michelle teoh

Winding Up at Windermere

KY was the one who suggested pre-Easter break that we should go to Lake District, one of the more renowned northern destinations to travel to on vacation. Two weeks into Easter break, it was getting obvious that if we didn’t just up and go, we would probably end up never making the trip a reality. So, on Wednesday, I received texts from my friends saying they were buying train tickets to Lake District for tomorrow. So I did the same. And the next morning, at 9:16AM, we were heading for Windermere, Lake District.

The night before, I came home at 3AM after spending the day with Rumin at Trafford Centre after picking up my US Visa from Moseley Road. Then, as per my daily pre-sleeping ritual, I spent an hour on my phone before realising it was 4:30AM and started to panic and in turn, the panic made it even more difficult to fall asleep. By the time my alarm rang the next morning, I was pretty certain I’d barely slept for more than two hours.

Rumin, KY and I headed for Manchester Piccadilly first the next morning since we live nearest to the station and waited for the remaining seven (Yee Lin, Nicole, Ash, Jia Yang, CC, Ernie and Ze Kai) to turn up before heading for Platform 14. It was already past 9AM so we started rushing — and it was exactly this rushing that led to me hearing yells of “NO THIS IS THE WRONG TRAIN” as soon as I stepped on the platform and seeing CC attempting to stop the closing doors of the train with his hands. And failed. Still in my half-asleep state, I turned to look at the sign next to the railway track which announced that the train that had just left, the train that CC and also, I later on found out, Ernie, had wrongly boarded, was a 9:06AM train to London Euston. The Piccadilly station workers noticed our shocked, and quite frankly, amusing, predicament and advised us to call CC and Ernie to get off at the next Oxford Road station and board the right train heading towards the direction of Glasgow.

We couldn’t really stop cracking up with laughter after that, all the way to Oxford Road station. The trip hadn’t even started and we’d already lost two of our members.

We were reunited at Oxford Road, after which the two-hour journey to Windermere commenced. I forced myself to take a nap despite being in a rather unideal position for napping because I knew I would probably be filled with regret if I didn’t once we reached Windermere. I barely caught a few winks from the discomfort and okay, maybe also excitement at going on a trip with my friends for the first time in the UK, and before I knew it, we had reached Oxenhulme where we had to change trains to Windermere. Half an hour later, we finally reached our coveted destination.

The first thing to remark once we got off was the weather. I was highly apprehensive the previous day when I checked the weather app and was told that the lowest temperature would be a negative integral. However, it didn’t seem to be the case in reality as we were, thankfully, greeted by a clear, azure blue sky, glorious sunshine and warm heat against our skin.

KY, designated tour guide of the day despite his repeated protests that it wasn’t like he had been to Windermere before, devised a route for us to take that involved ferry rides and AN 8 KILOMETER WALK, something I paled considerably after hearing about. But I refused to be a bad sport and was convinced that it wasn’t going to be as bad as I imagined it would be with my friends around. And so it began.

It was a roughly one-hour walk from the train station to Bowness-on-Pier, which was exactly what its name suggested, a pier. We bought 10 ferry tickets to Ambleside and had the opportunity to sit at the very front of the upper deck of the ferry.

The view was breathtakingly spectacular.

Our initial plan upon reaching Ambleside was to have lunch before going on the next ferry. So we entered a posh-looking hotel restaurant complete with a bar with golden-lighting, embroidered sofa sets and framed paintings hung on walls and was led to a waiting room to wait as they set out a table for 10 of us. Halfway through waiting and looking through the menu, it was brought to our attention that the last ferry to Wray Castle was leaving at 2:40PM, which was 40 minutes from now. Deciding we didn’t have enough time for a proper lunch meal, we quickly and sheepishly informed the waitress that we had a boat to catch and then quite literally bolted out of the restaurant. It was comforting to know that we would probably never step into the same premises again.

In place, we had a mini picnic at the tables by the lake, snacking on sandwiches and fruits we’d bought prior to the trip.

We didn’t actually end up dining at the luxurious posh-ass restaurant but at least we took a selfie in the mirror and that’s all that matters

The trip continued: a 15-minute ferry ride to Wray Castle.

It was getting sunnier and hotter when we found an ideal spot for a photography session by the road that lasted for at least an hour, living up to our Asian tourist stereotype of being obsessed with taking vacation photos. It was quite the literal materialisation of Best Coast’s song The Sun Was High (And So Was I).

After that, it was time to finally, reluctantly, embark on our 8km journey along the lake.

We even stopped for a while to hurl pebbles into the lake

The commencement of our embarkment was a lie. At the beginning of the trail, we stopped so many times to take photos, throw pebbles and climb stray boulders that overlooked the lake because it was just so beautiful. I am no good at describing sceneries and frankly, I usually can’t care less about sceneries but I think it was probably the fact that this was my first time on a trip out of Manchester with so many friends, and it’d been a long time since I was out of the predictable and monotonous hustle and bustle that the city of Manchester constantly provided us with. The sun was out, there wasn’t even any need for coats. The sights before me were sights that could previously only be seen on postcards or National Geography documentaries. Or maybe it was even the fact that I was kind of delirious from lack of sleep. But I felt so happy and contented, being able to take in this picturesque place with my own two eyes and be there with my friends. There was barely anyone around either, so it felt like the entire place belonged to us. It felt like we were in an insulated bubble, a world of our own, untainted by anything foreign or unbelonging. The recurring theme of that day was perhaps the word “~feel~”, complete with the tildes, implying that we were all like-minded when it came to basking in the ambience we were in. At one point I told Ash that I felt like we were in a music video.

It was, in all the true sense of the word, a getaway.

In the running spirit of movie-inspired photoshoots, I guess this would be Twilight

Once we got past the initial excitement of being in a setting that looked fitted for a medieval movie shoot, the 8km loomed ahead of us more glaringly. All too sudden, the scenery got repetitive to the extent that I was starting to feel more trapped in the aforementioned bubble than I was enjoying it. The pathways became sporadically interposed with muddy puddles that did damage to our shoes. Every few meters, we would chance upon a wooden sign that informed us of how much distance we had left. When we reached the sign with “2 1/2 miles” (of 4 miles/8km) carved on it it felt like the highest form of mockery towards my feeble stamina. We hadn’t even been halfway through the forest yet and I was already starting to feel all my cultivated energy from the previous high-ness dissipate at an alarming rate, as it usually does whenever I participate in marathons, rendering me with a guaranteed title of top five from the last place. But I could still feel consolation and gratitude for the fact that at least it wasn’t freezing cold, and at least it wasn’t as windy as the name of the district might have suggested.

As the sky began to darken slightly, Jia Yang suggested we might as well play a game to create an illusion of time passing by faster, and it worked. We played Contact until the pier where we were supposed to take a ferry back to Bowness came into a sight, and I had never felt more relieved. Our chance of survival wasn’t yet guaranteed, as Ze Kai reminded, but I was still elated to see ugly, concrete buildings and tar roads. It felt like a return to civilisation.

The ferry was a short ride and upon reaching the other end of the lake, we were told that we still had to walk another 2km to reach Bowness. My feet were screaming and frothing at the metaphorical mouth but in light of the 8km we had somehow managed to successfully conquer, 2km almost seemed welcomed.

Upon reaching Bowness, we hailed two taxis (after Ash and Yee Lin were unsuccessful in their attempts to hitchhike a ride for 10 of us) to the train station and the prospect of being able to be stationary and not having to walk was so blissful. Our train departed at around 7PM and everything after that, the two train changes we had to take etc was a huge blur as accumulated fatigue finally caught up with me. The night ended ideally though; as I like to always say, every good day ends with a dim sum dinner/supper.

I pretty much passed out the moment my head hit the pillow that night but it wasn’t without a heart bursting with good spirits and gratification from an enjoyable trip with lovely company.

*Photo credits to their respective owners among the 10 of us

Manchester Anime & Gaming Con 2016

The week before, I had lunch with Yuri, a friend I made when I went to Liverpool for a Rocketworld volunteer session last month. At a moment of sudden inspiration, I asked her if she might be interested to attend an anime con with me at Sugden the following week, and to be honest, I was really pleasantly surprised when she said yes because after all, it involved seeing white people dressing up in costumes of a popular culture that originated from her home country. That had to be some degree of weirdness. But she said yes and we bought tickets for the first day of the con on the 2nd of April.

This wasn’t my first time at a con in Manchester; I’d attended Doki Doki last November but the company this time was definitely way better. We went there at 10AM and already there was a huge line full of cosplayers and we attempted to point out characters that we recognise as we waited in the queue.

Yuri got an Assassination Classroom packet of candy while I got Love Live wafers

One of my absolute favourite things about cons is visiting the artists’ booths themselves. After so many years of following fan artists on the Internet, it was so incredible to see them in actual print and just so cool to see artists so passionate about creating art for, say, an anime that they like and putting them on display for everyone to see and purchase at a convention. I got some art prints for my wall too, of course.

After walking around in general for a few hours, Yuri and I ended up playing Super Smash Bros on these actual ancient televisions and Nintendo game consoles for an hour or so.

We had gyoza dumplings for lunch at Umami

Later on, I found out that Lara, a Twitter friend, was also at the con cosplaying as Kotori so we started to search for her. I loved the fact that both Yuri and my favourite Love Live girl is Kotori.

By the time we got relatively tired and had pretty much scouted the entire area, it was already 5PM. So I went back to Weston and Yuri to Dalton Ellis but not before she gave me a lemon cake her mother had sent to her all the way from Japan! ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡

And below, my haul for the day:

The LL wafer packet had a shiny card in it

Sonic print by @weiliwonka and Spirited Away print by @ZeeLinn

// M A N C H E S T E R T O N I G H T // L O V E , T H E 1 9 7 5

The 1975 Day was a Sunday, and that Sunday, despite it being two days away from my first essay deadline, I allowed myself to not think about essays for the entire day. So when Carmen suggested we go shopping before going to the show, I went all out and suggested we had sushi for lunch, and that was what we did. Any day with sushi is always a good day. Then we had bubble tea at Chinatown before shopping at Primark, seeking solace in retail therapy. We went back to Weston to change into concert wear after that – and emerged wearing unplanned matching outfits of black tops with denim skirts. I learned my lesson from Halsey the previous time and sacrificed the wellbeing of my toes and my shoes to wear platforms to compensate for my height. And then it was off to O2 Apollo we went, TO WATCH THE 1975 LIVE IN MANCHESTER

We joined the queue at 5.30PM, so that wasn’t very early but the line wasn’t very long either. The spring sunset was very pretty and it was the subject of our attention for a good few minutes due to the lack of stimuli present while waiting in the queue. At 7PM, the queue started moving and an objective observation that I can make, all the way into the crowd in the venue, is that the crowd of concertgoers was definitely calmer and less terrifying and rowdy than the one at Halsey. O2 Apollo was so much bigger than Manchester Academy as well, that I didn’t feel suffocated or pushed from all sides by the crowd, making the show already much more pleasant before it had even begun.

The opening act was called The Japanese House, which, okay. They were not bad and it was fronted by a female vocalist so that was even more appealing. Later on, we found out that they would also be attending Dot To Dot Festival.

At half past eight, The Japanese House left the stage, and in place were bright white lights shining from the stage and onto the crowd while a subtle but consistent hum of suspense filled the room, the kind which you can easily dismiss as background noise or a stray note from an instrument if you don’t pay too much attention to it. But it gradually got louder and more high-pitched, like a revved up engine, deliberately instilling suspense even where there was none in the first place. And then at 9PM on the dot, the stage went dark and the hum went silent and the crowd went wild, before we were greeted by a saxophone intro and a bright pink-lit stage to Love Me.

Every single stage set-up for each song was so aesthetically pleasing they looked like they were taken straight out of a magazine (see what I did).

The climax of my night was possibly fallingforyou, and I told myself I wouldn’t cry but I did anyway because the live performance of that song hit me in all the right places and it was just very beautiful and very incredible to contrast listening to their songs in my room two, three years ago in college and now, standing in front of the actual real band watching and listening to them perform live. I love music shows so much.

Setlist:

Love Me
UGH!
Heart Out
So Far (It’s Alright)
A Change of Heart
She’s American
Anobrain
Menswear
The Ballad of Me and My Brain
Me
fallingforyou
Somebody Else
Robbers
You
Loving Someone
Paris
Girls

Encore:

If I Believe You
Chocolate
The Sound
Sex

The final encore was everything everyone wanted, literally, as people started chanting, “We want Sex!” (not something to be heard out of context). And so, with a “Thank you, Manchester!” from Matty followed by Sex (the song), the night came to an end and both Carmen and I reluctantly left, exclaiming non-stop about how good of a show it was. And then we had dim sum for supper to round up the pretty much perfect day.

(Playlist)

Carmen also made a vlog about our day!

Michelle’s People I’ve Watched Live List, updated:

Hana to Alice: Satsujin Jiken (2015)

I found out about Hana and Alice when Janice uploaded a screencap of the 2004 live action movie as her Facebook header and got curious, after which I tried to find for a download link for it so I can watch it on the 2-hour train ride to London the next day but only found one for its 2015 animated version, which is a prequel to the live action movie.

I’m not going to lie, I was rather taken aback at first by the animation style of the movie – it wasn’t at all like that of anime or even Ghibli movies. In fact, the first word that came to mind was “crude”, although that probably wasn’t an accurate portrayal of what I felt. Indeed, the details of the animation aren’t as clearly defined or “pretty”, but what stands out the most is the fluidity of the animated characters’ movements, making each motion feel more realistic than any cartoon I’ve ever seen. Despite this difference in animation style from what I usually watch, I quickly got used to it. More than that, I warmed up to it, and it worked perfectly in the context of this beautiful movie.

The story follows our main character Alice (real name Arisugawa Tetsuko), a headstrong, opinionated and cynical girl, moving to a new town, a new house and a new school. The story sequence starts out rather slice-of-life, showing Alice adapting to a new school environment, dealing with bullies, and trying to get her mum off her back about school everyday. We are shown small bits of mysterious elements sporadically: Alice’s new neighbour who appears to be spying on her all the time, her classmates screaming at her not to move the two desks in the middle of the classroom, the inexplicable white writing on the floor surrounding the aforementioned two desks. I mean, the English translation of the movie title is The Murder Case of Hana and Alice and if I hadn’t preemptively read the brief summary, I’d have thought this was a movie of a sinister genre. You never know with Japan.

As it turns out, the mystery surrounding these peculiar abnormalities is pretty sinister indeed, one which involves an alleged murder of a former classmate who used to sit in Alice’s seat in class. No one ever saw him again, clueless as to whether he is alive or dead but because teenagers can never resist hyped rumours, a colourful tale of occult elements and gruesome murder-y tropes was concocted and passed down from generation to generation within the school.

Curious yet skeptical about the story she was told, Alice starts to snoop further, and finds herself down a path that might potentially bring her answers – visiting her mysteriously elusive neighbour.

Her neighbour turns out to be one of the titular characters, Hana, who has been absent from school ever since the alleged murder a year ago. Alice’s curiosity to find out who the victim really is and whether he is actually alive or dead sparks something within Hana – she, too, wants to find out the answer. Together, the two motley girls form a plan that involves disguising as a boy and following someone back home, despite having only met each other mere minutes ago by way of Alice trespassing Hana’s house.

But because this isn’t an RL Stine horror mystery story with child detectives and battles with spirits summoned with an ouija board, the girls’ plans go awry, and amusingly so. Alice’s absent-mindedness gets her tailing the wrong person and she ends up going on a trip of sorts all the way across town and making a friend out of a kind elderly man instead. Hana keeps on trying to catch up with Alice but is faced with all sorts of disturbances in the form of dead phone batteries and bumping into the actual person they were attempting to stalk. This disarrayed sequence of events eventually leads to the blossoming of an endearing albeit eccentric friendship between the two girls, warming up to each other the way I did to this film. After missing the last train home, Hana and Alice find themselves spending the night under an SUV (a source of warmth as autumn approaches) as Hana climactically reveals the true context behind the murder, which, [spoiler] unsurprisingly, wasn’t a murder after all.

Hana and Alice’s bizarre adventures, up until the next morning when Alice, after mistakenly assuming Hana was stuck to the bottom of the SUV that had driven off and started conducting a chase together with a couple of other cyclists when in actual fact Hana had just wandered off before Alice woke up, are the epitome of reckless youth but also, my personal favourite, the beginning of a compelling friendship between two contrasting personalities, the kind that only arise when both parties have been through some remarkably strange shit together, reminiscent of Kamikaze Girls. I live for female friendships like this.

Perhaps one of my favourite scenes was Alice getting lost with the confused old man, puzzled that this 14-year-old girl was tailing him for reasons unbeknownst to him and apparently, to Alice too. When watching that part, one couldn’t help but think something was going to happen at the end of it, or at least that the old man was going to play some major role in the progression of the movie plot – that’s how we’re usually trained to think in movies or TV shows, that something must happen for a reason. A character was introduced for a reason. But no, it was merely a standalone subplot that didn’t move the main plot any further besides perhaps contributing a humour element to the movie, but that was it. And in spite of that, it didn’t feel out of place at all. That’s what I love about films like this, because it challenges the predictability of continuity in movies that we’ve been groomed to expect. It’s refreshing.

And if reading all of that has yet to successfully convince you to watch this film, at least watch it for the breathtakingly stunning background sceneries of vivid light and pastel colours. Where Ghibli excels at producing vibrant and extremely detailed surroundings, this movie provides more of a calm, soothing realistic setting that complements the smooth animation excellently and makes every minute spent in Hana and Alice’s world exquisitely magical.

Walking to Uni in the Snow

My wish of waking up to a white blanket was finally fulfilled. I pulled back the curtains as soon as I woke up this morning and was greeted by large pristine white flakes teeming down from the sky and onto the green patches of grass in front of my window.

It felt like Christmas came early (ironic because it’s snowing in March, two weeks before spring commences, when there was barely a hint of snow during Christmas) as I abandoned the idea of taking the bus entirely and walked to uni instead. I got some snow in my hair, my mouth, and the ground was slippery as hell but it felt magically ethereal.

There are many things that I am cynical about in life but perhaps snow will never be one of it.

Manchester MNight 2016: A Night to Remember

The stage lights went dark. It was a wrap. Viva la Vida started playing in the background as the emcees for the night announced the end of 2016’s Malaysian Night and I yelled out, “IT’S OVER!” while throwing both my hands into the air triumphantly. My fellow props team members were seen in similar moods, joining in the collective cheering all the stage crew and cast and dancers were inducing.

I tweeted a series of tweets right after I got home that night at 4 in the morning, a rare emotion bubbling in my chest until I figured out it was satisfaction. Satisfaction of all our efforts paying off. During curtain call, when everyone gathered on stage to bow and thank the audience for watching, all I felt (besides obvious exhaustion) was happiness and gratitude for being a part of something as amazing as this. It hadn’t always been this way; being the extreme cynic I am, I wasn’t entirely too gung-ho about the whole concept of MNight, and I initially signed up to volunteer to help out just so I didn’t have to pay to watch the show. But I gradually warmed up to it. The people, the production, the work. All the meetings and Having To Socialise and minor conflicts and spending hours after classes at rehearsals to come home and pass out from the exertion — all of them paid off. I noticed the effort every single person was putting into the show and appreciated it so much, and gradually grew to admire and love what I was working for and thus was able to put in all my effort to make it work too. And that, was the huge blossoming feeling within me that made me grin non-stop at the end of the show, seeing the literal incredibility of everyone coming together to make something as huge as this production work perfectly.

Just an hour and a half prior to the final call, during the intermission, there was a point when May and I exchanged looks, declaring in disbelief that half the show was already over. The lengthy amount of time spent to refine the show, the running around, trying to remember which scenes we had to exit and enter and with what props, the actual construction of the props in the form of umbrella trees and box bushes, all of them amounted to only these four hours (or so) of showtime, and at the end of it all, there was, in place, the satisfaction of putting in the effort and seeing the end product materialise amazingly. But most important of all, the satisfaction was shared with so many other people in the room.

I am aware I barely possess the right to feel proud of something that I only contributed slightly to, but I am just in awe that this is what success feels like. And for something that I don’t even feel very attached to like MNight, I sure do feel a lot of emotions about it. Good job everyone, I am super proud of the MNight committee and literally everyone who piled in efforts to make The Kampong happen. It was an incredible experience and I couldn’t ask for a better MNight performance to be my first.

Halsey Badlands Tour: Live in Manchester

One of the main reasons why I chose to come to Manchester to attend university was because of Manchester’s comprehensive and up-to-date music scene, so naturally, one of the first things that I did when I came here was to search for nearby concerts and gigs. And one of them was Halsey at Manchester Academy on the 22nd of February.

Unfortunately, I forgot about the day tickets went on sale and they sold out really quickly in a matter of minutes. A few weeks later though, I found someone selling a ticket for the show on Twickets and I’d never pressed the “Buy” button as quickly before, leaving any second thinking or doubts for later (there were none).

This was my first gig in the UK so I was predictably pretty anxious the few days leading up to Monday night: what kind of clothes should I wear? If I wear winter clothes it’s going to be really hot inside but if I wear otherwise it’s going to be really cold when I queue up outside. And what do I do with my coat? Do I hold it? (I later on found out about the existence of cloakrooms) What time should I queue? It was my first time going to a show alone so how are things gonna go? Can I cope with the crowd alone? Do I walk back to my halls or take the bus after the show? It was like a press conference in my head and none of which I knew the answers to.

The question about queuing was answered for me preemptively by my very own criminal law lecturer because I had lectures on Monday till 5PM anyway so that was the earliest I could queue. When classes ended though, the line was already stretching all the way from Manchester Academy to AGLC so what the heck, I might as well eat something first if the line’s already this long so I had Subway with Ee Min, Yee Lin and Kah Yee before walking allllllll the way to the end of the line (which had already reached the entrance of the main library holy heck), heaving sighs simultaneously. Ee Min accompanied me until the line started to move into the Academy, so that made the cold 5°C wait outside a lot more bearable.

My fingers and toes were already partially frozen by the time I finally entered the Academy – and into this room with a stage placed right in front in the centre. I wouldn’t say the venue was huge because it wasn’t, just slightly bigger than my uni lecture theatre but despite that, after I joined the crowd, the people pushing and jostling against me as well as the collective excited chatters surrounding me didn’t make me feel like I was in a mere crowd of 2,500 but rather five times that number.

The first two hours of the show from 7.30 to 9.30 were opening acts by Flor and BØRNS, who were pretty good but by 9PM, the crowd was starting to get restless and began chanting Halsey’s name several times. At 9.30 on the dot, the stage lights went dark and everybody screamed. I couldn’t help it – I joined in the shrieking too. The background screens started flashing rapidly, followed by the entrance of the band members. The string-plucking intro sequence of Gasoline began to play and the ever beautiful Halsey emerged from the spotlight to grace us with her rich, heavenly voice.

Because I queued at 6, I was actually quite far back when I got into the Academy but during the opening acts, there were people who didn’t stop pushing against me from the back the entire time so I got really, really annoyed at that because I was already starting to feel light-headed and anxious from the extreme proximity from all directions and I didn’t need to be pinned between two bodies when I was struggling to inhale some fresh air. They were three girls who were really, really good at squeezing to the front and in the end I decided if I couldn’t beat them, I might as well join them so I followed behind them until I was a good meter from the barrier right in the middle. Possibly the most ideal position at a gig – only if I was a few inches taller. And thus, because of my cursed height (or lack thereof), me standing in a relatively good spot didn’t make much of a difference when there was literally a wall of three tall people directly in front of me that I had to stand on tiptoe and strain my neck upwards the entire time to catch sporadic glimpses of Halsey on stage.

Setlist:

Gasoline
Hold Me Down
Castle
Haunting
Control
Roman Holiday
Ghost
Is There Somewhere
Drive
Hurricane
New Americana
Colors pt. II
Colors

When the stage lights went dim again, I was furiously hoping the last encore would be Young God because it was one of my favourites from Badlands and you know what, Halsey did not disappoint at all.

(These photos are actually from Colors but they are so beautiful and make for a good ending to this post.)

And then came the dread of Halsey leaving the stage, the venue lights coming back on and the crowd dispersing. I could finally breathe again but I also definitely wished it was possible for there to be multiple encores per show. Still, I untied my jacket from my waist to put it on and step out into the (for once) inviting cold wintry air of the night, all the while marvelling at how beautiful Halsey was in person, how amazing she sounded live and how much of a great time I had at my first ever gig in the UK.

Some of my favourite songs that I managed to record (among the playlist here):

Michelle’s People I’ve Watched Live List, updated:

Teeth

The setting is always different, and so are the characters. It usually just seems like any other random, unpredictable nonsensical dream about a series of events that don’t make sense when conjoined together (as most of my dreams are) until it happens.

I start to lose my teeth.

The way this occurrence fleshes out is often identical: I feel my teeth (plural, not singular tooth) moving around in my mouth, loose and falling out and start to freak out. Sometimes they stay in my mouth, dangling from my gums but sometimes I spit them out onto my palm, staring at them in horror.

Last night’s dream saw me at an empty dystopian Alan Gilbert Learning Commons trying to search for something when I felt the upper right row of my teeth wobble before one of my bottom right molars came right off.

The worst part of it was how vivid and real the dream felt. I could feel the pain in my mouth as if it was really happening to me. The yanking strain in my gums that throbbed in sync with my heartbeat. The metallic taste of blood on my tongue. The confusion and fear as to why am I losing so many of my teeth? I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had dreams like this but each time, the anxiety of it happening doesn’t seem to subside from the previous ones.

Last night was the second time this week and 438973829542th time overall in my lifetime’s history of dreams that I’d dreamt of my teeth falling out.

V-Day Stands For Very, Very Cold Day

This Valentine’s Day, Evelyn suggested that all of us, who weren’t busy for obvious reasons, had a pot luck picnic at Whitworth Park in the morning and somehow, subconsciously, the night before turned into a subtle cooking/baking competition evident by how both Rumin and I stayed up till past midnight preparing sushi (her) and baking cupcakes (me). It’s one thing if I feel inadequate about myself but to clearly demonstrate my inadequacy in front of everyone else is another, so I, with Rumin’s help, spent hours decorating each cupcakes differently and subsequently labelled each cupcake individually with unique symbols drawn on heart-shaped papers to indicate which cupcakes belonged to who. It also didn’t help that my first batch from the oven pretty much flopped because the recipe I’d followed was a flop, something I’d only found out after I took one bite, realised something was wrong, and then scrolled down to the numerous criticisms in the comments about how “this recipe is absolutely not worth your time” and I could only mutter curse word after curse word as I attempted to salvage blunder by adding more sugar.

The next morning, I woke up tired and nervous, like I was presenting my dish to Gordon Ramsay in Masterchef.

When we got to Whitworth Park, Evelyn and Brian were already there laying down light pink polka dotted picnic mats on the grass underneath a white faux sakura tree, setting the ideal scene for a pleasant Valentine’s day picnic.

People gradually started turning up after that with their own food dishes and soon enough, a feast of assorted food was laid right before us, completing the whole picnic aesthetic.

Cheeseballs (Nicole), cake with cherries (Jia Yang), heart-shaped strawberry and cream-filled tarts (Evelyn), banana and nutella rolls (Yee Lin), vegetarian pizza (Brian), fried rice and cucumber juice (CC), tomyam fried bihun (Ee Min), pork casserole (Khai Jieq), a six-pack diet coke (Faris), sushi (Rumin), cupcakes (yours truly)

My cupcakes with individual symbols drawn on heart-shaped labels

Unfortunately, despite the ideal setting for the occasion, it was also 3 freaking Celsius and I was quickly losing senses in my toes and fingertips so we all moved to Evelyn’s Denmark Road hall common room to continue eating and subsequently played games and chatted until six in the evening. I was already all out of energy as Rumin and I walked back to Weston after that, but I had a lovely time spending Valentine’s with my friends and why only emphasise on the annual celebration of romantic love when platonic affection and gratitude is just as, if not more, important and significant in one’s life? I wouldn’t have wished to spend the day any other way.

A New Year Away From Home

Along with all the Firsts I’d had for the past few months, this year is also the first year I spent Chinese New Year away from home and my family.

The past weekend was a pretty busy one because I had two seminars to prepare for the next week but I’d somehow managed to hype myself up enough for CNY celebrations with my friends so I didn’t have the capacity to think about anything else, like the fact that I wasn’t at home to celebrate CNY with my parents, for instance.

On Saturday night, about 30 of us Malaysians had a reunion dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown complete with 11 meal courses and full-on karaoke-ing throughout the whole night. We also had the entire floor to ourselves and our waitress was so friendly and sporting that we (and by we it was mostly a firsthand effort by Faris himself) even got her to karaoke a few songs for us. The food was really good too, exceptionally so after months of depriving myself of luxurious food for the sake of the £££. I wasn’t as sociable as I would’ve liked to be that night (then again, when have I ever lived up to my expectations of extroversion) but the night ended on a high note (literally, we were asked to stop singing because the restaurant was closing) and despite my internal grief of being away from home during the biggest festive season of the year, it was a pretty good reunion dinner to compensate for my absence from home.

And then after, a few of us came to Weston and we stayed up till 4AM playing games in my hall’s common room.

Sa Chap Meh (30th night) (and day as well) was spent lazing around my room the whole day watching anime despite my impending assignments glaring at me from a side the entire time because I was adamant about my excuse of “It’s Chinese New Year! Live a little!” even though the only living I was doing was staring at my laptop screen for prolonged periods of time. And then on the first day of Chinese New Year, I celebrated by going to classes and finally relenting into starting on my assignments.

Some of my friends came over the next day for a steamboat dinner though, so that was also very nice.

Last year’s CNY was filled with exclamations from my relatives that “It’s your last CNY in Malaysia, Michelle!” and my stomach fell with each repetition that it was a wonder my gut was still intact by the end of the day. But I never did, never could experience nor understand the full implication of that realisation until I actually came here and was forced to contend with that reified fact, with the absence of CNY songs blasting from any and all available speakers indoors and outdoors, with the missing feeling of waking up all excited as I greeted my parents before changing into new clothes to visit my relatives, with the lack of angpaos from family members and endless good food from morning until night that there was no point trying to discern which meals were for breakfast, lunch or dinner because you could just carry on eating the entire time, with being unable to catch up with my cousins and gamble into the night accompanied by peals of laughter everytime someone (usually my dad) loses; even the awkwardness of having to make small talk and listen to my aunties and uncles talk over one another (like the Teohs do best) — I miss all of it. And this year, the only homely CNY experience I could get was through the pixels of photos sent in the family Whatsapp group and of an hour-long Skype session when my parents were over at Si Pek’s house on Cheh Sa.

But in spite of all of that, I count myself fortunate for the things I do have, and that is the friends I’ve made here and being able to celebrate Chinese New Year with them. My immense gratitude, to be able to feel warm during the coldest Chinese New Year I’ve ever experienced, both inside and out.

anigif2

calm, the anxious knots in your chest and the entangled thoughts in your mind

in the night, when tinny worries burst forth into turbulent vexations

when it is no less difficult to trick yourself into believing in your permanent solitude and

being gradually unconvinced by the second of your usefulness upon being existent in this world

calm, the paranoia and fear and endless looping of conversations and actions gone wrong when it’s too late to do anything, literally and metaphorically

calm, the storm wreaking havoc within myself

calm, please

York (The Old, English One)

At the end of the week after official exam period for the university was over, the Weston Hall RA organised another trip to York, this time only for the price of £1. Having heard a lot of great things about the old town (one of them being that Phil Lester used to study in University of York lmao), it being the end of exam week and also being immediately attracted to the ridiculously cheap ticket fare, I signed up for the trip, along with Rumin, KY and CC.

The night before the trip, I told myself that I would sleep early because we had to leave early the next morning but like all my grand schemes in life, that failed spectacularly so I ended up sleeping for three hours that night and then passing out during the entire two-hour coach journey to York. Which was a blessing, because I didn’t have to ask Puru for motion sickness pills or find something to kill the travelling time with.

When we reached York, the first observation I had was that it was really, really pretty, with colourful flowers along the city walls and being surrounded by large ancient architecture. The second observation I had was that it was also really, really cold. Suddenly, all the flowers and buildings in the world could no longer appeal to me because not only was I starting to shiver but I had barely eaten anything and needed to pee really badly. So we walked (with much difficulty against the direction of the wind) towards our first destination: York Minster.

I had somehow ended up as designated tour guide for the day for the four of us and I was really nervous because I don’t trust myself with a Responsibility ™ as big as this but the trip (spoiler) didn’t end disastrously! so maybe I did a pretty OK job.

Credit: CC / View from the top of York Minster (allegedly the tallest viewpoint in York) as part of the Tower Tours which I didn’t go for because of my fear of heights

It was in York Minster when I suddenly saw a really familiar face that looked like my law coursemate, Kar Ling, at a distance but didn’t dare call out because it might just be my short-sightedness tricking me and also it would be too much of a coincidence to bump into someone I know in York of all places. But then the familiar face latched onto mine and inched nearer and I realised — it was indeed Kar Ling! And it turned out that she and her friend had taken a train to York for a one-day trip as well. On the same day. And at York Minster at the same time. The world is so small and strange.

My stomach was quite literally digesting itself from hunger by the time we came out so we headed for Betty’s Tearoom at The Shambles upon Yi Jing’s stellar recommendation but the queue was one that stretched out of the shop and into the streets so Rumin searched for two other alternative places to eat. One was Mannion & Co, which was also packed and cramped with so many people so KY and CC lined up there while me and Rumin joined the queue at another café a block away called Brew and Brownie to see who got called to an empty table first.

It wasn’t a competition obviously, but Rumin and I won at Brew and Brownie. And then we had meals of sandwiches, pancakes and pork pies and it was a really, really good meal with a nice quaint ambience too.

The Shambles — narrow streets of shops that someone on TripAdvisor dubbed “the Diagon Alley of York”

Smoked Bacon & Brie Sourdough Toastie (a name longer than the queue itself)

The cold didn’t seem to be letting up even though it was well into the afternoon, so we only spent less than half an hour at the Yorkshire Museum Gardens before heading for York’s next best landmark (next to York Minster, that is): Clifford’s Tower.

It was an approximately 20-minute walk down south and it was probably the coldest and windiest I’d ever experienced in the UK, even more so than in Manchester. I was wearing gloves in my pockets and my fingertips still stung from the cold. So when we finally reached Clifford’s Tower and I saw that it was pretty high up, I climbed up the stairs anyway thinking that I might seek shelter from the premises. Plus, the view wasn’t too bad either.

View from the top: York Castle (or what remains of it, anyway)

We still had an hour left to kill so as usual, we went shopping.

I never actually managed to find Narnia 😦

KY and CC got very excited with Star Wars merchandise

York’s city centre surprised me because while it is a town that boasts of its historical buildings and architecture, simultaneously its city centre has as large, if not larger, an array of shops than Manchester’s ranging from small local toffee shops not unlike Whitby’s (but that’s where the similarities end) to brands that they don’t even have in Manchester’s city centre like Jack Wills. I also really loved the small intersectional alleys that went in every direction, an old town’s existence running parallel with the developments of urbanisation, a pleasant sight in comparison to Manchester’s busy metropolis. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve grown rather fond of Manchester, but I wouldn’t mind staying and studying in York if I ever have the chance, purely because I love the atmosphere and surroundings of the town, a meshed combination of the elements of what I like about Whitby’s picturesque suburbs, and what I like about Manchester’s diversity and variety.

I fell asleep almost immediately after getting on the coach at 5PM, fatigue from the previous night and walking around in the cold for the whole day catching up to me, which was good because by the time I woke up, I was already back in Manchester. I made a quick dinner and went to sleep rather early that night, heart full and satisfied from having a great time during the trip with good company for the day.

A Reunion in Eight Years

It all started when Yee Lin texted me one night saying that Ming Qiu was in Manchester and did I want to join them for lunch the next day? It came as a shock because I hadn’t put a face to that name in years, my best friend in nursery and later, kindergarten, whom the last time I saw was when we were both 13 years old in SP, eight years ago.

And so I said yes, of course.

The moment I first saw her was as climactic as I’d expected, a flurry of hugs and “how are you”s in high-pitched incredulous tones because it truly had been so long since I’d seen Ming Qiu, and likewise, judging by the way she said that no one pronounced her name the way I used to anymore — “Meeng-kiew”.

We had brunch at a quaint café called The Pen and Pencil at Northern Quarter, where there was a lot of pulling up ancient photos of kindergarten days from Facebook and reminiscing toddler antics that felt like light years away, and then spending the whole day in city centre together with Yee Lin and Evelyn shopping and then having milkshakes on the way home.

It felt magical and no less wonderful, to be able to meet an old friend after so many years (in Manchester of all places!) and still pick up where we’d left off, like there hadn’t been a glitch in the timeline of our friendship in the first place. Here’s to many more years, and many more reunions in the future.

Guess Who

Did Michelle even make it to 2016? is a question of valid perusal considering how this is the first time I’m writing a blogpost this year. Meaning this blog has been stuck in the year 2015 for almost a month and not only are the metaphorical surfaces of this blog covered with thick dust, so is my writing too.

But you know what they say, inactivity online can be indicative of one of two things: inherent laziness or actually getting caught up in the events transpiring offline, in real life. And while I can never win in a case trying to dispute the former possibility, 2016 started off with me being slightly more participative in real life (unsurprisingly, also a new year’s resolution of mine) which is something that’s making uni life here more appealing compared to the past four months of 2015 when I usually lamented the days away.

New Year’s Eve seems so far away now when it was barely a month ago. The ushering of the new year was fun; there was a dinner gathering at my flat after which we played games and then after which we chased after the new year fireworks they were setting off at Albert Square. We didn’t make it there but we stopped at Gay Village to spectate this tradition of releasing gunpowder into the air to mark the passing of a day, a change in calendars.

Janice came from London a week after new years, and it was such a great week filled with baking, six-hour karaoke-ing (though we only stayed for four), learning how to play chor dai di until 3AM, visiting Afflecks again (where Janice got attracted immediately to the movie posters) and my personal favourite, watching strange Japanese videos on Youtube late into the night.

Unfortunately, the start of a new year also meant that exams were coming up so every other day since the first day of 2016 up until now was spent either in the Learning Commons or in my room absorbing criminal and property law and that explains my absence most accurately out of all the excuses I can give. I fell sick twice during the weeks leading up to my papers, which is something I would never recommend, and I literally only just finished my last paper yesterday after which I caught up on the new Haikyuu and Osomatsu-san episodes as well as finish the first Evangelion movie.

Second term resumes next week and that means weekly seminar work is looming ahead but I’m glad and appreciative for this brief breather period for a week, which is something you don’t hear about very often, the usage of “glad” and “appreciative” in my vocabulary since starting university. But ultimately it’s a new year and in the event of having to choose between being grateful and being regretful, I want to learn to always choose the former.

Page 365

So far, the last day of 2015 has seen me reverting to my habit of waking up at 12 noon again for the first time since Christmas and then watching One Punch Man OVAs in the dark before I fell asleep again. Not exactly the most exciting and productive New Years Eve out there, but if I had to summarise the whole of 2015 in one day, today would be as accurate a representation I could ask for.

It’s still approximately seven hours to 2016 in my current timezone, the first time I am experiencing a new year transition in a timezone different from my parents, but I thought I’d just write this annual traditional year round-up blogpost now since we’ll probably be watching fireworks while counting down later and it’s already the new year in the timezone back home anyway.

Before that, a lot of things happened between my previous post and this one, all in just a mere span of a week. I was at Wiltshire spending Christmas with Sa Pek and Auntie Sue and – Ellie! whom the last time I met was back in Malaysia, and despite being away from home, this year’s Christmas spent in the company of family and friends was really nice and warm and I was extremely reluctant to leave to go back to Manchester. And then a day after I got back, a fire broke out in Weston Hall, rendering an entire block void of electricity (mine included) so me and a bunch of other residents were offered temporary places to stay in hotel rooms in Pendulum Hotel next door. I stayed there for two nights and even celebrated Yee Lin’s birthday there before the electricity came back on and I moved back in yesterday.

Everything happened one after another and before I knew it, all events pushed towards the end of the year and now we are teetering at the edge of 2015, about to fall into crevices of 2016 at any moment (I’m kidding, it’s fixed in seven hours).

2015 was honestly a confusing year of change. Many changes. Too many, in fact; one of them undoubtedly being me going to university in the UK. I didn’t a like a lot of these changes, still don’t, to be honest, but stagnancy is never good for the soul, no matter how much I can convince myself of that. So ultimately, what I wish for in 2016 is more acceptance, less negativity, more bravery, less cynicism and gratitude, gratitude to be able to realise that I am not in as bad a place as I keep on thinking I am, and also the ability to see the worth within myself no matter how small or how trivial, because I’ve lost all of what I’ve gained during the past year in just a mere few months. I hope, in 2016, I grow up and learn to be better, and keep on learning because everyday, there are always limitless opportunities for me to improve and do better and think better as a student, a friend, a daughter, a person. I wish for confidence and self-developed security, for being able to believe in myself so much that other people will too, and not the other way round.

And I wish everyone finds themselves a step closer to the person they want to be, doing the things they want to be doing and being in the places they want to be in the new year of 2016. Happy new year, everyone.