Thursday, November 29, 2007

misquoting Esther

So the first week of exams has come and gone for me - i must admit i've been taking things relatively easy, at least in the sense that i feel extremely slack compared to say everyone in the library, at least from how i sense things each time i step foot into that place. Nowsaday i go there every evening or so to read the papers, and apart from yours truly sitting there casually reading through the Straits Times (and i do mean casually - at least half-an-hour if not more per day), every single other person within my line of sight is buried deep in their books/notes.

Me? Hah well i seem to be spending as much time hitting the books (sometimes literally =p) as i do taking naps, shuttling semi-necessarily around campus, eating and wasting time online. (Not as though this is news but) i can have a lot of trouble staying in focus, hence my attempts at damage control by random acts like stowing my laptop away in a drawer (where it doesn't ever last very long) or having self-imposed facebook and youtube bans 24 hours before every paper.

Have still not reached the stage whereby i don't give a @#$% about my cap (and will probably not reach it until i graduate and there wouldn't be any difference whatever were to happen) and so to that end i've been occasionally calculating possibilities in my head, stuff like how much i could afford to let it slip this sem without leaving too much ground to cover the next time round, averaging out the potential minimal grades after each exam and seeing the prospects from there and that sort of thing. On the downside it can become rather an obsessive activity, so to that end i'm trying not to devote any significant amount of time to it. On the upside my arithmetic has never been better...

Past three papers have (dare i say) been generally ok - the SE paper i basically bumbled in and bumbled out of - that's the one i was most on track for a good grade for, and perhaps now that the paper's over i'm not so sure i'll maintain that grade after it averages things out, but we'll see yup... The China & Japan paper actually went better than i thought it would (read: i thought it would have been crap) - by the night before i had basically tired of reading the same notes over and over again so i just gave up on that and went to bed. Thankfully i never was stuck for much longer than necessary for that one. Today's histo was a bit of an anti-climax - i spent goodness knows how much time and energy understanding weird concepts by a whole host of atas people whom i'd scarcely care about otherwise, and then when the paper came round i answered everything with scant reference to any of those blokes - the answering process was straightforward enough, but alas in the end i did not mention even one of them and instead i filled my paper with a whole load of fluff.

One paper left and its arguably the one i'm most apprehensive about - since up till now i still wonder what made me take this class in the first place - China of all things. Lots of stuff to look at which i've not started doing yet, cos since i've a four day free block before this paper i didn't touch it even a tad until now. But well i was on edge through much of the exam period so far and by God's grace He brought me through that, and i've no reason to believe why as long as i don't slack off the same won't be the case for this one. And where results are concerned, well let's get Christmas over and done with first and then if i perish, i perish (ok not so doomsday as that lar =p)

Well, and while exams have been going on there's been a whole host of other stuff going on - birthday was one - had think three celebratory meals with the family in total - and the first one was, i'd like to say, a clear display of my selflessness (and obviously not of my humility haha =p), for i acceeded to my mother's request to have it at Prima Tower Revolving Restaurant, famous for its Chinese food, especially seafood and timsum (and of course i suffer from occasional giddiness, on top of not eating seafood and especially not liking Chinese food, particularly timsum), because she wanted a family Filipino friend to see the view.

Have also been spending a lot of time following what i'd like to call grey-area interests - as in not exactly what i should be spending time doing given the exam season, but at the same time useful stuff to follow and not total wastes of time - which has for the large part has consisted of following the Aussie elections - and so to that end now there's another world leader who speaks Mandarin better than i do haha - check this out:



Anyways, i sure did spend a lot of time following this - having cable proved a boon cos i watched the election returns on the Australia Network - in some ways it was more exciting than election night here, just cos there actually was a competition going on... Am pleasantly pleased with the result - no surprise i'm not a fan of Howard anyways. Oh the perils of associating oneself with Bush...

I also was sad to hear of the deaths of the five national dragonboaters. It's so hard to believe that something like that could happen. At the same time though, i wonder how many people actually know that there was a sixth person killed during the same event as well, just that he happened to be a Cambodian. The local coverage of that was limited to one paragraph in the Straits Times, to the best of my knowledge (and forgive me if i'm wrong here) Although definitely five Singaporeans ought to receive the bulk of the local coverage, at the end of the day should we really forget that there was someone else who also died? Kinda reminds me of what happened in the wake of the Virginia Tech Incident - one country's own tragedy (and i'm not taking anything away from this) blots out everything else.

And lastly, ah so yet another coup thingy in the Philippines - sigh will these never end? I know that typical S'pore crisis mentality means that no one here would be too interested in going there now (or at least their parents would not be), but oh well, that's just part of life over there really... I'd personally still go there in a heartbeat, and anyways, if i perish, i perish :p
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