music: the blood of cuchulainn; the boondock saints ost

Labels: amusements, goodstuff, music, thoughts

tune out the world ; 8:53 PM

first rainy day in japan, and i got drenched! yes i know i sound mildly happy and it's weird to be happy when you're soaked to the skin and shivering in the cold but it was really kind of fun. it's been raining since the morning, and you hardly ever get rain that lasts so long in singapore. just to prove that i'm normal, i was really quite miserable when trudging back in the rain, but i think one of the nicest things about rainy days is how comfortable it feels to be sitting inside, dry and out of the rain. it's only when i'm actually caught in the rain that i don't like the rain. really hoping i don't fall sick though! that's something i definitely don't want to experience when i'm here almost all alone.

the wet clothes are really a bother though, because i hadn't planned on doing laundry till the weekend. usually i fold up the clothes to be washed and stack them in a pile in the closet, but because they're so wet i can't do anything to them yet. now they're just hanging around and i'm hoping they'll become relatively dry! my poor gap pullover is also very wet and i'm a bit worried about washing that one because the colour might run. maybe i could wash it with the jeans or something.

it's apparently also going to rain tomorrow, and i really don't want to have to go out! but tomorrow's the only free day i have in common with my tutor for this week, so we'll have to go out really early in the morning to open a bank account. i think i'll chance it wearing my flip flops haha although it gets bitterly cold when it rains and in the morning. bringing my doc martens was such a mistake! i baby them so much at home already and refuse to wear them if i'm going to be doing a lot of walking or if it's raining because i don't want to get them dirty. here i doubt there'll ever be a day i decide wearing them will be safe. maybe when i'm absolutely sure it's not going to rain and when i'm only going to walk to the language centre next to my dorm haha.

placement test today went okay, i think. at least i got into the level i wanted to get in. crossing my fingers and hoping that it'll be mappable to japanese 6 back at nus. i really don't want to take japanese 6 at nus because i don't think it'll be with nagami sensei and i'm way too used to the way he teaches and the pace of his teaching. classes start on friday and i think i'm kind of looking forward to classes actually. i feel like such a nerd haha but i haven't been a student for almost five months! you know how they always say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. so not having school work makes me miss school work. it's really logical! i'm not weird. honest.

maroon 5's how is on repeat this week! it's not as well-known a song from their hands all over album, and honestly i hadn't heard of it until we got the album for my brother. it's a really good song though! adam levine's voice is amazing as usual.



love the lyrics too. (:

music: how; maroon 5

Labels: day-to-day, goodstuff, music, thoughts

tune out the world ; 9:32 PM

blogging because i feel very accomplished today! making a list really helped to show me how much i needed to rush things i think, because i felt so motivated to do work today. updating the list now! thought of more things that i needed to get done anyway.

- finish 2 more transcribings just 1 left
- finish lek's data analysis
- finish tarn's data analysis
- study for the placement test ):
- open a bank account
- pack
- meet my sister for lunch
- get my brother's birthday present giving him money because i can't find the cd he wants
- meet the pooks for dinner on thursday
- meet the interns for breakfast on friday
- meet wynne, sam and rab for dinner on friday
- meet su kie for lunch on sunday
- get bags for the cameras :D and a screen protector for oly
- get random stuff i need for the trip
- exchange money

data analysis jobs aren't quite done yet but they haven't given me new things to do yet so i'm going to just strike them off first.

i think i will put packing off until at least saturday or sunday.

----------

"what marks his plays is the way things get so mixed up the characters are trapped. do you see what i mean? lots of different people appear, and they all have their own situations and reasons and excuses, and each one is pursuing his or her own idea of justice or happiness. as a result, nobody can do anything. obviously. i mean, it's basically impossible for everybody's justice to prevail or everybody's happiness to triumph, so chaos takes over. and then what do you think happens? simple -- a god appears at the end and starts directing the traffic. 'you go over there, and you come here, and you get together with her, and you just sit still for a while.' like that. he's a kind of fixer, and in the end everything works out perfectly. they call this 'deus ex machina'."

--- watanabe describing euripides in norwegian wood

kind of disappointed with norwegian wood actually, because i was half-expecting it to become an all-time favourite given the rave reviews it had gotten. it's sadly quite flat on the whole when you consider the book in its totality, but where it shines is in little moments i think. like that paragraph i just quoted.

sometimes i feel like we're all just really stuck in the middle of a euripidean tragedy.

----------
wish the typhoon would just go away, seriously.

music: just a feeling; maroon 5

Labels: goodstuff, thoughts

tune out the world ; 10:46 PM

imagine having a library like that. actually just imagine being in a library like that.

oh and this is probably the first photo from the new camera that i'm showing you guys. although i am tearing my hair out and cannot begin to comprehend why sometimes numbers just keep flashing at me and why the camera refuses to take photos i am still having a lot of fun with it. too much fun, really, because it's a major distraction when i should probably be revising really hard for my placement test.

anyway to take that picture i accidentally made a new crease in the spine of the book. ):< don't know if i've told anyone else before (i know i told my sister though) but i really like my books to be nicely kept. it doesn't have to be completely pristine but i really don't like books with random creases down the spine or folded corners. that said, however, if it has to be old and well-read i'd rather it be extremely so. just not somewhere in the middle. okay i know i'm weird that way. stop thinking i'm weird i already know i am.

i hope this post works out to be a long one. yes, this is my attempt to prove that my brain is not yet completely twitterified and i can still think thoughts that are more than 140 characters long. actually, does anyone else find it difficult to encapsulate everything into 140 characters? i frequently find myself going over the limit and having to go back and type everything in short form or rephrasing everything altogether. and then it doesn't even feel like something i would type any more.

i'm not sure when i started typing in full sentences without abbreviations and all and with (dare i say it) decent grammar even for things like text messages and stuff online. but i think it's a good thing. at least it stops my language ability from degenerating any further, i suppose. although i guess it's probably not very good for people receiving my texts because they routinely end up several pages long. speaking of which, does anyone else find obscenely short messages annoying? this is not directed at anyone in particular, by the way. i don't think i have friends like this it's usually just people from school. anyway i just find really short texts very frustrating. it's like talking to someone who doesn't want to talk and just grunts in reply. especially people with iphones and blackberries. you know how the text message screen is styled like a chat window so in addition to obscenely short messages they send you several at one go. so for people like me still using ancient nokia phones i'll be halfway through typing my essay to you and i get 3 more messages.

okay i don't know why this is shaping out to be a post full of complaints but i didn't mean for it to be! anyway i realise i never really plan my posts at all. i usually have just a few things i want to talk about but then they're usually very disparate stuff so i end up with very disjointed posts that ramble on about nothing in particular. like this one that started with a library and that has ended up in complaints.

but it's not all bad i'm actually very happy these few days. (:

alright cliffhanger ending where i don't tell you why i'm happy.

music: just a feeling; maroon 5

Labels: goodstuff, thoughts

tune out the world ; 4:00 PM

my social psychology tutor has this habit of playing music before she starts the lesson, because it's an 8am tutorial that half the class is late for every week. usually i reach really early, so i always get to hear the songs that she plays at the start. but because it's also my busiest day of the week when most of my assignments are due, i normally rush to get some work done so it becomes just background music to me. some time ago -- i think the tutorial two or three weeks ago -- she played this song.

Labels: goodstuff, thoughts

tune out the world ; 1:22 PM

i wish i'd been able to find one with english lyrics, but i guess japanese will have to do. choice lyrics are translated (poorly) into english because i love the way the lyrics were written. give it a listen if you've got the time, and you should find the time to because it is a really nice song. do it so when zombies overrun the world and you're about to be eaten alive you can feel happy that you were able to hear this song at least once.

Labels: goodstuff, wheesung

tune out the world ; 9:27 PM

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

-- http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/dont-date-a-girl-who-reads/

Labels: goodstuff, thoughts

tune out the world ; 12:33 AM

accents make me happy. (:

Labels: amusements, goodstuff

tune out the world ; 10:04 AM

music: year of us; shinee

Labels: goodstuff, thoughts

tune out the world ; 11:46 PM

came home really, really stoned and wanting to sleep, but my email held a pleasant surprise that made me completely wake up from my not-drunken (unlike boon wei haha! okay kidding kidding i think you're amazing for being able to walk straight after that anyway) stupor. it made me decide not to spend the rest of the day studying and doing work (which i will probably on hindsight think is a really bad decision but i couldn't care less now) and just take it really easy instead, so here i am blogging. i think my decision of what to major in has just swung in a very large way towards japanese studies, just because of that email. (:

Labels: goodstuff

tune out the world ; 11:22 PM

music: promise; a.n. jell

Labels: amusements, goodstuff

tune out the world ; 5:33 PM

Labels: goodstuff, wheesung

tune out the world ; 6:24 PM

wheesung's going to have his american debut after his 6th album is released in october! and ne-yo will be helping to write the songs on his debut album. plus ne-yo will be featured in a song that was supposed to have been part of michael jackson's album. tell me how much better can it get. i'm so happy for him. and i've always thought wheesung was something like korea's ne-yo so it's really amazing that they're going to work together. but there's going to be a lot of pressure on him to make this album a good one because fans like me will be anticipating it so much.

i'm really happy even though english is slowly but surely killing me.

okay i doubt anyone really wanted to know about that haha. alright back to english!! i can't believe today is friday already. i am really not looking forward to going back to school, considering how horribly unprepared i am. but time moving so quickly also means that the date for wheesung's 6th album release draws closer and closer.

it's so easy to make a fangirl happy. (:

music: my love will get you home; christine glass

Labels: goodstuff, thoughts, wheesung

tune out the world ; 2:10 PM

michelle
18th sept
loves chocolates haribo chendolmrsoftee edisonchen ikuta toma wheesung maroon5 bleach (:

amos chin chris dawn huiyi kongmeng liyun moses rabecca rachel sam sms weijie wynne

forever the name on my lips so you can hear me crying is that right, rambo the sound of your voice can't you more than goodbye no sunshine for the first time it's the way he seems to stare right through my eyes aim for my heart if you feel like

December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 February 2010 March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010 August 2010 September 2010 October 2010 November 2010 December 2010 January 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 November 2011

basecodes: darkdegree
image I: neverendingstomp
image II: fading star; wheesung (mv)
image III: ~knoon