Saturday, September 25, 2004
'... in order to have an opinion about things, one first has to have knowledge of them.' Discuss.
I plucked that from someone else's blog. The quote, I mean, not the GP tack-on. It was keeping me awake, so here I am again at 2.30am. I agree that opinion without knowledge is just a lot of uninformed ranting (either that or we can call it abstract philosophy... yes, I'm just a simple girl) - much akin to trying to dig a tunnel through silt without steel and concrete supports. But, as we all know, the accumulation of knowledge alone can never be a substitute for independent thinking. Knowledge may lead to dogma and stifle thought. We educate ourselves in the hope of achieving intellectual nirvana, but the intellectually-passive tend to lapse into the bad habit of merely simulating the opinions of others. If we read unthinkingly, simply allowing the information to diffuse down the concentration gradient, we don't learn, we're not improved in any way, and in fact, we may be better off reading less and thinking more.
This is all old hat, dead-horse-flogging stuff... and I've known it all along. Together with this knowledge lies the realisation that I haven't got a real, original opinion worth a damn. I've been too busy filling my short-term memory with all sorts of nonsense and conveniently skirting the more important issues. I fear that I may be falling into the habit of living life on autopilot: comfortable only with routine, shying away from challenges, away from the painful process of actually having to
think for myself. And that's worrying.
Oh, and what began as a mildly philosophical inquiry has degenerated into a whinge-and-whine session. Why are we not surprised.
words were spilled on Saturday, September 25, 2004
(0) comments
Uncharacteristic behaviour
I'm blogging 2 days in a row. Amazing. You can tell that I'm bored (though I try not to use that word: it reeks of aimlessness and idleness and other unspeakable sins I try not to admit to myself). Of course there are things to do (aren't there always?), but I've banished them to the edge of my consciousness and silenced my sense of personal responsibility so that I can focus on enjoying my current state of boredom. Amazing, really. Maybe it's a prelim aftershock. Maybe it's some sort of native state, minus external pressures.
Has anyone tried an alcohol-caffeine cocktail masquerading as an 'energy drink'? There was one night when my mother shoved an entire bottle at me and told me to finish it up. Someone had informed her that it was a cure for insomnia. Naturally, I couldn't believe my ears. After all, it went against everything I knew about caffeine and its physiological effects. I warned her - very strongly - against drinking that unholy union of vodka and caffeine
(and lots of sugar to mask the bitterness of alcohol)
. She heeded my warning - which was how I ended up with the duty of finishing the bottle, since it cost quite a bit and it wouldn't do to waste good money.
Anyway, the alcohol takes effect first. The ears turn red, the flush spreads to the rest of your face, and you start feeling extremely warm. Then the caffeine kicks in. I'd fancied myself to have built up a decent level of tolerance, but I hadn't reckoned with the monstrous caffeine concentration of that thing. Either that or the combination of alcohol and caffeine did strange things. And I'm not just talking about central nervous system stimulation, which you can easily get with common coffee. The level of cardiac stimulation went off my charts: heart rate and force of contraction scared me half to death. Slow, regular breathing became tricky. Vision turned funny - think surroundings started to throb a bit, get a little wavy. In the end I felt so wobbly and sick that I decided to sleep it off.
So, in a way, it
was an insomnia cure - although I'd rather brave sleeplessness. Out of curiosity, I'd have liked to see what it would have done to my mother if I hadn't intervened. She's got an entirely different set of tolerance thresholds, for a very different class of pharmaceuticals.
I've catalogued my movie collection, complete with MDA ratings, just to get a kick out of seeing how many mature films I have. After gawking at the tidy collection of reds, blues and greens on MS Word, I proceed to identify the scenes in each movie that justify the rating. Sometimes it takes a bit of effort. Take for example
Starsky and Hutch, ostensibly a buddy-cop comedy - a silly but harmless flick. I was floored when I saw the M18 label and tried - without success - to find the usual accompanying 'consumer advisory' sticker that helpfully summarises the objectionable aspects of the film ('war violence', 'sexual references', 'intimate scene', 'coarse language' etc.).
Sure, there were certain scenes with disturbing undertones/overtones/innuendo and suchlike, but they were played for laughs. Guess MDA wasn't amused (they probably flipped out during the '2 dragons' scene). My sister and I certainly were. Entertainment is served best with a slight hint of scandal. It keeps fangirls excited.
Meanwhile, the slow process of resubmission by distributors and re-rating by MDA continues. I visit Laser Flair regularly to take notes, hoping, for example, to see
Interview with the Vampire in the stores uncut. The clumsily-truncated PG version available here is exasperating and it's too beautiful a film to own as a mere DivX file. The cuts in
Gattaca are even more ridiculous. For years I had to endure that blip in Eugene's wonderful rant and that annoying skip over Vincent's beach scrubbing scene, so this year I finally downloaded the full version and watched the aforementioned scenes to my satisfaction. Broadband is indeed a miracle.
words were spilled on Saturday, September 25, 2004
(0) comments
Friday, September 24, 2004
I have Paul Oakenfold's 'Ready Steady Go' on full blast and it rocks. I love car chase music. I
love my computer's sound system. I'm revelling in the fact that
prelims are over and as far as I am concerned a 'Bio S mock prelim' next week
doesn't count. Oh yes.
2 silly weeks of plowing along, sleepwalking through most papers. Honestly, I can't do Econs - or Bio - in a completely lucid state of mind. The clarity of the situation would kill me. Indifference, though, is a wonderful tranquiliser. Once you've eased yourself into a certain frame of mind, nothing can touch you - not even the realisation that you don't know how the hell Purchasing Power Parity ties in with exchange rates and GNI indices - and that your entire Data Response is likely doomed. But it didn't ruffle me too much, because it was Econs, after all, and this sort of thing really is getting boring. And I'm feigning nonchalance when I shouldn't.
For all those people struggling with post-prelim boredom, and others who have too much time on their hands, do check this out:
http://usa.bmwfilms.com/clap.asp?template=index&country=usa&film
BMW made a series of commercials that are actually short films (or short films that are actually commercials?) a couple of years back. The interesting thing is, they managed to get highly-acclaimed directors like Ang Lee, John Woo and Tony Scott to helm each short film, and the end result is an unconventional publicity campaign that is awfully fun to watch. It even has Madonna and Gary Oldman making guest appearances. What's more, it wrecked my feminine immunity against fast, sleek and shiny cars. Now, there are Audi wallpapers on my desktop. /gulp/
words were spilled on Friday, September 24, 2004
(0) comments
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
This afternoon, I was reminded of my hilarious propensity for needlessly complicating things while overlooking simple yet effective solutions.
It concerned the niggling problem of my periwinkles, which have grown and flourished beyond the water-carrying capacities of their pots, such that they now require at least 2 generous waterings daily: once in the morning and the second time during the sun-scorched late afternoon. Despite all my good intentions and efforts, however, it takes a shockingly short period of time for the plants to wilt once the afternoon sun invades the common corridor. Too little water-retaining soil to too much foliage, resulting in an excess of transpiration over water uptake. This problem is particularly vexing as my sister and myself will be away at Bukit Batok and hence there will be no one around to see to my periwinkles' survival for a good part of the September holidays. In anticipation of the crisis, I made some tentative attempts at designing devices for the storage and controlled release of water, preferably timed to coincide with the hot late afternoon. I brainstormed various theoretical models and field-tested a prototype plastic mineral water bottle that could release water over approximately 25 minutes and thus was quite useless for my purposes.
Finally, I related this intriguing scientific problem to my sister. She suggested that we brought the plants indoors. After all, a few days of mild sunlight deprivation wouldn't kill them, whereas subjecting the hapless things to an equivalent period of drought certainly would. Her commonsensical solution left me feeling frankly ridiculous. So much for technological innovation, hey?
....
I call the above piece of semi-farcical autobiographical nonsense my regular pre-GP anxiety management tactic. I have to check if I still can write.
words were spilled on Wednesday, September 01, 2004
(0) comments
