for someone who spent her early teenage years chasing after the title of 'rebel', i've somehow become a massive stickler for manners and righteousness. and the fact that so many bloody singaporeans have such bad manners is pissing me off. seriously. having the lift close in my face two days straight is not funny. absolutely appalling. bloody hell

my heart sank when i heard the news. politics and power, how scary they are.. that they can tear apart a country, people who have the same blood running through them, families and friends. at the end of the day, lives are lost, sons are being mourned, homes are ruined, hate is created.. all for what? how i wish violence did not exist.

christmas time has always been london time (: not the exact date, but the whole month before it. we used to go to london every few years in december when i was young, to revel in the christmas lights along oxford street, regent street and in harrods. to me, christmas in london was all about the bright sparkling lights, crazy amounts of shopping, mulled wine, pubs, ice-skating and books. haha. i loved my london bookshops.

and the past three years, it was all about christmas shopping with angela, a visit to some bloody ass cold country (paris, stockholm & helsinki), christmas markets, mulled wine (tt is my BIGGEST christmas love), cider, christmas shopping and all the lovely jolly festive spirit. mms (:

well at least i get the freezing ass country trip :p and mulled wine of course. hahaha. seoul's already beneath zero degrees (time to bring out the whole trunk of winter clothes i've amassed over the years), and ski season's about to begin in niseko. hello cold and powder snow (: here i come. oh nothing makes me happier than freezing temperatures and christmas (: they are love.

a shrug, a faint smile and all that patience i seem to show. i'm willing to wait and put everything on the line now because i believe it is worth waiting for. or perhaps something better hasn't come along. but then again i haven't been particularly active in seeking that 'something better' have i?

so i continue waiting. patiently. perhaps foolishly.

and yet it is times like these, in the depths of the night and darkness and there is nothing to distract me from my consuming thoughts, that i wonder, 'what if'? what if what i waited for comes true, does it mean happily ever after? but worse than that, what if it never comes true, or i never get a shot at it? or if everything is shattered by one much better than me? then what becomes of these years? these years that i spent waiting. would they just be empty and in vain?

oh huang qiushuang is an absolute delight to watch (: and tanaka rie has the loveliest body lines and a beautiful smile (((: oh how i love gymnastics

mms. the best part of the asian games is the glimpses i get of tomita hiroyuki (: ahh those few seconds are the best. brings back memories of the 2004 olympics. ahh love love love.

tonight was lovely (:

you can so tell from the frequency of one's blog posts whether they're having exams or not :p

did i mention i'm free like a birdddddd (provided i pass yeh)

i'm just counting down the days till my darling loves in nus finish their exams (don't complain, i'm suffering without you all too). and then we are off to SEOUL BABYYYYY :D the last time i traveled with rachel was wayyyy back in 2007 0_o too long rachel tan :p and so far it's never been ming, rachel & i. just like the 202 days. i feel like giving the two of them chinese textbooks and seeing whether they still flip to the same pages. that was way creepy. mms.

and one day after i arrive back from seoul, i'm off to hokkaido's niseko village for some bruising tumbling down the mountain slopes, erh i mean snowboarding :D i'll so be black & blue -.- just hope i don't get whiplash & a concussion again. that really hurt -.- it is massive seow family outing. hai. this is going to be one hell of a noisy trip i tell you. and then i get 4 days in tokyo with my uncle :DDD teehee, two days will be in harajuku & shibuya. eeeee :D tanoshii ne :D hahaha.

mms my nihongo sensei is simply adorable. her last name's kawai. grins. me wa todemo ookii desune. eigo mo iidesune. maishuu ishonni nihongo hanashitteimasu. tanoshikute, omoshiroi desu. ima nihongo to kankokugo wa benkyoshitteimasu. kankokugo no kotoba wa todemo muzukashi desune ): taihen desune. hai.

long day tmr :p i'm exhausted. sleep sleep. oyasuminasai (:

this looks like a good movie :p jake gyllenhaal is like red wine damnit. aging very very well (:

damn, i've got 3 exams next week. of which 2 i'm rather blank about and all i can focus on right now is the rather loud and annoying throb in my right temple. argh.

the one who can't say no is always the loser. when you put anything up on a platter, all ready & available for the taking, all you end up with are the desperate ones who'll take anything. lovely.

studying isn't working. i'm going to sleep. mother's dragging me to a family luncheon tmr. the day before crim -.- thanks mum. and then there's bloody evidence on weds and f-ing company on friday. gee i love being a lawyer.

seriously, if at the age of 30 i'm nowhere near my dream of being an international lawyer, i'm quitting everything and go live the rest of my life out floating from one city to the next. all this is only bearable because of that goal in the far distance. and somehow my parents don't quite seem to get that. they think my 'dreams' are just well dreams. another bloody phase i'll get over. we'll see

cass: i read the article that you had put up a link to, and my feminist tendencies flared up like the biggest gold-dust firework you see on national day. BOOM right across the sky. i'd love to hear cui's opinion on this.

okay. i get the derision and slight contempt for what he termed as 'mediocre females'. yes i know what kind of girls he's talking about, and while i do roll my eyes at these girls when i see them dragging their stupid flip-flops along the shiny floors of one of the shopping centres in orchard, in their tiny micro shorts, with their mandatory lv bags perched carefully on a jutting out arm.. somehow i feel affronted as a female with the tag of mediocrity placed upon them.

i have my fair share of complaints about people who just live to exist. they go through the same motions everyday of their life, fulfill the necessary obligations, school, degree, job, marriage, kids, a few lv bags here and there, grandkids, look after them, and then die. sometimes i just wish i could see some motivation, hope, dreams or whatever. the guts to be different, the yearning to make a change.

but at the same time i know that for some people, there simply is no such lofty ambitions. they are happy to live each day quietly and peacefully. some live to survive. and who is fault them for that. i don't believe that anyone has the right to just sit there and damn these women just because they fall into the faceless average singaporean girl category. we can criticise lifestyles on a personal level, in the sense that i don't like that lifestyle or i won't live my way like that. that's you. that doesn't give one a right to call them mediocre.

secondly, i think history has shown, and it is still going on now, the male role in female subordination has not simply been limited to the creation of a 'damsel in distress' role, or that or a 'virtuous wife and mother'. men have continually seek to put women in what they believe to be their 'rightful place', be it through social stigma, societal and familial pressure or even violence. Iran recently gave out execution orders for the woman who was accused of adultery. and while there are definitely many women who voluntarily accept the subordinate role so created, is it so bad. is it so wrong to choose that? does that make them mediocre?

and then, the topic of mediocre men. HAHAHA :p oh trust me i have a lot to talk about them. its so easy to say that all women care about are their looks. gee, i wonder who made them so beauty conscious with chauvinistic men constantly comparing which girls has the hottest legs, telling their girlfriends they are fat when they themselves have paunches at the age of 25. like i said, there are faults on both sides of the coin. i'm not trying to pin these on men. i'm just trying to say it is unfair to only criticise women as mediocre for being a certain way, and completely leaving out the other sex's criticisms.

and lastly, snorts, this is the argument that annoys me to no end ALL THE TIME. i absolutely absolutely absolutely (emphasis felt?) hate the fact that a passion or interest in fashion seems to constantly be used as an argument in support of mediocrity/lack of seriousness/lack of intelligence/anything bad about the female sex really. c'mon. the most common group of people i hear these statements from are those who think way too highly of themselves, take themselves too seriously and think that a lack of fashion seems to equate to intelligence or seriousness about their work. often i feel that the men who come up with these arguments just sound so sexist.

why does an interest in fashion and beauty make you boring/such a typical girl/'mediocre'? it is a form of personal pride, looking presentable no? and here they can list a whole list of artists as 'brilliant people' like picasso, van gogh and botticelli. but can't they see that fashion is another art too? a much more practical art in fact - you can wear it, cover your body and keep you warm at times :p instead of hanging it on a wall or keep it in a museum under lock and key. and fashion has produced an incredibly long list of brilliant geniuses too - chanel, karl lagerfeld, alexander mcqueen, balenciaga, just to name a few. isn't it funny how your so-called 'frivolous, mundane and oh-so-feminine based' industry is led by so many brilliant males. sorry, i think an attempt to copy these fashions from far east is much better than the typical male singaporean's uniform of bermudas, polo shirt and slippers. thanks :p

whoosh. i think my brain got fried during my spore constitutional law exam today -.- what a bloody waste of my time. mms. glad that's over with. i think i passed :p haha. on to the remaining three.

do tell me what you thought cui :p

ps. i know this is bordering slightly on a personal attack, but the inclusion of the japanese words were simply unnecessary, and often erh incorrect or simply irrelevant -.-

it completely breaks my heart to see the old women and men separated by the north and south divide in korea. the scenes of the reunion of a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousand families, weeping, wailing, clasping hands tightly together in hope that the inevitable separation (again) would not come. i don't understand the need to tear people apart like that, to hurt people who are of the same blood, same nationality and same culture like that. its so cruel when you see the face of an old man crumple upon finding out his mother hadn't been able to wait for him, and had died a few days before being able to meet him again after decades.

was this all really worth it? it scares me how much one person can affect so many lives, tear so many families apart.

mmm :D mondays and tuesdays are the happiest days of my week. sungkyunkwan scandal is the new love of my life. swoons