the things we learn.
written: 9:43 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 15, 2006

It's been cold and wet the whole day. I like cold and wet weather; I get a kick out of thinking that I'm cold-blooded, even though it's biologically impossible. But what does an Arts student care about biology, right? Anyway, despite my predilection for rain and coldness and grey skies and thunder and lightning, the ingredients that go into whipping up weather like today's, my nose was also blocked the whole day and that was extremely annoying. It was blocked throughout Property tutorial - and trust me, the air-conditioning did not help - and it was blocked throughout the afternoon and it's still blocked now. You know how stupid a person looks when he/she has his/her mouth opened when he/she isn't talking and is in fact by him/herself doing basically nothing? Well, that's basically how I looked the whole damn day. How trippy.

Still, I covet cold weather. Give me rain over sunshine/humidity (same difference in Singapore, really) anytime, anyday, the blocked nose be damned.

I can't write anymore.

I don't write anymore.

I haven't been writing.

I haven't written in a very long time.

You define yourself by a single passion and maybe-talent and it's been this way for as long as you can remember. You go on because of it, you're still here because of it, you haven't died because of it. It's there when no one is around, it pulls you out of shitholes when friends fail to, it keeps you up all night when everyone else is sleeping. It's oxygen and orgasms and cold weather and Ben and Jerry's ice-cream, all the good things in life, rolled into one.

You see the future without it and you don't want to go on. You see your present without it and you feel empty, hollow, a shell without a body. You see the past without it and you know it's a lie. It's every bit a part of you; it is you. One implies the other, one depends on the other, there is no whole without the other. This is your truth: it's been the only truth, and you'd like to think that it is the only truth.

But what do you do when that conviction has been subtly subverted, undercut, corrupted, without your conscious knowledge?

Because I don't know what I'm doing with my life. All I know is that I made a commitment to get through law school and I'm going to do it; whatever comes after, comes after. And I suppose it's a good...I don't know, temporary, short-term plan, perhaps even admirable in the light of the preceding paragraphs.

But there's still no joy and no feeling and no passion and for the past few days I've been questioning my existence, my identity, what the fuck I'm doing and am not doing. Everything feels forced and I face it with dread at worst and indifference at best. Needless to say, this isn't remotely how I'd envisioned my university life to be.

I'm back to wishing there were more. Just...something more than all of this, something that matters, that I care for, that I can get excited about. I wake up and go to school and I drift through the day and I come home, and the routine repeats itself over and over and over again, for the next two and a half years until this wretched degree is done. And for what? When I think of the opportunity cost (i.e. the thing I gave up) I paid to do this damn degree I just want to fall to my knees and weep and sob and die.

I can't write anymore. A vital part of me has been annihilated. Going through the motions of living is a fate worse than death.

I feel like I'm heading in that direction - slowly, but surely.

I want and need to write but I have nothing to say. Absolutely nothing. And when I think I have something to say the shit I type repulse me so much that I give up completely because it's all quite useless and needless when you think your own work is worse than a steaming pile of shit. I'm not even talking about self-deprecation; it's self-abhorrence and hatred and anger because you'd never thought that you were that mediocre. And mediocrity - say it with me now - is also a fate worse than death.

I have nothing to say.

As much as I want to write again I'd rather not write at all than to write crappy, half-baked and cliche-ridden "stories" more suited for some shallow teenager with average IQ than the intelligent reader. My ego is disgusting, so is my pride, and my snobbishness (snobbery? Whatever).

Why am I even in law school? Oh yeah, because I couldn't get into Cambridge. Isn't that the stupidest thing you've ever heard? Because it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

I should marry Jay Chou. We're both sell-outs. So made for each other.

I don't mind being in law school, but that doesn't mean I like it, and neither does it mean I'd like it in the near-future. Like I've said many times before the only modules I've liked and done relatively well in are the non-substantive modules, i.e. Legal Theory and SLS and now CLT. Like, yeah, that's so gonna make me lots of money. So if that's the case then my initial and operative reason for choosing law in the first place has been COMPLETELY fucked over (I was going to use a nicer word but heck). On the one hand, it's nice that I know for sure what kind of person I am and what I'm not; on the other, it's such a mind-numbingly stupid waste of four years, getting a degree you won't be making money out of. And if I do go down the (pseudo)academic route, that'd be the most hilarious shit in the world because I could've bloody done that with an Arts degree. Like, duh.

Just get through this. The rest of it is a toss-up. Hopefully it'd point me to New York City.

The real face of the law is grotesque and unsightly and, well, fucking horrendous.

It's this country. It really is. I don't know what we're doing. I'm so disillusioned with the way things work that I'm more convinced than ever that I never want to be a lawyer - ever. Besides the whole thing about how it's not me and how I couldn't possibly care any less, it's also extremely sad to know that you can never effect the changes you really, really want to see in the system. My rant to my mom just now pretty much summed up how I feel right now about the whole thing: It's bloody useless lah.

Because it is. If I'd been in Mag's position I would've mooted for an immediate right to counsel upon arrest, and needless to say I would've died because local case law completely goes against my conviction. And I can't do the reasonable delay thing because that goes against my conviction (and impliedly, my principle) and if being a lawyer or whatever means arguing for things you don't believe in, then bloody hell I'd much rather starve. (Going corporate is out of the question because Company Law is my worst nightmare and I couldn't possibly care any less about fucking corporations and the shit they do. Seriously, just get a brain and stop doing stupid things and sort out your own mess. Grow up. You're all adults. I'm sure you can read something as simple as the Companies Act if 20- and 22-year-old law students are reading it for an eight-credit course. And the whole shadow director thing is just cowardly.)

And that's just one of the many things that I can't stand about the way things work here, especially in comparison to other countries and jurisdictions. It just boggles the mind, really; I have no other words for it.

But hey, what do I care? I'm going to be a "quitter". Not my problem.

(I think I capitalised the title of this section wrongly. I need grammar lessons.)

On a much brighter note, MAG GOT INTO THE FINALS! Is she a genius or what!

She started off a little bit shakily; before that she, um, to put it nicely, stood on the wrong side of the podium (the plain version of this would involve a few lines on how that's so Mag and how, for all her intelligence, she can do the most bimbotic things), which was kind of funny. Haha! She gained momentum after a while, however, and she really impressed me last night. I'd thought previously that she was good at this mooting stuff when I timed her and Rui's moots last academic year, but last night was tons better than her LAWR moot. If she weren't as nervous as she were, I'm sure she would've done better, and I'm very sure that she will do better for the finals!

I felt really bad for her opponent though. He was this Year 1 guy who was attacked from all sides by the judges. But still, I was impressed by how he stood his ground (although he should've conceded that point about...whatever it was. I can't remember) and how eloquent he was, speaking-wise. I mean, it was, like, seriously good English LAH. Even the two guys from my year who made the finals don't speak as well as him (they speak very well too but that Year 1 guy was quite special).

So next Thursday is the moment of truth!

Shit I hope we won't have trial advocacy tutorial, because if we do then...we can't go! In which case I won't go for tutorial. Just watch me.

I'm very proud of my learned sister. :) (I even added that crappy emoticon for her. Wow.)

Because it is. The season finale was...underwhelming. I didn't think the last scene was necessary and I don't like the direction in which the show seems to be heading. Walt obviously looked MUCH bigger than he did at the beginning of the show; maybe he's written out for good. Whatever. And yeah, more Lost people (the Unothers) getting kidnapped. Haven't we seen this before, like...oh, during LAST SEASON'S FINALE?

Whatever.

The guy playing Desmond, though, is seriously hot without the long hair. His character's full name is Desmond David Hume. Like, Legal Theory Hume. Sadly I can't remember what his theory was, ha ha ha. All thanks to Lost whenever I see the name John Locke I'd have a mental picture of Terry O'Quinn in his ratty t-shirt running through the jungle with sweat beads on his face. Thankfully I know better than to equate Rousseau with a female.

I don't really care about the hatch thing and the whole Dharma initiative thing; I'm more interested in the supernatural sightings by various characters. Like, you know, that polar bear? That happened in one of the very first episodes of Season One and till now I can't get it out of my head. Like, what the hell is THAT about? But of course, two seasons later and I'm still asking the same question.

JJ Abrams should stop doing TV shows. He's annoying.

And Michael totally sucks. I really hope he's not permanently out of the show. He needs to get his comeuppance.

I finally decided to go for the movie on Wednesday night. Singapore Dreaming by Colin Goh and his wife. The poster included a line about the president liking the movie or whatever, which led me to conclude that the movie must be quite bad and Jack Neo-ish.

Surprisingly, it wasn't. And surprisingly, I enjoyed it. Even more surprisingly, I thought it was really good. Apart from how I thought the film was a bit Chinese-centric, it was nice seeing a thoughtful, well-written film about ordinary Singaporeans going through problems that all of us can identity with. Like Jean said, the characters were real and not sensational, the acting was really good, and the music was really good too. Overall it was a Wednesday night well spent, and a very good film.

The mother in the film was played by the mother of this guy in my year, who also happens to be in both my tutorial groups (wow, I actually noticed. How amazing). Needless to say I've never spoken to him before but yeah. His mother is a very good actress.

One observation I made: For some reason I find Singaporean Hokkien funny. Meaning, whenever I hear Singaporeans speak Hokkien I'd laugh because they sound funny. But when I hear the Taiwanese speak Taiwanese, which is Hokkien with a few differences, I don't find it funny at all. Singaporeans say that Hokkien is coarse and unrefined - they should hear the Taiwanese speak it. At most it sounds uneducated, but definitely not coarse. I never noticed the difference until I watched the film.

**

Lastly, a reply to a comment made by z:

I've only listened to two of Leehom's albums, his two chinked-out (or something) ones. I didn't like the first one at all, but I love Gai Shi Ying Xiong. Sadly I'm not familiar with his music but from what little I know of him, I think he's definitely a more respectable and credible musician than Jay Chou. That makes me very sad because I used to love Jay Chou and now I just like him. Anyway, the whole chinked-out thing is supposed to be a new, sort of experimental, style he's adopting, right? Well, by the mere virtue of the fact that he's taking that risk shows that he cares more about the quality of his music than the number of albums he sells. I don't actually know how different the new sound is from his old one but the fact that he "switched up" (to paraphrase a line from Jin's rap in Gai Shi Ying Xiong) his sound is admirable, I think. So yeah, I think he's cool. And he's WAY cuter than Jay.

I'm still quite annoyed with Jay. He needs to grow a brain.

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