I finished my last exam paper on Tuesday. It was a Philosophy paper and surprisingly, it was not that difficult as I thought it would be.
So this semester is sort of done for me.
Bring on the alcohol!
Since I was bored, I decided to draw another random painting and this time, add my own criticism! Who says one semester of Art History does not pay off?
This painting is developed in the style of Zarethism, a fusion blend of Neo-Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art using the medium of Multimedia and Graphic Designing (i.e. MS Paint).
The central figure in a Christ-like position alludes to the persecution of today’s youth while the lack of colour within the figure’s body points to the lack of identity and belonging.
At the same time, the smiling Pacman on the figure’s T-shirt is a representative on the entrenchment of pop culture in today’s youth’s mindset.
The lines of the painting is broken up by two cartoon characters on the left and right and by the floating texts. These broken lines serves as a discordant effect, disrupting the unity of the painting and serving as a metaphor for the mindless hivemind exhibited by the Baby Boomers and Generation X, Y and Z.
The use of bright colours has two uses: it brings out the stark contrast of the white background, creating a lively but yet empty atmosphere and the bright, shocking colours refers to the prevalent shock culture used by today’s media and youth.
As a whole, this painting serves as a metaphor for the challenges faced by the current generation: identity and belonging in an ever-changing world.
So I decided to take a break and draw this picture for you. This picture explains my current plight. I have been eating instant mee goreng (fried noodles) for the past two weeks EVERYDAY, partly because I am trying to cut costs (IMMA POOR STUDENT) and partly because it’s exam period and I can’t be fucked to cooked.
During the two weeks of eating instant mee goreng for dinner (and sometimes lunch too), I feel like I’ve been killing innocent strands of noodle after noodle.
I’m the cool pacman with awesome hair, eyes and teeth.
I took part in USyd’s Writers’ Society’s Exquisite Cadaver this semester.
Phew, that’s a lot of apostrophes in the first sentence.
What is a Cadaver? Well, first, it’s not a dead body and there’s no writer conducting an autopsy on a body. What a cadaver means in this context is basically a story where each writer contribute their own part. What happens is that the editor starts out with the beginning of the story and the next week another writer will contribute his/her part and the following week another writer contribute and so on. There are some ground rules, i.e. continuation of plot and characters mentioned must be in character. Of course, new characters can be introduced and new sub-plots can be developed etc…
So basically what you get is a story but with a mish-mash of different writing styles. Kinda like a real cadaver. Imagine the monster in Frankenstein. Its body parts came from different people, but essentially it was a functional, whole body and all hell broke loose when the scientist Frankenstein brought it to life. So that’s our cadaver, except for the all hell breaking lose part.
As for the word Exquisite, the editor decided to stick it at the front. It was the editor’s decision. So essentially the whole thing means Beautiful Corpse. Yeah…..
Anyway, I took part in the cadaver and soon it was my turn. By then, about nine writers (including the ed.) had written for the story, so just imagine the amount of pages I have to read just to get a sense of the plot, characters and situation development. And all this took place when I had to study for my Psych exam. My housemates thought I was mad when I still went ahead and wrote for the story. But a writer’s got to do what a writer’s got to do.
The story developed pretty coherently, given that nine writers contributed. However, when I got to the part where the last writer left off, I was stumped. For two reasons:
1) The last writer wrote a sort-of sex scene. Yet, no sex happened. Just lots of making out and dry humping.
2) Worse of all, the last paragraph ended: “She did none of these things.”
I stared at my laptop, wondering how the hell to continue. Should I just write the sex scene? But yet from the previous entry left by the last writer, the character, Rachel, did not want or, to put it more bluntly, was not that keen to have sex with the other character, Peter.
Hmm. So sex scene was out. I thought of writing about rape where Peter forced himself onto Rachel after she gave him blue balls. No, that would be tough to write. Then I thought about writing a scene where Rachel kicked Peter in his balls and kicked him out of her apartment, leaving him with painful, blue balls (yewch). That would be doable but it would be boring and predictable for the plot. And what the hell am I going to write after Rachel does that? Say that she went back to bed and think long and hard about the characteristics of men? I’m a guy and frankly, I’m not a good writer yet and I don’t know what women think about men. Generally.
Then I hit on a brainwave. Sure, it was an easy way out but it was sure better than writing some lame, half-assed paragraphs. The brainwave was to return the story back to the original character, the sort-of protagonist, Felix, and introduce a new character called Monet.
I managed to finish my part within 3 hours and email it to the editor. So in this post, I like to present to you, my part of the story. I’ll like to post the whole story but unfortunately it’s still under progress and its supposed to be published in the Writers’ Society’s literary journal first. So you just have to read my part for now. I’ll put up the whole story once it is done and published.
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“I had this really weird dream. I dreamt that I was a prince, walking up this really tall tower, really, really tall. Probably taller than the Burj Khalifa. Anyway, I managed to walk up all the way to the top of the tower where there was a chamber.”
Felix leaned against a tree trunk and sipped iced lemon tea from the plastic bottle in his right hand. He needed alcohol but the park where they were currently taking refuge was an alcohol-free zone. Next to Felix was Monet who was sprawled on his stomach, eyeing the redhead in front of them.
“So I went into the chamber, the door wasn’t locked,” Monet continued his story, “in the chamber was this hot chick lying on a bed in the middle of the room. She was encased in some sort of glass bubble, and the only way to get to her was to crawl through this tunnel at the bottom of the bubble.”
Felix nodded absently. He fixed his gaze on the pigeons as they feasted on the breadcrumbs handed out to them by an old woman.
“I crawled through the tunnel and got into the bubble. She was beautiful, very beautiful. She woke up when she heard me entering the bubble. Her eyes, I fell in love with her eyes. I can’t remember the colour but I remembered that they were so, so, what’s that word when you fall into a trance?”
“Hypnotizing,” Felix said.
“Yeah, that’s it. Hypnotizing. So the chick got up to me and gave me a kiss. It wasn’t really a kiss, more like a brush on the lips. I still remember that kiss even after I woke up. But after the kiss, she fell down dead.”
Felix stared at the pigeons. For once, he wished he were a pigeon too. Free food, free lodging, the freedom to take a shit and piss anywhere and anytime and relationships in pigeon world were probably a lot less complicated too. Life as a pigeon was free and easy. Damn it, he wanted to be one.
“Oi, Felix, are you paying attention? Stop staring into space. Have you been listening to me?”
“Yeah, I am. You’re talking about this chick who was trapped in some bubble at the top of a tower and she fell down dead after making out with you. So what’s the point, Monet?”
“There’s no fucking point. You asked me to tell you a story to distract you from your current situation and obviously it’s not working.”
Monet pushed himself off the ground and stretched. He reached into his pocket and pull out a packet of clove cigarettes, fished one out and lit it. As he inhaled and blew out the sweet-smelling smoke, he walked around the tree, picking up his jacket, bag and hat that were scattered on the grass.
Felix remained oblivious to Monet and took another sip from the bottle. The redhead wiggled and rolled over, this time sunning her back.
“She’s pretty hot,” Monet said.
Felix shrugged.
“Hey Felix, listen. You’ve been depressed and moaning about this for five fucking days. Seriously, get over it.”
Felix stared ahead. When he first heard about it, he didn’t want to believe it was true. But the next few days, he felt more and more depressed as he thought about it.
“Yeah, I’m trying to.”
“Doesn’t seems like it. Look, if Rachel fucked Peter, she fucked Peter. End of the story. So stop being depressed about something you can’t control. This thing is really fucking getting on my nerves.”
“Yeah, but I really like her.”
Monet squatted down in front of Felix. A small, squiggly line of smoke from Monet’s hand curled and wound it’s way up to his face before dispersing in the air. Felix shifted uncomfortably, both from the smoke and the sudden invasion of his personal space.
“So you like her. Okay, fine. But think about this. Rachel is perfectly normal, rational, okay probably slightly irrational but all of us are anyway, and she is human. So she had sex with someone, she’s just a normal human with a normal sexual appetite. What makes you think, that if, and that’s an if since you’re still in a fucked state, that if you get together with her, she hasn’t fucked some other guys before you?”
“Well, she’s just so reserved, I guess. I don’t even think it was possible of her having sex.”
“So,” Monet raised an eyebrow and sucked on his cigarette, “you prefer virgins?”
“No,” Felix sighed, “look, the whole point is not about Rachel having sex. The whole goddamn point is about Rachel having sex with Peter. I know Peter. You know Peter, and she having sex with Peter, it just complicates stuffs.”
“True,” Monet slowly rocked himself on the balls of his feet, “but knowing Peter, it’s probably just a bunch of shit with exaggeration. And even if it was true, just move on, there’s nothing you can do about it. Besides, there’re other girls out there.”
“But…”
“But what? But what? You’ve been thinking about this all the time and has it changed anything? No. So stop fucking thinking about it. Either you do something about it, or you move on. Look, I’m late for work. Just stop thinking about this, go home, and get a beer and some sleep.”
Monet stood up and took a long drag from his cigarette before walking over to a nearby trashcan and extinguishing the butt. As he cut across the grass to reach the paved walkway, Felix called out to him.
“Hey, what’s the tall tower you were talking about? The one with the weird name?”
“The Burj Khalifa?” Monet asked.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Where’s that?”
“It’s in Dubai. It’ll be the tallest building in the world once they finish building it. Why?”
“Nothing, just curious. I thought I’ve heard it somewhere before.”
“Don’t ever think of jumping off that building. It’s going to be the most expensive suicide, if you can even afford a plane ticket to Dubai in the first place.”
Felix flipped the finger at Monet.
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Yep, so that’s the part I wrote. Yes, I know I screwed the next writer. In my part, I did not give a clear mention whether Rachel had sex with Peter. It is still rumoured and frankly, even as a writer, I have no idea too. Did Rachel fucked Peter? I don’t know, ask the next five writers. Hopefully, they’ll manage to bring this story to a climax and resolution, otherwise, this story is destined to be some:
“… postmodernist no-beginning, no-ending, all-middle piece” (Words of the ed.)
So yeah, fingers crossed!
On a side note, I’ve just finished my Psychology paper today. I better damn well pass this. The exam consists 65% of the total course. Fucking exams. Still have two more papers to go.
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New MVs. I’m currently in love with this talented, Irish singer called Lisa Hannigan. The first song is “Lille” while the second is “I Don’t Know”.
When I first saw it, I was happy, because I got a four-day week schedule:
Awesome. No classes on Friday!
Until I saw Tuesday.
What the….
3 Tutorials and 2 lectures.
This is madness.
I know, I know, I only have 13 hours of classes a week. By right (or privilege), I should be happy. I mean, I have friends in Singapore who have 35 hours of classes a week and my brother is one of them too.
But I’m an Art student, not a Premed, not an Engineering or a Science student. I thrive on having as few classes as possible.
I’m not even complaining about the number of hours. I had 13 hours of classes last semester. So having 13 hours of classes this semester is nothing new.
But having 3 tutorials and 2 lectures? All in one day? With only two hours break in between?
Damn it, I’ll die from information overload.
And to add further insult, I have a 9am tutorial on Wednesday.
Oh, boy. I had experienced a 9am tutorial on Wednesday last semester. It was a World Politics tutorial. Knowing my inability to wake up in time and subsequently missing half my tutorials (I still passed, I think my tutor went easy on me), I decided that enough was enough. No more 9am tutorials or lectures for me.
So today, I went down to school to change my timetable. I did it last semester and it was pretty easy. Just go down to a computer lab, talk to one of the student advisors, tell them your problem, do some rescheduling and viola! timetable of your dream.
I planned out my rescheduling first. After all, when it comes to full time slacking, matters like this can’t be done half-assed. It needs proper planning and strategy. So I logged onto the university’s central timetable, checked out all the available timings for tutorials and lectures, made notes and chose which classes I wanted to reschedule.
Done.
I was actually planning to spread out my classes over 5 days. But after last semester’s experience, I decided against it. Because most of my classes was in the middle of the day (I cannot wake up early) and I couldn’t do anything much while waiting for classes to start, except to wait for classes to start. So it was like back in the air force, “rush to wait, wait to rush”. I spend 5 days waiting for classes to start. I had enough. I wanted at least one day free and that would be Friday.
This was last semester timetable:
This is an old one. I changed my English tutorial from 6pm Wednesday to 2pm Tuesday. I hate attending classes in the evening. That is another reason why I didn’t like this semester timetable. I have two Philosophy lectures at 6pm on Tuesday and Thursday. FUCK!
Anyway, I went down to the computer lab and met up with one of the student advisors. He was an old man with a shock of neat, trimmed hair. Like a professor. Or a genial, old grandfather.
“So, what’s the problem here?” Student advisor asked.
“Well, I want to change my Philosophy tutorial from 4pm Tuesday to 1pm Thursday.”
“Hmm, ok.”
Mr. White Hair Man (he did have the most brilliant white hair I ever seen) turned to his computer and started checking out the class attendance for Philosophy tutorials on 1pm Thursday.
“I’m sorry, but they are all full.”
“What….” I stuttered.
“Well, you can have a 9am tutorial on Thursday or a 5pm tutorial. But the rest of the timing, all filled up.”
I was lost for words, so I made an useless and obvious remark: “But… then, that’s the earliest and latest timings of the tutorials….”
“Okay,” I sighed, “How about changing my Art History tutorial from 5pm Tuesday to 4pm Wednesday?”
Mr. White Hair went through the class attendance record for Art History.
“Sorry, all the 4pm tutorials on Wednesday are full.”
“What… the…”
I could feel the walls of my slackerdom crashing on me. I needed to do some damage control.
“Okay,” a tinge of desperation creeping into my voice, “can I change my Philosophy lecture from 6pm Tuesday to 3pm Tuesday?”
Mr. White Hair raised an eyebrow. Doing that would mean having only an hour break. But damn it, I will not have a 6pm class. He went through the attendance again and said:
“Sorry, the classes are full”
I anticipated that sentence from him. I saw from the computer screen that under the remarks section, that time period was filled up.
I covered my face and let out a low groan: “Man……”
“Okay,” more damage control, “how about changing my 9am Psych tutorial to 2pm on Wednesday.
I heard more clicking of the mouse and another:
“Sorry, all filled up too.”
By now, I couldn’t say a single word. I just stared at the screen, shell-shocked.
“You know,” Mr. White Hair said, “these classes are very popular.”
Of course they are, these are afternoon classes, not too early, not too late. Everyone wanted those. And the courses I’m taking are some of the more popular ones too, so it explains why there are such a great number of students fighting for such few available number of classes.
I had one last chance. This better work.
“Okay, could I change my Philosophy lecture from 6pm Thursday to 11am Thursday?”
More clicking of the mouse.
I stared at the screen, willing that the class could accommodate me. Willing and hoping that at least, I would not have to attend a 6pm class.
“Sorry, it’s filled up too.”
The fuck.
I slowly tore my gaze from the screen and looked at my timetable, thinking how fucked I was for Tuesday. Thinking how Tuesday was going to fuck my head, thinking how dead I was when I had essays, deadlines and discussions piling up on the same day. Thinking how I was going to survive that one day of mind fuckery.
Mr. White Hair broke through my thoughts.
“You know, you can schedule some of your classes to Friday.”
I looked at him, the one guy who was the answer to my dilemma. The one guy whom my whole semester schedule depended on. The one guy who was to be my saviour but yet failed me, no us, because of the system.
Mr. White Hair stared at my desperate face with a mixture of amusement and pity clashing across his face. This guy couldn’t decide whether to feel amuse at my so-called plight or to empathize with me.
If I were he, I would feel the same way too. A student trying to wiggle out of some non-desperate situation. But what the hell does he knows? I don’t want my current timetable. I want changes.
The thought of moving some classes to Friday sounded so good, so tempting. It was so easy. All I needed to do was to give the go ahead, pointed out which classes I wanted to reschedule and Mr. White Hair would do it in a matter of seconds.
It was so easy. Just like that, I wouldn’t have to face 5 hours of brain damage on Tuesday.
“No, Zareth, don’t do it,” a figment of myself floated in front of me, “remember what you promised yourself. You wanted Friday free. You shall have Friday free. You SHOULD have Friday free. Just for one day, endure 5 hours of classes. At least you have the whole Friday off.”
Mr. White Hair stared at me, impatience forming on his face. The line of students outside the lab increasing like a caterpillar engorging itself on its last meal.
I looked at Mr. White Hair. I looked at my timetable. I looked at the computer screen. I had to make a decision. And I needed to do it now.
“Okay,” that would be my last okay, “I think, I’ll just leave my timetable as it is.”
Mr. White Hair smiled.
“You know,” he said, “don’t try to change your timetable by yourself. You might end up with something you don’t like.”
At that point, I thought he was advising me. Now I realized that he thought I did some changes myself but got some messed up timetable. But I didn’t. The system gave me this fucked up timetable. I didn’t catch his hint so I just said, “yeah, I know.”
“Thanks for helping me,” I said, even though he barely helped me out.
“You’re welcome.”
I went out of the computer lab, still dazed by the experience, by the thought of Tuesday. As I stood outside, watching students, friends, staffs and security personnel enjoying themselves with the O-Week festive on Eastern Avenue, I felt a sense of injustice, a feeling of hopeless rage boiling in me, a hurt that crawled towards my throat and clung there, refusing to let go.
Last semester, it was so easy to change my classes. Why not this time?
I felt angry. But mostly I felt numb and hopeless.
Then something inside me snapped.
I turned around and cannoned back into the computer lab.
My target was Mr. White Hair.
I ran fast, ignoring the long line of students and their look of consternation on their face.
Mr. White Hair.
He was my target.
Actually, he wasn’t, he was just collateral damage.
I came back from Blue Mountains around 6:30pm. The trip was awesome, so awesome that I extended my stay for one more night. Okay, part of the reason for the extension was that H and I wanted to catch the film “2012” and the next available screening was on Friday evening.
So instead of leaving on Friday afternoon as I intended, I decided to extend my stay for one more day. Ah… the things a film buff would do. I’ll blogged about the trip in two parts, due to lots of very long and epic stories. I’m kind of having Blue Mountains withdrawal symptoms now.
Anyway, this memory randomly popped in my head when I was editing another blog post. It concerns a psychology experiment that I took part a few months ago.
As part of our psychology course, I am required to take part in 4 hours of psychology experiments. In doing so, I’ll gain 5% credits out of the the total 100%. Not a lot of credits, but it is easy stuff and 4 hours is not a lot of my time. Besides, I gain some experience in how real psychology experiments take place.
I signed up for an experiment where only males are permitted to take part. The reason for this was because the psychologists were experimenting the effects Vasopressin (AVP) had on social memory.
Vasopressin is a naturally produced hormone occurring in humans and almost every animal known to man (stole this from the handout given to me) and it is closely related to the hormone Oxytocin (OT) which has been shown to play an important role in mother-infant bonding (stole this from the handout too).
Catching on? One trivia about Vasopressin and Oxytocin: it is also known as the “love chemical”, the chemical that triggers the romantic “feelings” and “emotions” in humans. Eating chocolates does the same thing.
Moving on.
Vasopressin is also known to play a role in social recognition and approach behaviours as well as inter-male aggression. Vasopressin is thought to play a more significant role in males as it has also been shown to interact with testosterone (Stolen from handout).
So that’s why the experiment is conducted on males only.
Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it), very little research have been done to find out Vasopressin’s role in humans (although a lot had been done on animals). It has been suggested that Vasopressin is involved in social bonding and male aggression and so the stimuli used in the study were Happy, Angry and Neutral faces (stolen from Handout).
For this study, it has been hypothesized that Vasopressin will increase the rate of ‘remembering’ for happy and angry faces over neutral, however this will be more marked for the remembering of angry faces. This research could potentially influence the treatment and/or understanding of disorders characterised by aggression such as disruptive behaviour disorders which include conduct disorder and disorders characterised by an inability to appropriately make social bonds like autism (stolen from Handout.)
Phew, that’s enough psychology shite there.
I got an email after signing up for the experiment. In the email, I was told not to eat or drink 2 hours before the experiment. This includes alcohol, coffee, tea and even water. So the day before the experiment, I ate a small dinner.
I woke up hungry and thirsty on the day of the experiment. Since I was allowed to drink only 2 glasses of water prior to the experiment, I drank some to quench my thirst and fill my stomach to prevent it from growling in desperate hunger. It worked quite well, so I left for the experiment after having my ‘breakfast’ of water.
The building where the experiment took place was located quite a fair distance from my university. It was about 15 minutes walk from the university to the building. Adding to the distance was my first trip from my hostel to the university. In all, it took me about 20 minutes to walk to the building.
Having to walk on a empty stomach is not so fun.
I got to the building and managed to locate the room on the directory. I went into an elevator and pressed the button and was brought to the fifth floor. After wandering around like an idiot, I finally found the room and the psychologist.
Before I continue with the story, I must clarify something. During the experiment, we, the participants, will have no idea whether we are administered with Vasopressin or with a placebo. Also, when we are administered with the chemicals, we have to put a few drops of the chemicals into our nostrils and breathed very deeply. I felt like a kid with runny nose when I did that.
The psychologist brought me to a conference room where she made me sign the wavier forms and explained the experiment and procedures to me. Before she started the experiment, she asked me a few questions to see if I complied with the instructions that were emailed to me beforehand. It went something like this:
Psychologist: ”Have you ate a meal within the last 2 hours?”
Me: “No.”
Psychologist: “Have you taken any recreational drugs or caffeine within the last 24 hours?”
Me: “No.”
Psychologist: ”Are you currently on any medication, including those that treat anxiety or depression?”
Me: ”No.”
Psychologist: ”Are you currently undergoing any therapy with a mental health professional?”
Me: ”No.”
Then came the final question:
Psychologist: “Do you drink?”
Me: “Yes, I do. Socially. Though I seldom drink everyday.”
At this point, the psychologist stopped her questioning and stared at me in shock. I was wondering why she seemed so surprised since drinking is a normal thing. Unless, you’re an alcoholic.
Psychologist: “You mean, you drank before coming for the experiment?”
I finally realized why she seemed so shocked. I thought she was asking me about my drinking habits. I didn’t know she was actually asking me whether or not I drank before turning up for the experiment. Because I was answering all her questions automatically, I wasn’t paying attention to that question and confused the word “did” with “do”. What she meant was:
Psychologist: “DID you drink?”
Of course, at this point I hasten to fix the misunderstanding:
Me: “No, no. I don’t drink… I mean I do…. I mean, wait, I mean I thought you were asking if I’m a drinker. I didn’t know you were asking if I drank before turning up. No, the answer is no, I didn’t drink before turning up.”
Miss Psychologist gave me a relief smile before continuing with her other questions.
If only she had asked her question in full:
Psychologist: “Did you drink before coming for the experiment?”
Then I wouldn’t have misunderstood her. Besides, who drinks alcohol at 8am in the morning?
Unless, you’re an alcoholic.
Song of the day:
Tegan and Sarah are a pair of Canadian twins. They’re my current favourite artistes. It is a coincidence that one of the twins is undergoing therapy with a psychologist in the MV.
Zareth Writes At 