I've had, if you'll pardon me, a heck of a week. Three written assignments plus a graphics-heavy oral presentation. I've been staying up far later than decent people should be, and even after all that I'm not exactly sure what I churned out was the best I could have done.
But now I'm free. And a couple of nice things happened. So that was alright.
I almost stepped on some ducklings while distracted the other day. Yes, ducklings. I quickly got out of the way before the angry mother could get a taste of my leg.
They were pretty adorable though. I'd have liked to take a picture, but I decided I'd bothered them enough for one day.
I used to think that being nasty and bad-tempered at home was all that kept me well-mannered in public. But I've spent months in a different home, and have not truly been angry or obnoxious once.
It's... different. That I don't have to be this way, that there's actually a chance for me to be a nice person.
Lift is awesome, and I only just found this out today.
This is just awesome. It just goes to show how much we depend on our hearing to place what happens around us. I felt a genuine sense of panic when he started on the electric razor.
In other news... HAHAHAHAHA.
Friday, 29 August 2008
Sunday, 10 August 2008
Another 1-Up
I know I'm a little late with this, but hey - it's still 9th August in some countries.
Happy birthday Singapore!
Yesterday I had to watch the National Day Parade over the internet, on a 2 x 3 inch rectangle on my laptop screen. I think my eyes died a little... While the image lagged on occasion, the audio was flawless, and it did feel that I was back home celebrating the nation's birthday like every year. Just for a moment.
I am so packing a national flag when I fly back here next year.
Happy birthday Singapore!
Yesterday I had to watch the National Day Parade over the internet, on a 2 x 3 inch rectangle on my laptop screen. I think my eyes died a little... While the image lagged on occasion, the audio was flawless, and it did feel that I was back home celebrating the nation's birthday like every year. Just for a moment.
I am so packing a national flag when I fly back here next year.
Sunday, 3 August 2008
Update XVIII: Block
I use the backspace key too often now. My mind is in a state of inertia, and refuses to pull itself together.
There are times when the words flow easily, and I wonder where the wisdom came from. Then there are times like now.
Writing is art. It cannot be turned on or off like a switch. But now the circuit is firmly fused open, and in spite of multiple attempts I cannot get it to move.
It's not that I have nothing to say. It's not that I want to hide. It's this block, stealing away the only means I have to communicate. I have the intent, but lack the words.
Fluency will not return at once, so I settle for small victories. Forgive this short post, it is a necessary step. When I return, I will make sense. Some time.
In the meantime, watch this. It is worth it.
There are times when the words flow easily, and I wonder where the wisdom came from. Then there are times like now.
Writing is art. It cannot be turned on or off like a switch. But now the circuit is firmly fused open, and in spite of multiple attempts I cannot get it to move.
It's not that I have nothing to say. It's not that I want to hide. It's this block, stealing away the only means I have to communicate. I have the intent, but lack the words.
Fluency will not return at once, so I settle for small victories. Forgive this short post, it is a necessary step. When I return, I will make sense. Some time.
In the meantime, watch this. It is worth it.
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Fiction: Procrastination
Do something.
I place the gumball in my mouth. If it were a jawbreaker this would hurt, but the candy coating dissolves quickly and collapses in on the hollow centre. It is an obnoxious shade of blue.
Experimentally I stick my tongue out at the mirror. Obnoxious shade of blue. I wonder if the previous gumballs were the same, and I simply did not notice.
You’re not doing anything.
I think about the pickles in the fridge. Pickles and salami. Salami slices fried to a crisp are like potato chips, only better.
Please. Time is wasting.
I ignore the voice and chew. Deliberately. I was thinking of something but it escapes my mind.
Pickles…
No, not pickles. Something. I shape the gum with my teeth and blow. The material snaps before it can form a bubble. So much for gum. I move to fold it away, into the tissue in my pocket. To my dismay, it is blue.
I examine my tongue in the mirror again. No blue.
“Ah,” I say. I pop in a yellow gumball and examine the result. Yellow.
Less dismay, then.
Alarm clock.
I glance at it. It stands in the corner of the table, nameless, trustworthy. “No.”
Then do something.
“No,” I say, without thinking.
It’s afternoon.
So it is.
A stirring which is quickly quelled. Do something. Do something NOW!
“I can’t.”
Why?
“Don’t feel like it.”
You will regret this later.
“Maybe.” The gum is losing its sweetness rapidly. I hate gum. It never goes away once it’s done.
Green.
“Green?”
Music.
Obligingly I put on the headphones and glance down the playlist. Piano, I think. The punctuated sounds follow in sharp staccato.
I still find it hard to believe that the piano is a string instrument.
The voice settles to a corner of my mind. I listen briefly to the notes. Already the gum tastes like tepid tea. While kneading out the last of the sugar with my teeth I consider which gumball to take next.
Green.
I shrug. Alright.
The music moves fast, notes following each other as fast as they can without stumbling.
Arpeggio.
“What?”
It’s called “arpeggio”.
“How do you know what I don’t?” The question seizes me, and I wonder if it is possible for me to know more than I do.
There is no reply. I do not have one.
Yellow.
There is no more yellow.
Purple.
I stare at it suspiciously. What flavour-
DosomethingdosomethingdosomethingDOSOMETHINGNOW!
Nerves taken by surprise and twitching in obedience, my hand moves and brings up a document. Something inside gives way, and I begin work.
“I hate you,” I say amicably. There is no response.
I place the gumball in my mouth. If it were a jawbreaker this would hurt, but the candy coating dissolves quickly and collapses in on the hollow centre. It is an obnoxious shade of blue.
Experimentally I stick my tongue out at the mirror. Obnoxious shade of blue. I wonder if the previous gumballs were the same, and I simply did not notice.
You’re not doing anything.
I think about the pickles in the fridge. Pickles and salami. Salami slices fried to a crisp are like potato chips, only better.
Please. Time is wasting.
I ignore the voice and chew. Deliberately. I was thinking of something but it escapes my mind.
Pickles…
No, not pickles. Something. I shape the gum with my teeth and blow. The material snaps before it can form a bubble. So much for gum. I move to fold it away, into the tissue in my pocket. To my dismay, it is blue.
I examine my tongue in the mirror again. No blue.
“Ah,” I say. I pop in a yellow gumball and examine the result. Yellow.
Less dismay, then.
Alarm clock.
I glance at it. It stands in the corner of the table, nameless, trustworthy. “No.”
Then do something.
“No,” I say, without thinking.
It’s afternoon.
So it is.
A stirring which is quickly quelled. Do something. Do something NOW!
“I can’t.”
Why?
“Don’t feel like it.”
You will regret this later.
“Maybe.” The gum is losing its sweetness rapidly. I hate gum. It never goes away once it’s done.
Green.
“Green?”
Music.
Obligingly I put on the headphones and glance down the playlist. Piano, I think. The punctuated sounds follow in sharp staccato.
I still find it hard to believe that the piano is a string instrument.
The voice settles to a corner of my mind. I listen briefly to the notes. Already the gum tastes like tepid tea. While kneading out the last of the sugar with my teeth I consider which gumball to take next.
Green.
I shrug. Alright.
The music moves fast, notes following each other as fast as they can without stumbling.
Arpeggio.
“What?”
It’s called “arpeggio”.
“How do you know what I don’t?” The question seizes me, and I wonder if it is possible for me to know more than I do.
There is no reply. I do not have one.
Yellow.
There is no more yellow.
Purple.
I stare at it suspiciously. What flavour-
DosomethingdosomethingdosomethingDOSOMETHINGNOW!
Nerves taken by surprise and twitching in obedience, my hand moves and brings up a document. Something inside gives way, and I begin work.
“I hate you,” I say amicably. There is no response.
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Meme: Books
Happy new month!
So I stole this meme from Eud's LJ... Anyway, the idea is to:
- look at the list and
- bold what you've read
- italicise what you're going to read
- underline what you love
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible (Only parts of it...)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (Read about half, then skipped to the ending. Aheh...)
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (I don't really like Hardy's books...)
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (I've been searching for this for ages!)
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (Read some of them.)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings was so much better.)
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (Saw parts of the movie.)
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (Also saw parts of the movie. Depressing story.)
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Another book I badly want to read.)
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (I liked Through the Looking Glass better though.)
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (One of the first books I ever read. Loved it.)
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen (My mother loves this book too.)
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell (Depressingly truthful book.)
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel (Fascinating story.)
51. Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (Read parts of it.)
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte's Web - EB White
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I've read every single Sherlock Holmes story and loved all of them.)
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (Wow, that was...so long ago.)
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur, l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux...)
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (I liked the 1948 film better than the book, to be honest...It was so funny.)
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (Only watched the 1935 movie.)
That's, what...36? 36 books? Agh, no wonder my eyes are as bad as they are. I also realise there's lots more books which I want to read and never got to... Probably should work on those sometime.
So I stole this meme from Eud's LJ... Anyway, the idea is to:
- look at the list and
- bold what you've read
- italicise what you're going to read
- underline what you love
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible (Only parts of it...)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (Read about half, then skipped to the ending. Aheh...)
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (I don't really like Hardy's books...)
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (I've been searching for this for ages!)
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (Read some of them.)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings was so much better.)
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (Saw parts of the movie.)
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (Also saw parts of the movie. Depressing story.)
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Another book I badly want to read.)
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (I liked Through the Looking Glass better though.)
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (One of the first books I ever read. Loved it.)
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen (My mother loves this book too.)
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell (Depressingly truthful book.)
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel (Fascinating story.)
51. Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (Read parts of it.)
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte's Web - EB White
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I've read every single Sherlock Holmes story and loved all of them.)
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (Wow, that was...so long ago.)
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur, l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux...)
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (I liked the 1948 film better than the book, to be honest...It was so funny.)
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (Only watched the 1935 movie.)
That's, what...36? 36 books? Agh, no wonder my eyes are as bad as they are. I also realise there's lots more books which I want to read and never got to... Probably should work on those sometime.
Saturday, 28 June 2008
Friday, 20 June 2008
FREEDOM!
Last exam ended today! Finally, after three weeks, I can do what I want to!
Freeeee...
The exams? They were relatively easier than what I'm used to. Of course I had to invest in a lot of mugs to make them easy, but...
Anyway, they're over. Gone. Half a year cleared, and then I'm going home.
In the meantime, I've got some serious slacking off to do. Laters.
Freeeee...
The exams? They were relatively easier than what I'm used to. Of course I had to invest in a lot of mugs to make them easy, but...
Anyway, they're over. Gone. Half a year cleared, and then I'm going home.
In the meantime, I've got some serious slacking off to do. Laters.
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