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October 31, 2008 | 2:56 PM
I linger in the doorway
 1. I've been revising To Kill A Mockingbird. I hope my new scribbling technique proves itself useful. 2. The phone bill's arrived today. There's a $10 reduction, not so much a cause for celebration than a more compelling one to take up a job during the holidays, probably with Charlatan and Allison? 3. 12 November!! I will be told something and asked something by you-know-who. Goodness knows what. But I'm not distracted by it because I've disallowed myself from speculating what his "insanely retarded question" is going to be. I don't fancy a relapse of the anxiety I was consumed by over the weekend after grad day. 4. I'll be making this blog open to invited readers after the O's, because I have so much to rant about [you know who] without having to redact or censor anything :) For example, I've so much to update my favourite people on. Like how I confessed a second time last night! Bit of a long story, that's why I haven't updated you yet, Charlatan, sorry! And also Charmaine Lim. 5. I miss my classmates! 6. VALERIE MAH I MISS YOU TOO. Edit DID YOU KNOW CHENG FEI IS 20??!!??!?!? October 27, 2008 | 4:52 PM
Quote of the day
Think of Stalin as a your average, every-day dictator. But he was a dictator of one of the most powerful countries in the history of the world. Him getting up from bed was enough to make some people *beep* in their pants. .. Which I thought most befitting for History-Paper Eve. It's rather historically accurate, by the way. I had the worst dream of my life. I and a few others were trundling along to his house, which was tucked away in the back of Serangoon Gardens, but the houses were oddly organised, something like the way Saffron City in Pokemon Gameboy was organised. The whole place looked like a d.c. circuit of parallel connections. Anyway, some stuff transpired at his house. It was all rather embarrassing, but the long and the short of it was that he spurned me (with annoying nonchalance and pretense). I woke up feeling glad he hadn't done that. And I hope he won't. Dom Tan the love guru advocates that I have more faith in him. And the pact initiated last night can attest to my attempt to. 12 November! October 26, 2008 | 12:54 PM
Getting over and onto something
Deleted the previous post, it contradicts too much. Last night/this morning was swell. The usual smiling-like-an-idiot for hours. The occasional bursting into mad laughter. I'm so excited to get on with the O's because the holidays are going to be bursting at the seams with who-knows-what-could-happen :) October 18, 2008 | 3:59 PM
The failure of communism goes beyond an economy
It's inevitable that I feel burnt out on Saturdays, like a pile of ash cooling in inert sloth. Anyway, to prove I've been at least reading my History textbook, here's a fact I found extremely hilarious: From 1976 Brezhnev was ill and the USSR was run by Yuri Andropov, himself ill. He was followed by Konstantin Chernenko, also ill. But this has got to be a classic: 1953 Irreverent derision aside, it's quite intriguing or at least thought-provoking to see how a man whose life for 30 years had been dedicated to serving one of the most powerful countries back in those days could so easily have his end summed up in two words. He hasn't been the greatest leader, but he had changed (and ended) many lives, and made an impact on the world. Come to think about it, lives lived are only meaningful to those who have been touched by them. "Stalin died"- it means nothing to the modern world citizen, but imagine the impact of the news of his passing back then- cheers erupted, the forced repressiveness notwithstanding, considering communism didn't die with him. Since we're on the topic of communism.. Communism never worked out. Why should it? How could it? The Soviet, communist ideal was for everyone to possess what his neighbour possessed, leaving nothing to envy, nothing to incite any desire to appropriate. Democracy triumphed. It came as hardly any surprise. There will never be any equal in the world. The communist ideal would only be something to keep striving for, and still they couldn't see they were only trudging along fruitlessly upon a treadmill. After decades of forcing unhappy generation after generation into the senseless system of communism proved ridiculous at the end. It fell apart. There is no equality in the world, skewed as you can assert your arguments. There will be people who have what you don't (what's talent if everyone is equally talented?), who are rich in aspects you are destitute, and vice versa if you are an optimist. When you have something, you fear losing it. When you long for it, it seems more permanent in your possession for you know you can't lose it. What about the emotions that soar and dip, or even things that crash as easily? October 13, 2008 | 7:23 PM
Saturday- Monday 5 P.M. APPREHENSION IRREPRESSIBLE DREAD CREEPING COLD FEAR Monday 5 P.M. -Now MORE SHOCK INCREDIBLY HAPPY EXTREMELY CONFUSED SAD HAPPY, SAD, SCARED all at once. Oh yeah, I also found out about something else. Too many revelations in one day. "Cannot take it!" (Zhi Wei-style) October 11, 2008 | 7:45 PM
Ever feel like you need to scream But then again, screaming alone cannot suffice?! Anticipation can kill. October 10, 2008 | 6:31 PM
Graduation Day 2008
I told myself I wouldn't blog about graduation, because I know I'd cry buckets. Stupid iTunes shuffled itself and suddenly Tennessee is playing. Obviously, it was enough to set me off. I'm not going to post any pictures (I will on Facebook.. After exams) but I just want to express how totally crushed I feel. When the school song was playing I found myself already on the verge of crying, because it was truly the last time we're going to have to sing it as students of ZH. I hated that song since Sec 1. Still do. But there's something magical about routine. You don't fall in love with it. You simply fall into it. It's pretty fucking unbelievable an ending has been written for this epic story of four years in this communist school. It's pretty fucking unbelievable that the dust is going to settle in a few month's time. I was in the loo a while ago, and there on the sinktop lay the butterfly clips that Charlatan gave me, crouching silently in the dark. The sadness I thought I wouldn't feel until much later just came in a breaking wave. In school a few hours ago, no one was crying. Everyone was just taking photographs, running around, shooting at one another, leveling water bombs at each other. It was hot. Perhaps it had vaporised melancholy just temporarily. That's why I saw no crying or embracing. I thought the heat of everything only numbed my emotions. I was half-right, probably. And in the cool darkness of the toilet, the butterfly clips reminded me of everything I was supposed to cry about. And so I am here, to try and articulate how exactly I feel about this parting of ways. I can't. I feel like I can never recover from this experience that is still surreal and vivd. I wish I had written *everyone* who mattered to me a letter, a card, a note, whatever. I regret not having done so for a few people. There is no point in giving "belated" graduation day gifts/letters. I just hope (like hell) that these people will know they have changed my life some way or another. This is for 4E6. I apologise for hating 3E6 '07 like mad, that I was constantly complaining about the lack of discipline and just everything in general. I apologise for not having spoken to *everyone*, and gotten to know *everyone* a little bit more. But I thank you guys for being the most awesomest class, because I have learned so much about life from life in E6. I love you :) This is no goodbye. Edit I was reading Linette's blog a while ago, and the snippet on the 2012 world annihilation caught my heartstrings like a hook does a loop of stray thread. I think I miss you, a little bit, but it was time to let go, and that's precisely what I did today. No physical burial, but I think taking the world into me, folding it up and sealing it in paper and giving it to you is pretty much the same. October 5, 2008 | 9:33 PM
Sometimes I even pretend to write
"I froze for a moment, and heard the click of the bathroom door. Assured of at least a few minutes' of privacy, I planted myself at his desk. The sun outside was dwindling, so I reached out and switched on the lamp. Troughs left by carvings became flooded with light. I searched for my name, but all I saw was algebra equations, and some Physics formulae. For a moment I felt a pang of disappointment- perhaps this was the glaring truth, that he wasn't thinking of me enough to inscribe my name anywhere to express his longing. My own desk was filled with a hundred "-s". And then I caught myself mid-sigh. Perhaps what he felt for me was far too complex to be committed to any tangible medium. Perhaps he thought that it would be safer to keep his feelings away from outsiders' eyes. Perhaps he thought that he needed no reminder, and that it amused him more to tuck such thoughts away in a more private shelf in his mind. Or perhaps I was wrong about him all along, and that he really didn't like me at all." - The Treatise on Longing October 1, 2008 | 12:10 PM
Bring the ocean back
I woke up this morning realising I had lost my ability to write narratives. I've been contemplating Question 2. Connection of the five we have to choose from to do as homework. I am tempted to write about human connection, but when I sat down at my desk to begin, I couldn't think of how to begin. I think I know why. Ever since Ms Ow's come to be my English teacher, she's been steadily poisoning my (I assume I'm the only one affected) mind, turning me against narratives of any sort, insisting on my/our writing expositions for one-word topics. Perhaps that was what has crippled my narrative hand. What aggravates my plight is that, initially, being predisposed to writing narratives, I had struggled in my transition into expository writing. I couldn't stop forcibly reincarnating my semi-narrative prose in my expositions, and for this reason, I am often marked down. I always ask myself, how would Jeffrey Eugenides convey such an idea? Of all writings I've sampled, I found Jeffrey Eugenides's (not so much in The Virgin Suicides as in Middlesex) most appealing. I could connect to his style easily. I have tried to emulate Nicole Krauss, as well as Jonathan Safran Foer, but have failed, most regrettably. I don't know how I'm going to get my A1 for English. I have an affinity with blades. (I'm not foreshadowing a spate of emo-cutting sessions in a locked bathroom. It's just a random revelation that has descended in the wrong moment in time. Yes, it's a double entendre.) |