term break

"how did you spend the ridiculous week-distorting 4-day term break?"

monday:
woke up, started work on the TORTURE CHAMBER plans (heh heh) for the foc night games. i don't really understand why i had volunteered for it, but i guess i really do exude the necessary aura for a gruesome torturer. after (almost) completing the report, uploaded it to games' yahoo grp and headed for ivan's oh-so-incredible home for games comm meeting.

ivan's place was just a breathtaking experience - makes anyone who's been there wonder why we're paying half our retirement money on substandard hdbs. meeting dragged quite a while, most of the time i was just wondering if ppl were really prepared for the meeting, myself included. but after the exhaustive 4-hour meeting, much was settled. i guess.

tuesday:
10-12 make-up lecture (i always find this term funny... why go for make-up lectures when i don't wear make-up?) by rappa. as usual, he's interesting and all, but pretty much unprepared to give a full lecture. we might as well call it The Rappa Show.

went to watch Hide And Seek with the glob-trio thereafter. whoa... very freaky show... good effects and scares. but pretty much a shallow movie using the now rather clichéd theme of schizophrenia for the twist. well-executed tho, as expected with robert de niro and dakota fanning in the cast.

next stop, revenue house at novena to attend a briefing for this survey lobang that i got from shena. ran into pat, jason, clarice at the station! some science outing if i'm not wrong. told patty to invite them to join prog comm. then it was 15 floors to the survey briefing. it was supposed to start at 7, but what can i say, even AC Nielsen can't keep punctuality. briefing was done by this plump woman who tries to be nice, but ends up being quite boring. eventually got my survey papers and went home.

and it was time to panic! we're supposed to sell drinks and sandwiches at saturday's games day - and nothing was planned! i sms'd/msn'd more or less everyone in the main comm i could find to come and 'volunteer' their services. eventually got it more or less settled well past midnight.

wednesday:
another day of slacking! went jon's place for a good long swim in the afternoon. really funny how jon, justin and i ended up discussing the technicalities of css. good to have guy-talks, very objective, very concise.

except when it becomes a rather unguided one on POLITICS. on the way to stella's place for yuanxiao dinner, jon and i debated abt pap's dialectics. i naturally took the oppo's view, while jon was quite up to the job of quoting pap's good points. bad discussion... very unfocused! left us both dreadfully wasted by the time we reached stella's place. won't ever forget her noisy but shy dog. we even played monopoly (!) after dinner... at which point stella says how a person plays monopoly determines how a person treats his/er friends. possibly in retaliation to how i was playing quite unfriendly-ly in typical capitalist fashion. reinforced my negative impression of capitalism. it was past midnight when we left, another insanely tiring but unproductive day.

thursday:
last day of break... woke up extremely late due to exhausting discussions after swimming. missed both make-up tutorials, but still managed to eat @ pizza hut with the glob-trio. this time... it was exhausting discussion about RELIGION. protestantism vs catholicism. when will it ever end? why are we always so bothered by the petty differences? humans... will always be so human.

after this, i went for the inter-varsity foc publicity meeting with jon & netto. another looong meeting with a lot of points in the agenda seemingly unprepared. the smu guys were quite cool, or perhaps they didn't really know what to expect/demand from us; whereas the ntu fellas were very, disconcertingly, quiet. only their foc head spoke (which was quite weird for me la) and he was, at times, quite anal about minute details. i spent much of the meeting wondering why they kept emphasising that they can't provide much manpower BUT our selling t-shirts would reduce their love-offering income. he was very capable... of coming up with blind spots that would stall discussion. kinda reminds me of Dear Leader Kim. but it eventually ended off on a positive note - nobody daring to ruin the cooperative atmosphere.

and netto jio'd us to play pool! haha. poor jon tagged along even tho he doesn't play. we went to paradigm, and for once we found the pool parlour to have empty tables. pool was kind of uneventful, but going home became another problem... netto and i eventually found some late buses to take, much to the relief of my cash-strapped wallet.

so that's it. only did some glob readings thus far. anne mcclintock!! what a nutter. many deadlines still hung in the air... methods: interview, deviance: survey/write-up, mktg: individual project, essays: med soci & glob. i feel so not in control... it sucks me dry. so much for the term break.

the busy life

it's not very easy being an nus student - this is one statement i'd dare say everyone would agree with. but that's where the similarities end... how difficult is it exactly? when we bitch about the endless cycle of deadlines and mugging, how much of it is really demanding work?

for me, i feel like i've been endlessly deceiving myself. i havn't been working very hard, at least not the way i imagine. a normal hardworking person, without going nuts, probably spends about 2 hours a day looking at his work, revising today's new stuff and preparing for tomorrow. now, is that very hard? 2 hours probably, at most, means sacrificing some tv, some msn, some slacking time; it may even not require any such sacrifice. in other words, even in my own terms, being hardworking is actually quite easy.

however, i'd immediately defend my position: 2 hours is definitely not enough for 5 modules! but how would i know until i've at least tried for an hour? it's not like i can't give up some aimless time-wasting. but i need the rest! spending a day out is extremely draining, you know. singapore's weather sucks. sure... isn't half an hour's rest enough? 'rest' becomes a form of self-indulgence! am i not simply addicted to tv, msn, slacking in general?

indeed... the busy life is often nothing more than an excuse... i figure, even if i consider the extra time i spend on the CCAs, i'd be doing little more than diving into deeper self-delusion. i'm not that busy! i'm just messed up.

do you buy fur?

this 16-min video ought to be watched by all who have contributed to the horrific cruelty.

basically, this clip seems to be of chinese origin, showing how various animals are - take a deep breath - skinned alive. not for the faint-hearted. even i, who had sat thru one of the al-qaeda's beheading videos, nearly hurled. ever seen a skinless animal struggle for air?

the animal's throat cannot be slit, for the blood would stain the pelt. they cannot crush its skull with a hammer for the skull fragments may tear the pelt. they can't even afford the time to suffocate each one before skinning - too many of them to skin.

the sobering fact is that these seemingly heartless skin-mongers are probably poor rural villagers, who have few other ways to get a steady income. each pelt fetches a handsome fee, tho it hardly pays for the crime committed. money can make the desperate, the greedy, and the uneducated do the most inhumane things.

the only way to stop them and to save these animals from such brutal execution is to STOP REWARDING THE PERPETRATORS. the government is more or less incapable of rooting out all the pelt-peddlers, for china is immense and officials may be getting a cut (who knows). the power to end the gory suffering is in the consumer's hands. heck, the power is always in our hands - we can stop all evil in this world with simple unity! when will we ever learn...

guess i was really affected by the video... turned into an anti-fur advocate for a moment. i'll never buy fur. why spend (large amounts of) evil money when you can spend less for synthetic material that nearly matches the real thing in terms of quality?

*shakes head* i can never fully understand this world.

the fish bone

anomie:
"a condition or malaise in individuals, characterized by an absence or diminution of standards or values, and an associated feeling of alienation and purposelessness."

well, it's almost certified that i am suffering from some kind of anomie, now that she's replied. it's like having so much to say, yet an innocent fish bone is all it takes to induce an abrupt end.

but what's there left to say, when i've already anticipated it, prepped myself for this, and did precious little else?

it is lent, and i havn't got my focus right. prayer... that's what i lack.

post v'day post

woohoo!

unbelievably, after nearly 2 yrs without a date, this old bag of bones still managed to find one - and a marvelous one at that! indeed, it's just too good to be true... this hardly 3 hour long lunch date... never in my jap-dissing life would i have expected sushi to be such immense fun!

it all seemed predestined - spizza closes at 2.30pm on weekdays and i conveniently forgot. (that makes two of two failed meals... tsk tsk.) so we had to improvise. i wasn't picky, and she wasn't either, which makes it more or less a "sakae? okay? no say? oh yea." kinda choice.

and she goes on to amaze me with her knowledge of japanese food! my gosh... i tot i was mr. know-it-all already. food eludes me. but one thing i had learnt from dinner with the css ppl: the hairy beans aren't very good. and even this little piece of trivia was ultimately defeated by her effortless means to play with them and enjoy the salty green peas. helplessly charmed, i could only pick up where she left off... absolutely amazing - it's simply preposterous.

3 hours whizzed past... it was neither insufficient nor surfeit, which was rather strange given my odd sense of time. she then drove me home! goodness. i was sheepishly telling myself "i'm new-age. i let girl drive me around. i'm proud of her. i will. get that. driving license. asap." and that's only when i informed her i had left her a present in her back seat. style points i hope!

so the key is in that Vday Package... what's next? it's been over a day... she definitely likes the concept. but what of the content? i am not jittery - no, not yet - but i do wish there's some way to penetrate this thick cloud of suspense. ask her out again? ask her about it?

i suddenly feel so distant from her... even with her in my very mind, i could only fervently wish to be closer. what is this impulse? oh lord of thoughts, won't you clear your poor servant's bemuddledness? perhaps it's part of his plan... to torture me with uncertainty so the resulting appreciability would soar... what frivolous finger-guessing.

and here i go, with aching shoulder, unfinished (untouched) assignments, and racy heart, off to bed...

valentine's

can you imagine this? sleepy, irritable me managed to stay up all the way just to complete my V-day Package! wonder what's gone into me... is it that pesky trend of adhering to 'valentine's day traditions'? i refuse to accept this! nobody should fall prisoner to such irrational westernised norms!

but what if i'd fallen for something greater?

superfluous infecundity

perhaps life is a little too glossy for this inchoate peccant; perhaps life is a simply too overbearing in its dystopic redundancy. whatever the reality, such hermeneutic existence could only allude to maudlin expressions of anachronistic euphuism, a paradigm largely frowned upon in didactic modernity. the surfeit excogitation of Man's allegorical consternation, at once mordacious and emetic, can only be christened oneiric.

or perhaps life itself is nothing more than a vacuous glissade, the moseying harangue of some blithe panjandrum, an egregiously fulminating proctorship condemned to pandering her simous, unctuous partisans.

and thus such pleonastic pulchritude is insouciantly dispensed. sagacity or amaritude, the dolorous fardel of life merely pandiculates.