on the bus today i suddenly realised i now have a relatively clearly formulated answer to "what do you think is your greatest weakness" type of interview questions:

i dwell too much on compliments, because i try too hard to please.

i know for some people it's walking, but for me it's bus rides that make me super self-reflexive, which is also why i normally enjoy (prefer?) long bus rides alone.

i'm turning into more of a social recluse every day. i just tire of people sometimes.

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that previous sentence makes this song i want to talk about so ironic. anyway i like this much, much more than the tamia original.

times like this when i have more than one song i want on constant repeat make me wish i had a player that lets me create playlists on the go. but i still love the one i have now even if it's almost embarrassingly old; at least the battery doesn't die on me even if i use it everyday without charging it for a week. and yes, that is a dig at all you swanky apple users and your constant need to charge up haha.

i shouldn't be here because what i should be doing is typing my japanese blog post instead. but i am stuck because i honestly have too many thoughts in my head now to be able to sift out the relevant ones. it's a very strange topic anyway; what can you say about marriage/men and women?

i should just translate dane cook's brain ninjas stand-up skit. but that is going to turn out waaaaay weird in japanese.

やめたほうがいい。

since i'm here anyway, i'm going to try and make this a decent post so i won't disappoint my ardent readers (that means you, sam, since i think you're just about the only person who comes here anymore haha. and yvonne of the yukon too).

very pleasantly surprised by japanese and intercultural communication midterms, and when i say very i really mean very. but then media writing had to come along and dampen my spirits. but no matter at least there're rewrites for media writing! not that they help very much but any help is good i guess.

and i think i'm finally beginning to really appreciate the morning bus rides to school every wednesday even if it means i have to wake up at ungodly hours. when i'm not drifting off to sleep (and hitting my head really loudly on the window pane -- so embarrassing -_-) i get to see the first rays of morning creep up and light up the sky. i'm sure it'd be so much more picturesque if there weren't that many buildings in the way, but even the light filtered through the spaces between the buildings is pretty. and when you go over the bridge and you see the marina bay area it really almost feels worthy of a postcard. i would take a picture to try and show you guys what it looks like, but (a) the smudges on the window would kill the scene, (b) probably wouldn't be able to take a good picture on a moving bus (thank you mr. bus uncle for always driving so fast and getting me to school in good time), (c) a picture wouldn't be able to fully capture the light and how it hits the ground and surfaces and (d) someone might make off with my camera while i'm asleep.

use your imagination, kids, like spongebob always says.

or you can just wake up to take the bus at an unearthly time like i do.

by the way, hyun bin in the movie looks awesome as usual. so you've got both visual and aural goodness in one single video. how's that for multi-tasking and making the most of your time? wish the movie would be screened here as well, but i shouldn't get my hopes up for that. should just wait for the dvd to hit stores and maybe buy it online or something.

lyrics:

あの時は　本当にわからなかった

at that time i really did not know

僕たち二人　本当に美しかったんだね

the two of us were so beautiful

upset over many little things because so many things are not going the way i intend them to.

i was writing my study group report for japanese, and was trying to describe the frustration of not being able to say what i most wanted to say in japanese. but then i realised it happens even for english now -- sometimes words just fail me. and it's doubly as frustrating when it happens for english. it's not like i was amazingly eloquent to begin with, but i've always taken some pride at least in being good at english. i wouldn't mind as much if i couldn't convey what i wanted to say in chinese or japanese, because i would expect that. but nowadays i take so much time going over a sentence agonizing over how to put down what i really mean into words. it's happening so frequently now it scares me. i don't know how language ability can just vanish so suddenly and swiftly. or maybe it's because i'm just beginning to take notice of it now, and it has really always been this way?

sometimes i even catch myself explaining something in japanese -- or worse, in (bad) korean -- to myself. maybe things are starting to leak out of my head because it's filled to capacity, so the more things i learn in japanese the more english and chinese i forget. but it's really frustrating, especially when you want to say something and you can only remember how to say so exactly in some other language that the person you are talking to won't understand anyway.

it's like enforced silence. because i can't say what i really want people to know i figure i should just not talk. but not talking isn't the solution either. there'll be a deluge of reports for the next few weeks, so writing will be a problem too. i can already foresee so much frustration in doing them.

exchange might be cancelled, because of all the problems in japan now. i really don't know how i'll react if it really is cancelled. if it really is cancelled i hope i get the news when i'm home and alone. i've been looking so forward to it that it almost seems like it's already a done deal and that i'll just have to count down to the trip. but now everything's hanging in the balance. don't count your chickens before they're hatched, right? should have thought about that before everything.

not doing very well in my new media modules as well, so my cap is in danger too. but i've really been working hard, so the frustration piles up when you get back an assignment that you know you have really put in effort for and for which your grade is less than satisfactory. even my film and literature module for japanese studies isn't going well. and it really isn't like i don't try. i've worked hard for every assignment so i don't know what's going wrong. with media writing it just feels like i'm not cut out for writing simply. don't know if it's because i have convoluted thoughts or if it's because i'm just not good at writing.

work keeps coming even as i struggle to finish what i wanted to finish last week. i'm really wondering what the whole point is if you have to spend your whole life struggling to keep up. is there really any end to all of this anyway? this really shouldn't be the way to live. but i'm in arts, and it's supposed to be so much slacker than any other faculty. so it's really just a problem with me isn't it? you don't see the law or medicine students complaining very much, do you?

and then thinking about all the people in japan struggling with so much more than what i have to deal with now i just feel so superficial and hypocritical.

it's scary how all these thoughts just add on to each other and threaten to overwhelm me everytime i am not entirely preoccupied with something else. but i'm not depressed or anything; if i really had to describe my state of mind it would be something more like tired. i just don't understand anymore why everyone has to keep trying to reach for something their entire lives. you can call it motivation or ambition but it's really a never-ending race. you can keep running your entire life and there's no guarantee that you'll see the end even if you run so hard that you feel like you would collapse with the next step you take.

everyone's own problems seem the biggest to them. but there should be a way to look past all of this shouldn't there?

questions i will never know the answers to.

sometimes i think i make the smallest things out to be so much more than they really are, so i really just set myself up for disappointment. i have much too wild an imagination than what would be considered healthy. and because i imagine too much and ascribe too much meaning to small things i end up foolishly misleading myself to believe that certain things are true.

intercultural communication keeps going on about how we're separated from each other by the envelope of our own skins, so effectively we're always alone even if we're in a crowd and surrounded by other people. it's so fatally depressive that no matter how much you try no one will ever experience the exact sentiments that you feel. you can try and explain something a thousand times and ask"you know what i mean?" and the other person can NEVER ever really understand more than a fraction of what it is that you truly feel. on the flipside i guess it's also a good thing, in a way. it's like having a secret world into which you can retreat everytime you feel tired of dealing with the world outside. but to find someone who can understand you a bit more than that fraction that an average person would must be such a wonderful thing.

on a side note -- which totally encapsulates the warped nature of my mind -- when i typed 'we're separated from each other by the envelope of our own skins' the only image i had in my head was of pulling my skin out shred by shred in a woeful bid to have someone really understand. not going to happen, obviously, because i'm not twisted enough for that. okay actually the image i had wasn't exactly of myself; it wasn't someone i knew, just a vague sense of someone human doing so. i wonder if anyone's ever been pushed so close to the banks of sanity to contemplate doing something like that. i hope i never go close to that edge.

so glad that it's the weekend and i can at least slow down a little so i don't feel so suffocated by all the expectations. mostly they're my own expectations really, so there really isn't any pressure except that which i give myself to meet them. i just feel much more than usual that life is meant for something better than being just-so.

don't know how new media can still be called impersonal when it brings such devastation so close to you. wish there was something more i could do aside from just looking at updates that bring worse news each time the list jumps.

1) the assignments just keep on coming.

2) which wouldn't be that bad because it's really one assignment a week and probably a manageable workload, but every assignment is a pain in the rear since you have to do so much preparation for it. how am i supposed to know what counts as a meeting/speech/breaking news that is newsworthy? do speeches at nus open house count? is a focus group discussion a meeting? it's not like i randomly have board meetings i can sit in on.

3) the writing is so plain and so stark it's honestly stifling every time i sit down to write a media writing assignment. i'm not trying to say my normal writing is grandiose and eloquent and rich and immersive but media writing is like lifeless writing. it's so stuck-up with all its rules and requirements that need to be stuffed in a corner somewhere so someone can go grow mushrooms over them.

i know complaining here doesn't do a thing -- it doesn't even make me feel very much better despite the ranting. and because i know (hope?) i'm not the only weird person who googles module names in the hope of reading complaints/reviews from people who have taken the module before, DO NOT TAKE NM2220 INTRODUCTION TO MEDIA WRITING because you are courting death if you do so. or at least looking to spend an entire semester completely shackled under the binds of rigid writing rules. or looking to become totally sapped of energy with all the looking for things to write about. you have been warned.

even a little comfort is enough at times.

music: keu yeoja; baek ji young