Crimson Bisque

Friday, August 12, 2005

Happy belated 40th Singapore!

didn't blog earlier. don't know why.

spent nat day eve night out with xuan rong... who was regaling me with tales of tibet and north korea!

the man trekked ard for 20 days in tibet! amazing if you ask me... he saw lots of yaks.. camped outdoors in the freezing weather (fell asleep in a tent to a thunderstorm and woke up and saw the place was covered in snow!

n. korea sounded interesting enough.. although all the restrictions placed by the government did result in the place being a little boring... tour guides/ government officials following you ard.. nto v fun to say the least...

all the n. koreans apparantly wear this badge.. even the n. koreans who study in china wear this badge. and apparantly the n. koreans there have to send a report back to n. korea every night! (NB Xuanrong studies in Qing Hua. in Beijing)

Nat Day was spent making popiah with mum... frying, cutting, shredding etc, etc. well at least i know how to make popiah now.. but i dunno where to get the skin in glasgow though. otherwise that would have been fun! NDP was ok i suppose.. but they always have the past, present, future theme for the performance segment... gets a bit dry after a while...

my bro was ill on that day though, so he ate noodles instead... he was missing out man... but anyway, i made one popiah for him.. and all the adults made such a big fuss abt how i was making the popiah. was totally annoyed. it's just one popiah. anyway. marc liked it and he even wanted another one. so there. you dont' have to be vindicated in front of everyone. just the one that matters.

wed night had my 5 generation buddy outing. and there i realised how old i really am. all these pple still in JC! sigh. miss the old days.

quotable quotes of the evening...

Bertram: (on the 25th president, who is apparantly VERY onz and takes over all the welfare duties that pple can't make it for) you know now it's the 7th month... maybe she's possessed by some spirit...

All of us: CHOI! Touch wood! *touch the table*

Xuanrong: yah she's possessed by a spirit. the Rafflesian spirit.

haha. you had to be there. XR had this weird hand action thing going for him. it was damn funny.

Bertram: (again on the 25th president) she REALLY cares

all of us: *give bertram a funny look*

Bertram: (realising how that must sound) eh it's not like we don't care. we do! but she...... REALLY cares...

that night was a blast... i was saying that 10 years down the road we have to go to a chinese restaurant and get a table... XR said yah you all can go to PEACH GARDEN (remember the restaurant that appeared on the front page of Life! ? well XR is working there now... it seems one of the 23rd 's mum is one of the owners.)

the only thing marring this week is the fact that i am seeing ONE spot in my vision. my left field of vision. it's only a very small spot. but sometimes i get confused and think it's a fly and swot at it. and i think i'm losing some coordination as well. i also get headaches quite often these few days.. but they usually go away after a while. i think maybe i sleep too much. hmm. hope i don't have to go see a doctor. will give it a few more weeks.

will try sleeping less. wah lau, good luck to me man.

an interesting article i came across. every year, the book club of the year in the UK is given a free 1 week trip in edinburgh. but this year's group is very different. They're in prison. As an alternative, Nick Hornby goes to the prison to talk abt his book, A Long Way Down.

"How about this?" said one of the men when the organisers of the prize asked for
a quote to illustrate the prisoners' delight. "We could have had a weekend of
sex and drugs in Edinburgh. But instead we decided to talk about suicide with
Nick Hornby."

I think it's amazing that these prisoners have a better sense of the importance of reading than most people outside prison. They read, and think about what they read. To them it's more than just killing time. it's not something they have to do (remember reading assignments in sch?)

to quote the article:

Maybe it's the rest of us who need to be locked up - certainly you get the sense
from these prisoners that reading is helping with more than just killing time.

I suppose things are different in the s'porean context. where the need to get high grades far exceeds any desire to treat reading as a leisurely thing. Reading is to be used for the sole purpose of memorising facts and a book is a mere textbook. we don't seem to have time to read books seemingly unrelated to our cirriculum. I often envied pple who were able to read novels on the side whilst dealing with school work and CCAs and goodness knows what else (SATS, IPW.. need i say more)

either way, i'm glad to have rediscovered reading in my post-JC years. I had forgotten how wonderful it was to be immersed in a different world. How refreshing it was. How much you learn from the books you read. Fiction or non-fiction. From the catty, to the funny, to the mysterious, there's just so much out there to read and to explore.

and i simply can't wait.

Inscribed @ 6:16 am