This current bug loves my nose. I think it enjoys chasing it just to make it run. Yesterday it was my right nostril and today it's the left... Now my nose is Officially Tired.

oh well.

Here's an sms convo I had with Vera today:

Vera: Marissa!!! I am hideous!!!!!

Me: Cool! When did you find out?

Vera: :(((((( i have too many moles on my face!!!!!!!

Me: Oh don't worry, I'm sure your face will make a good home for them. does your face have burrows? that's their usual habitat, y'know.

Vera: You...are not the best person to complain to...Hahaha ><

Me: Hahahahahahahahahaha xDD really what. I think you'll make a good home for them. they can be your substitutes for children until you get your own xP

Vera: How about no!!!!!!!! >< there must be some way to remove it...

Me: !!!! You're killing them?? Gosh i expected better of you vera! how can you kill the cute little things?? =((

Vera: If you want them i'll gladly pass them over to you hahaha!

Me: Nahballs. somehow i doubt moles like oilfields...they may like..drown or something. poor things.

Vera: OMG. You were talking about garden moles!???!!!!!!!!?? -.-

Me: HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA HOW SLOW CAN YOU GO??

Vera: Backwards...

Math is so emotionally taxing.

And 0 x 9 = 9. Brilliance.

I wonder what response I'd elicit from Ms Khoo if I told her that Nick Carraway's gay.

One is sad. One fails at probability. One fails at complex numbers.

One fails at math = One fails at life. :(

Let's backtrack a little...Presenting to you, the SRO Sunglasses Series!
















He just looks so silly that it will be absolutely tragic if I didn't include this.


This girl kept smiling at me when we were working, and she joined in once in a while. Really sweet.


And we're all getting down to work.


Oh yeaah, we had a long hard day. Look at Andrea!


Meanwhile, daddy and i were busy pounding. Dad's tired, poor thing.


Our house - completed in 3 days! With such efficiency in the 21st Century, Christ will have no more qualms about saying that he'll rebuild his temple in 3 days XD

Brown (the dog): Stop monkeying around!
Us: Catfight! Catfight! (or rather, dogfight)


Don't you love these two?


You know, deep inside, i'm still a kid. As for Claire...she IS a kid XDD


Andrea just looks so cute in this one.


And of course, here's SRO in its forte! (although how much forte we can actually do with those mutes on is debatable...) And Edmund's nose is Glowing!!


That's us again, in our entirety. Look at little Vera :)

 

We'll let the photos speak for themselves, won't we?


Touchdown in Siam Reap! All woken up and looking perky. (look at Claire XD)


Dad gets along very well with kids...probably due to his imminent reversion to childhood


That's a cow.


Ta Prohm - one of the Angkor temples and my personal favourite.


Yupp, we're rice cake fans!

Our very own residence in Siam Reap! Jealous?

Moving on... After R&R for two days at Siam Reap, we travelled deeper into Cambodia to CROAP (Centre for Research on Optimal Agricultural Practices), off Pursat Town. Here begins our ocip journey...

Mosquito nets! (and An-nettes XD)

We targeted 5 families living in abject poverty...





At the Kindergarten.



Meanwhile, we three went shopping at the local market for basic necessities for the families.

Edmund sucks at cam-whoring.


On the expressway home, catching the slipstream and getting really windswept.


Edmund got the worst of it, though


Finally arrived back in CROAP with the fruits of our shopping trip! We're all sitting on the rice, heh.


We sponsored a house and of course, we were really enthusiastic about lifting it up.


Guess who persuaded Annette to relive her childhood years? Yours truly :)


And we got down to hard manual labour -- Painting! We painted my shirt in the process, it's all part of the job, don't y'know?


And Beatrice painted with her sleeve - an amazingly resourceful kid.


That's how hard we worked. The knowledge that we had no turpentine to get the paint off fuelled the overwhelming temptation to paint ourselves. (and we gave in, as you can see)


My little boyfriend! He came right up to me and hugged me. Awwwww.

And i'm tired of uploading photos now...LJ takes awfully long to get anything uploaded. I'll try to upload the rest if I remember.

It was horrifically boring. Sianballz.

Us HCSE people basically died. But we sounded pretty decent which is good, considering we only had one rehearsal.

I don't think this is just me, the weather is getting really awful. Really humid, plus hot. I happily soaked up my uniform, elephant shirt and ares shirt yesterday.

You know life is inane when all you look forward to is watching more episodes of Friends on Youtube and ignore all other important things, like Chinese As and PW.

Silence is golden. Noise is platinum.

Unfortunately noise is annoying. It is also unnecessary. It has this remarkable ability to cheerfully block out the necessary and important issues. So much for platinum. Blurting unprocessed thoughts aloud only reveals idiocy anyway.

But the issue this morning was not really noise. Or distraction. It was plain disrespect. Don't you think you would've saved yourself all that trouble of arguing if you had kept your mouths shut and listened to his point before expressing those thoughts so irresistably brilliant you had to display them to the rest of the world? If you had listened, you would probably realize that half those thoughts would've been irrelevant.

Such intellect never fails to amaze and astound.

1. I hate flying cockroaches. (Where's Norvin when you need him...)

2. I cannot concentrate on my studies. (obviously, I'm here blogging right!)

3. Life is good with JUBES! (http://www.juicycubes.com/main.htm)

4. Project Work sucks. (Need I say more?)

5. Hoffmeister's etudes are...Interesting.

6. Someone tell me why I'm blogging when I should be studying.

7. Sleeeeeeeeep.

Life Schedule
1) Wake Up
2) Go to school/work
3) Come home
4) Finish leftover work
5) Sleep
6) Repeat steps 1-5 without stopping

For an effective life schedule, keep repeating steps 1-5 until you drop dead. In which case you will be in no condition to be of further use to the world and should thus disintegrate to contribute to recycling.

Darn I'm sick of mugging. Go and die, SEAhistory.  The june holidays are ending, and I only enjoyed six days of it.  Six days in Thailand, going shopping. And I enjoyed it. 

Let me do the normal (and boring) recount of my june holidays, in loving detail:

1st Week: Attended many rehearsals, rushed SEAHistory term assignment and visited many libraries (for the assignment)
2nd Week: Flew off happily to Thailand, having finished the assignment an hour before arriving at the airport (i.e. at 4am. God knows what condition my term assignment was in...)
3rd Week: Fall sick, mug.
4th Week: Mug.

Wow. Such an amazingly wonderful holiday. I didn't even get to sleep in much. *emos* 

Of course, it's very important to entertain oneself when one is mugging. Or else one might just lose interest and hurl oneself off the clock tower. 

Just a few days ago Kristie, Evelyn and I spotted this bunch of ants moving what suspiciously looked like half a cockroach vertically up the wall. Quite stunning, it must've taken those ants a herculean effort biting the cockroach in two, then hauling it against the mighty force of gravity. Ants are such heroes! Plus they're supposed to have these beautifully short lives. I should be an ant one day. Then my sole purpose in life would be to drag half a cockroach carcass vertically up a wall. It'll be my greatest achievement! It'll be so fun! 

Then again, I wonder what I'd do with a half of a cockroach carcass. Maybe the ants thought it would smell nice fermenting in their nest. 

I really should find something more worthwhile to do than blogging.

Ok. I've decided I shall emo about how stupid I feel. blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah.

Ooh. Degeneration's pretty fun too :D Me no wanna stahdeeeeeee. Noooooooooooo stahdeeeeeeeeeeeee. Stahdee baaaaaaad. I  sleeeeeeeepy. Don't wanna. Poo. 

Just to round this post off nicely, I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, the FULL lyrics of the Cancan! 

Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala

I hate feeling like an invalid. It's been awful having to spend the entire day at home and having to sleep it off. And on top of that, I've been prescribed this amazingly wonderful diet of porridge for all my meals in near future. How annoying. 

The only perk in this entire situation is that I get to drink all the isotonic drinks. The second 1.5litre bottle of h-two-o has just been brought home by mum :D Something more exciting than plain water, at least.

I just realized how dead I am if this illness continues. I barely read through the notes for differentiation today and had to make a trip to mum's clinic. As Kristie so nicely pointed out, I've got 9 more days to study for the blocks. Good luck to me. *dies*

I've still got Chad to deal with. He's nice enough, an interesting guy, but he takes up so much time. It's starting to get slightly taxing. At least Rene and I can drop him soon, another few more weeks. 

Maybe Kristie's right, I should go and sleep now, despite it being ridiculously early.

Just got back from Bangkok at about midnight, can't believe the customs took an hour to clear and I'm finally home. I shall blog because my hair's currently too wet to sleep with. 

I really had no idea we'd set aside so much time for shopping. My conclusion is that HCSE people can really shop, they've got amazing stamina. The first day was quite draining - I didn't sleep at all the night before rushing my SEAHistory term paper, which I seriously rushed out...I think half the points didn't really make much sense. Ugh. That aside, I finished at 4am (as I promised Vera) and decided there was no point in sleeping. Stupid thing, really. We had a whole day ahead, including a rehearsal in the afternoon, which was right after the flight and lunch. I ended up falling asleep during rehearsal for the first time in my life. I was dozing off even as I played Holberg from finger memory, and I was happily nodding away while Mr Foo talked about expression and all. My greatest fear then was dropping my viola, honestly.

The first two days we spent most of the evening shopping. I dedicated myself to two evenings of slavery - following Pinyan and Zara around while they shopped. It was just one shop after another, they'd lead and I'll be following behind (their personal guard-dog). Then one of them will disappear into one shop, the other into the shop next door, and I'll be standing outside between the two, making sure they didn't get lost. Of course, as all slaves do, I helped them carry their stuff whenever they needed my services; on the first night both of them decided they'd get their nails painted for 100 baht, which resulted in me carrying their stuff all the way home. Not that I minded. I mean, we all had to go to the shopping mall anyway, so I might as well make myself useful. To Kristie's great disappointment, I hardly commented at the stuff Pinyan and Zara were looking at. Seriously, Kristie, I'm not such an idiot as to voluntarily stick my head out to get chopped off.

I must declare, however, that I had enough shopping during this trip to last the next six months at the very least, so our Pinyan-Jiale-Kristie-me shopping trip will have to be postponed to December. I don't understand how people can walk around for whole days just doing this stuff (even after following those two around for two days), it's horribly draining. I don't even have to go into the shop to conclude that the stuff in there isn't worth my money, and erm...*cough* the things they consider nice are stuffs I'd say are ugly. WhichiswhyIkeptmymouthshut. 

Our concert in ChiangMai was very well received :) We had an audience full of Caucasians, to my surprise. I expected a good mix. They were very open when it came to Schnittke, and most of them liked it a lot, judging from the way they cheered and applauded. It was a great way to mark our seniors' graduation. 

I'm getting tired. I think I will update properly another time. For now I'll start typing nonsense. My baby behaved pretty well throughout the trip. I didn't lose him, and he stayed in tune. I really love the Kenneth-Jacqueline jokes. Especially the orange juice one. Poor old Jackie. She got scratched on the way home, and Kenneth looked pretty grumpy - I think he mentioned that he wanted to complain. I was spaced out on the ride home. Pinyan was having a headache, I tried and failed to sleep; it was the caffe latte I suppose. The plane food was really quite disgusting, one of the worst I've tasted. And it didn't help that I had this bowl of awesome beef noodles just before I got on the plane. The juxtaposition was...horrifying. 

I still can't believe it took an hour to get through the customs. It was awfully slow, for some reason. Maybe the airport personnel was getting sleepy. I should go and sleep now. And wake up at some obscene time tomorrow, some time near noon. It was a good trip, in conclusion, and I'm going to miss our seniors...

That guy's one amazing writer, all right. Norwegian Wood blew me away. The change in style was completely unexpected, for me, at least. I hadn't seen it coming. For once, Murakami actually weaves emotion into his story, and I agree with the translator's note: Norwegian Wood is not "just another love story". Norwegian Wood simply displays his remarkable talent; he took it on as a challenge and he did an awesome job. The story is incredibly sad, yet funny. It's the first of his books that has been able to arouse more than the usual confusion and intrigue.  

More than anything, though, Murakami has become a form of relaxation. I don't feel any excessive need to tear his books apart to decipher the extended metaphors, imagery and all the other literary devices. (Yes, the KI people will shoot me down at my lack of intellectual curiosity. Let them.) The intrigue and fascination is part of what turns his books into light reading, and I suppose, if you really have to satisfy your curiosity, it also calls for deeper reading. I maintain my position that not all books have to be decoded, deciphered and decomposed. The content have a somewhat disturbing quality about them, it's quite unsettling. Maybe not such light reading after all. 

I've typed two paragraphs after a considerable effort to type things that make sense. This is quite significant.

Nostalgia. I don't know why my memories of the Sec4 Lifeskills Camp are recalled with such fondness. I can picture clearly 406'07 in their hawaiian shirts, decorated with orchids, all very happy to be just the way we were as a class. Our cute class dance that provided great fun and enjoyment. I remember Genevieve's unibrow for no good reason, it's all very amusing. I suppose the most remarkable thing about that camp was that we all slept pretty much on time. We didn't even stay up till 1am! Blame Long's obsession with turning the lights off. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I miss my Nanyang days. I can't believe I'd say I miss the days where SIAs consumed my life, when CCA meetings replaced my recess and lunch breaks. I find terrible truth in the assessment Kristie and I made at the start of 2007, that as much as we really looked forward to passing Strings onto the next batch, we knew we'd regret not treasuring every moment of our exco term when the time was up. 

"JC life breaks existing friendships forged in secondary school." How far do you agree with this statement? Maybe a more accurate description would be to extend "friendships" to "friendships between juniors and seniors". I've seen it happen so many times, Jieying and me, Qingyan and all of us etc. Kristie and I have remained as close despite our transition, despite my cynical predictions that we would grow far apart as strangers by the time June came along. Obviously I've been proven wrong (and glad am I too). 

Regarding last saturday, I find myself slightly insecure. Despite all previous experiences in Secondary school, I don't find myself confident in facing what comes ahead. Especially not after I sat down and thought through the differences. Will I remain flexible enough? How do I relate to people now? 

Ah well, you allowed it to happen, so I guess you'll help me along when the time comes. I need not worry unnecessarily. 

At the end of it all, I've decided that the strongest bond I've formed so far is the bond between me and my computer. (My computer needs a name. Then I can call him my boyfriend and create rumours about us.) I gaze into his loving face everyday and see so many things in his soul, which I access through his humongous eye. It's wonderful how he gives me different things to look at every day. He is truly a boyfriend like no other.

I seem to be going on a Multi-Racial spree these days. First the Malay wedding on Sunday, and today I actually went with my family to visit my grandma's good friend who happens to be Indian. We celebrated Deepavali with then by having lunch. The smells of Indian food and an Indian kitchen stirred up great chunks of memories of Bangalore (or Bangaluru, as we must now call it) and all those spices. Indian sweets are very delicious (and sinful). That was random. 

On the other hand, I've been happily screwing up my sleep cycles. (Have I already mentioned that? Oh heck, I'll just repeat myself like a broken recorder XD ) Sleeping at 2am and waking up at 11.30am seems to suit me quite well. My nocturnal lifestyle is alive and very happy. I find that missing breakfast is a very novel idea, only to replace it with a midnight meal of considerable size. (And I wonder if I'm getting fat. Honestly!) 

Which reminds me. It seems I've gotten more unhealthy over the exam period. {frowns} And there's virtually no time to exercise! {frowns more} Thisisnotgood. 

It seems like everything around me now can link to the latest Murakami book that I'm reading. Life is so bizarre, but everything is connected, linked together. "Only connect" quotes yours truly. And very happily too, I might add. Dance? Yes, we must dance to keep ourselves from going a little bit off the rocker. But we must remember to dance in the Center of the Wheel of Fortune. We musn't dance along the sides, or we'll go up. Then we'll come down. Then we'll continue going in those cycles, round and round. And the Wheel of Fortune never stops. So we go round and round till we die. Who knows where we'll be on the Wheel of Fortune when we die? That's why, my friends, it's better if we find the Center. Once we find the center, we dance. And dance. And the Wheel of Fortune will not be able to spin us around in circles. We won't get dizzy if we're in the center. 

A single thread in the tapestry...is it blue? Or red? Or yellow, maybe. How fun it is to be that thread! Weave in, weave out. Criss-cross, double over. And all the while showing off that beautiful colour. 

Keep your step light, keep your feet moving. React to the rhythm, with the rhythm. Don't lose the beat. Be flexible. But most importantly, Do Not Stop.