Friday, January 22, 2010

hunger or horror?

Since as of late i've been spending pretty much half of every calendar weekday in school, it has become necessary to have meals (or at least some sort of food) there. There have been times though, when i've missed eating a single thing in school whatsoever, meaning that i've at least on a handful of occasions taken my first taste of food at around seven/eightish, due to only being free to eat when all the canteen stalls would have already closed. And while the seemingly legendary food center lies just opposite, the phrase "so near yet so far" could not be more fitting than it is in this case.

While this had pretty much been the situation since i first entered the school, it has only occurred to me recently that i could actually keep a stash of food in the office so that i would at least have something to fall back upon. Unfortunately, this epiphany of mine has coincided with the start of the cny season. In other words, it's time for the annual bone-chilling assault on my eardrums that is the cny songs played ad nauseaum in supermarkets.

I wonder if i've some kind of clinical phobia of these horrid dongdongqiangqiang numbers. I say this because driven by hunger, i've tried to brave the onslaught of overenthusiastic dizi music and incomprehensible (by me) Chinese couplets rattled off in unison by the seemingly endless number of annoying singers, only to find myself covering my ears as well as i can with my hands while scanning through the aisles of snacks for suitable food. I probably would remind people of the hear no evil monkey. That makes sense though - the hear no evil part, not the monkey part - since as far as i'm concerned such music is as evil as it gets.

Maybe i should get in touch with cold storage delivery...

(On a completely unrelated note i couldn't help but chuckle when i read the first bit of
this report in the ST a few days back. I don't know if it was meant to hint at the quality (or in many cases, lack thereof) of teaching at nie in general, but at least when i was reading the opening line, which said that "Their best lessons were not in the lecture theatres at the NIE", i couldn't help but think to myself that i couldn't agree more :p )

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

the elusive eight

There couldn't have been a bigger shift in lifestyle for me than between two weeks ago and now, with the beginning of school once again. There's a lot going on with me in school right now, and suffice to say that the words stamina and endurance immediately come to mind when i think of what i'll need to have a good semester ahead. Hence the sudden break midway through my attempt at doing a decent log of my recent trip. That will hopefully resume in due course (latest by the March holidays =p).

From last year, and of course presently as well, i've been lamenting as to how i can hardly seem to get a decent amount of sleep nowadays. The magic number is the elusive eight, which was often exceeded during the last few weeks of the break, after i had gotten back from the trip. Now on school nights i usually settle for six, and often end up with fiveish instead, waking up grumpy and then secretly scowling at the auntie whom i sometimes see at the bus stop smiling and greeting her fellow passengers at six thirty in the morning, wondering how anyone can be of such a cheerful disposition at that hour.

And just now in the shower it suddenly occurred to me to do the math and figure out why i'm ending up with so little sleep (relatively speaking, of course, since my work email inbox oounts the hours of one to three am as some of the most active in terms of incoming mail from colleagues). It all started to make sense, since with twelve hour days coupled with another hour a day for getting to and from school, it leaves me with just three hours to play with for anything else, if i am even to catch a whiff of eight hours of sleep per night. Not possible. Partly because i waste precious time on busy days like this doing things like typing this. Oops.