Putting the table back nicely:
┬──┬◡ﾉ(° -°ﾉ)

Throwing the guy who put the table back nicely:
(╯°Д°）╯︵/(.□ . \)

HAHAHAHA how cute are these Japanese emoticons? To see a whole amazing and amusing list, click HERE! (My colleague J sent me the link – she loves Japanese things!) Enjoy! ｡◕‿◕｡

Daphne: Sigh now still doing homework

Me: Do you feel like 16 again

Daphne: Nope
I feel like 10

Me: !!!

Daphne: Haha
Sigh tonnes of homework not done yet

Me: 原来做功课竟然有返老还童的作用 [So doing homework has the effect of making one younger]

PS So everyone, please do more homework! :P

Les Brown, American author

Oprah Winfrey, to WWD, at Valentino’s fall couture show in Paris, September 2004 (from here)

Wayne W Dyer, American self-help author

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

Once in the first semester of my first year (late 2006), I was late for a 10 am tutorial, so I decided to cab from Clementi MRT and ended up taking a taxi with an equally tardy schoolmate, a tall Chinese guy. The very first time I shared a cab with a complete stranger!

During the ride we didn’t talk at all, but I noticed he was reading some Geog level 3000 notes. As we were reaching our destination, the AS3 building at Arts, I wondered how to broach the topic of payment. At that point, he coughed, so I looked at him, and he dropped two $1 coins into my hand, which was half the fare.  Somehow, I found his actions rather amusing, and can still remember clearly what he did, although I can no longer recall what he looked like at all.

NB Title of this entry was of course named for the catchy Girls’ Generation song Mr Taxi – you can watch the music video here!

And unpacking is just as bad as packing!

However one thing hasn’t changed – my love for airplane food. As long as it is not too inedible, I’ll finish everything! ;)

Oh and I’m leaving for Vietnam tomorrow morning for work. Will be back on Sunday evening! :D

When I was in junior college, I woke up at 5.30 am to get to school by 7.30 am every day. Sometimes, when I passed a certain neighbouring block on my way to the MRT around 6 am daily, I would see this little boy sitting at the void deck, presumably waiting for the school bus. He looked like he was in lower primary, and judging from his uniform, he was probably studying in Nanyang Primary or Pei Chun Public.

It just so happens that neither school (two of the ‘better’ primary schools in Singapore) is anywhere near my estate. So whenever I spotted him, I always felt a frisson of sympathy. He should have been still in bed at that hour, even if only for a little while more! I chose my school, and getting up early was par for the course, so I couldn’t complain. But I was quite sure that he didn’t choose his!

That was nine years ago, so the little boy is probably in secondary school or even in a tertiary institution now. Occasionally I wonder how he turned out. Hopefully well. Am I the only one, or does anyone else think about the people they encounter, even for a fleeting moment – how are they now?

“Which, gentlemen, we know is in itself a lie as black as Tom Robinson’s skin, a lie I do not have to point out to you. You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women—black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.”

Atticus paused and took out his handkerchief. Then he took off his glasses and wiped them, and we saw another “first”: we had never seen him sweat—he was one of those men whose faces never perspired, but now it was shining tan.

“One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious—because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe—some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others—some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.

“But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.

“I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.”

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird