Flying

back to Chicago.

glhf gg yo.

In other news i watched kungfu hustle, which is amazingly funny.

Happy new year to all readers!

Blessed Christmas!

To one and all. I return to Chicago Jan 1st. Happy New Year! Also, the rest of thanksgiving should be up sometime soon, i kinda missed the 1 month deadline, sadly. i'll aim to put a story up sometime before next thanksgiving.

--
List of things i wanted to do in singapore but probably won't get the time to:
1. Watch a movie in the cinema
2. actually finish a blog post before i hav

A moment of silence

Suprnova has died. We mourn the loss.

Space filler

Of course i now need to post a couple of word posts to flood the picture ones off so the loading time isn't so long, so here's one on how today i saw holey charcoal at a BBQ.

Now, this is most curious. It's just like normal charcoal, only this time it's shaped very interestingly with a hollow hole inside, so the charcoal becomes sort of cylindrical. Which means a couple of things:
1. It doesn't stack well since it's kinda rolly.
2. It kinda takes quite long to catch fire since it's thicker and bigger sized than normal charcoal, and no amount of breaking seems to break it up lengthwise, which would defeat the purpose anyway
3. However once it actually DOES get started, it burns for a rather long time since the hole in the middle ensures oxygen delivery to the thingie, once the middle starts to burn.
4. Unfortunately it just doesn't seem to be worth the general bother, another hopeful invention gone to waste.
5. That marked perhaps the 10th and hopefully the last BBQ this year. Lessee, there was eug's, jxhuang's, chin's, chin's i've-got-a-free-appt-let's-BBQ's, nut's new year's eve BBQ (ok that doesn't really count), moses's...... well okay fine so that makes this the 7th, although i'm SURE there're a few i missed. 7 BBQ's is probably enough carcinogens for three years anyway.

We DID start the fire, and we kept it going, since the world's been turning.

Thanksgiving - the rest

I've decided that i'm never going to finish my thanksgiving posts, so, about one month after thanksgiving proper, here we have a pictoral description of thanksgiving.

Stayed here

courtesy of Jacq, but didn't sleep very much due to one year worth of catching up with her and sandy. Had thanksgiving dinner *imagine a picture* courtesy of her house.


ya madison is cold.


and their squirrels aren't quite as lively as ours.


Their town is quite funky and happening, but that's because they have a place called Chin's, not coz it's actually quite funky and happening. Notice the place is closed, like the rest of the town (ok ok so we chose the wrong day to go down) and notice the other wording on the ..... .... the.... (what's the word for those shady things?) says "life is a journey, wok with friends."


Ya got big building. Capitol building was kinda pretty, that's why it takes up about half of all my madison photos, not because everything else was closed. It's really intricate and has got nice security guards inside who tell you things like "why don't you lie on the floor, that's the easiest way to photograph the dome!" and then tell your friends "you wasted the chance to get a photo of them while they were lying on the floor trying to take a picture!"

Ya that's madison. Basically the less things to see, the more time to catch up, so all's good.


And well okay i lied, this isn't the rest of thanksgiving, it's only the madison bit! which i suppose makes this thanksgiving part 3. i guess i was wise in believing i needed to split this one into installments before i could get the whole story up.

Post-wireless post

So i'm in suntec curious about the truth of how the whole complex is wired. Just wanted to post something for the kick of it. =)

Today on the way out from home i realised that i was never really bothered the way some people are by how there's "nothing to do in singapore". Sometimes it seems like the whole of singapore is in Orchard on weekends, coz, well, there's nowhere else to go! And i thought, well, yea, but isn't it the same with other cities? isn't there a city centre where people gravitate to ANYWAY?

And then i realised that in chicago you could go to all these different neighbourhoods, like belmont, greektown, chinatown, etc. which all had their own very distinct personalities and culture. And here? Maybe we're not as diverse, but also because the government tries to homogenise everything, That Pasir Ris doesn't seem quite so different from Toa Payoh or Jurong. Perhaps Geylang is different from little india which is different from pulau ubin or something... i dunno.

I also realised how much of singaporean conversation revolves around food.

And i just realised that the wireless internet isn't free for use, but you have to pay, and that's why i can't connect to it. Phooey.

Thanksgiving part 2

As with all good informative reading, you should know the beginning, the end, and then you have a better idea of what the middle's all about.

Thus, the dining room is proud to present..... your dinner.
er, that is, the thanksgiving story, but be my guest anyway.

SO, when we last left off, our two intrepid heroes (well ok, one hero and one heroine) were on the bus to madison. The bus left O'hare terminal 5. It reached terminal 2E. The bus left terminal 2E. There was nice snow covered landscape. The bus arrived at terminal 2E. Like, eh, get on the road already. Apparently flights were cancelled coz of the snow, and thus there were more people to pick up. Whatever. I was happy to be on the bus and secure in my seat. Our intrepid protagonists talked a bunch and the intrepid heroine slept, having intelligently pulled an all nighter the previous night to try and get some of the thanksgiving work out of the way. The intrepid hero tried to fall asleep but failed miserably, despite all the closed eyes and oh-so-soft jacket and stuff. oh well. So he read some Herodotus. (which, by the way, is mentioned in Neil Gaiman's American Gods! Shadow says: "'Call no man happy until he is dead.' Herodotus." (Gaiman, 2002, pp 545)) (See, if i had written this immediately after thanksgiving, you wouldn't have received that nugget of info.) There was snow covered landscape.

The bus reached madison. It was late. It was cold. Sihui and Marcus were waiting for us, coz:
1. The bus was delayed
2. They went out for a movie
3. They did not have handphones

Combination of all these 3 effects led to the two of them being cold. Sorry, you two! And thanks to Jacq for trying in vain to reach them. Insert here a heart-warming tear-filled reunion if you want, with plenty of cheerful greetings and warm hugs. You know how those things happen? Well they don't happen when it's REALLY COLD OUTSIDE. Or well, it was, for the unaccustomed-to-chicago-cold people.

Long story short, I met up with Sandy and Jacq once more, and we went to our respective dorms and talked a bunch before falling asleep. There was much merriment and strange cheese and wine. There was not much sleeping. I woke up early to read more Herodotus, whereupon i realised to my dismay that i hadn't eaten anything since lunch at 5pm the previous day, and damnit it's thanksgiving day and everything's closed. *cue thanksgiving part 3*

Thanksgiving pt 6

I'm home! After a long flight and strange jaunts around the hongkong airport in search of elusive old wives, i'm back in the sunny island, and i realise:

1. It's humid and wow, paper isn't crisp anymore
2. including toilet paper
3. Not that i want toilet paper to be crisp, but well...
4. The trees have green leaves! And so many of them! WOW.
5. My house looks so different.
6. I still haven't really managed to finish reading American Gods, altho i'm down to a goodly 20 pages
7. I also realise i haven't finished publishing thanksgiving pt 2-5, i'll get to that sometime soon if i can remember what 2-5 were exactly.
8. I miss Chicago (and the people) and i curse the grass on the other side is greener mentality, and decide that perhaps emotional fulfillment is an elusive concept.
9. But yes, this is a public announcement, i'm back! Phone number remains the same. Here begins the grand Singaporean food tour!

Thanksgiving pt 1

SO,

after finally clearing the backlog of work that resulted from thanksgiving (give thanks for HW!) at 3am last night, and after a rather full day of activities (such as calc and bio) our intrepid hero finally returns to relate the tales from far, FAR, Away. So here begins the 5 part series that is my life since last wednesday. First let's begin with the beginning, where all things start:



It was good. It was VERY good. It was stand up and boogie with old ladies while waving hands in the air good. It was sing songs (softly) while marvelling at the voices of the cast, hum to the songs which you know but forgot the lyrics to, and sway a lot while drinking in the music good. And who else better to watch Mamma Mia with than another rabid ABBA fan? (^5 Adela) The atmosphere was great, the seats were decent, there was snow in the air outside, and the holidays had just begun! Perfect. And we had no problems getting to the theatre on time this time.

Old lady in the seat next to us, musingly: "Are you guys ABBA fans?"
Me: "Oh yes, huge fans."
OL: "When was ABBA really hot?"
Me: "80s?"
Old lady no. 2 next to her:"I think somewhere along the lines of the 70s.... 1974 maybe..."
Us: *muted laugh and a woah*
*Insert stuff about how ABBA music transcends all generations and is truly evergreen*

So we enjoy the show. Exeunt stage right. Still raining, damn, nevermind, the path is clear and the way shines brightly. We blue-line it, and eat lunch at 5pm on a moving train while standing up. Funky skill to learn, everyone, it'll serve you well one day... And we discovered that bartlett food is probably MADE to be eaten 5 hours after it's been made, tossed around in a bag, and put thru REALLY cold rain and stuff.

Long story short, we were completely amazed by the snow

on the way to O'hare which made everything fresh and white and pristine and crisp and COLD. man, when the train doors open and the wind and snow blow in on your quesadillas, that's something else.

And luckily we managed to get to Ohare, RUN and navigate and figure our way to the bus stop (ooh christmas tree take picture take picture) and in the end, managed to catch the right bus in the right direction (which is probably something of a minor miracle) and all went well, which brings us to the 2nd part of our story.....

Which File Extension are You?

QOTD

snurched off someone else's door:

on how chicago got started: some people in new york went "well we really like the crime and poverty, but it just isn't fucking cold enough."

Only in U of C

Can you talk about all of the above in one day:

1. How in an ideal situation with no air resistance and infinitely strong balloon rubber, a helium filled balloon rising into the atmosphere will oscillate and come back down to the ground before rising up again in Simple harmonic motion
2. How calcium adds to your bones and makes you grow taller
3. The economics of not eating chinese food until the marginal utility from delayed consumption is equal to the marginal disutility of delayed consumption
4. Rationality in humans and emotions and theory of mind
5. Chocolate.
6. Mickey mouse.
7. How freaking COLD it is.

Inifinitesimally

This one's for you:



And yes, it's an official house over here. So here's to the toast-a-que.

But the spelling's wrong, you say?
Damn americans, you know they can't spell anything rite.

Phew

Yes, well, thus hath passed, in the short span of 3 days:
1 x bio review paper
1 x mind paper
1 x mind response paper
1 x math midterm

and all the accompanying readings therewith.

Phew. I now know, with great certainty, that the maclab doth close at 1am dutifully, and that staying in the library past 1 thus isn't really worth it.

---
In other news, for all you fans of the sims(tm):
Dante's Inferno?

---

Also, because i have flooded off the old photos, here's a new one with a new story:

This weekend past we went out to the point to try and see if we could catch the aurora borealis, it being the super rare occaision when a magnetic ion storm whatchamacallit hits the atmosphere and does thingimajigs. In short, other ppl saw it on saturday and we oso want. So here's a photo:



And you can't really see it coz it's sorta small, but if you look reaaaaally carefully, and maybe turn your head a bit to compensate for the angle in which my tripod is artisitically inclined, you'll see a bottle on the floor.

But no aurora, sadly. Oh and we went there at like 12 midnight or something, my camera's just pretty good at making things bright.

The third day of the week

After tuesday and before thursday is of course, not wednesday, but shake day.

The day when cookies and cream shakes with whipped cream and sprinkles and a cookie (and a moraschino cherry but i despise those things) go for just $1.

Thus the tradition goes, you must take a shake every wednesday in the short break after bio and before math. And of course, purchase them for your friends so they don't have to line up for eons since you got let off your bio class early.

Now, if perchance a number of those friends happen to not want the shakes, you now have a number of shakes, n, which >1. Even if it is a reasonable assumption that everyone will follow their predestined fate and eat of the shake, i suppose nobody can accurately predict when they're going to fall sick on a wednesday, or when, for example, they need to go back to their house to get something.

Thus, perhaps, you might end up with a number of shakes which greatly exceeds 1, say, for example, a number which exists between 2 and 4. (yes, an integer, you honors math freaks)

And afterwards, as an afterthought to a BRILLIANT SPANISH TAPAS DINNER WITH AMAZING CHOCOLATE TRUFFLE DESSERT AND SUPER INTERESTING BAD ASS TAPAS DISHES and a NEIL GAIMAN READING OF A BOOK-IN-PROGRESS WITH AUTOGRAPH SIGNING SESSION you might wish to get, say, another shake, when you're at clarke's, a supertypical 24 hour american diner which of course is a novelty since you're neither american nor typical.

Of course you could cheat in the counting because you didn't actually finish ALL of those shakes, but hey, that doesn't mean that wednesday wasn't shake day. =)




Oh yes and the neil gaiman talk was really fantastic and he read SOOOOOO well and so amazingly in -just- the right cadence and accent and flow that engaged and enraptured, with his usual brand of humour brought to life (since, of course, it's him reading it) and it was just spectacular. And i managed to get a book signed for my sister (and, while i was waiting in line, after a great contemplation, with my name tacked on too) which made her excited and happy so that is all good.

It was a good omen. Buy Neil Gaiman's Anansi boys. *jedi mind trick*

Jia Cao

And so today i decided it would be a good idea to have lunch in the quads, out in the open, since it's a balmy 9 degrees out. So i dar-baoed a nice tasty lettuce,tomato, turkey, honey mustard, onion sandwich on grilled sourdough bread, which was nice and...toasty when i bought it... and walked the 4 minute walk to the quads, by which time it was naturally fridge-cold.

So i walked around, and found that they relocated the bench i wanted to sit at, and since i didn't want to sit on the fringes of greenery, plonked myself down on the grass and enjoyed the sunlight playing on my back, the wind through my hair, and the bright blue skies overhead.

Whereupon the wind coursing through my hair decided to pick up the cover of my sandwich container and blow it about 5m away. So, being a good citizen who doesn't like to litter, i went to pick it up, whereupon a number of squirrels (limit n --> infinity of Squirrel_n) saw me walking around with sandwich, and decided to investigate further. So okay, i took my sandwich, proclaimed how cold it was, and tore off a bit of bread crust, knowing i shouldn't feed it strange things which mess with its digestive system, but of course sourdough with honey mustard is a healthy alternative to starburst or whatever other crap ppl feed those things.

Which began my lunchtime entertainment. Naturally the squirrel sat there on its haunches nibbling furiously at the little bit of bread, which was absolutely adorable, but of course other squirrels suddenly realised what was happening, and decided to come and claim social security handouts. Now squirrels are smarter than pigeons, and a whole lot more aggressive (and cuter) so the aforementioned first squirrel started chasing away all the other prospective squirrels to protect it's newly found oil well. Border controls were set up, and the thing started rooting around the grass around me looking for scraps, getting a little bit too close for comfort (for some reason i had an irrational fear that it'd pee on my bag) so of course i did the natural thing that any threatened bag-owner would do:

I fed it another morsel.

Coz it was so damn cute.

And then of course i had to chase it away from my bag a few times, but it was all good

coz it was so damn cute.

oh yea and it was a good sandwich, cold or not, even though by the end i realised i couldn't actually feel my hands anymore. And i decided to come hide in Classics and wait for my next class, which is where i discovered that wireless internet is a good thing, and thus you have this post. It's truly fascinating to be sitting in a really old building with antique fixtures and furnishings (read: ugly floors) and have wireless access. phoosh.

The incredibles

Incredible movie. Cute animation with comic timing, impeccable voice-acting (E's particularly cracked me up), a realistic plot (well, if you discount the whole evil base in a volcano and all that stuff) and cool ideas for effects (insert another spoiler here) combined to give an experience that would have been nothing short of spectacular had we not all been seated in the front row.

This is not a movie review.

This is a rant about strange inefficient systems which have the theatres free for half an hour before the movie, and let the patrons and the market decide who sits where in a free for all. End result: it doesn't matter when you buy the ticket, it matters when you come to the theatre. Which i suppose does away with the problem of ppl coming late and stepping on feet when they enter the cinema late in an attempt to skip the trailers (why would anyone want to skip a STAR WARS EPISODE III TRAILER anyway?) but means your cinema infrastructure isn't efficiently used, coz money's made when you show movies, not when you let people sit around in your nice plush seats and drop popcorn on the floor.

ALSO, it means that people won't rush to buy tickets since it's first come first serve seating for buyers, so you probably won't know if you're going to sell out or not till much later.

Anyway i'm just upset that i had to watch a good movie from the front row and sustain a slight headache from all that amazing zipping around during the STAR WARS EPISODE III TRAILER. And all that jazz. But it was a good movie and i enjoyed it much. =) The company helped too, of course.

Wow

So that was the most exciting election i've seen. Never have people gone rallying in the streets, or handing out posters and stickers and badges(buttons, as they call it) and various other Kerry Paraphanelia (no bush ppl here), or had heated arguments over the merits of Hsien loong over chee soon juan (not that there's much of a debate there)... And i've never watched the TV, gripped, along with other people eager to hear the results before:



(yea that's everyone there trying to watch and do work at the same time, yes, the two laptops in the immediate foreground are open to MS word and trying to type out damn bio things)

That is, that was where i ended up after i eventually left the library at 12ish when i couldn't stand it anymore. We were all there trying to do our amazing bio homework with people randomly calling out "127:89!" and the rest going "argh!" or, well, more accurately, go clickety clackety on our keyboards as we try and do our homework.

But of course, as everyone knows, bush won.

And then all the leaves fell.



*cue dramatic music*

The Rain in Chicago Falls mainly wherever the wind blows it

Dear diary,

It rained all day today. I saw 3 umbrellas blow inside out, one of which was mine, but my trusty (damn expensive) US$15 with vents survived it without broken struts, unlike the poor, unaccustomed, fresh off the boat RJ umbrella (which i dearly loved) which kinda died within an hour of its first use. Chicago rain is so far sort of mao-mao yu, but boy does it know how to fall. and it's no fun when you're wet and the wind blows hard at ya.

That aside, the court is still out over the most satisfactory location for next year's accomodation. We have, however, decided on the fixtures for our house, wherever it might be:

1. Round glass-topped dining table with an aquarium below, which contains x baby sharks where x --> 1 as n --> infinity
2. Indoor waterfall/pool/rockfixture/thing to promote peace and tranquility
3. Foosball table
4. Pool table
5. Indoor pool (not equivalent to no. 4)
6. Mahjong table
7. Piano
8. Coffee-maker which can brew expresso, latte, cappuccino etc.
9. Cable TV connection which can get pay per view ESPN for EPL matches

Time to start saving, but hey, that would be such a cool home. It's good to have a buncha crazy cheap-thrilled housemates. =)

DST

This is just a post to see what time it'll post it as. I just gained an hour! How cool is that? I can sleep an extra hour longer without any guilt!

Where fun comes to die

THEY WERE SELLING THE DAMN TSHIRTS
AND I MISSED IT

COZ I WAS IN THE LIBRARYYYYYYYYYYY

they were selling it over 3 days somemore.

man. Irony.

$30

1. I was really very touched, thank you all. I don't actually know why, but i am.

2. Prize for best halloween costume so far: Pregnant nun giving out condoms.

Phew

Nothing terribly exciting to post, i'm finally done with the damn midterms, just had a bio one today which reminded me a whole lot of Sec 4 geog and writing till your hand drops off. Have also finally gone to make noise about the lack of a Social security number after 1 month, and am feeling bad about the misscheduling which resulted in someone going down alone and getting egg-ed by racists. Makes you feel not so safe anymore.

I wonder what other exciting things are due to happen today?

Also, i'm coming back to Singapore! Flying dec 10th and leaving jan 1st, so will be home for christmas and a bit of a new year's party before i leave for the airport. Oh and yes i should've posted this here earlier, but my new address is patch [at] uchicago [d ot] edu. Drop a message if you want more contact details!

yes and here's another random gratuitous picture:

H2O

Filtered water tastes so damn good. I suppose the water from the tap must be hard or something. ugh.

Revelation

I have just discovered that the reason why my milo tasted off, was not due to chemical interactions on a subatomic level due to the decreased humidity and thus altered surface tension and hydrogen bond strength of the liquids, but because the water from the tap sucked.

And thus with the purchase of a new Brita water filter (thank you adela), my first cup of milo is exactly like the way it should be. Right down to the coffee in it. Nectar and Ambrosia. Never again shall the dark come swirling figuratively down across mine eyes. This is the stuff i lugged 3 x (20+3 free packets!) = 69 sachets of milo halfway across the world for. Yes that's merely a coincidence and not significant in any way. Yes i know what you're thinking, now stop thinking it. Milo. Good. Yum.

and now completely irrelevantly here's a picture of a squirrel. Or a red tree. one of them.



Maybe if you look really hard you'll see a squirrel in the tree, bloody campers. bloody cute, too.

Oh yes and i finished my first iliad essay. 8 pages. woo.

Library Hopping

So today i'm in the library (where else would i be on a saturday night?) and i hear ppl getting up:
"where're you going?"
"Crerar."
"Oh cool, i'll follow you."

Crerar being another library. I wonder if they have booze there.

Call of the wild

It's a very unique and heartwarming feeling when you're sitting in the library and you hear, very unexpectedly, a few cubicles down, someone saying "damn jialat ah!"

It's all greek to me

Right so here i am sitting in the library too lazy to start doing my work coz i've just finished my first midterm, smack after my first paper, and right before my first abstract is due.

It's been a busy few weeks. So much has happened, and it's strange to see the time fly by like that. I can't believe it's already a month since i left home, and now i'm starting to call Max P home. Odd, isn't it? And already, i'm looking for a New Home which i'll share with two other singaporeans (predictably) and it's suddenly all very strange and exciting.

It's very strange trying to meet and make friends with strangers, sometimes you don't really know where to start. But this is the first place i've come to where you can walk along the street, and start a conversation with the person next to you (well at least in the first week you could) and even if you know you're not going to see the person ever again, or, for that matter, remember in 1 hour what that person's name was, at least the person would talk back and not give you a strange stare.

Oh and cultural shock point: They use pencils in their homework, and in their tests too. So Weird. And they don't allow calculators in math tests. Bah.

Mushroom Quiche

1. It's getting cold enough for people to scurry from place to place.
2. squirrels scurry to you if you make a tsk tsk sound and wave your palm in a progressive sinusoidal motion.
3. people look at you funny if you stop dead in the middle of the path and make tsk tsk sounds and move your hand in a progressive sinusoidal motion.

yes well excuse for pictures. What've i been up to?


(Alper is my house. This was taken from the 98th floor of the john hancock tower. w00t.)





right, and one of me:


Haven't gotten fat yet, for those who're wondering. =)

Chicago!

I'm here, in case anyone was wondering. Been busy all these days, taking too many tests, getting out of chinese even though i didn't know how to write 'chair', planning my schedule, getting it mangled by the lack of class openings, etc.

as of now, i have seen:
1. an ethiopian restaurant (way cool)
2. blues club (also pretty interesting, more fun to dance to live music, ja)
3. an outdoor movie (well okay 5 minutes of it)
4. battle royale (how can anyone like this show? *pointed looks*)
5. strange heater thingies which turn the bathroom into a toaster oven
6. bad food
7. good food
8. many vegans

and yea i'm gonna go capture the flag soon too.
ARRRrr. my house theme is pirates. how cool is that?

Check.

Nothing short of the divine.



Thanks to all those who made the above possible. =) And to all those who didn't make the fish pilgrimage this time around: make sure you go back and make lots of noise about it so i don't seem like the only fool to do this.

The Great Escapade

** Disclaimer **

The following is rated NC-13, i.e. Audiences No Closer than 13km from Singapore are advised against reading it.

** End Disclaimer




So starts the 2 week countdown, and with it, the final goodbyes to the sweet memories that i hold so dear to this lil' benevolent dictatorship that i call home. So i say goodbye to the movers and shakers, the nostalgic memories that i hold dear, the times i shared with my dearly beloved:

1. Or luat
2. Stingray
3. Red Ruby
4. Char Kway Teow
5. Bak Chor Mee

which were the 5 dishes sampled tonight, which all, unfortunately, sucked. Don't go to the rip-off makeshift hawker centre opposite centrepoint, what they tried to do was transplant all hte good hawker stalls from across the island. I unfortunately think that the only consistency they managed to capture is the spirit of Scalping Tourists which is the creed and ethos of the Newton hawker centre. (well okay it wasn't that bad but it was sorely below expectations)

The list of dear friends to say goodbye to:
1. RJ FIIIISH!
2. Jackson square bak chor mee
3. Chomp Chomp kway pie tee
4. Laksa (not particular about this one)
5. Victory Restaurant murtabak
6. NYDC Cheesecake/mudpie (hey, what if they don't have NYDC in chicago?)
7. Suntec Foodcourt Korean thingie (Auspicium Melioris Aevi)

and so on. *muses*

Random

Here we have, snurched off my roomie's blog which is updated only about twenty times as often as mine:

Q: How many members of the Bush Administration are needed to replace a lightbulb?


A: 10
1. one to deny that a lightbulb needs to be changed
2. one to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the lightbulb needs to be changed
3. one to blame Clinton for burning out the lightbulb
4. one to tell the nations of the world that they are either for changing the lightbulb or for darkness
5. one to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Haliburton for the new lightbulb
6. one to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a step ladder under the banner “Lightbulb Change Accomplished”
7. one administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how Bush was literally “in the dark”
8. one to viciously smear #7
9. one surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light-bulb-changing policy all along
10. and finally one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a lightbulb and screwing the country.

Gotta love political humour.

And from more aimless websurfing:
Angulus Latinum from which such gems as "Catapultam Habeo. Nisi Pecuniam Omnem Mihi Dabis, Ad Caput Tuum Saxum Immane Mittam*" come from.

Wisma Webcam for when you don't feel Big Brothered over enough.

and snurched off mythomanic's LJ:MIT Hacks; I wonder if Anything of the sort would ever happen in NUS?

*I have a catapult. Give me all the money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.

Hiatus

My blog is dying, not for lack of notable events in my life, but due to it lacking Will Of Overcoming Tedium (W00t) and for some reason i find myself not being able to find time to blog. Hopefully this'll change soon, but the posts will be few and far between until after sept 18th.

Oh and for those interested: I'm taking to the air on sept 14th, and will probably not return for a number of moons. (S)

The Birthday Conspiracy pt 2

And so last night we went to celebrate starchild's birthday. The interesting thing about it was: we had external help developing a conspiracy of surprise. After arranging dinner at Pasta Cafe (which, incidentally, prides itself as being "an ideal place for a satisfying all-day dining experience" for people who really cannot stop eating) and subsequent coordinated cake delivery from Approved Cake Dealer, Seven had the idea of decorating said cake with LOTR figurines. Upon discovering that a set of 4 LOTR figurines cost a stately $149, we decided to lower our aims and she managed to procure some chocs from ChocolateArt at holland village (which, incidentally, seems to be the ppl who made the choc doorgifts for MAS D&D), and used her amazing design skills and some free time at work (what work?) to design a more intriguing Dining Experience.

Now the problem was that the plan required some cooperation on the part of the restaurant to kinda let us go in and alter the micro-decor of a table, and some tie-ups with a waitress (Serene) to pull the whole thing off. They could very anal-retentively just have said "no, sorry, we don't do that" but they were actually quite nice about it and let us come in and mess up the table a bit, and agreed to respond to a subtle sign to figure out who the b'day girl was to do this:



Although of course after about 15 seconds it became this



and afterwhich it kinda fused into a spectacular new form of fusion cuisine. oh well.

But the coolest bit was after dinner, when i looked at the waitress with a slightly raised eyebrow, and she smiled and nodded (shuddup yaox) and the cake came very soon after. Cool, no? Well okay the point is that i seldom see such helpful service people around. This is what tips and service charge should be for.

click clack moo!

right quick post:
if you're in kino and you take a vague interest in american politics, then check out this book by doreen cronin called "duck for president". It's by the same author as click, clack, moo! and is TERRIBLY funny. It's a bush parody, ages 3 and up.

also, in reflection the other day at the busstop, i realised:

1. 13 takes a helluva long time to come whenever you're waiting for it
2. if you truly want to immerse yourself in a foreign culture and really APPRECIATE it, you better get a grip on your own individuality first, so you won't end up being automatically defensive or, worse, getting changed in ways that you might not want to, and are unaware of.
3. i should really sleep at more respectable times. So should my SISTER.

Flying Daggers from Far Far Away

And because i realised my blog was languishing, i decided to post something.

I guess i'm getting a bit too busy to bother to post on my blog, and it's degenerated into a simple picture sharing space in the end. There aren't many things i feel the urge to post about, and when i do get that burning desire to type something out, something else comes along (musou!) and i get sidetracked.

But at any rate, in latest news:
in counterpoint to mezz's blog and the 1st aug post, I actually thought the House of Flying Daggers was a pretty fun movie. It was pretty in the typical zhang yimou colour-coordinated way, only this time it wasn't as ridiculous as hero, where everyone seemed to own the same garment in all the primary colours. Disregarding the wonderful illogical bits (hey, let's fight for hours and hours and hours until the snow covers all the trees as an excuse to change the colour scheme from orange to white! What's that, you say? I have something on my back? Oh it must be just that stupid flying dagger, yea, i'm keeping it there coz i'll need it later.) which were actually damn funny and entertaining in their own way, and all the fanservice (yes alright quick hurry up and finish making out so i can see more acrobatic fight scenes).... it was an ENTERTAINING movie. I still miss the snow fight scene from kill bill 1, and the fight scene where they dance on water from hero, but hey, it was interesting in its own right. Yea. if you haven't watched it yet, suspend belief, step in, lie back, and laugh.

Right and that aside, i finally got my room assignment from Chicago, and it came in a nice envelope with the most amusing postmark i've seen in a while, and i'll test out the new blogger picture update thing by posting this picture:

...

okay blogger just cheated my feelings. fine. Geocities rox.


"Greetings from Far Far Away"

a word or two

Happiness is subjective.

This is a reminder to count your blessings.

it's also a blog post place-holder to flood off the last post on my blog since it's very picture-heavy so the loading time on the page isn't too long.

joyeux anniversaire

quick summary:

good friends + good food + good alcohol >> purple helium balloons.

to keep it short: The pictures speak for themselves. (thanks to resident photographer yaox for being so diligent at them: 300 photos from last night!)

The food was really good as usual (thanks mum!) and yea i don't mind having leftovers to finish from this, not that there were a lot of leftovers anyway:


foooood


more foooood.


Was truly a really fun evening, thanks to all who came, including but not limited to these people:





but there was good fun, with fil winning, for the first time i've seen, the 13 wonders hand:



After a while though, there wasn't any more chivas:


so everything kinda became more blurry after that. Stories and pics on request!

Balloons

are mankind's greatest invention. Helium ones, specifically fuschia helium ones x 1000.

You cannot believe the simple joy i got from seeing so many balloons, and then standing on tiptoe to try and catch them and take them down, and then accumulating so many balloons in the hallway that the lights got eclipsed and the GM of the british club had to come and ask us to move them somewhere else coz it was making the place dark. And then popping them with a pole with pins attached on the top: modern day improvised-pike. And then we realised people actually WANTED the balloons, so we started giving them out to random doctors who were there for the conference. And THAT was kinda fun. I haven't given random things to random people in a while.

Who kenw such simple joy could come from such simple things? Happiness is elusive, i guess, you find it in the strangest places. I decided to liberate 5 of them and scatter them to the winds of time and change. Freeeeeedom!

Random Strangers

And so we have the service counters. The places where stories are told, where futures unfold. Here we find the mishmash of people, the investment banker in a suit from Merryl Lynch, the chinese national who was rejected one year ago, the PhD students who're dressed to the nines and are going for their internship, who make singlish sound -classy-, the softspoken MNC engineer who travels a lot and whose previous 10 year visa expired. The Other Chinese National who's with his mum who only speaks in dialect. Everyone with a story to tell. Some dressed expecting a board interview, full suits, formal skirt suits and long-sleeved shirted people. Then there's Bryan Wong, in a beach Tshirt, broadshorts and sandals who obviously knew what to expect. There's a man now to whom english isn't his first language, parroting everything the American is saying behind the counter.

"put your left index finger on the scanner please"
"left index finger"
"no sir, your left hand"
"left hand."
"no, your OTHER left hand."
"left hand."
"yes sir thank you"
"thank you"

He's wearing grey socks with his black shoes.

There's a pregnant woman in the queue. There are empty seats in the waiting area.


So here're the nervous, the confused, the bored. The businessman in his armani waiting along with the young man in jeans and new balance shoes. The guy behind the counter just rejected someone "1 week more of additional paperwork", no excuse given. The PhD student whimpers and watches. People are still coming in, 30 minutes before closing time. The room reminds me of a hospital waiting area, but waiting at KMC has taught me well. It's not even remotely boring yet. The pair of PhD students have gone now, ecstatic that they've got their visas in time. They fly friday.

Here are the stories to be written. Their futures decided by someone behind a marble counter and thick glass - bulletproof, of course - who have no other information other than what basic biodata you provided them in the form. Do they decide your risk factor based on a combination of what's filled in fields 1, 4, 7 and 13b? I admire them, though, their ability to greet people cheerfully after 100s of other people. I suppose they have their job perks too:

"So your name is candy."
"yes."
"don't you think that's a very suggestive name?"
"Well apparently my mum thought it was a good idea."
....
"so why are you working in singapore airlines?"
"For the moneeey."
"not because *bimbo voice* 'oh i like flying and meeting new people, teeheehee!'? that's a very singaporean way of looking at things, 'for the moneeyyy'"
*nervous laugh*
"what do you do in singapore airlines?"
"F&B -- food and beverage"
"so what's your favouriate food?"
"er, i don't really like the food."
"So what's your favourite beverage, then?"
"I've developed a taste for the orange juice..."
"So if you were to serve me a drink, what would you serve me?"
"er, alcoholic or non-alcoholic?"
"with alcohol, of Cooourse!"
"how about a dry martini?"
"okay, how do you make a dry martini?"
"well, fill 2/3rds of the glass with gin....."

I look at the guy next to me and smile. He smiles back.
"I suppose he's trying to make sure she's really a stewardess," he says
"er, yea, perhaps." I reply.

sitting in the front row has its perks.

Flight of the dragonfly

And so, about a year or so after i decided to start blogging before i finish tweaking the design of my page, i finally finish the layout. First experiment with CSS after learning it a few days ago, courtesy of the lack of crowds at comgraph:


Booth sweet booth

Where i was at for the past few days, manning a stall as such and watching the big screen reboot:


WinXP sucks.

Comgraph is an annual animation and digital art exhibition organised by sigraph, a non-profit organisation of animators in singapore. It had some nice animations this year, if you go for that sort of thing. But of course even nice animations start to grate after watching them 4-5 times a day for 3 days.

At any rate, the free time during the lull periods of the exhibition gave rise to what you see right now. Cool, isn't it? And blueeee. Finally, i have a blog i can call entirely my own! The dragonfly pic was taken with my casio qv-r41 on macro mode with a very willing subject, and editted in photoshop. Best viewed in opera at 1024x768, so switch now!

The other reason for the switch is the significance of getting rid of all those swirling clouds of dust, now that i won't ever need to see them for a while. No more area D for a few years. For everyone who didn't understand that, it isn't important. My dust clouds have been swept out and replaced by dragonflies.

Factoid of the day: dragonflies are attracted to electromagnetic fields. Thus if you seem to have a lot of dragonflies around your dipole, it's working.

Comments please!

Je n'ai pas rien lecon francaise. =P

So yesterday i had the most amusing exam ever. It was my first french test, complete with a concurrent oral and listening compre. This teacher would come in every now and then and summon a fearful student to the gallo.... er, test room. Only, le professeur c'est francaise! So he must do it in styyyyle. How, i hear you ask?

Scene 1:
*door opens*
*french guy comes in, puts a foot on a chair to show off his addidas shoes and strikes a pose*
*teacher stares deeply into the eyes of this lady sitting first in the row*
"me? shit."
"ALLEZ!"
*exeunt with a flourish and a 'after you, madame'*

Scene 2:
*french guy leans against doorframe, staring at another student who's looking over her paper*
*student looks up and groans audibly*
"ALLEZ!"

Scene 3:
*door opens a crack*
*addidas shoe sneaks in and lifts up against the wall*
*voice from outside: 'ALLEZ!'*

and so at the speed the oral was going, we finished our paper before the orals, so the guy comes in, and takes a look at his last victim, and decides to hold the exam in the classroom itself with all of us there. And he switches off the lights, and locks the door ("pour ambience") and starts asking him some basic questions.
"What's your profession?"
"A teacher of chemistry."
*makes approving noises* "I'm a teacher too." *shakes hands*
"Where do you teach?"
"ACS." *class goes ooh*
"Are you married?"
"er, no.... no i'm not married." *in conspicuous complete sentences*
"WHYYYYYYYYYY?"
"er, because i single life like. because i like the single life..."
"Do you like lawyers?"
"uhhhh, yes?" *woman in class stifles laughter*
*points to some lady* "She's single too. Lawyer, teacher, lawyer teacher..... hmm."
*lady makes protesting noises*
"SHH! C'est un EXAMEN L'ORALE! *looks at her* Don't you like him? Teacher, ACS...... very stable!"
*looks at him* "Do you have a car?"
"uh, no...."
"Ahhhhh then no wonder."

and he proceeds to try and set him up with every single eligible female, heck, every single female in the classroom. Terribly amusing, but the poor guy, to his detriment, couldn't come up with very eloquent responses in french. But it was good entertainment. =)



And in other news, it's durian season! And rubbing your hands in salt after eating durians takes away the smell. Anyone can explain why? Adsorption? Some enzyme inhibition? All i know is that it works better than trying to mask the smell of it with scented soap.

---
Life's sometimes very similar to a CuSO4 crystal, all it takes is a small bit of help in a suitable environment, and you can end up with a thing of beauty. That, and it's full of blues.

more KL

And while i was in KL, we stayed at my cousin's old house... which is now inhabited only by his parents, and a maid who cares for the disabled father. And then i realise that very little has changed there since i last visited 7(?) years ago, i remember the stickers on the wall, the stone bench which Rusty (the dog) used to sit and laze away...

and it's all STILL THERE.

and the stall nearby which sold yong tau foo... still there... and the one at jalan ipoh which sold really good hokkien mee? check. Important things all there. =)

And then i realise that these old folks, they don't have a computer. No net connection, either, of course. The simple life. And of course, since they don't speak a word of english, computers would probably not have much use for them. hm. Practically everyone i know owns a computer at home, it's become just so surprising to see a home without one! But then again, i wonder if my grandkids will come to me when i'm old and wonder how i could survive without a VR headset and a jack to plug me into the matrix.

In other news, vouloir est peuvoir! blogs will hopefully be more frequent in the near future. The mood's returning.

Food, Ferris wheels, Flowers, and Flying.

Just back from KL trip, which was LOADS of fun, partly because of good food:


which included perennial favourites like KL hokkien mee from the corner shop opposite the 7-11 in the row where my mum's sis used to have a shophouse, and the lor mee from the place which only opens at night and has its main centre of operations in the carpark in front of the shop it's actually supposed to be in. And of course, A&W and baskin robbins. =)

Then there was the pro shopping, but there's not much to say about that, except maybe this pic of a breadtalk clone. Which came first, the story or the talk about it?


And then of course there's genting. Unfortunately i didn't have enough time to go visit the outdoor theme park and the roller coasters, but who cares about those when you have ferris wheels and a nice camera?


And stay in a nice hotel with nice flowers, which has no relevance whatsoever to the flower and hotel tower in the picture? (it's a picture of another hotel.)


Of course the most fun new experience was dressing up in a weird suit with pink frills and looking like a biker mouse from mars, all in the name of attempting to pseudo skydive in a vertical wind tunnel (seen in the back just next to the sign saying 'no pictures allowed') blowing winds at 193km/h, which creates interesting intrinsic effects like being able to fly and having the drool blown right out of your mouth.


And in other news, photoshop CS rocks. It has a nice improvement to brightness/contrast called shadows/highlights, which i used on the overexposed ferris wheel, and then it has a neat colour replacement trick which keeps the relative colours relative, so things like textures and shadows are maintained. So, if you ever decide you need a differently coloured shirt, photoshop it!


oh and yes those 2 people are one and the same person, who's actually hanging on to the side of the ferris wheel cage coz it was shaking. The casio feature of split pic is quite fun to play with.


And if that sounded a bit disjointed..... i guess it'e because i should've taken more pics that they logically flowed into one another. oh well. At least they all start with F, coz that's how they spell Fotoshop in malaysia.

Virtual Worlds

The great singapore sale has started! And so, where do we find ourselves on a sunday afternoon?


Kino.

A buncha 20% discount coupons (w00t!) in life! (29th May for those who missed it) and the general tendency to gravitate towards the place anyway (must be all the weight of authority in those books) cause us to somehow magically appear in the bookstore. Or, well, fine, my sis went there first and i was looking for her, which was the other part of why i was in kino.

At any rate, i found her in the computer section (go figure) reading a book on 'designing virtual worlds'. The difference this time is that it's a rather easy to read book more humanities based than coding-based, which just means that this time i can actually understand what she's reading. And so the first part i saw was kinda sociological and about the types of players who Mud and their differing objectives, and the implications of your design on the proportions of people who'll stay in the long run. Interesting stuff. And there was a whole section on Game economics, too. I like. My sis like(s). I buy.

And while i'm reading the book, i inevitably draw many parallels to the Kingdom of Loathing which is this web-based MUD still in beta, but going official soon. The thing about MUDs in beta is that there're endless tweaks going on, and with a reasonably transparent economy you can see interesting (and immediate) effects. And all at once, here's all your textbook economic theory in living dynamic practice, all your demand and supply, your market structures, your macroeconomic controls, and there're people, intelligent people, discussing with good economic sense why certain policies would work and certain others wouldn't, and nice discusssions about the REAL opportunity cost of actions in the game and how to combat inflation and that sort of thing. So cool. Did i just lose everyone here? But i figure that if i don't manage to get that childhood dream of being an animator at squaresoft, maybe i'll get a chance to be an economist at squaresoft for their next incarnation of an MMORPG. I never really liked the idea of subscription-based Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs, but hey, it'd be fun to be on the other side. Yea and anyway, my mum was so completely aghast that my sis wanted to buy this $90 computer book from borders. So yea i didn't tell her that i'm fuelling her passion with this one. oh well. Excuse me while i return to my attempt at profiting from information assymetries.

The pyramid game

So, my NS friend asked me out to dinner. Which is strange, becuase i didn't really know him that well to begin with, he was a good working ally and nice person to talk to in camp etc. but i didn't really expect to see him much after we went our own seperate ways. So it was quite a pleasant surprise when he called me up to ask me out for dinner. So okay, i say why not come along for this dinner we're having to send another NS friend off for his masters degree in violin? And then he says no thanks, actually he doesn't really know the rest of them very well. Which i find highly curious, but is not terribly inconceivable. So i say not this week, try next week.

So next week he calls again and asks me for dinner. So alright, i agree and in the end we meet at lau pa sat, near his office. And i'm thinking "wa, poor chap, working till 7pm." (we agreed to meet at 7:15) And i see him all dressed up in a tie and a long sleeved shirt. And i'm rather surprised, partly because i didn't think he'd be in such a formal job requiring such clothes, and later, when i realised it, because i'm wondering why he's still wearing his tie and stuff after office hours.

So we talk, he asks lots of questions about what i'm doing, what i'm going to do, the usual smalltalk. But refuses to answer questions about his job. Very cryptic. Already on the phone when i tried to find out, he refused to tell me, so, okay, i'll give him that much, but even now he went on saying "oh i'll tell you after dinner." which i found completely perplexing, and i was wondering what sort of illegal job he was trying to do.

And then he started being very nice to me and tried to pay for my dinner and ate what i ate and drank what i drank... which was when i decided that he didn't care about the dinner. And he asks me cryptic stuff like if i ever considered being retrenched, and whether i'd want to be in a job all my life, and such. When you consider that all our previous conversation about jobs basically involved things like 'dunno, see how' and the like, this got highly curious. So i figured he was trying to sell me insurance or some sort of financial instrument. Which i found amusing, coz, well, there's always the chance of me coming back to him on the same matter with a rather different change of roles 4 years later.

But he STILL REFUSES to tell me what he's selling or trying to get at. Which started to get agitatingly irritating. And he refused to tell me, saying 'well, come back to my office and it'll be easier to explain, or you might misunderstand.' At this moment various alarm bells started ringing, but i thought, hey, let's see where this is going.

So we take a walk along shenton way, and voila, office. we take the lift up, and he sees someone he knows in the lift. Considering that it's already 8 plus by now, i'm wondering what sort of job he does where temp people wander around the office so late at night. And he tells me about a nice working environment and lots of young people and that sort of thing. gee. So the doors open at the top floor of some random office building, and he leads me... into a showroom. I'm there going 'wtf?' at seeing a whole area full of maybe 30 people talking at small tables in groups of 3 or 4 or so. I was expecting a graveyard, and i got a market.

And he shows me the showcase of their products (aha, you're trying to sell me..... beauty products?!? and aromatherapy?!?) and explains some more, does a whole sales pitch, shows me the website, says good things about the company's president and director and stuff (why am i interested? what's your point? who are these people to you?) and eventually i figure out that it's multilevel marketing he's gotten himself into.

Which then begun a whirlwind journey of logic fencing with my friend who refuses to tell me very much, in fear of having me misunderstand. So he says wait for a while, i'm getting a senior partner to explain to you what it's all about. So in the end, he, this other army friend who was there too, and this strange senior partner who was probably the same age as he was, sit with me at a table. *glance at watch*

So senior person does all the talking. In chinese. Which is sliiiiightly problematic, since my logic fencing doesn't work quite as well when i'm spending half my brainpower trying to figure out what she's saying in the first place. And all the while i keep trying to point out how they have only 2 products for crying out loud, and they're really just selling the franchising system which won't work since there's no inherent value in their products. And she pulls all sorts of analogies with macdonalds and math games and stuff which i try to point out aren't relevant, but she refuses to listen to me anyway thinking that i've got the wrong idea and should just follow her train of thought for a moment. I suppose i don't express myself very well in chinese.

My friends try and convince me about the learning opportunities and how the courses are really good, i try and ask them if they're really worth the money because they keep talking about it in such vague terms like 'oh it's good' 'you won't believe it until you try it' and so on. I figure it's very personality cultish and brainwashy.

And so it goes on and on for *gasp* 3 hours, all the while i spend time trying to understand their concept and these people, and ask them probing questions to undermine their faith in the system, but it doesn't work. sigh. So i give up and decided my time was better spent elsewhere, like, say in a festering cesspool just down the road.

All in all, it was a 3 hour lesson in logic, chinese, patience, and human fallibility. Fun. Freaky. F-ed up.

Off-white

That one word post was of course a lyric from the chorus of Simon and Garfunkel's Mrs Robinson:

Koo-koo-ka-choo, Mrs. Robinson,
Jesus loves you more than you will know.
God bless you, please, Mrs. Robinson.
Heaven holds a place for those who pray,
Hey, hey, hey

But then again, i guess they didn't know what they were talking about either, and maybe, just maybe, kai's right after all. :)

Pink.

Kookookachoo!

Sunset Boulevard

And for a lack of other notable content to blog about (Read: I don't really feel like blogging about ORA jogathon even tho i have nice pics, because it's too far gone; and i don't want to blog about kill bill 2 because i'm too lazy) I post this highly irrelevant picture of a sunset from just outside my house, which we only saw because my sis wanted to run 2.4 (hey that rhymes) because she failed the one before.



The angle sucks, though, because it was the best i could do to try and avoid getting the houses and trees in the way. Which is kinda sad, because the sky was a rather nice vivid hue of purple-pink. The photo isn't very accurate at reproducing it, but it looks nice anyway.

Oh and my sis went on to get a gold for her NAPFA, which is rather ridiculously unfair, since the only thing she did in between was run once and do some sprints and stepups, but i'm proud of her anyway.

yea and always remember to bring $1 coins to NTUC if you're buying more than 10kg worth of stuff. Either that or A4 sized paper to hold bags with. Neither of which i had, of course, being me. Had to rearrange stuff in the middle of the aisle multiple times to try and fit everything into a basket, and then i decided that fruits just don't pack very efficiently. Dual-wielding baskets, yo.

Relativity

Ahh so i finally manage to think of something to blog about.

today's my dental FFI. 2 (.5!) years have really gone by pretty fast. Time moves really slowly and is all relative to what you were doing (which reminds me of a conversation i had with my sis about how she was going to dehydrate and die in sunday school because she forgot to bring water since 1 hour of sunday school seemed like 10 years to her and dehydration depends on how much time you spend without water, but i digress) and all the other significant milestones you measure events against. So when you're going thru something, and it's complete torture, time moves really slow. And when you look back at something, and there's not much to look back at, time moved very fast. It also, i guess, depends on the state of change of the world at large relative to what you'd expect it to be.... Primary school without net access seems to be eons ago, but has it really been twice as long as the distance in time between today and the time i stepped into JC? hm.

That aside, NS has come and gone, i'm finally at the brink of finishing it, and this golden timeperiod has been the stuff of dreams for a long time coming. Not too long ago i was thinking, "crap, 2 years and 4 months of NS ahead of me, that's longer than JC, and JC was REALLY QUITE LONG. Even if now it does seem like it went by very fast, i wonder if time is relative to the....etc" but now that the time has come, it's rather anticlimatic. I just want to get it over and done with and close this chapter of my life. Oh sure, there've been good times and i've learnt from NS, but i wonder if i wouldn't have learnt just as much from the outside world if i'd spent my time otherwise. No matter how i rationalise it, NS at a personal level doesn't make lots of sense, but i guess that isn't the whole point of NS after all. I guess i've quite definitely grown up a lot, though, and it's no longer a naive student mentality but a more cynical, jaded, wiser person looking out thru these eyes. The one thing i hate most about NS at the moment is how it completely destroyed my discipline and work attitude, ironically. I just can't seem to find it anywhere anymore. I wonder how long it'll take to be able to motivate myself sufficiently again. *Sigh*

and ah vell, the time has come to go out and get signatures. damn rain. it never rains when it's supposed to.

50 first crutches

Hello loyal viewers, and welcome back to the blog! This week's edition is on "how to get more bang out of your buck for your crutches!"

"But crutches are just for lame people to walk with," you say?
Not if you're caught in THIS situation!


Then your friends can have endless hours of fun at sports such as crutch duelling,


Hide and seek with crutches (supported pullups!)


reverse engineered crutches (and subsequent reallocation of resources)


subscribe to our newsletter for full articles and details on crutchian weaponry, crutch wallwalking, and more!

and yea, gg yaox, get well soon, coz i don't think your crutches will survive very long.

NES Rock band

Flashback to childhood:

It's a Rock band that plays only covers of old NES game themes.

talk about a niche audience.

in other news this guy does a pretty good electric guitar solo on the super mario theme with sound effects included. =)

apres.mid

So fil was saying how mezza was going to town to buy boox, and i said i needed to buy boox too.
F: "What sort of boox?"
A: "textboox."
F: "boox.txt?"
A: "shit guyz, that's like whatsup.doc"
F: "vampire.bat? company.exe screw.dat apa.ini"
A: "battering.ram"
F: "1.pdf 2.pdf 3.pdf"
A: "caughtin.zip"
F: "She.rar windy.torrent"
A: "cray.dll"
F: "help"
A: "goodbye.wav"
F: "superfami.com"
A: "quixand.swf"
F: "bright.flash"
A: "little.sys"
F: "ineed.hlp"
A: "closeto.inf"
F: "nice.sav big.bmp"
A: "nomoneyto.gif"
F: "whitemilky.ppt nice.mov"
A: "ad.lib deep.bas"

etc. etc. i think the point's made. ><

FISH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And so i went back to RJ today, and i hit the motherlode!



FISH!!!!!!!!!!!! I think i was the only sod in the canteen who was actually EXCITED about what he was eating. I saw the fish in the stall, and very instinctively said "FISH!!!" upon which the people in the queue stifled a laugh. So i queued up behind them, and the @#$#@es took all the rest of the fish. So i waited. But boy was it worth the wait. I am happy today.

metro, boulot, dodo!

The theory of relativity in words of four letters or less

Time sink

What does the title have to do with those, you ask?
absolutely nothing.

遇见 -- 孙燕姿

听见 冬天的离开 我在某年某月 醒过来

我想 我等 我期待 未来却不能因此安排

阴天 傍晚 车窗外 未来有一个人在等待

向左 向右 向前看 爱要拐几个弯才来

我遇见谁 会有怎样的对白 我等的人 他在多远的未来

我听见风 来自地铁和人海 我排着队 拿着爱的号码牌

我往前飞 飞过一片时间海 我们也常在爱情里受伤害

我看着路 梦的入口有点窄 我遇见你是最美的意外

终有一天 我的谜底会解开

*waits patiently for the responses*
it's a beautiful song. =)

Happy birthday jxhuang

To the guy who shares my name: happy birthday! Pics from yesterday:


this guy's drunk


this guy's dunked


these guys really love the YMCA

So it's amazing how much chargrilled food we've consumed in the space of the first few months of the year. The food is actually getting better, tho, and amazingly we have stuff we can actually eat now. But food aside, last weekend was loads of fun, what with the song guessing courtesy of jxhuang's ipod. Is it mildly disturbing that chin manages to identify cleardance clearwater revival songs within 5 seconds?

i'm feeling lucky?

The other day i was fetching my sis home from RI (yes it's the first time i've been to RI in the driver's seat of a car, and the first time back there for a long while, how ironic) and she was complaining how she's hungry but there's no junk food in the house, so i should stop by and buy her some.

"You don't need to eat more junk food." (we're talking about the person who can sit down and finish up half a packet of cup jellies here.)
"yes i do"
"no you don't"
"yes i do"
"no you don't"
"yes i do"
"no you don't, infinity" (monkey island joke)
"your debating skills suck"
"phbbbbbt."
"infinity isn't even a real number. it doesn't count"
"so what counts, then?"
"something like googleplex. Yes i do googleplex times googleplex to the power of googleplex to the power of googleplex"
"no you don't, whatever you said plus 42"
"yes i do, whatever you said times 2"
"no you don't, plus one."
"..........."

yea we have really mature intellectual conversations. I put it down to all my brain cells being dedicated to bringing my beloved sister home safely.

oh and i didn't buy anything, coz my mum just made cheesecake that day. ^^
Which i didn't get to eat much of coz i had to go back to camp, but welllll. c'est la vie.

Happy birthday, Chin

What a nice condo. Water's such a major feature in this, and everyone knows that it's good fengshui to have nice fountains and ponds and things. (thanks for the tripod, chin)


And even better fengshui to get a shower of good fortune!


And yea here's a completely irrelevant picture of a bird's nest. isn't it fun to have unlimited film?

Chin's BBQ last night was actually pretty well done (no pun intended) with the food actually tasting pretty nice, which is an improvement from "food tasting edible" which was an improvement from "food looking edible" which was yet another improvement from "we actually got the fire started". I suppose this time it's better coz we didn't start the fire, it was always burnin' since the world's been tur.....er, since we got there.

As is customary with parties in the vicinity of a pool, even if it's not exactly within sight, Chin was poised for a wet goodbye, in what must've been one of the largest pool-dunking conspiracies ever. What a pity then, that as we were making our way away from the BBQ pits, the security guard came and said, rather enigmatically "there is no pool." Well i suppose it's all a figment of our imagination, aye?

So after walking around a bit while carrying a very-large and very-heavy chin, we find the pool, and then said security guard appears again to tell us that there's no swimming after 10pm. Which, i suppose, we had to concede, since it was 10:02pm. He must've been a lawyer in his past life or something. Sheeeesh.

So Chin got wet anyway, but in a less fun and less satisfying way. So much for organised anarchy. Why do we always end up getting scolded wherever we go? hmmmph.