You wanna see the merchandise? or
The ineffective teaser trailer

I, the illegal correspondent, and my photos of copyrighted symbols.


Check out the price tag.




Going at $160 and $140 respectively, guess what? Get your very own elf promise.


A foot-tall Aragorn takes on Lurtz. Somehow, he isn't as imposing.


"This is Sting! You've seen it before!"


Find us here.

A lot of people think the wrinkled skin you get after a long shower is disgusting, or aesthetically displeasing. When I was a kid I found them spooky. "Look!" I'd wail to my mum. "Look!", sticking my fingers under her nose. A bit like little old faces with slits for eyes, etched into the flesh. And strangely, they'd recede slowly into normal smooth prints again in a matter of minutes. Maybe that was why I really didn't like the scene in TTT with the Dead Marshes. ("Don't follow the lightsssss!")
When someone spilt water on the table I'd rub and increase its surface area for faster drying. I liked to pretend I was a genius artist, and one day I saw this picture in the streaks - dinosaur bones, not gory but encyclopedia-like, rising in the centre of a plain. I excitedly pointed it out to the maid, who was wiping the table, who was confused.
This type of thinking isn't right for Economics at all. It's like having to think in a very exact way, and if you don't naturally, you're wrong (or stupid, or impractical). Why am I writing as if I hate Economics? I don't. You've got to think in more than the way that seems to natural to each person, otherwise your brain would be very limited and you'd think everyone is wrong (except you, of course). What a melodramatic explanation.
I saw a posse of middle-aged Frenchmen in The Soup Kitchen at United Square. The accent is so lyrical, and they are aces at using chopsticks, not what you'd expect from hammy Caucasian men ordering their Tiger Beer. They happily moved on to the neighbouring store to eat kaya toast later. I went to McDonald's for ice-cream; couldn't stop eating and stuffing my face and scowling at my dad for eating 3/4 of the fish and spraying pear juice all over me. This time I'm not valiantly searching for the End of CTs. I just keep studying, anyway, as if girding up the loins (as if) for the long (slow) race up till November. I'm tired of being ragged about researching about the future. I KNOW I have to. Same grievance.
The carrots dangling are a) the HC Band concert b) LOTR exhibition at the Science Centre c) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I miss HX, but probably won't see her for some time.

Polypetalus

"Oh simple thing where have you gone
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin

And if you have a minute why don't we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know
This could be the end of everything
So why don't we go
Somewhere only we know..."
- Keane, sounding like they meant it

I just got back from the GENUS concert which was okay, although Yu-Hsin was all ready to pull out foolscap and begin an essay on the feedback forms. I saw a St. Nicks' classmate today, who's in NJ, and for some strange reason kept saying she couldn't recognize any of the guitar folks I was with. Then it hit me afterwards - she thinks I'm in NJ too. Wonder if it's ever occurred to her why she hasn't seen me in school. Oh, yes, Han and I are the same person, right, how could I forget? A haiku on the MC:

Girl in a blue dress
Conducting the confused crowd
A flailing windmill

Studying. Piffle.

You are Schroeder!


Which Peanuts Character are You?
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Okay, so in full delayed reaction, JPL is coming back.
I'm reading Hwee Hwee Tan's Foreign Bodies now, for the sake of not behaving condescendingly towards local fiction. It's not too bad, for once not about the industralization and generation gaps. This lament about Singapore was laced with tried-and-tested-whining:
"... the banality of this country is due to the authoritie' desire to replace excitement with efficiency, passion and punctuality - their ability to turn everything into boredom."
Yet speech patterns, voiced, were quite eerily familiar:
'"Hey, you know what? Yesterday somebody in my building got murdered." I jumped and clapped my hands. "Excitement."'
We celebrated Gen and Jie Qi's birthday on Thursday, at Scotts' food court and Haagan Dazs. Eating Bailey's ice-cream, I spotted another table ordering a most fascinating dessert. Fondue, dessert-style - cubes of chocolate and strawberry ice-cream, with Brazilian liquid chocolate for dip, served in a pot over a flame to keep it delicately warm! Ingeniously upping the luxury quotient, it was one slick piece of packaging. With a pang I remembered sharing that four-scoop sundae with Mel, Han and Pamela, going to Mel's aunt's house after that and sitting on the floor surrounded by a mass of bags, beds and freezing my bum while listening to Han's trying to fit a long tale into 15 minutes.
Everybody, watch Big Fish. It's THE big one. Shall say no more. FLOURISH WITH FICTION!
I think my mum doesn't tell me a lot of things, because she thinks I won't understand them. Although, quite honestly, nothing seems to surprise me anymore. Issues are non-issues. When she was seven, and living in Hongkong at that time, she got it into her head to go to the market and buy groceries (mai cai). So her mum gives her some money and off she goes, and taking cai literally, really buys nothing but vegetables home. Now is that a cute story or what?
When I think about it my mum has had quite an exciting life. She was born in China, spent her childhood years in Hongkong, came to Singapore and got married while the rest of her family migrated to Vancouver. Her eldest brother was caught in the Cultural Revolution and couldn't leave without a lot of trouble. Today her daughter just rotates around the same spot thinking about it.
Han bought a gigantic LOTR poster picturing Frodo and a frame which cost twice as much. Elijah Wood now gazes wistfully, cupping the (not visible) Ring in his hand, indirectly at the first person who enters the room and turns on the light.