A person is a person, no matter how small.

Got a new Vox, http://cookiesinajar.vox.com

I love Ricebowl! He's loads of fun to meddle with. Lucky for me my HP box came with a complimentary Corel Painter software (think Microsoft Paint on steroids, paintbrush/crayon/pencil tip-loaded steroids). My mind draws a blank when it comes to breathtaking, heart-stopping hand-done works of art, so I decided to draw my clothes instead.

Expect more to come along, people!

I finally got down to painting my notebook cooler fan. I wanted everything - a decorated notebook cooler, connected mouse, transferred files - up and ready before I got down to using Ricebowl, my HP Pavilion tx2120us, and now everything's done!

This was the initial design:

P1100597

And here is the completed product:

P1100798

It turned out just the way I saw it in my head!

In 5 hours time I will be leaving for Philadelphia (yes that's me - a jet-setting maister). And boy do I have my trip all planned out, all with the help of Google Earth and the interweb. See - no need for Lonely Planet guidebooks.

Philly has a special, albeit less than authentic, place in my heart. I only remember driving through it when we drove from New York to Washington when I was 8. The only other, more significant, piece of knowledge I have of Philly is that it's the setting for Boy Meets World! Growing up, watching Boy Meets World was probably my main artery of cultural knowledge of the States, that and Archie comics. These 2 sources supplied me with everything I now know - that there are 3 types of hair color, that lockers are full-length, that they don't wear school uniforms there, that classrooms consist of singular tables with a tiny table attached to each chair, and that detention is much dreaded.

Lovely lovely lovely, I AM TOO EXCITED CAN YOU TELL

Collection 1: My travel itinerary

Ustripstock

I am a great believer in the power of food. As one of my beloved friends once said,

When it comes to describing my affinity for appetizers, main courses, dessert, heck, even snacks and accessory food (e.g. Sippah straws), it's pretty straightforward: as long as there is the supply, I have the demand.

The interplay of smell and taste is at once the most visceral of sense experiences, and yet the hardest to capture and reproduce. It immediately allows us access to the heart of a moment, and is so integral to any memory we have because in that simple combination it encapsulates all: the environment, the company, our feelings and thoughts, and not because it is a mere component of the memory. Case in point: an ice-cream that your mom drove you out to get because you were craving it, or the wanton noodles you order upon touching down at Changi Airport.

When I was 16 and had just finished my first ever Common Tests at RJ, I instinctively celebrated my liberation by getting a cup of teh ping from stall no. 2. On analysis, what had made its way into my consciousness and tradition was a triumph drink. I recall that since the start of my J1 year, I hardly spent any time in the canteen at all. When I did it was because I had just finished a test or gotten back a test I aced. And it just so happened that on the rare occasions that I did sit in the canteen I would order teh ping because it was the one thing I had never heard of but saw everyone drinking. Time and again I have, after a stressful period, repeated a journey to a specific place and procure a specific food item, so as to relive the moments leading up to when I first sampled it in the presence of a warm, fuzzy milieu.

What does this have to do with anything? Barely. Or rather, it's too early to tell. 2 days before I set off for a holiday in Philadelphia, 20 minutes after signing the Letter of Undertaking with CAAS, 2 hours after reading The Art of Looking Sideways, which is a marvelous book by the way, 2 weeks before giving another shot in Tianjin, I had Crystal Jade with the only 2 people who are most physically present in my life now: my mum and my maid. The beginnings of another memory package? Perhaps. But in any case, I SURE AS HELL HAD A LOT TO EAT.

Deep fried tofu, cuttlefish, XO chicken noodles, yangzhou fried rice... COME TO MAMA

Crystal jade

I thought the whole selection process was totally JINXED. From how CAAS was never something I specifically chose out of however many options, to the upsetting period that preceded the final interview, it really did seem to be the last thing to fall into my hands.

So the first round had a component where I had to give a speech from an essay which they had told us to prepare a week before. I hated what I had written, and edited it at the 11th hour on the night before the first selection round. Editing and delivering and timing, repeating the cycle. Next morning at breakfast, my mum requested to take a look at the speech requirements and my speech, and upon reviewing both commented something to the degree of "I don't actually see how you answered their...", clearly freaking me out. So I freaked out for about half an hour, completely paralysed as I got ready and still numb on the journey to the airport (CAAS's office), during which I realised that I forgot to put concealer on! My face was all pink and I stank from the morning's debacle. Crap. When I got in it was even more unsettling to see that it was only me with 5 other guys. Double crap. Well it didn't matter because a handful of other girls came in half an hour later. And so the day proceeded.

Getting through to the second round was quite complicated too. Due to the 3-week long stay in Germany and Italy I think I created plenty of scheduling complications for them. And so it was to be on the Tuesday after I came back (on Saturday). Over the weekend I got food poisoning which totally drained me. And on Tuesday I was 5 minutes late, which, you'd think, doesn't really matter right? Wrong. Everyone else who had gotten into second round too was already settled, calm, and composed. I basically barged into the conference room, and sat through the presentation fidgeting and trying to hide my buzzing phone, 'cos Mum wanted to vent and yell at me for making her rush through traffic. Why hide? To minimise the embarrassment created from the first call which I picked up, and had everyone else hearing her shrieks, even though my phone volume was turned to its lowest.

Adding to that mix was the wrong choice of footwear. Take my advice: stilettos are calamitous for those with spine problems. Furthermore, you're badly mistaken if you think you can execute disaster control by reducing walking and being on your feet, for sometimes people take you on TOURS of their workplace, which, in some cases, refers to an entire airport.

I blazed through fire and got through to the 3rd and final round, which, for me, was inched into a rather inconvenient time slot because of Bangkok. That interview was to be on the day after I came back. This made preparing for it quite a challenge, because I was still trying to get over being bummed out over lots of things, WHICH IF YOU WOULD PLEASE READ ON

IMMEDIATELY DISAPPEARED WHEN I GOT THE OFFER IN AN EMAIL THE VERY NEXT MORNING.

Moral of the story? Life doesn't always suck.

Lex Luthor said that, and it's true.

You know what, I'm gonna be happy from now on, so infectiously happy. I've got nothing to be sad about! My life will just be happy happy happy happy. My aura will emanate so much happiness that I can literally walk past a bed of dead roses and have them spring to life.

And FREED I shall be from the shackles of depression, insecurity and self-destructive tendencies! BE GONE, YOU.

Support me, my dears, in my quest for intrinsic happiness! We may not achieve contentment, we may fall short of fulfillment, but may we NEVER, EVER shun happiness!

Okay here's the 411 on what I've been up to lately and what I'm bound for in the near future.

I'm still fencing, only now I find competitions having less of the novelty that is the adrenaline rush than they used to have for me. Lots of issues there, no need for you to know and no space for me to type anyway. In April I went to Tauberbischofsheim, a little town in Frankfurt, Germany for 2 weeks before going to Acireale in Sicily, Italy for 1 week. Then a week in Singapore, before I was off to Bangkok for another week. Needless to say every trip had its moments of excitement, and seeing as we're fencers who don't get to sightsee much, you can only imagine where the excitement must come from.

Perhaps the degree of my conviction lessened because of my distraction. Read: distraction. Singular, not plural. Those "distractions" that the ill-informed must think I have have always been there since I started competing, so don't use it as a reason, and don't misrepresent me. Anyway, back to distraction that is all-encompassing and all-determining. See, the next 4-10 years of my life were to unravel within the month of April, and I would come to know of what life has in store for me during the time that I was supposed to be wholly focussed on training and competitions. That would be intimidating for anyone, especially for me, since I've been working so hard to get to where I wanna go for the past four years. So this is where I'm going!

• University of Pennsylvania, majoring in
• Architecture, on scholarship from
• Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS). 

My life, in 3 bullet points. It does give the misleading impression that it all came to me just like that, that these opportunities arrived at my doorstep and I had to Imelda Marcos-esque luxury of choosing. Ha. You wish. I slogged for each alright, and sacrificed things. A LOT of things.

I hope that things turn out well. I really do.

How abject can one's situation become?

I think I'm a walking embodiment of Murphy's Law. It's never been obvious to me until now, so it can't possible be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Putting it in a depressing manner, the last thing you want comes in first, the first thing you want never comes (Aqualung). More optimistically, I've got a roller-coaster, unpredictable life that's always bound to surprise me! Which means that at the end of the day, I can be content with my niche or role in society, because it was all meant to be.

The past two weeks at work have been fantastic! Dan (the architect whom I'm attached to) is so amazing! He knows just what to say to change my mindset or at least get me to see things from another point-of-view, and he's so earnest in teaching me stuff, always asking if I've got any questions and wanting to see my portfolio (which I whisked out on my iPod). And now I know all the high-end kitchen brands! Didietrich, Miele, Kupperbusch, Gaggenau, Smeg, Bosch (hmm that's middle-end actually), Valcucine, DelTango, Varenna, Poggenpohl, bulthaup, Hacker... I'm surprised they have a market. Or maybe I just haven't mixed with enough people who DO look to these brands for their kitchenware. I just always thought most people have kitchens that look like mine: everything in peach, not glossy, laminated (the vinyl kind of laminate) cabinets... you know, kitchens that don't provide any aesthetic experience other than smells when cooking happens. I think I carried the same apathy over though, because I seriously can't spot any difference between gloss laminates and acrylic and lacquer, or veneer and plywood, or elm and bamboo and beech, and for that matter any difference between the furniture brands (okay one or two are quite distinct from the rest). Maybe I'll see the difference when I look at their price tags...

But anyway, how great is this? That's enough words to furnish my German vocab! Now I know 5 languages! See:

• French: Chanel, Vogue, Louis Vutton
• Italian: Ferragamo, Georgio Armani, Gucci, Prada, Bvlgari

plus Chinese plus English plus German.. wahahaha conquer all the languages!

Now that I'm into my last week at Architects 61, I must say that on the whole, I've benefitted loads. There might have been some differential treatment from various people, but generally no one has been condescending, and everyone has been so nice at explaining the basics to me and sparing their 5minutes to 1 hour to assign me something or to just.. talk about their work I guess.

I'm really, really thankful to everybody!

Oh and... Hiral and Yiwen were here with me too! For 2 weeks each.. hrmph.. I'm still gonna spend my last week alone.