I just remembered I haven't illustrated the amount of work I have. Of course, work is intangible: aside from the word count (for which I believed I have hit nearly 12,000 in the form of 7 essays and 2 [short] proposals), presentations not included-- there is still the awfully time-consuming thinking and wording process.

And the reading, of course.



Okay, okay, before your eyes pop: only 12 of these books are officially my primary texts (plus 12 films, short stories, plays, poetry and two course packs) so it's SHEN JING BING LAR not as horrifying as it looks, really. The rest are just library books--which I still have to read, anyhow, in the name of diligent research.

I concluded that I should not be too hard on myself if I don't manage to finish my readings in time for class. It's difficult not to feel bad, though--I don't know how my brilliant classmates manage to finish their novels and the readings on time, and manage to stay awake and deliver comments --insightful or otherwise-- during class. Astounding. Perhaps their minds move instantaneously onto planning the next essay the second they complete an assignment.

Presently, all I can think of, after uploading my research workshop proposal presentation at 2am in the morning, is what breakfast I would like to have tomorrow.

Coffee Bean serves fantastic breakfast, by the way. Toast, and eggs, and cheese oozing all over your ham and sausages. I love! =D

It's very no life, beaming over the thought of breakfast in the wee hours of the morning, but it is 3am now and the usual people are not online for me to squeal at. Except maybe Siyi, whom I spot online even at 5am(!) on days when I'm rushing essay =P

Oh, and random fact of the day: the male actor in Japanese film comedy Welcome Back Mr McDonald is uber shuai. *beams* Problem is, I cannot remember his name because it's in Japanese-- will need to repeat it to myself a number of times before it sinks in. Alarming really, considering how many names I need to memorise-- two weeks ago I was clutching at straws in class because I cannot remember the female protagonist's name-- Tsuruko? Yasuko? Yukiko? Sachiko? Michiko? Sumiko? Taeko?

Turns out she was called Noriko. I think I should watch more Japanese films. Too pampered in Dr W's ang moh film classes, where single-syllable John and Smith and Ann and Jane would do.

Okay, I should stop writing-- I'm beginning to sound increasingly stupid. (It's compensation for heavy complex thinking prior to this, okay.)

Till the next post-essay entry, then! =)

Friday Night

I'm starving. At 2:45am in the morning =( Must conk out now, really. I spend more time before the computer than with anyone else in my family. And horror of horrors, I had endless nightmares before I woke up at 3 last night and yielded to panadol pills so that I could sleep without feeling like my head's splitting into two.

But God is good. I'm still alive =)

I'm supposed to blog about Friday night dinner with the comm at New York New York and KTV! I can't detail everything in pretty narrative form now, because I need to conk out in 10 minutes, so we'll just stick with the random little excerpts:

On needing to clean ears, or minds...

JE: ... but I need to fulfill my bond first.
WL: What? You need to fulfill your porn?

SH: How? Should it be salmon steak or chicken and prawn?
ET: Chicken and porn?

On kinky descriptions...

CY: *solemnly* Steak sounds exotic, but chicken and prawns are more... exciting.

On unabashed confessions:

WL: *removes knotted cherry stalk from mouth* Eh, it's a known fact, I'm a good kisser.

*clears throat* I think we shall not go into what was said about the margaritas.

Oh, and the fried mushrooms were way good. Always order fried mushrooms at (New York) square.

Highlight of the night has gotta be KTV, which was an utterly on-the-spot spontaneous decision. I've never sung KTV with Reso folks before, in my last three years. Horror of horrors. Anyhow Friday night KTV was uber fun! =D We established that we can wipe out the entire female population with Wai Lun on Eason Chan songs, ET on canto pop, JE on his high tenor solos (effortless, can!), and Jeremy on Tao Ze. Charm Loh's super zai on a*mei songs, Sumi on sweet solos (I must confess, she also reads Chinese better than me), and Su Hui on... anything(!) from sultry to angsty to Taiwanese-styled cuteness. Plus Su and JE are fantastic on shan1 hu2 hai3 lor. 卧虎藏龙 indeed. Oh, and I got to do my ancient Chinese songs. It's been ages since I ever sung them =)

Classics of the night include ET doing a constipated a*do number, Jeremy singing an a*mei song in a*mei range, Jia En and ET doing One Night in Beijing (!) and female descant for 不得不爱 (very distracting lar, can =P), Jeremy doing vocal gymnastics for every song ending and instrumental break, and the guys in general on 宝贝对不起, which got us all quite happy and high.

Immensely crazy... and hence immensely lovable bunch of people =)

No time write blog. Jialat. Maybe next week okay.

But thanks, my dear comm, for last Friday =) Love you all! *hugs*

Oh my. How good it'll be to study Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising Sequence for a semester! Or Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quartet. Or Diana Wynne Jone's Chrestomanci series. Or Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.

7 books, 4 books, 5 books, 3 books. 7 or 5-book sets could make up a 12,000 word HT, I daresay. And the 4- or 3-book series could make a 5,000 word ISM. Only snag is that I'll need to read them all--and most I haven't touched since secondary school. How to polish 4 books in a week and conceptualise stuff, on top of all the readings?

Kid's lit is no mean feat k. Maybe I'll do Enid Blyton, ohoho. 6 mystery books, or 5 adventure stories? Alternatively there's Oscar Wilde, and maybe 8 short, witty, depressing stories.

I don't know why the draw of children's lit, when I haven't officially been trained in that before. It's just the draw of... something we've lost, I suppose. As a kid I used to read these stories and be so glad there was an adult writer who remembered what a child wants in her world, and I kept telling myself I'll remember, too, what's it like to be a child, how it felt, that faith, that easy internalising of fiction, where complexities are simplified in crystal clarity, because we are aware of our ignorance (and the fact hasn't even begun to bother us, yet) and trusted in infinite possibilities.

And for a single, heart-stopping moment, I realised that maybe I have forgotten, somewhere along the way. Would I be able to write, not just about children, but for children, now? Prissy academic training aside, pretty fluffy decorative words aside-- could I still construct a world for the kids today?

*pause* Then again, kids today are rather scary. Nothing like what I read or what I used to recognise. But then again, the twenty-first century is scary. Darnit, I'm so early-nineteenth-century, obliging and docile, almost. What am I doing here? I should be strolling around manors, having high tea and scones, reading and writing, playing bridge daily with my lady companions, and learning to play the piano and sing. Other than the fact that my natural clumsiness might destroy a couple of fragile artifacts around the home, I should do fairly well in that era, methinks.

Okay, -bump bump- reality beckons. Before I went into the pointless digression, I was gonna say, I'm almost excited with the notion of kid's-lit, if not for the terror of deadlines looming ahead. Maybe I should start on another essay first.

Would tear hair, except that I don't have that much hair to spare, and hot as the weather is, I don't want to risk going bald. As if the brain is not already fried internally--if I expose it to additional external elements it'll explode, or something.

Speaking of which, my mummy pointed out quite severely that there's no point getting an A/B/C graded essay if the brain degenerates into a D/E/F grade, as exhibited by my increased spurts of hysteria and drama before each paper is completed. Gah.

Okay, rest time! Write again.

Mum: *stares at me downing two migraine pills* And how many more of those do you have left?
Charm: *counts* Er. Six.
Mum: *without missing a beat* You should go down to see Dr Cheong again then, to top up your supply. With five more essays you'll need to standby at least ten.

She did say that with a lot of wryness, having been so exasperated with me dying over my essays ("Look, why don't you take four-and-the-half years to finish your course?") but I did feel a tad bit insecure over the essay-pills ratio. I shan't even ask for anything extra, anymore... I just want to maintain the CAP as it is. And stay alive. And not get sunk into depression just by looking at my organiser.

Should I do an honours thesis? Independent study module? Or just take modules?

Much as I would love to do research on fairytales, or children's fiction, or sci-fi and fantasy(!), or films, or Oscar Wilde... There's still everything else to take into account.

Like, no more 11-essay term. Someone please recommend a purely MCQ science module.

Some part of me is almost tempted to do children's science fiction. But I need material. I need a research question. I need an approach. All before Nov 12.

I need time. *gulps*

Finished the essay! =D

Was dying and in tears over essay number 6 (oh look, they've all become arbitrary numbers already), thinking that after this one there's gonna be 5 more (longer!) essays till the end of term. Am surprised I even finished before daybreak. Thank God for family and friends and inspiration and half-hour naps and sweet SMSes and migraine pills. And thank God for God. You can't belief the pain of not being able to write for consecutive hours, consecutive days, so that the last word before you go to bed and the first word you awaken to is aphasia, aphasia, aphasia.

And then the crazy calming relief that washes over you when you find that you're sounding coherent again, that words and verses aren't just random, arbitrary, unrelated shapes, but things that actually can be linked together to make sense.

One hour nap, then back to school. And then maybe get my mummy out to relax and make up for my delirium and hysteria over ever deadline thus far. It's amazing how much nonsense she puts up from me.

Shall give myself a post-essay ice cream treat tomorrow!

I feel an insane, insane urge to scream.

Word count: ? /1800

The Facebook Skit

The following's done by Hindi a cappella group Penn Masala, from the University of Pennsylvania. I'm dedicating this especially to KK and Charlene and Suhui and Edlina, each one of you for rather different reasons that... *clears throat* I shall not disclose. *sweet smile*

Enjoy!



"Would you poke, if I sent you a poke...?"

What started out with the decision to lock myself up and catch up conscientiously with schoolwork and better planning for upcoming deadlines kinda melted gradually through the hols.

Not that I regretted them at all =)

Met Charlene and Kaykey last Wednesday for a hilarious specs-making session =) Thursday was a career talk session and dinner out with mum, Friday was committee meeting, which was estimated to last a couple of hours or so, but we talked from 11am till almost 6pm =P ET and Wai Lun left about 2-ish, though, leaving us four girls and Jia En having a field day discussing possible Vocal Obsession III themes, and getting terribly high, so that at one point we were going--

Charm: OH! Boxes have FOUR SIDES!
Girls: *simultaneous, high-pitch squeals of delight*

Eheheh. Jia En has a commendable tolerance level, I must say. But the girls were uber infectious lar, it's difficult not to get high =P

Caught up with Gill at night (I haven't spoken to her for so long!) and it feels really good to just ramble on and on on the phone about random stuff-- the last time we did this was like half a year ago =S

Then later in the night, talked to Charm over MSN for another 4 hours. Newfound friend! =)

Was out again on Sunday afternoon for presentation discussion with Amanda and Debbie, who are really uber hilarious =P And then Sunday night was with Huiping and Marcus for his birthday dinner. Marcus pointed out something really worth thinking about-- he was saying that we've got to catch up with our friends from our school days every once in a while, especially later on in our lives... because ultimately, these are the people who'll remind you who you were before, and who you are now.

How true, indeed =)

More of Reso last night for prac, and this afternoon with Jiayan and Suhui, then at night again with Charm and Su, in which-- hmmm, never mind =) Let's just say that I'm am ever so glad you girls are around-- and you'll understand exactly why =D

Must conk out in a minute! Haphazard entry, this, but more when I find time k!

Is it sunset already?
........................
But at least you still have the promise of tomorrow's sunrise.