it is new year’s eve and then it will be new year’s day and something has to be said. pilfered from karenly:

1. What did you do in 2006 that you’d never done before?
too many things, and then none at all, depending on how you would look at it. this was the year i first stepped foot in europe, in england, cooked with friends and had my first ever murder mystery; too many happy things, too many sad things, but this is how things go. had my first concert, my first musical, and i hope it won’t be the last.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
cursed less, but it still ain’t enough ;p and to be more mature i guess, and less wilful.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
haha yeah, my uncle’s wife :)

4. Did anyone close to you die?
nope

5. What countries did you visit?
england and switzerland.

6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?
i should just work for it lar. but maybe a rejuvenation for a dying soul.

7. What date from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
11th august, 31st august, 14th – 28th december. flights departures and temporal closures.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
not much i guess, i can do better.

9. What was your biggest failure?
not being a good waiter at timbre, and slipping on the day i was supposed to go to the yorkminister abbey and hence ruining my trip up to oxford.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
twisted my ankle 4 weeks before i was going to leave, and my !@$!@!%%$%^$#$ tailbone.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
YORK DESIGNER OUTLET SALES. ahahahahahahaa ted baker paul smith adidas ck ralph lauren for 110 quid. oh wait.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
the tiny hoh, dawn, kox, louis, ailin, enqi, debbie, dingo, the hwach kidz, calvin, jac, jes and risse. and a lot of other people i guess, everyone’s a dear :)

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
mine i guess. i should honestly be a more considerate bugger ;p

14. Where did most of your money go?
comics food clothes books musick.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
wicked the musical, but that was during the show itself so it can’t really count but it’s still utterly fantastic so i don’t really care. the england trip, the york trip and christmas :)

16. What song will always remind you of 2006?
iron and wine – sodom, south georgia
the eagles – the sad cafe
the eagles – tequila sunrise
i wish you love – rachael yamagata
the devics – come up
elliot smith – angeles

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? happier generally, grumpy now.
ii. thinner or fatter? was damn thin, now just thinner sigh.
iii. richer or poorer? poorer. rawr.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
talked more to people and opened my heart more, but it’s a bit hard to these days; it’s almost a reflex now.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
apathetic.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
happy full and a bit irresponsibly. >.<

22. Did you fall in love in 2006?
Yes.

23. How many one-night stands?
NONE. i suck.

24. What was your favorite TV program?
lost. haha!

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
not really, hating is too tiring.

26. What was the best book you read?
watchmen by alan moore. haha.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
the devics, elliot smith, iron and wine, charlemagne.

28. What did you want and get?
that’s for me to know ;p

29. What did you want and not get?
too many things; i expect too much and i only disappoint myself.

you see the conundrum, when i am idealistic i end up hurting myself; when i remain in a state of disinterest i end up killing my soul so either way it’s not very good ;p

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
superman returns was nice lar.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
this year i celebrated my 21st birthday with kox david dawn risse and ailin, and everything was lovely and happifying.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
not slipping on the 28th december

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?
jeans and shirts. yes, i ve finally made the leap.

34. What kept you sane?
dawn and ailin and jac and jes.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
jade seah and fiona xie. ohwells.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
more of an ecological issue actually, the independent makes a stirring case.

37. Who did you miss?
people in singapore

38. Who was the best new person you met?
haha i honestly don’t know!

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006.
faith i guess.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
i really need to start to pay more attention to lyrics.

it’s been more than a week since i left for yorkshire and i return happy glad thankful for the small things in life and friends who last more than a half decade of years; so to ailin chin, for being possibly the best host ever, and the fantastic organiser of the happiest christmas i will ever have, here’s to you and your lover bhoy and may you have a splendid incandescent new year in heathrow airport, and no, i’m not mocking you because more often than not it’s whom you’re with rather than where you’re at but i suppose i would be lynched for this given i’m in switzerland but trust me as i say this!

two weeks have flown by and soon the third will be gone and memories of this vacation will be reduced to the required tepidity and menial stupour of a daily routine and all i can say is that summer will be here, soon, and singapore, hot humid singapore will beckon and arrive and as usual, all sensible notions of fitness will be drowned with the incredibly cheap price of food.

it is new year’s eve as i type this post now so to everyone out there, happy 2007, may this year be a better one than the previous, may there be world peace, may there be inner peace and lastly may everyone treat a repeated experience as your first and thoroughly immerse yourself in the fluxes of the accompanying emotions because nothing kills anyone faster than apathy and ennui.

wicked at the apollo victoria was truly amazing, nothing short of being absolutely wicked, pun unintended; it’s the best thing on stage i’ve ever seen and the sets were just bloody brilliant. it wasn’t only that too, idina menzel wholy deserves her tony, even if everyone was telling me she was on her off-day by not reaching her pitches as effortlessly as she could and the chemistry was gorgeous, with the script breathtaking; it was adapted off gregory maguire’s original and even though i have never ever watched the wizard of oz, i probably want to read it now. it was expensive though, the tickets were about 45 quid, and the programme booklet and mug costing 6 and 7 respectively.

so i walked ailin down to victoria street tube, where she passed me some white rice which i later used for a fried rice and chicken with thyme and wine combi, and i saw the backstage door where a huge crowd was. obviously they were waiting for the actors of the set, so i was thinking, oh why not, and i jostled into the crowd. AND I MANAGED TO GET IDINA MENZEL’S AUTOGRAPH LIKE HOW COOL IS THAT.

and at sainsbury’s i managed to get a chocolate with hazelnut cookie packet which was bloody brilliant, and i don’t think many days can beat this.

tomorrow, i shall wait at the palace? theatre and hope that spamalot tickets come cheap. if not, well, there’s always more museums to visit.

cheers mates!

there’s so much culture in this place, so much vibrancy and life and nothing quite describes it; today i went to the victoria and albert museum where i spent the better half of the day peering at exhibits and reminiscing four months back when i was in singapore; yesterday i went to the national history museum and looked at dinosaur bones before having my first bowl of laksa in almost a year; yesterday i found a scone that was going for 7 pence and i promptly bought it; yesterday i had my first krispy kreme and today i had my fourth.

i must resolve that that would be my last. or second last.

harrods is quite amazing; they have testers for male scents in the bathrooms and almost everyone was trying it out; there were clocks going for 5000 pounds and i shuddered in my jacket; it is winter now, but it’s cold not because of the temperature but because of the wind.

i just consumed 2 chicken legs 2 days past their expiry date; tomorrow i shall watch wicked, so i pray in my forlorn heart that i would not have a stomach problem. again.

i reached london yesterday, bought the devics bought a travel card looked for friends cooked for friends and played dota for the first time in a long time. on the second day i woke up to spinach and mince meat, went to liverpool street and Sainsbury’s and bought groceries to last me for 4 days for 10 pounds and i feel as though as if i have lived here all my life. there’s an impossible sense of calm and peacefulness amongst the bustling thriving crowd and it should seem queer that this would be so, given that i was previously in switzerland and yet it is.

ailin has reached london 52 minutes ago, dawn emailed me a day ago and in a flat overlooking kentish town road, i type letters that spell my heart and i say softly, it is december, it is christmas, it is time for me to finally say sorry. but this requires more courage than most realize, and a concatenation of events, so for now, i will wait.

“I just know you’re not going to get equal value for a little monster that good.”

Chris Webber on Allen Iverson

can you imagine, iverson with artest and his crew in sacto?! artest reef iverson kevin martin brad miller HOLY SHIT GGXX PWN. or, even better, IVERSON WITH KG! pairing for the ages.

today, i shall skip french and play ball from 6.45pm onwards; it is a good week, it is a good day.

all trees look like christmas trees

i slept for nine hours today, and i woke up an octave lower and with a general disposition better than it has been for weeks. there are so many beautiful things in here, and the solitude was heartening and i will be flying off to london in 4 days.

there, i will try to fix things, and apologise for things that i should have done ages ago.
—————–

jesus, not now please. i can’t be falling sick now wtf.

there really isn’t that much to say these days, not because things have been tepid or boring but rather that they don’t really matter as much anymore. there is almost a certain sense of rhythm in which i lead my life these days, and i’ve learnt to stop bothering about most things and people because that’s just the way it is; why put so much faith and trust when it’s eventually used to break you.

the week was spent spamming projects ad infinitumly; sunday was cost control, monday was wine and bar, tuesday was a kitchen test, thursday was a business comm interview, friday was the restaurant conceptualisation as well as computer studies; i had 6 hours of sleep the whole week and when i woke up at 5pm in the evening, i watched snow fall for the second time of my life and i think i could do this all day.

we went to leysin today for the christmas ball; mr bayati dressed as santa and posed with a donkey; there were three people in a makeshift tent with a cow, sheep and a lovely shaggy dog where we drank hot wine. the food was your standard cocktail fare, which may not be standard but already has been given the number of times we’ve had those; it was quaint, lovely, a little bit like prom.

only 8 more months to go.

I was Thinking I Could Clean Up For Christmas – Aimee Mann

in the midst of finishing my cost control assignment, i suddenly detected the whiff of hainanese chicken rice; it is the figment of my imagination, quite definitely so and it is only 2 weeks before i get to fly to london and i should be filled with absolute joy and elation, but recent circumstances have dictated otherwise. i will go to england with 600 francs and 130 sgd to spend and all i can say is that nobody trusts me, not even my mom and sometimes i wonder if i can ever redeem myself.

times like this i wonder, if she doesn’t even believe in me, and i already don’t believe in myself what’s there to hold onto eh. everybody’s slipping, nobody cares and nobody understands and all i can do is just to move on, because maybe some days will be better.

but one of these days i will stop hoping.

oh, haha and it’s my dad’s birthday today.

happy birthday you fucking bastard swine.