 |
|
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Something interesting to read
So I was in the library yesterday, since I stay back in the library to do some reading/studying every Friday. I was sitting beside my classmate, and he had been reading a couple of magazines (Well, when Emily and I sat beside him he was kinda... asleep. LOL), and he told me that "this one is a really weird one, you might want to read it" It was a magazine called Adbusters, and flipping through it, it was a kind of magazine I've NEVER, EVER read before. Not fashion/gossip/whatever, but it had a sort of... satirical view on politics and economy and stuff like that, but it's weightier than I'm making it sound right now. There was this really interesting article on Kevin Rudd, and the sheer action of reading about Rudd's apologies to the Australian Aborigines, the Stolen Generation, made the hairs on the back of my hand stand... But that's just me, and things like that get to me. Either that, or it was because the library's air-cond was blowing right at me and I was kinda lazy to move away/the library was kinda full. Anyway, there was this essay which, at first, cemented Wei Shen's comment of "Weirdest magazine I've ever read" in my mind. After flipping through the magazine, I went back to read the essay again, because, though weird, it was really well-written, and one can only dream of writing like that. And I'm kinda on an inspiration-hunt for essay writing styles for applying to US universities. But onward to the story. Before I begin the essay, I'd like to say that Adbusters IS kinda weird, but it makes a lot of sense, and it's a really interesting magazine. You should check out the website (I've linked it, hee), or look for it in your college's library. Also, there are some things I may or may not agree about with what is put in the magazine, but, like everything else in life, there's interesting things, and there are really boring ones as well. --------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Editor,This piece I wrote for a friend who died a very violent death this summer. I'm a youth worker for a film and video mentoring project in the Downtown Eastside, and the coordinator of the Purple Thistle Centre.This piece is very close to my heart. A little long - 1300 words - but I think it's right up your alley. I would ask that you exercise your emotional sensitivity when editing it. I'd like to think that it falls under the 'spiritual mindbomb' category. It's about imperialism, culture, youth, school and institutions, and the psychogeography of colonized lands.My work has previously been published in Adbusters anonymously in the issue edited by Dr Matt Hern.Thanks for your time.Devon.************************************ Today my dear friend hanged himself. His life was violence. All he ever wanted was love.I am looking at his Myspace profile, wondering how long it will take for the news to finally trickle through the gravel irrigation to his Internet friends.I sleep late dreaming of a city half under an ocean of smoky gray quartz. In this dream city I am always taking trains, always to see my sisters.The neighbourhoods in the dream city are like mould, each sustained in itself but part of a larger colony. The streets are dusty, crawling with people and rich smells of nutmeg and clove, dirt, salt, ocean, sex, tomato plants and motor oil. Everyone is a bit surly because everyone is poor. But everyone helps each other because that's how we live. When I don't take trains between spores I do parkour with friends, and fight cops or other gangs.You are there a lot, jumping around with that crazy fire that is all and only yours.I was born in Chilliwack on the floodplain at the 'heart' of the valley in the wake of Coqualeetza. Even as a child, I understood that a devastating thing had happened here long before my birth."That TB hospital/Friendship Centre used to be a kid prison-torture chamber, sweetie""Well honey, all the brown people in town live on the reserves with no shoes and the dog gangs because our elders were racist family-destroying fucks""Grandpa made his living from scalps, baby""Ours is a stolen land and rotted peoples""It is our heritage, our legacy to you"My father told me a story about doing mescaline on a beach in Greece. He said god was a Dog and a huge Black Woman.She told him space-time was like playing dominos. It's a mescaline story, but I believe it. I see people set up for the knockdown all the time.God has always come to me as strange animals. As inordinately big spiders, a thousand tiny crabs, birds I've never seen before, brilliant and intimidating little kids.I dream of my elementary school and wearing a fairytale princess dress. The school has started medicating me, and I have to go to the office to get my pills. One day I cut through the gym on my way there. Out of the locker rooms (in which I was assaulted as a child by an angry old teacher) comes a stick-like and twitching old woman like the spindly remains of a crow on a roadway. With her is a huge, hulking GreenMan, half rotted and laughing.She speaks in bloodsplatters and deathrattles and her cohort rapes me on the elementary school stage. When he is done, I am still in my dress. CrowLady's talons extend like fishhooks and she rips open my guts. Spills me out cold on the floor. I remember her voice and the ebb of my bloodtide out into the world, like a balloon slowly popping.She visited me again a few years later, living with a crystal meth dealer in a punk house on a mouldy twin mattress with my convict lover. She met me in a Shale gray storm on a rocky pinnacle covered in grass in the middle of a floodplain. We fucked, her dressed as a she-wolf who coos to me about rotting and my organs and the memory of the Land. She pulled a mass of dirt and woodbugs and centipedes and bits of rusted metal and hard shredded white plastic out of my cunt, all mixed with blood that she wiped on my face and chest."My legacy to you"I walked the streets and I see La Llorona screaming for her children of the floodplain, jealously drowning the sons and daughters that are left standing after School. Ghost people help La Malinche translate her once red words into white smoke through a plastic and glass tube, inspecting the sidewalk for what has fallen between the cracks. Tezcatlipolca is rigging the ports, bouncing death through smoke and mirrors, a network of reserved spaces and underground opium tunnels confiscated by cops. Metal birds of the Morrigan feast on the heads of those washed at the Ford oil sands, the hipsters wear old headdresses. The mouths of our brightest crammed with Zoloft and Ritalin and alcohol from the hand of the All Father.Oin did not age well. Impotence and imperial bloodlust have turned Santa Claus into Saturn again. We devour all our children in his name.You are gone. You left because you were tired and I know what from. I witnessed your love and pain. I honour and remember your struggle.I'm sorry they treated you that way.I wish you all the love you ever wanted.***END ESSAY*** (Taken from: Adbusters Magazine, January/February 2009, #81, Vol 17 No 1)
Thursday, May 14, 2009
In the midst of a crazy schedule, I just remembered.
One year ago, on this date, Justine Henin retired from tennis.
):
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
It's been so long since we had a maid, and now that we have one... I don't know what's going to happen?
Anyway, Tan Sri Razali Ismail talk is on NEXT TUESDAY! 19 May, 10am - 11am at LT2, be there at 930am. Taylor's College Main Campus. Come if you're free, dresscode is FORMAL! There's NO entry fee charge, and he's going to give a talk about Global Teamwork. Now here's a not-so-confusing rehash of the details
Event: Talk by Tan Sri Razali Ismail
About: Global Teamwork
Venue: Lecture Theatre 2, Taylor's College Main Campus
Time: 10am - 11am (Be there before 10am, doors open at 930)
Dress Code: Formal
I think I might go, too! After all, ESL paper only starts at 1130am. It's just the question of dressing up in FORMAL CLOTHES for the paper.
Apparently there's going to be media there and all. Exams suck. The one time I can seriously be involved with my club, I have EXAMS. Psssssshhhhhhhhh...
Monday, May 11, 2009
Quoted directly from the Bit of Fry and Laurie 'Australian Soap Opera' sketch... "I have a confession to make" (Say it with an Aussie accent) ... Once you read this, it's no longer a secret. I absolutely wasted my time watching Twilight (Though, as I said several posts ago, it was fun with the girls), but I actually like the soundtrack. I mean, who doesn't like Paramore? And pianos? I cannot discriminate a composer because of the movie he's composing. Take, for example, the fact that I love whatever Hans Zimmer or Howard Shore composes, whatever other movies they compose music for that are NOT Gladiator or Black Hawk Down or Lord of the Rings and all. I will now distract you from what I have just said with a picture of Alicia Sacramone.  And this .gif of Shawn Johnson's bars dismount. I need a .gif of Nastia's bars pirrouettes. Seriously.  Credit to whoever made this, on LJ.
Friday, May 08, 2009
WHO KNEW THAT PICKING 4 TOPICS FOR A MODEL UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE WOULD BE THIS HARD?
I do.
LOL.
I'm supposed to find 4 topics from G20 OR The International Court of Justice (ICJ)
Economics, or Law. Economics, or Law.
Trying to find some good ICJ topics, because we already have ECOSOC. I have something to do with piracy in mind, since it's so rampant nowadays... but what should the topic be? Argh.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
- Investigative Study essay handed in. I have this feeling I did a really crap job with it. But the UN is so technical, it's kinda hard to have a questionnaire.
- Ei-Lynn provides a lot of laughs. Her Restaurant City avatar does, too
- Emily and I make a good team. Yeah, Elmo?
- Was in the library with Harvind (Bim), Michelle and Emily the other day - was talking to Emily about *cough* gymnastics (Well, ShawnJohn IS on DWTS) and then we were surfing the net and then came the exclamation, "DAMN, LOOK AT THOSE ABS" Yes, ladies and gentlemen. Gymnasts have 6 packs. =.=
- Bio practical assessment tomorrow. TSA/V. You should know what that is. Unless you're a bio dropper. Tee hee. Going to drop blocks of jelly into acid... Mmmm...
- Handling the TAYMUN booth with a bunch of other people are fun. Renee reminds me of Sue Mae. Except that Sue Mae's perkier. Jia Sheen is ever the bimbo, and it's quite amusing seeing Wei Wen stress out about hangers.
- Handling the TAYMUN booth also provides me an opportunity to meet various personalities of the college. Take, for example, an ICPU guy who was trying to guess who was in A-Levels, and who was in SAM. "SAM students always look so stressed, and A Levelers are the general population" was his reasoning
- Wei Shen (Tan. Yes, I have another Tan Wei Shen in my class. He's from Brunei) tried making his Restaurant City avatar look like a Twatlight vampire. Hee. I told him to try getting redder lips. xD
- I was going to fall asleep during Moral today, so I compromised by blabbering with the Moral lecturer. Morality and ethics and philosophy and whether the bombing Hiroshima/Nagasaki was right, and talking about Hitler and the Holocaust.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Just had a run around the neighbourhood. Okay, just ONE round. I did the entire round out of my house to the right, to the back row (Shahnon's row) back to my place. I think I would've done 2 if Dad hadn't called, breaking my focus. Blech.
Off to prepare dinner. Then I'm going to iron my pants for tomorrow. And dig Mum's jacket pile for, well, a jacket.
Damn. I'll be carrying a jacket AND a labcoat. Ugh.
I was wrong. It was actually Safina - Penetta and Dementieva - Kuznetsova in the semis. And THEN I was right, Safina and Kuznetsova won. They're going to meet in the finals! Hee. Anyway, I was just reading this random Nastia interview thing in a forum, and there's something I really identify with.
What irrationally annoys you?
When my pants are too short.
Who doesn't identify with too short pants? xD Which reminds me, I need to get my long pants lengthened. They're an inch too short. LOL.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
CSI NY and House this week were awesome. NY more so than House, just because of the premise and gravitas of the story. I love Hawkes. Seriously. Hill Harper hit the ball out of the park in his response to Danny as to why he wasn't going to be unnerved by the skinhead's racist comments. In terms of being emotional, it was definitely a lot more emotional than House's Head/Wilson's Heart. If they're submitting an episode for an Emmy - be it for Best Actor (Gary Sinise), Best Drama or Best Supporting Actor (Hill Harper. Although I'm sure the lack of actual screentime won't do him any favours) or maybe even Best Guest Star (Or whatever that award is called. The guest star, though only in 2 scenes, went from endearing old guy to seriously evil man in no seconds flat). It was an amazing episode.
House, on the other hand, was full of LULZ to revel in. From "Fight the Power!" to "If I'm drunk enough, I might kiss a stripper. Or become one" "SOLD". The overall lightheartedness and brightness (Literally. Simple Explanation used uber-dark filters, darker than NY Season 1, to the really glowy lens in House Divided) of the episode, yet the dark revelation of House slowly losing control of his subconscious ("Amber").
Anyway, Anna Belknap will be back in next week's episode! Woohoo!
In other news, I was watching some Jelena Jankovic vs Flavia Penetta just now. It was the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix, held in Stuttgart. A few years ago, the tournament used to be held in Filderstadt, in... September? Basically, post-US Open, indoor hard court. A couple of years ago, when Justine won the tournament (And the car, teehee) it just 'moved' to Stuttgart, though it was still indoor hard court, and in September. I guess it was after the '09 WTA Tour schedule revamp that Stuttgart became an INDOOR (RED) CLAY tournament.
Anyway, Jankovic was having a meltdown. Sigh. I miss watching Justine. Woman NEVER had a meltdown. Okay, other players don't have a meltdown, but, you know, I also had a soft spot for Jankovic (Mainly because she kept losing to Justine. Hee. Out of 9 matches they played against each other, Justine's won all of them). Also, sigh. No one really slides on clay any more. But I guess I shouldn't be generalizing too much since I haven't been watching (any!) tennis. Oh, and I just checked the scores. Jankovic lost. HAHAHAMEEEEEEEEELTDOWN.
But, DARN. Semifinals would be Safina - Kuznetsova. I love the both of them. I want Kuznetsova to win, so that she can get some confidence before RG rolls by, but I also want Safina to win, because bb needs to win something as a World Number 1.
Also, there's a gymnastics competition in Germany this weekend! Sloanie's going to be there. And... that's about it. I'm too lazy to watch, although it IS elite gymnastics.
Away from fandom, I wasted about 2 hours of my life watching Twatlight yesterday. Although I must say, it was fun watching it with the girls. We get to LOL at whatever scenes we feel are ridiculous, which is to say - a lot. I mean, SERIOUSLY. THERE WAS SOUND WHEN EDWARD SPARKLED. AND. IT WAS SO... LAME. I didn't even know that the Cullens (Especially Alice) were essentially still in school. I thought Alice was, like, the Aunty, or something. LOL. Anyway, better 2 hours watching the movie than 200 hours trying to plow through the book. Also, why the hell did the other vampire - James, was it? want to kill Bella? Just to spite Edward? Or is it because Bella is Major Mary Sue And So The Entire World Revolves Around Her?
And I drove to lunch and back today. We were going to go for lunch in Taipan, and Dad asked whether I wanted to drive, so, okay! Hee, Mum was also a passenger. Mruahahaha.
My Granduncle passed away this morning. I wasn't terribly close to him, but he's still flesh and blood (Grandmother's brother... there's some blood there). Also, I'm worried for my Grandmother. You know what it's like - when you're old and your sibling or someone who's close to you passes away, you think about your own mortality. Especially when the person who passed was younger than you.
Weather's pretty cool now. As in, no sun. Off to jog.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
MAY IS HERE, PEOPLE.
MAY.
OH, MY GOODNESS. HALF THE FREAKING YEAR (Okay, June is half the year, but May is half the ACADEMIC year). AND I'M STILL DYING. MY GRADES? STILL SUCK. MID TERMS. ARE IN.... 3 WEEKS. THOSE RESULTS? ARE FOR AMERICAN ADMISSION COMMISSIONS TO READ. T_T NO MORE SLACKING. As Mrs Soh said, the motivation has to come from within. There's only so much parental and lecturer-induced pressure can do. We only have about FIVE more months of SAM left. GOSH.
Anyway, so Mum saw my Princeton Viewbook (08-09 edition. I think I'll ask for another one when summer - don't know when THAT is, rolls around), and now she wants me to GIVE IT A SHOT! (Parental approval! Awesomesauce!) because, well, Princeton is generous when it comes to financial aid. And, as Mum says, when you convert our income bracket? Teeny tiny compared to what's needed for US uni fees. Sniff. Anyway, I'm waiting for my Columbia, Brown and Wisconsin-Madison viewbooks. I think I also asked for the Cornell one recently. Anyway, they come 'round in Summer, whenever that is. I'm going to assume next month.
Good grief, May is here. I knew this year would fly by, but I didn't expect it to be this fast. I mean, seriously. When I'm supposed to 'report for NS', I'll probably be dealing with the next 50% of my Internal Assessment. Heck, it sounds like I have to apply for Aussie uni's in August. STILL TRYING TO CONVINCE PARENTS THAT JULY INTAKE IS THE WAY TO GO, MUAHAHA.
Anyway - Malaysian Studies finals today went okay. Hopefully, I've managed to get my 20 marks :D
Looking forward to tomorrow. After all that fun, it'll be back to work - 3 sets of Mid Year Econs papers, lots of Maths practice, completing the final Investigative Study essay and prepare for a case study presentation for Bio.
|
|
|
|
|
|
