Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

Heh, been doing the WAVW Quote Thematiser, and it's growing out of control, I think. I seem to be quoting every line that's not a one-word remark, and I find myself practically prac-critting every page of the script. It looks set to break the 40-page mark. And to think that the RoTN one, which was formerly the longest, was only 28 pages. But surprisingly, I find myself really enjoying it. It's a self-sustaining process...because the patterns that Albee has weaved into the play are so intricate, discerning them is a pleasure in itself. And it does make things easier when I agree with his viewpoints.

Heh, and looking closely at the book again, I find that there actually is a surprising amount of material to support the view that the play is a commentary on the Cold War, a view that I originally thought was way too far-fetched.

Mmm first day of prelims went quite well, I think. Had fun for the two subjects we had...GP and Lit. For some reason I did the questions on religion for both, and as a result, by the end of it I had inadvertently written two religious tracts about my own blend of religious philosophy. Heh...I should publish the GP essay. Always wanted to see how well my religious philosophy would stand up to argumentation. Well...religious epiphany aside, the PC comparison question was hilarious! Hehheh...the Heaven poem (by Rupert Brooke if I remember correctly) owns! The Almighty Fin is my new superhero.

Mmm I love my new phone. More specifically (since I still can't operate the message typing system all that well) I love the radio function. And I love Lush 99.5. Not sure what genre exactly they fall under. I figure that they mostly play lounge music...light techno or jazz, stuff like that. The station basically comes across as a rather Metro thing, catering to hip young people with lots of money. They boast that they never play two commercials in a row. Which means that between every two songs they stick in a commercial spot. But at least it's tasteful, and some of the random stuff they stick in there is quite funny...Aaaand also been listening in on the World Service. Reception's none too good, but that's basically how I've been keeping up with the news, especially the Hurricane Katrina stuff.

Heh, interesting how BBC on radio works. Really quite innovative, I think. While other radio stations just play voices and music, BBC really stretches the imagination. They do this kind of walkaround thing, so you have shows in which you can hear hurricane winds howling around you (which is an interesting experience, especially when you're walking along in sunny Singapore) or the city sounds of Japan.

So now that the news is coming off the radio waves, been watching much less BBC on TV, which is just as well, cos Greg bought back Band of Brothers DVD from Yunnan. Been watching one or two episodes every night. It's a brilliant show. Very atmospheric. You really fear for your own life when you watch those soldiers going into battle. And the realism is so accurate that the drama is effectively also a documentary. The psychological stress of war is manipulated to perfection - which is why I can only watch one at a time. Night sequences are especially harrowing. And the bayonet sequences. How can one bring oneself to just stab someone who's in front of you? Shooting, though still abhorrent, is conceivable, because of the distance, but bayoneting is an altogether too intimate form of murder.

I guess partly it's also because you know that this is based on a war that has happened before. In a sense therefore the people on the screen are not just characters, and when someone dies onscreen, you really feel like a real person is gone. It's like living another person's memory. Of course, I also know that HBO must have sanitised its portrayal of WWII, otherwise the show wouldn't have been aired. But still, war is so distant as a concept that we'd believe what we can see. And the deep emotional impact of the show (I would even say I feel sympathy for the characters) is like a seal of authenticity.

Hmm...speaking of Yunnan...Greg was showing us the photos he took from the trip. Six hundred shots, two times more than the two-week trip in Taiwan last year, and a full five times more than the one-month Frexprog experience. Heh...that kid sure likes his digicam, and the fact that someone brought along a laptop helped, cos all the photos could be downloaded. But the kunming that I saw on the screen looked nothing like the city that we visited five years ago. Back then, all I remember of Kunming was the dust. And a convenience store opposite our hotel. And that episode with the tuxedo...But now, Kunming is positively Little Singapore. There's a whole commercial district that didn't exist five years ago. When you see changes as monumental as that in such a short span of time, you intimately appreciate the pace of China's development.

He didn't go to Lijiang to see the Dragon's Beard Glacier, the Stone Forest, or the Old Town in Lijiang, which is quite a pity, I think. The glacier was most exciting, and the Stone Forest was just surreal...so much stone practically floating in midair. And they didn't get to sleep in a school. Heh...no nighttime encounter with a starfield outside an outhouse for them, no huddling around one measly heat pack in the freezing morning either. Ahh...even if it was uncomfortable, the novelty of freezing made that experience exciting. It appears that this year, the Yunnan trip was much...cushier.

Teachers' Day ceremonies tomorrow. Was writing the cards for the teachers at Mel's just now, and it occurs to me that it's very hard to say anything without sounding trite. Heh, I practically apologised my way through Purvis's card. The problem is that whatever that you can think of saying has already been said so many times over, which makes it clichéd. And it takes a lot of ingenuity to make that quantum leap to something apt that someone hasn't thought of yet. But there are, practically speaking, only so many ways to say Thank You. There is so much that I would like to say to them, so much that I have to be grateful for, but then I would start sounding sappy. It's a big problem, trying to find a way to say Thank You that's not boring or uncomfortable.

But yeah...our two years are almost up, sadly. We're already into the last leg of our journey. To be sure, we have been greatly blessed with good teachers, teachers that would go the extra mile for us (see, I've already used two clichés), teachers that actually try to be interesting, and most importantly, not because they feel like they owe it to us, but because they want to. Therein lies a sincerity in intention that makes the whole learning experience much more precious, I think.

pondered by phoenican @ 30.8.05