plans for Brisbane becoming more concrete. finalizing dates and ticket prices. I really hope it all works out because Gus is so excited. his eyes become all shiny and his smile brightens up when we talk about it. just now we skyped with Sam and Abel about details, and I can tell Gus misses his friends a lot. so for his sake alone, I really hope all turns out fine. also it's his first time to Australia, so I really want him to go! Australia is one of my favourite countries, even though they are probably getting more and more racist. I will probably be heading up to Sydney for two or three weeks before Brisbane, anybody gonna be there let me know!!! I will be all lonely and shit ~

otherwise, i am writing an essay on how state apparatus's only role in Singapore is to fully support and promote government policies. but i am saying that its success in the support and promotion of government policies is only made possible by the attitudes and mindsets, and therefore receptiveness, of the Singaporean people to the actions of state apparatus. i think saying it now it seems like an easy standpoint to write from, but while writing it i realize it is difficult to integrate state apparatus as a governmental tool, but retain that it is a distinct and separate entity. this is easiest to do for the mass media, but i am having trouble with the bureaucracy and trade unions. i will continue to try my best, i hope i am not impossibly off point. i don't think i am

now i am tired and feel like tumbling. tomorrow i will work on it again, hopefully i will have a stroke of inspiration and spill out some brilliance. sg pols professor likes to laud law students to the sky. it irritates me, not because i don't like law students, but because he should not say things like that to arts students. also i have met several law students who strike me as potentially awful lawyers

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today in church pastor spoke on the book of ecclesiastes. and i think i like that book very much! it opened well... a good beginning always does no harm. it was written by Solomon, who was given an abundance of wisdom from God. and it begins like this,

"Meaningless, meaningless!" says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless!" 

- Ecclesiastes 1: 2

which quite accurately sums out how i feel about everything and anything nowadays. feel like life is not worth striving for because everything is to be lost, everything is going to waste away and die. we are going to die. the only certainty is death, pastor said. and with that, everything on earth, everything we toil for, everything we desire, everything we seek, everything we amass, everything we hoard, everything we store and everything we aspire for is meaningless.

of course this is a depressing realization. at the end of it Solomon comes to a conclusion, that since everything is meaningless, enjoy everything and do whatever you want. but bear in mind that God will eventually judge all your actions. at first glance i find this conclusion to be extremely superficial and general. truthfully i think it is a bad conclusion and is not something that i don't already know. but i guess there is a more profound truth to it that has not yet been revealed to me and i'm waiting to see what it is.