The Fatso's Big Fat Greek Wedding... Shoot.

Miss next-bed-neighbour whose new antics include waking me up in the middle of the night because she talks too loud with the other next-bed-neighbour, had her wedding shoot last Sunday.

Before the day, she had been constantly stalking the net for creative wedding photos. She compiled them all into a folder, a REALLY THICK folder, and started to prepare props. In the end though, the ideas that went through was robin-egg blue balloons and empty frames.

It was a day of corset-tightening (me!), helium balloons fetching (me again!), and basically any other sai kang that she can think of. In a span of a day, she zipped to 4 locations- studio, the warehouse, China Square and Sentosa.

The studio shoot took the longest. Forever, really. Then, the warehouse one which the bro-in-law started sweating like a pig in a furnace. I didn't go to China Square with them, prefering to relax in the comforts of the warehouse (and security guard #1 my mama was spying on us all the time via survellience camera linked to her laptop). Finally, as the day loses its last rays of light, we went to the sandy beach of Sentosa, balloons and bride in tow. I went home with the ballooons after that, while fatty bom bom went back to the studio for some more photo taking.

Wow. My sister's getting married. She told me, while I was half awake and complaining, that I'll miss being interupted by her in future. Well, yea. I'll miss her stupid jokes such as "Eh, your teammates call you Ah Mole ah? Then when you are angry, you'll be Emole!!", her bitchiness with regards to her best friend, and so many things.

If you think I'm lame, wait till you talk to her.

There's still a few months though, so in the meantime, I'll try to appreciate her antics in the midst of my sleep.





Warehouse shoot. Rosalinda, don't be jealous of her chest area.



Outside the warehouse, with oh-so-romantic pallets.



The brother-in-law is either deep in thought, or checking his car below to see whether he got tio any summons.



Teck Lim: "Next time we'll call our son Lim Kopi!"
Disa Tan: "Eh... maintain awkward smile first."



Teck: "Wah, her chin looks delicious eh. Like sharks' fin."
Disa: "Eh! You're supposed to look INTO MY EYES!"

The China Diaries Part 10- Heaven on Earth. 世外桃源

In the book Lost Horizon by James Hilton, a man gets kidnapped and lands on an unknown paradise called "Shangri-la".

We got ourselves to the place called "Shangri-la" in China from Tiger Leaping Gorge. This old town was originally called 中甸 but to increase tourism, the government renamed the place Shangri-la.

While there are disputes whether James Hilton's paradise referred to this piece of land in rural China, I can vouch with my own eyes that this land, at its very heart, is my sort of paradise.

This is the place where we cycled freely. We laughed and sang while we pedaled. We rode horses. For this one day, we were free from all troubles.

I loved it.




Before reaching, we saw plots of farmland along the road. They were really in pretty shades.



Our Youth Hostel, 老谢 Lao Xie's International Youth Hostel. Nothing but meadows surrounds the hostel.



Our ride.



We're off.



Singing, laughing.



Horse riding.



My horse, the furthest one, is also the naughtiest one.



The meadows and the animals in their own paradise.



While the rest rode in a single file, my horse had its own mindset.



I gave the horsewoman my polaroid and she was fascinated by it. This picture is of her and the horse, Tina.



Felicia makes sure she pens her thoughts before she forgets.



Cathy, in her own field of golden yellow flowers.



Driving into the rural town.



Checking out the shops. I bought most of my matchsticks here.



As day turned to night, we also started cycling back.



Playing pool by the outdoors.



Tired, but happy.



A good day begets a good night's sleep in a place surrounded by nothing but meadows.

Impromptus

I don't care already. I'm going to finish The China Diaries. I can't wait to show you guys wonderful pictures of the Shangri-la grassland. Just awesome. So, bear with my self-indulgent posts which are forever too long (or just skip over to the pictures. The pictures are fantastic).

Now I've gotten that out of my system. Stupid Felily and her emo-nemo posts which just makes me feel like going back. Joyce said that the 6 months didn't seem to happen at all. Which of course, isn't true, because I'm always trying to teleport myself back to 中山公园.

But I still love you Felily. And Joyce also.

And today, I woke up, feeling like I'm in Yangzhou all over again.

I stayed over at Ah Fang and Shi Hui's hall room last night, along with Wanmei, Jie Qi and Qinling. It was a moment of spontaneity. And as I already know, I either fall asleep fast or I don't fall asleep at all. I started drifting in and out of sleep when we went to sleep at 4am, but was mostly out- and I think everyone was fast asleep by 4.30am. For me though, it was the usual tossing and turning around. All I could think about was the similarities between this sleep and the one in Yangzhou, where I gave up trying to sleep and just laid there with my ipod in my ears.

When I was up at 8.30am, the golden period where all alarms went off and are put to snooze, I opened my eyes and just stared at the ceiling. I was thinking, this feels familiar. I would have woken Joyce up by now, and then would walk all the way to Felily's room to wake her up. And Joyce would still be on the bed, rolling in the sheets. If this was Shanghai.

Nonetheless, it was still a fun impromptu sleepover. We fashioned a slide out of the mattresses and slid down like little kids. Ahhh, such fun.

Once again, I feel super lucky to be going to school like a Year 1, even though I'm a Year 4. Then team has come up with a lot of activities during Recess Week and I'm just so eggcited. Seriously, it relieves a lot of stress and pressure from FYP. Plus, I just learnt some new moves during training yesterday. Oh yes. I really feel that there's so much to learn, and so little time. Often, I wonder why I never really played much with the ball when I was young. I'd always be home in a jiffy (ironically, I don't do my homework), never talking much to my so-called teammates. In JC I thought it got better. That's when I can say I played with a lot of passion. But it wasn't until I became a referee that I knew that there was so much more to the game. Damn.

But it's okay. I'm just glad I mustered the courage to go for Anti-You tryouts in year 1. It'll pay off, I told myself everytime I went for training. It'll pay off.

And yeap, it really did.

Obsession

Old man obsess over Streetfighter.

Young woman obsess over Hellolulu.

Young woman wins, because mother feeds young woman's obsession.

(must boast. Harharharhar.)

Then, other young women who just got out of the school circle obsess over uniformed jobs. 3 now. Army, army and police.

Young woman wonders what it's like to be in uniform. (No, not the darn SR one)

Young woman feels like sleeping.




Ah, this is going nowhere. I want to write The China Diaries again.

All that's left is to right.

I had the feeling that my fyp tutors hate me this morning.

It went away slightly after the meeting.

But they were right, in pointing out our fatal flaws. Now as I'm fleshing out my characters, I can see how the story would quite turn out.

I think I've been in Shanghai too long. I'm still in it. It's dangerous. While time moves forward, I forgot it's tugging me along. And so, I'm late. My fyp is late. Everything else seems to come late. Deadlines just fly by. There's hooks on 'em. Just trying to dodge 'em is torture.

Told you it's dangerous.

What I need is to focus. But then again, I've used that word one too many time that it has kinda lost its meaning. Maybe what I need is a safehouse. Somewhere to sit, and to write, and to write and to write.

So, social hermit it is. Unless it's Asshole Taiti, Saboteur or free movies *hint hint*, I'm going to crawl into that shell of mine.

And just write.

Okay, maybe I'll make exceptions for cycling. And of course, whistle-blowing.

Write Me a Parody

Hiatus

I'm stopping The China Diaries for a while. There are two more parts to go, and only two more, so to keep myself from finishing it, I won't be writing it for a while. Necessary, I think, because at least it'll force me to keep the memories in my brain a lil' longer.

So now, I'm going to talk about things that happened in Singapore. Boring, boring, boring. Coming back here, I feel like life, if it can be measured via the heart rate monitor, is a straight line. Yes. Dead. Somehow, I don't feel very excited about a lot of things now. I even told Leanne I'm inclined to be a social hermit soon.

There is one thing, however, that I am quite excited about. Which I try to make time for, at least once every week. There are times where I can't quite make it, but still, I'm happy. And I thank the people around me that makes it possible, even though sometimes I fall asleep at it. (Sorry Cathy). But things work in mysterious ways, and I'm glad to say I'm on the right track, although there is one tiny/herculean (depending on how one looks at it) hurdle to clear. There is one person who has been most hardworking in teaching, questioning, probing, pushing me every day and week, for whom I am glad is doing these. Thank you, Interested Person.

Yeap, she's definitely interested in more than my blog. My life too, in fact. But it's heading towards the right track.

Other than this, it's pretty much back to where I left off in January. School, basketball and refereeing. It has become quite a delicate task to juggle them nicely, and I can't quite say I've been doing a good job. Now I've thrown something else into the mix- a freelance writing job too. Making moolah has become one of my top priorities now, so I'd have enough to sustain my traveling addiction next year.

On a totally irrelevant topic, I love my mortal... and angel.