Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Yesterday my sister and I went to my prof's (who shall remain unnamed for reasons that will soon become clear) office to continue labelling the books in his library and rearranging the shelves, and we were greeted with a big surprise.
His ceiling seemed to have sprung a leak, and there were pools of water on his desk and on the floor. Later we discovered that water had soaked through some of the books we left on the floor from the previous session (oops), and the pages were all limp and the ink from his written notes had smudged all over the pages. Even the dye from the book covers was dissolving and leaving rectangular prints on the floor.
So I had to tell the General Office people about the leak and hopefully they did something about it this morning, especially since it has been raining heavily today. However, my prof can rejoice that his box of GYM SHORTS (which I thought he had brought home before he left for sabbatical, but nooo, he had simply stuffed the box into the bottom-most shelf of his bookcase when I wasn't looking!!) is safe from the rain.
kaoru said at 12:21 AM
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Friday, June 26, 2009
Updates on ISM: Dr Y agreed to supervise and he was very happy with the proposal. That means I'm a happy person too.
Updates on cleaning JWB's library: Can I be paid for this?
Updates on other thingys: I'm looking for a venue to host the Anime Club 10th anniversary alumni party in December and with my tiny budget, I had to cross out all the 3-star hotels I was considering. Does anyone have a dining hall or a condominium function room with air-conditioning and which can fit approximately 25 people? Your help is much appreciated.
Oh, I have also signed up for a deviantart account! Check it out at http://www.okaru85.deviantart.com.
However, there's only 1 picture there (=___=;) and I can't get an avatar up because no matter what I do, even the smallest image I create at the lowest resolution is still larger than the limit of 15KB. Arghhh.
kaoru said at 10:54 PM
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Sunday, June 21, 2009
Time for another update on what has been going on in my not-very-eventful life.
This past week I had a slew of outings almost entirely on consecutive days which left me feeling very tired, but more or less happy.
Last Saturday, my sister and I visited Shilei's new (?) home in Yishun together with some other members of the anime club and alumni. After dinner at Ishimura at Northpoint, we went to watch "Crackers?", a fireworks display that was the closing event of the Singapore Arts Festival. I didn't exactly feel at ease with the other members of the party (for reasons which I won't disclose here), but the performance was truly spectacular. The fireworks were dazzlingly beautiful to behold, and although there were many mock-warnings about the noise levels potentially exceeding "recommended levels", anyone who has been to a VK live before wouldn't have found the explosions particularly deafening.
On Sunday, I met up with Vanessa, Derek and Poh Lin, who had just come back from the US (and thankfully was not infected with H1N1). I hadn't seen Poh Lin since we graduated from AJ more than 5 years ago, and to tell the truth, I was actually not very keen on seeing her again, after her no-show the last time we organized a gathering for her sake (she had completely forgotten about the gathering and was watching a movie with her boyfriend while we were waiting for her at the restaurant - I had Research Workshop at 9am the following day but decided to make time for her so you can imagine how fuming mad I was).
But in the end, I was glad that I decided to overcome my misgivings, for I discovered that Poh Lin was still very much the same sweet girl I knew in JC, and that what JWB calls the "country club atmosphere" at Princeton had not corrupted her.
On Monday evening, I went out with MW, her "whatever" and Calvin for dinner and drinks. Well, Calvin only showed up at the bar 45 minutes late, so he didn't have dinner with us but I paid for one of his drinks as promised because he wanted a birthday present, and because I kind of owed him one, haha.
We went to Orgo, the new rooftop bar at the Esplanade co-owned by the apparently famous Japanese mixologist Kitazoe Tomoyuki, and the aerial view it offered of the bay was pretty fantastic. Plus it was actually cool and breezy enough to sit in the open and enjoy the night air. Orgo is supposed to be famous for its cocktails which are made with fresh fruits, so I tried a banana daiquiri. It was a bit pricey at $18, and Calvin was indignant that he was paying so much for less-than-spectacular drinks, but I thought my daiquiri was yummy enough. But the daiquiri was only the second alcoholic drink I have drunk in my life so far (and I'm not kidding), so what do I know.
Anyway, to make make his trip to Orgo more worthwhile, Calvin took home all the wet towel packets we were given, and he stuffed a coaster into my camera bag, which I only discovered when I was on the bus home... =___=;
Then on Wednesday, I met Wan Ching at Kino to buy the books we needed for our MA theses since Kino was offering a 20% discount for its members. After buying everything we needed, the two of us lugged our bags overflowing with books (manga, in my case) to the Royal Copenhagen Tea Lounge for lunch, which was actually tea because we got distracted by the pretty cakes in the display case and sacrificed nutrition for sugar and extra calories...
So after Wednesday, I was really exhausted, and I've decided to avoid going out as much as I can from now till August, because I don't want to catch anything (especially not some porcine-avian-human hybrid flu) which would disrupt my attempts to complete my Gothic paper and prepare for my ISM and conference paper within the next few weeks.
Ok, that's all for now. Tomorrow I'm going to have to draft and write my embarrassingly sketchy ISM proposal and contact my potential supervisor for a preliminary meeting on Thursday. I'll be glad to get that bloody thing out of my system and onto paper (even though it is embarrassingly sketchy) because it has been tormenting me for the past few weeks. And I think Dr Y will allow me to be sketchy at this stage, though I'm certainly not happy I'm not producing something better for him...
kaoru said at 8:36 AM
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Friday, May 29, 2009
The exam results were released this afternoon but I've only checked my results just now.
I managed to get the grade I wanted for Gothic Properties, and it's actually lower than the grade I got for Cultural Studies (which is taught, if you don't know already, by The Bishop as Pei calls him). The ways of the gods are mysterious, but I guess I can take this as a sign that I will most likely be able to write my Masters thesis on manga relatively successfully.
It feels a little strange to be receiving my results for the first time as a graduate student and a scholarship recipient. It seems like a mark of adulthood. When I was an undergrad, getting good grades meant getting rewarded with a place on the Dean's List, possibly an award, and a small present from my parents.
Now, I give my mother a monthly allowance, and I'm expected to get good grades or I'll lose my scholarship and my chances of getting another one in the future.
Growing up is a frightening business.
kaoru said at 6:39 AM
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Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Recently there has been a lot of media hype about the newly-opened Tampines One mall, so my mother decided to bring my sister and I to have a look at it on Tuesday.
It was disappointing. For all the hype, the mall was small, the architecture and decor uninspiring and the shops boring. Half of the shop space in Uniqlo was taken up by racks and racks of this disgusting new invention called the "bra-top" (which is a camisole/tank top with a bra attached to it - who could have thought of such a stupid idea) in seven different colours and with stripes and without stripes, but with essentially the same design. BOOOOOORING.
The Manpuku Japanese Food Gourmet Town was basically a Marche-style food court with Japanese food imported into Singapore for the first time, as the advertisements claimed, from famous restaurants in various parts of Japan. That's fudging the truth because most of the brands there can be found in other places in Singapore. I remember seeing a Botejyu outlet at Liang Court, and who are they trying to deceive when the logos of Ajisen ramen and Kyoto Ajitei are printed on their serviettes. The Aoba ramen from Hokkaido and Fruits Paradise tart shop are probably the only brands imported for the first time from Japan.
My mother, sister and I tried a slice of the Banana Chocolate tart and I thought it was delicious. The omu rice set was ok but I think the omu rice stall in the Takashimaya food hall gives better value for money. The black sesame ice cream with cornflakes and mochi was ok too, but not as spectacular as the desserts at Azabu Sabo. So the fruit tart stall is probably going to be the only reason why I would want to travel all the way to Tampines One again.
kaoru said at 7:53 PM
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Sunday, May 17, 2009
It has been two weeks since my one and only exam ended and I've been bumming around, reading a bit here and there, drawing a bit here and there and basically enjoying a brief spell of rest after my first semester as a graduate student.
But now it's time to get back to serious work. I've just drawn up a timetable for the month of June and already it's looking quite packed. I hope I have not been too ambitious when planning that timetable (perhaps Joan will think me masochistic again) but I have 3 big academic projects lined up for the rest of the year.
1. Publish a paper on the postmodern ''Gothic' in contemporary Japanese popular culture in a journal.
2. Present a paper at an international conference on the "Neo-Victorian".
3. Write an ISM on a research question I haven't even formulated yet.
I also want to take Japanese classes outside school and I may have to tutor classes next semester as well, but right now things are so unconfirmed that I can't really draw up my plans properly, and this irritates me. I've also decided that I can't afford to wait for the ELL department to release information about modules available next semester for me to decide whether I should take a module or do an ISM instead, so unless the department comes up with something extraordinarily fantastic I absolutely HAVE to take, I'm going to do an ISM.
But this also means that I won't be meeting people in a classroom setting (anymore?) and the thought of spending endless hours alone in the Room or in a tiny study carrel in the library seems a little daunting. How do graduate students cope with the loneliness? Or maybe they like it and it's a sign that you're made for academia. Well, I'm not going to take any risks with my personal sanity, so I will be pestering my fellow graduate student colleagues to meet up often to discuss our research or just talk rubbish over lunch/dinner. Hopefully we can build up a supportive network this way and avoid falling into the trap of turning into unsociable hermits and cold, emotionless paper-churning machines.
kaoru said at 9:06 AM
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Saturday, May 02, 2009
I'm glad I went for the Aware EGM today. It was a tough journey, it took almost 9 hours of nail-biting tension and wrangling, but we won in the end. And it was a victory the "old guard" of Aware deserved, for all the years they have contributed to the thankless job of NGO work.
The EGM was an inspiring lesson in ethics, leadership, political participation and passion. We showed the exco (now former) that we didn't tolerate their tactics of seizing power and their authoritarian leadership style. We showed them that we didn't tolerate their lack of transparency, their utter arrogance, their corporatism and their disrespect for homosexuals. We showed them that they had been hibernating since the 1950s and have slept through Second and Third Wave Feminism, postructuralism and postmodernism. We showed them that they had no right to treat us like we were children who couldn't make choices for ourselves on how to live our own lives.
Never before have I seen so many women willing to come forward and speak up, with logic, passion and eloquence. I'm proud of all the women and men who have had the courage to take a stand, and I'm proud I decided to be one of them. This has been a life-changing experience. From now onwards, I'm not going to simply whine about patriarchy anymore. It's time to do something about it.
kaoru said at 9:21 AM
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