hollaback_
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
ok, so it ended today. and then?
i went home after the paper. well, not before heading to the Question Paper Collection Centre (which will now be known as QPCC) and scrounging for my haphazardly jotted down thoughts for the very last time. i wonder why they bother putting it there though. QPCC was abandoned, with boxes full of scripts that no one wanted anymore. actually, it's always been that way since the start of the exams. i remember there was one time we'd finished a paper and it had been raining. the papers were soaked and wrinkled with dampness. even the security guard doesn't give a shit. so it's not really that much of a surprise. it's just that today is it you know. it's THE final day. and there will be nobody coming back..
i wonder why i bothered writing my name on my Lit S paper, since i'm not coming back to school. worse still, if Mr Purvis picks it up and i become a new object of scorn for the next 5 years and more. (you would be too, if you wrote
LOL and
DAMNIT!!! on your question paper.)
so yeah. a short detour to QPCC which was really just an exercise in futility. it's not like the O Levels where you can
wahhh. and
ooooh. and
ahhhh. years later cos you know you got 90% for A Maths. so not the case here, why do i need a reminder of rubbish times. QPCC was a site of abject abandonment, and even though eugene disagrees i think the sight of it was very poetic. anyway, headed to my locker to empty it for the final time, and i was out of school.
i spent the rest of the day playing Pokemon Emerald version. hadri would approve. although i think i made a wrong choice for my beginning pokemon. the plant ones are always the weakest. and the ugliest. ok i know this sounds weird, but it's quite challenging ok! especially without a guidebook. and i need to like, enjoy my youth while i still can. they say the army turns boys into men. sounds scary enough.
and not so randomly: i hate stupid sensor toilets that flush and churn and splash out disgusting water into your ass when you're not done shitting. finito.
mike just took up your time at
11:57 pm
Sunday, November 27, 2005
chocolate liquers by Anthon Berg. my latest indulgence. about the length of your thumb and shaped into bottles, hollowed out and filled with alcohols of all kinds. this is naughty and nice at the same time.
(geez i make it sound like a writeup to the latest avant-garde fashion.)
mike just took up your time at
2:09 am
Saturday, November 26, 2005
it's raining now, the windows are slightly open and the wind is coming in.
i wish i were out there now getting drenched.
there's something very primal about it, don't you think?
mike just took up your time at
4:25 pm
only you and only you and only you.
mike just took up your time at
1:46 am
Thursday, November 24, 2005
sometimes, i'd like to think that the past 2 years have just been one very long, extended nightmare. image building upon image. and it's like a bad remix. the final result always turns out worse than the original.
i think i can safely say that the theme of 2005 was Decline and Fall. ok, i don't really know what Evelyn Waugh's book was about but it just sounded apt. actually Fall From Grace would've sounded more impactful but we know that's not true since there was nothing great to tumble from to begin with. everything that could possibly get worse, did. what really improved? i lost a good friend. i gained some other friends, but i wouldn't exactly call them close. i gained several terribly unexciting and disturbing epiphanies about myself, which i won't go into detail here. i did something really stupid at the beginning of this year. which i regret wholeheartedly but i will never forget. and i might quite possibly have spoilt my future in the past one month.
maybe it's too quick to say anything. there's still about a month left to the year. but really, how fantastic could BMT/PTP get? and the reasons that got me all excited to be enlisted seem to be fading away quickly now. i don't know if any of these feelings are right anymore..
i guess i should just enjoy the remaining days of my civilianhood.
-------
just for the sake of future reference, and not your most probable malevolent voyeurism, i'll rank the papers that i did, from best to worst. then i guess i could see how close it tallies with my actual results a few months later. of course, these are all my own perceptions and may not match those of the markers'. just a little exercise in futility on my own assessment abilities. gets a bit hairy in the middle. only the top and bottom few are very certain.
Maths Paper 1
Lit Paper 8
Maths Paper 2
Econs Paper 2
Hist Paper 2 (i never expected to see this so high up)
Econs Paper 3
GP Paper 1
GP Paper 2
Econs Paper 1
Lit Paper 1
Lit Paper 3
Hist Paper 3 (what could be worse than doing a question not in your syllabus?)
as we can see, History and Lit are pretty screwed. Econs is a question mark. GP will be mediocre and Math has the highest chance of being my best subject. oh, the irony of it all.
and i really don't feel like taking S paper, the exam, next week. the lessons were great for interest's sake, but at this point in time a scholarship seems really impossible, and we all know what the S in "S paper" really stands for. what's worse, it's next tuesday, which is the absolute last day of the whole damn shindig. i really don't have the grit to do another paper anymore, especially one that seems pretty pointless. but i guess i'll go cos i paid money for it, i don't want to make my cert look any worse than it already is, and i'll enjoy doing the PC.
mike just took up your time at
2:30 am
Sunday, November 20, 2005
haha this is so cute!
there was a huge moth on the wall. and i was studying. then i heard this
tsktsktsk sound that comes from lizards. and the next thing i knew, i heard a desperate fluttering sound! the lizard was trying to eat the moth! in a deadly tussle, it was gripping one of the wings with its mouth.
like OMG SO CUTE. haha. ok this is madness.
the moth managed to get away, but fluttered helplessly to the ground. i turned off the lights and left the living room. i don't want to think of its fate.
but seriously man, this lizard's damn greedy. i'm not even sure if it's the same lizard, maybe there's a whole family of them. i know there's one that always rummages through the rubbish plastic bag in the kitchen every night. when i turn on the lights to get some water in the middle of the night, i'll hear the bag rustling as it runs away in fear. what an unlikely pet! it even goes to the bag when there's nothing in it at all. how adorable, catching it red-handed every night. oh well, as long as it gets rid of the other insects, i don't mind.
and oh! i was washing my hands the other day with dettol soap, which is the liquid kind. and there was this tiny bug buzzing around me annoyingly. then it just so happened to fly underneath the dripping nozzle of the soap, and died in a sticky, squishy death!
hahahaha. insects amuse me with their antics. goodnight.
mike just took up your time at
10:51 pm
Saturday, November 19, 2005
WHEN I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
...
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground.
...
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
Birches, Robert FrostAnd life's gonna drop you down
like the limbs of a tree
It sways and it swings and it bends
until it makes you see
Jump, Madonna
ah! that makes me like the poem and the song more than i already do. love the literary links!
------
To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.
De Profundis, Oscar Wilde
he couldn't have said it any better than that, really. it may seem pointless to pick at scabbed wounds harbouring festering scars, but i guess i just have to tell you this again. i really don't understand how, or why you can pretend that things that happened never did. being forward-looking is a good thing, but only when mindful of what it is one is walking away from. rejection of a shared past is the most stinging insult one can hurl at another.
-------
i think pride is an important thing to maintain. at least a decent level of it. to debase oneself, to offer oneself up so shamelessly to the whims of others... that's not really something i can do. if that means being inflexible, then so be it. i guess i'm just too much of an individualist. M, you're wrong. i am hardly a conformist. (cliche alert!) you think you know me, but you really don't.
what, that i would willingly lower myself to be the lapdog that's secretly scorned than stand apart standing tall and erect? i know my choice.
if you can't beat them,
join them. don't lose your dignity.
mike just took up your time at
3:55 pm
doesn't she look hot?
and there are just too many developments. i thought i was adaptable, but that's obviously been self-delusion. it will all change soon, though. let it will be.
mike just took up your time at
2:35 am
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
edit: kayhian asked me what
Ray of Light is. so to enlighten all-
In the album charts, Ray Of Light debuted at no. 2 in the US and stayed there for two weeks, only the Titanic soundtrack kept it from the top spot. It did top the album charts in Australia, Canada, Germany and the UK. The album sold 15 million copies worldwide; 371.000 US copies in its first week. March 2000, it was certified 4 times Platinum in the US. In the UK it was recertified 6 times Platinum in January 2003. At the 1999 Grammies, Ray Of Light got six nominations and it received four Grammies: 'Best Pop Album', 'Best Short Form Music Video', 'Best Recording Package' for Art Director Kevin Reagen and 'Best Dance Recording'. Madonna was also the big winner at the 1998 MTV Music Video Awards, winning 'Video of the Year', 'Best Female Video', 'Best Direction', 'Best Editing', 'Best Choreography', 'Best Special Effects', 'Best Dance Video' and 'Breakthrough Video', all for the videos of Ray Of Light and Frozen.econs today. at first i thought it was good. but i'm not so sure anymore. after some discussion which i don't think i should have done. well at least it was 3 microeconomy questions for me (which was my strategy from the very start) and i know PPC is more macro than micro but heck. that question was a do-able macro then.
questions all very short this year. compared to last year's lengthy lines.
anyway! am totally disregarding my "thou shalt not log online rule" cos frankly, i don't really care anymore. as long as i can get into the U. lost all my verve after math. so yeah.
on a happier note i bought madonna's
Confessions on a Dance Floor! woot!
i don't really feel like giving a review, although i swear it really is good. a psychedelic pop-swirl of luscious ear candy. and no i'm not saying that just because i'm a fan. it's on the same plane as
Ray of Light, and if you've never heard of
Ray of Light before, maybe you're not very into music (caveat: english mainstream music. although these days i find she's getting less and less mainstream) or general knowledge.
shall end off with this line i found on an Amazon review, which i found very funny. with regard to the lead single Hung Up and the line "time goes by so slowly".
This feeling is helped along by the legendary call to action that is ABBA's bassline from "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)," sampled here to the point of saturation. In the original, it was "half past twelve," while in "Hung Up" it's "a quarter to two"-maybe time really does go slowly, since in the 26 years from the original's invention to "Hung Up"'s addictive reinvention, only an hour and 15 minutes have elapsed!
mike just took up your time at
11:28 pm
Friday, November 11, 2005
my father walks into the room and sees me at the computer.
"whatever you do, just don't regret it."just fuck off already. the last thing i need now is some trite platitude attempting to guilt me into studying. that kinda shtick worked years ago when i was still a pubescent boy just embarking on teenagehood.
-----
i really shouldn't be here. especially after i spent 6 hours straight at the computer yesterday after math, MSN-ing my ass off. i mean i promised myself that after Math and it was rather therapeutic. but that meant no more computer-ing until next thursday! (cos friday is PC and you know. PC is PC. there's not much you can do about it)
but tomorrow's saturday so whatever. and i didn't log on to messenger. just going to.. continue feeling lonely here. i'm feeling grouchy that i can't go for the Confessions Party at Zouk tonight. i really wanted to go la! but i couldn't get tickets to that shmuckety exclusive event. and i couldn't really be bothered to dress up. oh well. my justification was that i needed to study which i didn't really do cos i slept instead but at least it's catching up on sleep debt.
i swear, falling asleep with your lights on assures you not having a good night's sleep. i did that two nights in a row for both Math2 and GP. and i paid the price for it because i "woke up" (you can't really wake up when you never fell asleep to begin with) at 0530 with a jolt to turn off the lights and sleep tight for just about an hour in darkness. ended up feeling really cranky after getting up and wasting precious minutes into the paper trying to fight the sleep. like the first fifteen minutes of compre were experienced in a state of wooziness.
GP. i always end up doing the general questions. it's like i've got some point to prove. especially if the question is something i believe in. like the Big Questions in Life such as the degree of control we have over our lives. honestly, i don't know why i picked it but on retrospect it was a very poor choice.
people do determine their lives yes. i had 11 other choices (ok actually only 4 cos i immediately crossed out rubbish like big businesses and research) but i just had to pick that. when i could have done something like art. or media. but no! i just HAD to jump straight into the trap that was so obviously beckoning. and i would say that on the contrary, there is very much a thing called Luck in the world. and i'm going to need as much of it as a i can get. so really, they both exist. you'd be dumb to assume neither was important.
this is so different from the O Levels when you kind of knew what you were going to get after you came out from the exam hall. this time there's really a lot of uncertainty swirling around everything. doing arts subjects without fixed answers doesn't really help much. and math itself being a total blindside means there's no certainty in it either cos Mr Tay said it was possible to get an A even with 70+ marks. (no, no more 86 thank goodness.)
i am not a perfect cert boy, that's for sure. smart, but not smart enough.
mike just took up your time at
9:32 pm
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Maths today. Bad with a capital B for the grade i'm most likely going to get. it all depends on luck though. where i end up on the normal distribution curve, more affectionately termed, "the bell curve" from O level days. i'm just trying to have faith in the general stupidity of singaporean JC students. and that i'm not as dumb as just enough people. the bare minimum.
i don't really feel bad about it. i'm selfish. i do want the A. and i don't want to know that i put in all that time and effort for a subject i'm not going to get A for when i could have funneled it into my other subjects. i'm not really feeling remorse. but that doesn't change the fact that it's wrong. wishing for others' downfall. reminds me of Robert Frost's
A Leaf Treader. others around falling to the ground, and the persona is just climbing and stepping on others. what a world we live in.
but just because RJ finds it hard doesn't mean a thing. what is hard to people anyway. "i didn't do 35 marks" or "i took 1.5 hours instead of my usual 1 today". and i guess it's a safe bet to say that if we find it hard, the lower end JCs should find it much tougher. having a few schools worth of near perfect scripts being a minority as compared to the majority of the nation who can't even hit the minimum 70 benchmark (and to think last year's A grade was a whopping 86.) is it enough? is the majority enough to offset the minority? and aren't we just glad for them? see? that's the kind of disgusting thing that pervades our minds. and we relish in it. "the only purpose of stupid people is so that we are smart by comparison". wow. and don't pretend you don't feel that way (unless you're one of the freaks who're gonna get full marks). especially all you people who probably aren't above 80-85% for your papers, averaging an estimated 70+%.
i had a carrie underwood moment today, during paper 2. you know, the new song. "jesus take the wheel". yeah. isn't it funny. how we desperately grasp onto anything when we feel like we're in a really bad position. anything goes. things we wouldn't normally do.
i don't think i've ever been so serious about the phrase "oh my god" until today.
thing is, i'm probably not going to turn on my heels and start going to church again after all these years. just not yet. i don't know. who knows, anyway. god is such a generic name. for all i know it might not have been the Christian one. unless it starts with a capital G. then it'd be a proper noun and not just any noun. and i don't know of many religions where the highest being wasn't looking for creativity but rather simplicity when self-naming.
but whichever faith you're from, thank you for your help today. i really couldn't have done it without you.
----
and some golden words from my mother.
"you're very bright michael. you're just very lazy. one of these days it's gonna be your downfall."i think it already has been.
mike just took up your time at
5:29 pm
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
i know i shouldn't be blogging, and i shouldn't be on MSN. but this is just too funny to let go. back to math!
hikaru says:
OMG OMG OMGOM GOMGOMG
hikaru says:
I AM IN LOVE WITH HIM
hikaru says:
like IN LOVE
hikaru says:
LOVE
hikaru says:
LESS THAN THREE
m!ke wake me up when november ends. says:
[the eyebrow arching smiley]
hikaru says:
LESS LESS LESS THAN THREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
mike just took up your time at
1:35 am
doesn't she look hot?