been the upperside of down, been the inside of out.
written: 12:27 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 07, 2007

But I cringed my way through whatever little of the piece of shit I managed to read, and when I got to page 5 of 22 I decided that the experience was too torturous to continue, and so I stopped. The writing was awkward, the arguments are trite, it felt forced and very much like an exercise - thoughtless, robotic, mechanical. I could see all the things I would write differently now, after two years of law school, which doesn't quite make me an expert in any way, shape or form, but certainly makes me a lot less clueless than I was one, two years ago.

We've all come a long way, I think. I know I have. One of the many reasons I don't like going to Kent Ridge - or just Kent Ridge, period - is because of all the angst I had back then. The former Faculty of Law is associated with days of lethargy and ennui; long, seemingly endless hours and hours and hours of what I thought were utter bullshit that I couldn't possibly care any less about; and, but not limited to, a sense of desolation, of vague despair, insidious and subcutaneous loneliness that somehow didn't fully dissipate even when I was in the company of friends.

I remember an afternoon when I went into the library and sat down at a random table, all by myself, and took out The Picture of Dorian Gray and began reading. All around me, people were buried in stacks of law reports and articles, but I was reading Oscar Wilde. More importantly, I was enjoying Oscar Wilde in exactly the same way I hated law school. I thought I would never grow to like it, I thought it was complete waste of time, I thought I'd be happier majoring in Literature elsewhere. Simply put, at that point in time, law school was the worst decision I'd ever made.

I suppose I should start believing in silver linings. I don't exactly know how things have changed to such an extent - but they have. Even in Year 2 Sem 2 I went through school by going through the motions. The emotional shit I was dealing with aside, or maybe precisely because of said emotional shit, everything was so pointless, I just couldn't engage. I couldn't engage with Public Law even though I thought it was something I would enjoy (bright side: I enjoyed writing my Public Law assignment, to the extent I was awake enough to enjoy it anyway), and I only liked Equity after getting that A- for the assignment. LCS? Piece of shit, now and forever.

Summer changed everything; it really did. The internships, the meeting new people at said internships, the first-hand experience of the ends towards which all of this - 4 years of law school, six months of PLC, six months of pupillage - is geared. I don't know, you know. A lot of things that happened over the past few months have been utterly surprising, and if someone had told me in Year 1 that I'd eventually grow to like law school and want to be a lawyer, Year 1 me would've sworn in said someone's face. In fact, many people have told me exactly that, but I never believed them - especially my dad.

I wonder if he's pleased that he's been proved right after all. He always told me, whenever I bitched about how I was totally NOT interested in law, that interest can be nurtured; that I would grow to like it; and that, basically, fuck your interest, you're here now, just suck it up and deal with it. My dad doesn't care too much for my whining and whatever nonsense I pulled back then. And I think he'd vouch for me when I say that I'm a much happier person now.

And yet, I think that's true insofar as I'm a much happier law student, which is really only a part of who I am. There are other things in play, too, things that come back to me when I look at old photographs: pictures I took of myself on my mom's phone in November last year whilst studying for exams out of boredom, pictures that were taken of me in November last year, pictures that I took with my friends in November, December last year. Before I got my bangs, when I still had that side-parting fringe, when my hair was long and thick, when I still had some extra pounds that I've long since shed.

Because I still remember the times on which those pictures were taken by a mental before or after calculation, and the zero mark is always December 7, 2006. And the pictures that fall into the 'before' category inject a tinge of melancholy in me, as well as nostalgia, because things were really much less complicated back then. And then there are a few pictures taken before another zero mark on a different scale: January 7, 2007, and I'd always remember that chalet and how people were talking about it, how Kong asked me where he was, and how I felt odd and happy at the same time, for no reason at all.

I still have all these dates stored in my head. I've always been able to remember things really, really well (that is, non-academic things, trivial things), but some details are more instinctive than others, some memories faster to pull up than others. And the details that assert themselves more than everything else I remember still pertain to the same person, the same thing, especially when I look at pictures of myself without bangs and with baby fats on my face and find myself thinking, "This was before [insert event], after [insert paper], at [insert place]; he was [insert action]."

How absolutely tiring. At some subconscious level all the obsession over my weight has something to do with that. It's not even half as much as my desire to not want to be fat, of course, but I can't see myself looking the way I did back then, not anymore. I can't look into the mirror and see that face, that long, side-parting fringe, thick wavy hair, chubby cheeks, the pigtails I used to tie sometimes, all that nonsense, even the clothes I used to wear. I'm rather tired of my bangs, to be honest, but I don't feel like changing my hairstyle - at all.

I really don't know what's happening, but I know this much: I want a guy who's capable of loving me. Even if I don't love him as much, he has to be capable of loving me. Subsequent to that, he has to be able to take on all my rubbish emotional baggage and help me put it all down, put it aside, put it away. I don't want to settle for something half-fucked because there's really no point. I'm 21 and I've never been in a real relationship that lasted for more than 2 months (I don't consider the first relationship a real relationship) and I'm really tired of these half-baked short term investments that go absolutely bust after two months. It's incredibly draining to take back everything that you gave away and try to start afresh.

I do wish that there were such a thing as starting de novo, and I do wish that I'd be capable of doing so someday. But until that uncertain 'someday' arrives, and I'm not even postulating that it ever would, I'm choosing to err on the side of caution and take Chloe's advice: Guard your heart with a vengeance. It's always too late when you start saying sorry, and I'm tired of being sorry.

In other news, I've suddenly become a road hazard. At my revision driving lesson, I was stopped from changing lanes by my instructor a grand total of three times. Before, I'd ask if it was safe to change lanes before I even attempted to do so, but yesterday was just...wow. I was too lazy to check the rear view mirror and the cars didn't seem very close to me from the side mirror so I attempted to change but my instructor was all, "The car's too fast! You can't change!"

Also, I overtook a taxi that stopped to pick up a passenger on the way back to the driving centre and the instructor had to turn my steering wheel to the right to avoid hitting the said taxi. Apparently I attempted to change back to the left lane way too soon after overtaking the taxi.

Colour me amazed. How utterly absurd, considering my THIRD driving test is NEXT FREAKING MONDAY.

As for my Rational Choice paper, I kind of have a vague idea of what I want to write about and the direction in which my paper would take. Problem? I'm still fuzzy on the concepts. And my weekend is fully booked for social activities so no time for work. What the fuck. I'm stay home next weekend; I don't care WHO asks me out. The answer is NO.

Oh but shit I'm watching Evan Almighty with Simon next Saturday, my idea. ARRGHH HOW TO DO WORK LIKE THAT. I do want to watch the movie with Simon though so I'll just go lah.

I have a 9 a.m. Evidence lecture in 8 hours' time. I was completely dying in Personal Prop seminar. Not only was I falling asleep due to the fact that it was 9.30 in the morning what the hell, the seminar room was a total freezer. It was INSANE and I almost died, and I was damn pissed off the whole day because I was feeling anti-social and sleepy and crabby, because the Year 1s were having some bloody Westlaw training (why the fuck do you need Westlaw training? It's just like Google for fuck's sake) and I wanted to print my Rational Choices notes but couldn't 'cause all the computers were taken up, and my laptop can't connect to the school printers, and I walked all the way to the freaking library to print just to find out that the ONE printer there was down. How could I not be pissed, right? Seriously.

It also didn't help that Mag isn't in school on Thursdays, Chloe had 15 minutes before rushing off for Chinese, and Rui had Personal Prop seminar at 12.30. If it weren't for Audrey, I would've been completely alone. If it weren't for driving, I wouldn't even have been in school after all my friends left for their classes.

I want to swim. I need to swim. I want to swim more than I need to swim. Saturday morning, 10.30, I'm hitting the pool. This fat-increasing-ness thing can't go on; it has to stop. NOW. Time to exercise, because I still want to eat my yummy chocolate mooncakes.

Mag was right: The Bakerzin ones are DAMN. NICE. I can't wait to get my Raffles Hotel ones. I'm so tempted to buy another box of Bakerzin snowskin truffle mooncakes.

To wrap up, I'm not emo-emo, so don't worry, friends. I'm just thinking about things, as usual. Life is still good. It will continue being good until I die.

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