Tuesday, 30 April 2002

hello from london! :)

had trouble finding internet access till now (at dearest friend lynn's place... say hi to the world lynn..Lynn: Hello! Boo hoo I've got exams so I can't go out to play with Huiling! so that was Lynn... :p) so that explains the long delay in updates.. the gloomy weather, the unpredictable rain, the brisk-walking glum-faced londoners, the wonderful second-hand bookstores along charing cross and the ever-crowded and musky smell of the underground tube stations and trains... the feel of london hasn't changed a bit since i was here five years ago... the grubby little alleys are still as grubby, st pancras station still amazes me with its grandeur.. and the london air is still as piercingly freezing when it hits your face as you walk out of your house in the morning....still, i see new buildings..the new british library and the shopping mall along tottenham court road.. and i see that starbucks and muji have sprouted up everywhere around london.. when i walk into LSE, i see they have built a new library, bought over and refurbished a couple of new blocks around the area and cleaned up some of the older lecture theatres and the cafeterias..

the feeling of nostalgia wasn't as strong as i expected... i didn't remember the streets as well as i thought i would.. and when i went to the apartment i stayed in in my second year of university, i realised how grubby the place is.. something i don't remember ever noticing when i was here then...but i still love full english breakfasts.. i still love walking through the quiet streets bordered by identical edwardian apartment houses.. and i still find the craft stalls and buskers in covent garden interesting and the books in Waterstones irresistable... and find camden market the most amazing street market in the world..

i'm glad i still love london as much as i did before....

Saturday, 27 April 2002

hello world!! from changi terminal 2 free internet access station A4 :D didn't sleep a wink last night - ended up catching the delayed episode of "The Amazing Race 2", then showering, then eating and then packing and before i knew it, it was already almost 3.30am! Decided to be a bit kiasu and get here early to beat the crowd so here i am now... almost an hour early :)

checking out london food places first..definitely must check out my old food haunts.. ok.. i've got..

- belgos - for those yummy belgian mussels and great atmosphere..
- wagamama - for funky jap food (not such an unusual concept anymore but nostalgic lah...)
- chinese dim sum - not sure which of those restaurants are still around.. i remember really liking China City's dim sum..
- and how can we forget notorious Wong Kei - reputed to have the rudest service among all the chinese restaurants - albeit cheap food..but it's loads of fun.. :p
- there was also one random Lebanese restaurant (along Edgware Road) i went to where we had raw lamb's brain.. umm...
- for that authentic English experience... must also try Fish & Chips in a london pub, along with a pint of beer... :) i guess any one of these would do.. but the Argyll Arms bears some nostalgia due to my having sighted it repeatedly in the past..
- must try out indian food too... supposedly comparable to india itself!

so many choices, so little time!! :O

Friday, 26 April 2002

so i went out shopping for stuff to bring over and ended up spending more than $200! trying to finish up some work now in the office.. another one of those last minute things we always end up doing whenever we are about to leave on a trip.. sigh... :| this is going to be my final blog before i leave for london.. unless i get to blog again later at Terminal 2 while waiting for the plane.. i hear they have free internet access there! :D
wah!!!! :D

domokun and umininns and tare pandas and kogepans!!
FINITO!! i'm done!! :D I'm done I'm done I'm done!! :D

quite a straightforward paper and I finished in 1 and a half hours!! :O started staring at the walls and then finally decided to walk out an hour before the end of the paper, starting an avalache of people leaving the classroom. Spoke to lecturer afterwards and he said it is the easiest paper he has set since he started teaching this course.. oh well, what the heck.. :)

going out shopping now for necessities for the trip.. umm... slide film, lithium batteries, travel size toiletries, some medication, umm... nothing much else.. eh? :|
this is really disturbing...

osama in drag
hey! look at these lovely Sunbeam Lomo photos... :) bright and cheery to start your day right... :)

It's the last exam!! Yay!! :D

com'on.. don't be grouchy.... :p

Thursday, 25 April 2002

terribly bored.. wished the last exam was tonight so i can just get it over and done with.. sigh... :O yawn... i don't want to study anymore..

what am i going to do...?
had a really enjoyable chit-chat session with my young fresh-faced staff after work today, over relaxing cups of blended drinks at Cafe Cartel (which still smells terrible what with their poor ventilation and bad food..)..all of whom are 18 and going into university come June, July or August - depending where to.. realised I had so many stories of wisdom, travel, folklore, revelations and horror (err...:p) to share with them... and they all seemed so fascinated... I remember I was like them too.. fresh out of JC, wondering what the next couple of years would be like.. excited to face the challenges ahead and eager to embrace all the grand opportunities that I knew would appear before me in new and exciting ways.. those were the most eye-opening years for me (and maybe the most "life-changing" ones too...along the way, i also discovered in my grand search for the "Deeper Meaning of Life and Truth" that there was definitely much more than just "looking within myself" or at the material world out there... i discovered and was blessed with the knowledge of and a personal connection with the greatest source of strength, meaning and wisdom there would ever be - a personal God who has been guiding, leading and sustaining me in my life..even though i know at times there were the inevitable doubts and struggles..)... i guess i've done largely ok so far.. :) It's been 9 years since then... gulp..!

the japanese qbhouse 10-min $10 haircut concept has invaded our shores!! am going to check it out with enthusiastic friend (this 75-year-old spunky lady-customer from our shop) when i come back from london! :D how exciting!

Wednesday, 24 April 2002

E-COLI

just got a call from a friend whom i thought had died (really!!) cos we basically lost contact and did not call me as he last promised.... turned out he was infected with the e-coli virus and was hospitalised.. hence the "disappearance"... i am so relieved i want to share it with you all.. even if you don't know who he is...
2 down and 1 more to go!! :D then it's London!!

exam went quite ok today - quite predictable questions since lecturer gave loads of tips so basically just totally trusted him and only studied what he "suggested we focus on".. hee hee... but rather silly.. didn't notice each question was worth 20 marks and not 25. There were 4 questions and the last 20 marks was supposed to be from our project which we already managed to score a "B" (70-79) grade. So I wrote and wrote like each question was worth 50 marks or whatever and used almost one booklet and a half.. :p or maybe it was just that my handwriting was huge... anyway, took too much time for the first question (which consists of part 1(a) and 1(b)) and had a little less time for the last question. When I looked back at the first question 1(a), I realised that I had actually written almost 8 pages for a 10 mark question!!! :O I bet the lecturer will be so amused when he marks the verbose answer... hope he won't mark me down for being "cheong hei"...

so silly... so one more paper on Friday (Financial Management) then I'm done!!

Tuesday, 23 April 2002

got this from Daniel's site.. The Dead Man's Switch... really handy and solves one of these perplexing questions that has been running around in my head for a while.. namely, how do you tell your pure blog friends (i.e. those people who know about your existence only through your blog - not those friends who read your blog but whom you can actually meet up with for coffee also). What happens if one day (umm...) I was really gone, away to the big furry Heaven. never to blog another entry again. How would I be able to inform all these people.. they will wait and wait for another entry..for days, for weeks and then for years.. never knowing the truth..

so this auto switch thingey seems really handy - it can be scheduled to automatically carry out a series of tasks, such as posting messages to websites, sending e-mails to loved ones (or hated ones), and encrypting or destroying sensitive files if it is not reset by a certain pre-set date... like a good friend who knows your deathbed wishes... eeks...
i want to be a non-photographer too!

just saw an episode of early 80s SBC (now TCS) drama serial Kopi-O on cafeteria tv... very surreal...
for those who really love (mostly American) statistics...Harper's Index: Number of years a sheep can remember another sheep's face : 2

See: The Greatest Collection of Classic Sci-Fi & Horror Poster Art on the Net - for those who like this sort of things.. cos I do... I remember really liking "The Omega Man"!! :)

and this is ab-fab..

Monday, 22 April 2002

spent an hour today talking to a friend on the phone and (not being unkind but) was really surprised she was still finding it hard to get over a relationship that soured almost a year ago. The reason why I found it so surprising was because the guy had long started becoming really unkind to her (not the kind that will just walk out, cut contact and "disappear" - which might actually have been easier) and was often abusive to her on the phone, saying really nasty things to her, saying he probably never actually loved her and the whole thing was a mistake and he was sorry on his part he had mislead her and all that kind of stuff that really tore her apart... nonetheless, she still could not stop herself from trying to keep in touch with him, feeling more despairing as the weeks and then months floated by. Of late, the guy actually started cutting off contact and then left overseas for an assignment without informing her (which she felt was a "betrayal").

what startled me when i spoke to her on the phone was how she had started to feel an increasing sense of betrayal from this relationship even as nothing obvious had changed externally. Between the two of them, things had already soured to a point of what she felt as "non-reconciliation". Yet, the hatred, anger and distrust had grown and grown, even when he was no longer communicating with her, and in that sense, no longer "feeding" and "fueling" the negative feelings. She had also started to bemoan herself as weak and "stupid" and "irrational". It suddenly occured to me as we spoke that (i'm not much of a psychologist myself but..) the negative feelings and thoughts had most probably grown organically within her. It was the result of a powerful, imaginative mind gone haywire, creating and feeding the active mind with negative and despairing thoughts.

It brought to mind Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search For Meaning" - about the power of the human mind and how it can at once either lead a man (in a time of difficulty - such as in his case of a Nazi concentration camp) to emerge either completely mad or staying sane - by focusing on the future, discovering personal meaning in the present context of what he was going through...

spotted the right questions! :D should be able to pass this paper unless something really weird happens.. :O hope not... phew.. this is the most worrying paper so glad it went ok. but the questions were really phrased in such an abstract way - the terms that were used were not even in the lecture notes.. they were some of the terms the lecturer appeared to only randomly and casually mention in his lectures.. grr...

Now i am less stressed about the exams... gonna give myself a rest today and touch on the other paper only tomorrow.. :)
woke up at 6.45am today cos Today is finally EXAM day!! :O

you won't believe what time i slept yesterday... 9.50pm!! got so tired of looking at rows and rows of text (even if they were in my own swiggly, ugly (er.. not really lah..) handwriting) and bright and freshly highlighted keywords that i went out to join mummy and sis to watch this hk serial (not sure what it is but the characters were really animated) and ended up reading a dive story from Michael Crichton's Travel.

finally decided that my resistance to the boredom bug was futile and slumped into bed and started the Zzs... :p

all the best to me!! and i'll blog after my exam to tell you all how it went..

Sunday, 21 April 2002

there are students studying everywhere!! mcdonalds, airport, kfc, olio dome, void decks, nus, community centres... moved from kfc to void deck to mcdonalds and then finally back to void deck and found my space usurped by a bunch of nus/poly-like students so am forced to migrate (with all my barang barang) back home... not a good idea cos am constantly tempted by computer/internet/blogging..

nonetheless, observed something really annoying when i was eating my singaporridge at mcdonalds. mcdonalds ginza plaza has this little art and craft corner for kids to dabble in some activities and this little 5 to 6-year-old girl did this "shrink plastic" keychain thing and showed it to her mother. i think she had to pay something like $10 (and she gets a happpy meal along with the package).

anyway, the mother was not happy with what she did (cos it apparently wasn't "perfect") and started going on and on about how she had wasted her money and how the girl should not have written her name on it cos "it spoils the thing" and dunno what else... the mother sat down at the table right beside mine and went on for at least 15 minutes in this monologue (cos the filipino maid was clearly ignoring her and the girl had meanwhile nonchalently skipped away), picking up the completed artwork repeatedly and staring at it in a dissatisfied way, grumbling and grumbling. When the little girl finally told the mother that the "uncle" at the art and craft corner was the one who told her to autograph her work, the mother actually got up and went to "scold" him and told him he shouldn't have made her daughter do that 'cos it "spoilt" the work. the guy could only nod his head apologetically..

I think the whole incident (or rather the mother) was rather silly - the little girl was clearly delighted with what she had done and was proud to autograph it.. why should it matter if it wasn't "perfect".. was that really the point of doing the craft? wasn't it so the girl could enjoy herself and be a little creative? I blame the dearth of creativity in Singapore largely on how many parents still bring up their children to believe that everything has to be perfect and how a little imperfection means "the whole thing was pointless"...

hey alb! the nice auntie at the pasir panjang shell station gave me a furry pink dolphin magnet! :)


cultural clash - i'm obsessed with soft and furry toys...grrr... :)

read my sis' blog about poor, abused nurses.. hey, treat them with respect ya? As a good friend of mine once told me.. "Nurses are the most courageous people in the world. Everyday, they face two of the worse things that can happen to mankind - Death & Disease..

no other job is like that..

Saturday, 20 April 2002

took a well-deserved break this evening from studying and went to watch Showtime! starring Eddie Murphy and Robert De Niro. Quite a silly show but light-hearted and mindless enough not to intrude with my fact and concept-saturated mind... two days more to the exams so got to make sure i don't overtax myself now in case i fall ill (touch wood!)...

Really thank God for some wonderful people around me who have been incredibly patient and supportive these couple of days and weeks as I struggled to get myself ready (especially mentally) for the exams.. i surprised myself with how frantic I became at a couple of points in time, especially when I thought I wouldn't be able to finish covering even the basic few topics (I have finally managed to cover them at least once through, so I know I should be able to go into the exams to "bullshit" even if the exact facts or concepts don't come to me :p)... guess it really isn't that easy to get back into the exam-study mode so many years after leaving University... I even became, as very frank but nonetheless wonderful Karen says - "boring" :O.... eeks.. :p but really glad for the nice emails and phonecalls i got from kind, understanding and supportive friends... must treat everyone to coffee after exams...

ROBODEX 2002 - a "large-scale exhibition in the world to gather human symbiotic robots" is to "provide people with "love" and "dream" through robots and to realize a society where humans and robots cohabit with each other."

would you want to marry a robot one day?

Matwix - Matrix a-la Looney Tunes

The Sony Clie PEG-NR70V is extremely tempting.. i sometimes actually wish my IBM Wordpad C3 will die on me so i have an excuse to get this... :p

Center for Online and Internet Addiction.. I think I really do have Cyber Mental Illness! - "Problematic Internet use associated with significant social, psychological, and occupational impairment... Symptoms include a preoccupation with the Internet, increased anxiety when off-line, hiding or lying about the extent of on-line use, and impairment to real-life functioning. :O

Friday, 19 April 2002

this is so.. so... random...

I'm happy sitting here in my sarong
And I don't care
If you think that it's right or wrong
I hear them whispering
Saying he's queer, he's a fool
But I don't care as long as I think that it's cool
It's my sarong


it's from this page on how to wear a sarong...
two very different stories about being different but being accepted:

- TV Beans
- Land Of The Dots

nice... :)
the clouds this morning are really dramatic...

had a nice chat with famous local watercolourist Ong Kim Seng when he dropped by at shop today. Very nice and amiable guy (even laughed when i reminded him to update his website often! :D) Gave me a whole bunch of suggestions on how to travel around Nepal and Tibet and which Himalayan treks i should take when i go there...

only managed to go around Kathmandu for photography when i was there in Dec of 99.. he apparently has done almost all the treks except for two with really obscure names.. he even did one trek that was for 29 days - the annapurna circuit i think! Very inspiring.. he travels around alone too... quite cool... but can't go there this year cos of all the Maoist activities. Quite thought-provoking how Maoism could be so big there in a little mountainous country..

Nepal for trekking next year...? umm.... :)

Thursday, 18 April 2002

my silhouette

Wednesday, 17 April 2002


< P L A Y >


seems like housewife in houston is getting a cultural shock... eeky MTVs... :p

here's a list of things that seem to be "in" for people of my generation at this moment...you may disagree but this is my personal observation:

1. studying for exams (cos they decided at some moment of insanity to study some more, even though they already have a good degree, in a good job, happily acquiring the 5 Cs..)
2. diving (or thinking of learning how to dive, or buying dive equipment, or planning a dive trip, or something dive-related..)
3. digital cameras (cos everyone else has one so i must have one too..and besides.. i am..)
4. blogging (so i need a digicam so i can put my picture on the blog so that.. err...so that..i can become famous? err.. lame...:p)
5. getting married (cos the biological clock is ticking and HDB flat has come sooner than expected and whatever)
6. trying to get rich by acquiring assets and being in the "correct quadrants".. (all thanks to mr kiyosaki..)

here's a short list of stuff that seems to be going "out", at least for the moment:

1. starting own internet business
2. travelling around the world (throwing all cares to the wind, refusing to join the rat race)

oh well.. something like that...i'm too tired to think anymore.. back to the books!
spoonerism \SPOO-nuh-riz-uhm\, noun:
The transposition of usually initial sounds in a pair of words.

Some examples:
* We all know what it is to have a half-warmed fish ["half-formed wish"] inside us.
* The Lord is a shoving leopard ["loving shepherd"].
* It is kisstomary to cuss ["customary to kiss"] the bride.
* Is the bean dizzy ["dean busy"]?
* When the boys come back from France, we'll have the hags flung out ["flags hung out"]!
* Let me sew you to your sheet ["show you to your seat"].
_____________________________________________________

Spoonerism comes from the name of the Rev. William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930), a kindly but nervous Anglican clergyman and educationalist. All the above examples were committed by (or attributed to) him.
what's this my sis is doing??

rise and shine and ..... study.... :(

..

Tuesday, 16 April 2002

Allegations that the Sept 11 crash into the Pentagon never happened.. huh?

Monday, 15 April 2002

had the good fortune of being acquainted with amazing Canadian sidewalk artist Chalkmaster Dave at last year's Busker's Festival at Clark Quay.. highly talented and funny guy..

just got another email from him... with nice cool new batman etc. pics.. see...>>
have been trying to submit my Income Tax Return for the past 30 mins!!! grrr.... must be jammed with all the submissions from the rest of us last minute type people.. sigh... lalalalala....

deadline has been extended to 18th April leh.. no rush lah... aiyoh.. just like all these people queuing up for the ezlink card... so kiasu...



Snaking lines of commuters formed at Orchard MRT station, but a TransitLink spokesman said many queued up for the "wrong reasons".

Sunday, 14 April 2002

just wondering if drinking Brand's Essence of Chicken with Cordyceps will worsen ringworm infection.. here's why i think it will.... Ringworm is actually a fungus that looks like a worm... and Cordyceps? Fungus that looks like a worm too!! :O

:O:O:O:O:O:O:O
C C O O C C eeks! :O Ringworm, It’s not a worm, It’s a fungus!

Saturday, 13 April 2002

did a goods delivery to a secondary school this morning and struck up a conversation with the lady at the reception desk. she was just in the midst of downing this massive dose of tablets and i found out that she has Lupus. Have heard about it before but never bothered finding out about it. she told me about how precious good health is and how we should be thankful for good health..

What a great piece of advice...
i really amaze myself with how determined i am to study... :p Read this..

I spent most of today studying in the SIM library until they chased us out when the library closed at 5.30pm. I wandered around haplessly for a place in the main SIM building to try to continue studying (determined to finish the topic I was working on) but all the benches and stone tables were taken by other equally hardworking SIMlets. In the end, I decided to drive over to Ngee Ann Poly to try my luck. Finally found a relatively quiet and (in retrospect) spooky place near the Engineering block, thinking I will study till about 7 or so and then go home.. The place was really deserted, except for a bunch of students playing soccer in a nearby field...Little did I know that my studying pace would be so incredibly slow and by 8 plus or so, I was still at it (although i was almost done). By now, mosquitos had started to hover around me.. annoying me..

Suddenly, i heard loud banging noises on the floor immediately above me (I was on the ground floor) as if someone was opening and closing the wooden doors. This was followed by some voices and then nothing. I ignored it thinking it was some students still hanging around on a Saturday evening. About fifteen minutes or so later, this happened again. Then a little while later, again. While I was a little spooked, I decided that I really wanted to finish the topic before going home... besides, I knew I was protected against this sort of supernatural beings (if they were such) and continued studying until I was really done. Then I came home.

Thinking about it now, i realised it really was pretty spooky huh? :p
this is how tired i really am...



took a break from studying this evening and ate a nice Turkish meal at SOFRA Turkish Café & Restaurant at Shaw Towers. Great Turkish food (had Shish Kebap, Sultan Kebap and Eggplant salad) at affordable prices (mostly below $10) per main course. Service was pretty slow though... maybe because restaurant was so packed. Seems like a nice place to bring a bunch of people.. food is halal btw.

then went for film fest French movie Martha...Martha - an almost 2 hour long dark & disturbing movie which mostly felt like it wasn't going anywhere and had a fairly anticlimactic ending... heard someone as i was walking out of the theatre saying it is a bad show.. don't think it is so.. suspect that there is a deeper meaning behind all that imagery (not trying to sound too arty farty here but surely there was something in it that made it worthy of a Cannes award, eh?).. anyway, don't want to spend any more time thinking about it..

going back to my books.. very scary.. only 9 days left... which means 3 days per subject.. not enough not enough...

Thursday, 11 April 2002

Lets make Hello Kitty a UK thing!!... errr... ok....

Oh, my gosh! They really killed Kenny (this time)!!!

This site allows you to "Build A Cow".. ya.. pretty straightforward...

This is apparently the "Most Annoying Page on the Web"
lovely flying piggies but i was asked today what they meant... ya, actually i put them up yesterday 'cos someone said something that i didn't fully agree with (and was in fact a little annoyed by) but (in my usual non-confrontational manner) did not go on arguing about it.. but then it started to grind on me after that.... and i started to feel even more peeved by it moment by moment.. .. and in my head, i kept repeating to myself what I would have wanted to say during our altercation, had i a chance - I really would have wanted to say something like.. "Ya.. as if pigs might fly..." in the sacarstic manner I used to..

but guess i am not so argumentative anymore ..... must be something to do with age...

Wednesday, 10 April 2002

An In-Depth Anaylsis of the Cultural Ramifications Evidenced in the Powerpuff Girls - wow... can't believe someone went to such a great length to analyse these characters.. i mean.. .isn't this just a cartoon???

...and about Buttercup:

She is the ultimate in action, saying as she pleases because in her mind, it has already gotten as bad as it must. Hair as black as her heart has become, Buttercup's wounds have grown too deep to heal, and the nerve's have been severed from all feeling. She is what we fear the female to become if we continue on our path.

:O... no! i don't believe Buttercup is evil!! i don't!!

Tuesday, 9 April 2002

i have 24 hours in a day.
i spend 8 hours sleeping.
i work 7 hours.

that leaves 9 hours!

what happened to those 9 hours??
"What doesn't destroy you makes you stronger."

- Nietzsche


feeling really tired and irritable now... started the day really early, waking up at an unearthly 6.30am (catching a stunning sunrise) to rush for an appointment at Tampines at 7.30am and then another appointment at Bedok to do a demo at 8.05am...all the way from Clementi..

then, came back to office to find that my boss refuses to approve my 17-day leave (1 week to study exam, 1 week for the actual exams, and another week for my trip to london).. says that no boss will approve such a long leave.. i started to stress out 'cos london tickets and (i think) accommodation have already been booked. In the end, I decided to cut short my study week (taking 2 days instead of 6 day leave), come back to work on 2 days in the week of my exam (i.e. in-between my exams) and managed to cut it down to 11 days leave instead....

was planning to work butt off this week so i can have whole of next week to study really hard for exams.. now have lost motivation to do so... feel like rushing off during lunch and straight after work to study cos now really panicking and not sure whether got enough time.. :( ... besides, no need to make sure work is completed since will be coming back most of next week anyway.. grrr... :(

i just wish life isn't so difficult now.......

Monday, 8 April 2002

Sunday, 7 April 2002

this guy is really cool... he drove all the way from New York to San Francisco in 6 days, mounting an SLR camera to his side window (triggered automatically by his speedometer) and took one picture at every mile - for all 3304 miles of it! He stops at night and drives to the nearest motel and then comes back to the very same point the next day to carry on... wow...

i want to come up with a truely original travel-photography project too.. something no one else (or at least very very few others) has ever done before... walk the length of something.. (i've thought of the River Thames or Hadrian's Wall), motorbiking and cirum-navigating the world on one of the latitudes or the equator...travel North to South of one of the longitudes (like Michael Palin's "From Pole to Pole")....something... (alb says I sound like John Nash in A Beautiful Mind.. :p)

went to this really odd kopitiam-style French food stall yesterday.. The French Stall off Little India - very odd.. you get gourmet stuff like Escargot for $8, Duck A L'orange at $14.80 and I had this Steak something for only $12.80.. but the food turned out to be only so-so (in fact, a little on the overly rare side).. could be because the main Chef was apparently not around and his assistant was in charge for that day..

there are really a lot of strange and interesting food places in Singapore (and I'm sure around the world too.).. so i can't understand this guy's obsession with McDonald's... he went to 45 McDonald's outlets in a single day! :O

Saturday, 6 April 2002

there i was in cubicle no. 104, mugging away, starting on yet another one of the really complicated capital bugeting questions from the really thick and very heavy finance management textbook.. it was my 50th or maybe 102nd.. or maybe..224th question.. i have been in the library since 10am.. and have been sustained thus far by only half a glass of milk in the morning and 2 miserable slices of toasted bread coated thinly with egg mayo at noon... suddenly... my brain juices started to leak out from the tiny cracks at my temple... i had begun to explode.. but i didn't notice.. cos i was still mugging away at my finance questions....

BOOM!!! there was a loud explosion suddenly coming from cubicle no. 104! pieces of me landed everywhere.. in cubicles as far away as no. 23 and 227.. with cubicles no. 103 and 105 worst hit... the other hardworking SIM-lets stirred.. suddenly interrupted in their studying.. the SIM-let in cubicle no. 79 muttered annoyingly at the noise and brushed away the loose pieces of flesh, bone and hair that had landed on him, and resumed studying.. as if nothing had happened... some of the others had already started showing signs of explosion themselves.. their escaped brain juices causing the floors beneath them to turn soggy...

: D

i'm going mad with studying.. blogging now at SIM library.. i think i'm done for the day...
funny how everything else seems to be insignificant and taking a backseat when you worry about exams... like I don't care that my favourite film fest is just about to happen... or about my london trip that is coming up... or that i seem totally unenthusiastic when you ask me if i am interested in this dive trip or that course or having dinner or whatever.. .. and worse of all, i start to be a bit impatient with everyone and everything that is slow and repetitive... even friends who are recovering from breakups and so on....

there's just something about the big E that tends to get me a little.. err... cranky......

hey.. gimme a break and be patient with me till i'm done, ya?.. promise i'll be back to life then...
:(

Friday, 5 April 2002

thanks for all the concern about my exams.. think i'll be fine but ya, surely i have to start dividing up my time properly... have just been told i am getting overly obsessive about it.. sorry lah.. nothing much else happening.. besides.. THIS IS MY BLOG! go write your own blog if you want other stuff to be discussed... hmph!.. sorry.. so rude.. :p

found a couple of great blogs.. they write a great deal better than me in terms of prose and style.. and content too! especially now when i can't seem to get away from the big "E"!! go entertain yourself with them till i finish my exams lah..

1. http://asecretsmile.blogspot.com/
2. http://textism.com/

btw, you may want to try placing the swirling clock and date cursor thingey over the animated Buttercup pic - it gives you a fresh new perspective of her.. quite cool.. :)

Thursday, 4 April 2002

suddenly realised i may not be able to finish studying my exams.... i'm panicking.... :( ... maybe i should stop blogging... maybe i should stop checking my email.. maybe i should stop meeting people altogether! I should go straight home after work on the dot and lock myself in my room .... disconnect the phone and modem... study and study and study!!! :O

DANIEL LIBESKIND

Tuesday, 2 April 2002



Farrell Eaves' camera was a perfectly ordinary Nikon CoolPix 990 until he accidentally knocked it into a pond last summer. Now it's a magic camera.

just had yummy cze cha dinner at 29 Tyrwhitt Road (off jalan besar) - 2 1/2 pairs of Makansutra chopsticks - famous for their belachan pomfret and black pepper crayfish.

busy day but have almost no recollection of what happened throughout the day - gee.. i'm tired... :|

Monday, 1 April 2002

Cheese Moving On Their Own

Met up with a friend struggling with some changes in her life yesterday and started thinking about change. About this annoying cliché – “The only constant is change”. Started thinking through the day and while going home. Beginning to see how true it is. Change is happening around us all the time. Sometimes, we create the change, because we acknowledge something is going awry (e.g. getting fat for me: p) and set our minds to stemming it. These changes are (relatively) easy to handle. Just need a bit of self-discipline and so on. Then there are changes that happen to us. Like for my friend. Or suddenly getting sacked because of office politics and so on. These changes are usually accompanied by feelings of betrayal and injustice and can take a long time to get over and accept.

In the book “Who Moved My Cheese?” by Dr Spencer Johnson, Hem says “Why should we change? We’re special. This sort of things should not happen to us. Or if it does, we should at least get some benefits.” Haw asks “Why should we get benefits?”. Haw claims, “Because we’re entitled.” “Entitled to what?” Haw wanted to know. “We’re entitled to our Cheese.” “Why?” Haw asked. “Because we didn’t cause this problem. Somebody else did this and we should get something out of it.” Haw suggested,” Maybe we should stop analyzing the situation so much and just get going and find some New Cheese.”

“Oh no,” Hem argued. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

Aren’t we all like that sometimes… Maybe they are right.. “The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Find New Cheese.” (pg 60)
For all animal lovers out there - especially all those pet lovers.. this is really worth reading.. "How Could You?"