"Hello. The person you are trying to call is unavailable. Please leave a mes-" *click*

I gotta wake up at 7am to go to the airport and check-in and all... Won't be phoning for the next whole week. Last chance last chance, pick up the phone!

He's gallivanting with the family up in Cameron Highlands. Could that be the reason? Ee...was hoping for a nice long chat again tonight before I fly.

Pick up pick up; call back call back.

My Melbourne buddy Calvin came down from KL today. As Winson puts it, "You and I really just have such a good time with Calvin round... Now pinch his nipples for me."

I just discovered - Calvin is colour blind!! He sees grey as green, red as brown, and purple as blue, sometimes orange as green too, etc...! So to him, the Sg $5-note is red, the Sg $2-note is blue, Elmo is brown, and he wanted to buy for himself a ladies' Adidas waterbottle that was dark purple and baby pink cos he saw it as a unisex black and white!

Calvin: I like that stuffed toy there. The one behind the red Elmo.
Me: I thought you can't see red?
Calvin: Yeah, but I memorized that Elmo is red. If you ask me to see like that, he's some brown thing.

That means when I wear my very nice scarlet trench coat, he wouldn't be knocked back cos he'll just see it as brown -.-
So I spent the entire outing pointing at random things and asking him, "What colour is this?" Hey, I'm a researcher, remember? I really wonder what the world looks like through his eyes. To him, a lot of people must have really tasteless dressing since his sense of colour is so screwed up, thus including his own, lol! No wonder he always wear shirt and jeans. Can't go wrong!

Then after lunch, he and I landed in the most embarrassing situation of the century. Mostly because I pulled us in...
We went to Build-a-Bear workshop at Suntec cos I wanted to get the new Pawsome Pony! So yeah, I went through the whole build-a-bear ritual.

Step 1: select your skin
Step 2: fill it up with cotton stuffing
Step 3: take a little stitched heart out from the bowl of little stitched hearts, make a wish, then pop it into the pony, and the lady sews it up
Step 4: bathe your pony (the most embarrassing part) - did the damn air-shower have to be so loud? everybody was looking at me!!! and stupid Calvin didn't even want to get close to me while I was 'showering' the pony!
Step 5: choose a name for your pony

Me: What should I name him?
Calvin: *pause* ... Winson Tan!

Step 6: print birth certificate

Indeed, it's been a long long time since I was one of them easily-amused kids.



Thus my little Whinny was born. Whinny, cos, you know, whinny - the sound a horse makes - and Winnie - the name my boyfriend takes... yeah...... ah screw the etymology. Calvin's idea to call him Winson Tan, thus I conjure up a horsier version to it. Sounds nicer also... >.<



Squishes and cuddles to the new member of my family of stuffed equines! Lup lup lup lup lup...this small, adorable, silent Whinny will substitute, for now, the heavy-arse, cantankerous, very talkative Winnie.

I'm flying for China tomorrow morning! I'll be landing in Hong Kong first, and spend a day there, before heading to ancient capital Xi'an, then to Beijing. Be back on the evening of the 19th!
Yum Cha, Xiao Long Bao, mystery-meat baos, here I come!

With haunting music like those of Enya and James Horner, and sometimes with vocals as mysterious as Enya's and Moya Brennan's, how could I not fall in love with Secret Garden.

Their songs conveying joy, harmony, peace, home, freedom, and hope - impressions and elements that overwhelm an onlooker of the rolling green hills of Ireland. Only appropriate that I fall under the spell of Secret Garden, after watching Lost Worlds: The Pagans last night on History Channel. I'm so gad to have bought the Secret Garden 1996 - 2006 collection set from Sembawang during it's 50% off sale. 6 CDs for about $55 only!
Did you know? They are the original composers of the ever memorable and famous, much-covered, "You Raise Me Up". I didn't know that!!

This evening's TKD class was good. I like going to classes. For the private lesson, I got a more engaging session with the Singaporean guy instructor. My previous two sessions were by a Philippino woman. This guy was also good. And then for the self-defence class, it was taken by the two head Korean instructors.
Small class, only 4 people. They just taught us how to wriggle out of threatening situations. Real useful. The Korean guys could hardly speak English though, so they mostly conveyed (or tried to) what they meant through a lot of hand actions and squealing. Lol! Got a lot to tell you about that experience, James.

Ok, History Channel time now! Gotta run!

I recently took up taekwondo classes. I know, sif I wasn't garang enough already. But my stepdad thought it'd be useful to know some self-defense. I went with him to the school and I could hear people screaming and hammering.

Stepdad: Taekwondo is like, when a robber comes at you, you shout "HIYAAAH!!!", and the robber drops dead. 
Me: Imagine. I go from yoga to this.
Stepdad: And also, if yoga fails, you can use taekwondo! =)
Me: -.-"" waaaaaat

Stepdad: Next time when you learn enough, and a robber tries to harm you, you can shout, "Choose your style! Taekwondo or yoga!"
Stepbro: What if the robber says Yoga?
Stepdad: Then you hug the robber. After all, yoga is about peace, balance, harmony and all that, right?

Yeah, welcome to the family. Okay, I should get ready to go for my TKD class now. Getting a new private trainer (very probably the Korean guy)(oh Jamie!) and joining the full class for the first time. Hope I'll be okay!

I was on the Singapore Flyer today. Dad got 4 free tickets on it, so he took me, and my uncle and aunt. Was super slow, quite boring really. But the view was quite purty.





Would like to have dinner in the capsule one day. Would be a nice experience if you're with someone special, I suppose.

Well, I wouldn't pay the original $30 to ride the thing. But was an experience. And I must say, one remarkable feat of engineering.
Yay! We have the world's largest ferriswheel and viewing platform!

I was just looking, on the internet, at the original ancient manuscript of the world's oldest Bible, dated to be 1600 years old.



Beautiful, isn't it? Fascinating, isn't it, to imagine the Greek hands which brought the ink to parchment and wonder, "Whose hands did they belong to? Who was he?"
Written in Greek around the time of Constantine the Great, it certainly is the world's oldest Bible. Have a look at it at http://www.codexsinaiticus.org if you're interested.

I love history. Been watching quite a bit of the History Channel, like I always do when I'm back.
Watching all those excavations really makes me wish I could be an archaeologist. To go to the very site where hundreds and even thousands of years ago, the very people responsible for the glorious buildings we see actually trod that very earth to raise the finest structures in history.
There are far too many beautiful structures all across the globe. I just felt like sharing a few - each with a different story behind them, each with a different message to convey.



Monument of Immortality: Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt - completed 2560BC



Monument of Pride: Temple of Rameses II at Abu Simbel, Egypt - completed 1224BC



Monument of Glory: Parthenon, Greece - completed 432BC



Monument of Protection: Great Wall of China, China - 206BC



Monument of Greatness: Colosseum, Rome - completed 80AD



Monument of Splendor: Palace of Palenque, Mexico - completed 7th century AD



Monument of Peace: Borobudur, Indonesia - completed 825AD



Monument of Faith: Notre Dame de Paris, France - completed 1345AD



Monument of Supremacy: The Forbidden City, China - completed 1420AD



Monument of Love: Taj Mahal - completed 1653AD

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Oh, and by the way... I'm going to CHINA next week!!!
Forbidden City, Great Wall, and terracotta army, here I come!! (preparing to tick those off my 'ancient sites to visit before I die' list.)

In the middle of the afternoon on Monday, 5/7/09. I received a pleasantly surprising sms from Penang.
He was wishing me a happy anniversary for the 6th-month milestone in our life (note the singular adjective).
I suppose that when two individuals come together in a mutual agreement of faithfulness - a commitment - they merge a part of their lives together, even while, at the same time, living their own separate lives. And this would apply for all (or, at least, the majority of) romantic relationships, no matter how brief, how temporary, how fleeting it may be; even in those where a deadline is set, or when love is absent. I guess such 'merging of lives' out of sheer affection is sprung from the commitment. This is where two separate paths merge, until the commitment is broken lifted, and the paths resume their own routes again.

Wait, why am I talking like it's the end of the road? I touch my hand to the wood on my desk! Getting a bit too submerged into the stinging reality of life again, as I always do. This isn't the end - I don't think I see it in sight yet. I'm having the time of my life in sharing it with another. With this other. He wrote me a short song. Wow... And a second's in the making.
Two weeks have never felt longer...

We had a rough start. A very rough start, right from the beginning. But we pulled out.

They spoke of a Spring Maiden. She loved a being so wise and splendid - a Ram of golden fleece. But her inuring harvest was wilting, for three years of drought is three years too long. Only two sheaves of of wheat remained in her once bountiful spring fields, when the Water Bearer quenched prolonged thirst and flooded the fields afresh. The Spring Maid discovered a harvest like ne'er before gathered. And so the Ram could be guardian no more, for this time, water was needed more than wisdom and gold. And thus did the gift of the Water Bearer continue to nourish the parched fields of the Spring Virgin, which yielded their harvests more gloriously than ever before.

Nice bedtime story. I swear the poets or antiquity could have told it. It's late now, and it's time to sleep.
I'm thirsty. I'm very thirsty. 3 more weeks to endure until I may drink once more from the cup of the stars.

WTF okay? WTF.

click to enlarge the awesomeness.

I'm on a good fibre diet. yet I've not shet in nearly a week...