i had a dream last night. oh, i know i havent been updating this page of my blog much, but that doesnt mean i havent been blogging. i've been blogging as Haldir in my haldir blog... like, a sort of roleplay thing, but when i blog as him i use up anything i might want to say in this blog so *shrugs*. if i were to blog here as well every time i haldirblog then it'll just be the same thing written in a different writing style.

and do update my writing pages. not much, mostly under the msn madness section, but i do update it.

and i have a personal blog, not this blog but a different blog, and i write all the really private stuff there... stuff i dont want anyone to know. stuff which i cant let anyone know. really, really private stuff, like a diary, except that it's not.

i have dual faces. i just realise it now. i have two sim cards. i have two families. i have two blogs. i have two of almost everything, one which i use often, the worn, common, public one, and one which i keep for myself, something truly mine. a public face and a private face. public thoughts and private thoughts. public expressions and private desires.

sometimes i think i show so many dual faces i am afraid what might happen if the dual faces merge, and the masks get rubbed away. what if someone who knew my private thoughts met with someone who knew my public thoughts... and the mask gets rubbed away... what will they see? what is there left? what will i see?

maybe it would run togethere and slide off, like crude oil to expose the naked skin underneath, so different, so odd. maybe someone would scream at the difference. maybe that someone would be me. maybe i would scream at how unrecognizable i am, even to myself, when all the crude gunk is washed off. my mother would scream, she does not know my true face. my grandmother would be quiet and sad, and wonder where she went wrong. my sister would think me cool. and me..? i would scream too, and cry, and claw at my face, not believeing, not wanting to believe that this is my true face.

but what is a true face anyway? the face beneath the oil isnt the face that i wear anyway. who is to say that is me, when it is nothing like how i know myself to be? but even as i say this i know it is a lie. the gunk isnt me. it's gunk. it's gunk i wish to be free off but dare not throw away, not for others, not for myself.

hey y'all.

i redid the haldir's blog entry about the detox diet. Not by much tho... basically changed the pickkie linkiness and added a few more pickkies.

went to my club welcome tea last night. yay! haha. it was fun. like, a once a year bash. lol! but really, it was fun. a couple of us met earlier to cook and stuff at extension A's kitchenete. and then when it was done we went over to deliver teh food. heheh.

the year 1s this year seem a very 'on' lot. should be good. it was really great, i loved the atmosphere there, it was charged... very promising... long live Us! haha!

oh, and guess what! the entire 15th mc turned up!! YAY! wow, that was amazing... when we stepped up, three of the 14th mc turned up. and last night the 15th mc turned up in full strength! wohoo! man, i'm so proud of you guys! you are the best man! 8x2-1!!!! i love the 15th mc... it's been such an honour being part of it. thank you lots. peace, man.

hallo everyone!

to any of you interested, i've set up a new page under LOTR Fanfiction. it's part of the Msn Madness 'series' Soulshadow and i do. and you'd never guess what's going on.

MUAHAHAAHAHAchokecoughHAcoughHA...HAHA...

It's a haldir blog. haha! yes, truly, a haldir blog. Oh, come on, indulge me. my roleplay haldir lives in my head now and he whines at me, so what better way to stop him whining than to give him an outlet? and it'll be fun. hehe. cos haldy's like me. he'd only wanna do a diary when he's down and out, but he's not a diary person. he hates diaries, but a blog is 'cool' and 'sophisticated' and 'modern' while a diary is 'old' and 'stuffy'...

anyway, it's just me roleplaying him in real life... like, manifesting when i let him. hehe. now i dont need to wait for soulshadow's roleplays to playact haldir. hee! so what to expect? general musings, lots of whining and a bit of bitching in general. and his own personal uptake on his romantic partner, the Once-Lord of Imladris.

visit haldir's blog at http://haldirblog.blogspot.com/

i just reformatted my com.

like, i went out and bought myself a thumb drive earlier this week, and i used the thumb drive to upload a backup of my files to my bro's lappy. and then i reformatted my lappy.

and just now, while i was looking for the blog entry i typed out last night on his com, i was shocked to see that i couldnt find ANYTHING related to my writing. and i was horrified cos i KNOW i zipped my entire 'my writing' folder. so i thought that OMG, i must have zipped it and then forgot to send it to the thumb drive to be backed up!!!!

GARRGH! *WHAT* a NIGHTMARE!!!

it turns out that it's there in my bro's com. *phew*. What happened was that when it was sent to zip, i forgot to change the name of the zipped folder to 'my writing', so the whole time i was hunting down for a 'my writing', it was sitting there under a different name all along.

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as some of you guys might know, i write. a lot. erm... wait, the very fact that you're in my blog prob means that you *do* know i write. or if you havent, you do now that you've been here.

but you see, not all my pieces are uploaded to the net. like, i have bits of writing scattered around in a couple of archives, and quite a number in my blog writing archive but it's not all there.

it's not all there cos it's not all good. but just because it's not good doesnt mean i dont like them... *sob* aw man... i thought i had just deleted the entire 'my writing' folder!!!! ARRRGH!

like, my novelette is in there!!! My novelette and the geographic maps for the novelette and character sketches and drawings and progression maps i've done up to trace the development of my writing and the different drafts and *everything*, even the formatted final draft of the first two parts of the novelette. and i thought it was all lost.... *shudder*

alhamdulillah... thank god it's still there. it's such a relief!

you know what's so weird? i'm so glad to be back. I am so profoundly glad to be back in Singapore.

but the weird thing is that it's as if left my heart in England.

which is so, so weird. I can hardly understand it. I love Singapore. I do. I've never loved being Singaporean until my England trip. and now I'm actually passionate about my country. I love the pledge, I love the anthem, I really celebrated national day.

and most importantly, I love the people. it's the people who bring Singapore to life. I am so very proud of my country because I am so very proud of the people. I honour the government for making Singapore what it is today. I honour the contributions of the people.

but it's the society which I find absolutely phenomenal. we are a society passionate about racial harmony. we as a society --and I cannot stress how amazing this is—which is passionately against any discrimination along racial lines. in fact, I would argue that we live in a society which is against any discrimination whatsoever, be it gender discrimination, racial discrimination. I think most people here are even staunch UnHomophobes. not to say that we all approve of the practice. in actual fact, I think that quite a number of us are disgusted by the idea, but the society is such that even the *thought* of discriminating against someone of different sexual inclinations is abhorrent.
how many of us know a friend, or know of a friend whose friend or family member is a homosexual or a transvestite? and how many of us feel a split second of shock and bafflement when we realise it? and how many of us struggle to swallow that despicable feeling of aversion that wells up?

and swallow it we do. because I think Singaporeans have perhaps taken the whole concept of prejudice to a whole different level. if you ask me, I would think that Singaporeans as a *society* is prejudiced against prejudice.
of course this is just a simple theory. it's certainly not gospel truth. but I am proud of the society nonetheless. I think that we are a society passionate about harmony and unity and meritocracy and democracy. why else would people be so upset about quotas set along gendered or religious lines? After all, shouldn’t equal opportunities be available to anyone deserving? and not deserving through family connections, or through birth but through sheer hard work and perseverance.

that is the peoples dream. it's a dream of all the peoples who dare to dream, and to aspire to be more than they are. it's the dream of all humanity who indulges in their humanity. it's a dream of love.

so why do I still feel so unsettled? how come I still pine for England?

ever since I came back to Singapore, I cannot help but feel that I left a part of me behind. Or to put it more accurately, I felt like a part of me had been forcefully torn from my being; that I had been so grounded to the place that leaving it was like uprooting a tree. you will, if you tried hard enough, extract a tree from the ground, but the process will invariable leave the tree damaged and mangles, with parts of it's roots severed. the very roots that anchored it to the land refuses to let go. and their very refusal to relent rips the tree apart.
the tree might continue to survive. it might nurse it's wounds and regrow it's roots. but it is no longer whole and complete.

and that's how I feel. incomplete.

but how can I feel incomplete when I am home?

I love this place. this is where I belong. this is where I want to be. I love my home, I love my family, I love my room. I am so glad to be back. I love my friends. I love my school. I am glad to be back.

I love being surrounded by Singaporeans again. I love the lifestyle. I love immersing myself in it. I am an urbanite by birth. I might not be so hardcore as to go clubbing every other night, but I am definitely not a country person. many times while I was in England I was bored to tears.

not that they weren’t taking care of me. they were. it's just that the lifestyle there is so different. people read a lot, for one. now being a literature student, I have *nothing* against reading. it's just the *way* they read that gets to me.
at home, I'd read a book, and then I'd talk about it to someone else who's read it. and there's always someone who's read either the same book or the same sort of book, or maybe even a different book by the same author.

and then we'd talk.

we'd talk among ourselves at school, and discuss how what we've read can be used to back up theories we learn about at school. we talk about the different ways the author engages us, and get into playfights about our favourite authorial style. we'd dream and sigh about the characters and their situations as if they were real, and bitch about them, or wish we were them, and engage in a little harmless fantasizing.

and that's the bottom line here. reading is a social activity. we read not just for readings sake only, but use our little stockpile of books to engage with people. we talk about what we read, we read out passages which we like, we laugh about them, we whine to people about them, and in an odd way, we use them to interact and connect with people.

over here, the centre of our lives are other people. we are a socialite bunch. we are the urbanites.

and everything we do is a social activity. even watching television. like reading, watching television is a highly personal experience. nobody else will have the same watching experience, whether or not they are watching the same show. and television is audio-visual entertainment. we sit unspeaking around the google box, our eyes locked on the little black screen for a designated amount of time.

but I would still say that watching television is a social activity. or it is in my house anyway. The whole family generally watches the same shows, and though we are quiet while we watch the programes, we use the programs as a conversation tool during advertisement breaks and after the program is over.

it's a way of life. the whole family is involved.