Thursday, April 26, 2007

Drudgery Amidst Music

The third essay is done – the third of four assignments I have to complete before getting down to some hard core studying for the exams, which loom ahead, ominously.

Something tells me that this blog is going to get a wee bit more boring in the coming few weeks. Certainly, all the expeditions to assorted eating places around London are over. I now scrape the sides of my fridge in perfunctory efforts to feed myself.

The escapades to various entertainment hotspots around town are at an end. No museums, no galleries, no pubs and markets, no performances. Instead, I have but my imagination with which to amuse myself. Cool London waits out there, but I might as well be in the middle of the Sahara.

But being cooped up in the room has given me time to savour some new music. HM has sent me two albums from Muse, containing spectacular tracks such as Sing for Absolution, Apocalypse Please and Assassin. These guys are awesome. She’ll be heading to one of their gigs in June with the SSG, and it’s unfortunate I won’t be free then to join the two of them.

Meanwhile, GNK has also provided me with some albums from Singapore’s own Stefanie Sun. I rather regret not tracking her career closely, for she rose to prominence during a time when I was away in the US. I recall returning to Singapore after those few years away, and discovering Stefanie Mania sweeping the island. It’s been a real delight to sample her songs now.

Meanwhile, I find my thoughts are focused ever more on the end of my course here in London, and on what might await me back in Singapore in the autumn. Of course, I shall have also to curtail the use of such terms, for they invite derision and the multiple rolling of eyes. But that’s how we’ve come to think of time, of the seasons changing.

Back home, with the sun rising and setting at seven daily, with the temperature within an unyieldingly narrow range, you find it difficult to feel a sense of time passing, each day containing the same drudgery as the day before, with little time to step back and reflect on where you’ve been and where you’re headed.

Over here, it is different. And it’s one among many reasons why I’m very grateful for this one year.

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