Before Gloomsday 2011

We’re about a month away from this year’s Gloomsday! [Update, 19 Aug: Not anymore!] Here are a few thoughts on it as we march into this most miserable of occasions with our feet heavy and our sighs even heavier. Another Gloomsday, another year older, after all. I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

I’ll probably update this post as the days go along. [Update: And I did!]

[Update, 19 Aug] Plenty of minor updates today, including a new note to introduce the presents section (regarding what you can do with it now that we all agree it’s quite useless), a list of stuff I’ve been planning/doing, the posters series, and some other stuff.

Scheming Celebrations

I think I will celebrate this year. I didn’t last year (technically, though my great friends did try to do something out of concern over something else). I don’t think I did the year before. But this year, I shall plonk down some ducats (yes, yes, I’ve been studying) for… something. I’m not sure quite what yet. There’s always The Lion King, if I can find really good company. I could of course just catch any other show, but the truth is there aren’t that many shows on Gloomsday plus-minus one. The company’s also an issue, but I suspect that it will be for all of the celebration possibilities.

There’s also the prospect of really good food. I’m in the mood for something European or something Chinese. Of course, all of this, being a month away, isn’t likely to stay quite as constant come the day itself, but it’s probably as safe a bet as we’ll get as far as plans can go.

Another possibility is that of an activity of some sort. Like going to a museum and having a picnic! However, no one would take me seriously if I invited them to a museum for Gloomsday, and very few people here are interested in picnics. In that case, nothing quite strikes me as being great celebratory (or gloomy) material, so this won’t do until I get a better idea.

But whatever it is, I think having a bit of spending power will be good in preparation for this. I haven’t actually deliberately celebrated in some two, three, maybe four or five years. And if I’m going to do it, I’d better do it proper. Importantly, it’s never about what’s being spent and what’s being given. I just want it to be about people.

The Birthday Present Paradox

[Update, 19 Aug] Actually, now that I’ve shown how paradoxical it is to try to fetch me a present in this sort of knowing manner, this section is useless. Let’s turn it into a section for present suggestions for other people. [/Update]

I generally don’t ask for presents. The truth is, I don’t really worry or care about the idea of getting presents. The best policy for most people, actually, is not to give me anything at all. I find that most of the time, it just leads to awkward situations. But people sometimes insist (very violently), and people often ask questions (what should I get for you and all that), and just in case you feel extremely charitable, here are some considerations that will save us both embarrassment. They will probably show you why presents are a bad idea and help you figure out some form of recourse. My most common advice to anyone who asks is to donate. There are a few causes I’m partial to, so you should donate to Child’s Play, UNICEF, or the WWF if you are thus inclined. It’s really just the way I like my presents.

See, the first thing I’ll tell you is: Don’t get me books unless you are very sure what you’re doing. My room contains some 400 books and I’m not that keen on adding to it carelessly. Also, my queue is tremendous. I still have books from two Gloomsdays ago. That’s not a good sign at all.

That said, there are books that you can consider, including:

• The Sylph Editions Cahiers
• The new Julio Cortázar
• The letters of Sammy Beckett
• [Update] And if you’re super rich: this.
• [Double update] And if not, this should do too.

And if you love me very, very much (how likely is that?) and want to express it through books, your task will be to locate a book I read very long ago but have since failed to locate again. I want to add it to my library, and also re-read it several times. That book is Julio Cortázar’s The Winners.

But there’s a problem here, see?

Here lies the birthday paradox. I like for people to think up something on their own and let their thoughtfulness and the surprise win me over. That’s the point of a present. But it’s nearly impossible because in the things I love, I would be picky, and in the things I don’t love, well, you know. And now that I’ve told you what books I could possibly want, I don’t want you to give them to me any longer. Isn’t it all just very clever?

Furthermore, don’t buy me soft toys unless you happen to be the girl I am interested in (and you’re probably not), at which point you can probably buy me anything as long as it doesn’t kill me. Don’t buy me anything music-related because I probably already have it if I wanted it. Don’t bother with the things on my other post because those things are expensive and in general I would feel bad to receive them. I also want to buy them for myself to feel like I fulfilled some kind of wish. There are generic possibilities. Tickets to a show are good because it means spending time with people, provided you can find a good one. I like theatre, dance, and music. Food is also good because we can share. I like things like cakes and pies and tarts. With fruit or chocolate. Or both. Generic gifts are easy on you, easy for me, and actually have the potential to offer more than what they tend to stand for literally. (I.e. going to a show provides the opportunity to spend time together; food is one of the most social of activities.) That would be wonderful. You can of course surprise me with a really thoughtful gift, and that would be great, but I should say that surprises don’t always work out the way you and I want to imagine that they would.

But really, the best immediate present you can give me is company. Like I said, I’m not big on the idea of receiving presents. It’s just too rare that I receive something I will remember and love for the rest of my life, and in general too much trouble for others, I think. Well, if you’re confident, please take the plunge.

[Update, 19 Aug] Meanwhile, apart from those books, another great suggestion as a present you can get for someone you love is a print from The Working Proof, which contributes 15% off of every sale to organisations such as Doctors Without Borders. [/Update]

Reading Habits

Generally, when it comes to this time of the year, my most basic indulgence is to read a book I really want to read. You know, the book that you’ve put aside all year because you want to save it for a special day. (Okay, I may be the only person who does that.) I don’t know what to read this year! I do have plenty of excellent books that I am eager to complete, but let’s just call it an embarrassment of riches. I have a Saramago, a Peixoto, some Camus, an Abe, and a Vila-Matas among a crowd of other literature, for example, and it’s hard enough choosing from these few as it is: I’m not about to take my actual full queue into consideration. Right now, the Vila-Matas (Never Any End to Paris) seems most likely. But things could change in three weeks! Hard to tell, these things.

Pre-Thoughts

Last year, I was ready for adventure. It did turn out to be a year of some adventure, for which I’m very happy. Many things changed. This year, like it or not, adventure has come looking for me. A new and very different school term begins, people are “moving onto the next phase of life” (oh come on, it really is only one phase and that is life with all of its constant change), so I’m not actually in search of adventure. I do feel a little old and a little strange. I think I used to think–being quite the fatal sort of bloke, as you might know–that 25 would be a great age to live to. Now I think 40 is a good age to live to. We’ll see. More thoughts to come.

Said more thoughts: Today (9 Aug going into 10 Aug) I updated this in bits, mostly pointing out the crucial paradox of the birthday present that struck me as the main reason I feel strange about birthday presents after a conversation. (Thanks, Chrissy!) I hope this saves a lot of money for a lot of people. I also realise that I feel really good about Gloomsday this year (thus the self-initiated celebrations) for reasons I can’t really pinpoint. I think it has a lot to do with the events of the past three years leading to a profound inability to celebrate things and to have fun. I also realise it may have to do with the feeling that I owe the people who have stuck with me in those same years a lot. Maybe I see it as a bit of “giving back”. Or, to continue this pretend-high brow psychoanalysis, it might also have to do with the removal of importance from one relationship and the reinvestment of importance into all of those that I’ve despite my best efforts overlooked these years. Whatever it is, I think there hasn’t been a Gloomsday like this for a long while, and I’m going to give every effort to make sure that these people are not under-rewarded (no, it’s not really the word I was looking for, but I was about to say “under-compensated”, which sounds worse) and overlooked anymore. It’s not a Gloomsday about me, despite all logic and sense. It’s a Gloomsday about all you brilliant people out there.

Doing Stuff

[Update, 19 Aug] Well, that’s a sort of unfair way of labelling it, since this section was started on 19 Aug. Since I last wrote, I’ve started to try to arrange meetings with about four or five different groups of people. I’ve also made a couple of contests for people to participate in. I have a mind to go out and get some gifts for my classmates because I’m having class on the night of my birthday. And, yeah, that’s how it’s been going. I’m not sure how successful this will be (we’re only a couple of weeks away!), but let’s keep our fingers crossed.

I also designed a set of posters for fun. They’re below. Exercises in amateur design.

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Orientation Week

Oh hello. A week sure goes by quickly. You would have imagined that things might have slowed down a bit given how it’s not the exam period but I certainly found the exam period more relaxing. I’ve plenty of things to do these days. More than I had first imagined, in fact.

My FYP takes top billing, of course. It… It’s progressing. I’m not so sure what to make of it. I’ll do my best, but I’m still learning many things and it’s still taking quite a bit of time to get anywhere. Hopefully I’ll iron out the kinks by these couple of weeks and we can get to making excellent progress during the holiday season.

Oh yes, the holiday season. So many presents to buy! So few actually bought. Daryl sad.

This weekend, I’m hoping to get started on a bunch of other duties. It just struck me last night how many things I have to do these holidays. I hope it works out. Honestly, I have no idea if it will, but I’m basically going to deal with it one at a time. I’m sure it won’t turn out too bad.

One of those duties–and I suppose it isn’t really a duty–is meeting up with some of my friends. And this is one of the things I am so thankful for, because I have such excellent friends. I don’t know how they put up with me. I’m afraid to find out because that might shatter the magic spell. So I’ll just let them do their thing and I’ll try to be the best that I can.

Oh I guess I should say a bit about my FYP. It basically involves reconstructing three-dimensional models from medical images (MRI so far) and using these models for simulations of computational fluid dynamics. I’ll show you a picture next time. Promise.

To end off this fairly disjointed blog entry, here’s a video of David Bowie performing “Teenage Wildlife”:

It’s on my jukebox now, and it’s such a wonderful song.

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Weekend Work

You know that the semester has crept up on you when your weekends are packed with things to do. Last weekend was somewhat the same, maybe slightly better, but yeah, I’ve more or less only just noticed. There’s that familiar sensation in my gut again as I begin to worry about this thing and that. It’s good to be back.

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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100% Polyurethane!

Pillow Talk

I have a new pillow. Well, a new main pillow anyway. It’s kind of small and claims to be a memory pillow of some sort, though I have to say, it seems to me that either its memory isn’t very good or I have no idea what it is remembering. In any case, it also has this funny smell, and I’m supposing that that has to do with the material, which is, as the packaging says, 100% polyurethane. It’s not a horrible smell, but it’s certainly distinctive. I’m not sure I like it any better or worse than my previous pillow, which was a fluffy feather-stuffed pillow turned not-so-fluffy feather-stuffed pillow.

Circus

Went to the circus show they’re having at Resorts World Sentosa. I’m no circus critic, but for what it’s worth, it was entertaining. Some parts were perhaps unintentionally hilarious, but that kind of helped. I think the company’s really important too, although that said, the right company can make anything work.

Jeff’s Back

I got my hands on the latest Jeff Beck album, Emotion & Commotion, and while it could perhaps be said that I’m more than a little biased where all things Jeff Beck are concerned, I’ve definitely been enjoying it so far. He’s always somehow stayed fresh and exciting to listen to for me, and this album embodies that pretty well.

Holidays (Or The Lack Thereof)

Oh no, a week before school begins. Time to get the rest of the house in order before heading into my final year. Looks somewhat intimidating, but there’s stuff to look forward to as well. I’m probably going to meet up with a couple of friends before we get started, and also watch a movie or two. Oh and I’ve yet to sort out all of my subjects so that’s going to get worked out pretty soon.

Computing

Oh the new computer’s basically completely done up. The remaining work actually lies with the old computer, with the scavenging of parts, transfer of data, complete obliteration of whatever I have to obliterate, and the disposal of all the remaining parts to come. I’m also really enjoying my time on the new computer and am glad that I got this chance to basically manage my home computer slightly differently.

Also, I want to be upgrading this compuer already somewhat, so I’ll be planning on getting some parts in the foreseeable future. I’ll start with a hard disk.

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Seasons of Change

Yesterday, I read a little note from a friend of a couple of years now who is moving onto another stage of her life. It was a sort of thank-you and a sort of goodbye. I told her that we should promise to keep talking. It seemed like the right thing to do, the proper thing, or maybe simply the human thing.

It reminded me of several things, not the least of which is the fact that that’ll be the rest of us in a year or so, moving on with our lives and probably saying our thank-yous and goodbyes as we should. I had to learn the hard way that things never stay the same, and even if I have, sometimes you can’t help feeling that it would be nice if they did, just for a little while.

Change can be frightening, mostly because it implies the unknown. Where will I be in a year? What will happen to us?  How will I remember these things and people around me? How will I be remembered? Will I be remembered at all? There’s a mild existentialist desperation involved in it, I suppose, kind of like literally grasping at straws and trying to hang onto the bits and pieces of your life.

And sometimes it seems to me as though it would be better if we could make these goodbyes more final. If we could really leave things behind, we would stop struggling to hang on. That is, sometimes I think I shouldn’t keep fighting, shouldn’t persist in trying to keep up with the people around me. I’ve only ever succeeded a couple of times in doing so, I think, and in those cases, only marginally. It’s just so difficult to get involved in someone else’s life the moment he or she leaves your immediate sphere of interaction. As one of those people would say, it’s just the way life is.

That I keep making such promises, therefore, only serves to highlight how futile it all is. And perhaps there is a point to be made here about the inherent futility of our faculties of memory and the powerless character of our lives, but let’s not worry about that. Let’s just say that I think we can only try to hang onto ourselves and our friendships, because if we didn’t, it just seems like throwing in the towel on something that could otherwise be brilliant.

That is, you can’t live in apathy, and neither can you live in fear.

July never seemed so strange, in the words of a certain Mr. Meloy and the irresistible Decemberists. They’re words that have never seemed more appropriate for  me, and yet I look at it and I think it’s probably just another season of change, like the ones that have come before and the ones that have yet to.

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Brand New Weeks

Monday, and far from the blues that everyone else will caution you of, I’ll say that sometimes it’s nice to start a brand new week. It’s like opening a new jar of peanut butter. And I don’t even like peanut butter all that much.

It’s going to be a busy week. I have quite a few people to meet in the next ten days or so and I’m afraid I’m going to have to procrastinate with a couple of them, unfortunately. That doesn’t happen very often. I’m not usually this much of a, uh, people person, in that sense. Still, after all the work last week, it’s nice to actually meet people again.

Speaking of work, today I intend to finish up with the second part of the current project. I look at the manuscript in three parts, and I’ve done about 70% of the third part and 90% of the second, so I’m hoping to complete the second in order to turn my attentions fully to the last. I have a sort of self-imposed deadline with regards to all of this, and I’m not sure if I’m on schedule, but I’m taking it one step at a time, really. It’s hard to tell, these things, and my predictions would be little more than wild guesses.

I have to balance all of this, of course, with (as I said) meeting up with people, and also with a number of chores. And meanwhile, I hope to ensure a certain degree of entertainment and enjoyment during these supposed holiday weeks, so I’m trying to make space for that too. It’s not a balancing act I’m confident of pulling off, but it’s not as if I’ve got much of a choice.

So it’s a brand new week! Sure, the world looks pretty sombre these days (well, it kind of always does, doesn’t it?) but that’s no excuse not to make the best of it. So, in the old and famous words, go out and get her.

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Unscheduled Downtime

So here is a post where I’m actually very sleepy. It wasn’t supposed to show up now, but there were some technical problems that I believe the Web Walrus has fixed. I mean, who else could have done such miraculous work? We were actually back up about 24 hours ago, I think, but I was out the whole day and didn’t get back to it until, well, now.

I’m very tired now. It is a good time to sleep. Particularly because I need to get up early tomorrow despite it being a public holiday. Of course, every time I say something like this, it means I probably won’t be sleeping any time soon.

Today was a particularly hot day. That is, even for our sunny country. I guess I picked the wrong day to have a rest. While I was doing my laces before leaving the house, I’d already begun to sweat. And of all things, I had to spend the whole day outside, walking in the open quite a bit too.

This looks like a busy weekend, and I’m not sure how much work I’m going to get done, but I’d expected weeks like this. It’s why I don’t feel particularly good about myself whenever I seem to be cutting into bonus territory. Typically it ends up being a sort of buffer for days like these.

The book club is… hmm, it’s probably too early to tell. I have cause for optimism and also cause for pessimism. I think we’ll see in a week or two.

I’m not particularly tired now, but judging by the structure of this post, my brain is already working out of order. Just let me ramble for a tiny bit more.

It was nice to see all of those friends today. Sure beats the typical stay-at-your-desk day, but it can’t happen every day. Partly because I need to work. Partly because they need to work. And partly because we would really get sick of one another.

I want to drop by at IKEA and get one of those glass oh wait I think I’ve mentioned this before.

Results are coming out on Monday. Exciting times, these. I don’t really know what to expect, particularly because NUS results days are like a whole season of 24.

Finally, I want to say that I just finished Flowers For Algernon, one of my first loves, for the second time. I think I look at it very differently now, though. I also bought a book for two dollars yesterday. It’s a second-hand (third? fourth? fifth?) copy of Imre Kertész’s Fatelessness.

Okay, I’m done for the night.

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Oh so many things.

Really. There are a lot of things to do. Sure doesn’t feel like it, but it’s true. That’s because most of these things that I have to do don’t have a hard deadline. At least not for the time being. It’s either something that I have to do at my own pace (that is, it doesn’t require a submission of any sort or is a self-imposed thing) or the deadline is so far away that it feels that way too.

I’m getting things done. Very slowly, but I am. I do however get the feeling that I’m sliding down the muddy old slope and will be overtaken by work before too long. The usual school work balance (that is, inter-subject balance) has been complicated by the various things that I’ve undertaken in the recent months. It’s not necessarily a greater amount of work, just more complicated.

On the lighter side of things, Mass Effect 2 has been proving to be quite the enjoyable experience. The quests, for one thing, certainly show that the developers put more care and attention into them. I also like how the characters seem to be better written, regardless of how the story is compared to the first game. The choices I get to make also few less obvious (that’s a good thing) and more important. It doesn’t feel like, Hey, this is the bad option and that’s the good one, and if you save this guy you get to hear about him later. Definitely also feels like a much more interesting bunch of folks I’ve got with me. At least they actually seem like they can’t get along, which was the feeling it always should’ve had.

Of course, it’s still early days. But I’m having a good time so far. It’s surely a nice distraction from work.

It’s also been nice to hear from a few friends. I have plans to meet them this couple of weeks, but I get the nagging feeling that I’m going to have to be a disappointment once or twice. Always happens. But I’ll do what I can. And onwards to the midweek.

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That’s because he’s dead.

Two

Wednesday was a great day. I enjoyed my morning lecture; I spent some time with a couple of friends; I visited the National Museum; I was happy to hear from a friend (albeit about school); I figured out some stuff about the writing; went for some shopping; and there was a great football match to end it all off. Yesterday wasn’t all that great. I felt sad for some unidentifiable reason. Managed to do some work, though not too much. Maybe it had a little to do with Wednesday being all-around excellent.

And now it’s Friday. Time waits for no man, yes, but sometimes you can’t help but hope. It’s the end of Week Two already. School marches on.

Egypt

The National Museum is having an exhibition on ancient Egypt right now. There were some fairly interesting things, but I can’t help but feel slightly underwhelmed. I think I was disappointed with the scale of it, really. It just seemed somewhat on the small side, and there was always this feeling that I wanted to see just that little bit more.

That said, there was a kid and his mom at the exhibition, and they were looking at one of the coffins, which as you will know resemble the people inside them.  So the kid asked: Mommy, why doesn’t he get up? Mom said: That’s because he’s dead. Kid: Then why are his eyes open? Mom: They’re painted on. Kid: Why aren’t my eyes painted on? Mom: Because you’re not dead.

New And Novel

I think I’ve figured out how this novel is going to work. Before yesterday came along, it was all a jumble of things, trying to cover quite a bit of ground thematically. Some things just fell into place yesterday, and there’s a certain unity that it seems to be approaching. That said, it’s still a long ways away, but I have a much better idea of how it’s going to succeed now. If it’s going to succeed at all. So in a way, it’s all looking very good, if young.

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Goodbye, Noughties

Well, to my mind, that’s a terrible way of referring to the decade of the zeroes, but I suppose that’s the only time it’ll ever appear on this page.

It’s the last week of 2009, and I guess this is where we say goodbye to it and imagine that it will say goodbye to us too. It’s been an odd year, to say the least, but certainly far from the worst.

But looking ahead, we’ve got plenty of stuff to do. Top of the list, of course, is getting published. While this has pretty much been on every New Year’s list, I think we’ve made a tiny bit of headway this year, and whether it ends in success or failure for The River, there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

That also reminds me that I’ll definitely be writing in the upcoming year. And quite a bit, most probably.

I want to travel too. My family wants to go somewhere, and we’re thinking of Europe for now. On the other hand, I would like to go somewhere with my friends, so I better start tricking people right now.

Speaking of tricking people, I’d like to attend more performances next year, in the way of plays, concerts, musicals and the like. So, yes, it will be a year where my abilities as a confidence trickster will be put to the test.

I’m supposed to shift my room over to the current guest room. After that happens, I want to make it a more personal kind of space by doing little things with my display items and so on. I wonder if it’ll have an effect on my work.

I have to start preparing for my final year project. So I better start learning useful things.

At the end of this year, I began to realise where my money was going. Now, that’s not to say that they’ve all been bad things, but I would like a little redistribution so that I can spend more in some areas by spending less in others.

Camera plans. Yes, I’d like to put them in place. I’d also like to go about shooting more.

One of my friends asked me about this gathering that I used to hold for my classmates from JC. Then another asked. And then someone from the army asked if I was going to have a gathering for them. I think next year will be a good year to hold some gatherings, and the challenge will be to figure out how to hold it so that I can get three different gatherings in a row for three different sets of people.  I’m surely not going to last in a marathon party. It’d be good, however, to have something like that, just as a sort of punctuation mark.

And finally (for now), I want to send more mail. I want to send cards, postcards and letters to people who’d read them. And failing that, I’d like to send emails to some folks. Apart from that, in a related issue, I’d like to do more little things for people. Give them random little presents. Buy them chocolate. And so on.

So, here’s to an awesome 2010.

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