I haven't looked into the NUS blogfest thingie, but when they first advertised for entries last month, I was thinking Are they serious? People do actually submit their blog addresses? Woah, no way am I gonna try, lor... The publicity! Eek! What if my lecturers see, huh, all these nonsense rants at wee hours in the morning at a period which I'm supposed to be reading, and researching, and writing essays? Like now.

You incorrigible girl, go and finish your writeup, or start going through your Romanticism notes, or something. I'm blogging way too much, but it's one of these random little things I do, to jump start my ideas and get words and expressions out, so there is some semblance of flow.

Isn't very exciting though, when no one else blogs and no one else leaves notes (my dear Charm, they are all rushing assignments too) Sigh. Go back and do your research and writeup and essay, k...

I like anthropology. Tutorial is really fun! And the people are really really nice and chatty without being unnecessaily cheem, and it's not difficult to have a discussion where everyone can throw ideas out freely.... as compared to the 9am tut right before that when my eyes will glaze over and my mind struggle with an overdose of information and my thoughts in a wild fumble wondering how come everyone else is so freaking cheem and sound like they really do know what is going on even when things get so convulated...!

The problem about fornightly anthro (and SS) tutorials, though, is that you don't get round to knowing people well enough for it to last more than a semester. Which is sad lar.

Just a random thought. Which is probably why Reso means a lot, the friendships that last, the getting-to-know-you-and-grow-along-with-one-another :) Transience and uncertainty and shifting changes are all very well and pretty, but I like things that last. Hence the potted, rooted flowers, rather that the daintily beautiful but rapidly fading bouquet.

CHARM! I'm majorly peeved with you! Why do you have to tense up and panic and therefore majorly mess up your solo line by your sharp panicked gasp of breath and unstable placement that results in your insecure trembly long notes and your shrill squeak-of-a-high-note and... ugh, even your mid-range crackles! When you know very well that you can pull it off decently when you're practising with your group-mates, and are even comfortable enough to set aside your scores and play with dynamics, and when you know that you have strong enough a background to support you, when you know that you can, upon first try for tonight's prac, hit your B with ease and glide down properly, because you were so relaxed and so unperturbed then? You need to snap out of this psychological barrier, you silly girl, and stop your solo from falling apart the moment you have extra pairs of eyes watching you, else concert how? how? *agitated* You've been singing onstage since secondary school, can, and here you are still freaking out... Oi, zhen qi yi dian, ke yi mah?

Aahhhhhh!!!! *exasperation* What do I do with you, Charm?

Quick follow-up.

I am insanely glad to be out of my makeup, although I still smell of pungent nail polish remover (silver toenails look nice in the first two hours or so, and then I get mildly startled each time I look down and spot them glinting up at me and wonder briefly whose toes those are before it dawned that they belong to me.) No, lar, it's not a fancy dress party I went for, it's just a role I'm playing in our Singapore film project, where we've got to make a mini-Singapore-film of our own, and I was suppose to act the part of this deviant and terribly lonely girl.

Which is really very odd, because not only am I an amateur in acting, I am an amateur in being--or dressing--deviant, too. (I can't work that darned eyeliner properly, lar... and purple lip-gloss! *wails at Maria again* I look like I just downed poison, wu-xia-ju style, and should, more aptly, lie in a faint in some handsome hero's arms gasping "I--will--die--without--the--antidote...The--spider--spirit--has--poisoned--me---You--must--run...Don't--bother--to--save--me...") But of course, this is an English programme, and therefore with complementary blackened eyes I just look malevolent and vamp-ish, more gothic villianess than dying heroine. (Sigh. No handsome hero. *grins*)

Okay. I'm exaggerating. Aftermath of the intoxicating nail-polish-remover.

It's just kinda difficult to get into character, because I am tempted to smack the young protagonist and tell her to wake up her idea because I think of the girl in the mirror with her makeup and her black mini-skirt and black top and her growling frustration at her mother and her friends and the depressing entries she writes in her blog and... It's not who she is, but the silly little thing cannot untangle herself from her own misery.

She isn't what I want to be, at any point in my life. This is not an outlet for vicarious rebelliousness and untapped potential to unleash the darker side of the self, or something. All I see in this girl is a gaping hole, and an aching desire to fill it up. But she can't, because she's looking in all the wrong places, and her family doesn't give her the emotional fulfilment she needs. *shudder* And you wonder what you can do with her, when things are so warped.

Gosh. I sound like some prissy kid who thinks herself too well-brought-up to be able to empathise properly. My apologies. I am so freaking conservative, I sometimes suspect that I'm supposed to be born in 18th century England or ancient China. Char was telling me the other day that I exist on a seperate plane on my own, of a seperate time and space, haha. Although indeed there's more truth to that expression than one can imagine.

Okay now. Must snap out of musings like that, and direct my textual analysis to where it's needed... ie, the three essays lined up for the coming weeks. For all my inability to act obviously deviant, I'm quite beyond completing enough readings within the stipulated time in order to qualify as a proper guai kia. Sigh.

I'll never get used to seeing myself in purple lip gloss (wah say Maria where did you ever get that from?!) and intense black eyeliner and eyeshadow smudged down the side of my face, I think. Very gothic, Charm. Just recalled that I didn't take a picture to remember it by, haha, but there is still one more scene of that to go. Oh well.

I'm exhausted. *flops over and sublimates into a puddle* Filming is not quite as easy as it sounds. Four and a half scenes done, three and a half to go.

Off to the shower. Must scrub the remnants of black eyeliner off my face so that I won't scare myself =)

Howl's Moving Castle is absolutely beautiful.

*blissful sigh*

It probably wouldn't make as much sense without having read Diana Wynne Jones's book first, so that you get a proper feel of the original and stretch your imagination and delve into character a bit... the movie just helps to expand, grandly, the visuals... But it's beautiful all the same =)

It's been so so long since I've watched a movie, or read a proper light fantasy book like Diana Wynne Jones, that this one movie totally swept me off my feet. It's probably something to do with watching a VCD in the quiet night alone, another with recalling all the times I'll gleefully submerge myself in Jones's book, revelling in a world totally apart from ours, beautiful, enchanting, imaginative, one that doesn't put on flairs and pretences of inaccessibility, but is delightfully complex in its simplicity, so that the light shades of romantic subplot echoes with irresistable sweetness.

*blissful sigh*

Nostalgia and all sorts of feel-good-ness. I've forgotten what it's like to sit and enjoy a movie without worrying about time.

I want a Diana Wynne Jones book for my birthday! Archer's Goon, maybe, or Howl's Moving Castle, or Witch Week, or something from the Chrestomanci series... And it doesn't matter that it's written for children, because that's exactly the point. I'm getting tired of the self-conscious text written for adults, that struggles to explain so much, yet consciously casts a veil over what it wants to say so that the stuff lurks under the surface, and you need to probe deeply for it to yield you its textual richness. Quite unlike a proper children's fantasy book that doesn't attempt to cheemify itself--what matters is the story, not the moral-behind-the-story... A proper children's book warms quickly to the story, and sweeps you right into their world with little self-conscious distractions or allusions or explanations. Yet it takes a child to grasp, with keen understanding, the complexities of a child's fantasy book, without forfeiting any of the enjoyment and genuine submersion within the story. It's a skill that gets lost in the hands of a growing adult. So we'll need to learn it all over again, the ability to appreciate, the instinctive impulse to feel without intellectual rationalisation, to get a better understanding of the story as a whole, like it's part of you, a world that is an extension of your desires.

If I had my way, I'll demand that all things should be understood only in this manner. :)

I shall return to reality in a little while. It was good while it lasted, though. Oh, if only...

Weary-kinda-tired.

Finished essay at 6 in the morning.

Dinner at the temple till 11pm just now. Reminded me of my grandpa. so much.

Almost expected to find him walk up to me to give me that customary pat on the head, before melting back into the crowd, like he always used to do...

Am reminded of a lot of things that I still have not lived up to. Not the tiniest bit.

I'm tired and panicky and conflicted. Which probably means I shan't continue in a long strain of narrative berating myself and make everyone miserable reading the entry.

Readings. Must do readings. And sleep. And presentation notes...

*hums* hearing voices telling me that I should get some sleep, because tomorrow might be good or something...

Finished my second essay of the week. Yay!

In less than an hour the earlier households will stir, and the morning-session children awaken, while I... I shall go have my two-hour nap for the night :)