one month later

Considering the amount of retail therapy I've been up to, it feels like something's missing and I'm trying to fill a black hole but I'm not sure what, maybe it's just a substitute for eating. Just discovered the joys of threadless tees but it is a scary place because I end up randomly clicking and I have never spent so much on t-shirts ever. But the shirts really feel like second skin.

Now, on to skins season 2.

in a month I have

Had 2 weeks of non-productive holidays, the suffocating need to practise seems to have left me since the cello exam, like an exorcised demon. It doesn't help that Cello Yoda is out of the country for 3 weeks. My practising has been shaved down to Carl Flesch, Sevcik and Popper, basically the therapeutic technical stuff.

And thank God I passed with distinction beyond the wildest of my dreams, like some surrogate reality in which I am myself but also another, like that in Fringe the TV show.

Read 70 ish articles on risk factors predicting early onset of alcohol use, and another 70 ish on social support for cardiac patients (from which I realised watching House helps in deciphering alien medical lingo).

Played for a korean church concert, and fell in love with the korean sound that is a huge ball that hits you in the gut unexpectedly considering it comes from these women that look so fragile in their Chanel heels branded totes impeccably made up faces sculpted hair. They press the strings with a vengeance and wring the sound from the instrument like the way they squeeze the water out of cabbage to make kimchi. Even the violinists. The bliss.

sleepy saturdays

It is on days like these that I feel I need this.

Not Starbucks per se because their coffee is not great. Just the caffeine IV drip.

Viral

I can't help posting this here, it's too funny, scarily tragic, and too true.

华语（残）酷

最（近）想见的人（都）生病了。

students' graffiti

There's this huge board in the room where I teach, and it attracts the scribbles. Collected quite a few photos, taken before and after the summer.

From one student to another.

"Panick" (sic)

 Came in one morning and discovered this. "Gossip Girl" influence is strong in this one.

Hieroglyphics! T'was difficult to decipher all the links. Maybe it was meant to be random.

 The compulsive Board Scribblers did this one. 

This is their too-obvious ploy to get out of playing the cello.

The most recent: Kitsch stickers and random post-its.

Two Grade 12 girls in the room, one sitting through the other's lesson and sniggering while doing this, which I only discovered to my horror after the lesson.

At the moment

What I'm watching at the moment - The Good Wife, Covert Affairs, Lie to Me, Rizzoli and Isles, Dexter, Modern Family, Big Bang Theory.

What I plan to watch - (I have to downsize my list soon, I realised I inadvertently started watching lot of other series during the summer drought, and now have too many to follow when the fall season starts. But am definitely going to watch Glee, Greys Anatomy, Big Bang Theory and Modern Family.)

What I'm reading at the moment - The Soloist by Mark Salzman. Am intending to re-read Watchmen just for kicks.

Also finished watching An American Werewolf in Paris, and Jesus Camp this week. I think the latter was more disturbing. It also got an M18 rating from the library despite having no swear words, frontal nudity or blood and gore, unlike the former that had an NC16 rating.

Am slowly trying to get my life back but at the moment I am perfectly content with holing myself up at home and getting my brain out of this edgy and highly strung post exam state - a.k.a.  'not enough time too much to do' state.

cracked equations

I just realised I might have played through my exam with a cracked bow. Hmm.

Now I technically don't have anything to practise for, except next week's lesson. But I realised practising is quite therapeutic, especially when you have to block out mental clutter and practise 4 bars for 30 minutes - time disappears.

The thrill lies in the process of finding out different solutions to a problem, which is a bit like doing math.

lifted

I didn't know you were there until you were gone.

I didn't know the toll you took on me until you left and I suddenly felt so much lighter, liberated from your insidious clutches.

Stress, you were the partner I never knew I had, but I'm so glad I'm done with you now, for the moment.

安静/居安思危

Watched Salt and loved it. Maybe it's just my penchant for secret agents and stuff. (Have also started watching Covert Affairs the TV show). Inception took itself way too seriously for it to be any fun, but the characters were quite well explored.

Holidays are ending in a week and I reckon it's about time because I'm getting fat with all the eating.

For example

Cappuccino at Black@TripleoneSomerset

piccolo latte at oriole

(Oh right, I forget coffee is not really considered food although sometimes it feels like it.)

beef cheek tagliatelle @ oriole that sounds totally iffy and inhumane but tastes a lot better than it looks and sounds.

(wow I just realised that I associate DrumrollLawyer now with coffee and food and chillaxation)

The only vaguely holiday-ish thing was the trip to Cameron Highlands with family.

Pretty colours

The very bo chup cat taking up one parking lot.

The long walk up to the Boh Tea plantation

I couldn't resist taking this.

 Favourite flower, called "Powder puff". Sounds like powerpuff.

 The only thing I bought back.

Two more weeks of 'holidays' left. It is the small things (琐事) that make the days disappear too fast.