Took advantage of today's so-called 'half-day' holiday to settle PS stuff and catch up on sleep. Originally intended to catch up on homework as well but PW and PS intervened and demanded my attention. For stress relief, my sister convinced me to watch 2 more episodes of 'Fruits Basket' over dinner. Gah. That series, I swear, is even more candy-flossy (i.e. fluffy and unbearably, sickeningly sugary) than CCS. It beats CCS for pure fluff shoujo-ness; I don't know why we are still downloading that thing. Maybe we watch it just so that we can roll our eyes and groan everytime the screen gets invaded by fluffy pink bubbles...
I've made an estimate. More than 9 GB of data have been downloaded into our computer over the past month. My, we certainly have been maximising utility on our new broadband connection. But of course, the satisfaction of old wants has only led to the creation of new wants; it's amazing how much time I can waste on the internet. Now that I can download mp3s in a few minutes (a far cry from the bad old 56K days), I've begun downloading entire video files, which typically take a few hours, so in the end there are no net time savings. (Did I just make a bad pun? I think I did.)
My goodness. Alertness brought on by sufficient sleep feels good. I daresay that'd all change by tomorrow, though.
Eeks. Tomorrow. I'll be missing Bio lecture on photosynthesis (among other lessons) because of some TCHS board of directors investititure... argh. Dare I say, waste of time? No choice really. Price to pay for leaching off school money.
words were spilled on Thursday, July 31, 2003
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Sunday, July 27, 2003
Eyes hurt from too many hours of staring at the screen. Patience worn thin by a Pentium IV-equipped computer that seems to insist on single-handedly disproving Moore's Law. Fricking browsers are being yet again uncooperative.
And I haven't finished my Econs essay outlines which are due on Tuesday. Now, I don't suppose *that* can be considered 'suicidal', because strictly speaking, 'suicide' is defined as the act of intentionally ending one's own life. There must be a deathwish involved, and procrastinating on schoolwork, while supremely unwise, doesn't qualify as a deathwish, I should think. How about 'masochistic'? (no, not in *that* sense of the word) Or I could simply put it down to poor time management. *tsk tsk*
Spent a happy afternoon at Causeway Point having lunch with my dad and generally shopping around. My usual haunts: Popular, Music Junction, Comics Connection. The last one was particularly interesting. My eagle-eyed sister managed to spot an extremely rare and ancient CLAMP manga I never thought I'd see in Singapore. Unfortunately, it's out of print and mostly out-of-stock, as we discovered after quite some time of rummaging through the shop, behaving like a pair of demented fangirls (which we are, in any case :) In the process, we made a few more interesting discoveries. Let's just say... I really wonder if the censorship board monitors all manga imports, or is it just the stuff that goes to Kinokuniya?
words were spilled on Sunday, July 27, 2003
My goodness, HTML is fun. As you have probably noticed, I've tweaked my layout, so now it's no longer in tasteless shades of bright blue. /gives someone a significant glance/
In fact, it's downright addictive. Code-'borrowing', looking up hexadecimal codes, trying to figure out from scratch what each portion of CompSpeak in the template window codes for... I could experiment forever. The only major gripe I have with my new layout: it doesn't display well in Netscape *at all*. Netscape completely screws it up even though I've tried my best. Such a headache... my IE browser hangs my computer everytime I try to open more than one window, so I've to rely on Netscape which is... bleah.
Oh, acknowledgements are also due for my little sister, who slacked off together with me as we tried to figure out HTML coding. Thank you so much!
Somewhere at the back of my head, someone's screaming about untouched homework. /shrugs/ Wonder who that is.
words were spilled on Sunday, July 27, 2003
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Saturday, July 26, 2003
obsessive compulsive
Which Personality Disorder Do You Have?
brought to you by Quizilla
What a surprise, indeed.
Sometimes I wonder what people really think of me. This afternoon I was told that one of my classmates found me a 'nice' person to talk to. I responded with incredulity, 'cos I've always thought of myself as something of a failure of a conversationalist. And... I'm not essentially 'nice', in my opinion. I'm self-centred, not prone to displays of love, affection, care or concern, and this is something that I've always regretted. (Sometimes I suspect that I'm emotionally deficient. Double-edged personal survival tactics and all... life has too many ironies to mention.) So it was a pleasant surprise to hear that bit of feedback today. It's always nice to know that you're not being as irksome as you fear.
/damn... I WILL not whine, I WILL not whine.../
(to Judith: your fault for planting that idea in my head, now I anxiously scan every line I've typed so that it won't sound too indulgently angsty. Hey, I didn't think it was all that bad, you know. I'm fully aware that this is a public blog.)
Finally got down to reading Judith's blog after approx. 1 week. (sorry... I know I said 'daily dose of intellectualism':-) Interesting, you think corpses aren't scary? That's because the mortician did a good job. I think the normal corpses you see in coffins are scary in the understated-horror sort of way. I speak from personal experience at my grandfather's funeral this year. It was unsettling (but I shan't touch on how much of that was due to me being disturbed with myself). The comparison to wax figures could be made, but what struck me most was the way I finally managed to notice all the details of the skin, spots and blemishes, the wrinkles, the way the closed eyelids bulge from the pressure of the eyes beneath them... details that I never really picked up on while my grandfather was still alive. In life, there are other things about the person that distract you from their physical characteristics. When the person's gone... you can't help but pay more attention to the physical shell. That is, if you're morbid like me.
I wish I could blog further, but my sister is yelling at me for our daily anime-cum-dinner session. We're going to finish 'Chobits' tonight, last 2 episodes. How sad.
words were spilled on Saturday, July 26, 2003
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Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Therefore, it saddens me whenever I lose any of them. Like today, for example. I used to treat Biology as an interest (apart from the mandatory exam mugging, of course). Naturally there are things within the syllabus that any student has to know, but I took pleasure in reading up on my own. Now that Bio Olympiad training has taken that prerogative out of my hands, it seems that what had once been an interest has become something of a chore. On my way home, I started dry-retching thinking about the sheer volume of material to be memorised by end October this year. No matter what people may say, my memory's very, very far from photographic. No, in fact, it's bloody short-term. It's bad, bad, bad.
Went home with Sheila and talked more than I had for the entire schoolday. She doesn't mind me (at least, I *hope* so) when I relapse into uninhibited nasty-person mode-- the result of a fortuitous combination of familiarity and distance. Awkward repression is the rule most of the time, so a majority of my acquaintances consider me distant and about as approachable as an iceberg (twice as cold, too, I should think). Damn. I should really get to work on my interpersonal skills.
words were spilled on Tuesday, July 22, 2003
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Friday, July 18, 2003
Am now staring at the 3 books I borrowed from the school library this afternoon. What lovely cheerful titles. One is on suicide and another deals with schizophrenia. [The third book is somewhat healthier, I suppose. 'Ethics' in preparation for GP. Yes, I mug even as I read for pleasure.] (Mental illnesses make for pleasant reading, don't they?) Psychiatric analysis is confusing as hell but fascinating nonetheless, in large part because it seems insanely complicated and nearly impossible. It makes my head spin. But that's me speaking. I'm a borderline obsessive-compulsive who likes her world neat, orderly and clearly-defined, and who is uncomfortable with ambiguity and messy emotional what-nots. Still, it's a distinctly disturbing experience reading, in detail, about the road to the 'disintegration of self'. You start detecting mildly psychotic tendencies within yourself. There's something unsettling about being able to see some sort of warped sense in madness.
But of course, this doesn't equate insanity. Not while you can still keep those tendencies under control.
On a separate note:
This may sound incredible, but I think Hwa Chong life has made me a more positive person than I was before. Unglaublich.
words were spilled on Friday, July 18, 2003
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Thursday, July 17, 2003
I've gone and linked to Jean and Judith /hooray/ but I'm feeling kind of insecure (again) about progressing further and making this blog known to more people. Especially since I haven't quite made up my mind about what exactly to post on this blog.
Does that sound stupid? It feels as though every step is painfully self-conscious; I'm quite aware of the damaging effects of posting overly personal details or revealing too much to too many people. Or, of embarrassing myself in ways I'm not aware of until it's too late. Alternatively, I could choose to go annoyingly cryptic and confuse the heck out of everyone. /smiles/
Oh, but then what would be the point. I'd always have somewhere more private to stow that kind of stuff, some document that will most assuredly never see the light of day while I'm still alive (not that I'd suggest to anyone that it's a situation to rectify :) and susceptible to humiliation.
Why do people keep blogs? Why do people read blogs? Everyone has his or her own reasons for doing so, I suppose.
In my case, I was introduced to the world of blogging not by my friends, but, strangely enough, by a bunch of total strangers who don't even know I exist. (I am, for those who'd understand, referring to an exclusive and eccentric little subculture known as Rabid Anime Fangirlism ^^;;) Oh of course, I had long since known that there was such a thing as a 'blog' or 'online journal', but the concept didn't really interest me until I discovered that blogs and livejournals were a wonderful sources of interesting raves and rants and furthermore, a great form of vicarious social interaction. Yes, I'm serious. In fact, I probably know more about these crazy fangirls (or women, in most cases) than I do about some of my classmates. And I can relate better to them too, in a funny sort of way, even though they hail from places as far-flung as the US and Finland. Confession: I read blogs primarily for the thrill of voyeurism and because I'm bad at learning more about people through direct interaction. I have a dysfunctional social life.
Actually, even after I officially (and regularly) started reading other people's blogs, I continued to resist the idea of starting my own, because I already do this sort of thing on a regular basis privately. (Staying up late at night in the process and sacrificing sleep and homework, but never you mind) And besides, I wasn't too sure anyone would be very much interested in reading what I had to say. But... blogs are such personalised things, aren't they? Concepts of 'what a blog should be like' vary from person to person, and who's to say who's wrong, really?
So... /shrugs/ due to that and some thrill of novelty, here I am. Taking time off from tutorials as usual.
By the way, is anyone curious about who Banscylla is? She's me, but not quite...
words were spilled on Thursday, July 17, 2003
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Tuesday, July 15, 2003
It's late. I'm still awake. So what else is new.
words were spilled on Tuesday, July 15, 2003
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Monday, July 14, 2003
words were spilled on Monday, July 14, 2003
