Non sequiturs

I just lost the spunk for blogging. And now I suddenly realise why people keep changing their blogs so often - to be rid of the past - but also to get back that spunk, that eagerness, that ease/lucidity of fingers tap-dancing away on the keyboard like free.

When I pride myself on nostalgia. A keen sense of the past. My heritage. The past IS me.

Bah. I'll do something soon enough, since even Gabriel (Thuan Liang) started prodding me to do something about this stagnating site.

Life's more and more full of ups and downs. Mine, at least, since when compared to the lives of many other hardworking fellows I realise I'm getting jealous of.

More non sequiturs coming up. Oh dear, what kind of essays will I write in future?

A Little (Backdated) Yelp

The ends of the year are nigh.
Save me.
Work still outstanding, not outstanding work.
Die.

In the meantime, If There Are 120 Days of Sodom:

A Sincere and Hopefully Unselfish but Probably
Ineffectual Contract to Salvage Myself

let x = number of Days Left to the Ends (that sometimes justify the means) of the Year:

x = a (absolute number of days left) - Lit trip from 16-22 September - 1 day of DMP hours (minus Lit trip = 27 hours) - I (inconstant amount of time for Gulliver's Travels dramatisation) - sleep hours - eating hours - bathing hours - random procrastinating moments

= 30 - (OMG)

approximately = 0

I swear to complete this mission to get a GPA of 3.60 if not better. I also swear to complete this mission to get an A1 for HMT O-levels. Incidentally, I would also like to swear to stay alive in the process.

Signed,
WJS

as of 10 September 2008, 9 days before the 3rd sorry anniversary of this sorry blog.

This is archaic by now, and I have not managed to salvage myself properly. Will describe in due course.

a minor farewell

It's one month and 2 days = 30 days before the sacred final round of judgement, today. This thought just catalysed (and crystallised - ah, hints of bogus chem revision) all that I've been going through for a few months already, especially after a really frank discussion on the known near future with Norman, Matthias, Andrew and Leon in class during the three-hour long RE free period.

I haven't blogged in a very long time, and I'm not going to pretend that I don't know that and make this post seem as if I have been very committed to the whole affair of blogging. Kieran's clarion call seems ages ago anyway. And I'm somewhat guilty for brushing this enterprise aside, and using the blog as a gateway to blogsurf elsewhere instead of being true and faithful to writing something vaguely reflective/philosophical/personal. I can't bring myself to report on grossly overdue stuff anyway - now's just not the time.

But well, I owe this blog to no one but myself, and as I've kind of established before in my more emotional posts in the past, I only attempt to extract and articulate some of my more meaningful bits of crap swimming in my head when I feel the irresistable urge to. It's probably analogous to some kind of bowel movement, if one should get the drift. *I had no idea that it would come out like that, but* Out it comes in one shot, though I must admit that it is no less a laborious endeavour to try and cough (won't use terminology for the other end) than any other piece of work I entrust myself to complete.

Scatology aside, what I wanted to do with this post is to actually state a temporary leave of absence from my blogging or blog-related activities, which have essentially ceased anyway. As I've mentioned enough already, this blog seems to contain more records of myself apologising for not blogging, and contains nothing but a few thousand kilobytes of random rubbishy convoluted paragraphs, incidentally sounding like this one. But I wanted - quite recurringly and now quite acutely - to register a sense of fear that I've been somewhat avoiding for some time.

And it's rearing it's ugly head. No, probably, it's just me rearing my own ugly head, and it's not to do with the recent haircut which I had last Saturday (incidentally rather satisfying, considering that I detest having hair remotely breaching the tops of my ears). It's really about the same old problem of having been overcommitted to CCA and individual projects that the language and humanities teachers simply relish to assign. And, what, three terms on, with nothing but ONE month and two days between me and the previously far-removed EOYs (excluding a final showcase portfolio, written biography, CLE poster to reinforce my moral compass, testimonial (!), history creative product and portfolio reflections, 3 zuowens, one zhuantizuoye, an essay on man, CCA record forms, a Lit trip to Australia lasting one week, a Gulliver Travels' dramatisation and probably certain forgotten-but-important things I've forgotten (conveniently as usual, owing to my superb memory)), I am well and truly breaking my covenant of making a stronger vote of confidence as to strengthening the numerical appeal of my academic results, nicely summed up in 3 significant figures: my dismal G.PA.

Okay. For once I wrote something useful in the prior paragraph. But that's not enough. As the storm clouds begin to gather, threatening to set me awash in a freezing bath of panic and expectant misery, I foresee myself having to slog it out for sleepless nights ahead, desperately trying to make ends meet. While I've enjoyed life in RI and RP (as will be featured when the EOYs are over and done with) (and this is not the run-of-the-mill brainwashing statement-making moment randomly appearing in chunks of convoluted text), I nonetheless have the constant fear in my mind and every single thing I do that I simply have no time.

I have clear goals as to where I'm headed. I know that to some extent, I've got the background and some groundwork already done. And most of all, I know I'm going to enjoy what I'm heading towards. But the constant struggle never evades me (unlike maths, by no coincidence). The struggle to simply put things down and just mug for dear life. It's the persistence of the perfectionistic mindset (another thing that never evades me), when I know I'm more imperfect than loads of other people out there. It's this shortsighted view that I want to do my best and get the best grades possible for every single assignment and give nothing but the cursory emotion of self-pity when I see dumpy results for math TAs and CCTs. And it's just an addiction, an affliction never going to budge unless I obliterate that perfectionistic, heaven-may-care, don't-care-what-time-I-sleep-so-long-as-I'm-satisfied-with-what-I'm-doing-and-I'm-going-to-(maybe)-score-for-this-assignment-so-it's-fail-this-fail-that-but-I-think-I-can-do-it-if-I-try-harder-next-time attitude.

There's just no end to it. And of course we all know next times are numbered and finite. Like how maths is (most parts of it where I'm concerned anyway).

And like what millions out there should have probably angsted about throughout humanity's history, all this is simply tragic irony. My goal is to try to qualify for RJ's Humanities Programme, and seek a career in future really in some form of public service. I extricated this in my head last year, and I've gone on and clarified it. But I haven't cleared the road to it. Yet. I'm hoping.

There are probably loads out there who qualify as well, if not better. There's going to be competition. The truth is that we live in a meritocracy, and I don't think I'm going to do justice to my yearning to do something productive to society, to truly leave a mark on this earth before leaving, since I do acknowledge that I have severe limitations. Like procrastination and over-over-perfectionism leading to my losing track of the big picture. And being productive to society is in a way that I know is going to be through my inclinations towards the expository and dialectical - the humanities, rather than anything else. I'm just going to be small and insignificant, if I can't clear this final hurdle before me. And I'm sincerely hope that I'm not going to be less significant than those three significant figures.

Let this be my cathartic 30 days of reversal.

A new post

Coming soon, on everything since Fast and Fresh, which should be stationary and stale by now. And there's still RMUN. And the hols that went by in a flash. And APCG. And Drama Feste.

And a load of hits and misses, with misses being more than hits. Were there hits anyway?

And I don't feel like writing anymore - for this post I mean.

Respite from the road to perdition

Due to the existence of irresistibly enticing pictures that follow, I shouldn’t expect many people to read what I have to say before going on to that. Except that as usual, there’s been so much to do in the past few weeks that I haven’t been updating as per normal. Fast and Fresh’s depressingly over, and not to mention the disturbing results that I’ve been gathering, and the backlog of a thousand and one other different things that’ve happened so far. All that, however, is simply too content-heavy and over-sentimental to elucidate at such short notice.

So here’s one of those rare photo posts that I ever produce, and this time it’s really to my convenience that I do this. For 1) I have RMUN and APCG stuff to tend to within this week, 2) I have not the time nor stamina to supply another regular dosage of verbosity and 3) I promised to be inspired to do this after viewing Fiona’s and Shumei’s blogs of late.

Chafe yourself at my tantalisingly ridiculous visage over the past 16 years. Unlike others I don’t know how to conclude whether my physical changes have turned out to be a state of progression or regression.

Occupying one-third of the RInspire coverpage

Before I segue into talking about some of the, how should I say, intrapersonal issues I’m fending off for the moment, just felt that the day before wasn’t as bad a CCT day as I thought. I basically spent the majority of last weekend mugging Chem and frantically doing differentiation in the hope of edging closer towards a few digits worthy of eye candy towards the end of this year. And as usual, with the permanence of math tuition set in every Sunday afternoon, Sunday has just become just about the most dreary day of the week. The sense of urgency to do the things I know that I haven’t done, and the sense of dread that I know that I can’t finish both the things that I know I haven’t done and those that I don’t know and have yet to do, no matter how much I try is just so irritating. Needless to say the imminent arrival of Monday, the first day of the work week and the day of reckoning every cycle of seven days isn’t much of a help at all in boosting morale. It was in such a mood of displacement (no chem pun intended) from the urge to mug that I don’t think I really spent many man-hours packing Chem into my head, only to feverishly panic somewhat towards the late afternoon by reciting reactivity/solubility/ion test lists and miscellaneous stuff.

So the wondrous, surreal, out-of-this-world feeling of euphoria I had after doing the Chem CCT, I think, was rather undeserving for someone who didn’t exactly mug everything to the core as he should have. Just as undeserving as well, I might just add, was my feature in the RInspire mag. It’s quite apparent when my CV of competitions, and more importantly, the basic qualification for a person of “high calibre” is comparatively bare with regard to the other two (i.e. Nigel and Si Yuan). Look no further than the inclusion of the number of pics in the feature – precisely because I haven’t actually taken part in many things worth taking photo-ops of, I have fewer photos in my feature as compared to the others. True, as I say (and often reassure myself), the spirit to give one’s all and the drive to sharpen oneself exist. But I can’t deny the reality that concrete results need to lend some kind of gravitas to the aspirations that just about anyone can profess to have. Truth be told, I don’t even think I have the perseverance of the two other said individuals to pull through countless sleepless nights (this I have done before but not on the sustained level of many more deserving unsung heroes), or hot sun for that matter. And I know very, very well how much a procrastinator I can be. All that I’ve shown is basically my insufficiently tapped potential to achieve things – often misconstrued with true ability and the true tenacity to pull through. I quote a random blogger – these days blogs are the way to gather feedback:

And yeah, today was the release of the April 2008 version of RInspire. The school magazine. On the cover is supposedly 3 handsome guys. 1 of them being [...] nigel fong. Another 1 is my house captain SiYuan. and some random low profile guy i’ve never seen b4.

I really wonder who’s the “random low profile guy I’ve never seen b4”. There’s always this nagging sense of being wrongly categorised somehow, that somewhere, somehow, millions of people out there should be where I stand.

Moving on to more interesting stuff, the Interhouse Humanities Quiz was a blast! I think we began work some time during the March hols, and for much of the past few weeks Yong Sheng took the helm of coordinating practically everything. Not trying to sound biased here, but most of the comments (other than certain individuals not numbering more than what I can count with my fingers) have turned out to be overwhelmingly positive. Much of my work was basically to set the History questions, and vet the questions and systems that we put in place. Though, of course, the theme could have been much more interesting than something like What on Earth is 185? There was quite a lot of active participation from the audience while I was on stage overseeing much of what was going on, what with cat-calling and actually people interested in suggesting answers. We were kind of fearing that the questions were just somewhat too out-of-this-world (how ironic) that people’ll just turn off on cue. My only regret would be having ill-advised Shou Jian about the Buckley selections – but nonetheless they pulled through with the Environment and Geog questions.

With S24 and the Humanities quiz over and done with, it’s been easier for the past two or three days with sufficient time to cope with matters. Of course, the work never ends, and May is just about among the more hiong of months to come. There’s Fast and Fresh, a 10-minute play production to oversee (Jon Lian’s script made it), RMUN, my RE exhibition layer, Bio CCT, HCL CCT and at least another fifty-odd things to do on my to-do list.

And I’ll prove that I can have my buffet and eat it.

Playing the fool

As usual, much has happened with the passage of the past 2 weeks since the last post, and I’m beginning to see this sentence as something of a template starter for all my posts nowadays. I’m always feeling this itch to blog that’s preventing me from doing other stuff, because I’d otherwise not do any justice to all that I’ve been doing already; yet it pains me to rack my brains on what to say of it. Anyway, while I’m trying quite hard to recollect all that has happened, most of these past 2 weeks have really been characterised by one thing: Shakespeare 24. As alluded to in the last post, countless hours have been spent on it – and overall I think I’ve really learnt something I’d never thought I would.

Like Kieran, I didn’t want to get too tangled up in this. I came in, regrettably, with a very self-centred motivation – to fulfil what I promised Ms Kuang in this personal development contract that everyone was supposed to do. I just wanted to slack around during rehearsals doing my own work until it was time for me to say my lines, do my actions and blah, and shirk everything else to those who were in charge. Other than performing as the elderly, tottering Duncan, I saw nothing else in S24 that I should’ve taken responsibility for. To Ms Johnson’s, Chris Koay’s and Ms Chew’s respective chagrins, I suppose everyone else mainly adopted that same attitude (or lack thereof) for the majority of the production work.

I’m willing to face the fact that our play was, with all due respect to the status of Macbeth as the cursed play, doomed from the start – notwithstanding the fact that I realised how much I’ve had fun doing it and learning from it. Truth is, all that I remember from doing S24 is about all the flaws each and every one of us had, not just as the stage characters we tried to portray, but also as people trying to cooperate together as a team. There was a combined discontent against the way the production was being carried out – by means of having more than one director (by every measure a no-no for most productions I’ve ever known and ever been in), each coming down on the cast and crew alike with such unbridled fury I’ve never known to exist in the theatrical scene. Most of my vivid recollections of the process of blocking each scene for hours were largely of either Chris or Ms Johnson defining the demeanour of the various actors, switching roles around, or basically exploding on stage.

And then there were the hours. Not that I’m not used to staying back in school beyond the bearable threshold of 8pm, but sustaining this much stamina for every single night for 2 weeks was definitely a first. Time for doing the usual copious amount of CCA/schoolwork is limited as it is already – and in the process I think much of these have taken quite a bit of flak. At least 3 or 4 assignments (large ones) have all been coincidentally shored up for Week 7, and I imagine slogging all these out, in addition to preparing for Fast and Fresh, and RJCO concert wouldn’t be much of a ball.

Yet in retrospect I think all this was inconsequential. For one, S24 has been rather bittersweet. All this while I had the sensation of being pushed to do things the way that those in charge wanted; we sort of succeeded in making a statement as the only tragic play in two nights of comedies, yet failed in functioning properly as proper human beings in our behaviour; and on watching the video that my dad assiduously filmed of my scenes on opening night, I realise how poor my portrayal and voice projection was. Most importantly, I’ve learnt to appreciate the drama behind the drama, that we really disappointed those who had the faith to trust us to carry Macbeth through. I won’t mention names, but the fact is all the trouble that we’ve given to the organisers and those in charge of us was a group responsibility and not just that of petty individuals. While we managed to the best of our abilities to heal those scars that were inflicted, some wounds just run deep.

But it was a fun experience nonetheless. Chicken rice every meal wasn’t much of a turn-on, but waiting in the wings for the four magical moments on stage (there were three only in the end, because my dying scene got axed for the logistical impossibility) was. Putting on makeup was actually funny; I was a kungfu master on opening night, while a tiger for the closing. And who can forget how prodigiously long Bhargav took to learn how to catch Lady Macbeth, or pick her up from the ground?

I know that the actual performances were our two best ones – even if the audience laughed at the weirdest of parts. Macbeth IS a tragedy after all, and is not meant to have laughter-inducing effects. I know everyone put in their all for everything. We pulled it off.

I know that I’ve learnt something when the fun of it all is in waiting in the wings with the rest, correcting one another, as much as doing our own stuff on stage selfishly.