clean linen

Just as a form of recollection, I spent my first weekend eating out a lot, having "reunions" with the Singaporean Year 1s and hallmates after not seeing each other over the Christmas break. My second weekend was spent celebrating the end of exams in my sickly state as well as saying goodbye to Erica and Ryan. So quickly, time has passed and my third weekend here in Nottingham just passed me by in a blink of an eye. I can be considered to be someone who has fully recovered, although I may still cough a little bit because the phlegm is still hanging around. Anyhow, on Friday night, we wanted to go catch a movie and so all of us rushed out of our halls to meet up at the bus stop to go into the city centre. However, when we were waiting for the bus, we decided that we would not be able to make it in time for the 8pm movie when it was already 7:30. In the end, Po Yew, Tzen, John and I all went to John's room and whiled our Friday night away. Po Yew cooked an omelette, we had p...

To all who are in the knowledge of me feeling unwell, I would just like to let you know that I am slowly recovering. My voice has somewhat returned, except that it is still a little hoarse. Also, my throat no longer hurts like hell when I swallow. However, my nose is still very blocked and I still have quite a phlegm-y cough. As mentioned at the end of my previous entry, I had every intention of making an appointment with a doctor at the beginning of this week with the hope of getting antibiotics or something like that, but Angie told me that the doctors here are excessively reluctant to prescribe antibiotics to people unless the people are showing near-death symptoms: "Oh, you're coughing until your chest hurts and you've been coughing this severely for the past few weeks, even close to a month? Oh don't worry, you've just got a cough. Here's some cough syrup. Drink lots of water, get more rest, and you'll be fine" - What a doctor here can tell you. S...

Friday night after my disastrous (and I'm not being over pessimistic or ultra negative here. Just being realistic) Contract paper, I returned to FB feeling absolutely lousy and tired. I was feeling very unwell and had reached the point of hunger where I was no longer hungry. Dinner had just ended in FB and so they were no longer serving any more food. I returned to my room with Erica, Tzen, Stephanie and Trang as company. We were all supposed to go meet Remi and Emmanuelle for the last time before they returned to their homes in France the next day, since the two of the are exchange students as well, just like Erica. In the end, I didn't go for that little gathering, whereas the other four of them did go to the FB bar for a little while. Ok, I'm just going to let the photos speak for themselves, feeling too tired to be detailed. Saturday: Erica's last trip to Nottingham City Centre, hanging out at Starbuck's before the Farewell Dinner, the Farewell Dinner at Flaming...

I was done with exams on Friday, 18 January, and had my first day of lectures today, 21 January, the first day of Semester 2 of my Year 1 in the law school of the University of Nottingham. Besides exams gone and done with, Erica has also left Nottingham for good, what with her period of "exchange" coming to an end. She left yesterday, 20 January. With hope, I will see her in Sydney in April (if she's around and things work out such that I can go to Sydney) and maybe again in September in Hong Kong (if, again, she's around in Hong Kong and things work out in our favour). With hope. But I really do miss her around. Tonight, Tzen and I had our first dinner in FB without her around (We still told each other, "Ok, let's meet at 6:15pm at Erica's Staircase", referring to the staircase just outside Erica's room and the one nearest to the dining hall). We met 2 new exchange students who will be here for this semester. Michelle is from Hong Kong and Jenni...

For the first time in my whole entire life, I am going to be taking my first Law exam in university. I just had breakfast with Tzen, Trang and Bura, with Erica joining us later. All four of them have a 9am paper today. I just got up earlier because I slept earlier last night, and I'm more of a morning person too. As they started to put on their coats and their scarves, taking their bags, getting ready to leave FB for their respective exam venues, I suddenly felt so unprepared and afraid. What if, tomorrow, at my very own 9am paper, the first ever paper I'm taking as a Law student, an undergraduate in the University of Nottingham, I blank out. I look at the questions on the paper and... I find myself completely at a loss as to what I should write, where I should begin? What if, tomorrow, I oversleep and completely miss my paper? What if, tomorrow, I feel very, very unwell during the exam? Talking about my feeling unwell, I had the best nap I've had in days yesterday afternoo...

Last night, Tzen, Erica, Ryan and I decided to have takeout from Yun's for dinner instead of having hall food, as the dinner 'menu' just didn't seem very appealing to us. Besides, I kept asking for porridge, so... we had takeout! And I had my porridge! With century egg! Ok, it wasn't that fantastic though. A bit too bland. Definitely a far cry from what I can get back in Singapore from the hawker centre or from Aida's Kitchen at Aroozoo Avenue, but it was better than nothing. I slept later last night, at about 12 midnight. I took a clarityne before going to bed, thinking that since I'm having a runny nose, let's just take one. And if I'm not wrong, it's supposed to cause drowsiness right? So, I thought I'd be able to sleep through the night and wake up feeling better, more refreshed. However, I woke up once every hour from 4am, for no apparent reason. When I decided to get out of bed because it was coming to 8am today, I felt oh-so-tired. My ...

Last night, I sat a new record in the time at which I went to bed... NINE O' CLOCK. I haven't been feeling well the past few days. I think it's a bout of flu coming on together with symptoms of stress. Basically in my first week of the new term here in Nottingham, my body feels pretty messed up. I had pretty bad backaches and cramps in the beginning of the week. Then the headaches came on and they've been bugging me ever since. A slightly blocked, and sometimes runny, nose followed the headaches, along with a dry, sore throat. Besides all these things, I had not been sleeping well the past few nights, what with the dreams and waking up hourly. With all these cumulated, yesterday was one long, difficult day to get through. I was feeling 'under the weather' (even though the sun was shining very nicely and brightly) and I was so, so tired. Tzen and Erica kept asking me to go to bed but it was simply too early to sleep! We had an early dinner - at 5:30. And we all r...

I think, from now until the end of this exam period, the highlights or events worth mentioning from day to day will be the meals that I have with my hallmates or Singaporean friends. Yesterday, we went to Portland for lunch again, as Erica had to collect an essay from Trent Building (just next to Portland Building). It was an uneventful lunch, as usual, with conversation topics ranging from how bad the food was to people we hang out with to our housing arrangement in our next academic year. After lunch, all of us then decided to accompany Erica to the Jubilee Campus to collect her other essay. Just imagine, four people going to collect one essay. Po Yew and Tzen were quite excited about it though because it was their first time to Jubilee. There, Po Yew saw the ducks and the swans and got excited. And rather evil. He tried to catch a duck with his bare hands. Fortunately, he did not succeed in catching a duck. Lucky for us girls, at least. Afterwards, it was just more attempting to stu...

It is my 6th day back in Nottingham and, so far, it is as if everything is 'back to normal'. Thinking back on the past few days, they have been filled with 'nothings' actually - eating, studying, hanging out a little while before we return to our rooms to attempt to study... and we repeat it day after day. On Sunday, a whole group of us met up for lunch, now that everyone was back in Nottingham. Tzen, John and myself went over to Po Yew's room first because he asked us over "for a treat". The "treat" turned out to be ba kwa! We had a nice time talking and enjoying some of Po Yew's 1kg worth of ba kwa before Angie came over. We then walked into Beeston to meet Erica, Ryan and Daniel for lunch at Yun's. It was a nice, noisy affair. All of us agreed that it felt so strange to be back, yet, everything seemed so familiar and... normal. John, as usual, was already dying to get back to Singapore. Yesterday, I met John and Po Yew to go to the Law...

Going back to Singapore for a short two and a half weeks, or even lesser considering that I spent five days with my family in Hong Kong, was really nice. I got to eat at the important places I wanted to eat at - Crystal Jade Palace, Crystal Jade Kitchen, Yoshinoya, McDonald's, Kuriya, Tomoe, Margherita's, Aida's meals at Aroozoo Avenue... I got to meet all the people I wanted to meet the most - Jien, Tina, Daniel (Loke), One-Third, Wei Chuen and Limiin, Faith and Boon Yeow, Jolene, Joanne... I got to attend a weekend's worth of church and got to attend the Watchnight Service. I got to spend alot of time with my family too! Notwithstanding the fact that I spent alot of time at home working on the three essays due Monday and sleeping less in Singapore than I usually do in Nottingham as a result of having to do these essays, I had a really good time in Singapore. Now, I'm just going to post many photos and, hopefully, they are in chronological order. Christmas Actually...

So I'm back in Nottingham after approximately two and a half weeks that was spent mostly in Singapore, and a bit of it in Hong Kong with my family. Tonight is my second night here in Nottingham, and Tzen just came over to my room in a desperate attempt to study, because studying in her room by herself was starting to get her all depressed. As for me, I'm just trying to type as quietly as possible to not disturb her. I thought I'd start studying tonight, since I'd gotten all my things unpacked in the evening before dinner. However, I still had to pin up stuff on my notice board and had to try out the printer I had brought to Nottingham from home after I returned to my room full from dinner (chinese takeout in Tzen's room with Tzen, Erica and Erica's boyfriend, Ryan). That took most of my night away. As a result, I decided that tonight I'm not going to be doing any work. Instead, I will reply emails, transfer photos onto the laptop from my camera, and blog. So...