Almost Back to School

Bah messed up the timing for the NS checkup, it's actually next Mon. So was about to leave for CMPB, and checked the date, then realised today wasn't the 11th, and changed destination to go to Tampines Library instead to hunt for Hist S material to read for the morning. The library is really too cold...I'd forgotten how cold it was, having not entered a library other than SAFTI for close to a year I think. Then after drowning in rather interesting conceptions of causality and factuality, browsed for fun this book called We Interrupt This Programme, which is about the BBC's most momentous news stories. It must have been so exhilarating, in the old days, to hear something like that on the radio. "We interrupt this programme to bring you breaking news." When that happens you can be sure something extraordinary is transpiring. Actually, now that I think about it, I can't remember any occasion in which normal programming on the channels that I watch have been interrupted. Heh, I guess it's rather pointless to interrupt BBC News, since half the time is spent on their hourly bulletins, and anyway, what could be so momentous to little old Singapore to justify interrupting your Sunday Night Movie on Five?

Anyway, just got a notice from the class people and Soph's and Vaish's blogs that there's no Hist S tomorrow, which suddenly leaves me with a heck of a lot of free time =) But of course, the prelims are looming eight weeks away, which is something to think about. Time to go over the previous year's work...to start memorising the quotes that matter, namely the History ones and the non-novel Lit quotes. And time to start filling in those university applications too. Time to start writing that autobiographical introduction. Tomorrow, must switch channels to reenter the grind of school life. And what a hectic term it'll be...racing to finish the teaching, layering over a healthy dose of revision, and also dealing with this university application stuff. Bleah...but must work up at least some enthusiasm.

But I'm halfway through The Human Stain, and it's a really pleasant read. Roth's wordplay isn't in the class of Conrad, or even Winterson...he's more colloquial, his writing flows more easily, it's intensely situational. After analysing Gut Symmetries, it's a really nice change to have a book with a linear plot again =P ANd it's entrancing...waiting to find out what Coleman Silk's great secret is.

This bit, about Coleman interviewing an attractive young French graduate for the post of literature professor: "It isn't difficult to understand what she intends for him to understand, especially as Coleman knew something of Paris from being a young professor with family on a Fulbright one year, and knows something about these ambitious French kids trained in the elite lycées. Extremely well prepared, intellectually well connected, very smart immature young people endowed with the most snobbish French education and vigorously preparing to be envied all their lives, they hang out ever Saturday night in the cheap Vietnamese restaurant on rue St. Jacques talking about great things, never any mention of trivialities or small talk - ideas, politics, philosophy only...the intellectual must not be frivolous. Life only about thought."

When I was reading it, I was thinking of all the top JCs. Okay, I was just thinking of RJ. And to be fair, Delphine Roux seems to be at best only a caricature of the stereotypical RJ student, thank God. Yet the echoes are disquieting...I've caught myself expecting things like her, expecting to do well just by virtue of position, expecting to receive praise for this chance endowment of intellect. It's dangerous, this tendency to self-elevate. Must be watched carefully.

Anyway...going to jump back into school life tomorrow, ready or not. I hope that at least it'd be entertaining...

pondered by phoenican @ 5.7.05