Within 4 walls

In the middle of cramming all about atopic dermatitis in kids and had this irrestible urge to blog about last night's hilarious conversation with my Dad. It went like this:

"Hi Dad!"
" Hi..."
"I hear you're getting baptised. Are you excited?"
"I'm more excited about you coming back lah..." (Hah! my Dad can be so sweet sometimes)
The conversation continues and then he asks:
"You know your pretty friend?"
"Huh, which one, got so many."
" The one who had dinner with us before?"
"Oh, that one ah. Haha, you think she's pretty ah?"
Protracted pause.
"No lah, I where got say she's pretty. All I will say is that she's a lot more attractive than you." (Wah, thanks a lot man.)

Well, parents. Okay mine at least. They never let you reside under this delusional cloud of being bold, intelligent and beautiful. My feet are always kept firmly on cold, solid ground. Which in many ways, I suppose, isn't a bad thing. =)

Damien's gone into the top 2! GO DAMIEN!!! I agree: " It's not just the luck of the Irish, it's talent!" A zillion =)

On a completely different note: I think sometimes, now, for example, I quite like exams. I like it because it keeps my perspectives strict, gives me a purpose, a goal to work towards. No need to wonder what to do with myself, no need to think about what else needs to be done, the perfect excuse to be shoddy about all other non-academic aspects of life.

Exams, here we come!

Church has this uncanny way of calming me down and making me feel joyous, peaceful and carefree again. Somehow, upon entering church, I just feel this aura of peace. Through the praise and worship and prayer all the anxieties and disgruntlements that I have with life just quietly fade into oblivion and then I can't help but think myself silly for being caught up in things so small, so insignificant.

On another note, we had some rain today! Yay! It's been so dry in Victoria the past few years, the farmers have had to stand by helpless watching their crops wither and die. And it looks like we're heading into a dry summer as well with only 8 mm of rain recorded last month! So any rain, despite it being an inconvenience is truly welcome. It's such a novel feeling, this excitement about the rain. Back in tropical Singapore, rain's an absolute nuisance. Your clothes don't dry, you can't travel from point A to point B and if you do you'll have to bear the discomfort of slopping around in soaked squelching socks and shoes. But over here, things are so different, every single drop is eagerly anticipated and appreciated.

Does anybody else out there have a day like this, when they know what they should do, they want to do what they should do, but they cannot do it because there is some stupid, niggling thought at the back of one's mind that keeps zapping those neurons and interrupting any attempts at learning? And no matter how much ice cream you eat, rest you take, music you listen to, nothing adequately smothers that one niggling, idiotic thought that threatens your future (okay, I'm exaggerating, more like the exams, but then again, at the moment exams are the future). And you continue to be distracted, knowing full well in your heart that tomorrow when you awake and find yourself so behind in that revision schedule you'll begin to quake and curse yourself for your slovenliness and lack of self control.

Well, today is one of those days.

Anybody else out there has them?

I meant to blog this on Sunday immediately after the episode of Australian Idol had ended but my internet connection just wouldn't behave.

This is said with much forethought as I run the risk of sounding like some crazed teenage fan wannabe way past her prime. But, for all u people in Australia, if you are intending on voting somebody, VOTE DAMIEN LEITH!!!

This is one singer with raw talent, nice personality and a true love for music.

There now, I've said it, justice has been done.

Over the past few weeks my social life seems to have expanded quite noticeably just when it shouldn’t 3 weeks to the dreaded exams. And though it makes me quite jittery to be lounging about with friends so close to the exams and makes me gripe inwardly at the poor timing, deep down I am quite happy about it all. An important lesson learnt through the years about friendships is that you can’t make good friends appear. They just happen, either by dint of chance or fate or divine intervention or perhaps a combination of all three. And when that happens, no matter when it happens, I invariably feel happy and truly truly blessed.

But what I intended this entry to be about was just to muse idly about people and human relationships, to take an aimless wander through the faces I meet everyday and describe a couple of them. Here goes:

J—she’s a complete and utter type A personality, things have to be on time, run like clockwork, her life can be summarized as “boom boom boom”. But I love her for all that and the fact that she is 100% reliable, straightforward, no pretences or affections needed. She complains to my face when I am being worldly and narrow minded, and I tell her, no qualms needed, that the food she’s just prepared “lacks character”. We have deep meaningful discussions about WB and RGS, and I tell her she ought to be the god-daughter of WB and CL, she is always a staunch defender in the perfection of both of them. And I thank God for her, for her loyalty, sincerity and honesty-- she’s definitely a keeper.

T—This is my friend, my buddy who baffles me half the time, who fills up a large proportion of my thinking time trying to figure out the whats and the whys about her, who knows my little quirks and idiosyncracies which she eventually accepts with a sigh and a smile and a shake of the head, whom I treasure for being resolutely loyal, undeniably kind and always self-sacrificing.
S—no matter what circumstances I’m in he makes me laugh and smile. This is one person who turns the most boring lecture into a hilarious time, who slops around in his burms and fading T-shirt priding himself in his unfailing ability to discern between bottled coke and canned coke (yah rite), who nods mindlessly through morning tutes while only half listening and gets into trouble because of it, and who can be sweet and caring in a quiet sort of way.

M—this dude I bicker with (and I quote him) “as if we were married”, though God forbid that ever happen. =) He has this uncanny ability to make me regress into using embarrassingly juvenile means of name-calling and rib poking to make a point and if ever I need to put up any semblance of respectability and maturity, he’d better not be around. But behind that teasing mouth of his, is a really thoughtful person, whose heart is in the right place, whom, when you pause to think about, makes you smile and think about fondly.