Meanderings of an opera obsessed mind...

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Probably the second stanza/verse of Ralph Vaughan William's 'Let Beauty Awake' includes my favourite lines ever in an art song. Plus it helps when it's the incomparable Sir Thomas Allen singing them as well =DD

Let Beauty awake in the eve from the slumber of day,
    Awake in the crimson eve!
    In the day's dusk end
    When the shades ascend,
Let her wake to the kiss of a tender friend
    To render again and receive!

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LONDON...ooh, and probably the rest of the UK, e.g. Durham, Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, perhaps also Scotland too. I'd go mental going round all the museums (I simply have to go to Apsley House and the Royal Opera House), theatres, sites, cathedrals, second hand bookshops (people are probably going to go 'WTF?' at the last place) etc. Then a massive book/souvenir shopping spree will ensue methinks. XDDD

I'd probably take my mum but she's technically more like family though I would really consider her my friend too. I'd go with enserric but I'm not sure how that will work seeing that she's already in the UK!

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. Despite being the HP fan that I am, I have never watched any HP film twice when it was out at the cinema...and this time, I loved the film so much that I saw it a second time.

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Hmm...early childhood memories all seem a jumble to me like flashbacks in a distinctly muddled order. I can remember various things but can't quite place them in chronological order. The most vivid and possibly earliest memory is one where I being pulled along by my mum from kindergarten (it was Wembley, if you wanted to know the name XD) to Cityplaza (yes, the very same shopping mall in Tai Koo) since we were in a hurry to meet her aunt and we were, as usual, already quite late. I think this was on a late summer afternoon (or perhaps late spring) and as I was being tugged along, I tripped and grazed my knee pretty badly on the pavement. I can't have been more than 3 or 4 years old at the time but I do remember it bleeding badly enough so that my mum had to go to a hair salon nearby (which she often frequented) and ask for a bandage or something.

And all this didn't quite help matters between my mum and her aunt, the latter of whom was pretty annoyed, I think while my mother herself was pretty furious that I had injured myself. She wasn't angry at me, by the way, she was probably more angry with her aunt who as I recall wasn't particularly sympathetic to the news that I had grazed my knee as a result of this mad rush to see her.

Another random childhood memory I have is of me locking myself in my room around the same time because I didn't want to play with my cousin who was a year younger than me and had visited us in Hong Kong. I remember holding this plastic ball in my arms and stubbornly ignoring my mother's entreaties on the other side of the door and my cousin's crying...it's kind of embarrassing remembering all this (God, it was just a effing *ball*, you silly girl!) but I have the feeling that I found my cousin annoying and wasn't used to sharing my things with someone who I had basically just met a few days before. And to be honest, even 16 or 17 years on, I don't think we still have anything much in common despite the fact that I'm only a year older than she is!

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1. The Sound of Music (1965)
2. The Remains of the Day (1993)
2, Sense and Sensibility (1995)
4. Great Expectations (1946)

...those four films should definitely not be remade in any way.

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As much as I'm making it my goal to be an academic historian, I'd definitely love to be a world-class writer, stage actor or even opera singer.

Unfortunately I don't quite have the talent to be the latter three as much as I want to be. But a life in the arts would definitely give the more fulfilling life for me...you can travel the world, get new experiences and meet more people rather than being shut up in your lonely research lab or office, trying to write your research paper or book (I've seen firsthand how academics work and it's a rather daunting looking prospect). A life in the arts might seem the more glamorous career but in the words of my favourite baritone, 'Everyone sees the swan gliding across the lake but not the frantic paddling that goes on underneath'. Don't quite remember exactly the words he said but that's the main gist of it.

Alas, one can only dream... *sighs wistfully*

[Error: unknown template qotd] For me, it can range from the smell of perfectly toasted toast, a perfect cup of milk tea or to  the smell of newly printed books, to name a few. Or even a person getting my last name remotely near its correct pronunciation (which alas creates many 'versions' of my name, from the utterly humorous to the utterly dismal -__-)

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First, lol at the choice of title for this...since 'Sense and Sensibility' is one of my favourite novels/films.

I think it'd be tough choice between all of them but I think I'd keep my sense of hearing...my world would be awful, I think, if I weren't able to hear the voices of those I love and care for. Plus a world without listening to music and opera and the sound of Alan Rickman or Thomas Allen's voice, for example, would be unbearable!

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It really depends...sometimes after a really long holiday and basically I've done everything that I planned to do beforehand, I can't wait to get back to school. But nowadays when you're in the full swing of essay deadlines, work deadlines, etc...I've got to admit that I'm definitely living for the weekends when they're the only time you have some semblance of a reasonable excuse to relax without anyone pestering you.

[Error: unknown template qotd]Well, in my case it's not a matter of seeing a band...it's more like trying to see a particular singer, an opera singer to be precise.

And goodness, do I have to travel more than just moving from one city to another or one state to another...it's more like one country to another since I have to make a trip all the way from Hong Kong to the UK in order to get any chance of seeing him perform.

The things I do for my interests...*head palm*