Occasional cases

It's not very pleasant of me to start off the year by complaining. Ah, well.

A friend who's in the JD programme emailed me earlier about obtaining an internship. Specifically, what to put in your email to law firms and could I send along a sample email? I'd explained before that as most law firms know what you are on about so long as you put 'Internship' in the subject line, there's no need to do anything else than include your name, year of study (and maybe grades) and availability. So I don't understand why there's a need for a sample email. It's like the time I explained that it's like a job application email, except shorter. That didn't sink in either, I guess.

It's kind of frustrating. I'm happy to help, but I'm puzzled when it's for something so straightforward.

The haze did clear up by a lot this afternoon, so despite the unrelenting heat, I stood outside the library and took lots of deep breaths. T'was nice not to feel like you're being smothered.

Although now it has resurged and it's making me cough just a bit. Well, it was a nice little respite. I was starting to forget what a blue sky looked like.

This may be just my singular experience, but the only people who want to take the TOEIC that I've only ever come across are Japanese people. Everyone else (ELT or EFL learners, I mean) take either the IELTS or the TOEFL. Apparently you get career brownie points if your company knows you got a good ranking on the TOEIC. Meanwhile, I'm at the 'but the TOEIC is such a lame test!' stage. (It really is! It has questions that test, lemme see, your ability to match a photograph to spoken descriptions, the same type of question and answer thing for grammer and vocabulary you get on the TOEFL except easier and then reading comprehension on things like mock emails, posters, and the like.)

(Ok, I will concede that it is less lame now that since they've added a speaking and writing section to the test.)

A student came in today so I talked to her about what she wanted to achieve: better general English skills aka all-round improvement, or improved TOEIC scores. Guess what she chose. Look, standardised tests are no doubt very useful to have, but really, isn't it more productive to use your precious time - since you work such long hours (7am to 10pm every day is just crazy) - to improve your English overall rather than drill yourself on test-taking skills? Even business English would be more interesting!

Not to say that you won't learn something whilst doing the preparation for TOEIC as I can see I'm going to have to do a quick run-through on basic grammar, etc, but the starting and ending point is TOEIC. So this necessitated picking up the TOEIC preparation kit at Kinokuniya. Have just been looking through it. (Lame!)

Also stopped by the school library to get a book on bankruptcy law. Because my knowledge of bankruptcy law can be summed up in one scientific term: zero. So basically I ended up lugging a textbook, the TOEIC kit, another novel that caught my eye and another knitting magazine. Lugging books is not an advisable activity in this haze, right? *feeling self-aggrieved, even though it was self-inflicted*

Item one: Caught an ad for Vasantham (the Tamil channel) for a series of Bollywood and Tamil movies to be aired in June. All feature (judging by the ad) doe-eyed beauties and well, manly men gazing forlornly into the camera... and the tag "an unspeakable love".

I'm not up to date on urban-speak but I think "unspeakable love" usually refers to same sex relationships?

Item two lips, indifferent red two: AP article on coroner's inquiry of dead American was inaccurate - and they were called on it. As far as we know, the man was found dead with suicide notes and it emerged that he had suffered from depression. The man's parents theorised that he'd been murdered because apparently his work was to have endangered US security. Coronor will have the verdict next month.

Wiki page has links. I'm boggled that initially, the parents requested for FBI to lead the investigation. You're not in the USA!

Hm, this is the first time I felt good about what I'm studying: that it can be helpful, I mean. Not giving legal advice as I'm not qualified, but it felt good to tell a friend that the so-called agreement he'd signed was not worth the paper it was printed on, and that he should tell his "partners" to take a long walk off a cliff. (And it's weird being believed because of what I'm studying when really, anyone of common sense could say the same.) And to say that if his arsehole "partners" threaten to go to a lawyer, you will go to one too, instead of being frightened off. (It's my personal belief that they are too chickenshit to do so.)

***

Checked grades today; only raw scores but I think I'm safely in B territory again. (One last subject remains unveiled still.) Well, considering I'd been having fears of a string of C's, I guess I can't be blamed for feeling blithe. The daydream of A's I'll grant you.

I sort of hate being so grades-fearful. It just goes around and 'round in my head: if only you'd studied more, if only you'd did those extra reading, if you only you had asked more questions, if only you'd read fewer fics, etc, etc. (I actually did ok on my exams; it was my midterms and term paper that I'd bombed, and well, by the time exams came it was too late to hope for better than a B.) So, realist am I. I didn't understand the subject with any sort of, well, insight until well into the term, so that is either due to a lack of intellect or I'm a slow learner. Ugh.

***

I've recently discovered I can buy books on my kindle! It's not supported here, so I'm quite pleased that I can still pay via my (differently-addressed) account and it will go to my kindle. So that's kind of awesome. Previously I'd heard you had to hack it through VPN disguises and a gift card.

Tho' I'm more knitting these couple of weeks.

***

Interning continues to be kind of hectic and kind of hilarious. As I mentioned, I'm the minor-est person in the team that's representing a client in court. (I just sit and take transciption-like notes.) I'm finding it hard to keep a poker face when the cross-examination goes rapidly to pieces. And I keep trying to send mental commands to our side's counsel: "Stand up and say 'objection'!"

1) Is it only Wednesday? It feels like it should be Thursday already, mainly because now the bulk of my classes are on Mondays and Tuesdays. Tho' am going to start going to gym today now that my cold seems to have cleared up; knees starting to get creaky again.

2) Got into contract drafting class after all, yay! (Someone dropped it and I squeezed in.) It's pretty interesting, even with the prof's tendency to read from judgments.

3) More interesting news: My Kindle Paperwhite has arrived! I lost my Kindle Touch at the beginning of the year and decided to try the Paperwhite. (Or should that be Paperwhite Kindle?) Thoughts:

(a) It does not have text-to-speech capability. I did not know this. Admittedly, I hadn't used it much with my Kindle Touch, but it's still a nice-to-have feature.

(b) Don't have much use for the lighted (lit?) screen feature yet, though it feels a bit glaring. Will assess again when I finally read it in dim lighting.

(c) Enables you to have dictionaries in different languages - admittedly only in the 7, 8 languages that it supports. But it's a step up from the determinedly monolingualism of before.

(d) Much, much better looking Chinese font. And Japanese font. (There's only two choices tho' - the nice one and the ugly one.) For that matter, the (limited) choices of font for alphanumeric scripts are nice to have too.

Textbook list

Property law
( amended list )
Equity and trusts

( It gets long )

Although at this junction what's really important to me about trusts is to better appreciate:

"'...But only consider, my dear girl! The whole fortune left in trust until I'm twenty-five, unless I marry before that date! You must see what a devil of a fix I'm in!'" (Friday's Child, Heyer).

Evidence and procedure
( Read more... )

Judge JH Gillis, in Fisher v Lowe (1982), 122 Mich.App. 418, 333 N.W.2d 67 (an appeal):

We thought that we would never see
A suit to compensate a tree.
A suit whose claim in tort is prest
Upon a mangled tree's behest;
A tree whose battered trunk was prest
Against a Chevy's crumpled crest;
A tree that faces each new day
With bark and limb in disarray;
A tree that may forever bear
A lasting need for tender care.
Flora lovers though we three,
We must uphold the court's decree.
Affirmed.

Not only is the entire thing in verse, Westlaw also got into the act by rendering the headnotes in verse.

(found through http://www.loweringthebar.net)

ETA: It's a pretty famous judgment (for all the right reasons - it rhymes!) so you might have seen this already.

The word "whereas" is starting to not look like a real word any more: European Community's Council Directive on liability for defective products.

So I'm staring at the email from our TA (hours after) apparently explaining to other people who were supposed to have taken the same midterm, just where the midterm question was to be found in the online student website. Bizarre, because the TA has been very conscientious about emailing everyone with the requisite information/instructions a few days ahead and I thought it was fairly straightforward. Log on, get question*, type answer on Word doc, save and upload doc. No problem, right? For people who are supposed to be computer literate and have been downloading movies/movies for years. (Barring crazy internet connections, that is.)

But apparently there are others who didn't get it. I don't get it. Oh, well. I'm just glad I never did see this email until the midterm was over because I would have panicked. As it was, right after (ok, 5 mins later) I finished uploading my answer and felt like gibbering, my student turned up and I was so frazzled that I taught him for 90 mins instead of our usual 60.

Thots:

Earlier I was at the Bras Brasah library and I never did realise what a lovely courtyard (8 levels up) it has! Reading/study rooms had chockful of students but they were wonderfully, fantastically quiet. So much nicer than uni library, which is too often full of students who want a place to chat and go to the library to do it.

Public library is still very posh-looking, compared to uni building right across the street. It's striking because both are pretty new buildings - less than 10 years old.

And reading week is up! I'm sort of happy about it despite having suddenly self-imposed lots of things for self to do - though more honestly, I'm knackered.

Last night, I decided to try drinking coffee to keep awake. Yeah, right. I face-planted into my notes twenty minutes later. Coffee doesn't work (but tea does) though it smells so good, I keep getting suckered into drinking it. So after I woke up from my nap, I overdid it with the studying and slept much less. Ugh.

Must watch at least one movie this reading week. In an actual theatre. I don't care which one.

*granted, there are two class sections for this particular course, so there are two possible places for the question to be. But the TA already told us which one and even if you cannot remember, there's only two.

Just out of *conflicts class, a classmate commented that this class was confusing and I was thinking, it's not so bad, I think I get it. But that's likely me having a case of "if you think you understand conflicts, you don't" kind of deal. At least it's preventing me from panicking about conflicts midterm on Saturday. It's a take-home exam. Well, I say take-home exam. The question's released online and you have to submit the answer within 2 hours so I guess everyone's sitting at home working in front of the computer. We're allowed to use any written materials. Much scope for cheating? I guess, if you got an expert to do the work for you or collaborate (prof's email sort of mentioned DON'T COLLABORATE - did it need saying?) with friends, but given the way so many of my classmates are less than 100% firm about concepts discussed, it'd be the blind leading the blind...?

I've managed to discuss with workplace to let me use a classroom for that precious 2 hours to work on the midterm. Advantage: don't have to travel to workplace afterwards, just send off answer and continue working! Reminder to self: bring earplugs as workplace has thin walls. Disadvantage: must make up missed work on Monday evening.

The other midterm that I'm reserving my panic for is corporate law. My mind blanks out when I have to answer a hypothetical question, so my job is to practise that (answering, I mean, not blanking out).

Also how much do I love my kindle? Because I have nearly all my reading on it. Disadvantage of using it to read cases is you can't scan ahead so you have to read every page. Not that that's a bad thing...

*commercial conflict of laws