Friday, November 30, 2007
Everybody seems so stressed as of late. This semester being a short one does not help 1.2 students like me, where we have lesser examinable tests but have projects which require more of our time as compared to last semester.
As a result, some of us (make that most) have not even began our revision yet. I for one, haven't. A mixture of arrogance and bad time management, I'm afraid. The timing of this blog posts speaks volumes about my sleeping habits for the last few weeks. Either through commitments or just pure 'addiction', it's hard to get more than 7 hours of shut-eye.
And projects require constant attention. I have given a lot of consideration into my various projects, which is rather draining really. Given that my nature of working in projects is to come up with ideas/crap with words, creativity and attention span is something of vital importance. And those 2 things come in short supply when you don't have sleep right?
Ah damn. And I haven't even thought about Blaw project yet. And apparently consultation for blaw article has closed and I HAVEN'T EVEN CHOSEN AN ARTICLE. Ah screw it. Pray and sleep on it, best way for now.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
I've not been very spiritual lately. By spiritual I mean like finding some quiet time to reflect about things, events and people in my life.
It's doing reflections like that that enables my gift of writing to fully surface, I feel. Given life's hectic-ness of late (or bad time management, both are of one thing really), I don't even get to reflect properly on the weekends.
So sometimes you get caught up with life's rat race. Eh, I mean I should say I, not you. When I get caught up with school work and other commitments, I feel as if I lose who I really am. That is, I just do things to get things done. Like I've become some robot or mindless zombie who just churns out work after work. I do have some kind of personality of course, but when I'm at home thinking back about the day I sometimes go, "Is that really me?"
That's when I have to remember who I really am. Sometimes the mask you make for yourself is so comfortable you just don't wanna take it out.
And with that explanation, I apologise to the groups of people I care about: TOG and envoys.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
My private holiday at home was nearly ruined when my folks had a minor row. I think it was about my dad being a hot tempered person again.
As much as I seem to put on a sympathetic air around me being all alone at home, I think it's kinda fun. Besides, dad's coming back on monday night, one day ain't that big a deal anyway. Just gotta feed the dog, that's all.
I'm still procrastinating, I haven't gotten around to start doing work yet. With the mountain of work looking over me, you can't blame me for ignoring reality for a while, can you?
So many things to write about (RED camp, missing out on Envoys stuff, anger issues, stress over humongous number of projects), so many emotions to be expressed (anger, glumness, etc) and yet, so little energy to draw upon to write all this out.
Stay tuned later on, I should update. THEN AGAIN, I do have a lot of work to go through, so who knows?
Friday, November 23, 2007
Whee. 4 plus in the morning, ain't staying up so late a sweet thing to do? :D
Nah, I just woke up an hour ago only. Slept at 10 then woke up to do a LMS short report (doing it now, it IS short but hard to think of what to write). I feel like doing it half way then going to sleep. SLEEP, SLEEP.
Anyway, today would be the last day of RED camp. So, zouk at hopnite. I think it's kinda over-rated for me cause I don't go/like/have gone for clubbing before. Mainly because I ain't the 'shake ya booty' kind? But hey, just go there to enjoy the atmosphere and try to catch any students grinding, should be pretty fun.
Alright, back to LMS. Damned cognitive distortion, why can't getting angry means getting angry???
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
So Day 1 of RED camp is done. My fellow SL's are pretty kickass funny, awesome and fun-loving. Great to soak in the atmosphere, really. The student participants are pretty receptive and they're a pretty awesome bunch too.
All in all, a pretty good day.
Oh and the Saint Andrew's outreach talk was good. Good in the sense that the audience was participative (read noisy but in a good way) and of course audience participation livens up any presentation by leaps and bounds.
Which also brings me to the point that planning for outreach talks never really do stick to plan. My first one, with Desmond, didn't go according to the script we made in preparation for our first outreach talk. As in we left out quite a bit. So this time having gained much insights into this trade, I planned with ariana just the points we were gonna talk about, not the actual content.
Which worked out of course. But what didn't work out was our intention to use 'characters' to convey the message, i.e. I was to play a more reserved and calm speaker (read more nerd), and ariana the opposite.
Due to the audience's activeness, those planned ideas were soon discarded (in fact she began to sound more 'nerd' than me. Then again, I guess it comes naturally from her :D) but I guess it worked out in the end. So more experience for me and a confirmation of a long-standing belief: God laughs at your plans for the future.
With much tiredness and dread for the week after this due to the glut of projects reasonating from me,
Brian Thomas Lim
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Its's so infectious. Camp mood is in the air and I cannot wait to see the thousands (supposedly) of students who are coming for NP's RED camp. Of course it's free, thus the humongous response (2000+ apparently). Can't wait, for more reasons than one.
I get to hit the books seriously after that.
Hahaha, I've been slacking off! Maybe not so much of slacking off then being occupied by other school-related activities. It's not a bad thing but I don't think it'll do much in the way of getting a GPA higher than 3.8, will it?
Oh and I'm doing the SA secondary school outreach talk with ariana. I think it'd be easier than the zhenghua one as I've a bit more experience under my belt ,and doing it with someone you're more familiar with is always a plus point.
Missing bits of class though.
Gah I'm ranting. Today has been a good day cause I met up with so many old faces from from RED camp pre-camp. It's good to get re-aquainted before the big show begins. It's rare that a social gathering brings me cheers, I'm pretty nochalant about stuff like that. Good change though!
Signing Off,
Brian Thomas Lim
Monday, November 19, 2007
I suffered a pretty moderate bout of stress attack just now. For those who don't know (that would be everyone actually, just coined the term), a stress attack for me would result in no physical difference, but mentally I am confused and panicky.
It is triggered when my brain suddenly absorbs too many variables in too short a time. Basically, I panicked out when I realised that BCA PBL and tutorial work had to be submitted in by tues/wed (and almost nothing was done), my prep for blaw 'tricky' quiz was not going anywhere and I did not do any tutorials in advance for this week. And I realised all this at 12 midnight.
I know it may not seem like much, but you do have to realise that when the mind is tired, rationality is pretty much a scrace resource. All that revelation seemed too overbearing to me at that instant, and my mind just locked down and refuse to organise myself to tackle all my due projects and deadlines. I did eventually calm down (hence my post) with the help of some soothing words from friends and slow breathing, but man does a stress attack suck.
And it really doesn't help that my studies are gonna be pretty much affected this week with RED camp and all. I still wonder why I signed up for 16 hours over the three days.
Seriously, all this clashing of appointments and deadlines is definitely not coincidental. God has something planned for me as usual. But with soooooooooooooooooo many deadlines due this week and next, boo him. Again.
And every word you say is analysed for an anomaly. Why? To see if it leads to bigger things of course.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
In the end, it was all worth it.
The months (which had many breaks in it) of planning and hours of stressed and white hairs it caused to people was really, really worth it. We came, we did what we had to, and we did achieve our aim. To show parents that for the hours they spend every week in church with TOG, they're in good hands.
And now for RED camp.
And because of that, tomorrow is going to suck big time. I have to finish all my work by tomorrow to ensure that my education is not compromised because I signed up a lot of hours (free time which is not occupied by class) for RED camp.
Sleep beckons!
It's morning of 17th November. What transpired in the last few hours probably killed off most of my brain cells. I had 3 meetings this morning/afternoon, one for IAC module and two for LMS module. All three meetings really require a lot of thinking to create presentations and skits and other nonsensical things only modules require of us but hell, I'm drained.
I don't know how the hell I'm gonna face today. I'm being frank here. I've layed out plans, but as you all know God just laughs at plans and throws in something. So you could say that today is gonna be one helluva day. If I can get through today without so much as an emotional/mental scarring, Bless be to God the highest.
He's been a jerk to me recently anyway, boo him.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Forgive me friends, for something is wrong with me now (LACK OF SLEEP, LACK OF SLEEP).
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Deepavali caused me to shift all my lectures and tutorials forward. I'm looking at a pretty mean schedule tomorrow.
Nonetheless, a free day on thursday could do me some good like cutting my hair (nicely) or spend a day with the family.
Overnight camp on friday/saturday was lotsa fun. We did work, had fun and bonded, so go BA_Envoys creative team!
And if you wanna have a look at the pictures that I took at the camp, head on down to my Facebook's photo album. Yes people, Brian does indeed have a facebook account.
I know I may have slammed social networking sites in the past, but that was for particular reasons like wanting to make friends out of complete strangers over such sites. I don't believe in faceless friendships, however I enjoy making contact with friends whom I don't meet often over the internet in whatever way I can.
And besides, Facebook is heaps and bounds much more fun than Friendster. Friendster has gotten way lame (not that it was fun to begin with) by introducng adverts that scream in your face. Facebook also adds interactivity into social networking (sounds stupid given social networking IS interactivity), but you'll know what I mean.
So add me there at Facebook to those interested and don't be surprised if I b*tchslap you one day.
Thanks to all the blogs i referred to (countless) for html code help :) (esp. cyn' and sixseven)
Adobe Photoshop Elements for supernatural abilities
