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2010-01-15T07:09:00.000-08:00

Faired Poorly

Well, today we were meant to spend several hours running back and forth between two locations, attempting to lead unsuspecting students or shepherd them with extensive screaming into a life of assigned plays and tentative plays that tend to stay in the process of script perfection for quite a long time.

The bad news, or alternatively the good, is that we failed miserably at that. Not only did we have a play that was exactly representative of the sort of thing that the drama club did on a regular basis, but we also lacked anything that would have shown an appealing alternative.

Learning skills, becoming the characters you play for the brief moment you exit the womb-like security of the backstage (cluttered with a mysterious assortment of objects that were there before you) and take your first breath in front of an uncomfortably staring audience. Watching ideas spread like weeds across a piece of mahjong paper, sticks tossed together that end up more than a bunch of sticks tossed together, though that would be the reasonable thing to expect.

But instead of giving any sort of insight or information about the club, we paraded through the concourse in vocal bitch fights with anyone that had some form of promotion. I'm just going to be honestly hypocritical here and admit that it was fun, but what were we trying to do yelling louder than the NCC guys that have to yell requests to get the permission to do just that? Halfway through our protest against everything we realized that we had to string together some form of act or scene and get an audience, but by then we were too far into the fair. We'd missed our chance and we packed up.

Ms Koh and some of the drama guys pointed out that if any of the new students loved Drama, they'd join of their own accord. But how do they know that this Drama club's going to give them what they love, especially after that woeful play? What about students that don't yet realize the joys of swimming in the boundless lake of lines and identity theft? What's going to make them go "Hey, that's actually pretty interesting."

I'd love to "try again next year", but then it hits me like an animated anvil that I'm not going to get that chance again. But maybe I'll come back, someday, and the Drama club will be all over the concourse poking, sharing, and distributing Chupa Chups.

2009-12-11T02:34:00.000-08:00

The Curse of Kayaking

I'd like to write about this one time I went for a kayaking course. In fact, it was the only time, so that narrows it down quite a bit.

Kayaking, for a tall person, is an exhilirating ordeal. On one hand, you're bobbing up and down on the waves, feeling the wind on your sunburnt face, with the closest sign of civilization being the barge that's coming awfully close to you- OH SHIT, while on the other hand, what you wouldn't give if you could just STAND UP for a second and stretch those cramped legs.

Your legs, you see, have to be bent outward so they look form a erogenous diamond in between them. Bracing your knees against the side of your kayak helps you make sure that you're absolutely balanced. Trying the alternative to this, if it can be called that, usually results in some impressive kayak drifting, which would be a lot more satisfying if any of it were intentional.

So you're condemned to having your feet stuck in the same position for hours on end, and if you're sasquatch-like from the ankles down like me, then you'll have no choice but to uncomfortably squirm to change your foot positioning in the claustrophobic space available. It comes as a particularly painful blow when you raft up with the rest of the trainees, which involves paddling next to each other and grabbing the sides of each others' boats to form a giant floating waffle so your instructors can tell you precisely what you were doing wrong earlier, and the short guy next to you just crossed his legs in his kayak. At that point I couldn't help but notice that he didn't have his paddle properly secured, and the instructor wasn't looking.

Well, no. I never did grab and toss that guy's paddle (wiggles eyebrows), but since then I've never taken standing up for granted, or forgotten my horror upon learning that the kayaks we used in the course were the SECOND-smallest variety.

2009-12-02T07:29:00.000-08:00

Assigned Acts

I'm part of a Drama Club in school, and we do plays, in between our administration-assigned... assignments that we get every national occasion. These usually involve coming up with plays that reveal the wondrous origins and nature of celebrations whose wondrous origins and nature have been revealed to us since we were six years old and were yet to discover the wonders of nature that we would at the age of 12 or so.

We're not generally worried about whether or not these plays will be received well, since everything's dead set on going a specific route since the points of time at which they're assigned to us. The contents, and very often the plot, are pretty much expected to be of a certain kind, and the reaction of the audience, if you really want to call it one at all, is generally the same as last year's: Excitement nearly rivaling that of the performers', unless someone's humiliated onstage, in which case it suddenly becomes the best damn play since the other one where Sam got called a girl, or something along those lines.

To sum it all up, the audience's boredom, or at least, their disinterest in what's supposed to be the subject matter of these plays, is always anticipated and quite distressingly, usually ignored. This is where things get ridiculous. The same plays are churned out year after year in schools everywhere, or at least everywhere in this country, and the whole thing ends up looking like tossing stale doggy biscuits at a puppy that always smack it in the head because it's busy ravenously devouring your sofa instead.

So what is it with assigned, occasion-based school plays that make them as appealing as soggy crackers?

Well, to start with, as mentioned before, it's the repetition. The same objectives, the same delivery, the same morals for each play for a a particular occasion. The audience can't ever feel suspense or curiosity when they're already smelling their palms and shaking their heads, muttering "Here we go. Educational play again..." They already know what the play's about and they already hate it before you begin.

Then there's the revolting cheese that accompanies every one of these plays, that sickening skin-invading chill that's bundled with them. The culprit's really the objectives and morals of these plays, which are politically correct and so government sponsored to the point where, whether rationally or not, people can't help but dismiss it. I don't know why opinions promoted by authority are always so unappetizing, but they just are, so performers always end up as "the admin's bitch". Sad and depressingly true.

So how do we save plays for national events, and do we want to? Well, we should. The occasions themselves haven't gotten stale, it's just that the same discussions about them are held every time. So if anything's going to save these skits besides Saxton Hale, it's variety in the way the subject matter is presented and discussed. Which means that we’ve got to move away from reading facts off checklists and going through all the “good” and “bad” perspectives and start presenting some of our own opinions: offbeat, tangent ideas that can be subjected to the ridicule of hundreds.
Why not? They’re better than reciting the same maxims over and over, and they make it clear to the audience that for once, perspectives are no longer restrained to the recommended few. This opens up the possibility of audience involvement, since once audience members realize that opinions just as “improper” as theirs are legitimate, there’s little besides the chronic fear of public speaking and prospect of humiliation that might hold them back, but that’s not really the point. The point is that breaking conventional play objectives will make these plays more intelligent, if not at least more entertaining to the audience.

But there’s an atrocious obstacle in the way. There’s always the possibility that someone in a group of over a thousand, or thousands in other schools (because let’s not forget that we’re a high school/junior college/anonymous schizophrenic group the size of a playgroup), is going to say something that pisses someone off, whether such responses may be rational or not.

But what’s important to note is that such problems are caused by individual ignorance and aren’t the fault of the performers or the administration. For some reason, however, schools administrations are still willing to take measures to prevent this by cutting out content that might incite such problems. That may appear to solve the problem but what it really is is paranoia, sacrificing what might be interesting and engaging content for the sake of eliminating the possibility of any situations later on that could be easily clarified. The option of distancing the views of the institution with those of an individual’s has always been there and it ought to be used.

In addition to the random heckler though, there’s also the risk of the play’s actual content being considered “objectionable” by certain members of the audience, or better yet, by the parents of certain members of the audience. So quite understandably, the administrations of many schools take the safe route, slicing out content that may be “potentially offensive”, or just taking the much shorter route and put bullets through the heads of any plays with such content. But while that’s an understandable reaction meant to conserve institutional image, the problem is that a clear line separating the “potentially offensive” from the acceptable doesn’t exist. No firm boundaries are drawn in the censorship process, and what might be removed from a play may be dependant on the personal opinions and unease of those responsible. This means that script writers are subject to inconsistent, and very often rather paranoid, scrutiny and restrictions.

We’ve just been assigned an orientation play that’s to be held in… well, January next year, and I don’t want to see another play that makes me chomp on my arm again. The title we’ve been given is “Life in NUS High”, and it’s evident that they want this to be a positive, cheery portrayal of a fun and educational lifestyle. Well, bugger that. Any quirks, problems or even redeeming qualities that you find in your current life in NUSHs, go ahead and slap them on the tagboard, because seeing that discussed in a play would be cool.

2009-11-26T04:08:00.000-08:00

A bunch of friends I know (As opposed to…? Never mind that.) apparently had the recent misfortune of watching numerically appealing movie 2012. According to them, it’s every disaster movie rolled into one wholesome Katamari, which is then repeatedly rolled into your face until you get a strong sense of rather accurate déjà vu.

Whilst they didn’t actually mention Katamari, they did give it a generally negative review, but I’ve no way of telling whether they’re right or were simply on helium at the time of watching and found counting their fingers more entertaining. Helium aside, there’s always the factor of personal preference. What my bunch of gas-loving mates found to be a long environmentalist boogeyman may be a thought provoking an- Alright, just for the sake of the argument, let’s assume we’re not talking about 2012. But the point is, I may very well worship what they consider an undesirable influence on young adults.

Which makes movie reviews, which is based around the whole business of telling people what films to watch and why, all the more stranger. Spoiling what you’d consider a terrible movie isn’t frowned upon, and may in fact be considered a public service. But spoiling a good film is bound to get you stoned to death, unless it happens to be a classic, in which case you’ll probably just be hideously embarrassed. But it’s very uncomfortable making that judgment based on your subjective opinion only, which is all you have to go by, really. So movie critics, or critics of any sort of medium with a plot, have to describe bits of the stories they review to justify why they like it or think of it as oddly good fuel, all while being careful not to spoil too much of anything.

But ultimately, though a critic can fan flames whichever way he wants as much as he likes, it’s really still up to the reader (Or watcher. Reviews in multiple forms of media are making this confusing and very meta.) to decide whether he wants to watch, read or play whatever’s being reviewed. So what exactly should reviewers and critics do?

They need to supply enough information about the stories they review to let potential audiences decide whether the subject matter might appeal to them, talking about themes, atmosphere and acting while avoiding too much exposition, and that’s when criticism may very well border on being the subject of criticism itself.

2009-10-31T09:16:00.001-07:00

The Aiiee of the Storm

People are a fussy lot. Give them glorious servings of almost commercially cheery sunshine and they call it sweltering. Respond by sprinkling a little bit of rejuvenating rainfall and they call it beastly, even going so far as to refer to that meteorological wreck of a place, London.

So it really shouldn't have been much of a surprise that after months of squeaking about how the rainfall quota was far from fulfilled, that they would just let rip with rain and cram a month's rainfall into a period of twenty four hours, like an inexplicably pseudo-American Australian Asian student cramming what should have been six years worth of studying into a weekend. And like any other attempt of the like, both ended up with uncontrollable bouts of sobbing, with the interesting point that both were occurring nation-wide.

In fact, both are uncomfortably relatable topics to me because I'm currently in the midst of both, standing in a bus stop whose architects never heard of combinations of rain and WIND, sobbing about my lack of Chinese vocabulary while wishing that the heavens weren't doing the same.

I've just gotten on a number 198 bus, having made a heroic dash through the gauntlet of rainfall from the bus stop to the entrance of the bus. This bit of getting on and off buses in the rain is another sneaky bit of work by the architects who seem to be determined in getting you wet (Ho Yay). If you've somehow managed to evade the cleansing spray of pristine rain water and the waves of tried and tested road water that's filthy enough to negate any appeal the rain water might have offered, then congratulations, assassin from feudal Japan, but let's see you get through THIS.

But nitpicking aside, the storm that I'm seeing outside of the bus and inside of the world right now, yes, I think it's proven itself enough to be called a storm because really, wow, it's enough to be described as a doozy of a storm, has got to be one of the most intimidating ones I've been in. It's like an eccentric fireworks maker collaborating with a SWAT team. I actually got thrown off by a flash of lightning, actually had to shut my eyes because of the brightness. Also, adding to the storm's organization analogy there, both the fireworks maker and SWAT team have consulted a psychologist for knowing the best time to chuck in some thunder after the victim recovers from the lightning flash prior to that and thinks it's safe to start thinking again.

It's really an impressive, frightening maestro of a storm and the sort that makes you wonder if maybe, just maybe, those crazy anti-global warming environmentalists might be right after all, and if they're going to spit out the proverbial phrase that stings more than any hearty bout of heavenly hell-raising: WE TOLD YOU SO.

2009-09-30T09:56:00.000-07:00

A Rich Atmosphere

The evening might have been described as clear, but "blank" was really a much better word. The sky wasn't really unobstructed. It was more as if the powers that be hadn't quite decided on the aerial agenda for the day. This, some realized, was the astronomical version of being put on hold, and the dreadful prospect of the astronomical version of holding music was briefly considered before being dropped like a fluorescent light that a kid who thought would be really fun to swing around in the dark had dropped, the only difference between the analogy and the analogy's non analogy being that the concept of celestial holding music does nothing for you in the dark but make you have the tendency to mumble.

The air, on the other hand, blurred the boundaries between breathing and suffocating; being so thick that looking up and performing the breaststroke would get you near anywhere, the exception, of course, being places with fresh air, since the lack of anything to push against once you got to pristine places generally meant that you really wouldn't have to DIG your own grave when you went. You just went without much hassle. As such, the inhabitants of areas with air that doesn't get in the way of reading generally use aircraft as a means of aerial transportation, but also as a means of achieving the secondary goal of eventually no longer having to use them.

Days where these conditions were evident were becoming so common that eventually, people might just assume it had always been this way and stop making a big fuss out of it. Which was why people were making as much of a fuss as they could now, while others wondered if they had really ever breathed what could be truly called “air”.

2009-09-30T09:54:00.001-07:00

What we have here is...

The following is an entry written at seven in a morning that I would describe for authenticity's sake as being "bleeding". At the airport, where even a delicious Big Breakfast from Mac's did nothing to stem my grouchiness at the time.

I've just realized, and by just, I mean at around six thirty in the morning in Terminal 3 of the airport, that I get all these great writing ideas at ungodly hours of the night/morning, but at those times my body really isn't capable of understanding "these artistic types" and just can't be bothered putting them into tangible form. So really, my brain's like a writer with a terribly lazy publisher that only operates whenever the brain doesn't, and when it does finally ask my brain for its writing ideas they're already lost underneath stacks of formulas for standard distribution curves and Kotaku news feeds.

So there you go. The startling story of a ruined creative industry in my head.

But maybe sometime in the holidays, like everything else I've wanted to try, I'll get up at at 5 at the morning, abuse my authority as major bodily stockholder and throw my body into my brain's working room and, in a strange physiological inversion, not let it out of there until it comes out with something. Anyone in favor of doing this as a conglomerate, go ahead and poke me, and don't forget to mention why you're doing it.

2009-09-24T09:07:00.000-07:00

A Tentatively Apocalyptic Morning

A wedge of sandy orange light pried my eyes open, not so much as apologizing for the unsavory experience before it pointed out that the celestial bodies were generally in an apocalyptic sort of mood at the moment. They'd apparently had enough of the little blue git, infested with all manner of parasites that they'd told him time and time again to get rid of. He'd apparently grown attached to the swarming abominations and disturbingly enough, didn't seem to mind it when they called him "Mother Earth". This had greatly upset Mars and Venus who were generally very adamant about the clear definition of genders, not that that had anything to do with them since they were planets, but minor details like those certainly weren't going to stop them being filled with righteous fury.

I had discovered this intragalatic dispute when I stepped out of my hostel room and took a quick glance at the sky. The sky was a bright orange, and in between the sun and us was a thick veil of dust that might have suggested that it was probably time for humanity to start going back to their nomadic roots and start living in giant sandcrawlers while scavenging off the ruins of prior civilization for a living. The sky was now an expansive desert of nothingness, the dust in the air passing off for sand and making the sun seem a lot more sweltering than it would have alone.

The desert was complete with bedrock, bedrock that tended to grumble a lot and spit lightning into its giant planet of a spitoon and wasn't quite content with being where it currently was. It spread, its blackness slowly contaminating the nearby orangeness and very soon, you had to look for the orange in the sky before you saw it, which meant that if you unaware of the orangeness to begin with then you would proably lost out on a lot of it.

But it had made a crucial publicity error. It spread so much, became so prevalent that it no longer drew any attention. It became the backdrop for a sky that was filled with nothing but itself, and everyone eventually ignored it. It didn't take this too well. It left, taking the furnace-like shades of orange and the fog of dust with it, leaving behind a vibrantly blue and slightly confused sky by three o'clock in the afternoon.

The weather, if anything, is erratically bipolar.

2009-09-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

No U

It's one of those little things that's always bothered me that would have made for an excellent and intellectually stimulating conversation practically made for accompaniment by a glass of red wine if it weren't for the fact that nearly everyone I know is under the legal drinking age. So that's made me grab this topic, shove it in a bag and throw it in a trunk, lock that trunk then sit on it indirectly with fifteen art history manuscripts as the middlemen, but now, despite still being under the legal drinking age, I'd like to talk about the use of hypocrisy as a defence.

Suppose someone accused someone else of performing something absolutely dastardly, something shamelessly unethical or so far on the opposite end of the spectrum that it deserves a smack on the head, just as a good follow up of matyrdom, like every saint should. The accused then breaks into a smirk, grin, or befittingly of his saint status, an enlightened and gentle smile and says,

"Well, aren't you one to talk?"

His will is done, and the aspiring prosecutor joins Rowan Atkinson on the path from a life of wonder and splendor to that of a linguistically retarded man with an unsettling attraction to teddy bears. He now looks like a moron and the formerly accused is now free to continue his work, but now with double the satisfaction and a huge smirk on his face.

But even aside from the fact that his accuser may have been guilty of hypocrisy, it still doesn't change the fact that the accused hasn't in fact defended himself from anything. He hasn't in anyway refuted the incoming accusation in anyway and he might as well just have pointed how ugly his adversary's tie was, and how ties are a bad idea in general.

And this might all seem well enough and self-explanatory in an over-the- top, one dimensionally portrayed incident like this, but in real life, which tends to have a lot more dimensions and thus a lot more space for the important stuff to get lost in, pointing out that an adversary is guilty of hypocrisy and then shimmying away from the dispute without having to actually defend yourself, and you can do all of that under cheery applause.

I realize that all of this really has a place in Latin terminology so sophisticated it has to be italics: Ad hominem tu quoque. But what I'd like to call attention to is the mind-blowing ease in which it can be performed and the frequency with which it happens.

Then again, I've probably done that several times myself, but I'm not sure that's the point.

Edit: I realized that the fancy Latin phrase that I said had to be in italics was in fact NOT in italics. So yeah. I just went back and edited it in hopes that no one would notice. Then I explicitly wrote an update note at the end.

2009-09-15T17:55:00.000-07:00

Write...

Just yesterday I started writing that dreaded extended essay and I did a little bit of a double take, followed by an intense five minute yawning session. The stuff I wrote was some of the most tasteless bran I'd ever written. If any piece of writing had to come with a glass of water, this would be it.

I can't remember the last time I wrote anything that was particularly insightful, but then again, maybe no one does either. (Well, that was depressing. Never doing that again.)

Should probably dust off the old notepad that doesn't actually physically exist but shh it's an expression. Start writing out whatever first comes to mind and see what dark crannies that leads to.

2009-09-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

Tiiiiooooommmaaaannnn

Posts I wrote during the Tioman trip, in an air conditioned resort room next to the comfortable open air balcony that doesn't try to freeze the living shit out of anything in it, posts that are probably utterly irelevant by this point but that I'm still going to put up anyway.

Day 1

Today's the first day of the bet.

In the elevator, felt a little bit woozy. I'm sure that this is in no way indicative of my future status today.

I've noticed that while Cancy has coffee in her bag, she hasn't drunk it, whereas I've already begun not drinking coffee. Clearly this is why she thought she was going to win. I figure that if I can last till the hyperactivity kicks in for her, it'll be a home stretch all the way.

The sounds of garbled conversations and Bob imparting Malaysian wisdom to all around him and the humming of the bus are... Soothing.

Yellow Submarine is infinitely better as a song you're on a moving bus staring at the sea.

Apparently Cancy drank the cup of coffee and then fell alseep. But coffee takes a while to kick in. It also wasn't a cup of coffee by my prescription so I'm going to try and badger her into drinking another later on.

Watching clouds moving past other clouds in the sunlight. I'm not sure anything beats that.

The ferry is tiny, and it tries to make the trip shorter by freezing its passengers till they get there. But then the boat starts rocking a bit, and that makes up for everything.

I'm writing this as I lie in a comfortable, uncomfortably enough, double bed, but essentially, I'm skeptical that this is in fact primarily an ecology field trip. The food's good, the room's are beyond anything we thought we'd get, and all our rooms are all on stilts and suspended above a scenic pond. I sat there and watched it for a good ten minutes and birds swept down and glanced the water just for dramatic effect before smugly flying away. So the accomodation's wonderful, if not touristy down to the last overpriced detail.

About the fairly minor ecology aspect of this trip, we constructed our Ber-something funnels, made to chase insects out of leaf litter we collected into bottles of soapy water that are to insects what vats of acid are to government agents, with the exception that they actually succeed in killing what they set out to kill.

A while after that we treked over to a forest and planted our eggs while we raked up wads of leaves to the melodious sounds of "O nom nom nom" and "Guns don't kill people".

During dinner, with a complete absence of any leaf litter whatsoever, the kind resort staff supplied customers with a pot of piping coffee at the buffet spread. I decided at the time, for some reason, to point this out to Cancy who very politely enquired if I wanted some. I declined even more politely and started thinking about nothing but the merits of tea for the next few minutes.

I actually intend to start drinking leaf water as a substitute for the bean solution that I love. At least I'll get some sort of hot stimulant in the morning.

Day 2

Can trees go above the canopy? We spent hours measuring trees and we still have no idea. More of a question for the philosophers.

We trekked back to the same spots in the same forest to measure the height and diameter of trees this time. Ants apparently found this objectionable and expressed this in the most dental way possible.

Snorkelling afterward was best described as a tune to the sound of salt water entering nasal cavities, people gawking at the fish circumventing them, and people emulating fishy schoal behaviour but with a camera.

Tragically, the forest night walk was replaced with what sounded like a fairly uninteresting return to the intertidal regions and mangrove. We later found out from those bored or interested enough to go that they ventured down to the mouth of the mangrove's river and saw igneous rock and sand.

Igneous sand is black in color. I don't think I need to explain how this variation in colour is the most awesome thing that could be done with sand.

Day 3

Today was really more of a wrap up than anything else. We went back to collect our quail eggs and got readings indicating that the spots we picked were essentially quail refugee zones. We walked down a bit to one of the other team's sites and found out that that was bollocks, of course. Where one of the teams once had two eggs in their petri dish, they now had three significantly smaller ones.

Leaf litter was also sorted through. At least, I assume it was, since I was busy trying to guess what Vera meant by "the opposite of Malay", which according to her is Indian. A few moments later she was equally confused as us as to why this was so, so it's all good in the end. Taboo is excellent for exposing politically incorrect beliefs.

A while later we were told to embark on a photographic treasure hunt for some organism or the other. My group knew the trauma associated with spending twenty minutes on the first clue and mopping up the remaining eight in fifteen minutes, which I’m sure we all still insist is the fault of the lycan growing on the tree right next to the bar in which we were given the clue which was way too discrete about its lycanthropy for its own damn good. In any case, after we ran to and from the bar where the teachers lazily supervised us in between sips of their martinis, we had the rest of the day to ourselves.

Ideally, the immediate to do would be to gather up a bunch of mates and proceed to scour every reachable inch of the island for amazing sights that we weren’t shown just to demonstrate the monotony of our education system. The problem then was that either a good majority of us had already thought of that an hour before the rest of us did and had already fallen down the crevices of some obscure rock formation elsewhere or had conspired to hide in their rooms and not answer the doors, because Cancy, Adhit and I couldn’t find Dom, Movin or Divya, and there was the general consensus amongst the people that could be found that the people they were looking for couldn’t be found either.

We couldn’t find anyone in the resort, so we figured that we’d try the beaches since we’d been talking about faffing about near the mouth of the nearby mangrove’s river.

All we found at the beaches and the mouth of the river were, respectively, the beaches and the mouth of the river.

So all in all, no people, but still a good find.

Went back a while later to find out from Kylie, who we’d passed by earlier on, that Dom, Divya, Aaron and Movin had shimmied over to the mouth of the river AFTER we left. Movin’s inexplicable disappearance was explained by him creeping over to the nearby forest and swimming in a natural pool by the trail we took earlier on. Dom had declined time alone with Movin based on the prospect of parasites in the water. Movin, being naturally repugnant to all forms of parasites, swam about for a good hour before heading over to join the others in saltier water.

2009-08-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

It is not Dyiiiiing

In about seven minutes, my phone would have unwillingly transferred all of its photos over to my computer, and saved all contacts to its SIM card, and beyond that, it will be laid to rest in a casket of one-time-use plastic and other materials intent on the destruction of the planet. There, it will lie in silence, contemplating the days in which it had a purpose, and the companionship of some wanker who subjected it to all manner of unfair acrobatics and kept whipping it out and pointing it in the direction of the unforgiving rays of the Sun.

It will contemplate the seething ungratefulness that came with comments about the sub-standard quality of its speakers, the unnnecessary hardness of most materials used for paving floors, and the terrifying, moist embrace of an adolescent's lipid-coated face.

And now it will be swapped out for a new model, a superior model, fresh faced and eager to be of service, not knowing yet knowing the terrors of the sweaty trouser pocket and the subtle yet unspeakable torment of dust from the hostel windows, nor the communal sighs of every phone that it passes by, who all remember the days in which they emerged from their motherly packaging into the world newborn.

Even in the last moments of its life it is told to pile its legacy into the trophy cupboards of other electronic devices, those bastards.

But despite all these transgressions commited against this kindly courier, it submits to fate. Partially because it's a phone and it doesn't have a damn say in the matter, but also because it knows that it's done its duty. It's dutifuly played catchy Beatles songs when told to, it's captured glorious suns because no camera was around, and it's saved its person from many a chemistry lesson through shamelessly downloaded mobile games.

Maybe it's also had enough of hanging around with people who pretend to read the minds of electronic devices, but that's just wild speculation.

But now we must part, faithful mobile, and though I shed tears that are suspiciously close in chemical composition to eye drops, parting will be made easier by the fact that I remember you and your services, from the day that Steph called you "champagney" to this very moment.

Fare thee well, K530i.

PS: In all lightheartedness though, it was a decent phone and quite stylish, so thank you Sony Ericsson.

2009-08-18T09:35:00.000-07:00

Just a Stub

He realized that there wasn't any possibility of him getting to his laundry. Not at this hour of the night, or depending on how you looked at it, the wee hours of the morning. He'd always liked to think of himself as an early riser, who apparently shunned the orthodox methods of falling asleep before the act of getting up and simply bypassing being unconscious altogether. That, he'd thought, was really just cutting out the middle man.

No one had really thought it necessary to tell him that sleeping wasn't the destination, but the journey.

2009-08-10T02:18:00.000-07:00

Not a stiff yet

Apologies to my blog.

Work has been piling and there've been many things that've happened that can't be squished into words without much effort and self discipline.

I'm incapable of both, unfortunately.

This blog isn't dead though. It's just... going to be comatose for a bit. And starting to smell.

2009-07-15T09:17:00.000-07:00

I'm not even trying here.

A lot has happened, but first it probably deserves mention that I just had what can actually be considered my first bowl of instant noodles in the hostel.

Alright, so ten minuets or so is stretching the definition of instant to the lengths of "not agonizingly slow", and it's not really the first meal (again, elastic definitions here) of noodles that I've ever had in the hostel, since that putrid polysterene-packed pasta technically counts, but I've never actually experienced the joys of having a steaming bowl, that isn't saturated with CFC, of noodles in the hostel. Until now.

The beauty of the entire moment was tragically stomped into the layers of dust on my room floor when the noodles didn't really taste that good.

I really need to get meatballs or ham. Anything to go with the noodles. And come to think of it, I ought to get noodles.

I'm counting on my hopes that Zeyang never finds out.

But while I'm on the topics of simple joys, I've found a source of euphoria: an alternative to simultaneous decapitation, dismemberment, and dismebowelment, followed by the hearty, alcohol laced bellows of a black scottish cyclops. I've discovered Captain's Ball down at the school track at five in the evening, once every few days or so.

It's especially fun when I get on one of the chairs and everyone starts overcompensating for what is apparently my towering stature. These poorly thought out tosses often result in someone in the canteen spilling his or her drink then swearing very loudly.

But now there's work to do, and I'd better get to it.

2009-07-02T23:17:00.000-07:00

Of Plays and Pulling Plugs

Well, pus.

It looks like the play might not be going on after all. This means that those two weeks of surviving nights on nothing but sheer willpower, coffee, and sleep are probably going down the drainhole that the admin just unplugged, although in fairness, it's also sucking down any chance of this pandemic getting any worse, so I suppose the sacrifice of having our play solicit with RNA viruses in the sewage might be for a worthy cause.

I'm not really sure how to respond to this whole debacle. On one hand, we spent over a month drafting up concepts and writing, and we would really like to just perform it, but on the other hand that has unkempt fingernails that have been to unmentionable places and should have been washed a long time ago if it wasn't for the fact that its owner was a lazy prick, by the time we get this approved, it'll be next week, and that would mean little over a week (if we're lucky) of rehearsals.

That I think, strictly falls under the category of the ridiculous, so if the play's cancelled, it's a bit of a double edged sword, and I can't say that I regret having worked on this script, although just on principle I am angry at the administration.

Well, not really.

2009-06-18T22:24:00.001-07:00

Shit is happening.

Well, the world's a mess, but there's no reason that Iran should.

Go on ahead and read up:

Timeline of major events in Iran and explanation detailing their Rubik's Cube governance system:

http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_political/3354654.html

Twitters you should follow:

http://twitter.com/ProtesterHelp
http://twitter.com/NextRevolution

And something to stop you from unintentionally killing someone:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/16/cyberwar-guide-for-i.html

Shit is happening in Iran and the least we could do is at least follow it with the power of the Interwebs. To quote the fervent, boiling-over-with-righteous-fury Iran election guru Abbeh:

"The revolution will not be televised, it will be tweeted."

2009-06-07T03:47:00.001-07:00

A Trek To and Through

He walked, or rather waded, through the thick, sticky air. Stickiness wasn't a property that you'd commonly associated with air, but unorthodox as it was, this air knew its stickiness inside out. That is, inside and outside of buildings. Even within the giant refrigerator that doubled as a shopping mall, the stickiness of the air was still there, but merely masked underneath the skin's mutually exclusive nature when it came to feeling stickiness and coldness.

He walked past a food court, where the scent of freshly cooked omelette creeped its way through the viscous atmosphere, and found its way to his nostrils. He took a deep, hospitable breath, but timed it wrong and inhaled just as he walked past the nearby dumpster. His lungs quickly kicked out the stinking, drunken stench out of the respectable premises of his respiratory system.

He wasn't here to skulk around the bins though. Where he was headed to was the park just across the road, which also doubled as a line drawn between the park and garbage bag territory. Nothing, even smells, passed across that motorway from one side to the other. This agreement was facilitated by the thick mist of exhaust, ensuring that if any smells DID find their way to the other side of the road, the leftovers of ignited gasoline would bury them quickly.

Scaling the overhead bridge, he found himself looking at a tall grey tower, constricted by two red frames of metal that didn't serve any purpose other than to hastily draw attention away from the dull grey. They twisted around the rigid, honest-to-god perfectly vertical slab of grey, but not smoothly in a perfect spiral. They opted for an approximation of a spiral, shooting off in a straight line and then changing direction sharply at a rigid angle. The overall effect was something that sort-of-spiralled, but wasn't too concerned with the details.

He didn't see the two electronic billboards at the side of the tower until he followed the curved path down from the overhead bridge. These boards displayed the sides of dice, and every few seconds or so they jumbled themselves and displayed a different number. He'd known from his previous but equally misguided visits to the park that this was the dice tower, built to administrate the overall board game theme of the park. There was a Ludo garden somewhere off to the left and a Snakes and Ladders trail to the right, but the subtle infusion of plant life into these "boards" meant that no one knew that they were supposed to be life-sized game boards. So everyone tragically assumed that the dice tower's flickering billboards were to be addressed by National Parks, which of course, didn't do anything about the non-existent malfunctions. So the dice tower stood there, faithfully jumbling its electronic dice once every few seconds, but for no reason at all.

He realized that he could see the billboards clearly today, owing to the absence of an easily discernable sun. Today, a glare guard had been fitted over the sky. The normally distinct circular glow of the sun became what the glow of a lightbulb behind a sheet of frosted glass became: a panel of light.

Following no road in particularly except one based on avoiding the groups of indian workers spread out across the park with almost nomadic inconsistency. (It really wasn't so much of a racial thing. He would have avoided groups of chinese workers, or even just chinese people in general, as long as they were bigger than he was. Even if they had been individually smaller than him he would have summed up their body masses while calculating the odds.)

The thought that this geometrically planned picnic mat of nature in a field of concrete and people was a good place to get lost occured to him. Unfortunately the thought had occured to a few other people as well, thus ruining the prospect of getting lost for every one of them.

(Would you look at that! It has been continued! Well, a little bit. I think the tone of writing in the previous paragraphs that I liked so much has slipped under the table and rolled off somewhere to germinate and scoff at meatball trees in a couple of years time.)

2009-05-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

Horrigins
A review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine

There are valuable life lessons to be learnt from the colossally proclaimed treasure trove of rotting cheese that is Hollywood, and just today, I learnt that things in life tend to work themselves out as long as you snarl a lot and have the ability to sprout bone claws from your knuckles.

And that seems to be what the entire of X-Men Origins: Wolverine is about. The entire movie can be very aptly summed up as Hugh Jackman snarling a lot and stabbing people, and when he's not stabbing people, partaking in all manner of socially unacceptable actions and brooding in the dark shirtless. In an attempt to really highlight his pursuits of the intellectual, he takes a merry jog across a meadow naked.

But Jackman's revelations aside, there are many things to be said about this movie, and they're best said after acknowledging that there are two possible audiences for this film.

The first is inevitably the armies of X-Men fandom that walk amongst us unseen. Quite fortunately, I don't happen to be a part of this demographic all that much. My background knowledge about Wolverine and the other mutants that star in this series of moving pictures is best summed up as everything that's on Wikipedia, and easily accessible to anyone who's looking for some entertainment if Youtube videos won't load at a pace that isn't rivalled by that of the Blob's. (Alright, alright, I just found out after reading the wikipedia article on the Blob that he's able to run fairly fast. But shut up now, this only proves my point.)

The second possible audience for this film is consists of anyone who's looking for a spectacular potpourri of explosions, sparks, and people leaping at each other while yelling battle cries that would make Leonidas cringe.

The third completely non-existent (statistically) audience is composed of hopefuls that think that there's the potential that Origins might actually have a decent amount of character development and intellectually stimulating dialogue. To get a better idea of my opinion on this after watching the movie, picture someone hoping that the movie will possess the aforementioned qualities, in the form of a thought bubble hovering about their heads. Now picture this thought bubble being viciously shredded to pieces by a furious Hugh Jackman who is now standing behind the doomed hopeful while panting very, very heavily, claws fully extended.

Allow me to explain this whole thing by giving a bit of an introduction to the movie. Origins covers the a-bit-of-a-bloody-giveaway origins of the mutant Wolverine, from X-Men, who possesses the ability to sprout bone claws from his knuckles and regenerate a ridiculous amount of flesh and bone (No, really. I'm not just referring to the inexplicable protagonist shield. He really does have this power.) It basically starts off with him as a rather sickly child sulking in the 19th century. His fate as a the subject of a blockbuster movie allows him to live all the way till the present day while looking exactly the same, all the while slaughtering chockloads of people with his half brother Sabertooth. Eventually the snarling duo join some secret government team of mutants and go around abusing African villagers, which upsets Wolverine deep inside his fuzzy heart and makes him leave.

You can see precisely where this is going.

I can't really give away anymore of the storyline because that would spoil the entire thing, but thank goodness that isn't really possible, since Origins is going to disappoint hardcore comic fans and anyone who so much dares to hope for a storyline. Comic canon is broken even more than the realism of the human physique in this movie, and the storyline is can essentially be summed up as a series of events, which in all of them, Wolverine gets extremely angry at a particular person and proceeds to try and stab him, while slaughtering and intimidating boring, blank slates of ordinary people and other mutants. The whole thing simply feels like an excuse for Hugh Jackman to rip things apart while snarling. The whole thing seems to be stitched together and even Hugh Jackman's regenerative abilities wouldn't save it.

But I hear you say "Ah, but kind sir. Is that not a perfectly legitimate direction for a blockbuster movie to take? Things blowing up and innocent African villages being terrorized are perfectly acceptable forms of entertainment." This would have been fine (except the terrorising of African villagers.) had it been executed with more flair. During the course of this automated beat em' up, Wolverine performs many action movie staples, such as being chased by a chopper while on a bike, and then proceeding to destroy both to an equal extent, despite the fact that he wasn't even trying to do that to one of them. He does plenty of pouncing and stabbing and so on, but all of it feels rather bland and doesn't feel like anything we haven't already seen. Most of the action is really just composed of Wolverine or his brother being stabbed in someplace nasty, which the audience responds to by cringing and making a plethora of supposedly sympathizing sounds, but that's all there is to the action. This is inevitably trouble since that's all there might have had been to begin with.

So that's what the entire thing is: A series of rather bland action scenes stitched together by a dilute storyline that swooshes down the drain without much fuss. If you've got ten dollars or so that you need to desperately rid yourself off because they have a terrible secret written on them that marks you as the target for some undoubtedly religiously funded organization of assassins, then by all means, purchase a ticket for X-Men Origins: Wolverine and leave the cinema pondering that maybe fleeing from those assasins in the two hours spent watching the film would have been vastly more thrilling.

2009-04-21T08:57:00.001-07:00

Walking a Lonely Rope

This seems to be an odd thing, and in fact completely impossible, thing be doing in a building, and in a very small room, in fact, but I'm walking on a tightrope. I've been doing that since nearly a year ago, before which I was rather contented to stand on the side of the tightrope and watch people nearly teeter over and point at them and go "Whoa, that guy nearly teetered over!"

Well, I suppose there must have been something appealing about it, since a while later I jumped on (or rather, was dragged on by a group of very persistant people and after a while, I found that I rather liked it). So for a solid nine months, I've been walking on this not-so-much-solid-as-wobbly tightrope (that you've provided figured out is metaphorical by now and if you haven't, then never attempt a conversation with say, Mr Valles) and I've found several things to be true.

It's very hard to overtake people when you're on the tightrope, and when you try doing that you end up falling over because people that are in front eventually get annoyed after a while and inevitably start displaying their amazing ability to kick behind them while still staying on the tightrope. So after a while you decide you might as well just admire their posteriors and tiptoe behind them at a pace that could almost be described as "merry", except that there's nothing very "merry" about the whole business of getting kicked if you don't.

It's also fiendishly difficult just staying on the infernal cord. It gets very tempting at times to simply lean over to one side, since you've got the justification that you could quite easily compensate by leaning over to the other side ready, which comes in quite handy when you're looking for an explanation as to how you ended up lying down and staring up at people walking on a tightrope, the point at which the you now might turn to the you then and very sardonically raise one eyebrow and declare this whole idea to be "Perfectly executed". The response is usually silence, although if the fall was traumatic enough a "shut up" might be heard.

So what I'm doing right now is creeping along on this piece of rope, hoping that I don't fall and if I do, then someone might think me lying in the mud an eyesore and yank me out (Quiet, children) of it and slap me down (I said settle down) onto the line that seems to be standing in for a compass that said it'd be back in a while and it just had to settle this one thing.

I hope it gets back soon, because everytime I look at my feet I know precisely how I stand on the line.

2009-04-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

Squatting Ideas

Every so often, and I really mean this, I'll find myself sitting in a school canteen where dustbins have been liberated of the social obligation to wear their lids, and I'll hear a distant voice of a rather nasal and high pitched quality proclaim something nearly as annoying as itself.

These incidents happen to coincide very closely with the times in which I start weighing all the pros and cons of the Internet. Usually, the nasally voice is allowed to continue with its gummy bear muffled ramblings since the alternative would mean me getting closer to its source, but I still can't help but wonder during those moments whether the Internet's advantages outweigh the terrible scourge of most Internet memes.

Yes, that's going to be the topic of this article, and while you're probably digging trenches for the rhetoricky, rant-ish invasion about why can't all these people just grow up and start making up phrases of their own, that's only going to be part of this article. The other part is hopefully going to be a soulful attempt to remember what memes used to be. The end of this paragraph's probably a good place to start, so let's get to it then.

Memes, when you boil away the thick black coating of Rickrolls and bodily fluid exchange, are really just recurring or continuous ideas within a society that are transmitted from one mind to another by way of a completely mentionable act: communication. And that's never been easier (seeing as how technology tends to get better in every aspect other than eco-friendliness when going forward in time) given advent of the Internet, phones and large buildings with nice hollow spaces right in their middles which make it very hard for you to have affairs (or one, if you'd like) with your attractive secretary(s).

So with the mention of the Internet and its ability to proliferate memes like a cold does in a Chinese train, the thought of testing the durability of your router may have occured to you. But hold that thought for a second. Memes are something more. (No, just put the router down. Really. It's not going to be worse.)

Every form of "received wisdom" is a meme. The concept of wearing clothing (some, at least) in public or not going spelunking in your nostrils (those who do have developed apathy shields that would greatly ensure their survival in the event that Halley's Comet came over to grab its belongings. So on further reflection we're mostly safe.) are all memes. They're generally well accepted ideas that have been deeply rooted into many different cultures, and the cultures that don't have these memes are either exiled or considered "damned outrageous". And the thing is, many memes have served us well, because without memes, it would be practically impossible to get anything done with large groups of people (With the exception of rioting. On second thought, scratch that. Rioting's no exception.) because of the absence of a common idea or set of ideas that unifies them in some way. If it weren't for the meme that stealing and murdering were bad, we wouldn't have a legal system. If it weren't for the meme that goats are by no means a form of standardized (or vending machine compatible) currency, we wouldn't have, well, currency.

Memes, we can clearly see at this point, are ludicrously two sided (the number of two sides there are is impossible to conceive). It can either be the trusty concrete that we have our riots on or the sewer of humanity where our last hope, in the form of very talented humanoid turtles, lies. So the problem isn't the existence of memes, but rather recognizing which ones should be existings and which ones shouldn't.

Because while memes can be useful foundational ideas, they can also become the equivalent of soft plywood supports for one of those kampong houses. It seemed like a great idea at the time when the rest of the house was made of soft plywood and its inhabitants consisted of the ocassional hummingbird that would fly off once the boards started creaking, but when its inhabitants atart consisting of walking things the whole thing starts to fall apart.

My point here is that memes can squat on mental chairs that should really be given to new ideas after a good dusting. While some foundational memes may have been excellent several decades ago, they start to lose their appeal and usefulness today. (The example of wearing clothing comes in here again, and it's nice to know that we're going full circle and that all we need to do is start talking to serpents again.) The problem with getting rid of such memes, though, is that they really don't want to get off their arses, because some have been so deepy imbedded in our culture that getting rid of them seems unthinkable. (Like say, in the case of hoping for a Hollywood film that doesn't have a romance thrown in like soya sauce on ice cream.)

So they sit there and shove away any new ideas that want to so much as offer them some Pocky. They end up being there for the sake of being there, and then the process of creating new ideas starts making funny gurgling noises that aren't very funny at all in retrospect.

Internet memes being used so often in some conversations is a clear example of this. Once people start using those memes as placeholders for phrases that haven't been echoed by at least one world, then no other ideas can.

Memes need to be constantly rexamined to make sure that they aren't irrelevant, and deciding whether they're irrelevant or not is going to take a lot of notepaper and a good supply of Pocky.

2009-04-12T10:08:00.000-07:00

Persuasive Accomodation

A few hours ago I did so relieve myself of the loads that made me suspect for a brief moment that I might have been detained for illegal immigration, and in a startling moment I flopped down (More of a roll on my back. The legs did flop down though, if that's any comfort) on my hostel bed and uttered one of the more startling things of the week.

"Yay, I'm back."

I'm trying desperately to rationalize this action as simply having been a slip of the tongue into oblivion, and then I realize, with several generous servings of dismay sprinkled lightly with stir fried hopelessness, that the expression (the smug bastard) is probably right. I've seen the hostel so often that it's probably becoming my default accomodation, whereas my actual home is becoming something akin to one of those summer houses in Zanzibar that you can only take the word of your estate agent that it still exists.

So for the time being, I've been constantly reminding myself of the perils of hostel life to hopefully bump this hostel room down a bit on my list of preferred accomodation, and since the list consists of two kinds of accomodation at this point, my actual home and this room, then it shouldn't be too hard to bump it down to the required level of tastelessness.

So if anyone does see me in the hostel, please try your best to make my stay here as unbearable as possible.

2009-03-30T07:37:00.000-07:00

Spotfrights

Few roles in a play let you feel as close to divinity as fiddling around with the lighting. And I'm not talking about fiddling with a set of tiny switches backstage while you tell yourself that truly, this is as close as you get to divinity. I'm talking about sitting in the control room, pompously or not, depending on your choice, and getting what is perhaps the most authoratative view in the entire theatre and then deciding who gets to be visible on-stage. Believe me when I say that power trips are equally likely to happen with the director and the elevated elite in the control room.

At least, that's the impression you get of the job at first, until you're tasked with something requiring about three hands and fingers of lengths that would anger any pianist into attacking you. The moment you enter the control room in your (well, my, actually) hazey power trip, you are greeted with a panaroma of knobs and switches that would look suspiciously familiar to anyone who's been to one of those open houses showcasing cockpit interiors.

There's what can only be described as an absolute spread of switches in the control room, and that's for lighting alone. There are fill light switches for nine sections of the stage, individual spotlights for each of those nine sections, then an additional larger spotlight for each of those nine sections again. Then there's additional switches for adjusting the color of the cyclorama (A funky screen that would have appealed greatly to the Beatles. Basically a screen disguised as a wall at the back of the stage that can change color in the most psychedellic manners.), and finally two random switches for side stage spotlights. I think that covers about three quarters of the switches. There's an additional (a very trendy word by this point) quarter somewhere that probably requires the synchronized turning of two keys or something along those lines.

Anyway, it's this mind boggling number of switches that really makes the lighting job very difficult. The nice lady that was kind enough not to leave us floundering (mostly out of concern for the equipment) drew us a reference diagram of sorts for the different numbers of the lights and which portions of the stages they corresponded to. It really did make things a lot simpler so all me and Damien were left with was frustration. Since the diagram wasn't divided into a table with labels like A3 or B4 or anything that would help you visualize positions, and so the switches weren't labelled in that manner, we ended up having to constantly refer to the tiny table scrawled (very kindly) in blue ink under the pseudo-illumination of the small lamp that you're allowed during the operation of the lighting, since the control room is apparently tasked with the role of housing the invisible machinations that run the show from behind.

So we did a rather shoddy job of allowing the hypothetical audience to see the faces of our undoubtedly nervous, and therefore grateful actors. But something rather surprising happened halfway through the last run.

We started improvising a bit. As opposed to referring to the terribly written (by us, I should add) set of lighting cues based on the script, we started improvising. We knew what was going to happen when and where, so we started referring to the diagram (not written by us, I should add again) and turning up whatever lights we thought were necessary. All this in very angry whispers in the dark.

I suppose as you do this again and again the numbers corresponding to the different lights become a vital part of your anatomy, and that would explain the labelling deficiency, and clearly we've yet to achieve that.

But regardless, it was fun, and it really was the sort of thing that's going to keep me from throwing my arms up and yelling at the people in the control room "How hard can it be to get some damned lights on?"

2009-03-24T09:49:00.001-07:00

Footnotes while on the Run

Hello there.

A bit of brief writing before I return to bed from whence I crawled.

I was just in the process of rushing an application for the purposes of entering the mystical NRP, or Nanyang Research Programme, if you're pedantic about that sort of thing or if you're giving a speech and you have to let the nice ladies and gentlemen know precisely what they're attending the speech for.

The whole process of signing up for the project was a bit finicky, but I suppose that's all part of the process of being incredibly complicated. Well, not really. I can't really complain, though a terrible misintepretation about the concepts of am and pm led to my submission of the form being about ten hours late, which somehow seems more erroneous than one day when you write it down.

There hasn't really been much time for writing over the last two days, and the barrage of tests will finally descend into rancid waters while waving their neatly typed tentacles in the air and making all manner of screeching noises, then it'll probably take about a week or so for them to reemerge the very badly damaged (though still freshly shiny) reactor of a long-sunken nuclear submarine that was previously unaccounted for.

Quite honestly I'll be quite glad once this whole test period is over.

I mean, life's about doing the other work, isn't it?

2009-03-14T06:30:00.000-07:00

Of Knee Jerks and Explosives

It was not a few weeks ago that I sat rather dismayed in the school canteen, and was bracing myself for the increasingly threatening AP Chemistry class looming on the horizon, its view denied to me by the school (compound). After a while I gave up trying to stare through opaque concrete and look like whatever organs in my body were responsible for generating hope had been extracted by way of liposuction, I attempted to proceed up the stairs when I was stopped by the principal in this particular course of action.

Well, I wasn't really stopped by the principal. Not directly at least, though he did hint that he would appreciate if I wasn't in my class by making an announcement calling for a gathering in the school hall, a gathering that was to be attended by a good amount of everyone.

So about five nerve wracking, nostril assaulting minutes later I found myself seated in the hall next to an entire row (or column, depending on whether you were viewing everything from a bird's eye view, which if you weren't, would mean that that particular group of students would be standing on seated one each other's shoulders) of people with bags of kimchi that were digging away at the side of their Ziploc bags with spoons they managed to sneak out of the compound's cafeteria.

This continued for a good twenty minutes or so, during which we were continuously reminded to contact anyone that wasn't here to make sure that they weren't in danger of being harmed by whatever was in the school compound (or not), not that there was necessarily any danger since that hadn't been announced yet, but it was absolutely vital that anyone missing was to be accounted for, lest they... not be here.

And after what seemed analogous to a nervous, tie-wearing, thick spectacled acountant finally getting down on his knees beside a gorgeous woman that he's known for about twenty minutes and popping the question, the administration finally called upon the superintendant from the nearby police station to give us a bit of an exposition as to why there was no reason to panic.
The reason why there was no reason to panic was that a "war relic" had been discovered in a construction site not far off from the school, and while there wasn't any danger to anyone in the school, our rather convenient distance from the war relic made us a candidate (and winner) for being a base of operations for the getting-rid-of-war-relic procedures.

And it was at that point that a good amount of atmospheric murmuring (rather loud murmuring, as the sound of over a thousand people speaking in hushed voices tends to be) was heard, though the superintendant did say that wasn't anything to be worried about and that the disposal and school hijacking procedures were completely safe to anyone that wasn't the kind of person that wanders into construction sites for no reason.

Dr Hang then concluded with the stirring instruction that we all bugger off for the rest of the day to ensure that we didn't annoy the nice policemen, save for those staying in the hostel, of course, who buggered off across the field to wander about the structural integrity of its foundations.
So that was a rather eventful episode, but what was particularly interesting was the reactions of the school population.

Before the news was broken, there was a ridiculous amount of frantic speculation, and a good number of people looking very grim and staring into the distant clouds, commenting that if the administration was doing its best to account for every single person in the school then there was sure to be a proper reason for such measures, and that reason was probably almost as grim as they were.

There was also an observable population that was rather prophetic, insisting that they had heard from credible sources that could not be named that it was most definitely a bomb that they had discovered nearby.

There was a good number of people annoyed at the twenty minute wait, and there was at least one individual that was annoyed by the nearby scent of kimchi.

The varying degree of responses to the single event of an assembly that not yet justified is interesting, and to a certain degree, amusing.

This amusement is further fed by the crowd's reactions after the reason for the assembly was revealed. Some immediately started looking for nearby exit signs while others evangelized the truth of the "war relic" being explosives. There seemed to be a recurring theme of either "the police aren't telling us the truth of what the relic is" or "the police aren't telling us that we're not actually safe". And to the latter response, you have to ask the question: Why?

Why wouldn't the authorities (a more faceless, authoritarian term for "police" here) reveal that we were in danger, and proceed to evacuate us if we were? While there existed the possiblity that they wanted to keep panicking to a minimum, there wouldn't have been much possiblity of it spontaneously detonating after it was discovered and the authorities were alerted, and there wouldn't have been any chance that they would have started working on sending it on its merry, explodey way till everyone was safely evacuated. The suspicion that the authorities or the government is hiding vital information from the people it is meant to protect/ the country's citizens is a knee jerk reaction that could potentially make someone walk funny if we aren't careful.

But maybe these suspicions are vital to maintaining the integrity of our national system. If we enquire, we open the possiblity of ignorance. But all that considered, surely we could have done that in a manner that didn't involve flailing our arms to make references to Hindu mythology.
And the twitch reaction aside, there was the rather paradoxical reaction of cheering after Dr Hang declared the rest of the day to be absolutely nothing. It was a rather impressive leap from people construction conspiracy theories and fearing for their lives to overall cheerfulness at the prospect of a break for the rest of the day.

That was nowhere near the leap of witnessing my entire cluster gather in a single room and cheering at the aftermath of the bomb actually being disposed off in a completely un-subtle fashion. And as I stood there trying to get a glimpse of the disappointingly, not-very-devastated construction site, I thought to myself, we sure have strange selection of responses to the prospect of adversity.

2009-02-27T22:09:00.000-08:00

Dear Diary

Hello there WordPad. There's been something I've been meaning to discuss with you lately, and it's about the whole concept of people talking to inanimate objects. No, no one needs any help of any sort. I'm talking about something that's fairly commonplace and that people don't really take issue to much. I'm talking (for about the second time now) about the topic of diaries.

No one really seems to be bothered by the fact that when someone writes in a diary, they're not recording the events of their day for the purposes of tabulation, or to maximize their door opening efficiency. What people that write diaries are really doing is talking to an inanimate object. They tell their tiny little books about things that happened today at work that are responsible for the creases on the back cover of the very same book, and that they're very sorry about creasing it, but they just need to get this all out so that they feel much better.

Diaries become a form of very submissive, accomodating, and in all aspects, incapacitated confidants. They can't really argue back about how compromise would have been a great thing in that situation or that the writer really is that much of a hindrance to the mental processes of others. In fact, when you think about, they can't really agree with anyone either.

Or maybe some people don't use a diary for the purposes of ranting. Some uses them to record thoughts and ideas and fantasies and the sort of things that would get them funny looks and would most probably end up having their daily actions recorded by someone else.

What diaries offer is something that human beings simply aren't capable of offering, and that also means that neither is a substitute for the other. Diaries are an entirely different market in terms of social interaction. They provide a neither agreeing, nor disagreeing companion, that doesn't say a word till you're done, and in fact, doesn't say a word once you're done anyway. What they offer is something that you can talk to without ever having your unique or strange ideas and perspective shot down before you've had a chance to fully get them out. Diaries are essentially psychological vaccum cleaners.

Wouldn't you agree?

2009-02-26T07:47:00.000-08:00

Things that Rooms Say

One of the greatest frustrations I've experienced when it comes to writing is that when I set out to do it, I usually don't get very much done at all. The creative process usually involves me sitting at my desk, tapping the table as if trying to extract whatever ideas might be burrowing under its nonchalant woody surface, and often shifting over to lean on the hand I'm not leaning on, possibly under the assumption that if the screen in front of me is viewed at a particular angle, magical glowing words will emerged from the sparkling ruins of the screen and present me with an idea.

Another of the greatest frustrations I've experienced when it comes to writing is that I just can't seem to do it in a word processor. This doesn't make much sense at the first thought given my legal history with handwriting, but what I mean here is that I can never seem to write an article or blog entry when I'm trying to do it in a word processor, yet ideas gush out at a rate envied by Asian floods whenever I talk to somebody on Windows Live Messenger. It's the most infuriating sensation to have had a wonderful conversation (Misnomer really. The person on the other end usually just sits there and blinks, and coughs up a one word response like "okay".) with someone, and then to sit and stare at what you've written over the last five minutes only to realize that it would have been a lot more beneficial to your literary ego had you done all of that in a word processor, as opposed to chucking the lot at some bewildered person who really just wants to get on with reading sappy fanfiction.

And the exact thing happened to me not too long ago when I had a conversation with Kylie about rooms. The subject of the conversation was initially how barren and depressed her room looked like after she had taken all of her postcards, posters, poems and alliterations down to accomodate her brother whom she was letting to move in because she was "nice". The subject then shifted to what her brother had in his room and how the very same room that she thought looked dejected would be troubled and deranged given a month's time. And then I commenced my solliloquy regarding rooms.

Rooms seem to say things, and while this is the sort of thing that could very well earn me a jacket with comically long sleeves I don't mean this in the literal sense. Rooms are mostly mute, but a quality they do seem to possess is the ability to convey a certain message based on the things in them.

Even an empty room says something, usually something something along the lines of "Hello, I'm empty. I don't really like this."
A room painted a eye-eviscerating pink would probably convey the message that it desires is the state's recognition of its freedom, while a room painted a relaxing coffee colour with patterned lampshades, a somewhat obese looking sofa possibly responsible for the obesity of people, and with all floral curtains drawn urges you in a reserved, butlery sort of voice to "let me take your hat and jacket for you sir, just sit down and I'll fetch you your loungue jacket." Rooms, as a whole including the things that are in them, seem to tell you precisely what their purpose is.

My hostel room, for instance, seems to constantly remind me in a mental voice befitting of humorless public relations officer that I am currently residing in an institution, and that I should probably take a rest so that I may resume my studies the next day and achieve great things and possibly break a few ethics along the way. The overall demeanour of the room tells me that I'm in a building built for the purposes of educational accomodation, and that I can't deny it. But precisely what it is that gives me that impression, I can't quite say. Perhaps it's the stock-like feeling off the room, so much that you can imagine thousands of the same room being churned out in automated factories in China and shipped over in plastic packages, but overall it does say "Sleep here so you can study later."

My hostel room also occasionally tells me it's probably time for the 10:35 role call, though it's a while later that I find out that that room happens to have actually come from China, and enjoys sleeping with nothing but striped underwear on. About a minute later I find out that that was my roommate, and not really much of a room at all.

And amidst all this imaginary conversations with accomodation I'm not quite sure why rooms seem to say anything at all. Maybe it's the accumulated features of the room by way of our contribution that speak of our personalities (or hygeine standards), which end up conveying a message, or in the case of an empty room, the lack of it. Perhaps a room is the best example of the accumulated visible effects of things that we leave behind, slowly piling together in corners the location of which you can't explain, though you're pretty sure you once knew why those things were there.

I'm not really sure how to conclude this, but I'm going to anyway by stopping right here, and might possibly hit the sack (no other word for this blast door of a mattress), and be reminded its quality.

2009-01-23T07:50:00.000-08:00

Byestreet 21

I'm sitting in my room right now, and just for the purposes of context here, I'd like to point out that I really am sitting in my room. My room, as opposed to the room that was assigned to me that faces the highway, spouting up copious amounts of exhaust and soot, as if the drivers are trying to convey their mutual hate for me and my luxury of sleeping at that hour while they are condemned to slogging it down the highway in their comfortably air conditioned vehicles. But anyway, I really am sitting in the room belonging to me, the one facing the rather large field that spews out colonies of exotic insects that asail my room light while I express my envy at the lady who sells drinks at our school, who happens to own a bug zapper shaped like a tennis racket, with a rather intimidating lightning-bolt in the center of it. Truly, that device is the closet you will ever get to reliving Greek mythology.

Back to the topic of me being in my room: I love it. I've never quite appreciated my room, with its dastardly pink cupboards, constantly declaring their pride in their lifestyle choices, the gaudy shade of green that plagues the walls, verging on breaking into the chorus of "Give Peace a Chance", and the haphazard combination of pillows on my bed, with pillow cases of such random variety that they emulate a family with siblings of stupidly different age groups. One has clothed bears on it, apparently going through some sort of species identity crisis, while another seems to be channelling its desire to be a kaleidoscope. But while they're all so terribly gaudy they're an essential part of the monstrosity that is my room. And I've never really been very fond of it until the point where seeing the same room appear in every single door on nearly every single floor got slightly monotonous at times. The rooms in the hostel differ only in terms of which tired, homesick people they contain, so it's refreshing to be blinded by the psychedelic qualities of my room again.

But it wasn't so much my room that I thought about after returning from a fairly gruelling day of setting people on fire and pushing back carts filled with explosives that could possibly set people on fire. I had a brief exchange with the wonderful Irsyad (this here being just for him) on what we would first do upon getting home (our respective ones), and I did so reply that the first thing I would do would be to get a pot, pour some water into it and set fire to that water, then once that water had enough I would proceed to unload a good chunk of noodles, an egg, and a few frozen wantons into the mixture, then let it burn a bit more just to make a point. The point being that I would probably be really hungry by then, and that I couldn't remember the last time I cooked noodles for supper in the whimsically described "wee hours" of the night (possibly morning based on the general wee-ness of the day/night at that point), though I can remember that it definitely wasn't in the last three weeks.

So while I was actually doing that, I stood around and admired the semi-sheen that the kitchen floor had. I wasn't used to it, since over the last three weeks I had been more accustomed to admiring how much of the floor I could see. There were a few specks of dirt near the stove, but drastically different compared to the few specks of stove in the hostel pantry.

At that point the contents of the pot aimed to change that and it occurred to me that I should probably adhere to the Geneva Convention and just eat the damn thing.

It was very tasty. Very much tastier than I had remembered it being. But then again, maybe it wasn't so much the actual food that was tasty, which I thought was the only possible case till this point. Maybe it was the clean chairs that contributed to the tastiness of the noodles, hopefully through indirect means. Maybe it was the fact that I could finally cook that bowl of noodles that made it so much tastier. Maybe it was everything but the food that made it so good.

I remember, this sentence adding at least twenty years to my age just by writing it, that there used to be a restaurant called Baystreet 21 at IMM. It had a very conservative, leathery sort of colour scheme to it, and there were dim hanging lights that exhumed photoscopic veils onto the tables. There was also this big wooden board with a ship relief carved onto it. Soft lounge music would play in the background while you carved into your Dory, making the lounge music an impromptu hymn, but that's killing my point here. My point is that it was cozy. It felt sophisticated and comfortable. The food may not be as good as I remembered, but the actual place definitely was.

Now, the place has been renovated into a diner's about as organized as my pillows, with very large tomatoes and lettuce covering the walls of the place, some of which were provided by customers leaving in disgust. The whole place looks like a McDonald's branch, and the only thing missing here is a Reminiscence meal of some kind. The food isn't even that good anymore. But then again, maybe the food just as good as it used to be. Maybe it's not the actual food that's declined, but the overall restaurant. But then again, maybe what I remembered it to be simply appears so perfect because of nostalgia or some other vague poetic term. Maybe that warm, pleasant Baystreet 21 never really was that toasty and enjoyable, but I still miss it all the same.

2009-01-16T07:23:00.001-08:00

The Hostel California

Well it's been a gruelling two weeks so far, which tend to be slightly better on Mondays, when they actually serve porridge, which isn't all that bad, and in actual fact I can't really complain about the whole concept of staying at the hostel during the weekdays and jumping onto a number 198 bus and having to trek home on the weekends while carrying a laptop that would have rather stayed at the hostel and plugged itself into the morbidly, sky blue colored LAN cable dangling from the LAN port next to my bed that I was too lazy to remove from, and proceed to wistfully watch Fry and Laurie videos till 2am in the morning.

People have taken a lot of different approaches to having to stay in the hostel. Some people squeal with delight every time the friendly, charming hostel biometric scanners beep twice and beam an approving green, while others (I might be mistaken here) attempt to poke out that stupid little bastard's eye out with their fingernails after having been rejected for the fifth time in a row. Others remember that they should be going up to do their laundry and come down to the library just in time to study, but I'm sure that we can all describe these studious, dilligent students as negligible. Well, not so much, actually, or rather, many. Lots of people find that it's a lot easier for them to get work doen when they are stringently enforced to do so, which is something that equally unenthusiastic classmates can never really contribute to much, so it's nice to see people experienced in totalalitarianism take up the matter into their own cold, leather gloved hands.

But what I've noticed (the party's over, is it?) is the drastic difference in responses to hostel life from various people, and while that might have happened with other issues in the past, it's never been something that's been so evident, especially when the effects of their enthuasiasm/hemlock are clearly visible for two weeks. It's at the end of those two weeks when the stances that people take to the same conditions really start to show, and I'm wondering if they might eventually even out in a few months time, and we might all start reverting back to normality, at least until we all have to go home at the end of the year and have trouble trying to find the biometric scanners on our apartment doors.

2008-12-22T23:52:00.000-08:00

The Abandonwagon

Every night when I sleep in the comfort of my warm, soft, and on nights when I feel particularly lonely, a little bit damp, pullout bed, I stare at the ceiling wondering about how long I can possibly keep putting things into to the massive cupboard on my left before it decides to publicly remind me of what it had in it, mostly old worksheets collected over the years that I've simply been too lazy to throw out. The worrying is often compounded by the fact that the cupboard is located on my right and a few metres up, which isn't so much of a problem if it stays a few metres up, but further assessments of the structural integrity of wood have forced me to dart quickly to the side everytime I open the cupboard.

The strange thing is that even though these old worksheets pose a potential threat to my ability to impress the citizens of Flatland, I simply don't have the motivation to clear them out, which isn't much of a problem anyway since I'm able to quite easily and conveniently rationalize that they are there for the purposes of book-keeping, and that the administration of the school might one day call upon me to resubmit work for exhibition and demonstration purposes, thus allowing me to contribute to the fullest to any Green Week events and so on. But the truth is, I've never had any reason to touch any of the old worksheets that still sit grumpily in the top of the cupboard while investing in the acquisition of exotic fungi. It's been years since I've even looked through any of the documents that I put up there. But the thing is, all these worksheets are the (unwanted) results of late night toiling and contributions to the coffee business, and it just seems terribly wasteful to allocate them into the black void of the rubbish chute. I just want to keep them for absolutely no reason.

Now let's just assume for the sake of linking this to the topic I'm about to discuss that someone wants my old worksheets for reference purposes. Ignoring the obvious integrity violations that come with that, let's just say that I refuse to give it to them on the grounds that they are my worksheets and I have the right to not give it to them. They might argue that I'm simply not using them anymore, so why not let them have it?

And let's just assume, for the sake of the argument that I haven't even told you about here, that someone else had already photocopied my worksheets in the past, and for the reason that I wouldn't give anyone else my worksheets, started making copies of that worksheet and distributing it to those who wanted it. I might get very angry, and possibly make that person stand in front of my cupboard of worksheets while I open it. Here's the question: Is that really fair?

Alright, alright. All that was a rather flimsy and clumsy buildup to the topic of Abandonware, but I just wanted to be able to mention my worksheets. But on to the actual topic of Abandonware.

Abandonware is basically the business (not really, actually) of taking old games or software that aren't being sold anymore and distributing them for free o'er the mossy swamp that is the Internet, and this is usually done by everyone except the companies responsible for the creation of the released software/games. The rationale behind the whole process of distributing old software (which is not actually legal, despite common belief) that isn't being sold anymore is that since the company or companies that created these pieces of old software aren't selling them anymore, and aren't making any sort of profit from them, then surely it stands to reason to simply allow the general public to use the aforementioned software for free, since it simply isn't of any use to these companies anymore.

The creators of the software have responded to this by saying they didn't say that anyone could do that yet, and that while the old software may be old it's still theirs, and that if anyone were to distribute it for free it would be them. Very few software developers actually release old games for free anyway, and so the general public have taken matters into their own hands and simply started distributing old software by themselves anyway, which the creators have labelled as piracy since they didn't have permission to do so. The whole debate then degenerates in the same way that most alcohol based marriages do, with both parties going off into their respective haunts and doing what they were doing, while muttering about how the other party can't see reason. Meanwhile the children are left sobbing in their rooms, or blasting heavy metal.

And the whole thing really is understandable (dropping the analogy). While I take the relatively pubescent stance that Abandonware distributed by third parties without the permission of its creators is still illegal regardless of how much your teeth shine and your love for the American Dream, because the decision of whether to release the old software in question still lies with the software's creators. The problem here is that more often than not, the begging of the public for such software is often met with results of the Oliver Twist variety, and since the software isn't being produced anymore and isn't available on store shelves (or even bins, for that matter), those who want it don't even have the option of purchasing the software. In this case, there is simply no way of obtaining the old software, even if you are willing to pay for it.

And at this point the owners of old software have two options: They can either release the old software for free download and be bathed in rose petals and confetti and never have to worry about fall injuries because of the good amount of people constantly following them around ready to perform a trust fall catch, or they can do what Valve has done for years now, which is distribute their old software online.

Not for free, of course, seeing as how that's the alternative and the point of an alternative is to not be the same as the non- alternative (which is actually an alternative to the alternative anyway, but heigh-ho). But online distribution gets rid of the unfeasibility of having to reproduce old software for distribution via stores, and so provides people with the option of obtaining that old software legally and for a small profit, assuming that the owners of old software charge much less than they originally did, which seems reasonable considering the software's abundance of medical problems by this point.

And Valve have done this amazingly well with Steam (No, I don't get any sort of commission for this. The correct ethical question should in fact be: Why not?). All their games, from the very first Half Life, are available for online purchase and download via Steam, and they also seem to have grasped the concept of making old software very affordable, as seen by their move of making the original Half Life (released in 1998) cost under five US dollars, which makes sense. Valve still gets profit from their old software and the consumers (It seems I've turned American by the end of this article) have the option of purchasing the old software for an affordable price.

And this does several things to the argument that old software should be released for free. Once old software is made available for purchase via online distribution, the argument that old software no longer earn their developers any profit is given good slap on the head, as is the argument that they are no longer available for purchase. From that point, it's up to the owners of the software whether they want to release it for free, but at least the dream of being able to obtain the software is made thoroughly obsolete, and can be replaced by dreams more appealing and affordable.

The only problem that would arise from this solution is what arises from all good ideas (I've yet to patent it as a result of my unbearable humility). That is, once someone does it, just about everyone does it. While that might not be a problem for all ideas, the problem here is that Valve distributes their software by way of Steam, an online client, that must be installed on the user's computer and you have to make an account for it before you start digging around and the whole process is actually quite an ordeal from my previous experiences. The thing is that if every software company were to start doing this, how many clients would you have to install on your computer before you run out of space for the actual software?

So what solutions might there be to this? A single, new, universal client that can access each company's "marketplace", or services like Direct2Drive that pride themselves on online distribution for all sorts of media? What will the online marketplace look like once many companies, not just software or game developers, jump onto the bandwagon? Will their jumping on shift the cart forward by way of momentum or will they break it? Who knows? Meanwhile, all we can do is sit and reminisce about the old software and games that we miss so dearly.

2008-12-12T03:37:00.000-08:00

Of Jetpacks and Skis

Being the sort of person that the mass media point to every once in a while while on the topic of violent games and go "He's what we're talking about!", a few days ago I was looking for something to soothe, or rather cater to, the savage beast within me, and so started hunting for first person shooter demos that would dispense the necessary amount of adrenaline to satisfy the fix that I so badly needed. And after a bit of hunting I rediscovered the Tribes Vengeance demos.

Also being the sort of person that people point to and say "He's what we're talking about!" while on the topic of nerds, I promptly started reading about the Tribes series as a whole after playing through and thoroughly finishing the two single player demos. And it was then that I discovered that according to the collective wisdom of Wikipedia that fans of the original Tribes games considered themselves to be playing the only true 3D first person shooter.

Also being the sort of person that can be entertained for a good amount of time by a Word Processor, this got me thinking about subject that I just spent an entire paragraph talking about earlier. But just so I don't alienate everyone else that isn't essentially a scholar when it comes to the Tribes series, I should probably just give a quick introduction to it (That was probably a bit of a stretch, really. I'm really not well versed in the Tribes mythos so I should probably stop talking like I am one.)

While there's a colossal amount of galactic history behind the Tribes series, all you have to know is this. There are jetpacks. These jetpacks are attached to people and this makes the aforementioned people fly. The aforementioned people, also aforementioned twice before, now having the aforementioned jetpacks attached to their aforementioned backs, decide that, quite logically, the thing to do would be to shoot other people with similar jetpacks while flying around (both of the groups of aforementioned people are doing so) while stealing the flags of the other group of aforemntioned people. But grammatical purity aside, the point of the Tribes series is team based objective driven games that also introduce one very important element: mobility.

Everyone in the game has a jetpack and, from Tribes 2 onwards, a set of skis that can be magically summoned to their feet by the touch of a button, though the characters in game don't seem to have to do anything at all, so we can only assume that the skis are in fact clairvoyant, and both are used to traverse massive, sprawling environments that usually consist of many very conveniently smooth hills and mountains. Jetpacks allow the player to gain altitude, while the skis allow players to take advantage of their gravitational potential energy by skiing down hills once they have ascended to the necessary altitude.

This, as you really shouldn't be imagining instead of actually doing so, is immensely fun. About half the fun (correct to about as many decimal points as is really needed) comes from traversing terrain, while the other half can be attributed to everything else. In other words, without jetpacks and skis, an incredibly bizarre combination that has never really been brought together in anything else other than in conversations that end in "that would be awesome" before this series, Tribes simply wouldn't be Tribes. It might still be called Tribes, but there would be a lot less jetpacks and skis, which really isn't the point of the game that would have existed. Never mind, forget that. The point is, the jetpacks and skis contribute a lot to the fun.

And seeing as how hardly any other games have really truly adknowledged the y-axis in game environments at all, one (I'm assuming that this is the current population of people reading this, sadly inclusive of me) has to conceded, at least to a certain degree, that the bold proclaimation made by Tribes fans is somewhat justified. While just about every game that comes out these days (Specifically which isn't really important, since the phrase "these days" seems to be completely acceptable even though the actual amount of days that is meant isn't specified at all. People just seem to understand what you mean and nod their heads in agreement.) don't really focus on vertical movement as much as Tribes did, despite the fact that a good amount of y-axis' are available for use. The 3D aspect of most games seems to be limited to where you aim, but the sensation of being able to move up and down has pretty much just been limited to jumping, usually to a meagre height that would warrant exasperation from the protagonist of Narbacular Drop. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narbacular_Drop) The technology of 3D environments seems to have taken a somewhat passive role in actual gameplay.

Which raises the topic of technology and gameplay. Why aren't technological advances, such as the physics engines of today's games, being more heavily implemented into gameplay? While the common expectation that something must move the moment it is hit in a game exists, this doesn't seem to have much of an effect in gameplay, other than the fact that it simply feels unusual and morally incorrect if a cardboard box refuses to yield a shower of bullets that would otherwise invoke a good and healthy amount of screaming from any enemy. It seems to be a practice that is done in game development simply to establish the fact that the game in question is clearly a next-gen game. But what if this technology was implemented into gameplay as a core element?

Portal, for instance, that probably doesn't need anymore polish from me on its critically acclaimed nails than it already has, took advantage of 3D environments and physics as a core part of its gameplay. Momentum, velocity, perspective were all elements of a brilliant game that could only have been done on an 3D engine with proper physics. Call of Duty 4 is another, with a proprietary physics engine with bullet penetration physics and a lot of other things that sound very impressive built into the game, that had an actual impact in gameplay. Cover was no longer something that you could simply loungue behind for very long because of its tendency to disappear after a while.

Physics engines are taking on a the role of an Edwardian chimney sweeper, poor and unnoticed and simply begging for more. We've all spoken of the fabled cone headshot incident in Halo 3 in hushed voices, something that wouldn't have been possible without today's physics engines, and while Bungie, in its intellectual torpor, hasn't had the good sense to take advantage of that IP, why not someone else? A game that implemented launching grabbing and tossing things at people would be very welcome at this point, and the fun derived from using the Gravity Gun from Half Life 2 is a testament to that. Physics engines are there to be made of use of, and we can't possibly pass by our duty to do so, can we?

2008-11-26T23:59:00.000-08:00

Liebraries

Hello there

I like libraries. I like them a lot. I like the feeling of being in a place where everyone simply wants to be left alone to drown in whatever novels or textbooks that they happen to be reading, and will react with great adversity the moment they are disturbed in the very slightest because they know that the majority of people in the building are on their side. I like the idea of a place that is put aside for the sole purpose of being able to be left alone, something that I'm not able to find even in my own room at times, so it's nice to be able to sit down and write completely pointless articles on Wordpad (my previous flame used to be Notepad, but we fell out of with each other after I realized that she gave absolutely no regard towards formatting). So I go to libraries a lot, but not, as one would expect, for the sake of the actual resources and books. Goodness no, I find all of that on the Internet. I come here simply because I like the atmosphere's wetness, probably due to the fountain on the ground floor of the library that has no doubt been exhaled and inhaled thoroughly by countless other people who also come here for the atmosphere.

And there do seem to be a lot of people who don't actually come to the libraries for the books. Many of the people sitting at the tables next to the very bright windows that outshine whatever might be on your computer's screen thus making the tables the exact place that you shouldn't sit if you're going to use a laptop, which is also where all the powerpoints are which makes the tables an okay-ish sort of place to use your laptops, have, not suprisingly at all by this point, laptops with them. They are also open and they (the people) seem to be using them a lot.

Maybe they're here because of the environment or for something else, perhaps the free wi-fi. In any case, they don't actually seem to be here for what libraries exist for: books.

The wonderful and late Douglas Adams wrote an article about this that I found in the Salmon of Doubt (which by the way, Gan, you should read once you emerge from the beneath the waves of programming that you seem to be diving into a lot lately). He basically wrote about how some things have features or components added to them that essentially make something else in those things redundant, and thus need to be removed. For instance, advertisments in magazines. Now that many magazines are online, advertisments no longer need to take up more space than the actual articles in the magazines because of links, which only need to be so large to get your attention, and can lead you to an entirely new page with plenty of detailed information about whatever the ad is about. The idea that advertisments need to be intrusive is removed. Online magazines also remove a lot of dead wood from magazines. Some things become redundant along the way, and should be removed.

But we still see magazines that you can actually hold in your hand. Papery ones as well. Which is puzzling seeing as how almost all of us possess some sort of device capable of accessing the internet. But it really isn't as puzzling as it sounds. Magazines still have the advantage of not running out battery, seeing as how they don't have any battery. People still favour the convenience of being able to take out a magazine and read without having to connect to a wireless hotspot, type in the URL of the magazine and so on and so forth. And in actual fact, we've really just subsitutted dead wood for burning already dead things that have become fossil fuels. We haven't actually removed anything overall.

I've got nowhere to go with this, really. Anything random comments on the tagboard, please.

2008-11-09T01:53:00.000-08:00

No one can hear you screen.

Here's a thought about the matter of touchscreens. They're not all that omniscient when it comes to input. You may argue that they're incredibly versatile and that their function is only limited to whatever they are programmed to do, and while this sounds very good on paper (something else that is a lot more user friendly), it really doesn't translate all that well onto an actual device, in terms of one thing: precision. Two things actually, but we'll get to them later.

Some might argue that what we're talking about here is in fact accuracy, but they should stop talking now because what I'm really talking about here is precision, quite ironically the more accurate term here.

First, let me just say that touchscreens are still a wonderful idea. Those that argue for its versatility are indeed, in some sense, right. Touchscreens can be incredibly handy in some cases, especially when you want to target something all the way on the other end of the screen on a handheld device, which would be laborious with something like a button cursor, to the point where you find yourself completely uninterested with what you were going to select by the time you get to it. In this case, touchscreens allow for quick and wide access.

Touchscreens also allow for gestures, which takes the pressure of the poor, miniscule screens that most handheld have to hold a ridiculous amount of buttons on them, and so freeing up the screen for more interesting things like epileptic backgrounds. Gestures also allow for more intuitive control. In the case of the iPhone, a rebel in more ways than one, including the area of proper capitalization, to scroll over lists you simply swab your finger across the screen to drag the list down, thus scrolling. It's very intuitive and those using the iPhone for the first time will probably figure it out quickly.

Touchscreens also remove the staggering limitation of how many buttons a small device can hold before it means that you no longer have the option of not accidentally activating your camera when you don't want to. On a touchscreen, you can simply classify buttons into panels, and swap to the set of buttons that you want to use. This means that the functionality of the device is only dependant on how lazy the developers are, which is something that has yet to be worked around.

So if touchscreens improve the range of functions a device has, as well as allow for intuitive control, then why all the fuss, and why the terrible pain in both my thumbs as I type this out on my tiny Tungsten C keyboard. What is wrong with touchscreens?

The problem with touchscreens can be explored using the analogy of... You know, never mind. The problem is that touchscreens lack two things: precision and feedback.

Touchscreens, while incredibly versatile, can also be terribly frustrating. As a Palm user I can testify to this (Listen Apple people, I'll get to you soon. You just wait for a second). A lot of frustration comes from selecting things on lists. Lists cram many little items together, and it's quite often that I can't seem to select what I want to select, and the reason for this is that my fingertip, being the mystical alpine dwelling creature that I am, often covers two items on the list at a time, this means that I usually end up selecting the wrong item.

Sometimes I try to change so that my Palm will still love me, and use the very tip of my finger to target more precisely, but this doesn't seem to work very well, usually because the screen seems to ignore this completely half the time (That phrase is slightly confusing. I apologize), and not respond at all. Even using the stylus yields the same results sometimes.

But many this is simply due to incompetence on the part of Palm. Maybe another company, such as Apple, the democracy crowned king of the touchscreen after the release of the iPhone, will do better?

In order to avoid stoning by all those that can afford iPhones, (Quite honestly, that makes this quite safe, but they may drop the price, so you never know.) I should preface the Inquisition by saying that there are slight improvements. The iPhone's screen buttons are bigger, as is its screen, thus compensating for user belligerence, and gestures do remove the frustration of trying to target those tiny scroll bar buttons. But there still exist problems.

Behind the safety of my anti-tank obstacles I must say this: the keyboard has induced high levels of frustration, ad subsequently, hair loss. The problem with the iPhone's keyboard is not the disregard of capitalization, but rather the same problem that my Palm has with lists. The iPhone's keyboard is simply too small for fast text input. While it does seem like it's a lot larger than it should be, it really isn't. When using Dom's iPhone for reasons that will not be covered here, I constantly ended up reaching for the backspace, only to end up pressing the P. Precision just isn't with touchscreen keyboards, and is especially irritating when you're trying to input lots of text.

The problem here isn't the touchscreen, really. It's the users, specifically the users' fat, myopic thumbs. Human thumbs are simply that big, and this is unfortunate because they're not going to change anytime soon, unless Aldous Huxley is to believed. Users simply have thumbs that are that large, and while they are the cause of the problem, the user remains quite significant when it comes to any device, and unfortunately, developers haven't figured out how to remove the user, and thus remove the problem.

But precision isn't the only problem when it comes to touchscreen input.
If you take a look at a hardware keyboard on a handheld device, the keys are usually much smaller than that of a touchscreen keyboard's, but for some reason they remain easier to use. Why?

The thing that hardware keyboards have that touchscreen keyboards don't is feedback. Whenever you push a button on a hard keyboard, you can feel the button, and this benefits the user in two areas. It informs you that you have pushed the button, through a next hearty click, and it also means that you know precisely how much force you need to press it. Touchscreen keyboards are fairly ambiguous when it comes to this, because there simply isn't any communication between the two. One is never quite sure how hard one should press to "press" a touchscreen button, and it can be distressing when you press too lightly and end up not pushing it at all, or press too hard and end up inadvertently declaring war on your touchscreen, that declares that it is no longer "your" touchscreen, but an individual touchscreen with its own rights and freedom. Hardware keyboards don't present this problem because of force feedback: you know that you have pushed the button when it clicks.

Another thing that helps when using hard keyboards is that you're always able to feel the buttons. In the event that your fingers or thumbs tread into the terrible void of the region in between two keys, you can feel it and correct that. Touchscreen keyboards, on the other hand, don't give you that because keys and the borders between keys all feel the same. As such, you're never quite sure whether you're trying to press two buttons at once.

And these problems themselves have a problem because they can't be solved. A touchscreen will always remain flat, and simply can't deliver the sensation of touch feedback, for letting you know that you've pushed a button or for letting you know the position of your thumbs or fingers. Hardware keyboards have been doing this for years, maybe unintentionally.

And quite honestly I don't think touchscreens will ever overcome these problems. They may become more sensitive and so on, but the human thumb will always remain stubbornly fat, and we humans, not to be outdone by our thumbs, will always require force feedback when pushing buttons. Touchscreens work for certain things, but there comes certain point where some features are beyond it, simply because of the way users are. Sometimes the tendency to rely only on a touchscreen for input can end up limiting the functionality of a device. Developers, like good ol' Steve, shouldn't be afraid to add a few hard buttons to their devices if it will make input more user friendly and efficient.

Developers have to take this into account. Technology and devices may become more sophisticated and so on, but we users won't change. We like our hard buttons.

And so I must let my poor tiny Tungsten C's hard keyboard rest, and I leave you with an obligatory Bow Chicka Bow Wow.

I would like to point out that all of the above, except for the text with the bad posture here, was typed out using a tiny, hard button keyboard on a Tungsten C. The buttons are truly tiny, smaller than the buttons on most mobile phones. Also, one thousand and four hundred words, my fabulosos.

2008-11-05T04:17:00.000-08:00

Max Rayne

Today I went on a random hike.

It was an interesting departure from the usual slog of spending a dark afternoon sitting in front of a computer writing a blog entry, or liberating Omaha Beach of the usual American capitalist scum. I say dark afternoon because it's not actually rainy or stormy of any sort, but rather the kind that threatens that it will be rainy or stormy in a while if you don't start taking it seriously, and eventually does break down into a small sobbing fit in the form of an irritating sort of drizzle.

But enough about the rain, because I"ve genuinely had enough of that rubbish.

After waking up at 12 in the afternoon and feeling very disappointed with myself I left my completely desolate dwelling for lunch at Jurong Point, and rather wantonly declared to myself (on the way there, on a road that was quite populated at the time, much to my embarassment) that I would take a completely meaningless hike from Lakeside MRT to Chinese Garden, for the pure gusto of it.

Halfway through my lunch the rather unstable and angsty sky decided to advise me against this, by dropping me a hint or two in the form of more than two rain clouds that proceeded to blot out any hope of my afternoon's plans.

I decided to give the sky a very mortal and electronegative finger, and proceed with my plans for the day anyway.

I took a very nonchalant and depressed ride from Boon Lay to Lakeside, and by this time the sky was already on the verge of suicide, which was quite uncomfortable for me since I was about to step out in full view of it. After alighting I wandered around the MRT station nonchalantly for a few minutes or so, shamelessly procrastinating like an equally suicidal sky about whether or not I should step into the already prominent drizzle and go ahead with the hike or not.

After a while, my interest in the station's architecture eventually fizzled out from nothing to slightly more nothing, and I stepped out into the rain under the comfort of my shaky, equally suicidal umbrella.

Trudging through what was light rain for a while felt a bit stupid at first. At this point, most people would start getting thoughts like "I'm feeling quite stupid right now", or "I could be on an MRT right now." Although it's important to note that most people don't do this sort of thing to begin with, and thus don't get any of these thoughts to begin with. Although after a while the feelings of stupidity gave way to true stupidity, and I marched through the rain for a good distance.

During this trek I experienced different things.

One of them was getting wet. This is strictly not recommended for anyone, unless you happen to be appropriately dressed for this. In the event that you are appropriately dressed for getting wet, however, you probably aren't appropriately dressed by any other standards. In other words, never walk in the open in the rain, even if you have an umbrella, for long distances without shelter.

But it was through this rain that halfway through my trek, I started to feel incredibly lonely, and maybe even a bit stranded. When my entire left side was pelted by liqueous rounds of water all I thought at that point was "I should probably turn back", but then realized with dismay that I was already halfway through, and turning back would mean an equal distance to an MRT station that carrying on would. I felt incredibly stranded at this point, feeling like I was in the middle of nowhere, or rather in the middle of two places that would each be considered somewhere. It was a very strange, disconcerting void.

And at this point I also had a few thoughts about MRT stations. They seem to be safe points of sort, checkpoints that make us feel like we're connected to the rest of the country when we're next to them or in them. There's this strange sense of relief that I get whenever I see an MRT station when I think I might be lost, knowing that that building can take me wherever I need to go. Without an MRT station, one (and quite literally one, because I might be the only one that feels this way) feels lost, having strayed away from a safe point.

And this made me think about LRT stations, branching out from MRT stations into the further away regions. The whole layout of an MRT map seems a bit like a very confused, multi directional tree, that you must play 50 cents each time to climb. Admitedly, it's a rather large tree, so I suppose it's fine.

Speaking of trees, I got quite a nice picture of a tree on the way, using my phone's camera that kicked and screamed as a put it in full exposure of the rain.

The camera is now in the process of recuperation.

So after a long trek through the unforgiving and angsty rain, I found myself wet and exhausted under the slightly less unforgiving shelter of Chinese Garden MRT station. I had half a mind to go off wandering into the depths of Chinese Garden, but then realized that I was only a few stops away from pneumonia, and postponed that for the day.

I should probably do this again.

2008-10-31T22:13:00.000-07:00

MRT Walks

Well, it's been quite some time since my last entry, and in the time in between my last entry this one, I've thought about a few things.

The first thought was that I should probably take sometime to stop and think about things for a second. I'm not quite sure why this thought arose, but it just did, and that's all that matters, I suppose.

The second thought was that Wordpad is in fact a lot better and user friendly that Notepad, so why do I even bother with the latter? After all, it takes care of all that formatting nonsense when I copy over text from Notepad into Word, but I probably won't be doing any of that from now on, so let's just move on.

The third thought, and probably the whole point of this entry, is that MRTs go really fast. I know that's probably been figured out for a long time now but a whole lot of people who didn't really bother to take note of that thought and write it down in blog entries, but that really doesn't matter as of now. What matters is that in the process of thinking that, another thought arose, namely the one a few lines (alright, two) below.

When you're riding an MRT, and you look down at the scenery, that's about all it is, isn't it? Just scenery. Someone could be running past a stationary train with big cardboard cutout sceneries and you'd still think that the train was moving, and all that scenery would be just about as interesting as it would be if you were actually in a moving train, psasing by scenery that was made only partially of cardboard, with those bits being so small that you probably wouldn't notice them. But the point I'm trying to make here is that in all the places that you pass by when riding an MRT, how many places have we actually gone down to look at? I mean, it's one thing to say that you pass by a certain building or tree or environmentalist headquarters everytime you go to work on the train, but how many times have you actually gone down to the environmentalist headquarters while carrying a newly cut down tree?
Not very often. After all, there's simply no way you would pass the technology quota with the cell phone you were carrying, but it doesn't even need to be a environmentalist headquarters building. All I'm saying is this:

Why not get a bunch of people, or maybe even just alone (which is likely to be so in my case), and walk from one MRT station to another? Maybe in between two MRT stations that you pass by every single day while travelling to work, school, maritial obligations etc. Instead of passing by and watching the cardboard trees roll just like everyday, why not actually go down and watch the trees get rolled into cardboard? Why not follow an MRT track and take your time to look around you, inciting Disney musical numbers as you go?

The exams are going to be completely history by next wednesday, and they will be reincarnated into the very uncreative form of more exams, but for now we can sleep knowing that those exams will only come next year. There's going to be quite some time avaliable for this sort of thing (the walking, not the exams), so why not do exactly that. I'm inviting anyone who has the time or inclination (or both), to poke the tagboard or poke me on msn so we can settle a day for this. The walk will probably be from Boon Lay to Chinese Garden, but then I'm not really the leading authority on completely existentialist walks from MRT station to MRT station, so why not suggest your own?

2008-10-11T22:26:00.000-07:00

A+rts and Literature

Well, it's been a good two months or so since I've put a post, and I feel obligated by the very existence of my blog to do so again, and then subsequently ignore it for the following two months. In other words, this isn't going to be a habit.

It's been after the never ending wave of literature homework slowly descending upon you like the final row of Space Invaders that you just can't seem to hit no matter what, or the final bit of the Centipede that constantly evades your slow, blundering shots, that I've started to notice that my personal interest in the study of Literature is now a de facto Lemming.

Never before have I experienced such an utter repulsion for anything that has the label of "Literature" on it. And since the text in this blog is highly dependant on my personal whims, today we are going to talk about Dadaism.

But since my personal whims have changed drastically since the last paragraph, I choose instead to start this paragraph on a complete tangent. Does the repeated study of something lessen your appreciation for it? I'm certainly not going to try and combat the likes of Stephen Fry, but it's very hard to deny something like this after you've been studying Literature for four years now, and at about the fourth year, it simply doesn't feel like the fourth anymore.

Maybe it's not because of the repeated study of it. Maybe it's just because I don't like the subjects being taught this semester, and I'm starting to be convinced that that's really the case.

Maybe it really isn't the length of which you study something, but what you're studying that determines how much enthusiasm you have for something, but in the case of literature, I'm not really sure it should be something that should be taught in a class like the Sciences or Mathematics.

A very good example is Wordsworth. During Romanticism class we studied one of his poems titled "Expostulation and Reply", which was basically Wordsworth's justification for not spending more time in the study and slacking off in the deeper recesses of a forest on a rock. In the poem, one of Wordsworth's unnamed friends (whose existence is debatable) questions him on why he wastes his time sitting on a rock and enjoying the fresh forest air and the beautiful chirping melodies of Nature when he could be in a dusty study room reading the Classics under a dim candlelight. Wordsworth then proceeds to answer, "Well, duh."

It was in a overly air conditioned, depressingly light classroom that I received this enlightenment.

We've taken Wordsworth's philosophy and printed it in books, but what we don't realize is that the book has in fact been printed upside down. Sitting in rooms studying is precisely what Wordsworth was against. He wanted people to go out into the woods (or the AYE, in our case) and sit alone and think. So thus we take his advice and study it.

Maybe some things can't be stuffed into a graded cirriculum, simply because it goes against their very Nature (anyone who got that, my sincerest condolences). Some things simply need to be taught for the sake of it, for the enjoyment of the student, not for their potential use in the future.

But I suppose that's not going to happen any time soon. Literature and the Arts are always going to be accessed and graded like just about any other subject. And it's after writing this blog entry that I'm going to have to finish up that analysis of Percy Shelley's poems that I'll get a one grade penalty for if I'm so much as one day late.

2008-08-16T06:06:00.000-07:00

Bother Tongue

It is probably in the distinct memory of whoever even bothers believing me these days that I mentioned that a Dark Knight review would be coming up on the site, the only fatal flaw being that at this point of time, I strongly advise disregarding anything I say regarding predictions about what will be coming up on this blog, since chances are high that they probably won't. (Congratulations if you are incredibly confused at this point of time, because you have just, as most people tend to say, "gotten the joke" here. If you aren't just ignore everything you've read previously that's in the bracket, then proceed to curse Samuel at the top of your lungs for putting this notice at the back of the bracketed text. It's probably best I close the brackets before they start becoming too proud of themselves.)

I do, however, have an interesting topic at hand here, which is pretty much what the rest of this entry is about. (Dammit, paragraph 1.) And this here is based on a snippet of a conversation I had with Rashidah. Not so much a snippet, since this was pretty much the entire conversation, but shut up you nit-picking git.

Rashidah: Samuel, do you still take Chinese?
Samuel: *gives a stare that would have disheartened Nelson Mandela* Unforturnately, yes.
R: Oh.
S: I don't want to though. I learn nothing in Chinese.
R: Ya, I also don't want to learn Malay.
S: The only thing I've learnt is why I speak English.
R: *Rashidah's trademark laughter that is untranslatable into text.*

And that alone pretty much makes the rest of this entry compltely redundant, which can be pretty much likened to the trailer of every single Hong Kong film ever made, but I digress (I'm not quite sure what the point of pointing that out is, but I've just realized that if I keep up this bracket nonsense it could cause jealously in the unbracketed majority.)

But the point is, to me, learning Chinese is quite redundant. Or rather, learning Chinese to the degree that we are right now is redundant. And the reason for that is this:

I'm never going to study or work in a country where Chinese is the main language.

I'm simply terrible at Chinese. So much to the point that I can emphatize with any Western masochist that attempts to learn the language. To me learning the language any more simply won't make me any better at it. About 80 percent of the vocabulary I've been taught in the last 10 years I've forgotten, which in the Great Wall of Vocabulary is nothing more than a brick, and I've no desire to tour anymore of the thing.

But here's the thing. If I'm no longer learning anything in Chinese, other than for the sake of passing that final A-level examination, why am I still studying it?

On reflection I need to start asking questions that need to be answered by other people.

But here's one that might require some sort of reader interaction. Why do I need to take that examination? I'm likely to fair horrible in it, and pretty much remain right where I am. Why take it if I'm horrible at it, and let it show up on my resume?

As is the common Asian way, I blame the government, and following the next step of the Asian way, subsequently withdraw that statement for fear of getting my arse dragged to the Asian Court of Law. But it is undeniable that one thing that the Singapore government has stressed in "The Things that make us Singaporean" is that most of us are bilingual, and it's quite unlikely that they're going to drop this stand anytime soon, since this seems to be a great selling point (Human Rights activists, feel free to twitch uncontrollably right here) for graduates when it comes to studying or working overseas.

But what seems to be happening is that the exact same thing is happening in other countries. English, thanks to the explosive prowress of the US, seems to be accepted as the lingua franca in the global community when it comes to international interaction (five times, quickly. go.), and foreign students are no doubt striving to avoid the fate of Chairman Mao as we speak.

Can you then say redundant?

Possibly not. While the international lingua franca might be English, the chances that the local population of any country immediately starts taking up English as its commonly spoken language is simply unlikely. It's the language they've always known and it seems unlikely that they switch to English just because those snobby Hamburger eating undergraduates are doing it.

So I suppose I'm just going to have to finish up the five Chinese writing assignments I have due right now, while I nibble the edge of my BK Tendergrill.

2008-07-29T21:38:00.001-07:00

The Sound of Violence

The speculative probability of me actually going to see a movie
on Friday, specifically The Dark Knight, and thus rendering my use of the phrase "a movie" grammatically incorrect (the correct phrase being "the movie"), leaves me with the equally speculative possibility of actually having something to write about within the
last month or so, putting me below even the most shameless magazines.

But the interesting thing is that not only are the usual rabid fanboys (more grammatically correct to refer to them as a single entity as of now) of comic books watching this movie, but there have been signs that a good percentage of the audience may in fact be members of the human race.

The Dark Knight is apparently more than just a comic book movie, putting it somewhat at the level of being analogous to Bioshock, the wonderful game/philosophyfest, with the difference of Bioshock being the dumbed down successor to System Shock, whereas The Dark Knight, being the latest installment in an army of already existing Batman films, only serves to further lengthen arguments concerning evolution.

So while I personally promise the a review of the movie after I finally get to live through the greatness that is The Dark Knight, I might attempt to persuade someone else possessing what is known as an actual social life to review the movie as well, thus leaving us with two different kinds of absolutely gushingly positive reviews to work with, as opposed to just one.

2008-06-14T03:38:00.001-07:00

The Quiz of the Dragon

There comes a time at some point of time in time where a misanthrope like myself has no outings of any sort to speak of on his blog, so he takes to filling up 100 question quizzes that happen to be on the blogs of other people like Kylie, who strangely enough aren't misanthropes that have no outings to speak of. So just for the sake of consuming pixels on the screen of you, the reader, let me just say that before you start reading my answers to this quiz, it really doesn't seem like the kind of quiz catered to misanthropes like myself.

So here you are: (And the 100 question quiz along with it)

001. What's the connection between you and the last person that
called you? - Utter enemies.

002. Do you ever turn your cell phone off? - I turn off a lot of
things, but hardly my cell phone.

003. What happened at 10.00am today? - I was in bed, so a lot of
things happened.

004. When did you last cry? - When my computer couldn't run
Battlefield 2.

005. What is your favorite thing to eat with peanut butter? -
Those awesome crackers made by some local biscuit company whose
name I can't remember, and most probably never will.

006. What do you want in your life right now? - Possibly an
attachment to some awesome professor.

007. Do you carry an umbrella when it rains, or just put up your
hood? - I'm not usually carrying an umbrella when it rains, and
I've never associated myself with any of them.

008. What's your favorite thing to have on your bed? - After I've
got a job, a stable income and whatnot, I'm thinking of getting a
comforter.

009. What bottom are you wearing now? - Track pants. Because
they're inexplicably nice.

010. Whats the nicest text in your inbox say? - "Your viva for
the module "Vectors in 2 and 3 Dimensions" will be on the 19th of
June".

011. Do you tend to make a relationships complicated? - Well, I
don't make relationships.

012. Are you wearing anything you borrowed from someone? - Well
technically, no.

013. What was the last movie you caught? - Indiana Jones and the
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I thought it was fairly epic, but a
bit cliched.

014. What are you proud of? - My epic humility, but mostly my
hair.

015. What does the oldest text message in your inbox say?" - It's
a discount alert from Tecman.

016. What was the last song you sang out loud? - The Scientist by
Coldplay

017. Do you have any nicknames? What are they? - Yes, actually. A
lot of people call me Samuel.

018. What does your last received text message say? - ??? I"m
invited? Don't think I will be going though... from Leroy, about
the blogger circle. Speaking of which-

019. What time did you go to bed last night? - Last night? Well,
about 1.00.

020. Are you currently happy? Well, I had dinner.

021. Who gives you best advice? That's a good one.

022. Do you eat whipped cream straight from the can? - But is a
fetus really a human being?

023. Who did you talk on the phone with last night? - I think it
was Shudder. I don't know.

024. Is anything bugging you right now? - What question is this?
24? Well, yes.

025. What/Who was the last thing/person to make you laugh? -
The second episode of RVB Reconstruction.

026. Do you wear toe socks? - I do wear socks.

027. Who was the last person you missed a call from? - Shudder

028. Have you ever had your heart broken? - Squashed, maybe.

029. What annoys you most in a person? - Refer to question 1.
Presumptous ignorance.

030. Do you have a crush on anyone? - That does not compute.

031. Have you ever done cocaine? - Well, I don't remmeber doing
it.

032. What is the colour of your room? Green.

033. Would you kill someone you hate for a billion dollars? The
last time I checked billion dollars wasn't enough to bail you out
of the murder sentence.

034. Do you believed in the saying "talk is cheap"? Absolutely
not. It's completely free.

035. Who was the last person to lay in your bed? Sadly, me.

036. Who was the last person to hug you? - I'm going to be
getting a lot of emails from this, but I think it was a long
distance hug from Darryl.

037. Did anyone see the last person you kissed? - Did anyone see
the last person I kissed? I honestly don't remember.

038. Do you have a life? Thinking of getting one soon.

039. Have you ever thought someone died, when they really didn't?
- Nelson Mandela.

040. What is the reason behind your profile song? - If you're
talking about Eyes of the Tiger, then simply because I admire the
guy who sang it, seeing as how it's completely impossible to do
so .

041. Who was the last person you saw in your dream? Jar Jar
Binks. Or the coroner.

042. Last time you smiled? Reading Kylie's answers to this quiz.

043. Have you changed this year? To the dismay of the residents
of my previous set, yes.

044. What are you listening to right now? The sound of crickets
outside my flat.

045. Are you talking to someone when you doing this? No.

046. Do you walk with your eyes open or closed? Generally a good
idea to keep them open.

047. Is there a quote you live by? I pity da foo, I suppose.

048. Do you want someone you can't have? Anything I can't have, I
most possibly don't want, so no.

049. Have you ever played an instrument? A recorder. And a
harmonica. It was most tragic.

050. What was the worst idea you've had in this week? Cycling
with a black T-shirt on.

051. What were you doing last night at 11.00pm? Saving the human
race.

052. Are you happy with your love life right now? It's generally
non-existant, so yes.

053. What song describes your love life? Blow me Away by Breaking
Benjamin.

054. Does the person know that you like him/her? - Are you
listening to yourself?

055. Who always makes you laugh? Mostly Stephen Fry.

056. Do you speak any other language other than English? - A bit
of chinese, and several dialects of 1337.

57. Are you blond? - But what IS blond?

058. What your middle name? - The Tormentor. Or at least, I wish
it was.

059. What are you doing tomorrow? Going to church, coming back,
and then being bored for the rest of the day.

060. What do you think you are like? A plastic apple. Looks
promising but quite empty.

061. Who will you choose to die with? The nearest estate agent.

062.Where have you been today? Right here.

063. What game do you play often? Too much Halo.

064. Who are you missing right now? Anyone who's as bored as I
am.

065. If you've to choose between friends & love, who will you
choose? - I don't.

066. What are you doing right now? Doing this quiz.

067. Which primary school are you from? Juying Primary, some
completely unheard school with a building composed of the
groggriest colors since the 1970s.

068. Name 3 colours that you like. Jet Black, Shiny Porsche
White, And Quicksilver.

069. What emotion do you like to show? Completely apathy.

070. What is life to you? An episode of Oprah. Usually quite
boring and never as good as it used to be.

071. If you have something troubling you, what will you do?
Proceed to intellectually bitch to the nearest person.

072. Who did you last chat with in msn today? Abbeh. About
perspective and a Master Chief cosplayer, and subsequently her
split personalities.

073. Who do you admire the most? Unfortunately anything I start
to admire usually degenerates into some form of envy, so I really
can't name anyone here.

074. Which month are you born in? - In my opinion, October.

075. How are you feeling right now? Bored enough to be doing this
quiz.

076. What is the time now? 6:25pm.

077. Where are you now? - In a stuffy bedroom in a flat in
Singapore, though I honestly would rather be somewhere in the
Pacific, seeing as how something dramatic happens there every
summer.

078. What colour did you use to dye hair? White, though I later
found out that it was in fact completely ordinary shampoo.

079. Why are you doing this test? I do believe I answered that.

080. What do you do when you're moody? Complain aloud till I fall
asleep. Also happens to be what I do when I need to fall asleep.

081. At which age you wish to get married? Not so much when I
"wish to" than when it might actually happen, and I can't say for
sure.

082. Who is more important to you? A lover or friends? Strangely
enough, my attention tends to go to the ones who are more
existent, so I would say friends.

083. Do you think you have enough confidence? Possibly.

084. Who is the person you trust the most? What's it to you?

086. If you can have a dream come true, what would it be? I'd
like to be a film director and script writer, actually. In doing
so I hope to completely demolish local tv.

087. What is your goal for this year? Redeem my atrocious grade,
as well as my previous attempts to redeem my atrocious grade.

088. Do you believe in eternal love? Well, I'm Christian.

089. What feeling do you love most? That smug moment after
hinting a relationship between two people, while both proceed to
give you the "I would strangle you if given the chance look while
being extremely embarassed at the same time.

090. Do you really think its Global Warming now? I'm in
Singapore, so that question really doesn't mean anything.

091. What feeling do you hate the most? Mind-numbing boredom,
easily quenched by doing 100 question quizzes.

092. Do you cherish every single friendship of yours? Mostly.

093. Do you believe in God? - Refer to question 88.

094. Who cares for you the most? - Refer to question 93.

095. What do you think is the most important thing in your life?
Refer to question 94.

096. What'll you bring when you fight? - A Mjolnir Mark V powered
exoskeleton, and a DV Camera.

097. What have you regretted doing in your whole life? Nothing as
of yet, but I'm suspecting that might change.

098. What would you feel when everyone no longer cares for you?
I'd feel quite pissed, I suppose.

099. What if your stead two-timed you? If? I'm also quite
suspicious of the use of the term "stead".

100. Love with a guarantee of heartbreak , or never to be loved
at all? There's not much disappointment to be had from something
that you've never had, so I'm thinking the latter.

2008-06-12T03:16:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I find that reading through the countless textbooks that currently define the space of my cupboard seems rather pointless, and that learning all this completely incoherent and completely unrelated information doesn't seem to have any purpose, following the trend of things that are completely incoherent and unrelated.

So every once in a while I find myself striving to make use of the completely incoherent and unrelated information piled up inside my brain and threatening to tear my skull a new skylight (the first one orignating sometime during Primary school, where I was under the impression that Yoda spoke the truth about size).

So having gone for a rather eventful and amusing mafeya meeting at the Botanic Gardens, I'd like to ask if anyone reading this is (assumingly, if you are reading this, then there's really no need to ask, now is there?) bored out of their skylight infested skulls, that if you would like to join me in starting a project on something. I'm not sure what, but something intellectual. Maybe building a trebuchet, or writing a movie script, or just making a video based on our efforts to build a trebuchet or write a movie script. Whatever your current sitaution might be, feel free to scrawl all over the tagboard to your right.

2008-06-07T06:08:00.000-07:00

Operation Get Shudder the Hell out of There

Twas a fine Saturday evening when Shudder knocked on my MSN window spouting profanities and singing ballads of needing to get out of the house. (Proof that once again I need to rework my definition of "profanities".) He beseeched that I find a way to get him out of the house, then decided to spoil the whole puzzle for me by promptly suggesting that a mafia gathering or blogger circle in school would be most appropriate (it should be noted that if you are shocked at the idea of a mafia gathering in school being appropriate, then you either don't know me, visited this blog by accident, or both).

So in keeping with the "No Child left behind" policy, I've decided to call for another blogger circle on this Monday, June 09. Anyone interested in this operation, feel free to decorate the tagboard with an elaborate mosaic of punctuation, or simply say that you're interested.

2008-05-17T01:15:00.000-07:00

Lolz in Translation

At this point of time, it probably isn’t worth mentioning that I give no sort of regard to copyright law whatsoever, but seeing as how I’ve just started this article and have absolutely no idea how many words I can possibly crank out like a broken record, it’s my firm belief that I should just play safe and throw in a couple (it can be seen from this that my definition of couple has led to the possibility of the family line either ending here, or branching in all directions) of words here.

Abbeh has already written something along the lines of this topic, but I’m still going to write about it, so if you don’t like it, then feel free to stick your fingers in your eyes and pretend I’m writing about something else.

Before that though I should probably say that this article’s topic was a result of the mini blogger’s circle that we held on Thursday (in fact, it wasn’t so much held as passed around like some sort of diabolical potato), and it being the first blogger’s circle, there really isn’t much to compare it to so I suppose we can’t even call it mini. But the main point is that it achieved it’s purpose in giving me something to write about. And while the Daily Refusal pretty much remains in limbo, I should probably add that it might take on the form of a new blog, so keep your hopes (and suspicious) up.

It wasn’t long after we all got together at the canteen and started randomly drifting into two groups, consisting of Me and Abbeh in the first, and the other consisting of everyone else. Shudder was sort of a drifter, and if there’s one way to describe his involvement in the discussion, then I’d have to say that he was doing a cross stitch.

Abbeh brought up the topic of everyone’s favorite cake firing, portal eating fun-fest, Portal. Kylie, strongly believing that such a topic alienated everyone that wasn’t completely obsessed with Portal (No, I know, someone needs to help her), gathered her brethren and started another discussion. At this point of time me and Abbeh pretty much slogged out on an article that she found (shut up), which can be seen here:

http://digg.com/gaming_news/Portal_is_a_feminist_masterpiece_great_read

Trying to make my article feel like two articles instead of one has already been tried and pretty much failed, so allow me to summarize the article in the following way:

1. Portal is feminist.
2. The portal gun is analogous to vagoo.
3. GlaDOS is a maternal figure.
4. The Cube is a paternal figure, which is later incinerated.
5. Ergo ergo ergo, QED, W5, Portal hates 49 percent of the world’s population.

All the allegories drawn in that article were pretty much viable, save for number 4. While I would have accepted the analogy of the Cube being representative of emotional burden or emotion itself, I never thought of the Cube as a father figure (and I refuse to acknowledge that floozy of a pyramid) to begin with, and still can’t. And while it is true that all the other allegories drawn are less masculine in nature than the other elements you see in other first person shooters, and give it a more female friendly atmosphere, if you take away the allegory of the Cube, you pretty much tone down or entirely remove the element of feminism.

It’s at this point of time where the topic of over-interpretation comes in.

One just can’t help but feel that the author of that article is just trying too hard to get that interpretation out of Portal, despite the fact that Valve might be half composed of curly mustaches with matching berets, with bodies to go along with them.

In other words, how far can one go before in his (take that, Portal) interpretations before they can be considered “too far”?

Some might suggest that the point where the interpretations are no longer of the author’s intentions might be a limit, but then you have works like those in visual arts, where the works don’t have a definite interpretation, and are just left there for the sake of making you think (once in a long while).

So does this mean that any work can be used as a basis for any argument, provided that the one using it can provide proper justifications for such a link? And I believe that given enough backflips and literary spasms, a link can be made between the most distant of things, such as children and childhood, or holidays and enjoyment. Given enough effort, such links can be made.

Probably not. While such links can be made, the limit to which these links are believable would be dependant on the audience.

But to a certain extent, such as in milder examples, like the article above, certain stretches can be made, and while I do find that disagreeable, it really all matters on how much I find it believable, and that pretty much varies from person to person.

So not having enough motivation to link this to the topic of peer pressure and the power of the majority, let’s just end this article here, and go back to whatever it was that we were doing, be it writing another article or making fun of the opposite gender.

2008-05-10T01:27:00.000-07:00

Writer's Blog

It's been quite a while ever since my last entry touched upon anything in detail that would shame Blu-Ray, so I've decided to do that once again. This post will most possibly be concerned with the Blogger circle. Most probably having blogged more about the blogger circle than during the actual damn thing, in this entry I hope to discuss and meander about a few key issues and concerns with the event.

The blogger circle was put together when Cancy and I started discussing about the inadequecies of our school's Journalism club, and their ability to publish 2006's yearbook and the year 2007 (punctually, of course). And having decided on the fact that there wasn't any interesting material to read within the school compounds (save for the library, but we're specifically talking about quiet places here). So I suggested something along the lines of a self-written, community based paper, and decided to dub it "The Daily Refusal", mostly because it was a catchphrase, but also mostly because of fun, laughter, peace and joy.

The blogger circle eventually came into the picture (albeit somewhat disorientated) and the idea of it started meandering around until we invited more people, and then finally decided on actually having the event. And while I do admit we may have gotten our priorities a bit mixed up, variety is always important, as is the reason why I never intend to go into medical practice.

The idea mostly sprung from countless random yet intellectual conversations about homework, work, and everything else. The common sentiment was that these conversations were mostly wasted, since we all we had from them was lots of fun, and that being of no practical use whatsoever, decided to put these conversations into tangible and incriminating form.

The only remaining minor details include how the circle will actually be conducted.

The strange thing about doing things in general is that its usually most difficult when you're conciously trying your best to carry them out. This means that actually getting the usual ramblings so easily avaliable to us is actually going to be harder than a titanium gobstopper during the actual event.

The best possible way in which the circle can be conducted would be to simply find a nice place to gather, get food and drinks, then let the conversation slowly flow in as much as the drinks. I'm also sure that we're all appreciative if more than drinks flow into this event, so if anyone recently defied the laws of improbability and casino blacklists, we'd be more than happy to bear the burden with you.

The only problems (aside from all the other problems) with this sort of event is that it tends to peter out after a while, and the partcipants and guests start to float away to attend the more exciting blogger circles in the region of Clementi.

So alternatively, we could just hold the whole event in a podcast sort of style, but that in turn forces those who would rather be talking about something else in the discussion (everyone taking EL4103 reading this is experiencing an emotion known commonly as nostalgia. Everyone else is experiencing an emotion called dread.)

So the final alternative I have to offer is this: (hopefully resulting in four mechanical tentacles being welded to my back)

Have three or four mikes in seperate places, with plenty of food and drink around (because mikes and drinks go together like the characters of everyone's favorite Shakespearean tragedy), and everytime a conversation results in a discussion going on, those involved can then shimmy over to the mike and begin their discussion there, sharing the mike (hopefully simultaneously for the sake of my photo album) and sharing their thoughts. Anyone who wants to join the discussion can then shimmy over and subsequently fight for possession of the mike (or the nearby Lays).

Ideally, such a setup allows anyone to join a discussion when they want to, and also allows multiple discussions to go on at the same time.

Of course, having been expelled from the heights of Olympus, this setup is clearly vulnerable to all sorts of drawbacks and as a subsequent result, needs meatshield.

Tagboard?

2008-05-06T06:57:00.000-07:00

The Hypathetical Effect

Everyone in the right state of mind (namely, not in Iowa), would have noticed that the school holidays are here (unless you happen to be a member of a lineage of katana wielding badasses). And while it has been something of anticipation for the last six months or so, it probably still is.

It simply isn't what you would have anticipated it to be. And while that may not be true as of yet, by the laws of induction it should be quite safe to say that from the last nine years of our lives, a trend can be observed. The holidays usually seem to be a lot more thrilling and relieving before the actual thrilling and relieving happens. That is to say, it disappoints.

Strangely enough, such a phenomenon is no longer limited to holidays (as of the 2008 patch). Many other things are usually a lot better and appealing before they're actually avaliable. And while the examinations do come to mind upon first mention of such a thing, it can't be denied that many a time, disappointment should be attributed to not to the object of disappointment (no suprise there), but to the human imagination.

Having such a lengthy amount of time to ferment thoughts of anticipation across the period of time in which one is deprived of the object of anticipation, by the time the object is acquired, the actual experience is terribly dampened by having experienced the... experience about ten times or so mentally.

Now about that blogger circle...

2008-05-05T09:36:00.000-07:00

Food for Blog

It's been about six hours or so since I knew the sweet scent of freedom, though the possiblity of being institutionalized is marginally possible, I'm thinking that attempting life in the outside world is still possible as long as I have a second chance.

That said, I believe it's important for all ex-convicts like ourselves to get together and talk about how the world has changed since we last saw it. But no longer having access to old woodland sheds in the middle of the forest, we now have to make do with classy cafes and pristine eateries. Dark times we live in.

There are a few tentative locations for such a meeting.

a. Someone's house, preferably one with a trampoline.

b. A cafe, preferably with coffee that costs more than the caviar at the Ritz.

c. The Ritz.

d. In the event that we can't possible have access to any of these places, we could attempt some sort of pilgrimage through the city, and generally talking about things.

Any suggestions, on the tagboard please.

2008-04-06T07:28:00.000-07:00

The Circle of Lies

For those who speculate that the writer of this blog might have turned to self blood liberation and poetry, fear not. He's still as jaded as a old Singaporean pawn shop. But the purpose of this post isn't to discuss the profits of such an establishment or to offer emotional help to those who need it, rather, it's purpose is to call for a blogger circle gathering.

The wonderful BCG (because everyone knows that without an acronym, something couldn't possible last for more than 1 month) is a hypothetical meeting, but we aim to remedy that. It mainly consists of roughly as many bloggers as possible getting together in person (though some online meetings may be held) to talk about stuff. Recent issues, the future, and possibly even clothing sales should the situation get desperate. In other words, it is not a meeting with conversation, but rather a meeting FOR conversation. In other words, come on down here and talk.

No one can possibly imagine my ecstacy at the moment.

And so, I beseech (not since 3 years ago) to all bored bloggers and adolescents to tag my tagboard (although if you are a boring and out of fashion individual then you could simply type in it.) if they're interested in such a potentially pointless meeting. But then again, who believes in this sort of wishful thinking?

2008-03-21T08:24:00.001-07:00

Right back Edu

One flaw of the education system is that it assumes the simple child is 100GB thumbdrive. The other flaw of the education system is that it assumes that this harddrive will never crash.

But really, at the end of the day, there is only so much one can learn during their sixteen or more years of sentence, And this is where some interesting points start to rise out of the ground after all three magical jewels have been placed at their respective goddess statues.

Suppose there was a kid that possessed the maximum learning ability of his generation. (I'm afraid that due to privacy reasons I cannot give you Darr- whoops, said too much) Now suppose that his entire life was dedicated to the pursuit of new knowledge, and that all his income comes straight from an unlimited source. His entire life is spent searching for new breakthroughs and so on and so forth. (Except for his PS3 sessions and bus pilgrimages on weekends.) After he dies (shattering the faith of many female high school juniors around the world), he leaves behind all the knowledge, wisdom, and torrents he had discovered. The next generation in turn has its own Darryl work on this knowledge.

So the question is (after many paragraphs of blithering) is this: how long can this cycle go on? And while I could turn you to the Tour de France what I really should be telling you is that the possibility of a point where the amount of knowledge learnt in one's lifetime is no longer dependant on how much there currently is, but the amount of knowledge learnt in one's lifetime is dependant on... well, one's lifetime. Will there be a time period where one's lifespan is no longer enough time to learn what has been discovered over the past years before one finally gets all the answers anyway? In more other words, when will it be that the human brain cannot accumulate all learnt knowledge before it dies?

So where is this all going? (And while I am tempted to ask for a minute or two and get back to you later, it looks like I'm going to have to do some impromptu) What this might mean is that there might be a point in the future where no more scientific advancements can be made because no one can learn all the knowledge necessary to make those advances before they die (and even Walt Disney won't help us then). Throw in the fact that lifespans have been dropping ever since Adam got his craving for deliciously evil fruits and there really is a reason to fill the basement with dried rations. But there might be a solution.

Using previously accumulated knowledge, if we could somehow extend our own lifespan, more advances could be made. And this is where topics like transhumanism (and the Florida Bar) start popping in.

So while we're all hurrying down to the grocery store to buy the necessary food and ammo, let's just give this topic a little thought.

Tagboard, anyone?

2008-03-08T21:20:00.000-08:00

Hol's well that ends hell

Having takne it upon myself at the beginning of every school holiday to contribute to the giant gaping void that is our planet's ozone layer, I've decided to write about the rather controversial topic of controversy.

It would be rather expected if about half my readers (I'm sorry, wrong word there? "my"?. Silly, arrogant little me.) immediately made the planet less unhappy by a negligible amount the moment I mentioned this topic, but this is probably what writers (from this it can be seen that I am really not one individual, but a collective entity composed of thousands of individuals) as "self topic syndrome" or STS, if you're the kind of person who goes through a cardiac arrest and dies if you don't get the opportunity to puzzle people every half a minute or so.

In fact, let's drop all this controversy nonsense and just talk about STS instead.

Many a writer tends to reach a certain point in their lives where they can no longer write anything (or think about anything to write about) the topic that they've been writing about for years. This may range from large smelly pointed hats categorizing young children, or generally insulting things about the physical form of God who came down to wash our sins away so that we may be entered into the kingdom of heaven. And many a writer will then try to write about writing itself.

This usually results in the vain sacrifices of millions of trees around the world for the cause of dissecting the process of sacrifing millions of trees around the world.

But the root of this problem usually comes around from trying to write something for the sake of being different, and this is where Dan Brown needs to start being ashamed of himself. So before I'm silenced let me just say this:

There's really no need to write about something different. What a writer really has to do is... well.. bonus points for the one who guesses this. Very simply, write. Write about what you want people to know, or what you think about something. Many a time have I found my thinking process get cut off by simply thinking "Is this going to be a good one?". If you're currently experiencing that, my advice would be to shut down your computer (or typewriter, depending on how many medical conditions you have at the moment) and go for a cup of coffee (or an IV drip), then come back when you've seen the error of your ways.

2008-01-28T05:43:00.000-08:00

The-vice

So after having shamelessly delayed all of my china entries save for the one promising them, I have had no choice but to churn out useless filler entries to appease the general masses (Norwegians not included).

Allow me to defend myself, Your Honor, by clarifying that this is due to the advent of the new school year and that most of the time that would have been spent sitting on my bed and sipping apple juice mixed with sprite while mercilessly massaging my keyboard are now spent sitting in a classroom with twenty one other people who would rather be sitting at home on their beds sipping apple juice mixed with sprite and massaging their keyboards. In other words, it's been a productive first month of the new school year.

But every weekend I do get the opportunity to sit down on my bed and pull out my beloved laptop (or Palm, in this case) and catch up on old times, as well as liberate at least forty people of their heads virtually. Of course, most of the time was spent on the latter but now that the recent head pandemic has passed, it now gives us the opportunity to move over to more intellectual entries. (These may include the vague possiblity of Samuel finally producing another entry, but as I said, intellectual discussions please.)

So once again we find ourselves brushing upon the topic of De Thevice, a hypothetical device that boasts the features of all the current portable devices that are relevant to us today, such as the mobile phone (which also happens to be a hybrid device) and the mp3 player and laptop.

But why bring up such a controversial and heretic topic at such a controversial and heretic time?

For those who happen not to own a 360 or Wii (look, it's a fact that we're going to have to face sooner or later, my dear Sony fanboys.), many other devices may have drawn your attention (with the merits of Adobe Photoshop).

Most of them may be hybrid devices, (though it is my strict belief that we should judge them based on their character and not their parentage) such as the PSP, PS3, iphone, and so and so forth and God forbid that Sony every create any thing that doesn't have a name starting with P. Earlier on, a similar attempt to bring two distant devices in holy matrimony ended in a abrupt seperation: The N-gage.

We have yet to see how the iphone performs (hopefully something along the lines of beatboxing), but the PS(P+3) have both failed, or at least not performed as well, in terms of the secondary functions they boasted. In the PS3's case, the features of a home entertainment system (also known locally as the little sister), and in the PSP's case, also an entertainment system, but rather portability instead of resolution ten times higher than anything to be found on the USS Enterprise.

The PS3 failed because of its irrational need for Blu-Ray (still it refuses any help, much to the dismay of its family), a new disc format which capable of holding a lot more than DVDs (in the same fashion where Jean Grey can hold a lot more than the Juggernaut), but because of the already existing popularity of the more masculine DVD (a great apology to all the feminists reading this blog, and a greater enquiry as to why they are reading it). The blu-ray disc also seems to fail in the very area it claims to excel in: resolution. While it may be true that blu-ray holds more than your average RPG character (will the real Link please stand up?), it fails in allowing the human eye to catch up (since the days of being able to project this month's stocks onto a wall using your eyes are still but a dream), since most people agree that there doesn't seem to be any noticeable difference in terms of resolution between DVD and blu-ray. So while blu-ray may be superior to DVD technically, in terms of praticality mother still knows best.

And yet despite the failure of such devices, the market moves increasingly towards the siren-like wails of multi function devices. The mobile phone (or comms droid, if you've decided to pop back into the 20th century to get away from all the nukes) you carry in your hand is a testament to this. Chances are if you aren't playing Snake 2, you've got a camera in your phone. Then after failing miserably at level 250, you proceed to enquire of your friend about a multiplayer bluetooth match. Suddenly the mobile phone is an entertainment device as it is a communication device. (Studies have shown that entertainment and communication are not to be confused, especially if you have a diplomat for a buddy.)

So why is it that the multi function mobile phone (or as everyone calls it today, the mobile phone) has thriven like Soviets in a library, and yet devices such as the N-gage have failed despite their very aim being incoporating multiple functions into one device?

Let's take a look at the problems with the N-gage, as well as other issues that might arise with similar devices:

1. The N-gage can be compared to that of progressive creationism. By compromising in both areas of a phone and a gaming device, it proceeded to flip on its transexual arse and die. The screen was taller than it was wide, which was more of a desirable feature in women than electronics, and the dialing pad was impossible to use without both hands. The original N-gage is also well known for glueing tacos to people's heads: instead of putting the screen to your face as you talked, you had to press the side of the N-gage onto your cheeks (hi there!), leading to great distress and a rapid climb in employment of personal pyschiatrists. So what did the N-gage fail in? User friendliness. By trying to stuff too many features into one device than was possible at the time the N-gage compromised on all of them, as well as user input.

2. As demonstrated in Iron Man's fight with the Hulk battery life is terribly important. And since fuel cells and strange aliens from space that supply infinite energy haven't been discovered yet, we require the use of the Lithium Ion/ Lithium Polymer/ Nickel Ion Battery. So far, these work fine in common devices, lasting about three days, in the case of phones, without charging and several hours for laptops. But what we can see from this is that different devices have different power requirements depending on their features. So while it might be possible to play cell-shaded games on the PSP, you might end up getting defeated by the devious "Low Battery" alert than the final boss' desperation move.

3 Fermat is generally known as a very mean person who enjoyed leaving mathematical dilenmas for the rest of the world to disprove/prove/get infuriated by even after his death, so it's no suprise that a single "o" could change anthing, because format is usually one of the problems when it comes to a portable electronic device. To solve the problem of having different formats for the exact same thing, many companies churn out converters, which usually can't be uninstalled or send adware into your computer like Noah sending chupacabras into the top deck of the Ark.

4. One common thing between women and electronics is that size does matter. Bringing your girlfriend to a bowling alley can be very embarassing without the right kind of girlfriend, especially when it turns out that the bowling alley was in fact your new portable cell phone. It's generally a rule that durability is inversely proportional to size, because as more features get crammed into a device, more components are needed and to keep the little bugger in the palm of your hand the components have to be made smaller, and thus more vulnerable to damage. Size may also affect user accessiblity, as seen in the case of small keyboards.

So what are the features to be desired in The Device?

Read everything that has been written since the numbers started. Now rectify those problems.

But as seen from the failure of the N-gage, we probably won't be getting such devices till the advent of the PS5 (or perhaps when Sony stops naming everything with the suffix of P and a numeral).

But there are also problems with the very concept of a multi purpose device covering all your needs.

Technology is a wonderful thing. Many a method has been devised to protect the IT user from various threats and heresies such as viruses and spam. Norton, however, does not provide protection from the actual physical laws of the universe. F=ma still applies, as does the usual law of “they didn’t see me do it”. Losing a mobile phone at this current time can already be a traumatic experience, so losing possession of your future ultimate device essentially erases your presence from the world, till of course you get another one and provided you backed up all your documents and files. Most shops however, have strict policies about serving non existent customers, so recovery may prove to be slightly difficult.
Losing your device would mean losing access to your bank accounts, your contacts, your clearance to the Bat Mobile, and more importantly, the possibility of someone else obtaining them. And while stronger security devices may be implemented to prevent access of another person’s information, humans, in their infinite creativity (in the presence of caffeine) and adaptability, will always find another way to be a thorn in the arse of the human race.

2008-01-15T03:50:00.000-08:00

Funtionality

Over the past few days I've been fooling around (or as the British would say, faffing about) with the multimedia functions of my new phone and I'm been, so far, quite impressed with all the features that can be fit into that little Snickers of a device. But at the end of the day, whether you're a high school teacher or a Republican politician that aims to shut down Rockstar Games, you have to admit that a phone's most ability intense feature is that of the games, in other words, 3D Java applications.

The pre loaded games that you get when you first purchase your phone are no doubt that of mediocre quality. Knowing that there was no way in hell (or Singapore) that I would be able to get the greatest possible enjoyment from playing Multiplay Tennis, I proceeded to an old associate of mine which I call www.mobile9.com.

mobile9.com is about as close to mobile content piracy as you can get, though it's not really piracy because no one actually gets the moolah flowing in from uploading content on mobile9.com, so we prefer to refer to it as sharing, something that used to be quite evident until the Boys in Blue came in and cracked dow-

And now that I managed to find some extra rope in my closet (as well as space, in case they kick about), we can get back to mobile9.com. I proceeded to download every single game with good looking screenshots and then uploaded them shamelessly onto my mobile phone like a poacher in Kenya loading up ivory onto his truck. The problem with the games I found was that most of them were clunky. Splinter Cell didn't give me the feel that I did in the PC version and Aero Mission 3D didn't aim properly. I did, however, find V Rally 3D, which led me to another site called www.mobiletoones.com. (Which also leads me to check the condition of the lock on my closet.)

I would just like to say that I do not have the soundtrack "Stairways to Heaven" and that the temptation to play it backwards has long faded away.

I would also like to appeal to those who have a spare computer monitor.

Mobiletoones.com is amazing. Signing up is required but free (what was that first part again?) 3D games are galore and all wonderfully put the monetary system to deep blushing shame.

Which is where we get to Robot Alliance.

Later.

2008-01-13T04:25:00.000-08:00

onering.gif cannot be opened

After having received my first phone that actually has more memory than that of an Alzheimer's patient or an JRPG protagonist, I've been plunged into the world of multimedia on my cell phone. I'm now able to use my phone as more than just a phone: a radio, a music player, and also a poor man's PSP just in case the MRT overshoots the last stop and the waiting lines upstairs happen to be longer than I expect to be.

Which leads us to one realization:

The lines between different kinds of devices are getting blurrer, which is an odd choice of words because now your cellphone happens to at least have a 2.0 mega pixel camera built into it, and there's really no excuse for that kind of resolution.

It turns out that most electronic devices these days no longer have one purpose, they simply excel more in one than they do the other. This means that one day, the possiblity of an ultimate device which fares equally well in all aspects could very well be in the palm of your hand soon, or in your cerebral cortex, depending on whether the biologists have been going heavy on the coffee or not.

Comments on the tagboard, please.

2008-01-12T03:50:00.000-08:00

January 12, 2008
Samuel's Brain

Our losses have been heavy. External Stumili launched an unexpected attack on our main neurons, and everything's a mess now. We were completely taken off guard and word has been received from the Cerebral Cortex that the same thing's happening everywhere.

I only have vague memories of this whole thing happened. I remember Samuel picking up a book at the library called God's Debris, and it completely overturned everything. He now sees matter as the absence of space and vice versa, and simply can't live as a the abnormal person he used to be anymore.

Thankfully, we've been able to regroup and it seems that things are going back to the way they were. It seems that we may finally stand a chan-

2008-01-04T22:00:00.000-08:00

Poortability?

So here we have it:

The entry that was written a few days before I embaked on my pilgrimage to the East (thus resulting in a few lawsuits from everyone's favorite anthromorphic monkey), but here it is:

There will be no more colons from this point:

Well, this is just the first entry, and is simply a test of the limits (though some claim that the videos are in fact frauds) of the portable Palm keyboard for the Tungsten T3. And for the total evaluation, I'm suprised to say that I really can't feel much of a difference when typing when compared to my laptop keyboard. There are two possible reasons for this, but I'm quite sure it's all very self explanatory. Although it's not to say the thing is perfect, since, by definition of the word perfect, there are a few quibbles to be had with the portable keyboard.

1. I can't charge my Palm while using the keyboard, for the simple reason that the Palm simply couldn't live with itself if the keyboard found out, or from a more Gradgrinian point of view, the keyboard interfaces with the Palm the way I like it, by plugging into it at the bottom, which coincidentally also happens to be the location of the unmentionable charging slot. So in the end, my Palm is torn between having to choose between being provided for and the fleeting pleasure of being able to type at the same speed as I would on my laptop.

2. Unfortunately, as is the case with most flat things, the Portable keyboard is simply frail. Underneath it's cold hard exterior lies a weakling longing for protection. And while this is due to the fact that the keyboard can be folded up into a case the size of a wallet, you can't help but feel that this keyboard will someday leave you prematurely, and that you should treasure every moment you have with it.

Though the keyboard does earn points for portability and compactness when folded, so in the end, its disadvantages are counterbalanced by whatever weaknesses it may have.

So while we're on the topic, let's talk (or if you tend to have crushes on four eyed beings which spend more time in front of a screen than anything, I will) about the whole concept of portability.

Human beings seem to be completely obsessed with being able to bring things with them (a brief apology to all the parents on the planet) wherever they go. Of course, this wasn't really much of a possiblity until the wheel was invented, but then most people didn't like the idea of having to Tour De France just to keep an error message on the screen and the SPCA had strict rules regarding hamsters, so we had to wait till the battery was invented.

The first kind of real portable computer (Not those wishy washy holographic versions) ran on AA batteries, and could last for an hour or so before ceasing to provide all sorts of wonderful error messages. But at that point of time, it was considered a wonderful breakthrough, because you could now enjoy error messages on the go, and would never have to do so in the comfort of your own home.

All was well and splendid till some genius came up with the idea of using rechargeable batteries which were only avaliable for fifty dollars or so, but could provide up to two hours of error messages. And so the market for portability exploded, and managers could now give you forty times your normal workload, because having to travel long distances was no longer in the way of getting more work done.

But of course, as our favorite uncle with a vocabulary of one sentence once (alright, once may be understating it a little) said, With great power comes great responsiblities.", Which brings us to one of the problems with portability: Power sources. Most laptops these days can usually only stay awake for about three hours on average, with higher end laptops being able to frustrate you for five hours or so, but most laptops still being in the regions of two hours or so. But with human beings' ability to adapt to all sorts of wome- situations, power plugs are now the most dominant species on Earth, though I still don't trust them.

Another problem, as mentioned before when discussing the Portable Keyboar- hold on a second... the U goes here... Shift key goes here... Alright, where was I? But more importantly, where'sthespacebar? You can see my point here. Portability results in a drastic drop of (this may not be the best choice of words on a plane...) strength and durability, especially if something was not specifically designed to be portable, then is suddenly dragged onto the porto bandwagon.

Occasionally, portability also shoves convenience and user friendliness off the wagon, such as reducing (I mean upgrading of course) to a pocket calculator, such that typing is only possible with your thumbs, thus making a lot of other species of creatures very angry at the wretched humans.

So why do so many foolish humans insist on making things portable? Morpheus is getting very concerned...

Well, for obvious reasons, of course. I mean, seriously. What sort of question is that? I mean, you can carry it around with you...

Well, for starters, it makes your devices more personal. You can now spend more time with them, and use what would be otherwise wasted time on the train to get that new game +, or type your letter of resignation. Our choices of what we want to accomplish are no longer limited by distance and postion, because we now bring our tools with us. You'll notice that the longer someone uses a device, the more information goes into the device and the more personal it becomes. It almost becomes a part of that person, which brings us to our next question:

Red pill or Blue pill?

2007-12-28T05:55:00.000-08:00

Santa is Watching You

While I work on the war diary documenting my travels to the Land in the East, like a shameless commercial popping up just as the hero hangs precariously from a cliff hanging precariously from a cliff, I send you this message with great concern. Pay heed to this warning.

But not to worry! Because in these dire times of need, Santa is watching, and will be there for you. Whatever the place, whenever the time, Santa is always watching.

And so I learnt.

When I arrived in China, I was under the assumption that the regime was over. I was, in fact, correct. The first regime was over. The age of Mao is over. The age of Santa is rising.

It should be noted at this point of time that according to our tour guides, the chinese aren't particular about religion. But instead of turning to Dawkins and his il- like, they have chosen a more Samaritan way of life, or more fittingly, a more RPG way of life: always pray at altars, no matter what they might be.

So in other words, they can be likened to a house wife trying out five different brands of detergent, but never really deciding on one in the end.

This means that they will not hesistate to sing of the birth of Christ in the very same room where sticks are burned in front of tablets with dead people's names writen on them. Subsequently, this led to the same five Christmas songs being blasted at me in the hotel corridors and dining areas for five days continuously.

So perhaps the only thing that could send me into a berseker fury after such an ordeal would be the words:

Hey, Listen!

2007-12-11T02:29:00.000-08:00

Pride comes before Fall, and so does Spring

Well, in just a few more days or so I'll be flying over to the land of Tim Sum and... you're going to have to give me a minute or two to figure out what else there is in China.

Well , there's not really much to talk about at this point of time. The orientation 2008 planning sessions have come to a standstill so far (which is ironic because Steph is in charge. No really.), but the possiblity of a meeting tomorrow stills exists as a waveform, and before the waveform collapses, I'm trying my best right now to gather as many people involved so that we can all assemble at school tomorrow and complain about the weather before going home and wondering what we came out for in the first place. Which of course, was for the purpose of coming to school and compla...

Before I hit Ctrl Alt Del, I'm going to announce the possibility of the existence of a waveform that I may document the whole China trip thing, just for the hell of it and because presumably the moment I stop typing, I stop thinking, and you can't get much of a rush from typing qwerty over and over again.

Don't call me. I'll call you. (*sniggers* right...)

2007-12-04T19:40:00.000-08:00

Plot vs Themes

A warning to those of you who do not relish the thought of killing Covenant scum and saving the universe at around midnight: You may be the only people who actually bother reading this entry. Amazingly, today you will find that this entry is a discussion. Not just any discussion, but something you don't really find these days: an intellectual discussion (at least, not on youtube).

If you'll pardon me for my excellence in the previous paragraph (alright, i'll try and stop that now), I've just finished reading Douglas Adam's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and if you've read the appraisals on one of his books, you'll notice that all of them will indeed contain at least one synonym for "insanity" or "lunacy" and other mean words.

It should probably be noted that Adams' books have sold over eight million copies worldwide (I'm assuming that's worldwide, just to give the other authors face.). And the reason for this, in my humble and unworthy opinion, is the absolutely ludicrous yet brilliant plot that he magically conjures up everytime he writes a book. Whenever some power unknown entity possesses you to pick up one of his books (that was its end of the bargain), when reading it you will tend to go through the following process:

1. Read a few chapters, and find that they hardly have any connection with each other whatsoever.
2. Read the whole book, and nurse the wounds on your face when you finally realize the connections that the events in the first few chapters have with each other, and realize the great plot that Adams' has orchestrated.
3. Marvel at the great plot Adams' has orchestrated.
4. Finish the book and sigh in relief.
5. Read the book again, this time without the marvelling but still with a certain degree of sighing.
6. Marvel again after reading the book again and go online in a valiant attempt to actually understand the whole plot.
7. Marvel again when you find that you enjoyed the book regardless of the fact that you missed at least one major plot element.

Congratulations! Welcome to the Adams family!

But here's the question (yes, after half the entry):
Can Adams' work be considered literature, or just a smashing novel that's fun to read?

In other words, is a novel defined as a good one by its plot elements or by the themes it discusses?

Look, I apologise for this whole thing, and I realize that the holidays are here and you need a good rest from all this literary nonsense, but it should be noted that I'm suffering right now and you're all my friends. Right? (Where's my handgun?)

Anyway, back to the main point... Adams' works don't discuss many themes in detail. Rather, what he does during his novels is bring up a subject, muse about it a little in a very amusing and insightful way (is there anything else I could say, seriously?), then move on to the plot. In the end, what really matters is the smashing plot. But with such grand orchestrated plots, it seems far too unjust to say that Adams' works are not literature because they don't discuss themes into such a great depth like the works of Dickens' and the like.

Comments on the tagboard please.

2007-12-04T04:07:00.001-08:00

The Occasional Blockade

It would seem that after what appears to be a writing spree for a week or so I have finally encountered the dreaded and nearly mythical entity that would make the Ring video seem like it was in full color with cheesy Flash effects. It seems to happen to every writer (or anyone who calls himself a writer) where at some point of time they simply can't get any words out as fast as they used to, and even telling people that they used to be able to get out some words faster seems to be a lot more difficult than the last time, whenever that was.

It would seem that I'm getting somewhat of a demo of this whole thing. My whole mind has seemed to be getting foggy somewhat of late, so much that a London weather girl could take one look at my cranium and sink into a deep depression at who anything could possibly outsmog London.

In other words, what I'm really trying to get across here is that my writing may not have been what it used to be, whatever it used to be, and that may or may not be a bad thing or a good thing respectively.

But meanwhile, a pre travelogue.

Knowing me (and if you don't, then well done), most people might already know that I"m flying over to China at popular request of the Japanese. And while all the negotiations and such are going at this time, I'm simply getting ready to fly over, and no cybernetically enhanced super soldier in green armor's going to stop me.

Anyway, not two days ago, I, accompanied by my mother (damn! mixed up the order again), graced a Winnings winter ware wearhouse sale with our presence.

I should probably say that at this point, I was rather charmed by the selection of coats that they had, that is to say, completely gobsmacked and on my knees. And while I could take this opportunity to make an even greater homage to the Queen (I mean, the QUEEN), I'm going to have to describe the coats now, so I have no choice but to move on to the next paragraph and let the QUEEN have this one.

The place could only be described as a coat hangar (yes, with an "a"). And while there were plenty of coats that were actually useful, the ones that I really grew partial to were the trench coats. Well, not so much trench coats as they were the kind that you would wear while trudging through the night streets of London with a smoke that was almost burning out, and with a case on your mind. It was simply beautiful, and would have descended from the heavens if it wasn't for the damn ceiling.

I would, at this point of time, like to say that I had gotten the coat.

While I'm wishing, I'd like a time machine.

And with that, I have nothing more to say on this subject that could possibly pacify anyone (or entertain, if that's what's popular these days), and I therefore must adjourn this session with a few pictures, along with some loose commentary.

Together, we can fight cancer. And fashion.

I'm afraid the Boss isn't in at the moment...

I don't have to tell you what I was doing in the wool socks section. (Yes, the ones for your FEET.)

2007-11-27T02:19:00.000-08:00

Ad-versity

Anywhere, here I am sitting outside of the grease factory Burger King about to embark on a journey of linguistic rampancy and make fun of advertisments.

Yesterday I was feeling extremely lethargic but went out anyway, only to realize that the moment I got to my favorite spot at the library (the one the turrets can't reach) I immediately got bored and proceeded to pack up and go home.

But today my forgetfullness has given me a purpose in life, that is, to get a present for Damien tomorrow because it's my birthday and Gan reminded me just one hour ago. Now Leroy and I, I mean, Me and Leroy (sorry about that I know you own me) are in a frantic rush to get something for him (preferably appealing to both him and his tiny alter ego) from Comics Connection and make up an ad hoc party tomorrow.

But first, as is the custom with all of my blog entries, I must make fun of something.

Just ten minutes ago I was passing by an OSIM shop in Westmall (that is to say, not coming out of it), and as a result, an advertisment on one of those LCD screens. I immediately turned around to get more information on Hellgate London when I suddenly realized I really didn't need a remedy for snoring at night, so I immdiately resumed my original course.

Anyway, the wireless in this place is totally f-ed up, and so am I (without the dash), so I'm typing this thing out on notepad while I wait for Leroy to come over and ask me what I have in mind.
Anyway, lately I've sort of lost my tempo. (Austin Powers had it lucky) I really have idea what to do, even though I know I'm supposed to be making up a schedule for the Orientation Dinner (in or caps) or studying Trigonometry or something along those lines. But right now I'm really just kicking it (and managed to disappear in time during the commotion) and doing things like playing Halo or leading the Toxin Rebels to glory.

There's probably going to be a meeting tomorrow and so I really need some ideas up to appease the almighty Stephanie, so I would appreciate anything you can dump on the tagboard. Tell me whatever you'd like to have during an orientation dinner and i'll try my best to bypass the Smartfilter.

2007-11-24T03:00:00.000-08:00

Cool, Calm and Compost

Over the last few days my routine has been pretty much the same: Wake up two hours after the time I expected and wanted to wake up at, get up, have some coffee, read a textbook or go online to blog about my daily schedule, then pretty much do the same thing over again the next day, with some random push ups thrown in here and there.

The last event that was actually different took place last Friday, during the Orientation 2008 Dinner discussion, but pretty much ended up becoming a game of very heated Monopoly, with alliances that granted each other immunity from others' rent and so on and so forth, with me and Shudder barely surviving throughout the whole thing. (nothing personal, rashidah)

Anyway, I call upon the people who actually read this damn blog and are feeling the same sort of thing is going on during their holidays to unite against boredom sometime next week, and get together for a board game session or something.

2007-11-22T00:12:00.000-08:00

Rain of Terror

I am currently sitting in my cousin's house, blogging about something that has been the subject of debate since twenty minutes ago.

The angels are taking their time in there...

The rain right now is simply abysmal. I can only describe it as a hydro-bombardment, with thunder coming along every ten seconds or so. According to my uncle, you're supposed to be able to see the Punggol HDB branch from here. You can't now. Whether that means the rain is heavy, or the world is a better place, only HDB knows.

It must also be noted that just ten minutes ago, I was playing a 5 player FFA game of Zero Hour with everyone playing Nuke Gen. I would like to compliment EA LOS Angeles for their technological breakthrough. It has been a thoroughly immersive experience and I would like to know how they got this power.

A lot has happened over the week. There was the Arts Fest, and... damn. Alright, there was the Arts fest.

Well, as with every event that happens in the school, I'm going to document it and then rate it. I'm afraid that my rating system goes somewhere along the lines of a fraction, like 3/5, and has nothing to do with alphabets and sex scenes.

It has been a tradition of mine to make a title for the whole thing in big bold letters everytime, so following the cliche:

Arts Fest 2007

There. Happy?

I would first like to clear up the whole toilet cake thing. Yes, we won the first prize for the Visual Arts category and won a printer worth $200. We've decided to eBay the thing, split the cash, then use the remainder to compensate LC (we told him it was a week old).

The Arts Fest covered two days. The first day could only be described as... (It should be noted at this point that due to the uneventful- wait... damn! That's the word! Anyway, due to the uneventful nature of the whole first day, I am referring to the Arts Fest programme schedule as we speak to try and get a rough recollection of what the hell happened and why it was so bad.)

Alright, according to the schedule, the first event was the opening speech by Dr Hang.

...

It looks like I've made a mistake here. The first event that mattered was...

Alright, I'm being mean here. Dr Hang raised a few points on how rigid the system used to be, which no one can deny (I mean, he's the principal.). He brought up a personal example: How he wanted to learn both Art and Technical stuff but could only choose once and how he went up to the principal (look, he was only a kid at the time so there shouldn't be any confusion here) and asked for an exception and he got one in the end but with the principal doing a "The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole" ripoff on him and so on and so forth and how fortunate we are to be *BREATHES* able to get the best of all the bloody worlds avaliable to us.

*Two shocks to the chest later*

Anyway, after the speech we all applauded (I'm assuming it was in appreciation of the speech) and the Chinese Orchestra came up and played a song. Yes, a song. In other words, they played a different song. Not that funny Golden Dragon Chasing Tail thing. It was actually a different song. But I would like to point out something here:

The Chinese Orchestra came up first, right?

The music they played was suprisingly Western. It sounded like something along the lines of Western Opera music. The following exchange then occured between me and an equally confused brother:

Me: It's freakin' western opera.

Darryl: Damn, yeah.

M: I'm thinking handmaid right now.

D: Say what?

M: Aristocrat woman, handmaid following behind...

D: *Insert hysterical laughter here* OH my god, yes!!! (Asthmatically)

Nonetheless, it was all very interesting as to how they were able to achieve this sort of Western effect using instruments that pledge their alliegance to the Emperor at the age of two. It was a nice refreshing change from the same oriental music we get every year.

*Stares demandingly at Band*

Speaking of the Band, they didn't play. I really don't have a clue why, but it could have something to do with the Chinese Orchestra and the bad economy.

And then a speech by Dr Wong on how wonderful the number 1 is. I've given up trying to appreciate these speeches.

And here we get to the cake stealing bastards of the day. Nick Wong, Random Guy 1 and Random Guy 2 come up on the stage, hang a 1 UP mushroom in front of them, and then play the Mario Bros. Level 1 Theme using percussion (xylophone, drums etc).

The only problem I have with this performance is this:

School Uniform? Seriously, come on.

Anyway, on to the Preg- I mean, You've Got It! competition. Most of the performance acts were Ad Hoc, come up with people who were bored of not seeing people perform any Ad Hoc.

Some pretty good performances out there, like the ad hogue monoloc between Ying Zhen and Mom, and... I'm going to need help on this one, since I skipped almost half of the performances. Brenda and somebody else's duet was pretty good.

And that's all I'm going to say regarding the performances.

Alright after all that fiasco I went outside to attend to the toilet cake (*slaps forehead*), then pretty much went inside at random intervals, then came out again.

Not much I can say here, but we won the Visual Arts competition and now have ONE printer and THREE very happy team members.

And yes, toilet cakes are made with love, son.

Anyway, I skipped the museum visit so I can't say anything about the place (damn).

Now here comes the more "controversial" (aka hated) part of the whole Arts Fest.

It is widely known that before World War 2 Hitler was very mean to the Jews, and while this has absolutely no relation with the Arts Fest whatsoever and no one has a rectangular mustache, I must say that during the Mass Perse- er... Dance I rather felt like one of the Chosen People of God (with a capital G).

See, some little bugger on the planning team decided to have us all dance to Hip Hop instead of music. (Oh come on, i mean seriously, you can't expect me to not hate the stuff.) It should probably be revealed at this point of time that Hip Hop isn't like cake (and sadly, isn't a lie as well), and that not everyone likes it. However, this didn't stop the clever person (*twitch*) who planned this whole thing from making everyone line up in neat rows and flounder like total idiots while some people dresssed in baggy shirts and equally baggy or baggier pants do some funny actions that seem similar to scratching one's unmentionables.

Frankly we would all have been fine with this whole thing (aka not have hated it as much) if we weren't forced to line up in neat little columns and dance for the Emperor, or the Fuhrer or whatever. And so a couple of other comrades (I shall not name them here so as not to implicate them) and myself decided to sit at the side of the Hall and watch everyone else scratch their crotch or do something that looked like it. At that point all we could do was just shake our heads and that have another dose of the good ol' stuff, because not only was it totally unfashionable (coming from ME), it just looked plain ridiculous, so much that even people who listen to Hip Hop would have put off listening to it altogether.

Later, under the watchful eye of Dr Wong we all had to do it together as a school again. So when the time came for the Year 3s to get rid of that nasty itch I simply blended into the crowd. (I almost won that game of chopsticks!) It should be noted that the only ones who actually tried to scratch their unmentionables properly were the Year 4s (or 5s. I couldn't look), probably because they like this sort of thing.

Then at last the War was over and we were all allowed to go home to our families.

So what happened? How did we lose the War?

Well, firstly the guys who planned this whole thing probably didn't get the revelation that not everyone likes Hip Hop (Hi there!).

Secondly, not everyone enjoys dancing to it or even dancing in public for that matter, which puts the whole concept of a Mass Dance at risk. But the main point here is that not everyone may enjoy dancing to the stuff, either because they just don't like it or they don't think they could do it properly to look acceptable enough.

Thirdlee, it should be noted that from watching what the people in the funny baggy clothes were doing, the moves they were (trying to) teach us weren't very Hip Hop-ish, which usually involve some sort of breakdancing, which you don't put in the same room as the average NUSHs student. So really, trying to look punk and being punk are in entirely different buckets.

Anyway, I'm running out of coffee now so I'm going to have to put off the second day (aka the good day) to another time.

I better leave now. I hear them coming. Farewell comrades.

2007-11-19T20:41:00.000-08:00

Of Ten Year Olds and Teabagging

Whlie I work on that post that makes DBZ seem moderately long, I'm going to pretty much document whatever has happened so far and relate to you all the very interesting sequence that happened about a few days ago.

Alright, it's Friday, and so SexyBlend (Darryl) and friends (Assorted people such as Mom, Cancy, Gan, Yuting, LC and so on and so forth) head to JP to Stepmania. That is, everyone except LC, who was actually just going for lunch, and realized we were headed to JP about ten minutes into the whole trip. This led to Darryl having to take his left arm while I apologized for the window.

Alright, so while everyone is busy stomping the life out of a poor platform (except LC of course), I head over to the free 360 and play a little Halo 3 (How anyone can possibly play a little of Halo 3, I'm still trying to figure that one out).

Anyway, I play co-op with this seemingly ten year old kid who seems to get the main idea of co-op pretty well: You nuke everything except the guy with the words floating above his head. Simple, right? But here comes the big problem: He leaves. He is then replaced by a six year old kid (or a very bad flash clone) who needs to jump to reach the controller.

The little bugger has no idea what's going on and decides to nuke the bad person with the words floating above his head using the very convenient rocket launcher. I decide to respond to this by walking up to him and introducing the butt end of my assault rifle to his cranium, then proceed to engage in the wonderful activity of teabagging.

Just in case any of the few innocent people in the world are reading this, allow me to completely change that and explain the process of teabagging.

Teabagging has its origins all the way back to first Halo game. Basically, if you kill someone in multiplayer and decide that the utter humiliation you have caused him is worthy of respect and you should rub it in his face (quite literally), you proceed to stand on top of his corpse and press and let go of the crouch button periodically, thus initiating one of the most wonderful acts of life.

Anyway, the little bugger had no idea what was going on and promptly respawned, eager to get revenge. So the whole process repeated itself a total of five times before I realized I was having too much fun and that my Creator was watching. So I left to watch the others stomp the platform, and went back after a while to see the little bugger still try and figure out what was happening.

I claimed my destiny.

2007-11-14T06:57:00.000-08:00

Your Cake will Probably be Edible Inc.

It was a moment of folly. We stared at that piece of inviting yellow paper, and in our brashful youthfullness, simply decided to sign up for the damn thing. Which is how I find myself to be in the living room of Yuting's House sniffing the vague smell of cocoa from the kitchen/storeroom/sanctuary, with that son of a b*tch who seems to have some sort of blood feud with my dark colored clothes outside barking like a... son of a b*tch.

We have signed ourselves up for the Visual Arts exhibition, and in her excitement (there was only one person excited here), decided to make pretty cakes. While this isn't something I do everyday (I'm not a heavy eater most of the time), I thought it would be amusing. Turns out, it's more of a health hazard.

The design is something I'd rather not reveal right now, because some of you are probably eating as you read this. And if you are, you're probably going to need a new keyboard if I told you, so I'm going to tell you. It's a toilet.

Yes, you heard (read) me right, the cake we're making is a toilet, or rather based on the visual image of a toilet. There were several prototypes thought up, like having a chocolate fondue fountain in the bowl of the thing, but we thought it would be better to save costs here and just make a toilet cake out of sponge, then fill the thing with chocolate Hershey's Kisses. Following that, the whole thing will be encased in a sanitary coat of white icing, and will be subject to several days of refrigeration till the hour of truth comes.

At least, that was the plan.

Right now I am stuck in the living/dining/study room waiting for the first cake to finish baking while our second cake mixes. The first cake was mostly chaos. The second cake is mostly chocolate.
We can probably throw that whole "Present Vice/Assistant Principal with first slice" thing out of the window (together with the cake). I mean, they didn't offend us or anything...

*10 minutes later*

Quick update. It turns out that that first cake I mentioned, the one in the oven, it's disappeared. In its place we have an observatory. It's a very beautiful observatory, but its occupants are still a bunch of slimy bastards, so we're going to nuke it for 15 minutes more.

*15 minutes later*

The observatory is highly stubborn, so we decided on a peace treaty. The observatory shall be mostly unharmed as long as we can slice off that slimey portion and eat it without any ill effects (on me).

*About 1 or more hour later*

The second cake was turned out to be a lot better than the first.

*A week later*

Well, all's gone pretty well, save for a few ammendments to the whole plan:

1. The cake can no longer be eaten.

2. The Hersheys can be eaten, but they won't be in the toilet bowl.

Besides all that, the cake's gone pretty well. Over the several days of construction the thing's holding up pretty fine, except for the flushing box which seems to teeter over at random intervals.
I gotta hand it to the folks who invented gelatin icing (alright, and maybe Yuting too. sheesh). It's hard, like plastic, until you take the thing out of the fridge. Then it's susceptible to all sorts of injury. Anyway, that thing makes up the toilet seat and the toilet cover, and both of them hug and all is well.
The cake's going to be judged first, so there's no gurantee it'll go up for exhibition. But come on, seriously! If a toilet cake doesn't work, seriously!

Seriously, man!

2007-11-07T06:44:00.000-08:00

Hol's well for now...

And once again, we are back to the days of being idle. Or not?

The exams are finally over... again. Like the last time. It's funny, but one often criticizes movies, books and the like of having such repetitive storyline, when we're really not bothering to look at our own damn lives. This is probably season 6 by now, but there's no indication that we're going to lose any screentime anytime soon.

It seems that 308 (for now) will be in charge of planning next year's orientation. Which brings us to the topic of the day:

This is probably just deja vu, but haven't we had orientation before?

Besides having to know which routes the Year 1s usually take, I don't see why having orientation every damn year for every damn level is needed. I say we just rig the stairwell and get it over with.

And I should probably go see what my mom is doing to my door now...

2007-10-31T23:34:00.000-07:00

Exblesso

It had to come sooner or later. It's happened to just about every newspaper, or magazine, or internet personality, talkshow etc... A very sensitive and personal editorial about something seemingly practical yet imbued with a great amount of emotional hoo hah and passion. It might not be the same thing I'm about to mention, but the general theme is as mentioned.

Today, in the ultimate of cliched articles, I shall be discussing coffee. I'm sorry, it's spelt Coffee, right? My bad.

Le Coffeh

And while I have absolutely no idea what that means, let's get on with it before my non existent editor comes along and notices it.

They are many opinions concerning this humble brown liquid (alright, would you all of you just grow up already?). Some have elevated it to the height of the mysterious smiling woman that probably wears braces, while some aspiring Duchamps have managed to actualll dislike (God forbid) the beverage. Others are more in the riddle of the road, sitting on the fence etc (other painful euphemisms for remaining neutral) about this subject, and prefer to see coffee as a simple beverage, liked by some and launched out of the mouths of others.

Those who place this humble bean water solution on a pedestal often say that one has not experienced the true meaning of coffee (and thus can only access 50 percent of its power) until they drink it with their mind being totally focused on the sensual experiences that come with drinking it. You must sit cross legged on a mat, or perhaps at a roadside cafe on the streets of Paris, and slowly take a sniff of the wonderful aroma that wafts out of the cup. Then you must slowly sip the coffee while irritating everyone around you (this is very enjoyable), swish the coffee around your mouth for a while, then swallow and enjoy the mellow sensation wafting up your throat to your nostrils.

To those who place it on the negative pedestal (aka pit), they say that in order to experience the true meaning of coffee (note the lack of italic for the word "true") one must gurgle it violently and then share the coffee with the person sitting in front of you.

Others just say pour it down your damn throat already.

And this is the part of the entry where I bore you with my opinion. Breaking the tradition of saying "none of these opinions are correct", I agree with numero three.

Coffee can be likened to that of love. While this comparison may be seem a little unfair (I won't do something like this again, Coffee. Sorry.) It isn't about sitting by the streets of Paris with your adept tongue work or sitting on a mat. It's about It being there whenever you need it. When you feel you just can't go on *cough* masteringphysics *cough*, it's there for you. Coffee is something humble yet sacred.

*End of article*

Bring it ON, critics.

2007-10-28T18:43:00.000-07:00

Hard Times

Greetings, all who would dwell on this side of the internet. Once again I come to you all bringing news. What else is new?

Yesterday I went to various bookshops in an effort to locate Hard Times. Yes, even in the midst of exams, I still ask for more. Three Popular stores and I got everything that Charles Dickens every wrote except for Hard Times.

(I would like to ask Ms Koh how she got all the money!)(Disclaimer: The mentioned joke was for the pure fun of it and is not a commentary on our beloved literature teacher's monthly income.)

It turns out that Borders had two copies left. Naturally, I got the cheaper one aka the one with the more reasonable price tag. I later noticed that the book contained things like two contents pages and Dickens' working notes. The store owners pointed out that little kids were nearby and I promptly left the area.

On my way out, I noticed that some guys in weird black T-shirts were given a presentation on something called the Cold-Spot theory. Turns out that these people here call themselves the Society of Paranormal Investigation Singapore (Which suggests that they are only a few of the many resistance fighters). Essentially, what this means is that these black clad, non pipe smoking fellows are the Ghostbusters without the cool gadgets, the Exorcists without the Innocence, and Elvis Presley without his hair.

It seems, from their presentation, that they investigate the presence of paranormal activity, but don't do a thing about it. They may monitor it, but that's as far as they go, using stuff like infrared cameras and the like. In other words, a scientific and observational approach to the like.

But how far one can remain scientific when it comes to such things is questionable. Meanwhile, I think it's best to keep that little Cross hanging from your neck.

I also think it's important to note that there was a Fantastic Four banner behind them, with Jessica Alba as the Invisible Woman right in the foreground:

2007-10-17T06:28:00.001-07:00

Nus High Research Constress 2007

This is the sort of effort put in that makes Carnot Engines blow milk into their handkerchiefs. But it was still mildly enjoyable.

We, the denizens of the VR project, were persuaded by the nice man with the gun to present our projects at the NUS High Research Congress 2007.

Basically, the Research Congress is a like a fun fair. Without the fun. Many people at booths in concourse, with many people who are not at booths in said concourse at the catering area.

So anyway, many a student broke the sound barrier is we struggled to set up our booths by the 1.30. Most of us failed, but it didn't really matter since the people in the auditorium were struggling to finish their presentations on time. So this either makes both groups very well organized, or second only to OBS rojak.

It was suprising that we actually had time to go down after setting the booth up and actually get something to eat, all the while talking about the density of Jun Wei's home as negligible, and the number of cars and parents he had (the parents lost miserably), and whether Jie Hong would be okay up there manning both booths. The conversation about Jie Hong went something like this:

Me: You think Jie Hong's gonna be okay up there?
Gan: Probably not.
Me: You think maybe we should go up there?
Gan: Yeah...
Me: Are we actually going to get up and go there?
Gan: *thinks*
Both: Nah...

Later, we saw Jie Hong struggling with the contents of a Portugese to English dictionary, and an English to Chinese dictionary.

All of the above is true except for the crap about the dictionaries.

When the Parasite finally attacked (Halo fans should get my meaning about the number of people coming out of the Audi), we were strangely disappointed. We got a few visitors here and then (all teachers, with Mr Chua Aik Boon drawing first blood), so I told Leroy to man the booth while I shamelessly snuck off to get some food. Not suprisingly, Darryl was there, all too happy that there was free fried bee hoon.

Me: *Looks at the crowd* Quite a variety, huh?
Darryl: Hm. Yeah. *Eats more bee hoon*

We need to get our hands on those Babel Fishes. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babel_Fish)

I hijacked Darryl's snake (I can explain, girls), which he got from Fishie (Nevermind, girls), and walked back to the booth to find that the VIP is there. I boggled for a bit then walked up to him, and was relieved to see that Leroy was already stealing the limelight. Halfway through the explanation I manage to butt in in a courteous manner, and explain the remainder. He then asks me where I'm from and I tell him "NUS High".

*insert chuckles from VIP here*

Then I conclude then I am from Singapore and was schooled in TV. He claims to get my meaning, then comments that our project has plenty of potential (aka it still sucks now) and walks away without giving any sort of funding whatsoever.

Ah well.

2007-10-09T06:49:00.000-07:00

People-o-pedia picked a pack of...

Yes, I have been away for a while. You guys might have been wondering precisely what happened to me. All I can say is that Luke had better buy me a drink or two, and I'm running out of tissue.

And with that quick reference to carbonite suspension, I shall now proceed to introduce the second most reliable source of insights in the world. The first being m-, of course.

People-o-pedia has touched down, and it comes in peace:
http://people-o-pedia.blogspot.com/2007/09/letter.html

A wonderful little blog in the middle of nowhere, the writer (referring to itself as Sardonic) gives its perspective opinions on issues such as the true definition and nature of bimbos, the Adolescent Conjecture, and the smiting of Birthday Parties.

Revel in its glory.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to practice saying ten different versions of "I've got a bad feeling about this."

2007-09-30T05:59:00.000-07:00

Sick Heil!

It is tempting to start this post with the words "Hello sick people", but i have not yet obtained all the artifacts.
As a result, this post will mostly contain bitching about the recent necessity for an Ark, mostly because of workload. I shall now attempt to relate the sheer mass of the amount-ain of assignments.

The following have graced my desk over last week:

1. Mechanics 2 project, with our lovable little cytoplasm as a group member (i refuse to say group MATE)

2. Chinese test revision. Nothing more to say here, since I met my lawyer yesterday.

3. Lit Journal entry, which has caused nothing but calamity. It was postponed a total of four days, and for no good reason in particular, except maybe House seems like a real fortunate guy now.

4. Math additional exercises. The principle in these is the famed Zerg Rush, where spamming multiple questions in almost Megatron amounts eventually wears your defences down, thereby exposing you to all sorts of mental and emotional rape.5. Silly little Chem assignment due here and there, as well as the lab notebook.

And that's about it. Let's move on to what's ABOUT to grace my desk:

1. A really cu- i mean, Chinese compo, with the topic being the virtues of friendship. Joy.2. That VR survey that gives other surveys of the same king funny looks (gay), with a presentation on the results due by the last week of Septe-... shit.
And let's not forget that I've been out of action for two days now. i've missed a chem prac, couldn't do that bullshit compo, and missed our wonderful 1000th day celebration. I hear it took a while to come off, Shudder.

2007-09-21T00:19:00.000-07:00

Banner than ever!

It's finally done! Steph's emo blog picture is now transformed and ready to be uploaded. Thousands shall ignore the picture, and the day shall come where it would be as if it never existed. But still!

Revel in it's insignificant glory.

2007-09-19T07:59:00.000-07:00

Deprived by Logic

It's official. The last week has been dubbed the infamous "Disappointment week". Lam Day was a total letdown. Which reminds me...

Where the hell were you guys? Only people who showed up:

Timo
Steph
Cedric
Joyce (didn't watch the movie)
Damien (Wait... what?)
Beryl (I don't get this anymore...)
Kay Wee (O-Kay...)
Kay Wee's Henchmen

And thanks to those who could have shown up but didn't, you're helping us bury these puppies! The movie wasn't any better either, which shows that the most intelligent of all the people in the above list is Joyce. As for the rest, you bloody geniuses.

It was putrid. Check it out on Rotten Tomatoes and you'll get an overall rating of 20%. You'll also find that the story has a happy ending, which is totally unrealistic, as portrayed by this incident.

The holidays before that were also hideously disappointing. As ugly as a fat suit with no John Travolta in it.

Which reminds me...

Hairspray!!!

2007-09-11T08:21:00.000-07:00

Exsteptions!

Sometimes, ACSI doesn't seem that gay. It's just a testament to how screwed up this place has become. Apparently, it's a manafacturing plant for logical fallacies.

Brother's laptop was confiscated yesterday, on the grounds of him playing Stepmania. I shan't say who, because I value my pistachois, but let it be known that it was 5, and no teacher has really stopped anyone from playing Stepmania.

While the above isn't really a valid point, neither is the following.

Mr Png took the opportunity to add in after a very amusing Fruit Salad song by Mr Sun, that it's important to have a healthy diet as well as a healthy mind. (Just like those Star Wars slide transitions)

He also took the opportunity to tell us to stay away from violent video games. (Give him nothing... but take from him... everything!!!) Now let it just be known here that I hve nothing against this stand. He wasn't forcing this on us, so we don't need to see his identification here...

But just before that, he had mentioned the confiscation of three laptops, confiscation for playing games in school.

I told Brother I that there were too many students in the way.

Mr Png had somehow managed to say that such games are violent, and detrimental to the mind and well being of a student. And while this issue is still debatable, what is more apalling is the application of this argument as a Red Herring. (Power to Ms Lam!)

Games being violent have nothing to do with playing them in school.

But fortunately, all three students have received their laptops back, and have vowed to quit their murderous hobby of Stepmania.

The day has come where arrows may breathe easy.

2007-09-06T06:54:00.000-07:00

Boredoom!!!

Hey there. As we all know, it's the "holidays". Even as we speak it's coming to an end.

It's about time.

It's strange, but I think over all these years, I've become addicted to work. Holidays make me feel like a potential dengue threat. It's as if not working kil-

...................

Sorry about that. Anyway, as I was saying. Oh yeah. Not working kills me. And by work I don't mean staying at home revising for that upcoming ting xie (cough cough). I mean going to the campus and wrecking havoc at the drinks stall.

That's what life's about. This is nothing like a holiday.

Anyone who wants to send the government a message on Saturday, call me up or post on the tagboard will ya. Or just msn.

doodlelikecrazy@hotmail.com

2007-09-04T19:26:00.000-07:00

I give you, The Mometer!

It's getting to be a pain in the ass, this one. I have no idea how it works so far, and neither does anyone. Johannes seems to be the only one who has a clue. *insert blue puppy here*

It's been a pretty generic holiday. Sitting at home doing nothing, then rushing out to school for projects. Of course, there are some perks to this kind of life (hint hint qio bu hint hint).

There's nothing much going on now, so I'll try and get some potential earth moving news to entertain you guys.

2007-09-04T08:44:00.000-07:00

Sigh-lence is golden?

I don't think so. Kylie, Cancy and Rashidah weren't so sure though. After Kylie went to watch an extremely... peculiar movie called Little Miss Sunshine, she proceeded to debate on the effects of taking a vow of silence. And so they did. Cancy still holds a place in my... ah nevermind.

Their hair should grow back soon enough.

The following interview has been edited for.... readability. And with commentary.

Me:hey there. you okay if I interview you now? (Here I demonstrate giving her the illusion of choice.)

Kylie: hey. yeah it's okay

Me: ah... yeah. anywho

K:( interviewing me for what btw? just for fun yeah?)

M:indeed

K:okay

M:a man needs to update his blog reguarly (*cough* appreciation *cough*)

K:hahaha. i've read your blog

M:alrighty. first question. my blog's awesome, right?

K:the blogging is good yeah (There is hope for my debut yet.)

M:okay... now for the first real question. why did you decide to carry out this experiment? oh and by the way, this convo will be recorded

K:because i saw it in a movie. haha. joking.

M:silent hill?

K:the idea was from a movie, but the reasons are different.

M:what movie was it?

K:why, would be to discipline myself as well as to learn more about the effect of spoken words. Movie: Little Miss Sunshine. (Might I comment that it's a rather... unique movie. It's also pretty funky. The character that she got the idea from was somewhat of a side character, though all of the characters in the movie are more or less equally emphasized on.)

M:do you think then, that discipline is the act of restraining one's voice? that seems rather oppressive, don't you think?

K:it's not the act of restraining one's voice. but in doing so you can train discipline

M:ah. okay. another one here. why did cancy and rashidah do the same? they watched the movie too? (I've got to learn how to make them do that!)

K:nah they didn't. i kinda watched the movie and thought about doing it one day. then i told them (Oh.)

M:and then they just did it with you for the hell of it? (I've got to... nevermind)

K:they havent watched it. but they know about it and yeah
you think they found it weird? here's the movie trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNWRblcfoFw

M:aye. so how do you think your environment responded to your experiment? you think they found it weird?

K:yeah they found it weird. because well firstly my parents didn't allow me to do it at home. because they thought it was antisocial behaviour. and that it would ruin my reputation in sch.(They obviously haven't been here yet.) and that they just didn't like me daoing them.

M:did you explain that it was an experiment?

K:and they didn't think that doing things for the "experience" or to "experiment" was a good enough reason. (This could be a problem...)

M:okay... here's a pretty personal question.
have your parents ever considered you to be "lacking discipline"? (Whoa whoa we wah!)

K:hahaha no they have not. i don't know.

M:there was one time I saw rashidah using a notebook to communicate
and cancy too. you think this defeats the purpose?
what was the aim of your experiment? in one sentence.

K:to find out how one's self and the people around me respond to silence. (In other words, just sound, not communication itself, as she elaborates later.)

M:do you think that silence is just verbal silence, or simply not communicating at all?

K:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYDQEmHqth4&NR=1
oh verbal silence. that link is a collection of scenes of that guy who took the vow

M:for how many days?

K:6 months or more i think. it's a movie (let me just say here that this guy is completely unrelated to me in any way whatsoever.)

M:so do you think your experiment was a success? (I fail to understand this concept.)

K:hurm. success as in i did learn a lot of stuff from it
not success as in i broke my vow a lot of times (Celiba- nevermind...)

M:oops . chinese oral, eh?

K:french (Ooh, kin- nevermind)

M:oh. that sucks

K:lol

M:ah. it's all greek to me. anyway, what do you think you learnt from this experience?

K:i leanrt that being silent makes people more emo (This here is very interesting. Emos tend to think that red fur is the fashion these days, and that no one understands them. Personally I think this is due to a lack of communication, or lack of attempts at communication. So much for being misunderstood.)

M:around you, or yourself?

K:hurm. myself. not the people around me because they kinda think it is quite cool

M:huh. alright. you would recommend this to anyone?

K:hurm. just about everyone. except people who really well like talking

M:i aplogise but I must refuse

K:hahaha. hurm. but it allows you to appreciate talking
but also gets you to like the silence (Interesting point here, about not talking allowing you to appreciate talking.)

M:ouch. thanks for the interview
anything else you like to say?

K:like there will be moments where i'll just not want to talk at all hurm. not much else?

M:alright. and by the way. everything you just said can and will be used against you
http://www.pressbackspace.blogspot.com/ (She still pleads not guilty.)

K:okay. see ya (in court)

M:thanks

And so there you have it. The complete interview with Kylie on her vow of silence for one day. There are some interesting topics up there that I would like to rant about.

For instance, how most people regard verbal silence as complete silence, Kylie's parents' reluctancy (and in fact, complete disapproval) towards her vow, and the appreciation of talking through silence.

This is all very interesting and I would like to discuss this with you, but I'm bored and needs me entertainment. Goodbye.

2007-08-26T06:13:00.000-07:00

Fisherman's Fiend

I'll make it short and sweet. My bag got stolen today. Once again, I would like to thank Nintendo for making their consoles so resistable.

Ironically, it happened on a Sunday. But that's the part responsible for indigestion. Wait till I get to it.

Left bag at table. Went to buy food. Bag focuses chakra around body. And I was like "Whoa! You have learnt well!". That didn't last long though.

One family noticed me evading nitrogen, so they asked if I was looking for my bag.

Me: Yeah.
Man: She said one indian man came over and took it. (points to daughter)
Me: Whoa.

And we couldn't find him. However, there is an upside to all this. This guy won't get much out of the loot. There are several reasons for this.

Firstly, recent market analysis has shown that the value of erratic, half broken violet umbrellas has gone down. Therefore, a second hand, half broken violet umbrella (pant pant) will fetch negligible profit.

Secondly, recent religious devices, such as white-beige colored bibles, have included a search and destroy protocol that allows it to carry out the work of God. aka, totally anhiliation of the one who stole it.

Thirdly, recent studies have shown that not many citi/deni-zens of singapore are fans of Hitchiker's guide to the Galaxy.

Finally, market projections have shown that the value of half eaten Apple and Cinamon Fisherman's Friend lozenges have dwindled greatly. However, they do still serve the purpose of soothing the thief's throat.

"NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!"

Amen to that.

2007-08-17T07:57:00.000-07:00

I will sur-wife!

The title is simply a tribute to all those who sacrificed themselves in run- battle. They will be remembered, and flowers shall cover their graves forever.

Plus, Gan is allergic.

Alright. I've been trying to get more sleep these days, instead of *cough* blogging about the damn problem. So I'm going to retire soon, and settle down in the countryside, then wake up tomorrow and study. Isn't life great?

The reason why my cracks lately haven't exactly been of World Trade Center standards is because of this. I'm going to have to be-itch about it sooner or later. Here it is:

I was attacked by Damien.

This is pretty old news. I'm also trying to keep it that way.

But I just find it kinda gay. Guess what else I found? Ah nevermind...

The thing is that, I've been giving puppies the gift of flight lately because of this matter. It's not so much what he did but rather why he did it. Damien's reasoning is that he's very stressed, so when I gave him the VR (we do this cool stuff in place of IR...... this window looks high enough) assignment for our group, he could only do one paragraph. alright. here it is... gave him one week. okay. he forgot... so er... gave him one night after I called him again.

Gave me on paragraph the next day. It was kind of a personal introduction more than it was a list of interview questions. After *cough* confronting him on this matter... er...

Did you know the throat is needed for breathing? It's true! Sigh....

Yeah. He kinda gave the jump on me. What also bothers me is that I was pwned in front of everyone in the concourse. Of course, the security guard has a gun, so I was saved. (*insert bullet deflection joke here*)

Now the disclaimer. I understand he is stressed. That's bad. What I don't understand is why I should get a piece of the pie. After this incident, we've grown so dist- er... I kinda think of him as the more stabbable sort, you see where I'm going with this?

Recently he attacked David because of an erased Pokemon savegame.

Damien, use Vice Grip!

Learn to relax buddy... I can't say it's not partially his parent's contributions that caused this though. They really have been crossing the line lately. He had a fever, then was just recovering, and still had a cough and BURNT HIMSELF in the shower, and his mom wouldn't take him to a doctor. No, a private doctor. Not that either.

There's one thing we can learn from this though.

"Sheesh."

2007-08-13T06:37:00.000-07:00

Fic-ture Perfect

The days of the canon are over, and it is time to usher in the age of fanfiction. Or is it?

Let's face it. Fanfiction has been around for as long as any series ever existed. It started even with classics such as Alice in Wonderlan and Sherlock Holmes. And that it proceeded to infect just about every popular series ever published.

Internet, you didn't exactly make matters better.

And whilst it can be pretty much agreed that most fanfiction really sucks arse, there are several few that stand out among the crowd, sucking even more. This is especially true when it comes to anime and manga fics.

We at http://www.pressbackspace.blogspot.com/ have scoured the land for the most revolting, sh*ttiest and "rinsed and repeated more than Beryl could ever hope to do" ideas and fanfiction types across the internet (mainly just fanfiction.net). Behold, risk your eyes. Here they are:

1. High School fics- An insult to the holiest of holiest of anime and manga, behold, take the greatest cause of suicide in the world and plug in your favourite anime characters. Now watch as your favourite anime characters struggle to avoid drowning in a sea of homework, teenage romance, and high school fanfics.

The problem with High School fics is that, like many others, there are so damn many of them. Most of them usually include pairings, and the remainder ALWAYS includes pairings. And the problem is, that's just about it. Your sword wielding hero, or your orange jumped suited ninja living the life that you don't want to know more about, and just grabbing the ass of the nearest..... PERSON. (You know what I'm talking about, you bloody Yaoi fic writers)

2. Crossovers- Well, you've already bastardized one anime? Why not do two, or something of an entirely different genre? This one appears most often when the author doesn't know which one to mutilate first, so settles it via Democracy.

Viva la Revolution.

3. Script fics- Yes. Sometimes your favourite fan fiction authors out there are just too lazy to think of anything besides dialogue. So they settle it by doing this.

Samuel: They simply type the character's name at the front of every dialog, er... every sentence and proceed to type NOTHING but dialogue.

S: Sometimes, your authors are so lazy, they just type the name once and proceed to use a vague initial for the rest of the series or fic. This can lead to confusing situations sometimes.

*** naruto fan boys cover your eyes ***

N: You cannot change, Ramen. It is fate.

K: Asuma, don't go, I love you!

S: I love you, Naruto!

So there you have it. Three of the most overused ideas in the fan fiction universe. This has been Samuel persuading the prisoners, signing off.

2007-08-09T06:19:00.000-07:00

Customer Com-pains

Hello there everyone. Regarding the last one hour, all I can say is: "What the Hell was that?". My bad. I meant "What the hell was that?" Slight religious error there.

Alright. My lappy's been known to be very erratic for the last year or so. It's currently been one and a half years since I first got it, but lately, we've grown a little distant. She's gotten all erratic. There was the first time, where her battery just fried for no reason, and she refused to go out with me. After a while, we got a new battery, and she was happy.

Today, she decided that it was futile to go on. You could say she stopped pressing charges. The charger screwed up.

It's been that way for a few days now. My screen would flicker now and then, because me com's display dims when you start charging it (like my face that time I was in court).

Then one day, it stopped working on the usual port. So I switched ports, and it worked.

Today, it just stopped working. And no, my hair didn't turn blonde.

I went into a frenzy, and having no respect for God, I swore a lot. I decided to back up my data but stopped halfway, and decided "you know what, screw you. I'm turning you off right now.".

The manual is a piece of shit. It tells you to turn off the computer and try again. I still can't believe that even though I was saving gas, I said "I've turned my computer on and off so many times we're going to have a divorce, you bloody piece of..."

Sorry God. If you have an internet connection, I'm really sorry for swearing all the time. Amen.

Then for no reason at all, I just kept the charger and put the lappy back where it belonged. (R2-D2 saves the day!)

Then for no reason, again, I tried to use the charger on the com without the battery. WTH it worked. It was underage, but it worked! And then I turned it off and tried it with the battery. WTH it worked! None of them got caught and they worked! It's amazing. Two possible things I could have said at that moment:

1. What the hell.
2. Hallelujah!
3. 1 + 1..... that's a good one...

Regardless, I'm glad that she's working again. Now I can spend some time with the kids.

I've been reading Ju- er... NIGHT WOLF's blog for some time now, and I can see that's he a very emo person. Either that, or I'm not the father. P'raps I should interview him?

Which reminds me. I got damned pissed about Gan and Darryl winning the 24 hr competition. in different teams. yeah. It's rather complicated but here goes:

1. Competition announced. I ask if they want to join. They bue song.
2. During VR session, Yuting comes and hands up forms to Ms Tan. Me=WTF
3. Interro- Ask Brother wa si mi? He say he no choice. I say, like that, I also no choice liao. He oso say comp IT club only one. Still not explaining situation.
4. Ask second brother Darryl wa si mi? He say, brother, I don't want to join one leh. I say, then you tell me then I join mah. He say *insert funny face here*. IT club only thing still does not explain situation.
5. Weeks later, word comes in both teams win comp. Kills brothers second time. Later starts killing innocent balloons.
6. Wait a while everything okay again. But IT club only thing still does not explain situation.

Anyway, Yuting tells me there's a Roving DV competition coming along soon. By a cruel twist of fate, the comp is limited to certain clubs only. This is just bullshit. Or so I thought. I found out the comp is hosted by MediaCorp.

This is bullshit. Why are we sacrificing innocent paparazzis?

The Roving DV comp makes students do MediaCorp's work for them by making documentaries about anything they want, submitting them, and if they do win the comp, they get to have their documentary put on air.

And the comp is limited to the IT and Journalism Clubs only. Joy.

Don't get me wrong here. While I am glad that the two clubs are finally doing something, I still don't think it's entirely fair that only they get to participate. After all, the competitions are open to anyone, right?

They don't say " Teams of students from your school's IT/Journalism Club", right?

It's been this way for a while now. It was that way during the SVA, and it's stil this way.

I'm still pondering about whether to join or not. Anyone else out there thinking of joining? it'll still take some negotiation (or as JS would say, parley) to enter the comp.

This is the day you'll always remember, as the day that you almost......... no wave? no wave? okay.

2007-08-07T06:03:00.000-07:00

Marrage is a horrible thing.

Hello there everyone! Are you ready to sing? Come on... let's go!

I would seriously like to start revealing the conspiracy about the House of Horror, but it seems that the tongue was meant for tasting after all.

Plus, its up again. So I'll have to wait till its over. Again.

I would just like, however, to make an honorable mention for the Horror House. I'll try to minimize the spoilers in the **** part, but then here's the main deal.

The Horror House isn't some open ended deal. In other words, these guys are the complete anti thesis of exams. In fact, the whole Horror House is rather like a play, but with you as the main character. (For those of you who get water from the strange metal tubes sticking through your walls, the Horror House is run by the Drama Club)

The first thing you'll notice about the Horror House is the decor. Very cliched, but it works. Dim orangeish light fills the first room, and cobwebs and dissected animals are suspended in glass jars. (Anticlima-tip : Comment on how dusty the place looks. Try to sell them a some detergent or floor cleaning agent.)

I won't cover any decor on the second part of the Horror House, since there's not really any decor in there.

The second thing you see are the characters. As I've said before, the whole layout of your Horror House adventure is highly innovative. You're simply a character in the story, instead of going into some linear maze with sexually confused ghosts, there's actually some goal for you in this HH.

The characters manage to bring that out perfectly. With an Adam's Family-esque cast, you are presented with a vague storyline that somehow works, even though there are plenty of dark pits in it. Not that it bothers you, since you'll probably be thinking of whether ammonia comes off in clothes detergent.

The costumes are just spot on. The characters in the first part of the HH wear costumes with a distinct Gothic style. It's all down pat. Laces, frills, that sort of thing. It all creates the proper atmosphere. Without these costumes, the HH would be just the Drama Room... After the holidays.

And the third thing I can tell you without making you a clairvoyant is the music. The music in a certain part of the HH distinguishes itself as the main enemy of washing machines. It sounds like a drunk choir, and it actually works. Nothing is scarier than a drunk choir...

Spoilers HARRY end POTTER here DOESN'T .DIE

Well there you have it. I've been wanting to review the HH for quite some time now.

This score isn't based on the previously written stuff, since it's incomplete, and my score may not be very accurate, since most of the time I was "persecute(ing) those who would try to steal my Millenium Key", but here it is.

We at Ex-Play give this Horror House 5 Goths out of 5.

2007-08-06T06:32:00.000-07:00

Stale haven't updated yet?

Greetings there, fellow earthlings.

It has been a while since I even bothered to open Blogger, and I can explain this. It's not what it looks like. Youtube is just a friend...

Alright, So I haven't been blogging on Youtube. I have, however, been watching the videos of this bearded fellow who calls himself Blunty3000. A very perspective guy, or at least, he used to be. I went back in time and took a look at his older videos. Those are, for some weird reason, a lot better than the videos he makes now.

Somewhat angry these days.

He did, however, mention he was suffering from clinical depression after a work-related... ACCIDENT, so that could be understandable.

Enough about Blunty3000. These few days, I've been feeling a little bit... Unsamuel these days. I can't seem to make a good reference, and I only pull off a good one occasionally.

I figure this is one of those sleep deprivation problems.

I hope she understands... (Score, baby!)

Alright... These few days have been rather hectic. First, there was the silly Art Camp, which I'd rather not talk about (They're watching, after all).

Then there was school.

And Brother is running for council. Do not ask me which Brother, because it doesn't really matter. It seems like everyone I know is running for council......

I wonder why mom isn't home yet?

And the most unexpected people too. The kind which you expect wouldn't give a sh*t about stuff like politics and changing the face of the school.

It's really amazing.

I've requested that Darryl let me be his campaign manager.

While I've been low on laughbohydrates lately, I've had a lot of marketing ideas. Like ideas for chocolate flavoured milk, and random assorted stuff.

The choc flavoured milk thing involves Hitler. See how sleep deprived I am?

I figure that while my brain is low on wit, I'd just relatively shut up for a while.

Mom broke my telegram.

2007-07-29T00:14:00.000-07:00

Return of the Bling

While it is a truth that I am not really bling, a man can dream, can't he? *Blink* *Blink*

Anyway, it's been a long while since I last blogged. I kept thinking, "one hour is enough!", so here I am again. It's probably because of the recent tight schedule, what with cross country, and the new play performance, and tests that march from Isengard that everytime I want to get up and blog, they scream "You shall not pass".

And then there's Gandalf. Battle for Middle Earth is time's worst enemy.

I must warn many of you before I continue though. This Monday, you may see one of the world's greatest abominations on this website. I shall be forced to blog in Chinese. Though I tried to parley, it didn't really go as planned.

On a completely unrelated note, it's not that easy to type with your nose.

We have an encore performance coming up soon. I'm sure we all remember that kickass play that I kept ranting about. Well, your suffering's not over yet. We're having an encore performance on Thursday. It's going to be twice as kickass. How should I put this...

It's going to be like the release of the PS3. For instance, it got postponed time and time again. And it also was a major letdown when it was finally released...

...

Maybe I should compare it to something else.

Anyway, come down to the theatrette this Thursday for that performance you missed. Please also remember that we only have change for small notes. Thank You.

And on another completely unrelated note, the Stomp issue is getting a bit out of hand. Either that, or it's getting under control. I'm not sure. More people... er... people are becoming aware of exactly what happened, but at the same time, there's more hullabaloo over what happened.

For those of you who live in Rock Avenue, someone apparently told Stomp (that shitty little news portal) that we polluted East Coast Park during our Cross Country run. If you care to read the "news" article, here it is.

http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/viewPost4345.aspx

If the article was even the slightest bit professional, it could be forgiven. That way, we don't lose our reputation, and I can save some .50. In this case, however, you can practically drown in the article's sarcasm. It's just insulting and as if that wasn't enough, they slap the label "NUS High Students" on all of us. Those who didn't litter are still dragged down with the rest.

There isn't even the slightest mention of how there was rain after the event, and how the Year 3s were barely given time to catch their breath after the run, before being dragged off on an even more... less peaceful game of Cabadi.

Johannes 1, Rasputin 0 by the way.

There's one good thing that came out of this whole shit though. We all agree that the tard who leaked this news to the public is... well.. a tard. A lot of controvery has sparked over whether the report he gave was accurate... what should be done to hi- er... what should HAVE been done to HIM, and what we look like in the public's eyes now (besides fear).

It's said that the mole is a NUSHs student. While I'm more content in believing that the mole is a complete and total asshole, the former may be true as well. It seems rather confirmed that the Stomper was a NUSHs student, since even our mentor talked about it, and when we bashed him based on the assumption that he was from our school, she didn't correct us (since Shawn agreed too). Either it's true, or she's just as ignorant as we all are.

There's also a lot of shit flying over the information given to Stomp. Some say the bottles were already piled at the trees (the garbage bags were there, and some of us are trained in the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps), and that the chances of the bottles germinating heathily were not as high as it was said in the article.

Stomp is also apparently trying to cover their asses, so I think I'll give them a mask one of these days. They're coercing the mole into making a public apology. Who the apology is meant for, I have no idea. I don't know if they want him to apologise to them (Why the hell for, I also don't have a puppy's paw) or to apologise to us, or to the public (I also think no blue puppy is needed here). Whatever it is, it just seems like their trying to shift the blame somewhere else instead of taking responsiblity.

Yes, the ass-mole did give them an allegedly inaccurate report, but then they could have chosen not to write that article.

Who do I blame then? I blame Stomp. I blame them for not thoroughly checking the "information" they get. I blame them for not having the sense to think what this article would do to our image. I also blame them for trying to shanghai their way out of this. Jack Sparrow they ain't.

And we here at Ex-Play give Stomp 1 plastic bottle out of 5.

2007-07-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

Yes... Yes... Take debate...

A clash of intellectual beliefs, or just plain bitchin'? Aye. Tis which I speak of is the feared debate. Alright, so a debate is bad enough, but then add literature into the equation, and you get an exothermic reaction that doesn't know when to stop.

It all happened when Ms Adeline Koh (the Awesome) declared a debate, in which three groups would battle for supremacy, or just slap fight, their way to argue for three different art forms. The three lucky winners are: Poetry, Drama and Prose.

Prose is novels, short stories, wills... you know, anything that's not poem-ish.

Team Poetry:
Samuel
Kylie
Kylie
Kylie (she counts as three because she's so imba)
Jensen (Yes, the inquisitive Jensen)
Leon (Not the coke Leon, not the horny one, the other one. The relatively eighing scale friendly one)
Jie Hong (Shut up, all of you)

Team Drama:
Brenda
Some guy I don't know
Some girl I don't know
Enough people

Team Prose:
Kenneth
Andy
Kenneth and Andy
Rashidah
Darryl
Darryl

So here was the lineup:

Jensen did the intro. I must say he sort of flipped a bit. It was a little unnerving. Somehow, we initially thought there was the dying obligation to accept every single POI (Point of Information, aka bullet) sent your way. Jensen did just that, unfortunately, since no one knew, and that threw the intro off balance. He did apologise, and we did accept the mone- apology.

Leon promoted the unique factors of poetry. This includes taking vocal effects and rhythm into consideration and what not. Leon is an excellent marksman.

Leon 10
POIs 0

I addressed the problems with poetry. Very shitty. Couldn't concentrate what with suddenly having to get up there. Oh well...

And the rebuttal round was just chaos.

Don't take the gag out until Jun Yup's settled down a litte.

okay. There were no definitions of the word "superior", and there was complete chaos. So much so that I was able to shoot down the Drama team. (after recovering from my Kenneth wounds)

Their intial argument:
Poetry can be less easily understood than Drama, and therefore the reader will get nothing out of it. Drama may not be fully understoof but they may just get the storyline, which is better than not getting anything at all.

Later...: (They were feeling nice):
There is no point in reading something and only understanding part of it.

Whoops. Own goal there.

Man of the Match: Jensen, for putting the goalkeeper to shame. Thank god WE have a subsitute.

Sorry Jensen, but you did score some own goals there.

Shall not mention anymore. Spam tomorrow.

2007-07-17T05:38:00.000-07:00

Ratio Harmony Day

I would now like to ask all of you to follow me in taking the ratio harmony day pledge.

It was long ago
When ratios came to light
Out of darkness
And into our sight
But alas! When that happened
when these wonders were free
"I hate other ratios!
Hail 1 is to 3!"
My friends does it matter
What proportions one has?
Or volume, perimeter
Or how much of mass?
The real treasure here is
Wonder, behold!
pi, which is worth
even selling your soul!

Now everyone turn to your right and tell your neighbor, "Your proportions don't matter." Except for Zeyang. If you're next to him, turn to your right then look up. Then say that.

2007-07-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

There's one in every fadhmily

I will try not to get myself sued for the rest of this entr- hey what the duce let go of me!..... a man can dream, can't he?

But anywho, on the more depressing matters! The crappy black tag-board we all used to know and love (try to smile) has broken down! unfortunately, due to the circumstances, I'm going to have to replace it with this impressive blue nifty cbox tagboard. I guess you can't have everything in life, and thank god too!

Samuel: So the little red button blows up Russia, right? Can I reuse it?

Okay. Er.... It's official. I have a teacher rivalry.

Now I hate rivalries, especially rivalries with teachers, because it's obvious you can never win. But angels need a laugh sometimes right, so I have a rivalry.

It's not really an open rivalry. More of the kind of rivalry which everyone knows is going on but nothing is really said about it. In other words, a nuclear programme.

This could get ugly... so stay tune-... er... run away.

2007-07-08T06:22:00.000-07:00

Wannavatar?

Here you go, little kiddies.

Remember, everytime you upload a bad avatar, a kitten dies.

Bob Barker 1
Kittens 0

2007-07-06T06:42:00.000-07:00

Writer's Blog

AH.. it's been a long time since I touched this blog... ever since that incident, we've grown so cold...

I wonder if Darryl actually updated his blog yet.

I, Samuel the GoFish!, am officially part of the family! The Codfather Damien allowed me to enter the family provided I adhere to the following conditions:

1. You will obey my word.
2. Because I said so.

I found them pretty reasonable, and so, I am now a member of the family. In other words, that old far... the godfather with the henchman with the shotgun pointed at my head now looks out for me, and vice versa.

I am also now an official acolyte of The Sons of Charmaine. May God Bless Charmaine in whatever she does, except hitting us.

i recommend ye fellow slackers out there to indulge in the following games:

1. flow
2. torus trooper

2007-06-24T00:33:00.000-07:00

Chroniday Holicles part 2

Adventure 2

Emo Day

Now don't get me wrong here. I took my medication and I have had my shots. But this was one of those days where NO ONE was free to hang around, and i wasn't going anywhere, and I definitely didn't feel like staying home for another round of C&C Generals Zero Hour. Therefore, I ventured into the world.

It wasn't really emo, but the whole idea of that day was to get out there and wander really badly, ranging from City Hall to the old campus at Buona Vista, I scouted just about every single place... er... that I had been to before.

I managed to escape from Mac World. What an Xbox 360 is doing on display at a Mac World shop, I have no idea. But you can't deny it though. The 360 does strikingly look somewhat... er... mac-nificent, and it just blended right in with the whole Mac theme. In fact, I had to recall that the 360 was made by the Microsoft bitc- er... people. It's just that Microsoft was never very particular about the exterior of most of their products (or people), and therefore the 360's design is a big suprise. (Also, Bill Gates has no horns?!?! what gives?)

Lunch was at subway. I had some Dead Hen's Breast, and THEN I roamed the streets.

I hung around the library that time. And I probably blogged about this day already.

What with the hanging around the school and all. Speaking of hanging, my damn comput-------------------------------------

Abort/Retry/Ignore?

I would choose abort, but that's against my morals.

Also, some pictures of the emo seedling I took, and a strangely attractive picture of the school track. try to focus on the track, not what's ON the track. Thank you.

Adventure 3
VR meeting

The adventure was not so much in the meeting itself, but rather what I saw on the way there.

Check out this babe.

I hereby declare, a "Saxi".