Hello February!!

Wow, is it me, or is time whoosing past me like American runners on steroids?

What has happened to me since the last entry? Nothing much really, considering that my so-called 'hiatus' from blogging lasted a grand total of THREE days. Yeps, thou shalt not endeavour to beat the writing bug.

I filed for graduation, something which I have been itching to do. In the end, my FFG attempt was disappointing. I thought it would be a carthatic moment for me, but in the end, I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. It seemed like an ordinary run-of-the-mill thing I do every day at NUS websites, only you do not inform the university of your 'intention to graduate' every other day. Perhaps my cognitive (and emotional?) resources have been spent thinking about how I would so badly screw up my thesis, and how all my hypotheses would not turn out and I would have absolutely nothing to discuss in the Discussion portion.

I slept a grand total of 1.5 hrs on the night of 30th January/morning of 31st January cos I was busy assigning my participants little code numbers representing their experimental group, and painstakingly assigning each one of them randomly to one of 14 possible counterbalanced order of questions. My last three weeks or so have been divided between three kindergartens, and hanging out with the little people there. I like hanging out with them, cos they are so disarmingly affectionate, charming, and they think I'm a giant. (HA!)

I never thought I would miss hanging out with them, but yesterday, after I wrapped up the second kindergarten's data collection and reached home, I suddenly felt a little sad when I realised that I probably won't be seeing them again in the near future. Come Friday, when I finally wrap up all data collection, I think I would feel even more upset. Even though I would probably be relieved that fieldwork is over, and I can at least indulge in Chinese New Year ba kwa and pineapple tarts relatively work-related-guilt-free. Life is always a weird concoction of mixed feelings eh?

By the way, here's a re-post of the whiny entry I was talking about. Saj thought it was the post about how lonely I felt (well, THAT was whiny too...), but it's actually some post that was written on the same day as my whiny complaint about my whininess.... (Oh well, wateva...)

Anyway, the final verdict is that my pencil case is lost forever. The people at SBS wrote me an email to say they never found it. Since then, I've moved on and gone on to replace nearly all of the things I've lost. Guanz was so sweet: he brought me to Taka, and had another similar keychain made for me. He also bought me the exact same thumbdrive I lost. *Thank you!* =)

Loss (27th January 2005)
Woke up this morning feeling rather dandy, until I discovered to my horror, I had lost my pencil case. I was horrified, and very kan cheong, cos I was going for data collection (or to be more exact, rushing to go), and had very little time to look. I turned my entire room upside down and inside out, and still couldn't find it. Came home just now and looked all over the place in the house again--still no pencil case. I've confirmed that it's missing and have just filed a 'lost and found' report with the SBS. I think I misplaced it on either the NEL MRT or the LRT when I was on my way home yesterday. Ironic that I should be watching the 12 mn drama "Without a Trace" yesterday night when I was missing something so vital to my academic career. Sigh....

My pencil case wasn't valuable in itself, but it still hurt to lose it. Wonder if they have a theory of attachment to personal belongings, cos I sure have a sense of attachment to anything I've used. My pencil case had a 128 MB thumbdrive that was worth at least 30 bucks, and my two very new Shakers, loads of new stationery (including pens, rulers, eraser, etc.), and my stapler. All in all, it was probably worth about $50, its value inflated cos of the thumbdrive (which had my thesis documents!!!), and because the case itself was worth about 10 bucks. I think I'm most upset cos I also lost the keychain that Guanz gave me for my 22nd birthday. It was attached to the case. I still remember opening my birthday package and finding the keychain inside. It may not be a very expensive present, but it sure was very meaningful. That's why I got so kan cheong the other time when I thought I had lost one of the frog figurines on it. I later found the figurine again. Hope that I'll be able to recover my pencil case, just like I recovered the figurine.

I remember William James wrote that the material self was one of the components of self, and that it referred to a sense of self derived from one's material possessions and personal belongings. Sigh... it sure sucks to know that some piece of me is lying out there somewhere. =(