诞生日

One more year down, one more notch on the knife, but who's keeping score? Almost to the next milestone of 25 now.

It's depressingly familiar.

And once again, I am at a loss of what to ask for my birthday. It's not that I don't have anything in mind that I want - wait, that's probably it. I don't really want for much.

That doesn't mean that I'm easily satisfied.

Hell no, I'm not satisfied with my life at all.

I guess I've gotten used to being unsatisfied.

It's like the closest thing to a constant companion that I have. =\

Okay, that sounded pretty sad. Rewind.

Results came back, and apparently my CAP refused to budge a milimetre. Still stuck at the barely-above-second-lower-honors mark, which compounds a difficulty in deciding if I should go ahead and try for honors. I was sure that I would die horrendously this semester and thus, not even be given the choice. Hence, it came as rather a surprise and an unexpected new question I have to agonize over.

Graduate? Y/N. That is the Question.

And I probably won't be doing an FYP or graduate thesis if I really do choose to go on. I hate statistics. With a core burning passion.

This holiday season has been rather slow moving. Aside from the 2 weeks I spent in the army, I haven't really been doing much aside from eating, sleeping, and for the past few couple of days, being generally useless in the Sets construction area for Sheares Production. Lots of niggling problems cropping up that I don't really know how to solve, but I'm trying.

Managed to catch Avatar (3D!) and Sherlock Holmes, both well worth the money spent. Avatar because of pretty pretty glowy trees and Sherlock Holmes because it was basically House +badass +explosions +awesome +FTW.

Also managed to meet up with Jeremy, Si Xiao Jie and Zhi for lunch at Ishimura (which is really budget and good, btw.). Been a long time since we caught up (esp. Si Xiao Jie), and Zhi's dancing in the 2010 countdown celebration thingy on Mediacorp, how cool is that? o_O

In summary: My friends and other people around me lead such interesting lives. MLIA.

Look, even other people's MLIA are fundamentally awesome!

some post-reservist thoughts

In the army, you sort of learn that no matter what you do, there's always going to be people out there who have it easier than you, who are luckier than you, who seem to have everything planned out.

Of course, this isn't an exclusive happenstance. Everyone around you is already living a far more exciting life than you are. Poor you.

But put 30 people of around the same age group into the same room with virtually nothing to do except talk about their lives to pass the time, and suddenly everybody has a story.

Makes you feel kind of scared to grow up.

Because, what if you don't measure up?

Rethinking plans for honors. Going to wait for the 22nd to make a final decision. Lock it in.

If my life were a series of regrets (which it isn't), this might be the biggest one yet (which it hasn't).

Also, having just returned, I have a backlog of stuff to clear up. May not be very free of late. Tralala.

Also, recording for posterity here: I am officially 3 degrees of separation from SNSD's Tiffany. My platoon-mate's half-korean girlfriend is her childhood playmate from the USA. What a small world! On that note, this puts me at 4 degrees of separation from SNSD's Jessica.

Life is wonderful.

But other then that, it is stultifyingly boring.

it don't make much sense

Funny how I can get an A for an essay dealing with romance and be absolutely clueless about it. True, well, that essay was really more about how modern society mediates romance with technology, but it's still fundamentally about people who less than three.

Either I have a deep-seated internal knowledge about this, or I'm just really good at crapping about this. Betting on the latter.

I know part of the problem lies in my pathological shyness. Koothrappali from the Big Bang Theory comes to mind.

Basically me, except alcohol just makes me sleepy.

I completely clam up when there's an attractive woman within a five-feet radius. It's really subtle, but I can pretty much feel my neural cognitive functions shut down. I subconsciously make less eye-contact, talk less, and stammer/stutter more.

Did I ever recount that anecdote where I messed up totally (read: very badly) with one of my eyecandies? I mean, I know I have talked about it before, but never really recorded it for posterity on blogger.

Ah well, that's another story for another day.

Why am I bringing this up again? Because, well, it's my last semester in university, and I have a creeping feeling that I'm going to die alone, childless and friendless*.

*Disclaimer: Dear friends, this is just a figure of speech, I am not discounting your friendships. You know what I mean.

I could get a kitten, but that's just avoiding the issue.

Somehow though, I have a feeling that it's really more of the way that I've been approaching human relationships in general. I think I don't make friends easily, which is totally a problem for someone who completely -needs- people to be around him in general.

You kinda get used to being alone when you spend that much time on your own. You get tired of trying. It becomes routine. Go for class, get food, be on your own. Pretend it's okay to always be by yourself. Pretend you don't need anyone and that you're completely independent.

That's basically how it is, it becomes second-nature to pretend to be something you're not.

Convince yourself that this is how you deal with it. Mindf*ck yourself.

But somehow along the way, you always doubt. That's where I am now. Doubting. But I think it's a good thing to reconsider my life now.

I'm doubting myself again, whether this is really how I want to live my life for the next twenty or so years before I get run over by a car. Or something. Depressingly alone, addicted to routine, completely and thoroughly bored with life.

They always say, people try to fill that void in their lives with something. Work. Family. Religion. Soap Operas.

What's missing from my life?

Whatever it is, I'm getting tired of waiting around for it to appear.

WHERE ARE YOU, MY DESTINY?

(Translation: I am tired of being single.)

Coming up after the break, I will be consigned to Jurong Camp for the next 2 weeks. No updates till I get back. Bye bye world.

owari

It has been, 3 days, 21hours, 17minutes and 58 seconds since I ended my year 3 semester 1 exams. Clapclap, oh joy.

There are only 2 days, 23hours, 12minutes and 2 seconds before I enter Jurong Camp for the two most interesting (not) weeks of my life. Clapclap, oh joy.

It's amazing how much work I have left to do/allocate/delegate before I get to go gallivanting off for a vacation which I most certainly do not want to go for, and I can only imagine how much stupid work I will have when I get back. Clapclap, oh joy.

Sigh, what am I doing with my life? (That was rhetorical.)

It's really quite amazing, for someone who uses Web2.0 and social-networking websites as much as I do, how much (or rather how little) of a social life I actually have. Between the end of the examinations and now I've only gone out once, and that was a failed trip to the Singapore Flyer with Shawn, CS and Mich, where pretty much everyone was late.

Well at least we had Tom's Palette and some pretty interesting conversation.

But that's about it. My Life is Average.

And today's average word of the day is: moo.

Between now and examination's end, I have been pretty unproductive, and I say, not unproductive enough, dammit. I had no idea being a 宅男 was this hard.

I guess it's my lack of a real attention span that keeps me from being glued to something for 18hours straight, not including meals and sleep. Fail.

There's barely 2 days of unproductivity left, and I still have to pack up my shit for army, settle hall stuff (deity-damn it) and blah. It's giving me an irritation just thinking about it.

But hokay, enough about my pedestrian lifestyle. Go back to your interesting lives, people. (swallows bitter pills)

module planning!

Exams are over! I have scarcely 5 or 6 days to go before I am whisked to the magical forests of Singapore where I will spend a week without access to basic human amenities and the preceeding week doing absolutely nothing of value inside a military camp. What fun!

I have also started to think about what modules I would want to take next sem. What fun!

If all goes well: (Bold denotes more or less confirmed modules)

2 Psych Modules Left:

PL3239 - Industrial and Organisational Psychology

PL3244 - Adolescent Psychology

or

PL3255 - Introduction to Paediatric Psychology

1 Lit Module Left:

EN3224 - The Twentieth Century

or

EN3231 - American Literature I

Breadth:

IT1001 - Introduction to Computing

1 UE/GEM

GEK1508 - Einstein's Universe & Quantum Weirdness

or

GEK1520 - Understanding the Universe

or

GEK1519 - Science of Music

Graduation is in sight. Mhmm. What fun. Sigh.

Oh, guess what degree I have?