200502, 2318hr, singapore time.

it's not my fault i couldn't update! the geocities server was down....

i spent the weekend at home with my family. nothing much actually, the usual stuff - went out shopping with my mom again, bought a pair of jeans that fitted surprisingly well. [my joke about the shopping scene here is that all the sizes are just S, XS and XXS. hahaha...]

in the morning today, went to the chinese embassy to get my visa done for my shanghai trip. there were surprisingly many people, but yet the wait was surprisingly short. so yeah. i was supposed to meet minz at 10am, i was terribly late. bleah.

it was fun hanging out with her though, at our usual hangout orchard places, shopping, chatting, and basically just taking it easy. before that, we went back to rgs to visit our teachers, it turned out to be quite an adventure trying to locate our teachers, to figure out where the gep classrooms are, and to ignore kids [all so young!!] staring at us. i went primarily to look for my chinese teacher, to claim a copy of that book that contains my essays. unfortunately he wasn't around. on the other hand, i actually spoke to the other teachers, teachers i didn't think would recognize me. or maybe they didn't, but only pretended to. especially my history teacher, i seriously don't think she has any idea who the heck i was - i've always been kinda low profile in class. ahem ahem. it feels strange though, to tell them, "yeah, it's been 6 years..." finally, i bought a card for my chinese teacher, just for the heck of it, and i wrote my message in chinese! of course, minz was there, happily criticizing my deteriorated chinese. argh. we had so much fun with writing chinese though, after that when we were hanging out at the bubble tea shop, we continued writing chinese letters. haha.

the bubble tea place that we went to isn't half as nice as the old one though. we had originally wanted to go to the one in wisma, but when we got there, we saw that a couple of hair salons have taken over the place. i was genuinely looking forward to going back there for an afternoon tea break, but it was simply not meant to be. very very sad. i don't like change, especially change that takes away pieces of my memory. that bubble tea place was the one my friends and i used to go to when we were still in rgs - a place where we gladly engaged in cheena chitchat about hongkong or taiwanese singers, movies, crushes, gossips, this and that. it was the place where we doodled, played a fool, and simply enjoyed each other's company. before bubble tea became the fad it is now. i'm simply upset that the bubble tea place my friends and i love so much is gone, while the other bubble tea chains remain, dishing out "fastfood" bubble tea over the counter. sigh. i'm an old foggy now, isn't it?

everytime i come back to singapore, i find something different. i absolutely hate all the construction that's going on, i cannot understand why something always has to be under construction somewhere in singapore - wherever i turn, there's some scaffolding, some dust, some debris, some bare ugly building skeletons. i always wish for whatever that emerges from all that ugliness and inconvenience to be beautiful and beneficial, sometimes i cannot tell but i'm more than willing to give them the benefit of doubt. who's them? the people who cannot be contented with what we have, always pushing for more and better, always looking for "upgrades". it's a singaporean thing. it's the thing that allowed us to survive this far as a nation, i should be grateful. yet, i also hate it. i hate buildings that change all the time, i hate feeling disoriented because heritage emotional anchors are gone.

sigh.

i wish things can be the same as before, i wish i didn't have to move on, i wish time would slow down, so we can breathe slowly. in fact, for the first time in my life, i genuinely wish i can turn back time. i don't want to be where i am right now.