what an irony. the very place that brought us together is driving us apart.

i forget how books suck you into a world of your own. or rather, a world of its own.

you start thinking, empathizing and feeling.
of things both foreign and familiar.

how we all fight so hard for the things we want
and how we get them
only to realise it's temporary
and that our paths have already been planned by above

do we really get a choice at all?
or do we just think we do when we don't?

you decide. (do you?)

is it just me or it happens to most females?

the confidence to step on the accelerator only comes with my familiarity with the route - which means i need practice. put me in a place like yishun to navigate and i'll cry for baby to come pick me up instead (which he did, actually)

still remember spending two hours to get home from school (ntu) by car when it normally took me about an hour and a half by public transport. driving up the wrong expressway made me feel absolutely intelligent too. up till now, i can't say i won't make the same mistake - unless i'm driving the same route everyday. even the area around my own house is a challenge at times - i got charged twice for ERP in the span of less than an hour when it wasn't even my destination. [writer's note: pls note that all this happened a long time ago]

doing my homework helps - finding out where it is, which route i should take. and of course, the most important thing is having the emergency number to call when i'm lost on the roads (that would probably be my brother and my boyfriend. heh)

other than the route or routine headache (can be taken both ways), i still find the skill of driving useful. unless, of course, i get so flustered that i forget that a manual car has a clutch. in an emergency two weeks ago, i mistook the brake pedal of a MANUAL car to work the gears (which works for auto cars). i spent 15 minutes literally pushing the gear stick. had i lifted my dormant left foot meant for driving manual cars, i would have found that the gear-box was still fully functional. thank goodness i hadn't told my dad (ever the skeptic of female drivers, but gives me a go at times) that his car was spoilt - i actually crafted an sms to him!

but i digress. my point is, i should practise more. so that there'd be one less stereotyped-driver on the road.

excuse no more

it's kind of amazing how God works.
i knew i'd never be 'ready' to do his work
so i found excuse after excuse not to do so
the inertia in me was a huge barrier

why go through all that
when i'm so comfortable now with the way things are?

He just threw it to me
but he worked through me

one more reason to praise Him.

i'm seldom home early on a friday night - feels kinda odd really. baby's really sick, never seen him so out before. sigh. his mum fainted cos she got the virus too. my bro's sick too. my colleague's sick too.

will i be next? i hope not...

i am strong! (:

lost sheep

are we lost sheep in this world?

father damien was saying people these days get too caught up with everyday life. i do agree that it's really easy to get lost. always find it hard to share spiritual stuff that's happening. speaking to people in church is really different from speaking to other people. i don't know..yeah.

days pass so quickly. am settling into my new job (it's been 3 hectic months). hardly get time to do anything much. weekends always pass in a flurry too. am wondering when life would slow down. sigh.

anyway, am really glad the new version of itunes is out. I finally have itunes back on my mac! yay! before that it was down :(

the 2nd 'clown' he sent to my present office...after last year @ Raffles Medical Group...created a spectacle in the office again..lol...

zzzz i've got to go down to compass point later again (went yesterday afternoon)..on a sunday!...to handle the media. there goes my weekend...taking up both my afternoons! hmph. but well. at least it's an achievement getting the media to go down.

(:

feeling hungry again. shall go hunt for food now..

here and there

melancholy

i'm almost never gonna find enough time on my hands to do the things i want to:

read up on financial supplements/investment books
read the bible regularly
sleep (time's really precious!)
do my work (it's never-ending)
run regularly (the thought of running the year-end 42km scares me.)
watch tv

miss going back to school. all them lectures, tutorials and seminars almost seem fun now. am waiting to see if there's a work-school divide among friends. can feel it sometimes. but everyone's so caught up with their own stuff, i understand.

though i'm now more active in prayer meetings and church, it still feels foreign. a little superficial. i don't wanna be a sunday catholic. need to live my life better. but it's a lil hard to integrate cos the people there are speak a different lingo. am still giving it another try.

for you, i will.

convocation 24 July 2007

so now he knows. he probably won't feel comfortable reading some of the stuff i write/wrote/have written over the years. i don't know if i'll change my writing style, being more conscious of a particular reader. but i hope things will work out.

had my CONVOCATION on tuesday, 24th July. A milestone in my life. Never thought i'd feel this happy graduating. I do, but at the same time, i miss school too. and of course, meeting him in school. it'd be 2 more years before he graduates. i hope i'll be there at his convocation when the time comes.

we went back to NJ on impulse. Always wondered if we'd passed each other along the corridors without knowing. So we drove in and took some photos. Heh. How nj has changed. Uniform's a lil different. The canteen area's been extended into a pavilion. The FIELD's GONE. In place of it, would be SYNTHETIC grass. Imagine, all the times we'd trained on the lousy-quality field. now they get special grass!

didn't intend to meet anyone, but mr goh (my econs teacher) recognized me, and we chatted for a bit. I'm pleasantly surprised that he can remember my name even after 3 years. The last time I was back in nj was to collect my A'Level cert. met mr tong too. heh felt bad that i didnt go find benzie dio, but i'm sure i'd see him again soon.

after graduation, this new chapter beckons. working life.

work work work!

work is crazy. multi-tasking has gone onto a whole new level. an events company has 6 ppl working on one event. in my pr agency, it's one person on 6 accounts. and it's pr PLUS events. i'm stressed out la. sobsob.

last one in the office now...heh blasting music from class 95 to keep me sane.

there's nothing like a flower to brighten up the day (: (:

961

Thank God we're okay. Just escaped a traffic accident yesterday. Baby and i were on the bus home (961) along bukit merah when another bus crashed into our bus. The window pane shattered directly one seat away where we were sitting. And shards of glass flew. towards us too. but luckily we weren't injured or anything. the bus driver seemed more concerned about his bus than us, his passengers. argh. there was an indian lady who escaped just barely cos she was the one seated one seat away from us.


once again, i'm reminded of the fragility of life. for that split second of that impact, i didn't know what would happen. how serious it would be, etc.


i'm just glad we're all safe.

i'm getting boreeed at work. they haven't assigned any challenging tasks yet, so i'm stuck with just reading ALL the magazines and ALL the newspapers ALL day long (well, almost). some people might envy this (wah, i get paid for reading mags?) but not me!

Okay...dinner time. Guess I won't post again until there're happenings!

well.

to be on the safe side, i won't blog about work. will definitely get tracked la.

it's kinda tiring, but for different reasons.
yep i'm gonna turn in soon..nighty night!

(let's hope i will have a life OUTSIDE work to talk about next time)

on tenterhooks

kinda nervous about tomorrow as it's my first day on the job.
will my colleagues be nice?
can i manage the workload?
can i still have a personal life?

it always feels as though i haven't prepared enough.
not enough clothes?
shoes?
makeup?
technical skills?
has my command of language deteriorated?

speaking of language, i'm supposed to continue to give tuition via email. and maybe go down once a month?!

ah well. we'll see.

ugly side of retailers

don't ever, ever, ever replace your watches' battery at lucky plaza. i guess that's where they rip off the tourists (and locals alike, because they nearly pulled a fast one on me!). the first shop at the basement closest to paragon showed me the worst service ever.

some snippets of our conversation:

'ah seng': eh, you never change your battery before ah? very hard leh. got so many small screws! your battery very expensive. $35.
me: [quiet] (thinking to myself, is that my problem? how is that related to me?)

few seconds later..
ah seng: eh, miss, can don't stand near me? you giving me stress. (in an impolite tone)

few seconds later..
he puts the small screws on the table, without anything to hold them (he drops them later on)
then, he takes out an electronic calculator battery and tells me that the battery is more expensive, so i have to pay him $45 instead. we negotiate and reach $38. asked for receipt but he said they didn't issue them for under-$100.

when the battery was installed, it looked totally unresponsive. in fact, it looked like it wasn't working.

ah seng: i don't know how to reset your watch. ask your boyfriend press some buttons himself. should be no problem.
me: can you do it for me instead? you should know.
ah seng: aiyah, this watch i don't know. ask your boyfriend la. $38 please.

after standing around with my friends for a while looking at the poor watch, i approached them for a refund. or just somebody to UNDO the lousy thing. apparently NOBODY knew how to do it besides that guy. and guess what, he conveniently disappeared to the toilet RIGHT after he collected the money. i pressed his colleagues to find him immediately.

he looked nonchalent and gave no explanations. but he complained about having to re-screw the pieces. said it was difficult. and in the process he DROPPED one of the tiny screws on the ground. that wasn't all, you know. he asked for a $5 service fee!!!! at this time, one of my friends had gone off first, leaving me and another girl. we both looked very unhappy, and my face was very black. i think the shop people knew. they started pulling down the shutters of the shop. at 7pm?!?!? we wondered if they were afraid we would create a scene (i was already planning to, as soon as my watch was safe in my hands).

when he was done, he said, "so i'll give you back $33 cos of service fee. i did a lot of work you know."
i stubbornly insisted that i was NOT going to pay him for any service. i wanted $38 back. he tried again, "$5 service".

"WHAT KIND OF SERVICE IS THIS? I AM NOT PAYING FOR IT!"


i got all my money back, but not before he shouted a hokkien vulgarity at me. i spent the rest of the night seething. even through dinner with the girls. i'd love to pursue this matter, i'm just not sure which is the best way. or if it's even WORTH my time.

but the more i think about it, the angrier i get. hey guess what, the world is ugly after all.

results day!

still can't believe we got an A+ for our final year project (FYP)! i think it played a big part in determining whether i would've gotten Honours or not. anyway, time to celebrate!

flashback - crossed paths

traced a place which brought back memories last year on 6 May 2006! this was the coffeeshop that me and holly went to after clubbing at The Liquid Room (which has since closed its doors. sigh.) :



where i just couldn't stop thinking about whom i had met there. coincidentally enough, he had gone there just a while after i had left. that very same coffeeshop! i wonder how many times we had missed each other in the past, when we were in nj, or elsewhere in ntu.

if someone had a record of our lives, wouldn't it be interesting to see all the flashbacks? lol.

gaga over donuts?

this is the day where i queued for donuts at raffles city.
after lunch with marc and meiwen, thought i'd use my spare time to stand in line. the queue was VERY long. i waited for 2 hours. goodness! yet i think the donuts are merely so-so.

bought a few things at the gss! love the discounts.
shall go shopping again soon.

benzie

hey! i met mr benzie dio in wisma last night! it's been 3, almost 4 years since i've last met my jc civics tutor and he still looks the same. laid-back, cool and still good-looking! lol his girlfriend works in the same pr agency i first interviewed with (foreword). a pity we didn't get to meet his gf, cos back then all the rumours were that she was quite hot! heh.

sure brings back memories of nj.

shanghai - singapore

as i'm typing this, i'm dozing off at my computer. haven't had much decent rest these past 8/9 days while i was in china! we visited places like suzhou, hangzhou, jiangnan, nanjing and shanghai.

shanghai's very nice! it's like singapore, but much more modern, especially their scenery and architecture. the cruise down the huangpu river really showed off its beautiful skyline. heh. prices there weren't cheap though. while we were in xintiandi (a cross between takashimaya and somewhere european), the clothes there were expensive! liquor wasn't cheap either. the clubs (which were playing chinese hip-hop songs that i didn't really like) sold them at slightly higher prices than singapore. we went pubbing instead. but whoa! they're really generous with the alcohol in mixes!

met baby's dad in shanghai. while we stayed at a creepy 3-star hotel, his dad took a suite at InterContinental Hotel with his own family. Payed them a visit, or two visits. And chilled out good there. Lol. Ordered a sirloin steak (finally western food in china) from their room service. felt quite pampered there. heh. his dad took us to Shanghai Uncle for lunch. we would never have been able to afford such luxury on our own! went for a full-body massage with baby and his dad at some blind-man massage parlour (they're quite good over there). massages were very affordable, so we did them on our free-and-easy days. lol.

this lady in my tour group made me damn pissed on our 3rd last day during a conversation we had. shan't go into details but she made me feel insulted. i hope i never see her again! or her ntu daughter. made my blood boil. argggh. spoilt the whole day for us too.

can't remember much of the other places cos they were too culture-based. only remembered the yucky breakfasts we had in the hotel cafeteria. coffee isn't coffee. it was more like water with a tinge of coffee taste. same goes for everything else. and to the chinese, oil seemed like it's FREE. everything was CAKED in oil! i do miss the youtiao and dou jiang we had at the roadside stalls for breakfast though. we ordered many dishes but only paid about 60 cents per person for the whole meal!

need to sleep now.
so i can think better later.
got offered a full-time position at huntington while i was in china. what do i do now..

okays laters.

70% packed for china. kinda excited. heh EVEN THOUGH our tour group's demographics are quite skewed. i think we're the outliers. hehe.

be back 29 May! (:

kinda hungry now....darn.

cupcakes are lotsa fun

craving for cupcakes i saw in season 7's sex and the city. can't seem to find the exact creamy ones. i think it's the pinkish cream they put on top that's driving me nuts. saw these though, but they can't beat them:




btw my korea photos are here if you're interested!

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/edna.kheng/Korea2007

falling trees calls for more faith!

I know i'm just being paranoid. Was actually quite cool with the idea that he'd be mountain-climbing these few days, until this morning when i read:

2 S'poreans killed in separate freak accidents
Two Singaporeans - a dental assistant and a trainee teacher - were killed in similar circumstances yesterday - by falling trees
May 16, 2007

In Singapore:

Dental assistant Ho Siew Lan, 43, was taking a walk in the Bukit Batok Nature Park with two friends when a tree toppled over and came crashing down on them.

Madam Ho, who was pinned under the tree, died while the other women, Madam Ting Kim Hong, 47, and Madam Leong Lai Ming, 48, escaped with bruises and cuts.

This is the first fatality from a falling tree on the records of NParks.

It was drizzling slightly and the women's umbrellas had probably blocked their view, preventing them from realising that the 6-storey tall tree was falling on them, according to The Straits Times today.

All three women have homes near the park.

Madam Ho's younger son, Chuen Kiat, 18, fearing that "something bad" had happened to his mother when the clinic which she worked for called to find out why she had not turned up for work, went to look for her and stumbled upon the police cordon. He broke down when he saw hyis mother's body.

NParks is investigating the cause of the fall.

The tree, from Albizzia species, is common here.

Earlier yesterday morning, there were thunderstorms, with gusts of winds hitting up to 70kmh, over Western Singapore where the park is.

In Malaysia:

Trainee teacher Mohammad Rohaizam Tumadi, 27, who was on an outdoor camping trip at Mount Ophir, Johor, died when a tree feel on him yesterday morning at about 5.15 am.

Mr Rohaizam, a first-year postgraduate student teacher with the National Institute of Education (NIE), was asleep in his tent with three others when the tree fell and hit the tent during a downpour. The other trainees were not hurt.

A statement from NIE said Mr Rohaizam, who suffered head injuries, was given first-aid treatment onsite and carried down the mountain base, where emergency services were on standby. He was rushed to Tangkak Hospital in Johor where he was pronounced dead.

NIE said he had been attending the outdoor experiential camp from May 9, together with over 130 others. The camp is a compulsory seven-day module for all first-year Physical Education student teachers.

At a press conference at NIE yesterday, Professor Lee Sing Kong, the institute's director, said that safety precautions had been taken, and some staff had gone on a recce a week earlier to check out the trail and campsites. The trainees were also accompanied by seven Malaysian rangers.

Mr Rohaizam's body is expected to be brought back today for burial.

Anyways i'm trying not to think about it. the first incident's just outside his place while the second (M'sia) is where he is (except he's climbing a different one). Hope he gets back safe and sound! :(

a new chapter after university

welcome to my new blog, one and all!

got my phone bill this month. never thought $2.75 per minute would set me back so much while i was in korea.

grand total: $289

i'm totally screwed. after paying for my own korea trip ($2100 including expenses), my china trip ($900 excluding expenses) next week, my piggy bank's empty. not expecting any help from the family too. what's more, the internship at Edelman in july's gonna pay me peanuts. sorry i'm complaining but i need to get this off my chest. i've never lived like this before! baby says he'll help me but he's not doing too well himself too now.

went for a marketing executive job interview today. it sucked. 80% admin work? no thanks. i could not find a nicer way of saying no than "I think I need to consider". maybe it was the nature of the work the company did (B2B media company, i shan't say who). didn't like anything they said. maybe it was the WAY they said it? or maybe i don't like marketing/sales much. well.

anyhows. (Company x) sent their contract over today. Damn thick la. Loads of confidentiality agreements and a code of conduct agreement. I think it's gonna be a hell of an experience working there. another smaller agency just called for a second-round interview though, for a full-time position. not sure if i can get through. if i do, then i'm gonna be facing a real headache. both ways, dad isn't too happy about it. he doesn't understand what pr is, and he said i'd have no future in it. thanks dad.

okays enough with the jobs and money. going for dinner with yf soon.

ps. if ever i meet up with any of you during this period, please understand i can't go anywhere fancy. thanks!