I wanted to do this last night but then the internet decided to throw a tantrum and irritated me so badly and I had to just shut down the computer and go to bed, which was a good idea anyway, considering I had an 8am lecture today but I was late again as usual.

that was one sentence. I should stop doing this sort of thing.

yesterday was a good day. settled 2219 (hopefully the research turns out okay, it's quite an interesting company to do), and anaemic boy isn't all that bad. in fact rather normal. not as evil as he looks. oops. and the sw/soci girl is just the nicest child on earth. she's just so nice. I haven't another adjective for her.

then after that I did my japanese homework, I did my nm2220 (which couldn't go over a page for some reason), printed my vocab list (yeah like FINALLY because lesson 17 has 5 million extra vocabulary words). (sidetrack: there's some felle here who's asking people to do surveys. it's absolute spam. waste of paper, that is.)

oh and said hello to dangly earring boy. (hello uncle, cap guy has a name, right?)

oh and I did more research than I should have! haha I forgot that we're supposed to find 4 sources each, but I piled up like 8 books or something (and a few were rejected, by the way). photocopy, photocopy. anyway it was
good, since it seems like our dear lecturer's english is left much to be desired, and his cryptic instructions were read wrongly? because apparently we're supposed to find sources that contain the theory in them. it's just that out of all those papers with the theory mentioned, 3 of which are supposed to mention the example he mentioned in the typeout. fantastic. like who the heck was supposed to know that. and do lit reviews really look like that? my goodness. 

(and people have really done his survey. my gosh. I didn't. he took it anyway.)

in some bad financial news, I have just gone shopping again. somehow I'm beginning to understand retail therapy. I suppose previously I had something really bad against shopping more because I'm against walking long hours. I still am anyway. can't stand walking up and down, in and out, here and there and everywhere for hours. I don't understand how people do it. and the craziest part is that sometimes people do it in heels and heavy bags. amazing people. amazing. 

perhaps that's the real audience that online shopping is trying to target -- the lazy customer. the lazy one who doesn't want to fish for bargains; the lazy one who doesn't want to move out of the house; the lazy one who doesn't want to browse through everything herself and ask the felle if there's stock available blah blah blah. because online, if there's no stock, there's no stock. and because I go through a middleman, there's a lot of stuff I don't need to consider. yes yes it's true that it's going to cost more (since middlemen need to be paid too) but because I'm so lazy, that's pretty okay too (after all their fees are not exorbitant.) 

what can I say. at least I don't have ibanking. that would add to my er, laziness. and I tend to opt for meetups, partly because postage is more expensive than my bus rides in general, and also because I think at the rate I'm buying stuff these couple of months, the packages are going to get flung at me by my parents, who, according to previous post, don't quite trust online shopping as yet. they like the store.

that's fine by me really. but sometimes I get tired of stores, and sometimes they don't sell what you want. in fact, a lot of times they don't. and some of them come at SUCH exorbitant prices. I don't really blame them either, because rental in singapore is rather high, but hello, when there's a better option, why not? I just want to try anyway. there are some things in life that are well, try-able. as in there's not much harm in trying. after all, if they don't fit, or you don't like the goods, you can sell them off as well. there are avenues for that. there's exchange, there's sales, there's second hand sales too. there are so many ways of getting yourself out of a sticky mess of unwanted things without suffering and incredible loss.

besides, with the amount I'm paying this time, the loss is really minimal. (when it takes less than 100 bucks for 7 pieces of cloth, it's not bad. in my opinion.) 

I should really stop this. as much as chia min doesn't really know why she's re-watching meteor garden, I don't really know why I'm actually buying into retail therapy. look at the amount of words I've just dedicated to it. gosh.

and vicks is here for lunch so I should go. and goodness knows where kayan is. better call crystal.

I just had to put this down. it just cracked me up, reasons half unknown.

there are many things to be done this week. so many. how did they all cram into the same week? I haven't a clue. but they have all come to bomb my week. below, are some random sentences I just wanted to state. after that I will work on some of my deadlines, before I die from their presence.

I hope vicks is alright. (I'm glad she isn't uber angry over my 8 pages though.)
I have to go to school on monday.
I have a bad feeling about that boy in 2219.
I have 3 books to complete. one of which I am unable to renew.
I should have started the 2220 earlier. it would have cleared 1 deadline.
I am such a procrastinator.
I am actually feeling tired now, but work must be done.
I actually can't think of anything else I want to say.

oh. I watched a super messy complicated longwinded hindi movie this afternoon. I don't really believe I actually sat through most of it and finished it despite the cheesy and predictable plot. it reminded me of an extended euthyphro, and a line from ratatouille.

and I can't go on anymore.

he remembers me.  

I ought to get to bed NOW, but somehow I like the late night.

I have sent out the email, and there's something exciting about it. and thinking about it, it seems more and more random. so random that I haven't a clue how to explain it. it's another classic case of why am I still on the msn list.

and then the tiff spree items are here. yay! apparently the girl is packing the items tonight. she is super efficient. I think she can make a living out of doing this, really. she's awfully good at it. and she really takes the time and effort to get it done properly. wonderful. so I was right -- I will get my stuff by the end of this week, latest.

unfortunately about the bags' side, it's going to take a while more. the girl's emails are a slightly cryptic (but not annoying, at least), so I asked her about the status proper. so looks like mine is stuck in between. it's not on hand presently, but at least the supplier has stock and will just take a while more to get it over. so crys you're going to get your bag first, because she said the shipment will include the on hand stock ones first, while the others which are not oos will wait a squee bit more.

I survived yet another long long wednesday. it was so long, I couldn't believe it. oh and I understood the absolute and relative nonsense. it's actually inside the tutorial sheet. the irony of today's tutorial? we started terribly late, not just because my tutor came in late, but also because he couldn't get the projector to turn on. what a joke. it man with it bran cannot turn on projector. why? because some idiot turned the mains off.

ha.

so weirdly enough, I had lunch with ching har, then wanting came and they left together for tutorial. and then I had 2220 with fuzzy and walked and talked nonsensically to kent ridge terminal after class. to top it off, I took the bus with sarah lau. it is all very strange, for although these people are not strangers or particularly distant to me, they aren't the nearest either. it was all rather odd in all. they all worked out though. somehow.

I must go sleep. I have to redo my TB kanji reading exercise because I lost the paper, and I haven't studied for vocab yet. and I like 2219, never mind what xueying thinks. I suppose it could be less interesting than 2201, but hey, she's nice and she tries hard and I think she's doing fine and so there. okay that sounded somewhat childish but never mind now.

go sleep.

you know, reading some of these theses makes you believe that the students of today are bored. they are bored of reading the same old thing, they are bored of expanding on the same few topics. they are tired of normal arguments, tired of researching on normal looking things and they want to discover new things, new concepts, and sometimes they go backwards. so there was a book of unusable inventions (can't remember the name of the designer now, though), there are unwearable clothes (I mean, sometimes you pick up a piece of cloth in the shop and ask yourself how the heck do you wear this), and this honours thesis I read today, after ploughing through more than half of it now, tells me about

unreadable literature.

fantastic, no? I say denise should read this thesis. unreadable, because it makes people look at the words. it makes people stare at the linguistics. so instead of reading phrases that make sense, and words that are related to the one on its left and right, this bunch of poets decide that they shall make people make the language the subject of the poem, and not use language to express an idea or theme of the poem. they want people to focus on the language itself, the words used, and seriously, the word used. for the word is but a bunch of letters strung together. and that is what they do. not that it becomes seriously unreadable as in unpronounciable, but they can use word fragments, or seemingly random thoughts and string them together. it is all incredibly interesting. I haven't finished reading it yet, but thus far it has proved highly readable, and I can hear him talk this thesis. seriously.

I love the man to pieces. he's good at this.

also, I completed the busking thesis. I got out of the bedok mrt station underpass and walked towards the hawker centre, listening to a busker at the bus stop, and thought of the thesis. finally at the conclusion, did I understand what his whole discourse (I am beginning to understand fully why mae really hates this word) was seriously all about.

and it goes to prove that the government, while it sucks, it also sounds suspiciously like the oceanian government.

and I mean suspiciously. because of the way it has constructed people, and how they have treated ideals and fed them into people's heads, making concepts that didn't actually exist, exist. they could not decide which was better, and finally decided on any definition of this construct that would benefit themselves, never mind the rest of the people. and they continue to look good.

I doubt I'll ever finish, actually, but I borrowed 3 foucault pieces. I must be nuts, you say. I think so too. there's something wrong with me this semester. I've been reading way too much. way too much that I shouldn't be. but since 2 theses have made references to something beyond archaeology of knowledge, I shall embark on the foucault trip then. maybe if I survive I might start some deconstructionism.

there is, something positively wrong about me.

so I should channel this reading spirit into my other readings. come on, what happened to reading 2219 and 2101! especially 2101, actually. but today's 2101 lecture actually sounded rather interesting. honestly these theories aren't as bad as research methods. I should attempt looking at this in a better light.

also, I think my player wasn't throwing a tantrum today. it ran out of battery on saturday, and so I went to charge it. I checked it when I arrived home yesterday, only to find that it didn't charge. so I irritatedly stuck the plug in once more, and just left it there. I turned it off last night, assuming it had completed its charging, and threw it into my bag. then this morning I tried switching it on.

it refused to.

I was so annoyed. I thought it was throwing a tantrum. so I survived today without music. seriously. from home to school without music. in the library without music. sleeping in the library without music. reading theses without music. from school to bedok without music. my goodness there was such a void. there was this silence. amazing silence. the music keeps me awake. keeps me walking around without half falling asleep on myself. guh. so what happened? I came home today and plugged the charger in once more.

it hadn't charged half a bar even. no wonder it didn't turn on. there wasn't enough battery to even turn on. so I sat there and watched it, and figured that there's something wrong with the connection of the plug. I think either it's dirty or something loose or whatever. basically the connection isn't too good, and so the moment I get a connection, I need to leave the player in that position, otherwise the connection would go off, and the player wouldn't charge. I last checked it, and yes indeed it's charging normally. so that means that even though I plugged it in and turned the charger on the past 2 times, it obviously wasn't well connected and didn't charge my player at all.

well that's that. at least I don't have to run all the way to their workshop only to find that the player was throwing a tantrum. because the last time it did, I went all the way to jurong east to fix it and it wasn't a very good journey to the west. then again, journeying to jurong east is still better than boon lay. that was one loooong journey. my goodness.

and so to end off the day, I sat around with mae and meida, and listened to mae bitch about her jin cheng wu. (okay the little boy's name is really wu jing cheng) whom I think she should just quit on, because honestly, tutoring such a boy doesn't help because 1. the little boy isn't cooperative and refuses to do work and refuses to listen to anyone, and 2. it makes things worse when the mother is always on his side. if the mother doesn't wake up and realise that it's her own little boy's fault for not doing well in school, and blames it instead on all the teachers, then the boy wouldn't wake up either. after all the mother's on his side. and it really sucks when that happens. this is the very reason why so many people don't want to be teachers. and those who have decided to go into it come out crying and screaming and unstable. the parents don't understand, or rather they don't want to understand that sometimes it's their own kids who don't want to make the effort to do work and study properly. they don't like knowing that their kids are naughty, or lazy, or ill-disciplined. so they blame the teachers, the tutors, for not bringing them up properly and not teaching them well, when honestly, that's the freaking parents' job. the teachers come later. the child's first line of discipline comes from the parents.

then I ran all the way to bedok to watch ratatouille. what a show. it rocks. seriously. it's immensely funny, the rats are so cute, and the show is so awwwwww at the end of it. but for heaven's sake, don't name your children after food. like hello, alfredo linguini? why the heck do you want your kid to be a plate of pasta. and remy huh. yes yes you know who that name brings to mind. I can't believe he's in my tutorial. again. just as I thought aiyah everybody should be here already by now and I suppose he's not in my class. and then he walks right in. fantastic. but anyhow the rats were really good, and there are 2 million themes inside the show. okay I'm supposed to watch the show for the show's sake, right? but it doesn't really happen anymore. all lit students know that.

OH MY GOODNESS. this is really random shit, but somebody's just started talking to me. and it's really funny, because I just replied jinx's comment on this. he's been noticing that I'm also a jrock fan, I assume. and my display pic has been gazette for a long long time.

you're right. dangly earring boy it is.

I have the weirdest people on my msn? but I don't care. it's really funny, because his window popped up from nowhere asking if I had alice nine tunes. my goodness. and now we're talking gazette music. I barely believe this. it's so funny. and I must say farewell soon, because it's a bleeding long day tomorrow. and I mean long day. goodness.

it's been such a long entry.

after an episode of hana kimi, and another episode of yamada taro, there is a strong sense of yaoi-ness going about here. but while one is not really yaoi (because mizuki's a girl after all), the other seriously is. and that actor has an amazingly bashable face. you feel like slapping him somehow. after watching him for the first time in hana yori dango, that opinion cannot change, because he's just as amazingly idiotic and irritating in yamada taro.

and with the gayness, I checked up on some aids stuff. you must be wondering why. I was checking on foucault, really, and apparently he died from an 'aids-related disease' (in some articles, they just said aids). but in any case I went snooping about the aids articles all the same. the first strand of HIV was found among 5 gays in los angeles. which probably explains why the incredible discrimination and prejudice against homosexuals, and gays in particular. the problem is, HIV is transmitted more via hetero sex than homo sex, so if people actually bother looking at the stats carefully, they'll realise that actually the homosexuals have little to do with passing the virus on. the largest population is actually heterosexual. which is really sad for the homosexuals. I don't condone the behaviour, but it's not fair to blame the group for something they didn't cause, that they don't necessarily cause, and that they obviously don't mean or want to ever cause.

in case you were wondering. yes michel foucault was gay. and he came from the same school as derrida (the name that I thought, after irving goh, I may never see again), durkheim and bourdieu. oh and beckett lecturered there. how nice. I'm checking out some foucault books tomorrow afternoon, and perhaps someday I shall check out some derrida works. although if irving loves the man to death, there must be something terribly profound inside that may burn my brain reading it. but nonetheless, I burn it anyway. maybe I should finally like open up my textbook for 2101 and read something related to comm studies for once. oh and maybe read grunig? that might sound more useful.

I was organising my paper 4 folder just now for sarah, and stumbled upon a number of my old essays. somehow I sounded different then. and I supposed many new ideas were still new back then, and there was much room and excitement left in me to think about them really carefully and more critically. nowadays I've grown so tired, so lazy, so old. previously I wrote with a fervor that fought my way through each essay, fighting for my point, and remembering every point in the 4 books that could make my statement valid. incredible.

I think I would have been a very different person without paper 4. or rather, I think I would have remained more superficial and optimistic than I am presently if I hadn't been exposed to such literature. such is the world of literature, that it harms you in some ways, but yet when you think about it, it wasn't all that harmful. an orange clockwork was a really sick book full of horrible images and weird language usage. but when you look at it as a whole, and the true effects of it, it was a really sad book too. I was quite upset after the whole thing, because the whole story turned around and it wasn't fair. it wasn't.

and in dedication to the one who, in someone's words, single-handedly introduced me to the world of utopian fiction and all the consequences of it on my brain, I will borrow his thesis tomorrow afternoon.

oh no I have not forgotten you, my very intelligent one. oh no no no.

what is with guys and going offline without saying a word. first harry, next zonghan, now fraser. so smart. in any case tomorrow I am going to ratatouille, and nothing, nothing, will spoil my mood to watch a little bluish grey rat cooking soup in a french restaurant. off to bed I go now, I will need a fair amount of energy to get up early in the morning. tomorrow will be a good day. I insist.

finished the sai baba movement one. how interesting. never knew they existed. (and what odd beliefs they have. how did they expect the religions to co-exist under the same umbrella? and how did a human become a god? who elevated him? the ones who elevated his status must be god, not him. how did swami become one? doesn't make much sense to me, but people believe in whatever they wish to, and it's rather obvious that they've obviously picked only tenets that appeal more to them and practice and revere ideas that are closer to their original religion than anything else. oh and the de-hinduism involved, of course.) they hole themselves up a lot in the hindu temples and say that they have muslim devotees. right. and then they say you can keep your old beliefs and practices. like how? incredible.

in any case, that was a rather interesting and simple thesis. oh and short too, by the way. although I don't really understand the difference between a 'working paper' and a 'thesis' and why one can be placed in little green folders for all to access freely (just without borrowing) and the other gets bound up in black (partly because it's thick, perhaps) and thrown into the library vault to be requested.

I haven't finished the other one. it shouldn't be called a discourse analysis of the great singapore busking experiment. it should have forewarned me with a title like...a foucaultian analysis of busking in singapore, or the great singapore busking experiment -- the foucault version. or busking in singapore through foucault's eyes. anything, anything, just freaking mention foucault.

and that, might scare me right off the paper. so now I have read through slightly over half of a paper that is literally, looking at the situation of buskers in singapore via foucault methodology. there is no hypothesis, no motion, no questions to be answered. it is simply looking at the state of how things have gone over a few years as to how the government has dealt with buskers, who they are and what they do, how society views them, how they view society blah blah blah entirely based on 2 foucault principles.

which, I should wiki them some other day. I find that sometimes it's not that these philosophers or theorists have weird ideas. it's just that they fail to express their ideas in a simple and succinct manner that would list their principles clearly and their rationale behind each one of them. noooo they must go writing in their flow of consciousness manner. and so I utterly fail at comprehending them, despite the fact that I'm a rambler myself.

he didn't explain the 2 foucault references very much in depth, or maybe he put it so succinctly I didn't understand very well either. I understood the nietzsche part. I thought the part about people not knowing what they should do anymore was quite funny. it's one of those unfortunate but true. (and the hossan leong quote.)

in any case, foucault, foucault. it beats having kant stare at you out of my 2219 notes, but hello.

it's late. scribble some things down and go to bed.

oh but I must say that I'm very proud of myself today. went for worship practice early in the morning, then I met aileen to discuss the message. we sorted out the books we needed and finished one large point out of 4. she's taking one other point and I'm taking another point, so by next week we'll just have one more point to finish. and then I finished my japanese homework for next week, and I completed 2 nm2219 readings. so proud of myself. and I still managed shaney's thesis and half of harryboy's.

yay for moi. (but damn tired now.)