.

fading in and out of reality
need to snap out of this reverie

i just want to get away
is that too much to ask?

Here's a quickie

It’ s been a highly unproductive recess week.
I relaxed, slacked and enjoyed myself at the expense of my studies.
All these, after learning about opportunity costs and cost benefit analysis.
Hail me as Queen Procrastinator.

6 more weeks till my first exam. (Econs and Socio. Just great.)
2 more weeks to write a 1500 words essay on how 2 events have greatly impacted my life and shaped the person I am today.
1 more week till my first ever Econs test which I am highly insecure about. (The insecurity can be likened to that feeling of wearing white while having your thing*)
4 more days till the damn reflective essay is due.
Less than 24 hours to the COM 204 deadline and COM 203 quiz.
5 more minutes before I officially start on my COM204. It just figures that she gives me 2 weeks to do it and I end up doing it very last minute. =)

I need to focus on my “S” goals from tomorrow onwards:
1. Slim Down (I feel like a balyena with all these subcutaneous fat),
2. Save Up (Christmas is around the corner. I need moolah to immerse myself in the spirit of giving. I’ve been spending money as if I crap it out. No good)
3. Study Smart to avoid regrets. This will take some pretty awesome will power which I lack.

Sigh. It's funny how I can write so much on my blog but fail to even write a single sentence for my assignments. When will I ever learn?

I'll come back here when I've accomplished something.

I need a break...on second thought...

Things to do:

COM201:
1. Read bloody textbook and make own notes

COM203:
1. Read 7 weeks worth of readings
2. Notes on 7 weeks worth of readings
3. Start Reflective Essay (URGENT)
4. Start on the damned research project.
5. Post something on the damned discussion board

COM204:
1. Decide on what to do soon. Really soon.
2. Find someone to interview.
3. Writing Assignment (Outline, draft, edit, edit, edit)
4. Watch the news.
5. Read Newspaper. Seriously.

HE191
1. Conquer "Principles of Economics". It's only about 20 chapters=500 pages=a million theories to remember. Gregory Mankiw, you're going to be the death of me. Let that be in your conscience.
2. Notes. Make my own notes.
3. Redo 6 weeks worth of tutorial. By myself.

MB107
1. Revise topics covered for the past 6 weeks.
2. Redo Tutorials. Properly.
3. Notes! Research the damned cases. Collate.

HS101
1. Read and make notes out of 7 weeks worth of Readings.
2. Assignment Essay Part 2
3. Revise Lecture Notes.

Remind me not to take content (and very new content) heavy electives next semester.

There's 3 birthdays coming up. My older brother is coming to Singapore. There's SCI DnD on Tuesday.

I want to escape. Even for a day. Go somewhere. Do nothing but stare at the sky. Fall asleep without a worry in my mind. Have a day where life ain't a mad rush to finish things I will not remember 20 years from now.

*Looks up at the long list to do*

It's only in Singapore where people think that you should be occupied with THINGS TO DO during a BREAK. It contradicts the very essence of having a BREAK, a breakaway from things you HAVE to do. A BREAK should be a time to do things you WANT.

OK I'm just whining. My time and work management just sucks. See, I've totally sucked up this culture I've even learnt to blame it all on myself and not my circumstances
(i.e. The fact that teachers give us assignments right before the break and expect it to be handed up after the break which means they expect us to do it during the break. The fact that they conveniently schedule tests right after the break. The fact that we're required to do so much, complete so many units, when in fact it'll all be rushed and won't be absorbed.

I shall shut up now and do my Biz Law tutorial.

Rant over.

Home

My life lacks punctuation.
Now where did that bloody comma go?

Why is this frustration never ending?
When will I fill this void?
What am I looking for exactly?
How do I go about finding the elusive it?
Where do I go from here?
Which direction is right?

5W1H.

I realized something today.
I think the reason I feel lost in the whirlwind of changes is because I'm away from the only thing that has been constant in my entire life: my family.
From one country,city,house and school to another, they're the only ones remained the same.
And that familiarity was comforting because it provided stability.
The houses we lived in changed yet it always became home because my family was there.
The people, the environment changed yet the atmosphere at home remained the same.
The food, the lifestyle I was exposed to was different yet at home, we maintained the same familiar lifestyle we've had since I was young.
Friends, came and went, some stayed but my family was always there.

I always thought I wanted to get away from them because I found it rather suffocating to be with them all the time.
But now that I got that chance, I finally see the things that I've always taken for granted.
I'm not even that far away from them. It's not like I live in another country (although it is debatable that the ulu-ness of pulau NTU is comparable to living 'abroad').
Yet I'm feeling homesick.
The specific geographical location of it is not important because to be perfectly honest, I don't know WHERE home is. I just know home is where my family is.

I finally realize how dependent I am on them.
I don't mean that I need my mother to do my clothes and laundry (although my laziness always hinders me from doing my laundry in hall =P), or cook food, or keep my room clean.
That's the easy part. Heck I cook, do laundry and iron clothes for the whole family so I know I'm capable.
It's more of being dependent on them for emotional support and stability.

This aspect of independence is harder than I thought.

I wish I had my faith to fall back on.
But even that seems too rocky to rely on.

I need to get myself together.
Seriously.

=)

Lynsey (while talking to Wenshin about poems):
"Get Robert Burns and Do Him. Then I think you should also get Shakespeare and do him too! "

We girls started laughing like mad and making jokes on the pun Do.

As we were getting out of the car, the taxi driver told us...

"You girls don't Do anyone ok?!"

LOL.

We went to Emerald Hill for dinner and drinks (a very happening place I just discovered) and the atmosphere was great (although it was filled mostly by working expats causing me to feel realy young ) . We devoured those peanuts as we drank our cocktails. It was followed by dinner (at that place I always pass by on the way to centrepoint but never really notice) then drinks at Howl at The Moon. We all ordered the Cosmopolitan and had our own version of Sex and the City Toast. Some drunk English guy provided entertainment by doing dances that resembled the mating dances of babboons (If they ever had one anyway, but you get my point)

I fell in love with the pianist, the drummer, the guitarist and the vocalist. I'm talking about the same guy by the way. He plays 10 freaking instruments and he sings sexily too. When Lynsey comes back next year, we'll go back to the same place, I'll down about 7 Cosmopolitans, go up to the stage, sing then ask him to marry me. HAHAHA. Make that 10 Cosmopolitans and a Lychee Martini. I'll go take vocal lessons and improve my piano now.

Oh! And we went on the Singapore Flyer. It wasn't that exciting and it was spent mostly camwhoring (what else is there to do?). We went a bit nuts (mainly because of Nutty Nat) with the camwhoring thing and people must have thought we were rather mental. Hey, we were on Top Of The World!

I forgot how much I really missed Lynsey until I met her again!
And I seriously hope all our plans for next year materialise! Time to save money!

I just feel happy.
Important friendships have amazingly stood the test of time and distance.
I got my Adobe Creative Suite for free thanks to Junhua.
My macbook returned to her normal self after pmsing for an hour(which caused me to worry extensively about the cost of the repairs). I refuse to name my macbook. I like having the flexibility of calling her a bitch one second and my darling baby mac the next. Names are highly dependent on my fickle mood.
Even though I'm struggling with my studies (I just realised that the last time I did NOT struggle with studies was in Uplands. The Land of Bliss. Failing Maths does not count.), I have a renewed sense of confidence (or delusion. must be the alcohol) that I can do well. Please let that feeling linger longer.
My parents are not being anal about me coming home late.
And most importantly,
there's NO 8 30 lecture tomorrow (later)
YES

I shall go snooze now.


Valerie wants to and will learn bartending. One day. Someday.

.

The days are zooming past me.
I need to stop that fast forward function before
I forget why I'm here.

On wild boars, assignments and more

I saw a wild boar from my window today!
I swear I can produce a documentary for National Geographic during my stay here in hall.
My roommate said she saw a whole family of boars! About 10 of them. TEN.
Hakunah Matatah. Pumba. Pumba is a boar right?
OK. Never Mind.

I handed in my 204 ASSignment yesterday.
I have a sinking feeling that I did not do well.
At all. After today's 204 lecture I just realised I did everything contrary to what she taught.
Why couldn't she have given that lecture last week or given the assignment this week instead?
Hmph.
Well, I should not expect so much.
I was sneezing, coughing, having a severe headache, vomiting, and having a slight fever on Sunday while madly rushing for it.
I had to change my topic on Saturday because the people I wanted to interview rejected me or simply ignored my request.
I had to thank my lucky stars that my Aunt (who happened to be relevant and rather important), whom I've never met and talked to before , was available for interview.
OK. Whatever. It's over. Fail if fail. I'll learn from my mistakes. Thank God my tutor seems approachable.

I thought I could finally settle down to catch up on my work, but another problem cropped up regarding my dependent pass just after I handed in my assignment. I now have to go to the Immigration Place, Submit Documents, Write Letters, Call people and Figure out things. The place is all the way at lavender and all my Important Documents are in a mess.

Lynsey is coming to Singapore all the way from Scotland! Time to party! Yay!
And we're having another Sushi Family gathering on Sunday!
I don't care. I'm not sacrificing my social life for school. I'll just go insane. Haha.

I should not be blogging. I should be mugging for 201 Quiz. I made my first mind map today. How amusing.

The Don't s of life so far.

Don't confuse friendliness with closeness.
Don't rely too much on people.
Don't take things too seriously.
Don't let frustration stop you.
Don't forget to bring your umbrella when you go out these days.

Interesting Sociology Readings

This is why I think Sociology is Cool:

Body Ritual Among the Nacirema by Horace Miner


The anthropologist has become so familiar with the diversity of ways in which different people behave in similar situations that he is not apt to be surprised by even the most exotic customs. In fact, if all of the logically possible combinations of behavior have not been found somewhere in the world, he is apt to suspect that they must be present in some yet undescribed tribe.

* * *

Professor Linton first brought the ritual of the Nacirema to the attention of anthropologists twenty years ago, but the culture of this people is still very poorly understood. They are a North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin, although tradition states that they came from the east.

Nacirema culture is characterized by a highly developed market economy which has evolved in a rich natural habitat. While much of the people's time is devoted to economic pursuits, a large part of the fruits of these labors and a considerable portion of the day are spent in ritual activity. The focus of this activity is the human body, the appearance and health of which loom as a dominant concern in the ethos of the people. While such a concern is certainly not unusual, its ceremonial aspects and associated philosophy are unique.

The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.

While each family has at least one such shrine, the rituals associated with it are not family ceremonies but are private and secret. The rites are normally only discussed with children, and then only during the period when they are being initiated into these mysteries. I was able, however, to establish sufficient rapport with the natives to examine these shrines and to have the rituals described to me.

The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is built into the wall. In this chest are kept the many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live. These preparations are secured from a variety of specialized practitioners. The most powerful of these are the medicine men, whose assistance must be rewarded with substantial gifts. However, the medicine men do not provide the curative potions for their clients, but decide what the ingredients should be and then write them down in an ancient and secret language. This writing is understood only by the medicine men and by the herbalists who, for another gift, provide the required charm.

* * *

Beneath the charm-box is a small font. Each day every member of the family, in succession, enters the shrine room, bows his head before the charm-box, mingles different sorts of holy water in the font, and proceeds with a brief rite of ablution. The holy waters are secured from the Water Temple of the community, where the priests conduct elaborate ceremonies to make the liquid ritually pure.

In the hierarchy of magical practitioners, and below the medicine men in prestige, are specialists whose designation is best translated as "holy-mouth-men." The Nacirema have an almost pathological horror of and fascination with the mouth, the condition of which is believed to have a supernatural influence on all social relationships. Were it not for the rituals of the mouth, they believe that their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends desert them, and their lovers reject them. They also believe that a strong relationship exists between oral and moral characteristics. For example, there is a ritual ablution of the mouth for children which is supposed to improve their moral fiber.

The daily body ritual performed by everyone includes a mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these people are so punctilious about care of the mouth, this rite involves a practice which strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting. It was reported to me that the ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.

In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year. These practitioners have an impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of these items in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client. The holy-mouth-man opens the client's mouth and, using the above mentioned tools, enlarges any holes which decay may have created in the teeth. Magical materials are put into these holes. If there are no naturally occurring holes in the teeth, large sections of one or more teeth are gouged out so that the supernatural substance can be applied.

* * *

It is to be hoped that, when a thorough study of the Nacirema is made, there will be careful inquiry into the personality structure of these people. One has but to watch the gleam in the eye of a holy-mouth-man, as he jabs an awl into an exposed nerve, to suspect that a certain amount of sadism is involved. If this can be established, a very interesting pattern emerges, for most of the population shows definite masochistic tendencies. It was to these that Professor Linton referred in discussing a distinctive part of the daily body ritual which is performed only by men. This part of the rite includes scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument. Special women's rites are performed only four times during each lunar month, but what they lack in frequency is made up in barbarity. As part of this ceremony, women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour. The theoretically interesting point is that what seems to be a preponderantly masochistic people have developed sadistic specialists.

The medicine men have an imposing temple, or latipso, in every community of any size. The more elaborate ceremonies required to treat very sick patients can only be performed at this temple. These ceremonies involve not only the thaumaturge but a permanent group of vestal maidens who move sedately about the temple chambers in distinctive costume and headdress.

The latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple ever recover. Small children whose indoctrination is still incomplete have been known to resist attempts to take them to the temple because "that is where you go to die." Despite this fact, sick adults are not only willing but eager to undergo the protracted ritual purification, if they can afford to do so.

* * *

The supplicant entering the temple is first stripped of all his or her clothes. In everyday life the Nacirema avoids exposure of his body and its natural functions. Bathing and excretory acts are performed only in the secrecy of the household shrine, where they are ritualized as part of the body-rites. Psychological shock results from the fact that body secrecy is suddenly lost upon entry into the latipso. A man, whose own wife has never seen him in an excretory act, suddenly finds himself naked and assisted by a vestal maiden while he performs his natural functions into a sacred vessel. This sort of ceremonial treatment is necessitated by the fact that the excreta are used by a diviner to ascertain the course and nature of the client's sickness. Female clients, on the other hand, find their naked bodies are subjected to the scrutiny, manipulation and prodding of the medicine men.

Few supplicants in the temple are well enough to do anything but lie on their hard beds. The daily ceremonies, like the rites of the holy-mouth-men, involve discomfort and torture. With ritual precision, the vestals awaken their miserable charges each dawn and roll them about on their beds of pain while performing ablutions, in the formal movements of which the maidens are highly trained. At other times they insert magic wands in the supplicant's mouth or force him to eat substances which are supposed to be healing. From time to time the medicine men come to their clients and jab magically treated needles into their flesh. The fact that these temple ceremonies may not cure, and may even kill the neophyte, in no way decreases the people's faith in the medicine men.

* * *

In conclusion, mention must be made of certain practices which have their base in native esthetics but which depend upon the pervasive aversion to the natural body and its functions. There are ritual fasts to make fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to make thin people fat. Still other rites are used to make women's breasts larger if they are small, and smaller if they are large. General dissatisfaction with breast shape is symbolized in the fact that the ideal form is virtually outside the range of human variation. A few women afflicted with almost inhuman hyper-mammary development are so idolized that they make a handsome living by simply going from village to village and permitting the natives to stare at them for a fee.

* * *

Our review of the ritual life of the Nacirema has certainly shown them to be a magic-ridden people. It is hard to understand how they have managed to exist so long under the burdens which they have imposed upon themselves. But even such exotic customs as these take on real meaning when they are viewed with the insight provided by Malinowski when he wrote:

Looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic. But without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have advanced to the higher stages of civilization.

Hall Life Complains.

OMG.

Those fucking birds have been communicating for over a few hours now.

I did not pay 200 dollars to experience the jungle life and hear birds screech and chirp endlessly.

I'm stressed, sleepy, cranky, moody and I have nothing but violent images involving guns and those cursed birds in my head.

I'll continue this rant during Econs lecture. Which starts in 15 minutes.

Run Valerie Run.

Maybe not.