NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November

Singapore loves its acronyms. Today I’m reminded of one of my favourites.

On my Fine Art college degree at Humberside Polytechnic (probably now called something like Hull University) there was a course known as ‘TBM,’ or Time-Based Media, something that I think is still studied today. No one really knew what it was but from our relaxed seats in the college canteen it seemed to be to do with cameras, lights, fiddly bits of kit and dark rooms, and was studied by earnest and slightly angry young men wearing corduroy trousers and goatees all darting about in an intellectual rush, unable to stop and have a cuppa with us because their subject was obviously far more superior than ours. So we came up with another phrase to match the course acronym: ‘Too Busy, Mate’.

Now I find myself back at college and, thanks to a proposal due in on Sunday at 5pm, I’m a little bit TBM myself, today…