Of Yellow and PEACOCK Blue

Met up with a JC mate last week, and sometime during the dinner, he said, "You know what, after so many years of boys' school (9 that I knew of - 4 years of studying in one, and 5 years of teaching in another), I am going to the other side."

"What?" I replied in between mouthful of pizza and beer (I is super hungry then..gosh so unglam) "Make sure you dont end up getting caned at the end of the day!"

"Choy..I'm not that stupid!" he quipped. "Guess where I am going?"

I looked at him looking expectantly at me..."You are going to Crescent??" He smiled gleefully "Yup. The school with the yellow shirt and blue skirt!"And just then, he pointed to someone walking past where we were sitting, strolling down Lorong Mambong, obviously way past the time she was let off from school, "That's from Crescent right?" I turned, looked, laughed and said, "It's not blue! It's PEACOCK blue! And that kid is not from Crescent - she's from Fairfield Methodist la.."

And it's confirmed by wiki. No matter that the school song says that school colour is blue..cos I am sure that's just cos the composer can't fit the whole phrase "peacock blue" for aesthetical reasons. That's what sets us apart from other yellow and blues such as Fairfield (think it's only between Crescent and Fairfield?).

And that was last week. Today, out of the blue I was trying to recall how my school song went...I thought I lost it until I heard the first line of the "Oh let us join our school to praise.." and the rest just came flowing. 4 years of weekly singing during school assembly had some how ingrained the tune and words into obscure corners of the brain, but you never lose them totally :)

Oh...and so many other memories! As a Crescentian, I existed during the time of the 武则天 Mrs Ng Gek Tiang, whom left me the everlasting impression that education is a number game, and Mr Samat - the small Malay man whose son went to Taonan Primary and my first ever hockey coach. Mrs Wong the ever so nice Arts teacher, Mrs Loo the feasome discipline mistress (and I suffered once when I fell asleep in her history class..), Mr and Mrs Kit the married teacher-couple. Our temporary school site along Queensway, where I spent 3 out of 4 years, our small hockey room at the back of the canteen and subsequently near the bamboo grove (with many incidents of snakes..), our CLDS sessions on Saturday mornings (the most memorable year was the one when I had to devour the whole book on 杨贵妃 to come up with a script in 快板 for a drama depicting her life story. Shit I should have kept that script. It's amazing how I managed to do it). The irritating rotunda at the new site (where the school stands now) that led to our "exclusive" classrooms for the graduating classes at the highest floor. And our infamous cheer on the hockey pitch, which was so distinctive that I ever had a ACS boy my age repeating that to me once like just 2 months ago ("Oh you played hockey in Crescent? C-R-E-S-C-E-N-T Crescent! Can never forget that". I was seriously stumped and lost for words at that instance :/)

What I always remember is what Mrs Ng Gek Tiang said once. Though the 武则天's take on education was purely how the school stood in ranking, she said this, "You would never forget the school that you graduated from, no matter how long you have left the school for". (Ok, and she continued by saying "So you all better perform well so that next time after you graduate you wont feel shameful that you graduated from a bad school" Yes. She really said that.)

"The day when we must part,
May Crescent remain in our hearts"

Oh well, it's true that a bit of that yellow and peacock blue will always be there.

C-R-E-S-C-E-N-T CRESCENT!

Recovery Monday

After a weekend of bumpy boat rides, scrapped fingers/foot/knee ..the luxury of sleeping in on a Monday morning after a hectic week :) Too bad this luxury won't be too oft, don't think boss will be too pleased if I take Mondays off too frequent. Oh well...company was good and the experience brought a wider perspective for me after the first DMT trip.

The only thing is..I wonder where all the training from the uniform had gone to..did staff work for too long?

Laptop up!

yay! brother helped me changed the keyboard (the old one was probably way clogged with the dust, bits of chips, cottonwool, coagulated nail polish.....)and my laptop is up and running again! No more irritating "r"s!

The last 2 nights sans laptop were well spent nonetheless - 1st night I caught up on reading, last night I decided to do some introspective soul searching (not referring to sleep! though I must say the lack of distraction from the ingterneck kinda prompted early sleepy..vs now =.=").

Anyways..I wanna watch this!

Laptop down..

My laptop went crazy. The letter "r" is jammed and that irritating letter multiplies itself whenever it has a chance too.

Tried calling Dell service center, and realised that unless you have a valid warranty, the autobot manning your call dont care a hoot even if you are the Sultan of Brunei. For a 4 year old laptop, I wonder if there's any value in getting a new warranty.. guess obviously not.

Argh.. get a new laptop? seems like a bit overdoing it since it's only the keyboard. But then it's tempting since the laptop is like quite old already, and there are so many sweet-young..er.. new gizmo out there. But I am still sentimentally attached to this old fogey..well ok..more like the reluctance to re-learn getting used to a new laptop.

And why did it have to happen when COMEX just ended??

First thing first, got to backup all my previous MP3 and pics..and twiddle my thumb until my impulse draws me in the right direction - buy or repair?

BOOMZ!

When I first read about Ris Low in Sunday Times, I thought, what's the big deal...we are never gonna win any international beauty pageant anyway. Then someone in the office today was making jokes about "preen"-ing documents. So curiosity piqued, I went to check out Razor TV.

And I went..OMG..has the judges' tastes gone to the gutters?? Photoshop and makeup aside (which hadn't helped her during this interview clip at all)(and cant the makeup artiste find a pair of more natural falsies?), she could have won if she had been eloquent, smarty, charismatic...whatever. But when she start to speak, I realise why had there been such a big hooha. By 1.30mins (after the "read bi-gi-ni", "boomz", "about ME!"..I dont think she can pronounce "fashionista" too), I was squirming inside hoping that the presenter would stop asking her questions already. And then that's when the "leopard preens" came out.=.="

Well Ris Low could have been a really nice person for all that I know; I feel kinda sad for her that she has to put up with so much public scrutiny and lambaste. And that she is going to rep Singapore! I just hope that South Africans don't think she is the typical Singaporean gal, and that she loves the safari as much as she loves wearing"read bi-gi-ni".

剪掉

The hair was getting heavy, and somewhat irritating the hell out of me (one good thing that came out of it was that it kept my hands warm - I tuck them into my hair when the office gets too cold :p). So when the half day course ended early, I popped over to my usual place for a quick trim.

However, 5 mins out of the place, I immediately regretted it.. suddenly I had the urge to chop off my locks, get a bob or something. Darn..why didn't the urge come earlier?! I could have saved one trip and the $$ for one hair cut.

剪掉...

Anyway this was a site that I have visiting and fantasizing about the different hairstyles I can do - girly, punkish, chic, sassy...blahblahblah..Whereas I used to guess what some of the words ared trying to say, thank god for google translate now!

Case of missing phone numbers

There was this time when I tried to sync my handphone. "Tried" - cos everytime when I tried to sync my phone, I always get error messages that either some records cannot be found or some other systemactic problems that the workings behind the cosmic nature of computer and handphone technology, which are just beyond me.

So anyway, I tried to sync my handphone. And true to be, some error message popped up about some handphone records couldn't be sync or something. There was no other option other than to click the "OK" button. SO I did. And held my breath for 2 second. Phone didn't crash. Good! And so life went on...

Until a few days later, I tried to look for a colleague's number, and realised that I couldn't find it, which was damn weird cos I definitely sms-ed her a few days earlier during lunch time. And progressively I realised that I lost more than a few - when I saw smses from unknown contacts, calls from people. It's damn difficult to figure out what numbers I lost, since some are people from long ago, and whom I only contact sparodically, while some I may not even need to contact anymore. But it was just darn too inconvenient. Whenever I get an sms from a number I dont have in my phone book, and I had to ask the person to identify himself/herself.

And there were numbers from people, like whom you know you haven't kept in touch for so long, but you know that if the chance comes, you would definitely want to touch base again. Like how I was supposed to contact my ex-boss from my first job for a meetup after we were talking about it one of the rare times she was online on MSN, but after that I realised that I lost her number during "that" sync. She probably think that I didn't take that promise seriously. Sigh..

Argh...never going to buy HTC ever again!

Be Be Your Love

Suddenly thought of this song and dug through many CDs. Darn, I still havent gotten down to grabbing her latest CD.

And Youtube sucks. It damn difficult to get onto the site nowadays. Bleh.

If I could take you away
Pretend I was queen
What would you say
Would you think I'm unreal
'Cause everybody's got their way I should feel

Everybody's talking how I, can't, can't be your love
But I want, want, want to be your love
Want to be your love, for real
Everybody's talking how I, can't, can't be your love
But I want, want, want to be your love
Want to be your love for real
Want to be your everything

Everything...

Be Be Your Love - Rachael Yamagata

The Cove

Do we really need to dolphins in captive? Just so that we can go "Awww..." whenever the dolphin do a backflip, keeping us entertained for the 30mins we paid for? The easiest retort may be that "It's easier to educate the public". The public should be taught the dolphins ought to remain where they should be - in the wild.

In the show, many Japaneses are unaware that their fellow countrymen are killing dolphins. These people are unaware that as consumers, they are perpectuating the massacre of one of the mascot they are promoting in the tourist town of Taiji. It's an irony that the little girl was patting the dolphin softie in the souvenir shop, when at the dolphin site, hundred of dolphines are murdered with multiple stabs, dying slow deaths. Are our lives so compartmentalised..that we may be unaware that we are actually part of an ugly chain of events? Sea Worlds and marine parks as fronts for an ugly dolphin trade, rapid deforestation to support commercial demand for wood, over-fishing to provide that fresh salmon or tuna on a dining table half a globe away, global warming due to our massive use of fossil fuels..what other deeds are we doing, that in our frenzy of consumer buzz, we forget that whatever we are taking in, are depleting our natural resources?


Sometimes I think it's really the time to look at how man should live with nature..instead of trying to lord over it. It is definitely not right that dolphins, and other animals as well, should be slaughtered just for our unjustified incessant and excessive needs. Like, do we really need to eat sharksfins? Or was that just a extravagant way of showing off our affluence? If this goes on, will there be a point, beyond which the planet we live in loses the ability to regenerate itself any more?

I remember that someone told me, that people who chose to watch a certain documentary they are already choosing to believe what is the being said. I say that it's a reminder, to see what we fail to see or choose not to see.

(p.s. - this reminds me of another show..Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, from my favourite Gibli Studio; showing how the Earth struggle to regenerate itself. I cant believe that Google Video has the whole clip! But voiced over in English. The original one in Jap is a must watch)

While on MC at home...

You know things are bad when someone younger than you is telling you on MSN....

(cy2) says:
seng yut yiu yim hei yun
gum yeung dim duc ah
(cy2) says:
yiu kao kei d!

(in Cantonese please...)

Ok, CY, like what I say, I will turn on my engine and switch on my charm to the max k? (minus the stand by road side and hilt skirt higher. hahah~)

Gosh..it's good to be on MC when it's raining so heavily...at least I'm spared from the blasting aircon in the office..KO on med and maybe some DVD therapy..