and tonight will go on forever while we walk around this town like we own the streets
So Term 2 is over! - I am sorry to see it go, signifying as it does the end of my merry carefree life. The interruption to my youth that is the 'A' levels! As Term 1 drew to its mournful, sleepless close, I told myself that Term 2 would be (had better be) good 'cause once it was over there would be no fun to be (guiltlessly) had. Well there is no guiltless pleasure in J2, with the 'A' levels at the end of it and the general sense of waking up from the long party of J1 and the dark night at the end of it to the HANGOVER and the IMPLICATIONS TO DEAL WITH in J2. But Term 2 has been nice, ill-spent, now is the time to drink, now is the time to dance (briefly) footloose on the earth, go to town when one feels like it, read what books one pleases, put off work indefinitely. AND DEAL WITH THE CONSEQUENCES IN JUNE AND BEYOND!!!
I spent the last day of Term 2 much unwilling to see it go; had lunch and ice cream with Hee, then sat on the stairs with Amanda and the best possible intentions, both of us vowing that June would see us reborn as drive and efficiency incarnate. Sadly we turned to talk of other things, and were joined by Hee in the later afternoon and Yarn in the evening and made unlikely conversation as it grew dark, at which it seemed that we oughtn't do things by halves, and having talked for a good four hours, went for dinner in Greenwood, and then to the swings, and then home at nearly midnight, exhausted (but content!)
I will be sorry when such things are no longer possible (if such a time should ever come - I hope not) - I don't mean, the ability to blow off all outstanding work, drop everything to have continuous eight-hour conversations with good friends (though I'll be sorry to see that go, as well), but ... the fact and nature of such conversations. A closeness I've found peculiar to junior college, or maybe specific to this year, or maybe inherent to youth, or what have you - incongruous, unexpected, not overt - closeness used to be clearly defined, predicated on specific people. Now things are different - I remember last year bitterly attacking the perversity in others that placed value on circumstances more than people - well either I've gone that way (don't think so though) or I've come around to, I suppose, the simple and obvious lesson that - sometimes there are other people in the world, and sometimes it is good to talk to them. A few years ago there were things I'd never think to put into words, and certainly never tell anyone else - I don't mean secrets, which I didn't understand then (having none to speak of) - I mean, a way of thinking - any real thought about anyone else. Talk used to be different, people less real. And I am getting obtuse - tired, work undone, miles to go before I sleep, etc - never mind. Apropos of not much, Nabokov in a 1962 interview:
In your new novel, Pale Fire, one of the characters says that reality is neither the subject nor the object of real art, which creates its own reality. What is that reality?
Reality is a very subjective affair. I can only define it as a kind of gradual accumulation of information; and as specialization. If we take a lily, for instance, or any other kind of natural object, a lily is more real to a naturalist than it is to an ordinary person. But it is still more real to a botanist. And yet another stage of reality is reached with that botanist who is a specialist in lilies. You can get nearer and nearer, so to speak, to reality; but you never get near enough because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable. You can know more and more about one thing but you can never know everything about one thing: it's hopeless. So we live surrounded by more or less ghostly objects ...
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Re: the above - no idea what I was talking about either. Livejournal asked if I wanted to restore my saved draft but I don't actually remember writing it! Trippy. Anyway, continuing my unwholesome lifestyle. PSC psychometric testing yesterday - four hours of multiple choice questions! They promise they will send us our results and personality profile by August. I am interested to see what they will say. "Your facility for simple arithmetical calculations is lamentable. You would be best advised to reconsider the feasibility of higher education." "A damaged individual with artistic pretensions. Also, gay." Seriously I remember when I was nine and we all got packed off to do the GEP test to see if we were Gifted, in the top 1% of our nation, and we sat for this battery of tests, what comes next in the pattern; pride is to prejudice as sense is to; and like ... those tests were fine! I think in the intervening nine years my brain has gained a porridgey consistency and lost its ability to multiply by double-digits.
[HERE FOLLOWS AN UNNECESSARILY DETAILED EXPOSITION ON THE NATURE OF THE PSC PSYCHOMETRIC EXERCISE, FOR THE EDIFICATION OF ANYONE WHO HAS YET TO TAKE IT, 'CAUSE SERIOUSLY, I'D HAVE LIKED A LITTLE WARNING, MYSELF] We had this awesome test with patterns, and I zipped through the first fifteen questions, like, yay I have great cognitive ability, I always know which pattern comes next, but then it was like omg the wavy lines keep moving but follow no logic known to man but obviously this was wrong or something because the science genius sitting in front of me had finished the entire section and was reclining in the obnoxious posture peculiar to the self-aware science genius.
The maths section drove me to suicide, practically, it was stuff I would have scoffed at in PSLE, before I developed this unhealthy dependence on calculators, you know, ratios, exchange rate, proportion, long division - it was terrible!!! The letters to shade on the answer sheet were in groups of three, lending themselves (deliberately???) to internet acronyms! Copy down my answers, now: LOL OMG WTF BBQ CMI PWN ZED. So I had like a MILLION questions blank. In the next installment of Adventures of the Reclining Science Genius, while I was struggling through questions fifteen through twenty-one, he was like ... reclining. This profound sense of incredulity overwhelmed me. Is this really what you are looking for in civil servants and scholarship candidates? the ability to multiply by double-digits? to chart the progression of little dots around a cross-hatched circle? SURELY NOT, PSC!!! then time was up lol
NEXT SECTION was VERBAL (I rejoiced!) You are supposed to read little passages and answer questions based on them. And say if it's true/false based solely on the information given in the passage, or if you can't tell. Result of taking KI for a year and a half: my entire exercise was shaded "can't tell", like, all the way down the column. GREAT. You can't do this shit to a Humanities student: MCQ is against our every moral principle (unless it's Economics MCQ, in which case, it is fine and dandy) - aiyah! Should've given us an essay. See where you'd be THEN, huh, reclining science genius ... ... ... ))): Personality test was sort of blatant, in that you could see which categories they're trying to sort you into - you know, introvert/extrovert; artistic/scientific; imaginative/practical; assertive/cooperative. Trouble is they have this thing about how you can't cheat the test because they'll pick up inconsistencies - but they have lame shit like: I would prefer to spend an evening a) reading quietly or b) going out with friends. DEPENDS ON THE BOOK AND ON THE FRIENDS, RIGHT? and on the EVENING? Similar are the arty questions - If I were writing articles for a newspaper, I would rather write a) book and movie reviews or b) politics and current affairs analyses. I would rather watch a TV programme about a) a concert pianist or b) practical new inventions. LOL what if you are arty but tone deaf? not that I am arty but tone deaf, I say hastily. anyway I bet they're gonna think I'm faking like mad. Other notable question-types were variants on the ARE YOU TRUSTING OR DO YOU HATE EVERYBODY? type and the DO YOU HAVE SERIOUS EMOTIONAL DISORDERS AND A DEBILITATING SENSE OF INSECURITY? and, my favourite, the DO YOU SPILL YOUR GUTS AT THE SLIGHTEST OPPORTUNITY OR DO YOU PLAY YOUR CARDS CLOSE TO YOUR CHEST? le sigh! oh PSC I am too complex and nuanced an individual to be adequately summed up by your MCQs! I am a unique and beautiful snowflake! ... but I really need your money to go overseas! it is a dilemma!
FOLLOWING PSC PSYCHOMETRIC TESTING in my busy and exciting life was CAP opening ceremony, Amanda and I went (tied, blazered, shod in court shoes), I showed up to find that omggg okay I don't want to talk about it but this year's Eye on the World publication is KIND OF EMBARRASSING, by which I mean, there is too much of my shit in it, and not through my own doing!!! I swear okay I was like okay how many do I send in and my mentor's like okay eight's the minimum and I'm like okay [spends an evening scraping up eight presentable pieces] here's eight poems! begorrah!!! AND THEN ER. I hate myself. Never mind. Saw my harem and old CAP friends (disjunct sets, for anyone who's about to take offence) on whom I lavished affection. Also seedless grapes! Opening ceremony itself was charming, as always, had the pleasure of hearing Arthur Yap described as 'clinically straight' (what! said Cheng next to me) and watching Amanda try to intellectualise her paedophilia. - CAP seems to have that effect on people, I say understandingly.
After the opening ceremony we got trapped in the reception making conversation with like ... like, we were just talking to Del, right, and suddenly our voices tailed off and we became aware of this woman with red, red lips standing at Amanda's elbow, like just smiling at us??? waiting for us to say hi to her??? and we were like ... hi. And she smiled at us some more and was like ... and you are ... ? and something in my brain went like don't tell her your name! don't tell her your name! and I was like ... I'm from Hwa Chong. And Amanda's like ... me too. And then we huddled together for safety. It was frightening!!! Lucky the food was good. Gorged on little cakes and pastry things and finger sandwiches we moved gluttonously towards the door and towards NUS library, Amanda chaperoning me like that St. Bernard dog nanny in Peter Pan as if expecting me to make a break for it and start engaging in unwholesome illicit activity with CAP participants. as if! I say scornfully making gestures of disengagement. Er anyway. On the way to NUS library Amanda decided her feet were killing her, so we swapped shoes, but she was like, still dissatisfied so we took our shoes off altogether and I removed my blazer and artfully unbuttoned my shirt a little and loosened my tie, thus achieving the much sought-after fell-out-of-bed/just-had-sex look, perturbing Amanda, and we walked to NUS library barefoot (both) and artfully dishevelled (me). er anyway. We were GOING to research our respective KI papers but instead sat in the glass tank things and played Oprah (much as other little girls play 'house' or 'doctor' ... when Amanda is around people always end up playing Oprah. it is a mystery) (Amanda plays to win)
Anyway, anyway. Evening - for yesterday was a busy day! - was Lisabel's birthday dinner. She is now old enough to legally do what she does better than everyone else anyway! ( ... by which I mean, consume alcohol, I say clearing up any doubts) We all had dinner out on the roof of Holland Village in a very nice restaurant whose name escapes me, and disgraced ourselves by playing with the candles (Rachael taught me how to put my finger in the candle flame and escape unharmed!) and while waiting for our orders Rachael and Amanda and I went downstairs to the petshop and bought a pair of hamsters for Lis's birthday. Their names are, variously, Knowledge & Inquiry, Pride & Prejudice, Hamlet & Ophelia, etc. While loitering in the petshop (in my cocktail dress. one must make an impression!) I chanced upon this like ... hellspawn hamster. Like ... you know how petshops keep their rodently organisms in big fibreglass enclosures like fishtanks with coin-sized airholes in the walls? There were two hamster enclosures - one with a fair-sized flock of hamsters in it, another housing a single hamster, that was, beneath my enthralled gaze, endeavouring to chew its way out of the cage. Its entire hamster-snout was protruding from the cornermost hole as it gnawed assiduously. Its tiny hamster-feet were not even touching the ground, rather, it was braced against the walls of its cage. As it disengaged its fangs from the hole to take a break at the bottom of its cage, I saw that it had actually significantly enlarged the diameter of the hole, to the point that escape was actually a viable option. Can you imagine! I was all for buying it to secure its freedom, but Amanda and Rachael said it would eat Lisabel's entire apartment block, or something. Whatever!
After dinner (and tiramisu!) Amanda and Fish and I, the drinking buddies of destiny, independently decided we'd wander around to see the Holland Village bars, and all ended up outside the eskibar. And then - you know how these things happen, I say appealingly - inside the eskibar. Have you heard of this place? It's subtitled the sub-zero degree bar, and I've always wanted to go in and see what it's like, and now I have! Inside is all igloo-themed and the bartenders wear winter clothes, and I thought it was just a charming gimmick, a misconception which persisted as we stepped inside and noted that it was slightly chilly, but nothing to set it apart from the average, slightly chilly bar. Confidently we presented our proof of age (fellow H3 students may be pleased to know that the NUS student ID card works a treat) and strode through the glass doors to the cold chamber, and promptly died of hypothermia. Okay? I guess the excess of condensation on the doors should've alerted us, but we are Humanities students, have set aside the Physics lessons of our youth for the undone History papers of our present, and also, we are very trusting! I think it really is sub-zero in there - certainly it's cold enough that you can not only see your breath, but you can actually see your life-force puffing out of your lungs and tinkling, frozen, onto the frigid bar counter (which is, incidentally, a solid block of ice).
Staggered out of the cold chamber to get some alcohol (I always start these Reckless Drinking Adventures with the best possible intentions and somehow end them with a drink that is essentially mango juice - why?) but Amanda needed to go to the bathroom (perilously situated in the very heart of the cold chamber) leaving Fish and me to the tender mercies of the overfriendly bartender. and then I had a mango daiquiri, for reasons that are unclear to me, and then we went home very sober! AND NOW THE HOLIDAYS HAVE REALLY STARTED. what to do? where to go? HOW am I going to finish all this work and clear the massive backlog that is the result of doing no work and getting no sleep in term one? wedged as we are between two eternities of idleness, there is no excuse for being idle now! onward! etc
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every day in every way, etc. I was going to put up a to-do list to motivate myself, but halfway through typing it I began to weep uncontrollably and have now developed alcoholism! I wonder why! anyway, it's terrible, please send help, suggestions on a postcard, posb/dbs transfers only, strictly non-exchangeable, I'll see you when I see you, kids!