Cheeseball Day/Nosy Neighbor Appreciation Day
2005-04-17 @ 11:41 p.m.

Got a nice haircut this morning! Now to buy hairspray so my styled hair doesn't melt when I perspire. I thought Uncle Kenneth's sermon today was surprisingly lucid, possibly his clearest so far. Left service early because I had to meet Chun Long and Thong for dinner at Raffles City. Chun Long bought freaking expensive bouquets. The sentiment behind a bouquet is well and good, but pardon my cynicism here. If the flowers are going to wilt anyway, wouldn't a few suffice? I can't remember when was the last time we bought a whole bouquet for anybody's performance. Nevertheless, Chernise and Grace did deserve it for their hard work. That said, I might possibly not have gone for tonight's concert if I'd known more than half the songs were songs I'd heard performed before. Elected to disappear with Shou Jie, Sophia and Thong instead of heading down to Lau Pa Sat, partly because I was tired, partly because I wouldn't have been comfortable with the group that was there. Don't get me wrong, I like most of them individually, but I feel shut out from their circle, and it's only right that I should because I don't belong there.

Got tired of V.S. Naipaul's letters, so I began reading Northrop Frye's Anatomy Of Criticism on the train, and I'm prepared to buy his book just for the section entitled Polemical Introduction. Fascinating insight into literary criticism, and it's reinforced my beliefs on the subject. Was especially taken by this statement: "The presence of science in any subject changes its character from the casual to the causal, from the random and intuitive to the systematic, as well as safeguarding the integrity of that subject from external invasions." (Note the swap of "s" and "u" from "casual" to "causal", that's a very clever phrase if I may so.) Literary criticism should not draw its framework from other branches of study, like feminist criticism or liberal-humanist criticism, because it introduces an element of bias. So I remain a New Critic, unless something on this site on modern literary theory I just discovered resonates more with me.

This week:

Volunteer Week