my weekend with kids

two consecutive days spent with kids have left me burnt out. literally. yesterday we did filming at west coast park with four kids and it was like a zoo with lots of melting ice-cream and mood swings. but it had its good moments lah. and i still love my kids. well i got burnt! this is quite a phenomenon and something new to me. haha check it out man, while it lasts.

today after church i spent the afternoon helping to take care of some 17 hyper kids that left me feeling very old indeed. this care group has an amazing number of kids (17 is not their full strength) and now they're serious about starting a kids programme while the parents do Bible study. so i'm in for the long haul. i like the idea actually and it helps that the kids are so cute, though they ask me questions like "are you married?" and once they know my age they classify me, like "oh, so you're still a teenager". haha.

and guess what. i've gotten addicted to solitaire showdown and i've dragged fel unwittingly into playing this with me till our eyes pop out and fingers drop off. but it's fun. please play with me. haha thank you. no no please don't play with me. i got work to do. haha sorry.

davidtao.com

david tao has a website!!! i had no idea. heehee ok it's not so bad coz he just launched it on dec 22 last year only. the website's really cool! you should all go check it out. i wanted to register as a "david's club member" (lol) but my mother told me not to be silly. ok... and he has a diary! again my mother said it was written by his secretary. sigh, she forgets who brought her to his concert in 2003. haha. anyway, the most important thing is that he's got a new album! i had no idea as well. where have i been??? it's called "The Great Leap" or 太平盛世. i bet it'll be a fantastic album, as usual. hehe. I CAN'T WAIT!

"Outstanding singer/song writer David Tao has not released a major album for over 2 years, but now he's back and guarantees to attract the attention of music devotees everywhere all over again. The acclaimed Asian R&B expert teamed up with Li Zhuo Xiong to offer you the phobic lyrics of his latest principal track Ghost that describes a person's fears among a mass media driven society that is getting too close for comfort. Also watch out for Susan Says that skillfully combines Beijing Opera sounds with David's exceptional contemporary music style. Continuing to offer you his usual high-quality work, David's new long player presents his first installment in a new musical trilogy that should not be missing in your collection."

-yesasia.com

(i cited my source)

cooking / valentine's day

haha i do like to cook but i think i shall only seriously try it out after we move to blue horizon. the kitchen now is really small and cluttered. not enough room to take any kind of disaster from me. and you know where's our microwave oven? in the STOREROOM. don't think you know of anybody who cooks in the storeroom right. :p hahaha.

you can get valentine's day gifts at budget prices here. forever friends bears and roses and chocolates and what not. though i think most of you who will read this are girls...but um, just spread the word for me. support mingen's bro's enterprising effort. thanks. :)

tiger cup

another pic from the tiger cup experience... that's a lot of us! haha. we entered the stadium very early, like 5:40pm. the match was supposed to start at 7:30 pm. people over there were practising the kallang wave many many times... then jai the singer came on and sang a few songs, like knockin' on heaven's door (the song in windstruck too heh). the national anthem was weird. never heard that kind of version before heh. the newspaper said it was too folksy and something else. people booed the indonesians. so bad. :( talk about a gracious society...

one of the girls fell in love with lionel lewis and it was hilarious. while everyone was cheering for him for yet another good save, she was shouting "i love you lionel!!" lol. my hero was indra. when he scored in the sixth minute i was overcome with joy. then someone fouled him and i almost fainted. i also got to see agu's famous back flips. flip, flip, flip. heh.

after the match we went to al ameen for supper. now i finally know what a milo dinosaur is all about. but it's so ex...$2... i can make at home myself ah. hehe.

yay for singapore!!!

WINDSTRUCK

windstruck was good man. i love it! i'm so glad that there are at least two good movies in the world - my sassy girl and windstruck. i've had enough of hollywood! :p i watched it at mingen's house this afternoon...a good start to my hols. but oh man i cried so much. i cried from the time the guy died all the way to the end of the movie (i remember that's what happened to lirong too). no happy ending though. i wanna sue them. anyway, i've borrowed lots of movies from mingen to watch during my hols. very excited... (and lirong! now i know how come you know about the animation thing on the top corner of the pages in a book... haha)

can i ever live without God in my life?

don't feel very productive this week. anyway, went to watch the match on sunday night and it was pretty good. it was nice to see the stadium filled with red. i'm really glad singapore won coz they'd worked so hard! and this is me outside the stadium looking rather ah soh with the handbag and handphone sigh...(i rather like the "wind in my hair" effect though. lol.)



and the answer is no.

even worse but at least there's shrek... 2

just when i thought the week was picking up... heh well as you all know i did a really bad speech today. i bet this will haunt me forever. i wished i had just turned around and flung myself onto the whiteboard hehe. but to give everyone credit, you were so encouraging and sweet about it.

the other irksome thing today was that i went on a wild goose chase for the tickets to this sunday's soccer match (gonna watch it with my friends from church). haha man...what a journey. first stop, west mall. then the 7 eleven right at the other end of the bus interchange. decide to take a train to bukit gombak. locate 7 eleven but cashier tells me the nearest s'pore pools outlet is at WEST MALL. decide to go home before i explode. haha. later i take a train down to bukit batok again, post letter to korean penpal, find out that there are outlets at the ntuc downstairs and outside of west mall (two chances!). ntuc turns out to be shop and save. !!?? tickets sold out at the outlet outside. feel very weird at the outlet where everybody is buying 4D and toto. finally return home and watch shrek 2 to cool off.

shrek 2 is super funny!! i enjoyed it a lot more than i did for the first one. and i love it when i think the movie has ended, but no wait there's more! a whole singing extravaganza and far far away idol. lol. the way they made the whole movie was really smart.

so yay i'm ok now... haha. i know i shouldn't habour all these negative feelings inside me and i'm trying not to. i'm trying to let go...and give it a break. because everything happens for a reason and God won't put me through anything more than i can bear! i can do this!! hahaha.

all bad but over

finally it's wednesday night and i'm feeling rather qing song. haha what's the english equivalent for that? i'm not sure. oh, it's relaxed. lol. today i was writing random chinese words on the back of my sab notes just for practice... i like to do that when i'm bored or want to be distracted. heh. and also coz i'm so scared i'll forget all the words i know (which ain't much, but...). that'll be such a waste after ten years of struggles!! but already i'm starting to forget. anyway, fel joined me and we started writing jap and thai words... heh she remembers so much of her jap even though she took it way earlier than me! i have wasted my parents' money. :( sigh... i must dig up all my notes and start revising! especially my thai, coz my friends from chiang mai are coming in april!! yay!!! haha.

well yeah the first part of this week was kinda bad but it's all over now. especially glad that the debate is over! that was a dark cloud hanging over my head since last week. :p and today for aerobics we did pilates! at first i was really glad and excited coz 1) it means we're just on the mat, no running/squatting/stretching/stepping/etc etc; 2) i don't even have to pay and i can learn pilates!; 3) pilates will help me get my flat stomach. well point 1 is no longer counted coz even though i did none of those things i still almost died. point 3 is also invalid coz i didn't work my ab muscles at all - they went MIA on me. only point 2 is the saving grace. haha...

what can i do

went out with the pumpkins (hee) yesterday and it was fun! i really enjoyed myself. we went jalan-ing around wisma, taka... oh man, so many good stuff at good prices! i had to literally DRAG myself out of the shops. in the end i just bought a lilac sleeveless top from U2 for $10. it's an investment ok. it'll last me for a long, long time. :) oh but we didn't get to take neoprints! we ought to! haha. sam and fel were in their kbox mood and went crazy singing songs... sent terence running across half of takashimaya... lol but they sing well.

this week felt longer than usual. guess that's because we spent more time in school. but i remember monday was nice. we had a good brunch at macs. i like it when we can all just relax and laugh a lot. tuesday after school my group did filming at ahhihh's void deck. that was quite an experience. and now the weekend has come...great...but i've got work to do. :( i feel like watching movies instead. heh.

doesn't really feel like 2005...heh

oh well i just got home...didn't sleep the whole night. let me start from yesterday. i went down to school around noon to hand up the graphcomm project... what a load off my shoulders! thank God for the last minute inspiration that came on thursday. oh before that, i almost got cheated by the photocopy auntie at bukit batok who wanted to charge me $3 for binding!!! :p haha. good thing i mustered up my courage to tell her "no, thank you" and walk away. the shop in school charges only $1.60!! i'd have been so gek if i'd really paid $3. heh.

yeah then after that i met mingen at suntec coz i wanted to buy some presents for my mum but in the end, couldn't find anything. (thanks mingen for accompanying me!) instead, i bought some necessities for myself, like a handphone pouch for my precious handphone (don't want anything to happen to it again) and socks for my aerobics. btw, dorothy perkins is/was having a very good sale! i was overcome with surprise and then joy haha. tried on quite a number of clothes but in the end, RESISTED entirely and walked out of the shop empty-handed and wallet still intact. nowadays shopping doesn't interest me that much anymore... :) there was a really cute handbag going for around $29 though. but it's ok. it's a matter of whether it's a NEED or a WANT!

then at night i went down to church for my masterlife (this Bible study) retreat. at 10:30 we went to the sanctuary for the watchnight service, which was just beautiful...i wish we'll have more of such services in future. just singing and praying to the Lord. so wonderful... i cried for the year that had just passed. so many things had happened to me and this was truly an extra special and meaningful year for me. after the service the masterlife group continued with the retreat in the form of card games like dutch blitz and phase 10. it was my first time playing these games, and blitz was really fun! apparently it's a game made up by missionaries(?) who didn't want their kids playing those kind of poker card games... :) smart idea! phase 10 required a lot more warming up heh. our brains weren't functioning too well by that time of the night. it was a while before the game got into momentum but after that it was ok. just prefer the adrenaline rush that blitz gives.

ok i better catch some sleep now... can't believe 2004 is over.

movie list 2004

lists!! i like lists!! did you see today's life!? there's the top 10 best & worst movies of 2004. unfortunately, i happen to have watched stepford wives. with my mother, no less. and now she's blaming me for taking her to one of the lousiest movies of 2004. hahaha no lah. we didn't like it after we watched it either.

managed to get the black laptop cover today from the computer supplies shop in my school. paid $19.50 for it. if you think i've overpaid, please don't tell me.

had aerobics today again, and we did mostly kickboxing. i was feeling so healthy...

and then i came home and indulged on ang ku kueh and fried chicken wings.

ferrero rocher overload

ferrero rocher is my absolute favourite chocolate. it's tastier than that tennis player ferrero. i eat it whenever we have it. we don't normally buy it, it's usually more like people give it to us, especially at Christmas and New Year. i eat it when i'm down, and i also eat it when i'm in a good mood. either way, i eat it a lot and i can just imagine all that fat. good thing i have aerobics tomorrow.

lugged my heavy laptop to school today and then to west mall after that. didn't manage to find a black cushion cover for it but got a black cardigan (for myself) from dano at least. been scouting for one for a long, long time. i've been hearing so much about the sales that are going on, i feel the lure of shopping malls, but i just can't bring myself to go on a full scale shopping spree. not when i've graphcomm to worry about, and other stuff... hmm.

... big sigh. i've never seen such a big tragedy before. 24 000 people dead and counting. so terribly sad!!! and the thai king's grandson was one of the casualties!! oh man that's so sad. i like the thai king you know, no matter what terence says. :p actually we have a lot to thank God for. singapore's safe from all these natural disasters. no earthquakes, volcanic erruptions, tsunamis... i feel really sad for these people. big big sigh.

anyway, check out today's life! section. there's a list of 10 good books to read. i love it when i get such lists. now i can go book hunting and hopefully end up with many good reads.

It's a Merry Christmas Eve

today was kinda a surprise! went to sch with kailin and only had like ONE HOUR of class when it should have been three. Christmas eve, that's why. but actually they shouldn't even have school on Christmas eve! :p anyway, went to check out the school bazaar and it was pretty interesting and cheap...bought two glam bracelets. thinking of who to give them to...

oh last night i watched shrek on my laptop. borrowed the vcds from my (ex) piano teacher. it was quite funny, in the intelligent way...but it wasn't SUPER funny...coz i guess i watched it too late. after i've heard all the gushes and praises from everybody. it was like that with finding nemo too! you know how you hear about how GOOD a movie is, and you end up having sky high expectations or something...anyway, somehow the movie just wouldn't feel as interesting, amusing, or wonderful. on a side note, right now the one movie that i wanna watch is nobody knows from japan. (mingen!! shall we go??)

rum&raisin brownies can get you drunk

haha yeah i dunno HOW it happened but i think i got a little tipsy after gleefully gobbling down two yummy-looking brownies at somebody's house last night. the kids from my church went carolling and i decided to tag along halfway, and it was all really going quite well... i mean, the kids were singing really really WELL and the food at the homes were good... but somehow those brownies just didn't sit down too well with poor old me. all along i've preferred chocolatey fudge brownies, and now i know even better to steer clear of rum & raisin brownies!!! there was this funny thing going on in my head, but good thing i was sober enough to hold a decent conversation with the people who gave me a lift home after that. this is still a mystery to me. i can't figure out how i can get drunk on those brownies when i'm always fine after eating mee sua with dom...fa guo lang jiu. haha.

aerobics

AEROBICS. yes that's what i'm doing for s&w. sigh. what on earth did i get myself into... i thought i was so clever to pick a sport that just requires you to go "and 1, and 2..." with the lady on tv. aargh!! i was so wrong. hahaha man it was such a torture. i thought all my PE days were far behind me but no, they're BACK. :( i did all sorts of exercises in a blur, just kinda kept asking myself what had i been thinking...haha. the first hour was excruciating. the second part was better coz we finally got to sit/lie down on the exercise mat and do some yoga and pilates. but no spiritual stuff for the yoga lah. the teacher knows. heh. i like her...and the best part is, she's guaranteed us a flat stomach! my mother is happy for me. thanks.

i found a new route home! just take 61 from outside my school to bukit batok mrt and then take the train to yew tee. at least 1/3 faster than my [bus to clementi then mrt to yew tee] route. very happy now! :)

anyway, just got news that we're gonna be moving into the west coast condo next march. that's so soon! like we packed everything up just not too long ago, and now we have to do that again. and this time i really want to get my room right. the last time i decorated my room was when i was 5, and that was why i ended up with pink furniture. not that pink isn't nice.

3rd day of school

this morning was so nice to sleep in...nice and cooling. i was snug in my bed until about 9:30 and then i got up and went to eat rotiboy. haha my mum had been so excited to let us try it and finally i did but i detected butter in it! and she says she's the butter expert so if she says there's no butter that means no butter. anyway, i didn't finish it. i don't like butter. :(

yesterday there was no school so i met ahhihh at raffles place for lunch. she's having her law attachment somewhere there. i found out that OUB plaza is quite a cool shopping place! yay. i bought something from there.

later i have school from 1-5. really thank God that wednesdays are gonna be better from now on. i mean, nothing can beat cats and iac right? heh. this sem it's starting a business and sports & wellness. i wonder what sport i'll end up with! maybe ballroom dancing. haha. ok that's not a sport. maybe it's under the wellness category.

my last days

school's starting next week! tsk. haha. i love my bed man! this bed in yew tee is so nice that it makes me just want to sleep all day. for every morning now i've been waking up at embarrassing hours such as 10:45 am... so last night i thought that it'd be nice to catch the early morning sun just for once, so i set my handphone alarm to 8:30 but the bed was really too nice to resist and i woke up at 9:20, which is still an improvement, according to my mother. heh heh.

singapore idol finals! i was so torn between taufik and sylvester, right down to the last minute before the results were announced. then i realised that i had to make a decision as to who i was supporting or else i wouldn't know who to be happy/sad for when the results were (finally) announced! and my dear mother was happily supporting taufik and refused to sit next to me during the nerve-wrecking suspense gurmit's "i'm really gonna announce the results - soon" then commercial break then back to the show... unless i said i was gonna support taufik. so taufik it was! anyway he's really good and i'm so glad he won. i'm so glad that he and sylvester are buddies too. and sylvester is gonna make it big in the chinese market for sure so i'm glad for him too! yay yay yay! HAPPY ENDING!!! i love happy endings!

the wedding

haha hmm...was kinda anticipating my cousin's wedding for the entire year and it came and went...but it sure was memorable. and touching. and lovely. here are some pics:


me walking down the long...long...aisle


the whole wedding contingent

the changi project

hehe tues night i went to changi airport to play...haha it was a night out for the youths in my church. about 30 of us turned up and monopolised burger king while waiting for the game to start. haha ok no lah... but anyway then we launched into this fast and furious treasure hunt sort of game...whoa i don't think i've ever run so much in one night before. yeah i RAN! haha... it was really quite fun lah. but running around the airport is no joke. lol and one other team tried to form an alliance with us. hahaha they think what - we're in amazing race ah?

the funniest thing was when we were all looking for the name of a coffee blend and suddenly i realised it was spelled out on the poster right in front of this boy from another group, but i wasn't sure if he'd seen it... turned out he hadn't (so blur) and my group quickly covered up the poster while his group started to realise what was going on and so it ensued in some scuffling around the poor starbucks poster... no the FUNNIEST thing was when the same group was engrossed in this other poster and we stole their trolley and ran with it right to the other end of terminal 2. running with a trolley is no joke either. and we had like so many strategies to like avoid them lol... we hid behind walls, acted as the telephone operator when they called, sent out scouts... but in the end they didn't catch us or else it'd have been more fun.

we reached changi village at about 11:45 and had supper there. i saw the roti tissue which looked like a party hat hehe... and i saw milo dinosaur for the first time too... hehe yah i've been living in the jungle. anyway we left at past midnight and travelled home on this hired bus. the uncle was really nice, didn't complain at all. coz we had to send people off to their homes and in total we made about 7 (?) stops around singapore. some people bunked in with others, or else we'd have had to make more stops. my mum picked me up at bukit batok and we reached home at about 3+, slept at 4... woke up at 1:15 pm the next day. heh.

so that's yesterday already. late afternoon, we collected the gown from chinatown and bought a pair of white heels from charles & keith at citilink, but last night at the church rehearsal i was like wobbling down the aisle in those heels so i think i might have to go change them... yay charles & keith has an exchange policy! as long as you have the receipt, the shoes are still like in original condition, and best of all, i can go to any branch i want... so that means causeway point, which is just 3 mrt stops away. :)

weddings

it takes a lot of work to get a wedding going, don't you think. the amount of planning you have to do is...enough to make me think twice about getting married early. i see how much my cousin is doing for her wedding and i'm like aiyoh... poor thing. hehe i mean yah lah i don't mind getting married early coz all that stuff about waiting till both are financially secure or something doesn't really bother me...coz money is not important to me in that sense...as long as you're contented. but since i haven't even found anybody yet there's no point thinking about this NOW.

my point is, at first i thought it'd really be a mammoth task to get married. but then, after spending so many days shopping for my bridesmaid gown, all that wedding dreams are filling my head again hahaha. the gowns are really nice you know! i'm not talking about those obiang ones with lots of beads and sequins and dunno what else, i'm talking about those gowns which are really sophisticated and classy and beautiful!

sigh so you know my mum and i walked up and down orchard road till the poor lady was about to drop...the next day we hit chinatown and though the results were more encouraging we were nowhere nearer to getting a gown... but we did make a lot of friends with the shop ladies who were all so friendly and helpful... it was like, "ok ok next time when i get married i'll come to you" so yeah that's how this whole wedding thing started. i wish i could help them, like give them business, you know.

but anyway, you can only get married once. i mean, you SHOULD get married only once. and i've still got so many more years before it's my turn. dunno if they'll still be at the same place anot. haha ok back to my story. then just as we were about to join my dad for dinner, we actually came out of the shopping centre through the wrong door, but then we decided to walk on to see what's ahead, and lo and behold.... a bridal boutique was just across the road! although it looked a little upmarket (one of our most oftenly used words this week), it turned out to be the best deal we'd ever got. so thank God! just when you think you won't get what you're looking for, it turns up at the most unlikely place. must trust in God to provide.

hey i wish all of you a good week ahead. :) don't hesitate to call me up or something if you ever need a listening ear or a shopping buddy! or an exercise partner, or a movie date.... ok ok. haha.