Thursday, April 28, 2005
Zwei LiederI'm becoming a lazy blogger: instead of composing serious, thoughtful entries, I post song lyrics. Oh well.
2 songs for grey rainy afternoons of ennui when life seems to be doing nothing much, other than soft-swirling aimlessly around you and being only *very* *mildly*... diverting.
Mad World - Gary Jules (from the film 'Donnie Darko')All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very very
Mad world, mad world
Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very very
Mad world, mad world
Mad world, mad world
Mad world, mad world
Enlarging your world
Mad world...Tomorrow Never Knows - Our Lady Peacelisten to the colour of your dreams...
turn off your mind, relax and float downstream
then it's not dying, then it's not dying
lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void
and it is shining, it is shining
now you may see the meaning of within
it is being, it is being
love is all, love is everyone
and it is knowing, and it is knowing
let ignorance and hate mingle with dead
it is believing, it is believing
oh play the game, existence to the end
of the beginning, of the beginning
of the beginning, beginning
turn off your mind, relax and float downstream
it is not dying, it is not dying
play the game, existence to the end
of the beginning, of the beginning
of the beginning, of the beginning,
lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void
of the beginning, of the beginning, of the beginning
words were spilled on Thursday, April 28, 2005
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Monday, April 25, 2005
Half-baked techno-geekinessAzureus is a
great Bittorrent client program. I never truly understood BT until I started using Azureus. (For a generous, given value of 'understanding'; my computer nerd meter is stuck at 'end user'.)
Now, at least I finally have an accurate grasp of the BT concept; now, I've finally got it through my head why no files can be played before download completes unlike in other file-sharing programs like Kazaa (Bittorrent downloads files in discontinuous pieces depending on availability, so a 40%-complete download isn't the same as the first 40% of the file, but 40% of total data
scattered throughout the file.)
Best of all, Azureus has more features and hence allows for greater user control than the standard BT client. For instance, I can configure the TCP port to get around the problem of ISPs or tracker sites blocking/banning the most heavily used BT ports. Or I can prioritise files in a single download comprising multiple files (eg: TV episodes in a single-season download) so that I don't have to wait until all 8.58GB have been downloaded to start watching the first episode. Stuff like that.
Finally, when I'm feeling bored I can watch the statistics charts and the various download progress bars, which show details like the IP addresses of the people you are downloading from, their clients, pieces currently being downloaded and their availability etc.
Of course, Bittorrent at the moment is under siege by MPAA and most of the torrent sites and trackers (that I know of, anyway) are defunct, so unless you are downloading unlicensed fansubbed anime, Bittorrent just isn't the treasure trove of digital plunder it used to be.
words were spilled on Monday, April 25, 2005
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Friday, April 22, 2005
All you future business/economics majors must watch
Wall Street (1987). It has high adrenaline stock trading scenes, hostile takeovers, corporate espionage, shareholders, management and unions all battling it out amidst the machinations of unscrupulous investment bankers and their protege brokers. Sounds exciting, doesn't it?
"The point is ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms - greed for life, for money, knowledge - has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed - you mark my words - will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you." - Gordon Gekko, in his most notorious speech
(Wall Street) ~
Interviews can't get any more devious than one in which the principal interviewer
talks at you for 30 minutes while you nervously pick at your nails (under the table of course) and desperately try to make your murmurs of assent less monotonous. You keep thinking: the seemingly innocuous proceedings must have some hidden, insidious purpose - the friendly monologue some trick of psychological manipulation lulling you into a false sense of security - they are assessing your reactions (or non-reactions), your non-verbal cues, your tone of voice, your nervous tics - they are testing your (im)patience, your passivity, your non-combativeness? And the more innocent the conversation seems, the more deceptive this appearance must be, because
this is simply too good to be true.
Spending time around James Angleton is doing wonders for my paranoia.
words were spilled on Friday, April 22, 2005
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Tuesday, April 19, 2005
I don't usually post these, but I figured - what the hell. Every teenager's blog should have a filler post once in a while. =)
You Are 28 Years Old |
28
Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe.
13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world.
20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences.
30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more!
40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.
|
Being 19 isn't that bad, though. At least it doesn't stop me from gaining access to R21 films or R(A) plays.
words were spilled on Tuesday, April 19, 2005
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Monday, April 18, 2005
I used to find rainy days highly enjoyable. The
sturm und drang of tropical thunderstorms unlocked my inner weather goddess and made me feel gloriously elemental.
Now I just wish those grey clouds would make a detour and grant me my patch of blue sky so that I can happily explore strange new housing estates on my trusty mountain bike.
I did Ang Mo Kio - Hougang - Sengkang - Punggol the other day, cycling an estimated 22.4km; although it felt longer than that, especially on the return trip, when long-disused muscles began to protest in earnest. Back home, I retraced routes in my street directory and took note of the interesting fact that Pasir Ris was just a page removed from Punggol... except that I'd have some trouble covering that distance if I didn't plan on braving the TPE, because the area in-between is agrotech land and pretty inaccessible.
Cycling in Sengkang is OK, but Punggol is rather eerie. That place is an underdeveloped ghost town.
words were spilled on Monday, April 18, 2005
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Friday, April 15, 2005
"Most people... are led by instinct to satisfy the basics. What they don't realise is that if you don't ask [yourself], other people will answer for you, and then you never discover who you are."Words of wisdom from an obscure cult fiction character... but that's beside the point. The point is, despite my lacklustre, half-hearted performance for both the first round interview and the assessment centre activities, A*Star has seen fit to grant me an audience with Mr. Chairman-of-A*Star himself in the final round interview. I'm not sure what to feel. I'd been hoping that greater powers beyond my control would cooperate, but it seems as though they are refusing to grant me the easy way out of making my own decisions.
Ah well. During one of my interviews this week (specifics will not be given because paranoia is always prudent) I managed to pull off a truly successful lie. And by that I don't mean the routine sort of carefully prepared embellishments one usually serves out to interviewers. When posed a particularly difficult question, I latched onto a half-truth, modified it, outfitted it with a touch of evasion, and slipped the finished lie past their probes, all the while sincerely convinced that I was telling the truth. I could have passed a polygraph test with that one. It's so much easier to lie when there is some truth in the lie - the details fall in place much more effortlessly because they already exist and do not need to be fabricated out of thin air. All that is required is a slight twist of interpretation... and fervent belief in the resulting concoction.
Of course, truly accomplished liars do not require that kind of aid. But I'm a lousy liar, so for that interview, when I realised what I had pulled off, I was unapologetically exhilarated.
words were spilled on Friday, April 15, 2005
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Monday, April 11, 2005
The broken record scratches out its well-worn and frankly tiresome refrain:
I suck at interviews. I switch to Default Senseless Self-Sabotaging Babble Mode with the first sentence out of my mouth. I can't seem to stop myself from hedging on my virtues, and blurting out deficiencies as a sort of self-introduction-on-autopilot. Even when they aren't asking for them. The negatives always come out more strongly than the positives. They sound a great deal more convincing to my ears.
All of this constitutes - yes I know, I
know - a ridiculously stupid strategy to adopt. And then when the chance comes for me to wax lyrical on subjects that I am normally comfortable with, it falls apart - because I need time to organise my thoughts and time is a luxury you don't have in the interview room.
And what's with all that bloody interrogation on why I didn't opt for med school?? I'm sick and fed up with it... sure, I have reasons for that decision, but they are probably all the wrong reasons. And no amount of sugarcoating is going to make them sound more palatable to the fault-finding inquisitors on the other side of the table.
Drowning my sorrows in the NUS Central Library proved effective. After 2 hours of dazed and awestruck aisle wandering and bookshelf browsing, I came away with a book on media ethics, one on semiotics and American popular culture, an introductory text on sociolinguistics, and (to appease the inner geek) an academic study of
Star Trek in the American Mythos. Within the Library's impressive collection of opera, symphonic, instrumental and vocal sheet music, I managed to locate and photostat the score for Chopin's Nocturne in Eb Major. There are advantages to being a Non-graduating student: all the perks with only a fraction of the stress.
I must stop this habit of drifting into libraries and emerging with books that serve no constructive purpose other than that of bibliophilic masturbation (which is not constructive), taking up valuable time that could be more productively employed in preparing a solid personal PR campaign that would better address pressing Real World Concerns.
If I don't make the USP, I'll be content with spending all my available free time in the Central Library [note: instead of the
Science Library where I must rightfully belong] soaking up useless information.
Oh, and the Central Library actually has
Angels in America on DVD. It's probably a sociology thing, but all the same, I am impressed.
words were spilled on Monday, April 11, 2005
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Friday, April 08, 2005
If I were to use one word to describe myself...geek (n): An intelligent, eccentric person with an interest in the perceptably useless and esoteric. A geek is not interested in the mainstream; their expertise is to be found in that which society scorns or misunderstands. They have many realms of interest, most of which coincide with computers or science fiction. The social life of a geek revolves around their particular interest or expertise, and they will organize gatherings based on their common interest. A geek is capable of normal socialization, but prefers the company of other geeks. (Except that I don't even have a geek-style social life. Which is sad.)
The above definition was culled from the
GeekSpeak Dictionary. Other entertaining examples include:
mid-twenties breakdown (n) [Douglas Coupland, Generation X, 1992]: A period of mental collapse occuring in one's twenties, often caused by an inability to function outside of school or structured environments coupled with a realization of one's essential aloneness in the world. Often marks induction into the ritual of pharmaceutical usage.
Law of Juvenile Omnipotence (n): Anime Law # 42. Always send a boy to do a man's job. He'll get it done in half the time and twice the angst.
video store auteurs (n): Filmmakers who learned the art of filmaking by working behind the counter at a video store rather than through attending film school or art house showings. Famous examples include Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith.
Real World (n) /2: The location of non-programmers and activities not related to programming. /3: A bizarre dimension in which the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5. /4: Anywhere outside a university. "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the Real World." Used pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking of someone who has entered the Real World is not unlike speaking of a deceased person.A slew of interviews, assessment centre activities etc. coming up next week. The NSS is looking less and less attractive. I mean, a B.Sc in 3 years flat? No gloriously irrelevant liberal artsy courses allowed? What would
be the point of a US university education under such conditions?
Meanwhile, I continue to plow through 'The Company', a hefty tome by Robert Littell chronicling the multi-generational saga of the CIA. It's part thriller fiction, part history course, part spycraft tutorial. The academic instinct persists with tenacity, so I dutifully make notes as I read. (I
did mean
plow.) Notes on how spies are "perfectly sane human beings who become obsessed with trivia", for instance. Ahem.
24 is a fascinating TV series. I have never seen so much torture, ranging from the bloodless electroshock kind to the scalpel-and-hot-poker variety, being carried out on a TV show before. As a bonus, the US government is responsible for a good deal of said torture. (horror!) Characters have a dreadfully common tendency to die - and die horribly. (In fact, one of the best parts of the
24 experience is placing bets on who's going to croak next.) No one's untouchable except for Kiefer Sutherland, people are Never Who They Seem to Be [TM], key witnesses almost never survive long enough to make a difference, the LAPD's astonishingly incompetent, phone batteries are inexhaustible, the broadband's amazing, and best of all, everyone seems to run on pure adrenaline, with no need for coffee. (shock!)
At the end of each season, you are yawning in sympathy with those poor schmucks who had to stay up for over 24 hours straight. I tried it once, and believe me, it didn't work out. Even with the aid of 2 servings of coffee, I was nodding off in the 23rd hour.
words were spilled on Friday, April 08, 2005
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