achy!

hurting all over from jumping/crawling/writhing around with ben, elliot, evelyn, meridith and kate. i am not fit anymore! but i can still do cartwheels so not too bad. surprisingly, getting punched in the face by jim didn't hurt at all (except during the punch lah). what an awesome time! and the musician was really good. i wish i could see myself though (or maybe not)... kinda curious what i looked like throughout the whole class. all i know is that i was drenched in sweat at the end, and had a blister on my left little toe. but it was great man. weird and awesome.

foresting in ithaca

found out last week that there is a river right in my backyard. craziness. i can't believe i spent 4 years here without journeying into the woods behind Valentine Place! well, once is still better than nothing. i also found out that slippers are not the best kinds of outdoor footwear, and also that leaf litter can be very dangerously deceiving.

do i at least get to go to purgatory?

i'm having blog paralysis now. all i want to do is to write about my life and for the first time in my blog's history someone has decided to judge me openly here for everyone else to see. it's like suddenly, this blog isn't mine anymore. and for a few days i've sat in front of my computer not knowing what to write, not knowing if people are going to read my blog and go tsk tsk this kenneth is hopeless...

sigh... kinda ironic how last time i didn't have to worry about my blog cos i knew who wouldn't read it... but now i suddenly have to be careful and sensitive and everything. i actually don't mind if you judge me, if you are angry or upset or understanding about me, because this is something that's between us. you've hurt me, and i've hurt you. you've also loved me, and i've also loved you. but there are people who feel like they have to say something, either on behalf of you or on behalf of their own principles, and suddenly it's not just about us anymore. sometimes i really wanna go "come on! it's my life!" but then again i do know that that's just silly. we never really get to live our own lives, do we? our identities are developed relative to others -- i'm smarter that these people, funnier than them, i'm less socially awkward than him, not as irrational as those girls, more christian than them, less environmentally conscious than those people, etc etc... i'm sure many people look at me and go "yep, i'm better than him, i won't do things like he did. if i were in his shoes, i would have...."

so yeah. i guess when you have a blog, you set yourself up to be judged. people who break up are always bad, no matter what happened when they were in the relationship. people who are broken up with are always victims. what about people who have broken up with someone, and who've also been dumped? i don't know. but maybe that's ok cos God knows our hearts anyway. and in the end, that's what matters right?

sigh... am i a horrible person?

i'll rather have my heart broken
than to have never loved before

Jesus Take The Wheel

Frank's blog title and such a beautiful song! Really what I need at this point in my life.

Asphalt Dreams

Made on the topmost level of the seneca street parking garage, after madeline's after pandora. then we went home and randomly searched for music, and after about 5 min found the perfect one.

apple of my eye

Revelation Song

i love this song! learned it at church a few months ago, but only just remembered the title :P

anyway, the time has come when i have to start sell my belongings here in ithaca. it's such a chore to get rid of things that i am practically giving things away free. i used to be very sentimental about my possessions, but in recent years i realize that i am becoming less and less attached to what i possess, because about a year after i came to cornell, i heard someone talk about this thing that is better than anything than i can ever buy here or anywhere else in the world. and the best part is, it's free1 so i decided i needed to have it, and now it's like nothing else is really that precious anymore.

thank you colin and aloysius and valerie and char and joseph (and many others of course), without whom i would still be what i was 5 years ago.

dreamy saturday

saturdays are so weird now. previously, saturdays are always snowboarding days, and i would without exception be on the slopes by noon and snowboarding till 7pm, leaving no time for any other activities. but the arrival of spring has rendered the slopes unboardable and left a void in my life. it's so weird man... every saturday it feels like i am on vacation, and when you're feeling like you're on vacation in a city (not really city) like ithaca, you'll invariably feel, well, lost and aimless. and so today, in an effort to find meaning in life, i am going to pmall to shop! *quiver*... shopping is such an alien thing for me, but i think it will be interesting lah. i need a grad night shirt! and more neil gaiman books! and maybe i'll cut my hair, which is getting rather unsightly. have to look good for graduation photos!

today winson said he'll celebrate my bday with me! his is 11 june and mine is 10 june, so it makes a lot of sense. but awwww so touched right... i got a friend! if only yongchuan is back in singapore also, then we can have a big june babies party! i can't wait to go back to singapore man. i need to rollerblade and play squash and play badminton and sit in my mum's transformer!

SPRING!

oh and yy wants a niece omg YOU ARE !@! i mean 12!

today...

...while the blossoms still cling to the vine
i:

played squash with a sprained wrist
made/let simian drive katie's car
did not play for worship wow
ate burritos on Libe Slope
jumped on a tree stump
watched the moon rise
watched the sun set

ate frozen grapes

ate potato chips
played catching
sang Elmo Song
drew a banana
ate a banana
and smiled.

Untitled Hymn (Come to Jesus)

So many times, just when I need it, you give me a song. Thank you.



Weak and wounded sinner
Lost and left to die
O, raise your head, for love is passing by
Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus and live!

Now your burden's lifted
And carried far away
And precious blood has washed away the stain, so
Sing to Jesus
Sing to Jesus
Sing to Jesus and live!

And like a newborn baby
Don't be afraid to crawl
And remember when you walk
Sometimes we fall...so
Fall on Jesus
Fall on Jesus
Fall on Jesus and live!

Sometimes the way is lonely
And steep and filled with pain
So if your sky is dark and pours the rain, then
Cry to Jesus
Cry to Jesus
Cry to Jesus and live!

O, and when the love spills over
And music fills the night
And when you can't contain your joy inside, then
Dance for Jesus
Dance for Jesus
Dance for Jesus and live!

And with your final heartbeat
Kiss the world goodbye
Then go in peace, and laugh on Glory's side, and
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus and live!

I failed the test.

i am a cyclist! don't hit me!

deer watching

the other day, we saw a deer at the arts quad, milling about and occasionally bending down to nibble. it had horns, and it was beautiful. we crept up to it in absolute silence, knowing that it would scamper the moment it saw us. and then suddenly, it stood up straight and stared right at us, like you know, stared all the way past my skin and into my very soul, before returning to it's higher calling of grass consumption.

so after peeing our pants, we decided to go closer, and it totally didn't give a damn about us! how cool is that! i wish i had my camera, but i had to content myself with standing there slack-jawed and going wowomgwow the whole time.

and then after about 2 hours, our deer got bored and walked away, and we went home.

dazed

Dont it always seem to go
That you dont know what you've got till its gone

-- Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi

i think it applies to both of us. now that we're no longer together, i realize more and more that you're someone i really care about, and i really wish i can always be a part of your life -- someone with whom you can share your joys and sorrows and everything. i don't know, maybe we got together too fast, maybe it's the long distance thing, but it always seemed like almost from the moment we became a couple, something wasn't quite right. but right now, now that we no longer have to judge each other or expect anything from each other, i feel like we can share our lives with each other in a way that we never really could.

i'm so glad that you have so many good friends around (some of them you probably never really appreciated until now?) to comfort you and protect you. i guess i don't deserve any "life support" right now since i'm the bad guy, but i honestly feel very very sad too. a huge huge part of my life is gone and even though i feel i had to do this, my heart hurts so bad each time i think of you or play with my ring (which i still can't take off).

please don't wait for me. who knows what's going to happen in the future, but let's just take opportunity to see what life has in store for us ok? i promise that as long as you want it, i'll stick around with you as a good friend, and who knows, maybe that's what we were always meant to be?

i'm sorry

i'm sitting here trembling and unable to move from this spot at all. there's plenty of things i ought to be thinking about, but right now, all i can think of is you. i turn around and look at your photos, and realize painfully that you're so beautiful, that your smile melts things and brings light to dark places. i realize that i am a different person now thanks to that smile, and thanks to everything else that is you. and i wish so desperately that we were ok from the start, that God didn't bring us together just to find out how much we can take. we were so confident; we couldn't care less about all the naysayers who thought that this was impossible -- after each fight we would tell ourselves, "here we are, stronger than before, even more equipped to prove to the world that nothing can tear us apart." when we were driving through the wilderness in Australia, it seemed like we finally discovered how to be perfect for each other, how to accept that we are two very different people who are absolutely in love and who will always be.

i loved you and cherished you. each time you said i didn't care about you, it would be like a knife twisting into my chest. each time you cried, the pain would course from my heart all the way to my fingers and toes. but those precious, precious times when you would look into my eyes and smile... i felt like nothing else really mattered in my life anymore.

but then we make mistakes and those mistakes cost us and now all i know is that i am so thankful that you let me love you these few years. i am sorry i am not as strong as i thought i was, or as i promised you i'd be. i'm sorry for all those times i made you cry and for all those times when i continued fighting with you when i could have just said i'm sorry so you could love me again. i'm sorry i let you down...

but i'm not sorry for what we've been through together, because it was special and real and wonderful for me and there is not a single memory that i want to erase from my mind.

i really, really loved you.

who needs an umbr ella on a sunny day?!

today, the solemn chimes of our clocktower chimed Umbr-ella for the whole school to solemnly hear. in bright spring sunshine. to their credit, they made it sound as morose as they possibly could.

what a week

in which i:

missed three classes. :|
was happy. :D
was sad. :(
was angry at my professors for taking their own sweet time. :(
walked the whole way down fall creek. :D
did not visit the johnson museum. :|
got cream, black, red, brown m&ms. :)
ate two tubes of pringles original. :)
was severely underdressed (but not as underdressed as char) in NYC. :|
watched david archuleta perform on the iphone in the apple store. :|
did not get to visit FAO Shwartz. :|
went to Waterloo Premium Outlets for the first time in my life. :)
remembered how much i love pool, and remembered how i picked it up. :D
did not get to snowboard. :\
did not crash joseph's car. :)
sang for char for the first time in a long long while. :)
trespassed, but was not prosecuted. :D

nobody give me chocs before!

char at broadway again

sumptious food at haru -- i love edamame cos it's SALTY!

giant platter of raw fish and raw unborn fishes

my head casts a giant shadow

looks kinda sinister to me

don't need to buy, just take photo can already

don't need to buy, just take photo can already 2

we came too early!

trying very hard

trying very hard 2

tried very hard

so cuteee!

natural french braids

i jump ah i jump! really! i jump!

cows also need to travel wat...

i know how to make now!

see?

char showing me how.

tapas!

our make-your-own-flight

ashes and lavarrr

so pretty right :)

people always like to put their fingers into my lens

i think it went in

i think it didn't

if only it was a stuffed toy

wow overflowing man this is too much

dino gets to carry a cute girl! yay!

why they put 辣椒油 in my soup....

yummy.

haha what kind of expression is that?

sticky rice's owner is one talented guy

so cool we also had to try! i can you know.

i am a very optimistic person.

why do i think so? cos i always under-dress for the weather. i think some part of me always believes that the day is going to be beautiful, that as long as there is sunlight, there will be warmth. I KNOW IT IS NOT TRUE. but i can't help it, everytime i dress up, that knowledge always vanishes temporarily from my mind, and the next moment i'd find myself shivering outside and wondering why i am doing this to my poor, battered body again.

char's here! we watched avenue q together which was fantastic. haha not sure if she enjoyed it THAT much cos it was kinda crude and everything, but omg the acting was so good. i mean, it's a PUPPET SHOW for goodness sakes! i was like wow nice i am paying 60 bucks to watch a puppet show.... but the actors really made it work man and it was so funny. especially how the actors have the same expressions as the puppets so it's like watching two shows at once. i am amazed.

ok so check this out...it's not the one we watched but it's so cute. song's the same:


and it's so great that char's happy. :D

post cny 大扫除

once in a long while, after i've let my surroundings deteriorate to a point where my very health is at risk, i freak out and go on a cleaning crusade, which is what i have more or less just accomplished. my room now looks 2x bigger ( i actually feel a little strange sitting here in this strange empty void that is my room), and my kitchen doesn't reek of rotting flesh anymore. quite proud of myself! though i also think that if char wasn't coming to visit, i wouldn't have had the willpower to slap myself into action at all, and our house would have become a biological hazard in no time.

well, it's all good. everything smells nice and sterile! and once i do laundry tomorrow, the world will be beautiful once again.

Razor

"You are capable of setting aside your fears, setting aside your hesitation ... and even your revulsion. Every natural inhibition that, during battle, could mean the difference between life and death.

When you can be this -- or as long as you have to be -- then you're a razor." -- Admiral Helena Cain, Battlestar Galactica: Razor

in preparation for the final season of BSG, i watched from the comfort of my bed their 2 hour tv movie Razor, released more or less as a teaser to keep their fans clinging on desperately to the show. and wow what a movie. so elegant, violent, beautiful, horrifying, hopeful and sad. and so much spaceporn haha which we had all sorely missed in Season 3. please, everyone, please watch Battlestar Galactica. It is amazing.

Interestingly, Razor is all about women. women loving, hating, trusting, betraying, fighting, shedding blood, dying, living... women being razors. loved admiral cain and kendra shaw. not only do i respect the writers for weaving such beautiful stories into a show about robots and spaceships, but the acting is just so nuanced and affecting, it makes me want to have my planet blown up and be stuck in space with these people.

i think i will cry when the season ends. i really think i will. and then after i finish crying i will watch it again from season 1 all the way to the end. and again. and again.

here's some cool BSG vids i found on youtube:

BSG fan-trailer -- "Battlestar of Brothers"

Razor trailer


Everything until now

in other news, i discovered that not getting 4.2 GPA doesn't mean you're stupid.

awaiting the return of BSG...

... has been a traumatic experience. not only did it take more than a year for season 4 to come, it has been made abundantly clear by the powers that be that this will be the last season of Battlestar Galactica (imho the best sci-fi series ever to grace television). and now, with episode 4-01 right around the corner, my heart is pounding each day with anticipation, and also filled with an irrational dread that this final season will not live up to the first season, which was absolutely stunning.

no. no way. this is going to be AWESOME.



At the risk of oversimplifying, BSG is the story of a ragtag fleet of humans who narrowly escaped the destruction of all the twelve planets that they once occupied. Flying through space, they are chased by the Cylons, who are essentially robots created by the humans a long time ago. The interesting thing about these Cylons is that they are biologically almost identical to humans, and some even think they are human until they are activated.

As the humans search desperately for a new home -- a legendary lost colony called Earth, they develop a complex relationship with the Cylons. The fleet discover Cylons in their midst; one falls in love with a Cylon and even has a baby; and at one point, half the fleet is trapped on a planet and forced to live in captivity under the control of Cylons.

What I love about this series is that it isn't just a sci-fi story. It is a complex drama that tackles political, technological, economic and social issues that are very much part of our present day life. What kicks ass is that this complex drama is elegantly woven into an ecstatic orgy of explosions, gunfire, and enormous, lethal chunks of space metal.

and then there's grace park. who makes everything worth it.

poor girl.

just read in the news that a former child prodigy from malaysia who entered oxford when she was 13 is now a hooker. just goes to show how competitive the field is nowadays. soon it'll be lawyers and doctors and former presidents... but seriously, leave the poor girl alone! if she doesn't want to do maths anymore then so be it lah! overqualified then overqualified lor... maybe next time she can write a paper on the economics of the sex industry. actually wonder how she feels about being splashed across newspapers and tabloids everywhere... just like that girl who caused governor spitzer's downfall. must be doing a brisk business now.

ok dragon day photo:

that was a lot a lot of coffee

I am a lazy Teaching Assistant

this morning, i sent a subtlely desperate email to my class:

"Hi! I know you guys are probably busy working on your projects for the meeting with Chris and Ezra tomorrow, but I'll be at the PC Lab at 1pm if you want to talk. Cheers, Kenneth"

basically, that translates to:

"Hi! I know I have to come and show my face here but I really really don't want to and I know most of you don't have anything to show me also so let's all do each other a favour and don't turn up so we can all sleep at home. If you really want to come I'll try to smile and all that but I'll be really really pissed off inside. And since I have to turn up anyway you better come at 1pm SHARP if you want to talk to me at all because I'm going to disappear at 1:30. Good luck for tomorrow ok! Cheers, Kenneth"

So far, only 1 person showed up, which proves that my students are more or less what I expected them to be. Will escape really soon.