The Heart Keeps Beating

[ Me ]

Nickname: Ursula
Birthday: 7th January 1985
Zodiac: Capricorn
Where From: Singapore

Laidback, sensitive, fickle, easily-tickled, fiercely loyal

Manga and anime lover, enthusist, collector and critic/ Coffee lover, addict and expert maker/ Aspiring future wife of famous culinary chef/ Aspiring future wife of a 1.8m tall hunk

My Friendster link:
http://www.friendster.com/vivis

[ Likes ]

Sleeping, dancing, books, manga, anime, chocolates, coffee, Jap food, Italian food, Ayumi Hamasaki, people, my sister

[ Fave Books ]

Harry Potter series, Artemis Fowl series, The Inheritence Trilogy series, The Da Vinci Code, Memoir of a Geisha, I Don't Know How She Does It... and all my comics n manga!!!

[ Currently Reading ]

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
by Susanna Clarke

Inkheart
by Cornelia Funke

The Well Of Loneliness
by Radclyffe Hall

Midnight's Children
by Salman Rushdie

Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha Who Seduced The West
by Lesley Downer

The Unbearable Lightness Of Being
by Milan Kundera

The Historian
by Elizabeth Kostova

[ The Wishlist ]

My Amazon.com Wishlist:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/ref=yourlists_pop_1/103-2401787-9502236

Phillips MC235 Thin Stereo Microsystem

Kathy Van Zeeland bag
(saw on amazon.com going for bout US$65... Why dun Singapore stock her goods??! >.< I wan it in Topaz colour~!!!)

The Lord of the Rings
by J.R.R. Tolkien

Inu-Yasha Theme Song Collection

12 Kingdoms/ Juuni Kokuki anime VCD sets

GUESS bag (darn, i dun have the $120 required to buy it now and i noe it'll be gone soon, Guess always changing their apparels every month or so u_u)

DKNY gold and crystal-studded watch (very ornamental, more a dress watch then an every-funtion watch. still, pretty~)

Mphosis pale gold SLIPPERS (i run through my shoes and slippers like they cost nth X/)

The BodyShop BLUSHER in Golden Pink

The BodyShop blusher BRUSH

Shiseido eyelash CURLER

Full-length wall MIRROR(s) for my room

A new big every-purpose BAG

Pretty SHOES

A Digital CAMERA

A bloody new PC or laptop with the speed of light and a gazillion GB of memory!! =[

The Sims 2 (PC game edition)

[ The Memories ]

Sunday, October 31, 2004

Post Mortem: Dancing

Ooooh... muscles sore and acheing from dancing the whole of last nite at Sparks wif Xiang. Its been a long time since i'd 'suffered' similar aches n cramps... since my sec sch basketball days training under Cindy i think... the 'good' old days (k, tts the masochistic side of me toking).
But find that i really like to dance - its such a satisfying form of work out =) haha.

hmmm... tho cant say the same for last nite's events.
3 grps of guys came up to get to noe us last nite, once after another. n no matter how big Sparks is, no matter how packed the dance floor was, n no matter how many times we changed places to dance, this fucking bastard jus keeps returning. Fucking disgusted.

Guys met in such nite places are totally meant to be suckers.
I dunno how some relationships can come out of meeting pple at discos n stuff, but i jus cant bring myself to take them seriously. Cant blame us for making use of them for drinks n transport back rite? Guys. Duh. *roll eyes*

On a lighter note, i met up wif lay hoon n huishi for dinner in town before meeting Xiang to go Sparks. Forgot how long its been since i'd last seen lay hoon but its nice to see that she hasn't changed much :) kinda have the feeling like its onli ytd that we'd jus left our classrooms. Reminisces. Lolx!

Isn't it nice to meet up wif old frens n see that they haven't changed?

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 5:58 PM

Friday, October 29, 2004

Life of Pi

I am reading Life of Pi now.

Everytime i start a good book, which is often reccently, i'm filled with the ache and longing to devour the book whole (literally, a physically impossible feat i understand, but...the urge! the urge!) so that i may noe the whole content of the bk in the shortest time possible. But it cannot be, for a good bk have to be properly masticulated n digested, n this, takes time.

It is especially not easy when the book is between 300-800pgs long, when i wud feel the longing n urgency so in the first 100pgs or so.
If the bk is much acclaimed, as is the Life Of Pi (winner of the Man Booker Prize), this urgency is esp. strong. n i take no pride in the fact tt i have to take time; slow minutes by even slower hours, to fully savour a good book. But alas, its not an option.

When the urges are esp. strong, i fight it watever weak will-power i have, suppress the trembling in my hands (really!), to finish the pages one at a time. Fighting the urge so that i may take in the splendour of the narrative, the desciptions, and languish in the story's unfolding. I held my greed in check - no, i cannot finish the book too quickly; it does the book no justice - finish a few long chapters, 100pages or less, and then set the book temporarily aside, taking time to fully languish in wat had been unfolded so far n give it some food for thought. The urgency to finish the book then is the greatest, but i've no option but to suppress it. A good book cannot be swallowed without slowly savouring its richness.

Jus as good wine have to linger in three senses or more before we swallow it - swirling it in the wine glass first to give it body n taking it in ya sight, then when the sweet wine finally passes ya lip, rolled around in ya mouth, lingered in every crevices on ya tongue, and we savour the robustness and texture wif our taste n touch.

I'm taking a reprieve - too long already - from the book now. It shd be time before i return to it soon.

May all of u be blessed with similar assaults to ya senses with a good book soon.
tata~

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 3:26 PM

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Cursed i am that 'am not borned wif a friendly face

Been out wif Huishi today.
Holland V.
n its like my, wat? second time there onli in recent years??
gawd. i'm so not living like a modern teenager shd :/

Didn't noe we could tok so much.
n big whoops - several scandalous revelations.
*raise eyebrows*
lolx! ;p
Really hafta hang out n 'catch up' more often (nice way of saying 'gossip', lolx =p), keke.

which reminds me tho...
wondered where or who she got my blog addy from...
yeah, was shocked when she told me she actually has my blog linked to hers.
had not planned on having a reading audience (or at least, not of anyone i noe) when i'd first started private blogging in this 'public' place.
sort of scares me to think of who else are reading my blog.
but i was stupid to think that cyberspace is privee to oneself or a chosen few anyway...

Anyway, met Mrs. Chua n Ben ytd after sch to discuss bout their new opening of their restaurant cum pub - Bermuda Triangle Bistro.
Ended up having both lunch and dinner wif them ytd (their treat...so nice of them. haven started earning $ for them and already start spending their money), going to another pub wif them n staying so long that xiang n i reached home onli after midnite. Dead tired.

Yup. Xiang n i will be returning to waitress for them as their pioneer batch of staff when they newly open the bistro next week or the wk after.
gone will be our slacking days of uni already... dunno how am i gonna be able to adjust so suddenly to a 5-6 day work week while still studying...
seriously, i hadnt expected them to take us back as full-time staff...onli tot we'd be working on a part-time basis when we agreed to working for them two weeks back.
n no, i had definitely NOT tot that it'll be a pub again...
xiang n i had be under the illusion that we'll be waitresses at their restaurant this time... -.-
But we had already promised them.

Frankly... really not looking forward to returning to the old days when every tot that passes my mind each nite before slp is dark, depressing, hideous and full of hatred n self-loathing. I dun wan to hafta 'sell' my 'smile' or 'other services' in again. But in this line, its inevitable. In fact, smiling is a must in any service industry. But i'm not one of those pple who were born wif an easy smile on their faces wif little or no effort. Sometimes, i think it probably uses me more facial muscles than others to work my face into a smile. Cursed i am that 'am not borned with a friendly face -.-

Smiling 'false' smiles always give me a headache, which i've to bear with until the nite ends. Literally. No one i noe seems to suffer similar maladies like these; they had at most jus felt their facial muscles ache or numb wif prolonged fake smiling.

Cursed i am that 'am not borned wif a friendly face =/

So pple, those of u who dun noe me well. If u see me wif an unapproachable expression on my unsmiling face, dun be offended or frightend away -
Thats jus my ugly hide.

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 11:16 PM

Sunday, October 10, 2004

Your Sexual Profile (you sexual deviant you...) by sparkledee
Name
Your Secret Kink Thing	You have a puke fetish.
Your Sexual Strength	Amazing fingers...oh YES!
Your Sexual Weakness	You're terrified of penises.
Your Likely STD	You've every STD known to man
How Many Partners in Crime?	Too numerous to count! SLUT!

Quiz created with MemeGen!

Your Love Life by lpfloatsmyboat
Name/username/nickname:
favorite color:
best physical quaility:	lips
best personality trait:	friendly
will you marry your bf/gf that you have now?	no
when will you get married?	January 7, 2012
your kiss is:	fiery
People date you because:	you're funny

Quiz created with MemeGen!

Lolx! try these out!

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 1:54 AM

Elfriede Jelinek

Boy, wat advantages winning the Nobel Prize Award for Literature has... aside from the $10 milion Swedish Kronor (S$2.3 million) prize money of cos. But lets not go into that.

How fickle can the literary world be?
n by that i mean the readers, not writers.

Man, imagine how easily one's winning of the Nobel Prize award for Literarture will propel one's book sales up the charts practically over-night. In a surprising turn of events, the German author of controversial books such as The Piano Teacher (the author's semi-autobiographical novel which was made into a movie; about a music teacher who indulges in violent sex and mutilates her own genitials with a razor), Lust and Women As Lovers - Elfriede Jelinek- shocked the book world with the news of her win.

Aside for The Piano Teacher which was turned into a movie, she was a relatively unknown writer with books that aren't exactly crowd-pleasers either. n u noe wat? i was online checking out her books on Amazon.com n discovered that of her four books, three of which has never stepped into the Top 50 ranking before (the ranking depicting the amt of books of that title sold online on Amazon.com, n therefore the book's popularity), have suddenly shot up the charts. The highest even being in the top 20.

Is it her sudden winning of the Nobel Prize that increased her recognition in the book world that had spur more people to buy her books? Or like me (who checked out her books online), had bought the book mainly to uncover the controversial topics in her books and judge for themselves the worthiness of her win of such a prestigious award?

Frankly, like most of the world out there, i could not see the justice in her win. There are so many other nominees this year whom i find more deserving of this award than her. Unless the judging panel was judging more on the shock value....

I could not bring myself to watch The Piano Teacher when it was released in 2002, neither could i bring myself to pick up the book now, no matter wat recognition it had gained. n judging from the editorial and reader reviews of her other books, they are equally as dark n maybe, more radical.

Maybe i'll jus pick out one of her other books at the library the next time i go and see if its worth the nightmares i'll have to borrow n read =/

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 1:16 AM

Saturday, October 09, 2004

Cute-guy alert!

Met this very cute guy at bp plaza who resembles alot like Clive.
Like, he had about the same height, same spiky hair, same mega-watt smile n stuff?

Went to the home-diy/decor shop to exchange stuff my mum had bought there previously n he was the sales assistant who attended to me.
And boy, he had a great smile!
Charmed =) hee~
He's so cute!! Dun mind going back jus to see him again, haha ;p
Which is wierd, cos u dun c me going gaga over the real Clive like that.
Now thinking about it... i havent gone gaga over any guy since i entered JC =/
Haha, its sure nice to have some eye-candy once in a while =p

Which makes me wonder also... where is Clive n how is he doing now?
or for that matter, Claudia n the rest?
Hmmm.

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 10:33 PM

Sunday, October 03, 2004

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell

Finally got the book i've been itching to get for the past 3 weeks or so - Jonathan Strange & Mr.Norell - by Susanna Clarke. Wheeeee~

n u noe smth ridiculous?
altho it has spent several weeks at the TOP of the bestseller-lists in most countries (USA, Europe, Amazon.com, etc) since its debut about 2-3 mths ago, it has ONLY jus reached the bookshelves in Singapore bout 2 weeks ago!! is tt absurd or wat?!
No, no wait. That's not even the most ridiculous thing yet... the fact tt Kinokuniya, the largest bookshop in S'pore tt boasts of holding more than five-hundred-thousand titles under its belt DOES NOT even carry this book yet... i think tt takes the cherry. CAN U FREAKING BELIEVE IT??! I had to get it at the relatively smaller Borders at Wheelocks Place instead ytd. n i could jus as easily have bought it at Popular outlets (which started carrying the bk bout 2 wks ago). Is this a joke?? *roll eyes* man...

But boy, is it ex...
actually costs bout 40 plus bucks??
ah well... it IS nearly 800 pages long....
its even fatter, bigger, broader n taller than my latest (n thickest) Harry Potter book so far... n oooh, does it look gooood on my bookshelf ;)
lolx~!

Been so longing to get my hands on the book, but now tt i've finally got it, i dunno when to start reading oso... its so thick i probably have to find 3-4 days of quiet to settle down n finish the book... n there's still a few library bks n comics i've yet to finish.

Hmmm... will be buying the next book in the Artemis Fowl series next... prob cost me bout 15 bucks... wondering will the price drop anytime soon?? This, i noe i wun wait to read... ;> heh.

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 6:40 PM

Friday, October 01, 2004

"Excuse me -- how much is the ticket to Hell?"

"Do you have to ask? Of course its free. Because you're Death!"

- Taken from one of the mangas i've scanlated (can't remember which, rubbished it after reading it). The whole manga's pretty much crap actually, but i like these quotes *smiles*. Kinda have a nice ring to it, heh =]

+ Ursula r e m e m b e r s again + 10:29 PM