It's that time of the year again, when people are getting exchange programmes all over the world. I think it's NUS' turn this time. I think I realise it more, because although NTU's exchange programmes happen like half a month earlier than NUS', I have more friends in NUS than I do in NTU (I mean for NTU it's like... Chrys and no one else). I don't know why but it seems like getting an exchange in NUS is easier than getting one in NTU, and MUCH MUCH MUCH easier than getting one in SMU? Someone please enlighten me on why this so. #doesnotstudylocally

Suddenly FB (and to a lesser extent, twitter) is inundated with status updates like: "You have been offered a place at -enter university name here- for the student exchange programme during NUS AY2012/2013 Semester 1" along with added squealing and emoticons/smileys/etc.

I mean, I'm just like lol, congrats guys (: Although I wouldn't personally want to go to many of the unis which my friends/acquaintances are heading to (I think I only have one friend whom I envy to a certain extent, she got a place at the University of British Columbia which has a beyond gorgeous campus), I think my point of view is skewed and biased because I already study overseas. If I had ended up in NUS/SMU/NTU and got a exchange programme, I think my reaction would be exactly the same. Like $#@% YES!~ As long as it's overseas and far from S'pore, I would have been happy. I guess this reminded me of how fortunate I am, to be able to travel as often as I do around Europe, and to be able to see what I wake up to every day. Even though it's cold and miserable sometimes, I am thankful for what I have.

I mean, I travel so damn much I'm sick of travelling and flying on planes. That has got to say something right? :/ (Everyone at home: WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT I WOULD KILL TO BE YOU.) I really am blessed: recently, in less than half a year (Sept '11 to Jan '12), I've already been to/am going to 5 countries in Europe in total, not counting UK and S'pore.

I'm honestly humbled by and grateful for the things I have been blessed with. I don't think I appreciate my situation enough sometimes, and I guess I ought to do it more often. I'm just really glad and happy that my friends in S'pore can experience this too, the joy of leaving home and fending for yourself, being independent, and hopefully they'll learn to appreciate their parents and their home and being in Singapore more. I've met too many people who are going overseas to study (armyboyz, this is you) and they see this as an escape, to "get out" of the country and leave all the shit behind. I am almost ashamed to admit I was once like that too, but I suppose I was less fervent and open about it. Yes, you feel like that when you leave and the first term is just you letting loose and being free. But after a while, I believe that everyone, through leaving home, will ultimately appreciate it more someday.

It's the small things really. You gain lots of freedom, sure. But you have to do your own laundry, wash your own dishes, take care of all your admin stuff yourself, cook for yourself, clean for yourself, travel by yourself (sorry ah, no one to ferry you around)... Plus you have to be more careful on the streets and no, you can't actually eat any S'porean food anymore. They've Chinese food yes, but other than prawn mee and laksa and chicken rice and a few more, there is nothing else. No bak chor mee, no seafood soup, no sugarcane juice, no fishball mee, no pig organ soup, no Malay/Indian food... It's sad. ):

So yes, through the excitement of leaving and thinking about all you will gain, I hope that you guys think about what you're losing too (: But I suppose for a short six month exchange, the excitement will probably last throughout. Heh heh. Enjoy, you guys (: Wrap up warm.

I absolutely detest Christmas shopping and trip planning. I can totally see the appeal of giving up and going on a tour, where everything is planned for you and you just need to go with the flow. But I guess the appeal of planning your own trip is the ability to go wherever you want, whenever you want... I guess you sort of see more of a place rather than just being stuck on a tour bus all day. You get to go on ~public transport~ and mix with the locals and order your own food. You get to stay in gritty hostels with people of different nationalities whom you'll never see again (but for the short moment in time where you were coincidentally in the same place at the same time).

But until you get there, the planning SUCKS.

Fine, it's not the first trip I've planned. It's probably not going to be the last either. And I'm not the most anal of people who actually have an entire timetable of where to go and at what time for the whole of the trip, so that takes a lot of work off me as it is. However, I think people underestimate how annoying it can be to plan a trip, especially a big one with like five people tagging along. (Not that small groups are much less annoying, but still.)

First step: find flights. This can be really annoying because you're checking Every Single Flight Website there is, and trust me there are quite a few. It's even more annoying when you're planning a general trip in December and you don't actually have proper dates when you want to fly. It's just one of those we-fly-on-the-date-where-it's-cheapest things. So you have to check every single website for the whole month.
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Next step: Are you flying from Birmingham or London? If it's Birmingham, yay! We're almost done with the process. But if it's London? (Which it is like 90% of the time.) Then damn, you just set yourself up for more work!
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Step 3 (London things): Find train (including return journey) down to London. Find hostel to stay in for half the night. (Because most cheap flights fly from 6am to 8am in the morning in London, you'll need it.) Find transport to the airport (hello Easybus).
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Step 4 (skip Step 3 if flying from Birm): BOOK A HOSTEL. Hop onto hostelworld.com, find a ~cheap~ and ~good~ hostel. (Sounds easy? Try it when you're visiting a big and expensive city, I assure you, this step is all but impossible to complete.)
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Step 5: Oh look you're almost done! Wait, root through your email inbox for the gazillions of confirmation emails sent, print out whatever you need, and don't forget to check in online and print out your boarding pass!
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Step 6: Wash rinse repeat for every single trip. And oh yes, check wikipedia and google and books for awesome sights to see when you actually get there. And if you're in a big group, email/text/skype with everyone in the damn group to see if they're okay with the flights/hostel/whatever you booked. If you are travelling between countries, don't forget to find transport between each one (read: buses/trains/flights)!

If it sounds like pie, I challenge you to plan a 1.5 week Eurotrip with 3 countries, 4 cities, and 5 people in total going on the trip. I did that in Easter '11 and it was pretty stressful (although the trip itself went really well). Now I've spent most of the last two weeks planning my trip to Budapest in the first week of the hols, Dublin in the last week of the hols and Mystery Destination during the weekend of my first year anniversary/birthday.

Plus, Christmas shopping. I'm only buying ONE present, for my boyfriend, but please do not underestimate the fussiness and pickiness of this one boy. I can spend hours online shopping for the perfect gift and then I need to run it by him to make sure he likes it (no surprises for this one, he hates surprises) before I buy it otherwise if I buy it and he doesn't like it, I will prolly have to return it. He also only likes ~practical~ things, so I can't get him something impractical or decorative cuz he hates that shit. And I have given up on getting him clothes because he is extremely picky about colours. Anyway, after some hits and misses over the last 1 or 2 weeks, I managed to spend FOUR HOURS on Monday picking the perfect category of present (wallet), picking the perfect present itself, and making sure it doesn't bust my budget (tried to keep it below 100 pounds). All this while, was texting the boyfriend to make sure that the colour/texture/etc of said wallet was okay with his picky self.

It went something like this: Wallet or belt for Xmas? Wallet. Black or brown? Black. Coin compartment or not? No, card space would be nice. Does texture matter? Yes. Smooth or "scratchy"? Nothing weird is good. Do you need a card holder? Er no.
~By now, I've narrowed it down to two choices. I go on Skype to ask Chrys and Reubey for their opinions. I finally pick one.~
XMAS PRESENT BOUGHT, FINALLY. For all you curious peeps who have stuck with me through this entire post, I got him a Hugo Boss wallet.

And all this whle I had two essays due at the end of the week. As of now, I have finished/handed in one, and am 1/5 through the other. Hohoho. Just can't wait to get this thing done, hand it in on Friday, and GO ON HOLIDAY and reap the benefits of all my planning. Hehehe.

Just got back from Croatia! Was such a lovely trip and was great hang out times with the people I went with, especially since I haven't seen them for so so so long. Had a few mishaps along the way but nothing major/life threatening haha (: those mishaps didn't detract from the trip so all's cool.

Rushing my readings now and listening to music and my iPhone is being one depressed bitch right now ): First it played Katy Perry's The One That Got Away before shuffling straight after to Taylor Swift's Last Kiss. Haiya, iPhone. At least it didn't go to If This Was A Movie after that otherwise I might have just died from sorrow and moroseness ):

Come on, play me some krubbing music now. Mama needs to get pumped up and finish this shit.

Well it's been ages since I last blogged, because I haven't had Internet access for a couple of weeks and once I got Internet access (as opposed to living off my iPhone data plan) I spent my time doing useles things like catching up on my Project Runway episodes and reading funny webarticles. And anyway it's not like my life is particularly happening, same old same old. I think it's the same thing whenever I talk to my parents every week on Skype because I lead such a boring life (:

Currently I'm slogging over my International Security essay which happens to be due TOMORROW (yes you got that right... and I've only written about a third of it) and I'm also hungry. Which is not a very good combination because when I'm hungry, I am not happy. And when I am not happy, I do things that make me happy. And usually what makes me happy also wastes a lot of my time, hence my essay is not going as quickly as it ought to. Heh.

Also, oftentimes what makes me happy also spends a lot of my money. Case in point: I just bought a pair of purple Doc Martens >_> I also ate a small bag of chips so now not only am I unhappy, I am also fat and unhappy.

Going to go drink tea now, hopefully that takes the edge off the hunger ):

I hate feeling helpless.

It 's the worst feeling in the world. I'm inching forward to this unspoken deadline and this deadline I've known of for months and months, and I guess I've sort of buried it behind my classic procrastinator facade: Oh, it's like a month away, there are plenty of fun times ahead, I'm enjoying every single moment... And then suddenly, boom! It's crept up, and I'm like where on earth did all this time go? Then I start getting desperate, yes yes let's meet up on xx day at xx time to do xx and how about the day after that as well, are you free for lunch, are you free for dinner, are you free to spend an afternoon with me? I frantically block up dates and times and days, trying to squeeze every single iota of time I can manage.

It makes me feel so selfish, so desperate. But this is all I can do, because soon enough it'll be months and months before I see you again in person, in high definition and 4D, instead of from thousands of miles away on a blurry computer screen and via a shitty connection that makes your visage hang and lag at the most inopportune moments. I can hug you really tightly even though you wriggle and pull faces and make the worst noises in the world. Right now, to talk to you, I don't have to dial a foreign country code, I don't have to calculate time difference, I don't have to pay more than my phone bill demands, I don't have to yell into the crackly laptop microphone. Soon, however, I will have to content myself with a grainy image, a facsimile of you, and hollered conversation which leaves hardly any room for the sharing of secrets or even bitching/gossiping about people -- unless of course you don't mind the whole world around us listening in. Soon enough, we'll go from seeing each other a few times a week to "seeing" each other once a month, or even lesser than that.

I don't think it ever gets easier. Perhaps that's why I'm pushing meetings, scheduling like a maniac, trying to create enough great awesome amazing wonderful fond memories this summer to last us through more long months of separation. And perhaps the saddest thing is, I'm not even sure it's really going to work.

I hate feeling helpless. However, it's all I can feel right now.

Had to clean my room today, under the instruction of my mother. Had to clean her room too, because that's what university students home on summer holidays do: clean shit so their parents don't have to. She tried to get me to do the toilet via phone call today too, but I was all like hell no you didn't mention the toilet I ain't cleaning no toilet. If that sounds mean, it's because I was halfway through cleaning BOTH rooms and the end was in sight. Plus if I'd done the loo too, I prolly would've been late to meet Hwee (:

Anyway the point is, while cleaning my room I took the opportunity to look around. I mean, the parents have made much effort to revamp and reorganise my room so stuff that was a certain place when I hadn't gone to uni yet was now in another place altogether. And it struck me how many things I have lying around in plain sight. Some of these items are things which I feel I don't take enough time to appreciate, both for the item as well as for the person who gifted it to me. Some of these things are trinkets which were given almost a decade ago by very old friends, and I guess it served as a nice walk down memory lane.

-Painting of a rose (with glow in the dark paint) from Stella Bee, circa 2003.
-Painting of sunflowers from Jasmine, circa 2006/7. (It was from the CAP period, I can't really remember which one though. I also have forgotten what the message at the back means. Oh dear.)
-Photo frame with Vietnam picture from Stick, circa early 2009.
-Dreamcatcher from Ryan, circa 2006.
-Wooden D&T carving of a hamster? Pikachu? It's from Desiree, circa 2005.
-Candle holder from NJC OGLs, circa 2006.
-Large stuffed dog from my aunt on my father's side, lovingly named Alexander Montgomery Chubb, circa 1998.

And I'm sure there's more stuff in my drawer, cards and postcards and whatnot. I guess it's just a small reminder to look around at what we see every day and think about them a little more, because they hold memories of the past and the people in it (:

It's 3am, I'm up doing nothing, and I'm feeling completely useless as usual. I think I need some meaning in my life but it's difficult to find meaning when you don't even know where meaning is. Somehow I don't think staying up watching videos and playing online games is particularly meaningful. Kind of want to go back to school pronto, it would suck a little but at least I would have something legitimate to do with my life.