Civ4: Just when it couldn't get any better

When the last Friday of the Easter term rolled around, we grabbed it with as much enthusiasm as the ones that flew back home to their loved ones. I promised myself three days of nothing but R&R, anticipating long walks in the park, a visit to Borough Market, and lots of sleep.

Then Civ 4 started, and before I knew it, it was Tuesday morning with the break over and the studying timetabled to start. We had spent the last three days block booking Weng's computer in turns to finish our solo Civ missions in stretches of 6 hours. His poor Vaio hummed away 16 hours a day under our urgent clicks and much practised keyboard shortcuts.

Fast forward to Wednesday night, we were still pretty much in the same position, only managing to squeeze studying in between the Civ time slots, promising myself that once I win this campaign, I'm going to stop. No seriously. I will stop.

And then we found Multiplayer Mode: Hot Seat. Mg, just when we thought it couldn't get any better, now we get the chance to play against each other. So that's where we're at now, completely devoid of social contact for almost a whole week.

Chelsea vs. Liverpool

The pictures have finally been sent in true Malaysian timing i.e. a month after they were taken (jk, thank Ti!) and I can finally show you how amazing it was.

I've never seen Fulham Broadway so crowded, and there I was thinking, 'Thank goodness I didn't wear a Liverpool shirt!' as I fought my way through the crowds to the stadium. So we posed for pictures.


And took our seats...


Oh, I was so excited because we were sitting courtside! I mean pitchside.


So then the rest of the game was okay.


I mean we lost, but what a day, hey?

Overdue and overrated

All my birthday presents have straggled in a little late this year, apart from the scarf and Tishen's brithday message, everything else has been delayed.

Ti's birthday message came with the most hilarious warning I've ever read:

"Happy 21st Birthday! Unauthorised copying, duplication, and sale, public screening of this video is strictly prohibited. This disc is programmed to self-destruct if used with the intent of causing harm to the reputation of its production company (TT Ltd.) or in any circumstances that even remotely resemble the act of blackmail. View responsibly. TT 2006."

After watching the video, I was relieved to discover that Tish isn't just TT, but TTP, the total package, ah ha (yes ladies, he has absolutely everything), but also horribly disappointed that I could not share my hysterical joy with the rest of the world. No matter, I know we're in good company should we ever decide to go to a wedding reception or golden 50s dinner and dance.

On Monday Weng and I braved the wind, and I'm so not kidding about the wind, gale force you know! And headed to Fenchurch St. way way on the other side of the Circle Line, and bought a printer! We now co-own a beautiful Epson DX4200 All-in-one (I changed my mind and decided not to cash in my birthday present ticket just yet) that promises to do everything short of laundry.

Yesterday, Rudy sent me my birthday present - a very sweet testimonial that I refuse to post on account of being too selfish to share his writing. Some of his lines are worthy of an Oscar, they are.

Earlier today I found out I will be spending most of this summer in Singapore, "conspermed", as Lester likes to say (thank you so much!), so thus begins phase one of my netball aspirations. After looking at the average height of the Australian team which stands at about 185cm, I was panicking slightly, but my fears were unwarranted when I discovered that the average height of the Singapore team is 170 (that's me!), so I have a chance I reckon.

Going back a couple of days, I found out my most favorite icecream at Bar Ciao is the Strawberry Sundae. The basics are always reliable, although I do want to try the Peach Melba. Took Tom to Belgo's at Covent Garden, that place is so impressive the first time, then not so afterwards.

That's about as far back as my memory goes. I'm still waiting for my sister to send my stuff over, for Tish's e-voucher for Amazon (whee!), and our long promised trip to the British Museum.

I wasn't born a fish

Commonwealth being streamed through BBC has been amazing. It's let me follow pretty much everything and has given me a solid excuse to spend most of my day glued to a 2.5" by 4.5" screen for most hours of the day, except for 2 hours of suspiciously poor selections of sports - like boxing - between 3 and 5 in the afternoon. I've watched the incredible success of the Malaysian divers and badminton players, the fortunes of the mostly China-Chinese-but-now-Singaporean paddlers, and a lot of netball.

I'm going netball-crazy, I now have aspirations of making the national team. Netballers don't retire all that young and I think that gives me about 10 years to get into it. The last time I was so strongly inspired was after watching Fame which left me thinking, I want to dance. I can still hear my mum, "Dancing is such a sleazy job."

Anyway, so while being forced to watch the British nations in every sport they have half a chance in, i.e. boxing, bowls, and badminton, I clicked on the article bearing the title "Are you born to swim, do you have the body for swimming", and was horribly dismayed.

Key characteristics as listed by Dr. Kevin Thompson, physiologist at EIS, are wide shoulders, slim hips, large hands and feet, large arm girth, and high arm span to height ratio.

Wide shoulders. Okay, yea I have pretty wide shoulders. Okay, fine, very wide.

Slim hips. No way, these hips are built for breeding.

Large hands and feet. Um, I don't think so, I cannot palm a netball and I take after my dad in shoe size.

Large arm girth. I don't really know what this means to be honest, where are they measuring around? Forearms? Upper arms? At 14 years old, I was doing endurance sets of bicep curls, tricep curls, and obliques with 5 to 10kg. At 21, I can barely lift three, much less repetitively.

High arm span to height ratio. I know for a fact that my arms are disproportionately short. Louis Tan kindly pointed that out to me during a squash session about three years ago.

So no, I'm not built to swim. Damn.

One more

Yes, I know what you're thinking, omg, pictures. Here's one more that didn't seem to want to join the others.

A princess for a day

The party didn't really get started until about 4pm when Weng arrived. It was one of the surprises of the day, although somewhat unsuccessful. I was almost convinced nothing was going to happen until I called him earlier. We chatted for about five minutes and he managed to hide the background noises well but in a split second of silence, the ding-ding-ding came through followed by the announcer's voice that betrayed his location and placed him on the platform with the arrival of the 1408 to London Waterloo.

He arrived with the promise of a special dinner, so we spent the next three hours and fortyfive minutes of Wednesday afternoon like this:

Where are we going?
You'll see later.
Okay, what do I wear?
Well I'm going in a t-shirt and jeans.
What kind of food is it? Chinese?
No, not chinese, but it's very near by.
It's Carluccio's isn't it? Where are we going? You can tell me! We'll still be going anyway.
You'll see later.
Can't we go earlier? I'm hungry.
No, the reservation's made for 7.45pm, you can't go earlier. It will be really crowded.
No, London people don't eat dinner so early, it'll be less crowded at six. I'm starving.
No, we can only go at 7.45.
Only at 7.45? Who are we meeting?!
What makes you think we're meeting anyone?
We must be meeting someone, it wouldn't be so exact otherwise.

I was so totally on to him. Even more so when he refused to leave until 7.47 when his phone buzzed with a missed call. It such an awesome dinner with my nearest and dearest in London, minus Tash who was caught up in Cheltenham with her mum.



Ti's mum made me that lovely scarf! Tish, you totally look like a tourist, and I don't know why Terence looks like a bouncer, but thank you guys so so much for coming!

Then I got home, saw the brilliant surprise my unbelievably amazing housemates had got me and wished very strongly that I didn't have that tiramisu for dessert.


We are such an attractive bunch.

Anyway, I think Weng's going to take my shopping for a printer this weekend. I know, so practical right? I asked for it, because I feel bad bugging Lester to print stuff out for me, and I think a scanner/copier would come in handy too. I'm 21, I've had enough of teddybears and trinkets, give me something I can use.

My absence was not exciting

The prospect of finishing level 1 Italian for good was one I looked forward to with more enthusiasm than my fast approaching birthday.

Now it's finally over and my brain no longer feels saturated with verbs, the language is actually coming more easily to me, certainly more easily than during my oral, where finding the right gender, the right pronoun, the right whatever was like grabbing mist, all on top of having to fight off the random urge to alternate my answers in Malay and Mandarin.

Anyhow, it's over, and now that I have the time to do anything I absolutely want, I am completely and utterly deprived of entertainment. The Commonwealth Games' reruns feature some of the most boring sports tonight not to mention a looped episode that features 5 commentators analysing and reanalysing each one of Britain's athletic golds. Weng took his Civ4 back to Southampton with him, and the House detox regimen has to be handled carefully with only two episodes left for me to work around.

I guess I could study for the finals.

Oh, thank you so much Ah Yi, for the e-card (isn't my aunt cool, she's so up to date with technology), and for the birthday wishes from Rudy and later Cheryl, who pointed out that I am technically 21 on account of timezones.

But yea, in case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm 21 tomorrow. Yes Tish, tomorrow.

Like a week full of Mondays

I have such a hard time starting Mondays, and it doesn't help that Italian's the very first lesson. I spend most of the 50 minutes listening to my colleagues babbling in a language I'm supposed to be competent in after about 60 hours of contact time and with the final exam next week, but nothing. Nadda. Zilch. I might as well be sitting in advanced Finnish.

It's as if the part of my memory that's been carefully storing various verb forms and their English equivalents over the last two terms has been padlocked in a chest and thrown into the Mariana Trench.

I guess I'd better start looking.

Let me hear you say rawr

Thank you guys for filling in my Johari window, you're all so sweet - well I suppose it's only because there aren't really any negative adjectives but you're still all so sweet. It's funny that people think I'm confident because I sure as hell don't feel it a lot of the time, and organized. Oh yes, that's me.

End of the week +yay+ and about 50 more skirt segments to go.

Growing up

*sigh* Teenagers and their hormones.

Do my Johari!

Right here.

So far no one (out of three) thinks I'm patient and Weng laughed hysterically at 'organised'.
Tish is taking forever.

Aiyo, so d-duhr

Ash: Hey person A and person B were holding hands today!
Weng: Holding hands? As in everyone's holding hands? Or just them both?

At least you brought me some entertainment during the walk home in the pouring rain.

Tuesday brings crappy weather

Thinking back, it seems that quite a while has passed since I stepped foot on UK soil to begin uni. Being under 18, I had problems getting things done. For one, I couldn't open a regular bank account like everyone else but had to apply for a 'Young person's account' and subsequently change it when I was of age. Only found this out 2 weeks later when I received a letter rejecting my initial application. You would think the bank would have checked my particulars or informed me of that problem when i first handed in the form.

Then there was the time I got asked for ID buying some sparkling grape juice that was NOT alcoholic. I was too stunned to question why I was being asked. Thank goodness Ash stepped in. It didn't help that I was almost 20. Had to endure countless days of teasing after.

Now almost 3 years along, I feel so much has changed. However, it's hard to imagine I'm graduating before 21. How can one feel so old and young at the same time?? Sometimes I want to just go out and work, earn a salary and see what lies beyond university life. Other times I'm content to just stay where I am, worring about what to cook for dinner, wasting the day away watching some TV series or being glad that I can sleep til 10 the next day. However circumstances, obligations and responsibilities is closing the door on the latter. It's gathering pace and seems to be just a matter of time before it'll be closed forever.

In other news, Champions League tonight! =) so I'll be temporarily putting those responsibilities and what not on hold for 2 hours.

...and ended with guilt

I should have done some work today. *sigh*

Monday started with death

The suspected charred remains of an unidentifiable insect were found today after gloom descended in a spiteful fizz of failing circuitry. It had apparently kamikazed in the bowl-shaped section of an Argos "Burnished Bronze" floor lamp, taking the light out in the process. All that remains of the toasted invertebrate is a lingering odour not unlike that of a Chinese medicinal herb shop.

Five ants lured by the honey glazing on my rice puff cereal also died violently in the bottom corner of the bag of cereal today when the walls of their polythene tomb closed in on their unsuspecting heads. One panicked and tried to escape, but failed horribly in the attempt, expiring (also violently) one centimeter away from its friends and approximately 748 rice puffs from freedom.

New friends, old friends, and six degrees of freedom

I learnt my lesson after last year's London Games - 1) don't ever referee, and 2) when you disapprove of things, don't make it obvious.

It was so much smaller than last year and the year before that. Some put it down to the last minute-ness in letting all the other colleges know about pertinent details like what sports were even going to be offered - LSE, the organising society, had the biggest turn out.

It was freezing and I suffered painfully from wind burn, but there's nothing more fun than watching KCL with their telepathic sisters and UCL in all their gung-ho aggressiveness steamroll the rest of the competition. The second each dainty foot hits the court, you do not want to mess with these women.

Lester kindly offered an opinion on the way home that you had to be butch to be good at the sport. I disagree, you also need to have a good set of nails, a backside with which to covertly bump other players out of the way, and all the cunning and wile of ... of a cunning and wiley thing.

The girls did great, I love playing with ICSS because they're so much fun, and when we found ourselves hopelessly behind, we swopped positions and had an awesome time running around like headless chickens. I generally played like a wuss, relying too much on the referee to call up the slightest contact like in league games, where even touching your marker pulls you up for a foul. To be fair though, the referees this year were a marked improvement in that they actually made some calls rather than stand there with the sole aim of starting the match, stopping the match at time, and avoid getting glared at.

Then there was I. The KCL-UCL final needed referees, and although two girls (both from LSE) were perfectly willing and experienced, i.e. more than 16 minutes of refereeing under their belt, KCL had issues about two LSE referees and I was taking my time leaving the court. So I tried my hardest, making a very lame show of refereeing - regulation whistle in hand (that was never used) - for 24 agonizing minutes. I badly wanted to cheer madly for UCL who were putting up such a good fight, and every foul I saw registered two minutes too late.

I really enjoyed seeing Hsiang, who had also made his way to Bacon's College to get thrashed, and I met Pui, one of the more experienced referees who plays for LSE 5ths, and Nicola, who used to play for LSE 1sts, who also knows Becky, Diane, and possibly Fong May (although I didn't ask). What a small small world.

I miss my mom's cooking

I feel sick.

Not because I'm down with some medical illness but because I just had a really salty take-away dinner. I miss my mom and her cooking *sigh*. I don't think we fully realise just how much time and effort goes into cooking a decent dinner until you live by yourself; well at least for me, cos I didn't do any cooking prior to the UK. It's so hard to cook something nice or often barely edible without leaving 3 servings worth of leftovers. It's a gamble. Every single one of my dishes taste the same.

Cooking for one person is tough.

Also you can't exactly recreate certain dishes here cos of all the time constraints that we face (which I strongly feel would be significantly less if I had a car) or the fact that we just can't get those stuff here - like tiger prawns.

I miss my teh ping. I'm addicted on that stuff. Going from 3 times a week to zilch for 3 months is torture and paying GBP1.50 at Mawar for a glass does make me feel slightly better but only for a very short time before I start to get withdrawal symptoms. Good thing it's that price - it keeps me away just long enough till I can go home. (I've only had it once)

The luxury of home-cooked food. Won't know what you're missing till you're actually missing it.

There were the ups and then there were the downs

My sister's finally completely disillusioned with the prospect of driving. I think she lasted longer than I did, and I fully sympathize, 3.00pm is always awkward.

Sheer stupidity on my part put an extra week in February, giving me a false sense of comfort that was quickly dispelled on Tuesday when that entire extra week disappeared with the realisation that March started on Wednesday. It was like God took a pair of scissors and snipped 168 extremely valuable hours (valuable, not productive, there's a difference) out of my life and my sanity, bringing a whole barrage of tests and deadlines crashing into each other in a catastrophic panic.

Among the tasks that I have to complete in the next two weeks are:

1. Italian coursework
2. MSD progress test
3. Stats coursework
4. London Games
5. About 4 backlogged weeks of MSD tutorials
6. 72 skirt panels for the hoverboard
7. Italian finals
8. Eating 6 Krispy Kreme donuts before the ants do - considering they're up by about 1 billion individuals, the odds are somewhere in that region too
   

The coursework is most definitely going to be among my most pleasurable tasks, but somehow we soldier through.

Last game of the season

Wednesday afternoon saw 7 of us following Naomi through the crush of people that seem to throng Victoria Station at all hours on the way to play GKT 4ths for our last league match. They've remained unbeaten in our league all season and apparently Jade was supposed to have said, 'I don't even know why we're making this trip'.

On the way there we talked, as girls do, and it seems a lot of people won't be around next year. I sure hope Celina gets 3rds captaincy because I think she's a wonderful motivator, if a little intimidating with threats of forcing her players to attend all socials for some game time.

But it wasn't too far. Despite initial worries when I wasn't able to find North Dulwich on the street map, it turned out to be in zone 2 somewhere. We arrived early for once, giving us enough time for a warm up, which I braved in proper uniform. The wind was unforgiving however, and as soon as we finished warming up, I had to slip my tracks back on. Game play was a lot faster than last week's disaster and we won it - a great way to end a pretty good season.

I was actually hoping the ball would get back up to my end faster so I wouldn't have to think about the cold or the 6ft-plus keeper, and when I thought it couldn't possibly get any colder, it started snowing. At least GKT looked warm compared to us IC girls dashing around the court in sleeveless dresses.

I'm already looking forward to all the friendlies, and currently trying to put off learning my Italian vocab for the test tomorrow. I told Tom a couple of days ago that I'd talk to him as regularly as I could on MSN in preparation for the final, but he hasn't signed on since. I don't blame him, the conversation was grammatically incorrect most of the time and agonizingly slow. E stato molto paziente.