yesterday was nus Flag Day which means that there was a high chance you were accosted by someone in a puke blue shirt between 0600 and 2200 hours asking you to donate to some noble nus charity shit. since it's all part of the great rag and flag tradition where the faculty which collects the most money wins, the m2s have been nagging at us for weeks to turn up to help extort money yesterday. our og was supposed to flag at toa payoh, but ended up being public nuisances around bugis and city hall, where we dispersed in order to divide and conquer. except, when we got started around 11 (after a good mac's breakfast) we discovered that dentistry and arts year1s had beat us to prime locations. mandy and i started the day off at bugis and walked through raffles city and suntec, where we were invariably sucked into the shops. whatever could we do; we were merely serving our national duty as fine patriots of the economy! anyway, for the hour or so that we actually -did- our charity work, we practically raped joshua and woochiao flat, especially given the amount of haggling and travelling and begging which went into their one-third-full cans. haha! it's all about the innocent beseeching look and the polite 'excuse me sir, would you like to make a donation?' and then of course there's the 'thankyousomuchsir' or the 'fuckoffsir' depending on the kind of response we solicited. mostly we didn't need to use much of the latter, although we were amazed at how many people would actually risk their lives to cross the road in the face of oncoming traffic just to avoid being stuck with us at red lights.

so, compared to the excitement and activity (haha) of yesterday, today has really been a next to comatose day for me. i spent half of it sleeping and the majority of my waking hours doing 'arty farty' things as mark just called it. i painted 2 ikea photo frames in the afternoon, one of which was in a yellow colour which looks ok from certain angles and makes me feel like puking from others:



i wanted to spray it with fixative so that the paint won't keep coming off on my hands when i touch them, but i couldn't find the can of spray which i bought in december, and the mental exertion from searching and getting pissed caused me to develop a headache which required even more sleep afterwards. then i touched up the stitching on the pencil cases i made earlier on and sewed down the straps on my bag which keeps falling apart everytime i pick it up. so it has been quite a productive day, except that i haven't quite started doing what i was supposed to do in the first place, which is: study.

apparently some people in my og are so kiasu that they've like studied the entire cell biology chapter and first aid course book which were uploaded onto mednet, and this is stressing me out because it is making me feel more stupid than i need to feel. i looked through the first aid book and immediately i knew there would be trouble because half of it is like common sensical stuff, which is a problem because i don't do very well in situations requiring common sense. plus, the grand finale is to perform CPR on a dummy, which i am not looking forward to because i am not keen on putting my mouth onto a pair of unhygeinic unwashed plastic lips.

happy national day everyone!