1st May 2000 (evening)

So my holidays have finally come to an end. It's a pity to see them go, and I've only done half a night's worth of halfhearted revision, but like I wrote this morning, they were wonderful. I think I'm learning to cherish my time more as a clinical student somehow. Holidays are so rare I don't waste them thinking how I'm wasting them anymore. Simply waking up late, without the aid of an alarm clock is something to be savoured, now.

I bore witness to a rather crude catfight on IRC last night between two strangers. I arrived in the middle of it and couldn't make head or tail of it except that both parties were extremely antagonistic and unaverse to slinging aspersions to each other's intelligence, or lack thereof. It wasn't a pretty sight. I think it had something to do with one of the parties studying abroad and putting down the other as a "mere peon" and a "common heartlander". The "heartlander" was vociferously defending "his kind", which irked me slightly. I served NS and I've met the real "heartlanders" of the country. This person presuming to speak for them was actually one of the educated "elite". It offended my sensibilities that he was choosing to represent a people he didn't know that much about. It offended my sensibilities more that the other party could completely miss the point that he was priviledged to be studying abroad, and that his "overseas education" was obviously being wasted on him. The words "haven't you learnt anything?" kept running through my mind. I attempted to speak to both parties, since I've realised there's always a context to everything. When people blow up at you there's probably something you don't know about hovering in the background, a bad breakup, financial problems, lack of sleep... something. It makes things a little more understandable, although not necessarily any more excusable. The student in Singapore turned out to be the nicer of the two and was simply replying in kind to the "overseas" student's jibes. I attempted to make peace by suggesting to him that he ignore the other chap who is, at his best, superficial. Educated, sophisticated, and incredibly shallow. No offence if you're reading this. The "overseas" student took matters a little too far and started casting aspersions as to the "peon" (quote unquote") 's parentage and heritage. This shocked the student back home into realising I had been right and he wasn't really arguing with a person worth his time, but merely with someone who wanted to argue. Ennui, he often sites. This chap also happens to be anti-religious, occasionally anti-christ, and oh-so-painfully fashionable. And self-conscious. Everything our stereotype of the "educated elite Singaporean" is supposed to be. When the Singaporean student commented that he was probably a lonely, deprived individual (and I think he may have hit the nail on the head), the "outlander" added with some pride, don't forget depraved and debauched.

Is that's what it comes to? To be fashionably cool you've got to be depraved, debauched and deprived. You've got to be a macho man as well and yet have the intellect to string together complex (and verbose) phrases that constitute nothing more than ugly insults. I'd rather be the unfashionable geek anyday, which incidentally the "outlander" has labelled me before.

The Singaporean student thanked me after a bit when he realised he'd gone wrong to try and lock horns with the officious poof who was really a sad, bored git getting off on making strangers angry. It made me realise he wasn't a bad chap after all, just someone who had got caught on the wrong end of some random antagonism. The student in America, however, I will never understand.

Someone wrote the other day that my pages made her want to live life to the full. That has to be a first for me... heh perhaps I should take to reading my own pages. :)

2300 hrs, 01/05/00