Tuesday, June 28, 2005

to my housemates yongchuan, sera and lydia:

i love you guys!

why? because you all eat so little! wah today is monday and our groceries are almost gone... for those of you who don't know, my summer housemates are all guys and hence we eat 3 cups of rice everyday (which isn't really enough actually) plus lots of other stuff that always seem to disappear all too soon!

so please come back my dearest housemates, i miss all of youuuuuu!!!! plus i'm broke.

sera i want an update. oh many thanks to you and lydia for the bday card! wheee.... and to my dearest harmoc friends too... haha sorry i haven't been talking to anyone recently.... no excuses lah actually, but i hope everyone is doing well! val and yilin and julie, when are you guys going to actually start work? must save up dim sum dollies for me to come back and watch with you guys ok? and wq, hope you're still as fit as ever! i can't wait to return home actually.... can't imagine spending more than one year away from home....

oh major realization: all parents talk the same way to their kids, and all grandparents (esp grandmothers) talk the same way too! eg. (mum) cook for you still must beg you to come and eat dinner! (dad) listen to your mum lah (grandmother) boy come and eat... food is getting cold liao, cold then not nice liao.... come come... good boy...

i want to be a grandparent! can be cute and nice and be loved by all your grandkids... so fun! new year can give ang pao sommore....

okies enuff for now... tata!

Monday, June 27, 2005

just last week i saw what my sister wrote about my dad, and it honestly made me tear up... it wasn't just another touching article about family -- it made me realize just how much i let what's happening around me draw my attention away from the people who are the most important in my life. so in mitigation, and in the light of the weather being too hot to do homework in, i will write this little essay:

my sister

my sister will be 22 years old 4 days from now. her name is jasmin, without the e behind cos my parents wanted to be hip and happening, just like not putting our chinese names in our birth certs. she just graduated from UPenn, and is in MIT doing a 2 year masters course in one year. She was in the national netball team before college got the best of her favourite sport, but while in college became the president of the upenn ssa, worked 2 jobs, got attached, broke up, got attached again, got into badminton and basketball teams, found God, got an econs prize, etc etc.

my earliest memory of my sister was when she bit me on the arm when i was 3. according to my grandmother (who remembers everything about her grandchildren), i was playing with this cute penguin game where the penguins would go up this escalator and then slide down -- very fascinating for a 3-year-old. my sister, meanwhile, fascinated herself with plucking the penguins off everytime they reached the top of the escalator. That didn't sit very well with me, and soon the little competition for the future of the penguin colony escalated into a battle that ended with my arm being bitten, and all questions of physical superiority answered.

we used to have a sticker book each. my sister, being a girl, naturally had more (and nicer) stickers than me. when things went well, we would trade stickers. when things didn't, she would say "i take back my stickers ah" to quell any hint of resistance.

my sister is one year younger than me. which means that for the first 18 years of our lives, she got all the precious testpapers, sample essays, completed homeworks, not-to-be-made-again mistakes that any competitive schoolkid would kill for. and consquently did a little better than me in school every single year.

we fought all the time. over:

who gets the front seat in the car
who gets to practice piano first
who has to play piano first when the dreaded piano teacher comes (i still have nightmares)
lights-out timing
story endings when we played acting games (one of the most hotly contested events in our growing-up years)
which channel to watch
which station to listen to
who changes the bedsheets
who hangs the clothes
who gets to use the internet (parents, please please buy two computers, or three if you have 3 kids, even if it's going to kill you)
and many more....

...and for half my life, i hated her with a vengeance.

when we locked ourselves in the car boot (ok don't laugh) when i was in primary 3, i comforted her while she sobbed and said we were all going to die.

when my parents ran into car trouble halfway up to loch ness with no clue where we were, the two of us played alphabet games to distract ourselves.

when one of my relatives came to our house to kick up a fuss, we hid in our bedroom and read the Illustrated Bible for Children, not because we were Christians then, but because it was me and her reading the Illustrated Bible for Children, in our room, with the door locked.

when i fell sick, she would put cold towel on my head for me. and vice versa.

in rjc, during the study break, when i got distracted and went off to play volleyball, she would shake her head and go "kor, study lah..." How not to feel guilty right?

when her a level results were going to come out, had no appetite for lunch.

when i broke up with kay, not once was she too busy to talk to me. vice versa.

she's been telling her friends that i'm the best brother in the world.

i've been telling my friends that she's the best sister in the world, and nothing will ever change my mind.

someone told me just recently that her friend from upenn told her that jasmin is very nice and down to earth. i couldn't agree more. she's the humblest person i know, besides my parents. she is also more highly achieving than anyone i know personally. my friends would shake their heads and go, "how can she do all these things and still have time to watch nba?"

whenever she messages me on msn and says, "kor i'm very sad..." i feel like the luckiest person in the world, not because i'm not very sad, but because i see a chance to make that tiny difference in her life, to do what a good brother ought to do.

just like she has done for me for my entire life.

there are many things i thank God for. today i thank Him for a friend, an enemy, a competitor, a comfort, a confidante, a partner, an advisor, and a very, very wonderful young lady.

























proud! and jealous too :P



p.s. mummy now your turn to write for me! haha :P

Friday, June 24, 2005

so what if i haven't been blogging for one month? doesn't mean that i'll never blog again right? haha ok so i'm back after my 40-day hiatus. been heluva ride man... guess i should have blogged a bit about the vacation i took with charlotte, but it's far too late now... that's what happens when i enjoy myself too much -- i forget about the rest of the world... but no matter, now i'm back with a vengeance!

went to my professor's house with a bunch of friends to celebrate summer solstice. for those of you who don't know, summer solstice is the day when the sun ba long long (takes its own blardy sweet time to) go down, hence giving us the longest day in the year. but the amazing thing wasn't actually the tremendous amount of sunlight that we got. on the other hand, we journeyed to our prof's house to witness the most beautiful moonrise i've seen in my ENTIRE life. actually, i've never ever seen a moonrise in my entire life! so anyway, it was beautiful. we were just getting impatient when suddenly, from across Cayuga Lake, the moon appeared right between Sibley Dome and the McGraw Tower. It was red. have i ever seen a red moon in my life? NO. i was like, OMG. that's why scholarships are good see, they pay for your tuition plus 1350 a month to let you see such wonders of nature.

talking about wonders of nature, i spent a good deal of time this summer looking at fireflies. with charlotte at taughanock falls, with colin and gang at the Plantations, and with my archi friends at my prof's house. i wonder why fireflies don't go extinct. i mean, imagine being an insect with a big red target on your backside. yah. now imagine your backside shining like a blardy lighthouse. how to survive? maybe they're so cute that nobody wants to eat them.

oh big news! i've finally found a way to cope with charlotte's temper!

haha yah right.

i wish ah. but i still love her! don't get angry ok? i just say for fun only.

ok that's all for now, going to try and cook some lousy dinner for myself, before my ribs start poking out.