when you find yourself falling into madness, dive!

hello 2012

2012-01-01T03:05:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: avulsion - a tearing away / (Law) the sudden removal of soil by change in a river's course or by a flood, from the land of one owner to that of another / a part torn off
Random Fact of the Day: The creator of the NIKE Swoosh symbol was only paid $35 for the design

hello 2012, i have high expectations for you. i think one new year's resolution i'd actually like to make an effort in keeping this year is to take better care of memories, hopefully not at the expense of experiences. there really isn't any reason i can't or shouldn't, given the plethora of options with which to capture and store/share them. i would have done a reflection post for the year gone past, except i can't remember a lot of it.

i guess this means this blog might die a slow death since i'll be doing things piecemeal rather than storing up information to release in a delicious explosion of words, which is quite a shame since its 10th year anniversary is coming up in about a year and a half, or maybe it'll just start taking on a different tone. it already looks different; might as well not leave the renovation only skin deep

2011-12-27T10:41:00.004+08:00

mmm guess i should post something soon. in the meantime, visit http://longestjokeintheworld.com/

2011-11-01T01:45:00.001+08:00

2011-10-25T15:42:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: anoesis - a state of mind consisting of pure sensation or emotion without cognitive content
Random Fact of the Day: The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache

there is a fine layer of dust that has settled over most of the exposed surfaces in my home. i was supposed to blog a week or so ago but i was lazy about it. the dust isn't going anywhere anytime soon, anyway. the house is so dusty because it's being renovated. apparently my grandparents are coming to stay with my family some time in the near future, which is a slightly jarring thing to comprehend. i guess this means i'll need to become a more loving person really quickly. i think i thought of blogging last week because i needed to vent; i suspect i needed to vent because the week hadn't gone particularly well. part of that was due to visiting my grandmother but i've forgotten most of the other part that contributed to the feeling. i had to visit my grandmother again last saturday during lunchtime and based on that one visit, i've come to the conclusion that it's a more pleasant experience visiting her during lunchtime than dinnertime. my grandma has dementia and her memory isn't the greatest, so she tends to ask the same question multiple times over the course of one visit. which is why i was pleasantly surprised when, after i'd corrected her on the number of cars the family has, she remembered how many cars we had later on. or maybe it was a lucky guess, but i'm not that picky

i had a group presentation yesterday that i think went well, although i don't remember ever working so last-minute, literally and not-so-literally, for a presentation that i thought i'd actually do well for. i baked cookies to give to the class just because i could but they didn't turn out as well as i'd have liked them to. people thought they were good though, so that should be good enough for me

some 8th dan in judo was in singapore over the weekend and monday to teach at this thing called the olympic solidarity course. i was supposed to go for two of the days but only ended up going for one of the days, after which i immediately regretted not going for the other day. actually it'd be more precise to say that i started regretting it as the course progressed. it was a mind-blowing experience and an extremely beautiful thing to watch what he was demonstrating. i think that there is a lot of beauty to be found in complexity, but there is also much beauty to be found when the complex can be distilled into the simple

it is raining now and i am falling ill and i have to go for class later and also continue to collect data for my thesis. thesis has been an interesting experience so far, although i don't think i'm getting the results i want to. it's interesting in part because i will never meet most of the people who sign up for my experiment, but every time one of them cancels their sign-up, i feel a deep sense of loathing toward them

i think i will go take a nap

2011-09-20T00:09:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: revenant - one who returns after death (as a ghost) or after a long absence
Random Fact of the Day: More money is spent on gardening than on any other hobby

mmm quite an appropriate word of the day. i've been busy and lazy for a while, so i haven't got round to blogging, but something happened to me yesterday that i thought was worth sharing, even though now that i think abt it, it isn't really

i went to the kitchen yesterday, and there was a lizard on the kitchen sink, so i tried shooing it away. it ran around for a bit, then decided to leap off the sink. it landed on my hand, which annoyed me greatly coz i hate lizards. i flicked it off and it landed in front of my dog, who looked at it curiously while the lizard ran off to hide under the washing machine

then a while later i was washing dishes, and as i was washing, i noticed that one of the drains - apparently the one that the kitchen sink leads to - was starting to bubble and then flood. as it was flooding, two spiders crawled out. and then suddenly one cockroach appeared. and then three more cockroaches started squirming out of the little holes in the drain. it was quite impressive coz their bodies were bigger than the holes but they managed to find their way out. but anyway it was damn freaky to just see them all stunned there in one group. im really very glad im not that scared of cockroaches. i managed to use a broom to scoop them up and dump them into another drain, which i flushed down with water. then i found out apparently cockroaches can swim

so anyway, i went to watch a taylor swift concert in omaha, nebraska on may 28 this year, and it was the best night of my year so far. i donno what to say about it, other than that i got to touch her hand and that it was very nice of her to sing songs that weren't on the original speak now tour setlist, like "mean," and "haunted," and "our song." ok that was an underwhelming description

2011-07-12T11:03:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: skylark - to frolic; sport / a brown-speckled European lark, Alauda arvensis, famed for its melodious song
Random Fact of the Day: A person uses approximately 57 sheets of toilet paper each day

i dreamed last night that i was waiting to eat dinner, and that i was so hungry that i woke up. but then i also peed for very long so maybe that was the reason. i also dreamed that i was in some sports hall and i had to do breakfalls, but the way the guy did it was that he would breakfall and immediately spring back to his feet, kinda like how they do it in pro wrestling. in between those two dreams was a mass of blurriness

i watched some episode of 1000 ways to die on netflix in california, and there was one woman who died from sudden unexpected nocturnal death syndrome: apparently she would constantly dream that she was being strangled by a fire-breathing dwarf and on this one occasion she didn't manage to wake up from the dream and she ended up dying. then the voiceover said something along the lines of how if you die in a dream you die for a real. but ive dreamed that i've been eaten by a shark and sunk to the bottom of a swimming pool, and i was intact when i woke up

ok a proper post is in order next time, i think

2011-07-04T13:36:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: catawampus - off-centre; askew; awry / positioned diagonally; cater-cornered
Random Fact of the Day: Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been struck by lightning

i went to a church service in LA today and there were three songs i'd never heard before and when i went to listen to the original versions, i found out that the church worship team sang them better than the originals, which almost never happens. the stage wasnt lit during worship, so you couldn't actually see (at least from where i was) what the musicians looked like, which i thought was pretty cool and useful coz the support singer's voice was extremely extremely nice and id probably have been distracted by her if i could have seen her

2011-06-18T12:15:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: orison - a prayer
Random Fact of the Day: Humans blink over 10,000,000 times a year

just got back from a road trip to south dakota to see mount rushmore. found out that deadwood, the city that the hbo series was based on, is in south dakota. geeked out. won $10 playing blackjack there

2011-06-07T12:43:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: pecksniffian - hypocritically and smugly affecting benevolence or high moral principles
Random Fact of the Day: A snail can sleep for three years

ok im actually spose to talk about the best night of my life ever but there are some thoughts i had from the weekend that i wanted to get down in writing even though most of it is somewhat frivolous

on sunday, instead of going for a typical church service (yes, ive started going to church again), i ended up doing community service. the church my cousins attend over here in nebraska do some community outreach program every first sunday of the month, where members go around and help out with various tasks in the area

what i ended up doing was going to some house that hadn't been looked after very well and helped to mow the lawn, except the lawn was so overgrown that i had to use one of those weed whacker thingies that grasscutters in singapore use. it was pretty fun but after i was done, my hand felt like it was constantly vibrating and now my arms hurt. i had to wear goggles as well just in case and it was kinda disturbing when, after a while, the goggles started filling up with liquid because i was perspiring so much. the contraption i used was pretty similar to what ive seen in singapore, right down to the little sliver of plastic that ends up becoming so deadly when it rotates at high speed. i was amazed because the plant shrapnel that i cut up didnt hurt very much when it hit me, which means that the machines used in singapore must be super high-powered in order for it to hurt so much

it was kinda mindless work so i ended up thinking to pass the time, and i originally started out by thinking that the position taken up by many vegetarians is untenable, which ill address later, but then i also started thinking of how grasscutting is similar to war

when you cut grass, you are the aggressor and the thingy you carry around to cut grass is your war machine. there is a lot of collateral damage done, coz even though you mainly wanna cut down weeds and stuff, there are still other beautiful things like dandelions that end up getting cut down as well, and it's like how war doesnt really discriminate sometimes. then there are things like twigs and branches that fall down to the ground and get in your way and disrupt the grasscutting process and i havent thought of a proper analogy for them yet although maybe they're like people who dont wanna be in the warzone but are at the wrong place at the wrong time, or maybe they're freedom fighters or UN peacekeepers who want to stop you from indiscriminately going around cutting stuff up. i had to start up the cutter multiple times because i needed to stop and wipe myself off, and each time i restarted it, i had to squeeze a trigger that fed gas into the cutter so it could run. squeezing the trigger when the cutter is on increases its power, and i found myself holding on to the squeeze even when i didn't need to, and this made me think of how there's a tendency to increase aggression during war even when the minimum level of aggression is needed. i think there's some other stuff i thought of that i can't really remember right now

anyway, the main thing i thought of is how a lot of vegetarians often like to say that they don't eat meat because of the way in which meat is prepared (i.e., the way in which animals are slaughtered before their meat is processed, the living conditions for the animals, etc.) and the argument usually boils down to animal cruelty. having cut grass, i started to wonder whether this was a fair argument to make and on what grounds it stands when you consider that plants aren't treated all that well either. when vegetarians decide to not eat meat, they're implying that animals have a greater right to life than plants do but people rarely get them to justify this stance. consider a pig. what is the purpose of a pig? they don't seem to count as pet material, people call other people pigs as an insult, they don't have any secondary benefits such as milk or eggs. maybe their only worth other than their meat is that they can sniff out truffles, but even then only some pigs do that. how is a pig more useful than, say, a normal garden plant that helps contribute toward producing oxygen through photosynthesis. there seems to be more value in any random garden plant than any random pig, wild or domesticated, and yet certain people would definitely make such a big fuss were the pig to be killed and not bat an eyelid if the plant were killed. i don't actually know where im going with this whole argument, but i feel that vegetarianism based on the argument of animal cruelty is inherently flawed, because it supposes animal rights but where do these rights come from? i guess i should probably go talk to an actual vegetarian about this and see what happens

also, i realised that it was pretty cool that i actually got to use a weed whacker

2011-05-30T10:55:00.001+08:00

Word of the Day: slaver - to slobber; to drool / saliva drooling from the mouth
Random Fact of the Day: Turtles can breathe through their butts

and my head told my heart, "let love grow" / but my heart told my head, "this time no"

still trying to come back down from my taylor swift cloud but i don't know if things will be as good when i do. interesting back story next time

2011-05-28T13:53:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: prink - to dress up; to deck for show / to dress or arrange oneself for show; to primp
Random Fact of the Day: On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens each year

i first heard this song on "Growing Up," in the episode where the mother died, which made me cry and feel damn emo

2011-05-24T10:15:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: foofaraw - excessive or flashy ornamentation or decoration / a fuss over a matter of little importance
Random Fact of the Day: I was trying to find out what the meaning of the song "Run Devil Run" by SNSD (zomg hyoyeon <3<3) was, and I discovered that the song was originally sung as a demo by Ke$ha but her managing company didn't buy the rights or something and SNSD's did

so you can listen to the kesha version right here (with many typos in the lyrics):

and then if you're still reading, i realised that i also wanted to say that i watched Priest recently, and i quite enjoyed it other than that it was in 3D. i hate watching movies in 3D. oh and also, some of the dialogue and acting in the movie were terrible. but it was like watching a video game, without the pretense of it acting as such (like some people say Sucker Punch did) and also where the person playing the game (i.e., the protagonist) was highly competent. although i still don't understand why they couldn't have blown up the train if they managed to get in so easily. don't worry if you haven't watched it but were planning to - you'd probably have thought the same thing. i also liked that it wasn't particularly gory even when it had every right to be (the goriest parts are in the form of comic book-style animation), as opposed to something like Watchmen, which i thought was unnecessarily gory

oh and the other thing comes in light of the supposed judgment day that has come and gone. it's not the first time that this harold camping or watever his name is has predicted the rapture. i wonder how he felt the first time around and how he felt this time. but anyway. i was thinking of the Left Behind series and how the protagonist is essentially a nominal christian or whatever who was given a second chance. i assume that this grace would have been extended to all other nominal christians, in which case it seems that the rapture as the book(s) described it wouldn't be a very likely scenario, given that such spontaneous disappearance of people would invariably lead to the deaths of others in a similar state to the protagonist (played by kirk cameron in the movies, if im not wrong), which opens up a can of worms that im too lazy to explore further

yongc, i hear and (will try to) obey

2011-05-22T11:37:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: physiognomy - the art of discovering temperament and other characteristic qualities of the mind from the outward appearance, especially by the features of the face / the face or facial features, especially when regarded as indicating character / the general appearance or aspect of a thing
Random Fact of the Day: An earthquake on 16 December 1811 (hi bel if you're reading this - momentous things were happening on your birthday long before you were born) caused parts of the Mississippi River to flow backwards

i forgot what the original intention of this post was supposed to be. i'm in canada now and i've been sleeping very late. i've been trying to nua as much as possible after all the hectic activity of the past few months, but i think i've been nuaing more than i should be, so much so that i haven't been doing things i need to be doing. i need to start thinking about what to write for my honours thesis; i need to start writing the story i intend to submit for some creative writing competition; i need to finish these things soon. my flight to canada was delayed by 3 1/2 hours, which was agonising and i actually wrote a rant that i wanted to blog about but i can't really be bothered to anymore because i can't exactly remember what i ranted about other than the delay. it's interesting how the stringency of immigration into canada compared to the states is mirrored by the stringency of the security checks. i got my first TSA patdown when going into new york, but nothing of the sort when i went to canada

i think my late hours have been affecting my memory, and things have been made worse by my general lack of mindfulness that i should probably get round to cultivating soon. i went for a japanese buffet last night that was very filling but i can't really remember the taste of half of the things i ate, even though i've eaten some of the things before. i was pretty blown away that the salad bar in the restaurant had wang wang rice crackers and tau sar pau, both of which were very pleasant surprises

oh yes that's right. i played soccer yesterday for the first time in a few months, and i was asked, with very little measure of flexibility, to play at left-back. i never play left-back. but ok lah, for a team that kept losing possession 90% of the time upon reaching the halfway line after obtaining it in the penalty box, and played a 2- or 3-man defence (myself included) in an 11-man team, we managed to do exceedingly well. anyway that's not the point. one of the guys on my team was a friend of the people im currently living with, and he did something in one of the earlier games that, upon reflection, i realised was extremely dumb even though he was trying to get the ball to me. i don't know him well at all, and i can't really pinpoint the relation to whatever im going to talk about, but it made me think about myself. i'm not sure if i still am, but i used to be a very competitive person. i think that as a consequence of trying to become a "nice" person, i lost a lot of my competitive spirit, which is detrimental because it's made me afraid to do some things, like take part in judo competitions more often. i suspect it's got to the point where being nice and being competitive have become dichotomised and i have to figure out how to reconcile the two because leaving both as extremes will probably lead to an unsatisfying life, but im not sure how to go about doing that

2011-05-20T02:02:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: nonplus - to cause to be at a loss as to what to think, say, or do; to confound; to perplex; to bewilder
Random Fact of the Day: No president of the United States was an only child

omg very depressing and beautiful song

2011-05-11T10:05:00.000+08:00

there are some songs with messages that i need to take to heart more. "the middle" is one of them even though i'm not a girl, last time i checked, and "butterflies and hurricanes" is another

2011-05-10T12:42:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: callithump - a children's parade, with prizes for the best costumes
Random Fact of the Day: Vikings used the skulls of their enemies as drinking vessels

i've been waiting for this moment all my life / but it's not quite right

i want to sleep but i've to wait for my laundry. i actually wanted to write all this last week when i was in a bad mood, but i couldn't commit the time coz i had to do work, which is sad and is one of the things that this post is about. also, in the past few days i've been typing very ungrammatically, like information isn't transferring from my brain to my fingers properly, so ill type sentences and skip words, which is sad as well

the other thing this post is about is a story that probably a majority of my readers have heard me tell in some form or another, although i guess im really underestimating the number of readers i have (i.e., less than 6). i don't actually think it's very important to share now that i think about it, although at the time i first thought of it i felt it was something that committing to record would help soothe

there's this girl over here who i saw pretty early into the semester and found very attractive the moment i saw her. most of the thoughts i had about her veered from thinking of how to approach her to figuring that there wasn't much point since i probably wouldn't see her again. one of the problems i realised after spending time here was that i settled in too quickly and developed a comfort zone too readily. i ensconced myself in it and so i essentially blocked myself from taking more risks and opportunities than i guess i would have if i had been more uncomfortable. you might ask why, after realising this, i didn't do anything about it, and i don't have a satisfactory answer

i'd walked past before her but never got round to saying anything, and there were times when i'd have physiological reactions (in my stomach, you pervert), which weirded me out and made me feel even more bad for not saying anything coz i always thought that whatever i'd thought of would sound out of place

things sorta came to a head a couple of weeks ago, when i was trying to psych myself up to die die talk to her. i told myself that time was running out and i wouldnt have very many chances left and what was the worst that could happen since i wouldnt have to see her again. i was about to leave the library when i saw her in the corner, and i was like ZOMG sian coz i really wasn't going to just walk up to her out of the blue and start talking. then i saw my friend sitting near her and i was like ZOMGwtfbbqsian coz i couldn't figure out any reason to go talk to my friend. so i went back to my room and along the way i was thinking of reasons to go back to the library and each time i thought of one, id also think of a reason why that was a silly reason. i called myself silly names as well. i decided to go back to the library with the excuse that i needed to print something, but when i got back there were no more printers, which left me lost for a short while but then i decided to just go talk to my friend and see whether there was some not-so-awkward way of ending up talking to her. as i was talking to my friend, she got up to leave so i was thinking "oh well" but then i found out that she and my friend were in the same group working together on a presentation and i was like DIVINE PROVIDENCE A BIT and i started talking to his other group member. she came back and i talked to her a bit and she said that she was frm taiwan but she used to stay in spore for a while and was maybe gonna visit for the summer and i was like HOLY SMOKE and ZHEN DE MA and i left the library feeling very happy

i arranged to get a meal with her so i could get to know her better before i hopefully met her again in spore, but then on the day we were spose to meet, she asked for a change of plans coz she said she had more work than she thought. it seemed like a reasonable explanation so i said ok but i was thinking DANGER DANGER MR ROBINSON. half an hour before we were gonna meet, she said her friend wanted to eat with her and if that was ok and i couldn't think of a nice way to say no even though i really wanted to and probably should have. i've only managed to talk to her once since then. dinner, as you might have guessed, wasn't stellar

ok i ended up going to sleep and now im continuing after a day of very little studying even though i still have one more exam that i dont really wanna study for coz im already damn sian of studying

there really isn't anything more to say about the girl story, other than that i think what annoys me most is that there isn't a sense of closure. my reaction to this whole episode relates to something im gonna talk about in a while, which is essentially that i think i've moved away from my spiritual core

i learnt in one of my classes that sometimes people procrastinate because they're afraid of ending up feeling ashamed of the end result of what they have to do. somewhat related to this, i guess, i read somewhere that perfectionists are often procrastinators because they want to do things once and do them right and dont like to entertain the thought that what they do isn't acceptable the first time round

i think i've become slightly more self-aware during my time here, but it's come at the cost of regressing as a person. i've been doing well in my classes over here and i somehow ended up making it a point to be a good student and attend classes (for the most part) and have pride in my work and generally create what i hoped would be an awesome impression of singapore and NUS. what i really think i ended up doing was create an excuse that i used to stop myself from doing things i really wanted to do while i was here. this has been compounded by what i mentioned earlier about how i found a comfort zone too easily. i havent been training BJJ/judo as much as i thought i would be, even though i could have; i haven't been reading the books i brought along with me at all, even though im sure i could have; i haven't been writing creatively very much at all, although i'm glad i managed to write a little bit of stuff at all. i hope i manage to change things around when i go back to singapore, and i do plan to, but i always wonder if im so far gone down a certain path of lethargy and laziness that i can't get on the other path that is whatever the opposite of what i just said is. at the same time, though, working hard (more or less; it became harder as the semester progressed) has helped me develop a sort of discipline that i hope carries over back to singapore

i've been to church/small group/whatever religious function very rarely since i got here, mainly because i didnt know anyone to go with and im always very reluctant to go for them on my own. id like to think that ive maintained most of my morals even in the lack of regular spiritual nourishment in a corporate setting, but ive come to realise the importance of spiritual community and what a benefit it can be. i've noticed that my temper has become shorter and i've become more insensitive to people and that my security in God isn't as strong as it used to be, the last point probably explaining why the taiwan girl thing is affecting me for a longer period of time than a similar story back home usually would. now that i think about it, i also dont think ive been as consciously grateful to God as i could have been, although im saying this because i learnt in my class that a key component of happiness is gratitude, and ive been feeling more neutral than anything else. which actually isn't all that bad because the mood you're in affects your memory, so being in a neutral mood most of the time facilitates studying because im usually in a neutral mood when doing exams

i thought coming here would see me become much more expressive and uninhibited because of the greater freedom and fact that i wasn't in my home country, but this hasn't proven to be the case, although whether im any worse off is debatable, as is the case of whether personality becomes unmalleable after a while

2011-04-29T08:47:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: polymorphous - having, assuming, or passing through many or various forms, stages, or the like
Random Fact of the Day: Jupiter is twice as large as all the other planets combined

i have an essay due, my final one, slightly over 16 hours from now. it is supposed to be seven pages long. i have written less than half a page. my stomach has been making weird noises since this afternoon and it distracts me and annoys me and refuses to be fixed by a trip to the toilet

today in class we talked about blogging because it was related to the actual topic we were discussing, which was something called e-memory. i said that i'd been blogging since 2003, a useless fact that i happened to remember even though i don't usually go back and review what i write like how some people do and like how i keep telling myself i should go do

in my most recent trip to the toilet, i thought about going back home to singapore. last night, i shuddered for a short while at the fact that i'd be leaving william & mary soon. in the toilet, i thought of a friend i'd be seeing in new york, and how i anticipated it feeling like it hadn't been a long time since i last saw him. it got me thinking that things wouldn't really be different when i do go back to singapore, as far as my relationships with people go. things do seem to be changing in singapore though; at the very least, there is the appearance of change in the air. people keep mentioning the elections in their tweets and status updates and there doesn't seem to be a lot of love for the PAP going around. this post is going nowhere but it has been very interesting to me to see my peers suddenly so caught up with the general elections given that the last time they were held, no one really seemed to care as much. then again, people were five years younger five years ago, or were they?, and politics probably seem much more relevant to them nowadays

i hate studying in a public place when my stomach makes noises

2011-04-26T23:29:00.000+08:00

art imitating life. apparently i'm in my middle age already

2011-04-25T01:24:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: corybantic - frenzied; agitated; unrestrained
Random Fact of the Day: Men get hiccups more often than women

13 years on and i still remember all the lyrics to this song

2011-04-18T09:47:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: scurrilous - grossly or obscenely abusive / characterised by or using low buffoonery
Random Fact of the Day: Richard Millhouse Nixon was the first US president whose name contains all the letters from the word "criminal." The second was William Jefferson Clinton

i first heard this song in a cinema while waiting for the movie to start, and then i started listening to their other songs on youtube and realised that i'd listened to one of their songs, "wasting my time," before

2011-04-13T04:50:00.001+08:00

Word of the Day: oppugn - to assail by criticism, argument, or action / to call in question; dispute
Random Fact of the Day: The average lifespan of a major league baseball is seven pitches

i'm still very annoyed this didn't win best song at the oscars. randy newman is going to make a song every time pixar makes a movie, but how often do you get to hear the guy who plays Chuck sing?

2011-04-10T04:49:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: futz - to pass time in idleness (usually followed by around) / a fool; a simpleton
Random Fact of the Day: The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets

you read in books that it takes approximately or at least 10000 hours of practice at something in order to be considered an expert at it but i wonder if more efficient learning methods helps to reduce the amount significantly or not

2011-04-06T08:17:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: irascible - prone to anger; easily provoked to anger; hot-tempered
Random Fact of the Day: The world's longest game of Monopoly lasted more than 660 hours

omg i still can't believe stephen gately is dead and that ronan keating got married when he was 22

2011-04-01T11:47:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: bivouac - an encampment for the night, usually under little or no shelter / to encamp for the night, usually under little or no shelter
Random Fact of the Day: It is estimated that at any one time, 0.7% of the world's population are drunk

i think the room next door is contributing to that 0.7%. anyway, another song. it's quite cool how the radio here has like 2 or 3 frequencies in a row that play christian music and that the styles of music they play are quite different from each other. this is one of the more radio-friendly songs i managed to listen to

2011-03-30T11:44:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: bedaub - to smudge over; to besmear or soil with anything thick and dirty / to overdecorate; to ornament showily or excessively
Random Fact of the Day: There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball

i decided to write again even though i should be studying, probably because i think that one activity will end up being more productive than the other. for some reason, there is a strand of girl's hair on my pencil box

in case you don't already follow my twitter (@jctcexchange), i had lunch today with a group or mormons. on one hand, it was every bit as awkward as i thought it'd be, and on the other hand, it wasn't so bad. i usually eat with a friend and his friend for lunch on tuesdays, but this time my friend was meeting some mormon missionaries and the other friend couldn't make it, so i knew very well going into the lunch that i would be feeling strange. they were in their shirt, tie, and pants outfit and they introduced themselves as "elder so-and-so". the most experienced one was quick to point out that "elder" just meant "teacher" or something, and offered his first name. lunchtime conversation went smoothly enough. i couldn't think of what else to talk about to sound interested in their lives so i ended up finding out more about how being a missionary works in the mormon church. i managed to actually not ask what they did as missionaries or why they decided to become one. it became easier to talk to them the more i tried to remember they were human, just like me, rather than define them by what they appeared to be

there is a feeling of sian-ness that has started to cover my general mood over here, which my roommate feels as well and was talking about to me last night. it's probably exacerbated by the fact that we're away from home and yet, at the same time, it's not a conscious feeling of longing for home. i managed to pinpoint something that i missed about spore, which is the ability to speak to people quickly without trying to worry about whether i'll be understood or not. put another way, i take much more effort here to try and speak clearly, and it's becoming tiring trying to speak English all the time

it was brought up in one of my classes the idea that exchange isn't the life-changing experience everyone makes it out to be and i think that has been, for me, mostly true, although the seeds of several grand schemes have been planted in me that i hope bear fruit. i want to learn how to play the piano/keyboard. i want to be more disciplined in my studies and have a more concrete schedule for my time so that i have specific portions set aside for specific activities. we'll see what happens when summer comes and goes

2011-03-28T09:19:00.005+08:00

Word of the Day: ersatz - being a substitute or imitation, usually an inferior one
Random Fact of the Day: Mosquitoes are attracted to the colour blue twice as much as to any other colour

i've started to listen to many more new songs since i got here, although i found this one by accident. i think i should post songs more regularly since i don't have as much of an inclination to blog

2011-03-13T13:59:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: prolix - extending to a great length; unnecessarily long; wordy / tending to speak or write at excessive length
Random Fact of the Day: Butterflies taste with their feet

i'm writing this on the train back to virginia, which is as good a use of my time as anything else. i actually wanted to play games on my laptop/iPhone, but i am self-conscious. there is a woman sitting next to me who looks like she could be from Jersey Shore, which i happened to watch last night. the woman got on the train at a station in new jersey, so i don't think i'm being very unfair in my assessment

anyway, it's about time i finally posted something. i'd like to think that you actually finished reading the previous post and were so blown away by it that you haven't minded the long absence. yes, i'm still alive.

i've just come to the end of my spring break visit to NYC. i haven't missed singapore all that much since i arrived in america, thankfully, but i think nyc came closest to actually making me feel some sense of longing. i was telling some people i met there that it was strange going to somewhere like williamsburg, which is so dissimilar to spore, and then go to nyc, which bears more similarity (e.g., good bubble tea). it was like having reverse culture shock. people in nyc always seem like they're in a rush to get somewhere, and there are sirens blaring way too often, especially at night. i spent too much money on food, probably not enough on shopping (actually, not enough on food either), but i guess i am altogether richer for the experience. see what i did there? i'm not quite sure myself. i liked that nyc was relatively easy to navigate but there was nothing there, or in america that i've seen so far, that could persuade me to think that spore isn't a better place to live in. i wonder how i'll feel when i arrive back at williamsburg.

i didn't sightsee all that much in nyc either. visited the museum of modern art, which turned out to be a pretty enjoyable experience, as well as the statue of liberty, which wasn't particularly awe-inspiring. i've quite a few photos from both locations, but i forgot to bring the cable that connects my camera to my laptop and i don't have an SD card reader, so they'll probably be rather outdated by the time i upload them. i finally went to church as well, and it always irks me when bulletins don't have any space to write notes. the service reminded me of how much i rely on notes to remember things that are said, and it didn't help that i was kinda sleepy, although the guy who spoke, timothy keller, is spose to be some pro dude who's written a few books and was pretty engaging. he was speaking on the glory of God, of which its attributes are apparently nicely outlined in some chapter of ezekiel verse 28. i thought it was interesting how he mentioned that reactions like worry and anxiety were signs that we weren't glorifying God, or on the other hand that we were valuing something else over Him. the church was full of asians, which was surprising. all the ushers were asian too, but the communion servers were all caucasian. i'm observant that way.

ok i wrote all that while i was on the train, and i felt a sense of relief when i arrived back at williamsburg, but then i realised that i was back to the rigors of school life and that i really need to get out of my holiday mindset (even though yes, i know, i'm on exchange) and step it up a notch in terms of how disciplined i am. i foresee great difficulty with this. go me

2011-01-11T23:25:00.001+08:00

Word of the Day: sockdolager - a decisive reply, argument / something unusually large, heavy, etc. / a heavy, finishing blow
Random Fact of the Day: Earth experiences about 50,000 earthquakes each year

ok smaller font for a long post. this is the first post of the new year, and im going on exchange which means i probably won't be blogging that much, so this post is going to be very long. it's also going to be an excerpt from a book: The Dark Tower 1: The Gunslinger by Stephen King, which i'm posting because i find it to be a beautiful piece of prose and quite thought-provoking, especially considering that he wrote it when he was 19. the material doesn't belong to me, it belongs to stephen king and no copyright infringement or financial gain is intended. i apologise for any typos and also suggest that you read all seven books that comprise the series if you have the time. im trying to reread them and ive no idea how i managed to do it the first time. i think ive mentioned this before

And so the man in black began to speak.

The universe (he said) is the Great All, and offers a paradox too great for the finite mind to grasp. As the living brain cannot conceive of a nonliving brain - although it may think it can - the finite mind cannot grasp the infinite.
  The prosaic fact of the universe's existence alone defeats both the pragmatist and the romantic. There was a time, yet a hundred generations before the world moved on, when mankind had achieved enough technical and scientific prowess to chip a few splinters from the great stone pillar of reality. Even so, the false light of science (knowledge, if you like) shone in only a few developed countries. One company (or cabal) led the way in this regard; North Central Positronics, it called itself. Yet, despite a tremendous increase in available facts, there were remarkably few insights.
  "Gunslinger, our many-times-great grandfathers conquered the-disease-which-rots, which they called cancer, almost conquered aging, walked on the moon-"
  "I don't believe that," the gunslinger said flatly.
  To this the man in black merely smiled and answered, "You needn't. Yet it was so. They made or discovered a hundred other marvelous baubles. But this wealth of information produced little or no insight. There were no great odes written to the wonders of artificial insemination - having babies from frozen mansperm - or to the cars that ran on power from the sun. Few if any seemed to have grasped the truest principle of reality: new knowledge leads always to yet more awesome mysteries. Greater physiological knowledge of the brain makes the existence of the soul less possible yet more probably by the nature of the search. Do you see? Of course you don't. You've reached the limits of your ability to comprehend. Buy never mind - that's beside the point."
  "What is the point, then?"
  "The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life buy size. Size encompasses life, and the Tower encompasses size. The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows.
  "You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box and cover it with wet weeds to die?
  "Or one might take the tip of a pencil and magnify it. One reaches the point where a stunning realization strikes home: The pencil-tip is not solid; it is composed of atoms which whirl and revolve like a trillion demon planets. What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Viewed at their actual size, the distances between these atoms might become leagues, gulfs, aeons. The atoms themselves are composed of nuclei and revolving protons and electrons. One may step down further to subatomic particles. And then to what? Tachyons? Nothing? Of course not. Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity.
  "If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through that shell (or find a door), what great and torrential light might shine through your opening at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?
  "Perhaps you saw what place our universe plays in the scheme of things - as no more than an atom in a blade of grass. Could it be that everything we can perceive, from the microscopic virus to the distant Horsehead Nebula, is contained in one blade of grass that may have existed for only a single season in an alien time-flow? What if that blade should be cut off by a scythe? When it begins to die, would the rot seep into our own universe and our own lives, turning everything yellow and brown and desiccated? Perhaps it's already begun to happen. We say the world has moved on; maybe we really mean that it has begun to dry up.
  "Think how small such a concept of things makes us, gunslinger! If a God watches over it all, does He actually mete out justice for a race of gnats among an infinitude of races of gnats? Does His eye see the sparrow fall when the sparrow is less than a speck of hydrogen floating disconnected in the depth of space? And if He does see... what must the nature of such a God be? Where does He live? How is it possible to live beyond infinity?
  "Imagine the sand of the Mohaine Desert, which you crossed to find me, and imagine a trillion universes - not worlds but universes - encapsulated in each grain of that desert; and within each universe an infinity of others. We tower over these universes from our pitiful grass vantage point; with one swing of your boot you may knock a billion billion worlds flying off into darkness, in a chain never to be completed.
  "Size, gunslinger... size...
  "Yet suppose further. Suppose that all worlds, all universes, met in a single nexus, a single pylon, a Tower. And within it, a stairway, perhaps rising to the Godhead itself. Would you dare climb to the top gunslinger? Could it be that somewhere above all of endless reality, there exists a Room? ...
  "You dare not."
  And in the gunslinger's mind, those words echoed: You dare not.

small font size with the other font is kinda unreadable

2010-12-28T13:43:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: eschatological - regarding last, or final, matters, often of a theological nature / regarding any system of doctrines concerning theological endings, such as death, the Judgement, the future state, etc.
Random Fact of the Day: The Atlantic Giant Squid's eye can be as large as 40cm wide

"eschatological" is not to be confused with "scatological", which has a totally different meaning

i'm leaving for america in about two weeks' time and it hasn't really dawned on me yet. i don't think it'll hit me until im in the plane, flying over the pacific ocean, and then maybe ill realise that ill be halfway across the world and maybe ill break down and cry in the plane and the people around me will think im crazy and ill get tazed. instead of spending my time settling things which i really should be, i've been wasting away in front of the computer and also reading a lot. i've started re-reading the "dark tower" series by stephen king, and it's frightening how captivating the books are considering that i've read them before, and upon second reading don't really understand how i managed to make it through the first book the first time round. i think that it really shows my preference for fiction over non-fiction, especially since i have a few other new books, some of which are read halfway, that i've been neglecting. i was thinking about it and part of it, i concluded, is that the beauty of fiction is in the lessons and messages it manages to teach without necessarily trying or without it being the point. in the case of the dark tower series, one example would be something along the lines of how "the best lessons in life are the ones that are self-taught"; this is just one of many lines that resonated in me and more evidence can be found in the underlining i did in the earlier books when i was younger. i see how fiction can be an escape, and fiction can also be an inspiration, and many times both, which is something that non-fiction probably finds very hard to do, given that it is by its very nature often grounded in reality. i wonder if it is the mark of a good piece of...art, or whatever better word there is, if you can look back on it at different stages in your life and take something new from it each time, and whether being able to create something like that is a skill attainable by all

2010-12-18T01:26:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: boondocks - a remote rural area (usually preceded by "the") / an uninhabited area with thick natural vegetation, as a backwoods or marsh
Random Fact of the Day: In your lifetime, you'll shed over 40 pounds of skin

i guess "sad" isn't quite the right word to describe the whole situation, but i just had the most exciting three seconds in my life that i can remember and one of my first thoughts was that i had to blog about it: i was holding onto something with one of my hands and my pajama top slipped from a railing and was about to fall onto the wet bathroom floor, so i stuck out my foot to catch it and as i was balancing on the other foot and attempting to pick up the top from my foot, i started to lose balance and fall but i couldn't remove the top because it had caught onto part of my foot but i managed to pull hard enough to release it, use that hand to support myself, and step my foot back onto the floor all at the same time so that i didn't fall down. ok bye.

2010-12-11T17:40:00.001+08:00

Word of the Day: philter - a magic potion for any purpose / a potion, charm, or drug supposed to cause the person taking it to fall in love, usually with some specific person
Random Fact of the Day: The left side of a gondola is longer than its right side, so that the gondolier can row the gondola forward without having to switch sides.

you are bleak, you are beautiful / no matter what they say

today's random fact of the day is brought to you by assassin's creed: brotherhood. i used to get my general knowledge from reading comics. now, i get it by playing video games. video games are better because they also teach you swear words in foreign languages

dammit lah my knee guard got blown off onto the roof again. i will have to go ninja it back off the roof, but maybe when the roof isn't so wet

things haven't really been falling my way recently. a few days ago, i was walking to bukit timah market when i took out my phone to read a message. a bird shat on my forearm. yesterday, i went into my parents' room to do something. when i opened the door, a baby lizard fell to the floor next to my foot, which pissed the hell out of me in a very subdued manner

so if when you dream of your teeth falling out of your mouth it represents insecurities, what does it mean when you dream that one of your teeth is loose and there's another tooth growing underneath? last night, i dreamt that i got a paper cut. a piece of paper sliced my finger, and i was hoping it wouldn't bleed, but the skin started to separate, so i got annoyed, but then later on, it ended up like there was just a surface layer of skin that got cut, and there was another layer beneath that didn't get cut. it kinda looked like when you get a cut and then there's a scab and you peel off the scab and there's the healed skin underneath, but there's still some skin left behind that was attached to the scab. you know what im saying? no? ok never mind. what i found interesting was that i was very sure that in real life, i was rubbing my finger and trying to feel whether i had actually been cut, but this was still when i was half-asleep. interestingly, i had another dream later on where i ended up going to sleep, kinda like inception but not really

2010-12-05T13:35:00.001+08:00

Word of the Day: ombudsman - a government official who hears and investigates complaints by private citizens against other officials or government agencies / a person who investigates and attempts to resolve complaints and problems, as between employees and an employer or between students and a university
Random Fact of the Day: I learned the other day while making tea that, according to the St. Dalfour tea company, you shouldn't soak a teabag in water for longer than a few minutes, because doing so serves to release the bitter flavour of the tea, which isn't good. Thanks St. Dalfour!

calendar girl who is lost to the world / stay alive

ok i was originally spose to post this on 13 nov (today is 5 dec which, incidentally, happens to be the Day of the Ninja), after attending aikido class. not because i want to share with you what i learnt in aikido class, but more to remind myself of the principles behind what was being taught, namely that in a self-defence situation (which aikido is technically about from a combat perspective), you have to be able to intercept the opponent's movement before he has time to properly attack you. thinking about it now, that seems to be a rather loose interpretation of the whole "never attack" philosophy underlying aikido, although i guess that giving a potential attacker the benefit of the doubt might end up being your last bad idea. the other interesting thing that was brought up was the concept of occupying your attacker's space; displacement of the attacker's original position while still maintaining contact with him is advantageous for you because it usually means your attacker is off-balanced

apparently the week in which 13 nov was was spose to have been rather interesting. i can't remember why anymore. i was walking down to the bus stop and, as i was looking down at the pavement, i noticed something that caught my attention like headlights to a deer. i have a tendency to look at things i know i probably don't really want to. it turns out that there was the desiccated carcass of one of those frilled lizards that scurry around in grass and tend to get run over by cars. i found it so mesmerising because it looked like it was sitting up; the lizard was curled up so that only the lower half of its back was on contact with the floor. obviously, this didn't consciously occur to me. instead, i felt like i kena ice bolt with 1 second stun. then i felt horrified as i continued walking, so i started to make silly visualizations about the sitting up lizard and i felt better after that

i had a dream recently involving my grandmother, in which she was acting strange so i had to accompany her home and she kept talking about killing someone or the other, and it turns out that she was carrying guns on her when we got back to her home. i also dreamt that i was goofing around with a group of people, trying out judo-related stuff, and i ended up getting suplexed by some cute-but-kinda-scary-looking-sometimes girl, which left me with a bleeding lip. it was interesting because i felt the blood but when i woke up i was fine. i was at the american embassy waiting to do my visa interview, and some guy sitting behind was telling his friend that if you dream of your teeth falling out, it supposedly represents insecurities in your life

i've been writing in such long sentences. this past thursday i was on the way home with a friend after training, and some random boy comes up to him and starts speaking in chinese gibberish. my friend is half filipino so he doesn't look like he can speak chinese. i thought he'd stare at the boy and then ignore him, which i was doing because i wasn't next to the boy, but he replied in chinese, eventually telling the boy to speak clearly, which he didn't really seem capable of doing. anyway, he apparently had a pouch with 10000 rupiah inside, and wanted to know its value in SGD. this makes me even more annoyed with the boy. if you need to ask why, im annoyed with you too. luckily my friend had an iphone, so he managed to tell the boy that 10000 rupiah is less than SGD$1.50. the boy shouts something (probably vulgar) and stomps off without saying thank you. my friend and i stare at each other, laugh, and then watch in bewilderment as the boy promptly attempts to cross the road at a normally busy junction while the man is red and ends up walking into a turning van. there have only been two incidents in my life when ive seen someone close to getting knocked down by a vehicle, and i guess i should be sad to say that i was only genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of the almost-victim the first time round

2010-10-31T22:45:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: chicanery - the use of trickery or sophistry to deceive (as in matters of law) / a trick; a subterfuge
Random Fact of the Day: Turtles can breathe through their butt

ive had a rather tiring past few days. had training on thursday and friday, then took part in nus arts open yesterday, where the team i played for was made up primarily of usp people. apparently usp doesn't fare very well in soccer competitions - they'd never had an actual player from usp score in a competition prior to arts open. i haven't played soccer for very very long and i was reminded of a few of the reasons why i probably haven't missed it as much as i thought i would have
there are times in life when you know you have the power to make things proper (as you see it) in certain situations but circumstances prevent you from fulfilling your potential. like being the right person in the right place at the wrong time. or something like that. arts open felt that way to me, although all things considered, we really did better than we were expecting
i injured my toe while playing, though, which really pisses the hell out of me. i was running and i stopped abruptly, and my toe jammed into the front of my shoe, and now my toenail is in the process of dying. im so annoyed because i'd cut my toenails and it's not like they're jutting out past my toe and ARGAGHRAHGARH

had combined judo training with the other universities and polytechnics today. it was quite interesting. why do the cute girls in poly judo not end up in the universities? we had a mini-team competition after that and i got dominated, although i got to try out fun stuff that i hadnt really got the chance to before. it makes me sad that i havent yet found the magic switch inside me to turn on when i need to change my mindset for competing, or anything else for that matter. i didnt even get an adrenaline dump this time. i was just...nervous. i didnt even feel motivated to try harder than i did, and i guess i could use excuses like how i was worried about my toe or that the people i was playing against were probably heavier than me, but my performance is accountable to myself, and i think i need to start changing things in the way i perform

2010-10-18T17:16:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: laconic - using or marked by the use of a minimum of words; brief and pithy; brusque
Random Fact of the Day: Humans blink over 10,000,000 times a year

Light of the world are You still here / and are we illuminating?

i've been wanting to blog for a long time but haven't really bothered trying to find the time to do so. i think that as i've grown older, my time management has become poorer. also, it seems to be the case that i don't attend to things as well as i'd like to, meaning that i've become a lot more absent-minded. im glad i am able to apply the principles i learn in school to real life, although it'd probably help if it went over and above just explaining phenomena that occur

i think i wanted to say something about how much a pain school has been in general this sem, but then we all have our problems. what i will allow myself to indulge in is comment on how much more intellectually challenging school becomes when you take an honours module. ive been doing a module on evolutionary psychology this sem, and it's been quite strange (i would say "uncomfortable", but the word isn't particular enough to explain how i feel) to try to reconcile what i learn and what i believe. there's a classmate who's a rather new christian who's had his faith essentially uprooted by what has been taught in class, although this problem has also been compounded by what he learns in another mod. i feel like one day i should probably sit down and spell out why i believe in what i do; i find it slightly disappointing when the whole notion of sharing faith comes about because the two things i need to rely on, being a "second-generation" christian so to speak, are the ideas that faith is to a large extent irrational/illogical, and that i choose to believe in what i do because of personal experience, which are things that you usually can't spell out for people and have them accept it as things that make sense and thus things that they can believe in. anyway, that's not the point. the point is that i seem to be able to compartmentalise the two "incompatible" areas pretty well, to the extent that i don't really feel shaken when i go to class, which is something im thankful for. on the other hand, i am able to accept the concept of evolution, but not necessarily as it applies to humans (that is to say, i cannot fully accept the idea that humans have a common ancestor with other primates), which seems a bit like cherry picking and i guess is something that id have to reconcile by this sem, if not i probably won't ever think about it again

the other day, i was in my family area and there was this gigantic evil looking insect thingy buzzing against the door and trying to get in. i was like "yes thank goodness there's a wall blocking it from getting in", and then i proceeded to stare at it for awhile and get scared when i realised that it was about the size of a dollar coin, and it had a stinger the length of 5-/10-cent coin. i eventually went back to my room, then i had to use the toilet, so i left, and when i was going back into my room, i realised that the destroyer of worlds was on my bedroom door, which made me very very scared and cautious coz i was afraid that when i went back into my room it'd suddenly go ape on me and sting me to death. this is the story of how a scary insect prompted me to consider existential questions. i was thinking of killing it, just to be over and done with and not have to worry about it again, but the thought of the mess id have to clean up made me feel like it wasn't worth it. then it made me think that death is a rather troublesome thing, which was a thought that coincided with the passing away of my granduncle. im not sure whether what i thought was reflective of some aspect of my personality or character, but it seems the case that death is rather troublesome for the living to deal with, what with the rituals involved and the traveling you need to do and stuff. it's sad, to be sure, at least where humans are involved (see previous post: i was actually very sad when i went for the wake. also, i should have said i went for a wake, not a funeral), but it also seems inconvenient. i guess part of the feeling of troublesome-ness is also a function of the proceedings of whatever ritual it is that takes place to remember the dead, which is why id like a lot of alcohol to be served at my wake, so people will loosen up and stuff and not feel so sad

there are several iPod/iPhone apps that have been released that turn doing chores into a game, so that you can gain xp and level up and stuff. there is a story of some guy who turned his life into a game with mission objectives and stuff so that he could lose weight. i wonder how you quantify the amount of xp you get for say, washing the dishes as compared to doing homework or going on a date. the whole concept of making life an rpg is very interesting, slightly sad, and probably something i would consider doing, except that given how lazy i am, implementing the system in my life in the first place would probably level me up to max level

2010-10-01T17:20:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: rigmarole - an elaborate or complicated procedure / confused, incoherent, foolish, or meaningless talk
Random Fact of the Day: There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball

a while ago, i dreamt that renzo gracie got into a confrontation with darth vader, and managed to somehow turn off his lightsaber without touching it. GJJ > the force

i have an exam tomorrow that i haven't really studied for and an essay due tomorrow that i haven't really started on. this is either indicative of extreme apathy, or an example of the peace that surpasses all understanding. or frontal lobe damage. i am keen to attribute it to the second option.

over the weekend, i attended probably the best wedding ill ever attend for quite a while. it was tiring though. if everything stays the same, id have attended 3 weddings and a funeral this year. phooey. maybe i should crash one more wedding. my granduncle passed away and, with all the demands of the week, i felt rather bad for thinking that, among other things, death was rather troublesome for the living. this was until i went for the wake and i actually felt very sad and had to tell myself not to cry and might very well have if not for the slightly annoying service pastor who kept using the word "bosom" and verbose phrases

okok time to get started

2010-09-20T17:49:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: soupcon - a slight trace, as of a particular taste or flavour
Random Fact of the Day: The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer

went to a wedding ceremony/dinner this past saturday. will be going for another one this coming saturday. the couples both have known each other for a long long time. where is my fairy tale? although i suspect im partially responsible for sabotaging it every now and then. if you have the chance to attend a wedding dinner at st regis, be sure to eat a lot of bread; it is rather delicious

i've been having strange and incongruous dreams recently. one involved running away from something and getting killed or otherwise maimed and then repeating the process and trying to make sure things turn out differently. another that i had last night involved running away from something and having to swim through a waterway because i was holding on to something that needed to be kept hidden but this segued into eating a sumptuous meal at home, and when i woke up i felt a deep craving for frozen waffles and also needed to pee for quite a long time

while showering, a spider fell into the shelf where the facewash is kept and promptly went ahead to try and drown. i drained the water out to save it, but after awhile it couldn't really be bothered to save itself, and i didn't want to leave a half-dead spider just laying there, so i flushed it down the drain. i am reminded of a nursery rhyme involving a spider that enjoyed a much happier ending

2010-09-08T17:14:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: kenspeckle - conspicuous; easily seen or recognised
Random Fact of the Day: A pregnant goldfish is called a twit

a few days ago, i had a group meeting. i was wearing my glasses coz my eyes were tired, and one of my group mates asked if i was rj or hwa chong. i got very stunned. then i took off my specs and asked her to guess again, and she said ac

during judo, i got thrown by a friend as practice. there was a pair next to us, who performed a throw immediately after ours, and the guy who got thrown landed on my foot. i guess a small consolation is that now both the joints of my big toes have swollen to the same size, after the previous one got injured, so my feet are roughly symmetrical again

today, i came home and parked the car in the driveway and went into the house. then i noticed that the gate hadn't closed properly again, so i went to close it. then i noticed that my dog was missing. now i can't wear the tshirt i wanted to wear again for tomorrow, coz it's full of dog hair

2010-08-27T22:16:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: schlep - to move slowly, awkwardly, or tediously / to carry; lug
Random Fact of the Day: A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second

something i need to blog about before i forget, because it felt to me like an example of divine providence: last week was judo welcome tea, and we had to bring the freshies from the src in nus to the sports hall at nus high, and it was raining, and the group was quite big, and we were leaving at peak hour, so we thought that the buses would be very crowded. we reached the bus stop just in time to see a full bus leave, but when the next available bus came, it was completely empty. plus it was a 96, and if you've ever taken 96 to nus, you know that it's never empty. so we all managed to get onto the bus and reach nus as one group

that was last week. this week has been pretty crummy, although i think it's mainly because of my lack of sleep and my messed up sleep schedule. went to watch yog judo mixed team event on wednesday with chenweian. it started at 12, we arrived at 1245ish, then coz we were hungry we went to eat after one of the rounds even though there was another one still going on. when we arrived back at the hall, we saw people coming out, and found out that it was break time, and that the event was starting again at 6pm, which wasn't good coz i had to go back to school for tutorial. so we just bummed around and looked at the exhibitions, but also managed to take photos with some of the judokas

school has been very busy, or ive been more lazy than usual, and im way behind on my readings and stuff, so oh dear. i got a paper cut yesterday, albeit a small one, for the first time in probably a few years

2010-08-08T18:42:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: fantod - a state of extreme nervousness or restlessness (usually expressed in the plural) / a sudden outpouring of anger, outrage, or a similar intense emotion
Random Fact of the Day: An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain

in today's front page of the newspapers is something along the lines of SM goh talking about how there should be a new set of 5Cs which, if i remember correctly, are career, comfort, children, consideration, and charity. it felt very inspiring reading the article and other stuff he said regarding how the pursuit of the original 5Cs shouldn't become such an overwhelming priority in people's lives. he also talked about how people should pursue a singapore dream instead of succumb to the singapore gripe

omgomgomg im eating ginbis seaweed biscuits now they're terrrrrrrrrrrrific and exactly how i remember them to taste like i have no idea why they would ban it in singapore i hope there isn't some deadly special ingredient inside, because what's printed on the box doesn't look particular threatening to me. speaking of special ingredients, apparently there's an ingredient in chocolate-flavoured vitasoy named "locust bean gum". i can't imagine what that is. ok according to wikipedia, it has nothing to do with locusts

today i ended up suddenly wondering why elephants are an endangered species, because they don't really have any natural predators and no one really considers elephant meat a delicacy as far as i know. certainly no one has ever come up to me and asked, "have you tried elephant meat before? it is rather succulent." and then i was reminded that poachers killed elephants because of their tusks. but then they'd only kill male elephants, and only the bigger ones, and it seems hard to believe that when the young bulls become sexually active that they'd unluckily be killed immediately once their tusks are of valuable size and before they manage to spread their seed. and even then, elephants aren't monogamous, so one bull could go round many times, especially if the other bulls were taken. i guess there are many other factors to consider, like how getting shot at probably isn't conducive for gestation

2010-08-06T23:34:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: yeuk - an itching sensation / to itch
Random Fact of the Day: A person uses approximately 57 sheets of toilet paper each day

the best you could hope to be / is now just a bittersweet memory

don't worry, i'd never dream of standing in your way to happiness. i'll just stand at the side and glare at you sullenly as you go

IM VERY HAPPY OMG i saw an olympic flame live and in person! and also, i was less than 100m away from president nathan. i could've run through the crowd to touch him, but then i might've been shot by the security personnel. AND THERE WERE FIREWORKS PEW PEW PEW. also, arts won the best float for rag, but i don't really care. i still can't figure out wat the point of rag is

2010-08-01T19:04:00.000+08:00

Word of the Day: hypocorism - a pet name / the practice of using a pet name / the use of forms of speech imitative of baby talk, esp. by an adult
Random Fact of the Day: Starfish don't have brains

today has been fun in a not very fun kinda way. got woken up by the rain last night, and then realised after a while that the ceiling of my room, and ironically not my windows, was leaking in two different locations. when i got out of bed proper, i discovered that my kneeguards, which id put on my window sill, had gone missing, presumably blown away during the rainstorm

went downstairs and realised the new dog had peed on the floor again, but was in a rush to leave. when i got home, the sad reality dawned on me that the piss wasn't going to clean up by itself. i placed kitchen towels on the puddle, went back to the kitchen to get more, and when i returned, the kitchen towels were gone. the original puddle had kind of dissipated, but there was now a trail of piss and random shreds of kitchen towel lying around

i found out that one of my kneeguards had landed on the wall that separates my home from my neighbours'. the other one had blown onto a roof, accessible from the bedroom below, so i climbed out of the window. of all the injuries that i thought id sustain while attempting the rescue act, i sustained one i never thought id get. while trying to climb back into the house, my thigh hit the corner of the window. there was blood. ive progressively been getting more and more crippled in my right leg over the course of the week, although nothing near as bad as the poor ornament duck whose foot got broken off as a result of the rain

2010-07-31T20:25:00.001+08:00

Word of the Day: epilate - to remove (hair) from by means of physical, chemical, or radiological agents; depilate
Random Fact of the Day: The ears of a cricket are located on the front legs, just below the knee

i finally remembered what it was that i wanted to blog about! i was on the bus to meet a couple of friends for lunch, and then this very cute girl got on, and then it turned out that she had hairy forearms, which made me very disappointed, because i always wonder why girls pay so much attention to the hair on their legs but not equal attention to the hair on their forearms/arms

so anywayyyyyyyyyy. ive always wondered how i found out when school starts each semester, because there's never really a fixed date

2010-07-25T20:50:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: impedimenta - baggage or other things that retard one's progress

Random Fact of the Day: There are 1 million ants for every person in the world

IMPEDIMENTA! it's not just a harry potter spell

saw a dead cat in the drain today. it didn't look like how i imagined a dead cat that wasn't roadkill would look like in death. it wasn't lying on its back with all it's legs sticking up in the air. it was just...lying down, curled up. i thought it was real for a split second until i noticed all the flies buzzing around. it left me feeling horrified and cold for the rest of the walk down to the bus stop. on the way to church, saw a real victim of roadkill

church today was interesting. the speaker was talking about being missional in the marketplace, and actually managed to offer some new perspectives on something id thought id heard about before, like the difference between being missional and acting missional

i realised that wat i wanted to blog about was this: apparently ginbis seaweed animal biscuits are banned from singapore because they don't meet the ava or donno who's regulations. wtfffffffffffffffffffff

2010-07-24T19:41:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: zaftig - full-bodied; well-proportioned

Random Fact of the Day: The Hawaiian alphabet only contains 12 letters

there was something that happened to me on monday that i found interesting/amusing that i wanted to blog about, but i waited till today so i can't really remember. or maybe this is it: went with some friends to drive thru at kap. in case you're unfamiliar with the drive thru system there, there's this screen that displays what you've ordered and a mic/speaker below that allows you to communicate with the person taking your order, who's further down the road. the car that was in front of us tried giving money to the screen. ok it was a lot funnier to see than talk about

been helping out with nus matriculation fair. preparation was rather tiring..i think i drove more in one day than i did for the whole month prior, and ended up getting angry with some other driver and then i realised i was probably in the wrong and i ended up feeling very guilty. i think that reservice was preparing me for this, because i've basically been sleeping late and waking up early again and doing stuff the whole day. at least it's been rather fun, considering that a large part of the day is made up of getting rejected by people. oh yah that's right, a shout-out: visit nusbjj.blogspot.com

watched inception today. not exactly sure what's so confusing about it as far as the storyline goes; there are confusing things that aren't explained very well but aren't really essential to understanding the main plot. it's quite a good movie, although i think it didn't help that i was sitting so far back in the cinema. sitting right at the back in lido cinemas sucks, coz the screens are kinda small so the experience isn't very immersive. still, it's a good movie; i didn't yawn at all, probably because it was so engaging. interestingly enough though, yawning is supposed to be a mechanism to keep one awake and thus is meant to suggest interest in whatever activity one is currently occupied with. i must say that joseph gordon-levitt looks very good in whatever clothes they made him wear, and ellen page is extremely cute. also, in case you haven't watched it already, leonardo dicaprio dies. ok no lah, he doesn't

2010-07-11T03:41:00.003+08:00

Word of the Day: sibylline - prophetic; oracular / of, resembling, or characteristic of a sibyl / mysterious; cryptic

Random Fact of the Day: Rats are incapable of puking

just came back from reservice. very tired. managed to sleep for more than 8 hours at a stretch without waking up for the first time in an extremely wrong time. i journalled a bit during reservice because i had time and because i could and because it didn't take as much brain power and concentration as it did to read. this is what i managed to come up with:

6/7

the impending onset of my reservist got me wondering: when phoenixes die and are reborn from their ashes, is it a complete renewal, are they remade identical? i always feel like something inside me dies when i get involved in NSmen activities, but i haven't quite figured what it is, or whether i emerge the same sans whatever "it" is. there are various reasons why i abhor going for reservice or mobilisation, and i've been trying to make a conscious effort this time round to think more positively. it seems to work on the surface, but i can't shake off the deep-rooted, underlying feeling of resistance. it didn't help this time round that ict spans the duration of both world cup semi-finals, although to be fair to my unit they arranged for a screening of the first semi-final that i couldn't really be bothered to watch because lack of sleep drives me crazy. speaking of which, today was the first time in a long time that i woke up at 6am. it was also the first time in quite a while that i suffered a nosebleed. the nosebleed was rather out of point, but when it coincided with a sore throat, blocked nose, and cough, it became troublesome and annoying. but God is strong in my weakness, and an experience today reinforced this belief

there's something about the whole notion of ippt that seems to paralyse me when it comes to performing physically. i'm very grateful to God that He gave me the ability and determination to pass this time, even in my weakened state. it is not fun needing to blow your nose while you're running. got to book out at night, and i don't remember the last time i felt so excited about the prospect of eating at macdonald's, although now i'm coughing again so maybe not such a clever idea. something...infuriating happened on the way back to camp that i still can't figure out a proper resolution to. i'd bought the new paper, and on the bus some guy asked to borrow it, so i let him, coz i was wearing uniform and also i thought it'd be a bit asshole if i didn't and also i'm naive and kind that way. when it was time to go, i told the man i had to leave, and he asked me to let him "borrow it for awhile". i said i hadn't even read it myself, and he continued with the same line, which he repeated about twice (either he was playing dumb or he really was mildly retarded which, come to think of it, he looked slightly). the bus doors had already opened by this time so i said, "forget it" and left. all this was in chinese, and i keep thinking that i should've delivered some fantastic, devastating line in english as i left, but oh well

7/7

when inefficiency becomes so entrenched within a system, what hope is there for the people who wish for better and try to change things?

i made a very bad decision yesterday to not go home, and i paid the price today for my assumptions. i can't figure out whether what i miss more about civilian life is aircon or warm showers, although i figure that if there were aircon in more places, i wouldn't need to go for so many cold shower in the first place. i showered four times today. absolutely ridiculous. i apparently have to wake up at 4am tmr zomg. i realised last night while tossing and turning in a futile attempt to sleep, that i think what causes something in me to die is the idea that nsmen activities are like this huge black hole or time void or something and time moves like molasses, and then suddenly it's the end of the day and you're just glad it's over and you survived. tonight i will attempt to sleep with prickly heat powder and an extra pillow and hope things go better

9/7

i'm writing this now even though i should be taking the opportunity to sleep, coz i figure that if i don't, i'll end up not writing. woke up at 3.45am on thurs morning to prepare for range. news slowly trickled in that paul the psychic octopus was right again. the day actually felt like it passed by faster than i thought it would have, probably because i had something to do most of the time, which usually isn't the case at range. i found out some good and bad stuff about myself over the course of my work. i found out that i'm rather efficient and can actually take initiative when i feel like it. the bad part was that the thing in me that thinks it's better than other people reared it's head again, and led to me being impatient and snappy and exasperated. i guess i need to learn to be more humble still, although i guess it also means placing myself in situations where i'll have to be more humble. i think also that, ironically, i need to think less of people so i don't get so frustrated when they don't meet what i expected. range finished reasonably early but by the time everything got settled, i ended up getting back to camp at 2+ and sleep around 3. i can't remember the last time i stayed awake for so long

2010-06-30T22:54:00.003+08:00

Word of the Day: macabre - gruesome and horrifying / pertaining to or representing death, esp. its grimmer or uglier aspect

Random Fact of the Day: A snail can sleep for three years

yesterday was an interesting day. went to help out with the judo booth at the sports camp martial arts display section thingythingy and ended up talking a lot. i have a sore throat now, again, thanks to watching soccer after getting home. my plan to get people to sign up for judo/bjj failed rather miserably but it was a rather heartening experience, sharing stuff with the freshmen and seeing them participate even though they were all kinda stoned at first. it was also nice that one of the groups gave us a "hip hip hooray" at the end of their session, especially since we didn't hear any of the other martial arts around us getting one. or maybe we couldn't hear. but it felt good

time passed by surprisingly quickly - it was over too soon but it was quite tiring. ended up eating dinner at around 11.30 at some ramen shop in orchard plaza that is described on ieatishootipost or watever it's called as "dark and dingy". it was decent and the staff are nice..will probably end up there again eventually

watched toy story the other day. i think if i watched it by myself without anyone else around id have been reduced to a sobbing mess

i was watching the brazil-chile game, and then at halftime i started wondering why i was watching when i didn't really even care about any of the players in either of the teams, and then i started wondering about how there're times when i do things even though i don't really care much for them or have any particularly good reason to do them, and then i stopped thinking coz i was tired and i went to sleep

2010-06-13T13:18:00.003+08:00

Word of the Day: juggernaut - any large, overpowering, or destructive force / something, such as a belief or institution, that elicits blind and destructive devotion

Random Fact of the Day: No president of the United States has been an only child

and i know that we've still got time / but i do not think we're invincible

i never knew that a juggernaut was anything other than the first description listed. dictionary.com also lists one of the meanings of juggernaut as some idol of Krishna in uh Puri, in Orissa, India (or sth like that iirc) that gets drawn on a cart annually and under whose wheels devotees throw themselves to be crushed, but if it's a specific idol, shouldn't it be Juggernaut instead, and then wouldn't you have to like put the definition of the x-men character?

i realised that a very small plus point to being sick is that i can't smell my dog so much anymore

making juice is rather fun but superduper messy, and you also get a nice juicestache after drinking

2010-06-11T04:55:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: phlegmatic - not easily excited to action or display of emotion; apathetic; sluggish / self-possessed, calm, or composed / of the nature or abounding in the humour phlegm

Random Fact of the Day: Armadillos, opossums, and sloths spend about 80% of their lives sleeping

when you feel so tired but you can't sleep / stuck in reverse

i tried to go to sleep at around 11. along the way, i woke up, and i havent been able to go back ever since. i wonder why. i guess it wouldn't be so bad if i didn't have to wake up at 8. i am annoyed

2010-06-10T15:11:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: noctivagant - pertaining to going about in the night; night-wandering

Random Fact of the Day: The only letter not appearing on the Periodic Table is "J"

we're taking shortcuts and false solutions / just to come out the hero

mother's advice to me: if you want to meet good christian girls, why don't you join vcf?

me: uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh okayyy. i went for some crusade thing once and it was a bit eeyur

mother&father together: NONONO DON'T JOIN CRUSADE

im sick. im not sure why. i suspect it is because of my strange sleeping hours. i don't remember the last time i was sick like this, with the sniffles and a sore throat.

went to eat at ippudo last night in mandarin gallery. it is not bad, but then in japan you can get a bigger portion for a smaller price. we arrived at the restaurant at a good time though, coz just after we got seated, suddenly there was this damn long queue that stretched from the waiting table in the restaurant to the escalator outside. oops need to go pc fair now. im not sure why im going, but it's apparently good for me to get out more

2010-06-07T13:57:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: bathos - triteness or triviality in style / a ludicrous descent from the exalted or lofty to the commonplace; anticlimax / insincere pathos; sentimentality; mawkishness

Random Fact of the Day: Fingernails grow nearly four times faster than toenails

this is not your place / no this is not your playground, it's my heart

i remembered what i actually wanted to blog about. on saturday, my brother and i went to pick my parents up from the airport. we went to eat at macs, and we ended up sitting next to this family (parents and a son). the son was playing music from his handphone. he looked no older than 10. he sang along to justin bieber's "baby", and lady gaga's "bad romance". i couldn't stop bursting out in spasms of laughter, even though they were right next to us. it was kinda disappointing that he apparently had only two songs in his phone, though, so it got annoying when the songs started repeating. then he got a phone call and the way he spoke to the person on the phone surprised me. it sounded just like you would expect a little emperor to sound

2010-06-06T23:11:00.002+08:00

went to have dinner with my grandparents. on the way back to the car, i passed by a stray cat that was surprisingly tame, so i started playing with it and did the whole, stick your hand in front and let it smell you first thing, then it immediately started rubbing itself against my legs and walking in between them so i just played with it for a while, then it moved on to my brother and did the same thing, then suddenly my brother yelled and i didn't know why. the cat moved on and went back to me, and then it bit me. then we both got damn scared that we'd contract something although it was a very gentle bite. so we left, and continued walking to the car, and my brother kept turning around as we were walking. i asked him why, and then i turned around and realised the cat was following us, which was pleasantly surprising and freaky all at the same time. it followed us to the car, and then when i opened the door it started looking inside and i didnt want it to jump in so i had to carry it and move it somewhere else and then while it was still recovering from the 5 second stun i swiftly moved back into the car and shut the door. then i had to make sure we didn't run over it by accident while we drove off

2010-06-06T15:07:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: nepenthe - a drug or drink, or the plant yielding it, mentioned by ancient writers as having the power to bring forgetfulness of sorrow or trouble / anything inducing a pleasurable sensation of forgetfulness, esp. of sorrow or trouble

Random Fact of the Day: No word in the English language rhymes with "orange", "month", "silver", and "purple"

today has been a rather sad day. i woke up alright and on time, but as i was washing up i felt very, very reluctant to go to church. i managed to partially persuade myself by reminding me that if i didn't go to church, i probably wouldn't end up cutting my hair. i should've stayed at home.

went to church, sat by myself until the sudden influx of youths that usually inhabit the rows of pews at which i normally sit appeared. it's very...discouraging when the people around you during worship are all younger and yet more lethargic than you. then before the sermon started, one of the elders came up and told the congregation some news. last week, this former member of the church who emigrated to australia, but who visits bartley when he returns to singapore, came to give a testimony, about how he was battling with cancer, and that he'd gone for an operation and it was successful and his body had managed to generally withstand the side effects of treatment, and gave thanks and asked for prayer support. then he and his wife went back to australia the next day. today, the elder informed us that the man had emailed to say that when they returned to their home in australia, they'd found out that their son had committed suicide. their son was my age

i really hate cutting hair. today reminded me how much i hate it. ive yet to find a place that can give me a consistently decent haircut, and although today's was cheap, i still struggle to understand how people can spend so much on getting one. i really, really hate cutting hair. it leaves me with a profound sense of powerlessness and lack of control that ive yet to reconcile, and the consequences remain for a long time after

2010-06-02T19:43:00.003+08:00

Word of the Day: threnody - a poem, speech, or song of lamentation, esp. for the dead; dirge; funeral song

Random Fact of the Day: The first video aired on MTV was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles in 1981

we all have a weakness / but some of ours are easier to identify

kinda went shopping today. bought a bag. visited prologue in ion orchard. they were playing christian music, which was rather strange. the stationery section of prologue is damn chill, i think coz it's troublesome to walk up the staircase to reach it

watched robin hood last week, went out of the theater, looked at the timings for prince of persia, and then watched prince of persia. robin hood is quite a solid movie, but not really emotionally engaging at all. i don't like cate blanchett but she was quite decent in this and not so scary-looking. even the violence in the movie was quite understated, which i usually appreciate most of the time, but it made the movie a bit monotonous. it's not bad, just a tad flat. i liked prince of persia, especially considering that it's a video game adaptation. it was hard to refrain grinning like an idiot every now and then, particularly when they mimicked certain sequences from the game series

my results for the semester are pretty good, thank God. a nice, refreshing change where i really have nothing to complain about and a lot to be thankful for. someone told me some time ago that it's very often the case that when good things happen people thank God but then when bad things happen they blame satan but don't acknowledge God's hand in it. i was reminded of this a couple of days ago when i was spose to submit some stuff for exchange, but i didnt receive one of the documents in time and so i had to hand it up late and now i donno if it'll affect anything, but id like to think that things happen for a reason, and id like to carry such an attitude in all other areas of my life, which i sure know i need to. i think hope is a very important thing to hold on to, but it must be tempered with some degree of realism, and i also think i don't really want to ramble on anymore

2010-05-24T23:08:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: adumbrate - to foreshadow; prefigure / to produce a faint image or resemblance of; to outline or sketch / to darken or conceal partly; overshadow

Random Fact of the Day: Mangoes and poison ivy are in the same plant family

it's a circle, a mean cycle / i can't excite you anymore

today i went into my parents' office, and the toilet roll in the toiler had been used up. i don't remember leaving it used up the last time i visited the toilet. OMINOUS.

i need to buy a juicer. like, really really need to buy a juicer

my hair is rather long, and my internet connection is very erratic

2010-05-17T00:05:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: eidetic - of, pertaining to, or constituting visual imagery vividly experienced and readily reproducible with great accuracy and in great detail / marked by or involving extraordinarily accurate and exacting recall especially of visual images

Random Fact of the Day: The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma.

be Thou my vision o Lord of my heart / naught be all else to me save that Thou art

for the longest time i wondered whether goh keng swee was still alive or not coz i always read about him in the singapore story, but because he left parliament and politics or watever before i was even born, he never really got mentioned in the news

im glad i went to church today. learnt and was reminded of very important things from ideas extracted from gen 16

tugger's whistle's blowin'

means we must be goin'

no more russell crowe-in' for you

but, no, don't you start to whine

i'll see you again next time

coz there's plenty of more of fightin' left to do

making movies, making songs, and fightin' around the world!

2010-05-15T21:51:00.003+08:00

Word of the Day: opinicus - a heraldic monster having the head, neck, and wings of an eagle, the body of a lion, and the tail of a bear

Random Fact of the Day: In Ancient Egypt, priests plucked every hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.

can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars / i could really use a wish right now

dictionary.com's word of the day is down today for some reason, so i randomly chose this, and apparently the spelling checker doesn't recognise it as a word

from askmen.com's quote of the day for 15 may: "Blaming the victim makes perfect sense if the victim has behaved stupidly." - Camile Paglia

background to the quote: No feminist scholar made quite as many waves -- or enemies -- in the 1990s than Camille Paglia. Today's quote comes from one of the many interviews she had to give in defense of her controversial essay "Rape and Modern Sex War," in which she rather plainly stated that some young women engage in behavior so widely understood to be dangerous -- such as getting drunk at a fraternity house -- that they should own up to the consequences.

what she said.

i got abrasions from training yesterday for the first time in a long time. i got an abrasion on my armpit, which has never happened before.

funny story: after training, went to eat at bukit timah market, and after id parked and got out of the car, there was this P-plate BMW that was trying to park in between the car and some other lady's car, but the driver was super suck. so suck that he would've crashed into the other car had the lady not been in the car honking at the driver each time he tried reversing. he tried about twice, then went he moved forward to prepare to reverse again, i started talking to the lady and decided it was probably safe to not move away from the car just in case he reversed into mine. he failed again, the lady honked some more, and eventually the BM gave up and left. the best part is that as he drove off, the lady in the other car said to me, "at least you're safe now", before she drove out of the lot and left too

2010-05-14T16:26:00.004+08:00

in my parents' office now helping to do some proofreading for this book called "the complete book of everyday christianity", which, as i read, is seeming to be slightly outdated (it was published in 1997 apparently), although it's spose to get republished or sth with added chapters that make it more relevant to the present day. note to self: i need to remember to point out eventually that there are references in some of the chapters to future predictions that have already passed

anyway, one of the chapters i was reading titled "Accountability, Workplace" had a section that i found quite interesting:

Accountability and Responsibility
Accountability is in fact the flip side of responsibility. While we often use the concept of accountability to refer to the measurement of specific action or behavior in pursuit of the mission or objectives, it might be more appropriate to keep accountability closely linked with responsibility. It is only when a person is understood (and understands himself or herself) to be responsible for a particular action or progress that he or she is accountable. So accountability measures the progress or growth for which a person has accepted responsibility. It assumes that we want to grow, that we expect some movement which we want to measure, unless of course we want to stay in a steady state, in which case accountability seeks to measure that we have not lost ground!
While it is possible to be held accountable by another for a responsibility assigned, accountability and responsibility are most powerfully linked when they are owned. Ownership is the intentional internalizing of responsibility so that a person holds himself or herself accountable. When responsibility is owned, when accountability is internalized, it becomes a personal commitment and a powerful motivating force within the person.

2010-05-14T00:01:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: afterclap - an unexpected, often unpleasant sequel to a matter that had been considered closed

Random Fact of the Day: It is possible to lead a cow upstairs... but not downstairs

mm just came back from resorts world sentosa. going to sentosa now looks like going to DISNEYLAND! very exciting. although i didn't get to see watever the castle-looking thingy held inside. the mma event they held at RWS was not bad, all things considered. the cheapest tickets got pretty decent seats. there was at least one of everything (2 submissions, 1 decision, 1 tko and 1 friggin awesome falcon punch ko). there was too much music though and the ring girls pranced around to very skanky music. also got to see robin leong and benedict goh. benedict goh still looks so young

ive been falling asleep very late recently, even though ive been trying to sleep earlier. this is not good. also, i havent been exercising. not good.

watched ip man again, and it was a much more pleasant experience being able to see the whole screen. managed to take in and appreciate details that i didn't notice the previous time, but they showed the same trailers again, which was kinda sad. JULY 8 man. they were showing the "predators" trailer in the toilets at cathay, and while i was peeing i heard the predator roar and uh..never mind

2010-05-01T14:31:00.002+08:00

thinking about ip man 2 is like answering a source-based question. at first glance, it appears awesome, but on deeper analysis, there are things about it that don't seem so nice after all. i realised that i didn't like how a lot of the characters from the first movie were very cursorily treated in this one. his son only had 1 or 2 lines, but then again his son is kinda there to look cute and stuff which he managed to do sufficiently well even though he's grown older and taller. also, apparently boxing rules weren't very well-defined in the mid-20th century, and eye-gouging was allowed (i guess they never thought that people could eye gouge each other if they were both supposed to be wearing gloves) and from the looks of it western boxing is damn awesome, especially given that they don't learn any kicks.

still, id probably watch ip man 2 again. i totally forgot that id need to read subtitles in addition to watch wat was happening on screen, which was a bit difficult when sitting in the 2nd row, but it's quite heartening to know that i havent totally lost my ability to understand chinese

also, i finally got round to thinking about it, and it really irks me that avatar didn't win either best picture or best director. especially best director. how do you manage to pull off something so epic and not be given enough credit for it?

2010-05-01T00:56:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: doula - a woman who assists during childbirth labour and provides support to the mother, her child and the family after childbirth

Random Fact of the Day: The Bible, the world's best-selling book, is also the world's most shoplifted book.

there'll be ash and dust to bury us / but i will keep you clean

this has been a tiring week. ive felt tired before, but i don't remember the last time i felt so utterly spent. still, ive made it through so far and will probably make it through everything so im rather grateful for it.

i was spose to blog 2 days ago, when i was at the peak of feeling drained, coz i actually had other stuff to say then but as usual ive forgotten so oh well

just came back from watching ip man 2. as far as movies go, this one served its purpose very well. looking at donnie yen's pleasant face has such a calming effect. he even cried in this movie, thus displaying about 150% of the emotion that he showed in the first film. ironically, the cinema showed a trailer for another ip man movie being produced by a different company. it apparently guest stars ip man's son, which is cool and strange at the same time

2010-04-19T22:55:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: scapegrace - a reckless, unprincipled person; one who is wild and reckless; a rascal; a scoundrel

Random Fact of the Day: Reindeer like to eat bananas.

i like to eat bananas too. in fact, i ate them today. next week, i will become them

tonight, the moon was smiling at me, so i smiled back

2010-04-18T21:37:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: disport - to amuse oneself in light or lively manner; to frolic / to divert or amuse / to display

Random Fact of the Day: There are 1 million ants for every person in the world.

another wasted breath / again it goes unnoticed

i really don't like rihanna. omg i really really don't like rihanna. she pollutes my internet radio stream

yesterday, i watched the manchester derby. im not sure why. ive never felt less than i did yesterday when i saw a goal scored in the last minute

i had a pleasant dream last night that involved fighting, although it made me feel tired when i woke up, but i felt better not too long after that. but now im sleepy again

the whole acsi-sas commotion has been interesting. i wonder why no one more strongly condemns the actions of the people who invaded the pitch (other than...rohit brijnath? rohit brijnath is awesome. i don't even know if i spell his name properly). i think, that if parents get involved in something like this, that the battle to bring back sportsmanship has been lost already

2010-04-10T14:06:00.003+08:00

Word of the Day: manumit - to free from slavery or servitude

Useless Random Fact of the Day: The longest one syllable word in the English language is "screeched"

this morning i woke up / with this overwhelming fear of love

this morning i woke up and i couldn't remember what day it was. then i remembered it was saturday and i had nothing to do and it made me feel good, until i realized that i needed to pee

i had many dreams last night, but the one that stood out for me was the one that made me scared. oh and the one where i was singing "kings and queens" on rock band. anyway, for some reason i was in the sea with some other people, and we couldn't see land anywhere, and we had been swimming in a certain direction. after awhile, we decided to swim in another direction, when all of a sudden some hippy-looking dude wearing neon orange something-somethings appeared behind us and asked us to go back in the original direction

so we followed him and suddenly there was dry land, and then we eventually ended up in a nice big house where we met the guy who stayed there. i saw a puppy too but apparently it was dead and stuffed or donno wat and according to the owner, the puppy and his wife had both contracted some disease and died, so it was just him staying in the house. the puppy was rather cute. it looked like a toy poodle sorta thing. but it was at this point in the dream that i started to feel uneasy, coz you know, dead wife haunted house and stuff. so i was in one of the bedrooms with another person and i went to use the toilet, which was connected to the dead wife's room, and the door leading to that room couldn't lock properly, so it made me even more scared. then at night, for some reason my uncle was there too and he was in that room playing some version of super mario and he was there by himself and all i was thinking was that it was oh oh bad for him. and then the dream changed to something involving a swimming pool

i found it interesting that i could so palpably feel fear in the dream and yet not wake up. i wonder why i recognised the fear and not the fact that i was in a dream. i used to keep a dream diary for a very short while, with very vague details that were meant to remind me of wat the dreams had been about. when i revisited it by accident while looking through my various old notebooks, i couldn't really remember anything regarding wat id written down. details, details.

2010-04-07T20:35:00.003+08:00

Word of the Day: megrim - a migraine / a fancy; a whim / in the plural: lowness of spirits

it may be elaborate fantasy / but it's a perfect place to start

a testament to the power of sleep: i was playing word warp at about 2 in the morning, and the letters were "TASSID", and i couldn't think of the correct word so i went to sleep. i woke up, went to make milo, and when i thought of the letters again, i immediately thought "sadist". this is both interesting, in that i solved it so quickly after getting some sleep, and disturbing, in that a word like "sadist" would so easily come to mind

today in class i learnt what a tumblr account actually is, and it made me kinda inspired to make one, except id probably be too lazy to maintain it, seeing as how im clearly not the most prolific of updaters

also omg tofu hunter is a very fun game. it has horrendous loading times though

2010-03-27T12:53:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: geld - to castrate (an animal, esp. a horse) / to take strength, vitality, or power from; weaken or subdue

i learnt this word while playing word warp. who said games arent good for you?

last night was rather fun, and yesterday was as uh..exciting..as the day before was mediocre. i woke up earlier than usual again, so i decided to go back to sleep, and then after a while i realised i should probably get up to finish an assignment which was due and which i had to finish before leaving for school and which i hadnt started writing for yet. left the house very late and thought id be late for school, but for once i was glad the tutorial i was attending always ends late. except it ended late for my session too so i was late for my next class, social psych, where the prof showed the class two stories by some dude that were very depressing. incidentally, he's the same guy who wrote "the giving tree", which another lecturer showed his class in his module last sem, which was also very depressing

went for training after that, and then went back to acjc to supposedly help out with the AH haunted house but jiahao and i got tasked by some teacher to try and figure out for security reasons whether there was any way to break into the third floor. so we went around the school and looked. we walked around the canteen, to where the generator room is, and then climbed up. if you're familiar with acjc, you'd know that on the side of the wall facing heritage view/dover park view there are these large circular windows that lead into the hall/LT1. we were within touching reach of one of those windows. then later we found these abandoned chairs and tables in one of the alcoves along the corridor where the 2nd floor of the staff room is, so we shifted them to the other alcove further down and we managed to climb onto them and then climb onto a ledge and get onto the third floor. then the teacher told us after that that the door leading to the alcove would be locked anyway. zzz.

2010-03-25T19:35:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: lambent - flickering or playing lightly over a surface / possessing a light but brilliant touch / softly glowing; luminous

ain't that mister mister on the radio stereo / the way you move ain't fair you know

hi wishygal if you're reading this

today i woke up earlier than usual, trying out tips that i found here, and the ones i tried sadly worked, but not well enough so i lazed in bed and listened to the radio, where on 95.0fm FD, glenn ong and vernetta lopez were talking about sex or sth. can't remember why. then FD said that if sex were an olympic sport and/or if medals were given out, singapore women would be last and thai women would be first. then vernetta lopez said that it was because the thais got paid

i made breakfast for myself today, and everything generally went wrong, setting the stage for a day of relative mediocrity

2010-03-18T18:38:00.003+08:00

Word of the Day: cozen - to cheat; to defraud; to deceive, usually by petty tricks / to obtain by deceit / to act deceitfully

as far as serving my purposes goes, today's weather has been rather pleasant. nice and windy, except i actually had to use an umbrella. i forgot i was wearing my "to arr is pirate" tshirt so i got very disturbed when some woman stared at me with a strange look on her face

i abhor it when kids sit near me on public transport because they usually make much irritating noise and their parents usually and very pre-emptive in making sure they behave themselves. i am glad i was never that kind of kid, although maybe having been one would've made me less hostile toward children on public transport. probably not.

the first time i remember taking a bus on my own (although i dont ever remember taking it with my parents) was in sec 1, where we had just moved to farrer court. im very sure i took public transport before that but i cant seem to remember when. the sec 1 incident was so memorable because i didnt know what the actual bus route was to get home, so i didn't know where to stop, so i ended up in hougang. i had to cab home, but i didnt have any money in my wallet, but then i remembered that i had an angpao with $20 in my bag for some strange reason

2010-03-13T03:13:00.001+08:00

Word of the Day: solecism - a nonstandard usage or grammatical construction; also, a minor blunder in speech / a breach of good manners or etiquette / any inconsistency, mistake, or impropriety

note to self: no more 3d movies, no more midnight movies

2010-03-08T13:16:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: inveterate - firmly established by long persistence; deep-rooted; of long-standing / fixed in habit by long persistence; confirmed; habitual

there's a saying along the lines of "don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened" which, until yesterday, i wasnt firmly cynical about. i am now.

went for the paramore concert yesterday, and now i feel like there is a gap in my mind that has started leaking out sadness and feelings of loss while all the while paramore earworms try to fill it in but end up pushing more of the leaky feelings out. i don't even know where to begin to make an attempt at catharsis because i highly doubt it'll come

but time is supposed to heal all wounds, and this too should pass, although it's the getting there that is a pain

2010-03-05T22:12:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: mulct - a fine or penalty / to punish for an offence or misdemenour by imposing a fine or demanding a forfeiture / to obtain by fraud or deception / to defraud; to swindle

note to self: you cannot eat two packets of indomie at one go anymore

2010-02-23T19:40:00.001+08:00

2010-02-20T22:47:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: egregious - conspicuously and outrageously bad or reprehensible

rather amusing. was playing the avp demo with what sounded like 2 american teenagers. before we started, i was lamenting the fact that you couldn't mute the voices of other ppl, but it turned out to add lots of value to the experience. also, it's quite amazing that you can hear people on the other side of the world talking. also, it seemed awfully early for them to be playing video games. hearing them talk added a surprising amount of tension to playing, or maybe that was just coz there were 3 ppl playing. it was very funny every time they sounded surprised when i disappeared from sight, and whenever the younger-sounding one kept addressing me by my nickname. the lack of swearing was quite surprising too

finally got my first singaporean angbaos today. my first two outside meals after coming back to singapore (that i can remember) were frm burger shack and hatched. i really don't feel like eating at hatched anymore

2010-02-18T19:02:00.001+08:00

Word of the Day: duplicity - deliberate deceptiveness in behaviour or speech; also, an instance of deliberate deceptiveness; double-dealing / the quality or state of being twofold or double

you were the last good thing about this part of town

penang cny trip

what is appearing to be an annual pilgrimage to malaysia came round again. the journey there started off eventfully enough; when we went to check-in, we discovered that we couldn't transit even though we were taking a trip from singapore-KL and then KL-penang. instead, we had to exit at KL, go through immigration, and then go back into the departure hall for our flight to penang.

this wasn't really a bad thing, since we managed to go eat. first meal in malaysia was macdonald's. awesome. i got to try out this thing i read abt online called a "McGangbang", which is rather vulgar and doesnt make sense considering that it's just a mcchicken inside a double cheeseburger. try to wrap your mind around that, and if you can't, just imagine a big mac made up of a double cheeseburger and a mcchicken. it wasnt as mind-blowing an experience as i thought it'd be, but it was novel nonetheless and also quite tasty, coz like one bite is beef and then another bite tastes like chicken

the flights themselves were pretty uneventful. while scrounging through the pocket of the seat in front of me i found a barf bag, which i took out with the intention of using to simulate puking as a form of entertainment. the barf bag had strange scribblings and doodles on one side, which i showed to my brother and elicited a chuckle from both of us. then i opened it and found a biscuit stuck to the inside, which almost made me want to really puke. i hastily put it away, and then discovered something vile and viscous stuck to the length of my seatbelt. we wondered who had sat on the same seat before me

on the way to penang, we landed at KL's budget terminal, called the LCCT, where LC stands for "low-cost" and CT stands for something else. in the LCCT, the planes don't go to you; you go to the planes. ive never walked so much outside of an airport before.

by the time we arrived at where we would be staying, it was past midnight already. we stayed in some relative's apartment that was supposed to be rented out but was temporarily vacant. nothing to shout about but not much to complain about either. the lack of wi-fi was a bummer, although not entirely unexpected. my grandparents were staying in the same apartment as my brother and me, and my grandpa woke up when we entered. he talked to my mum a bit and came up with a choice quote, "just give me a tinkle." in ages past, "tinkle" apparently referred to a phone call, not peeing.

before going to bed, i realised that the air-con control gave its temperature in fahrenheit, so i had to turn on my phone for the first time since arriving just to convert it into celsius. 18 deg celsius is around 64 deg fahrenheit. fascinating.

day 2

woke up at least four times in the middle of the night. twice involved turning around in my sleep. another time that i could remember involved my brother reaching over me to take the remote control and change it from 18 deg to 20 deg. the other time involved me cocooning myself in my blanket because it was still very cold.

got out of bed properly at about 1.30pm, ate biscuits and drank milo and read the newspapers then went to shower. ate lunch at coffee bean, where we managed to access wifi. great success. id only brought my iPod with me, and i came to the sad realisation that the only thing i could be bothered to check was facebook, and it was even sadder when i realised i only had one new notification, although it was someone accepting my friend request which was quite a nice thing to see

went to visit my paternal grandma and stoned at her place for 10min. i had to write the hanyu pinyin for words to a song, so that the non-chinese-speaking members of the family could sing along

left after about 15min and went for a swim. interestingly enough, all the apartments on the ground floor of the condo have a mini swimming pool right outside, so you can climb from your apartment into the mini pool and then get out and go into the bigger pool. some connect directly into the main pool, which is slightly gross if you think about it

had reunion dinner, which was a small and modest affair. found out, much to my chagrin, that my paternal grandma's house suddenly managed to locate a wi-fi signal, in the year that i wasn't staying in it. isn't it ironic, don't you think? after that we went to visit relatives on my mum's side of the family. the tv in the house we went to was tuned to a thai channel, full of pretty thai girls. my grandfather came up with another awesome quote: "did you know, a lot of thai actors and actresses are cross?" to which we nodded enthusiastically, trying hard not to laugh. turns out he meant that a lot of thai actors and actresses are of mixed ethnicity. bowchickabowwow. stoned on a swing out in the front of the house, and managed to see some fireworks in the distance

got back to the apartment we were staying in and then promptly left to buy drinks from something called a "happy mart". quite appropriate - the cashiers looked pretty happy. found a tongkat ali energy drink being sold but didn't dare to try it

day 3

i hate having to shave everyday. my plan to bring shaving gel with me to malaysia was an epic fail, because gel is not as easily transported as foam

went to church today, and saw a super xmm (super in the sense of "awesome", not "extremely"), which was disconcerting. the message was a good reminder of things i easily forget even though i really shouldn't

had lunch at paternal grandma's hse before setting off to visit relatives. nothing interesting happened while visiting. in fact, nothing interesting really happened the whole day

day 4

thankfully got to sleep in today, then went to visit queensbay mall, which was a rather big mall that had many shops that were closed. at lunch at this place called paddington house of pancakes, which was highly awesome. pancakes for lunch and pancakes for dessert. and they didn't taste like hotcakes, which was even better

managed to browse in borders for a while and found a couple of interesting books, and ended up buying doughnuts which i didn't finish. zzz.

unfortunately, visiting the mall basically ate up the whole afternoon, so i didn't get to go swim again. instead, had to head straight for dinner at his place called the chinese recreation club, which was friggin crowded. the best part of the dinner was a waitress, but this doesn't say very much at all. her hair looked very soft and i wanted to pet her head. she really wasn't anything spectacular, an opinion reinforced when she missed my glass while trying to pour tea in, but she had a sharp jaw, which is quite rare in most girls. also, there is the power of cheongsam-ish looking things to make women look better than they normally do

on our last night, i succeeded in making the aircon remote show the temperature in celsius instead of fahrenheit, but i had no idea what i did. i can't remember what time i went to sleep, but i know that i woke up at near-hourly intervals, starting at 2 and carrying on until it was time to actually get out of bed. in fact, id woken up way before time and i didn't succeed in going back to sleep

day 5

the last interesting thing to happen in malaysia actually happened on one of the flights home. in the row immediately in front of us, some dude arrived and said that some woman had taken his seat. they talked a bit, with some other old man needing to help mediate due to language differences, and then they ended up having to call for assistance from one of the stewardesses because it appeared that they both had the same seat number

it turned out that the woman was on the wrong flight (stupid woman!); she was actually spose to be on a flight from penang-singapore, rather than the flight we were on, which was penang-KL. this was rather worrying, because ppl on international departures and ppl on domestic departures enter through separate entrances into the departure hall, and there're spose to be a series of checks to ensure you get onto the right plane (stupid system!). i think the other C in LCCT stands for "carrier"

the flights back to singapore were uneventful enough, thankfully, and now i am back to reality where i realise that there is science to be done, there is research to be run, and i have projects and work to do

several things struck me during the time spent in malaysia. one was that it was very very hot. stiflingly hot and humid. singapore isn't much better at the moment though. another thing was that drivers in malaysia (or at least penang) don't seem to be able to stay in their own lanes. im not sure whether this is a problem with the drivers, or with roads being too narrow. the final thing is that i wonder whether ive become more resistant to cny, or more indifferent to christmas. neither of them seems to resonate with as much emotion as they used to, although im unsure as to whether this is a symptom of age or circumstance. guess ill find out when christmas arrives this year

2010-02-17T14:39:00.001+08:00

Word of the Day: inexorable - not to be persuaded or moved by entreaty or prayer; firm; determined; unyielding; unchangeable; inflexible; relentless

i never experienced a single nose bleed while in malaysia. first proper day back in singapore and i get one after waking up

2010-02-11T23:15:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: coquetry - dalliance; flirtation

today, i made a decision based on rationality instead of commonsense or intuition, and i felt a quiet sense of moral victory well up within me

other than that, im very sleepy. had a bio psych test, in which my nose started to bleed within the first 10seconds and left me feeling foolish and amused. the test was quite not bad, thank God, so that's another significant hurdle out of the way.

this year (or semester) has been very strange. it's felt extremely busy, and time seems to blur by, but events of the previous week feel like they happened a long time ago

flying off to malaysia tomorrow. i hope it is a productive trip

2010-02-04T21:38:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: verboten - forbidden, as by law; prohibited

new interesting phrase learnt: "pretty boss, right?"

note to self: when going home after a 6pm class, never take 151

gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

old time is still a-flying

2010-01-30T23:37:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: rapacious - given to plunder; seizing by force / subsisting on prey / grasping; greedy

it just dawned on me that i've only had one meal the whole of today

i need to buy new shoes, and i need to get a haircut. one of these things must be done by tomorrow.

note to self: last night was the worst night of sleep you've had so far this year, or as far as you can remember

im on manning this week, so i got very paranoid abt being called back today, so i slept terribly. woke up more times than i could care to remember and really didn't want to check wat time it was; i used to have a tendency to check the clock when i woke up in the middle of the night

went for og outing after that, which was at marina barrage. never been there before. it is quite a pleasant place and also a very crowded place. met a norwegian exchange student there, who's apparently an honourary member of the og, and also his american friend. they are an interesting pair and it was surprisingly easy to talk to them

just like that, january's almost over

2010-01-20T20:44:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: lacuna - a blank space; a missing part; a gap / (Biology) a small opening, depression, or cavity in an anatomical structure

while on the bus, i passed by an angmoh on a motorcycle who had stopped at a traffic light. he was wearing work pants and a long-sleeved lilac/purple shirt, with helmet on. he stared straight ahead into space, both hands on his handlebars (is that what they're called?). i looked down, and right in front of him was a rat, dead along the pedestrian crossing, mouth agape in an expression similar to people who stone with their mouth open

2010-01-07T23:35:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: quotidian - occurring or returning daily / of an everyday character; ordinary; commonplace

as far as starts to the year go, this has been not too shabby. watched sherlock holmes on tuesday with zhiguang. before watching, we went to kfc and ordered a buddy meal each. people stared at us. sherlock holmes was quite an enjoyable experience. i wish i could think as quickly as he does in the film, although i assume greatness always has a price, as shown by his friggin weird behaviour

received some kfc voucher that came with the newspapers. apparently kfc is offering a bargain meal for $15.90. it includes 6 pieces of chicken, 2 med whipped potatoes, and a med coleslaw. their family feast costs $25.90, comes with 2 more pieces of chicken and a regular popcorn chicken. the difference between the two meals is $10. the cost of an a la carte 2 piece chicken and regular popcorn chicken is less than $9. wtf.

i was very indirectly complimented today. while going to the counter in cheers to pay for something, i came across a friend talking to the malay cashier about the difference between using "terima kasih" (malay for "thank you") and merely saying "kasih". she asked him if he was singaporean, and he explained that his malay friends used "kasih" all the time. then she turned to another friend i was with and asked him if he was singaporean too. she didn't ask me, so i asked her why not, and she told me that i was definitely a malaysian, then went on to say something about how malaysians have a certain something something, and look at christopher lee, he's so handsome

i am very sleepy right now, in large part due to having taken part in a 4-5hr karaoke session which i hope doesn't happen again anytime soon

2009-12-21T22:13:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: dolorous - marked by, causing, or expressing grief or sorrow

had training today and while rolling with some guy, he said my hair smelled very nice. this has happened before. it's quite heartening to know that my hair can stay pleasant-smelling for so long, coz i can never tell. the weather today has been very good

it's been said that when you dream of a car, what the car really signifies is your physical body. the other night, i dreamt i was driving with two passengers. i was on the road and i missed a turning, so i swerved over the road divider. the car flipped sideways, landed on its side and the momentum caused it to flip back upright, and we continued driving almost as if nothing had happened. i wonder what that means.

in other news, my ps3 has finally died. apparently there's a fix, but apparently it requires a heatgun, which sounds cool but which i do not have. i hate sending in electronics for servicing because it's friggin troublesome. also, the last time i sent my phone in for servicing and it was a phone i really liked alot but the fix only lasted a few more months before the phone screwed up again. i would like to think sony provides better service than nokia but omg zzz

2009-12-03T12:33:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: myrmidon - (Capitalised) a member of a warlike Thessalian people who followed Achilles on the expedition against Troy / a loyal follower, especially one who executes orders without question

the myrmidons were the people who brad pitt told to take it, because it was theirs

i was reading the newspapers and i always like looking out at the top of the Home section for interesting headlines, and the featured stomp topic for discussion on talkback was "Why are arts students always looked down upon?", which i thought was interesting because i was/am an arts student and ive never felt that way. so i went to visit the forum page, which you can find here, and then i realized that the original poster didnt even know what he/she/it was talking about, and then coz stomp has all these other interesting-sounding thingies to look at, i wasted 10 minutes of my life that i was spose to spend studying

2009-12-01T21:32:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: intrepid - fearless; bold; brave; undaunted; courageous

sleepy, and in no mood to study. there was something i wanted to talk about before i talked about watever im going to talk about next, but i forgot what it was

while the dave matthews band may have composed the most swoon-worthy pervy song ever when they wrote "crash into me", there is something about chris carrabba's (frm dashboard confessional) voice that makes even the most pervy subject matters sound touching and emotional. for example, "the secret's in the telling", where he sings about a booty-call buddy, and "belle of the boulevard" (xoxo), where the music video (the actual one, not the one i linked) implies that he's singing about a hooker

i saw this on a bumper sticker, and on someone's tshirt very recently, where it says "be vegetarian, you might come back as a cow", or something stupid along those lines. it annoys me no end. suppose reincarnation actually existed, and it extended to any living organism, what if you came back as a juicy apple or broccoli? also, does that mean that vegetarians who subscribe to this line of thinking would rather come back as a cockroach than a cow? also, something along the lines of morality and consciousness that i should talk about but can't really be bothered to now

2009-11-29T20:13:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: benison - blessing; benediction

life is always hard / when you're the belle of the boulevard

the ending of assassin's creed 2 gave me goosebumps. on a related note, ive never played left 4 dead, although i sorta wanted to when i first heard that it was coming out, and now left 4 dead 2 has come out and i still havent played the first one. but i digress. i wonder what the allure of l4d is, and how it manages to attract girls to play as much as it attracts guys. i wonder whether they enjoy playing as the humans more or as the zombies. im glad that there're ppl making a new AvP game. i very much miss playing AvP2, although i dont think anyone knows what im talking about. i cannot adequately convey the immense pleasure that comes with being able to walk on walls, and now that i say it like that, it sounds pretty stupid.

on a related note, i think my eyesight is slowly going; i've been spending too much time staring at screens. i always thought that after a certain age, your eyesight more or less stayed the same and would return to baseline if you overstrained it. my grandma doesnt wear spectacles. then again, my grandma didnt have nothing to stare at to spoil her eyesight. then again, she watches a lot of channel 8 serials if im not wrong. oh well.

i really can't wait for exams to be over, not because im stressed out over them. actually in a manner of speaking, i am, but it's more like im stressed out over the exam period rather the exams themselves. but ive never been more excited about a post-exam period than i have been this semester because of how rife it is with potential. of course, i could always get lazy, which would probably result in me having to wear specs on a consistent basis by the time school restarts, but for now there is always idealism and wishful thinking to get me angsty and impatient

2009-11-19T22:28:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: perseverate - to involuntarily repeat a particular response, such as a word, phrase, or gesture, despite the absence or cessation of a stimulus, usually caused by brain injury or other organic disorder / to repeat something insistently or redundantly

im surprised this word didn't pop up throughout the course of abnormal psych. im really only writing this post to whine and garner sympathy because i got kneed in the face today. specifically, i got kneed in the left front tooth, which worried the hell out of me for like 20 seconds until i calmed down and prayed and stuff, because i have this paranoid fear that my teeth will get knocked out one day, which is both annoying in and of itself and troublesome to fix and it's a problem that stays with you for life. i used to have dreams where i would pluck my own teeth out or they'd get removed by some other strange method and id wake up and feel whether my teeth were all still there. it's kinda like the dreams where you go to the toilet, but worse.

in other news, there is no news. which should be good news, but isnt really. my exams are starting in a week's time, though, which doesnt really mean anything to me. on an unrelated note, i felt stressed today about vague possibilities of the future

2009-11-15T13:06:00.003+08:00

Word of the Day: quiescent - being in a state of repose; at rest; still; inactive

i've just finished reading "the little prince". it is all at once a beautiful, inspiring, and depressing story

2009-11-14T00:48:00.002+08:00

2009-11-06T20:43:00.003+08:00

Word of the Day: felicitous - suitably applied or expressed; appropriate; apt / happy; delightful; marked by good fortune

mrmmm annoying week. monday: got whacked in the groin three times during training. it was like, light punch, light kick, heavy kick. to the balls. wednesday: arrived 15min late for a 25min paper. now, different parts of my body feel very messed up, but at least i can sleep early tonight. i hope.

exams are coming! need to start studying soon.

very sad, there really isnt anything interesting or whimsical happening in my life right now

2009-10-16T14:49:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: fetor - a strong, offensive smell; stench

i hate class debates. their boundaries usually arent defined well enough to contain my aggressive, competitive behaviour when it manifests itself

during abnormal psych tutorial, the tutor talked abt how consolidation takes place during rem sleep or sth like that. last night, i was watching a tv show and there was a segment where this guy kept going on and on abt he-man. when i went to shower later, i killed a cockroach. it was the first time i ever witnessed a cockroach sink after being dropped into the toilet; i was actually expecting it to float

when i went to sleep, i had a dream that i woke up from feeling quite disturbed, even though i couldnt remember what it was about, so i was like "ok God i dont wanna keep dreaming about that anymore" then i went back to sleep and dreamt that i was killing cockroaches in my home's guestroom toilet, with shieldtox and newspaper. every now and then i would smash a cockroach with the newspaper while yelling, "by the power of greyskull!"

for some weird reason, all sorts of other weird bugs started showing up like crickets and stag beetles and praying mantises and even headcrabs, which was very strange. at the end of the dream i had several piles of dead bugs in the bathroom

2009-10-07T23:06:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: foofaraw - excessive or flashy ornamentation or decoration / a fuss over a matter of little importance

how to make a sacrifice to the gods of the sewer or, how to kill a flying insect

1. make sure the insect is flying slowly enough

2. knock the insect out of the air with sufficient force to incapacitate it. for this case, i used my wallet, which is dense and chunky

3. when the insect is downed, try to immobilise it or kill it in a mess-free way.i found a can of shieldtox. it says that it kills flying and crawling insects and is odorless, so i sprayed the insect with it

4. nonchalantly wrap the insect up in a piece of tissue, mocking its foolhardiness while you do so

5. DON"T SLIP ON THE SHIELDTOX THAT YOU'VE SPRAYED. shieldtox may be odorless, but it's bloody oily

6. dispose of the tissue in the toilet and flush heartily

2009-10-02T21:14:00.003+08:00

Word of the Day: incarnadine - having a fleshy pink colour / red; blood-red / to make red or crimson

ah it dawned on me today that maybe part of the problem is that my eyes move too fast for my brain to process

2009-10-01T22:46:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: cavort - to bound or prance about / to have lively or boisterous fun; to behave in a high-spirited, festive manner

i have a homework assignment to do for a module, where the question is: "Think of a time when you thought someone or something would always be a certain way but you were caught off guard when that someone or something turned out different than you had expected, even against all odds. Why were you caught off guard? And, what did you learn about your decision making process from this?"

ive been thinking for very long but havent managed to come up with anything concrete. this is reflective of how i dont seem to be able to internalise and remember important life lessons sometimes but they manage to remain as implicit memories. ive always thought of myself as being more self-aware than average, but this is confounded by my inability to think fast enough, meaning that when i get asked questions like these im always hard-pressed to find an example. i generally don't manage to recall events in my life very well when pressured to do so. maybe i need to take more photographs, but this probably also explains why i have a tendency to be a terrible conversationalist

today in abnormal psychology class, the lecturer showed an episode of 20/20 (i can't believe i actually know wat 20/20 is/was) that featured some woman whose daughters had suffered from anorexia, and she managed to develop a method of treating their anorexia which she then managed to turn into a profession. it was a very depressing and emo video that i probably would've done my best to cry while watching if i hadnt been surrounded by abt 200ppl

2009-09-23T21:45:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: eldritch - strange; unearthly; weird; eerie

i seem to have lost my motivation to study, which is more worrying than disturbing. also, i am apparently unable to study at night, which i guess has its pros and cons. i think my attention span is progressively waning

watched "gamer" yesterday. it was gory, but numbingly so. i was wondering why the antagonist looked so familiar, other than looking somewhere between matt damon and mark wahlberg, then i realised that he's the guy who acts as dexter. he's damn ripped. interestingly enough, gerard butler doesnt get to show off his manly body in the film

been slacking a lot for the past few days and feeling only slightly guilty about it. will be slacking some tomorrow too. gonna watch brad pitt kill some nazis. in what may or may not be enlightening to you, this isnt the first time brad pitt has scalped nazis. in fact, typing "gonna watch brad pitt kill some nazis" reminded me of this. brad pitt also scalped a nazi in "legends of the fall", if im not wrong

played soccer yesterday and it went terribly for me. according to a friend who says it's according to our abnormal psychology textbook, people who write about their terrible feelings are more likely to ruminate on them, making them more susceptible to depression, or sth like that. uh oh

2009-09-13T21:07:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: noisome - noxious; harmful; unwholesome / offensive to the smell or other sense; disgusting

wild eyed boy, your heart still won't settle / wild eyed boy, how much can you take

yay new muse album coming out in a coupla days time. my brother introduced me to an australian band named 'birds of tokyo' who are pretty good. while listening to random songs in his iPod i came across a band called 'number one gun' that was also not bad so far

there are some times in your life where it's impossible not to think about the 'what-if' scenarios, even though it's probably better to just accept how things went. today was one of those days

apparently yo-yos are back in vogue again. which is kinda disturbing because they were mad popular when i was in like..secondary school or sth. i never really thought toy popularity could be as cyclical as fashion. i wish the same were true for cartoons. one day, kids aren't going to know what "the lion king" is about, which is rather tragic.

today's papers featured some article on anita sarawak and her husband getting attacked in malaysia. her husband sounds quite manly; he didn't back down even after being slashed by a parang on the head. it was interesting to note that when they quoted her, they capitalized the "g" in "God". an article later on was talking about how two kids committed suicide a year ago because they thought in doing so they could save the world (more or less). one of the boys was referred to as being able to speak to "god". i thought this was very very interesting. but then again, i can't remember if the article that mentioned this was in the new paper so it might have been a result of shoddy editing which TNP is notorious for

oh, arsenal, my arsenal!

2009-09-12T23:37:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: puissant - powerful; strong; mighty

so apparently my toe might be fractured but ill never know coz the doctor said there was no point going for an op, and he didn't give me an x-ray, but he said that either way there wasnt much i could do about it other than wait it out. he even gave me counterpain, which was quite a wtf moment. on the plus side, my ugly blue black is slowly clearing

i went to sleep listening to a band called "birds of tokyo". i didnt manage to finish listening to the whole album. i had a dream that involved a movie, durian mooncakes and fast food among other things. i woke up and one hand was holding onto an earphone, and the other hand had a finger in my ear

2009-09-08T17:37:00.003+08:00

Word of the Day: refulgent - shining brightly; radiant; brilliant; resplendent

i was bored in school today so i wanted to use my iPod to blog but for some reason it managed to load up the "new post" page but i couldn't actually type anything. i had just read an excerpt from "the little prince" that touched me immensely and i wanted to blog about how emo it made me feel but oh well. i read an excerpt from "the little prince" and it made me feel very emo. i'd always heard about the book but never had any interest in it until today

i went for training yesterday with an injured foot, and i left with both feet injured, as well as a fugly toe. lemme take a picture and upload it.

what you're supposed to notice is not the toenail of the big toe, but the index toe. the toes look so burnt coz i was placing ice on them, but the darker shade just below the nail of the index toe is actually around the same colour as the dark discolouration in the big toenail. i should probably go see a doctor soon, but seeing doctors is such a troublesome thing to do

2009-09-03T10:24:00.003+08:00

Word of the Day: diktat - a harsh settlement unilaterally imposed on a defeated party / an authoritative decree or order

i was reminded today that, far from being useful only for making a rude gesture, the middle finger is actually a very useful tool in providing support and leverage while trying to hold an object

2009-08-30T11:19:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: chary - wary; cautious / not giving or expending freely; sparing

i dreamt last night that i was living in another house, and in that house there was a dog that appeared to be a cross between a beagle and a jack russell, which i was very excited to play with because i hadn't played with anything that resembles a beagle since the one my family owned died. then i walked around the house and found my mum, who told me that the dog was actually one of my aunt and uncle's dogs (both of which are jack russells), and that one of their dogs had died and this was the other one

i walked around some more, and found my other dog, along with 3 other dogs of the same breed, which kinda freaked me out. i started playing with my dog, then i lay on the floor to attract his attention and he came over and started to get ready to take a piss on me so i rolled and shrugged him off. he trotted some distance and pissed on the floor. then i lay down again, and he played with me awhile, and then pissed on me. i managed to get most of it on to my shorts. interestingly enough, in my dream i was wearing the exact same clothes that i was sleeping in. i got to my knees, yelled in anguish, and my mum and i had a good laugh about it

2009-08-25T20:05:00.003+08:00

Word of the Day: truckle - to yield or bend obsequiously to the will of another; to act in a subservient manner / a small wheel or roller; a caster

it seems to be a trend that taylor swift releases songs in a particular order of happy and sad (for lack of better words): love story followed by white horse, and then you belong with me followed by you're not sorry, but then again you're not sorry seems like a song i heard a long long time ago so i might be wrong

2009-08-22T19:44:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: bowdlerize - to remove or modify the parts (of a book, for example) considered offensive / to modify, as by shortening, simplifying, or distorting in style or content

i think, at the end of the day, one of the biggest regrets i have is not watching hannah montana the movie on the plane flight back home

i came back to singapore from tokyo a few days before school started, which is obviously no reason why i haven't updated for such a long time since school has restarted already. i relived the japan experience very temporarily and to a slight degree when i went to visit the toy, games and comic convention held in suntec. there was an incident of sheer awesomeness though, almost akin to seeing the life-sized gundam model at odaiba. at the tgcc there was some cosplay costume competition, where the participants would go onto stage and the host would give some brief description of who they were and were dressed up as. then he went on to call out the name of a participant, and everyone went crazy but the camera showed an empty stage. after a while, it panned down and they showed some dude in a freakin gundam costume. it was so weighted in awesome that he couldn't even walk up the stage in it. ironically, i think i saw more cosplayers in singapore at the tgcc than i did while i was in japan

anyway, visiting tokyo was kinda great apart from the shyness and the secondhand smoke inhalation. it's crazy how many arcades they have in japan. there were these container thingies on the uh dashboard of each console which i thought were meant to hold coins, but i quickly later found out were actually ashtrays. i can't decide if it was more annoying being surrounded by smoke all the time, or that there are hardly any dustbins in tokyo, and if there are receptacles, that they're usually recycling bins

i surprisingly overpacked again, but only marginally so and with repeated use of berms that under normal circumstances would've been sent to the wash. every day, a new food stain appeared on my berms, which was very annoying. one day, i spilled sake on myself so i couldn't rewear that particular pair of berms but good thing i spilled colorless alcohol so the stain disappeared before i left the restaurant. they really love their alcohol there; even kfc advertises their chicken with pictures of beer

there was one day we were walking down the street at night, and then some guy came up next to us and started asking, "sex? sex? sex?" either that or he was saying "six?" but one makes much more sense than the other. then we walked on a bit further and some guy unfolded a book in front of us with a picture of schoolgirls and asked, "strip show?" not much later, as we noticed a street sign, we realised we were in a bona fide red light district

2009-07-29T14:46:00.002+08:00

Word of the Day: sapid - having taste or flavour, especially having a strong pleasant flavour / agreeable to the mind; to one's liking

i think that the singapore national football team must have felt very sad playing against liverpool, knowing that they were playing on their home ground but most, if not all, of the people there were supporting the away team. i think they must also have felt even sadder knowing that their fitness levels couldn't keep up with people who weren't even used to the climate here

the funniest part in the harry potter film was when he took the luck potion and then when they were having the funeral for the giant spider, he said "pincers" and then made a stupid face and stupid noises. i cant find a proper video of it, but this girl seems to agree with me

i just finished reading the last harry potter book again, and it was strangely very compelling to read again, but then i realised again why i hardly liked it the first time round other than the annoying ending. it's like a who's who of harry potter characters die in the book and voldemort's death is hardly epic

finally took a photo with my new phone, except it was of something very vulgar, which i am about to reproduce, so if you're one who doesn't like reading obscene toilet graffiti then you should probably stop reading. if you don't know wat toilet graffiti sounds like, you should continue

i ended up in woodlands for a strange reason, and i went to causeway point to eat breakfast but i had to use the toilet. while i was in the toilet, i saw on the toilet paper dispenser, written in liquid paper: "I like 2 suck cock pls let me suck ur lovely juicy cock. I waiting next door. offer ur cock 4 me 2 suck." i was very disturbed by this, because people usually leave a phone number for you to call if you're inclined toward participating in fellatio, and there was actually someone in the cubicle next to mine, who exited his cubicle almost immediately after i did and turned out to be a chinese man with a disgruntled look on his face