Phil Collins- You Can't Hurry Love
Published Saturday, October 21, 2006 by Robin.Check this out. It’s so catchy I can’t help shaking to the baseline.
I had dinner with chio-bu last evening. After seeing her off at the taxi stand, this song started to play in my head and I walked back to my dorm sprightfully, swinging my umbrella and with a spring in my step. The song always leaves me wondering if its central message is fundamentally cheerful and optimistic (as its tune suggests) or cheerless and resigned (as its lyrics can be interpreted to be suggesting). I am the sort who likes to plan and have a sense of what is to come, but very often we just have to accept that the vagaries of fate are a fact of life. For the moment, I like to think of the song as a cheerful reminder.
My mama said
You can't hurry love
No, you'll just have to wait
No, you'll just have to wait
She said love don't come easy
But it's a game of give and take
You can't hurry love
No, you'll just have to wait
Just trust in a good time
No matter how long it takes
Shostakovich Centennial
Published Wednesday, October 11, 2006 by Robin.
Friday evening is undoubtedly the highlight of my weekend. It was the Shostakovich centennial and I went downtown to catch the concert at Heinz Hall. Shostakovich is my favorite modern composer and I had been looking forward to the concert the whole of last week.
Heinz Hall is ornate, the architecture lavish and extravagant. The wealth of the tomato ketchup.
Heinz Hall is ornate, the architecture lavish and extravagant. The wealth of the tomato ketchup.
The tango from the first piece (The Bolt) was exciting but after that I got very irritated when the trumpet started sounding like wind rushing out of a deflated balloon.
I was not extremely impressed, but I had a lot of fun.
Literary Constipation, or History Papers Are Such Pain In the Ass
Published by Robin.
I slept very well last night. I had three assignments due yesterday and the weekend had been tiring. The thing about assignments and homework in general is that they count towards the final grade. Furthermore, it is not uncommon that some of the writing assignments actually carry more weight than the exams.
I spent Saturday and Sunday working on my history paper. It was tiring not because I was writing and drafting away, but because I was suffering from a particularly terrible bout of verbal constipation. I brooded over my response for hours on end but still could not put together a decent paragraph. I worked on a point after leaving my laundry in the washing machine but the paragraph was still incoherent after my laundry came out from the dryer.
I started on the paper by working through the readings on Saturday afternoon, half the time having no idea what the authors were driving at. They beat around the bush and devote chapters to obscure examples. But just when I thought that I can get the gist of what they are trying to say by simply reading the chapters’ introduction and conclusion (worked very well for my previous response paper), some important points pop up in the middle.
I gave up and went for dinner, thinking that the break will help me find my muse.
I worked on it again after dinner, got nowhere, took a fitful nap, and woke up at 1am feeling neither refreshed nor rejuvenated. Not only did I get no where this time, I threw out half the points from my outline. I came up with ideas for some new ones, chatted on MSN and went to sleep. That was Sunday morning.
Not surprisingly, I had to try very hard to stay awake in church. To add to my feeling sian, chio-bu woke up late and couldn’t make it to the service. But things got better. The bowel movements returned to some semblance of normalcy. While I did not turn into such a wordsmith as to be able to purge like some of those school-children who kenna-ed gastric flu, I was a lot more productive. It was like a much-needed dose of fiber and laxative, there was an irrigation in the colons; I could even put together the conclusion to my paper while taking a shower. In many sense, my paper ended with a release and then a flush.
The first chorus from “Weird Al” Yankovic’s parody of Avril Lavigne’s ‘Complicated’ aptly serves as an ode to my history paper, “Why'd you have to go and make me so constipated/'Cause right now I'd do anything to get my bowels evacuated”.
I spent Saturday and Sunday working on my history paper. It was tiring not because I was writing and drafting away, but because I was suffering from a particularly terrible bout of verbal constipation. I brooded over my response for hours on end but still could not put together a decent paragraph. I worked on a point after leaving my laundry in the washing machine but the paragraph was still incoherent after my laundry came out from the dryer.
I started on the paper by working through the readings on Saturday afternoon, half the time having no idea what the authors were driving at. They beat around the bush and devote chapters to obscure examples. But just when I thought that I can get the gist of what they are trying to say by simply reading the chapters’ introduction and conclusion (worked very well for my previous response paper), some important points pop up in the middle.I gave up and went for dinner, thinking that the break will help me find my muse.
I worked on it again after dinner, got nowhere, took a fitful nap, and woke up at 1am feeling neither refreshed nor rejuvenated. Not only did I get no where this time, I threw out half the points from my outline. I came up with ideas for some new ones, chatted on MSN and went to sleep. That was Sunday morning.
Not surprisingly, I had to try very hard to stay awake in church. To add to my feeling sian, chio-bu woke up late and couldn’t make it to the service. But things got better. The bowel movements returned to some semblance of normalcy. While I did not turn into such a wordsmith as to be able to purge like some of those school-children who kenna-ed gastric flu, I was a lot more productive. It was like a much-needed dose of fiber and laxative, there was an irrigation in the colons; I could even put together the conclusion to my paper while taking a shower. In many sense, my paper ended with a release and then a flush.
The first chorus from “Weird Al” Yankovic’s parody of Avril Lavigne’s ‘Complicated’ aptly serves as an ode to my history paper, “Why'd you have to go and make me so constipated/'Cause right now I'd do anything to get my bowels evacuated”.