Tuesday, April 4, 2017

I'm still here, but I'm hiding behind the curtains

I can’t, for the life of me, believe that my darling baby has slipped into a heat-induced coma. I don’t know what happened to my Sony Vaio, but it crashed when I wanted to tackle the final bits of my Politics of Law research proposal. Thank God I had the nerve to keep a copy in Dropbox and Google Drive – or you’ll see me bursting into tears.

Am I allowed to whine about the late nights spent on the workload? The required amount of time and dedication this semester is more than I initially expected, but I guess it is what it is. I can’t complain much because we’re all in the same boat, gasping for air while struggling to stay afloat like a fish above water. This is especially true for us students who’ve to tackle at least 2 3 hour tutorials for electives. Gone were the days when we could chill until Week 3 of the academic calendar before panicking for dear life. It feels like time has slipped through the cracks of our fingers and propelling us to tackle our fears faster than we would like to.

I should be peppering the final details for these two assignments (although one’s not due until the end of the month. I’m sweating in fear over this one because by the time I’m able to polish it, it’ll be a day before submission… and I like to leave the assignment to sleep for a week before I return with a fresh pair of eyes). I don’t usually stay awake past midnight yet I’m suffering from a serious case of procrastination. I know that somewhere in the depths of my heart, I’m able to unearth the determination to complete the assignments tonight, but I can’t form coherent sentences that will make sense to the lecturer when s/he grades it.



Amidst the boiling temperature of the pressure cooker, the three of us managed to catch up over waffles. Although the arranged location was hidden in one of the laneways, it wasn’t as arduous as I initially thought because of its famous neighbor … and we ran into each other en-route. There was a slight problem that we didn’t foresee: neither one of us expected that the clouds will draw for us a chilly, cocoa-inducing day when we agreed on a day.

Something happened midway during our meal and it set the three of us on a trail of laughter. While my sister managed to recover on time, I bit my tongue to keep myself from rolling on the floor in laughter. I saw the gleam in the good friend’s eyes that if we started laughing out loud, we’d be dead from the lack of breath. The good mood from our outing evaporated the moment my eyes caught the blinking stars in the night sky. It has left me with a heavy heart from time to time because of those twelve words: “So, we should lie on the lawns and watch the starry night.”

Bam.

Inasmuch as I want to burn this miniscule memory of my life, it’s all in the past and there’s no point in crying over spilt milk. I can only send my wishes to the wind and pray that it will deliver it to the intended recipients.



At the rate that I’m speeding on, I’ve to pray that the upcoming mid-semester break will provide something along the lines of a brief respite for me to catch up on sleep and backdated readings. I’m drowning under the pile of tutorial notes that I have to gather to assist me with the assignments (it’s another three, off-memory). It is also on this ground that I want to apologise for my continual absence in the blogosphere - academics have taken a large chunk of time and I'm taking the little breathing space that remained to clear the stress with a spatula.

Gosh, maybe I overestimated my capabilities. The reason why I said that is because I’m highly tempted to scream my lungs out into the pillow to mask the volume. Lord, please save my soul from the torments that I’ve placed myself in.

6 comments:

  1. No need to apologise to the blog world. We will always be here :) It sounds like there is a lot of work in your course but seems like you know what is expected of you. I remember in my final year of my Masters of Communications I had 4 essays to do and like you, I like to finish them at least a week beforehand - to give me some breathing room, and also it gives me comfort I know what I'm doing.

    I always, always am paranoid about losing my work on the computer and will save and triple save my work on one or two USB sticks apart from my laptop. That is also the OCD in me coming out. Same applies to my writing and blog posts.

    It is good you got a bit of a breather with friends and had waffles. When I need to get away from work and writing, I like to just sit - a lot of the time I'm too tired to do anything :D

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    1. That's sweet of you to say that, Mabel, and I really appreciate it! =) The workload spanned from the choice of courses this semester, not the degree per se. I should be alright next semester. It's just that when there's time before submission, it allows us to polish or edit the essay even further, right? =D

      My thumb drive crashed on me once, which destroyed the only copy of the pictures taken in New Zealand (One Tree Hill, Auckland, Wellington)... I just never expected that it'd be my laptop to slip into a coma. *sighs*

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    2. I actually enjoy the editing process a lot - because I like having something to work with, and then I tend to be able to shape a stronger voice within my essay and blog posts :)

      Have you tried using a program to recover some of those file from the USB? Once my SD card full of photos from an entire year crashed. I downloaded a free recovery program online and managed to recover half of the photos. The other half came out half cut off, corrupted, but it was better than nothing.

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    3. The editing process is good because it allows you to look at your essay from a different eye, if you know what I mean? My lecturer agrees with that too - she likes to leave it aside and return to it with a fresher mind. It is at this stage that she's able to improve on her answers/contribution. (We had this conversation on a quiet yet rainy morning before the lecture, btw.) Personally, I've to start doing a rough draft of an essay a month before it's due and it wouldn't be until at least 72 hours before the deadline that I'll consider handing it in. I've waited until the eleventh hour to submit it (and that's because I wanted to squeeze the best out of it) before. XP

      I didn't - because it happened almost a decade ago and I didn't know what to do. I think it was after that I learnt to keep an extra copy on the laptop and, recently, on Dropbox.

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  2. You cakap banyak-banyak, but here's the most important question yet: what did you get for your new computer? :D

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    1. Haha. Aku belum beli lagi lah, CL. Nak tunggu balik KL baru decide because I'd love to save the Vaio before I purchase a Mac. =P At the current moment, I'm temporarily using an older model of HP. =)

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