Stream of Consciousness
Midterm break. Life sucks. Choir Ridge The Body Financial Maths. Linear Algebra assignment untouched, Stochastic Processes midterm absolutely clueless about.
How are all of you today? To you, I'm sorry. To you, I miss you. To you, try to get online I need some cheering up. To you, thanks a lot. To you, why haven't you all done your work and now I'm the one scrambling to do your crap? To you, lately it's been strange, but it's all in good fun.
Belated happy birthday Dad. You're 60! The 40-year gap between us doesn't seem to be all that wide, methinks. Owe that to my being a stubborn know-it-all, and you feeling young as ever. :) I appreciate everything, really, and I miss you guys at home.
I'm finding it hard to accept criticism, and that's a fault I need to fix. It's a qualified sort of statement, actually, as there are just a few buttons I don't like being pushed. Push them even half-jokingly, and I'll feel bad. It's not a conscious thing; it just happens. Anyway, it's no big deal, really, but expect me to be "off" for a while.
Being Secretary for NUS Choir is taking too much time. I've been calling hotels, shopping centres, country clubs with the rest of the exco to secure caroling deals. Then I personalize the business letter and send them emails. Then there's the CFA jacket proposal, then there are tje minutes of the meetings, then the choir write-ups. The politics in choir comm (both within and between exco and musico) is not fun. I tend to get affected too, so how can I really devote 100% of my attention to studies when my mind and chest are unsettled? Even if the matters don't particularly involve me, as part of the comm that manages the choir which I've grown to love, I am unavoidably affected.
I've finished the 4th book for my The Body module. It's Under the Skin by Michael Faber. It's engrossing, and it's interesting that a novel can be perverse (the first few pages depict a seemingly sex-crazed female driver picking up hunky muscly hitchhikers) and just.. heartbreakingly beautiful at the same time. It brings elements of sci-fi too, which although isn't quite my cup of tea, has brought to light some questions worth exploring: What does it mean to be human? Are we really the same under the skin? What are the deeper issues we tend to overlook when we encounter signs and people/things around us? How does the phantasmic become corporealized in a narrative text? I think I should mention that I have been tasked to do a presentation (20% of the grade) of the issues raised in the novel in our tutorial (the 10-student class of which I'm the lone non-literature major). That meant I had to read the novel very thoroughly, armed with dictionary and Google. That also meant I was reading very slowly, and consumed far too much precious mugging time. Hopefully it pays off.
My head's aching now. I want to talk about the inter-varsity Pinoy Party, and the NUS Choir performance for a Skin Centre Congress at Raffles City Convention Centre today, but I think it's time for me to study. Oh I even forgot to talk about the September issue of The Ridge, and my Linear Algebra midterm, both of which pissed me off.
I feel stupid, but I know it won't last for long, according to 'Mad Season' by Matchbox Twenty. Well, this is taking far longer than it should. Help me Lord.
Age of Iron
Age of Iron
I'm currently taking a module called EN3249: The Body: Politics, Poetics, Perception. Maybe it's just me, but it promises to be one of the most interesting modules I've taken thus far. It discusses the issue of corporeality: the bodily experience of a reader reading a text, the corporeality of the narrative and the metanarrative,
It's a level 3000 module, so I was initially hesitant to take it, as I'm one of the very few non-Arts students taking it to fulfill a Minor in English Studies and from the first few lectures, I noticed it was a small class of 35, mostly Arts majors (I'm a Statistics major) and the topic of discussion (it was Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida then on the issue of corporeality of signifiers whose images were captured in photographs) seemed rather philosophical and 'hardcore' literature, so to speak. Add to that the fact that should I take the module, it would be my sixth module for this semester, which is insane, really, but I must carry on anyway.
After an email exchange with my (pretty) lecturer and discussions with Karen, Arthur, Joanne, I decided to keep the module in the end (and drop, with a slightly heavy heart, this other level 3000 module on 19th Century Literature and Culture). I don't quite regret my decision, and I'm enjoying the intellectual tickle of this module. A cause of slight alarm, though: I went to the first tutorial last Friday, and we had a grand total of 10 students in the class (my smallest tutorial ever, and yet in another group Dr Yeo said she had only 6), and after a round of introductions, I learned that all the rest of them, are either Year 3 or Year 2 Literature majors! Haha oh my dear Lord what am I getting into? Haha.
* * *
The second book we're discussing for The Body is this J.M.Coetzee novel, Age of Iron. Coetzee is South African, and a Nobel Prize winner for Literature, and his novels, according to Dr Yeo, are depressing.
- unfinished post -
I'm currently taking a module called EN3249: The Body: Politics, Poetics, Perception. Maybe it's just me, but it promises to be one of the most interesting modules I've taken thus far. It discusses the issue of corporeality: the bodily experience of a reader reading a text, the corporeality of the narrative and the metanarrative,
It's a level 3000 module, so I was initially hesitant to take it, as I'm one of the very few non-Arts students taking it to fulfill a Minor in English Studies and from the first few lectures, I noticed it was a small class of 35, mostly Arts majors (I'm a Statistics major) and the topic of discussion (it was Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida then on the issue of corporeality of signifiers whose images were captured in photographs) seemed rather philosophical and 'hardcore' literature, so to speak. Add to that the fact that should I take the module, it would be my sixth module for this semester, which is insane, really, but I must carry on anyway.
After an email exchange with my (pretty) lecturer and discussions with Karen, Arthur, Joanne, I decided to keep the module in the end (and drop, with a slightly heavy heart, this other level 3000 module on 19th Century Literature and Culture). I don't quite regret my decision, and I'm enjoying the intellectual tickle of this module. A cause of slight alarm, though: I went to the first tutorial last Friday, and we had a grand total of 10 students in the class (my smallest tutorial ever, and yet in another group Dr Yeo said she had only 6), and after a round of introductions, I learned that all the rest of them, are either Year 3 or Year 2 Literature majors! Haha oh my dear Lord what am I getting into? Haha.
* * *
The second book we're discussing for The Body is this J.M.Coetzee novel, Age of Iron. Coetzee is South African, and a Nobel Prize winner for Literature, and his novels, according to Dr Yeo, are depressing.
- unfinished post -
