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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(Harold Pinter, Art, Truth & Politics, 2005)

The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary was the world,
But here is all aright.)

The Christ-child stood at Mary’s knee,
His hair was like a crown,
And all the flowers looked up at Him
And all the stars looked down.

G.K. Chesterton

It’s Christmas tomorrow. It’s raining like crazy here. I’m having a bad Christmas, but it doesn’t mean that you should too! There’s always Christmas cheer to be had, if you want it.

Our first Christmas here is a tad boring, without any fancy decorations or free things, but hey, I’m poor and poor in devising fancy things.We’ll just make do with a quote.

And three random thoughts about Christmas here: Christmas lights go up way to early, half of the people have no idea why folks celebrate Christmas anyway, and in place of snow we only ever get rain.

The first isn’t so bad this year though because I remember a year when they went up in September. But they aren’t really any pretty this year, though I have a flickr set going here.

I’m sure the second applies because people think only of shopping when they think of Christmas. Sometimes they also think of, well, a holiday.

And finally, we will never get snow here. And truth be told, I’ve never seen real snow before. I swear I will. One day. When it snows. (Duh.)

But let me not keep you.

So, whether you’re having a Merry, Manic or Moody (like me) Christmas, keep safe and don’t drink and drive. Eat lots of turkey. Unless of course you can’t eat turkey.

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All these differences come after the crucial task of sitting down at the table and patiently turning inwards. To write is to tuen this inward gaze into words, to study the world into which that person passes when he retires into himself, and to do so with patience, obstinacy and joy.

Orhan Pamuk, from his 2006 Nobel acceptance lecture.

Short Weeks

I’ve been having three-day or four-day weeks of usually few lessons recently. It’s made me feel a bit like an Arts student.

Of course, it’s also the sign that next week is in fact the last week of school. And just around the corner… exams. Oh how woefully exciting.

Plans For The Weekend

Nothing much, actually. I intend to start some writing soon, either on The River or fragments of Singapura, or maybe a completely unrelated side project. On the other hand, I will be on Fallout 3 and LittleBigPlanet, no doubt. As far as school work is concerned, I’ll be finishing up the last couple of tutorials and reading up on my last lab session. And I also plan to start on my readings so I don’t get overwhelmed closer to the exams. I’ll be converting more of my Japan photos from RAW to JPEG and putting them up on flickr too. And I suppose that’s about it.

So it’s all a bit of slowing down over the weekend, I guess.

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I will duly pass the day O my mother and duly return to you;
Not you will yield forth the dawn again more surely than you will yield forth me again,
Not the womb yields the babe in its time more surely than I shall be yielded from you in my time.

The Sleepers, Leaves Of Grass, lines 202-204, Walt Whitman

Under The Weather

I’ve been feeling a bit ill. It appears to be a mild stomach flu. In the meantime, I seem to have developed a cough. Oh unhealthy me.

Books

I’ve been reading, of course. I’ve also been recommending books to folks. I’ve lent books to people. I’ve bought a style manual for someone. I’ve bought books as birthday presents. I’ve to work out what books I’m going to be reading next, in what order and all that stuff. Right now, I’m trying to figure out what book to lend to a friend from China, who apparently hopes to try a detective novel in English.

All this book-lending and book-spreading. Hope it actually ends up to the benefit of people.

Week Eleven

Wow, two more weeks and the term ends and it’s the exams. Fun times, these.

I Think…

I’d better get back to work, or get some rest. Brr.

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