the mask I polish in the evening by the morning looks like shit
I hope you are noting the colon in the middle of my title. Oh Literature! Unexceptionable. Had I a better practical understanding of the concept of comparative advantage, I would have spent more time on my Othello essay instead of my Tempest essay, but WHAT OF IT, man. These June blocks have been an exercise in poor time management! Predictably I ran overtime for my Tempest essay, thinking my Othello essay would be okay ('To what extent would "Pride and Prejudice" be a suitable title for Othello?' - HOW WITTY!!!) as it was on essentially the same topic I wrote my term paper -type essay on (reputation reputation reputation, Othello's self-delusion, solipsism of Desdemona, that sort of thing). SADLY it is not so easy to write a neat summary of a 6-page essay in 40 minutes as I thought! Alas! Mr Perry does me in again! If you will think back to younger, happier, more innocent times, you will remember that twice I did myself in by 'spotting' questions that I was, for various reasons, totally sure would come out. This block test, I thought, I have learnt my lesson! I will study all equally, for they are all my children! then awesome right he comes out with exactly the question I would have spotted (and could thereby have avoided studying altogether and simply read my own stupid essay).
Okay anyway whatever! THREE thematic threads run through this last round of block tests: 1. Poor time management; 2. The potential to do better if only I could've read my own essay (oh KI!!! you wound me to the quick!!! IT COULD HAVE BEEN BEAUTIFUL BETWEEN US!!! I mourn for what might have been!!!) and 3. on the whole I feel okay but not great. MEDIOCRE is the word. but no! I have resolved to content myself. I wish to do SUFFICIENTLY well that I may do whatever I wish. there is to be no EXCESS. I hope only to avoid FALLING SHORT. I AIM, in short, to PLEASE.
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Monday I was so enamoured of my newfound freedom that I ran straight out the gate and got on the first bus to town. There I had a happy time SPIRITUALLY and less so financially, I suppose. I saw Acey and Natalie for lunch and socially unacceptable discourse, and looked upon the tunics in Phuture London that will be my downfall (they are beautiful and in many colours and have FLOWING SLEEVES!!! I walked past and saw them and I was like ... IT'S ALL OVER FOR YOU, KAREN LEE). Later I was looking for black heels to replace the ones I broke (for vomit green ballet flats are a poor substitute) but I hate shopping for shoes (and try to do it as little as possible) so I was in a bad mood already, and then I realised anew that no one does black strappy heels sans preposterous adornments, so in a fit of pique I got like ... I can't even describe them. I think they are three-inch stilettos and involve a lot of long black velvet ties. I expect them to last approx. a week, tops, and they are a poor revenge on the footwear establishment (as revenge was my obscure objective) for failing to supply me with shoes I did want, but oh well, uh, they are surprisingly comfortable! ... I hate them. I should have taken the RARER ACTION of like VIRTUE over VENGEANCE but what of it!!! when I break my ankle on them I will feel weirdly vindicated, e.g. FOOTWEAR ESTABLISHMENT, IN FAILING TO SUPPLY ME WITH SHOES I CAN ACTUALLY WALK IN, YOU HAVE BROUGHT ME TO THIS PASS, AREN'T YOU SORRY NOW except I guess they'll be like ... no. whatever
Lunch with Acey and Natalie: delightful as always. I told them my new backup plan to get myself through university. Like ... if I don't get the government scholarship I want (foreign affairs, no more puns from you, madam!) I will apply to the MOE! Because no one wants their scholarship with the inescapable 6-year teaching bond, amirite - because no one wants to spend the best 6 years of their life teaching in some vile academic factory; people want to do curriculum planning, people want to hang out in the Ministry doing interesting, overseeing-type work, no one wants to actually be out there in the field - and so there is a certain EAGERNESS to bestow said scholarship on whatever bright-eyed young candidates appear willing. Yes! So I will go to university on their dollar, graduate with my degree, and tell them ... ... ... by the way ... I'm gay. QUELLE HORREUR as we now know, they don't want nasty homosexuals teaching in their schools ... because as we learn, all homosexuals are sexual predators and/or comparable to religious zealots in their uh religious ZEAL to SPREAD their practices and beliefs ... so, in short, and with some dark well-placed references to Notes on a Scandal, I will get the desk job and post in curriculum planning, safely away from hellhole academic factories, that everyone so craves. That is the plan. The BACKUP plan, that is. For far more attractive than (prevented) paedophilic affairs are foreign ones - yes?
We were talking about plans for next year. Mine include relief teaching (must get this educational urge out of my system or I will wonder about the road not taken, forevermore), waitressing (I know it's menial and underpaid, but I think there are some things you've got to do at least once in your life, and this is one of them, and I can't think of a better time to do it) and ... going to Vietnam to stay in a VIET CONG tree house. Cool? I read that you can do this now! I am all for it. AMANDACHONG will come with me. In between all this I hope to intern at this media firm and, IF THERE IS TIME in my busy schedule - for I intend to supplement all this hard labour with hard drinking - to take a job that is actually lucrative. Maybe I will clerk it in my mother's old bank. I was asking Acey if she wanted to relief teach in Nanyang and received a vehement no and I was like BUT WRYYY (it would be SO Notes on a Scandal) and she was like ... THE STENCH OF FEMALES. Can't argue with that. I will go and offer my luscious young self up as the newest addition to the staff and see if everything I have discovered to be true of the inclinations of the Nanyang student ... body ... are similarly true of the staff. OH GOD I should not be allowed near children actually. WE SHALL SEE. Maybe I will devote myself to good works. I would like to travel. I would like to see Burma again, have never been to the various INDOCHINESE states, have relatives in Australia and a longing for New Zealand. We shall see!!!
Got my eyebrows done on Monday, forgot to tell them the usual, which is, LET US EXERCISE A LITTLE RESTRAINT HERE, result, my expression is one of almost permanent disdain. I guess in a sense it is helping me to lead a PURER and more HONEST life, as my OUTWARD SHOW now enforcedly matches my permanent inward state of mind, but I realised like ... God gave me a freakish natural unibrow (it's not that bad BUT IT MIGHT AS WELL BE) because it DULLS the EXPRESSIVE MOVEMENTS of my face which is ... a good thing 'cause basically it's less noticeable when I am raising my eyebrows in horror/incredulity. I was having lunch with Lisabel yesterday and she was like ... STOP THAT. and I was like what, what. she's like you're DOING it again. yeah well
Mum's birthday today, Matthew and I lovingly created BANANA BUTTERMILK pancakes. It was harrowing! Woke up at 5 this morning and sweated over a non-stick pan as the sun rose. I think I have a NATURAL TALENT for pancaking. An INSTINCT. Like some strange inborn AFFINITY for pancake batter. IN MY HEART I know exactly when to flip the pancake. How long to leave it as it turns GOLDEN-BROWN. I must be some kind of kitchen savant. I am also a good baker. (Couldn't make myself dinner to save my life though. I think I can just about manage an omelette) ANYWAY seriously, let it be known that the Lee offspring have elevated pancake-making to an art form, we made a menagerie of UNUSUAL PANCAKE BEASTS (some with a few extra legs or suspicious appendages, but what of it) and a really DISEASED-LOOKING pancake heart, and wrote MUM in calligraphy more heartfelt than artistic, and then I sent Matthew out with orders to pick many beautiful flowers from the garden (he decapitated half of the heliconias in his zeal!) and ... yes! Happy birthday to my lady mother, whom I love best in all the world and still has yet to disown me.
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We've got back half of our Economics block test paper and await the other half as little lambikins await the large, shining knife. The other block tests will trickle in, I suppose, over the next fortnight. In any case, various matters academic and - otherwise - are harrowing up my soul and haunting my living nights, hence I have resolved to spend the coming week in a drunken stupor and come to school totally hungover every day. I have arranged my social schedule to this end, and look forward to a marked lightening of spirits, dulling of this terrible pain, etc. I am all set from now til Monday, and will think of something to fill the remaining evenings. (... History H3 and KI IS, I am rather thinking). Ah, youth. Do you miss it? Don't.