i am an ass. a donkey. a fraud. an idiot. i suck.
written: 6:01 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2004

Today is the first time that I truly feel as if I have completely made a mess of my GP essay.

Today is also the first time that I filled up six pages for two Econs essays and managed to write (pretty last-ditch attempts at) an evaluative conclusion. In addition, the other one that I didn't really manage to finish was like, five sides.

At the end of everything, I am so drained that my left leg is hurting from sitting down for two hours and fifteen minutes straight, just scribbling furiously away as if my very survival depended on it (and yes, it does, to some degree), and I feel warm all over and oh, I'm having a splitting migraine.

This is probably academically-suicidal but I don't feel like studying Lit now. I don't think George Eliot and Silas Marner can be any more boring and I'm quite annoyed by Othello and I don't understand why he's a tragic hero as I think he's a traitor to his own race, and Hard Times is okay if you can find it in yourself to excuse glaring plot holes and obvious hasty conclusions on Dickens's bit, and I have not even got started on the sheer didacticism or whatever of his prose.

I mean, it gets a bit too much after a while. When someone has fallen into some deep dark coal mine and has been lying there for a couple of weeks, when he's finally rescued, he would not spew a whole bunch of shit about how he doesn't blame the wealthy for his plight, how we should all adopt altruism as our principle driving force in life and forgive and hence solve our problems, blah blah blah. It's ludicrous. Stephen Blackpool pisses me off, and the only good character in the whole book turns into a wimp in the end. Why the hell would a maverick and casanova like James Harthouse back off just because some irritating 16-year-old village idiot told him to? Like, what logical sense does that make? Absolutely none.

Shit, I think I'm having a fever. I so should not have stayed up last night reading my newspaper articles. The few commentaries on how badly the Russian authority handled the Beslan school siege were rather interesting.

On the one hand, I can identify with Vladimir Putin's absolutely-no-negotiation stand on the Chechnya secession problem, in particular because of the comment he made, about how impossible it would be for the States, or anyone, to sit Osama bin Laden down on a diplomatic table and negotiate for peace. That I kind of get, and to some extent, I'm sympathetic.

On the other hand, I would hardly lump Chechen separatist fighters in the same category as Osama bin Laden. I mean, yes, the people (a misnomer for those creatures) behind the school siege allegedly have connections with al-Qaeda and some of it was religiously-motivated, but at the very core of the Chechen problem, the association is hardly valid. The people whom Moscow have been fighting ever since 1991 do not have a cause that is as grandiose, despotic and radical as that of Osama's. All they want is an independent Chechen state, not a total annihilation of the non-Islamic world.

Obviously, Russia can't grant it to them because of the whole territorial integrity bullshit, but some diplomacy is needed in order to satiate these people. I mean, what do you want more? National security or national pride? What the hell would you stand to lose from peace-talking with the secular/nationalist separatist fighters?

Well, I'm not exactly seeing the larger picture but from the little odd bits of jigsaw pieces that I'm staring at, it does seem like Putin's obdurate no-negotiation stance is backfiring on the country somewhat dramatically. Shouldn't some measures be undertaken to make sure that Islamic fundamentalists don't eclipse the whole point of the Chechen rebellion? I'm not saying that we should all go out and bomb capitals in order for our dreams of an independent state to be realised, but there has to exist a separation between the separatist movement and the radical Islamic shit that seems to be spreading to Chechnya.

Yeah. So that's my bit of political/current affairs commentary for the day.

And I was so engrossed in the details of the Beslan school siege, among other stupid things, that I ran out of time to talk about other things in my through-and-through, wholly disastrous GP essay today.

Question: "Human beings have more to fear from themselves than from the natural world. Do you agree?"

The concept of fear is one with which all people can identify.

That banal, utterly unexciting and constipated sentence you see above in italics is my fucking first fucking sentence.

What the hell is wrong with me? Is 'all people' even grammatically correct? Why don't I know this?

And it also did not help one single bit that I suddenly thought of another line of argument, one which basically goes something like, "Since human beings are a part of the natural world, we have as much to fear from ourselves as we do from the natural world."

But since I've already written my introductory paragraph (which sucks major ass) I decided to devote an entire paragraph in rebutting that argument, which I think doesn't even make any sense now. So about a page was spent on demonstrating How To Waste One's Precious Exam Time And Write Bullshit That Completely Does Not Address The Question, Hence Being Totally Irrelevant And Stupid, and about fifteen minutes or twenty minutes or so was spent on that ineffectual and shitty paragraph.

I could've used that time to talk about Matthew Shephard, religious fundamentalism, the spread of diseases like the bird flu as a direct result of the negligence and incompetence of human beings, but no.

One measley paragraph on the threats that the natural world pose to human security, some bullshit on earthquakes; two pages or so of two seemingly-distinct but actually-similar points, political clashes between countries and within a country; and the introduction of a separate point in my BLOODY CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH.

Okay, why did I have to talk about Taiwan/China and Acheh/Indonesia? Both serve the same purpose, so why did I have to mention both? And why did I just HAVE to bring up developing countries' fear of protectionistic measures adopted by developed countries against farm produce in my last last last last last fucking paragraph just to make a huge mess of it as I ran out of time? Why did I have to write 'agricultural products' instead of 'farm produce'? Why couldn't I just forget that I thought of the counter-argument and pretend it had never occurred to me? And most tragically and sinfully, WHY THE HELL COULD I NOT PARAPHRASE THE GIVEN SENTENCE? WHY THE HELL DID I KEEP REPEATING THE STUPID SENTENCE AT THE START AND END OF EVERY PARAGRAPH LIKE AN UNCOUTH, UNSOPHISITICATED JJC GP STUDENT?

I'm so pissed off at and disappointed in myself that I could just... argh, I don't fucking know. My A1 has gone to the dogs, just because I chose that moment to screw up. When I take things seriously, I realise, the result is always less than when I treat them as a complete joke.

I mean, during GP common tests I was always like, "Ah, fuck lah, anyhow do lah, still can get a nice A2 what." And save for one unfortunate incident, that has always been the case.

But last year's promos, I actually bothered to flip through the dictionary for nice bombastic words the night before the paper, and in the end I got a lousy 34/50.

And today's paper? I was fucking afraid. Of GP. English. I was afraid of writing an essay. And why, self, why? Just to screw up the stupid thing lah.

Yeah lah, continue using Singlish lah. Your English sucks anyway.

Damn, my legs are aching. The cold weather is not helping matters much.

The nervousness was almost unbearable. I don't understand it.

Well, I can console myself with the thought that I pretty much breezed through Paper 2 and the words just flowed like the Niagara (sp) for the AQ.

But nevertheless, I feel shitty. Absolutely shitty. I did things I was not supposed to, carved out new heights in the world record book of Utter Stupidity and Braindeadness, and yeah, like I said, my A1 has flown away, just like that.

I pretty much didn't give a damn about Paper 2 by that time though. Was too demoralised to care. Luckily for me, the passages were on the age-old issue of whether violence can ever be justified or not.

See what I mean? The instant I place too much importance on GP is the very moment my grade is jeopardised.

Bloody shit. And I think I might not get a good grade for Econs today because... I don't know. I'm not very sure if I addressed the questions properly, and hello, we ARE talking about that highly volatile and unpredictable subject called Economics here. To say anything in advance would be to jinx whatever sliver of chance I might have at a good grade.

I don't even know what that 'good grade' is right now. I want an A, but I'm not gonna get it, based on the shit I wrote today. Yeah they were long, but so bloody what? It's the quality that matters.

I don't know. I didn't even revise fiscal policy and I had the cheek to do the queston on the topic.

Well, that's because I couldn't do part (b) of Question 3 which was on standard of living because I knew that I was going to turn it into a GP discussion, and I didn't feel like doing national income determination because, frankly, it's rather boring, so I did the last three questions, two of which were full 25m essays.

Okay, I have just realised how fucking screwed I am and how deep the hole that I dug for myself during the 2h 15m truly is.

I seriously think I'm having a fever. My left leg hurts like hell and my right leg feels awfully warm. As does my forehead.

Lovely. What a great time to fall sick. Timing couldn't be better.

Seriously, I feel so shitty about the GP that I can't even use the thought of me definitely going for Jielun's gig on the 27th of November to inject even the tiniest cheer into myself. It's bad. I feel embarrassed. The English was atrocious.

If my script were to be marked by a teacher who has taught me before or read my stuff, the comment would probably go something like, "Performace grossly below usual standard. You are a fraud after all. Give up the 'A' Levels and go sell your body."

Okay, I realise how irritating it is that I keep harping about GP, but whatever lah okay? Wo yao xie she mo jiu xie she mo. Ni bu xi huan de hua, qing li ke fuck off.

(Translation: I write whatever I please. If you don't like it, please fuck off.)

This is bad. I really don't feel like studying for tomorrow's Paper 1 Lit at all. Like, AT ALL. And I'm actually really keen on attempting an essay question because throughout the past year and 9 months, I've done nothing but passage-based stuff because my knowledge of the texts is nowhere near extensive enough to fill up an essay.

Yeah. Me, doomed. How am I supposed to memorise quotes from three texts by tonight? Argh.

SHIT! The leg is hurting like hell! How can I possibly get muscle aches from sitting?

Something IS wrong with me. I screw up my GP, I screw up my Econs and my body cheerfully decides to malfunction.

Yeah. Life is great. Indeed.

Oh yeah. I forgot to mention. After I was done with my first two Econs essays, I was left with one measley sheet of paper for my third essay. So I raised my hand to signal that I needed more paper, but guess what? The teachers were too busy not invigilating to see my raised hand. One of them was right at the back, while a few gathered in front, all looking down at whatever it was they were looking down at.

So I spent like 3 precious minutes, during which I could've fucking explained how a reduction in taxes will not cause a current account deficit, panicking and trying desperately to get the teachers' attention.

The only question of which I was more sure than others is the one that I did not complete.

Yay. I am so on my way to aceing my A Levels.

How the fuck does one spell A-ing anyway?

before sunrise // before sunset

Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010