tell me what do you think of me now

argh. i don’t know why and how have i degenerated so badly in terms of sitting down and just doing work. the deadline for the SEA paper is tomorrow and i still don’t even have my introduction out. argh. wtf am i doing to myself? i’m going to end up with a non-A grade for an ace-able module, at this rate. ee, you suck. seriously.

i wanted to work on it through the night but somehow and sometime i went to sleep without realising that i did. miraculously enough i managed to wake up in time for lecture, at 9.12am without setting any alarm or receiving any timely wake-up message. but this is really insane and i really have to stop doing it. soon.

the headaches and migraines i’ve been having in recent days haven’t been helping, either. i got hit by my first bad migraine in a while after watching apocalypse now. taking a nap after the usual 2 capsules of ponstan didn’t get rid of it. in fact, it felt worse than ever and i was faced with the prospect of having to go for the MAB dinner with a migraine threatening to murder my brain. but thank goodness my neighbours helped to mark my attendance and i felt a lot better after taking napan, a hot shower, a short rest and seeing if the relaxant my sister got from the doctor worked. i think the relaxant did the trick because the splitting pain finally went away.

it’s threatening to come back now, though. i’m still wondering if i should take the ponstan to prevent it from redeveloping into a migraine, or if i should save my ponstan because at the rate i’m going, i only have about 10 doses left. sigh i’ll see how it goes.

i really should be working on SEA now but i am also tempted to take a rest to prevent that migraine flare-up. and the weather now is also just perfect for a nice nap. argh. what should i do?

hate them freaking migraines. go away.

tell me what do you think of me now
that i’ve traded all my armor for a crown
come on what do you do with me now
that i’ve taken down the mirror on the wall
and the sweet rain is ready to fall
giving it up for you

my dear, we’re slow dancing in a burning room

and here’s a big one for un-productivity, because that’s what today has been all about.

just came back from harbourfront, where me maryam and yy were supposed to study at the macs there. note, supposed to. i ended up doing nothing more than reading two pages of my book – the sex sector: the economic and social bases of prostitution in southeast asia. no points for guessing why i’m reading this. incidentally i also have another book titled the sex sector, but with the sub-title of “an unenumerated economy”. haha. didn’t realise it until i took it out at macs just now.

and this is random but the double cheeseburger at macs today was somehow really good, a whole lot better than usual. in fact, it’s probably the best double cheeseburger i’ve had at macs for a long, long time. and i was so sorely disappointed (just ask maryam and yy how i was weeping) when i found out that the macs didn’t have milkshakes. argh. it might be a good thing considering the number of calories the milkshakes have, but i really want my milkshakes. boo.

and continuing about randomness, if i suddenly and “randomly” die, yy and maryam did it. one of them, or both of them together. i am dead (pun intended) serious. i know this because i overheard them plotting to kill me in a variety of very creative ways (like scaring me to death by making me sit on a rollercoaster or viking ship. or making me laugh to death, or administering death by cucumber. you get the idea.) so they can divide my possessions between the both of them. maryam will get the ipod and my birkenstocks, yy will get the green slippers and they’re fighting over my altec lansing speakers, etc. yeah i don’t like to say such things about people who i thought were my “friends” but well, just in case, you know.
(i’m just kidding, of course. but you never know…)

and today kinda sucked. first i slept longer than expected and ended up not going to the library before tutorial (just as well, actually. you’ll see why later.) or reading before that. tutorial was alright, save how a few of the people were as usual, seeming to argue for the sake of it. and i realised again today how lucky i am to have a bit of SEA history background, because it gives me an edge, no matter how tiny, over the rest. and right now i’ll take anything that gets me a better grade in any module, thank you very much.

and speaking of grades, i’m pretty pleased at my grade for the eu simulation. i’d expected to do rather poorly given that i could hardly be bothered to add on much stuff to the notes and because i was so nervous and emotional during the simulation itself, but i think i did quite well in the end :) i got 80 out of 100, and the highest score is 81 (maryam being one of those “freaks” who got it) so yes, i’m very relieved and happy it turned out okay in the end. i wonder what my group members got, though… (cue evil laughter and sinister grin.) haha.

yup, so that’s the second good grade in as many weeks, and i’m obviously quite happy about it. i have to take care not to get too complacent and get stuck in my little bubble of deluded cleverness though, or i’ll end up not studying hard enough for the exams and flunking them and screwing my CAP up instead. though i don’t think that will be a problem because my bubble will be quite promptly burst by when i get my china test. and this time i will very definitely NOT do well. like hello, factual errors in a history test. if that’s not suicidal i don’t know what is. oh well, at least it’ll jolt me back into mugging. not much time left, as it is…

and oh boy for all my so-called cleverness in studies (which i realise is in the two exposure modules. i’m still getting like B-grades for the 2000 ones. crap!) i am an absolute idiot when it comes to a lot of other things. yours truly has managed to lose her matric card. and that’s not just it, because i only realised it like… three days later? i think i lost it on friday in the library around the time i was watching the movie with maryam, because that’s the last time i saw it. but i had no idea until i was in the library today to borrow books for SEA. then horror of horrors, i’d “forgotten” my matric card. so i rushed back to my room, only to discover to my greater horror that there was no matric card anywhere on my table on in my bags. i called up the library to check if they’d found it, but to no avail. and the retarded library doesn’t allow you to borrow any books without the matric card. alternatively you could apply for a replacement card. both matric and “library” card. meaning you’ll have to fork out another 5 bucks for a library card that you will only use for about a week because that’s the time taken for the replacement matric card to be ready. thanks a lot, nus library.

so you can imagine me panicking like hell because i couldn’t borrow any books and desperately needed to do so for my SEA project, and i couldn’t think of anyone who was in hall and could spare their loan quota. but fortunately for me i was saved by xiaoxuan, who was heading back to her room after a shower and thank goodness she didn’t have any books on loan and was willing to lend me her card. she’s probably not going to read this but thanks so very much xiaoxuan, you’re my saviour!!! maybe i’ll dedicate my SEA paper to you, haha.

okay, time to go back to poverty and prostitution in SEA. and let’s hope tomorrow will be more productive than today. we’re skipping soci lecture (guess who’s lecturing?) to have breakfast at macs instead. all soci students are welcome to join us. hahaha.

and i’m sure yy (and maryam?) would agree, john mayer’s really good. love his continuum album. and paolo nutini too, i just realised i haven’t listened to him for quite some time, what with my whole dixie chicks craze and all. i kind of can’t get slow dancing in a burning room out of my head. especially, for some strange reason the line you’ll be a bitch because you can. it’s just like how yeah she caught my eye / as we walked on by / she could see from my face / that i was fucking high when james blunt’s you’re beautiful used to be stuck in my head. how i shudder at that thought now.

john mayer is <3 as is paolo nutini, dixie chicks, etc etc.

it’s not a silly little moment
it’s not the storm before the calm
this is the deep and dying breath of
this love we’ve been working on
can’t seem to hold you like i want to
so i can feel you in my arms
nobody’s gonna come and save you
we pulled too many false alarms

we’re going down
and you can see it too
we’re going down
and you know that we’re doomed
my dear
we’re slow dancing in a burning room

i was the one you always dreamed of
you were the one i tried to draw
how dare you say it’s nothing to me
baby, you’re the only light i ever saw

i make the most of all the sadness
you’ll be a bitch because you can
you try to hit me just to hurt me
so you leave me feeling dirty cos you can’t understand

easy silence.

the weather is insane. it was blazing hot in the afternoon, and still disgustingly hot in the evening and at night. and when i go and take a shower to cool down, it rains. at nearly 6am in the morning. and it’s not just raining, it’s pouring. insane, it is.

and just in case you think i’m still awake cos i’ve been studying, nope, i haven’t. it seems that the freedom from my 3-in-2 situation has made the procrastinator in me go on overdrive. zero, zilch, nada work done this entire weekend. i wonder why i even bothered to drag my soci and eu texts home.

so well, no more procrastination when i wake up in the morning later. streng verboten!

6am and i’m hardly sleepy… hmmm i think i screwed up my body clock again.

i still kind of can’t stop listening to not ready to make nice haha. i went to download their previous album home too, but i prefer taking the long way because it’s not so country-ish but very listenable. i’m also trying to listen to new music, and amy winehouse is not bad. haven’t gotten addicted to any song yet, though.

okay maybe i spoke too soon, i’m getting kind of sleepy. and the rain really is insane.

when the calls and conversations
accidents and accusations
messages and misperceptions
paralyse my mind

buses, cars, and airplanes leaving
burning fumes of gasoline
and everyone is running
and i come to find a refuge in the

easy silence that you make for me
it’s okay when there’s nothing more to say to me
and the peaceful quiet you create for me
and the way you keep the world at bay for me
the way you keep the world at bay
[dixie chicks: easy silence]

i can’t see the sun rise in the rain.

not ready to make nice.

whew, i finally get to take a short breather after one of my most hectic and tiring weeks of the sem. unfortunately, my body also decided to get a headache at the same time. oh well, better now than when i really need to mug or rush a deadline, anyway.

so, let’s recap. previously, on eeling’s mundane but highly stressful life as a result of procrastination:

can’t remember what happened on monday. i probably spent most of the time trying to do either eu or china. i think.

i didn’t sleep on monday night but still went for the soci lecture. which was another why-did-we-even-bother, walk-out-during-the-break affair. sometimes i think we shouldn’t even go for lecture because i think we kind of piss the people around us off with our commentary and jibes at TES, haha.

i went back to my room to nap for a while, and listen to the bbc documentary on alcohol for soci tutorial. unfortunately i ended up falling asleep again and only woke up at 2.15pm, the horror. rushed like mad to the tutorial and thankfully it was just a presentation by another group. and that was when i felt annoyed at myself for not having done my readings on deviance, because i had no way of evaluating their presentation to see if what they said made any sense. but then again, who has time for readings when deadlines loom on the horizon?

i was rather tired, stressed and upset before the soci tutorial, and the tutorial and the discussions just somehow managed to raise my spirits a little. then i got the soci test back and suddenly things didn’t feel too bad. hehe. and okay that’s enough, i seriously need to stop thinking the world of myself just because of one test. i suppose the china test will bring me back down to earth. very painfully, too. oh well.

we were supposed to have 2000 words about the red guard by tuesday, but surprise surprise, none of were done by then, haha. we were then supposed to meet at 3pm, which got pushed to 4pm… and later only esther came over first because vanessa had gotten a bit stuck at her portion. we read through each other’s sections and talked a bit before i had to go back to work because i wasn’t done. eventually vanessa finished before i did, and when i finally churned out my last, vaguely meaningful content paragraph we had a party in my room to celebrate.

yeah right. we read through each other’s portions just to see if it was okay. and actually we couldn’t be bothered to do more than that, we were so jaded and lazy that unless there was some majorly glaring error or whatever, we’d just leave the entire thing as it was. which was precisely what we did. we cobbled an introduction and conclusion together and just threw our different portions under appropriately named headings like “political”, “economic” and “social”. haha.

vanessa left as soon as we were done, but esther hung around so she could grab some songs from me. it was quite fun talking to her, and i was pleasantly surprised to find that she likes dishwalla too. well, just candleburn, but that’s still a start. and haha i guess in a way i’m glad for the project, cos i got to make a new friend :)

and i’m also glad michelle and shufang moved to our wing, cos we’ve gotten to know each other better and we’re all so full of nonsense sometimes. i spent some time outside their doors talking and laughing about shufang and michelle’s late night antics, and huishan’s “exposure” to all the expedition people, haha. and if not for the fact that i had to go back to compiling our china essay i would probably have just talked crap with them for the whole night.

as it turned out, i fell asleep while doing some editing and before i did the bibliography, so panic ensued when i finally woke up. it didn’t actually take that long but i was panicky because i hadn’t done very much for eu. oh well, not that i had much time to do it anyway.

i went back to my room after the china lecture hoping to churn out some material for eu, but after a while i just really couldn’t be bothered so i went to look for maryam and yy, who were selling tshirts at a corner of the central forum. coincidentally vanessa appeared at our tshirt stall and after we were done selling tshirts we headed for eu together.
(no they weren’t actually selling tshirts, but they looked like they were because they were squashed into the corner with all these tshirts around them, haha.)

we ended up being a bit late, and i think in the future we should never let vanessa choose seats during eu and why history (or any module that has our friend YZQ in it) because it seems like everytime she does it, we end up behind or in the same row as YZQ. it was rather funny because i didn’t realise it until i looked over, and YZQ gave me one of his slightly creepy i-know-you looks. why oh why does he have to major in history too?

and it was the eu simulation after that, which was… interesting. i have to admit that half the time i was getting a bit confused because i hadn’t read up as much as i should have, and that i became rather caught up and emotional, haha. my usual bout of nervousness at the beginning didn’t help, either. but i suppose it was rather funny how most of the solutions were either plebiscites or “another conference at a later date”, how everyone were kind of talking at the same time, how some decisions got really screwed up (like russia in with war guilt. what the hell!?) and some others. france came out pretty good though i got really confused when usa proposed terms that were different from what we’d negotiated. oh well, it’s over and i don’t care.

but i suppose i’m rather envious of maryam and yy in the sense that they got to know the people in their groups quite well. in my case we/they didn’t do very much work and we didn’t even meet up that much (believe it or not, we never even had a meeting where everyone was present) so we had obviously limited opportunities for interaction. but never mind that i didn’t get to know them, what annoyed me a little was when one of them apparently sent a message to the wrong person. it’s one of those incidents when you’re like bitching about someone and accidentally send the message to them instead. she wasn’t bitching per se, but she was like laughing at me for “acting so angry” and how i “got into the mood of the actual event”. maybe she wasn’t trying to be mean but obviously no one would like to hear this kind of thing said behind one’s back? but well i don’t really care now, at least i bothered enough about my grade to put in some effort to read and contribute to the group. and i’ve always just been like that, i can get really emotional and passionate about things i strongly believe in. like me and harry and hermione back when i was still really crazy over it, haha. i think my grade will be affected by what i feel is a lousy performance from me, plus lousy notes, but what matters most is that it’s over. whew.

i went for dinner with yy at vivo after that, which ended up being carl’s jr again, haha. there really just isn’t anything else at vivo that’s good and not too expensive. and with burger king selling out we realise that carl’s jr now seems very value for money. the burger’s bigger and better, and you don’t pay that much more. i think the worst thing that ever happened to my waistline, arteries and all is carl’s jr opening at vivo, haha.

despite bus 10 being abysmally slow to arrive i managed to return to hall in time for the EHOC meeting with time to spare. and hmmm, i don’t know what i might have gotten myself into, actually. i didn’t realise that it was so serious and commitment-heavy. there goes my holidays… darn. but oh well, it’ll keep me occupied and ease my workload during sem time since i don’t have to join so many comms or sports. and it does seem rather fun, too. i’m not going to enjoy moving my stuff from E block all the way to A block, though…

and in a moment of rational insanity, me michelle and shufang decided to go to the west coast macs and study, because we were hungry and also afraid of falling asleep in our rooms. which would be terrible for me and michelle because we both hadn’t done our soci assignments. so we got our stuff and off we went. i didn’t realise the roads around fong seng were so empty late at night, and it was somehow fun walking across the roads like we owned them, haha.

after a somewhat long walk we finally reached our destination, and it was rather empty so we got ourselves booth seats that was fortunately near a power point. we ate first, and had quite a lot of fun talking nonsense, as usual. and it was hilarious because michelle and shufang were like okay let’s NOT talk about flag or anything to do with EHOC but somehow or another the conversation just kept drifting back there, especially since michelle was writing about hall life for the soci assignment. like she mentioned boys playing takraw, which made the conversation turn to block A and the holiday stay and sharing rooms before we were like eh we’re talking about EHOC again! haha.

and just in case you were wondering, we were there from like 2am all the way to 7am. insane, yes. but i suppose our rather insane studying/work session was quite fun and productive, after all. i enjoyed myself (except for when i was about to fall asleep and when i was trying to write stuff for the assignment) and wouldn’t mind doing it again. if only i had a car and my license, it’ll make things so much more convenient, haha. but yeah i want to study there sometime again, because i think it’s not too bad for studying. there’s food (macs) and coffee (mccafe), the two most important things. and there we won’t have to face the girl from the chope-comfy-seats-at-starbucks secondary school girl, haha.

and this is really random but one of my indulgences and things of the moment is… strawberry milkshake. hahaha. i’ve gotten rather hooked onto the strawberry milkshake from the fruit juice store (you don’t want to know exactly how many times i’ve drank it this week) and because all the espresso machines in macs were retardedly off i had the macs strawberry milkshake. which isn’t too bad, actually. it’s funny, i’ve never been a really big fan of strawberry milkshakes but i’m really just crazy over it now. if you need a favour from me, just bribe me with a strawberry milkshake now, haha. or, if you just want to make me happy, you know what to do… hahaha.

and i was so damned freaking tired after the all-nighter at macs, i didn’t even know when i fell asleep. i woke up to the sound of maryam messaging to ask if we were going to meet at 12 (it was 11.51am) and i was like oh shit when did i even fall asleep? scary. maryam came over, and i went to pick up my laundry. and i was damned pissed off to find that somehow someone had managed to put MY laundry on top of the DUSTY dryer and put someone else’s clothes in my laundry basket. like what the hell??? the sheer illogicality of it just boggles me. after some pottering around we went to megabites for lunch, where i ate something apart from the western food and sandwiches for once, haha. the nasi padang was actually not too bad. i really like the chicken that kind of tasted like satay and mutton, haha. and i think the root beer they have there isn’t too bad, either.

and oh i also decided not to go for SEA lecture (i really should stop ponning it but i feel so damned bored and sian whenever i do go) and join maryam in watching one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, instead. we only managed to watch about half of it but it was not bad. it’s quite funny, and really interesting to see a young jack nicholson, too. and we’re watching apocalypse now for why history, which is cool because i finally get to watch my post-modernist flick. i’ve been wanting to watch one ever since cultural studies last sem, but never got a chance to, so this is a nice coincidence.

okay i’m getting bored of mundane-detail-blogging so i shall go off and do other more unproductive things. haha. oh oh i nearly forgot. i just set up a tumblr, which is essentially a blog, but a rather cool and different one where it’s really easy for you to post pictures, videos, links and conversations. if you use blogger you know how annoying it is to post pictures and other stuff on it, so my tumblr will be the place where i will post photos and videos and other stuff that i find and like while surfing around. my tumblr’s at eerational.tumblr.com, go check it out :D

and i leave you with lyrics from my song of the moment, the dixie chicks’ not ready to make nice. i heard it when i was listening to the album, but only really started liking it after hearing it on class 95 in my cousin’s car, and listening to it again and checking out the lyrics when i got home. yeah i like the dixie chicks, i can’t believe i never listened to them earlier.

forgive, sounds good
forget, i’m not sure i could
they say time heals everything
but i’m still waiting

i’m through with doubt
there’s nothing left for me to figure out
i’ve paid a price, and i’ll keep paying it

i’m not ready to make nice,
i’m not ready to back down,
i’m still mad as hell
and i don’t have time
to go round and round and round
it’s too late to make it right
i probably wouldn’t if i could
cos i’m mad as hell
can’t bring myself to do what it is
you think i should

i know you said
why can’t you just get over it,
it turned my whole world around
and i kind of like it

i made my bed, and i sleep like a baby,
with no regrets and i don’t mind saying,
it’s a sad sad story
that a mother will teach her daughter
that she ought to hate a perfect stranger.
and how in the world
can the words that i said
send somebody so over the edge
that they’d write me a letter
saying that i better shut up and sing
or my life will be over

i’m not ready to make nice,
i’m not ready to back down,
i’m still mad as hell
and i don’t have time
to go round and round and round
it’s too late to make it right
i probably wouldn’t if i could
cos i’m mad as hell
can’t bring myself to do what it is
you think i should

i’m not ready to make nice,
i’m not ready to back down,
i’m still mad as hell
and i don’t have time
to go round and round and round
it’s too late to make it right
i probably wouldn’t if i could
cos i’m mad as hell
can’t bring myself to do what it is
you think i should

forgive, sounds good.
forget, I’m not sure i could.
they say time heals everything,
but i’m still waiting.

the heart of the matter

whew, the china essay’s finally out of the way. and let’s forget about how it’s kind of like three different essays trying masquerade as one giant one, shall we?

am now panicking over EU because i haven’t really gotten my notes together or really read up as much as i should have. which ordinarily would be bad enough, but worse still if we do end up getting backstabbed by the usa people. concern over my grade aside, i’ll be really disappointed if that was the case because well, i’ll feel terribly deceived? or maybe stupid, for falling for someone’s smooth talk. haha.

just need to get over the simulation, churn out two pages of soci and i will finally be able to take a well-needed breather. to catch up on my readings, ironically and sadly enough. but i really need a break, apart from a few procrastination ones i haven’t really let up on myself. and i need a good, normal night of sleep.

hmmm i have the feeling that we might get our china test back soon. but probably during tutorial next week, not during lecture. oh well, we’ll save the bad news for next week. the good news was getting back my soci test and being pleasantly surprised with an… a plus :) :) :) i’d thought that i’ll do badly because my brain appeared to be malfunctioning at the time of the test and it felt like i was writing nonsense (especially when i couldn’t recall the definiton of gender) but somehow it turned out alright in the end. am pretty pleased with myself but i suppose i shouldn’t get too carried away. hmmm, if i do manage to do well for 1101E maybe i should consider that double major, after all… i mean, i did get A- for soci of food… hahaha.

okay time to shower and squeeze in some eu reading or something. good luck to me for the rest of the long, long day.

broken inside.

i am tired.

damn freaking tired. physically, mentally, emotionally. it’s hard to carry on and i don’t know how i can do it anymore.

argh.

doesn’t help that my body is rebelling against me again. weird, scary aches in my right hip and knee that come and go. my left heel hurting incessantly again. my thumb helpfully contributing with an occasional throbbing every once in a while. and now my stomach is roiling around too.

wish i could take one giant painkiller and be rid of it all. too bad life seldom goes the way you want it.

and too bad, life just sucks.

way back into love, take one

sigh, that settles it, i think my eu simulation grade is rather doomed, because we definitely don’t have enough material or research but the rest of them don’t really give a damn and consequently don’t think they need to contribute anything more than the paltry amounts of information that they have submitted. information, i may add, that is very easily google-able. bare facts, with some attempt at structure and that’s it. interpret and infer everything else on your own, thank you very much. and it’s not fair to leverage such claims on all the members because i think at least one of them bothered to pick up books from the library and post some related information, even if it’s probably just from the book itself. at least she bothered.

i’m definitely not happy with what’s happening but at this point there’s not much i can do anymore. i’ve already tried prodding and saying in the nicest possible ways for them to please start working to save this but if they refuse to respond appropriately (meaning submit information that actually has gone through some thought processes) there’s nothing else i can do, is there? and call me a whiny, complaining bitch for my back-to-back rants about them, i don’t care. i probably AM one. writing about how things piss me off always helps and i’m not going to begrudge myself of the best way i know to release all this pent-up feelings. at least they don’t know about this blog and i can say all i want about them as long as i don’t mention their names. yeah, i’m in a damn bitchy mood now.

the only source of possible salvation for the simulation is that i think i have an ally in the… oh wait i better shut up, not a good idea to reveal too much about french plans, just in case vanessa actually does read my blog cos she’s with the germans. better safe than sorry, haha. but yeah i can’t help being paranoid because i keep wondering if i’m being led by the nose to get backstabbed during the simulation itself. but if that’s the case they’re spending a damn lot of energy just on hoodwinking me eh.

and sometimes i wonder how much of what i feel is real, because it seems like i can psycho myself into feeling whatever i want myself to feel? after a few bad experiences i really can’t help but question my capacity for feelings now, especially when i appear to be confronted with new, somewhat foreign ones now. is this real? am i just being delusional again? well, i suppose time will tell. but just in case you were wondering, no, i’m not reverting to my (i have to admit) sadly misguided self. i like to think i’ve thrown it out of myself and that it’s never coming back.

and okay, enough random utterings. the visit to the sikh temple on sunday was a lot more fruitful and interesting than i thought it would be. i learnt a lot of things about sikhism, which really sounds like a very nice, feel-good, “equal” religion especially when compared to most of the mainstream religions. equality among men and women and no class distinctions being the most interesting aspects, of course. and incidentally these are the aspects that are rather examinable from a sociological point of view. which kind of makes me realise that the fun part about soci is that it’s everywhere, hmmm…

okay, back to work. i realise with a bucketload of pity for myself that i have to churn out 2000 words of china by tomorrow night. nope, no sleeping tonight. maybe i’ll get to eat hall breakfast for the first time in ages, this time.

and hehe i just love this duet from music and lyrics. the demo version is hilarious (just a little louder, cos this song is intended for humans) and strangely nice.

i’ve been living with a shadow overhead
i’ve been sleeping with a cloud above my bed
i’ve been lonely for so long
trapped in the past, i just can’t seem to move on

i’ve been hiding all my hopes and dreams away
just in case i ever need them again someday
i’ve been setting aside time
to clear a little space in the corners of my mind

all i want to do is find a way back into love
i can’t make it through without a way back into love
oh oh oh

i’ve been watching but the stars refuse to shine
i’ve been searching but i just don’t see the signs
i know that it’s out there
there’s got to be something for my soul somewhere

i’ve been looking for someone to shed some light
not somebody just to get me through the night
i could use some direction
and i’m open to your suggestions

all i want to do is find a way back into love
i can’t make it through without a way back into love
and if i open my heart again
i guess i’m hoping you’ll be there for me in the end
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

there are moments when i don’t know if it’s real
or if anybody feels the way i feel
i need inspiration
not just another negotiation

all i want to do is find a way back into love
i can’t make it through without a way back into love
and if i open my heart to you
i’m hoping you’ll show me what to do
and if you help me to start again
you know that i’ll be there for you in the end
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
- hugh grant and drew barrymore, “way back into love”

the more i know, the less i understand

blah. i’m like the epitome of sloth now, just when it’s probably the worst time ever to be lazy and sleepy all the time. at least for the moment i’m prevented from going back to sleep by how my room has reverted to its warm, stuffy, makes-me-feel-gross-and-sticky ways again. blah. if i want to sleep again i’ll have to take a shower, but i don’t particularly want to because i don’t want to sleep unnecessarily and because i don’t know if i have enough detergent to last me the week. haha.

and well yes i know i haven’t blogged in quite some time. was either too lazy or too busy, i’ll let you decide which was it. and well i was blogging an entry the other day but i fell asleep halfway through and was too lazy/tired to continue when i woke up so i just saved the draft and abandoned it… haha.

nothing much to blog about the past few days, which have been positively slothful days. lots of sleeping and slacking when i should be working, etc. am suffering from a terribly minuscule amount of willpower now, i’m hoping it improves pronto. it’d better, i still have tons of work to do, sigh.

like i need to start on the china paper which i haven’t, because i’m still caught up in the quagmire of the eu simulation. unfortunately for me some deity of projects up there hates me or something, because i’ve managed to end with a none-too-stellar group for the second sem running. here’s an idea of what it’s like:
- we haven’t met as a complete group before, save for a brief moment during tutorial, i think
- of the meetings we’ve had so far, i’m the only one who has been present at all of them
- our meetings seldom last longer than half an hour because it mostly consists of me explaining roughly what stands france will take and us allocating parts to do
- which some of us don’t do. granted i am guilty of not submitting my material yet but what about the other two doing the external issues? and happily for me, when i posted a nice long announcement highlighting what parts everyone was assigned to and roughly how we should disseminate our information, only one person responded at all. after i’d smsed everyone about it.
- and because i want to keep everyone in the loop, i draft the emails we’re sending to the other groups and send them to everyone and ask them to see if they’re okay. only the same person from above replied. i gave up and just emailed it out. and it’s rather sad when other groups respond to your email faster than your own members do.

at least two of them did submit stuff, though well, i hate to say this but the quality is a bit suspect. one is still alright if refined i think, but the other is… sigh. she was supposed to cover the demilitarisation bit, and upon checking out her work i realised that all she did was to compile all the terms in the original treaty of versailles that had to do with demilitarisation into an 8-page ms word file. no explanation for why we want these terms, problems we might face trying to get the allies to agree with us, etc. eight pages. at this point no one else had submitted anything and i developed the paranoid fear that no one else would submit anything, or that it would all be like that. i’m not trying to impose intellectual superiority or anything like that, but please, i’m sure you could put in more effort? and if you’re really not sure about what to do, ask?

sigh. i’m so afraid of having to carry everything on my back again. and i don’t want to, which means i will be calling people up soon. even if i didn’t have my other project to worry about, one person deciding and doing everything for the group is not the way to go. and it’s times like this that i really don’t know what to do. if i take the initiative and try and step up, people will leverage claims of me being domineering, trying to get my own way and thinking that only my opinions are right. i admit that i am especially prone to the latter and that it’s a major fault of mine, but it’s not like i’m not open to suggestions. but it’s really difficult when hardly any suggestions are even offered, let alone plausible, workable ones. but if i don’t step up, if the whole thing falls through i’ll be accused of not doing anything.

and the thing is that in situations like this i always rather bear the burden of more work and possibly the “evil domineering bitch” claims than sit back and just do my assigned portion of the project. it’s a project, which means my grade is also dependent on what my group members come up with, so i have to care about the rest of the project. even if the rest of them don’t seem to, even if they turn in slipshod work, inadvertently or not. and this is why i dislike projects. especially ones when you’re thrown in with people you don’t know. i don’t like being on dependent on other people and their work for your grade, because i don’t feel it’s fair in the sense that you can be as hardworking and good at whatever you do as you can be, but ultimately the rest of your grade is dependent on what the rest do. at the very least only 10% of my grade for this simulation will rest with my group members and our overall performance as a group, but it rankles to know that those in a “good” group will easily get that 10% while i have to slog like crazy over my individual bits, and have to really shove my entire group along at the same time.

i don’t see it happening, but i suppose there is always the chance that my group members will step up. eventually. and argh. all that is happening now is making me reluctant to involve the other members as much as i should be doing, because i keep feeling that they don’t really know their stuff. at least one or two of them, that is. and this is the domineering bitch in me speaking, i’m afraid that they’ll ruin “my plans”. haha. okay i’m talking about meeting up with the other groups to work out some deals before the simulation itself. when they brought up meetings i was initially reluctant to go because i doubt i have the time, but i realise that it might be counter-productive to send someone else and have them end up making deals disadvantageous to our cause. but on the other hand i’m also iffy about not involving the rest of them… sigh. as it stands, if everyone (including me, i suppose) doesn’t submit their assigned portions then i suppose i will just be my EDB (evil domineering bitch) self and go on my own since it’s unlikely that anyone else in the group will have a grasp of most of the issues concerning france. i hope i’ll be proven wrong over sunday, though.

okay i suppose that’s enough bitching and EDB-ing from me. shall get back to churning out my portion, which i’m having problems with cos i can’t really think of enough reasons to press for some of our claims, haha. it’s like i had all these ideas when i was reading stuff, but i stupidly didn’t write them down and it’s obviously all gone… oh well. i wish my sunday was completely free, but it isn’t thanks to harry and the incessant amount of work he’s piling on us. we have to do a presentation on the later topics we’re doing, after observing sociological phenomenon and the like, so we’re going to a sikh temple. which i don’t mind doing, but now is just a bad time. and to make matters worse harry has very kindly given us yet more questions and work for tutorial. sometimes i can’t decide if i should like harry for livening up soci, making it a lot more interesting and providing way better explanations than most of the lecturers, or hate him for piling on so much work and making soci tutorial the only tutorial i have to prepare for like crazy.

and hmmm i’m kind of listening to some of the songs and albums i downloaded but never really listened to before, and i realise that india.arie is actually pretty good. my only gripe is that some of the songs sound a bit alike… but i suppose that’s called a distinctive style? it makes for very easy listening on the ears, though.

okay, less talk, more work.

(and as a final note, god, i’m really dying to get my hair cut. does anyone know of a decent and not too expensive hair salon around here?)

the more i know, the less i understand
all the things i thought i knew, i’m learning them again
i’ve been tryin’ to get down to the heart of the matter
but my will gets weak
and my thoughts seem to scatter
but i think it’s about forgiveness

sleep-sleep

gah. my body is crazy. it gets hungry at strange times even though i eat regular meals, fine. but to seemingly get hungry only after i’ve brushed my teeth is just… argh! and i just refuse to eat something and brush my teeth again. not that there’s anything i feel like eating now, thanks to the ieatishootipost blog, which just featured the tanjong rhu pau. and now i can’t stop thinking about the tanjong rhu charsiew pau. argh!

the smart thing to do would be to sleep off the hunger but i’m reluctant to do so, seeing as how i’ve been dreadfully un-productive ever since i came back from vivo, and well, i’ve been horribly lazy these few days in general. grrr. my sin of the moment is definitely sloth, with gluttony coming in a very close second.

and bah. i overestimated the effects of caffeine on myself. since i was totally awake after downing a can of nescafe coffee, i thought it wouldn’t hurt to take a short 10 minute nap when my eyelids got a bit heavy at about 4am. can you say big mistake?
after sleeping for 10 minutes on my chair, i cleverly decided to go back to sleep for a little while more. when i woke up, it was about 8am in the morning and i was sleeping on my bed. it really befuddles me how i manage to move from my chair to my bed without realising it, sometimes. granted, my legs were already on my bed but to move until my head was on my pillow etc is just rather nuts. people sleepwalk, i sleep-sleep. insane.

(this was an incomplete post)

actually, it’s not that bad.

damn, i’m in one of my want-to-do-anything-but-work funks. the only work i’ve done since returning to my room is some reading for the eu simulation before dinner. and laundry, if you can consider that work. before dinner (which was quite sucky. i swear the quality of food is taking a serious nosedive) i had a nice long nap, only waking up to put my laundry into the dryer. too bad it’s not like, automatic. haha.

soci lectures feel like a waste of time. don’t get me wrong, i rather like soci, but the lectures just really put me off. some of them are alright but those by TES are really quite dreadful and feel like a waste of time, because his explanations and elaborations are well, useless. i’d rather just use his powerpoint slides as a very very rough outline, and read the readings in the textbook and coursepack. we left during the break since it was such a blah lecture. one of the funny parts, apart from all his mispronunciations (we all choked when he said “bargirls” because it sounded just like “buggers”. lol.) was when he let us off for the break and i was thinking why do we need a break? it’s not like our brain has even been marginally taxed! it’s not like he’s taught anything!
i was just amused by that, in comparison to say dr kelly giving us a break at 3.15pm after saying half an hour ago that he was just going “finish this bit” or something like that. and in eu you definitely need the break because it’s like information overload and feverish, thumb-stressing (yeah i still have a retarded thumb) note-taking. if i’m not asleep, that is.

we crashed back in my room for a while before maria came along and it was time for us to head to vivo to meet lynn. and it was definitely good to see her again, after not seeing her for… i can’t even remember how long it’s been. over a year? funnily enough it doesn’t even feel that long. after getting a bit lost because vivo is just way too big, we finally found our way to the kim gary hk restaurant.

well, to call it a restaurant might be pushing it a bit, but the label of a food outlet is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is 1) the price and more importantly, 2) the food. and kim gary was rather good in both aspects. the food items were rather reasonably priced (as opposed to a certain market-concept eatery on the third floor) and when the food came it was pretty good. in fact most of the food sounded or looked good, and i kind of can’t wait to try the other stuff there. too bad it’s definitely not halal so i’ll have to drag my hedony-buddy (aka yy. haha!) there sometime. not that she’ll need to be be dragged, i suspect. i suppose the only obstacle is that the queues for kim gary are usually rather long, which means we’ll have to go during off-peak hours and at the moment we definitely don’t have the time for that. oh well.

rushed back to school for my eu meeting, which was short but still not too bad in the sense that we did decide on some stuff. went to go zap books for the simulation after that, before heading back to my room to dig through and pore over jstor articles on the red guards until my eyes were dying and it make me feel like puking. literally, because i got a bout of indigestion. very highly annoying since it was just before we had our meeting. strangely enough it disappeared for the duration of the meeting, and came back as soon as esther was out of the door. blah. but it was a good discussion cos at least we know roughly what we have to do, and by when.

can’t remember what i was doing after that, but i only went to bed in the wee hours of the morning, as usual. and as a result i overslept by nearly an hour. though fortunately that is not as bad as it sounds because i set my alarm for 8.30am for 10am lessons. and believe me when i say that is very, very necessary. and tutorial was very… hmmm. i don’t know, it wasn’t very directly related to the syllabus in a sense, because it was about the story of ah q by lu xun. in fact it was kind of more like a literature lesson because we were discussing which characters and events allude to what events and figures in the chinese history of that period. and if you recall, literature tends to have a soporific effect on me, so go figure as to what happened halfway through the tutorial… and i was sitting in front too. crap.

met maryam at megabites (m-alliteration! haha.) before heading to the library to exchange readings for the eu simulation. and i have to confess that i’m horrible at employing the photocopier, or at least understanding the logic of placing the orientations of the pages so that you can get nice double-sided copies of double-sided things without having to manually scan them in. which i also incidentally managed to screw up later. don’t ask me how. moral of the story is, don’t hire me to photocopy stuff for you. at least not double-sided things.

lunch was at macs, and i didn’t like the fries there today, because they weren’t in the least bit crispy, but they weren’t soggy either so it was just weird. we had a nice reminiscence of childhood books and things like that, before we parted ways because maryam wanted to return to the library, and i, to my room.

and oh, man u won the charity match versus the europe xi! granted that they were missing a few first-choice players, but still. and apparently ronaldo scored a magnificent free kick that i would love to look at. i quote soccernet:
“Ronaldo’s effort, teed up with Jonny Wilkinson-like precision, bent so many ways before rasping into the top corner that Valencia’s Santiago Canizares, widely acknowledged as one of the best keepers in Europe, began by moving with it, then just gave up and watched it fly past him…”
haha. sounds good eh. i hope ronaldo stays in for the long haul. and i’m also pleased to note that the heat managed to win again. a narrow win yes, but they came from 17 down, which really is no mean feat, especially without dwyane wade. let’s hope dwyane wade recovers in time for the play-offs, now that it looks like we’ll make it after all :D

okay, i’ve definitely very totally procrastinated a hell lot of time away. which i did by playing this game called peggle deluxe which is damned freaking addictive. maryam, don’t download it if you want to get any work done.

okay time to work… or actually, go eat supper cos dinner was so sucky. ARGH i hate myself sometimes.