On the eve
After three days of Christmas Fun, sunburnt shoulders, peeling purple fingers from several vigorous renditions of La Cumpursita. And a funny feeling... too much to say... restlessness... (HORROR! THE DOTS!) the ones I have to dance and squash flat with my feet again. Danced? Squashed? Okay.
Maybe it's just the sunny - sun, and the awful hanging heat on the stage that makes me want to walk, and walk, and I WOULD WALK 500 MILES AND I WOULD WALK 10 000 MORE *breaks into Proclaimers medley*. Shit. So I had to buy my music instead of presents for other people (typical), pulling myself into the ultra-hippie, crazy crazy Counting Crows:
But I got a friend from the new frontier
And Galen, she says,
"This is not America.
You need a girl with electrical hair.
And the word that you wanted was
Aluminium."
Is a letter for Christmas enough, if it says enough? What if it says what you wanted, instead of the blessings?
We went to my grandpa's house as per usual for Christmas dinner, although I had had three lunches at J8 for no particular reason. What we had to eat: ham, rolls, butter prawns, roast chicken, salad, two types of log cake, fruit cocktail etc. Incongruously I thought of Christina Aguilera dueting with Lil' Bow Wow crooning and hopping and singing on MTV about having good cheer and dancing under the mistletoe, oh phooey, WHATEVER. I thought about how Saddam's capture was called an "early Christmas present" for Bush and Gloria Arroyo calling the Philippines landslides a "tragedy so close to Christmas" (along those lines).
I took the bus back with Shulin, who was hurrying to church for her own Christmas celebrations and piled with presents for her family, and Jasmine, who told us she usually spends the 25th watching TV anyway, so she was going back to J8 for CF work. I think my Christmas cards are my dearest gifts.
How to celebrate with everyone?
How to celebrate at all, thinking about everything else? The Mediacorp stars singing carols very badly?
I have to go to a church lunch tomorrow, and I don't want to, but it's tradition, whatever that means. My mum will teach Han and I to make creme brulee, for dessert on the 26th :).
At the root of it all.
Happy birthday, Jesus, and thank you for everything, everything.

Always behind
Now ahead
There are many paths to tread
From the shadow
To the edge of night
Until the stars are all alight
Mist and shadow
Cloud and shade
All shall fade
All shall fade
- From The Steward of Gondor, OST The Return of the King

No one wants to leave Middle-earth
*SPOILERS!!!*
LOTR is not overrated, it's not, it's not, I can keep saying that, until you believe me. I want to cry now still, and I watched it on Saturday.
Enough of the teeth-rattling, monster-sized action that had me gaping like a stupid goldfish, and all hail Peter Jackson, who "makes you cry, you don't know why". Gollum's horrific tragedy of a human, Sam's untainted loyalty, Eowyn's giving, loss and receiving.
I SOUND LIKE A BLOODY MOVIE CRITIC!
I still want to cry anyway.
Best scene with a female
Witch King: blablablabla NO MAN HAS EVER DEFEATED ME!
*dramatic pause, Merry tumbles in here somewhere*
Eowyn: (whips off helmet) I am no man.
*Stabs Witch King, who dies kind of easily, maybe that was the whole point*
Prettiest flower vase ever
Did anyone notice? Frodo gets stabbed by nasty Nazgul and wrapped up by Shelob, Gimli can't ride a horse himself 'cos he always tumbles off, Gandalf is dragged off a cliff by a vicious Balrog and whacked quite soundly by Saruman before finishing him, even Aragorn almost-drowns and is nearly stepped on, and Legolas gets not one friggin' scratch, never trips even when shield-skateboarding at Helm's Deep, and tackles a whole oliphaunt (or something) without even messing up his hair.
There's something wrong there. And the dialogue Orlando Bloom gets! He sounds like a centaur straight out of Harry Potter. "The mounts are uneasy.""There is a darkness beyond..."
It suddenly occurred to me that Pete wanted it that way, you know, so cool. Okay, fine, very cool. Pity he and Gimli had so little to do; I guess Tolkien had has reasons.
Best development in character
The hobbits, the hobbits, the hobbits. Particularly Merry and Pippin - when they stumble, and are helpless, and are pushed aside as 'halflings'? Who can't fight? They go out there, and they do, in the most unspeakingly moving sequences; Pippin defies Gandalf's orders to "return to the citadel" and stabs just one Orc, Merry stands alone and is swept onto Eowyn's horse. My favourite, favourite 'tears' scene is not when the ring is FINALLY (OVER NINE HOURS OF STRUGGLE) tossed into the cracks of Mount Doom, but when Pippin is bundled off to Minas Tirith by Gandalf and has not one inkling what it means. His "but we'll see each other again soon," (significantly without the "won't we?") to Merry, and when Merry dashes high up to watch Shadowfax disappear... and dunno, it was so full, that moment.
Plenty found Sam's marriage weird and unnecessary, I'm sure, but somehow it makes perfect and good sense... hobbits don't like adventures, normally, but they can show their extraordinary strength there nonetheless, and he still got - and richly deserved - what a hobbit would want... drinking at the Green Dragon, loving Rosie Cotton.
I LOVE this movie; where the stories of friendship and bonds, and not romantic love, are the most prominent and layered and lovely.
Most overused line
"It is time..."
At least SIX times, I promise you. We KNOW the time! That's why they're telling this ridiculously long yarn! Aragorn's refreshing take:
"...but it is not the time."

With the frogs cartwheeling down the stairs
It's time to stop taking sugar cubes for cash
So there was a frog on the stairs yesterday. I was walking up carrying my books and pencils after tuition and this gray-green creature leaped across the stair in front of me to clutch the railing. First thought: "Not another lizard." Second thought: "Um, lizards don't leap". It just sat there blinking morosely (frogs are always so sad) at the very edge, as if it would fall down into the hallway with a splat and bounce away if I dropped a book on its toe. It was very disgusting. Although I still can't decide why it was disgusting.
And I can't think how it managed to get there anyway.
I got back from Adelaide on Sunday and it has quietly retreated, a small golden hover (Snitch?) of a dream holiday at the back of my head. Tartness of apple-cinnamon jelly and orange juice, warm-till-baking soft sand under stolen towels and sprinkling in between my toes, inches from the camera (horror!), cocooning me between Mel and Han. And every time you sit up it's cold again, crisp breeze and sun-burned teenagers. The window-seat in our apartment building and neon-green-faced clock tower, pig stomach soup and tofu, housing TT characters on long walks amongst the sweetest houses and shadows, buskers, beautiful knickknack stores, strong cheese and beefy flier-givers. "Ladies!" Remember? :)
So I came home and did GP homework, collected Wang Lee Hom articles for Yuwei, sent Christmas cards, struggled through chords, lived new scenes with fresh inspiration. I can never describe them; they come, exit the lift, lie upon paper and swiftly ingrain themselves. Of course, never without an argument.

"I remember, too, the light on the slopes, long shadows in tufts and hollows, with cattle, brilliant as painted china, treading their echoing shapes. Bees blew like cake-crumbs through the golden air, white butterflies like sugared wafers, and when it wasn't raining a diamond dust took over which veiled and yet magnified all things." - Laurie Lee, Cider with Rosie

"'Crawling at your feet,' said the Gnat (Alice drew her feet back in some alarm), 'you may observe a Bread-and-butter-fly. Its wings are thin slices of bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.'" - Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Justine told me yesterday in church that the J2 prom was tomorrow - in other words, today. It made me huang ran da wu and realize I probably won't see my seniors ever again and next year, that's who we'll be. Wowowow. Justine, Sarah and Jian An, fellow CWC-and-1cian unique individual Wen En, the Hotties members taking strained turns to teach us If. Others. They made up the shadowed-by-As edges of JC, the ones you met less than often, but ultimately smiled once, and were there.
*small voice* Oh.
Christmas is coming soon, and it makes me kind of sad. It's easy to get *caught up* and stuff like that, but it's too commercialized to be meaningful to me anymore. Do I like big family reunion parties? Eww. Do I like buying presents for people? Heck no. Why is Christmas even mentioned in Harry Potter? Ooh, having large unhealthy treats and crackers and gifts is really what Christmas is all about. I want to give this year. No turkey.
I should get an I SURVIVED METRO T-shirt. The PR smiles and teddy bears seem no biggie when you stand there even when blowing a nose furiously on tissue, but when you get on the MRT and sag in a seat with all symptoms of a severe head cold, it's been just under 10 hours on feet or foot. A new friend, Joanne, introduced delicious egg tarts, though, and on Saturday we stopped to laugh at the community performances on dinner break. Little boys wrestling in the shopping aisles and big ones intent on disturbing. I'd have found it more amusing if well. Lousy lousy Chinese. What is "item"? Mum wants one of the bears for her collection. So she's trying to steal the red one I got for Han. But this CIP I felt what I was doing, and it felt good.
I've packed. Tuesday night!

You know, the Internet is a depressing, mind-numbing place I'm not fond of hanging out at, where the medium-is-the-message caution is no longer what's important. If you're 17 and have had a year's worth of GP lessons. So spending less time gazing at a monitor is my resolution. So less blogging. Ha! Reasons. I just feel nauseous every time I reread my last entry.
It's a swotting, running-about holiday, where one spends quiet days eating pretzels without the dip, filling in printer-distorted music scores, responsibility homework, outwitting the rain and writing poetry about ducks. I can't imagine Chun Wee dog-sitting. Hahahaha. Sorry. It's a very funny image. (Funny as in haha, not as in weird.) You mean you don't have an aversion to animals? !!! Oh yeah, cockroaches are insects. (Can you get a tagboard, Chun Wee?)
Han's Bandfest performance was not bad, though it got me thinking about the merits of week-long camps for some people. Some people. CAP, the genius camp in The Lovely Bones. When it's assumed you'll find fast friends among people with similar interests? It's an assumption to whaddyacallit extent.
I'm terrified I'll wake up tomorrow morning and realise it's time to go back to school. Cheers Mel, your exams are over!!! Do cartwheels in the garden to celebrate. 6 more days...
I'm weary of grey weather and inconsiderate neighbours who fumigate their areas and ours in the process with poisonous, choking white gas.