There really isn't much to say, when all is said and done. Everything I have said here has been said before, and said better.
I wonder if this is a good place to sign off.

I realised this blog is one of the few remnants of my IB life. That is partly the reason why I am reluctant about deleting it, even though I find it hard to post anything without repeating myself. The other more significant reason, rather embarrassingly, is that I do not know how to delete a blog.

In a rather sad commentary of my life, my phone is one of the other remnants.

Not so recently, an acquaintance mentioned that there are two ways one can hope to get a first class in an exam: i. word hard and do well, ii. pray hard that everyone else doesn't do so well. This struck me as being unusually hypocritical; being a physicist, I am quite certain he would accept the existence of God in no other areas of his life.

That aside, I think this is a damning verdict on the state of affairs in institutions of learning. The desire for personal excellence is now often mistaken for a desire to just do better than the others, leading to the usual petty competitiveness.

Selfishness will quite certainly be the product of this one-upmanship, although hypocrisy dictates that no one admits it as such. When a certain person refuses to release certain information (that he is not obliged to withhold and that will be of help to someone else), he will often take elaborate precaution to justify that he is merely upholding intellectual honesty. Why, after all, should someone benefit from the hard work of others?

Everyone nods, because this fiction is distinctly more respectable than fact, but no one bothers carrying out the above premise to its logical conclusion, which is to abstain from receiving any help from others at all. Ripping off, after all, is a matter of degrees, on one side of the spectrum, there is blatant plagiarism, on the other, there is (quite) respectable research. By the same logic, of course, helping build houses for the destitute in third world countries is equally condemnable, because, hey, they are benefitting from the fruits of your labour. Of course, this is often neglected because helping a poor man build a house does not threaten your social status, but helping your peer very well might.

One often finds that this is almost always more prevalent among the better educated possibly because: i. education allows one to justify one's flaws ii. as a class, they probably have more to lose.

So please, before you mouth off the next time about how you worked hard for it and how someone else should not benefit from your work, think about how hypocritical it really is. I really think I would have more respect for someone who openly admits to selfishness.

Sorry for the lack of updates. There is not much to say - exams is over, the weather has been generally good, will be leaving in less than a week's time, so 'twould be an awful waste if I don't milk it for all its worth. Its sorta like being back in Malaysia again, except slightly awesomer.

I don't really have anything to look forward to at the moment, except to this day in two weeks' time, when I shall be gloriously, gloriously free. Looking back at my school days and reflecting on my current uni life, I realize that I have been getting through life by eagerly looking forward to the end of whatever current phase I happen to be in, just so that I can be disappointed by whatever comes next.

I wonder if this blog is starting to sound dreary or to smack of faux sentimentalism. Possibly, but I have sort of ran out of other things to say.

So. Man utd lost. Still, two champions league finals in two years isn't exactly a dismal record - let's just hope they will actually keep plugging away and not fade into oblivion.

Sometime around this time of the year last year, I was sitting wide-eyed in front of the computer at six in the morning, typing out a euphoric post-match uhm, post. I am not sure what else has changed, or what else hasn't.

So nearly two years on, and we are still reminiscing about the same things, seeing the same people, listening to the same songs.
I wonder if we are the batch stuck in time.

How do people live to sixty, and live with their mistakes? To pay penance for every wrong, to regret every loss; that would take another lifetime. Maybe we just have to move on and hope that at the end of it, we will have time to mourn. Or else there won't, and we will be spared the trouble.

Good lord.

Things I DO remember:
1. 'How am i going to clean this suit?'
2. 'We've all been there, man'
3. Getting on a cab
4. What's for dessert?

Am perplexed about :
1. The number of bruises I have.
2. My sore throat. Was either overly loquacious, or is a result of excessive, uhm, reverse peristalsis.
3. Why is there a Cambridge City Council bag in my room??

I trawled the site for reassuring glimpses of the past, but I think the places that I used to like have all been deserted.

If procrastination is the thief of time, that's only fair i think. Its not exactly like time doesn't steal anything from you either.

In times of duress, we inevitably turn back to what gives us comfort and strength.
That's why we read each others' blogs, even if we do not actually speak anymore. That's also why we revisit old memories and fond places, to remind ourselves of people who were once there for us. This is one of those days I am stuck in the past, and I browse through stories and faces of people who travelled a part of my road and stuck through with me. We do all this, because we draw on the comfort of what has happened, to give us strength for what is yet to come.

These are the moments that this blog seeks to capture; moments of introspective quiet solitude, vivid electrifying sentiments that enjoy their brief period of evanescence, before they evaporate and are irretrievably lost.

Apparently I used to be quite literate.

On Loafing (III)

I do not wish to rehash old topics endlessly, but I think the recent amount of work I received for the holidays necessitates another post on this subject. Just so that I set my priorities right.

There is something to be said about idleness; after all hard work is only justified if you are doing useful work, otherwise I think it is better to be doing nothing at all. Given most people's staggering propensity of screwing things up, I think it is more important to keep them gainfully idle, than to find avenues for them to mess things up. And also, given that there are more stupid people than smart ones, it follows that if you have to choose between one or the other, idleness would probably be the better choice. You know you can't be headed the wrong way if you aren't doing anything.

I am not sure who instituted hard work as a virtue; even the (pretty severe) God of the Old Testament insists that one in every seven days should be kept for rest so it can't have been from the beginning of Time. One can always pull the old line in defense of hard work and insist that society just wouldn't work if everybody thought like me - which is flawed, of course. It is true that society would only run if there are people who are not idle (all the time)- the whole point is that you just have to make sure you aren't one of them.

Victorian gentlemen would have agreed - although they told the masses that hard work is a virtue, they abstemiously refrained from it, as they would never be so immodest as to aspire to perfect virtue. In the same way, I suppose, most leaders have the (often) strenous task of convincing people to work hard, so that they wouldn't have to.

My maths supervisor is an amicable 60 year old professor who is pretty awesome. The only thing is, he doesn't seem to recognize me, despite the fact that i have seen him for an hour a week for the last two terms.

My friends and I were at a formal when he sauntered up and asked if we were freshers, or second years. Sensing potential embarrassment, I muttered that we were freshers, and was about to make an inobstrusive exit when my friend felt the need to ask me who my maths supervisor is. Just to see the professor's reaction, was the way he put it.

I pointed at him, he recognized me, cue embarrassed looks all round, save for my friend, who was rather enjoying it. My professor offered the rather less than convincing excuse of not having seen me in a suit before, and there were a couple of awkward exchanges before we excused ourselves and went on with the happy business of getting ourselves drunk.

and while the king was looking down the jester stole his thorny crown

I am already at the halfway point of my first year in uni. The fact that the year is hurtling along at an alarming speed is only part of the concern; perhaps more importantly, I have not seemed to have done much at all this year.

Admittedly, this has been the case ever since I left school more than one and a half years ago. Back in school, things were regimented and ordered- you had specific goals, ones that you can achieve if you worked hard enough. Life made sense, and you don't have to think too much, or too hard. When you come up against a wall, you asked someone, and because you were still a kid, you get the answers without much hassle.

The problem now is that no one really cares here. There is no regiment, no one to dictate your day, or more importantly, how you should spend the rest of your life. You find yourself asking whether its all worth it, whether the glimmering treasure you worked for in your youth is only fool's gold.

And this time round, no one offers you the answers,possibly because they are all looking for it as well.

You sort of get used to life here after a while. The monotonous routine and aimless drudgery can be quite daunting after spending a year doing whatever strikes your fancy. But after you get over your initial shock, you settle down and bed in, and then you fall gently into a somnambulistic existence, a hypnotically rhythmic cycle oscillating between the bed, where you sleep, and your table, where you work. After a while, if you are really lucky, (or unlucky, depending on how you see it) you might never notice there was anything wrong your life at all.

parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell

They say the Devil's water, it ain't so sweet,
You don't have to drink right now,
But you can, dip your feet,
Every once in, a little while.

I was talking to my friend the other day and she finds it curious how I tend to resolve everything down to the question of God's existence. I personally do not find that to be a matter of much interest; if you are one of those who trace everything to its first cause, it is rather more convenient to be cogitating about God's existence than, say, the moment of your birth, or worse still, conception.

Anyway the point is, I realised it is pretty much an all-or-nothing question - God either exists, or He doesn't. You have more or less a 50% chance of getting it right either side of the coin, but the answer is most emphatically not somewhere in between. I am pretty certain God isn't hovering in a quantum state of uncertainty, somewhere between Being and not Being.

In the absence of further information, I suppose it is pretty natural to sit on the fence, although, if you think it through logically, you can be pretty damn sure you are getting it wrong if you do.

And also, the thing is, you are unlikely to have the answer handed to you, so you either stick it out with what you believe, or you eventually give up and convince yourself you should switch to the other side. Whatever your answer is, I am pretty sure ten or twenty years of staring at it will convince you that you are right.

I seriously think God should be less coy about His existence, if He exists.

Was sick from food poisoning last week, and had to subsist on nothing but thin rice porridge for a couple of days. It was all rather gruelling.

On a side note, Happy New Year everyone! As usual, I will be hoping this year turns out to be better than the last=D