phys

dear friends.
all the best for tmrw.
good luck yap xiong hui melf joshy michy teo naga gabriel josephine jo nair ian shah sumei and everyone else whose name i cant remember now...

good luck and God bless

looking at friday

tiredness…

I get the urge to be angsty again, so pathetic. About the exams and studying and everything… then again I guess everyone’s going thru it the same as me… so what do I have to complain about. Really don’t feel like studying anymore, just wanna go hole up in a library and read books, even international finance textx which surprisingly are quite interesting… so much of which the dumb school notes fail to represent, reducing all the complexities of the Marshall-Lerner Condition to a couple of nondescript lines on a page for example. Reading up on international finance while studying at the library in the early weeks b4 papers started… MLC is like a topic all in itself… cornrows of derivative equations and factors, page after page of interlinking intricacy… and that’s only one segment in the one component of econs. Gosh, its like school dumbs down everything and feeds it to us hoping we’ll believe it to be the entirety… which ashamedly we do, taking everything so face-value… how sad.

Hopefully geog continues as well as I thought it did. Human was quite good. Haha that’s an understatement it felt like the best human paper I’d ever written for a long long time. Had a strange feel to the day that day, this cloudless quiet elation during and after geog like an unction on a private pain. It felt so… strange… unnatural even, as if I’d had some clear purpose and direction, the way someone might carry on with complete and utter legitimacy of course but not knowing what course it is. Now thinking about it the cliché is ‘a great weight was lifted off his shoulders’. But it wasn’t totally like that, it just felt more like a lucidity, not a relief… so hard to describe.

And then the floundering in e8 for the first time in my life. Comparison was fine, then the prose yawned like the vacuum of deep space, but I had to go and ignore the sign ‘Unexplored Space’. I should have turned back and aced the poetry. Creffield’s private warning ringing in my ears… ‘don’t do stupid things like try questions because you think it’d be fun!’ But regrets are misplaced now certainly… what does it matter… what does it matter…

Today I just feel tired and old. No motivation to do anything that bears a resemblance to work. Read feet of clay by terry pratchett tho. Everytime ed brings home a book I’ll pick it up so I think it must be the fifth or six pratchett book I’ve read in the past two weeks… sigh. sigh! sigh!! Angst is so painful. Maybe after As I’ll fall into depression and climb to the top of some solitary mountain and meditate. Sigh As is simply screwing up my life, most days I wake up and have no idea what I’m supposed to do, no anticipation of new things to try today, new experiences. Enslaved to exams. All my plans dissected like frogs, spread out and pencilled on sheets, preserved but withered, dried out. How many illusions will dissipate after As?

Which reminds me: “A joke is like a frog. You can dissect it to see how it works, but it tends to die in the process.” Indeed. Again, the genius of Pratchett.

Iamb – stress unstress
Trochee – unstress stress
Spondee – stress stress
Pyrrhic – unstress unstress
Dactyl – stress unstress unstress
Amphybrach – unstress stress unstress
Anapaest – unstress unstress stress
Proceleusmatic – unstress unstress unstress unstress
Dispondee – stress stress stress stress

I cant get over the dispondee, its just too punny to be true.
Must remember to get the peotry notes back from yina

Dear Lord… Please give my friends the strength they need to push through the next two weeks of examinations, give them the fortitude to carry on even as You carry them Lord… and I ask You Lord if I may, bless them and keep them safe… in all things I come to You Lord, and I thank You, amen.

20th nov 2004 2214

i havent finished studying e1

6 in the evening
eleven more hours before I wake.

a room in darkness is lost.
the icebox rattles its bones
shivers and complains. Cold
toes wrinkle and curl. Old
coffee curdles cobweb foam.
Earphones chatter forgotten
by the table lamp skeleton;

its empty eye socket glares.
My hand frozen in mid-reach
is a tableau in shadow.

I must have gone to sleep.
Eleven more hours before tomorrow.

The monsoon plays clockwork on my roof.

little wretched papers

what has been going on the past few days? everyone seems so adrift. adrift on their own little rafts in a general atmosphere of... oh i dunno. whatever comforts can support them now at this time.

just feeling a bit of despondency at the whole exam thingummy.

sulynn told me something about Ecclesiastes having a portion about ppl not being able to study too much or something. i forgot what she said the passage was or where it is except that its in Ecclesiastes and Ecclesiastes is bbIgG and i am LLaZzY.

one thing i've known for a long time:

God wont save you if you wont save yourself.

so there you go. save yourselves darling friends.

and then comes the part with 'God bless'.

“But people are rather stupid and waste their lives. Have you not seen that? Have you not looked down from the horse at a city and thought how much it resembles an ant heap, full of blind creatures who think their mundane little world is real? You see the lighted windows and what you want to think is that there may be many interesting stories behind them, but what you know is that there really are just dull, dull souls, mere consumers of food, who think their instincts are emotions and their tiny lives of more account than a whisper of sand.”

terry pratchett - 'Soul Music'

whatever cref and ganga say about terry pratchett being a load of trashy novels, i think he has some of the best insights into the human condition.

mex it out

sara on america's top model is really pretty... her hair is GoRgEoUs

tmrw is ao maths. wat if i dont pass? wat if i do? wat if i almost pass and knew that if i'd worked that little much harder i would've?

is it time for reproach? when it comes down to it... i really dont know. sometimes its like a sacrifice, one subject for another, and this philosophy (if it can be called such) carried me through track nats and competitions and terms and prelims. does it still hold now? am i even able to pass if i want to now? today was the first time i touched maths in one million years. there's tmrw, and then six more days to paper two, and i feel... calm, unfettered, unruffled. if i really gave a damn about maths i'd be freaking out right now.

or rather, i'd be freaking out now two weeks ago when i'd scheduled myself to start math revision.

whywhywhy dint i start when i should have? cos i dint freak out? i'm not freaking out now so that must mean something... probably that im a stupid fool for being lazydazyhazy. assonance.

at least. at least... today i managed to start, and its not so hard once the rhythm comes up. as long as i keep to it i think i'll pass maths. i hope. and hopefully this not at the price of my other subjects.

i hope april wins cos she's asian
oh no now they're deciding who to kick out!

*suspense*
...
...
....
...
.....
..
...

frickin.
they kicked out sara!!!
poodles!
chihuahuas!

disbelief
shock

i will go and mope now

I am a hybrid of: Uptown Girl Progressive Girl Click on the pictures below to read more: Take the 'What Kind of Girl Are You?' quiz at CookingToHookup.com

cool!! i need lots of upkeep and im classy and im not afraid to try anything. yeah.

black as night

post colonialism is a bore...

i cant even remember wat my other topic for s lit is so i think i'm dead. i think its... ok i really cant remember, even the books i have dont remind me cos i dint really have a plan when i picked them.

oh no.

catachresis appropriation.

i feel better today.
i also feel fat so that means tmrw i have to stop putting off the inevitable and hit the torture chamber with my big yellow towel and convince myself that pain is temporary but willpower lasts forever. which it doesnt but who's counting anyway, at least i feel reprieved for the moment.

so far there are two things happening:
1) food fest at expo hall 5 which ends TMRW
2) motor show at suntec which ends 21st
hmmm.

i think i am crazy. just know i was laughing at my tortoise cos it ws waling around with a piece of longbean sticking out of its mouth. wellwell. at least life is interesting.

waking up early has seemed to cure my stupid sniffles. past few days i decided to get up at 5 and do some work until i get hit by the midmorning lazy bug, and surprisingly i've hardly been sniffling through the day, which is so typical of weekends. i should do this more often. maybe its the weather the past few days... so much cooler and fresh cos of the rain. i dunno

must cut hair
must go shopping soon
must get earrings for lizzie
must find some nice stuff to munch on
must find out how jie is doing
must remember promise
must tell you i miss you
must remember to go for tuesday maths

night is never as black as morning

God bless

Hello boringness

A bad feeling. That the As are the end of something. Something like my future.

It feels like failure and impending doom. Has this not happened before to you O weary traveler? When you reach the gate and find that it is closed, that the hinges have rusted and trapped you beyond that portcullis to safety and comfort? I do not like this feeling, yet it inveigles its way into my chest and grips with an asphyxiation. Shouldn’t it then be now time to set off this effete path, to find a way unto an efflorescence instead? Sometimes even I cannot find the answers to mine own heart, and I leave myself out in the cold, out by those selfsame portcullises. And I feel my folly so distinctly myself! Why the brash rashness! Why the sane idiocy, in all deliberateness! Why choose to bury yourself and indulge in the everyday pleasures of sleep and food and sin… why then, why.

I came back to God two weeks ago, after a long exile by sin. I felt the full force of him in my heart, and I cried in my bed as I prayed, lying there, prayed as I poured out my confessions into his enveloping presence, spoke out aloud the words of my prayer and pleaded for his forgiveness, that I may once again return to His flock. The feeling then… the feeling of utter subservience, utter guilt, finally utter joy at His infinite grace and power. Never again will I want to turn from You Lord. Everyday I fight a battle with sin and the evils of my heart, with the faith of my Lord planted firmly in me.

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want
He makes me lie down in greener pastures

What then do I have of want now? I think it is the desire to excel that pushes me on, and the desire to excel that mires me. I cannot stand to be better, to run in this marathon of competitive grades. It is so different from real sports, so vastly more selfish, poisonous, filtered and reamed in its note and texts and mindless paraphernalia. Competition nonetheless – contrivance nevertheless. The is pain both ways, and in both things, the pain of failure, the heart-rending, wrenching fall of not measuring up, but also, surprisingly so, the pain of glory and success. That being the best is only the veneer over a cesspool of private anguish and suffering and, more often than not, a stinking, rotting interior, derivative of pride and ambition. Now that, is what I cannot bear to stand for.

Ditto for prom.

I conclude on this note: wherefore art thou polity. The individual cannot even get oneself out of the mess it gets oneself in. the sins of one are the sins of many, and doubtless society becomes wrangled up by the cows of the people themselves. Who gets out of this mess better, if any get out at all? Maybe the best-dressed for success will be picked for prom king and queen.

Thusly I am not one of them. I live my own life.

colours

23rd oct 2004
1130pm

Today was national colours award presentation

I thought it was tmrw.

WhAt

Its just so like me to do some dumb thing like this and forget about the date of some important thing, just like I mix up when Ramadhan begins and what mock test I’m having on what day, or even if there’s a test at all.

Ok so now I wont be getting my cert for national colours. Hooray.

I guess that’s punishment enough yup.

On the other hand I can just dish up some believable excuse and hope that lawrence ang actually took my cert back to school with him so that he can pass it back to me.
bleargh even hafta write a explanaton letter to lawrence ang.

Gah. I gotta stop doing stupid things like this.

study will come

i hope i can get my study will back.

today i went back to school for the first time since baccalaureate, and went back for a three hour human geog test of all things. it reminded about a couple of things: first, my studies are not in order at all, second, i need to practice my writing more, and third i need to buy new pens cos i gave up on writing my last essay after both stupid pens start to sputter. sputter is the best i can term the way the pens wrote; one moment there's ink, the next it leaves out half of a letter of a quarter of a word. so frustrating. looks like i actually have to spend money and go find some quality pens this time instead of relying on pickmeuppens and lousy office bringhomepens...

so today at least i got some work done and finished 11 lects on urban, which is not bad by my standards. i couldve done more, but... i could say 'nvm it'll get better' here... but the truth is that there's really no time left to mess about. i really hafta go and get things done if i'm even going to pass the bare 2As 2AOs... its scary... cos i know i may not pass... and i may get left at my seat on results day.

which would be the second worst.

the worst would be that i have to go to poly and do my tertiary ed all over again... argh!!

how to pass As

1) study.
2) study. like mad.
3) memorize sloman, a&c, othello, hardtimes, geog text,
4) scrape brains off wall after head explodes
5) produce brandon seah clone and call him eugene
6) coerce creffield clone to call herself eugene
7) train with monks on hill and learn the universal answer ommmmmmmmmm
8) put brains back in head. almost forgot.

yup all set to pass As now

storybook

dint study AT ALL today. read Shadow Of The Hegemony by orson scott card. it is a truly engaging book.

but i dint study and i dont think mr storybook man is gonna help me pass my exams.

this is not good

kusuOJT

Today was OJT to kusu

It was kinda boring really.
I felt I dint really fit in first of all.
I know it sounds stupid that I should complain about this, but really, I do feel like I’m not really into the whole scene heart and soul.
I cant bring myself to the kind of fervour over guiding I usually have for stuff that I really enjoy doing.
Mingsheng once said during a workshop that I’m in it ‘more for the scientific part’, which I seem to find more and more aptly descriptive.
Out on the walks I just kinda lose focus and get bored of the leaders talking about some other creature I already know about.
I can feel it in me that I wont be a really good guide in the talking role or seeking role. Gimme the crowd control role then I think that I can handle no problem.
Still, it points towards some general inability of mine to communicate and interact and bond with the layman and public properly, and which I’ve always been aware of.
So I guess something has to be done, that either I change myself and become more chirpy cheery and interactive or else I just slog thru the december walk with a memorized script and get it over with then go incommunicado.
Both ways its pathetic quitely.
Maybe then, I should just learn to open up and not be afraid to talk and initiate conversation.
Then problem solved and I will be happier and people ard me will gain a new friend aka me.
Hahahaha.
Anyways something new seen today.
A DOLPHIN!
It was quite a ways away, maybe 50, 60 metres, but when (the someone) shouted ‘dolphin!’ I turned and saw the beautiful blue-purple back breaking the surface and the dorsal fin cresting out of the water like… like… like something out of imagination tv story etc.
Magical to the point of mundaneity.
Strange but true.
Waiyin would’ve been so excited if she was there.
Yes Singapore waters have dolphins just that its quite rare to see them cos there are so many vessels that most marine mammals are frightened away or, well, mowed over I guess.
I just hope this one returns to the larger sea safely.
A dolphin.
Can u imagine?

certain things

i think things are getting better. not much that happened the past few days seem very eventful. spent baccalaureate wondering why i subjected myself to extended chapel and waking up at 5am to rush to school to do... what? watch the ppl i dont like singsong on stage. at least the band was good and i enjoyed the hymns yup. consolation.

picture taking afterwards was awful cos i dont have a proper camera and it was so hot and trying to avoid certain people erk. and then i went home early cos i just felt i couldnt take the 'oh look i love the class let me show it by being chirpy and social' thing anymore. yup.

lately i've been drifting from You Lord.
help me come back. today after failing to find a seat at woodlands library i went for a walk at causeway point and bought four little pass it on cards at mount zion. kinda drifted to that shop and felt quite happy and peaceful for once. hearing christian lyrics over the speakers in the shop was definitely therapeutic. i need you in my life.

anyway. somehow yingshi and i are getting closer, and i'm beginning to harbour mixed feelings about her. she says she and kenny are... i'm also not sure. on off on off on off i cant even remember. can only advise. somehow this is the kind of scenario you only see on tv. anyway deep down she is really genuine and kind and warm, perhaps a bit misdirected and liberal in her affections. i'm not sure about anything anymore, so its best i not speculate. let things run their course la anyway i've got As to handle and if she wants to come down and visit me mugging at the library it's always nice yup.

after exams
go for french lessons with audrey
take up tap (finally) with... joshua? haha mebbe just myself
do stuff with... someone

angsty songsty

to be hurt, to feel lost
to be left out in the dark
to be kicked when you're down
to feel like you're pushed around
to be on the edge of breaking down
and no one's there to save you

no you dont know what its like
welcome to my life



it'd be nice to say 'life sux'
but if you know which side of life to live in usually life is quite ok

life sux
ok maybe just yours

by the way the lyrics suck so there you go wHaT IrOnY

upset

ok
got cancelled on today
it felt... painful
disappointing
but somehow i kinda expected it
i never had a chance anyway
oh well...
at least my books dont cancel on me

zao school again

Today I skipped school. I’m at home while all my friends are in school. though it’s the last few days of school and ppl are probably busy snapping photos for keepsake I don’t really mind. Its easy to have memories of ppl but what is the point really if they are just memories? Sentimentalities are bothersome. Its better to make the effort to catch up with ppl now and again rather than just look at old photos and reminisce. Of course it will have to come to some destination in life when catching up is just too difficult cos of lifestyle and marriage whatnot, well in that case what are the chances that we’ll look back on jc anyway? It’d have just become a redundancy in the already manifold experiences of our lives by that time. Still… its nice to remember and get warm fuzzy feeling. Provided there are ppl you’d want to remember that badly. Mish lee said I was sentimental cos I decided to keep the paper napkin from (probably) the last formal class gathering in school we’d have. Actually I kept it cos it had this really pretty floral print, so there.

In a way though it really feels strange to be leaving school, as if leaving a womb and emerging into the real (and unsheltered) world all of a sudden. School now feels like this great big umbrella that shields you from the external, and I think many ppl are going to have a tough time trying to readapt to a lifestyle where not everything is provided for you in one neat, conglomerated package. See in school we can have food friends fun and be teacher-fed notes homework guidelines everything. We become dependent by default. What the poodle is the good of school then? When (if ever) we find a job we’ll have to do things on our own – and gosh I can just imagine some of the class trying to find their way through life. They will get lost lost lost! Then again. They are supposed to FIND their way. Its not as life is laid out like a red carpet ahead of us… and that is the problem with school, because it paves our route through adolescence and education… and that is the real danger. Don’t get caught.


Human mock on Wednesday morning.
Physical mock on Friday morning.
E1 mock is on Monday morning.
Kusu OJT is on Sunday night.
Baccalaureate is on Thursday night.
Stayover on Thursday night.
A levels in four weeks time.
I haven't finished anything.
I need to get tickets for ballet under the stars.
diediedie.

socked

today I stole a SOCK.

Not even both sides.

Just a sock, and its blue and red with pink trim yeehah. I don’t even know why I did it except perhaps because I could, and I wanted to prove the useless security in jb to, well, the citizens of jb. How lame. And its not even a PRETTY or nearly any GOOD QUALITY sock.

Its just a SOCK in red blue pink.

Gah chihuahua.

sleeelp

oh fricky fricks tonight i better go to sleep. for the past three days i have existed on 7 hours of sleep. i feel a bit strange now. the feeling is like being on static.

today went a bit over with audrey.

static...
bbbuzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZzzZZzzzzzzZZzZZZzzz
zzZZzzZzzZZzzzZZzZZzzzzzzzzZZZzZZZZzzzzZZZZZZzzzzzZzZ
zzzZZZzzzZzZZZZZZzzzz

i cant concentrate long enough to study.

my brain is too liquishy to write an essay.

i cant think straight.

i need sleep bad.

why are you so cold all of a sudden? i'm thrown off course.