That's it! The last day of formal curriculum for our current JC2s. Time is now yours to manage and though there are still some common exercises for you to work on and we're still around to help you out right until the last minute, you really are on your own. Enjoy the September study break next week and 3A2, please look after your health. Too many of you are falling sick at such a crucial time. Work as you must, but it's important to have adequate rest and a proper diet as well. So much to nag, so little time...

Me, I'll be around for personal coaching if you feel you need it. Call me and let me know when you want to drop by so I can schedule my time accordingly. That, and I'll be doing my best to conserve my own energy for the next mad round of marking prelim papers. I've maxed out on invigilation duties so my marking tme is going to suffer badly. This deadline is unalterable, though, so good luck to me.

Started my destress protocol from this afternoon with a long, leisurely lunch with Vince, Cara, Amy and Anthony at the prata place. Coincidentally, we all wanted some kind of byriani today, except for one order of Maggi mee goreng. It rained heavily and we had to run from table to table to find the best seating to avoid getting splashed. The noise on the aluminium awning was loud, though no more so than the noise of hand tools coming from the bike repair shop immediately next door. We were determined to have a nice lunch so we resolutely sat and ate and yakked until our other committments became pressing and unavoidable. Unfortunately for Sarab, I kept him waiting through lunch before I could attend to his administrative detail. Sorry, dude!

Finally caught AVP tonight. As with the first AVP comic book series (and in the Alien movies), the main character is a tough, resourceful woman who survives the ordeal while others around her fall like flies. Feminism isn't an issue one would expect to pop up in a genre like typically male dominated science-fiction but the Alien franchise is full of women's issues.

The movie was exciting though limited by the artificial environment of an isolated island in Antartica thousands of miles away from the next habitable landfall, and buried under 2000 feet of permafrost. So the implications of this earth-shattering secret from ancient history doesn't hit the world with any impact at all. It's like observing a tempest in a test tube, and then going away knowing a little secret that noone else in the world is likely to share, or even believe.

Aliens take the form of their host bodies. This fact was established in Alien 3 and in AVP. I was just thinking, wouldn't it be unfortunate for an alien if it's host was a bunny rabbit or some other fluffy small herbivorous mammal? Oh, the complexes it might have to live with, growing up with it's bretheren who had picked their hosts more sensibly. OK I'm getting silly here.

Quote of the day: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," Alexa Woods in AVP