ze wonderful adventure of the useless midget

To

Nini, here is the sequel to China.

Leng, here is Excitement Galore, as you requested.

Oi Shan, don't freak out. (I heard shoes expand when you wear them often.)

NOTE: this post was made yesterday morning. A lot more happened. Another time.

Let's start with the wonderful.

Snow definitely wasn't what I was expecting. No knee-deep tracts of snow. (edit: I WAS WRONG.) Not at this time at least. You'd quickly learn that snow next to the road is grimy and black and best avoided, but if you stumble upon vast flat lands that stretch all the way to the horizon (as I saw on the Swebus), you'd see dazzling, obscene whiteness that you really want to hurl yourself onto.

I saw my first frozen lake, complete with fishing boats caught in stasis.

Walking on snow is Crunch Crunch, like walking on cornflakes. Not cotton wool.

Some of you would be glad to know that pimples dry up like magic around here (and so does your face and hands). Amazingly, the frizz in my hair just upped and gone like that. I can't stop touching my hair D:

The adventure. (Don't kill me, Oi Shan)

The gods have decreed that I be separated from the WKW bunch. They now live 3km south of school, while I'm 5km up north. That's 8km to Enforced Independence. I was half-horrified and half-nervous, although I was pretty annoyed to receive a scolding from my dad and an imperative to get myself transferred to a 1m-vicinity of the Others, immediately.

I've got myself a single room and an extra dose of hyper-vigilance (I couldn't stop fingering my room keys in my pocket, and I'm making plans to buy a heavy-duty chain).

Right now, I'm staring out of a giant window.

NTS: buy curtains.

It's 8:10am and I slept really well. I love my bed to bits. It's triple-layered with mega bouncing power, and I've got four pillows.

Down the hall, there are eight more rooms, all guys. I'm sharing the bathroom with a dozen dudes. My heart sank when I saw the classic "Previous User was Male and Cannot Aim Properly" syndrome in the two toilets on my floor. It's like having a hundred brothers instead of just one D:

NTS: buy female toilet signs.

The useless. (Don't kill me, Oi Shan)

WHO SAID VILHEMSRO IS A PARTY PLACE?

When I got here, the entire floor was deserted. I was clueless, hungry and utterly useless. I was supposed to get online ASAP and contact the others, 8km down south, until my French neighbour told me we have to get access cards from school, the next day, to get Internet.

I wish to say I'm independent and brave, but truth was, I was bloody scared. I am 8km (don't laugh) from anyone I know, and I have no way of contacting them. I can't cook, I was starved and I have no Internet. That means no way of wiki-ing the bus routes to grab something to eat out. Which would be fruitless anyway, because my Japanese neighbour told me, in Japlish, that all the shops are closed.

There was this Chinaman from Room 5 (sharing with my Japanese neighbour), 25 this year, who was my Iron Enforcer of Independence. When I told him I can't cook and have got nothing to eat:

(imagine Sensei Stance)

Then Learn. You're Scared, But You Have to Learn on Your Own.

Then he proceeded to educate me on the Parts of the Kitchen.

I resigned myself to cup noodles. Btw, his name is Neko. Neko, and his roommate is Japanese bwahahahahhahahahahahaokayignoreme.

BUT WAIT! DON'T FREAK OUT, OI SHAN!

I went up to the 2nd floor and met a bunch of Hongkies and became best friends and ate burnt rice and Chinese soup for dinner and suddenly it doesn't seem too bad after all and I managed to borrow a computer to get Jeremy's number and I'm probably going to see the rest in 2 hours' time so exit. (EDIT: which I did. I spent the night at Xien/Shiying's place and made my way back in the early morning, when it was still dark. I have amazing mapreading skills/guesswork power/intuition/luck.)

taxi drive from Changi Airport terminal 2

All of a sudden, I'm convinced all the HDB blocks I'm seeing are really futuristic implants, optimised for human-living at maximum efficiency of space.

ALIEN INVASION FTW

five months of daily-intense-conditioning and sporadic application of anti-frizz serum and occasional hairdrying (which is supposedly good) later:

(if I tuck behind ears) ↑

(if I don't tuck behind ears) ↑

I guess, for my hair type, this is considered good enough. *glowers*

...

Or maybe I should just go back to these days ↓

($6 haircut → low-maintenance → A+s)

SHOW ME THE WAY, OH WISE ONES. WHAT DO I DO?

X plus X

At some point in my life, I have acquired the ability to cry on cue. (Special talent, no?)

It's a kind of raw sadness, devoid of bitterness and makes me want to roll up myself like a sushi in my one-and-only comforter, and just sort of water the sunflowers on my bed sheets.

And then I'd unroll myself and realise, ohmygawd, I am a female life form. And there are such things as Emoshit Hormones that I might finally be susceptible to, after years and years of failing to grow up like a woman. Or at least, I was never aware of it.

If anything else, Zixin is not the only person who can cry on cue.

And Zixin is not the only person who's going to have long, long hair.

logic

If I can find a coat as red as this, my time in Europe is going to be absolutely weets.

I'm going to meet the perfect roommate.

I might also meet (again) that Indian dude I hung out with at the Swedish Embassy.

I would also magically learn how to cook and feed all my friends at Grashagen.

I'll start searching tomorrow.

self

Change of mind.

Today, I'm weak and bleary-eyed.

*plays Tokyo Jihen's Rakujitsu and mopes about the floor*

I'm tired and lazy, so I'll just squat around and wish for something nice to happen. For once.

I'm a dependent and weak soul sometimes.

Plus my stomach hurt like shit (thanks to Tom Yum Ban Mian).

*draws circles on the floor*

*draws triangles on the floor*

*looks lifeless in general*

self

Sometimes it gets very clear that I'm just a normal human being.

Sure, I have my bunch of idiosyncracies that my Good Old Friends love and laugh about, and I fantasise about Dramatic Shit sometimes. (e.g. discovering that my heritage is Martian or living out wayward and contrived explanations for normal everyday happenings)

But I'm really very ordinary. One who has 207 to study for. One who is not particularly brilliant nor amazingly charismatic nor have astounding hidden talents nor is breathtakingly good-looking. One who is just existing with a bunch of Others, and who, by-the-way, is also growing out her hair on a whim of changelust.

But today I'm strangely thankful and contented to be just like that, because it's just so comfortable up here.

*sips tea*

*flips textbook*

*watches a torrented movie*