Colin's Journal

5:12pm: Weekly Movie Screenings
Here's the deal: I have about 35 weekends from now till I have to leave for college. Every Saturday afternoon starting from Nov 27, I'll hold a screening of two related movies, usually classics. If you've always heard of or wanted to watch a movie but never managed to make the time for it, well, now you have an excuse.

This is the tentative list of movies that I've drafted up; please take a look and tell me if you'd be interested to join in. If you have any suggestions for movies that you'd like to watch, or directors/actors that you want to learn more about but don't know where to start, do comment as well. (Also, if you've a place to offer that's conducive for screening movies, or you have DVDs to lend, or if you think Saturday afternoons or double-bills aren't a good idea, please make yourself heard too!)

Filmmaker	Scheduled Movies
Directors/Writers
Billy Wilder	Double Indemnity | Some Like It Hot
Charlie Kaufman	Being John Malkovich | Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Edward Yang | Tsai Ming-liang	Yi Yi | What Time Is It There?
James Cameron	Aliens | The Terminator
Orson Welles	Citizen Kane | The Magnificent Ambersons
Quentin Tarantino	Pulp Fiction | Jackie Brown
Robert Altman	Nashville | McCabe & Mrs Miller
Steven Spielberg	Jaws | E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Werner Herzog	Aguirre, the Wrath of God | Grizzly Man
William Wyler	The Best Years of Our Lives | Funny Girl
Woody Allen	Hannah and Her Sisters | Annie Hall
Woody Allen	The Purple Rose of Cairo | Bullets Over Broadway
Wong Kar-wai	In the Mood for Love | Chungking Express
Actors
Al Pacino	Scarface | Dog Day Afternoon
Buster Keaton | Charlie Chaplin	The General | Modern Times
Cary Grant	His Girl Friday | North by Northwest
Clark Gable	Gone with the Wind | It Happened One Night
Clint Eastwood | John Wayne	The Good, the Bad and the Ugly | The Searchers
Glenn Close	Fatal Attraction | Dangerous Liaisons
Humphrey Bogart	The Maltese Falcon | Casablanca
Jack Nicholson	Five Easy Pieces | Chinatown
James Stewart	Mr Smith Goes to Washington | Vertigo
Judy Garland	The Wizard of Oz | Meet Me in St Louis
Julia Roberts	My Best Friend's Wedding | Erin Brockovich
Katharine Hepburn	Alice Adams | Holiday | Adam's Rib
Liza Minelli	Cabaret | New York, New York
Marlon Brando	On the Waterfront | Apocalypse Now
Michelle Pfeiffer	The Fabulous Baker Boys | Batman Returns
Meryl Streep	Silkwood | Bridges of Madison County
Nicole Kidman	To Die For | Birth
Penelope Cruz	Volver | Elegy
Robert DeNiro	Taxi Driver | Raging Bull
Tilda Swinton	Michael Clayton | Julia

11:05am: Twitter Consolidation, Vol 3
My Twitter posts since the last consolidation (username: colinlowyc):

Movies
DISTRICT 9: Bracing as a quasi-documentary on alien immigrants, and as a horror film on unwanted transformations; opaque as an action flick.

I hate that all the blogosphere buzz is over before the movie even arrives here in Singapore: first DISTRICT 9, and now INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

MOON: Thoughtful scifi for beginners: promising premise, predictable plotline.

The trailers for A SERIOUS/SINGLE MAN made me think: same film, gonzo marketing team.

Off to watch INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS while the rest of my family watches THE COVE. The movies' attitudes to violence are likely to diverge ;)

Never again will I buy a seat in a movie theatre on row F or closer. The screen is *leering* at me.

Caught PAPER HEART with Myf. One of my fave movies ever. Shades of WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, with clever, disciplined use of the handheld trope

Dining and snacks
Ate instant noodles cooked with McDonald's curry sauce. Tasted like a variant of Japanese kare ramen.

Ice cubes, yoghurt + honey (2:1 ratio), bananas, blueberries, mint leaf, cinnamon powder, a scoop of rum&raisin ice cream: heavenly smoothie

Dictionazism
Pet peeve: Jokes that involve a suspension of disbelief that the "t" and "th" sound are homophones (http://xkcd.com/282/). They are NOT.

What's the best English term for "siap", that icky sensation you get on your tongue from unripe guava or the skin of black grapes? (Best answer I got: "tart")

TV Shows and ads
RT #NDP09 Rally: Children stayed away from their parents' funerals as carried out in a different religious tradition =(

RT #NDP09 Rally, in a projected vid of Marina Bay: "Trees! The instant trees have arrived" LOL PM's gibing the machine!

The judges on Singapore Idol have settled in impressively! Dick Lee: "I became a musician at 35. Don't ever say there are no more chances." Wow.

Is anyone else frustrated at not knowing what the words edited out of the driving instructor's rant in the GOLD 90.5 FM ad were?

Channel 8's new self-congratulatory ad is disturbing: so now the mentally-ill make for good dramatic actors?

Why is Mika prancing half-naked on a bed looking like Brüno? "The Boy Who Knew Too Much" indeed. I thought he wasn't out.

Christopher/Fann's wedding prep show proves that local TV needs more unscripted, non-"social issue" docs. It's actually heartfelt and real!

Books and other fictions
Just finished Sarah Rees Brennan's THE DEMON'S LEXICON... I'm breathless. Chekhov's armouries don't get any better than this.

Sat in Charm's class ytd in army uniform. One student's short story: "Withered roses scattered on a tombstone." Genius

Wisdom tooth-extraction anecdotes
It is surreal to not know you're falling asleep, then have someone wake you up to tell you the operation's over, your 4 wisdom teeth are out

I have so much cotton in my mouth, I'm mumbling like Marlon Brando in THE GODFATHER.

My jowls have swollen to the size of Jodie Foster's in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. I've never had a fuller jaw — eep!

Existentialist/academic musings
Isn't the fun of being a teacher in seeing how to get people excited about things — that is, in being a great recommender?

"Abstinence is a good thing, but only when practised in moderation." - Anon

Nothing is illusory — happiness, sadness, etc. — just because it is fleeting.

Happiness is a state of mind, not a state of affairs.

Me: "Why d'you always ignore me?" (pause) Sis: "Sorry, what?"

National Service
11 weeks to ORD: the first time in my army life that I'm wearing coveralls. #NS

Peanut gallery (after I grinned through a phone call): "You look like a guy who's in love & has just been f'ed" "You have a radiance. I can see the butterflies ard you"

Of the things I expected to do as a 3SG, presiding over people pissing and chatting with those who can't conjure enough was not one of them.

Random stuff
Switched over to Starhub's 8 Mbps broadband after a decade of Pacnet's 512kbps. (Holy talent, I've been had! Look at those speeds!!)

12:42pm: Twitter Consolidation, Vol 2
My Twitter posts for the last month (username: colinlowyc). And I can't believe it didn't occur to me to join the National Day Parade live feed! *pouts* (Russell Peters: "Not, like, a live feed... wouldja grow up?")

Movie Reviews
WEST SIDE STORY: (Romeo + Juliet's plot) - (Shakespeare's poetry) = Awful book scenes. Moreno sets her scene ablaze; other songs not well-lit.

Despite the subpar HARRY POTTER movies, I can't wait to see HALF-BLOOD PRINCE: the trailer spewed hormones, and they feel like old friends.

HALF-BLOOD PRINCE: Potter fatigue has caught up to me; all of J.K. Rowling's missed dramatic opportunities keep thwacking me in the face.

SILKWOOD proves that horror movies are scarier when they feel like a part of life, especially one you haven't the means to escape. *winces*

KATONG FUGUE: How is it that celluloid pianos so readily channel their player's inner desires? (cf. THE PIANO)

PUBLIC ENEMIES: Retreads BONNIE AND CLYDE, laced with the irony that even America's Most Wanted doesn't beat its citizens' self-absorption.

FIGHTING: A formula film w/o the formula's best parts: the sweat-soaked anticipation, the thrill of the win, or, y'know, the actual fighting

UP: Apart from the vignettes of lifelong marriage... eurgh. EURGH. Pixar at its most infantile.

Movie-related thoughts
Stars of the '00s: Joker (Ledger), Erin Brockovich (Roberts), Gandalf (McKellen), Miranda Priestly (Streep), Capt Jack (Depp), 007 (Craig).

Idea: Remake CABARET with Alan Cumming as Sal Bowles, Liza Minelli as the Mistress of Ceremonies, and Jude Law as a mute Brian Roberts...

Idea: Remake SWEENEY TODD with Barbra Streisand as Mrs Lovett - who else could nail her brand of rapidfire humorsong? Remix TODD with WEST SIDE STORY love songs for Anthony and Johanna's sidestory: "Every sight that I see is Johanna..." "Tony, Tony..."

National Service
(As I type out paragraphs from a text for later reference:) Solomon: "While other people are going to the gym, you're doing heavy lifting."

I failed my SOC yesterday. Again. This time by one second, instead of three. =(

Completed myORD quiz 3 months in advance. w00t!

Ran 21km at East Coast Park. Afterwards, I rested my head on a table at Carl's Jr and puked 100plus and glucose water into a plastic bag.

Two of my bunkmates (Bin, Han) are members of my country club! It seems my Saturday morning swims have been "too early" for chance meetings.

Semi-coerced into my first karaoke session... but I'm liking it! Turns out I like my disembodied voice more than the one I hear inside me.

Dining and snacks
I've discovered that plain yoghurt (a misnomer: it's sour!) works as a healthier, low-fat substitute for cream cheese in PB&J sandwiches.

Celebrated mum's b-day with spicy pork sausages, melt-in-your-mouth baked potato and juicy rosti at Paulaner Bräuhaus, near Suntec.

Glugged a Baileys Irish Cream on the rocks at the Esplanade, at my dad's behest. Turns out I'm a happy drunk! ^^

BreadTalk's green tea muffin has the musty fragrance and crumbly consistency of Play Doh left out to harden. (No kidding - it's uncanny!)

Plain porridge is tasty! Why would anyone want to sully that with condiments?

Dictionazism
Myf noted (via Jared Diamond) that "politically popular" is more accurately phrased than "politically correct". Guys, update your diction!

Isn't an excuse tantamount to a valid reason not to do sth? At what point did "that's NOT an excuse" mutate into "that's JUST an excuse"?

Existentialist/academic musings
We may not feel this until we're older, but the Aughts ('00s) are our generation's decade, from 9/11 to Obama and then beyond...

We busy folk thrive on content, but for my dementia-ridden grandma, every moment is like a scene plucked from a dream, bereft of context.

The evidence leaves us agnostic: hence when we choose our religion, we're picking the practices we wish to uphold! (Belief follows after.)

National events
inconversNation: Speakers had anecdotal evidence & vested interests. NTU president: "Can't speak for our education system, but NTU rocks!" They're not researchers, they're businessmen! Let them talk abt their experiences, don't hog-tie them to academic topics!

IndigNation: S'pore govt's illiberal pragmatism → liberalising of the arts → foreign-made films w gay content / S'pore gay self-expression. Hong Kong has gay rights (govt-imposed to slow Tiananmen-propelled emigration) but less social acceptance; S'pore has the opp.

National Day Parade '09: Creative director (Ivan Heng), visual FX director (Brian Gothong Tan), scriptwriter (Alfian Sa'at): second-class citizens celebrating citizenship. huh.

Random links
Are packrats animists? http://bit.ly/16usSF; IKEA's snarky rejoinder: http://bit.ly/puaFZ

Tales of a homeless father and daughter in The Sims 3: http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog... literally: http://bit.ly/5ECwG

Decent deals
Bought "The Little Black Book of Books" (1000 key moments/figures in 1900s literature) for $9.57 after 50% off @ Harris, Jurong Point!

4 spice jars (Rajtan, 150ml) at IKEA for $3.90; great for door gifts!

9:00pm: Twitter Consolidation
Lately I've been hanging out at Twitter (username: colinlowyc), whose 140-character limit, in enforcing pithiness, encouraged me to write more in fewer words. This is opposed to LiveJournal, whose blank "Post an Entry" fields have proved more daunting than liberating. Here are my cranial oozings from the last month, organised by their vague topics, with some conjoining and chronological swapping for added coherence:

Hanging out at LaSalle
No point to live music if you can't see them play! I'd love for The Observatory to weave its sonic textures around a proper narrative next. The Life! arts journalists ended up rating Invisible Room as the S'pore Arts Fest's Best Test of Endurance. xD

Charm and I lay next to each other on the LaSalle turf and gazed up at the canopy. Security uncle told us to please sit up, there are CCTVs.

Attended Short+Sweet S'pore 2009, a festival of ten 10-minute local plays, at LaSalle last night with Charm and two ex-ACJC blokes. Charm breathlessly whispered each new plot twist: incestuous siblings, former sex professionals, straight-boy crushes who turn out gay...
#4: 7 RULES, a taut reversal of 7 mafia rules by a rising assassin on the kingpin enforcing them, sullied by a comic-relief waitress.
#3: BIRTHDAY SURPRISES, warm in the company of old friends, shared song and memories; cruel at the notion of time passed too assuredly by.
#2: LOVE & ROBBERY, a Bollywood-tinged farce of a guy and girl who meet-cute over trivial acts of misanthropy while held hostage in a bank.
#1: THE FRUITS OF WAR, a side-splitting, fruit-splattering saga of escalation between a dark-skinned girl and the boy who ignores her.

Movies
Watched Ang Lee's THE WEDDING BANQUET in the wee hours before booking in for COS duty this morning. Queer domesticity warms my soft heart.

BOYS DON'T CRY: Rural America? Boring + treacherous. Avoid!
THE WEDDING BANQUET: Urban America? Work stress + domestic bliss. Avoid parents!

RATATOUILLE: Anyone (who can reconstruct whole recipes from scratch with just a whiff) can cook.

TAKEN: dooming teenagers worldwide to clampdowns on travel by their paranoid parents, who believe that kidnappers lie at every foreign turn.

Must rent THE SUM OF US ('94) as part of my crusade to hunt down and watch queer movies that err on the side of overtolerance.

Also, gotta try REVOLUTIONARY ROAD in silence, on Charm's recommendation.

INDY JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE: Sturdy pulp movie, with stars (Ford, Connery, Phoenix) that knew they were stars, and how to act as stars.

Verdict on the 007 tussle: CASINO ROYALE proved that Daniel Craig was a great find; DUPLICITY proves that Clive Owen was the better fit.

National Service
Cookhouse uncle blessed my future teaching career. Gestures like these remind me that we don't need God to be grateful for what we have.

Pillaged apples from the cookhouse fridge for dinner. So, heh, it could be said that I'm detoxing on public funds.

I'm now a platoon sergeant to 20 men. A fellow 3SG dubbed me "sergeant mama" because most of them are fiercely protective of me.

Having become a platoon sergeant, I know now why my ex-teacher cringed when we then-students spotted her with her fiance at KAP.

I live as though my worlds (family, NS, academia, romance) don't overlap. Perhaps I have no other choice.

L.L. tried to guilt-trip me into extending his book-in time so they could cut his dad's birthday cake. I told him to stuff it.

In the army, my words have grown artless. This scares me when I have nothing to hide behind, and comforts me when I have nothing to fear.

The worst way to spend any chapter of your life is to wait for it to be over.

Potential post-ORD plans: the Gibbon Experience in Laos (http://www.gibbonx.org).

Dining and snacks
Crispy chicken linguine (aglio olio) with nori + iced lemon tea + chocolate truffle cake for $15.50 at Ambush, Taka B2.

Chicken kebab for $5.50 at Sultan Kebab, Peace Centre; then silky soya beancurd for 60¢ along Selegie Rd.

The new Pringles Extreme: Blazin' Buffalo Wing Super Stack offers Tabasco-tinged chips for $3.95!

Random thoughts
Off-centre phrases of the day: "provoke harmony", "ceramic bafflement".

Laymen tend to use "momentum" as the converse of "inertia", as though the latter only describes a tendency to persistent INaction.

You know what would be a great name for a university? AFAIK!

4:15pm: Not a prison for privilege

Eventually, my rejection of authority spilled into self-indulgence and self-destructiveness, and by the time I enrolled in college, I'd begun to see how any challenge to convention harbored within it the possibility of its own excesses and its own orthodoxy. I started to reexamine my assumptions, and recalled the values my mother and grandparents had taught me. In this slow, fitful process of sorting out what I believed, I began silently registering the point in dorm-room conversations when my college friends and I stopped thinking and slipped into cant: the point at which the denunciations of capitalism or American imperialism came too easily, and the freedom from the constraints of monogamy or religion was proclaimed without fully understanding the value of such constraints, and the role of victim was too readily embraced as a means of shedding responsibility, or asserting entitlement, or claiming moral superiority over those not so victimized.

- Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope

Ten months into my army life, I feel the need to re-assert my misgivings about those adolescent issues that often surface in the midst of all this military drudge work: the existential crises; the fears about college, work and lost friends; the rage at the systemic abuse of our personal time. Winding through a near-silent camp grounds to our barracks one night, Bingqian asked me how I could be so chipper all the time. He said he had wondered how, in junior college, I could lie belly-down across a public bench to read a novel, oblivious to averted glances; and he said he wondered now why the army didn't seem to sap my enthusiasm, even though it offers few good reasons to be enthused. We spend a lot of time on small sacrifices now, to prove that we can afford them in an improbable war. We heave dummy loads. We slap on camouflage cream. We swipe at mosquitoes. We get grazed, and bruised, and slathered in sweat and mud and self-doubt. Worse, we have to put up with insufferable superiors, who are either smugly assured that even the time allotted to us for rest can be snatched away, or too absorbed with themselves and their omnivorous standards to notice.

"Partly it's just my disposition," I replied, quashing the niggling voice that protested that I did resent all those things, and that they often deflated my enthusiasm. Because I did believe that I was still happier than most people -- at least I wanted to believe it, since it made me feel special -- and so readily applied myself to the puzzle of why this was the case. I recalled how my boyfriend had noted that most people tread and retread the same paths in life, for all its endless variety, because they are hard-wired to react to certain situations in a given way: perhaps mine is to accept that life doesn't owe a coherent meaning to anyone, and pointless adversity is part of its complex tapestry.

I wonder how my army mates do it, other than by burying themselves in resignation or denial. Some of them complain at their peers, and when I once asked what the point is if your complaint isn't reaching anyone who could help to change your lot, one answered that it didn't matter -- it was a perfectly useful coping mechanism. But then it strikes me how much of this complaint stems from privilege, from the underlying assumption that you should be doing in life whatever it is you want to and are good at, rather than this soldiering thing that you've been forced into.

It reminds me of the people who can't simply bear it out to that fateful two-year mark, because they lack the money or smarts or the opportunity afforded by being born to the right parents in this country. When we were swabbing the interior of our vehicle, my driver once asked me "Why did you choose JC over poly?", as though it were a choice people had to think about. I listened to Clifford, one of my men, boast about the daring schemes they hatched in their childhood days to shoplift tote-bagfuls of Ferrero Rocher, or frozen meats for a barbeque, not for their inability to pay but simply for the thrills of it. When I expressed my admiration for their ease at such dangerous thrill-seeking, he replied, "Aiyah, sergeant, we live in different worlds mah." And I recalled that starless night we were waiting in an abandoned built-up area for our bus to arrive, and my staff sergeant asked us if we had any questions. One of us ventured, "Staff, what do you see for your future in the army?" My staff sergeant kicked at a pebble as he paced, and after a moment's silence, he said, in a subdued voice: "Don't ask that sort of question, lah."

These are the stories you miss, in the towers that meritocracy built.

(P.S. Sorry about the length. This is my post-JC rebellion against the influences of The Economist and my KI teacher, and marks my new influences of Dr Nick Davis, Pauline Kael, and a certain president-elect that needs no linkage.)

7:53pm: To our skyscraper-lined T-shirts (and minds), which never really caught on
The suspicion began when Miss Letchmi popped up on MSN Messenger, asking for "feedback from ex-iSpark boys". iSpark was our high school's name for the gifted education programme (GEP), a nationwide model that bundled "intellectually gifted" kids in classes and expanded their curriculum. Its aims were to deter these kids from mediocrity, indifference or disruptiveness in a normal class (where they lacked mental stimulation); and nurture them as "resources" for Singapore.

When I complied, she told me that the Ministry of Education would use the feedback to get a sense of the chances for interaction between gifted and normal kids. I smelt a rat – the harmless façade of an MSN conversation had roots in the ministry? The topic of choice signalled (to my paranoid self, at least) that the ministry wanted a reason to wipe out the GEP, and if the lack of interaction with other students was that, it would take it.

After all, this was the programme that sparked a furore in the Today newspaper forum over the elitism and ostracism it encouraged. With the advent of the Integrated Programme, that allows entire schools to bypass the O-level exams (but raises the selectiveness of these schools), I expected that the elitism of the GEP would be replaced by this other. I was right.

The GEP is dead.

I have qualms about having told her that I hardly interacted with mainstream kids in high school, and liked things that way. The GEP kept me in a bubble for seven years, and fed my belief that the world loved quirks and intelligence. I don't think this elitism was a bad thing, for the reverse made humanity bleaker and far more depressing. Cast into the mainsteam in junior college (where no GEP exists), and noticing a stark difference in talent between ex-gifted kids and the rest, proved this. Getting shunted to the top of the class killed my motivation, since I had always had someone to aspire to, but was left suddenly with nothing. In the GEP, the cream of the crop bested themselves. Outside it, they were always "good enough".

At one point, I became so desperate that I flirted with dropping physics (a subject that I was secure in) for the humanities programme (HP) classes, in a bid for the same atmosphere that filled the GEP. For the HP is similar to the GEP, more than any other programme in junior college. For one, it is isolated from the cohort – where most classes settle on benches, leaving their bags there during breaks, the HP classes are given an air-con room each – much like how our GEP classrooms were rarely in the same building as the mainstream classes. For another, the people are much the same, having hailed from the GEP in high school, and they seemed to have imported the lively and charismatic mood, and that sense of challenge. They were ostracised, but that I could handle, having dealt with coming out to myself in secondary two. The GEP, for one, bonded more strongly due to it, like soldiers against an unjust commander. Still, the decision would have been wrong, but that illustrates further how addicted I was to that environment.

A case could be made that the GEP was a drug – intense and fleeting, but unhealthy – and that I shouldn't escape the humdrum of reality. Yet the more books I read, films I watch, and plays I see, the more I find this conception of the world as a boring place is narrow and wrong. The world holds genius, and the GEP was only the tip of that iceberg – and maybe not even that. Singaporean students need to try harder, and we needn't bend for them.

Thankfully, I settled for a better place, in my present knowledge and inquiry (KI) class. KI is a mixture of philosophy and critical thinking, and at times, lessons rage with heated debates over the veracity of one argument over another. Already it has taught me a clearer sense of structure, and with The Economist it has encouraged the cleanliness of my style and speech. Impressive for only the first year of its execution. Ironic that, in two years, we should have to witness an execution of a different type.

I can't believe I told Miss Letchmi that the GEP should be removed in name, if for the prejudice that surrounds the label alone. It pleads blindness to the differences that separate us, and that would be wrong. I should know that, being part of a minority group. Miss Letchmi did mention how we should not ignore Indians by pretending they don't exist. Yet is that analogy proper? I told her, then, that it didn't mean we should segregate the Indians from other races if we noticed they differed. Truth is, I don't know if the GEP was for better or worse. But I care for what it stood for.

Now in junior college, I seek comfort in KI. Back in high school, iSpark may be affected minimally, since it is school-based and out of the ministry's reach. Yet this new phase of education in Singapore will chug on, leaving the GEP behind. And I can't help but feel that a piece of history will be missed.



Follow-up

7:38pm: My (not very) graphic (but rather) novel escapades
In a corner of Jurong Regional Library is a bookshelf stocked with comic books, none of which are in order. Scan the shelves, and you can spot the different volumes in Frank Miller's Sin City series scattered everywhere but on the shelf labeled "MIL". As you can tell, this makes locating any book a total bitch. Worse, the library staff has given up on this kippleized nightmare; yesterday, I watched in horror as one of them stuffed a handful of Japanese manga in the lacuna of the English section.

One day, I shall banish every book from that shelf and replace them as they were intended. I suspect it will spiritually resemble a scene from a Batman comic -- with myself attempting to restore order, the police trying to curb my vigilante justice, and none of the citizens giving a damn. Oy vey.

Nonetheless, I have managed to plough through a primer in graphic novels:

Watchmen by Alan Moore
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller
Maus (vol 1) by Art Spiegelman
Sandman (vol 1 and 3) by Neil Gaiman

(Unfortunately, all copies of V For Vendetta have remained on loan since the film's release, neither vol 2 or 4 of Sandman are in the library catalogues, and I can't borrow my ex's copy of Maus vol 2 because n2greg has been hogging it for a year now.)

After the first two in that list, I am officially sick of Cold War themes. Up next: cold war!

***

Today, in a hearty "fuck you!" to the torrential rain, I cycled through it to return both The Dark Knight Returns and Sandman (vol 3) to my local library. To do so, I sheltered the bicycle basket with a retractable umbrella, clamping its edges between my thumbs and the handlebars, and started off.

However, along the way -- my glasses speckled with raindrops -- I failed to notice that the next segment of pavement was jutting higher than the current one. (You can probably guess what happened next.)

WHUMPH.

Out went my umbrella. And my handphone. And the two graphic novels.

With the rain pouring around me, I snatched the first two items, depositing them in the bicycle basket. Next I spotted The Dark Knight Returns; thankfully, both graphic novels had plastic jackets, so the damage to it was minimal. I returned it to my basket with the other two--

-- the other one. My umbrella was gone, blown away by the wind. And Sandman was nowhere in sight... when I noticed something residing in the drain.

Yup, my copy of Sandman had fallen into the drain, rainwater sluicing all over it -- and yet, for some reason, it was largely unscathed. I have little idea how this happened, but I praised the Lord for plastic bookjackets. With all but my umbrella recovered, I raced to the nearest void deck, soaked and cold.

At that point, my handphone beeped. It was an SMS from a friend: "Happy birthday, Colin!"

Ten seconds later, the rain stopped completely.

9:51pm: A short gripe
You don't know how sad it is when a hall of students laugh at our math lecturer when he pronounces "parabola" correctly.

(ETA: Granted, it's worse when he gets that right, but mispronounces everything else.)

10:48pm: Cycling in the neighbourhood, settling at the classbench
As I type this, some tented vaudeville for elderly folks is going on downstairs, and I am displeased by this intrusion on my night-time solitude, which I hold in highest regard. This tempts my inner brashness, but insofar as I have goodwill for humanity, I will maintain my self-control.

This evening, after the rain had stilled, I went cycling around the neighbourhood, a cathartic experience unrivalled by the same activity transposed to a park. Trips in residential areas are far more revealing: I passed office-workers with worn faces, aunties with grocery bags, children with a blindness for incoming bicycles, scolding parents of said children, and inevitably I felt more relaxed as I observed them from the distance afforded by my humble vehicle. No park can offer me this -- their constructed setting holds a place only for recreation-seekers, and the acknowledgement of such a purpose lowers me to a level where I am incapable of finding what I seek.

Of course, I realise that this is biased and largely psychosomatic, but this is my display of anti-establishment leanings in the vein of jez_hex declaring his reluctance for the social conventions of hunting romance (aka Project Twenty-One, or "half of the meaning of life", as he puts it). Well wishes for his endeavours, and may V For Vendetta incite post-film conversation for him unlike my own experience, wherein my companion ancal clammed up after offering his single-sentence summary of the film ("It's about social revolution without the social!").

In other news, I have concluded my subject-combo escapades by settling on Physics, Math, Economics and KI, which has reaped various effects:

1. Classmates in Charmaine and Qintan, girls with most cheery and optimistic dispositions, as well as dementist_xer0x, whose gloominess and evil are buffered by his cynical intelligence. As the last of them points out, my social dysfunction impedes me from interacting with all my new classmates, but nevertheless I am succeeding better than I did in S6H.


2. Knowledge and Inquiry, in which we read people like Descartes and Hume (or pretend to when we don't get them, then wait for the lesson-time summary) and then discuss philosophical issues in class! It makes up for the vibrance and intellectual challenge that I missed from GP, not to mention that our tutor Mr Melvyn Lim is vested in the entire affair. Also, it has offered me another stab at writing a paper, and this time with fewer creative limitations than I was comfortable with in the major research papers of high school.


3. Dropping of Literature, which I regret slightly because Mr Augie Wong has grown more comfortable in his teacher's skin, and has become a pretty decent teacher. This is remedied because the gaping hole in my timetable, left by my classmates flocking to Chemistry, accords me the freedom to crash his tutorials! Other than that, I am glad to have rid myself of the subject, which I dislike as a student because I cannot perform well in essays when the text fails to move me, and that is threatening to my grades. This is not helped by the prescribed texts - postcolonial Indian novel The Guide and John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi - to which I am lukewarm.


4. Unfortunate tendencies of girls in my class to have atypical reactions to my sexual orientation, which is not helped by dementist_xer0x's divulging of it. Generally, though, I just walk into these situations. -_-||

Overall, much yay, excluding instances like number 4.

10:10pm: The problem is choice
I can't believe this dilemma is rearing its grotesque head again, with the impending release of the GCE O Level exam results. hongyu has barefacedly tried to lure me into applying for the Humanities Programme, and I can't deny that I am tempted. But little has changed since I picked the science stream last year, apart from the acquisition of my experiences in it so far, and the dilemma still remains. It lies in the dichotomous nature of the arts and sciences in our academic system, particularly troubling for me since I have inclinations to specific disciplines in both, but I can only select one track. Even if I should choose inaction, I will still be ridding myself of certain failsafes, so it makes sense to evaluate and choose those I am more willing to shed. But gosh, am I stumped.

When I entered the science stream, one thing that struck me painfully was how lacking the atmosphere was compared to that with my erstwhile classmates in the (unofficially dubbed) "humanities class". Given some of their responses this year, I'm convinced that only the Humanities Programme classes can match that former vivacity, if not surpass it. I hold no contempt for that familiarity, having seen the dreary offerings elsewhere - and having fans of Quoridor (and other quaint intellectual pursuits) in your immediate vicinity helps, too.

And I despise the pigeonholing that I have been facing - I have been labelled a mugger, simply because I'm lugging a book around much of the time, and this apparently confers upon me mystical qualities of excellence in all my subjects, and oratory skills to be feared. Well, nada. The only benefit from this is that it gives me license to skulk and indulge in a few eccentricities. But I'd rather have classmates from whom I can learn, and with whom I can discuss subjects of interest without them being waved off as "too cheem" simply because I pursue them - even if I were to feel intimidated in the process (since, as I have been told, I get easily intimidated anyway).

My first problem with the Humanities Programme, though, is its prerequisite subject combination of H2 Literature, and a further two H2 subjects chosen from among Geography, History, Economics and Chinese Literature. H2 Economics would be a lock since I already read it, but I am ambivalent about the other subject choice. This leaves me with three more points for other subjects - most likely Knowledge & Inquiry, which would place my combination on par with everyone else.

But here lies the rub: with such a combination, I would have entirely shut myself out of the science department in university, since I need to read both mathematics and a science to qualify. KI removes any points to do so; without it, the tripartite of math, science and GP atop my three H2 humanities subjects would slay me.

My second problem lies inherent in the system of choosing subjects. See, I have little confidence in actually getting into the Humanities Programme despite my efforts - my creds are near-absent, I will be rushing to scout for testimonials at this late juncture, and when the superior dementist_xer0x couldn't make the first cut into HP at the year's inception, I'm certain that I can't, either. And it is likely that, should I not make it into HP, the administration will simply shunt me into a peripheral class in the arts stream, and dump upon me the subject combination I wanted to read if I managed to get in.

However, HP and its benefits (the most appealing of which I have mentioned above) are the motivation for my selecting these subjects - were I not to head down that path, I would much rather have a subject combination that better reflects my pursuit of the sciences evermore. This would most likely be KEMP or LEMP, similar to my current combination. Alas, I fear that the administration may not be as flexible as to accomodate such a varying choice.

Oy vey. :(

8:26pm: Time for the real orientation
The past two weeks of Orientation to life at junior college have been a misnomer. Rather than directing my sights to life ahead, this stagnant period left me dwelling on the past. The endless talks forced me to stew in guilt over former immaturities I committed, having been unable to move on. The prototypical Orientation activities (such as the "war" games), I failed to identify with, being disinclined to the sportive and unnecessarily messy. Hence, after this mixed bag of events that sent my emotions in a near-sinusoidal pattern, I was grateful for campfire night, which brought Orientation to a close.

I'm not wholly satisfied with my new classmates. After seven years in the Gifted Education Programme, I have become inured to an environment of eccentricity and overanalytical minds. I'm not asking that anyone should feign interest in theoretical physics (which is universally met with groans, even in 4O, my class of yesteryear). However, I was confronted with the sharp difference in intellectual curiosity when participants in a game of floating bridge were apathetic to learn how they had faltered.

I'm learning to identify the PRCs in my class, and address them in Mandarin. Not only will this improve my Chinese (which I don't wish to deteriorate despite not taking it as a subject), but I cannot help but cringe at their accents, and their awkward syntax is something I do not wish to correct, having learnt to reserve my pedantry for fellow writers. One thing I have learnt is that exhibiting fervor for grammatical correctness does not equate to its evangelism, and I find that this applies as a general rule.

This dispassion for my new class is not helped by my nostalgia for the rapport I found in 4O, and I'm echoing other 4O alumni when I say that I miss it. It's too early to tell, though, how my new class will develop over the pressures of academia. It took two years for 4O to emerge under such conditions to become the amazing class it has become, so there's always room for hope.

What makes up for the shortfalls in class atmosphere is the significant upthrust in school spirit. The climate over at the college section of Hwa Chong Institution bubbles with more verve, which I attribute partly to the presence of girls, mass dances and college songs. During campfire night, chorusing "日复一日 一次又一次的迷惘" (roughly translated to "as the days roll by, and we find ourselves at loss time and again") with the rest of school strengthened my conviction in the eternal power of art. The above line awes me with its effective summation of life, and its ability to strike a chord in these hearts of ours, especially when sung in unison. I spent the weekend memorising a few of these songs (as well as reading Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, which seems to have affected my writing style in this post).

Having shed the shadows of the past, and looking forward to creating art (and studying physics as an aside), I haven't been this optimistic about the future for a long time.

Here's to a great year.

12:29pm: The Game of Quoridor: Stand Between Us Now, As Fences
Yesterday, we wreaked havoc at Fuji's (fujizr) condominium estate for our second class gathering in two weeks, initially organised to finish the unbarbequed food that was left over from the first class gathering, wherein we each had to pay $10 for the raw meal, so clearly LEFTOVERS APLENTY. The condominium estate was gorgeous in the way these estates are, complete with faux-brick buildings, pebbled landings around swimming pools and a waterfall flanked with trees, and restrooms situated in the artifically-undercut recess behind the waterfall (the trickling of which made certain situations a lot more urgent, I can tell you).

Anyway, the lot of us came across -- well actually, Fuji's enthusiastic relatives kinda dumped it on us -- a deceptively simple game, Quoridor, that has apparently been winning awards left and right since its inception in 1997 - including Game of the Year and MENSA Best Mind Game. What makes it appear so simple are the rules; you start off with a gridboard with 9x9 squares, as follows:

        A   B   C   D   E   F   G   H
        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
    |   |   |   |   | x |   |   |   |   |
 1--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--1
    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
 2--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--2
    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
 3--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--3
    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
 4--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--4
    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
 5--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--5
    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
 6--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--6
    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
 7--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--7
    |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
 8--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--8
    |   |   |   |   | x |   |   |   |   |
    +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
        |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
        A   B   C   D   E   F   G   H

The squares marked out with X's are the starting positions for each of the two players' pawns, and the player whose pawn reaches the opposite row of squares first wins. During each player's turn, he may choose either to move his pawn to a directly adjacent square, or (and this is the genius of the game) place one of his ten allotted fences into the grid.

This is the rub: no player can place a fence such that it leaves no path for either pawn to reach their objective, and each fence (being two squares in length) will prevent the placement of a fence directly across it.

This game is unlike boardgames such as Scrabble or Go (known locally as weiqi), wherein losing a battle on one side of the board may be compensated by an aggressive uptake on another side of the board. Due to the immobility of the fences once placed, Quoridor players have always to take note of the passageways available across the board. Timing is especially important, as sealing off certain passageways may be done by either player to force the opponent to backtrack through a longer route, or to prevent them from doing so by sealing off any alternative routes.

For us amateurs, this developed an early strategy in which both players would attempt to seal off as much of the board as possible, thus concentrating the fighting to one of the sides. Another strategy involved the formation of a long central wall between the pawns that left routes through both sides, and culminating once more in an issue of timing, wherein one side would be sealed off to the advantage of the other player.

A unique and fascinating game, Quoridor was, and now I badly wish to acquire a set. Perhaps we could set up a club for it in the future!

(For now, I have added it to my interests. If yours was piqued, you might want to add it too. This game deserves a bit more recognition than it's getting.)

12:11am: An Insomniac Ruminates on the Near Future
It's past the twelfth strike of the clock, what, and I'm driven by a sudden urge to piffle. I suppose it's the culmination of ennui and the prospect of choosing one subject over another for 'A'-levels addling my brain that's brewing into this honking great need to generate claptrap, but then you don't see a lad doing that every day, so a little bit of nonsense wouldn't hurt your scrolling finger, now would it, you good people.

Always a place for dilemmas in my vocabulary, so here's a sample. I'm in a fix between whether to pick Chemistry or Literature in English for my 'A's - I'm strapping to go for Physics, which is no good without Mathematics though I sometimes stump myself over matters of differentiation and calculus (but then who doesn't, yes?), and Economics is just such an agreeable meta-choice, to let it pass would be a waste.

Selecting the former would give me the PCME combination, which I've been told (to my utmost consternation) has the most conformist clout. This unsettles me, indeed a great deal, because I'm not confident I will survive pitching myself directly into the scientific mainstream. Draping on a sheepskin to mingle with the herd would prolong my sense of security, yessirree, but I'll be left high and dry when the time comes and they say you know what, lad, you never really belonged there. DOOOM

and gloom and other appropriate grotesqueries

Literature is tempting, but it makes me negatively Sisyphean - my zest for the subject ebbs and oozes with text and temporality, lots of hard work sometimes that doesn't appear to pay off. Tolkien and Dickens are various old tarts that make me feel like a Tantalusian swimmer, except I'm not ravenous for their writing, and I'm afraid that the assigned things rub me the wrong way, plus it will really mess me up - I'll end up straddling the sciences and humanities like a blood-for-ink traitor, with two of each sort.

How spiffing. Must check this again when I wake - the things I say whilst drunk with insomnia might appear unfit to a more sober mind, if such a state should exist for myself.

12:57am: Holy Crap, I Can Hear The Circuits Frying
Just twelve minutes ago, my father popped his head out the bedroom door and startled me witless. Which wouldn't be a problem, except that my elbow collided with my cup, which met the keyboard.

Now, I'm blogging using my sister's laptop, because despite having brandished a hairdryer at it, my laptop's still making bleepy sounds you'd hear from an AI robot in a low-budget scifi film (or an obscenely-budgeted one, in George Lucas' case). And that one time I managed to get it to the Windows login screen, the keyboard didn't work, and I could hear staticky noises that I suspect are the circuits shorting from all the water.

Currently propping the laptop up so that the electric standing fan can blow it, but for the record? This sucks.

2:25pm: "We've Been Here Before, Haven't We?"
Drowsy thoughts from flipping through the first few pages of Jack Kerouac on a Sunday afternoon, while lying chest-down on the bed with head and arms jutting over the side with the book propped up on the floor: we live in the Silver Age, the Post-Everything generation. We've been there, done that; the truth to the saying that "everything that can be done has been done" comes from the fact that, while it isn't entirely true and you can still do things that haven't been done before, not many things can be done that will shock and impress us any more.

The golden age of literature came and went with the likes of Faulkner and Joyce and Woolf, and now the novel is anything but. Hollywood's fall from the graces of Cooper and Bergman and Welles has been lamented by filim critics, and the movie stars of today are also anything but. Rock music, that popular form meant to celebrate the transcending of boundaries, is judged by the giants it stands upon. Scientific breakthroughs and cutting-edge technologies like the Internet have reached a lull, commonplace rather than revolutionary by this period. The only way we break conventions now is to examine the ones we have and think about how we can subvert them, because the chances of serendipitously achieving this are down to an all-time low.

The truth of the matter is that we've been thrust into a world that changes so much, it's very much like it hasn't changed at all. Terrorism and political joustings are old-hat, but they're pretty much all we can be identified for, since the societies of today are those that clamp down on those defining historical moments. We have lukewarm turmoil now, nothing like the Great Depression or the World Wars of the past. This is our generation, the bridge in the history of time where we're floating towards directions that can never truly be defined because we can only know when we're not there. Fukuyama was wrong; history doesn't end with ideological homogenisation, since we don't have that even today - it ends when we already have the greats to depend on, so much so that we can't have any more.