Random rant-y entry.
written: 4:44 p.m. on Thursday, Apr. 09, 2009

I have a whacked theory that the only reason I fell sick is because I stopped my at-least-once-a-week tennis, all thanks to the ICL exam. After regular exercise for months, it has to matter that I suddenly stopped, right? The body isn't used to the sluggishness and inactivity wreaked upon it by some crap weekend paper that irritated the crap out of me and made me all stressed out and unbelievably tired, and it also didn't help that I slept past 5 AM twice that weekend. No exercise + lack of adequate rest + unhealthy eating = sick Yelen. GREAT.

Of course, this theory is entirely whacked and if I even attempted to make a point and a half about it to my mom, she'd call me nuts faster than I can call myself nuts, so whatever. I'm a bit annoyed with her right now. She called me earlier on to tell me that it was raining at my grandma's (where she was at) when I mentioned that I felt like going out to play tennis, which was made of major WTFness, because my grandma's house is in the East and I always hit against the nice wall with the nicely drawn faux net at...KENT RIDGE. Not to mention - it was actually mildly sunny at my place 30 minutes ago, so I have no idea what the hell the rain in the east had ANYTHING to do with ANYTHING. Would've made more sense if she'd said - again - "you're sick don't go out" but she had to tell me that it was raining at my grandma's. Not My Problem, thank you. At least Saturday Tennis is on again this week and Baoyue is finally joining us after like, ten million years. I really hope the weather doesn't screw me over this week; otherwise, I'd be right pissed.

You know, the thing about tennis isn't just the fact that it's omg tennissssssss!1!!1 and I totally love it; it's also the fact that it's freaking rigorous exercise, and trust me when I say this: Exercise Is Liberating. I feel like I can eat whatever I want at whatever time I desire and I wouldn't worry (too much) about it because I know I'd work it off. This is also why I'm really annoyed that I haven't played tennis for over a week - I've been eating chocolate and ice-cream (just had one whole cup of Ben and Jerry's Dublin Mudslide. Sure the cup is a small teacup, but it's still one whole cup, to the BRIM, because I felt greedy) and I don't have the assurance of exercise to make myself feel better, and now I'm back to feeling fat and gross. To make things even better, my body has decided to go and contract some random virus because it deems me unworthy of the luxury of exercise. SCREW YOU, STUPID BODY. I'm not happy.

I realise it's been about a month since my last period so I think I'm just PMSing today, but yes, I'm really annoyed and antsy for being holed up at home when the weather is perfect for outdoors activities. Shit.

Since I'm allegedly PMSing and thus on a rampage, I'd like to rant about fucking annoying big corporations and their stupid copyright claims over the tiniest things. I HATE it when American Idol videos get deleted on YouTube. While I understand, without even taking IP or intending to have anything to do with anal retentive and joy-killing IP, that AI videos on YouTube are infringements of Fremantle Media and Fox's copyright, can I just say that this crazy regime of intellectual property has seriously robbed the man on the street of the innocuous enjoyment from these videos that he would have otherwise? The only harm I can think of in letting these videos exist on YouTube is that the respective companies wouldn't profit from it - in which case, can I just say that I Really Don't Give A Shit? It's all well and good to say that I should pay for a video if I really like it; but last I checked, iTune videos STILL aren't available for download outside of the United States, and lest we forget, American Idol is shown worldwide. So what's a fan to do if she wants to re-watch a sterling performance from the show but can't download the video because she's not American? And now she also can't resort to YouTube?

Fuck you. Fuck you greedy big-ass companies whose only objective is to get even richer. I'm sorry if I can't be bothered shedding tears for your loss in revenue, but I can't. I also don't freaking understand why they can't find a happy medium and upload performances videos themselves, the way some artists create official YouTube accounts and put music videos on YouTube. I hate how everything is driven by the profit margin, especially the intellectual property regime (or what I understand of it, which is admittedly limited). I can't believe I ever once wanted to have anything to do with IP on the naive premise that illegal music downloading actually hurts the singers/bands. I'm sorry, there's just no way I'd ever participate in some circus that only benefits big corporations.

***

Okay. I know my health has taken a hit when I start having trouble spelling. I just misspelled 'macchiato' which is shocking because I've never misspelled it once ever since I corrected myself all those years ago.

I think I'm going to lie down after this entry.

Anyway, since I still feel like ranting, apparently some idiot journalist by the name of Simon Reed said that Andy Murray could become #1 by the end of the year. At times like these, I actually feel indignant for Rafa - and I hate feeling anything but annoyance and irritation at him, so by extension this Simon Reed person should step away from his computer and stop writing tennis articles NOW. I bet he's British. Only British commentators/journalists crap their pants over how awesome! Andy Murray is, nevermind the fact that he's hasn't won a Slam (and, in my humble opinion, isn't likely to do so - anyone but Murray, please, even if it has to be Nadal), that the fact that his first Grand Slam final was a straight-sets, decisive loss to this has-been, irrelevant dude named Roger Federer, and that 1 and 4 are separated by 2 and 3. Maybe Murray should try overtaking Djoke in the rankings first before anyone starts to conceive the idea of him reaching #1. And I'm sorry, but Wimbledon and the US Open still belong to that irrelevant, petulant, irreverent and washed out has-been named Roger Federer.

Roger's site has turned orange in honour of the clay court season and um, my eyes hurt. Boo.

Also, if it's possible to screw up a non-law, well, I did it yesterday. I ended up not studying for that 10% test because I couldn't be bothered and I was feeling crap the whole of yesterday so I went into the test having read practically nothing, and I spent the lovely one hour writing absolute shit. I can't wait to see what I get for this one. It's going to crack me up for sure.

I'd like to say how deeply I regret taking Nation-Building. I should've known better than to listen to the people that said it was easy. Even though it is easy, it instantly becomes utterly difficult when I just Don't Give A Shit about the course at all. AT. ALL. The easiest thing in the world - like O Level Maths, for instance - is instantly made the hardest thing ever the minute I discover that I Just Don't Care. I don't like it at all. Modules like Human Rights and Emergencies are only easy to me because I like them, and if I were the kind of person that likes crunching boring numbers and looking at boring contracts, I'd find commercial/corporate-esque modules easy because I'd like them. But, well, I don't. And I don't like Nation-Building because I really don't have an interest in Singapore history after having it shoved down my throat for, like, ten years, so I really did myself no favours when I stupidly chose this course.

I particularly hate how I'm forced to read stupid statements by government officials in the course, like yesterday's test. The source was taken from some speech by the Education minister (ex or current, I have no idea, and neither do I care) on the education policies that have been implemented since 1979. Great, except, not so much. I don't know why, but there is something about the English spoken by government officials that just seriously rankle me and rile me up and make me want to take up arms against their unconscious but insidious assault on the English language. It's competent English in the sense that it's grammatically sound; but there's just something so lifeless and mechanical about the way they speak English that I genuinely feel affronted when I'm forced to read their speeches. I'm not sure what kind of "elites" this country has if they can't use English properly - but they can't.

While I'm on the subject of bad English, this is a true story: 20 minutes before the end of the test yesterday, one of the tutors, who's presumably a History graduate student (if not, a graduate student in one of the Arts programmes), made a short announcement about the number of minutes we had left. He single-handedly broke my concentration and made me forget for ten whole seconds, maybe more, what I was writing or thinking of writing or thinking of making up before the announcement. His English was atrocious, and his atrocious English yanked me out of my "zone" (okay, wasn't in any zone, except maybe Desperate, but I was at least kind of focused) and distracted me to the extent that I forgot about what I was saying. I'm glad I got a tutor who's able to speak good English (though she did have a slightly annoying tendency of rolling her "r"s when she responded to the Chinese American student in my class) and was actually entertaining and engaging to boot.

On another note, I was thinking about dual (omg I actually typed 'duel' at first and only realised it like minutes later - omg I'm really fucking sick) citizenship the other day. I know Singapore doesn't allow its citizens to hold more than one citizenship and while I understand the obsession over loyalty to one's country, I don't think it's impossible to feel loyalty and a sense of connection or whatever to more than one countries at the same time, enough to make a person want to take up citizenship of that country. Once upon a time I thought it had to be a choice between Singapore and Taiwan, but increasingly I'm realising that I was wrong. Having nationalistic feelings towards Taiwan doesn't preclude me from having nationalistic feelings towards Singapore. Maybe I was more emotional and sentimental about Taiwan because I was stuck lamenting the life I could've had and all the inevitable "what if"s that came along with it; but after I've discarded of that phase of my life, it's really not so hard to imagine that I can feel nationalistic feelings towards both countries. It's a shame that I can't hold dual citizenship; if I ever had Taiwanese citizenship, I would've been forced to give it up when I turned 21, and now I can't have the option in the future of making myself legally a Taiwanese. It just seems so hokey to pretend I'm only a Singaporean citizen when, well, that's not even the whole story.

Oh well.

Okay, I'm tired and I want to go lie down. One last thing I'd like to contribute to the Internets in this post is this: Roger's forum has a lot of weird people posting in it, people that can't spell and have zero grammar, and a lot of them are not native English speakers (because Roger attracts fans from ALL OVER THE WORLD) so they're forgiven for the non-existent command of English. But sometimes you come across hilarious mistakes that are so funny, you just can't let them go without a good laugh over them.

This is the funniest thing I've came across online in truly quite a while:

Roger throwing his rocket

It's a thread about Roger throwing his racquet, which is also spelled racket.

Wow, I never knew Roger had a rocket. He's truly rich beyond my wildest imaginations!

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