Presidents' Day/I Got You Day/Independence Day (Lithuania)
2004-02-16 @ 10:17 p.m.

After a long break from writing poetry, I started on a new poem during Creative Writing Club on Thursday. I finished it this afternoon, while waiting for Chernise to come out from Chinese to join the French people. With this poem, I return to the tanka form, which was what I used for Of Light And Darkness, my first serious poem. In some ways, I'm as proud of this one as of my first. By the way, we aren't having our lecture test tomorrow! Thank you to the other faculties who haven't finished Chapter 3. Having one extra lecture per week does have some benefits after all! Today was cool, in the sense that we got to go out as a class, more or less. We went to the hawker centre at Ghim Moh, which I suppose is better than nothing. I will miss Holland Village when we (hopefully) move to Bishan. Junction 8 pales in comparison. The funny thing is, I haven't been to Holland Village more than five times this year, but I like it so much already! I drank sugar cane with lemon, which tastes a little strange if you ask me, despite what Jennifer thinks. Sigh, Drama Feste tickets are sold out, so quite a few of us will just have to crash the place! Haha, it's not our fault that they picked such a small venue...

I hope Mr Purvis reduces the number of our GP lessons. It's fun to discuss stuff, but I think it's really pointless to spend more time on this 'AO' subject that will get you into Law at NUS, than on all the other subjects which could get you overseas. Anyway, we watched another video today. Not about gender and sex-change operations, but about love, lust and marriage. There are three stages to love in human beings - lust, infatuation, and attachment. Then where do crushes fit in? It seems like the "Seven-Year Itch" is a myth after all; it's really the "Four-Year Itch"! Fascinating stuff. I thought it was wonderful, the bit showing the couples that had grown old together. If they could do it, why can't we? Food for thought. Oh, and I hate NAPFA training, even though I badly need it. My 2.4-km run is pathetic, I can only pace Ben Woon for three rounds before I give up trying to keep up. Sigh, if there is more to life than passing NAPFA, why do I feel bad about it?

Come to think of it, today was a day that began badly, but ended remarkably well. I forgot to pack my French books, which could potentially have resulted in my getting sent out of the room. I actually remembered about it just as an 806 pulled up at the bus stop, hence I decided not to go back up to avoid being late for Student Venture. (I was still late by the way.) By a strange twist of fate, we had a trainee teacher coming in today for the first hour. She looked so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, so naïve really. It was fun though, but I can't imagine how Mlle Ng could once have been like her! She was doing some revision on pronouns, so we didn't touch our books at all. I think I'll post the untranslated transcript of the dialogue my group wrote (as I'm feeling lazy), which we thought was damn funny. Must have been Jonathan Tay's delivery of his line "Il nous a vu!" ("He's seen us!")

[À une soirée]
Jean: Salut! Je m'appelle Jean.
Marie: Allô! Moi, je m'appelle Marie.
Jean: C'est un joli nom! Ah! La musique commence. Voulez-vous danser avec moi?
Marie: Pourquoi pas?
[Ils dansent.]
Paul: Qu'est-ce que c'est ça? Marie, tu me trompes?
Marie: Mon Dieu! Il nous a vu!
Jean: Qui? Cet homme-là? C'est ton père? Il est un peu trop jeune, non?
Marie: C'est mon petit ami!
Paul: Tu m'énerves! J'en ai marre de toi! C'est la fin! J'ai soupçonné depuis longtemps que tu es infidèle.
Marie: Mais...
Paul: Il y a des choses que je peux tolérer, mais pas ça.
Marie: Paul, je peux tout expliquer!
Paul: Tant pis, je t'aime, mais c'est impossible! Nous séparons!