overheard

"fe le lo ro shay"

guess what was being referred to. we then spent the next ten minutes mocking these little (Singaporean/ Malaysian) Chinese boys up and down the aisles.


I'm going to hell, I know. (psst. I don't believe in it so that's okay)

was going to pose a twisty conundrum here but when i started writing it i forgot what the point was. and it wasn't that tricky to begin with. brains scrambled from results. oof. shoo you, unless you're going to metaphysically celebrate with me. kidding.
i am content for now

burn

I wonder what it would be like to go out with a normal, decent man. For a change. Bring me one? After I detox that is.

I don't know where to start with the day's events. I don't know if I should, so I won't. Strangely, it doesn't hurt the way you would expect it to. It's already reached saturation point I guess.

On the upside (or maybe more on the strange side as well), it was another day where people kept smiling at me. In the faculty corridors, on the road. Whatever.

I saw whales for the first time. They were just off the shore at Maroubra and I could see their tails flipping and occasional spurts of water. Also got burnt (thank you impromptu-beach-trip-without-sunscreen-at-noon). The straps and the hemline from my dress are on clear display. Genius.
-walks around the house muttering ow ow ow ow-

IT has been read by people other than my supervisor by now. Duncan told me that today was the date all theses were to be passed back to the Honours coordinator. After this the two different markers' scores will be tallied and there will be the Honours committee meeting to discuss the results before they are released. The thought of other people reading, having read it terrifies me, just a little. It has been put out there for strangers to see. An open book.
Dinner was good.

I miss my people.

done

yeah, it's done. it felt surreal yesterday, to not have it in my hands anymore, to know that it was complete. the work of almost a year and by far the biggest thing i have ever done.
'empty nest syndrome' my cousin called it.

But today it feels good. To finally have the time to do what I want without feeling guilty for taking precious minutes away from it.

So I made truffle scrambled eggs.

Remember bills' scrambled eggs? The silky texture without a trace of hardness in the eggs? :) I got it perfect today (and without the 1/2 cup of cream too)
nyam

I now have to clear off my desk and clean up my room - papers, journal articles, chapter drafts from march through to the final full draft in october, LIBRARY BOOKS (two trips)
I'm going to spend the next month of so doing (almost - because I'm being good) everything I've meant to do since March. And I'm also in the mood to cook for the first time in months. Maybe I'll set up a cafe with my sisters and use my thesis as wallpaper. Hmm..

And no, no plans to do a PhD. Or to turn my thesis into a book.

the end is near

tweet tweet tweet tweet!
It's almost done
:)

just a couple of thorough read throughs to check for consistency from start to finish and then it's done. for good. monday, october 20 2008, 12pm will mark the end of this phase.

self-praise

I have to admit, even as IT drives me insane editing it, I love the complexity of my thesis. Reading the first few paragraphs that state succintly what it's about makes me positively purr.

*

hush now, if you're really quiet you'll be able to hear me scream

BECAUSE I NEED TO CUT 1500 WORDS

almost there

I *heart* gnocchi filled with spinach and ricotta. It doesn't even need sauce. Browned butter might be nice. mmmm..

The meeting over the first draft lasted two and a half hours but it didn't seem like 2.5 hours. Must have been the coffee. Surprisingly little to change though even if it'll take a few full days to correct. Minor details here and there but Duncan still hasn't criticized anything I've written much. He talks about how he kept scribbling 'excellent!!' instead and wanted a stamp so he wouldn't have to keep writing that. I hope it's just me being overly critical of my own work rather than him being overly easy to impress/ lenient. Now, finding more things to cut is going to be hell. Damn word count. Shouldn't have it. It's repressive.


gnocchignocchignocchignocchi. love the sound of it. gnocchi. too much coffee. gnocchi. shiny blind-you-bright fuschia nails. gnocchi

*stretch*

first full draft done
almost full
no concluding section yet
because
word count 19800
not including (3) diagrams and TOC and appendices
need to dream up a title
and put together bibliography properly instead of mumbo jumbo state is in now
stop tinkering and adding stuff
for now

'lost in translation?: Local Agenda 21 in Malaysia and and the limits of participation'
hehehehe
hmm.. i like that

going to rock me gold nails tomorrow
wont dry in time for sleep tonight
hate smudged nails
zzzz

dead calm

The usual cacophony of voices in my head is unusually quiet today. Sure there's a murmur in the background and I hear whispers from the acquisitive one but all else is at ease. Panic is surprisingly silent. This after the manicness of the past week or so.

21315 without a conclusion
this can be done. cut out 2315 words and you're set.

my bottle of booze is getting lighter. half a jar of nescafe in two weeks isn't that bad. the way my sleep patterns are going, in a couple of weeks i'll be back on GMT+10. it'll be full circle :)

but this might just be the eye of the storm.

argh!

i hate my thesis
i want to burn everything i've written
i want to run away and forfeit honours
i want to jump off the top floor of a 100 storey building
but i live on the second floor. not even the second floor, it's a one and a half floor.

140 km/h

they say there's a storm coming. "batter down the hatches because we're looking at 115 kmph winds"

as long as it doesn't cut my power supply it'll be fine


there's always a storm coming

doo doo

shit. my printer cartridge has 30 sheets left in it.

shit. UNSW is too cheapskate to pay for access to half the journals I need.

shit. I have a tonne of revisions to make to the draft I have.

shit. I have NO TIME!!

version 1.0 (in full)

The first draft of IT is done. IT is patchy and requires significant modification and rewriting before I can consider it acceptable but essentially, IT is done.

boomchickaboom

*does a little jig around the room*
because chapter 5 has been deemed good
:)

re: letter

so here's the thing. about the letter.

I cringe everytime I think of it. it was more open and bare than anything I had ever told him, than anything I have ever told anyone. and the fact of its nakedness embarasses me because I don't do that. you know.
I don't put my emotions and thoughts all out there for people to see, I can't wear my heart on my sleeve the way others do without feeling incredibly vulnerable and pierce-able. (I know my faithful reader will applaud this, "progress!", but really, I hate it)

I suppose that's also why writing it felt so liberating and it enabled me to let go of everything. it was all out, there was nothing I wanted to say that I hadn't said in it.

But now that he is/might be responding, the thought of it terrifies me. I don't want to know what you have to say for a number of reasons.
i. because if it's good and you're trying to get me back, I might fall back in
ii. because if it's good and you're not trying to get me back, I might fall back in and wish that you were
iii. because if it's bad, I'll feel like a fool.
I don't know which is worse. let's add a 4th reason, to make it a multiple choice kind of thing.
iv. it's a reciprocal goodbye letter.

No, that's the same as ii. nevermind then. I'll just hope that he decided not to send it after all.


Chapter 1 runeth over. 1194 and there's more to write. say it with me ~word count~
and it's so easy after Chapters 4 and 5, leaving me with too much time to think about other things

a gripe

shoot me.

political agency
translation of norms from the international arena to the local level
power relations
state-civil society nexus
inadequacies of civil socety
historical contingency

this is what I'm talking about? fuck me, I'm giving myself permanent headache and setting myself up for a lifetime of poverty. seriously who would hire an Arts student who decides to launch on a critique of both the state and civil society. fine, I could be an academic and sit in the ivory tower and make incisive critiques that no one but other academics would ever bother with but that would require more of this. every convoluted, 5 line long sentence that get teased and tortured out of my head makes me grimace. Because they are convoluted, 5 line long sentences which convey judgements I may not even be in a position to make.

this thing has a life of its own.

should have done taken the Wittgenstein approach and said that none of this is real because there's no such thing as theory. therefore civil society does not exist. it is an abstract notion that has no relation to reality. norms do not exist. the state is a figment of the imagination. ugh. can't do that. Wittgenstein = GK = nutter.
plus I'm doing grounded theory. not just any old theory.

I should sleep on this and come back to it tomorrow but I'm too wired from the coffee I just had. this is fucking with my sleep patterns to the point that I'm confused by it. not that that's hard to do.
I want someone to play with. kidding kidding! (beinggoodbeinggood, E)
no time for that anyway >(

dammitdammitdammit
no work done today
excellent, when duncan asks for an update i can tell him that i spent sunday sticking a letter on my exboyfriend's door and then walking around bondi junction in a semi-conscious state and later cleaning the kitchen and rhapsodizing about truffles to anyone who will listen.
the letter was to tie things up. the way i ended it has been plagueing me and it felt like there were so many things i left unsaid which i had to say before i could move on. so there. one thing done.
focus. thesis. FB's iq thingy tells me i have an iq of 142. i should be a genius therefore this should be a breeze. alternatively that iq thing is whacked and i'm screwed. i'm inclined to agree with the latter.
i CAN be a genius, but only when i'm not preoccupied with
a) sex
b) thinking about sex
c) men
d) my nails
e) my next meal
which means never. or only at 2 in the morning.
sigh... why does my brain not cooperate with me?

que te parecen?

I think:

JW has been telling tales on me to my mom - she wanted to visit me in Sydney soon. hmm... worried about the sanity of her youngest daughter?

coffee has stopped working on me

talking to myself helps. a lot.

democratization. soft authoritarian states. decentralization. civil society. cooption. repeat until linkages form.

i should have done law or physics or something which does not involve original research and critical thinking.
(but they are just sooo tedious! and look at the people you know doing law.. ugh. soulless hamsters)

one day i will look back and laugh. NOT ANYTIME SOON!!

fuck. i can't write today.
so going to delete this.

there's a worm in my brain

why oh why doesn't my brain work?

3000 - 1000 = 2000

for a discussion chapter. this should be a piece of cake! all I need to do is to churn out 2000 words that reflect on my research findings and draw linkages to 'the bigger picture'. and after the 9000 words monstrosity that was The Chapter, this should be easy.

grrr..... work dammit!


on the bright side, I have pretty nails.
I'm meant to be a bimbo, not an honours student.

breathe in

exhale

repeat

shit. this is so much harder than i thought it would be. the approach i was going to take won't work because i'm not qualified to make the judgement i thought i could so i need to rearrange this section. participation. this is hell.
remind yourself: this is not as terrible as you think it is. calm down and take a step back. go back to the start, look at what you have, take it back to the material and let it speak to you

easier said than done when your own biases keep weighing in on things
this is why my first choice for a topic wasn't on malaysia. too much personal bias, too much history. objectivity flys out the window the minute i stop concentrating and let conjecture take over. that is going into the methodology section as one of the limitations to the thesis.

i guess i doesn't help that i woke up this morning wishing it was june again. i miss june. june was happy. i had people i love around me, taking them around the city i love, i felt loved and i thought i was faling in love. the research month was ahead of me, full of possibilities, exploration.

the difference two months makes
this will pass
it's hormonal. give yourself a couple of days and it'll be fine