For once, I'm going to do a photopost!

First up, convocation. Thursday early morning and we were all sleepy and tired, and had to robe up into those awful gowns with lots of safety pins.


( More convocation pics )

Then Chermaine and I went to Vivocity to watch An Education, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It really did live up to the reviews. Go watch if you haven't already watched it!

Anyway, after the movie, we went to the "seaside" – Sentosa in the distance, and took ( a bunch of photos at sunset. )

      

The next day it was prom at Meritus Mandarin's Mandarin Court ballroom. Small affair, only nine tables, thanks to our tiny cohort.

I finally debuted that 90-euro necklace bought from Austria:




Zoomed in. The picture quality doesn't do the necklace justice – the white-ish bits are actually small crystals embedded in silver. There are also crystals on her feet. Tinkerbell at her finest and prettiest, I think.



After prom, we headed to KBox at Cineleisure, and ended up spending about 5 hours singing karaoke. Left at about 4.30 am.( Then we headed to York Hotel where about fifteen of us had booked a room. )

By the time we'd all showered it was half til seven. So four of us (Aaron, Cherm, Caleb and me) decided to head out to Ion Orchard in search of breakfast. We ate at Swensen's, and it was cool, because we were starving. The rest of the hotel room occupants woke up later, and we lazed around until it was time for lunch. Lunch for me was a huge tub of Venezia's gelato. Unhealthy, but whatever!

My camera had already died by this point so no more photos :(

Anyway, it was a great night even though I was so stoned out the rest of Saturday. Ah well, I'm getting old, can't stay up a whole night without dying the next day.

So now it's goodbye to NUS High School, where I'd spent a rollercoaster four years of my life. The I have graduated! bit hasn't really sunk in yet. I wonder how long it'll take. Hmm.

Random things that I have been doing that don't fit anywhere:

1. Been drinking way too many Starbucks Green Tea Cream Frappucinos. I can't help it. They're so delicious and they give me a small caffeine kick without the drowsiness afterwards. Tea has about 20% the caffeine coffee has. I love Starbucks.

2. "Finished" my 2nd UC essay tonight, and it really, really sucks, but I'm so lazy to edit it. I hate essays, and have ten+ more to get through.

3. I played for random couple's wedding on Saturday night and it was really fun. $100 for an hour totally rocks although I'm pretty sure my accompanist (and agent) is getting even more than me. Whatever, it's my first time, I have no experience, so I'm fine. I wish my mom would stop whining about it; it's not like I'm being exploited, sheesh.

4. Boring talk at NUS today, and I was thoroughly unimpressed by how they tried to sell their university by slamming others.

5. I want to watch An Education. Read about it and watch the trailer. Carey Mulligan is such an awesome actress!

6. I watched A Christmas Carol on Sunday and it was scary enough. I don't know how little kids sit through it. Then again, the animation and 3D is pretty cool.

7. I'm soooo sleepy and I need to be up in three hours!

Today, Dr Hang announced that the school will be among the pioneer schools to implement the new Speak Better English programme next year, or something to that effect (basically to raise the standard of spoken English).

There was a lot of muttering at the back, involving the snarky subtext of such an "honour": because the school's English is so terrible that we have to be the first or we'll fall behind. Now I know that's politically incorrect since some of our fellow pioneer schools have pretty good standards of English (or so the ever-reliable parental source says), but perhaps the situation isn't as humorous as I'd initially thought.

See, I stumbled upon a junior's blog that mentioned the form to appeal to honours for Y5/6, and I was aghast.

"I, (insert name) of Mentor Group (insert mentor group), would like to appeal to honours the following subject: (insert subject)."

OH MY GOODNESS. "Honours" is NOT a verb!

"To honour" might have worked, but honoring a subject makes no sense, so we shall leave this alone and move on.

"Appeal to honours" sounded fine because honours could be a noun in this sense, but "honours the following subject"? That's a school colloquialism because no one has the time to say "major with honours in (subject)"!

And such colloquialisms have no place in a formal appeal form.

In the spirit of not following in the Angel of Anarchy's footsteps, I shall provide some alternatives that the form-designers could have used:

"I would like to appeal for honours in (insert subject)."
"I would like to appeal to read/pursue/offer a major with honours in (insert subject)."
"I would like to appeal for a major with honours in (insert subject)."

First, there are grammar and spelling errors in the progress reports. Now, this?


--- (here follows a letter to the relevant authorities) ---

Dear School Teachers and Management,

I know it is a practice to read students' blogs, so I am sure some of you are reading this. I urge you to take my suggestions into account when issuing 'appeal to honours' forms for the next batch. We aim to prove that our graduands' standard of English is comparable to that of their peers in JCs. If you, as the senior body, do not set an example in official documents, how will the student body be motivated to improve? Though I am graduating in a week, the school's reputation remains an utmost concern to me as it is to you.

Thank you for your time.

Regards,
Vanessa Chew, Class of 2009.

------------------------------------------------------------


P.S. Unconditional offers for UCL Chemistry and UCL Medicinal Chemistry! So four out of five choices have replied, all "unconditional". There's only Cambridge left... but that won't come until January. Sigh.

Check this out: Weezer ft. Sara Bareilles - (If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To (acoustic)



mp3, mp4 and flv versions available. Ask me ;)

Some of you will know I've been searching for a particular album these few weeks: The Hotel Café Presents Winter Songs. I found it at HMV, actually, but it was $27.50, and I refuse to pay so much for an album I can digitally download for USD $9.99.

Serene (the youth leader) asked me about it tonight, so I googled "hotel cafe" to show her the tracklist, and a search result jumped out at me: The Hotel Café Tour.

The tour is sort of an annual affair, and they've put it up since 2005 (there wasn't a 2009 tour though, sadly). What happens is that they get their more established acts to headline the tour, and showcase the other artistes as well. I have an image of the saying "taking under their wing".

So it's the same concept as what happens in the place itself. The Hotel Café is a joint in LA where singer-songwriters rule the roost, though it's neither a hotel nor a cafe. The community is friendly and encouraging, where those more experienced in the music industry help newer artistes, and they leave any rivalry at the door.

One bus, one band, and a bunch of friends on the road.

I think it's pretty innovative, how they extended that philosophy out to a tour, which not only promotes the music of the smaller artistes across the US and UK, but also "frees up" stage space at the actual joint for more artistes to play in the engaging atmosphere of the place.

Anyway, the website had a flash music player that streamed songs into my waiting ears, and as you can imagine, I was immediately hooked, and spent the next few hours googling the singer-songwriters mentioned there. My album wishlist has now expanded greatly. All of them happen to be female, interestingly, because the most recent tour was an all-female ensemble.

For those of you who share the same taste in music, here's my current list of singer-songwriters I'm listening to (you'll notice some old/perennial favourites):
Anya Marina, Brooke Fraser, Catherine Feeny, Erin McCarley, Holly Conlan, Ingrid Michaelson, Jaymay, Katie Herzig, KT Tunstall, Lenka, Meiko, Priscilla Ahn, Regina Spektor, Sara Bareilles.

Now I want to study in LA, hahaha. UCLA, maybe?

This is one of my rare recount entries:

Today (well, yesterday) was an eventful day. There was CA3 for LSM1102 Molecular Genetics, which was difficult but manageable, and then I took a bus down to Holland Village to let Aaron transfer Renee to Cherm and me.

Happy 18th birthday Renee! You can now drink alcohol, get a driving license, and watch M18 movies.

We had dinner at Da Paolo Pizza Bar, where we ordered a meatball starter, a smoked salmon pizza, and lasagna bolognese. Contemplated getting cocktails but eh, I don't fancy getting hungover, seeing how my alcohol tolerance is zero. Strangely, the starter arrived last. The food was pretty good – I especially loved the lasagna. But though the pizza was smoked salmon, I thought it was just a little too salty. The mushrooms and cheese balanced it out though, so it didn't overwhelm the palate.

Then it was dessert at The Daily Scoop. They have a new outlet at Chip Bee Gardens in addition to the one at Clementi Arcade. We had brownies with ice cream; I think Renee took lychee martini and Cherm took minty mint (sheesh Cherm, what a boring flavour!) and I tried this flavour called "Salted Mr Brown" which was a concoction of sea salt, brownie bits and brown sugar. It was awesomely delicious – not too sweet, not too salty, just perfect. I should've bought a tub home; perhaps the next time I head to that area?

The best part was that it was surprisingly... affordable. We'd anticipated a repeat of her 16th birthday where we split about $160 between the two of us, but this year the total cost of dinner + dessert + present was $86, which was about half what we'd splurged previously. (Yes, Renee, now you know exactly how much your birthday treat costs.)

A great girls' night out; we should do this more often! Meanwhile, I've got EARWORMS, which are pretty annoying. My "music" isn't what's playing on my iTunes, it's what's stuck in my head. Grr. This is what 14 years of studying music, academically and otherwise, does to you.

I was watching The X Factor on youtube, as usual, and I was shocked to see that Lucie Jones has been eliminated.

Hello Simon Cowell, WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM – you think Lucie Jones can't win the competition, so let's throw it into deadlock?? Use your chance to get rid of John & Edward!

I can't believe they're still there when all the better singers are getting eliminated. Sure, the comedy factor was nice at first, but it's getting tiring. They can't sing, they can't dance – I'm not too impressed by Lloyd Daniels either but at least he can hold a tune.

So a favourite contestant of mine is gone and I'm left with Joe McElderry, Stacey Solomon, and recently I've been getting impressed by Olly Murs although he seriously needs to perform a contemporary pop song soon.

As disappointed as I am, I guess I'll continue watching the show – after all, it is so much better to watch than Singapore Idol, which is such a huge failure. The domestic market just isn't large enough to sustain the winners (who aren't that good singers in the first place). If they want to make it big, they've got to break into the US/UK/Australian markets.

Another unconditional offer from Imperial, this time for Biochemistry!

It's strange to receive this offer because they'd initially sent me an email acknowledging the receipt of my application to the department, and they said this:

"As I am sure you are aware, admission to the College is very competitive and we receive a large number of applications from excellent candidates. In order to ensure that all applicants receive equal consideration, it is often not possible to make a final decision on your application until the end of January."

So I really wasn't anticipating anything till January, but this makes a good surprise anyway.

(I thought, since I've already posted so much on uni applications, I might as well document the whole process here, so I can read it later and laugh/cry at myself).

In other news, I need to stop posting so much. The correlation between new layout and posting frequency is starting to look more and more like causation... I try to be wary of fallacies drilled into my head by English and Math teachers but I'm suspicious now.

So a new layout appears to correlate with a tendency to post more often. Or perhaps my life has simply gotten more interesting (yeah, right).

Anyway, to answer the ever-intriguing question of what I'm doing nowadays; I have to admit that I absolutely love this... interstitial space that I appear to be floating in. I go to "school" three days a week, laze around for the next two days, and then head out on the weekend to church and dinner and everything.

The only problem I really have is a lack of money, because I don't have a job, and it actually costs quite a bit to maintain this lifestyle. My allowance is barely covering it, and it's disappearing next year – my mom and her wonderful schemes of financial independence before university (though I do think this is pretty common, it doesn't mean I have to like it).

Also, my sleep cycle has completely screwed up. I sleep from 3 am to 11.30 am nowadays. It's actually consistent, which surprises me. Eight hours of solid sleep is wonderful, except that the timing is awkward – but I've always been rather nocturnal.

Ahem. Vanessa's graph of productivity peaks at midnight, and falls in a Gaussian curve on both sides.

I am such a nerd, and it's bedtime.

Some of you eagle-eyed friends may have noticed that I've finally changed my layout after months of whining about it, including the brief paragraph in the last entry (which was just a few hours ago, actually).

Who am I kidding; 90% of the people who read this read it on their fpages.

The header image is temporary, although it is very pretty. And I've always liked that Shakespeare quote from R&J:

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

But I think I might go the route of refreshing the LJ's look by changing the header image every now and then. I don't know. It seems fun, and since I'm not setting a schedule on it, it'll be spontaneous!

Meanwhile: been sitting around at home facing the laptop. Tomorrow will be the same... okay, so maybe I should get started on picking out a jazz/pop piano class. I wonder how a life without music would be.