Criminal Law and Mediocrity

I'm in criminal law now and Oh. My. God. it. is. so. b.o.r.i.n.g.

I have one main gripe about people presenting.

It is beyond me how you can go and stand up there, mike in hand, powerpoint slides majestically gracing your background, and just drone on. and. on. and. on. And talk like you've assumed everyone is asleep Already. WTH! Do you not realize you are boring the entire class to the end of their wits? As a matter of fact, you can't even be accorded the honour of having bored them because to bore people, there must at least be an attempt on their part to pay attention in the first place. Here, people don't even try. In fact, we aren't bored. We're just unengaged and disinterested.

I don't understand how people can be so lacadaisical in their approach to presentations.

Do you not have any pride in your speech? Any sense of wanting to engage your audience, make sure you're not creating a hell hole of boredom and Mediocrity in your presentation? Apparently not.

Good Grief.

CNY

CNY family picture from a week back. Happy holidays everyone. School has yet begun.

Presents from the UK

I'm so bored right now. So I've decided to blog about one of the most banal things ever - pictures of myself. (omg I still can't believe I'm doing this).

So here goes. Some gifts I got from the UK! And I actually Like them, for the first time hahaha.



Purple fluffed bedroom slippers with shimmery sheen and small beaded stones. Very pretty. But only useful for 5 degree weather. Which we don't get very much of in Singapore. But nvm, I can wear them when the air con is at it's all time cold of... 18 degrees! (:



Ok next in line we have... copper tone barret (is this how you spell it?)! Don't mind my face, just focus on the thing on my head thank you.



And lastly, thick hairband in grey burburrey-esque shades. Of course it's Not real burberry. What fool would pay so much for a bunch o' checks on your head.

This marks the completion of my picture post. (: Bye!

A couple o' things

There have been a few things that I've wanted to write about for some time but I haven't because procrastination often overwhelms me like a fat cow and also because I needed to take a few days to solidify my thoughts.

So anyway, i recently watched The Pursuit of Happyness on DVD and it proved to be rather thought provoking - especially with regard to my spending habits.

There was one point in the show that really got to me. The character, Chris Gardner (Will Smith) had just got off from work at Dean Whitter, this stoke brokerage firm he was interning at for free. And he was rushing off at 4pm because he had to go pick his kid up from day care in Chinatown at this place where they spelt Happiness with a "Y", so that they coudl get in line at Glide House by 5pm just so they'd have a room to stay in for the night. And then he walks out of this huge firm with his life in his suitcase and he meets his boss who just gets out of a cab and asks to borrow 5 bucks cos he left his wallet. And at that point Will Smith's character looks worriedly up and down the flight of stairs he just came from and offers to run up to et his wallet for him. At this point you do realize how much he's trying to juggle. It's between losing 5 bucks, which could be a day's food for him and his son, and getting in line late at Glide House and not having a place to sleep that night. And at that point, you realize how damn lucky you are that you even have a home to go home to every night and you don't have to worry about lending someone 5 bucks because your life isn't in the 5 bucks. But Chris Gardner's life Was in the 5 bucks. When he eventually extricated the green bill from his wallet like it meant so damn much, you could really feel that sense of loss. A sense of loss, over 5 bucks.. What his boss didn't realize was that the poor are constantly losing something by trying to save something else. Lose the 5 bucks and gain a place to sleep for the night.

I'm gonna think againt he next time I think of spending $3.20 on Ritter Sport chocolate in school. Unnecessary calories anyway. (:



So that's The Pursuit of Happyness. I thought it was a good show.

Now that my thoughts on poverty are out of the way, it's time for some cheena new yr posting. Cny this year has been almost the same as every other yr, except for the fact that I feel a lot older now cos I actually can Drive to like parties and stuff. And I don't have to worry about midnight cabfares or being abducted in the middle of the road while waiting for the cab, or getting abducted byt he cab driver himself, or any of that sorta thing. So I feel so old and responsible all of a sudden. And this yr it's been gatherings and cny visits and lots of ang pao collecting the whole week, which has been pretty fun. And I'm glad for the mid term break that allows us to enjoy cny in all its cheena glory.

And I'm sorry for not having pictures up. As you might know, taking pictures never ever cross my mind unless I'm really bored out of my wits. So if you want pictures you can check out facebook or something. I think some pple tagged some pictures for me. And thanks to those who did! (:

That's it for now. Till I recall some of my other thoughts again.

Cherubic Cupid - Not.

Happy Valentine's Day to one and all.

Expect the least on this over-rated commercialized cliched wishing to suck every penny out of those in love and every energy out of those not in love to get in love pseudo holiday. (:

Once again, happy valentine's.

It's nice to know the most conservative of peoples can be more unconventional about sex and love than we can ever think of (see above).

Facebook: your key to the world

Facebook is an amazing way of reminding you of your pathetic excuse of a school life.

I browse through my friends who are studying in Oxford and Cambridge and Columbia and what other dope ass ivy leagues and top notch shit you've got and I can't help but feel a tinge of regret each time.

I don't know how true it is, but my idea is this - they're there partaking of a splendid education, learning new things, engaging in passionate discourse with people who actually really want to talk about issues and not because they have to fulfill 25% of class participation. They get to be in the midst of brilliant minds which are so brilliant, your sad excuse for a brain struggles each day to comprehend how theirs even got to being that brilliant. They get to interact with people who are passionate about the things they're studying and who don't just brush everything off as belonging purely to the world of academia, making legal theory sound like a chore and forced obligation when it actually is rather intriguing.

I want to be amid that kind of influence too. I want to experience a different kind of education. I would like for my world view to change. And I feel that's what people who study overseas get - a worldview reform. And here we are in Singapore, still obssessed over our little petty gossip, and our insignificant joys of completing memo and our over-rated pains of upcoming memorial. Whereas in Oxford or what have you, life is different, people are different, the culture is different, the take on education is different, you live on your own, you learn new things and the list goes on.

You can't help but feel that the people who've gone overseas have a much broader sense of the world than you do. And you're trapped in sunny singapore where everything's minute. Minute in land space, minute in ideas, minute in experience, just minute.

I do hope with my life that I don't live and die without knowing something bigger and greater than what I've come to know in Singapore. I will just kill myself if that's all I grow to know and understand.

Colossians 1: 10

"that you may have a walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;"

Furniture

Pictures of my new found friends over the weekend! Sorry there isn't a picture of the room in its entirety. I got too lazy trying to position my laptop correctly to take the pics.

Dempsey Rd btw, is great for finding swell furniture like that. Though I'm not sure if I got ripped off or not.

Mussels

Hellooo Daniel! Sorry if this is an affront to your personal dignity Dan. But I had to use this as an excuse to post more pictures here. Lest it get too boring see. (:

(Check out those abs!)

Look outward

"And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works..."

Hebrews 10:24

Death in a day

After much meditation and thought, I've decided that one cannot grasp the concept of death in a day.

This is ironic since the event of death happens in all but a day. In fact, it happenes in a matter of seconds, minutes, however long it takes. But yet it is wholly impossible to grasp the concept of death in a day. The idea that a loved one is gone, and not just gone to the supermarket for groceries or gone to Japan on business or gone to the UK for 3 yrs to study but really, permanently gone, unalive, dead... it's never happened to me but thinking about it makes my head swirl. Because how do you come to terms with death when the impact takes so much time to take effect? Maybe you have to wait 3 yrs to discover that your sister really hasn't gone to London to study but she's gone for good, never coming back.

And another thing, how do people respond to death? Or how Should they respond? I don't know. The movies provide us with a convenient list of ways in which you can respond. You can either go into a catharsis, or you can be silent and go into denial or you can be in shock etc. But it doesn't seem to be as well-defined as that. I think the movies just screws everyone over. It makes us expect certain things of life which are never going to materialize. And when they don't then we get confused and ask why that didn't happen the way we expected, the way the movies made us expect.

The idea of losing a loved one seems so distant until it hits 1m away from home. Then you realize that's not something that happens to your 2nd cousin's husband's uncle. It happens to your friends too, and possibly you. Then it doesn't become a joke anymore, it becomes painful. And I cannot help but occupy myself day and night with how my friend might feel and what he might think and what I think he might think and feel. In fact I dont think I can stop trying to put myself in his shoes until I've satisfied myself, knowing that I can now at least feel an iota of what he might be feeling, whatever it is he might feel, may not be grief even.

So that's that.

Here's a tribute to you dan, and your dad and your family: for your bravery.

To everything, there's a first.

This is scary because it's my first blog post. Creating a blog has been an idea I've been toying around with and the only reason I've actually gotten down to creating one now is because I actually have something that I desperately want to write about. That will come in a while. After I get over the initial shock of typing this post - knowing that people are going to read it. It is so weird typing your thoughts for an audience. Wth. I hope I get used to it soon. Or else I'm just going to close this thing down. I hope I even know how to post after this first post. But people say it's idiot proof - that should be pretty safe for me then.

My main compelling reason for creating this thing is so I can document my reflections. I realized that in recent months, I've been delving a lot into my own thoughts and have had several rather valuable thoughts, even if I must say so myself. I realized that I don't want to forget this stage of my life and I want to remember all my valuable insights. Since I despise writing, I figured it'd be a good thing to type it out and thus, the birth of my BLOG. Gosh it even feels weird to Think in typing that I have a blog. Since I've openly smashed the idea to the ground on more than one occassion. In any case, this is relatively therapeutic. I hope I don't vomit when I read all of this tomorrow.

I shall now move on to the real, substantial post. Under a different heading. Goodbye for now.