ckblah

seoul

Wed, 27 May 2009 16:10:28 GMT

2008

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 17:12:05 GMT

stop

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 13:20:48 GMT

almost two months of drifting in hopes and dreams.
it's time for me to come back to reality.
stop hoping.

the pink bucket no more

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 04:44:25 GMT

after four days of nauseousness, diarrhoeaing and 2 days of meds, the pink glow of my room had receded back under my bed. cheeeeerios! i sure hope this doesn't strike again! thanks so much for the outpouring of care, concern and well-wishes! :)

the pink bucket is out once more

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 06:21:06 GMT

yes, i own a pink bucket. it's pink because that was the only available colour when i bought it more than a year ago. intially, it was my laundry basket, now, it's reduced to holding my clothes pegs and hangers when they are not in use. that's the usual use for it anyway. it has another usage though. i place it beside my bed when i have food poisoning, just in case i don't make it to the toilet which is about 8 steps away from my bed. gosh, so now it's out, it's stationed at the side of my bed, for emergency purposes only. i wish i can keep it back under my bed soon!

on a side note, shi han is in beijing! being a nice person, i orchestrated a surprise birthday celebration for him. hopefully, it was sufficiently surprising enough. so anyway, here are the pics from the celebration and another night out for dinner.

xmasy

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:25:47 GMT

i recently placed a xmas sock on my door. it came as a surprise that some people threw some candies in. stuff i'd received include chocolate, lollipops and melon seeds. truly surprised. but this was not the only thing that surprised. something else did too.

at the end

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:48:19 GMT

ever wondered what you'll do if your life is threatened? read the following:

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_309959.html?vgnmr=1

"She ended off by saying, if I don't make it out of here, I love you all."

frankly, i do not know what i would do if i were to find out i only have minutes left to live.

coldness numbness

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:11:46 GMT

winds are getting really strong. i've decided on what to do. it's cold. perhaps it'll be numb soon too.

lost

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:59:55 GMT

it's gonna get freezing and i'm at a lost of what to do. the drought persists. perhaps i should just get used to it. abandon the hope of rain. the cycle is back. for some weird reason, the cycle repeats itself. no wonder it's called a cycle huh. right.

which road to take?

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 15:25:45 GMT

what i want and what i should do are two totally different things.

post midterms

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:25:46 GMT

one would think that life post-midterms will be all exciting and fun right? i was kinda expecting that too, but frankly, it's just pretty normal. after my last midterm paper, i went with michelle and ruilin to watch 海角7号 at an extremely ulu cafe which has a huge plasma tv and us as the only patrons. we had the whole place to ourselves and we just lounged on the sofas and watched the movie while sipping nice warm ginger red tea and bursting into moments of laughter. hehe... shuangness.

happiness is kinda shortlived though. on monday, i had HIVES! can you believe it? for the uninitiated, hives is essentially a rash on the skin normally caused by an allergic reaction or emotional stress. the last time i had hives was when i was really young and it was due to seafood. that phase subsided after a week or two and i was back devouring prawns and crabs. this time around, i have absolutely no idea what triggered the allergic reaction. i was trying to sleep at 10plus at night and it started itching. thinking that i've got a mosquito in the room, i scratched a bit. little did i know that it soon spread. arghs. woke up at 11plus to shower and applied loads of calamine lotion. didn't exactly help though. after a futile attempt to get to sleep, i logged online at about 1am and thankfully, kelvin told me that clarityne is a antihistamine. popped a pill and soon enough, the itch subsided. no relapses since the fateful monday. phew... the cause of the episode still remains a mystery...

to ze: erms... it feels kinda weird that you're actually dropping me "hope i'm well" msges on my blog instead of facebook or msn... anyways, i'm well :) fyi, the clarityne totally worked!

efficiency

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:19:53 GMT

i took a midterm on tuesday and the results are out today. another one on saturday. gosh.

无语

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:25:24 GMT

曲终人散

the last

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:58:59 GMT

you'll always remember your first because you know it's your first
you'll never remember your last because you never know this will be your last

数学

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:35:08 GMT

老师说的：
短头发是头皮的法向量
长头发是头皮的切向量

warmth

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:03:30 GMT

it rained last night
washing the dust in the air away
i woke up to a clear blue sky
it was cold
4 to 14degC
but the whole point was the wind
up to 30km/h strong
i kinda forgot how strong winds in beijing could get
this reminded me
i cycled against the wind
shivering under my coat
when i went out again, i wore a scarf
warmth it gave

深秋

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:02:00 GMT

前些温暖的日子已经过去
进入深秋的北京寒冷许多
路上落叶的数目逐渐增加
太阳照射的时光逐渐减少
北京将离开深秋步入初冬

bad week

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:44:18 GMT

daniel powter sang the song "bad day", he really should change the lyrics to "bad week" for me. the past week basically sucked. it all started on wednesday. i started the day rather late, waking up at about 10am before i did a few questions for my tutorials and commented on facebook that i love wednesdays as it's a pretty slack day for me. disaster struck at night, when i was doing more tutorial questions. i left the computer on as i did my tutorial. someone msged me on msn so i proceeded to check the msg. that's when it all happened. the pin wheel started spinning. never ending. after 3 mins, i decided to cut the power supply of my computer. guess what, it could never boot up after that. sigh... in a nutshell, my hard disk CRASHED. together with the crash, it brought with it lots of photos i took in nz and sydney and lots more in china. SIGH... thankfully, i managed to fix my laptop by changing the hard disk. on friday, i bit my own lip! now, i've got an ulcer waiting to erupt thanks to that. oh man... this week is bad, real bad. will it please get better...

the end of it all

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:05:34 GMT

just in case you think i'm gonna launch into this whole emo entry, let me disappoint you. nope, it's not gonna be an emo entry, just some thoughts and stuff that happened over these few days.

my national day holidays ended. well, are about to end in an hour's time that is. it's amazing how fast a week went by. frankly, i didn't do much. i had wanted to complete a lot more than i actually did. still, it was great to just laze around and visit cities neighbouring beijing such as tianjin and qinhuangdao.

it seems that the end of 20+degC days is here. thanks to the autumn rains, temperatures are averaging in its teens. no more shorts, no more t-shirts, say hello to jeans and jackets.

hols! collages! work!

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 05:52:43 GMT

放假咯！yeaps! it's the hols once again. before you start commenting that i seem to have a lot of holidays, let me say a few things. firstly, our summer holidays was only for 11 weeks, of which, 5 were spent on summer classes. next, this week's break will be my only break for my 18 weeks long semester. it's extremely precious! well, instead of traveling, i'm taking this hols to do my tutorials and catch up on some reports that i gotta do. will be a hols well-spent i hope. :P anyway, i made a few collages with the photos of the places i visited over the past few months:

秋

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:30:41 GMT

叶子逐渐呈现那秋天的橙黄色

下雨了
天冷了
入秋了

树木脱下那绿色的外套

凤猛吹
冷刺骨
打哆嗦

光秃秃地迎接冬天的到来

秋天的到来意味着夏天的离去，这句话似乎显然，但隐含着时间正在悄悄地从身边溜过的信息

季节的接替意味着温度的起伏震荡，忽冷忽热，也意味着雨水的充裕

换季＝麻烦？是的，非常麻烦，今天还能穿短裤汗衫，明天却需要穿薄毛衣

但是，我喜欢

我喜欢,因为每个季节都带来不一样的色彩

春：色彩斑斓
夏：绿意盎然
秋：橙黄接替
冬：雪白一片

入秋了，该是收拾心情、继续向前的时候了

of greatness

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:36:15 GMT

Great Wall
went with a few friends to the jiankou section of the great wall (箭扣长城）over the weekend. the first thing that greeted us on our way up the wall was this:

yea, so it's illegal to climb this section. arghs. there're quite a few people up on the wall though, so since we're already there, why not? besides, if i did not, i wouldn't have been rewarded with the following view the next day:

we wanted to camp overnight up on the wall, but i'm pretty glad we didn't. if we were lugging huge backpacks with camping equipment, i seriously do not think we'll be able to get past even the very first day.

the steps are horrendously steep not to mention really narrow too. it's almost a vertical climb up. thankfully, we all managed it. the first day ended with us reaching about two thirds the height of a section called the stairs to the heavens (天梯）. this section is extremely dangerous as the steps are very steep and narrow. also, the side walls are very short too. if any of us were to accidentally slip, we'll just trip off the wall and fall all the way down the hills. i was the lead person and stopped when we were nearing completion as it suddenly dawned upon me that what we were doing is very risky, life isn't something we can toy with, no reset buttons are available for any errors committed.

as the sun is about to set, we headed down the wall and went back to the villagers' place we were staying at. dinner was prepared for us. total cost of dinner and accommodation was 30RMB. at night, we headed onto the roof top and had a mini mid-autumn celebration, complete with mooncakes, pomelo and (herbal) tea. pity that it was cloudy and the moon couldn't be seen.

we started bright and early the next morning. loaded our bags with food and water and headed up to the wall again for some serious climbing. it was kinda tiring but the view was awesome. the wall just stretches for miles and miles, along the mountain ridge. you really wonder how the ancient chinese managed such a daunting task and it's even more amazing that these walls managed to survive the elements of rain and wind and lasted till today.

the above are some photos to give an idea of how dangerous the climb was. we had to hug boulders as we were on cliffs without any safety barricades. as this portion of the great wall has yet to undergo any major reconstruction, it's pretty badly damaged with lots of rubble. most of the stones are unstable to step on and we had to squat whenever we were making any descents. the scariest part had to be the ladder which was hanging in the air. the base of the ladder still has concrete attached to it, but it is no longer attached to the ground. we had to step over onto the ladder after stepping up onto a boulder. no mean feat for any of us. i'm really thankful we are all safe and sound after such an adventurous climb.

to cap our successful climb on the great wall, we snapped some photos. the view's awesome. plants are growing on the wall itself and they definitely look ready to obscure the wall from the our sights with their dense canopy of leaves.

Great People

The Singapore Sports Council gave us tickets to the swimming finals of the paralympics held on sunday. let's allow pictures to do the talking.

Watercube Aquatic Centre and Bird's Nest National Stadium

decked out in red and armed with singapore flags and clappers, we cheered on our paralympian yip pin xiu for her 50m backstroke s3 event. we were rewarded with the following:

GOLD! yea! Singapore struck GOLD in the paralympics! how awesome is that? we sang the MAJULAH SINGAPURA really loudly. as we sang and cheered, the chinese kept turning around to look at us. perhaps we were mad, but hey, how could you not be when your island of a country strikes gold for the first time?

here's a pic with our golden girl! never had i felt so proud to sing the national anthem. it's an awesome day, made awesome by the great pin xiu who accomplished something really great despite some shortcomings. perhaps it's time for us to take a step back and appreciate what we have.

不上长城非好汉

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 13:56:16 GMT

climbing the jiankou section of the great wall (箭扣长城) is definitely one of the most crazy stuff i had ever done! lots of cliffs and a ladder hanging in the air without any safety barricades. amazing experience, but definitely not something i'll do again. i'm glad to be alive.

fyi, i did take that photo.

dry

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:41:19 GMT

it's now dry.

perhaps perhaps

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:29:29 GMT

nice view huh? yea, i agree, wish i'm back there.

summer classes just ended today. it's actually pretty fun, but i'm real glad it's all over.

mid-autumn holidays from the 12th to 14th before the frenzy of mugging starts once again on the 15th.

intending to head to the great wall on the 13th. will spend a night there too. till then, have a great time. :)