Category: General

Expensive. Today was another uneasy day of feeling the itch… of impending deadlines. 

CNY celebrations were boisterous and cosy. Fuses were blown and I correctly predicted that my 财神 efforts were going to be ignored by some of the juniors but at least I tried. 

My OG loved it as I danced around in red, sweating buckets and tossing candies. The ICG video was crazy well received and I’m so damn proud for having been (at most) a third of the process… 

Things are…  well!

Sometimes, my brother shoots me a scathing glare if I ever decide to embarrass him in front of other people. Other times, it shows in a snapped sentence or two, traits I see in Dad as well.

I noticed it last night and returned him a disappointed glance before retreating to a corner of the room to will away any dark thoughts. 

二姨婆＇s house was buzzing with the same unfamiliar people I’ve been seeing my entire life. A framed photo of the generation above hung proudly near a trophy cabinet,  all donning mortarboards with their hands on my grand aunt’s shoulders. 

Compared to the well dressed people around the bungalow, my family was the only ones wearing cheap, plain polo tees with jeans and I, very guiltily, felt a rush of embarrassment. We were the outcasts, the HDB dwellers setting foot in a doctorate household, the only ones arriving in a van that didn’t even belong to us. It belonged to a company that stresses the fuck out of Dad and yet he daren’t quit from for he was our only breadwinner. 

For the first time ever, I sat uneasily in the house, aware that the awkwardness I felt was, in fact unworthiness.

–

An uncle told me that the market was saturated with Web designers and I painfully smiled at his good-natured reminder. Later on, I recounted this to my brother in the van and he snapped that “It was your choice to take it anyway.” 

I looked at him briefly, wondering if that was the moment to accuse him of thinking that I made my family look bad in front of the others, and that if I had went along with his fake-ass guise we’d fit right in with the wallpaper, the dark blurs between the bokeh of their starry lives. I wondered if he felt inadequate too. 

I decided against it, pursed my lips and turned away to put on some Modest Mouse. 

School is on hiatus and everything’s gonna snowball once we leave the new year. 

It was one of those days when everyone seemed to talk about how the future was going to be another set of checkmarks, or how they’re leaving for the Great Everywhere Elses and having the next stage of life decided and ready to go. 

Yirui and I had an intense discussion about something like that which quickly devolved to me desperately seesawing between reassuring him that life isn’t as bleak as we thought and sullenly agreeing that being dealt a bad hand in life meant second place. He curiously apologised on WhatsApp after he left, almost as if by courtesy and a bit of embarassment that he got carried away with apathy. (would you look at that?)  I hesitated and replied to him with what felt like a very halted shrug. 

After CS3242 (Clarence claims that sending him super low res pictures of Dr Huang was bullying) I finally steeled myself and went to UTown, that Sheng Siong near UTown and Clementi to search for an AAAA battery which was the last hope for my Surface 4 pen. And it worked! 

Cider leaves me unfiltered and boisterous. 

Watched La La Land with the D Blockers (smuggling two Anchors in) and gushed about how the entire movie was made worth it after its end-scene. We crossed paths with Steven Lim thrice, and I got a Long-Island, a-whisky-coke and two-beers-worth of being hammered and hungover. Ended up wandering through the seedy, smoky Orchard Square looking for two more shots before giving up and stumbling back at 4am.

Told An how I saw him so much in Seb and the suit who was dumped and he agreed.

Kor came back from Sweden after 6 months and it felt like he’d never really left. I ran out of things to say but pointed out hot girls to each other and we shared a haircut. Mom was peering curiously into the salon, occasionally coming in to make comments and suggestions while I squinted disapprovingly at her through the mirror. She said the hair cut was better than what she could’ve made.

I’m afraid to think she’s lying, but that’s no way to live life. 

Blue ticks are the worstttt

Since when did 3am nights become a bad thing? 

Doing Videography for ICG. A lot of discomfort… But a lot of gladness that I’m doing something out of my comfort zone. 

Now I’m just thinking about which lectures to skip tomorrow. 

God, I don’t want to go back to school. 

I’ve sent dozens of WApp chats requesting people to partake in the InterCollege Games trailer and I don’t see this ending any time soon.

I have a couple of videos to make for RVRC. 

I have a production coming up with Stage. 

I’m the fucking 财神 for NARVI (actually this is cool) 

I have 2 proposals to write right now, before school’s even started. 

Two of my days end at 7 or later. Shit! On the bright side, I can still apply for exchange at the end of this sem. Maybe that will make me a better person.