i'm in a strangely good mood.
written: 4:41 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 02, 2006

ARGH. I hate driving. Surely taking public transport isn't THAT bad?

...

Riiight.

The clutch isn't that bad, actually. My main issue is the fucking gas pedal, particularly during the point at which I move the stupid vehicle. Well, that, and the whole 'making my car straight' thing. My instructor (the woman) got quite pissed with me 'cause I kept turning the steering wheel in desperation but luckily after a while I stopped my crap - which actually caused my car to be severely out of the lane in which I was supposed to be in on more occasions than I care to remember.

So yeah apparently I was supposed to do braking today but because I'm "slightly slow" (instructor's words), all I did for the entire hour and a half or thereabout was SHIFTING GEARS.

And I swear, changing from third to second is a major bitch. It always feels like I accidentally changed to fourth because...well, because. I'm sure anyone who's ever driven a stick before will understand. Um, I hope.

I'm utterly HOPELESS! Boo hoo. There was this moment during which I was still stepping on the clutch pedal and turning my steering wheel at the same time and my instructor was all, That's dangerous! To illustrate her point, a while later when there were no cars ahead and when I was about to make yet another turn, she told me to step fully on the clutch and turn the steering wheel.

I was in either 2nd or 3rd gear and bloody HELL it was the scariest shit EVER. The car was all out of control and spinning towards the OTHER LANE, like the one in which cars head TOWARDS you. Oh my god. I never knew what 'free-wheeling' meant when I saw that term in final theory practice tests and evaluations (which I have YET to pass, dammit); now I know why it's such a dangerous monster.

Sigh. I'm going to take forever to get my licence. I seriously suck at this! I'm thinking there's some sort of trade-off; like, because I have brains, I have to suck at practical things like driving.

Right, I'm just trying to make myself feel better, but yeah. Today's session? Not good. More than ever I wish I could wake up one day and magically know how to drive. I'm really more into the end result than the excruciatingly, embarrassingly slow, tedious process.

Sigh.

**

In other news, The Curse of the Powerpoint Slides finally returned.

Today's Property lecture was the first in the entire year during which I paid absolutely no attention. There seems to be an interesting relationship between lecturers who use powerpoint slides and the effectiveness of their lectures: in short, lecturers who use powerpoint slides = fucking boring.

I was like, My Property has just gone to hell.

For some reason the lecturer managed to make an inherently boring subject even more boring. Remember how dismayed I was when I saw that we had to do mortgages because, like, mortgages is so totally boring-sounding? Well, I'd never imagined that it'd be THAT boring.

I wish Kevin Gray could come back and lecture us for the rest of the semester. Today's Property felt like a Company lecture and that never happened before and I'm really bummed because having a good, effective and sometimes even inspiring lecturer is paramount to one's survival in university, not just law school. And so today, the powerpoint slides, my surfing Veronica Mars on TWoP, how I tried to listen at a few junctures but failed utterly, it's all quite disheartening.

Sigh, again. Life just HAS to fuck with you every chance it's got.

**

My Property assignment sucks. The initial wordcount was 3196 and when I was reading it over to cut it down to below 3000, I couldn't see at all what the hell I used so many words on. It was just, blah blah blah co-ownership blah blah blah not a lease blah blah blah contractual licence blah blah blah sale in lieu of partition (I didn't even know that there was a difference between sale and partition - yeah, how clever) blah blah. I might as well have just written 3000 blah's and handed that in. Seriously, it sucked ass. I'd be surprised if I get even a C+.

In the end I cut it down to 2990, mostly by shortening phrases and cutting out excess words. I did not use the proper citation format, I didn't even bother writing out the full case name properly (I left out the [Year] [Vol. no] SLR or whatever [page no.] thing), and the whole thing was peppered with contractions. Yes, I used contractions. And I think I didn't delete a phrase I wrote out of frustration, something along the lines of the stupid Dolphin Hotel being a 'poorly-maintained dump'.

Hey, 'twas good already that I didn't use 'shithole'.

('Shithole' reminds me of the first boyfriend. He used to call his apartment a shithole. And indeed it was.)

I removed one "anticipated argument" that made no sense plus my "response" which made even less sense. My assignment is a piece of crap.

And so I type my third sigh for this entry.

**

I have pictures to post but I haven't transferred my photos and I'm lazy so well, another time.

Friday evening/night was spent with my wonderful Bitch Club from Jurong. The Bitch Club was formed as a Maths study group and it helped that we were already friends because it made the studying that much easier. If you're wondering why we're called the Bitch Club, well to be honest I don't quite remember. I think it happened during Maths class when one of us said something that wasn't bitch but sounded like bitch and um, I don't know, we added the first letter of our names to the word 'bitch' and we became the Bitch Club. Like, I'm BitchY, Angela's BitchA, Baoyue's BitchB (it's really fun to say out loud) and Simon is BitchS.

BitchS sounds like Bitch-ass which makes it funnier.

Anyway, it was a fruitful night. S, B and I had this seriously cerebral and bloody intellectual discussion at TCC Cineleisure and it was truly the most stimulating conversation I've had ever since leaving Jurong. As hard as it may be to believe, I've had a lot more intellectually-stimulating conversations while in Jurong than I've had in law school. Anyway, nevermind about that. Baoyue's a Sociology major and she was pondering over something LKY said about how Singapore will (I think he said 'will'. Maybe he said 'would') never have a culture, and from there a whole discussion ensued about what constitutes 'culture' and what makes up Singapore's culture, blah blah.

I think Singapore has some semblance to a culture but it's an awfully unrefined one and mostly I want absolutely no association with it. I mean, things like Singlish isn't exactly something I'd go around touting with pride, you know? It's just one of those not-real real things that I prefer to pretend doesn't exist.

And yes I know it's just me being snotty. Whatever.

Also, I came home that night at around 12 a.m. I showered and everything and it was 1 a.m. I started on my Property assignment and I wrote well (not saying anything about content though) and it was all because Baoyue inspired me.

She made me realise how stupid it was, what I was doing, fucking with my honours degree. Knowing how hard she's working to get a good honours degree, and knowing how I really didn't bloody care whether or not I get a second lowers or uppers, made me realise that I'm a bloody idiot.

Because I am. I'm spending four years and all these money and all I have to show for it is a pathetic second lowers and an immense hatred for my subject? That's immensely stupid, Yelen. Wake up and smell the shit. This is your life for the next 2.5 years, whether you like it or not; if you never make it out of this country, this is the rest of your life. As shitty as it may sound, I think you really ought to do something to help yourself make it less shitty.

There's always good and bad in any given situation. Most of the time the bad outweighs the good because the world is a foul, fucked up, piece of shit place. But the world has also produced Dickens and Oscar Wilde and Julian Barnes and Lolita, so it really can't be that bad. And even if it does get seriously screwed up, there's always an untouched, nicely-wrapped Julian Barnes novel to escape into.

And I've lost my plot. Basically what I wanted to say that Koh Baoyue is an inspiration to me and that I want to see her graduate with First Class Honours because we all know that she deserves it.

As for me, I'll continue to live in my own dream world and simultaneously try not to drown in the real world.

I love and miss my JC friends.

**

The haze is back for the nth time and the air smells horrid and my nose is all screwed with but I'm fatter than ever and I'm eating a lot of junk nowadays and we're getting more chocolate mooncakes from the Raffles Hotel which are the best mooncakes EVER because I insisted that we ordered 2 more boxes and so despite the rancid air I'm going to swim now.

If my asthma comes back, well, too bad?

(It's been gone for the past 12 years so I really doubt that'd happen.)

**

Lastly, my new favourite thing to say: "Move your anus!"

No points for guessing which best show ever it's from. Haha.

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