...Rock you like a hurricane...


















"Why?" you ask. Because some places just have too many bad memories and not enough good ones. Thanks for the laughs. Keep well everyone.

I sometimes think that I fashion myself as a quiet rebel without cause, doing and saying things differently from others just to stand out, get attention, build a false sense of a unique self. It happens so unconsciously sometimes that I only realise it when I'm in the middle of doing something I didn't want to do but agreed because I just had to say differently.

So after 70 pages of The Kite Runner and I started thinking that it's bad, I thought it was just me having to be contrary again. Thank goodness at least 160 people on Amazon.com thought it didn't pass either (meaning they gave the book two stars or less out of five). True that Amazon.com might not be the best touchstone when it comes to literary criticism, but how about Slate magazine, owned by the Washington Post?

Right, true that even Slate magazine does not bolster my own opinion very much. Especially if you consider the flood of raving reviews out there. Honestly it was difficult to find a bad review that is made by any kind of established institution and not a random individual.

How did I come to read this book, considering I am about 6 years too late in joining in any conversation about the merits of the book? Well about a couple of months ago, my girlfriend and her friend started a two-person book club and this was one of the first books that decided to read together. They both raved about it after they were through and more than once my girlfriend said I should read it because it's really good (they read A Thousand Splendid Suns too but didn't like it as much).

Ok, so while she is away on holiday in England for about 10 days, I decided to pick it up and see it for myself (after having played computer games for 8 of the 10 days that is). It started off promising, although the last lines of the first chapter: "I thought about the life I have lived until the winter of 1975 came along and changed everything. And made me what I am today." did get me cringing a little. The slight melodrama seemed more apt for pulp fiction. Still it was just two lines.

Chapter Two came and went with the equally cringe-worthy "Looking back on it now, I thnk the foundation for what happened in the winter of 1975--and all that followed--was already laid in those first words." BUM-BUM-BUM!!!! Reader be forewarned: Something important happens in the winter of 1975. Please take note of this and remember that everything changed because of winter 1975. Not summer, and not in 1978 but WINTER. 1975. WINTER.

It sort of went downhill from there. And at page 74, I put the book down, Googled to make sure I was not the only insane person in the world who thought that the book sucked, and started writing this post. The characters are cliched as heck, the plot already contrite, and the subtlety was anything but. It may have been hailed for being the first fiction book in English by an Afghan to depict Afghanistan but it seems that as a book, as literature, it has more than a few short-comings.

Does this mean I think that my girlfriend and her friend are morons for thinking it's good? Hardly. I am envious rather. Everyone takes something away from a book and evidently for them, what they came away with made them exhilarated and in awe. The last time I had that feeling from reading a book was Rushdie's Midnight's Children and that was some years ago. Obviously when I read, I read for something entirely different from them. Perhaps it's a pity that I cannot be transported into a fictional world by a book and just live in it without pointing out how the constructedness of that fictional world is working against the book in general.

So it is with some sadness that I acknowledge I don't feel the way that my girlfriend and her friend did, reading The Kite Runner. But I move on, there are loads to read and god knows I have not read anything more than a restaurant menu for quite some time now. And so I am now midway through Jose Saramago's The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, which is so dense and thick it's like eating New York Cheesecake after a two-hour long buffet. Before each bite I must sit back and rest, or else I risk ruining any enjoyment to be had from the book. I sense its greatness, not because it's difficult, but because everything in it feels right. No pretence (despite the fact that there is a ghost in there that waxes lyrical about politics and love) to be sensed, yet nothing in it can be taken at face value. I plough on.

Never have I been so puzzled by a movie. So many nominations... but where's the stuff to back it up?

Everyone around me was saying how great the movie was, and its multiple Oscar nominations had me thinking it'll be good too. But I watched it and as my friends talked about how good it was, I wondered what all the fuss was about. Not wanting to spoil the fun, I kept my opinions to myself.

What I felt was that the movie was a bloated collage of pretty images signifying nothing.( Read more... )

I'm pretty sure one can only be happy about the end of something if one hates it enough to begin with. For that reason, I don't think I have hated my thesis enough. It is finished and I am glad about it. VERY glad.

But (and there's always a but in these things) I am deeply unsatisfied with it. It was a rushed job--no one's fault but my own--and it was poor. I refuse to look at it again now because I know I will spot so many flaws in it that I could have and should have changed, but didn't have the time to. These things happen when one overestimates one's ability.

Oh well, I'm not going to lament how bad I'll do or how stupid I am and all that. I will however take bets with anyone daring enough that I will not get anything better than a B for it. Minimum bet is $5. Anyway what's done is done.

What all this means is that I must not get a good grade. I need a bad grade for my thesis so I will be pissed off enough that I'll do my Masters with a blinding vengeance and a frenzied madness.

People talk about their "throw-away semester". I think the second half of my NUS life is made up of nothing but "throw-away semesters". Oh well, there's always NIE. *shudder*

1) Reached home just after 2pm.
2) Realised whole family will be going to my uncle's place soon. Since I have work to do, I'm not going.
3) Dad stuffed me with food.
4) Mom stuffed me with food.
5) Dad said, "See? Home still the best right? Got so much to eat."
6) I rolled my eyes.
7) Mom asked if I had missed home.
8) I realised I didn't.
9) I said I did.
10) They left.
11) I started doing work.
12) I cursed the year one students who couldn't string a proper English sentence together.
13) It hit me that I didn't come back to home at all.
14) Started planning my great escape.
15) Blogged about items (1) to (14)

Lots of other small stuff happened in between of course, but for in general, the last 7 hours have been more or less summarised adequately above.

Oftentimes, a person can never compare to the memory of another person. The memory always wins, the person always loses. How sad. How unfair.




Annie Lennox is my current love. So damn hot... Those eyes... Those awesome expressions! That great big smile... And that andro look is pretty sizzling too I thought. And that smirk at -1:05... Man... *wistful sigh*

No one but me will really understand what this is all about. But some things just need to be written out.  And when writing stops, then some things just need to be done. And I think my writing's coming to an end soon.

After THat, the chiming will be right.
The blight that is cosmic joke,
That thinks it is friendly folk,
Must do that which is right.

Must do that which is hard.
But that which should have start-ed
Long before the blight was alight
Upon others thus made affright.

All blight ever might was hope.
And all hope ever might was not
Anything but the end of a mope.
Always then the blight was fault.

Blight blight blight blight blight!
That was all the blight spoke.
Pretend pretense turns plague-like.
But now.
Now.
The blight.
To this he awoke.

Here. I give you a couple pictures of me with black eyeliner and black mascara. This is the second time I have worn this. Shock shock horror horror shock shock horror eh? No, not really. I allowed it to be put on me. I think it's interesting to just see what people will do or say. It reveals a lot about certain things that you wouldn't otherwise know.

For instance, girls almost immediately see the make-up. Guys don't until someone pointed it out. That's just one of the things I have learnt.

PS. For those who noticed my lashes, they are real. I'm not wearing fake lashes, they are just that damn long.

PPS. For those who wonder - I'm straight and I'm happy to be a guy.

PPPS. For those who still wonder - I have french manicures on all my fingers too. And I'm upset that they don't look very good because my nails are fucked-up and they're starting to chip even though it's hardly been a week. And I also had my brows plucked, not too long ago.

I don 't think I know what I'm doing anymore. Or why I'm doing what I'm doing. Ack. Argh. Sigh.

For music. If there weren't singers and songs and music in this world, I think I would have offed myself long ago. Yea, yea so emo ah me. Whatever.

Lust, Caution is great. If anyone is still holding out on it because of the whole censorship hoo-ha, believe me, you do not want to miss it. Catch it before it's gone.
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I just learnt I have about 15 days more before till I need to hand in my thesis. I quite literally panicked right there. I'm so dead on this one.

Finally, some days I just hate being human and having to deal with everything that is human.