questions about national identity

this week, the issue of national identity has been constantly in my head. it seems like 2 unrelated modules i am taking have spontaneously decided to focus on national identity. in Culture, Text & Identity, we've been looking at Chinhua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia and the issue of the nation through the Enlightenment and nativism, while the topic of the week for Poetry In English Since 1945 has been Scottish Poetry and the grapling of the issue of Scotland as a nation.

in fact, the i've been reflecting on all the issues so much that the when i read a question in the graduate application for M&C Saatchi (which was 'Distil the 21st Century in 21 words'), the first phrase that came to my head was 'disintegration of national boundaries and identity'.

scary.

while i was sitting in my Scottish Poetry class, i started to think how even more foreign this is to me than it is to the other people in the class. i have enough problems understanding poetry in English, let alone dialect (and/or understanding half the references). hopefully things will pick up when we study Indian poets. Or Aussies.

head.cannot.absorb.going.to.explode.

i suddenly realised this morning while standing at the bus stop and looking at my diary that it is week 5 of the term. and next week is reading week.

OH MY! the end of term will be here in 5 weeks!

my life has been marked by deadlines for job applications that i havent realised how much of my final year has passed! AI-YAIYAI-YAIYAI!

and i just spent 30mins trying to read 2 poems for Poetry In English Since 1945 lecture-seminar tomorrow. the topic for the week is Scottish Poetry and ohmygoodnesswhydotheyhavetowriteindialect?!?

i have enough problems trying to understand ENGLISH! let alone a variant of English that even when you read it out loud you still dont get it phonetically!

btw, have i mentioned i am linguistically challenged? i suck at Business English. and worse! even conversational English! i stumble and ramble before getting to my point. which is so helpful when applying for jobs.

bummer.

OH CRAP

i had been putting off sending an application till i was certain that the answers to the short-answer questions were perfect. this application had 6 pages, the questions were on page 4.

i clicked on 'Save and Continue' and went on to page 5 which just had 2 questions about how i learnt about the job. after answering them, i clicked on 'Save and Continue' so that i could go to the last page to make sure i didnt suddenly discover that there were another list of questions to answer. i figured that there was probably a button to click on to submit once i got to the end of page 6.

OH CRAP.

because once page 6 appeared, it said "Thank you for your application. You have met our minimum requirement" and then asked me to fill up some other form. I thought, 'dont panic... hey maybe at the end of that there is another button to click on to submit both this and the new form.'

then i received an email from the company saying they have received my application.

OH CRAP.

new tag board

AHHHHH! for the last 2 weeks tag-board.com has been annoying me.

LIKE BIG TIME

because my blog is my homepage on my Mozilla and everytime i open it, some pop-up window POPS UP asking me for some control panel password. and it happened when i tried to read other people's blogs for a while as well. and also when i tried it on Josh's computer a few days ago.

finally enough was enough.

so bye bye tag-board.com. hello tag-world.com.

and hopefully no one has been trying to tag recently (and actually successfully done so) because i would have had no way of reading any of it.

GRR.

In my weakness I am reminded

Psa 20:1	To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David. MAY the LORD answer you in the day of trouble; May the name of the God of Jacob defend you;
Psa 20:2	May He send you help from the sanctuary, And strengthen you out of Zion;
Psa 20:3	May He remember all your offerings, And accept your burnt sacrifice. Selah
Psa 20:4	May He grant you according to your heart's desire, And fulfill all your purpose.
Psa 20:5	We will rejoice in your salvation, And in the name of our God we will set up our banners! May the LORD fulfill all your petitions.
Psa 20:6	Now I know that the LORD saves His anointed; He will answer him from His holy heaven With the saving strength of His right hand.
Psa 20:7	Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; But we will remember the name of the LORD our God.
Psa 20:8	They have bowed down and fallen; But we have risen and stand upright.
Psa 20:9	Save, LORD! May the King answer us when we call.

of frustrations

many apologies to loads of people who have messaged me and i've not actually spoken to in reply - it isnt that i am ignoring you, just that i've had a lot of things to deal with recently that i feel rather overwhelmed.

i've been feeling more and more pressed for time - not in the everyday kind of way, but rather than there is a clock ticking the end of my university life, the end of certainty and the beginning of the great unknown. i didnt use to have the post-graduation jitters like some of my friends did/do because i guess i always knew that i would really enjoy working since i've gone through it and felt rather stimulated by working life. recently however, i've been feeling a sense of urgency to get THAT job and to cement my future. but it's so frustrating to think about how tough the competition is going to be and getting upset that i've had to strike many options off because i am not eligible to apply for their graduate schemes due to my nationality.

and on top of that, i've been auditioning for MTW stuff because i know i want to do at least one show before i graduate or else i'll always regret that i didnt even put my name down to AUDITION. my Copa one went pretty ok - the Chorus Line one i went for last year was really good in getting me used to auditioning and i think i did much better this time than the last (though it is hard to top how bad the last one was). and today i auditioned for the Wk 9 show even though i am not really sure i want it. i guess auditioning wont hurt since i have nothing to lose and stuff to gain (practice for job interviews perhaps?).

it's so easy to say "Leave it to God" but so hard to put into practice. i guess i'm just eager to find out God's plan for me so that i can relax - but then that isnt the point, is it. i know in my head that whatever happens will be good but i guess it is the control freak in me that wants everything to go according to my plan. when it should be His plan.

i wish i wasnt so... ME. and more Him.

Dancin' Fool

today was phenominal - considering how the day started with me hearing banging noises at 7am and having to get up ANYWAY because i had a 9am class.

i watched a brilliant film, participated in a stimulating seminar and did loads of dancing! i ache but in a good way - the sort you get after doing loads of continuous exercise, the type that comes after you've pushed yourself on and convinced yourself to go all-out even though you are exhausted, the kind that you dont mind having because you proudly know that you actually stretched and warmed up AND cooled down after each session.

on the other hand, i was pretty much the clown in Stuart's Freestyle class - i am convinced that he thinks i am retarded. i take ages to learn a step and about 5 seconds after he has finished going through the step, i forget it. he even came up to me and personally showed me a rather simple sequence.

crossing my fingers about something else - hopefully tomorrow's half will go well. :)

Life as an Adult

so my 21st birthday passed without as much fanfare as i had originally planned for - somehow having your birthday on the first Thursday of the academic year doesnt work very well for parties because

a) it is a Thursday and it's the first Evolve (or for old-timers, Mirage) night and EVERYONE wants to go for it
b) i live in Earlsdon in Coventry and it doesnt work well to plan a party when half my friends live in Leamington Spa and half in Coventry (and a few on Campus)
c) my house is too small for a house party
AND
d) thinking about the logistics makes me feel lazy/tired

so i had a nice quiet night out with Josh at a quaint little French restaurant in Kenilworth - we arrived in time for a late dinner (after working out a compromise where he went for the first half of Big Band rehearsal) and had the whole restaurant to ourselves. AND even though we only occasionally go to Restaurant Diment, the husband-and-wife proprietors know us so well that the wife even asked if i did something to my hair/makeup because i looked different. now THAT is called personal service!

anyway, i spent my afternoon doing such a grownup thing that it is a bit shocking - i worked on updating my CV. i guess it is the whole realisation that applications for graduate schemes have opened and some of the deadlines are the end of this month. two weeks ago i was up at 7am looking through companies i was thinking of applying to and noting down all the deadlines. i guess i am kind of excited yet daunted by the task of finding a job because i feel pumped up after Summer to start seriously working on getting a good first job. on the other hand, i kind of feel like a bit lost in that i dont really know people in the industry, dont know anyone else who wants to go into the same area as i do (which is a good thing for lack of competition but bad in that i dont have anyone to go through this with) AND i seem to be the only person in my department who is looking to get a corporate job whereas everyone wants to muck about and/or make an independent film.

and to compound the sense of frustration, i've had to strike off a few companies on my list because they wont even accept my application because i am not eligible to work in the UK (i.e. they need to apply for a work permit for me). which means that "for applications for work permits to be granted it must be shown that the required skills cannot be sourced from those who are eligible to work in the UK" AND most places are only going to hire 10 people in my area of interest.

wake-up call to the harsh reality of adulthood.

but in a good way, a pressing call to depend on God's grace and favour.

FINAL year

its strange to be in my final year of university. on one hand, i am glad that there will no longer be any more essays to write, no more exams to deal with. yet there is a bittersweet quality to that- no more adrenaline-pumping exams, no more pushing myself in the middle of the night to churn out that genius of an essay.

i feel like time is running out to enjoy university life. so much to do, so little time. especially performing. it IS depressing to think of life with no more performances to work towards. at least for musicians you can gig regularly in venues like pubs and restaurants. as a dancer, you dont quite get that.

am almost sure i will do the MTW weekend show - it's CHICAGO! and all i want to be is in the chorus!

i've had 2 long days of almost neck-to-neck classes. it's been rather overwhelming but somehow i'm feeling really pumped up about my final year as a student. it's now or never to enjoy the intellectual stimulation. how often will you get to discuss Ingmar Bergman or Lubitsch or Robert Frost's "speaking voice" or Robinson Crusoe and Enlightenment?