Gettin' to know me...

The below is something I've just wrote - the only thing I've written in relevance to schoolwork, and this being a personal introduction, is a pretty sad state of being. Graduation-mode needs to be purged out of my system. Anyway. So, seeing as I haven't been writing, let me be lazy and post something that already will be "published" elsewhere:

Life in NUS, Sociology Department:

I'm a very ocular-centric person, so the media and its influence on popular culture (and vice versa) hold much fascination for me. Being someone who grew up glued to the goggle-box, the power of the media to me is an important and immediate dimension of human social life. Sociology helps me be more aware of how images and stories are manipulated to suit the aims of the press (and also to remind myself that a Xando pill does not a skinnier Julia make).

In general I'm more interested in the micro, qualitative aspect of social life. (But that is not to say the Marx and Weber are crap. They are not. They are to be highly revered, yessiree.) So gimme gendered constructions of sperms and eggs, and gimme the inner workings of the recording music industry. Social life as it is lived, no? Of course it would be very nice to be able to extrapolate from higher abstractions of society, but sadly it is something I still have to work at.

ISM Topic:

An ethnographical study of how social gambling may or may not mediate social relations (in terms of hierarchy within the family, for example) within the extended kin group. This is based on the idea that gambling, as an activity that involves some matter of chance, provides a form of equality between actors and might therefore act as a mitigating factor for social norms of respect for elders, distance between in-laws (especially those of the opposite sex) and such-like.

Life, Post-NUS:

Enough studying for now. I would like to see the world. So if I cannot secure a "proper" job that can allow me to do so, I might pack my bags, learn feeling management, commodify them, and fly the skies in a sarong kebaya. But that would presuppose my writing up a resume, and seeing how long it has taken me to get down to writing this, it’s obvious I’m very bad and highly reluctant at giving descriptions of myself. That would also reduce the possibility of me pursuing the more lofty ambition of research in conservation (nor the more self-indulgent ones like a career in singing). At the end of the day however I would like to do something media-related, perhaps in writing or production. (Goodbye, superstar dreams.)

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