history

You know what it means to be smart when choosing your modules? Lemme tell ya...

You think it is hard learning the history of Singapore? Think again. France has a history dating back to 800BC.

I am studying French History.

Be smart.

When in France, do as the french do.

1. Speak french. duh!!! Bonjour!

2. France is a bread loving nation. And I feel so at home coz I absolutely adore bread and cheeese!

3. I find their Metro-culture very interesting. You gotta press the button at the door for the Metro door to open. And you gotta talk very softly or not at all, unlike us crude asians, whose voices could be heard 5 doors away. And escalators are rare in their stations. So imagine lugging a 20kg suitcase up and down their stairs... and u want an idea of wat a scene we made? Multiply the suitcase scene by 7... *shudder* If you have no tickets to get through the gantry, you either just hop over the hurdle or crawl underneath, which we saw several times on the few days we were in Paris. But being law-abiding Singaporeans, we paid every cent of our fare.

4. Baguette is their staple and their fashion accessory. You can eat your baguette anywhere, in the Metro, along the streets, while waiting for the traffic to turn green... ... and it is the IN thing to carry your baguette around either stuck in your bag, or carried with your hands using a piece of paper wrapped round the middle of the long bread. dun ask me how hygienic that is...

5. They luuuuurrrrvvvvvvvveeeee hot water baths... ... the water from the shower can be used to cook cup noodles. This is a fact which is not yet proven by experiment coz no one is gonna waste one precious cup noodle on proving this meaningless theory.

6. Get used to paying exhorbitant prices for normal things. Making a phone call from a payphone to a cellphone in Paris costs 2€ (S$4.10). *Scream*

7. It is true that their wine is cheaper than their water. Haha... coz their Evian has to be transported from the french alps while the wine can jst be made from the grapes in their vineyards. We bought a wine that costs lyk 0.15€ (S$0.40) per bottle at the supermarket last week.

8. If you think you have talent, flaunt it! I am not sure if busking is legal but you find them everywhere. In tourist spots, in Metro stations, and even in trains.

9. Draw... on every single available space... I am not sure why graffiti is so common here.



This was taken from the train...

10. Basically, just sit around and do nothing. Everywhere, you can find people, either alone or in groups just sitting and staring. You find a nice spot on the steps, you sit and rest. You find a nice spot on the grass, you lie and sleep. You find a nice shade under the tree, you cross your legs and eat your baguette.




Oh yah... their pigeons here are so fat coz they always get free baguettes from the people...

Thank You

I am just very very very very very very thankful.

To all who made this possible and the 'divine intervention' for that stroke of luck, please understand that my gratitude extends far beyond a simple thank you.

I love my family and friends V E R Y M U C H.

sorry!

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source
sor·ry/ˈsɒri, ˈsɔri/ [sor-ee, sawr-ee]
–adjective, -ri·er, -ri·est.
1. feeling regret, compunction, sympathy, pity, etc.: to be sorry to leave one's friends; to be sorry for a remark; to be sorry for someone in trouble.
2. regrettable or deplorable; unfortunate; tragic: a sorry situation; to come to a sorry end.
3. sorrowful, grieved, or sad: Was she sorry when her brother died?
4. associated with sorrow; suggestive of grief or suffering; melancholy; dismal.
5. wretched, poor, useless, or pitiful: a sorry horse.
6. (used interjectionally as a conventional apology or expression of regret): Sorry, you're misinformed. Did I bump you? Sorry.

Daomingsi had a famous line in Meteor Garden "如果对不起有用的话，那要警察来干嘛?" (loosely translated, it means in english "what are cops for if a sorry is enough?")

I met with an incident today which made me ponder about why people say sorry. After all, what is done cannot be undone. Pure expression of apology without real action is not gonna help anything.

I am on the side where the other party, or rather parties, said 'sorry' to. But their 'sorry' will not help the situation in anyway and no matter how apolegetic or guilty they feel, nothing is gonna change.

Then why do people still say sorry? And I realize people often misuse 'sorry', using it casually when they do not mean it at all or when they need not feel sorry at all. To the latter group, I will always say 'your apology is not accepted coz you were not in the wrong in the first place.' To the former, it is total disgust. *yucks*

I tried looking up wikipedia hoping that it will provide some history of how this word came about but to no avail.

But according to a famous scholar JASMINE ANG, saying sorry is a verbal manifestation of guilt or regret since there is no possible facial expression of it. And saying sorry is only meant to appease the offended party and for the offending party to take the blame and admit the mistake. Referring to my incident, before the other party said sorry, I was furious that they did not say that magic 'S' word to claim their resposibility though I jolly well know that the harm is already done. After the magic word was uttered, I was frustrated because the situation cannot be salvaged.

Arrrgghhh... I hate apologies!

i love reading the papers!

I just realized that my blog entries are getting longer and longer and I am getting more and more long-winded. But who cares? You are in my blog so you obey my rules.

Rule #1 My blog is a dictatorship, not a democracy. So you have no vote.

__________

I was reading the papers today and I came across some pretty interesting articles.

I finally remembered the name of the memorial hall the man we befriended at Taiwan brought us to. It was Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial Hall but it is now the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall. According to the article, it was a move to water down the legacy of the late KMT leader. Hmmm... why deny him the name when his great big statue is housed there and EVERYONE knows the hall is built for him? And they are gonna blow S$364,000 to change the public amenities built after him.

But when you are in the building, you just gotta lift your head and this is what you will see...

They might as well tear down the whole building.

Speaking of the weird things that people do, do you know that Maybank revised a ruling that legal firms wanting to do business with it must have at least 3 partners, one of whom must be a bumiputra with a 50% stake. Is it that hard to see that the ruling is plainly discriminatory? But that said, what systems are in place to ensure that fair competition really takes place? We are still treading on murky waters.

Yep and I was happy to read on life!, an article on afternoon tv. The columnist was recalling her 'afternoons spent in the company of this hour of escapist television' where the shows are genres like those hosted by Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey and also soap operas such as the never-ending 'The Bold & the Beautiful'. Seemingly boring and dated. But according to her, she enjoyed it coz 'it had no bearing on my real life whatsoever'.

I must sheepishly admit that I do that too. Sometimes I just turn on the tv and watch shows like this. There are periods of time I get ultra-addicted to them such as the Debbie Travis Maleover, the Ellen DeGeneres Show and even cooking shows by Martin Yen and Jamie Oliver. Ops!

But according to the columnist's analysis, people are hooked on to such shows coz it is a 'break from reality'. Is that so? Am i like this? What is so bad about my reality that I have to run away from?

nah, i love my life... her interpretation is flawed. But I seriously cannot figure out the appeal of such shows.

Post-Amazing Race Thoughts

I cannot remember how long I have been watching The Amazing Race. But I am so addicted because teams get to travel around the world and do all sort of activities from adrenaline-pumping skydiving to downright gross stuff lyk eating metres and metres of sausages. *puke* My dream! Minus the stuff-urself-till-u-are-fuller-than-full part. And I really wish to participate in it. Yeah, but I missed the dateline for the 2nd Asian Edition. Blame it on my lack of conviction.

I really like how you get to see the real character of your partner sans the facade and pretense. And as audience, I get to see the side of people that I don't like, and try to not behave like them. Like how partners like to argue and go on and on abt how he should have listened to her and how he should have asked for help at that pertol station they just passed.

That is why I swore not to argue with anyone. When you are angry and you try to fight for your stand, you end up sounding lyk a broken recorder repeating the same grouses and saying words so hurting that you will just regret later. So anytime I feel lyk yelling at someone, I remain silent. I hate REGRETS and to hurt someone with words is just about the worst form of pain you can inflict on anyone.

And yes. I am a person of WORDS. Simply because they are so, so impactful. I collect quotes, short phrases and articles I like and read them over and over again, revelling in the sound of them and their message, and harboring a deeeeeep admiration for the author who can actually put across a message so powerful in a string of seemingly simple, unrelated nouns, verbs and adjectives. So please dear friends, be careful of what you say, not only to me, but to your dearest others, coz they are SOPHISTICATED WEAPONS OF IMMENSE DESTRUCTION.

Back to the Amazing race and the topic of fiesty teammates. I wanna share with you all an 'exemplary model of arguing' by the Beauty Queens team, Dustin and Candice (my fave team!).

They screwed up their canoeing at the sea and were both pissed at each other. On the car ride to the next stop, they were saying stuff like 'i did not like the way u...' They were clearly agitated and angry with each other and themselves but they never once hurled abuses at each other. They told the partner what they felt went wrong and what they could have done instead. At the end, they shoke hands and said 'we're in this race together' and patched up.

See? I like the last part. But it applies not only to the race too. It holds true for our life as well. Why you wanna screw up a relationship with people you love? We are all in this journey called life.

And so, please allow me to say this (but why do I have to ask permission when this is my blog? I shall make an official declaration then.) I HATE PEOPLE WITH BAD TEMPERS. If you wanna be my friend, you either make sure your temper stays away or you have a good temper. I don't tolerate tantrums or verbal abuses. It is just another antic of deprived attention-grabbers. So there.

And it is so ironic that the winners Danielle and Eric were all ovey-dovey when they won the $1million when they have been pissed and complaining about each other THROUGHOUT the race. Cut the act!

_________

Well, to compensate for the mess of words up there and lighten things up, shall upload some photos I took just now which I did not have the intention of putting them here initially. You are in luck!


About the crappiest & silliest girls you can find (notice the superlatives)


Princess Jasmine just set a new rule for playing blokus...Clap!


Ying, do you see how Sheena & Christ totally ignore when they are next to you?


And how happy mh looks next to me?

PS: thanx girls for the wonderful night!

Morning!!!

I woke up at 10.30am by a call from my mum and she reminded me that I am home alone. So with a hot, lazy day stretching ahead of me, I thought it would be cool to go have a nice American breakfast in an air-con restaurant by myself so I ended up at MACDONALD'S.

Now I wished I had cooked myself some instant noodles in the nice quiet retreat of my lovely home.

First, a bunch of about 20 secondary students were making a big ruckus. But I was already equipped with my lappie so I thought maybe they will go off soon. But no! Nearly an hour later, they are still here and still as noisy as ever.

Time check: It is Monday morning, 11AM... don't secondary school students go to school these days? And I believe I have not expressesd any form of desire to participate in their discussions so can they please kindly keep all things to themselves?

And I was hoping to flip through The Straits Times while trying to enjoy my meal when this man came and grabbed the only copy of the main sections of the paper after I just put the Life Section back in place. And he is not even a customer of the store! *yucks* How can he paper-hog??!! *double yucks*

I truly understand the debate over whether Singaporeans are rude. But why the debate when the answer is clear? Totally disgusted. Yeah I was rude too. For shooting them countless dirty looks. Absolutely grossed out.

P.S. After my ranting above, the students have miraculously vanished and the paper is back in place. Complaining does help yeah?

__________

Ok. In response to my previous entry, I found 2 reasons.

1. I was tired.
2. I have not told anyone about this blog so bascially I was just feeling stupid just talking to myself. Imagine me talking to myself along the streets and you get the idea.

__________

Taiwan is like the new IT place. Bangkok is so passe.

While I am alone here furiously ranting away, my friends - Apple, Yinghan, Qiuyan, Jielin, Sandra, Peishan and LiLeng are in Taiwan for grad trip. AHHHHH! I wanna go too! I am so excited for them when they were planning. More excited than about my own trip. I wanna go again! ...... if I have the money ......

I remembered there was this news about how South Korea's entertainment industry is bringing them big tourism dollars (or won?). It should be the same case for Taiwan right? Surely you all have the impression of Taiwan as a gastronomic haven, shopping paradise and land of pretty babes from the numerous Taiwan variety shows and dramas yeah? Ok, that is so irrelevant. haha

And I shall now take on the ardous task of uploading never-before-seen photos of my trip there last year with Hsien. Now I am wondering: why haven't I shared my photos with my friends yet?

Post-upload blues: My neck is aching and my temple is throbbing. Another group of students are back and they seemed to have the admirable determination of competing with the previous group for the record noise level. HELP!

I should be headed for home.

Disillusioned

I knew this day is gonna come. But I certainly did not expect this to be so soon.

WHY AM I BLOGGING?

Why do I want to announce to the world what I did today? If you really wanted to know so badly, couldn't you have given me a call? Am I not worth that 5 minutes of your time?

*yucks* I knew I wasn't cut out to be a blogger.

My new home

I am starting to know why people invest so much of their time in blogging.

After this blog was more or less done up, I felt really happy. The happiness stemmed from the satisfaction of having found a space in the blogosphere to call my own. The feeling is almost the same as buying your dream home.

When you buy a house, you have to:

1. Find a house which you like and that you can afford.
2. Renovate the house.
3. Throw a housewarming party to let everyone see your nicely done-up home.
4. Constantly keep your home in good condition.

When you create a blog, you have to:

1. Find that blog address which you like and is still available.
2. Beautify the blog.
3. Tell everyone about it.
4. Feed the blog constantly with lotsa juicy gossips and pretty photos.

Ah, I foresee spending lotsa time in blogosphere.

Inaugural Post

Jasmine has just hopped onto the bandwagon and joined the rest of her friends in blogosphere.

She is not sure where to go, what to do and why she is here in blogosphere.

Moreover, she has always resisted the idea of putting her life on display and has deliberated on this matter for quite some time.

But she gathers that since so many friends are here, it must mean that this is a good place to hang out.

And the rest will be history.