ok this is slightly embarrassing but when i'm feeling lonely and boyfriendless i just listen to this cos i mean seriously. THOSE EYES. i really do melt.
but i was thinking as i was watching it (yes i do retain some control over my brain despite the charmingly bewitching good looks) i was thinking, he's doing those eyes to a camera. that means it's to some extent fake. and what if guys out there have heart melting eyes like that which they employ on girls even if they aren't sincere.
scary thought. so yes we must be on our guard girls :)
ok if you're reading this (anyone) please get off your chair and JUMP! :)
because it's such a special occasion!
so the day before, to hype her up for her birthday, i brought a Lemon Drizzle Cake to school with
Ellis Sweet 16th written on it in pink-purple frosting.
i also gave her a roger federer card, and i made up a signature for him and drew it on. (i hope that's not illegal!)
but the real surprise was on the 25th! charmaine was amazing and organized for us to go to ellis' house at 9 to surprise her.
unfortunately, i got mixed up (as expected) and arrived too late for the surprise, so i headed straight to the MRT at 10 to wait for them
then we went to the ZOO
now, the singapore zoo has changed alot Alot ALOT
it's beautiful, fantastic. it has this wholesome fun timeless roaming smell
so we wandered around looking at animals
we saw:
orang utan
the false ghavial
pygmy hippo
rhino
zebra
elephant
flamingo
babirusa
tapir
otters
giraffe
naked mole rats
cheetah
leopard
lion
white tiger
chimpanzee
meerkat
mouse deer
sloth
a variety of snakes in cluding an anaconda and 2 pythons
emu
kangaroo and wallabies
gibbons
a variety of small primates
komodo dragon
rhino iguana
Aldabra Giant Tortoise
the best exhibit was the Aldabra Giant Tortoise because we paid to go and feed them!!! and stroke their scaly necks and ridged backs. it was truly awing. some of those gentle giants weigh more than 200 kilos, which is more than 4 times my weight, and maybe even 5 times! (i'm 41 kilos, and my dad says i'm too heavy to carry, but i'm pretty puny compared to these guys!)
the experience of just running round, forgetting the practice papers at home, taking ridiculous pictures with ellis weixin charmaine and grace was just wonderful fun! a great pep tonic after being sniffly and sore throaty and wretched for a week.
fun with friends :)
though it drizzled here and there, it was fine because we had one and a half umbrellas between us (the half is there because wei xins umbrella was miniature) but we shared and sheltered wherever we could.
on the way home ellis opened my 16card surprise thing (basically for her 16th birthday i made her 16 small cards) and her present
i'm just so thankful that i have ellis as my bff and she's WONDERFUL SO HAPPY BIRTHDAY !!!
(im so irritated at myself for not being able to express how much i appreciate her in words on this blog but she knows anyway im sure)
my brother always locks the balcony door at night
and he doesn;t just lock it, he double locks it, clicking the catch thing on the doorknob and fastening the catch at the bottom of the door
and i don't understand why?
i think perhaps he's afraid kidnappers might climb up the balcony (despite us living on the 3rd floor) into our room and kidnap hannah me tim. or worse, grandpa bear ( :) )
but all he really does is shut of the wind that comes from the balcony which would be welcome seeing as we have no aircon
so i think it is an irrational fear
but then who a, i to talk of irrational fears when i used to be certain there was an old woman with straggly greasy hair living under my bed, waiting to plunge an injection into me.
(i shall talk more about my irrational childhood fears another time, but she was one of the chief bedtime ones)
these are the number of views of my blog from different countries since its conception!!!!
This is why i am considering reopening it to public. because its so darn cool that i have international readers. not that i don't appreciate my local readers. i mean, you guys are my most faithful (and also the only ones that can see what im writing) but wow. wow wow wow
i have resolved to start a diarynot one of those many word diaries that require me to spend half an hour each evening, slaving away by penning down my day
but one of those simple picture diaries that i can touch once a day or once a month depending on my fancy
it will be full of pictures i find and weird feathers i pick up on the way home from school, patterned leaves, perhaps and interesting rock or 2 and maybe even some soil samplings from places i love.
why did i have this brilliant idea?
tave gevinson (who i just discovered. yes i know i'm behind the times but really now i love her blog. it's so colourful and bautiful and kooky, which my mum taught me is pronounced k oooooo k eeeee)
here is her diary which i shall style mine on but of course mine shall be different because she is american and i am asian and she has american magazines and i have the strait's times.
here is her wonderful beautiful diary scrapbook collage thing
i was lying in bed, waiting for ellis and wei xin to come over for cycling like we'd arranged
then, my phone buzzed and told me that weixin was still sick and her mum wanted her to stay home to rest
feeling slightly crestfallen, i told ellis, and she told me to call her
when she picked up, she told me that she couldn't come either because of church stuff
more than a little crestfallen, i resolved to bury my disappointment and resignation in leningrad by disappearing into the fantastic book i was reading, called the siege. i proceeded to disappear for a few minutes, drawn into a world of passionate russian love and murdered children and a rain of bombs and phosphorous fires, when i was jolted from my path into the book by a knock on the door. assuming it was my sister and that she'd either have her keys or someone would deign to open the door, i tried to read again, but the knocking persisted and i decided to stop it so i could read in peace.
when i went to the door, after being surprised that it was already open, i was surprised and shiningly happy to see wei xin and ellis both there, replete with a big card and a box in addition to their normal bags.
i can't tell you how shocked i was, but that didn;t matter because i was also ridiculously happy (they came they came for me for me :') )
after setting down their bags at the table, they showed me the most beautiful pink cupcake with pinky purple blue swirly icing and rainbow sprinkles adorning it, and we lit a (pink) candle and i blew it out and made a wish which i can't tell but which goes along the lines of wanting to be friends forever with 2 very sneaky but amazing people who have good taste in cupcakes
then i gave them some of the banana cinnamon walnut cupcakes and cookies i baked the day before, and we had a nice petite brunch
then we trooped to my room to open (yippeee) presents!
i got a lovely new ballet bag (to replace the ew NYWLD orange and black one i've been using) from ellis
and
a da paolo scone (intact and uneaten!) as well as giraffe socksss from wei xin
then we went down to jump on the trampoline and talk about bridesmaids and swing on the heavenly swing and watched weixin be dragged backwards thrice because she didn't land properly :) (heheheheheh)
and then we went up to watch partition (Which is wonderfully sad) and ellis had to leave before she saw all the best parts but it was okay because we had a lovely day already
weixin stayed to the end of the movie and didn't cry (i cannot believe it) but agreed it was really sad
and then we went downstairs again and jumped on the trampoline and swung on the heavenly swing so much that i got rope burn when i tried a new way of swinging and almost fell off (and now i have 2 matching white blisters on the palm of each hand) and we played badminton with shana against tim and rishab (and i have to admit, though grudgingly, that they make a super duper talented team...must be the tennis skill translating itself into another racket sport)
and then wei xin went home
and that was the end of my day with 2 of my BFFs but it was wonderful and i was so touched at their sneakiness and thoughtfulness to the extent that they cabbed here and tiptoed up the stairs :') and acted just like the wonderful and stupendous people they are
love you guys to the moon and back and to the end of the world and back and forth and back and forth....and til mosquitoes become extinct and the rainbow merges into one colour and the stars outshine the moon and the sun becomes concave and wei xin stops loving pink.
yesterday and today were awfully wonderfully productive days
(I'm talking about physical manifestations of production)
so
yesterday, in a fit of zest, i baked and baked and baked:
12 banana cinnamon walnut muffins (which were simple and fun to make, but they yielded picture perfect, mouth watering results. i actually did take some photos with the old digital camera but due to my lack of technological know how, they remain in the camera's memory)
about a gazillion chocolate and walnut chip cookies (which took forever to make because there was about 3 or 4 batches of about 11 to 12 each time. good god, if you do the math that's 36 to 48 cookies!!!)
and then, because the creative juices were still flowing i decided to make earrings, having already bought 6pairs of earring hooks from spotlight in plaza singapura
so i flipped through the old national geographic magazines, found pictures i loved, cut them out and proceeded to create
i made 3 pairs of earrings:
one looks like 2 large green jewels in a golden setting thing but its really actually 2 spider eyeballs, magnified about a gazillion times. it amazed me that spiders had such perfectly round eyes, and green, and so i decided to use those
another is 2 geisha's (one on each ear) one is carrying part of a parasol (the other part was snipped off mercilessly by my scissors) the interesting thing is that the nape of the geisha's kimono's are pulled lower than a traditional conservative Japanese woman, which was considered quite alluring. another interesting thing is that the red skirts they wear are actually their underwear and so basically, their behavior is altogether shocking. i love that they defied restrictive cultural norms to have fun (they were wading in some river thing) and i was also intrigued at how what was considered rebel behavior in Japanese society would be considered prudish and conservative dressing today as their skirts were full length and the nape of their kimono wasn't even that low.
the last pair is of 2 crabs holding up what appears to be 2 large black pearls, though they are actually also spider eyeball. the crabs are different, one is white, the other, black, and i thought it was a reflection of both our earth's precious biodiversity as well as the colour stigmas in society. you see, when one looks at the black crab and the white crab, you think oh look, 2 crabs. but if one looked at a black person and a white person, one might think, oh look, a black person and a white person, instead of oh look, 2 humans. it's funny how we lump animals into one indistinguishable category while humans are segregated into many classes and compositions. sometimes i think class/race distinction is a good thing as long as everyone is equal, so there remains a diversity of culture, bu this is hard to achieve i suppose because of the cultural differences that seem to instigate a reflex assertion of superiority.
after sticking them on cardboard backings and fastening them to the earring hooks, i had to varnish them, a process which i left to this morning.
apart from varnishing the earrings hourly, i also made a headband according to the instructions (well, mostly) of a most fabulous fashion DIY website called P.S i made this. (the earrings were also inspired by the website) the head band was made with part of a broken necklace chain, a string that came with a bag i bought once, and some bygone ribbon that is remnant of a class cheer in one of my 4 years in SC. it was harder to make than the earrings, albeit faster, because i had to break the necklace chain by twisting one chain link open, and use a knitting needle to screw holes in the bag string thing.
but it came out quite pretty and i was proud of making it.
but i think that's probably the limit to my creativity this holiday, or at least today, and it's back to humdrum life tomorrow.
what up with the weird title?
greek gods live on mount olympus which is from where the the word olympics is derived
my my my
i love the olympics
despite clashing most horribly with my prelims
i've watched some amazing things
Ye shiwen (China) winning, with a WORLD RECORD in the 400 metre individual medley (which i believe is sheer talent and hard work)
Andy Murray winning the GOLD MEDAL in tennis, beating federer! (Brit pride :') )
federer and juan martin del porto in the longest tennis match in olympic history!
chad le clos (i think i'm in love hahahahaha) beating michael phelps in the 200m butterfly to win GOLD and gulping down tears during the south african national anthem
Usain Bolt (zeus' lightning) winning the men's 100m with ease and striking his cheeky pose after wards :)
Michael phelps winning his gold in the 200m individual medley. he is a giant, and if he were a country, he would be ranked 36th in the world, just him and his medals
Feng tian wei winning 3rd in the women's table tennis single :) (singaporean pride :)) i don't care if she's from China, she's Singapore's olympic heroine :)
aaaahhh olympics are an amazing once in 4 year gathering of the gods and goddesses of human fitness and physique to celebrate friendship in competition and improvement of the human race.
i love it
dear christy,
i would like to jump on the trampoline with you
and swave board round the neighbourhood with our hands behind our backs so we look like pros
and paint eggs and stones to place in neat rows on mydesk or up the stairs
we could also find a cat and adopt it, to add to our mini zoo consisting of 2 purple unicorns and a pink monkey
then we could go swimming and pretend we are narwhals.
what do you say cheesty? Love
Miriam
dear emily,
i would like a summer date with you, me, a polaroid camera and a picnic basket of nice food
on the ex-train track
we shall just lie there in nice dresses and eat and talk and take photos and let people step over us
if we get bored we could go down to tanglin halt and get fringes cut
or alternatively we could buy doughnuts and eat them off strings which we would hang on trees
this would make our noses very sugary but nevermind, sweets for the sweet
so what do you say emily?
Love
Miriam
what a way to celebrate the end of prelims! for my birthday, my cousin in England Amanda gave me:
-Ian McEwan's Amsterdam
-Katherine Mansfield's The Garden Party and other Stories
-Helen Dunmore's The Siege
-Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men
and
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich
can't wait to get started on this load of lovely books
i held a frog in my hands, clasped it within my palms and felt it's tiny heart beat and its cool bumpy skin
i was so afraid i would crush it or fling it into the air in panic but it was perfect and beautiful
today as i waited for Shana to bring out the badminton rackets, i climbed up the junior hill and sat on their swing.
i noticed panda the cat was sitting below me and gazing at me with her inscrutable cat eyes, so i commenced to talk to her.
"hey Panda, i love swinging. when i tilt back i see the sun through the leaves and trillions of different greens and all of them within eye view.
and i can see my hair in my shadow.
it's all long a tangly like in movies
but of course that's my shadow
do you think i'm a hippie, Panda?
i sometimes think i'm a hippie
but then perhaps not because i'm not like the hippies i know
but then again they aren;t really hippies, or maybe they are to themselves
i'll be a hippie to myself then, panda.
you know, i want to stay here forever.
this place is so perfect, it's like those secret places lovers run to in movies.
maybe one day i'll bring someone special here, and we'll swing on Shana's swing and i'll swing so he can see the sun in my hair
and then i'll teach him to swing, and we'll jump on the trampoline too, and he'll bounce me high and i won;t be the only one bouncing other people.
and then we'll go to the cliff and watch the sun set so we can walk home in the dark when it's cool and the mosquitoes are biting
and maybe i'll have my first kiss as i watch the sun go down
yes maybe.
i want my first kiss to be really special, with someone special"
i think Panda found all my romantic talk distasteful because she ran into the shrubbery then
but musing to a cat is oh so nice
i once read a book about 2 sister, violet and lily
violet was (ironically) a shrinking violet, while lily was loud and lovely and likeable
and sometimes i feel like that
hannah seems the perfect sister
and she is
just too perfect sometimes
and i get this sinking feeling of never matching up
i asked my mother
'mum, do you think i'm uninteresting, especially relative to hannah?'
and my mum said
'no, i have some of the most interesting conversations with you'
but then again, she is my mother.
i don't begrudge hannah of course, but sometimes i berate myself for being so unsocial and shy and cold
once again this post is not going anywhere. (um, including twitter. not on twitter please)
i think i'd be perfectly happy for a moment if someone handed me a bunch of flowers and gave me a beautiful heart and whispered in my ear 'i love you i love you i love you'
though of course,it would depend on who it was
perhaps i'm a tad premature
or just watching too many romantic movie trailers
today in church i had the most terrible case of wanderlust ever
it was so intense that i started writing on my order of worship about how everything seemed so beautiful in England (where i wanted to go)
so here it is:
as you read it, listen to the music below because it somehow reflects how i feel about England. its a roaming, an adventurous country rambling hedge kind of music that is tempered with genteelness.
~all roads lead to Johannesburg~
(what relevance this has to England is beyond me but it fits somehow)
Silver Birches: where cars crunch on pebbles and doc leaves tend to nettle sting, birds revel in the old stone cherub Bird bath, 3 legged dogs roam,
rabbits scurry through red yellow pink rose bushes,
and lady Marion hides in the leaves of the pear tree with the orange plastic swing
getting bark chips and tree dust all over her Sunday best
memories of Dee dee and wheel barrow ride (neither can be separated from the other, everything is a web)
and castles made of dried grass one small and one big, its 3 inhabitants having their afternoon tea nestled in the embrace of that lovely smell
2 Shetland ponies in the field nearby who are quite content with nuzzling grass from your outstretched palm
splitting peas with auntie sheila before the Sunday afternoon drizzle comes and marvelling at her pirate writing for a treasure map school project
cow biscuits hidden in a specific corner shelf in the kitchen, and in another, the sugar and salt shakers (one can steal a handful to suck but beware of sucking the salt)
jacko is subject to violent swings from Hannah and I (for silver birches belongs to Hannah and I, Tim is more of an ixworth kind of guy) and his wrist bears the brunt of our young eagerness
stairs are climbed up and slid down, bumpity bumpity bump, its carpeted surface worn down by generations of bottoms
a little black cat sits stately in the doorway and watches as you tie your shoes. she never moves for she is a constant stone, and doesn't even fall to the temptation of 2 glass bottles of milk which come each morning without fail, little bubbles around the mouth of the bottles
gather gather for a game of mousey mousey in the lounge, flushed cheeks and bright eyes bely long past bedtimes
and if you lose your teeth,
you wake up to a 2 Pound coin beneath your pillow
Ixworth:Houses stand shoulder to shoulder and skin to skin and neighbours breathe each other's lives
the high street slopes down and falls away
its gravitatous path helmed by 2 rows of pastel coloured shops
in one smoky room a butcher watches a girl with oriental features buy a packet of cadbury chocolate coins, a ritual repeated once every 2 years, hello he greets her
she always hears and he is one of her favorite people though his private life is as shrouded from her as his face, masked behind several layers of thick cigarette smoke
down again and an Internet cafe-pastel pink- sits, serving afternoon chocolate and milk shakes, a comfortable place where little girls go unafraid and uninhibited
and if one takes a rickety bike over the bridge with its resident 2 swans
and past the woolpack(which holds promises of Jill's fantastic steak, pasta and strawberries and cream.)
one reaches the watermill, with its quiet pools or icy water disrupted by the splash of eager feet and nets in attempts to catch the tiny fish that dwell in it shallows, one can walk through an arch of weeping trees and emerge on the other side, where there is a gate that is perfect for leaning on as one gazes into the field of the mysterious farmer who trims his hedges into fantastical shapes, a crocodile, a rearing horse whose mane is blown by the wind and leaves fall into the quiet pond behind the mill house where dwells the swan family, goslings following with their mother.
nearby is the local store where you can find all manner of delicious food, berries and ice creams
and overall presides number 106 highstreet, opposite the fire station, where grandma looks out, soapy handed and soapy smell, waiting for Mick's cab heralding the arrival of her grandchildren, in her wooden kitchen in her small house. in the garden the birdbath lies hidden behind an enclave of shrubbery, and one can walk along the cool stone path on a hot day, or sit down to stroke sparkle the cat.
and return in the night time to hug grandma and breathe in her warm, powdery, soapy smell/
i so so wish i was there. i may be bit incoherent but think this case of wanderlust may be terminal and part of my heart shall ever be in England/
i have once again discovered the charm of 'to kill a mockingbird' which was a book that used to intrigue me with its air of sophisticated adulthood and intellect (because it's cover boldly proclaimed that it had won the Pulitzer prize, an award that sounded foreign, posh and altogether wonderfully mysterious)
this is one of my favorite quotes:
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love
breathing.
and also this
I had never thought about it, but summer was Dill by the fishpool smoking string, Dill’s eyes alive with complicated plans to make Boo Radley emerge; summer was the swiftness with which Dill would reach up and kiss me when Jem was not looking, the longings we sometimes felt each other feel. With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.
hello hello hello
i'm back again
and i'm 16
(it doesn't actually feel much different to being 15, partly because i'm celebrating properly on August the 14th so i'm kind of in age limbo right now)
anyway,
28th july (my birthday day) was also my church's family day (which is basically a carnival for people, not just families)
my contributing part, apart from being a sponger for the youth group game, was bringing 2 large pails to the church (which meant from the buona vista MRT stop to Aljunied, a good 12 stops away which amounts to almost 45 minutes of travel time usually, and then on the number 158 bus to a stop near our church where i walked, holding a bright red and blue bucket)
i suppose the ride was not as dull as the usual dull MRT atmosphere (most people have their noses in their phones or ipads, but after ensuring my buckets were firmly secured with a well placed foot, i contented myself with staring hard at such persons who obviously wouldn't notice, so enthralled by technology were they, and imagining stories about them)
when we got there (a bit late but i suppose that might soon become a yeo family idiosyncrasy) someone (juslyn i think) said happy birthday which kind of triggered a mini onslaught of well wishes (including one from my sister who had forgotten what day it was) which i (as always) am at a loss at how to respond to. so i just said a very insipid thank you all round which wasn;t nearly close to how embarrassedly pleased i was that people remembered but oh well that's me.
after that gloria and i got down to business soaking sponges so they could be thrown at kevin and nathaniel raj.
subsequently i went behind the 2 targets so i could pick up the fallen sponges (most of the throwers were small children still handicapped by undeveloped muscles and questionable aim) and toss them back to gloria. unfortunately, i too seemed to be "handicapped by undeveloped muscles and questionable aim" and i hit kevin slap on the back of his head which made it look like it was on purpose (i swear the first time -out of the three times that happened- was an accident) and caused me to take a couple of sponges too, which was enjoyable because it was a very hot day.
after our shift we had to go up to watch an iron man movie (which was touching but i thought kind of too scary for the many little kids present) and i saw a malay family in front of me, and some were not interested but there was one guy who looked taken and i don't know, i hope hope he got something out of it.
after that was fun fun again, a blaze of colour.
i made 2 cupcakes: one was my impression of a mouse with a bad case of rainbow sprinkle acne, another was a house with an m&m footpath and half oreo fences. :) and gloria, beth and I also got our faces painted as Marvel characters. gloria was captain america, beth was a superb iron man, and i was catwoman (though i didn't know what cat woman looked like so i just got a cat nose&whiskers) i love having friends who are brave enough to do full face face painting (even though i didn't)
christy wanted to be the joker but wasn't allowed to be because it wouldn't be tactful because of the Colorado shootings. so she came and had her face drawn with me instead at our resident artist's stall. and my picture didn't look like me i don't think but it was fun to do anyway!
this is getting to be an awfully long post but still
i jumped on the bouncy castle with the little kids and christy and didn;t mind the sweaty bodies and shrill screams and just revelled in having fun that glorious day. i think it was brilliant brilliant bright and wonderful, and not just because of the happenings because happenings don;t make joy (only temporary happiness, and family day was joy because i can feel the euphoria coursing through me again as i write)
