End of Commontests

Good grief, it seems like the entire dd.vg url redirection service has been bought over by this funny usenet site, and my allegedly eternally constant dd.vg address has now become useless. Ah heck...no more redirection I guess. Link directly to this site, at http://phoenican.f2g.net/. How annoying. And the fact that I didn't tell anyone the actual address of the site means that a long tedious process of notification must start...

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Anyway, end of commontests today with maths and Lit S. Heh, thought that the combination would be really screwy, but as it turned out wasn't really too bad. Math was easier than the last commontest I think, but maybe it's only cos I did so much more preparation for it this time. The formula sheet was utterly useless...none of the questions referred to it. And I thought the Errata sheet was a piece of rough paper for workings till I turned it over. Lit S was fun...though my question choice was not too wise on hindsight. Both questions were self-indulgent I think, one concerning my personal preference in literature, and the other concerning the relationship between the writing and the reality it is meant to reflect. The thing is that for both I have my own strongly held views, but I can't handle the language well enough to express my ideas clearly under exam conditions. Heck, I can't even express them well in homework. So it was fun to do that paper, but the lesson learned is that for marks maximisation, I should probably not choose the questions that I feel most strongly about.

All in all, not a baddish commontest. Looking forward to getting back all the papers except Lit, ironically. That set of papers is the hardest of all...you can't guarantee anything with a Lit paper. Especially if your name doesn't start with a "J" and end with an "onathan" =P Heh don't take it wrongly...he is a great writer, and he has my respect. And the conclusion, ironically, is that it's not worth it to study so hard for Lit. Or rather, not to study so hard for the novels. I think if I'd been memorising Frost poems rather than Native quotes, my returns to scale would have been higher.

Aaaanyway...papers ended today, so naturally we had to go out. It was a really slow journey with Oh-san, Aps, Soph, Claud, Ian and Thong; the group was supposed to travel to Orchard to meet Vaish. In the end we took like 1.5h to get to Orchard from school, because people kept diverting to other places. Heh, like Hardy wrote, "Men are drawn from their intentions, even in the course of carrying them out." Anyway, went to Borders, and took advantage of Thong's 20% off coupon to buy Sharon Olds's Strike Sparks, an anthology of works from all her books, which is conveniently just what the doctor ordered =P Now to find poems that complement her work.

And then went to stone in nydc and chatted about lots of stuff, but what exactly we were talking about doesn't come to mind anymore. It's that kind of effervescent conversation you have to burn time. And it was utterly delicious, because it was the first time in a really long time that I'd had a time like that. Last year we always went to Holland V to talk like that. This year, there just isn't time. Which is why when we actually did it today, it felt so good. To have the time, and to be able to choose without guilt to waste it, that is a luxury indeed.

Going to go out with the Guitar Exco tomorrow after their paper ends. No idea what they want to do, but I think it's safe to expect it to be entertaining =P It'll be our first comm outing ever...and unfortunately, with things going as they are, perhaps our last. And then tmr evening is War of the Worlds with the 4N people. So tomorrow will largely be given over to going out with old friends. Heh, it feels so desperate suddenly, as we grapple with time and grab whatever we can to go out together. Studies are encroaching everywhere...and it will test all these relationships, and see which ones will pull through. There are some who have already stood the test of time, and as for the others, I have no idea how they would turn out. I don't expect much. But I look forward, as always, to being surprised =)

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Reading my cousin's blog, and it's a real relief sometimes to read stuff written not in perfect English. Heh...leetspeak has a certain sincerity and authentic flavour that our blogs don't, a voice that is distinctly young and colloquial. And I realise I am frequently surprised at how much of what she writes actually echoes the philosophical discussions that Hardy makes. Just goes to show that Hardy really was right in his assertion of the universality of the human problem. But it also bolsters my faith in the simple people. Makes all our academic pomp look so superficial. A sense of perspective is an important thing; we must always remember that at a fundamental level, we're not so much different from the man in the street. If anything, we're an aberration, not superior, just different.

Her blog has a certain earnestness about it...her writing strips down problems to their very core. No mincing of words, like what we tend to do, like what I'm doing now. And though they are romantically inclined, her writings are not so much sappy as they are wistful. Quite interesting...we, who study the craft of crafting language, cannot express a thing like the intricacies of love as well as a teen using leetspeak. It its strange construction and spelling, her language is actually clearer in transmitting some meanings than our discussions.

I guess it is the frankness of the writing that really strikes me. Powerful stuff in its simplicity, meanings are punched home. And I guess that has to be done unconsciously, inadvertently. An over-awareness of the nuances of language can paralyse any attempt to craft it, as we feel compelled to put in caveats everywhere about the exact sense of the words that we're using. It's interesting how the normal mode of speech, in which words are much less carefully chosen, still manages to communicate better. I guess partly it's because we share a common cultural context, so the sense of the words used can be appreciated m0re accurately. But I do believe that the frankness of the expression, born out of instinct and carelessness, does have something included unconsciously in it that makes its meaning more exact, more clear. Is it the spirit behind the utterances? A simple sort of telepathy? I'm not sure myself, but whatever it is, the intriguing thing is that it works so well.

pondered by phoenican @ 30.6.05