At this point, I'm actually more concerned with my own well-being because I've been ill for the past week and a half or so - too busy to rest and recuperate. Damn flu and recurring fevers. And by the way, I was just called a workaholic today. Not that I mind being called that, it only shows my work ethic is having an positive(?) impression and influence on others; but I think I've gotten too carried away with work for quite a bit.

Marketing turned out to be okay - heavy on concepts, but it's precisely what I'm good at. As for law, I'm a little miffed as there is a lot of memorisation involved, which I'm perfectly okay with, except that the flu bug makes my mind blank most of the time. I'm just super annoyed when I can consciously feel and sense that my mental faculties are weakening, especially during law when we're supposed to voice out many opinions, and my brain is *just* so slow. But apart from chiding myself a bit, there's nothing I can do to remedy this, except unless the flu goes away. So mean while, I get to look stupid in class as I give opinions that are stupid and incredulous when prompted to *try*. When teachers say try, they want you to _do_ it, as per usual. So yeah, with emphasis through tautology, I look and sound stupid in class. Flu sucks.

Cesc Fabregas does his part for Arsenal's official charity. In a bunny suit. Awesome, huh.

So anyway, hullo there, not in the best of moods because there's no Arsenal this week due to stupid internationals, no One Piece manga this week, Lakers lose to Denver Nuggs(or to be more accurate, they got their arses handed to them), yeah, stuff like that. And the weather. It's the worst. Basically, it reflects my general mood, not that I'm going to cry or something, just dark, grey, moody. Sucks!

So this week : Got through exams, went out with friends, nothing really eventful I guess. Went out with my parents to go pray at Bugis Street's GuanYin Temple just a little while back today. Now I'm not a devout buddhist, I just felt obliged to give my thanks because whenever I fall sick or have exams my mom prays to her so that I'd have her blessings and cope well. Hence, I just went there primarily to give my appreciation and to pray for my family and friends etc. I'm just not one to pray for myself because like I mentioned previously, I'm not exactly a pious person who has an absolute faith and zero doubts in an omniscient being and thus I don't deserve any blessings; but I suppose it could work if I prayed for others who may just happen to have faith. Now, I'm sure that makes sense to nobody but myself, so disregard that. Anyway I don't really like discussing religion in real life because my take on it is sure to provoke attack and polarise opinions, generally not a good thing. To me, it's just a tool to impart the societal ethos, virtues and to provide direction and support, or in the case with those so-called "conversations with god", a means for the subconscious to manifest and provide the answers an individual had all along, but hidden in the subconscious. So yeah, it's definitely a good thing in most cases, but it being a means of control and coercion is also a huge downside ie. radicalism/extremism, or producing patriotic zombies for the state (or establishment).

Excuse my babbling, I'm a little tipsy from the vodka over family dinner. Anyway I digress, I went to Kinokuniya after that. I'm not exactly sure why, but it's probably my favourite bookstore; I suppose it could be the ambience, the choice of books, the decor. I definitely prefer it over Times, Borders or Popular though, the lattermost being the worst. Anyway I got me a few books, Allan & Barbara Pease's new book (learned something new : love at first sight = Dopamine + Erepinephrine) , another Armchair economist book and finally, The Longer Tail, a new edition of Chris Anderson's The Long Tail, which is eponymous of the concept it tries to sell, which is basically a business strategy loosely based on the 80:20 Pareto distribution. Hope it comes to use in the next semester when I do Marketing.

Yeah, I'm doing Marketing, as well as business law next sem. Which happens to be like next week. NO HOLIDAYS, BOOHOO. Anyway, this calls for a review of the semester gone by. I'm not exactly pleased with my work even if I think I did do well, I was rather unproductive for most of the sem, I really need to put in more effort given that I'm already a year behind my peers. I suppose I need to increase my revision time to about 2-3 hours per day instead of the less an hour I've been doing for the past sem (lazy me). Well, originally attending school was only a means for me to pass the time, but I really want to take this seriously now, even if it's only a stopgap just in case I couldn't make poly...

I have 2 assignments for the next semester which I expect to solo, so I need all the time I can get to do well for both of them. I'm no fan of groupwork; it slows me down because group mates are more often than not a hindrance such that solo-ing would be better (well, I want things done my way and convincing people takes time I'd rather spend on such). So yeah, I'm all but prepared for the next sem, hope everything goes well.

I'm becoming more incoherent by the second, so I'm stopping here. Yum, darn good vodka.

~Win Ee

Warning: Long, boring update.

I've actually been unwell since having THAT steamboat @ Roxy Square to celebrate my eldest sister's birthday in the past weekend, the tom yam base disagrees with me and has argued with my stomach ever since, even now. Sadly, that tiff had to coincide with the examinations. I'm swearing off steamboats...for now.

On topic of exams. I'm pretty much done, with Management and Econs being over. Management was a little hellish on my right hand, wrote excessively to the extent that my fingers were locked tightly to the pen-holding position, blood flow having been cut-off due to the intensiveness and length of writing. Yeah, hurt like hell. And you know those abrasions you get from moving your hand as you write - THOSE HURT. All-in-all I wrote about 15 pages, if quantity was ever a barometer of aptitude; not like the concept is something I agree with, but it's something I'm pleased with myself about because I put in quite some bit of effort to study for it. This was harder than the previous semester due to the non-existent teaching this round which affected my motivation quite a lot because my tutor seemed to be reluctant to teach us and we ended up relying wholly on the library. Many brain cells were killed in the studying for this module, I borrowed like, more than 10 books to do research for my assignment and to revise. And for this module, there weren't any tests either, so it was quite scary going forward because the type of exam questions and my own ability was a totally unknown factor. Still, I've always been one to embrace uncertainty haven't I? ;D Anyway I can safely say I've done well for the subject, the heavy emphasis on examples, application, interpretation and evaluation was very much suited to my style because I rely heavily on my fluency, imagination and improvs to get me by and I did ably so for the exam.

Econs was kind of a disappointment though, I don't know if I've done excessively well, or excessively badly. I'd say I'm extremely good with my concepts and my theory explanation was very sound, but the peculiarity of the marking scheme leaves me on shaky ground. I mean like, Price ceiling, draw diagram and explain, 10 marks. UH, there isn't any content to cover that, intents, drawbacks, strategies and examples included, I think. So basically if you can explain the theory, it's already 5 marks? That is some heavy grade inflation. Given that econs has been my favourite subject and my forte, I finished the paper in half an hour. Should be a good thing, except the paper's duration is like 3 hours. So I kept thinking that something must have gone wrong - but I decided to stick to my guns and have faith in my ability, partly because I thought my answers were quite complete as well as concise, and I couldn't add any more to it(shockingly though, I saw some others asking for an extra booklet to write in!). Luckily, it wasn't only me who pretty much finished it so quickly as the first person to hand it in did so in the 1hr30min mark. But I stayed back anyway to wait for my clique so I enjoyed the aircon for almost 2hrs more.

SO IS THIS GOING TO BE GG.COM OR BOOMZ? I'll find out in three weeks when I get results through the mail.

Anyway, something I've noticed in the past month or so due to the free time spent on reading, I'm into new genres again! I used to be more of a fiction person with the Artemis Fowls, Harry Potters, Dan Browns and whatnot, but I've shifted more to non-fiction. My favourite authors now would probably be Levitt&Dubner, Malcolm Gladwell and Tim Harford. Levitt & Dubner happens to be one of the best tag-team writers whose works I've ever read. Levitt's my favourite economist and he's from Chicago Uni in the states, which produced other great economists like Milton Friedman, etc. He's very much a microeconomist, but I can see some bits of behavioural econs (holy shit it's a hybrid between psychology and econs! Dream.) in his work, some very interesting stuff. And Dubner, of course, writes for the New York Times(methinks), great journalist. Not going into detail about Gladwell, quite sure he's pretty well known for his work e.g. Tipping Point, Blink, etc. Brilliant journalist/sociologist. And Tim Harford, another great microeconomist, loved his Undercover Economist series. They're all as entertaining as fiction stuff and there's a lot to be picked up from their work too, very real and useful applications to real life. For example, have you ever thought of having kids as an economies of scale? (Given that I've always wanted to have a football squad number of descendants, this is relevant to me.) It's not worth it having only one kid, the fixed costs of having kids is a lot but as always, AFC falls when production increases. Yes, I'll have as many kids as I can afford. And another example quite relevant to students - given that grading is becoming more relative now and decided by bell-curves, the tacit-collusion theory can be applied to student bodies colluding together to slack-off and get good grades with minimum effort, as they mimic an oligarchy, especially a tacitly-collusive one, as there is an incentive for each and every one of them to study and get better grades than others, so as to top the cohort(and be the market leader). So teachers should skip tests altogether and opt for colossal exams so that they, as an oligarchy, cannot find out who the non-adhering ones are as they would have through taking multiple tests and pressure them into submitting to the rest and slacking-off, thereby making it ineffective. Some really interesting stuff like that. Love it. I'll definitely consider the option of continuing studying business and econs in MDIS if I get a scholarship and cannot get into Psychology in poly.

So yesterday I was re-tracing my steps and thinking about what I've been reading since I ever picked up Spot the Dog(OMG!) as my first book, not to mention those waterproof picture books I used to read whilst soaking in the bath(back when I still had one) and playing with soap suds & complementary rubber duckies(yes, I had those too, so cool right). 3-6 was probably all picture books, but at around 6 I started the Childcraft series of children encyclopedias, I really missed them, but they're in better hands now with my nephews who need them more. 6-8 was Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl, really loved those. 9-11 was when I started being interested in chinese mythology and history in general, started fervently collecting and reading the Horrible History series and those Asiapac comics(I used to do show and tell about them in primary 5!). I really, really enjoyed those. I'm still into history but not as much, secondary school made sure that interest was killed off pretty much. 12-15 was Harry Potter. Everybody was reading that when I was twelve. After that, more Harry potter, Manga, and Artemis Fowl. 15-17 was Dan Brown and a bit of other fiction thrown in. Yeah, it was interesting to chart my reading progression, just as I've done with the change in musical preference previously. My tastes and preferences have changed a lot in the past 2 years I'd say, unfathomably so.

Okay I'm a little tired writing this much, still not feeling too well due to the tummy disagreement with tomyam. I'll end here. My blog needed a long post like this after all the inactivity.

~Win Ee

But I digress. I've been away at tumblr for awhile after being unable to log-in. Anyway, I missed blogger even though tumblr was helluva fun, it's closer to a social-networking site ala Twitter, Facebook, et al, than a blog; the community there being largely indie, fun , closely-knit and filled with familiality, an adjective I just coined for describing how family-like it is. However though, I'm away on an indefinite hiatus from it as I found that I still MISSED blogger and tried to log in again, leading up to this post. Anyway, tumblr introduced me to a whole range of new stuff, hobbies like photography (more specifically, bokeh), watching basketball, watching glee, listening to indie music, et cetera, the list is endless. It became less of my own personal blog, but rather a symbiote that needs to be fed, as I was inclined to post on it by obligation rather by my own choice and decision. An addiction would be a rather more apt description. So I left. The opportunity cost of updating & reading @ tumblr for the whole day was too high, when my priorities should be studying.

On the topic of studying, I got back my results from semester 1, both As. I'm rather thriving in this new environment, where the lack of both a rigid, unchallengeable chain of command and a setting of an anachronistic diktat that suffocates and kills off by asphyxiation any source of motivation and interest, proved to be rather effective for me, as it eases all tension and there is an onus on my part to do well due to interest rather than through oppression. Yes, that is secretly a rather sour-grape and ungracious comment on my previous school, the top management of which decided it was appropriate to kick out 50 students wantonly as it desperately needs to amend its increasingly poor results and cover up it's poor management. I highly suspect it is the reason behind the exodus of teachers from the school.

Ironically, I'm currently doing econs and management and my exams are in a fortnight. I hope to do well, there's more desire to prove myself more than ever, as the desire is rather an understatement, it is rather a pent-up feeling of smoulderingly intense causticity begging to be relieved. I want to get that diploma/scholarship so much and soon, it hurts. Anyway, I'm on to a good start after the semester one results, as well as my recent econs test results (I actually aimed for full-marks, but I lost two marks to carelessness - I got accused of being greedy and of hubris due to that comment) and my completed management assignment. BRING IT ON, EXAMS.

Anyway, it has been a rather good month for me, all-in-all. Arsenal, the North London Derby, tonight!

~Win Ee