Episode 414: Graphics Collected!

We were talking about regional French accents today in LL209, including the Canadian French accent, which is really quite odd and incomprehensible at times. We had a conversation about accents in our home countries, and I tried (with some success) to explain how some Singaporeans have a more 'polished' accent, what Kelly once described as 'educated Singaporean', which is a great description, since in my experience, it tends to be precisely those with a certain educational profile who possess the accent, to varying degrees. I'm a bit of an accent snob, to be honest, even if mine does vary between typical Singaporean, 'educated Singaporean' and Anglo-American mishmash, depending on the company. Met up with Owen after that to get some Photoshop tips, so now I've collected all the graphics that I'm supposed to for next term's films. Will try to finish the titles while I'm in London, but if that doesn't happen, I've still got a week after I get back anyway. So to reward myself, I'm going to watch the latest episodes of House and Gossip Girl, while devouring a pint of Ben & Jerry's!

Episode 413: Hitchhiker's Thumb

Woke up when it was almost noon, so I spent the afternoon doing my French homework while catching up on TV shows. (Yeah, I tend to do my French homework under such distracting conditions. Doesn't seem to affect the quality of the output though!) Busted the word limit writing about political and social progress and/or regression in Singapore, but it was fun discovering things like 'gerrymandering' translates as 'charcutage électoral', making it sound like the votes have to undergo some culinary process, which I guess is true in some sense. I also discovered that I have 'hitchhiker's thumb', which Wikipedia informs me is a recessive congenital condition in which the extended thumb bends backwards to the nail and outwards. See, I never realised this made me special. I always thought that was just how thumbs were meant to be! So yeah, cool discovery of the day. Further cool stuff came in the form of finding albums by Heads We Dance, The Killers and Velvet Code. I know I'm a bit late for The Killers, who've been around for a while now, but it was just so weird to realise that some of the songs I recognise from clubs/pubs are actually their songs. Like 'Mr. Brightside' and 'Somebody Told Me'. I'm a bit ambivalent about Heads We Dance's first album, Love Technology, but I really like their upcoming single, 'Take My Picture'. It's like Sophie-Ellis Bextor with less dated synths. As for Velvet Code, I just like the dancey beats. (Yeah, I'm a bit shallow that way.)

Episode 412: You Know You're Tired...

When you'd rather have stayed in bed instead of crawling out to make dinner. Anyway, I sang in church today. Good times! I like singing harmony as much as singing lead, and I don't get to do enough of the former back home, so it's really cool getting to do it at Westwood. By the time lunch at Varsity was over though, I was utterly shattered. Came home and had a nap, which kind of ended up lasting twice as long as I'd intended. So much for getting started on the film reviews for Jennifer's Body and Sommersturm. I'm thinking that this time, I might actually watch the film in question before writing the review, even though that isn't strictly necessary, or at times, even practical (i.e. upcoming releases that haven't premiered at the time of writing). Also have graphics and titles to collect, so that should keep me occupied over Reading Week while I'm in London. Hopefully, I'll be able to learn everything I need to know on Tuesday when I meet Owen, now that I've got Photoshop installed on my laptop. I kind of messed about for a bit and think I might have got the hang of it, but I'm pretty sure there's a more efficient way to get things done.

Episode 411: Days Of Significance

Have just realised that in order to get to church tomorrow in time for band practice, I'm either going to have to wake up ridiculously early to walk there or take a taxi, as the buses don't start running that early. Oh well. Practice today was good, although I was pretty much winging it throughout. Will have to have a listen to the songs later to figure out the harmony for certain, although Matt says what I've done is fine. Finished reading Moniza Alvi's Split World a couple of days ago, having really enjoyed it, especially the sequence of poems, Carrying My Wife, from the collection of the same title. Have now begun reading Christian Bök's Eunoia, which is one of those crazy experiments that has to be read to be believed. George Ttoouli was talking about it during yesterday's seminar and mentioned there was a copy in the Library, so I went to pick it up after coming out of last night's film. The main sequence of the book consists of five chapters, in which each chapter features words containing only one of the five vowels (and suppressing the letter Y), alongside other rules determining narrative content. It's in the spirit of what Oulipo writers like Georges Perec have done, but this makes it no less astonishing though.

Also went to see the RSC production of Days Of Significance with Dan and Laura this evening. Had mixed feelings about it, mainly to do with how realistic the dialogue was and the things the characters did. I know theatre is a construct and artifice is inherent, but you can still tell when something feels inauthentic, and that's how all the cussing and fighting felt. Sure, it was quite witty, but hey, so's the adaptation of The Importance Of Being Earnest I've done with Yee Hung for the musical. I kind of felt like the second act didn't go far enough in exploring the psychological trauma soldiers experience and its effects, and too much was left unsaid, which seemed like a bit of a waste because that really was what would have been interesting to play out onstage. The ending was a bit odd as well. I understand that closure isn't an absolute necessity. I mean, it's not ancient Greek drama we're dealing with here, but at the end, I couldn't get a clear sense of where Hannah's character was standing. Had she made up her mind to stand by Jamie? Or was she still unsure about the whole thing? That's the weird part, I think, that her ambivalence was, well, so ambivalent I wasn't even sure if it was there. On the whole though, I've seen worse plays back in Singapore, so I guess tonight was okay. That and going to the Tin Angel twice for hot chocolate. Haha!

Episode 410: Ping!

Reading week is officially here! Still have French on Tuesday though, but am heading to London the next day, so it's all good. Finally have tickets to tomorrow evening's performance of Days Of Significance. Didn't manage to get the free ones under the Arts Council's A Night Less Ordinary scheme, but it's an RSC production, so there were student tickets going for £5. Can't wait! EN232 was good today. We read out stories by Raymond Carver ('Intimacy') and Samuel Beckett ('Ping'). Reading Beckett's 'Ping', by the way, was one of the most exhaustingly fun things you can possibly imagine doing on a Friday morning on less than six hours of sleep. It's a fascinating work to hear though. Had to rush back from the city centre with Keegan to make it for the WSC screening of Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince. I swear the CGI in this instalment is crazy. I mean, almost none of the settings actually looked real to me. They all looked too real, if you know what I mean. An example of the uncanny valley as applied to landscapes and environments? Am now convinced that the Harry Potter series is one that has to be seen in its entirety in order to be worth watching, as taken individually, the films just scream 'Commercial! Hollywood!'

Episode 409: The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus

We celebrated Annie's birthday by seeing The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus and then hitting Varsity afterward. The film was, honestly speaking, one of the strangest things I've ever seen. Anti-narrative, perhaps? I understand that Heath Ledger died in the middle of filming and that must have really messed things up, but I somehow felt like the film was missing scenes that would have made the whole thing make more sense. I think the best way to describe it is to compare it to a film that's adapted from a book series, so it's like too much has been compressed into too little. Probably explains why the film felt like it had a couple of false endings. Minor quibbles aside though, the film is visually very, very stunning. It's like the cinematic equivalent of a rich dessert. More like a dessert smorgasbord, to be honest. I wasn't quite sure what to feel by the end though. It seemed like it should have been uplifting, but it was barely minutes after one of the main characters had been hanged! Like, what is going on here? It was just slightly disconcerting, that's all I'm saying. We had to stay inside the pub because it was raining, so it was just as well that we managed to commandeer the back of the pub. Am totally knackered now though, which isn't good because I've got a seminar at 9 am. Sigh...

Episode 408: Here We Go Again...

Have only written about half of my Blake essay, which is bad because it means I've procrastinated too much again, but good in the sense that I'm way ahead compared to where I'd normally be. May not even have to stay up all night! I'm pleased with the main idea that my analysis is based on. I think it's clever, although to me, it possibly runs the risk of being clever for its own sake. It is true, however, that re-reading is rewarding, as the linguistic repetitions I've picked up on actually accumulated over several reads. Have not managed to read The Two-Part Prelude yet, but somehow don't feel like I'm missing out on much. Am not, admittedly, the biggest fan of Wordsworth. Maybe I just have no mind of my own, but I do kind of agree with Emma Francis about preferring Coleridge over Wordsworth because of the different ways in which they treat their human characters. I did read everything else for this week's lecture and seminar though, so don't feel too bad about it. Now if only I had spent the afternoon more productively instead of watching an episode of Melrose Place, which wasn't even that good. I'm honestly just watching it because I've already started and there is a reasonable amount of eye candy on that show.

Episode 407: I Cooked For A Party Today!

Have banged out 1234.5 words, vaguely inspired by the structure of House Of Leaves. The story didn't make any sense towards the end, but if anyone asks, I'm going to pretend that it was intentional and reflective of the psychosis of my unreliable narrator. Now I've got to start on my 1500-word explanation of why Blake's 'A Song Of Liberty' is obviously about emancipation from the decadence of organised religion. Watch me bluff my way through. Again. I am also seriously considering the wisdom of getting an electric heater. Either that, or wearing more clothes when I'm at home. Anyway, I cooked for Stephanie's birthday party! Made a pasta bake that was generally well-received, but Keegan was being contrary and didn't like it that much, which is fine, since it's not like I'm going to be cooking for him very much in the future. I personally thought there was a bit too much liquid after the baking, and I actually had to pour some of it away after I took it out of the oven. Possibly one jar of water next time instead of two?

Episode 406: Permission To Write (Badly)

Forced myself to complete two poems in the afternoon before heading onto campus for the Ugly Cousins and musical production team meetings, as if I didn't get those done today, I wouldn't have time over the remaining couple of days to finish my 1500-word close reading of Blake and 1234.5-word story for Friday's seminar. I'm being a bit ambitious with the latter, as the book whose pattern I've chosen to recreate is Mark Z. Danielewski's House Of Leaves. Expect copious footnotes that narrate a story as disturbing as the main one. It's also a sneaky way of cutting the word count down to something manageable, since I'm really bad at writing longer fiction pieces, but splitting things between main story and footnotes gives around 600 words, which is definitely manageable. Am slightly more concerned about the Blake piece because I only have a faint idea of how to structure my close reading, although I think it's a reasonably clever idea. I find Duncan Wu's explanatory notes at the bottom very irritating, by the way. It's like being told what to think and then realising that you can't interpret for yourself anymore because you're relying on the glosses to explain things for you.

Episode 405: Slightly Irritated With Myself...

I have a slight headache, so I think I shall go to bed after typing this instead of trying to read. Or write, for that matter. Have done absolutely nothing since buying groceries at Tesco with Bex and John after lunch at Varsity. Wasn't even going to do that because of the rain in the morning, but it cleared up enough by the end of service, so I figured, what the heck, I'll just get it over and done with. I couldn't even manage to do the Wordsworth reading, despite taking the book off my shelf earlier, fully intending to do so. I ended up wrapping the book with plastic instead, which left me feeling quite satisfied with myself, but having accomplished nothing of real value whatsoever. I did start on a poem for EN273, but I made it to eight lines before deciding it wasn't worth continuing, or at least, it wasn't saying what I wanted to say about this week's reading from Herodotus. May actually do the usual thing and try writing it later, under the covers, if I can figure out what form I want this week's poem to take. I've already gone through syllabics, ballad, pantoum, and I was thinking tanka this time, but I can't quite figure out how that'd work. I could give each character one tanka (Candaules, Gyges, unnamed Lydian queen) and then have a final summative tanka, but do I have enough to say about each of them to fill out five lines? Possibly. I really wanted to finish writing this week's poem tonight, so that I could start on the close reading tomorrow, but I guess that's not going to happen anymore, is it? Sigh.