number 13 looks like you

Ladies and gentlemen, this is pretty much the crunch time. The magazine is slated to go to the printers this weekend and everything's in a mad flurry and rush. Calling for photoshoots and article submissions. Pictures to be processed (CMYK pls) and articles to be edited and re-edited and you get the picture.

I guess I've found a slant for the NUS Biathlon thing. Pays at times to read the background history on the event. Not that it matters and that I give a shit but the article needs it. And better that than some slipshod first-hand account of something that was honestly, boring.

My mood swings from one extreme to another which could be potentially scary if I was the sort to prance around wielding kitchen knives. Ergh. Didn't I mention before that I seriously needed to organize my time better? Yup. Sometimes I hate the unfortunate bastards and bitches who get it so easy. Without so much as lifting their finger or needing to sacrifice anything at all, they get what they want. But you turn the mirror back at me and you could possibly say the same things. So the question comes that mayhaps they appear to be fortunate (and sometimes even ungrateful) fuckers so nonchalant on the outside but what if they're all troubled and tormented on the inside? The analogy of two sides to a coin. But still, it doesn't mean that we (poor, pitiful and pathetic lowlife commoners that we are) don't have the right still to want to gouge their eyeballs out.

I'm attributing this angst and derailed train of thought to work stress. I'm not a huge fan of deadlines, I know they work really well in ensuring you get the job done. But at the same time, it amplifies the amount of things that need to be done. Hence, scary and terrifying and everything else. But at least now I've gotten a paragraph up. Just a bit more to go and I can start focussing on the Singapore Masters.

Whilst we sat down during lunch and talked about current affairs, I started to question how transparent was the media and the government with its people. We take if for granted that what we read about countries outside of our own cocooned island for granted. War and strife, chaos and suffering so eminent elsewhere. We seem apathetic about it, is it only because they're happening there and not here? For the matter, how much do we truly know of things happening to us? Things that are going on and around in the country?

We're only concerned with the hike in GST, we're concerned about the hike in transportation fees. Notice how a lot of things revolve around money? It saddens me to think that we're possibly a nation filled with dollar-signed oblivious skeptics. Or not even skeptics. We're just oblivious. Or on my level, around the people I hang out with, none of these would make into dinner-time topics of conversation.

'How are you doing?'
'How's work like?'
'How much are you getting paid?'
'Is your boyfriend/girlfriend still treating you like shit?'

But then there's nothing that can be helped with regards to that. To brood excessively over things not within our control labels us as being overly dramatic. And yet when we focus so much on ourselves we're self-absorbed and egocentric.

The point. The fulcrum. Where is that? What is enough? What is balance?

I think I'm beginning to think too much of things that I shouldn't even bother thinking about. Quite true. Not that any of this is going to be of value anyway. Argh. I'm just typing to stay awake.

But seriously though, how?























(Much later)
We live for little breaths of life at each time. Such as, my editor telling me that I've vastly improved in the most recent submission. More colour, more words and more impact.

There is still that niggling problem of putting names and faces instead of just shadows and vague figures.

I'll learn. I will.