absolutely gutted
it's 2am and i'm blogging. and obviously something's keeping me awake. i'm absolutely gutted by the loss. okay putting things into perspective, it's pretty stupid that i'm hung up over a carling cup final loss when i've got a test tmr, of which i have absolutely no mood to study for, no mood to even attend. no way. WE. WERE. JUST. THIS. CLOSE. i don't really want to face the united fans right now. and only a gunner can understand my feelings. to be so close to winning something and then have it snatched from you. no, no quite snatched, but more like to give it away so openly. i don't really know who were the better team tonight, because i didn't watch it and soccernet commentaries only spark my imagination that much. but well, for certain this isn't the team that played against barca and won, for certain this isn't the team thats fought tooth and nail to prove that they're not young raw talent. for certain...i don't even know whats certain anymore!
emotions run deep. i feel hugely disappointed. and yet a part of me kinda guessed that this would happen. never thought it would be an easy win. and i knew that from the moment arsenal was the bookie's choice and everyone said it was a shoo-in. Because we've never performed well that way. we perform better as underdogs.
I'm seriously feeling very gutted now. and thats the only word that keeps popping into my mind. this whole post is going to sound very repetitive cos i'm typing it as i reel from the aftermath and tears drip down my cheeks. I'm giving myself one "pity-party" day. and then i'll move on. move on because the premier league title is within our reach. move on because we're still in the FA cup for now. move on because we've still got a shot at the champions league even though it looks like an insurmountable challenge. as it is, theres no more quad, but i'd take the other three if you'd give them to me.
I don't understand how i can feel so deeply affected. I mean. Think about it, starving children, kidnapped children, abused children, natural disaster victims: the world's full of them! and yet what matters to me most now is that WE. CAME. SO. CLOSE. AND. WE. DIDN'T. WIN. THE. CARLING. CUP.
and i'm gonna need time to get over this.
i really really really don't need to hear the taunts.
learning to be happy
i think it's a woman's preorgative, once a month to have mood swings. though she does ought to slap a warning label on herself: "ATTENTION: MOOD PRONE TO SWINGS. KEEP OUT" so that if anyone gets into harm's way, well. it's their own fault; they've been duly warned.
And somehow my mood kinda swings rather precariously. Which is scary. Some women are blessed in that they know not the extreme path their moods are taking. unfortunately for me [fortunately for everyone else in my path] I know, and hence I try my best to control the swinging. But that's like playing battleship with your own hormones. which is pretty impossible.
and so i think, once a month, i'm gonna teach myself how to be happy. to remind myself of the little blessings I have around me so that i forget the pain inside of me.
I AM HAPPY BECAUSE...
1. i have a proper chair that doesn't flip up and cause me to fall when i sit down.
It looks something like this, but in red:
it looks like it belongs in a primary school classroom, but who cares. all I know is that I have a chair that is stable for once, and I LIKE IT.
2. I have a purple painted wall in my hall room that makes me smile whenever i see it. cos most of my things are green. and i think green and purple are the most awesome combination. ever.
3. I have a mum who cares enough about me to treat me to a GIGAN-NORMOUS buffet spread and let me eat to my heart's content:D
4. Because most of the best things in life are free and while sisters feel like they cost a lot at them, they are among the best.
5. Because I have friends who care enough to stay up till 12mn, and spring a surprise on me
[sorry, accidentally resized your photos too small and cannot undo!:( still love you guys though)
6. Because I have friends who love me enough and want me to be happy so much , they got me: the happy book. and also because somehow we manage to find the right balance. most of the time.
7. because i'm 20 and young. got a problem with that?
&more than ever, because of you.
HAHA. i bet everybody's gonna ask me about that last line. who knows, maybe i just put it there to test out my theory:D and I'm not going to reveal what my theory is. maybe it's cos theres someone i want to thank that i don't want to name? maybe it's cos the you refers to a million people? maybe i'm referring to GOD? who knows?:D so bottom line is: don't ask. i'm a woman with a pain in the tummy.
i think Grice just turned in his grave. haha.
so, i guess i do have much to be happy about. more than a lot:D
"and the greatest of these, is love"
tumblr-ed away
Sometimes I like going through other people's photos [on my sister's tumblr]
and i begin to see where her addiction to tumblr begins.
Every Human is geared to wanting to achieve perfection
some, more so than others.
But there isn't anyone wouldn't admire perfection.
and perfection in spite of imperfection is even more admirable yet.
and those pictures taken, those people
ARE. AWESOMELY. PERFECT.
who knows why. photoshop/lighting/place location venue
countless reasons, but they don't really matter
because what looks good to the eye is what matters when judging a piece of photo
unless, obviously there was a botched photoshop job
but thats not perfection so, that aside...
Somehow seeing perfection makes one strive towards it.
And hence that explains HRH elaine asking me to pose for/take tumblr-like shots
although it was annoying initially
when I went to sneak a peak at her tumblr I was strangely HOOKED.
I didn't think I would be! hahaha
which brings me to my question: HOW ON EARTH DO THEY GET SUCH NICE PHOTOS?!:(
because the ones I take are pretty hopeless:( or maybe it's just me being in it
hahaha. so here were our pitiful attempts at tumblr-like photos.
didn't really get what she was trying to get me to do actually-.- and like an idiot, I smiled for a picture for which my face wasn't even shown.
pleating her hair. though who knows why she was looking down and acting demurely instead of looking at the braid she was pleating. which would have been far more realistic.
OKay, slightly unglam shot of her:D
but i couldn't resist. haha
This is so not a tumblr-like shot [at least not in my category]
BUT WITH LOVE, GUNNERS
youngest sister in a vibrating pink massager at charlene and charmaine's house.
elaine taking her turn
I'm quite proud of this photo. even IF it was take number 5? 6? 7?
she was supposed to be staring forlornly out at the rain...
oh well.
HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR ALL!
.
.
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ESPECIALLY ALLICIA CHEW cos it's 'YOUR YEAR' RABBIT:D
i miss FB:(
the basket not the book.
age and time
January 2011 is gone. and I can't wait for it to be February 2011! I feel like compiling a wishlist of what I want for my 20th birthday, but I won't use my blog as a big hint broadcasting station:D
I love birthdays. or at least I love MY birthday. not the date [though thats really special] but the fact that I'm one year older, and it gives the day an 'aura'. like some mystical quality such that on the 13th february 2359 i'm 19 and the next minute 14th feb 0000 I'm 20! like I grew 1 year within that minute! Although we all know that thats a stupid theory and isn't true. and speaking of theories reminds me of my hole-y 'food' theory. but, thats besides the point.
And while I know the theory of aging is not as simplistic as the one I offered above, it still is special and fantastical to me. Another way I look at it is that every second every minute every hour i'm getting little by little older and finally on my birthday, I reach a WHOLE number without the excess +xxnumber of days/hours/minutes/seconds...but then again my theory only holds true for 14th of february 00:00...so no, it doesn't make much sense either.
whatever it is, I look forward to my birthday every single year. without fail. I have no idea why, it's how I pass a year! to me, 'next' year has only arrived with the arrival of my birthday. narcissistic, i know. but, thats MY way of counting the years and the one constant thing to mark time.
you'd think that after 20 years i would have learnt to tone down on my expectations....but no, there exists a child-like belief in me that 'everythingwillbehappilyeverafter' at the stroke of midnight 14th of february...i might have read one too many fairytale books when i was younger. fiction and fact sometimes crosses and lines are blurred.
This kinda reminds me of people who have 'chased the rabbit' as told by my dad in ytd's sermon [he took the story from a book called finishing well]
In a certain country, dogs were trained by setting them to catch a mechanical clockwork rabbit within a pen. The dogs spent days running around in a rectangular pen, and they just spent the entire time going around and around in circles chasing after the clockwork rabbit [which obviously was programmed to run faster than the dogs]. this went on for some time. One day, as the dogs were chasing the clockwork rabbit, due to some technical glitch, the rabbit stopped running. The dogs finally caught up with the rabbit, but what did they do? or what could they do? they never touched the rabbit, because they never knew why they were chasing the rabbit in the first place. Once they had caught up with it, they didn't know what to do with it.
so the rabbit represents things we strive towards, we chase and chase all day long, but we never know why we are chasing them. and at the end of the day, when we've finally caught up with our rabbit, we get disillusioned and lost. because we don't know what to do with it.
I don't really know why i'm including the story here. and the story is really from memory. But it keeps sticking in my head and I ask myself, what are the rabbits in my life. my birthday is another rabbit-like example. year in and year out, i anticipate, i eagerly await for it, and yet when the day is here, it passes like any other ordinary day. no big fireworks in the sky that says "HI EUNICE IT'S YOUR DAY TODAY" [it certainly doesn't help that i'm sharing my day with all the couples in the world] not that I'd expect it to. I mean, 14th of feb is just another ordinary day. and i'd be disappointed, but not by much, and the very next day 15th of feb, i'm geared up for another whole year of anticipation and disappointment.
quite foolish, come to think of it! when there could be much more things to be looking forward to.
but i'd like to believe that my foolishness comes in a smaller dosage than those whose rabbits are more time-consuming, more human-eating than mine. Mine's a passing fancy, I don't spend the whole year doing nothing and just watching the clock. But rabbits of other natures are not as kind, are more vicious in taking away family time, and things that are actually of value, like the things of God.
I'm quite surprised at what i've written here. but i was inspired. I have no idea by what.
When i told clarence i was going to blog, I had no idea this was what was going to come out, and neither did i know that it was going to be this LONG. so this is a disclaimer...kinda put at the end of the whole long chunk:D
raspberry heaven
let me quote myself [ this "gem" was spoken to idiot]
"if 2010 was fast, 2011 is zooming past"
i can't believe i rhymed it so well, and yet i was laughed at:( i was told that 3 weeks into 2011 cannot be counted as zooming past. Still, it encapsulates my thoughts.
I can't believe that January is ending. I can't believe that it's going to be chinese new year in less that a week and i'm not even feeling the CNY vibe. I can't believe that productions is finally over. I can't believe that it is less than a month to my birthday! The last bit kinda scared me. I was walking and thinking [or rather talking to myself] “oh yeah, my birthday is just around the corner. Is it a month to my birthday yet?” and then with a start I realised, it’s only NINETEEN DAYS more [erm, plus minus 1]. 19 days left of being 19. I can’t decide if I want my birthday to come faster. I don’t think I do.
Three weeks into the sem and I realise I see schizo and idiot nearly every day of the week [it is NOT a bad thing] and thinking about them reminds me of a couple of pictures I have and I couldn’t decide where to fit these photos under in facebook, since it’s quite ridiculous to have an album completely dedicated to 5 photos which look virtually identical, save for the slightly different angles. BUT I can’t let idiot’s surprise go unpublished so I’m putting it here!
somehow or the other, schizo's blog had a photo of raspberries with hotcakes. and they looked really really yummy. so as the ahem, eldest, member of the HC2011 teaching faculty, idiot took the chance to buy us RASPBERRIES [which are awfully expensive i now realise] which we paired with our macdonalds hotcakes. wonder what the macdonalds service staff were thinking when they saw this:Draspberry+hotcakes+maple syrup+melted butter=*heavenly*
REALLY REALLY EXPENSIVE RASPBERRIES:( it's a luxury food item i guess
I think idiot said it was 10 bucks for that small box. but they look so good
and when i finally found the sweet tasting one, it was awesome
somehow the ones I kept picking tasted sour. and at first i was like
"raspberries aren't that fantastic"
but i was WRONG.
the ones which had a balanced proportion of sweet and sour
were simply delicious.
I don't really know how to describe it in words,
but one word keeps popping to mind even though i tell myself that doesn't seem like the right word to use on raspberries.
"SUCCULENT"
which makes me think of roast pig, not sure why, since I don't even like pork.
realised that when I cropped the picture it's not longer as tempting as the original
i think this picture is going to go out of the white box. but for the sake of showcasing it, i shall put aside my obsessive compulsions to have everything neatly aligned:D
and now it's back to designing stuff for CAC camp:(
2011, not a moment too soon
and as usual, i'm going to say "HOW DID 2010 PASS BY SO QUICKLY?!"
and i've been saying that for the past 19 [soon to be 20, yikes!] years.
so i really have no idea whats the benchmark i'm measuring "the speed at which the year should be passing by"since every year i take up the same lament!
i don't think normal people will understand what i just said:(
I can't decide. either it means that not once in my 19 years of living have I made full use of the year to do whatever i needed and wanted to do, or that in my 19 years i've filled up my life each year with so many things and activities that I love that the year just passed by so quickly. I highly doubt it's the second one since well, school has taken up most of my time, and "activity I love" and "school" don't really fit well together...
2010 was a year of blessings and opportunities for me. God closed a door here, and he opened a door there and gently shoved me through the right door. All i can say is that I've been very blessed, and undeservedly so. And I think i've shared this a zillion times, hence i'm not gonna repeat it. I'm just saying that all my paltry "successes" this year are attributed to the grace of God, cos left alone I'd be in a pretty bad shape.
2011 marks a new decade for me. a decade is 10 years right. I keep mixing it up, cos dozen is twelve. so 2011 marks the 20th year in the life of Eunice. and i'm relieved to be alive till now. I'm looking at where I stand, knowing that much of it is God's grace [okay, make that ALL OF IT] and i'm wondering how next year is going to be like for me.
Which is strange. Because I never really have bought the habit of making new year resolutions. ever since i was 7 and my new year resolution was "i will not chew my fingernails next year" and kersplunk. you all know what happened.
No one actually keeps new year resolutions. So why bother making them in the first place?!
But it's a new year, and a new year doesn't feel right without a new start.
I want to be neater. I want to be more disciplined. I want to be friendlier. I want to be more teachable. I want to have a more willing heart.
I want all, but I can't.
I know that on my own I will fail. Haven't I failed many times before? I Pray that God will help me...slowly but surely. If I aim to do all, I think I'll just fail miserably and give up 2 hours into the new year. So I pray that I change, slowly but surely, to be the woman God wants me to be. Even though at this moment I am far from her.
A brand new year. I headed into 2010 telling 2010 to "watch out! I'm gonna take you by storm". or some other gungho phrase along those lines. Now i cringe at my pseudo bravery. Oh please, I don't have the energy or strength or wisdom or courage to do that.
Whatever I'm going to tell myself this year as I head into 2011, I'll probably cringe at that in 2012 too. But i'm slowly surveying, becoming a wee bit wiser as the year crept by, and I won't do that kind of naive "cowabunga!" kind of thing anymore [i hope]
2011, i'll meet you when it's time(:
lesson learnt
I learnt and important lesson, one that came from a teacher so totally unexpected it threw me slightly offguard. I don't think she even knows how big an impact she made in my life.
Obviously she'll know after reading this(: But she showed me how to open my eyes to the 'others' in the world, how to open my heart to notice their needs, and how to open my hand to make a positive difference in somebody's life.
in short, she notices the unnoticeables and she does something about it. I don't think she wants any recognition, which is why i won't mention her name. Yesterday after dinner, while heading back to school, she pulled me aside and said [not verbatim, but something to this effect]: "eh, i think theres an old lady with a lot of bags. I scared she cannot cross the road leh, how? what can we do?"
I stopped and thought. an old lady? why didn't i see her? we decided to turn around to help, leaving the group to go ahead first. and even then i couldn't see, my eyes weren't big enough, or maybe the night was too dark. Only after she pointed out the lady to me did i see her. and then i noticed the amount of plastic bags she had in her hand, and how she was standing at the curbside, of a dark and not quite well-lit road.
and i didn't even notice. too caught up with myself and my own thoughts maybe. or just indifferent and callous to the people around me.
my friend wanted to help her cross the road. we came to a consensus and approached her to ask if she needed any help, and she said she was waiting for her daughter to pick her up in the car. But the smile that lit up her face told me she was touched that there were people who noticed and cared enough to go out of their way to help her [not referring to myself]
i guess i learnt and important lesson that night. how to notice the unnoticeables, and how making a difference in someone's life could be as simple as that.
i couldn't stop thinking about it though, I the believer- the one who didn't notice. I pray that God will give me bigger eyes and a bigger heart:D
