so this is it. the culmination of all our fears, expectations, hopes, frustrations. 17 years of academia and look what we’ve become today – experts at the art of examinations, cynical that this has been anything else but that. least of all the pure, untainted pursuit of knowledge and learning. perhaps. or i could be alone in my cynicism.

that being said, it is not at all an unemotional end. there’s infinitely more to it than simply not having to study for exams any longer. for so long one has been protected from it all by the belief that all you gotta do is work toward that one thing. so what do you do when you’ve done what you gotta do? who knows what’s out there in this big bad world. at that one last peal of the bells, it’s run and you’re on your own.

the strangest thing happened to me yesterday. sitting in the design office, i suddenly felt inexplicably sad that it will all be over come monday.

that, if you ask me, is almost as impossible to fathom as our electric arc furnace is.

It’s a lovely, lovely Saturday today. It is days like these – gloriously clear blue skies and a sun generous with its rays – that bring pangs of sadness when I realise I will be leaving this place for good, so soon. How I will miss watching London from the upper-deck of the Number 14, watching artists sit by their array of paintings along Green Park, people walking their dogs and joggers weaving through the strolling crowd on the sidewalks. The effect of good weather is felt so much more here in London than it ever is back home.

I’m writing because I figured if I don’t do it today, I won’t do it til the Easter break begins, which is more than a month from now. Final year design project has taken over my life of late, to say the least. This past week saw the completion of the Interim stage of our design project and that’s why we’re ever so slightly more laidback this weekend. It’s the first weekend in 5 weeks that I don’t have to be in uni at all! But then.. this is only the tip of the iceberg. The eye of the hurricane. The calm before the storm, as it were.

Expect this space to be a little lonely for the next six weeks or so. I know I’ve been very characteristically lousy at keeping in touch. It’s the only reason I’m resisting the urge to complain that playing one Scrabulous game after another doesn’t quite count as keeping in touch. d=

I’ve often wondered why you always have this clean, homey scent of soap on you, all the time, every single time. It reminds me of my father – that Imperial Leather barsoap scent so characteristic of him. I catch a whiff of it in the gust of wind caused by the swinging-shut of the doors you always hold open for me. I smell it in the place you were standing, even a second or two after you’ve moved away. If I’m lucky, I inhale the comforting scent when you kneel down next to me, picking up the broken pieces of ceramic fibre I’ve klutz-ily strewn all over the laboratory floor.

Yesterday we spent 2 hours together (oh, rapture!) snapping these silly fibres in the Mech Eng laboratory. You have this sense of humour I find so cute. You speak of your fibres almost lovingly, fondly calling the odd one-or-two ‘freaks’ when they withstood unexpectedly large loads. You admonish your fibres, calling them ‘uniformly un-uniform’ and ‘rubbish’.

You are so sweet and kind and nice and ohsoverybrave! when you gallantly defy your penicillin allergy to enter a chemical laboratory just to show me where to find the micrometer screw gauge. You know the answer to everything, you are so knowledgeable and so clever.. And oh, so strong too! How effortless it seems when you tighten and loosen these bolts and screws and things!

Alas, you are a glorious PhD student writing a ground-breaking thesis, and I am but a lowly undergrad watching and admiring you from behind these oversized safety glasses. Alas, to you I am simply known as ‘UG’. And our little rendezvous are but work responsibilities to you, perhaps even unwanted burdens…

Oh, will I ever see ‘Dear May’ instead of just ‘Hi’ in these emails, let alone hear my name spoken on your lips?

It is so easy to waste time when you have internet at home. I’m not kidding.

Which is not good when there’s so little time as it is and so much to do!

CVs and cover letters to write
Job applications
Research project
Fibres to spin in the lab
Career presentations to attend
Lectures
Spanish lessons to keep up with
Night-time ambushes on cockroaches in the kitchen
Broken CD-rom to be fixed
People to keep in touch with

…amongst others

I am so addicted to clementines and mandarins, I just can’t stop eating them, for some reason! I think my body knows when Chinese New Year is round the corner..

I hate job applications. Loathe my current Unilever one with a passion.

Denmark Street was a bit of a letdown – nobody told me the street was only 100 metres long! – but at least Heidir bought the Ibanez he’s been lusting after. Don’t worry, pumpkin, if you can’t pay your rent after having parted with letsnotsayhowmanypounds to buy that beauty, you can always busk at Gloucester Road tube station for a month. Lol.

Wonder if there’s a piano equivalent of Denmark Street in London.

Oh! For the benefit of my few but faithful readers in Malaysia (hehe) – last Wednesday saw the falling of the first snow in London this year. Sadly I was fast asleep when the woman in the clouds starting emptying her featherpillows of their contents at 3 a.m. )= I did get to see the gardens all covered in white when I walked to college later that morning though. Hope it snows again soon.

Yesterday a friend presented me with a poem he penned just for me, the most heartwarming yet amusing poem okay, in which each line ended with a word that rhymes with ‘May’. He is now officially my favourite curly-haired Singaporean Indian Muslim Japanese-speaking non-Fine Chem Chem Eng-er. Hehe.

I’ve forgotten to bring my wallet to college on three out of four days so far this week. Monday, I borrowed one pound from Jin Rong to buy myself a pain au chocolat to assuage my misery, only for it to drop it on the floor and roll behind the vending machine out of my reach. Tuesday, as a result of reading my timetable wrongly and bringing in the wrong notes, I sat through all my lectures totally disoriented and at sea. Wednesday, I slammed the lid of the grand piano on my pinkie. And to top it all off, today I forgot my keys, and thus got locked out of my room for an hour or so. I’ve been such a klutz it’s not even funny.

Story of my life. Sigh!

Lipstick on my teeth
Perfume in my eyes

My hair out of place
My socks mismatched

Yesterday reverberates
Still in my head

Fuzzy wuzzy dizzy ditzy
Nippy in my skinny tee

I’m running late
Hot chocolate burns my tongue

But oh, it’s Monday morning
So tell me, now – what’s new?

I’ve decided to put up some pretty photos on my blog every now and then to systematically chronicle what has happened in the past one or two months. And they’re not filler posts, okay! Lol. So here we go.

OCTOBER
Chicago Musical at the Cambridge Theatre, when Jenn Yi came to visit. And yes, I saw Ashlee Simpson. Not that I’m particularly proud of that. Heh.

Zhon Wei’s pre-birthday celebration at Four Seasons, followed by a long and chilled night at Guan’s.

Hari Raya with the Pengarah at Encik Adib’s (our new JPA Student Advisor).

Burger night at Chuan and Nits’s. Followed by Taboo and shisha.

NOVEMBER
Steve Tyrell at Ronnie Scott’s. No shots of Steve himself though, cos I was too absorbed in the music and the everyeverything to be bothered to take out my camera. (= Oh, and there’s a picture of me doing the touristy thing in front of the Eye. Teehee.

Speaking of missing boxes, the other day while unpacking my things I realised that I didn’t have my folder with all my certificates with me in London, and I don’t remember seeing them at home in Bentong either. Rightaway a dreadful recollection of my missing box from last summer struck me, and I concluded that the folder of certificates must have been in that box for it was to be found nowhere else… and that was a horrible shock indeed because this year I know I would be needing all those certificates to apply for a summer internship. I got so angry at the people who were responsible for it, whoever they were; until my mom called later in the day to tell me that the folder was actually at home sitting in an unopened box in my room. Phew! So… my apologies to the people who took my box/the people who lost my box, for thinking all those nasty murderous thoughts of you (just joking) but if you please, I’d STILL love to have the box back anyhow, thank you very much.

The guys minus Lance are at the moment keeping themselves occupied with the Playstation 2 – I hear boyish yelps, bursts of laughter and other assorted noises every now and then – Melissa and Lance have gone a-swimming and so that leaves me all alone to my muse, while listening to jazz – just the way I like it. (=

Autumn term of third year is going to be a time of attending career talks, filling in application forms, revising and re-revising my CV, doing online tests/assessments and going through interviews and the heartbreak of being rejected, which leaves much to be desired, really. Time to think about my future, to put it very plainly.

But moving on to more cheerful things – I’m looking forward to more ‘kau yook fan’ sessions at Oriental Canteen with Chuan and Zhon, Starbucks Fridays with the Chem Eng crew, karaoke sessions with the gang, Steve Tyrell at Ronnie Scotts, watching Kung Pow with my fellow Kung Pow-crazed housemates Alan and Yew Vern, and cooking up yummy dinners every night in our kitchen. (=

Anyways, more piccies of the house…

Our bedroom

Close-up of my desk

Ravioli hanging pretty from our bedroom door

Our kitchen

And the hallway