i have been lazy i know - i spent the past 20 minutes looking for a new blog skin, and trying to change the table size in order to get it to fit properly. the table size won't budge however so i have words overflowing from the table which is ugly so i will deal with that another time when i feel more up to it, heh.

anyway i'm actually not in the midst of doing an essay! (well actually i am supposed to start doing one but i've been putting it off, heh, i will start once i finish blogging). it's been a very hectic week, but a really fun one as well. i went to escape with serene and sheryl on monday night, which was crazy - shisha, cocktails and some rather plucky fun. the first time i went to a club for 2 or 3 months i think. amazing i know. suffice as to say i really really had an awesome girls' night out, and some things that happened during that night (and things that were said!), uh-hem, shall remain secret.

and then on friday it was half-way hall. that went on very very well also. the dinner was surprisingly good, considering it was hall food - a gut-busting 5 course meal of soup, pate, steak and potatoes and mixed vegetables, lemon mousse sponge thing that was very nice, and then cheese and biscuit platter (with stilton!) and then a plate of chocolate mints. the drinks flowed rather freely as well, champagne reception, followed by some rather pleasant and sweet white and red wine during the dinner, and my favourite dessert wine, port, to go with the chocolates and cheese. after that we started dancing on the high table! that was hilarious because the provost was there as well (next to the table, not on the table) doing a jiggly tune of his own. (i think he had too much to drink). i think the high table developed a crack under the weight of the many people dancing on it. then it was off to the bar to chat, and then off to escape again to dance. very tiring night but great fun.
tracy and i in an attempt at an artistic shot:

with anna and divindy, me looking slightly red in the face - not the alcohol but the heat i swear!

people dancing on the high table:


it's striking that i really am halfway through my university education. it is really counting down from now on. my provost said that the dinner was a dinner of celebration, i agree. freshers dinner, we were too nervous, not very comfortable with meeting so many new people and for me, having to be someone i was not. finalists dinner will be a bitter sweet thing i know, because it marks the end of my time at oxford, my time with my lovely friends, and my time learning the oxford way. it is indeed a privilege and very enriching. i hope i have matured and have become more, i don't know how to put it, ready? tracy and i were talking about how circumstances change one's circle of friends, and it seems like once circumstances change one hardly keeps in contact with old friends anymore. and a part of me always felt guilty, still do, that people who meant so much to me don't seem to be at the fore of my thoughts now. i am worried, because much as i want to remain close friends, being in a different country really does make things harder. i will be very sorry to say goodbye to such good friends. yet it seems inevitable. when tracy tells me about her uni life in china, and the times she spent with her dorm mates, i wonder if they still keep in touch. now tracy knows me very very well now, and i will like to think i know her very very well now too, but it seems that neither of us is willing to admit that things will change, and worse, that we might actually be all right, though regretful, if things do change. she will be busy working in london or hong kong, and i will be back in singapore. now that's not all that far, and we've made plans to meet up in thailand this summer if she is working in hong kong, and i have told her that she will be making my will for me (lol thinking far ahead i know), but is this just talk?

lovers say 3 little words to each other, i love you. sometimes they mean it, sometimes they don't and sometimes they only mean it for a period of time. friends say 3 little words too, keep in touch. is it like i love u, too?

i realise fully now why i like to read my friends' blogs so much now. it is to keep in touch with their lives, because i can't directly do it sometimes. part of it is because of the physical distance and time constraint, but i know part of it, most of it, is the fear that i no longer mean so much, if anything, any more. the fear that when i say, hey let's meet up, my friend will think i am a lunatic, after months or years of not talking at all, a let's meet up sounds like i am selling them insurance (like in singapore dreaming) or something! will they still care?

tian xia wu bu san zi an xi. sigh. won't it sometimes be easier if this wasn't the case?