i'm really upset.

my rabbit is now in the animal hospital because the vet suspects he has enteritis, which is a fatal disease. basically over the next 48 hours they're going to be caring for him and trying to get him to eat something. it really upsets me to see him so subdued from his former self and not eating at all. he used to be so chubby and cute and happy to eat, but now he's losing weight day by day and almost half his size. i feel like this is all my fault because i bought him knowing that i would be going away and my family obviously did not know how to care for him properly.

sigh. i don't really know what to do. i hope he recovers and he will be happy again. it really really pains me to see him so miserable.

+ posted by M @ 6:38 PM

...	Thursday, June 19, 2008

i think i'm addicted to theatre, and being in the theatre.

it's been barely a few days of sitting around doing nothing, trying to get over my jetlag, and i just feel extremely restless. it was easier to ignore my withdrawal symptoms last week because of the stress of finals. but now that i'm idling about, i'm not even interested in going out, i just want to start work.

and who knows what work is even going to be like? i'm a little scared, honestly. i'm hoping it will be a good experience, and i won't just be someone they're not quite sure what to do with. and most importantly, i want to learn a lot of things.

bringing rabbit to a specialist tomorrow, in ang mo kio. he's having problems with his teeth i think, he doesn't seem to be eating much and has become very small. it's almost like caring for a child ... i really hope he gets better soon.

i want to start reading a new book, but i'm not ashamed to admit that right now i have no interest in reading something like Marquez or Woolf or Kundera or any of that intellectual stuff. i'm not saying i want to read chicklit rubbish like shopaholic or something, but i just do not want to read something that requires too much mental effort. i am not interested in books that are going to make me sit at my desk unpacking one paragraph for half an hour (looking at you, Woolf). i really just want to read something simple and character-based. i won't even mind Forster or Hemingway. or maybe JUDY BLUME. yes, i said it.

what has become of me? too much, WAY too much intense UofC hipster intellectual pseudo-artsy crap. i don't really want to be around, or aspire to intellectualism anymore. sue me. freud, socrates - greek philosophers ... in fact anything greek? nothing could sound worse. unless i'm reading about interesting greek myths and creatures like pegasus and sea monsters, in which case that's ok. and no Thomas Pynchon either, i'm not interested in holding a book just to look cool.

i'm a little surprised at how much i have to say now that i've started blogging again, and maybe this is also made a little easier by the fact that i know not many people read this anymore. i'm not sure why i value my privacy so much - i think i might have taken it a little overboard in chicago. back here, friends had my blog and everyone kept a blog so it was pretty normal for people to read it and understand my thoughts without me saying so. over there, what you see is what you get more or less - i forever remained a mystery to some people simply because i did not share enough of myself with them. i think that's something i have to work on more in the coming year, if i don't want to be remembered as 'the girl who was a mystery', or worse yet, forgotten. i don't think being called a mystery is very complimentary, even though it might sound that way depending on what floats your boat.

i've been catching up on my friends' lives these few days by reading their blogs - something i've not done in a very long time. i used to check the blogs at least once every few days, but i honestly have not read a lot of theirs for almost the past six months. angie and dawn, i know i have completely neglected yours... and God knows who else. and sometimes it seems that so much has happened, it's too tiring to read it all. i've been reading celene's and amanda's and for some reason it seems jarring to me whenever they mention my name - i don't know why, but i feel surprised that they still think of me sometimes enough to mention my name in one of their posts, and i guess i feel happy that i'm still a part of their lives, even though i think i really haven't kept up my end of the bargain.

i'm still waiting for friends to slowly trickle back in. bea, carol, kai (?), phil, bernice, zx (?) .. the fact is i don't even know who's coming back and who's not, who's here and who's away. i guess i should start texting people but the fact is i'm tired and i don't even know why. things are not going to be the same. i feel like we've all grown up some and when you're not really around when that person is growing up, it takes quite a while to catch up. it's a sad thing, losing touch with people.

+ posted by M @ 5:37 AM

...	Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Being home makes me realize that I'm somehow in a completely different stage of my life right now. So much that used to matter seems really inconsequential. Old friends and certain people I used to like a lot (person, I guess) have seemed more interested in making contact than I have and somehow it just doesn't even matter. I don't even know if I care to ever see them again, and if we'd really have anything to talk about. I feel like I've changed quite a bit, and not necessarily for the better. But I think I've definitely grown up, at least a little, and most of the people here haven't really ... If you still read this blog, that probably means I still do care about talking to you, so don't feel hurt. Maybe it's because I no longer really care what they think - I've moved on to caring what other people think. But even then, in college, you don't really have to care what people think about you because they seem (maybe I'm wrong) a lot less judgmental than Singaporeans.

Or maybe I'm just feeling disoriented and unfamiliar, and I won't be feeling the same after a few weeks.

Rabbit has lost weight, he's really light in my arms now, and he doesn't smell as good. I hope he gets better soon, we shouldn't have fed him quite so much before.

+ posted by M @ 3:08 PM

...

I was reminded today how wonderful a good book can be. Reading a good novel is like slipping into your most broken-in, comfortable pair of jeans, or having coffee with an old friend. I picked up Prep (by Curtis Sittenfeld) at O'Hare. I was looking for something light and breezy to read on my 20-hour journey. The title attracted me, obviously - while I dislike chicklit for the most part, I admit to a certain soft spot for reading about east-coast prep school girls with their effortlessly cool uniforms of pleated skirts and knee-high socks. The synopsis proved promising too, and it had been reviewed favorably by the NYT (comparing the writer to Salinger and Plath!), indicating that maybe Sittenfeld's writing was in a different class than the generic Gossip Girl novel (and I have never read those, it's a matter of principle ..). Also, it was about 400 pages long, and I couldn't imagine that any chicklit writer would really have that much to say about shopping and shoes - this had to contain something of more substance.

My mom asked me when she picked me up if I had slept much on the plane. I didn't, and the truth is, I was reading. I had started devouring the novel, and it wasn't the guilty pleasure I expected it to be; it was pure, organic food for thought. Sittenfeld's novel was funny, poignant and extremely real. Her writing is so insightful that it was almost painful to read at times - I saw so much of myself in there, and related a bit too well to the main character. She reminded me of the person I was in college, which was almost incredibly sad. Her heroine was not one of those awesomely WASPy entitled Blair Waldorf types that I was expecting. The book was about a girl from the mid-west, a fish out of water who spent most of her time observing rather than participating. Someone who obsessed about any little event that occurred and wondered much more about her classmates than they did her. I have to hand it to Curtis - it's pretty hard to humanize and make interesting a character people would find invisible in real life. That girl was me, and sometimes I do feel I must be invisible in Chicago. Any pre-conceptions I'd had about the title and the cover had vanished as I now realized this was a carefully crafted piece of writing. I later wiki-ed the writer and found out it took Curtis 3 years to write this book, and a lot of it was based on her own experiences as a girl. As I read, I couldn't help thinking that most of my friends might enjoy this - Carol, I think you might like it, except it might be a bit angsty for your taste. I probably liked it so much because I recognized myself among those pages of words. Something both scary and reassuring.

It was nice to finally have time to read for pleasure and feel the strangely familiar urge to keep turning the page. At the UofC, I have to stay up hours on end reading non-stop, but I only keep reading because I have to, not because I want to.

+ posted by M @ 4:03 AM

...	Monday, June 09, 2008

a very talented friend of mine performed a bunch of stephen sondheim songs on friday. before he sang this, he claimed it was his theme song and then proceeded to sing it just like it really was. i kind of fell in love with it.

The sun comes up,
I think about you.
The coffee cup,
I think about you.
I want you so,
It's like I'm losing my mind.
The morning ends,
I think about you.
I talk to friends,
I think about you.
And do they know?
It's like I'm losing my mind.
All afternoon,
Doing every little chore,
The thought of you stays bright.
Sometimes I stand
In the middle of the floor,
Not going left,
Not going right.
I dim the lights
And think about you,
Spend sleepless nights
To think about you.
You said you loved me,
Or were you just being kind?
Or am I losing my mind?
I want you so,
It's like I'm losing my mind.
Does no one know?
It's like I'm losing my mind.
All afternoon,
Doing every little chore,
The thought of you stays bright.
Sometimes I stand
In the middle of the floor,
Not going left,
Not going right.
I dim the lights
And think about you,
Spend sleepless nights
To think about you.
You said you loved me,
Or were you just being kind
Or am I losing my mind?

on another note, bat boy ended. i wish i had done more, but overall i'm pretty happy with my involvement. i'm slowly getting sucked into this musical theatre thing... i used to say that musical theatre wasn't real theatre. i don't know if i can still say that!

+ posted by M @ 5:06 PM