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xxxxMonday, January 31, 2005xxxx
I wasn't going online again tonight, and especially not to blog, but what the heck. Like I have anything better to do online... For an update on my day, which was not spectacular, it's this: met YQ at Pasir Ris MRT, walked around White Sands for 1.5 hr but couldn't find anything nice in both Popular and the library. Gave up and said goodbye to YQ, then hopped on the MRT to Eastpoint (my first time there in how long???). Didn't find anything there either, but by hook or by crook I had to spend the remaining $5 voucher, so dialled up my mother and convinced her to need some stationery. Haha. So, after 5 months, my $100 shopping spree is finally over. :P There's more. Then I decided to take 131 home, so I got off at City Hall. Decided to take advantage of where I was and go book hunting - checking to see if there is anywhere better/cheaper than Kino to get my stuff. After searching four bookstores, I realised the answer was NO. By that time I was already deep in Suntec, so I had dinner at KFC. Shrooms meal, my favourite. I am aware this sudden obsession with books is getting a little ridiculous. But if you will notice, when I put up the reading list at the side of my blog, I listed the first book I read in 2005. In other words, I'm keeping count of all the books I read this year. Hoping to make a nice record. Already this month I've read almost as many books as the whole of last year combined. See how the O's suck your life away??? Last night (as usual) I was thinking a lot of things before I fell asleep. One recurring thought was that I'd love to have a dog. I remember fondly three Decembers ago I had a whole week living with a dog in the house. A dog that stuck to me like a magnet, in fact. Kinda irritating having him tag along everywhere, but it's also nice to have someone waiting outside the door for you. ANYWAY. Very incoherent thoughts today. Excuse me. February's almost here. Thinking of end Feb is really freaky. I still remember November 2000. It was the day before the PSLE results, and I was happily playing my GBC on my bed, without a care in the world. Then my sis came in and asked if I was nervous/afraid or something. Not that I ever thought I'd do that badly. Sad thought. Still contemplating missing the whole results thingy. My mother sure seems more excited than I am; I know she'd gladly go get it on my behalf. Except that even if I don't want to know, I'll still have to know. It's not some little test, or like last year's mid year when I refused to know my Chinese grade - being completely sick and fed up with everything to do with Chinese at that moment. Sigh. Don't like the idea of going all the way there just to get bad news. It's happened once, who says it can't happen twice?Then there's the whole choices thing after that. Which could be fun if I got good grades, but nonetheless it's no easy decision. Sometimes I think maybe it's better if my grades give me no choice and I don't need to think anything over. But that's so depressing; I'll always resent not having had a choice about my life. And if I do have a choice, then what? Like my final decision will be SNAP! right in front of me. Ha ha. Hardly.
Jessica wrote home at 10:35 pm xxxxSunday, January 30, 2005xxxxI can't think of much to say about today. Went for lunch at Centrepoint then walked around (very briefly) before heading home. Surfed the Net (very briefly) before leaving again for dinner at Chinatown. After dinner walked around a little while (took a pic of the gigantic revolving chicken - I mean, rooster), then went home again. Wow. Pretty brief day, eh? Okay, okay, I admit, I am completely not in the mood to blog today. Just checking in as an indication of my being still alive. I kinda have a headache now. Want to read or play Sims... Jessica wrote home at 9:56 pm xxxxSaturday, January 29, 2005xxxxAww, look, at least someone noticed my absence. :) Firstly I must say that I only didn't blog for one day, not two, since today's the 29th and yesterday was the 28th. And the reason I didn't blog was that there was a problem with the Internet connection. I just found out that it was due to one of the connecting wires coming loose, so everything's fixed already. Phew. Although it was a good excuse to play The Sims yesterday (in which there were some pretty freaky genetics going on...)! Okaaaaaaaay. About yesterday. Contrary to Thursday, I woke up and immediately received very good news (while still lazing around in bed, of course). My mother came in and asked, "Did you lose an earring?" Oh my goodness! How did she know?? Didn't I only blog about it? And it was sooo long ago... So anyway, yeah, it turned out to be my miraculous earrings having had another miraculous escape - its most miraculous of all in fact. It had actually gone down the drain but was somehow stopped by this little contraption under the drain cover which is supposed to prevent brown things from crawling up! Hahaha. Who'd thought cockroaches would come in so handy? Well, after this great piece of news I decided to take my long awaited trip down town...to get a new book. :) I was at Orchard for barely an hour, but I managed to find out that the Ancient Greece book YQ wanted was nowhere to be seen and that Kino doesn't actually have all the Hercule Poirot books in stock. Other than that though, I picked up that 3-in-1 omnibus (YQ will know exactly which one it was - and not exactly which title, but exactly which copy of that title. Hehe.) and breezed to Orchard MRT to make note of what stuff I'm supposed to get later at Popular. Must admit, it is quite sad to not have anymore Popular vouchers. But they'll be expiring in 3 days' time so I don't have much choice. Jessica wrote home at 1:54 pm xxxxThursday, January 27, 2005xxxxToday looked to be a good day (partly 'cos I woke up at 10 a.m.). Until (still lazing around on my bed) I reached for my phone and saw that I had received a message. But I didn't hear the message tone, I thought, clicking on it anyway. The first words that jumped out at me announced the unfortunate scoreline for this morning's Man U vs. Chelsea match. I gave this horrified gasp and thought maybe I shouldn't get up at all today. Unfortunately I had to, because all my aunties dropped by and were making comments about me sleeping till so late, so I had to stop pretending I was asleep and get up. In a bad mood by then, of course, since it's not exactly uplifting to get complained about in the morning. After breakfast I had an unintentional nap and woke up at 2 p.m., debating if I should go shop for more books (having this sinking feeling I shouldn't have only bought one book yesterday). By the time I had decided "Yes, I'm going", I decided to give my mother a call and tell her (like any good little girl is supposed to). And she says, "No, it's too late and too hot and you're always going to the bookstore but never buying anything and you're wasting your adult fare." Speaking of which, damn the adult fare. Just because I'm not in school doesn't mean I'll never go to school again, nor leave my house till school starts. (grumble grumble grumble) Yet another account of a good day gone wrong. Jessica wrote home at 4:11 pm xxxxWednesday, January 26, 2005xxxx Hello. I shall have to make this very quick because I want to play The Sims later (getting to the good parts), and YQ knows why I need as much time as possible to play. :PAnyway, met her at Orchard MRT at 3.30 p.m. (okay, I was a little late). Went to Popular (where I couldn't decide which Hercule Poirot omnibus to get - the 4-in-1 or 3-in1), Fila (YQ bought 3 shirts), then to my favourite place of all time - Kinokuniya. Haha. There, it was very hard not to grab every single Hercule Poirot mystery off the shelf and run for the cashier...or the exit, since I obviously don't have that much money. But eventually ended up with And Then There Were None, which is a lot thinner than Murder On The Orient Express. Wonder how I can make it last till Saturday... After that I made the mistake of having a strawberry shake at Mos Burger. Not that it wasn't nice; I just couldn't enjoy it properly because I had dinner at home and the drink is so darn filling. Oh well. Next time. Then, sadly, it was time to go. 16 very kindly took ages to arrive, and so did 131. By the time I got home it was 8 p.m. ...and now I better go shower...blog another time... Jessica wrote home at 8:28 pm xxxxTuesday, January 25, 2005xxxx Thought for the day: Tiong Bahru Plaza has got to be the most boring place in Singapore. At least, it's boring for window shoppers. There are way too many clothing shops for my liking. And Popular was absolutely no use. So no books for me today.Speaking of books, I have a little bit more of Sword Of The Rightful King to finish. I read 258 pages this morning and the only scene I really liked was the one where Arthur and Gawaine were massacring this group of bandits - with swords, of course. :) Reminded me of the good old days of my long-forgotten FE story, which I went to reread after that. I realised that my favourite quotes from the story were the ones involving Deacon, especially: D: "Where were you? What were you doing? Who's this guy? DO YOU KNOW HOW WORRIED I WAS?" Haha. If I were his sister I would've gotten my pegasus to trample all over him. But whatever. Oh, and while checking the number of deaths so far, I realised Bailey wasn't the only one who killed three times; Miguel killed three wyvern lords in like half a page (and subsequently got killed himself). Then again Miguel was probably twenty years older than Bailey or something, so that still proves Bailey is good. :P All right, sorry for boring you out. Unless you're Sam, Cheryl, Joy or Sue Anne, the previous two paragraphs were utter nonsense to you. Can't help it though. I am bored. Jessica wrote home at 9:29 pm xxxxMonday, January 24, 2005xxxxPhew. Phew. Phew. It's been two days' work tweaking this blog to my satisfaction. Not that I am completely satisfied - for some reason my birthday countdown can't be seen (it's supposed to be where the large gap under the date of the post is). Plus I got YQ to view the blog and she says it's pink and red, not light purple and dark purple. :( ANYWAY, I woke up late today, but I wasn't bothered by it because I didn't have anything to shop for. The only thing that needed to be done was finish Murder On The Orient Express, which I shockingly sped through for 4 hours early this morning. Couldn't put it down. So now I am left with one more book before I need to go "restock". Haha. Now that I think about it, I wish I could've gone out. But everyone's busy today and if I don't have something important to do (i.e. check out books), then I won't go out alone. Sigh. Such nice weather today too... Oh no. I've got nothing to do tonight. Can't possibly stay on the com till bedtime. And don't feel like reading that much... Jessica wrote home at 6:35 pm xxxxSunday, January 23, 2005xxxxI'm so tired I can't even sit properly; currently slouched on the computer chair, typing at an unnaturally slow pace. In fact it's as if everything's moving in slow motion. But I figure I must at least type something before I completely doze off (which I did on the bus back). Firstly and most importantly, the weather yesterday was very nice to buy books (haha), so I took my chance to pop by Borders on the second day of their sale - since obviously Friday was a big failure where shopping was concerned. My father, remembering that I had wanted to get that antiquity book, stopped at the history section. I actually felt a little disloyal to Singapore because all I looked at were books on classical and medieval history. There was this really thick book on the Middle Ages, which looked interesting enough to read, but I decided against buying it because I'd only finish it in the next five months or something, and it's not like I don't want to read anything else other than that. In the end I didn't get that antiquity book, and was really happy when I found the last copy of Agatha Christie's Murder On The Orient Express. After that 15% discount it cost a little over $14, so I joyously headed for Kinokuniya next. At Kino I found the book I had been looking for, Sword Of The Rightful King (the sight of the sword on the cover drives me crazy, I tell you...), although it was highly embarrassing wandering around the kid's section again. Okay, so it's the YOUNG ADULT section, but the kid's books are in the next shelf and that really isn't very comforting. Since I only had $20 to spend on books (I could've allowed myself to spend more but I didn't want to), the $7 extra I had to pay was quite saddening. But saddening is one thing, maddening is quite another issue altogether. Having nothing better to do I browsed the mystery section, and of all wonderful things to see, Murder On The Orient Express was sitting on the shelf, costing all of $9-something, without discount!!! It took a lot of self control not to jump up and down at that moment and start screaming, I tell you. But granted the copy I bought is slightly larger, it's still no reason to fork over an extra $5!!! For $5, in case you didn't know, I could've paid for my replacement earrings or had a frappe/Spider at Cafe Cartel! And I had to spend extra money because I ended up both buying the earrings and drinking a Spider at Plaza Singapura. Sob sob...$5...I am such a scrooge. Jessica wrote home at 1:02 am xxxxFriday, January 21, 2005xxxxA very unproductive day of travelling back and forth. Well, it was mostly my fault for waking up so darn late and taking my time to eat lunch. Before I could even change, WH called to go eat dinner. So okay, my day would be a little different. Then I had to be the Cross-Country Communication Centre (CCCC) between Joy, Vanessa and YQ. Finally I decided I was not going to stick around and wait for WH's second call, so I left for Borders. I had stepped into Borders for no more than two or three minutes when his SMS arrived saying everyone was at Bugis. Wow. Back I go again, without much of a chance to look around. At Bugis we spent almost an hour pushing through crowds whilst WH looked for clothes. Then it was a looooooooong discussion about where to go next, which took place half in Bugis Junction and half in Bugis MRT station. Having not come to a decision, we decided to go home. Okay, except for me. I took the train to City Hall (missed the first train out of Bugis 'cos it was so packed). At City Hall the connecting train to Orchard arrived almost immediately. Just before I stepped in Vanessa called, telling me to stop and not go any further. So I jumped out of the train before the doors slammed shut, only to learn that ZY had called at Kembangan and they were going down to Somerset to meet him for dinner. Wait. Now, doesn't the Orchard-bound train stop at Somerset? Feeling stupid (especially since I had already called my mother to tell her I was having dinner), I sat down at one of the benches in the station. When Vanessa and WH turned up again, WH's friend had vanished and I was having fun editing (otherwise known as vandalising) the picture WH had taken of himself earlier. (ADVERTISEMENT: If you want the pic I can send it to you!!!) Anyway, we got to Somerset and ZY was already there. After an unnecessarily long walk to find a toilet and an even more unnecessary walk through Glutton's Square (or whatever that place is called), we somehow ended up on our way to Orchard Cineleisure. Had KFC for dinner again (seems I had it quite recently). I shall not get into details 'cos I'll start to feel sick. I ate too much chicken and coleslaw, I tell you. Next stop was Takashimaya. On our way there we got excited when an open-air bus drove down the road, thinking it was the Tiger Cup bus. Turned out it was full of Burger King girls, which undoubtedly made some people a little more excited than before. At Takashimaya ZY went to buy his printer ink. (I'm jealous. Why is Epson printer ink so cheap compared to HP's???) Then it was down to the sports level where the three of them got entertained by the clothes, bags, caps, shoes, etc. on display. ZY went a little crazy and picked out like three shirts, (one was a red one featuring Wayne Rooney), a bag and shoes to buy some other day, transferring them all neatly in one corner for easy future reference. On the other hand, WH still could not find anything. :P By then it was nearing 9.30 p.m. and the walk to the MRT station consisted of Vanessa and ZY trying to whack and dodge each other, as well as WH flirting with some girl on his phone. At City Hall, as usual, I got off and hopped onto my favourite 131. Jessica wrote home at 10:58 pm xxxxThursday, January 20, 2005xxxxBack home. I am so freaking tired but it's too early to sleep. ANYWAY, for starters I woke up late this morning. The alarm rang at 11.30 a.m. and I got up, then let my head rest on the pillow for a little while...you get what happened next. By the time my head snapped back up again it was 12.10 p.m. and I knew I would be late. Well, turns out I wasn't that late. At least, I cut down my 40 min deficit by half an hour before meeting Vanessa and YQ at City Hall MRT. We caught the Boon Lay-bound train to Clementi and didn't know where to wait for the bus. Finally ended up queuing at the interchange, though before that we walked past a Ronald McDonald statue and I was reminded of ZY. I exclaimed, "Ronald!" and YQ, a little too enthusiastic, went, "Where?!" before I realised she thought I had seen the other Ronald! It was a hot day and it totally did not help when we reached NP. Except maybe to make us really thirsty, but that's not the point. We took a long walk to the convention centre, stopping by the secondary school and CCA exhibits on the way. At the convention centre YQ and I had just joined the queue for cotton candy when we were told we had to come back 15 min later. Brilliant. So we just went to get our freebies instead (haha). Then it was this super confusing period trying to find the School of Film & Media Studies. While we were happily lost somewhere in an engineering-like building, the place we were looking for was overlooking us from two stories above. Brilliant again. We joined one of the tours around the place, peeking into recording rooms, mock TV studios, etc. Which was pretty cool. The only NOT cool part was when the elevator our group went into was too full, so the three of us had to run up six flights of stairs to rejoin them...whereby they completely forgot about us and were moving on already. But now that I come to think of it, I don't even know which rooms are used by MCM students and which rooms are used by those from FSV. Sigh. After that we hung around the place and eventually left slightly past 5 p.m. YQ and Vanessa went to Bugis Junction for dinner; I headed for City Hall. (But thanks for accompanying me!!! :) ) I just realised I'm free tomorrow. Hmm. Shall I drop by the bookstores again? Jessica wrote home at 9:43 pm Having given up the idea of moblogging (maybe when I really need it), I shall now tell you how yesterday went. Firstly I had to wake up early to go get my spectacles done. Not that I ended up waking very early, but you get the idea. Anyway I was still very tired but that didn't stop me from trooping down to Orchard after that to fix my MMS settings. So now it's confirmed I can send MMS messages, because even though YQ didn't receive hers, I managed to send some to my Yahoo! account. BUT...before going to get the settings fixed, I went to Kinokuniya. And guess what? I get to go book shopping this weekend!!! (Friday at earliest, or else Sunday) So exciting, even though I can see not all of you would be excited at the prospect (rolls eyes). Oh well. At least I am taking Zhi Yu's 'advice'. Haha. Now I can start rambling about other things. Like, for example: I'm going to the NP open house later!!! Can't wait!!! (Reader - that's you! - wonders how much more crazed Jessica can get. Jessica - that's me! - says "That's not all...") I am currently very jealous 'cos I just visited the Usborne website. Do you know how few of the really cool titles ever reach Singapore? IT'S NOT FAIR. I so want all those medieval and archaeology books I've never seen here before. Sob sob. (Reader wonders why Jessica is still reading Usborne books at age 17. Jessica says she loves the pictures and who says adults don't read them? Or else who writes all the book reviews?) I'm so inspired, I shall go reread my puzzle adventures some other day. Oh, and remind me to ask Sam to lend some...that is, if I ever see her again. Remember, she's a Busy Woman. Oh yeah, speaking of books again, everytime I open The Lady And The Unicorn, I feel like sleeping. I don't know why, it's not even boring! But I must, must, must finish this ASAP... Darn. Internet Explorer's acting up and wants to close. Better post this before it gets lost in cyberspace again................ Jessica wrote home at 1:55 am xxxxTuesday, January 18, 2005xxxxFrom the desk of the Birthday Girl (spends few seconds gazing in wonder at "Jessica turns 17 today!" scrolling on the blue bar) Well. 17. I still can't believe it. Seventeen. Sounds so...old. (ABBA's Dancing Queen plays in the background: "You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen...") Snaps back to reality. (Sorry, that's the only song with 'seventeen' that I know of!) Anyway, today was a pretty good day. Expecially after how stagnant my life has been these few days. Ha. After giving up on The Sims 2 and finishing my book, it was already 5 a.m. and I contemplated staying awake the whole day, before deciding to sleep. It took me almost 2 hours to fall asleep, because 1) The ending of the story was so disturbing I couldn't stop thinking of it, 2) I hadn't chosen what to wear yet, and 3) at almost 7 a.m. my aunt came in to water the plants. I jumped out of bed since it sounded as if the house was being broken into. I actually managed to wake up when the alarm rang at 12.30 p.m. I'm so proud of myself. Even though all I wanted to do was pull the covers over my head and go right back to sleep, I forced myself to get up. Not that it was very hard, since I just had to remind myself that I couldn't waste MY DAY sleeping in. I ate a cup noodle lunch (again) whilst reading yesterday's newspapers. While I was absorbed in the sports section, the Nokia tone kept playing. It was driving me crazy and I was on the verge of telling my sister to stop playing with her phone, when I decided I had better go change, then realised it was my phone ringing. (Hello, the phone is supposed to play Crash & Burn, not the Nokia tone!!! Don't know what's its problem...) It was Vanessa, who told me to call WH. After putting down the phone I realised I had like 4 missed calls. Then I called WH who got me to drop by Tampines instead. I took (as usual) a loooooooong time choosing what to wear, and by the time I left the house I was so sure I was going to be late...but no, I arrived like 45 min early - and everyone was watching a movie. Fine. So I passed the time wandering around both Tampines Mall and Century Square, till it was nearly 4.30 p.m. Then everyone reappeared, complaining that The Aviator was unbelievably boring and that they had left almost midway through. Next we all trooped to KFC, where I had kindly forgotten I was supposed to have lunch with them and instead sat watching everyone eat. I also got to take a peek at my present - which, coincidentally, is the exact same husky bookmark my father bought and which I recently lost! Then I read the card, which has a very nice drawn husky in front, and even nicer messages inside from my friends. :) Finally, we headed to a shelter in Tampines Central Park, where we sang a birthday song around my cute little blueberry cake (and, judging by the candle, I effectively celebrated my tenth birthday. Ha.). After that we settled down to talk, mostly about soccer (especially the recent Tiger Cup) and OBS (for some reason. And I have never regretted not going.). Then everyone had to leave because they were busy (how nice of them to take the time off), although YQ and I headed to Tampines Mall to shop a little more. In the end I reached City Hall nearly half an hour late, but since I am after all The Birthday Girl, nobody said anything about that. :P It was a choice between Cafe Cartel and Tuk Tuk Thai Restaurant, but eventually we settled for Thai food (my decision) since I am supposedly going to Cafe Cartel this weekend (or so YQ says). As usual I ate a lot but at the mention of dessert, I immediately found some extra space in my stomach for one-third of a Gelare waffle. (Half-price on Tuesdays - what luck) Sadly we had to go home right after that since it was getting late. Took ages getting a taxi but am now happily home. Well, maybe not so happily, since it's less than 40 min to the end of my birthday and I really don't want this day to end. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. Jessica wrote home at 10:44 pm xxxxMonday, January 17, 2005xxxx(I am currently blazing mad, which is completely ironic, as you will see after you read this post. I just spent a good chunk of time typing a very long and interesting post - then the com hangs with absolutely no warning.) All right. It's 25 min before January the 18th. January the 18th. The day which always sees me in a good mood, even if nobody remembers my birthday. Well, at least, in 2003 I went to school in a good mood, thinking that it was a Friday and I could finally de-stress, since I hated everything about Secondary 3 right from the start. Then when Lihua handed me a present I actually gazed, puzzled, back at her. Luckily it struck me just then that it was my birthday before I could do something stupid, like ask, "Erm, what for?" And in 2004, of course, I had a high fever on the 16th and 17th, so on the 18th (a Sunday) I was still recovering (like anybody cared). But I made extra effort to recover since it was my big day - the sacred Sweet Sixteen. Which, when I come to think of it, was nothing special. No big birthday bash or anything. In fact a whole lot of people weren't even on talking terms with me... ANYWAY. In other news, I woke up today about 15 min before 3 p.m. (which, if you read yesterday's post, was an improvement). Since it would've been absurd to eat my breakfast of cereals in the middle of the afternoon, I settled for eating my lunch of cup noodles. (I may add, all alone in the house. Sniff.) I had just settled down to eat when the doorbell rang. Thinking it was either my aunt or my sister, I went to look through the eyehole. It was some lady I didn't recognise, dressed rather unitidily. So I decided to just pretend there was no one at home and return to my noodles. But the doorbell rang again. And again. And again. Like seven times in a row! (Although when it started playing Happy Birthday To You, I said aloud, "Thank you, but it's a bit early") Getting really annoyed, because I hate being disturbed when I am eating cup noodles and the stupid speaker for the doorbell was right above my head and giving me a headache, I marched back to peer through the eyehold again. This time a guy had joined her, and they were sitting on our doorstep! Which was both an aggravating and disturbing sight, aggravating because can't these people get a hint and leave? and disturbing because what's so important? And how am I going to leave the house if, let's say I want to go shopping? Well, it was really a little too late to go shopping plus I was lazy, but thankfully the couple left not long after and I was able to return to my noodles. Phew. But after my lunch I realised I was in no better a mood than when I woke up, so I set about trying to cheer myself up. Initially I read my book whilst listening to music blasting out from my phone's loudspeaker (another day I shall wax lyrical about my trusty 6230), but it didn't take long to make me sleepy (more than likely the music was the culprit, and not the book). So in the evening I went to start up The Sims 2. I admit I didn't have high hopes for my Sims to cheer me up - they usually give me a headache when they keep lagging or hanging. Which was exactly what happened yesterday, when I got my infamous Sim's two daughters to grow up and then had her, her husband, and one of the daughters move out, only to have the com hang abruptly and erase all my hard work. But this time when I entered the family again, I decided to do things a little differently by delaying their moving out. In short, to have another baby first. And lo and behold, my patience paid off with the birth of identical twins boys! Now, that was only my second twin birth in the game (and the first pair of identical twins), so my mood went WAY up (much like the happy Sim parents). (Although my theory is not working out well and the boys have brown hair and green eyes like their older sister - so what happened to their father's genes???)... ...that was, until I ran into a spate of computer-related problems, including the aforementioned disaster. I shall now play it safe and post this, then go have my bath. It is quite an appealing idea to enter the bathroom as a sixteen-year-old and step out as a seventeen-year-old. Though not really, of course, since it's not like I was born at the stroke of midnight on January 18th 1988. Wow. 17 years. So amazing... Jessica wrote home at 11:35 pm xxxxSunday, January 16, 2005xxxxWoke up at 3 p.m. Hurray. Although I must mention that was because I stayed up the whole night so I could say goodbye before my mother left for Genting. Also to wish her a Happy Birthday. Other than that I just spent my time playing The Sims 2 (more about that later) and reading The Winter Queen. Then after saying bye I headed for bed. Except I couldn't sleep at all, no matter how tired I was, and instead lay awake agonising if I would ever be able to get the other half of my birthday present (from me to me, the first half being the books). If I had that $48 it wouldn't seem so bad, but by then it might not be in stock... So, anyway, by the time I actually drifted off it was probably well past 6 a.m. Then I was rudely woken up by someone ringing the doorbell and knocking on the door around 1 p.m. Finally when I decided not to open the door, the person slid a flyer advertising tuition for primary and secondary students, under the door. Primary and secondary students!!! I'm the youngest and even I'm finished with secondary school!!! Don't you have better things to do than wake me up by ringing the stupid doorbell?!?! If we wanted you we would've called!!! Therefore you can guess I was pretty peeved. I went back to sleep, only to have a very bizarre dream, and finally at 3 p.m. my sister made me get up to go grocery shopping. Now we're back and I'm logging off soon to attend to my Sims again. I lead a most pathetic life, if you haven't yet realised. Anyway, about my Sims, my happily married Sims now have a brown-haired, green-eyed daughter. That proves my theory because if the father had been a first generation Sim (i.e. homozygous dominant genotypes instead of heterozygous dominant), then there would be no way for his children to end up having brown hair and green eyes like their mother. Sweet. Jessica wrote home at 4:45 pm xxxxSaturday, January 15, 2005xxxxMAN U WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Jessica wrote home at 10:27 pm Ahem! (cue ear-piercing scream): I WANT TO WATCH THE MAN U GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!! WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
(calms down a teeny bit) Huff. It is NOT FAIR!!!!!!!!!! NOT FAIR AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!! And Yahoo! Sports isn't helping much either. Except there's currently a '1' beside Manchester United, so I'm thinking it means one goal. Which is good. If that's what it means anyway. I shall go find a more in-depth site. Oh, it is one goal. And btw YQ, it was your Rooney who scored. Ahhhhhh...feeling much better now. I can finally settle back and tell you about my Saturday. It, as usual, began very late. Rather, I went to sleep at like 5 a.m. Except I didn't fall asleep till long after that. So by the time I forced myself awake, I had a giant headache. ...pardon me while I go cut my mother's birthday cake...be right back...
Back again. Everyone kept saying how nice the cake was and how light the cheese was, etc. I could only nod because frankly, I felt like throwing up. Not that the cake wasn't nice, but I'm not a fan of birthday cakes (I like the whole sing-and-blow-out-the-candles ritual, but not the eating part), and also I am extremely full right now. Which brings me to "what I did today", part 2. My first (and only) stop was Centrepoint. After wandering about Times till I almost froze, I had to whittle down my choices to two: The Winter Queen and The Lady And The Unicorn. Wanted quite badly to get a book on antiquity, titled - surprise! - Antiquity, but decided the non-fiction history could wait. (Antiquity, by the way, is the period before the fall of the Roman Empire, i.e. pre-medieval history) Then we had to wait a long time before my sis arrived. Had dinner at Fish & Co. Ordered one pan of calamari and one pan of mussels, in addition to our main courses. I had fish and chips, and thinking about all the food now is making me sick again, so I shall stop typing about it. OH! Wait, my Sims update. The game did not save after my Sim's sister-in-law officially died, but her sudden-death scene replayed again. This time I got her husband to plead for her life, and won. Yippee. Argh. YQ still isn't online. Should I stay and receive live text updates from BBC Sports? 'Cos I think my blood pressure rises substantially everytime the page automatically reloads, and that is not good. But if I load The Sims 2, I won't be able to receive my updates... Jessica wrote home at 9:07 pm In other news, I decided to have an intellectual afternoon yesterday, by reading Shakespeare's Macbeth. It was actually quite interesting, until everyone kept interrupting me to do errands, go eat, go bathe, yada yada. By the time I returned to the book it got really trying. Especially since out of every two pages, only one-quarter contains the actual text. The other half is filled with explanations and key notes, while the remaining quarter is peppered with my sister's notes (since the book was actually her Sec 3 Literature text). The explanations and notes are, of course, essential, but my sister's handwriting just kills me. It is obviously nicer than my own (whose isn't?) in a regular sense of word, but it's harder to read (IMO). Partly due to my stupidity, I guess. For example I spent half a minute wondering (amused) why "Macbeth wanted the kings hip". (Oh my goodness, what does he want the king's hip for??? I know he's a violent guy and everything, but isn't that going a bit too far???) Until I realised that my sis meant Macbeth wanted the kingship (which means he still has to kill the king, and that is no less violent, but whatever). Sheesh. Jessica wrote home at 1:37 am Hell, hell, hell. I can't find all my stuff!! This is so aggravating. Among other things, I do not know where are my
2) American Idol 2: All-Time Classic American Love Songs CD 3) The purple shirt I got for my 16th birthday (obviously haven't worn yet or it'd be in my cupboard) 4) A few of my Beanie Buddies 5) The only copy of my fourth full-length adventure story (written when I was ten and embarrassingly childish - but still a good laugh when I need one, which is very often) 6) MY BOOKMARKS!!! ALL OF THEM!!! (howls with grief) 7) My earring! I really lost it this time. I better go get a replacement from Perlini's later before they stop selling it... Jessica wrote home at 1:05 am xxxxThursday, January 13, 2005xxxxI hate the kitchen. Had two accidents during lunchtime. First was when I had just poured hot water in my cup of noodles and was hurrying behind my mother to the living room to read the papers. Unfortunately I was, as usual, looking down and failed to see the open cupboard, so I ran smack into it - not that it hurt a lot, because I stopped the moment my head collided with it. My mother was clearly concerned that the hinges of the cupboard would be forced apart, but that thankfully did not happen. By the time I finished reading the papers, I realised I had spent more than 3 min, so I dashed back into the kitchen to wash my hands, then ran along the length of cupboards to get a fork. This time because I was looking up, I didn't notice that the folds of my shorts got caught in the jutting-out handle of a bottom cupboard, and continued running... This time the top hinge really came off!! Luckily my mother was on the phone so by the time she got off, I didn't get much of a scolding. Anyway, like it's my fault the handle juts out and I'm tall enough for my shorts to get caught! Sheesh. So after my lunch of very soggy noodles, I took a bus to Centrepoint to make a list of books to get from Times, hopefully over the weekend ('cos I am getting increasingly restless without anything to do). Then since it was still early, I took a walk to Kinokuniya, and got annoyed because they had A Season For The Dead and Horrible Histories: England there, but not at Times (which I have discounts from). Next I popped by Orchard MRT's Popular (because my remaining $30 worth of vouchers will expire on February 1st), and did not find a single book that I liked. This means I shall go to the Tampines branch soon... Feeling lazy to walk back to Lucky Plaza to catch the bus, I instead took the train to City Hall. And then I decided, "Oh well, it's still early, no harm if I go check out MPH..." Which was also incredibly annoying because they had A Season For The Dead there too. Sigh. My luck. Oh yeah. I didn't get to test out my Sims theory yesterday. I managed to get into one of my families to jack up the relationship bar for this girl (cheating, cheating), but then her sister-in-law woke up and promptly died for no reason whatsoever. The girl begged the Grim Reaper but she lost, so nothing could be helped and I had no choice but to restart the game (hoping it doesn't save by itself). Not that I would've cared much about the sister-in-law, if she just hadn't happened to be expecting. And after that the stupid computer just hung whenever I was halfway through loading the game, so in the end I gave up completely (a lot of self control needed not to smash the monitor) and went to do an 'errand' for my father instead. Bleargh. Jessica wrote home at 11:50 pm xxxxWednesday, January 12, 2005xxxx Okay, the com just hung four times in quick succession so my patience is running low. (Oh my goodness, the doorbell just rang and it's playing Happy Birthday To You. Since when did it play that?! Why does it play that?! Ugh.)I've decided to stick around a little longer and think how I can tweak this blog. No promises about the outcome. Besides, I want to play The Sims 2. Speaking of The Sims 2... Jessica Gets Scientific Stupid, stupid me. All those Bio lessons and I didn't realise it. Anyway, as you all do not know, I've been agonising over a certain Sim family's brood of children - not only are 4 out of 5 boys, but they all have black hair like their father and dark blue eyes like their mother. The dark blue eyes are the most agonising part, because I've never had a Sim baby with green eyes (like the father's), and I've been wondering why. WHY?! Apparently, The Sims 2 is so wonderfully advanced that it has real genetics inside. The obvious thing, now, is that dark blue eyes are dominant to green eyes (in the game). Since both parents are Generation 1 Sims with no parents of their own, that would make the alleles for their eye colours homozygous. So the mother's eye colour genotype is DbDb, whilst the father's is GrGr. And it happens that homzygous dominant and homozygous recessive will ONLY produce offspring who are heterozygous dominant, in other words, DbGr genotypes. So there's 0% chance of my Sims having green-eyed children. Sigh. BUT, the good news is that if I get one of their children to marry a Generation 1 green-eyed Sim, then there's a 50% chance their children will be green-eyed. Which is exactly what I'm going to do next... P.S. It was fun using those terms again. I miss my genetic diagrams... Jessica wrote home at 5:51 pm It's a too-sunny-for-its-own-good Wednesday afternoon, and I'm sitting here wondering why it doesn't rain when it should. Ideally, now. It's so stuffy in here. Well, blame myself for waking up too late (as usual) to go out. Go out shopping, to be more exact. Especially since I just finished my last book and have nothing else to read in the meantime. Not to mention I have a whole pile of books to check out. Yawn. I'm uploading new background music right after this. But first I'm going to tell the story of my very miraculous earrings which has escaped being lost countless times, the most recent being yesterday. Here are two heart-stopping experiences (heart-stopping for me, since they are my favourite pair)... 1) Sam and I had gone swimming and I had just finished my bath. I was drying my hair when I noticed, to my absolute horror, that the front part of my earring had dropped off. Which meant there was a high chance it had gone floating down the drain. After scouting about tearfully for quite some time, I was resigned to getting a new pair...then I felt this tiny lump under my slipper and realised the little silver thing had gotten stuck there. I brought it home to clean and after cleaning realised I had misplaced it again, but eventually absent-minded me remembered where I had left it. Phew. 2) It was sometime in the day when I was standing in front of the bathroom sink fiddling with my hair. All of a sudden I heard one of my earrings pop out and drop with a metallic clink in the sink. My heart seriously nearly stopped. I slammed my palm down on the sink and managed to stop the earring from bouncing in. Double phew. Jessica wrote home at 5:00 pm xxxxTuesday, January 11, 2005xxxxJust checked my spam-inundated inbox. The only mail worth reading was the Yahoo! reminder for my birthday. I get the same message every year, with the same words I typed who-knows-how-many years ago. It's weird, but every year when I open this email on January 11, I always feel as if I just opened last year's not long ago. (It means I'm getting old. Sigh.) And the message is incredibly stupid, but it always manages to make me smile. Especially now when there's not a lot going on in my life worth smiling about. ANYWAY, I am currently very tired. My energy saps away mysteriously everyday. Today the reason for its disappearance isn't particularly mysterious, but I'm tired all the same. Only thing is, if I sleep now then I will be awake the whole night. I'm as much a night owl as an insomniac these days. Sigh. My brilliant life. It keeps getting better. Another thing. Every year when SHSS started new CCAs I got annoyed, 'cos the choices were extremely pathetic back when I was in Sec 1 (I just had to change the previous sentence to past tense. Sigh. Changes.) - basically most girls flocked to choir. So it really wasn't my fault that I had to contend with only half a CCA (it officially became a non-core CCA in 2002, then reverted back after that), Publication. I never took it seriously, in fact in Sec 1 I wrote in my journal: "I love it when Pub and English Enrichment clash, so I just sign out of Pub!" English Enrichment was much more a CCA to me than Pub ever was. The only problem was that it wasn't a CCA. So when I got to Sec 3 I was extremely depressed for many reasons, and this is just a brief list of reasons - 1) No more English Enrichment for upper Sec, 2) Crappy triple science instead of triple humanities. And Pub...who really cared about Pub anyway?! Even after I got 'promoted' to vice chairman, and subsequently chairman, I still hung out with the 3A (then 4A) Pub gang and slacked all the time. Basically you can guess I had no issues stepping down for the O's. An issue with the O's, maybe, but not an issue leaving the committee. Although I must admit it was quite disappointing The Pub Hub failed to make it to its sophomore year. But anyway, I've been thinking it might actually be cool to go back and gatecrash a Pub meeting one of these days. Except that I'm too lazy, of course, but it just so happens that I just read Ana's blog, and she mentioned: "and guess what? under abel's leadership, pub has officially closed down. hahahahaha... i figured that would happen." Which is actually kinda funny, and since Pub was useless from the beginning (especially in recent years), I can't say I didn't see it coming either. Except perhaps not so soon. Like right after I left! Well, at least they kindly waited for me to leave. I wonder what happened to Abel and what he's doing now. Hmm. Jessica wrote home at 10:43 pm xxxxMonday, January 10, 2005xxxxFinished Murder On The Leviathan around the vicinity of 3 a.m. this morning, then promptly got out Kazunomiya to read. Succeeded in making myself feel incredibly childish. Note to self: it is very degrading to read a children's book after finishing an adult one. ANYWAY, I'm making good progress with The Sims 2 now that I am cheating outrageously. I mean, do you seriously think I can wait 10 hours (in real time, not Sim time - though that doesn't make a difference, considering how slow the com is) for my Sim to give birth? Sheesh. In fact I think I'm going to go start up the game now. Oh, yes, before it completely slips my mind. Since it's like 1 week and 1 day to my birthday, I was supposed to say what I wanted. Well, I want a bookmark. As you know I tragically lost my whole collection (save a green one, and the few that are still in some books) last month, including my two favourites - one with ballerina koalas from Sydney, and one with a beautiful husky from Adelaide. Oh crap. Thinking of them makes me want to cry. Yeah, so go get me a bookmark... Jessica wrote home at 8:26 pm xxxxFriday, January 07, 2005xxxx Sorry I haven't updated the past few days. Well, actually I don't have any idea when my last update was, owing to the fact that I didn't read my blog before I went to post this...and also because my mind seems to be permanently programmed to think everyday is January 5th. No, January 5th is nothing special; I just heard someone mentioning it that day, and it (unfortunately) stuck. Hell, I might just wake up one morning and go through the whole day before realising it's my birthday...ANYWAY, went out with Sam again today. (YQ, if you're reading this, we didn't intend not to ask you, just that Sam only asked at 1 a.m. whether I was going out, and by the time we decided we were going out, it was 3 a.m. and the only thing on my mind was sleep...) Traipsed around the City Hall area, much to my delight (due to the obvious convenience). Once again it is an odd but lovely feeling to be free on the first week of January. When we saw this group of secondary school students from a school near Sam's house, Sam went, "What are (name of school) students doing here?" and I added, mockingly, "Yeah, don't they have homework to do?" Ha. Evil. Well, let's go on to today's topic, which I only just remembered again... Memories Part I I can't remember which day it was when I felt something cold touching my skin and recalled the Ethanol Experience in Sec 3. Our class, being the only Bio people, were at the Singapore Science Centre after a restless day in school (in which Mr Philip said it was a pity we would only start on Bearings the next day, as then we would know what to do if the bus lost its way to the centre) for some Bio class dealing with bacteria. E coli, unfortunately, is all I can remember about it. I think we were far too fascinated with the white lab coats we had to wear, and all the cool instruments on the tables. Cheryl and I were sitting at a table with Wee Keat and some other guy (whom I sadly cannot recall), and the instructor said that the bottle of ethanol on the table was to sterilise our gloves as we worked with the bacteria in their petri dishes. Funnily enough for gloves, we could still feel the iciness of the ethanol when we poured some on them. The sensation was so refreshing and addictive that all of us couldn't keep our hands off the bottle. We'd be like accidentally brushing a glove against our arm and going, "Oops! Contaminated!" and snatching up the ethanol, or purposely pushing up our glasses with the gloves and sighing (with all fakeness), "Oh no, have to sterilise again..." We did it all through the whole course and were quite sad to leave the ethanol behind when we headed back to school. The next day, when we viewed our petri dishes again, apparently our (that's the one Cheryl and I shared) experiment had been contaminated...by two drops of ethanol that somehow found their way inside. Ha. Irony of ironies. One incident I find particularly hilarious now. Jessica wrote home at 8:47 pm xxxxTuesday, January 04, 2005xxxxFace it. I'm just bored. So I will list the books I read in 2004 now. As it happens, I sat down and listed them after the 'O' Levels, so I don't have to dig through my memory right now, just flip through my journal. I must say I'm quite impressed how many adult books managed to worm their way into the list... Books I Read In 2004 (in chronological order) 1. The Princess Dairies #5 (I swear Mia is getting annoyingly bitchy and whiny) 2. Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (my second favourite in the series; the reason why I did so badly in the mid-year...) 3. The Year Of Secret Assignments (hilarious...helped me forget how much I paid) 4. Winter Rose (beautiful is the only word to describe it, even if the intricacies of the plot lost me) 5. Horrible Histories: Cruel King And Mean Queens (been meaning to get it since 1998) 6. The DaVinci Code (I couldn't stop reading) 7. Blood Red Horse (got inspired about the Crusades after reading The DaVinci Code, can't wait for the sequel) 8. The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time 9. Angels & Demons (I had to speed through this after the 'O' Levels because I was waiting for Kino's 20% off coupons to be published) You see! I doubt I have read so little books in the course of an entire year before (well, 2003 might have been worse, I can't remember) - I read 11 books in the December 2002 holidays alone. Man, am I glad upper sec is well and truly over. At least I have like two more months to read... Jessica wrote home at 1:02 am xxxxMonday, January 03, 2005xxxxMe again. In case no one ever told you, I love making lists, and I have two today, both of which I should have done over the New Year weekend. Firstly, on Sunday's post I mentioned nearly going crazy choosing two books from Kinokuniya. If you check the updated reading list above, you will see the two new additions. So my first list is that of what books I have to finish reading, and what books I plan to read after that (which makes it two lists, but just shut up). Books I Have To Finish Reading 1. Ombria in Shadow (getting there!) [young adult; fantasy] 2. Murder On The Leviathan [adult; mystery/thriller] 3. The Royal Diaries: Kazunomiya, Prisoner of Heaven [children; historical fiction] * 4. Easy French Reader (won't make much more progress unless I finish that Living Language French course) [language] Books I Plan To Read (to be continued!) 1. The Lady And The Unicorn [adult; historical fiction] 2. A Season For The Dead [adult; mystery/thriller] All this is assuming I'm willing to fork out the money for more books. If I was that willing then I would have bought the other two on Sunday, if you haven't realised. But time will tell if I become more willing...or rather, richer. The second list is a list of movies I've watched in cinemas in 2004. My close friends know that I have a personal one-movie-a-year quota that is absolutely ridiculous, however much I see movie-going as a waste of money and time. These close friends also know that I seriously violated this restriction last year... Movies I Watched In 2004 1. Ju-On 2 (tickets bought before midnight on New Year's Eve 2003, watched past midnight on New Year's Day 2004) 2. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban 3. Ella Enchanted 4. The Village 5. National Treasure ?. Meet The Fockers (tickets bought before midnight on New Year's Eve 2004, watched past midnight on New Year's Day 2005...so technically doesn't count, I guess) ...Other than Harry Potter #3, which I watched too long ago to recall much (although I raved about it quite a fair bit in my journal), National Treasure was hands down my favourite... * I know it's a children's book and I have no business being in the children's section, but I've been reading the series since I was 11 and it's still my favourite series, so even though it's freaking expensive (and the books seem to be getting thinner!) I'll keep reading it till the series ends (I will admit I've read most, not all of the series). There you go. Wonderful, useless lists. I shall list what books I read in 2004 another time (I read unsurprisingly little, considering how much work there was the whole year), and then a very important list: What I Would Like For My Birthday. All in jest, of course, since I hardly get birthday presents. But if you're kind enough to get one from the list...well...(shrugs) Jessica wrote home at 11:25 pm [Job Hunt: Day 1] Okay. You're staring at the words above and gawking like an idiot - but that's exactly what I spent the whole day doing. Job hunting I mean, not gawking like an idiot! When you really sit down and think about it, it would have been far more fun, though not beneficial, to sleep in while everyone else trudged to school. But oh no, sacrifices have to be made. My poor feet. All that for just 4 hotels. All right, 4 hotels where I left my name and contact number, 7 hotels in total. For a comprehensive list Hotels I Left My Name & Contact
1. Ritz Carlton Millenia Hotels I Visited Pointlessly
1. Pan Pacific So there you have it. I've done enought for now, running around in high heels all day - it's high time to kick back and relax! Really hoping I get the Ritz job though...(crosses fingers) Jessica wrote home at 10:37 pm xxxxSunday, January 02, 2005xxxxThat was quite a bland countdown on Friday. The steamboat was okay, except that some of the guys kindly dumped us midway through for the arcade. Then because it was raining off and on, we had to walk under umbrellas all the way to Benjamin Sheares bridge and eventually Suntec City. Which was so not fun trampling through wet grass and sand. In fact it hindered us from taking any photos along the way. At Suntec seven of us bought tickets for the 2 a.m. screening of 'Meet The Fockers' (my first NC-16 movie). Then there was time to kill before midnight, so we bought canned drinks from Carrefour. Yan Qing, Cheryl and I had fun aiming the cans into rubbish bins after that. At the Fountain of Wealth it actually looked more lively than last year, but because there wasn't any televised countdown, we couldn't check in with someone at home (like what Wee Keat did in 2003), and there were too many of us to countdown together anyway. We thought we'd at least hear cheers from the Esplanade, but we never heard anything. So finally we all agreed the new year had arrived and just shook hands. Not long after, four others left and it was only the seven of us. The one-and-a-half-hour interval passed extraordinarily fast, and soon we found ourselves back at the cinema. The movie was two hours long and funny, duh, in a mature way. At least I didn't fall asleep. After that in the semi-darkness of Suntec, we decided to have a very late supper at Lau Pa Sat, which meant quite a long walk through City Hall and half the CBD. In the end we all left for home at nearly 7 a.m. I got home to have a well-deserved shower, blow-dried my hair and ate my lunch (yes, lunch at 8 a.m.!). Then I promptly went off the sleep and though I set my alarm to 12.30 p.m., I didn't awake till nearly 3 p.m. There were quite a few delays before I managed to leave the house at 5 p.m. for Orchard Road, where I nearly went insane trying to decide on two books at Kinokuniya. After dinner at Coffee Bean, I went home again, but instead of reading, I went on MSN with Yan Qing (she sent me more pics again) and checked up on...shh. Not telling you yet. After that it was like 1 a.m. when my sis finally let me transfer some music files into her laptop so I could load them into my phone. Then stupid Nokia PC Suite refused to work properly for a good 1.5 hours, so by the time I got everything done it was pass 3 a.m., and I still had to stick around while my sis checked up on the thing I'm not telling you about yet. She couldn't give me an answer so I went to sleep. I meant to go out again today to get my CD, but it's been raining since I first woke up (then went back to sleep), so I guess that's completely out of the question. This would be really nice weather if I were sleeping in, but right now I'm pretty agitated... Jessica wrote home at 3:52 pm 
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