Sound familiar? It should, naturally, unless you've been living in the Himalayas for the past God knows how many years or have been living the most sheltered life known to any living thing. Things always happen, good or bad and life goes on. Sometimes we stupidly wallow in the negative and neglect the positive, but even that is part of life as well.
It was an interesting day today. Woke up feeling horrible (illness still bugging me like a darn cockroach that refuses to die after being accidentally stepped on), went to tutorial totally unprepared with one of the greatest nemeses of an Arts Warrior (no multi-classing unfortunately) ready to take a bite out of my self-esteem at 4, I was sure this was going to be a most unforgettable day, right after my tutor announced that she was handing back our NM3224 Culture Industries essay back to us. Hot on its heels was the news that Man Utd got knocked out of the Champions' League. =(
Oh joy. Another notch on the sword that is swinging down on me. Grinning at my own stupidity for completing it 2 days before the deadline (where I decided to abandon sleep and health for one whole day), I prepared for a beautifully decorated essay with the intricate penmanship of my lecturer and tutor adorning the otherwise accursed thing.
I went through the almost clean and amazingly plain looking papers, my eyes journeying past the forest of words and mountains of phrases to reach its final destination, where an unfamiliar black treasure trove of letters awaited them.
The numbers read 26.
Before you start laughing your heads off, the total marks for the essay was over 30.
A 2-day essay with that kind of a score? Either I was still sleeping or divine grace had been granted upon me. I chose the latter after giving myself a pinch.
Oh, did I mention I prayed desperately on the few days before the deadline? No? Well, now you know. For all my other friends out there, Prayers do work, for the next lecture touched on a test before this. Judging from the comments made by my lecturer, it would seem that there is reason to rejoice as well.
Then came the battle with The Nemesis.
It was an open-book test, of course, else 90% of the cohort wouldn't even have thought of taking the darn module. Unfortunately, sickness and a limited 1GB RAM hard disk in my head took me as far as I could before The Nemesis sucker punched me. What a way to end the day, huh?
With dreary thoughts of wondering how I was going to squeeze into the sardine cans with the other little fishies who had slogged their day away, I saw this:
Beautiful, isn't it?
No. Tsk. Maybe I am weird. Basically, I felt the scenery compelling, though my camera phone was not good enough to capture the essence of it. A flash downpour was what it is, with the evening sun heading to the tavern in the West to take a breather from blessing us with light and attempting to try his hand at cooking with the heat. It illuminated the raindrops that fell like sparkling little crystals from the sky. It was when they pitter-pattered prettily on the hoods of cars did I realise that the pattern somehow reminded me of a music-making band. Or just a humongous drum with plenty of drummers landing a hit on the skin.
Then on my way back, I saw something that nearly took my breath away:
I shall remember to invest in a GOOD camera and take up a photography module next semester. ^^'''
But basically that is it. To me, it looked so phenomenal, like a celestial painting meant for people who were able, for a few seconds, to look up at the skies instead of concentrating on their own things, instead of thinking about how they want to prop up their feet on the coffee table while channel surfing, instead of hoping that their wives and kids stop giving them headaches through incessant nagging and noise and BGR problems.
All they had to do, all we had to do, was to look up, away from our problems for that few moments, and perhaps we could all feel refreshed, even if it was for the briefest of moments. It's not even escapism, not when you have two feet planted firmly on the ground. Take a deep breath, and enjoy the simplest pleasures that we fail to see despite having the gift of sight (and the mundane but useful ability to take a look around and observe).
Of course, don't let your head go to the clouds to build the castles in the sky. That's when you know you've gone too far. Just a little to get yourself pumped up for the rest of the day or to lift your spirits. That works for me, at least.
Quirky, quirky day indeed.
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