back at russell street

tasty is the forbidden fruit
but should permission be given
to enjoy it
i believe all its flavour would be lost

landed in melbourne

god, i really really dislike planes, although SIA made the journey much better

thank you whoever met up with me in singapore, for your time and effort, i really appreciate it.

you can hear cars and stuff from my apartment.
pink was just blasting from a car. love her songs and her attitude.

& i don't need you tonight

finality

grandma looked peaceful. i was the last to place a flower inside her coffin before it went into the crematorium. the family was given yellow roses, because that was her favourite flower.

met up with manda. she managed to tear a $10 plastic note. don’t ask me how:

the mood for this trip back was very low. like gma first, then we couldn’t celebrate CNY. friends are all working and they’re kinda nervous for A level results. and on top of that i’m down with the flu.

the new malls depress me. ion, 313 & orchard central. they look alike. bright lights, loud music & stainless steel & glass = headache.

i should go ice skating or clubbing or something. something to take my mind off everything.

dust to dust

we all live, we all die

at least i got to say goodbye.

2 more days of greeting relatives and family friends.

her lipstick shade is too pink though. she always wore it bright red.

the tent was done well. nice white sheets.

my job was to refill peanuts, melon seeds and sweets on the table.

i think tonight it will be collecting donations.

all in all, i think grandma would have liked her own funeral.

sg

i've been emergencied back to singapore

so here i am, back in my humid hot home country.

i realise that

1. i have flown about 15 times in 2008 & 2009. Mainly to and from melbourne, sydney and singapore. therefore, i have consumed at least 10 disgusting meals, survived crappy service and packed my whole life into suitcases and boxes 3 times. take this advice from me, a spoilt singaporean: stick to SIA. Qantas has a lot to catch up on.

2. aussie immigration don't have a problem with me but singapore immigration does. EVERY SINGLE BLOODY TIME the singapore immigration will ask me how i got my USA passport. once they hear the singlish accent coming from my mouth they will stamp my passport. this time coming back was even funnier:

i went into the singaporeans queue. and the officer is a chinese and there's a malay officer leaning against the booth flipping through those 'CNY specials' catalogue that supermarkets like to give out.

so the officer looks at me, looks at my passport, looks at me, looks at my passport, not convinced that it is actually me. then the malay officer asks 'eh what is dis buddha jump over de wall ting arh?' The chinese officer is abit preoccupied with making sure that the girl in front of him is really both american and singaporean so he goes ' er er er... is de....' and i pipe in helpfully "sharks fin" the chinese officer looks at me and then immediately stamps my passport, convinced i am actually a singaporean because of my answer.

3. i am apparently going to visit my ill grandma every day cause that is the expected thing of me to do, as the eldest daughter of my father. she’s quite unresponsive, not talking. but she does nod or shake her head and her eyebrows do lift up when i tell her something that she finds amusing. everyone thinks she doesn’t have much time left. secretly, i am hoping she can survive although rationally i know it isn’t a comfortable life she’s leading now. i once debated for euthanasia, and i believed what i was saying. now though, i find it difficult to reconcile my heart and my head

4. went back to GB for fellowship camp. i was a station mistress with manda. some idiot group greeted us with ‘good evening sexy mistresses’(mistresses to who?!?!) and ‘good evening chiobu-s’. Every squad that passed through our station had to greet us with some variation of hot, sexy, cool, pretty, beautiful. :D including marianne’s squad. i wish i could have taken a video of marianne calling me “ hot station mistress melissa” but sadly, nah. went for supper with manda, melia, stacey, pet, dodo, vera, seow & mak. also saw sam there. we were at KAP, and it was full of orientation groups. i felt so old. <YEAR 2 OF UNI> just kept booming in my head. but i was happy because manda was next to me, worrying as usual, and on the other side of me, melia was listening to pet pet and stacey nonsense and i was talking to mak and seow and dodo and vera were also talking and everything seemed, for awhile, like we went back in time to sec 4.