Whatever Works

I am still coming to terms with the KBox mishap yesterday. What I managed to do defies belief. I managed to repeatedly insult Cheuk Ho on his birthday. I managed to ruin the mood at the place with an ill-timed and ill-judged glass smashing act. The most shocking bit, however, is the way I managed to do these without realising anything amiss or pondering any consequences. It scares me how indiscretionate and callous I seem to have become. Just about everybody in attendance has branded me a person without EQ or SQ, and not without cause. I do not wish to delve into how misjudging the trajectory of a loaded bag of stuff has at best a tenuous link to EQ or SQ because then I'll be accused of refuting these people's claims which just have to be absolutely and wholly true. Fair enough. I cannot be right, it's not allowed.

Don't get me wrong, I am not angry. I never am. I am too aloof as to be bothered with the opinions of people around me. And perhaps therein lies the whole EQ/SQ problem. My emotions are sealed from almost everyone else. Just try making me angry or happy. It is difficult preempting people's responses and ensuring you don't anger or upset them when you never actually experience such feelings yourself as a result of their actions (because you are too self-contained and arrogant, but still). I have no idea where to go to be really honest. To solve this problem (which is so not in my nature; my first inclination is always to run from difficulty rather than face it) I have to be able to emotionally immerse myself within normal and daily situations, which would erode the unflappability and pseudo-invincibility I have prided myself in. See, hubris is in the way again. But the occasions when I say something really daft (or insulting) that irks people around (without even realising that it does so) have developed a disconcerting frequency. And yet I don't see why I should conform to socially-defined ideals of good EQ/SQ at the expense of the personality I have assumed and grown into. Aren't we past the modernist paradigm of societies determining their collective rightness and wrongness, and into the individualist era?

I don't know but I am confused. Why am I even concerned that I don't really matter or mean anything to anyone when I know they don't matter or mean enough to me to influence my predominant emotions? To those this is related to thanks a lot for confusing me. At least that's one thing you've succeeded in doing. I should just shut up from now on and keep to myself. Nobody will feel the absence anyway. To those unconcerned who are asking "what is going on here" sorry that I'm shoving my troubles across without any cogency or purpose. But isn't that what our online identities are like? We remove our person from our words and just let them sting whosoever appears. Life sucks.

Paradoxical Truths

School life is funny, and not just because that particular phrasing is oxymoronic. As the prelims creep closer by the day, I find myself immeasurably bored at having to mug and revise content which two years of relentless study have given me a strong grasp and a waning interest in. The desire to just toss my work aside and do interesting things (the monotony of IB has expanded that list to include even shopping) steadily grows. And yet, having spent this afternoon roaming Marina Square and Raffles City with a bunch of long-time acquaintances shopping for random things, there is this tremendous sense of guilt that my time was not spent working for a good prelims grade. What the hell. There seems no way to placate me!

At the very least there is this Sunday's KBox-cum-Cheuk Ho's birthday outing to look forward to. It's always good to look forward. Looking back always depresses me because I am obsessed with perfection. I mourn how I could have done better, chosen better, judged better, known better. No achievement seems to fully satisfy my infinite wants. Being an Economics student I always weigh what I did against the opportunity cost, and it can be depressing. So I look forward. There was this passage I did for Chinese that characterises people into those who always choose the best available option and those who leave the best for last. The former group appear optimistic because they always delight themselves with the best of what they have. The latter group seem to be pessimists. Yet the irony is that the former group will always taste a lesser cherry than the one they last had and always look back wistfully in reflection on the has-beens, while the latter group always enjoys cherries of a higher standard than that to which they are accustomed, and can anticipate and embrace the future. The former group is satisfied with what they have, while the latter group always possess a hunger and a drive for their future betterment. Reading the article gave me a tremendous sense of satisfaction and vindication. I don't have to say which group I belong to and when I eat the best cherries. My study schedule for prelims will place English A1 last of all!

It hit me that we have about four weeks of classes left in our time in ACS(Independent). Four weeks to treasure our lessons, our friends, our teachers. The vast majority of the aforesaid three has been supremely rewarding and the end of the year will bring with it a great unwillingness to accept that the fruitful journey has ended. Following on from the earlier analogy surely it must be that the last few weeks are the sweetest. Perhaps so, because I will appreciate them and treasure them in the knowledge of how blessed I am to be having them. The beauty of bliss is in seeing it and recognising that it is actually upon you. The last are the best because you cumulatively appreciate all the joys of the ones gone by. I may not have consciously left the best for last, but I will consciously make the last the best. Then, in Cheuk Ho's words, we can go "dreaming of a more better future".

Till We Ain't Strangers Anymore....

If you have never heard of that song (the Bon Jovi-LeAnn Rimes duet) then shame on you. Get on youtube or baidu or anywhere to right your wrong.Now. Even Yeo Yinghao likes it okay! I have been feeling this irrepressible urge to listen to this song for the last 3 weeks. I indulge without fail. This means it must be some song, because nothing holds the affection of fickle-minded me for anywhere near that long. Save for Literature and History, that is.

The deadline for applications to Oxford University slowly creeps closer, little by little. It takes slight and innocuous steps, one day at a time, each day too much alike to mark or name a place by so as to say for certain it is near. I need to write a convincing personal statement and complete a seeming tonne of paperwork. I need to decide whether to do History, English Literature, or a joint honours course involving them both. I have been saying this for perhaps the best part of 2 years, and I like having thought of it so well I say again, "I need to decide whether to do History, English Literature, or a joint honours course involving them both". It looks like I'm still not over my IOC-mania. And by the way, I absolutely LOVE Robert Frost.

I am getting re-addicted to Channel 8 dramas. I thought when I weaned myself off it early last year that I was through forevermore. I thought wrong, as always. Seriously though, there is a thrill and enchantment about these dramas that transcends the apparent uniformity and singularity that defines their subject-matter and their means of making themselves interesting. It is something I cannot define and I cannot explain. I just keep watching. As an aside it is quite humorous watching Pierre Png trying to elocute and enunciate in Mandarin. The character he plays is also tremendously endearing. And I guess if I continue this into why he is comparably more favoured than some of the other virtuous characters I will be doing English A1 right here and right now. I'd rather work on my latest Paper 2 essay.

24 Hours Are An Eternity

"Nine envelopes beckoned on the brown wood (of the oak desk in the Boardroom)
And sorry I could not peruse them all
And be one IOC candidate"

I shall be telling of my IOC experience with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence. Murphy's Law is real. Damn you Soyinka, damn your Background & Friezes! Despite not having studied this over the weekend I somehow managed to produce a commentary my teacher found to be "excellent". Just imagine what would have been had I pulled out something I was actually prepared for! This is such an apt microcosm of life, somehow. The 9 envelopes grope towards being reflective of the infinity of life's choices. You only ever know the consequences of the one choice you made, and will be left in the perpetual suspense of "what it could have been". Looking back I'm thankful for the IOC experience, in spite of how all my preparations appear to have come to naught. I met literature in a different way. That, now, is priceless.

The inconsiderate antics of Singaporeans never cease to irk me. The "me first" attitude is prevalent everywhere you choose to look. "I look around me and I know there's a place that will stay within me wherever I may choose to go". I really detest those inconsiderate idiots who never ever decide whether they are taking the lift in the upward or downward direction. Pushing both buttons while waiting does little to hasten the arrival of the lift. You just possibly have two of them arriving at the same time, each dialled in to travel in a different direction. "This is home, surely, as my senses tell me". The infuriating bit is when you are travelling upwards and the lift stops in mid-trajectory and picks up somebody who wants to go down. What is he doing in my lift?! "This is where I won't be alone". When this happens all you hope for is that once you alight and he doubles up on himself, returning, to pick up the half of him that wanted to go "DOWN", to the floor at which he boarded. Never seems to teach them a lesson, though. These same people whose faces I am accustomed to seeing in the lifts of my apartment block will always catch my attention for this. "Where the lifts wait for me and the traffic doesn't flow".

Sorry I am such a bitch. One positive from the last 24 hours would be Chelsea! This could be our season, you know! There's only one Joe Cole!

Here We Go

This is now to be a REAL blog. Not some place to spout intellectual gibberish - pretend to - but somewhere for me to do my bitching.

Let's start with Ng Cheuk Ho. With a blog address reading acsianblood and with a caption along the lines of "ACS Forever" I cannot help but cringe at the crippling irony. Since when was being an ACSian about making more grammatical errors than sense? Not a good place for me to have visited on the eve of my IOC, no doubt.

Speaking of IOC I cannot believe the amount of effort I have put into preparing for that. Sometimes I wonder why I spent all that time writing page after page of my own notes when photocopied versions of last year's students' notes were readily available. Especially since I will nevertheless be caught out and stumped if a Soyinka poem were to appear from those magical brown envelopes.

I see the weeks ahead being devoured by activities I have been numbed into disliking through one monotonous year and more-than-a-half. I need to get my UCAS application done, including the 4000-character challenge of a personal statement I have been mulling over for a good long time. I need to get that darned GDC repaired. But most of all, MOST OF ALL, did someone say prelims?

I'm thinking of meeting up to study with people, which is surprising since I've always championed studying alone as the most effective and efficient method to aceing any examinations. It is even more surprising because I hate having people leech off me!

I'm interested to see how long I can keep this habit up of actually having a conventional blog. I never thought I'd have time for it! IOC now.