why do i think the swedes are the best bunch of musicians?

http://www.swedesplease.net/

the same year - fairfield rollin good times, which we planned and executed and went waaay over budget. everyone came decked out to the theme - there were the beatles, cowboys, some in the 70's, some in genres we find hard to define, but it was awesome. murder on the dancefloor, barns and john rapping to ashanti or something! abs wore red stockings, we sold corsages; this was six years ago. unbelievable.

and lastly. i miss you already. to the crazy places, in july 08. i'll see you.

28 Jan 2008 (Mon) - Ngee Ann Poly, The Atrium
29 Jan 2008 (Tues) - NUS, Arts Canteen
30 Jan 2008 (Wed) - NTU, Canteen B
31 Jan 2008 (Thur) - SMU, Underground (outside Kopitiam)

Drop by our booth to say hi!!

Plus.

Score a SUPER SEXY at the Bar Exam and win nice nice stuff from New Urban Male.

Haven't got your sexy rings yet - we're giving out our last batch at the roves!!!

Those of you who have been dying to have your picture taken with our sexy whiteboards - last chance, don't say we never say.

We look forward to seeing you, sexy.

in advertising class in year 3, i did this radio commercial for invisible children. it had a cheesy title: so you think you've got problems.

it had this girl rattling off in the most irritating white accent, ranting about her shopping woes. i was inspired after reading blogs after blogs of the same subject.

then i came across sia's cd- some people have real problems, and today's public opinion class too - we were talking about something something so you think you've got problems.

i'm pretty sure the forces of nature are sending me a message.

your world is not even collapsing and you're sulking like a spoilt brat in the corner. whatisthisseh.

across the universe
good movie. go see it, esp if you like crazy fantasia stuff. and esp if you're not a beatles fan - you might become one after watching it, cause their songs could make a bit more sense to you. the covers are pretty sweet.

the film struck some sort of resonance because everything was one mad whirl and that was very similar to my state of mind and that time. getting sucked up into the whirl, no longer knowing where the ground is. oooh, dangerous.

i've been leaving traces of barrack obama on the blog because i adore him if i haven't already said before. barrack is a model of perfection and imperfection; so normal, yet so great. the way he has ran the campaign - presenting steak first (which everyone mocked as political inexperience) but the sizzle is on - not just sizzle and no steak (thanks Chang for such wise words), which pretty much happens everywhere else in this world. His campaign of hope, no kneeing of opposition - staying grounded. I like very much.

i don't like the way some things have played out and the fact that i've allowed them to - how I've not achieved what I had set out to do. I try very hard to be like You, but I don't think I have been a reflection of that sort of greatness. So more than anything, I don't want to finish the race yet, not this way.

how would that make you feel

“Words are not action and as beautifully presented and as passionately felt as they are, they are not action. What we’ve got to do is translate talk into action, and feeling into reality"

But Mr. Obama came back at her.

“The truth is, actually, words do inspire, words do help people get involved.”

all you need is faith no bigger than a mustard seed.

hmm.

what do you do, when everyone around you, self included, is exhausted. what do you do.

it just never ends.

Talk about wishes coming true for 2008

9 March 2008 - Esplanade Concert Hall.

I'm still flipping.

The one decadent thing that I tried to indulge in this holiday was to catch up on the movies that I’ve missed over the year. Considering how we’re now videoezy members, and how I hardly go to the cinemas during the semester, and how rachel's birthday month gets us 20% off rentals, I’ve been poppin in a dvd every time there was time, ezy ezy.

Here’s the list: Little Miss Sunshine (hit), Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (mistake), Namesake (okay), Invasion (almost hit), Motorcycle Diaries (hit), Music & Lyrics (okay), I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (okay – I had to watch it cause I try to watch every Sandman flick there is out there, it’s a personal conquest), Hairspray (okay), I can’t remember the rest but there was surely more mistakes than hits.

Freedom Writers, I heard so much about, and I knew I would ultimately watch this Gangster’s Paradise version two one day cause it’s one of those. I expected the plot, the fuzzy feeling such movies will trigger, the formula, and that would pretty much be it. Eject the disc and return it to the store.

(You see where this is going.)

There was more; now I am here furiously typing, resurrecting an already put away dream.

I don’t know what I’m working towards now, I can pretend to know when people ask me, or I can whip out an answer that is truthful yet incomplete. An interim response to what is going to happen next, to satisfy the person asking, and myself temporarily.

I can’t be in the media, and that is getting clearer each day. Four years of getting myself prepped for it, but only feeling like I can never be part of it as the completion of the preparation draws nearer.

There’s no mistake in what has happened these four years. What the education has given me, is probably more than what I would have received anywhere else. The way things played out, the experiences, the people met, the way I have been taught to communicate, to think, to digest, to interpret – it could not have come together in any other better way for sure.

Yet, the clearest thing that has emerged in these four years for me, is what is wrong with the media: the paradoxes, the ironies, the contradictions, the effects and its causes. Do I have the mettle, the determination, the grit to fight it and make sense of it? Not now no. Am I disillusioned, weak, and everything that Nietzsche describes the coop-outs to be? Very possibly so, in his screwed up definition, yeah.

The first official job I ever had, was relief teaching in a neighborhood school when I was 19. I taught Secondary Four Normal Technical streamed students Mathematics and Physical Education and got paid a ridiculous $65 a day doing that (and by ridiculous I mean too much). I had my fair share of being ignored, being teased, being screamed at in the classroom. I had my fair share of sitting with students and having them tell me about their lives, having a senior teacher telling me not to waste too much time on them, having to be strong for the kids who needed someone to cry to, having to stand in between fights as kids threw punches at each other during fights that ran along racial lines. I had my fair share of witnessing the better students in the school receive the better treatment, while the weaker kids, that were deemed weaker by the system, receive no treatment. The winning formula for the movies, but a truth that shamefully exists.

It sounds too trite and cliché; and worse, it sounds like I enjoy being part of this local version Gangster Paradise so that I can write all about it at the expanse of these lives. But I don’t – I don’t enjoy the fact that there is inequality even in this perfect little island, that there are students falling through the cracks, that there are students being affected by the things they see in the media, or the things they see at home, that there are students being uncared for. I don't enjoy it when someone says that these things are inevitable because of allocation of resources, and that you need to look at it from the perspective that many students have benefited from this system - myself included.

But most of all, I don’t enjoy the fact that I can see someone very close to me, in these students, and because I know where the choices they are making will bring them, and their destination set unless someone tells them something they have never been told before, I find no joy in the everyday struggles of these students.

Ever since I walked away from deciding to go into teaching, and embraced this other idea of a dream, there has just been too many times that I have looked back at what I could be doing, if I had more than 5 months.

I’m not blindly aspiring to be Ms G. and I am aware that it is afterall a film, albeit real life story, edited with many things in between cut out, lined with tracks by Common and MTV-style effects; marketed well. All I am aspiring to be is a useful person, doing something that would matter, doing that which He planted in my heart. I only think that the reason why I’ve been frustrated and discouraged of late is because I am shelving the right dream and chasing wrong, more convenient ones.

We are all meant to do different things. I am certain that I am going to have friends who will become great journalists, great documentarists, great producers, great researchers and great public-relationists/advertisers that hopefully will work towards changing the landscape from what it is today - I know that in some of them, there is grit, and passion, to make the landscape a better one. And while I wish that I will have a fraction of that grit and passion, I probably would be trekking a different path towards what I truly have the heart for.

So i conclude, that I need to be held accountable for the things I write, that's why I blogged about this, in this very drama fashion. And when I forget, and lose sight, I hope one of you will remind me of what I have once said.

love :)