Against my will...

Right now all I wanna do is to do absolutely nothing for a long long long time.
But I can't.
Think I started to get worried when I got to know my deployment on Thur. Self foresees repeat of tortuous semester, racked with sleep deprivation and last-minute adrenaline rushes.
It's not good to be a perfectionist at times.
It's also equally unfeasible to possess no common sense and to lack organisational skills.

***
Think all that worry is starting to crowd into my prayer life. I jus want my brain to shut down or to focus on brainless things.
I realise I start to slip when the going gets tough, when I should really get stronger.
Lord, I pray for strength, for more faith and trust in You...Help me in my weakness.

***

Vexed...

Eight days of courses....over at long last. Phew. In some ways those things can prove more tiring than normal teaching days.

Will be teaching Sec 3 and 4 next year. How terribly exciting (No believe me, i'm not being sarcastic here:P). The most daunting task has gotta be the 'O'-Level SPA thingy. The memory of how I was hanging desperately on to the end of my tether during the last half of this year is coming back to haunt me. And things can only get more intense...

Several people have been asking me whether I like teaching. I just dun haf a ready answer for that. Becoz I honestly can't say yes, or no. I suppose it's the whole experience of working life that's getting to me. Studying offered a lot more freedom (but I really really dun like exams), and I could always plop onto my snooze chamber anytime I didn't feel like studying. And now it's like I gotta just keep doing things that I dun really wish to do, simply coz it's part of the job. And the work can really pile up at one shot. The perfectionist streak in me is protesting heavily...learnt during the FCGE that there is a certain category of students who need a lot of time to do tasks so as to achieve those high standards that they set for themselves. Think I'm part of that category. Does this call for a fundamental shift in my habits?

***
Anywayz, am feeling vexed now coz...
a) my mom keeps disturbing me after rudely waking me up from my beauty evening nap
b) I dun wish to start doing work but I know I need to
c) my table is messy
d) jus general unhappiness with myself

Grrrrr!!!
But thankfully I still have this space as therapy..think I'm best at expressing myself in writing. Am getting increasingly thoughtful and reflective about stuff in life. Coming to realise certain things about myself, like how I probably haf high intrapersonal intelligence. To continue with Gardner's model, I should also score the following...
-Linguistic intelligence: High
-Logical-mathematical: Moderate
-Musical: I'm still in the process of developing it
-Bodily-kinesthetic: Low
-Spatial: Very low, almost non-existent
-Interpersonal: Moderate
-Naturalistic: Can never really figure out what this means.

One of my greatest takeaways from that course with the GE branch must be that a sense of humour is actually an indicator of intelligence. Meaning people with a good sense of humour (note, good does not include "lame" or "corny") should possess relatively high IQ. Cool...coz I think I'm quite funny...=D

Bond...woolala!

This might be long, since I'm riding on a wave of inspiration.

I wrote the previous post while in a highly nostalgic mood, and have since emerged from it so there won't be a Part II anytime soon...

So jus came back from watching Casino Royale...and oh man... find myself like one of those smitten critics...

After the show was pondering about my fondness for movies and books and stories in general...and yes it's coz i'm like one of the many deluded unhappy souls who yearn to escape and preferably stay in a fantasy world brimming over with adventure and romance. Alas, reality remains as harsh as ever, and it's interesting how the more one gets immersed in trying to escape, the more stark and permanent the real world becomes.

AAahhh...well...back to the show...and for the raving to begin...

That has got to be the best Bond movie I've watched...not that I've watched many...only those with Pierce Brosnan in it...but I think I got the general feel of the Bond who's portrayed by past actors - very suave, very charming, very slick, uber cool, and STD-immune. So after a few decades of that prototype, albeit with varying additional traits depending on the actor, comes this totally beguiling beefcake who obliterates every single past impression of James Bond.

(<---er, since this is after all a public blog, with respect to the readers who may not be spoiler nuts like me, THERE ARE SOME SPOILERS AHEAD--->)

Yea, so he isn't what most would consider good-looking, or handsome, or wadever...but his looks kinda grow on you after a while, and without that "armour" of gorgeous facial features (the body is great), we are left with his...acting. It is little wonder why some actors who've been in the field for a long time dun really get many credits for their acting - some of them are jus too distractingly handsome (e.g. Brad Pitt). And it can be a struggle for them to overcome that. Take the reverse situation and it's a whole lot easier.

Craig brings these raw set of emotions to his character, and what I like about him is that he's just so...sincere in his role that you can't help feeling for him, and sometimes even with him. Very unpretentious, like when there were girls checking him out (which is like a bit improbable but ahem..), there was no smirk or even the faintest trace of smugness on his countenance; he jus kinda stared after them in a very dispassionate way. And he has such a disarming laugh! Can't help but laugh along with him, like, hurhurhur...very cute. He's a brute when he fights but a charmer when he talks. Aw..

Several memorable scenes, like the chases (the opening chase sequence was AMAZING - love those parkour moves), the high-stakes card game which wasn't as boring as it was made out to be - his stunned demeanour after he got tricked by his nemesis was priceless - Bond makes mistakes...whoa. I dunno why but I particularly like the part where he got poisoned and went into cardiac arrest. It all looked so real I felt quite breathless at that point myself. And of course there was the torture scene which was aptly in place to elicit collective groans from the male portion of the audience. Ouch. A completely speculative point - could his jewels have been damaged so much that in a reverse psychology sort of way it caused his future promiscuity? Hmm. I mean, it's possible, bruised testes and all. They are rather fragile (I think).

Anyway, all in all I enjoyed the show and Craig rocks (in his own craggy way). Sweet!

A brief Memoir Part I

Seem to have taken an unplanned hiatus on blogging...

Have just run out of material I guess...or out of enthusiasm...

But anyway here I am - appreciating another day when I don't need to think about school stuff. Guess that's why I like to get away so much. Like in another country, one's not tied down to anything and can simply cast aside all worrisome thoughts to really live in the present (and Taiwan beckons...=)).

Been contemplating a lot lately...about my state of life, about what could lie ahead. I mean, I'm fast approaching the big 25. Nice time to do a review of what I've accomplished in a quarter of a century here in this world. What to include in case I do manage to get my memoirs written (haha). So here goes...i'm just gonna write whatever comes to mind...

Part I - The childhood years

An unfortunate aspect of this segment is that I really can't recall much of my childhood years. I'm not like some friends who can remember with startling clarity incidents in primary school or even early childhood. All I have are brief snatches of certain events that have somehow embedded themselves in my substandard memory bank. I can remember being in the total control of a classmate while in kindergarten - following whatever she did and whatever she commanded me to do. Vaguely remember meeting her a few years after that and scarcely greeting each other. Guess we were not what you would call friends.

My mum, like so many other moms, took me to drawing and piano classes. The latter I gave up after a short while coz I didn't like the other student whom I envied endlessly for being better than me. I progressed better with drawing, even winning second prize in a drawing competition in some mall and getting this set of Polly Pocket toys which are still in my possession. I can't draw stuff from scratch but I think I copy rather well.

Primary school was where I was being, in common parlance, an overachiever (have never identified with this term really, I mean, if they say that the human potential is limitless, then why are there such terms in existence? Me thinks it's just sour grapes). I got good grades and had no problems pushing myself to do well or to do better than my peers. So I did everything under the sun but steered clear of outdoor stuff, a feat which I repeated in secondary school. Memorable events include winning a Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors' Award for this wooden structure known as the "Super Duper Wet-Shoe Hanger". Hahaha. It was my mother's idea, actually, but the kids got the credit.

I thrived on entering competitions back then. Storytelling, poetry recitation, essay writing, drawing, skits, performances. I think I needed that kind of affirmation to assure myself of my self-worth among my peers. I was, you see, an insecure kind of person who suffered from an incurable inferiority complex which still surfaces now and then.

To be continued...