hey i managed to shoot decently, i haven't had that Feeling since a long long time ago. it actually felt so much more stable. yay. and i could shoot 50m, albeit the grouping was bad, and i accidentally released one arrow when i wanted to put it down, and it hit the ground halfway, ouch ouch, but it's magically still in usable condition. amazing considering i didn't shoot for an entire week and it was crappy at that time.

buying new phones is fun. buying new laptop is fun too. buying ram is fun too. i think im getting obsessed with opening up the CPU casing. one day, i am going to check if i put the processor heatsink on properly, i half suspect it's not optimal.

C&C3 is fun! even though i'm obsessed and biased and fanatic, it's still fun.

pleasantly surprised at jax's running capability. but she's always been quite good at it. perhaps next time we can go further and faster.
i think running at night is wonderful, none of that lousy heat and humidity here. running in the day is like impossible to breathe. somebody make me run faster though.

maybe it's the shoes, bleh.

i still remember so clearly the days of preparation for last semester's exams. the days in the library, in engin, walking all over the place, the downloading, the games, the minesweeper, the battle for middle earth 2, the oblivion, being sick, and all 3 months ago. ouch. =]

perhaps i've really lost it. i wonder if im biased, or im tired, or it's just really this way, or i'm tired, or it's the same towards everyone.
but it's always like that. perhaps sorry in advance.
no, of course no one will understand this, i know.


i often also wonder what i'm doing with my life




if there were three, and then there were four
it's not some silly riddle, nor does it mean anything at all.

if there was black, and after there was blue
black which sped past the blue, even beyond blue
into white it did. and from white it fell, plummeting,
until a greenish blue it was
and yet still it fell, furthermore
further past green, past brown, past black, past red, past yellow
only to turn itself a purplish red, fading, swirling
slowly but nevertheless turning yellowish like all that was around it
enticing it would be to be otherwise, but no
yellow it stayed and yellow it will be.

actually this was brought to mind by the previous post, but i decided to keep it separate to not confuse people.

when i was walking home just now, it being around midnight, the roads are very empty, so i crossed the traffic junction diagonally again. i've been doing this for a long time, but why. is it because the roads are empty, is it because i know i won't get knocked down, is it because i'm lazy to walk the longer way.

but perhaps it is some little small meaningless thing that i do to rebel, to maintain my individuality in the midst of all this conformism. perhaps i do it be remain sane, to remain myself, to stay out of the system, out of the matrix, to be aware that the system does not control me totally.

this sounds like something Mr. Smith would say, i think it would sound nice in his voice.

and so i do it to be me.

that said, i think the Giordano 'Me' series of shirts are really boring, they lack style, lack class, lack individuality, lack meaning. just plain square prints on boring shirts with basic meaningless tessellations. cmi.

wow. i mean, wow they actually dare to make such a movie with such big names. i wonder if they can earn money. it's such an Say-Everything-Yet-Say-Nothing kinda artsy Film where you either love it or hate it.
i was thinking, it could be titled "the unbearable lightness of being Paris", i just love that title. all those funky ridiculous jaw-dropping bewildering scenes. it's like cutscenes of parisian's lives, a lifetime of experiences condensed into 2 hours. but there's so much to say, to see, to hear, to notice. and there are few things that you could ever see as a tourist. these are the sort of things that are instinctively associated with the Dream that paris is, as zerá put it, the dream that makes paris what it is, the dream that paris in turn creates in you.

i am so particularly intrigued by the american woman's textbook french in simple sentences badly pronounced. and she was using such advanced tenses that it feels like the mispronunciation was overly enhanced. i suppose some people in class do speak that bad, even after 2 years.
you know what, the lack of liasons was just so jarring. once upon a time, everyone wonders why in the world is it so important. now it feels like this love between the words, that forms music without pauses.

and blah i can't follow what they say, too fast too fast. just like i can't catch 80% of what these two people were saying on the train. i was rather surprised they spoke all french all the way to hougang station. would you imagine these two foreign young adults speaking french in the middle of hougang, i wonder where they are staying.

do watch the film if you can, it's something which, in this age of penguin cartoons, screeching tyres and submachine guns, will truly stand alone and be remembered for being itself.

she said thank you for coming out, she says thank you for helping with the phone, she says now she knows that there's always ways to get what she wants. i suppose, that was always what she needed to learn. that was worth it all.
but im happy that i managed to do it.
sometimes impossible is just a shortform for the lengthy explanations that would never end, sometimes impossible is just impossible, sometimes impossible is just a matter of how much effort the result is worth, sometimes adidas says that impossible is nothing, sometimes they say that nothing is impossible, sometimes someone should tell them that it's impossible for impossible to be nothing. but we border on the insane conflicting ideas that only geniuses can hold in their minds without going crazy. [really im surprised by the things i come up with]
'in conclusion', one must be able to distinguish when something is really impossible, and when one is unwilling to put in that much effort, and acknowledge likewise.

for all their hyped marketing and runaway fame, adidas and nike at least preaches good stuff to the public, not like twisted iffy companies.

oops i need to do work. i should not wait till everyone has borrowed all the books in the library before starting to go looking. but it's too late.

whee im depressed. yeah, if you're slightly versed with psychology perhaps you might understand why that sentence is written that way. can you really tell what's going on in my little mind if i do not tell you? guess?

the night before, i was sad, i read Metamorphosis, by dear Franz Kafka, from Gutenburg website. what a frightening story. though i wished it was longer.

last night, or rather throughout the day but mostly at night, i speed-read through Shadow Puppets, by dear Orson Scott Card. feels like only the third time i read it. but it's just so nicely familiar and comforting after Kafka's words.

help.. blub blub...

anyway the recent spate of scuba diving incidents have dented my enthusiasm for it. how sad. not my dream death to die like that, not very glam.

wow GV is really such a *beep*, they're showing "Paris, Je t'aime" at GV Vivo Europa for S$10. are they really such idiots or what. premium price indeed. all timings. Cathay is showing it for only $9.
oh the other hand, safra members get to watch "standard" GV movies at $8 on weekends. but well this is a preemiumm film. [sidetrack, as much as some people keep going on and on about our authoritarian government, the number of people out there who cannot think for themselves seems to justify it]

it looks like a really really nice show. 'got standard one'. opening film of Cannes 2006. wowz. wonder they watch such stuff.

and i am also very entertained by today's papers take on the Academy Awards, not that i really understand all their awards nor care much about them. nominated and award winning films have higher viewership, oh please, gullible folks, think for yourself with your own brain.
and this journalist was blasting that new golden Chinese film for being uselessly pompous, thinking that it will win them awards. i can't agree more that their films are pathetic IMHO, director and actors included.

and i dont just like french films because they're in french. it's coz they have a wonderful style and content. Hollywood is just Hollywood, the Americans have never learned to live and understand life as the Europeans do.

"[hard disk drive] failure rates are indeed definitely correlated to drive manufacturer, model, and age"

engadget link
half-surprisingly, half-unsurprisingly, Google did hard drive failure analysis on their hundreds of thousands of hard drives. yup they have that many disk drives. wow. you would almost think they should own a stake in one of the companies. and they have churned up useful statistics on how hard drives fail. which agrees completely with me that S.M.A.R.T., this process which is supposed to detect hard drive failure, is useless and inaccurate.

experienced uni students can read the Google Labs paper titled "Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population", it even contains 20 references, link on the webpage.

yes it's not Lyon! isnt that fantastic. an somewhat absurd weekend trip brings us to Marseille. because it was hard to get tickets to anywhere. and actually it was also an insane idea to buy the tickets, because they were exceptionally expensive. very. because we got the discount tickets for first class TGV. like $150 total for return trip or something. and only one direction was first class. ah well. in the end it was worth it. lots of stories in this trip.




after skipping some boring photos, ok they have these really pretty bus stops. i like, the frosted glass is so fun.


then we pop into the first big church we saw. and voila a wedding, and it's a black couple at that. only realised later that Marseille has many immigrants from the continent down south. but this is quite a cool thing to see. the photo's blurry, din want to disturb their wedding. wanted to wait to see them kiss, as part of the kissing photos collection, but we din have time. cool anyway.


this city, is in an absolute mess. it's an amazing mess. there's the construction works for the new tramline, there's trash all over the city. and it looks like some suburb.
though amusingly we discovered when we were leaving marseille that there was strike going on. guess what, trash disposal service was on strike. wowz. which ends up with all that rubbish on all the streets.
bizarre. we encounter strikes so often. but oddly i learned somewhere that they don't actually strike that often. shrug. so yeah trash.



see when you don't really know what to do, you grab some map, you sortof think that you want to see this this and this. and then you walk, very important, you walk, then you see people, the you follow people, into alleys if you must, and then you end up at nice places. so here's one of their weekend markets. in some dirty street. i thought it was quite shady, but i guess it was that trash un-disposal's fault.




in there was much much food. i guess they were expensive? since it was like middle of the city. but darn their fresh apricots are so cheap. bought a paper bag of them. coz lunch was packed food. and i think we had peaches too. i miss soft fresh sweet apricots. ack.
and why are singaporean bakers so stingy with strawberries


roadside cafe, don't you think that's a cute way of arranging the glasses. pretty!


titled: gulls in various stages of flight


if you don't understand the timetable, you're like dead, coz you might not get back home from the island. boat trip out to an ex-prison on an island. now what was the name. this boat trip was very very important and fateful.


we decided to walk first, for reasons i cannot remember but which made sense at that time. we went on a 10 church spree. roughly that number of churches in marseille, i think abit more. yes they're mad. so we stumble upon more outdoor performances. to my further amazement, there are performances that night. wow. more music outdoors. festival. i cant remember the name, i only know we didn't attend.


i like this building. coz of that thing. and there are words on it. it reads "SENEGAL -something- MERCI"


building on other side of entrance to the harbour. something from long ago to defend against sailing boats. ah well. and then see that cliff there, it looks decently pretty, but there are actually vagrants living in the cracks. yes there are, saw them when our boat went past. marseille is a rather unruly place actually. gangster city


we went walking in the streets. and this is one of the artistic photos. very nice setting. they've got these narrow winding sloping backstreets. very nice


decorated for their festival. and since it's so narrow, they can do nice things.


cute?


paper decorations, and other recycled materials. done by a primary school. very pretty.


the entire setting is lovely, absolutely fantastic. the alley, the colors... priceless view


ok this was from some church. i took very long and got this nice photo finally, so im proud of it. we spent a great deal of time resting in churches coz it was sooo hot out there. argh. i think it was 30 deg. or more.


more decorations. very simple and handmade and pretty and village-like


peculiar. ohyes it's very tiring to walk up and down, up and down... the middle portion is for draining water. that's yanghan on the left, waiting for me to take odd photos


see, more weddings! so many. but it's such a pretty summer day. and then after that can go for honeymoon


see that, MS-DOS 5.0 manual! *gasp* must've been more primary school era.


i think this is the wrong order, but nvm. Lapin! i want to try rabbit. but i think pecilius will not be happy with me


trimarans in the harbour. do you know how pretty they are. the sleek lines, the emptiness. the bare skeleton and magnificent sail. this one is named Skywalker. apparently some competition going on i think.




so this was on the fateful boat trip to the prison-ex. where the wind was very strong and view was very good. and here, this china-man started chatting with us. coz we spoke chinese and we had two prc ppl with us. so chat chat. this lonely single guy somehow likes to talk to us so much, he stuck with us during the entire boat trip, and also during the entire time we toured the prison-ex!! and also after that! and after that and after that!! for the entire time.


something nice on the island

just to show u what the day was like

and that guy. no he's not crazy, he was just insanely game to try anything and we were in the midst of a period of taking jumping photos coz Mr. Lumiere did them, and they made him famous. so he's prc, working with IBM, attached in marseille at that time, does not speak french.


view of the city. very pretty. such a pretty city.


havent yet mentioned why that guy is so impt, but here's another nice view of the city. setting sun color. the magic hour before dark, superb lighting.


another pretty photo. look at the kid's eyes.



just to show u. and that's one of the nice places. nice design.



then we got back to land.. er. and we walked somewhere, which wasn't great, except for it's height and the view. so we took nice photos instead.


then we decided to eat properly for dinner, at a cheap restaurant, or rather cheap by their standards, but we are not very rich to eat $50 bouillabasee, equivalent of non-spicy seafood curry. i was very happy because i was very hungry.


walked past interesting vehicles. and dangerous dark lonely streets where we were afraid of being robbed coz that guy, what'shisname got pickpocketed or robbed in marseille. but he sounded quite cool about it. odd. hm.

ok so i gotta tell story now. we are in marseille for two days, saturday and sunday. we did not book any accomodation. we were either going to find someplace to stay, or stay out. as in really stay out somewhere. which was a very crazy plan. yeah. heh.
then that guy finds out about our crazy plan, coz in the end we din get to go find any rooms and yeah. and he apparently thinks we're very fun and happening, and really likes us alot. and invites us to stay with him in his hotel room!! what the. yeah madness ok. hotel. so we were really suspicious for the entire day. coz this stranger comes and chats with us and follows us around and invites 4 complete strangers to stay in his hotel room. HMMM. somehow in the end we decided to go. yeah it was rather worrying. rather rather rather. tall story huh. so that's the room we were in.


of course there isn't space for so many thing to be placed neatly. but we did get to bathe and sleep in nice hotel. goodness.

then there's one big bed. well. so guess what happens. we had one girl, 3 guys, and him. so? so he graciously let's yanghan sleep on the bed. his hotel bed, his hotel room. and then the 4 guys sleep on the floor, on bedsheet. the story gets more fantastic huh. yeah it's just madness larh. mad mad mad. and we never gave him a single cent. nor lose any. nor did we get kidnapped or robbed or murdered in the middle of the night. fantastic. and the next morning he wanted to go to the calanques with us. and we planned on leaving at 7am, coz we din plan on sleeping much. so that's also another reason why he wanted to stay with us. he's mad lah. we went to sleep like 3am or something i think. 2am maybe. we din even plan on bathing. well it's a crazy weekend trip. then in the morning, he and yanghan went to eat the hotel breakfast. also another deliberation coz we din know whether it was safe for yanghan to go with him alone. but well nothing happens. and tmr is another day for another post. it's just utter madness that we met such a person and had such a trip. we din dare to tell the INSA teachers and our hosts what we did, for fear that they would go crazy over our safety. but it was truly risky. though it did balance out the expensive train tickets. received a CNY email from him too. really nice guy.

Libellés : France, Marseille

i can't believe i ate so much good food today. or rather supposedly good food like abalone, sharkfin, yadda. and for some moments i was actually glad to be part of the CNY traditions. you can't possibly marry into a chinese family and experience it all, coz you'll be giving angpaos, not receiving them. and there are so many things involved in this somewhat elaborate festival.

yeah for awhile i was actually glad to be chinese. wow. quelle surprise.

then somehow, i dunno how, i realised that many CNY things are about money. all the greetings, the symbolisms, the rituals, the 'traditions', so many of the involve bringing good luck, fortune, prosperity, wealth, success... and all that. why is CNY so money-minded. is it just Singapore? or did it come from China.

it is commonly referred to that the chinese are 'smart' or 'good' at doing business, at succeeding. but WHY. why why why why why. why are the chinese so good at doing this. i believe it is because to them wealth and face and image and name and money and money are so important. so important that they are willing to spend their lives on it, that they have nothing better than to go all out to get all the money. what's the chinese community like, what is it founded on, what are their core values. even the U.S. of A., which is always being blasted, believes in liberty and all that. isnt that considerably than the chinese society's all-for-oneself, all-for-money kinda belief. i can't believe i think that america is better. gosh. why, why are the chinese like that. does it make them great that they can get rich easily and quickly, at the expense of lax laws and corrupt officials and tramping on the lower rungs.

i wish CNY wasn't about money. i wish it was about peace and love and nice things. like what the other festivals are about. i wish i wish i wish

how much did you earn this year?

liberté égalité fraternité

Libellés : CNY

Quand une femme me paraît belle, je n'ai rien à en dire. Je la vois sourire, tout simplement. Les intellectuels démontent le visage, pour l'expliquer par les morceaux, mais ils ne voient plus le sourire.

- Antoine Saint-Exuéry. Pilote de Guerre. 1942 -

searched this up in french for the tutorial. they're just such fascinatingly pretty lines. what a dear pity that the author died in the war. pity pity. anyway he wrote Little Prince.

in english it goes:
"Of what I see, I shall perhaps have nothing to say. When a woman seems beautiful to me, I have nothing to say about it. I see her smile, and that is all. Intellectuals may dismantle her face to explain its every part, but they no longer see the smile."

too bad vday is over.
these things come from the JC times. which i suppose could be considered my personal literary renaissance period. what happened to me who read and read and read and spent money on nice books. where have all the books gone. i wish something would happen which would make me start reading again. perhaps one day i shall be crazy and read Dante Aligheri's Divinia Comedia again, perhaps one day i shall actually start reading Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. guess i should go and scan Kino's bookshelves again, and run my fingers over the lovely spines. i still want to read Garth Nix's Abhorsen. and there's always the reading list lying at home.

Libellés : Antoine Saint-Exupéry, books

The heart has it's reasons that reason knows nothing of - Pascal

this came to mind recently, from all the weird things that i do, without fully understanding why, without really agreeing, with the tinge of regret that is grey in color

in the hearts of the writers lay
the threads of stories never told
never to be expressed in writing
to be conveyed as it is

in the dreams of the stories hide
emotions so intense and intertwined
the heart cannot differentiate
nor fully comprehend

in us the soul waits for the day we
learn to speak impatiently wanting
to be understood sometimes never succeeding
never realizing that within us we have a voice unknown

in the nights of the dreamers
lie the reality of tomorrow

. Jhender
in reply to Zerá

and because i have such a philosophical french tutor this semester, he goes on and on about how to learn a language. and now, he says, we have to understand the text "avec vos âmes", with our souls. we start off only understanding words, and then it becomes more than words, and then mere words aren't enough, the meaning and implications have to be exactly what it is supposed to be. sometimes it's so hard to learn those things that doesn't have a straightforward direct translation.

forgot to mention something about one of the nights in Lyon. it wasn't recorded on photo so I missed it. night of 17th June 06, after we got back from Annecy, 4 of us guys decided to go to one of the pubs. just to see. decided not to go to the Fish, coz you gotta pay for that place, and we weren't planning to stay the night, but Fish is on a boat!. so we went to something i dunno what.

then we met somewhere. and at night it's so deserted, prob 9-10pm. but you see they don't function at night see. so it's deserted and then we came to this traffic light. so let me describe the scene. at one side there was this police car, and then from another direction these two cars arrived and stopped at the junction. and we just standing at one corner. and then the green man came on and we started crossing. then in those two cars were many guys. and from one car, someone starting firing fireworks at the other car! absolutely jaw-dropping. and we were just crossing in front of them. freaky, two cars side by side and then sparks start flying. we almost got hit by some of those fireworks. unfortunately i don't have any footage of it. so the police obviously saw it all, and then they drove over and stopped them and whatever else after that. it was just somewhat more happening than we expected.

so then we had to walk further, and we were rather wary of what else will happen. then ppl in cars will be like yelling or something. wellz. so we got to a pub place, and then we were actually speaking english to the bouncers, who looked like americans. there was one really friendly one, who helped us quite a bit. he was encouraging us to stay, coz apparently pretty girls would arrive. had some problem coz someone wasn't wearing long pants, but it was impossible to change coz 'home' is far away and hard to get to. but we got in anyway, since we were 4 poor underaged-looking helpless tourists.
then i was really tired and there was a considerable journey home after that so i didn't want to drink, then i only ordered coke while the other guys had assorted dilute alcohol. and then the friendly bouncer, who helped us order coz we dont speak french very well and they wanted some dunno what drink, he was either amused/surprised/tickled by me ordering coke that he actually treated me for it. news of this started spreading in sch thereafter, but it was really funny. i can remember it as the time i was treated to coke by the bouncer. sheesh.

then we left early coz we didn't want to pay alot of euros to take cab home. it was a rather crazy weekend coz we went Annecy on saturday daytime, went out again at night, and then sunday spent the entire day out to Geneva. it's very tiring to have to take 2 hr train trips and waking up early to go to the train station. zz

Libellés : France, Lyon

this guy picked up a metro ticket from the ground, examined it for a short while, then promptly threw it back down onto the ground and walked away. gosh they go around trying to reuse tickets. coz there are 2 hr tickets, and various other kinds.


that evening i went to a synchronised-diving ?show. mainly for the parents of the kids. i believe they had some competition recently. Laure, the elder daughter is in one of the teams. some of them are like ultra young, little kids. ok it's called Aqua Synchro Lyon. there are like all ages, even some national team women. funny thing: some ppl's noseplugs drop out, then you can see them trying to stuff it back in halfway through their routine. but little kids just started out learning only larh.


breaktime. got to see close-ups of their hair. see the kids being very fascinated with their friends' 'superglued' hairstyles. funky.


that's actually the little place selling food. it's very informal, like families selling stuff, but they sell Perrier and cakes. and that TV there is showing World Cup, France vs someone. and of course France won.


that's Laure. and Mdm Jaillard is taking video.


i like this shirt, i think it's a Jennyfer

Libellés : France, Lyon

this looks rather morbid, but actually it was at a museum for the Lumiere brothers, who invented many of the early cameras and video cameras. decent museum, if you really want to find something to do in Lyon.


just outside the museum, we have amazing tree-climbing kids. wow. i didn't expect to see this in the city, and she climbed rather high up, i've got a video of it


another of my indulgences. i think if the managers at the self-proclaimed bread shops in Singapore saw this, they'll have a heart attack over the ingredients.


oh this was from the previous night actually. just that it was taken past midnight so it ended up in a different folder. the camera splits up the days. so after the music festival we took the really late bus home, and that group near the door were singing drunkenly. i just wanna mention that there was this day when after we got off the bus (daytime, normal stop), some youths threw out a glass bottle from the rear door. almost hit this pastor guy. wonder if it was deliberately aimed at him. kowz.
but i miss being able to get up the bus from any door. and having 3 sets of doors. and having timings. but not having any aircon.