June!

Every year before this it'd have been "June! Holidays!!!" but unfortunately that is no longer. Haha twas an exciting month nonetheless, right till the end. Things are worth remembering and memory's spilling over, so it's time for some plain old archiving.

The first notable thing from June should be visiting Platform 1094 aka the "Harry Potter cafe" or, more appropriately, the Harry Potter-themed cafe #copyrights. Anyway, one of the first things that left an impression was that... ... they were playing LOTR music. After hearing the entire track of "The Breaking of the Fellowship" (sans "In Dreams") I couldn't help portioning some attention to the background music and naming all the tracks I could. All in my head though, my friends weren't interested xD [Yes, there were actual HP tracks playing from time to time.] Food was ok at best. Drinks were amusing though: most we could tell were regular cocktails... but new name new identity! The bday girl ordered this sour blue drink that came in a transparent cauldron-shaped cup along with a plastic-tasting straw. Showtime: the waiter slid a spoonful of flaming substance into the drink so that there literally were blue flames dancing on the surface of the blue drink. Sprinkle some cinnamon powder on top and voila! you get a rain of tiny, falling flares and a nice insta video. The waiter waited awkwardly at the side for us to finish sprinkling more powder for more social media goodness, before capping the cup and extinguishing the flame. My drink brought back memories of the butterbeer from the Harry Potter studios back in London... Was pretty nice, though I suspect it contained a fair bit of ice cream soda after spotting stacks of bottles at the back of the place. Price was not amusing--not-so-cheap thrills I guess. tl;dr worth the novelty, but wouldn't go back. Prob should give the cafe a little more credit though. Considering that I did no advance drafting for this post, the length of the para speaks of how memorable that whole thing was, even if it happened an entire month ago.

Next up there was this slightly intense period at work. Such that one fine Sunday morning I found myself otw to Climb Central, laptop in hand and eyeballing my drafts on the bus so that I could climb in peace afterwards. Also got to experience turning off the lights at the office for the first time. Heh still nowhere near the late nights of the uni days, though I never want to come under those same conditions in working life. Staying in the office with the team till 2340 on D-1 was a milestone enough, and from post-D0 till the end of that week I pretty much felt like an understuffed pillow. In case you missed what we launched on D0, here it is! Best viewed on PC for all the interactive features to work! I'm proud of it. It feels like I've achieved something fairly significant since starting work roughly 5.5 months ago :) Took me a while to recover from that episode though, coz my sleep debts rack up interests of 150%.

Shortly afterwards, I noticed that FB was being v enthusiastic in surfacing my "on this day" memories. Turns out these were from 2 years ago, over a stretch of 10 days, when I'd taken to FB daily to prove my status of "alive and well", from wherever I happened to be in Europe. While I definitely meant to, I never wrote about my solo cross-country trip in the summer of 2015. If there's one thing that deserved to be written about from back then but never got to see light, it's this. So I've decided, that's next up here! Already copied the full 10 days of memories, ready for a major throwback.

Much monkey business in the final half of June, causing an inordinate number of trips up to Novena which I otherwise barely have reason to visit. Back in May I'd acted on a compelling urge to sign up for SOMETHING and ended up joining this year's installment of Velocity Urban Attack (must thank the REP ninja for posting his intentions on FB). Got the early bird too, that's how little dithering there was... Then I spent the following few weeks wondering what I'd done, coz my shoulders haven't exactly been in a very healthy state. Was genuinely pretty unnerved one week before my qualifiers, esp after going down to scout and watching sooo many people fail early in the course. Felt better though, after visiting the HDB Hub gym (again, props to aforementioned ninja) and finding out I could at least still handle monkey bars :D Turns out, compulsive as it was, it was a pretty worthwhile decision! Against all odds, I made it into finals (qualified 15th out of 15 girls) just by completing the first 2 obstacles. Then again, the obstacles were harsh this year. Harsh enough to eliminate many people at the second obstacle, regardless of gender. And that's how I ended up on the right side of the bell curve: just from being able to do a baby campus on wooden rungs of almost-finger-length thickness. Climber's advantage! And then... err.... couldn't get past the third obstacle (google "ninja warrior body prop" to see what it is, got no photos of myself) coz of my perpetually malfunctioning pushing muscles and joints. [Video of my v short run is on insta, or ask me] In any case, by the finals run I'd already gotten to play on the whole course for a couple of hours in total, much more than I'd have gotten without qualifying. Satisfied the adult monkey in me! Pretty happy about all this, considering that just a few weeks previously I was still afraid of doing pull-ups. Well I've had my fun, so I guess it's time to recover once and for all. Haha all this monkey business (long climb on the same weekend included, man that overkill) does take a toll, and I can't keep taping my shoulders forever. No more bouldering for now :/

Most people know that climbing is a weekend staple for me (when I'm not injured). But throughout the month, I've been in various conversations that drew attention to the other weekend staple of mine, the one I never really paid much attention to coz it's always been there. Since I was born (it's been happening since before I was born), every Saturday night is reserved for visiting my grandparents' place in AMK where my entire dad's side extended family gathers. It's always been a regular weekend "routine"... until I heard that others get to see their extended families once every year on CNY. Only then did I realise what kind of luck I was born into. My cousins are not strangers coz I see them every week and literally grew up playing with them. At dinner, everyone--cousins all now part of the adult-sized bunch--has to squeeze shoulder-to-shoulder at the same wooden dining table which a few years ago was so much roomier. Dinner itself's always worth looking forward to coz there's always good food and general entertainment inclusive of vulgar jokes. True story but I will not repeat them here xD That not-so-big AMK flat keeps getting smaller and rowdier over the years. Sign of a close and growing family (and I don't just mean sideways)! It's no time for deep thoughts, but I just wonder how it took almost 24 years for me to realise that this is no mere routine, but a treasure.

Last but not least, the exchange season has started. I'm not going anywhere unfortunately *sobs*, exchange is for younger people. But I still have school-going friends: some are leaving, and others are coming home. For REP in particular, everyone gets to go for one full year away and that same year does not pass in a flash for those who are not overseas enjoying life xD [Happens that today it's exactly 2 years since I came back (on my mum's bday!)] Well, another full year is coming to an end. And for some reason, although it really shouldn't apply to me, I'm looking forward to the start of the new sem :)