Work and Play

The Keys to Your Heart

You are attracted to those who are unbridled, untrammeled, and free.

In love, you feel the most alive when things are straight-forward, and you're told that you're loved.

You'd like to your lover to think you are loyal and faithful... that you'll never change.

You would be forced to break up with someone who was emotional, moody, and difficult to please.

Your ideal relationship is lasting. You want a relationship that looks to the future... one you can grow with.

Your risk of cheating is zero. You care about society and morality. You would never break a commitment.

You think of marriage as something precious. You'll treasure marriage and treat it as sacred.

In this moment, you think of love as something you thirst for. You'll do anything for love, but you won't fall for it easily.

What Are The Keys To Your Heart?

Okay, I shall indulge myself for once...heh I find this quite hilarious. How the heck did they infer all this from my preferences for animals? =P I shall not reveal how accurate this is. Just find it quite funny. Except for the rather unfortunate shades of pink that the results originally came in, but that was easily fixed...

Anyhoos, been doing nonstop work for the last few days...doing up a Super Duper Quote Thematiser for good old Native. It's a brilliant piece of work, and as I trawl through it, I realise that perhaps there has been a fundamental difference between how I've seen it and how Purvis has explained it. Maybe it's a mistake to see the heath and Fate as one and the same...from what I see, the heath and Fate are separate, and they only happen to be passively allied with each other in tormenting the characters. In that sense, the heath is indifferent to human suffering, but Fate is actively malevolent. So perhaps we were both right. Just a matter of perspective.

And also doing concurrently the documentation work for Atonement. The more I do it the more impressed I am. McEwan isn't a Hardy, to be sure, but he does have much detail in his work nonetheless. Atonement, it turns out, has much to say on family dynamics, the process of growing up, perception (the play of light in the novel is ingenious), and most impressively, wordplay and writing itself. The whole novel, I think, is meant to be a case study in the craft of the author. Briony's imaginative wordplay (investigating the innocent connotations of a bad word, for example) is the most obvious manifestation of this. Emily's meditative stream-of-consciousness is intriguing to read. And Cee's dressing up scene is an analogy for the composition of a poem, I swear. Quite exciting, and ingenious. And it's a real pleasure to do the book...the only trouble is that it's so good that I'm taking too long with it.

Grace came over today to study...was going through all my New Imperialism stuff, and quite impressively, she managed to read through the whole section's notes in one afternoon, while I was busy being delighted by McEwan. Heh, during dinner my parents asked the usual questions about school and courses and lessons, and then unexpectedly, Dad launched into this whole career planning spiel. I think Grace was quite surprised. I was stunned...they didn't give any of my visitors career advice before. Heck, the didn't give me career advice before, or at least, not so blatantly =P But I find that it's quite cool actually, their outlook on the future. What Dad says does make sense...it's not enough to rely on knowledge nowadays, even in the vaunted KBE. What you need is to work on a talent. And I realised, as we were around the dinner table chatting about uni courses, that I am rather proud of my parents. I reckon such progressive folks aren't found in every family =P

Sent off the Finland Chorale people yesterday, and it was with much envy that I waved them off. Well, it was a good excuse to change scenery, and to break from studying, at any rate...was reading Atonement at the airport waiting for them to arrive. Lounging in the darkened viewing mall, listening to them talk of the scandals in Punch and Chorale J1s, and then downstairs when the whole group was getting ready to walk through those doors with the cheerily coloured Goodbyes in multiple languages, I envied them. They have ten days to live a new adventure, and in a country which experiences only 3h of darkness now. That must be quite cool =P These people are really lucky, to go that far away, with friends that have gone through the thick and thin of this year. One hopes that they'll have the chance to sneak out at night and frolick on the town, like the Bangkok people. If they don't manage to have at least as much fun, it would be such a waste.

I wonder if platonic relations are necessarily written off by romantic ones when on this kind of field trip. But it is important to remember that that isn't the case. Just don't be too eager to jump to conclusions, especially when not all the facts are available.

They should have arrived about 12h ago. I hear that Finland's good for blueberries and reindeer meat now. Pity that they're still on their Choir Diet =S I hope they'll enjoy themselves.

pondered by phoenican @ 9.6.05