I'm sick of this research essay and everything about it.

Studying is so much less fun than I remember. There are occasional bursts of mild interest in the stuff I'm working on, but, by and large, the best part of days is still pole (although it's been irritating how the colder weather these days has been fucking up my pole prac - no heat, no grip).

I'm so frustrated I could explode. ARGH!

The inevitable deluge of post-mortems of the hottest saga in Singapore. I've been going through article after article, blog-post afte blog-post, and for me they paint a rather frightening picture of the fundie-virus.

Then I had a sudden thought: The (over)zealous evangelizing and conversion of sheeple - is that what earns one brownie points with the god in their head ("Collect 1,000,000 points and you stand a chance to redeen a trip to heaven - all expenses paid!")?

Is this evangelizing a sorta multi-level marketing?

Yikes.

I guess eating with anyone with a medical background will inevitably lead to some pretty scary and gruesome conversation topics ...

Still feeling very emotional about the women and men at the EGM yesterday. Very proud of all of them; very, very, very proud.

Not so proud of myself, because it's just struck me that I only followed the EGM in realtime (via Twitterfall) because I'm here in Welly; had I been in Singapore, I very possibly would've missed it all just to be at pole. I would've been one to "shut up and sit down" and not stand up and speak up.

Hopefully this momentuous event will set a precedent for Singapore and me: Don't let someone yell at you to "shut up and sit down"; don't let the vocal religious-fundie minority - or any other nutjobs - bully you just because they're louder and more strident.

Good grief.

I've been following #awaresg twits at Twitterfall for the past 8 hours - have cooked, eaten, and showered - and I still don't know the results of the no-confidence vote.

But I've learned a few other things (SGD 90,000?! "Shut up and sit down"?! "Femmentor"!), felt exhilarated, laughed, growled, almost teared, among many other things.

My Volsunga Saga remains, sadly, still untranslated. I'm gonna go grab a snack before I fall asleep on my netbook.

Give us the results already, why doncha! =/

Open night at the studio yesterday meant 3 free hours of pole work!

But it was too cold (windchill factor at 7°C) and the poles were slippery because warm hands on cold steel poles meant lotsa condensation. My arms felt really weak and my hands were slipping off the (upper part of the) pole that I kept sliding when I inverted mid-pole to chopper, and couldn't even have enough grip to get from scorpio to star.

Still, I tried out the new way to get into brass monkey that I'd been visualizing - bat to brass monkey - and it worked!

I just read this on the Hardware Zone forum (re: AWARE takeover) and laughed my ass off:

24-04-2009, 11:35 AM
playtime
Member

Emperess [sic] Palpatine?? The Sith always comes in pairs, a Master and a [sic] Apprentice....


Luke...... *heavy breathing*... I am your Motherrrrrrr...

XD

Not sure why though ...

Read this today:

While homosexuality is clearly wrong, it is not the worst sin either, he said. People who are involved in homosexuality are no worse than people who lie. However, there is a tendency for the church to condemn homosexuality more than other wrongdoings.

"He", of course, would refer a certain pastor in that cult church. (Yes, that particularly vocal one.)

And it made me think: If gay people cannot be who they really are (because of what some men had written in a certain book) and had to suppress that integral part of themselves every single excrutiating second, would they not be liars?

And who - or what - would have made liars of them?

Call it PMS or stress (stress?), but I really miss Rach at this moment. I wish I could talk to her and have her make me feel it's going to be all right.

It's just occurred to me that there's a four-letter [apparently my math has degenerated so much I can't even count now!] five-letter word for people of Thio's ilk: BULLY.

Does the entire world thrive on playground dynamics?

I get really irate and frustrated with people sprout drivel about the "gay agenda" and how equal rights for the LGBT community will infringe on the rights of heterosexuals, taint all and bring about the apocalypse, yadda yadda yadda.

Selectively and stubbornly ignorant? (Or ...?)

Are they for real? Do they really believe that? On what basis and whose say-so?

Haven't been following the AWARE affair back home (mainly because it had seemed a little to sensationalized when I first read word of it), but - holy fuck and all things fucked up - if Thio Su Mien is part of the new ExCo takeover team then ...

I've no words, just nausea and black portentous dread.

OMGWTF!

Some girl I see around the studio during pole came up to me yesterday and asked me if I were going to be at the studio's open night next week. She said she was bringing her friends to the studio and wondered if I could be their show monkey.

Even though I don't know her name, hey I've absolutely no problem with that! It'll be play time!

I think I'm developing a little phobia of pole prac without a safety mat.

Yes, yes, I know it's a definite no-no - at least at my previous studio it was - but my current studio just doesn't have any sort of protective matting lying around. And after my slip on Tues, I'm getting a little jittery about my inverts.

I don't want this to be one horse I can't climb back on. =( There are still so many things I want to get. Like Angel Drop (maybe) - and the many other legs-free inverts.

Sigh.