my home is in empty spaces.

It's the season where "raindrops keep falling on my head". And every other S'pore resident's too =)

Mood: slightly amused, and slightly drunk.

I was ambushed with two scandalous offers at lunch today.

One was Sex on the Beach, with alcohol-soaked cherries in the mix.

The other was a friend of my friend, in a matchmaking attempt.

No, no, no. Like I said to her on the three different instances at lunch that she offered him to me on a platter, I will never touch a guy who's that old and still has not had a girlfriend. Because I refuse to train idiots ever again. Friend, mother, wife all into one? The thought makes my skin crawl.

Lunch was otherwise very good. =) Thank you dear.

Mood: grumpy, and slightly unwell, and in the mood for cryptic notes on blog.

There are lots of things going on in my mind right now, but some of them are unmentionable.

So while drafting this post I'll just write down whatever I have (like the Pensieve in harry potter stories), and then delete those sections I find unappetizing to record permanently. You have been warned.

1. Shall I remove the post I put up here a few days ago on a pushy project mate? Because from what I wrote here alone, he's really anonymous (I have lots of projects, ppl), but myztika was chiding me for even complaining in this manner. Something to deal with when I next see her, before our conversation moves on to more important things.
   
2. What to do about a longstanding and irritating family problem
   
3. How I was so demotivated to study today and simply spent the whole day in bed with a novel.
   
4. How I think that some ppl are old enough to grow up and take care of themselves, that they have been totally impervious to my advice for so long I don't care anymore although their current state of being still demands that I should make the effort to teach them to 'know better'.
   
5. How women can be straight-off despised as weak for tolerating abuse. This was what part of my novel dealt with today. Yeah this point is really disturbing to know.
   
6. I should do a caffeine withdrawal as soon as possible.
   
7. What my parents really want from me
   
8. What some dickheads really want from me
   
9. the ACJC open house yesterday, which I went for because finished a project unexpectedly early, plus my cousins are 16 with funkily stoned parents who like to use their children's place of education as boasting credentials (RJ, RJ! without a further thought). At least when I next see them and this conversation topic comes up, I can offer more lucid options.

9.1 the AC swimming pool where the entire water polo team stared hard as I walked past

9.2 the unexpected air of classy serenity the place has, with its poser designer wall-sized photographs of students exclaiming over a burette during VA (volumetric analysis) like they'd just discovered ..... i don't know what. A burette? Oh please. It would be something if it were an 800 MHz NMR spectrometer. And another of an assembly chapel session showing students supposedly in repose but they looked more like they were catching a short snooze.

9.3 the horrible contrast the students made to the air of classy poser serenity. Hey even I could do it better than them.

9.4 the good facilities. At least if you hate all the people there, you'll still be soothed by the landscaping and the architecture.

9.5 the complete lack of edge and cool that I would associate with a JC. Okay, that I associated with my own JC. So I'm biased here. But I think my place is still the best in terms of arts and culture. which leads on to....

9.5.1 the AC Dance ppl who did something that was exactly the standard of my JC's Mass Dance and which they were so desperately proud of. Oh, the contrast. And oh, the applause they garnered from the undiscerning spectators. Eeeks.

9.5.2 the overlying air of gloss that fits poorly over porous substance

9.5.3 the no doubt very tired Choir which had been singing often throughout the day but still managed to completely f*** up a Chinese folksong by making it sound like Britney Spears on Ecstasy. I'm talking, completely. J, you might recall Chen Yi's Riding on a Mule, the one that starts 'kuang, cei cei, cei cei' unpitched.

9.6 the unfriendly and authoritarian teachers who are somehow respected. This respect for such would never happen where I was. Said teachers were whining to us the public (okay, and former student, but still...) about how impolite the current students were, that they dared to ask for private tuition time (~half an hour) without considering the teachers' schedules. So, Key point 1: Just refuse them if they're being unreasonable! They can't force time with you even through your HODs or whatever, unless their request was somehow reasonable, in which case you shouldn't be refusing them.... Key point 2: Does this whining to the public during Open House within earshot of everybody else not infringe the bounds of decency and sheer common sense, for goodness' sakes?

No doubt I'll probably be cut off at the knees here for some of those AC-related comments. But hey, that's life, everybody's entitled to express an opinion on as public an event as an Open House.

There have often been occasions where I've come across ungrammatical or badly-phrased English, but these two take the cake, because I have no idea whether they are making an important new point or a simple typographical error. And it is impossible to tell from their context.

1. One such problem can be seen in the association of a deletion variant blah with the risk for blah. This particular observation was inexistent in larger studies.

2. (This is the fun one.) One evidence for a patriarchal society is seen in the assertive firmness of purpose and ideology in the Women's Charter vs the matter-of-factness of the Penal Code.

I've just invented the 2nd one, by the way. The 1st example was from a project draft.

'Ave been winging it so much, the good ol' wings are broken

I wanted to write something to erase all the hurt and whatever. All that irritating smallish self-centredness of (my work is killing me, old hurts resurfacing, it's such a joy to meet friends etc).

Really.

Unfortunately, even my dreams are filled with reading journal papers.

Oh you mean I didn't tell you the one where it was 10 pages long, the print was too small and I was supposed to finish it within the next 15 minutes? while feeling that familiar sense of panic and surreal resignation that the upcoming 15-min-later test would concern this particular paper and not the other 100 that I'd read in preparation.

Which sums up my life in school so far.

Permanent Head Damage is not quite a joke, in the way that "two dead bodies walked into a bar..." is not quite a joke.

Ummz. Need chocolate. Need to rant. Would possibly rant here for the rest of the semester with abovementioned (it's such a joy to meet friends, I feel like dying etc). Thank you in advance for the hugs, I will need them to SURVIVE.

-Takes deep breath-

Have to run to do next project on time. See ya soon and please do be happy, don't get too screwed over by unhappy things. *smile* May the human forces of (I will get through this mess happy) be with you. zupzz.....

From the timetable pusher for the project I was talking about recently (minor editing to protect his identity):

"pps
I understand that all of us have different schedules and work styles but as a team, we really need to be considerate towards others as well. We have to move on as the deadline is near. Please arrange your time to fit this project because this time line was agreed on by us many days ago. Only when we finish this one can we deal with other coming projects. =) "

Okay, buster, -I- did not agree to the time line because it was too damn optimistic, even though you claimed you had taken all the tests and other project deadlines into account, while conveniently not mentioning at that time that lectures for this our module are finished this week, freeing up a lot of time between now and deadline to do this project.

And, I have no other upcoming projects, because while you were slogging your butt off for this project, I was working on all my other group projects which were due like immediately, which I told you about when we were arguing about the time line. That's why I'm down with the flu now, and feverish, which I also told you about (yesterday). And this illness is why I could not make it for the meeting today. Not because I'm a slacker!

If you have other upcoming projects, you can go do them first. Especially your Honours thesis which I know you're worried about but are not sufficiently motivated to get off your butt to do it all by yourself, so you harass your group ppl from other projects in order to destress yourself. Get a life.

It makes me sad that I can't even tell you this in any form whatsoever (no, he does not know about this blog) because it'll just make you defensive and antagonistic and completely deaf and quite likely to edit my part with a vengeance. Why do such people exist?

A link to Vioxx market withdrawal.

Of the awful long list of work posted here exactly one week ago, this is what I have left:

the test on tues

the test on thurs

and the project with the timetable-pusher that's due the latest, that was supposed to have been done last last sat. Muahahaha.

That means, I have finished 3 projects and a test in one week. One. Week. I feel good. Share my joy.

I am now in the middle of the Med Library hoping to wake up enough to do some work, and lo and behold, the peeps opposite me are having sex.

You never know with some humans these days.

(private joke with N) Maybe it might happen in the Sci Lib, but that's quite unlikely. =)


At least the Med Lib people are a guy and a girl. Thank you God for gradual surprises.


Much as I regard sex as a natural part of human nature, I think I am not quite awake enough to filter out this stuff while at the same time doing work, and I also have better ways to relax than to be voyeuristic. Moving off..... to sleep at home. Cya soon. And take care *chirps*.

This is a public service announcement to all inmates of my university, especially those who like to loiter around Science and Med facs.

If your lecturer puts up lecture notes only 2 hours before lect and is the kind who zooms through important but squid-like trailing thoughts everywhere during lecture proper, and the Science computer cluster printers both choose that very moment to break down when you want your notes simply to survive the lect, fret not. Your lecture notes will be at hand.

One of the best-kept open secrets in Science, coming up.

At the basement of the COFM building, where everybody walks past on their way to Med Lib (unless you like going the other way and climbing up and down stairs unnecessarily), there is a little glass cuboid.

It's been there for about 1 1/2 years, I think, but it's never really registered on me until this sem. (Neither has it registered on anybody else, apparently, because it's most often empty.) That boggles the mind, considering that there are neat A4-sized b&w notices stuck up on the cube's side that say, "2.5 cents photocopying, 5 cents network printing".

This little unpretentious-looking cubicle-like thing offers precisely the same services as its (larger and) more famous cousin in Arts Fac, which is, 5 cents network printing. (Yes, you need to log in before using this service. Sorry to all stalkers of this site who are not from where I am.)

To the blur, network printing means that we have computer access within the photocopy shop itself, so that we can download and print our files on the spot. Instantaneously! = No queueing to get our printed copy. =p

And that is the end of my public service announcement.

Argh argggh arrggggrrhghghghgh argggh no life no life no life!

no life no life no life!
no life no life no life!
no life no life no life!

proj due last sat for compilation still not handed in

proj due on wed for discussion not done

test on fri

test next tues

test next thurs

proj due next thurs completely not started

uh, that should be 2 proj due next thurs completely not started

fuck, if I do one, the others will scream, why didn't you do mine first?

Well, my guilty conscience, fuck off. Let me just crap a small draft for the proj due last sat, since that one's official deadline is the latest of all stuff, so late that it's not even on the list above, but we have a serious bloody timetable work-pusher in our group.

Some days I wake up with aching regrets, residue of nightmares built upon reality. The 'why' questions are unanswerable.

Today was such a day, until I shunted those aside in favour of my current work project and got out of bed.

I'm resigned to the fact that sleeping in perfect peace is fast becoming an ideal state instead of an everyday occurrence. (Just like sleeping 8 hours a day.)

Good news: at breakfast, my father nonchalantly handed me an article from yesterday's ST, "Haunted by traumatic memories", asked if I'd seen it, and we firmly declared whatever happened as described in there as emotional blackmail. Which is good; he has moved past mollycoddling me in floods of sympathy, to rationally talking about the matter. (It certainly took him long enough. =p )

But something about the way you look still catches my eye, leads me to wonder, why, how, where, when, and most of all, who. But all those questions will never be answered by you. Therefore they will never be answered at all, and I can live with that. But, for that lack of understanding on your part, I can't love you.

I can't love you. Don't expect me to; you'll get hopelessly disappointed.

But then, in some minute slivers of some days, when all logic and reason dies, and I slide out of sleep, I remember loving you, and my heart aches. Until I snap out of it, and get out of bed, and move on with my life. It's almost like creating an alternate and safe identity, but I can live with that. Because it's one that I choose. One that I continue to choose every day that this happens. And it's one that brings productivity and joy, and a new life. It's hard to describe how this is not only a compensatory healing mechanism for traumatic events, but is also a normal part of growing up - that we develop appropriate personas for different situations, and cast aside all else while in that situation or with those certain people, and most importantly not lose ourselves. That all these different personas are me, are you, are him or her, that any one of them could describe him or her but only only within a certain context, and that all of them together will still only describe a person in part. Disjoint pictures, indeed, and what's wrong with that? =)

I have lotsa things to read, now. But before I go:

My father fixed my CD player for me today. And that is a gift to be treasured.

To all stressed people, this is for us. S and husband included.

My friend C, whom I met by accident in the canteen on Fri evening, said to me while we were chatting,

"You know, when we get stressed, more bad things happen to us."

It's easy to dismiss this with all the arrogance and world-weary naive street smarts of a teenager that no, it's not -more- bad things that happen, it's just that we become more aware of them, therefore the frequency of bad-stuff-occurrence in the absolute world has not really changed.

Uh-huh. Did that make you feel better? I don't think so *grin*

Possibly even doubly or compoundedly stressed that the world's evils are inexplicably descending or even converging on you and you don't know why, yada yada.

So let's take our friend C's statement at a less cynical level. Let's agree that her point is true - more bad things happen to us. While at the same time, remembering to count the good things that happened to us within that same period of time too. Double-count the good things if necessary. Because the real sin is not that bad things happen, but that if dwelt upon without balance, they paralyse and kill.

So go forth and be happy. *kiss*

I write this because I was hit with a double whammy of the same issue on Wednesday, and yesterday, while work piled up every day with no respite nor slackening of pace. But some very good things happened too - relying on an old friend to be there for me, and she was; spending time getting to know a new friend better and finding that while we share the same values, we don't exactly share the same values (always interesting, that) and learning that I trust her; waking up with a goodly amount of work done yesterday and knowing that I'm keeping a steady pace and will continue keeping that steady pace even if the sky falls precisely because I know how to seek help (homeostasis? wink) when the sky falls.

Seek help when the sky falls. Or get crushed.

I can't do this alone.

Happy Children's Day, by the way.