OKAY I'VE MOVED! :D

http://aandrealim.livejournal.com

fat with glee and contented.

im deliberating whether to change to livejournal. quite sick of my template, and sick of blogger. but i dont like the comments thing on LJ! hmmms. how. :(

well anyway. i shall finally start updating (posted other ppl's works to cover up my lack of updates as you can see). ahahaha. and i realised a lot of random ppl stalk my blog. hello. :D

AAAHHHH PROMOS ARE OVER. and so is my j1 year. goodness, the year passed so fast. dunno how long i've waited to say that (paradox paradox! haha). but seriously, a week before i kept wanting to say "eh this year passed really fast" to ppl, but i kept stopping myself, cos i realised that i was still in the midst of promos. so yeah quite stupid. xD

anywayyy i actually started partying on sunday cos i went to ZOO with the kids for children's day outing!! (siao eh this girl.) when i told my friends before lit paper they were all like WHAAAAT?! ahahahaha but then it's john donne and an unseen how to study! but i studied okay. a lil. missed F1 race. sniff sniff. aiya not that i really cared. haha well at least i know why i'll do badly for lit. my only shot at an A and i frigging threw it away. SIGH.

i knew math'd be tough, but not THAT tough. it was really very shockingly unexpected. was a paper designed to kill. i couldnt manage to do half the freaking paper; curse and swear. and i heard some ppl went down to the canteen after the test, tore their papers and threw them on the aisle for the math teachers to see. drama mama man. and damn funny xD

okay let's not dwell on disastrous and smelly things like promos. zoo! :D i dont have lots of pictures though, and they're not really clear cos my handphone cam lousy. but nvm i'll just post what i have.

monkey! i just found out they use their TAILS to help them grip! how clever.

this naughty orang utan took a good long piss on the audience. GAHAHA

flipper stand! that's some cool breakdancing.

the white tigers were sooooo beautiful i tell you. -swoons- pity i couldnt get better shots.

okay this snake freaked me out.

we got to pet this lovely horse! he's called King. :)

amazing how something so cute can be so dangerous. roar.

I MUST POST THIS UP. the kids thought the guy had EGGS. ahhahahahahaha it's hilarious.

p5 teachers - daniel li + daniel yim cos it was his bday :D

my zebra shorts amused quite a lot of ppl xD

one of my kids. aha so cute!

and this is our darling ba-bell... although his name doesnt really have a proper spelling yet.

some other adorable monkeys at the zoo, messing with the fake aussie outback van.

this tortoise was HALF MY HEIGHT!!

well of course we saw lots more animals, but my lousy phone cam made me sian of taking more pics. I had TONNES of fun with the kids and my class teachers.. zhangpei was being her crazy self, dan li was illegally plucking plants as usual ("do yall know what's this tree?" "actually i also dunno.") and enos was having fun insisting that he had a clone. xD we had perfect weather, and the kids enjoyed themselves thoroughly. couldnt have asked for a better day, God. :)

phew okay that was zoo. :D and a testament to my very bad photography skills. you'll witness more of it later when i write about glutton's bay. i need a proper cam!! pleeeease?

hehe. so yesterday we went glutton's bay for dinner!
with zhangs, jon, jon, james and daniel.
and tim was SUPPOSED to come but OBVIOUSLY he pangseh-ed.
eh please ah tim, PLEASE pangseh us again. please ah. HAHA.

but well we had a really good time anyway!
(anyway: bad service from the happy pot ppl, and our bbq and soup flames weren't hot enough, and zhangs and daniel came super late)

ahh i think this is a really sweet photo. I LUBSCHOO ZHANGS! (even though you dont get our 'cheem' jokes sometimes. HAHA)

daniel who raised his eyebrow too late.

i was TRYING to take a still picture of jon and the food...

failed again. haha. -jon concentrates hard-

this was somewhere near clarke quay when we were wandering about. xD

james being delighted at himself (as usual)

HAHA. xD i like this shot. not that bad.

GOSH it was quite a crazy night. after dinner we were walking under this huge bridge near fullerton, and there was this HUGE foggy misty thing, so we had to like walk about 10m through the mist under the bridge in the dark, couldnt see anything beyond 10cm away, which was FREAKING FUN... we went siao playing in it like lil kids. xD
it was quite late alr, almost 11, when we decided to get drinks from macs. so we sat at the river there watching the reverse bungee ppl scream for their lives. super funny!
then james psychoed all of us to go harry's to watch this live salsa band. music was goood man. and there was this sweet couple dancing. im so learning salsa!
then we finally trooped to the carpark, and all 6 of us squeezed into dan's merce. !!
he had this radio screen thing which amused us thoroughly cos it kept saying "Do not let the system distract you from the situation" or smth like that and it was DAMN FUNNY cos we KEPT getting distracted by the music ("eh why are we listening to a tamil station?!") and daniel made quite a lot of wrong turns. hahahaha. he sent all of us home la so sweet!! when we all live so far apart-like tampines to ang mo kio.
but in the end we got home safe and sound, and dan finally stopped driving around 130. :)

stupid me had to leave my handphone in his car, but thank Godd he returned it to me this morning yay. reunited with my phone. and he bought breakfast for me! which was 1 buck plus onlyyy but I AM A GRATEFUL GIRL. thank you!!

whew. so that was my CELEBRATION. (part one, with many more sequels i hope)

thanks guys for taking time to go out and spend time together i LOVE LOVE you all. and thank you God most of all for being so faithful and wonderful to me.

kevy posted this super super nice speech on my class' yahoogroups. i liked it so much i printed it out xD i found a part of this on isaac's blog just now, so decided to share it here. it's really long, but completely worth it. enjoy!

Life and How to Survive It
Below is a speech to the graduating class of 2008 at the NTU convocation ceremony last week by Adrian Tan, a litigation lawyer, and author of The Teenage Textbook. Read it! It's hilarious but very meaningful.

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It's a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you've already won her heart, you don't need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You're done learning.

You've probably been told the big lie that "Learning is a lifelong process" and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters' degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don't you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they're wrong.

The bad news is that you don't need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You're in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I'm here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There's very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you'll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they're 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn't meet their life expectancy.

I'm here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it's calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.
Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don't need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life's a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don't expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term "Karoshi", which means death from overwork. That's the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there's nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There's a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are "making a living". No, they're not. They're dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan "Arbeit macht frei" was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn't do that, I would've been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction � probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don't imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I'll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don't, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I'm not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It's not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it's often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one's own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn't say "be loved". That requires too much compromise. If one changes one's looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We've taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work � the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn't happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don't, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don't work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

You're going to have a busy life. Thank goodness there's no life expectancy.

LOVE (III)
by George Herbert


Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.



And this is the Love that i grieved.