I doubt anybody reads...

...but to the interested, this moment of mugging for the IB finals, finishing the last touches to a much hoped upon university application, and the distant specter of enlistment makes one wonder, "Is this it?"

Since I'm still doing IOC...

...I'll keep it short like the twittery beings we're turning out to be. Trying to google Singapore with any of the following terms:

- novelists
- fiction
- man booker
- nobel prize for literature
- shakespeare

is a predictable yet darkly humourous enterprise in futility. Moreso if you come across a particular prologue for a certain book that shall not be named due to its mind-eating dreadfulness that will have its booklaunch as part of the Singapore Writers Festival to showcase local literary talents. Convoluted, but I shall refrain from putting a link in case of unwarranted attention.

On the other hand, university applications threaten to yank my writing habits out of the closet for official declaration. Dreadful, isn't it?

Running the gauntlet

Jx says:
it seems that we have a whole gauntlet to run from now

Jx says:
even with the mid years ending

Jx says:
prelims is about 9 weeks from now, with IOC in the middle

Jx says:
and 5 weeks after that is the actual IB exams

Wull - Just a dreamer after all says:
indeed

Wull - Just a dreamer after all says:
and so, in the immortal words of our principal

Wull - Just a dreamer after all says:
let us pray

Jx says:
http://deadwinter.cc/page/069.htm

Jx says:
like this

Jx says:
=D

On the [n]th day of studying

Where n = 30+.

Makes me wish that some dratted thing around here can C-H-A-N-G-E for once. The nearest outlet is fiction, but escapism does little for a room with notes as one's bunkmates. The landscape knocks the mindscape back into place.

I had a post, but Bio ate it.

n

Just some link-sharing, in context to the education angst that has been going on recently.

An article from Psychology Today

Apparently something like that can and does exist on the very same time and dimensional plane as us. A distant utopia of learning, perhaps.

This holiday...

...POP ended.

...I've taken a bit of time off to dawdle with various things.

...learned a bit more on the process of songwriting.

...got Betrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, which will make good reading for a long time from now.

...gotten that old story idea rolling off from the flat and sagging middle towards where it's supposed to go.

Not too bad, for a math-portfolio-ridden week, along with other things.

The next leap

And to think that, looking back from those halcyon days of childhood (or whatever suitably nostalgic sentiments that counts for it, for people our age. I think most readers here would know, especially after all that sighing over days gone by. But I digress too much in the blatantly authorial third person again.), and forward into the future yet to come, there'd be another great leap forward, into another unknown where we can all be happily miserable about the past again.

Splitting ways, heading into NS, universities. Finding new groups of friends and in the usual biological manners, a mate. Going into the workplace and being busy.

After NS (and the perpertual nannying of the state in teaching us to be proper citizens of the motherland), everything from then on would be entirely up to us. Granted, we've always had that capacity to choose, for even the most impossible of barriers are often those constructed by habit and repetition. It seems impossible, a damning choice to leave school, moreso at these levels. But to take a step back and think: What are these qualifications? A currency that is commonly agreed upon as a ready estimate of your worth and capabilities, perhaps even who you are as a person. Opt out, lose out, for no right minded employer would take you, leaving all those menial jobs that has been serving as the national bogeyman for kids. Score well, or end up sweeping the road.

But in the end, it's an agreed upon means of exchange, a common constructed system of measurement. Just as the cost of a metal tells us nothing of its qualities, an arbitary system of weighing people's worth says nothing about a person's virtues and flaws. When we reach that fateful 21, where we are left to fledge out on our own, all thoice choices, even in the face of seemingly insane decisions, becomes our responsibility. Even if your parents still place down expectations on who you should be, and the wider world around agrees that it is the way to go, the choice is still yours, and now, so will its consequences. Currently, we have gone through a whole parade of institutions to be instituted in, and for the most part, we didn't have much choice, considering that we wouldn't have known better. But now that we do, try following society's expectations and at the end say "they made me do it". At that point, try reversing time. Who knows, it may work, just for you.

Once we've reached that point (or are already there), all choices would be there for us, even if its against the common wisdom of the time. However we choose to leap or plunge off our safe little nests, crash or soar, it'll be us who'll feel the scraping dirt, or the soaring exuberance above.

Yeah, that's more or less it, while ranting time off that could be used for World Lit while waiting for a printer to reinstall. But as I said...nevermind. Already said.

This form of writing would be incoherent to the proper elements of style in English and TOK essay writing. But you're reading it, and I'm using second person while breaking the fourth wall. So much for that.