what a genius i am. not.
written: 6:23 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2006

Breaking news: I did research!

Okay, so all I did was to photocopy the section of the original Employment Act with which I'm concerned and the second reading of the parliamentary debate on the said Act; but STILL! I was in the library! I was looking for books! I used my cashcard! My nose almost fell off from breathing in all the dust and dirt accumulated by those ratty old books!

This is so a day for lottery-buying folks out there to buy Toto/4D/whatever.

I'm still feeling the emptiness of a lack of new Veronica Mars episode though.

Anyway, I finally revealed my true public speaking skills - or lack thereof - in class today during that presentation of the Statement of Facts/Opening Statement/whatever. For some reason, I was freaking nervous and I went like a bloody bullet train and my tutor said I was "slightly" fast. I also kind of memorised it but somehow, when I was standing in front of the classroom with my script resting comfortably on the podium-like thing, all the words I painstakingly tried to commit to memory totally wiped themselves off the surface area of my stupid brains; hence, I was essentially reading from my paper again when I told myself not to.

It's hard trying to slow down your speech when you don't even realise that you're speaking fast. I mean, like, during that valedictorian thing, people told me the same thing (my mom thought I spoke very fast during the event itself) and I was like, "REALLY?"

This only goes to show how NOT cut-out I am for a career steeped in having good oratorical skills. And you know what? I'm not really bothered either to correct it. If I didn't have to moot...no, wait, make that if the moot didn't count towards my grade, like hell I'd even give a damn whether or not I can speak coherently in front of an audience, big or small.

Okay, maybe I'd care a bit because I don't like looking bad, but I definitely wouldn't be feeling worried right now.

So yes, that was LAWR mini-presentation.

Another thing I stayed up to do last night which I finished with this afternoon is that Warwick email interview.

Let me tell you - the questions are fucking tough. Like, OH MY GOD, WHAT DOES THE QUESTION EVEN MEAN?-tough. It was quite bad. I pulled my usual overly-wordy stunt again and wrote a lot but said very little; some of my answers didn't even answer the question; and I had to write a poem on the theme of loss within the form of a seven-line stanza containing seven syllables followed by an eight-line stanza containing eight syllables, without using any adjectives. The last bit was really fun though, and very challenging. I wrote it at one a.m. and finished it in...I don't know, twenty minutes? But I spent the whole day - from the moment during Contract lecture that I read the question to the few minutes before I sat down and started typing it - thinking of what to write.

The funny thing was, I was in Contract tutorial and all and my tutor said something about 'measurement of losses' and in my head it was an Eureka moment; the inspiration for an idea came and even though it was rather contrived and silly, I stuck with it anyway because that was the only thing that came to mind.

I attempted to write about the loss of idealism when one grows from a child into an adult, but I don't know if my point was clear enough. I mean, it shouldn't be in-your-face obvious, but the subtext shouldn't be so obscured that the poem ultimately becomes pointless, an empty exercise in style over substance. I think my poem was a bit of the latter.

I was also asked to write a 200-word argument for the view that "Inspiration is the heart of creative writing" and an argument against. I wrote absolute bullshit. It was 2 a.m. and I was SO SLEEPY and I just wanted to finish it so that I could go to bed, and I didn't want to revise it in school today and so I emailed back my answers with the shitty "arguments" intact.

Basically, I dedicated half my argument in the "for" section to Julian Barnes and Flaubert's Parrot. I don't even know if I got the story right. I remember reading an article in which he said that he got the inspiration from the book while going on a Flaubert trail in France, but I didn't remember how the inspiration struck; so I dug up a brilliant article he wrote titled "The Follies of Writer Worship", control+Fed the word "Flaubert" and transferred his anecdote from the article to my paragraph. (It was basically about how he saw two stuffed green parrots in museums that both claimed to be the very same parrot that Gustave Flaubert borrowed while writing a short story of his whose title currently escapes me.)

Bad bad bad. I don't really like the Warwick campus but this course, English and Creative Writng, is, like, the most perfect course ever. And apparently they're selecting only 25 people out of the 60-odd interviewed!

Well, in any case, I'm quite proud of the fact that they interviewed me 'cause apparently they receive about 600 applications for the course, 500 of which are predicted or have attained 4A's.

I just wish my answers were more direct and coherent. I mean, I spent like three freaking hours trying to answer the simple question of "What are three of your favourite books? Why?" I went into a damn pseudo-analysis of the ending to Oscar Wilde's A Picture of Dorian Gray and got it totally wrong. Talk about shooting self in foot and everything. I'm so dumb.

My mom says if I get a scholarship I can go to England. The problem is, I'd rather die than work for SPH and they rejected my application anyway, when I sent it in last year; my next option is the Ministry of Education and I'm not very keen on the idea of teaching for six years! Supposing I graduate when I'm 22 and start work when I'm 23, by the time my bond is over, I'd be 29! That's like, you know, more than half of my life would be over!

I suppose it all boils down to how badly I want to go. How profound, I know. Oh well, we'll see.

Anyway, I'm not looking forward to doing my stupid memorial when I don't even know how to start. I don't have Criminal Law tomorrow (boo! The only module I really like!) so I get the day off. If I didn't have the memorial due, I'd be damn happy, but since that's not the case, the pressing obligation to write the damn thing has already taken away the joyous feelings I felt when I found out that I don't have to go to school tomorrow.

My brother wants to go to SMU because he says the campus looks like a shopping centre. Trust him to come up with the whackiest thing ever.

Mag made me laugh a lot during my post-Legal Theory and pre-LAWR break. I'm tempted to relate this hilarious thing that happened to her, but because I'm so nice, I shall not. HAHA!

Ruishan also made me laugh. Her recent experience watching an M18 movie and getting carded at the door - HAHAHAHA! It only goes to show how cute she is though, for she really is.

Also, Chloe and I spotted Ruishan with this funky highlighter she nipped from the Law Career Fair and so we (me Chloe) went into the moot court with the sole purpose of getting that same highlighter. We had to listen to a dude going on and on about his law firm and corporate law and litigation and whatever just to get that bulky, frankly dodgy-looking, highligher. I think we're all crazy. But it was fun.

And lastly, I had a disturbingly sweet dream about someone from school and when I saw that person today, I was freaked out. It was just weird. Like I said, I think we're all crazy.

(PS. My heart is still broken. Oh Veronica, when will you come back to me?)

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