The Pensieve

Rating: ****

‘Juno’ starring Ellen Page, features the nine-month detour that a sixteen year old junior takes when she decides to keep her pregnancy and eventually give up the child for adoption.

I have to marvel at the tenacity of this child-woman. This girl, who lives with her parents, who hasn’t outgrown her childhood yet, has much to bear when she makes such a huge decision, and all independent of her boyfriend… who IMHO, is a wimp. There are no major emotional scenes, no big quarrels that rock the scene but a whole series of little heart-warming nuggets throughout the entire film.

It’s a film that showcases love at all levels - love between a man and a woman, love between a stepmother and her stepchild, love between a couple longing for a baby of their own, and the innocent teenage love (ok, in this case, not that innocent). It’s all together a very family film and teaches us how to make the best of circumstances, instead of dwelling on upsetting matters. It doesn’t censor us or our actions, but teaches us to cherish the miracle of life, and of loving and giving. (at this point I think I sound like a christmas commercial).

Anyway, it’s good to catch such films once in a while, before I get all jaded and hard-hearted dealing with unpleasant circumstances at work.

In the recent years, I’ve always opened public toilet doors with a bit of trepidation, just somehow, I think one day I’m going to find a body on the floor of that toilet.

A short while ago, I was mooning around feeling kind of lost and aimless… Sort of not knowing what I wanted in life and getting extremely depressed and worried the more I thought about it. In fact, my pet phrase became… ‘I don’t know’. <— that’s something I’ve never had to say in my quarter-of-a-century. I remember my cousin telling me that I needed time to think about my options, or maybe I was just exhausted after the long spate of exams followed by that mental and physical stress of housemanship. Or maybe I’ve just played too much during my er-hem ortho posting…

Anyway, it just suddenly hit me that day. Like how that retching hits patients when you shoot in the ceftriaxone too quickly, or how some patients seem to have that awful sensation of burning chest tightess as that iv push of adenosine just zooms in… Anyway it just hit me manz…

So I think my life’s back on track to the way I like it, time for work and study, a couple of projects and great friends… It’s all going to stretch me a bit thin but I think I’ll just give it my best shot!

Or my bank account is so going to suffer manz…

Waaa I thought I was going to roll around on my bed and feed some fungus these five days, but I was soooo wrong! As usual, I had to make FULL use of my free time, which resulted in meeting different groups of friends, buying textbooks, collecting certs, settling insurance issues, chking out travel agencies blah blah… Couldn’t quite catch my breath. *Huff huff*

And to top it off, my dad had a syncopal attack (which brought us back to my workplace)…

And I had to do an assignment….

And someone dropped a bomb about exams… which resulted in frantic planning of scedules… and a lot of uncertainty about what I’m going to do…

And I am now ending my leave on a big bang - - - by falling ill!

BAH!

During this break, I finally got to meet up with THAT gang of people from my sec two days… haha…

It was rather hilarious…

We used to grouch about:
- that one particular teacher with flowery language who used to give us endless assignments and then lose our work which gets buried in a pile of to-be-marked assignments on her table
- that oh-so-eccentric dance teacher who never seemed to age
- how we got only A2 instead of A1 (we were the biggest bunch of nerds alive)
- how we haven’t started studying for finals when we’re probably on round 2 of revision (hahaha)
- how the meepok queue is SO LONG and our break is SO SHORT

Now we’re like a bunch of scary women talking about:
- divorce laws and alimony (not that anyone in my group is getting divorced, heck, no one’s even married yet… but we truly believe in planning ahead)
- NS captains and how unattracted we (or maybe only SHE) is to them
- hair woes: the perming, dying, straightening, ionic combs blah blah…

and then… in the bus, two of us were like dozing off (we’re not young anymore, we can’t chatter continuously like the two chipmunks sitting just behind… so noisy!)
Anyway, those two teenagers (I believe one was in Uni yr 1 and the other in J2 and they were church friends) were talking about relationships and religion, school and you know the usual stuff…
It was so filled with angst and ridiculous notions (I’m sure I thought like this in the past…) that when those two got off, the two of us were just roaring with laughter… Haha so mean!

Ok i’m officially on LEAVE from August 12th to 16th and I’m likely to be staying put in Sg.

So all those people I’m supposed to meet up with but haven’t been able to, it’s time we shld get together! (you know who you are).

I don’t think I’ve ever been to the NATAS fair… this year, I thought I’d be able to catch some good promos for my vacation… Little did I know it would be a night of cruising the roads… Not the travel booths…

First I took a rather successful trip from my place to AH (I’m sooo proud of myself! Cuz the last time I tried to drive to NUH from work, I got lost!) Then we took a really nauseating drive on the ECP to Expo… to find… the queue to get into the car park was simply unbelievable! In the end we actually dropped off the other people and decided we would rather get dinner than starve in the queue for expo!

At least there was free parking at IKEA. yummy fish and chips… :) but I felt a bit nauseated… Cuz I hadn’t had anything since breakfast and it’s not really good to ‘break fast’ with oily stuff eh.

Then sent my friend home… and tried to figure out what was according to him, an EASY way to get back to my place… Then I somehow ended up driving into IMH! Best… I think I have a natural attraction towards hospitals… After bungling around a bit, I figured my way to Marymount… almost thought I’d gotten to the highway home when I suddenly found myself in BALESTIER!!! Nearby TTSH! Gawd…

But at least I know my way home from there well! haha.. . I’m such a loser.