Disarray

My personal life is in a bit of a disarray. I'm not really functioning very well... I can't keep track of what I am supposed to read, what I need to bring to class, and when assignments are due. My iCal calendar is out-of-sync with my life. I almost didn't go to class yesterday because I had accidentally deleted the class from iCal the week before.

Fortunately, I have friends who would say things like, "Where is English class today?" (Me: "What English class?" Friend: "English class! Today! At 3:30pm!" Me: "Oh.") And stuff like "Have you done Mr Ren?" (Me: "Who is Mr Ren??") And lecturers who say, "You have to hand in your reflections personally to your tutor at the end of the lecture." Which leaves me scrambling to complete it during the lecture itself. Thank God for laptops and multi-tasking.

I also had a friend look into my eyes and say, "You've been crying." Which I denied vehemently.

These days, I function only at the extreme ends of the spectrum of emotion. It is only during quiet moments like these, when I am sitting outdoors, feeling the breeze, that I remember who I am.


I wish
you could feel this breeze I feel,
the texture of the pebbled stone
against the soles of your feet.

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Great Eastern Run 10km

This is a race of firsts. It is the first time I am participating in a women's run, and the first time I'm running a race alone.

Both rather mind-opening experiences I have to say! I'm used to being a rare damsel in a sea of hot sweaty men (remember the "Spot the Woman" contest in my blog post about the Sheares Bridge Run?) It is such a treat to stand in the holding area before flag-off and not worry about bumping into sweaty bodies. Very nice. I can even look about the holding area since I'm no longer shorter than average. ;)

SPOT THE MEN CONTEST!





It is a lot more tiring running a race on your own than with someone else, I have to say... I push myself so much harder. Although it is to a certain extent still a spectator or social type of sport — I love watching the fast ones whiz past me on their return leg: I always hoot and cheer for them — I think about the distance and the time so much more when alone. And I am so much more tired when I am done.

Got a chip time of 1hr 2mins 26sec. I wish I could have broken the hour, but I haven't been running very consistently these days, so it was really as fast as I could have gone... I'm happy with it though. Worth the pain. :) Seriously, when I crossed the finish line, I was seeing stars and had to squat for a bit — I am that unfit!! :)

ITB woes again. Boohoo.

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Anatomy

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Assignment due on Monday

But in no frame of mind to do it.

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Living in Singapore

My dad has white hair, yah? He is slowly starting to look like an old man — the wrinkles about his eyes, the charcoal hair, the almost-leathery skin. He is also a very smart man. He is an RI boy. He speaks a smattering of languages and dialects: English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew, and Malay. He can translate a talk from English to Hokkien in real time. Impressive stuff. He has absolutely no airs about him — he wears his ah-pek (old man) trousers and his ah-pek tshirts everywhere. He has a huge vocabulary, but he pronounces everything like a china-man.

So, when he goes to the doctor's, he gets his medicine with these little red circles drawn on them. He couldn't figure out what they were... until this morning, when he excitedly told me, "They are drawing for me how many pills I should take!" It's brilliant. I think it's brilliant that the pharmacist should do that. Although my dad can read and doesn't need the red circles (in fact, the red circles added to his confusion), it is cool that the pharmacist should do that for people who may not be able to read English. It makes me like Singapore that little bit more.


One red circle for one in the morning


Two red circles for two after breakfast

But there are two sides to the coin. Sometimes my dad gets extra food from the hawkers for a lower price just because he looks old and friendly. Free soup from the Western stall, extra serving of vegetables, etc. On the flip side, sometimes people take advantage because you look old by cutting queue, speaking to you like you are daft, and being very rude.

But that is the way it is I guess. It is the same if you look young — sometimes you get treated better than normal, sometimes worse. But "normal" is debatable.

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What I am having for breakfast

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Eye for a Guy

I'm watching Eye for a Guy on the mobile TV in the public bus and something about the way the beautiful host eliminated the good looking men with such cool aplomb made me sick. It's a bloody power play.

And i'm that cocky idiot.

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My coffee and me

I think I'm drinking too much coffee. I had a cup of thick local kopi this morning about 9am, and now I have a frothy flat white on my table as I work on my Mac. I'm going to have coffee-stained teeth at this rate, along with the coffee-smelling pee that I already have. (Okay, sorry, too much info!)

I'm reading an article about writing today. There is a quote in it that I like very much.

Writing for me is almost never a straightforward, dispassionate matter of presenting information or defending conclusions. I assume — indeed, hope — that writing will entail and interplay of cognition and affect, of rationality and emotion, of conscious, disciplined effort and intuition and inspiration. ~ Lee Odell, Constants and Variations in my Writing Process

True, isn't it? Although sometimes I desperately wish I could write and present information in a "straightforward, dispassionate" way, rather than this complicated emotive/intuitive/undisciplined thing that I tend to do.

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Sweet and Power Sock

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Lost in Gimp

I mucked around with Gimp this afternoon and created this.



It's a frankenstein montage badly put together, but gosh, it felt really good mucking around with an image editor again. Like in the old days cocooned in an office on lazy afternoons, just me and the computer screen, staring at pixels, selecting, deselecting, layering, deleting, cropping.

I like this kind of work. I get lost in it and forget the time.

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