I've had enough of Blogdrive's downtime.

Officially moved to http://nesnesnes.wordpress.com and loving it.

See you at my new space! :)

Sometimes people get so caught up in the whole rat race that they're so accustomed to, they forget to appreciate the finer things in life.

Taken from Erlin's blog -how true:

what's with a country that works so hard to progress but its people never actually take time to stop and smell the flowers, to enjoy what they've achieved. what's with having that almost utopian image when they themselves are not exactly happy. what's the point of looking good from the outside but inside them, they are crying from pain. why do they care so much about what the world views them as that they have to suffer. why do they think that to win is more important than to be happy, in fact, to win is what the country exists for, it is like the national goal.

When you try your best but you don't succeed
When you get what you want but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

[Fix You - Coldplay]

A movie which should have leveraged more on Kate Hudson's adorableness and 
Matt Dillon's charm, I'd say. 

Headed to Timbré with Stentorian + Lilian + Shan Shan on Friday night after Andrew's birthday dinner at Fisherman's Wharf. It was my first time at the bistro|music|bar. Pretty much dig the outdoor concept (finally, none of that stuffy, smoky air typical of pubs confronting you when you feel like enjoying some good live music) if not for the mosquitoes.

The live band which performed that night was quite pro, I thought, although Stentorian may not fully agree with me, heh. The drums are too loud, Ayank said. The guitarist is good but nothing fantastic, Andrew remarked. The vocalist's range is kinda limited, Sam (or Junhan?) commented. Oh well, they sound good enough to a layman like me :)

The mocktails we ordered were kinda disappointing, though. Iylia's Gunner tasted like ice lemon tea with ginger while Ayank and I couldn't tell our Virgin Margarita apart from lime squash.   

Bottomline: Place is recommended solely for its live music.

PS: Something else about the place kinda peeves me -I've never heard anyone taking into account the accent in the official name, Timbré, when pronouncing it. Is it just me?

Thanks to my fashionable girlfriends for this lovely peek-a-boo Topshop top -now I feel like getting a red waist belt to go with it:

I love the Phuture State earrings too! We should dine together more often than twice a year -last night at Marché was awesome! Love you girlsss *mwacks* !

And to the very sweet two boys: I'm kinda past that Happy House phase, but I love this wallet nonetheless :) Let's do more lunch together!

Pixies from Singapore Biennale Part I, Monday 25/09/06:

Cheryl and I decided to get the single entry pass and checked out the exhibitions at City Hall and Tanglin Camp that day.

Venue #1: City Hall - The Old Supreme Court

Check out Cityhall's pink windows! Written on them are quotes of people on the streets.

It was my first time stepping into the old Supreme Court and the interior is just damn cool! Many of the exhibitions are held inside the courtrooms, which are poorly lit, that it got kinda creepy (maybe it was just me).

We signed up for the guided tour, which turned out to be a private tour because nobody else did. Our guide is this well-travelled social psychology lecturer from Nanyang Poly (or Ngee Ann Poly?) who was very informative. On paper, the tour is supposed to last for at most 1.5 hours, but we ended up spending 2 hours in City Hall :)

The sucky thing is, photography is not allowed inside the exhibition venues. So wasted -there was so much to see in City Hall alone! The artists really made full use of the courtrooms (e.g. there's a painting that covers all 4 walls of a room, and a courtroom desk that is converted to a flying machine) and the art works are mind-boggling at times.

Cheryl loves this very emotional series of photographs depicting the disputed Sulu archipelago while my favourite was the video projections of USD notes by a Korean artist, Jeon Joonho. The artist actually made himself part of the notes, animated them and even converted the picture in one of the notes into a 3D one. Now check out this US$10 bill:

You see the windows? In the projection, the artist was shown painting all those windows of the US Treasury building white, to illustrate how the big shots who make huge decisions often do so without bothering to look out of them and the layman unable to see how these decisions are made. It's just so cool it's a must-see!

Anyways, the guide was really nice she gave us so many Biennale badges!

Btw, Belief is the theme of Singapore Biennale 2006. I think there has got to be more than 95 different badges altogether, since each artist is represented by one badge. I shall collect them all by this November :)

After the Cityhall tour, we had some time to kill before heading to Tanglin Camp for another guided tour, so we decided to be "touristy", pulled out our cameras and took pictures of some colonial architecture and major landmarks in the area, hehee...

The clock tower. Cheryl remarked that clock towers look the same everywhere :p

Victoria Memorial Hall and Victoria Theatre. Do you know that there's a black Sir Stamford Raffles statue (see pic on the left) as well as a white one in Singapore?

That's the white one near the Asian Civilisations Museum. 'Twas a very cloudy day.

Arty-farty me. Haha. That's Cheryl from the back.

We took the Biennale shuttle bus to the next venue which is an ulu former military camp despite its proximity to the Orchard area.

Venue #2: Tanglin Camp

The site had been abandoned for quite some time before it was turned into one of the exhibition venues. Rumour has it that the artists who were allocated this venue really dig this place, though, run-down and all. Well, you know them, artists :p

This time, our guide was a second-year Engineering student from NUS. We spent another 2 hours touring the venue.

Tanglin Camp is slightly larger than City Hall, plus it has a more open concept. More interactive too, although I could identify with the art works in City Hall more. Some art works that leaves an impression on me in Tanglin Camp are by Brian Gothong Tan, which show a chopped up Merlion, a video of Imelda Marcos dressing up as a maid with NTUC plastic bags as her sleeves and a chalk drawing of Singapore Girls vomitting water à la the Merlion.

My favourite work in Tanglin Camp is this pop-culture room with a picture of audience on a cardboard occupying half the room and a microphone in front of it. Kinda like an Idol spectacle. So what happens is, if you sing or talk into the microphone, you will hear the audience applauding you and the harder you sing, the louder their applause will be. So cool!

Photo courtesy of Artnet Magazine

Anyways, after 4 solid hours of guided tour, Cheryl and I decided to visit the Sculpture Square off Middle Road, hoping to find some inspirational art pieces. To our disappointment, the whole venue was filled by some funny ceramic debris. We were like, uh, okaaay.

Decided to end our first part of Biennale journey after that since our brain could only take in so much art information in a day, ahaha. Gonna visit the other two venues -National Art Museum and Singapore Art Museum- on one of the weekends next month, I guess. We're also gonna check out Salvador Dali's works which are in town till October, so I'll keep you posted!  

The so-called one-week break is here. Which means that now I've got some leeway (self-consolation!) to produce what I've been up to lately and more in writing.

S2006

Skipped 2 weeks worth of lessons + 1 quiz for this highly exaggerated (and, contrary to public perception, highly inefficient) function. Was transferred to Swissôtel Merchant Court because no delegates decided to stay in Copthorne King's. We ended up overstaffed it was just silly. Bah.

The Devil Wears Prada

Don't you girls simply luuuuuurve the clothes in the movie?

I think once I start earning a steady flow of money, pretty clothes and shoes will take up the bulk of it (like there's any surprise there :p), right after tickets for the front-row seats at plays and musicals :)

INSTEP subject matching

Lots of technical cock-ups. And I mean lots. Have had to re-accept the offer and re-submit my proposed substitute modules like five times by now. Hopefully things work out well in the end. I really wanna go!

Forbidden City take #2

Energy level was not as high as it was back in 2003. Perhaps because back then I watched the musical like on the second night of the season, as compared to the 3rd week this year. The crowd was still amazing, though -it was nearly full house last night in the Esplanade Theatre. Plus, nothing beats a world-class musical with a full-force live band. Thank you baby for taking me <3

And oh, we went to Vila'ge (how the hell do you pronounce that? Supposed to be a French word?) at The Heeren's basement for dinner and found out that it's actually Marché called by a different name! The layout, the food, the payment system... everything is pretty much unchanged. Why did they even bother to change the restaurant name, that I wonder.

Things to do during the one-week break

1. Explore Singapore Biennale - gonna do this with Cheryl tomorrow, after we came to the conclusion that Singapore's nature reserves are hardly worth a visit (with the exception of Chek Jawa, which is unfortunately fully booked till November) and cycling is a tad bland.

2. Self-discovery (haha!) and job search - 3 cover letters to work on by next weekend. More recruitment talks to attend when school reopens. Interview skills workshop to go for on 8 October. The future looks so full of prospects it's just overwhelming.

3. Catch up with all the seminars that I missed in the past 2 weeks. I need help with audit!

4. Projects!

5. Read Une Pièce Montée by Blandine Le Callet for some book club thingy at Alliance Française that my whole French class is going for in October.

6. Dinner with the girls. It's just so hard to find a common free evening these days! Hopefully Thursday it is.

7. Catch a flick @Starlight Cinema? Should I, should I? I've watched most of the movies they're gonna be screening, and those which I haven't hardly interest me. I want to find out how it goes at the Padang, though, because I've only been to the one at Fort Canning Park.

Anyway, gotta get back to work. Selamat menunaikan ibadah puasa! :)

I can't believe the AA 306 quiz falls on the same date, same timeslot as my Credit Suisse technical assessment!

My very first shot at securing a full-time job!

So much for the excitement for having my résumé through. Bleargh.

PS: I have like a gazillion things to update, but deadlines are really tight these 2 weeks. Will update once I'm done with what I have to do.

If all goes well with the subject matching, I will be off to Europe next semester. Yes, I've accepted the offer. After all, this is what I've been wanting for so long; to see the world.

Weird thing is, I'm not even half as excited as I thought I would be.

As much as I know this experience will be good for me (I had asked God not to let me receive any exchange offer if it were otherwise), I wish the whole prospect didn't petrify me as much as it does now.

I wish Cheryl would be going with me. I could imagine how much blast we'd have if we visit Spain and Italy... and Paris... and Prague together. She'd be such a perfect travelling partner; she's always been the more knowledgeable and sensible one. It's killing me that I still don't know who the other NTU student who'll be going with me is. I hope we'll get along just fine --it's gonna be just the two of us in a completely foreign land.

I'm afraid I won't master enough German for self-survival by the time I leave for Vienna.

I'm worried I can't secure a good job by the end of this semester.

I'm scared I wouldn't make it in time for my convocation.

I wish it'd be easier for you.

306 Mergers & Acquisitions project is driving me nuts.

I'm horribly deprived of sleep. I can't concentrate when I don't get enough sleep. I become grumpy if I have to sleep for less than 6 hours a day.

I don't like drinking coffee because I had to. Coffee only helps my body stay awake; it doesn't help my brain work. 

Having to start applying for jobs doesn't help, either :(

On a much brighter note, was at Alliance Française yesterday and found out that a grand French musical is coming to town! Woowee... I'm deliriously excited!

About the musical, taken from http://www.notredame.com.sg:

• First opened at ‘Palais des Congrès’ theatre in Paris in September 1998
• Based on the Novel ‘Notre dame de Paris’ written by Victor Hugo in 1831
• A sell-out tour of France, Canada, England, Swiss, Russia, Spain, America, Italy, Monaco, etc
• 3,000 performances over 13 countries
• The most sensational and successful musical in France

Based on Victor Hugo's tale of Quasimodo and Esmeralda, Notre Dame de Paris has been a phenomenal success since it was unleashed in the French-speaking world.  It attracted over 6 million spectators, breaking box-office records in France, Canada, Belgium and Switzerland. The musical is the creation of lyricist Luc Plamondon and composer Richard Cocciante, who have both won numerous awards for their works.  The music has sold over 8 million copies so far.

Taking Europe by storm, "Notre-Dame de Paris" opened in London at the Dominion Theatre on Tuesday 23 May 2000, following previews which opened 15 May.  The English lyrics are written by Will Jennings, Oscar-winner for "My Heart Will Go On" from the smash-hit film Titanic.

Quick November come quick!