Still, I hope I cope.

I’m currently on Coetzee’s Disgrace. I’m just about to finish it actually. Then I’ll go about doing the presentation thing that we’re supposed to do in the tutorials. I will probably talk about animals.

Meanwhile, I think I will take a bit of a break from reading my texts and do some other book next, just for personal reading pleasure. I’ll figure out what that is soon.

On the topic of enjoying myself, I shall take myself to the pictures in the weekend, I hope, and catch a movie or something. Or maybe I should go loan some movie. I was thinking either an Ingmar Bergman or a David Lynch picture. I haven’t done a David Lynch film for a long time. I want to watch his most recent film, Inland Empire, so I might consider going to look for that.

On a side note, I might go to the PC Show/IT Show/PC Fair/IT Fair/Whateveryoucallit this weekend. I’m not looking for very much though it’s nice to drop by once in a while. I could do with a hard drive just to fill up the slot I have to spare. I could pick up a monitor because mine seems to be having a bit of a problem, though I don’t think that’s too great of a worry right now and that’s a few hundred dollars I don’t quite want to spend right now. Then there’s the issue of my speakers but I don’t think you can get very good deals on speakers at these events anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. In the end, it’s more of an excuse to actually go out and buy something, really.

Right, time to polish off Disgrace.

I also watched Godard’s Le Mépris over the weekend. While it isn’t a compulsory text, I am doing Contempt this semester, and my love of the few Godard pictures I’ve watched (the result of my own laziness and also the fact that he’s made so many pictures) meant that there was no way I was going to leave it out of my to-do list. It’s a beautiful picture, as Godard’s films tend to be, and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. The Delerue soundtrack certainly helped too.

The last piece of genius I should tell you about today is Macedonio Fernández’s wonderful The Museum of Eterna’s Novel (The First Good Novel). It was funny and clever and moving all at once, and is the sort of thing that makes you think, If only I managed a novel/antinovel even half of this magnitude someday. Wonderful stuff.

I’m moving onto Franca Rame and Dario Fo’s monologues next. It’s one of my texts and to tell the truth I have no idea what to expect. Of course, it’s perfectly possible that this is a work of genius too, in which case my earlier statement will have to be retracted, but having not read it I’m in something of a quandary here.

And on a final and really unrelated note for today, I think I should be ordering my earphones soon. I have a feeling they’ll come in handy in the near future. I’ve delayed enough.

d

One mostly comforting thing is that I’m beginning to get a better feel for what I thought to be my most difficult subject. I still think it’s my most difficult subject, but it’s not bamboozling me so much anymore. I also realise I ought to step up the pace on a couple of my other subjects lest I get left behind, but it’s just that there are so many things going on at one time that it doesn’t always seem possible.

Oh yes, I have to do my first lab report this week. It’s been a long while since I’ve put together one. I hope that doesn’t impair me in any horrific way. I foresee having to spend an inordinate amount of time on it.

Next week I’m having the first of my project meetings. Somehow it just comes across as being quite exciting. Unnecessarily so, I’m sure, but I can’t help myself. It’s the sort of thing that makes you cry out quietly inside that something’s actually happening.

Made some friends this week. Lovely thing. Lovely people. I hope I find friendships to last this semester, though the way things happen, I’m not particularly optimistic about it. Two of those new acquaintances asked me yesterday: “Are you Singaporean? Because you look Korean.” My word, that’s the first time anyone’s ever said that. It was funny mostly because the two of them were thinking the same thing. And if you don’t know what I look like, I promise that I don’t.

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Ah yes, and now, an assortment of random things:

I woke up yesterday with the most curious mix of joy and sadness. There was a curious disappointment that I had to deal with but also a number of things that made me quite glad. The disappointment is associated in part with a new friendship; the joy is composed of an eclectic mix of sources.

One of them has to do with a somewhat attractive idea that occurred to me in the morning. It’s a philosophical idea that I’m sure has been discussed to death since the time of the ancient Greeks, but I’ll latch onto it for now and see where it takes me. I might be able to glean something from it. Attractive ideas are always exciting. That is, ideas that make you go, Now that’s something to think about. Whether or not I mess it up eventually is a question for later. For now, the purity of it and the fact that it might well lead me to unchartered territory make it all very exciting and of course very attractive.

Spent my morning yesterday setting up a new printer, which was straightforward of course except for a little quirk that stumped me for about half an hour. It’s always the little things that get you, isn’t it?

I had a calculator that died. I think the battery died. It’s the first calculator that’s ever died on me. Fancy that. Though I bet loads of people get through their entire lives without calculators dying on them.

I wrote a new short story. Did I say that already? I wrote it last week. I don’t know what to do with it. I was thinking of a certain competition but I just missed the deadline by a number of weeks. Oh well. I’ll keep it in reserve maybe. I’ve never quite written a short story like that, but it feels right in that it feels like I know what I’m doing. So far, people seem to like it, which is as much as a raconteur can ask for, I suppose. Though I did receive complaints about my generally minimalist punctuation.

I might have to watch some heart surgery soon. That just sounds brilliant in itself. Looking forward to it.

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