thesis.student.life.

two weeks ago i had a little thesis epiphany, and i came to see more clearly what i was actually trying to do. and this not without a lot (and i mean a lot) of help from s who has all this while seemed to know what my thesis is (and should be) about. sigh. that conceptual breakthrough helped push my thinking forward and now the theoretical framework is taking shape, and there're four, five, case studies swimming to the surface. 

i've made a few good friends, all fellow grad students, all tearing our hair out. it's scary how everyone's thoughts and fears are the same - the self-doubts, the imposter syndrome, the helplessness, the lost-in-the-theoretical-woods, the tears. it's a repeated script - there'd come moments when, after a day's work, one finds one alone, and one'd start sobbing. L put it all into perspective one time during lunch, when after doing the requisite who-else's-luckier-than-us-who-can-do-what-we're-doing (delinquent, economically-unproductive, overaged and under-careered students), he asked, 'what's a thesis but a few pieces of paper piled one on another?' suddenly a thesis didn't seem that daunting (yeah ...). but what hammered it home was his profound observation that some students would never be happy until they'd handed in their thesis, by which one'd wonder, 'what's the point?'

it's already week 9 of the semester, and i've come to enjoy tutoring the three classes immensely. old habits are stubborn and many times i get off the rails on some burning issue that gets to me and i have to abruptly halt my hectoring self. apparently the students find that amusing. it's also a tough balance between not imposing one's politics and beliefs upon these fresh minds and inculcating in them a habit of rigorous thought processing. many times i find myself an entertainer, even when the topics of discussions are earth-shatteringly exciting issues of nuclear annihilation and the stuff of great and small power politics and everything else in-between. it's amazing how cynical one can get so young. yesterday i can't remember what, but i found myself ranting off, each sentence louder than the last, i think i was saying something about it not mattering what one's ideological position was but that it was informed by ethics and intense intellectualisation, and that if the university didn't encourage it the university would've had failed them but if they themselves as uni students didn't deem fit to engage in philosophical inquiry then they'd have failed themselves. i have this habit of sitting on desks rather than on chairs and i was almost falling off the edge. but there're also moments reminding you that teaching is still about interacting with a fellow being, like when students email you saying they're sick and have to skip classes, or sharing a personal problem with you, or just hanging around after class to have a chat, taking an interest in your work and life, and then there're the endearingly familiar moments of deciphering atrocious handwriting and appalling grammar, and then the rewarding times when they tell you you're the best teacher they ever had in uni. ah.

i'll be very busy the next four weeks, gotta revise my conference draft, hem up a 10,000 word thesis intro chapter, mark the eighty essays, and pack up my things, once again, into boxes, and continue leading the very nomadic life of mine.

unsupervisable

me: u're right, i shld focus on sg poco and work into ir if at all. the ir bit can come later
S: ah poetry to my ears. J says to supervisor: "You are right"
me: i am so unsupervisable
S: *HUGS*
me: lol
S: yes. supervisor gives advice, j does opposite for 6 - 8 months. then says "I have had this idea, it is just what you said 8 months ago"

LOL

quiet days

winter is receding, and strangely, the onset of spring has brought with it days of rain, warm and little humid drops sprinkled from above. during my last six, seven, months in sydney, i've entered into a few routines such that i felt like i've been here for much longer. yet when i returned to singapore and confronting all that are familiar, i could just as well have never left. i'm always intrigued by how our minds can render time and reality so pliable. i remember when i was a child, maybe five or six, i would wake up in the mornings with the sunlight lancing through the window and familial voices wafting from outside in, a picture of domestic contentment as vivid as a five-year old can envisage, i would imagine how this awakening into consciousness, into reality was all a dream, and that to slide into slumber and into unconsciousness was in fact a return to the real reality, one that i in this awakened-but-unconscious state would have utterly no inkling. those fantasies i would lob around my mind for a bit, before i would finally get up for breakfast. what if my childhood hypothesis were true? 

when i returned from melbourne i was very sure i wanted to move over next year. but somehow sydney started to grow on me, the sun, the uni, the routine, the friends that i'd made. and so for the last month i had been mulling over the pros and cons of each, and was actually gradually coming to deciding to remain in sydney, until today, somehow i was convinced that i should move to melbourne. sydney hasnt been able to give me a peace of mind, and as a consequence i havent really been reading and writing a lot. i was in a bookshop this morning and chanced upon a copy of henry miller's 'quiet days in clichy', a semi-autobiographical account of bohemian paris and his days there as a struggling and impoverished writer, and then i rather wished i had written such a book. 

tomorrow is monday, but mondays mean nothing to me, not when my monday blues mean lying in on the green grass in front of the library lawn and staring up into the big wide blue.

遇見

some time ago a friend sent me a song (一根煙的時間) by a then-unknown HK songwriter 林一峰, knowing i love tenor voices. but this tenor is quite a cut above the rest... he reminds me of faye wong. yeah... there's a certain type of voice that gets to me, i don't know how to describe, so one might want to listen to the clip below to know what i really mean. :)



oh goodness, i spent the whole morning youtubing faye wong.

Love, this country

Four cities in four weeks, and having returned yesterday morning, there is a growing fondness for Sydney. I can't believe I just said it. KL had nothing going for me, muh as I like the more rustic places in Malaysia, and I was becoming more frustrated by the day whilst in Singapore. I had initially thought of spending a good few months in Singapore next year as part of my field-research, but I think I'll pass. It's no longer just a place where the people are only interested in making money, looking pretty, and being utterly empty. S, who recently visited Singapore, thinks it's a city that has lost its focus. I think it has gone blind, and in its sudden blindness erupted a mass hysteria (very Saramago...) to earn, spend, and preen as if there were only now and no tomorrow.

Some pictures from the conference in KL; there was only one other delegate from Australia, this bubbly girl from the sunshine coast. I learnt more about how to attend conferences than from the conference.

___

And then there's Singapore. Other than the presentation at nus, I fixed a new crown on my front tooth, extracted my wisdom tooth, and in between such dentistry and swollen gums, saw my family, mrs c., some friends, ex-students, and attended a piano concert. And then I had my most comfortable flight ever - I suppose the Brits can still get some things right. Fly British Airways (it's a greater way to fly).

Before all this traveling, the previous six months in Sydney felt like forever; yet when I went back to Singapore and seeing everything in its familiarity, it was as though I'd never left. Anyway, I should get back to my daily routine. At this rate time is running, one year is almost gone, my time is fast running out. I arrived at 5.30am, took a little nap before dousing myself in coffee and going off to uni to conduct my make-up tutorials. As I mentioned earlier, I'm really glad to be back here, I feel much more at peace.