My Subconcious Prejudices

So I was talking to some people about my needing to stay back another semester, which naturally brought up a lot of differring reactions, ranging from "It doesn't matter, I still love you anyway" to "Stupid idiot! Wasting you parents' money because of your complacency and laziness". My parents, surprisingly, leaned towards the former, possibly because brother dearest has hit even lower lows this year, compared to which I can do nothing wrong. Also, it's not the first time I've done badly in school (gasp!), and I'm sure they're still sufferring from remorse over my formative years (I play the guilt game very well). My friends provided the more varied range of advice, which roused in me feelings ranging from reciprocation of love to guilt and frustration. Thankfully (despite the dreadful heat, which I blame for almost everything shamelessly) I refrained from lashing out at anyone.

The truth of the situation is, of course, that I'm not too happy about having to stay back another semester. Firstly, it smacks of the bitter taste of admission of defeat, and - worst of all - stupidity. I've never liked feeling stupid, not since I was a fat little kid in promary school with no friends and high scores in math and english. Being smart was my only plus point for a long time, and I still have the sneaking suspicion that it still is. If at all I am, which is beginning to look more and more suspect based on my decision-making skills. Plus, there's this insidious part of me that cries out at not being economically active at the age of 23 (till September!) that I believe stems from my growing up in Singapore, where you're only alive if you work.

It's not just me, of course, artists, musicians and other people who work in the creative line find themselves at the bottom of the social pyramid along with other low-income professions in Singapore (unless they make a best-seller). Maybe it's just my own limited social experience, but then again I belong to the subset of Singaporeans that make up the bulk of funcitonal society (ie. boring, banal, blind) and I think it's pretty safe for me to assert none of us would consider an artistic career going anywhere beyond part-time. At the back of many of our minds lingers this little thought about artistic intent - a waste of time that can't bring fortune.

Happiness = cash.

Luckily, most of my friends are in 4-year courses, so I'm not looking at too many of them going out to work and leaving me as a silly student git, so peer pressure isn't too much of a problem yet. The ones who have started work are thankfully in jobs that actually make me feel good about still being a student.

On the bright side of things, I suppose the extra semester will also allow me some times to think about what I really want to do with my life. It's better than running off to Europe to find myself, I guess (though much less romantic) and will hopefully give me some time to come up with a decent portfolio.

Hopefully I get a chance to make it all right again.

So really, I feel bad enough about it already, I have reflected on my mistakes, I have repented and I regret my sins.

So spare the sermons?

My Last Few Days Here

I've decided, even should I have to redo another semester at NUS, not to stay in hall any longer. It's time to move on, and anyway I should be getting a place to stay outside anyway.

Some place with air-conditioning.

I don't think I'll miss staying on campus much. It wasn't really much of a home. I stuck in my room and kept interaction with neighbours to a minimum, so it's not surprising there's no emotional attachment. My neighbours look like losers, so I have no wish to get to know them better. Actually once I get to know them better they'll probbaly lose loser status, and I need to bitch about them sometimes so I'd like it if they stay that way. I'm closer to my mates from my various societies, so it was real fun when I used to stay at Prince George's Park and we'd meet up almost every night to do stuff. These days I stay at Old Kent Ridge, where no one else stays (other than Wei Chuen) and is a long bus ride away from the old group.

The constant having to move-in-and-out means my decor is alawys changing, which just makes me feel like I'm living in a shoe-box meant for mice with short life spans. I used to have one wall covered with all my posters last semester, which I thought looked rather nice and cool (and fed my ego, since they were all posters I'D done), and I'd hoped to be able to keep it when I moved out but the by-the-book administration wouldn't even hear of me leaving the broom in the corner. The clerk who came with me to check out of my room took a look at my beautiful wall, shook her head and proclaimed it illegal. I tore it down with her help, and when she asked if I still wanted to keep them I told her no. It was a heartbreaking thing to have to do, but to carry them all would have been armbreaking (I was weighted down with the laundry basket). This semester the wall is bare.

I have never used the communal kitchen, mainly because I am a lazy bum, but also a little because it's always crowded with the Vietnamese. It's always the Vietnamese. I've seen the Indians sitting in the kitchen drinking beer and cracking peanuts before, but only the once. I've seen my Malaysian neighbour sitting there entertaining some female once, and staking out the fridge (story below) once. Other than that... it's always the Vietnamese using the kitchen. They have almost every meal there, as far as I can tell. Lunch/Dinner is always rice in that transparent bowl, with assorted quick-to-cook foods in the assorted pots and pans, which I usually witness in a state of unwashed dirtiness in the sinks. It stinks to have to use a sink dirtied by someone else. Evidently they have enough utensils among them to last an entire day without doing washing, which means I try to avoid the kitchen in the afternoons.

(Sorry Gina, I'm sure not all vietnamese are like that. But I lack a suitable label for the ones in my block.)

The kitchen has another problem - a communal refridgerator. I have the habit of buying twin packs of milk, of which I usually finish one carton within the day, the other requiring storage in the fridge. IT ALWAYS gets stolen. I have had my milk stolen at least ten times this semester alone (I have an amazing faith in the goodness of my fellow man). And I am not the only victim, it turns out - for a week there appeared a note stuck on the fridge - "The one who stole my milk will go to hell! Fucking milk-stealer!" Which resulted in me losing all faith in the goodness of my fellow man (sharing some milk can't be that bad) and my Malaysian neighbour staking out the kitchen to find out who it was who was stealing milk. He asked me if it was me, to which I replied that I was lactose intolerant and only drank soy bean. I didn't really want to tell him the truth - he might have tried to rope me into staking out the kitchen with him to avenge his carotns. Nick once suggested I add some laxatives into a pack and stake out the toilet to find out who does it, which I thought was clever, but unfortunately I never got around to doing it.

Communal toilets aren't that hot neither. I am blessed this semester with hostel-mates who are at least clean in their hygienic attentions. But occasionally we still get the bad-aim-shitter or the shampoo-all-over-floor incidents that result in the mass exodus of users to the toilets across the road. Plus, being the oldest hall in campus, our toilets are in a sorry shape - flushing the toilets is a bicep exercise and footwear in the baths is absolutely necessary to avoid foot-injuries. The water heaters' knobs have all fallen off, and are always set on "high", meaning when you turn the tap on the resulting first blast of water will scald you. Depending on where the tap is aimed it can be a painful experience indeed - some parts of the body are not suitable for the common treatments of ointment and plaster.

My room is on the side of the block facing the road, meaning I get stereo-surround-sound-type acoustic effects every time the bus goes past. It used to wake me up early in the morning when I just moved in, but luckily I adapted and now I sleep so heavily nothing short of painful torture can wake me up before eight in the morning. Also, Singapore being a green garden city, it's roads are paved with flora of all kinds, which are in turn infested with a most respectful variety of bugs. These bugs tend to crawl into my room, and it is most unfortunate that I am not a student of biodiversity, because otherwise I might have collected a mighty collection of preserved insects. As it is it just means I use a lot of tissue paper and my dusbin is always a graveyard of tiny lives (I'm not Buddhist, no qualms about killing bugs - support the culture of death!). I wake up every morning with new bites from god-only-knows what horrid things, which I'm sure contribute to my myriad allergies.

No, I don't think I'm gonna miss living here. Really.

Wherein I Tell of Senseless Labs

I will possibly fail CZ4206, Symbolic Computing, because I had not handed in a single laboratory assignment, and they figure for 35% of the final grade (not really a big deal. My history of assignment-doing this semester goes along the same lines).

However, I had not done the labs for this module not so much because I was lazy, but because they were ridiculously easy. Really. Stupendously easy. It's Mathematica programming, for god's sake. I can pick it up in three days, and pass it easily with some reference.

But that's not really why I think the labs are easy. I think the labs are easy because THE ANSWERS ARE POSTED ONLINE. That's right, all source code, ready for download. You see, the labs haven't changed in the past two years the module has been taught, and some conscientious lecturer had posted the answers to the labs online. The less-conscientious lecturers who took over the module never seemed to notice this.

It made no sense to me at all to hand in source-code that was there for free download.

So it was really just a lesson in obedience, that 35% of the final grade in Symbolic Computing. I do not consider cosmetic-changing of source code a skill that should be learnt at University level.

Maybe I should have said something to the lecturer about giving more challenging labs, or removing the source (which wouldn't have helped - I'll bet it was all downlaoded at the start of the semester), but my patently chinese manners rebelled against snitching on the poor girls who probably had to download the source, change some variable names and then hand it in.

So instead sat around, too lazy to change a stupid system, too apathetic to bother complying with it, and the only one who suffers is me.

Errr. I think the muscles really are clogging up blood going to the brain.

In other religious news, Benedict XVI received leaders of other faiths and professed an interest in "building bridges of friendship" with other religions. He also remarked that:

peace was a "duty to which all peoples must be committed, especially those who profess to belong to religious traditions."

Meaning that the ones encouraging war are the godless atheists like me (though I'm really agnostic, but the distinction is usually lost on religous people). I'm surprised at his tolerance for other religions. After all, the Muslims, Hindus and cherry-bush-worshippers of Gogoland are as much heathens as I am, right? Why this unfair distinction? Is catholism growing soft?

Imagine a new world religion, tolerant of all faiths... except for disbelief. A world where religous struggles become mega-conglomerate market-share battles, where you have to choose between Coke or Pepsi, but not-to-drink is a crime against cool (sorry - alliteration fun). The biggest stake-holders, having economies of scale and much more experience than any newcomer, will oust the competition and squeeze the market dry such that small religions can't survive. I can imagine the showdown - Islam, Christianity (all of which tiny factions will eventually have a merger) and maybe Buddhism (which will be where all the confused people flock, because some denominations support sex). We'll have charismatic CEOs, profit analysis and checks and balances. Magazines like "The Religist" will actually be read (for YOUR moral education!). Morality will be shored up and displayed to the masses, and due to the intense competition distinct lines of battle will be drawn, with cries of "WE'RE more moral, because we went and built home in Somalia, Nah nah!".

Okay, perhaps I take it too far. But you know I don't like any organized religion.

No, not even buddhism. And no, not the cherry-bush-worship of Gogoland. DEFINITELY not that.

What's Wrong With You?

Okay, I'm gonna fail some modules this semester.

I also seem to be in a constant state of depression and am spouting strange phrases at people.

My moods haven't been so volatile, ever, and my need for argument is greatly increased.

I seem to have no direction in life, nor any wish to create any.

No, there's nothing wrong with me, nor is there anything you could possibly do to help me. I don't need any solutions, nor your pithy life-philosophies. I have my own, and I don't see a need to change them right now.

But I know you will show me your truth, your shiny truth, the one that sparkles in the sun, the one that catches the rays and makes them its own. Our most paltry of baubles are precious gems when on display to the poor.

There is no need at all to worry about me.

Or is it because my displaced social-function makes you embarrassed that you are acquainted with me? Does it bother you to see someone who is unable to contribute to the economy and society you strive so hard to belong to? Would you be friends with a freak? Or has your tolerance for compliance been breached?

You say you can't sit around and see someone kill himself, but you sat around and watched the deaths of thousands of people around you without raising a finger. They died, slowly and painlessly, drowned in the morphine of their existence. You helped pull some of them down yourself.

I watched too. I still watch, because I am weak, a small and powerless animal that can only mewl pitifully it's complaints.

Can you help me? Boost me up from this swamp? Or should I be content to sink with you?

Maybe if you could only teach me to close my eyes, then I might be content. Maybe if I stop this struggling, I should finally be at rest.

---

Am unsure what brought about this sudden loss of identity and despair. Blame it on Nietzsche. Hope it is not teenage angst - thought I managed to skip that part of growing up.

I Am So Sick of Exams

Okay, so it's narcissistic and shows a complete lack of comprehension about my own looks. But I believe that all bloggers are at least subconsciously disgusting exhibitionist fetishists who will do anything to have people put comments on their blog.

Don't believe me? Look at Singapore's Top Blog. I'm not so sure who rated this, but Xiaxue definitely has one of the most involved blogs out there at the moment. Pictures of herself, stories about herself, interviews of herself... wait - it's a BLOG. Of COURSE there's information about herself. Silly me.

Anyways, go take a look, guys. Pictures of semi-naked ladies. Evidently Ms Xiaxue is in the fashion line or something (can use photoshop, good camera) and has the big-head-shot technique quite well mastered. She also... writes short stories filled with sexual innnuendo and Singaporean reference (an unusual combination).

Other winners of the Asia Weblog Awards 2003 can be found here. As far as I can google there have not been any Singapore-based awards for blogs. Possibly because there's nothing particularly nice to read about Singaporeans? Now that is a recurring topic amongst blog-conscious Singaporean bloggers. Thankfully, we can rely on technology to bolster our insipidly monotonous content, posting images from our spiffy cameras, sound off our iPods and all other manner of strange device-specific fun.

But of course, content-presentation aside, the content-meat is also a problem for Singaporean writers. It is a sad but true fact that most people are uninterested in the affairs of countries other than their own. Or at least around them. Or at least half-way across the world but you've declared war on them and killing millions of people over there. The latter we can discard for Singapore, where conflict is mostly limited to the fisticuffs amongst aunties trying to jump the queue at MacDonald's for a Hello Kitty toy. So, because Singaporean news commands little attention, even in the blogosphere (such an awful word) we have a smaller market than our competitors in other countries. And the electronic age was supposed to remove physical boundaries, too. Yet it seems a little crass to be writing on the issues of some other super-power, no matter how tempted we may be to do so in condemning their condescending foreign-policy, self-serving justice and imposed-democratic-values (ooops), when there is so much more interesting material to work on such as the fascinating and heated arguments for and against casinos in Singapore:

You have no choice anyway, just listen to the government.

Oh. You can actually stop reading now. Just typing in the hopes of evading study-needs.

Just end with a quote from Singaporebloodypore(one of the very few politically-motivated blogs from Singapore):

Singapore gynaecologists routinely report women coming to them complaining of barrenness only to be told they are virgins.

(decision to migrate has been made)

Running

I spent so long running from my parents in their prime past that I never realized I was running straight into their youth.

Wherein I Finish Zarathustra

Okay, I finally finished Thus Spake Zarathustra. It's a weird book (get one of dozens of etexts here) that makes little sense and requires entirely too much thought to understand. The basic premise, for those of you who don't want to have to read Nietzsche, is that we are still not realized of our true human potential and should strive to become the Superman or Overman (trans - Ubermensch). How we are to do this, though, Nietzsche doesn't seem to explain very clearly - at least as far as I'm concerned.

The main hero in Thus Spake Zarathustra is (unsurprisingly) Zarathustra, named after the founder of Zoroastrism (Freddie Mercury was a Zoroastrian), but otherwise has little to do with the Zoroastric faith. In fact, I doubt very much that the original Zarathustra managed to found a religion by sitting alone on the top of a mountain and saying weird things like :

In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that route thou must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoken to should be big and tall.

But a realistic interpretation is neither here nor there. What is more important to me personally is that Nietzsche focuses less on finding any answers to life, but more on how people should live it. There are views on marriage, on friendship, on leisure activities, on how you should sleep. He meant it to parody the New Testament, I suppose, with it's vague, open-to-interpretation value judgements.

There's also a Last Supper, Disciples and a lot of talk about God. Mostly about him being dead. However, remember that Nietzsche was an atheist. For him to say God is dead is NOT a religous statement, but rather a social commentary. He has many social commentaries, a lot of which I do not find myself very approving of.

Nietzsche also spares no mercy in his disgust at the "common man". The term referring to people like you and me, I suppose, who are sitting around reading/writing blogs instead of pondering our way towards ascension (though this point I find confusing - Nietzsche's attitude towards ascension of any kind seems to be based on a resignation of inability to reach it). Luckily, he condemns the living death, something closer to my heart (though I suspect my reasons for that now). On the other hand, I know the Germans tend to be somewhat outspoken in their views, but read TSZ and you'll see why it makes sense that it was twisted to Nazi idealogy and probably ended up being a little bit responsible for the deaths of the thousands. Death is, as far as Nietzsche is concerned (at the beginning of the book, towards the end I feel he's more forgiving), too good for the scum of the earth.

And Nietzsche didn't like Jews, neither.

Hmmm. I've been giving Seet a hard time because of his NLP, mainly because I thought it was silly that he should go running to someone and pay them so they could tell him how to live his life. I guess, in a way, I'm also looking for someone to tell me how to live my own life - that's what all these philosophy books are about. So maybe I'm not better (although my affliction costs me a lot less).

Well, he used to make fun of me for that too.

An anonymous blogger has driven my friend to tears by posting in her blog that she was possessed of several bad traits. Phew. Luckily I didn't link her from mine, so it wasn't one of my readers that flamed her. On the other hand, I guess it's a lesson to all of us to be more responsible about our words. All very good to say it's MY blog and I'll write what I bloody want, but freedom is not something you should flaunt, if you want others to respect it.

So keep it reasonable and well-argued, people! Bitch blogs aren't fun to read (unless you're my sister).

The Commonplace Mind

The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
The Revolt of the Masses

Which is more true these days since the rise of democracy, I suppose.

Or is it?

Meh Meh Tiah Den Weh

Okay, this is the kind of thing that amuses me - a teochew ringtone that tells you to answer your phone NOW!!!

Wherein I Tell of My Failure in Physical Prowess

Okay, to be a National triathlete in Singapore (meaning you won't be winning any medals overseas), you need a swim time of 22:30 for a distance of 1.5km and a run time of 39:00 for 10km. I don't know if the timings are supposed to be taken in consecutive runs.

By comparison, I swim about 1.0km in 25 minutes and take about 50 min to finish 10km. And only when I do them on seperate days. With ample rest in between. And am feeling relatively stress-free at the moment. With no physical injuries. And the sun is not too hot. And the humidity is not too high. And there is no haze.

Hmmm. And this is my best sport.

The Ironman France competition involves a 3.8 km swim, 180km bike and 42.2km run. These are distances I am alien to on non-motorized vehicular transport. I vaguely remember seeing on television some strange english competition where they did something like that, only there was also barbed wire involved (or maybe I was mistaken and it was a movie about a jailbreak).

Maybe I should have just stuck to reading for a hobby.

Blog Linking

Anyone like to be blog-linked from mine? I've had bad experiences with people who told me their ONLINE, PUBLIC-ADDRESS blogs were PRIVATE and thus they would rather not have the whole world see it.

I have little respect for people who don't know have enough technological know-how to use a friends-only blog. If you have private thoughts you need to hide, so be it. At least hide them well (I have much experience in this field, it's easy).

So tell me! Let me link you! Please! So that my other friends can see what other weird people I know and that it's not entirely my fault that I turned out this way, it's because of all the strange company I keep and all the strange things they keep thinking of and tell me that make me so strange as well and that I'm not really morally bankrupt it's the social circle that I keep and that I have friends that are real and not imaginary nor complex and they live and breathe and can talk and keep blogs and are real living people whom you can interact with and leave comments on their blog systems unless they're using Xanga in which case you need to sign up for a Xanga account which totally sucks so you should't and anyone who uses Xanga should be shot (gently) and then we can all know each other and we can all be happy happy people!

Remember... silence means consent.

Rant Regarding Relationships

Another late night out with Seet and gang, playing DotA as usual. Somehow on the car we got to the topic of how passive girls are (which always happens because of Seet's model girlfriends, who tend to be passive) and Nick commented on how unhealthy it was to have a relationship where the two partners are dependant on each other.

Being a science student, of course I couldn't let him get away with that without some justification. So I asked what was wrong about a relationship like that, and how a relationship with two people who were independant of each other is better. Nick's example was the pathos associated with people who couldn't stand on their own, and had to have someone else in their lives to make them feel more complete - my rebuttal was the counterargument that a relationship with two people completely independant of each other add no qualities to the relationship to make it ostensibly any better than a co-dependant one.

We got to my block before I could really get into the meat of the matter, but I do recall saying something about it being more a matter of whether or not you think you SHOULD have a relationship to begin with. I mean that the soppy little girls (and guys) who always talk of finding someone to complete them are, subconciously or otherwise, expecting to belong to a relationship. That hole in their lives they're waiting for someone to fill is an emotional complex for companionship that they somehow think they are ENTITLED to.

In the case of more "independant" people, I would guess they see a partner as being an enhancement to their lives, meaning they realize they don't HAVE to have a relationship in their lives, but having one might make it better (or even worse). Love is not an entitlement, but more of a coincidental occurence, perhaps.

Of course, this is all very slipshod argumentation. I have no results to back my statements, which in any case are rather ill-defined. What do I mean by "independant relationships"? What am I thinking of when I say that?

In the context of my social circle, I think I mean most of all emotional independance, in the context of providing intimate emotional support, the kind you can't get from even close friends or family. I might also mean personality-dependance, where you look for someone to compensate for your own lack in some personality traits (though I myself have never had this problem, it just seems sick). The only example I can think of in my own limited life would be some friend whose girlfriend was this sad little peep who cried when watching horror movies, never initiated conversation and spoke in a whisper most of the time. The friend was outgoing, boisterous and generically of a sunny disposition. We never really knew whether or not to say their were compatible or not, though I fancy he always treated her well.

Most of my friends are or will be middle-upper-working class professionals, with partner-expectations of the same financial capacity, so financial dependance doesn't really seem much of a problem in my social context. Even the most anachronistically chauvinistic amongst us (you know who you are!) are looking for non-monied marriage. No problems there.

So does what I have argued applied to the kind of dependancies I have thought of? I think it's rather scary if they do.

Consider if you thought relationships were an entitlement, ie that you are supposed to have one or that there's something wrong with you if you never have had a romantic interlude. Then consider people who are emotionally/personality dependant on their partners (surely you have seen some?). Are their personal failings because of this expectation? Do they deliberately sabotage themselves so that when they do get into a relationship they can feel it's worth more somehow?

I turned to my favourite search engine for answers, and dug up some articles on relationships. Here's one by a trained counsellor, though I find myself unconvinced by her arguments also (due to lack of scientific argument). Here's an article from the National Mental Health Association about co-dependance as a mental illness(!!!). I think of great significance is their checklist of symptoms to look out for. It's seems quite easy to agree with it (for me), though I don't think I am a very dependant person. And here's another about Victim Behaviour and the Poor Me Syndrome, just to make Nick's point about unhealthy co-dependance.

But I'd just like to bring up a point, having watched so many arthouse flicks with dysfunctional families (and having been brought up in an ever so slightly dysfunctional one myself) - after reading all that stuff about the unhealthiness of co-dependance, what have all those articles actually said about this form of behaviour being good or bad about the relationship? I'll grant that it's rather obvious to see that being in a co-dependant relationship is bad for the people in it if they are considered individually, but if you read carefully, you'll see they all say nothing about whether a codependant relationship is really a worse one than one in which the partners are completely indenpendant of any need for each other. If they do allude to it, it is in this way - co-dependance is bad for the people in the relationship individually. They become mentally ill. And mentally ill people cannot possibly have a "healthy" realtionship.

What's a "healthy relationship"? Is it the same definition of healthy as when used to describe people individually? It lives a long time, has no major illnesses, and doesn't require artificial aid to survive? Do these apply to your recent romances? Do I want a healthy relationship? Some prescribed goodness in my romance? A tick of confidence from my doctor to say I'm doing just fine? A definition would be nice, so that I know if I'm doing something wrong in my relationships. And I found one here.

It's frustrating that a happy relationship is always being defined by the processes that create it (supposedly), like being based on respect, having honesty, having trust for each other, etc and not any traits intrinsic to itself. It's kind of like describing loaves of bread by the virtue of the fact that they were baked in ovens at certain temperatures.

Taken any philosophy modules ever? If you have you'll be starting to feel a little suspicious by now. It looks like there's gonna be a circular definition somewhere, and a lot of crass definitions worked out by psychologists more eager to bringing economic and functional well-being to their patients than to provide any real answers.

I think that's as far as I'd like to think about this topic. Shouldn't touch with the short end of a long stick unless you're a qualified counsellor or someone qualified to tell other people how "healthy" their relationships are, I guess.

But personally? I'll stay fucked up in my fucked-up, co-dependant, cholesterol-laden relationships, thank you very much.

(added later)Oh, wahahaha... turns out Nick was paying attention too. Note that his views are significantly different, but it makes sense ad hominem, I guess, since he's in a pretty healthy, inter-dependant relationship whereas I'm in the sick perverted one with all the problems and complications. Go figure.

Sin Slum Singapore

If you've been living in Singapore then I suppose you've heard of the casino issue. The results of our good and kind government's decision on whether or not to open one will be out next Monday. In case you want more news, you can go to http://www.casinocity.com/sg/cities.html for more information. I had no idea this website was here before, though now that I think about it I suppose it makes good economic sense to be parking on this domain. I'll bet all other permutations of singapore...casino have been taken as well.

Weijian was on to something, I suppose, especially in Singapore's limited domain-name space.

Well, I don't really care about the casino, except for the fact that I've been looking for a way to make a quick buck and that's what it's supposed to offer (making me one of the 2.9% of people susceptible to pathological gambling problems!), but evidently Singaporeans do. I'm surprised, frankly. I'd thought the promise of economic advancement should have won over most of my countrymen.

I guess I also belong to a social circle that doesn't rate morals quite so high on our list of priorities in life (short of the odd psychotic christian). Even my more religously-minded friends don't make much of a fuss about the cess-pit of immorality that will be built.

Having taken too many statistics modules I hardly ever gamble (unless it's to make someone more drunk or more naked). So no worried for me. If it helps tourism then I'm happy, I guess. I mean, Singapore's easier to get into than Genting, and though we're more expensive than Malaysia we also have the more easily accessible airport, touristy attractions and even food that doesn't have to be halal (sorry Faizal)!

If absolutely nothing else, it also means there's something to do with my friends late nights. I hope there'll be cabaret dancing, at least.

One in a Million

... you're one in a million... once in a lifetime...
(lyrics off some generic love song)

Well now, are we really one in a million? Of course, we all know we are completely and utterly unique, but that hardly translates properly when you're looking at it form the point of view of being special now, does it?

So let's try to see if we can indeed, be one-in-a-million. Though that is itself is probably unimpressive - it means there ate at least 6,000 people on this planet who are like you, and three people in Singapore alone who are too.

To be fair and not use specific events of your life, I will use only attributes that can be found on Singapore's Department of Statistics:

I am a Chinese mongoloid, making me one-in-six people around the world. However, if we consider that I am a chinese mongoloid living in Singapore, that makes me only one-in-1.2 or so. Hmmm. We take the smaller statistic, considering that I am more concerned with my national significance.

A quick check at the education statistics show that I am, if I manage to graduate, only a pitiful one-out-of-five Singaporeans who do. Assuming that race and education are independant factors (which they are not, but I'm not about to argue that here), that makes me about one-in-six.

Still waaaay off mark.

Okay, I am a Singaporean who has attended an arts performance or exhibition in the past two years (albeit mostly trashy hall plays), which places me in the 27% of Singaporeans who still care about art at all. That makes me about 1/22 of the population, assuming the factors or ethnic race, education and arts-appreciation are independant of each other, which they are assuredly not, but I am too disheartened as it is to argue.

Oh! I forgot I'm male. That doubles my uniqueness immediately, placing me as being 1/44! (remember, that means that out of 44 people in Singapore, 1 will be exactly like me, a male Chinese 20-25 year old graduate Singaporean who patronizes artistic events)

I am also one of the 90% of the people my age group who are still single, making me... 1/48. This exercise seems hopeless.

Ah, religion! I am one of the 18% of Singaporeans my age-group who do not have one. Unfortunate, the godlessness of my generation, else I might have been more special in this respect. Okay, up to 1/266.

I live in a five-room flat with my parents when I'm not in hall. That boosts me up another 23% to 1/1,156.

Ahhh! I am one of 99.198% of Singaporeans who has not met with an crime and reported it this year. I doubt this statistic is of much use in upgrading my specialness level, though... For my brother it would shoot his uniqueness rating up the roof.

Given my subscriptions to CableTV, owning TV license, cinema-attendance, library loaning history and newspaper subscription, I'd say I can increase my uniqueness rating to about 1/1200, a pittance as my habits of public entertainment/information gathering are sadly common.

And... that's it! The other factors presented in the Department of Statistics are too small for me to even factor into my little report here. Out of every 1,200 Singaporeans my age there will be one who has all the attributes I listed above. Namely, male, chinese, a graduate, single, arts-going, areligous, crime-free, and with my reading/entertainment habits.

Nowhere near one in a million, I'm afraid. I guess this is the danger in letting yourself be labelled into a demographic by any statistician. All the interesting little traits of yours get lost.

America Stands As One

Errr. This music video (Quicktime) displaying America's theocratic leanings deserves watching. Note that I'm not a fan of American Foreign Policy, but I don't slam it neither. I just can't decide if the MTV is supposed to be satirical. I've decided it isn't, but is just so cheesy it borders on unbelieveable.

Dennis Madalone, (I can't believe the name isn't satirical) the lead singer and guy-with-long-hair in the video doesn't have to stand alone, though, had he taken the trouble to look for someone to love him! The Eulenspiegel Society is the oldest and largest BDSM education and support organization in the United States, with year-round events and lots of fun conferences and lectures you can go for if you're a member. I'm sure he can satisfy his cravings for firemen and army personnel at the NYC FetishMarathon, where he can also learn how to have fun with his dogs, I suppose.

And whilst you're checking them out, take the Over Masturbation Test at Herballove.com (warning! Idiot Alert!). According to them,

"there is a big change of body chemistry when one excessively pratices masturbation.

and

Abundant and unusually amount of these hormones and neurotransmitters can cause the brain and adrenal glands to perform excessive dopamine-norepinephrine-epinephrine conversion and turn the brain and body functions to be extremely sympathetic.

I know there's a change in my body chemistry when I masturbate. Usually the symptoms are a decreased interest in sex. Is that unhealthy?

Not that I need to masturbate daily, of course, but according to the survey as long as I'm 'Very Healthy' I can masturbate 50 times a week and still be fine. What a lark! I'd better be going off to complete my schedule then.

Whicg Job Offer Would You Take?

Assuming you were a skilled and brilliant programmer with experience in security issues (ie. you were behind some of the security threats that have plagued the IT world recently), which of the two companies would you join?

1. Microsoft, which cruises for you at a post Black Hat conference party in a gay club and will take you regardless of whether or not you have a degree in Computer Science, or...

2. Centre for Strategic Infocomm Technologies, which visits your university just prior to education and absolutely requires your degree.

What if you were, say, not a brilliant programmer with l33t skillz but rather just your run-of-the-mill guy with a decent Honours degree in Computer Science?

Are we safe?

Oh yes, I do read the Register sometimes. When bored. Like now.

Wherein I Turn Green with Envy and Desire

Okay, this girl from the Science Club decided to quit. Not because she haas problems with her work, not because she dislikes being in Science Club, but rather because she has decided that she has HAD IT with Computational Biology and would rather go off somewhere else to study design.

She sent out emails to all of us (the publications team) to let us know of her choice. I don't know if I had any part to play in her decision - we had this long talk about how miserable I am doing what I do now and how much I regret not taking up another major instead when we were manning booth at some t-shirt sale thing.

And now I am green with envy and desire, despite the fact that she is all nervous about not being able to make much on a living on design alone.

I have my cake and I suppose I must eat it, but it tastes so bad. Sour, you know?

I want another cake. Can I get another?

Please?

In other news, I do have another cake, and this one is just as bad, if not worse. It tastes wonderful, delectable in the extreme. But I can only have the tiniest nibble before it is taken away from me, and I can see nothing that would let me retain it. If you knew there was something wonderful in the closet and that you could hae a tiny little sample, but no more than that, would you at least want to try? Knowing that you would live with your desire forever, unvented, unfulfilled.

An air ticket to Paris costs at least a thousand.

I vaguely remember a friend telling me that if you really need money all you have to do is to keep thinking about how to get it and a solution will come up eventually. Of course, usually it's not ideal, and you'll have to compromise your own expectations, but then I'm supposed to be an intelligent adult with good problem-solving skills (though my Computational Quantum lecturer might disagree).

My blog seems to get loaded with poor metaphors, half-hearted descriptions of my own emotional bearings, scattered intentions and soppy sentiments in proportion to the condition of my life. At the moment it's pretty much FUBAR, so unless I suddenly get shipped off to Ethiopia without food and money (not that you can do much with money in Ethiopia except eat it) I don't think it can get much worse. So endure! Endure till the day I step out of this shadow of education and into the light of... dull dreary rat-racism! Endure!

Wherein I Comment on Hippo

I don't usually make fun of people by giving them nicknames, mainly because I think it's a low-brow, crass form of humour and also due to the plethora of nicknames I myself was given when I was in primary school. However, I use the term of endearment 'Hippo' to refer to one enormous girl Nick and I saw at gym on Friday, whom Nik has already named in his own blog.

Now, I know it's cruel to poke fun of people who are physically unfit or overweight, but you must understand that there was no way I could have treated Hippo as a normal human being in my circumstances. I have not the body beautiful, but I am working towards something that I hope will not leave people who look at my vacation photographs with the beautiful backdrops of sunrises on mountains saying things like "My, aren't you fat." I know my goal and I'm getting there. Still, I feel embarrassed stepping into the gym, with it's beautiful tanned people with their muscles and all that deflate my puny little biceps and $2-a-pop abs. I avoid the mirror and looking at myself in it at all odds. I hide in the corner when I'm resting, in the vain hopes that people will not notice me, the pathetic wannabe with the small quads.

Hippo girl defies all my behavorial traits. We walked in to witness her and her polka-dot stretch pants/shorts (depending on the exercise she was doing). Hippo girl is fat (political correctness is useless in this case). The sight killed our conversation.

Throughout my workout I couldn't concentrate. Hippo girl had my full and undivided attention, albeit in a somewhat downcast-eyes look-at-her-then-look-away-quickly kind of way. I almost dropped my bicep curl things when I saw her doing leg presses. My abs nearly gave way when I saw her admiring her reflection in the mirrored wall. Ilost all decorum and just stared at her as she did her situps.

through it all, I was amazed at her guts. She betrayed no discomfort at the obvious looks she was getting, not any self-consciousness about her looks. She didn't run out to salvage her pride when she did her leg-raises, nor was she shy about the preacher curls done using the lightest weights. She was there before we entered, and she was still at it when we left.

Now, I am always impressed when people have guts. And I am especially impressed when people can ignore the superficial idiots around them. Hippo girl takes the cake on both counts(though I would advise her against eating it). I would like to know her, if only to ascertain if she indeed possesses the iron will that I suspect she does.

You know you should live with some pride in yourself. But it's only through examples, I guess, that you learn how to do it.

Bargain Bin Emotions

Guys: Suppose you were going to propose sometime soon (you only lack courage!) and you don't yet have a ring. You source around for something nice, only to find that that very day there is a sale on a particular type of diamond ring, high in carat but low in style (you vaguely remember she mentioned it looked hideous). The sale is a very attractive one. Do you still buy her a ring like that?

Girls: Would you mind if your ring came from a bargain bin?

Would your partner's financial output, your own financial capability, age or number of previous partners you have had affect the answer to that question?

Life on Hold

This is probably a bad time in my life to be having a teenage breakdown-in-identity and self-searching of the kind that is only supposed to happen to forteen year-olds. I had thought I was past that age. But it turns out, after all, that I'd been living in a hospital and had never seen the sun.

So the price I have to pay for snobbing my foolish, emotionally-rich friends who wrote cheesy poetry and invested in horrorscope-interpretations to more fully understand themselves is that I am now spending my time staring into space and making all-new discoveries about myself that I had thought had been resolved years ago.

I am as yet unsure if I have opened a can of worms, or if the worms just happened to have been disguised as... wriggling appendages previously.

Okay, the whole architecture thing has been more concretely thought out. According to friends who are working, it is evidently not so easy to go back to studying once you're in a job... unless like xuelanghu your job sucks and you can't wait to get out of it. Also, my financing plans have been somewhat deflated by friends who point out that I spend like an insane megalomaniac with a fetish for expensive girls. I, of course, do not have a fetish for expensive girls, but I supplement that with too-many varied-interests and fruit-flavoured condoms instead of the regular ones that do the same thing and cost less. I have also loans to pay, potential costly medical treatment to think about, and an increased upkeep brought about by a sudden decrease in the number of things I can still wear in my wardrobe.

So now what, Alex, now what?

Am I to be bereft of even clutching at straws? I do not want to splutter at the edge of aspiration any further. I want to stand in the warm embrace of ambition, to have the golden light of hope shining down on me.

I wAn tO sToP wRitiNg lIke a foRteEn-year-OlD giRl!(!!)

And life just keeps going on. I can't even press the pause button to think things through first before I get into anything. I'm committed to just being here, wandering around like some lost sheep (albeit a very fast-moving sheep - I know, it's a poor metaphor) until I find something to graze on (ummm - another poor metaphor) again. Which is what I've been doing most of my life, I suppose, but back then you thought you had all the time in the world. Now the sand is trickling from my fingers and etching lines onto my face (which I must start buyinf anti-aging cream for, they say the best time to start is in your early twenties).

My steps are actually starting to feel more solid now, but that means they're also starting to hurt.

From pondering the meaning of existence of humans in general, I've come to ponder instead the special case when said human is me. It turns out that the answer is no easier to find. And that nothing that works for a general populace can really apply to a specific person. I should have spent my time getting a six-pack instead of thinking about life at all. At least I'd be more popular at parties and have more to talk about (I think; ARE good-looking abs a more interesting conversation topic than existentialism?).

And to add fire to the sludge of my troubles - passion when I need it the least. Sigh. My life is completely out-of-time. How is it that I can only now be doing all these things I should have had happen to me years ago? What was my youth consumed with?

Oh. I know the answer to that - video games. And fantasy novels. And MTG. In general, fun.

Shit. I put life on hold and now it's back to make unreasonable customer complaints.

Maybe I should just put it back on hold? Can I ? It's just hitting the button. Just for a while? A few weeks? Months? A little bit longer?

Please?

My Japanese Name

Xuelanghu linked this Japanese Name Generator on her blog, and I went to check it out. the program runs, as far as I can tell, by generating random names based on the characters you enter as your own real name. Entering something like "pink dolphin" does not give you a literal translation, and though "Autumn Book of the Big Ocean Trout" sounds better than "pink dolphin" I find it somewhat offensive that the translator should attempt to make your name look nicer.

My own name (黄忠汉), whether in chinese hanyu pinyin, or an english literal translation (Yellow Loyal Chinese Man) does not translate properly, giving me instead crap names like "Upon a Well One Reality" (井上一真).

By the way, Cheryl informs me that Japanese first names all sound like they were derived from village locations because there was, after the second World War, a tendency for Japanese women to have casual wanton sex with men who had just returned from the battlefirled (and thus horny as hell) and, that being pre-condom age, conceiving their children. And then they would name the child after the place where they had made it. I find it a most logical and practical means of naming and remembering your child, as well as a good method of measuring your sex-lifeagainst your neighbours and relations. Clear winners would be "Nuclear Power Plant Sakamoto" or "Airplane Toilet Hayaki".

Anyway, not one to be satisfied by the half-hearted attempts at name-translation, I went and translated my chinese name into Japanese. Chinese characters are largely similar to Japanese Kanji, and my name is composed of characters that luckily have an obvious correspondence. The resultant is the rather funny-sounding Ou Chyuu Kan, which has the same literal meaning in Chinese and Japanese(yellow loyal chinese man), and are written similarly in both languages (excepting the last character, which is written in Japanese kanji as in old chinese).

Now, what about the last bit - the Alex? A quick Google run reveals that it means "Protector of Mankind", "Defender of Men", and "Short and cute but a liar and a cheat". Disregarding the "liar and a cheat" bit, I'm no more an Alex than a yellow loyal man any day of my life, I can tell you that (and so can my Chinese language teachers). My name, should a martian inquire, is pleasantly culled from two seperate cultures, one of which can be literally translated into the other, and one which has only symbolic meaning.

When I was in unit, I had this expecting colleague who worried incessantly, towards the fifth month of her pregnancy, about her would-be child's new name. She checked books, priests, parents, and sometimes even consulted me, though at that point of time I could have cared less if she had named her child "Under the Table in a Restaurant Chan". The etymological roots of her child's name seemed of outmost importance to her, and she was constantly fretting that she might destroy his (scans revealed gender before birth) future if his name sucked.

But what's in a name? I mean really, isn't it just another tag we put, in this case, on our children? Will you change significantly should your name change? And in a globally shrinking culture, does a name really retain much significance? What about all the cross-cultural marriage kids, the religous converts who have a take new names or the radical teenagers who decide to want to be more Americanized? What can you tell about a person anymore from a name?

This Yellow Loyal Chinese Man doesn't know what to think.

I typed out this long entry about life and death and the pope and Terry Schiavo and blogger spit me an error and now it's gone.

Argh.

Wherein I am About to Throw in the Towel

Maybe it's just been too long since I last did anything to do with quantum, but it is ridiculous what I'm learning now. I don't understand a tenth of it. The terms bounce off my brain like it was armour-plated and the ideas were missiles, or like oppositely charged particles repulsed by some fundamental hidden force, or like... like...

What the fuck does this lab question mean? I have no idea what to do with it!!! How do I make Hamiltonian0???!!! What was I thinking when I wrote this crap???!!! I don't normally expect to be spoon-fed, but my notes from my lecturer are complete and total crap!

Nyargh!!!!!