Someone pinch me

I know I've been quiet with my posts over the last few days. Other than the anticipation of a rather hectic school schedule that's going to come up. What with me having signed up for the Certificate In Autism course offered by my workplace (a mandatory thing that all teachers here have to undergo) which practically means that each and every Wednesday night from here on out (barring holidays) will be taken up. Add that to the anticipation of me having to teach Primary 2 English and Maths, in addition to Primary 3 Maths and me being made de-facto Teacher-in-charge for Pre-Vocational training of Office-related work skills due to a lack of manpower...... it kind of makes me wonder if I'll ever afford to have any semblance of a social life once the new school term starts.

Anyhoo...... Anyone of you out there use Imeem? I've been using the services on the website for some time now. And if you haven't noticed, the playlists I have in the sidebar to the right of blog are all from Imeem. Now, I generally have no qualms with the site and services offered (since they are free of any charges) but I am quite bewildered by how they would, randomly I might add, edit songs that were already playing on the site for quite some time to 30 second previews. That seriously screws up not only mine but I guess a lot of users' playlists. And of course me being the guy with an eternity of free time would always have the time to rearrange my playlists whenever they do this without prior warning (hint of sarcasm there in case you didn't notice). Regardless, I'll still be using Imeem, hey its free... unless anyone can point me to another similar free to use website.
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With all that said, I'm ending my ranting session for now. On to more pressing news..... sort of.

Now as all of you folks most probably know (or not depending on how well you listen to me babble about my aspirations), I have always wanted and will forever wish to be an author first and foremost. Fiction-fantasy first and foremost, as always. And though most who have read my writings have said that I should give it a shot. Still, I've always had my doubts. Most of it was born from times long ago (when I was 12 to be exact) when my manuscripts were rejected by local publishing companies. Their main reason - there wasn't a market for my kind of writing in Singapore. As such I have always wanted to travel to the US and hand my manuscripts in to Tor Books or Random House. But that's another dream for another time. However with the Lord of the Rings revival and the Harry Potter books increasing interest in Singapore readers into similar fantasy styled novels - ie Dragonlance, The Wheel Of Time, etc, I think its worth it for me to give it a shot. Well, at least to enter some of my works into local competitions.

And thus when I came across a pamphlet on The Golden Point Awards 2007 while on one of my regular forays to The National Library, suffice to say that it reinvigorated my enthusiasm in earning myself a break in this haphazard life of mine and be living my dream. The only catch is - submissions must be made by the 31 July deadline. The worst part was that this competition had been open since April. Worse still when I found out that this competition had been running since 2003. That's four years gone when I could have had extra bites at the proverbial cherry. Anyway, no point crying over spilled milk Time to get my act together for this competition and hopefully make it my platform to what I want my life to be.

I thought of entering submissions for four separate categories - Poetry (English), Poetry (Malay), Short Story (English) and Short Story (Malay). However, given the time constraint, I'll be lucky if I could manage to even complete one submission. You see the requirements for submission are as follows:-

Short Story - On any theme comprising a maximum of 5000 words.
Poetry - A minimum of 5 poems and a maximum of 8 poems.

And of course they can't be the same inane dribble I usually post on here. And the biggest catch was that I can't submit any material that is already published, electronically or in print. So that pretty much rules out the poems I have already written on Azarian Tales.

I'm probably going to submit works for the Short Story (English) and Poetry (English) categories. And if, by some miraculous act of divinity, I have extra time, I'll submit works for the Poetry (Malay) category.

If there are any fellow budding Singaporean writers out there who would want to give this a shot, click on the logo below.



I've got 35 more days to go to complete the required submissions. I guess this'll be a good time to get one of those countdown banners. And definitely a time for me to shift into overdrive in terms of writing. So if you don't see much activity from me on any of my blogs, you know that I'm busy chasing my dream.

Someone pinch me .... my dream is upon me
Someone pinch me .... wake me to grasp it before it flees