the space between words

pink dot 2010

2010-05-16T00:34:00.000-07:00

On May 15 (Sat), I attended Pink Dot at Hong Lim Park for the first time. For those of you who don't know what Pink Dot is, it's an event where people, regardless of their sexual orientation, wear pink clothes to the park and gather together to make a giant circle to express their commitment to the freedom of LGBT individuals to love who they want to.

I'm really glad that I went for the event. As Yisa said last night, you could feel your cynicism retreating into the background for those two hours you were at the park, and for that moment Singapore seemed like a warmer, kinder, more inclusive place, and you were genuinely happy.
And because I was reminded last night to make my position as a reader of any text and practice clear, I'll have to admit that I'm bisexual (but still leaning closer to the heterosexual side) and so I do have a vested interest in the success of events like Pink Dot. But apart from my position, it's a good thing that Singaporeans are becoming more accepting of non-heteronormative Others as fellow human beings who want to love and be loved just like everybody else.

And as a student who works on gender and sexuality issues, I felt that Pink Dot was an especially meaningful event for me, personally, as a 'supplement' to my research and politics (and I mean this not in the sense of the 'auxiliary' but in the Derridean sense of 'adding on and qualitatively changing what the new thing was added on to'). Scholarly research is important, but Pink Dot helped me to walk out of the ivory tower for an evening and SEE and FEEL and REMEMBER the presence of the ordinary women and men I'm writing about, and writing for, and writing with. And that really puts the heart back into my research and pushes me to make what I do more than just a hundred pages of type-written text to be handed in, graded and then left to moulder in a forgotten corner of the library.

taiwan conference trip 2010

2010-05-04T10:02:00.000-07:00

To those of you who knew I was going abroad, I’m back in Singapore (I’ve actually been home since Sunday evening) and I’m finally in the mood to blog about my conference trip to Taiwan.

29 April, Thursday, Day One:
I arrived in Taiwan around one o’clock in the afternoon, and because NUS is hardly paying for anything other than the airfare, my mother and I took a bus from Taoyuan international airport for TWO hours to the Taipei train station, and then sat in a slow train for ANOTHER TWO hours till we finally reached Hsinchu in the evening. I consider myself someone relatively accustomed to long travelling times as I take about one hour and a half to travel from my house to NUS, but the journey to Hsinchu was really trying.

But I was glad I got a chance to see a side of Taiwan I probably wouldn’t have seen if I had taken a taxi instead. The houses lined along the railway tracks were in a terrible state of squalor and disrepair, and it was really sobering to remember that beneath every glossy image in a tourist brochure lies a gritty underbelly of abject poverty and human misery.

The city of Hsinchu itself was an eye-opener. Coming from orderly, highly regulated Singapore where almost every traffic violation is recorded on a surveillance camera and a summons sent to you immediately, I was astounded and pretty frightened by the sheer chaos on the roads of Hsinchu. Firstly, there weren’t pedestrian walkways, so I had to walk on the road itself. Secondly, traffic rules seemed non-existent. Cars and scooters simply zoomed all around you regardless of the fact that you were standing on a zebra crossing with the green man flashing. And my heart nearly jumped out of my mouth when the taxi I was in swerved across three lanes and carelessly cut in front of a bus mere centimeters away from the taxi driver’s head half-hanging outside the open window.

When I was at the conference the next day, my mother attempted to walk down the main road from the hotel to the city centre, but she turned back at the main crossing between Section One and Section Two of the road because the traffic simply terrified her. Hsinchu is definitely not flaneur-friendly.

30 April, Friday, Day Two:
Although the roads in Hsinchu were not friendly, the people certainly were. Dr Yeoh was absolutely right when he told me that Taiwanese people were known to be one of the friendliest people in the world.

The conference was a very small-scale affair, with the audience mainly consisting of the presenters and the students involved in the organization of the event, but it gave me the opportunity to experience for the first time what a conference was like, and to meet really nice fellow graduate students from other countries around the world.

However, I did feel a little out-of-place, as the conference participants were either Chinese students who spoke Mandarin with their peers, or Caucasian students who mingled mainly within their own racial group. Even the Chinese-Canadian student from Toronto spoke Chinese more fluently than I did (and here I can hear all my Chinese language teachers banging their heads on the wall). It was a rather strange and dislocating experience (incidentally, one of the papers presented was on cultural and racial dislocation) because ever since Junior College, I’ve gotten so used to the fact that many Arts students, and especially Literature students, do not speak Chinese well, and are usually not expected to. In fact, it’s even a perverse source of pride for some of us: we don’t speak Chinese well, and the implication is that we’re fluent in English and therefore better educated, more cultured, more ‘cool’ etc. etc. So at the conference I felt for possibly the first time in my life like a total ‘banana’ that’s not just yellow on the outside and white on the inside, but with little incongruous bits of strawberry chocolate Pocky thrown in as well. It was rather discomforting and I felt that I was letting down my ethnic heritage in some way… I don’t really know what to feel about this. On the one hand it seems a pity to have wasted all those years of studying the language (and it was a real struggle, especially in the early years when I actually believed I was English and couldn’t understand why I had to study Mandarin as my ‘mother tongue’), but on the other hand, it also seems inevitable that I would have lost the ability to use the language after completing Higher Chinese in secondary school since my family speaks mainly English at home, and my research is conducted exclusively in English and Japanese.

I was really nervous during the presentation and I didn’t have enough time to finish reading out the entire script, even though I had already cut down the 9,000-word ISM it was based on to a 10-page paper as Lorraine and Dr Yeoh had recommended. Furthermore, I’m actually quite incompetent in thinking quickly on the spot, so I think I was rambling instead of answering the questions put to me during the Q&A session properly. But some of the participants came up to me after my presentation to tell me they were impressed with my paper and the answers I gave, and words could hardly express how honoured their undeserved praise made me feel, and how happy I was to have done NUS proud. I’m eternally grateful to Dr Yeoh for guiding me in the right direction and giving me advice on how to make the ISM ‘publishable’, to Prof Bishop for his help with Baudrillard (even though that part of the paper unfortunately had to be omitted to fit the page-limit), and to the conference organizers for giving me the opportunity to have this experience.

1 May, Saturday, Day Three:
I left after breakfast the next day with my mother to travel by train (another loooong ride) to Taipei. The train ride was tedious, but it did enable me to travel with the locals and to catch a glimpse of their ordinary ways of life.

As we only had less than half a day to visit Taipei, we limited our activity to Ximending, which Curren had recommended because he knows I’m interested in Japanese popular culture. However, it would be more accurate to say that we limited our activity mainly to Wuchang Street and a bit of Zhonghua Road because my mother was tired (she gets tired easily) and wasn’t willing to explore other areas (this was one of the reasons why I didn’t really want her to follow me to Taiwan, but you can’t go against your parent’s wishes when they’re convinced you’re going to get yourself into every conceivable form of trouble when you’re overseas alone).

Nevertheless, I did manage to visit the Animate store (the only outlet outside Japan in the world!) and buy some BL and YAOI manga for myself, and a really cute Hetalia notebook in the shape of an EU German passport for my sister who is going to Germany soon for her Physics students’ immersion trip. My mother and I then had dinner at a maid café situated next to the Animate store. The maids were quite kawaii and the food was delicious and unbelievably cheap. There was also a solitary male otaku seated in front of me who positively beamed when the stereo in the cafe played a song most probably from some ‘moe’ anime. He really looked like he had seen the Light and was going to transcend to heaven at that moment. Well, there’s otaku globalization for you.

Although I didn’t get to see much of Ximending, I liked it a lot for its young, vibrant, energetic vibe. There was a rock band performing at the Cinema Park in the afternoon, and later in the evening I watched a teenage boy playing the drums at the intersection between Wuchang Street and Zhonghua Road in the evening. They were really talented; far more talented than the Dir en Grey wannabes we see at the Street Fest every year… =___=;

2 May, Sunday, Day Four:
Because I was sick of lugging around the luggage, which inexplicably seemed to have expanded in size and weight even though I bought a grand total of two manga books, a pair of earrings, five pairs of socks and one jumper-dress, and my laptop, and my bulky jacket, and a paper bag of souvenirs, my mother and I decided to take a taxi from our hotel to the airport. After milling around for a while in the shopping area where I saw the same few brands repeated ad nauseum every few metres (there’s globalization for you again), we got on our plane, were plied with more food in a single meal than three of my school lunches combined, and finally arrived home in the evening to be greeted with sweltering hot weather and a karaoke-crazy neighbor squawking away louder than ever.

So here I am and it’s back to the usual routine again. The trip to Taiwan was a welcome break from my thesis, but it does feel good to be in the graduate research students’ room again, with the window open to the familiar sounds of the canteen vendors laughing and the distant harbor, eating crunchy purple grapes while reading Rosemary Jackson and having a good chat with a good friend (in English!) in the late afternoon.

preparations for first conference

2010-03-28T08:34:00.000-07:00

Latest update on my very boring life: I'm going to Taiwan for my first conference at the end of next month.

It's only a graduate student conference organized by a not-very-famous university with a funny name in Hsinchu (so you know it's not Tsinghua), but it's an international conference nonetheless, and since the conference has no specific theme and I know very well how unimpressive my paper actually is, I decided that was the best bet for a first-time experience. And since I thought I would be going on my own, I knew my parents wouldn't freak out since Taiwan is only four and a half hours away from Singapore. Moreover, thanks to ten years of compulsory mother tongue classes, I can manage moderately well in a Chinese-language environment (I think).

But it turns out my mother has decided to accompany me. I have rather ambivalent feelings about this. On the one hand I do appreciate the presence of someone I know when I'm lost in an unfamiliar place (and I'm bound to be lost half of the time) but on the other hand, I was rather looking forward to being a 'big girl' and taking up the challenge of travelling to a foreign country on my own. My mother has promised to treat this trip as a test for me and to let me take the lead, but within 2 minutes at the counter of the travel agency (more will be said about this in a later post) she intercepted me and began talking to the agent even though she had hardly any idea of what we're going to do in Taiwan... =__=;

But my mother isn't half as annoying as my father. Once again he is reminding me how much I can't stand petty men who feel that they absolutely must be in control of everything in order to believe that they haven't already been castrated down there. Almost immediately after telling me parents that my abstract had been selected (I had chosen not to tell them I was submitting an abstract until I received confirmation because I knew the alarm bells would have gone off prematurely), my father went into Mr Ramsay mode. I seriously think he actually regards planning for overseas travel as an affirmation of his personal worth as a man.

So my father started making all sorts of plans and talking to my mother at the dinner table the day after the announcement about what he was going to do as if he were the one going for the conference, until I stopped him and told him I wanted to deal with the preparations myself because this was MY personal affair and I didn't want him to spend his time doing something that was supposed to be MY responsibility. I also told him (quite politely, I thought) that I would ask him for help when I needed it.

He ought to have been glad to be relieved of extra work and to see his daughter becoming independent but instead he took it as a personal affront and gave me the most hilariously disgusting show of wounded male pride I have seen in recent days. He had printed out some maps of Taiwan from Google at the office but because he couldn't remember which county the university was located in (then why print the maps so soon, darling?), he printed out the most general map of the whole island and another where he partially zoomed into the wrong part of the general map. So, after I told him that I wished to handle the preparations myself, we had this very interesting exchange:

Father (with patented wounded-male-pride pout): So, this means you don't need these maps anymore ah? So I can use them, right?

Me: Yeah, those are too general to be useful. You can go ahead and use them as rough paper.

Father: So you really don't need them anymore ah? These maps (points to printouts) can ZOOM IN one you know.

Me: ... ... ... Erm, you didn't print out the zoomed-in version...

Apparently my mother spoke to him later that evening to tell him to let me handle everything by myself. Nevertheless, he is bugging me at every meal (in the most friendly manner possible) to check-in online NOW so that my mother and I can pick our seats, and telling me what I should and should not do once we reach Hsinchu, and shoving thick stacks of information printed out from the websites of the hotels that I have booked, as if I'm not sick enough already of looking at those websites from the days I struggled to find cheap hotels with available rooms at such short notice.

And the only reason why the conversation is remaining civil is that I'm busy writing the introduction of my thesis and I want as much peace and quiet I can get right now.

new year

2010-01-10T07:04:00.000-08:00

It's the beginning of a new year again, and it's time for me to officially start work on my MA thesis. This is the first time that I'm embarking on a long-term research project, and it does feel rather daunting, but I've come to terms (for the most part) with myself and have decided that it's not a grave sin if my working speed is slower that that of the average graduate student and if I need to extend my stay in NUS by one more semester. I'm still rather sore about this, but ultimately I would rather the research and writing process be an enjoyable experience than an insanity-inducing horror.

I was called up in November to choose which module I would like to tutor this semester, but, for some strange reason, the department has again decided to let me off the hook and has not contacted me since November. Even though I was a very willing fish this semester.

I actually emailed the person in charge of assigning TAs in late December to ask whether I could find out which modules I was supposed to tutor for (so that I could start preparing earlier) and up to this very moment I still have not received a single reply.

At first I was pretty miffed at being so unceremoniously ignored, but I've since decided that there's little use in feeling frustrated and imagining all sorts of possible justifications (some of which were really improbable and did nothing but make me feel miserable about myself). I should take the opportunity to concentrate on my thesis and get a good amount of work done.

And if the department wants me to tutor for EN1101E next semester, well, there are things in life we can't change with individual willpower alone and I'll simply have to make the best of the experience.

I hope 2010 is going to be a good year for myself, for all the people important to me and for everyone else out there too. Till the next blog post then...

2009-12-19T04:20:00.000-08:00

". . . She did think it mattered, her party, and it made her feel quite sick to know that it was all going wrong, all falling flat. Anything, any explosion, any horror was better than people wandering aimlessly, standing in a bunch in a corner like Ellie Henderson, not even caring to hold themselves upright.
Gently the yellow curtain with all the birds of Paradise blew out and it seemed as if there were a flight of wings into the room, right out, then sucked back. (For the windows were open.)

[. . .]

The curtain with its flight of birds of Paradies blew out again. And Clarissa saw - she saw Ralph Lyon beat it back, and go on talking. So it wasn't a failture after all! it was going to be all right now - her party. It had begun. It had started. But it was still touch and go. She must stand there for the present. People seemed to come in a rush.

Colonel and Mrs Garrod... Mr Hugh Whitbread... Mr Bowley... Mrs Hilbery... Lady Mary Maddox... Mr Quin... intoned Wilkin. She had six or seven words with each, and they went on, they went into the rooms; into something now, not nothing, since Ralph Lyon had beat back the curtain. . . ."

--- Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

Thanks to everybody from the NUS Comics and Animation Society alumni for supporting and making today's party a great success! It was a real pleasure to see and talk to all of you again. I wish I could have spent more time with each and every one of you, but I'm sure we'll meet again in the near future =)

2012

2009-12-03T08:56:00.000-08:00

I am so, so sleepy.

I spent about 6 hours today reading a measly 20+ pages of Azuma Hiroki on the "database model" of postmodernity and getting into time-consuming theoretical wrangles with him on what I thought to be his misreading of Baudrillard before realizing he meant something else. Shit. Was Azuma being unclear in his argument, or am I just getting dumber?

Then I rushed down to Somerset to meet Diana, MW and Calvin Xie for dinner and got lost once I stepped out of the new 313 Somerset, which just opened today. Orchard Road is starting to look very unfamiliar.

Nothing of great interest has been happening in my life, except, perhaps, for the fact that I watched 2012. Yes, the day I watch a Hollywood apocalyptic movie is the day the world comes to an end. I decided to sacrifice $7.50 for it because I'm working on apocalyptic narratives in Japanese shoujo manga for my thesis, and I need to have at least a rough idea what the Hollywood conventions of such narratives are.

Anyway, after watching the movie, I think I can summarize the essence of 2012 (and perhaps of other similar movies in the Hollywood tradition): lots of spectacular explosions (and I use the word with its full Debordian connotations); some guy makes some inspiring speech about 'humanity' (which is really a disguise for celebrating the GREATNESS OF AMERICA); an indirect nod in the direction of China's burgeoning technological power (but you're still going to be castrated so that you don't compete with the white hero who saves the day by undoing the mess he created himself); some minor characters die, major characters look sad for 5 seconds and start making out with someone else; hooray for (American) humanity, Africa is now free for you to colonize all over again.

prawn peeling

2009-11-19T07:58:00.000-08:00

After 24 years of having prawns appear before her on a plate with their shells magically missing, the Ojousama has finally learnt how to deshell prawns on her own.

Thanks to Kevin's instruction today, I now can remove the shells of prawns (rather clumsily) with a fork and knife. Hooray! I've added another life-skill to the list of "Things You Must Know If You Want To Do Your PhD Overseas and Come Back Again In One Piece". Now I just need to learn how to cook more than 5 dishes, how to peel off the skin of fruits with a knife, how to wash my clothes, how to iron my clothes, how to do grocery shopping, how to clean the toilet etc etc etc...

2009-11-13T21:55:00.001-08:00

Wan Ching's right: I haven't posted anything on this blog since July! O___o

This is probably Facebook's fault. Who wants to write/read long passages of prose when you can just speed through one-line updates and mindless memes? Especially if your line of work involves reading and writing long passages of prose everyday.

Anyway, just to give a short update on what has been going on in my life so far. I handed in my ISM to Dr Y yesterday afternoon and then went out to Northpoint for dinner with Wan Ching and Priscilla. Gurpreet was supposed to join us but she had a bad migraine...

It was fun to be able to meet and talk to one another after such a long absence. I hadn't spoken to Wan Ching since the semester began, and although I had met Priscilla in the Cultural Studies seminar last semester, we didn't really get a chance to talk.

Hmm, not much else to say except that I'm taking a short self-given holiday to recuperate (not that I worked extremely hard in the past few weeks, hah) before I begin work on the journal article. Welcome to my boring life.

On a completely irrelevant sidenote, I now find Swensens' ice cream too sweet for my liking and that the crowds on the South-bound train from Jurong East in the evenings are scary.

the saga continues

2009-07-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

The saga continues.

I told my prof about the leakage problem and guess what he replied? He told me to go to the staff pantry opposite his room and put the wet books into the REFRIGERATOR to dry them out. He wanted me to put books that have bundles of dust hanging on them and strange yellow fluids seeping out of them into a space for FOOD. That brings cross-contamination to new levels. And the staff pantry has restricted access, so I would have had to explain to the people at the General Office why I wanted to go into the pantry...

Now I can see why people often joke about how getting a Ph.D means getting "Permanent Head Damage".

In the end, my sister brought along a hairdryer to blow the books dry. One of them now looks like cabbage with pink and black splotches though.

leaking ceiling in jwb's office

2009-07-08T00:21:00.000-07:00

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.

misc

2009-06-26T22:54:00.000-07:00

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.

hectic week

2009-06-21T08:36:00.000-07:00

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...

exam results

2009-05-29T06:39:00.000-07:00

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.

trip to tampines one

2009-05-27T19:53:00.000-07:00

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.

summer vacation timetable

2009-05-17T09:06:00.000-07:00

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.

aware extraordinary general meeting

2009-05-02T09:21:00.000-07:00

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.

the importance of being earnest

2009-04-04T05:44:00.000-07:00

Ok, just a note to let everyone out there know I'm still alive.

I handed in the final term paper for the Gothic Properties module on Wed and did my research topic presentation on Fri, and so now I have a slightly smaller burden off my back (because there is still the HUGE Cultural Studies paper due at the end of this month).

But I took some time off on Thurs night to catch the much-anticipated W!ld Rice production of Oscar Wilde's (haha) classic play The Importance of Being Earnest with Diana. I think the directorial decision to have an all-male cast dressed in suits was an interesting one that led to new insights about gender, and wasn't just making a point about how Wilde was gay (although this is important too).

The actors had impeccable articulation and comic timing, the set design was minimal but cleverly done, the live music accompaniment by Tang Quartet was impressive, and Ivan Heng as Lady Bracknell was absolutely divine. The whole audience literally gasped with excitement when he sashayed onto stage in that beautiful bright red frock coat. I really wish I could get Frederic Lee to make suits like that for me...

I also managed to satisfy my cake cravings with yummy blackforest cake when I had dinner at tcc before the play. I've had lots of fun over these past few days, but tomorrow it's time to get back to work again.

NUS streakers

2009-03-18T19:19:00.000-07:00

I know this is going to make me sound like I have been living on Mars for the past month, but I only found out about the streaking incident in one of the NUS halls this morning when I read the Culture Vulture column in the Staits Times.

Like the columnist, I'm horrified that the students are being punished so heavily for a small, silly act like streaking at 4am in celebration of their hall's victory in the Inter-Hall games. I think this ridiculous prudery is a big problem with the NUS authorities and Singapore society and institutions on the whole. Nudity is not always sexual (and it certainly wasn't in the case of the streakers), yet the authorities seem to readily assume that it is so and thus they go about censoring/punishing nudity in such a puritanical manner. They seem to have minds like that of the governess in The Turn of the Screw - stifling in its Victorian propriety yet ironically the dirtiest and most vulgar of the lot.

busy busy

2009-03-04T08:08:00.000-08:00

Hmm, I realized I haven't updated this blog for some time, but I don't really have much to say. Oh no, perhaps I really am more boring than a virtually empty noticeboard with a conference poster on foreign loan words in Malay.

ムカつく！！

Anyway, school has been getting busier with presentation and essays coming up. Just today I had to give Kinokuniya a call about 2 manga series I wanted to buy for my Cultural Studies term paper on representations of Victorian England in shoujo manga, and I had to go all the way down to Liang Court to pick up one of the series that was reserved for me. 7 books of Godchild + 1 book of Kuroshitsuji (ok, this was my personal indulgence) cost me $74!! Now I now how expensive my hobbies/research interests are. =___=;

I also have a presentation to make on "Network Structure and Linguistic Change" for the GRS on Fri. As a Lit student, I find these articles on sociolinguistics not only boring and opaque because of the jargon, but terribly disappointing. If this is what linguistics is about, I'm glad I have never had much to do with it.

Not only do linguists seem to spend lots of money on empirical research finding out things we already know ("our findings show that female characters in anime use gendered expressions and this promotes gender ideology" - duh!), some of their 'theoretical' writings are too scientistic and poorly theorized and seem to amount to little more than making the facts fit a formula. Maybe I'm generalizing based on a few articles I've read, but these articles are supposed to be seminal works from an introductory reader...

As my friend Yi Qing pointed out some time ago, it really does seem strange to have 2 disciplines as different as Lit and Lang in the same department.

Ok, enough of griping about my presentation. There's lots more work to be done and I had better go to bed now.

bad day

2009-02-18T07:58:00.000-08:00

I'm surprised that today isn't Friday the 13th because I have had a pretty bad day. And it all started with a papercut.

I was trying to staple the notes and readings I had printed out at the AS7 computer lab just 2 hours before the Gothic Properties test when a stack of sheets slipped from my hand and slashed me on my right wrist. And after that unconscious attempt at suicide, everything went downhill.

I went to the Graduate Students' Room and had some problems opening the door. Thinking that the password lock was being cranky again, I didn't dwell on it and was let into the room by Miguel. I studied for a while until Miguel left to grab a bite before the test. 5.40pm rolled around - time to go to the restroom before the test at 6pm. When I came back from the toilet, I couldn't open the door. I tried again and again, but the door refused to open. And there was nobody inside the room to let me in this time.

Remembering what had happened to my room companion Adeline, I rushed all the way up to the General Office to catch the admin staff before they knocked off at 6pm. After taking what seemed like an eternity to find out what was wrong with the door, the clerk told me that they had just changed the door password. YOU DON'T CHANGE THE DOOR PASSWORD WITHOUT TELLING THE STUDENTS USING THE ROOM, YOU FOOLS.

So I ran all the way downstairs again to try the new password. And again the door refused to open. I was close to total panic by this time. Because my watch was in the room, I didn't know how many minutes I had before 6pm when the office would close and the test would start and all my belongings would be trapped in that blasted room for the rest of the night. So I ran up the three flights of stairs to the office again, and then I found out from the clerk that I had misheard the last letter of the password (and I'm blaming her bad pronunciation and hearing for this because I double-checked the first time!)

And so it was down the stairs again, and I was so happy I could have gotten down on my knees and thanked the heavens when the knob yielded and the door opened like the gates of paradise. Ironically, the prof came only at 6.05pm...

But that was not the last of today's spate of misfortune. The test questions were, as the prof said they would be, extremely open-ended and since we were not supposed to bring in any textual evidence but to talk about the issues in general, my answers ended up being airy fairy comments, which I absolutely dislike. Worse still, my mind seemed to have gotten stuck in a rut and with only 20 minutes for each question, I seemed to keep going over the same thing and nothing else was surfacing in my brain. Some of my classmates felt the same way and that is reassuring to an extent, but I still can't help feeling I just flopped in the first test of my capability as a graduate student =(

But after the test, things started to pick up and the seminar was enjoyable as usual. So this wasn't Friday the 13th in disguise after all, and I'm just fishing for superstitious excuses for my poor test performance... =___=;

100% geek

2009-02-13T07:35:00.000-08:00

You know when you're turning into a 100% geek when

1.You can subsist on bread/muesli bars and Dracula till 9 at night.
2.You have to make do with the wall in the Graduate Students' Room for companionship.
3.You (sometimes) want to make do with the wall in the Graduate Students' Room for companionship.
4.You treat photocopying articles as a form of relaxation.
5.You can photocopy a whole 200-page book for your supervisor in under an hour. I challenge you to speed photocopying!
6.You get drawn to other students who have the same perverse interests as you do and clump together to form a homosocial fangirl community.
7.You feel like "slashing" some of your professors.
8.You have a "hot date" with your notes on Gothic capitalist modernity on Valentine's Day.

Jokes aside, I'm really enjoying my first semester as a Masters student. The Gothic Properties seminar is challenging but very enjoyable, and I love getting into the complexities of the texts and sharing my ideas and learning from my friends and the Prof in class. Unfortunately, the discussion seems limited to the few of us who make it a point to participate actively (and you can actually count the number of people who speak up regularly on 1 hand) so things are a far cry from the great Level 4000 20th century seminar which will go down in history, but hey, if people don't want to participate, that's their choice.

For all those who don't know yet, I'm also working for one of the Profs as a research assistant, and so far, I've been doing all sorts of things like making book orders, creating a Macrobibliography, photocopying stuff, wrangling with the library, and now, indexing for a book he's editing. The work is pretty tedious but I'm learning a lot of new things, and the Prof has been imparting sagely advice about graduate studies and publishing and the like, which is very useful. I'm glad I took on this job because it gives me an insider's view into the ways of the academia, even though most of the Prof's previous RAs didn't seem to stay on for more than half a year... Well, we'll see how it goes.

ginny problems

2009-02-04T08:46:00.000-08:00

I sense there is something amiss about Dr Y recently, yet I don't really know what it is and if there's anything I can do about it...

lovely poem by JAR

2009-01-21T08:38:00.001-08:00

My sister is taking EN1101 this sem and today she learnt about trochaic tetrameter through a very enlightening poem written by one of her lecturers:

"Gilbert, Gilbert, Gilbert Yeoh,
Doctor, Doctor, Doctor Yeoh."

This poem was not written by Dr Yeoh, obviously. XD

first week of school

2009-01-19T07:25:00.000-08:00

I've been through slightly more than a week of school, and so far, things are more or less OK.

After 2 weeks of frustration and anger and ranting, I've finally obtained the Cultural Studies module. Although I have a pretty big grudge against the general office, I'm very thankful that they have saved me at the last minute from having to sell out my body and my feminist principles. Depend on a man to help solve your problems? I would do better to depend on a cockscrew to dance the limbo for me. (Ok, ok, I'm over-generalizing. But the fact that I got the module because Wan Ching gave her place to me means I'm exempted from my own vow not to criticize the B anymore)

All my classes are at night but sometimes I'm in school in the daytime to study. The end-result of this is that my diet and biological clock are a little out-of-whack and I'm constantly feeling tired. I guess it'll take some time for me to get used to my strange new nocturnal existence, but I hope it won't take too long, because I want to be able to contribute actively in seminar discussions instead of staring at my own notes on Adorno and Horkheimer without making sense of anything.

I haven't quite gotten used to cultural studies and the not-very-likeable students in that class, but Gothic Properties and the Graduate Research Seminar seem very promising. I felt so alive during the first Gothic Properties seminar - it has been a long time since I've experienced the adrenaline rush of engaging in exciting intellectual discourse. And the lecturer for the GRS is a really cool Japanese female sociolinguist - who wears red eye-shadow and black fishnet stockings =)

I hope this is going to be a fun and enriching semester.

tomorrow is the first day of school

2009-01-10T20:24:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow marks the first day of the new semester, and for me, the first day of my life as a graduate student.

Yet administrative matters are still in a mess. I really hope I'll be allowed into the Cultural Studies seminar. It's THE module I absolutely have to take for my thesis and I'm shut out of it now because of the utter incompetence of the NUS bureaucracy. GRRR.

I think I need to go dig up my dusty 営業スマイル and some long-lost feminine charm as well. I never thought I would have to do this...

ponyo

2009-01-03T19:04:00.000-08:00

I watched the much-anticipated newest Miyazaki Hayao anime film Gake no Ue no Ponyo with the Anime Club alumni yesterday evening and although it wasn't as complex as other Miyazaki movies I've watched or heard about, it was still pretty good.

The story was simple but heart-warming and the characters were life-like yet cute and quirky, without being overly-cute and therefore annoying.

Zhijia was right that there were a few elements in the story which could have done better with more development, and I felt that the film's environmentalist criticism lacked punch and the representation of the relationship between Man and Nature was too utopian, but I've still got to hand it to Miyazaki for his genius in creating whimsical, fantastic, imaginative universes filled with childlike innocence and wonder.

I seldom watch more than 2 movies in a year, but there is another highly-rated show out now which is making me feel like I should part with more of my rapidly depleting money. Elegy is apparently about a Lit professor who has many affairs with his female students and when I first read about the film in a review in Life!, the first person who popped into my mind was a certain infamous prof in my department whose name is ironically the title for the highest-ranking official in a Christian church.

(On a side note, why do writers think that profs who have relationships with their students are Lit profs? Or that Lit profs often have relationships with their students? I'm also thinking of David Lurie from Disgrace).

But on a more serious note, I think the film sounds like a worthwhile watch and I'm probably going to catch it on my own on a weekday next week while my sister goes off to watch Ponyo.

new year's eve reflections and resolutions

2008-12-31T05:49:00.000-08:00

It's now 10 minutes to 10pm according to the clock on my table. Approximately 2 hours from now, we would have left the year 2008 behind and stepped into 2009. So I thought New Year's Eve would be a good time for some reflections on the year that has passed and some resolutions for the year that is to come.

2008 hasn't been a very good year. Some countries have been hit with natural disasters, others have become paralysed with political turmoil. The whole world struggled with rising oil prices, rising food prices, and then came the bank credit crisis.

But, at the risk of sounding cheesy, I think there is hope for change, although I'm skeptical about how much and how fast Obama can bring about the great change he promises. He may be the President of the United States, but he is not the Messiah. But I would still like to retain at least a qualified optimism.

On a more personal level, 2008 has certainly been an eventful year. In the first half of this year, I successfully completed the most important academic paper in my life up till now - the Honours Thesis - and managed to get the First Class and the research scholarship I had been working towards for as long as I can remember. It was an experience which I'll always remember, especially when I prepare for my Masters thesis half a year from now.

Of course, there were also more ambiguous moments in 2008 which were not clear-cut successes or failures. I took a big risk and finally did something which I had been thinking long and hard about, and although the consequences were not quite what I expected, I think I did the right thing. I would be lying if I said that I don't sometimes regret what I did and want to go back to how things were in the past, but at the end of the day, I'm glad I took the plunge. The whole ordeal has taught me a lot about human beings and has made me a more mature person.

The second half of 2008 has been a pretty fruitful period of rest for me. It was great to take a break after four years of studying and use the time to do all the things I did not have the time to do previously. Within the past six months, I have read books by Woolf, Kafka, Joyce, Calvino and a few others which have been on my "to read" list; I have beefed up my theoretical knowledge to some extent by reading (and re-reading) essays by critical theorists and a book on cultural studies; I have revised my Japanese all the way from Japanese 2 to 5 and have taken the JLPT2 exam.

I have also taught myself fashion illustration, perspective drawing (though I'm still very bad at this) and familiarized myself with Corel Painter. I think my drawings have shown a marked improvement although there is still a long way to go before I can compare myself to the likes of Juliana or Luo Lan.

I have also overcome my long-held resistance and joined Facebook, and found that it is actually a pretty useful tool for keeping in touch with one's friends. I have attended many gatherings and met up with long-lost friends and made new ones. I have eaten lots of nice desserts; I have finally tried the famous ramen at Tampopo; I have even drunk my first alcoholic drink (and nothing bad happened).

I have attended the Singapore Biennale and other art exhibitions; I have visited MAAD, I have watched the first public performance of Laremy's plays.

And I have found the time to simply laze around in my room, surfing the Internet for D videos or lounging in my armchair with manga or a fashion magazine in my hand and my mind drifting away to ponder on all sorts of random things, without having to worry about work undone and looming deadlines.

So all in all, I enjoyed 2008. And I hope 2009 will be a better year, for myself, my family and friends and for everyone in the world (yes, even THAT GUY I really dislike - I hope you realize what a horrible person you are and do something about it!). So here are a few resolutions for the new year.

1. Study hard and get good grades (obviously I need to).
2. Keep fit and stay healthy.
3. Do not succumb to the temptation of using work as an excuse to keep people at too great a distance in order to avoid the complexities of human relationships.
4. Perservere in the path that I have chosen.
5. Become a stronger, more mature, more independent adult.

There is this beautiful passage right at the end of Italo Calvino's novel (?) Invisible Cities which expresses very succinctly how I want to live in 2009 and for the rest of my life.

Already the Great Khan was leafing through his atlas, over the maps of the cities that menace in nightmares and maledictions: Enoch, Babylon, Yahooland, Butua, Brave New World.

He said: "It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us."

And Polo said: "The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by living together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."

Happy New Year!

new underwear!

2008-12-30T01:41:00.000-08:00

I am no longer condemned to wearing boring underwear.

Thanks to a tip-off from my sister, I bought my first piece of cute, frilly, girly underwear today. My inner Lolita impulses are fulfilled. Hooray!

harold pinter has passed away

2008-12-26T17:39:00.000-08:00

There was an article in the front pages of the newspaper today, but I had already heard about it from Kevin yesterday: Harold Pinter has passed away.

Critics, intellectuals, artists and even the French President (!?) all over the (Western and Anglophile) world have been paying tribute to the late British playwright, but I'm not going to join in and say something of the likes of, "We mourn the passing of a great artist" or "Pinter will be remembered forever for his profound and powerful plays" for one very simple reason. I have read only three of his plays, and only one of which was a 'seminal' work, and I can't remember what they were like at all.

I'm not saying that Pinter was not a great artist. Neither am I saying that I do not personally think that Pinter was not a great artist. And I'm certainly not saying that I don't remember what his plays were like because they were all forgettable fluff. All I'm saying is that I can't justifiably say that he was a great artist if I can't even remember what I've read; that would be intellectual poseurism.

I know I sound like a total loser of a Lit student. When Kevin spoke to me about "the final pause before the resolution", my mind drew a total blank. Was Pinter famous for using pauses in his plays? LIT STUDENT INTELLECTUAL CREDENTIALS: GRADE F MINUS TO THE POWER OF TWO HUNDRED.

Reading the Straits Times article this morning, a few things are coming back to me from the far-off days of the level 3000 "The 20th Century" module. Dr Y bouncing around in front of me in the tutorial classroom, "absurdism" (the requisite big word), different types of silences, a cheese roll, and oh yes, Dr Y bouncing around in front of me in the tutorial classroom.

Everytime this sort of thing happens, I feel slightly disturbed. Aren't Lit students supposed to be able to go on and on forever about how a work is Aristotlelian, Sartrean, Marxian, Lacanian, Derridean, Deleuze-and-Guattari-ian, Jamesonian etc and how the author employed allegory and bathos and circumlocution and intertexuality to paint compelling visions of a universe devoid of God devoid of meaning devoid of "the centre" with nothing but the void of nothingness and difference and differance and the infinite substitution of signifiers down the endless metonymic chain of desire/signification?

I remember reading lots of books, I remember liking some of them, but sometimes I can't really remember why I liked them (strangely, the opposite is not quite true). The same goes for theoretical works I've read. I'm always impressed when people can tell me exactly which theorist said what in which part of which essay. Just a few days ago I was wondering which theorist was the one who wrote about the subsitution of signifiers - was it Lacan or was it Derrida? Or was it both of them?

Sometimes I wonder whether this memory loss of mine is something I should worry about. Is it a prerequisite for an academic to be able to quote stuff off the backs of their hands? Apart from the obvious boost this would give to my intellectual credentials, I think it would be extremely useful if I didn't forget so much of what I have read before and have to re-read texts and essays again and again. Think of all the time that would save!

I really hope I'll learn to be better at retaining information, but ultimately there is a limit to how much a human being can remember at any point in time. I can only hope that even though I can't remember exactly who ate whose cheese roll in The Homecoming, that play has made an impact on me in some way and will become part of the myriad experiences that have contributed to the way I live now. Perhaps nothing is truly forgotten in this sense.

a pensive day

2008-12-23T07:01:00.000-08:00

I need to remind myself to be strong, to be patient, to move forward slowly, one step at a time. And to be happy with what I have now.

さあ、ゆっくりと、一歩ずつ進めよう。

exhausting week

2008-12-13T06:28:00.000-08:00

I'm finally at the end of an exhausting week and I'm really glad I can do nothing tomorrow but simply stay at home, curl up in my armchair and read my neglected Kafka short stories.

I started my week with the Anime Club chalet dinner held at Aloha Changi. Juliana and I bought a special 'surprise' for our juniors - a classic English Christmas pudding from Marks and Spencer. I had wanted to try what a Christmas pudding tasted like and the Anime Chalet provided the perfect opportunity, haha. But apart from that, I really wanted to give my kawaii kouhai-tachi a treat and was rewarded in return with lots of BL between K* and G*****l!! ~woohoo~

It was also good to see and catch up with YJ and Aik Leong, whom I have not seen for a pretty long time since I graduated. They'll be joining the alumni very soon, and then we can all have more fun at the alumni chalets ^^

The next day, I met Joan for afternoon tea at Cova, a very upmarket Italian tearoom in Paragon. Cova is probably the closest you can get to the Swallowtail butler cafe in Singapore (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Oot6HUGiY&feature=related), although the waiters there are more Tanaka than Sebastian XD

Hmm, it seems like I'm unintentionally revealing all my "true" motives for meeting up with my friends...

Although the food was pricey, I think it was worth every cent I paid. The iced cappuccino I ordered was aromatic and thick (not watery like Starbucks' poor excuse for coffee). The cake named "Aurora" had a delightfully fluffy and feathery texture and the strawberry mousse burst with real strawberry flavour once I bit into it. Absolutely heavenly! And of course, Joan was the perfect companion for the afternoon. ^^

On Friday, I went to the Singapore Art Museum with my sister to visit the "Is it Tomorrow Yet?" and the Japan Media Festival exhibitions. Although I was initially excited about seeing modernist and postmodernist works by the likes of Warhol and Nam June Paik, seeing too many abstract, geometric paintings bored me after a while. There is only so much of lines and grids and squares that I can take in a day.

The Japan Media Festival was more interesting with interactive games and screenings of cutting-edge animation (I particularly liked the typographical animation done for Issey Miyake), but I was actually expecting an exhibition on a larger scale...

After our visit to the museum, my sister and I proceeded to Bras Basah for my first photoshoot. It wasn't exactly a cosplay photoshoot but I had wanted to try constructing a different kind of 'image'. I wasn't very sure how to pose properly, but thanks to my sister's direction, I think most of the photos turned out alright. The pictures will eventually be uploaded when my sister is done editing them. And when that time comes, for those of you who are familiar with anime/manga, I think you can tell where the fashion influences came from :)

And finally, I went to EOY today. As my sister was busy helping out STAC with baggage security and cosplaying as Setsuna from Gundam 00, I had to go around taking photos on her behalf. I think seeing 3 pretty good Kuroshitsuji cosplays made my day ^^

Butlers rock.

bureaucracy

2008-12-11T18:04:00.000-08:00

Bureaucracy in NUS never fails to amaze me.

FASS is making me sit for the Diagnostic English Test because it's now a blanket policy that all grad students, regardless of nationality and medium of undergraduate instruction (and if I may add, regardless of the area of study for which the degree was conferred!) have to take the test so that the faculty doesn't have to rack their brains over the immensely complex question of whether a student who has graduated with an Hons degree in ENGLISH literature 6 months ago should be packed off for remedial English classes.

Apparently grad students are not mature enough to decide for themselves whether or not they should take the English modules if they find themselves struggling with the language after their enrolment.

And guess what's even funnier? I was sent an email this morning from the Registrar's Office telling me to do pre-registration for my registration on 7 Jan.

post-JLPT

2008-12-07T05:00:00.000-08:00

After months of re-reading my old Japanese textbooks from as far back as Minna no Nihongo for Japanese 2 and weeks of doing practice paper after practice paper, the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) is finally over.

I was pretty worried about being able to pass the test because I had not been able to complete the reading comprehension and grammar section within the time limit in any of the practice papers I had done. I felt that the examiners were asking for the impossible - how could anyone read 5-8 passages carefully, avoid all the traps in the MCQs, and then go on to answer 3 more sub-sections of grammar questions, all within 70 minutes?

But today, I did just that. I actually completed the reading comprehension and grammar section!!! I couldn't believe it then and still can't quite believe it now. I actually I thought I had missed out on a page or two and double-checked to see that I had really, truly answered all the questions. Perhaps I should have pinched myself to see if I was dreaming as well.

But this probably means that the examiners set an easier paper this year, and this probably means that most of the other candidates would do equally well, if not better, than me. So I might not pass or pass very well, after all. But I'm pass caring now. I'm just glad that it's over and I can get back to reading my manga again =)

mysterious alarm clock

2008-11-25T21:41:00.001-08:00

My alarm clock is behaving very strangely again...

I mentioned some time ago in a blog post that I once set my alarm clock to ring after 1 hour, took a nap, and woke up at the 'correct' time 2 hours later to discover that my clock had slowed down for 1 hour while I was sleeping.

This morning, I was supposed to wake up at 6am to go jogging, but I only woke up at 7.30am. I looked at my clock, thinking I had switched off the alarm earlier while still in a semi-unconscious sleeping state, and saw that it had stopped working at precisely 5.59am and thus the alarm had no chance to ring at all.

And now my clock is in perfect tick-tock condition again, even though I neither changed the batteries nor so much as rattled the damn thing.

不思議だね・・・

AFA 2008

2008-11-22T18:07:00.000-08:00

I had an absolutely fantastic time at the inaugural Anime Festival Asia yesterday. Here's a detailed account of what happened at the AFA yesterday.

I arrived at the Suntec exhibition hall around 11am yesterday and was pretty surprised to see a long snaking queue lining up for tickets outside the entrance. I had to queue for about 45 minutes before I was able to purchase tickets for myself and Shilei and her friends.

However, I had much less to complain about than those who did the online pre-registration - these people were promised a shorter queue for their 2-day passes, but the pre-registration queue was dissolved soon after I arrived at the hall, and by 11.45am people who had pre-registered had to join the same snaking queue as those who hadn't...

Shilei and I headed first for the Graphite art exhibition and our so-called club booth which was selling CDS material (!!), where we met Moogle, who was trying to mould clay into beads for her cosplay costume, and KC, Gabriel and Zirong, who were playing around with a figurine of some alien-like man supposed to be our new male club mascot who likes YAOI (!!!).

Shilei and I walked around looking at the booths for a while, but we didn't actually DO much because the place was so crowded and chaotic and we couldn't be bothered to join all the queues for the various free stuff. There was even an extremely long queue outside the KKnM booth, which also had bouncers on all four corners of their little space to prevent anyone from entering without queueing. I usually like doing my shopping slowly and in peace and quiet, but the jostling crowds and incessant noise made browsing impossible and after a while I totally put off any attempt to buy anything. One of my seniors, Adeline, later told me that she felt the same way - I guess we're all getting old...

Although AFA was indeed held on a much larger scale than any other anime convention held in Singapore before, there wasn't much that really appealed to me. I'm not a figurine collector (and I have absolutely zero interest in mecha and Gundam), so the displays of priceless and award-winning figurines didn't mean anything special to me. The exhibition of original drawings by the mangaka of Dragonball, Deathnote, D-Grayman and Naruto published in Shounen JUMP were interesting, but there were too few artworks exhibited for the exhibition to have the 'wow' factor. The crowds at the Latendo area were stupendous because the store was offering a 70% discount, but like I've said earlier, I'm not a figurine collector.

The artist alley was paltry compared to what we've seen at Cosfest and EOY, and the artworks weren't particularly attractive. Shilei and I also gave the arcade section a miss, as Shilei plays non-versus-games such as Guitar Freaks and I don't play arcade games at all. As for the anime screenings, it didn't make sense for Odex to screen D-Grayman, Shana, Casshern Sins and Skip Beat if they were already broadcasting these series on Okto...

However, the Graphite art exhibition was a success and I must say I'm proud that the anime club has managed to make Graphite more prominent in the local anime community. The standard of the artworks submitted this year has also increased considerably. BUT the prize presentation was not executed very well, but that's not something I wish to go into greater detail here...

Even though we were a small group, the anime club alumni cheered very loudly when Juliana went up on stage to receive her prize. I'm still amazed (pleasantly, of course) that the drawing which was supposed to be the poster design for the competition won the competition in the end. Jul's drawing even has our (former) club mascot Shouryuu in the corner carrying a large strawberry! It seems like a recognition of artistic talent in our own club, haha.

So I didn't have a great time at AFA because of the event itself - I had a great time because of the wonderful company I had. I went for lunch at the Japanese food section of Food Republic with Shilei, her friends and K* and G*****l, whom the more I saw together, the more I was convinced they would make a star BL couple in the club. I was pratically going "kyaaaaa" internally when K* sat next to G*****l and gave him food from his plate. *___*

As none of the members of the alumni were interested in Mizuki Ichirou aka The King of Anime Songs, and Yanhua was starved, we left at around 5pm and headed to Waraku at Marina Square for an early dinner. We had loads of fun talking about Jul's love of various male anime characters, including the shuai (??) Kakashi who has unfortunately been killed off in the most recent chapter of Naruto. Oops, there goes a spoiler.

After dinner, we met up with Reboot and CK and adjourned to Coffee Club for coffee and cake. The conversation really took off here and we had even more fun talking about weddings and "Grinny" in Harry Potter and the "bashful" Bond in Quantum of Solace (language jokes courtesy of Yanhua) and why Yanhua prefers to ogle at Science girls who wear T-shirts and jeans instead of Arts girls who wear much less and how we got conned into joining USP...

I could feel not just caffeine and chocolate coursing through my veins but the real camaraderie between us. I really do hope we will become even better friends as we spend more time with each other in the coming years. It will not be easy as most of us are now working, but I think this is a group of people who really make the effort to meet up and who are interested to know what's going on in each other's lives, and that's the kind of friends I think are really worth having.

2008-11-18T07:25:00.000-08:00

I realise I haven't been blogging for quite some time. I'm currently uploading the photos I took of the Biennale exhibits at the Central Promontory Site a looong time ago on Facebook; you should be able to view them (and other photos I took as a domestic tourist) soon.

Nothing much out of the ordinary is happening in my life at the moment. Let's see...

Today I went out with PY and Minwei for lunch and some shopping. The last time we met outside school was in PS in July! It felt really good to see them and talk about all sorts of things again. Let's hope our Swensens outing with Diana in early December will be just as successful.

Tomorrow I'll be going to the doctor to do the medical check-up that is required for my registration as a Masters student. And I'll be meeting a senior for coffee on Friday, and going out with the alumni to Anime Festival Asia on Saturday.

At all other times I am attempting to do a gazillion things at the same time and not getting much done =/

fragmented thoughts

2008-11-01T10:53:00.000-07:00

Some fragmented thoughts at the end of a long day out to the Kaleidoscope digital art exhibition at Funan, and then to watch Freedom with the Anime Club alumni.

I'm sick of male Oedipal rivalries and enfeebled male brains that turn to cheese at the sight of an attractive woman. And I'm not just referring to John McCain.

I'm disgusted by women who smile oh-so-sweetly-submissively and gaze with adoring puppy-dog eyes at men with aforesaid enfeebled male brains.

"I am the club and the club is I". I see Indira Gandhi-esque megalomania burgeoning in a puffed-up nitwit with an enfeebled male brain.

I'm a little tired of being the "nice" person all the time. Can I be a little selfish once in a while?

how well do you understand guys? quiz

2008-10-22T18:22:00.000-07:00

I was checking my email this morning when I came across this quiz in a bimbo online newsletter called "ShoppingLifestyle" which I have been receiving for some time but have absolutely no recollection of how I came to be in their ML in the first place. Anyway, in true bimbo fashion, this quiz is titled "How Well Do You Understand Guys?", and since I was kind of bored, I decided to give it a try just for fun.

And surprise surprise, this was my result:

"You're a great guy reader

You're so good at figuring guys that you could've gotten a PhD in male psychology! Case in point: Your guy looks bothered, but then says "I'm fine" when you ask him what's wrong. You know better than to push him for details. All he wants at this point is time alone so he can sort things out by himself.

You're also a natural expert when it comes to deciphering a guy's body language. For example, you can sense that the hunk who's giving you a smirk-like smile isn't really being sincere with you, and likely just wants a no-strings-attached fling. You can also pick out subtle signs that he's crushing on you, such as when your date mirrors your posture, keeps his upper body squarely facing you throughout the conversation and starts stroking his glass.

'It's all about giving his hands something to do while his mind races through the possibilities of activities in which they would be otherwise better engaged,' says Lisa Helmanis, author of Master Dating."

This was so ironic it was hilarious. And actually, the result should be changed to "You're a great guy PERSONA reader". Because the quiz was written in words (obviously), and my sensitivity to textual representations of human beings (not just male) is actually a hundred times greater than my sensitivity to the behaviour of real human beings. You can't ask me whether I know that a guy is interested or not when he's stroking his glass, 'cos I wouldn't even have noticed it. So I probably fail as a woman, but at least I have done my Lit teachers proud.

If anyone wants to have a go at this quiz, you can do so at this URL: http://www.shoppinglifestyle.com/quiz/understandguys/

singapore biennale 2008 part 1

2008-10-19T19:51:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, I visited the Singapore Biennale 2008 exhibitions at City Hall and South Beach Development (opposite Raffles Hotel), which was formerly the headquarters of the Singapore Volunteer Forces and a one-time army camp.

I started off from City Hall MRT at about 2pm and my journey of "wonder" was completed by evening without any major hiccups (apart from .quot;wandering" around the area trying to find the Raffles Hotel for 45 minutes =___=;).

It was fascinating to see how the historic buildings of City Hall and the really old and dilapidated compound of the Beach Road camp were transformed into spaces for the exhibition of cutting-edge contemporary visual art. Although I was at a loss as to the meanings of some of the more conceptual pieces, it was nonetheless enjoyable to pick my way through the artworks slowly, ruminate over their possible interpretations and be amazed and challenged by their weird and wacky (and often disturbing) quality.

I have taken some photographs of particular works which made an impact on me, and have uploaded them onto my facebook page. I have made access to this album open to the public, so you can view the photos here if you're on fb as well:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=44517&id=513057478

sexual content in manga

2008-10-16T07:52:00.000-07:00

An article on manga with sexual content in the NUS Co-op by the ridge.

http://ridgeonline.wordpress.com/2008/09/29/comics-with-sexual-content-found-at-nus-co-op/

Stop bashing manga for its "immorality". And stop treating university students like babies.

I wonder what the authorities would have to say about YAOI manga if they knew it existed...

a month of the arts

2008-10-14T18:34:00.000-07:00

The arts are really draining my pockets dry this month.

First I paid $10 to watch Eric Khoo's My Magic, which I had been waiting for months for it to open in Singapore cinemas but ended up having ambivalent feelings about. Then there was MAAD at the red dot museum where I bought Sharon a handmade cushion for her birthday.

On Friday this week I will be heading down to the Singapore Biennale exhibitions at City Hall and South Beach Development Area, and that'll cost me another $10 (unless I choose to use my old matric card...). And two weeks later, I'll be attending a grand total of three screenings at the Animation Nation 2008 film festival.

And let's not forget the electricity bill racked up by my day-and-night scribbling on the tablet. Time to get back to my Kaleidoscope submission piece, or I won't be able to complete it by the deadline >___<

antique

2008-10-03T07:52:00.000-07:00

"Life Goes On" by CHEMISTRY is playing on loop on my laptop. It's such a sweet song, and it's even sweeter when you listen to it in the context of 西洋骨董洋菓子店～アンティーク～ which is a really wonderful anime. I'm really glad I found this series by accident on crunchy ^^

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDvesTREMjU

Life Goes On

悲しい時に「悲しい」と告げるのは弱いって事かな
辛い時に「辛い」と打ち明けていいかな

I've just got to believe
闇が迫り　行き場失ったとしても
今はキミがそばにいる　迷わずに踏み出すんだ

流した涙はきっと　光る結晶へと変わる
優しく包んで　I'll be with you I'll be with you
キミが教えてくれた　自分らしくある事を
だからどんな時も　信じて進むよ
Life goes on.

ボクがキミにしてあげられる事って　何があるんだろう
苦手な事なら　たくさんあるというのに

I am to be with you
キミの言葉　ふと思い出してうなずく
星が掴めそうな夜　終わらぬ愛を誓おう

流した涙はきっと　光る結晶へと変わる
震える心で　You're by my side You're by my side
この声が届かずに　あきらめそうになっても
握った手だけは　離さず進むよ
Life goes on.

風は絶えず動いて　ボクらの背中を押すよ
時が流れても　You're my sweet heart You're my sweet heart
瞬く星の向こう　夢見た未来描こう
だからその時は　一緒にいようよ
Life goes on.

Life Goes On (apologies for my half-baked translation)

I wonder if it's weak of me to tell you I'm sad when I'm feeling sad
I wonder if it's alright for me to reveal my suffering when I'm suffering

I've just got to believe
Darkness closes in Even if I have no place to go to
As long as you are here with me now I can step forward without hesitation

The tears which have flowed will surely turn into shining crystals
Holding you gently I'll be with you I'll be with you
You taught me how to be true to myself
So at all times, I will believe in you and go forward.
Life goes on.

I wonder what I can do for you
Although it seems that there are many things I am inept in

I am to be with you
I remember your words and nod my head
On a night when the stars seem close enough to grab, let's make a vow of never-ending love

The tears which have flowed will surely turn into shining crystals
With a trembling heart You're by my side You're by my side
Even if my voice cannot reach you and I am about to give everything up
I will not let go of your hand and I will go forward.
Life goes on.

The wind moves without stopping, pushing us from behind
Even as time passes You're my sweetheart You're my sweetheart
Towards the twinkling stars Let's draw the future we saw in our dreams
So let's be together when that future is here
Life goes on.

not moving on

2008-09-29T02:33:00.000-07:00

I've just returned home from a chalet stay-over held to celebrate QH's coming 1-year training programme at Lucasfilm in the US. Earlier last week, I met up with Brandon, who will be (if he has already signed the contract by now) relocating to Tokyo to work in a Japanese company later this year. So two friends whose presence in my life I have more or less been taking for granted will be leaving Singapore soon, and I may not be able to see them again for a long time.

It has been approximately 5 months since my last semester in school ended, and reality has finally sunk in. Where we once shared a common road, my friends have now embarked on their respective journeys along forking paths. Everyone seems to be going somewhere, getting somewhere. Except me.

Most of my friends are now in NIE, training to be future teachers. Some of them seem to be doing pretty well in the news media industry. Some of my JC and secondary school classmates are on their way to becoming well-heeled, sharp-suited Shenton Way executives.

And people whom I have thought of for the longest time as friends and school seniors have grown up all of a sudden and gotten married! Two of the pioneering anime club seniors have just tied the knot with each other on Saturday, and ZF sprung an even bigger whopper of a surprise on all of us at QH's chalet when he introduced us to his wife, who was previously his girlfriend only about a year ago.

And what have I been doing (and will be doing) in the time between graduation and starting school again in January? As much as I pretended to be indifferent, it never failed to irk me whenever this question was posed to me and I had to answer it with, "After NYP, I'm not going to find any employment" and confront the mildy incredulous and accusing looks of the questioner - "You're not going to work between now and then AT ALL??" And of course there's the familiar "You STILL want to study SOME MORE???" It's as if I can't justify my existence in this world if I'm not receiving a paycheck.

I'm certainly enjoying my last long holiday and spending my free time fruitfully (even though it may not appear so in the eyes of the rest of the world) but I can't stop feeling slightly envious whenever my friends talk about going for interviews and gripe about their jobs. It's as if everyone else is moving on to something new and great, whereas time for me is stuck in a rut. Unfortunately for me, the Eternal Student was an ideal which went out of fashion at the end of the Age of Enlightenment.

And on the romance front, nothing is happening as well. When I was an idealistic teenager in a single-sex secondary school, I used to dream of meeting the perfect guy in university, dating through school and a few years after that, and finally settling down happily ever after at age 29, no earlier and no later.

Having spent the past four years actually living the real life of a university student, I have come to realize how horrendously naive I was, and I don't agree with the idea of deliberately looking for love just to be in a relationship, yet I can't help but sometimes be plagued with a lurking twinge of bitterness which has to be suppressed in the face of happy school sweethearts innocently wanting me to wish them the best.

Sick of relationships which die before they even begin, I bemoan, like an annoying, whiny, self-pitying, pathetic loser, "Why does everyone else manage to find happiness? When will it be MY turn to be happy???"

But ultimately, these feelings of envy are only temporary. Come next January, time will be zooming by with the aid of readings and seminars and papers, and before I know it, I will be standing in the UCC auditorium with another piece of paper in my hands again. And, in a rather ironic but perhaps not unpleasant turn of events, (school)work will help to preoccupy me and put all thoughts of romance out of my head.

And even now, deep down inside, I know I would not have my life as it is now any other way.

cake!

2008-09-26T04:39:00.000-07:00

I have been to Heaven once. It was a dessert food hall in a department store in Tokyo.

There is absolutely NOTHING in Singapore that comes close to the extravaganza of cakes, chocolates, cookies, puddings, jellies, mochi and all other kinds of sweets dreamt up by the human imagination that can be found in a Japanese food hall. But thank goodness, there are still places here where I can satisfy my cravings for delicious desserts.

I went out to Orchard today to run some errands and was looking forward to treating myself to Haato ice cream at Wheelock Place after my work was done. But after going up and down through all 4 storeys of the building, I realised to my disappointment that the Haato outlet was no longer there!!

I was pretty upset, as I had PLANNED to eat Haato's ice cream because I knew I should save money and eat a cheaper dessert than other things I had in mind, and I had DELIBERATELY eaten less for lunch to save money and stomach space for dessert and yet!!!... I wasn't going to be denied my long-awaited dessert just like that, so I made my way down to Canele at Paragon.

Although Canele cannot be compared to a department store food hall with its dozen patissieries and chocolatieries all vying for your attention (and wallet), it presented me with enough choice to make me hover before the display case trying to decide which type of cake I should choose.

Due to the influence of Seiyou Kottou Yougashiten ~Antique~, I had wanted to try a "Cassis", but I remembered it was autumn already and Canele was not likely to have it. I also wanted to take a closer look at the Mont Blanc in the corner, but a woman making an order was blocking it. So in the end, I decided to try the "Le Royale".

It was a thin, rectangular slice of cake with mousse made of 64% dark chocolate, hazelnuts and rum. The layers of mousse were so substantial that I needed to use a bit of strength to slice through the cake with my fork, and it was full of rich chocolatey goodness which wasn't too sweet and heavy on the palate. I couldn't really taste the rum and I would have liked the flavour to be slightly stronger, but I think it did make me feel a bit tipsy later on my way home.

The cake was a little pricey at $7 a slice but it was delicious and it made me feel happy, and I live by the belief that, if I'm going to eat something, it had better be worth the fat intake.

There was a couple next to me in Canele who ordered a classic French chocolate cake, and left after eating only half the slice. Cake-eaters like them should burn in Hell.

one year older

2008-09-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

I've just come back from a gathering with some JC friends which I was led to believe was meant for KR who is to return to Cambridge this Friday. But much to my surprise, the gathering was actually meant to celebrate my birthday. I was really touched because I had thought no one would know that it was my birthday. A BIG THANK YOU TO FIONA, PY, JAN, SHARON AND DARYL!!!

facebook

2008-09-07T19:44:00.001-07:00

Yes, I've finally sold out to Facebook. You guys can mock me now.

I've been against the idea of joining Facebook and all other online social networking systems for a long time because I thought (and still do to some extent) that having an email account, msn and a blog takes up enough space already on cyberspace.

But after QH told me that the Anime Club alumni wanted to create a group on Facebook, I thought that if having a Facebook group can help us increase the sense of community and friendship within the alumni, then I shouldn't be a spoilsport and stay out of Facebook. So here I am.

As time goes by, I'll also inevitably be seeing less and less of my former schoolmates, so Facebook should help me keep in contact with them as well. But this doesn't mean that posting messages online and sending 'pokes' can fully replace the need to see and talk to people in person. There's nothing like a long afternoon chat over a cup of tea with an old friend.

serangoon gardens controversy

2008-09-07T19:44:00.000-07:00

Looks like ivorytowerism has set in a bit too early.

Yesterday morning, I was surprised to see a very long article in the Sunday Times on the controversy surrounding Serangoon Gardens residents petitioning against the setting up of a dormitory for 1000 foreign workers in the neighbourhood. Even though I live in Serangoon Gardens, this was the first time I had even HEARD of this petition. I guess I didn't notice that trouble was brewing up around me (but that is nothing new).

I personally don't feel very strongly against the idea of converting the unused secondary school into a dorm, because the land is vacant and foreign workers are human after all, and they need a decent place to stay in.

Foreign workers are often looked upon with derision by locals, but I think this is mainly due to prejudice and the ironic re-enactment of colonial relations of power in a postcolonial setting. I have not personally experienced any kind of harrassment from foreign workers before, and it is highly unlikely they'll actually go around on a rampage of robbing and raping.

As for drinking too much alcohol and littering at void decks, that may be true as newspaper reports in the past have shown, but this problem can be solved by building a canteen or lounge in the dorm and letting the workers have their drinking sessions there. I don't approve of alcoholism, but I can understand why the workers would want to use alcohol as an form of distraction from the exhaustion of manual labour and their sense of alienation in a land far away from home. On their part, foreign workers should remember to act responsibly, and perhaps then we can all co-exist peacefully?

But that doesn't look likely to happen anytime soon.

On a slightly related note, the old Paramount cinema complex which now houses the NTUC supermarket in Serangoon Gardens Village is going to be torn down and replaced with guess what? Yet another shopping mall. What will happen to the charm, the cozy, intimate atmosphere and funky al-fresco dining so characteristic of our neighbourhood? It's sad that yet another piece of the old world is going to be lost in the name of "development". I had thought there was actually going to be a petition about this instead...

funny things at work

2008-08-31T19:00:00.001-07:00

Just a random funny situation I encountered at work going through the online bursary applications yesterday.

In the space provided next to the question whether he had been charged in court before, this student wrote: "I'm suffering from atopic eczema."

back at NYP again

2008-08-31T19:00:00.000-07:00

I'm back here at work again. I blame commodity fetishism.

happy birthday asagi-sama

2008-08-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

It's ASAGI's birthday today (29 Aug) and he turns 34 this year!

お誕生日おめでとうございまーす！！\(^v^)/

D is also releasing their second major single Yami no Kuni no Alice next Wed. Check out the superb PV on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk4Ulh7HSiA

As you can see from the PV, D is still under avex trax. So the rumours that D's contract with avex is only limited to the release of Birth are, unfortunately, untrue. However, it seems that D has not lost their 'indies' edge yet, and hopefully they won't ever go the way of Gackt *shudders*
Yami no Kuni no Alice sounds pretty interesting, and like most of D's songs, you have to listen to it carefully a few times for it to grow on you. Right now, I think the chorus is quite catchy and the song has a whimsical 'fantasy' feel to it which I have not heard in D's other works. And at the risk of sounding shallow (and I readily admit I am no music connoisseur/snob), the first thing that struck me when I watched the PV for the first time was how gorgeous the costumes were. All the band members are looking as pretty as ever, especially Aasama!

So here's to Aasama and D's bright future! As the Chinese saying goes, old ginger is the spiciest.

books list

2008-08-26T07:43:00.000-07:00

I found this on Wan Ching's blog and decided to give it a go as well =)

Instructions:
- Look at the list and bold those you have read
-Italicise the ones you want to read
- Underline the books you really loved and strikethrough the ones really didn't enjoy [I don't know how to strike through text on blogger so I'm just going to use an X to indicate the books I didn't like]
- Reprint this list in your own journal if you want to... you know you want to.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen [yes, I know my knowledge of canonical lit sucks.]
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible [not all of it, though...]
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 _Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell_
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens [I never managed to get through more than half of this horrible novel!] X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott [read this when I was a child]
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy [well well, I didn't even touch this novel even though it was one of the set texts for the Tragedy module...]
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare [err, I've only read several of his plays]
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier [I think I didn't complete this book as well even though it was set for the Feminism module...] X
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen [I have ambivalent feelings abt Mr Knightley]
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins [oh, I read this text for the 19th c mod in my first year! Didn't finish it though 'cos its pacing was way too slow for a mystery novel...]
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery [childhood reading again]
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 _Lord of the Flies - William Golding_ [I want to read it again!]
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen ['A' level text. Brings back memories of the good (?) old days in AJ]
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 _Brave New World - Aldous Huxley_ [one of my alltime favs]
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In A Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov [read this during 'A' levels and couldn't think of what to make of the ending...]
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy [yet another 'A' level text]
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [tell me about wanting to read this book! I've been looking for it in Central Lib since May and every time it's been borrowed by someone else!!]
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker [this was good fun to take apart in Feminism class]
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett [childhood reading again]
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 _Ulysses - James Joyce_
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens [I remember reading this as a sec sch lit text??]
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 _The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro_
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White [I remember I was charmed by this novel as a child]
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute [sec sch text again...]
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl_
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo [my sister is trying to read this - don't know how far she has gotten]

moments worthy of kafkaesque laughter

2008-08-23T06:58:00.000-07:00

Ok, two blog posts in a single day. My, am I on a roll.

I'm beginning to feel that my life is taking on a Kafkaesque quality.

A round, bullish man jealously guards a key to a cupboard full of junk. A frog in a pot talks on and on without realizing that the water around it is getting warmer. An alarm clock set to ring after one hour propels its sleeping owner two hours forward into the future.

I can do nothing but laugh helplessly, bitterly, despairingly at the increasing ludricrousness of everything.

OTOT

2008-08-23T04:45:00.000-07:00

I came back last night (or more accurately, early this morning) at 3am, and after taking an afternoon nap, I now feel conscious enough to write this post on our Lit students' outing to watch Own Time Own Target.

In the previous post, I mentioned that almost half the Lit cohort was going to turn up to support Laremy. Although some of the people who had bought tickets couldn't turn up because of work commitments (darn the neo-liberal economy's illiberal workers' welfare practices), some other people who could not make it at first turned up, so in the end the numbers remained about the same.

However, we were scattered all over the place and some did not stay for the feedback session after the show and as a result, I could not get the group photo I was so looking foward to taking. It would have been nice to have a picture of all of us together to commemorate this unprecedented event...

But on to my views of the show. I liked Laremy's second play Radio Silence the best out of the three plays featured in this triple bill. The reviewer from Life! called the play Beckettian, and I couldn't agree more. I liked the way Laremy pared the play down to its bare essentials, setting the action in a non-man's land and letting the audience watch how his characters grapple with the collapse of the entire system of rules and hierarchy which governs life in the army. Like Stefan, I felt that the play had great potential, but it was let down a little by the rather flat acting of Nick Shen as the driver Charlie.

The first play, Full Tank!, was madcap fun to begin with, but unlike Radio Silence, it was a bit too diffuse and unfocused in its direction. I felt that it touched on several topical issues of interest to Singaporeans, such as racism against Malays in the SAF, the incompetence of the authorities and being trapped in a system whose maintenance one is complicit in, and this is of course commendable but it could have done better with a stronger underlying structure to bring all these concerns together. The comedy was also a bit too amateurish and slapstick at times, detracting from the edge that the absurdist elements were supposed to give the play.

Nonetheless, Laremy did a great job for a first-timer and we were all very proud of him. The third play, which was a mini-musical by Julian Wong, was feel-good entertainment with charming songs and likeable characters, but it wasn't very original and didn't take its critique of the army's discrimination against male homosexuals and its discourse of masculinity far enough.

But perhaps I'm asking too much of a mainstream musical with a severe time limit, and frankly speaking, our brains were so dead by that time of the night that cheesy, accessible fare was a welcome relief after the chilling Radio Silence. The cast was also very talented and I'm really amazed by the way they could juggle so many vastly different roles in one single night.

All in all, OTOT was good fun and I'm really glad that W!ld Rice give Laremy this opportunity to showcase his work in a public space.

anime club alumni chalet

2008-08-20T08:41:00.000-07:00

These past 2 weeks have reminded me once again of how good it feels to meet up with friends, reminisce over old times and catch up on what has been going on in our lives. My social life has not been this busy since... well, ever.

Last Friday (15 Aug), I went back to school for lunch with Joan and Leon, and then chatted with Kevin for a while at the anime club booth, and then left in the evening to attend the FASS prize presentation ceremony. It felt really good to see Joan and Leon again and revisit our old practice of post-lecture lunches and frank talk about all things from schoolwork to phallic symbols to reproductive health.

On Sunday (17 Aug), I attended the Anime Club alumni chalet, where I met up with my dearest senpai (except Adnan-sama who could not come ;__;) as well as seniors who had steered the club in its earliest days. It was good to see the people who had first brought me into the Anime Club again, and to get to know some of the seniors whom I had only known by name or been introduced to very briefly when I was still an undergrad. Here are some pictures Shilei and I took at the chalet: http://s34.photobucket.com/albums/d141/okaru85/nus%20anime%20club%202008/alumni%20chalet%2017%20aug%202008/

Jul did lament to me when we were eating that we actually knew very little about what was happening in each other's private lives, but I think it is sometimes not necessary to know every detail about who's marrying who and who is getting a promotion at work - it simply suffices to be in the company of people you like and to hear their voices and see their smiles again.

We tried to trace the history of the club, and it turns out that we're turning 10 next year! I hope to organize a birthday bash for all the past and present committee members and maybe also track down the elusive pioneer Cedric, the legendary "shuai" cosplayer who remains shrouded in the mists of ancient history.

We've really come a long way and I think the most important thing we got out of all those years of hard work was the friendships that we still share today, and that's certainly worth celebrating. Reboot, our 2nd generation chairperson, put it very succinctly when he said that the most important thing is "to remember to have fun". The current exco may not realize this now, but I hope they will when they have spent a few years in the club.

On the following Monday, I went back to school again to meet PY, Minwei and Diana for lunch in the Arts Canteen. Unfortunately, unexpected circumstances once again prevented Diana from meeting us. However, we did manage to spot Calvin in the lunch crowd and invited him over to our table, where he almost made Minwei burst her bladder from laughing at his silliness.

The next day, I was back in school yet again, but this time, I was there to read my books in the library before heading down to Vivocity for dinner with some of my JC classmates. And surprise surprise, I met QH in the library! He was back in school to solve some problems with his project from last semester. So we ended up studying in the library again, just like in the not-too-faraway past when we were preparing for our HT and FYP respectively...

After spending the whole day in the library, I took a bus down to Vivocity and had dinner and desert with KR, Sharon, PY, Doreen, Van, Daryl and Derek. It was supposed to be a gathering for the Maths students with Mr "Maths" Tan, but he had urgent work to do and couldn't make it in the end.

But I still had lots of fun catching up with my classmates, especially with KR, who I see only once a year. I seldom miss KR consciously, but whenever I do see him, I remember how much I've missed him, how much I wanted to talk to him again and to ask him about how things are going over there in Cambridge.

And although I wouldn't have believed it 4 years ago, it was an immense pleasure chatting with Daryl and talking rot, or "intellectual discourse" as he called it, with him again.

It also seems that a new couple has sprung up out of our JC groupings. I'm a little surprised, given that the guy in question is the crappiest clown and biggest flirt in the class, but things look like they are going pretty well and I should and will wish them all the best, despite everything that has happened.

Ok, I think I should end here. I have yet another social function to attend this Friday - Laremy's NS plays are premiering at the Esplanade as part of the OCBC Singapore Theatre Festival, and almost half of the Lit Hons cohort is going down to support him. It's going to be an absolutely fantastic night. ^^

first day of school

2008-08-10T22:43:00.000-07:00

Today's the first day of the new academic year in NUS and for the first time in 4 years, I'm not in school. O____o

It feels kind of weird. I'm very glad, of course, to have this long holiday where I can finally pay attention to things I've not had the time to do, like improving my drawing skills and revising my rusty Japanese, but at the same time, I miss all the fun and bustle of preparing for another school year - costume-making sessions, Matric Fair, buying towers of books at the Co-op, even bidding in CORS.

Kevin's in school right now and telling me over msn how chaotic it is with the new crop of freshies. Last year I was pretty annoyed that the freshies were crowding up the whole place from the Arts Canteen to the 3rd Level of Central Library.

I suppose I would still be annoyed if I were in school today, but there's something about the noise and crowds and buzzing activity on the first day of the academic year that just gets your heart beating and adrenaline pumping and you're all ready to go for another 15 weeks of non-stop studying.

But I will have to make do with experiencing the beginning of the new school year vicariously. And to help you guys who have graduated do the same, here are some photos of the Matric Fair which my sister took =)
http://s222.photobucket.com/albums/dd180/thickfish/matric%20fair%2008/?start=0

hiniku na koto ga ippai

2008-08-06T19:12:00.000-07:00

The problem with being a Lit student is that you learn to see things from so many different perspectives, to accept complexity and ambiguity and differences in subjective perception, that you end up a conflicted mess.

But that's also the beauty of it.

nice work and not-so-nice work

2008-07-31T00:55:00.000-07:00

For all those of you whom I haven't told yet, I'm working at a polytechnic processing MOE bursary applications. But thank goodness, today is the last day and then I'm out of here and back to my "nice work", before my brain degenerates and my soul dies.

I'm no stranger to working in this poly, but doing administrative work (in my previous stints here, I did writing for the school newsletter and website) has made me realize a few things.

1. Students nowadays can't follow simple instructions.
It doesn't matter if you remind them to submit the proper supporting documents by the deadline through email, posters, leaflets and online announcements a gazillion times. If they don't want to read your instructions, they won't. And that's why it's part of my duty to call students up and chase them for missing documents. If I had things my way I would have simply junked their incomplete and late applications into the recycling bin, but molly-coddling the students is the way things are done here.

But sometimes it is really bewildering how the students here can be so thick-headed. The instructions are organized in tabulated form for easy comprehension. If your parents are employed, I want to see the payslip. If they are unemployed, I want to see their CPF contribution history. And then I get students giving me CPF statements for working parents. I seriously think there is some special function in their brains that makes them see each section in the table merge into each other like an abstract painting.

And there are the really idiotic people (let's not mince words here) who can submit the online application without the hard copy supporting documents, or even worse, submit the documents without the online application. I don't see how you could have read about submitting one thing without seeing that you needed to submit the other. Perhaps in addition to their capacity for higher level abstraction, the students have selective vision as well.

2. It appears that secondary school English language teaching has failed. Some of the students don't seem to understand that a self-declaration LETTER of one's income should NOT look like the following:

Name: XXX
Occupation: Self-empolyed
Income: $1000 a month
Reason why income documents are not available: Self-empolyed

And there's no signature at the end of the letter. Sure I'm taking your word for it that your parent's income is $1000 a month and not $100 000, but this is way too perfunctory.

3. My calling.
Ploughing through stacks of bursary applications for the past 3 weeks has made me realize what I consider my "real work", "nice work". It frustrated me deeply when I couldn't read my book, as I was often dragged off to one place and then left there with nothing to do, while my book sat waiting for me in another place. It annoyed me when my reading kept getting interrupted by phone calls from parents who call 3 days past the deadline for submission thinking I can make an exception for everyone. It irked me when I couldn't fully immerse myself into the world of my book with aunties walking in and out of the storeroom I sit in trying to have inane conversations with me. And it deeply saddened me that I wasn't doing justice at all to my book by dropping off after 10 pages every night after getting home tired from work.

So this is what the famous "working life" is like, and frankly speaking, it scares me. The very possibility that I won't be able to read and think about books for the next 40 years is unimaginable. The thought of wasting away in a cubicle staring at numbers on a computer screen everyday frightens me. I don't want to end up like the aunties outside my room who can talk about nothing except chicken rice and Ginvera moisturizing gel to alleviate their boredom. In order to get my "nice work" in the future, I'm really going to have to work hard for it now. And so it's back to the library next week.

lit hons movie outing

2008-07-26T20:39:00.000-07:00

I had a GREAT night out last night.

After many failed attempts, I finally managed to attend the latest Lit Hons gathering, which was a dinner + movie + drinks affair originally suggested by Sarah and organized by the dutiful Qiurong. Qiurong, Stefan, Kim, Benita, Shi Ping and I had dinner at Eclectic Attic, an antique shop cum restaurant in Plaza Singapura that had the prettiest and quirkiest eighteenth-century furnishings. It reminded us of Jane Austen - and Dr SA's office. But the food was pretty good and reasonably priced, and they actually served dainty tea cakes on a two-tiered platter!! All they needed to complete the picture was Sebastian the butler. I am definitely going back there again to enjoy my food slowly, cos we had to rush through our dinner to make it time for the movie (people being late again, as usual).

While we were having dinner, some of my friends saw a familiar face walk by outside. I saw that it was actually my long-lost senior Selene, whom I have not heard from for at least a year, and I called her in and we chatted for a while. It turns out that Selene knows Joan from another Lit module. It really is a small world, especially where Lit students are concerned.

After chowing down our food, we went off to watch The Dark Knight. I have never been very interested in movies based on superhero comics (correction - I have never been very interested in Hollywood movies in general), but I wanted to catch this movie only because of all the hype surrounding Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker. And I think Ledger deserves all the praise he has gotten, for his performance was simply electrifying. I felt that most of the other characters were a bit flat, even Batman, but the Joker was frighteningly incomprehensible and chillingly real. I also felt that the movie had quite a bit in common with the anime Monster (although Johan is scary in a very different way), and that it was trying to make some profound deconstruction point about Batman "complet[ing]" the Joker and vice versa, but the fast-paced action scenes indicate that the movie was obviously not made for audience contemplation. My brain simply shut down once the car chase scenes came on, But the fight scenes were exciting and well-chereographed and I totally agree with Kim that Batman's voice is veeeeery cool. Although in real life one would think he had bronchitis. Go watch the movie and hear it for yourself ;)

After the movie, we headed down to Brewerkz at Riverside Point for drinks and chatting. I have never heard so much gossip about the Lit department and its denizens exchanged within 4 hours before. And we also managed to learn a bit more about Qiurong, whom we know now is actually a sweet, sentimental, devoted boyfriend beneath the cool, nonchalant exterior. And I also accidentally outed myself because of Laremy!! Argghh. >__<

Kim was so kind to give us all a lift home, and thanks to all of them, I had a wonderful time! Hope to see more people turning up for our next gathering!

ranting about guys

2008-07-21T20:12:00.000-07:00

バカな男が嫌い。
無神経な男も嫌い。
勝手な男が大嫌い。

Today I'm going to rant about guys. Yes, I know this isn't a chicklit column, but sometimes, you wish that some members of the opposite sex would simply disappear from the face of this earth.

My sister has mentioned once that Engin guys have 0 logic. Let me broaden that statement. It turns out that this guy who has all the traits of the totally illogical, can't-hold-an-argument-to-save-my-life-yet-I-am-right-and-don't-you-dare-dispute-it Engin guy is actually majoring in Political Science. This doesn't prove my generalization wrong; it simply goes to show what a supremely sad case he is. Please stop trying to pass off political naivete as Machiavellian machinations "for the good of us all". You just want something and you just want to get it no matter what other people say. And God save us all if you come to govern the country.

And then there are the slackers. All talk and no action. What's the point of being in a club committee if you're always slouching around, ignoring the important emails and replying only to the trivial ones, and disappearing when your help is required? Save your pontificating for your otaku anime blog.

And then there are the Engin guys and guys who resemble Engin guys who have 0 EQ. Don't you know that taking someone's artwork and giving it to another artist to change it completely without even asking for the original artist's permission is insulting? Don't you know that saying "thank you and have fun" after saying sorry makes it sound like you just sneered your way through an "apology"? Don't you know that you shouldn't suddenly sever your relationships with your friends and look right through them like pieces of glass just because a girl doesn't return your feelings?

And lastly there are the PERVERTS. Creeps who fill their handphone contact lists with the numbers of dozens of girls, and who consider every girl who agrees to lunch with them in the Arts Canteen their "girlfriend". Creeps who come univited to chalets and try to get chummy with all the girls and consider themselves so privileged to be the official photographer of sleeping girls. Creeps who ogle at and comment on female cosplayers' chest areas in front of their girlfriends.

As my sister says, such guys should be fed to the Taiyaki.

commencement photos

2008-07-12T20:36:00.001-07:00

I've uploaded the photos taken at my Commencement ceremony on 10 July. Click here to view the photos --> http://s34.photobucket.com/albums/d141/okaru85/commencement%2010%20jul%202008/?start=0

I'll be off to the Anime Chalet from this afternoon to tomorrow, and then it's the beginning of a three-week stint at NYP. I also have a dinner reunion with my JC classmates on Thursday, and Commencement dinner on Friday. Looks like this is going to be a busy week.

london trip and commencement

2008-07-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Phew! I've finally finished uploading all the photos taken by my sister and I during our trip to London. Here's the link http://s34.photobucket.com/albums/d141/okaru85/trip%20to%20london%202008/

Some of the pictures have accompanying descriptions, so please view each picture individually using the slideshow function to read the narrative.

~~~
My Commencement ceremony was held this afternoon at the UCC (10 Jul), and all of us had a blast! I will be uploading the photos taken at the ceremony soon so keep an eye out for it. ^^

back from london

2008-06-27T09:35:00.000-07:00

I'm back from London and I'm pretty shagged. So no blogging about the trip till I gather up the energy to do so. Meanwhile, my sister is editing the gazillionn pigeon/duck/flower photos she has taken. Will take a while before I can upload them to photobucket.

Till then!

last nostalgia trip

2008-06-13T18:13:00.000-07:00

A recent update: I've recently received an email from the Graduate Studies department telling me I've been accepted into the Masters by research programme with Research Scholarship included. I wasn't expecting their reply so soon as they said they would reply by Oct 31, but good news is welcome anytime. So it's back to school come Jan 2009. ^^

~~~
Ok, this is going to be the final installment of all the 'nostalgia trips'. I'm going to talk about a special group of people whom I have stuck it through with together these four years - the Lit cohort of 2004/2005.

The Lit cohort is of course made up of very different individuals with diverse personalities, and there are of course some particular individuals whom I can't say I like very much (such as arrogant Lit students who like putting down others in the meanest possible way during class) but on the whole, most of my Lit classmates are really cool and wacky people, and great fun to hang out with. And I love the way all of them are passionate about reading, even though it doesn't always show when we're exhausted after sleepless nights of mugging and can't wait to use Middlemarch as a doorstopper and read our comics and fashion magazines again.

As is my usual (peculiar) habit, I hung out more with the seniors than with people from my own batch from my first to third year, so it was in my fourth year that I got to know the people who were always around me but whom, sad to say, I didn't often notice... =___=;

The module that really made me realize that the Hons cohort was a bunch of great people is definitely the Topics in the 20th Century seminar taught by Dr JN. This was without doubt one of the most enjoyable modules I have taken throughout my four years in NUS. Every week, 20 of us would sit in a circle in the rather obscure ADM block, and during the class discussion segment of the lesson, groups of 3 or 4 students would take charge of the seminar and faciliate discussion of specific short stories by several women modernist writers, while Dr N sat behind us and jumped in only now and then.

This way of managing the class worked amazingly well, as it gave us the freedom to take the discussion in many different directions and to give our opinions without fear of saying something stupid and getting whammed by the lecturer. If you've taken Lit modules in NUS before, you'll know that seminars tend to be rather quiet affairs dominated by a few outspoken people, but this wasn't the case for the 20th c class. There was a really wonderful sense of camaraderie amongst all of us, a kind of understanding that we were all on equal footing and in the same boat, and that we should engage with each other and help each other out. And our discussions (especially of Katherine Mansfield's stories) were seldom dry, solemn 'academic' speechifying events but lively, heated, passionate exhanges of views and opinons drawn from our own real life experiences. And then we would laugh at ourselves for getting so worked up about whether "Phoebe is a slut" or "strawberries are symbols of horniness" or if we took William's side or Mary's. I took away so much after every discussion, and the seminar certainly hit home the message that while reading is a solitary activity, we need to interact with other readers to discover new angles and perspectives we would never have thought of on our own.

In the second semester of my fouth year, I began going to the EN Hons Room, sometimes to study and sometimes to chill out, and it was there that I found yet another home I could belong to. The Hons Room is populated by a bunch of crazy crazy people whom you can whine about how slowly your HT/ISM is moving along, bitch about unsympathetic teachers and "Muthu", laugh till you cry about the "Chinese man hair syndrome" and listen to Stefan's not-so-secret salacious affairs. Sometimes I really pitied our neighbour next door 'cos we were always making a ruckus...

It was in the Hons Room that I got to know some people whom I had thought were rather cold and distant towards me, and they turned out to be real fun to chat with. I like my Anime Club friends and other friends of course, but one also needs people who can have a sense of sharp ironic humour and share one's skepticism and anti-establishment disrespect for all the sacred cows of orthodoxy.

It's a real pity that I only got to know these people in the last sem of school, and we'll soon be leaving on our separate paths to different careers and different social networks. The Hons Room is probably deserted now, but the bookshelves, the lockers and of course, the fridge, will always keep those traces of us and of the times we spent together, even as the room passes into the hands of the next generation of Lit Hons students.

~~~
I'll be leaving for London early tomorrow morning and will return only on the 27th. Till then!

costumes and short films

2008-06-12T02:39:00.000-07:00

Our long-awaited outing to Chocolate Factory has been hit by unforseen circumstances and axed... yet again!! T___T
I'm beginning to think Chocolate Factory is jinxed... Perhaps I should choose another venue the next time.

~~~
This will be the second last 'nostalgia trip' as I will be flying off to London on Sunday and will be back only on the 27th. So bear with me.

In this post I'll be talking about some of the most enjoyable and fulfilling experiences I've had in the past 4 years in NUS.

1. Making costumes during the summer vacation
If it wasn't for the Anime Club, I wouldn't have had the chance to try my hand at making cosplay costumes. After helping out in the making of both the Otousan costume in 2006 and the maid and host costumes in 2007, I'm afraid my sewing skills are still as lousy as they were before, but at least I know a little bit more about the mechanics of sewing, and more importantly, the sewing sessions were wonderful opportunities for me to spend more time with my committee friends, some of whom I have become much closer to because of the shared experience. I hardly knew YJ when I started out making the Otousan costume with him and Zhijia, Shilei and QH, but at the end of 3 months I had found out how he could make all of us double up with laughter with all the crappy things he said. All of us except Zhijia and Shilei were entirely inexperienced in sewing, but we had plenty of fun figuring things out (with lots of assistance from our respective mothers) and being crazy as only a bunch of anime fans know how to. I still have plenty of priceless photos of QH wearing a tutu and Gabriel wearing a maid costume. Perfect blackmail material >=)

Now that I will be playing a much less prominent role in the affairs of the club, I'll miss those lazy summer days when all of us would gather in Zhijia's house or mine, and talk rubbish over pieces of cloth and thread and attempt to sew straight lines with the sewing machine. ;___;

2. Making a short film
Thanks to the Singapore Film module, I had my first (and last) taste of making a short film. Together with Kevin, Sam, Peiqin and YJ, we tried to do many things and ended up with a C+ for our project =___=; But I'll never forget filming till 4am and then almost getting driven to JB by Peiqin because our road navigator Kevin had already alighted. And the famous shot of our albino janitor and Peiqin walking past each other down the AS1 corridor =)

Now I know how difficult artistic creation is. I shall henceforth stick to writing only books on books.

diana and joan

2008-06-08T01:18:00.000-07:00

Ok, after talking about Dr Y in my previous 2 posts, it's time to talk about 2 great girlfriends I made thanks to Dr Y's classes.

I first got to know Diana during EN2111 tutorials. I can't really explain it well, but I was attracted to her and wanted to get to know her better. I suppose you can say I felt that there was some sort of chemistry between the 2 of us. So after one particular tutorial, I asked her if she wanted to have lunch together. We ate at the Grinning Gecko where we laughed over all the funny things that were said during the tutorial, and I guess we took off from there =)

Diana is a very cheery person with a hearty sense of humour, and being with her never failed to brighten up my day and make me look on the lighter side of life. That's why I was quite shocked to find out about her condition, as I had thought she was a strong person who took all the obstacles of life in her stride. So I was very worried when she took leave of absence for one semester and I couldn't reach out to her and help her in any way. It made me realise how inept one could be when faced with a friend's deeply personal troubles which only he or she can fully understand. It was an instance where I actually understood the concept of "irreducible Otherness" in a more than theoretical sense. Diana has since pulled through and I hope she knows that whenever she feels unhappy or anxious, I'm always there to support her in her struggles.

I met Joan when I took the 20th century module (the level 3000 one) in my third year. She was in the same 9am tutorial as I was (together with Kan Kan and Angela, as Dr Y remembers so well) and I think the same thing with Diana happened with Joan and I... I asked her out for lunch at the old Arts canteen, and we began talking, first about Dr Y (I'm making Dr Y sound like the perfect icebreaker and conversation piece...) and then about other things such as our philosophy of life, our views on boyfriends (mine theoretical, as usual) and our need for the occasional 'bimbo' reading material. Joan has since become a close friend, and it's due to her that I got to know my JC senior-now-turned-junior Leon. I've really enjoyed all the "post-post-colonial" lunches we have had together, and as Leon seems to be a sensible, caring, intelligent and interesting person, I think he'll be able to make Joan happy, and so, putting my usual skepticism aside, I wish the two of them the best =)

dr yeoh

2008-06-05T06:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, in this post I'm going to talk about how I got to know Dr Y better after the first sem of my second year.

It all started with a bus-ride on the 96 early on in Sem 2 of my second year. I actually remember I had a Singapore Lit test that afternoon (now why do I remember these things...?) and after the test was over, I got into the crowded bus at the bus-stop opposite Central Library (and to think I sometimes can't even remember what I just ate for breakfast...). Some of the passengers in the bus alighted, creating a bit more space at the front of the bus, so a few more people from the bus-stop managed to squeeze in. I was a little dazed after the test, so I was simply standing there holding on to the railings without thinking of anything in particular, till some mysterious impulse prompted me to look up to my right at the passengers who had squeezed in after me. And just at that moment, Dr Y turned to the left and saw me. He waved a little shyly, and as I was pretty stunned, it took some time for me to register that it was him and to wave back. The people standing in between us moved away, and we moved towards the middle of the bus, where we stood side by side for the rest of the journey.

It was the first time I actually spoke to him for more than a few minutes and outside of tutorials. Although the bus ride was only about 10 minutes long, it strangely felt much longer and yet not long enough. We talked about stuff ranging from the modules I was studying that sem, whether I was a Christian, Brokeback Mountain (and how I couldn't watch it because I was underage at that time... =___=;) and how he just sold his car and had taken up cycling to the MRT station. I moaned about being unable to understand anything that was going on in the Psychoanalysis seminars, and what he said then really encouraged me not to despair. He told me that I needn't worry too much about my "first brush with theory" as I would improve and I "wo[uldn't] be the same student in year 4 as [I] [was] in year 2". Looking back on what he said, I think he's right and he definitely should take a large share of the credit for moulding me into the student I am now =)

After that incident, Dr Y and I began to talk outside of class a bit more often, and I felt that he was someone I could open up and speak freely to (which is pretty rare). He was also very, very nice whenever I presumed to ask him for help in my CCA's events, and he never failed to give a listening ear and sensible advice whenever I griped about my dad or gushed about my anime/manga/visual kei obsessions during my visits or whenever I happened to bump into him at bus-stops or around Arts (which was more often than probability allowed for, I think).

After taking almost all of his modules and working on my HT under his supervision this sem, I've come to respect Dr Y as a wonderful teacher who is always mindful of the intellectual and emotional needs of his students, and to admire him for his boldly original (if somewhat perverse) interpretations of literary texts. No one but Dr Y could talk about ducks, rapists and the Trinity in one breath.

I don't believe in determinism, but it does seem that Fate has had a hand in things, and I'm glad that I've gotten the chance to know someone as wonderful as Dr Y, even though all good things must come to an end...

exam results and EN2111

2008-06-01T05:32:00.000-07:00

Our exam results were released on Friday morning and I'm glad to announce that I'm going to graduate on July 10 together with the 2004/2005 Lit Hons cohort. Omedetou to everyone who will be graduating too!

~~~
For this nostalgia trip, I'm going to talk about some of THE MOST unforgettable moments in my life in NUS, involving (who else?) Dr Y... =D

1. The Chicken Wing Incident
When Marianne and I saw Dr Y for the first time when we were in year 2, the first thing that popped into our minds was that we had stepped into an Engin lecture by mistake. At that time he hadn't uploaded a photo of himself on the department webpage, and I wasn't quite prepared for a Lit lecturer to look like that...

But that turned out to be the least surprising of all the things he did in the first EN2111 lecture. I will never forget, not till my dying day, how he stood at the front of the LT and took out a plate with a fried chicken wing on it (yes, a chicken wing) , and said, "Look, I have some lunch here... Did you know that around this chicken wing lies a huge web of complicity in the cruel treatment and killing of animals? =)"

I think the whole class was totally unprepared for that shocker. I later wondered what happened to the chicken wing, which never made a reappearance. Liza guesses that it might have disappeared into the great web of complicity. I think it disappeared into his stomach... =___=;

2. Delicious irony
This has got to be one of the funniest moments in all the classes I have taken in my life. Dr Y was gushing about the revelation of the legendary Kurtz's true nature in the last part of Heart of Darkness, and he said, "Let us take a moment to savour the delicious irony." And just at this moment, Diana was raising a spoonful of her lunch to her mouth. XD

I remember thinking at that time, "What's with the food imagery?" Three years down the road, I have since realized that Dr Y is pretty big on food imagery... But I still have my doubts whether irony is really "delicious"...

This memorable quotation has become a huge running joke between Diana and I for the past three years, providing us with uncountable hours of mirth and amusement.

3. "The horror, the horror!"
This was definitely one of the catch-phrases of the semester, and it has also become one of the longest running jokes between Diana and I (yes, we are pure evil when it comes to making jokes about Dr Y). He kept repeating "The horror, the horror!" over and over again, and then he went on to variations such as "What about the child, the child?" (when referring to Lucy's baby in Disgrace). I wonder why I didn't develop a muscle sprain from cocking my eyebrow at all the weird things he said and did throughout the semester...

But after getting to know Dr Y more over these past few years, I've come to realize he isn't just a really weird lecturer (though this certainly doesn't mean he isn't really weird). More on this next time =)

old arts canteen and as7 lobby

2008-05-29T05:40:00.000-07:00

I went on a shopping spree in Orchard today and bought quite a lot of stuff (but nothing compared to what Jas is capable of). Hooray for retail therapy.

Although it's a little soon after the previous post, I'm going to talk about my two other favourite places in school - the old Arts Canteen and the AS7 lobby.

The Arts Canteen (otherwise known as the Deck, though I have never called it by that name) was renovated about a year ago and is now a two-storey, futuristic white Colosseum perched precariously on the slope of a ridge, and though I must admit it looks a lot better and is much more spacious and airy now, I miss that special cosy feel the old canteen used to have. Sometimes when I was tired of studying in the very cold and rather sterile environment of the library, I would hide myself away in one of the nooks and crannies of the canteen and do my work there. It was a great place for hanging out at for long periods of time, as there wasn't any freezing airconditioning there (and I can take the heat much better than the cold), and the benches were pretty comfortable for lying around in (unlike the stools in the new canteen, which have no backs and are therefore an implicit hint to you to eat your food quickly and vacate the seat for the next customer). I remember spending afternoons in a corner of the old canteen, chatting with friends and bumming around. There was also the very unforgettable (and embarrassing) incident in the first semester of my second year when I burst out crying right in front of the Japanese food stall out of frustration at what I perceived as a friend's callous treatment of me =___=;
But I'm very grateful to PY for generously giving me comforting words and tissue paper =)

Apart from the 3rd floor of the library and the canteen, my other favourite not-so-secret hideout in school is the AS7 lobby. I was introduced to this very cool study area by my senior Shiuan, and thanks to her, I have spent many mornings and afternoons curled up in my little corner between the pillar and the glass windows (and I'm there so often that no one else seems to want to lay claim to it), reading my books and soaking up some vitamin D at the same time. That place is even better than the library in offering solitude, as it is really deserted most of the time, plus I get natural sunlight and greenery without the bugs! And while I have to sit on the hard floor and my butt does begin to hurt after a few hours, it feels good to stretch my legs there after a whole day of classes.

Ok, that's all for tonight. The exam results are going to be released tomorrow morning! Please let me get at least a C+ for that blasted Science GEM and I can graduate without any trouble...

street fest, water fools and 3 fav places in sch

2008-05-28T05:13:00.000-07:00

Omataseshimashita! I'm back with a very long post. My apologies for not posting shorter posts more regularly, but recently I've been using my sister's computer in the morning to colour my drawings, and I don't really like staring at a computer screen for longer than a few hours everyday.

Ok, I'm adopting the same format as the previous posts. First some updates and then yet another nostalgia trip.

1. I went to the annual Street Fest at Suntec City with my sis on Sunday, and although it was held for the first time in an air-conditioned space (and that meant no melting make-up), I felt it was the WORST Street Fest I've gone for. Sharing a cramped space with camera and laptop stalls, lots of random shoppers milling around with no ostensible purpose for being there, and worse of all, getting herded by security guards with loudhailers and sirens into the cramped 5m x 5m stage area like CATTLE. Excuse me Suntec City, but what is the purpose of giving the Street Fest a space in your shopping mall and then not permitting the cosplayers and participants to stand around as they please? If you're thinking of using the cosplayers to attract the crowds, then please show them and their supporters some respect.

2. My sis and I were so bored by the Street Fest we went shopping, and in the evening, we left Suntec for Clarke Quay to catch the last performance of Water Fools by French circus troupe Illotopie, which was this year's opening performance for the Singapore Arts Festival. As we were quite early, we decided to drop by Yamakawa Super in Central, and guess who we bumped into once we stepped through the entrance of the shop? Victor and QH!! It turns out that they were there to watch the performance as well, and so the four of us went down to Boat Quay together. It was very packed and we could hardly see anything going on, but it was good fun, and I'm really glad we managed to meet Victor and QH there (although I must admit they are a strange and unexpected pairing...). Chance works in mysterious ways =)

~~~
Now on to the next installment of my reflections on the past 4 years in NUS. This time, I'm going to do something a little different - I'm going to talk about one of my three favourite places in school.

1. The 3rd level of Central Library

When I matriculated in NUS, one of the first things I did was go for one of those tours organized by the Library. However, I was pretty early on the day of the tour, and having nowhere else to go, I decided to explore the Library on my own first. I went down to the 3rd level, where the Library's collection of books for lending is stored, and the first thing that greeted my eyes were endless columns of shelves neatly packed with rows and rows of leather-bound, austere-looking books. The sight literally took my breath away. I walked through the rows of shelves slowly, picking up books at random to feel the rough leather covers and touch the yellowed pages, and I wondered to myself, "How long would it take to read every single one of these books? Would it take more than a lifetime? How many books would I be able to complete by the time I finish my undergrad studies here?" (Sad to say, I have covered barely a fraction of the books in the Library.)

And at that moment, it struck me that if I had my way, I would spend my entire lifetime sifting through this immense sea of knowledge, reading as many books as I could till I couldn't read anymore. Looking back now, I guess I sound like one of those travellers in Borges' The Library of Babel, and I guess I would have ended up like them, failing after a lifetime of questing to find any truth in the permutations of letters, commas, spaces and full stops, but I thought then and still think now that meaning-making is a noble enterprise. After four years of study here, I have not lost faith in this belief, and I want to be part of this noble enterpise, though I hardly deserve to be among the likes of great thinkers and critics who dared to put forth their original and controversial views and who have played such an important role in shaping the way we think about the world around us today.

I suppose if I were to make a calculation, I would find that I have spent at least half of the time I'm on campus in the 3rd level of the library, either finding books for my research or studying in the quiet reading area. I love sitting in my usual corner facing the windows, on my own with peace and quiet all around, retreating into a sacred inner world where I engage in silent mental dialogue with the text before me. I'm not a misanthropist, but I value personal time and space very deeply, and I've always enjoyed the solitude the library offers me. And I also love its wide selection of *free* fiction and non-fiction books and uncensored films, haha. =)

Ok, more next time on my other 2 fav places in school.

EN2101E

2008-05-22T23:11:00.000-07:00

It's been some time since my last post, so a few updates before I move on to another brief nostalgia trip.

1. For some inexplicable reason, my tablet pen is oozing oil. If the pen goes, so does my sanity.

2. There is nothing like scribbling away on a tablet while listening to VK rock music to take one's mind off things.

3. Could anyone be THAT socially inept...?? Patience, my dear, patience.

4. Congratulations to D on the release of their major debut single [Birth]! It's a good song and I hope D will continue creating lovely music (and looking lovely as always) ^^

5. I've uploaded the photos taken by Joan after our last Postcolonial Lit lecture as well as photos from my last club committee meeting held on 12 May. Click here --> http://s34.photobucket.com/albums/d141/okaru85/EN%20hons%20cohort%20last%20day%20of%20sch/ (with Joan and Leon at Paisley and Cream)

http://s34.photobucket.com/albums/d141/okaru85/nus%20anime%20club%202008/ (club photos)

Ok, now on to the nostalgia trip.

~~
The first Lit module I took in NUS was EN2101E Madness and Literature, and for all those who know me well enough, it is THE Lit module I gripe most about. I've moaned about it for 4 years already, so I'm not going to start here again. Suffice to say the way the module was managed by the lecturer was entirely appropriate to its name. But I'm very glad EN2101E didn't frighten me off from majoring in Eng Lit and switching to Japanese Studies instead (although I did seriously think of doing so after the disastrous exam). If I had made that decision in my first semester, I think my life in NUS would have taken a very different path.

It was in EN2101E that I first met MW and Marianne, who were in my project group together with PY. I thought that Marianne was a very sweet and cute girl, but my first impression of MW was not so positive - I felt she was a rather cold, aloof and intimidating person. MW took very well to PY after that first sem, and at first I couldn't understand why they got on so well. I put it down at that time to them both being devout Christians, which was something I didn't share. I didn't feel very comfortable around MW, so I hardly hung out with them when the two of them were together, and to tell the truth, I sometimes felt a little jealous and excluded.

But after spending more time with MW over the years and gradually getting to know her better, I've realized that she's actually a pretty interesting person to talk to, and she does care for others around her in her own very distinctive way. She certainly looks fierce and unapproachable, but that's only because she's feeling sian and she's stoning (and she stones rather often, so that explains her usual demeanour). Now I no longer feel any discomfort when chatting with her, and I know I can entrust my deepest secrets to her. Joan asked me some time ago whether I've ever seen MW smile before, and it struck me then that I've grown so used to her as a friend that I take it as natural that she's smiling and laughing.

So I'm very glad that I didn't give up my dreams and changed my major after EN2101E, 'cos if I had, MW would have remained a mere acquaintance, and I wouldn't have gotten to know all the wonderful Lit teachers and coursemates who have given me so much knowledge and so many experiences, and who have all contributed in some way or another in shaping me into who I am today.

first meeting with nus anime club

2008-05-17T21:04:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know I wrote "tomorrow" in my previous post but I was too busy rushing my Masters thesis research proposal so I couldn't find any time to write that short piece I promised. Anyway, now is a very appropriate time to write it, as I have just spent a most enjoyable night out with the Anime Club alumni community (or the "old" people, as Yanhua puts it) at Marina Square.

~~~
I don't remember much of the interview I went for when I first applied to join the committee, except that Adnan insisted that I should join the Publicity Sub-Committee because of my experience in Cedar Press and Synapse in AJ, even though I told him "Publications" and "Publicity" were not the same thing... But I ended up in Publicity for 3 years out of 4 anyway (though the last shouldn't count 'cos I hardly did anything =___=;) and I did gain a lot of valuable experience in planning and executing events publicity. Moreover, if I wasn't put into Publicity all the way back then, perhaps I wouldn't have had the chance to make cosplay costumes. More about that next time ;)

I don't remember much about the first AGM either but I do remember Alex, ZQ, Chonghan, Qianhao and I sitting in a row and laughing at the supposed mistake in Adnan's name on the powerpoint slide... It turned out to be really his name after all =___=;

I guess one of the most important things that has happened in my NUS life is meeting Adnan. He is by far the most capable student leader I have ever met before and he has certainly been a much better one thanI have been and will ever be. His planning for events was meticulous, he knew how to distribute work evenly to his subordinates, he made decisions quickly and decisively yet not without due consideration, and strangest of all, he had this charisma that somehow made people want to work for him even though most of the time he looked like he was merely sitting there devoid of all expression and drinking too much coffee. I used to think he was simply stoning, but I soon realized that he only LOOKED like he was not paying attention when he was actually fully conscious of - and OBSERVING - whatever was going on around him. And I always found it rather creepy that he would often present strange imaginary scenarios to us and ask for our response.

I suppose that might have been due to his being a Psychology major, but although he was weird and was possibly using us as his experimental subjects, and I know this sounds pretty embarrassing, but I absolutely idolized him. He wasn't only a great chairperson, he was also a great senior and friend. I was pretty lonely in my first year, but even though he was already in his third year, he often chatted with me online (I will never forget how we stayed up to 3am once talking about the ethics of casual sex...), gave me advice on my schoolwork (I owe my A- in PH1101E to him), guided me along when I floundered in my first year as Publicity Head, and always welcomed me into the small but close-knitted community of the club comm.

I remember walking along the dark AS1 corridor one hot afternoon early in my first year, and glancing up at the dazzling green trees outside, and all of a sudden I thought, "I am going to marry myself to the Anime Club and give it everything I can give for as long as I can. They have accepted me when others have rejected me, and have given me a place to belong to in this world where no one seems to care whether you live or die, and I am going to stick with the club through everything, forever."

And it's been four years since then and I still love the club as much as did at that moment. Although I now play a much smaller role in the committee and I understand that it is time to let the new blood take over and do things for themselves (no matter how worried I am for the club), I'm still going to help out when I can and maintain contact with the club even as I graduate and move on to other things. After all, the club has given me four years of great experiences and wonderful friends who have grown up with me and whom I hope to keep for life - how can one fully repay that? Being an NUS Anime Club member is a lifetime commitment =)

time to graduate

2008-05-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

Exams are over and well, apart from completing my Masters application and thesis research proposal by this coming Thur, I can finally take some time to stop and think about what I've done and experienced over these 4 years.

I can hardly believe that 4 years of undergrad life have come to an end. I know it sounds cliched, but it really feels like it was just yesterday that I was a freshman, straining my neck up at the signboards trying to find classrooms, and sitting all by myself in 1101E lectures, seeing unfamiliar faces all around and hardly speaking a word to anyone throughout the whole day. And now I breeze into any lit class and it's "oh hello there it's you again!" As my senior Selene once said, lit classes are like Chinese reunion dinners (and Joan wonders why I know a lot of people).

So it's time for a little reflection (and nostalgia trip) before I move on to the next stage of my life. I actually planned this quite some time ago but forgot about it when the work started to pile on this sem - I'm going to write a series of short pieces on the most unforgettable moments and experiences of these past 4 years in NUS. I'll be starting with a post on my encounter with the Anime Club tomorrow =)

advice needed for masters thesis

2008-05-03T19:26:00.000-07:00

Hi guys,
To all the closet anime/manga fans out there who are reading or lurking around my blog, I would like to ask for your advice on my Masters thesis research proposal. =)

For my thesis, I intend to study fantasy manga texts that have apocalyptic narratives, but at present I only have 2 texts in mind and I need another one (the 2 texts I have picked so far are Angel Sanctuary and Kami-Kaze). I was thinking of D-Gray Man but the problem with that text is that it's still incomplete at this moment. So I would greatly appreciate it if you guys can suggest another completed manga series for me to write about which fulfills at least some of the criteria below:

- Has to be under the 'fantasy' genre (not sci-fi) and set in an alternative universe unlike our own (in other words, it should not be set in a 'realistic' Tokyo etc.)
- Has to have an apocalyptic narrative
- Can be shoujo or shounen or even adult
- Functions as a site for the articulation of contemporary cultural values, hopes and anxieties, Japanese or otherwise (eg. fears about the irresponsible use of science and technology, feminist thinking on gender and sexuality etc.)
- Engages in the postmodern practices of bricolage, intertexuality, rewriting of old stories, hybridity, cultural translation and/or syncretism
- Negotiates Japan's place in a globalized world and Japan's attempts at 'internationalization' (kokusaika)
- Is not a traditional liberal humanist text (eg. modernist, postmodern, metafictional, existentialist, determinist etc.)

Your help is greatly appreciated. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu~

the freaky yeo huan

2008-04-28T18:27:00.000-07:00

As I was rushing back from the library to the Hons Room yesterday evening, guess who I bumped into? The 'exalted' YH, who was my tutor for the Tragedy module last year.

He's currently writing his Masters thesis in NUS, and according to my calculations, I thought he should be finishing up his last semester as well. So I asked him if he was graduating this semester, and he replied that he wasn't sure and that he was very stressed about finishing his thesis. I was pretty surprised ('cos he's a genius who finished writing his entire HT in the middle of the semester when other students were still struggling to even start), so I asked him when his thesis was due. And he said, "August."

*face fall*

Man, he's a nice guy and all that and I don't fear him like some of my friends do, but he sure is a freak.

NoGod

2008-04-26T23:03:00.000-07:00

What is the most self-consciously nonsensical, cutely irreverent, subversive yet self-mocking 'religious' cult in Japan?

新興宗教楽団NoGod!

Despite their rather lame name, NoGod is a pretty cool band. And their antics remind me why I love VK bands so much. Watch these short movies and PVs to see how adorable they are for yourself. My apologies to those who are not able to read Japanese - there are no subs...

Short movie before "Guren" - how NoGod was formed (if you believe this story...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmIKjEHGsMU

"Guren"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSR_CgBrJ94&feature=related

Short movie before "Atria" - NoGod apparently loves 関係ない物語 a lot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaxWZLcCIAs&feature=related

"Atria"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwpm2uAEw9g&feature=related

Karin-chan modelling a Lolita dress from Baby the Stars Shine Bright
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAfDaZ2tr-w&feature=related

華凛ちゃん萌え~!!

last day of school

2008-04-18T08:27:00.000-07:00

Today was the last day of the term. The very last day of the last week of the last semester of my life as an undergraduate. Gosh. I still can't quite believe this is the end (or the beginning, as kyon/pk has remarked).

I spent almost the whole of today in the Hons Room, having a sort of 'party' with some of my friends. Not all of the usual Hons Room gang turned up, so our 'party' turned out to be an all-girls' affair and pretty tame. But we had fun all the same, talking about all sorts of things ranging from religious faith to our old primary and secondary schools and gross people who don't wash/shave/blow their noses. We also took a few photos - and I don't know why my photo with Nadia is missing... T___T

Pei was also very kind to accompany me to ask Dr Y to take a photograph with me. I was either very nervous or very cold, 'cos I was shivering as I was walking with her downstairs, and asking him for a photo was like asking ASAGI-sama for a photo (ok, baaaad analogy).

So here's the link to the photos --> http://s34.photobucket.com/albums/d141/okaru85/EN%20hons%20cohort%20last%20day%20of%20sch/
I know the amount of photos is pathetic (my sis takes 100+ photos with 4 people only) but I promise there will be more when we have more gatherings after the exams are over.

dansou kissa and host club

2008-04-15T08:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrHfSHuIz5Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_HcMY1UHTE&feature=related

男装喫茶で働けばいいなあ～

key words for this sem

2008-04-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

You know how a few key words keep popping up in your lectures, presentations and essays within a semester? Well, key words for this semester are:

Bricolage. Iterability. Appropriation, Subversion and Reinvention. Subaltern.

I guess I have been pretty successful in using my readings in an inter-disciplinary fashion over all my Lit mods this semester (read: trying to save time and minimizing the amount of readings for each module). Heh =)

Well, I've just completed the last of all my assignments for this sem. It's been a hectic week but it's over (at least, until I start preparing for the exams...).

So how am I going to spend this last week of my undergrad life? By taking lots of photos with friends, hanging out more often in the Hons Room, going for my last lit lecture tomorrow and chilling out in my favourite places in school.

Another key word for this semester: It's the end.

hons thesis is finally completed

2008-04-12T05:25:00.000-07:00

After 5 months of intensive poring over theories and criticism, scribbling pages of anti-mindmaps, bouts of anxiety, lethargy, insomnia, hacking away at the computer keyboard from one morning to the next, agonizing over the lack of time and despairing over the lack of perfection, feeling paradoxical mixtures of happiness and inadequacy after every supervision session... it's finally over. The Honours Thesis is printed, bound and ready for submission on Mon.

For the past week, I've been feeling like I just want to finish the HT in time to the best of my ability, and get it over and done with. I really am glad that I've managed to finish everything to a reasonable degree, yet I can't help feeling that I should have produced something much better than this. I still feel like I've not lived up to my supervisor's expectations, even though he has been very nice and has consistently been telling me over the whole semester that he's very pleased with what I've written. But there really isn't any use in thinking about improving the HT now, and I certainly should put it aside and concentrate on my other assignments waiting for me...

Here's an "acknowledgements" page which I obviously couldn't put into the HT but is not any the less sincere for its informality:

I really want to thank all the friends who have helped me throughout the semester. Thanks especially to PY who was always ready to give support and advice in times of need, and Minwei who was always ready to lend a listening ear to my constant griping about the thesis. Thank you to the girls from the Metafiction class and to Joan and Leon for cheering me up and taking my mind away from thesis troubles during our lunches every Monday and Tuesday. A big thank you to Pei, Kim, QR and Stefan too, for always welcoming me to the Hons Room. Although I never did manage to get much work done there, I've enjoyed every minute I've spent there chatting and laughing and getting to know you guys better. And thanks also to Kevin for poking me on msn with much-appreciated words of encouragement. I couldn't have gotten through this semester without the companionship of all of you.

I should also thank my sister, who has played an invisible but certainly considerable role in the logistics of my HT by photocopying books and running all sorts of strange errands for me. And last but definitely not least, I'm really grateful to my supervisor for everything he has done for me. He has been awfully sweet, guiding me as I struggled to shape my thesis without dogmatically imposing anything on me, giving me my independence and yet providing me with such invaluable advice which has definitely contributed to the argument of my thesis on the macro level, agreeing to see me in Week 12 and offering to read my Intro and Conclusion 5 days away from the submission date, and always, unfailingly, encouraging me with undeserved praises and giving his full support for what I've written. I will attempt to do as Pei has predicted I would, and say "THANK YOU, DR Y!!!" in font size 100, haha.

jikan ga nai!

2008-03-27T11:41:00.000-07:00

I need more time!

It's 2.45am in the morning and I've just finished writing my Metafictions essay. It was supposed to be a 2000-word essay, but as usual, I've grossly exceeded the suggested word limit. Major problem this semester: wanting to write too much.

Another problem that's been bugging me this sem: slow writing speed. I've never been a very speedy writer but I feel like I'm slower than ever nowadays. I don't know how other people can churn out essays within a day or two when I take at least a week. Either I'm being very "scrupulous" or my brain cells are gradually rotting away with the passing of each day.

Man, I wish I could write as quickly as Hizaki plays the guitar. I would have no problems with finishing all my work on time then =___=;

Ok, I had better go off to sleep now. I still have to go back to school tomorrow to edit the Metafic essay, hand it in, do manga resale booth duty and meet my Postcol Lit tutorial group mates for a discussion on our presentation next Wed. And I still haven't done even the first draft of the third chapter yet! ARGGGHHH!!!

Usually I like meeting Dr Y by chance in school but right now I think I don't really want to bump into him...

busy busy busy

2008-03-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while since I last blogged, 'cos I have been (and still am) very busy with schoolwork. Sometimes I wonder if I will get everything that needs to be done on time, but I know there is little purpose in freaking myself out with such thoughts. As the Bellorophoniad shows us, too much self-consciousness about self-consciousness leads to paralysis. Just do it, as the Nike ads say.

So I'm not going to gripe about screwing up my metafictions test or not being able to finish my postcol readings or taking such a long time to produce the third chapter (which a certain smiley faced supervisor is smiley face waiting for with smiley face anticipation). I'm sure you already get enough of my angst-ing when you see me.

I'm going to talk about things that make me happy instead. And I hope they make you happy too.

1. Visit this website http://puccho.jp to see what marketing means in Japan. Kawaii-ness is serious business. I can't believe the food manufacturers actually employ people to make sites like this that serve no other ostensible purpose except to cheer stressed people like me up (and to make us feel like buying more puccho sweets too).

2. Versailles. A really good VK band which I highly recommend. The guitarists Hizaki and Teru are superb and the whole band works well to create melodic heavy metal Gothic rock which has traces of X Japan. And Kamijo's voice sounds much better than what it did when he was in Lareine. I am definitely going to buy their debut album Lyrical Sympathy.

I can't really decide which song to recommend 'cos almost all of them are pretty good, but have a listen to Sforzando.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NRV_UYG7Rs&NR=1

3. Gazette's latest single Guren. I'm addicted to it. Gazette's ballads are always so melancholically beautiful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-1PrASJt0w

things haven't changed much

2008-03-06T18:08:00.000-08:00

Tommorow is International Women's Day but it seems like things haven't changed much.

Pei and I were chatting in the Hons Rm yesterday afternoon and we came to the topic of boyfriends. I remembered reading in a newspaper column some time ago where the columnist lamented how one of her girlfriends had a pig of a boyfriend who dumped her simply because she put on a bit of weight. And then I remembered reading an article in Urban in the morning on the results of a poll conducted by the newspaper on the ideal qualitites single Singaporean men look out for when they date women. And the results were thouroughly disappointing. The top quality picked was (perhaps, not surprisingly) "takes care of her appearance and dresses well". Ok, I do agree that one, whether man or woman, should dress appropriately and look presentable when going for a date, but surely that shouldn't be the most important quality one uses to judge someone? What about intelligence, wit and good conversation skills? What about warmth and sincerity? Well, these qualities didn't even figure on the list of options given by the people conducting the poll.

One relationship 'expert' quoted by Urban justified the men's choice of appearance as the top quality with the easy biologistic answer that "men are visual creatures" and therefore they have to be attracted to a woman's looks before they get interested in knowing her. Sure, blame evolutionary biology and distract attention away from the real issues of gender constructions and social conditioning.

It's times like these which make me wonder why women put up with men like these. It's ridiculous that people are now measuring gender equality by checking whether the woman offers to pay for her own meal and carries her own handbag when the fundamental relations between men and women haven't changed at all.

Thank goodness I know that there are some guys out there who are far more enlightened than the neanderthals Urban surveyed. There aren't many, but they are guys worth celebrating.

AFF is over!

2008-03-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

Am I glad that the anime event is finally over. I was so near "genkai" yesterday morning fretting about the lack of publicity and if anyone was going to turn up for the talk and how can we face our speakers and our (ertswhile) sponsor and CFA and the public that my blood pressure must have gone up several notches.

But in the end, things turned out reasonably ok. I shouldn't have doubted that we could count on the few committed members of the committee (you see, derivation from the root word doesn't necessarily mean equation) to support our own event. Thank you guys for being there.

I'm not going to relate how the event was like 'cos nothing spectacular happened, but that doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy myself thoroughly. It's been a long time since I've hung out with the club, and although I want to relish every moment of my last sem as an undergrad to the last, I also can't wait for the sem to be over so that I can go back to helping out with club matters and just talking crap with my friends again. I know it's a paradox, but who ever said human beings feel only one thing at one time?

Here are the photos my sister took at the event.
http://s222.photobucket.com/albums/dd180/thickfish/AFF08/?start=0

Note the interpreter in tight brown shirt and tight blue jeans. Whoa.

phew! HT Ch 2 completed

2008-02-28T08:32:00.000-08:00

I'm absolutely bursting with exuberance now, despite having slept only three and a half hours last night. And also despite the very disappointing turn of events regarding our anime event. We've screwed up again. Spectacularly. ><;

Anyway, I've finally completed the second chapter of my HT and it looks way better than the first chapter. The whole process of planning and writing, though it was laborious, was definitely a much more pleasant and enjoyable experience than the first time. Hope it shows in the finished product.

The only problem (and this is actually a very big problem) is that the second chapter, like the first, is near 5000 words long, and I'm supposed to keep to a word limit of approximately 3000 words per chapter. Oops.

But I'm writing about THREE Woolf novels, and each of them is so rich and dense and full of interesting and illuminating and complex issues to talk about that I can't help going over the word limit. Plus Dr Y told me that he wanted "more complex" arguments so...

But one must be ruthless and cut the chapters down to size. I certainly don't want to end up having to delete half the entire HT at the end of the semester. That would totally break my heart (and my health, due to the excess of slogging throughout the whole sem).

Ok, nothing much else to update you guys about. Oh yes, please come for our anime talk and screening tomorrow evening (Fri, 29 Feb) at the NUS UCC if you have the time. We've invited speakers from Singapore-based Japanese animation studio and school 77-star, and we'll also be screening The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. It's part of the NUS Arts Festival.

sweeneykiss

2008-02-17T01:54:00.000-08:00

My sister and I have just come up with the greatest idea ever! The two of us are still obsessing about Sweeney Todd, and it struck us that there should be a Visual Kei version of the film. And it should be titled... Sweeneykiss!

If you don't get that joke, it means you aren't a Malice Mizer fan...

And here are the potential members of the cast (and all of them are A-listers, I assure you):

Sweeney Todd - it's a tie between Klaha (Malice Mizer) and Kyo (Diru). Klaha has got the 'look' and Kyo has got the angst. Lots of it.

Mrs Lovett - Mana (Malice Mizer) and his interpreter XD

Anthony - Miku (AN Cafe)

Joanna - My sis wants Bou (ex-AN Cafe) because Bou is cute and looks good throwing stuff (like waterbottles) to Miku, but I prefer Kaya, just for the sheer irony of seeing a cute 'girl' sing in a deep, manly bass voice. Shinya (Diru) and Isshi (kagrra) are also possible choices. Imagine Isshi singing "Haru Ura Ra" in the window =X

Judge Turpin - Kamijo (Versailles)

Beadle - Yu~ki (Malice Mizer). In demented golfer gear of orange plaid and upturned moustache. =X

v day 2008

2008-02-14T02:34:00.000-08:00

It's Valentine's Day again. No, you are not going to get the yearly griping about mass market capitalism disguised in sugary sweet chocolate and overpriced roses from me this year. I'm over all that.

I'm just going to write about some interesting things tangentially related to V Day that happened to me today.

1. I had my first 'proper' supervision session today. Dr Y was very helpful and he gave me lots of things to think about, without forcing anything on me. That was really good; I like a man who respects my independence =P

2. Dr Y tried to mitigate his criticism about my first chapter (which was well-deserved) by telling me "[my] scrupulousness is a virtue". And he lavished quite a bit of praise on my "elegantly argued, precise, scrupulous [again!] reading" of Mrs Dalloway. A bit of praise is no doubt flattering, but I wonder how he can tell how "scrupulous" I have been if he relies on me to tell him what is inside the three novels...

3. I met Pei by chance in the Arts canteen and she was so excited that she started gushing, really loudly, "OH WY, YOU ARE DRESSED SO PRETTILY TODAY!! DO YOU HAVE A DATE LATER?? WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE ARE YOU GOING??!!"

And I was like, "I am going to get a sandwich..."

4. After I had finished my tortilla wrap (I decided not to have a sandwich, which was getting predictable), I met Benita and Kim, who invited me to go join Pei in the EN Hons Room. So instead of going to my now-not-so-secret hideout, I went to the Hons Room and ended up chatting with Pei and Kim for about an hour. It was real fun gossiping with them again after not seeing them for so long! The only bad thing was that the guy next door probably heard everything we said about our respective supervisors and other lecturers. Thank goodness he's from the EL side of the department...

So that's all for this year's V Day post.

dr yeoh is featured in "the ridge"!!

2008-02-12T07:17:00.000-08:00

For the first time in my life, I actually wanted a copy of the NUS students' magazine, the ridge. I walked all the way from the library to the Arts canteen, from the Arts canteen to the Engin canteen and from the Engin canteen to the Business canteen, in search of the latest copy of the ridge. After scouring half of the campus, I was finally rewarded for my labour. One last copy hidden under the rubbish in the rack outside the Biz canteen. Hooray!

Now the only reason why I went to such trouble for the magazine (which is not a particularly interesting read to me), was because PY told me that there was an article on my supervisor in it. And I just had to see what was written about him in it.

The article is just a very brief interview, and his answers are so brief to the point of being laconic, but it is still a good find. My sis says I should go frame it up. Thank you PY for telling me about the article! =)

chinese new year activities

2008-02-08T02:05:00.000-08:00

Today's the second day of the Chinese New Year (if the blog date does not say "Fri, 8 Feb", that's because my computer's time settings are wonky).

As we do every year, my family went to my uncle's house where the whole of my mother's side of the family congregates for CNY. It's a tradition in our family for all the relatives to meet in one place to make visiting more convenient for everyone. It's a big event for my parents and relatives who like meeting their siblings and in-laws and updating everyone about their lives (and their multitude of physical ailments), but it's getting more and more of a drag for me every year. When I was a kid I used to like playing Monopoly and the like with my cousins, but now that I'm 23 and everyone's more or less grown up too, things are getting pretty boring.

Today the few of us who form the 16-25 age group simply sat around and stared at each other without knowing what to do, before finally deciding to play "grown-up" card games. I don't play cards and I wasn't in much of a mood for any sort of game, so I merely sat aside with my sister. Basically the game was just a way of getting around the problem of not having anything to say to each other at all. And out of the 6 of us, I'm pretty much the odd one out. I'm still a student, which excludes me from the conversations of the two older cousins who have been working for a few years, and I'm too old to have much in common with the younger cousins who are closer to my sister's age. Moreover, I've realized how right YH was when he said that we recede higher and higher up into the ivory tower of academia every year we extend our studies. I've been so used to intense conversations about lit, love and life with my Arts friends and lively, insane chats about all things related to anime with my Anime Club friends that I felt totally out-of-place in my uncle's house. So there I sat, not saying more than 5 short sentences in 3 hours.

But although visiting is a drag and like the characters in The Years, I don't have much affection for "the sense of the family" and its demand that I put on a stilted smile and a fake public persona, it is a duty that I still have to fulfil, and since it's only a few hours once a year, it's not really all that bad. And this year, I was lucky to have Johnny Depp to console me.

After the visit was over, my sister and I went to AMK Hub to catch the latest Tim Burton and Johnny Depp collaboration - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It was a really great film. It had Gothic make-up, frock coats and crinoline dresses, the dark houses and smoky chimneys of Victorian London, singing barbers swishing razors, and of course, lots of thick red oozing blood. And the film wasn't just a gleeful gore fest but a subtle, amoral tragedy of revenge. Absolutely wonderful Gothic, anti- "the world is so happy" CNY stuff =)

HT chapter one

2008-02-05T12:03:00.000-08:00

I've just submitted the first chapter of the HT to my supervisor.

Two nights of non-stop writing till 5am. And the chapter still looks like crap to me.

I'm so screwed.

x____x

the unbridgeable gulf betw the arts and the sciences

2008-01-30T22:47:00.000-08:00

Today I'm going to talk about the unbridgeable gulf between the arts and the sciences.

You see, I'm taking this rather horrid Science GEM called Life as a Complex System, and everytime I go for the lectures, I am once more reminded of how East is East and West is West and the twain shall never meet (never mind the 'deconstructing' second part of Kipling's poem).

When I told Joan I was taking this module, she said wasn't complexity something that we have always been talking about in Lit class? Yes, but over at the other end of the world they have a very different conception of "complexity".

So this is what usually happens during the lectures. The lecturer would introduce a concept and I would immediately think of its counterpart (but not equivalent) in 'Lit' terms.

Science lecturer: Living beings are complex systems. Complexity involves complex numbers. Chaos means non-linear systems. But they still can be expressed in the form of a simple equation.
Me: "Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged...". It eludes your totalizing grasp. Chaos is the flux which threatens to overwhelm the tiny island of civilization. "Significant form" is a line down the middle of a painting.

Science lecturer: I like mathematics. I like to know things with precision.
Me: I love to read texts and discourses for their "ambivalence", their slippage, their excess of signification. Slide down the endless metonymic chain of desire. In the Beginning, There Were Not Maxwell's Equations of Light.

Science lecturer: Scientists are still trying to discover the origin(s) of life.
Me: Why this metahistorical quest for metaphysical being? Let us write genealogies, not evolutionary narratives of beginning, middle and end. Let us talk about "births", not "origins".

There are of course, several scientific theories which have been appropriated and reinterpreted by writers and theorists of the humanities. The parallel between quantum physics and poststructuralism is clear. I suspect Foucault's concept of "emergence" and Derrida's concept of "iterability" owe much to biological and mathematical discourses respectively. And as Barthes has argued, both science and literature are discourses, neither having any privileged access to 'truth'. But science is still slow to recognize its discursive nature, and I don't think it has really pushed the implications of its own theories.

So, at the present at least, there is still an irreconciliable divide between the arts and the sciences. And this is probably why, as Joan has so wisely pointed out, Arts people don't go out with Science people.

it's a small world

2008-01-22T06:33:00.000-08:00

It's a small world.

After Postcolonial Lit lecture, Joan and her friend and I went for lunch. And when we were talking about essay writing styles and I mentioned GP, Joan's friend said, "Point. Elaboration. Evidence." And I knew straightaway that he was from AJ.

When I returned home, I began to think that this guy seemed rather familiar, and then I realised that was because he resembled KR in his mannerisms and manner of speech. I went to ask KR over msn whether he had a senior in AJ called Leon, and true enough, he did. And when I went to check the yearbook, I discovered that Leon was from 29/01, the senior class which very kindly 'adopted' my class in our first year because we were number 36 and had no corresponding JC2 senior class.

So my senior has turned out to be my junior now. =X
And he resembles KR. =X

This is getting very, VERY, VERY strange indeed.

metafic presentation

2008-01-21T04:09:00.000-08:00

It's been a hectic first week of school and I've got lots of stuff to blog about!

First, let me, by way of carthasis or exorcism, tell you about the 4 very disturbing images that have cropped up during various conversations with friends over the past week and which have tainted the purity of my mind.

(Names have been modified to protect the identity of persons involved.)

1. Dr G writing "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday" and so forth on his underwear.

2. Dr G ironing his clothes.

3. Dr G ironing his clothes in a frilly apron.

4. Wxxxy flapping around the swimming pool in rubber float and flippers.

The horror, the horror! Save me from my insane imaginings!

~~
After planning and writing for 3 whole days and having only 3 hours of sleep last night, I managed to deliver my presentation on Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies this morning without any hiccups. I'm so relieved it went well, 'cos although I was too tired to feel very nervous, I was still worried that it would not go down well with Dr S A. But everything went ok and I'm glad at least one assignment is out of my way. But now I have to catch up with everything else that has piled up... =___=;

I actually had a lot of trouble preparing that presentation because I had caught a small cold and for days my mind was feeling all woolly and my thoughts were all indistinct. Definitely not the best of conditions for thinking about metafiction and structures and floating signifiers. And when I was writing the actual presentation on Sunday night, it was so difficult to squeeze the words out that at times I really felt like chucking the whole thing into the wastepaper bin (figuratively of course, because I was working on the computer). But strangely, the words started flowing out of me so much more smoothly as the hours went by and my brain got more and more fuzzy. At 2am, I was even struck with a sudden bout of poesy and penned the last paragraph of my presentation, which even now, in the more sober light of day, is far more elegant than anything I have written in quite a while. So does this confirm my mother's hypothesis that I write better when my mind is drugged with medication or lack of sleep?

I've always known that my mind works in strange ways but this is weirder than ever. Perhaps this is a (very unhealthy) way of liberating one's mind from rigid constraints and letting it express itself freely?

first day of the last semester

2008-01-14T04:10:00.000-08:00

Today was the first day of my last semester in NUS. And something not very nice happened to me first thing in the morning in class today, but I'm not going to discuss that here.

After a whole month of staying at home and talking mostly to my sister only, it was quite a relief to be able to see so many familiar faces and to talk to people other than my sister again (not that I don't like talking to my sister - there are some things that can only be said to her - but I believe one needs to have relationships with a variety of people in order to be 'enriched' as a person). I had lunch with PY, Minwei, Marianne and May (so many Ms...), and after they left for the Utopias and Dystopias seminar, I met Wanching outside the library. When I was inside the library, I met Edwina and we talked for one whole hour!! And when I was at the bus-stop waiting for the 96 in the evening, an old secondary school friend came up to me to say 'hi', and as I was getting onto the bus, I met Brandon walking towards the bus-stop.

I've not talked so much in one day for a long time. I guess meeting my friends again made me realize how much I like being around them and talking to them, despite my love of silence and solitude. I'm beginning to really appreciate the irresolvable tension the Woolf novels consistently posit between society and solitude- perhaps all of us as individuals are always trying to achieve a balance between the need for personal, private space with the need to reach out and communicate with others.

yet another failed gathering

2008-01-11T05:49:00.000-08:00

I really have very little success with organizing gatherings with my friends. There was the pizza party with secondary school friends that never came to be, because almost all of the girls called me on the morning of the gathering itself to tell me about sudden bouts of illness and (less forgivably) suddenly-remembered appointments. So after putting down the phone, I had to eat the salad I prepared for them myself.

And then there were the numerous JC 'class' gatherings that attracted only the same faithful few, while the rest hemmed and hawed and gave lame excuses.

And then there are times when your friends genuinely want to attend, but luck simply isn't on your side.

I was reading E. H. Carr on the accidental event in history this morning, and after finishing about half of the chapter, I rushed downstairs to have a small lunch, because I was supposed to meet Minwei and Diana for our long-awaited gathering at Chocolate Factory in the afternoon. As I was gulping down my 2 slices of corn biscuits and a small mango, my handphone buzzed with an incoming message, and Carr flashed into my mind - what if a chance event were to disrupt the orderly, rational progress of my planned gathering and throw everything up into the air? But I brushed aside the unauspicious thought and went to wash my plates and utensils. Before I could finish washing up and check the sms I had received, Minwei called to tell me Diana had diarrhoea that morning and asked if I wanted to cancel the outing. So after having our theatre show cancelled because the actor accidentally broke his toe and postponing our gathering till the end of the holidays, and then changing the day from Fri to Thur and back to Fri and thus having no choice but to leave out PY because she wanted to go back to JB on Fri, a totally random bout of diarrhoea can appear out of the blue and derail all my plans?!

Well, it only goes to show you that the most perfect, meticulous plans human beings craft can crumble to ashes in the indifferent face of the explosion of the contingent.

So in the end, I cancelled the gathering. Because I had less than half a proper meal with no food in the house, and because my sister was moaning non-stop about the loss of the promised cake from Chocolate Factory, my dad went to buy some cake from the stall in the market. And so we had to make do with this:

And this:

Not exactly posh nosh but it was enough to make me feel a little bit better about the failure of yet another gathering...

more coincidental meetings

2008-01-07T17:49:00.000-08:00

Barely 2 days after bumping unexpectedly into QH browsing through manga on the opposite side of the shelf in Kino, I bumped into PY looking for Lit texts on the opposite side of the shelf in the Co-op yesterday morning. Wow. 2 coincidental meetings in bookstores within a span of 3 days. But this still does not come close to that time I bumped into Brandon at Shinjuku station and then Shao at the entrance of Sunshine 60 at Ikebukuro on my way back to the hotel during my trip to Tokyo. Now that was simply miraculous.

I've bought most of the books I need for this semester, and while most of them are very thick and filled with tiny font and promise to wake me up at 3am to finish them in time for class, I'm pretty excited to be reading lots of new works by writers I have not read before. I guess I'm a bit tired of looking at Mrs Dalloway, The Years and Orlando for the third or fourth time already.

The Lit modules I'm taking this sem (apart from the HT of course) are Metafictions and Postcolonial Literature. The former is taught by the renowned Dr S A, and this will be the first time in 4 years that I'm taking her modules. Most people are amazed to hear that I've never been taught by Dr A before, but I always seem to miss out her modules every time they were offered for some reason. She's reputed to be very intimidating, but lots of people seem to think I'll like her (one senior even thought I was a Dr A fan??) so I hope it does turn out to be the case.

Apart from the Lit modules, I have to do a Breadth module as part of my graduation requirements. Since Business modules take up a lot of time and effort, it's an open secret amongst final year Arts students that it's better to take a Science GEM as a Breadth module. But I dislike Science subjects and I hate doing lab experiments (that's why I'm an Arts student, right?), so doing a Science module is a real bore. This time I'm just picking the only Science GEM that fits my ideal 3-day week timetable and I'm going to use my final S/U option on it, so I'm not really very concerned about the content matter of the module, which is very unenticingly called "Life as a Complex System". Neither PY nor Minwei are taking this module, so I guess I'll just be floating in and out of class for the whole semester without speaking to anyone. Sometimes it is a relief to be completely anonymous in the LT and to be able to do what you please alone.

Ok, I guess that's all I have to say for now. I had better get back to reading Orlando again...

coincendences

2008-01-05T18:30:00.000-08:00

After my appointment with my eye specialist yesterday, my sister and I went shopping at Far East and Heeren. Nothing very interesting about shopping in Singapore as usual, so I'm not going to talk about that. I wanted to drop by Kino to pick up the latest tankoubon of Nana, and as I was scanning one of the shelves in the Japanese-language manga section, I happened to look up and who did I see looking at manga on the opposite side of the shelf? QH, back from Japan! Shilei was with him as well, and we talked for a short while about club matters (now I know what SOY he was talking about...) and their trip to Japan with half of the active committee of the Anime Club. They also gave me a parting "gift" - the long-lost spongey orange bow Shilei's friend Yuanie made for the club's sailor uniform costume one and a half years ago... Now why am I becoming the repository of these odds and ends of the club...? >__<;

It's really amazing to think how these coincidental meetings can happen when there are so many people moving about all over Singapore at any point in time in a day. Singapore isn't a very large place, but it still is a city with 4 million people flowing in and out of its MRT trains and shopping malls. And you can just look up from a shelf of manga in the middle of a large bookstore to find your friend standing right opposite you.

A totally unexpected meeting that made an otherwise nondescript day a little more significant for me.

greek exhibition and vexille

2008-01-02T18:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Kevin and I visited the Greek Masterpieces from the Lourve exhibition at the National Museum. I hadn't been to the museum since it was renovated, so it was quite an experience. The last time I went to the museum, or any museum for that matter, was when I was in lower secondary. I vaguely remember the place being rather dark and dingy and the exhibits totally drab (remember those tiny plasticky figurines jerked into various poses of 'historicity' in the Singapore history diorama, trotting out the SS textbook version of national history to unsuspecting students and tourists?). I also remember instinctively rushing to the door of the gallery displaying Farquhar's animal/plant doodlings in a moment of horror upon suddenly seeing my Sec 2 form teacher's face in the mirror. The security guard thought I had seen a ghost but I think I found my teacher more revolting than any wandering spectre.

But the National Museum is now bright, airy and quite a successful hybrid of tradition and (post)modernity. Nothing spooky about it anymore. I particularly liked the mechanical oscillating red chandeliers hung high up on the glass ceiling of the new extension. They seem to 'update' the traditional colonial heritage of the museum (and of Singapore) with a modern fascination with the speed and movement of machines, without going the way of the Italian Futurists.

The exhibition was pretty informative, but my primary interest was in the artefacts as works of art (in one sense to the ancient Greeks and in another sense to 'moderns' like us) and as 'real' objects the ancient Greeks have sculpted and painted and eaten and drunk with and been buried with. It's actually quite difficult to imagine that the amphora standing serenely in a glass case in front of you was actually used as a practical utensil by individuals 2000 years ago. I would have liked to have been able to touch the artefacts and literally feel their historicity, but that would have gotten me hauled out of the musuem by the guards.

The most breath-taking exhibit was definitely the 2m-tall Venus statue (I forget the exact name). When I first laid my eyes on it, I was like, wow. It was flawless, not a chip on the body, not an imperfection on the surface. Everything was so carefully carved, down to the flowing folds of Venus' robes. And then you realize that this isn't the original statue by a Greek sculptor - it's actually a Roman copy. But by adding the magical words "in Antiquity", the imitation becomes just as valuable as if it was the original. It's fascinating how a simulacrum can attain its own "aura" after a suitably long period of time has passed.

After we finished walking around the exhibition, Kevin and I headed down to The Picturehouse to catch the latest anime film showing in Singapore, Vexille. The CG animation and action scenes get two thumbs up, and the premise of the story is intriguing (already I sense a potential paper on anime and Japan's reflection on its past brewing at the back of my mind), but the film's concerns with technology felt a bit rehashed and simplistic after the phenomenon of Ghost in the Shell. Characterization was also pretty shallow. The mad scientist/dictator character was a bit of a cliche. But it's still a pretty good film and very good animation. Singapore's attempts at animation (just watch the trailers of Zodiac and Legend of the Sea) look like a baby's scratchings in comparison =____=;

sendai kamotsu everybody gay!

2007-12-31T22:30:00.000-08:00

Recently, I have finally gotten around to confirming my long-held suspicion that the band members of Nightmare are also in the band Sendai Kamotsu.

Sendai Kamotsu is the alter-ego of Nightmare and is a kind of parody Visual Kei band - I think some people have even cheekily categorized them as "Visual Gei". They sing extremely silly and campy songs, irreverently poking fun at the stereotype of the VK bandman as effeminate and homosexual. That's why they use the kanji "gei" (which signifies "art" and "performance", as in "geisha") as a pun on the word "gay", foregrounding the perfomativity of sexuality.

I really couldn't believe at first that Sendai Kamotsu is made up of entirely the same band members as Nightmare, except for Kurihara the keyboardist. They are dressed and made-up so differently, and they use aliases, so it's pretty easy to think that they're completely different people. But they still have the kooky Nightmare quality, multiplied by 100. And Ruka is still molesting Yomi, even though he looks a downright horror as the vocalist Chiba. And Sakito as the bespectacled Satty is still so pretty and adorable *___*

"Gei School Otokogumi!!" is, if I'm not mistaken, Sendai Kamotsu's latest PV, and I couldn't help giggling all the way through as I watched it. I've written down the link to the youtube video below, so go watch it if you want something funny and refreshing to pass time on your New Year's Day holiday. And oh yes, do watch out for the super-ironic moment in the PV too! ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9So3Tvr2sfE&feature=related

exam results

2007-12-25T23:08:00.000-08:00

Exam results out today!

Phew, my CAP has dropped by only 0.01 points...

merry xmas 2007

2007-12-23T17:04:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas to everyone out there!