Singapore has left me with many reasons as to why I love my Chia Family.

1. We're insane and have weird humour. In fact, it is proven that it runs in the family/is genetic.
- On the first day of Chinese New Year, we were taking family photos (You know, the huge group one), then suddenly, my aunt was like, "Do weird faces! A candid shot! Peace signs or something!" (I know who Yih Shan is thinking about whenever anyone says 'peace signs'), then we all go to do boring, indifferent poses... except for some of my aunties. LOL. THE COUSINS DIDN'T DO ANYTHING. THE AUNTIES DID.
- Poor Li was the only one missing this year :(

2.1 Kuachi eating is a Chia thing.
2.2 Observing how people eat kuachi is how the family gauges your natural ability in hand-eye coordination.
- We have natural indents in our teeth to facilitate the breaking of the kuachi shell. Until some people decide to wear braces and have to have their teeth extracted. T_T
- My youngest cousin (She's turning 10 this year. We're all so old )=) was eating kuachi, and my 4th uncle (We name them by rank) said that she would be good in racket games/sports that involve hand-eye coordination... because of the way she ate the kuachi. My other cousin (The one a year older than me) and I then countered that Chia cousins are naturally good in racket games, so that may not count... Although we do eat the kuachi as well...

3. Studying in advance? What's that? STRESS is our MOTIVATOR
- I have discovered that it is not only me with horrible study habits. Yes, I did plan to study 2 months ahead of SPM, but I only started 2 weeks before, and the SERIOUSLY SERIOUS studying was SERIOUSLY last minute. My cousin sat for her A's last year as well, and she had the SAME THING. PLAN TO STUDY AHEAD... ... ... whatever. BUT WHEN WE ARE UNDER PRESSURE, OTHER PEOPLE CRUMBLE. WE FORGE AHEAD AND ARE ACTUALLY BETTER UNDER STRESS. (I find that especially true with myself. I work a lot better under stress)
- On the non-studying side, Cousin Who Is A Year Older and I wanted to walk Other Cousin's Siberian Husky, Max. It bounded in front of our 2-year old nephew (The dog's 3 times the tot's size. And was about 2 inches away from his face) (Because it was so happy it was going for a walk. That dog is freaking strong. As expected of a Husky). What did my nephew do? HE LAUGHED. HE LOVED THAT THE DOG ALMOST KILLED HIM.

4.1 My Dad has 5 other siblings. 3 of them are left-handed. 1 more is ambidextrous. 4.2 Out of the 13 of us in our generation, NONE OF US ARE LEFT-HANDED.
- Where did the left-handedness go? T_T

5. "Oh, you're studying to get a PhD? Uh... Great! ... ... Yeah..."
5.1 As long as you study and get a good job, we don't really care. Grandma's happy as long as you can speak Cantonese, call her once a week or something, and make sure you can come for MAJOR family dinners (ie. Grandfather's memorial, grandmother's birthday, Chinese New Year, Christmas) (Any one of them is fine. As long as you come for ONE)
- A cousin's fiance is studying for a PhD for something I don't know where, but we don't really care about the fact that her brains exist (Although yes, intelligence is appreciated) because her face has "DON'T TALK TO ME" written all over it. I swear, I've seen her twice and my cousin (The one a year older), 3 times, but we still don't know the fiance's name. Seriously.
- We don't really do the whole big-family-dinner-to-send-people-off-to-uni thing. Unfortunately. IN FACT, in 2007, a cousin of mine was given a scholarship to study in Oxford. Now, it wasn't unexpected that she'd go to a really good uni (She's brainy. Incredibly so. But she's still cool. LOL), so the general reaction to the news was, "Oh, okay. Good for you!" and some "Study hard and you'll get there too" to the younger ones. Namely me and the cousin who's a year older than me. Well, me, mostly. Because Cousin Who's A Year Older Than Me is smart, anyhow. Even better was my grandmother's reaction. "Oxford? One of the best uni's in the world? Great! Oh? She's on a scholarship? ... ... GREAT, THAT MEANS SHE'LL HAVE TO COME BACK!"
- Reactions to cousin going to Columbia: Apart from ME going "HOMG COLUMBIA!" and her own parents being proud that cousin has achieved... ... no reaction that I noticed. OH, apart from my grandmother, who still brings the LULZ. "Columbia? In America? Why so far? T_T"

6. General advice for cousins who are heading to uni, by uncles and older cousins:
- "Work hard... BUT PLAY HARDER, OKAY? 8DDDD"
- "Oh, uni? I remember I used to fall asleep A LOT during the lectures. Just make sure you're awake and alert for the tutorials... come to think of it, that's why I slept during lectures..."

7. All those weird study habits...
- AND YET, THEY STILL MANAGE TO ACHIEVE.
- Which is why there's pressure on me to do well in SPM. T_T

8. We're generally awesome in many different ways.

9. We expect people to know exactly what we're talking about. So we just finish half our sentence. The next Chia will complete it for you. We are telepathically connected.

The cousins are getting old. Next year, it's my turn to go to uni... Woe.

Here's a picture of us, with 'only' one cousin missing.



Yay us!

- Hoi lin was especially fun today. The usual lou hei LOLness in the family, with uncles going "X SHARES GO TO 30 DOLLARS!" "ECONOMY IMPROVE!" "BLAH BLAH BLAH" On the cousin side of things, "DON'T DIE IN UNI AAAAAAAAARH!" "CHILLEN STAY GOOD FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR AAAAARH!" I <3 my family.
- Played squash today. Lost in 3 sets to my cousin, but oh well. Was dead by the time I played the 2nd set with my uncle, but I am glad that my forehand is still intact. I miss squash.
- I did not expect my cousin to be a Nastia Liukin fan. And this was the cousin whom I told Yih Shan "I don't think she bothers about things like artistic gymnastics" and Yih Shan was like "You never know". How did I find out? After our 2 hour squash session, we decided to cycle to the park nearby and play badminton (Sister's idea. Not mine. I do not suggest badminton sessions). Too windy, didn't play. There was an area in the park where there were monkey bars, chin up bars and things like that. They also had parallel bars. Then I was fooling around at the parallel bars and my cousin was like, "Ei Ling, trying to be Johnson?" HAHAHA. Then she said she prefered Nas (Darnit. Oh well) and we were talking about Olympic gymnastics for a bit after that. HAHAHA.
- My hand might just fall off from today's great workout(s).
- I did not know why I did not play my touch game today. Oh well.
- I expect whoever reads this blogpost to UPDATE THEIR OWN BLOGS. HMPH.

I didn't post yesterday because I was being a bum, and I almost didn't want to post today, either... But, anyway, Happy Chinese New Year, everyone!

Chinese New Year has always been special to me. Not because of the whole collect-money thing, but the seeing family thing. It's just... different. And I know that this year's Chinese New Year will be very different because it pretty much is the last Chinese New Year in a few years that my cousin will be around. No more random fun things to do.

Anyway, I came to Singapore on Saturday. I think I'm coming back on Wednesday. Driving lesson on Thursday. In the meantime, I'm also reading up on my Investigative Study - 2 books with a combined amount of about 1000 pages on the United Nations does not read up on its own in 9 days. And it seems like my cousin did something similar for her A-Levels, so she's got some books on the UN that I could just EXTRACT INFORMATION from.

IN THE MEANTIME, we will be having a Lord of the Rings marathon on the PS2. I hate playing the hobbits. They suck. And I don't recall Gandalf *that* hard to level up. Ugh. We're like a bank when it comes to having experience points, but we can't buy character-specific upgrades when their levels aren't high enough yet. Geez.

Anyway, tomorrow is visit houses and play blackjack day. Hopefully I win money. Hur hur. I want to go to Borders and get that magazine. Muahaha. I hate the fact that it costs S$19 in all its thin, miserable glory. (Oxymoron)

15 years of going down to Singapore for CNY (Well, I'm pretty sure there was a couple of years when we didn't go down for CNY because of some stuff). We're all old now. It's depressing to think that I'm 18. Now my powers of general knowledge isn't that special. Because a 15 year old knowing about Creutzfeld-Jacob's disease is a lot more impressive than an 18 year old who knows it.

Which reminds me - lots of Bio homework. Get on it.

Also, I found out that it's ACS that offers IBDP.

I'm in the library right now. There's an Orientation Party/Extracurriculur Activities Day thing starting at 330, so I'm just bumming around here first.

I passed the opportunity to join the SAM Student Council. And I was in a crappy mood today. Meh.

IN THE MEANTIME, I've watched House 512, Min Shen would love the beginning AND the ending, the diagnosis was bizarre, and I like what they did with oWilde's hair. I don't know. I didn't notice until one bit where they were walking and all I could see was, "Oooh... oWilde's haaaaaaaair". I DON'T KNOW WHY, OKAY? Hahaha.

I just want to go home and rest. :(

It was either the sugar in the ice lemon tea, or the tea in the ice lemon tea. 2 nights ago, I slept at 11pm and woke up at the usual time, 6.45am, and by the time it was 2pm I was EXHAUSTED. And I still had lessons until 3pm. =.=

Today, however, was different. I slept past midnight last night (Don't ask me why. I just couldn't sleep last night) and woke up at the same time, but I'm still awake right now. So it must've been the sugar from lunch.

Today was positively boring, save for a non-ESL ESL class, a I-need-to-process-this Chemistry class (Remember how we would write electron configurations in the style of 2.8.8.3 etc etc? We can't do that now. Now we have to write it like this: 1s^2 2s^2 2p^6 3s^2 3p^6 etc etc. Confusing, right? It is), more Supply and Demand in Economics, I still don't like Add Maths and at least Bio was interesting. LAN was, as usual, pretty pointless. We have slideshows talking about Malaysian culture and stuff. They were talking about gift-giving in Chinese culture, and one part said:

• Elaborate gift-wrapping is imperative.

SEE THAT, PEOPLE? ELABORATE GIFT-WRAPPING IS IMPERATIVE. IT IS A MUST. WHEN I GIVE YOU YOUR PRESENT, MIN SHEN, IT WILL BE A TINY THING IN A HUGE CARDBOARD BOX. FOR IT MUST BE ELABORATE. LOL. 8D

Anyway, we had a class lunch today! Super chun lorh. Ms Cheang was so nice to BUY ALL OF US DRINKS. I feel so guilty now. Huh. It must be her ploy to make us study hard/achieve. I SEE WHAT YOU ARE DOING THERE, MENTOR. YOU ARE SNEAKY.

- Enzymes are LOLtastic.
- Kirsten Flipkens could have beat Jelena Jankovic. But didn't. Oh, well.
- I signed up to volunteer with some community service thing, just because.
- I don't know whether I should sign up for SAM  Student Council, or the College Student Council.
- I am doing that for my uni applications. Le sigh. But, you know, the community service thing sounds interesting. I hope that I can be patient with the kids. You know me. I hate don't like handling kids.
- I signed up to climb Mt Angsi in Ulu Bendul, Kuala Pilah (My World Geography rocks. My local Geography, however, fails as hard as... uh... *looks for metaphor* nevermind, forget it. Anyone care to tell me which state Kuala Pilah is in?). The college organizes it for SAM students. There'll be another mountain another time, and we're basically training towards Mt Kinabalu in May. =D

Also, the comments on my blog seem to have disappeared. I can see them on my User Dashboard (For lack of better word), but not on the page itself. Hmmm...

I love you, Nah Jia Sheen, for your lack of knowledge of who Michael Phelps is.

I have suddenly been following the Australian Open. For things like SAFINA WON! Kuznetsova won! Kirsten Flipkens won! But Kirsten has to play Jankovic in the 2nd round! Poor Kirsten. It's her comeback from that injury. I don't know what injury it is, but... HERE'S TO HOPING THAT JANKOVIC STILL CHOKES AGAINST BELGIANS. I mean no offence to Jelena. I love her for she's pretty close with Justine too. :D

I also have suddenly decided to get a QR code for my blog, and my LiveJournal! I first heard about QR codes from a pretty recent episode of CSI NY (Recent being Season 5. That ep aired last year), and I kept noticing that Adidas has their QR code on their merchandise, and it was too tempting NOT to get a QR code for my blog. Hahaha. [/geek]

Ann Ee JUST signed up for SAM! I offered to help her with Econs if she needed any help catching up. I don't know, I find that it helps with my own learning process when I share with someone. Besides, knowledge sharing is fun. I hope Ann Ee understands whatever I help her with, though. I know I can be very confusing. LOL. It's just... me.

I changed my LJ layout, and it's so stare-able now. So stare-able that I don't want to spoil it with my own custom header. My graphics aren't that great yet, hahaha.

Going to continue studying now. BYE!

The mouse in the library is tanning SO HARD RIGHT NOW.

And, LOL. It's very hard to read ONTD_Olympics comments on certain THINGS ON TV when you're in the library. One cannot laugh out loud, or even SMILE AT THE FREAKING SCREEN without looking like an idiot.

Hahahahahaha Tots.

Time to review my Bio notes and make sure that I've done all my econs. Also, Facebook is not loading. GRRR...

I just had my first driving lesson!

I drove through empty roads, I forgot how to turn properly, I was feeling sleepy (Hahaha), I drove with traffic, I stopped a little too far past the line, I stopped a little distance FROM the line...

I am happy to say that:
1) The engine didn't die on me!
2) I didn't kill anyone!
3) I didn't scratch anyone's cars!
4) My instructor said I was good. MUAHAHAHA! *Ego*

However:
1) I can only have my next lesson on the 29th. I hope I don't forget anything.
2) I ALMOST had the engine die out on me. Luckily I remembered to put the gear back to Neutral fast enough.
3) My instructor kept asking me to slow down because I was driving 'too fast' (40km/h isn't fast! LOL). Uhuhuh. I hope I don't get a speeding ticket next time. LOL.

And I had a lot of fun!

And I saw Min Shen's and Yenn Ling's and Jen's names in the book. Hahahaha.

(I just discovered that Pn Nor Azilah has got a Facebook account. I have been traumatized)

Completely random post to start off the day, but...

HOLY CRAP, SANDRA IZBASA IS A LEFTY? GEEZ.

So, to add to the compounding list of People Who Make Me Really Really Really Want To Be Ambidextrous:

Min Shen
Sue Mae
Li Za
Alicia Sacramone
Sandra Izbasa
Tia Hellebaut
Yelena Isinbayeva

Also... 164cm is 5'5''? Cool. I didn't know that I seemed so tall.