watching nosferatu

Bio today was worryingly easy. By "worryingly", I mean, if you walk out of the exam hall and all you think about is whether you spelt "mitochondrion" correctly, then the reality of the shifting bell-curve has to be accepted, albeit rather begrudgingly.

But don't we all gain some and then lose some too? Physics was a killer, but there's still hope of doing well for paper 1! (At this rate I shall need a perfect score for paper 1. Let me continue to dream on.)

Esther's in KL now, probably partying, or watching more cantonese soaps and feeling left out of the plot because the only phrases of cantonese we know happen to stem from our limited exposure to dim sum. This immense sense of solitude I am feeling is actually kinda wonderful.

Also:
I feel like ranting about parochialism and old wives' tales and an annoying servile, brown-nosing ethos creeping back into my life after the days of being a reluctant scullion of a certain organisation, since they've been bugging me the entire week, but I shall try to practise restraint this time.

And: I'm thinking of going undertaker chic for the prom. I need to find a way to make my skin paler. Hmmm.

Principia Mathematica

And, may we pawn all.

In ascending order of misery

The camembert cheese wasn't soft enough.
I think I injured my calves/shin.
Physics was horrendous and traumatising.
I can't delete my text messages collectively.
Cats have all been looking at me very condescendingly, of late :( :( :(
Camera Obscura's performing in the esplanade now.
I can't lock and unlock my phone.

But I have minty creamy chocolate and I'm not afraid to use it.

smelly foods

Okay this is rather odd — I'm starting to get a little crazy about cheese. Not the Day-glo orange Kraft singles or the very suspect puddle of molten cheese that comes with my nachos, but the kinds that come in exotic rinds and could possibly smell worse than, oh I don't know, an athlete's foot sufferer running through a field of rotting durians towards a hot spring. (Then again, perhaps not.) I want my cheese blue veined and ash-streaked. I want it to crumble over a crusty toasted baguette slice when I spread it, and I want to taste how salty and pungent and revolting it is when I sink my teeth past the soft curd and into hot crackling bread. I also wouldn't mind reading about how they wrap it with cherry leaves/dried peppers/hay and inject it with blooming fungi.

Today, I wanted my cheese soft with a white, velveteen-like coat. Hence the camembert for supper, and all its unctuous, gooey and flowing texture. It is really flavourful, and upon first bite, you'll feel the soft rind crumble in your mouth to mix with the delicate, woody notes that become slightly sweet and salty and creamy. Gah, I so love camembert.

And the next smelly food is the batch of aioli I made. I wouldn't really deem it smelly, but it is pungent because of all the garlic in it.

Anyway, in the spirit of tomorrow's physics paper,


xkcd

(Afterthought: I do not know where to insert this in my post - I thought history paper today was manageable, somewhat fun. Methinks there was a dangerous amount of room for feminist manifestos against the Nazis though, heh.)

because I was bored of perestroika

On quotation marks —

Perhaps no single emblem better epitomizes the perversity of my colleagues than the lowly quotation mark. Some rogue must have issued a memo, "Psst! Cool writers don't use quotes in dialogue anymore" to authors as disparate as Junot Díaz, James Frey, Evan S. Connell, J.M. Coetzee, Ward Just, Kent Haruf, Nadine Gordimer, José Saramago, Dale Peck, James Salter, Louis Begley and William Vollmann. To the degree that this device contributes to the broader popular perception that "literature" is pretentious, faddish, vague, eventless, effortful, and suffocatingly interior, quotation marks may not be quite as tiny as they appear on the page.

By putting the onus on the reader to determine which lines are spoken and which not, the quoteless fad feeds the widespread conviction that popular fiction is fun while literature is arduous. Surely what should distinguish literature isn't that it's hard but that it's good. The text should be as easy to process as possible, saving the readers' effort for exercising imagination and keeping track of the plot.

[...]

The refusal to make a firm distinction between speech and interior reflection can also evoke a hermetic worldview. Explaining why she writes without quotes, British novelist Julie Myerson asserts, "In my experience of the world, there are no marks separating out what I think and what I say, or what other people do." Yet when the exterior is put on a par with the interior, everything becomes interior. What is conveyed is an insidious solipsism. When thinking, speaking and describing all blend together, the textual tone levels to a drone. The drama seems to be melting.

From WSJ, Oct 25, 2008

OK, I thought this was slightly relevant to what we know about literary techniques and more importantly, the meaning they create and their effects on the reader. I have an issue with the merging of the interior monologue and outward speech because it confuses me to no end, never mind the soi-disant "hermetic worldview" it underscores and the conveyance of more realist attitudes towards the cyclic nature of time in relation to our self-awareness blah blah blah. Personal idiosyncrasy aside, is this useful in creating further levels of meaning? Is this creation of ambiguity a means to broach the idea of arbitrary and nebulous postmodern realities? Hmmmmmm

overheard while walking out of the exam hall

"Did you draw the line/I finished mine in/flexible curve/formula for L?!/huh tangent secant theorem/are you going/it came out before somewhere/scared me, I thought we needed to draw two graphs/cosine two/I used mid-point theorem/crapped my way through the explanation/did you see that invigilator/graph paper/coughed loudly/oh no/parallel sides right/proving was alright/intercept theorem?/no more A Maths/where are they/I freaked out at the last minute/did you find the triangle?/they said something about 2536/I screwed up the that question/sketch graphs/the invigilator said/she stared at me/both used graph paper/how much did you get?/formula for L?!/freaked out so many time/was scared/I didn't see tangent secant theorem/maybe can/but 2536?/just prove for congruency/oh no I've lost 4 marks/I left it blank/I got the log question wrong/no graph/maybe it was a mistake/I thought they were calling for me/I finished it when he said put down your pens/did you/bye/so irritating la/actually it was better than/use mid-point theorem/I didn't get the second part/what last question/I was so confused/triangle goes here/so tricky/I'm going home."

I have the worst IM etiquette.

Gee, at the rate this is going, I'll be visiting other schools during teachers' day next year.

(No, really, what on earth is happening? *Righteous anger building up*)

Talk about pathetic fallacy...
It's drizzling now and the skies are grey. I could phrase this more eloquently so my sadness becomes poetic, but I have a headache and I have to sit in dim lighting now because I'm getting sensitive to bright lights. When I grow up, I'll never install those glaringly white fluorescent lights in my house.

English papers yesterday were pretty decent. I'm happy about situational writing and summary. My essay was close to crappy and I've already lost marks in vocabulary. But whatever, I can't fly around the world at supersonic speed to turn back time, can I?

A Maths today left me very demoralised, because I don't think I did my best. Well sure, the paper was tricky and the questions were more unconventional, but even then, my concepts felt a little shaky and panicking mid-way through the paper made it worse.



Anyway, this is funny and it cheered me up :D

floating 213 miles above Earth

600th post! *\O/*

This also marks the first day of O levels, which so far seems quite manageable. Invigilator seems nice, the hall feels like home now, and the temperature is just right. However, the spectre of The Bell Curve looms above us with the easy chemistry paper, and I can only make wild guesses about the A1 mark for this paper. It's probably like, 120% now. !@#*

And for lunch, I had a dory fish fillet, cherry tomatoes (that Mingting promptly swooped down on at first glance without acknowledging my presence), oranges (from Jeremy who brought what seemed like a pear orchard as well), and bars of Cadbury's Twirl that my mother bought me while feigning a sort of reluctance and resentment at caving in to my sudden chocolate craving. No, I'm not on Atkins or anything. I'm just trying to figure out what foods help me to concentrate better. Apparently this combination is working for me, but it leaves me hungry at the end of the paper.

I am reminiscing that tumultuous period in sec 2 when I was choosing my subject combination, since my sister is doing the same now. By an amazing turn of events, she found herself nominated for the new scholars' programme in school because of her more-than-decent results. (Am happy that I still beat her! yess.) Hopefully I won't get my smarmy and self-absorbed triple science mindset in the way of her decision-making, but it's probably bio and chem for her with pure lit, which is what I would have chosen if we were actually offered that.

I need a new phone. :(

tomorrow tomorrow

Confession #1 -
I would like to mock-sheepishly boast that I refrained from touching my books for the entire weekend in an effort to chill out and relax before the start of the Big Game, but admittedly I did not and could not. However, I would like to emphasise that I never studied for 12 hours straight in a day. Ever. It is (a) unnatural and (b) long study marathons have never helped me. Tomorrow I will have to brace myself for another routine deluge of passive-aggressive condescension, if you get my drift, hur hur.

Confession #2 -
Do small blue tents, police lines and neighbours looking out from their windows with horror and immense concern strike you as odd? I was on my way to the park when I spotted this scene of an unfolding tragedy, not realising the gravity of what had happened until I spotted blood, fresh and incarnadine, seeping out from the little tent and, upon removing my earphones, someone wailing in the distance. It was mortifying. If I continue to encounter horror stories in my path like this all the time, then heck I'm all set for a career in journalism. (Surely a remark I'll later regret, but I need to indulge in sometimes-flippant repartee in my fragile, stressed-out state.)

Confession #3 -
I went to Canele. Again. This time, I went with my parents, and they thought the food was so-so. Actually, I'm starting to agree. The macaron shells were lumpy, and they ran out of tiramisu and that ostentatiously-named Le-something dessert, so we had to make do with a glorified citrus-scented cream pie with a whipped egg white filling and (I think) lemon curd. My parents had ice cream, which was edible but rather forgettable. The salt in the salted caramel was undetectable. The caramelised filo pastry cracked in the wrong way. The ice cream itself was pedestrian and so ordinary that we felt rather hurt and betrayed. I know I'm going to sound like a fuss-pot, but I enter that place with high expectations all the time, knowing how experienced the chef is and how his creations are promising and oftentimes at the vanguard of local talents (the keyword here is local). But service is above par and this usually saves the day!

AND O LEVELS START TOMORROW!! MY DRAWER BROKE, I WITNESSED A SUICIDE, MY LEGS ARE CRAMPING, THIS IS NOT VERY AUSPICIOUS :O :O :O (I'm only joking.) So cryptic, but I thank God that things aren't as bad as I think they seem. And I feel very blessed that I've got friends I can depend on and that I've gotten through the weeks without veering (too far) off the course!