this is fucking crazily mammoth!
written: 4:18 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 07, 2005

Argh my arm hurts, my back hurts, my eyes hurt, I hurt everywhere, my heart hurts at the thought of actual lessons starting tomorrow. Oh, the fear that grips me, the trepidation and apprehension!

Okay I should go read notes or something after this. Actually I should do it now, but I can't function on an empty stomach and so I shall do it after dinner.

(Insert other shit excuses here for putting it off.)

Anyway give me a moment to recall what happened on Friday and Saturday.

Oh yeah okay.

Friday: Went to NUS in the afternoon, attended half of the orientation stuff. First it was this Law CCA "fair" thing where various CCAs talked to us about the CCA; I can't remember half of what was said. The Law review sounds fun though; but then again, my idea of 'fun' differs quite greatly from the general majority's, so it could be just me. There was this other production CCA whose openness about their financially-bankrupt status cracked me up. I still have no idea what the Law Club does.

Next, introductory lecture by this professor with a Vietnamese name that I can't remember. This bald dude (and I mean bald, like monk-bald bald) wearing a suit and a tie sets up his laptop and starts talking about Criminal Law. It sounds like a real lecture, except for some bits here and there during which he says things or does things that remind me of my own stint subbing in Jurong Junior a few months ago. The hesitation, the lame jokes, the obvious throwing-questions-at-class-to-engage-them gimmick...he doesn't feel like a real professor at all.

And of course, the curious fact that Criminal Law noticeably absent from my class schedule.

Then it says on his PowerPoint slide, My name is Yih V(something) Iam Lawrence.

Thank you for attending this mock lecture.

How funny.

Well, it made sense, 'cause I found it hard to believe that a professor could be as young and as good-looking as that dude, who turned out to be an Advanced Graduate Programme student. I repeat, how funny. I wonder how the people who had serious questions to ask the dude during the Q&A felt at the end of it all. Like this one guy, he was asking the 'prof' about his view on the death penalty...wait a minute, I know that guy, he's in my OG. But whatever it is, I cannot buy any form of "utilitarian" justification for state-sanctioned murder, or ANY kind of excuses to validate it. It's murder, period, I don't believe in an eye for an eye, and people who believe in it based on the "reasoning" that it clears up space in prison...ought to try it for themselves. The mental trauma before the execution, the actual execution itself, not to mention countless botched executions in the past that only led to unnecessary and prolonged suffering for the criminal: What a fucking bed of roses. I love living in this humane world.

Anyway.

Moot competition between NUS and University of Malaya.

I know I shouldn't say this, but hell, I was on the verge of falling asleep. This is so damn bad isn't it? I know I shouldn't bad-mouth others but I have to say this: The two students of UoM...couldn't speak English. It was weird, and I disliked how they kept saying things like, "My lord", "my learned lord", and "it is our humble submission". Blah okay? At least NUS said "your honour" which is less nauseating than "my lord".

I stayed for the result but went to the loo during the judges' deliberation time. The one outisde the moot court was damn crowded and I seriously had to pee, so I went to the one further away and by the time I got back the event had already started, and I was sitting in the third row and didn't want to go through the whole "walk down aisle and have everyone staring at you" shit. Hence I stayed outside in between a bunch of PRC students on laptops at the study benches and waited for the event to be over.

What a waste of time. Should've just left and not waited for the results if I'd known. Anyway, NUS won, predictably, so there you go. The second NUS speaker was pretty good though; I was quite impressed. I don't think I could ever do something like that: step up to podium, present case, have judges interrupt you every three words to shoot you insane questions (half of which I didn't remotely understand) and answer those questions in precise, coherent English. Especially the part where you answer questions in precise, coherent English. I'd probably be like, "Blah blah blah like blah blah um blah blah and yeah." In other words? What I always do.

So many things to learn.

I finally left NUS at about 7.30, and by then I was starving. I stole a few Time Out chocets (how to spell ah?) from Harsharan who bought it from the bookstore and maaaan chocolate has never tasted that good! I wanted to buy the cookies that Rui said were nice that other day when I was there with her but didn't have enough money. I'm gonna buy them tomorrow. Looking at them made me salivate, and it was only the packaging.

Then I got home, ate, other mundane shit; and at 9.30 my phone rang. It was Clarence asking if I could get out of the house to eat with him.

Fuck if I'd known earlier I so would've gone with some OG people for dinner, or stayed in school for dinner, and not gone home that early. But I didn't even have to ask my dad to know that he'd never let me get out of the house at that kind of hour with a non-girl, so...

There's this stupid new full-page casino spyware ad that keeps popping up and it's pissing me off.

Anyway, Saturday.

Yesterday was fun! Save for the morning, that is. The morning was ultra-shit. First, I reached NUS at 8-something a.m. and then cheerfully found out that I forgot to bring my phone. And since I am a technology kid living in the technological 21st century in which no one can conceivably survive without a stupid cellphone, I freaked out. I walked all over the stupid Sports and Recreation Centre for a full half a fucking hour looking for a non-phone card pay phone, and I'd like to take this opportunity to pose a crucial question to all readers out there:

WHO THE FUCK CARRIES A PHONE CARD ANYMORE? Honestly, tell me: WHO THE HELL DOES? The only pay phone I found in my vicinity was a stupid phone card pay phone. How very USEFUL idiots! I thought public phone companies should be smart enough to know that profit maximisation (or rather, revenue maximisation; I can't imagine such idiocy ever making profits) equals adapting to changes and evolving with the times, and "the times" logically dictate that most people won't carry phone cards since they have mobile phones, which means that they should change all public phones to coin-operated ones since people will still continue to carry loose change! DUH hello?

In the end I walked to the Alumni House and used the phone there. Asked my bro to tell my mom to bring the phone to me and all.

I know, I am so spoilt. Ordinarily I wouldn't have done it, but I really needed my phone yesterday so I was left with no other alternative. Anyway, I waited like half an hour for her alone at the SRC carpark so we're even.

Some dude asked me where the Rag Competition was held and I used that chance to borrow his cellphone; had to call home to confirm that my mom did leave the house and did not abandon me for dead, for that was how it felt like without the phone yesterday.

God it sucks, doesn't it? This stupid over-reliance on extraneous technology, how stranded I felt without my phone, and it's got to a point where I can't even remember how I used to function without one only two years ago. I thought I was above the curious trend of youngsters naming their phone as the number one thing they can't live without. I guess I was wrong.

Oh fuck it, whatever.

Rag Competition sucked. Couldn't see anything from where I was standing. I didn't know anyone there; was standing amidst a red sea of Year 2 people and so I walked off half an hour later. Heard that Law didn't win Presentation, which it won last year.

That's actually pretty sad. It's akin to the Detroit Pistons losing face as the defending champions when they lost to the San Antonio Spurs this year. I was happy about that but that's beside the point; I had to be too, was a last-minute Spurs fan, and Law is more Spurs than Pistons anyway so...

Oh well.

I sat at Yusof Ishak House and drank my second cup of milk tea for the day. Called Clarence and woke him up, poor thing. Haha, he sounded so groggy over the phone! It was so funny and cute. Anyway finally arranged to meet at Clementi; he was supposed to meet me at NUS but due to unforseeable circumstances, ie. me leaving Rag Competition early and having nothing to do at NUS, our original plan was botched. Sorry dude! You can come this Friday though...I think.

Shit I still have no idea what classes are starting and which ones are not. I tried checking my NUS email the other day and I got a Page Not Found page. Fuck! So mah fan lah wah lauuuuuu.

Okay when I lapse into Singlish in writing, it means that I am on the verge of losing all semblance to that fragile thing called Sanity. Not Good.

Anyway, guess who I ran into on Bus 96! (Or is it 95? I keep getting these two buses confused. I'm referring to the one that gets you to Clementi.)

MEL AND PEI!!!!!! LIKE OMG!!!!111!!!!111!!!!!!!!!

What a coincidence! Was I happy to see them, and happy is probably the biggest understatement ever! Pei started going, "Oh it's going to be so sad!" like practically from start of journey to end of journey, ie. it's gonna be so sad that we're no longer together, and hell, I concur. I'm gonna miss them soooo much, and all my 03A1 friends. Especially Mel and Pei. It's gonna be a lonely 4 years ahead. Sigh.

Oh but GUESS WHAT, they wanna join NUS Lit Soc tooooo! Wednesday's the welcome tea thing and although it's at the crappy time of 6 p.m., way after my last class, I can't wait anyway 'cause they'd be going with me. Yayness, and this time I mean it.

We hung out at Clementi's MacDonalds' for a bit, bitched about some unsavoury characters (ripped this term off Clarence!), laughed about our Econs lecture routine (Blatant Lack of Attention-Paying and playing Round Robin and Bingo), talked about school...absolute fun times.

ARGH FUCK I'M GONNA MISS THEM AND I HATE THIS FEELING HENCE THE TYPING IN CAPS.

Thank goodness for CCAs and Literature and friends who love it as much as you do. I don't think it's mere coincidence that 'literature' and 'love' both start with the letter 'L'.

Anyway, moving on.

Clarence showed up at Macs at around 12, half an hour past the time we were supposed to meet. Pei left about 10 minutes before that so it was just me and Mel, and thank goodness she was there or else I would've gone nuts with having nothing to do. Mel commented on his fingernails; called them 'reverse French manicure'. Haha.

Okay what is it with me and guys who like nailpolish? They're just so hot, I can't help it, such that I'm blatantly writing ungrammatical, run-on sentences. I still haven't got my hands on that perfect pot of yellow nail colour though. Clarence and I must find time to do our nails together!

Anyway he bought Twister fries, I finched them, I refused to have lunch there so we split, went to get a drink, and then waited for a car to come and take us to Sixth Avenue. He had to check on this fish tank he set up and I, Poor Thing, had no choice but to follow him.

Well, I did it willingly 'cause I had nowhere to go anyway and because it was Clarence soooo yeah.

Black BMW was cool. The interior made me quite ill though. There's something about leather seats and the way they stink that give me a mild headache. My aversion to leather seats are not purely based on pretentious ethical reasons, you see.

The Sixth Avenue condo-thing had a 2.3-metre pool. God I wanna swim there! 1.8m pools get boring after a while; stretch out the legs a bit and my toes are touching the floor. Where's the fun in that? And can you imagine swimming underwater in a 2.3m pool? How fun and exciting!

I was talking to the auntie while Clarence did his thing. It wasn't as weird as I thought it'd be; I mostly listened to the auntie talk and smiled and nodded. Uh, interesting experience.

Half an hour later they drove us to Orchard where Clarence made me waste two hours of my life on The Island, a.k.a an ultimately-pointless action movie that tried too hard to be meaningful and hence bored me to near-tears. Clarence had a few 50-dollar notes with him and as a result paid for my ticket; otherwise, I doubt I would've watched it. Haha! I'm such a cheapskate, I know. But hey I bought him his Starbucks mocha so we're even.

The Island really sucked. I hated it. The action sequences were seriously extraneous and boring; the whole cloning thing was such a blatant rip-off of Brave New World and even The Matrix; and the subtext was so damn obvious that even thinking about it is a waste of brain cells. The general population of movie-goers will probably marvel how how intelligent it is, how meaningful it is, how it had such an important message, fucking hell crap, but Michael Bay can't fool me. Is he the same dude that made Pearl Harbour which I didn't bother to watch either? (And not just because I hate Ben Affleck and his ugly chin.) Whatever it is, nice stab at a blockbuster with meaning but inherent in that term is a glaring contradiction: a blockbuster more or less dictates that any attempt at meaning will sadly (and predictably) fall flat, and fall flat it did with The Island. The unimpressive action sequences obscured whatever larger message the director/producers were going for and you know what, I just didn't care. Period.

Oh, and we were sitting like third row from the front. The last time I did that was for Kim Ki-duk's "Samaritan Girl" during the film fest. The only reason I did it yesterday? It was Clarence. Enough said. I like watching movies with him, even if the movie is shit.

Clarence liked the movie though. We have such extremely opposite taste in movies. I mean, he hated The Aviator which had me in a mild state of shock (who can find fault with that majestic cinematic experience?!) so yeah, there you go.

Oh and I hated how the movie glorified sex and made it look like something so utopian that there cannot ever exist any negative consequences. I'm sorry but the sex scene was so unrealistic and saccharine and corny that I was on the verge of laughing. But then again, this is so awfully characteristic of Hollywood that I shouldn't even complain anymore.

Okay anyway.

I'm so sick of writing this stupid entry! It's almost two hours since I started on it. Ugh fuck, so irritating. Okay so in the evening I hung out with Mel at this cafe nearby, Gone Fishing, was helluva fun! We ordered this blend of Oreo cookies and chocolate and coffee and I loved it.

I'm so going to miss Mel.

I need to read my notes tonight.

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