Crabsticks.

It dawned on me at 12.30am that I have four readings and two short stories to finish before 10-5pm lessons tomorrow. How can I realise this so late? Tried to cram one-and-a-half films and assignment research into my free day today, but I only finished half a film =( Black Rain is a powerful film though. Immensely sad in a deeply melancholic kind of way... I thought a war film would be too overtly explosive and in-your-face for my liking, but this one has its surprisingly light, endearing moments, which made the bleak images and stark, raw moments of loss, delivered with such matter-of-fact, calm resignation, so very touching.

Love film. Short stories are okay too, they don't give quite the pleasure of conquering a novel but they're still quite good. Still grumpy about having to wallow through readings for the other modules =(

Miss novels and slow chordy songs. And no, the 1175-line does not count as a novel, okay.

Amazing fact #1: I slept 1.5 hours last night after finishing the presentation notes.
Amazing fact #2: Today was not my presentation date.
Amazing fact #3: The actual presentation date is two weeks away.

Pui.

4:41AM

I can't believe that I'm going to bed at this time.

9am presentation tomorrow. Less than 2 hours of sleep for today.

It's only week 3.

Till we meet again

In memory of Consonance senior Zicong.


(Pic is kopped off Wenquan's blog)

I prolly haven't seen half these people for ages, and how ______ it is that we should meet at a wake. But we were there, in person or in spirit, and that mattered.

And I wonder again how surreal it is to lose a person without really knowing who he is or what he's really like, even though I must have 'known' him since Cadenza 3 in J2.

Black and white-- a solemn farewell to you, dear senior, and my deepest respects. Be well, wherever you may be headed henceforth.

Three more things

I'm sorry if it's just lists, but it's the quickest way to update.

One, Reso auditions are on! 20th to 24th August. I don't know if anyone might find this relevant, considering most of you readers are old and retiring from school, but hey! If you chanced upon this entry by some random-blog-browsing mechanism, you're probably fated to join us anyway, so come =)

Two, I'm feeling put out by research workshop presently, for some reason.

Three, I cut my hair!

Finished 3 readings, 4 more to go. Dying. I want to read novels and poetry, not dense theories that go in endless loops =(

Four Things

One, I'm like super stressed about Asia Moderns. My prof goes full throttle with enormous words and humongous ideas and theories come fast and furious. So dense you can drown in words.

Oh, and presentation is next week.

Two, I'm freaked out by eighteenth century because there is no class next week, but there is presentation the week after.

Three, I won a pair of tickets to 881 *beams* But of course the other ticket must go to Charlene, who made me join the email contest for free tickets =)

Four, Nicole passed us a copy of our Food Export magazine! Debut magazine okay! Heart it. Had to turn down the part-time job offer, and I felt really bad, because I would like to have helped Nicole, in return for all the valuable lessons she taught us, and because she's so incredi-nice. But this sem's workload! =( Had to reject for survival's sake =( Grah.

So yeah. No time. Readings to do, presentations to plan. Write again.

You didn't need a reason then, so you don't need a reason now. Sometimes answers are not so crucial, and reasons are never accurate. I thought a lit student, of all people, should understand that.

So here we go again =)

*hums*

I don't know when I wrote this. During the hols, perhaps. So this is technically chronologically out of order. But never mind, it should have its place with the rest of the entries as well, so here goes! =)

----

Beautiful, my delight
Pass, as we pass the wave
Pass as the mottled night
Leaves what it cannot save.

Scattering dark and bright
Scattering dark
and bright...

- To be sung on the water, composed by Samuel Barber

I. Heart. Beautiful. Songs.

Even if all that I remember of the song are the humming, lulling background and the lone sop line, lifting into a high cry and fading into the murky bassy background. I still hear it in images, the oars dipping into the steam, stirring, pulling the waters, the rippled moonlight, the hushed, rhythmic swish of water against boat, in the cool, silent night.

It's a different feeling from Winter's Light, which is another song with very vivid imagery, and which I'm terribly fond of as well, but there, I think I've found my answer to one of those conversations that goes like this--

Q: What kind of songs do you like?
A: *ponders a while* I don't know, a variety, I guess.
Q: But there must be a type that you prefer. You know, like pop? rock? jazz?
A: Ballads, maybe? A bit of jazz? A bit of bossa nova? Classical music is nice too...
Q: Yah but which kind do you prefer? Or maybe you have a favourite singer, that kind of thing?

It's quite a headache trying to pinpoint things like that, I think. But here-- I like songs with images in them. Vivid, vivid images that come woven into the lyrics. I like songs with stories in them, I like songs that can make your spine tingle with the feeling that's embedded into the music and the words.

That, and every other frivolous stuff you can make meaning of, including those that go inchi-inchi-inchi-inchi, once in a while =)

Internship

Very busy week! I haven't got the time to talk of internship proper at all, I realised, especially with the onslaught of Reso activities taking up every night of the entire last day of work, spilling over to the following Monday.

But a two-and-a-half month stint does deserve its place of mention on the blog, yes? =) I think I was really really lucky to get this internship-- and this isn't a comment realised only upon hindsight, because really, there're lessons to take home all the time, things to learn and stuff to write. And I did really get to write, which is an opportunity that I'm super grateful for. After overcoming the first week of bad writing, of course, when I had written without completely knowing what it is that was required of me. Poor Nicole probably nearly died editing the first set of articles, which made me feel terribly guilty. But she allowed me to make mistakes without grudging me for it, and sent them back to let me review and re-edit and fix my mistakes, which helped a tremendous lot in getting me to understand how things work, and getting me to have a better grasp on writing for something with its own set of expectations. When the next set of edited articles were sent back I was practically bubbling with delight and relief within, when I spotted a significant dip in the red-marked changes. On the one hand it meant a less painful experience for my editor, of which I do feel very much responsible for, and on the other it meant that there was some sort of improvement =) Yayyers. There's still quite a way to go before I'm good enough, of course, but it is encouraging =)

And then there're really nice people, who are easy to get along with, and nice to work with as a consequence =) It's pretty cosy in the small two-room office, with only the big boss, two writers, an administrator and us two interns, (the configurations were changed a couple of times, but that's another story--we'll keep this simple). Nicole and JS are totally hilarious sometimes in their utter randomness and their unexpected comments and responses, of which I'd rather not quote here... We'll all like to keep our reputations intact, should I happen to return again in the future =P And then there's Kaykey, of course, who added more life into the internship altogether, without whom I'll probably be bored to death. (And twice as kan cheong about every crisis and deadline. She's super calm and efficient lar, which is life-saving at times when I panic, heh) All the MSN-ing and simultaneous whining about stupid companies with lousy info and tea-buying and (probably the highlight of these all) disturbing a very agitated Charlene every once in a while actually makes long work days more manageable.



Charm, Char and KayKey at Tom's Palette, our favourite ice cream parlour ever =) I think this is like the only picture I have of three of us...

And here's us!

Dressed down and half-dead on the last day of work, haha. There's a pretty view from the boss's office-- you can actually see the big ferris wheel at Marina and Suntec from here.

We didn't get to take pictures with Nicole, grah. The last day of internship coincided with a pending publication deadline, so neither Nicole nor big boss was around in the office, even =( JS declared that he was camera shy, so we didn't take with him, either. =( =(

Never mind. We shall be content with the scenic view from our toilet on the sixteenth floor.



Nicole promised to treat Kaykey and I to a KTV outing, so expect more pictures then! =D

Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
French political philosopher (1712 - 1778)

A canary released into the wilderness is as good as a dead canary anyway. What does it know, what can it want? Nothing, after all. Nothing at all.

Heart aches
when I sense
that wealth of pent-up sadness that lies underneath what seemed so
pretty
and polished
and noisy
and happening

and alive.




Alive?





I think once upon a time the feeling would have been called bereft. Would that be an apt word, that of loss? But how do you understand loss when you don't understand what it is that you have lost? Is it a realisation that you've never had it in the first place, that it has only existed in your idealistic imagination all this while?

*shudder*

I hadn't thought of what I was saying when the words tumbled out in keyboard-taps. And now that subconscious thoughts are crytalised into words, staring back at me, I almost fear that...

No.

But you do understand that this is gonna apply to more than one person, you, who are reading this piece, and wondering. How I wish ever so often that I had the right words or means of comfort to offer, or to be able to cast spells that makes one "magically happy", a virtual (unreal!) service that Facebook had ingeniously offered.

I do remember an awful awful stretch of ---ness (for lack of a better word), then. But you all!

I don't know how to make things better, or what to say, even, but if it helps in any way, I'm here.

And things do fall into place. Or we, adaptable human beings that we are, will ourselves fall into place, in time. And I suppose this would be sufficient, at least for now, at least until the next time around.