Feels like I'm living my life in reverse - I've done everything I like by 25: playwriting, acting (eww),creative writing, studying, teaching at uni, teaching at RI, tour guiding, drama coaching, backpacking around Europe, living the chilled out boho life.

Now what? Dunno what to do with the rest of my life.

What a flightly Gen-Yer. Not denying it.

One thing: working overseas.

Thinking of being crazy and doing something totally on the other end of the spectrum.

So. The thesis chapter is done, lecture Tuesday is done, arranged for makeup tutorials, arranged for meeting with prof, booked my room for Cambridge, survived Lazy Weekend Desaru, survived socialize with Church People

And now facing a blank wall - bit depressed.

Wonder if I'm really a closet workaholic and my slacker MA life is killing me slowly, brain degenerating all.

Anyway, just one more thing. Which consists of finishing up my creepy story by Tuesday. 10 grand, here I come!

"A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy" - George Jean Nathan

True?

Labels: "love"

i honestly can't decide if the iphone is a boon or bane in my life. plus point, it keeps me informed about news on the go, i can look for directions, keep in touch with the long distance boyfriend, take pictures, look for nice places to eat etc.

on the other hand, it keeps me distracted. all the time. can feel my iq dropping and patience for books diminishming.

I WANT PICTURE! AND SOUND! AND LESS WORDS, LITTLE WORDS, BEST IS NO WORDS!

Anyway, back to literacy. In a bid to take my mind off the thesis (yes supposed to submit one draft by today) I went to download this stupid game called Jelly Bear. It's kinda similar to Bejewelled.

A funny memory popped up. I used to play Bejewelled with kc on msn in the days of yore. Once I felt frustrated and didn't want to play anymore cause I kept losing. (yar childish I know but really sian what right). So him being him, said something along the lines of how women are less spatially inclined and cannot see shapes and patterns as well as men.

I know he was trying to be nice but the feminist in me was insulted. If I suck, why must it be extrapolated to be because of my gender! At the same time, I know he's trying to say don't take it too hard, you're just not built that way. Feminist girl who sucks at puzzle games and nice, MCP guy who is trying to comfort her. Conundrum, right there.

Funny. I wonder if it will happen again if we play Jelly Bear together on the iPhone?

What the Fuck Wednesday

Is when i wake up to aircon dismantling and renovation but it's okay. I read the papers and it's like "London Burns", "Stock Market
Crashes". You go on Twitter and "West Indian Negro insulted by BBC anchor" and "MP Penny Low plays with handphone during National Anthem".

The noise and banging drives me mad and out of my room. Stranded downstairs, I have to listen to my mum complain and scream at the maid. Send (no idea why but stressed) bf who is in London a text but obviously he is sleeping.

Can't do thesis and feel vulnerable despite being safe in Singapore. Also maybe cause my dad got a call saying the floor of his office caught on fire, though thankfully his office is not directly affected.

Things fall apart the center does not hold.

I have to escape from an increasing chaotic world in which aliens are attacking. One has to take a plane out of the city into a large vessel in the ocean which then escapes into space.

At the terminal a monster blocks the path and sucks everything in it's path. A bunch of women make noise to arouse it's anger but because it does not deem women a threat, it simply cuts the rope our platform hangs on and lands us right at the departure gate. Happily we run in.

Luckily unlike the main characters sister we can take the high class plane with aircon. The lower class one consists of just a metal skeleton. In the plane we leave the city, NYC which is destroyed. Along side are rows and rows of empty low class planes.

In the plane is a kind couple, their child and a deliquent pregnant girl. There is also a criminal. He tells the girl the child is his and silently rapes her when she's asleep.

When they reach the vessel it is one of six which can transform into humanoids and escape into the sea to get into a safer vessel. They fly away like Transformers holding the survivors of the human race. Diving into the sea which is lain which atomic bombs waiting to explode the 7 humanoids make it to the vessel. The last one however draws the attention of the Ultimate Bad Guy who has a bomb to kill all of them.

When he ignites it and escapes through the window, his flesh gets stuck to the tip of the vessel. The humanoids throw the bomb out with him and kill him in a safe explosion on the exterior of the vessel.

On safe arrival back in NYC a young couple consisting of the delinquent girl go swimming to explore. Because the place has been flooded during the attacks half of the city is under water. They go to the park and free a large red fish in a jar. Everything is edenic, as if life begins again.

She asks him for another chance at the relationship, surely they like planet earth can begin again abd be as beautiful.

He says that they had been through so much in their relationship, escaping and surviving the near destruction, he is not even sure it was a relationship. Furthermore, if the world is beginning again surely the human race would be more perfect than ever. He would probably fall for almost anyone now. Why go back to something old and sad?

Taylor swift plays in the background, "you belong with me" but he has already swam away leaving the girl contemplating the new new york but the same old human selfishness.

I am at some zoo, a tourist destination with friends. It is a simulation of a swamp, it is damp. People are milling around oblivious but I start to hear sounds. I realise there are real crocodiles around. Everyone is lying down trying to be unobtrusive. Im the only idiot standing up. Only realise later I keep looking out for my phone and laptop. For some reason, instead of the crocodiles, I wrestle the crocodile hunter!

Working hard for shopping money! Working at moms spectacle shop, taking up some writing jobs and STILL trying to make 10k from a short story! So tired! No time to miss my bf so good!

In this cruel and fallen world, holding hands and/or kissing doesn't seem to mean a thing. When conservative girls have no choice but to conform to the ways of the world. But sometimes the Fates intervene and they actually get half decent boys who are baffled that these girls have such low expectations and could actually think holding hands doesn't mean anything. (But yay anyway.)

Why they think like that leh? - What to do, just look around.

Some social theorists argue that feminism has lead to more "Alpha Females" who only want to date "Alpha males". Men like to date down and women prefer to date up. So these women have limited choice because the men they date must be better than them. So one Alpha male has maybe 5 women fighting for him. Because of all this competitive, they undercut one another - put out, spend alot of time on clothes, have very very low expectations, don't make demands and basically cling on to him AT ALL COSTS - leading to the prisoner's dilemma for the female population. Everyone loses in the end.

Except for the man of course. He has to do less and can demand more. If the one girlfriend pisses him off there are 4 others begging him to give them a chance. Even the beta male wins - out of the 4 "losers", some of them might give up and resign themselves to dating down. Better that than to be single for life RIGHT. OMG.

"One of the reasons we might be suffering is that we are surrounded by snobs. A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses it to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery. And the dominant form of snobbery that exists today is job snobbery — you encounter it within minutes at a party when you get asked that famous, iconic question of the 21st century: ‘What do you do?’ The opposite of a snob is your mother.” ~ Alain de Botton

Not true, my mom is democratic when it comes to job snobbery. Daughter or not - good job = good person, bad job = stupid/lazy person.

Probably one reason why I feel a constant anxiety about the big question mark post Jan 2012. I'm one of those control freaks who likes to know everything about anything in advance and/or in case -

(on a side note, how they cut cakes so cleanly in restaurants: today at cedele I saw a guy run the cake knife under very hot water and slicing the cake cleanly with it. NOW we know!)

so yes, cutting cake mystery solved = good, big question mark = bad.

Plus, the whole notion about Gen Y being flightly - I was discussing it with Jayne who HELPFULLY pointed out that it is because our generation has so many options. Going overseas is so much easier. We don't have to struggle for survival. We CAN study useless things like Liberal Arts. Plus the advent of new media just makes all the

1. alternative boho jobs
2. power suit money producing jobs
3. gritty fast paced jobs

seem

1. a realistic goal (if that stupid primary school friend can do it why not me!)
2. more widespread than true (people with "bad" jobs don't usually boast about it)
3. better than they really are (bankers losing and/or getting white hair, marriages falling apart, nobody talks about the financial difficulties of being a "novelist", people don't talk about the mental pressure and banality of being an academic)

I've obviously been thinking about this for a bit. If you didn't know, my life dreams crashed and burned in March when I got rejected from ALL my phd applications. After hem-ing and haw-ing, being depressed, see-sawing between just trying again (DON'T GIVE UP!) or giving up (BE REALISTIC), I really had to think about what I REALLY wanted in life. At the end of the day, people can encourage you, but it's really my own life.

(Will they be there when I'm overseas lonely and hungry? Will they read my Nth draft which has 200 pages about the same boring thing? Will they be providing me money when I'm jobless because no university wants somebody who specialised in an obscure, now unfashionable topic? Will they give me social security benefits when the full professors refuse to retire and/or die? ANGST)

I'm not quite sure yet but I think it's something along the lines of trying not to be influenced anymore by what will make me look cool/social status. More eloquently,

One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.” ~ Alain de Botton

I really enjoy teaching though and I'm not sure what to do about that. I don't want to go to MOE because of all the horror stories which one of my fellow grad student (a 33 year old ex-MOE scholar says). Maybe there is something else out there for me which I haven't found yet. I shall try! And probably be depressed half the time looking for it. BAH.

Labels: joblessness

There is a God!

(I think irrationally when I am happy but am sure will agree, with less gusto, even when I'm not. Anyway)

After toeing the depression line for weeks I finally have good news. And great things come in pairs of pairs!

Not only did I get excellent teaching feedback (which makes me feel my life is not a waste of time), I got full funding got my conference!

I've also managed to arrange my tutorials such that I can see KC for 2 weeks in the UK (hopefully we dont kill each other) and maybe go to The Fringe.

Last cherry on the ice cream (is that the phrase?) is that I'm teaching Decline and Fall next semester! Awesome I love that book!

And Harris's "Please God, make them attack the chapel!" hahaha

So fun I was delirious with happiness. Now I'm so exhausted from that high (might be bipolar) and am contented! I shall beam irritatingly throughout lunch.