Hadha Al-Wakt Fi Al-Fasl

That time of the semester:

1. when for the past two weeks (last Friday notwithstanding) my room is my entire universe of existence.

2. when 4 pieces of stale bread and cheese is sufficient to get me through a day.

3. when the only human contact I had was limited to awkward hey-how's-revision exchanges in the corridors (or the inevitable vending machines, what have you).

4. when I suddenly pick up past obsessions again (ie The Big Bang Theory; Nodame Cantabile; football).

5. when I start making outrageous plans for the impending holidays. (Hobart ho!)

6. when I write pointless posts only to delete it afterwards.

On the bright side, come Friday (or Saturday, other things considered) I'll be back in the USSR (you don't know how lucky you are... boy!).

/// slaps self.

Within 3 Hectic Years

Please Please Me (1963)

Revolver (1966)

Confound it.

#edit: And two years later:


White Album (1968)

Work And Play

Funny isn't it? We're born honest and then we get taught not to say what we really feel.

I used to feel reluctant to be picked up by Nellie, to go and play with the boys. I'd take five hours of housecleaning than 50 minutes of trying to please them. Not one person who I told of my current part-timing express less than surprise. I have always found it difficult to feel affection for children in general. I love my younger sisters and cousins, but not other people's. Treat them as your own, said my mother. Yeah right.

Over the hours I spent at the Claydens, though, I have begun to feel attached to them, because they taught me of so many things that I have neglected to pick up on during my childhood. And they remind me, that children, more than anything, need to be understood.

Meet Oliver (3) and Piet (4-going-on-5) Clayden.

"Can I tell you something really serious?"
"Yes, what is it?"
"I like pink, but I'm a boy!"

"Smile, Oliver!"
"Geessshhhh"

Makes me miss Lahad Datu even more - how I have always neglected trying to understand the younger ones at home.

Protest Jam

I had a nasty feeling that I was always tucked away somewhere else when things were happening. Last Monday, I was at a tutorial when I heard the marching band across the Fellows Road, from the Chancelry.

If any school is poised to take the slough of the budget cuts head on, it would have been the School of Music. Although not in their usual repertoire (which many will testify to), they got their point across to people with low civic awareness (such as yours truly). Loud, and maybe uncharacteristically crass, but wonderfully unified:

Had it been the School of Law it would have been a pain to watch: a postulation based on stereotypes would conjure the image of a bunch of self-important know-it-alls shouting inexplicable proses of protest to the university and against each other. That, or a mass exodus elsewhere.

Cogito Ergo Sum

They have it best, don't they?

They can tell you why they are there
and they didn't even have to say

even you know their reasons.

But you,

why are you here?

As you walk down that road, every single day

talk to faces that pass you by

and stare into the same sky that other people do -

and think of things other people are thinking -
tell me,

why are you here?

You go where you're supposed to go

do what you're supposed to do

say what you're supposed to say

do you feel what you're supposed to feel?

are any of those really yours?

and, tell me
why are you here?

What do you stand for?

and what do you know?

what do you believe in?

now tell me, are they really yours?

or are they merely instruments for you to fit in
when you have nothing else to show for yourself
regardless, tell me
why are you here?

When all you are is reduced to one question

and you don't get to hide behind all the universe have to offer

and all those presumptions that define you are suspended -
just you - in your entirety and individuality
would you really exist?
and if you would, tell me
why are you here?

You and I might not know it
but they have it best
because they know their happenstances
and they went to lands of the mind
you would not dare traverse.

As for me,
I don't know much myself -
all I know is that life is dull that way
and that's perfectly alright.

Is it so wrong
to feel cheated out of the years
where I borrowed others' dreams and inspiration?

Is it so wrong
to seek for one's self?

You need not mind me
I'm not really here
and to me,
you're not really there.

# forgive the melancholy on crack - it's week 11 into the semester and I am currently, very dangerously behind.

Naaa Na Na Na Na Na Naaaaa

This video is the best thing on the internet right now.

1st part:


Fun fact: Oprah had a Paulie phase during her girlhood.

2nd part:


0.05 No Doubt on what I suppose to be a tribute of the Shea Stadium Concert attire - 'Hello Goodbye' and 'Penny Lane'.

Protip: You might want to skip to 2.39 for Dave Grohl and Norah Jones singing 'Maybe I'm Amazed'.

5.10 for Steven Tyler taking on Abbey Road: 'She Came in Through the Bathroom Window', 'Golden Slumbers', 'Carry That Weight' and followed by the sage wisdom in 'In The End'...

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make....

9.23 James Taylor and an awesome woman whose name I don't quite know singing 'Let It Be'......

And at 11.47 the song slides into a big choir and the Na Na Na Na Na Na Na from Hey Jude we all know so well.

Oh, I have tears in my eyes...

Nowhere Man

So.

This is what my life has come down to.

Spending eight hours reading a manga even I find ridiculous.

Whilst listening to John Lennon calling me in a plea.



Nowhere man, 


Please listen


You don't know what you're missing


Nowhere man, 


The world is at your command....