Every day I wake up, it is research that I think of. When I eat, research. Before I sleep, research. It dominates every aspect of my life, the guilt that hampers my enjoyment of doing anything non-work-related, the relentless worry that I won't complete my assignments to my satisfaction, the obsession with tweaking every little argument so everything will be flawless and the world will become a better place with everything cited and referenced according to APA style.
Portrayal of homosexuals. Queer Theory. Spiral of silence, Noelle-Neumann. Racialised discourse. Transethnic solidarity. Model of initial trust. Social capital.
And then there is the social life.
Therefore I resort to escapism. Lately I am gripped by the clutches of this silly little game on my cell phone. I spend hours on it. When I am obsessed with breaking my own record, my mind contains nothing else. It is a void, a void of work, a void of emotions with only one goal in mind - get that block in line, break that record. Awaiting the end of the game, when I finally break the cyclical chain of pressing restart, is of course despair about time wasted, on one silly little game. But during the game, my mind is able to rest. It is a perverse way to meditate.
Get out, you say. Go knock on the doors of those lonely souls, ask them out. In fact I have tried knocking on doors, once. It was mostly out of necessity as I had borrowed an umbrella from a girl whose room number I forgot. A Danish girl oversaw the spectacle of me repeating the procedure of knocking every door, and apologizing at each, until I finally got the door, at the tenth attempt I think. She was greatly amused and we shared some good laughs. Yet when I saw her next, at the bus stop, her stony expression indicated that she did not recognize me. I did not reintroduce myself as the door-knocking girl, because I wasn't 100% sure if that was her. I have to reiterate that I am extremely bad with faces. She probably was too.
It is the nature of the fleeting relationships that I form in the hostel, while getting water from the pantry, while studying in the TV room. People you meet briefly, share a conversation about why you're knocking every door on the floor, and never see again - or never recognize again. There's no depth. No emotional residue is left on any shoulder you rub. All are busy with their own problems, presumably preoccupation with their own research.
Also, spontaneity is dying out. In the monotony of routine, spontaneity is what I thrive on, what I live for. An irreverent gesture, an exchange of twinkling eyes, a song sang at the top of one's lungs, buskers and hitchhikers, something out of place. There is none! Obedience reigns here, nobody laughs, the bureaucracy makes you do illogical things, weekends mean traipsing hundreds of shops which merchandise look virtually the same. If 4.5million people can do it, why can't you?
Before I terminate this incessant train of self pity, which is quite unjustified actually, what with people being detained for two years without trial, children being poisoned just for drinking milk, the global economic crisis and politicians on the brink of losing power that they're clinging onto with a death grip - I leave you with a piece of news under Breaking News in The Straits Times yesterday.
3,821 jaywalkers caught. What in the world should we do to these naughty lawbreakers?
Now - back to work.
Update - The university must have caught wind of the errant pedestrians, it being a major breaking news and all, and sent out a powerpoint presentation on "NTU Campus Road Safety". Since as we're merely university students, we probably need to be educated on how to cross the road. Some pictures of the campus are in there, which I thought you'd be interested to see, though they're not very well taken.
