Life has always been somewhat uneventful for me. I was thinking of what I could possibly write about today, but then I realised that besides fangirling, there isn't much interesting going on at all! It's rather depressing.

Jiawen is coming back home soon, and we already anticipate much fangirling conversations when we meet up! :)) ahah. (eunice and munirah, beware. :p)

Friday night, we had dinner at Hanis@Eastpoint with Cik Dah and company. And when we were chatting away at dessert at Starbucks, I felt very happy. I mean, I suppose I've enjoyed many dinners before. But that night, I just took a step back from myself and realised that I was happy with life. It could be better, but it could be a whole lot worse. So, sipping on hot caramel macchiato, and listening to everyone telling each other jokes, gave me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. okay, sappy quota fulfilled for today? yes, I think so.

okay, a kurosagi fanvid, because I so want a second season! pleasepleaseplease. >.< and this is my OTP right now.

I've been messaging jiawen on facebook about JE. haha. finally, there's someone I know who knows this stuff, you know? And we are excited cause she says HanaYoriDango the movie is coming to singapore in august and we shall drag munirah (and maybe eunice too? :P) to watch together. yippeeness.

only apoptosis assay in the afternoon today.

and oh! Of course I should say that eunice and me met up with yeatian yesterday! Yeatian is going to Kyuushu (spelling?) for a summer exchange! >.< jealous, jealous. And we talked so much at swensen's about eveything from stupid people who don't know that England is part of Europe to ghost stories. I think I have this inability to contain my excitement when talking about stuff. Like this couple sitting next to us - I was vaguely aware they were a bit annoyed at our noisy table. I don't know. Not sure if it's me being oversensitive. But they left rather quickly too.

and oh, I was just reading the paper while eating tahue this morning, about how being geeky is so the in thing now. That truly rocks, it does. It means my torturous mugging for programming has some popularity boosting power for me or stg (muaha, what am I saying???). HAHA. Masi Oka (Hiro from Heroes), who apparently has a mind-boggling IQ of 180 (the average is 100) and was once a special-effects programmer for Lucas Films, said "A geek is just someone who's really passionate about something and I'd rather be passionate about something than be apathetic about everything." :) so it's okay to be geeks. And apparently Oka was voted into the Sexiest Men list last year?! really, man. Geeks are inheriting the earth, they are. And the ST article ended with how all this only proves that the brain is the sexiest part of the body. nyaha.

want and think something nice. (:



This is from Wordle. A place where you can insert a bunch of text and produce semi-personalized art from it. So I used entries from this month and voila! You can see what has been most prominent in my posts. Words with a higher frequency are given prominence. I see mice and cat both appear. Haha. And Japan. :p No surprise. And apparently I use the word nice too much.

I like this!

Mondays mornings are THE worst. Because I'll always end up sleeping later than usual on sunday night and have trouble dragging myself out of bed in the mornings. >.< All I want is to stay under the covers.

Parents came back from Puncak in the wee hours of sunday morning. Me and brother were at T3 at 2 am. I got a donut and he got a cheeseburger while waiting. Parents look happy but tired. And brought 5 bags home. 5 okay. Nutters. But I got a quite a lot of things! A pair of jeans that fits! (yay!) A nice black and white top. A nice brown shawl. A scarily garish pink shirt. A bangle.

AND AND AND. They bought Ayat-ayat Cinta, which we tried to watch last night itself, but THEN: it cocked up right in the middle. It refused to continue playing. @_@ I was like: "WHAT?!" It looked original okay. So I still haven't finished watching it. I tell you, I'm cursed with regards to this movie. But so far... eh... I like the art direction; very pretty. And the whole premise is very promising. But the acting is rather amateurish! Which made some parts rather laughable when it wasn't supposed to. And the arabic! Makengkau. We kept laughing cause it doesn't sound like arabic but garbled indonesian or something. Nya! >.< haha. But so far, this Fahri character, I suppose I grudgingly like him. He's nice but not overbearing. But what's with all these Muslimahs clamouring for him??? HAHA. I thought it was amusing. I'm sure there are many such nice Muslim guys studying at Azhar. And what's with German girls being able to speak Indon so fluently and saying "dong" at the end of sentences?! It just totally cracked me up!

muaha. I shall find a way to continue watching it. :p

Sis and me are having a heartfelt conversation with granny about relationships and stories of our parents and how girls should rightfully be home by dusk. HAHA.

And how members of our family are all somehow slowly getting hitched with Indians. Like Kaktiyah. And Bubu. And Kak Ilah. And my brother too. And my granny's like, "Eh, korang janganlah, eh! Tak nak mama jugak. Kesian Abah." Because everyone knows how hung up my dad is about us marrying an Arab. -____-

And then, me and sis, in absolute unison said, "Kita nak Jepun!" And then we screamed in laughter together. It was seriously hilarious. Oh, our JE-riddled brains. :p But really! At this stage, I think I'd choose a Yamapi over an Abang Dolah, if you know what I mean. Okay, you probably don't, but nevermind.

I just want true love, daddy, thank you.

More of my mice died, by the way. I am fearful. :s And I think I maimed one of them during imaging today, haha. Like I was a bit rough with him and almost cracked his skull or something. :s If I could apologise properly to it, I would. I'd say gratefully, "Thank you for dedicating your little precious lives to science. May god reserve nice fields of wheat for you in heaven."

I've also been thinking: how people perceive me as an uberly serious person. (Like today, although I really wasn't feeling sad but just thinking about the deconvolution image problem, Irene asked me why I was sad! And I was like, "Eh?!" Do I have a perpetual melancholic expression or something???). Most times I think I'm actually like the most blur, whacked, dreamy-in-the-clouds person on earth. Like I was visiting Archana's mice the other time. And the black ones are really tinier and more active or something and one was swinging from the top of the cage like a trapeze artist, and I just spoke naturally to it, "What are you doing, you psychotic mouse!" To which, to my surprise, Archana burst out laughing. And my first reaction was like, "Eh?" And with some thought, I somehow came to realise what comes naturally to me might seem nutty to others.

okay, time for sleep. APEX camp tomorrow!

The Sichuan Zoo recently had a panda baby boom! Have you seen this???







Aaaah! SO cute! They're like furry footballs! I want a panda, please. And I can't believe I haven't been getting to watch the movies I've wanted to watch. I didn't manage to catch Ayat-ayat Cinta at the theatres. And I still haven't seen Kungfu Panda and The Happening! I WANT. Maybe friday night? Before the parents come back from their happy holiday.

Anyway, yes, my parents are having a nice vacation at a mountainside in Puncak, Indonesia. I would have gone if not for this work attachment with mice. And I was really deciding whether to forget about this job thingy for the trip, but I decided that maybe I should try working for once. Besides, I have the december hols to console myself with - I am seriously hoping for Japan. Been relentlessly bugging my dad about it. At random intervals, I'd poke my dad and say, "Japan, okay? Japan, okay?" And he'd go, "TSK." But I secretly think that my dad melts with much persuasion and poking and the right amounts of grins and puppy eyes from his daughters. (Although, crap, this coming from a 21-year-old must be weird.) I shall keep at it. And Japan might just materialise by the end of this year! >.< And I want to be able to speak a decent amount of Japanese by that time.

I have not much work today. Image processing has encountered big insurmountable pothole; the software isn't able to deconvolve (aka resolve) the image correctly. So, my poor overworked mentor will have to scout around and figure something out. And I shall go read some bio stuff and anticipate my mice imaging work tomorrow.

Suddenly had the urge to reread Totto-chan. I remember how much I loved it when I was 14. And how much I wanted too to go to a school out of train cabins and have a lovable headmaster who could be both your teacher and your friend. Now that I'm 21 and rereading it, I want to be a teacher at such a school. Really. I want to teach at a school like Tomoe Gakuen. Where education is at its truest. Learn what you love to learn. And everyone gets a fair chance at it. :) Oh, what joy. No fuss about grades, but emphasis on developing not just the mind, but the body and spirit as well. If only I'd been enrolled in a Tomoe-Gakuen. I think I'd have been a happier and more confident child.

The head master deplored contemporary education, with its emphasis on the written word, which tended to atrophy a child's sensual perception of nature and intuitive receptiveness to the still small voice of God, which is inspiration.

It was the poet Basho who wrote:

Listen! a frog
Jumping into the silence
Of an ancient pond!

Yet the phenomenon of a frog jumping into a pond must have been seen by many others. Down through the ages and in the whole world, Watt and Newton cannot have been the only ones to notice the steam from a boiling kettle or observe an apple fall.

Having eyes but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear, said the headmaster.

~ Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, Totto-chan

So. In case you didn't already know, I've recently (past few months) been very into Jap stuff (as evinced by my blog entries), namely Johnny's Entertainment. And tonight, I need to gush. o_O

Seriously: I adore Tegoshi. In a not really guy way. It's hard to explain. It's different. Like... I think Yamapi is amazing. And I adore him in the way I adore Lymond, Draco, Keanu (although now not so much, but first loves are still forever) etc. But when it comes to Tego - gosh. I like him like I like a cute little brother (although technically he's turning 21 too). And, like I said before, he makes me feel oddly proud. Maybe because he's an extremely pretty JE boy BUT BUT BUT he can sing. So damn well. Which is seriously a rare event in JE. (Try listening to SMAP live.) Everytime TegoMass performs, I watch. Because Tego just rocks, man, he does. I want to squish him! With that pretty, girlish face and that amazing voice - he can be big, yes he can.

And Ai Ai Gasa is slowly crawling up my favourites list. The meaning is so sweet. Here it is if you're curious.



So cute, right! And no prizes for guessing who's Tegoshi. But gah, his blond hair! >.< I prefer black. Black is always best.

Why is free disk space so hard to come by. My whole image processing work has been held up because we don't have enough disk space and my mentor has to spend hours just transferring files.

Was just reading Straits Times about that whacked Japanese dude who stabbed people in Akihabara. It's a sad story. How he's really mentally unstable and resorted to this. I mean, he didn't deny doing it, too. When you think about it, how many of us out there are actually very, very lonely, and need someone to just care, so we don't go around murdering people in a bid for attention? I think I'm incredibly grateful I have a family I can talk to about most things, a sister I crap to about almost everything, and a friend I ramble to about the stresses of life and how much we want holidays. Sometimes, all it needs is one person to make all the difference.

Taking the trains back and forth always puts me in a pensive mood. Traveling time is my time for picking at my brain and my thoughts. Like yesterday, I realised that if I could put all that I wanted from life in one statement, it'd be this: To live true. Short, and simple, and all one truly needs to be happy, I think.

40GB disk space now available! okay, going to do image processing now. let me be able to work the code. >.<

Went to Ghim Moh for lunch today. There ain't no more MacDonald's there! In fact, the whole place looked kinda different. :( Sad. It was a Macs full of memories. We played games there, and lepak there, I wasted time waiting for my dad there.

Been spending the morning figuring out image processing. And as I blog, I'm letting the software load the images. It takes forever. And I've been listening to Jap songs along the way. I really think, and I'm saying this as free of JE and NEWS bias as possible, Tego has a superb voice. Besides Yamapi's, I'm always looking forward to his parts of the song. I love just listening to him! ah, I feel oddly proud.

Image loading now stuck at 20 of 27. -_- I'm running out of songs to entertain myself with.

Meeting Jean later! :) It seems like ages since we talked last.

And oh, although I doubt Pige reads this: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! (A day late, but I think it's good enough. :P) You are officially, officially, of any kind of legal age. I keep wanting to send her an email wish, but in between looking at these images, it keeps slipping my mind.

I've been wanting to say something about a cat. Every morning now, as I walk to the MRT station on the long arduous journey of getting to Biopolis, I pass by this nice, fluffy, greyish cat, sleeping on the steps of a ground-floor apartment. And everytime I see it, I think, "Oh, you lucky cat!" That cat has got it good. While I have to work hard and travel far, lugging my freaking heavy laptop. Every morning, I get jealous of the cat for getting to sleep in. >.< ahhhh. It's so nice to be able to laze indefinitely.

but work is good too. yes it is.

Knocking off work in a bit. -_- My back aches from sitting constantly and staring at my laptop. Although the morning was spent in the lab.

Describing work isn't fun.

I feel so uninspired! >.<

I don't know if this is what I want to do all my life. Ahhh. Feel so drained and confused.

Module planning is bugging me again. And my dropping CAP. >.<

This morning, my dad had a strange mood swing and burst into our rooms at 8.30 with a wide smile and announced that we were going out for a day excursion. I was a combination of -______- and @_@ because I slept at four and was hoping to snooze till late. He had turned environmentalist all of a sudden and suggested treetop walks and chek jawa. I was really going "Eeeeeeeeh." What is goin on.

Minus my sister who had her pesta pantun meeting, we went for Nasi Rawan breakfast at the ever-favourite Wak Nah at Bedok and set off in the direction of Telok Blangah. But then my mum was worried about the heat so we decided to go to the national museum instead. The first time since the revamp. Pics ahead.



There was this brocade Greek statue that was quite fascinating.









The Film History Gallery was nice too. P. Ramlee stuff.





I have no idea why the photos can't be horizontal! Anyway, I can't decide who's prettier between the two: Zaiton or Sarimah (the latter). I always thought Sarimah was more beautiful but here Zaiton looks super sexy in her kebaya.




$3 movie ticlets! must be heaven.




Then there was the food section. I swear we smelt jemput-jemput (fried banana cakes) inside the gallery.







The audio companions. They were rather troublesome, but quite informative, I guess. I remember Patrick telling us during heritage class that it distracted people from the exhibits. And it's quite true. You end up just listening to the narratives and the exhibits become sort of redundant. Hm.



There were also NAFA furniture design competition entries (or stg) and there was this really cool structure that could be made into a cd shelf. I so want it. I was so fascinated by it I forgot to snap a pic.

Work starts tomorrow! :s