In Continuum.

Anyway, so today is my birthday, and my parents came to me and asked if I am expecting a concert coming up anytime soon. Apparently, my mother somehow thought that I was about to attend a concert, an assumption which baffles me to no end because I haven't spoken of any in a long time. There aren't any bands that I like that is coming to Singapore, at least no one has announced it just yet. At any rate, my mother stuffed me two hundred dollars and told me to use it for future concerts - a birthday gift that is both strange and, admittedly, very practical. It isn't the kind of gift to feel warm and fuzzy about, but let's admit it - we all love thick wads of cash more than a gift. At least with the money, you can do pretty much whatever you want with it. If you want to bust in on a plate of chicken wings, you can go right ahead and do it, nobody is going to stop you. I'm just saying that it is practical to give me money, and it's not like I haven't suggested that idea in the past anyway. So, my birthday gift this year is apparently two hundred dollars from the parents. It's not a lot, but it is still money anyway. In the previous years, I have gotten guitars from them, so I guess this kind of pales in comparison.

Though, I really shouldn't complain, because what came next today on the timetable really struck me back to rock bottom. I am not one to feel depressed about people forgetting my birthday, I really cannot care less. It is nice if people remember, and a big thank you to all those that did. But for the rest, it's not like I'd hold anything against you guys whatsoever. Not many people did so far, but we have a whole day ahead of us anyway. What really pissed me off today was probably the whole mid-terms paper for PSY 333. I know it is something silly to be worked up about, and I also made a mental note to myself before to not be so hard on myself. After all, as COM 249 and 450 proved, I don't usually do as bad as I expect. But this time around, I really do think that I am going to do as badly, or worse, than I expect. It sucks even more that I had to go through the paper on my birthday itself, and not all the other days. This deep burning rage I have against the lecturer has been going on for a while now, and it isn't being extinguished by her grandma-looking exterior either. I constantly conjure up images of her being tortured underneath a blowtorch and a chainsaw at the same time. It isn't so much about her, of course, but about the kind of papers she love to set.

We have heard horror stories her in the past, but things started out fine. I mean, for those who have been through her class, they've told us before about how terrible she is as a lecturer. A point to note here, the juniors seem to love all the lecturers that the seniors hate. I have no idea why, but they just seem to differ from us in terms of opinions. Anyway, the lot of us are not exactly used to her exam style of focusing on filling in the blanks. I mean, we have been trained mostly with MCQs and essay questions, and the sheer amount of content that we had to study this time really was a strain on us. She obviously didn't take into consideration the fact that this is a summer semester, and that everything is sandwiched up for us. Just because her module gets the entire semester (unlike the others which have only six), it doesn't mean that we have all the time in the world to focus on her shit. It becomes annoying when she uses her old standards on us, and believes in her own methods of teaching when they aren't necessarily teaching. Anyway, I probably bombed this mid-terms paper, and I am not the kind of person who'd do well in a paper after claiming that I have bombed it. Yes, I bombed this paper, and I mean it that way.

So, for the rest of my birthday today, I am going to spend it with Neptina (hopefully), sleeping, playing catch up on blogging, and a whole lot of nothing. It happens just once every year, but it's true that turning twenty-three really doesn't feel very much different from when I turned twenty-two last year. This is the period of time, a series of ages whereby there aren't a lot of differences for the most part. Like, turning twenty from being nineteen is probably a big deal, and the same with turning twenty-one from twenty. But everything from twenty-two to twenty-four, nothing really changes mentally, and everything pretty much remains the same. Twenty-five is the year when people start to worry about a great many things. People start to think about careers and families, and they start to think about marriages and all the sort of thing. Twenty-five, being on the later half of the twenties, it just makes you feel like you are running out of time. Twenty-six to twenty-eight is yet another period of time when everything pretty much feels the same. You are still not married, and your job still sucks, and you have already survived a couple of years on the same wage - fine. Then twenty-nine comes along, the last year you are in your twenties, and you really start to freak out here when you realize that you are pushing thirty.

So yes, twenty-three feels just about right I guess. It's good to be a guy at times, you really don't have to worry about aging at this age. I mean, they are always talking about expiry dates for girls, and I am sure there is one for guys as well. It's just that we probably had a lot more preservatives added at the beginning, and we tend to last a lot longer than the ladies. By twenty-five, some women would see themselves as being "out of the market", or ready to get married, that sort of thing. Maybe it doesn't work like that right now, but at least there are people who still believe in it. Twenty-three is a very comfortable age for me, and especially so when I don't have to throw a big party to commemorate it. There was an urge when I turned twenty-one to celebrate it, or to mourn for the loss of my youth and innocence, something like that. But then again, when I did eventually turn twenty-one, I realized that my youth was still intact, and I haven't been innocent for a very long time already. So, it really wasn't that significant, and anybody who has planned and thrown a party would tell you that logistically, it is a bitch. Not only that, you have to entertain different tables of individuals who have been important in your life, yet at the same time they may not be related to one another in any way. Trying to play host is going to be annoying, and I'd much rather entertain them on different occasions. Maybe when I am pushing thirty - just maybe.

Anyway, I intend to spend today much like how I spent yesterday, and the day before that. Neptina is coming over today, and we are just going to hang out and laugh at silly things. I don't imagine myself to hold out for very long in the afternoon, since the paper was a killer and I have no cells left in my skull to do anything more than to go into hibernation for a while. I think there were plans for some of us to go out to town. But, seeing the weather and the lack of enthusiasm, not to mention the rampage of the swine flu out in the wild, you kind of want to stay indoors and stay away from the general public out there. Felicia was just telling me about the taxi that she saw the other day on CTE, with all the passengers wearing masks, including the driver, and the windows winded down. That is how serious things are right now, and I personally feel that Singapore needs a bloody wake up call. I don't wish for death, but I wish for a further spread somehow. That is the only way for people to learn from this, to know how serious things can get when you do not take extra measures to control the situation. I mean, just look at the military camps. Sooner or later, no one would be booking out and no one would be booking in either. Wait, that's actually an awesome idea. Let's do that.