I played lots of badminton today. Haha. It was great exercise. I love badminton. I think I might even choose it as my CCA. Haha yes you heard me right. I'm going to be in a SPORTS CCA. Hahaha... Not many people turned up today but it's ok lah, since there were only two courts. We have some badminton pros and they're scary man. When we played doubles, they were just shooting really fast and furious balls (ok, take it in the badminton sense ok? I don't know how to describe sports action) so I was like telling my fellow nothing-to-do at the other side of the net, Ok, let's go take a water break now... Haha. But it was cool lah. Had a good time. Hopefully we'll have it more often. The CC also has karaoke, haha. Maybe next time we'll do that. Then I went to Clementi Central with my two little sisters for dinner and to collect photos haha. Good thing I walked past Giordano! Coz I saw that they finally had ladies' jeans going at $19!!! You don't know how long I've waited to see that big red $19 sign go up. Heh. Made the girls hold my stuff for me so that my hands could be free - I was just so excited - to check out the jeans. Turned out that they only had one design for size 26 so I went to try that on. It was called hiphugger bootcut (which I like), but there was no lycra. Aiyah. The colour was also not super nice, just ok. Haha but I just couldn't pass up that chance to get my jeans at nineteen bucks! Ok why am I typing all these now...haha maybe coz I feel guilty about making such a fast purchase. Really, I was just like, eh $19! Got size 26? Only one design? Nevermind! I go try! Ok not bad! Need to alter length! Ok pay now, collect tomorrow! And it was all over. Haiyah, I hope it turns out well tomorrow!!! Baleno has 50% sale storewide, by the way. Samuel & Kevin looks good too. Tomorrow will see further. Today didn't have time to check them out. Went to KFC for dinner and ordered the Chicky Meal haha! Got the dunno-what Spiderman toy. See at church which cute boy to give it to... haha. Today Jeremy (the baby) came over for a short while and he fell down the stairs!!! I felt so terrible. Sigh. Ok and the Portugal vs England match? I just felt sad for England lah.

We sold the house! AND bought Blue Horizon! TODAY! Wow... God really is amazing, you know. Really thank Him for giving my parents the wisdom to make all these big decisions. Imagine buying and selling in the same day. When we have been trying to sell for the past two years... Ok, actually I think we have had the intention of selling since like ten years ago but it only got very active (and desperate) about eight years after that, and now, it sure is hard to believe that the house has finally been sold. Am I dreaming? I really can't believe this is happening! I came home from orientation to this good news but it only sunk in after my Thai class. In fact, wait, has it even sunk in yet? Haha. After so long...my mum is finally getting her dream fulfilled. All these years of her having to take care of us and the house, as much feelings as I have for this house, I also want to move out because this is what she deserves. Blue Horizon! We got the third floor unit, by the way. :) But we can't move straight into the apartment. We got to rent a flat somewhere and hold out for a few months first. But as my parents say, good things are worth waiting for, and what's a year when compared to ten? Those are all true, I guess. And I'm also glad for my mum that she doesn't have to keep cleaning up the whole house anymore just because there's going to be another viewing.

Wore all black tonight for Thai class and my teacher thought I'd slimmed down. Haha I wish! Ate fried chicken wings just now, so I know this won't be very possible anyway. Orientation was fine. I woke up this morning feeling ok because I knew that it would all be in God's hands and I had nothing to worry about. It turned out to be true. Nothing embarrassing or difficult or rudely annoying happened. Heh. My class is pretty nice. In fact I'm feeling excited about starting school on Monday...well I'm just curious to see what it's like lah. Everything would be so new. We have to bring our laptops on Monday but I don't want to carry it in that backpack! Heh. Anyway, Mondays are the worst. 8 am to 5 pm. Sigh. At least no classes on Wed and Thur mornings. But everyone (seniors and lecturers) says that Mass Comm is gonna be A LOT of hard work. Why did they have to emphasise that. If it really is true, then I won't be having much of an outside life anymore... and that's precious to me. Like my weekends are precious to me. Ok what am I talking about... I should get some sleep.

Had retail therapy yesterday! Was good. Bought slippers and crop pants. The crop pants from 37degrees only cost $15! So don't need to buy from Giordano already. Heh very good. Oh I sure will miss Flowers in the Attic. I love hanging around in the shop. Yesterday, I went through their stuff so many times because my friend was busy and I had to look like I was doing something...oh I don't know why...probably because I got all nervous with the boss around. I'm afraid of the boss! Haha. Oh anyway, two of their dresses are featured in this week's 8 Days. The rose print black tube dress is nice. Just that I have too many rose print stuff already, and I don't wear tubes. Haha now did that sound right... Ah, it's not that I can't go to the shop anymore just because my friend won't be there. But it'll just be different, you know what I mean right? Oh, but I gotta tell you about the arm-chair they have in the shop. It's so comfortable that the moment you sink yourself into it you never want to get up. :)

Ahhihh and I did some stupid stuff in the bookstore yesterday a la our RGS days ha ha ha. I don't know how to explain the game that we have but it sure is fun. It takes a lot of intellect to play that game too! So don't say we are...ah, whatever. But she was the better player yesterday. Oh why am I even admitting this here... Anyway, then we chanced upon the complete works of Shakespeare and that came at just the right time because before that we were trying to recall one very interesting passage from Julius Caesar. "touch thy instrument a strain or two"... Hahaha. Classic literature moment. I bet we'll all still remember this passage and quote it flawlessly and (ahem) passionately even when we've long forgotten the petty quarrel between what's-his-name and Brutus, the funeral speeches in Act 3, and uh, what else ah... heh. I never really liked JC actually. Just that passage because it never fails to make me laugh.

Viewed Blue Horizon today! It's cool. I'm really excited to be moving there. Ok, I shouldn't talk as if everything's been confirmed. But yeah, I think it's like 90%... Anyway, the bedrooms are really small. The moment I walked into one, I knew that all my dreams about how I wanted to do up my room had to be revised immediately. Haha sigh... No wonder my mum said that if I really wanted a walk-in wardrobe, I could just hang all my clothes in my room and walk in lor. Haha. And I was thinking of having a changing room corner, but now that doesn't seem possible either. Aiyah, I just gotta draw up new plans again lah. Haha. Before I saw the showroom, I was just taking my cousin's room as the example you know. Coz they live in a condo and oh, I don't know how my brain works...haha. The kitchen floor is so tiny too! Haha my auntie was saying that my mum would be like "oh, I finished mopping it already, now what...mop again! then..." hahaha. We had to hold this extended family conference about which floor and which unit we wanted our home to be and it was like such a major thing. So incredible. Haha. Coz my dad likes the high floor where there'd supposedly be breeze. But we've been living in landed property for 16 years and have survived without a breeze what. And we could save the money from not buying a high floor apartment and use it to buy fans or even air-cons for him! Heh. I like the third floor unit. High ceiling, private space, pool view, much much cheaper, same floor as the carpark, not to high up if the lift breaks down......

Tomorrow's orientation!!! I'm really nervous. Sigh. Oh, I finally realised that I did actually have the login ID and password to enter npal (some student web dunno-what) so I found out my timetable. Bad timetable! Will fill you in another time. Better rest and get ready for O tomorrow. Sigh.

Hey!! Now got music har?? So cool right!!! Haha ok so I'm repeating whatever I said on the tagboard but that's because I'm still in the same state. As in the "wow! got music!" state. Heh. Yes, I haven't gotten over it yet. (Thanks, Nic.) Well I've seen other blogs and I'm just so AMAZED at their designs. How do these people do it??? I'm so bad at html and stuff. My blog looks so boring compared to theirs. But, now, I've got music. Hehehe.

Baked today!!! Ok, ok, yes Erica, it was my MUM who baked and I was her diligent, enthusiastic, hardworking, attentive, helpful, full of initiative, assistant. The (mostly walnut and very few choc chips) cookies turned out pretty good!! Just that they're very, uh, fair. I mean, in terms of cookie colours (golden brown is ideal), they're very fair. Yeah, yeah, just like the one who helped to bake them right. I was actually quite tickled at the similarity. Heh. We started out with a mixing bowl and a wooden spoon and the butter was so hard! Then my Mum suddenly said, "Ok, let me get out the electric mixer." And I was like, what??? We have an electric mixer??!!! Hahaha. But the electric mixer wasn't any better!! Haha can you believe it. The two mixing things just stayed there. As in they didn't move around the bowl. So how much can you mix like that?? So we went back to the manual method. At first we thought the cookies weren't going to turn out well but thank God, everything was ok. Just the colour. Yeah. I wanted to dye the cookies red in the first place!! I think red cookies would be cool. No?? Or violet!!! Heh. Anyway, will be giving away the cookies to my friend at Flowers-Attic, Erica (so that she'll get so fat that I'll look skinny next to her heh!)...yup that's about it.

You know, I was telling my mum about how I think I should form my own gang. Haha. As in there're like a few funny gangs in church...the Butterfly Gang, the Firefly Gang, the Dragonfly Gang, the Honey Boys, the Waterboys... yeah, so I'm the honourary member (yes, Nic) of the Butterfly Gang. It's basically pink, butterflies, and short skirts. So you can see why. Haha.. But anyway...yah my mum was saying that I could be the Dragon Girl Gang. Hahaha. And she would be the only other member. I would be Xiao3 Long2 Nu3 (Dragon Girl) and she would be, uh, Lao3 Long2 Ma1 (Old Dragon Mother) or Lao3 Long2 Sao3 (Old Dragon Ah-Soh). We were all getting very nonsense then haha...but then she changed her mind and wanted a cooler name coz, just last night, we'd given our dad the very you3 sha1 qi4 (killer) name of CAPTAIN ONE-CHOICE. Haha big family joke there. Think I've mentioned it before? Yeah. It's about how he always says things like "You can choose where you want to go for dinner but I'll only go to Tiong Bahru." Like how we always seem to have more than one (his) choice but we don't. Hahaha... Captain One-Choice. I'm so tickled!! My brother came up with it. It's reminiscent of the Superheroes game in Whose Line is it Anyway? don't you think. Haha so yeah, Captain One-Choice, here to bring democracy to the world...hehe. My dad's so cute. He was so proud of the Father's Day card I gave him. I think that will give me a year of favours from him till the next card comes. Heh! Already during dinner when I couldn't finish my noodles and wanted him to help me finish it, I could execute the "You got a card today hor???" so successfully.

So I'm going shopping tomorrow! It's been more than 3 weeks!!! Yes, yes, very proud of myself. I'm gonna visit my friend at Flowers- (yes! just killed the irritating mosquito!) Attic. Her last day is 1 July. :( That's so sad. I don't know whether I can go down next week coz I don't know what my timetable is like... But I guess the first week of school is always uncertain, unfamiliar, unfriendly, uncomfortable, hehehe...

Oh yes more stories about the low-tech Sarah! My friends (they're twins) in NZ have had been trying to have audio conversations with me for the longest time ever but it always didn't work out. And then yesterday, one of them decided to try again. Unwavering spirit of a guy. I told him that I didn't have a mic but he could talk and I would type. And FINALLY, I heard his voice for the first time in 3 years. He sounded so different! All grown-up and all. Haha. Oh, at first he was just talking and I was typing in reply. Then he kept saying that he could "hear me type". And I seriously DID NOT connect anything for the first few minutes. Until it finally hit me (!) and so, yeah, ok big boo-boo there. It was hilarious. He had a cool accent and there I was talking in Singlish (as if Singlish really is a language haha) and sounding ah-lian...heh. Ah, the silly things that happen to me.

Exciting news! We could very well be selling the house TODAY! Wow...after so many years of waiting and longing and dreaming...this could all end today. And after 16 years of living in this house, I've finally understood once and for all what type of house it is. It's an intermediate terrace, not a semi-d, maisonette or something else. I could never get it right before!! But I sure will miss our mango tree, the space we have, the convenience brought by living in this location...ok but moving to Blue Horizon will be just as convenient too. Ever closer to church, market, Ginza, the park (!)... Just that I GREW UP in this house. So many feelings attached to it already. But I guess I can look forward to doing up my new room...and using the facilities in the condo... OHHHH but it's so sad now to think of really moving.

The speakers in this laptop are really really fantastic. Makes my Ah Tao (David Tao) sound even better! Not that he needs any help, of course. Heh. But anyway, yeah, they're really wonderful. Just that LOW-TECH SARAH did some boo-boo and now there's something not quite right with Microsoft Office and my brother says I may have to re-install everything BOOOO......

My shoulders got burnt from learning roller-blading on Wed!! Yes, come and see the new dark Sarah. Once you thought she can never get tanned, but you were wrong. Ahhh ok...I'm not actually darker than before but at least this has proven that it isn't impossible for me to have two-toned skin, like my skin can actually be other than white. Heh.

Giordano has nice stuff!!! I wanna buy the crop pants, white tee, black sleeveless lycra top, and dry-tech top maybe. Do you think OG Giordano will be cheaper??? Because the crop pants looks like it's already on sale at $29... But OG is always 20% off. $29 for a pair of pants that isn't even full length is too much when I can get jeans for $19. Anyway, the white tee and black lycra top, you can surely get at 20% off if you go to OG. Coz OG wants to attract costumers, so they got Giordano to go there and then they absorb the 20% discount. Haha auntie-speak!

I've orientation next Thursday!! Argh I hate orientations. Be positive! Positive! OK I'll be getting my timetable. That part is the most attractive, other than meeting my classmates. I'm in tutorial group T109... And I hope the timetable is super slack.

Just to show you that we don't just no action talk only, wr and I went to the park today! For Real! Haha. But before we set off, my mum and I gave her a dress for her birthday. Nice dress! Just right for French summer. She was one of the two people in Singapore who was selected to go to France on an all-expenses paid trip for 2 weeks! So proud of that girl. :) Anyway, had to cross some big roads to get to the park (I hate crossing roads). Then we talked and walked for quite some time until we saw the sign that said that the bicycle kiosk was actually back at where we came from. Argh. So we walked back. But then it was closed! How can it be closed? Now's school holidays! If you aren't open at 11 in the morning then when are you open??? And so we had to walk back. Again. Then we came to McDonald's. Nice place! And just opposite Blue Horizon only. Another good reason to move there. :)

Back from church camp! It was really good. Such a meaningful 5 days spent. Our youth speaker was so, so good. Now I can't wait for next year's camp to come. The kids were all so lovely too. I had such a good time babysitting them. My parents were even more crazy over this baby. They missed him so much over the weekend and good thing we saw him in church today. Haha. Oh I even went swimming! Yeah, very suicidal. I haven't swam or even exercised since...PE last year?! Haha. And I had to swim ACROSS the pool. Coz we had water games. OK, just the breadth of it. But still. When I reached the other end, I thought I was ready to die. Haha. Good thing nothing embarrassing happened. Just maybe I shocked everyone coz I looked so white. Sigh.

Just watched Bend it like Beckham. Nice show! And so funny...Keira Knightly's mum thought she wasn't straight! That was really so, so funny. And the lump-in-the-throat moment was, of course, when Jess' (sp?) dad let her go to America. So touching...the love of her dad and the rest of her family.

There's just like 2 weeks more before school starts. Sigh. It's hard to imagine starting school again after being on leave for 6 months. So I'll probably just slack in school? Haha dunno. On the brighter side, I'll be collecting the laptop this Wed. And maybe I'll be learning Japanese...though now that I think of it, it'll be quite a struggle juggling Thai and Japanese. I think I've learnt not to have so much on my plate. Should bear that in mind next time. I know my JC friends are struggling with the heavy workload now, especially with exams right after this hols (what a horrible thing, by the way!!!) and maybe some of them think that I'm going to have a better life in poly...but I'm not so sure about that. But I guess at least, for one, I'm spared ultimately from the A levels...which was something I wanted to avoid in the first place. So no regrets so far about not going to JC. There are many other reasons why I chose poly over JC but all these aren't that important now...

Well, ok, it hasn't been all that bad leaving work. I've plunged full force into the Great Singapore Sale and retail therapy is working wonderfully. Heh.

So who went for the Singapore Idol auditions? I know of two people who did/are going to. I think they're still queuing. The queue, I'm sure, is super long! I read the reporter's first-hand account of her audition. The panel of judges sounds quite friendly?? I wonder what kind of criticisms they'll come up with. But it'll be quite unexciting if they follow Simon's style, don't you think. So unoriginal too. Oh well. I hope the show will be watchable.

Today, a Nigerian lady and her two little girls came to our church. Their hair is fascinating!!! It's really a whole different kind of...hair. Reminded me of a freshly mowed lawn. Heh! Don't know why. And their names are so cute! One's called Ti Ti and the other's called Su Su (but pronounced "Chu Chu").

Tomorrow I'll be off to Malaysia for church camp and won't be back until Friday. Hope the sale can wait for me. Haha... Take care everybody.

Oh, what sweet, sad, sad, sad, freedom... There's this routine that I have? Like, wake up at 7:15am because of my handphone alarm, shut it off, switch on the phone, go back to sleep, wake up at 7:45 thereabouts, wash up, think of what to wear, what earrings/bag/shoes to match, pack breakfast to eat in the office, rush out of the house, wear shoes in the car, listen to David Tao, reach workplace, climb 4 storeys worth of stairs (!), check reflection in the mirror, enter office, wear my jacket, fill up my cup with hot water, then it's another day's work! Physics journals, Clinical Approach, Zebrafish... My whole desk would be covered with papers and stationary, so much so that people would probably think: how much work I have, when actually it's all just due to very bad organisation and the lack of a stationary holder. Lunchtime comes and we all head down to the bus that's waiting. And lunchtime conversations are always so much fun and I always learn a lot. How I will miss my colleagues!!!

I really have much to thank God for. For getting such a good first-time job that lets me into the world of publishing, for having such nice colleagues who keep the job from being too boring, for the lifts I get from my dad every morning which make going to work something that is not quite dreaded, for all the little things at the end of each day that I look forward to...Mon: Channel U's Ready, Steady, Go; Tues: Dad can fetch; Wed: 8 DAYS and American Idol; Thur: Dad can fetch and American Idol; and Fri: Arrival of the weekend! So you see, it really is not that hard working from Monday to Friday. And that is why I'm so thankful!!!

My last day of work gave me this very warm feeling inside. I went around dishing out yummy Ferrero Rochers to everyone and then for lunch, two of my colleagues treated me to a meal at a Chinese restaurant at JEC. Then we took a cab back. Saw on my table a little bouquet of sunflowers from another two of my colleagues!!! Was super touched. Even got a present from another colleague whom I wasn't particularly close to or anything like that. Then went to the warehouse for the first time because we had to stick the correct serial number onto the books (which were about dissection, by the way). The warehouse is HUGE! And filled with so many, many, many books. It's interesting to be working in a place that actually, in a sense, makes books, after one has been reading books for so many years...When I was younger, my own amateurish attempts at "publishing" were simply just stapling the books. And now, it's professional binding and real book covers. Just incredible to me. And lastly, I ended the day fittingly with a physics journal, complete with lines of numbers and words that completely don't make sense, as usual! Heh.

Sad, sad, sad! Major withdrawal symptoms now. Went for retail therapy today though, and bought a sling bag from 37 Degrees, the one with a rainbow sling. I like! Walked past one pink shop after another, it does seem like nowadays one can find a pink shop at every turn. After a while, it gets very, very scary.