“11:11:11H on 11/11/11

Wow, a total of 12 "1"s all in a day! No wonder there's so much hoohaa about the "special" date. If only all my university grades were all 1s, then it would be crazy...hahaha but certainly wishful thinking. Am alr very thankful for all that I have. For me, it marks the end of another semester as I submitted my FINAL assignment - Terrorism Take Home Exam (the TOUGHEST).

Apparently, this day for me didn't go too well. First, there was a minor problem when I submitted my work. My paper got stuck on the date/time stamping machine but at least I managed to get it out. Held up many other students who were submitted their assignments too at the faculty office. Then my day just got worse. Went to the city, wanted to withdraw some cash and my ATM card got rescinded by the machine. Can't get back my ATM card until Monday. How frustrating a day it has been isn't it?

BUT I could at least rest in the comfort that everything is now over. My summer holidays have started. Much has happened over the past 2.5 weeks when I've not blogged: from Qantas infamous lock-out to a deepening debt crisis in Europe, to the Queen & Prince Philip visiting Melbourne/Australia, to Professor Noam Chomsky's public lecture, to the launch of Singapore Airlines' new budget carrier, Scoot...the list goes on.

Now today is the momentous date as many call it: 11/11/11. Much talk has been about the date being a once in 100 years phenomenon. BUT BUT BUT, pardon the skeptical me. Isn't every date also once in a 100 years or even better, every date only happens once, isn't it? Haha, all the psychoanalytical/ political theory is now influencing me so much...omg! Just read the news that a total of 574 couples got married in Singapore (See Article) but must the date really be special to hold any significance? I don't think so. It just helps one to remember one's wedding day or even birthday easier. If one doesn't put in effort to sustain the marriage, no matter how lucky the date is, the marriage will still blow. At the end of the day, dates matter but living every day to the fullest matter even more!

Okay, just want to talk about my final paper. "Terrorism: Shifing Paradigms" is really a very intriguing subject from which I've learnt a lot (even "a lot" may be an understatement). So many theorists from Lacan's mirror stage, Freud's "Beyond The Pleasure Principle", Agamben's state of exception, Hobbes' Leviathan, Schmitt's sovereignty & exception and even Derrida's pure forgiveness...too much information to be squeezed into 12 weeks of semester. I loved the subject as it really forced me to re-evaluate myself and somehow changed a little bit of my worldview (how scary the world is). My only worry now is that I may not score as well for this subject and it may pull my average down. Just hope I've done enough to secure a good grade. Fingers crossed.

FINALLY, allow me to end with this quote from Lacan about language (which is one of my favourite quotes from the subject):

“We always mean more or less than we say, 

and we always say more or less than we mean.

Food for thought huh? Just shows the complexities of language and that everything in life is predicated on how things are narrated/who gets the right to narrate. Enjoy!

PS: Sorry for a long post. Too long a break from the blogosphere has made my hands itchy to type on and on...ahaha!