Not too long ago I’d always been excited about the growing number of my age. Sweet 16, forever 18, golden key 21. Then it stopped. I’m not excited about growing up anymore. It’s just not funny saying I’m forever 18 any longer. Before people start to classify me as belonging to the mid-twenties, here’s a reflection on my turning 24 (mostly thinking back of silly-but-poignant random incidents, or little little achievements):

1. This is my 5th birthday spent abroad. That’s more than one fifth of my lifetime. Whoa.

2. I’m still very much wide-eyed (even though my eyes are small).

3. People no longer find it funny when you attempt to make lame jokes like the above.

4. Money, career and maybe even love is of secondary importance. What’s most important is extremely fundamental, and is my father’s most asked question to me: do you move your bowels everyday?

5. Don’t underestimate the power of healthy bowel movements. I had to provide a stool sample recently after getting stomach flu and let’s say I’d rather take 10 injections instead!

6. Having seen 7 colleagues being laid off barely into my first year of work, I have started seeing the workplace as incredibly cruel.

7. During my first 7 months in Shanghai, I mistook the softener for liquid detergent. Yup, so for the entire 7 months my clothes smelled good and was incredibly soft, but never cleaned.

8. Some construction worker stole my wallet and I ran after him. I managed to get my wallet back but on hindsight it was so dangerous.

9. I followed a stranger from near the Space needle in Seattle to the Museum of Flight, and took a bi-plane ride with him.

10. I followed 2 strangers from Wreck Beach in Vancouver to downtown and was treated to Poutine.

11. I dropped out of Singapore Institute of Management after 2 or 3 months.

12. I very nearly went to University of Queensland in Brisbane instead of Fudan University in Shanghai.

13. I peed in my skirt in Primary 1 because I didn’t dare tell the teacher I needed to go.

14. I’ve made several big purchases this year that amounts to 16,000RMB (Nikon D80 and Macbook), some other settlements for 10,000RMB, and 2640RMB on my teeth.

15. I have 2 crowned teeth i.e. fake teeth above real molar stumps. Now toothpicks and floss are part of my daily routine after some meat delight, and I think twice before biting on crab pincers. I swear never to use my teeth to open beer bottles again.

16. I’m a university graduate now.

17. I’ve learnt to cook, although my chopping/slicing is nowhere near experienced.

18. My first official job is a (Content) Editor.

19. After 23 years of being fearful of pets bigger than fish and terrapins, I now live with 2 adorable dogs. I feed them, play with them, sleep with them. walk them (or they walk me), and keep a close watch on dilating anuses to lead them into the bushes, but I’ve never picked up their poo (and hope I never have to!).

20. I own 3 websites, 3 computers, and too many cameras. Next up is a handycam.

21. I now fit (mainly) XL clothes, which coincides with my initials.

22. I’ve gone without showering, changing my clothes, nor brushed my teeth for 3 days.

23. My Chinese still sucks. But my bargaining tactics still work.

24. I’ve started shopping on Taobao.com (like Ebay but far far better) and I’m hooked. Never thought I’d be a sucker for internet shopping but here I am, keying in figures out of my bank account to buy things based on pictures on words.

I am very thankful to Frankie at Frankie’s Place, the homeliest Singaporean restaurant in Shanghai, for being so generous on my birthday. We were served birthday mee sua, ang ku kway, and Tiger beer on the house! I haven’t even had a bowl of birthday mee sua for the longest time, ever since my mother got angry with me back when I celebrated my birthday with my friends back when I was 16.

I’m just glad I’ve found a home away from home, and found family in this adopted city.

This is a long overdue post, but at least I made it in time for the new year.

Happy 2010 folks!

There are so many people to thank for helping me keep my sanity intact through these trying college years. Don’t know if you all think this is too sappy of me though. Haha. Bear with me, for this is probably the first and the last.

First and foremost, I would like to extend my eternal gratitude to my parents. This goes without being said: without them, I wouldn’t be here.

To the teachers who have inspired me and pushed me to achieve my potential these four years, I thank thee, all two of you. To the rest of the teachers, thank you for giving me a pass grade. To some of them, you might want to consider a career change, teaching is not just a job.

As an emotionally dependent idiot, I owe the woman I spent 4 unforgettable years with for being there through my foul tempers and for being a lasting punching bag. She saw me through my transition from a feisty youth to a resigned chinese university student, and stayed. When my temper called for it, she flew to Hong Kong at my whim, and even to Shanghai just to help me with my unpacking when I moved to a one-bedroom apartment. She has been relentless in giving all she can to me, even when I long stopped deserving it. You know who you are — thank you.

To MissY who’s somewhat grudgingly still by my side, I know your patience with me reaches your limit many a time, and I thank you for bearing with my bitchiness, nagging, and laziness with household chores. Let’s hope this year of pseudo married life will bring much laughter to our new home. Thank you also for being my pillar of support, and more importantly, school administration informant these four years in college. Haha. Thank you for staying by me when I was at my lowest, and for forgiving me when I couldn’t even forgive myself. 

To CG who is currently in lovely London finishing up his Master’s, thank you so much for all your encouragement and advice through the trials and tribulations these 4 years. Also grateful for your help when I had to move one too many times, and for our many reasons to celebrate with treats! Your wisdom and academic talent have also been of great help to my little academic pursuits. Thanks mostly for keeping it real when the rest of the world seemed to sway the other side. Much credit has to be given to you for the sanity I have today. 

To other FUSSA-ians, although your recollection of times with me is probably of yesteryears, I do sincerely appreciate the help and support available from FUSSA these years. I wish all of you success in your endeavors.

To Vanessa, my closest Chinese friend, thanks for daring to be different from the herd, and looking out for me when most didn’t. I appreciate your honesty and cherish our years of friendship in Shanghai.

To my other Chinese classmates, thanks for being patient with my Chinese and Mandarin, and listening to my presentations with accented English even when the teacher was not in the classroom. As we embark on our different paths after this, I hope we remember the good times when we acted out “Cupid and Psyche” and other fun skits in English class.

To my one and only Italian friend Marta, your independence and courage have been of great motivation to me, and I thank you for our heart-to-heart talks, and all your encouragement that would not have been possible without your open mind.

To Birte, hailing from Hamburg, thank you for imparting some of your mature wisdom on to me. Meeting you at that fateful Irish talk was a lucky day. =)

To Yuka, thanks for sharing your interesting china experiences recently, and I do hope you achieve your goals in the near future.

Connie, thanks firstly for feeding me with great food and letting me introduce you to unhealthy snacking and life-saving instant noodles. My stomach is grateful for your occasional treats of banana bread, Reese’s and your bag of half-eaten chips. Thanks for being so cozy with me so quick at Gage, and helping me make my stint in UBC a very memorable one. 

Thanks also to my other roommates at Gage, who made 6 pax living extremely comfortable, even though we only had one toilet cubicle! Thanks loads for sharing your utensils, but mostly for giving me intimate insights into Canadian culture.

To Grace, Elena, and Madeline, thanks for the great times in UBC! The meals, the drinks, the skipping class to climb Grouse Mountain (not once but twice!), and the talking cock before and after MLT class.

To my beloved supportive friends back home: Winni, Reina, Celine, Joanne, Lay Shan, Shufen, Shuh Tien, Shaina, Dino, Yiling, Yunling, Wz, Js, etc. Thanks for all the support and encouragement! I’m also grateful to some of you for calling/webcaming/skyping/msning once in a while to share intimate details of our lives. It’s absolutely gratifying to know that friends back home still care despite the distance, and it’s life’s great luxury to be able to chat over roti prata etc with pals whenever I’m back in Singapore.

Thanks dot for always showing concern and offering medical advice at critical moments! 

Nicole, we seem to only meet long after the sun sets, but, good times.

Joice, thanks for the inspiration to take the road less taken.

To anyone else I may have missed mentioning here, you are missed and thanked too!

Starting full-time work tomorrow (1 July), and I guess it’s farewell to academia. 

Although I’ve had many misgivings in the past with Fudan University, I sang the school song on the day of commencement. Not so much because I felt proud or whatever, but ‘coz it’s quite a good piece:

Fudan School Song:

Goodbye bouts of nostalgia, hello full-blown adulthood.

I just sat for my final paper in university, possibly the very last one of my life. It was for my Shakespeare elective. Everyone left the exam room complaining about it, because the final mini-essay question was not in the text at all, nor did he give us any clue that he’d drop such a bomb. We studied excerpts from 9 plays: The Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Henry IV, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Tempest, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. But the critical exam question was on The Merchant of Venice! O, judge o you Gods, what fools he makes of us.

In spite of that, I’m very pleased. This university life is over. OVER! 

Since nostalgia hasn’t kicked in, let me say all this now. I’m so glad I don’t have to sit in those toilet-stenched classrooms with creaky fold-down wooden chairs paired with completely vandalized wooden chipped off tables anymore letting voices of boredom weave in and out of my semi-wakefulness, resting on my one too many photocopied copyright breached textbooks distributed at almost no cost. I’m even more elated at the fact that I don’t have to write on A3 brown thinner-than-toilet-paper exam answer sheets while witnessing how students are referring to small pieces of paper in their pencilcases, underneath skirts, or under caps. Or more recently, students leaving the classroom for the bathroom and miraculously filling up their papers with the right answers after they return.

I wish I could say I’m also done with the administration people in my university, but alas, I still need them in order to graduate.

Peace, ho! Studies and exams, I bid thee farewell.

I said yes!

Will most probably start full-time employment in July. 

So I’m now a junior editor at an internet firm. My first job sounds great!

I do wonder if I took it on too early though. Hovering on the line between school and work hasn’t been all nerve-calming. The worst sacrifice has been my freedom to travel, taken away from me, through my own accord of chaining myself to employment. I haven’t stepped out of Shanghai since I came back for this semester in February. Boo.

To be politically correct, I look forward to an exciting and fulfilling time at the workplace!

To be honest, my advice to myself is quit thinking about the money and focus on the skills you’ll acquire, experience and exposure you’ll gain, and everything else money can never provide! Bah.

I believe content in this blog has been dwindling. That’s another trade off.

Starting to miss home actually. I would have demanded friends to give me first job gifts like wrist rests, a usb keyboard cleaner, and any miscellaneous desk and computer related gadgets.Or throw a celebratory party. Maybe receive red packets from parents. Ah well. My parents aren’t coming for my graduation, by the way. So there’s no red packet to receive, but plenty of my money to be taken away. There’s chinese taxes, rent, utility bills, grocery bills, parents’ allowance. MissY and I have started looking around for suitable apartments to live in come July, but they have either been too expensive, or just too…sad to live in.

Suddenly I feel the weight of what everyone terms as adulthood. Very bitter taste indeed.

Not a good day at work today. 

Disclosed things I wasn’t supposed to, which put the boss in an awkward position, which of course didn’t forbade well for my prepared negotiation speech.

Oh well. Will sleep over it.

Just wanted to share how MissY cooled us down from a stressful day at work with her sliced cucumbers. Probably not an uncommon method but I’d like to think of it as her knack for exhibiting her Koreanness at the right time.

These pictures were taken in various Singapore bus stops, early February 2009, with a Nokia N95 8GB.

What is common in these three public service messages from the Singapore Police Force and the National Crime Prevention Council? Apart from the usual offence of being very tacky (playing with alliterations, feminine rhymes and syllable rhyme in Careless/Cashless, Reveal/Regret; and antonyms in Believer/Deceiver), it is also very SEXIST. Which is so typical and habitual of them/[insert any public service body]. I beseech you to look at such fallacies with open eyes and never allow yourself and your children get accustomed to it.

Stronger than the actual didactic crime prevention slogans, Singapore residents will come away with this misconception:

Who are victims of crime? Young women, middle-aged women, old women. They will be victims — of pickpockets, of robbers, of cheaters. They will be careless, they will reveal too much of their wealth, and they will be gullible believers of tall stories such as the infamous magic stone. Who are the criminals? Men. They will prey on young women, middle-aged women, and elderly women to steal, rob, and bluff.

Women = careless, foolish, helpless. victim.

Men = scheming, dishonest, evil. culprit.

Open your eyes.

Stereotypes are so yesterday. And really,
evil is woman.

Hah. Happy Women’s Day (8 March 2009)!

Just shut my luggage.

Wondering if the mess in my room will be untouched for the rest of this year.

Heading to KL tomorrow morning for a mother-daughter thing (?!) before proceeding to Shanghai for what we all hope to be my last semester in that university. As to what happens after, your guess is as good as mine.

On a more optimistic note, I went to watch a bit of the Thaipusam festival today in Little India! Great stuff! But I don’t have time to upload the pictures and all now, so I guess you’ll hear from me in Shanghai!

Writing this at half-past three in the morning is automatically forgiven for sappiness, or fruitless whining.

1) It sucks that I can’t eat on trains and buses in Singapore. When I’m hungry and rushing off for an appointment, I have to choose between time and food, so I usually just go hungry. Which may have been a contributing factor to my current gastric problems. A plus point for Shanghai, for not being so particular about cleanliness or technical problems caused by food/drinks.

2) The body odour on buses and trains in Singapore are really really different from those in Shanghai. Let’s just say that here in Singapore, we have a variety of people with different diets, so sometimes there’s a blend of the different BOs of the different diet groups, though some are stronger than others. In Shanghai, since diet does not vary much, the communal BO of the showerless can overwhelm, but still not as pungent as certain diet groups here.

3) Plastic bags are given free in Singapore as opposed to the chargeable ones in China. However, when I decline a plastic bag in Singapore, I receive looks that imply I’m such an environmentalist snob.

4) Photocopying is really expensive here. I visited the National Library to photocopy some parts of reference books, and it was a hefty sum to pay. That amount of money would have let me photocopy 5 whole books in Shanghai.

5) If the fact that smokers are only allowed to smoke in designated areas such as the “yellow box” is sad, limiting final alcohol purchase at midnight is depression. No more alcohol after midnight! Even my curfew was never so cruel. Too many restrictions, this place. But well, considering that in Vancouver one can only lay hands on alcohol at liquor stores or pubs/clubs, the 7-11s and any other liquor-licensed establishment is heaven in Singapore (but only BEFORE MIDNIGHT).

————————————————————————————————-

It’s that time again. I hate leaving at this time of the year because I know all that awaits is the cold. Hostile and merciless. i can’t go there with an open heart/mind anymore because I know what I will face: people who will push, deceive, and engage in verbal warfare; students who make friends with you for ulterior motives, who will cheat, who will pay money for papers, and who will take all the As; teachers who are too easy to negotiate, who are too hard to, who like to “do taichi”…

A handful of years ago I was the sort who had to voice my feelings of injustice, pour my heart out to buddies and friends alike just so I can sleep at night. I think I’ve grown reticent over the years, kept more to myself, just so that i can let them sleep at night.

But, who am I to be forlorn, since to most at home, I’m the lucky one to stay abroad, always bringing goodies home to share, telling everyone how life is good, things are much cheaper and that they should come visit me? Then even when they visit they see the concrete, they see the glitter, they see everything that doesn’t matter.

I even suggest the possibility I’ll stay there. Even though I have no fucking idea what I’d do. I envy my friends right now, for having that nine to five job, in the comfort of home, hanging out with friends when they choose to, I could even get used to squeezing on the train during morning rush hour. I want to soak in all these things homely (of course, including being able to eat prata at any hour of the day) and be with people who can understand me in all my singlishness and singaporeaness. Yet, I choose to run far away and starve myself from all this comfort. WHY? Why do we press harder on the remote control when the problem lies with weak batteries?

I’ve (very) recently bought my very first DSLR, a Nikon D80. Then bought a what-I-think-is-good-and-can-afford portrait lens Nikkor 50mm F/1.8D which I also hope to use for food pics.

Still experimenting, but I think my friends love the pictures heh. So by extension, I think they love me. HAHA

I love my camera(s)!

Haii, what a fluffy post.

…or sugar or pepper.

Always always always. Can’t trust only one source, and you must always assess the source.

For instance, certain Singaporean Fudan University (or collectively affectionately known as FUSSA) seniors filled us (then) wide-eyed wide-jawed juniors with misinformation. (Dont worry CG, this doesn’t involve you)

Myth #1: Foreign students cannot apply for exchange.

My discovery: Lo and behold! I stand here before thee.

Myth #2: Don’t live out of campus on your own, if something drastic happens, you will only be discovered after the rotting smell comes on.

My discovery: My bachelorette pad was possibly the best place I ever stayed in. You do know that a single room dorm doesn’t have an alarm that notifies people of unconscious bodies either? And lastly, living with others can prove to be one of the worst decisions of your life. The very person who said this had to move from her supposed dangerless, perfect-roommates place to the dorm cell due to roommate (actually, housemate) conflicts. I am also living with someone who has had too large a share of roommate (this time, really a room) disputes.

Myth #3: Avoid taking buses in Shanghai, the sardine can syndrome is an outrage of modesty for girls. Take taxi la, not expensive.

My discovery: Buses are the cheapest way to get around, and you get a huge slice of life on them, even if it means holding your breath under someone’s hairy armpit (yes, females too) and having a fish tail from someone’s marketing poke you in your shins. Taxis chalk up a lot of money in the long run, and you run the risk of listening to “Singapore is very clean” for the millionth time if the taxidriver is chatty and investigates his passenger’s background. It can actually be fun on buses in Shanghai, not many places give you a free roller-coaster ride like an overpacked bus rushing for time.

Myth #4: Contact lenses are not safe to buy.

My discovery: Clear vision and gentler on the wallet.

Myth #5: FUSSA is fun!

My discovery: is better left unsaid.

Nevertheless, the seniors deserve credit for helping me a great deal when I first arrived in Fudan. And fellow Singaporeans look out for each other in necessary times, like some of them tried to help when MissY and I were stuck in BKK, so I’m grateful.

But yeah, don’t go around preaching your own ignorance. More importantly, have a good filtering system in your own head.