Greeting no.652

I'm missing SN like crazy. Orientation, meeting new people and making new friends have been really fun and awesome, but I think I've been really spoilt by the comfortable environment back in SN - the people, FOOD, convenience... I've gotten quite used to HC already, but the canteen food still fail to please :/

Maybe it's the Taurus in me, I like the idea of starting afresh but not exactly the actual process.

On the side note, here's the Ares faculty dance for post-orientation party 2013! Learning it wasn't that easy but the final performance looked fabulous!

RED ONES LET'S GO!

Greeting no.651

New journey ahead, but this time I have quite a number of close friends going to the same school as me. 

After knowing the posting results, my mom said," At least you can go there and be the 少数民族. Better than being a 外星人 (like how my situation was in sec1 - going to a new school all alone literally lol)."

Greeting no.650

2nd post in a day!

A Wednesday being a Wednesday, there was a pathetic amount of customers at work. Minus the fact that I had less chances of selling more products i.e. increasing my commission, I also had enough time to brood about THE day tomorrow. I really want to believe that everything will turn out fine, but there are chances that it will not.

Anyways, for people experiencing the complex feelings of wanting yet not wanting to know your results at the same time, here's an excerpt from Oh The Places You'll Go! by Dr Seuss:

You'll be on your way up!
You'll be seeing great sights!
You'll join the high fliers who soar to high heights!

You won't lag behind because you'll have the speed.
You'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you'll be best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest. 

Except when you don't.
Because, sometimes you won't.


I'm sorry to say so but, sadly, it's true that Bang-ups and 
Hang-ups can happen to you.


You can get all hung up in a prickle-ly perch. 
And your gang will fly on. 
You'll be left in a Lurch.
You'll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump. 
And the chances are, then, that you'll be in a Slump.

And when you're in a Slump, you're not in for much fun. 
Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked. 
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they're darked. 
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin! 

Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in? 
How much can you lose? How much can you win?



The whole text can be found here. I don't know about you, but I found this book really encouraging for all sorts of situations. Whatever outcome it is, let's hope it's the best (even if it may not seem like it at the moment) outcome for everyone.

Greeting no.649

I've been so caught up with work lately I had no energy left to blog! :( Alright, I'll look through my past resolutions to see if I lived up to them in the whole of 2012.

• STUDY, study, study. maybe not as much as I would've liked, but I can safely say I did mug more than I used to. 
• Get a job after Os. Well I did and I'm still at it. 
• Tone up somemore! I can't tell actually, but I know I definitely exercised more in 2012. 
• Take lots of pictures. Lazy me was too lazy to take and edit pictures 
• Drink more water. I DID! 
• Sleep at regular times. failedresolutionforlyfe
• Clean up & vacuum my room every 3 weeks. it became a once-in-1/2-months thing
• Stay out of crappy relationship(friends, etc) problems I guess so? Made new friends, kept old ones. 

Seems like I did live up to most resolutions :D I hope this self-satisfaction will last me till I get my results tomorrow, and save me from depression if need so. 

Greeting no.648

I do a great job at scaring the shit out of myself.

Greeting no.647

It's THE time of the year again! Hahaha as the heading suggests, this post will be a quick rewind of what went on for me this year. I must admit, 2012 has been VERY VERY VERY VERY busy for me, although I took part in lesser activities than previous years. This was how 2012 fared for me...

January
Leaving my sec3 life was tough, getting used to my sec4 life was tougher. Got really busy preparing for CCA fair in the first week, since it was our (as in my cohort) last fair we wanted to make it really good.

the super solid picnic table and bench set we designed and built

Also got back my chinese O level result which was better than what I expected (A1!!! iloveyouexaminers). While I may have had rejoiced at the moment I got my chinese result back, my moment of joy was ruined by the bombing (release) of O LEVEL ART PAPER 1. 

February

Last Valentine's Day in St Nicks where everyone hugs everyone and gives everyone flowers/chocolates/sweets/notes. Man I will miss this. In that month I finally put my foot down and decided to go for PGA. 

March 

The super fun PGA interview preparations began. March was also the month of Camp Olympus which taught me a lot. 

Somewhere in between there was the Jessie J concert too!

April

It was the campfire month! Greyguides proved the no-dance-genes theory wrong and managed to pull off a decent dance item for our Camp Olympus campfire. After our last personal campfire, I also attended my last external campfire by the RI Scouts. April was also the month spent giving tuition to kids as CIP for PGA. 

camp olympus souvenirs for VIPs 

my "students" haha 

aiyo lizzy ah last campfire already still get busy talking to boyboy...

May
The month started off with my birthday which was really memorable even though we were all so damn busy!

my macs birthday breakfast!

PGA interview followed, and we received the results 2 days later. I still remember Ayana and I sobbing when we knew cos we really never expected to pass! Haha some other teacher thought something bad happened, and Ms Tan just shooed her off saying, "IT'S GOOD NEWS IT'S GOOD NEWS!" in her usual loud way.

After the notice the crazy and super tiring PGA P&O Camp preparations began and nearly squeezed the life out of us. Those were the crazy nights of rushing proposals, trying out my recipe and making everyone around me eat it (I asked nicely alright). In between I had some breathers, like LADY GAGA'S MONSTER BALL (''')(''') and a relatively fun moving back day.

moving back day

between all the madness I managed to find some time to go on with my legoman photoshoot for art Os

June

June began with Jubilate, and many Greys attended it like we did last year. 2 weeks zoomed by as I prepared for PGA P&O Camp: going back to school to settle logistics, doing last minute amendments to the final proposal, running to get everything printed and binded, buying ingredients for my task from ntuc (I think the toa payoh ntuc cashier recognised me already)...and the actual P&O CAMP. The whole thing was huge mishmash of fun, stress and fatigue. 

A week after the camp I fulfilled my last duty as a PL to enroll my patrol's secones before officially bidding SNGuides goodbye during farewell. JUNE WAS A TERRIBLY EMOTIONAL MONTH AIYA ALL THE FEELINGS ALL 乱乱出来. To end off, there was JASON MRAZ'S CONCERT! 

July
It went by in a blur of studies, studies and studies. Along with preparation for my last round, PGA's BP Test.

August
Had PGA BP Test, which was a dramatic experience especially for ayana, beat and I. Really thankful that we made it! When we knew that our 8 months of hard work paid off we just got stunned on the spot. In August there was also the super enthusiastic National Day celebrations in school, and the kick start of the gruelling prelims.

September

Sep hols weren't holidays of any sort. I went back to school almost everyday to study and rush art, since it was the Art Os Paper 1 submission month. When I finally submitted everything I felt so proud I couldn't give two hoots what grades I'll get, then I went out for a good meal:) 

October

My years in St Nicks officially ended, and I truly began to feel scared for my future. The rest of the time was flooded with studies and more studies. After all the preparations, October 22nd was THE day - Os began. 

November

As quickly as it came, Os ended just as fast. LIFE BEGAN! There was grad night, and a lot of shopping and hiking. My swimming exercise routine also started. 

December

My time was all spent hiking and doing art projects at home. There was also the combined patrol outing, and my taiwan trip.

OH THE GLORIOUS DESSERTS THERE

genius me using my snood to block rain since i forgot my umbrella :)

After I returned it was immediately the President's Guide Award presentation ceremony at the Istana. The whole thing was quite tiring haha we all kept smiling till our faces got sore booo! But I'm glad my grandma enjoyed it:) She felt really proud cos she got to enter the president's house without having to wait till cny. 

After PGA ceremony my experience as a part of Singapore's workforce began. I found my first job and began working.

Ok that just pretty much summed up the whole 2012. In short, I never really stopped working throughout the whole year hahaha.

Greeting no.646

大家晚上好! 我现在在台北!

Hellomello I'm in taipei, taiwan right now living the pig life. Can't help it though, I mean food here is so incrediby easy to find, freaking yummy and super cheap! I have to admit, things in many countries are waaaaay cheaper than they are back home.

Will be heading to Tainan tomorrow, before coming back to Taipei again on 17th. So far this trip has been super awesome with all the nice and friendly people around :D To end off this post, here's a pic of some delish mochi we found in a dessert shop hidden in some discreet corner of the street.

Greeting no.645

So the hikes have begun.

Here I blame the lazy ass in me for not being a nice blog owner and spare this blog of mine some attention. Anyways since after grad night, there are very few things to look forward to (almost none). So to not waste this well-deserved break rotting at home, people like nic, ayana and I decided to plan a series of hikes in different parts of our sunny island!  

So far we already had 2, and another one is in the planning stage. 

This happened on 30 Nov (last friday). It was actually like a redo of an impromptu "hike" nic and I had with Shi Hui last year (2011's great east coast hike), but this time we're PREPARED (as in have some money and know where we actually are)!

Met Nic, Xen, Ayana and Vivvy at Dakota MRT. Was horrendously late cos I was busy rampaging through the house for food :( But peace was with everyone, I didn't get killed and we set off to walk to ecp. All I can say is, thank god for Google maps or we would've ended up walking in circles! Saw this super steady 阿兵哥 who ran 1 big loop in 5 minutes while the loserish us only walked one straight street.

Walkwalkwalk and we reached our destination!

VICTORY PICTURE! 

I have to admit I'm a complete sucker at those continuous timer shots - forever missing the last shot :( 

Last year Nic, Shi Hui and I went to ecp so broke we couldn't even afford to rent a bike. Super pathetic cos we had unknowingly blown most of our money away on lunch. This year, as I said, we were super prepared so obviously we rented bikes and cycled. Xen said that I cycle very unpredictably, always swerving to left and right. Well besides the fact that I'm still considered an amateur, she should've seen my 师父(teacher) - NIC ANG. Nic was happily swerving here and there in front of everyone, cycling with one hand and all. Like teacher like student mah.

After cycling for 2 hours straight we returned the bikes and stoned at KFC for some time. We were all guilty of being extremely lazy and not really exercising pretty much ever since... ever since PE lessons ended *sheepishly hides in a hole* Os just made us into fat couch potatoes la.

The cycling really got us moving our rusty parts, so by the time we stopped our legs felt super heavy. Hahaha we first turtle-walked to KFC, stoned and ate some food we brought, before turtle-walking off to Parkway Parade.

Had a yummy lunch at Pastamania before heading home. Someone (rn I forgot who shit sorry!) still wanted to ask me out but I felt so stinky and sweaty I just rejected. Plonked down to sleep after a nice bath, only to wake up 2 hours later to realise that I have no dinner :/

My purple mama jansport and xen's baby purple jansport! ><

The second hike I had was at Bukit Timah Hill on 3 Dec (Monday). Woke up 6 freaking am to rush to Bishan to meet Nic at 645. Honestly who wakes up at this ungodly hour during the holidays? MRTed down to Bukit Gombak and met Ayana. The breakfast-less us bought toasty sandwiches from Subway, before heading off to find directions the Hill.

I SWEAR IT'S BLOODY ILLEGAL TO HIKE ON A MONDAY, like some secret law that people don't talk about. At Bukit Gombak, we found out that the nearest MRT is actually one more station down at Bukit Batok (don't trust the stupid website). By this time we unfortunately met with the morning crowd, and had to miss 4 trains before boarding. At Bukit Batok we couldn't find a legit source to tell us the bus services, so we decided to flag a taxi to get to the Hill. I know this was supposed to be a proper hike and all, but the Sun was already up flashing its blazing smile so if we didn't reach the Hill soon, we would be cooked during the climb up. After almost 30 minutes of watching occupied taxis zoom past us with sad eyes, we finally finally finally got a freaking taxi! Honestly the journey of getting to the Hill was so frustrating ugh.

At the foot of the Hill the 3 of us finished the milo I brought for some energy boost. And our actual hike began. All the routes up the Hill all begin with this really steep slope. It was an ultimate hike of shame for us hahaha. We were panting slightly while climbing up, and elderly couples just strolled by us at this leisurely pace. It seemed so effortless to them omg. There was this ah pek who made it a point to do exercises at every shelter he passed. While we pant, he was doing sit ups and bench presses. okcaniknowisuck

we took the red route up, and the yellow route down!

It took about an hour or so for us to reach the summit, the highest point in Singapore. Yes that was after seeing several fitter old people run/walk past us. It is one of my goals now to be able to run up Bukit Timah Hill like them without dying halfway. By the time we reached the summit my arms were entirely covered with sweat like I just bathed. All the hard work and effort of climbing up called for a celebration, and this was how we celebrate...

EATING BACK WHATEVER WE JUST LOST! 

Ok understandable we all didn't have breakfast since we rushed out so early. Our sandwiches were so squashed I think mine became half its original size. While eating everyone else around us were doing exercises, and judging us maybe aha.

achievement unlocked!

Conquering Bukit Timah Hill felt like one of my major achievements during this holiday. In fact it felt like the only real achievement. Clearly I need to reflect about what I'm doing with my life ._. After resting we took a longer route down, this time into the foresty part of the reserve. The steps were very uneven, with lots of rocks everywhere. Good thing about the place was that it was quite cool, since the trees blocked out some sunlight. Also, surprisingly there were no blood-sucking mozzies looming about. (I don't know if mozzies are supposed to be flying around in forests really)

We found a stream which looked really clean. Nic and I tried a sip of its water, and she claimed it tasted like Ice Mountain. Till today we didn't lao sai or anything so I suppose that stream is clean.

Continued hiking and got a little lost in the middle. Eventually we made it down and had a wipe-down with Nic's smelly medicated wipes. Bused to Clementi station, where we met Xen and had a healthy lunch of porridge and yong tau fu. Headed down to Xen's new place, which was a lot bigger than her old house! Played wii and watched Accepted, before dragging our half-asleep selves home.

So far these 2 hikes we planned have been successful, so praying the next one will be equally awesome too! After all a good hike is like fun+workout, a great excuse to convince my inner lazy asshole to take the trouble to be healthier :)

Greeting no.644

An overdue post about grad night (I don't know why everyone's calling it prom cos it wasn't prommish at all)! It was on 22 November (last thursday) by the way.

Girls being girls, this is definitely one of the days we all look forward to most in a year/whole secondary school life! Haha weeks before the actual day my twitter timeline was already in a prom-frenzy mode cos everyone is talking about their dress/hair/makeup/nails/weight/figure/shoes/skin/contacts blablabla. Many friends from other schools already had their graduation nights before me, and it was really nice to see how good people can look when they actually make the effort to (for some people it was almost mind-blowing hahaha). Haha for some time fb seemed to more 俊男美女 than usual.

Prep + Grad Night
Woke up damn late before packing all my stuff. Headed down to Orchard, where I almost got lost searching for Each A Cup in Ion. I don't get why I always seem to get lost for at least a while every time I go to Ion >( Was just standing at the mrt tap-out area acting all zen, while Jillian kept on going "OMG OMG WHAT IF I LEFT SOMETHING OUT OMG OMG!" She sounded like she was going for Os haha.

Tessa arrived and we went to Ngee Ann to shop for food for our stayover! We then walked down to the venue for the night: Orchard Hotel. Honestly from the outside the hotel looked damn run-down, but the inside was a different story :D Rachael's parents were darn nice and generous to SPONSOR A DELUXE ROOM IN THE HOTEL FOR US!

Our room! Ok forgot to take a pic of it myself so I took this from the hotel website. We had 2 single beds instead of a double.

Met Rach at the hotel and we checked in before lazing about eating chips and watching Michelle Phan videos as a last minute makeup crash course lol. At about 4 we started changing and preparing. Super proud  cos I did all my makeup myself and I didn't end up looking like a drag queen! Plus I even had time to help others draw their lower lash lines :D Looks like I didn't 辜负the times I watched makeup tutorials when I was bored.

After all this, what's a girls' grad night without cameras? Pics ahead!

Val looked like princess jasmine. She's super cute ><

tessa, val, rach and becca

glammed up going home buddies with lizzy!

with vera - recess buds since 2009

even with heels, cindy is STILL very much taller than :/ 

there was this boxful of super cute props to camwhore with ;) 

with tessa and bunny ears

more props! 

with nic before we began photobombing other people

with jasmine and susanna. Jasmine was like some HK TAIWAN 美眉 *.*

from jasmine's cam HAHAHA THIS LOOKS WRONGGG 

fat face with becca and levia 

val was supposed to be a mermaid princess with pretty seaweeds as backdrop. Please don't judge we were really quite bored then.

from rach's cam

all the SN girls clogged up the entire space outside. And the whole programme started late so we were stuck outside the ballroom like that for about 1 hour :/ 

at this point becca and I were starving going "FOOD? FOOD? ME WANT FOOD!" But being hungry was one thing, we still made the effort to smile chio-ly :D 

me, jillian, anna and kaiyi. I vaguely remember Jillian saying something about a wedding dinner here -.-

The programme proceeded and the dinner menu was pretty standard. I love the fact that there were so many dried scallops (干贝) in the dishes, and the steamed fish was superb! At some point a lot of people left their seats to take pictures with teachers, so my table was very much deserted. Ended switching to Tessa's table for the rest of the night cos there were so many people there like me who weren't interested in camwhoring with teachers haha. For us it was just eating, talking loads of crap, and more camwhoring among ourselves. 

The After Party

After everything ended naturally Rach, Tessa, Jillian and I went back to the hotel room. Yes we were super tired but no that wasn't the end of the day. Played around with Photo Booth before removing makeup and resuming our lazy, plain selves :) Photo Booth pictures all from Rach

queen/president wave!

ahaha tessa the ghost behind

the b&w pics are super classy ;)

AYE AYE CAPTAIN! 

Pigged out some more with doritos and ice cream. Also bought passion fruit  Cruisers that tasted DELISH! It was super nice don't understand why Jillian and Rachael didn't like it. The alcohol percentage is really low so it tasted like the cocktails I made last year. Finished a bottle myself while we watched Mean Girls. 

yumyumyum

The movie ended but we were too hyped up to sleep. So we laid on the bed and talked till 3am before finally crashing. The next day we woke up at 11am and went for a cosy brunch at Secret Recipe before checking out.

I don't know about you, but grad night was super fun for me (esp the shopping and after party). Some people may think the element of fun was much reduced for our grad night since it was all girls so we have no one to dress up for and to impress. That's quite true but the all girls' thing just means that the kind of fun we have is very much different. Perhaps we may even have more fun. Anyways, hope everyone had a fabulous time for their grad nights with loads of awesome photos!