H3/Freedom/YO concert

woo i smell freedom
in the air; wind in my hair -
i need a haircut.

-----

h3. ugh. twisted case study, and i don't think my essays were particularly good. i realised just the night before that h3 is marked by levels and evaluation too... sowden says screw levels, they're for markers, but somehow i'm not too sure. well screw it. can pass lah, i think.

lunch with martin and annliang, interesting. martin and i delivered killer jokes, annliang ate some hilarious prawn thing which was a joke in itself, cos he was too skinflint to order a sandwich and instead got a heap of tiny prawns resting on a comfortable bed of lettuce with (literally) question-mark-shaped squirts of mayo and thousand island around the plate. hilarious.

on the train. met wang (hanchen). hilarious too. i was standing next to the doorway seat, saw this woman come in at toa payoh reading some tabloid. today or sth. standing too close to the doors... almost got her newspaper smashed by the thing. i didn't know abs could cramp while laughing. wang and i cracked up totally. kinda evil, but schadenfreude ftw!

-----

dinner with amanda went fine, and i managed to remember the way to vch from suntec.

wooo concert was quite good. scratch that, it was good. ok garden veils (yawn)... lanabel's mendelssohn was a bit thin and kinda overpowered by the orchestra and laggy winds but her playing was valiant. and actually pretty impressive. very nice.

i must reserve my best praise for death and transfiguration. it was wildly good, its the only time ever that i can remember being brought to the verge of tears at a concert. i take back all the stuff i said about cringing, i only cringed once at the cello solo, high Eb or whatever. brasses were powerful... strings somehow gave a pretty rich sound generally. mr lim must have worked really really hard, it's the kind of piece that you can really put your heart and soul into, and he definitely did - i think the subject of the piece struck close to home too, for him personally. i was quite moved by it.

hrm dance of the hours was kind of a letdown (hard to match the strauss lah)... zhengyi and the perc didn't manage to get on stage before they started (ouch!)... rhythm was kind of screwy. some christmas stuff after that, nothing really special. i think the strauss really saved the night though, it was amazingly good.

-----

went out with the gang after the concert, chatted with remus - he saved me from getting run over by a car the day my A levels ended O.o slightly unnerving - and won a game of bridge sitting at marina square at 11pm - i bid up to 4 hearts (i think, can't rmb) but let remus win the bid with 4 no trump. i had the AKQJ984 of hearts, A of clubs, and the Q&J of spades. utterly imba hand, the kind that you only see in dreams (yeah i dream about playing bridge). remus had pretty much the same for diamonds and so we pwned kenneth and jinjun quite spectacularly. that and the concert kinda made my day.

-----

ahh. so now A levels have ended and i've kind of solved personal issues that have been bugging me throughout prelims and A's. if my results turn out sucky, its because of what's been constantly on my mind these past couple of months.

but now that that's done, if i'd walked into the path of that car and really had gotten run over (granted it was travelling at like 20km/h lah, just got out of the raffles city carpark), i wouldn't have had any unfinished business on my hands really, i'd have just quite happily gone off into oblivion - or hospital. no regrets.

no ppp, i'm going in to have fun. woo screw h3.

tried out the waldstein sonata. and was utterly humiliated... it's an amusing piece, you could almost say it's cute. the opening of the 3rd movement sounds like some music box thing for toddlers, until the sforzandos of course. but it's hellish - i'm sure octave glissandos (i.e. same hand, glissando 2 notes together) in both LH and RH, RH trill + melody... lol. damn beethoven, it sounds so ridiculously easy and kiddy, i was mortified to be noobified so spectacularly -.-

argh. supposed to be doing h3 but my productivity's hit the pits. doesn't help that the syllabus is like a patchwork that a couple of fuddy-duddies cooked up on the back of a dirty paper napkin after dinner. it's quite incoherent, all kinds of rather random stuff thrown in... but at least they don't have the "NE messages" column like students should understand that no one owes us a living, rofl. or "preparedness" and "adaptability" (cf. geog syllabus). gosh, spare us the bullshit.

last paper

last paper in 2 days' time. i sense the waft of freedom already... blast all those pple on msn with 'busy' status lah, i bet all of them are dota-ing away like crazy.

out of the 9 - get that, NINE - essay outlines i prepped for the comparison qn none came even close to coming out on the lit paper. i just hope the stuff i cobbled together and tossed off was actually relevant to the question, it was 6 pages long and full of quotes lah damnit. think i probably didn't make enough connections back to the qn though... something about the links between the impossible and the familiar, quite unexpected.

faustus was... a piece of cake, it should be fine. the PCs were guailan though... far cry from the paper 1 stuff. overall the paper sucked baaad. hope my lit A comes true...

went out for dinner with not-quite-the-usual gang yesterday - martin char xy aditi els bren and annliang - who left halfway and therefore avoided paying lol. uhhh conversation was fun, we had lots of jokes at xy's expense, which is good for a laugh. went home and played civ IV till my mom nagged me to go sleep, as usual.

spent the last 1 hour looking for books to get/read (thx for the recs aditi!) so besides love in the time of cholera and brodie's report, i have something like 8 more books on my to-get-and-read list.

Jack Kerouac - On the Road
Claire Messud - The Emperor’s Children
Nick Laird - Utterly Monkey
David Lodge - The British Museum Is Falling Down
Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood
Marisha Pessl - Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Michel Butor - Second Thoughts
Georges Perec - Life: A User's Manual

any more recommendations from the rest of you?

so i'd better get down to doing up my H3. damn.

catch-22/lit ppp

There is this amazing thing about Catch-22. It's somehow both a celebration and a damning denunciation of modern collective insanity. I love this part - it kind of sums up my thoughts about this God dude, when I'm in a good mood:

[Yossarian] "I thought you didn't believe in God."
[Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife] "I don't," she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. "But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be."

When I'm in a bad mood I think there's got to be a benevolent but dangerously incompetent God up there, if only to explain how I'm making a complete pig's ear out of my life. I guess some people out there probably think that I'm angsting over nothing - trust me, still waters run very, very deep.

The thing about God - in the Christian conception, at least - is that He's not some on-command miracle worker like a bloke manning a call centre in the 11th dimension or something. You don't know if there's no one on the other side, or he's just daoing you to test your faith (I have none), or this is part of The Big Plan for you. The fascinating - and alarming - thing about believers is that they can base so much belief on the scrappiest bits of evidence.

Faith? Bollocks. Reality hurts, but it's there, it's tangible, it's something you can get a hold on, as long as you keep your expectations down. Remember life's a piece of shit anyway. Live with it.

-----

Tomorrow's the 2nd last paper, Lit, paper 4. I'm fine with Lit I guess... After all when messrs P and B mark our scripts the bell curve is completely fucked - this is RJC humanz, we're supposed to be clustered on the more competent end of the spectrum (right?) - and besides i've never gotten less than a B for Lit, amazingly, and hell, prelims were good, so no worries, right? Just reassuring myself there; just hoping everything will turn out decent. Christ I absolutely loathe Dr Faustus.

Now for a PPP
- dear examiners
plz give me a good unseen to respond to
so i can show what i've got
it isn't much, but it's something
plzplz give me a straightforward comparison question
something that i can sink my teeth in
i need to prove myself
preferably something that i've prepared
plz don't screw me over on faustus
it's sad enough as it is already
just give me a chance to regurgitate mr B's notes
i really, really need all the A's i can get
make this an A i can count on plzplzplz
kthxbye -

My expectations are obscenely high lah. I'm hoping for top grades on everything - that's A for GP, 4 A's for the H2s and a distinction for H3. Barring that at least an A for GP, AAAB for the H2s and at least a H3 merit. It's just a touch better than what I pulled off for the prelims... I can - I must; I'd better - pull it off again. I'll be a nervous wreck till March; if things screw up I'll be a nervous wreck for ever.

May the bell curve ring for me!

Give me A's, or else I die. - I've been (mis)quoting THT all week.

my neighbour thinks he owns a damn nightclub

damn. i have a neighbour who evidently thinks he owns franchise rights from the Ministry of Sound or some crap like that. boombox going at top volume, the beats are shaking the atmosphere up, some disco thing in B - all i hear is 4 syncopated F#s and a long B. it's crazy, i can't concentrate, i can't think. when i most need to get THT/1984 done. shit. i'm feeling the beat but i mustn't. damn.

i'm going to try drowning it out with classical - and my coolio altec lansing speakers. if this doesn't work my revision's fucked.

damn this asswipe.

i'm feeling a feeling that's outwardly indistinguishable from ennui, but not really that; rather, it's more a world-weariness arising from my grappling with big issues of Why Am I Here and What's The Bloody Point Of Life Anyway. if not for the support of my pals i probably wouldn't be here, i'd be chewing my arm off in an institution.

possibly the most exciting thing that happened in my life the last 24 hours was the lift jerking to a stop and then (in daniel ong's immortal words) "plunging a few feet". yeah us two were stuck in the lift for maybe half a minute (the block H lift; we were going up to the library to mug) - it was midway between level 3 & 4 before it ground to an ominous halt. and the display board showed level 6 lol. (there isn't a level 6). when the thing finally deigned to open the door and let us out at level 3 there was a split-second lag-time when freedom hadn't registered on our minds; then we both chionged out of the lift door of doom. and took the stairs for the rest of the day.

spent the whole of yesterday mugging h3 aside from a bit of lit and meeting up with adam after his paper. (thx, man.) that's it, really.

looking forward to the end and the YO concert and... long boredom. what's the quote from THT... "maybe boredom is erotic", something like that. not for me it ain't.

so. tuesday morning found me in school, waiting for oblivion.

ok fine, exaggeration; i claim poetic license. well yeah, i was in school mugging 1984 at 8, no one's interested in that -skip- had a difficult but necessary and, well, eventually (i hope) rewarding chat with a very good pal -skip- went for purvis' lit lecture which was basically his last stand-up comedy slot of the year.

tuesday afternoon saw me wasting nearly 2 hours at lunch with david daniel char & annliang. and wow i found out i had more readers than i thought possible. sucks to you iggie =P

shoutout to all you deprived humanz pple out there lol please go and get a life. here's a good place to start: www.youtube.com

well we had a good chat about blogs and stuff, and how abu dhabi is really less interesting to blog about than classical music (lol i think daniel might have won that one if we'd been anywhere else other than the humanz classes), and so on.

yeah daniel mentioned the level of swearing on my blog, which i guess was pretty gratuitous in the last post (about the wasp). mmhrm yes true. i should explain my stance on swearing; i'm more liberal on using unprintables than most people, on the principles that a) the notion of profanity is a social construct that should have passed into obsolescence a long time ago anyway, b) helps to relieve some of the tension that i feel, that perhaps some people actually don't, c) adds flavour to the otherwise staid prose of your humble narrator, and d) cos i like it.

the only exceptions i make are cunt and motherfucker (those two words will not appear on my blog ever again, i promise) - i really cannot muster up the egregious vehement misogyny needed to use those two words in a meaningful way; it probably comes with middle age. it needs a sheer elemental hatred of women in particular and mankind in general that is beyond my understanding, which is why i am mildly irritated when some people (like chua) use it casually. it's like the word fuck; kids shouldn't use it, because they simply have no conception of the sheer anger at the world needed to impart real meaning into it. nice people like daniel with nothing to worry about feel absolutely no need to say it, which is fine by me, just don't impose it on me, is all.

fun laughter peace & joy: YO rhsl & other cool stuff

FUCK there's a giant wasp about the length and size of my thumb (my thumb is pretty large) hovering around the bathroom and there's no fucking way i'll take a shower with that thing hovering around threatening to sting me or make a nest in my ear or something. so i've decided to blog before getting the vacuum and - oh double FUCK my parents just changed the vacuum to the kind with no bag that you have to empty out every time so i'll have to empty out an ANGRY wasp that's been sucked into a stinky new vacuum cleaner damnshitfuck. just my luck they're out getting groceries. wtfwtfwtf blast it.

so, i've had quite a thrill-packed 24 hours (ok, considering my life; stop smirking), i'll go in reverse chronological order.

beethoven. sonata op. 2 no. 3 the C major one. this is (musical) classicism in its death throes, it's lovely stuff, no emotional content except a very spiritual 2nd mvmt where i do all the p's really pianissimo and then the sf's really loud just for the kicks. the first movement is quite wacky if you play it my way (the p & sf contrast again) and the 3rd and 4th mvmts i play in a kind of sustained and florid muscle spasm lasting about 10 minutes. in short, brilliant piece, shame about the playing =D

let me see, what else? i read the papers this morning, saw another snooty singaporean complaint about people hugging each other in parks and on public transport. i mean, what's the deal? at least they're not out dogging, right? (dogging: UK slang for sex in public) conservative asian society my ass, they're just poor deprived people who didn't have their fun when they were 20 and want to spoil it for us now they're 40 and think they know better. (i might turn into one of them when middle age kicks in -.- ugh) besides, i think we ought to be grateful when people are hugging and smooching as tightly as possible on the MRT; gives the rest of us more space on the blasted carriages. wtf, they should be awarded for snogging away. i mean, population density and all that, when we have 8 million people on this shitty piece of land ALL of us are going to be locked in a massive group hug ANYWAY. or buy johor. get used to it, is what i say.

xue yang called me up last night, long tiring convo about 1984/THT. i have no freaking clue why he calls up a lit noob to discuss his ideas; but it was really funny cos i started the call standing up, then sat down, and by the end i was lying on the floor. in the right position to literally ROFL when i said "but love doesn't exist in the world of 1984" and he replied something like "oh come on, love doesn't exist." that was funny. well it doesn't exist for me, but i'm sure it does for some... eh adam? oh sorry, "feelings are boring; kissing is awesome" =P

went to borders last night. my parents got ratatouille, watched it at night. the soundtrack's fantastic, and the anton ego childhood memory part just takes the cake. i rmb peck wally and i laughing our butts off in the cinema. suspension of disbelief ftw, nvm about the talking rats hehe. i also bought 3 books at borders cos they had a 30% discount coupon: zadie smith's On Beauty, gabriel garcia marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, and jorge luis borges' Brodie's Report (collection of short stories). you can see i'm getting into latin american writers.

crashed YO rhsl with shaggy and ruolin. saw most of the pals back there again. lol shag & rl were getting harassed during break by the kiddies teasing them about how they happened to crash the same rhsl. good thing shag didn't go cycling in the end or their attn might have fallen on me. rofl.

I miss YO rhsls, they were seriously the best fun of my adolescence; my best friends are almost all from there. orchestral pract is awesome. i love the non-verbal communication that goes on in pract; it gives me a wonderful warm fuzzy feeling when people can say 'heyyyy great to see you again' halfway across the room, with just their eyes, or even just turn around and wave or smile or give a O.o raised eyebrow face when we hear some weird wind stuff; it cracks me up when i see the "oh SHIT i should have practised" faces over at the 1sts; i get a kick out of sightreading everything when everyone else has been practising like siao. its crazy but its damn fun.

cracked some jokes with my old section pals, caught up with the new comm, had some hilarity at wen-yi's expense (hello wen-yi if you're reading this!) and mrs wong has finally changed her shoes so they don't sound like percussion on overdrive roflmao (it's an in-joke, never mind; but it was hilarious when her clogs came in on time and -I swear- in sync to tchaik's marche slav a few months back, shaggy and i had exactly the same O.o expression). haha grats mrs wong! she looked absolutely delighted to see me, which was really nice of her; so did mr lim which was also nice of him. brilliant brilliant. great to be back. sigh. warm fuzzy feeling ftw... miss you all.

played caesar IV in the morning, but no one's interested in that so i'll end on the warm fuzzy feeling note. for 2 hours yesterday i felt absolutely great, almost like back home again. those were the days. ah well.

time to face the wasp's wrath.

UPDATE:
couple of minutes after i posted, my parents got back, and when i checked the wasp was gone. phew. otherwise i'd have smashed it brutally against the kitchen tiles at a strategic moment and wiped up the ugly, ugly mess - or it'd have stung me in the process and made me sit next to the phone waiting to vomit pus and dial 995 to be brought to A&E for an allergic reaction.

damn

i hear cats rutting away downstairs... void deck or sth i guess. HDB life for you roflmao.

they're having more fun than me.

damn.

btw hi aditi!

this brings my readership to 6 wooooo...

phew.

mad week is over. finally.

i've had 4 papers in a row this week, only 2 more to go.

no papers next week too, sweet.

but no one wanted to go watch a movie, wtf? thought i'd have a brilliant afternoon out watching mindless gore in anglo-saxon: beowulf opened today (i think, right?)

damn. and i'm not going alone, tts obviously trying too hard to get a life. which is why i'm blogging instead. not like that’s much of a substitute, but yeah. you get the idea.

good luck to all you science-side suckers, you’ll be done before me. i have the last fucking paper of this year’s A levels. H3 econs. evil timetabling bastards

woah that was a lot of gratuitous swearing. sometimes i really amaze myself.

geog. what kind of crack were the guys at cambridge on when they set the thing? ok the essays were... fine. but the DRQs? what kind of primary fieldwork are they expecting for 6 marks? zomgwtf? (besides the fact we never covered it) crapped out some utter bullshit for the DRQs. badbadbad. must pray that phys geog saves my ass yet again. essay qns were fine but i wrote rubbish anyway. damn. the DRQs seriously guailan-ed the shit out of us. i just hope the bell curve rings for me.

at least its over now. caesar IV ftw i'll finally finish the republic campaign. been at it on and off for months. and i'll wrangle out an irish coffee from me mom, there's whipped cream in the fridge. transcribe that ysaye ballade. w00tnessity.

econs case/quick ppp

ok econs case study was... not swimmingly great, but ok. talked about all kinds of weird shit. the supermarkets case material was kinda long and rambly, i didn't manage to process all of it, so last sub-qn was skimpy. hell. its over

wandering around the sch after the paper waiting for mummy-express was a plain time-waster. chatted with ruolin at the lockers, quite funny. bumped into shaggy at the stairs; after all that's said and done he's been damn good about everything - and i feel even more of an utter bastard. cryptic comment ftw.

quick ppp for human geog, no time alr
- dear cambridge examiners
plz plz plz
no essays on urban transport
no qns on new techs and practices
no 16-mark 'describe the organisation of a tnc you have studied'
no guailan drqs
no twisted questions
don't play with urban or pop geog cos those are my favourites
don't play with my life or i'm fucked
kthxbye -

its in the morning right after econs case; the seab timetablers are damn screwed up. but i shouldn't complain, i'm not getting 2 papers in a day. wooo 3 papers left!

econs essays/ppp

well... i must say that today's econs wasn't too bad; ok the micro questions were all weird and twisted, and i basically sacrificed about 4 out of the 8 marks on the monopoly question (qn 2) for the certainty of at least 12-14 on part b (out of 17 marks). Which is not too bad a bargain, i guess. but the macro ones were pretty ok. i wrote a hell lot for the macroeconomic objectives and policy question (which might or might not have been totally relevant), and i absolutely whored qn 6 (the globalisation one). woo. application and evaluation ftw. it splashed out like a flood. no double entendre intended, absolutely. (trust me, you don't want to know XD)

feels good but it always feels this way, right up till i get the essays back and realise i got 11/25. bastards. (ooh that's a swear word i haven't used here yet, i think.)

so, now
- dear cambridge examiners
plz plz plz give me easy case material
and good questions
so i know exactly what you want
and can give it to you
after all, you know exactly what i want
and if we trade, there'll be welfare gains right?
and besides, it improves allocative efficiency -
you have marks, i need marks
it's a mutually beneficial situation
plz plz plz let me get an A for econs
cos i'd really like to get to princeton
or yale
or lse
or someplace nice
to waste 3 or 4 years of my life
and of course the government's money
though i'll be paying it back of course
sigh 
c'est la vie -

w00t

woah. rj lit dept is l33t. how on earth did batchelor, purvis and the gang manage to spot one of the poems out of the '000s cambridge could have picked? and the one that i did, too. tts damn brilliant. sweet. i loved both sets of poems, they were fantastic. these were the ones i did: one art and long distance

did a crappy A&C and a decent GX too... which is kind of my usual pattern. faustus and 1984/THT should be fine... lit's touch-and-go, really, but i should have a 2/3 chance of getting an A and 1/3 chance of getting a B. fine by me. i kind of like lit exams, look forward to them springing me a nice PC and two fantastic poems for me to get my fangs in. cambridge kind of made my day, somehow. although the A&C questions were fucked up (i expected it anyway).

ok ppp for econs

- dear cambridge examiners
i need econs to be good
for a morale boost
since i want to do econs at uni anyway
(fine. not want, per se
more like if i don't do econs psc won't give me a scholarship
and i happen to be slightly interested in it,
more so than in geog anyway)
and i also need econs to be good
to get an A
hell, i need those As
but then, it doesn't take genius to figure that one out
plzplzplz gimme straightforward untedious questions
so that i can show what i know
and hide what i don't
so that i can trick you into thinking i know what i'm talking about
when i don't, really
kthxbye -

2 poems and a ppp

whoops! just shamelessly whored your humble narrator's blog by dropping the link in on peck's/lip's tagboard =)

so now. 2 funky and nice poems and then a ppp and i should go sleep.

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Flowers (by Wendy Cope)
Some men never think of it.
You did. You'd come along
And say you'd nearly brought me flowers
But something had gone wrong.

The shop was closed. Or you had doubts -
The sort that minds like ours
Dream up incessantly. You thought
I might not want your flowers.

It made me smile and hug you then.
Now I can only smile.
But, look, the flowers you nearly brought
Have lasted all this while.

[what a way to treat a gf lol]

-----

Piss Flower (by Jo Shapcott)
I can't pretend to a golden parabola,
or to the downing of many pints
for making magnificent water.

I can't begin to write my name, no
not even my pet name, in the snow: except in pointless unreadable script.

But I can print a stream of bubbles
into water with a velocity
you'd have to call aesthetic.

I can shoot down a jet stream
so intense my body rises
a full forty feet and floats

on a bubble stem of grace
for just a few seconds
up there in the urban air.

[i think that's a brilliant evocation. considering the subject, too. i'd always thought there was something aesthetic about piss...]

-----

For more, visit the Poetry Archive: http://www.poetryarchive.org/
If you have the time go find "You're Beautiful" by Simon Armitage.

-----

- dear cambridge examiners
plz plz give me a set of poems i can relate to
not some crap about bullfrogs or thistles
i got an A the last time, but my powers are crescent, like Pompey's
and therefore wax and wane
and if you give me a screwed-up PC i can't score
plz plz plz give me straightforward questions on A&C and GX
preferably an easy passage too for A&C, just in case
and not a question on dramatic effect because i'll have no clue what's expected
things just have to go reasonably well for this paper
and i should be home and dry
kthxbye -

on request

since you asked, ming loong, here's one of the masters on how to write well:

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
  
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
  
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
  
• Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.
  
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
  
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

- George Orwell.

hrm.

On one hand I absolutely detest Andy Ho's writing: it's cluttered, it's unclear, it obfuscates any issue he argues. If Malaysia needed to win Pedra Branca they might do better if he argued Singapore's case.

On the other hand, I don't know if jumping into the fray of the raging gender/sexuality debate is a good move at all, given that I'm also in the middle of A levels. I sent an email to Andy Ho this morning about his article in ST today; I'm reproducing it here, and I guess I'll be expecting a reply over the next week, which I will probably post here too.

It might have been a bad move. Still, I couldn't let that article published today pass without a strongly-worded email from me. It's not so much the content I objected to (ok, it's an opinion column after all) but the horrible style. The abuse of language. Gah it reeked of journalese. He's a senior writer for crissake!

So this is what I wrote to Andy Ho.

-----

Dear Mr Ho,

I'm writing this letter in response to your most recent article in the Saturday edition of the Straits Times, and several others that you have written over the past few months. Despite not being part of the gay community I am slightly disturbed by the blatant logical incongruities that your article contains; to paraphrase Neil Armstrong, your writing often appears as one small slip of the pen, one giant leap of logic.

Firstly, I note that your opening paragraph references "homosexual sodomy". That to me raises two issues, one objective, and the other subjective. Of course, 'sodomy' refers to the Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, and is synonymous with sin; this clearly highlights which side of the debate you are on, consciously or unconsciously. While this is not wrong in itself (your article is after all an opinion column), it might seem a tad early to poison the well, so to speak. The objective issue is that the term "homosexual sex" would do quite as well, having the advantage of neutrality and thus adding to your credibility (besides being faster to type!).

You also write that the debate in Parliament might be seen to "(legitimise) the identity politics of (homo)sexuality here." In what way is such a debate not already legitimate? You mention further on that "emotional interlocution that remains respectful can be woven into the patriotic fabric that binds us together" – in other words, such a debate (interlocution) can be part of an emerging democratic spirit, and I presume, legitimate. In this way your article seems, to my mind, clearly incongruous. (Besides, the phrase beginning "emotional interlocution..." appears to me to be a tad too clichéd for print; surely there could have been a better way of more clearly conveying your intent?)

Further on, you write that "identity politics turns sick when grievances transmute to ... demonisation". This is strangely ironic given that you also write in the very same article that the gay lobby "tends to reduce complex human beings to one trait - homoeroticism" - does that not count as demonisation? Even if, to you, it doesn't, does it not strike you as ironic that you have yourself reduced complex human beings (comprising the gay lobby) to one trait - seeing homoeroticism in everything? I am sure the poetry of Cyril Wong, for instance, is not all about homoeroticism.

I do agree with some of your points made, for instance the one about moving or negotiating between social groupings of age, race, religion and so on. However I find myself taken aback by your journalese directly following that: "But this fact is that which allows for non-conflictual give-and-take since our interest might differ on one dimension but map onto one another on a different one". This sentence inspires me to ask the slightly more incisive question, "What?" As far as I can decipher, your meaning is that the fluidity of these social groupings enables us to undertake non-conflicting "give-and-take" (reach a kind of mutual understanding?) since dimensions of our personal identity ( i.e. social groups that we belong to) can intersect with others' identities on many different levels - whatever that means.

I am concerned that (since I am currently sitting for my A-levels) my 12 years of primary and secondary education in English and 2 years of General Paper have not prepared me to understand n-dimensional sociological thought in a national newspaper; it strikes me as either a failure on the part of the education system, or an indictment of writing style. I would very much like to know if my interpretation above has captured the gist of what you intended to say.

As a journalist your mission is twofold - to educate and inform the public, and to (especially in your Review columns) espouse and develop a viewpoint. And as a senior writer you undoubtedly have a further mission - to use the English language to good effect. In your article I find obscure language (pharisaic, from the Pharisees; balkanises, after the Balkan states, referring to a splitting up; obstreperous, unruly and boisterous), quantum leaps of logic, and rather glaring incongruities in your argument, all of which certainly do not contribute towards putting your message across.

Most obviously, as part of a team that writes for a national newspaper, you serve as a role model for language use among Singaporeans, particularly students. However I feel, as a student of literature and the English language, your attitudes to language use are rather less rigorous than I would expect.

I have cited "homosexual sodomy" (sodomy is, according to the Collins Cobuild dictionary, sex between men, which renders "homosexual" redundant; alternatively, "homosexual sex" would have done better). Another example is "pharisaic" - relating to the Pharisees, suggesting a doctrinal, inflexible adherence to religious dogma, or hypocritically self-righteous according to the American Heritage Dictionary. You use it in the context of the group diametrically opposed to conservative Christian (religious) groups, which is jarring and odd to say the least. Besides, it is hardly a common word, and does everything to obfuscate and nothing to clarify your point. Furthermore, in your last article on this subject (on how gay traits might be passed on, I believe), you use the word "gayness" many times, which seems to trivialise the condition; why not use the more neutral word, "homosexuality"?

This email certainly contains harsh and damning language, and if I overstep my mark I humbly apologise. However I feel strongly that the journalistic mission which you have been entrusted with is simply not compatible with your use of the language or with the reasoning you employ, at least in this particular article.

I'm also attaching (below) a letter to the Forum I sent a few months ago which was not published (I suspect owing to its length!), on another of your articles on climate change. If you have the time to spare I would certainly appreciate a response to that as well.

Yours sincerely,
Rayner Teo
November 10th 2007

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I'm not attaching the forum letter to this post as well; it's waaay too long. But that article was really bad too, logical errors, omissions of fact and all.

I'd be interested to hear, what do you guys think? Was I right to speak up against the desecration of language - even on a hot-potato topic like that? (hot potato - A problem that is so controversial or sensitive that those handling it risk unpleasant consequences)

more gratuitous angst

getting sick of mugging. right so the payoff is really good if you can get your 4 As; you get to burn 3 or 4 years of your life away in a really nice place in the US or UK, and another 6 years as loyal civil servant helping the people of this lovely island live their lives which is not too crappy a bargain, seeing as you've burnt the preceeding 4 years on careless socialising partying and whatnot (not like i'm the kind of person who would lah, probably end up a no-life shit like the rest of us. malaysia-singapore society *shudder*).

but hell, i don't know if what i'm doing is right, or going to help... maths was a bummer, so was gp cos i don't really think the marker would appreciate me raving on about sibelius without really making a point. not looking forward to A&C, my answer will probably be incoherent as usual cos i have absolutely no idea what to make of antony and cleo, not to mention octavius, rome, egypt, the use of language, or the play in general. econs is a scary thought, i think i know what went wrong with my essays, but i still don't know if i can do the right things in exam conditions.

(incidentally the expression from that rotation question was still there on my gc, and i figured why i screwed up - cos i typed in ((x^2)sin(x))2 instead of ((x^2)sin(x))^2. so my answer was right after all, IF I DIDN'T READ THE WRONG LIMITS. bollocks.)

yeah. damn. what a life. my only consolation is that i'm not the only one: solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris (it is a comfort to the unfortunate to have companions in woe.)

but damn it, you people are going to do brilliantly and run off to harvard, princeton, chicago, cambridge, oxford, lse or some wonderful place or other. and if things don't turn out right for me i'm just fucked. so thats the only thought sustaining me right now, more or less. well, life has to suck for some of us: does it really have to be me?

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zhaohan have you put the cd in my locker?

what's that, a sheepish look on your face?

damn j00.

lend me/send me the ysaye ballade plx i want to do a piano transcription after this A level shit is over.

-----

so yes, ming. since you are j2, and i hardly know any j2s outside rjc, i'm assuming that i know you from RI/RJC: which means either you're a girl and ming's not in your name (wtf? then why the nickname huh?) or you're a guy and ming's in your name.

5. ming loong?

post paper paranoia

this is incredibly loser. it was about 2:58 in the stats paper, and i'd just entered the definite integral into the GC, can't rmb which question number but it was the (x^2)sin(x) rotation thing. ok. imagine my horror as time was called while the calculator was taking its bloody sweet time to find out the integral. i got the freaking wrong answer, i knew it, but i couldn't write it down. wtfwtfwtf. damndamndamn 2 marks gone like that screwit, disappearing literally before my very eyes. i could kick myself so bad. so bad.

i bet you're laughing your ass off out there. screwit. wtf.

damn, i made some really careless mistakes, like confusing list 1 and list 2 for the regression question... blew half an hour figuring that one out. that stats paper was really bad. the galling thing is that it was avoidably bad. shit. if i get a B for maths (or worse!) my LSE dreams are blown. probably my scholarship dreams too.

even worse, my fingers were fumbling like crap, tying the string, after i discovered i screwed up the definite integral. i bloody hope i tied the thing properly or else i can't even get a U if my paper falls apart before it reaches cambridge. hell... that's a chilling possibility i don't even want to contemplate. yah i wrote my name on all the pieces of paper but that's not going to help if three of them are floating in the indian ocean, is it? gahhhh. majorly screwed up.

i give up. i'm debilitatingly worried and stressed. this is bad, i couldn't concentrate on mugging geog today.

i've been listening to good stuff for two hours now; beethoven 9th symphony has failed to calm my nerves, as has smetana, sibelius and a whole load of other stuff. my nerves are still frayed. doesn't help that i think i'm developing tinnitus ugh. i can hear a moderately loud but indeterminate chord at all times, there's a D in it but whatever it is it's driving me nuts

i might have to prepare to go to a conservatory after all -.- but then what if i go deaf. shit.

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ehh ming, you didn't answer the third question - M/F?
and so i know you from ri/rjc, and no 'ming' isn't part of your real name? not kidding? hrm.
well... here goes:

4. are you j2?

remember no lying.

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i hope i can get into a better state of mind tmrw. for econs. damn maths. why did i screw up the most fucking dumb things? this is really very bad. the A levels have suddenly taken on a haunting, dark and forbidding aspect.

identity crisis/ppp

not my identity; yes, who's ming?

i dare you to reveal your identity through the time-honoured fashion: twenty questions.

The rules (from wikipedia, the fount of wisdom):

One player is chosen to be the answerer (ming). That person chooses a subject (his/her name) but does not reveal this to the others (me). All other players (me) are questioners. They (if I have multiple personality disorder) each take turns asking a question which can be answered with a simple "Yes" or "No." ... Lying is not allowed, as it would ruin the game.

So, here are 3 to begin with, because if i asked each in turn it'd take forever:

1. Is 'ming' part of your real name?
2. Do I know you from RI/RJC?
3. Are you female (and single, and... never mind)?

heh this is amusing. some more clues: you are freaking bored, and you were available - and blogsurfing - at 11:40 am today (monday) which means that if you're at RJC now you're either j1 or suicidal. and you use pretty odd word choices: "chanced upon" and "somewhile"; but you're rather unparticular about grammar: "chanced upon your blog" in past tense but "dropping by and saying hello" in present continuous.

----

if you're one of the psc spy dudes who check up applicants' blogs i recant everything i've ever said. and yeah, this is tan xue yang's blog. tan xue yang of 07a13a, rjc. the short one. =)

(signed) rayner

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oh, and one thing. mass mvmt came out for drq. wth. some retarded question trying desperately to piece together mass movement with tropical cyclones and other hazards. they're seriously running out of ideas. and they gave us a photo to produce a sketch on wtfbomb! and yes i did the flood question in the end. sigh... but i didn't answer it in blood.

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another quick ppp for maths

- dear cambridge examiners,
plz plz plz don't screw me over for maths
i need all the marks you can give
to grab all the A's i can get
to go someplace i want to go
to live life
so don't make your integration too cheem
or your p&c too sly
or your hypo testing too twisted
or your normal distribution too nifty
and i'm made.
woooot -

pre-paper prayer: geog

today i'm going to keep it simple, cos i need to sleep early. it's also addressed to the paper, for a change.

- dear physical geog
plz let me kick ass. -

although please let me and kick ass are two phrases that don't quite seem to go together... well fuck that.

today i told me mom bout the second email from harvard. she said hrm why don't you try applying, put together the envelopes and get the application ready?

well. screw it. its only going to be a distraction now, when i least need distracting. besides if i screw up theres no bloody use, ever. my life will just be completely screwed over if i don't get decent grades. i'll go to nus and rot or sth. or if i can't make it there i'll go play bass for the rest of my life. wtf.

i use these thoughts to motivate me. they're freaking scary thoughts.

damn physical geog. bring it on!


- ps: plzplz don't let there be floods. or mass movement. cos if they come out i'm just screwed i'll slit my wrists and answer in blood or sth wth -

note to adam

you should get rid of your tag board. its been advertising porn and dodgy russian sites for months now.

and yeah, i think that you're about the only reader of this blog. so who's the worse no-lifer, you or me? roflmao 

ADDENDUM:
it's also amazing that my blog readership grows more loyal the more i insult it. ain't that right? =) just a cool thought that struck my mind.

wtf/on uni applications

i feel kind of screwed up not applying to harvard. they emailed me again, the asian american organisation or sth. on the one hand i feel damn lucky & honoured and (of course) gratified (i like that word) to be worthy enough of their attention through their pretty intensive email campaign (2 emails in under a week!)... and i kind of regret not asking the teachers to write an extra teacher rec hehe. if they ever read this, thanks for the attention.

but on the other hand i'm
a) damn scared that my hoped-for 5A's & 1D(istinction, not D as in one grade below C!!) won't materialise come march next year and
b) very very aware that there are tons of other much smarter people than me applying to harvard so it was likely to be wasted effort anyway

this is a slight dilemma that i hadn't intended or expected to encounter. cos all the time i've been thinking: ok my grades are pretty decent, but i'm well aware that i'm not that brilliant; i know there are lots of people who are ×100 better equipped to go to places like harvard, oxford or cambridge. and besides, i'm not sure if i could survive the pressure to compete tacitly or openly (in class, tutorials, exams, whatever) with people who are definitely smarter and more impressive and expressive than i am. that's one of the main reasons why i refused to apply to oxford or cambridge even though mr sowden and some of my friends did encourage me to do so.

also (and related to that) i think that if i myself feel that i'm not up to it, on a subconscious level the interviewers or applications people or whatever will recognise that; it'll manifest itself somehow, through a general reluctance or... something. put it another way, to get there, you really have to want to get there; and since i don't, i probably won't. so screw it.

another reason was that i couldn't stand the thought of interviews during a-levels. last and most mundane reason of all, was that oxbridge applications are just before prelims -.-

it all boils down to an excess of a) self-deprecation b) sense of perspective and c) modesty, i guess. but i'd sooner lose a place in cambridge than a sense of perspective, of what an insignificant little turd i am (or indeed, any one of us is) in this world. it is disgusting to lose a sense of perspective, have airs of self-importance, that sort of thing, and i certainly don't want that.

then again, my sense of perspective might just be screwed up. false modesty, or whatever. maybe i should be aiming for the skies. maybe i should have whored myself to cambridge for a place.

whatthefuck.

[to self: stfu and mug phys geog lah.]

after-math

using the same bad pun as before lol. yeah cambridge was pretty nice about their maths paper, but i think i didn't manage the time properly. spent lots of time checking and rechecking the easier first few qns then had less time for 9, 10 & 11. bugger. didn't manage a couple of sub-parts, so maybe lost, i dunno, 5-10 marks depending on how far i got. yeah so i figure for this paper i have a roughly 30% chance of getting more than 80, 40% chance of getting 70-80, and 30% chance of getting below that. decent but definitely not safe. so i need my stats to be pretty good to save my ass.

now i'm supposed to be revising stats and the remaining pure maths topics that didn't come out today... i'm pretty sure they won't do another complex numbers or functions or graphing qn, vectors prob not... definitely integration, maclaurins/binomial and possibly connected rates of change. i foresee a particularly screwed-up integration question. and MI or summation is pretty likely too. gah.

and instead of revising i'm actually blogging wtf.

phys geog on monday, the stats paper on tues, then massive mugging all the way till lit paper 1 monday next. phys geog is... ok, if i mug enough (stating the baldly obvious). except for hydro which is an utter bitch. i know nuts about rivers and how rain flows into the ground and forms streams and springs and all that shit. fucitol. but climo is good and geomo is fine.

and lol no i'm not a nirvana fan, though i might be if i heard more of their stuff but i've only ever listened to smells like teen spirit. it's crystallised transcendental angst, i think i used those adjectives in the essay. but that essay was shitty, i'm not sure whether i even established that music could change the world.

oh well. i think i'll type my pre-paper prayer closer to the date.