Apocalyptic

Ohohoho. I feel like posting every existing video of The Strokes' live performances on youtube right here. Seriously. Aaaaaaa, yeah. I'm feeling crumby because I had a Maths test this afternoon. Enough said, no? Hah.

Am having my study leave break now. Mid year exams starts next Friday until Wednesday. Got 5 papers to sit for. And guess what? I heard from a friend of mine who attended the exam briefing, that us Pharmacy and Dentistry bound students are supposed to get an average of 90% at least. If we don't our parents are gonna be called to the Parent-Lecturer's Day. I'm not concerned with having my parents coming over, it's just that...an average of 90% is. IMPOSSIBLE for me.

Talking about the impossible. Frankly, I'm absolutely certain that I'm not going to be able to get a TER 96 and fly off to Otago next February. Uhuh. Yeap. I'm resting all my hopes on JPA's mercy and my plan B of doing Dentistry twinning in IMU (2.5 years) and then to University of Sydney, Australia (2.5 years). The requirement is TER85 only, which is perfectly feasible for me. This, truly, is the ONLY thing that keeps me going at the moment (plus The Strokes, of course).

I'm a rationalist. I don't deceive myself, not often anyway. I know what my limits are. Yeah, yeah, this sounds like the ultimatum of a Defeatist too doesn't it? But hey, it's not like I'm giving up or something. I'm just licking my wounds and trying to comfort myself. The pressure just depresses me. Terribly so. You know what it's like, aite? When you find that absolutely nothing interests you anymore and feel the great emptiness of 'my life is pointless' settle in those quiet times in the edifices of your solitary mind?

That aside, I just finished formulating my 'study schedule' for the Mid Year exams. Just like the good ol' days in high school. Haha, those days when I used to list down the things I need to study, within a time frame, WHICH I NEVER manage to keep up with. Aha. The idea is not to really stick to it, it just helps you realize the NEED to study since there's a bunch of subjects to tackle.

Enough with the boring stuff.

FUN stuff:

I, am going to the TOKIO HOTEL concert in One Utama tomorrow!

YEAYYY. Haha. I already planned to attend it but gave up since you gotta get their HUMANOID album to get the free pass. I mean, I don't love them or anything, they pique my interest a little. So, when my cousin called me up yesterday saying she has two tickets she got for free from a friend, why the hell not? I am SO going to enjoy watching the Kaulitz twins. Hahahhaa.

My MAIN reasons for wanting to go to the concert are:

1. I wanna hear 'Monsoon' live. I hope they sing it!

2. Bill's HAIR. No shit. He is the spawn of Sonic the Hedgehog I tell you. If only it's indigo blue.

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P.S: I'm posting this anyway. AND OH! I've also just realized that in this song (4 Chord Of The Apocalypse) by Jules, there's this bit in the lyrics "It's nice to be important, etc etc, but it's more important to be nice". WHICH IS my favourite quote from the great ROGER FEDERER! Jules and Roger unified! MAGNIFICENT no? hahaha.

SO, enjoy.

THE REASON: Juicebox

Why I'm boxofjuice.

Why The Strokes is brilliant.

Why Jules is magnificent.

Why the Earth is not flat.

Why some people are still alive.

Why some people are dead.

MOSTLY,

Why I am sane right now.

Farewell, Dedalus.

I'm done reading it, returned it to the library just now. Am very very sad to have parted with it. For once, I feel like snatching a book from a library haha but I didn't! Honest. I really did return the book, very grudgingly so, but I did.

I know it's illegal and all to underline and scribble stuff in library books but what the heck, I'm the first person in two years to borrow it! It's not like I wrote anything bad in it. I scribbled a couple of words only anyway. Shouldn't matter much. I underline the bits that I love because honestly, the prose! Absolutely beautiful!

Here's some of my faves:

"...for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music."

"Pride and hope and desire, like crushed herbs in his heart sent up vapours of maddening incense into the eyes of his mind."

"...a leader afraid of his own authority, proud and sensitive, battling against the squalor of his life and against the riot of his mind."

"...His thinking was a dusk of doubt and selfmistrust, lit up by the lightnings of intuition, but lightnings of so clear a spelndour that in those moments the world perished about his feet as if it had been fire consumed: and thereafter his tongue grew heavy and he met the eyes of others with unanswering eyes for he felt that the spirit of beauty had folded him round like a mantle and that in reverie at least he had been acquainted with nobility."

"Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the secret cause."

There's like a BUNCH more I'd like to post up but esh, that would be excessive. Stephen Dedalus, beautiful, Stephen Dedalus. I adore him, yet I despise him too. It's difficult to explain why.

At any rate, I did finish studying Biology last night so I that I'd be able to have my slice of escapism. Haha.

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P.S: This is sort of terrible...but, I got my hands on:

- 'The Image Of Chekov: Forty Stories by Anton Chekov in the Order in Which They Were Written' with an introduction by Robert Payne.

- 'The Stories of Vladimir Nobokov'. A compilation of Nobokov's short stories.

I intend to read these during my semester break beginning 17th, well okay, 21st May. I've BTN starting 17th May til 21st, in Sepang :S

It's not May yet.

I know, I know. I intended not to blog about anything til May. But hey, I 'intend' a LOT of things. Sue me. Anyway, I just feel like sharing my unfortunate experience of the IELTS exam I took last Friday and Saturday.

I barely slept the night before thanks to mr. Rain. It rained heavily that night and when it does, the rooftop thingy over my window makes a TONNE of racket with the rain drops pelting it and all. Finally fell asleep at 3:45A.M. And so, I was pretty much half asleep during the reading, listening and writing exams.

SPEAKING - Okay I guess. I mean, it wasn't 'Good' but it wasn't 'Disastrous' either. Kind of like a mini train wreck shall we say?

READING - Again, okay. It wasn't too hard.

LISTENING - Is Okay too.

Let's get to the point of this post shall we?

WRITING.

Yeap. This, I totally screwed this up. First things first, there's two parts to this component. The report bit I did okay I think. It's the other part.

Question:

"Everyone in the world wants to own a car, television set and refrigerator. Does the disadvantages of these developments to the society outweigh the advantages?"

Something like that.

I wrote an extremely shitty answer coloured with undertones of my repressed...'mind' that surfaced due to my being sleepy. The subconscious is a lethal part of your mind if not restrained appropriately, I assure you.

Firstly, I concluded the statement was about 'materialism'.

Then I came up with wild ideas. I even used the word 'ineffectual' at some point in the essay.

And I definitely remember writing these: 'the world will fall to its ruin' and 'humanity will become extinct' and 'social class gap akin to that of kings and slaves of medieval times'.

Get the picture?

My 'essay' was basically a rant on the vices of materialism to humanity.

I particularly despise the word 'ineffectual' now. Thanks to my utilising that particular word in my disastrous piece of writing. Lack of sleep taxed my reserves so I grabbed at anything that flitted through my fatigued mind.

The word 'ineffectual' I only found out about a couple of hours before the exams. I was reading James Joyce's 'A Potrait Of The Artist As A Young Man' in the bus on the way to college to keep myself from falling asleep.

That's all. I'm gonna go study now.

I just can't help it...

His Beautiful Misery

Through the raging waters of imagination,

Beside the fountains of damnation,

Laid a man of such beauty and charisma;

A fleeting glance of his blue jades,

Would slay girls from any millennia.

A cynical cad with a subtle rigour,

He could utter such daring unspeakables,

Yet in the same line and breath,

He would have melted a thousand hearts,

And sang a thousand pretty ballads.

What had he to care for but himself?

The clothes on his back, the shoes on the rack.

And the rays of love graced still,

His nicotine stained fingers,

His cold and unyielding will.

The suffering humanity in his eyes,

As desolate as a weeping willow,

Truly, he is full of sorrow.

It could be heard, his heart’s songs;

Trembling like a dying violin.

A dethroned king of the Sky kingdom,

He flounced on feet without discretion,

And gave flight to his worries with wings of silence,

So that he may drown them, lost and forgotten.

Alas the maidens and the lads knew not,

The ghastly whispers of his inner demons,

So damningly excruciating,

Was his beautiful misery.

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Whispers

Who could forget those hands?

Whispering promises of love to anything it graced,

Long, pale, and elegant,

The hands of a musician.

Dancing across keys of ivory

The music was never any sweeter,

A touch so soft yet profound,

That hearts were sent a flutter.

Worthy of caressing clouds of heaven,

May their beauty triumph even death,

Lest the earth yearned a claiming,

For they are the musician’s every breath.

Pray for a chance meeting with him,

The owner of those lovely hands,

For they are heart wrenchingly pretty,

Those fingers of ivory.

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Hugh. You slay me.

P.S:

On a darker note, I'm about as senile as the Mad Hatter right now. Feeling pretty prickly too. *goes to study Biology* Man are but carbon based organisms. Sentient? Not all of us are.

See you in May

I've had my week of indulgence :) Yeap. I went to class only to tune out whatever's being said and went back home only to melt into a puddle of Hugh and went to sleep only to dream of November.

Wonderful week indeed.

Now I shall face the music and do whatever I can to fix myself before 7th of May. Because really, there's no beauty in misery without the glory. Though I'm most likely not gonna attain anything 'colourful' I'd like to believe that I actually did, try.

Hopefully, this time around, CARPE DIEM won't be quite so impossible.

P.S: I ain't giving up Hugh though. 'In betweens' are 'In betweens' y'know.

Hugh Grant is my 'somethings'

That's just it really. I have absolutely nothing to look forward to. 'Nothing' in a sense of 'something that can cheer me up'. You always need these 'somethings'. It's the only way anybody can ever be happy or content, at least. An ingrate I am but really, aren't we all? Ingrates?

Okay, that's rather off topic here. Back to my need of a 'something' to look forward to.

Why? Because there's too much important academic things to bother with and not a speck of pleasurable 'somethings' to distract myself for the 'in betweens'. These 'in betweens' are important so that I don't get stuck in a rut and take to writing 50 poems daily and wallow in my shallow misery brought forth by my self concocted boilings of boredom and stress.

I'm a piece of work. I've this irrepressible need to inject significance into my all too dull life by working up these wild notions of how humanity is in a decrepit state and that by writing soppy rhymes (I dare not call them poems) I'm able to somehow soothe my so called 'tortured' soul. I just like the idea. Isn't it romantic? We're all hypocrites anyway. It shouldn't matter too much.

So, I invented one, a 'something' for me to indulge in. That is, Hugh Grant. This is random and all but yeah. I've taken to watching his movies and is currently spectacularly smitten by him. Crow's feet and all, I think he's beautiful that way. I adore his dry wit. And his accent! He can utter such unpeakables and make them sound absolutely endearing. "A cynical, self loathing cad, an anti-movie star." That's what the media describes him as. *smiles*

It's funny that I keep falling for half-century old actors like Keanu and Hugh. Haha, I don't know what to say. I think I should stop here. Any further and this will turn into a gushing fest. Aye, it would. I'd write about how they're 'tortured souls' with a mask for the media when they actually do, care for the 'suffering humanity'.

Hahahaha....ahhh, I'm such a pariah.

And before I forget:

www.puddle-of-ink.blogspot.com

Do visit. Me and an acquaintance of mine, mai mai , we're collaborating on this project thing. We wish to compile short stories and, my uh, rhymes. What for? I scarcely know myself. Ask mai, it's her idea. I'm just delighted to have something to do. Haha.

From now on, I'll be posting my, well, pieces there. I'm rubbish really but it'll kill me if I don't write anything.

P.S: Jeez every single syllable of this post is saucy. *sigh*

Nope

Hullo.

This is wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. I can't keep snatching up papers and write shit for no particular reason. Nope. I most certainly can't afford to let myself just, just, get carried away, like whooosh like that! Not now anyway.

Because you see, I mostly write when I'm miserable. Or when there's something I find to be utterly beautiful, or simply put, putrid. I just feel like putting them into words where I can see them, examine them and all that. You know?

The time will come when you know that you can't trust your own wretched thoughts due to some, circumstances shall we say? Yes, circumstances. It has always been that way but when the realization hits you, it's a whole different story altogether.

Haha. That's enough, that's enough, now. Right.

Caw

Ravens By My Window

They cawed their croaky syllables,

And preened their feathers,

Black with a purplish green,

An ironically pretty sheen.

Caw said one, Caw said another,

A relentless back and forth,

That meant something or the other,

A nuisance, a constant bother.

"Scat thee! Get off my window!"

It fixed a beady eye,

And cawed an angry reply,

Almost threatening it seemed.

Thack, Thack, Thack,

Its clawed feet tapping,

With a jolt I'd awaken,

Meeting the eyes of the raven.

"Say something you fowl!"

And I wished it would,

With fear I waited,

For an impossible 'Nevermore'.

These pests of ebony,

So frightfully ugly,

I'd shoot them if I could,

If only someone would.

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Note: An animal lover I might be, but if I've a shotgun, those stupid crows are going DOWN.

Where My Mind Lies.

It wasn't a particularly striking day, just an ordinary Wednesday. Same old, morning breeze and tardy school bus. The clouds were different though that morning. Not that clouds are ever the same, but it had a tinge of washed colours in it.

With the salmon sky above my head I made my way to class. Counting the pavements as I stride, careful to skip every other tile which results in a pace commendable of a marching soldier. The crunching sound of trampled brown leaves added an extra clarity to the crisp morning. The morning I lost my mind.

Class proceeded as usual, with me paying attention only in the first 30 minutes and spending the remaining hour and a half roaming worlds within me. I considered myself a practical person with a penchant for the whimsical and fantastical only when it suits me. In other words, I was terribly volatile albeit in a silent manner. I would implode every now and then but I never, ever, concerned others. Alas, I was not a butterfly who flits around and mingle.

Miscellaneous details aside, it was on the way back that I lost my mind. The sun was setting (the bus was always tardy), like any other sunsets, the sky was lit with a brilliance that was always surreal. I stared at a cloud that seemed to retreat with the evening shadows and then, there was nothing left. A complete nothingness welled in me and I felt as if a great hand had squashed me flat. Everything that was me, was no more.

With an empty head I made my way to my room and waited for my mind to return. Perhaps it was not such a bad thing, to lose one's mind to such a beautiful phenomena such as a sunset. Don't you think? Thus, from then on, I would look at the clouds knowing my mind was among them. Free and unrestrained. I would always smile and wink at my mind, lost in the clouds.

Innocent Delirium

I'm appalled,

At the beauty and tragedy,

Of a great many things,

Unspoken and silenced.

Slipping from my consciousness,

There are, a great many things,

I can barely begin to understand,

Hidden and restricted.

The crying madman in the attic,

The sentimental fool in the rain,

The rational hermit in the study,

The hapless beggar in the drain.

I cannot comprehend them,

The irrevocable oaths,

Of those who promised lies,

And beat their chests like primates.

These are the litter of society,

The well-bred innards of class,

I'm but one who observes,

And agonizes their pitiful sweetness.

As rotten as wine,

As broken as a twig,

Like stepping into a puddle,

Where the cold water clings.

Can you not see their souls?

Through those blank windows,

Twins set in their masks,

The eyes of a liar.

Apalled, I am,

At this innocent delirium,

Sprung from wicked intentions,

Lost in the river of thoughts.

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Note: Yet another poem written in a great hurry. When my mind whirls, so does my muse.

My Future Is Hanging By A Thread

It's been a while huh. The significance of my life now lays in the hands of never ending assignments, quizzes and tests that just never cease to pile up. I've tests and quizzes every freaking week, sometimes twice a week! They're usually at night too. Freaking annoying. Say hello to SAM (South Australian Matriculation) though they call it AUSMAT in INTEC, it's actually SAM.

Had a terrible chemistry test last week. It was difficult as HECK. Chemistry was NEVER that hard before! Organic chemistry is interesting but applied questions can be tricky. ESPECIALLY when you only have 1hour 10mins to answer a BUNCH of structure questions + an essay. The lecturers did it on purpose. I swear they did. Just to trip us up so that we'll kick ourselves into overdrive for the mid year exam in May.

Got my biology test paper too, got ANOTHER accursed B, 76% this time. Only one person in my class got A, 84% (Rabihah yg comel). Aaaaa...and guess what? I saw the biology marks of this other chinese guy who's gonna do dentistry in NZ (me too, hopefully) from another class. He got 90% for test 1 and 93% for the recent one. Like, DAMN. I feel worthless. I NEED those kind of marks. Dentistry's TER for Uni Otago is TER96 yo! Haish.

That aside, my IELTS test is in 2 weeks. On the 23rd and 24th April. Egh. Abaikan.

What else? I don't know. I'm not even going to bother writing bout maths, EVER. I'll just do what I can, and hopefully I'll land myself an A sometime soon. THEN, I'll write something bout maths.

Hurry up MAY, end soon Mr. April. I wanna bade goodbye to you. I only have one week of mid year exams in May (the 2nd week). 1st week, got one week holiday (Study Leave for Mid Year exams), after exams it's SEM BREAK oh yeahhhhhhhhhhhh. One month :) (Mid May til Mid June).

Then we'll be studying without breaks til August. September got mid sem break again + Trials. October, nothing I suppose. Just REVISE REVISE REVISE. Then finally, the real SACE exams (1st November til 10th November).

So you see? I'm trying to keep myself focused and motivated here. Wish me luck. I'll be needing lots of it.

P.S: Bought myself a new book last weekend, Tender Morsels by Margo Laganan. It's DISTURBING, yet...I don't know. It's quite poetic, the tragedy of it and all. Never read anything like it before. And to think it's a YA book...the themes are rather mature. A fantasy, a dark fantasy. And I mean that really, and NO not dark as in werewolves + vampires + suave cardboard musterious heros...rubbish. There's not even a dude in it :S besides the psycho dad n the weird midget.