Panthera Sapiens Ellipsis: The Blog

My final exam is tomorrow. I spent some time this afternoon studying--and last night, of course--and some time ago; my 25-page summary didn't type itself, you know. And this afternoon I and a couple friends went flipping through the past-year papers and I think we can all agree that as long as we can sufficiently memorise most of the contents of the lists--and there are many lists, believe me!--we ought to not come off too shabbily. ...but I can't quite make myself study. I don't know why. Well, actually, I do know--kind of--but that, at best, is only a partial explanation; it happens every semester and yet this is the first semester I can remember where I've been so attentive to the gradual emptying of the hostel as people finish their exams and pack their bags and disappear. The neighbours, for example: one of them left on Monday morning and the other leaves tonight (or early morning tomorrow--I'm not terribly certain); and several of my better friends here leave

...it's a ridiculous 25 days since I last posted. How extremely remiss of me; and unfortunately I can't remember everything --I could check my Google Calendar, of course, but I'm far too lazy to do that--that's happened over that time period. (In passing, I wonder how long Google will store those Calendar entries. Would it be possible to, at some unknown future time, riffle through one's own archives and go "oh, wow, ten years ago on this day I had my very first exam in NTU ever!"?) Twenty-five days; sometime in this period, a lot of people from the House of Bread have gone off back to behind the Great Firewall. Most of them I didn't mind because it was explicitly a temporary absence--most of them are students--all bar one, actually--so they're sure to be back by the time the school term starts up again. On the other hand, the one who went back on Tuesday has just graduated, and has got a job that'll apparently eventually send him off to Wollon

...I'm typing this from my library, during a bit of a break in between classes. I've done a bit of work--not much, but some , and then I fell to reading my old blog posts. It strikes me that I've really not changed much at all since my A-Levels days; I still worry about the future, I still don't like not knowing the full impacts of my possible decisions before doing them, I still have a relatively bad temper even if it manifests a lot less these days, and I certainly still don't get good grades, although I've been reading Gladwell's Outliers and it seems that I needn't worry about being smarter than everybody else as long as I'm smart enough, however much enough might be. Then again, being a February baby explains how I've been more or less coasting along academic life, or at least I was during primary and secondary school--of course genetics comes into it somewhat, along with me being the firstborn, but then there's the early-birthday advant

I don't think I've slept for more than six hours any day in the past two weeks or so; it's becoming increasingly common for me to sleep at four and wake at eight, and then keep dozing off whenever I can find an opportunity to do so--yesterday I did it while in classes and then at a Campus Crusade meeting after classes--and of course the recurring problem is that whenever I'm tired I become more taciturn than usual, and then people start thinking I'm depressed or pondering something or preoccupied, or else all the scum in me rises to the top because I've no energy to think twice or suppress the urges... even if today is a public holiday it doesn't mean I'm going to get more rest than usual. At least, if I manage to stick to the schedule I might, but my mind feels like a packet of cotton wool at the moment. I went out for something of a jog last night with a friend, and at the end of it we decided it was a bad idea. But then it's never seemed to turn o

I'm horrendously tired at the moment. They say opposites attract. I find this is rather, oddly, true of most of the people I hang out with; somehow they're all the boisterous kind, full of bobance and bounce, whose life is fricasseed eels and I'm channeling Puddleglum today, it seems. But 'tis true; it was driven home today, when I spent a strange couple of hours doing what was meant to be "chillaxing" (the etymology eludes me); I was there, with Announce-chan and two other friends, whom I think I've not yet named, or if I've named them before I've forgotten it. I should go into further detail so as to provide an adequate context for my narrative. Since the 27th (the date of the last post!), there has hardly been a day that I didn't have a meeting of some sort, or people to discuss things with or homework to catch up to or a project that needed rushing. My Google Calendar, the main way I keep track of all the things I need to do, assures me tha

Well, recess is over; it's the Wednesday of the next week, and that planned timetable? Didn't work out. Would have run if I weren't so tired; would have swam if it hadn't rained and I hadn't been so busy. I don't think I got more than six hours of sleep at any time during the week, and by Saturday I was sporting noticeable bags under the eyes--I'd slept only four hours that day--4am to 8am; though that was entirely my own fault. My procrastination combined with my sense of always being crept-up-on by deadlines meant that I'd frittered the day away on Kongregate and movies (Monty Python, no less!) and so was rushing to look at notes and things in the wee hours. On the other hand I do have a sense of accomplishment, having managed to get some things going during it--not as much as I'd have liked, of course, but real progress was made; and one of those things was to do with the FYP and the upshot is that I have slightly less than 2ft x 3ft x 1mm of PMMA

It's Tuesday. How did it get to be Tuesday already? And half of Tuesday is already over. It seems like it was just yesterday that it was Friday, the beginning of the weekend. And now it's Tuesday--where did the weekend go? Ah. Yes. It went wherever the past always goes. And so it's Tuesday already, of my recess week; it promises to be a busy week. I've already looked at my time and made a little schedule that looks something like this: ...the blank bits are my buffer times, during which I'll likely be playing Bunny Flags or Epic Battle Fantasy 3 or digging through some of the many books I have that I haven't finished reading. I don't have very many of those. And of course some of the things I plan to do will take more, or less, time than I've allocated. Hence the buffer time. And, obviously, one big omission from the thing is the GO HOME bit that usually appears in my calendar whenever there's a holiday; normally by now I'd be at the grandfolks&#

Is it really only two days since my last post? It's the first of October and somehow it's unbelievable that I should have posted only three days ago--it's Friday night, after all, and so much seems to have happened; yet looking at the post, so little seems to have been recorded. This blog serves the function of recording things, in the end, and it doesn't seem to be serving that function very well... At any rate I shall therefore record; after all this week many things happened other than me having weird dreams. But then I suppose those would have slipped my mind; it's not difficult, what with my mind having the frictional constant of wet soap. At any rate the record is accurate as far as it goes, so far... Personality types have been on my mind for awhile. At any rate I've always had an interest in people's inner workings. I'm what I've learned (in Fundamentals of Management, no less!) is called a low-context person, which means I'm a lot more l

I've been having... odd dreams these days. Not all on consecutive nights, of course, and they're not all similarly weird; but for me to remember any dream at all is odd. (As an aside, I notice that the dreams I remember tend to involve me in some sort of uncomfortable situation. Possibly that is what kicks in the remembering.) I had two earlier, which I already wrote about on Facebook; and I just woke from the third. I never quite see these dreams through to the end, though; I always wake up and that's how the dream ends. The earliest of my last remembered dreams was set in Cambodia; it was afternoon, I remember, and we were walking down a generically Cambodian street--hot, dry, a sparse crowd of people, traffic running the wrong way--and somehow I was walking behind the staff leader and Sir Bob, listening to them talk; and then the discussion turned and became a discussion of the likelihood of us returning to Cambodia for a second visit. Eventually the two of them turned t

It has been long, long indeed since my last post; but you needn't worry, this post won't really be all that long either--well, maybe it'll be. My tendency when writing blog posts seems to be to try to start out clear and precise and concise, and then I veer off into descriptions and explanations and justifications, and that's a slippery slope at the end of which is a wall of text. At least I'm a lot less censorious now than when I was younger; though, of course, whether that's a good thing remains to be seen. One is always reminded that while one should try to be tolerant, simply letting everything be is sheer laziness. And I have been awfully lazy this week, I think. When a Sanguine/Choleric starts wondering why you're so incredibly free, you know you've been very incredibly free indeed. The various responsibilities I've taken upon myself have begun piling up, and time is precious coin that I spend prodigally on fritters and toys. I should be more

I am in a decidedly unhealthy state; my nose runs and I keep sneezing violently and at a high frequency, too. I've decided it is due to the state of the room, which until a few hours ago was horribly dusty--at least the other side of it was... ...I should start off chronologically, for ease of recounting and remembrance. Therefore I will begin my recounting about four days ago, on Saturday (technically, as it is after 12 now, it was five days ago). It is a long time since the events in my last blog post, but rest assured that nothing of great moment occurred in the intervening period; the time was spent running around for meetings and outings and sometimes spending lots of time sitting at the computer (which only occurred one day out of five last week, now that I think of it). I got quite footsore and my free dryfit vest got a lot of use. On the Thursday of last week I went down to the Hall Office (they had sent me a letter some time back offering me accommodation, which I naturall

I must apologise for the long period in which I haven't posted; in return, therefore, here is a post that details my life over the last month and a half! July 26, Monday 3am I have just returned from an outing with the Pig and Kelvin--well, Kelvin had to leave early because something he ate during dinner disagreed with him, so I spent about two hours with both of them and about three hours with the Pig alone. We had drinks at Coffee Bean--White Chocolate Dream for me and Pure Vanilla for the Pig and hot water for Kelvin (who wasn't feeling well by then)... perhaps I should get things chronologically arranged first, though. And there's a lot to tell... I have a lot of reminiscing to do: the eighteen eventful days in Cambodia over the mission trip; the four days of orientation that immediately followed those; the day I spent in Singapore; and then my time here in Patience so far. It's a lot of typing to do, and it's already 2.30am or so--we caught a late screening. Pe