Monday, September 27, 2004
I'm finally done with my prelims! Bio S is over and done with...and done for, i might add. Smokiest paper ever. 2 out of my 3 questions were based purely on residual GP knowledge. But then again how wrong can oyu go with the ethical and social implications of cloning, stem cell research and IVF?
*poof* smokinessssssss............
Got econs back as well as half of GP, things do not bode well for me. On a cheerier note, the weekend was reasonably interesting...I
finally got my much desired BAdly Drawn Boy album..The HoUr of Bewilderbeast. The title alone is fantastically brilliant. Kudos to the wonderfully fantabulous person who got it for me! *runs round in circles cheering*. The only thing the cd has done thus far to incite a furious and oersistant desire to get
more of his albums. Must drop by that cd shop one day.
Watched
On Earth As In Heaven at Alliance Francaise. Just. It's this brilliantly spooky semi feminist french film about this single mother whose foetus doesn't want to be born. And then it turns out that foetuses the world over have decided to rebel against being born into the world..basically because there wasn't anything worth living for. It makes one wonder...given the choice, would you choose to be born into this day and age as you know it? Would you choose to be born at all? And come to think of it, there's no actual way to discount the idea that we actually
did have a choice.
Next month on: More french and jap film fest things happening, will stick more details at the sideboard. Anyone interested, drop a tag. I realize that i have a minimal number or artsy-fied friends. No, ignore the elitist connotations, just tag. Also, i grabbed a bunch of fliers and stuff from alliance. Am planning to sneak them up onto the defunct artwatch board in school. That place is like, hibernating. Who updates it? Yeah, can anyone tell me who is in charge of that board? For those of you who are unaware of its existance,
its next to the sc board outside the student lounge.
Alright goodnight. Off to listen to BDB for the 17th time. The lyrics below are taken from
The Shining, first track on the album.
Faith pours from your walls
drowning your calls
I've tried to hear
you're not near...
Remembering when I saw your face
Shining my way, pure timing
Now I've fallen in deep, slow silent sleep
It's killing me, I'm dying
To put a little bit of sunshine in your life
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Friday, September 24, 2004
I justify my persistant pessimism with the excuse of hormonal depression.
I’m two papers away from the end of my prelims. Guys, whoever i made plans with to meet at that elusive time called
after prelims, I’m sorry, well, that time doesn’t even exist for me right now. Bio S ends Monday after school, which means my weekend’s quite gone…after that i figure I’ll have at least a sort of life.
I don’t feel like celebrating the end of everything. It’s not even celebration-worthy to begin with. No, actually, I feel like the exams didn’t even happen. Considering the fact that the prelims are supposed to be a big deal, that any shot I have of getting out of this country sort of balances on how I do, and that, well,
in general people actually care about doing well , that’s strange. But I’m just numb. Everything’s just so unimportant. There’s no intrinsic value in anything we do right now; their importance is at the very most, instrumental.
And we’re all just stupid drones crawling mindlessly around, hoping against hope, and believing without justification, that what we do matters.
so much for the myth of Sisyphus
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Thursday, September 23, 2004
Something I said to a friend in a potentially dangerous position
if you’re trying to fall over backwards, you will succeed. If not, you will fail…
Ain’t that brilliant? Irrelevant, but brilliant. I cannot believe I came up with that. Wow.
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Sunday, September 19, 2004
I hate ezlink cards. Yesterday morning marked my long-overdue attempt to replace my missing ezlink card at pasir ris.
Speaking of which, my family members and I have theory regarding the new office at pasir ris.
(why pasir ris of all places?) Obviously, they
had to do it to cater for the convenience of their best-paying customer, ie,
me. I think they predicted a lot more business coming from this direction. And yes, they were tight.
Anyway, irritatingly, after making a long and ardous journey by bus to the station, what do they tell me but “oh, sorry the picture must be in uniform”. like,
since when??. Previous attempts (of which there were many) were not so. Aside from the fact that 1) school uniform pictures are the ultimate in fugly, and 2) i didn’t have a singe shot at home, it struck me as ultimately stupid to have to waste a zillion bucks taking the picture and making the card when i have like, at most 3 months left to use it. ARRRGHHHH.
And so my mother intones,
its no one fault but my own…
On a more cheerful note, had a fairly interesting day studying at the airport, delifrance in the morning, and then staff canteen. The staff canteen is scary. It was so full of students thoroughly engaged in studying/ furious scribbling/ some combination of both that we all felt we might have just as well gone to a
library . Irony : Huge blue signs placed conspicuously on the walls proclaiming
NO STUDYING IN THE STAFF CANTEEN . Who says Singaporeans are sticklers for rules?
Sometime during the course of studying the topic of belly buttons came up. Basically, we were trying to decide what one does to the umbilical cord after the birth of a baby and how that affects what a belly button looks like. So there we were, sitting around comparing innies and outies in the middle of the staff canteen. The following was a particularly interesting bit of the conversation:
D: What knot? I don’t remember what my belly button looks like
L: Yah, there’s a knot. And there’s a button looking thing next to it
D: Really?? *checks under shirt discetely Oh yah! There’s a button You’re right! How you know?
L: I saw it when we were changing in primary school
Everyone: And you actually remember??!!
It’s somehow extremely funny listening to someone describe a belly button (of all body parts) to the owner of that belly button in question.
You know all those cutesy little friendship quotes that circulate on the end bits of forwarded emails? I can think of a few.
Like: A real friend sees and remembers what your belly button looks like, and reminds you when you don’t remember.
isn’t this familiar?
Fish and Co for dinner, courtesy of mother anxious that i
not be anxius about the prelims. I’m not anxious. I’m resigned. We figured out where they got their name from. Fish and
Company = Fish and all their fellow edible
companions from the sea.
So much for Saturday. Today is Sunday and its been uneventful and pretty much unproductive. Slept an awful lot. Also, I’ve been having strange dreams…like, in episodes. First episode was about me marrying a house gnome (like, a house elf? But a gnome). That was saturday night. Sunday afternoon was episode 2, and it had me, my gnome, and a bunch of other people going on a round the world cruise. Woohoo. Can’t wait for episode 3, tonight?
stay tuned to Gnome Gnews
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Thursday, September 16, 2004
i'm going to be very subtle and polite here:
Anyone out there who
a. feels like doing a good deed
b. has too much money and wants to get rid of some
c. owes me an 8 month old present *glares*
d. just..ah heck anyone who wants to lie me out of the mire of exam misery
no one looks at the wishlist so I'll put as a very nice,
subtle post
1) Any albums by Badly Drawn Boy, preferably The Hour of Bewilderbeast, followed by One Plus One Is One, followed by all others
2) Barenaked Ladies: Stunt
3) David Gray: White Ladder
4) Indigo Girls...any! All! cept the only one i have, namely Rites of Passage
Ok thats it
The prelims have thus far been disgusting, if im confident of one thing, i'm confident of my
lack of confidence . It's been day after day of either staring blankly at the question with zero idea what to say, or frantically writing stuff with not enough time to think...thereby ensuring that everything on the paper was effectively rubbish.
Ultimate suicide for GP: "Religion serves no practical purpose but to give men hope."
Easily the hardest question of the paper, and brilliantly, i did it. badly at that.
Music keeps me happy. Music keeps me sane. Guess thats where this post came from :)
I'll probably delete this unreasonable, demanding
rude post. But not now. After suffering through the horror they call the prelims, i deserve to be a little unreasonable :)
cheers, and all the best
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Tuesday, September 14, 2004
bio essay writing advice from Ms Ng retrieved from an old notebook: I swaer, she's the only person who can make essays sound
funny
1) Do not make sweeping statements - unless the floor is dirty
2) Remember to use paragraphs! I'm sure you all use paragraphs. You use essay-length paragraphs. 3 page long, rambling paragraphs.
Monster paragraphs.
I think there should have been more, but the rest was mysteriously torn off.
Good luck for Bio and maths. good luck to me ME! ME!!!!
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Monday, September 13, 2004
I wish i knew what to say to you, i wish i could deal with you’re the way you need to be dealt with. But I can’t I’m sorry, you are so completely alien to me now and nothing I say would do more than echo in the hollowness. I feel like you’re just falling further and further from the edge of sanity and reason and there is
nothing I can do to stop it. I can’t justify the importance of happiness to someone who has so little propensity to appreciate it. And I can’t change how you feel, or the way you view the world. I thought I could. I guess I’m wrong.
I want to repair your desire,
And call it a gift,
That I stole from just wanting to live,
Now I see the vision through your eyes,
Your innocence no longer fuels surprise.
~Badly Drawn Boy
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Sunday, September 12, 2004
Let no outstanding debt remain, except for the continuing debt we owe to love one another ~ Romans 13:8
This is partly in response to a recent entry in
Denise’s blog, and partly something that’s just been floating around my head.
There are too many times we blame others for being unappreciative or ungrateful for the things we do for them; too many times we feel resentment because people around us do not respond the way we expect them too. And so the gift of
giving , which is meant to be something that brings joy, turns in on itself, it all comes to nothing. I guess what struck me about the verse was firstly, that we tend to focus much on the debts we perceive are owed to us, and forget about those we might owe to others. There’s really no point in comparing the relative magnitude of each, because I believe we’ve all had our fair share of each.
Still, it is only normal and human to be affected by the actions of those around us – well, normal for most I guess. It’s so easy to slide away from one’s own emotional equilibrium and start on some wild roller coaster spiral if one isn’t careful.
It is also interesting that the people who have the greatest ability to influence our happiness also have the power to make us absolutely miserable.
The way to get through all this emotional messiness without ending up like some people hating cynic is to try remember that, most of the time,
it isn’t intentional . People deal with stuff different ways; they have differing priorities, views, responses, opinions. There is no point getting upset over a non-personal, non-intentional slight because the aim to cause pain was never there to begin with. Furthermore, these things they do may offend our own sensibilities, but very often there is nothing
inherently wrong about them. There is also no point in trying to manipulate or persuade people to agree with our own views or perceptions. They are as much individuals as you and I are, and we must learn to accept them as such instead of demanding conformity to our own expectations.
Give me the strength to love freely and unconditionally, not only with reference to those close to me, who give me reason to love them and who love me in return, but also to anybody in general whom i can call my neighbour. That is the true spirit of giving, one which many of us have forgotten, and which i hope i can learn again.
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Friday, September 10, 2004
I decided i needed a change. Many changes in fact.
I guess I'll start here. How long since I last changed the template?
I lkie this one, its so light and airy and dreamy. Makes me happy just looking at it. Which is a good thing, because i spent a lot of today brooding.
I need a lot of help with it, as you can see
1) the entry part looks really wordy and squashed somehow. Think it needs some space around the sides but i can't quite figure out the css for that.
2) the width of the title image and the bits below that are different! I think its something to do with the sidebar, but i can't figure out what. I suspect the tagboard is too fat. anyone know how to fix that?
3) needs more colour. the lots of balck little words dont look very readable.
so kind souls out there who are web geniuses in hiding, please do me a favour. I'd be grateful.
why "the promise of things to come"?
Because at such a point in life as now, i think we all need to pull ourselves together, hope for the best, and not let the stressfulness and the horrible-ness of everything descend onto us and kill us all. Maybe its a bit cheesy on my part, but its a symbolic thing. you know, this represents a change for the better. and etc. And the new templates so uplifting looking, i hope that kind of diffuses out.
Thank you once again.
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...describe me in as few words as possible words: The above being the answer of 24-hour emergency helpline and budy andrew lim yikai. Feel free to contribute, its narcissistic,yes i know but irresistably interesting. We're ALL closet egoists, ok?
drewie hows that for an ego bo0st (wrt your profile :)
despite a notable deficit of posts there's a lot that's happened within the past month? two months? Gotta start again, i miss writing. Happy birthday Taran!
First and most important thing i figured out: Its not that hard, and not that terrible being alone. I used to have a terrible phobia of doing anything at all alone, and i think
that might have gotten on people's nerves a bit. After my period of driftiness, well, came the realization that being alone is not always equal to lonely...the same way
not being alone is not always equal to
not being lonely . Quote Jamie: Its liberating. Being at peace with myself and my own company.
Have to say this, there's a singularly nice thing that a friend did for me that really touched me. I'm a maths idiot, and halfway through a desperate clutching at straws type session of maths-ing i messaged a friend to ask for help. Anyway it turned out she had the answer, but couldn't email it to me cos she had no scanner, and couldnt fax it cos i had no fax machine. So guess what, the funny girl actually put the solution in an envelope and SNAILED it to me. A maths solution! iN A WHITE ENVELOPE ! Its so funny and sweet, oh gosh, I was so simultaneously touched and amused. Kaishi babe, you know what I'm talking about. LOVE YA! remember the ice cream :)
Having said that, I realize that one of the things i value most in people is sincerity. ie, you mean what you say, you do what you promise, and you deal with issues straight up. I can't stand people who live life as though they have a huge invisible script. You can almost see the cues: *Cue: Express concern now!...*Cue: Nod to show solidarity now! I'm not sure how to describe it, but its intangibly there somehow. Maybe that's how cliques form: they all have the same cue cards. Which explains why some people don't fit in cliques. Then again, maybe everyone has scripts. The ones who are *different* have lousy cues. Question in point: is it better to be an individual and stick out, or to somehow conform and be like everyone else?
The main problem with this question is that i doubt people conform or stick out
consciously by choice . They just
happen to, you know, have matching cue cards. ie they just happen to have personalities that stick. We have a term for people who deliberately go out of the way to make themselves stand out, not necessarily in very appealing ways. The term is
EXTRA. But if you were *different* by nature, to what extent would you cover up the different-ness to fit in with everyone else?
I have a personality problem. I don't stand out and I dont fit in. What does that make me?
*little insecurities: everybody has them.
Had a long talk with my dearest bestest friend down under last night. It felt good, like, to talk properly after all the months of non-conversation. I hope I dont lose a best friend. You know how hard it is to find really good friends? And I have like, great skill in choosing friends who end up moving far far away. and i've lost a few friends this way already, regretfully...not a trend i would want to continue. If two souls are truly connected, it won't matter how time or space seperates them, I believe true friends will be able to pick up where they stopped..or rather...paused. True friendship doesnt really end ,does it? I know thats a corny chicken soup type line, but it's the best way to put it. So jamie babe, no more surface convversations...dont want to lose you as a friend.
With regards t more little insecurities: prelims are like, hours away. I'm not prepared. If I do badly i probably deserve it. I hate this system, i hate the way it makes people stupid. There are a thousand things i want to do, books to read, new stuff to try out, et cetera. Things that I can't do because, by virtue of the fact that my GRADES are the only thing that matters in this country, the major part of my time is spent trying to make these GRADES look halfway decent. Which seriously doenst make sensem because AAAA is only a means to an end; and the intrinsic value of AAAA? not much really. But one shouldnt complain. I have my dreams, a plan to live a life that goes beyond mere day to day survival, and i will NOT let the system defeat me. So cheers. Tag me anyone who agrees.
Again, I end with a quote type thing, song lyrics this time:
And I wish her insight to battle love's blindness
strength from the milk of human kindness
a safe place for all the pieces that scattered
learn to pretend there's more than love that matters
~Indigo Girls
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Tuesday, September 07, 2004
hello world
I won’t go so far as to say i’ve been too busy MUGGING to blog. But i guess i just got lazy.
The previous post was written when i was in one heck of a depressed mood, alone, grumpy, stressed, and tired. After my very long absence from phaerieland i got an amazing number of little post thingies and so, here’s a huge THANKS to everyone out there. Specifically, i am talking to
foot in mouth vasud(h), dhash my savoiur to be, val, denise, kaishi… ahh everyone actually, but i remember these names.You guys make the world a better place *grin* . Thanks loads.
To Aaron, Nelli, and anyone else whose links i messed up or whatever, sorry…I’ll fix it asap. Which won’t be anytime soon. But i will, i promise
Prelims are rapidly encroaching, so close it hurts, and i’m always stressed out and stupid around exams, so don’t expect anything intelligent…forget intelligent, COHERENT is enough, from me until, say, after November.
Notes that i cant be bothered to write in sentences:
1.Delifrance at the airport is a fantabulous place to study. Empty-ish, food, quiet. Highly recommended.
2. Esplanade library is another fantabulus place to study. There are so many students there they’ve given up on trying to chase us out. All you get is a token “don’t study in the library” type warning. There is safety in numbers. Very large numbers.
3. I lost my wallet. Again! Act surprised, why don’t you?
4.To Yijian, Vasud, Val, Chuwen, happy birthday in advance. In case i forget. Which i probably will. So. I dedicate this post to all of you Sep babies.
Leaving with a quote courtesy of jamie
“when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness - and call it love - true love."
~Robert Fulghum
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