term break

"how did you spend the ridiculous week-distorting 4-day term break?"

monday:
woke up, started work on the TORTURE CHAMBER plans (heh heh) for the foc night games. i don't really understand why i had volunteered for it, but i guess i really do exude the necessary aura for a gruesome torturer. after (almost) completing the report, uploaded it to games' yahoo grp and headed for ivan's oh-so-incredible home for games comm meeting.

ivan's place was just a breathtaking experience - makes anyone who's been there wonder why we're paying half our retirement money on substandard hdbs. meeting dragged quite a while, most of the time i was just wondering if ppl were really prepared for the meeting, myself included. but after the exhaustive 4-hour meeting, much was settled. i guess.

tuesday:
10-12 make-up lecture (i always find this term funny... why go for make-up lectures when i don't wear make-up?) by rappa. as usual, he's interesting and all, but pretty much unprepared to give a full lecture. we might as well call it The Rappa Show.

went to watch Hide And Seek with the glob-trio thereafter. whoa... very freaky show... good effects and scares. but pretty much a shallow movie using the now rather clichéd theme of schizophrenia for the twist. well-executed tho, as expected with robert de niro and dakota fanning in the cast.

next stop, revenue house at novena to attend a briefing for this survey lobang that i got from shena. ran into pat, jason, clarice at the station! some science outing if i'm not wrong. told patty to invite them to join prog comm. then it was 15 floors to the survey briefing. it was supposed to start at 7, but what can i say, even AC Nielsen can't keep punctuality. briefing was done by this plump woman who tries to be nice, but ends up being quite boring. eventually got my survey papers and went home.

and it was time to panic! we're supposed to sell drinks and sandwiches at saturday's games day - and nothing was planned! i sms'd/msn'd more or less everyone in the main comm i could find to come and 'volunteer' their services. eventually got it more or less settled well past midnight.

wednesday:
another day of slacking! went jon's place for a good long swim in the afternoon. really funny how jon, justin and i ended up discussing the technicalities of css. good to have guy-talks, very objective, very concise.

except when it becomes a rather unguided one on POLITICS. on the way to stella's place for yuanxiao dinner, jon and i debated abt pap's dialectics. i naturally took the oppo's view, while jon was quite up to the job of quoting pap's good points. bad discussion... very unfocused! left us both dreadfully wasted by the time we reached stella's place. won't ever forget her noisy but shy dog. we even played monopoly (!) after dinner... at which point stella says how a person plays monopoly determines how a person treats his/er friends. possibly in retaliation to how i was playing quite unfriendly-ly in typical capitalist fashion. reinforced my negative impression of capitalism. it was past midnight when we left, another insanely tiring but unproductive day.

thursday:
last day of break... woke up extremely late due to exhausting discussions after swimming. missed both make-up tutorials, but still managed to eat @ pizza hut with the glob-trio. this time... it was exhausting discussion about RELIGION. protestantism vs catholicism. when will it ever end? why are we always so bothered by the petty differences? humans... will always be so human.

after this, i went for the inter-varsity foc publicity meeting with jon & netto. another looong meeting with a lot of points in the agenda seemingly unprepared. the smu guys were quite cool, or perhaps they didn't really know what to expect/demand from us; whereas the ntu fellas were very, disconcertingly, quiet. only their foc head spoke (which was quite weird for me la) and he was, at times, quite anal about minute details. i spent much of the meeting wondering why they kept emphasising that they can't provide much manpower BUT our selling t-shirts would reduce their love-offering income. he was very capable... of coming up with blind spots that would stall discussion. kinda reminds me of Dear Leader Kim. but it eventually ended off on a positive note - nobody daring to ruin the cooperative atmosphere.

and netto jio'd us to play pool! haha. poor jon tagged along even tho he doesn't play. we went to paradigm, and for once we found the pool parlour to have empty tables. pool was kind of uneventful, but going home became another problem... netto and i eventually found some late buses to take, much to the relief of my cash-strapped wallet.

so that's it. only did some glob readings thus far. anne mcclintock!! what a nutter. many deadlines still hung in the air... methods: interview, deviance: survey/write-up, mktg: individual project, essays: med soci & glob. i feel so not in control... it sucks me dry. so much for the term break.