-random

its funny how condo (and perhaps landed property, except those tradtional looking ones) residents are stereotyped as english speaking, and hdb flat residents as chinese speaking or their mother tongue. just now outside my condo, someone approached me for help. he looked like he was a chinese speaker, but talked to me in singlish. he either perceived me as english speaking from my face, or just cos i stayed in a condo.
i would expect most of my neighbours to be english speaking too, somehow. and when like ppl do CIP or whatever charity at hdb flats, they always open the convo with the residents using mother tongue. even if the residents r young ppl. but thats not always the case that hdb dwellers speak mother tongue more. during a goodwill thing to deliver packages to 1room hdb flats as part of church camp, i remember coming across this very old chinese man in his flat. we talked to him in chinese, and he gave us the confused look and just slowly walked over to the gate before saying, "i dont understand..."
it probably became a stereotype that in order to be more successful in career, you gotta be english speaking, so that only those more successful and relatively richer ppl get to live in condos and landed property. its only true to a small extent, cos in todays society english is a must for better jobs and so is passing english in whatever exams. but couldnt ppl have just the required english fluency while speaking chinese the rest of the time, and still be successful? i dont see any reason why they cant. after all, the top 3 students in my class are all chinese speaking =.=' and no, they are not study robots imported from china.

speaking of that, its surprising how faces can so accurately tell of what they speak. just by looking at someone (chinese ppl only), i can roughly tell if that person is chinese or english speaking, or sometimes both. and its rather accurate most of the time! even as i look back at my classmates, those who are ES and CS all have the corresponding looks. the bilingual ones are harder though.
i think the most suitable explaination i have is that when ppl see u at first impression, they kinda judge whether ur ES or CS, and respectively talk 2 u in that language. and over the years, with this continually going on, u get moulded into the habit of speaking that lang. for the bilingual ones, i guess its like they somehow have a english face, but their family always speaks chinese or vice versa. confusing and amazing at the same.

staying just a stone throw away from vast nature has its own interesting effects. some animals just cant differentiate between trees and condos. so recently i have had invasions of huge wasps that come in every other night to buzz at my lights. when they first came, there were 9 of them, each one more than 2cm long, crowding around the ceiling lamps and like making a nest there. once that happens, they would consider it as their territory and attack us if we go near. my dad was really worried about them entrenching in our house but we had no inect spray. so i ended up using a newspaper and whacking all of them to death. (they are too distracted by the lights to run from danger.) lately i have moved on to more sadistic methods like using a scissors to just cut them alive into half! of course they have to be stationary for that. its fun to explore new methods of ridding these unwary creatures for the greater good.

a week ago i plucked a stalk of wild flower from near the nature reserve, and put it in a flask of water for display at home. now, it has started growing out roots from its stem! never expected it to be this kind of plant. and never come across such plants before. no wonder it could survive for so long after being cut. so i decided to transplant it into soil and have it grow and produce more flowers, hopefully. while doing this, i found some nice pots and gathered extra soil, so i suddenly decided to start growing beans again! no balcony this time so i cant plant a whole container of them. but just one or 2 in small pots which i can put on my ledge. needless to say, i wont be expecting to farm generations after generations of beans. or that flowering plant for that matter.

time seems to be flying extra fast these days. and the thing is, it flies fast even when im not having fun. though one thing i can say, i have not been doing anything stressful or that i dont like to do. still, it seems i have been spending unexpectedly long time on the stuff i do, or taking longer than expected to do them. and so especially on free days, i look at the clock every now and then and get shocked at how much time has passed already. it really feels like time is running faster, or disappearing into nowhere. hmm... holidays are such a bliss. then when school starts again and the projects and assignment pile up, time shall slow down once again, to my disfavour.

crap talk
Dad: so were there any restrictions on you for using the gym?
Me: uh.. not that i know of..
Dad: no kids allowed ah?
Me: WHAT KIDS?!?!
Dad: hahaha... i knew that will get your reaction.