miserable.

At 4am in the morning, with a pounding headache, and unfinished Biomed.

These are the times when I want to just throw in the towel. I’m probably not getting my Second Uppers anyway. Unless I somehow manage to produce 3 A-s in this round of examinations. (Hardy har har. I have better odds finding the Holy Grail.)

I’m going to sleep. So there.

damn all these beautiful girls

I think there’s a masochistic streak in me that makes me want to look at pretty girls every time I feel fat and ugly during exam season. My recent oglee (as opposed to ogler) is Namie Amuro. She’s so PRETTY!!! And damn hot when she dances too! And guess what? She’s THIRTY TWO. Does this look like the face of a 32-year-old to you?!

She has a 15 year old son too. OMG. It’s ridiculous how well she maintains herself. I want to be like that too!!

why do you do?

I saw an advert for a singing competition today. Not too long ago – maybe a year or so back – I would have jumped right at the opportunity to join. But I didn’t feel a thing when I saw it today. I didn’t have any urge to perform either, when I saw the invitation to perform for Collegiate Dinner. Neither did I feel any need to go for an audition that a minor record label had invited me to. But when Cheese asked me to perform at her wedding, I felt so, so happy that she asked me to.

And so I wonder, what changed? Initially I thought I was just tired of performing. Tired of putting up an act for the world, because that’s what you do when you perform. All that junk about being true to yourself when you perform – it’s quite a lot of rot; when you’re on stage freaking out with hundreds of people staring at you, you don’t project you (“you” is cowering somewhere in the region of your toes), you project a construct of you. I thought I was really tired of that.

But then, that didn’t explain why I felt happy about singing at Cheese’s wedding. One performance is very much like another. When my cousin asked me to sing at her wedding many years ago, I did exactly the same sort of prep as for less meaningful singing gigs – even though, if I remember correctly, I chickened out of singing in the end because there was no need to. (Hey, I was only 14 then!!)

So, what changed?

I’ve come to realise that it’s more than just image fatigue. It has to do with why I performed. I used to perform for acceptance. I needed the social validation badly. I wanted people to come up to me and say, you sing well, you’re awesome. And not just with respect to singing – I needed validation in everything. I used to get really upset when someone posted a negative comment on my Youtube channel, and the singing competition mania was probably just an extreme manifestation of this obsession. But now I find that I don’t need that any more. I still need social validation – everyone does, to a certain degree – but not as much as before. Did it have to do with losing weight? Maybe. Curing my buckteeth? Maybe. Becoming fitter? Maybe.

But most important of all, I think, in helping me realise that I didn’t need to be socially validated by the world at large were my dear friends. I came to realise that eventually, at the end of the day, you don’t need everyone to understand or accept you. What I really wanted was to be understood and accepted by those who meant the most to me, and they do, despite all my ridiculous quirks and idiosyncrasies.

It’s very easy to dismiss these ruminations as mere foolishness, but I think these thoughts would cross the mind of anyone whose primary source of confidence is external, as mine used to be – and still is, to a certain extent.

I still upload videos onto Youtube occasionally. I still love to sing. But the difference is, I do it for no other purpose than for the pure love of doing it, and especially, doing it for the people I love. I no longer care if I don’t sound 100% perfect, I don’t care if some people don’t like what I do, and I don’t need people telling me what a good performance that was for me to think a performance was good. Which explains the complete lack of depression that usually follows a performance as off key as the impromptu one I did at Collegiate. Haha. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to strive for perfection – the audience for whom I do this has simply changed. Praise is sweet, but a lack of it no longer deals a blow to my confidence.

Why do you do what you do, indeed?

3 down!

THANKFULLY, today’s ACJ exam was not as screwed as it could have been.

Let me explain to you why I was tossing and turning all night.

How it could have been screwed: HHL and Hor split the teaching, HHL taught 6 topics, Hor taught 5. They each set one part of the paper. Each part has 3 questions. You must answer 3 questions, and you have to do at least 1 from each section. So the minimum you must study to be safe is 5 HHL topics and 3 Hor topics, or 4 Hor topics and 4 HHL topics. I picked the former, but only managed to do 4 HHL topics, plus the last Hor topic was done quite badly, given that one of the readings couldn’t be found – website was down – and I started reading it for the first time at 1.30am.

Why I was freaking out:
1. I was afraid that for the Hor section, the only question I could do was the badly done topic. My spotting powers are far from awesome and the topics I studied were the ones with the least reading material (like a LOT less), so I was quite worried I spotted wrongly.
2. In the HHL section, there was a possibility that the 2 topics I didn’t study would come out, and thus I would only know how to do 2 topics total in the exam, which would probably mean a B- at best in this paper.

Why I was heng:
1. The 3 topics I spotted for Hor’s section all came out! I’ve never been this zhun in my life.
2. HHL tested like 5 of the 6 topics he taught via either/or questions. That possibility didn’t even occur to me!

I AM SO RELIEVED!! I’ve been worrying so much for the past 3 days that I’ve had constant headaches, nausea, gastric trouble, diarrhoea and insomnia. THANK GOD THAT’S OVER!

(Although, I foresee a repeat of this in Biomed, since I’m spotting so heavily. :( Some people are just not constitutionally suited to risk taking. Zzz.)

Okay I would like to indulge in some sleep now. Goodnight.

DAMN SCREWED?

Yup.

in exam hell.

DT just uploaded his examiner’s comments for the FOS final exam, and I’m freaking out again. I don’t know if I’m in the “better answers” category or the “weaker answers” category. I have this feeling I’m in the latter category. OMGOMGOMG!!!! The comments are so vague that I could be in either. e.g. “The best answers make appropriate observations about RAV and Black and then carry on to analyse based on doctrine”. I sort of did that, but were my observations appropriate?! And is it clear that I’m analysing from doctrine? On reading it again I feel like it’s not obvious at all!! FREAKING OUT OMG.

But okay Rachel chill about FOS already. Biomed and ACJ Biomed and ACJ. FOCUS!!!

I’m going a bit mad. This Biomed is unfinishable. I have no muggers for ACJ and have to study a min of 9 topics in 5 days. HELPPPPPPPPP

the beginning of the end

With the submission of FOS today, I’m two exams away from the end of law school, and I don’t know whether to feel happy or sad. :( It’s not a work that I would say is representative of what I’m capable of, and I think it can be improved, but it’s definitely better than what I submitted for the mid-term (very little can trump that awful piece of work, really).

In the course of submitting my paper, I saw some law interviewees freaking out about their interviews, and was wondering why I’ve never seen them around till Year 4! Quite apt though, that I conclude the end of the teaching semester with a humbling reminder as to how this whole journey began. This makes me want to sing Elton John’s Circle of Life. Hahaha!

*

FY, Sharms, Jolin and I marked the end of Reading Week with dinner at Cedele! The food was ok, but the service was AWFUL. Seriously. Like FY said, “there is a reason why Sun with Moon (next door) got queue but Cedele doesn’t have.” OMG. It was great destressing with them nonetheless! Despite this sem being the most jialat of all 8 sems in terms of workload, I feel like I’ve actually chillaxed a lot more, in the sense that I’ve had SO many dinners with friends this semester – I think I averaged at least 1 a week, come to think of it! I didn’t understand the seeming slackness of the seniors last year, but I get it now. This last sem of school just feels so precious that you want to make the very most of it, to concentrate all the great things there are about academia – the stressing, the shopping, the dinners, the friendships, the mugging, the hilarity, the heart-to-heart conversations, even the shared feeling of impending doom – into these final four months. I’m going to miss law school so, so much!

*

As I got to Orchard much earlier than the other three, I had a FABULOUS time testing all the different concealers in CK Tang and Takashimaya! Tres bimbotic, I know, but I think I earned that little sojourn into mindlessness after five days of endless FOS. After trying all sorts of brands, I finally settled on (surprise surprise) the Kanebo Lunasol Under Eyes Base. I’ve used it once so far (today) and it’s quite brilliant. Hopefully my opinion of it will not change!

To save concealer-hunters the trouble of going through the testing (and because I’m not in a mood to study right now), I shall provide a summary of my findings. Grins.

Concealer reviews

Dior Skinflash: N/A
The salesgirl informed a chagrined me that the Skinflash pen was not a concealer, merely a highlighter. It really provides ZERO coverage. But it seems like quite a great highlighter!

Shu Uemura’s Mark Cealer: 1/5
This was the most disappointing of the lot. Given the rave reviews about it, I expected much more. It provides very little coverage – no more than plain foundation, even though (a) I don’t make it a point to pack in the foundation under the eyes, and (b) the foundation I use is classified as sheer-medium coverage. The lack of coverage is even more amazing because the concealer was applied for me by one of their makeup artists! It also has a weird watery texture that makes the pigment sink into fine lines and look cakey once the fluid dries.

Clarins Instant Light: 2/5
The smell of this product is awful. It’s strong and it’s awful. I cannot abide smelly things. Otherwise, the texture is fine, and the pen applicator is quite easy to use.

Lancome’s Effacernes: 2/5
It has an oily looking finish, and the colour doesn’t match well with my skin tone. It makes me look like I’ve applied eye medication or something. Shudders. The coverage is as bad as Shu Uemura’s Mark Cealer, but the good thing about it is that it doesn’t look cakey.

Chanel’s Eclat Lumiere: 4/5
This would have been my brand of choice if not for the price. It costs S$54 off the counter!!!  And from the reviews on MakeUpAlley, it doesn’t last very long – about a month on average. I can’t shell out $54 per month on concealer. That’s MAD. If you have money to burn, though, it’s everything you want in a concealer. It sits well, doesn’t look cakey, has a good consistency, blends well, has coverage full enough to conceal my dark eye circles, contains light-reflecting particles for a brightening effect, and comes in a handy pen applicator (although I find pen applicators to be quite unhygienic, actually).

Kanebo Lunasol Under Eyes Base: 5/5
I saved the best for last. Grins. It’s as good as Chanel’s Eclat Lumiere, with all the good properties ascribed to it above – without the hefty price tag. Doe foot applicator concealers like this one usually last twice as long as the click pen concealers, and it only costs S$46! Why pay more when you can have the same for less, right? Another advantage of this concealer is that it comes in five or six shades – more likelihood of a closer match to your skin tone. Chanel only had 2 shades at the CK Tang counter.

I really wanted to try Rouge Bunny Rouge’s Luminous Skin Wand, but it appears they’ve pulled out of the Singapore market! I traipsed all the way to Paragon just to try this one out – I felt it worth the walk even in my not-so-comfortable heels because it had won the InStyle 2009 award (which only celebrates the big brands, so RBR winning it must mean it’s really something). But sadly, when I reached my destination, Customer Service informed me that “Rouge Bunny Rouge don’t have already!”. Dammit. I heard the airport counter closed too. The only other place I’ve seen it is in Bugis, and I’m betting that one’s kaput as well.

*

Today was generally an excellent day, minus the frantic footnoting and rephrasing that consumed the better part of it. Friends, I love you. :)

romancing a library bug

This was addressed to Caitlin, after she stated that she had finished her Arbi exam.

Definitions for the uninitiated:
A “hold”:  Something you place on a book when it’s already been borrowed out and you’re frantically trying to lay your hands on it in time for your assignment submission
“RBR”: No, this does not refer to Rouge Bunny Rouge. It’s essentially the redspot collection. You can borrow it for a few hours and the fines are $1 per hour for late return.
“hiding books”: An activity commonly engaged in by selfish slugs who want to make sure YOU don’t get the A, so that they can.

this fat pageant thing

I was so disgusted with what some of the contestants said that I wasted half an hour writing in to the Sunday Times. And my FOS take home starts 10am tomorrow. =.=

I quote these contestants:

“I didn’t want to eat popiah for the rest of my life to maintain the weight… Today, I eat what I want and I’m at peace with myself.”
You DON’T have to eat popiah for the rest of your life to maintain the weight. How about exercising and eating things like Low GI foods and counting your calories??

“It’s hard to resist all the yummy Malay and Indian food… I try not to indulge in supper.”
Hello. You shouldn’t be indulging in supper in the first place. As I found out to my detriment. And could you like, have a bit more self-control? Yes it’s hard, but most things worth achieving are.

This pageant is like providing excuses for people to be fat. Seriously.
Fat is fat. Fat is UNHEALTHY. I am fat. AND FAT PEOPLE NEED TO LOSE WEIGHT! Period!!!

there are days.

When I feel disproportionately irritated and angry over things that should not bother me so much.

Today is one of those days.

I would like to scratch something.