JYSim for jobless-yokel Sim

The endless days and nights sitting in front of the lamp, reading through paragraph after paragraph of Organic Chemistry or Media Studies which seem totally Greek to you, and the torn apart feeling when you’re deciding whether to continue studying (and be very ill-tempered later) or watch a movie on your PC (and feel so guilty later) is ending as you scribble away the last sentence of your memorised media studies essay. Handing up the script full of condemnation about how rotten the media in Taiwan is, you feel liberated. Merdeka! Liberation! Free! απελευθέρωση! (Greek for ‘liberation’).
But the blissfulness lasted only a fraction of a second. The second thought flash through now - what’s next? This is what I as a Chung Ling student feel after each and every exam in CLHS - what’s next? I will be home in less than 20 minutes, bidding Mdm. Mok goodbye, I’ll have a whole afternoon to my own. However, on this particular day I shall not ground myself to more books, the pile of reference books lying on the marble table at home will be standing there, towering to the ceiling until one day Mum can’t stand it no more and threaten to whack it down if I don’t clean up. I will watch a movie, take a long nap, and wake up to more television. This was my post-exam life as a Chung Ling student.
Now another level higher, as a university student I’m given extra freedom but with less privacy or will to exercise it. No Mum will be there nagging about the towering pile of books and papers, and my roommate won’t care if all the sheets are flying about on the floor, as if a tornado had just blown over Wall Street. Though good times lie ahead, there’s still this small constant gnaw inside your brain about things still not done - borrowing the BioChemistry textbook from your senior, study BioChemistry Chapter 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 14, 15 and 17 during the summer (to be tested upon beginning of term), arranging how the water-balloon fight for September etc. The feeling of ‘what’s next?’ is still there, though to a lesser degree. And we’re all so unmotivated and reluctant to do anything after the exams.
Exams are a part of education - a necessary evil, an absolute evil I may say. I really did study hard for O. Chem, well, perhaps not that hard. I did steal an hour or two watching ‘Hot Fuzz’ and ‘Charlotte’s Web’ (and cried), and I did spent some time daydreaming, but on the whole I do study, and why the heck when I see the questions I stupidly picked ‘R configuration’ when my fingers are doing the anticlockwise motion - it’s so obvious. And why, why and why did I wrote ‘there are 5 stereogenic centers on the molecule’ when I actually marked 6? I ought to just jump from my friend’s room from the third floor. Half the time during the exams I do not know what I’m scribbling. In fact, I’m even amazed by my performance at producing a 1000-word Chinese essay within an hour today - I never got the chance to check it through, but the amount alone is enough to shock me. If you’d ask me what I wrote, I honestly cannot reply. My brain had been rendered nonfunctional since weeks before the exams - many blunders I committed recently - calling people by their wrong names, saying illogical things like ‘the french fries looks smile ice cream,’ (my mind was going through three things - ‘the french fries looks small’, ‘why are you smiling?’ and ‘i want an ice cream, too.’
While I’m still pondering over ‘why did I stay here for such a long time?’ I’m dead envious at my classmate Hueih Ling and Jieyang in England getting to go home so soon. The feeling of going home, for us first and second graders, is even better than hitting the jackpot or being upgraded to First Class - just get us home, that alone is happy enough. My mind is so tired now it cannot do anymore sentence structuring or analyzing. I’d have to stop here before sentences like ‘my hands is with the chicken’ starts to appear.

My enjoyable and relaxing Year One is two weeks from ending now, and a long and a-little packed summer holiday is waiting for me once I defeat the evil evil final exams. Come to think of it, I think the only education worth having while you’re in college or university is to learn to resist temptations and pursue what you really wanted. Temptations are bad, though you’d sometimes get the message ‘temptations are good, so give up to it’ in a paper wrapped in chocolate or something similar. You plan to study the entire morning, and just because your roommate who is beside you is so successful with his Sim City 4 (I bankrupted it a dozen times) you’re so tempted to study how he managed his city so well, you end up turning on your computer and downloading 5 movies and 3 soundtrack CDs. To make things sweeter, you continuously reassure yourself you can eventually get your studies done in the afternoon and head out to a 2-hour lunch.
Summer holidays is the period of lust, of unimaginable idleness and totally relaxed pace of life. It is angelic when you’re in it, but before you step into the cubicle you see it as a demon - it distracts everything. You have 3 papers to be submitted, a total of 10000 words, and there you are, checking airfares to Phuket and Langkawi, and though you know the probability of you actually going to Phuket is like 0.5%, you still go on WikiTravel and took notes even more precise than for O. Chem what you should buy when you’re there.
Nevertheless, Sim Jun Yi being a person who easily gives up to temptations, has find his summer holidays almost packed (even though it’s like one month before he’s actually home). It will kickstart with attending Mum’s Convocation Ceremony in PWTC, it would be a really touching and memorable moment - even grandma is invited. Then, as August looms ahead, the triad (or quartet - Soon Khen, Jieyang, me, Jiong Kit) would probably go paintballing. And as Jieyang says he’d like to spend more time with us, I emptied the first 10 days of August for him and his friends. Around 11 - 15 of August I will have the chance to travel to KL in style as an ambassador of Tzu Chi University for an education fair in KLCC. As transportation and accommodation is provided by the school, I’m drawing plans to fly Malaysia Airlines First Class and charge the school for that.
Next, my friend and his sister would do a short visit here, around the school holidays, and as I’m still in a daze of where to bring them, I cannot yet churn out words for this paragraph.
After the certainly-glamorous National Day Celebration of Malaysia I’d start doing the usual ’see you next January’ procession with everybody I asked out. This time back, I’ll be certain I stocked enough CLHS notebooks and exercise books, and I’ll bring my Italian glass-painting here - I just realized it had become my life, symbols are my life. Before the summer ends I’ll be making plans for the NEXT summer already, and just as Dad’s paintings, it is boundless, it is powerful, it calms you and makes you happy, but realizing it or not is another matter. I guess life is what we are now - to plan perfectly but to realize it unexpectedly interesting and enriching.
Guess this post is completely babel all the way.

The degree of how busy you are - business (busy-ness), is coincidentally the same word for a commercial trade of goods and services, business. While Oxford had had no recognition on the word ‘business’ used on how busy you are, I’d like to claim it mine first in order to continue on for this post.
I’m extremely sorry for not being blogging for such a long time, the main reason being I’m 10 on the business scale recently, and that my past posts had had no comments, which was rather disconcerting. Recently I experienced several kinds of business, listed below with description:
1. The Abrupt and Acute Business
You’re happily watching Air Crash Investigations of China Airlines 006 when suddenly 3 of your friends nudged you on MSN. No. 1 demanded that you complete your description for the water fight you plan to organize on September this very instant while No. 2 is trying to get the message ‘go sign up for the course on how to handle a society tomorrow before 12pm at the Office of General Affairs with Ms. Foo and don’t forget to pay 100 dollars and ask her to issue a receipt as well as submit the society’s reimbursement for the money used on tuning the grand piano…..’ across, but of course you weren’t paying attention because you’re too preoccupied watching and typing at the same time. At that immediate moment No. 3 urgently needs an explanation on why you did not call up your group members and inform them about paying up 1000 dollars for a camp.
That’s the precise moment when you wished you had the remote control to your life so that you can yell ‘ STOP’ and everything will freeze.
2. The Slowly Gnawing Business
You had a great day at school. The lessons were ok, you did not fell asleep, and you were planning to clock some study hours before finally leaping into the ‘ER’ DVD your senior lent you at 10pm. You’re back at your bedroom, and you had the physics textbook in front of you. Just as you’re about to plug in your iPod, you suddenly remembered about your scholarship next year - are they terminating it or are they continuing it? And why the heck my money has been delayed for almost one month? And then another worrisome problem crops up - heck, I have a 3000-word essay to be submitted the day after tomorrow, and currently I’m still at Word Nought. Sim Jun Yi, you know you’re not a genius and you cannot produce a 3000-word essay in 30 minutes, so you gotta get your butt off the chair and start typing now. But, oh, I’ve gotta study a little or else I’d be so behind soon.
As you’re still contemplating on whether to start typing or continuing studying and your eyes wonder around the pages sending nothing into the brain, you turned and saw this mountainous pile of recyclable garbage in the washroom. And then - didn’t the dorm master just entered your room yesterday and warned you guys better get that pile out of your room soon or else he’ll set them on fire and roast all of you alive in there?
And thus you are so undecided about doing these things until finally you’re too tired to think at 1am and you fell asleep.
3. The Talked-into Business
You’re dining alone at an eatery outside your school, feeling down from the weather and the coming weekend. Your senior walked in with his boyfriend, and, as you’re usually smiling all the time, she noticed something different about you.
‘Oh, you looked so cool when you’re not smiling!’
‘H’m, ok.’
‘Well, you’re so well-versed and cool all the time ain’t you? Such a talent!’
‘Uh-huh’
‘We need a host for our farewell party this weekend, you’ll be accompanying Ning Ning on hosting. It’ll be fun! I’ll contact you soon to give you the details ya?’ (prepares to leave).
‘But, I…’ (she just left and closes the door).
And thus I had to vacate up to 20 hours in the next 3 days in order to prepare for the host job. It was a nice party overall, but I blubbered a lot, and now that I’m not anymore expected to do anything, nobody says I’m cool or good-looking anymore.
To conclude - business, it comes in all forms.
Would post more soon, I’m still busy anyway.