Death, Undeath, and Football

Not Dead

The book club is not deceased. It came back to life the week I went missing from the internet. It’s certainly not what I would call fighting fit, but I guess there’s a shred of hope. Also, I’m lagging behind and better try to catch up.

Still Dead

My desktop, however, has not managed a similar resurrection. That accounts for most of the disruptions to my everyday life. Take, for example, the long-since dusty photo feature at the top of the main page here.

I have also taken to listening to music off of Youtube on my crappy notebook speakers. That’s the double whammy of losing your desktop and your earphones at one go.

Picky

I have to start picking my subjects. Hmm. I’m thinking about doing a minor, but I’m not too convinced about that because it involves something of a gamble since I’m not sure how well I’ll do in those, and it also involves doing a couple of extra subjects. We’ll see.

Contentious Sports

Oh I watched the World Cup finals. It was in fact the only full match of the 2010 World Cup that I watched. I thought it was a poor game and a terrible advertisement for football. Too little football and too much of histrionics.

I also disagree with what most of the press (and football legends) have been saying in that the Dutch were rough and totally anti-football. Sure, there were a number of bad tackles but I chalk that down to nerves. The anti-football claims are especially irksome because, if anything, the Dutch attacked as much as if not more than the Spanish. It was a reasonably positive performance, to be fair.

On the other hand, the Spanish team disgusted me sometimes. Well, not the team as a whole, but I wasn’t convinced about a number of the fouls they were awarded. I was also surprised to see Iniesta still on the pitch because I remember retaliation being a red-card offence. Most of all, Busquets’s constant complaining and provoking seemed to characterise the darker side of a mentally manipulative Spanish team.

But that’s the way football is. It’s so easy to have an opinion and so easy to pick a side. Perhaps the most objective thing that can be said about the match is that it was a poor one and we should all just forget about it as soon as possible.

Quote

“I don’t think that people accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.”

David Lynch.

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Meetings, footie, miscellany.

Meetings + Writing

Today begins a series of meet-ups over the course of the next two or three days. I’m looking forward just to not working. I’m in the final stretch and I really need to take my mind off of it. In a sense, I don’t want to mess up the last bits and have to do them from scratch a second time.

It’s mostly eating and walking around, though I think I may have to keep my eye open and do a bit of shopping. I’m not very sure how it’s all going to work out, but I’m sure that’s not actually a big problem. It’ll work out!

Meanwhile, as I stitch up this first draft, I’ve got to get to emailing to see where my first project is.

FYP

I also have to start picking my final-year project. I’ve printed the list out and narrowed it down slightly, but only very slightly, and greater narrowing-down must take place shortly.

Music

Recent things on my jukebox: Radiohead’s Hail To The Thief., Bowie’s Hunky Dory, Arcadi Volodos playing Liszt, Sonic Youth’s The Destroyed Room, Buddy Guy’s Skin Deep, and Coltrane’s Blue Train.

Book Club

Book club appears to be on its last legs.

World Cup

No, I don’t usually talk about sports here, but this World Cup appears to be turning into a farce of some sort. The refereeing appears to be horrible; the playacting is in its full glory; BZZZZZZZZ; the goal count is pretty low; many teams appear to be playing some kind of anti-football; and then there’s this French mess as well as discontent in the English camp. The surprise results are sort of nice, but that’s about it.

Admittedly, the sport is too big to suffer too heavily from this, but you have to wonder if any of this is going to be on FIFA’s meeting agendas. And even then, there’s no guarantee that anything is going to be happen. The sport has had the opportunity to improve refereeing and has flatly declined the use of more referees and new technologies. Governing bodies also don’t seem too interested in dealing with playacting. And the inflated egos of players in the past ten years will only worsen with the power shift towards them.

It’s a sport that I love watching, but certainly an embarrassing one at times.

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Updates

Work

I’m kind of at the stage where I want to wrap things up, so every day I set my mind to completing this bit and that bit. I had a target word count in mind, an estimation of some sort, but it looks a little as if I might overrun that. I’m not very sure. I’m never very sure about these things, but I do that to give myself some remotely concrete destination to keep in my sights and also to figure out the scale of the project. It’s just the way that I work.

Like I said, though, I’m in the closing stages of the first draft. Things actually look very uncertain now in the sense that there are portions I still don’t know what to do with, but it’s all gathering some kind of momentum and it feels a tiny bit different these days. One of the important things is that I’m trying not to mess things around too much because this is roughly where I should say everything is where it should be. It sounds like it doesn’t make a lot of sense but that’s just the way it is until you have a go at it.

Yesterday, someone asked me what I think about my work so far. I’m not sure. I’m actually trying very hard not to think about it, in the sense that I think he means, because sometimes it just drives you crazy and you give up on it completely. At the same time, I thought about what the book’s actually about and was satisfied when I couldn’t really give some kind of definitive answer. While that’ll probably be a problem when I get to writing the pitch, for now it implies that I have no idea what I’m writing about; I have very bad summary skills; or it refuses to be reduced to some kind of summary, to some extent.

While the last possibility might not be the most likely, at least it’s there to begin with.

Miscellany

Ah yes, it will be time to choose my final year project soon. I’m kind of nervy. I have no idea what’s going to happen. I’m determined to make it a good experience, and in a way, I’m looking forward to it.

I kind of want to catch The Full Monty, but I don’t feel like going alone and I suspect this means I’ll be giving it a miss. From experience, anyway.

My book club moves into its second phase this week, but I get the feeling that if it’s going to die, this is pretty much where it will choose to die.

I’m beginning to think I want a small camera more than a large one, though I’m still considering.

Still have yet to put up my things, the whiteboard and the prints. Will get to it soon.

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Needs a break.

Chain Contingency

I need to do something different. One of these days, I always tell myself. One of these days. Then the next day comes and I’m right back at work, no variations, no weekends, nothing. Just work, work, work. (Not having weekends is actually nothing horrible except that it distorts your idea of the week.) It’s actually all going quite okay, but I’m afraid that it’ll affect me sooner or later, so I better get a contingency planned soon.

Diary of a Bad Ear

Meanwhile, I picked up a ear infection. The last time I had one, I was still in primary school. It was about the time we went for a sea cruise. I remember a few sadist doctors doing very mean things on my ear, such as attempting to wash it with a water jet. One of the specialists eventually (and I do mean eventually) came to my rescue with antibiotic eardrops. I’ve got those this time again and it doesn’t seem as serious this time. Fingers crossed.

Results

Oh dear, results will be in in a week and a half. I suppose there’s nothing that I should be worrying about, but you can never really tell, can you? If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in NUS, it’s that results have a tendency to surprise you. On a lighter note, I’ve tried not to spend my money on anything in this couple of weeks (and the one to follow) both because of the GSS and also because it’ll be nice to be able to buy myself a little something if my results turn out okay. I’m thinking something to do with clothes, though I haven’t made up my mind yet.

Beginnings

These are exciting times. The book club officially begins life on Monday. I don’t know if it’ll work. I can’t remember the last time I was so uncertain about any such enterprise, but let’s keep it positive, optimistic, and whatnot. I think it might stand a chance, but all I really can do is to make sure I do my job well as the proprietor. The rest of it will of course depend on the club roster. But it looks okay. I think it’ll be okay. Please be okay.

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The biggest milestone in a while.

So as expected, I crossed the barrier yesterday and reached the biggest milestone in a while. No, it’s not finished, far from it, but it’s nice to think that I’ve managed okay up until now.

I’m about two-thirds of the way through the whole thing. Of course, I don’t actually have a very clear idea of how much there is left, as usual, so that’s a really suspicious kind of estimation. I keep thinking that I actually have more than a third to finish, but I suspect I might complete it even before I get to the expected number. It’s the contradictory way that these things tend to turn out somehow.

I’m hoping nothing changes in the sense that I can keep up with the err good work. I’ve been going at what I think is a reasonable pace (I’m generally a slow worker), and I haven’t had a burnt-out episode yet. So I’ve been healthy, in that sense, and that will optimistically continue.

What I need to change, though is my method of working. I figure that with a third to go and given the way in which I write, this will probably be a good time to actually start completing the things that I’ve started. That is, I think I should start looking at all the stray bits that I’ve got and putting it together. It’s just the way that I work. I hope I’ve done enough to sustain any such efforts. If not, I’ll end up going back to putting bits and pieces together.

Meanwhile, my book club hasn’t officially kicked off yet, but people seem impatient. I suppose that’s a good sign. Hooray.

Now I’m going to take a break before getting to work again.

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