Heyyy ya…

Hmm I really think I’m finding my groove right now, as far as studying and getting into the flow of school and work and everything.

I know I’m still behind a week or so in terms of readings and tutorials and everything is concerned; but I just feel I have good, optimistic vibe going into halfway through the third week of school. I know that the work tempo’s gonna step up real good from this week onward – and I’m confident I can take it.

Need better time management, though – no more zoning out in front of TV. Except for South Park and Jon Stewart. Just had awesome workout while watchin South Park… need to keep up this workout thing too!

This week is the last week I have to wear this hulking knee brace on. I cannot wait to take it off, I swear. It’s been a long 6 weeks and soon I’ll be done with it. About time… autumn’s finally here and this stupid brace is getting on my nerves.

Hah – and have been bumping into Singaporean kids over the last coupla days… after meeting em all on Saturday, I realize that campus isn’t really that big after all. It is a small world… Big school.

Oh and I scanned a load of my old army pics and a coupla new ones so new pictures I’ll post over the next couple days…

Forgive the absolute lack of metaphor and imagery in my recent posts… I’ve been really spent lately, emotionally and physically… and there’s no time to rest anymore(!) but I’m good. I feel good, for once, at ease and everything…

I’ma take things one thing at a time now… slowly.

I’m out.

Yee-aah. Let’s get this outta the way – I didn’t play a minute of computer today – a real accomplishment by my standards, considering how lazy sundays usually are. Yes, I did zone out listening to music. Yes, I did take long breaks to chat with my friends. And yes – I just spent two hours working out and watching TV and lounging around.

But since noon I think I’ve been at work all the while; I did about three-odd hours of math and then tried to do some reading of this silly Greek tragedy essay by some “scholar”, which thoroughly disgusted me.

Which brings me to my first point; anyone who blogs, who has ever written an essay in her or his life, should read this short essay by the legendary George Orwell, whose quote has been on my site forever.

My Greek tragedy commentary readings were written by some fool of a Took… uh, professor who, wide though his knowledge in Greek mythology may be, is horrifically inept at writing. To express a single thought process or idea he tries to mask his own incompetence by embellishing every sentence with so many half-ideas, while at the same time using distastefully long words when short ones would suffice: resulting in a straight-out unreadable 20 page long paper.

I’ve come to a conclusion he probably doesn’t have much of a social life and has sex with farm animals.

somehow i can’t upload any photos for some reason so… bleah

What a day – and what a week. Another really hectic week passes; more so than week one, particularly since I had to switch classes to fit my timetable. Next week gets worse and tutorials begin and I’ve got a paper on Greek tragedy due Thursday and… Sheeeesh. Tomorrow shall do tons of readings, math practice, compile commerce notes and read my psychology stuff, too – though I fear m psychology readings will have to wait…

But enough about work, eh. All work and no play makes Joel a dull, dull boy.

Today I went for very, very cool MSSA (malaysian singaporean students association) orientation thing, which was tremendously well done and amazingly fun, I must admit. Met tons of people… who, for once, were my age and maybe slightly older… =)

We had this Amazing Race kinda thing, and went to Korea Town which just lies to the west of the school… pretty nice place, with a lot of food, like the esoteric sounding “sushi pizza” which the soph girls swore by… but I’m kinda skeptical about.

my fellow korea town exploring groupmates… this photo goes on the website, i think. thank you phei yee for picking the pic with me looking really silly =P

Not bad an experience, not at all, I must say. And I got in touch with my old schoolmate from RI, Sun Can! Amazingly enough, there are SEVERAL Rafflesians in the U of T… which we all discovered when we had this phototaking session late today.

Its just really heartwarming to be able to get together again with old RI/RG people… especially at this god forsaken frigid icy wasteland (oops)… And bitch about silly RI cheers and losing to AC (which also has a big contingent here, by the way) at rugby.

In the meantime, USA is still in a mess over Katrina’s aftermath… and Rita which thankfully died down a notch. I hope the people who were stuck on the highways during the storm are doing all right.

Allright-y… It’s getting really late and we – I – walked HELLA far today… I’m spent, spent, spent…

PS. Manchester United really gave it away today… I just hope they get it together, man. They just gave the game away. Come on Fergie… do your thang.

More tomorrow. I’m dead beat and out of words. Till then…

A-ha.

Once more, staying the brash hand of impulsive action has benefitted me. To no end.

Things have righted themselves, for the most part. As is the rightful course of things.

And I’ve sorted out my courses and tutorials again! This time it should be finalized and – phew – hopefully for the best since I had the excellent advice of a 2nd year soph babe instead of crappy website info…

Amen! Gonna hit the sack soon; need sleep since was awake till three plus last night on MSN…

PS. thanks for listening to me whine, Erin – I think it worked. Wonders. +5 points for Gryffindor for you!

PS2 – gwen stefani’s “cool” is such a good song. not ashamed to admit, i am.

yeah, thats what i said – i sense a disturbance in the force, a big-ass change in the whole grand frickin social scheme of things; a butterfly flapped its wings in some hilly foresty glade halfway across the world and i am here anxious to death from an emotional bloody tsunami just lurking under the surface of an otherwise-calm beach. i thread on the edge of tectonic plates grinding and smashing and gnarling against each other, with infinite rivers of molten crimson cruel magma brewing and restlessly churning underfoot, hidden beneath the thin flimsy veneer buffer of my slipshod psyche.

nothing at all is going on – nothing. at. all. is. going. on.

however, intuition – the one thing that has served me tremendously well since i kinda opened up my emo-radar some time ago – tells me that mr joel has either played his cards wrong, somehow, in the recent coupla days, or – hopefully – this is just another false alarm, the chop-suey flotsam result of erratic male numbskullness.

unfortunately, (might i add with a dash of pride) mr joel’s pirated sense of intuition is becoming increasingly… accurate.

maybe its cuz he doesnt “look so much into things” anymore, like he used to looong ago – he just feels that something isn’t quite right. he follows that ephemeral feeling in his gut, that inexplicable feeling that something’s gone terribly wrong somehow… and i am beginning to think that joel’s got a point there. here – right now.

i think you messed up somewhere, joel.

note to self -
time to give some rope. time to give a bit of reel. to step back and create a vacuum. to re-establish that personal space and spunk and character that you are, that makes you… you.

in other words, to sink back into your usual status quo.

IF you haven’t noticed, today and yesterday you had your FIRST cup of coffee, and your first mug of beer in a fortnight-plus. you have subconsciously been thrown out of your god-damned element, swept off your feet in an imbalance caused by none other than yourself.

so get your act together asap – you’re off form, off balance and in a position of severe disadvantage…

PHEW. great to get that off my chest. being honest to yourself (myself) is one of the things that i pride myself on. this delusional self-absorbed rant notwithstanding, i think you’re on the right track…

… you definitely know exacty – what – you – need – to – do.

NOTHING AT ALL.
BOCHUP.
EFF IT.

all together now – its time, high time, in fact – for that whole zen shit to come into play.

amen, homies.

PS. dear joel – thank you for nipping the problem in the bud. dont think too much on stuff – i know you still do that sometimes, which probably explains why you are writing to yourself, talking to yourself in the third person again, and generaly, looking like a crazy psychopath to anyone reading this.

PS2. Ahem. Back. To summarize the abovementioned tirade to myself, I would say that in recent times I think I’ve been a bit off, in every sense of the word, and, without revealing any more than I would like to, my intuition tells me that I have made a silly mistake recently, without even knowing.

Hence, the secret to righting things – do absolutely nothing. Whoever knows me well enough by now knows exactly what I mean… and probably the context which I have clumsily hinted at. (you moron)

Way to go, self.

another sunday passes; it’s been a long week. this morning, i woke up from what seems like the first night of proper rest i’ve had in a while, no thanks to my late night reading, tv-watching and gaming habits, admittedly…

well, i went to the eastern beaches of toronto today for a cass (canadian asian students-something) orientation meeting thing, and it was pretty cool; met a load of people who were fun, vibrant and sporty and everything – my only regret being that i couldnt really participate as much as i woulda wished, what with my bum knee and everything.

one thing that put me in the mood for fun today – before heading down to the cass’ training shed-thing… (on a side note, inane as this sounds… after going through NS, you realize that there is no better word to describe a shelter-like-thing than a training shed) i went to the cool and shady beach pub, sat down at the bar and had a HOEGARDEN. first beer in weeks. quicksilver heavenly ambrosia trickling down my throat.

its a really nice district though – the eastern beaches. it reminds me so much of marine parade, where i worked for a great three months with club pets and bliss magazine. there’s a stretch of nifty cafes and drinking places… i like drinking places. its so sunny and breezy and i bet it’ll be amazing too, in the winter.

i love the lake… (if you could call lake ontario a lake since its one helluva big body of water) i remember; last time i was in canada two years back id go running by the lake even in winter. the ice would form for tens of meters out into the water, and it would be snowy and cold but still really amazing with everything white and beautiful and nothing in my mind but my own sharp breathing…

oh and i finally scanned my old army pictures… so check this out… i look like a dork though but fuck it…

the irrepressible tango one – four

omg… i think im fallin sick or something it was scorching hot today, i sound like a girl now, and i think im feeling dehydrated and overheated and sick… im oging to sleep now without doing much reading at all… ugh

So therrrrre, Diana – here’s Mister Joel without special effects, make-up or airbrushing.

What a first day of university – I’m amazed, pretty pretty amazed by it all. Everybody’s just so… well, there are just so many people. I had an econs lecture with maybe two or three hundred people in the hall, and a math one with at least one-fifty… tomorrow I’ve got two lectures which require the use of the convocation hall – that’s gonna be huge, I swear. We’ll see, though.

And it seems summer is putting up one heck of a fight… it’s been SCORCHING today, after a week of mild and cool sunny days. Bad, bad summer. Stay down, biatch.

I still find it kinda unnerving how absolutely random everything is, and I don’t even mean random in that cliched, hackneyed over-used way – I mean random in its truest sense. It’s so humongously messy in every sense, the school, with thousands and thousands of people rushing around and… I wonder how I’ll be able to get to know anyone, to really know someone, to be close to someone in all this jumble of messy first impressions and ephemeral hello-and-goodbyes.

On the bright side of things – now how many times have I said that recently, I don’t know – things are looking okay; people seem friendly enough and offered help or said hi just… just because. I like that.

Work’s gonna pick up soon, however; I have that feeling that it’s gonna pick up real fast. I seem to have forgotten a heck of a lot of my math fundamentals in the last two years, even though I feel linguistically at my most comfortable now, thanks to working at Club Pets / Bliss for a couple months.

Anyway I find myself here on my bed again, typing and working dumbbells and crunches and physio exercises… I actually just saw The Ultimate Fighter 2, which is like that WWF rookie reality TV show, except its for UFC. The WWF has nothing on this shit… nothing at all.

Oh – and there’s an archery club on campus, and a revolver club and a rifle club too. I’m really tempted to join the rifle club, or the revolver one, since it’s actually pretty affordable since we’re students ‘n all. Hellla tempting… not that I was a marksman or anything in the SAF, but firing is always fun, and minus the sweat, the camo, the risk of getting charged – it’ll be reaaally fun. Hmm and maybe I can like apply some of my uber-soldiering skills into action for once…

We’ll see.

Time will tell eh? Haha back to crunches…