pillar of cloud and fire

After yesterday's essay marathon my brain has gone on a throbbing strike and acts up whenever I see small print, especially anything to do with statistics. So here I am.

Yesterday my astronomy group mate BlondGirlFriend dropped the bombshell that his group hadn't taken the Sun Pictures for February. I thought the plan to split our group into 2 groups of 3s so one group takes the pictures and one group does the 6000 plus words essay was quite a good idea. Apparently not. Apparently spending one day to take pictures of the Sun in February is a task of high difficulty. So they decide to take pictures only on the last day of February and very optimistically hope that the Sun will shine, contrary to weather forecasts. Actually, to be fair to that half of the group, BlondGirlFriend is actually the main person at fault because he does not reply smses or return calls when Square calls for photo taking sessions. But still.

So it rained the whole of today, despite my fervent prayers, and my mobilising the family to pray for sun. In January, God sent the sun. This time He obviously decided not to, but I'm cool with that. I don't know why but I'm starting to not bother so much anymore, although it does bother me.

Maybe I'm just getting old and am too tired to supply drive and energy for the whole group. I am not Senoko power station.

On a more sunshiny note, today at KoolPurpleSkool, Dreamboat came into the room after Chatterbox's lesson and whispered to him 'Ellie wants to ask you something'. Then Chatterbox grew quiet and had this shy sheepish look on his face, which was startling because Chatterbox is always loud noisy and ra-ra.

So I sensed something amiss, and asked Chatterbox, 'Do you like Ellie?'

"what?! no!" *blush*

Dreamboat piped in. "Ellie has a crush on (Chatterbox)!"

*Chatterbox acts shy.*

Me: "Is she cute?"

Chatterbox: "Nooooooo.....!"

Then he blushes up to his ears, and because he is blond and has extremely fair skin despite all his wakeboarding, it was extremely fascinating to watch. (Talking about fascinating, Chatterbox, at 8, watches Gilmore Girls, is rather smitten with Rory and thinks it's cool she got arrested for stealing a yacht.)

When Chatterbox leaves after he's pestered me for the millionth time to make a date with him on Club Penguin (I actually went to get an account, just for kicks, but that's another blog entry altogether), Dreamboat confessed,

"I have a crush on this guy in my class" *twirls long brown messy hair and chews it*

Dreamboat is 8!

But before I could kaypoh for more details, her mother came in and she suddenly became quiet and focused. It's amazing how hard she tries to please her mother, who is nice, very good looking but has eyes of a killer.

alternative

I'm starting to see myself manifest inwardly-directed-frustration during lectures.

Recently I've taken (again) to making random ink markings on the back of my hands, around the wrist, wherever. It helps me concentrate better. The thing is, if anyone has tried using a Pilot G2 to write on the back of your hand, you would have discovered that it takes a lot to get the ink to come out (uniball signo pens work better on skin). You have to actually press really hard, and do it a few times to get any ink out. Also the space restrictions mean everytime my writing has covered the back of my hands, I have to rub it out and start over again. Or else I just retrace the words over and over.

(As much as there are 2 hands to write on, it simply isn't enough for a 2 hour lecture, what more for a 3 hour seminar.)

Nearer the evening, more than halfway through a seminar, someone next to me went 'you self-mutilating ah?'. And I said 'no la it's just a pen'. That was until I realised that there were red 'shadows' behind the words on my hands that remained after the ink had washed off.

Bruises that spell words, how cool is that.

kneejerk

This happened last week, but much business has kept me from blogging.

I was at the bus stop and ran into two social work classmates. Let's call one Square and the other one Circle. In an attempt to make conversation, I asked Square what class she just had, which happened to be Bahasa. I said I knew quite a few people who were doing Bahasa too, and added in a deadpan manner, "maybe because they want to work with Indonesian maids next time".

Square's eyes widened in shock and horror and said, "Stereotype!" rather triumphantly. (Yes she has featured once in one of the previous entries, in case you got a sense of deja vu).

I was wondering if she was joking, or if she didn't get that I wasn't serious. So I asked Square politely what the stereotype was and she said, "Stereotype!" again. By which time I was already regretting opening my mouth and so I laughed a rather lame, hollow laugh. Then Circle said, "You can only laugh silently huh", and this time I really laughed. I wasn't laughing at her; it was just that the whole situation was so ridiculous I didn't know if they were for real.

I hope I'm not sounding snobbily elitist or whatever, but it's tiring frustrating and freaking irritating to have these kind of encounters almost everyday. I think I shall just retreat into my anti-social(work) self again.

another wednesday

Today I asked one of my KoolPurpleSkool students if she watched last night's debate, and she went "Omg it was so weird...(the opposition) was so...aggressive!". My Chatterbox Wakeboarding kid said the debate was boring, but that's because he's 8, and more involved with Club Penguin and Neopets.

Chatterbox told Dreamboat Girl today (he always gets distracted once she comes into the room), "I am going to be Double Platinum (something something) on Neopets!" And he did his fake-rockstar gyration with the statement. Dreamboat Girl looked at him and went "But I'm already there.", and Chatterbox visibly deflated.

Purple is my favourite colour

Today's one of the rare days I'm at home, on a weeknight, and Watching TV. So 'The Arena' was showing this debate between KoolPurpleSkool and CombiGreen over the motion that Singapore's service standards have a long way to go. The individual styles of the debaters were so different; one might attribute it to the English vs Chinese culture thing, but watching CombiGreen people debate just reminded me too much of my communist secondary school. The whole philosophy of 'trying harder', the aggressiveness with a hint of condescension they try to pass off as 'style' and 'power' (not intentionally, I presume - maybe just young impressionable minds reflecting some aspects of school culture.) - it was all a bit much. Like they were trying too hard.

Maybe it's just my bias towards KoolPurpleSkool, but I did think that they looked a lot less insecure and they actually debated, instead of reciting some very well Googled speech. Not to mention Purple did not debate as if their lives depended on it. I like detachment. I think over-involvement and emotional outpourings are more manifestations of the less likeable sides of human nature. Too messy.

But I was glad KoolPurpleSkool won despite a horrible start. Although it felt a bit weird watching them identify themselves with 'Singapore', despite being foreigners. But maybe that's why they won. Because being too long in The Machine makes you spew whatever you hear and get from The Machine, and what you say may be what The Machine wants you to think, which may not stand under closer scrutiny.

Somewhere during the debate, I was suddenly reminded of my college's Lit tutor's oft-quoted line from Yeats, that goes "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity" and I was wondering if it applied.