Rinse and Repeat

Again and again and again and again.

Hands up those who agree that when the radio overplays a song, it totally ruins it.

Example:

Even if she kinda failed at rocking out the song, I quite liked Taylor Swift's Back To December at the AMA '10. But as usual, I postponed downloading it till like a month later.

By then the radio stations had begun spamming the song till it was spread so thin; to the point that it contracted that 'all stations are playing this same song at the same time' disease.

So when I finally downloaded it, I:

a) Felt like such a trend follower

b) Was already utterly sick of it

Some current songs the radio should stop replaying over and over:

Just The Way You Are (I KNOW. Still ongoing.)

Back To December

The Time (Dirty Bit)

Rocketeer

Hold It Against Me (says sis but I still like it)

Sucks when a good thing gets overrated.

I mean, seriously.

P.S.: Then again, finding the balance between satisfying the requests and not overplaying a song is not that easy so cheers to the radio station peeps.

Estranged? Not Really.

I love them.

I really do. At least I think I do. I feel sad when they feel sad and happy when they feel happy. I want to support them when they’re down and help them when they need it. I am willing to sacrifice for them and I feel the need to protect them.

I hope that’s part of what loving someone is.

But I feel like the problem is that I can’t spend too much time with them. It’s like we just can’t mix well that way. Like chalk and cheese. Like day and night. Like marshmallows and pizza.

Wait, no. That last one might work out.

Like… Like oil and water. You mix them up and they seem perfectly fine churning together in the glass at first. But give it time and they soon start to separate into that two distinct layers. You just can’t keep them together for long.

It’s like that with them sometimes. I’m fine hanging out for the while, just chilling and stuff. We talk, we laugh, we get about.

But sooner or later, we inevitably start rubbing on each other’s corners. Everything will seem fine but somehow someone with start something that will lead to stupid things being thrown at each other with vehemence that is not always justified or reasonable.

And it’s far from a pretty sight when that happens. There’re tantrums and arguments and blame being tossed back and forth and for one brief moment, I could swear that I actually hate them with all my guts.

But when I calm down, I find it stupid: most of the things we argue about. And I don’t know if the other party sees it that way but I think they sometimes do. Sometimes they don’t, and those are the ones that simmer at the back of our minds, ready to boil over in a blast of rage the next time an argument happens.

I don’t know if they feel the same way, but I see the pattern anyway. No matter how hard they try to draw me in, they can’t possibly not see the most basic of outlines of how it will go. The timeline here plays such a huge part in how much we get along.

It’s not that I don’t always hate spending time with them, it’s just that I feel like I can’t. I do think we’re better nowadays as we’ve matured or learnt more patience. But it is still not smooth sailing and it feels like the more we force it, the more ill the feelings get. It’s so taxing, having to keep the tempers and eye rolling to a down low, and it’s worth it. At times.

Other times I feel like there is not point to it. I myself feel completely satisfied hanging out with them in short intermittent periods of time; I feel that’s enough to make them understand that our relationship is still important.

Problem is, I don’t think they see it that way. That’s when the misunderstanding starts. Subsequently, it piles on and on, by and by. Till it reaches that pinnacle.

And boom.

Each Step

What do you see when you look into the future?

The excitement can be so scary sometimes.

Wondering what’s going to happen to you.

Where you will be then, which country, what kind of abode, how you furnish it.

What job you would have, whether it’s something steady or erratic, how you’d live with it day to day, how high you’d be in the career ladder.

How much you’d earn, what you would spend on, how your lifestyle would be.

Who’ll you be with, how you’d treat them and how they’d treat you, how often you see each other, what would you do together.

Who would be the new people you meet, who you would keep as friends or colleagues or acquaintances or even rivals.

Would you wake up at 7 in the morning? Get the kids ready for school and drive to work. Meet up with a friend and have lunch together. After that, you head over to the office to see the progress. Come home for a nice, warm dinner and spend the night relaxing and laughing with the spouse while nagging at your kids to study. You tuck them in around 10 together and sneak out again for a late movie together.

Or would you sleep till the sun is high in the sky? Make yourself an early lunch of leftovers and go into your home office to start typing up documents and making phone calls. You continue this till its dinnertime. Then you order take out to eat while watching TV. Later, your friends come pick you up and you hang with them till just before dawn breaks.

Maybe you would wake up at 6 to go jogging together? You come back and snooze till 10 and wake up to a breakfast prepared for you. Get yourself ready for work and head out to the bus stop to get to work. Flirt with some co-workers and laugh with others. You head over to a restaurant after work to meet up and have dinner together. You have a couple of drinks before heading home to have a Wii marathon till 3am.

Let's say you’d have to wake up at 5 and cycle to work. It’s so meagre a pay but you have to do it anyway just to pay off the debts. You come home to an empty rental room around 7 with some fast food as supper. You can barely afford to feed yourself and pay the bills. Most of the nights, you sleep with the fan off just to save money. You’re growing a belly but you retire right after dinner anyway as work tires you out and you have to wake up at 5 the next day again.

Any of those circumstances could befall anyone. Sure it may depend on your strength, your will, your smarts or your courage. But luck definitely comes into play. I’m not sure if luck and fate even exists, if there is such a thing as one’s destiny. But there are certain unexplained forces that could be taken as coincidences or proof.

Sometimes a decision we make affects us in a huge but not so severe way. Or the small ones that might or might not change our whole lives without us even knowing it. We may welcome them depending on how adventurous we are or shun it for the safer road.

But sometimes the decision is so great that it not only affects you but others in your life as well. Sometimes you might be afraid to make that decision. It could all work out but some many arrows point towards negative. Yet that foolish tiny ray of hope says that there is a chance you could and that’s enough. You could, or you could not. Both have equal degrees of maybe’s. And you’re still scared but you have to put one foot forward soon. The path behind you is already disappearing. But which foot? Which path?

It’s very confusing and you’re probably not prepared to face it but you need to make the choice anyway because that’s part of the journey.

WELL. I don’t really know where this post was supposed to head. It was just me spewing random thoughts from my head as I read OP. Fuck, I think I’m addicted.

I need to study. And paint my nails. Night.

First Attempt At Sushi

Of a budding chef.

That was also the first day of my fasting.

Sushi rice on fingers + CAN'T TOUCH FOOD = omgwannadai

Well, all in all it was interesting. And I did learn new cooking tips because he is a great chef though this first attempt was kinda phail.

Oh, warning. The post will be peppered with his awesomely cute shih tzu puppy that accompanied us, Twinkle. :D

Is her.

So anyways, after shopping for the stuff (in which I had to walk through aisle upon aisle of yummies tqvm), we headed back to Chew's place to make Teh Sushi.

He basically did all the work. I was just snapping pictures and staring in awe at his not-so-newfound culinary skills.

We couldn't get the ingredients as fresh as we preferred because Jusco is fail. But he we made it work.

She's adorable~

The rice just takes ages and of course, being one of those really meticulous chefs, he had to get it just right.

Snoopy, their other dog! I hope I remembered the name right.

Awwww~

She's tired but she can only lie down for a second before jumping up again and following us around.

I think she knows we'll drop bits of food sooner or later.

Anyways, we rolled the sushi (actually he did most of it, I wasn't about to embarrass myself in front of him duh) and he started slicing them up.

He had to make very weird combinations like adding the ebikko straight into the rice. I admit it was fun, but made the already difficult rice even harder to roll. -.-

LOL.

I still feel proud of his our work! :D

Last pic of Twinkle in an old outfit! :P


And a really cute video of her doing the 'Stay!' trick. :DDDDDDD

Okays, I has a rant-ish.

So yeah, we had our Professionalism class test today. And I'm VERY sure I died.

As in 'lucky to get 40%' type. Not 'I'm a bloody anal nerd who must get above 75%' type. Yeah, even then I don't get that high. I am sad.

*prays for sympathy marks*

Oh goodness, I've been reduced to praying for sympathy marks. It's THAT bad. My dignity can go f**k itself.

But like, I really NEED this. Or my scholarship is screwed. My Human Nutrition test already so-so only. And the best part is, I actually thought I did fine this time. It's always like that.

Just goes to show you reverse psychology triumphs once again.

So we were all thinking we did fine and dandy and eager to get out and go home.

But then! They went through the test after they've collected the papers. And this is the really messed up part.

On the one hand, I really want to mentally prepare myself for what it is. I mean, taking this as an example, I thought I did alright when I really screwed up. The mental shock would've keeled me when I received my score. I do prefer to have a mental gauge of my score beforehand.

And all that crap about knowing the right answers la (I don't really give a crap about that part to be honest, my brain doesn't work that way). AND APPARENTLY WE ANSWERED THE QUESTIONS WRONG.

Like outta four short answer questions, we got like 85% off the mark. Okay, I did anyway. And I was so confident too, writing all I got from the notes. Then they hit us with (their) reality and tell us the answers are a whole different set on a completely different page.

The whole class was groaning by the second sub-question.

Aaanyways, back to the 'feedback' session. Yes, that's what they call it.

One the one hand, some of us, including moi, like to prepare ourselves for how we did. So feedback gives us an outline of it.

One the other hand, its like:

FTS LIKE I WANNA GO THROUGH THE DAMN TEST AGAIN. EVERY SINGLE WRONG ANSWER IS LIKE A STAB IN THE BRAIN LIKE "WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID? WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID? WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID?" WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME? IMMA FLING THIS CHAIR AT WHOEVER DARES TO GET ME IN DENIAL BY SAYING I SCORED GREAT THIS TIME AND PUNCH SOME RANDOM PERSON IN THE FACE JUST BECAUSE I WANT TO.

*proceeds to cry uncontrollably*

Of course this all happens in my head.

So yeah, conclusion: I did badly.

Human Physiology test is up next week. Can I get a hoorah?

Imma throw this bottle at the first person who cheers.

P.S.: This cheers me up slightly.

:)

And this lol, garlic and cheese naan. :D

P.P.S.: Thanks to Crys for that awesome new header. Though too bad I'm part of it or it'd be better.

Pindapata and A Phobia

Oh goodness.

That was quite an adventure.

Yes, I am referring to killing that HUMONGOUS GIANT ASS COCKROACH in my bathroom.

I had to like chase it around the whole 2 by 4 feet of the place (I know, it's bloody small) before I managed to crush it a bajillion times repeatedly to a pathetic twitching pulp and flush it down the toilet.

And it actually was only like a below average size one too. T___T

As if I'd dare approach on of those proper adult-sized black scuttling freaks!

Aaaanyways, I see them (and crush them) quite often in my bathroom. I used to think they weren't roaches because of their small size and weird more translucent colour.

But I actually had to pick this one up to chuck it into the toilet and I could actually smell that gross roach smell from like an arm's length away. Blame my mum for teaching me to identify it. -.-

So uhuh, I'm pretty convinced there's a roach nest down the drain next to the sink now.

Of all insects, it had to be ROACHES? I think I could tolerate just about anything. Except ROACHES.

I HATE COCKROACHES I HATE THEM I HATE THEM I HATE THEM. THEY SCARE THE CRAP OUT OF ME. THERE. I ADMIT IT. NOW SOMEONE GET RID OF THEM. NOW.

I think I must've burnt down an orphanage, stole candy from a baby, kicked a puppy AND robbed a charity fundraiser in my past life to deserve this bad karma. TT____TT

Speaking of which, pics from Pindapata last last week. (I didn't even accumulated any merits from that?!)

Reached there bright and early but not as early as some. o_O

Gorgeous yummies.

Some pics are by Crys. Like this glaze-y cake.

*drools*

Met Kris there! :D

OMG I JUST REALIZED CRYS AND KRIS SOUND THE SAME LOLOL.

Yeah, just realized. Shaddap. -.-

It's started. And I am lazy to explain. Also I am pretty ignorant.

So here. Knock yourself out.

Teachers guiding the lil kiddies.

Putting rice in the alms bowl.

Crys ignoring Jason's lameness?

My turn! Cut line lol.

Thanks Brother (?) Swee Aun for the pic. I've no idea what to title him. @_@

Megs! :D

Sis tagged along with her friends.

Rice to be eaten by the monks and then the lay peeps.

His new haircut fascinates us all. :DD

Teachers helping with the food too.

Sariputta '09 babes. *coughperasancough*

Arranging bananas!

We tried so many patterns! But the plate was either not conducive or the numbers were wrong or the goddamn bananas just wouldn't cooperate with us.

Rawr.

End up Megs came up with the banana ribcage wtf!

Ummm, chanting or blessing or something. Cough. *shoots self*

Wrath of Crystal is to be feared indeed. Cower before her, you pathetic lowlifes!

With their job done, the boys came over to help with the food.

It was like a practise round for our puasa-ing, taking care of all the deliciouses but not being able to touch it before the rest did. T_T

Oh yes, we are puasa-ing for ten days over these two weeks. AND I HAVE NO IDEA HOW THEY DO IT FOR A MONTH. ORZ

Megan's oranges lol. I don't know if she brought them or something but for some strange reason she was very attached to them and wanted to take their pic. :P

Red flesh ones.

Random salad with cherry tomatoes!

Helping keep the flies away.

This was, OMG this was the awesome, fragrant, ajinomoto-filled, gastric juices-inducing fried rice that we all hovered above to sniff at one point or another.

Don't deny it!

More food! Ugh, torture.

Covered to keep the heat in and to make sure those pesky flies didn't give anyone food poisoning.

OH GLORIOUS YUMMIES. T___T

*grabs wildly*

Monks first!

This monk so cute omg! Squeeeaaal~

Then the tables were rearranged so that it was easier to serve the laypeople food.

Yeah, we had to serve them first and watch them gobble it all up while we stood there placing the food onto their plates.

Tis a sad life for us.