I was panicking about my SC4212 paper deadline on 29th March an hour ago; I realised that apart from some stuff which I had gleaned from other modules and common knowledge, I didn't have anything in the form of a literature review. Because hey, there IS no literature on my topic. -_-

Then I figured maybe it was about time I looked at other working class cultures to see if I could extrapolate anything from there (stupid me, only thought of it so late), instead of constantly trying to look for information on Singapore's case.

My essay could turn out terribly sparse and totally not the quality of a level-4000 essay at all....!! *wails in despair*

Could I get a better grade for putting in effort to write on something that hasn't been researched on, at least...?

But then 5 minutes ago, I logged in to check my email, to see if Prof. Hadiz had emailed me back with the contact whom I could interview for said paper.

And the most recent unread email right at the top of the screen reads "Essay Extension".

So it turns out the deadline for my SC4212 essay has been moved back a WEEK, till the 5th of April.

God bless Prof. Waterson. :D

*Heaves a gigantic sigh of relief and bounces round her room cheering madly (at the same, if it's possible XD)

On another note, Prof. Hadiz is now one of the nicest ever profs in the Soci department in my opinion, coz he's just been so helpful.

Will you be my ISM supervisor in two semesters' time, prof? :P

Of shiny new things.

Kristy finally got her new NX Expert riser on Friday, so she was setting it up and tuning it yesterday, with Coach's help, of course. :D Took ages, but she finally stepped out into the sun to shoot her first arrows with the new bow. And it's damn quiet. 0.0....

No more vibration sound! No more funny "twang"!

Just a short "thumm" plucking noise and then it all goes completely silent!

Behold Gerri's excitedness (despite the fact that it's not even her bow, the stupid little girl) and saucer-plate-sized eyes.


On my side... well, Mr Lim Chee Wee called recently to say he now sells Samick products. Kinda odd, since at the time when Kristy and I had the $100 vouchers from IVP, he kept trying to get us to buy stuff from him, but when I mentioned that I actually wanted a Samick riser, he said that he didn't sell Samick products. And suddenly he SMSes, emails and *calls* me to tell me that he now has Samick stock.

I've been eyeing the silver Samick Masters riser for quite some time, and a month ago, the only price which I'd managed to find for it online was Bill Wee's price: $750. Ouch.

On Friday, while delivering Kristy's riser to her at her hall, Mr Lim asked her to pass on a message to me, saying that while Bill Wee sells for $750, he's selling it for only $698. (Hehe... although just this morning I checked Bill Wee's site and I noticed it's changed... he's selling it for $695 now.) Ooh. Price war. XD

Then yesterday, at training, I mentioned the whole thing to Coach and he suggested I wait for a while and let him check with Mr Tang, the head of our archery association in Singapore, who's also a dealer for Samick equipment.

And guess what..?

On account that he's on good terms with our coach, Sunny Low, and he knows that Sunny's our coach and he knows that we're all poor students (or some combination of factors along those lines, hehe), he's willing to offer it to me at $680. XD.....!! The consumer is king indeed. :P

But he said that he'd check to see if he had any silver stock with him, and I still need to confirm if I'll actually be buying (and I need to find somewhere I can earn the money...!!).

Here's a look at the pretty thing:

See the silver riser in the middle? :D


This one's a close up photo of the blue riser; pity I couldn't find one of the silver one, but the blue one does seem awfully pretty up close... :P


And finally, I have new glasses!! :D

My sisters collected their new glasses last week when I went home, so I went to get my eyes checked and get new glasses too; the frame of my old pair had actually got a bit twisted after a minor accident during training last year.

So the good news is that apparently, my degree has dropped by 25, and my astigmatism is gone too (the optician tells me it used to be 25)!

When I went to pick them up yesterday night, my new glasses make everything *SO* much clearer; it was a bit of a shock when I first put them on. I thought my old glasses were still okay, but apparently a change of just 25 in the degree makes all the difference! Everything's just a lot sharper.

Less than a week till my Soci of Power and Social Memory term papers are due.

Gerri is in pretty deep shit.

Politics has really never been my kinda thing (and at the same time, I think I know more Political Science majors than Soci majors; my boyfriend and godbrother even number amongst them), and while the course is pretty interesting and thought-provoking, I'm still at pretty much of a loss as to how to research for it.

As for Social Memory.. I think that paper's in even more trouble.

In what seems like a repeat of my level 4 module last sem, I just *couldn't* think of any possible topic to write on, until last week's session, when we got started on a bit of discussion on working class memory and whether any such thing existed in Singapore.

Then it occurred to me: why not write a paper on it?

And then on Saturday, I asked my prof, Prof. Waterson, for some advice on it, and when I mentioned my proposed paper topic, the first thing she said was, "Wow, that's more for a thesis than a term paper, isn't it?"

And um.. well, I didn't really understand what she meant by that, but I went on ahead and asked if she could point me in the direction of any topic of interest which I could develop or expand upon. And I also mentioned that I'd checked the library and found very little literature in the way of a Singaporean working class. And she suggested interviewing people.

Argh. *SO* do not have time for that now.

And then, on Tuesday, during my Soci of Power tutorial, Prof. Hadiz mentioned something in the course of the class discussion which just made me silently curse and go: "Oh shit, way to go, Gerri."

What he said was this: "Well, one of the things which really hasn't been researched very much in Singapore is the working class."

Which just totally EXPLAINS why there is practically NO literature on it.

ARGH. How to write a term paper for a topic which has NO prior research??! In one week..!!?!

Well, all right, don't completely panic. I have an outline for the essay. Prof. Hadiz gave me someone to contact for an interview, but eh... I had to email Dr. Leong for it, and he hasn't replied. Damn.

If I look on the bright side though, it seems I've found a topic for my Independent Study Module, if I choose to do it next academic year. And it seems I have a pretty good idea of who I should pick for supervisor too.

To my 4th-year/graduated seniors who read this blog: anyone have any idea how you go about asking someone to be your supervisor for ISM and how early you can ask them?

Something I found on Ivan's blog-- lovely lovely fun. ^_^ Go check it out and get your own little widget. :)

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I love this song right now-- "Prelude 12/21" by AFI. I just wish that the band had made it longer to begin with.

But maybe there was a purpose or hidden meaning or a point they wanted to make in keeping it short. :)



If you're interested, the "12/21" in the song title is a date which seems like it may be a reference to one of two things; the 21st of December is the date of the Winter Solstice and in ancient Mayan culture, the 21st of December is thought to be the date on which the world will end. This same idea is also found in a few other cultures, and they all seem to agree that the exact date will be 21/12/2012. Hence, "Prelude 21/12", if you think about it, is really a "prelude" to death; a suicide note, a swan song-- anything that will finally let you "lay (it) to sleep".

Today's post is brought to you by the number 300.

Because I just realised that all the significant events that happened to little ol' me yesterday seem to revolve round that the pretty little number.

Firstly, miracle of all miracles, when I was least expecting it, I broke my 300 barrier when I was shooting one round from 30m distance. The exact score was 316/360. Bloody hell it was amazing. :D

Although I do realise that the 30m round comes after the 50m round in competition, so realise that it's not really a "fair" approximation of my normal score.

But then that more or less confirms that my problem is keeping up my stamina, and in a way, it's a good morale boost. Hey, at least I raised my own glass ceiling. :)


And the second thing was the "300" movie.

There were sneak previews yesterday, and my dear Joseph just *had* to watch it as soon as was humanly possible, so I went along with him, after I'd quelled my cynicism and was sufficiently satisfied that it wouldn't be a mindless action flick, like the disappointment that the second Matrix installment turned out to be.

And really, it wasn't. In fact, it was a fairly inspiring film, and I *loved* the.. um.. sole actress in the whole movie. :P

I don't know what it is, but over the years I've become very sensitised to stereotypes that get employed in film and various forms of mass media. Personally, I'd say that maybe it's due to my training in the social sciences and humanities. Given that this film has a practically all-male cast, I was a bit of leery of what the portrayal of the only woman in the film was gonna be like, but the reviews I'd read so far assured me that she was gonna have at least some character development.



*SPOILER ALERT*
(Do not read the following half of this post if you haven't watched the film yet and don't want it ruined for you!)



And I loved her within the first half an hour of the film, when the Persian emissary asked Leonidas why she, a woman, would think that she could speak among men, and she answered that it was because "Only Spartan women give birth to real men."

Something, I'm sure, which has escaped the notice of most patriarchal states; for all that you esteem the men, only the women can bring them into the world.

So.. okay. The female character passes; she has character development, she has depth, she has more than five lines in the entire film and I love her delivery of the Spartan women's send-off for their men. Curiously enough, I was telling Joseph earlier in the day that it was said that when Spartan women sent their husbands and sons off to war, they would tell them to come back with their shields, or on them-- to return in glory still bearing their shields, or be borne home upon their shields after dying an honourable death.

And Queen Gorgo says it in the movie. With such force and passion that you really can believe that this is a Queen who *knows* exactly what her place in her husband's heart is. If you ask me, that scene was just beautiful in all its simplicity.

I like that she doesn't just fade into the background or become some story by the wayside of the main theme. She's instrumental to Leonidas' campaign for freedom in the film, and my opinion is that by her speech before the Spartan council, she lays the foundations for Delios' tale later; she makes them open to Delios' persuasion, as he spins his tale of valour.

But something I began to notice as the film progressed was this: there seems to be a very consistent portrayal of the Persians (and by association, all the peoples of the Asian continent, especially as Delios' narration begins to refer more and more to the Persian army as "the forces of Asia" and "the creatures of Asia") as being barbaric peoples.

Uncivilised peoples who keep slaves, torture animals and produce such freaks of nature as the Persian Immortals in the film and their chained bloodthirsty man-beast which nearly brings about Leonidas' death.

Asia becomes a land of slaves and bondmen, while Greece, Sparta and the European world are the lands of "free men".

It strikes me as a kind of racism, if you ask me; why only mention the "free men" when Greece and Sparta had slaves and bondage of their own?

I'm nitpicking, I know, but hey, as they say, film buffs (not that I'm claiming to be one) only get really picky about the films that they like. :) In the end though, I know that it's not exactly supposed to be an accurate historical representation of events; I know that film can't be perfect; I know that some themes are more important than others and prejudice has its own part to play in making the world easier to understand.

But I don't agree that we have to condone it.

So even if making everything black-and-white does make us root for the bravery of the Spartans and makes their heroism and sacrifice so much nobler, I still say that not every Asian in the Battle of Thermopylae was out for European blood, and self-proclaimed, power-hungry god-kings were not found in Asian cultures alone.

And that, as one of my lecturers likes to say, "we need to look at the history of things to really understand what they mean now".