the world is a question

Grapes

2012-01-27T21:29:00.002+08:00

A mention by Z of Adele's Someone Like You this afternoon made the song get stuck in my head (esp the tragically subdued, tired line of "sometimes it lasts in love, and sometimes it hurts instead") and I'm now listening to her album 21. I never really listened to her seriously before but now I understand the hype - she's very talented. Anyway hopefully this will get me kickstarted back on listening to music again, because I've not been listening to anything substantial since, um, October? Haha, guilty as charged :(

I've been reading though! Fiction mostly. But I finished my Ben Franklin book recently and also Salman Rushdie's Fury. It was good, solid - Rushdie's always reliable, I suppose - but did not strike me as particularly outstanding. Still, it was entertaining and exciting and, so, quick to get through. I don't know if books make me more cynical, or more idealistic. In any case, I think I read so much that sometimes I project too much of the negatives in the books into real life - always thinking of what-ifs, imagining future ennui, rejection, depression, insecurity, obscurity. It can get pretty unsafe up in my head sometimes.

That said, I'm actually quite happy - I always remind myself that books are (sometimes, sadly(?)) just books and I have a pretty good life. I have a loving God, very nurturing parents and family, an amazing boyfriend, and I've been blessed with so many wonderful people (friends, teachers, mentors) and gifts (both tangible and intangible).

I think I kind of understand what Esther of the Bible meant when she said "And if I perish, I perish." (Esther 4:16 NIV)

- although our contexts are highly different, I think I can identify a bit with this - the idea that it's okay to not know for sure what's coming in the future, but trusting in God and His providence, and knowing that all things (good and bad) happen for His purposes. I've been worrying about the future quite a bit recently, so I'm quite grateful that I read Esther 4 today for devotions and that God spoke to me through it.

Of course, sometimes I don't understand what God really means. The whole Jacob-Esau thing, really - I don't really get it, though I suppose one way of reading it could just be as per Romans 9, which Mr C pointed me towards the last time - "Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?" (Romans 9:21) Who are we to question? Also, since God does all things for His glory, there is a reason behind perceived injustice, there is a higher purpose for it as well. I must confess that I haven't done as much study on it as I should, but well, many more mysteries left to guess at (:

On other things, I will be joining the ranks of the gainfully employed on Feb 2! High time, I suppose, since I've been slacking away for so long (ok, if you don't count New Zealand, one month). I'll be glad, I think, to get myself moving and working again but I suppose it will take some adjustment out of this stasis-induced inertia/laziness initially. But it's okay! I'm hoping to learn as much as I can, and to lead as balanced a life as I can - I fully intend to treasure time with Z and family before I'm whisked off to university, wherever that may be.

I'm real glad for everything I have. And for future reference:

¹² When Esther’s words were reported to Mordecai, ¹³ he sent back this answer: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. ¹⁴ For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
¹⁵ Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: ¹⁶ “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish."
- Esther 4:12-16

Carbonated

2012-01-23T12:35:00.000+08:00

"For most Americans in 1776 to be a simple democracy was not a good thing, which is why nearly all the state constitutions formed at the time created governors and senates to offset the democracy embodied in their houses of representatives.

Democracy in the eighteenth century was not yet the article of faith that it would become in the decades following the American Revolution. It was still a technical term of political science, meaning simply rule by the people. In traditional political thinking going back to the ancient Greeks, rule by the people alone was never highly regarded, for it could easily slip into anarchy and a takeover by a tyrant. The best constitution was one that was mixed or balanced, where the people's rule was offset by the rule of the aristocracy and monarchy. Eighteenth-century intellectuals admired the English constitution so much because it seemed to have nicely mixed and balanced the three simple forms of government, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, in the Crown, House of Lords, and House of Commons."

- The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, Gordon S. Wood

--

Interesting book - first non-fiction for me in a long while (since IB ended!) It's not particularly painful nor particularly smooth-going, but it's one of those revisionist takes on an established view, and that's always interesting.

Finished Kazuo Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills and Susan Sontag's In America over the past few days. Ishiguro was lovely, darkly subtle and confusing and tragic - I want to read more of his works. Sontag was sharp and astute in her portrayal of Old World Poland vs New World America but held no emotional appeal for me. I'm on my way to finishing almost all my library books! After Ben Franklin, only Rushdie's Fury left.

I've been quite restless recently and I'm sure it's because of the lack of things to do - after driving and conversational Malay classes there isn't much else, whereas the rest of the world seems productively employed somewhere. I've been looking for options but it's all a bit limited when I'm constrained by an irregular schedule and another internship coming up in April. Well, we'll see.

Happy Chinese New Year! by the way. It's been more toned-down this year maybe because it's less of a contrast to my lifestyle pre-CNY (during school term it's always a mad rush before CNY and so that period becomes a much-needed breather). In any case my priority this festive season is to not get a sore throat... and to spend some time with family.

Funny how life never really changes.

I miss my Z :(

Giblets

2012-01-14T16:36:00.001+08:00

Today:

1. visited a huge chicken processing factory. It was incredibly interesting learning not just about the whole process but also about the business aspect of things; I am contemplating (not going into the chicken business! but rather) the course of my life and the risks I want to take and the decisions I make. It was an odd experience watching the chickens get stunned, throats slit and then the blood dripping dripping dripping and the odd chicken or two still flapping its wings feebly when suspended, bleeding dry, upside-down on the conveyor belt. What got to me most was the smell, I think, it was a thick warm farm smell with an uncomfortably raw edge. But all in all a highly enlightening experience and I still managed to eat chicken for lunch afterwards without any difficulty.

2. finished an anthology of Raymond Carver's short stories - Short Cuts. Apparently it's a good film as well and I shall try to see it someday. Carver has been in my heart ever since A Small Good Thing in secondary school; "the human connection" was what Ms K called it and I think it stuck with me, that phrase was a turning point of sorts in my relationship with literature as a subject. His other short stories are similarly dark and lonely and (sometimes) hopeful but I still have the most affection for A Small Good Thing, probably because of my nostalgia. And the lingering presence of the cinnamon buns in the story. Who can resist cinnamon buns, seriously?

3. felt better about driving, less nerves, more excitement - I figured that I'll pass it eventually (LOL) even if I end up failing the first time. I guess this was due to a combination of talks I had with the parents and other people today and yesterday. It has been rather silly of me to fear it so much. I'm going to be fine!

4. felt better about everything, in general. Indeed I have been silly to fear anything so much. Yes, there are so many roads before me, but I think I can do whatever I want (maybe this is residual feelgoodness from Forrest Gump yesterday). In any case, there is no wrong decision, only longer and shorter paths to the end.

And there is God with me (:

Cog

2012-01-13T22:53:00.000+08:00

There is always this emptiness, this fatigue when I return to solitude or pensiveness or whatever state of being it is when my mind wanders into realms I do not know. To imagine the vast expanse of (largely) unfettered time ahead of me rather scares me yet I do not want to change anything. Am I unhappy? No. Am I happy?

--

I can't wait to get to the book of Romans.

Tofu

2012-01-12T22:03:00.000+08:00

So, recent exploits include:

1. first two driving lessons of my life. They were terrifying but I'm alive after having driven slowly through a business park and made a couple of U-turns and gone round and round and round and round a roundabout. My instructor speaks fluent Chinese and I've been using this opportunity to brush up my very rusty Chinese... 28 more to go. There's always so much going on that it's mildly confusing and while it is fun, it is also very nerve-wracking ahahahha.

2. finally finishing Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol. Goodness, that book took me forever. It was rather dreary in the Russian style and had a decided element of being both grotesque and absurd. I guess it was wickedly satirical but far too draggy for me... I think I am getting impatient with too many works of literature. Anyway, I think Gogol is talented and slightly maniacal but it's going to be a long while before I read his work again.

3. speedily rushing through Richard Russo's short story collection: The Whore's Child and Other Stories. It was light and easy enough reading for me to get through without much of a struggle, such a contrast to Gogol before it! and I was suitable emotionally affected in parts, but I guess it didn't have a huge driving impact on me. I think that is one of the things about short stories, especially when read quickly in succession as part of a collection - they have so many individual little buildups, climaxes and resolutions one after another that it all kind of blurs and you get desensitized to the emotional flux. Novels on the other hand are longer, more laborious and drawn-out and therefore they sting more, they demand and leech more thought and consideration out of the reader. I still like short stories though, they're generally reliable especially when you've a trustworthy author on the cover.

4. reading Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince at a moderate speed and getting quite puzzled, emotion-wise, by it. I've a lot of mixed feelings and it's all very confusing because she does the postmodernist thing of questioning the reliability of not just the narrator but every other of the "dramatis personae" in the novel. One thing I agree with the critics with is that it is a novel about being in love, and all the wretchedness and joys that comes with that state! It was a little melodramatic for me but simultaneously believable and I suppose that is Murdoch's talent. The philosophizing, especially about the nature of art, got too much for me at some points but I guess the whole thing was a good piece of work, in literary terms, just not quite to my taste.

Very few things are perfectly to my taste these days :/

--

life has been very... carefree, and that's in a good and bad sense - on one hand I get to see Z anytime I want (but always with the sense that we have limited time before he goes into the army :(), I can arrange driving lessons anytime, I'm free to do all my reading, but on the other hand I find myself wondering what I have planned and realizing - not much. I've not reached the stage of boredom yet so I'm warding it off by trying to find things to do. I'm going to take a conversational Malay course and try to find some volunteer work and keep up with my driving, and then in April internship proper starts. I hope I don't end up loafing around.

In any case, today I came across this in my devotional book and I wanted to put it down here as a reminder for me not to compare my life with others' and to not try and do everything that everyone else is doing and to just trust and be secure in the plans God has for me -

"[paralleling Nehemiah from Neh 2 and Peter from Acts 12]... The lesson of these radically different experiences is one that we must learn again and again: God’s servants do not have the same gifts, the same tasks, the same success, or the same degree of divine intervention. It is partly a matter of gifts and calling; it is partly a matter of where we fit into God’s unfolding redemptive purposes. Has he placed us in times of declension, for example, or of revival; of persecution, or of major advance? Let God be God; let all his servants be faithful.”

- For The Love of God (Vol 2), D.A. Carson

Constant

2012-01-07T23:03:00.000+08:00

I remember rushing into the girls' toilet after listening to a long paper review on how spiritual and psychological illness wasn't actually considered illness. The same thing happened after experiencing the finality of my prelims results slip. I always wanted to be strong - always unruffled - but then, looking down at my 5 for English, I just lost it and collapsed into a sobbing mess in the (thankfully lonely) toilet. The issue wasn't so much disappointment with myself as it was a sense of injustice, a desire to fight what was established as a "correct way". And I was so angry.

After about half an hour shutting myself in the cubicle and sitting on the closed toilet bowl with my head in my hands, I just began to pray. To ask God to give me the strength to deal with all of it. At first it was just silence and anger. But then I thought back of what Mr C told me, and messaged me, about how God has given me certain gifts, and then there was a switch that clicked into place in my head and I realized - one slip of paper does not take away from anything that God has given me. And my heart swelled with an overwhelming sense of gratitude for those gifts, and my prayers turned away from anger into immense thankfulness. I don't even know what exactly I was thankful for - perhaps it was everything in my life, everything I already had. And then I thought back to the fact that God planned all this. He planned my choosing of the illness question, my initial joy at discovering a question I had answered in a practice essay, my double disappointment when I found out that question was not to be attempted. Similarly He planned for me to cry my heart out alone and He planned for me to realize I was far from alone. I think in that moment I began to try and shift away from my self-reliance, to just surrender the struggle and not think that I alone was in control of my life and the happenings in it. That was an amazingly liberating thought, and while the grade still stung for a while after that, I began to let go of some anger and eventually I really think I put it behind me as far as possible.

That incident comes back to me now, after the IB results, because I think back on that initial resentment of mine and how God motivated me to use the experience for good - after that incident I did essay after essay for practice and met up with my teachers and forced myself to think and write differently in some areas. Moving away from my established ways was frightening. But now I look back and I still can't quite believe I got a 7 for HL English and I do think that the drilling and practices helped. And I'm proud of myself for that. I'm proud that I swallowed my pride and anger and learnt to think differently and worked like crazy in the leadup to IB exams. I thank God for helping me to do all that... I thank God for my failures and successes both. Indeed -

"Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them."
- Psalm 126 NIV

Cheese and mushrooms

2012-01-07T00:43:00.000+08:00

45 points with A's for both EE and TOK (:

All glory to God! He guided my hand through everything.

And I'm really thankful for my teachers and parents as well, and the support I got from Z and my other friends through it all. I'm real proud of them, especially my bb (:

I'm also really thankful that this year's results procedures were much shorter than those of the years before. Broke out in cold sweat and squirmed endlessly in my seat and it was - is - still so surreal. Though of course this is only a small bit of accomplishment in the grand scheme of Life and things, I'm still grateful for it all. I'm so blessed(:

After results Z and I went to have jalapeno poppers and unhealthy Mexican food at HV and then watched Mission Impossible which involved a lot of oohing and aahing and laughing and thankfully, not much thinking. It was really a beautiful day (:

Coeur

2012-01-01T21:24:00.001+08:00

Happy 2012 (:

Watchnight service last night with Z was - even more resonant than I expected. It seemed that so many of the battles I thought I'd been facing on my own were just laid bare during the sermon and I realized that I was far from alone in this. And I think it got me out of my self-pity, till now at least, and I'm truly grateful for that. Being there with Z also helped because I can always count on him to be my strong support, my foundations, my comforter; and it was really nice to spend new year's together with God and Z.

Today was another fairly lovely day as I went for service and then went prawning with Z and his sister and her boyfriend, and it was light and relaxing and took my mind off things which was necessary, I think... And prawning was really quite fun hehe Z and I make quite a good team! Then family gathering at my granddad's house and it was nice too especially with the presence of my baby cousin who greatly amused herself by dragging each relative individually into a line formation to play "choo choo train".

I guess my current state of uncertainty is due to a mixture of emotions that I cant even separate very well. I've a lot of unfounded fear, I think, and a bit of confusion and being lost and generally my tendency to overthink things doesn't really help haha. In any case, I know these feelings are unfounded. I know - with my head - that God will provide (not always what we want, but always what we need) and I just gotta keep reminding myself of that. Jehovah-jireh!

The world remains a question - that excites me, alarms me. I am fearful but optimistic (:

With A Solemn Pop, I say goodbye

2011-12-31T17:54:00.000+08:00

So this is the first post since I've gotten back, and needless to say New Zealand was fun - time in the campervan, long hikes including the Tongariro Alpine Crossing which we did in 6 hours and in which we experienced scorching sun, cold rain and even tiny hailstones in quick succession, walking around in Auckland, having some really good fish&chips and of course the gorgeous scenery. It's amazing how much geographical diversity there is - we saw a fiord, a glacier, geothermal parks, mountains, ocean, lakes, volcanoes, waterfalls... and the way they integrate nature and wildlife with tourism is really quite amazing. I love how friendly their birds are!!! HAHA and the people are so friendly it's very pleasant to go driving around.

I had fun but was also glad to be back because of a number of things - things to be done here, finally meeting Z after 34 days apart, catching up with friends who, because of the lack of school, all seem to have fallen off the grid, and also I was glad to be back to $3 hawker centre food instead of the $20+ that you have to pay almost everywhere. So I'm back, and I've been suitably busy with books (borrowed 9 from the library the other day in a fit of madness), gatherings/meetups, driving theory nonsense, and applications. And the related woes.

There's a kind of depressed ennui that's fallen on me these days, and I have a couple of theories as to why this is so, but I doubt thinking about it will lead to anything more productive than wallowing. I'm reading Gogol's Dead Souls now which doesn't quite help but I've grown to be quite particular about finishing one book before I start another so, I need to persevere. Coe's The Accidental Woman looked promising initially but finished rather emptily, whether by authorial intent or otherwise, but it didn't help my emotional state because I find myself identifying sporadically with Maria's accidentalness, how everything in life seems to just happen and I drift through all of it, but I know deep inside that I'm actually just being silly and that is not the case. The rather funny thing is that "accidentalness" actually implies having a Creator, though it seems counterintuitive initially. And I doubt people understand what I'm saying at this point so, I'll leave it at that hahaha.

Recent events have made me question, like, the nature of my self and who I am and what I want to do with life and the thing is, I have no clue... the future is blanker now than it has ever been and that would be liberating IF there weren't all sorts of expectations and perceptions placed on me by other people. Of course I know I shouldn't be bothering about what other people think but then I think one of my great weaknesses is an overt self-consciousness that amalgamates into my insecurities to make me one giant mess sometimes.

And here I was saying that I wouldn't wallow. Okay, I shan't.

The last day of the year generally calls for a customary 2011 review and I want to do it but don't have the heart for it at the same time - so I shall make it quick. 2011 was a good year. I found God (or rather, God found me? thats a can of worms which reminds me of that bit of Romans 8) and I found Z and I was academically inspired, especially by history and the two Mr Cs. IB was tough - I still look back on it with a strange mix of exhaustion and nostalgia and indulgent pride - but completely worth it. As the year tapered to a close I became very reluctant to leave it, as I suppose is the general pattern with most years, but this year it was all the more intense because my 2012 could go in all manner of directions and I'm afraid BUT knowing I shouldn't be because God will take care of me.

The band of 2011 was without a doubt The National because of The Geese of Beverly Road but also Sorrow and Lemonworld and like basically everything they've ever written. And their slow self-deprecating melancholy was perfect for this year of turning 18, becoming older and younger at the same time, turbulent and self-consciously melodramatic and aching and raw. They're really my soundtrack to the year, cheesy as it sounds.

Yes, 2011's been nothing like I ever experienced, or expected, and I wouldn't change anything... I'm glad it happened to me. I've been through a bit (it's not much, but in my little teenage head, yeah it's a bit) and I'm glad but it also leaves me with some melancholy to say goodbye to the familiar, with all its joys and sorrows.

And yet I don't think that I'm ever saying goodbye to it... honestly, nothing makes New Year's Day intrinsically different from any other day so, my life in 2011 will always be with me in memory and spirit and I am trying to make this sound as un-corny and un-cliched as possible but yeah, bring it on 2012, I'll take whatever you throw at me. You're different but then you're also the same.

Rope

2011-12-05T15:58:00.001+08:00

Just finished Ernest Hemingway's Men Without Women and I admit rather shamefacedly that it was the first work of Hemingway's that I've read so far and he truly does live up to the hype. I think it was even better that it was an anthology of short stories because you can really tell that he's someone who uses no word without reason, every sentence and phrase is deliberate and concise and yet they layer onto one another in a way that lends a certain richness of meaning even though the words themselves are not very much. I particularly liked Hills Like White Elephants and Today is Friday, although trying to find favourites among the many was really difficult. It's remarkable how he uses repetition in a way that doesn't come off as gimmicky or trite or forced, and it's funny how the detachment brought about by his sparse style actually draws the reader closer into the story because you're forced to fill in your own bits of emotion. It benefits someone like me with an overactive imagination, I think.

Leaving for New Zealand in two days and it's quite surreal because I think, once we're there, time will just accelerate by and it will be time to say goodbye to December. Then next year will come around and while I'm looking forward to some things (ie spending time with Z before he goes off to the army, going back to RG to teach, etc) I am also dreading the decisions to be made and the things that I'll have to leave behind when I go off for university. I think the past 1.5weeks without Z have really made me painfully aware that it's not going to be easy leaving.

I can't have everything all the time, and I guess this is part of growing up. There are sacrifices to be made and choices as well, so I can no longer do everything under the sun and hope to get away with it like I've always kinda forced myself to in school. I kind of don't really want to grow up? But I know I have to :(

Canvas

2011-12-03T16:04:00.001+08:00

So I've just finished Milan Kundera's Encounters, which is a collection of essays about art (literature, music, painting, even film) and it was light reading but also highly interesting, and oddly enough I understood where he was coming from even though I've hardly read/listened to/seen the art he reviews or describes. It was plenty of food for thought (and I copied down some titles to read soon) but I think possibly too much at one go for an afternoon, ha ha. Some of what he said was familiar, as if I'd identified with it before but was always unable to voice it in my limited words - ideas about the unity of literary works through the repetitions of symbols/tropes, about how film as we know it has become far less of an art form than it initially promised to, about how there were so many undeveloped possibilities for the novel that are still unrealized, about ugliness in art, meditations about how exactly the wars left indelible marks on Europe... the kind of literary and cultural commentary that I find myself, surprisingly, loving quite deeply.

And then I wonder if maybe this is the path for me, academia and possibly some writing of my own, writing that would aspire to art. But I don't know. I feel like I have been buffeted along, ever since age 15 or so, by winds and forces that would counsel, or demand, me to pursue something colder, less emotional, more apparently reliable. Oddly enough that's also the age I feel like I began reading for myself for the first time - reading outside of the syllabus, opening my mind to books like Kundera's. To be honest, I started reading more than I needed to because I thought it would give me an academic edge - it was all about hard-nosed, accelerating competition, but in one of life's little ironies it actually made me less inclined to follow that cold narrow path set down before me. I don't know. I think the relative lack of things to do nowadays has opened up a lot of speculation about the future and while that sometimes strays into the path of worrying, I know I shouldn't because God is in control and I'm just going to go along with whatever He decides.

A few days ago I also finished Aleksandar Hemon's The Question of Bruno which focuses on the impact of the breakup of Yugoslavia - I feel compelled to tell you about how many little spikes of emotion it provoked in me while I was reading, but now to my horror I can't really remember what exactly happened in that book. I remember bits and words but not actual happenings, which is a testament to the fact that I read too quickly for my own good :/

Anyway, I have Hemingway next - a tiny little book to finish before we go off to New Zealand. Then I'm probably bringing East of Eden along. Also, I found out that the library is doubling our loan quotas so I can actually borrow TWELVE books at once hahah! I suppose part of the reason why I rely on the library so much is because I also cannot fathom leaving so many beloved books behind when I go off to university :/

It is beginning to storm here (been thundering extremely loudly for the past half an hour) and this means my runningtime is being postponed :( Pfft.

On other things, I'm missing Z so much. Skyping him twice a day is already such a luxury and yet it's not the same, not having his presence, not being able to share things with him on the spot, and being constantly reminded of us because of the smallest things - I watched Winter Wipeout today and kept thinking about the time we stood outside that shop in Plaza Sing just laughing our heads off at the contestants getting wet and muddy and wipedout on the screen. I think that moment kind of encapsulates our relationship, how we exist in a little bubble away from/in the middle of the mad world around us and it's safe and comforting and it's home.

Kids

2011-11-30T16:57:00.001+08:00

Decision to decisions are made and not bought
But I thought, this wouldn't hurt a lot.
I guess not.

Control yourself,
Take only what you need from it.

Sultanas

2011-11-28T18:18:00.001+08:00

Over the course of the afternoon I have:
1. finished Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and been heartbroken
2. fussed about my interview tomorrow and checked out how to go there
3. missed a certain someone (I'm terribly predictable, I know)
4. read a few chapters of Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club
5. eaten an overly sweet brownie
6. drunk a lot of water
7. felt lonely
8. sorted out my NUS applications after a series of complicated events
9. read another few chapters of The Rotters' Club
10. been very impressed by Coe
11. wondered amorphously about my future plans
12. missed Z again

--

Steinbeck was very powerful. It was so little (only a 100-page-long little book) but so much at the same time, the end hitting me like a sack of bricks (I keep using this analogy. I need more imagination) and leaving me pooled in so much sadness, disillusion, the tragedy of the forgotten. I've East of Eden waiting for me but I think I shouldn't touch it till later on, when I'm done with my other borrowed books, and perhaps when I'm in a not-so-fragile emotional state.

As for Coe, I was impressed ever since What A Carve Up! but The Rotters' Club really strikes me as well, maybe because it encapsulates so much of the madness, the drunken joy and pains of growing up that I've been thinking about recently. He has a way of writing that is absolutely gripping on a surface read and if one digs deeper, there is so much of the essence of being - certain states of life, like youth - that he captures in those glorious passages of his. Here, for example:

"…He was no more persuaded by the things his parents told him, or the teachers at school. It was the world, the world itself that was beyond his reach, this whole absurdly vast, complex, random, measureless construct, this never-ending ebb and flow of human relations, political relations, cultures, histories… How could anyone hope to master such things? It was not like music. Music always made sense. The music he heard that night was lucid, knowable, full of intelligence and humour, wistfulness and energy and hope. He would never understand the world, but he would always love this music. He listened to this music, with God by his side, and knew that he had found a home."
- The Rotters' Club

This paragraph jumped out at me from the end of Chapter 9 and I think I know why, but I don't know what to do with what I know and feel. I'm just here sitting saturated in a deluge of emotion (that isn't all entirely melancholy, or nostalgia, or overwhelmingly negative) and I suppose it would be called "wallowing", but I don't quite know what else to do.

Fret

2011-11-28T13:13:00.001+08:00

This morning: woke up at 7am to the texts of the boy halfway across the world, did devotions, went for a run at 8am, came back, showered, watched Wipeout and moped a bit (because it reminded me of him), sent a couple of emails around to NUS + ACS (long complicated story), couldn't stop the glee when I found out Z was online, skyped him for 45minutes, went to Clementi library and hauled back 6 books, dropped by Subway for lunch (which also reminded me of him). There is a lot of stfucoupledom here but I really can't help it. I'm just glad for Skype and technology. And holding on to the hope that God will bring us back together in about 30 days.

It's an odd realization to think back and see that a month ago, IB exams hadn't even started. It feels like much longer ago. I think the only reason why I'm not feeling a post-IB void of nothingness is because Z's also away and that emptiness has overwhelmed the emptiness of my schedule. Of course, there's also the minor issue that my schedule isn't exactly empty either - applications, interviews, worrying about things. Though this morning I was reminded that "Who of you can add a single hour to your life by worrying?" (Luke 12:25) and so I'm really trying my best to fight all these insecurities and paranoia. Looks like I'm slipping back into the teenage angst ha ha ha.

For now, I think the best way to get away from all of that is to keep myself busy... it's when I'm idling that all these fears creep up on me and then I feel intensely lonely without my bb around :( So this afternoon I pledge to just do some quiet reading and not think too much. Which is kinda of self-contradictory but there's a way to do it, I think.

Today's haul! (:

White

2011-11-24T22:31:00.001+08:00

"She is clothed with strength and dignity;
she can laugh at the days to come."
- Proverbs 31:25

--

I really loved that chapter(:

I really thank God for everything. Every challenge He sent my way has made me grow and learn.

Real

2011-11-23T21:17:00.001+08:00

Spent about 30 hours out of the house over the past two days and I must say prom was quite highly enjoyable despite moments of ennui - it was fun seeing what everyone was wearing and going around taking pictures and sitting at the same table as my beloved Z and the food was pretty good too! Didn't go for the clubbing kind of post-prom but had a quiet private little post-prom celebration of our own with Pirates of the Caribbean 3 that lasted late into the night/morning. The rest of the night/morning was a blur of things but it was all in all a pretty fun experience and I truly feel it marks the end of youth or something ha ha. My teenage existentialist angst is far from over, apparently.

On other things I was/am very emotionally trainwrecked at the moment and my heart feels like it's being torn asunder and I don't really know what to do, or think, about any of it. I feel like all I can do now is to throw myself into my work (applications, research, reading) because at least that will distract me from everything else. And I guess aggravating everything is the fact that the one person who can put his arms around me and make me feel like everything is okay is the one person whom I won't see for the next 35 days. And I know this is only the beginning because we'll have a lot more separations to deal with in the future but it still hurts, hurts, hurts like mad.

:(

Bone

2011-11-22T11:35:00.001+08:00

Jonah 2

From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. He said:

“In my distress I called to the LORD,
and he answered me.
From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,
and you listened to my cry.
You hurled me into the depths,
into the very heart of the seas,
and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
swept over me.
I said, ‘I have been banished
from your sight;
yet I will look again
toward your holy temple.’
The engulfing waters threatened me,
the deep surrounded me;
seaweed was wrapped around my head.
To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
the earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you, LORD my God,
brought my life up from the pit.

“When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered you, LORD,
and my prayer rose to you,
to your holy temple.

“Those who cling to worthless idols
turn away from God’s love for them.
But I, with shouts of grateful praise,
will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the LORD.’”

And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

--

Did double my Bible readings this morning for today and tomorrow cause I won't be home most of these days! I think I really felt the Lord speak to me through the various passages and address so many of my varied worries about life and the future and choices I'm making/will make and I can't really express the joy of knowing God and the joy of being able and even responsible for spreading this knowledge to people who need it.

Anyway I'm really excited about prom tonight and while I earlier had mixed feelings about the amount of time and money spent on this one night, I've realized that it is the last ever prom I will have and, in some sense, it marks the end of this whole IB journey. So I'm really determined to enjoy it and the company of people I've grown to know and really connect with these two years. There's a kind of bittersweetness to all of this, as is to be expected. I have to keep reminding myself that this isn't really the end of my youth or childhood (ha ha) and there are places to be gone, good works to be done, life to be experienced.

I just thank God for the past two years and all that has happened in them. It's really been incredible.

Ships

2011-11-16T21:34:00.001+08:00

Tomorrow is Bio Paper 3, and the last paper of my IB life.

I've been having lots of interview-related things going on this week (Princeton yesterday, STB scholarship this Friday, arrangements for the EDB one week after next) and those occurrences, coupled with the anticipation that IB ends tomorrow, has led me to the realization that as tomorrow comes around, the end of my JC days, my AC days, will have arrived. No more reason for going back to school - no EE, no consultations, no training, no meetings.

There's a very funny ache inside associated with this realization, because I'm going to miss AC so much. I'm going to miss the people. The madness. Being young and stupid and crazy in school watching all the nonsense unfold around me and knowing that we're in this safe little bubble where there's significant room for error and nothing requires that much (over)thinking. I guess I'm a little afraid - no, very afraid - of going out into the real world and facing the prospect of not having any more room for error. Less cushioning. More at stake.

So, rather fittingly, I watched Jimmy Eat World's "Work" video today and it made me so melancholy and pensive it's almost amusing, given how I always laugh about my guilty pleasure in listening to JEW because they seem so teenage-angsty. But I realize that there is where I am in life. In that teenage-angst phase when you take everything so seriously that every small thing is a big thing and every big thing - well, you're so cynical that it becomes a small thing. It's funny and sad and nostalgic at the same time, thinking of this and the past 6 years of my life, "growing up" - I think I grew up and consequently there's things I left behind and that's probably for the better but I'll miss some of it.

It's rather odd because I always see RG as having contributed more to my development than any other experience in my life and yet AC has been such an experience in itself, I think I must eat my words. Just talking to my Princeton interviewer yesterday about myself - track, switching from A's to IB, EE, IMUN - these are all things from the past 2 years and indeed AC has become a part of me, or rather I a part of AC, and I wouldn't trade that for the world. I think I grew up in AC but I also grew-down, found so much happiness in small things and I think I matured by recognizing that I'm only 18 and embracing the "perpetual state of intoxication" of youth.

It was in AC that I learnt to take so many risks - so many leaps of faith - with people, with commitments, with God. I feel like I really am comfortable with myself now, glad and grateful for who I am, flaws and all.

And so I recall one thing Mr Hodge said during his closing address a couple of weeks back, which struck me at the time and resounds now - even though we may have graduated, ACS will always be our home. Just as RG has always been my home.

And it is really odd that I ended with that thought, because one song that I heard (of all places, on a Nikon ad on tv the other day) and that has been haunting me today is - Welcome Home, by Radical Face. I'm thinking that it will be associated with this day, this ending.

But then it is not an ending at all, because the future days will be a continuity.

And I think - I'm quite ready for another adventure.

Psalm 139:1-12

2011-11-08T23:53:00.000+08:00

¹ You have searched me, LORD,
   and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
   you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
   you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
   you, LORD, know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in behind and before,
   and you lay your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
   too lofty for me to attain.
⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?
   Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
   if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
   if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
   your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
   and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
   the night will shine like the day,
   for darkness is as light to you.

--

A timely reminder that God sees everything - the minor freakout outside the examination hall, the monotony of placing IDs on the top left corner of the desk, the rows of ziplock bags on the floor, the pounding of our hearts during reading time, the rubbing of eyes in tiredness/ennui, the panic, the gladness, the confidence, every elegant clear argument, every silly glaring mistake.

So there should be no fear. (:

Space

2011-11-07T23:18:00.001+08:00

Proud to say I've finished all five (ok, not all of Hsu, but the relevant chunk) in preparation for History Paper 3 (: It's been a thoroughly enjoyable experience and I loved learning about Chinese history. Whatever happens on Friday, I've already gotten my reward for studying (:

--

Also, 6 <3 ((((:

Fear and...

2011-11-06T20:29:00.000+08:00

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?

Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?

Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?

Crack

2011-11-04T22:20:00.003+08:00

My sore throat has mandated me doing salt-water throat gargles three times a day. I must admit that staring up at the ceiling while trying desperately not to swallow a mouthful of dissolved salt has opened my eyes to quite a few things I never noticed before. Nobody really notices ceilings. It's either the walls, or the floor.

Today I went for a run at twelve noon. I observed two noteworthy birds in addition to the usual brown sparrows hopping around like distracted rabbits. One was a large white stork which swept over the surface of the giant longkang, narrowly avoiding ramming into the bridge they've recently constructed over the longkang. The other was a spectacular bright blue bird that stood splashing in the longkang water for a while before taking off skittishly.

"Our love for others must not be selfish" I said that today. I really believe in it. But it's really hard to do.

P.S. Today I avoided using the word "a n d" because I use it too much for my own good.

Citrus

2011-11-02T22:58:00.003+08:00

Two days into IB exams and - I've been battling a lot of things, foremost a persistently painful sore throat that worried me greatly for the past few days, then a bad headache halfway through today's math paper that lasted till two hours later, and also a semi-swollen toe and various other odd ailments here and there... and that has combined actually to take some stress off of exams and onto my state of physical health. And then I worry sometimes about how the past 6 years of my life have really been spent working so hard that I don't know how well I take care of my body. Which is, after all, what will stay with me for much longer than any certificate or accomplishment.

In any case, in spite of all this - because of all this (because it is nothing more than minor) - God has been good to me. I'm not even really thinking in terms of how well I've done or how prepared I feel (because it's a giant questionmark to both those things), but rather a state of mind, some serenity, some calm. In an odd way, I find myself not really reminding myself as often that God is in control - during Prelims, for example, I had to tell myself that all the time. But this round it feels like I just know it, and it's safe and secure inside of me. I won't say that I never doubt - I do - but it's no longer chronic doubt. I really thank God for placing me into this state of mind, right now at least. I hope it will stay.

Oh and I am reminded of something I read on a Christian tumblr the other day about how when we pray, we shouldn't just ask for God to alleviate our suffering but also, and more importantly I think, to grant us the faith and strength to keep going despite the suffering. Acceptance, I suppose.

Today I was touched by some of the points in Amanda's pre-math-paper prayer. I think her mention of love was very apt, that in our own stress and frustration we must remember to love others. She meant it in the context of friends who are taking the paper as well, but I also felt that it applied to people like mom and dad, whom I confess I tend to take for granted once exams roll around and I get caught in my own little bubble. Love is what God teaches us, foremost - "the greatest of these is love", so there really is no excuse for not loving with all our hearts. Because ultimately things like exams and scholarships are just things of this world, but love is something beyond. For me I am still really barely beginning to wrap my mind around how much God loves us, enough for Him to send Jesus to die for us. And I don't think I can fully comprehend the immensity of the act of loving, but it is that great and that overwhelming.

Recently I've been reading Hosea for my devotions and one of the key themes is - God's faithful love.
I will plant her for myself in the land;
I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’
I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’;
and they will say, ‘You are my God.
- Hosea 2:23 NIV

Reading it was something special.

--

All the best to my friends taking IB and A-levels and O-levels and whatever else this couple of weeks! And to anyone going through a tough period in their lives. We'll make it through (: <3

Ambient

2011-10-20T22:24:00.000+08:00

Forest Eyes
Jinja Safari

Family cabin you never saw,
Sat alone on the forest floor.

And the wood rotted out slowly,
‘Till the roof gave way.
But we fixed it up now,
On this summer’s day.

I know that you're into Salinger
And you wanna be his character,
I know that your so sophistica,
And I know you live ironica

But I never saw the light in city skies,
And I never saw the light burn in-
Forest eyes.

If I could design this day.
Be me and you in no ones way.
If I could design this day,
I’d never let it get away.

Saw a thousand eyes in a peaceful sleep
We banged around with our city feet.

And we pulled down the sky,
So we swam back home,
And we drank our tea slowly,
With our garden gnomes.

If I could design this day-
Be me and you in no one’s way.
If I could design this day-
I’d never let it get away.

---

The days have been slow and lumpy and - full of bursts of music, in an odd mix of Hillsong, Bombay Bicycle Club, Boy & Bear, Jinja Safari, Owl Eyes and other random not-as-good indie stuff. I've been studying but I don't know if it's enough and oddly enough I'm not stressed out striking off day after day on my calendar - just excited that it's all going to end soon.

:/ Okay I'm going to look at Econs or something now. Or at least pack for another long day of studying tomorrow. Meeps.

Bronze

2011-10-18T23:00:00.001+08:00

After about 2 weeks of intense studying (more, considering that we hardly had any breather before OR after prelims), I think my body has reached a stage where it is forbidding me to work by simply expressing its discontent by shutting down. Today the moment I left school and got into the car, a dull buzz settled around the back of my head and I felt an uneasy churning in my stomach and both did not subside until I lay down and curled up and closed my eyes and shut out everything. Later on, while entertaining the possibility of writing an English paper 1 about The Sea, the ache returned and I figured that, burnout or excuses or otherwise, I wasn't going to be doing work tonight. So I spent the night listening to Hillsong and generally doing nothing... Well. I suppose we must all have a break sometimes.

Speaking of Hillsong... It's funny how I'm only really listening to more worship songs on my own time now. Actually my first real pang of emotion with regard to Christianity came sometime last year when observing the school sing Hillsong's Still during chapel. The line "I will be still, know You are God" touched me in a deep secret place which I brushed off at the time as a one-off moment... but it wasn't. Ceasing our human struggles, rebellions, desire for self-control and self-reliance, and just surrendering to a higher power - I guess that idea resonated with me then. It still does now, except it's no longer an abstract ideal but a concrete action to be put into place.

It's never easy though. (I am reminded of how "living by faith is never easy".) I think my greatest problem is a self-reliance, an excessive clinging on to my own work, my own efforts. And yet looking back at my life so far - the decisions I've made, small things that ultimately made big differences, why I am where I am now - it's awe-inspiring and humbling how God was at work at much greater efforts than I could ever imagine. How much I was fighting to steer my life in a particular direction and how, looking back, God was guiding me all along, whether in the direction I wanted or in others.

My recent devotions have been focused on, among other things, the lives of Daniel and Elijah. Both prophets, both extremely inspirational and both somehow speaking to my heart. So today I was reading Daniel 3:

"Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

Then Nebuchadnezzar was furious with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and his attitude toward them changed. He ordered the furnace heated seven times hotter than usual and commanded some of the strongest soldiers in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and throw them into the blazing furnace. So these men, wearing their robes, trousers, turbans and other clothes, were bound and thrown into the blazing furnace. The king’s command was so urgent and the furnace so hot that the flames of the fire killed the soldiers who took up Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and these three men, firmly tied, fell into the blazing furnace.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisers, “Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?”

They replied, “Certainly, Your Majesty.”

He said, “Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.”

Nebuchadnezzar then approached the opening of the blazing furnace and shouted, “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out! Come here!”

So Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego came out of the fire, and the satraps, prefects, governors and royal advisers crowded around them. They saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them."

Reading about "the fourth" nearly brought tears to my eyes. Indeed, in all trials and tribulations, whatever the outcome (whatever number of points, whatever university), through the most minor period of mugging to the most major test of faith, God is with us. God is with us. God is with us (:

Upward

2011-10-14T20:40:00.001+08:00

"... The perpetual seesaw between fresh evidence and interpretation gives any new history a fuzzy outline, bounded by many unresolved questions. The path of historical wisdom is to find out what issues are still in dispute, to identify major current questions, rather than to try to resolve them all here and now. Our libraries are littered with the pronouncements of writers who knew all about China but could not see how much they did not know. The expansion of our knowledge has expanded the circumference of our ignorance."
- John King Fairbank, China: A New History

I'm only on the preface but I know this is gonna be good :') here I am actually enjoying my mugging, yay!

Olive

2011-10-13T21:54:00.002+08:00

Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

- Colossians 3: 9-14

So today I was rather disturbed by a tiny incident which made me rather frightened and unsure about a few choices that I've made, and - God sent me this verse for today's devotions. A number of things stood out:

1. Firstly, that I have "taken off my old self", and am just beginning to learn to live in a new way, with God at the centre of my life. And I suppose there are inevitably teething issues that I have which aren't easy to deal with but God will help me deal with them.

2. Secondly, that "Christ is all, and is in all", and the human debates we have, any disagreements, any differences, all come back to a common ground which is that God is in all things, in all of us.

3. Lastly, advice on how to continue living - to let go of unsettled and frustrated thoughts, to forgive liberally, and "over all these virtues put on love", which I think is one of the greatest teachings of the Christian faith and one that I always need multiple reminders of.

There's so much more we have in common than there is driving us apart, and I guess I needed to be reminded of that and learn not to fear.

Tinsel

2011-10-09T21:45:00.002+08:00

Today - church, then a delicious half an hour with Z and his guitar, then 11am to 6.30pm spent studying our brains out (with an hour or so of lunch + arguing about whether a dress was black or grey + the last 6 suspenseful minutes of the Australia-South Africa rugby match). I'm tired out of my mind and I have an English essay outline next to me and I should be starting but there's a dull tingling at the back of my head and I don't know. There are many things I'd rather be doing but to focus on them is silly and it's just one more month to hang in there and work work work. God will see us through this (:

Also I have finished Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's which is actually a collection of short stories and I enjoyed it immensely, especially the piece "A Christmas Memory". I stood at the MRT station for ten minutes to finish up the book instead of walking home immediately, and it gave me goosebumps. Literally. I like Capote and his "Southern Gothic"; his characters are rather shady in general and Holly Golightly is certainly a bit of a shock for a goody-girl like me but they are quite charming, if not lovable. His work reminds me of the raw, slightly primal and wild side in humanity - a feeling I've only ever really gotten from writers outside of the English canon. I mean I never would have associated the glittering clean vision I have of modern America with the eerie isolation of "A Christmas Memory"... an isolation which nearly brings me to tears. I feel that Capote has a grasp on something in the human soul that is jagged and uneven and almost painful but startlingly real.

"My, how foolish I am!" my friend cries, suddenly alert, like a woman remembering too late she has biscuits in the oven. "You know what I've always thought?" she asks in a tone of discovery and not smiling at me but a point beyond. "I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when he came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I'll wager it never happens. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are" - her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone - "just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes."
- "A Christmas Memory", Truman Capote

This touched me immensely. There is so much beauty and heartbreak in that story.

Portion

2011-10-07T23:02:00.000+08:00

(re-posted from thesaltcellar)

The Faith to Rejoice: A sermon on Habakkuk 3:17-19

Mr Chua sent me this link this morning after hearing about my English paper woes and I think it’s really good. I especially like the part towards the end with “Lessons for Living by Faith”:

(1) By definition, walking by faith is harder than walking by sight

Recall that Habakkuk chapter 2 presents us with lessons about how not to live by faith. The proud one searches for satisfaction, security, accomplishment, and honor. All of us desire these things. The natural response to these desires is to seek them directly: to try to satisfy ourselves, to try to establish our own security, to try to accomplish great things, to aim to bring honor to ourselves. The natural response is the easy response.

But to the one who lives by faith, God says, “Don’t pursue these directly! You will not find them that way. I know, that’s the natural thing to do. But I tell you: Trust in Me! Delight in Me! And I will give you the desires of your heart. You will find true satisfaction, true security, true accomplishment, and true honor in Me alone!”

So you say living by faith is hard? That’s no surprise. Walking by sight is easy. Walking by faith is hard. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be walking by faith.

(2) Living by faith means loving God, instead of loving God’s gifts.

Habakkuk sees all God’s gifts disappear. Now, the question is: will he love God?

Think of a parent who lavishes gifts on a child. The child says he loves his parent. But isn’t the child’s reaction to the ending of those gifts the real test of his love?

Or consider a young man who loves a young woman; he gives her many gifts, he writes lovely poems for her, he sends her flowers daily. She takes his gifts, reads his poems to others – but then ignores him.

How easy it is for us to act that way to God! To love His gifts, to delight in His gifts – and to become angry if those gifts disappear.

There is a great deal of difference between, “I love what you do for me” and “I love YOU.”

Living by faith means loving GOD Himself! We indeed must be thankful for His gifts – but God is our delight, He is our portion, He is our treasure, and nothing we desire compares to HIM.

I feel like I’m always growing and learning and I have been very blessed this round of exams to have had so much support from various quarters (ranging from near-strangers and people I haven’t spoken to for months and years to older wiser Christians to my beloved Z who always guides me along). It has come to the stage where I am able to re-read my English papers and disagree completely with the grade I got and lament the subjectivity of the subject BUT then to put these away and let the anger die down in my heart and look to the future with optimism and faith. And because I have learnt this, learnt the limits of self-reliance, I thank God for this whole experience.

Thank God for my 5 in English.

I can say openly, almost proudly, that I have gotten that, I have a 60/100 for the subject I used to get 90s in. I still don’t agree with my grade or the intellectual justifications behind my grades but I accept it.

In the past I’d always stopped at “oh, bad luck” whenever the amount of work put in and the results obtained didn’t correspond. But having gone through this, with the realization that God is behind everything, I realize now that there’s a lesson behind it. I think this is what I worked out over these five days, slowly, painfully: It’s because work and results don’t correspond that faith becomes all the more compelling both by logic and by faith itself. What can explain this incongruity but the knowledge that God has a plan that often defies our limited human logic?

I am somehow reminded of Gideon, whose story Z told me about and I am very intrigued by - how God weakened his forces so severely that when he won, it was clear that God was behind his victory. I think God has brought me low(er than usual) this time because I haven’t quite grasped the idea that I do not alone determine the results of my work. I still take a lot of things for granted (Z made a point about this earlier today that sparked this thought).

So I think today my biggest reflection is that there’s always something to be thankful for. Whether it’s the joy of a 7 in History, Math and Bio, or the ambivalence of a 6 in Econs, or the seeming disappointment of a 5 in English. Thank you God for everything.

Curd

2011-10-06T22:18:00.002+08:00

So the other day I finished Intuition by Allegra Goodman, which I found unimpressive despite it being longlisted for the Orange Prize and having all those fancy nice things said about it by newspapers on the blurb. The pace was just rather stilted and some things I found trite, although, to look at it from another perspective, it's very (post-?)modern in how anticlimactically true to real life it was. How in the end, things blow over, people move on, we never find what "truth" really is. Still, I can perhaps appreciate this intellectual angle without feeling a jot of emotional connection with the book, and so it is.

I'm reading Breakfast at Tiffany's now which is... more accessible than the previous Capote book I read, but also makes me slightly uncomfortable by forcing me out of my rather conventional, boring, narrow-minded set of worldviews (I hate to admit it but I think it is). I suppose that is the point of the novel, however. I'll say more when I'm done.

The past week has been nothing but paper reviews followed by 5-6 solid hours of studying in school every day until the sun goes down and I strain my eyes to read in the absence of light (frustration exacerbated by the fact that the lights are there... just that there are no electric switches to be found) and the cold evening air lifts gently and reprovingly to settle around me, as if shooing me home to dinner and obligations. I have a very strange relationship with solitude... it makes me melancholy but sometimes I like the melancholy. Sometimes I fear myself when I'm alone, though.

- I suppose that this post up till now is just a means of distracting me from the release of prelim results tomorrow. Part of me is, I think, already disappointed in myself. I don't know what I did wrong, or maybe it was a large combination of things, but I'm hinging on the edge of getting upset now when I know I clearly cannot change anything, and I guess all this forced apathy is a weak mask to protect me from the intensity of my fears, but it is slipping. Sitting through paper reviews has made me all the more convinced that I could really have done better and tried harder, and so this has just been aggravated, but never mind. I must cast it away. Of course I know that whatever happens is God's will and that He will make a way, but knowing it and being able to embrace it are two things which I am ashamed to say I cannot reconcile...

Tonight I cut my nails to make sure I don't pick at them in a fit of nervousness tomorrow until they turn to shreds. Meh. What scares me is what I already feel and know and know that I should not feel.

Trawl

2011-10-03T20:20:00.000+08:00

I think the thing is, most people don't understand that for me it's not about the grade, it's about the justice of the grade. Time and again I've been frustrated with the subjective nature of my HL subjects and my inability to break barriers with Econs and the constant zigzag rollercoaster of the other two. I think it all culminated in today's first day of paper reviews which redefined emotional trauma for me.

But it's alright. I'm alright now, after a good deal of prayer and reflection and with the comfort of Z. I'm not looking forward to Friday, but as Mr C told me today, "God has given me a gift" and I am so grateful for that gift and I know that it will not fly away from me just because of one round of examinations.

Moments

2011-10-01T00:16:00.001+08:00

I am very blessed (;

Storm

2011-09-29T16:54:00.001+08:00

Returned from the library today with a good haul of books! Well, as good as it could be given that Mom has used my library card to check out 2 craft books and I'm left with a measly 4 :/ In any case, I was forced to read Camus' The Outsider in the library before going home today because if not I would have exceeded my quota... and I'd already confined myself to browsing two shelves only! Meh.

It really does seem as though I've been nudged in the direction of exploring the meaning of truth today. Starting off with the first book I picked up, Intuition whose blurb hails it as "the quest for truth" in a cancer research lab, and then to Camus, who said in the afterword to The Outsider that Mersault is someone who is punished because of his commitment to truth... and, very interestingly, that he crafted Mersault to represent Christ, but far from being blasphemous I think it makes some sense when you consider the many dimensions to it. Jesus - was one of the world, but also an outsider. Jesus, like Mersault, refused to "play the game... to lie", and paid the price for it. I think it's hard to assess the validity of Camus' claim upon a single reading of course but looking back at it while it's fresh in my head... I see his perspective. Really one of the more provocative thoughts of today.

Other than the library, occasional shopping (in which I have to keep telling myself to not spend, not spend) and hanging out with my bb + Mom + other important people, this semi-week has been a huge amount of slackerdom and I'm glad for it though I also wonder if I'm going to regret not studying my brains out as much as I can... I do know that I need a break though I don't know if this is carrying a break too far. In any case, back to school next week and that will mean nose back to the grindstone, reality will once again settle in upon us and mugging will again become a fulltime priority. I'm treasuring this freedom while it lasts.

"So what with my sleeping for hours, remembering things, reading my news story and watching the changes of light and darkness, the time passed. I'd read somewhere that you ended up losing track of time in prison. But it hadn't meant much to me. I hadn't understood how days could be both long and short at the same time. Long to live through I suppose, but so this distended that they ended up flowing into one another. They lost their names. The words yesterday and tomorrow were the only ones that still meant something to me."
- The Outsider

This paragraph resonated with me. Not that it particularly represented the essence of the book, or even Mersault, for me, but perhaps in a highly self-absorbed and whiny way it does represent our current existence. Though we shouldn't forget that we are so much better off than we usually think we are.

Also, this took me a while to get, but when I did, wham:

And so lying underneath these stormy skies
She'd say "oh, I know the sun was set to rise"
This could be
Para-para-paradise
- Coldplay, ever-genius because they always understand all these things that I cannot put into words

Madeira +1

2011-09-28T23:49:00.001+08:00

Today God told me to:
1. Stop expecting so much from everyone,
2. Stop focusing on my materialistic wants, and
3. Trust.

And through Mr C, He got me reading Romans 8 (for an entirely different occasion) and it all clicked into place because I was reminded, or I grasped entirely for the first time, that God loves us even though we are full of weakness and sin.

Thank You God <3

Madeira

2011-09-28T22:32:00.001+08:00

Today - spent a morning clearing up 2 years' worth of junk on my study table and in my cupboard and did endless filing in preparation for the horror that is IB exams. I needed FIVE files just for history. And I'm not talking about those skinny flat size-0 plastics that have the capacity of a stapled stomach. I like wholesome, full-figured files that aren't afraid of curves. In the afternoon went to the Peranakan Museum with Mom and then had coffee and quesadillas and shopped around fruitlessly before going home. To my angst, mom then pulled out 3 more stacks of my old RGS stuff and asked me to clear it up.

I junked it all. Threw away countless essays and notes I'd written on everything from principles of governance to the psyche of Mao to the family dynamics of Frankenstein and the Ewells. It's not just the tedium of having to clear things away for the second time in a day for the simple reason that there isn't enough space in the house for a book-loving and sentimental girl, but also the sense of loss, because I remember a time when I was so proud of my 18/20 and 21/25 essays and my entire notebooks filled with history notes and though they are so conceptually shallow now when I look back at them, they still represented so much struggle and so much hard work that the act of throwing them away feels repulsive and disgusting.

Felt like shit. Still feeling like shit.

I know I'm fortunate to be where I am and to even have a roof over my head. So please God help me stop whining and be a better daughter.

Cashmere

2011-09-24T19:11:00.004+08:00

So I've been incredibly restless this weekend because, after ~~two~~ five weeks of intense non-stop mugging, I'm finally nearing the end of prelims and the two papers on Monday are papers which I believe I've prepped for a lot already - of course it's never enough but frankly speaking, I believe I'm ready to take the paper tomorrow if I had to. I think the most ennui-inducing thing about this weekend is the suspension in limbo of sorts, somewhere between (temporary) freedom and the dread of still having two papers to go, such that I feel guilty about taking breaks even when I've gone through my interwar notes and Nutrition+Ecology notes a reasonable number of times. But it's still been better than the frantic mugging of the past few weeks.

I thank God for getting me through the past weeks. This round of exams has been quite disappointing, especially Econs-wise, and I think my History Paper 2 wasn't as well done as it should have been either... Bio and Math were okay but that's only because I've put in a lot of time and effort for them (knowing that generally the math and science subjects are somewhat more effort-rewarding than the risky humanities that I have chosen to make the centre of my life). Mr P Tan hinted the other day that English Paper 1 was well done, which was extremely happifying in the tense moments right before History Paper 3, but I don't know if Paper 2 went slightly off topic even though it was so enjoyable to write - we'll see, eventually. I am disappointed by how I did during Econs because I've spent so long working on it and yet at the crucial moment the important content just slips out of my head, and it's always been that elusive 7. I enjoyed writing History Paper 3 though, even though it was my greatest fear during this round of exams. God has really helped me through this. At moments when I was at my lowest (especially midweek, with that disastrous Econs Paper 2), I was constantly reminded that everything happens for a reason and it's all in His hands.

Actually, that's a liberating thought - not just for exams but for everything I've been preoccupied with so far, especially thoughts of the future and of scholarships and university applications. To borrow one of my mummy's pet phrases, "what will be will be". Still, though, I really should be getting my apps done for both these things (I'm almost done with uni ones but haven't started on the scholarships eeps) but for now I'm taking a bit of break by blogging. I have a lot of things I want to say? It's just that they've been buried deep within me for a while.

It's a fine line to tread between leaving things in God's hands and becoming complacent, and recently I've been constantly reminded of that. Sometimes people don't understand why I have such high expectations of myself, and it comes to the point when I feel ashamed for my own expectations because of comparisons with others'. But I've realised that my high expectations aren't due to a lack of faith, or an excess of self-pride. Quite the opposite. My expectations of myself are there because I have faith. I have faith that God has made me capable of doing things to a certain standard and so I must live up to these standards and God will help me get there. And yet in an almost contradictory manner, my expectations of myself are also high because I realise that I am weak and fallible and I need to keep working in order to live up to what I can do, what God has made me to do. Finally, my expectations of myself should not have anything to do with others' expectations of themselves because we all walk different paths. Pragmatically speaking I have to do well because of the path that I aspire towards. For one, I'm not going to be able to go overseas and study if I don't have a scholarship. And I already know that I am blessed to be where I am and to be able to dream that kind of dream. And somehow I see this - the high expectations, the constant striving - as almost a reconciliation of the existentialist and spiritual halves of me - yes, God has made a plan for me, and the struggle of existence and experience is part of that plan. Because there is a reason behind every struggle.

I haven't been reading for a long time, which is somewhat of a problem, but I hope to remedy that once prelims are over. I have very mixed reactions to the end of prelims, and of IB. It's quite surreal to think that this IB journey is fast approaching its end - all the time and effort spent poring over readings, staying in school late, spending entire weekends in front of the computer churning out IAs, all the late nights and early mornings and the (sometimes) excruciating days in between, all will be over and hopefully rewarded for all of us. It's been quite rewarding already, actually, in terms of intellectual challenge and the camaraderie built up because of a common enemy (IB, if it wasn't clear enough already) - I am somewhat reminded of Wilfred Owen and his "wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong" here, ha ha ha IOC infiltration. I'm happy that I chose to come to ACS. I will never know for sure what life would have been like if I'd gone to RJ instead, but I've enjoyed myself and learnt a lot. That's why I find it sad when I keep hearing the cynics. Sure, the system isn't perfect, but there are plus points if only one cares to look for them. That doesn't mean I accept the status quo as ideal, but it means I work within it to the best of my ability.

(Somehow I am reminded at this point of the grilled fish and fried rice sprinkled with curry powder that I had the other day at Dad's workplace. Hahaha probably shows that philosophizing makes me hungry.)

Um, ever since getting together with Z I've found that I haven't been spending as much time with my other friends which is mildly disconcerting but sometimes I wonder if that's the way things are - people drift in and out of your life. I do feel like I've made the effort to initiate things, and relations aren't hostile - just less warm than they used to be - but ultimately I guess we only have so much time and this is how I choose to spend it. And I'm very thankful that Z was brought into my life because I think I am a better person with him.

Recently I have found myself fascinated with certain sections of the Bible and foremost among them is the Song of Solomon. To me, its allegorical meaning of the relationship between God and the Church speaks volumes about the kind of relationship between man and woman that lasts - one that is deeply rooted in a love beyond human feelings, whether the physical or emotional. Like Pope John Paul II said in Theology of the Body (I haven't read the whole thing but it does look rather interesting), "This love has been called "agape" and agape brings the eros to completion by purifying it." I must admit that the first draw for me towards the Song was not its meaning but its language - how its opulence and sensuality kind of set it apart from the rest of the Bible, but the meaning followed soon enough. And I understand why some would call it "profane". It's very interesting to me how it reveals, in a weird Siddhartha-esque sense, the unity of things - the sacred and the sensual, the human and the divine. How these things can be different and yet the same. It's lovely and awe-inspiring.

On other things, I've also been mulling on the invisible people in our society - those who help carry out the most basic of processes in our lives and those we often overlook. I remember how I used to say hello and bye to all the security guards in RG and I loved watching them smile in return because to be honest, so few of us do this kind of thing. And now I feel ashamed for mostly ignoring the security guards in school and also just walking past people like those cutting grass along my jogging route and those HDB cleaners around my estate. I feel like I owe people so many smiles and polite greetings. I suppose they are often the "Others" in communities - somewhat different from us the majority - and that's what makes us uncomfortable when we have no right to be.

On a more frivolous note, within the boredom of exams I have been yearning a bit too much for retail therapy and typical girl things - went gallivanting a bit the other day in search of a nice sweater (which I really do need - functional purpose!) but found nothing that I liked. That night I sat down for my quiet time and realized how my vanity is reaching new proportions. I guess my frustrated search was a timely reminder for me to focus on what's important, ha ha. (I am still eventually going to get a new sweater, though. And no, this does not signal the beginning of a recycle-clothes-and-avoid-bathing hippie phase.)

Mm I feel that there is so much left unsaid but much of these things are unsayable. This has been one of the more candid posts I've done but I'm not really bothered by that. Oh and look I've whiled away a couple of hours which I would've spent rotting away in front of the tv... that's a positive! I'm glad for this blog. I think the process of writing helps me self-discover (ahahah how trite) a little bit, every time.

Life will continue to be interesting, I think. I'll soldier on (:

Cold

2011-09-13T22:47:00.000+08:00

Winter Milk
Jamie Morewood Anderson

Now it is morning,

dawn begins to hem the day, the meadow

and brindled grass take the light.

There is something so beautiful about the window,

the loose silhouette behind the rinse of glass,

the liquid shadow of feline so angular and illustrated

its clarity could break the heart.

The moment she sees him,

panther-like in the dusky daybreak,

the dun-colored cow lets down her milk.

I know precisely

how this bovine’s body is composed,

withers and hoof, the flesh of udder,

her skin so alive against mine.

But he is a mystery, an indescribable movement

of muscle and grace.

For the cat I have gathered winter milk,

foamy and sparkle-splashed;

heavy cream so lovely in the pail.

He watches me in backlit darkness,

body crouched, ears flat, tailed curled and tense,

the hunt abandoned with my soft footfall at the door.

His purr and sputtering breath, the smooth push

of paw at my soft parts is a fellowship of elements,

anchor and rhythm, shank bone and fur.

He rises in his lion-body like a tide,

laps my white offering

from the hollows of upturned palm.

I offer my fingers to his remarkable territory

of spine and tail

as bright reaches of sunrise gather us in.

I trim the lantern;

the cat threads himself around me like an epiphany.

How fragile we are in the glorious light.

This was our poetry option for English Paper 1 today. I loved the sanctity, the purity, the beauty and wonder of it. How the words drifted down and curled and fell into place, "like an epiphany"... how I could almost feel "shank bone and fur" at my fingertips with just a few simple, fuss-free words. Telling it like it is and yet saying so much more. Needless to say, I felt an immediate emotional connection which ended up with today being a general take-intellectual-risk day and I have a bad feeling the risks might not pay off; silly me for being unpragmatic and looking for challenges where I shouldn't... But I'm over it and looking ahead to the next few papers. God will make a way (:

Fall

2011-09-10T16:09:00.000+08:00

So for the past few days I've been going through endless essay outlines for Econs and History and practising Math and rewriting old Bio notes and rereading English texts (probably not as much as I should) and I am relatively, suitably calm for now, even though Prelims begin in two days. I have found faith very comforting in this time, because I know that God will have a purpose for everything that happens in my life. Also I think I'm ready... I think. Though one never seems to be able to be ready enough.

Oddly enough this is the first time I am posting on this blog with the new Blogger editor, on my computer - the past 2 posts were written and published on my phone while I was in a substantially emotionally shaky state and so, perhaps more cryptic than they should have been - I have a tendency to lapse into self-pity and let my insecurities and emotions take hold of me more than they should but I am trying to control that.

For those who are wondering, yes I recently found God and while the consequences have been difficult to deal with (family, most of all, and in some moments self-doubt which really is unwarranted), it's been teaching me to look at things from whole new perspectives and, as I posted on my tumblr a couple of days back, I don't see it as a retreat from my existentialist self but as a step forward in the direction of Kierkegaard (father of existentialism) and his "leap of faith". I'm quite happy and secure in this position and learning to live rather differently. Learning to forgive, and love, and be less judgmental. I am a work in progress.

Also I have been listening to The Cranberries on loop and it's heartbreaking. Ahhh.

--

Studying developmental econs and also the wars has made me quite convinced that I want to do humanitarian work (both academic and practical) at some point in my life, later on. It just stirs my passion in a way that a lot of other things don't do, and I'm so fascinated with society, cultures, power structures, the multilayered complexity of other lives. Of course I don't quite know how that is going to fit into everything else in my life but that's alright. God will decide that (:

White is not surrender, despite what you've been told
It's clouds of hope

Grey

2011-09-08T22:39:00.001+08:00

There are so many things I fear.

1. I fear ossification. That I will become so complacent that I stop trying or I settle for trying less than my hardest. I fear becoming tired and tiring to everyone around me. I fear not living up to what I can do and I fear burning out before I have begun.
2. I fear abandonment. I fear disappointing those all around me and those who have believed in me and spent time and effort on me (parents, teachers, even Z). I fear being "loved a little less" (Rahel in The God of Small Things) because of choices that I make, parts of myself I cannot control, not being good enough.
3. I fear the unknown. I fear my future and the battles that are to come and the inability to plan and not have a constant.
4. I fear change. In myself and in other people.
5. I fear regret, that I will look back and think that I should have gone another route, done something else.
6. I fear forgetting. Watching the days slip by and caught up in this little bubble of my own with immediate joys and immediate sadness. I fear not realizing as time makes a fool of me and, secretly, my scariest nightmares are also the silliest and most absurd - haunting thoughts of missing application deadlines and staring at forms blankly realizing they are useless. Hilarious in a painful sort of way.
7. I fear being led astray. That I might become drunk with either work or play to the extent that I steep myself in it and go on a treadmill to nowhere. I fear listening to wrong advice - whether well-intentioned or not. I fear going wrong and rotting without knowing it.

8. I fear my own imagination and what it does to me, to conjure up all these fears.

- I fear so much when I should not. I should trust in God. I will trust in God. For this life is not merely my own, on a lone journey to nowhere. And there is much beyond my limited human knowledge. Let me let go and let God do what He will.

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear...
- 1 John 4:18

*

2011-09-04T21:56:00.001+08:00

Today a lot of things happened and most of it was not easy.

God grant me the strength to get through this. I don't think it's going to get any easier.

Mineral

2011-09-03T21:13:00.000+08:00

"The evidence on the distribution of ODA funds across countries suggests that political and strategic interests predominate in the thinking of most donors." NO SHIT SHERLOCK!

--

Reading about 20th century wars, authoritarian states and developmental economics (especially on issues of foreign aid, trade barriers and agricultural subsidies) is making me a rather angry and bitter girl.

I wouldn't say "cynic" yet because that comes from frustrated idealism and I don't think my idealism has been completely dampened yet. I'm still young and foolish and willing to believe in better days for all the suffering people in this world.

Anyway I am actually interested in what I am mugging but I feel no sense of urgency but I am also on track and raghhh I don't know what to feel or think anymore. Went through a bit of my Beatles discography this morning which remotely helped but frankly I don't know what I'm doing. What do I want in life? What am I good enough to do? (there is so much I cannot do.) Why and how and what if?

I'm just scared :(

Hyacinth

2011-08-29T10:26:00.002+08:00

I don't think I'll be able to write an essay about The God of Small Things without descending into a blubbering mess. The Love Laws get to me every time, a clamp around my heart. Moments mean so little and yet so much.

I am, however, taking an inordinate amount of pleasure in reading the powerpoints about the book and some of the critics' literary analysis of it; I don't agree with all of it of course but it's a very interesting way of approaching the text. Reading GOST from a feminist perspective has reawokened some fire in me, possibly already kindled last night when I was researching the roles of women in the two World Wars.

I'm actually enjoying studying, somewhat. I don't know if it's because I'm not working hard enough or because it's finally something I connect to and feel for.

And Discussion Questions which I found particularly poignant:

1. Who-or what-is the God of Small Things? What other names and what divine and earthly attributes are associated with this god? What-or who-are the Small Things over which this god has dominion, and why do they merit their own god?

7. Is Time as destroyer the novel's most insistent theme?

19. Does a single moment of true, intense love compensate for centuries of oppression, cruelty, and madness?

20. Why does Roy end the novel with a detailed depiction of Ammu and Velutha's first night of lovemaking and the promise of "Tomorrow"?

Ivory

2011-08-28T16:18:00.003+08:00

Today - church, exploring foreign-yet-familiar territory, electric guitar badassery, ladders, soup, sweat, macademia nut ice cream, a long walk in the sun, so much laughter, so much learning, so much yearning.

I hope you know how complete you make me feel.

Feather

2011-08-19T21:25:00.003+08:00

In retrospect today has been a thoroughly unproductive day both in school and at home and yet I'm tired out of my mind... I plan to sleep early and let my work levels remain low today. While I really should be doing recordings of my Caesar extracts, it would be futile if I was too tired to absorb anything... or so I tell myself.

Today has been a day of extreme exhaustion by sheer virtue of its length. And yet the small moments at the end of it (butterscotchpecan, (not-so-?)old memories, the weak breeze of evening, humidity and stickiness) were so disproportionately full of joy that I ended the day quite gratified and willing to accept my tiredness without being grumpy. I've been thinking quite a bit and while that isn't anything particularly new, it does tend to mute any extreme feeling I have either in the direction of euphoria or depression. Automatic stabilizers...

Also, wrote the letter requesting for my predicted grades last night and I guess the finality of all of this has begun hitting me over the past month or so. The thought that in 3 months, IB exams will be over and I will say goodbye to ACS is - rather bittersweet. There are things I'll miss dearly and things I won't and things I'll forget about. And what continues in life after - I really don't know. Minister S Iswaran said something today about how the world is a messy place and that struck a particular chord in me because I understand at this point more acutely than ever that in the real world, outside of a piece of academic work, there are too many random variables for us to predict entirely accurately or to control. And so a big part of life is dealing with the unexpected and the messy. This lesson I felt particularly applies to my experiences with university applications which have been bothering me for the past few months - if there's one thing I learnt it's that perfect information is impossible and comparing green apples with red apples is not always possible and sometimes we have to learn to deal with making a decision with limited information and being flexible enough to go where life takes you. And brave enough to fight against going somewhere you can't accept. Brave enough to fight for what you want and adaptable enough to be okay with not knowing exactly what you want.

In a fit of extreme madness yesterday I wrote a practice English essay that wasn't required on a question that jumped out at me from May 2005 - In what ways, and to what effect, has failure and/or suffering been portrayed in two or three works you have studied? I used a new combination of Siddhartha + Paddy Clarke to answer this and got increasing absorbed in the comparisons and the end result was me typing the essay for about 4 hours straight and only coming to dinner when almost everyone else was done (fortunately I have a great mom who understands the temporal idiosyncrasies of academic writing). I don't know if it's exactly the best-written piece around but the ideas were overflowing out of my head and spilling out of my ears eyes nostrils fingers and I had so much fun writing it I could ignore the dreariness and pain involved in reviewing something you've learnt and forgot 38329 times before. Ahhh.

Okay I feel the drowsiness creeping up and I think the best solution right now would be to be weak for a change and cave in to my bodily urges. Sleep is such a raw primal thing, and I say that in a very admiring way.

Rare Earth

2011-08-15T19:54:00.002+08:00

I've been working hard and there have been a few emotional speedbumps but it's alright, I'm still soldiering on.

(Finally) finished reading Kafka's The Trial today. It didn't astound me as much as it should have. I mean to think about it as an intellectual exercise was interesting and perhaps a bit too complex and relevant for comfort but then it didn't engage me emotionally which I suppose is what I end up looking for in books, although that in itself has pros and cons. In any case the characterization of all the female characters as more or less empty vessels to be used at will was rather annoying to me as well - perhaps I cannot appreciate the nuances of ambiguity. Or perhaps I've moved past the stage of absurdism (for now?). There was a period of time in Sec 4/last year when I might have appreciated all this ridiculousness a bit more.

Also, have discovered two gorgeous songs - Love Love Love by Avalanche City (video features penguins sailing on a ship, a hot air balloon and being in love. what more could one want!) and Bloom by The Paper Kites which stirred something in my heart. Their lyrics are gorgeous and to be perfectly frank, the most compelling reason to blog today was simply to post this after a haze of IOC recording and trying to tuck away insecurities:

In the morning when I wake
And the sun is coming through,
Oh, you fill my lungs with sweetness,
And you fill my head with you.

Shall I write it in a letter?
Shall I try to get it down?
Oh, you fill my head with pieces
Of a song I can't get out.

Can I be close to you?
Can I be close to you?

Can I take it to a morning
Where the fields are painted gold
And the trees are filled with memories
Of the feelings never told?

When the evening pulls the sun down,
And the day is almost through,
Oh, the whole world it is sleeping,
But my world is you.

Can I be close to you?

Anti-matter

2011-08-13T00:40:00.002+08:00

Today was somewhat of an anticlimax. Oddly enough the best moments of the past few days have been, in no particular order (but all rather small and unexpected):
- watching videos about microfinance/fair trade/coffee trade during econs (words cannot describe how much I am inspired by developmental econs)
- moments of glorious literary epiphany, mingled with plenty of heady emotion, when discussing God of Small Things during English; I have not felt like that for a long time
- successfully recording 2 of my IOC extracts and being on schedule and sounding stupid but coherent... on doit travailler encore
- daydreaming about universities
- finally being confident in saying that I know what I aim to do, even if I am not confident of what I am capable of doing...
- bulldozing through statistics worksheets which gets rather pleasant after a while in a very mindnumbing way - on other things, my foolscap pad is almost stripped down to nothing after a week of use
- today, sitting on my rocking sofa in the stuffy stillness of the afternoon, watching the Simpsons Movie with Z on his iPod while Bsoh slept soundly
- absurdist conversations during English which are a result of all of us becoming "siao" as CY aptly put it, more and more as the day progresses
- realizing that I have time, as long as I use it well
- realizing that work helps you forget and feel better
- discussions of positive feedback loops, breastfeeding trivia and underwater biodiversity during Bio
- unabashedly listening to far too much bad radio music for hours at a stretch and having "I don't play football but I've touched down everywhere/Everywhere?/Everywhere. I don't play baseball but I've hit a home run everywhere. Everywhere" stuck in my head forcing me to rap it out to people loudly - such is the degeneration of my previously hipster past
- late night Skype conversations
- today, trudging to Wendy's at Holland V at 11pm for supper with the usual suspects - despite the brevity, it was refreshing somehow
- recalling The National's saddest songs. I need to listen to them again.
- thinking about things without worrying too much about them. I realized that time brings stability and I have many things to learn yet.

Roof

2011-08-09T22:40:00.002+08:00

Happy National Day! I love you Singapore in spite of (because of?) all your idiosyncrasies. You're home.

The past few days have convinced me that life is good. I've been working at a steady pace, not anything spectacular but at least I'm plodding along, and I am glad for the small breathers, moments of laughter and crinkly eyes and "little wonders" that make everything better. And that glorious afternoon of yesterday. You're another person who feels like home.

愁

2011-08-04T22:55:00.002+08:00

Wrote this on my tumblr half an hour ago in a fit of sudden introspection, but thought it was worth sharing here.

Sometimes I feel that the poetics of the Chinese language are something I can only grasp at wisps of, peripherally, and while that does not sadden me excessively, it does make me value the language a little more, and I think when I do use it (especially since after I stopped studying it as a subject in school), it becomes more special. When I use it it's because of a sudden feeling of which "word cannot wield the matter". There's a melancholy, a loneliness to it.

And the song is here, if anyone's interested. It's a retrospective musing about remembering the times of youth, which is rather apt for my current stage of life - I must treasure every moment of this because it is slipping through my fingers all too soon.

年少时候，谁没有梦？

今天忽然想起这首歌曲，想起我在学校里剩下的时间不多，的确觉得又年轻又非常老了••• 哈哈。
—-

最近一直为未来操心，总是觉得自己对自己没什么了解，我眼前的那条路躲在一片浓雾后，不知道十年后的我会是什么人，过什么生活。

这样的无知，是有点令人担心，但我相信人生这道路是弯弯曲曲的，我会勇敢地走下去••• 希望能够找到幸福。

幸福又是什么呢？•••
—-

细水长流。

Kiln

2011-07-31T18:54:00.004+08:00

Today I understood the full magnitude of what happened when Paddy observed that his Ma wasn't just hugging him, but was hanging onto him. Clinging, somewhat desperate, needing that warmth, that silent acceptance. Not knowing how and why, but knowing what is.

Thank you (:

--

The past week (and weekend) has been a blur of IOC, work, moments of glorious laughter with special people, pensive thought, a bit less reading than I should have had, and endless unsatisfied food cravings. Things are falling into place, and I can - I will - keep going. I am very glad for what I have (:

Church today was thought-provoking, but the last thing I want is to do anything on an emotional basis. And yet there are certain truths that can be accessed only via emotion? I don't know. How far is faith an emotion? Are my Sisyphusean beliefs sufficient for me? How would I know what "sufficient" means? When are the moments of self-doubt and meaninglessness truly questions at my core and when are they products of hormonal changes/too much reading/bad days? What does anything even mean any more?

I guess the problem is that I second-guess myself as a pastime. It's insecurity - it's not really insecurity - but then it is. It has come to the point where I don't trust myself to think rationally any more and that makes every decision I make especially suspect. It's reached an impasse, I think, but hopefully time will grant me clarity and some stability.

I realized that, for all my exhortations of the fringe benefits of responsible risk-taking, I am somewhat of a hypocrite. It is so hard - so hard - for me to consider the prospect of making a mistake, and the bitterness of even a hypothetical "wrong decision" makes me cringe and recoil and not want to even step out on that ledge to look at what's below... Not a good state of affairs. Let me find courage to trust myself even if I trust nothing else.

I think today really made me realize how afraid I am of being vulnerable, and yet how truly vulnerable I am on the inside. Because I've never really had to taste defeat or massive failure or even a sense of weakness. Of course I've had small setbacks but I've always gotten over them so quickly they seemed like nothing. But this fear is something different altogether.

- Let me figure this out. I need time.

In the meanwhile - Rachel Platten is so lovely and feel-good (: And I'm happy! I am. Things are on track, I will be able to face whatever comes, and I have a great support system (I just try to avoid using it as much as possible... LOL my fault). There are things to look forward to and I know that life hardly turns out the way one expects; I know that there are other routes to being happy and a useful person in life other than the traditional ones we are always told about - the scholar officer senior officer seniorest officer route. It's almost laughable how narrow my ambitions have been thus far. There are so many other Important People out there.

I know I'll be fine.

(:

Terracotta

2011-07-27T23:08:00.003+08:00

Dear you,

Thank you for making everything better (:

--

Meepmeepmeep.

Today was a nice ambly day I think I am calming down and getting started and things will work themselves out. Trust, trust, trust -

- is putting all your belief into something unknown and uncontrollable. Has always been rather hard for me but I'm working on it. I have to stop thinking that I ever know enough to have full control... the worrying eats away at my insides.

I feel rather small and fragile... like a fluffy animal of some kind. Meeeeehhhhh.

Speckle

2011-07-26T19:27:00.003+08:00

Just sneaking in a quick post before dinner -

I have been finding a bit of rhythm, slowly, tentatively back into my life these days. I have come to the conclusion that the weekends leave me too alone with my thoughts and that is the source of a lot of listless self-doubt; during the week although faced with the ennui of the school day, there are always small things to laugh at and look forward to and keep me going somehow. Things so small that they are forgotten the moment they pass but are always there, in essence, reminders of what is comforting in their fleetingness, in their ordinariness.

IOC is the most dreaded thing at the moment and I suspect I'm panicking for a number of reasons - one, I have never encountered this mode of assessment before, two, I have not finished preparing for it (just started, in fact...), and three, I really have no confidence in my ability to speak eloquently into a tape recorder for 12 minutes straight. I think I'll be fine once I practice and practice and practice (I think we'll all be fine) but this will of course take time and stress and a great deal more heartache.

Finished JMG Le Clezio's The Flood the other day - I heaved a sigh of relief because at least it was over and no more dreariness, no more illustration of the drab absurdity of the everyday, no more implied (never overt) questioning of why life, why this life, why this way. It was beautifully written - Le Clezio is a master of poetic, albeit grey, description - but I simply couldn't connect with Besson or the other characters and I must confess I actually got bored reading about his wanderings and his slow descent into an irredeemable depression and the weary repetition of existence. Perhaps a year ago I would have lapped all of this up - identified with Besson, probably - but the day before yesterday I just couldn't. It all seems so self-absorbed and painfully constant that I almost read it while detached from it - I feel nothing, my eyes trudge across the page wearily, only trying to pass one page and then the next till the inevitable end. Not for me, I suppose; not at this stage in life, at least. I don't know if I'm glad that I've left behind the existentialist phase for now. I don't think I was very easy to deal with last year; there's something about that phase that strikes me now as being immensely self-pitying. Which is still a problem I am dealing with now, I suppose, but of a different nature, on a different plane.

In the span of 1.5 days I also finished Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms, which scared me incredibly. After turning the last page last night I sat there shivering (literally, metaphorically) and ended up calling Z and blurting out my fear to him but I just couldn't explain the horror which the novel entailed besides the fact that all the people lived like ghosts, trapped in their memories and chained to their pasts even when they weren't actually ghosts. I suppose the isolation, and semi-Gothic aspects of his writing, added to this mix and resulted in a story that was frightening and gripping and incredibly fascinating. I liked the concept of the Southern Gothic and how characters like Joel and Randolph and Amy and Idabel and Zoo all lived on the edge of worlds, in that hazy murky area between being eccentric and slightly insane. While there were themes that surfaced quite quietly but strongly through the book - like the slow emerging of a man from a boy, the acceptance of self, Joel's endless search for a father, a boy growing up too fast - it was odd and somewhat refreshing how these themes seemed to have no resolution, not to me on a first reading at least. Well. I need to read more of Capote, that's for sure.

I fear I lack the strength of will and the self-discipline to sit down and mug my life away like I know I'm supposed to until the end of the year. In this respect I feel far more like a sprinter than anything; I lack the academic stamina to keep going and keep fighting. Often I feel like laying down my arms and just letting go, but I know I can't and shouldn't.

Perhaps it would be easier if I would stop letting my imagination play tricks on me and speculate about what other people think of me and how I'm doing academically and how that performance relates to other aspects of my life. I know that 40 was supposed to prove everything - to everyone, to me - but then I think it did nothing... and now I'm rather adrift, lost, missing an anchor. The cast iron has been cut off and is sinking irreversibly to unexplorable depths.

I know - and I should feel glad that - there is no-one whose opinions of me should matter more than my opinion of myself. The problem is, I suppose, that my opinion of myself is inextricably bound up with that of others' and I wonder if I have let that whole "you only mean as much as you mean to other people" thing get too far. I suppose it's a long way yet till my life philosophies are firmed up but one thing for sure that I know now is that I never want my self to be defined by other people. The central difficulty, however, is finding that self in the first place.

Dots

2011-07-23T22:18:00.003+08:00

My life is great - I just got a 40 for common tests which frankly speaking was unexpected and gladdening (initially at least), I have close friends who I can spill out my thoughts to, I have supportive and open-minded parents who want the best for me, I am comfortably middle-class with no worries about whether or not I can afford a university education, I have all the books in the world at my disposal, I don't mind the way I look, I have a good working relationship with most of my teachers, I have someone who loves me and whom I love deeply, and I can never shake the feeling that I am very very very lucky to be where I am with what I have.

Just - in that case - why am I not happy?

Base

2011-07-21T22:36:00.003+08:00

Final thoughts before tomorrow - (I will not even bother to begin discussing the dread pooling up at the pit of my stomach now) -
1. Today was a marked improvement from the ennui and general frustration of yesterday. I think I am learning to let go and endure irrational thoughts/feelings until they go away? Perhaps the long hot run in the noon sun helped, too.
2. Went for dinner with Karen & WQ both of whom I haven't seen for a while and it was - good, quite easy and comfortable which is really amazing considering how long we haven't seen each other for and how disparate our lives are, at this point - I always feel like I can talk to them about everything and, though we all might have changed in bits, our Stupidity Square has remained rather intact and that helps, I think - I am very glad for people like them (:
3. Have been embarking on a kind of spiritual exploration of - Christianity, in particular. This has been a deep-seated curiosity but I guess the catalyst was really the mid-year exams when I began to question a lot of things and beliefs I'd been taking for granted. On a markedly worldly note, this is when the Bible app on my phone has become incredibly useful because it helps me make slow but steady progress on reading passages which - some of which I've heard of but never understood in their entirety, others which I've never heard at all. I have a lot of questions and I guess the more I read the more questions I will have because without a doubt the Bible is one of the most difficult texts I've ever had to analyze :/ I am just grateful to have people around who are more than happy to help me out in offering answers to my questions.
- Well, we'll see.

Cause it's hard to feel like you're worth something in this life
When you're walking next to me, I can hear your body speak
We're just waiting for a chance to come,
we're just waiting for a chance to come.
- Noah & The Whale

Alabaster

2011-07-18T16:28:00.003+08:00

- Just taking a breather now between history worksheet (which was so painful to do, reading Hsu again after months of not touching it - I am ashamed to say I fell asleep doing it which is something that hasn't happened to me for ages) and IOC prep. IOC is probably my greatest nightmare at the moment. Being a task that I've never really confronted before except practicing during class, it scares me because I think my ability to speak in a formal setting is incredibly weak and I just sincerely hope that I don't end up blanking out and panicking because that would just be a waste of everything I've been working on for the past year and a half.

Patience, courage, strength.

The past couple of days have been emotionally tumultuous, for a variety of reasons. But I think I've gotten over the worst of it. (Aptly, Nelly Furtado and James Morrison just sang "It tears me up". Haaa.) I think I will emerge stronger from this; no matter what happens I will know myself and my voice better. I will give it time and thought and let it be. Obviously it hurts like crazy but that is the problem; I shouldn't let hurt or emotion interfere with anything or even become relevant because it is not, and it shouldn't be. But it's alright; I know who I am and the distinction between what I want and what should be. The distinction between what is easy and what is right for me.

Compounding the mix has been my increasing dread about common test results. Complacency is my worst nightmare but I fear that this round will clearly show how insufficiently I've invested myself (literally, psychologically) in my work. Obviously I could argue as I have been arguing - that I had no time. But I was always able to overcome that before, and I should stop making excuses for myself. I think I've been cutting myself too much slack and feeling entitled to rest and breaks when goodness knows I can't afford that. Focus focus focus, the end is in sight.

On the bright side I finally got a new phone and the iPhone is lovely because now I can bring books around with me everywhere without actually bringing books - I can read practically everywhere and you have no idea how happy that makes me. In addition I borrowed 6 new books from the library last week and am looking forward to getting through them. Perhaps they will bring some structure and serenity in my life; the kind that's been missing for weeks.

To be perfectly honest I don't really like how my lifestyle has changed but I really wouldn't have it any other way. I think it's a matter of me readjusting and finding myself and my place in all of this, and rearranging the components of my life so that they fall into place and the comfortable familiarity they used to be in. I've been so unsettled for so long this really isn't sustainable and I need to keep a tighter rein on my thoughts and let things go.

I told you I was brave but I lied.

Crest

2011-07-12T20:03:00.003+08:00

Today I bade farewell to mid-years with the last uneventful (but careless :() Bio paper and I honestly feel like it's been the toughest round of exams yet and I'm so, so relieved it's all over. I've a bad feeling about results but I guess we gotta roll with it and work harder for the next round. At least I tried my best given that I effectively had two weeks to study because of SATs and then IMUN in June. No regrets, no regrets.

Post-paper today was just so much fun I can't even begin to describe. I thought that given the gradually increasing activity over the weekend I would have been slowly tasting freedom and therefore there wouldn't be such a rush of emotion when today's paper finished, but no - after waiting in agony for the last 15 minutes of the HL paper and carrying tables from the audi back to classrooms twice, I decided to postpone my library plans till tomorrow (since Clementi's so near school anywayyy) and rushed home to shower and then out again in the cool breeze of late morning and hopped onto a bus to Orchard and spent an hour or so shopping fruitlessly before meeting Z for a truly exotic lunch and then we WALKED to the National Museum where, after some confusion and immense self-doubt regarding the location of a certain exhibition, we got in for FREE (WOOHOO student concessions in the name of arts education!!!) and then traipsed down to the Abbas Attar retrospective that I'd wanted to go for since pre-exams.

I think - it was a very sobering and thought-provoking exhibition that tempered my initial exuberance of post-exams quite a fair bit but - I didn't really care. It was really quite brilliant. Technique-wise (though I really know next to zilch about technique), emotion-wise, concept-wise. Two hours in there and I felt enlightened, somehow, just by noticing clues and details he places into his work - or rather, that his work places in front of him. I think photography as a field is so unique because it involves seizing the moment and the day in its purest, most raw form.

I was glad to be there, and glad to be there with Z (:

After the exhibition we headed down to Orchard and after much dillydallying ended up sitting at a random corner in the Ion basement drinking "grumbling raisins". LOL well and then it was time for him to go and I walked down to Knightsbridge where I failed to procure anything and then over to 313 where the Zara 30% sale section was a war zone full of pricetag shrapnel and limp fabric carcasses of unimaginably strange sizes strewn all over the place - those that could be saved were saved and whisked to the safety of the changing room, but far too many casualties were simply left to languish squalidly in a heap of other oversized bodies. I think I am taking the metaphor too far. IN ANY CASE, that yielded nothing as well and I was all ready to go home when I chanced upon my one rare find of the day in all its twenty-five-dollar glory! My heart sang.

Today has been incredibly happiness-inducing and I don't really have much to say other than - I wanted to document today for posterity. Even though I know this happiness is very temporary and the shadow of IOC is looming around the corner, I think we still deserve to play for a bit. Effectively this is as close to a June holiday as I got in the past 1.5 months, ha ha. All in good time! The Future is rather frightening but I guess we'll deal with everything as it comes.

I won't pretend
That I can see the end, but
It's far away,
It's in the distance
- Don't Be Afraid To Sing

Field

2011-07-11T19:49:00.003+08:00

After the meltdown of Saturday night I am much more at peace following an intense routine of mugging bio, watching TV for hours at a stretch (Masterchef, Bones, Hell's Kitchen), running, eating and talking to loved ones. I guess we must all go through these things and hopefully emerge stronger.

Today was light and lovely, consisting of so many favourite things - long bus rides, escalators, mutual indulgences, fifteen minutes standing outside Starhub unashamedly watching Wipeout on the big tv screens and laughing till my stomach hurt, salty popcorn, earl grey milk tea, sitting and talking on granite steps, slow walks, the lingering.

There's one more paper tomorrow but I've studied for four days and I think it'll be okay. Freedom's almost on the tip on my tongue!

Dew

2011-07-10T00:23:00.002+08:00

The happiness in my life comes in short bursts that don't last nearly long enough. There are nights when I am so close to tears that I berate myself for being so fragile which only aggravates this vicious cycle. And then I feel like I have to put on a smile and face the universe because I cannot expect my unhappiness to be the realm of anyone else but what I do and what I am is so at odds with each other now I don't feel like I know myself much anymore. Last Wednesday night and last night and tonight have been just overwhelming and talking about it makes this worse because there is no logical reason for any of this. Perhaps this is the existential ennui I thought I got out of a year or so ago and perhaps it's been the prolonged pressure and the fatigue and the fear and the inadequacy but perhaps it is just me being childish and self-absorbed and losing my grip on what is real. Because I don't understand myself anymore and I have never not known myself and this is frightening and horrific because in this world if you don't know yourself then you know nothing, especially if you realize how transient everything around you is and how blurry the lines are between your eyes and your head. I mean, you could - not exist. I could not exist.

Irrelevance (or, Motivational Self-Talk)

2011-07-07T09:24:00.005+08:00

Breathe Kar Min breathe you know how to do this you can do this you've done this before you've done well in this before you know your material you've done your readings you've done readings of your readings of your readings you've written you've asked you've thought you've argued/considered you've searched you've explored you've genuinely been interested in this you've genuinely been passionate about this you've considered (are considering) studying this in university this does not define you what comes out of this does not define you you will enjoy this you can enjoy this you must enjoy this you are not afraid of this you are not afraid of not knowing because you know you know you know and whatever happens, your proficiency in the subject is defined by years' worth of lessons and questions and not by one and a half hours of cramping fingers and sweaty palms and steadily degenerating handwriting.

Okay history paper 3 here I come.

Rubble

2011-07-03T22:15:00.003+08:00

Shanty Town Cinderellas - Documentary from Clingfilm.tv on Vimeo.

For young people in the run-down suburbs of Cape Town, the graduation ball is a real dance of freedom, proof that they are going places in the world. And these prom queens and their kings will save and sacrifice almost anything for their one night of glamour. Shot entirely on location in Cape Town, South Africa.

I saw this documentary via Tumblr today (remind me to extol the intellectual virtues of Tumblr another day...) and it struck a chord. I highly recommend it - it explores the excitement of the Matric Ball (Prom) in a Cape Town suburb where graduation takes on special significance because of the high dropout rate. It reminded me of what we take for granted here and how similar we are to the youth in the video, and yet how different. There's a lot to think about and it was good to have this as a kind of refresher after a week of focusing on the me,me,me,MY stress of exams. I think exams bring out my self-centredness to an extent which I'm almost ashamed of. So caught up in my own worries and insecurities that I neglect almost everything and everyone else around me.

--

Thought I'd establish some presence here now that I've stopped work unprecedentedly early for the night and am actually just stoning around online giving Foals a much-needed relisten. I can only trust myself to play Total Life Forever (the album, not just the song) whenever I'm in a relatively stable and above-baseline emotional state; anything lower and I'd just roll down into that Rut and stay there whimpering like the baby I actually am at heart.

Um, the weekend has brought a degree of respite that I haven't had for a long while and part of me is convinced that the worst is over - that the most painful papers were those of last week. I guess it isn't entirely untrue although reflecting on all those papers, I think I've had a terrible round of exams so far, probably the worst showing since Sec 1. It frightens me and frustrates me because I've worked hard and I guess the mistakes (in essays, mostly) surfaced only in my head after the paper and it makes me cringe and while they aren't huge major errors they'll count for something and I want to hang my head in shame because those were completely avoidable errors! Ugh. It also makes me loath to study for Econs/Hist Paper 3 because relooking at content reminds me of the mistakes I made and - it's embarrassing and painful and LOL I'M SUCH A CHILD when it comes to all this.

Keep calm and om. The one saving grace in the past week was (I hope) English Paper 2 which I actually really enjoyed writing because the question connected with me on such a personal level and I just hope I was coherent and not carried away with my own opinions instead of answering the question. Fingers crossed :X I know I definitely enjoyed the Twain/Doyle comparison. Really do love both of them, Doyle especially - his interviews are so honest and unassuming and marvellous. (((: If I ever become famous the one thing I'd like to always keep is a sense of incompleteness, a sense of insufficiency, that I'd always have more to learn and an infinite number of people/things to learn from. Because there is (((:

Okay approximately 1.3 weeks more to go and after that I intend to self-declare a holiday (no I won't be skipping school but I do intend to indulge in suitably frivolous and unproductive after-school activities) and LIFE CAN CONTINUE as per normal!!! Hopefully, before IOC prep rears its ugly head at us... but that's a worry for another time. Soldier on, and don't be afraid to sing!

Hedge

2011-06-29T21:44:00.003+08:00

Ok this is it for tonight. No more notes, no more memorizing, no more reading. I'm going to rest my head and sleep in preparation for the twin horrors of history and bio tomorrow. Exams have been very horrifying so far and I'm prepared to see a large fall in my grades and it devastates me to see myself reduced to this all because of the lack of time - all because I tried as hard as I could but it just wasn't enough because last year I only had 2 weeks of the holidays to study and I studied for half the syllabus I am studying now; I guess the frustration comes from having worked like a dog every day of the holidays and it not being enough.

I'm sad and scared tonight. Night time has not been too good to me - all these fears, worries, insecurities creeping to the fore. The threat of the next day looming over the horizon and every tick of the clock bringing with it more dread. Lol I sound like some exaggerated Gothic novel but I assure you it's not simply an overblown literary device when I say that That Feeling is filling up my mouth at this moment, thick and bitter.

--

On the bright side - or maybe it has actually exacerbated this melancholy - I've fallen in love with Angus and Julia Stone. The Black Crow video stole my heart from the beginning and I think their voices, both so plaintive and desperate without being whiny (unlike mine), bring me to another plane altogether.

--

What is this, I am an emotional wreck and I don't even know why. Stress alone was never this stressful. It would actually be funny if it wasn't this painful.

Incandescent

2011-06-25T21:54:00.002+08:00

I get these random bouts of acute melancholy nowadays. I don't even know if it's because I'm worried about exams or just feeling empty without my (non-school)books to anchor me, or if all this is just the last desperate pangs of adolescence screwing around with my hormones and brain. Ugh.

I think I'm ready for exams? I don't know if this is because I've genuinely prepared everything that I need to (since when has that ever been the case) or because I'm getting complacent/burned out (either option is terrifying). Two more days! (less, actually) but yes here we go, deep breath before the plunge and all.

I've been indulging in a bit of poppy stuff recently and, current earbug - Maroon 5's Never Gonna Leave This Bed. It has this melancholic hook of sorts, that pulls you in and drags out the sorrow, and what Z said about them taking sadness and making it catchy is quite true; Idk if this is the best thing for my current state of emotional flux but - nevermind. I don't think I'm very lucid now.

--

It Is Born
Pablo Neruda

Here I came to the very edge
where nothing at all needs saying,
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea,
and the moon swam back,
its rays all silvered,
and time and again the darkness would be broken
by the crash of a wave,
and every day on the balcony of the sea,
wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning.

Liquid

2011-06-24T23:26:00.002+08:00

The past week or so has been a huge drag of studying, studying and studying. Everything's just been melting into a blur of wake up study/run go out study study study for like 8 hours at a stretch and then dinner and back home by about 10. And it's been madness and I'm so tired and exhausted especially tonight but I can't - I don't know - I can't stop now, not so close to the beginning and the end. I think I'm on track for all my syllabus but I don't know if I've absorbed everything thoroughly and I hope I can hang in there till the end of the next 3 weeks.

The presence of Z has been a great comfort and motivating force and I'm truly grateful for that. I was telling him how funny it was that in the end we always have to assuage each others' insecurities and it's true by extension how we rarely believe in ourselves until someone else does? I don't know but I think in the end people have immense potential to make each other stronger.

I've been very unsettled tonight. I'm pretty sure this is exam stress acting up again coupled with the relative lack of sleep I've been getting and the lack of exercise (ran 2k this morning but that was the first activity in an otherwise extremely sedentary week) and perhaps general nerves about the Future. Or this could just be hormones shooting off in strange directions from my brain and generally messing with my worldview. - Argh.

I neglected to mention the other day that I've finished Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The General in His Labyrinth which was epic and tragic; it chronicled the fading of a once-godlike man and I guess there's something poignant and stirring about the fate of those who fall from power and are reduced to nothing but bones and ashes? Even though the plot was clear from the beginning, and intentionally so, I was still anticipating every next page because Marquez makes suspense out of the wait for death; the realism of the characters, the historical/romantic tidbits, the slow fleshing out of the General's character and lifestory - it all struck a chord, drew the story out longer, and eventually the last few pages reached an emotional climax unlike most of what I've ever encountered before.

Okay that's all I'm incredibly tired and exams begin in approximately 2 days. Help.

P.S. I guess the bright spark in the past few days (apart from Z) was getting back my SAT results yesterday. I was on tenterhooks for most of the day and when I got home from mugging in school, I checked and - thank goodness. It turned out pretty fine I think (: I can still dream of my ivy league future ha ha ha

X_X I'm out.

Clay

2011-06-22T09:05:00.002+08:00

"Have a good pair of walking shoes and fall in love. You will be walking a lot, and when you are in love, you see things differently. You are in a state of grace."
- advice to young photographers by Abbas Attar

Abbas Attar is exhibiting 45 years' worth of photography in conflict zones (apartheid in South Africa, the Iranian Revolution, 1970s Biafra & Vietnam) and, as his photography evolved, explorations of religion (Islam, Christianity, Animism, Buddhism), "not as faith, but its social, economic impact, and what people do in the name of God" at the National Museum. I would really love to see this exhibit so I'll mark it down for post-exam activity - just like so many other things I want to do. Argh - soldier on, soldier on, this will all be over in 3 weeks.

Residue

2011-06-18T20:35:00.003+08:00

Recent earbugs (since the last time I've blogged about music, which was - circa Cut Copy/Snow Patrol), in chronological order:
1. Drive - Incubus
Whatever tomorrow brings I'll be there, with open arms and open eyes
2. After Hours - We Are Scientists
The night is winding down but time means nothing/ Say that you'll stay
3. Lethal Enforcer - We Are Scientists
I promise this is not a test/ It's just I want you to be sure
4. Crying Lightning - Arctic Monkeys
And the way you like to aggravate the ice cream man on rainy afternoons
5. Cornerstone - Arctic Monkeys
She held me very tightly/ Till I asked awfully politely - "please, can I call you her name?"
6. Hoppipolla - Sigur Ros
(I don't understand the Icelandic/Hopelandic but it's magic all the same)

--

I think I should be studying Bio now but I've been cramming nonstop for the past couple of days so, today is a bit of breather I guess? I think I will stay up to study more tonight though. There's a sense that I don't have enough time but I will just fight as hard as I can to make use of what I have. After all I only have myself to rely on and this will partially determine a lot of things - ie., next 10 years of my life. I know I want 2 things:
1. to spend the next 4 years of my life in an educational institution that will challenge me and make me a better learner and person, and
2. to not rely on my parents' retirement funds to send me to university.
And so I know I have to work. It might be hard and I might not succeed as much as I'd like to but we all work with what we have and I will not go down without a struggle.

This afternoon was lovely in many ways. Just the quietness and comfort of it all was reassuring to me. It's not something that can be easily explained using either language or rationality but I know I feel it with all my heart. And I know feelings are transient but I think they are an initial foundation for me to grow and learn and build upon such that if one day they do disappear there will be something else - sweet and solid and unsaid, unsayable - that is left, that will endure.

Multiple conversations this afternoon also got me thinking about things I haven't thought about for a while now - religion, the workings of the universe, the future. I realize, among other things, that I've changed a lot over the past 6 years or so (ha ha, I suppose this is a "duh" statement given these are the notoriously tumultuous years of adolescence). I went from being entirely sure of myself, an extreme believer in independence and rationality and the need for strength, to - someone else, now, someone who's a lot less certain about things and a lot more okay with the idea of uncertainty (our human finiteness), someone who cares a lot less about individual freedom/independence and more about community and relationships. Someone who is less set on ambition and more keen to cherish the small good things in life - which is not to say I've stopped striving. I think this has been a gradual change that occurred over these six years and if I had to mention a turning point it would probably be the middle/tail end of Sec 4, and the past one and a half years has been a kind of catalyst I think. I am tempted to think of everything in dialectical terms because I have definitely not left the whole of my old self behind, just that its excesses and extremes have been tempered with a good dose of cynicism/idealism (varies on a case-by-case basis) and I think I am a more balanced person for it.

- Actually I think that reading (novels, history books, periodicals, basically anything outside the syllabus) may have played a role in all this too, because I first restarted reading regularly at the end of Sec 3, and so it all might have taken effect in Sec 4 when I started looking at the world a little differently. I think the empathy that comes along with reading widely is something that isn't to be underestimated and something that often just creeps up on you and settles over your soul unnoticed. There is no bang, no epiphany, no sudden realization that you've been far too self-centred all along. And so I am glad that I picked up books again and learned to see things from a broader perspective.

My post-childhood reading journey itself has been rather interesting. It all started with that Michael Lynch book - Mao, which I wrote about here at the beginning of 2009 - which triggered me to read more outside of school. So in a very strange sense history led me back to literature. And literature was what opened my eyes and heart, in essence, I think - one pivotal moment was during a Lit lesson in Sec 4 when we were covering Raymond Carver's A Small, Good Thing (gorgeous story, by the way, and readable here if anyone's interested) and Ms Kamsir said that one line - "in essence almost all literature is about the human connection" - and that idea has stuck with me ever since. Everything fell into place and made more sense. I've always thought of literature as something that I grew increasingly alienated from as I turned towards so-called more pragmatic and realistic disciplines like history and econs but now I realise that I should love both history and literature equally dearly because history led me back to literature and literature led me to me. To a more nuanced perception of the world and myself and people and I think to a better self.

It's funny how I never realized how much these two subjects matter to me until I was actually typing it out just now, in the moment. I think that knowing how history and literature have touched me on a very personal level might actually help me re-find a kind of joy in studying them; in the end I remember what Mr S said to me 1.5 years ago before we both made the leap into the unknown, about how my feelings towards a subject/discipline should not change, should not waver with time and tide, that they should be anchored somehow. I guess tonight I've found the anchor - I am bound to what I love because of how it has moved me in a secret place deep in my soul, because it has profoundly unhinged my status-quo-worldview and made me think and learn and (hopefully) be a better person.

- I actually think that principle might apply to love in general, which is kind of a fresh thought for me, but I'll have to mull over it for a while.

It still surprises me how much capacity I have to feel, and be passionate, when I thought I lost a lot of passion a long time ago with age and a kind of cynicism born out of, frankly speaking, reading too much (here we see the flip-side of oh-I-love-literature-it-has-made-me-grow, hahaha). It's been a long time since anything I felt in my head, feelings that I understood the source of, was translated into something I felt physically in my heart. One prime example - that plummeting heartracing feeling that I used to get so strongly when watching LOTR and pining away at the thought that I'd never be able to live in a world like that. I lost that feeling, that physical feeling, somewhere in the middle of secondary school and it has never come back, not when Denethor tells Faramir that he wished he'd died instead of his brother, not when Eowyn rides into battle disguised, not when Aragorn tries to reject his past. And yet - and yet - life works in strange ways, no? I'm putting all my overthinking tendencies in the backseat and taking everything as it comes. Sometimes I get frightened by the foreignness of this intensity but then I remember that the foreign and the unknown is also the beautiful.

I still have what feels like spools of thread in my head that are unwoven thoughts but they are that - unwoven - and perhaps they are better left to when I've considered them all more carefully. I think I've exhausted my thinking capacity for tonight which is fine but I really should get back to my Bio notes now and perhaps some Siddhartha/Macroecons. This life is a good life and I am glad for it, with its struggles and setbacks and its small joys.

Air Raids

2011-06-17T23:47:00.003+08:00

"The effort to overcome modern culture - like the various projects to construct a new political and socioeconomic order - was full of contradictions. It did not generate consistent or well-enforced policies. At the intellectual level, anti-modernism actually drew on a Western conceptual language articulated in Europe by figures such as Nietzsche and Heidegger. Indeed, the centrality of calls to “overcome modernity” was an indication of how fully modern Japan had become… It is important to recognize that unease about modernity and losing one’s traditional essence was not limited to Japan or to the Axis powers. Indeed, such unease has been a defining feature of modern life itself, all around the world. In an extreme way, and with unusually devastating consequences, wartime Japanese were grappling with quintessential modern dilemmas."
- Chapter 12: Japan in Wartime, A Modern History of Japan by Gordon Andrew

Emphasis mine. Just wanted to post this because I love me a good set of poetic-sounding notes. I love studying history, just not mugging it. Studying has been saturated my brain beyond the point of any kind of belief (see, the incoherence of that sentence should be an indicator of something) but I'm alright, I'm ploughing on. Back to the Pacific War!

Add-on at 12.05am on 18 June 2011:
I've finished my set of poetic notes and for reasons of posterity I'd just like to document what I've been doing with my time this week. On Monday and Tuesday I went to school and studied from 10.30am till about 4.30pm (with lunch break of course and multiple instances of yawning and slumping on the library desks) and Tuesday evening was spent eating at Gluttons Bay then lounging around with my book and a Chocolate Chip Cream at Starbucks; the night saw a reunion of sorts with long-lost fellow Fiorians at Island Creamery. It was a good day. Wednesday Thursday and Friday have been spent zombie-ing around at home attempting to study and (sometimes) succeeding; Thursday night also entailed some madness at a Swedish restaurant in Haji Lane with the usual suspects - good company, again. Friday was a thoroughly unexciting day but the presence of a certain someone via the wonders of modern-day technology made it all more bearable. And I've been productive! Just that I don't know if I've been sufficiently so. In any case, tomorrow (today)'s a new day, and a better one, I think (: Perhaps this new-found peace of mind has to do with how I basically told my parents during dinner today to brace themselves for my bad results - I'm kind of resigned to doing worse than before but this doesn't mean I won't fight tooth and nail to try and prove myself wrong.

Asphalt

2011-06-13T21:14:00.002+08:00

The thing about studying is that - I often get more and more panicky just doing it, and it ends up counterproductive with me worrying about the events of exams themselves instead of focusing properly on absorbing necessary content. There are also many doubts about the "right" way to study and how to best utilize the (too short) time we have; I am tempted to drop everything and rely solely on notes I've created in the distant past.

I think I am facing the much-dreaded spectre of what is known as burnout. After having slogged my guts out for the past 1.5 years I think I am tired, and tired of working at such intensity. I am still studying as hard as I can, though, getting a good 4-7 hours in a day, my only fear being that the quality of muggerdom is dropping to an all-time low even as the quantity remains unchanged. I can only cross my fingers and hope for the best. Damn I need to do this well so badly (university university university) but it's really hard to get past this - helplessness, this tension. And I cannot push myself on much harder because any more and I will spill over the edge into spiralling frustration and that would just see a repeat of Week 1 near-nervous-breakdowns and that, of all things, would not help anything.

So I will just keep going because I know I can and I will and I have time and the time is mine. Of course I am worried about being overconfident but I am learning to believe in myself a bit more.

- Although, my days are settling into a nice regularity. Run read travel study eat study study smile study home rinse study eat study slack (tumblr) rinse sleep repeat - I am glad for things which are simultaneously comfortable and exciting in my life and I'm glad for support and moments and the joy of these moments because they make the pressure and dreariness of the day fade away, if only for a moment. I am glad for many things.

The end of IMUN brought with it a whole load of relief and lightness and I'm glad it went smoothly and in usual IMUN style (ie. with loads of madness and looking as if the whole secretariat & chairs were on some kind of crack) and it's over now and I can finally get down to studying... fulltime, at least. I've been in school every day yes EVERY (week)DAY since the beginning of the holidays lol it's getting a bit too much for me but then - 5 months of suffering, just 5, left. Here we go.

My holidays have actually been pretty eventful but somehow I cannot bring myself to write out where everything ends and begins. My head is dry, narrow, now.

There's a beautiful sadness that runs through him.

Granite

2011-06-09T08:45:00.001+08:00

So as promised to self I did finish Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist last night and here are memorable moments -

At some point you have to set aside snobbery and what you think is culture and recognize that any random episode of Friends is probably better, more uplifting for the human spirit, than ninety-nine percent of the poetry or drama or fiction or history ever published. Think of that. Of course yes, Tolstoy and of course yes Keats and blah blah and yes indeed of course yes. But we're living in an age that has a tremendous richness of invention. And some of the most inventive people get no recognition at all. They get tons of money but no recognition as artists. Which is probably much healthier for them and better for their art.
- p. 77

Poignant and genuine and down to earth, no? Also,

What does it mean to be a great poet? It means that you wrote one or two great poems. Or great parts of poems. That's all it means. Don't try to picture the waste or it will alarm you. Even in a big life like Louise Bogan's or Theodore Roethke's. The two of them had an affair, as I said. They had a busy weekend with many cries of pleasure, and it helped their writing a lot. Or Howard Moss's life, or Swinburne's life, or Tennyson's life - any poet's life. Out of hundreds of poems two or three are really good. Maybe four or five. Six tops. All the middling poems they write are necessary to form a raised mulch bed or nest for the great poems and to prove to the world that they laboured diligently and in good faith for some years at their calling. In other words, they can't just dash off one or two great poems and then stop. That won't work. Nobody will give them the "great poet" label if they write just two great poems and nothing else. Even if they're the greatest poems ever. But it's perfectly okay, in fact it's typical, if ninety-five percent of the poems they write aren't great. Because they never are.
- p. 101-102

And -

So what rhyming poems do is they take all these nearby sound curves and remind you that they first existed that way in your brain. Before they meant something specific, they had a shape and a way of being said. And now, yes, gloom and broom are floating fifty miles away from each other in your mind because they refer to different notions, but they're cheek-by-jowl as far as your tongue is concerned. And that's what a poem does. Poems match sounds up the way you matched them when you were a tiny kid, using that detachable front phoneme. They're saying, That way that you first learned language, right at the beginning, by hearing what was similar and what was different, and figuring it all out all by yourself, that way is still important. You're going to hear it, and you're going to like it. It's going to pull you back to the beginning of speech.
- p. 111

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, especially towards the middling section. Perhaps it's because I can identify with frustrated ambitions and dried-up rivers of inspiration and so on. Perhaps because I cannot get started. But - ultimately he wrote his 230-page introduction and so will I... metaphorically. There's always a path ahead, there's always a road to take.

--

Now at the startings of Day 2, sitting in HQ with Paddy Clarke (again) and Snow Patrol circa Eyes Open. It's - nostalgic, in a way, but also incredibly tender and, in some instances, fit for the moment. Surviving on about 4 hours of sleep but it's alright because last night was so full of bittersweetness, like some parched empty well within me was filling up again, water, water, water.

Absence

2011-06-08T19:14:00.003+08:00

This silence is a void that only you can fill.

--

Day 1 was smoother than expected - probably because our system worked, and I'm glad for it. I literally woke up, washed up and walked right out the door to come to school in slippers and shorts without changing - I left the stuffy skirt and blouse and heels to the last minute, just before delegates started arriving, and I think things went quite smoothly all in all. Then I had what seemed like the most brilliant bowl of mee pok in my life (though I suspect it was the chilli and the hunger that saved everything) and the rest of the day was a blur of sitting in HQ, plugged into iTunes and crawling slowly through Paddy Clarke and running the occasional errand or two. There was a brief horrific stint as Palestine in HRC which convinced me that I can't bs for nuts.

As the afternoon wore on I got more and more mopey and spent a couple of hours listening to The National and weeping inside while Paddy talked about roads and pipes and the industrializing Ireland. This strength of emotion scares me because - well, there is no because, or maybe you might guess the because. But I regret nothing. I've found what I wasn't looking for and it's turned out to be - treasure, precious. I'll take it all.

--

I intend to do some good work with Paddy tonight and perhaps get The Anthologist finished proper; perhaps a moderately early night in preparation for what promises to be a busier tomorrow. I know I'm strong enough to get through these few days - to stay focused on work, but keep the good things in sight.

I know we're going crazy but I need you now
I know we're running baby but I need you now
I need you now, to fight somehow.

To A Poor Old Woman

2011-06-06T21:05:00.002+08:00

munching a plum on
the street a paper bag
of them in her hand

They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her

You can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her hand

Comforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her

- William Carlos Williams

--

This dude liked plums a lot (ref. This Is Just To Say). This poem, though - got me, in a strange place, somewhere between my stomach and my ribcage, like a sharp breath of air that went the wrong way. - I don't know.

Waking

2011-06-05T23:04:00.004+08:00

It feels like I've been studying for ages (put in a good 5 hours or so into English today, which is a feat because English is possibly the subject I am most resigned to failure for because of my complete haziness towards everything) and yet I've also spent close to 8 hours today out of the house with my family which in retrospect was far too long but frankly speaking what good will regrets do and also - it was good, I guess, family-talk-time and walking around shopping for my brother/father/mother hahaha I often feel that shopping alone is the most efficient use of time but then again...

I don't really have time this holidays to do nothing, so I've resolved to just use all my time wisely - work hard play hard and hopefully emerge having worked more than I've played hahahaha. But I think the trauma and insecurity of last week has been more or less left behind and that's a very, very good thing. Now let's hope I can continue to push myself and have the stamina to keep going for the next 3 weeks... argh.

Today has been full of Cut Copy and a fair bit of frustration with wasted hours but that is all gone now and I must let it go let it go. Thankfully Cut Copy's somewhat calming, though I think am increasingly diverting from my altrock/folksy roots and leaning more towards teenybopper synthpop... I don't know if that's a good thing but perhaps my tastes will swing back after a while. For now - Cut Copy's pretty genius.

The sound and video quality is quite breathtaking and I love their energy live. The crowd looks really stoked as well. But most of all I love these songs - especially Blink and You'll Miss A Revolution, which I think wins Most Poignant Title so far - and I love the feelings they bring. It's like being young but not so young, seeing the world through sad eyes but still laughing and rejoicing at the little things that, while absurd, can still be appreciated and experienced and loved with a keenness that transcends mere cold logic.

Miscible

2011-06-05T01:22:00.003+08:00

I got home slightly more than half an hour ago and risk facing the wrath of my parents tomorrow morning, but that's alright. There's something about living recklessly that I am beginning to understand - that it drives you to places never been before, that its short-term gratification can mean more than any calculated long-term plan of what should be and will be. In a sense this goes back to the newspaper article I was reading the other day about how experiences give us more satisfaction than material items - how a concert, a museum tour, a night out could possibly yield more enjoyment than a new phone or computer or clothes. It makes sense, I think, anecdotally at least.

It's your heart, it's your heart
That gives me this Western feeling

Center

2011-06-02T22:24:00.002+08:00

The past few days have been rough, I suppose, but I am somewhat better (finding taking comfort in small good things and a few people who I am thoroughly, thoroughly grateful for and trying to look beyond, above this). I guess the realization hit me today as I was walking to the MRT before school that I am only so stressed because I am bothered by what people think more than anything. How is this time different from any other examinations I have been going through? Yes it might be larger and with a seemingly wider impact BUT since when have I ever let the scale of an examination determine how hard I work (and by extension how well I do?). I've always just tried my best and it's been working out pretty ok so far so - I know I can, I know I will. "Keep on breathing, that's the key!"

Finished Monica Ali's In The Kitchen (FINALLY) in a reading process that was far too long drawn out and rife with the irony of a bunch of boys shaking with laughter at the sandwich-joke implications of the title (/rolls eyes) anddd it was pretty darn good, it's one of those books that takes a while to warm up to but by the end you're practically crying. For me it was somewhat resonant - how that single little incident spiralled Gabe out of control and his life going steadily downhill until, finally, that nervous breakdown and the blood under his nails and the almost-surreal stint of vegetable-farming (clever way to weave in the cross-cultural human trafficking concern that I guessed would preoccupy a social critic like Monica Ali!) and the inevitable crash, the rock-bottom for Gabe and his dreams. And then the fragile, fluttering hope that things could still get better. With family, and love.

In a strange way it's a cliched plot direction but still resonant. Because I guess that's how it is in life - life becomes a cliche because it works out in all-too-predictable ways but the interesting thing is that the best advice, the best comfort, comes from cliches; something like - it's been done before, so it'll work out again, and things will be okay, and life will go on. I think I am losing my coherence; I cannot express myself in words nowadays.

Not been running much, which I think contributes to the general moodiness; managed to sneak in a quick 4k this morning before going to school for focus camp but I think its effects wore off by evening. I'm really tired and not from running; from the general tension of being in school and worrying and perhaps I'm not sleeping well, either. Argh Idk I just want things to get better, and some breathing space.

Am currently reading The Anthologist which is getting increasingly impressive. It's one of those quiet inconspicuous books which hits you with pearl after pearl of philosophical wisdom and before you know it you realise that there's a paragraph on every odd page or so that calls out to you, that illustrates a thought you've been having, or initiates a whole chain of them in your heard like firecrackers. It's quite lovely and refreshing and, I wish I had a memory that was less sieve-like so that those trains of thought would linger a bit more.

The other day the thought of - "love as a country beyond one's own" fell quite into place. It occurred to me that Death Cab's You Are A Tourist could perhaps speak of that - being a tourist in another person's place, with a burning in your heart, an endless fury in your heart.

I think - I understand more now about how/why people can be entirely absorbed by their feelings. I think I would have been exasperated with Gabe and probably the protagonists of The Pickup but I guess that would be me imposing my self-righteous notions of independence/rationality on characters (people) who are - just that, people, human. Perhaps it is a kind of power to know how weak we all are.

Funny how different the rain feels when you're curled up, warm, at the very back of the top floor of an empty double-decker bus taking a long trip back to school.

- today was calming, in the end. It's been sky and water and closeness and - the little things, I suppose, that make the day a little brighter, the load a little lighter. I hope - I think - we'll walk a long while in these grey shoes yet.

/

2011-05-31T19:31:00.003+08:00

So here they are, all my fears and insecurities laid bare before me. I guess today was - the straw that broke the camel's back. The rain, the cold, the isolation, the fatigue, the futility - sitting alone waiting for dad at the roundabout, hunched over for more than the cold, I think something inside me broke and I closed my eyes briefly and tried to breathe but was just overwhelmed. I do not think I've ever felt anger, fear, frustration of that intensity, that depth before.

Perhaps it's the stress of everything - perhaps it's new challenges that I haven't been able to adjust to, new expectations, new responsibilities. I don't know but they are washing over me in a tidal wave and I cannot, cannot handle it right now. Not like this.

I guess what the absolute worst part is - is that I feel absolutely alone in this. I feel increasingly detached and, sometimes, alienated from my parents, who I usually turn to for support on anything, and their comments last Sunday about how I should stop "complaining" about work and stress - really turned me off from telling them more about what I feel and what I can/cannot handle. I don't know if this is considered growing up and becoming independent and taking hard knocks but - again, I can't deal with this. It's like they're just oblivious of everything, that they don't see the kind of sweat and tears that go into whatever I do, because I hide/hid it well? And then I'm afraid that when I fall/fail, which is going to happen eventually, they will not understand how much I tried. How much I'm trying, every day, to keep afloat.

Now that I think about the sources of all this frustration it becomes increasingly clear to me that I have too much to say and not the patience, nor the courage, to spit it all out publicly and thoroughly. What is this I have become, what is this I will become, and who am I, and why am I so afraid, and how do I stem this flow of fear, running in rivulets down my spine, how, how, how, why.

Splinter

2011-05-29T23:28:00.002+08:00

You're all that I'm asking for.

Lifehouse's 2010 album - Smoke & Mirrors - got its first listen from me today. I must confess they still resonate with me, just not as mindblowingly as, say, me of 5 years ago. Obviously this does not cohere with music snobbery but I don't really care about those things nowadays, why bother about labels and judgments when all one should do is what makes you happy?

--

Today was - rather rollercoaster. I have been swinging between hugely carefree enjoyment of life and bouts of extreme anxiety about exams/the future/obligations. To top things off IMUN has been weighing on my mind and more particularly, my sense of helplessness/haziness regarding it; I can only cross my fingers and hope that it all works out in the end, in true AC style.

Thankfully I've had some of the best emotional support I've had in ages, at moments today when I felt I was going to cave in under all the pressure. Thank you so much for just being there.

--

Open my eyes, I see sky

Mithril

2011-05-28T08:13:00.003+08:00

The last week of school has been - with its dreary moments, but all in all very lovely, and I don't know if it's just because term is ending, or because things in my life are falling together into place. School is the usual but made more bearable by friends and friends, and little moments of accomplishment that are rather validating in a way that is motivating but not as overwhelming as it would have been, perhaps for the circa-2009 me? I think that was when my drive and competitiveness reached its peak and - that is not to say I do not have either of those things today but - the past two years has taught me to look for a bit of equilibrium in my life, to stop and breathe and smile. I'm fast approaching 18 and that's actually too long a period of time to have been spent incessantly working.

Finished Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient two days ago which was tragic and heartbreaking but didn't have that magical hook for me. Perhaps I wasn't paying enough attention to details - there were a few moments when I stopped and reread passages because of how lyrical the prose was and how certain moments were grasped at, hinted at but never explicitly illustrated - but this was patchy, I think, and I guess I need significance as well as style in order for me to classify something as beauty. Perhaps it is because I do not have the necessary empathy to fill the shoes of these characters caught in the after-dust-storm of war, to understand the torment and hardship of the bleak. Terrible as it may sound I hope I never find that empathy (and to qualify that) through experience.

Also - I got very good news delivered to me in an envelope on Thursday night. My dad came home with the mail after a long day's work and gave me the thick, A5-sized envelope with the inevitable Authority logo on the top left corner and my name printed drily, emotionlessly on the cover; I remarked that this was "the moment of truth" and on hindsight there might have been more than a note of hysteria in my voice. It had all the elements of a good old suspenseful movie. I fumbled with the envelope and the glue was so sticky it refused to open and I had to open 2 or 3 drawers looking for the hard silver letter opener (oddly simultaneously plastic and heavy) and then I couldn't slit the flap properly and had to resort to a tiny bit of ripping and then - it opened, I pulled out the letter, and the next half an hour or so was a blur of unbreakable grins and (almost) jumping up and down in excitement and - thinking, being grateful.

At the end of it all I remember turning to my parents the next morning before we left for school and telling them that I am glad to be in a country where this kind of opportunity exists. I know that it does not exist evenly for everyone because - life is not meritocratic even if systems try to be, but on a very personal level I am thankful for what I have.

Good memories over the past few days have included - that envelope, the thought of holidays, the slow degeneracy into madness on the last day of school, running 4k around the school track at noontime on Thursday, long comfortable conversations after school, waffles, Lau Pa Sat with 6.12 which has to be one of the coolest dinner destinations ever, watching N + S + H try to run upstage and "mosh" with the band butchering Yellow at said dinner destination, photographs and light moments, walking down the wide CBD streets late at night with the dense, cold buildings towering overhead into the sky, going past the river in all its dark tranquility, waiting in line (which completely paid off!) but completely enjoying the wait, the genius combination of egg and thin crust pizza, the warmth, the closeness.

- I'm not questioning good things (:

Spectrum

2011-05-25T22:09:00.003+08:00

"Ae ú-esteliach nad, estelio han, estelio ammen."

--

Books, long walks in search of bus stops, self-consciously self-amusing, mutual indulgences in fast food heaven, being thoroughly embarrassed by chance meetings (turning red red red), turning down wild honey that isn't good enough, peanut butter overload, the waffle bowl that would not break, rooftop views and makeshift stone seats, thoughts and smiles and infinite conversations.

- I wish I could capture all this more eloquently, more precisely, in more than words - more than simple sights or sounds but in the entirety of the moment. Unfortunately I cannot but I can cling onto the sensations that linger, every breath and pause, falling into the rhythm of being.

I'm very grateful for what I have, this life.

Dye

2011-05-23T19:32:00.005+08:00

On Nadine Gordimer's July's People - was lukewarm at the beginning, loved it very much towards the end. I don't know if that's because of my lack of focus during the opening and middling chapters but - alright. I still found that The Pickup resonated more, but anyhow, Gordimer is a real master of the cultural-crossing and the modernist/postmodernist(?) form, loose and ambiguous but still incredibly polished and - you can see the thought put behind the ambiguity, the layers of complex meaning she imbues into the simplest of things. Including the title - who are July's people, those he has returned to or those strangers he has brought back with him? Gordimer definitely goes onto my list of Pro Authors to be sought after when all other casual book browsing fails.

--

On other things - it's the small things that matter, I think, in the end. At the final week of this very tumultuous term I am glad to have survived this far and, while always worried that I've not done enough, think that I've done what I could while preserving my sanity (well not quite, not all of the time) - to be honest I don't think I've suffered as much as I thought I would (and was warned that I would) and Idk if that's due to complacency from burnout or... (dare I say it) the rewards of having put in consistent efforts and sacrificing about a year's worth of weekends? (Pardon my stream of consciousness this is the byproduct of having to package one's thoughts far too nicely in essays and IAs over the past couple of months -)

Anyway the small things - small, good things. Things like:
- spontaneous moments of madness in school and out of it
- sitting outside the classroom in the thick warmth of the day, slouching by the lockers reading Gordimer
- finding something particularly interesting in a passage and mentally noting it down (and promptly forgetting)
- finally printing out page after page of much-loved labour in all its double-sided glory
- hurried 5-minute breaks to escape from the monotony of class
- answering difficult questions (! - this is universal I think!)
- A GOOD PRATA (OR TWO)
- ice cream on hot days - particularly, how incredibly well rum & raisin and hazelnut go together (:
- the moment of hearing your math teacher say "the criteria's been shifted down to 45 instead of 50/60" so - effectively NO MATH FOCUS CAMP
- water (by sunlight or moonlight) and all that comes along with it
- long fast runs in the early evening, sweating out all the fatigue of the day and clearing the mind of all that is irrelevant/futile
- climbing over/under/through thick forest and elbow-high grass and sinking into ankle-deep mud while hiking from Jurong East to Bukit Timah with the parents on Sunday morning -- ok this is no longer a small moment but you know what I mean (:

--

New Death Cab album just available for listening on npr.

I am steadily melting into a puddle.

Jar

2011-05-21T17:13:00.004+08:00

City and Colour's pretty darn amazing, rediscovering it after a while.

--

"The story, Detective Landsman, is telling us. Just like it has done from the beginning. We're part of the story. You. Me."
- Chabon

--

I've been - happy. I really don't think any more needs to be said. I'm afraid that saying anything at all, putting it in mere, weak words will make the magic in my head disappear and be reduced to something more accessible but somehow more normal. All I need really is to grasp that feeling, that thought, and it will just be kept intact, safe, in the cradle of my head. That is all, and that is enough.

--

EE's done, and I want to let it go, already. It might not be worthy of my expectations of a grade but it has far exceeded my expectations of myself, and my learning. I've worked so hard on it it really is the most significant labour of love I've ever done thus far, I think. I'm a bit tired but I keep reminding myself this is the last stretch for so many things; it's pretty amazing just to look back and see how far we've come from being little Year 5s and seeing the world through wearier, (hopefully) wiser and more experienced/balanced eyes.

Doing SATs practice questions now and I'm terrified of the later half of the year when applications and procedures and everything for the future will start and - argh, I am suddenly afraid to plan and think and exist beyond this sheltered little bubble I've been in. But we don't get to make all the important choices in our life, do we.

On second thoughts...

Column

2011-05-18T22:24:00.003+08:00

I have been - ridiculously happy for the past couple of days (weeks) and I guess that has, strangely enough, helped me focus more in school, be more attentive and alert during classes, which is really counter-intuitive I guess but - I am not questioning good things.

I am not questioning this, and trying not to think too much of anything, just to feel and be. I like the status quo, whatever its name is, with or without labels (there are no fitting labels) - I like this comfort, this mild steady joy, this not-quite-familiarity but getting there. I like sitting by the water in the gathering dark and sporadically talking and just existing in the moment. Everything, including full, deep silences, everything says so much without speaking at all.

--

In other things have more or less gotten over my backlog and am somewhat on track for school again - EE is almost done I suppose and I really have dug my fingers raw in trying to look for more corroborating social history sources but I've tried my best and while all this effort may not get me an A, it's alright because to me the intellectual risk is worth far more than any grade scrawled in the safety of established schools of thought.

Have been camping out in the NLB far more than usual and I think my eyes are paying the price for 3 hours straight of microfilm work (Monday) painstakingly poring over 2 months' worth of Straits Times articles; the microfilm room is way too dark to do any notetaking and yet that's what's necessary when looking at the microfilm reels and trying to glean information from forgotten passages of time that would be relevant. I've been tired tired tired recently.

On books - I finished Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union today and it took me quite a while but it was - satisfactory, as a whole. Not spectacular, and it dragged on and (perhaps I was overly distracted) confused me greatly at parts, but I think my understanding of the text was hampered by my lack of specific knowledge about the Jewish struggle for a homeland (historical as well as spiritual knowledge, here) and so perhaps I'm not the best judge of quality here. But am glad to have finished it, it ended ambiguously yet hopefully.

--

15/20 for the latest history test which gratified me somehow but also left me ambivalent despite the test being a week before track finals and therefore not administered under the most ideally prepared conditions - I think I am better at regional paper than any other paper I've done before, but I can only cross my fingers and hope that my sanity + coherence stay with me for as long as necessary.

--

Went to the ArtScience Museum yesterday with my family to celebrate Mom's birthday and it was quite an interesting experience - saw van Gogh and Dali exhibitions which really did flood the senses and (for Dali) the "wtf o_0" regions of the brain. I like both for different reasons - van Gogh for how the individual strokes make up such a brilliant whole, and Dali for the subconscious brilliance of the thought behind his work. van Gogh's story is of course tragic but Dali was fortunate enough to enjoy lots of patronage and I guess that's the way life is, where you are born and who you meet shapes the path you take such that it winds a way different from everyone else's.

I do like the Museum (both architecturally as well as for its contents) and I would go back again but not too soon and not on a day when I'd be rushing - there's a bit too much to see all at once and I enjoy leisurely walks reading the plaques carefully and understanding what I am seeing, rather than whirlwinding through a barrage of sensory information. It's a personal choice, though, more than anything.

--

I think I have burned myself to the point of exhaustion now. My eyelids are rapidly closing and it's barely 11 but it feels like 1am and I think this is the product of consistent late nights for at least 2 weeks in a row now; ever since post-nats I've been struggling to keep afloat. But things are under control now, I think, and will be better. One and a half weeks to the end of term!

I awoke only to find my lungs empty,
And through the night, so it seems I'm not breathing.
- City & Colour

Hollow

2011-05-14T10:25:00.003+08:00

It's been a while since I've done any early-morning posting, but today's kind of a rare day - I've gotten a brief respite from work this weekend so I'm focusing on EE entirely, clearing my other IAs and nonsense out of the way. Term is over in two weeks which seems incredibly quick, almost too quickly for comfort but then I am also very glad that the end is in sight.

- So how has the week been? It almost seemed to fly by too quickly because we had so many lovely pockets of free time in school because teachers were missing/ we were going to support A Div finals and it felt so good to be out of the monotony of the classroom.

Tuesday was rugby finals which was incredibly intense and which we eventually won as the underdogs of the match hahah it was truly brilliant! And I finally understand why J talks about the atmosphere of rugby matches so reverently; it really is another plane altogether, every moment could bring a new turn of events and a change in the fortunes of both sides. In a strange set of circumstances the entire Y6 cohort went down to support the finals because the Y5s were all at WOW (leaving school very nice and empty) and it was like a mass fieldtrip of sorts. Fun and gratifying and much, much needed.

Thursday's tennis finals saw more intensity and, this time, not so much luck - it was a hard close fight right to the end and I guess - silver is hard to settle for when one is so close, but this is the way sport is and I'm just proud of AC for fighting so hard, always. - And I guess the net effect of this week was the sense of school pride that I've never felt so acutely before the past 1.5 years. To think that I very, very nearly didn't take this path.

In non-school-related things my life has been rather empty without training and I still do feel kind of lost, but the afternoons have been occupied with mundane and often dreary hours of lectures/tests/meetings but okay, things are getting better - I've been running diligently the past couple of days and it helps destress, I think, that brief 30 minutes of pushing everything else out of your head and focusing only on the pounding in your heart, the ground under your soles rising falling rising falling. And the sweat rolling down in waves, mildly salty and haze-inducing and settling over damp warm skin.

- Also I am still walking an edge and to be honest I don't really know what I'm doing and I don't really care; it feels right and safe and comfortable for now so we'll leave it at that and see how it goes. The only thing I really doubt is my own emotional maturity, haaaa.

Have been listening to Fleet Foxes recently and getting all heartachy over them. Theirs is a universal sadness, a melancholy that leans on the quiet interplay of emptiness/infinitude, conjuring up images of wide open skies and rolling plains that suggest, somehow, that there are treasures on this earth still untouched, whole.

And you will go to Mykonos
With a vision of a gentle coast
And a sun to maybe dissipate
Shadows of the mess you made
- Mykonos, Fleet Foxes

Fear

2011-05-09T19:28:00.003+08:00

Just finished Nadine Gordimer's The Pickup and a little bit of me died inside. I am left heartbroken and hanging and very very emotionally shaky with this in a way that I haven't felt for such a long time; usually I am not this hung up over love stories, not so emotionally invested but this time - she has a style all her own and the realness of her characters, the intricate webs of life and society and civilization spun all over and around them, they made me think. A lot. It's a very nuanced take on the easily-oversimplified immigration/sense of belonging/identity issues and Gordimer's a real master of the form, I think - certain phrases ("dreamed green", the use of "his"/"her", and of course the eponymous "pickup") and pauses and structures lend themselves particularly well to the evocation of certain bitter, thick, difficult emotions that do not really fit neatly into single adjectives. I - felt so much, am still recovering from it, the finality of the final separation, the uncertainty of what is to follow beyond the final page.

The idea of love as a country beyond one's own, though. That's a thought.

Ahhh.

On other things I have spent today wasting away at home finishing my Bio IA and tomorrow's the long-dreaded test which I've only studied the bare minimum for argh I am terribly unmotivated these days but I put it down to a temporary tiredness which will dissipate with time, I think!!! I hope. But not till the end of term, it seems. Sigh.

The weekend was spent doing work and I suppose that's why it's been so dreary and tiring lately, with all the restlessness and alternate inertia-slogging-inertia-procrastination-angst and that has spoiled most of the long weekend, unfortunately. Ugh I can't wait for a real proper break without the anxiety of coming tests and looming deadlines and the constant worry of whether tomorrow you'll have more backlog than what you ended up with today. Also I am pretty sure I can't finish my english essay tonight so I'm bracing myself from a scolding from M G tomorrow :/ What promises to be the first work-related missed deadline of my IB life, hurrr.

I am living life dangerously but for once am not thinking about it or the consequences; I suppose all one can do is to hang on and do the best we can while trying to keep ourselves as happy as possible. I don't know I don't know I'll take it as it comes. Please please please give me strength.

When there's a burning in your heart
An endless fury in your heart
Build it bigger than the Sun
Let it grow
- You Are A Tourist, DCFC
(I can't wait for Codes & Keys!)

Hawk

2011-05-06T22:44:00.002+08:00

The week has been incredibly tumultuous and I have been swinging on an emotional spectrum but it has finally come to a steady, final close. I am glad for a lot of new discoveries and a lot of challenges this week that I have not really overcome but am in the middle of overcoming and I think I am growing/will grow stronger after all of this. The past weekend I was somewhat of a mess trying to catch up with all my backlog and whatnot and it all seemed so long-drawn-out and impossibly slow-moving that I wondered if this was burnout, finally, what I'd/we'd (?) been anticipating/dreading/hoping against hope against - but yesterday and today saw a few hours of good solid productivity so I guess maybe not. And I've been alert during classes - history and econs mostly - so I guess it's a good sign.

I've been staying up till 1, 2am to (attempt to) finish some of the work that's been accumulating like crazy. Anyhow the days (nights) have been strange because I've been going out (ie. for PAP rally at an incredibly muddy field in Clementi on Wednesday where I, frankly speaking, cemented my support for the ruling party in my GRC (but not necessarily in others)) and I've been having midnight showers which wake me up immensely and render me wide-eyed till 2 in the morning. Unfortunately it has no effect on my productivity which continues to hit an all-time low. I wonder if it's because I've been so disorientated recently with just too many things going on at the same time - but in any case things have more or less settled and there is clarity through the madness, now, for now.

On a good note I did a couple of (interrelated, but you would never guess exactly how ;)) things that made me happy this week:

1. Ran a 10:52 for 2.4k which is my best timing to date (never officially subbed 12 before!) and was buoyed by it for the whole day

2. Finished reading (FINALLY) Twentieth Century China: New Approaches which is part of the Routledge "Rewriting Histories" series and a very lucid, compelling read that helped me see more of a big-picture trend to Chinese history (though, somewhat ironically, this was achieved by micro-study of dissected issues in the eponymous "new approaches" to China). One hilarious and mildly embarrassing related thing is that I showed the book to Mr C and he ended up photocopying an entire chapter (Esherick's Ten Theses on the Chinese Revolution) for most of the level hahahah I really didn't expect it but I think this is what communities are for - the communities I keep lauding repeatedly in TOK + even my RES essay. Oh dear.

3. Almost done (2 chapters left) with Mario Vargas Llosa's Death in the Andes. It's such a gorgeous and terrifying and merciless book. Peru Peru Peru; it paints the desolation, the literal/metaphorical cold of the country, and yet its life and its darkness. I am not surprised that Vargas Llosa got that Nobel because I think he is one of those rare writers who photograph with their words - even without describing everything - he shows both the ugliness and allure of the country and its people, it's a rare ability that I think I've never quite encountered in this form before. And yet such easy, heart-to-heart reading!

4. Went to the Clementi public library for the first time the other day and I must squeee~ at how new!!! all the books are. They look like they've never been borrowed and it's almost as if I bought them hahaha so I maxed out my loan quota and I can only hope that I manage to finish reading all of them. I need my reading (fiction) therapy so badly now lol I think the emotional turbulence of the past couple of weeks has been due to my book-starvation for most of nationals; now that I'm back more in the comfort zone of work-work-read things should probably mellow down a bit.

5. I am glad for my friends, old and new :) They have helped make the stress and the trauma and the general ennui of the past week more bearable.

--

There's a lot of backlog still but I think I've a better handle on things now and I hope it stays this way. Goodness knows I'm already pushing my limits deadlines-wise and I need to work a lot harder... find that drive that I was full of at the beginning of term, at the beginning of the year. I am avoiding the term burnout because I do not want to believe that this inertia is irreversible.

If anything, on the other hand, I need a break so badly. I keep looking for windows of opportunity and thinking of what-ifs but it's very hard to seize them when one is constantly paranoid about the undone state of affairs. I AM CRAVING DAILY SCOOP ON A DAILY BASIS lol lol I actually want that strawberry cheesecake ice cream I had a tiny scoop of that day at Sunset Way (off-limits because it was the weekend before nats!!!) and Idk where I can get it. Also I'm supposed to go with T to have Gong Cha & milkshakes and to Max Brenner with J and A and the other chocolate lovers from class and also MACDONALD'S which I haven't had for AGES. Like maybe a year hahahaha.

I've gotten back on The National, and Stars. They're lovely paired with Vargas Llosa and a cold empty classroom (or the hollow corridors outside of class, sitting down and leaning against the locker) and sometimes those are the best moments of school, other than those spent snatching conversations in between classes, listening to J and A banter/pose/generally provide laughter in class when the teachers aren't paying attention, and sitting in the SAC with coffee and good company. Mm :)

Just because

2011-05-02T21:16:00.004+08:00

Jump Into The Fog - The Wombats

This whole album (This Modern Glitch) is freaking gorgeous. So many songs, so many lyrics jump out at me and I could listen to it forever, it's the same Wombats magic but so much more sensitive, sophisticated, mature than they were before. It's like the exuberance of a 15-year-old complete with all the bursting energy of life and the cheekiness of youth just mellowed down and rethought life and now they've grown, aged, become more anchored and more worldweary but there's still life and the future ahead and a bit of tired, dogged, edgy optimism and the cheekiness is tempered with a cynicism that I kind of identify with.

I feel very old hahah 18 is fast approaching (6 months) and I am Scared of growing up and going into an adult world in which there's so much less margin for error and so much to do and consider at the same time. Ahhh I have a sneaking suspicion I'll get into some kind of existentialist crisis and think about What have I been doing with my life, What am I going to do with my life. Cross the bridge when the time comes, though!

The weekend has been madness; stayed up till 230 last night as well and today I spent entirely on econs which I hope pays off somehow... I am not really trying hard enough I think but I can only keep going and perhaps it takes time to build up the momentum at which I was moving earlier~ Must hold on, and keep moving on and up.

--

PLEASE ALLOW ME TO BE YOUR ANTI-DEPRESSANTTTT
I, TOO, AM PRESCRIBED AS FREELY AS ANY DECONGESTANT
- Anti-D, The Wombats

Codes

2011-05-01T19:11:00.003+08:00

It still surprises me, though it shouldn't, how much clarity and calm a long run can bring into your life. It provides stillness and a kind of re-perspective that is useful for one's mental well-being.

Let me posit, now, that all things, including ideology, leads up to an ultimate pragmatism.

--

Back from SDP rally which was somewhat of a disappointment. I am tired of the emotion-invoking rhetoric and the blatant populism of the policies proposed, especially Tan Jee Say's 60 billion economic proposal. I do agree with the spirit of what he's proposing but not the methods, especially the speed and magnitude at which he's trying to implement it, PLUS I think the direction towards a service-based economy is already something which the current government has been focusing on, so... not many new points there, I think. Or anything radically different from the status quo except for the vastness of the sums he's proposing to use. I expected more, actually, from his credentials, but I guess most of the opposition parties don't actually have viable alternatives to the current system. And I don't think change purely for the sake of change is necessary at this point, in my GRC anyway.

Again, I wish I could vote. Ha ha.

On another note though it was interesting just to be there and observe what was the first political rally of my short life! There was quite a large crowd including those of us who climbed up the multiple storeys of the surrounding HDB blocks and stood in the corridors peering over the railings. The organization of the event, including how they planted supporters amongst the crowd to shout and cheer and jeer when necessary, was quite interesting to observe; for me it was also interesting how the speeches made occasional recourse to past PAP Old Guard like Goh Keng Swee and S. Rajaratnam by quoting them or in Tan's case drawing connections to them, as if they were trying to inherit their political legacy. It does of course mirror some of the tactics we've seen being used by other political parties in our study of history and that's why I picked it up; the idea of legitimacy from successorship is probably a more powerful tool than we give it credit for. Food for thought.

--

Ok I really should get down to work. I'll likely be sleeping at 2am or so writing econs and that corresponds to last night's 230am; both nights I've had midnight showers and that has rendered me rather awake so Idk, this is probably short-term comfort at the expense of long-term wellbeing :/ What else can one do, though?

I want The Wombats' new album. From the sounds of it it's got a more electronic, produced sound but still as catchy as ever and his voice would be recognizable anywhere~

A combination of things has made me feel better than I was yesterday and I'm very grateful for that. Listening to Phoenix now and - it makes sense, more so than yesterday's endless Foals. As always, they make me drop over the edge into a pit of existentialist angst and I just lie there in the Spanish Sahara and I can't get out, I give in.

Not today, not today.

Rome, Rome, Rome, Rome
Focus looking forward the colosseum
Oh no! What did I say? What can I say?
Rome, Rome, many tears have falling here
I'll be driving, you look the other way

Always and forevermore
I call to say I'm on the way
2000 years remain in a trash can
Let burn the cigarette somewhere
Ashes till it falls, falls, falls
- Phoenix

Gills

2011-04-29T20:53:00.000+08:00

Jumpers 2011 (:

While the rest of the world is either at an election rally or watching the royal wedding, here I am having just finished watching a couple of videos of parrots singing/headbanging (everything from opera to death metal) and wondering what to do with my life. I have so much backlog from all the days of school that I've missed because of nats but I can't bring myself to do anything. This weekend's absolute must-dos include 2 essays, studying for econs + math tests, editing TOK essay, doing worksheets (math, bio), writing IA24, catching up on the 83723 pages of history reading backlog and going down to the library to dig up more material for EE including poring over microfilm. Grahhhh.

The week was eventful. Monday and Tuesday were days of anticipation, the runup of sorts - Wednesday was track finals, in which I ran the last ever race of my life and boy was it one to be proud of. I am glad because the whole process was so darn underdog and against-the-odds. A team of 2 jumpers, 1 hurdler and a retired sprinter, managed to make finals having trained a grand total of 3 times and - in finals we shaved off almost a second from our qualifying timing and moved one position up (: It was such a good feeling. In fact it was a lovely race to run because there was so little pressure. I don't know if I mentioned before that, once I got over my fear of falling flat on my face, the starting blocks actually made me feel super pumped and finals was no exception - the starter held the "on your mark" for longer than usual but we hung in there and when it was finally time for "set" and the final, inevitable gunshot - it was just a blur from there, a bit of a heartstopping moment when passing to A and then the run went on beyond the bend and before we knew it it was all over. I remember W (from ACJC) and I just looking at each other and we burst out half-laughing, half-sighing at the same time, thinking of the same thing - how this was the end, the last race. And as we walked back to the startline half-hugging each other I guess the finality of it all hit me and I didn't quite know if I was relieved, or devastated.

- I'm glad I kept nagging Mr W to let us have a relay team. The first in ACS(I) history and possibly the only one for a while to come.

The following few hours were a blur of cheering and screaming and high excitement and a drizzle and meeting (briefly) ex-RG-now-RJ people who I hadn't seen in ages and then DOWNPOUR and running for my life back to the shelter and relative emptiness of the badminton hall and then squeezing through the crowd outside to watch the prize presentation and climbing over a staircase railing (I KID YOU NOT, to the chagrin of the blazer-ed Cedar girl "guarding" the entrance to the staircase to hold the crowd back) so that I could take photographs of the A Boys getting their divisional trophy which was SUCH AN AMAZING EFFORT given that our team was 14-strong compared to RJ's 40-strong. AC AC AC!!! Then running downstairs to take photographs and dodging the rain and then off on the bus to dinner~

The oddest things happened on the bus; K and B were sitting next to me and forced to squeeze a bit too close for comfort and I was laughing madly at them and I think it was the heat of the day + lack of water + too much screaming but I felt funny and realized that I'd started nosebleeding in the (fortunate) darkness of the bus and it was almost surreal for a moment, then almost funny. Dinner was madness, as expected; we demolished the buffet in more ways than one and the craziness was completed by the numerous eating contests being held involving all manner of things from mango pudding to lotus paste buns and the jumpers' table was where all the food piled and piled and I think my lack of concrete recollection of anything is a sign of the mind-numbing eat-eat-eat madness that ensued that night. Reached home at 1030 thoroughly stuffed and showered and did absolutely nothing until 1230 when I forced myself to go to bed.

--

(part of) Jericho

Thursday I went to school in a zombied state and I wasn't the only one - in essence, most of the trackers who summoned up the willpower to go to school were only half-alive from the exhaustion of the previous day. Possibly it was the tension that caused it all. Was somewhat revived by a spontaneous 2.4k run of 11min40 during recess and then quiet time by the fountain in the company of some of my favourite people (: But the highlight of the day was post-school when we finally got to go on the beginning of what promises to be a long food adventure... had Nutella Tart from EWF and then the most gorgeous tiramisu ice cream from Daily Scoop~

Unfortunately the joy and exuberance of Thursday was dampened somewhat by my nerves about today - this morning to be exact. It went better than I expected, actually; there is always stuff that could have been said better, things I could have done better but ultimately I think it was a passably decent attempt? There was a lot of laughter which I take as a positive sign!

Today was tiring, numbing and somewhat depressing in that nothing was done but there's everything left to do. I'm just tired but I've rested so much already and when is it ever going to be enough? Am afraid I am going into a kind of slough~ and so avoided Foals in iTunes today but they are tempting! And I don't know if Franz Ferdinand will be much better.

Bio class has been full of philosophically picture-perfect moments. For example, on Thursday, Sir was showing us the attendance lists for the past month or so and somehow I've only managed to miss one class despite competing on 4 or 5 days; in response, A turned around in her seat and asked me incredulously, "Why are you always here?"
- I didn't realize the full implications of that question until D who was next to me nudged me and pointed out the existentialism behind it. So. Why am I always here?

And, today, I was talking to B and as part of the conversation I said - "...that's life. Travel light." I don't even remember what we were talking about but then I grasped that phrase and to make sure I didn't forget I wrote it on my arm with a purple pen that somehow always ends up doing these things and - Travel Light, that is a good philosophy for life and I think I will try adopting it for a while.

Elections are nearing the corner and I wish I could vote! I fully intend to go attend a rally or two over the weekend. I think my political views are more or less steady but still always in the process of being formed and, all I can say is, I am growing more confident in them. On the whole though the whole business of politics disturbs me a bit; it seems like so much rhetoric and stirring up of emotion and media manipulation and information failure that it seems like we only see the hollow image of politicians, not their whole substance? I don't know.

I haven't been reading proper books (ie. fiction) for too long (ie. about a month...). Perhaps that is contributing to the emotional dryness, the unsteady equilibrium, the preoccupation with the unimportant and the neglect of heart.

I'm a bit lost now that everything's over. Have to pull myself together and get back in the driver's seat, in control, in focus.

I've recently been introduced to Between the Buried and Me and I can't really take the screaming properly but the second half of Selkies: The Endless Obsession is pure genius and I don't know, I might try again when I feel braver. I guess screaming is just using the voice as an instrument in a different way but it's so alien and jarring to my ears I think this is a long-term job if there ever was one.

Things have gotten closer to the sun
And I've done things in small doses
So don't think that I'm pushing you away
When you're the one that I've kept closest
- Crystalised, The xx

Fragments

2011-04-25T20:38:00.002+08:00

Am somewhat on edge now. Today was a haze of school and tiredness and sleepy eyes and, notable moments that seem small but felt odd, different from the usual:

8am. smiling wryly to myself at various points during chapel, drifting in and out of focus
10am. curling up in a corner of the classroom during recess, swamped by my brother's jacket and plugged into Alcest and just seeing nothing, letting go
12nn. truncated math lesson where I felt that familiar but creepy sensation of following a method without understanding it thoroughly
2pm. after school, whirlwinding through 2 math worksheets while half-listening to CY's tales of his exploits with girls... the math was good
3pm. sitting through an hour of bio from 3-4, being (unusually?) passive yet having done practically everything asked of me, I doubt anyone would complain, ha ha
4pm. walking home from school for the first time in a long while in a semi-daze; floating along in the sunshine because there was no other way to move
5pm. the extreme sleepiness, lethargy after struggling to revise some econs. I felt like I was dissolving away into the afternoon.
7pm. being jolted into some kind of clarity by a combination of, in chronological order:
i. Quaker oat biscuits
ii. lukewarm television
iii. an unexpected and exciting and frightening email

The last line deserves mention. I guess that email reminded me of how little time we have left, and how these emotions are likely to repeat themselves endlessly until the end of the year. I don't want to leave this comfortable yet anticipatory stage that we're at, somewhat stuck in limbo but always hoping for something brighter still to come. If I were to make a comparison in bad taste it would be paralleling the state of Christians on earth, stuck in a transit of sorts and just waiting for the next step to somewhere (we hope) better. I guess - all in all that email provided me with some perspective and I am determined to work harder than ever to make this all work out, make it all worth it.

I think two things have made me what I am - thinking, and reading. Reading - shaped my worldviews, shaped the way I look at people and events, taught me to be a better person, I think. I saw this article today about how reading expands one's sense of self by allowing one to feel accepted by a new (albeit fictional) community and so, increases one's sense of self-worth, and it hit me that that might be the reason why reading lifts me up emotionally, that I often get moody when I'm away from texts for too long. Mm. And thinking, because it's what makes me reflect on life and people and situations and myself, as well, and makes me want to learn more and be a better person.

And of course dad and mom because I am merely a product of the two of them.

--

To be honest, I can believe in God but not the God they tell me about.

--

J introduced me to shoegaze the other day in the form of Alcest and since then they've been on my playlist every day - rather different from what I expected since he described it as "an intro to metal" and I am really quite pleasantly surprised. It's a lovely atmospheric kind of sound, reminiscent of a harder, edgier post-rock with a tinge of (dare I say it) new age and it brings with it this really beautiful melancholy. There is a tiny bit of screaming on one or two songs but I am learning to sit through it in order to get to the glorious instrumentals and I guess this is the way to slowly get desensitized to the noise and focus on the music. Probably still a long way to go to metal, though, hahaha.

Alcest lyrics are pure poetry, in any case.

Sur l'océan couleur de fer
Pleurait un choeur immense
Et ces longs cris dont la démence
Semble percer l'enfer.

Et pais la mort, et le silence
Montant comme un mur noir.
...Parfois au loin se laissait voir
Un feu qui se balance.

- Sur l'océan couleur de fer
(above the iron-coloured ocean)

Pocket

2011-04-23T16:37:00.002+08:00

Oh goodness I've just finished doing the English test I missed on Tuesday and I'm proud to say I spent exactly 1h42min doing it (short of the 2-hour time limit hur) and everything was as per exam conditions except that I was plugged into Jimmy Eat World (lol it's good for times like these). It was a tricky paper I think and hopefully I wrote lucidly enough for whoever's marking it to understand what I'm getting at. English this year has been better for me classes-wise but not so good paper-wise; I am constantly brainstuck and unable to express the torrent of emotions/thought which hits me whenever I read a text. And when I write it always sounds so trite/contrived/textbooky that I really, really fear for not just my grade but my imagination. And brain.

Immediately after I finished it I ran downstairs to the void deck where our MP Christopher De Souza was having a dialogue session with residents of my area, and managed to catch the last 15 minutes or so of the dialogue (I shall wheedle my parents for the other details later, ha). Dr V Balakrishnan was there too and he was doing most of the talking (hur) but he's impressive and I genuinely like him as a minister (though it really is just a vibe I get, and possibly the ACS-alumni thing, and I have no concrete examples to substantiate). In any case it was informative just to observe those last couple of minutes and I am actually pretty excited about election season because my GRC (Holland-Bukit Timah) is very likely to see some action so, good morning to my political awakening haaaa.

Now I'm mentally exhausted (had training in the morning, got home, showered, did 2 math worksheets, had lunch, began English, the rest you know - I am chronologically illogical) and I resolve, after finishing my bio worksheets for Topic 6.4, I am going to declare the rest of the day a day of rest (ha ha ha, completely unintentional wordplay there).

Went to Robertson Quay last night for dinner at Epicurious and had possibly one of the best salads of my life. Then had a spoonful of sticky date pudding (my family ate the rest) and I think I am beginning to enjoy life a bit too much hahaha in any case it's a lovely chillax place which I like very much.

- I think I am already feeling the beginnings of loss/desolation from the imminent ending of my last ever Nationals. I foresee myself drifting around aimlessly once this Wednesday passes and it'll all be over and I think I'll be pretty devastated argh and nothing else will be there to distract me from dealing with school and other academic-inclined things which I like in moderation but not 24/7! So I guess I have two conflicting goals for post-nats which are, 1) to run like mad, and 2) to eat like mad. Ha and guess where school fits into all this?

(nowhere)

Am afraid I am burning out with all this. My recently laissez-faire attitudes towards World Lit & EE would be surefire proof of getting tired. Eeps I hope that post-Wednesday, when I finally get to go out after ages and not just eat but also hang around and talk to people who I really need to have long-postponed conversations with, will see a restoration of energy and drive and, in a strange and potentially dangerous way, identity.

At least

2011-04-21T20:58:00.002+08:00

The past 2 days have been rough for me and not quite up to expectations but it's ok, we live and learn and there's still 4x100m finals next Wednesday to focus on. And I am proud that we've already made history as the first girls' relay team in the history of ACS! I guess the main difference between yesterday and today was that - today I did my best, while yesterday I perhaps didn't; it's the frustration of not being able to repeat the technique we've done 278338 times during training that gets to me, but it's over now and, in the wise words of Theodore Ng, "in the end, what you'll remember is the training, your teammates and your coach, not the competition".

- That thought really gave me strength to get through today and much of last night's turbulence, when countless if-onlys and what-ifs were going through my head. Also, am grateful for the people who gave me support/encouragement at what was possibly the lowest point of my track life so far - the jumpers, especially, and other trackers, and my classmates, + other lovely people from school who bothered to text me to make sure I wasn't suicidal. Hahaha THANK YOU VERY MUCH guys :)

The story isn't over yet! Next Wednesday (and one more week of dieting, hurr).

--

This thought was sprung from brief conversations I had with WY (ex-RG classmate who I finally met after AGES today at nats), my parents and S today - I think being in ACS has presented me with a set of challenges wholly different from what I'd ever encountered before (and possibly what I would have encountered in RJ) - and I appreciate these challenges. I know I have not/will not/could not overcome some of them but there are others that I think I've seized by the neck and managed to overthrow; every small victory, every bit of opportunity that has been sought out and confronted head-on, has made me a stronger person and I'm thankful for that.

I think I was previously used to things happening for me - chances being presented to me on a platter - but now, more restricted, I feel oddly more empowered and just - braver. There's so much we can accomplish if only we were not afraid to fight.

--

One thing about being away from school for almost a week is that there's a massive inertia and general sense of je ne sais quoi (in all senses of the phrase...) that takes over and hazes over your sight, such that one feels that one knows absolutely nothing about the current state of academic affairs and the bottomline of this is that - I am reluctant to go back to school next week, and I completely dread the amount of work that's backlogging as I speak.

- NEVERMIND. I shall have more time after nationals (supposedly).

--

This song is rather apt, both in feel + lyrics-wise:

Jackson's Last Stand - Ou Est Le Swimming Pool

It's gone, gone, gone, gone
It's time for things to get better,
It's time for things to move on,
Instead of this,
You won't, won't, won't, won't
be staying with me forever,
Cause this is, its my last stand,
It's my last stand.

5 Minute Post

2011-04-19T20:55:00.002+08:00

& by some miracle we managed to qualify for 4x100m finals despite screwing up a baton pass pretty badly + I DID NOT FALL ON MY FACE LEAVING THE BLOCKS + music (Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, Miami Horror & Birds of Tokyo in particular) is a very stabilizing influence~ Just focusing on tomorrow now and hoping to keep my technique, the takeoff, the brief moment of suspension in the air (think of the high jump mat think of the high jump mat) and the easy, outstretched landing.

I just need to do what I've been doing during training, and not let my thoughts or insecurities get the better of me. No pressure, no pressure.

On other things my list of post-nats to-eat has to wait for another week because of relay finals! OH WELL. I'm not complaining :)

I don't know why I've still been going to school for barely an hour or so of lessons, but I guess it's not over, not over, not over yet (Klaxons, which I've been listening to tonight and am alternately impressed/creeped out by).

Well it's not that kind of love
It's an arrow through my heart
- The Feeling (this song has such a hook.)

Two-Minute Post

2011-04-18T21:58:00.002+08:00

(Possibly the first of many)

Got home at 830 from CCK after light training. Sleeping in 2 minutes because tomorrow marks the beginning of Nationals proper - 4x100m relay heats tomorrow, long jump finals Wednesday, triple jump finals Thursday. Fingers crossed, hoping for the best (which is yet to be!).

Layers

2011-04-16T17:00:00.003+08:00

Foot
Stem
Foot
1.
Directly behind - 2.

Tangent to curve.
Perpendicular fingers, imaginary line.

--

10000 bonus points to anyone who can tell me what the above means :) You'd be a genius.

In other things, today has been moderately productive. I will write more later, hopefully before I forget.

--

edit at 10.14pm:

I have nothing much to add. Today I had training in the morning which mildly assuaged some of my fears and exacerbated others, then in the afternoon I finished 4 math worksheets, Econs DRQ and what is possibly the last econs IA draft in my life. Couldn't drag myself to do World Lit after, although that's what's been weighing on my mind the most, but it'll be done by the end of this weekend... I hope. Spent an hour watching DC Cupcakes which is really doing nothing to help my pre-nats diet psychologically but AH WELL.

Music has been a solace recently. I am looping Miami Horror's Sometimes, whose video I found incredibly misleading, haunting, atypical. It made me think of another time, another place. Today also fell deeper into Birds Of Tokyo and Phoenix, especially Lisztomania.

My facebook account has been dysfunctional recently but it seems to have righted itself more or less. I am surprised that people noticed, and unjustifiably irritated at how alarmed they seemed. I don't know how much of myself I can divorce from my account, but I like to think that we are reasonably separate. Indeed I don't think even people who I talk to regularly know much about me, because so often language is inadequate to express what is in my head.

Sometimes, when all that's lost remains
Drink from the fountain of youth and never age again
Sometimes, we jump across to every cloud
Fly away get lost and never be found

Salted

2011-04-14T22:50:00.002+08:00

I have never been so reluctant to go to school. I'm - stuck, in many ways, in situations I do not want to be in, under scrutinies from people I couldn't care less about. The weight of expectations - or what I perceive to be expectations - just seems to be bearing down on me slowly, slowly, and every day I look at myself and wonder why I didn't push on that bit harder, why I am not that much stronger. It's never going to be enough.

I am also frustrated with systems in a way I have not been since early last year. I thought I'd learnt to pick my battles but it seems the smallest things have been capable of irking me recently; the hypocrisy, the empty arrogance, the downright bitterness and antagonism. Perhaps it is the stress of everything converging, and my own inability to rise up to these pressures, but I am becoming alternately afraid of and disgusted with so many things going on around me that I don't quite recognize myself any more, at times.

I've been drifting away from people I used to tell everything to, or rather from a person that I used to speak to with (almost alarming) regularity. Idk if you still read this but I'm sorry. I have no excuse to hide behind except that I am tired and alone and my instinct is to put up these walls because - how can I explain these things when you have no conception of them? When I do not even know my own conception of them? I am afraid that my words are inadequate and you will not understand and then all would be lost, because - who else would?

I just finished reading 3 chapters of Robyn Lim's The Geopolitics of East Asia and I am so behind on my history readings it scares me. There is a semi-drowsiness and a constant awareness that I am not understanding, that I am forgetting too easily, that I really am not cut out for a life like this. I don't even take pride in finding interesting bits of text and jotting down ideas for later and pursuing an argument to its resolution any more.

I fear I am fading into mediocrity. I forget all this whenever I am out running and training and focusing on technique and telling my body what to do, but once training's over and I'm back in the dingy toilet next to the track, in a clean shirt and staring at myself in the mirror and - all these demons come flooding back. I think too much.

I should have known something was wrong when I began to stop caring beyond what was necessary. I think I've just been steadily losing bits of myself day by day and they slip off and - this is infinite regress if I ever saw it, ha.

I think in the end it all boils down to one thing. I'm scared. I'm scared. I'm scared.

Stop

2011-04-13T21:00:00.003+08:00

Today was the first day without training in a long time (because nats are really coming and - rest is important, says Coach) and I felt so oddly bereft after school I hung around with J and had yoghurt and talked a bit (but never enough) and then I finally went home in a semi-dazed state, just before the stormclouds hit. Idk what I'll do when it's all over. One (or two, hopefully) more weeks ahhh this is all happening too fast and yet the wait is agonizing.

I am beginning to pick up momentum in school again (?). I think the past few weeks have been way too overwhelming for words. I think - I hope - I am getting back into the game (well not rly I am unable to fully concentrate because of the thought of nationals looming ahhh) and I am glad at the relative speed/ease with which I've been able to transition back into more focus, less divided attentions. But the struggle with inertia is a daily one... perhaps this is burnout, against all my hopes (and expectations, ha). In any case we just soldier on.

It just saddens me how I no longer find pleasure in English classes and history is only an interest, now, not so much a passion. I don't need to even mention Econs, do I? Ha. I think it's partly a problem with me. It just seems that every day I pull myself to school and force myself to sit through all these lessons and keep awake and do my readings and homework and ask questions but it's all become a drag, paddling against the current. I constantly feel like I'm wasting time but I don't quite know what I'm supposed to be doing with my time either. My greatest fear is inadequacy or mere adequacy but there is no more drive, no more fuel to keep pushing beyond the barest minimum; WHERE IS MY DESIRE FOR EXCELLENCE? WHERE?

I think the older I've grown, the less understanding my parents are. This is not to resent or complain but just an observation that we no longer talk about feelings, especially the complex and/or difficult ones. Ones that I think they wouldn't approve of or be able to understand. Perhaps it is just time - them losing their sensitivity to children, me growing more guarded. But I guess it is the State of Things and I don't really expect any different. I'm grateful for what they've done for me but I guess growing up also means growing out of this kind of dependency.

In other things I've spent the past couple of days since the weekend discovering new (rather varied, but all pretty darn good) music -
1. Art vs. Science: my introduction to the very impressive genre of dance punk. It's all the lightness and energy of dance with the force and hardhitting nature of punk. They're also very headbangy and that's good I think, hahaha. It doesn't hurt that their videos are quite genius too, esp that for Parlez- vous Francais?. So brilliant, pushing the frontier in so many ways.
2. The Middle East: lovely brooding folk/postrock. Reminiscent of Bon Iver, in some ways, and goodness knows I've been looking for more Bon Iver-esque stuff since forever.
3. Boy & Bear: heard Rabbit Song from a link to a Mumford & Sons video and the video floored me. Haunting, melancholic, and - keep my soul, my head's not coming back.
4. Ou Est Le Swimming Pool: pretty fine synthpop, it grew on me! Haha and I think Dance The Way I Feel has something to it, meaning-wise.
5. Birds Of Tokyo: as I told J, "indie version of JEW" hahaha well it's the usual alternative angst but with somewhat of an edgier feel. Still very nice on the ears :)

I guess I am glad for some of the people around me who have made the days somewhat more bearable, both in school and out - I think it's pretty easy to lose one's mind if one is left alone for too long. And somehow my weekends have melted into weekdays and every day is the same old same old but luckily there are a few people around to help me keep my grip on life.

- Ha, I desperately need a good solid break once this is all over.

Imagine none of this is real!

Scrape

2011-04-10T22:16:00.005+08:00

I think the euphoria of the past few days has been subsiding in a crashdive and I am dangerously close to lapsing into one of those sloughs of despond which I cannot, CANNOT afford to be in now.

It's mostly to do with people, I think, but also with my level of drive/motivation, and I'm afraid all this has made me complacent and unable to pull myself higher which is a disturbing thought to say the least. It doesn't help that there's a history test tomorrow and I've been studying thoroughly halfheartedly and been distracted the whole weekend with discovering new music (in particular, dance-punk genius in the form of Art vs Science).

I've been incredibly sleepy the past few days but end up sleeping at 11 or 12 and waking up at 5.30am on my own; there's nothing I can do about it and I attribute it to a combination of hard training + sporadic nerves. I'll be somewhat glad when the next couple of weeks are over, though I'll definitely miss training, the regularity, the discipline.

And yet, things to do once this is all over:
1. Sleep. Properly.
2. Eat. (so many things I've been abstaining from hahahaha I'm literally hanging by cliff's edge for this)
3. Take a break; aka finally go out with J and other people
4. Meet WQ!!!! I haven't seen her for too long
5. Work, Focus.

It's very odd how I so easily swing from one extreme to another. I guess I'm usually saddest when I'm left to my own thoughts and have nothing else to occupy me. I like dance punk (and trance, ha ha) because it absorbs me so completely to another place that I can no longer be exiled in my imagination thinking of what-ifs and should-haves.

It was a magic fountain!

Light

2011-04-07T21:42:00.003+08:00

C'est fin c'est fin c'est fin!!!!!!

Et c'etait bien (:

There were questions that I thought I wouldn't be able to answer but I did and it was well and good and I am pleased with myself and I think I deserve a good long break tonight of doing nothing (except filling in Important Urgent Forms... meh) and I think this will be the best I've slept for a long while (and I've been sleeping generally well!) so yay.

Oddly enough it took the TOK Presentation experience to make me realize some things haha and to say that I am relieved emerging from the frozen stuffiness of that underground library room is - an understatement. For when the presentation ended and everything that happened after - it came so fast and so suddenly I had no time to think or overthink and I just - felt. And looking back at those feelings I realise I am right where I wanted to be (and was afraid I wasn't at) all along :)

Now I can look back at myself and laugh, and look at other things and laugh too. The triviality of it all, the small-mindedness, how child-like we all are. There is so much more to living than this. That said, I will continue to do what I want; as I have explained multiple times before there is nothing about wanting that shouldn't be embraced as long as the ambition is within principled grounds - there is so much I want out of life, ha, and I think today really showed me that.

I went out on a limb and risked breaking my neck and it paid off, I'm pretty sure it did. I am so relieved and - well, jubilation is the word, just floating around in a semi-conscious state smiling stupidly to myself and hardly noticing how many rounds I'd gone for warmup during training afterwards hahaha it is perhaps too early to say but I have found back that drive that served me so well earlier. Mm so much more to do and say and I guess I just feel - liberated, somehow, now, by:
1. the absence of feeling, and
2. the absence of being.

Listening to Bon Iver again - gorgeous as always. I haven't started on any of the Important Forms yet but I will, soon. It's a very - alternately amusing, alternately ironic - juxtaposition of the banality of these Forms and the significance of what they potentially represent. Here we go!

Blinded,
I was blindsided

Rigged

2011-04-06T20:43:00.003+08:00

I really should be doing World Lit 1 Draft 2 (or at the very least frantically practicing my TOK presentation for tomorrow) but - immense restlessness, now, or at least a sense of constant anticipation and waiting on the edge. I have a sneaking feeling why this is happening to me (and has hit me especially hard tonight) but I am semi-in-denial for now; I can't accept that I'm capable of thinking like this and feeling like this. Ha.

I guess I'm just surprised at how people treat each other. Mom says that this is the beginning of real life and I am inclined to agree. As much as we have been lovingly cocooned...

I guess we've just all been too high-strung recently. That's what I attribute my overreaction to certain things, anyway; there's just too much to deal with even without the additional burdens of information/pseudo-information and I really- am frustrated with myself for failing to control it as much as with other people for sparking it off.

Anyway TOK tomorrow and I don't really know what to expect. I hope they like my topic (and the endless pictures of food lol lol lol) and I hope for coherence and confidence and most of all CALMNESS (I almost wrote "calamity" hahahaha this is a bad sign) and I guess up to this point there's only so much one can have done.

I've been training practically every day in preparation for nats and I don't know if it's because I want to do well or because I'll miss training so so much when it's all over. Am slightly burnt today because I started at 1pm (HAHA - serve me right for wanting to end early) but was all calm and settled until... until. Pffft@ self.

Perhaps I should get myself off the computer and read a bit before going to bed. I still haven't decided if I should go to school tomorrow morning. On one hand I feel like I've done enough and on the other hand, it doesn't seem like it's ever gonna be enough!
-
On unrelated things I am afraid I am losing my ability to express myself, both in a linguistic and a social sense. It scares me because, firstly, why, and secondly, who am I if I cannot put it down in words or deeds?

- Ick, not making sense anymore.

Don't be scared to fall in love because you don't like heights -

Smile!

2011-04-03T13:50:00.003+08:00

快乐心经

不埋怨要感恩
不贪心要知足
不烦恼要乐观
不争功要分享
不记恨要宽恕
不批评要赞美
不恐惧要心安
不冲动要忍耐
不嫉妒要欣赏
不发怒要微笑
不计较要宽宏
不拖延要积极
不自私要舍得
不自夸要谦虛
不气馁要振作
不欺骗要诚信

--

Went to my grandma's niche at the Buddhist columbarium this morning since this weekend is Qing Ming (清明) when the Chinese traditionally visit the tombs of ancestors to sweep the tombs and pay respects. I guess I didn't really know what was going on most of the time but just followed what the adults were doing, which is alright I suppose. My agnosticism allows me some flexibility in everything although it does seem like a convenient way out sometimes. But I find most faiths easy to accept, just the question of which should one prize above the other? I am pretty open to the existence of God though "God" would be indescribable in words because he/she/it would be great beyond our knowing.

In any case I think with time, society as a whole gains some things and loses others. I have absolutely no knowledge of what's involved in funeral rites and there's always an odd sense of cultural displacement whenever I visit the columbarium, like I belong to that world but only peripherally, the same way I belong to many others. But usually on these trips I like to look around and observe as much as I can and today, I was walking around the funeral suite and looking at the pictures and plaques of deceased strangers and sometimes one or two would catch my eye, like the man whose photo has him wearing a hat and looking very Deng Xiaoping-esque, or the niche with a baby photo and a plaque saying, Born 1992, Died 1994. And then I will think about these people and wonder about their lives and who they've left behind.

One other thing I saw and took note of was the 快乐心经 that's at the beginning of this post and that was framed up as an engraving on the wall. I guess a rough translation would be "Mantra for Happiness" though I always find Chinese-English translations don't do justice to the poetry of the language and makes it sound a lot lighter, more trivial, more melodramatic than it actually is. But yes, things to bear in mind for happiness.

This weekend has been rather oddly spacey. I wonder if it's me just losing my grip on things or perhaps the calm before the storm, the deep breath before the plunge, etc etc all these things that help try to make sense of a life which is inherently absurd.

Anywhere

2011-03-31T23:34:00.002+08:00

This moment of triumph in which I have successfully cut down my EE Draft 3 from a 7000-word behemoth to a lean mean 3994-word fighting machine MUST be documented for reasons of posterity. I will remember this night, me sitting in front of the computer in the sticky stillness of night, slightly burnt from today's training, constantly fighting the drooping of eyelids, semi-raging to Jimmy Eat World, stopping and starting and stopping and whining and starting and excruciatingly, surely, finishing this mammoth task. For tonight, no matter how much I stumbled in battle, I WIN.

--

On other things. Have finished Robert H Frank's Falling Behind!: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class and while it was a nicely concise, lucid read, it didn't particularly stand out to me; pointed out a few things I hadn't encountered before but other than that, rather pale. I haven't yet managed to find an economics book that blows me away. Perhaps it has to do with my own would-be arrogance, or simply my failure to connect with the subject despite its magicalness (we were doing comparative advantage in class the past week or so and it really is ~magic~ to me how the numbers just boom. of course there are assumptions and weaklinks but, indulge my amateur economics student perspective pls).

On Borges now (I cannot pronounce his name. I am ashamed.) and as far as I can tell he's extremely weird. Oh well, weirdness is not a bad thing~

Have been training like mad this week because it's the last week of hardcore training before winding down in preparation for nationals. I am Sad that it is all going to be over soon :( Oddly enough this is the first year in a long while that I'm feeling stoked, somewhat, for nats even though I am probably not going to do superbly well; there is a general feeling and excitement and a bit of tension in the air, for me anyway. Well, we'll see what we can do (:

Ok am exhausted. I leave you with a bit of Jimmy Eat World (there is a long convoluted story behind how I very nearly was going to watch them in SG tomorrow night (!) but I shall leave it for another time); I told one of my music snob friends the other day that there is art behind writing songs that one can rage out to but I guess it is hardly a matter of reason when it comes to preferences like music and food etc etc. In any case JEW has gotten me through tonight and so -

I'm done, there's nothing left to show
I try but can't let it go
Are you happy where you're standing still?
Do you really want the sugar pill?
I'll wake up tomorrow and I'll start
Tonight it feels so hard
- Polaris

Dry

2011-03-29T22:16:00.002+08:00

"... the power of language to corrupt when it becomes detached from life, when it becomes a substitute for feeling."
- p. 35, Introduction to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Too true, in a strange way. I mean, isn't that what happens when we get caught up in fantasy worlds and fall in love with people and places who aren't really people or places but versions of them stuck in a world other than ours? We idealize things and so disguise them with our imaginations. And I am reminded of how "to acquire language is to subject oneself to the inevitability of desire" - from psychoanalysis notes I read at the end of Sec 4, I think. Funny how it is also language itself which allows me to link these two moments, and language which lets me write this and burden all you readers with the weight of my narcissism. Haha.

I guess the danger is not in language itself but in the gap between language and reality. A danger which is not always a bad thing? I guess we all walk this edge of a knife and must balance the best we can.

Maybe you got what you wanted
Maybe you stumbled upon it
Everything you ever wanted
In a permanent state

Denim

2011-03-28T20:40:00.002+08:00

Just turned (barely 30 seconds ago) the last page of Jonathan Coe's What A Carve Up!. It was gorgeous. Imperfect, of course, but darkly funny and almost self-deprecatingly satirical and there were so many instances of meta-meta-meta and blatant-yet-subversive intertextuality that I can't help but love the book. It was almost painful to read at parts, though, the kind of book that'd leave a part of you mildly traumatized, somehow, impacted for a long time to come. And yet another of those click-into-place novels that yield a great deal of satisfaction. Also, the fluidity of style that Coe employs is just staggering. At points he seems almost devolving into heavy angst and isolation and desolation and then at other times his mastery of noir-style humour and twistedness just floors you. Oh, Coe.

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On other things, I am getting increasingly distracted which is not really a good sign but I guess I have to keep fighting it the same way I fought before. Nothing will come of this, I do not want anything to come of this and the irrationality of it all always hits me in the face whenever I think of it and yet - I can't just flick an emotional switch and expect it all to be better. I guess it just needs time (and perhaps some major event to jar things into perspective) but yes ultimately I am stronger/more focused than this and I will get through unscathed, mostly, I suppose. Hahahaha.

Anyway - this is very belated but here is my HELLO to J's mother who might just be reading this after he visited this blog on her iPad. *waves*

I realised the other day that I cannot remember what I look like with long hair. I doubt I'll ever grow it out again but now I am a bit bored with what I have already HAHA what other change can be made besides snipping off more? Meh. J (a different one, fyi, in case his mom's still reading this) and A were talking about tattoos today and I said with conviction that I'd never get one nor would I dye my hair (and I never wanted to haaaa) but I wonder why I have an aversion to these things. I can only think of a conformity to social/traditional codes but oh well I thought I was beyond that evidently not. In any case, I am still intuitively convinced that dye/ink/excessive holes are not something I'd like to deal with. I really am quite instinctively conservative despite all the liberaltalk I tend to engage in. To resolve this I guess ultimately liberalism is the respect of choice (rather than rebellion) and therefore I can still be liberal by choosing to be conservative... whatever I don't know if I'm even discussing politics/culture/both here. Perhaps they overlap more than we know.

I guess I am not afraid to say that I want things. I want more than I have and that is what drives me to work and work and try to go as far as possible. Call it greed call it motivation call it what you like, I really just want to get to a higher place (literally emotionally spiritually). I do not think we should be ashamed of wanting to be better, it is what prevents stagnancy; it saddens and disturbs me when people (self included, sometimes) feel that they have to be wary of their own ambition. What is there to be ashamed of? Perhaps we are afraid of what we might become.

9.06, I am this close to sleep. Perhaps it is time for apple-picking hahahaha.