Everyone go to Pastamania!!!=) Good food, cheap food, and free soup =) And giant gurrypuffs!

Plodded to school yesterday to hand in SPF form, and ended up hanging out with Mel in the LEP room trying to read Hongloumeng. I managed three lines *beam* Then met the CLAO people after their paper (liberation!=) for lunch an the trip down to Jo's.
I wish I'd videotaped the entire episode, but I didn't, so here it is, as best as I can describe it -- The Great Eng Siang Escape (that wasn't to be)!!
After Sheryl had laughed her fill at ES' shoulder ailment, Mel, Sheryl and I decided that he ought to go see a doctor. Naturally, ES, with Alex's full backing, acted cool/macho/idiotic and refused flatly ("What the hell can a doctor do?"). So the three of us shoved/pulled him back upstairs to Coronation Clinic, which happened to be closed. Once ES saw the "closed" sign he made an about-face and hobbled away. Sheryl and I stopped to talk to Weilynn, but managed to grab ES' bag as he hobbled past us. ES got rid of his bag, and Sheryl and I were left outside Cosy Corner, holding ES' bag! Or rather, I was looking like an idiot holding ES' bag.
After we finally caught up with Longlegs (haha fortunately Mel was tracking him), we dragged him to another clinic next door (Alex was no help at all! What is it with guys and doctors?). ES forked out something like $40 bucks for pills that looked suspiciously like Panadol. And for the rest of the day the only thing he would say about it was "I've been forced against my will/I've been unwillingly dragged to the doctor's." Talk about gratitude. ES later declared the painkillers successful. Thank goodness for us girls.

Second order of the day was Hamlet/O viewing at Jo's house (video! video!). Kicked off with O, a trashy chick-flick with bits of eye-candy (Josh Hartnett as Hugo/Iago and whatshisname-from-7th-Heaven as Michael/Michael). As though the race/racial prejudice part weren't obvious enough (Odin/Othello as the only black kid in an American high school), you had these rap tracks in the soundtrack where the rapper rattles on and on about "black", "blacker", etc. The only thing I found mildly funny was when Michael and his pal taunt the loserly fatboy, Roger/Roderigo, and flick his ears until they turn bright red and Roger/Roderigo's face crumples up as though he's about to cry >_< =)
Any speculation about Desdemona's virginity/chastity (I remember a length debate with Cat about this before promos) was put to rest in O; apparently Odin's and Desi/Desdemona's favourite pastime is to sit naked on the bed, in front of Desi's best roommate (Emily/Emilia), and talk.
In any case, interrupted sporadically by ES' and Alex's snide comments, we made it through the show, and, disappointingly, O decided to adopt Black Commando's ending: a big house surrounded by police cars and ambulances. I guess there aren't many modern-day equivalents for Venetian high authority.

By this time most of us were too sianed out to watch the grand production of Hamlet in its entirety, so Chim, etc. adjourned into Jo's room for a belt-session ;) While trigger-happy Estelle fast-forwarded us through the show, stopping only at the juicy bits where our hero Hamlet decides to kill someone. I don't have much to say about Hamlet because (i) we didn't watch the whole show, and (ii) it really is a good production, unlike O=)

Quote-of-the-day.
ES: "Call yourselves S-Lit students! (You keep going) 'When does he die?' 'Quick, die!'"

Lunch today at Prince was hilarious, not least for Serene's, Chengwei's and my varied attempts at Mel's LEP-S paper, to similar results. Serene kicked off with a stuttering rendition of some deceivingly simple-to-read passage, which she happily interpreted as "Aiyah. It means you shouldn't mug what." and offered it as an answer to the first 15-mark question on hanyi. Then I took a slightly more successful shot at the poem, which was about swallows flying and feathers, if you take Serene's English translation. Supposedly about hope. In any case, Serene's half-baked translation was enough for her to volunteer to do Mel's LEP homework for her, and while the three of us went to the toilet, the dear Kittykat eked out two painful sentences on the poem.

Chengwei, appalled at her fellow-Southgoat's apparent lack of proficiency in native-Southgoat-language, resolved to be NY's saving grace by presenting Mel with her own mini-essay on the poem. Problem: Chengwei hadn't, and couldn't read it :P In the end we had to roughly similar, equally incoherent little paras, both of which would've kicked Mel out of her S-paper class=) Will post the thing here once I figure out how to.

Somewhere along the line our conversation degenerated into an all-out catfight (excuse the expression) between Serene and Chengwei. I can't remember the details, but both of them will tell you that they won.

Favourite punches below the belt:
"I got a ONE. You got TWO."
"I was MAF emcee."
"I got Chinese tuition in sec 4." "I didn't need a Chinese tutor."
"I know Jolie's and Emilyn's Chinese names."

Rather disappointing returns:
"I have PRC friends."
"I went to China."
"My mum sings Teresa Teng." (Reply: "My mum listens to Jay Chou.")
"Well, my ancestors were from China." "I have relatives in Taiwan." "They don't speak Chinese in Taiwan, they speak Hokkien. you speak neither."
"I know Nanxiao people." "I know Chris."

Do NOT watch Intolerable Cruelty. You wouldn't believe the Coen brothers made it. Maybe they were drunk.

My holiday reading programme! Was reminded on Friday by Cat and Z.Hui of the good old days in primary school where everyone did SRP/ERP projects for English by looking up novels on Novelguide.com or on PinkMonkey.com, and managed to produce wonderful pieces of work which, for a moment, managed to convince me that they'd actually read the real things.

Well, S Lit next year, and, I presume, faking it isn't gonna help me any, so:
Shakespeare's Four Great Tragedies-- Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Hamlet
Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and The Portrait of Dorian Gray
Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway
Thomas Hardy's Tess of D'Urbervilles
Charles Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.
The results of a spree at Borders (20% off on Saturday=). Now I have to read them. It sounds really sad when I realise that there are people who've read all of these and probably more, and makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing in an S Lit class. Then I remember ZK waxing lyrical about Byzantine prime ministers and conclude that I'd rather indulge in a good novel. Or play. Or two. Or ten.

christina
between the road and new york city


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