Werk

I thought it was only three days or so since my last post but holy shite it's been a week!!! I'm sorry. I have been busy for I am a working woman now. I feel INDEPENDENT and RESPONSIBLE and EMPOWERED. Loljk my body is madafuckin exhausted. I've been going to work every day since the last time I wrote here (other than on Sunday, when I went for a wedding) and will be working everyday until Sunday and this waitressing thingy is definitely not kind on the feet. I still enjoy work, though. My colleagues are really cool people and my manager Anthony is fun to work with but he's so inappropriate.. Sometimes I can't really decide if he's a dangerous pedophile or just very fatherly LOL.

The customers at relish are generally nice to serve. A lot of them are super friendly and appreciative of the service and not intimidating. There are also lots of handsome French men and pretty women and adorable babies and sometimes there are cute boys too and I love it when they are very thirsty and I have to go to their tables to refill their glasses for them like, five or six times while they're dining and they give me their sexy-ass smiles and say thank you. It's very rewarding HAHAHA.

The 2+ hours of breaks between split shifts are also pretty fun. Yesterday, Dewi, Soufi and I had junk food from 7-11 and then got yummy ice cream from Island Creamery. Today was just Dewi and me. I tried the pear sake sorbet yesterday.....it was pretty good.... Dewi had the tiger one today.... also pretty good.... Price to pay: I am going to grow fat and then go to hell. Hahaha sorry la I was curious.

Hey. You know what? I think I will never fall in love. Hahaha I made a promise to myself at the start of the year that I will not leave secondary school without ever having been on a date. Lol 10 days to 2012 and I am still very much inexperienced. Kai Xiang told me I was pathetic for never having had a boyfriend. Hahahaha I don't know what to think.

P.S. Do I have new readers or something? Like literally no one used to read this and suddenly I have 940 views this month? Hello there.

19:52

Time is irrelevant when it is the holidays. My body now pays no attention to day and night and my sleeping hours are 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. I like it.

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon an artist named Mark Ryden's website. He does these really cute but terribly morbid and unnerving surrealist paintings. They scare me a lot. I like that. I also find his repetitive symbols quite interesting. You'll find Abraham Lincoln in lots of his paintings, as well as meat, Jesus and this one bee. I love his subjects. They are more often than not children, but they don't have a lot of that joyful, naive innocence you usually find in kids. Sometimes they look like they're in a slight trance to me. They have this vacant look (that's really quite creepy) that when paired with strange, grotesque situations, makes me very uncomfortable. A lot of the girls also have this very adult sensuality. It's like these children have known sorrow and emptiness and love and lust and sex and brutality and death... and they like it. Or are fascinated by it, rather. It's quite interesting. His Snow Yak show, though, feels a lot less.. dangerous? It still makes you feel weird inside, but there is a serenity in the mostly white colour palette that soothes that ickiness away and you feel a bit more peaceful. A bit. I also love the baby named Jajo that he's painted quite a few times. But all this weirdness does not mean that his works are not nice to look at, because they are. That's the problem. They're so pretty and cute and make you want to look at them, but it's really just a trap. Because after that you can't get it out of your head.

Fetal Trapping in Northern Carolina from 'The Tree Show' series

The Cloven Bunny from the 'Blood' series
(The blood clots are lovely)

Fur Girl from 'The Snow Yak Show' series

The Grinder (#95) from 'The Gay '90s Show' series

Little Boy Blue from the 'Bunnies & Bees' series
(This feels so sinister)
(I'd love to hang this on the wall directly in front of my bed and wake up to it every morning)

All pictures from Mark Ryden's website. I would really love to see his work in real life, with their ornately hand-carved frames and everything *-*

Nostalgic at three a.m.

I wrote this a little under year ago (7 days short of a year) (it was posted on 20th december 2010) in my old blog. It's quite nice to realise I still long for this exact same thing that I longed for back then. Such a dreamy post. I've always had my head in the clouds.

"Sometimes when I am in a particularly dreamy mood, I plan to spend the whole of my 21st year of life backpacking across Asia with a family of strangers from all over the world. We will talk about nothing and everything and sometimes things that make no sense but we will laugh like we were the smartest, wittiest group of people that ever lived because we're all on weed. We'll have bonfires on the beach at night and dance, maybe topless and painted like red Indians, and sing and play music until dawn breaks. Then we'll sober up for a moment to appreciate the sunrise, and afterwards we'll pack up and set off to wherever our feet shall take us next.

We'll spend our days maybe surfing in Bali, or just soaking up culture in India, or getting high and just enjoying and appreciating life on this beautiful -so goddamn beautiful- world that we realise we've taken for granted all our past years of living. We won't really have money, but we'll get by. Sometimes we sleep on the beach, sometimes a friend we made on the trip offers to put us up in their homes for a few days, or sometimes, in exchange for a day's work on the paddy fields, a kind family welcomes us into their home, where we'd have dinner together and attempt to share stories despite language barriers.

We will distance ourselves from technology as much as possible, except perhaps there'd be a few photographers among us to capture this year-long trip through the lenses of their cameras. I will keep a journal, and immortalize the amazing moments and emotions and places and people I've experienced in ink and paper. I will also draw. And with so much passion and inspiration that by the end of the trip I will have a whole stack of sketchbooks to lug home.

It is also on this trip that I will learn to cry. Cry when I need to, or don't need to, or whatever. I will learn to cry. And I will learn to live. And I will learn to be humble. And when I return home my heart will feel light and love and peace and I will translate all that I have experienced into art, hopefully remarkable art, and I will know how to live, and cry and appreciate. And as I age, I will always look back on my 21st year with satisfaction and fondness. And on days when I feel like my life is mundane and pointless, I will think back to the 365 days I spent with my family of strangers travelling around my continent, and I will smile knowing that at least I did something so fulfilling and wonderful and at least, for one year, I was somewhat of a hippie ☮"

There is a heaviness in my chest that makes me want to dig my fingers into my skin and lift my heart out just so I can feel lighter. Why does emptiness weigh so much.

I have been

1. Staying up until 4 in the morning.
2. Sleeping in until 2 in the afternoon.
3. Watching TV.
4. Watching movies online.
5. Working (not everyday)
6. Craving stickybuns from the bakery next to Relish (every fuckin day)
7. Feeling very lost.

(8) And then yesterday I went out with Stella Ashlee Ng Pei Shan Petom So'od. I haven't seen her in so long!!! We went to town to walk around and have cake at Coffee Bean because I had a $5 voucher. I was looking forward to having one of the yummy christmas cakes but Pei Shan is allergic to nuts (which were in almost every single thing!!!) so we got this really girly white chocolate and strawberry meringue cake. But that's OK 'cause it was gooo00oOod.

As usual, we updated each other on all the stuff in our lives since the last time we met and it made me miss all our heart to hearts at school :-( We used to set aside days where we'd spend whole afternoons at the tables outside the NP room just pouring everything out and laughing at our lives. Sigh, gone are those days........... :'( It's really hitting me now that we aren't returning to TK at the start of next year. I feel very grown up.

Anyway, we window-shopped our way through orchard road while Pei Shan congratulated herself for practicing self-restraint. Ah, but she soon had to take that back because then we went to H&M and she ended up buying a sun hat (overpriced but so pretty), socks and rings sigh. She spends like crazy ok!!! You should see her two twitpics of the things she bought a couple of days before. Tsk tsk tsk. Haha but she's also very generous because she bought me this glittery little black wallet. Hi Petom, when I get my pay I promise I am treating you back! And then when I am a true hippie with my husband in dreadlocks who looks vaguely like disney's tarzan, you can treat me back with that caravan you want to buy me ;) Hehe just kidding please don't spend a few hundred thousand dollars on me! ❤ 


Hmm I hope I have work tomorrow. I want my sticky buns. I also would like to have something productive to do with my days. Most of all I just want my sticky buns. I keep dreaming about them. I'm not kidding.




Of Moons Birds and Monsters. Probably my favourite MGMT song. I love how deep Andrew's voice gets in the verse and I luvvvv the instrumental bit at the end *_*

my knees are cold

I have been feeling so shitty this past week. We had to call the cops in to take my mother to the hospital for her mania on Tuesday morning. We had a terrible night. She was up the whole time and I barely got any sleep because she kept singing at the top of her voice and shouting at the whole house to "PRAY! PRAY! I AM THE THIRD MOST IMPORTANT YOU MUST LISTEN TO ME! ALLAH IS NUMBER 1, MUHAMMAD IS 2 AND I AM THE THIRD! ALL OF YOU ARE STUPID!" And then she screamed the Azan as loud as she could and banged on our bedroom doors. I had my hands over my ears the whole night.

She spent the morning in a lingerie-like slip that barely covered anything, shouting out the door at frightened neighbours and singing some more to the song that is her favourite every time she is high: I Believe I Can Fly. Sometimes her voice would go so high that she would choke on herself and start coughing and it was so fucking hilarious but I couldn't possibly laugh. Everything felt so twisted, including the things I was thinking. I know how horrible this sounds but when she was singing out to the neighbourhood, I kept chanting in my head, "Please really believe you can fly. Please just.... jump." But of course she didn't. The policemen came, my mother flirted (as always) (still in that godforsaken slip) and my next door neighbour who is a good friend tricked my mom into getting ready to go to a 'club' at 9 in the friggin a.m. They took her away, albeit with a bit of struggling and shouting downstairs and that was that.

I don't know what to do anymore. Technically, my mother has already lost it, but she's seriously losing it now. Even when she was first diagnosed with Bipolar her relapses only occurred at worst once a year. Now she gets manic every couple of months. It is so fucking taxing and depressing and distracting for the rest of us. I ended up having a meltdown on my second day of work, which was Tuesday, because my manager kept asking me to smile and I just couldn't. She talked to me for a while and asked me to go home early that day. I spent the rest of the afternoon at Haji Lane by myself, sitting by the window in Pluck, drawing and eavesdropping on other people's happy conversations. My workmates slipped me really sweet cheer up notes on Relish order forms on my way out.

Yesterday was my third day of work and my first time on the night shift. We had a pretty busy night but it felt good to have something to do. I ended up leaving the restaurant at 11.50 after all the cleaning up and reached home at close to one, but it was okay. I also met Syadza for a while before work and we had Ben & Jerry's and shaker fries and lots of nice walking around. I realise we always sort of gravitate towards Suntec City even though we know there isn't much to do around there.

Today was a haze, interspersed with lots of exasperated groaning on my part. Talked to Syadza for a while just now and I feel better and I hope she does too. Hi Syadza, I love you and everything will be OK <3

Saying nothing, that's enough for me.

Bon Iver will always give me the shivers. The opening bit of Holocene, oh my god *_* I have grown to love Bon Iver, Bon Iver very much. I really love Michicant and Perth :') I kind of hate how he's become popular for Skinny Love now. I don't know, I can be irrationally territorial about the stuff I listen to. Before, Bon Iver's music just felt a little more.... personal.. to me. Secret. Special. It was my ethereal 3am music. My quiet Sunday morning music. It always felt like Justin was whispering to me and it was always so heart-wrenching because there is so much emotion in his voice. I used to be so sure that Bon Iver would be one of the best-kept secrets of alternative music, but.. they've got four nominations in the upcoming Grammy's, don't they?

I just watched Vincent Moon of LaBlogotheque's Pitchfork Music Festival video and this man is such an artist. I love his Take Away Shows. I remember first being introduced to his work when I started getting into Lykke Li in '08. I didn't pay too much attention. Then I couldn't stop watching The Kooks' Take Away Show in Paris. Then I fell into obsession with The Morning Benders' Virgins performance, and that is probably the start of my love affair with Mr. Moon's amazing work. It was so beautifully filmed. I love the feel and atmosphere in all his videos, the intimacy with the musicians as well as the immediate audience watching the performance.. I love how his camera moves and I love the colours and the setting of the performances.

*Wrote that last night. Today, I shall write a bit more about Vincent Moon: He's gonna be at the UpToTheSky festival tomorrow, right? Soufi is working there!!! And today she got to talk to him!!! And since she's working there she gets free entry for the festival!!! Haha hi Soufi I am fucking jealous of you. I wanna go for the festival but then I've got work at night and no $50 to spare for tickets. Maybe they'll need another volunteer somewhere? Damn. I've been wanting to go for this thing :-(

We are OK

Is it strange that I now feel chained to this new-found freedom I have been waiting on for so long? It feels like there is a certain pressure to be doing something worthy with all this time laid out for me. It doesn't feel very good.

I have been watching a lot of television on both the actual thing and on my laptop. I started watching Skins a couple of weeks ago and watched the first season within the weekend. I've also been watching this reality TV Project Runway-esque thing called Work of Art: The Next Great Artist for like... inspiration for that portfolio I need to finish soon. I like the first season more than what I've seen of the second.

Anyway, I'm pretty damn terrified about securing a place in a school next year. I'm fucking scared. I just really want to do art after this and the chance of getting rejected feels more real than actually getting accepted. I'm worried I'll screw up my interviews because I am so horrible at presenting anything at all. I'm afraid that my work won't be good enough because I neglected to put in enough time and effort into developing my technical skills and ideas and styles and whatever. Man. I am also feeling super insecure about not having taken O Level Art or any art classes before. I don't know how to go about the whole process of creating a piece. The research, conceptualising, preparatory sketches and all that jazz... Haha I don't even know if that's what it is! Sigh. I'm feeling quite small right now. But I shall make use of whatever time I have left. I didn't put in as much effort as I should have for Os. I need to work as hard as I can for this thing I really, really want now.

I spent yesterday with Syadza. It was a really good no-plans-let's-just-go-with-the-flow day. We met at City Hall and ended up walking round Suntec, sharing a macaroni & cheese and deep-fried breaded mushrooms at Swensen's, and eventually walking to the Singapore Art Museum where there was an amazing exhibition called The Burning Gaze by Korean artist Hyunk Koo Kang. He does a lot of monochrome portraits and they are so bloody realistic and intense, I got a shock when I saw "Oil on canvas".  Looking at established artists' works makes me want to work hard to get to that level. Yet at the same time I still feel like I'd be better off just.. forgetting about it because I'll never be as good as that. And anyway my life goal is still to have a cafe that doubles as a gallery for mainly local and regional artists, and then when I'm old, to either run my own proper gallery or to become a curator in a museum..... so perhaps my own art might not be as important? I don't know. I still love doing it, though.

Tomorrow I am sharing a flea market stall with some of my friends to sell off some clothes I need to get rid of. There aren't that many so I'm wondering if it is worth it to pay $10 to try to make money off of only a handful of things? Let's hope it goes alright. Oh yeah, work didn't start this week. They couldn't slot in any shifts for me so hopefully this coming Monday shall be my first day. Trying not to get too anxious about that now.

This is so much rambling.

The End

Hi.

The past week has called for quite a lot of celebrating. O levels officially ended last Tuesday, and in extension, secondary school too. Prom was on Thursday night at the Carlton Hotel. TK girls clean up really well. I swear there were so many people I barely recognised in their dresses and updos. It was a little intimidating. All the girls were so gorgeous and I felt a bit... silly compared to the rest because everyone else was wearing elegant gowns and sexy high heels while I wore my platform clown shoes. At least I was comfortable. . . The halal food was actually really disappointing. The programme was alright and the dancing was awkward. Especially me. I realise I have totally cut myself off from radio music. I didn't know anything they played even though everyone was singin along. I need to get out of my head. Yeah.

I think that the rest of the night after prom was more memorable. A group of us stayed over at Marina Bay Sands that night. We left prom at around midnight and went back to the room and goofed around until about 2 or something. We got bored, so we decided to take a walk around the area. We walked aimlessly, still in our prom outifts, through the MBS shopping centre. We took photos, found our way to the boardwalk outside and sat playing truth or dare by the river. At 3 a.m., a smelly drunk man came by and began to play with these orange barricade cones near us. We went back to our room.

We wanted food after a while so we all changed into our casual clothes and went out again. We were thinking of going at for satay Lau Pa Sat or something, but the hotel staff we asked advice from said that it was closing soon. It was about 4.30 then. We decided to go find a McDonald's somewhere. We took cabs to Marina Square. We thought that all Mac's outlets were 24/7. We were sorely mistaken :'( We ended up walking all the way to Raffles City after that. I don't think the walk was actually that far, but because we were so tired and kept stopping to take photos we only reached food at 5.30. But then!!! The McValue Meals start at 6!!! So we waited patiently for another half an hour before we actually ate. We also realised that the morning peak hour taxi surcharges start at 7, so we didn't stay long.

We went back to the hotel, crashed into fluffy white hotel pillows and slept until 11. Here's a secret: Only two out of the seven girls in our room took any showers at all. Hahahaha.

OH YEAH. And I did my brows. Hahahahahaha please laugh at me.

2 days

Two more days and O Levels shall officially be a thing of the past for me!!! Two more hour-long multiple choice papers for biology and chemistry and then I'm free!!! CAN YOU SMELL IT?!?!?!? CAN YOU SMELL THE FREEDOM?!?!?!?!?!?! This feels so good.

There's a Madness in Us All

Hi.

I hate myself when I'm upset. I rarely get as upset as I did the other day but if it happens then I turn into this annoying sobbing impulsive idiot who needs to rant. I hate the things that come out of my mouth when I'm like that. The things I type and decide to publicise too. I wrote a really long facebook post that I was going to put up on my mom's wall the other day. It was really hurtful and I made her sound so fucking terrible for her 1300+ friend list to read. I think just typing it out calmed me down a bit, because by the time I was done with it my head was thankfully clear enough to not actually go through with the whole thing.

I have been feeling strangely emotional in recent days. Studying for my social studies paper, I teared up reading about the conflict in Northern Ireland. I've been feeling those little pangs of heartache at fictional television moments even when they aren't particularly sad and reading my battered and wrinkly, rain-stained 5 dollar Edgar Allan Poe book draws actual sighs out of me. I usually read the poems in the book at random, flip to a page and begin, and last night at 12 a.m. I read Dreamland for the first time. It struck me as really beautiful and is now my 2nd favourite of Mr. Poe's works that I have read so far, 1st being The Sleeper. It's probably the whole dream idea. And the deliciously tangible imagery & metaphors and the dark vibes of the poem at midnight while I was feeling particularly creative and doodling furiously rather dream-like scenes in my sketchbook ha ha my brain really relished that piece of writing.

Do you believe in like, fate? I am feeling a little bit in awe of time and coincidences right now. Yesterday I left the house late for my 8 am geography paper. I waited from about 6.15 to 6.40 for a cab but there were none. I thought that perhaps this was a sign, so I checked my bag and behold, I forgot to bring my IC and entry proof!!! I ran back up to my house and by the time I was done I was too late for a train ride so I had to cab all the way to school. 5 minutes into waiting, this really kind old taxi driver who gives me free rides to the MRT station with his son if he sees me in the morning drove by and picked me up. I asked him if he could send me to school straight, and said I insist on paying this time. He said sure! he could send his son to work at Aljuneid too, in that case. So I got my taxi, and I was on time for school, and as if that wasn't enough, the taxi driver said that since he sent his son too, I must only pay half of the $20 fare! I was so touched man.. why are people so generous??? And how was everything so perfectly timed for something like this to happen? OK lah, I know how. Thanks, God :') (lol I just looked out of my window and at the sky after I typed that)

Dreamland

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE- out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the tears that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters- lone and dead,-
Their still waters- still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,-
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,-
By the mountains- near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-
By the grey woods,- by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp-
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,-
By each spot the most unholy-
In each nook most melancholy-
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past-
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by-
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth- and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region-
For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis- oh, 'tis an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not- dare not openly view it!
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.

By Edgar Allan Poe

I also love how some lines don't actually rhyme phonetically but are spelled as though they do, like floods and woods, swamp and encamp... It's like.. the lines don't sound like they fit in the poem, but they more of rhyme visually..............



Santa Fe//Beirut

boobies 4 u

 

Have been trying to work on my human figures the past two nights. I need to learn how to draw hands for I am terrible at hands. I also need to start drawing my people in more complex and less stiff poses. But I guess that aside, I am quite happy at my progress. Sleeping with swollen eyes tonight.

let it fall

Today it is cold and the joints in my fingers and toes are aching. I feel like Os are sucking the life out of me. This all ends in exactly 3 weeks from today, so happiness & freedom, until then, dear friends.

Yesterday I went to meet Soufi after I visited my grandfather at the hospital. The Botanical Gardens train station was only a few stops from NUH's Kent Ridge station on the circle line and Soufi was getting off work soon, so I headed to Cluny Court. We got a bag of honey dijon chips + a french onion dip and pink fanta at the supermarket and went to the Botanical Gardens to chill. It started to rain as we walked around so we sat under a pavillion eating and talking until the rain stopped.

I want to have a picnic there once I start work. Cluny Court is a zebra crossing away from the new entrance to the gardens and Soufi and I can go in the afternoon after a lunch shift. I hope it'll be sunny, especially since we have now eased into rain season. But if it is not, that's still fine - we know a really cozy spot in the cactus gardens for rainy day picnics where you don't get wet and icky. We could bake scones and fairy cupcakes with pink glitter and bring cucumber sandwiches and tea. I'm going to have a garden in my house when I own one, just so I can have cute little picnics with my kids right outside my door. I'll have my own vegetable and herb garden too. Maybe I'l even grow THE herb eh? ;)

Mr Devendra Obi Banhart is tending to my heavy heart today. I love him and his magnificent moustache. I realise I have taken a liking to long hair on men. I find dreads the sexiest. And then I like the dark, messy shoulder length style + nice 'stache and beard combination. A close third is an afro or like, curly Pascal Grob hair. It's like, I'd shag the guy with the afro, and I'd date the one with the beard and live with him for a couple of years in a sparsely furnished apartment with white walls and dark wood floors, but I'll marry the boy with dreadlocks and we'll live happily ever after listening to Papa Marley everyday and bringing up hippie children.

i wanna go surfing

Hahahahahahahaha the English paper was diSaPPoinTinG........... I declare myself officially incapable of writing under pressure. All of the essays that I have ever been proud of writing took me a few days to write, never an hour or whatever. That puts me in a lot of trouble because the essays that actually count, that actually determine my bloody future(!!!!) I must write in only 45 minutes. I couldn't think today. I really hope paper 2 makes up for my untimely inability to use my brain during paper 1.

Sigh.

Someone has planted a little guilt seed in my chest and it is sprouting and fast and digging its roots into my heart and I seriously feel like dirt tonight (hahaha can I consider that a pun???? ..no? sigh okay). Part of me is almost begging to burst into ugly stupid sobbing to lighten this uneasiness, but meh, what is done is done. I'll just sigh despairingly in the corner 6000000000 times instead.

Listening to lots Spacemen 3 and Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix tonight. This is Mary Anne by Spacemen 3.

we could stick around and see this night through

Noon time on the Saturday before my first O level paper. I just blew my nose and it felt like some part of my ear exploded.

I am looking forward to next year's Laneway Festival. I was really hoping that Portugal. The Man would come to Singapore after seeing the band in the Australia line-up, but I guess if they were only going for the Syndey and Melbourne stops anyway, I couldn't be too hopeful that they'd come here. It's alright, though. I'm still excited that Feist is coming. And M83 and Girls and The Drums and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. I'll give the other bands that are coming a listen too. Right now I am listening to We Bros by Wu Lyf and I think I like it :-) I also need to start learning the words to Feist's new album before she comes in February.

I'll be starting work a month from now. I didn't really know what sort of cafe Relish was when I signed up for the job, but I've been reading up and it's apparently a pretty expensive burger place. Like $18 a burger sort of expensive hahaha. Do we get free meals? Cause I'd really like to try the tofu + portobello mushroom burger! I've been craving veggie burgers, specifically Cafe Salivation's spinach burger. I need to learn how to make it myself because Salivation is so out of the way :-( It's down the road from Mustafa and my family aren't very Mustafa people.

I think we're rearranging the room today. We're painting the walls at the end of the year but we decided we still need a quick change of scenery til then.

I want to watch Martha Marcy May Marlene.

It's hard to dance with a devil on your back so shake him off uwoohohhh

Today I was a good little nerd and did some studying. Well, okay I was forced to. My mom realised I wasn't doing enough revision for my Os even by her standards. She took me out to lunch at Cafe Le Caire on Haji Lane and we ate and then I did math. Directly under a speaker blaring arab music but issokay my concentration is very good. Just.. not at home when I have the laptop and the telly and the bed and like, a refrigerator I can open every 20 minutes. My mother turned on her laptop and watched videos of toddlers dancing and updated her facebook status to pass the time.

 Today, I wore the super cool necklace that Pei Shan got me for my birthday. It has a suitcase and an aeroplane charm and it is beautiful. This is my favourite gift this year (although my mom's sponsoring more than 1/2 of my Lykke Li tix might be a bit of a competitor) because Pei Shan said she got it because she thought that hippies might like traveling awww :') She also says she'll buy me a caravan when she's rich. I love my Petom.

 My mother went back out for supper with a friend a while after we came home. Room all to myself, a secret solitary Flaming Lips singalong sesh commenced. I then sang along to some MGMT, Florence & The Machine, Bon Iver, Yeah Yeah Yeahs (I realise they all have very distinct singing styles. Andrew has a sort of constipated falsetto thingy going on, Justin Vernon's got his weepy weepy sorrow shit, Karen O's a bit like Andrew but  more... Karen O and more sex & Florence is airy fairy then big and intense k bye)... Hmm it was somewhere in the midst of spasm-dancing to a creepy lyricless song of M83's when somehow I decided to do this. Yeah I don't know either.....

I guess today I am quite content. Also, I like red lipstick. And I like tying scarves around my head. And I went out without eyeliner today and it felt good (haven't done that in a while cause I felt yux without it).
But then right, I keep getting only 70% for my math practice paper 1s >:( My paper 2s are worse. I scared lah.

hek

My shoes (+ a sick me). So lovely in all their tackiness ♥ I'll wear them with socks. They look pretty cute with my pink polka dot socks, but maybe for prom I'll wear less fussy navy blue ones.


K so I have my fairy godmother shoes, my blue studded oxfords and theseeeeeeeee. From now on I shall refer to them as my clown shoes.











Ok....... I just realised....... I don't even take my shoes seriously anymore what is my life going to be????




EDIT: They are knockoffs of these Prada shoes:

Can lah ah.

ugly post about a nice day

Soufi and I have really awesome adventures together. Somehow, everytime we go out together we end up with really cool experiences and encounters with interesting people. Maybe it's that when we go out we walk everywhere and nothing is very planned. Sometimes we get into really hippie philosophical moods and get carried away by how it's the positivity and being at peace and stuff like that, but don't mind us.

I've gotten a little lazy to write everything in detail like I tend to do, so here goes a summary in point form of a good day I'd like to remember. It might still be long though. (Sorry can't help maself)

• Both Soufi and I got jobs at a cool little cafe/restaurant called Relish at Cluny Court in Bukit Timah! The job interview was kind of spur of the moment and we were nervous but it turned out to be very.. not serious and the boss was joking around a lot. He kept making stupid references to the scarf I tied around my head and my Mr Bean earrings and how it was good that we were single cause we could work more... Soufi starts tonight and I start on 21st November, after I clear all my papers.

• After that, we went to Bugis and had lunch at Banquet before heading to Bali Lane, where Soufi's friend Rachel wanted Soufi to model for a streetstyle editorial shoot that was her school work. Rachel's photographer was sort of involved in Port Tumasik so we were able to use the space for the shoot. Soufi and another of her friends, Amalina, were given sort of sleepwear on the streets kind of outfits and we went downstairs and I watched them take pictures on Bali Lane and stuff. Then Rachel said my outfit would work too and she asked me to sit on this broken wooden chair among like bushes and plants for the photo. There were mosquitoes.

• One of the other models, Joelle, was really cute! She practically whispers everything she says and she came in jeans, a red top and a trench coat tied loosely at the waist and John Lennon dark glasses. She gives off that small, shy, intellectual, weird, enigmatic but likeable girl vibe, yknow? She goes to Lasalle with Rachel.

• Soufi and I went to Haji Lane afterwards. I now have my prom dress and it's not very prom-y but I'm taking advantage of the 'smart-casual' dress code to come in something that I could still wear on casual days. Got it at Modparade and it's black and white and I am PRAYING that no one else bought it because I mean, what if someone thought that Modparade would be somewhat obscure enough for no one else to buy their dress there, much less buy the exact same one? Then prom will suck for me :-( My shoes are also not very prom-y but o what the hell. I got them at Far East for $65 yesterday. They sort of resemble brothel creepers with the platform and the lacing up but they are more.. wacky? Almost clownish? But I like them so ya bye.

• I realise that when Soufi and I shop together we seem to always find the perfect things to buy. Usually I'm really fickle and will not make my decisions fast but with her, I am a pretty damn decisive confident shopper man!!!!!!!!!

• K then after shopping we had a really chill dinner at Cafe La Caire and shared falafel sandwiches, snapple, a pot of mint tea and a banana split. It was a nice dinner huddling together on the carpeted floor with a low table.

• We decided to check out the LP launch party at Port Tumasik that Francis Poon asked us to come to. Soufi's friends who worked there asked us to come meet her but she'd just left when we arrived, so we didn't hang around very long. Wan is one sexy man. He owns Straits Records and has got beautiful dreads that are really, really long and greying. Apparently he's only about 36 or so, though. He looks A LOT like Bob Marley, except his features are sharper. My mental image of Wan is him sitting on a stool outside his shop smoking. Sexily.

• Then we went back to Bugis Junction and we saw a really really hot butch. And then I went home while Soufi went to meet her cousin and then her date~ Hehehe

the demons I fight

Life's been alright. Right now I'm kind of annoyed because my grandmother was being really mean to my brother and I. She's always super nice to me but when my brother comes over, she switches to bitch mode. I've always kind of had a feeling that it's because my brother reminds her of my dad. She holds a pretty big grudge on my father for my parent's divorce, which ultimately led to my mother's bipolar disorder. For as long as I can remember, my grandma has always been extremely mean to my brother. Even as a five year old boy she picked on him, compared him to my father and said she hated him. It was confusing to watch as his seven-year old sister then.

Sometimes I kind of feel like I've grown up without parents. Maybe it's just self-pity, whatever. My father never sees us unless my mother tells him to. Now I think she doesn't even bother anymore. He doesn't call and we don't really want to either. My mother is ill almost every year, sometimes a few times a year, and the whole months of hospitalisation don't really leave that much time with her. She also seems to be getting more... I don't know, it's like she's become a quieter person, like she's retreating into her mind more and more. And while I really enjoy the freedom she gives me because she's so liberal, it almost borders on not caring.

Sometimes I think... maybe the reason why I try to rebel so much is because I've never had anything to rebel against at home. I've never been scolded, never been hit, never been grounded, everything gets the green light. Sometimes I tell her things and hope she gets angry at me, like the other day I told her I've tried smoking. Her eyes fucking lit up and she asked me, "Nice, right?" A few weeks back, she was bragging to our neighbour about how she doesn't want to get involved in her children's education because it's our responsibility. She sounded so proud of herself. I cut in and told her that I had to drop Add Math because I was too stupid for it. She proved her point. She cheerfully said OK and continued talking to the neighbour.

I used to tell my mom she was the best best best best best best mother in the whole wide world. I think it got to her head. Now I shall write about something happy. I'll blog about my Friday with Soufi.

"The only way to be happy is to love. Unless you love, your life will flash by."

I've been trying really hard to be hardworking this past week. I haven't managed to bring myself to do much more than math papers and biology paper 1s and write out my o level schedule. I'm so chill that I'm more worried about not being worried than I am about the exams themselves! But at least in my unproductivity I have been quite happy.

I've been watching nice movies this week. I watched Nowhere Boy and Let Me In a few nights ago and on Monday, I went to catch The Tree of Life with my mother. They only show it once a day and in one cinema in Singapore, so we had no choice but to see it at 9.30 pm. It was 2 hours and 20 minutes long and for some reason there was a delay. We were hoping we wouldn't have to, but we got into a cab. The time for the trip start on the little screen in the taxi read exactly midnight. A minute earlier and we wouldn't have had to pay the 50% midnight surcharge, a minute later and at least it wouldn't have hurt as much!!! :-(

Sigh anyway, The Tree of Life is an unusual film. If you're looking for a clear-cut plot, a narrative neatly presented in chronological order and mindless enjoyment, this may not be the movie for you. It is a film that requires... a lot of patience. And by a lot, I mean you gotta be really zen, man. There is a scene that is basically the formation of the universe (planets and their molten and gaseous surfaces and everything) at the start of time, then the beginning of life in the form of cells, plants, dinosaurs... and it lasts for at least half an hour. Barely any dialogue. This half hour, however, is absolutely mind-blowing because it is stunning shot after stunning shot after stunning shot. Honestly, I can't even exaggerate when I say that every single shot in this movie was beautiful. Even the one where the camera zooms up to Sean Penn's face as he walks into his office building was interesting. It says something when a trivial, 3 second scene that doesn't actually lead up to a major event is one of the ones that hasn't escaped my memory yet. The cinematography was pretty much genius and I would very much like to marry the director, cameramen, the editors, and every single one of you behind-the-scenes masterminds please. (I'd put you all in one big house and make love to all you creative souls. At the same time. We could make another beautiful movie. ;) )

I think it takes a while to fully appreciate the telling of this story, for sometimes the pace of the film is tedious and frustrating. Sometimes you are just totally baffled because you aren't very sure how this scene relates in any way to the previous because the whole thing is just so abstract. It is not much of a simple narrative. It is fragments of memories that chronicle Jack's family's lives, from when Jack is born to when he and his two brothers all play with the town boys to when Jack finds himself rebelling as a pre-teen. Thrown in the mix are also the parts which chronicle the origins of earth and life. And then you see Jack as a middle-aged man who still thinks of his younger brother who died at 19. Middle-aged Jack comes off as somewhat detached. But this is a movie that keeps you thinking as you watch it. Even after you've left the theatre, you want to keep on trying to figure it out and you want to read all the reviews you can and you want to learn more about the movie and how it was made and written and you want to kiss Terrence Malick for being such a poet and a genius.

Fancy 'non-linear narrative' style, stunning vivid images, arty farty intellectual story telling aside, The Tree of Life is about life, death, love, hatred, the universe, faith in a god, family, loss of innocence......... Although it was wonderful in the purest sense of the word to watch, this film still felt a little unsatisfying. Maybe it's a bit too abstract, maybe it tries too hard to be something it fell just a little short of achieving, maybe it's just 'pretentious crap masked by beautiful cinematography'. Whatever it is, I suppose everything has its good and bad. Bottomline: I enjoyed the movie a lot. I haven't been so awed by a film in a very long time. In fact, probably not ever. Also, I didn't even come close to falling asleep despite being exhausted from a day walking around town. In my books, this movie is gold.

At the beginning of the movie, Jack's mother's voice says "The nuns taught us there were two ways through life - the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow. Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things. The nuns taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end." I read a few reviews that night and I like the idea that Jack's mother turns out to be the embodiment of Grace, while Jack's father is the embodiment of Nature.

I also really love that so many people are comparing this film to Stanley Kubrick's 2001!!!!!!! I luv luv luv Stanley Kubrick he is a crazy genius I luvvvvv him!!!!!!!!!!!! A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut I loved it olllllll *O*


Hahahaha shucks look at the big ol' nerd I've let out. If you made it to the end, I am amazed. I wish I was this interested in my Literature text man. Also, I envy how frickin intelligent and well-written and inspiring this review is: http://www.gameinformer.com/blogs/members/b/enigma13_blog/archive/2011/06/01/the-tree-of-life-movie-review.aspx

Also, Terence Malick, you are now on my radar. I now need to watch all your past movies.

Baby Say Goodbye

 As of today, I have officially graduated from TK. It doesn't feel very real. Perhaps it's because I know we're still coming to school when 'O's begin, or the next two weeks of study break will still require some of us to return to school for extra lessons and stuff, but I didn't really feel like this was the end. There were moments today when I would tear up for a few seconds, but nothing more than that. I feel a bit.. cut off. I think it will only hit me that we're done on the last day of O level papers.

I feel a slight regret for not having made full use of my 4 years in TKGS to really get to know people. I have to admit to being a bit of a social recluse, and my circle of friends and acquaintances is pretty small. I am, however, extremely grateful for the people I have ended up opening up to. My favourite people have to be my squadmates. We've gone through so much together the past four years and all the ridiculous shit we get up to is pretty amazing. We've had some scary conflicts, but it was nice to see warmth again today. I also really love the hilarious group of people I go for recess with. They are amazing and funny and I realise that almost all of us are hopeless at staying out of trouble hahaha.

In other news, my sixteenth birthday was on Wednesday. I never really look forward to my birthdays very much. I always feel sort of lost and confused on my birthday. I don't know if the aging scares me or whatever but I get uneasy. I ended up in tears in Malay class when everyone had left for recess and I was stuck there because I couldn't finish my essay. I was worrying about family, and feeling shitty about how my father had wished me through a facebook message that only said "Happy birthday Ayesha!", and feeling so pathetic because I was so unfocused and couldn't do anything right and the tears just sort of flowed. It was scary because I never break down out of the blue like that. I managed to get out of handing in the essay and then I went to meet Filzah at the void deck. My day picked up from there :-)

Maya, Filzah and Syadza got me to go to the canteen and Adela had baked me cupcakes and they had this big box of photos, flowers and a song for me. Filzah made a huge mess when she sprayed us all with that party string thingy that malfunctioned and came out as dust. The photos were really sweet and everyone wrote on the backs of the pictures. Syadza also slipped in a couple of photos of Lykke Li and Andrew Vanwyngarden and decided to ghostwrite their wishes to me hahaha. Felt so much better after that. Pei Shan also gave me a really cool necklace today. I really do love my friends <3

The top of the pile of photos.

5 4 3 2 1

This week is the last actual week of school. Day 1 out of 5: over.

Bought a new sketchbook a few days ago. I cut out a circle from fancy paper and stuck it on the plain cover. I like it.

Today I had detention after school. They gave us dc kids a bucket and a rag and we each had two classrooms to clean. The heat was stifling. I am drained. I shall fall asleep to Chan Marshall's luffffffly voice now.

THINGS I WILL DO AFTER 'O'S

• Get another sidecut
• Take part in The Sketchbook Project
• Find a job, hopefully in a quaint little shophouse cafe/boutique
• Buy a guitar and learn to play it
• Buy a sewing machine and learn to sew my own clothes
• Start cooking
• Restock on art supplies
• Work on my portfolio
• Weed party ahahaha
• Be chill. (as if I'm not already)
• Go for art school interviews.

Slowly We Unfurl

Skipped school today. Woke up and scrolled through twitter (morning routine) and saw stylesophomore's tweet with my name in it.

So... yeah....

{ Regret carrying that bag + holding my wallet + being so tubby + being 1.5m tall. Ugh please save me my insecurities are killing me :'( }

But in other news, I did some drawing last night. I love how this calmness takes over when I'm doing art, like my whole being just relaxes and focuses on my pencil and paper and nothing else matters. It's quite a lovely feeling, especially with really soothing music playing. Last night was Timber Timbre's Black Water on replay.

 

it's a nuclear show and the stars are gone

Need to learn the art of being succinct, condensing my thoughts into readable, less intimidating chunks of words. My last few posts have been very............ long.............. I also need to teach my brain to work more quickly, because I'm not kidding when I say I have gotten "think faster" or "you must not take so long to formulate your thoughts" or "time management problems? please see teacher" more than ten times as comments in my exam scripts. I have no sense of urgency. I'm becoming too ~chill~ for this fast-paced time-starved world!!! NPCC and shouting "Where's your sense of urgency?!?" threateningly at juniors does not actually make me a very urgent person, after all.

Sigh.

It is Tuesday today and I am already so exhausted. I've been going home straight after school more often and it feels pretty good. I haven't gone into hardcore studying mode though. Once again, behold my lack of urgency. Everyone's talking about the guilt they feel when they don't spend their time studying and I'm just like, guilt? Wat dat? Hmm I can't wait for O's to be over but at the same time I am terrified of 24th October making its way here because I am so unprepared. Now I only have seven subjects left since I dropped A Math last week, so I really need to do well for the all of them. My prelim results have been very terrible and.. I don't feel anything. Something is wrong. Very wrong.

By the way, hello Syadza my bimbo friend! I hope this post is short enough for you.

Spent Sunday afternoon with this silly girl. Went to Suntec's Starbucks to lepak with a laptop, some potato salad and too many bottles of drinks. Had a nice time just like chillin' and like eatin' and like watchin' videos and hearin' the F1 race cars deafen the hell outta everyone and shit yeah. I am slightly obsessed with Radiohead's Lotus Flower now. The song is hypnotizing. Thom Yorke's dance is infectious. I wish I was a dancer. Or just uninhibited enough to not care about my awkward limbs.

Graduation is next Friday. My birthday's on Wednesday. Two weeks of mugging at home after that, and then we sit for the big Os. How how how tell me how?

OK bye need to bathe and make geography notes.

Hippie Soulmates