Last night I attended an LSE Literary Fest talk by Laurence Rees (there seem to be various versions with regards to the exact spelling of his name) called Talking with Nazis. He was an ex-BBC producer of historial documentaries around the WW2 era (why the hell does that sound like such an awesome job, and why aren't there more like that to go around?) and did one of the first documentaries about Germany and the Nazis. As a companion to the talk he gave, which was on the nature of interviews and interviewees, we watched some clips of interviews conducted with old SS guards and a woman who denounced her neighbour. For the optimists, it's not a sob fest of the interviewees crying their regret, and for the pessimists it wasn't a straightforward denial (they did agree to be interviewed after all). Instead it was insightful listening and watching to their responses. It was just simple, plain, matter-of-fact recounting. I did it, but I won't tell you whether I have regrets. It was part compartmentalisation and part self-denial. It was an excellent, refreshing talk.
That wasn't really why I wanted to post about last night's talk, though I seem to have accorded it a nice paragraph without really setting out to do so. I went home and googled Laurence Rees, and it turned out he wrote one of the core texts that I used for my extended essay in IB. The fact that I had actually handled his work, read his words and seen his person (albeit retroactive realising) made me excited (retroactively), so I spent a solid few minutes bugging the hell out of a Philip Pullman-reading Christoph. That was exciting.
In other news, my digestive system seems to have gone completely haywire. Last night before I went to bed, I ate a pile of pasta and went to sleep straight away. 4 hours later I wake up, bloated and hungry and unable to sleep as a consequence. I spend the next 30 minutes eating all sorts of random things, toast, biscuits, slices of ham before I am full enough to go to sleep. I wake up 5 hours later, still tired, and now completely bloated. My stomach feels so sick, and its been like this for the past few days.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Week 6
After talking to some friends today, I realised that a lot of people have been burnt out from school too. However, their burn out manifests in less destructive ways, as my skin surely attests to.
Perhaps next week will be better.
Perhaps next week will be better.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
I haven't wished this in a long time
but I wish I was dead now.
I am very tired of living, and attempting to live.
I am very tired of living, and attempting to live.
Monday, February 07, 2011
Pesce
Week 5 is finally here, and by extension A Week of Hell right after a week of Preparing for Hell. I am very tired.
Today I finally stumbled upon a good recipe which is fairly chinoise enough for my palate. White fish, cod in my case, marinated in a soy sauce-chopped garlic-brown sugar-sesame sauce mix. Tastes almost like the soon hook my grandma would always order in restaurants back home.
Thank God for valium and Yes Minister.
Today I finally stumbled upon a good recipe which is fairly chinoise enough for my palate. White fish, cod in my case, marinated in a soy sauce-chopped garlic-brown sugar-sesame sauce mix. Tastes almost like the soon hook my grandma would always order in restaurants back home.
Thank God for valium and Yes Minister.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Fuck Internships
I don't know what to do with my life.
First off, my grades are crap. No one wants to hire anyone who's managed to fuck up her First Year in Uni and get a 2:2. Nevermind that I missed it by 0.666666 marks. Fuck the rounding up and rounding down system.
Second off, the things I actually am interested in are very hard to get due to numbers. The world has too many PhDs running around clawing at academia and think tanks as it is. Even working in NGOs is hard for the same reason, too many people and too little places.
Thirdly, I can't take a job that is high stress. I simply cannot cope with stress or insomnia (which is brought about by stress anyway), because at the rate my neuroses are going, I am going to end up dead sooner rather than later - and that's just with the stress LSE brings.
Lastly, and worst of all, I have no confidence in myself at all to even go out and apply for anything. Even rubbish like HR wants applicants to have a 2:1. In the eyes of the competitive working world, I am nothing even with my shiny expensive degree from LSE and intelligence.
I hate it when people ask me about the future, because presently, I have none.
First off, my grades are crap. No one wants to hire anyone who's managed to fuck up her First Year in Uni and get a 2:2. Nevermind that I missed it by 0.666666 marks. Fuck the rounding up and rounding down system.
Second off, the things I actually am interested in are very hard to get due to numbers. The world has too many PhDs running around clawing at academia and think tanks as it is. Even working in NGOs is hard for the same reason, too many people and too little places.
Thirdly, I can't take a job that is high stress. I simply cannot cope with stress or insomnia (which is brought about by stress anyway), because at the rate my neuroses are going, I am going to end up dead sooner rather than later - and that's just with the stress LSE brings.
Lastly, and worst of all, I have no confidence in myself at all to even go out and apply for anything. Even rubbish like HR wants applicants to have a 2:1. In the eyes of the competitive working world, I am nothing even with my shiny expensive degree from LSE and intelligence.
I hate it when people ask me about the future, because presently, I have none.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Drei
Since I have not been doing this for some time, I have decided to write about 3 books that I have read recently.
Imre Kertész's Detective Story took a while to get a hold on me. At the end however, I was left with a fairly discernable impression. It was not enough however, to strike quite a resounding chord with me. A good read nonetheless.
Anne Tyler's Digging to America was highly entertaining. Jumping from narrator to narrator, I especially loved the bits the grandmother Maryam narrated. I even brought the book the school on multiple occasions to read when I was between classes. Still at the end, it seemed to lack a little something (or as Jia puts it, umami).
The best of all 3 however, was Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. The titular story did not impress me as much as the latter three short stories did. When it comes to a well executed and finished story, Capote is simply one of the best. The problem I usually have with short stories is that they ring hollow when they finish. Sometimes, you even wonder about the motivation for even wanting to write them. They tell something unsatisfactorily and answer nothing. This was especially the case for Enright's Taking Pictures and D'Ambrosio's The Dead Fish Museum. Capote however tells and sums up a good yarn.
Imre Kertész's Detective Story took a while to get a hold on me. At the end however, I was left with a fairly discernable impression. It was not enough however, to strike quite a resounding chord with me. A good read nonetheless.
Anne Tyler's Digging to America was highly entertaining. Jumping from narrator to narrator, I especially loved the bits the grandmother Maryam narrated. I even brought the book the school on multiple occasions to read when I was between classes. Still at the end, it seemed to lack a little something (or as Jia puts it, umami).
The best of all 3 however, was Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. The titular story did not impress me as much as the latter three short stories did. When it comes to a well executed and finished story, Capote is simply one of the best. The problem I usually have with short stories is that they ring hollow when they finish. Sometimes, you even wonder about the motivation for even wanting to write them. They tell something unsatisfactorily and answer nothing. This was especially the case for Enright's Taking Pictures and D'Ambrosio's The Dead Fish Museum. Capote however tells and sums up a good yarn.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Eating Animals
Apparently I am heartless. On Wednesday, I somehow managed to drag my hungover ass into the Old Theatre by 6:25pm (luckily, because at 6:45pm the lecture theatre was full), and listening to Jonathan Safran Foer talk about his newest book (albeit published more than a year ago), Eating Animals. As some of you might have recalled, I am a great fan of his writings. Every year that I have read them, every year they have made my list of Top Ten Reads (which reminds me that the 2010 one is still tardy :/) Going for a talk by him, even though I like my meat very much, seemed only natural.
So anyway I went and listened. He was very good and very convincing. Not everyone can go vegetarian he argued, but surely you can give it up for just one meal a week? And he's right. Unfortunately while my mind and my heart, arguably thinking organs, I am unable to reason with my stomach. 30 minutes after eating a satisfying meal of spaghetti bolognese (fine there was beef in it), my stomach started to bray for more food. As much as I like the idea of going vegetarian, and I do know of the health effects of eating too much meat, meat is still one of those stomach fillers that keeps it full for the longest period of time. And I am frequently hungry because my metabolism is completely out of control, to the point that it is detrimental to my health >:(
Thus today while separating the meat into single person portions, I realised I had 4 portions of pork chops for 1 person, 1 portion for 2 people (Christoph gets 1 more pork chop) and 3 portions of chicken for 1 person. Therefore I must conclude, I am heartless to the poor animals.
So anyway I went and listened. He was very good and very convincing. Not everyone can go vegetarian he argued, but surely you can give it up for just one meal a week? And he's right. Unfortunately while my mind and my heart, arguably thinking organs, I am unable to reason with my stomach. 30 minutes after eating a satisfying meal of spaghetti bolognese (fine there was beef in it), my stomach started to bray for more food. As much as I like the idea of going vegetarian, and I do know of the health effects of eating too much meat, meat is still one of those stomach fillers that keeps it full for the longest period of time. And I am frequently hungry because my metabolism is completely out of control, to the point that it is detrimental to my health >:(
Thus today while separating the meat into single person portions, I realised I had 4 portions of pork chops for 1 person, 1 portion for 2 people (Christoph gets 1 more pork chop) and 3 portions of chicken for 1 person. Therefore I must conclude, I am heartless to the poor animals.
Monday, January 17, 2011
I need a life part deux
In my neverending wrestling with essays (!!!), this time with the Chinese Civil War, I often mentally turn into a mush pile as all my energies are directed towards dissecting, rephrasing and plagiarizing works of the Good Men. That and wishing I was playing CIV4 instead/getting a haircut/pulling out my hair strand by strand.
Therefore, my latest obsession: the waiter in the first part of Kelly Clarkson's I Do Not Hook Up. SO HOT.
Therefore, my latest obsession: the waiter in the first part of Kelly Clarkson's I Do Not Hook Up. SO HOT.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Wright's Bar, Tea and Me
So here I am sitting in the Govt Common Room, Book I Have to Read, next to me - and blogging instead.
My expressed purpose of bringing my Not Very Light laptop to school, was to do work. Instead I am procrastinating. I blame it on the earlier HY235 lecture, which is the academic equivalent of crawling under barbed wire in the mud while the enemy rains machine gun bullets over your head. The enemy in question in this analogy is my lecturer, who shoots Narratives and Facts at us, with no real Organisation, in a RapidFireRateMode. Instead of feeling refreshed, invigorated and stimulated by the material, one feels like they have just run a marathon where all you do is mindlessly scribble down Shite, because there is no time to actually process the material. Not like there is much analysis anyway. I hope no one decides to vanity google HY235.
So anyway to recover, I resorted to my old trusted activity: a good tea with sugar from Wright's Bar (45p!) while sitting outside the Old Building and People Watching. In front of me, there were two fairly wizened people handling out fliers and trying to detain people to harass. I caught whiffs of "cuts", "government doesn't care" and "near SOAS, Birkbeck". I sat there for 15 minutes as they floundered around, the woman managing to detain 2 people and the man detaining none. He also called an IHT around under his arm, probably nicked from the LSE reception. They did not once approach me, even as they stood, defeat by the unmistakable air of Apathy from passing LSE student hordes. I found that amusing, perhaps they decided by virtue of my race I was Apathetic anyway. I also saw some friendly faces, Filipe for one, and some other people I wanted to dodge, some people from my old dorm. I also saw a women walk by in a striking mustard yellow coat, with a deep plum dress and stockings. She really likes her colours I suppose.
I have now procrastinated for 47 minutes. I'm off to the loo, then I PROMISE that I will start work after.
My expressed purpose of bringing my Not Very Light laptop to school, was to do work. Instead I am procrastinating. I blame it on the earlier HY235 lecture, which is the academic equivalent of crawling under barbed wire in the mud while the enemy rains machine gun bullets over your head. The enemy in question in this analogy is my lecturer, who shoots Narratives and Facts at us, with no real Organisation, in a RapidFireRateMode. Instead of feeling refreshed, invigorated and stimulated by the material, one feels like they have just run a marathon where all you do is mindlessly scribble down Shite, because there is no time to actually process the material. Not like there is much analysis anyway. I hope no one decides to vanity google HY235.
So anyway to recover, I resorted to my old trusted activity: a good tea with sugar from Wright's Bar (45p!) while sitting outside the Old Building and People Watching. In front of me, there were two fairly wizened people handling out fliers and trying to detain people to harass. I caught whiffs of "cuts", "government doesn't care" and "near SOAS, Birkbeck". I sat there for 15 minutes as they floundered around, the woman managing to detain 2 people and the man detaining none. He also called an IHT around under his arm, probably nicked from the LSE reception. They did not once approach me, even as they stood, defeat by the unmistakable air of Apathy from passing LSE student hordes. I found that amusing, perhaps they decided by virtue of my race I was Apathetic anyway. I also saw some friendly faces, Filipe for one, and some other people I wanted to dodge, some people from my old dorm. I also saw a women walk by in a striking mustard yellow coat, with a deep plum dress and stockings. She really likes her colours I suppose.
I have now procrastinated for 47 minutes. I'm off to the loo, then I PROMISE that I will start work after.
Saturday, January 08, 2011
OXON & BOOKS: a list
Yesterday I popped up North for a whirlwind visit to dear old man in Oxford. As usual I paid my respects to The Last Bookshop, £2 for all books, located near St. Aldgate's. The Last Bookshop stocks a delightful array of books, some exquisite photography books (for when I get my own proper flat and proper coffee table I presume) and general literature. There were loads of tempting buys, vying for my attention like Chabon's Kavalier and Clay (didn't get it though) and Nemirovsky. I managed to stop myself at 5 books though:-
Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion
Imre Kertesz - Detective Story
P. D. James - Cover Her Face
Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon
Bret Easton Ellis - The Informers
Along with the generous £25 Amazon voucher I got from Christoph's mum for Christmas, I also got:-
J. M. Coetzee - Disgrace
Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red
Edmund de Waal - The Hare with Amber Eyes
Anne Tyler - Digging to America
Truman Capote - Breakfast at Tiffany's
I am currently reading Stella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm.
I will finish and post the very delayed 2010 list next. I promise!
Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion
Imre Kertesz - Detective Story
P. D. James - Cover Her Face
Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon
Bret Easton Ellis - The Informers
Along with the generous £25 Amazon voucher I got from Christoph's mum for Christmas, I also got:-
J. M. Coetzee - Disgrace
Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red
Edmund de Waal - The Hare with Amber Eyes
Anne Tyler - Digging to America
Truman Capote - Breakfast at Tiffany's
I am currently reading Stella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm.
I will finish and post the very delayed 2010 list next. I promise!
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Boeuf de Tartare
The last dinner I had in Germany was a very nice beef tartare, homemade. The beef was excellent, and much tastier than the one I had a few days ago in Bürgerspital. Although that being said, the atmosphere at Bürgerspital could not have been beaten because WoHu joined us there, along with many bottles of wine and schnapps. We had a nice table, inside a large wine barrel. The service was very German though. The highlight of the night had to be just as we were about to leave, someone could not stand up because she had too much Silvaner (wasn't me), and I turned around to see a large chunk of the wreath surrounding our table MISSING because WoHu had ripped/pilfered a large keepsake just like the last time we were out. The sight of the missing chunk, complete with the fact that I had tried to take some earlier but found it superglued down, made ME collapse in giggles.
The damage that night (one spoon, two menus, the wreath, all the decorative nuts and apples on the table for the restaurant) was at least 4 glasses of Silvaner, 3 bottles of wine, 2 glasses of schnapps and 1 rustling for me: some €250. Needless to say everyone was very very happy. I was only happy by proxy though, since 3 completely happy drunk people make from awesome dinner companions and I was still recovering from my cold. At one point, WoHu started banging the sides of the barrel with his head, and I started hitting it with my fists. All the other diners were staring at us, two middle aged and two young people being completely rowdy and shouting, while ordering lots of wine. I think we completely ruined it from the couple seated near to us, who were obviously trying to have some romantic night out.
Yup. That's going to be a night I remember for a long time.
But like I said, the beef tartare Christoph's mother prepared today was simply par excellence. The size was very generous too. Now, while Christoph and his mum are busy walking off their dinners (his sausages and mustard, her's a beef tartare too), I am being a lazy bum and sitting on the couch half watching Viva (I have no idea why I am so fascinated with MTVs again, probably because it makes good background noise in a language that is not German) and half typing this.
Tomorrow, back to bloody London and the problem with the fucking landlord again.
*on a separate note, why the hell does it seem all the music popular in Europe is clubbing/dance music?
The damage that night (one spoon, two menus, the wreath, all the decorative nuts and apples on the table for the restaurant) was at least 4 glasses of Silvaner, 3 bottles of wine, 2 glasses of schnapps and 1 rustling for me: some €250. Needless to say everyone was very very happy. I was only happy by proxy though, since 3 completely happy drunk people make from awesome dinner companions and I was still recovering from my cold. At one point, WoHu started banging the sides of the barrel with his head, and I started hitting it with my fists. All the other diners were staring at us, two middle aged and two young people being completely rowdy and shouting, while ordering lots of wine. I think we completely ruined it from the couple seated near to us, who were obviously trying to have some romantic night out.
Yup. That's going to be a night I remember for a long time.
But like I said, the beef tartare Christoph's mother prepared today was simply par excellence. The size was very generous too. Now, while Christoph and his mum are busy walking off their dinners (his sausages and mustard, her's a beef tartare too), I am being a lazy bum and sitting on the couch half watching Viva (I have no idea why I am so fascinated with MTVs again, probably because it makes good background noise in a language that is not German) and half typing this.
Tomorrow, back to bloody London and the problem with the fucking landlord again.
*on a separate note, why the hell does it seem all the music popular in Europe is clubbing/dance music?
Saturday, January 01, 2011
Silvester
The top song of 1996, apparently: 10 Kleine Jagermeister
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The first new years' I spent overseas, has probably been one of the best new years that I've spent. Namely because for the first time (well I do recall a class party in 2008/2009 that involved a group playing Mahjong in my dining room, and the rest of us watching The Shining in the living room - with Cheryl arriving late and scaring the bejabbers out of me), it was actually properly celebrated for the sake of New Years'.
We went to the oldest restaurant in Wuerzburg, had a really nice dinner for a very nice price, then we walked home. On the way back, we saw lots of fireworks as 2009 passed into 2010. There were lots of drunk people setting off fireworks, some in a rather alarming way best observed amusingly from a distance. One firework even ricocheted off a tree branh and bounced across a road, near to where we were walking. Towards the end of the walk, we crossed a bridge which spanned the Main, and watched the fireworks being set off in all directions.
Back at the house, we watched some trashy music television - some Boney M, some Genghis Khan - which was enjoyable in its trashiness. We even saw some countdowns of (goodness knows what categorization they used) that put O Zone's Dragostea din Tei at number 5, and Las Ketchups' Aserejé (The Ketchup Song) at number 6. Also some What a Feeling, sung by the original singer and some weird Swiss DJ. It was bad trashy music TV at its best.
I am now listening to Backstreet Boys' I Want It That Way (1999) on the TV now, a new countdown that began with Roxette and The Scorpions in 1990. Good, good New Years' Day.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Top Ten List of 2010
First, I must state that this is not my usual End-of-the-Year Best Books Read list. Secondly, even as and when I shall publish the list (probably in early Jan 2011, because I do not have my usual texts with me), it will sadly not number 10, but 8.
Instead to end 2010, I offer a totally random list under a random set of categories.
Top Vacation of the Year - Vietnam
For the food (beating even France!), for the luxury and for the feel of raw exoticism, Vietnam was the best holiday I took in 2010. Even though the heat was like anything ever experienced, a living outdoor Sauna that beat even Singapore's weather, it was still memorable. And Oh My Goodness the food was absolutely wonderful. The meal I had the first night, in Danang, stands out as one of the best meals I've had in ages. Viet Nam, the name of the restaurant, was like an old dingy Malaysian style coffee shop with florescent lights and old wooden tables and chairs. No one there spoke English. But the beef, cooked in lemongrass and other lovely stuff (I tried to replicate it a few weeks ago and failed), the garlic oil salad and the beer drunken prawns, were just a joy to eat. As a certain friends would say, LOVES.
A close second was the trip I took with my parents to France-Belgium-Luxembourg. Strasbourg, Brussels and Troyes stand out in my mind and simply beautiful cities to visit and live in.
Top Uni Module of the Year - HY234
I love HY234. I love the teacher/lecturer, I love the content, I love the way it is taught. This, is the singular module that gets me through the week. This, is the only module that I would willingly overwork myself for. The parallels to the modern world are startling.
A close second is HY114, the Military Revolution module I took last year.
Top Album of the Year - The Arcade Fire's The Suburbs
A lyrical odyssey for the modern day Ulysses - the modern man who battles Tube Strikes, rude Bank Tellers and his Boss instead of mythical monsters. The man who fights against his consciousness and himself, in an era of existentialism. I adore this album and the way it stimulates my thoughts.
Top Bizarre Weather Experience of the Year - 18th Dec 2010
This was the day Christoph and I set off for Germany, as further documented here. We left the house at about 11:40am, for King's Cross St Pancras - the train was set to leave at 12:58pm. We stepped out into a howling wind, a large unprecedented blanket of snow, and a blizzard so thick that visibility was down to 20 metres. I was drenched after walking in the snow for 2 minutes, and then walking into the warm train station.
Top Growing Up Experience - Having the Landlord from Hell
As a person, I am usually unable to be assertive. I am completely conflict adverse, provided I feel that I have not been backed into a corner with no further course of action. My landlord however, is someone who would not do anything else one pays hard ball and fights against him. Latest news of why-my-landlord-is-a-shite: the shower heater has been spoiled since 20th Dec. It has still not been fixed, and there is no hot water in the house at all. Thank goodness I'm still staying in Germany till the 5th Jan.
I have also started to put my nasty letter writing skills - gleaned from all those legal internships, thank you very much - into good use. Damn this landlord.
Top Series of the Year - Dexter Season 4
I watched Dexter Season 4 with my Dad over the Summer break. Some nights, we even watched 2 episodes! It is by far the best, most thrilling, exciting and unexpected TV series I have seen thus far - beating The Pacific, which we also watched together during Summer.
I miss watching TV with my Dad.
Top Newly Discovered Awesome Thing - The Extra Computer Labs in Lincolns' Inn Chambers
Looking for a computer to work on in school is a nightmare. Thank God I finally got around to discovering the new com labs. Pity these don't seem to have heating though.
Bonus: Daddy Donkey's stomach-filling burriots, sold for lunch at the Leather Lane market behind my house
Top New Author - Marina Lewycka
The author of notably, a Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, I discovered her over the New Years celebration I shared with my parents on Sibu Island. The small resort we stayed in had a copy, and I devoured it within a day. Since then, I have sought out all her books when I am in need of a cheering. Her depiction of the failings of human behaviour, coupled with a very well and humous narrative, make her the best author I have discovered in 2010.
Top Game - Heavy Rain
I admit to have played like a grand total of 5 minutes of this. However the friends I played it with, JH, Steph, and Ianthe one crazy exasperating night from 9pm to 6am the next day (because they insisted on completing it, with the proper happy ending), make this a memorable game for 2010.
Top Skill I learned this year - Cooking
I cook. Not too badly too apparently. Woo hoo. Which is good because I am often hungry.
-----
Taa people, have a good New Years!
Instead to end 2010, I offer a totally random list under a random set of categories.
Top Vacation of the Year - Vietnam
For the food (beating even France!), for the luxury and for the feel of raw exoticism, Vietnam was the best holiday I took in 2010. Even though the heat was like anything ever experienced, a living outdoor Sauna that beat even Singapore's weather, it was still memorable. And Oh My Goodness the food was absolutely wonderful. The meal I had the first night, in Danang, stands out as one of the best meals I've had in ages. Viet Nam, the name of the restaurant, was like an old dingy Malaysian style coffee shop with florescent lights and old wooden tables and chairs. No one there spoke English. But the beef, cooked in lemongrass and other lovely stuff (I tried to replicate it a few weeks ago and failed), the garlic oil salad and the beer drunken prawns, were just a joy to eat. As a certain friends would say, LOVES.
A close second was the trip I took with my parents to France-Belgium-Luxembourg. Strasbourg, Brussels and Troyes stand out in my mind and simply beautiful cities to visit and live in.
Top Uni Module of the Year - HY234
I love HY234. I love the teacher/lecturer, I love the content, I love the way it is taught. This, is the singular module that gets me through the week. This, is the only module that I would willingly overwork myself for. The parallels to the modern world are startling.
A close second is HY114, the Military Revolution module I took last year.
Top Album of the Year - The Arcade Fire's The Suburbs
A lyrical odyssey for the modern day Ulysses - the modern man who battles Tube Strikes, rude Bank Tellers and his Boss instead of mythical monsters. The man who fights against his consciousness and himself, in an era of existentialism. I adore this album and the way it stimulates my thoughts.
Top Bizarre Weather Experience of the Year - 18th Dec 2010
This was the day Christoph and I set off for Germany, as further documented here. We left the house at about 11:40am, for King's Cross St Pancras - the train was set to leave at 12:58pm. We stepped out into a howling wind, a large unprecedented blanket of snow, and a blizzard so thick that visibility was down to 20 metres. I was drenched after walking in the snow for 2 minutes, and then walking into the warm train station.
Top Growing Up Experience - Having the Landlord from Hell
As a person, I am usually unable to be assertive. I am completely conflict adverse, provided I feel that I have not been backed into a corner with no further course of action. My landlord however, is someone who would not do anything else one pays hard ball and fights against him. Latest news of why-my-landlord-is-a-shite: the shower heater has been spoiled since 20th Dec. It has still not been fixed, and there is no hot water in the house at all. Thank goodness I'm still staying in Germany till the 5th Jan.
I have also started to put my nasty letter writing skills - gleaned from all those legal internships, thank you very much - into good use. Damn this landlord.
Top Series of the Year - Dexter Season 4
I watched Dexter Season 4 with my Dad over the Summer break. Some nights, we even watched 2 episodes! It is by far the best, most thrilling, exciting and unexpected TV series I have seen thus far - beating The Pacific, which we also watched together during Summer.
I miss watching TV with my Dad.
Top Newly Discovered Awesome Thing - The Extra Computer Labs in Lincolns' Inn Chambers
Looking for a computer to work on in school is a nightmare. Thank God I finally got around to discovering the new com labs. Pity these don't seem to have heating though.
Bonus: Daddy Donkey's stomach-filling burriots, sold for lunch at the Leather Lane market behind my house
Top New Author - Marina Lewycka
The author of notably, a Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, I discovered her over the New Years celebration I shared with my parents on Sibu Island. The small resort we stayed in had a copy, and I devoured it within a day. Since then, I have sought out all her books when I am in need of a cheering. Her depiction of the failings of human behaviour, coupled with a very well and humous narrative, make her the best author I have discovered in 2010.
Top Game - Heavy Rain
I admit to have played like a grand total of 5 minutes of this. However the friends I played it with, JH, Steph, and Ianthe one crazy exasperating night from 9pm to 6am the next day (because they insisted on completing it, with the proper happy ending), make this a memorable game for 2010.
Top Skill I learned this year - Cooking
I cook. Not too badly too apparently. Woo hoo. Which is good because I am often hungry.
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Taa people, have a good New Years!
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Käppele
In German the word for Nine, Neun (sounds like: Noin), sounds like Elmer Fudd from loony tunes saying "Nine". I just had to get that off my chest, because I keep thinking it every time I attempt to learn the numerals in German.
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Sunday, Christoph and I woke at 2pm, to eat a massive spread of breakfast. Dinner incredibly, was scheduled for 5pm, and was roast goose. Christoph, his mum and I went for a walk before around the area, and after she left Christoph and I threw snowballs at ducks and at poles. Then we had om nom nom goose at a pub nearby the house with his mum and sister. Not so om nom nom were the weird green stuff that had the consistency of creamed spinach, and the potato balls which were... chewy?
On Monday, Christoph and I went to visit the Käppele. It was a bad idea because the way both up and down was completely covered with 25cm deep snow. I fell down 5 times, got massively pissed off, stopped feeling my toes (which somehow started to hurt a while after I lost feeling) and became a massive grumpy bitch. BAH, the snow.
Afterwards, we went to the Christmas market in Wurzburg central and had a Bratwurst, before wandering around. Christoph bought me a cute palm sized polar bear there. For dinner, we went to a nice restaurant along the Main river, and I had sea bass. By then however, I was very tired from the chaos of the day and the previous few days. When the family friend, WoHu turned up however, I quickly woke up ("Hallo Herr Bundes chancellor"). He was quite a character, bursting into the restaurant practically shouting "Hallo my friends" and introducing himself as the bundes chancellor. All the other tables stared at us. It was as if God had rolled Joshua Cao and Alistair Chew together, into a German high school teacher who speaks excellent French and English, and had an academic interest in WWI and WWII military history. Later, Christoph's mum joined us. When we left, WoHu persuaded me to steal an ornament from the table, a styrofoam ornament that looked like a cookie with sprinkles. I think he took one too.
Yesterday, I stayed in and watched The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, because Christoph went to Heidelburg to visit his friend. It was an excellent film. At night I went out with Christoph's mum to town, to get some random items and have dinner in a very nice Franconian wine pub. She ordered a Rostling for me, which was very sweet and nice. We shared a platter of sausages, I particularly enjoyed the wine sausage and the potato salad which reminded me of a dish my grandma used to cook at home. Then I had a plate of beef tartare, which I messed up by putting too much everything - salt, capers, onions, gherkins - because I am an idiot. Despite the screwing up, it was still very tasty and we both ended dinner completely stuffed. Then we went back, and Christoph's mum translated the news for me for a while before retiring to bed.
Today I am just bumming, waiting for Christoph to come back. Meep.
-----
Sunday, Christoph and I woke at 2pm, to eat a massive spread of breakfast. Dinner incredibly, was scheduled for 5pm, and was roast goose. Christoph, his mum and I went for a walk before around the area, and after she left Christoph and I threw snowballs at ducks and at poles. Then we had om nom nom goose at a pub nearby the house with his mum and sister. Not so om nom nom were the weird green stuff that had the consistency of creamed spinach, and the potato balls which were... chewy?
On Monday, Christoph and I went to visit the Käppele. It was a bad idea because the way both up and down was completely covered with 25cm deep snow. I fell down 5 times, got massively pissed off, stopped feeling my toes (which somehow started to hurt a while after I lost feeling) and became a massive grumpy bitch. BAH, the snow.
Afterwards, we went to the Christmas market in Wurzburg central and had a Bratwurst, before wandering around. Christoph bought me a cute palm sized polar bear there. For dinner, we went to a nice restaurant along the Main river, and I had sea bass. By then however, I was very tired from the chaos of the day and the previous few days. When the family friend, WoHu turned up however, I quickly woke up ("Hallo Herr Bundes chancellor"). He was quite a character, bursting into the restaurant practically shouting "Hallo my friends" and introducing himself as the bundes chancellor. All the other tables stared at us. It was as if God had rolled Joshua Cao and Alistair Chew together, into a German high school teacher who speaks excellent French and English, and had an academic interest in WWI and WWII military history. Later, Christoph's mum joined us. When we left, WoHu persuaded me to steal an ornament from the table, a styrofoam ornament that looked like a cookie with sprinkles. I think he took one too.
Yesterday, I stayed in and watched The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, because Christoph went to Heidelburg to visit his friend. It was an excellent film. At night I went out with Christoph's mum to town, to get some random items and have dinner in a very nice Franconian wine pub. She ordered a Rostling for me, which was very sweet and nice. We shared a platter of sausages, I particularly enjoyed the wine sausage and the potato salad which reminded me of a dish my grandma used to cook at home. Then I had a plate of beef tartare, which I messed up by putting too much everything - salt, capers, onions, gherkins - because I am an idiot. Despite the screwing up, it was still very tasty and we both ended dinner completely stuffed. Then we went back, and Christoph's mum translated the news for me for a while before retiring to bed.
Today I am just bumming, waiting for Christoph to come back. Meep.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Wurzburg, Deutsche Bahn and Eurostar
"Hello Mum and Dad,
Prepare yourselves for a very long rant against Deutsche Bahn (the German train company) and Eurostar.
So as both of you know, Christoph and I were 2 hours 15 minutes delayed because the train from Brussels was missing. Initially the Eurostar people kept saying the delay was due to "bad weather in France" which was delaying the train - but the Paris 1:30pm train came on time anyway. Fine. But from saying the train would be 30 minutes late, they increased it by 15 minute increments every 15 minutes until the train FINALLY came at 3:15pm - and left the station at 3:30pm. The final kicker was that the train we finally took to Brussels was't even the train that we were due to be on, they had instead given us a replacement train. God knows what the hell happened to the people on the earlier train from Brussels to London.
Now the problem was that had the train been on time, we'd have been in Brussels with a comfy 2 hours and 20 minutes buffer. Surprise! We didn't make the train. First the train went slowly due to bad weather (acceptable, I grudgingly concede), but SECONDLY the train stopped for 10 minutes in Calais FOR THE CREW TO CHANGE. The train was like 45 minutes into its journey, WTF?! On the train, a eurostar employee finally comes along trying to gather numbers for the people who needed to make transfers to Germany, and it turns out to be easily half the entire carriage. It's then that we meet Anna, another German girl who is a student in the UK who is headed towards Wurzburg too. The eurostar employee says that she'll come back with more information. She never comes back.
As the train pulls into Brussels, the train conductor lovingly tells us that we have missed our train to Frankfurt (thank you very much) and that if we want to head to Frankfurt, we should take this other totally random train that is, by the way, leaving in 10 minutes. Cue what must have been 100 people running from one train to the other, dragging/carrying large pieces of luggage. This is approximately 7pm local time, and I have eaten nothing since which was very light in London. When we finally arrive at the platform, I am extremely suspicious because for some reason I think Liege is in the Netherlands... and we're headed to Germany. Christoph asks the conductor, he says Yes Yes Yes! and I doubt he even listened to the fucking question. We get on anyway since everyone else is, and that's what the previous train conductor said. All the while there were NO EUROSTAR EMPLOYEES ANYWHERE TO BE FOUND, not when we got off the train, not when we boarded the new one. WHAT THE FUCK.
So we arrive in Liege, a town that neither Anna nor Christoph had heard of (surely this is not a good omen right?) and the place is deserted except for obviously German and former Eurostar passengers lost and completely wandering around. Great. There is still no food to be found anywhere, although some people seem to have found a Kebab shop in goodness knows where and people (including us) are staring at them enviously. There is again no one giving directions. Through deduction, the passenger mass realises they must then go to Aachen, which is some German border town I have never heard of. The train for that is 20 minutes late, and we all wait 35 minutes in the biting negative degree snowy cold, stomachs rumbling but with no food in sight.
When the train comes, we all pile on, overwhelming the poor train and its passengers. Somewhere on this train, we leave Belgium, enter The Netherlands and then enter Germany. I have taken a tour of Western Europe without even asking for one. That's great. At Aachen, same thing as in Brussels, everyone gets off and runs the fuck for the train for Cologne. Then from Cologne we run to catch to the train to Frankfurt, which it turns out is delayed by 1 hour 30 minutes. Do you see a trend here? Somewhere around this time I totally lost hope, become grumpy, cold, hungry (I think my stomach started digesting itself) and a total pain in the ass. Thank goodness Christoph is much more patient and cheery than me.
We arrive at Frankfurt at 3:20 am in the morning. I am totally pissed off and hungry. While leaning on our luggage and looking extremely pissed off, Christoph and Anna go to talk to the Deutsche Bahn people (FINA-FUCKING-LY) and they manage to wrangle money for an epic 127km (or somewhere around that figure) taxi ride to Wurzburg. There are amazingly shops open at the station, and amidst navigating among hobos, I FINALLY GET SOME WARM FOOD AFTER 12 HOURS. Throughout the trip, there was either no food, or no time to buy food. Anna, Christoph and I share the cab back, and the driver is an amazing ex-banker from Pakistan who speaks German, and English with an American accent because he studied and worked in Texas before. According to Christoph, he was driving very scarily because he was overtaking other cars. (*Note: the Autobahn had almost broken down into a one lane roadway because there was just too much snow for the snowplows to handle. You couldn't see the road at all, just snow.) I don't care/notice because I am honestly beyond caring/dead asleep by then.
We arrived at his mother's place at 5:30am in the morning, hungry. We were supposed to arrive at 12 midnight, with warm bellies. As predicted, his mother woke up (because all parents are like that around the world) and went back to sleep after being happy and satisfied that we had finally reached home safely. Shower, sleep, and we woke up at 2pm today.
Deutsche Bahn racked up a €200+ taxi bill, and they're refunding half our train ticket price. I heard eurostar owes us one free ride because the delay was due to technical faults. Christoph thinks this made it all worth the trouble. Me? I hope both companies BURN IN FUCKING HELL.
Love,
Your Daughter"
Prepare yourselves for a very long rant against Deutsche Bahn (the German train company) and Eurostar.
So as both of you know, Christoph and I were 2 hours 15 minutes delayed because the train from Brussels was missing. Initially the Eurostar people kept saying the delay was due to "bad weather in France" which was delaying the train - but the Paris 1:30pm train came on time anyway. Fine. But from saying the train would be 30 minutes late, they increased it by 15 minute increments every 15 minutes until the train FINALLY came at 3:15pm - and left the station at 3:30pm. The final kicker was that the train we finally took to Brussels was't even the train that we were due to be on, they had instead given us a replacement train. God knows what the hell happened to the people on the earlier train from Brussels to London.
Now the problem was that had the train been on time, we'd have been in Brussels with a comfy 2 hours and 20 minutes buffer. Surprise! We didn't make the train. First the train went slowly due to bad weather (acceptable, I grudgingly concede), but SECONDLY the train stopped for 10 minutes in Calais FOR THE CREW TO CHANGE. The train was like 45 minutes into its journey, WTF?! On the train, a eurostar employee finally comes along trying to gather numbers for the people who needed to make transfers to Germany, and it turns out to be easily half the entire carriage. It's then that we meet Anna, another German girl who is a student in the UK who is headed towards Wurzburg too. The eurostar employee says that she'll come back with more information. She never comes back.
As the train pulls into Brussels, the train conductor lovingly tells us that we have missed our train to Frankfurt (thank you very much) and that if we want to head to Frankfurt, we should take this other totally random train that is, by the way, leaving in 10 minutes. Cue what must have been 100 people running from one train to the other, dragging/carrying large pieces of luggage. This is approximately 7pm local time, and I have eaten nothing since which was very light in London. When we finally arrive at the platform, I am extremely suspicious because for some reason I think Liege is in the Netherlands... and we're headed to Germany. Christoph asks the conductor, he says Yes Yes Yes! and I doubt he even listened to the fucking question. We get on anyway since everyone else is, and that's what the previous train conductor said. All the while there were NO EUROSTAR EMPLOYEES ANYWHERE TO BE FOUND, not when we got off the train, not when we boarded the new one. WHAT THE FUCK.
So we arrive in Liege, a town that neither Anna nor Christoph had heard of (surely this is not a good omen right?) and the place is deserted except for obviously German and former Eurostar passengers lost and completely wandering around. Great. There is still no food to be found anywhere, although some people seem to have found a Kebab shop in goodness knows where and people (including us) are staring at them enviously. There is again no one giving directions. Through deduction, the passenger mass realises they must then go to Aachen, which is some German border town I have never heard of. The train for that is 20 minutes late, and we all wait 35 minutes in the biting negative degree snowy cold, stomachs rumbling but with no food in sight.
When the train comes, we all pile on, overwhelming the poor train and its passengers. Somewhere on this train, we leave Belgium, enter The Netherlands and then enter Germany. I have taken a tour of Western Europe without even asking for one. That's great. At Aachen, same thing as in Brussels, everyone gets off and runs the fuck for the train for Cologne. Then from Cologne we run to catch to the train to Frankfurt, which it turns out is delayed by 1 hour 30 minutes. Do you see a trend here? Somewhere around this time I totally lost hope, become grumpy, cold, hungry (I think my stomach started digesting itself) and a total pain in the ass. Thank goodness Christoph is much more patient and cheery than me.
We arrive at Frankfurt at 3:20 am in the morning. I am totally pissed off and hungry. While leaning on our luggage and looking extremely pissed off, Christoph and Anna go to talk to the Deutsche Bahn people (FINA-FUCKING-LY) and they manage to wrangle money for an epic 127km (or somewhere around that figure) taxi ride to Wurzburg. There are amazingly shops open at the station, and amidst navigating among hobos, I FINALLY GET SOME WARM FOOD AFTER 12 HOURS. Throughout the trip, there was either no food, or no time to buy food. Anna, Christoph and I share the cab back, and the driver is an amazing ex-banker from Pakistan who speaks German, and English with an American accent because he studied and worked in Texas before. According to Christoph, he was driving very scarily because he was overtaking other cars. (*Note: the Autobahn had almost broken down into a one lane roadway because there was just too much snow for the snowplows to handle. You couldn't see the road at all, just snow.) I don't care/notice because I am honestly beyond caring/dead asleep by then.
We arrived at his mother's place at 5:30am in the morning, hungry. We were supposed to arrive at 12 midnight, with warm bellies. As predicted, his mother woke up (because all parents are like that around the world) and went back to sleep after being happy and satisfied that we had finally reached home safely. Shower, sleep, and we woke up at 2pm today.
Deutsche Bahn racked up a €200+ taxi bill, and they're refunding half our train ticket price. I heard eurostar owes us one free ride because the delay was due to technical faults. Christoph thinks this made it all worth the trouble. Me? I hope both companies BURN IN FUCKING HELL.
Love,
Your Daughter"
Thursday, December 09, 2010
1,251
Writing from the quad, and freezing my fingers off (why the hell is this place covered but not heated again?) and eating my last Cranberry, Bacon and Brie baguette from the SU Shop of the term, I have just come out of an epic 1 1/2 hour discussion with my GV225 GTA regarding tomorrow's presentation that has already given me a panic attack.
1 more damned day to go.
1 more damned day to go.
Monday, December 06, 2010
Lead into Gold
Dear KLM,
Please stop sending me emails with "Have a European Winter Holiday! SGD$1,389 only!" I am getting an unintended winter in what appears to be the worst winter in years. Seeing emails like that makes me want to shriek and get on a plane and fly where the temperature never drops below 25 degree celcius, and the food never fails to make one salivate.
-----
Last Wednesday, I went for the Arcade Fire at the O2 with Jia (and on another tangent, fuck they played Modern Man the next night). It was awesomezzzly awesome and awesomezzzly fun. I could not have asked for a better companion. Well that and the two happy drunk Brit girls next to us.
Getting there however, to the O2 arena, was an adventure in itself. I'm quite proud that I didn't get a single panic attack, even though it was a decidedly good time to get a panic attack. After praying multiple times that there'd be no suicides on the Central Line, I managed to get my ass to Stratford without much incident. At stratford however, I got lost. When I finally found the Jubilee line, I got confused by the directions because it was a terminus. After asking a cleaning lady, I sat down as people began to stream in. However after 10 minutes the PA announced that there was a signal failure at North Greenwich, and the train would not be able to run -______________________________-
The concert tickets said 6:30pm, and it was currently 5:40pm. I was stuck in Stratford, a completely alien place, and needed to get to North Greenwich. If there ever was a good time to get a panic attack, it was at that exact moment. However somehow I managed to keep calm and ask for help and was directed to bus 108. After finding the right bus stop (which was a mess since all the commuters had been redirected), I managed to squeeze in. On the bus I started to feel a little worried that I would miss the stop/the bus would take too long, but I kept myself distracted by looking at road signs and landmarks, so I had a rough idea where I was. Outside, it started to snow.
When we finally reached North Greenwich, 3/4 of the bus got off. Then I went off in search of food. I ended up with some unsatisfactory Chicken Yakisoba from Wasabi since there was nothing else to eat. When Jia finally came, we raced to get in side, thinking we were late, when we realised we were very very early. Why print 6:30pm on the tickets when the actual concert starts at 9:10pm? GAHHHHH. Anyway Devandra Banhart came out at 8:00pm, so that was something. The rest of the time was spent chit chatting and stoning, as we watched the mosh pit swell in size.
The concert, when it did finally start, was good. I love Arcade Fire. Jia and I sang along, jiggled in our seats and stood up and danced towards the end. Exuberance ftw.
Getting back however, was a nightmare. There was a massive queue just to get into the tube station, and everyone was having a mass singalong to Wake Up, which was kind of cute. At the station, we got sandwiches from the shop and stood outside eating. We saw a Ha-Ha Road on a map. Twice, drunk men men shouted KONNICHIWA at us, and waved randomly. However when we walked into the tube station, we got separated by the mass of people and never saw each other again. Boo.
I ended up taking the tube to Southwark and catching 45 back home, after a chilly and snowy 5 minutes out in the cold. During those 5 minutes, I was insanely paranoid because it was Southwark at 11:45pm in the night, and eyed the few people around suspiciously. I question my wisdom repeatedly. However of course, nothing happened. Phew. I even took some pictures:
Friday, December 03, 2010
It's coming
This is one of the days I really just want to curl into a ball and cry. From my gmail getting hacked, to again a massive 5 week long spell of disrupted sleeping patterns, headaches, indigestion and general extreme stress, plus work assignments and the fact that I am weeks behind in some modules - I really feel like I don't know how to do it anymore.
I feel like I cannot go any longer, any further.
I feel like I cannot go any longer, any further.
Thursday, December 02, 2010
My insomnia is worsening
It's 2:35am, and I'm not tired or able to sleep at all. I really badly just want to sleep.
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