krunchypeanuts

Sunday, November 30, 2003

phew wat a crazy day. things were going wrong right in the morning when i tried to surprise my babes by buying a gift for him that he wasn't expecting. He sure didn't expect to receive wat i got for him alright. the poor thing is still suffering from the aftermath of sneaky bad surprise enterprise.

then my sister quarrelled with her husband and refused to alight from the car. my mum was the wise one who up and left the car, and walked all the way home. Me and dad just stayed on for a hour while she ranted and raved. it was quite a scary spin on married life. But i realised so many things from their quarrel and i think me and perhaps my dad went away much wiser about our relationships, more desperate perhaps to learn the lessons that life has been teaching us, more willing to listen and being patient.

i guess these few days there's so many things that i can thank God for. When i looked at a Hopper painting today at borders... they are having that yearly sale of calendars to give you a headstart with the new year... i can't remember what the title of that painting was... it was a nature scene, hills and meadows and the... strong blaze of the early morning sun overwhelming defenses and melting ice caps in frigid hearts. Oh it sure was the most optimistic thing among all of hopper's paintings where loneliness in human beings is the constant theme.

But even in the midst of that optimism, there was a sadness i could tangibly feel at the fringes of my consiousness. there was no sight of any human being in that picture. Can we only be happy, perfect and free when there are no humans? It was not only the lack of any human representation in the picture but it was also my loneliness (and perhaps even my own inability too) that prevented me from sharing what i felt was so immediate and inspiring... that made this picture sad.

Even now, i remember something i've read recently that really gripped my attention and then i'll be done for today.
Counsel in the heart of man is like deep
water,
But a man of understanding will draw it
out. Proverbs20:5

posted by happyhannon at 1:36 AM 0 comments

Friday, November 21, 2003

i must praise God for the papers i've taken so far. though they haven't been easy at all, but trusting Him gave me my peace of mind. even if i don't do well, i will be contented with the fact that i got through the whole process. i have been really thinking these few days of what's my purpose in nus, doing lit honors. what was the purpose of immersing myself in 6 years of literature? i sort of came to the realisation that the end result of it all, whether i get a good honors degree, whether i will do well in my studies does not really matter at the end of the day. Even whether i've done 6 years or 12 years or a lifetime of literature, all these achievements don't mean a thing. afterall when i die, leaving at least a dusty folder of my honors thesis (that could probably get lost someday too), who's going to care?

the things that really do matter. yes, it's the process of going through it all. but life is more than studies, work, family. i want life to be more than that and i'm glad that it is. Whenever i feel like i'm being sucked back into the world, i just cling onto my faith and hope. the struggle and the denial is worth it coz i don't want to go back to the way i was. it sucked. it was gloomy and depressing. i used to refuse to step out of my house. i hated my family. i hated even my own life. even when i became a christian, there were times when i dropped out of the christian race and it was like returning to hell. Once you're on God or God's on you, nothing will ever be the same again.

of course God at first was my drug. pardon the expression. i read my past entries and cringe too at the naivety and awkward, cliched phrasing but i just shrug my shoulders and move on. it's my blog anyway. :P so God as drug.. ah that would be another topic for another day. The details you can ask from me when you see me so won't post it here and bore people. suffice to say that if God is in my heart, then i don't have to expect goose bumps experiences to know He is near. He just is and i don't have to look any further but into my heart.

i don't really talk so much about spiritual stuff because most of the time, it just shows off my inadequacy and foolishness. but today, i guess i'm in the mood to talk. my sister said i was like a muslim coz i always seem so fatalistic, pessimistic. well whatever names i'm called, i can't help it if life is really just a journey and we are pilgrims on this earth, travelling to our eternal dwelling place.

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Hebrews11:13

posted by happyhannon at 2:12 AM 0 comments

Thursday, November 20, 2003

i noticed that groups of sparrows, swallows fly over my flat at 6/7 in the evening. as they passed overhead, i could hear their feathers ruffling; my heart for some strange reason began to beat faster. in its small, insignificant way, the event made me happy. it was probably years years ago that i had sat here and watch the birds fly past my flat, and i can still remember i had wished i could just fly away with them. Not trying to escape anything here but would not it be exhilarating just to fly? not in the Neo Matrix way where he does the superman thing. to have two wings beating, your heart racing, thumping against your chest, and then the defiance of gravity as your very wings lift you off the ground and you're flying with your companions. hearing their own feathers ruffling, seeing how their small bodies are propelled through the air and then you realise that you're one of them. the miracle of living life with even the smallest capacity.

hmm. bird fetish aside... i hope to get my brain working up to speed when i reach the exam hall at 5pm...

posted by happyhannon at 8:21 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

my head is throbbing.. no, not from doing the crit theory exam this morning.. but watching the talented mr. ripley on vcd and the oprah winfrey show. i went through the exam like walking into a blardy fog... ok i've never walked into a fog before, you don't get fogs here. but i started writing and writing and writing. never crapped so much insubstantial stuff in my whole life and everything went by in a blurrrrrrr...

sigh seriously don't know how this paper will go and my mind just can't seem to stop worrying and thinking about it. anyway, tomorrows the research methodology paper and all of us are supposed to ace it coz it basically tests us on what we have done in the last three years... or last six years for me that is doing practical criticism. i don't know why but my brain just bulks at the demand to perform. God save me... God save us!

i'm just waiting right now for my laundry to be done. i'm thinking of getting a good jazz cd. anyone got any recommendations? i like anything except fusion jazz.

and now.. my brain just needs a rest. going to stare at clouds and relax my eyeballs...

posted by happyhannon at 5:43 PM 0 comments

Friday, November 14, 2003

Elvish or Orcish What Language Are You?

got this from jojo's blog. hehe. :)

wait a minute.. how come the languages are so odd! elvish and orcish! aren't they like completely opposites! since when is an orc loyal. wahh! i don't want to be an orc or speak orcish. yelk.

posted by happyhannon at 9:53 AM 0 comments

can't believe what just happened two days ago. someone has obviously an axe to grind with the present lit honors class. for more of the gory details click on aime's website. what this person has done is making me shake in disgust and horror. can't believe anyone can do this so "naively" and think that no one is going to get hurt badly. And why all the sneaking around behind people's backs and being anonymous.. why..

even if we can get a reason out of all this... it won't be something that will alleviate the pain. I'm very sad that our honors class is now being ripped apart by this insensitive act. Could it not have been an outsider? Maybe someone fwd the email to someone outside of our group...

the alter ego of the lit honors class group. the repressed and subversive element. i hate it when our lives are turned into fiction material. We are real as blood and flesh; our thoughts having impact upon a physical body that has the potential to affect other bodies as well. We are human beings not semiotic complexes and games.

this is becoming very unreal for me. with the exams coming, things are looking really cheery eh.
To all the elithons, life still goes on. there's nothing to prove to the tell tale snitch. we should not be proving to anyone anyway. only to ourselves and conscience, and for Christians, to God.

posted by happyhannon at 9:39 AM 0 comments

Thursday, November 06, 2003

at this point, i would have to call myself a bastard too.

i got the topic i wanted after all. :) much thanks to all the efforts put in by my honours coordinator and my supervisor Dr Goh. but then again, they won't be reading my blog.. would they? three of us went to see our hons coordinator for a very kind explanation why we didn't get our first choice. she was absolutely fantastatic. very obliging and accommodating. and we spent like nearly an hour *i think* talking about other stuff like her pottery and visits to the dentist. i wish i had known her during my undergrad years but then again, i don't think i would like to take another gothic class even if Dr. Ang was teaching it. i don't have a natural affinity to dead or undead things and kinky representations of gender etc. my mind is like a wooden plank which is a very odd and, sometimes i admit too, exasperating position to be in.

I mean as a literature student, one has to be "open" to such things. to art, the word and everything in between. i could be an exception and it doesn't bother me. so far in my three years studying lit in NUS, i've learnt to differentiate between my personal likes/convictions with a whole range of other sort of preferences out there. Their existence used to trouble me but now i just acknowledge them and move on. In fact, it's often the most interesting times when these other preferences and uncomfortable subjects surface in my own area of study and strangely, have a certain ring of truth in their existence. even as i'm thinking about christianity in contemporary culture and writing, i can't help but have this thought that christianity to most is just like another self-help book on the shelf. I've often staked out at the local literature section PL5149. :) and the books related to spiritual or religion are often those self-help books or autobiographical "true life" kind of narratives... Religion is being fed back into this whole cycle of consumerism and it's getting hard to distinguish the secular and the religious.

Well here is just some of the books that caught my attention
books written and sponsored by the "kindness movement". the contriveness of it all gives me goosebumps.
self-help books that answer questions like "Is S&M healthy?" mix buddhist and hinduism quotes to arrive at a seemingly predetermined answer... no (?).

How will christianity fare at the end of the day, after all my research? something in me is sounding the alarm but i'll mull over this off the net for now..

posted by happyhannon at 6:16 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

alright.. have you people from elithons opened that brown envelop with the school address on it yet? well i have and i didn't get the honours thesis topic i wanted. how strange. and i thought what i wanted to do was obscure enough "Christianity/Biblical symbols in contemporary writing/culture". wonder who was the lucky bastard who got the picking.

so i'm stuck with my second choice which i have not put much thought in... coz i never thought i would get it!! "Major British 20th century poets". there's seamus heaney, there's dylan thomas but how am i going to skewer them together?? what on earth can i do to/with/about them...

how hellish this night is. to tell you honestly, i got depressed when i saw i didn't get what i had planned for initially. really depressed. i had just reached home after nearly an hour and a half car ride where i puked from nausea and gastric. the puking was strangely anti-climax since i had been coughing and hacking the entire day; every cough was like a mini puke, mini death in itself. the world spins and my eyes water. and then i have to gather myself and move on.
but after working myself into a state of agitation, i've somehow slipped off the top and am walking now, through the hazy thoughts in my head.

Things are not bleak. There's just nothing there now and suddenly the future seems completely emptied out of bright ideas and directions. quite liberating but certainly not comforting at all.

well, moving on now...

posted by happyhannon at 9:50 PM 0 comments

Monday, November 03, 2003

shitters.. i'm still stuck on my euro lit essay. my posing as a smart alecky is doublecrossing me really badly. thought i'll do "reflections on the act of writing". thought it was "interesting" to focus on apollinaire, zola and gide.

so dEAD wrong. i've been having constipated thoughts for the whole day.

and then the uncanny struck once again at my house.

these few days all my electrical appliances,
most of them have to do with my quintessential entertainment set,
sound system, vcd, etc.
have been circuit fried.
when the vcd fried,
it trapped my cds in it.
miles davis is actually keeping the peace
for once.
But just five minutes ago
the live cracker of the family
the darling with the 25 inch grin
the sony tv
got fried!!!
Dad said it smoked a little.
yeah it smoked a little and
now it's demise is telling all of us
to kick the addiction.
control station to God,
"very nice move".

posted by happyhannon at 1:26 AM 0 comments

Saturday, November 01, 2003

it has been one cr@zy week!! well, i'm sick again. this time with a fever and a throat that screams in pain everytime i just try to swallow my saliva. the other night i dreamt of a living dead trying to wrench my head off. i had no choice but to combine the name of Jesus with gongfu moves and slice the thing in half like what brad pit did to tom cruise in that vampire show. of course the horrid thing won't die. it just fell into the river with a psychotic grin on its face..

sadly these traumas are not induced by my brain alone. my mum emailed my dad a letter and signed off using my sister/my initials. yup we sisters have the same initials JCC. Anyway, my dad thought it was a good letter since it basically barrages my mum. my dad is also thankfully not a tech geek and does not know anything about checking the email address of the sender... so then my mum sends me a copy of that letter and she has been lurking around my com to watch me read and open her letter.

" i want to see whether the cartoon characters i sent you got colour and can move..."
"open lah"
"i want to see..." (repeat infinitum)

she's driving me crazy too. my favorite phrase of the week (if u can guess)

"Don't be so crazy lah!"
Mum: "What! you call me crazy! ..."

these family dramas are amusing. why does no one make a movie about this nonsense. "the discontents of lower M.C." Middle class individuals who can't wait to get an MC on life as they know it.

posted by happyhannon at 9:10 AM 0 comments

krunchypeanuts...once u pop u can't stop...daily trivia with a dose of social responsibility...a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down...let's say we try...oh Lord how we try...