my house

is seriously

a warzone.


it's a tug of war inside me. amidst all the chaos (that take on both tangible and emotional meaning), i struggle to find myself, and to say goodbye to the things that have defined my life for the past 10 years.

auf wiedersehen, nighttime HTHTs on flanking bedposts, hougang mall dinners, 107/82/113 rides to kovan mrt and, again, big kitchen with brown cabinets.

mr/ms tenant, pls treat my humble abode well thank you.

再过两天，景物依旧，人事已非。期待着新居，但心头还真挂着一点惆怅，一丝不舍。



working with germans have accustomed me to phrases like "please recall me about the issue....." and "please accost me about the email......"

but once in while, it still tickles me. ha, haha, hahaha. :P

looking fwd to dinner with cell at night, and s17 get-tgtr on sun for sk1's party (feeling sore for missing out on shotengai and walawala last sat grrr). yay :)





an unfortunate event, but your actions yesterday really, really touched me.


thank you, for little surprises (although unknowingly carried out) like these (:


just two weeks left.

just two weeks, and i will say bye to lilting birdsongs, big kitchen with brown cabinets, and 21 years of rooming with at least one other person.

and also good riddance to the thugs below on the first floor.

two weeks, and i say hello to my castle, and weave new sweet dreams within walls of Lustre Pink & Peach Chiffon. (:

moving and change are always bittersweet, no?



online ikea shopping is fun. (:

hospital trips are depressing.

i love tele-conversations with people i love. :)

and i do realise, that these 3 statements have essentially nothing to do with each other.


having had only two papers this sem, my exams ended outrageously early. yep, when most ppl were still feverishly eating paper and drinking ink, lucky-me was liberated from the shackles of exam prison TWO thursdays ago. :)

totally digged the look of envy on my friends' faces :D

and ever since, it's never been a moment of rest, as i found myself running out of the house every single day for various reasons, starting from the very day after my last paper. post-exam, and not one day spent at home! and it's only just the beginning, for the list of post-exam plans in my orange notebook reminds me that there is more to do. :D


exam closure marked the end of april.

thank you for your call that day dear. (:


so, to sum it up, i've been
- shopping
- meeting ppl
- singing (with hk, sk, jf and bh)
- attending church activities
- spending entire days at CG cleaning up and other assorted hard labour

aaaanddd......


working.



ah yes. last paper on thursday. reported to Rödl & Partner the next day.

what can i say? it's been..... interesting. not always positive, but i'm eternally thankful, again and again, for wonderful (german) colleagues like Eike, Lukas (Lucas?) and Sigrid. especially Sigrid, the only person in the whole office (a small spore branch) whom i can almost always fully understand.

i dunno, is it the accent? she hails from an area near stuttgart, maybe i'm more used to it. plus she speaks slower. for the rest, i've reasoned that it's either their accent, or my pathetic grasp of german, that wipes my mind blank in one swift swipe when they talk to me. they probably think my blank look is the way i look all the time.

and Eike, thank God for him. i've been blessed in many ways since coming into this office (despite the various challenges) and he is w/o a doubt one of them. w/o his help and warmth i'd definitely have had a much harder time adapting (and comprehending instructions from Mathias, my boss)

not forgetting intern Martina (from switzerland), she's real cool. and Paul, whose warm and cheery personality adds dashes of colour to the place.


and also kenneth & suzanne, who make my life in a work environment that's so german in every way (from german emails, german chatter to german keyboards) a little bit more sane by simply being normal, true-blue singaporeans, like me. :)

not forgetting, of course, 1.30 lunches with bo (:

sometimes, these days,

as i shuffle along orchard underpasses, ambling past the inviting wares of ion and wisma (tactfully averting my gaze trying not to succumb to retail sins),

or as i travel skywards in the shaw centre elevator, i think of how, even as internships shun me and normal jobs elude me, i'm actually blessed, for it's not everywhere that i can get a german environment like that.



saturday, yet another day of hard menial work at CG (where some incidents made me thoughtful, indeed, broke my heart, just like several ones that have occurred over the past few months, but that's for another post).

after which, we made our way to tanjong pagar!

for privacy reasons (and to protect my own back from the fury of certain family members hahah), photos here are either of back/side view, or heavily edited. :)

entourage: me and zel's mom


sattine bridal studio (:


long, heavy trains are EXHAUSTING....!!

day one. a pathetic battle.

but come thursday, i will be free. (:

in between periods of mugging (perforated with all sorts of distractions), scribbles of plans ahead in my orange notebook bring sunshine to the monotony of black typewritten garbage on creased white stapled sheets of paper with coloured cursive scribblings all over.



sleepless nights make me angry with myself.. no position seems right and thoughts ranging from stuff as diverse as childhood memories in the old house to scenes from an earlier show wreak havoc in my seat of consciousness, keeping me, well, conscious. i relish those nights when i just get sucked into the dizzying fantasy world of slumber on instant contact with my pillow. sadly, they are far and few between.

chinese assault up ahead. beware.


有时还真搞不清楚，何时是梦，何时是真。梦境与现实之间的界限，有时真的划也划不清。

梦犹如真，实亦像梦；真真假假，假假真真。
以假乱真，以虚换实的次数，在我生活中竟时不时出现。

有时一觉醒来，开始一天的琐碎，心里还会纳闷，刚刚的过眼云烟，是昨天，前天，上周发生的事，还是只是又糊里糊涂编织了一场梦？怎么竟有如此真实，实在的感觉.....

有人说日有所思，夜有所梦。那是否有夜之所梦，日化为实这种事呢?

继续做梦吧，现实生活中无法实现或达成的，也许在梦里都能一一实现。而且做梦，对我来说往往是一种逃避，一种解脱。

反正梦，是天马行空的。只要不被突然唤醒就好。
unless it's a nightmare. then of course die also must try to wake up lol.


唯美梦境因现实所逼而烟消云散，还真是一种遗憾。我想不管是谁都曾经经历过吧。


today was very good. (:

despite the long trek to NUS, money&banking midterm results made up for it (and also for the sorely disappointing public finance one). plus i bumped into debs in sch. following which, journey mercy led me to shaw centre on time and the people and envt that greeted me, although small, was one of the friendliest i could've asked for. conversations held almost entirely in german were....... delightful. Mr Weingarten and Ms Schuetz were, in particular, simply charming.

for frequent german interaction like that, i'd gladly create ppt slides, order coffee or run to the embassy.


and although it was raining in orchard when i left, not one drop assaulted me when i reached hougang, where i had my hair cut by an affable guy. in fact, the skies were clear when i put my key to the lock, a rarity at 5pm these days....

lovely day. (:


the weather seems to follow a template these days. it's HOT in the day and then when 4/5pm comes, BOOM. RAIN.

predictability's good, but predictability (and therefore sense of preparedness and assuredness) can sometimes wind down to plain monotony.

outdoor businesses, i feel for you.

the older sister ytd quipped:
"这个冰岛，平时没有什么新闻，最近突然间一直上电视，都是因为负面新闻。"

true. first its bankruptcy. and now volcanic ash, which wouldnt usu be big news except it just left hundreds stranded at airports waiting for the next flight home :/



tomorrow, shaw centre.

"ich komme morgen um 15Uhr" ....... !!!


recently i've been staying up at night and adding to electricity bills for this.





got me hooked! stuff that i gladly stay up on sat nights and wake up on sun mornings for. :)

and i rmb this adorable cherub of a boy in a programme about children nutrition:

"neeiiinn.... arm sind wir nicht!"

and a pause, with his adorable eyeballs rolling about in childlike contemplation. and then.....

"... aber auch nicht reich.."

lol. aw. cute lah.


i actually started with radio, and it's really interesting to hear people calling in to talk about their lives, the traffic & other topics, or to hear "guten morgen" and 6am weather/traffic reports at 12pm on sundays, in real time, half the world away.



:) the wonders of technology.


speaking of round-the-world connections, it was good to hear your voice, transmitted from up north right down to the equator.

i'm really glad there's nothing but brutal honesty between us. :)



and so, it's reading week. exams are coming. and as much as i keep trying to convince myself, i cannot, cannot believe that the sem has come and gone. that my year 2 is done.

that, when august comes a'knocking, i will be a full-fledged, make-no-mistake-about-it, year 3.

YEAR THREE. OMG. WHERETO HAS TIME FLOWN.

you know how they say time flies? well in uni it doesnt.

it hurtles.


i cannot, absolutely CANNOT believe that four semesters of german have elapsed, just like that. it really only feels like yesterday that i plunged into this, and as i've said many times and will say again, it has been nothing short of an amazing, amazing journey.

friday 6pm end of german tutorial brought a tinge of sadness (the rain didnt help) to my disposition and as i sat with pris at central forum before our daddies came, we shared our disbelief at how time has flown and GAP has ended so quickly. actually nearly everyone else i talked to shared the same sentiment.

four semesters. all the familiar faces. it's gonna be different routes for us from now. some of us will be going for exchange, some continuing with german 5, some not, some ........undecided.

for four sems, german has been so naturally a part of our lives that we always only had to bid for four modules, bcos german was a given, and when ppl asked what mods we did, german was always a definite, kind of like "duh".



year 2 sem 2, you've been good to me. :)

i liked mondays, bcos it was my official free day.
i liked tuesdays, bcos there's german and sch ended at 11.
i liked wednesdays, bcos it was my unofficial, self-declared free day. (heheh)
and thursdays, bcos there's german, and i get to meet jf and bh for lunch & marketing.
and fridays too, bcos i start at 2, there's german, and cell after sch.

taking only 4 mods didnt occur by choice, but from sthg initially so undesirable, many good things have been derived. :)



on a last note, squash on sat with jf at CG was good, after so long. i still suck at it though. like really badly.

and i really hope all the uncertainties about that will iron out. bcos it's april already and may is coming.


everyday, it's a fight.

a fight that begins from the moment you open your eyes in the morning. you fight to lift your limp self out of your comfy pillow, and as the day runs its course, you fight insecurities, troubles, demons, competition, all having a field day inside you.

my fight, it eats me from within.

but i know, deep down,

that God is bigger than all my worries. (:

(some ppl actually think that's me in the pic lol)


seeing "ganz toll!" on my german worksheets just makes me want to giggle in delight.

and.... i think i am seriously going to have a heart attack soon.

"ja darüber würden wir dann sprechen – teils auf deutsch teils auf englisch."

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!