Chocolate Cake Day/Mozart Day/Thomas Crapper Day
2005-01-27 @ 9:12 p.m.

I'm sitting in front of the computer, munching on a big slice of bak kwa, and making reasonable progress with my last essay. I guess you could say I'm as content as I can be at the moment. Naturally, there about a dozen things that could make me a whole lot happier, but I will learn to be content with my lot. I am perfecting the art of studied indifference to my surroundings. Twice today I deliberately sat alone in an LT. Not to mention the fact that I cut classes today, because I just couldnt' bear the thought of enduring one more lecture. What's the point of being there when you're distracted half the time? It was just a Mathematics lecture, and I spent it in class doing my essay anyway. Kay Hwee was busy with his tutorial so I was effectively alone. They took attendance today during the lecture, but I really don't give a damn right now. I find myself suddenly and irrationally annoyed by people who ask me why I choose to leave empty seats between myself and other people. Is it wrong to want to be alone, or if not alone, at least apart? Not being personal here, because quite a few friends asked me that during the European History lecture today. Just irritated in a general sense. You know what's the problem with the new campus? There's no place you can run off to when you need to hide away from the world and mope. I can't get this chapter title out of my head, which is also from a poem - My Mind to me a Kingdom is. Another random thought that has haunted me since I came up with it: To love another person is to welcome the paradox that with or without the other, you can never be complete. "To be loved to madness - such was her great desire. Love was to her the one cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days." - The Return Of The Native, Chapter VII: Queen Of Night

The second time I sat alone was during the screening of American History X. This is CWC, repackaged to appeal to a new audience, with a spanking new name to boot, Writers Inc. So I was minding my own business, trying frantically to finish the essay before Mr Purvis left LT3, which I obviously didn't, and they turn off the lights. No big deal, I figure I can work by the light of my handphone's display. Decide to watch a bit of the film, just for fun. Then this girl sitting in the row in front of me decides to be sociable. So she asks me, very politely I might add, why I'm sitting all alone. Deflecting the question with my usual silence, I shift to the seat from which she has removed her bag. Within five minutes, I figure out she's from my junior class, and she's going for SIMUN. When she sees me trying to write my next sentence, she helpfully suggests that I work outside. I decline, mentally resolving to give up on the essay until I get home, and I watch the rest of American History X. It's really an interesting movie, about white supremacists in Venice Beach. The mastermind looked disturbingly innocuous. A pity that the brother had to die though. Now that came as a complete surprise at the end. Gruesome...

We celebrated Kay Hwee's birthday today, albeit belatedly because he was in Thailand with Ben. I love the bookmarks they brought back for us! I like shiny, silvery stuff. Anyway, it was so funny, because Joseph had to invent some excuse to drag Kay Hwee out of class and stay out, only to have Mark Chen spoil the surprise. We basically hid in class with a lot of noisemakers and a cake that was so weird! It was like this huge slice of cake, with strawberry biscuit sticks poked into it in place of candles. The end result, as Shiqi put it, looked quite like some sort of urn with joss sticks sticking out of it. Not a very mouth-watering description! It was fun though, short as the celebration was. Anything to relieve the tedium of school, which I'm quite sick of at the moment. I'm enjoying the temporary lull before it's back to the grind for all of us. We hate calculus, but we love Mr Tay's tutorials! (Only because they're great entertainment. Oh, and I actually kind of like calculus, insane as that sounds.)