last paper

ni tech ni auto. j'en ai marre.

room 408

After some tidying up, I might as well snapped a few photos of the room when it is neat and tidy. So that when I post it on my blog these will be the lasting impressions people will have of my habitable living conditions in Paris. For posterity sake.

"there you have it. what you see when you walk in."-cj

"clean toilets. 4 stars."-cj

"An upskirt poster right above my keyboard. To satisfy
my both my voyeuristic and musical pasttime."-cj

"bedside time reading. Danish cookies.
can't sleep without either."-cj

"my mini-mart."-cj

"I know milk does n0t look classy beside the wine.
but i have a high dependency on dairy products. 0.75L/day."-cj

" from tomatoes, broccolis, green apples,
mushrooms, chicken etc etc for a good meal.
to pizzas as fast food"-cj

"staple food. Rice. Pasta. Spanish Paella. Noodles.
butter cookies are sometimes my staple too.
which explains why they are there."-cj

"pots and pans to whip up a storm in the kitchen.
and ovaltine which I thought I will never see again in Singapore."-cj

"One of the hardest thing in my life.
reading french business law."-cj

"mind your Ps. pin-ups. postcards. pencil case.
phone. photos. posters. post-its. pence. penknife. " - cj

"Prague's Charles' Bridge as my desktop.
aa's mushroom on my sub-woofer. "-cj

"A souvenir from every country.
Ironically, almost all are 'made in China'."-cj

"there, 4th from the right,
the travel book for my big trip in April."-cj

i remembered how empty my room was when i first came.

exams

no pressure. no stress. no late nights. no coffee. no walk in the park either. but i have a pre-exam routine.

I clean my room. spotless. it is now. :)

woa

what gratification.

brothers

"hey bro, check out his move!"

head i win, tail you lose. haha

just. soon.

"Thanks for the past, I won't hesitate anymore." What are you hesitating to do anyway? If this is a threat, make it credible. Opening salvos without gunpowder is like firing blanks. How many people do you have to crucify a year for your lack of generosity? We can all already band together to form a support group. I apologized for being blunt. If you want to lie, make sure it cover all bases. Lying and then punishing me for tear apart your lie. real mature of you.

(s)he is not gg to real this anyway. ermph. finally got it out of me.

Montmartre

"my fav photo and aptly my fav hangout place in paris too."-cj

Here is what you do not see from the photo.

"FIGHTS broke out early on Wednesday between French police and demonstrating students in the tourist district of Montmartre in Paris. Police in riot gear charged groups of students after around 150 young people carried out acts of vandalism, an AFP reporter said. Several streets were littered with broken glass after the windows of a supermarket and two banks were smashed.

One student said a 'university night' attended by some thousands of students near the Sorbonne university got out of hand after a group decided to hold spontaneous demonstrations in the streets of Paris. Riot police converged on the students in dozens of vehicles and were met by salvos of bottles. On Tuesday some 200 students had occupied part of the French capital's institute of political studies in protest at inequalities in higher education. -- AFP"

i signed a petition to the school's administration yesterday night. riots, strikes are essentially a part of my life now.

friday night

We spend the Friday talking. Touching a wide range of topics including religion, South American political systems, war in Africa, our common dislike for the French students in our school, my disgusting banana snack, unemployment rates in Algeria, finding European wives, housing in Paris, Italians, Singapore's history, British colonies, why nobody cleans up the mess in the kitchen, being more well informed about a religion doesn't make one more religious, government regulation vs free markets, the layout of a mosque, the exams in a week, internships, learn a bit of Berber and etc etc. In some Arabic countries, their 5 day work week begins on Saturday and end on Thursday. Their Friday is like our Sunday equivalent. Maybe this explains why Christians go to church on Sundays and Muslims to mosques on Fridays, as the 2 days are their respective days of rest. This lead me to question the functioning of the financial and trading centers in these countries as global markets operates from Monday to Friday. His matter-of-fact answer : and so this is how we lose 4 days every week.

I just found out that there is a Spanish word to describe "sitting around the table talking after a meal" which was just what we were doing. We are a curious mix if you ask me. Imagine an Algerian, an Argentinean and a Singaporean having a conversation in French. With my poor french, I was proud to be able to hold my own. It was really an eye opener as you see how much insight they can bring to you about Africa and South America. They have so much to offer. Throw in a German, a Canadian, an Australian and an Eskimo and we will have represented all 7 continents. I'm going to miss those guys when the leave at the end of the month.

i feel small in a world so big and with so much to offer.

hur

I'm sorry if you think that I think that you are an imbecile.

cos I don't

lifted

I had stayed up late waiting to make sure my friend get back home safe. You can't imagine the state of late night transport in Paris with only 20+ night bus routes serving the big city. Expecting arrival time at 230am, I had a long night ahead. Early sleepers like me have problems staying up late, so I went to cook myself a midnight snack and settle myself comfortably in bed to watch Slumdog Millionaire. Magical film. Like a modern day fairy tale, it told the stories of two childhood friends and their repeated separations and reunions. It gave me a general feel good feeling at the end. Good thing I had drawn my curtains, else people who looked into my room would be wondering who is the crazy drunk kid dancing in his room at 2am in morning. The show probably double the amount of optimism in me.

Earlier that day, I had spend the whole afternoon chatting on msn and emails (with some people who refused to log in to msn) Now my inbox and sent item show a whole page of Jac~. well done. It has been the longest I had been online since the new semester started. I caught up with the lives of my friends, trying to suck them dry of every detail of their life which I had missed out. A surprise. Today I renewed a connection; one that I thought has been lost.

"Bridges. Connecting people."-cj

I remembered our last spoken words were "We will still be friends."
I said it as a lie, but you said it as a promise. I'm ashamed.

brinkmanship

offer you my other cheek? I can't do that. and pls don't try push it.

not even if you tell me that you are gg to kiss it.

7 minutes

My most productive 7minutes during the 20min presentation. i know that there is no rhythm. Nobody expects a masterpiece in 7min anyway. No no kids. Blogging in class is wrong.

To the one who sat
beside me in class,

7 minutes

"I sat and sulked, my boredom grew.
Over my head, his words flew.
I looked at him as if I understood,
but really, i'm thinking 'bout red riding hood.

I dislike the lesson, but I'm attending.
Physically here, but my mind's not willing.
Three hours of Econometry is really testing.
God forbid, but my will is bending.

What I had thought to be an interesting lesson,
is filled with least square fit and linear regression.
Multi-co-linearity and standard deviation,
why did I subject myself to such mental degradation.

I want to dig a hole and bury my head.
Time is more well spent lying in bed.
I register nothing of the things he said.
The boring speech. He's such an old maid.

Worse, the presentation is in french.
didn't help that my dislike for it is deeply entrenched.
The presentation is slow and lacking in width,
making the snails look deadly and swift.

I'm already at the last stanza of my rant.
"Oh please stop!" No he can't!
I mused a little at my poetic flair,
reminding myself my judgment hadn't been all fair. "

-cj , spring 2009
seance 4 du cours d'Econometrie

in retrospect, what a crudely written poem. and happy belated birthday.

bullying

A friend S just finished "19 minutes' by Jodi Picoult. One things leads to another and we ended up talking about bullying in school and among siblings. I didn't really have much to offer as I was neither on the giving or receiving end of bullying when I was in school. Yes, I did made some one cry before. Ok maybe I did make some people cry. Those are isolated incidents not to be confused with bullying.

We talked about what went through the minds of the parents, the bully and the victim. How mos parents end up blaming themselves for the bullying. Parents asking themselves how did they raise such a screw up kid. Is bullying a way to cover up for some emotional inadequatecy? Then we strayed to other topics about how parents like to compare their children among each other. If any parent is reading this. In my opinion, this is really unhealthy. The younger siblings are not there to fill the shoes of the older silblings. I personally do not like to be compared with my siblings. Clearly, we are brought up the same way. But we went to different schools, chose different paths. In this case of nature vs nurture, the nature wins in my case.

My siblings and I went to different schools. I do say we all turned out rather decent and, in fact, good. (those who disagree that I am a good person. please scroll down to the picture at the end of the entry and see what I will do to you what you when I get back). We have very different motivations, different hobbies and very different characters. So there is not really a direct basis for comparison. I was never the most hardworking and never the most polite one either. But some kids are simply defiant, this "cant-you-be-more-like-your-sister" strategy does not always works. The covesrsation went on about a lot more stuffs. But hell. I seldom about serious issues on msn.

Maybe msn is meant for serious talk. Being already in front of the computer will allow you to search for the opinions of others on the same issue on the internet. Non conversationlist, multi-taskers and scatter brains can copy and paste those lines directly into the conversation. Thus, allow them to keep up with the conversation with minimal effort. hahaha if you are reading this. no i was not doing tt last night. or at least tt will be the story i am sticking to.

"I will freaking bite off your head."-cj

yea. i will do just that. kidding.