Walter Moers is good for a little light diversion if anyone is in the mood for something that's all plot and pictures.

Rumo and his Miraculous Adventures

Currently reading:
True at First Light - Ernest Hemingway

"In Africa a thing is true at first light and a lie by noon and you have no more respect for it than for the lovely, perfect weed-fringed lake you see across the sun-baked salt plain. You have walked across that plain in the morning and you know that no such lake is there. But now it is there absolutely true, beautiful and believable."

more complaining

it was i who went to see sideways with yen. it was a movie i probably should not have gone to so close on the heels of the Thing, but i'm glad i did anyway.

the most frightening thing about the character of miles, i reckon, is that he is not an anti-hero through and through. he has qualities that ought to redeem him. he has his interests and dreams, some kind of a moral compass - but none of these things actually lead to his redemption (in the movie's language, some of us are pinot noir); nothing inside of him is intrinsically valuable. only others can save us, and therein lies the doom - nothing we have to offer (er...erudition and wit and obscure knowledge of tropical fruit?) is appreciated by the people we have to deal with day to day.

thus, there are three eventualities. we:
i) build walls (a fortress deep and mighty)
ii) get the hell out of here
iii) wither

complaining

why i hate the oscars, part I

schmaltz always wins over pathos. and no, hilary swank was not "gritty".

it's harder than i thought not having a place to complain.

oh well. i've been good for, what, two weeks now? let the merriment recommence.

interscribum is a good word

previously unnecessary addendum/clarification necessitated by dax's comment to previous entry

"to keep us from going insane and bludgeoning everyone else/ourselves to death with blunt instruments of choice"

coming temporarily out of hiding to say 2 things

1) it would appear that my capacity for setting myself up for disappointment is approximately infinite.

2) although i suppose that when you think about it hope is really all we have.

It's funny how accurate my intuitions are.

You know, I've used humour (or attempted humour; I know I'm not very funny) a lot on this blog to deal with my unhappiness, but I think that I've reached the point where trying to be funny just isn't going to cut it, because I really feel now that all this is just shit. On the other hand, I don't want to turn this into a litany of woe either because I know that a lot of the people who read this aren't exactly waltzing down the primrose path themselves.

Ergo. I'm going to stop writing entries for a while, just to give myself time to regroup and come to terms with the fact that there is bloody nothing in this country for me, and that it's time to seriously think about going away -- far away -- possibly never to return.

It's easy to say (in retrospect) that I should have just gone straight to grad school, but as I told my parents last night, that would not have cut it simply because I would not have had the experience of struggling and failing and struggling and failing again, and the escape would have been too cheaply bought. I would probably have been in Minnesota now blogging about freezing my ass off and how much I want tahu goreng and blah blah blah woe is me. Too light winning making the prize light etc.

So perhaps the suffering was necessary. I don't know.

I have not been thinking straight for two days because I've been too busy hurting and feeling really sick.

So: hiatus. Su-Lin: thanks for the offer of cake.

I'll be back, I promise. I just need some time.

praise the lord for benzodiazepines.

spent most of day swirling in gaba-induced serenity, eating honey-roasted peanuts and surreptitiously reading the power and the glory under my desk. (the person i was understudying has resigned, and i got to take over her desk. which means my back is now conveniently against the wall and my front blocked by a large orange partition). that graham greene has to be one of my all-time favourite books. survived till 5:30 without any major panic attacks. i have decided to leave my phone off vibrate because otherwise every time anything near my desk moves i feel like my heart stops for several seconds.

wrote that mostly because the anxiolytics had worn off.

will switch to alprazolam today and see how that treats me.

premonition

I have a sinking feeling that the answer is going to be 'no'.

Von and I had a memorable conversation a few years ago about how all of us are screwed because we used up our quota of good fortune way too early - getting (relatively) good grades, making into reputable schools. Sooner or later, he said, it has to run out, and as we process into adulthood, I fear that these prognostications are, indeed, coming to pass. As long as we were in school, we were invincible, we felt guaranteed of a fairy-tale ending; now it's joining the line for handbaskets and being pointed the way to the big guy with horns.

So Dorcas springs on us this week the news that she is headed for Perth (a.k.a. Out. Of. Hell.) for her Masters in Ed. Psych, and is leaving "soon" (a.k.a. the 24th), which prompts a flurry of preparation for a goodbye party that really isn't much of one, unless you consider Canadian 2-in-1 Pizza, Bacardi and Coke, and Desperate Housewives an appropriate farewell-bidding combination. It's at Louise's place with Eekia, choir Adeline, and HCJC Debbie (who I barely know), and the apartment, though old, manages to squeak into the category of cosy. It has other plus points - overlooking Holland V's Coffee Club being one of them - but I digress. Dorcas. Is leaving - and not a moment too soon, I suppose, 2 years being about the outer limits of the amount of time one can tolerate in this damn country without beginning to pull ones hair out by the roots. I'm glad that all of this fell into place for her - partly because her situation is one that I hope ends up being pleasingly symmetrical to mine - but also because she really deserves to be happy, and it's nice that someone in this whole lousy mess is getting their due.

Other stories: Louise is angling to get out of JTC to join a company that will pay her to spend a month in Italy indulging in haute couture and Bacchanal. Eekia is teaching music to Sec 1s in Montfort Secondary School using the medium of film. Production of Arrested Development is being shut down this season to make way for American Dad, and people need to write to Gail Berman to tell him what an idiot* he is.

And I spent most of the afternoon staring at my handphone wondering why it was resolutely not ringing.

*This blog, I think, suffers significantly from the fact that I strain not to curse on it. I will rethink this policy.

exactly

during constantine

(which was, by the way, highly sacrilegous, and not terribly good to boot)

-- cp comments that films such as these work only with the catholic faith, what with its ripeness of iconography and plentitude of arcane rituals. if the movie featured protestants, we agree, keanu reeves would have had to talk the demons to death. or irritate them until they fled.

so who are they kidding again?

How this was put into print I'll never know. I know there's a sucker born every minute, but do they all reside in Singapore?

I have obtained Microsoft Frontpage (pirated), so you can definitely expect a personal homepage to be up and running sometime in the next, say, 15 years.

Currently reading:
The Hours - Michael Cunningham

recap

In all fairness, office life is several degrees east of tolerable, thanks largely to (a) long lunches, (b) strong coffee, and (c) colleagues who (on the large part) just want to make an honest day's wage (Is that supremely naive? Are office politics inevitable?). Things are benign enough that I can coast, which is good in one way, but bad in another - loss of momentum can be a killer.

*

I'd not mentioned actual work much in this blog because I thought it a rather dull topic, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to give a rundown of my JD.

1) Ridicule of ineptitude in writing
(I can't give examples for fear of prosecution, but if you've received my emails you'll know what I'm talking about.)

2) Arranging for meetings to discuss Nothing Of Any Particular Importance

3) Attending said meetings

4) Coordinating a project to discover why the company, staff population 12,000, has such swelling ranks of underperforming middle management, and what the hell can be done about it

5) Poking around at other people's salaries, and wondering why I don't get paid that much, or if I ever will. (Hint: No)

6) Deleting spam mail from the company inbox

7) Smiling at my boss and telling him that he has Excellent Ideas, Most Excellent Indeed

8) Thinking about resigning, and going quietly insane while doing so

Happy CNY

-- to all and sundry, and may you, yearly, have fish

"Remuneration", I think, is one of the ugliest words in the English language.

10:45 a.m.

(i call cp)

cp: hello
me: hi! where are you now?
cp: boon lay
me: really? i'm in town. just y'know, hanging out and doing nothing in particular
cp: how long have you been planning this call for?
me: quite a while. but trust me, it was worth the wait

So it's done. The interview was the most technical I've been through - sort of (I guess) like a scaled-down version of defending ones thesis. (Having never actually defended a thesis, I apologise if the comparison is in any way obscene). Had to talk about pigeons and BOLD signals and HDRs and lie barefacedly about my critical (big inverted commas) contributions to science. Dolling up ignorance is an art. Perhaps I should, as Von suggests, go into consultancy.

I was completely numb for about an hour after it was all over, and when I came to I discovered that I had somehow landed up in Starbucks with one of the largest mugs of coffee I'd ever seen in front of me. This was, luckily enough, when the day began to pick up. Finally got to see The Aviator (Ian Holm!) as well as finish reading Bennett. On now to Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, which I hope I'll be able cope with. (Probably not.)

panic/hysterics/etc.

as usual.

had planned to ask my dad to help print my independent study paper (in color, on his office printer) to give to the interviewers tomorrow as a writing sample, but procrastinated and ended up not getting it to him on time, which meant that i had to print it at home, except that of course we had run out of paper. sped out to orchard in ragamuffin clothes only to find that all stationery shops in town had conspired to close at 9 (time of arrival: 9:07). last desperate fling was taka, which mercifully had one ream of paper left in stock.

but what i really want to tell you about is what happened next. there were two cashiers nearby - one line seemed a lot shorter than the other, so i chose that one (which, of course, turned out to be short only because the ladies at the head of the queue were purchasing enough pots and pans to prepare meals simultaneously for everyone in continental asia). two poly students joined the queue behind me, and despite my fuming, i couldn't help but overhear the bit of their conversation which went: "i find psychology very interesting...(so-and-so) told me the other day that the human brain is actually really small"

which was funny on so many levels that i couldn't help but explode into laughter, probably making everyone around me think i was certifiable, but whatever, because i'm sure that some higher power had dictated that i be right there right then just so i could be privy to that little snippet of inanity. i really needed that. i mean, just half-an-hour before i was telling someone (online) that if i didn't get this job i would have to immediately go and look for a very tall building. honestly, it's all a bloody joke anyway. life is only sometimes kind, but fortunately, it is almost always hilarious.