Ripples and Sunshine

Oooh I love my editors =) Spent the day at Nat's house with Siyi and Mark and Nat for the last dash to finish up the project, and tada! Here it is! Credit goes to Nat and Siyi who rushed out the entire website overnight... Amazing, these girls =)

I think I like editing, although it's quite a pain sometimes, as Mark--who helped me with so much of the final vetting and editing yesterday--puts it. But it's a lotta satisfaction after you're done with it *beams* Fulfillment!

So in case you missed it, here's the link again: Click it! =)

Logged into my gmail to send out the usual internship application stuff and guess what I saw?

"We refer to your application to X company, (sent January this year)... and will like to arrange for an interview..."

Well, whaddya know? =) Maybe two months later SPH will ask me to go for an interview too! *grins*

Was the horror of the Columbine High shootings not huge enough a tragedy to mobilise a country to review its gun control policies? 8 years ago the press had acted like they did now--Oh! how could it have happened! Oh! Alas! The country mourns, oh, horror swept across the world, oh, is there perhaps something wrong with our liberal gun control policies?

Of course there are a million other factors contributing to the incident, beyond just gun control policies, yet the fact remains that accessibility to arms hadn't decreased that dramatically since the last shooting, to allow for history to repeat itself on a greater scale.

Pumping widespread terror across the nation with the press blaring out images and descriptions in such a vivid manner is not helping, either. Would terror not justify that people be allowed to own firearms too, just to 'defend' themselves against the potential 'minority' who threatens their lives?

*shudder* everything is such a huge paradox. I don't know how to make things better either, but if the government were to impose stricter laws upon gun control, and if the media would stop magnifying the waves of fear and violence, would things get better, perhaps?

Okay, so my dear friend was asking, I quote, "Eh, why so long never blog, your last entry was AAAAHHH ESSSSAAAAYYY", or something along these lines... so okok, here I am =)

*taps fingers* Blog what? I had an urge to blog yesterday, right after American com was submitted... Typed the first sentence, got as far as "last assignment for the semester!" before I froze, and then decided that I didn't want to continue writing, because I didn't feel quite as exuberant any more =(

Shucks lar. Am gonna miss my favourite lit-mates, who are all graduating this semester. Which was why--despite it being a crazy semester with never-ending assignments and stress levels up way high-- I hadn't wanted this semester to end. Sigh.

*shakes head* Shall not continue on this train of thought. Gets depressing =x

Caught up briefly with Steph-the-long-lost-white-tag-St-Nicks-friend today at media lab, and it's gratifying to know that after so many years, we're not that far off from the two teenage girls chatting way crappy stuff over ICQ, haha... Very nostalgic =) And strangely enough she was the only person who ever asked "You're only got two more sems to go right? Aren't you sad?"

I am. With the whole world a-buzzing with moving on, moving on, "what comes after this?", making plans for the Next Big Thing and scheduling stuff to look forward to... it almost seems as though the present is nothing but a blur, and the past a rosy fast-fading water-colour painting I'm frantically attempting to preserve. The online diary last time was used to archive events, descriptive narratives of things that happened, but it seems as though I hardly ever write descriptive narratives anymore. Must be the lit essay training, haha. "Don't narrate! Always assume that your reader has sufficient knowledge of the events that have occurred... go straight into an in-depth analysis of the text itself."

Which is funny sometimes, because I go back to certain entries and cannot recall the exact event that sparked off the situation, but have no problems identifying with the feelings explored.

Okay, have gone off on a tangent... *pause* No, never mind. Am not writing a lit essay with a point to return to. Goodness, the assignments are getting to me.

Strangely enough, NM has been as much of a point of reflection as my lit mods this sem... a relatively negative series of reflections, haha, but absolutely essential. Come to think of it, a lot of my... how do I describe it?-- my worldview? is probably due to how I grew up reading Reader's Digest and fiction texts, instead of news from the Straits Times. Which meant that every event is a human story with layers of complex psychology and emotions. Which meant that every disaster brings about heroes to save the day. Which meant that every tragedy holds a powerful lesson. Which meant that every screw-up has a resolution.

And so on and so forth.

How tempting it is to believe this is the way reality functions... save that it doesn't seem to gel with everyone else's sense of reality. Blah.

Shucks it's 2a.m. And I've studied a grand total of ONE introductory chapter in Sing lit today... Alamaaak. Okay must go must go~

To friend: I blogged! Aha!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
EEEEESSSSSSSSSSAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY HOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

two-days-on-one-hundred-words. Move-faster-charm-write-more.

The brother had an art assignment which required him to draw a famous person. And being the helpful sister that I am (okay fine I was getting bored with my readings) I sketched an example on a piece of rough paper.

It was a random burst of artistic inspiration, I tell you. I never drew people that looked like people before, but I kinda thought this was cute, haha.



Looks like anyone you can think of?

So that was drawn last Sunday. Or last last Sunday. Or the Sunday before. Goodness, I cannot keep track. I count my weeks by deadlines, so this week is Breaking News and NM Exam and American Comedy Outline week. Nesha had to remind me that this is the last week of school, and a surprised Sarah (and a genuinely horrified Alicia-- "WHAT? NOOOO! THERE'S NO SING LIT TUTORIAL!") told me that there's no tutorial or IVLE posting for Sing lit this week.

Even Yishan, basking in the Austrian sun, noted over MSN that it was Week 13.

EH! WHERE HAD MY SEMESTER GONE? =(

To slow down time a little I decided to take a breather, browse through the travel-blogs of my dear friends on exchange, and gaze at the lovely lovely scenery over at Vienna and Switzerland. Pointed the pretty pictures out to my dad, who promptly suggested I take a series of Singaporean shots and post them up as well-- "And then you can tell them, see? I also have!"

*laughs* Next time, okay. Heritage tour around sunny Singapore! Char Agl Wenyi game?



And yes, I miss you girls... Gotta catch up with you guys more often eh, regardless of which part of the world you're in =)

Sometimes it's just coming online to browse, looking for I-don't-know-what. There isn't anything to do online really, while before you, behind you are truckloads of stuff waiting to be read and analysed and conceptualised and made ready. Readings made me sleepy so here I am. Oh, goodness.

I had a terrible urge to use the phone, to nestle in the comfy softness of my parents' bed and cradle the phone against my ear and talk the time away. The weekend was refreshing because time stretched on in an almost leisurely manner, and I get to talk with my parents, with my brother, catch up on all sorts of stuff.


You know there's something wrong when I start to talk compulsively. Or blog compulsively, in this context. It's not that I'm very free, what with quizzes and watching prime time movies... they're more of a means of distracting the brain from work, or panicking about work at least. Have been brainstorming and ploughing through readings and scouring every single faculty's online events calendar for a speech or breaking news and drafting possible interview questions and thinking some more, and...

And I need some kind of catharsis before I freak out big time. This is not good, Charm. The number of freak-out moments this sem is more than last sem already, and it's unhealthy. I never knew I had such issues with stepping out of my comfort zone before, but for some reason or other Reality and The Future and Great Unknowns keep looming before me. Some kind of quarter-life crisis, this being scared of everything that is to come. My goodness, Charm, get a grip.

Why are there no more reso pracs? There goes the thing-to-look-forward-to-on-a-Tuesday =( Might be dog-tired at the end of the day, of course, but prac's often a welcomed relief =)

Ah well. Enough with the wailing... Must log off quick.

*sigh* Hadn't wanted to catch A.I. again, for the simple reason that it's gotta be one of the most heart-wrenching movies ever, but there it was, right smack in the prime time Sunday night slot, on a channel where either my brother or my dad would invariably flick to and settle on.

And so I was caught, reluctantly entranced, until the ending credits rolled. Even though the movie was barely half-an-hour to the end... but then again, the closing scenes of A.I. have always been the most heart-breaking =( The raw, raw emotions of a little boy aching for his mother's love, the undying trust that lasts beyond the lifespan of humanity, the immensity of loss, the transience of humanity... haven't yet lost the power to coax you into tearful empathy.

"A robotic boy, the first programmed to love, David is adopted as a test case by a Cybertronics employee (SAM ROBARDS) and his wife (FRANCES O’CONNOR), whose own terminally ill child has been cryogenically frozen until a cure can be found. Though he gradually becomes their child, with all the love and stewardship that entails, a series of unexpected circumstances make this life impossible for David.

Without final acceptance by humans or machines, and armed only with Teddy, his supertoy teddy bear and protector, David embarks on a journey to discover where he truly belongs, uncovering a world in which the line between robot and machine is both terrifyingly vast and profoundly thin. -- © 2001 Warner Bros."

If a robot could genuinely love a person, what responsibility does that person hold toward that mecha in return? It's a moral question, isn't it?



David: My mommy doesn't hate me! Because I'm special! And unique! Because there's never been anyone like me before, ever! Mommy loves Martin because he is real, and when I am real Mommy's going to read to me and tuck me in my bed and sing to me and listen to what I say and she will cuddle with me and tell me every day a hundred times a day that she loves me!


Monica: I do love you, you know.
[whispers]
Monica: I have always loved you.

Kopped the quiz from postmodernist-Alicia's blog =P

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational. Cultural Creative 81% Romanticist 75% Idealist 69% Postmodernist 63% Fundamentalist 56% Existentialist 50% Modernist 31% Materialist 25% What is Your World View? created with QuizFarm.com

And even as each week is marked by a deadline or two, I will not count my days to the end. I will not I will not I will not.

I wonder if I would look back on this sem and remember only deadlines, frazzled days and crazy nights of one assignment after another. But given this notoriously selective memory I might not register the fact after three reminder-free months. After all, who was it who was wailing "I will never take another new media module! Never never!" and went on to spend another 500 points on a follow-up module to that one UE module that drove her crazy all the previous semester?

So that's Reality2221 (take-home point 1: don't try to be funny, Charm. don't kill yourself by going into journalism proper. take-home point 2: Charm has close to no sense of reality. my goodness, where have you been living all your life? under a stone?)

Even my Straits Times subscription has stopped on its own accord. The English newspapers ceased to arrive this month even as the Chinese newspapers make it safely to their destination, ever as reliable, and ever as unreadable. Much as I appreciate my very Chinese upbringing, my Chinese vocabulary is in dire need of revision.

You gotta pardon this increasingly frazzled narrative. I am, as far as I can, keeping the rising panic and potential shrieks out of the entry, but one glance at the upcoming week's timetable sends my nerves a tingling. *shuts eyes and groans*

I must admit though that NM is not without its credits for me. At least, at 21, I am made to read and to digest news, to actually have a slightly more accurate idea of what the 21st century is all about. *wry laugh* I am appalled at myself sometimes... I often think, if there were parallel time-space existences in this world, then perhaps I was accidentally swapped with my nineteenth-century counterpart.

Okay. After exploring all the events calendars from every faculty in NUS, and searching for possible talks at the national library and museum, I should prolly retire offline to my readings. Back to lit lit lit! Sometimes I recall with a shudder how close I'd been to going into communications studies in NTU... and I look at lit and NM breathe a huge huge huge sigh of relief.

I have only a vague idea of what tomorrow will bring, and it is with some trepidation that I flip the idea in my head, over and over, more frequent than before, as certain possibilities crystalise and others fade. Ah well, we'll see.

Shall go luxuriate in Boey Kim Cheng's poetry now =) Was never really a poetry person, but his poetry has a certain drawing element that I haven't felt before, in all those previous British poetry I've done. Might develop a taste for poetry after all (after donkey's years of doing lit, goodness) but still like prose best thus far.

So, till the next entry~