You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2005.
pleh. i am not cut out for exams. i just can’t write under pressure, me thinks. or my studying techniques were just wrong for this. yesterday’s politics A exam was a terrible experience… >_______
on the slightly brighter side, for politics B, which has no exam but is judged on take-home essays, i managed to get an average of 68.5, which is a second upper grade, and which i’m pretty happy with, really. and since i will be saying goodbye to political philosophy forever and ever amen, my next few exams will all be based on the real world, like developmental politics and international relations, so hopefully it will work out better.
hopefully.
the brightest side of all this, is that year one doesn’t count to my final degree. so as long as i get an average of 40 for my pol A, which i thiiiiink i ought to be able to. -pause- oy vey. -fingers crossed- i just graduate to year two. sigh. and now i have no more politics for the academic year. w00t!
(so why do i still feel so crap about my exam?)
i’m tired of worrying for my politics exam and staring at the same notes over and over again, and i know this will probably haunt me because i’ll fail to do my best, but now i honestly don’t(can’t) give a damn because there is a hollowness and an emptiness and a silence and a sad sad sadness.
—
i thought of a story that day, on the train to london. this girl wakes up from a coma one day to find herself face to face with a man she’s supposed to be in love with but can’t remember. were we in love, she’ll ask him, tentatively, for there is something untouchably sad as he looks upon her, and he will hesitate, and slowly, one paw tapping the tundra, he ventures a yes and that hangs between them big and nebulous and intimidating and empty. and they will slowly get back together, he will woo her like he did and they will be happy for a while for she was who she had been once again, with the lightness and the selflessness and the unselfishness of her love. but it doesn’t last, nothing does. there starts the downward spiral, the doubts, the little things that were endearing start to annoy each other one day and the girl starts to suspect that maybe, maybe he was never hers and she was never his, and he had been lying to her the minute she woke up. and they will–
break. and she will look at him and she will ask him if this was what they had been before her accident– unhappy. and finally, he looks at her with that closed closed look in his eyes, and he will tell her, no. no, they weren’t happy when her accident happened. then you were lying, she would yell. you said we were in love. how can we have been in love if we were unhappy– and he will say simply, quietly, love is pain. if you want to know what is love– this. this is it. it is being with someone you know you will never have a happy ending with because not being together would have been even more excruciating. it is making each other miserable and yet coming, coming back to it everytime thinking it will be different. that you can make it different. you will change. she will change. but what if that change brings you further apart rather than together? and the audience will find out in a stunning revelation that they–
broke. they broke the day her accident happened. and he chose to go back and try and try again even when he knew how their story would end. and this, this… is love?
i don’t know how to end this story. i don’t know how this story will finally end. but there is a terrible sadness in living each day like it was(is) the last.
after 20 episodes of naruto:
1) why oh why do the animators feel the incessant need to drag the fights out so much? is there really a need to do a mandatory 7 minute recap every episode? can you not trust the audience to connect some dots by themselves? i’m reminded of slam dunk where they dragged the last 10 seconds of a match for an entire half hour episode. and it. was. so. tedious. imagine watching only one episode a week. you’ll never get back those times of your life, never!
2) why is exposition so clunky… >____<
3) why does sakura not do anything?! for 20 episodes all she’s done is squeal and scream and shriek and read out exposition. sigh. she’s cute, i’ll give the animators that, but boy is she useless. -__-
4) stop whining, naruto.
5) oh sasuke, angst does not a character make.
6) kakashi sensei wa kakkoi desu! hee~!
7) wow. yaoi so fast? explicit some more. :P (haku and that other dude.) w00t. haven’t gone all squealy over shounen ai for a long time. heh.
8) er. i think that’s it. damn addictive anime series. now. back to politics. -weeps copiously for the 483652846th time-
these days i’d like to blog more about my life, though words escape me and what i really want to say comes out all wrong, or cannot come out for i have burnt my bridges perhaps too fast and now there is no turning back.
there are so many things i’d like to tell you. but this blog is too public and feelings too many to consider that the words get stuck in my throat (ich ich ich), and there is only a stubborn and woefully inadequate silence.
i need my own secrets now, even if they do devour me at night– in the dark no one can tell.
—
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 13
i don’t know why i feel like this now. maybe i’ve always been semi-emotionally stunted and everything only hits me after a bit of a lag time, but there is a tight little panicky empty fear that’s starting to churn my stomach and i wish you were here with me all of a sudden…
—
and a more… balanced side note. it’s 5.09pm now and the sun is shining brightly. what the hell?!? O__O and i’m so scared for my politics exam.
ETA: that i really like this joi tsai song which i hadn’t really paid attention to till now. it’s so goddamned happy despite (or in spite of) the lyrics.
this post seems weird four days late, but it’s just something i’ve been thinking about lately… i turned 20 (good bye my adolescence!) 4 days ago on the 16th, and despite the mild almost-quarter-life-but-not-really-there-yet crisis, i have to admit that i have been remarkably thankful for the 20 years i’ve had on this earth.
was talking with en qi a few days ago about this, that there was never any guarantee that any of us would live till 20. i should know that, seeing my brother pass away before he turned 21. but it never really struck me till now. that i have been remarkably lucky that i have survived 20 years of this (wretched) world without any big screw up.
that i have been blessed with relatively good health, no obvious disability, relative intelligence, and while not being drop-dead gorgeous, i suppose i’m not butt ugly either. the fact that i’ve always had the chance to make it to good schools with good opportunities. that i’ve been able to learn music, to sing, to write, to draw (none with extreme success but i suppose being a jack of all trades still counts for something), that my life has not known any relative hardship. that this has been my luck of the draw– i have to admit that i’ve got a pretty good lot.
that i have always met people who understood, or who were willing to understand (a rare quality sometimes), and that these people have stuck with me for all this while; shaRon and shuzhen since we were 6(!), char and mel since we were 13, raining since -she- was 13, and the wonderful people i met at hwa chong, kelvin, sharon, yuankai, pak, yexiang, and the fantastic people in york, cui, en qi, jason, jiamin, jiawen, eleena… (the list isn’t definitive by any means, just the people that have been on my mind lately), and i just really love you guys.
it seems the older i grow, the more easily satisfied i become. lin hai told me once i gave him the sort of impression that i always lived in the darkness (and ate flies, as a sidenote) and i took whatever happiness i got gladly because anything was better than the darkness i’m incessantly cloaked in. and i suppose, that that may be true. but i really am satisfied with all this. that people send me a birthday greeting makes me happy. i don’t need cards or presents or anything. just knowing that there are people out there who thought of you, even if it’s only just that moment that they typed the words ‘happy birthday’, it’s just one of the bestest feelings in the world.
and what’s better is if people take the time to spend it with you. like the motley crew in york who got me sunflowers (as jason says, “so you won’t live in the darkness anymore”) and had dinner and ben & jerry’s and snarked with me through star wars… it was one of the best times i’ve had in york. :)
i suppose i really have mellowed. -thoughtful smile-
heya! holiday photos need to take a backseat for a while… cos i need to pia my politics exam. why does time pass so fast here?!?!! -WAILS- damn you, samurai champloo! you and your quirky jokes, and sly satires and enigmatic bishies!
anyway, was just link-surfing and i came across what promises to be the most horrifying blog ever. and it’s just… surreal. because you don’t think people like this ever existed. especially not in singapore… he’s just full of misogyny, homophobia, and… vitriol… and my god. he’s just a troll. a nazi troll. O__O i won’t link to him because i don’t want to give him any publicity, and besides, he hasn’t updated in a while. but if anyone is curious to see how the mind of a bigoted psychopath works, you could msn me or leave a comment i’ll dig up the link for you.
am extremely distracted! argh! must. concentrate!
-starts daydreaming again-
Want
Rufus Wainwright
I don’t want to make it rain
I just want to make it simple
I don’t want to see the light
I just want to see the flashlight
I don’t want to know the answers
To any of your questions
I don’t want, no I really don’t want
To be John Lennon or Leonard Cohen
I just want to be my Dad
With a slight sprinkling of my mother
And work at the family store
And take orders from the counter
I don’t want to know the answers
To any of your questions
I don’t want, no I really don’t want
To be John Lithgow or Jane Curtain
But I’ll settle for love
Yeah, I’ll settle for love
Before I reached the gate
I realized I had packed my passport
Before security realized
I had one more bag left
I just want to know
If something’s coming for to get me
Tell me, will you make me sad or happy
And will you settle for love
Will you settle for love
i love rufus. sigh. granted, want isn’t from want 2 which i got lately from both sharon and jiamin (lol), but it’s still a pretty song. yesterday i sat down and properly listened to rufus lyrics and they’re really very good. there’s something very poetic yet plain and pleading about them. mmmmm. someone tell me i’m not going to go all groupie on him when he comes to york… >___
i am a terrible person.
i’m sorry, i’m so so sorry. if i could make this up to you in some way, i would.
we now take a break from emotionally charged msn conversations (oh. don’t. ask.) to bring you a report about: Ailin’s stint in paris!
so we leave the lovely quaintness of Nice (like a french york, only prettier, less grey, and with a painful beach. oh. and no one there understands a word you say in english.) for the bright lights of paris. then disaster 1 strikes.
i leave a bag with stuff i helped my mom buy (which are pretty expensive) on the train. i was in utter agony. just kept beating myself up and hating myself and thinking about how worthless i was and how i really just wanted my mother to be happy… so my memories of paris are mostly those of pain and agony. and you know what made the incident all the more painful? there were like, signs everywhere telling me to check my things. first en qi started fumbling about to check her stuff, which prompted me to run back to my seat to check (but the bag had been shoved under someone else’s chair) so i didn’t see it. then an american family in front of me started yelling if anyone left kids behind. which struck me as funny because people normally leave bags behind. but do i check if i have all my bags? no. why? because i am a KOOK.
sigh. no, i don’t think i’ve quite gotten over it. but my mom has been nothing but sweet and understanding about it, telling me to just treat it as an expensive lesson, and it really makes me feel kinda worse yet better. sigh. if i ever leave anything on a train again, i deserve to be slapped.
anyways, so day one, we just woffle around exploring the city, and we don’t do anything because i wasted everyone’s time dragging them back to the station to lodge a lost and found complaint, so by the time we’re done, everything’s closed. the only thing we manage to visit is notre dame. a bloddy big church if i ever saw one. but very grand, and very pretty.
the next day, we get up early and head off to… er, i can’t say i remember. i think it was montparnesse cemetary. which sounds cool doesn’t it, grave-hunting and the like… well. it ain’t. the tombs aren’t numbered and are pretty haphazard, so finding the graves is pretty tedious. most of the famous people also seemed to have shunned ostentatious graves. anyways, there was jean paul sartre, citroen (like the car guy?), tzara, and [one of] my heroes: samuel beckett.
then following the established theme of the day (which is death and dead bodies) we went to the pantheon. which has the bodies of many other famous people, like napoleon, rousseau (ooooohhhhhhh how you’ve made me suffer!), voltaire, marie curie, victor hugo and others. :P
this is me being a right old antisocial prat as i mourn my own stupidity for losing the bag. en qi, however, was very kind to take photographic evidence of the poetry of sadness. :) the photo below is rousseau’s coffin. which for some reason has a hand stretching out from inside. which is mildly (oh, you know, only mildly) disturbing. i think it’s meant to signify how the spirit of his words never lose their effect and they continue to illuminate the way for budding french revolutionaries. or maybe french coffin makers were just weird. hey. who am i to judge?
then we trotted to st. sulspice. (sp?) which y’all dan brown fans out there should recognise as being the home of the rose line. and guess what? dan brown lied. -dies laughing- jason was mighty pissed. but anyway, there’s this lovely disclaimer at the church, which i’ll just post the link to because if i shrink it, y’all can’t read it properly. click here.
following this holy experience, we decided to glorify consumerism by paying homage to the first shopping centre in the world– au bon marche. which means literally, at the good price. which shows that false advertising just dates waaaaaaay back.
finally, we ended our second day by going to… the tower of learning.
we went up…
because we were using night mode, any slight shaking makes the picture blurry. however, i find it sad this might be the most attractive picture of me yet– one where you cannot see my face. and we saw all the sights of paris, tattooed in her iris:
and because i am tired, i’ll finish up paris tomorrow. in the meantime, my favouritest shot of us and the tour eiffel:
(once again, flans most welcome in comments box, failing which, comments would be good too.) tomorrow’s entry might not happen though, cos i’m off to newcastle for a day trip!
