Of Fungibility and Helpless Hiatus

it's with deepest regret that this hiatus had to occur. academic slaughter can be quite that pain in the arse, especially when stretched over a protracted period of time. together with ground-breaking results over past assignments, this noxious mix is proving to be the lingering bad medicine in the mouth. i'm suspecting my next update of this virtual journal is likely to occur when the examinations are wiped clean-slated.

but it's not without excitement, this hiatus is happening. a lot of peculiar and excitable events did occur, however small they might come. take for example this book i'm just done with (well not quite, was done with it end last month): Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't be Wrong. it details the idiosyncracies and misunderstood quirks of the French people, rationalizing it with history, embedded beliefs of their land and cultural backlog, complete with lurid examples of their habits and inherent beliefs. it makes for an interesting read and informative at that, just makes u wanna land yourself in France and test the hypotheses provided by the authors. one thing stuck firmly in my mind surfaced from this quote: don't make your lending of money sound like a matter of principle. the french rationalizes their huge public lending and skewed fiscal policies with that and compounded with the infamous French pride, it is easy to see the nuance of the quote.

then there is this episode in the gym which i would kindly label it as 'colonial hangover masked in fake politeness'. well to spare everyone the intricacies of the exact factual matrix of the incident, i was rather cheesed off when some caucasian-expats come around and give you attitude like they are the supreme race, still imprinted with the impression that S'pore is a British colony thereby justifying their faux pas imperialistic overtones. i mean i was just resting b/w sets and this overriped ang moh comes by and says r u fiddling with ur ipod or exercising. oh well until they understand that us Chinese will be assuredly taking over the world in less than 10 yrs' time, they'll forever be in their compromised state. careful we make the United States of America become the United Provinces of Greater China.

oh cinematically wise, Spanglish was quite an unexpected treat. it was more than i prima facie cut it out to be. it was sweet, heartening and the comedy of cultural errors was simple and audience-friendly. characteristically 'mind your language' humour but with more heart and romance. and quotes like 'lately your low self-esteem is good common sense' and saccharine-sweetness things like 'they should name a gender after you' makes you just wanna hug the actors..ha. the drunked mother was the best supporting cast in the show.

meanwhile it's back to my academic progeny- notes materialised from forced discipline and an intrinsic fear of faring poorly. so until then, luck to all under the mercy of this invitation to a beheading.