Watched some of Big Bang Theory.

Did some purging of the room today; will continue tomorrow.

Got to catch up with kiru and darran on msn.

Listened to "On An Unknown Beach" and "Blake Says".

I feel better : )

Also, I'm all caught up with pooky wrt the Leo situation.

I like talking to my friends.

That just makes me feel like everything is right in the world.
Pooky recommended "Yoko" by Pegasus Bridge, and it's so good I can't even. I always like the music she recommends. ^-^

Gah. miss her so much. so much. As I miss every one who is SO. FAR. away from me.

Chele and Pooky are in melb, Darran is in abu dhabi, not to mention Hailee and all the people in NL/ Belgium/ Sweden.

I miss michele! ):

All I have is geeru, and we manage to meet once a fortnight, at best.

Just can't wait for the day I manage to meet pooky, and I have to do it quick so that chele will still be there.

heh. Although studying overseas almost guarantees that most of my friends will be far, far, away from me, so I'd better get used to it. It's just that I miss them so, so, much. It's just... I'm so used to them being around, and being able to hang out with them at a drop of a hat. Kayley Hyde says that living far away from most of your friends is something one has to get used to. I admit, before I've left, I've already had lots of practice with being away from my friends, so it shouldn't be so bad. After all, there is always skype and letters and phonecalls. Being separated and not being able to talk to them whenever I want, and not being completely updated on each other's situations is just something that is hard to get used to.

It's what was making chele so sad, I guess. CHANGE is hard to get used to. Moving means that I'll have to make a whole new set of friends; and even though it isn't really new to me since I've done it loads before in the past year, it's just difficult to leave all your established relationships behind. With friends like these, whom you've practically spent most of your teenage life with (chele felicia geeru) you take for granted that they'll always be around.

Also regarding friends, now that I kind of have a social life (this concept is entirely new to me) it's hard to keep in contact with old friends and maintain the conversation with new ones. I don't know how to strike a balance. Sometimes I feel like I'm spending too much time and effort maintaining my online/ distance friendships, and not spending enough time with my local ones. Admittedly distance friendships take more effort to keep going. But I don't want to lose them; my friends who live so far away are important to me. At times I feel guilty that I'm spending too much time with my "new" friends, or with the writer-people, than with people like jacque or peter or kimberly. Or I'm spending too many facebook posts on people overseas-- pooky and chele, as opposed to kiru.

I get the feeling that my friends are monitoring my facebook profile page to see who dominates the most-mentioned on my wall. I don't want to feel like I'm leaving anyone out, so sometimes if I want to mention someone, I'd rather not, because it would seem selfish.

I guess it's just that the concept of having many friends outside of school is STILL terribly new to me. (even though it's been happening since nov 2009) but now that I'm actually out of school and have time to socialise, juggling different friendships is quite hard to handle. It's all a bit confusing, really, because I want to give ALL my friends the same amount of attention, and I try to measure this "attention" by the amount of tweets/ dailybooth posts/ facebook posts I mention them in. All I really want to do is just spend time with whoever I want whenever I want... which is pretty much what I'm currently doing, actually.

I dreamt that I was in a holiday camp, and we were all confined-- my mum my sister and me, and we had to sleep in bunks like mockingjay. I was sleeping on a bunk bed, and a classmate from primary school was sleeping on the top bunk. And sometimes people had to kill each other. We had to fulfill a PE requirement. I had to make coffee/ tea for people ( can’t remember why) and it was a competition. I won the competition. Sometimes people called me camel; sometimes they called me valerie, or “val”. I distinctly remember that my name was really nicole, but no one seemed to believe me.

I don't know what to think now.

feeling a bit pissy.

tomorrow is wednesday. Because it is wednesday, I'll have to film a video.

I have a bad feeling that I'll be stuck with nothing to do after my volunteer gig.

Which is all fine and dandy if I want to film videos and write and read all day, but it is not fine if I want to go to leakycon.

Sometimes I'm afraid that the choices I'm making are the wrong ones.

But sometimes I remember that I'm still 18, and I might as well take the chance to muck around and have fun while I still can.

Also I don't know what kind of career I want.

okay! Reasons I don't like Borders:

I used to go there as a kid, remember? As young as p1/p2, and get a book on the weekends, or not get any books at all. I would sit in the kids section and read until my neck ached, and my mum would have to find me and I'd have so much trouble picking out a book. It's also where I found my HatP cd, and the Spring Awakening one, and the Pan's Labyrinth VCD that I got michele to buy because I wasn't 16 yet. In RG, we used to go there after exams just to browse, and geeru would head straight to the Terry Prachett section to ogle. I went there once after exams and saw adeline, and then in sec 4 I went with my classmates.

I don't really like it now because it holds so many memories. Well particularly because of jinghua and how he felt me up and I panicked and took flight. Also because of that time I went with darran and loki and darran talked about himself working in borders. -_-

Also because jacqueline/ thurisaz83 says the shifts are shit and working there is shit.

So no borders for me!

I don't understand why this is an issue, honestly; there are so many other places to work in.

I'm only thinking of this because geeru asked me.

But it's not her fault at all.

And it got me thinking how many ~memories~ have been formed at borders.

I feel like I can trust and learn and open myself to new experiences again.

It feels so good.

I AM A ROCKSTAR OF THE ROAD

I hate JC.

The whole idea disgusts me.

Last thursday I was walking into school, thinking that it wasn't so bad, wondering why I hated going to school. And then I remembered. Just being in the destructive environment is enough to make one pessimistic. Some people may say that if I have a cynical outlook, things will generally turn out to be... dismal. I tried to be optimistic-- I don't complain about JC to anyone I speak to in real life, and I tried to make the best of it while I was in it. I just refrain from thinking about why I hate it so much and tried to work with it while I could.

But now that it's finally over, I think I can be free to say why I hate it so much.

There were good things:

1. Lit lessons

2. RRP

3. Bio Soc until august 2009

4. linghui dorcas jiaohua jialei elizabeth meiying

5. being able to get a good review from at least 1 teacher

6. the externally-hired guidance counselor

But that's about it. Here's the things that I couldn't stand:

1. the fact that people mostly like to talk about grades and how to do better and how to outcompete someone

2. If they're not talking about the above, they're talking about who's dating whom.

3. Or mimicking viral videos from the internet

4. People in my class who don't bother to be well-informed and choose to be ignorant about issues that affect us

5. The abysmal level of intellectual discourse

6. The fact that everybody's in here to get more things on their shiny CV and nothing else-- this fact can't be helped.

7. People who have a radar for any form of non-conformity, and it gets picked up on and talked about because... there is nothing else to talk about

8. The counselor who fucking took out a bunch of crayons and drawing block, and lego people, and asked me to "play with them", and afterwards said that we didn't make any "progress". She also smelt like a used sanitary pad, but I will not hold that against her.

9. crappy GP teachers

10. crappy attitude of just studying to pass the exam

And then today at dinner I realised (not for the first time) that the path I am choosing for myself is marginally unorthodox, and I felt like I was walking on my own. I don't know. Sometimes I really abhor being with my family, because they make such a big fuss about everything. And I feel this urgent need to break away and find somewhere where I can be useful, you know? The level of "breaking away" is debatable. But I have the feeling that I am the one entirely responsible for my future, and I'm walking this road on my own. It's scary but empowering at the same time.

Scary because for the first time in my life, I honestly don't know what I'll be doing for the next 2 years. I might pass my As, I might not; I might be able to go away, I might not; I might be studying anthro or even biology-- I might even find myself in Darwin counting turtle eggs... I honestly don't know. I don't even know whether I'll go into arts management after uni because of my BA, or end up working in NParks. Hell, I don't even know whether I'll be working in singapore.

But I have lots of faith in whatever I choose? I trust myself to choose something that I will be content with. Or if the choice is made for me I just have to live with things. For now, I just like having control, while I have it. This is probably blind faith in Fate. sigh.

I don't think I would have had the courage to break away or to talk to different people if not for JC, in this oddly convoluted way. If I hadn't hated JC so much I wouldn't have continued talking to darran and kiru for example, gotten myself so involved with the valkyrieknights, or immersed myself in the internet community. So I suppose there's a bright side to all this.

The Writer by Ellie Goulding really brings me back to when I watched KickAss and I liked the song she did there. That was in april. Ah, good times. I miss them.

I realise the first times of everything are so so precious, because you never get a "first time" again. Every time you experience it hereafter will be different. (sigh)

I think right now I'm very grateful for the fact that I have friends who are so accepting of my insanity, and love me, and support me. I feel like I'm being surrounded in a cocoon of affection and it is such a comforting feeling. Being in contact with JC or anything connected to it (eg grad night) makes me remember how fortunate I am

okay last year I was watching one of jbdazen's liveshows at 4am and being stupidly ecstatic

This is the song that was in my head the next morning.

So Charisse talked about this: (yes, I still read her blog but we're not close friends I feel like such a stalker)

cynicism, low-hanging fruit
Every time I reread The Importance of Being Earnest I discover something new.

It's perfectly easy to be cynical. You don't gain anything from it either except a self-righteous stroking of both the intellect and the ego. Yeah the weak little ego that most likely had to face the cruelty of the world and couldn't take it.

I'm tired of people being weak and refusing to face up to the fact that sometimes you just have to face up to the world.
You're not being romantic when you say you wish the world was all fairies and lollipops growing from christmas trees, and that since it isn't you're just going to hide your teeny little head in the sand forever. That's just plain dumb and guess what, you can have a reasonable facsimile of a world like that if you wake up and create it for yourself.
I'm tired of whining, but not because I don't care. It's because I know how much better it could be for you.

Seriously why why why can't people see that giving up short term pleasures for long term happiness is the only way they can achieve the latter? So much for homo economicus.

Delay your mindless self-gratification and wake up your idea.

About short and long-term goals, sometimes I think I have to think about it myself.

Right now, I don't have any long-term goals.

I do have Dreams, though, which are very unlikely to be fulfilled, and they are:

a) Going to a liberal arts college and after that doing an MFA in film. I don't know what I'll do after the MFA, but I (hope) will be very happy doing the MFA.

b) Majoring in Biology in university, with a concentration in Ecology and Evolution. Spend lots of time at coastlines, wet bogs, or coniferous forests. Die happy.

c) Majoring in Anthropology in university, and spending equal amounts of time talking about gender studies and uncovering skeletons at field sites in Morocco. I would feel clever talking about feminism, and I'll meet a cute girl in the GSA, and we will write for autostraddle together. We'll live in a cute loft and fill it with lots of books, and she wouldn't mind my vegetarianism, and we will go to Tegan and Sara concerts. When I post outfits on chictopia she will be my model or photographer as she feels like, and I will make short films starring her. We'll listen to indie music and dance and not care who is watching. Replace "girl" with "guy" as necessary.

You see in all of those Dreams everyone says I will have no way to feed myself, and there is no talk of this abstract concept of a Career Beyond University, hence they cannot be long-term goals.

My short-term goals are to get enough money to go to LeakyCon and to not get disowned by my mother until she stops funding my education.

Sometimes I get so sad I lose sight of my Dreams and think they will never ever come true unless I was born 50 years ago or 50 years in the future. So I pull out my short-term goals and they make me stop feeling sad. I don't have any long-term goals at the moment because I do not understand the abstract concept of a Career. All that I care about in the next year is whether I go to LeakyCon, and whether I'll get to move out of the country. Quite frankly, I don't have an inkling of what will make me happy in 5 years time, or when I am 30. Also, I have very little faith in 1) my Dreams becoming true and 2) me still being satisfied with them when they do come true. I am additionally intensely afraid of being exceedingly sad for long periods of time. Therefore I find it hard to "give up short term pleasures for long term happiness".

Many people say that The Real World is shittier than school. From what I've seen of The Real World, I'm not even sure the other people and I are living in the same World.

I wish there was a reblog function or something with yingling's blog. I could put this on tumblr but I won't look back on it, and people who read my tumblr don't read chinese >( so here:

就只剩下三天了.
很快的,考试将到来,
彻底把我认识的世界颠倒.

其实害怕的并非考试,
而是考试过后.
虽然大家嘴巴说很希望考试赶快结束,
然后就有大把时间玩了休息,
但是大家也明白这次大考后,
意味着大家已经离开了简单的校园生活.

以后,犯错误是没有回头路的.
以后,你的成功失败都不能以简单的A和F分出.
大家很残忍的被推入着可怕的世界,
有的只是怀胎九月(就是大考和上大学的那时间)的时间适应.

这次的考试就是我们最大的辅助.
若考得好,
以后的日子也会顺一些;
考得不好就得拐个大圈,
生活更艰难一些.

虽然说一切都会在死亡那刻化为乌有,
但是生活着,总希望一切比较美好,
少点痛苦,多一点快乐.

所以大家的压力越来越大,
希望考试能助自己一臂之力,
而不是起反作用,
害得自己没好日子过.

真是烦啊.

the other day I put my mp3 on shuffle, and it turned up a bunch of spring awakening songs. I was singing along to Left Behind, and I started crying.

Even after all these years, SA is still so resonant.

okay I remember listening to this in march or february. I remember it being really poignant because at that time I was sad about something but now I can't remember what the HECK I was feeling sad about. -_-

Does anyone know? not that I expect people to keep track of my moods, haha. But I want to know WHY it feels like it means something but I don't know what it MEANS.

Also, it's officially a year since I saw amanda palmer live.

I would like to think that so many things have changed, and it has, really. I don't know, maybe she started everything. I've really liked this past year, all things considered. Sometimes in my head change happens overnight, but I keep forgetting that growing up and moving on is a continuous process that takes time, and is only as fast as the effort I put into it.

Not that I want to grow up quickly. Or do I? DUN DUN DUN.

I want to improve myself, definitely. i.e. get better at talking to people, and at chatting to people I don't know in real life. this is something I didn't really have to do very often before, but now I realise that it is advantageous to have Connections (and also fun to boot) so it would be a good idea if I got used to this.

I think I'm also comforted by the fact that I'm more optimistic and less desperate that I was a year ago.

or am I just trying to convince myself that I've changed?

I feel like I've changed.

I look at last year's blogposts and I think that I'm so different from the person who wrote them.

I feel more secure with myself, if you know what I mean. I also feel more sure that everything is going to turn out right and things are going to be okay. I'm less uncomfortable with who I really am. I'm less afraid of being myself, whoever "myself" is. Still trying to figure that part out, heh.

I don't know. I like the person I am today more than I like the person I was a year ago. Or this might be just egoism at work. I think I'm more able to kid myself that I'm adept at communicating with people. And then I realised that "confidence" just involves a lot of bluffing yourself, and hoping that the other person will be hoodwinked as well. When I'm chatting to someone really well, I tend to pretend that I'm the ideal version of myself? Let's call this tumblenc. When I'm in a conversation and everything is going well, I pretend that I'm tumblenc. And naturally socializing would involve a lot of pretending.

But sometimes pretending is tiring, or I don't have any energy to pretend, and then I don't really like talking to people much. Trying to be tumblenc is tiring, more so than I perceive. It's like I can be out with someone for, say, 4 hours, and all that time I'm tumblenc. I only realise when I'm tired when I'm alone, like in the bathroom. And then when I stop focusing and my brainspace starts becoming my own, I realise that I'm really actually tired. I enjoy being tumblenc, but sometimes it's exhausting. Sometimes I discover that I don't have enough energy to be completely tumblenc, and things don't go the way I want them to. And then I get exhausted. Sometimes I get really exhausted and I don't know why, because I haven't been doing anything physically demanding. Maybe I can attribute it to the pretending.

When I get really exhausted, and I feel my brainspace is reaching its maximum capability, I decide that I can't really handle meeting anyone that week and shut myself off. I don't know yet if this exacerbates the problem or resolves it. But lately I've just been really tired and overwhelmed, sometimes stressed. Sometimes I'm really uncertain about the future, but I try not to think about it because it makes me sad. Today I was wondering why I was so sad when I was in sec 3, and for the life of me I still cannot understand why. Whenever I think about that, though, I think that what I'm going through now cannot be worse than what I went through before, because in my memory it was really bad.

http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z301/theclotheshorse/NYCFW2010/IMG_1667.jpg
http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z301/theclotheshorse/NYC%20Fall%202010/IMG_5222-1.jpg

I want to have hair like her! :D The fringe, the redness...
http://theclothes.blogspot.com/

我想，如果自我认知并无法给我自信，
那么什么才会呢？
我是要让自己所有的缺点消失才会相信自己是好的吗？
那时不可能的啊！
我的缺陷是我的一部分，如果改变了，我只是对一个陌生的躯壳感到满意。
或许只要让自己再漂亮一点，聪明一点，勇敢一点。。。。

到头来，只有改变成不是自己的自己才能让我更相信自己的能力。
这也没办法。
自信是无德无能的庸人唯一的安慰，
唯一能让我放下追求完美得到自信的方法，
恐怕只有接受和以往我的缺陷才行吧。

自恋一点，自爱一点，自信一点。

So my friend wrote the above. She asked the question; "Is it true that one will only have self esteem if one does not have ANY negative qualities?" (我是要让自己所有的缺点消失才会相信自己是好的吗？) Because you tend to think lowly of yourself because of your negative qualities, and sometimes, if you're feeling exceptionally low, you think, "oh, if only I wasn't _______". But everyone has their weaknesses, and most people have self esteem regardless, so why isn't it possible to feel good about oneself?

She continues to say that our weaknesses are part of our identities; that they are inherently part of us. She asks the question, "In the end, won't I have to change my entire personality in order for me to have confidence in my own abilities?" (到头来，只有改变成不是自己的自己才能让我更相信自己的能力。)

Which made me think about how I regularly think about myself. (meta-thinking!) In the end, she encourages everyone to "love themselves a little more". (自恋一点，自爱一点，自信一点。) <3

hello!

So today there were more than the usual blogposts in my feed aggregator.

I'd like to respond!

I don't care what I did in RJ or what I did as part of school or what I did outside academics. I don't care about anything in relation to RJ. I don't care :D :D :D

fin.

B-quartet again! I picked this one because there's drums in it and you can see the DRUMMER. (more about that later)

Anyway. Went to see them again on saturday, and they are SO much better live. Admittedly everyone is better live (except Backyard Surgeons, who are better on myspace) but this was a really different experience. I think they tried to make it an integrated audio/ visual thing, because there was a projector set up, as well as an OHP, for light demonstrations.

To start, the whole set-up made a difference to how you would listen to their music. The performance was held in the Substation Theatre, and the entire band was spread out across the room. The audience had to sit on the floor in the middle of the band, so to speak, and some people were sitting really close to the bass guitarist, or the supporting vocalist. The lead vocalist was at one end of the dance-studio sized theatre, the sound engineer and guitarist were next to him, OHP was right in the middle, the drummer was near the OHP projection, the other guitarists were at the corners of the room opposite the lead vocalist, and the supporting vocalist was at the corner opposite the drummer. (unfortunately, I am not learned enough to identify who was playing bass.)

In this way, with the audience in the middle, you could see the leader of the band communicating with his bandmates, and the vibe they had going on. Rather than playing to us, I felt that B-quartet were playing through us, so to speak, as if we were a conduit for their music. When we were all sitting on the floor, you could feel the drums and the bass vibrating through the floorboards, and you felt as if the music was possessing you for a little bit. I said earlier that attending a gig was like giving permission to the artist to take some of your time, and I really enjoyed giving B-quartet my time and mind space.

All this time and I haven't even discussed how they sound like! The whole time I felt as if I was being reminded of something, and then I realised that they're is like Jack Conte and Ursula Rucker COMBINED. I like the range of instruments they use-- they used an oboe, and ethnic malay instruments, among others. The lead singer plays as if he is in his own world (hence the resemblance to Jack Conte) They also do spoken word to some impressive riffs and synth music. (hence the resemblance to Ursula Rucker.) I like the way they use the pedal to record and playback and loop :)

The drummer is also super INTENSE and really into it. I can't describe it. It's hard to find any online recordings that is remotely like what he plays, because the live experience is so different, and so real. It might be a far stretch, but if you listened to Brian Viglione's drums on the last few tracks of Face of the Sun, it's just like that. The drums are mesmerising and they almost put the audience into a trance-- I could feel myself moving to the same beat, along with other people in the crowd, and the guitar players were also getting into it at the same time. That's why I like live music-- it's like sharing the experience with total strangers in a collective body. They played music video-like film at the same time, and the images were kind of surreal. There were lots of jump cuts, obnoxious, blinding flashes, and playbacks of mundane things like rain falling on a window pane. Do you see what I'm getting at? To describe the experience as "trippy" is an understatement.

I was talking to a guy after the show:

PERSON: So how did you find it?

ME: I liked it; it was like an acid trip 8D

PERSON: So have you had one before? *cough* excuse me, I meant, have you heard them before?

LOL.

Good stuff. They're playing at the Substation on saturday, so I might see them :)

Prelims were over today, attempted (the nominal word here is "attempted") to have lunch with Chele and Nat, but failed horribly xD Because me and geeru were kind of really late to meet Chele and Nat, but they'd already had lunch and a bit of a shop around already. But Nat! Was nice to see her, I haven't been out with her in ages. <3

Geeru dragged me to this japanese buffet, which is all-you-can-eat, with a 1 hour time limit. I like eating! I like buffets! There were a ton of vegetarian options, which made me a happy bunny indeed ^^ You would think this was a perfect fit, right? xD We ended up eating so much we were going to burst. At one point geeru flipped down the timer (everyone has one, they set it for 50 min) because it was so stressful haha. But the buffet was nice; it had omu rice, curry rice, soup and bread, japanese pasta, pizza, ICE CREAM CREPES, and tons of mousse-type cakes. Next time we plan to start with dessert. #strategy Needless to say, I skipped dinner today.

After that we went to the art museum (SAM) and it was nice visiting with someone, because you could talk about the pictures and squee. *reminds self to send MoMA song to geeru* I like that Art is as much a process for the creator as for the viewer; if the viewer didn't feel anything or think anything about the picture, then the picture almost ceases to exist. I'm getting philosophical now. I really really want to take a philo class in uni, seeing how arka is enjoying his classes at BU. Not sure if I'll apply to BU, but I'll probably apply to the liberal arts colleges in New England because they have the SEA semester thing. And it's a easy eliminator.

Gosh I miss geeru. We only get to see each other what, once a month? And that is way too little. Today we talked about how we would keep in touch, as we looked at people's correspondence. Geeru kept on bringing it up, and I couldn't help but be reminded by imminent separation. We've been friends for ages now. I don't believe that you can measure friendship by how long you've known the person, but geeru's my go-to person for everything, and always has been. She's done things for me I don't even think she's aware of.

I'll miss her.

watched this again and got emotional xD

I first watched it 2 years ago.

ah, good times.

new song! You Say Party are going to tour with Tegan and Sara, and they're a canadian band. #woop Canadian acts are awesome. Although I may only say this because of alanis morisette, and The Nifflers, therefore I am Not A Reliable Source. But still.

They sound like a cross between The XX (2010 Mercury prize winner! yay) and Ellie Goulding, or just like any other hipster stuff that you're hearing nowadays. They're not as dancy as Robots in Disguise, though. Just good not-top-40 stuff to drown yourself in. And honestly. How could you not listen to a band with a name like this?

"So, what kind of music are you into?"

"Oh, just You Say Party." [+1000 indie points]

see? Perfect for any social situation where you'd like to demonstrate your refined taste in music.