Episode 79: The Office Party

Just got back from The Office Party, which I saw with Ben Woon. Like most SRT shows that I've been to, this one was great! While the dialogue occasionally fell flat, most of the time, it sparkled with precisely the kind of comic timing that I hope The Culture Project will have. There was a really funny moment when someone's handphone went off. Twice. So the actors spoke ad lib, making a tiny crack in the fourth wall. I love it when stuff like that happens. I didn't quite like the ending though, as I felt it didn't provide enough in the way of resolution, but I nonetheless had many a good laugh throughout the two or so hours. Office shenanigans make for really compelling viewing, especially since I'll almost certainly never see anything as entertaining in my office in future. Before the play, I also descended on Kinokuniya and bought, among many other things, the complete Dune series. Yeah, all of Frank Herbert's original six novels, plus the various prequels and sequels his son, Brian Herbert, wrote in collaboration with Kevin J. Anderson. I spent more than $250, but it was well worth it, since I bought a lot of stuff that I've always wanted to buy, but never had enough spare cash to get. Am now immensely satisfied!

Episode 78: Waiting To Come Alive

No progress on the script as yet, although I'm wondering if my idea for an opening scene in which the account of how the principal couple met via Facebook should be given to Adriana as an opening monologue instead. Will try writing it out soon and see if there's enough comic potential in that to match what Bella wants. I don't know if anyone else feels the way I do, but being back in Singapore between terms is kind of like being in limbo. I suppose it feels different for the summer break, but this period of less than a month, it really doesn't feel like a proper homecoming at all. It's more like a very, very long Reading Week. Couple that with my perpetual feeling that I'm not making full use of my time, and you can see why in some ways, I'd rather the term hadn't ended. At least then, the timetable, sparsely populated by classes at it is, helps to regulate the days (and the nights). Here, I am free to order my time pretty much as I wish, which generally ends in my not doing things like reading all the texts that I brought back with me for the sole purpose of reading them. Maybe I'm just too laidback for my own good...

Episode 77: As Usual, Doing Stuff Other Than Work

Have begun the time-consuming process of transferring all my TV shows onto my 1 TB external hard drive. Have also found a new show to watch, Sanctuary. I'm hoping to get this done by the end of tomorrow, and then spend the rest of the week focusing on writing the dialogue for The Culture Project, now that Bella has sent me the notes for the discussion we had before the last rehearsal. I think the ideas we have so far are fantastic, but a lot depends on how snappy I can make the dialogue, without sacrificing depth and substance. A task that will tax my wit indeed! Hey, if Oscar Wilde could do it, I don't see why I can't have a go. Have found new Christian music that I enjoy, by Brian Bates. It's something about his voice, I think. His vocal register is just very soothing to listen to, and it kind of reminds me of what I sound like when I record myself singing, on a good day. I've managed to find his second album, Worlds Collide, so I might end up buying his debut, Outside The Limits, off iTunes. It all depends on how rich I'm feeling after I've seen a few plays and bought some shirts and books!

Episode 76: Back!

I'm finally back in Singapore. The books that are not to be brought back have been inserted into their places on my bookshelves. The clothes that have been brought back have been unpacked. The life that was interrupted by 11 weeks in a foreign country has been resumed. It's a little unreal, how it's entirely possible to pretend that I've never left at all, and somehow I feel like I should be feeling more disoriented, more lost in my own skin. Yet I don't. Perhaps I haven't been away long enough? Or am I less given to sentimentality than I thought? I can't say that the thought of being home makes me ecstatic, the way it might for some of my friends. Not that I'm not grateful for the familiarity of home, but sometimes I think part of growing up is learning to be able to let go, to go on functioning despite losing something. I don't think I'm any closer to entertaining the thought of migration than when I first left, but I do know that I handled being away from everyone much better than even I expected. You could of course read that as a statement of how relatively unimportant I am to most of the people I know, but then that would be rather cynical, wouldn't it? After watching Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging, which was an entertaining, albeit formulaic, coming-of-age flick, I decided to start reading Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. I think this is perhaps his best work since The Remains Of The Day. An Ishiguro novel always unsettles me as I'm reading it, but this one is particularly chilling because of its subject matter. Think of the movie The Island as a novel, without the fast-paced action sequences and the happy ending. The Guardian has a hilarious take on the book though, right here. Got to love John Crace's digested reads...

Episode 75: Transiting In Dubai...

Am surfing in the airport at Dubai while waiting for my connecting flight to Singapore. I think the whole connecting flight thing with Emirates is just really tedious, even if what I'm paying for the flight is significantly cheaper than the SIA direct flight from London. It was so disorganised when we got to the terminal, with contradictory instructions being issued. The good thing about Emirates though, is that you can fly from Birmingham, where the airport is less of a nightmare than Heathrow. The inflight entertainment for Emirates is okay, but not as fantastic as SIA. I watched Hellboy II: The Golden Army and Babylon A.D. The former is quite decent entertainment, although its central plot element isn't really developed all that much. The latter, however, is quite brainless. It's an example of a movie that has a cool idea at its heart, but the execution completely lets it down. The ending is especially bad, as it leaves you wondering what the heck actually happened! I mean, you get that the events portrayed have taken place, but you simultaneously wonder if there isn't a lot more that somehow got excised from the movie by mistake! That and it's really boring watching Vin Diesel, who is completely incapable of emoting.

Episode 74: Last Day Of Term

I finished the essay around 6.30 am, which left me with just over two hours of sleep. If I didn't have to go to the EN121 seminar to hand it in, I'd have slept in and skipped my second seminar this term. The essay is slightly better than I expected, so perhaps a Second Upper is within reach? We shall see. My tutor isn't teaching us next term, which is a pity really, since she's nice and quite funny. Have just about finished packing my stuff. I'm hideously over the weight limit, but if I do end up having to pay overweight charges, I'll just swipe my Visa and bill my dad, since a significant proportion of the stuff is gifts for people back home. I've brought back a number of books that I bought this term, including all of the Milan Kundera books. Will have to seriously reconsider my decision to cart more books over when I come back for Spring Term. With this experience of packing, I'm more acutely aware of the sheer difficulty of compressing your life into a couple of suitcases. Am quite psyched about going home actually, although I'd have been okay staying here too. It's mainly the thought of Singaporean food that appeals. I feel like telling my parents to buy cereal prawns from the coffee shop opposite our house. That would shock them. Haha...

Episode 73: Writing At The Eleventh Hour, Literally

Finally got around to photocopying the bits that I needed of the book on 'Howl'. It took me around half an hour, and I ended up photocopying nearly the entire book. Keegan was telling me I should try to crack the administrative password for the machine, then I can get my copying done for free. I think that's just really retarded, even as a way of saving money. Of course, for people like Keegan, the response to that would be, 'No wonder you're doing English,' which is the kind of statement that always seems fairly ridiculous to me. Why do people assume that my mind is only given to certain things just because I read English? It's a reductive line of reasoning that I find somewhat offensive, to be frank. Anyway, tonight's rehearsals were pretty cool, and things are really beginning to fall into place script-wise. Will have to force myself to bang out the script once I'm back in Singapore, as I promised Bella I'd only need just over a week. For now though, I should concentrate on finishing this bloody Gawain essay. I think I'm just going to end up rambling and not making a lot of sense, so will forgive myself if I get like Second Lower for this one. Not that it counts anyway, so there isn't much incentive to get it right!

Episode 72: Shopping

I just got back from Mimi Khalvati's reading at the Arts Centre. This is the first time that I've bought the books of the person who was reading, which proves just how much I like her poetry. I even got her to sign one of the books! I've just gone on Amazon UK and ordered the two collections that weren't on sale during the event, which were, oddly enough, her earliest and latest. The latter might arrive in time for me to pick it up, provided it gets delivered early enough on Friday. The former, I'll definitely have to wait until I get back to collect it. Now I'm on Facebook, joining fan pages in a very successful attempt to avoid working on my EN121 essay. The trouble is that I don't know where to begin with this essay, which is a really bad state to be in, with less than two days till it's due and not a lot of time actually available to do it in! Shall settle for a Second Upper for this essay. I managed to pop down to Coventry after all, with Michelle in the afternoon. I got all the stuff I'd intended to, and then ended up buying about £40 worth of Topman accessories. I know, such wanton spending! I think the rings I bought were nice, although I might end up returning two of them eventually, if I get tired of them. Those are the ones with some sort of design on them; the brushed metal ones are wonderful no matter what. I bought four bunches of those wristbands too, just for fun. Consider it a reward for myself, for writing another good essay. Haha...

Episode 71: The Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reaction

Okay, so I cheated and wrote about something that I actually know a fair bit about, in a sort of general, very vague way at least. I first encountered the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction in Russell Hoban's novel, Fremder, and since then, it's become one of the scientific concepts that have stuck particularly well in my brain, along with things like black holes, particle physics, string theory, and that's just the physics stuff. My brain is a veritable muddle of bits and pieces of knowledge, some more complete and intact than others, regarding very disparate subjects. I suppose you could think of me as a sort of half-baked Renaissance man? Anyway, the point is that I managed to find something on the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction in the Library, for which I intrepidly ventured into parts of the Library hitherto unknown to myself. So now I'm working at a terminal in the Library, for the first time in 10 weeks. This last week is really turning into a week of firsts. Was at Top Banana last night after all, for the first time ever, even if Samantha was sick and didn't attend it with me and Jerrick as we'd originally planned at The Benjamin Satchwell. I had fun, and there was Whitney to accompany back to Westwood, so I didn't have to walk through the freezing cold alone. Now I just need to finish this blasted piece of creative non-fiction, which doesn't feel all that creative actually, and I can finally get some sleep. Oh yeah, I got a First for the 'Howl' essay redux, so am definitely going with the 'Howl' question for the assessed essay too. I discovered a really funny thing when I got it back. I'd printed out the creative non-fiction piece from last week's seminar, and then handed it in too by mistake, stuck behind the bibliography. Adam read it anyway, and he commented that it wasn't so bad, so perhaps my creative non-fiction is not completely hopeless. Getting the essay back was the highlight of my day, I think, sad as it may sound. Acting as a cheating husband during rehearsal came a close second.

Episode 70: Travesties

We had a rehearsed reading of Tom Stoppard's Travesties instead of a regular lecture, which was freaking awesome! Although I haven't read it yet, the verbal pyrotechnics on display in the excerpt that was dramatised were enough to convince me to do so, very soon. It was definitely worth walking through what was an unusually cold evening (even for this time of year). Popped into the Library after the lecture, where I picked up a few more books, for both the EN121 and EN122 essays. Have more or less decided on the 'Howl' question because I've already researched the poem before, so it's just a matter of photocopying the relevant chapters out of the library books, which I will do as soon as I've figured out which are the useful chapters. Made up my mind about the 'Howl' question in the afternoon, just before I took a shower. The alternative questions were mostly pretty dry and not really my kind of stuff, although I probably could do enough research to answer some of them. My only concern is the lack of available material in Singaporean libraries, so I've really got to do all the research by the end of this week! As for the Gawain essay, it'll just have to wait until tomorrow night. I'm thinking if I should go to the last Top Banana of Autumn Term, but Jerrick hasn't replied to me yet if he'll be going, and I don't want to go alone with Samantha and the rest of the girls. So maybe I'll just sit in my room and read. After I finish watching Ghost Whisperer, of course. I nearly teared when Jim died, and unlike most of the fans who seem pissed off at the writers for this latest plot development, but I'm waiting to see how it turns out before passing judgement. I will say though, this is one screen couple who is so perfect that they could only exist in the world of television, which is partly why all the fans are so upset about Jim's death. We'll just have to see how this one pans out...