absolutum dominium

"It takes alot to morph into someone who sacrifices for people...
You have dreams, ideas and hopes...
It's only when you are like me...
Someone who has seen much and thinks simple...
When you realise sometimes, dreams dont happen..
ideas dont work, and hopes are just hopes...
You learn to accept things and think you are lucky enough...
You look down to people who dont have what you have and you learn to
give...."

if this is true, then does it mean tt i have to stop dreaming, stop being idealistic, stop believing, before i can learn to give?

i don't believe tt.

i last took this about a year ago, and i swear the results were different then than they are now. i guess this is just indicative of the facts tt although i thought i am more stable now than i was a year ago, i'm still in a period of transition. and as much as i would like to believe tt i know what i want, i don't. i just know what i don't want.

**********************************************************************

Your dating personality profile: Athletic - Physical fitness is one of your priorities. You find the time to work athletic pursuits into your schedule. You enjoy being active. Adventurous - Just sitting around the house is not something that appeals to you. You love to be out trying new things and really experiencing life. Outgoing - You can liven up any party. You've got a way with people and have little difficulty charming your dates.

Your date match profile: Athletic - You aren't looking for a couch potato. You seek someone who is active and who keeps his body in top shape. Adventurous - You are looking for someone who is willing to try new things and experience life to its fullest. You need a companion who encourages you to take risks and do exciting things. Liberal - You need a person who has liberal opinions and beliefs. You are engaged by political discussions and would find a liberal viewpoint refreshing in a date.

Your Top Ten Traits 1. Athletic 2. Adventurous 3. Outgoing 4. Wealthy/Ambitious 5. Liberal 6. Sensual 7. Practical 8. Funny 9. Intellectual 10. Stylish

Your Top Ten Match Traits 1. Athletic 2. Adventurous 3. Liberal 4. Intellectual 5. Practical 6. Outgoing 7. Funny 8. Big-Hearted 9. Stylish 10. Wealthy/Ambitious

Take the Online Dating Profile Quiz at Dating Diversions

well. just to update you guys on what happened the past weekend (it's sunday now. and it's back to working on my paper).

totem had a dance party on fri night. the annual halloween dance party. having absolutely nothing to wear and no time to find anything, i donned my black blazer and pants and borrowed andy's oakleys, and went as MIB agent I/secret service/matrix agent smith wannabe (actually i didn't know and didn't care what i was going as. anyone who asked me what i was could get the answer: "i'm afraid tt's classified information"). heh heh heh.

halloween is a fucking big thing here in canada, and it doesn't even matter what age you are. everyone dresses up. of course, if you're a teenager, every girl wants to look sexy. 2 girls on my floor went as jap schoolgirls complete with the short short skirts and the bra-bearing tight white top. we had quite a few pirates - guys and girls - with the eye-patches, hats, swords, buckles and parrots even; while the girls would wear off-the-shoulder tops. some guys from 5th went as black guys - and these are white guys mind you - so they put on brown face pant and dressed ip gansta' style; and there was a whole group of them! even more hilarious - when the brown paint dried they couldn't move their mouths! 2 girls from my floor alex and jackie went as princess leia (with the cornrolls) and luke skywalker (with red lightsabre) respectively, and 2 guys from 5th went as batman and spiderman! except tt they bought their costumes from toys'r'us and it's for kids, so when they were walking around with it they got a WHOLE lot of laughter. adam's really tall, so the batman costume top came only to the middle of his chest - it was midriff-baring, and it was really funny coz he's so thin! and his tights came up only to a little past his knees! and damien's spiderman costume was so tight and midriff baring too, and it didn't help tt he had such skinny legs because the tights 'accentuated' tt feature! hahaha. oh, and yuka's this really hot japanese girl from my floor, and she went as a police officer, except in black tank top, short black skirt, fishnets and high boots, with handcuff and a cap in two.

seems they love associating law enforcement with bondage and submission here. i think the force were really to introduce these kind of outfits we'd either have a significant rise in crime or a significant drop. depends on the approach.

i had too much vodka. fuck. my newly-unopened bottle was opened and 1/4 of it is missing already. bad idea to take shots and then top up half a bottle of smirvoff ice with more of tt.

anyway we went to the beer garden on campus to mingle with the other happy halloween goers. it was so packed; angels fairies, mickey mouse, monsters, tiggers, gorillas, cross-dressers (yes, there were a quite a few guys who donned blonde wigs, tight pink frilly dresses and thick make-up) and the like. and the highlight of the beer garden was this bronco bull competition where people would line up to ride this mechanical bull in the centre of the bar until they fell off, and then everyone would yell "pussy" to them. it was hilarious.

after tt it was on to the dance at the ballroom and well... i shall say no more of tt (you can guess from my previous post, which i put up still in a state of severe inebriation). but it was fun. fuck... like i was telling jane during a really short msn conversation later when i was still slumped over my table waiting for my head to stop spinning so tt i could make my way to the bathroom to throw up, i feel fucking deprived right now. it's been tt way for so long, and even though the feelings haven't changed, but sometimes i wonder again and again if i'm ready for monogamy. and i went through all this before again and again and when i'm sobre it all works out, but after i get drunk i realise tt sub-consciously i haven't changed. and to be honest sometimes it makes me re-evaluate a lot of things. now, things like money and time and status things which i never thought would matter to me start to bother me because of how they're affecting what we talk about when i call him. esp now when it feels like he's so far away and he doesn't seem pleased or happy when i call him, like he always has something more important to do. maybe i'm asking for too much.

anyway i won't be touching the vodka for some time at least. it's not tt i can't really hold my alcohol, but tt it makes me feel really sick thereafter and i hate having to throw up just so my stomach won't rebel against me all night.

on sat i went downtown shopping on my own for my winter jacket, which i finally bought. it's white and it doesn't have the fur trimming tt i like, but it was cheaper than the a&f one tt i might have bought online, and since i only need it for one winter (unless i come back again), i don't need something quite so expensive. ended up buying more than just the jacket though - as usual; a pair of micro-gloves on recommendation for wearing during running in winter (which i guess is possible coz the people here have done it), a green scarf tt wasn't too expensive; hairband to replace the one i broke, and a pair of angel wings to go with this white dress tt i realise i'd bought over from singapore, for halloween night on monday...

and then in the evening after the sun went down, i went for the pacific national exhibition playland fright night event with eileen. pne playland is vancouver's amusement park, and they had some special event for halloween with 2 roller coaster rides, 3 (i think) haunted houses, and a bunch of other rides. me and eileen only managed to go on 4 rides in total because it was so packed! we had to queue at least 45 mins for 1 ride - and the corkscrew roller coaster took us 1 hour of queueing time just to go for! we didn't even get to visit any of the haunted houses because the queues were all too long and we simply had no time! but queueing aside, and the fact tt it was so fucking cold tt i was shivering incessantly even under my down jacket and eileen's toe had gone numb, it was a hell lot of fun, and a damn good way to spend saturday night! we went on both roller coasters, we tried this ride called hell's gate tt turns you upside down as you go up and down, and crazy beach party, which is like the viking except tt you're spinning around while you get swung from side to side, and we alternated between being scared (1st roller coaster) from the height drop to being made supremely dizzy! haha.

and after tt we bought hot dogs and corn dogs respectively from the stands before making our way back to ubc past 11pm.

we met shawn at granville. he'd come back from this irish club and was dressed as neo from the matrix (cheap costume according to him - just the long black coat and sunglasses). we ended up taking the bus back and eileen wasn't feeling too well, so she slept through the bus ride. and i was talking to shawn about where he'd been and what he was doing, and he's inviting me to go up to whistler on the 9-13 of december with him, weiliang and kweelin. they're going to learn how to ski. i want to learn how to snowboard. i'll give the skiing a miss coz i just wanna learn how to ride, and ride good, but i'm seriously considering coz i think it'll be a lot of fun, and even if it's going to be 4 of use squeezed into 1 hotel room i don't see any difficulty. i like sleeping on the floor anyway (experience from seattle). i think shawn kinda took my suggestion as a "i'll sleep on the floor if there is no space thing", which made him feel kinda paiseh coz i'll be the only girl there, but to be honest, i'm not offering to sleep on the floor as a magnanimous thing... i LIKE the floor coz i'm a light sleeper and i can't sleep on beds where i can't shift around or if i'll wake up every single time someone does.

but yeah! snowboarding at whistler in mid-dec sounds like a plan! and i can't wait till montreal and toronto and visiting amy and the rest of the singaporeans in ut! oh! and new york! for christmas and new year's!

k. gotta get food now, and then back to my paper.

congratulations to my babe, one of my bestest friends and a quarter of the mambo whores, miss jane lee zhenzhen!

for being able to be so happy, and for finding what you are looking for!

and it's amusing to read about you floating on cloud 9... miss original... heh heh heh.

*muakz*

i wake up and shuffle my feet to the bathroom. and as bleary-eyed as i always am in the morning, i cannot miss tt big new poster in pink on the wall. not when its title covers half its page in saying: "PRACTISE SAFE SEX".

directed to girls (presumably the ones on my floor): it includes tips like 1) always carry protection (i.e. condom, the pill, IUD, diaphram... etc) and 2) always carry more than 1 spare around.

(actually there were more tips but i cannot remember the rest).

anyway tt's just an indication of the physical/sexual maturity of the girls here. the range of ages for girls on my floor is 17-19, but they mostly start pretty young.

and last night when i was with eileen, we saw this asian girl who couldn't have been more than 13 or 14, and she was wearing boots and a short skirt, make-up and thick blonde streaks in her hair. she was really hot, but still... a 13 or 14 year old looking hot... i just find tt a litte disturbing. it's only a good thing if you attract guys your age and thereabouts... not guys 20 years and up older (ew).

just a thought. k sunday morning/afternoon. gonna go grab FOOD now.

i had the strangest dream last night. i dreamt tt me and my teammates were staying in this hotel on some ulu island with only 1 chinese restaurant. i don't know how we got on tt island; i don't know how we were going to leave tt island; i didn't even know what we were doing there. but it was perpetually bright and sunny and we could walk around the entire place in training tee and slippers, and there was this strange episode where cindy, geok, yirang and me wanted to check out what the chinese restaurant had for dinner, but when we went there the manager told us it was fully booked (coz they only had *3* tables), and cindy saw this huge bunch of twenty mangoes and she stole them while me and yirang distracted the manager.

and then we met the rest of the girls outside the restaurant and said we would have mangoes for dinner.

the line immortalised by sheryl crow.

pretty much sums up my life now.

fuck. i have to stop drinking so much. even if absolut apeach tastes so damn good. and someone please remind me tt i'm attached. i have to stop leading guys on, even if they're ang moh and tall and blonde and blue-eyed and oh-so-sweet to me.

my bf is so going to kill me if he found out i was dirty-dancing with joshua and foster tonight. and tt's excluding the problem of anthony and adrian.

i've been commissioned to wake up my boyfriend at 7am singapore time (4pm vancouver time) every day so tt he won't be late for work (because he's been late for work everyday of the past week). and i get such a kick out of it coz it amuses me tt i have to give wake up calls to a guy who's so much older and working and after all tt he does, should technically have less problems getting himself to wake up on time than i do. but more than tt, coz it's so cute to listen to him first thing in the morning when he's all disorientated and groggy and he sounds like a lost little boy.

and tt's when you can make him promise anything you want coz you know tt he won't remember a damn thing later.

heh heh.

article taken from http://www.singapore-window.org/sw05/051028au.htm.

"Don't ask Singapore to make an exception"

Australian
October 26, 2005

OPINION: Asad Latif

A 25-YEAR-OLD man risks his life to help pay the debts of his drug-addicted twin brother. He is discovered, tried and sentenced to death. What is to be made of this outcome? He is a hero. This is what brothers are made of, or should be. Their lives belong to their siblings. They do not just live in families but for their families, and are prepared to die for them as well. They are role models.

A hero is what Nguyen Tuong Van would be today, except for one crucial, deadly detail: drugs. Nguyen is not a hero but a criminal who, notwithstanding that he was driven to desperation by concern for his brother, trafficked in the substance responsible for destroying the life of his brother, others' brothers and sisters, others' sons and daughters, others' wives and husbands.

Drugs kill.

This said, a debate is possible on the humanitarian aspects of Nguyen's case. What is surprising, though, is how those aspects appear to have been subsumed by condemnations of an upstart city-state for having dared to condemn to death a citizen of an island-continent.

Look at the discussions on the internet, for example, and one theme that emerges prominently is that Nguyen should be spared because he is an Australian whose country does not impose the death penalty for drug trafficking. How dare tiny Singapore question the laws of Australia with its own laws?

This is the wrong approach.

Australians have the right - indeed, they have the responsibility - to be concerned about what happens to one of their own beyond their shores. They have the right, if they so wish, to argue that their laws are better than those of Singapore.

But - and this is the critical caveat - no one has the right to expect, let alone demand, that Singapore bend its laws to suit the laws of another country. Sovereignty, then, is a key issue in this case. The Australian Government understands and respects it, but some of the less circumspect voices commenting on this affair do not.

The fact is that Singapore, as with other sovereign states, has the right to apply its laws within its borders. Those laws are very clear and well known when it comes to drug trafficking, and an essential part of the clarity lies in the reminder that the death penalty applies to foreigners as well as to Singaporeans. It cannot be otherwise. To argue that foreigners who are in Singapore or are passing through it should be exempt from the functioning of its laws would be to make a mockery of the republic's sovereign right to apply its laws to everyone within its jurisdiction.

Incidentally, expecting special treatment for foreign criminals reveals a sense that their lives are more precious than those of Singaporean criminals. Where is the justice in that view? The converse argument, too - that Nguyen should not have received the death penalty because he was carrying drugs meant for Australia, not Singapore - is disingenuous. Is it right for Singapore to offer its airport transit facilities to criminals who would make Australians vulnerable to a deadly vice, a vice from which Singapore's tough laws protect its own citizens?

But these are side arguments. The main issue is that of sovereignty. The laws of Singapore prevail in the land called Singapore.

The second issue has to do with consistency. If Singapore were to make an exception for a citizen of a close and important partner, as Australia certainly is, which countries should be excluded from the ambit of exceptions? Would it be right for Singapore to hang desperate people from poor nations with which it has hardly any trade or political ties because their media or other institutions could not be bothered to turn the faraway conviction of a citizen into a public issue?

Surely this cannot be the case. Laws applied in some cases but withheld in others lose the legitimacy of law. They become instruments of expediency.

The third issue, insistence, follows on from consistency. The city-state called Singapore has laws that prevail today because it has insisted on applying them.

In the late 1960s, Singapore executed two Indonesian marines who had entered the island during a period of unrest and exploded bombs that killed civilians.

A recently independent country inhabiting a region of tensions and danger, Singapore understood that it was not a propitious time to refuse to bow to external pressure, including a personal request for clemency from Indonesia's president Suharto.

But Singaporeans also understood something larger than passing dangers: that a country whose sovereign right of action is held hostage by external forces will soon have little sovereignty to protect. Singapore upheld its law and its right to be taken seriously by other nations with their own laws.

I am sorry if my arguments sound harsh or churlish. My intention is not to fly the Singapore flag over the impending fate of a young man who had his life ahead of him. I still think that Nguyen is an excellent brother. What a pity that this embodiment of fraternal care and concern should have done what he did. I only hope that his terrible story will deter other people from following in his footsteps.

The laws of Singapore are not to blame. Drugs are.

Asad Latif, a former senior reporter with the Straits Times, is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. He is the author of, among other books, The Flogging of Singapore: The Michael Fay Affair (1994). This article is written in a personal capacity.

i read the articles written by the australian opinion editors on nyugen tuong van and singapore's death penalty with great curiosity. i have to give these writers credit for the amount of rhetoric put into each article, and the emotive kind of response tt such articles may draw.

but in spite of everything, behind the layers of righteous indignation, i realise tt the articles have no legal substance. yesterday, i consulted with my advanced criminal law tutor on the laws of canada, and what canadian judges would have done if faced with such a case. his reply: tt guy is toast. even though singapore has laws which are very different from canada's, judges generally work from the judgement backwards to their reasoning. and if you've got 396 g of heroin, there's no fucking way in hell you're walking. an acquittal is just plain out of the question. so maybe you're not going to hang, but there's no way you're going to walk. mitigating circumstances taken into account, the sheer number of lives you can ruin with tt much heroin is way to disproportional to what life you are trying to protect.

and today when i consulted with my international law tutor on the point about the guy being searched and arrested at changi's airport transit lounge even before he entered singapore immigrations and customs, and whether the defence tt he should be subjected to internatonal law rather than singapore law, his reply in short, was tt the guy was one stupid bastard. yes, tt's his words exactly. he said tt as long as you are on the soil of a country, it doesn't matter tt you don't go through immigration. you are already on tt country's territory and therefore subject to tt country's jurisdiction.
and like my previous blog title: "ignorantia legis neminem excusat". according to him, the bastard should have known. they announced it over the airwaves in the plane and in the airport tt entering singapore with narcotics is going to get you hanged. and the guy chose to do it anyway.

so moral of the story? hard as it is: he had it coming.

btw, contrary to what most people, esp those pesky human rights advocates assume, hanging is not a so-called "19th century" contraption, nor is it any less human than say, the electric chair, the firing squad or what have you (okay. i think lethal injection is the next wave, but even then you can't really say for sure tt it's any much better). like bungy-jumping, the rope with which to hang you is measured in length according to your size and body weight. the objective is a clean drop. coz with a clean drop, as long as you don't struggle, the sudden force of gravity on your body will cleanly snap your neck, making your death swift and painless. it's only painful if you struggle, coz then you interfere with the pull of gravity such tt your neck doesn't snap cleanly and you end up suffocating yourself to death.

so it's not really all tt inhumane. if it's painful, it's coz you chose to inflict tt pain upon yourself.

but anyway the weather this afternoon was really lovely. it was sunny and all, albeit cold. i tried canadian perogies for the first time today. they're like chinese wo tie or pan-fried dumplings, except with a filling of mashed potato flavoured with cheese. you eat them with sour cream, bacon and spring onions. i also had tomato bisque soup. tt was yummy. but to be honest, i'm missing chilli and curry a lot. i miss my prata with chicken curry, my chicken curry mee, and most of all, my bak chor mee kia dry with extra extra chilli!!! argh. there, i said it.

it's really cold now though. i can hear the wind howling outside my window. it's almost like a scene right out of a horror movie before the big bad ghost arrives to wreak mighty destruction on whoever. gosh. halloween is next monday, but already so many people are in the spirit of halloween. i've got a hall dance thing tomorrow; i'm going to the pacific national exhibition halloween special thingy with eileen on sat... and worst of all, i have absolutely nothing to wear! ARGH! i am going to stick out like a sore thumb when everyone dons their magnificent halloween costumes.

but to be honest, right now the cold and creepy weather makes me kinda miss the boy. somehow i feel so distant from him right now, like once again, phone calls just aren't enough. it isn't the same snuggling up to your pillow when the wind howls outside, as it would be when someone is next to you and holding you and watching you sleep. sometimes the memories just come back at all the inopportune times, and even though i always say tt it's the memories tt keep me alive, especially now when i'm alone on my own and so far away from all the people who mean so much to me, sometimes they just make you feel more wistful and longing than you should.

and it's amazing how when i run, a dance track like "move your body" will make me want to dance with my baby again. it's just tt song and how it triggers memories of him and thumper. sigh. i miss clubbing actually. and i especially miss clubbing with my mambo whores. it'll be 7 months at least before we will be reunited again. :(

but on the upside, i finally watched trainspotting today. and it automatically goes onto my list of all-time fave movies. :) i love danny boyle films.

it was cold when i walked to school this morning. i walked through the path from totem to law school. a month ago the path was flanked by rows upon rows of trees with pretty multi-coloured leaves. it was almost like walking in an autumn rainbow wonderland.

today, the trees are there but the leaves are gone, and bare branches greet me as i walk by. the grass is still as green and the sky still as blue and as clear as if it had not been raining before and will not be raining again, but the starkness strikes me.

beauty is beauty only because it is fleeting. it captures you for a moment, and then it is soon dead.

some people ask me what exactly it is tt i talk about with the boy since our careers/future careers are or will be intertwined. well. below is an email i sent him while in the midst of writing my research paper. and no, i still don't know what the fuck possessed me to write it.

"Hey baby.

I've just started writing for my 30 page research paper on Singapore. I'm taking my sources from places like The Economist.com and other newspaper agencies to build up a holistic picture of what exactly entails the "Western" and the "Eastern" cultural blends. Now that I've started it's a little more difficult to organise than I thought because there is such a wealth of information and such overlaps between each sector tt sorting them all out is a headache. But hopefully I'm still on the right track and I am not turning cultural conflicts into political ones per se.

But nonetheless on my research, I came across this article in the Sydney Morning Herald. Apparently we're going to execute this guy called Nguyen Tuong Van this Friday for trafficking 396 g of heroin from Australia into Singapore. Interestingly, the name caught my eye coz last year, PP v. Nguyen Tuong Van was a case tt we studied in my Public Law course regarding the intepretation of Singapore Law and what we meant by the legal vs. the moral intepretation of the law. Because in law, there's this dual argument about whether a legal provision should be intepreted acording to the letter (i.e. technical black-and-white) or to the spirit (i.e the purpose behind the statute, and whether it is just or not) of the law. In the case the judge (can't remember his name) said tt the death penalty was a mandatory one based on legal guilt, not moral guilt. Basically you know the drill - 15 g of heroin or more and you are presumed to be trafficking. Presumed to be trafficking and you hang.

But the facts of tt case were such tt Nguyen Tuong Van isn't actually a trafficker or a consumer or an addict or anything (if the evidence is to be believed). Apparently, there were mitigating circumstances, because he was carrying the drugs to Cambodia to help his twin brother repay off debts to loan sharks. (But I know tt this defence won't hold water under SG law). However, the argument tt the defence has was tt he wasn't trafficking heroin into Singapore. He was trafficking heroin into Cambodia from Australia, and had not passe through immigration. He was in the airport transit lounge when he was searched and arrested. So does this mean tt as long as your at a Singapore checkpoint like the airport, you are on Singapore land and subject to Singapore laws, even before you enter immigration? Should there be a distinction between people who are entering a country, and people who are merely transit? It makes me wonder about the passenger terminus at the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station. Once you enter tt station and board the train, you're on Malaysian territory and no longer subject to state laws, even if you are physically still in Singapore.

I'm surprised tt when I checked out Channelnewsasia, I did not see any news about Nguyen Tuong Van or the protests from the Australians on it at all. I applaud and I still stand by the stance of our government, because I still believe tt we should not allow ourselves to be subject merely to international law and relations with other countries (I'm reading international law now, and I find the arguments advanced by the Australians tt Singapore is breaching international law standards unreasonable and unjustified because there is no one set way with which to intepret international law standards, and while countries like Canada might say tt we should intepret the law "in good faith" and with as broad an intepretation as possible, I believe tt Singapore should continue with a dualistic system and not allow itself to be bamboozled by other countries so easily). But I'm just surprised tt this isn't receiving very much coverage by our national media, when it seems to be pretty huge to the Australians, at least.

And tt the reporter who was writing about this (his own opinion, of course) is advocating a boycott of Singapore, and our companies, and our airlines, and our airport, while the Australians are at it.

But anyway I don't know why I'm writing this. I wanted to ask for your opinion on the whole subject and whether you'd heard about it, but I assume you might have. But I don't think I actually asked a question, so I don't know if you can provide an answer. I'm still undecided as to my views on state-sanctioned killing. On one hand, before I signed on the dotted line, I didn't believe in it. But now tt I have and I'm seeing how it can be necessary in some cases, I believe it should stand, or at least I want myself to beliebve it should, but on the other hand I still feel like there is a miscarriage of justice in a case like this, even though it can be argued perfectly in black-letter law and all the technical details tt it is perfectly legitimate."

and of course, this in much greater succinctness, is his reply:

"First things first...

Nobody likes our laws...
American tried to bend us with Micheal Fay..
we caned the bastard....

Phillipines tried with Flor Contapcion..
We aced the Post mortem and the Forensic evidence...

It's the whole Human rights thingy...
They say we are inhuman...
and do you want to know why it aint on ChannelNewsAsia or anything..
If lucky..
He gets a small colum in the Straits Times...
Cause it is no big deal to us..
For us,
you do the crime, you do the time...

It's a system that works...
It's a system that keeps our streets safe...
They dont like it cause it's a slap in the face for them...
cause we get it done...
that's why I hate them...

But our govt knows our stand in all this...
and they dont really fuck us up cause
half the time we dont give a shit....

Oh well,
You'll see this more in the future..
Anyway,
the bastard's guilty as far as I am concerned...

:)"

for some reason, i'm reminded of tt song by U2. the distance between a man and a woman. but yeah. in an environment where it's all soft human rights law and so-called ethics, i'm convinced.

just had a conversation with someone i used to like a lot, but with whom i guess it just wasn't meant to be. i promised tt i would wait till he was ready, i promised tt we would take it slowly, i promised a lot... but sometime a couple of months ago i finally stopped believing and i decided to stop allowing myself to be in emotional turmoil anymore, and i quietly let go. and then i found my boy, and tt was tt.

but when i talk to him and i hear some things tt are being said, and i wonder if i had been too hasty in assuming tt all was dead and could never be revived. i wonder if i had been too hasty in giving up too fast, too soon.

but it's too late now for second guesses i guess, apart from the wistful wonder tt comes from an encounter with an old friend who used to mean so much more than tt.

besides, i am happy.

- The Black Eyed Peas Feat. Jack Johnson

Johnny wanna be a big star
Get on stage and play the guitar
Make a little money, buy a fancy car
Big old house and an alligator
Just to match with them alligator shoes
He's a rich man so he's no longer singing the blues
He's singing songs about material things
And platinum rings and watches that go bling
But, diamonds don't bling in the dark
He a star now, but he ain't singing it from the heart
Sooner or later he's just gonna fall apart
Cause his fans can't relate to his newfound art
He ain't doing what he did from the start
And that's putting in some feeling and thought
He decided to live his life shallow
Passion is love for material

[Chorus]
And its gone, gone going
Gone, everything gone, give a damn
Gone be the birds when they don't want to sing
Gone, people, up awkward with their things, gone

You see yourself in the mirror
And you feel safe 'cause it looks familiar
But you afraid to open up your soul
Cause you don't really know, don't really know
Who is, the person that's deep within
Cause you are content with just being the name brand man
And you fail to see that its trivial
Insignificant, you addicted to material
I've seen your kind before
You the type that thinks souls is sold in a store
Packaged up with inscence sticks
With them vegetarian meals
To you that's righteous
You're fiction like books
You need to go out to life and look
'Cause what happens when they take your material
You already sold your soul and it's...

[Chorus]

You say that time is money and money is time
So you got mind in your money and your money on your mind
But what about that crime that you did to get paid
And what about that bid, you can't take it to your brain
What about those shoes you'll wear today
They'll do no good on the bridges you've burned along the way

All that money that you got gon' be gone
That gear that you rock gon' be gone
The house up on the hill gon' be gone
The gold fronts on your grill gon' be gone
The ice on your wrist gon' be gone
That nice little Miss gon' be gone
That whip that you roll gon' be gone
And what's worst is your soul already gone

[Chorus]

***************************************************************

Jack Johnson is a guitar-genius. Listen to the rifts on this one.

a word from you, and my beautiful world comes tumbling down.

i hate being so goddamned vulnerable to you.

while researching my information for the first of my three 30-page research papers, i came across this 22 october 2005 article in the sydney morning herald, where the s'pore government was rejecting the pleas for clemency for this australian drug trafficker who had trafficked 400 g of heroin to pay off the debts for his drug-addicted brother.

under the s 17 and the second schedule of the misuse of drugs act (cap 185),
possession of 10 g or more of diamorphine (i.e. heroin) is deemed a presumption of trafficking, and 15 g or more of diamorphine gets you a mandatory death sentence.

reason, morality; nothing matters. it's not a moral standard, as we have learnt well in public law. it's a legal standard. why do i bring up this example you ask?

because the australian drug trafficker's name in question is Nguyen Tuong Van. (law students, remember tt case?)

intepreting the law within its own four walls.

now tt i'm here in canada where marijuana is de-criminalised and you can grow marijuana plants in your own basement and get sent to jail for only a couple of months to a couple of years if you are caught (and provided tt the evidence is admissible in the first place), i finally see the tragedy in the hanging of shanmugam murugesu, who was sentenced to hang for trafficking 1 kg of marijuana (which is definitely 10 times less than 41 potted marijuana plants).

i was talking to my boyfriend about how the law here was so different from the legal system back home with regards to political freedoms and criminal procedures. here the charter of rights and freedoms really is paramount. it isn't qualified by the interests of the state first. whereas back in singapore i bet a lot of people don't even realise tt we have a constitution, and tt we have constitutionally-protected rights. of course, these rights are secondary to the interests of the state.

british columbia just had a 2 week long teachers' strike where high school and elementary students didn't have to go to school coz their teachers were walking around vancouver wearing pickets. we haven't had a strike in singapore since... since... the hock lee bus riots maybe? we had a joke of a demonstration back in august when 4 people tried to protest against the lack of transprency regarding the use of public funds by the government for investment. it's against the law for more than 5 people to protest without a police permit. these guys got broken up by riot police.

i'm reading the report and i'm wondering how the journalist managed to type all this out without laughing hysterically.

there's a war within me as i write this.

on one hand, there's still tt part of me tt still wants to see more of a change for singapore. i still believe tt we need a political opposition because though our current government has served us well for the past 40 years and having been in canada for a couple of months, i really do appreciate the kind of strength tt a strong government can exhibit, i am grateful for the security in our system, i am proud of the education tt i have received and even though we all do complain about the education system in singapore, i realise tt other countries do not necessarily have a better education system. and you'd better believe tt. i am appreciative of a lot of things tt i have taken for granted as as a singaporean. but at the same time, i still believe tt we need to liberalise.

i respect our current prime minister lee hsien loong. no matter what other people might say because of his being the son of lee kuan yew and all the dynastic connotations tt come out of it, i believe in his political speeches. i know tt he is intelligent and tt he is promising to be more progressive and to give singaporeans more chances to speak out.

but at the same time, i feel tt change isn't coming fast enough. a lot of people, especially the conservatives, feel tt we are not prepared for change. the older generation in singapore do not approve of things like homosexuality, oral sex (although my boyfriend believes tt the chief justice was lying through his teeth when he said tt we just don't have oral sex in singapore.... YEAH RIGHT. as if the same people who arrest some guy for having a girl go down on him don't go home and have their own gfs blow them after tt), or what they perceive as general immorality. but at the same time, i feel tt the standard of education is higher and much more pervasive now than it was 40 years ago. there is a difference. we are not stupid or illiterate anymore. we don't need to be mothered anymore.

the government has always prided itself on being paternalistic. a provider for the people. but with the forces of globalisation (a dirty word, i know) and the dynamics of outsourcing and the rising competition for jobs from both the higher economies of the west and the much cheaper labour markets of china and india, the government can't provide as much as it used to. and if you can't provide as much, you can't be a father figure.

it's why the government is encouraging entrepeneurship. there's a saying tt goes: "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. teach a man how to fish and you feed him forever."

and tt's what they're trying to do. teach us how to provide for ourselves. but a lifetime of conditioning, of having little choice, little freedom, little room for expression, and therefore little room to have to think, worry or to learn to provide for ourselves, is making this difficult for them. it's a vicious self-perpetuating cycle tt needs to be broken.

granted, the government is taking steps to do tt. encouraging the exchange of more universities, encouraging more people to take more arts subjects like well... arts, tt encourages liberal thinking (although admittedly one of my friends was asking me: what are we going to do with all our arts graduates, since it's so hard to get a job with an arts degree due to the narrow mindsets of employers? and i replied: maybe tt is the government's idea of entrepreneurship. because all of them can't get jobs, they'll be forced by desperation to become entrepreneurs and develop their own businesses. isn't tt how sim wong hoo first started out? desperate, and now the creative zen sells right next to apple ipods all over the world. but then again, sim wong hoo is very literally, one in a million.). but still... with things like the still ever so strict police laws on liberal protests and the need for licences (and trust me, from the inside it's fucking hard to ever get granted a licence for anything vaguely political in nature), the strict control of the media for 'national interests' (right now my singapore news source is still NOT the straits times or channel news asia, for a good reason), the censorship of movies, even the film poster of the internationally-acclaimed eric khoo's 'be with me', and of dramas like sex and the city, and the fact tt we have to be 21 to watch porno films... i mean, R21 films, when we can fuck legally by 16 (and prostitution though illegal, is decrmininalised and you have girls as young as 13 selling their bodies for pocket money, if the DPA (German News Agency) is to be believed), all in the name of "asian values"... something's gotta change.

i know tt the use of the sedition act on bloggers who make racist comments on the blog is a way to protect 'racial and religious harmony'. just as the crack-down on consumers who pirate music (i.e. NUS students) is a way to make singapore a so-called 'hub' in protecting intellectual property rights. but in countries like the states, such lawsuits are brought about by companies and individuals. in the states, you think you have a problem against some one, you litigate via civil action. here in singapore, the state brings about the action. against the small fry. the student. the twenty-something. there is supposed to be a deterrent effect, and i remember something about what thio li ann said about the effect of clamping down on public voices. it has a 'subduing effect' - it silences people and over the long term, makes them apathetic and stop caring.

tt's where melissa got the 'poor little rich girl' analogy from. we're economically successful, but we lack soul. the same kind of soul tt yuwei was speaking of about london, tt so-called 'vibe'. the feeling tt i got from standing on the corner of a street in seattle caught between buildings tt were neither old nor new, victorian nor modern, a city filled with the rich and the wealthy, yet with the homeless lining up for the soup kitchen three blocks from the qwest stadium.

singapore has no homeless. they're hidden from view. tt's why i find it so hard to look when i see them here in vancity or in seattle.

i advocate change. a part of me roots for more political liberalisation, the opening up of the mindset, the freeing of the media (or at least to the extent tt we won't look like hypocrites), etc.

but there's the other part of me tt i recently discovered. the innate fascist. i think it was always there all along, but it was never really big until i really became determined to be a cop. the respect for the law. the belief tt we need a strong government and a strong police force (and yes. i still think ISO 2001 is a dumb idea tt should be scrapped). i believe tt we shouldn't allow silly pointless demonstrations, strikes or protests over things like pay (although i would think tt there is a greater need for transparency myself). i condemn too much people power because i still believe tt power can never be in the hands of the masses. we are not communist and the IQs of people generally decrease when the number of them increase (the 'herd mentality effect'). people are in general selfish and self-seeking, and there is no such thing as a decision tt will please everyone. as the saying goes: "try to please everyone and no one will be happy." so for this reason i still believe tt we should have a strong government, strict laws and the strong enforcement of laws. in public law last year, one of the theories studied was this one, where in order to give freedom, you had to restrict it.

the example was the imposing of strict criminal laws to deter against the commiting of crimes (and therefore a wide view of what constituted ciminal offences), which restricts freedom. but the end result would be greater security, which means tt people can walk the streets more freely than were there relaxed laws - the granting of a greater freedom. ironically, i believe in this theory too, even though singapore is often regarded as a police state and a dictatorship by lots of foreigners outside of the country because of our laws (and yes. half of the people i talk to assume tt we are a police state or a dictatorship).

i'm proud of this country. one part of me is happy with it the way it is, or at least, with much of the system tt we have. yet one part of me constantly struggles, constantly wishes tt there could be more change, more liberalisation, less restrictions. we're not a nanny state. or at least, we should no longer be one. why should the state be interfering so much with our own judgments and decisions? if singapore's most important resource is people, should we not be allowing for development of this resource, and not restriction of it?

when asked about why the law enforcement of the country was so strict, wong kan seng defended this as being because "no one is above the rule of law". i was shocked when i learned tt his car gets vandalised more freqeuntly than a lot of other ministers (although i maintain tt this is probably because he's not as uptight about his own safety and security than some other ministers). but when i read this comment i begin to realise tt the meaning of the rule of law to our government is different from the intepretation of what the rule of law means to everyone else. to the government, the law is a technical creature. you go by the context and what the statutes say. to other people, including other countries like the US and Canada, it's about the spirit of the law. you look behind the statute to find out what the purpose of the law is in the first place and what objective it seeks to achieve. it's really about what is fair and just, or rather, what is the closest for fair and just tt you can get.

i think someone will probably ask me to go join a political party to get my ideas across. go join the opposition party! go publish my ideas in a media (as if: 1) i will be able to get a licence; and 2) anyone's going to want to publish them; 3) i won't incur the risk of getting accused of defamation or be threatened with the use of the ISA). but i don't want to. i don't believe in politics. i am interested in the subject and the study and the discussion, but i don't think i am cut out to be a politician. i am neither ruthless nor cunning enough to play the game. i believe tt changes comes from within, and is a gradual process.

but i am confused about myself. oh well.

too much research. k. enough babbling. back to my paper.

P.S. no, my bf doesn't know about this blog. he kinda despises blogging anyway. calls it the medium of the bourgeoise intelligentia (okay, my words, not his), and too 'high and mighty' for the annals of society to even contemplate.

oh well.

mmm. i love a good bacon and scrambled eggs, and baked egg omelette with ham, tomato, brocolli and cheese, in the morning.

ok. in a bid to save money to compensate for the sheer amount tt i've already blown on travelling, activities like my skydiving and my bungy-jumping, my insatiable cravings for food, and all the shopping tt i've done thus far, i shall not go out on weekends unless i am visiting places without a) shops; b) restaurants, and have no admission fees.

at least, not until i travel for certain.

otherwise i will run out of money by next jan (and i am here till may!).

for winter, i want...



Abercrombie and Fitch White Amber Jacket

my presentation today went superb. :) i'm so pleased with myself. even though i was supposed to wake up at 6am this morning to start preparing for it and i woke up at 8am and i didn't have anytime to prepare... i did it.

and i had a nice and relaxing day.

and then i blew it. one klondike ice-cream bar of vanilla ice-cream with oreo cookie fudge bits and covered in chocolate.

and one kit kat chunky with peanut butter bar.

and at 12.30am, one triple thick chocolate milkshake from macdonald's.

fuck. 5kg... welcome 1 more.

anyway i thought it was all going good and i would sleep early and all tt, but then my floormates dragged me out to a mini-fiesta outside mcdonald's where we were sitting around a field in the dark watching the semi-drunk guys play fight and try to grab each other's nuts. and damien walked into a pole while walking back to totem.

which was evilly, hilarious. everyone was mothering him, and then saying "what a fucking idiot" to each other.

and just now i was visiting one of the rooms on 4th with jackie and diane. and they were smoking pot. this guy takes some weed out of a bag, rolls it up like a cigarette and sticks it into a plastic mineral bottle half-filled with water. he lights the roll up and then someone smokes it. and then you blow out into this other bottle stuffed with cotton wool.

i got a headache from just being in the same room. which is why i left.

it's an interesting experience to watch. but i draw the line.

we're going to have a strike tomorrow. this means the public transport system will probably be at a standstill. that's coz BC (the province tt vancouver is a part of) has an ongoing teachers' strike, in addition to a health care workers strike, tt basically exists coz the teachers of the elementary and high schools in question aren't happy with their pay.

so for the past 2 weeks, they haven't been going to school, and have been standing out in the streets wearing signs about how 'teachers deserve more pay'.

now, consider the following factors below:

1. teachers here get paid more than singapore. canada is more welfare than singapore will ever be. a bus driver gets $30 an hour. and yes, you get paid even when you're on strike.

2. this pay comes out of tax-payers' money. i'm not sure about income taxes, but i know tt canadians pay a damn high income tax. and tt doesn't include the 14% tax levied on all consumers - 7% GST and 7 % PST (provincial state tax). which goes to supporting the comfy pay of public service workers and the people in need of welfare; i.e. the homeless and jobless in the streets. who according to a couple of native vancouver-ites tt i've talked to, probably ended up this way, not because there aren't enough jobs (coz there are if you look for them. a lot of sectors, especially the service sectors, are understaffed), but probably because they got involved in drugs (what else is new?) and busted all their money on drugs. but before i digress further, what i am getting at, is tt any higher pay tt teachers get will be coming out of citizens' pockets.

3. the power is in the hands of the employee, not the employer (and implicityly, the masses, not the government).

maybe i'm innately fascist. maybe i'm cold and heartless. maybe i have been indoctrinated and brainwashed by the PAP and i'm no more than their lackey now (although I suppose the fact tt i signed on the dotted line and my other half is in the force probably counts for much of the reason).

but frankly if i had my way i'd get out there and arrest all of them and throw them in jail.

strikes and protests strike (pun!) me as pointless. ok, if it's a good cause like lobbying for the release of a political prisoner in cambodia, or because some great wrong has been done, then people power is legitimate. but as the saying goes, popular opinion is the greatest lie, and there is no strength in a government tt panders to people power.

unless a strike justifies the principle behind it, it's just a major economic distortion, it causes inconveniences everywhere, it exposes political weakness (if i were the government in power, i wouldn't back down from my stand if i feel tt my stand is worth not backing down for), and it's just... i don't know... pointless to me.

in singapore, you would never get this far. coz firstly, you would need to get a licence before you can stage a public anything. and applying for a licence for something like this is obviously not going to be worth the trouble coz you're sure as hell not going to get it if your public something or other involves something political, racial or religious, or is going to stir up some kind of disharmony.

and a public assembly of 9 or more people is going to get you the suspicion of rioting. and yes, the cops are going to come in.

man. i miss singapore. where the police have power.

i come here and i learn about the ridiculous search and seizure law procedures and i miss singapore where we don't have this whole long-drawn protocol about how you need a warrant before you can search, and even so, your warrant has to be authorised by "an independent person of judicious capacity", it must be "based on reasonable and probable grounds", and the search must have been carried out in a "reasonable manner".

and if you don't have tt warrant, the search is deemed prima facie unreasonable and the burden is on the crown to prove tt it is reasonable. in which case the crown has to prove tt the search is "authorised by law", like from a statute or the common law cases; the "law is reasonable", and tt the search was "carried out in a reasonable manner">

and if the search is not "authorised" or fails to satisfy all three conditions, we have to go into whether the evidence itself will "affect the fairness of the trial", whether the violation of the cops in the search "is serious", and whether the "non-admission of the evidence will cause a greater mis-administration of justice".

all this just for the admittance of evidence recovered through a search and seizure.

what the fuck long-drawn procedure is this? imho, you're wasting precious time and money. the courts have to spend so much time and money and effort just to determine whether evidence is admissable. and cops who are just doing their jobs have to go through this system of whether they were being "reasonable" in doing them.

why? all because of the whole 'rights' argument. oh no, the sanctity of the home. individual freedom. blah blah blah.

yeah. some guy can grow 41 pots of marijuana in his basement for trafficking and you can still talk about what rights he has.

in singapore, try growing 41 pots of marijuana. tt's a nice cheerful "goodbye" to you. forever (think "gallows").

in singapore, you can lay off the whole admittance of evidence bullshit. you don't need a warrant or what reasonable and probable grounds crap to base it on. crime's committed, cops do their job. and at least in singapore, we have ISO 2001. cops still believe in service (although i still think tt the police force should remain a force and not become a service. we're here to arrest criminals and keep the peace, not to learn how to bow to anal complainants). cops still knock.

cnb officers just kick the door in.

which is why, thank god, singapore doesn't have much of a drug problem. like i said. which is why we don't have people O.D-ing on crack every few nights. which is why we can walk the streets at night without worrying.

which is why in NUS you can leave your laptop and belongings in the library and go to the toilet, and your belongings will probably still be there when you come back.

not so here. one of the girls got her bag and all her valuables stolen... and she had just fallen asleep in the business library here with her bag next to her.

and apparently on making a report, it seems tt the culprit is this guy who's been entering this library and stealing stuff for the past several years.

several years, and they have footage of him on cctv, and they've apparently 'banned' him from the ubc grounds (although how the fuck do you ban someone you don't even know the identity of?), and they have never caught him?

is the police here ineffective, or understaffed, or have you just tied their hands too much with all your so-called 'human rights' freedoms?

it's all a balancing act, baby.

me? i'm glad i live in singapore. and i'm glad tt the police force in singapore is what it is.

so maybe i am innately fascist. but i'll take my chances.

11.34pm at night and my boyfriend is giving me a crash course on the different types of drugs and the sentencing of each one. including the relevant statute provisions.

i haven't been updating because when i came back on sunday night, my LAN connection wasn't working. it took 2 days of calling the front desk and IT services and bringing my comp down and everything... until i finally replaced my LAN cable today. so here i am. back online.

anyway with regards to interesting things going on on campus... do you know tt vancouver is one of the 'filming destinations'? hollywood likes filming their movies and dramas over here coz the pace of life is slower, there's a lot of space, and it's cheaper than good ol' uncle sam across the border.

but how does this relate to UBC, you ask? well. because film companies happen to like the area outside our koerner library a lot.

for one, some weeks ago i told you i saw tom welling right?



that's coz they were filming an episode of smallville here. and yes, tt is him. and yes, he is a hunk.

and for another, right now they're filming a movie called '88 minutes' here.

and al pacino is in tt movie.



so how often is it tt you can go around and tell your friends: "omigod. i just saw al pacino today?"

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

in other news. i just love deathcab for cutie. i am so absolutely peeved tt their concerts have all sold out, not just in vancouver, not just in canda, but also in the states.

but it's no surprise i guess. deathcab songs read like poetry. you could just sit there and listen to ben gibbard forever.

music is my life. i would die without it, i swear.

for those who have been wondering about the long absence, i was away in seattle for the weekend, or at least from 15- 16 october (fri to sun). went with 5 other singaporeans: eileen, ignatius, weiquan, jillian, diana, and 5 girls from hong kong who were iggy's friends.

we drove down from vancouver to seattle in 2 cars. one was an '80-something white toyota camry owned by jill, and one a pontiac montana 7-seater suv/mpv tt iggy had rented. takes approx 3.5 hours to drive from vancity to seattle. or at least tt's what the guidebooks say. i'm not sure what the actual time taken is; we have been going up to 150 on the freeway (km, not miles), but at the same time there have been so many delays and time spent waiting, so i guess things more or less even out in the end.

we left after lunch on fri afternoon. or rather, we left between 1 and 2pm, but it was assumed tt we would already have had lunch. or else eat in the car. yeah. we pretty much survived in seattle on *one* sit-down meal. and the rest... what meals?

but yeah. pics 1st.



these are the first few pics tt we took - the moment we crossed the border from canada to US where it was legal to take photos without the probability of being accused of terrorism or military espionage.

the above is me and eileen on american soil; more distinctly in the state of washington (state, not city. think 'washington apples'. mmm. yum.), although miles away from seattle yet.

and below is iggy (trip leader, planner, driver and tour guide extraordinaire), eileen and i.



we went to the seattle premium outlets first, which is a bunch of factory outlet stores on the way to seattle. and i mean factory outlets for brand names like guess, coach, calvin klien, gap, adidas, puma, nike, banana republic, burberry's, nine west... etc. yeah, you get the idea. but while the prices were *really* cheap in US: i.e. i got an original nike tank top from the nike store for just US $9.99; once you convert them to SG prices (multiply by approx. 1.7), they aren't tt cheap after all. oh, but levi's is cheap. you can get a pair of levi's for approx US $20. and i bought a genuine fossil watch for myself for US $14.99, and one for the boy for US $29.99.

but because half of our tour group consisted of crazyinsane shoppaholics (somebody kill me now), we didn't get our asses on the road till almost an hour after the generously stated meeting time.

but yeah. we got to seattle... close to 10 pm i think.



this is how the space needle looks like at night - taken from the car window.

i can't rem when exactly we checked into day's inn (sneakily cramming 5 or 6 people into a room meant for 4), but by the time we wanted to make our way down to the crab pot (i heard something else actually) at the waterfront for our very fucking late dinner, it was past 11 pm. by which time the crab pot was very nicely, closed. so tt was tt. in the end we were told tt only a) elliot's, or b) ivar's would be open. well. we found elliot's first, so elliot's it was.



yep. eileen and i at eilliot's. elliot's is an osyter bar. what this means is *fine-dining restaurant*. in US prices.

jill, eileen and i shared half a dozen rockafeller oysters for US $12.95. but boy were they absolutely good. they were so fresh and baked in their shells and covered in cheese, spinach and bacon and the whole thing just melted in your mouth. i haven't actually been much of a fan of oysters, but i would def eat this again. my table also shared a plate of cajun crab cakes ($13.95), crab claws with risotto ($24.95), and i ordered a delicious clam chowder ($5.95). oh, and the bread was free, and it was warm and really good... so tt we could def eat more of.

but the thing is... we didn't know tt ivar's, which was just a little further down, would be a lot cheaper. plus it looked a lot more fun too. just read the sign outside the restaurant.



on day 2 we woke up early... too early in fact. we were supposed to go to pike place public market, but somehow somewhere along the lines someone changed their mind and we ended up back on the waterfront where almost everywhere was still closed, taking photos of the scenery.

so yeah. just coz we had to.



that's me, diana and jill above.

and tt's the 4 singaporean girls - eileen, me, diana and jill, below.





and above: the UBC people. actually, most of us (excluding jill, who goes to SFU) go to UBC. but it so happens tt the UBC hoodie is a popular choice. heh.

after that it was a quick stopover at zeitgeist coffee for literally, seattle's best coffee (i broke my coffee celibacy and ordered a cappucino just coz i had to taste how good the coffee was)...



...and then over to this street market for what was supposed to be an oktoberfest... except they spelt it with a 'c' instead of a 'k', which makes a whole world of difference. so there. our supposed german lunch of franks and knuckles and sausages became a lunch of apple strudel and popcorn (coz everything else is fucking expensive). haha.



oh. but i managed to buy this blue knitted scarf from the woman selling the apple strudel (talk about diversification). and tt made me happy.

thus commenced the 4 hour drive out from seattle and into olympia... to mt st. helen, this dormant volcano in the mountains. its last eruption was in 1980... and since it was a national attraction... yeah.

but anyway the drive out was really scenic. i love the american and canadian freeways coz there's just so much *space*. you could just go on and on forever. i suppose the closest singaporeans know is the malaysian north-south highway, but the big difference is tt it's a lot colder in north america. and the scenery is different. you don't see kampungs or palm and rubber trees. you see coniferous pines, multi-coloured fall trees, mountains, lakes...

at some point in time up mt st. helen we stopped the cars *just* to take photos.



this is what you can see from the road.

and below: tt's me with tt.





me, diana and jill...



me and jill...



me and eileen: the normal photo...



and me and eileen: the spastic something-is-wrong-with-us photo.

and if you've been wondering who i've been in the car with:



the car people: jill, diana, weiquan, eileen and i.

and all the singaporeans...



everyone + iggy.

yep. so photo-taking session over, we get back into our cars and drive up to mt st. helen. apparently it's about 3000 feet above sea level (or is it 3000 m? i can't remember), so it's approximately 6 degrees celcius. yar. we were freezing our butts off. didn't help tt it was raining (what's new in vancouver/seattle?) and foggy.

oh. the foggy bit was a bummer. you wanna see how st helen looks like?



there. if you can make it out through the fog. tt's the volcano.

i think.



tt's me with the background. it's one of those "see? i've been here!" kinda photos.



and tt's jill and i. YES. we are *COLD*.

anyway we got into a little skirmish with the st helen people coz we didn't pay the $3.00 entrance fee and the woman who was demanding the money was being a goddamn bitch. oh well. not like we're going back again anyway.

so after tt it was back down the mountain and to olympia, where we were to spend the night at this place called econo lodge. once again, 6 people into a room meant for 4. and my room was right opposite the office! but well... we managed. just a little sneaking around.

we had dinner at this place called the spar cafe and bar. which sells tobacco and cigars and has a live jazz instrumental band. olympia's a small town with what i would assume to be a small-town mentality. aka chinese are strange looking people.

but anyway the prices were cheap compared to elliot's. jill, eileen and i shared the oyster stew, which was damn fucking good. and jill and i also shared the captain's platter, which was deep fried halibut, shrimp, scallop, oysters, and strips of clams, with fries. and i ordered a peanut butter milkshake.

i swear for all my love of peanut butter, i will never order another peanut butter milkshake again.

for one, the serving was enough for 2 people. they gave me 2 huge cups of milkshake. and tt's just 1 serving. for another, it was so thick and rich and creamy tt i could barely eat anything else after drinking it, and as much as i absolutely love peanut butter and i was forcing myself to, i really couldn't finish the milkshake. and weiquan who tried it, called it the first ever milkshake tt he dislikes.

spent some time in the bar after tt just chilling over drinks and listening to the instrumental band. then it was back to the inn for an early night.

well. we played bridge till midnight, actually.

we woke up early to drive back to seattle. some people were a bit too inconsiderate to wake up on time, therefore causing half an hour delays, but nonetheless, we got back to seattle around 10 am and in time to visit the pike place public market.

just background info: there's this book called 'fish!' tt is a bestseller for companies hoping to motivate their employees. and it's based on the fishmongers in the pike place public market.

aha. so you see the link now?

so anyway yeah. we visited the market to see how these guys worked. and they were all really cheerful and energetic, shouting orders over, chiming in unison, joking and literally throwing large fish around.



and we also visited the original starbucks. as in the first ever starbucks outlet. it was right there in the pike place market area.




after tt, it was on to visit the space needle. the space needle is this 520 inch tower thingy... oh what the hell. see below.



tt's how it looks like by day.

anyway it's a historical momument of seattle. any postcard with seattle in it will have the space needle on it. sort of like our merlion, except tt the space needle doesn't have lazer beams shooting out of its eyes. not tt it has any to begin with.

we busted US $13 just to go up to the top of the space needle.

but yes. the view is gorgeous.



you can see the whole city from here. as well as the puget sound.



but it was fucking windy. and therefore, cold.

post-space needle: our only meal of the day for the third day - we went to this place called 'the cheesecake factory' in downtown seattle.

the waiting line is long, no matter what time of the day it is, the food is expensive - a slice of cheesecake is anywhere between $5.95 and $8.95.

but like what jill said, it's worth visiting. and worth sitting down and eating for.



yes. all these are cheesecakes.



want a closer look?









and what we ordered:



chocolate mousse cheesecake, godiva chocolate cheesecake, fresh strawberry cheesecake, kahlua coffee cheesecake, boston cream cheesecake, original 6 carb cheesecake, and chocolate fudge cake.



oh and not featured: our main courses - fried macaroni and cheese balls covered in marinara sauce, and spicy cajun jambalaya pasta.

shared among 6 people. now you know why it could last us for the rest of the day?

but after the cheesecake factory, we had problems finding parking, and as a result we missed the underground tour, which is supposed to show us the days where seattle was a crime/prostitution/drugs haven.



this place is btw, in pioneer square. historic seattle.

there's something about seattle tt i can't pinpoint. the buildings brim with something tt i feel like both singapore and vancouver lack. i think the word 'culture' is overused, but yet i think tt is what might be used to describe seattle.

there's a kind of old world charm to this place, a vibe tt underlies the whole city. it's not so old tt it's victorian or historical, yet it's not modern. it's caught somewhere between the past and the present, and there's just something immaculately beautiful about tt.





the above is the Q WEST Field in between the buildings. super bowl sunday is the day where the football teams play the NFL. and this evening the seattle mariners were playing a home game, so the whole city was crowded with excited fans making their way to the stadium. at a time like this, it costs up to $25 just to park your car for the event.



and tt's me and eileen and our last photo... the sunset over seattle.

thus concludes the seattle road trip.

first ever trip to seattle.

first ever trip out of canada since being here.

first ever trip to the US.

first ever road trip.

it was fun. we should do this more often.

the sunset over seattle.

(went to seattle over the oct 14-16 weekend. currently have problems with internet connection. will update in more detail when more time. will also reply emails and check out other stuff then.)

me: "die lah like tt. i gained 5 kg since i came here. i'm always eating. and i always feel hungry... in fact i'm feeling hungry now! and i just had dinner!"
the boy: "arhahaha. you eat more than me lar woman. you... you pacman, you!"

"Go Global storms Halloween at the PNE!"

or

"UBC/SFU Halloween Club Crawl"

11 - 15 Nov: Montreal
15 - 19 Nov: Toronto

tentative christmas break plans:

22 dec - 2 jan: NYC
2 - 8 jan: chicago

the weather is unbelievafuckingbly cold.

at times like this, i actually miss the sweltering heat and humidity of singapore. at least singapore is predictable.

here, you're either melting indoors where the heat's up high, or freezing your ass off out doors, where it's cold and rainy and windy and wet.

not tt i should be complaining tt much. on my way back to my room, i saw this giant raccoon scampering around, and it was soooooooooooo cute. more than took my mind off the discomfort.

at least you can see cute and cuddly raccoons here at night. and they're about the size of a small dog. sho cute. sho sho cute.

anyway the highlight of today was watching tim burton's corpse bride with eileen. man, it's fucking expensive to watch a movie in vancouver. the fucking ticket cost us both CAD $21.90. for 2 people. on a fucking wednesday night. like, what the hell?

but yeah, i'd been wanting to watch corpse bride for a long long time. so at least now i've watched it. although i prefer nightmare before christmas. they still elicit the same feelings of bittersweet wistfulness at the end, but nightmare touched me more. prob coz the guy got the girl (or the girl got the guy)... and here, well... SIGH.

but anyway tt's pretty much been about it. tt and food, but i don't think you want to know how much i ate again and how much peanut butter and chocolate truffles i devoured in my room in addition to my heavy breakfast and lunch at the cafe and an equally heavy dinner of a $0.99 giant pizza slice and then kfc chicken strips and hot chocolate topped with whipped cream in the evening?

melissa and the boy have both commented tt my face looks rounder. i am resigned. i'm currently over 60 kg now. oh well. all tt food has to go somewhere, right?

yep, so tt's mainly it. don't really feel like discussing lessons, although learning abt the canadian approach to search and seizure in my advanced crim class makes me feel as though the system is retarded. ok ok i know. i shouldn't be judging and i shouldn't be prejudiced and i'm supposed to be appreciative of a system tt strongly upholds the individual rights and freedoms of its citizens.

but still, when i come across a case where real evidence like possession of cocaine or marijuana is deemed inadmissable evidence, just because the search was unwarranted and conducted in an "unreasonable manner" not in line with s8 of the charter or rights and freedoms, and the guy in question walks because of this, i'm like: hello? i think there's something wrong here.

but tt's just me. what do i know anyway?

am feeling really tired now. i have a million and one things to do tomorrow anyway. i need to visit the money-changer's before my first class, pay for my montreal-toronto trip between my first and second class, go for my hapkido lesson (since i lazily missed tuesday's), pack my stuff for seattle and make sure i have everything i need, and still do my readings for my friday class before i leave.

ARGH.

"you know i got, what it takes to make the crowd go outta control."

take a leaf from the bloodhound gang.

Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo

Trip 1 - Rememberance Week Trip

11 - 14 nov: fly to montreal
14 - 19 nov: fly to toronto

Trip 2 - Christmas Break Trip

22 - 27 Dec: fly to las vegas
27 - 2 jan: fly to new york
2 - 5 jan: fly to chicago

Notice: If you want to join me, let me know ASAP. I don't really give a fuck about company or if i have to back-pack, so these are just my personal plans.

i feel tt if i don't travel, i'm wasting my time here.

i'm on an exchange programme dammit. i need to see the places tt i am in. i need to see more of canada, and more of the US. and if this means taking a week off school to travel, then so be it.

my most interesting activity today was cramming into anne and charlin's room to watch the latest episode of nip/tuck with them and diana.

although nip/tuck totally uncensored is so scandalous. you get to see naked butts and a disproportionate amount of sex scenes. and tt includes oral sex, threesomes and foursomes.

but tt said, i was highly disconcerted by my conversation with the boy tonight. he was walking to far east plaza for his monthly haircut as we were talking on the phone, and he happened to pass jeyaratnam selling another of his books. and he was like "fuck. tt bastard's selling his books again."

and he was going on and on about how much of a pain in the ass he was; everytime he appears in orchard to sell his books he's doing something illegal, and everytime the cops (i.e. him, when it's his shift) have to follow him around and tell him to pack up and go home and not create trouble, and he says tt it's such a waste of resources coz you have so many cops, cid, isd etc. people just surrounding this one guy. why can't he just go home and stop giving everyone trouble?

and i was quiet for a long while. i said: "i hate to tell you this, but i am a JBJ supporter. i respect and admire tt guy. always have from the time when he was a Queen's Counsel, and even now when he's down and out and he's still fighting."

the boy's point is tt you have to understand the consequences. if you want to make yourself heard, make things easier for everyone, find a legal platform.

i'm like: you know tt's not possible. he has no fucking money. he was bankrupted by the same government and the same people tt he was once fighting for. he can't get a licence coz you're not going to give it to him. he has no fucking thing to lose. not anymore.

when we were in nanaimo, i was talking to eileen about JBJ. she knows how strongly i feel about him. it's not about sympathy or pity, it's not tt i don't think tt a lot of what he's doing is foolhardy and probably not very helpful (although the fact tt so many branches of the cops are practically trailing this one little helpless old man who isn't in any shape to harm anyone says a lot, either about our country's paranoia, or about the impact tt the people in power are trying to deny); it's about respect. it's about admiration. it's about idealism and belief. and qualities tt i want to possess, even if i don't intend them to play out the same way.

is it possible to work for a government when you cannot support every single facet about them?

i mean, let's face it. i'm currently in canada. it's so rights-based and individualism oriented. and mark my words, it's def a freer country. you can do so much more here than in small, restrictive singapore. whatever you want, you got it. booze is cheap, sex is cheap, drugs are not legal, but they're def not criminal either. you want to hold a demonstration, by all means. you want to stage a sit-out like the retrenched telus workers, no one's going to stop you. we've currently got a strike by the high school and elementary teachers regarding their dissatisfaction with their current contracts with the government (i.e. not enough moolah).

but it's got its downsides too, of course. when teachers go on strike, the students suffer. there's no one to teach them, there's no accountability. striking affects businesses and the economy. there's a bit more political instability because governments are voted in by popularity, and thus policies may be dictated more by public opinion than by national interests per se, and even if they are, who is to say tt the government tt is here today will be here in 4 years to execute a policy tt it made today with effects tt extend beyond 4 years? besides tt, i feel tt all this 'me me me' kind of national and cultural mindset is responsible for what i see as moral and social decay.

on the streets, you see homeless people begging for change. the welfare system here is good, it's so good tt you might as well be unemployed than have a low-wage job. taxes are high coz of tt. because of the de-criminalization of drugs, you have a few druggies around. the first few weeks i was here, people were O.Ding on counterfeit heroin tt ruthless dealers would sell them, and you had about 9 deaths in 2 weeks. i think tt's a higher statistic than the number of heroin traffickers tt we've hanged in singapore in a period of 2 years.

sometimes, i think you tend to lose sight of yourself in this individualistic environment. sometimes, everything's all about self-gratification, making your own life. i won't say tt i am not guilty of this because i am. i dream, i have plans and goals for my own life and i tend to be more independent and removed from other people than most of my peers. but tt being said, i do believe in certain values. in family, in friends, in community. i believe in belonging. i believe in respecting your elders, and even though i tend to complain about my parents a fair bit, i have no respect for people who do not respect their parents or talk back to them. i believe tt many things are relative, but i don't believe in absolute relativity because then where does humanity come in?

well. and yes, before i veer completely off-tangent, let's not forget tt singapore is still a very good place to live in. we have the infrastructure, we are clean, we manage to preserve our asian values with relative success (i used to scoff at 'asian values', but when i came here i started to realise its importance in a place where everything can be relative), we have a modern bustling city life and a culture tt is unique to us. and it's easy to overlook all this when you live in singapore and you find it so restrictive and stifling and too competitive, and maybe i'm too nationalistic and all tt, but for all of canada's beauty and freedom and the amount of things tt i can do here, my heart still roots for singapore.

but tt being said, no country is perfect. canada is not perfect, and neither is singapore. just as i feel tt the states and canda are too liberal, too open; singapore still has some way to go to becoming more open. i applaud the powers of policing, i have seen the ridiculous nature of allowing strikes and i think it's a good idea to completely ban them, unlike what the canadians think it is possible to live without chewing gum, and the death penalty while thought of as barbaric by human rights advocates has helped keep our drug and crime rates under control; i still think tt we need to be a little more politically liberal.

maybe i'm still too biased. maybe my admiration for JBJ has overshadowed objectivity. but as much as i believe in the government and the direction tt they have for singapore thus far, i find it hard to love a government tt won't even leave a poor old man tt they reduced from being one of the greatest men in the history books of this country, to a poor old pauper who has to resort to hawking his books by the road, alone.

So Eileen - my new travel/activities khaki and fellow girlfriend here in UBC - and I spent our long Thanksgiving weekend - or at least, Sunday to Monday - in Nanaimo.

To bungy-jump, of course. That was the main objective.

So we woke up nice and early (although I overslept; was supposed to wake up at 7.30am, but woke up at 8am instead. ARGH!) to catch the HarbourLynx to Nanaimo. The Harbourlynx is this fast-speed catamaran tt travels between downtown Vancouver and Nanaimo on Vancouver Island in approx 80 minutes, which is a lot faster than the usual BC Ferry tt you might take from Horseshoe Bay. Of course, this means it costs more too... So thank God tt we booked 'The Bungy Express' package instead.

But yeah. Below is the 'boarding pass' for the HarbourLynx tt I reserved.





And above is the view of the catamaran itself from the back.

BTW, the weather this weekend was horribly cold! It was so windy and cloudy and it rained...a light rain, but rainy enough to be cold and annoying! Yeesh. I hate too cold weather. Makes me sullen and withdrawn. And uncomfortably cold.

But yeah... Welcome to Nanaimo!



And the people here are real friendly btw. We didn't have a single problem getting around at all coz everyone was really helpful, like the HarbourLynx Nanaimo guy Chris. :)

Anyway coz we hadn't booked the shuttle to The Bungy Zone where we'd be doing our jump in advance, we had to wait half an hour to get picked up. Boy oh boy was it cold... But we managed to pass our time in this harbourfront cafe called the Javawocky, drinking...

Hot chocolate!



Mmm. That is mine, and yes. It is every bit as good as it looks.



Yes, yes. Glamour shot. Me ever so eager to devour this delicious treat...



And tt is Eileen's. She bought the hot white chocolate. Can you say 'yum'?



Ooh. And this is the dog tt was waiting for its owner to get a cuppa from the counter. Javawocky has a 'no pets allowed' policy, so the poor dog had to wait outside in the door.

But yes it was soooooooooooooo cute! And adorable! And obedient! I just wanted to smuggle it hommmmme!!!

Anyway, our ride to The Bungy Zone came just after 12pm. And so Eileen and I headed out for our jump.



That is the bridge tt we have to jump off from.



See the Bungy-Jumping sign?



And yeah. Me being extra. And yes, the wind was fucking strong! It was so fucking cold I was shivering just standing up there!!! Bloody hell... It was prob below 10 degrees celcius I bet.



This is the Nanaimo River tt we'll be jumping off towards. And this is the view you get from the bridge.

Oh. And below is a larger view of the kind of height tt we'll be jumping from. It's approximately 143 feet.



Anyway just a bit of history tt I gleaned from John, the owner of The Bungy Zone, when he was driving us back later to our guesthouse in his swanky '86 Cadillac (man. My first ever Caddy ride!). John's a kiwi who came from NZ fifteen years ago to set up The Bungy Zone (it's 15 years old!), and as he proudly puts it, he 'built this bridge with his own two hands'. And do you know tt you can actually bungy for FREE at The Bungy Zone?

Provided you come on the weekend closest to Valentine's Day, and you jump NAKED. That's right. Jump naked and you jump for free.

Hmm. That's a thought.

But anyway, back to the jump. Eileen went first. She was great. She just clarified what she was supposed to do, and then without hesitation off she went! And she didn't even make a sound! :)

I went after she came back.



That is me getting the towel wrapped around my legs for cushioning...



...And then getting the cord tied around my legs before it gets attached to the bungy rope...



Me waving to Eileen as she takes the picture...



And off we go!



And again...



And again (yeah. That's the raft tt's going to untie me from the cord and take me back to land)!

Anyway, just for the curious, bungy-jumping is not tt hard or impossible to do. In fact, it is easy. Easier than sky-diving, even. All you have to do, is jump. This being my second jump, it doesn't make it any less scary. When you shuffle your feet over to the edge of the ledge such tt your toes are pointing out over nothing and you can look all the way down and see the river so fucking far away from you, it is scary. It is fucking scary. Although the view is great. I love the view of the Nanaimo river and the railway track tt cuts through it straight ahead, and the beautiful autumn trees tt frame the river like a painting.

So tt's it. When you say tt you're ready... you GO. You don't think. You jump off, and you feel yourself falling. Make no mistake about it, you don't fly. You fall. Gravity just acts on your body and the acceleration is heart-pounding. The river rushes towards you as you dive head-first towards it and your heart's almost literally in your mouth.

And your jeans are also getting pulled off (and mine would have been had I not thought to tighten the belt just before I jumped, and therefore giving spectators more to see than they would have expected) as your shirt rises towards your neck (once again, good thing my jacket was zipped. Otherwise spectators would also be able to tell about things like the colour of my bra. Eep). But of course, tt's not the main thing.

Then comes what I consider the scariest part. Or the second-most scariest, next to the physical act of jumping: the rebound. That's when you get pulled away from the ground back to almost the same height you jumped from, and the scare-factor is tt you can see the ground disappear away from you and you just know, anticipate, expect, falling all the way down again.

It's a fucking trip I tell you. A fucking trip.

Some people ask me which is scarier: this or sky-diving? I don't know about the Physics point of view, but from my point of view, bungy-jumping is scarier than sky-diving. Sky-diving is scary in those few seconds when you jump out of the plane and you're free falling, but you're so far away from the ground and the wind is rushing in your face and your ears tt you don't feel like you're falling as acutely as you do when you are bungy-jumping (although make no mistake about it. Freefalling in skydiving is STILL falling, not flying). And then when the parachute is opened, it's not scary anymore. The scenery is just beautiful and awe-inspiring. It's unreal. You have to skydive yourself to experience how it is to have a panoramic view of the world around you and have your feet dangle a few thousand feet above ground level with absolutely nothing beneath it.

But back to bungy. Bungy-jumping is done headfirst, and this close to the ground (in comparison with freefalling), gravity acts with a much greater force on you such tt your falling is accelerated. So obviously it's scarier. So is the rebound. But of course, bungy-jumping is over a lot quicker than skydiving. So fear doesn't last very long.

It's not like you can do anything about it anyway.

But it is SUCH a fucking adrenalin rush. I could do this again! In fact, I intend to, now tt I'm a lifetime member of The Bungy Zone and all subsequent jumps are only CAD $35. And let's not forget my dream of bungy-jumping off Queenstown in NZ. At least once in my lifetime.

Yup. So tt was the bungy experience.

After the adrenalin rush, Eileen and I were driven back to downtown Nanaimo for the rest of our day, which was, in comparison WAY slower. Nanaimo is a pretty sleepy town, and esp coz it's the Thanksgiving weekend, most places and stores are closed or close really early at 5pm, so you can imagine the pace of life here... Almost moves at a crawl compared to Singapore and Vancouver.

Oh. And below is where we stayed the night.



The Painted Turtle Guesthouse.



Yeah, and tt's me with the Painted Turtle in the background.

It's a kind of hostel-type guesthouse. For the incredibly low price of $20 flat, we get to stay in a room with 4 bunk beds; Eileen and I shared a bunk bed - I took the top and she took the bottom - and there was only 1 other person in our room. And because the Painted Turtle is so new, the bathrooms were so luxurious! It was such a steal for this kind of price.

After settling our stuff in, Eileen and I went to walk around. Ooh! And inspite of the mostly-closed shops, I found this bookstore called 'Bygone Books', and it is such a treasure trove. It stocks mainly secondhand books, but you can find 1st editions, rare books, antique books and collectables in store, and oh man some of the books look like the kinds you see in 18th or 19th century Victorian libraries! I was so tempted to buy one such copy of Homer's 'The Odessy' or Fyodor Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment' just to have an antique book on my hands! In the end, I settled for the 1st US Edition of Jeanette Winterson's 'Art and Lies' in hardcover, and I was looking for Karl Marx's book on Marxism as well, but unfortunately they only had his early works.

After the bookstore, it was finally over to lunch!

And we went to Pirate Chips!



Yepz. That's me standing outside the store.

Basically Pirate Chips is a 3-year old (according to the newspaper clipping in its door) establishment, and it sells fries, fish and chips and stuff, milkshakes and desserts...



This is the menu of the main courses tt it has. And ooh... It's so coolly-decored, and apparently celebrities like Tara Reid have eaten here (if you look at the autographs on the wall)!

Anyway Eileen ordered the signature cod fish and chips...



And I ordered the poutine with fries.

Basically, poutine is this traditional French-Canadian rich gravy tt you eat with fries. It's highly fattening, but people say tt you're not truly Canadian unless you eat poutine. So yeah, my first poutine with fries and cheese curds.



Sinful, but yummy!

And after tt, we shared a chocolate milkshake...



Which was OH SO GOOD!!! Yum.

And we ordered the signature deep-fried chocolate bar with chocolate ice cream and whipped cream.



Basically, it's a Mars Bar tt has been deep-fried, and then served with chocolate ice-cream, whipped cream and chocolate sauce. But oh man, you will not believe how different and how good a Mars Bar can taste when the chocolate's all hot and melted and the caramel is just oozing, and you're eating it with the crunch of flour and with the contrasting coldness of ice-cream.

It's the brainchild of the owner who started Pirate Chips, as something new and novel and never tried before, and yeah, it worked. It got her attention in the newspaper, and it got celebrities in. And it got us in too. :)

Heh.

But yeah. That meant tt our lunch was just heavy heavy heavy.

For the rest of the day, we passed our time by taking this small ferry ride to a small offshore island called Protection Island. Which is like uluville. Hahaha.

But you can walk around the island and appreciate nature, and get views of Nanaimo while you're at it.



So yar... Eileen and I took a couple of pictures.

This one's about the pretty scenery and the trees.



And this is the swing... I haven't swung for a long long time! It was so fun to have both of us just sit and swing for a while. Brings back memories of our childhoods. :)



This one's my fave, of her and me.



Basically we met a kind old couple when we were getting lost (which is why we could actually get both of us in 1 picture), and they took us through to Smuggler's Park.



That's Smuggler's Park, btw. And yeah... The husband helped us take this picture too.

And well, we also visited Pirate's Park.

Here's Eileen pretending to look scared of the sign.



And me trying to look scary.



She said tt I look like I'm trying to be a ghost. Oh well. Not really my intention, but still.

And yes, all the road and park names on Protection Island have something to do with pirates and stuff.



See what I mean?

Anyway we also walked out to find the lighthouse (yeah, the wind is really really strong)...



And look! We can see Nanaimo from here!



We don't even have to look tt hard to find it. :) It's just across the ocean.



Speaking of which, even though Nanaimo is really sleepy city-wise, it's fantastic for outdoor sports. They have diving trips off 2 artificial reefs here. You can kayak here; kayaking is a huge thing. There are lots of mountain-biking and running trails. Camping is encouraged and there are at least 4 R.V. Parks for camping. Rock-climbing can be done as well.

And in July there is the annual Nanaimo Dragonboat Race.

Ooh.

But unfortunately I won't be around for tt. Oh well.

The sky got really dark really fast though. Coz it's fall, so the days are shorter than the nights. We almost ended up walking into someone's property coz it was so dark and we didn't really know where we were going.

But nonetheless, we managed to make our way back to the Dinghy Dock Pub, this quaint little pub and restaurant where we would be having our dinner.



It's a really cool place...



You can just tell from the kind of decor.



HEH.



And tt's me. Duh.

But you don't really want to know about me or the pub decor, now do you? What you want to know about, is the food.

Our starter was scallops wrapped in bacon and served with bread, and our main course was the seafood combo platter, which is essentially one piece of the pub's 'best halibut fish', scallops, shrimp and juicy onion rings, deep-fried and served with a salad and tartar sauce and ketchup.



Voila!

Boy oh boy were we stuffed by the time we'd finished our food.

But then, me being the really bad influence tt I am, I made it such tt Eileen couldn't refuse dessert.



Behold the Chocolate Konfusion. A cake where the top layer is rich fudge completely enveloped in chocolate chips and drenched with chocolate sauce; the middle layer is chocolate mousse, and the bottom layer is a crunchy brownie/graham cookie base.

Absolute heaven.

We ate so much tt we felt both full and sleepy.

So after dinner it was back on the ferry and back to our guesthouse for an early night.

We woke up this morning in time to check out of the guesthouse at 10.30am and catch the 12 noon HarbourLynx back to Vancouver. And in the meantime, have breakfast at Javawocky again.

My breakfast: my first ever bagel with cream cheese. And hot white chocolate.



It was absolutely relaxing.

And thus sums up our weekend getaway to Nanaimo.

Happy Thanksgiving! :)