the new year is a scam

you wake up the same, you breathe the same

you do your usuals and eat your usuals

what good is a new year

when time is but a man made measurement?

I suppose the silver lining is that with a new year

comes a false facade of hope

and you know what they say;

the more you believe a lie

the faster is becomes

a truth

(ni.l)

2014 has come to an end.

As usual I am a big fan of summing things up in one word because I can be super long-winded unnecessarily so if I had to describe the year in a word, it would have to be:

Incredible.

Yes in hindsight, my miseries were pretty small after all! I guess that is what happens when you look at a galaxy after months of scrutinizing stars. But in any case, my resolutions for the new year are a secret.



They are such a secret that I don't even know them myself.

If it succeeds, I shall wear it like a flag and slap it into anyone's face who cares and if it fails, it dies with me. So at least I save myself the huge embarrassment. But then again this is my personal space so.

Also I am trying to write a poem every day. Okay I say every day but I'm probably not that dedicated. Will here's a airy promise - however my life falls apart in 2015, I promise to keep this tradition going.

Hopefully one day in 2025 where Man has conquered our easy extinction with Bane-inspired masks and featherweight oxygen tanks, I will be writing a novella far greater than anything I could have ever imagined.

I pray that on that day.

I would be able to look to my poems.

And think this exact thought,

"Jesus Christ where did I get the courage to post these online fuck thankfully I am a rich and successful author and photographer and business owner and whatever the hell 2015 nicole wants me to be. Also my apartment is beautiful and I am finally marrying the (robot-programmable, only $99.90 a year!) man of my dreams!"

I have a lot on my mind.

It upsets me greatly to know that one day, all of my thoughts will die with me, never having seen the surface of this earth.

It upsets me greatly to know that one day, there is a chance that what comes after my death is oblivion and I will cringe and wallow in my regrets forever.

It upsets me greatly that one day, there will be nothing left of me but ashes, and I will be nothing but a speck of dust in this obsolete universe.

This universe constantly amazes and frustrates me.

I sleep better these days. Perhaps it is because I'm on my much-needed break, but I think it is because my mind is made up.

I dropped too many dreams. I gave up too many times. I can't let all my failures go to waste. Why fail when you don't intend to learn from it? I better not be a damned shame to myself.




Open letter to the gods up above:

What do you want from me?

What is the point of giving me something good, only to have it taken away from me?

I accept that I messed up along the way and landed myself in this shithole I call a life but I'm done fucked up now, why can't you be a little merciful and let me be happy again?

I mean, I'm not asking for much, am I? You would know - I am trying my hardest to be the best person I can be. I always try to let kindness triumph selfishness, no matter how poisonous my thoughts were at that point.

I am trying harder than ever to upkeep this facade of a content life.

But you and I know better, don't we?

A car could run me over right now and my biggest regret is not eating more Ben & Jerry's. Is that the kind of life I'm supposed to bear with for the rest of my life?

At 21 years old, I have been gifted with the most tumultuous life I have ever known. Whatever you threw to me, whatever I brewed for myself, I dragged through it and survived by the skin of my teeth at every turn.

There are nights of hell where I wake up from my nightmares wondering, "why me?"

You gave me my salvation once. I need it back.

Please.

It doesn't take much more to break me.

More than anything else, I need a sign. I need a sign to know that everything I am doing will lead me home. I need a sign to know that everything I am doing is toward a better future. I need a sign to know that I am not the hopeless fuck you first condemned me to when I turned 17.

Please.

It has been 4 years.

2015 is approaching so fast I can feel it on my tongue. You don't have to make it easy for me - we both know I'll end up taking the hard way anyway - but just give me a sign.

Tell me it will all get better.

Please.

Tell me my gray skies will slowly get dotted with pastel. Tell me the dreams I once thought impossible will come to me in shards and pieces. Tell me my life will slowly shine through the eye of this shitstorm again.

4 years.

4 long, torturous years.

Let me go.

Give me a sign.

Please.

The certainty to life is knowing it will never be certain.

I have said so many "certain"s in my head that now the word runs a strange course on my tongue. Certain certain certain. My point is I think I am dying and nothing any doctor says is making me feel better.

But I suppose if I were to die young, as long as I don't feel it and have the people I love around me, I wouldn't mind. Or maybe I can die in a gigantic car crash all by myself.

Oh well.

My cousin is a gifted photographer.

I am not the best with posing. I am frigid and cold and lifeless. Also maybe because the cool schtick I'm going for isn't exactly well pulled off. But the point is - she saves the photo with her magic touch and I bless is afterward with generous Photoscaping.

Man what a A team.

Review: Arton Hotel

For about $100, me and my boyfriend booked a attic room at Arton Boutique Hotel.

The entrance area is really small actually. It consists of a small kitchenette, a fancy toilet (with the rain-shower thing) and an exit to the balcony. Right to the balcony is a relatively steep flight of steps that leads up to the attic.

Now I know I would die to be an American and holy shit for a minute I was living out my fantasies of hiding out in an attic. If I could I would have filled the walls with quotes and writings but of course my artistic tendencies are not welcome here. SUE ME.









The stay was immensely comfortable.

The only thing I care about when it comes to boutique hotels is the bed and the balcony, for the two single reasons of having good sleep and kickass photos to make everyone in my Instagram timeline jealous.

Arton did 2 of 2, but my heart remains Parc Sovereign's. Which was, incidentally, directly opposite us so believe me, I had to dramatically wipe a tear away every single time I went to the balcony for a breather.

I would love to come back though.

Location is great, we rode out to get supper at Little India because I was craving masala as usual and it was only a 15 min journey away. I found a little floral shop below the hotel and managed to get more pretty photos to piss everyone in my Instagram timeline off hahah. Score!

We had breakfast along one of the cafes along Jalan Besar. Chye Seng Huat Hardware happened to be open so we dropped in. And my god did the place look good! If only it tasted as good as it looked!

Never going back to that overpriced industrial hole.

To 19 year old Nicole,

Did you expect the life you have today?

2012 was a bad year for us. It was a mess of bad decisions and misplaced priorities. We lost many people and never thought we can one day get on our feet again. If I had to choose, I would say 2012 was a life-changing year for both of us, don't you think?

It was the year you lost your best friend, your closest childhood friend and a man you once thought the world of. It was the year you realize some decisions can never be truly reversed and that not every effort returns results.

2012 was a year of darkness and pain and frankly, from the way I saw it, I truly believed that I would never be happy again, that I will never amount to anything worthwhile.

And yet here we are, 2 years on.



You finally got the job you dreamed of since you were 6- to write for a newspaper. As if that's not already the silver lining on your every cloud, you are also the web content editor, a position you envied in your old happy days at TheSmartLocal.

Work wise, it worked out beautifully, didn't it? You are writing for a living and loving what you do. In fact, this is a Saturday and you are still browsing Weekender, wondering how else you can try to boost its readership.

But everything else.. I don't know.

I am scared to read I wrote this for you any further. I am reading "on love" and I have become so cynical that every line in it makes me want to throw up. I headed over to "on loss" and suddenly everything is top notch and heartachingly perfect again.

What a funny world it is.

Took me long enough to realize that holy shit my cousin is queen of photography.

The key to not being sad hearing a song is not listening too closely to the lyrics.
The key to not being sad writing a poem is not reading too in-between the lines.
The key to not being sad reminiscing a memory is not thinking past the parts that matter.

Since you left, I have listened to music with my mind occupied and I have read poems with my heart elsewhere and I have thought of you while doing Maths.

Last week I made a conscious decision and effort. I told myself I'll go swim, and I surprisingly managed to get there. I tread with my toes lightly into the water. The chill crawled up my legs slowly, dying to enter my spine. And I stepped out immediately as if I've been scalded by fire.

It is funny, isn't it? 

I wanted to tell you this is an analogy - an analogy of how I never do anything too intently now because everything is you.

And yet all I could think of is;

Had I submerged myself, I would finally be able to hear everything and see nothing.
Had I submerged myself, my mind would have went into a helpless limbo, a limbo where thoughts of you finally manage to crush past the locked door to my conscious begging to be released.

Had I submerged myself,
I would have never wanted to resurface again.

There is something ridiculously terrifying about "new post".

I had so much to say but now it's all up in smokes.

Life has the strangest way of working itself out.

When I rejected DBS, I thought it was the end of it for me. But immediately the next day, I got an email for an interview. And in a flurry of movement, I started working at Weekender Singapore as their writer and social media developer. Talk about luck.

These days have been excessive, sketchy plannings of projects to take on ahead and while none have materialized, I have mainly decided to start on a series of photographs and writings first.

Hopefully the goddamn card mounts so I can start a preview here.

On DBS and opportunities

It is 11:38am.

At 2pm, I have the opportunity to sign an offer with DBS Bank Asia. I could have been earning $2500 a month before I turn 21. I could have had my 26 days unpaid leave, my medical benefits, my transport allowance, my year end bonus, my chance of promotion within DBS in 2 years.

This opportunity will not come again. I have spent the past 2 months since graduation moping around at home while I fire out resumes after resumes and attended interviews after interviews. The idea of another interview nauseates me.

But the idea of working 9-5 and working shifts and hours at a job I know I'll hate nauseates me more.

It is 11:41am.

I am remembering how I felt when I stepped into DBS's HQ at changi. The 1.5 journey pissed me off to no end but I arrived eager and wide-eyed. I watched the DBS tv for 45 minutes. I saw the working folks walk into the building in their immaculate suits. I heard their deep conversations. I wanted in.

But I can't do it.

It is 11:43am.

I closed JobStreet and opened SGcares instead. I am thinking of volunteering to keep my sanity while I continue to look for jobs and source for internships. I am wondering of the days ahead of money issues and how to get more in the shortest time frame possible. I can still change my mind. DBS is only a half hour cab away.

A 9-5 job awaits me with a promise that fresh graduates only dream of. A job of unparalleled employee benefits calls me. A job that I could maybe try out till the end of this year is at the other end of Singapore holding a contract with my name on it. I could've earned more than 10k by the end of this year despite joining only in August.

But I want to write. I want to take photos and I want to write and I want people to read my writings deep into the night and think: wow thank god for her inspiring me. If not I would've never gotten out of my shithole.

I want to write for magazines and I want to write for newspapers and I want to write my own book and I want to write poetry and I want to write and write till I die.

I've always been a dreamer and I've always disappointed myself no matter what I do. I am 21 and my life still hasn't gotten itself together. I have been presented with the best possible monetary opportunity to get my shit together. And I am letting it go.

This will not be another disappointment. I will not regret being a dreamer. I will find my way through Singapore's sordid mess of being unhappy all the fucking time and I will find my way. I will not allow myself to be unhappy anymore.









I am chasing my dreams.

So today I tried a new diet and less than 8 hours into religiously following it, I crashed and fell upon Domino's easy-to-use, new-and-improved user interface! app and suffice to say I killed my diet in a glorious, cheese crusted fight.

Review: Being a Toy Outpost Merchant

In the tragic beginning when me and my boyfriend first came up with the brilliant idea of renting a booth at toy outpost, our sincere thinking was that it would work - how can it not when our costs are so low?

I mean $230 a month to expose your stocks to a potentially countless myriad of customers. The weekend crowd is impressive and the weekday crowd isn't all too bad. Selling one item a day would recover the day's cost immediately. What's there to lose?

E V E R Y T H I N G.

So dear reader at 2am googling "toy outpost merchant review" thinking your entrepreneurial idea is bloody brilliant, you're in luck. Here is the naked, writhing truth about renting a booth at Toy goddamn Outpost.

There will be expletives involved because I'm a mean son of a bitch so don't read on if you're looking for a sugar coated review of this hell I call Toy Outfuckingpost.



Aww look at how eager I was.

Me and my boyfriend spent the past couple of weeks looking around for booths. There were always a couple of empty booths around but all of them were bad placements. We found this one by chance.

This booth is 1717, the placement is basically two locker booths away from the entrance of Vivocity's outlet. We went on a Sunday. The owner had just moved out. We saw the vacated slot and wanted to book it immediately but they don't take merchant queries on weekends.

So I cabbed down to Vivocity at 11am the next day and waited for this place to open. When they did, they offered me a leasing contract to sign. Because I know your attention span is running bleak, here's a quick rundown.

1st: Pay deposit of $150, pay one month $230. 

Timeline: We opened the booth in end May.

Termination notice needed is a month so even if you regret it and decide to close your locker in early July, you would still have to cough up the rent for from July to August. Your misery will only end one long month later.

You can decorate your locker as you wish. No restrictions but you can't scratch or leave marks on the interior if not you'll be liable for a fee. I am rolling my eyes so badly my corneas hurt.

2nd: Start rearranging your locker!




Wow so exciting! 

But hold your illegal Singapore horses.

They have a long list of products you can and cannot sell. No branded products nor replicas. They rejected the Balenciaga inspired wallets (corner left) and my Hello Kitty bracelets (roof corner right). They also rejected the My Melody casing (front corner left).

Things you get at this point:

1. a long list of price tags that you can write your prices on
2. a little card to verify you're the locker owner anytime you need to open it to restock
3. a username/ password for you to log onto their website to track your daily sales

Price tags are replaceable, you can claim a new sheet everyday. Card loss results in a replacement fee. How much it is I don't know, I held mine onto today even after the lease has ended. I'm still mulling over which murder method would hurt this card the most.

To digress a little, it is important to note that while there are always lockers available, it is rare to find one in good placement. So when we did find ours, we had no ready stock because we weren't prepared. This pile of junk you see above are leftover stocks from my old Carousell business and assorted pre-loved stuff.

So if you see piles of junk in lockers in toy outpost, sympathize with them, because it is very likely they were in the same situation as I was. In case you can't visualize, here's the easy rundown:

Oh my god dardar look! There's a locker, let's book it! Fuck we have no ready stock because who knew the previous owner loser would open up today! Let's just sell your precious fake tattoo stickers/ my worthless jewellery knockoffs! Oh yeah we are doing this!

Got the picture? Okay moving on.

3rd: Leave and pray to God that your locker doesn't end up a loser locker

For the first two weeks, I religiously logged in onto the website hourly to check my sales history. And for the first three days, I got nothing. Within two weeks, I managed to sell a grand total of two items.

Take note that from the minute I opened my locker, I already started making losses.

Sales was so slow, it would make the nearby snails feel proud that they are little racers. But that's okay because after all, it was still my old stock we were selling. We finally gotten our shipment of accessories so we went over to tear down the old stuff and mount our new ones.

Take note again that because of the ridiculously stupid small space, you can practically sell nothing but accessories. I spent nights agonizing about how to display everything because the space was so fucking small, its senseless.

Timeline: We took the whole locker down and redid everything in mid June. 

I don't have a photo of the re-done locker because right now, our earnings were a grand total of $47.50 (after close to a month, which has been at a $250 rental cost) and we were both pretty pessimistic about the whole thing.

Still, our new stocks made us a little more hopeful so we persevered.

From here on, read everything carefully and wake up.



I will tell you: in the next two weeks of wondering why the fuck aren't my things selling, I went back to check on my booth. To see this. Now well well well, isn't my locker beautiful!

Now, what is wrong in the picture? Shall I start with how my new stocks are spilling out from the side? Or shall I start about how my necklace hooks are empty? Or how about how my price tags were taken down? Or how about the general fuckpile of mess at the bottom?

Because you see folks, the staff do not give a fuck.

I told them nicely that the necklaces on display are, well, for display and new stocks were at the side. But did they give a fuck? No. Whenever a customer bought a customer, they took the display, took the price tag off, and went to sell it.

So what am I left with?

A grand total of three necklaces sold in two fucking weeks. That is a $15 sales by the way because there is NO WAY you can sell accessories in this shithole for anything more than $8 and expect to profit.

In the next two weeks after that horrifying mess, I forced myself to go down once every fur days to tidy up since THE STAFF COULDN'T GIVE A RAT'S ASS ABOUT MY ARRAGEMENTS and so finally, me and my boyfriend decided to cancel the lease the soonest we could.

Timeline: This is end June.

We were informed we can clear out on 15th July. Hallefuckinglujah.

Timeline: This is 14th July.

Our total sales were $100 in two months. At the cost of $250 + $250 + our travelling expenses every four days to rearrange the locker + $350 which is the costs of our accessories seen in that box.

Plus we sold every necklace for less than $3 because we had to cover costs and even at $3, sales were so low, I could find nickels on the streets and still earn more than I do at Toy Outpost.

We had to take everything down and clear out leaving the locker pristine. Exhausted and pissed, we finally got it done and went to the counter. Now this is not unexpected of course, but while Toy Outpost was lightning fast to claim monthly profits (6% of your sales) and demand rent, they told us it would take 2-3 weeks for the deposit to be in.

Weary and feeling absolutely fucked over, we surrendered the locker's card and prepared to leave when a staff helpfully told us we can keep the card in case we ever want to reopen a locker again.

My boyfriend took the card from them and threw it at their shelves and stomped off. I picked it up and kept it in case there were deposit issues. As of right now, it is sitting flaccid and worthless in my drawer, being the little prick it was in life and in death, in rental and in retirement.

So here's my word of advice to you, potential locker master:

DON'T FUCKING DO IT.

And Toy Outpost Vivocity if you read this, fuck you and your system to hell. I await the day your stores pull out of Singapore after every locker renter see how big a pile of bull you are.

And to you, dear reader. You can say I wasn't prepared. You can say accessories are done to death and I could've sold something else. You can say my decorations weren't good enough to attract. You can say my prices were too high.



But you can't tell me this service is acceptable.

If it can happen to me, then it can happen to you. Should you still wish to execute your idea at this point, I wish you all the best and I hope you give my regards to Toy Outpost. And by regards I mean concentrated acid.

Meh.

I caught Transformers over the weekend.

And sincerely I was thinking, "how can they fuck this up?"

But life is as life does and disappointment likes to find it's way up to me like an old friend and choke me from the back and upper cut me with my own expectations and kick my non-existent balls.

For a start, let's go down the list of the people I hate a.d. after dino-transformers:

1. Kim Kardashian
2. Still Kim Kardashian
3. The entire cast of Transformers

In the short year I waited for Transformers 3 (it has dinosaurs wtf its gonna be fucking amazing), I transited from continuously wondering whytf shia is so fucking clueless all the time in the movie, to thinking "damn that innocence is cute" and what is it brought on from you ask?

Nicola Peltz and co.

I adored Megan. I tolerated Huntington. I abhorred Peltz.

Wasn't Hollywood trying to reboot the whole "wow I'm a woman I am more than my boobs" with paltrow being a power-inflamed pile of mess in iron man 3 and the upcoming Thor woman? Then why make peltz more worthless than toilet signs next to a urinal?

And that's not all.

Do you know why people bothered over Megan Fox's replacement? Because she was a badass motorbike, car-hotwiring, machine lovin' goddess and I could do with fantasizing about her while I tolerate shia lebeouf repeated incompetence.

Nobody cares about shia being gone because he was a simple, stupid accessory to Transformers. And I doubt anyone would mind if walberg goes because to face fact is to realize that the whole point of the show is the orgasmic Optimus Prime and everyone else are just time-fillers.

All in all, Transformers 4 (that's right you don't deserve the rest of the movie title) is a disappointment in waves and I am never watching Transformers again.

Abs buns thighs my ass

After all that trouble of finding the perfect lesson, I managed to hit the jackpot of crack lessons - my abs buns thighs class is choking full of aunties and with workouts so brutally simple I yawned for 10 min straight.

The abs workout was pretty intense and the rest is just "ok jut ass jut your class work work work it". It is the kind of workout I do at a club except without the excessive inner swearing at the auntie behind me invading my space.

Lately it feels like I've been watching a tad too many What Would You Do videos. I see situations there and I think of things I would do but I wonder if I would actually react when it befalls me.

Nonetheless, life as an unemployed sits me very fucking ill and I can't wait to go out and get a job but I have been horrifyingly pampered by the last $15/h job so now I'm just.. chilling.. sigh.

Hours ago, I woke up in the dead of the night convinced I was going to die and that someone will be collecting my godless soul soon. And I texted Junwei madly, trying to cling onto a last human touch.

But he didn't respond and I just held my blankets tighter and drifted into a disturbed sleep. And I wish with complete sincerity that this is just a writer's exaggeration but it isn't - it feels fucking real and it scares me beyond comprehension.

I see more wonderless days ahead as sleep continue to elude me.

Ah man.

In great sadness

In great sadness, we fall to our knees and grasp blankly centimeters away from our hearts,

In great sadness, we fall to our knees - we lose strength in all we have and bodily duties fail us,

In great sadness, we grasp blankly centimeters away from our hearts - it is a loss so great that it feels like your heart is being ripped from the seams and thrown out to the dogs,

It is a loss that leaves a hole so gaping, you forget where your heart is anymore.

(Not) Waiting for a train

I probably like my back a lot more than I like my front.

My obsession with this top is limitless.

More outtakes from yesterday!

Photoshoot with Syahirah, pictures coming in slews!

Finally collected my namecard after agesss.

Discovered a photo perfect spot at Clementi!

Happy hat days :)