Sunday, March 26, 2006
15 minutes of fame
and so it ends, just as simply as it began, with nary a sign to mark its passing. save for mine poor words.25th of march, 2006. yesterday was the day of TG13's moots. mine at 3pm at the moot court. the culmination of an entire year of LAWR, from the first case summary of R. v. Spurge when we were fresh law students who had never seen a case before in our lives, to the final memorial submitted merely a week past, a full argument, complete with authorities, defending our stand for our client (retarded though he may be) to the bitter end.
i'd like to say i fretted endlessly over it, and spent hours of research painstakingly putting together an argument for my case, and show that in the end, the effort paid off. however, in all honesty, and considering the vagaries of life (as well as the fact that it was yours truly), all i did was write an opening and a closing statement, and throw in random points in the hopes that i would be questioned endlessly. so imagine my surprise, and horror, when i got a bench that was silent for the better part of 5 minutes.
anyway, it was fun. i survived, battered and bruised, and halfway bloody, but i survived. i suspect the judges were merely using us as sharpening stones for the ultimate showdown between lavan/james and sean/aloysius...the moot after ours. which i timekeeped, and my gosh, that exchange was scary! not between the counsels, but rather, between EW and whoever was unlucky (lucky?) enough to be on the stand then. but it was fun to see most of the TG down for lavan/james' moot. and the sunflower also. as well as the scandalous exchange later on, witnessed by EW. also the mad photowhoring that went on in the moot court, and carried on till after dinner (on a separate note, sun at chijmes is mother nice, let's go again!).
15 minutes. a mere pittance when viewed against the wide expanse of a year of LAWR. but for that 15 minutes, the court belongs to you. all attention is on you, to shine or to fall on your own terms. the judges, mere accessories to the eventual conclusion of your moot. and although you tremble and falter and dread those 15 minutes ever coming, when it's all over and the adrenaline has drained away, leaving a mild glow of satisfaction at having made it thus far, you realise you miss that heady rush and that thrill of engaging the judges in something that you firmly believe in and want to prove. and the fact that all the comment i got after those 15 minutes was a mere one-liner: you have good style.
and so, just like that, my 15 minutes came and left. will i moot again? i doubt so. unless my entire TG decides to moot too. (*hintmootpartnerhint*)
mooting photos (post-moot photos too) to come later.
p.s. to a dear friend, happy birthday! and to make up for a lack of present (for the time being) i wish you much joy, good luck and chirpiness for many years to come. *beam*
wen was dreaming at 2:04 PM
Friday, March 24, 2006
PMS
pre-moots syndrome. a condition every law student encounters at least once in his/her lifetime. lately, law school has been seeing a surfeit of such symptoms, ever since the month of march began, with a large number of young law undergraduates spotted wandering around school in a daze, dressed in white and black , ready to pick an argument or to defend their stand at a moment's notice, to the bitter end.it begins innocuously enough, with a 3000 word written assignment that has law students breaking into cold sweat, sleeping a scant 3 hours a day for an entire week, while they ponder on one of life's greatest mysteries...how can 3000 words take so long to squeeze out? or, how do i make 5000 words shrink into 3000? amidst the tears, caffeine addiction, bloodshot eyes and much prayer, such miracles are founded.
then comes the temporary reprieve, the calm before the storm, where you are lulled into believing the worst is over, punctuated by intermittent bursts of preparatory moot sessions, and amidst the dull monotony of hearing the same arguments over and over again through differing perspectives and through the endless drone of litany, you begin to believe again, to have faith in a fading, failing argument.
and although you were expecting it, the rewrite for the memorial still comes as a cold shock, an affront to your very being, that what you had thrown together in a panic weeks ago had, with the benefit of hindsight (that most unforgiving and critical of views), failed all expectations and plunged your soul into darkest despair. so again, onwards you trudge, the end closer in sight, each day bringing clarity and focus to your argument and rewrite (or so you think). come the deadline, you find yourself having procrastinated for too long, and again the panic, again the horror, the cycle of caffeine and glazed looks repeats.
through the memorials, we have endured, through the arguments, we have persevered. the worst is over, or so we would hope, the last moot session closed. ahead remains the final reckoning, mere hours away, and yet we falter, yet we fail, and with the doubt and hesitance predominant in our very characters, we wonder, have we really researched enough?
and so you toss and turn, shift uncomfortably, and in the cold folorn darkness whisper a prayer, that the weaknesses you see so clearly can be glossed over, that the tiny flaw in your argument will not widen into a gaping abyss, that somehow, someway, the judges will be charmed. and amidst all this worry and nerves, all this doubt and fear, our sole defence is hope.
P.S. it started off decently enough, but somewhere along the lines i think it got away from me. so yeah, if it doesn't make sense, i'm sorry.
wen was dreaming at 2:30 AM
Monday, March 20, 2006
beautiful oblivion
bunch of random songs that shuffle through my playlist while doing up my arguments for lawr.okay maybe not so random, but they're still nice.
and it's 5 days till i bid lawr, allegro, bandwagon and all their silly idiosyncracies farewell for good...
"i would swallow my pride
i would choke on the rinds
but the lack thereof
would leave me empty inside
swallow my doubt
turn it inside out
find nothing but faith in nothing
wanna put my tender heart in a blender
watch it spin round to a beautiful oblivion..."
"dark as roses, fine as sand
feel your healing and your sting again
hear your laughing and my soul is saved
on forgotten graves you cry
crawl like ivy up my spine
through my nerves and into my eyes
cuts like anguish or recollection
of better days gone by
but it's alright when you're caught in pain
and you feel the rain come down.
it's alright when you find your way
then you see it disappear
it's alright though your garden's gray
i know all your graces
someday will flower in a sweet sunshower
eyes like oceans, so far away
a feather trail to a better way
worried mornings turn into days
then into worried nights
but it's alright all you'll be you are today"
so i'm bored. blame it on jaredchen. and his friendly dinner. *growl*
last friday was fun though. last week as well. amidst a week of rushing memorials and crim essays, i still managed to catch a movie, meet with friends, and drink. a lot.
well well. more fun awaits.
wen was dreaming at 8:18 PM
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
too old too fast
i realise i've been rather self-absorbed lately. wake, work, study, bum, sleep. rinse and repeat. save on days where i have tutorials, and excepting the hall people (and other strange people who study late at night in lawfac), i realise i haven't seen a lot of people these past few weeks ever since the break.msn? sure, i see and chat with countless people daily while multitasking. but there's just no real substitute for a nice chat with a good friend over a drink. for one thing, at least your attention's focused on one person rather than split among ten. (well, maybe split among two if you count the cute girl sitting across over there...)
the point of this? the world's passing me by, and i don't ever stop to appreciate it anymore. at work, i chat with people twice my age, and the next youngest person (not counting the temps) would be about ten years my senior. in school, i've been presenting formal arguments for moots (okay, maybe not so formal, but still). and essentially, i feel like just taking a step back, and stop to smell the roses. as childish as it might sound, i don't feel like growing up just yet.
it might be leftover vibes from my dive trip, it might be natural inertia and aversion to schoolwork and essays, but i have this sudden urge to hop on a yacht and travel around the world and forget to bring my handphone and laptop along. we're only young once. so why're we spending it poring over notes and cases and judgments and spending our days (and nights) in the library when the sun is shining and the skies are clear? (well, it's for our future i know. BUT. there's a limit and a line to be drawn somewhere) life's beckoning, and we're simply too worn out to respond.
you can all ignore this post. it's pure rant rant rant. kinda fun. especially when the alternative is writing a criminal essay on a ridiculous hypo, or preparing your next argument for mooting. but sometimes, i really do miss living for the heck of it. nary a care in the world. no plans, purely living for the moment, full of dreams and ideals, and foolish enough to actually believe in them. so the question as always: does the real world have room for dreamers?
current song: champagne supernova
"wake up the dawn and ask her why
a dreamer dreams, she never dies
wipe that tear away now from your eye..."
postscript: bloody melancholic post. i do apologise.
wen was dreaming at 1:28 AM
Thursday, March 02, 2006
torn
canon is a wonderful brand. maybe too wonderful. now i can't decide what camera to get.on one hand, i have the slim, compact, lightweight ixus55 with outstanding battery life and quick shutter speed. and it looks good too!
however, i'm equally tempted by the high-performance, high image quality powershot A620 with its many photographic functions and modes! although it's heavier, uses AA instead of lithium batteries, has a marginally slower shutter speed, and is more bulky, it has better image resolution, better zoom, better macro capabilities, and basically beats the ixus55 in most technical aspects.
well. both are the same price (give or take $20), and both have underwater casings (the salesman lied, i checked the site). both would serve as well for my underwater camera. so which should i get, the pretty, slim one with decent capabilities or the bulkier yet more technically sound one? torn. (well, maybe in the 2 months before i buy the camera, canon will graciously come out with a new model that combines the best of both worlds. oh wait. it already has. sort of. in the ixus750. darn.)on a sidenote:
lovely music. lovelier company. despite constant assault by random nuts. still undoubtedly fun. and chill. *grin*
wen was dreaming at 1:03 AM