Randomness. Utter randomness. Haha.

Am busying myself going crazy saving Narnia icons from all over the place. Mostly of Peter and Edmund. More Peter than Edmund though. :D

I've always loved Peter ever since I first read the books, but William Moseley makes Peter a most handsome king indeed. :D And Edmund's cute because he has freckles. Susan's beautiful; the dresses they made for her in the film-- lovely. Lucy's adorable because she can't pronounce her R's! They all turn into W's, so "Are you all right?" sounds vaguely like, "Are you all wight?" Bless her little curly-haired head.

My little MSN message (you know, the little message you add onto your nick) currently says: "Flutterby, butterfly, er... jamfly? I'm a mad little Gerri, haha". Another brilliant moment of madness randomness mad randomness. :D

William Moseley really is so cute. But I've said that already.

Am slightly high, I think. Rambling in my excitement. Maybe it's the wine gums. I wonder if you ate enough wine gums on any empty stomach, would you *actually* get drunk??

Henry and I were debating my lack of normalcy over MSN just now; he thinks the world needs more people like me. Madness is underrated and overlooked and locked away; without us, life would be boring! And without us, there'd be less people willing to dare to shout when they're happy, dance and sing in the rain, run through a field just screaming for the fun of it, and do cartwheels in the surf.

Like the rainbow-coloured ink that someone spilled across the negatives of a black-and-white movie filmstrip. Colour and life and noise, haha.

Funny how it doesn't really feel like the holidays (or the year) are ending. :)

Post-Christmas "aftermath":

(Well, I like to call it "aftermath", haha)

Got back from Malaysia yesterday afternoon and met Pam in the evening to go watch Narnia; we finally managed to get a 9 pm show at GV Marina Square, and the movie was BRILLIANT.

Although there've been quite a few people who tell me that they think it sucked. And well... I might be able to see why. The thing is, Andrew Adamson's kept the movie really true to the book; I noticed the tiniest details in the movie which are mentioned just in passing in the book, but they're there, and for a fan of the books, it's that attention to every single detail that just makes you go, "Oh my goodness, they remembered even that!" and smile to yourself and laugh deep inside.

But admittedly, this makes the build-up to the climax of the story a long one; this works in books, but not in movies, especially when nowadays all anyone cares about is action.

For someone who read the books when I was about ten though, the movie was just, well, brilliant, because everything that you've ever imagined while reading it is there, in all it's beautiful glory. And if you've not read "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" before, you read that last line right: "books". Plural, not singular.

I've already had to enlighten a couple of people on this, and conversation usually went something like this:

"Well, have you read the books?"
"Ah..?! Got more than one, ah?"
"Yeah... there're seven."
"Wah, even more than LOTR?!"

*exasperation*
"They're thinner, don't worry. And simpler to understand."
"Oh. So the movie's based on the first one, is it."
"No... actually, 'Lion, Witch and Wardrobe' is the second book."

*confusion appears on fellow conversationalist's features*
"Then the first one....?"
"That would've been kinda boring to make a movie out of."
"Oh."


Harry Gregson-Williams' music is breathtaking. The strings in the battle theme are glorious, balanced with the heavy brass and the choir, and it's everything that a battle theme should be; foreboding and hopeful and of courage with no room or time for fear. The sadder secondary theme which Mr Tumnus plays for Lucy also has a Celtic kinda feel to it that I like; I've always felt that Celtic music more or less sums up Life-- mournful but still singing of and looking forward to the days to come.

Says a lot about me doesn't it, my taste in music with contradicting themes.

Someone did tell me once that I am the most paradoxical person that they know, after all. :)

My sis and I are in Malaysia at the moment, in my auntie's house; we got here by coach last night.

And you know, along the North-South Highway, there're these toll booths? Well, at the last one just before you enter Kuala Lumpur, my sis and I saw the *funniest* thing.

Each of the pillars was wrapped in an opaque blue film, with large white letters (one per line) saying:

Say

No

To

(wait for it...)







Porn.


Heehee. The anti-porn ad which brought my sis and I much mirth. 

Yeah, you saw that right. :D My sis and I were like, "What?!??"

We thought it was gonna say something like "Say no to piracy", not "porn"!! Hahaha.....

Oh well. I guess now we know where the Malaysian authorities priorities lie. :D

And here's a cute little ditty that I heard on the radio last week and just remembered today:


All I Want For Christmas (Is my Two Front Teeth)
by George Strait

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth
My two front teeth, my two front teeth
Gee, if I could only have my two front teeth
Then I could wish you, "Merry Christmas."

It seems so long since I could say
"Sister Susie sitting on a thistle!"
Gosh, oh gee, how happy I’d be,
If I could only whistle.

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth
My two front teeth, my two front teeth
Gee, if I could only have my two front teeth
Then I could wish you, "Merry Christmas..."

An early "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" greeting to everyone who knows me; I'll be going to Malaysia tomorrow and will be away till Monday, so my Christmas won't be spent in Singapore.

I forgot to send out Christmas cards this year, so just for laughs, here's something:




...Haha..! Just kidding, really. :D

Happy Holidays, all. :)

Back from Kenny's bookstore opening.... :)

It's a lovely loft-looking place; wide open space and white shelves with white and green walls, and with childhood toys and vintage treasures dotting the place-- here's a small white typewriter sitting innocently beneath a sidetable full of books, old cameras lining the topmost shelf, and there's an old-fashioned little children's piano near where the music boxes are, the Nutcracker perched atop it grinning his face-splitting grin as someone winds up a music box and his Suite begins to play.

Although the music boxes aren't really boxes. They're really quite round. :D

William and Rachel were there, back from NZ-- William's hair is different now, all sort of flat (haha, :D) and Rachel's hair is longer-- Ivan was there too and of course, Kenny and Karen.

Ivan and I amused ourselves most of the time blowing bubbles; you know, the kind that they sell in the form of some rubbery gel in little metallic tubes, and which you blow by putting a blob of it onto the end of a little yellow straw?

Bubbles out of a tube, unlike the Western alternative, where bubbles come out of a bottle. :)

Took a picture with my new phone of the too-bright street lamp hanging from its metal limb right outside the window. And I could imagine in that very moment that if all the lights in the store were turned off, the street lamp would light everything in the room, casting light in angular patterns and the decals stuck on the windows like depictions of fairytales playing over the floor and the walls; the three bears out of Goldilocks hurrying across a shelf and dancing over the spines of Murakamis and Nabokovs and Orwells. And places where the light couldn't reach making calm shadows in quietly dark corners. And the picture of the white light on the white walls and the white shelves lined with their books looked and felt like winter.

Perhaps because of all the white. Perhaps because of a little flicker of a comparison of the rustle of pages in the wind and the crunch of new snow underfoot.

I want to buy shelves from Ikea and install them on the walls of my room... I need shelves. And I've kinda just realised that Christmas is less than then days away. Wow. Somehow days have lost their significance and only deadlines have any meaning anymore.

So I was stoning in front of the television, watching Arts Central.

Sat through the anime segment; something called "Hellsing" and something else called "Rumbling Hearts"-- lovely angsty sort of stuff. And the latter was something like a stumbling progression of scenes, and a collection of disconnected, disjointed scenes of equally detached characters. All looking like they're not sure of what they're doing with their lives.

Then, there was a short play of Samuel Beckett's on, entitled "Happy Days"; I still can't really figure out absurdist playwrights-- the only sense I could make of the one long, single scene throughout the short play of that woman sitting waist-deep in the sand of a barren waste, with a bag near her and muttering to herself, was the idea that Beckett was perhaps expounding once again upon the fatalism and how nothing that we create (or *don't* create, for that matter) doesn't last.

There's a clear sky tonight with a thousand millions stars out; at least, that's what it looks like. I can see all the brighter ones twinkling away, and in an empty patch of sky, I think I see the ones that are less bright, looking like shadows of pinpricks of light nestled in the purplypinkness of the sky. Or maybe it's my own eyes seeing illusions of the brighter stars seared onto my eyes and projecting them on the blank expanse.

Training restarts tomorrow morning-- good thing, I'm itching to shoot. And then I'll be off to Kenny's bookstore for his official opening. :)

Bleah. Something screwed up on my desktop at home; my personalised desktop on the home PC that is, not the entire CPU.

Ever since the com came back from service, the Microsoft Office programs no longer work on any of the personalised desktops (mine and my sis'), and just recently this week, for no damn reason at all, Firefox stopped working on my desktop. Everytime, it just loaded halfway and no matter where the hell I clicked, the only thing I could do with the window was close it.

So I gave up, personalised a new desktop, and then started moving everything over by going through the "Profiles".

Only just finished moving all my bookmarks; think everything's there, so I shall be going off to bed now.

Yesterday had to be one of the happiest days of my life.

Turns out that the AAS competition gave out prizes both for ranking and for knockout rounds for the individual events.

So I got third for ranking and fourth placing for the knockout round.

Knockout, is a series of matches wherein, if say we took the top 8 archers, No. 1 would be pitted against No. 8, No. 2 against No. 7, and so on and so forth. So I was against No. 6, an NTU girl named Iris, and I beat her by 12 points.

Then came the second round, and I was against the NTU girl who'd been shooting in my lane the day before, Eng Shuen Hui, if I remember her name correctly. And that one was a bit wasted.

During our third end, she had one arrow in black, and that would've been a good time for me to catch up, seeing as the difference between our scores wasn't that much. But I took too long to focus, didn't hear the thirty-second call, and didn't get to fire my last arrow. Shame that; I lost to her by five points, and I could've got second at least, but I guess shit happens. :P

As it turns out, later, the lady that I was up against for the bronze medal match had also lost because she didn't get to fire her last arrow in the last end of the previous round. All the juniors who were watching were saying that the bronze medal match was more exciting and more closely matched than the gold medal one, hee.

Kristy, Norisha and Pecilius took bronze for the Standard Recurve Ladies' Team event, and Huiting won fourth place for her Standard Recurve Ladies' Individual knockout as well, and fifth for her ranking. James only just lost to his NTU opponent by 6 points during his knockout round, and Kristy and Norisha both lost to their opponents; who were also teammates. :P

By virtue of the ranking, Norisha was against Huiting, and Kristy against Mabeline.

As it turns out, none of our guys in Open class made it to the knockout rounds; Vincent was ranked 40th, but the guys' standard really is damn high.

We did all right though, I think; definitely much better than last year. And to top it all off, when I came home, I had a new phone waiting for me. My mum had traded in my dad's old Nokia 2100 for an Ericsson K700i, so the first thing I did this morning after it was charged was to take a photo of my trophies. :D

Shall upload pretty pictures when I've installed the software that allows me to transfer stuff from my phone, and when the people who took pictures upload them. :D

NUS ARCHERY! I'M SO PROUD OF ALL OF YOU!!!! :D

Well, this is going to be a short post, but I'm really happy about today!!! :D :D

All the juniors whom I'm mentoring have been ranked in the top sixteen of their categories and are proceeding to the knockout rounds tomorrow! And the two girls have made it into the team event as well, which is only for the top four teams with the highest combined individual scores!

James is ranked 10th in Recurve Men's Standard class; in Recurve Ladies' Standard class, Kristy is ranked 8th and Norisha is ranked 11th; Huiting is ranked 5th, Mabeline, 9th, and Pecilius, 12th. We have *five* girls in standard knockout! :D :D

Now all that's left to make it perfect is Vincent's score, which he's agreed to message me later when he knows. But he should be all right, I think; he should be able to make it into the knockout round.

I have a high success rate, haha...

Imy and I qualified for knockout as well (automatically, really, since there're less than 16 archers in Recurve Ladies' Open class), but what really surprised me is that I'm ranked third. 0.0

I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope everything goes well tomorrow. We shall bring back more than a few medals!! :D :D :D

Sighting later today. Score for one end yesterday was 225/300; Vincent was looking at it halfway through and he was saying that it might be able to hit 230, but ARGH, it *didn't*. Nghh.

Must stop hitting so many damn blues. Bow arm is not steady.

Had a good rest last night, and Huiting lent me her copy of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" yesterday! I've been reading all over the web about the sudden depth of character development that J.K. Rowling gives to Draco Malfoy, and that's just made me itch to read it, haha.

Anyway, am about four chapters into the book right now, and for once... Draco Malfoy was mentioned earlier than Harry Potter. Haha. Well, sort of anyway, if you don't count the first chapter where Harry's name just sort of pops up in the course of conversation. When I say "mentioned", I mean "mentioned" in the sense which makes them crucial to the plot of the current book. :P

Currently quite taken with Jack Johnson's songs; they're happy, light acoustic which just makes me want to bop along. Especially songs like "Breakdown" (doesn't sound as dismal as its title makes it out to be, I promise you) and "Bubbly Toes". And "bubbly toes" sounds like something *I* would say, haha!

Maybe there's finally someone else out there in this world who would understand what "happy toes" are. :D

Sad-- it seems like no one else whom I know is as excited about the Narnia movie as I am. Expect maybe for Pam, but Pam's different; she's a movie person, so she'll get excited over most movies. :P As long as she likes either the story or the characters, I think. :D

Anyway, here's something I've found: a NINE-minute-long Narnia *supertrailer*.

The link here takes you to NarniaWeb where you can download it; the super-high resolution Quicktime format of the supertrailer is about 100 MB, but it's worth it! It's absolutely lovely. But it IS full of spoilers, so if you'd rather not know, then please refrain from clicking on the link.

I love the music already; I want the soundtrack! The strings on the main theme sound glorious.

And while we're on the subject of Narnia, why on earth is it opening here only on the 22nd of December, when it opens in Malaysia (and worldwide) on the *9th*?!?

Sigh. I suppose while waiting, I'll just sit here and nurse my poor sore finger.

5 days to competition, and best score is still 438/600. Lousy.

Lookie what I found...


Forever as One

Isn't it pretty. :D

Well, okay, so I watched Harry Potter. It was... okay.

(I should warn you now that if you haven't seen it and want to avoid spoilers, you shouldn't read this. Now, shoo.)

But the graveyard scene was the best. That had to be about the *only* intense scene, really; the only scene where you could feel something for the characters. For Daniel Radcliffe's vocal cords' sake, I hope they didn't have to do too many retakes of that scene. *snigger*

The dialogue in this one was very different from the last three; it doesn't help character development much because most of it is just bland statements which contribute to the status of things at the moment in the plot rather than drawing in some way upon the relationship that the characters are supposed to have.

Like when Harry tells Ron that he's a "right foul git", and I was like, "Yeah, so?"

Seems like Ron thought the same thing. Haha. How childish.

Quidditch; HOW can we have a Harry Potter film WITHOUT Quidditch, goddamnit!?!? Yeah, they show us the beginning of the Quidditch World Cup and everything, and then you see the Irish and Bulgarian teams come out, and just as they're letting everything build up and Fudge begins the game, you find yourself back in the Weasleys' tent and it's like, "What, THAT'S IT?!???!! Where the F*** is the Quidditch?!?!??!"

*fumes for a minute*

And the Horntail! The Hungarian Horntail in the first Task isn't supposed to get OUT of the arena!

But, then again, I suppose they're trying to make up for the GLARING LACK OF QUIDDITCH, so they probably figured, "Well, how about instead of having two mad Bludgers chasing after Harry and him chasing the Snitch, we have a raving dragon chase him and have him fly around the school and smack himself into the architecture? How 'bout it? Sounds brilliant, innit?"

Bollocks to that, hell, no.

And I am forced, once again, to bemoan the tragic lack of Draco Malfoy scenes. Even more so for this movie coz Tom Felton just makes him look absolutely yummy droolworthy hot. XD

Really. That first scene which he has, when he enters the Quidditch stadium with his father? It had to be pretty hot with all the people around, and he's wearing that black suit with a black turtleneck? Someone tell me it didn't just get hotter. Haha... XD

I'm fangirling, I know. 'Tis the result of reading too many lovely H/D slash fics over the last few days, in particular, this one: Life, As Experienced Through Your Fingers by Gold-Snitcher.

There's no magic in the story, but our favourite familiar characters are all in there (with some new names added), in the setting of a school for the arts. You know, liberal arts; music, art, drama, the like. Am now thoroughly in love with the thought of a piano and violin duet, and I wish I hadn't stopped piano when I did. Sigh.


Camille Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre" is exhilarating.

And this piece by Michael Nyman is a beauty that makes me want to laugh and cry and dance and run and stand still all at the same time.

Decided to shoot for a while today after my Gender Studies paper.

My back muscles now hurt like crap.

Which is a good thing, coz it means at least the muscle memory is still there; I still remember which muscles I'm supposed to use. I've come to realise that sport is a semi-masochistic thing, haha. If the right set of muscles doesn't hurt, then you're doing it wrong. :P Although, overdoing it could also make it hurt, of course.

Zhan Tao, Cheow Hui and I were hanging out in the lounge this morning, talking before our papers, mostly about shooting and how we were damn out of practice and all the SEA Games stuff going on; if they actually televise the archery matches, Zhan Tao's suggesting we all watch together in the lounge, haha.

Although I don't think our lounge can fit *all* of us... -_-

Cheow Hui mentioned that Benson was featured in Thursday's newspaper, in the Urban section that came with the paper; said that Benson was the oldest of the six athletes who were featured-- scary stuff; the guy's only 25!

So I came home and rooted around in the pile of past days' newspapers, found it and saw that the youngest of the six is 15. Playing golf. The rest are 18 and 19, and only one other guy is in his 20s-- he's a cyclist, and he's 23.

It's like we're turning out prodigies left, right and center. Soon the prodigies won't be so special anymore, I think.

Last paper on Monday! Then AAS Shoot sighting on 9 Dec, and competition proper from 10 to 11 Dec. SEA Games starts tomorrow and Archery is on from the 29th of Nov to Dec 4th.

I can almost touch freedom.

Now I just need a wide open field to dance and jump and run around and scream in when it does arrive, but this being Singapore, with very little open space, I'll settle for watching Harry Potter instead. Haha.

2 papers down and 3 to go.

Methods was quite okay, and while I wish that I'd looked at the Soci of Food past exam papers earlier, I'm still quite happy that at least I did look at it. Because as of this sem, the Soci of Food exam paper questions have been the same for three semesters in a row now. Haha. :D

Maybe I'll start studying SC2216 tomorrow. And tonight, maybe I'll play NavyField tonight. Yippee. :D Tomorrow morning, training. Wake up at 7 am.

And I think I shall go home and write a bit. Have an idea for a Harry Potter fic and I need to put that last haiku that I wrote down in digital print. :)

Setting goals for AAS Shoot-- should try to get a personal best of at least... 500? 0_0 Good Lord, that sounds daunting. Oh well.

19th of November... during which day Gerri was rather unproductive.

Couldn't really get into the studying mood today; studying in clubroom again might have had something to do with it. Or maybe not, considering that half the time, it actually was quite empty. Maybe my brain's just refusing to cooperate after the gruelling reading marathon that I subjected it to the whole of Thursday. Sigh.

Tired. I want this all to end.

Saw that music video for the SEA Games athletes on the bus again. And thought for the twentieth-plus time how unrepresentative of our atheletes the sample shown in the video is. (Haha... I'm talking in technical terms now.. the leftovers of my Methods module :P)

I've seen that excerpt that they keep showing on TV Mobile at least thirty times, and each time, I can't help but notice a few things:

1) Only the "popular" sports like track and field, wushu, waterpolo, swimming, badminton and table tennis are featured in the video; there're about 30-plus sports whose athletes aren't represented.
(*cough*archery,shooting,fencing*cough*)

2) In one of the opening shots, there is a shot of runners nearing the finishing line. The runner in the lead is wearing red, but his number tag says in LARGE letters: THA-- ergo, he's from Thailand, not Singapore.

3) In one of the closing scenes, there is a freeze-frame shot of two female athletes (table-tennis or badminton players, I think) kissing their gold medals. Unfortunately, if I'm not wrong, they were, um... "imported". The athletes, not the medals.

4) With the WCG (World Cyber Games) in town, I just can't help but imagine an extra scene with maybe a team of five players high-fiving each other over a bank of computers. Haha. :D


Benson and Albert Loh are shooting Recurve individual and team for SEA Games, and it turns out that the rumours flying around during the Indoor shoot this year really are rumours after all: Jennifer isn't shooting. And I heard the ladies' recurve team didn't make the cut. Sigh.

Hopefully Albert will win gold this year! That should teach the SSC to overlook the lesser-known sports. Ha. And maybe give the national team a better training ground, for goodness' sake.

And look what I found when I was surfing through SSC's site; they actually have profiles of the individual players! Benson and Albert Loh are the only people I recognise in the list of national archers; only some of the rest look um.. vaguely familiar. Well, okay, I'll admit most of them don't. Haha. I like the pictures on the profile pages. Very cool. Especially the background.

Have a look: Benson and Albert.

Benson's bow just steals his thunder in his picture, haha... Seriously, I've always loved the silver riser. Damn cool, can. I wonder if the national team gets paid. And if so, how much. :D

And Benson always makes me think of the time when the seniors asked the nat team seniors to give us some pointers in one training session after our AAS shoot; I'll always remember how I took a MONTH to understand what Benson was trying to teach me about perfecting my release. But I got it in the end, and it seems that as a consequence of that, everyone else on the NUS team seems to know my release as the "smoothest" on the team. But you know how you can be good at something but you can't explain it?

Yeah, that's a minor source of irritation for me, coz I can see the problems with release that the juniors whom I'm mentoring have, but I can't seem to make them understand. Sigh.

This is making me think about training. I miss my baby.. my darling bow.. I badly need to train; my back muscles are deteriorating due to the lack of training, I can feel it. It's a funny thing that seems to happen only with me; when I don't train for too long, my back muscles actually start to ache.

Shall consider training on Tuesday morning, especially if I'm gonna stay over in school on Monday night.

And while we're on the subject of shooting... someone help me think of a relatively embarassing forfeit for a guy to do (and please don't let it involve kissing another innocent bystander or something like that; no one else needs to suffer except this guy in question, haha).

My junior challenged me to a shooting match after exams; loser does a forfeit. He's already set the forfeit for me; if I lose, I'll wear a skirt and a spaghetti-strap top (which I actually did for the Sports Awards Dinner, which is where he got the idea. *rolls eyes*). So now... I have to return the favour. Haha. Use the tagboard on your left for suggestions, please. :D

Was studying in Biz library today with Denise; she was telling me last night over MSN that Biz library is really quite conducive for studying coz they have these cordoned off tables; like the ones that we had in IJ, in the library, lining the walls. Each table is its own little unit with a wall rising on both sides and in front of you, so there's very little to distract you, unlike the Central library where the study area is just open space with lots and lots of tables, so you can still see what everyone's doing.

For me at least, that's distracting.

So today was my most productive day in a LONG time: I managed to finish 3 chapters of my Methods text! :D

Going back tomorrow; shall try to finish another four or five chapters, so I can read the extra qualitative research notes.

It's funny; exams start on the 18th, this Friday, and I don't really feel anxious or anything. Unless I consciously think about it. I think.

I wanted to be like you
I wanted everything
So I tried to be like you
And I got swept away

I didn't know that it was so cold and
You needed someone
To show you the way
So I took your hand and we figured out that
When the time comes
I'd take you away

If you want to
I can save you
I can take you away from here
So lonely inside
So busy out there
And all you wanted
Was somebody who cares

I'm sinking slowly
So hurry hold me
Your hand is all I have to keep me hanging on
Please can you tell me
So I can finally see
Where you go when you're gone

If you want to
I can save you
I can take you away from here
So lonely inside
So busy out there
And all you wanted
Was somebody who cares...

(Michelle Branch's "All You Wanted")

For Jared, because this is our song. Because all we've had is each other for so long. Because we keep each other sane. Because it's cold outside and somewhere around each other we're warm. Because everything around us is broken and we break everything we try to have. And because sometimes I wish I knew where you were.

Nghh... Pissed off.

Was playing NavyField just now; today's a good day. Earlier on, in the wee hours of the morning, there were a lot of Light Cruisers being "charitable": you had at least three rooms at any one time which were "7 DD vs 1 CL" (7 Destroyers vs 1 Light Cruiser) or stuff like that. Was good fun and good teamwork, coz it was all of us against one CL, haha. Although there was one of those games where my team's teamwork was crappy and the CL ended up taking out all of us. 1 CL took down EIGHT DDs. 0_0 (I was the last one down, haha.)

Anyway, was playing again just now, and had quite a few good games; won some and lost some, but still managed to level up my sailors and accumulate about 5000 credits. But the last game I played pissed me off.

3 teams, Alpha, Bravo and Charlie; I was on Bravo, and we decided to go pick off Charlie first. About five minutes into the game, C was down to two ships and we were down to three; the three of us were ganging up on the second last one; he was on my left, and he was already dead in the water-- things were looking good. Then the ASSHOLE teammate on my right decides he wants the frag, so he releases his torps.

And I'm on his left.

So the torps went through me, SUNK me, and the remaining ones sunk the Charlie ship. Effing asswipe TK'ed me!!! (TK means "team kill".)

Stupid bastard. Ngghh.


But, onto... happier things. Might be getting a new phone later; I'm not *too* keen on the Nokia 6101 that's on offer, but I guess it's all right... Well, we'll see. For now, the books are calling.

Zoo trip was.. hm. Fun. In a way. Might have been more so if we'd actually walked through that rainforest walk that Ivan told me about and which ended up being my main impetus for coming along.

I was still only in half a mind as to whether or not to go on Thursday, until Ivan told me about the rainforest walk thing where they had animals freely roaming around and which you could touch... I'm not so sure about that last point, but that's what he said so, yeah.

We left the zoo at about 6 plus, then a few of us went to Orchard and had a bit of fun by ourselves; Hock and Leon and Ivan Chen joined us at Orchard, but Hock had to leave early. I left a while after he did, mainly because it was getting late, and I was losing interest.

And on the bus, I came to realise something.

In the clubroom, among the guys who played DotA, there once existed what was known as the "DotA Widows Club". It was enough of an internal joke that it even got featured in the Thank You Dinner video.

And the "Widows Club" once had four members; the girlfriends of four of the guys who played DotA.

And what of it now, you may ask?

Well, it doesn't exist. There's only one of them left which has survived the ravages of such a short time, but one member is hardly a club now, is it?


"...He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good."

(excerpted from "Two Songs for Hedli Anderson", by W.H. Auden)

Papers are all handed in! And the semester's over!

Which means that exams are starting in about a week's time. Bummer. Can't an undergrad get any rest?!

A few people were saying that they'd got the email regarding seat numbers for the exams already, but I haven't so decided to just go check by myself instead of waiting around for the mail.

And I was playing NavyField last night; got fed up with manual firing again, so I got lazy and switched back to the auto Firing Control System. I'll learn manual some other time. And I got rather pissed off last night coz in all the battles that I joined, I had crappy teammates (or the other side had better teamwork), so I didn't earn much in the way of frag or credits. Damn.

But, on the bright side, three of my sailors reached level 14, and two of them are stationed at the torp tubes, so I can fit torp tubes now! Only thing that worries me is the safe distance; they need 15 km before they arm, and I'm not sure if that's a very long or very short distance.

And, talk about um.. culture shock. If you can call it that. Most of the time whenever I've played NavyField in the past, there's a lot of Spanish and German and whatever else flying around on the chat panels; mostly European languages and English, but last night, all the Singaporeans were online.

And you have no idea how funny it was to see Hokkien curse words scrolling up on the chat panel.

Any Europeans playing in that room at that time would probably have been thinking, "What the hell??" Especially with the standard of the English that was used. Er, *when* English was used, that is. Haha...

Going to the zoo tomorrow, with the rest of the 25th MC and a few of the Arts Club affiliates. Don't know what on earth there is to see, but Ivan says that there's a rainforest walk thing where there're animals roaming around freely in there and you can touch them!

Still very tired though. Not going to finish my revision at this rate... *sob*. -.-

Essays are almost done. Just one more to go; editing group report right now. Hand it up tomorrow morning and I'm free! YAY!!!

Over the past week or so, I feel like I've become some sort of Microsoft Word expert; I now know a lot of functions which I never really knew before. And I now have a sort of template for my papers! My own personal template kinda thing, that is. Getting the hang of writing essays now.

My lack of sleep at night still hasn't managed to disrupt my body clock very much; I can go to sleep at 6.30 am and I'll still wake up before 9 am. Annoying. But at least that means that I can maximise my time. Always need to look on the bright side, yes.

I've only actually slept at night about two or three times in the last week and up till today (didn't sleep last night either); I know that my neighbour's fish will start bobbing up in the pond and making gulping noises at about 2.30 am, I know that the newspaper man comes by at about 5.30 am, and then I can hear the soft putt-putt-putting of the scooter and the quick plop of the paper on the front porch. And then I hear him doing the same for the neighbours.

Didn't you ever used to wonder where the newspaper came from when you were a child? You'd wake up every morning and there'd be a paper on your doorstep, sitting there all by its innocuous self, with no indication of how it got there, and in your little childish mind, you could never conceive of the fact that someone was awake before you were, riding around dropping off the papers...

Because you thought the world only began when you woke up, and you didn't really have an idea of where the time between last night and this morning went.

Even in the midst of rushing my Sociology of Food essay I'm taking breaks here and there. To do completely useless stuff such as this:


My life is rated PG-13.
What is your life rated?

Using the Singaporean system though, I'd actually rate it M18 for violence, violent language and ideas, and occasional use of strong obscenities.

Oh, and lookie what I found while looking through some Harry Potter sites!



Just... whoa. Haha. Droolworthy. Very suave. XD

Ho-hum. *Wanders back to essaying-land*

I like the Harry Potter trailers... On the official site, there're three of them and I LOVE the second one!!

The music is just wonderful!

Well, of course, the trailer as a whole is nice too, but the MUSIC!

I suppose you get my point. :P

I just love the music most of all. And Harry Potter is slowly becoming like Lord of the Rings, in that aspect; the music, the drama (becoming more end-of-the-world-like now), blah blah blah and everything. Well, aside from the bit of teenage hormonal angst every now and then like how Harry angsts over how he just can't get laid a girlfriend, it's a lot like Lord of the Rings, yeah.

And speaking of Harry's girlfriend! Cho Chang in the movie is not overly stunning. I mean, she's pretty, but.. hm. Well, then again, I suppose it's enough. She *is* quite pretty. Disagree with my sister saying that she's "ugly".

The girl playing Fleur Delacour is damn pretty!!

And I watched the "Memoirs of A Geisha" trailer as well. I don't think Zhang Ziyi is *that* pretty.

All right, shall return to thinking of a topic for my Soci of Food essay. Need to do lots of things, and cannot sleep, although I probably need to sleep, as am sick again for the fourth time this year. Gah.

Keep thinking about how I'd like a new Chronicles of Narnia box set.

I'm digressing. Blame my fluey-ness. Hope I get better really quickly after all my essays are due, coz first paper is on 18th, and if I don't get better soon, nothing I study will get into my head! Argh.

*sulk*

Well, a lot of good that's going to do.

Sigh. Dinner now. Which will probably not taste like much since I can't smell or taste anything. Sigh.

Proving ridiculously hard to find many papers on the subject of gendered roles in cooking. Online, at least.

Must polish up conclusion for American Law paper later.

Will also not play more than 4 NavyField battles in a row. Unless I'm on a roll and I get to know more Fubuki players and they help our team torp whore and-- Never mind. I probably don't make any sense to most of you reading this right now. So if you feel like it and have the time to spare, go take a look at NavyField's site.

It's an MMOTSG; unlike MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), the TSG at the end here stands for Tactics Simulation Game. You get to own ships, buy ships, outfit them with guns and enlist sailors, and when you reach Level 12, you get to choose one of four nations in the game (Germany, USA, UK or Japan) and buy a ship from there after deciding the nationality of your sailors.

This morning, I reached said level 12 and immediately set my top sailors' nationalities to German and bought myself a pretty Z1 Destroyer. Only problem is that I can't fit it with torpedo tubes till I reach level 15, but that's okay. Not too bad. I can deal. My credits are seriously diminished after buying the ship and outfitting it.

And I'm making friends in the game. Haha.

Some guy called "ogwarlord" declared me a "worthy opponent" earlier this morning, and in a rather funny episode, someone called "addenosis" tried to make friends, but there was a language barrier. So it basically went: he said hi, I said hi back, coz I recognised him from the previous room we had been in, and then he typed something in a language that I didn't understand. And I told him so.

And the one other guy who was in the room with us at the time started laughing at it all. :D

Good players that I see around lots of the time... "infernous", "indolent", "citan7"... among a few others. "indolent" gets really crazy with his Fubuki. A Fubuki is a model of a Japanese destroyer which carries no guns and only has torpedo tubes (a LOT of them); this means the ship is a lot lighter, moves a lot faster, and is a lot deadlier. Torps do plenty of damage, needless to say.

I almost laughed once when I was playing a small game, and when we first set off, one guy remarked to another who was keeping pace with the Fubuki on our team, "let the fubu get ahead". Yeah, so we can let the Fubu torp whore the other side. Haha.

I haven't even been playing for a very long time; only two weeks, and I'm level 13 already. It's really easy to advance through the lower levels.

This is giving me ideas, I'm telling you. I wanna get my own laptop and install NavyField on it... then I'll play in school, haha. And hopefully the wireless doesn't constantly die out on me then.

Shall get back to essaying away.

Status of papers and deadlines:

1. 31st Oct:
AS3213, American Law: Language and Gender; Research Paper due
Three-quarters done; need conclusion

2. 4th Nov:
SC2215, Sociology of Food; Essay due
UNCOMMENCED; need to borrow and request library books ASAP

3. 7th Nov:
SC2101, Methods of Social Research; Research Paper due
Have required literature and data, need to start writing soon

3. 9th Nov:
SC2220, Gender Studies; Project Write-up due
(one-week extension)
Rough draft; have required literature; need to start typing; editing group report next week


Shall head back to my American Law paper now.

Handed in Reaction Paper on Friday. One down, four to go.

My eyes are quite tired, reading stuff on the computer screen, reading stuff from books, reading readings from course packs... argh. Tired, period.

Shall draft my American Law Research Paper tonight and maybe let Prof Chng take a look if I have the time and she's in her office tomorrow. Just changed my premise this afternoon, which makes it a lot easier for me to focus on my topic of choice. Meh. Looks like I'm not sleeping tonight. But I can.. sort of afford it. 8 am Emotions lect tomorrow has been pushed back to 9 am; review lecture. And I'll never have to listen to that woman lecture again for the rest of my life in NUS!! Wahaha.

At least, I hope so.

Last training this Thursday. Thank you, thank you, all that is holy and sacred out there. Not that I hate archery or anything. In fact, with all the regular training this sem, I think I love it even more. It's just that... we're archers, but we're students too. Yeah. You get what I mean.

Stumbled across this article sometime last week about the different kinds of headaches (apparently there are 6 kinds, including "hangover" and "caffeine-withdrawal"); it says that headaches that only occur (is that the right word for it??) on one side of the head are migraines. Does that mean I have migraines?? O_O

Coz all my headaches only ever happen on one side. Never both sides at once. Or in the center. Huh. Oh well.

I'm not speaking/typing in complete sentences. Sigh. Well, I'm tired. Half-rambling coz of the mocha I drank an hour ago. If not, I wouldn't even be typing.

I need a laptop. Desperately. Makes it so much easier to get work done, you can put all your own stuff on it and nobody but you has a right to do whatever you want with it, and well... I've come to the conclusion that this sem has been ESPECIALLY laggy for me because my home desktop was down at the beginning of this sem, then it came back with its RAM drastically reduced to 64MB, thus making me very afraid to even switch it on for fear that it wouldn't even be able to handle opening the programs, let alone me using them. And then when I finally learned to cope with the slow processing speed, the monitor went *POP*. Yeah, a very loud pop. It was a very old monitor that was a bit wonky; we've been using it ever since the original monitor that came with CPU spoilt. So now we have a CPU which can't be used because there's no monitor. And we can't get a new monitor right now because of the usual financial problems.

You've probably figured out by now that in my household, when misfortune happens, unlike opportunity, it strikes more than once.

So I've been living off my mum's and dad's laptops. Problem with that, though, is that I can never actually use them for long periods of time, so ... yeah. That's self-explanatory, isn't it.

Archery stuff... my cell report is long overdue. Sorry Huiting and Nick... My attendance record is overdue as well. Sorry Imy.

Upgraded my bow limbs to 30 pounds. Then decided to shoot on Saturday without my arm guard. Figured it was pretty safe since when I shoot *with* my arm guard, my bow arm doesn't get hit anyway. Apparently though, psychological barriers are pretty powerful things. For some reason, without the arm guard, I end up getting hit.

F***, but that hurts. I haven't been hit by the bowstring for a VERY long time. And definitely NOT with a 30 pound bow. And NOT with a fast-flight string. Finally decided to wear the arm guard when it looked like if I hit my arm just one more time, the skin would burst right then and there.

Uh. Sorry for the gross image.

One small spot on my arm is still very brown and blue though. And slightly swollen.

Was looking at my MSN contact list. Suddenly my Archery group makes up the biggest group of contacts in my list. And Zhan Tao's nick is particularly... inspiring? Hm. Inspiring some deep thought, that is:

"We do what we must. Sometimes we can choose the path we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us."

Sigh. My choices were always made for me. And when I thought that I could finally choose my path, the choice got made for me when I wasn't looking. Then it got handed to me and I was told to deal. Again.

And I can't help but let my mind drift sometimes and it wanders to how some people tell me that I'm a strong person. And I remember what Meiji told me when we were in J2, when she told me that she felt that I was an independent person. And I wonder. Am I really? Or is it just that I don't have anyone to rely on, so I don't have a choice? Or is it just that I never trusted anyone enough to rely on them, so I felt that I had no choice but to be self-reliant? Maybe I just thought that no one would care enough to bother about me.

I wonder if it's self-pity. It was something that I came to realise in J2, when I finally warmed up to my class (out of the blue and for no reason that I can think of, but they seemed okay with it); I realised that I could fit in almost seamlessly with all the class cliques, I could talk with them, joke with them, hell, even make the people laugh with my notorious sarcastic wit. But when I left, I somehow had this innate sense and understanding and even acceptance that I wouldn't be missed.

Is it self-pity if it's something you accept as a fact of life and you're not even complaining about it or anything? Hm.

Well, to quote one of the many inspirational nicknames that Zhicong has used on his MSN, "The truth will set you free. But before it does, it will make you miserable."

Suppose I'm at the miserable stage. Suppose I'm somewhere nearing the outer edge of it. Suppose it doesn't really matter and I just live my life the way I always have, just being happy to be where I am at the time I am.

Have taken to reading a bit of the book of Plath's poetry that Kenny gave me, every night. She's a fantastic poet. I completely understand when people say that she's just a mad, sad, depressed woman, but at the same time, I think they don't understand. It's that madness which is creativity. It's the madness which inspires it and is it all at the same time.

I completely understood what she meant when we were in JC and we were reading Plath for Literature, and she wrote "The blood jet is poetry".

When Rudolf Nureyev died in 1993, I remember the paper running a simple piece on him, with a picture of him and Margot Fonteyn in a ballet pose; and next to the picture was a single quote, wherein he said that dancing was his life, and he would do it "till the last drop of it leaves my body".

And I understand that too. I want to write. I want to write until there's nothing left; just give me the time. Give me the time to write till there's nothing left in me that I can put on paper and maybe then I'll stop.

Mr T. used to say when he was teaching us Plath that lots of writers don't live long. Isn't it ironic that when so many people create, they destroy themselves at the same time.

Have always loved Plath's writing. Have wanted to be her ever since I first read her work when I was 14.

Guess that's not a very good thing, considering she stuck her head in an oven when she was 33.

But, her writing. That's what I mean.

Am now for the first time actually seriously considering publishing. Maybe I'll ask Kenny if he knows anyone. And in the meantime, I'll get back to another sort of writing, which distracts you from life in another way by telling you that it's urgent urgent urgent, and that you just have to finish it or you'll be so screwed seven ways from Sunday that you won't be able to tell up from down.

Huh. I have no idea where that came from.

*Shrugs* Oh well. It's just me. Sitting here all by my lonesome. Typing. Nice of you to drop by. Thanks for reading. And listening, maybe.

And it's funny, but when I first started writing, I never wanted anyone who knew me personally to read what I wrote. Writing is.. awkwardly personal stuff, after all. Anyone who reads it would know what you're feeling inside, under all those layers. Also makes it a lot easier for people to criticise your work if they don't know you. And if they don't know you personally, well... then they can't place all those emotions to a person, a name, a face, and you're safe really. Because they can't get to where you are and look at what you wrote and look at you and put two and two together and they'll see through and through, inside and out.

But I suppose that's why half the time, this blog is coded in abstract half-poetic prose and stunted, paralysed verse.

Lookie what I found!! :D

All six episodes of TIm Burton's "Stainboy"!

Clicky-clicky:
Ep 1|Ep 2|Ep 3|Ep 4|Ep 5|Ep 6

All hotlinked from The Tim Burton Collective. :)

It's that time of the year (or sem) again. Papers, papers and more papers due.

1. 21st Oct: SC2220, Gender Studies; Reaction Paper 2 due

2. 31st Oct: AS3213, American Law: Language and Gender; Research Paper due

3. 2nd Nov: SC2220, Gender Studies; Project Write-up due

4. 4th Nov: SC2215, Sociology of Food; Essay due

5. 7th Nov: SC2101, Methods of Social Research; Research Paper due


And I haven't even got started on the Soci of Food essay yet!! I'm not even sure of what we're supposed to be writing about! Argh.

And I'm sick again. For the third time this year. Although now it seems to have mostly cleared up. :)

Finally finished that survey thing that I've been doing for the Soci department. If there's anything that I've learned, it's something about the "wildlife" of quiet HDB estates at night.

There're what Pam likes to call, Ratticus Giganticuses; giant rats. And there are plenty of stray cats. (Some of whose colouring really is quite nice.) And then there're suspicious looking men and bad tempered old men and middle-aged ladies lurking behind their curtains in their flats and screaming at you from inside. Or sometimes they open the doors and do it.

Oh well. Let's hope that I get paid for all the trouble a lot sooner than later.

And Venus is high in the sky tonight. A beautiful constant point of light which doesn't flicker, unlike all the stars around it, with a strange sort of pinkish aura ringing it. Or maybe that's just because of all the pink clouds in the night sky, looking like someone's been through them with a comb, faint furrow lines scored into them by the wind.

Met Wei Jian at Clementi today as I was waiting for 156!

Was kinda just standing there, waiting for the bus to go home, and out of nowhere, someone calls me, and who do I see walking up to the berth but Wei Jian! Haha... Turns out that he was on the way home from church. And apparently, "church" is in Boon Lay. Which is odd, coz Clementi and Boon Lay aren't exactly very near each other, and the few friends he had with him had come to Clementi for dinner, I think.

It's been ages since I last saw Wei Jian, man; probably the last time I went for alumni band, which was probably sometime earlier this year. He looks a bit more "normal" now, and not so "inverted-triangle" shaped. Haha. Still skinny though. Bloody hell, I want your metabolic rate!

And his hair's grown out, so his head doesn't look so weird, especially since he's all sharp angles. Haha...

He talks more nowadays; or maybe that's just because something kinda changed between us in J2 and we could talk to each other a lot easier. Used to be that in band, he'd almost always only talk to the trainees, and of the nine other trainees besides himself, he'd only really talk to Wai Lun and John and me.

So we talked for a bit, stuff about how life is and how school is for me and how weird it's going to be when he comes into NUS and I'll already be in third year by then! And how Sheena mentioned that Guan Jing left his hair really long and he's almost unrecognisable now; and despite all this time, I've only seen Chin Khiong once in the whole sem. Although he's in Engin, so I guess that would explain it. But Sheena says that he's in Arts all the time. Hm. *shrugs*

Someone out there's being very nice to me. Lately I've always had someone to talk to when my day's being screwy. First there was Paul (really out of nowhere, like someone had known that I'd like to talk to someone and so dropped Paul right in the middle of my path, haha), then there was Khim and Zhicong last week, and now there's Wei Jian, out of the blue!

Still got all those essays and research and personal problems and irritations to deal with though, so life isn't really as wonderful. Shall get my 2101 crosstabs done tomorrow. Once I have my second independent variable I can probably get started on my paper...

And I hope I get the work that Pei Pei recommended. Really need the money after watching "Quidam". :P

Shall go to sleep soon; meeting Chwan early tomorrow morning for shooting-- might be nice to shoot early in the morning for once, before the sun really gets too hot.

Piling up. That's the only way to describe my life right now.

My readings are piling up.

My archery stuff is piling up.

My term paper and project deadlines are piling up.

I need to get everything done.

I need time to slow down but it won't.

Maybe I just need time to break myself into small-enough bits that will drift away on the wind so no one will have to pick up the pieces.

I am my own undoing,
This hardened core that keeps its grudges
Like marks scored in the walls
Four strokes down and a stroke
'Cross them all;
Such sweet nothings you spoke
And it turned out they really were
Nothing at all.
How blind is blind
And what faith are words worth?

This is the sharp point of my paralysis
And the fine edge of my anger;
It bleeds out forced and concentrated--
Mars the endless white expanse.

Cold nights alone with a seething darkness
And a wish for a dream
For a lightbulb to shatter
And to rip its filament to shreds
That its light would never again shine
So it would only last have shone for me

But I do not hate you enough
To not want to love you.

And to throw myself against the walls
Hard enough to splatter;
Hearing all those cliches about
All that really matters,

Amor Vincit Omnia.
How beautifully you lie.

"Quidam" was just awesomely beautiful.

Benedict got us seats quite near the stage (Row G), so we had a pretty good view.

For those who don't know. "Quidam" (pronounced as "KEY-dahm") is a Latin word which refers to "a certain someone/thing". So in the essence of the show, Quidam is everyone and no one at the same time, the headless character in the show, the embodiment of the faceless society.

John, the ringmaster character in this show, was really funny. He was the first to make his appearance on the stage even before the show proper and started to hurry people to take their seats, since it was almost time to start; even did a bit of ushering. Haha.

The Diabolos act was cool; it was a very Chinese sort of act, but the music and the speed and mood were just so different that even if you'd been thoroughly jaded by all those cultural performances that you had to watch in school, you'd still be amazed by this one.

Contortion in silk was something that I'd seen in "Dralion" before, the German Wheel was quite amusing, especially since the artist seemed to be taunting the audience nearest to the stage by constantly rolling the large wheel that he was in over to the edge of the stage and stopping at the last possible moment; one of the men in the Spanish Web act looked eerily familiar in both his face and gait and poise; he reminded me of the Flying Man in Alegria. When Arts Central aired a recording of Alegria, I taped it and everytime I watched the Flying Man, it'd almost make me cry; something about flying and the music which made the mood so longing and so hopeful and so despairing all at the same time.

Oh, but I especially loved the Banquine act. Involves performers being thrown into the air and caught on nothing but two men's joined hands; reminded me a lot of Alegria's Russian bars.

Of course, there were the clowns. A staple in almost every Cirque du Soleil act, just as they were in every Shakespearean play. The two in "Quidam" were especially funny; haven't laughed that hard in ages.

Red balloons everywhere throughout the show.. well, maybe not everywhere, but at certain points; Zoe (the main character, a little girl) carrying one, then later she appears again carrying a few small ones all tied together; her mother, carrying larger ones tied together, and then later, dragging a string of deflated red balloons as she walks along the edge of the stage.

Like the end of childhood and becoming bored with the world. I thought that the red balloons symbolised childhood, anyway. Balloons for innocence and childishness and red for a burning kind of curiosity that every child has because the world is always new to them. Until they grow up and grow used to everything. Until they grow up and grow bored of the routine.

And Quidam is part of them and apart from them all the same time; because he is one of them and symptomatic of all of them all at once. And as the acts come and go and the faceless and veiled characters mill around and vanish in the background, Quidam appears and disappears from time to time, till he comes forward in the end to take back his hat, a hat without a head to cover, and everyone sheds their white coveralls and become different people.

And red balloons rise from all around the stage.

This is what happens when you start to miss trainings. Feeling damn lousy and useless right now coz my bow arm wasn't steady just not during training.

But on the bright side, Khim Nyang dropped by. With his brand-new iPod Nano.



It's so DAMN beautiful that I want one for myself. And I've never really been a huge Apple/iPod fan. He got his online, I think and it cost $403; reasonable, I think. 4 GB, and it's personalised. Sorta. It has his nickname laser-engraved on the back; it says "Greenlamb's iPod".

I know what I want for Christmas. Hahaha... :D

And I'm going to watch Quidam tomorrow! YAY!!! :D :D :D

Went for the Yulia concert in school; they were giving out free tickets for it.

Was nice; she sang pretty well. Though her mixed Russian accent and NZ/Aussie twang did cause some problems with her pronunciation. But she does have a lovely voice.

Spend all your time waiting
For that second chance
For a break that would make it okay
There's always some reason
To feel not good enough
And it's hard at the end of the day
I need some distraction
Oh beautiful release
Memory seeps from my veins
Let me be empty
And weightless and maybe
I'll find some peace tonight...

Bleah. Damn tired. But feel quite... accomplished. Yeah. That's the word.

Managed to go around to all the ten addresses that I had in about two hours, and I gave out 5 surveys! Yay!! Though on hindsight, it was probably only that fast coz most of the people weren't home... :P

But still. Not bad. If those 5 surveys are nicely completed, that's $75 for me. :D Plus it's not very strenuous; the blocks are all in the same neighbourhood, and thank goodness for lifts, haha.

Pam didn't have much luck with her addresses though.. she ended up having to replace A LOT of addresses due to ineligibility of the occupants to answer the survey, but finally, the last house that she went to, the lady agreed to do one! Yay! :D

So I'll collect them back tomorrow and turn them in on Monday... hopefully I'll get paid for it on the spot, but even if I don't, that's okay as well. After all, if I don't physically have the money with me, I can't squander it. Haha. :D

Woot! Arubaito today was MUCH more fun. Probably coz I had a "cheat sheet" of some basic things to say in Jap. Haha. And also coz my group this time round were slightly more proficient in English, and more friendly. Not that Wednesday's group were unfriendly; they just kept to themselves more.

This time, 7 girls, and except for one, Nozomi, who was 16, the rest were all 17. Surprisingly though, Nozomi, though she was the youngest, was the loudest and the joker of the group.

This time, we were ferried to Orchard Road from their hotel (Riverview Hotel) and the minute they were dropped at DFS Galleria, they made it known to me that they wanted to go shopping.

And shopping is no problem. Better than wanting to go all those cultural and educational places which I have no idea whatsoever where they are. So I took them to Taka, where they got really excited over the bubble tea stall at Basement 2, and the accessories store nearby (Hushush, I think it's called; their stuff really is quite nice); Nozomi and one of the other girls got excited when they spotted a selection of Japanese comics in the window of Kinokuniya; when I brought them to Chinatown, they were just as excited (if not more, since this group were more "noisy" and friendly than the group from Aichi on Wednesday) at all the colours of the buildings and all the cheap stuff they could buy.

One thing different, however, was that when they entered one of the "3 for $10" shops and saw the large array of costume jewellery (the rings, specifically), Nozomi told me that back in Japan, they preferred things simple and that only the "aunties" in Osaka (their hometown) wore such gaudy stuff. In her words, she called them "Osaka obachiang". At least, that's how it sounds like it should be spelt. :P

We crossed the Garden Bridge for a light snack again (I know where to go now, haha), and when they saw the decorations still strung up over the main road left over from the Lantern Festival, they got excited all over again; all the cameras came out (all seven of them), and they asked one of their schoolmates who was walking past to help take the pictures. They insisted I join in too.

Oh, and one thing that really fascinates me to no end..? You know how when you were in secondary school and maybe you and all your good friends were obsessed with taking NeoPrints and doing the "V" sign with your fingers was seen as trying to be "like all those Jap girls and act cute"? Well, all the Japanese students do that sign when they take pictures. Really. ALL of them. Even the guys.

They bought ice cream from the shop just beside the Q Bread bakery; it was some kind of natural fruit, gelato ice cream, I think, and they were quite amused at how the ice cream sometimes "stretches", like warm pizza cheese. The guy at the stall even gave me a little extra when I ordered lemon flavour, "for bringing all of them around", he said. Haha. :D

In the end, we went back to Orchard, and they went back to DFS Galleria early; we were told that they had to be back there by 4.30, but after eating Mac's for lunch at Taka, they wanted to go back at 2.30. Really early, but it turns out that they wanted to shop around.

And the most shocking thing of all was that they bought me a bear!



Ta-da. Romance, the TY Bear that they bought me from DFS itself. Ian was saying on Wednesday that he'd been doing this for so long and the pair of Havaianas that he was given that day was the best gift that he'd ever received; so I guess I'm lucky that I received something on just my second try! Haha...

Another $94.50 for six and a half hours; it's good money, but I can't help feeling bad coz I can't really talk to them. Oh well. Tomorrow, Pam and I are gonna start doing the Soci dept surveys... gonna have to go to Commonwealth to give them out and everything; hopefully I'll be able to give out some so I can collect them back on Sunday and bring them back to school to hand in on Monday.

It's a survey on late marriage and low fertility, by the way. I'm not sure if the department still needs more student interviewers, but if you're interested, you could ask. They're paying $15 per completed survey, by the way; and all you have to do is leave the questionnaire with the randomly selected household (they give you a list of addresses) and collect it back the next day. :)

Can't feel my arms anymore.

Well, okay, that was more like a figure of speech; I do feel them. They're making their presence and existence and attachment to my body very painfully known, thank you very much.

Yesterday, I did a tour guide job; Ian's lobang: bring Japanese students who are here on a field trip around Singapore. Basically, they tell you where they wanna go and you bring them there. And maybe chat with them a little. I don't know any Japanese though.

But apparently, the guides aren't really supposed to know Japanese, since the kids are supposed to be improving their English anyway, but most of the people whom the Jap Studies Soc get to do these arubaitos (as they're called) know Japanese. Makes it a lot easier to communicate with them, after all.

The group I had yesterday were six girls, all 17 years old, from Aichi prefecture. I only know four of their names though; Nodoka and Masuya seemed the most enthusiastic (so to speak), almost always walking in the front of the group, and hence the ones I spoke to (or attempted to communicate with) the most often. But Masuya and Iyumi were the only ones who actually ever started conversation with me. And Yoshie, the quietest girl of the bunch, never said a thing the whole time. Even when I asked her name, she just held up the lanyards that they were all wearing and showed me her name and smiled. Jinshen (the guy whom I think is in charge) later commented that they weren't from a very good school, so their English wasn't very good either.

My group did have electronic dictionaries, though. Haha.

Anyway, when we left the hotel yesterday, many groups wanted to go to Merlion Park. That threw a lot of the guides for a loop. Jinshen had briefed a few of the first-timers earlier, saying that usually, they'd want to go to Chinatown or Little India first, and anyway, at 9.30 am, nothing else is open. So when quite a few of them said that they wanted to see Merlion Park... yeah. And it didn't help that quite a few of us also had no idea where the place is.

I saw the lady from the tour agency (JTB) who was one of the go-betweens for the school and the agency as we came down to the lobby of the hotel, and I asked her where Merlion Park was. And the woman's immediate response was to stare at me and ask if I was Singaporean.

Well, no, I'm not, but that's not the point, woman! How many Singaporeans can actually be bothered with Merlion Park, anyway? Who cares to find out where the hell it is, unless they have kids who want to see the friggin' fish-lion-hybrid-monstrosity? Singaporeans are just all so jaded with the Merlion already; and the fact that I'm not the only one of the guides who didn't know where it is just proves it.

Worked it out in the end, though; caught up with some of the groups who'd already left the hotel, bumped into Jinshen's group at the first traffic light, opposite Raffles City, and found out that his group was going to Merlion Park as well. He said that he had no idea where it was either and that he'd never been there before, but he had a rough idea now of its location. So he told me to tag along. Which I very gratefully did.

Turns out the place is behind One Fullerton (if I remember right). Daft, I tell you. Should never have moved the Merlion in the first place; it looked much better and so much more visible where it was.

After that, Chinatown, where they spent a good amount of time, about one and a half hours; when we took the MRT, they were fascinated by how all they had to do was tap the card, and they were even more amazed when a dollar was refunded when they returned the standard ticket. As we came up the escalator, they started to get really excited as the shophouses came into view. They started to buy a lot of stuff from the "3 for $10" shops, and when we bumped into Jinshen's group again later, he suggested to me that I take them to Bugis if they wanted to have lunch, and told me to wait for a double-decker bus coz they'd have never been on one before.

But when we crossed the Garden Bridge, it turn out that they saw the Q Bread bakery and bought some stuff from there instead. Then, wanting to go back to the Orchard area, we crossed the bridge back, where they then wanted to stop and sit in the shade of a few of the trees up there to eat. And they got fascinated all over again when they saw that a crew were shooting an Indian movie on the bridge.

In the end, I brought them back to the hotel at 3.15 (we were supposed to be back by 3.30 pm coz they had an early evening flight); Ian's group bought him a pair of white Havaianas, man.

Awkward moment of the day was when we were on the bus and we passed the Civilian War Memorial; you know, the one which consists of four pillars, each of which is supposed to represent one of the four races in Singapore which suffered and died during the Japanese Occupation years. As it happened, the Memorial caught Iyumi's eye and she then turned to me and asked in hesitant English what it was.

First thought: "Oh shit."

In the end, with the help of one of their electronic dictionaries, I just told them that it was a war memorial and hoped that they wouldn't ask any further. They didn't. Good thing.

So why do my arms hurt, you may ask?

Well, yesterday, I figured that I might go to school after the tour was over and do a bit of reading, and as a lack of foresight on my part, I hadn't left my course pack in my locker but had brought it home instead. So yesterday, I carried my bag everywhere for about six and a half hours; I hardly sat down at all, and my shoulders became very sore. And today, archery training. After about a week of non-practice.

It all adds up. And it hurts.

At least today I've thought to leave my course pack in school, so if I want to do reading after tomorrow's tour, I won't have to lug it everywhere with me.

Oh, and did I mention that for the six and a half hours' work, I got paid $94.50? ;D

It's funny. People are telling me a lot of things which I never thought of myself before.

Suppose I've changed.

Maybe Jianwu's right, and maybe when girls find someone to love, they stop wanting to be strong all the time. Maybe it's why all the strong girls that guys may be attracted to all get clingy after a while.

Maybe character-wise... I'm a stronger person.

Maybe now, given my year in office and having to juggle a lot of stuff in my first year, I have more confidence.

Gone around looking for all the reasons and I think I've found them.

And I think I agree. And I understand.

These are the brightest corridors that wind around each other
White and blinding and filled with so much joy it could hurt
Fell through the storm that was waiting behind the last door
Twisted so tight that it felt like the warmest bedclothes
And a dreamed lover's embrace
And the safest place to get lost in.
Yew tree roots started to show and the shadows of its branches lengthened;
Evening of my first most longest journey;
Walking towards oncoming vehicles and suddenly wakening and realising
That nothing was halting my feet

Willow, willow, why do you weep? The rain is here,
The storm at its hardest just as its end approaches,
Weep less and not have to feed thine own love no more;
The yew tree saplings all have moved away; their roots up-plucked and
Away they whisked

So that left here is but an apple orchard in the sunshine
Fruits and flowers battered and lashed
And littered 'cross the ground
But are the trees not yet still standing?

Woo... Thank You Dinner only ended at about 11.30 pm last night; that's late. In comparison, last year's dinner at the Orchard Meridien ended at 10-plus. Although I suppose that's because last year's VIPs, the then Dean of Arts, Vincent Ooi, and one of the Vice-Deans who was with him, didn't turn up one and a half hours late. -_-

Tim, Yaozhong, Steven, and both Ivans even um... "dressed up" for the occasion. Really. They rented costumes.

Tim and Ivan Chen dressed as Roman gladiators (Tim complained of the "armor" causing chafing under his armpits; he said that he knew then why the Trojans lost. -_-||); Steven and Yaozhong dressed in those very simple blue, one-piece robes that men in China would wear in the past (you know, the type you always see the commoners wear in Chinese drama serials; apparently, Steven wanted to rent the "long pao", the robes embroidered with dragons which only emperors were allowed to wear, but it was too expensive. Heehee.); now guess what my dear Ivan came dressed as.

He rented a 70s' kind of suit; think John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. White, with tiny metal studs and beads and costume jewellery; long-sleeved top with flared cuffs and a wide, low neck, and flared pants with gold trim around the ends of the pant legs. And to top it off, reflector shades (Ray-Bans, I'm telling you) and a large brown afro wig.

I was somewhat mollified. :P But it suited him. I sometimes think that my dearie should've been born in the 70s.

But just half an hour before the dinner was supposed to start (at 7 pm), the headache that I'd had the day before came back, and later, I realised that it was the start of a fever. Very bad; my hands were cold (not entirely because of the air-conditioning) and my face was warm, which is what always happens to me when I have a fever.

So as it turns out, I ended up not eating very much due to a lack of appetite; thank you Chong Han and dear Yanyan for your concern, though. :) Chongy, if you say I'm lucky to have a nice boy like Ivan, then Shuyi's just as lucky to have someone like you. :D

Gift exchange finally came around; I gave Guanjie a pen. Was somewhat embarrassed coz I didn't have the time to wrap it, but it's nothing to be sniffed at: a Cross pen from their Ion range. The pens come in a lanyard set, coz the pen can be attached to it, and the pen comes out when you slide the two sides of the pen apart. I have one myself, and the sliding thing about the pen entertained my for quite a while. But that's just me. I take more pleasure than is normal in some of the simplest things in life; I don't know why. :D

And Guanjie got me a book! "The Five People You Meet In Heaven" by Mitch Albom; I've wanted that book for ages! Have already started reading it today and I'm one-third of the way through it. Now if only I read my readings that fast. :P

At the end, Steven gave all the 25th MC girls a pink rose each; lovely little things; mine's sitting in a vase on my bathroom countertop at the moment. :) Ivan waited with me for my mum to come pick me up since he decided that he was going to stay over after all, and there was a very amusing 15 minutes when my mum decided that she didn't mind sending Ivan home (all the way to Tampines) and she kept wanting to do so, even though I told her that he wanted to stay over. Eventually, Ivan personally talked her out of it, heehee.

As for today: went to Sharifah's house to do the tutorial assignment for Soci of Food: cooking. :D

We decided in the end to cook fish & chips, partly because we were lazy and because our group had a lot of "restrictions": Sharifah, being Muslim, can't eat pork; Jialing, being Buddhist, can't eat beef; and Jialing and I are both somewhat against spicy food.

Was fun covering the dory fish fillets in breadcrumbs and frying them, although I'm not sure the meal was entirely healthy; we deep-fried the fish and fries, after all. But we did leave them on paper towels to soak up some of the oil. Jialing and I were both somewhat traumatised at the amount of oil that Sharifah poured into the frying pan when we started. Seriously, I've never seen that much oil in a pan before. Was slightly nauseating.

And our food did taste pretty good. :D

Meanwhile, my two group members have enlightened me as to the fact that there is an essay for Soci of Food... which just adds to the number of term papers I have to do: the number now stands at four, and two of them have to be at least 10 pages long. -_-

So... I probably should get cracking and stop wasting my time here.

Well, archery training camp for the last two days was fun; got back yesterday with a massive headache though-- probably all that time spent out in the hot afternoon sun over the last two days.

My juniors are improving nicely and I'm readjusting to my lovely bow after a long period of irregular training during the holidays; getting ready to upgrade the poundage of the limbs and slowly make the shift to carbon ones somewhere around November.

Thank You Dinner is later this evening, 6.30 pm. Will find a gift for Guanjie, my Deputy Publications successor, later. Wonder what everyone's going to be wearing...

Got new carbon limbs on Tuesday. Pity, coz their poundage is 34 pounds, and the current poundage of my bow is only 28. Quite a big jump, so I've decided not to upgrade to a Hoyt riser and the carbon limbs just yet.


My metal bow, with its lovely blue Samick riser. 

The problem with this is that Samick risers can only take Samick limbs, and Samick doesn't manufacture carbon limbs-- only wooden ones. Carbon limbs are really made of fibreglass, by the way, not carbon, and because they're made of fibreglass, they give a much smoother draw than wooden limbs.

I'm somewhat reluctant to upgrade to carbon limbs because that means I'll have to change the riser to one which fits carbon limbs; something like a Hoyt Gold Medallist riser. And the GM risers are nowhere as pretty as my Samick one. They're all solid colours, and there're only three colours...

But on the other hand, there are the carbon limbs, which are just beautiful:


Winact carbon limbs, by Win&Win archery 

Now, the picture doesn't really do them justice; they're lacquered and shiny and the silver parts actually gleam under the light.

Sigh. Lovely riser, or lovely limbs? I could just have a black Hoyt riser. That would go quite nicely with the carbon limbs.

Decisions, decisions.

To quote Steven, I'm "now officially an ordinary Arts student."

I've finally officially stepped down; it's going to be weird, not having the clubroom key, watching the 26th go about their MC activities, and basically watching from the sidelines instead of being at the heart of all the action. But I suppose I'll have to get used to it.

"Goodbye to MC..." :P

Mondays. Ironically enough, when I planned my timetable and packed the very first day of the work week with 5 hours of lectures first thing in the morning, I thought that Mondays would be a terrible drag. But it turns out they're not.

American Law is actually quite stimulating; I might walk into class still a little fuzzy-minded, but the discussion's always interesting. And immediately after the three hours of seminar, I have two hours of Methods of Social Research lecture, but Pam always there to brighten the day. So, really, I could probably safely say that I enjoy Mondays the most this sem.

Ah, wait. Will be back in a bit. Clement has offered to go to Law library with me. Haha.


Woot! Back from Law Library. Cool. VERY quiet. VERY good studying environment. Maybe I'll study there during the term break. Or when exams draw near. Although nearing exams, it might just get really crowded and all the people around would probably be quite distracting on their own.

Also saw the long couches that Mario told me about last year; really quite an ideal environment for sleeping. Haha.

And outside, it looks to be getting ready to pour. Reminds me of rare desert showers and short-lived gardens; flowers blooming and wilting in the blink of an eye of the universe-- they last about a month, I think. What then of seven and a half months? How much does that mean?

Today is a bad day...

Was teaching my group of juniors today during archery, and halfway through their third end, suddenly it was as if someone had smothered my brain in cotton: my vision started to get more and more obscured by a grey "cloud", and my hearing started to get very fuzzy-- like someone had stuffed cotton in my ears.

My first reaction was "Oh, shit."

So went to sit down before I could actually fall over, and asked Zhan Tao to take over for me. Crappy. This has never happened to me before.

Think it was the sun that was especially strong today or something. Nicholas agreed with me on that, and Angel spent the better half of training sitting in the shade with me as well.

And then, after the juniors were done with their shooting, some of the seniors decided to shoot at 30m, so I thought, well.. okay.. Was a bit hesitant coz I've never shot at 30m with my metal bow before, but I thought that as long as I shifted my sight down, it should be all right.

So I moved the sight down. And apparently it wasn't enough.

My first arrow went low, hit the ground and bounced off the zinc fencing at the back of the range. And when we went to retrieve our arrows, I found that it was BENT.

FUCKING hell.

If fletches get nicked or torn, they can be easily replaced, but if the shaft of an arrow gets bent, then it's pretty much useless. Even if you try to bend it back, it'll never be as good as it was.

The most I could do was remove the point so that I could reuse it, but the fletches and nock pretty much had to be condemned along with the shaft. That's worth about $9 in total that I had to throw away. Bloody hell. This is the first major accident that my arrows have had.

And it's terribly upsetting. Sob. :'(

Internal elections ended at 3.30 am this morning. They started at 6.30 pm. Isn't the thought of it just horrifying?

And to top it off, it was disappointing and a complete waste of time. That's my opinion, although I'm quite sure that many of the 25th MC members will concur with me on that.

But anyway, I've sorta realised that I will miss the 25th comm.

I'm not a very social person, and I admit that I don't even spend nearly enough time with the people that I'm supposed to be working with, but after working with and losing sleep and getting stressed out with all these people during FOP, I'd say that I've got to know a few of them a little better than I have in the past year.

I wonder if I'll even hang around clubroom as often now that I'm stepping down. I wonder if I'll still see Xuzi and Hock everyday; Xuzi with his "Gerri, where's my rice and curry" question, simply because it rhymes and Hock with his laughing greeting and wanting to pat my head (most traumatising, I assure you :P). Beng Chong and our jokes about him being 60% gay, Yuimin and her "totally" bitchy way of talking (which I've learnt to appreciate :D), Alex and his himbo-ness, Xinyan and her random acts of kindness...

Yeah. I'll miss these people.

And now more than ever, I'm convinced that we're one of the best comms that Arts Club has seen.

25th, we rock.

Have you ever, as a child perhaps, tried a sip of your parents' cup of coffee and pulled a face at its bitter taste?

I have, and the first time I tried it, I solemnly said with as much conviction as my 6-year-old self could muster, that I would never drink coffee.

And so, nowadays, the only source of caffeine which I consume other than Coke and lemon tea is mocha.

And mocha, being coffee mixed with chocolate to make it less bitter, is what I call "sissy coffee".

Today, during my SC2101 lecture break, I came out of the LT wanting to buy a cup of mocha, but found that, to my dismay, the vending machine that sold mocha didn't sell it anymore. So I went to the other vending machine which sells canned drinks, and bought this:



Ladies and gentlemen, I have finally "graduated" to drinking.. um, "normal coffee". :P

I have new music; like? Kevin Kern's "We All Fall In Love Sometimes"; I especially like the beginning-- the first short 15 seconds or so has a lingering feel of autumn tinged with sadness and children running in a meadow, mere dots against the expanse of grass, carefree and full of hope.

ROP (Rite of Passage) Camp for the incoming 26th MC is starting in about 2 and a half hours' time, and I'm part of the comm; one of the station I/Cs, with Ivan. Should be fun (probably more for us, the comm, than for them, the incoming MC).

Still looks somewhat overcast outside; have plans to train for a while with Nicholas later, at 4 pm, actually, so I hope it doesn't rain. Well, actually, the lazy part of me does. :P Especially after yesterday's training... 41 push-ups, coz everyone accompanied James to do the 21 that he accumulated as penalties during training... -_-

My back muscles ache. The juniors' probably hurt more though, seeing as they did those push-ups *after* all their training.

Hm hm hm. Hectic next three days. We'll see how everything goes.

Back to school indeed. All the readings and projects are just starting to pile up.

Aside from American Law (which has the most readings, and that's probably the reason why I'm trying so desperately to keep up with it, even at the expense of my other modules), I'm about six readings behind for each of my remaining four modules. Something tells me that I'm awfully screwed. Unless I manage to do a helluva lot of catching up during the mid-sem break.

So why am I here blogging when I could be doing more productive things with my time? Such as coming up with those questions that I'm supposed to submit for next Monday's American Law discussion, but we won't go into that...

Well, I don't know. But I can tell you though, that I was kinda bored, so I surfed through some of my older posts, read all the memories and some of my friends' memories of the same times, and while I was doing that, I came upon this quiz that I saw on Ivan's blog a long time ago. And so I thought, well, while we're in the business of wasting time, why not?

So here; I did it, and this is the result.

Congratulations Gerri, you are...

Scarlett Ting of joewei.blogspot.com


You are independent, smart and beautiful. Its too bad you don't see that yourself because life's little difficulties brought down a lot of your self confidence. As a result, you talk cryptic and you don't trust people easily. You care a lot for your friends and your loved ones, sometimes even more than you care for yourself, although they don't always seem to appreciate it. Don't let that affect you. As the saying goes, you don't miss the water till the well runs dry. So hang in there, you're a star in the making.

Which Singaporean Blogger Are You?

Hm. I don't read blogs very much so I don't know much about the person... but the description sounds rather accurate to me. :)

Completely random post. Just blogging coz I feel like it.

Going to help prepare cheese prawns for dinner later. My aunties are here, visiting, from Malaysia. The prawns are huge, by the way; they're tiger prawns, not the smaller grey prawns that we usually use at barbecues. Gonna be hard to wrap, especially since I only have one packet of cheese.

Walked down the road just now to pick up the cake that my mum ordered from the lady who lives at house no. 70. She makes lovely mango cakes, but her durian cakes are much better, in my opinion.

Was walking there, dressed in my bright green Arts Camp tee, a pair of bright pink shorts and my bright blue Havaianas slippers.

Felt bright and happy, a bit like Sunday morning instead of evening. :)

My American Law module continues to, in equal parts, fascinate and depress me.

Before I go any further with this post however, I should warn you that if the subject of abortion causes you discomfort, DO NOT read this post.

We're on the topic of abortion rights in American Law, as it were, so for the whole day today, I've been reading this case which happened in 2000, Stenberg vs. Carhart; a case in which Leroy Carhart, a Nebraska physician who performs abortions, filed a suit claiming that the Nebraska law which banned partial birth abortion was unconstitutional because it infringed on a woman's freedom and right to choose to have an abortion.

So in the laying out of some of the basic facts, you get some squeamish stuff, such as the definition of a partial birth abortion, and then some descriptions of the procedure itself, which is also called "dilation and evacuation" (D&E) or "dilation and extraction" (D&X); the latter is the name for the D&E procedure when the foetus is removed feet first. Although I really don't see a difference.

And here's how the procedure's described:

"...intact D&E proceeds in one of two ways, depending on the presentation of the fetus. If the fetus presents head first (a vertex presentation), the doctor collapses the skull; and the doctor then extracts the entire fetus through the cervix. If the fetus presents feet first (a breech presentation), the doctor pulls the fetal body through the cervix, collapses the skull, and extracts the fetus through the cervix."

My toes were squirming a little unhappily by the end of that paragraph.

And then the next one went into even further detail.


"...American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists describes the D&X procedure in a manner corresponding to a breech-conversion intact D&E, including the following steps:

'1. deliberate dilatation of the cervix, usually over a sequence of days;

'2. instrumental conversion of the fetus to a footling breech;

'3. breech extraction of the body excepting the head; and

'4. partial evacuation of the intracranial contents of a living fetus to effect vaginal delivery of a dead but otherwise intact fetus.'"


It reminds me most unpleasantly of a talk which the Secondary 4s were given in my time, during one of our pastoral care lessons; an abortion talk, of course, during which we were shown a video on abortion (and the gruesome results of it) and some diagrams of how abortions were carried out.

Other than the method which removes the less-than-3-month-old foetuses by vacuuming them out of the uterus, the one other method which I distinctly remember is the partial-birth one. Basically, in a diagram, we were shown the above procedure which I just copied and pasted above. The abortionist manipulates the foetus into a feet-first presentation (if that isn't already the case), delivers the foetus up till only its head is still inside the mother's body, then uses something to puncture the base of the foetus' skull and drain some of the contents before delivering the rest of the foetus, intact but dead.

I'm not sure what kind of effect reading stuff like this might have on most people, but I imagine that it should be quite disturbing. Probably more so for girls, considering that the cervix, uterus, etc. which is mentioned so often in the text I'm reading is the equipment which we all have, and the thought of someone or some foreign object messing around in it is just... very unsettling.

If there are women out there who specialise in abortion law (if there's such a thing, specialising in a particular kind of law), I have no idea how you read stuff like this on a daily basis.

I'm not even halfway through the case reading yet.