Goodbye Civ Eng

Change all your bookmarks to to http://eskimimii.wordpress.com !

Yesterday graced us with glorious weather (comfortably warm and not too glaring) as the class for Civ Eng 2010 meeted and greeted in Hyde Park for the last time. Everyone was still fresh from the horror and relief of having sat their vivas, many glad for the 4-year ordeal to be finally over. There was chatter and munching, sweaty football and photo taking.

And then something that I never done even in high school; the scribbling of the yearbooks. This took quite a while due the distinct lack of pens! And I apologise to everyone for my lack of imagination when writing messages, but I really do wish you all the best! Everyone had half a page of profile to share their best memories, some barely writing anything, and some having loads to say with one guy mentioning each and every class member in his entry - which I thought was really cool. And then there were the polls - I was voted Best Dressed Female (seriously wasn't expecting that!) and my derriere was runner up (okay, I kinda wanted to win that one, oh wellz).

Popularity and vanity trips aside, it didn't really hit me that this would be the last time I would see some people until I actually left. I would have stayed longer but my eyes were being attacked by grass pollen. (And no, that is not a euphemism for "oncoming sobfest"). It seems natural to be leaving everyone in the summer, but we'll never sit in the same room again until graduation and I'll never again walk into a room to see the same faces. I wish I had gotten to know some people better and it's this that always gets me if anything. The people I have made good friends with I know will never completely leave my life; the KFA ninjas and the HBS haters have shown that you can still stick it out no matter what you do next in life. It's just those people you might have been better friends with, you'll never know if they could have enriched your life even further. It's all good though, I've made plenty of friends outside of department, which in some ways I think is better. Making friends out of the convenience of their presence can always be a bit short sighted and short lived. You know that if people request your company having not seen you every day, at least you can say that they want you to be there and not because it's rude not to invite the person you just happen to chat to every morning, but don't actually like very much.

So after the park I went shopping with a couple of the girls and then we met up again to have dinner. It was really nice to chat without worrying about things. And girly chat as opposed to engineering chat. I know that at the very least these girls will keep in touch with what they are up to. After the effort of trying to hold on to two sets of school friends whilst doing a degree, I can't help but wonder if our friendship would stand the test of time.

The race for popularity

Today Is The Last Day

Today was my last assessed act at Imperial College. The viva to my final year project. After much agonising on the possible pain that lay before me, I dragged myself into college sweating slightly from wearing smart clothes in hot weather, scribbled myself some notes in the 20 mins I had left to go over my presentation, took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

35 mins later I left in some disbelief. It was over. What did I do? Well I called my up my friend to share the joy (since there was no one around) and logged into facebook of course :P

I couldn't decide what to do. I ended up clearing out my locker - full of bottles of Tanzania water, (EWB stuff). I then decided to eat at the MDH one last time, but they had some event on so I had to sit in the scorching heat outside! Grrr. Oh well. I bought MDH food anyway, no way in hell was I commemorating with a bloody panini or a jacket potato. I don't think I can eat another one without being reminded of bad coursework times!

I then went home, sweating more now as the weather creeped towards 28C, ripped all my clothes off as soon as I got to my room and swapped for the first piece of summer clothing I saw. Sitting in my polka dot dress among my baby peas and baby beans made me very happy. My peas are growing pods, I am quite excited. But my beans have not so much as flowered. I repotted my marigolds (which smells divine when about to flower) and loaded the fisheye camera I got for my birthday and took some random shots of the stadium. Haven't used analogue cameras for a VERY long time, it was quite disappointing not to be able to see the results instantly. I'm sure it would be worth it when I get the film developed :)

I spent the rest of the afternoon agonising over the end of my student discount privelages, watching the England game, eating foods and cooking nasi ayam (chicken rice). Well being told how to cook it, for I am a terrible terrible cook in the sense that I never want to.

So anyway, today is the last day of student life. I think T.S. Eliot pretty sums up very well how it has been like to be at Imperial. Soul sucking and empty at times, and ending without a bang, but a whimper.

I think it is time to direct you to where I will be posting from now on. It's just like how a series has different volumes. I need to type a new one. The next few months I anticipate to be full of uncertainty, and it might be interesting to follow me for the ride?

In case I do not end up updating here again, I will be found as of tomorrow at http://eskimimii.wordpress.com (note double i at the end)

Farewell, Distance, it's been amazing.

The Hollow Men

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.


II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer -

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom


III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.


IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.


V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                       For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                                   Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                       For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

- T.S. Eliot

Heartbreak Like It's 2001

Oh no, she's whipped out the Michelle Branch!

This is the only video I can find of her singing this song - fan-made ones with the original track were uber-lame, unless you are a Hermione x Harry OR Neji x Tenten OR Pacey x Joey OR Spongebob x Sandy fan. Yeah, I didn't think so.

Would You Be Mad That I Held The Old Me Back?

[warning: emo post]

Aw come on, you mean you don't remember when this was the hottest on screen kiss ever?


(Before Tobey Maguire turned into an undesirable pudgy thing. )

I watched Spiderman 1 the other day, I loved the soundtrack for it a lot when it first came out, I had it on CD and played it constantly in my room. I only had three sets of friends then: in school, out of school and online (typical high school blog girl much?). Now I'm missing too many sets of friends that I daren't contact any of them because keeping anyone up to date takes up so much time, and by the time we meet up again all drama has ended. So now I seem like a biatch who has been only been focussed on herself lately and hasn't really cared what anyone else is up to with the exception of what people post on facebook. Damn facebook. It has given me the impression that I have been in the loop when actually I haven't spoken to some people for 6 months. Where had that simpler (and yet complicated) time gone? The time where I reached out to people by typing nonsense and cared about people I never even knew.

Where'd the shiny smiley me go?

I hate that my gmail keeps anything and everything within searchable reach, so searchable that I can find them by accident. I sound like a really nice person in some emails that I write. Lovely, and innocent, and sweet. I type very bitter things to my friends these days - things that are supposed to pass for teasing or sarcasm, but actually make for a very unreadable message. Imperial has made me not very nice.

Cue angsty emo theme of me circa 2002:

The Impossible State of Now

There are things I desperately wish I could forget and erase from memory, but unfortunately can't without some kind of mini targeted EMP to scramble my brain. And there are memories I desperately wish to make happen for the future, but I know it will be a long time before those things will happen. Apparently this ability to plan ahead and take into account past events is one of the defining aspects of humanity. (Although, this attribute is contested by a tribe of people living in the Amazon who have no regard for cause and effect and yet to this day manage to survive.) If this was THE defining aspect of humanity, I think I would be, in fact, super-human.

In short, I worry too much.