Wireless Internet is down at home. Slipped this in through some meddling with a LAN cable. Life as I know it is over. Horst-Grabens anyone?
Inject pathos here.
#4: Fifteen Minutes Old
Biology is worrisome. Even after the exam. For starters, I ran out of time and I’m hating the residual feeling. It’s that feeling a speed bowler gets when he tosses a wide after a huge run up. It’s the feeling an astronomer gets when clouds envelope the moon just as he’s done setting his telescope to aim for it. And it’s the feeling, no less of the sixteen year old who knows what Okazaki fragments are but didn’t have the time to put that down (it’s figurative for those who know; Okazaki didn’t really come up for the paper).
And it’s the boy who is to remain the stoic residue of a system that is bound not to make it. (Whatever ‘it’ is now synonymous with)
#3: In Between Dreams
One of the reasons why I love the writings of Kazuo Ishiguro is because of the way he manages to oversimplify life. His works are the epitome of simplicity and he manages to capture even dark histories in brightly colored capsules of text. Maybe that’s why I respect Ishiguro’s works are some of the finest fiction available.
I am hours away from my first exam (being in an environment where it pays to be calculative). And I feel nothing like the protagonists born to Ishiguro’s pen. In me, there is none of the order and conservativeness that his Japanese characters embody. Something in me wishes there was a way to return to the good old Victorian days but Einstein seems to have put an end to that possibility. In a way everything that is done in this school is being done for some materialistic reason that consistently fail to comprehend.
For some reason, I am tempted to offer another (another because those who know me will testify to my affinity to the man)Machiavelli writing, – “Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain“. Perhaps I’m being hypocritical in the penning of these lines, perhaps I’m the greedy one, but who know? Maybe Ishiguro will remind me that the glass is always half full.
#2: What A Wonderful World
Or otherwise. Exams are here. Gone are the days when all it meant to me was that holidays were close as well. Here at NUS High, I’ve actually got to work hard for grades I once took for granted, grades I had once scoffed at. And the study process is not less excruciating in the least.
Spasmodic drilling in the background breaks a serenity that I can only imagine to be existent. It’s a boring life. Coffee wakes me up at four. The only glossy pages I pore over are college textbooks I regret paying fifty dollars apiece for (I’ll sell them on Facebook for say 25 when they fall into disuse). When I boot my computer, it’s for the periodic monitoring of my Gmail and Facebook account. Occasionally the curious thirst for entertainment has to quench itself with a Bushism or two taken with a short outburst of laughter followed by a return to the Golgi apparatus or the next concept that I’ll recall to be redundant ten years from now.
I’ve been doing a copious amount of memory work for the past two to three days, concentrating solely on Molecular Genetics. And it’s starting to get on my nerves. Literally. Last night I sat up for an hour or so with DNA helicases and whatnot zipping around my head. And I fell asleep thinking. I’ve still got my essay on euthanasia to do up.
#1: This Is Your Way Out
For starters, the title is a product of groundless wandering of my mind, an activity that I’ve been engaging in only too often these days. To tell the truth, there really isn’t a way out. Two years ago, NUS High School presented a face that was clean, guileless if you like. At the end of my forth semester here, I stand corrected.
In a high school where the best time to critically analyze the school spirit is exam time and a quarter of the faculty holds PHDs (which deluded students ‘misunderstand’ as permanent head damage). Half of us are here to attend MIT and Stanford and Caltech or whatnot in the future, the other half wants a straight ride past the O and A Level systems. Truth be told, I get the sense hadly anyone buys the “you’re-here-to-stand-on-the-frontiers-of-science-blah-blah” bit.
The faculty are no better. Don’t get me wrong. Some of the teachers here at NUS High are excellent ones; they’re better than the hordes of teachers I’ve encountered in my life. But a major problem with some members of the faculty here is their mentality towards running through course content like items on a checklist, failing to inspire students in any manner. Perhaps I shouldn’t be blaming them; maybe it’s just the way the curriculum is organized.
A certain Mr Lim Ee Tuo (deputy principal at NUS High) on Wednesday branded several of us as hypocrites; pretentiously being nice to everyone at school while criticizing everything from canteen food to the faculty online on blogs and whatnot. I have to say I completely agree – we’ve got to stop being pretentiously nice in school.
