千九百二十七： Unstoppable

38.3km to Singapore

I think this sign at Kukup is cool - like the floor area of the GMT clock in Greenwich where they show where / what time all the major cities in the world is. Kukup had really good seafood, their cereal prawns were much better than sg, not so harsh pieces of cereal and the crabs were cooked in a much tastier chilli concoction than sg too.

Unstoppable last week was very heartstoppingly exciting. Living next to the train tracks for pretty much half of my life so far, I can totally feel the danger of the runaway train in a densely populated residential area.

Finally rebonded my hair after 1 year of trying to grow out the broken hair from the last rebonding session. The chemicals were too strong, leading to a flaky scalp for almost half a year, hair breaking in chunks from my head (which scared me really badly and i thought I was balding when hair came off in bunches when I was washing my hair) and very very dry hair made worse by the long winter in Japan. Decided that I could not go through all that again and went back to Mei Mei my longtime stylist who still remembered me & did some great work on my hair as usual :) Business seems to be going well for her and i'm happy for her!

I'll be leaving Singapore in 2 more mondays! even though I was here for 3 months, the last 2 weeks are always packed with meeting people, strangely, but at least I realise that many people actually are quite happy to catch up and meet with me even after a gap of a year or 2.

千九百二十六： Movies

Kungfu Panda 2 is coming soon!

meaning next year I think - probably during School holidays?

I'm happy that i've managed to finally watch some movies this week! During UAT period there weren't many good movies too luckily, so watched RED, Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, It's a wonderful afterlife, The Housemaid. I have another 2 weeks plus to gorge myself on the theater experience because this is one of the things that I miss the most in Japan. Watching movies in theaters are just too expensive - per movie it's 2500 yen per ticket - nearly S$40! ... thats 4 tickets in Singapore. :(

I think 3 months back in SG is a bit long. I've settled into normalcy, don't really have any cravings for any SG food anymore.. although i'm happily still going for desserts that I know I will miss like almost every week or 2 weeks - eg Koi bubble tea or Red Mango yoghurt or the snow ice at Ion.

Red Mango yoghurt - Berries Galore

I haven't been running regularly and i have to buck up a bit. there's some weird pain behind my right knee from my thigh to calf area, hope that doesn't worsen.

千九百二十五： Grey

I am starting to dread coming back to the house because my mom will start to quarrel with my dad everyday at bedtime. Usually it's about how he doesn't chat with her.

wth is this about? when I don't take her side, she bursts into tears which irritates me more. When I am in Japan, I face 4 walls and i have no one to speak to most of the time. and she is the person who keeps saying to me: "oh u will get used to it". I wish she would just take her own advice. at least my dad is in the office with her almost 8 hours a day?? When I'm in Singapore no one really chats with me face to face as well, the only consolation is that if i make it into the office early enough, I can have lunch with humans. else I would eat lunch alone at my desk again.

it's raining every afternoon nowadays and my mood is pretty much the same - grey grey grey.

I walked into Kikki.k at Ion (which I would probably spend all my money in if I had more of it) and saw some really good ideas for organizers / calendars / notebooks. They were also giving out a Xmas gift catalogue which kinda reminded me that the year is coming to an end soon. I remembered making xmas cards last year and sending them out to friends which only reached them after new year, and I think I have to start early this year and thinking what kind of card I should send out. I don't know if people actually keep them, or maybe i should ask pple if they even want to receive physical cards. ok I asked on facebook. I hope there will be responses. Thinking if i should give any gifts at all, have thought out some gifts for some people.. but the rest probably will go by air mail i think...

New goal in mind for 10km. Must try to have more discipline to run in the mornings - but the mornings in SG are just so hot :( I need to be able to run the current race pace as my normal training times (flat ground minimal slope) - to be able to run 5km in 28 min or less normally is pretty much a condition for any improvement. (mental encouragement to myself: go Jocelyn!)

千九百二十四： Books

I realise that I only have 1 month left in SG to exercise my library privileges so I've decided to read at least 4 new books a week.

Novels, non-fiction, historical accounts, anything. I've recently got myself interested in WWII historical accounts, especially from the Asian warfront, about encounters with the Japanese army from the Allies, (since I'm in SG) but it's hard to get a true account of the perspective from the Japanese side except from Japan. So far the war museums in Japan have been interesting and very educational, but of course I would like to have English materials to read to understand fully what went on.

btw, Singaporeans are really lucky to have NLB. We have so many libraries every where and the convenience of returning the books anywhere is amazing now that i've experienced library services in Japan. so few libraries, very little English books (not really a valid complaint since I'm in Japan), no availability to return books as and where.. no wonder when I said I had enrolled myself as a member, Ryo was surprised (he has never joined a library his whole life in JP) and i was like.. but I can't just keep buying books to be able to read so many books in the world! I was trying to find secondhand bookstores (for English books in Japan) but they seem to be mostly in Tokyo, and now I understand why their bookstores are booming since no one goes to the library! there are bookstores at almost all train stations, Japanese people read a lot I believe so if they spent some money increasing the number of libraries in these times of recession, I'm sure the library memberships would just explode and grow exponentially.

Serious lack of sleep this week, first it was because of work, after that it was because I was too excited work's done and then just had to do my own stuff before I sleep and before I know it it's past midnight, past 1 am, past 2 am before i force myself to lie down and not do a thing in bed to fall asleep.

Trying to achieve the feeling of no-negativity towards others in my mind, and this mantra really helps : If you don't care why should I?

It seems to be working, I do make an effort to say what I feel but I don't think I should make myself all unhappy if people choose to ignore my advice. I said whatever I said because I cared, but if you don't care why should I? -> see, it comes in very useful.

Favourite picture of the week:

the crowd milling around a Z1 at BMWworld

BMW World was so so, quite small venue, nothing really superb? Luckily it was free admission, gave us a chance to see the concept car as well.

千九百二十三： Heritage

My favourite photo of the week:

picture of j taking a picture of the giant capsicum

Artists should make more of such sculptures - we know what it is with 1 look instead of those abstract types u need to think and understand and its damn cute too :)

I realised that I haven't been to most of the museums in SG. Went to the SAM (Singapore Art Museum) one public holiday long long ago in 2003? and that's it. it was pretty interesting, but yet did not have the chance to visit the rest of the museums in SG while i went all over the world visiting the famous museums w/o knowing what our own National museum was like. Our museum may not have historical exhibits of the ancient civilisations, the roman empires, or the pyramids' replicas, but they do have Singaporean food history, fashion, living, and with our really short history i think it's pretty good. Looking around brings back a sense of nostalgia, and I might be too young to really understand or remember seeing everything, but I think I might come back here when I'm older and see all sorts of items i would be exclaiming *oh i remember this!* to my children/grandchildren about. The other 2 museums were a little small, and I wonder why they don't try to combine everything into the National Museum to reduce operating costs and to improve visitors' experience? there seems to be too few exhibits for the National museum, and I'm wondering where's the history museum that has all the war time history artifacts?

Reading the Runner's Rule Book now. it's super funny. I was laughing by myself when thumbing through the book at Running Lab today and I just had to get it. I found another book by the same author and I was standing in Kino reading it and just couldn't stop laughing. Until a lady came over to me, and said, I seem to be enjoying myself, it's such a rare sight to be able to see people laughing aloud when reading. hahaha. so embarrassing. but then it was really funny..

long weekend 2thirds over. Have to get work done tomorrow.. yuck yuck yuck!!! I feel so reluctant to open my mailbox nowadays, because it means I probably have to fight with people to get them over obvious issues and i'm really tired of it. the pictures/screenshots are so obvious, are they blind??

flight back to JP decided. have about a month in SG left.

千九百二十二： Great Eastern Women 10K

my first finisher's medal

Went for the GE women's 10K run yesterday and completed it in 59:29. I had to stop for a toilet break halfway again argh, but i think it was more psychological than physical. I just kept thinking i can't go to the loo when I started and i guess the more you think about it the more you want to do it instead so.. in the end i had to go.. :( 2 races in 2 weeks are abit too much for a novice runner like me, when after the run I was just dragging my right foot around wherever I walked. I think I need to train my thighs abit more with bodylicious type exercises. Felt very fatigued around middle of the run and was very much struggling to even continue running. perhaps it was just because of the mental exhaustion from the week at work. and the route was boring, no scenery, just kept going up and down the same road and u-turning. bleahz.

after the race..

going to just train for 10km and improve my timing first before even trying to go for distance. Don't want to try to achieve too much at a time, improving the time to 50 minutes will be my next goal :)

Last week of UAT this week .. looking forward to the holiday on Friday. but then.. it's only Monday...