The Opera Populaire

I really appreciate the many frens God has placed in my path over the years. Sometimes the revelation surprised me; I am not the most sociable of persons. I am by nature rather quiet, though my Mom told me I was born with a gift of gab...I pick up languages and music easily and my late paternal Grandad used to be very fond of me when I was a young kid becos I was such a chatty and pretty little thing.

But I guess one thing is that I tend to open up to people easily. Somebody said before that I can talk to almost anyone...kind of a compliment, I must say. I believe in treating people with sincerity. And I dun see the need to project a certain image of myself in front of people.

While things may not be perfect at this point in my life, I find that, like many other such not so up times, God has placed great frens and family members who tided me through. Thanks to my sis in Christs from church who always find the time to pray for me even though they r themselves laden with probs and are very busy. Thanks for the sometimes harsh but timely words, not only from them, but oso from other frens outside. Think I am really priviliged to make frens who love me enough to hurt me in order to be kind. I will keep your words of wisdom in mind, peeps.

I look forward to Fridays becos Kevin will be at the Archives and I always try to sneak down to chat a bit with him. He was laughing at me the whole of yesterday whenever he bumped into me. "They paid u $2000 just to sit here and read stuff??" Haha yes. Currently I am not that busy yet so I sneak down to re-live my student days by reading theses etc. It is good to see a familiar face.

The drinks sesssion at the Dubliner's Irish Pub last night with some of the Honours peeps were great. Felt extremely touched when Sam told me that he always look forward to reading my blog, though I have been rather busy and have not much time to update it. I was oso touched when he noticed I din talk much and tried to include me in. Dun worry, Sam :) I dun talk much by nature, esp in a crowd. I like listening to wat ppl r saying and I found all our conversation very interesting last nite, esp the "racist" jokes :)

Poor Ziqian lost so much weight and looked so washed out! Hey bro, do take care hor. Eat more :) Still feel so paiseh abt u footing all our bills. Must come out with me for lunch one of these days...it will be on me!

Saw Charmaine for the 1st time since Shaoyun's wedding. Very interesting to find out how much she can drink! I mean there I was, barely able to finish my one pint of beer and she had gone on to order 3 different mugs! Wow!

To Cherky, who told us abt how the kopitiam auntie said he's handsome, this is my 2 cents' worth of opinion :*blech* Heehee joking lar, bro :)

And to Soph: great to see u again! We must meet up more often for lunch, since u r bored with eating with ur collegues everyday. U'll neva be bored having a charming, sweet, cute and did I mention charming lunch companion like me?? Hahahaha.

Miss those days at the Hon class, when it seemed that u were perpetually surrounded by people. The drinks session restored some semblance of those days, although our conversation topic had since changed. It was very funny when we exchanged our name cards and tried to pronounce each other's Chinese names. I dunno if it was too dark or something, but Cherky actually managed to mangle my name tsk tsk!

Met up after donkey years with Eugene, my former tutor, who helped to pull up my EL standards a great deal when I 1st arrived in S'pore. He treated me to Curry Favor. Ai! I intend to treat him back, becos during all those years of tutoring me and my cousins, he had always remembered to give us birthday presents and little treats here and there. And we repaid him with lame jokes and disruptions here and there. But we remained in touch all these years, attending his wedding and he visited my parents when he stopped over at Jakarta. Glad that he is doing fine.

Delia was the answer when one day I prayed to God to just send me someone to perk up my day a little. Glad that we could share a bit abt our struggles and pray for each other. Indeed, God showed me that I am not alone.