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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.