Life. And how I never want to be the dining dead

2006-01-01T19:13:00.000-08:00

Very wet and wild new year

Plus a bike ride this afternoon

Happy 2006!

2006-01-01T18:46:00.000-08:00

As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit. Photography has something to do with death. It's a trace
-Henri Cartier Bresson

2005-12-26T17:36:00.000-08:00

Recovering from the merrymaking. Spillover alcohol still swilling in my bloodstream. I can hardly read properly.

I have New Year's resolutions.

I dislike mum intensely because

1) she tells me to eat fruits, and to be a good girl (at age 23)
2) she tells me I have to slap on eye cream because of all the "MRT lines" that are manifesting their wretched little selfs around my eyes (at age 23)
3) she freaks out about my going out with guys who are not marriage material (at age 23)

My mother is extremely age non-appropriate. One moment, I'm a 9 year old child and the next, I'm a left on the shelf spinster of 45.

I have realised my mum is a nightmarish caricature of the overly protective marm. Unfortunately, she is not merely a figment of anybody's warped imagination. She actually exists this way.

I think i managed to scare her into silence this morning. She was telling me to put on the eye cream in the car this morning while I was struggling to recover from a nasty hangover throbbing in my left temple. Silence, then a sudden loud outburst from me, like the frosty Tilda Swinton in Narnia. Silence again. Ahahahhaa. It works!

New Year's Resolutions:

1) Allow doors to be opened for me
2) Don't quibble unnecessarily with mum. Silence will do most of the time.
3) More prudent spending.
4) Less alcohol
5) More moving around and less being sedentary
6) Reply to emails in 4 days max rather than 3 months
7) Remember birthdays, and do something about them
8) Put aside more time to draw
9) Learn how to paint
10) Learn how to drive
11) Grow my hair out beyond shoulder length and not look scraggly in it

2005-12-23T03:39:00.000-08:00

major reflective mood kicking in. But I"m happy, so I can't explain it.

2005-12-21T19:52:00.000-08:00

Much fun and controversy at La Viva.

The strumming of spanish guitars, hearty renditions of the cheesy spanish favourites.

So I brought up the topic of my lesbian friend and it generated much heated discussion. 2 opposing factions (christian girls vs the amoral girls). As the argument wore on, I got more and more emotionally involved, even angry at the other camp. Everybody is entitled to their views, I do not think it unreasonable for people to feel that homosexuality is unnatural, but some of the views that were tossed out were irresponsible and very disrespectful to homosexuals as individuals. At times, it was hardly worth more than a whiny "eew, that's just completely disgusting".

Apparently, they are worried for me because I am easily swayed (with regard to all matters, though I do not know the basis of that). Whether or not sexual orientation is a choice is not a question for anybody to answer. I think it exists on a sliding scale ranging from lifestyle choice to innate instinct. The question is why people should not be free to pursue their happiness, regardless of who that lies in, male or female.

I do think the purpose of life is to seek happiness, one that does not harm or hurt. Let the pursuit of happiness not be fraught with more difficulty than it already is.

2005-12-19T23:53:00.000-08:00

Why is the figure of Mr Darcy so small????

I still prefer Colin Firth

2005-12-19T22:32:00.000-08:00

Weekends can be so packed sometimes. It just pffted away. I need to keep a mundane account of what i do so i know what i did

Friday night: King Kong and dinner with the gay-wannabes
So Naomi Watts tenderly stroking Kong's finger is supposed to be a representation
of the white woman's unending fascination with the black man's gargantuan cock.

I do have weird friends

Saturday: Unfortunately, work work work till 7pm. Toa Payoh with E to check out cheaper
handphones, which we couldn't get. Still, we had some ginseng chrysanthemum liang
cha at E's insistence.

Sunday: Shouting match with mum. Great way to exercise those vocal chords early in the
morning. Skipped church. Sis remarked snidely that having to endure mum's nagging is
God's punishment for my not going for mass.

Pride and Prejudice!!! It's one of the best cheesy movies I've watched in a while.

Choral concert at the cathedral of the good shepherd. Beautiful singing and quite secular. Which was good. Wouldn't have been half as fun if the programme was just filled with latin hymns.

1030pm. Start of my shift. Walked a pack of 8 boys to fong seng at 3am in the morning. I killed my tum with mushroom-cheese prata and then mee goreng. And a venti peppermint mocha frappe.

7am. Home and bed

2005-12-15T23:15:00.000-08:00

bodily emissions and all. Somebody has done a survey on :

The Japanese, of all people!

http://www.wordpress.tokyotimes.org/?p=725

2005-12-14T23:38:00.000-08:00

This from a very helpful website http://www.pioneerthinking.com/stainremovers3.html

Marble Stain Removal - Make a poultice from white absorbent material such as a napkin, blotter, paper towel or facial tissue, dampened with the chemical recommended to dissolve that stain; or mix whiting with that chemical to make a soft paste to cover the stain. The poultice should be left on the stain from 1 hour up to 48 hours, depending on the age and depth of the stain. Plastic wrap, held in place by masking tape, can be put over the poultice to keep it damp; otherwise it will have to be redampened with the chemical periodically. Mix only enough poultice for immediate use; mix a second batch if another application is needed.

Right. I hate the sound of "poultice" And if I knew which chemical could remove the stain, I wouldn't be reading this.

2005-12-14T23:07:00.000-08:00

So many strange boo boos recently.

I tried to highlight my hair strawberry blond (not jet black) and only ended up with blacker, drier hair.

The dye bottle that I left in a plastic bag on the floor exploded after 4 hours. I came home to a big, bubble blob-like spill that was the color of bitter chocolate on my extremely latte marble floor. Unfortunately, the resulting stain wasn't a delicious mocha. And of course my marble floor isn't mine. It's my parents'. Who weren't too pleased to see a stain the size of my arse on their pristine marble.

I shall google marble stain-removal techniques.

2005-12-14T22:50:00.000-08:00

Do I sense a come on or am I just being paranoid?

First she changes shifts so she can be my shift partner and we can watch movies on her laptop together, after she had been on shift just the night before. Then she makes a remark about trying to imagine what my sheer top would look like if worn on its own.

Argh.

Getting freaked out. She is such a great person though, and I don't want to be paranoid.

We had a very interesting discussion on the fluidity of sexual orientation and the definition of gayness. Really. How do you really know you are straight until you turn gay? Which is not to say that I'm getting one bit confused. The movie was Saving Face (how appropriate) and I cringed at all the lesbian scenes. Of course, the bo liao guy friends are all encouraging me to try out the other side just so the probability of their experiencing a menage a trois ups a couple of notches. This is of course, in tandem opposition to the number they have on their bedposts.

I could never be gay. I think.

Aeon Flux

2005-12-10T22:38:00.000-08:00

Pointless, vacuous, but very beautiful.

The last time I felt this strongly about a character's hair in a film was Run Lola Run. Never summoned the courage to dye my hair firecracker red, and I don't suppose I'll be sporting assymetrical jet black fringe anytime in the future.

2005-12-07T06:27:00.000-08:00

Yay! The awful pink and lilac wall-to-floor-to-wall cupboards are going! Too much stuff to pack, though I'm a self-professed non-stuff person.

Impact of a crash brought back memories again. Random porcelein teddy bear figurine smashed to pieces because of my klutziness. The figurine was totally non-significant. I think it was the terrible thud and how in that split second you realise that something has been lost even before it hits the ground. Hahaha. I laugh at follies of the past (it's been more than a year!) , my mad woman smashing up of the high-tech speakers to their skeletal bits.

2005-12-06T08:31:00.000-08:00

someone i've spoken to recently has given me so many logical reasons, and yet, i still listen to the siren call of intuition and gutfeel.

I am illogical, as much as I like to be rational.

Subjectivity and openness serve a purpose, up to a certain point. For subjectivity being what it is, sways. Step over a threshhold and the boundaries shift once again. Do you allow them to shift till there is no more room for question, where you have irrevocably drifted to one end, or do you take up an absolute stand before that happens?

2005-12-06T03:55:00.000-08:00

Double takes and guesses.

Does that statement extend to me?

Mobius loop of doubts. Why? What happened in between? Is the correlation significant? More concern and contact coincides with.

aiyah! whatever. back to work.

Blown away

2005-12-05T08:54:00.000-08:00

I can resuscitate half-dead people!!!!!!!

The joys of CPR and breathing air into a dummy cast in hard-plastic

So not all of us are born equal. Some are better at blowing than others. Haha. It made for a lot of laughs amongst the four of us. A's mouth is just too small. My advice " open wide, relax and just use more localised force" To B, "no teeth!" Of course, I'm just a natural at it.

So who says First Aid can't be fun?

Books. Why you read what you read

2005-12-05T08:30:00.000-08:00

How do people choose the books they end up reading?

Pure serendipity, in some cases. Of late, I seem to be choosing chance reads that somehow have a common thread. Biography of Salvador Dali, maestro of the twirly moustaches, and The Sandman. Surrealism and post-modern gore seem pretty similar in their proclamations of doom and destruction. Dali freaks me out and amazes me at the same time. What seems to be a giant self-pleasing hermaphrodite is actually an allegory of Spain. He paints freakishly well. All his works of fantasy have a waxy still-life quality to it. Whether or not intended, it adds to the surrealness, captures the frame within a frame flavor. Raw, whimsical ideas, translated into renderings on a canvas that seem to have originated from a prior existing reality, finally fixed into a pictorial rendering. I"m getting confused.

More mundanely, there must be a branch of psychology somewhere that deals with how your choice in reading material is a manifestation of your personality.

I'm skittish. I don't know what I want. I go to the library, walk along the shelves. Pull out a few whose covers interest me (non dog-eared, non-glossy cover, non yellow-stained poor quality paper). Hmm. The covers that interest me are nons. I choose the non-negatives rather than focus on the positives. Does that extend my range? I usually end up picking the ones with matt-surface covers, the ones that are not Russian even though I aspire to reading Dostoevsky and Kaminovsky and authors with mail-order bride-sounding names. Ocassionally, I'll be ditzy. Chick lit novels, novels given mention in alternative media (Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera from Serendipity, the movie). Did I mention I hate Garcia Marquez? Too many Joses and Antonios in his novels. I get too mixed up in his rambly knits of family histories.

I try to rediscover my past. Picked up Transformers- Legacy of Unicron, homage to my childhood days. More than meets the eye..I had a hard time distinguishing one Transformer from the next. A shame, considering my first doll was a Transformer, not a Barbie (maroon body and white legs which morphed into a plane, I have no idea what his name was other than Ken, the make-believe partner of my eventual Barbie)

Choosing a book, let the other small things in our lives. All a reflection of our personalities.

Oh yah, and disturbingly, all these new-age novels about misfit Indian people born in America (The Transplanted Man, The Arrangements of Love), or Caucasian people trying to find themselves in India (brainfever Bird). Granted, my defence is that a lot of the up and coming authors (Roy, Roy, Roy, whom I don't even like, Vikram Seth) are Indian or choose to write about the Indian experience.

most disturbingly. Do I read too much?

Essential spanish

2005-11-15T19:24:00.000-08:00

"Luego, Despues del rayo, y del fuego,
Tendre tiempo de sufrir"

Perhaps.

2005-11-15T19:20:00.000-08:00

Monday blues, though it's Tuesday. Having one extra day of leave makes going back so much more difficult.

Funny though that today seemed like a good day. I got through much of today because of a great lunch session with 2 wacky colleagues. Talking and laughing far too loudly at coffee club, scaring the shit out of the other taitai customers.

I officially have 2 shrinks! Only I was semi-reclining on the beige linen benches instead of a black leather-upholstered one, and my shrinks were laughing their heads off at their patient. Some people love service people to know their every like and dislike, their favourite drink or habits (extra sugar with no milk, sir?) I hate that. Not in a personal way, just in a too close for comfort manner. The auntie at the canteen where i have kaya toast and iced milo picked up on that after my 4th consecutive visit. I freaked out after that, which means I no longer have my cherished kaya toast for breakfast. Diagnosis: abject commitment phobia

haha. those 2 are funny.

"dongle" -- in tech/geek speak, a small hardware device that connects to a computer and acts as an authentication key for a particular piece of software.

Wasn't aware of that term till today at a briefing, where someone termed it "donger" on a powerpoint. Isn't it weird how some words sound universally lewd? Sounds like what guys would name their better bits.

Weekend was a mixture of crappy/lovely. Thanks to those who put up with me, and who gave much cheer. Really touched. And I shall put a halt to stupid behaviour in public.

2005-11-14T18:27:00.000-08:00

I spent most of saturday night sawing through a coconut transversely, and spent most of this morning painting it.

The damn polo mints I tried to paint, but they were still kinda gooey in the end. Argh, what a mess.
in the end. Most of my morning's efforts down the drain.

I chucked the whole damn coconut
***************************************************

On another note, I was going to say I should have smashed it. Then I stopped because it made me wonder when I became so full of anger?

Times when it just threatens to boil over so you lose it and then start cursing hysterically in public or hitting someone.

My official alcohol limit is about 3 beers over 3 hours, or 2 shots. Shall keep to it from now on. No more on the spur of the moment long gulps and bitter sips.

2005-11-10T23:56:00.000-08:00

There is no freedom. Of speech, of religious ideals, of views, or what time or if I do want to dry my hair, drink the damn soup heated, use the bloody internet at 12.45am, which is why i'm typing in complete darkness. Even Cuba is free-er.

Oppressive regime at home. I get woken up at night, cold fingers running through my hair, fucking complaining voice insisting I blowdry my hair and not go to sleep with wet hair. I kid nobody not.

Mother (no pun intended) of all fucking fights tonight. Maybe I'm at fault too, shouting at her whilst she's lying there with a bad chest infection. But I'm having my dinner, staring stonily at the bad cheesy TV show so the lack of conversation isn't jarring, and the issue of Going to Sleep with Wet Hair comes up again. Arguments fly thick and fast from both ends, pitch and tempo of voice ascend fervidly, personal attacks, the damn guilt trips, voice fraught at regret at having sent me away to america thrown uselessly my way.

I'm no pretty picture either. Eating my dinner and almost spitting onto the table in disgust at the shit that I've to deal with. 23, and my wet hair is a major cause of her concern. I want none of it. I want out. Why is it you can divorce people you choose of will and not people you never had a hand in choosing? Can I pack my things and run away? One day they'll come home and I won't be there for them to pick on anymore.

Rescue, please.

2005-11-10T08:52:00.000-08:00

Singapore Design Expo is a big fat quack affair.

I just noticed that all my posts are negative, pessimistic, whiny, bitchy.

Reflection of who I am? Or just that happy days don't generate so much need to vent/publish?

The organisers can't decide if they want Mass Appeal, or street cred. They failed miserably on both counts. Convention hall felt a little empty and wannabe-ish, and most annoying were the people who obviously were there just to buy cutesy action figurines/ take pictures of themselves at yet another outing affair. Some of the "Artists" obviously took themselves as people of the art world seriously. Swigging beers, rearranging their booths without showcasing their art, ignoring the plebians standing round eager to see if some art would start soon.

I think I'm bitter I spent $35.

tao

2005-11-06T18:00:00.000-08:00

I'm dreading it. Perhaps they're all right. You know, when all the rats are scurrying away from a source towards another, and that's either because the floodwaters are gushing in or there's a huge slab of cheese waiting at the other end.

Maybe we need religion. Even the best, most cynical, most hardened intellectual lot of us.

It's been more than a passing feeling of late. That neediness for something else to make life life. Only I've no idea what it is and religion seems to be the last crevice I haven't tried looking into. Or maybe illustrating a picture book "the Missing Piece" by Joel Silverstein.

Pretty boy playing in the background, and I'm sharing a room with 5 other strangers, all typing away furiously on their keyboards.

A lack of attention and discontentedness are probably the scourge of the modern world. It's not "Western" ideas or whatever people think it is. Western civilistion had its Puritan moments, and eastern culture hasn't been immune to promiscuity (hello! concubinage) and wantonness.

It's really unattentiveness and the creeping acceptance of that. Consumerism is a manifestation of that acceptance of the unattentive culture. We buy stuff because the new now becomes old in 5 seconds. We can multitask, do a million things, but our eyes and hearts are no longer where they are. They don't even linger for that split millionth second over anything. Sick of your spouse? Divorce. Don't like? Run away, go do something else to take your mind off that. But there isn't something to take our minds off when they weren't there in the first place.

Emptiness too maybe is the bastard child of that. Our lives aren't filled even though there's so much more in it. Or perhaps because there's so much more in it.

Had such a live in, quiet weekend, but I've been fidgetty, dissatisfied. Let's hope it's a phase.

errata

2005-11-02T11:03:00.000-08:00

Drunkenness.

It's never about the alcohol taking control of you and making you do things. It's mostly you taking advantage of alcohol as an excuse to lose your inhibitions.

glassy hatred

2005-10-26T23:41:00.000-07:00

shards that twist deep
and claw at nothing

icy rage where there should be fire

cool, cruel execution to quench the crackling cuts
shattered silent, yet, the cracks
echo and haunt

scarier yet, the echoes that have no walls
doomed
to a searing screech through
a vacuous eternity

2005-10-16T23:54:00.000-07:00

the weeks are passing in a whirr of constant pointless activity. Like running on a treadmill. there's a certain satisfaction from the steady pounding, not having to lift your feet more than a few centimetres from the ground because the belt is moving neath your sneakers, but it gets old after a while.

I'm losing track of time. I think I'm settling into life here officially.

On another note, life is a momentary pleasant surprise when you're deciding between instant palak paneer and jalfrezzi and you get advice from an interesting stranger. Who remained a stranger fortunately.

2005-10-08T14:36:00.000-07:00

The continuous tension

When should it snap? The question is not when does it snap? We are more often in control of what happens than we think.

Run away?

2005-10-08T14:30:00.000-07:00

You know how everyone perceives the world in different ways?

I'm intrigued by so called synaesthesiacs. You hear a piece of music, and you can literally taste it.

Memories, textures, they trigger each other.

I closed my eyes to rewalk the many paths I had taken back there. Thankfully, many of the tracks in my mind's eyes are still fresh, and I can feel the uneven potholed roads beneath my feet. I think of The Dell, and I feel that beige, gritty carpet underfoot the minute I open the door. I remember the cheap pvc rust red couch, with its depressions and broken springs, the little notches it makes in flesh because it's gathered in places. the slight tackiness of it from years of wear and changed hands, and dried lysol.

I feel the jolt up my spine from the numerous bus rides along the potholed roads. How everyone flies up in their seats. Momentarily awakened from the drudgery of the commute.

nostalgia

scary hopper

2005-10-08T14:17:00.000-07:00

Scary hoppers.

Are we rabbits with fangs? Or do we just enjoy the momentary free fall twang in the air, ready to trampoline to the next destination the second our paws hit solid?

my roscharch

2005-09-10T11:45:00.000-07:00

Prolific prolific.

for the longest time, I looked at this As Four invite to their show and couldn't figure out what it was. I kept seeing a rider on a horse.

2005-09-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

field day for op-ed people after Katrina struck, and little wonder why.

Karl Rove may be a tzar at political manhandling and dirty trick manipulation, but in the aftermath of what would change america's political course and psyche, there is no convincing campaign spinning to turn the tide of intensely negative public sentiment. I'm sorry Katrina struck. I'm terribly saddened by the savagery that surfaces when people are left with nothing and the streets are littered with carrion. But if this is what it takes for the US to finally take action against the foolhardy we will take'em on and knock'em down and save the poor misguided democracy needing muslim world policies that W, son of HW, has been advocating, then it couldn't have come earlier.

And what is it with these dumbass wives of politicians who keep making Marie Antoinette quotable quotes?

A brief timeline of stupid women who made the headlines:

1780 Marie Antoinette: "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche"

time warp during which apparently no woman made that stupid a comment

2005 The year of the double tragedies
Madame Goh and the unfortunate slip of the tongue about les peanuts

Stupidity knows no bounds/boundaries.

Ex-first lady Barbara proclaims Katrina "a success for evacuees because they were
underprivileged anyway" and how it's scary because they all want to stay in Texas,
because of the overwhelming hospitality"

She forgot to add yeeeee-haw

I suspect the evacuees might be happy to stay in texas for the moment because their big easy is now a big festering cauldron. Because her darling son is an inept moron. And yes, they were underprivileged anyway, so it couldn't have become worse. And they would have been grateful to receive the slightest sliver of your beneficience.

If only Mrs Bush made a comment related to yet another food item. We could then nicely draw a convenient parallel between all 3 cases and attribute these momentary lapses of judgement to an obsession with food and cooking and home and hearth.

2005-09-10T10:54:00.000-07:00

life is a constant boil of contradiction.

which is what we really want. constant, moderately tuned tension and edge pre-breaking point. because once it snaps, transalters to the flip, goes down the slippery slope, you're tempted to claw your way out the other way.

people are funny that way.

Peace on earth

2005-09-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

P for pms. P for perpetual. P for phucked up.

the 7 habits of highly effective nuts

2005-09-05T01:16:00.000-07:00

I've had a draft on circumcision sitting around forever. I think it shall sit around forever.

A bad joke courtesy of my ex-boss.

Why did the Jewish doctor perform his circumcisions for free?
He only took tips

I shall get off my lazy ass. Nope, actually stay on it because when i get off it, my knees get scraped on nearby plastic objects.

7 things that scare me
1. having my parents find out i had an indian boyfriend, among other things
2. that feeling you get that someone is behind you when washing your face
3. sunday nights
4. being alone and not liking it
5. losing myself
6. unoriginality
7. being boring

7 things i like the most
1. teh tarik ice cream
2. banana spin from spinelli's
3. waltz theme from amelie
4. amelie
5. getting a back rub after a terrible terrible day
6. having a really great conversation
7. dancing to bhangra

7 important things in my room
1. chooch the stuffed dog
2. bed
3. cho the starfish
4. my colored pencils
5. crayola jumbo box crayons
6. bed bath and beyond fragrance spray
7. paper star hanging

7 random facts about me
1. i have brushed my teeth with exfoliating scrub accidentally
2. i like squatting down like a trishaw rider when eating dinner at home
3. i like peanut butter cucumber sandwiches
4. i have discovered that raw pasta is indeed a little unpalatable
5. i got scalded with boiling water in a car and nobody else realised it
6. i have cried after a haircut
7. i like weird people

7 things to do before i die
1. go to tibet
2. get an anything in fashion design
3. try not to have children
4. be less selfish
5. be a mentor to somebody for real
6. read all the narnia books and stop quitting at voyage of the dawn treader
7. be sure jesus christ is not a myth

7 things i can do
1. bend my wrist over and touch my wrist with my thumb
2. laugh like an idiot
3. enjoy walking in the rain
4. type on the computer in the dark real soft
5. eat a pint of ben and jerry's in one sitting
6. eat a jumbo hershey's bar in 2 hours
7. sleep anywhere, anytime

7 things i can't do
1. be physically coordinated in general
2. make small talk with irritating people
3. navigate
4. pretend to be really smart and on top of things
5. drink copious amounts
6. think of 7 things in every damn category

7 things i say the most
1. shitttt
2. fucked up
3. har? really?
4. hmmm....
5. oi!
6. nono
7. i'm sorry

7 celeb crushes
1. arragorn (not viggo mortensen)
2. tony leung!!!
3. johnny depp
4. pierce brosnan
5. antonio banderas
6. tay ping hui
7. ralph fiennes

7 people i'll love to see doing this
they mostly don't have blogs.damn

gourmet

2005-08-23T15:01:00.000-07:00

back to college days.

curry instant noodles, scraps of veg i stole from the fridge and random ikan bilis and nuts. in between black forest cake and cold milk and cereal.

irresponsibility is fun :)

2005-08-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

Cleared out my 4 email inboxes.

One was a gift with a really stupid user id. Made the mistake of randomly reading some of the contents in the inbox. Which sort of describes how it is really. You store memories away and choose to ignore them. but you can't ignore presence. It is there even though you don't care about it. Should I just let that account die a natural death when it expires? Do I let it sit, collect dust and cobwebs, except it cannot?

Wished I were still living in the days where all correspondences would be filed into a huge rattan chest so I could physically hurl it from 8 storeys above (oh no actually. that would be killer litter). Clicking delete. Too non-ceremonial. 3 years and all past-emotions lost at a simple mouse-click.

I enjoyed shattering my altec-lansing and scaring a tourist shit-silly in the process behind Baltimore Museum of Art.

funnily enough, i think i feel free. YAY!

Uncertainty

2005-08-23T12:19:00.000-07:00

LEONARD MANDEL (at left) and co-workers at the University of Rochester gather around a parametric down-converter, an unusual crystal that converts any photon striking it into two photons with half as much energy. Mandel's group pioneered the use of the device in tests of quantum mechanics

Looks like a spoof of some Star Wars movie poster, but it's really a serious group photo of some serious people who do serious things.

Physics only sounds sexy if it's vaguely philosophical. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is still undecipherable to me, but the idea behind it is cool enough to warrant a cursory plough-through of all the equations. Which I still don't get and never will get.

Which brings us to schrodinger's cat. apparently, other groups of serious people have already annihilated the paradox, of whose existence in the first place is supposedly embarrassing.

My question is "Does it matter?", which I know is entirely out of the point, but being out of point is more fun for the quantum mechanically challenged.

Leave it unopened.

2005-08-20T13:22:00.000-07:00

distinguishable distinction. How extra!

I am more catholic than I think I am. Later.

2005-08-20T13:07:00.000-07:00

In a drunken stupor of sorts at 4 am last night. Came home to find the family hall and bedroom and bathroom inaccessible, so it was the couch, and other creative measures to get through the rest of the night.

I wrote a blog entry about not griping, ranting, grumbling so much anymore yesterday, but that one got axed because the site died on me. Perhaps I should stay a grumbler *yay!* On the other hand, I could just be smart and save a copy of my draft before clicking on "post"

Sometimes, I sit there drinking, with people, listening, slightly nodding off from the narcoleptic effects of one beer too many, ocassionally making some comment, and I feel really distanced from it all. N told me I have so many laughs I scare him. Apparently, I laugh at everything, funny or otherwise. I know when i'm fake laughing, but i'd like to know if there is a distinguishable objective distinction between my fake laughter and my real one.

A fake smile is apparently easy to detect. Try this game: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/index.shtml

I completely sucked at it.

let me think about the different types of laughter one can have

1) bitter laughter
2) drunken laughter (in between falling off your chair and not being able to control falling off and being amused by yourself)
3) commiseraty laughter
4) fake laughter at unfunny jokes. like really unfunny jokes
5) fake laughter at something you know is really funny but just don't find funny
6) gut laughter (where you can't stop and trying to makes it worse) [haven't had one of those in a while]
7) uneasy laughter (something really unfunny is about to happen)

Th list goes on. I give up. There are more types of laughter than types of excrement.

And laughter starts looking like some sort of cross between draft and lager.

No wonder it's the best medicine.

Gotta go to work.

2005-08-15T01:08:00.000-07:00

"True love is the soul's recognition of its counterpoint in another"

Soething is obviously lacking when one starts thinking that a cheesy line from a cheesy movie is classic. But then again, I've always been cheesy. Recounting the time SGP and I did our girly movie thing and watched Ever After. Obsessive rewinding to the scene where useless prince was on his knees beseeching Drew Barrymore to marry him. How do you say no to that? Or Hugh Grant, making that piss-lovely declaration of love to Sandra Bullock's defiant activist in Two Weeks' Notice?

I am such a floozie.

Too much circumstantial practicality surrounds marriage. I don't want any of that. I'd rather be Ms Left (on the shelf) than compromise. Or maybe not. In the end, lack of companionship or sex or whatever it is that people get into lifelong union for might weaken me and I might succumb and marry a civil servant and live in a flat in a new HDB estate and have as many babies as my childbearing hips can endure so I can get a big fat bonus paycheck and raise them and.

and what?

Life draws a bloody blank.

2005-08-10T02:11:00.000-07:00

Johnny Depp!!!!!!!

I get prepubescent about Johnny Depp. I don't get like that about Brad Pitt, or Orlando Bloom.

In Wonka VS Wintour, Wonka should definitely take home the crown for catty drag queen. I'm not sure what Wintour would have to say about Wonka's wanky (sic) sartorial sense, but Wonka would probably tell Wintour to stuff her sour face with a few more chocs.

Haven't been so satisfied after watching a movie in a long while. The explosion of technicolor fantasy of leaping loompas and the big pink dragon boat in a neverland of gurgling chocolatefalls. Sheer delight. If heaven looked like that, I might sign up to be christian at once.

Still, the movie was a lot darker than the book was, and Depp's wonka is a little more than unsettling. I'll just dream of all that chocolate tonight.

laid to rest

2005-08-09T02:30:00.000-07:00

A long drawn, long lost battle now laid to rest.

Why do we love who we do? Never as intensely, never as much again.

Half-drunken sobs at a person 50 years away, 15 hours behind. His sobs. What do they mean anymore? My rational, hollowed-out listening to explanations. Exasperated shouts demanding an explanation, an impossible solution. There is no solution.

Will we fall and sink again? Or do we part as strangers forever?

Parting a strange rewind, replay.

2005-08-08T14:37:00.000-07:00

It has finally happened. An email with one small paragraph right at the end informing me of his decision that we should not talk at all from now on. Monday morning. I don't know what to do for now. Smile and pretend to be happy whilst nursing that huge gash inside. Had a good cry but emerged with swollen eyes and pretended it was allergies.

Reread his email and replied. This had to happen at some point, but there was no warning. Only belated promises unfulfilled, followed by a slap across the cheek. I never learnt.

Sunday of lies

2005-08-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

Sunday again. Which means time for church. Which means it's time for me to go sit at Thomson Plaza munching on Ya Kun kaya toast whilst my sister attends mass.

I feel almost like a gay person struggling with coming out of the closet to my parents. No, I am not catholic and I do not buy into the idea that one has to pray to intangibility to derive comfort. But I do not wish to rock the status quo either. Who knows what averse reaction mum would develop to my confession.

So I shall sit at thomson plaza and worship at the house of ya kun for an hour every week. Thank God we're catholic! The services are only an hour long.

The Reason for everything

2005-08-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

"Breakfast of the Birds", Gabrielle Munter

Was reading about the absolutely tragic story of her love story with Kandinsky.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/05/opinion/melik6.php

Why do so many artists have such bitter lives? One wonders if it is necessary to be an outcast, an outlier in society, to be able to perceive life with a higher deeper clarity and render it crystal, be it on film, in music or on a canvas. Yet, even amongst artists, there are the outliers, and those who are normal and gregarious. Cezanne and Van Gogh were the outliers in the artistic inner circle of the Belle Epogue, but others such as Renoir seemed to flourish in that fraternal climate.

Must go examine art and try to dissect the differences between a deranged artist's art and that of a happy, normal artist.

Many times, a tragic story makes for a great artist. Works have significant power in context, and we are all flies drawn to the illuminating hypnotic power of tragedy and grief. The brilliant strokes of thick daubs of yellow paint, the artificial optimism of the sunflowers of Van gogh are a strange counterstatement to his life. Was he really happy perhaps, though he appeared deranged? Were the bright happy pictures painted as a form of self-consolation that helped him obliviate himself to the imminent collapse of his world? Likewise, in Munter's work The Blue Sea. The grief behind the works make them greater. Van Gogh might be perceived as a lesser artist if he hadn't done those crazy things like cut off his ear and go mad toward the end of his life.

I realised how my most prolific phases are usually when i'm upset. Art, to me, is a little like religion. Art is a safe repository for my emotions. I suppose, instead of having one-sided conversations with myself, I transfer agitations, disappointments onto paper. It blocks you from having to think or feel for the moment.

Maomao did an abstract of "grief" after I found out and left. Jagged fierce urgent strokes of inky black across the harsh yellow and faint blue of a hastily torn out foolscap page. Smudged by my tears in the lower right corner. The final work is irreproducible, of the moment. I gave it back to him though. I wished I still had it, but looking at it would bring back everything.

Now The Reason is playing, and it brings me back to those nights I was lying in my bed in the dark, listening to the silence and wanting to break it with screams.

sour and bittersweet

2005-08-06T03:34:00.000-07:00

Hung out at geylang unidentified odd lorong. Over sweet/salty tauhway, char siew puff pastry and egg tart, B lamented about how difficult it is to chat girls up.

It must have been the salty tauhway. To digress, that is the worst shit I've eaten in my life. I'm fairly psychologically challenged. If I hadn't known that the white, soft, shaky stuff in the bowl was tauhway, it might have made for extremely delicious tauhu. Which does bring us to the philosophical question of "what is tauhway"? Of course, neither of us proceeded to polish off said bowl of salty tauhway. Who the hell drinks soya sauce??!? To think that the auntie taking my order for tauhway with cold tauhway chwee gave me a dirty look and made a terse comment about how that combination sucks.

Back to where I left off..

It must have been the salty tauhway. B asked me for advice on how to chat girls up. Me pf only 2 boyfriends so far fame? I haven't been chatted up too much, and one of the few instances that I was (un)fortunate enough, it was some Pilipina old fogey who pounced on the fact that I was catholic.

I agree that the guys usually have a tougher time because they are doing most of the potentially humiliating things whilst we girls sit back, look pretty and hope to death that dumb boy gets the idea soon and tries to express his feelings coherently. However, there are major pitfalls that should be avoided at all costs.

What not to do whilst in the transitory period from gal pal to girlfriend:

1) ask her for permission to hold her hand/kiss/go to the toilet. Unfortunately, this was from personal experience. Dating is not equivalent to going to school. What you learnt in Primary 1 and used on Mrs Wong is not going to score you points in Ms Right's book.

2) dither around for too much before expressing your feelings for her.
There is much difference between biding your time and simply missing the boat. Remain friends for too long and that's probably where your relationship will stay. You'll become her newest gay best friend.

3) use unoriginal jokes and pass it off as your own. Again, unfortunately, from personal experience. (why me? oh why me?) She will chance upon that Russell Peters stand up routine that you watched eventually and then get rid of you faster than you can say "be a man. do the right thing"

4) try to hold her hand by trying to read her fortune. Lame lame lame. Women are a little smarter than the lab mice you think they are. Faux pas #4 was committed by guy who commited faux pas #3. It's nice that you held my hand, but I wished you did it a little more suavely.

5) read the entire SDU dating manual and cramming it the night before the date, thinking that that will help you out in your journey to ending singledom. Who do you think wrote that manual? Probably some balding old man shuffling papers in a dusty office in the basement of SDU who is married only because he joined the SDU 50 years ago.

And now, for some constructive advice:

1) Be a man, do the right thing. Which means:

Taking initiative. Making her feel like there's someone in charge. Personally, I like men to be a little more assertive. I appreciate sensitivity, and consideration, but that is different from being able to make decisions. Letting a date become a decision making process for everything (where should we go eat? which movie shall we watch? Should I wait outside the toilet for you? do you think we should walk to the MRT station?) becomes a huge pain in the ass. It's nice to have a guy tell you that he's got a wonderful evening planned out and be able to sit back and enjoy once in a while

2) Make her laugh. I don't know how to teach somebody to be funny. But I guess that means trying to find a girl who finds you funny without your having to try too hard. I feel bad for guys in this respect. Can't quite change wit or sense of humor. Upgrade your cars. There are enough materialistic women out there who would give a dull man sitting in an Aston Martin a second look.

I'm not great at giving advice.

senile dementia and the things that plague me

2005-08-06T02:46:00.000-07:00

I might be suffering from senile dementia at the ripe old age of 23.

2 minutes after I had created my blog, I have forgotten the url of my blog. Great.

I wanted to be "thediningdead.blogspot.com", a tribute to one of the most poignant moments (in my opinion) in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind, but some extremely disgruntled waiter had already beaten me to the spot. So, I have become either "why/how/whenhaveibecomethediningdead.blogspot.com"

Starting a blog like this is new for me. I have had 2 blogs so far, both completely anonymous because I needed to bare my soul (and other expletives withheld in the course of daily interactions) completely.

This might not be any different. But it will be less anonymous. I think I might tell people about this blog. Or I might forget and change my mind about it in the next 2 minutes. Executive decisions made at 02 43 tend to veer towards the unbrilliant.

Perhaps I should change my blog title to "Senile dementia and the things that plague me" But I bet somebody suffering from Alzheimer's has already beaten me to that. I suppose I shall remain one of the variations on the theme of the dining dead.