Kimmy & Kuma-kuma

Dear lonely isle,

Last Sunday, when my dad came to visit, Kim got a surprise belated present from Mei Kuan and Bee Bee. It was something she'd been looking for for a loooong time, something she wanted to get so many times but just couldn't bring herself to buy. Something she'd been eyeing on on Mei Kuan's bed.

Let me give u a hint.

If you don't know what (or who) that is, let me enlighten you.
That, is a Kuma-kuma.

What, might you ask, is a Kuma-kuma anyway?

Well, wonder no more, for someone invented the World Wide Web,
and included Google in our life too.

And so, finally, cos good things come to those who wait,
(and to good girls too ;) like yours truly)

Happy Kim with a happy Kuma-kuma.
(and the flowers we stole from Pacific Sutera Harbour)

Well, Kimmy really loves her Kuma-kuma, and dotes on him.
On cold mornings and nights Kuma-kuma will sleep on her bed,
resting his head on her pillow with the blanket tucked to his chin.

Kuma-kuma is not allowed to be held by anyone
for an extended (*cough*cough*really brief*cough*cough*)
period of time, especially by Yasmin,
who for some reason loves to torture Kuma-kuma by
punching him,
squeezing him,
flattening him, and
sepit-ing his hands and feet between the door and the door frame.

Needless to say, Kim is mortified by the ill-treatment of her Kuma-kuma
and holds it protectively with her when Yasmin is in the room,
helping Kuma-kuma avoid punches and kicks thrown at it.

However, today as I trudged home from yet another, long, tiring,
and exhausting lab session, I entered the room to find the lights on.

What I saw just made me laugh. And laugh.
Somehow it made part of my day seem more bearable.

Kim said the lights were too bright for Kuma-kuma to rest.

Er..okay...

I think this is what you call a really good sleep...

...with a smile on your face.

love, joyce.

Paper Chains

Dear lonely isle,

Forgive me for my long absence! I was planning to blog a few times in the past few days, but what happened was I got swamped.

Yes. Swamped.

Much as I'd like to say that a swamp fell on top of me, I'm forced by reason of belief, principle, moral and conscience to tell the truth.

What really happened was one night, as I prepared for bed (the usual bathroom rituals of teeth brushing, flossing, face washing, bag packing, etc.) my assignments and reports suddenly grew arms and legs and started crawling all over me, yanking at my hair and screaming into my ear, all demanding to be completed and handed in. The textbooks for my major subjects, upon hearing the commotion and emboldened by the sudden fierce and violent revolt of due literature got up and started demanding their fair share of my time too, biting and scratching my legs and arms.

The result? I now spend many hours (chained) at my desk at night, slaving away at the mercy of datelines and threats of bad grades and dropping PNGK.

But even as I try to reduce the angry workpile that sits on my desk, I get stared down by new reports and assignments marching in every week. It is as I fear, going to be a long, hard and brutal enslavery. They allow me little sleep at night and generously dictate long hours of work when I'm home. With mid terms within sight, the textbooks faction have begun to throw their weight around, trying to shove their importance into the faces of the more numerous reports and assignments faction. Unable to agree on the allocation of time for their respective parts, haggling down to the last minute and second of my time dedicated to studying/completing/writing/revising their contents, they decided instead to agree on putting in even more hours for me so as to give equal share of time to the textbook faction while not neglecting the hours demanded by the reports/assignments/presentations faction.

Life is not looking too good for me.

At this very moment, I'm on one of my allowed short periods of rest, and so decided to explain my continued absence. Which is likely to continue with no end as yet in sight.

This is a plea of a girl waiting for the words "Graduation" (as one might look at the word "salvation") unknowingly that what lies ahead puts fear into even the most staunch and hardcore of procrastinators and parasites.

Working life.

Sometimes I think life is one long cruel enslavement to commit yourself to things you hate to do but are yet forced to do for reasons like wealth and luxury. After which you gain the former you still cannot enjoy the latter due to the restraints imposed upon you by your enslavement to the former and to your fear of losing it.

*From a distance* "Oi! Time's up!" *Whip cracking*

Okay, you heard that textbook. Back to work.

One day at a time.

love, joyce.

Though the distance that's between us now
may seem to be too far
it will never separate us
deep inside, I know you are

never gone, never far
in my heart is where you are
always close, everyday
every step along the way
even though for now we've got to say goodbye
I know you will forever be in my mind
never gone

Rainy Day

"..and I'm gonna miss you
like a child misses their blanket,
but I've got to get a move on with my life,
it's time to be a big girl now,
and big girls don't cry.."

Dear lonely isle,

I thought I'd be okay, but I guess that was just me lying to myself again.

Blasting the music through my earphones. Trying to drown out the sound of my own thoughts.
And the rain inside my heart.

Don't think. Don't think. Don't think.
Just don't think...

Been bottling it up since lab today. The sky overhead just kept getting darker.

He called just before boarding when I was on the way back. Just dropped off my last passenger then. Stopped the car in the middle of the road to answer him.

When he put down the phone, I couldn't keep them in anymore.

It started to rain.

Don't feel like talking to or facing anyone tonight.

So damn tired today but I hardly feel it.
The water was so cold when I took a shower but I hardly felt it.
Just feel incapable to to feel anything else at the moment.

The only sound I hear is the rain.

It's time to be a big girl now.
And big girls don't cry.

It's just another rainy day.

love, joyce.

Friday

Dear lonely isle,

Schedule for 22nd February 2008:


8 - 10.00 am : SPSS lecture

11 - 12.00 am : SPSS tutorial

12 - 2.00 pm : Overtime (OT) for Biophysical chem lab

2 - 5.00 pm : Tissue culture lab

5 - 7.00 pm : OT for Biophysical chem lab

7 - 9.00 pm : Tissue culture lecture


9.35 pm : Baby's flight to Australia.


What a horrible day.

I hate tomorrow.

love joyce.

Sunshine On My Rainy Day

"..and all the things I deserve,
for being such a good girl, honey.."

Dear lonely isle,

Woke up in a pretty bad state yesterday.

Why, you ask?

Well, for starters, it wasn't the alarm that woke me, it was the sound of my handphone ringing. It was my coursemates who went to uni with me every morning. They were already waiting outside my house. That would mean it was already....7.30am

Class starts at 8.00am by the way.

Oh and then I realized I couldn't see. Because my eyes were so swollen they were plastered shut. And they hurt. And I think I look like I got punched in both eyes. My dark rings were that bad.

So I stumbled out of bed and went downstairs to open the gate for them. On top of everything, it was raining heavily. And who greets me? Downstairs, my housemate's coursemates (eng fac, so they're all guys) who came over the night before to get some assignment or other done. Didn't know they stayed overnight. And me in all my glory feeling my way down the stairs. In my pjs. Hair uncombed. Face unwashed. Teeth unbrushed. Braless. I must have been such a ghastly sight that they all probably wrote a mental note somewhere to make sure their future girlfriends do not have a sidejob starring in Ju-On.

Anyway, thank god the autogate was finally working. Wouldn't wanna get into all that rain first thing in the morning. It's already cold enough. Contemplated skipping class.

Scratch that. REALLY wanted to skip class. Nose had already started running. And was showing no signs of slowing down and waiting for me to catch up. That, and plus the two things under my eyebrows on either side of my nose and above my mouth, which (for lack of a better word) I'm forced to call me eyes. I'm so sleepy I'm beyond it. I'm somewhere in the recesses of ZOMBIE-hood.

But then, my lecturer for that morning's class tends to look out for me, to see if I slept that day or not, so what the hell. He can catch me snoring that day.

When I got into the car to drive, Tiing Jen asks me, "Can you see the road?"
Well yeah, my eyes were pretty badly swollen. No worries people, even though the window of my view is really small, I can still see the road, and made it to campus without any (near) accidents.

When I was in class I could hear another coursemate, Jia Jia, asking Tiing Jen, "Can she even see? Hold her! She might bang into something!"

Yeah, didn't look too fabulous that morning.

No surprises though, I fell asleep even as the presentation started (class presentation by a group of students yesterday). I even missed my lecturer announcing that our midterm was postponed for two weeks from the appointed date instead of commencing next week.

Fell asleep several more times after class, while waiting for my friends to choose an assignment topic in front of the lecturer's room. Was worried I wouldn't be able to drive back, because every time I sat down I promptly fell asleep. And well, driving kind of involve sitting down in the driver's seat. Somehow managed to drive back without drifting off. I even went to pump air into my car tyres. Which of course, my coursemates totally spoiled me by doing it for me. You get special treatment when you look like you've been through the plumbing of a house. Came back and crashed. Oh, I completed my management homework due at 2.00pm yesterday before that.

At 1.00pm, again I got woken up by the sound of my handphone ringing instead of my alarm. Time to go to class. REALLY wanted to skip class. Again. Try as I had since I woke up I couldn't make my eyes open wider than a slit. It hurt if I tried to make them open to even a third of their normal size. But the coward in me was steering the body that day. So I went to class, in case there was a pop quiz or something.

Appetite was working fine though, because I attacked my food that day. In class, my lecturer expressed he was feeling unwell, yet managed to nag for half an hour first, and reminded students who owed him money to pay up. Then he left us some work to do and said he was gonna take the day off. We could leave after we've placed our work in a box he left behind. Okay, lucky I went. Was getting better though by then. Nose wasn't sprinting anymore, and had slowed down to brisk walking. Eyes were slowly opening wider. Brain was slowly starting to comprehend things like written words and sentences.

After that, back to home to CRASH. Until 6.00pm. Had arab class that night, from 7.00pm to 10.00pm. Yeah, I know. It's a real pain. So at 5.45pm, got woken up by the sound of my phone message tone screaming in my ear. Accidentally fell asleep on it. It was from an arab class coursemate. It said.

Arab class cancelled. Tell your friends.

WHAT MAGIC WORDS. God himself must've sent them.

Read it a few more times, just in case my defunct eyes might have replaced "cancelled" with "extended" or "replacement". Felt satisfied enough. Now back to what's really important.

Sleep.

Enjoyed a good four hour nap till 8.00 pm :)

Hehe, my baby called at 6 something to wake me for class and even my housemate Bee Bee came in to wake me up. Such nice souls :) But nah, even those little disturbances didn't disturb my sleep. Did I mentioned it rained the whole day? And that everytime I crashed my blanket was all the way up to my chin? It was such a cold day.

So who knows? Sometimes if we just grit our teeth and bear it like a good girl, you do get rewarded.

One of my better days, certainly.
Even if it did start off like something from the rear end of house plumbing.

love, joyce.

Resolution

Dear lonely isle,

A month and a half has passed and still I'm not achieving what I hoped to achieve when I made my silent new year's resolution while watching fireworks on New Year's Eve.

I don't know how much further I've come in this struggle with myself, but I know in my heart it isn't very much. Who knew it was so hard to change yourself?

Okay, let's not use that word. Let's be a little bit more positive and say improve myself.

Change does not happen overnight. It has to come from within.
Someone told me this.

Maybe that's why it's so hard to change what we are, our habits, our personalities, our temperament. Because all of these are part of our core selves that we project to the world. What we do stems from the kind of person we are, translated into an emotion or expression or a habit.

Just like how jealousy stems from insecurity.

Maybe I'm not doing this right.
Maybe it's because I don't want it enough.
Maybe I'm not feeling what I'm trying to make myself express.

I'm trying to change myself emotionally, mentally and physically.
But I don't know how to.

Everytime situation presents itself in a manner which I can choose between what I hope to be and what I am now. I fail.

And I can feel the guilt eating me up inside because I keep succumbing to how I feel.
I'm doing it again. I'm making empty promises.

Sometimes I just hate myself so much for being so weak.

With determination you can achieve anything.
Someone told me this.

Or is it that I do not have the determination?

Everytime I open my mouth about this I can just hear myself making more and more excuses for myself.

Sometimes I just can't even explain myself to myself.
Even I don't want to listen to what I have to say.

Tell myself I'd stop everyday, knowing that I won't.
I've got a problem and I.. don't know what to do about it
Even if I did, I don't know if i would quit.
But I doubt it.

If you really want this, something's got to give.
Someone told me this.

Maybe I just need to go back to where it all began. To the reason why.

I miss you.

Thank you for being so patient.
For waiting still.

I'm sorry I'm still here.

love, joyce.

Happy Valentine's Day Baby

Dear baby,

I just want you close
where you can stay forever
you can be sure
that it will only get better

you and me together
through the days and nights
I don't worry cause
everything's gonna be all right
people keep talking
they can say what they like
but all I know is
everything's gonna be all right

no one, no one, no one,
can get in the way of what I'm feeling
no one, no one, no one
can get in the way of what I feel for you

can get in the way of what I feel for you

when the rain is pouring down
and my heart is hurting
you will always be around
this I know for certain

you and me together
through the days and nights
I don't worry cause
everything's gonna be all right
people keep talking
they ca say what they like
but all I know is
everything's gonna be all right

no one, no one, no one
can get in the way of what I'm feeling
no one, no one, no one
can get in the way of what I feel for you

can get in the way of what I feel

I know some people search the world
to find something like what we have
I know people will try
try to divide something so real

so till the end of time
I'm telling you there is no one

no one, no one, no one
can get in the way of what I'm feeling

no one, no one, no one
can get in the way of what I feel for you

love, joyce.

Gong Xi Fa Cai from Malacca

Dear lonely isle,

Happy Chinese New Year!

Went back to Malacca as usual this year :)
Ziggy followed us down on Tuesday for a day trip.

Surprisingly didn't take many pictures this year,
only took some on the night of the second day of chinese new year.

We went for dinner at a place called Geographer situated on Jonker Walk.

Jonker Walk from the second storey of Geographer.

Beatrix, Denise, my brother and me.

Denise squints her eyes every time she's posing for the camera now a days.
She's trying to protect her eyes from the anticipated flash.

Sometimes though, we didn't use flash, like this picture.

My ah yee, Denise and my mom.

Denise enjoying her cheese sandwiches.

My ah ku, Tristan and my dad.

My dad always seems to be looking elsewhere in pictures..

My e chai and Cheryl.

Gosh, I look so dark and shiny..

Geographer is a pretty nice place.
I like the casual setting and the interesting pictures on the walls.
It gives you something to read if you're not with company and waiting for the food to arrive.

They have a huge article on the Titanic, and something about who survived and who didn't.

Oh yeah, the atmosphere here is nice,
but they're pretty slow in the food service department.

We occupied 2 tables on the second storey, the place is empty during dinner time.
Makes it better to take pictures :P

The crowd usually comes in much later, to drink.

Surprisingly, even though the view from the first floor is so nice,
customers seem to occupy mainly the ground floor.

Which left us privacy to make as much noise as we want to
and shift the furniture around to take pictures :P

My mom with her sisters and my grandmother.

Family photo!
Me trying to hide behind my mom in an attempt to appear thinner.

My mom was looking at the wrong camera.

Me and the girls.
From left, Beatrix, Alexis, Denise ketot, Cheryl and me.

Ignore how fat I am.

My brother posing with the boys.
From left, Kieran, my brother (yes, he's thinner, your eyes are not fooling you), Tristan.

Candid shot :P

Alexis and my e chai.
I tell you that girl just won't stop growing.
She's already taller than me *jealous*

And she's 7 years younger.

Denise trying to imitate the jolly looking statue behind her.
Hands up, tummy showing, squinting eyes..SMILE!

Is that the happy buddha or something?

She got the smile right this time :)

Extended family photo!

Pose everyone!

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

May your new year be bright
and
filled with the colours of hope, happiness, wealth and prosperity!

love, joyce.

Baby Came To Visit

Dear lonely isle,

Sorry for the dreadfully long absence. But you see, one of the reasons was because I was particularly taken up with my visiting baby.
Yes, didn't you know? My baby came to visit :)
And he stayed for a week, so I was away all that time. (and then just after he left my internet was down, furthermore I went back for chinese new year soon after that, before my internet was fixed. So now you see? It was inevitable.)

The many faces of Ziggy!
Hehe we borrowed Bee Bee's labcoat for a few days.

My evil lecturer made us do a practical which took 4 consecutive days to complete,
so my poor baby was forced to spend days in the lab with me.

He amused himself by taking pictures of me
concentrating on my assignment when we were home..

But we also had fun :)

We camwhored in the hotel..

And we also camwhored in the airport...

Yeah we're still not good at it.
That's why we're practicing!

I miss you baby.
Thanks for visiting :)

Enjoyed every moment with you.

love, joyce.

Post Chinese New Year Blues

Dear lonely isle,

It's only been three days since I've been back from celebrating chinese new year and already I'm shuffling my feet everyday like a reluctant school kid.

First up, I can barely stay awake in the mornings anymore. I suspect this has got something to do with my lack of sleep. I'm trying not be dependent on naps anymore, resulting in this unable to keep my eyes open in class, probably because while I don't nap, I also don't sleep any earlier either.

Take today, I didn't even realised I fell asleep in class today until I woke up from my wonderful wonderful dream. And then, I realised that I cannot keep my eyes open for more than 5 seconds before it automatically shuts itself again. My lecturer today was talking about machinery that we can use to analyse macromolecules. While she was rattling on away about centrifuges, x-ray diffraction patterns and what not, I dreamt (yeah, fell alseep already) that we were walking around the labs because she wanted to show us all those stuff. And that she was wearing her gym clothes. Exercising and stretching while she explained. Only that she wasn't her anymore, she became a lot fatter. I think by now the average person would've figured out that something was definitely wrong here, but my problem is that I never get to find out I was dreaming till I wake up.

I think the only way to describe me on morning classes is "zombie-like". Heck, I'm even starting to feel like a zombie. Now if I were to watch resident evil or some other no brainer zombie show I guess I can reach out and tell the television set, "I feel you, brothers." No wonder they shuffle around like that, they can barely stay awake! Poor things. I really do feel you. (which reminds me of Sweeney Todd, and the young sailor Anthony, in a fit of pure obsession he sings to the girl locked up in the room, "I can feel you, Joanna. I will steal you, Joanna." Steal? God the guy is creepy. I'd run away from someone who wanted to steal me. I am my own person. I refuse to be stolen like some baggage or grocery item, like some thing.)

So yes, determined not to be dependent on naps, even when I can barely stay awake, and it rains continuously for the whole day (making the weather oh-so-don't-wake-me-up-today-it's-too-good-in-bed cool), I shall attempt to blog.

love, joyce.