As an introspective person (not necessarily an introverted one) I've always looked inwards for an answer whenever I face a problem, perhaps out of a kind of arrogance that doesn't believe or doesn't accept that anyone or anything outside has anything substantial to offer, or maybe out of a recognition of the limitations that someone else on the outside looking in may face. So instead inwards I look, and if the answer really does lie within, then that's good, yet I'm ever realizing that there are some things I'm not equipped to deal with, and that sometimes I deal with them in a manner that's harmful to myself. Sometimes I'm so intent on working out a solution myself that I totally fail to consider what other options and "tools" I may have at my disposal, it's a very myopic way of dealing with things, and a mindset I really have to reorientate.

It's been a strangely trying week, furnished with anticipation to finally be met with disappointment. If I were to use a rather frivolous analogy; which I shall: It's like how upon reading Harry Potter in P1, I'd hold on to the vague-yet-fairly-foolish-hope that on my 10th birthday a half-giant would pop up on a flying motorbike and tell me "You're a wizard, Chris!" or failing that at least of getting a letter from a sentient owl of my acceptance to Hogwarts, only to wake up on the 9th of September, 10 years and a day old to realize that nothing's changed at all. Okay, strike out the fairly, this was totally out there, but I suppose I got the point across in a convoluted way.

So yes, after hearing from a friend that he'd gotten a callup on Thursday, I literally had palpitations for the next few days, conjuring up ludicrous scenarios in which they may have delayed in confirming my acceptance (The first stage of grief is denial afterall) while anxious waiting for a call, getting a near heart attack at a single SMS (thank you friends for leaving me alone, probably saved my life xP) and so it went. I was fairly sure of the outcome by Saturday, got the confirmation that I've been waitlisted today morning, hugely disappointed especially given the amount of preparation I put into it, and my dad's effort too, and I honestly thought I did well in the interview. I've been telling myself though that there's no way of knowing how well others did, and it's not like they owe me a place because I'm oh-so-perfect, army has sadly dispelled all such notions so I guess I moved on to acceptance fairly quickly, though I can't deny the faint shimmering of hope at the slightest possibility, oh naive heart of mine. A childish part of myself is indignant, questioning why it's always so tough for me, why I keep on having to deal with rejection, but I shush it before I let it embarrass myself, I know other people have it worse, and maybe I should just see it as a further test of my resolve and determination, though why I have to be tested so I may not understand. With the shooting exco episode, nus and now this, it's all too easy to draw a semi-compelling narrative, or to draw upon so many other isolated incidents even, to say that I have a predisposition to phail but at least on this occasion I refuse to do so, so press on I shall. Be humble, accept my limitations, learn and move on, that's all I can do really. Prolonged self-pity is pretty pathetic, at least for myself. Kinda reminds me of the flavor text on Rothus the Traveler, my first holographic card in Duel Masters, go google it if you're interested; it's a little melodramatic but seems to have stuck with me unfortunately.

On the positive side, I feel, at least that I emerged from last year's failure as a much more mature person and candidate, a lot more sure of myself and what I want to do, which is why I found my rejection this time particularly disappointing but I'm confident that I can only grow hereon, and for that I'm thankful. My past failures have been pretty barren mothers so far, but I guess it's important to keep things in perspective and that it's not so much the success subsequent to failure but rather the lessons you learn from it that are really important.

Some part of me is miffed that I don't have anyone much to rant to but I guess it's a blessing in disguise to give myself the time and space to mull it over and cool down in a sense, so that's that. I've been pretty negligent in catching up with people as a result, so I do beg forgiveness and a chance.

C'est tout.

Well I've been pretty occupied the past week or so, not to mention Blogger has been deleting some of the drafts I type out in camp so that's the reason for the paucity of posts >< and somehow I guess my writing and expressive ability has been somewhat impaired over the course of the past year. Anyhow, here we go.

My prime occupation had been in preparation for yesterday's interview at NTU, the buildup to it was a little pressurizing for me, and I have to admit my patience did wear thin a couple of times at the perceived over-interference of my parents, hiring an interview coach/personal motivator, getting my uncle involved, and also my dad closing his clinic both on Friday afternoon and night to pick me up from camp and grill me, as well as on Saturday morning to send me for the interview. And yet after those transient moments steaming in the car, and feeling a little pissed off, what I do feel most strongly is the care and concern that they've showered me with, and it's something I don't want to take for-granted. Care, to me, is simply doing something for another person that you don't strictly have to do, even to the point of inconveniencing yourself at times, and that's precisely what they have done. So yes, I'm a little shocked by how on my dad was about the whole thing, even moreso than myself I daresay, making the effort to end work early during the weekdays to call me at night and speak about certain questions and issues, and sending loads of stuff to me on whatsapp, things he'd researched about till 4am, and lots more, and sometimes I find it a bother, but what I realized is that when people show you such care, the least you could do is accept it with an open heart, no matter what form it comes in, because yes, we all express our care for others in different ways. Another instance, my uncle, an awesome cardiologist who regales us with stories of the various different countries he travels to - sponsored of course - to attend conferences, having spent the whole day chairing a meeting, still volunteered to pick me up to go over to his house and address any questions I may have, though we eventually ended up simply eating this heavenly-tasting chilli crab which he'd brought back from the conference. So you know, sometimes I get really frustrated with my family, we often have trouble communicating well with each other and that sometimes leads to misunderstandings and arguments but from the bottom of my heart I'm thankful that they've allowed me to grow up not knowing what it's like to be loved, and to have a desire to care for others as well.

I find it strange, too, that despite how I torment myself wondering about the purpose and meaning of words, that my thoughts and intentions could be so crystallized, directed and focused, through simply vocalizing them. Over the past week I've spoken extensively and quite freely about my motivations and desire to be a doctor, and call it brainwashing if you will, doing so has somehow tied all the loose strands together, I'm no longer confused about what I want to do, and it somehow seems a logical result of the narrative up till now. I really think I performed a lot better for the interviews this time around, hopefully things turn out well xP

Onto another topic, my bunkmate who been attached for 4 years started talking about how he can't stop thinking about another girl and how he feels that this may show he doesn't love his girlfriend that much, or that he's together with her because of the history behind their relationship and all that she's done for him and not because he loves her, or that there may be someone who comes along who he may potentially love even more. Rather than talk about whether this is right, or whether he's being an asshole or whatever, I'd rather segue right on into relationships in general. I've often pondered about what it is that keeps people together, either romantically, or maybe even as friends. Like for example if someone asks you just what is it that you like about your friend, you may say that they're caring, generous, fun to be with etcetc, but what you must notice is that there are certainly people out there who are more so, than them, so assuming that we can only maintain close relationships with some few or at least a limited number of people, are we then compromising/settling? If you say that ok, that may be so, but what keeps us together is rather the experiences we've shared, the times that we had, our shared history basically, what then happens when we're pulled apart by circumstances not within either of our control? It's pretty likely that you'd meet someone, eventually, with similar attributes, and whom you get to spend more time with, and eventually become closer to. Do we then "move on" so to speak? It's quite a depressing subject to think about, all things considered. Or maybe relationships are sustained in such cases when both parties put effort into doing so, however this means that should one side suddenly decide to disengage, having found someone else, then the entire thing falls apart. I don't like the idea that people are substitutable, but something about humans is this innate drive to carry on with life, though loss we may experience, and after awhile the wounds heal over, scars fade, and we move on, though what we find may not be an exact fit, we carry on.

So what does this mean? I have no idea, actually, but what I do know is that I'll treasure those relationships and friends that I have, knowing that they could fade away in the future, but rather than cause for despair, I suppose this is an even more compelling reason to treasure them while I still can. And should they one day vanish, I'd rather not grieve over them, but hold those memories even closer to heart.
 

The place for you~

So, seeing as how the 3 bowls of milk pudding I made with my sis a week ago didn't give me diarrhea or anything like that, I've decided that it's time to post a little about my HK trip XD nothing pedantic or whatever here, simply in a very narrative sense, I may get tired of it halfway through so look out for future updates :)

The photos only start from the second day onwards, cause I only really woke up from there, which is quite a pity :/

The dim sum is awesum. Seriously. It's pretty much a staple to any mainstream HK family-oriented drama, you see them making reservations at the place for some dim sum with the whole family. It's really important to go early (or in our case late) if you want to avoid the queues to just get in. Placing our orders was a pain as they don't take your orders directly (the servers are way too busy) and instead get you to check them off on some menus. Which was a problem as the dishes are spread out among various different menus and in the end they only collect that single sheet of paper, thus missing out some of our orders in the process, which kinda sucks, and we couldn't be bothered to correct them, seeing the inordinately long amount of time they took to start serving our dishes. Really delicious though, especially siu mai in the bottom left as well as everything else, really :P

The next day we hopped onto a ferry to Macau, around an hour's journey from the HK ferry terminal. We were I suppose fortunate in that we managed to charter a van at the Macau terminal to bring us around to the more scenic places which tourists frequent, saving loads of walking and also cause we hadn't done much prior research. It worked out pretty nicely for me as I'm a scenery kinda guy.

 Fisherman's Wharf, some kind of themed attraction done up in a um...coliseum style? I'm not sure myself, but it was quite cool and prompted a spree of gratuitous photo-taking, tourist style which I'll admit is decidedly uncool x.x

Wiki tells me these are the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral, it looks nice from the front and back but it's pretty much a 2D free-standing facade. Loads of people taking photos of it too, as you can see, and behind me were a few streets of shops too, selling the famous Portuguese Egg Tarts and some apparently well known pork chop bun. I was pretty sick and tired of the ubiquitous Polo (Pineapple) bun as we'd bought a whole bunch of them while exploring the streets of HK the night before, no pics unfortunately, and since the rest of my family didn't feel like eating them after they turned cold, it fell to me and my bro to finish them off. urgh but this pork chop variation wasn't bad at all, and the Portugues Egg Tarts are freaking awesome. No words to describe them, oh how badly I'd suck as a food critic xD

Me seen here posing which the sign which points at the (purportedly) authentic store, among tons of others. I have one of my sis too but decided against putting that one up.

 A cursory view of the Macau streets and shophouses I saw while walking around, pretty interesting style, not that I'm an expert or anything, and there was even this Primary school squeezed in-between some shophouses too,  not something you'd see in Singapore.

We had a pretty good view of Macau Tower and the harbour below from up high. The tower actually doubles as a bungee jumping platform, I actually managed to spy some people jumping off and dangling from the bungee cord before being lowered to the ground. There's also apparently a skywalk where they let you walk around the outer circumference of the topmost portion of the viewing deck; unfortunately we didn't give it a try.

A visit to The Venetian, a luxury hotel cum casino had me overawed by the bling on display. Pretty darn opulent. I decided against attempting to set foot into the casino portion (minimum age 21) though I suppose I may have been able to fake my way in. The long hallway leading to the casino seems pretty reminiscent of a chapel I've seen somewhere, except in this case dedicated to the worship of indulgence and wealth.

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 With a name such as "The Venetian" it's pretty expected that they'd have a street of shops done up to look like a facsimile of Venice within the building itself. Believe it or not, the photos below were taken entirely indoors, under perennially unchanging skies, or rather a ceiling painted to look like the sky. Such is the hubris of Man. It's pretty similar to the one you'd see at MBS but on a much grander scale, and with a much more pleasant ambiance. The boaters regale you with song, you have costumed street performers roaming around to entertain patrons, and it's an undeniably pretty sight AND yet another great photo-taking opportunity, apparently it's featured in some Korean drama too, probably one on a tight budget.
 

Me and my brother looking especially bemused after a pretty interesting episode in ShenZhen. We'd taken a train ride (yet another hour spent traveling) to ShenZhen, whereupon we took a supposedly free shuttle bus to this place called Maya City on my uncle's recommendation, with him saying it was a good place to relax and shop. Famished from the trip and eager to get some lunch, we approached reception to ask whether there was anywhere to eat nearby, only to be given the band which you see around my hand and told that in order to be allowed to go to the restaurant upstairs, we first had to take a bath and have a change of clothes. We did feel like stepping away, but there was something menacing in the way the rest of the staff were closing around us so we did as they said, going to our respective changing rooms. I don't know what the female one was like obviously, but at ours we were chaperoned by crew cut middle-aged men dressed in what suspiciously looked like prison garb, with horizontal orange stripes, who instructed us, without ceremony to strip and put our stuff in the lockers provided. It was all very sudden, and kinda shell-shocked, we complied in bemused fashion, showering in cubicles without doors, where other guys walked around naked, and found ourselves attired as above. After a surprisingly decent lunch, we were persuaded into getting a full-body massage each, I'm still not quite sure how the chain of events led to that. Regardless it was pretty good, though I found it a little....strange to say the least. Elaborate I shall not. Anyways after that we were finally able to extricate ourselves from that place and went on to our next objective. Honestly though, it'd have been relaxing in another set of circumstances, and if we hadn't gone there totally not knowing what to expect, so I suppose I'd consider going back some day.

Next was a trip via cab to Dafen Oil Painting Village, quite an interesting place dedicated to the export of reproductions of masterpieces. My dad wanted to get a couple of paintings for his clinic and our house as well, which was our primary reason for making the trip to ShenZhen in the firstplace, from which we'd been unfortunately sidetracked. It was amazing to see the number of artists who had set up shop there to sell their works; cheaply, in the case of the smaller paintings, of which I got a few for around $5 SGD each, and also pretty cheap for the larger paintings as well, now that I think about it. I found it quite strange to grapple with the concept of mass-produced art; lying around were stacks of canvas, paintings which had yet to be mounted on a frame, often stacks of the same painting, reproduced many times over. At the store we finally settled on, the owner had a computer where he would google various famous artists to allow my dad to pick from their works to commission a reproduction of, much like shopping from an online catalog. It's testament to their skill that they can reproduce almost anything, and I suppose some of the works on display were originals too; it was a very eye-opening experience. As I walked the streets whilst my parents were finalizing the details, I even stumbled upon an artist in a small studio along a side-alley, painting a copy of the Mona Lisa with his back faced to me. Curious, I watched him for awhile as he worked. He had a small printout of the original clipped to the side of his easel and that alone was sufficient for him to make his own reproduction as he carefully applied the layers of oil to form the hand and filling in the black to define the fingers. I was pretty interested in a couple of landscapes to hang above my bed but skinflint that I am, finally decided not to go in for them afterall.

A highlight of our nightly roams around the HK streets would be whenever we gleefully stumbled over yet another dessert shop, these above look nice I suppose, but they weren't the best that I got to try, more later!

I enjoyed our trip to Ocean Park immensely, I didn't take any photos of the entrance though! Take note that outside food is prohibited, as I found out to my detriment when I had to part with some choice snacks stowed in my bag. First was this underwater world kinda attraction, very well presented, with a lot of educational displays set up, and of course with a gigantic, well-occupied aquarium with well-placed viewing windows and all that.

Jellyfish!

Next was a cable car ride to the other half of the park. It's quite interesting cause when you first step in the part looks good, but still pretty small, it's only when you realize that there's another half of it hidden on the other side of the mountain that you start to appreciate how immense it is. The ride was awesome. Breathtaking scenery, my pictures can't begin to do it justice; it was quite foggy, and a nice cool wind permeating the cabin.

As with any good amusement park, Ocean Park has some pretty neat rides as well. We (me and my bro, cause the rest of my family didn't dare to) took The Hair-raiser first; it's the maniacal clown face in the background of this picture, followed by The Flash, The Abyss drop and the Viking Ship. Strangely enough, the scariest was the Viking, even though The Hair-raiser turned us upside down, The Flash turned us 360 degrees and The Abyss was just shit-in-my-pants inducing, probably because they were all too short, and nothing induces that lurching feeling that feels like your viscera are about to pop out of your chest like the Viking. After that was an amazing sea animal show, much more impressive than the one I remember seeing at Sentosa a long time ago.

The crappy part of the park being in 2 halves though, was that it rained. Heavily. Cable cars are obviously a sub-optimal way of ferrying large amounts of people across a mountain in the shortest time possible, and with the long queues, we ended up walking; taking escalator after escalator down the mountain in order to get onto a shuttle bus to bring us back to the entrance.

Wet and starving (we had little for lunch as food inside is so freaking expensive, all part of the corporate plan obviously) we were in need of good food. My mum called ahead to make a reservation at some place famous for it's roasted and cured meat, the name eludes me currently, and it was goood (Y) The roast duck was amazing, so was the veggies with century and salted eggs, the pigeon not so much, a little too salty and tough for my liking.

These hygiene stations dispense alcohol for sanitary purposes and are common in shopping centres and such, an exemplary practice imo!

The HK harbour area looks very impressive, it probably edges our Marina area by just a bit xP The occasional junks you see sailing by and a nice touch too! My parents insisted on walking down the Avenue of Stars, which basically has these concrete and metal plates inserted into the floor with impressions of famous actors/actresses along with their signatures. I originally looked for this guy's print cause I thought it was Jackie Chan only to realize that it was someone else completely. After googling it I now realize how horribly wrong I was. Sigh. Still makes a pretty good illustration I guess so I'm keeping the picture.

I didn't actually visit the Andy Warhol exhibit at the HK art museum but they had this interesting thing setup downstairs inline with the 15 minutes of fame theme. They basically allow you to take pics of yourself and run it through a program to convert it into an "Andy Warhol" style photo, which they would then display on a wall for a couple of minutes. Being the creative guy that I am, I soon stumbled upon the idea of putting my phone's screen in front of the camera to create some of people who weren't physically there, resulting in this:

Lol. I wanted to do the same for each of you but there were too many people queuing up and we had to go ><

 

 

Pretty much the best milk pudding in town. Super delicious. I'd totally recommend this place to anyone visiting HK for the milk pudding alone.

More food. HK milk tea is a lot better than Singapore's and this meal actually came with some toast too.

A simple illustration of how foggy it was on the day we left. The topless towers of HK? xP We took a ferry across HK bay to HK island, then took a bus up to Victoria Peak. It was um...cool I suppose to be actually entering the fog as we climbed up the mountain, didn't do wonders for the view unfortunately. We had initially considered taking the footpath further up but ultimately decided it wasn't worth it with the limited time and the fog would have obscured our view anyway so we stayed there for awhile before making our way down once more.

 And that was it. Afterwards was a trip to the airport, clearing customs, landing at Changi, purchasing as much duty free liquor as we could, and the trip home. HK was certainly an enjoyable place to spend the week, an apt description of it would be "similar to Singapore but not quite". The developed areas, with shopping centres and branded goods occupying pole position in windows could be a carbon copy of what you'd see while walking along Orchard Road, but the less modern areas are a different creature altogether. Night markets where I almost got fleeced by some vendor while buying a couple of gifts, as well as those unruly streets which twist and turn and branch abruptly, something you certainly wouldn't observe in Singapore, yet which lend the place an organically vibrant feel.