one b

random.

2006-07-22T00:56:00.000+08:00

So why do I write here again, after all these months? Because I’m having one of those moods. Somebody told me that unhappy people will, in the long run, be unhappy. Happy things may happen, and occasionally they may turn happy, but in the long run they will return to some sort of unhappy equilibrium.

And I suppose there is some truth in that.

Will you believe me if I said that the last two years were the best and most eventful years of my life, academically, and possibly, in other areas too? And will you believe me if I said that I’m so glad I shared part of it with this group of people?

Maybe not.

Everybody has a right to be sentimental, and I, believe it or not, am a person too. I’d like to say ‘thank you’, even though you might’ve been looking for ‘sorry’.

In my ideal world, reality would correspond to my will. I’m still getting used to the idea that I can’t get my way all the time. The reality is most of the time, almost all the time, reality will not be how I’d like it to be. As a kid I was a loser, and a very bad loser. Despite my years of experience I doubt I’ve improved too much.

Life has been relatively kind to me of late. I’m out of places where I don’t want to be and going to places I want to go to – I suppose I can’t ask for much more. You can’t have everything – most people have very few things.

I can tell you my love for you will still be strong, even though the boys of summer have gone.

Don Henley.

NOIIIIISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! exclamation marks to piss you off.

2005-09-27T11:04:00.000+08:00

look it's elyse sewell's livejournal! the world of intelligent, coherent models living in unglamorous crowded places. good for boredom because she is madcap, psychotic and her photos are entertaining.

class outing

2005-07-26T22:21:00.000+08:00

im desperate - to the point that i think more people will actually read this than listen when i make an announcement in class. yeah, i know its sad. anyway, does anyone have the faintest inclination to do something as like, you know, a class? if not i shall just give up and retire to my corner. :(:(

some stuff

2005-07-16T21:55:00.000+08:00

Prophesy dated 1/7/05 was fufilled, rather disappointingly.

Anyway, because i don't feel like studying for some weird reason i've been blog surfing. This guy's blog is actually quite funny.

If you think Chun Yee's ah beng wait till you see that cunt. In the Ah Beng Football totem pole he's Arsenal and Chun Yee's Scunthorpe United.

Here's an excerpt from his post on the nkf (what else?)

I do not hate charity organisation, I think people must help other poor and sick people. But fuck lah, you mean when on the tv the people who earn $1000 a month donate and the number on the NKF tv show jump $100,000 to $200,000 to $300,000..... when reach $600,000 of donation, is only cover this CEO salary?

No wonder Zoe Tay have to do so many cheebye stunt!!!

Wah, sue the Singapore newspaper for their article, then now kena the whole world know your top secret salary. It is like score own goal, man. Want to sue the Singapore newspaper not so easy, ok? Singapore newspaper is the most kuai lan and richest and powerfulest company in the world, and their reporters is bullet-proof one, you also dare to fuck. See lah? Now kena fuck back.

is it me or is it me

2005-07-04T18:30:00.000+08:00

bad bad case of ambiguity (1)

(which even matthias himself missed)
was pointing out that his msn nic, which read The Hardest Part Is Yet To Come is typical him - concluded that it's obviously his subconscious at work ahah.

bad bad case of ambiguity (2)

Kayhian, on msn -
remiel. deal. says:
anyway, i'm expecting an improvement this time around (which isn't saying much)
remiel. deal. says:
but i'd rather get the moaning over and done, the sooner the better

could have passed off as a reluctant satisfied consumer of the kamasutra.
but no no no. it has to be math. wrong four letter word - alright next!

bad bad case of ambiguity (3)

Kelly, while discussing bangkok and its lifestyle
"i mean the problem for me isn't swallowing, it is putting the thing to my mouth"

ahahah this one's a classic. bangkok's renown road side delicacy of another kind - deep fried grasshoppers LAH.

hello world tomorrow! =)

Good on you Matt! really =)

2005-07-01T23:22:00.000+08:00

For the rest of us mortals ...

2005-07-01T14:11:00.000+08:00

i will score better for maths than for history or econs. $20. any takers?

2005-06-30T22:42:00.000+08:00

blee!! hahaha very randomly (and oddly so...) i squashed an ant with an ice cube just two nights ago! :P hahaa see i was actually wondering if it would freeze to death or otherwise activate some inbuilt defense mechanism to play dead or something geez so i lightly dropped the block of ice over it and waited for like a good two minutes..
and guess what! when i lifted the iceblock there were like pieces of black bits here and there so i figured i might have squashed it and broken it up in the process... BUT then of course, i saw the body of the ant intact as it was (or at least as i think it was..) only brown now and evidently skinnier.
so i figured, we freeze and they shed their outer layers. cool eh :P

AAAarrrrrgh.

2005-06-29T19:28:00.000+08:00

[to self] no one's gonna be blogging tonight nasty. everyone's doing trig, binomial, and poisson - not sure if they started out as friends but your classmates sure are promicuous. unhealthy pursuits, all. remember to brush your teeth even if you fall asleep grudgingly at 4am and wake at 530am - to catch the sunrise of cos! Bart needs more mentos-like teeth and eyes less like mentos. heil Lumbda! [end]

r

Blee 1 - Ant 0

2005-06-29T02:36:00.000+08:00

the department of homeland security responding to a tip that a can of alphabet soup in the white house pantry might contain the word "al qaeda".

MAN! and to think all this while i've been searching for the perfect can opener for Mother. anyway someone i was conversing with insisted that blog-equity has to be maintained by compulsory blogging for all phantom blogsurfers. haha very novel! but of cos imagine it being applied to online porn. scary huh.

i guess reciprocity's just not in vogue now - not unless you're blee's victimized ant. ahahhaa even then we're invincible as she's politely pointed out! 1 point for Blee, death penalty for ant. it's 2am and frost's giving me a brainfreeze. the stakes are very high indeed.

bao your natdee is very very distracting! =(
jgallagher whee!

rarr.

2005-06-26T00:32:00.000+08:00

okay random thought, and probably not gonna be useful in hm, 32 hours, but oh well who cares!
anyway

i just killed an ant, or actually stuck some scotch tape on half of the ant and it was stuck there struggling a bit before i took pity (haha) on it and squished it (stuck the scotchtape on the whole ant). i thought 'oh dear isnt that the most horrible way to die, to be stuck to something unable to move until one day you finally give up trying to?' and then it struck me that for humans it'd be different cos we're so used to sitting around for days on end looking at words and figures that if we were stuck by a giant piece of scotchtape, we wouldnt know till the next meal! (unless you get all your meals delivered la..) and even if we realised it it wouldnt really matter anyway cos we'd think, oh wow now i can't help but not get distracted!

sometimes i would rather be an ant :(

(yes nasty i have been reading jgallagher.blogspot religiously)

2005-06-04T23:53:00.000+08:00

just gasp!

2005-06-04T23:52:00.000+08:00

look what ekwok has done! gasps,

2005-06-04T23:49:00.000+08:00

what happened?!

grr.

2005-05-11T22:16:00.000+08:00

oh i didn't realise anything'd been posted.

well, okay, i'll post something, i'm that desperate for something to procrastinate rolly's essay with.

have you heard me whine about the deadlines?? man oh man oh man. i missed both econs lessons today and holed myself up in the library till 6 doing that crazy thing, i even missed training. and while i was about two paragraphs in (which was still the major-smoking part) and poring over rolly's notes rolly himself came and stood behind me. while i valiantly tried to defend my screen he said something about there being a lot of books "over there"... how utterly humiliating.

anyway, the deadlines! even if i finish this thing today-- and that would be an achievement-- i would still have the lit s essay to do in one day. and i want to do it well, i wante a few days to do it in! i was so disgusted when purvis said he wanted them in "this week, not next week". how inconsiderate! how merciless! and it isnt even a question of not starting early, we've been having tons of essays these few weeks!

not to mention (but i will anyway, because this is my rant) the maths! i didnt know the probability things were due, and i'd been trying oh-so-hard to keep up with those insane deadlines and actually managed! and now they spring things on me so that its impossible to do them! augh!

i dont remember how it was when i actually missed all those deadlines. i was less stressed, i think. but then, i dont remember anymore. its no point trying to keep up. they think you can manage, i think, so they pile it on some more. the cruelty of it all!!

2005-04-30T23:05:00.000+08:00

well mixed salad? spicy penne and roast pumpkin. drink? yea sure. pink grapefruit. lovely pink tiles. ooh. fiona apple yes.

2005-04-30T23:02:00.000+08:00

Decency has arrived.

2005-01-23T21:46:00.000+08:00

Nerds are cool in their own way.

MOO

2005-01-13T20:59:00.000+08:00

hellohello!!
haha how's this for enthused: nasty auntie and i wrote notes for 1ao1b and nasty's mom's attaching these flower thingamajigs we bought to them for us! hahahhaa aren't we the sweetest ;p and i just found out that this girl in our junior class is my neighbour's cousin! exciting stuff eh.

update friday 7th

2005-01-07T19:51:00.000+08:00

k. last one.

Economics, Tutorial

Received one Data Response and one Case Study
Discussed the data response on education but did not go through the questions.
Will be going through essay questions on market failure very soon.

Mathematics, Tutorial

Finished Q1, 2 & 4 of Tutorial 11C. Weekend homework is Q5 & 6
Maths Assignment 11B due on Wednesday.

International History, Tutorial

Benuel gave a presentation on the question How far can developments between 1945 – 1948 sustain the contention that the Soviet Union was systematically executing its master-plan to spread Soviet communism worldwide?
For notes, get some from Adele or Yvonne.

General Paper

Had a discussion on different political systems. Stopped before Socialism.

update thursday 6th

2005-01-06T19:20:00.000+08:00

European History, Lecture

Went through Lecture Notes 007 given out on the day itself. Covered up to page 7 but we're supposed to read up on the rest ourselves.

General Paper, Booth

Gave out discussion worksheets on political ideologies. The extras are with him. We'll most probably be having a discussion on the above the next time.
He wants us to bring the resources for home schooling the next time too.

Literature, Purvis

He went through Chapter 1 of Native again.
Gave us a few quotes from Woodcock and Lawrence.

Maths Lecture

Finished up with Ch 11 Differentiation II notes. Curve-Sketching.

European History, Tutorial

Students with internships are supposed to fill out a feedback form.
We've been assigned position papers for the term. Mr. Rollason sent out an e-mail to all of us regarding the fixtures.
We'll be covering Russian Rev. for 7 weeks of the term, followed by 3 weeks of dictators (the big dicks) and then one more term. Document Paper on Origins of 1st World War for Term 3 and revision in term 4.
History S Papers will be held at 4 p.m. at SR11 for the time being. He will give us our groups soon.
Russian Rev. Assignments are due next Monday, but O-teamers have been granted an extension till wednesday.

Economics, Tutorial

Finished up the Case Study on Page 244.
Read through the Singapore article on Recycling.
We'll probably be doing more macro econs soon.

update Wednesday 5th

2005-01-05T22:57:00.000+08:00

Economics, Lecture

Mr. Sowden will be taking the J2 humanities for both tutorials and lectures.
Will not be adhering as rigourously to the syllabus outline as the mainstream, will probably go in the same order of subjects but will not cover subjects that he thinks that we can learn ourselves.
There probably will be no printed notes but he will make the powerpoints available on the files section of the humanities groups.
People with problems accessing the yahoogroups should contact me soon.
Mainstream is currently covering National Income, he expects us to go look this up ourselves.
I recommend looking up Sloman for information on this. It's an easy chapter, should be able to breeze through it in about 15 minutes.
We merely went through an introduction so nothing's really up. We'll start on the syllabus proper come next lecture.

Mathematics, Tutorial

Lamda's extension number is 64199864. Shared by 4 teachers, so state her name when calling.
She passed blee the errata for the red maths revision textbook that some of us bought last year.
Assignment 11B is due next wednesday.
We finished up with Tutorial 11B today and moved on to try out Q1 Tutorial 11B
She wants us to do Questions 2, 4 & 5 by next week but skip q3 because she won't be covering in class. Question 2 and 3 are similar.

Literature Lecture, Purvis

He narrated a humourous story about how he spent his trip to school with baoen and got soaking wet halfway.
He then rushed through to finish Chapter 2 of Native.

Economics, Tutorial

Talked roughly about the concept of Market Failure. Nothing new.
Finished Q1 of Econs Case Study on Recycled Waste Paper, P244 of Cheryl
Note that the supply curve of waste paper is perfectly inelastic.
He recommends we read up on the post that he gave over the yahoogroups which most of you must have deleted by now.

Dec 3, 2004

Plastic recycling all under one roof$6m one-stop factory turns common household waste into resin pellets to besold abroadA NEW $6 million recycling plant is taking business a little further thanthe factory doors - it is offering to buy back plastic bottles at one centfor every two bottles, or 22 cents per kilogram.K K Asia, which opened Singapore's first one-stop plastic recycling factoryin Tampines yesterday, is discussing collection details with communitydevelopment councils and residents' committees. But it will pay anyone whobrings in cleaned bottles with immediate effect.At the factory, plastic bottles, bags and containers are recycled into resinpellets - the raw material for plastic products like textile fibres, milkcrates and shopping bags.At the opening of the plant yesterday, K K Asia's chief executive, Mr RobinLoh, said his operation is also one of the largest in South-east Asia thatrecycles plastic into reusable resin pellets.A typical day at the 100,000 sq ft plant - the size of about three footballfields - starts with about 300 tonnes of plastic being sorted, pressed andstored in bales.The material is then crushed, cleaned and melted down into pellets, beforebeing sold as resin to plastic manufacturers in countries like China,Indonesia and Vietnam.Before opening the new facility, the six-year-old company was involved inonly the sorting, packing and occasional trading of plastic.With an annual processing capacity of 50,000 tonnes, Mr Loh is aiming tocorner what he sees as a lucrative market. There are about 150 recyclingfirms locally.According to the National Environment Agency (NEA) <http://app.nea.gov.sg/>, of the 580,000 tonnes of plastic trash generated every year, only 7 percent, or about 40,000 tonnes, is recycled.Of the remaining 540,000 tonnes of plastic, about 10 per cent consists ofbottles used to hold drinks, shampoo and other products which, according toMr Loh, works out to about 150 tonnes of plastic going to waste every day.And since recycled plastic costs about 30 to 40 per cent less than new,oil-based plastic, it makes economic and environmental sense to recycle, hesaid.Added the 33-year-old: 'Half of all plastic waste comes from consumerwaste.'Recent figures from the NEA also show that more households are recyclingtheir waste now.Since a national recycling programme was launched three years ago, about450,000 households, from an initial 130,000, are now recycling items such asnewspapers, cans and glass bottles.NEA statistics show that each week, a typical family of four can accumulateup to 26kg or seven black trash bags of waste, around half of which can berecycled. If households do so, up to 1,700 tonnes or 240 refuse trucks worthof waste per day could be diverted from incineration plants and landfills,the agency said.That means more needs to be done.Officiating at yesterday's opening, Environment and Water Resources MinisterYaacob Ibrahim said companies like K K Asia are helping the recycling effortby closing the loop.But they cannot do it alone.Said Dr Yaacob: 'If we can go upstream and ask Singaporeans to be a bit morediligent, use less plastic or reuse plastic bags, I think that will help...to reduce waste collection altogether.'A sentiment in keeping with the conservation motto: Reduce, reuse, recycle.

update tues 4th

2005-01-04T20:08:00.000+08:00

hello, it's me again, to bring yet more fun and joy to your academic year.

Literature, Batchelor

Covered the soporific After Apple-Picking today. Get your notes from some girl with legible handwriting cos i think the rest of us just fell asleep.
We'll be covering a new poem the next time we meet but not sure what it is. I'm sure bao will have it photocopied for us.

Maths, Lecture

Covered the Nature and Tests of Stationary Points in Maths Lec, which was essentially a recap of our O-Level Syllabus. (Ch 11 Differentation II, 6)
Covered the essentials of Curve-Sketching. Stationary Points, Intercepts, Asymptotes. Hence, the acronym SIA. (Ch 11 Differentation II, 8.1-8.2)
He made scant reference to our notes but for the record, we're currently on Differentiation II. We have yet to actually go through the examples in the notes, if I'm not wrong.

Maths, Tutorial

We're on Tutorial 11B and I believe she wants us to finish it.
She helped us a with a few questions as we worked on them in class but did not have the opportunity to go through the full solution with us.
Most of us got up to questions 8 or 9.

International History, Lecture

Started on our theme on International Trade today.
We started on the chapter or period known as The Golden Age of Capitalism on page 6 and managed to cover up to the sub-section Role of International Economic Organisations & Policies on page 7.
There's another History Lecture this week so he should be covering more.

Physical Education

We skipped P.E. and some of us went to J8 for lunch with Adele.

hi!

2005-01-04T19:27:00.000+08:00

hello class! i'd think it were just extremely funny that this thing still exists for boring inane (but of course necessary, ha) updates and random impersonal commentary if it weren't so bloody sad. but, oh well!
thanks benuel for the helpful updates although i must say it's not particularly uplifting, but what can we do, yes. hopefully the holidays served their purpose and we're all up and running, ready for another horrible academic year, though of course we must not forget to develop wholistically as our dear college strives to have happen! and which our favouritest teacher rather astonishingly proved to believe in, as well, which would explain the sympathy and understanding with which we were treated (and therefore the scolding we were not treated to). although, that might also have had something to do with the rather uncomfortable and unglamorous position he found himself in on the first school morning. but, i shall not be ungrateful for life's little blessings!
that said, 'luck everyone with the homework, especially the oteamers who've got a nice cushy grace period of a week, and then it's back to the grind! or in some (rare) cases, just to the grind, since you can't be going back to it if you never had to really face it before..
and here i'll echo andi's kudos-ing although probably ineffectually since who the heck visits this place but the solitary souls who sit at home and stew while everyone else is being useful and constructive? hahaa, have fun oteam-ers and to hannah and belle, i only have this to say: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(haha nasty i'm not just generous with exclamation marks)
okay be happy everyone, even if only outwardly and in fragments!

Update Mon 3rd

2005-01-03T19:38:00.000+08:00

hey, i figure that since half the class is away for orientation. might as well update anything daily remotely academic here for people to see when they get back or something.

All lessons were cancelled except kwok. surprise surprise. he made us sit on the cold floor to do some housekeeping.
International History Term Essay for the holidays will be due next friday, 14th jan
This is our 1st Term Essay, there will be a second one this term
Kwok's Book Review is due next monday 10th Jan. Any book related to international history will do, a few chapters will do too.
Tutorial questions / position paper will start on friday onwards with Hannah's and Benuel's on Friday. Title Below:
How far can developments between 1945 and 1948 sustain the contention that the Soviet Union was systematically executing its master plan to spread Soviet communism worldwide? Supposed to do outlines, but who is going to do them anyway.
Notes on International Trade were given out, Andi has most of them, I think.
European and International History will now take alternate weeks, Euro is even, Int. is odd. One of the tutorials is a floating one.
Econs S people, try to hand in essays by Friday. European History, Russian Rev. Essay, Rolly's forgotten when he wants it in so probably by this friday too.
Monday's lit. is purvis, Tuesday's is Batchelor's.

better late than never

2004-12-30T10:15:00.000+08:00

being the responsible ct rep that i am, here is the announcement

Heyyar folks!!

Please forward the following to your class's yahoogroups(or watever you use to disseminate info)

Thanks a bunch!!

THE BIG MOVE
Will be held on the 29th Dec, Wednesday. Highlights of the day will include the farewell and welcome ceremonies, exclusive non-stop train ride, school tour as well as limited edition Raffles shoebag and hiphop caps!
Please be at the Netball Court in Mount Sinai at 0815 sharp.The farewell ceremony really has to start on time coz the train is scheduled to arrive at a fixed time.. so yar dun be late! The attire for the day is Half-U - Faculty T-shirts and RJ pants or skirts.
Yupp, so do come down! This is a once-in-a-very-very-long-time event so dun miss it! And please also help to spread the word to your gooondu friends who dun know about this!
Seeyar all!
MSC Comm24th Students' Council

yeah i know it was yesterday.. but people make mistakes right?

merry christmas too

2004-12-26T19:35:00.000+08:00

anyway, who knows where to report in RJ on the first day? and uhm... no lessons on the first day right?

Merry Christmas!

2004-12-25T13:10:00.000+08:00

does anyone still read this?

or do i hear an echo reverberating around an empty blog?

haha no matter anyway tis the season to be jolly so your jolly ct rep wishes everyone who sees this a merry christmas and a happy new year! or was it the other way around..

books

2004-11-15T20:00:00.000+08:00

terrible! i went to the booksale at the expo with my parents today at 5 and there was precious little left, none of the greene or roth etc, those i actually wanted. i found the powerbook at 3 for 10 or $4 which is amazing but in 'selecting' my books my parents took out that and the only roth i could find, pretending that it was because my pa had never heard of them hence they couldnt be famous. what rot. winterson at least is infamous, more likely. in any case i suppose i shouldnt have expected anything, what with the naked people on both covers.

imaginary conversation:
"pa, but jeanette winterson and philip roth are very famous! mr purvis recommends them!"
"but theyre silly books. [actual quote.] they involve sex."
"huh? what is sex?"

some cip stuff.

2004-11-09T23:12:00.000+08:00

helping a friend publicise his cip project. let me know if you're interested and i'll let him know. you can msg me at 94381559. alternatively, you could just tell him direct and say you're a friend of mine. shirin suggests a class project, though that's up to you guys :)

hello everyone.

my name is fawwaz, and i am a volunteer for ECGS, or epilepsy care group, singapore.

on the 11th of december, members of the ECGS, who are mostly epileptic patients, and their families will gather, like they do annually, for a christmas party.

this year, they will have it again, only difference is, YOU, yes YOU will have a chance to give them the time of their lives.

some of you may have sold flags for communities u never heard of, societies you never knew existed. now, u can be closer to a society, understand their cause, and help patients lead a normal life.

what you will do is help the ECGS organise its christmas bash.

when: 11th dec, 7-10 pm

where: NUS

pax: 100++

what else: benedict goh will be hosting. and no, mediacorp isnt involved.

------------------------------------------------------------

question: ITS SO FUN!! how do i join?!

answer: reply to this mail, expressing your interest.

question: what do i have to do after i hop on the bandwagon?

answer: i will contact you.

question: what will be my duties?

answer: u will attend meetings, discussions about the party. as proposed, there will be weekly meetings, two hours or longer each, till 11th dec. if you feel that you do not have the commitment for meetings but u want to help, there are other jobs for you, like performing or helping out at the party itself. if you cant make it for the party, its alright, just do planning. some of the planners may have to undertake leadership positions like treasurer and all. its absolutely essential.

question: what other incentives are there?

answer: CIP hours, enrichment points. free good food. (i think.. just dont join coz of food.) the CIP hours are unlimited. lol.. i clock the hours for you guys.. so make this party a good one, have fun planning it, and i promise you more hours.

question: can i bring in other friends?

answer: haha.. yes yes sure. but im looking at 10-15 ppl, so if there are too many i may have to ask you guys to perform other duties other than planning. the main work is planning. there is still the logistics part and all. or backstage crew. or u cud sign up as a volunteer as well! do websites, newsletters, help mantain their 2nd hand shop. anyway i may have missed some of my own friends (you know who u are) in sending this so u guys might want to forward it.

question: what if i have MORE questions?

answer: contact me at spargawz@hotmail.com gawzshiai@gmail.com 91784318 64894351 -scaff.blogspot.com

FOOTBALLING CHARADES

2004-11-08T10:42:00.000+08:00

As Saints and West Brom draw 2-2 Frank Burrows practices holding an invisible log, while the Southampton touchline duo impersonate teapots.

why i don't give a fuck about chinese

2004-11-04T02:50:00.000+08:00

because i have some time before the champions league match i shall bitch about chinese.

the bilingual policy in singapore is not really so much a bilingual policy as it is a mother tongue policy. but when you're dealing with something like an individual's mother tongue, with all the implied cultural add-ons, the worst thing any government can possibly do is to have a blanket, i-don't-care-who-the-fuck-you-are policy. as usual, singapore shoots, singapore scores.

lets talk about chinese, my ministry declared 'mother tongue'. taken literally, 'mother tongue' would refer to your mother's native language. but let's be a bit fair and broaden it a bit to include any one up to my great ^4 grandparents on either side. now it would be fine if my ancestors hailed from beijing. but the fact is not one of them spoke mandarin as a native language. my grandmother didn't start speaking mandarin until the advent of the speak mandarin campaign, which complemented the other more subtle, pervasive and much more effective speak mandarin campaign: those ghastly 7pm and 9pm tv serials. so having established that mandarin isn't my, and hardly anybody's mother tongue, let's look at the fucked-upedness of chinese instruction.

'chinese as a second language' is a misnomer. it merely means that chinese is taught at a second language standard, but that says nothing about the method of instruction. chinese from primary one has always been taught as a first language. this stems from the ethnocultural ego of the chinese-speaking community. the argument is, that you're teaching chinese kids and not whities, and there's no reason to stoop so low and use a foreign devil language. that chinese kids should be taught chinese in chinese because they're chinese and not the offspring of the foreign devils. it is essentially a blatant refusal to accempt the fact that a good number are indeed foreign.

just because i have yellow skin black hair and slitty eyes, and just because my grandfather came from china, and just because just because, i am therefore chinese and am expected to be able to know chinese and be culturall chinese. as good an example of racial discrimination as any. culture is an integral part of a person's identity and is clearly up to an individual; no body should attempt to fuck around with that. and culture's got absolutely nowt to do with the colour of your skin. it is an attempt to sinicised the de-sinicised. and i am not amused.

the idea of chineseness in singapore is essentially different from chineseness in china. instead it is the remnants of what is percieved to be chinese, shards of a culture brought along a century ago, and in the course of that last century, bastardised and mongrelised. if such, is singaporean chineseness still chinese? what is chinese anyway? and who is chinese?

the point is, forgive me for rambling, that culture and ethinicity are two different things. i get pissed off when these chest thumping, short-sleeved shirt-wearing moralising fuckers come and tell me that i should be ashamed because i'm chinese but i don't know chinese. or that because i am chinese i should be chinese.

and the economic argument doesn't hold either. china is not the only country in the world, and if you think its going to make doing business in china is easy, think again. how many of you can get along with prcs? individually, some may be ok, a couple are cool, but a good lot of them are fuckers. and collectively, you know they are intolerable. and you think, with your ao chinese a1, and your 125 cheng yus, and your 2 memorised tang poems, you can build guan xi (read: quasi-nepotism. under the belt. lack of transparency. S&P: "we're not even going to fucking rate you". ) and you wanna do business in china? some of these kids think that singapore, half of san francisco and taiwan belong to china. they think that kid in orbit is the greatest achievement ever, forgetting that a society as chornically backward as russia put yuri gagarin up there fifty years ago. the thing is, how much in common do you have with them? and, do you really want to trust them with your money? i'd rather have a muscovite in a brown suit handle my money than put it in china.

end of rant, i'm going to watch my match now :) have fun studying for chinese! and watch trainspotting, it's a good show, you pick up good moral values from that. such as wearing tight tapered pants can look good if you can pull it off. and heroin makes you constipated. and impotent.

lit homework

2004-10-25T22:40:00.000+08:00

Write a critical appreciation of Frost's "The Wood-Pile", noting to what extent it seems typical of Frost's poetic interests and concerns.
(Due Day 1, 2005)

[Word document]

The Wood-Pile

Out walking in the frozen swamp one grey day
I paused and said, "I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther—and we shall see."
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went down. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather—
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was grey and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labour of his axe,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

sun

2004-10-23T13:52:00.000+08:00

But the sun marched in blue heaven and sent down his rays as he went. She felt the soft air of the sea on her breasts, that seemed as if they would never ripen. but she hardly felt the sun. Fruits that would wither and not mature, her breasts.

Soon, however, she felt the sun inside them, warmer that ever love had been, warmer than milk or the hands of her baby. At last, as last her breasts were like long white grapes in the hot sun.

She slid off all her clothes and lay naked in the sun, and as she lay she looked up through her fingers at the central sun, his blue pulsing roundness, whose outer edges streamed brilliance. Pulsing with marvellous blue, and alive, and streaming white fire from his edges, the sun ! He faced down to her with his look of blue fire, and enveloped her breasts and her face, her throat, her tired belly, her knees, her thighs and her feet.

She lay with shut eyes, the colours of rosy flame through her lids. It was too much. She reached and put leaves over her eyes. Then she lay again, like a long white gourd in the sun, that must ripen to gold.

She could feel the sun penetrating even into her bones; nay, farther, even into her emotions, her thoughts. The dark tensions of her emotion began to give way, the cold dark clots of her thoughts began to dissolve. She was beginning to feel warm right through. Turning over, she let her shoulders dissolve in the sun, her loins, the backs of her thighs, even her heels. And she lay half stunned with wonder at the thing that was happening to her. Her weary, chilled heart was melting, and, in melting, evaporating.

There was a little soft white core of fear, like a snail in a shell, where the soul of the men cowered in fear of death, and in fear of the natural blaze of life. He dared not quite emerge: always innerly cowed. All men were like that.

— D.H. Lawrence, Sun

the true story of the elephant man

2004-10-23T13:35:00.000+08:00

I wanted to surf and walked to the edge of the cliff with my gear. the longboard under my arm was catching strong winds as I looked down the face. "that's a long fall." I felt I was being watched and turned around to see a sandy blonde in cut off denim shorts. she was peeling an onion and had tears in her eyes. "you don't want to jump off now, they drain the ocean every three thousand years." she offered the onion to me and I shook my head no. "suit yourself," and she bit into it like an apple. "you know, we share the emotion that eventually killed joseph carey merrick: to be like everyone else. but you have to be careful because the desire to be different and more outrageous than your neighbor is often a way to make up for the fact that we need people's attention to feel good about ourselves again." I thought about this for a long moment. "how do we take the bags off our head without indulging in our freakiness?" the tears were streaming down her face and her eyes were red but she kept chomping on the onion. "silly, don't ask me those questions. be still and know yourself. haven't you ever thought about the elephant man?" okay, she's crazy, I thought. I glanced over the cliff to jump in the water and get out of this discussion. but sure enough they had drained the ocean, leaving the swimmers and surfers shivering on the ocean floor.

— [the] Pink Hollers Newsletter, david pajo (of Slint)

2004-10-17T22:21:00.000+08:00

benuel, that shit ain't funny.

some people blame the british for fucking up palestine. well it's easy to blame the british, but consider this: if you're white, church of england public schoolboy, oxbridge graduate waiting for your father to die to inherit his marquessate, what the fuck do you know about palestinians and jews and their little conflict. nowt, effectively. throw in a rich, influential jewish lobby, and you're going to play like robbie savage.

instead, blame the zionist movement. despite knowing full well that moving in will be like some colouring exercise turning the white sands of the negev into sinful red, they didn't care. the jews bought their way in quite literally. now that would be pretty ok if they accepted the status quo: palestine is effectively a palestinian state, and a muslim state as a result of ottoman rule. now that would be ok, if they picked a place where they wouldn't go have a daily local derby with their fiercest historical rivals. but it isn't ok now is it?

it's not the biblical days of yore, and they knew it. i think they knew crystal clear what was going to result, and they still went for it. anti-semitism in europe? well, if a community can collectively be so butt fucking rich, if a community can collectively exercise so much political clout, if a community can afford to buy half of palestine, if a community can be so inwardlooking and exclusive, so us-vs-them, well damn right people won't like you. it's for the same reason why ethnically indigenous indonesians don't like the chinese very much. yet they don't seem to be doing too badly, eh?

hamas humour

2004-10-17T19:34:00.000+08:00

the indomitable hamas, which never ceases to confound me whether to curse or to laugh out loud.

JERUSALEM, Oct. 16 - Israeli troops and armor completed their pullback from built-up areas in the Gaza Strip early on Saturday, but many soldiers have remained in the territory, redeployed on the hills overlooking the Jabaliya and Beit Hanun refugee settlements.

The redeployment was the effective end to Israel's 17-day offensive to repress the firing of Qassam rockets into Israeli settlements and towns from the northern Gaza strip. Some 115 Palestinians died during the operation, Israeli Radio said Saturday morning.
The Israeli operation also left behind further destruction to the shaky economy of Gaza. Troops uprooted many olive and citrus groves.

Electricity was out in Beit Hanun, Palestinians said, houses were destroyed in Jabaliya and roads and water pipes had been ripped up by tanks. "The whole house is rubble and there is no way we can find anything," Ezzeya Daher, 50, told Reuters news agency in Jabaliya, as hundreds of people picked through mounds of debris to search for belongings. "Now we are refugees for a second time."

Compared to the Palestinian dead during the Gaza operation, Israeli losses were small: three civilians, including two children killed by a Qassam in Sederot, two soldiers and a Thai farm worker.

now here's the punchline

A Hamas spokesman, Fathi Hammad, said: "The Zionist army has retreated in defeat from all the positions. We consider it a victory for our resistance."

history

2004-10-15T21:22:00.001+08:00

in the light of the recent papers, here is that (fairly infamous?) ac teacher's blog entry(ies):

(ii) the opposite of inevitable is 'evitable' -- as in, apparently Khrushchev felt that war with capitalism was 'evitable' rather than what Marxism-Leninism suggested, ie. that it was inevitable. And the 'evitability' proposition made Mao an angry man. Such anger and rage (damn that rap music). Perhaps more illustrative of the origins of the pain is --

(iii) When one is reading poems in a practical criticism exam for unseen works, one does not know which words to read, bringing on the strange question during a consultation with me: "Which words do you suggest I specifically focus on, sir?" Perhaps, says I in my mind's spinning (and very frenetic) sarcasm, the 'the(s)' and the 'is(es)' and the 'are(s)'? After all, one very striking comment made in a lesson by a certain intelligent life-form (spin sarcasm spin!) upon reading a prose passage was: "It has a lot of fullstops."

ok, so maybe its not so funny on second reading.

hardy's style is much like eliot's, i realise, except he is so much smarter.

"Her father was as good a feller as ever lived. He always had his great indignation ready against anything underhand."

"Is that sort of firearm very dangerous?" said Christian.

"I bain't afeard [of death] at all, I thank God!" said Christian strenuously. "I'm glad I bain't, for then 'twon't pain me....I don't think I be afeard--or if I be I can't help it, and I don't deserve to suffer. I wish I was not afeard at all!"

i shall stop posting random net bits. what a luxury, though.

ruin my brain

2004-10-15T14:44:00.000+08:00

(exploding dog.com)

Conformity

2004-10-15T14:08:00.000+08:00

We typically imagine a conformist to be conservative, someone who abides by the rules of the society, but in a society or community where rule-breaking is part of the norm, breaking rules would be a process of conformity. In this sense, conformity does not necessarily equal conservatism. That is, appearance is deceptive in discussing what conformity is.

In high school where being "cool" is literally a matter of life and death, mastering this balance of conformity and deviation is the key to popularity, and successful survival. You conform too much, you are toast; you deviate too much, you are toast too. Somewhere between the two lies the perfect balance everyone strives for. If deviation, or being different, was the key to becoming "cool", being handicapped, gay, deformed, or retarded should be regarded as "cool", but this is not the case.

The name of the game here is for one's existence to be recognized and valued by the society or the community. How you achieve this is by balancing between conformity and deviation. Ultimately this pursuit of the golden balance is conformity in the true sense of the term.

Japan is known for its culture of conformity, and is a highly homogeneous society, but beyond the facade, the degree to which people are concerned with the golden balance is the same as you would notice in any other countries; only it manifests differently. Most Japanese high schools require their students to wear uniforms. They tend to minimize the opportunities to express individuality, but wherever it is allowed, they take full advantage of it.

What does it mean to conform to this golden balance of conformity and deviation? What are we trying to achieve by it? In a word: popularity. To be popular is to be recognized and valued by as many people as possible. To conform is to measure oneself against a collective standard of value. It is not to a community of people per se but to the standard of it.

...

Leaving one standard for another that shares nothing in common, would be quite similar in effect to committing suicide. By doing so, you would be destroying the ego you had built over the years using your native standard. Most standards, no matter how disparate they may appear, share much in common. How difficult the conversion is, is dependent on how little the two standards share in common. The concept of "born again" is precisely this: to shift your standard from the ordinary one to one of Christianity. After the conversion, everything you did, do, and will do in life will be measured against a different standard. A piece of impressive accomplishment by your previous standard may not mean much by your new one. In this sense, you are killing part of who you are. This is when you realize how intangible and arbitrary "you" are in the ordinary sense of the term.

By Dyske Suematsu | Dec-29-03

from DYSKE.com

i dont wanna go on a rant here

2004-10-15T13:15:00.000+08:00

A strange thing, our punishment! It does not cleanse the criminal, it is no atonement; on the contrary, it pollutes worse than the crime does.

---

nostalgia is an opiate. it feels good for a while, or at least it feels like what seems to be good. until reality resumes service. then, i think, it feels quite bad.

we're all drug addicts aren't we, in our own socially acceptable way.

fucking liberalmorallydecadentabandonconservativeasianvalues Government, not doing anything about all that drug abuse.

belatedly

2004-10-15T09:08:00.000+08:00

THE ULTIMATE SILENCE
October 12, 1998

Listen to the mustn'ts, child.
Listen to the don'ts.
Listen to the shouldn'ts,
The impossibles, the won'ts.
Listen to the never haves,
Then listen close to me ...
Anything can happen, child.
Anything can be.

~ Shel Silverstein

Six years ago today, Matthew Shepard was murdered for being homosexual.

What will you do to end the silence?

Click here to post this on your own page or weblog

documents

2004-10-12T02:06:00.000+08:00

yars, very important we are.

the link below doesn't work, use this one for your econs promo paper answers.

while im at this here are some scanty nuclear arms/ cuban missile crisis quotes i typed out just for kicks. i know im almost infamous for my history, but it happens-- i get carried away with the most uncharacteristic things. the paradoxes and ironies are fascinating. all from the readings the tutors gave out. nothing new here.

Kennedy: "We must work with some countries lacking in freedom in order to strengthen the cause of freedom."

"If threatening to commit suicide in defence of oneself is peculiar, doing so in defence of someone else is even odder."

econs promos mcq 02/03

2004-10-11T16:35:00.000+08:00

andi has kindly passed us the answers for the 02/03 papers i'll try to get something for the rest. probably from salinah or something. happy mugging. 13a people, if you see this, it's for you as well.

because she is bored:

2004-10-08T18:39:00.000+08:00

full text of vanity fair! http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/51/94/frameset.html
naturally, it is not encouraged that you attempt reading it now. but hey, better to read proper literature than blogstalk ;p
laa, hope the weekend sees us being astoundingly constructive and absorbent! :)

maths promo paper answers

2004-10-06T19:32:00.000+08:00

here, or just right-click the link or picture and save target/ picture as.

yes, the last line is missing.

from The Warhol Diaries

2004-10-02T18:20:00.000+08:00

Saturday, March 11, 1978
I had a lot of dates but I decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows.
Thursday, July 27, 1978
After work I just stayed in. Watched 20/20 and instead of saying, "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes," it was so funny to hear Hugh Downs say, "As Andy Warhol once said, in fifteen minutes everybody will be famous." People on TV always get some part wrong, like - "In the future fifteen people will be famous."
Monday, August 16, 1982
But tell me why it is that everybody is so good-looking now. In the fifties, there were the really good-looking people and the all the rest who weren't. Today, everybody is at least attractive. How did it happen? Is it because there's no wars to kill the beauties?

Young PAP recruitment drive

2004-09-30T23:03:00.000+08:00

The youth wing of the People's Action Party (PAP) has embarked on a mass recruitment exercise as part of the party's process of self-renewal... However, Mr Goh and his recruitment team have no quota to fill. "If there is a number, I will say it's the whole of Singapore, the four-million membership mark is what we want."

2004-09-30T21:47:00.000+08:00

"It's shite being Scottish. We're the lowest of the low, the scum of the fucking earth, the most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization. Some people hate the English, but I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers. We can't even find a decent culture to be colonised by. We are ruled by effete arseholes. It's a shite state of affairs to be in Tommy and all the fresh air in the world will not make any fucking difference."

some uplifting prose!

2004-09-30T18:59:00.000+08:00

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning —
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
-The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

:]

2004-09-27T18:27:00.000+08:00

ahaha finally someone appreciates my taste. andi, hear that? sigur ros is not a series of squeaks!

hello, honoured passerby. it wasnt mine, it was from the sigur ros site, you can find samples and a lot of other songs there. untitled #1 and #3 are good. its something called post-rock, and (some people are gonna skin me for this-- theyre a little weird) i consider mogwai the (second) pinnacle of the genre! here you go:

sigur ros - olsen olsen
mogwai - hunted by a freak
the six parts seven - this one or that one?

cows

2004-09-25T23:27:00.000+08:00

ACSII cows

                    (____)               (____)                         (____)

                    (oo  )               (o  o)                         ( O O)

         /-----------\  /          /-----\    /----          /-----------\  /

        / ||       |  \/          / |   |  \/   |           / ||       |  \/

       /  ||       ||||           \ |  |      | | |        /  ||       ||||

      *   ||||-----||||            *| | |-----| | |       *   ||||-----||||

          /\/\     /\/\             /\ /\     /\ /\           ^^^^     ^^^^

     This cow belonged         This was Salvatore      No one was sure whether

      to Pablo Picasso        Dali's favorite cow    M.C. Escher's cow had four

                                                           legs or eight



                          (__)

          (__)            (oo)         (__)

          (oo)            /\/          (oo)

   /-------\/         /--/--            \/-----

  / |     ||         / |    `-.         / |    `-.

 *  ||----||        *  ||----||        *  ||----||

    OO    OO           OO    OO           OO    OO

 

  Cow-vertible      .     .     .



                                                  _______

            (__(  .-<                            |   |   |

            (oo)  |                              |___|___|

          ___\/___|                              |\_____/|

         |  |  |                                 |       |

         |  |  |                                 |_______|

       >-'  |  |                             _   |   _   |

        *----/\                     /-------//   |--(_)--|

            /  \                   / |     ||    |_______|  (__)

           /    \                 *  ||----||    |       |  (++)

           ^     ^                   ^^    ^^    |_______|   \/

        Egyptian Cow                   Marie Antoinette's Cow

                       

                     

     __  |   \ /        

       \/----///\      

     */\______(xx)           

              (  )            

                               

Pro-democracy cow from Beijing





           (__)

           (oo)

   /------||||||

  / | UX`  \||/

 *  ||----||

    ^^    ^^

   Karl's cow

(yes, that's the Russian symbol. Use your imagination.)

happy mugging, people. :]

A Hanging

2004-09-18T20:26:00.000+08:00

By George Orwell
(August 1931)

It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.

One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick, sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the moustache of a comic man on the films. Six tall Indian warders were guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood by with rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what was happening.

Eight o'clock struck and a bugle call, desolately thin in the wet air, floated from the distant barracks. The superintendent of the jail, who was standing apart from the rest of us, moodily prodding the gravel with his stick, raised his head at the sound. He was an army doctor, with a grey toothbrush moustache and a gruff voice. 'For God's sake hurry up, Francis,' he said irritably. 'The man ought to have been dead by this time. Aren't you ready yet?'

Francis, the head jailer, a fat Dravidian in a white drill suit and gold spectacles, waved his black hand. 'Yes sir, yes sir,' he bubbled. 'All iss satisfactorily prepared. The hangman iss waiting. We shall proceed.'

'Well, quick march, then. The prisoners can't get their breakfast till this job's over.'

We set out for the gallows. Two warders marched on either side of the prisoner, with their rifles at the slope; two others marched close against him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing and supporting him. The rest of us, magistrates and the like, followed behind. Suddenly, when we had gone ten yards, the procession stopped short without any order or warning. A dreadful thing had happened — a dog, come goodness knows whence, had appeared in the yard. It came bounding among us with a loud volley of barks, and leapt round us wagging its whole body, wild with glee at finding so many human beings together. It was a large woolly dog, half Airedale, half pariah. For a moment it pranced round us, and then, before anyone could stop it, it had made a dash for the prisoner, and jumping up tried to lick his face. Everyone stood aghast, too taken aback even to grab at the dog.

'Who let that bloody brute in here?' said the superintendent angrily. 'Catch it, someone!'

A warder, detached from the escort, charged clumsily after the dog, but it danced and gambolled just out of his reach, taking everything as part of the game. A young Eurasian jailer picked up a handful of gravel and tried to stone the dog away, but it dodged the stones and came after us again. Its yaps echoed from the jail wails. The prisoner, in the grasp of the two warders, looked on incuriously, as though this was another formality of the hanging. It was several minutes before someone managed to catch the dog. Then we put my handkerchief through its collar and moved off once more, with the dog still straining and whimpering.

It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never straightens his knees. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.

It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working — bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming — all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned — reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone — one mind less, one world less.

The gallows stood in a small yard, separate from the main grounds of the prison, and overgrown with tall prickly weeds. It was a brick erection like three sides of a shed, with planking on top, and above that two beams and a crossbar with the rope dangling. The hangman, a grey-haired convict in the white uniform of the prison, was waiting beside his machine. He greeted us with a servile crouch as we entered. At a word from Francis the two warders, gripping the prisoner more closely than ever, half led, half pushed him to the gallows and helped him clumsily up the ladder. Then the hangman climbed up and fixed the rope round the prisoner's neck.

We stood waiting, five yards away. The warders had formed in a rough circle round the gallows. And then, when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out on his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of 'Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!', not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The dog answered the sound with a whine. The hangman, still standing on the gallows, produced a small cotton bag like a flour bag and drew it down over the prisoner's face. But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still persisted, over and over again: 'Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!'

The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes seemed to pass. The steady, muffled crying from the prisoner went on and on, 'Ram! Ram! Ram!' never faltering for an instant. The superintendent, his head on his chest, was slowly poking the ground with his stick; perhaps he was counting the cries, allowing the prisoner a fixed number — fifty, perhaps, or a hundred. Everyone had changed colour. The Indians had gone grey like bad coffee, and one or two of the bayonets were wavering. We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened to his cries — each cry another second of life; the same thought was in all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise!

Suddenly the superintendent made up his mind. Throwing up his head he made a swift motion with his stick. 'Chalo!' he shouted almost fiercely.

There was a clanking noise, and then dead silence. The prisoner had vanished, and the rope was twisting on itself. I let go of the dog, and it galloped immediately to the back of the gallows; but when it got there it stopped short, barked, and then retreated into a corner of the yard, where it stood among the weeds, looking timorously out at us. We went round the gallows to inspect the prisoner's body. He was dangling with his toes pointed straight downwards, very slowly revolving, as dead as a stone.

The superintendent reached out with his stick and poked the bare body; it oscillated, slightly. 'He's all right,' said the superintendent. He backed out from under the gallows, and blew out a deep breath. The moody look had gone out of his face quite suddenly. He glanced at his wrist-watch. 'Eight minutes past eight. Well, that's all for this morning, thank God.'

The warders unfixed bayonets and marched away. The dog, sobered and conscious of having misbehaved itself, slipped after them. We walked out of the gallows yard, past the condemned cells with their waiting prisoners, into the big central yard of the prison. The convicts, under the command of warders armed with lathis, were already receiving their breakfast. They squatted in long rows, each man holding a tin pannikin, while two warders with buckets marched round ladling out rice; it seemed quite a homely, jolly scene, after the hanging. An enormous relief had come upon us now that the job was done. One felt an impulse to sing, to break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering gaily.

The Eurasian boy walking beside me nodded towards the way we had come, with a knowing smile: 'Do you know, sir, our friend (he meant the dead man), when he heard his appeal had been dismissed, he pissed on the floor of his cell. From fright. — Kindly take one of my cigarettes, sir. Do you not admire my new silver case, sir? From the boxwallah, two rupees eight annas. Classy European style.'

Several people laughed — at what, nobody seemed certain.

Francis was walking by the superintendent, talking garrulously. 'Well, sir, all hass passed off with the utmost satisfactoriness. It wass all finished — flick! like that. It iss not always so — oah, no! I have known cases where the doctor wass obliged to go beneath the gallows and pull the prisoner's legs to ensure decease. Most disagreeable!'

'Wriggling about, eh? That's bad,' said the superintendent.

'Ach, sir, it iss worse when they become refractory! One man, I recall, clung to the bars of hiss cage when we went to take him out. You will scarcely credit, sir, that it took six warders to dislodge him, three pulling at each leg. We reasoned with him. "My dear fellow," we said, "think of all the pain and trouble you are causing to us!" But no, he would not listen! Ach, he wass very troublesome!'

I found that I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even the superintendent grinned in a tolerant way. 'You'd better all come out and have a drink,' he said quite genially. 'I've got a bottle of whisky in the car. We could do with it.'

We went through the big double gates of the prison, into the road. 'Pulling at his legs!' exclaimed a Burmese magistrate suddenly, and burst into a loud chuckling. We all began laughing again. At that moment Francis's anecdote seemed extraordinarily funny. We all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away.

the nothing song

2004-09-16T22:32:00.000+08:00

this is beautiful:
sigur ros - untitled #4 (a.k.a. njosnavelin / the nothing song) (6:57 minutes, 8.1mb)

randomness!

2004-09-14T23:15:00.000+08:00

search the nlb catalogue for giovanni's room the other day, and the location column (where the database usually displays the libraries where you can find the book) said 'love'.
awww.
yes it's a love story..though not your conventional one. -furtive grin-
happy randomness! to brighten your mugging day!

fix (inadequate)

2004-09-08T13:23:00.000+08:00

i think my toenails grow at an insane rate.
i think i just like people to remember i exist. ergo sum.
hm you know, i kinda need help with econs...

p.s.: yay i fixed the tiny template glitch in netscape/variants. blogger's not publishing, though. :(

p.p.s.: spread the joy!
low quality mp3: Nada Surf - Blonde On Blonde (1.7mb, 48kbit-- wow), from barsuk.
higher quality mp3: Metric - Combat Baby (3.7mb)

econs revision

2004-09-08T10:34:00.000+08:00

hey,

apparently, mr. sowden made a mistake. so it's tentatively off but he'll consider giving it to us because we responded but i'll confirm with him.

augh

2004-09-08T02:10:00.000+08:00

my fingertips are peeling the way dried glue peels off or flakes off or whatever, what is wrong? am i not drinking enough? it looks horrible and everything feels dusty.

once again i have done nothing productive with my day. a very big public thank you to dan leong for his notes, because i printed them out, wrote in the page numbers and presently felt very satisfied with myself. but really, thats all i did. im not even going to explicitly confess to not doing them overdue essays because i feel so horrible about it. but of course im a bit of an exhibitionist so i do anyway.

which leads nicely on to how lonely and deprived-of-exhibition i am now. i like having people around to occupy my workless days (possibly workless because they are around), to listen to me whine [green day sound clip], etcetera, and so am already wavering in my resolve... but no. according to vaish it is twenty-six days to promos and i am determined to conquer this rampaging inertia. tomorrow perhaps.

hello, nasty-who-is-online-at-the-same-time-as-me. goodnight.

aye m'lord

2004-09-07T19:40:00.000+08:00

i second the saturday convention! plus being at east coast, there is this good pool place. finally, i shall convert all you bukit timah plaza kiddies to parkway! then we shall from that day on play pool at classic where it's nice and convenient for yours truly His Majesty the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India and the Cocos-Keeling Islands etc etc.

anyway, $120 for smirnoff is blatant capitalist exploitation. especially when i think i can get it for about $40 or so at my struggling, small-time, operating below minimum efficient scale local shop. evil capitalist petty bourgeois imperialist intellectual elitist scumbag! they are the stinking ninth category scum of the earth i presume types who should be sent back to the countryside to learn from the peasant. long live mao! father is dear, mother is dear, but chairman mao is the dearest of all.

everybody, support your local retailer and small business! especially when the shirtless, tattooed, past-his-prime seventy year old running the shop doesn't check for age.

of interest

2004-09-07T18:45:00.001+08:00

andi/y, maybe you would be interested in this:

Free flow of vodka with soda from 11pm to 12am.
Smirnoff Vodka $120 nett.
1 for 1 juggies vodka @ $28nett.
E33 bucket of 5 @ $35nett.
Promo 11pm till closing.
Every Sunday Nights
(for September 2004)

saturday, please. i should start mugging by then.
(essay! oh, haha.)

POOOOOL

2004-09-07T16:38:00.000+08:00

(codespeak for class convention. -shifty-eyed-)
okay it has been suggested that we hold the convention either this thursday or this saturday. thursday because people who want to watch the terminal can go and watch the terminal and saturday because we can then commiserate over (un)done work.

convention dinner at marine cove at east coast? there's a mccafe, gelare, some italian food place, coffee bean, indonesian food (it sucks though), steamboat, etc etc. and sun and sand and the sea. or else someone's home. or orchard. or something.

awwright so now how many conventioneers are there? (that's the title of really cool barenaked ladies song by the way) raise hand if you can make it!

(meanwhile i shall essay forth on other more academic pursuits. sigh.)

Quote

2004-09-06T22:17:00.000+08:00

David James from Football365.com

If you're going to be on a billion televisions around the world, the last thing you want on your chin is a beard that looks like a 'Brazilian' pubic hair patch. Unless of course you're David James, in which case your goalkeeping frequently makes you look like a fanny anyway so you may as well.

Conversations with Andrew Ong (nee Andrea)

wish i knew: but it's okay i'm only a gay transvestite i wouldn't know anything -sniffs-
i buried paul.: hahah. stop trying to act pitiful
wish i knew: i'm not acting!! -cries-
wish i knew: i'm only typing. hahahahahha! i'm so funny!!

the free speech zone

2004-09-04T14:14:00.000+08:00

ooh. ouch.

(toothpastefordinner)

Proposed Class Convention

2004-09-02T20:07:00.000+08:00

I feel damn guilty for not having posted on this blog for so long but how about having a class 'convention' during the holidays? 7 at Bao's proved to be non-existent so let's just gather one last time before the promos and the mugging to have some fun. Any ideas? Hopefully, this blog is alive enough to provoke some sort of response like spasms after death following electrical shock.

Pool at Bukit Timah Plaza

2004-09-02T01:29:00.000+08:00

in all incongruity - the title's only to draw the attention of Mark Tan and the likes (yes im being hopeful they haven't forgotten this website). well now tt i've been vindicated and the world knows for sure you guys are a bunch of sorry sods, run along now to P*** land. (ha)

you know life's been good to you when life's greatest dillemma presents itself in simple, straight-forward 4 letter terms:

pool or porn. depends on whether you're willing to pay by the hour really.

hmmm

sleepy now. so this entry's largely about pool anyway.

perhaps if there weren't gun laws in Singapore the ageing population issue could be easily solved. single, whitewashed history teachers sound tantalizing, especially so if they're dead.

and of course before long we'd have to start importing Singaporeans altogether.
living talents.

eminence

2004-08-24T00:47:00.000+08:00

for a miniscule country we are quite outstanding in some areas.

sorry, my temporary internet swap-space.

2004-08-21T08:27:00.000+08:00

hm. I've lost a machine.. literally _lost_. it responds to ping, it works completely, I just can't figure out where in my apartment it is.

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.

i was gonna call 911...but i was downloading a file

My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
-- Bill Gates, 1981

The difference between us and a computer is that, the computer is blindingly stupid, but it is capable of being stupid many, many million times a second.
-- Douglas Adams

ASCII to ASCII, DOS to DOS.

Hardware, n.: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.

Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless.
Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.

To err is human. To really screw up it takes a computer.

It works better if you plug it in.

The geek shall inherit the earth.

f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.

Why did the computer scientist die in the shower?
Because he read the instructions on the shampoo bottle, "Lather, rinse, repeat."

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
-- Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

There's no place like 127.0.0.1.

/(bb[^b]{2})/

May the source be with you.

/* no comment */



<geek>

> SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0
0 rows returned

A television may insult your intelligence, but nothing rubs it in like a computer.

i've got <style>.

(other cover-ish things:)
WARNING: trojan on computer
blog blog blog
i want to have a web page
1992 on usenet
nerd not found

frost

2004-08-16T18:07:00.000+08:00

hello my dearies.

bring your $15 to buy robbered frossed.
pay the money to me and i will buy for you,
or go to the bookstore and tell the lady you are from 1A01B.

if there are books left in the 1b-ordered stack she will be pissed because she would have bought x-number of books more than necessary and/ or turned away potential customers unnecessarily. by posting a notice here i absolve myself of responsibility should you not follow my directions. humour her. she is not young anymore.

happy national day

2004-08-09T22:22:00.001+08:00

hello, mark. don't we all love you. my mum was unhappy that i didnt introduce her to the guy behind the apples. she says to tell you she thinks you're "cool". she means it as a compliment.

it was quite strange. the bagpipes— what were they doing there?? singapore has no historical ties with scotland. the mc couldnt even fake chinese— surely we are not so short of talent? it was amusing watching people screw up their mass displaying. and the pre-parade video on how we've weathered so many storms together— the thwarted terrorist attack on yishun mrt or something (oh horrors!), sars, and the tragic nicoll highway collapse (we must always be prepared for an emergency, Singapore!)— it was so stirring, i nearly felt Singaporean. </overt cynicism>

the freebies were disappointing. they had khong guan cheese crackers and a packet of four roasted chestnuts by way of snacks. my Nokia Cameraphone Torchlight worked only without the cover. my flag was nicely dysfunctional though, they cut it wrongly so the 2:3 ratio is completely off and the stars and crescent are in the centre.

on a more positive note, i think its pretty cool how so many of our top politicians' children insist on being artistically-inclined (and/ or are hopeless at chinese).

you know what?— maybe 1b has a sense of humour, after all.

here, an excerpt of a poem by one of our local poets, which i encountered at apm.
Happy National Day, all!

Propitiations
Gwee Li Sui

Roving down Queen Lizzy's Walk, seeing
the dear Merlion, marble-scaled, spilling
old waters between its jaws.
A stream, circumflex by ban about
a Prometheus, forever drawing out.
Merlion and I live by laws.
The flesh is weak, I said, Merlion!
My saliva wells up and it
can find no avenue —
but I must never spit!
The Merlion cried, My son,
my son, I spit for you!

arts fac arts fac is the best!

2004-08-09T19:38:00.000+08:00

hahahaha mark has anyone ever told u exactly how much shit you're so full of?! you crack me up big time! (:

anyhow yeaa ppl GO for the class outing, unless u simply can't bear the thought of not seeing belle blee and -of course-, i along with you guys! and that's only cos whilst u guys are busy cruising along orchard road basking in the glorious weather and comfort in the knowledge that a hearty meal plus a thought provoking movie will precede a restful night's slumber, complete in the ease of having conquered math and kwok (oh eew!) the trio of us will be cheering out at the top of our worn-out lungs, bouncing off eleven-men pyramids and the mossy track, snacking on marmee as last minute measure before dragging our tortured souls into bed with the nagging reminder of all the work left in that untouched desktop heap.

yup, so if your conscience-s still reign free, go on! go out and make the best use of this well-deserved holiday whilst we slog for the better of your faculty's image! :)

oh yes, and please don't watch collateral.

weekend woes

2004-08-09T16:50:00.000+08:00

hm, for all the parent-enforced 'rest' these days i havent managed to do much. theres always something small (usually familial) going on, and all these little things chop up my time until i have two hours here and another there... which of course i spend on the comp blogstalking and generally doing the inane things i feel uneasy not doing, each time i sit down at it.
the gist of the matter is, im not sure ill go (and im very sorry, mark!) because "i need my rest" and i still have exactly the same amount of homework with significantly less time. duties undischarged, you know.

yes, yes, a boring life. today i am going to the parade, actually (maybe the cameraman will fancy me?)-- this will be the second highlight of my weekend. the first was apm, which i spent trying to look interested, sitting behind the speaker at the school's monstrosity of a laptop. i hope the freebies are good. i like freebies. i like the food. and the face paint is good to muck about with. today i bought quite a lot of clothes, parent-funded. i actually bought a skirt and a top that manages to look frilly although it is merely wrinkly. all in all i am quite satisfied.

i wish i lived around the exciting (read: sleazy) part of town. i have never seen a whorehouse. this is bad for me, because how am i to battle an unknown enemy? on the other hand, if i did live there id have a curfew time of about seven o'clock.

the postal service's such great heights is nice. ok, enough irrelevance for today. some other time, perhaps.

2004-08-09T13:41:00.000+08:00

i was in jalan besar area yesterday afternoon because i was terribly bored, and there is this lovely lovely little road caledl petain road. if you've been reading ura documents you would know that the petain road/tyrwhitt road area is a conservation area. if you're a real singaporean and if you've been living here for a decent ammount of time you wouldn't associate petain road with that; instead you would associate it with the cheapest whores in singapore.now if geylang is british airways first class petain road would be easyjet. anyway, it was absolutely amazing. on one side of the road you've got these absolutely beautiful townhouses, inhabited by yuppies and expats, and the other size a completely empty playground called the somme road playground. it's sunday evening and there's not a single kid at that playground. instead you have two indians, each sitting on seperate benches, both awake, staring at the shophouses housing taoist organisations across somme road. a little further down the road, which was pretty quiet, is this bustling alley. there were just so many men walking in and out of whorehouses. they remind me of ants acutally. you see a few ants walking in a particular direction, and as you head closer you see more ants, and then you see a bloody lot of ants surrounding a dead beetle.

actually i don't really know why i'm posting this, i guess i'm just bored.

hello, world

2004-08-09T00:46:00.000+08:00

does anyone remotely human still check the blog? well, if you are (remotely human that is), this is adressed to you. if you aren't, buzz off (i know you can).

being the patriotic zealots that we are, i know that our national day holdiays are spent in a pensieve mood, reflecting on how everybody (espescially the malaysians) thought we couldn't build a nation, but we did. if we are feeling espescially patriotic, we might even tune in to channel 5 on monday, and watch some dumb civil servants march around the track, and maybe even find out who the camerman fancies. so you're probably quite busy this week. but after you've hung out your flag and tatooed the pledge on your chest, and have fully discharged your responsibilities as the only valuable resource of our country, and are looking for an outlet to release your nationalistic fervour, well then, why not a class outing?

there are several good reasons (to go) for a class outing..

it's a great way to facilitate interaction! really!
since the government gave us a nice 5 day holiday, we might as well do them a favour and stimulate the economy
it reflects our strong class spirit
if you're considering not going, you're probably the only one
then you'll end up stoning (or even worse, mugging) at home (alone), re-reading this post and regretting. sad.
or you'll hear about how fantastic it was, and feel sorry for yourself
you want to watch a movie in town anyway, so you might as well do it with the class
either that or you have a pressing errand to run in town, so you might as well meet up with the class
whatever the case, you might as well go for the class outing

as you probably know, this list is non exhaustive. you probably have several more compelling reasons for you to go for this outing. anyway, here are the details.

venue : Orchard MRT

time : 1500 hours

ok, we havent really decided to plan anything concrete. so what? it'll be fun anyway. there's no doubt that we'll come to an amicable concession.

oh, and you have to tell me whether or not you're going ASAP (immediately after you read this). ben will probably be circulating the message to the class to save me some smses, the kind soul, but your reply is very much appreciated because, well, it'll save me a lot of trouble.

Class Outing

2004-08-06T19:13:00.000+08:00

anyone up for a class outing this national day weekend?

so much

2004-08-06T17:14:00.000+08:00

for national day and outings and all, eh? i hate singing national day songs! they are so daft! i think the snide cynicism of my shirt was lost on, like, everybody. for the vast majority who didnt notice, it said "United Nations: Working for Peace". admittedly, though, a CCCP shirt would have been more blatant.

grr. apm is disgusting. poh~~fun~~-uh-trie and music. so primly smug. grace chua [a local poet, of course] is fantastic, though.

which brings me to music!
the council-veranda band rocked! not the first one. the second. they were better when i saw them practice-- or maybe it was just the drummer. [pause for spectroscopic flight of fancy. mmm.] the song they played was offspring's the kids aren't alright, it was actually a decent approximation, i think, apart from the out-of-tune guitar.

a sampling of songs i have discovered lately and that make me happy!--

the folk implosion - my ritual
the cocteau twins - i wear my ring
fuel - falls on me (i must have been the last to hear this.)
death cab for cutie - lightness
the books - there is no there (the site is so cool!)
the streets - could well be in
the thrills - don't steal our sun
superchunk - pulled muscle
wilco - she's a jar

feels so smug-poseurish to be able to say "i discover my songs" as compared to, say, "i like that ~~maroon 5~~ hoobastank [or whatever plebeian band it is now] song theyre playing on the radio." but no, many are on recommendation. most songs new to me were released years ago, and would have been discovered by others, in which case i look like some uneducated country-bumpkin type. possibly a semi-conscious reason for my particular taste is its stubborn anticonformity. indie is not so much a style as a mentality. "indie follower"-- ironic. i am shallow, after all.

how boring, its a short day, holiday, whatnot, and here i am sitting in front of my comp mulling over the utter lack of excitement in my life.

irrelevant, eh. i just felt like saying something to an audience. :) but then no one ever listens to me.

pluck them,

2004-08-01T21:37:00.000+08:00

those loathesome wrinkles off vectors and throw them into the bin. insipid crooked things.
better yet shred those worksheets page by page...don't you think plain losing them is getting boring? no? still a novelty for some.
obviously Linda Chan trespassed my mind.
terrible girl.

oh something out of curriculum!!! (again? not again?) [applicable only to guys] - should you declare yourself homosexual for NS and subsequently pursue a heteorosexual marriage [nope a man in drag doesnt count] you'd be recalled for formal NS retraining! which doesnt really make sense because
1. why would you want to subject a reformed (PAP speaking) gay to further temptations? communal showers and fallen soap cakes ( of course it's all about the bending over to pick it up ) are a slippery combination. they should be handsomely rewarded in other ways.
2. right to preclude abuse to the system. i'm quite sure Singaporean men would line up in droves to compromise their masculinity for clerical duties. They are not that ingenius.
3. stupid. with technology we probably need more deskbound/clerical jobs than anything else. our nation needs limp wrists, not biceps!
4. I may be wrong myself, so til we get things straight , leave those people in love alone.

*Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday without proper lessons.
let's pretend to celebrate national day in style!!! yesa yes yes yes yes no double GP no PW no math no nothing splendid!
Cleopatra Iris Talk To her O Momento awaits us all and of course, Irreversible for those above 21 years of age. i accept bribes. *wink
The Stepford Wives The Village The House of Flying Daggers too. ahhhhhhhh
let's all drive the economy ahhaa
OR since with lit day we've established our hidden (oh 1B - always shy and modest) culinary skills let's have a picnic at the botanic gardens/sentosa! fly kites? someone mentioned previously.
OR/AND be outrageous and sleepover in school, walk about with glo sticks at 3am and scare the ghosts silly.
an excursion to the zoo with our Siggs around our necks, fingers on our lips, in twos - us and our hands. =) or as proof tt we're more exciting than tt - the Night Safari.

Fine, so we're all homebodies. im sure Jon Yap would appreciate company while catching Saturday Night Live (ahah). We've got to be happening like him!

1B just pick one?
there's no wrong answer =)

*Friday's programme would involve station games/performaces for classes, attendance is compulsory, itinerary ends at 10.30am.

date.

2004-08-01T01:32:00.000+08:00

likely it can be taken to court, seeing how the government has a habit of poking its sneaky nose into generally-agreed-to-be-mature adults' private sex lives.

death cab for cutie is lovely. thats a band, incidentally.

why twentyfirst?

2004-08-01T01:21:00.000+08:00

catch us on ifg opening, when we'd be (i hope) presentable! (:
ahh confirmation; wib ends on wed. ticket availability very low. only $80 tickets available, and the tues night $68 tickets' availability is 'limited'.
cutting music isn't exciting... it's frustrating!! but i'm getting better at it. Ha! Ha at technology. i shall prevail.

marriage and sex- if the woman won't give her husband sex, can he take her to court? is 'irreconcilable differences' applicable in this case for a divorce? haa, strange things run through my head. and it's not even that interesting a question.
is there a relationship between a hub as in a regional 'whatever' hub, and a hubcap?
and most importantly, why are there only moths and plain yellow butterflies around here!!

this is what stupid boomdynamite!squealsquealgoteamyeah music does to you.. o_O

ps: i suspect we have all been semiconsciously avoiding you, bao

twentyfirst

2004-07-31T21:49:00.000+08:00

it is? oh well. we'll know on monday.

hahahaaa i didnt intend to chop anything! in the first place it was an excerpt, but then i forgot a lot of lines. did you see me thinking? someone told me he could tell. oh dear.

aye people only start coming when litday's over, eh...

ooh i want to watch you cheerlead/ practice! and i didnt know you could cut tracks. exciting!

im bored. so few people online!

what's sowden want for econs again?

blahhhdiblahh

2004-07-31T21:27:00.000+08:00

hello!!
firstly, what happened to the tagboard?
this is all i have to say: isn't wib ending nxt wed? thought it was. eep.
that said, since there's no tagboard and this is an entry i'm forced to say something more. (what logic).

ahh anyway i need somewhere to VENT. trying to cut cheerleading music (insert cherubic face) for our dearest arts fac and it's REALLY frustrating. trying to get the minutest bittiest second down pat's near-impossible! but thank god only 'near'. if the music comes out all garbled blame goldwave not me.

lit day: thanks bao! pozzo was certainly made for you. just read act one of waiting for godot and realised why the commands you were issuing were so random... that's a LOT of dialogue you chopped off.
hongwee: your scissors! have i returned them..?
mark: the fried apples and onions thing was damned good you leaning-on-contradiction-er!

haa i guess i did have more to say..

w i b

2004-07-31T20:14:00.000+08:00

alright, since feli asked and claud raved, if any of you want to go for woman in black (apparently very good), leave a tag or tell me on mon and ill try to figure something out.
i dont know very much but (everything according to claud) its $80 seats for $45, over the next five days or so. or something.

and on lit day, thank-you-very-much to all you sweet and helpful people. thank goodness its over.

post-lit day

2004-07-31T09:27:00.000+08:00

in response to b.'s accusal that i have not contributed to this blog, tadah! she sayeth much truth actually, when did the background change?? oops. :/ i kinda like the picture but not the blue bg ah but my attendance is too scanty to deserve a request for change!

anyway, thanks bao for the work gone into Lit Day prep. your skit was certainly impressive- our class enthusiasm level with regards to lit-related stuff isnt really high is it? i thought the poor person u were dragging around on stage was shirin! (hahah shirin u ought to be flattered we thought u could act! jk..)

yay yesterday went really well what with chocolart our class' delicacies -despite popular belief the potent fried onion and apple combination wasnt poisonous!- it was a good afternoon.

so people what are yr comments on chocolart? it's free but you people have to pay house funds :/ (considering all of chocolart was sponsored by last year's batch's money..its your turn now) heh alright? yes. u dont have a choice really. $5 next week, will make another tedious announcement. and what's the buzz abt our class watching woman in black? any idea if the school's sponsoring.. apparently its next friday but doubt they have any seats left. who has the vast capability and resources to find out.?

_{-psst. bao i think they're calling you.}thanks a million

liddeh

2004-07-26T21:22:00.000+08:00

Noticeboard:
In your groups, produce

summary of book (1 pg)
excerpts, preferably critical to book or relevant to theme (at least 1 pg)
discussion of themes, focus on dysfunctional love (at least 1 pg)

By pages I mean A4 size, with generous margins (top and bottom 1.5", sides 1.4") and font size 14, which is not much. Use a standard font throughout your section, I'm not particular what as long as it's not one of those fancy illegible ones. Print on white paper and give to me latest by Friday recess. Also print a list of your sources (font size 10), internet or otherwise. This is to permit you to plagiarise without guilt.

Try and read the book you have been assigned, or at least some introduction. There are no more in the school library. Here are the full texts of Sons and Lovers and 1984.

Food:
For various reasons we can no longer do the Hot Coal/ Marshmallow thing. Hence, we will produce Salsa Di Pomodori, from Jeanette Winterson's The PowerBook, and/ or Fried Apples and Onions, from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy. They are simple recipes and really do sound very good, but someone must do the cooking. Please volunteer your services.

Fancy Dress:
Once again, we (that is, probably I and some ~~unfortunate victim~~ kind helper) will be playing Pozzo and Lucky, with an excerpt from Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot (with audio, on this link). A few helpful people have agreed to supply costumes and props:

Bernasty— floppy hat, rope, whip and trenchcoat
Chong— bowler hat or similar
Bernice— vest

If anybody wants to play either of these roles tell me ASAP. It's great fun.

salsa

2004-07-26T20:41:00.000+08:00

Salsa Di Pomodori

Take a dozen plum tomatoes and slice them lengthways as though they were your enemy. Fasten them into a lidded pot and heat for ten minutes.

Chop an onion without tears.
Dice a carrot without regret.
Shard a celery stick as though its flutes and grooves were the indentations of your past.

Add to the tomatoes and cook unlidded for as long as it takes them to yield.

Throw in salt, pepper and a twist of sugar.

Pound the lot through a sieve or a mouli or a blender.
Remember — they are the vegetables, you are the cook.
Return to a soft flame and lubricate with olive oil. Add a spoonful at a time, stirring like an old witch, until you achieve the right balance of slippery firmness.

Serve on top of fresh spaghetti. Cover with rough new parmesan and cut basil. Raw emotion can be added now.

Serve. Eat. Reflect.

— Jeanette Winterson, The PowerBook

more litday

2004-07-22T19:32:00.000+08:00

Noticeboard Groupings:

1984	Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit	The God Of Small Things	Sons and Lovers	Lolita
Hong Wee Benuel Chun Yee John	Shirin Bernasty Annabelle Bernice	Yang Wei Chong Lin Hannah Becky	Andrea Yvonne Matthias	Jonathan Zhong Xing Felicia Mark

If you really want to do another book, swap with someone and tell me.
Again, what you must do:

short summary
relevant/ interesting excerpts
discussion of core themes and ideas, in particular
exploration of theme of taboo love

Food:

From the vote taken on paper, coal has one vote, the rest have none. Since i like coal too, that is what we will do. We (I) can provide foil to transport your personal Hot Coal. To permit non-suicidal people to partake of the festivites, marshmallows will be provided. They may be heated over the abovementioned Hot Coal.

Here are the literary references:

Julius Caesar, Shakespeare		Marcus Brutus, Plutarch
Brutus O Cassius, I am sick of many griefs. Cassius Of your philosophy you make no use, If you give place to accidental evils. Brutus No man bears sorrow better. Portia is dead. Cassius Ha! Portia! Brutus She is dead. Cassius How 'scaped I killing when I cross'd you so? O insupportable and touching loss! Upon what sickness? Brutus Impatient of my absence, And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony Have made themselves so strong:--for with her death That tidings came;--with this she fell distract, And, her attendants absent, swallow'd fire. Cassius And died so? Brutus Even so.	Messala Had you your letters from your wife, my lord? Brutus No, Messala. Messala Nor nothing in your letters writ of her? Brutus Nothing, Messala. Messala That, methinks, is strange. Brutus Why ask you? hear you aught of her in yours? Messala No, my lord. Brutus Now, as you are a Roman, tell me true. Messala Then like a Roman bear the truth I tell: For certain she is dead, and by strange manner. Brutus Why, farewell, Portia. We must die, Messala: With meditating that she must die once, I have the patience to endure it now. Messala Even so great men great losses should endure.	In the meanwhile, there came one in haste from Brutus's house and brought him news that his wife was dying. For Porcia, being extremely disturbed with expectation of the event, and not able to bear the greatness of her anxiety, could scarce keep herself within doors; and at every little noise or voice she heard, starting up suddenly, like those possessed with the bacchic frenzy, she asked every one that came in from the forum what Brutus was doing, and sent one messenger after another to inquire. At last, after long expectation and waiting, the strength of her constitution could hold out no longer; her mind was overcome with her doubts and fears, and she lost the control of herself, and began to faint away. She had not time to betake herself to her chamber, but, sitting as she was amongst her women, a sudden swoon and a great stupor seized her, and her colour changed, and her speech was quite lost. At this sight her women made a loud cry, and many of the neighbours running to Brutus's door to know what was the matter, the report was soon spread abroad that Porcia was dead; though with her women's help she recovered in a little while, and came to herself again. When Brutus received this news, he was extremely troubled, not without reason, yet was not so carried away by his private grief as to quit his public purpose. Brutus's dead body was found by Antony, who commanded the richest purple mantle that he had to be thrown over it, and afterwards the mantle being stolen, he found the thief, and had him put to death. He sent the ashes of Brutus to his mother Servilia. As for Porcia his wife, Nicolaus the philosopher and Valerius Maximus write, that, being desirous to die, but being hindered by her friends, who continually watched her, she snatched some burning charcoal out of the fire, and, shutting it close in her mouth, stifled herself, and died. Though there is a letter current from Brutus to his friends, in which he laments the death of Porcia, and accuses them for neglecting her so that she desired to die rather than languish with her disease. So that it seems Nicolaus was mistaken in the time; for this epistle (if it indeed is authentic, and truly Brutus's) gives us to understand the malady and love of Porcia, and the way in which her death occurred.
An Unfinished Story, O Henry
He could look at a shop-girl and tell you to an hour how long it had been since she had eaten anything more nourishing than marshmallows and tea.

Fancy Dress Pair:

Suggestions so far (mostly mine):

Legolas and Gimli
Merry and Pippin
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (Cervantes' Don Quixote)
Socrates and Plato (Plato's Republic)
Nagg and Nell (Samuel Beckett's Endgame)
Pozzo and Lucky (Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot)

Beckett struck me as quirkily amusing, in a Pinter-parodyesque way. Two strange characters engaging in bafflingly random dialogue. Don't bother trying to understand it. Nagg and Nell live in "ash bins". Pozzo and Lucky: some guy and a servant.

POZZO:
(with magnanimous gesture). Let's say no more about it. (He jerks the rope.) Up pig! (Pause.) Every time he drops he falls asleep. (Jerks the rope.) Up hog! (Noise of Lucky getting up and picking up his baggage. Pozzo jerks the rope.) Back! (Enter Lucky backwards.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Turn! (Lucky turns. To Vladimir and Estragon, affably.) Gentlemen, I am happy to have met you. (Before their incredulous expression.) Yes yes, sincerely happy. (He jerks the rope.) Closer! (Lucky advances.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Yes, the road seems long when one journeys all alone for . . . (he consults his watch) . . . yes . . . (he calculates) . . . yes, six hours, that's right, six hours on end, and never a soul in sight. (To Lucky.) Coat! (Lucky puts down the bag, advances, gives the coat, goes back to his place, takes up the bag.) Hold that! (Pozzo holds out the whip. Lucky advances and, both his hands being occupied, takes the whip in his mouth, then goes back to his place. Pozzo begins to put on his coat, stops.) Coat! (Lucky puts down the bag, basket and stool, helps Pozzo on with his coat, goes back to his place and takes up bag, basket and stool.) Touch of autumn in the air this evening. (Pozzo finishes buttoning up his coat, stoops, inspects himself, straightens up.) Whip! (Lucky advances, stoops, Pozzo snatches the whip from his mouth, Lucky goes back to his place.) Yes, gentlemen, I cannot go for long without the society of my likes (he puts on his glasses and looks at the two likes) even when the likeness is an imperfect one. (He takes off his glasses.) Stool! (Lucky puts down bag and basket, advances, opens stool, puts it down, goes back to his place, takes up bag and basket.) Closer! (Lucky puts down bag and basket, advances, moves stool, goes back to his place, takes up bag and basket. Pozzo sits down, places the butt of his whip against Lucky's chest and pushes.) Back! (Lucky takes a step back.) Further! (Lucky takes another step back.) Stop! (Lucky stops. To Vladimir and Estragon.) That is why, with your permission, I propose to dally with you a moment, before I venture any further. Basket! (Lucky advances, gives the basket, goes back to his place.) The fresh air stimulates the jaded appetite. (He opens the basket, takes out a piece of chicken and a bottle of wine.) Basket! (Lucky advances, picks up the basket and goes back to his place.) Further! (Lucky takes a step back.) He stinks. Happy days!
He drinks from the bottle, puts it down and begins to eat. Silence.

Unless someone vetoes me, or you people decide to vote, this shall be it, because it amuses me so. I will be Pozzo. :)

I get the feeling no one ever listens to me on Lit Day, but nevermind. This is for reference. I am at peace with the world.

digest

2004-07-17T23:58:00.000+08:00

1) Noticeboard
as agreed, our board will be on the topic of Dysfunctional Love.
"dysfunctional": Abnormal or impaired functioning, especially of a bodily system or social group.
again, here are some books that could be discussed:

vladimir nabokov's lolita
mary gaitskill's secretary
d h lawrence's sons and lovers
arundhati roy's the god of small things
george orwell's 1984
jeanette winterson's oranges are not the only fruit

i think this is a pretty good selection of books, not just in terms of kinds of love but also different periods, cultural contexts etc. here's a run down to pique your interest.

Lolita
the story of a perverted paedophile (Humbert Humbert) and the object of his obsession, as we all know. erotic and humourous, but never pornographic. deeper than that, it contrasts "old europe and new america". or something.

I gently caressed her hair, and we gently kissed. Her kiss, to my delirious embarrassment, had some rather comical refinements of flutter and probe which made me conclude she had been coached at an early age by a little Lesbian. No Charlie boy could have taught her that.

To think that between a Hamburger and a Humburger, she would— invariably, with icy precision— plump for the former.

Secretary

haven't read this one, but have watched the movie. its good stuff. about a self-mutilator with an alcoholic father, who takes on a job as a secretary for this guy with a penchant for punishment (others'). modern workplace sadomasochism-- uncommon, but who's to say that's not right? from the movie:

"You scored higher than anyone I've ever interviewed. You're really overqualified for the job. You'd be bored to death."
"I wanna be bored."
...
"It's very dull work."
"I like dull work."

Sons and Lovers
no incest here. a son is unable to be close to women except sexually, because his soul is sold to his mother, so to speak. oedipal complex. 1900s working class setting.

He had come back to his mother. Hers was the strongest tie in his life. When he thought round, Miriam shrank away. There was a vague, unreal feel about her. And nobody else mattered. There was one place in the world that stood solid and did not melt into unreality: the place where his mother was. Everybody else could grow shadowy, almost non-existent to him, but she could not. It was as if the pivot and pole of his life, from which he could not escape, was his mother.

And in the same way she waited for him. In him was established her life now. After all, the life beyond offered very little to Mrs Morel. She saw that our chance for doing is here, and doing counted with her. Paul was going to prove that she had been right; he was going to make a man whom nothing should shift off his feet; he was going to alter the face of the earth in some way which mattered. Wherever he went she felt her soul went with him. Whatever he did she felt her soul stood by him, ready, as it were, to hand him his tools. She could not bear it when he was with Miriam. William was dead. She would fight to keep Paul.

And he came back to her. And in his soul was a feeling of the satisfaction of self-sacrifice because he was faithful to her. She loved him first; he loved her first. And yet it was not enough. His new young life, so strong and imperious, was urged towards something else. It made him mad with restlessness. She saw this, and wished bitterly that Miriam had been a woman who could take this new life of his, and leave her the roots. He fought against his mother almost as he fought against Miriam.

The God Of Small Things
set in india. the love part: a woman falls in love with a man of a lower caste. shes older too, i think. taboos, the "Love Laws". great writing.

They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.

1984
we've all heard of this portrayal of a dystopian future. there is love and sex too: sex as rebellion, sex as power. the nature of love.

... you could not have pure lust or pure love nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.

'By itself,' he said, 'pain is not always enough. There are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death. But for everyone there is something unendurable -- something that cannot be contemplated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come up from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with air. It is merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed. It is the same with the rats. For you, they are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you cannot withstand, even if you wished to. You will do what is required of you.
...
The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then -- no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just one person to whom he could transfer his punishment -- one body that he could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.

'Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!'

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

girl from religious family falls in love with another girl. semi-autobiographical, "tender and funny".

...I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never the destroyed. That is why they are unfit for romantic love. There are exceptions and I hope they are happy.

well, so much for my book samplers.
i was thinking we could divide the class into pairs or groups or something, and each picks a book to do a short summary on and an exploration of the core themes and ideas, in particular love. we could include biograpies, central excerpts, pictures blah blah blah. im not sure about youall, but i think its very interesting!

please, please reply, what you think of the books, if you dont want to do a particular book, if you want to do another one, what else we can do for a more innovative board, etc...

2) Other things to decide

namely, the food fest book and food and the fancy dress thing book and pair. suggestions, please!!

ahh. you can tell im getting tired, everything's getting shorter. hope youve at least enjoyed this Literary Digest.

Think About It.

noticeboard

2004-07-12T22:21:00.000+08:00

Pay Attention To Me.
We are doing the topic of DYSFUNCTIONAL LOVE for the noticeboard.
we might have to define this. romantic love, or relationships in general?
shall we focus on novels/ prose?
i have a few books so far, some mine, some, well, not:

vladimir nabokov's lolita
mary gaitskill's secretary
d h lawrence's sons and lovers
arundhati roy's the god of small things
george orwell's 1984
jeanette winterson's oranges are not the only fruit

any more? lets just do a short writeup on each covering the main theme, issues, link etc.
volunteers? or shall i Delegate? (ominous, eh.)

next, we must decide on food and pair.
for food jon suggests coal. you know, julius caesar, portia, coal? yeah. (whatever.)

i suspect blog not most efficient way of disseminating information.

tada / Lit Day

2004-07-11T17:43:00.000+08:00

new template! again! theres an annoying bug though, if you look carefully the sidebar is 1px wider where there is text. that is, where the actual sidebar content ends, theres a little 1px 'jump'. dont look too carefully.

official information on litday (and some):

1) oh whoops. did anyone want to go for Pinter's The Caretaker? because you were supposed to sign up by 9th July. but if anyone did order, bring $10 on Monday!

2) If you are interested in the SRT production of The Woman In Black read the Eng Dept noticeboard. $60 matinee tickets at $40. not sure if can use edusave. highly recommended by Mrs Perry.

3) Lit Day Programme
2.30pm: classes end
3.00: be in LT1, RP SYF performance
3.45: Fancy Dress Parade
4.45: Presentation of Lit Trip, judging, setting up of Food Fest
5.00: Food Fest in canteen
5.45: Clean-up
Films may be screened throughout the week.
There will be a Literary Quiz throughout the day with a box to submit answers.

4) Static Display
DECIDE ON TOPIC BY 12th
(oh [expletive] i am screwed. we will discuss this on monday itself since the blog is unresponsive. :x) topics children's literature and absurd theatre are taken. <propaganda>there will be a prize for best display. we may do stuff relevant to s paper etc to make this a relevant and enriching experience. </propaganda>

5) Fancy Dress Parade
decide on pair by Friday. must be dressed appropriately and prepared to speak a few lines in character. will be judged. be imaginative though decent. striptease explicitly prohibited.

6) Food Fest
each class to provide a plate of food/ tidbits of a 'literary nature' and a placard explaining the connection. table (in canteen) to be manned in rotation, everybody to have chance to eat. Literary Music will be played.

7) Lit Trip people i suppose you know you have to put up a presentation.

8) Notes to Self
- pay for caretaker tickets.
- decide on board topic and fill in engdept board chart, by mon
- decide on pair and fill in engdept board chart, by fri
- photocopy or original of book for display
- decide on food
- roster food/ various duties?
- check engdept board for additional duties
- move boards to side after litday proper
- ask mrs perry for request to be let off class early?
isnt it terrible, all the things i have to do! ;p

my own Bigger tagboard.

2004-07-11T15:22:00.000+08:00

Post-Spidermanism

how delightful it is to arrive to voiced concerns regarding my keen sense of observation (Booth) and my even keener xray vision (everything but Booth). haha oops? anyhow it's merely pointed out to me by a friend who's summary of Spiderman 2 was accurately succinct " it's just Kirsten Dunst without a bra " there you go, insightful company i've got *grin. and notice how is has been only the girls who seem to have missed out on tt 2 critical scenes. haha insert Silas Marner into the set - imagine what he'd have missed (alongside the rest of you) and consequences of embracing all things glaring and gold ... (balls of fire).

Besides, i'm merely focusing on real actors as opposed to Dr Oct with his 8 slender limbs or Spidey dearest who's second skin threatens to "ride up his crotch" (hmm then again haah) and hey isn't it ironic tt Spidey's battling an 8 legged freak himself? *randomness. and i thought the sleekest bit of the movie lies in Tobey McGuire's glasses. absolutely smashing.

clarification of dates

Cheerleading Aud 13th/14th July
Lit Day 30th July ( with Chocolart )
IFG commences 1st Aug
IFG ends 19th Aug
RP Production 20th / 21st Aug

on cheerleading do come down for auditions it's innocuous fun (attn: jon yap) and since Annabelle's going down, our other CT rep should too (attn: mark tan). haha (attn: chonglin / shirin) at this rate some of the external funds collected from the auditions alone cld go to our class treasury, rp treasury and if there's more... our pockets. what noble priorities! *grin
moral of the story : corrupt officials are scary. corrupt officials who can't do math are scariest.

RMUN-ed

it was initially (and still is) a pain in the ... feet, but well unless you're not holing up at the ITRR playing online yahoo pool (attn: Mark Tan) it was an unexpectedly rewarding experience. and ACS(I) is very quotable.

on homosexuality : "since homosexuality has been in opur society for so long, we should debate about it right now and not leave it dangling there "

on well, indecency : "man with hands in his pockets feels cocky."

and everyone thought Chonglin's infamous "i figured if i fingered you long enough you'd come" pick up line was bad. haha i know, i just had to post that online!!! *smirk

Literature Day

for board display - why don't we try exemplifying how literary devices are emplyed in song lyrics themselves, from Don McClean's Vincent , to some Eminem's rap or sth. no harm trying? we might just unearth some surprises.

ahah costumes alice in wonderland!!! we can be poker-cards donning freaks

lalalalalala anything to keep me from the state of moribund.

litday

2004-07-08T22:48:00.000+08:00

good morning people. we must really do something about lit day. its on the 30th of this month.

first off, let's settle the display board. ideas?

next, our two costumed characters.

please reply! settle by wednesday! then we can delegate work (or rather, i can) and start being productive. because lit is a good thing to be productive in.

The Benefits of RMUNC

2004-07-07T18:32:00.000+08:00

it's not all bad, really, spending.. what.. 10 hours slacking in an obscure room (itrr - don't rat on me), clearing the 167,000,000,000 mails that somehow managed to clutter the mailbox simply because yahoo increased storage capacity by 25 times. somehow, i don't get the feeling that it's an entirely good thing. i mean, after reading the 289037th email from sowden about "ASDA - Price Chum?" AFTER the common test, the next few million just went straight to the bin.

and of course, i'll be back on saturday too, helping to facilitate discussions by passing inane messages between the delegates (which is essentially a self-inflating name for a bunch of snotty secondary school kids) representing different countries, whilst they debate on and on and on about the same 'issue'. if this conference is anything to go by, the real UN conferences must be hell - after all, this is only a small scale replication with a 100+ school children, who aren't even real ambassadors representing legitimate interests. little wonder the league of nations failed.

i get 1 enrichment point for this. hooray.

thom

2004-07-06T01:46:00.000+08:00

whoo. isnt thom yorke cool. in, like, a really dysfunctional way. look, we can have a thom yorke head as a cursor. i like dysfunctionality. its a good idea, seeing as we are on such familiar terms. our class doesnt have a clock. we should have a dragon joss-stick metal-weights string alarm clock. i think ill hand in half of an essay, and hope he doesnt read it. ill print it in small font and blue ink and say i was running out. no wait, i have no blue ink.

re: Class Outing

2004-07-04T18:21:00.000+08:00

Ok. These are the confirmed details for the class Outing. Chonglin wrote it down somewhere below but i'll put it up anyway.

Movie
Time: 2100
Meeting: 2045
Venue: Lido, Theatre 2
Tickets: $6.50

Dinner
Time: 1900
Meeting: Orchard MRT
Budget: 15

Try to come down for the dinner first because well it's important that you do. Bring cameras cos it's an occasion that calls for memory.

bernasty

2004-07-04T17:49:00.000+08:00

i am going to come after your blood! you have tainted my template with impure html!!! -- that is, until i do some massive damage control...

the charges are as follows: using html instead of css for formatting, using deprecated tags (what the [ah] pig is marquee??), not putting values in quotation marks, not closing tags and therefore formatting the rest of the page.

you be thankful youre away across the island and that the damage is reversible. though i dont know what to do with the illegal marquee.

cursor!

2004-07-04T17:41:00.000+08:00

ahaha i am so tickled check out the cursor! css rocks! its a radiohead icon by the way, courtesy of green plastic.

IllegalGathering

2004-07-04T16:59:00.000+08:00

fickle aren't we, with layouts. haha if only this collective sovereignty were extended, i'm pretty sure Kwok would be -quite- out of job. *grin. or perhaps LaoShi too, if the 6-block-per-weekly-bilingual classmates get their way (you would, because the rest of us'd scream "wo men hui yong yuan zhi chi ni de!!!" how incredibly out of context ahahaha and oh, neon placards sold separately.

first step to class spirit : make history. make certain teachers history. hah.

ah yes yes sparklers in the middle of town sounds very promising why dont we all head for Chijmes to catch the Euro-2004 finals thereafter? Bobby Rubinos (it serves alcohol besides steak) can't give a hoot about age limits so it'll more or less work out!
have got to treasure every precious hour before econs lecture on tuesday and benuel new lectures notes please and chonglin is the treasury (how misleadingly grand) still experiencing deficit? it's unexpectedly blissful to be caught up in the routine once more. strange.

to chonglin: your take on post-exam euphoria segues so neatly into your beliefs as scribbled on the Mandarin Hotel paper at UN Sem... i'd churn out a reply right now.

IMPORTANT!!

2004-07-04T16:04:00.000+08:00

hey all... alright these are the details of the movie outing we'll be having tmr, monday 5th july:

- the movie is at 9PM, at LIDO theatre 2. to those of you with curfews, SO SORRY for the late timing but the only other evening time which is 6.30 had quite quite lousy seats.. so the show will probably end at say..11?

- let's meet for dinner before that!! alright, so for those of u who can make it to dinner, meet at ORCHARD MRT at 7.30PM okay... and do try to think of possible places for dinner yea...btw we'll be doing something MEANINGFUL before the show, so do try to turn up at 7.30 if your -busy- schedule allows k! :]

- as for those of you who can't make it for the dinner, meet the rest outside the theatre at 8:45 k... and by 8.45 i think i mean 8.45-very-latest-9 yea!

okie dokes, so see ya all at orchard mrt/lido tmr evening!!

oh yes, and everyone brings twenty bucks on tues to pay for this and other stuff as well k..*groan and moans along with the rest of u* tata!

yes ben.

2004-07-04T14:23:00.001+08:00

new old layout. heh i seem to like girls (on templates). good on smaller res'. displays with too many scrollbars on netscape. aiyah whatever. ;p

template

2004-07-04T01:00:00.000+08:00

hey can we have a maria sharapova template please? sharapova is amazing! and what legs. and she's got that cute up-turned nose which i just so absolutely dig.

spidey

2004-07-03T23:12:00.000+08:00

hey all! i was just thinking that we could play with sparklers in the middle of orchard after watching spiderman! instead of being boring and sitting around wondering what to do. okayokay?