That said, I got the prize for Best A2 Humanities Student! Yay! And the prize is a $25 for WHSmith, which I suppose I’ll use for next year’s stationary

Laughed when I saw this quote: ‘Be careful about reading health books.  You may die of a misprint.’ Seriously now, Mark Twain has the best quotes.

Threw lots of stuff away (you wouldn’t believe the amount of nonsense I’ve accumulated) and I’ll post some pictures later of the old and new place. 

At least today’s weather is loads better than yesterday’s. Yesterday’s was rainy, windy, gloomy and cold. Today’s got sunny intervals

PS: We (Ayne and I) ran a marathon last weekend for Cancer Research! 5km only la, but still …

‘He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.’

‘Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further … And one fine morning – / So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’

‘If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about … ‘

‘We were always thanking him for that – I and the others. / “Good-bye,” I called. “I enjoyed breakfast, Gatsby.”‘

‘… and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like a silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.’

‘Thirty – the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age.’

‘”It’s full of – ” I hesitated. / “Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.’

‘”What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” cried Daisy, “and the day after that, and the next thirty years?”‘

‘ [Jordan] … I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.’

‘Gatsby – who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.’

‘He put his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of his vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight – watching over nothing.’

This was the coursework task: ‘Within the context of 1898 to 2007, how far has China’s history contributed to its potential as a future superpower?’ 

Was I an idiot to choose this title? Very much. Not least because China’s history is so – well – much, even more so over the span of the recent last century. And even after proofreading the end product, there was only a single-sentence mention of both World Wars I and II. I admit, the amount of resources on China was overwhelming, though thank God there was information (of which I got off the school library, the Jubilee library, Waterstone’s bookstore, Amazon books, Googlebooks, as well as statistical information from the Internet – I’m listing them just so I impress my future self).

For the most part, the writing of the essay itself wasn’t fun, and I had to constantly change my writing plan depending on how it suited the essay and as different historical events came into light. Points were shifted back and forth, the essay structure changed again and again, and the language was edited every time the structure/points changed or when the essay was extended. And because this was my first History assignment for the Exam Board, I had no idea which tack to use for approaching a 3000-word essay. In the end, the research was done simultaneously as the essay was being written, but it definitely helped that I had watched documentaries and short video clips, and read a handful of background information when beginning to tackle the coursework. 

Intense? You bet. Especially because I wanted to make it a perfect essay, and because I found so many interesting (but utterly irrelevant) pieces of information. This sense of accomplishment, however, is incomparable.

I always sort of tuck my writing work away, keep them like keepsakes, and they never fail to remind me of what I can do. Just so you know, this one’s going on top of the pile.

Manchester: 

The shopping area … Loads more choices than in Brighton, and lots of walking involved.

In an Italian restaurant. Nice pose, Sanyi =P

The cute Italian waiter took this picture for us … smile, ladies! (and gentleman)

Prague:

First view of Prague!

On Charles Bridge. Pretty majestic, if you ask me.

Soldiers marching in Prague Castle.

Musician? Sort of. He was playing some piano-ish instrument thingy (goes to show my limited vocab after over a decade of music lessons)

Swan Lake about to start! Though the ballet show wasn’t as good as expected. But Les Miserables made up for it in London! 

On the train from Prague (Czech Republic) to Budapest (Hungary).

Budapest:

Crazy Pei =)

Posing at Kempinski Hotel because we can’t afford it. Mind you, this is near the toilet. Not that it hindered cam-whoring.

Okayyy… I swear I remember what this bridge is called *cracks brain thinking*

On the boat trip with Pei! 

Night scene in Budapest. 

London:

Somewhere in London (so not helpful, I know!)

In Portobello Market, and dang, have they got good stuff!

Bicester Village, a renowned shopping place for branded stuff sold at retail price, and where Sanyi and Pei enjoyed themselves very much. Should’ve taken a picture of the number of bags they were carrying after 3 hours. Plus, I got a Fred Perry winter coat! How much it costs – well, it makes me dizzy too.

Hyde Park …

Sanyi and Pei talking on the phone (and refusing to walk the rest of Hyde Park), haha.

And the final picture … Maybe the grass is greener, and the sky bluer, on the other side of the world.

So there you have it. I’ve been terrible at updating, but I have my reasons. I’ll post the link to the Bellerbys website when I get to post on it as a graduate student. 

Toodles, lovelies.

I’ll be updating on my trip to Prague and Budapest (I’m here now!) before leaving this blog for good. So if you’re reading this, hang in for just a couple more posts! 

That said, a big big THANK YOU to all you lovely people who’ve faithfully checked this inconsistent blog. Hopefully the next one will be more … active XD

I once replied to Sarah’s post, saying something like ‘Oh it’s okay if what you do now might not be what you do in the future, because what you do do now will lead you to your future’. An abstract concept, if you like, and a hell lot easier to say than to live through it (sorry Sarah). Lately, I look at something Shakespeare wrote and just think, ‘Again?’ Or I try to read some prose and all I want to do is chuck it out of my sight. Or I come across some seemingly thought-provoking modern literature like A Thousand Splendid Suns and I’d decide it’s monotonous before getting through two pages. 

And guess what? I’ve just signed up to do English Literature for another 3 years of my life. 

Oh golly.

If there’s any good that’s come out of taking Eng Lit at college is that I’ve learnt to enjoy poetry a lot more. But what happens when I get sick of ‘discovering’ another ‘great’ poem that simply says, in a different way, what I already know? What happens when I get bored trying to learn life’s lessons through a string of words and the hollowness of language? 

Here’s a conversation I recently had with a teacher -
Him: Unembellished love. What do you mean by unembellished love?
Me: Something like, pure love. You know, without being accessorized.
Him: Why don’t you just say pure love? ‘… but for all the thought-provoking themes it relays …’ Hmph. Relays. Why not conveys?

Who cares about the difference between ‘pure’ or ‘unembellished’ or ‘true’ or ‘pristine’ or ‘immaculate’ or ‘simple’ or ‘authentic’? Will I now be picking words out from modern fiction, trying to dissect every word? Am I going to be one of those critics who pick up modern fiction and trash those who ornament their work with words? Oh, let’s all just pick up a Jodi Picoult and exclaim ‘Ah there, you see, she’s using words she picked up from a thesaurus’!

If Literature is supposed to mean something, it’d better show itself soon. Patience ain’t this girl’s virtue.

Here’s the ugly truth: I never quite know what to post here. When I come across some really witty quote, I’d think ‘Hah! Great for a post!’ – then I actually start to live life, and the blogging just seems too distant a part, too other-worldly, too artificial and non-solid for me to engage in when I’m actually out there. Or how do you know if you’ve revealed too much of yourself? And words are such that once the impact is hit, the damage is done – you can never quite reconstruct or alter or erase it from someone else’s memory, and that’s when it dawns on you: You’ve said too bloody much. You’re too exposed and too vulnerable, like a clown in front of a gaping audience as you try out your juggling and skipping, self-conscious both when you fall and when you don’t. 

A lot of people can tell me what to do – heck, you-can-he-can-she-can, yet you’re still only voicing what’s already in my head. I have all the intellectual answers, I am too old for my age, I’ve surpassed all this ‘self-exploration’ and ‘self-discovery’ – yet I’m still not there. 

If life was really meant for us to just grow up, do the self-discovery crap, have kids, lug through fifty years of cooking-cleaning-careering, then I’m really not supposed to understand God.

Here’s an online plea: Whoever borrowed my ‘Further Under the Duvet’ book by Marian Keyes, please-please-please could you identify yourself and return it to me as soon as possible? I’ve been looking for it for ages, and I wanted to pack it up and take it with me when I get back to Brighton. I’d hate to spend another RM40 on one book twice.

Thanks.

Sigh.