to first times and farewells.

at long last, i get to indulge myself in one of my favourite favourite things; snuggled in bed, tucked in my comforter, soft pillows supporting my back, bolster at my side - typing away merrily at my laptop. be it blogging or concocting nonsensical emails to my friends,
i don't care.

i finally have time.

no one has any idea what that means, how much it means. except probably my ADM friends.

to constantly have to rush and sew like mad people, covered from head to toe in loose thread, sewing machines rrrrrr-ing away like motorbike engines being revved, eating in the canteen unaware of the measuring tape hanging around our necks. sigh. to be stuck in limbo; caught between panicking and crying at 3am or giving up and sleeping.

any-way. a hah! now i know what it means when they say, err, actually i forgot what they said. something about how your true friends will show themselves in times of dire need: although this isn't exactly a particularly needy time of mine. if you haven't been updated, this is the lowdown.

*in chinese, it would be 'chang wen shuo duan', which in direct translation would sorta mean 'long story cut short'.

so, my eyes were reddish and had a little yellowish discharge (i know i've repeated this a billion and one times over the past few days, bear with me)

discharge mummy, NOT PUS!
pus just sounds gross.

- me being a busybody poked around and disturbed brrrnest on msn about his nick
- turns out some red eye virus has been passing round school and s'pore
- we went to see dr chia/killing two birds with one stone
- checked my eyes and got a prescription for new specs

the outcome: it was a mother and doctor gang up against 'rebellious teenage girl who ignores her mother's fine advice and has a vanity issue, WHICH IS NORMAL BECAUSE ALL TEENAGE GIRLS WANT TO LOOK NICE, it would be abnormal if i didn't' -- or so he said.

you see, nobody listens to me. i felt like i was talking to the wall and the wall was ignoring me but at the same time accusing me of being vain (yet normal) and defiant (yet perfectly normal as all teenagers ignore their mothers) and ignorant (yet, and i repeat NORMAL) to wear contact lenses even though she has sensitive eyes. helluva wall.

my eyes had developed an allergy to contact lenses 90%, and a slight infection 10%. resulting in my laying off lenses for a while, and wearing glasses to school for the first time in my three years in design.

i was reluctant, but not unwilling. in the past, vanity would've kept me from doing so - it was my worst nightmare to have to reveal my true self to the public - but i'd like to think that with age comes maturity, and maturity says that it doesn't matter what you look like, because you're still the same person underneath those outdated slanted metal frames that got lost in my bed the other day, and are now 'sengeh/beng koh'.

some people were very kind, asking about my eyes and all. thanks :) i've been sick for the past week or so, sore throat, fever, cough, you name it. and minutes after my mother warned me not to scratch myself on the rusty mannequin, that's just what i did. i got a superficial cut on my leg from the mannequin stand bottom.

more drama ensued.

so i told him what had happened, and thanked him once again. i had to go make new glasses. they're purple plastic frames. i pray i don't get the new specs syndrome. you know, because when you go and make new specs, you take off yours, put on the frame and you're looking into a blurred mirror image of yourself. what is the point, i ask? you can barely see where your eyes are, let alone how 'chic' you look in the new ones.

then i was relating my rubbish worries to brrrnest about how i might end up being mistaken as one of those VSC blackplasticframe wearing dudes. hah.

but as brrrnest said, and i quote, "haha okay. so you're gonna have the geeky emo chick look. it's better than red eyes!"

couldn't have said it better myself.

for the past three days i've been trudging to school, slanted specs notwithstanding- to the open eyed, mouths agape reception from my classmates. most of them had no idea i even had a degree, well neither did ernest, he confessed. aha. i was a bonafide nerd/geek. i had to field comments like 'eh you wear specs ah?' 'wah so thick' 'why so thick ah?' 'i can't get used to you like this' 'how many degrees?' 'haha you look so intellectual' 'you look like a nerd'

most of them relatively normal questions except for the mean ones from ah nan and jesse bebe, which i think were a joke haha. we were pigging out at chomp chomp when they asked me if i was going to wear my specs to liquid room. i countered with, "and what if i did?" they replied, "then we don't know you." GASP.

it was sad huh. sitting in the pub with lijing & co. i scrolled through my handphone gallery, looking at the images in a bid to remind myself that i wasn't ugly. it sure felt that way :(

i felt so unglam in school, looking at all the lithe young things running around in school aka freshmen in all their flower in their hair coordinated glitter shirt tweed blazer wearing pointy toed stiletto long peasant skirt newsboy cap multistrand bead parades.

i promised them a total and complete transformation the night after. though upon receiving my new purple specs, i had the urge to go clubbing with them on! yeah, they're THAT funky. but i was still a little dizzy, so i went with the contacts. i have to admit, it might sound vain, but it was nice to see my familiar face again. even sharon said i looked fresh, finally.

oh well, it was fun. it would've been better had he been there. looking at all the other couples around me, i felt envious. i just wanted to hold him and dance with him, my classmates all were all clambering to meet him. hah. but i know he probably had more fun with his friends.

i felt like i knew everyone there. from juniors to ex schoolmates, to current schoolmates, to friends' friends, to my sister and her friends, to jacky and his friends, to a judge on the panel, to all round familiar faces. even my sister's best friends (they're twins) elder sister's boyfriend, who was Dj Ko Flow. that was nice. supper afterwards was even nicer, it was simply hilarious. it was the first time in our lives that we clubbed together (my sister & i), the first time i hung out with her friends and the first time since she came back from UK that we spent time together.

she's leaving today.

i don't like the word 'cheers'. it sounds pretentious to me. i'll sub it with 'yam seng', for obvious reasons. YS to first times and farewells. to my dear sister & friend, we'll meet again.