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...)

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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...

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.