done with michaelmas term!

submitted my exam essay. 2 months of work: complete! it feels great relegating all the books to the floor. my desk is now (temporarily) cleared :). Christmas dinner last night was nice, and i'm looking forward to enjoying a quiet holiday here. i feel bad for my parents that i am not going back home this vacation for the whole 'empty nest' must be strange, even lonely at times. but to me, it feels right that i stay. of course having WS here means that i am happy to be here. but it's also about not having to travel and spend on flights, and about being near the library so that i can read and research over the holidays. Hilary term (January-March) is going to be worse.

the relief will never be as great as we had anticipated, but that's okay :).

some Romantic music by Chopin to share - this is what got me through the essay:

Chopin's Nocturne Opus 9, No. 2

Chopin's raindrops

the last stretch

didn't sleep well last night, dreaming wildly and waking up every few hours. i awoke in the morning thinking, 'who what when how WHERE the hell am i?!' kind of like my jet-lagged feeling whenever i go back to singapore home/hk home/Brown dorm. i also have very little recollection as to what happened last night. that sounds scandalous. i assure you it had nothing to do with alcohol or craziness. i was just writing my essay on conrad. and now i must confront the reality that this has to be finished today! for submission tomorrow.

i have a black-tie Christmas dinner to attend at Wadham College tonight! must. finish.

i think everyone will be happier once i stop talking about Conrad. my fellow Conradians in seminar and i have had many laughs this term talking about our love/hate relationship with him, how we spend all our time with him, and that we need some time off and perhaps try out long distance...? it was certainly obsessive, as evidenced by our facebook activity. (how sad, i know. but also cool in a nerdy way...) i certainly spend more time reading every single letter, essay, short story, novella, and novel he's written than i do hanging out with friends. but i guess that's the way it should be in graduate school? not sure.

anyway, so i can't wait for my holidays to begin!!!

to motivate myself - here are the things to look forward to over the winter vacation:

- tonight's Christmas dinner

- physically submitting this to Exams Schools tomorrow and knowing i've got 25% of my exam DOWN

- fortune-telling party this Friday with staircase friends

- meeting up with An this weekend

- all the little errands i must run: posting cards, returning all the library books, etc.

- Christmas reunion in Cambridge

- London with Pembroke people :)

- food and sleep and books not written by Conrad

okay okay now back to mediated skepticism!

while waiting for dinner...

i had my manuscripts transcription exam today. (it went okay. the handwriting - DH Lawrence's - was tough to read but i should be able to pass...)

this was for my Palaeography class, which is basically a handwriting reading/transcription exercise where we look at original manuscripts of authors and try to accurately and constructively represent what's on the physical page in a transcript. we try to reproduce what's on the page - everything from the words, scratch marks, page numbers - and represent the reader the author's process of revising the piece of work (so we also transcribe their omissions, additions, revisions, etc) and highlight any other editorial or interfering work that has been done on the manuscript by later readers and collectors of the manuscript. so for instance, one week for homework, i had the privilege of looking at a (photocopy) of a page from Tolkien's LotR, and had to transcribe the text and Tolkien's own sketch! in addition to footnotes and such, we're expected to also write a mini essay on the manuscript transcription... things we've noticed about the manuscript, idiosyncrasies of the author, paratextual elements, where it's from, who it's by... etc.

basically it's this kind of thing, if you want to have a go! http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography/tutorial/default.htm

apart from the exam, i've been really unproductive lately. i blame it on the weather because the cold keeps me in my room, huddled near the radiator which i recently borrowed from the college. (central heating is practically non-existent...) yes the cold makes us apathetic to everything really... even Christmas carols, fancy dinners (who wants to wear black tie in this weather?) , etc. how i will survive another english winter i don't know but i think it will involve a lot of food all the time and a lot of soups!! watercress and pork rib soup :)

on the whole it seems like everyone, around the world, is super busy. i wonder if this is just a trait of 'modern' life that everyone feels so incredibly busy all the time and neglects keeping in touch. (i forget, too of course, but i think i tend to send out a lot more messages to see how people are doing but replies are scarce!) but i guess keeping in touch doesn't necessarily equate to 'caring' about someone, to put it bluntly.

anyway, it is 5:25 and time to get dressed for dinner! have a good weekend friends~