Movie: Nicholas Nickleby brims with old-school sweetness, the kind where fluffy romances make you clasp your hands and go, "Oh," and Jamie Bell, death-white, twisted, tragic, 'saved in death' - makes you cry. Charlie Hunnam's jarringly artificial British accent has to be excused; his naive ideal of pure love is never toppled in this world where the poisonous villains he tackles are more often than not caricatures that Dramatically amuse and dismay. Visuals (Cheeryble brothers always dress alike, talk alike = comedy) - old-school, music - old-school, Nicholas' elf-like diction - old-school, OTT romantic Devonshire setting = old-school. Verdict: I love!
Event: I will see old friends, and find - we haven't lost anything at all.
Quote: "Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you." - How I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith ended in all its ambiguous glory

___________________________

Movie: I Heart Huckabees tries to screw with your brain, and I am almost-convinced by extensive newspaper reviews to believe that the director's on a mad crusade/argument behind all the crazy, flitty, colourful camerawork. No, I know. Confusion comes off it in tantalizing waves, inspiring me to read Philip Yancey again, and to create avatars fossilizing the idealistic, passionate/vulnerable Tommy Corn, who stomps around in fireman boots and sits on a mound while trying to change the world or break it down.

Event: There was a gas leak or something at BBDC today and yesterday, making the whole place smell as if it's going to blow up. My instructor asked me how his hair looked. He doesn't have much hair. So I laughed and hurt his feelings.
Quote: "How come we only ask ourselves the really big questions when something bad happens?" - Tommy Corn, IHH
"We are discontent with our lot, whatever it is, just because it is ours." - Roger Shattuck

Have you ever been to a buffet where they haven't served curry yet? When that's three nights in a row, I have to keep running to the toilet, and I can't even say 'toilet' when I'm in America, like how you have to be careful with 'pants' in Britain.
There is a Fantasic Four postcard on the table next to me, and Ioan Gruffudd's stretchy fingers are beginning to frighten me. I'm turning it over.
On Friday, we rode rattling back to Tampines MRT in the back of James' van after CG dinner, making jokes about what type of goods we were along the way. People are funny, sweet and strange when they try to 'do good', or 'be good', or do God's work, as it is easy to say in church but not at all when you're outside it. But when you see hard-edged, deadpan cynicism coupled with real earnestness, and those who never stop trying, what else can you want to do but learn from it?
On Saturday, I saw 1c at Sean's place again, where merrymaking included squashing ourselves around his room, barbequing marshmallows and sitting in the dark or around the TV, semi-bonding.
Jie Qi: "If I eat any more chocolate I'm going to turn black in colour."
Mamaleng: (After Mark makes dismissive comment about girls' 2.4 timings) "So?! Can you give birth?"
The Jelita building is practically in pieces now, and if something like that happens to Serene Centre when I'm in Virginia I'll never, never forgive the construction authorities.
The UVA gathering at Mr. Kirtland's place involved wandering around a resort-ish pool area, seeing the same faces as on the 30th. And everything/everyone was unfamiliarly easy. Gordon Kirtland is a nice, kindly man who told us several riotous college stories. Their all-male acapella group ('The Virginian Gentlemen') who were swamped, boyband-like, by Deprived!girls when they sang at MGS and had to make undercover getaway to get back to their cruise, and kids streaking along the Lawn in the middle of a hurricane. And we're already planning to hit NY for the new year countdowns in Times Square, in all our NotS'pore!excitement, that stretches and holds you every time. Since there is a 90% chance I'll be staying at Hereford, there's 90% chance I'll be stranded on a hill and none of the lazy Singaporeans are going to want to climb up and visit me, hoho.
I'm barging into the kitchen at inopportune moments these days, demanding to be allowed to take over whatever complicated cooking process my mum is carrying out. But I still have to wash my hair, buy insurance, eat lunch, plan courses and go driving today, and I haven't done any of that, so I have to. Start.

Assumptions and exaggerations

There is a US Embassy-organized seminar on the same day as the Half-Blood Prince release. Dgmvjojslkjkiislf. You will see me flee from there like no one has ever run before. I got my yearbook today and it is the ugliest purple-and-green thing I have seen in my life. It appears that I am elected dishwasher at all future CG retreats. I had my driving simulator session today with two guys. One of them reminded me exactly of a random, ex-guitar mate, and the other was quite possibly gay. Hiphop fiends cannot look more incongruous than in the Bukit Batok heartland area. No game is more fun than Yahoo! Graffiti. Huixin most definitely needs shoes for her birthday.

The only reason I turned on the TV at 10pm was a certain ex-hobbit.
Here is the result.

G(r)eeks are hot!

And yes, Michelia, I wouldn't mind a whit if that was what my shirt really said.
Just had a raging blow with my mum over laptop models and how to pronounce 'Fujitsu', and of course it was probably a result of something else. I really, really, really hate computers. And webcams are the weirdest of Internet windows - I cannot imagine squinting into the screen at the shadowy, hunched-over figures of my family, going, "Hi, hello, how are you?" I love my four-wheel suitcase, though, and I could run all over town with it as if it were a pet dog (and it wouldn't even sniff the frocks the way the real ones did in Anthropologie NY).
I wish I were never rude nor condescending, at all, without ever trying not to be. I wish I could be smooth, happy and tactful and improve situations with one sentence. Basically, I wish I were superhuman.
Ha. It would be fine if I could just stop getting into accidents. After wrestling with my contact lens all day Sunday, my eye was still on fire after I took it off at home. It was so bad I basically could not stop crying. So my parents rushed me to the optician, who gasped in horror and said I probably had a corneal ulcer and could go blind, die etc. So we had to go to A&E where we waited for a year (tears still flowing freely, all of us vvvvv scared as hell) . Then we had a young doctor who was both cranky and cocky and laughed at the idea of wearing hard contacts to reduce myopia. He said it was merely an abrasion and there was no infection yet, but if it happened it would be terrible story that could involve sight-loss, and he sounded really happy when he said that. But the drops largely reduced the pain and I stopped bawling only to nearly start afresh in ragged fear. Next day eye was much better and the specialist we went to said all was healing and there was nothing to worry about.
I have way to many close shaves and I don't think I deserve them most of the time. But the thought of going blind made me want to cry more and basically I am an idiot who will never understand hardship. And why I am always told, be overwhelmingly careful.
I talked to Mel about swapping uni jumpers, smiled fixedly at my niece running around a restaurant in fairy wings sticking stickers on every one of my fingers, and laughed uncouth, hysterical laughter over the suckiest of steamboats with Han, Mich and Constance. So why do I have to yell at all?