The mythical realm of Top 10 winners

I read in the papers that for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award competition, there will be 1 overall winner and 9 Merit Awards, while the other 10 can sit back and hold back their tears and rage and the express desire to cause grievous harm to the other 10 who actually win physical materials.

I know I said stuffs like getting shortlisted is lucky enough and if I didn’t win it won’t really matter. That’s probably true at that time when I was still suffering from euphoria-induced delusions, but truth is, when you’re already in the Top 20 and you’re this close to be in the Top 10, why not!?

Plus, since there’s that unlikely possibility for the overall winner to be me, I will be much more contented to settle for one of the nine Merit Awards instead.

Lecture me all you want on “youths these days” whose greed for material wealth will eventually be their downfall, but one thing’s clear for sure: I’m a student, and I write part-time and work on Hidden Street semi-fulltime for a living. I am 18 years old, and I am a guy who happens to spend part of his money for trivial concerns for moments of fun, pleasure and exhilaration that I probably won’t get to enjoy when I grow some wrinkles on my face, or when my invisible social circle is destroyed by some shocking unholy relevation that I am indeed the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- (make it to the power of ten while you’re at it) grandson of the Lucifer. I also happen to love, love electronic games.

I’m confident that Suet’s essay would have already propelled her to that “mythical realm of Top 10 winners” (if it sounds familiar, you’ll know why >_>) since it was so bloody well-written, coupled with various killer lines and historical phrases that will have any average Joe who hated History like yours truly stumped.

Since I do not have the liberty nor the opportunity to browse through my other 18 competitors’ essays, my simple story of a homeless child that was written 2 years ago for our old Celcom project, u8generation.com, seemed to be not of the quality I would have expected to be even shortlisted in any essay competition regardless (what were on the judges’ minds!?). (omg long sentence for a paragraph that Pn Zuana would disapprove!) They also do say that sometimes you yourself are your worst critic.

I don’t know what to think, to be honest. :( I try not to think about this competition since I have more important stuffs to divert my attention to like levelling my currently Level 77 Priest on MapleStory daily using the coveted 2x exp card, or actually think thoroughly on how I could change the world. No, really, I don’t want to get my expectations all shot up and feeling absolutely crushed later on as happened countless of times in the past.

TheStar will be publishing the names of the shortlisted entrants in its StarEducation pullout this coming Sunday, and hopefully they’ll post up snippets of the essays or something?

Till then, I best get my lazy arse to finish a writing assignment on an interesting topic of freediving - an extreme sport of breath-hold diving (in layman’s terms, stop external breathing) that has plenty of fatalities due to the dangerous circumstances of apnea (a fact I am sure to exclude from my article. This is also known as selective journalism, where you write what the readers want to know about!) - in which I will get a minimal monetary sum to further fuel my love for trivial concerns.

Upon reading my past entries and this, I noticed I have different distinctive styles of writing: one for writing whatever that goes into my head (ie: personal entries), and one for writing to entertain you readers, because you, dear reader, is the reason why I’m writing.

:)

Okay I lied, I thought it’d do me good to practise different writing styles to find out which one I’m more comfortable with. So there.

Again I lied, since I write what I feel like writing about, see. And I feel like expressing my uncertainties as to whether I would eventually be one of the coveted ten in the Top 10 winners list in a manner unlike me, where I will normally (define normal) make sure to put pressure on the Shift key while randomly apply keystrokes to explicitly express my temporary insanity-induced euphoria.