so the semester didn’t start out the way i had hoped for. but one-eighth of the way into this whole gradschool thingamajig, the lemons have gone one up the production process into lemonade. (well, as things shake up with the bigass essay deadlines and increased tutoring over the next weeks, we’re going to get some major lemonade fizz action coming along yo.)

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being in grad school really frees up a lot of time to do random stuff like going to climb mt ophir over a weekend. as little miss fear-of-heights, climbing up was no problem but going down was one major experience. considering that the soles of the shoes came out 1/4 way up, and the shoe started breaking from the base 1/2 way up (imagine, you still have to climb down!!), i think i did pretty good. and because it rained, the entire place became misty and the ground slippery. so my preferred mode of locomotion was brachiation. (HA TAKE THAT YOU EVOLUTIONARY PROF. i actually remembered the different locomotive modes).

but my most memorable part of the trip was when we were descending and there was this section where it was just daddy and me. and because we were quite ahead, we decided to sit on a trunk and wait. i hadn’t eat all my rations so i took out my kitkat and we shared it. how cool is that? to sit with your daddy on a log, in the middle of a mountain, sharing a kitkat. and now my daddy and his climbing khakis (their average age was what, 55??) have a new motto ‘we climb while we still can’. HAHA. Gunung Tahan next! woot!

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taking only two modules also means that during the midsem break there is lesser stuff to do. so i brought mummy to the movies on monday and we watched *surprisesuprise* Mamamia! haha! my entire family are ABBA fans and it was such a kitschy blast! moreover because the age of the characters roughly corresponded to my mum and mine, it was more poignant. hearing mummy describe how last time when she was my age she watched ABBA and the thrill she had was pretty cool. seeing andropausal men dancing, with jiggling beer bellies, wearing shirts opened all the way down however, was definitely not a sight for sore eyes, but i guess it shows that at no matter what age, people can (and should!) have fun.

one swoon worthy moment was when colinfirth took out the guitar and started strumming a few chords. *melts* thats why i won’t learn the guitar, i think guys should play it. for all the girlpower sensibilities within me, this has to be one major caveat. because mummy and i were the last to leave the theater (yeah, there were only 5 people. aiyah monday morning 1030am, what do you expect?) we could just sit there and sing along to the songs. ha, who would have thought going to the movies with your parents could not be fun?

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i’ve a lot of respect for my classmates. most of them (in the SEA env class) have had working experience with NGOs/VWOs or just random companies and it reallys makes them qualitatively different. (and reinforces the niggling doubt that i should have gone to work first). there are only 3 singaporeans in that class of 21 and the vibrancy is wowness. to talk to people who have done humanitarian work on the thai-burma border or who can speak 5 (zork) languages because of previous work experiences really opens up the mind to other opportunities out there.

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oh and another perk, going to the school clinic! was in the vicinity of the uni clinic this afternoon and decided to visit it instead of going to the neighbourhood gp and despite the fact that all non-undergraduates have to pay $10 consultation, the medicine was actually cheap! annnnnnnnd i’ve alternatives to antibiotics! it is quite fabulous to subvert the tyranny of the antibiotics dispensing robot that is the gp.

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on a totally sad note, all my itunes songs (my damien rice, electrico, franz ferdinand, Rent, belle&sebastian) have been accidentally deleted. my sadness knows no bounds. mweeples.

we (R, S and me!) decided to celebrate lantern festival (minus mooncakes since we all hate them) and hence there has been much talk about lanterns and sparklers i’m going to get the zeng-ed lantern for myself! the one that has music and lights! yay! since my parents always got me bee- or butterfly-themed ones, now with my own spending power, i shall get what i’ve coveted all these years…AN ULTRAMAN ONE! woohoo!

thinking back on the past when i used to celebrate with the cousins, one thing i missed most about this festival is ah kong. i remembered when we were kiddos we used to have those paper lanterns and i always got the spherical one. because i had a bad habit of trotting, the candle always overturned, leaving me walking around with a ball of fire, stubbornly refusing to let go, and proclaiming WAH MY LANTERN SO BRIGHT. only when i walked back to the house with charred remains whilst the cousins still had their lanterns intact, would i go to ah kong to sulk with the ‘why every year my lantern burn the fastest one!!!’ complain. and he always said, the luckiest child’s lantern always burns up the fastest and the brightest.

i kinda miss you muchly, ah kong. i really do.

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“But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight POP and everybody goes ‘Awww!’”

Kerouac, On the Road