Results Get

All Smoke, No Fire

So the results are out and the rest of the world gets to do the whole I-told-you-so routine again that seems designed precisely for me. No, didn’t fail my Math or anything (I had that dream about a week ago, just before the Richard Feynman one), but it wasn’t spectacular either. In fact, I think that’s the best that could be said about it, that it wasn’t a spectacular success but also not a spectacular failure. It panned out as a B-, B+, B, B, A-, which adds to 18.5 points, and Math was actually one of the Bs. Also surprising was the A-, which came in what I initially thought was my worst subject, and with the other B I was hoping for an A.

So, you see, results just like to mess with your brain.

Expectations

On the topic of expectations and messing with brains, I did mention, I think, stepping into high gear for Bukit Merah a couple of days ago. (Forgive me if I didn’t. I’m an old man and my memory isn’t what it used to be.) On my Wednesday break day (and the unintentional Thursday semi-break day), I tried to sort it out and a few ideas came through. I’m now kind of stuck on one of the ideas which is oscillating between a proper brain-messing and something a little more orthodox. While I’ve always happily pushed ahead with the brain-messings, this one runs the risk of not fitting at all, and that leaves an itchy feeling in me that I think is basically my common sense telling me no.

So, I’m pretty sure that’ll be adjusted, though in what way doesn’t seem all too clear yet. I’m pretty sure about sticking to challenging expectations with this one idea, so we’ll just have to wait and see, and hopefully something interesting will emerge.

In the meantime, there’s still quite a bit to work on before I actually get to that point, and I mostly have everything before it figured out, so I’m more or less set for the next couple of weeks. (Assuming that I keep up with the fairly tremendous pace.) I’m almost at the halfway point, though, that said, I don’t know how long the thing is, so saying that is kind of pointless.

Coupling

Here are a couple of links. You can click them.

David Tennant to reprise Hamlet for BBC Two. [via BBC] I’m still waiting for the RSC DVD of the stage production. Which reminds me that I was talking to Jolie the other day and I realised I just don’t watch theatre alone. In fact, I can’t do a lot of things alone. The only things I can safely say that I prefer to do alone are work and writing, which tend to become the same thing most of the time. I’m just a companionship person.

UC Berkeley Classics Department’s 2009 commencement address by David Mendelsohn. [via UC Berkeley]

“And so, I would ask you this: when you think of what it means to be a classicist, don’t think only about your deconstructive readings of Homer, or post-structuralist approaches to Plautus, or Freudian readings of the Euripidean romances, or Marxist interpretations of the Peloponnesian War, the iconography of red-figure vases or the prosopography of the late Roman Republic. Think about Mrs. Begley; think about the people in Kraków, who, when they had very good reasons to believe that civilization had ended, felt that the first thing they needed to do was to put on a play by Sophocles.”

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Rainy Days (*Bang Bang* *High Kick*)

Not Just The Weather

It’s been rainy, yeah, but it’s also been more than a little gloomy for me these days. Since last Friday, in fact. Doesn’t look to be clearing up soon, although I think we all get used to gloomy days after a while and just learn to make the most of them.

Writing has been good. I’ve continued at my ferocious pace and am happily forging ahead with no hint of letting my foot off the gas. I will today, though, because I’m going out to take my mind off of things. I’m hoping that the extra thinking time I have today allows for some good planning of the following chapter, which is extremely long (at least in my mind) and I really need to kick the awesome gearbox up to the fifth gear. I’m six or seven chapters in and I realise I haven’t quite stepped it up yet. I better do it before it’s too late.

Otherwise, it’s all looking okay. It’s just my personal life that’s going through a little bit of a rough time, and my closest friends have not been in touch, having gone overseas for exchanges and work-and-travel, so it’s all been more than a bit difficult.

*Bang Bang* *High Kick*

This is pretty self-explanatory, but it has a Doctor Who fan onboard the TARDIS in a special scene with Captain Jack written specially for this. David Tennant cameos.

[via YouTube]

Love it when John Barrowman pops about going, “Bang bang!” and then kicking the air after one such instance.

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Richard Feynman Dream

Never According To Plan

Funny. I think I said on Friday morning that I wasn’t expecting to do any work on Bukit Merah. Things rarely go according to plan. I hammered out a fairly significant portion at about twice my usual rate over the weekend instead. It might have to do with how Friday was a terrible day, and I generally perform pretty good when I’m sad. Like a limit break or something.

I’m sure the writing’s all very rough and will need a lot of editing, but the point of the matter that I wrote fast (for my standards).

Valkyria!

I’ve been playing Valkyria Chronicles. It’s fantastic.

“Entanglement Machine”

Last night I had a dream where I was in a car with a friend of mine and an aged Richard Feynman with white hair and spectacles. It was at night and we were in a carpark testing my friend’s “entanglement machine”. Apparently, that’s a really fancy name for a machine that does nothing but produce a small glob of black mass. We performed one test on my right index finger (like it was a good idea for the off-chance that I might, I don’t know, lose a finger or something), and when my friend applied these wires to the skin, poof, a tiny black glob appeared on my finger.

Great results, and then I said something along the lines of, Hey, wouldn’t it be great if I had a disentanglement machine? I could destroy my enemies! Then, suddenly aware that I said something stupid, I sank into silence. I remember thinking that Richard Feynman was receptive to even the stupidest of ideas, and he started mumbling to himself, Disentanglement… enemies…

We performed a second test on the same index finger (so much for rigorous experiments), and this time, the black mass was more scattered, roughly tracing out my fingerprint. Interesting, I should have thought, but I didn’t because it was a dream. Instead, Richard Feynman pointed to one of the graphs that was the one on… oh I don’t know… something against time. Apparently, the mass was produced at 4 and 6 seconds. This was reflected by an increase in the graph level immediately after those times. But! he exclaimed, what’s interesting is this!

He was pointing to the bits just before 4 and 6 seconds, where there were dips. He got all excited and told us that such dips had yet to be explained.

Just then, a security guard appeared and knocked on the window. He informed us that our car, a cheap old sedan, was slanted. Richard Feynman took it upon himself to reverse out of the lot to steer the car straight, but just as he was about to drive back in, something happened, and this got fuzzy, so I can’t tell you what. It had to do with some other vehicle interfering, mainly, driving across and preventing us from parking.

Somehow that got cleared up and we had to try again. This time, I was to drive. Having not driven in a long time, I drove very gingerly, and it was about here that I woke up.

See, I have these really… strange dreams.

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Money Matters

So you spend it.

Here’s the loot report for yesterday, or in other words, the books joining my little library:

1. Seeing by José Saramago
2. All-Star Superman Vol. 2 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
3. The Odyssey by Homer (Translated by Robert Fitzgerald)
4. The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger
5. Pandora In The Congo by Albert Sanchez Piñol (Translated by Mara Faye Lethem)
6. The 4 Major Plays by Anton Chekhov (Translated by Curt Columbus)
7. Last Evenings On Earth by Roberto Bolaño (Translated by Chris Andrews)

Not quite the mix I was expecting, with a shortage of science and poetry. I think I’ll pop by for another book tomorrow if I happen to be passing by, though that’ll likely be a recent novel than anything else. In fact, it might even be in Chinese.

I’m happiest about my Pandora In The Congo buy, actually, because it’s not something I would normally read, and I’ve only heard good things about it.

I had a bunch of other books I was intending to get, including the new Kazuo Ishiguro Nocturnes and In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin, but I suspect I’m going pocket paperback for those, if they ever appear. Otherwise I’ll just get them as they are. There was also a science book that’s in a gigantic hardcover and I was at first slightly tempted, but what the hey, I’m a poor student without a job.

I’m sure there’ll be another before school reopens, since there’s the Great Singapore Sale somewhere along these couple of months, so there’s certainly ample time to stock up on my new semester reading.

Today…

I think I’ll be working on a query for The River. I just want some space from Bukit Merah for now, in case I burn out prematurely. I figure that if I can’t tell how long it’s going to be (since I am making it up as I go along), then I run the risk of either writing it too short (rushing it) or too long (dragging it). Some distance, temporal or otherwise, from it might help, so I reckon I won’t be back at it until Monday, depending on how the weekend works out.

Hmm.

Results in a week. Wonder what I’ll see. There’s something nerve-wracking about getting your results reported to you by your computer. A click of the mouse and poof it’s there. And as if it wants to mess with your head a bit more, it doesn’t appear instantly. No, it just lags a bit and hangs around and tries its best to surprise you. Then it shows up like a magic trick, and you’re struggling to contain the dread in the first couple of seconds as you try to make sense of it all.

Then it makes sense. And it’s like dust, taking ages to settle.

Next week. Friday, I think.

2.8

The WordPress 2.8 beta has got up and going. [via WordPress.org]

TRICO

Team ICO’s next project has an alleged trailer. [via Kotaku]

Looks great. I like the giant beast.

9

New trailer for 9. [via YouTube]

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Books And Wilco

Book Outings

Kinokuniya is having a Thursday-to-Saturday sale, and I’ll be down twice, I think, with different people. Got a couple of special things to look for, a couple of orders, and a couple of gifts. Apart from that, I believe it’ll be the usual stuff, just hoping to spruce up my own library with a mixture of new fiction, classics and non-fiction.

I hope I don’t spend too big, but sometimes, you see a really pretty and rare photography book or the like and it’s just too hard to resist.

So, just to make sure I don’t go crazy with my cash, I’m going to try to keep it to about five novels comprised mainly of new books and one or two of the classics. Then I’m going to add a science book, and possibly a general interest book. If anything else strikes my fancy, I’ll cap it at a maximum of two. And if there really is a rare photography book or some other sort of lovely tome that I feel I just have to have, then I suppose it’s just too bad.

In any case, I’m not planning too much this time. I’ll just pop by and improvise.

Been Busier

I’ve been writing, as you probably know. Finished drafting the third chapter yesterday. I got stuck on what to do for the fourth, so I didn’t do anything. I’m making reasonable progress, I think. I’ve been busier, but this pace has been pretty good. I just hope I don’t neglect The River and fail to make any sort of submission. The writing on Bukit Merah is somewhat unplannable (if that’s not a word, I made it up), but the submission is something I can actually arrange into some kind of a schedule, so for now, I’m just going to go with the writing.

That’s assuming, of course, that my mind doesn’t go blank when faced with the prospect of making a submission. I suspect it will, and if you take it that way, I suppose you can call this self-denial instead.

80

Faber & Faber, one of my favourite publishing houses, turns 80, and has a bunch of celebratory events lined up. [via Faber & Faber]

Entitlement

I was checking my RSS feeds and I saw Neil Gaiman with a nice journal entry about writing and the nature of the job. [via Neil Gaiman]

Signal Leakage

Wilco’s upcoming album was leaked, and this article describes the sort of buzz the subsequent actions taken by the band and vendors that was generated. [via billboard]

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One Word At A Time

Work, Work

For various reasons, I’ve been a little short on sleep, though that strangely hasn’t impaired my ability to produce writing, and I can happily announce that on Monday I cleared the first draft of the first chapter of Bukit Merah, which is a minor milestone, I should think. I say ‘ability to produce writing’ (as opposed to ‘ability to write’) because I’ve not actually looked back at it, so for all I know the lack of sleep has made me churn out complete trash.

Still, it’s nice to be writing again, even if writing this is proving to be completely different from writing The River. It’s an entirely different prospect, almost to the extent of it feeling like a different medium. As though one’s a TV series and the other’s a movie screenplay.

I kind of have no idea where I’m going. Well, that’s not right. I do have an idea of where I’m going, but there are plenty of things along the way that have always seemed vague or icky, and I’ll have to work them out as I go forwards. These things tend to just sort themselves out naturally, but they need space and time, so I don’t think I’ll worry too much about them for now. I’m just happy to be filling out the beginning without too much in the way of choking up.

Still don’t feel quite right yet. When I wrote The River, I coaxed myself into a 10- to 12-hour day rhythm and kept punching at the keyboard rain or shine. It felt like day-to-day work. So far with Bukit Merah, if feels more as if I’m writing it in bursts. Quality of the writing aside, I don’t think I can finish the project writing in this way, so sooner or later, I think, I’ll have to find my way back into that sort of rhythm.

But it’s all looking optimistic for Bukit Merah. Still early days, though, but I think the carthartic experience of finishing The River has certainly been of some help.

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Positivity

Class Gathering

The reason I don’t appear in many photos (apart from my semi-ninja skills) is that they remind me of how awful I look in them. Usually as if I walked into the photo by accident.

But thanks to everyone who dropped by, whether or not you see them in this photo. Much appreciated, and I hope it wasn’t too bad.

Work Ethic

Sometimes I have nothing to do for the day and decide that I can focus entirely on my work. So I sit in my chair and try to start writing and the whole thing is a struggle.

Sometimes I have plenty of things to do, like on the gathering morning, and I place my hands at the keyboard and I just fire away like nobody’s business.

It’s just the way the world is.

Award-Winner

Before I forget, a couple of links. First, Cormac McCarthy has won the PEN/Saul Bellow award. [via cbcnews.ca]

Science!

“Why is the immune system able to fight off some viruses but not others, leading to chronic, life-threatening infections like HIV and hepatitis C?” [via PhysOrg]

Good Vibrations

Monday morning, things look sharp. The gathering for instance went pretty okay (I think). The River looks like it’s in a bit of trouble but at least Bukit Merah is faring better, and I’m actually having fun getting stuff done. Making friends, talking to old friends, sustaining existing friendships, all seem to be going smoothly, so it’s all provided a dose of fresh air. Oh and my jukebox has been very happy with a healthy variety of music.

(Speaking of friends, many are going off for work-and-travel programmes, foreign university education, and exchange arrangements, so I think I won’t be seeing a number of them for quite a bit. Stay safe, all of you.)

On the flip side, haven’t really started with Ulysses. It’s heavy. I brought it out one day, and reading the introduction alone made my wrist tire. I’m also supposed to meet with a couple of people, but those arrangments have failed to work themselves out so far, and I’ll probably have to step on the gas a bit. The River, as I was saying, is kind of in no man’s land. Sometimes I stare at it and it looks terrible. Sometimes I stare at it and it looks terrific. The usual disease. I suppose that actually means it is terrible. Oh I don’t know. I want to get back into a bit of a groove first by writing some of Bukit Merah first.

Still, all things considered, it’s a reasonably good start to the holidays. Let’s hope it stays that way.

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Friday, Friday

Work Updates

When the holidays arrive, I’m going to start Bukit Merah all over. I have a couple of thousand words of fragments, but I think it’s fair to say that that was something of an experiment. It feels as if the entire thing is a little heavy, a little too long for its own good. I’m going to have to start over.

The River leaves a very different impression on me now, and in fact I believe I can’t actually write like that again no matter how hard I tried. I guess change is something I’ll have to learn to get used to.

School Stuff

Busy. Busy days. Extremely busy. Also extremely sleepy. Tests. Assignments. Project. Stuff.

Now Reading

I’m currently reading Saramago’s Death At Intervals. Did I tell you that already? It’s been a thing of wonder so far, and I probably would have finished it by now had it not been for a remarkable lack of sleep. Today. Today.

Planet Of The Dead Trailer

Here’s the trailer for the upcoming Doctor Who Easter special [via TARDIS Newsroom]:

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Wednesday Morning

Saving Mankind

Yesterday, I saw this:

‘In a crowded subway car, I hear a male voice, close to my ear. We’re on an express train somewhere between Grand Central and Union Square, and I worry that I have a situation on my hands. But he isn’t talking to me. He’s reading out loud from “Only You Can Save Mankind,” by Terry Pratchett. His head is a mass of dark, wayward curls, and a young woman leans into him, listening and idly tugging on his Harry Potter-esque scarf. She’s wearing purple leg warmers with oversized yellow buttons down the sides. Between her boots, laced tight with rainbow laces, is an orange bag stuffed with smaller white plastic bags—it looks like a creamsicle. A single, surprised “Oh!” escapes her chapped lips at something he’s read. They aren’t on the subway; they’re in the story, saving mankind. He holds her head against his chest with his gloved hand, and she turns the page for him.’

[via The Book Bench]

Writing Blind

I’m chipping away at a Biomaterials paper which is proving to be a little like eating a tough steak using plastic utensils. I also wrote a little of Bukit Merah. The thing that these two have in common is that I’ve been quite incapable of writing at length. I just do bits and pieces, take my mind off of it and do more bits and pieces.

Getting Better?

Not exactly feeling much better, but at least it’s settled into a form of consistency and I can function at some basic level right now. Been talking to a few people, and no matter how I’ve come across these few days, if you’re reading this (you ought to know who you are), I’ve had a good time talking to you guys.

Right, back to work.

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Monday Blues

System Maintenance

It’s been a rough week, but it’s gradually clearing my system. Things are kind of falling back into place, though in the wake of events they all seem to be a little distorted, as if the world has changed just that tiny little bit.

Things are slowly getting back on track. Been working on papers and some writing. Been studying. Been watching TV. Been imagining things. Been dreaming. Been drinking ginseng tea. There are a few things that haven’t been going so great. Haven’t been sleeping, for instance. Haven’t been talking to many people. (Just about three in fact.)

Though at the same time, I’ve also been enjoying writing in a way I never quite have before. Although to say that it has to do with this is a little untrue, but to say that it has nothing to do with this is also rather naive. Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. Doesn’t really matter.

But really, apart from the lack of sleep and the decision to avoid talking to most people, I don’t think there’s too drastic a symptom.

And Now A List Of Random Things

Last week before the reading week. Goodness, we’re already halfway through the semester.

I’m going through Waiting For Godot next.

No, still not querying, but slightly more optimistic on Bukit Merah.

Two Links

AmpLive is the producer of hip-hop group Zion-I, and he did remixes of songs from Radiohead’s In Rainbows (dubbed RainyDayz Remixes) some time back, but received a cease and desist. Ever since then, the project has received the approval of Radiohead, and you can find download it for free if you’re interested. [via Josh Spear, actual link] I’m not much of a hip-hop person, but I did quite like a few of the remixes, especially the version of 15 Step.

Doctor Who Valentine’s cards. [via io9, actual link via Enjoying Life's Journey]

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