Sweater Weather.

The Neighbourhood's Sweater Weather has been one of my favourite songs recently, which I discovered just before arriving on these dreary shores, since I have had nary the chance nor ability to do any discovering since, what with no WiFi and all UNTIL TODAY YAY!

I thought it was an apt song to bring into autumn (my favourite season as some of you may know) but it is scarcely true. As sad as it makes me to say this, I have to declare that this is parka weather instead. It's been raining every single day (or it sure feels like it has) since I've got back. Masigh.

Today I wore a shirt to class. This sounds like just about the most mundane and meaningless statement in the world. Or so I would have thought. Instead, what I got were comments like these. "Why are you wearing a shirt today?" "Did you run out of clothes?" "I thought you had some kind of wardrobe malfunction or something." DO YOU GUYS EVEN KNOW WHAT THE WORD FRIEND MEANS GUYS? I mean, how depressing is that?! Admittedly my wardrobe has needed a little sprucing up for a while now (incidentally I bought myself a fancy new plant flower shrub thing because spruce refers to some coniferous tree apparently) but frank astonishment I did not expect, not from people I had heretofore (what a lawyer I am) called "friends".

So. Been pretty busy these few weeks, largely with church related activities, and I am pleased to note that my first week at children's church went well and without injury nor tears nor mucus et al! (Wow totally didn't realize it at first but that's a phonetic pun right there. i.e. at all. Must be the Law and Literature module I'm doing, also a fantastic one!) Sure there were only 2 kids there but still it was a roaring success in my books! The adorablerestness kids of the whole world I assure you.

Been attending lectures with almost near perfect faithfulness (yes I just skipped my first lecture yesterday sigh. I am disappoint.) like the aforementioned Law and Lit as well as Forensic Speech, which are fascinating just on the strength of them being the minor modules which arise purely out of their own interest and are the professor's brainchildren I guess, the kinda things they themselves are passionate about, so it's been mighty good. Just attended a reading of Where The Wild Things Are which was fab, so I am only expecting greater and better things from here on out. Apparently saying things like greater and better is a linguistic tool called a doublet, and there's your random piece of education you never were expecting. The wonders of the internet hey.

And meeting friends and other people, not actually had much free time of late and what time I do I have spent on FFX. Didn't quite like the game initially but man am I hooked now. It really is quite bad.. Yuna looks terrible when not in CGI form though, i.e. normal gameplay, but ohwell I really shouldn't be trying to notice fictional characters should I?

Been reading City Of Small Blessings, the book kinonn kidnapped for weeks back in Singapore, which has been pretty good so far. Also finished this epic book called Sleepwalkers, a non-fiction account of the shenanigans that lead up to the First World War and changed forever the world, leading as it did to the Second World War etc etc. Really quite a fantastically researched and articulated narrative, and it's definitely going to add some colour and knowledge when I go and my Eastern European adventures this winter (I hope!) And Emeritus Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew's One Man's View of the World, which was good as well. The breadth of knowledge and insights that this one man has, it's not even funny man. For some reason it's cool to like LKY and it's cool to hate on the PAP too. Weird singaporeans. I guess it is hard to deny his influence, the same way I've probably never heard anyone complain about the late Dr Goh Keng Swee.

Cool in Singapore is really weird nowzadayz cause I just found the new Navy advert on youtube and it is pretty awesome, especially that tagline: We may be out of sight but you will always be on our minds. Or something like that. And just about 90% of the comments are from SGAG-gers (okay I might be wrong for taking that as the standard for "cool" cause most of those people make me want to gag.) who were lured there by the promise of a pretty female officer, and they're split between professing their unending ardour and desire for her, and deploring her upsetting unattractiveness. As my friend jess would surely say, kill me lah.

I do have a friend though, who seems rather ashamed of being Singaporean, or possibly just Singlish, and has this overwhelming sense that he wants to be British with the best of them. It's pretty disturbing really. Not that he doesn't like singapore or anything, it's just this sort of sense of inferiority. Which is kinda easy to fall into sometimes I guess. My uncle told me the first time I voyaged to Hong Kong at the tender young age of 14 that one of the key things he wanted to tell me was that: Never to feel inferior to anyone, especially Westerners. And I guess that extends to everything exterior as well. So I find it odd when I meet someone who does, a little.

I just had my wisdom tooth extraction a week before I was due to fly, which saddened me greatly cause I wanted to indulge in all da food before leaving. And I did! Because I suffered almost not at all from any pain or swelling at all, thank God! KTP Hospital is my new third home I think. The staff there are fantastic, and I am 159% pleased with my entire experience there. Visiting dentists has never been this painless.

Which leads me to this next question I shall pose the universe. Must all dentists possess fine eyes? I went to the medical centre in base (of all places) for my dental assessment (which I failed miserably apparently thanks to my wise but uglily grown tooth) and the first thing (indeed the only thing I could) I noticed was the dentists' eyes. If eyes could launch ships the way faces do (see: Helen of Troy) then surely she belongs rightly to a naval base. Okay I did notice the engagement ring too after, but those eyes! Haha that's been one of the things I've been meaning to say for a while now, because it was one of the bright spots of my stint back home (as lecherous as that sounds..)

Erm, have also done up my room so it looks a lot more presentable now than it did when I first arrived, which was quite an unmitigated disaster of a first encounter! Sparse, sad-looking, shelve-less, wires sticking out of walls. Managed to bum a (shaky) shelf off my street-mates (also the aforementioned jessica) so my room is at least serviceable now. As long as I don't rumble the floor too much and send all my books sprawling. For some reason I had like 30 books leftover from last year, which frankly is shocking given that I purposefully tried not to make any big purchases from amazon or bookdepository.. Well that number does include statute books and law revision texts, but they are so overwhelmingly in the minority I am ashamed even to mention them.

What else. My life does seem so sparse everytime I attempt to encapsulate it in words. But what do when life is average. As the Kaiser Chiefs say, #everythingisaveragenowadays. How they tried to charge 30 or 40 or even 50 plus for a performance at my uni is still baffling to me. I paid 50 for MUSE IN LONDON BUDDIES. Oh in other cool news heading up to Manc in november for Imagine Dragons, imagine that! Thinking if I should go for TNAF again cause it's just 2 days away.... Don't see why not really, unless I truly overspend which I am quite in danger of doing unfortunately. Too much going out and pizzas over the last few weeks, and not enough cooking sadly.. Have only cooked once since getting back although I do make the excuse that I have no idea how to use this gas oven..

Well that as they say, is that. Not quite got that much to say, so bye. (Probably my most parentheses filled post in months as well, although I'm not sure if they mean anything, or if this signifies anything in the greater scheme of things at all, or maybe it's just one of those meaningless observations which serve no purpose but to fill space and frustrate minds.)