the business study mission to israel concluded on a tired note this afternoon. we were travelling across the country at break-neck pace, stopping at different cities, different hotels every night. but israel needs to be visited, because it calls for other important perspectives, which would never get unless we experience them for ourselves.

a place so wrought with political tension, yet so resilient to it all. their motto of ‘you knock us down and we will come back at you twice as strong’ is inspirational to say the least- it’s exactly what makes them tick. the thing on every one’s minds: the economic prosperities of singapore and israel (after all a school course we had to discuss all this!) 2 different models of economic growth: one where the government is the sole provider and the other where they go out of their way not to rely on the government. we had a great debate about this when we were leaving Israel, getting into Jordan. Lots of blaming the father of the nation and more defending him for his policies. ( I never felt much for this land. It’s home and it provides and I am thankful. I don’t want to get messy with the politics. I don’t feel I belong anyway)

on retrospect, i must say this trip was more about rediscovering my wanderlust. i had fun running about after hours explorin the cities by night. the euphoria of being in a foreign land, learning and interpreting their ways – trying to live like them and walking through their everyday alleys is a rush in itself. granted this short trip did not give all that, it refreshed my mind on the glorious 5 months spent in europe. anyway here are some more pictures – not all, just some.

Petra

i figured out what a complete self-obsessed bitch i can be. but there seems to be no recourse for it cos i seem to be engineered in that way. i also feel that i am going nowhere. i like what i do at school but i am not good at it. but that begs the question: what am i good at then?

i am in constant of awe of my friends. they are amazing people, seeming to know their life paths or at least etching something out slowly.

i need focus. i need to be brave enough to stand up and admit to them i have let them down. (or did i? sometimes i wonder what they wanted me to be)

Eyelid twitch

Definition:

An eyelid twitch is called a blepharospasm. It happends when your eyelid muscles repeatedly and rhythmically contract.

Alternative Names:
Eyelid spasm; Eye twitch; Blepherospasm; Twitch – eyelid

Causes, incidence, and risk factors:

The most common things that make the muscle in your eyelid twitch are fatigue, stress, and caffeine. Once spasms begin, they may continue off and on for a few days.

walau. i got all sia.

It’s amazing how things that you enjoy can keep you up and awake for so long. I have been on 5 hours of sleep in the last 3 days and I do feel energetic still.

It might be this cheesy relaxation podcast I downloaded a few days back. It is 15 minutes of crickets chirping and wilderness type of music where this man tells you to relax and breathe systematically. I recall that I always fall asleep at the same moment and wake up about 2 hours later feeling way fresher. HEH!

C’mon Rosh! Screw Applied Econs. It fucking sucks anyway. <3

I realised a couple of things between the time my head rested on the pillow and I slipped into a deep, dream-filled sleep.

1. I will never have time for a relationship if I keep retreating into myself and blaming my family for taking up too much time. For the most parts, I know they are pretty much hands off lest for the curfew. But I think, its just me in my head. I speak to myself too many times and come up with things that might not exactly be there. Spastic eh?

2. I get heady excitement from the corporate world. As much as  I moan that I don’t like the unfeeling, cold and cut-throat corporate world, I think I love the change and excitement with stock markets, macroeconomic outlooks, ICR, corporate governance and all the business babble that entails. People interactions, game theory and all that jazz… It all pulls me down and yet, gets me going.

Asian WSJ, BT, IHT, BBC, CNN, Bloomberg … all keep me going every single day. I don’t think I want to get out of the corporate system just as yet. But then again, I don’t wanna be in the thick of it. Hmm. Confused?

Yep, I admit I love it. So, my last term in school looks like this:

Ethics and Social Responsibility (compulsory)

Strategy

Change Communication

Asia Pacific Business (going to Macau on a field trip)

I need another econs course. Gotta look into it.

So going back to the start… pretty heavy stuff for before-I-fall-asleep-introspective-thoughts eh?

Why do I feel like… Like there is something missing?

Like there is no meaning in anything anymore? There is no purpose in what I do. I am getting more and more disappointed with everything around me. No more zest. No more spring. Just cold routine behaviour which is becoming alien as the days close onto themselves. I close my eyes and a multitude of scenes fill my head. What was, what could have been and what will never be. Wistful, wishful thinking.

The Arabic word found as ḥuzn and ḥazan in the Qur’an and hüzün in modern Turkish refers to the pain and sorrow over a loss, death of relatives in the case of the Qur’an. The Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk in ^[7] further elaborates on the added meaning hüzün has acquired in modern Turkish. It has come to denote a sense of failure in life, lack of initiative and to retreat into oneself, symptoms quite similar to melancholia.

I have been having this feeling for the longest of times. Some times I think I court melancholy. There is a strange twisted happiness in feeling morose. Me, myself and my thoughts. It makes awesome company to wallow in your own.

Plus it doesn’t help that I am having a massive flu-induced headache and I don’t want to do the mountain of work facing me. And the fact that I feel I have disappointed myself.

These days I think a lot about the future.

A LOT.

I feel the weight of the end of a life’s chapter looming ahead of me and as much as it excites and envigorates me, I am scared. Scared ‘cos the life I want for myself may not be achievable. I wonder at super humans out there who seem to be able to do it all and that too, effortlessly. I secretly wish that there is something that they are lacking or missing out on. You win some, you lose some… right?

I try not to think about the numerous grievances that I have over the past 4 years. Every time I regret, I remind myself not to limit my mindset to the here and now. It’s my life… everyone can have opinion on it but in the end its mine to live. Which brings me to the headache of the moment. I absolutely envy all my friends who have minimal or no family attachment. You ask me what’s my biggest distraction, that’s it: family. I’m not sure if 20 years on I would look back at my selfish 22-year-old self and say that family was all worth it. If Indian movies or soaps are anything to go by, sacrifice for the greater good (family) is lauded highly. I’m not sure if I can do all that.

My mother has been showing me pictures of guys and all, and well, as much as I appreciate the fact she is ‘introducing’ me to people, I don’t think I want this right now. Especially when I am not sure what the outcome would be. Just for friendship or a more than friends relationship, I can deal with. But nothing more than that. I am too comfortable with my brand of freedom. I want to test to its limits; push myself in a job to the hilt. Too many new experiences ‘cloud the model’ – as my econs prof would put it. Too many variables, too much chaos.

Is this too much to ask?  (Don’t bother answering)

Ideally, I would like to really work for the next 5 years in the communications (journalism/media/PR/corporate relations) industry and get my hands really dirty with it all and then, perhaps settle down.

oh well. just a thought. an incomplete thought for now.

Mais quand Mini rouvre les  yeux, elle sait bien ses reves ne se realiseront pas dans la vie. Et alors, elle est triste.

Un jour, Mini en a parle a sa maman qui s’est mise a rire et lui a dit:

<<Mais, Mimi, tu as plus de chance que les autres, tu sais faire un peu tout. Cela vaut mieux que de savoir tres bien faire une chose et pas du tout les autres.>>

– Mimi est la meilleure, un livre pour les jeunes a partir de 7 ans

LOL

I thought I had problems with hair.

Waxing, epilation, electrolysis, shaving, threading… all seem to be part of my everyday vocabulary. Actually, it is more a problem of keeping the hair where it should be and removing it in all other places (since Indians find a headful of thick black hair sexy and which, also possibly, has some correlation between marriage prospects and future fertility). Call it the bane of being an Indian with a genetic proclivity for fuzz. In my family, we (the 4 females in our house) sort of refer to it as the werewolf syndrome, (just as we refer to the monthly ‘thing’ as the… thing) where we feel pretty the first half of the month before the hair starts creeping out on us again.

But we have learnt to deal with it… you know… by wearing skirts for the better half of the month and gradually, increasing the length of our bottoms as the time goes by. We  also have our own theories and discussion groups on what is the best method for hair removal and what we have read/discovered/conjured up in our head the best ways to have long glorious tresses. (My dad, who’s hairy genes we have also inherited, quickly exits at this juncture) My mother has stuck every strange concoction of ‘natural’ substance on our heads. This includes tea grounds, henna, honey, egg white, curds, etc. all in the good intentions of making us have great-looking hair. (No, she was not cooking our next meal on our heads). Have they worked? Some have and others well, let’s say, faith and hope are great things to have when we have no answers. Plus, I hate pissing my mum off.

So where is this going? Imagine my reaction when I find out that there are horrifying events like the World Beard & Moustache Championships. UGH! Well, it is for the men anyway but still, UGH! These people grow their facial hair for competitions! My first thought was ‘How to go out like that? Wah… the waxing lady would have SUCH a problem!!’ Anyway, check it out if you want to… disturbingly hilarious.

Indian beaten to first place by a hairier Brit at WB&M’07

Ok a bit more hair, but on men. Yes, the rugged look is nice, with itty bittles of stubble in the right places. I also prefer my men hairier cos, I don’t want to be the Beast AND the beauty in the couple. But I guess my love for hair on a man also comes on a likeability spectrum. If you’re hairy and can’t do much about it cos your mum and dad were direct descendants of gorillas and the wooly mammoths, then please keep your mane problems tamed.

(This post has come to an abrupt end because I had to go call my waxing lady pronto)

I remember when I was in Europe that I travelled on every mode of transportation possible. Plane, bus, train, car, bike, ship, and yes, good ol’two feet of mine. What completely impressed me was the train systems linking all over Europe. Fast, mostly on time, fastidious with their passenger checks and clean, I found it a dream to move around Europe without much problems. (Possibly helped that I was a girl, had a Singaporean passport and gave my biggest smile to everyone on the train so that I did not get myself into trouble anywhere). I loved my trip from Nykoping, Sweden to Copenhagen, Denmark. There was a short 5 hour direct express train but in the interest of saving money, I took a 3 change train which arrived in  9 hours.  I made a  lot of boo boos, like fumble around and get on the wrong carriage (i was nearly in tears knowing that the next train was in 5 hours, the train inspector calmed me down and let me travel 1st class!) and panic too much cos the trains were delayed, making me miss my connection (the lovely train conductor made an announcement to me over the PA system in the train to calm down and listed a couple of possible alternatives to take… haha!) I also completely enjoyed using my Eurail pass to seamlessly zip around Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France.

Another thing I noted about these railway systems is that the operators are looking to improve them consistently. I have watched programs on the french channel TV5 on improvements to the TGV system and the testing procedures they have for their trains to be consistently faster. So I read with great interest the latest trains to hit Munich and perhaps Europe in time to come. The maglev system that the trains work on make them faster than the usual electric trains. Eliminating friction… Awesome!

 Germany to build Maglev railway

Yes I am a nerd some times. Skipped my EDA class today to chill at home. No more eyebags. Shal, if you remotely read this.. I love you loads. Thanks for listening to me yesterday!