i still cannot spell reminisce / reminiscing correctly (though those are correctly spelt). grawr.

anyway, that's beside the point, other than the fact that it gets downright irritating when your mistake slaps you in the face all the time, you getting the spelling wrong in your CAP journal even after having written that word in at least 2 poems. why yes, while some CAP people are happily reminiscing (okay, good i can spell it right now, yay me) about the happy 1st week of holidays spent at eusoff hall (!) and lt13 (!!), i'm here doing my reminiscence in another way, by filling up my rather blank CAP journal. i daresay it is equally enriching and engaging, though 'tis sad that one writes without company except a computer, which then again, doesn't exactly suit the definition of 'company'. still, i am happy for my CAP journal, it is already (i bet) 10 times as long as the gargantuan blogpost below, replete with cheesy pictures comical illustrations.

oh and when i say gargantuan i really do mean gargantuan. unless you deem 3000+ words as an un-gargantuan number, then i have nothing to say.

[edit] no it is not 3000+. it is, to be accurate, um, 5362 words long, but at the same time that is not an extremely accurate representation considering i put in ng yi-sheng's poem, which in itself takes up a good hundred words. wait, my word count tells me that, to be exact, it is 750 words long. okay whatever. you get the idea. wait! a 750 word poem is, long, gosh. [/edit]

on yet another note, i have finished my trio of poems! which is much joy, though i have a love-hate relationship with the last. i like the wordplay, but it doesn't flow half as well as the other two. and now i'm having second thoughts about grouping them together as a bunch, because somehow the focus of that trio is starting to become hard to pin down, and it is unforgivable when your poem loses its focus. but i can't bear to pull them apart either. ohwell. ): and yuck, the other poem which i thought was quite good initially doesn't seem half as impressive now, and i still wonder if 'evening' takes the dance metaphor a bit too much. i maintain my liking for 'one-three' though - or rather, i like the title itself - but then again this was just written yesterday, and a week on i may just grow to abhor it like the rest. okay michelle you have a lot to learn, and you'd better learn it soon.

**

to go off on a tangent, happy birthday michelle! (: no, not me.

**

okay to get off rather CAP-ish / literature-ish topics, i was listening to symphony92.4 (hmph, it's nice okay!) and then they played the 4th movement of chopin's 3rd sonata (op58, the nice, broad one haha). comments like i-like-li-yundi's-interpretation-better-than-lang-lang's aside, i realized that i miss chopin's music so, so much. ): ahem, depriving me of chopin for at least 3 months is not a good idea. which is why i want my lrsm to be over as soon as possible. okay maybe not. actually, i can't even put my finger on what exactly makes his music so irresistible, but i guess it's the broadness? the expansive melodies and the sense of space in his chords (plus the harmony!), okay maybe i'm not really sure. (look bach also has expansive melodies, or should i say melodies that keep churning out themselves, but then again i do not exactly, um, like bach. on the other hand, apparently i do enjoy abusing parantheses!) at any sense i think i have falsified senses of grandeur, judging from the kinds of music that i prefer. haha, beethoven and his sonorities, chopin and his melodies, debussy and his well, poetic emptiness? fine so emptiness isn't the word to use here, but grawr. and sibelius' orchestration! :D hee, but copland's sense of vastness in 'rodeo' still doesn't appeal to me, one wonders why. (and this reminds me of the 'american effect' that i was joking about one day, hahaha. don't worry, it's nothing insulting / inflammatory.)

to further add on to that list, ave maria too! yay that is just, pure choral joy! (: even though i still screech horribly at the high parts (and yes i have absolutely no idea why i was put to sing the chorus 2 soprano 1 part with all the high 'a's littered all over the place when i ain't even a 1st soprano), the chords are worth all the 'ouch-my-throats' and voice strains, though i guess it doesn't strain the voice as bad as jaakobin's glissandos do. :D choir is much, much love! and i really do think voice is cool, not only because of the stuff like you being your own instrument and its immense 'portability' (heehee, syf post), but also how you can get different shades from that one voice. okay so the piano can create various tone colours, but somehow, it just feels like a different thing altogether. and grawr, my ability to verbalize / put thing down in words is horrendous, oh i cry. ): anyhow, i've grown to realize that if we didn't have choir practices so regularly, i think my life would be, a lot less eventful and interesting. i wouldn't groan about choir practices now, even if the next day was an all-important exam or something; i probably would groan if they cancelled choir practices out of the blue. to sing with RGSChoir is such an immense joy that i can't put it down in words, and the best thing of it all, it destresses. yes. (:

so haha, now i join the legion of seniors (nevermind i'm a senior junior, which technically still makes me a senior, hahaha xD) whose lives revolve, or almost revolve, around choir. hmm, i guess choir really is that important. (: of course, i'm aware that not everybody will share this degree of passion, but sometimes it's just sad when other people don't put in effort. well, we're singing, we're not mumbling! so i guess not properly opening your mouth isn't going to help matters. then again, i'm horribly proud for my juniors even though they make fun of me just so often hmph who dare to sing out and who already love choir with their hearts and souls! (: and haha, when i saw fiona 'correcting' stefanie's pitch when we were singing ave (or at least, it resembled that) it felt like pre-prague all over again, when i was being horrible in pitching and she was helping me with it (and hopefully, i've grown better at that, hopefully). :D ahh fiona is such a lovely senior. (:

**

the monk is such a good book, siriusly seriously! granted, it cannot exactly be considered 'good' content-wise, but think of it in literary terms and i say matthew lewis did a real neat job. the way he presents ambrosio's thoughts makes them easy to identify with (as in, the thought processes that ambrosio goes through, not the actual thoughts themselves), and i liked how the gothic elements are nicely woven into the text without seeming as if they were forced upon it. y'know, when the marquis de la cisternas (i think he's called raymond but i'm not so sure because a deluge of characters invariably leaves my head in a mess) talks to his page (i forgot his name -.-) about the cons of writing literature and getting them published, somehow it just gave me the sense that he was indirectly trying to justify his work, especially since it was so controversial, like for the bits about how one was definitely going to face public scrutiny, that critics would either attack your text and tear it to bits, or if the text is infallible, they attack your private life and tear that to bits. okay so maybe the situation isn't that bad nowadays, but it seemed interesting in the context of the book. probably the only thing that i didn't like about it was how it had so many subplots going on at the same time, and how he interchanges between subplots all the time, such that while you're waiting for the next piece of action in this particular subplot he moves on to yet another. or maybe that's just my brain being too slow to comprehend this work of a genius.

and i have yet to finish it! i've had 3 weeks to read it, and stacey finished it in 2 days. see, i win! -.-

**

qiqi was asking me how to calculate gradient during choir, and i forgot. ): which totally plumbed me into depths of despair over my levels of intelligence, and memory, for that matter. grawr sometimes i wonder what my results tell me: am i actually understanding the subject and doing okay in it, or is it merely that my methods of studying just happen to work. i don't like forgetting things after i've learnt them, and after they've been used in exams, but somehow this has gotten to me, and i know that's not supposed to be it. am i just a really good crammer, someone study-smart, or am i truly getting the subject, hmph. ): yaargh it would be depressing if i were the former; hopefully i'm not.

(then again, when i was trying to get to sleep that night and failing rather miserably, i decided to think about plain form for japanese and kinematics graph thingums for physics, and boy, was i glad that i could still basically remember the stuff, or at least, fathom out how it works. it was a good feeling then, and i must say that having such gullible optimism is quite helpful at times, hmm. okay scratch that. i shall be happily optimistic then, which could possibly count as being egotistical, but still, happily optimistic i shall be! :D)

**

i was reminded of the newspaper article about two sisters sharing around 16,000 friendster friends between them while blogsurfing, and was led on to think about what a friend truly is. of which the conclusions i shall not post here, for fear of sounding angsty! (: haha, somehow i still do think that everyone is their own best friend; either that or it's me being unwilling to open up to others (and monologuing on this page which i 'solely use and abuse', to quote a line from a mentorship poem, and with a bit of luck that may be the exact line).

**

i am skipping from topic to topic as quickly as a sheep flits across a patch of grass - which may not be exactly very fast, actually - but to those two observations, never mind. (hey is this the first time in many blogposts that i actually left a space between the two words 'never' and 'mind' or what!) anyway, it didn't hit me that we have to submit subject combinations in august until recent days, but well, i think my preferred combination is quite fixed. looking back to a post that i wrote last year (when i was agonizing about combinations, haha), i guess some of the things i said still stand, except for the bits about hating physics (i'm officially okay with it now, as long as the teacher is good) and possibly taking history and geography (history, i have almost 80% ruled out). but i shall be a bit ambitious and pursue one of the options that i've considered last year, and if i die, i shall um, drop something. being able to cope that way may be wishful thinking, but i'm still going to, well, try it out. :D (your cue to say: gullible optimism. to which i will reply: happily optimistic! okay i am deranged; i am talking to myself. dear me.)

**

okay enough enough, this post is long enough as it is, without my adding on more random thoughts to it. wait no i must talk about some stuff that happened during this week before i end off, because it's some stuff that's worth commemorating (or at least, remembering).

bringing the beyond kids out to pasir ris park was quite fun, albeit a tad tiring. such vitality these kids have - i don't even think i was that energetic at their age! though it's fun being childish once again, bobbing up and down on swings, chasing after one another across a playground, and other random things that a little kid would love to do. i think if we had to do more service learning / if i had more time, i wouldn't mind volunteering there. serious.

and haha, the chinese writing camp thingy on wednesday! the chinese name for it sounds really, bombastic. -.- it scarily reminded me of CAP. i mean, the day started off with a plenary, then we went off to the botanic gardens on an excursion for inspiration (haha literary excursion!), writing workshops and a disguised performance workshop. (and still i say 'no thank you' to dance since it's the only time which makes me feel horribly, invalid.) well then again the geb officer in charge was the same person who was handling chinese CAP matters, so hmm. nevertheless, it was nice experiencing a mini-CAP, and hurhur, i can write something resembling a chinese poem. hahaha(: i'm quite pleased with it (though you have to take into consideration my horribly low expectations), but i don't think i'll be translating it for my mentorship portfolio. it just won't feel right; after all each language has its own, uh, voice? okay i'll keep it as: it just won't feel right.

**

fine so now i shall end, yes and i mean it. the 100th post just before i get plunged into the vigorous workloads known as 'school', and a long one so that, uhm, nevermind. i hereby bid farewell to my holidays - even though there's still a day left - and greatly anticipate my normal life to start once again.

nah, that was sarcastic. it would be wrong if it were true.

or zongmin, in english, chinese or - okay, not really otherwise.

rafflesian
111 (06) | 213 (07) | 414 (09)
tripscience/lit♥ + mep, crab! (:
RGSChoir♥: sop2/alto1 + appassionata!
RGSPB-fior, batch of 'o9! (:
waddlian :D
CAPper'o7!
OBS}hillary!♥
team rgs/nsc08! (:
RGS-ICYL08: FIXcomm!♥
wycf08, satb choir! :D
ISYF@SG09!♥

lives, writes, sings, plays the piano, and attempts to sound intellectual at times (conclusion: fails rather miserably).

loves music (almost strictly classical, hurhur & inclusive of faziolis!), literature (& also the sciences - no they are not in conflict), making hopelessly lame puns, laughter, white/milk chocolate, cheesecake, the world & the people in it. list not exhaustive, by the way.

wants the world to be filled with peace, joy and love, and also wants (perhaps a little more selfishly) to be happy, plus lead a life of purpose. that would be more than enough. (:

oh, and she likes embarking on her own 'free hugs!' campaigns after exams and the like; not really sure why. D: (at any rate, you can tell that she's random enough.)

amanda g.
amanda y.
baozhing
brenda l.
brenda s.
chanel
charmaine
chloe
darrell
deborah l.
deborah z.
elizabeth
fangying
fiona
frances
giovanni
grace k.
grace z.
iris
jacqueline
jane
jiaxuan
jingjie
jovina
kezia
leevoon
lisa
lynette
madeline
may
mengshi
michelle
natalie
nikhita
peiying
priscilla
samantha
sarah
seetteng
shanjee
shiaoyen
shermaine
shze hui
siyi
sophia
stacey
stefanie
suetping
tienli
vanessa
wanhui
wanjiun
weite
xinyuan
yeephon
yinleng
yujia
zeslene

111'06
213'07
rgs choir
thefugacious@wordpress!

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very plain, she knows; but this is probably herself in its entirety - nothing more than a compilation of perhaps-boring-to-you little things (and the occasional Important Event), but also nothing less than all the brilliant memories which constitutes her life, and perhaps yours.

also interpreted as an inability to express with other things but words (nothing more, nothing less!), although even words sometimes won't do enough. but she does like orange.

v2.0 (230208): maybe solid grey isn't that fantastic after all. but wordy is good, all the same. she's weird, she knows.

ver. i-pretend-that-it-is-3.0-when-i-know-it-is-not (070608): i am boring, take that. (:

v4.0 (200908): got bored, so cut down on the quasi-fanciful stuff even more. perfectly plain now, though somehow the background still doesn't work on safari / google chrome. ):