You are This Desert Life, for you rules are things
that happen to other people. You like to try
new things and you're not afraid to show how
you got to where you are.


Which Counting Crows album are you?
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I'm not the least bit hungry. I'm full, and I ate too much calamari. I feel pretentious and stupid. The wrong words always, always roll off my tongue when I want it least to happen. ("It's a silly word, girl." - Translations) But what a day...
At 8.30am I was already sitting at the tables outside LT2, doing my history tutorial. I'm having a fiendishly bad time catching up on my work ever since SDG XIV, can't seem to stop falling asleep every time a lecturer opens his/her mouth. I thought I looked at least semi-awake during the Senior Civil Servant Speaks (or what I call it, anyway) dialogue session, but according to Chun Wee, Zihao and I were comatose in relatively obvious states, so to speak. Darn. No wonder the council president, seated next to the guy and giving the interested nods, was giving me these (envious?) looks every time my eyes were open.
Anyway, so the rest of the committee filters in and a long time later P decides to grace us with her presence after glaring down the corridor from the teacher's room several times at our lack of punctuality. It was a a long meeting; again I felt like I was staring at a feedback form, unable to fill in under the heading "Topic". After a lot of talk from concentrating-on-the-music to Nibori to we-are-good-friends to beige-shirts to pontianaks (huh?), we were released at 12. I could just feel the sun rising each hour behind my back. The guys cannot stop plotting and planning against everybody (even Johnson's Duck Rice), although I doubt they have clear campaign plans. We are not supposed to soften our stance. (Am I revealing too much, General?)
It's so quiet now...
Now again I shall make fun of Zhixuan. "What CWC event is it?" he asks at lunch. "Artist's Jam, where we read out stuff," I reply. "Read out what? Lit texts?" he says blankly. I choke back a giggle and explain we read poetry. "Stuff you write yourself?" he shouts incredulously. "Recite it to us now!" (he demands.) It's wild the way he tries to create a muggerish element out of anything at all.
So I ran back to school for the Lit-text-reading event. It was actually pretty fun (as it usually is), introducing ourselves and strange, assorted alumni, and simply enjoying original poetry and prose, setting up the reception tables (where I consumed so much seafood), talking to people. (Apparently the J1s had a good time at the guitar camp. Yay! Or for her word, Victory!) While waiting for the judges to make their decisions, we hung around and I later learnt the tabs for Angel (Sarah's, not Shaggy's) on Daniel's ancient guitar. (I love the diversity AND similarity of my CCAs, I do.) Yi San bagged the top prize for poetry and was shocked. It was very funny seeing her shocked. I'm happy.
I'm sorry I hit a nerve. I'm sorry if I said the wrong thing back there...

Because he will have a new weapon, gravity,
And everything he releases becomes a missile,
Even glass marbles, books, the fatal music box.
Because he is lonely enough without being able to
Frame the house he lives in between his forefinger and thumb.
...
And because he might get the wrong notion that he is closer
To heaven, when he has not even come a mile
Within the presence of angels, despite the resemblance.
Alfian Sa'at, Why A Man Cannot Have Wings

(In imitation of The Death of Marilyn Monroe, or maybe Tori Amos' A Sorta Fairytale vid)

One leg limps here,

One arm lies there,

Sweaty pores scattered everywhere.

Unnamed muscles

Have vanished completely.

So has stamina.

Why is a body disintegrating

Over something

Like NAPFA?

Hearing the last of it
I have to leave in less than half-an-hour for a post-concert meeting, which means typingattopspeedrightaboutnow. There we will have start the process of choosing the new exco.
One of my eyes feels weighty, as if the eyebag is pulling it gravitationally downwards. The weather is hot, humid, sticky, blue-slip-ish (i.e. it's easy to convince yourself of illness, if not others). Papercuts, toe blisters, unhealthy eating habits. Thus, the habitual feeling of being unconscious or on the way to unconsciousness. Our sleepover on Wednesday night was such inane fun on afterthought... sitting around the dining table at 12 eating supper ("Do you have anything in the fridge? I eat a lot at night," I am coolly informed), conking out on a mattress in the hallway listening to Cheek and Shulin discuss Chem tutorial questions, at 2 in the morning, while Josh Groban yodels from the TV set in the background. Then Zhixuan starts talking in his sleep about Mona. Hmm. I wake up at sporadic moments. Everyone likes to sleep with blankets/cushions over their faces (and die of suffocation), so it was a bit to difficult to identify them in the morning.
Yesterday was such a blur of costume-changes, lollipop-and-card giveaways and photo-taking, I can't remember a great deal of what happened. I was worrying about the music and audience, and of course feeling saaad... watching the J1s chase each other around hitting each other with Zhi'en's squeaky hammers; they are so lucky, this isn't their last! I just saw everybody, I miss everybody. Huixin's roses are so beautiful - yellow with a touch of orange. It was so good to see her, and Yuwei, if only for a few minutes at end, always running around behind the stage and in front of it and through the hall, searching...
At Macs' "after-party", we couldn't stop clinging to these last few moments, talking, celebrating, planning outings - it felt good to just sit there and soak up the enjoyment of knowing this group. I have to work hard, turn to other things, but I will remember...

A smile is something special,
A ribbon is something rare...
So I'll be special
And I'll be rare,
With a smile
And a ribbon
In my hair...
- A Smile and A Ribbon, from Daniel Clowes' Ghost World

All the windows on the taskbar are making my head swirl. As are the Post-its and notebook pages, dotty broken promises. You know the way A-I judges love confusing the poor contestants until if they decide to listen to all those contradicting, fluctuating comments, they would wind up with violently orange hair, stomach ulcers and a misplaced personality. I've been travelling a la sandstorm throughout the house today, up and down the stairs, sprawled on a red-and-white cushion in the middle of my bedroom surrounded by Stable Table, a dozen pencils, Econs TYS, yellow notebook, Sloman, tin of peanut butter wafers, lecture notes... and the phone rings, vibrates, kicks off another frantic shower of papers from my schoolbag. To where I am now, only with library book, phone, Greetings Workshop CD and virtual documents instead. I don't know why I'm panicking, and that's the worst part.
I note that in the last entry I was actually frolicking around, uploading pictures. What happened in the last two weeks? I can't remember.
--
I'm supposed to be writing about what happened at the Singapore Art Museum, way back in January, for Artist's Jam, and I can't remember anything besides mutiliated animals. There was the patchwork teddybears exhibit, where it is possible to create a bear spider, if there are enough legs. There were the butterflies, little glittery pieces of them scattered across a whole wall, and not one of them was complete aside from those in the glass case. The pecan pie at Dome had too many... pecans. I must be a bloody superficial person. I don't know why only the physical descriptions, surface emotions (e.g. irritation and boredom) are the only ones that come out of my mouth.
The Last Concert looms, so Wednesdays now round up at 9. It's quite true that McDonald's does not sell actual food, has permanently oily tables and smells like cleaning fluid, but it will be an RJ heartland (if I use the word correctly). I miss it already, even when I'm sitting there. The last round-robin argument, lame joke, ice-cream fry, administrative headache, broken guitar, dynamics agreement, scribbled minute. Concerts always bring about that musical, love-everybody feeling, but this time I suspect it will be true. Yes, it's true, I don't want it to end, even though we're all slumping about in authoritative exhaustion and brow-creases. Sitting with Shulin, talking over a National Geographic omnibus, I realized there are so many levels of responsibility. Although I'll only want to see one, which is perhaps why I am panicking, after all.