Like a river flows

Updates on my life cos im boliao (wow im gonna miss being boliao when school starts which is in 12 DAYS HOLY)

nothing much happened last week- was busy with the last week of summer school. somehow all the assignments are due in the last week. there was a 50% group project, 10% group assignment and 20% individual essay all due in the same week 🙄 but yay im finally done with my summer module, couldn't be happier.

saturday:
had slf jam in the afternoon. i think we have improved by leaps and bounds :') i'm less of a potato at the guitar now.

sunday:
house got painted so the whole family had to retreat to the balcony. went to do work at a cafe at simpang with jiams later. huge cup of coffee for 5 bucks, yum.

monday:
handed in my last assignment for summer sch!! (i asked for an extension hahaha)
had rag jam in the evening. somehow a lot of other people were also in the clubroom/studio for various reasons, so after our jam we all went to eat at ameens tgt. then 3 of us got a ride back to the east yayyy

tuesday:
weirdest thing ever happened to me!

went out early and to one of my hangout spots at paya lebar. it was kinda crowded so i asked a lady in office wear if i could sit at the table next to hers.

and then both of us stared at each other.

she said first "you look very familiar..." and i said "ya you too!" but neither of us could remember where we'd seen each other. sat there for a few very very awkward moments (her face had turned red LOL), she asked what school/workplace and i said NUS and she said she worked nearby.

-more awkward silence-

and then i realised and i said "OMG youre my cousin!" and she looked at me, shocked, and said "what?"

and then she realised as well and we both laughed awkwardly.

she was the daughter of my estranged uncle, and i've only seen her twice in my life before.

my goodness, imagine meeting your own cousin in public and not recognising them. so paiseh for both of us!! but it was also super funny and weird.

if our families had not reunited recently, i would have sat down next to this lady without knowing she was my own cousin. wow...

so anyway, she had to rush off to work soon after that, and i left the place at about 3pm.

had beer at the usual place with hj at night. it was the most intoxicated i've gotten in ages. though i definitely wasn't drunk.

we decided to be adventurous and shared 2 jugs, so that's actually one 1.5 litre jug each. felt a little woozy but still fine, talked and walked normally and got home safe, but then i conked out on the sofa hahahaha

i remember i kept trying to reply texts but the next thing i knew i would be waking up from sleep. it was quite funny

wednesday:
woke up at 12 noon today hehe. the potato life is such a good life. kinda sad it's ending soon.

basically lazed at home the whole day. had lunch, went to collect my bass amp back from friend's gf who i lent it to, watched cat videos and listened to haley reinhart, had dinner with mum, watched some kdrama with her, then back to the laptop.

what a lifee

Human

i hardly comment on current affairs, especially on a platform where i try to keep things light-hearted, like my blog, but i feel like i really have some things to say too about the recent NUS sexualised orientation camps saga. 

i love my university. it's given me so many amazing opportunities that i am super thankful for. not many people in the world get to grow up and study in a university as safe and ideal as NUS, and i realise that. my time in NUS so far has been nothing short of wonderful, so it really hit the feels when tnp wrote this article that seems to be insinuating that NUS culture is not as vibrant and wholesome as it seems. 

1. if you don't like it, don't go. it doesn't take a lot of time and effort to ask around and do your research about camps. and it's common knowledge that arts camp is probably the most lup sup camp in NUS. i signed up for arts o week camp back in 2014, and i actually got in, but after a bit of consideration, i decided not to go. i didn't feel like i would fit in and resonate well with arts camp culture, so i just turned it down. simple as that. 

if you do go, and you decide to sit out when they play the lup sup games, be proud of your decision. you just decided to adhere to your moral standards and put your own comfort first by choosing not to give in to peer pressure, and that's an admirable thing to do. don't sit out, then worry if people are talking about and judging you behind your back, and then rant about it to an influential local newspaper. 

if you're worried you won't be able to find any uni friends if you don't go for arts camp, then don't worry cos your worries are completely unfounded. there are faculty camps, sports clubs, arts and other interest groups, halls and colleges of residence, even academic society groups. there are a thousand and one other ways for you to find friends in NUS, there's no need for you to go to that one camp that makes you uncomfortable. 

in short, know what you signed up for, and be smart about it. 

2. irresponsible reporting has been a hot trend in the media of late, but i think this article really took the cake. what does tnp hope to achieve by painting NUS in such a bad light? if it's to evoke strong negative public reaction and generate a hoo-ha so as to gain more readership, then i guess they've achieved their goal. 

reporting was done based on the views of 2 students, and everything seems to be centred on the events at only one camp in NUS. this is generalisation at its finest. the article was completely biased, which is really sad seeing as it's tnp, one of the more influential papers in singapore. 

by focusing on all the nasty stuff that's been going on in one NUS camp and highlighting the experiences of two students who did not have a good time, while completely ignoring any other contradictory positive viewpoint, tnp gave the average naive singaporean reader the impression that every student in NUS must be a bad nut with no sense of morality, and NUS is not doing anything about it. 

3. of course, this allowed many people to jump on the i-knew-it, kids-these-days-are-up-to-no-good bandwagon. every generation loves to judge and bitch about the next one. i myself am guilty of it. 

readers expressed horror at the falling moral standards of youth today. older NUS alumni were disgusted at what's become of the students of their beloved alma mater. other folks questioned the purpose of awarding prestigious degrees to such poorly-behaved youth with no sound character. 

it hurts to see NUS and its students being bashed like that on social media, when i know we are so much better than that. singaporeans love controversy. the country's pride and joy, NUS, breeding insensitive, morally unsound brats with no class? wow, what a juicy piece of meat for everyone who hates the 'strawberry generation'. 

but at the end of the day, nobody is really benefitting from poor reporting. 

Three cheers for five years

Disclaimer: this post is all about Mayday Parade


want to quote some lyrics, but idk whether to quote verse, chorus or bridge cos everything is so feeeeeels

i didn't know this song back in 2014, so when they came and played in singapore, i was more of a huge fan of jamie all over, kids in love and jersey. (miserable at best and stay are not really my favourites from mp, but it's really nice to sing along to, so i liked when they played those too)

but now i keep listening to this song over and over. it's so well-written. that emotional buildup towards the bridge, and then the pretty much bittersweet ending verse at the end.

for some reason this is also the mp song that reminds me most of the concert back in 2014.

i loooove concerts. there is always this feeling of affinity with your fellow concert-goers, even if you've never met them before it feels like you're at least acquainted somehow, because you both forked out 80 bucks to come and see the same band, so that prolly says something about how much you like them.

i can't remember exactly when i started listening to mayday parade. i think it was 2012. sometimes i can't believe it's gonna be my second time seeing them this year. i was 18 when i first saw them and i'm gonna be 21 when i see them again. how cool is that?

the other day i was doing some spring cleaning in my room, a couple of days after baybeats, and i found a postcard that i got during cashew chemists' set at baybeats 2012. a stack of them was being passed around the crowd for free.

i think i have the photo somewhere on my facebook

ta-da!

(took me forever to find cos i kept getting distracted by all the photos)

but really though. has it really been 4 years? wow

Raised in Carolina, she says

• hello! 
• the past week has been really fun and eventful. but also tiring cos i had to travel to school every day. 
• lemme recap the past week so i can procrastinate on my assignments
• Monday: had really bad cramps and a terrible headache, so i skipped class. but still had to go to school in the evening anyway for slf band jam. this gig is prolly the most fun gig i've ever had in nus. not only am i doing it with close friends, we're also switching instruments! i'm playing guitar, keys, drums- everything except my own instrument. hopefully we don't turn out too fail. i'm especially nervous for drums cos it's gonna be so obvious if i make a mistake. 
• Tuesday: went to school to work on a group assignment for summer school. was quite fun
• Wednesday: went to school and didn't know what to have for lunch, so i decided to try 'butter my buns', that new cafe at utown. seriously, everytime i decide to try something new i regret it. it was crowded everywhere in utown due to lunch hour, but when i stepped into 'butter my buns' there were about five people there. decided to go ahead and order anyways despite the obvious lack of rave, and it was soo bad. the portobello mushrooms tasted like ... almost gagged. potato salad was not the creamy kind at aston's, it was literally some greens with pieces of potato. LOL. even the mac n cheese was okay-ish. paid 7.5 for the food and it wasn't even filling. but the coffee was pretty decent. tasted like humble origins' coffee. will probably never go to butter my buns again for food.... maybe just coffee. 
• anyway, even though i was alr in school, i decided to skip class..... hahahaha. went to the studio to hang (i think the studio is by far my number 1 hangout in nus) and read my slides, and encountered a couple of drummer friends who were changing drum skins, i think. at 5p: m we got hungry so 4 of us went to wah chee for zi char. yummm. hadn't had zi char in a while. 
• Thursday: slf band jam again, this time at 11am-2pm. reached the studio at 10.30am to practice, and whatsapped "is everyone awake?" to which one of them replied "huh don't like that leh, does that mean you just woke up?" and i was like no la. but turns out he was the only other person who was awake... LOL. another 2 people woke up past 11 and joined us much later, while the last one never made it. 
• but i got a ride home from a fellow eastie so it's okay. went to saizeriya by myself for dinner. it was like 4+, so there was no crowd, and a waiter came and chatted me up 😭 the reason i eat alone almost all the time is cos i don't like talking while im eating... and im too lazy to go into detail, but he was also quite weird
• Friday: lecturer sent out an email that we're not allowed to skip today's class cos there was group evaluation, so i had to go. picked the wrong day to wear slippers cos it rained cats and dogs, and the floor at utown was super slippery. despite walking super carefully and slowly, i slipped three times omg. it was so scary. 
• lecture was quite interesting, but i got super hungry towards the end and prayed hard my stomach wouldn't growl. went to hwangs and ate ramen which is basically maggi mee, then felt guilty so i walked to yih. weather was really nice for a walk anyway. 
• had rag jam in the evening which i thought was really productive for a second jam. yayyy. 
• okay time to do assignments

byee

My secrets for a buck

• took this selfie a few days ago, wanted to blog with it since i haven't updated with any photos for about two eons now. it's to show you guys i'm still blogging and haven't been replaced by a robot. 
• took it 15 min after waking up, hence the tired face haha
• listening to brand new and uploading photo booth selfies really makes me think of the jc / a level break days. i used to blog so often in jc haha. and i rmb how completely carefree i felt after i quit my job and did nothing for two months while waiting for uni to start. 
• all i did every day was wake up early, drink tea, blog, drink coffee, read a book, listen to brand new, rhcp and tigers jaw, sleep, repeat. 
• life has been good- just came back from prata with wums and her bf (hi wums!). 
• had a mini pizza party with the baybeats team this morning and was glad to hear baybeats may not be the end of our stint. hopefully there'll be fun stuff coming up. really enjoyed this whole process, getting an insider look at music journalism. it never occured to me that there was even such a field until i watched almost famous. 
• getting complimented by the st music correspondent on my 'flair for writing' was also the highlight of my day. very touched to receive praise from someone who's been in the scene for so many years. 
• school starts in a month and i'm pretty excited, finally embarking on a semester where i'm not being burdened by compulsory german (don't get me wrong i loved german but it was just such a heavy mod, with at least one vocab test/assignment/exam every week and all). 
• at the same time i also have to up my cap game, after the disastrous last sem. still can't get over what a baaad decision it was to take IO. worst mod ever. plus after this sem i only have honours mods left to do in nus and it can only go downhill from there. 
• speaking of sch, changing landscapes was also another bad decision. it is so impossibly fluffy. should have taken a nice factual mod from science or something for summer school. but ah wells. 

time to sleep bye bye

Twenty ways to start a fight

• Da jia hao
• It's a nice saturday afternoon and I'm bumming around at home, kinda. Saw that the module listing for this year is out on myaces and excitedly went to look at modules. For some reason I'm always super excited to plan timetables. I think it's fun, don't you?? 
• but then i saw that one of the mods i wanted to take clashes with a core mod, and then it wasn't so fun anymore. 
• can't believe it's my fifth time planning my timetable. -cries- more than halfway through my uni life already. 
• life has been great, the past week was pretty busy because i went for all 3 days of baybeats. it was soooo fun! tbh the foreign bands didn't really stand out for me. but i heard Unclose (JP) was great, sadly i didn't catch them. i thought koji was amazeballs, but not many other people seem to be raving about them, maybe they're not as appealing as disco hue or cashew chemists. (but i must admit eugene is really charming, reminds me of alex turner with that velvety i-will-sing-blues-love-songs-to-you-over-the-phone voice.) another band that really did it for me was the summer state, that amount of energy was insane. 
• wednesday was cac camp finale night gig, the crowd wasn't very high despite the gig being at zouk, but one of the dance cac groups (was it funkstyles?) showed some love by dancing to our music which was nice :') a few hiccups here and there during the day, but it was all good. 
• sometimes i think we're really at a huge disadvantage compared to other cac groups. dance and acapella groups are so much more popular with concert planners because there is practically no logistics involved- all you need is a simple PA system to blast trendy pop songs. with amplified, there's expensive, bulky equipment, transportation costs and manpower costs for the shifting, plus all the equipment also takes up precious space backstage. not to mention our equipment is not only burden-some to the gig producers, it also costs a bomb to rent. and to add icing to the cake, edm music and dance items are all the rage now. the general youth population doesn't really listen to good bands anymore, it's all kpop groups and flashy moves and fleshy moves and synth and electronic beats. 
• sometimes i feel bad for some of my friends in the club, they're trying so hard and it's not really their fault that amplified isn't that big. just gotta admit that we're really suay, and about as trendy right now as bell-bottomed jeans are. 
• and on an unrelated note, the cac camp estrella comm really sucked? nobody was there to supervise us or tell us where to go, what we could do during the entire afternoon, except for the logs guys who were really nice and helpful. the whole day, we (the cac groups + logs guys) carried everything over and set up everything ourselves, rehearsed and soundchecked ourselves and prepared for the gig ourselves. we had no idea who was in charge or where they were. it almost felt like we were running our own gig at zouk. best part is when someone contacted a comm member to ask why nobody was there, the reply was "i expected better from the performers," meaning that we should have known how to do everything ourselves and we shouldn't need anyone from the comm there with us. makes me mad all over again just thinking about that horrible attitude. just because they signed up for this one-time camp comm thing it doesn't mean they can behave like that? i sure hope they feel good about themselves writing about how much they contributed to this event in their resumes. 
• haha ok didn't intend to elaborate on the hiccups. but ah well. 

off to surf youtube, bye bye