Palaver on Procrastination

apart from cutesy cupcakes and dangly earrings, there is little else in this world that i relish more than a good, dirty, delicious dose of procrastination.

as i was telling the love of my life earlier (and before you ask, yes he is still very much the love of my life, contrary to what some of my emo blogposts and angry MSN nicknames may imply), i’d still not managed to untangle myself from the clingy, tenacious webs of yummy procrastination despite having a, yes you guessed it, Economics exam tomorrow. at this point i am wondering, WHY, after almost 13 years of academic participation, have i not learnt the finer points of the art of focus and/or sidetracking-aversion? and more importantly, WHY does it seem as if there is an economics test/quiz/exam to sit for every week or so?

so after talking to my beloved on MSN, which was the first of my Procrastinatory Activities (hereafter known as PA, not to be confused with Personal Assistant, of which i was one for a sad 3 days of my life, gloomily having to fetch coffee and blot make-up and the like, but that is another story for another day), i told myself : self, this is it! it is already 1am, and it is time to start mugging for this looming econs exam you have in about 8 hours!

but then i realized, 8 hours is a lot of time to cover 4 chapters. in fact, it is more than enough time. i dont even need that many hours! okay lah so i can chill for a bit. ooh, Bitcomet says the latest episode of America’s Next Top Model is 100% downloaded! yessssss, 42 solid minutes of one of my favourite TV programmes, and yes i like ANTM, what cannot izzit, at least i’m not one of those hypocrites who go, ‘yerrrrr why you watch ANTM wan!’, but then secretly go home and tune into Channel V every Monday at 8pm sharp to watch catty models steal each other’s food and whimper about how they miss their kids/husband/family back home. by the way, ANTM’s latest season is totally awesome, and this diversion has gotten so long that i forgot what i wanted to say. why the hell am i talking about ANTM again?

and so you’d think that after i had gotten my weekly illegal (torrented mah) dose of Tyra Banks’ infamous ‘X beautiful girls stand before me, but i only have (X-1) photos in my hand!’ and weepy eliminations, i would hit the books in a panic fit because i’d just lost 1 precious hour of study time. but no, what i did instead was indulge in another PA. it is the mother of all PA’s, one you are all familiar with, none other than the great WIKIPEDIA! Wikipedia, i must say, is the greatest invention for information sluts like me, as well as panicky exam-sitting students also like me; but tonight i wasnt wikipediaing Inflation Costs or Theory of Exchange Rate Determination like a good Economics student should, but i was in fact wikipediaing Grey’s Anatomy characters. yes, i WIKIPEDIAed Alex Karev, Derek Sheperd and Mark Sloan. and even Izzie Stevens. this is the utter epitome of Nothing Better To Do. i am shameless. just kill me.

fortunately, after my 52nd Wikipedia stub on fictional but very hunky TV show characters, my superego got the better of me, and i decided that i should start studying NOW. so i took all my books and notes and post-its and dumped it all on the living room coffeetable, because my ’study desk’ in my room has my laptop (by extension, also the Internet, which by a second extension, houses many other PAs of which i cannot afford to associate myself with at the moment) and therefore my ’study desk’ cannot be called my ’study desk’ because no studying can be done upon it. hence it should be called simply, ‘desk’. now you know why Malaysians like to call their desks ’study desks’ or ‘working desks’ instead of just ‘desks’ … it’s because Malaysians are not procrastinatory by nature, and the prefix to their desk actually does fulfil a role. either that or they just wanna make themselves believe that.

digression : is procrastinatory a valid word?

anyway as i was saying.. i dumped all my stuff on the living room coffeetable so i could get to my studying. but unfortunately, guess what was lying on top of aforementioned coffeetable? yes.. what else but the Leading English Daily In Malaysia, The Star. which i havent read yet today. dont pick it up!, my conscience twittered anxiously. study first, read newspaper later! ah, but Kee Thuan Chye has a new column in the Sunday Star!!! must read must read. i figured that if i skipped all the articles on the Machap by-election, i could cover the newspaper in 5 minutes. but noooooooo, there just had to be a three-page feature on Anwar Ibrahim as well as Huzir Sulaiman’s funny column. and of course, my horoscope. and my boyfriend’s horoscope. and all of my best friends’ horoscopes. argh. thank you, The Star, for playing the indispensable role of the evening’s PA #ILostCount as well as a contributor to my failing grade for Econs 203.

sigh.

after i finished reading the newspaper cover to cover (yes i did eventually read all the articles on the freaking Machap freaking by-election and the 49853rd article featuring Tan Boon Heong and Koo Kien Keat) i didnt actually start studying but i spent about 15 minutes trying to find a testpad. i dont know why we call those things testpads, because i have been met with many blank stares when asking for testpads, so if you dont know what i am referring to when i say testpad, what i mean is an a4-sized notebook where you can tear loose sheets of lined paper from. to my defense, this is not actually a PA, searching for a testpad i mean, because i need a testpad to study for my exam. need to write notes and all mah. aiyah actually it’s a PA also lah, because The Search For The Testpad eventually led me back to my ‘study desk’ on which sits my laptop, which is connected to the Internet, which as we know houses many many many many many many many PA’s, one of which is

WORDPRESS.

(for the uninitiated, it is the blogging tool on which i log-on to to blog)

and that is why there is this 1048-word post on the index page of quaintly.net, when the Pinkpau should be busy studying for her Econs exam instead. yes, i did in fact copy and paste this whole post onto Microsoft Word to determine its number of words. Microsoft Word is another PA, did you not know? so is Solitaire, the shortcut icon of which sits beckoningly on my desktop. hmm..

no no no no no no no no no no no. GO AND STUDY.

edit : i have found a new PA!!! and that is searching on Wordpress for blogs i wrote while procrastinating on studying for econs tests and exams. i found four. one, two, three, four. see, i told you i have damn a lot of econs tests/exams.

edit edit : stop reading my blog and go back to whatever it is you are supposed to be doing!

33 comments April 9th, 2007