Vacation week is here.. Along with a pinch of discourse

I happened to remember that I bumped into a blog which seems to belong to one of my lecturers. Got kpo and read it. Such devoted parents... Really wish their children and themselves live happily and healthily.

Vacation week is fraught with project group meetings, essays, studying for MCQ tests etc. I think I mentioned it already in a previous entry so I will stop the whining.

I havent got such freedom for a while ie a week's break where u can just slack it all away, or mug yr way thru. Whatever, no lessons, yr call.. Such a juicy carrot.. No wonder some ppl just cant handle freedom and their privileges.

Today's class (last day cos Im gonna skip the Fri lect cos its webcast)... was rather paisei.. I misused the word "oblivion" as the noun for "oblivious" ie "oblivion" equals something u dunno.. Well Im not exactly wrong when I checked it out after the lesson. It meant sth we are not aware of.. So if I dunno what is happening, can I say "Im in oblivion."... Dunno, no idea, avoid that word for the rest of my life... I was suggesting to the prof that "oblivion" may be a good substitute for the term "not knowing". Apparently no one said anything, (I wonder why) until some classmate next to me said that it is not supposed to be used that way... Well fine lesson learnt on my side.

The most irritating thing is that he said "U are taking English modules, how can u mistake the use of this word?!" OMG... Hello, Im not God of Words or whatever.. So pissed when I heard that sia. For one thing, if he thinks Im ignorant, maybe he is more.To clarify, just cos its an English module doesnt mean that I shld be good at Eng, or that Im learning the definitions of English lexical words and mugging about them. Far off... We are learning on the etymology, phonetics yada yada.. I remarked him back, saying that I feel like Im taking more of Math, Science than English during that module; it really is the case... We dun even write essays...

I did not bitch about the above incident for fun.. Today's lesson was on DISCOURSE.. Its a dense word really. (What entails is rather deep. I noted it down just for archiving purposes so its probably best to stop reading henceforth).

Definition of discourse (summarised): the system that a community uses to communicate with each other, based on a common set of assumptions and values. These assumptions and values are reproduced because they are accepted either subconsciously or through assertion of power.

My prof was kind of intrigued with my counter-arguments on the techniques that enabled discourse to spread. We are already indoctrinated with all these assumptions thru media, word-of-mouth, history etc. I was suggesting to prof that if only we can make everything explicit and say "Look here is what's happening", instead of implying everything and basing on other ppl's interpretation, then we can get things done a lot more efficiently. Varied interpretation is one of the shittiest thing this world can ever experience, thus leading to wars, conflicts, nonsense etc..

I really think if not for discourse, there wont be so much misunderstanding on earth. Its a real sinister thing but its there. Be careful ppl.
No wonder we take utopian literature.. The perfect world is not such a boring and bad ideal after all.