for weeks now i have nurtured this secret hope; a hope that history will be made on polling day. increasingly i have heard the murmurs of dissent and dissatisfaction among those of our generation, the murmurs gradually becoming whispers, and then speech. who says the young are politically apathetic? a good many have been politically aware all along, and for these people, well, they just know. they know enough of what's been happening in Singapore to know whose side they should be on. or rather, whose side they should not be on. they will vote with their hearts, for the democracy which they crave, and which Singapore needs.
as for the rest - apathetic some may be, but the talk of the elections, the excitement of being able to vote for the first time, is awakening a huge awareness in them. and i see the potential in their hands. do they realise, that for the first time in a long while, political power is finally back in the people's hands? do we realize the enormity of this power that we wield? do we realize that we can make history with this?

yet the optimism is fading. i am afraid, yes i am. despite the hopes, i know more or less what the results will be. what i am truly afraid of is that another kind of history will be made. living in the shadow of a dictatorship-of-sorts, this is always fearsome, no? courage, my friends, courage. democracy may be lost this time round, but there will always be a light of hope, fervently held out by the few of us, that one day, we will be able to live in a truly democratic state.

*[[ And they lived happily ever after... ]]*
|10:17:00 AM|

---

walau i can't believe it. people have actually invaded the yih study room, soliciting for donations. wtf can't you see that we are all trying to study?! leave us alone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it's all very well to stand at the door and target those outside or entering / leaving but please do not go where you're not welcome! bah.

and don't give me that oh-you're-such-miser look when i politely decline. i am not stingy or whatever. in fact, i will gladly donate if it is for a cause i believe in and through legitimate forums. and i have given money to ppl who approach me on the streets if i really do feel that they're in need of help. even if i run a significant risk of being conned.
but i do not appreciate being acoosted here in the study room when i'm trying to concentrate. besides, their presence just feels like a huge intrusion of sorts. if i had a gun i'd shoot them all down. go away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*[[ And they lived happily ever after... ]]*
|4:57:00 PM|

---

i hate the yih toilets. to the core. i can't even sit on the toilet bowl to shit in peace for 5 minutes without the toilet flush giving my butt a good wash. 3 times it happened somemore in this 5 minutes. BAH.

on another note

happy 2nd bigroo-day my groo =)

*[[ And they lived happily ever after... ]]*
|10:16:00 PM|

---

recap on last wk's runs (yes i'm gonna start doing this from now on coz at least this is a way of keeping track of my progress so far)

tues --> 2 x road race route (minus the src carpark bit).(estimate: 4.2k?) relatively easy, even with the slope. prob coz it was at night. and i wasn't going 100% like i was during the race itself. note to self: must do slopes more. been reading everywhere about the wonders of hill training on stamina and speed and strength. only problem is i think our nus central lib slope is nowhere near what these writers have in mind.

weds --> 6km at 4pm. big bad mistake which resulted in possibly one of the worst runs in the past few weeks. sun was freaking hot and i felt faint and light headed after 7 rounds. ended up running under the sheltered area of the grandstand because i couldn't afford to get heatstroke or something and collapse 2 days before my paper

thurs --> normal 4k on track. pushed myself a little. done in i would say 19:30 - 19:50. i'm still bad at estimating my timings.

sun --> 8.8k. most shiok run of the week. physically. it's runs like this tt renew my motivation and drive and remind me of why i love running so much. but i got bored after like 6k and got distracted by all the parents jogging together with their little kids on the track. why oh why didn't my parents do this with me last time? =(

oh wells now that biomed is over i've kinda lost the drive to study. still like being at yih though coz it's fun. in a weird way. and great for peoplewatching which i love doing. at the end of the day i yak and bitch endlessly about the anonymous people sitting in close proximity to us that day and the groo just goes huh?. apparently he hasn't noticed them after a whole day of sitting near to them. this just reinforces the view that guys have tunnel vision. oh but wait a minute sometimes he doesn't even notice the person directly in front of him.

back to biomed. it was positively definitely one of my favourite-st modules in my law school life and it was one subject for which i was just happily contented-ly sitting there at yih absorbing knowledge, without the thought of the impending exam in mind. everything just interested me sooo much. from accounts of the cruel human experimentation that the nazis and japanese did on their PoWs and civilians during WWII to modern day clinical trials to cloning and stem cell research to the ethics of human tissue banking and organ transplants to genetics to people fighting for the right to die to... ohh i could go on forever about everything i've learnt in this module . studying was, for once, truly enjoyable

and now i feel a deep sense of loss. and despair too, when i look at the muddling statutory provisions, rules and technicalities that make up corporate insolvency. yuck. it's horribly horribly boring but i force myself to soldier on but am usually totally brain dead by late afternoon. 8 more days to go. but i wish i had more. partly because i know i can't finish studying and partly because i don't want internship to start. boohoo.

the groo thinks that i'll totally slack off from my runs once internship starts and keeps reminding me that no matter how much hard work i've done the past few months, it'll all come to naught once i don't run for 1 month. i know that very well thank you very much. but when i'm serious i really do mean business. i'll see it through even if it means having to wake up at 530 every morning and pissing off my parents by insisting on running when daylight hasn't even broken and even if i collapse onto bed exhausted every night and even if it means waking up early on weekend mornings too. oh yes and i would like one of those gps thingies. that measures your heart rate and timing and mileage and whatever nots when you're running. it'll be cool to be able to look at random data when i'm bored during long runs. if anyone knows where to get one of those please do let me know

=)

*[[ And they lived happily ever after... ]]*
|11:11:00 PM|

---

i shall refrain from commenting on the geog project by some arts students which projects "The Law Faculty As A Landscape of Exclusion" (oh the sheer ridiculousness of it all!) as my esteemed colleagues have already, i believe done a pretty good job of exposing the fallacies in reasoning in it.

All i shall say is .. go read it! at http://gssq.entori.net/writings/academic/law_exclusion.htm it's highly original and amusing, that i must admit and it'd make for a good stress-relieving session.
but still as much as i commend their ingenuity, i must say that some, if not most of their arguments and theories don't hold water.

they claim that "the closed doors [to the law faculty foyer] serve as a marker of territoriality, strategized to assign people they deem to be outsiders to areas out of the boundaries... so as to exercise their power over the space within the Law faculty..."
seriously. wtf. are they simply having a good laugh at us all?
anyone with a single shred of common sense in their brains can realize that the doors are closed for a reason. and that reason is because the foyer is air conditioned.
dimwits
and i'm so tempted to say 'no wonder you're in Arts'. but no. i shall refrain as that would be downright elitist of me and extremely politically incorrect as well.
but oops i seem to have said it out.

whatever. peace. and please do note that i have absolutely nothing against 99.99999999% of arts students.

*[[ And they lived happily ever after... ]]*
|11:09:00 AM|

---

life during the reading week and exam period always settles down into a nice lulling comfortable routine. it doesn't bring me great joy -- but i'm contented. just like that fat ginger cat snoozing away curled up on a rug on his favourite chair in the costume shop we visited before DnD.

mornings start with me awakening with a sudden jolt and realising that it is bright outside. a sudden surge of panic follows -- what if it's already 10am? have our seats been taken? mad scramble to find my phone in the midst of the mess of bedsheets and soft toys. a glance tells me that it is only 750 or thereabouts. thankfully sink back into shallow sleep. 810 -- alarm rings. hit the snooze button. 815 -- alarm rings again. hit snooze button again. 820 -- alarm rings again. damnit. sit up groggily on the bed and stone for awhile. shuffle to the toilet and go through the washing up motions. sit on the toilet bowl and stone awhile more. shuffle back to the room, wear contacts, change, pack up stuff. muck around and laze on the bed waiting for the groo to get ready and feed the fish.

walk to yih wondering if our seats have been taken. think that the morning feels nice. the sun is lovely and warm on my face. reach yih. put stuff down, lock laptop, go for breakfast. first sip of my teh peng -- and the last remnants of sleep are chased away. bleargh toast, yummilicious half-boiled eggs. waffles sometimes if i feel like it. go down to cheers and buy straits times, exchange greetings with the cashier who recognizes me by now. come up, turn on itunes, and start listening right from the first song on my playlist. read straits times, surf blogs, check email, play sudoku, in general just laze around till 10. start work.

watch with amusement as the yih superintendent does his rounds, clearing the unattended books and stuff on the tables, and vaguely wonder if, in some perverse way of his, he enjoys what he's doing. and the morning passes sitting wide awake and happy in the cold, air-conditioned comfort.

lunch. wonder why there isn't better food at yih. silence if i'm eating with the groo. incessant chatter if ym and cl are with us. reluctantly shuffle back up to the study room. general period of slacking, more sudokus and unproductivity. first inklings that an afternoon nap would be nice. firmly push away that thought and get back to work. 130pm. aircon gets turned up. curse silently. thereafter, watch the dark clouds gather and wonder if i'll be able to run later. the afternoon gets on. more dark clouds. old chang kee / nz ice cream break with the groo. sometimes i take a chance and dash back to change for my run and beat the rain; at others, i wait for the storm to pass. 445pm. vaguely remember that we used to go back religiously for tea at this time last sem. revitalized after run. come back, slack more and play more sudoku as i'm feeling happy with myself. dinner. hall food or clementi. some time wasting (if in clementi).

come back. attempt to really work as the day is almost gone. usually rather successful. 9 pm. aircon gets turned off. 10-ish. start losing steam. muck around more. read blogs. yet more sudoku. 11-ish. pack up.. arrange stuff nicely on the table to make it seem like i've just gone off for awhile (but of course, everyone knows better). walk back. happy usually. lots of talk. stop near the pottery room to gush over the resident snail family there. back. laze around on the bed. supper sometimes. feed and scold the fish. marvel at the amount of snails in my tank. more lazing around on the bed. set alarm. slowly drift into sleep. zzzZZZzzzzz

life is good.

*[[ And they lived happily ever after... ]]*
|2:43:00 PM|

---

a man strangled his wife and guess what. he gets 4 1/2 years only. 4 1/2 years! as compared to the death penalty if diminished responsibility had not been successfully argued. you know what i think? i think diminished responsibility and unsoundness of mind are being too damn liberally used nowadays. so what if his wife was met her lover on this guy's birthday and didn't spend the day with him? so what if he was wracked with jealousy after his wife recounted all the details of the tryst to him? that doesn't make him less responsible for his actions. if sinking into a depression becuase you 'loved (your) wife too much' can bring your sentence down to 4 1/2 from a possible 10 (ok i admit the death penalty would be a little harsh here) then the floodgates are opened. everyone would start relying on that. it would be pure stupidity for any murder defendant's lawyer not to engage a psychiatrist to testify about them having depressive disorders and being mentally unsound etc etc etc and trying their luck. because you know what? from the way things are going they might just be successful even if there's nothing wrong with their minds. isn't there some element about them having to be 'unable to appreciate the consequences of his actions'? what happened to that? bah.

*[[ And they lived happily ever after... ]]*
|9:28:00 AM|

---

i think i dont have heart or lung cancer afterall. i think i know what's been wrong with me the past 2 weeks. Somehow almost imperceptibly (maybe due to the desire to run faster faster faster) i've shortened my strides and increased my frequency and this is super ineffective for me. Yesterday i tried running at a slightly slower pace. and i found myself throwing open my legs more. striding. s-t-r-i-d-i-n-g. till like half the time i'm suspended several mm above the ground, foot reaching for the next landing pt. and it felt goood. like how i used to feel last time. and i can run fast. faster than before even coz somehow i can sustain long strides. and i hardly feel tired and actually crave for more after the run. amazing how a leetle difference in running style can effectively make such a huge difference. amazing amazing amazing.

oh and i also realized that i run faster if i constantly look down at the ground. i like seeing the red rubbery thingy rushing along beneath my feet. and it makes me wanna run faster to see it rush faster. erm so yea. if anyone finds running a pain maybe you could try doing the above. open up your strides and look down at the ground. you never know... it might just work for you too.

*[[ And they lived happily ever after... ]]*
|10:16:00 AM|

---

feeling abit out of sorts coz i just lost out in a territorial battle for a good table in yih to a group of prcs. argh. i must admit that when you get to know them personally, they are all pretty nice; but somehow they're just irritating in a group. damn irritating. and yih is filled with them somemore.
anyway back to that group. i think they all wanted to sit together in a group at the table yesterday, but when i reached only 1 of them was there so i took the row opposite her with the result that some of her friends couldn't sit at the table. and the buay-song-ness was so evident on their faces when they came. hellooo dont blame ME blame THAT GIRL. if she had even bothered to chope those seats for them with just a few pieces of paper and stationery i wouldn't even have gone near there as there were still empty seats around.

then at night before leaving the groo and i naturally put stuff to chope those 2 places and this morning it turns out that they shifted everything to one corner. like #$%^%$. if they had asked us nicely last night before we left if they could take those seats for their friends i would have given them up willingly and choped other empty seats. but NO. they had to do stuff SNEAKILY behind our backs. gah.

but its ok i guess. luckily i came early enough for there to still be relatively decent seats around. and i must admit that i've been extremely lucky so far; last sem i choped seats throughout the entire exam period and reading week and nothing bad happened to me even though everyday, people's stuff were getting moved around and taken away by the superintendent and all that. so ya. there's really nothing to complain about. except that i wish some people won't be so underhanded.

ok can't think bad thoughts. need to start studying. 14 days to study for biomed and 11 days afterwhich to study for insolv. sounds slack but it's so NOT. both are 8MC modules and which i've done practically nothing for the entire sem. and my insolv essay has 3,800 words without a conclusion. how on earth do you edit out 800++ words?!. but i'll worry about that later. am so sick of it that i dont feel that i can possibly bear to look at it again until the weekend at least.

oh and another thing about that group of prcs. the guys there are like... ... ... . one is sooo obviously gay from his actions to the way he speaks and dresses. and the other is totally himbo. in the midst of studying he takes out a mirror (i dont even carry a mirror around!) and examines his face. my gawd! that night i even saw the gay guy talking to one of his girl friends. and during their conversation he was just absent-mindedly playing with her fingers, and rubbing them and he even lifted her hand up and sort of brushed his lips over it. like wtf?! i am without a doubt that they are not together (long story lah. and my intuitions are correct more often than not). and really. even if you tell me that they've been best friends since childhood that is still damn weird. only lovers do that to each other man. now i'm beginning to have some weird notion that they all engage in mass orgies together or something... hur hur. excpet that they probably dont have time to do so since they're forever here. hmm.

*[[ And they lived happily ever after... ]]*
|10:35:00 AM|

---

i dunno why but i think my body is deteriorating. it's protesting more and more as i run - normal simple runs, nothing heavy ... and i'm beginning to wonder if i have some silent killer disease creeping up on me or something. i'm really tempted to go for a full body checkup someday. ever since 1 or 2 weeks ago, my 3.2-7ks have left me sweating copious amounts, which i swear, never used to happen. plus i start panting like crazy into the 4th round. plus plus i feel really bad. plus plus plus the phrase ' just using all your remaining energy on concentrating on putting one foot before the other' which i've read on many marathon websites --> finally i know what it means. ok maybe i'm exaggerating abit, but ya its quite bad. really, i dunno what's wrong. its not like these distances are unfamiliar to me or what. i've been running them since like... forever.

the groo says i'm running too fast. i've considered this possibility before. i mean its the only possible explanation besides me having some terminal illness. but i dont think so. is averaging 1:50+ to 2:00 per round for about 4k very fast? i thought it was normal... since reasonably fit girls can do their 2.4ks at around 12 mins which translates into 2mins per round. plus these few days i already feel like i'm super super slow. maybe i'm already used to a much faster pace since road race... just that i can't sustain this pace for longer distances? maybe this is the problem. but i feel like i'm running at the same pace i've always been running at what. maybe last time i was slower than i thought i was, because i never took my timings. maybe this maybe that ... a thousand maybes and i'll never really know.

i just want my body to go back to the way it was. and to be able to look forward to runs and not having to put every ounce of energy into doing sub 2-s per round. :(

*[[ And they lived happily ever after... ]]*
|9:00:00 PM|

---

i desperately want to re-watch beach boys again. somehow this desire always pops up at a bad time - either during or right before exams. oh wells. seems like i'll never get sick of the serial

anyway i accepted another internship at the maritime and port authority from jul-aug. which leaves me with effectively NO holiday at all. i dunno if this was a wise choice - had a sudden strong desire to turn it down but .. whatever .. i figure it'll be a good learning experience anyway.

and as a result of many long cold hours spent in yih these past few days, it actually seems like i have a prospect of finishing my insolv essay before the weekend! gasp. it's like a dream come true. finally soon i can start studying proper. i have nooooo time ARGHH

just a thought .. i wanna go somewhere real cool for graduation trip. like haiti or something.

*[[ And they lived happily ever after... ]]*
|4:59:00 PM|

---

i know i'm going to get killed for saying this - but i really really really for the umpteenth time wish that my handwriting was nicer. and neater.

i also know that it looks pretty nice from afar (or so i've been told) .. but to me its just neat. and i dont know why some, or rather most people equate neat-ness with nice-ness.

and actually if you look closely, its not even that neat. the spacing between my letters are uneven, the circles in my 'a's and 'p's and 'o's are not perfect circles and vary in size, and the straight lines in my 'm's and 'b's are rarely totally straight. grrr. sometimes i do want to tear my hair out in frustration just looking at it. because i can't even do such a simple thing well.

i dont know why i'm being so anal about this .. its just that for just about as long as i can remember, i've always gotten a perverse satisfaction out of making my handwritten work look like it's been typed out. hur hur.

ok back to the tedious task of having to chop 500+ words off an otherwise (or so i think) already perfect essay. i mean how do you go about chopping 500 words off when everything inside is essential?!?!!!!!!

*[[ And they lived happily ever after... ]]*
|5:01:00 PM|

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