ages ago there was this piece of writing:

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

Mark Strand

I do not know if it is still familiar to you. Another thought came to me today, the thought that I would rather be missed/noticed when I am missing, than to be noticed when I am present.

It is easy to notice what is right in front of you, it is far more difficult to notice what is missing.

just one of the little different ways in which I live, in which I see things, in which I am me.

do you live?

was at Bugis Street, shopping for a bag, had an odd feeling, of "Ah Beng" salespersons being very polite and attentive. there was one rather commendable shop attendant, i was rather surprised. he wasn't that skillful at sweet-talking or recommending items, but the effort was laudable.
i was rather put off by the noise-blasting shops and the smokers, almost made me decide not to buy anything there because the place wasn't my style.

there was another shop at wiwocity, i walked in and the staff were talking. i overheard one of them who was speaking rather loudly "i think butch and lesbians no fun. ... i mean, they can only finger. ..." dah.

after weeks of hearing the NDP song "There's No Place I'd Rather Be", i finally caught on today to the pun of "I, Wannabe". It's in the lyrics. It fits, doesn't it. This song, talking about all the top cities of planet earth, comparing them to singapore, trying to link us to them in one sentence(song).
it comes across to me as pretentious, narcissistic, wannabe.

such has National Education evolved over the years.

by chance, or not, recently a minister was encouraging ppl to study overseas but return to work in singapore. and some blah-blah nonsense. and then it was also mentioned this person who went overseas to study and returned to realise that singapore had become a land of opportunities. granted our economy is doing fine, but, as the cynic in my horribly realises, all these are but a figment of our imagination. all these one-sided views, one-sided reports, one-faceted conclusions. it is oh so easy to forget that there will be many other silent ones, who to say whether they prefer to "return" overseas.
the media is but a little limited resource, driven to publish, and no matter what they do, cannot tell the whole story about anything, cannot properly explain somebody's life. it is rather sad, extremely sad, that we live in a world so heavily influenced by so limited a resource.

what do i wannabe

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; wisdom and instruction fools despise. Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and reject not your mother's teaching. For the self-will of the simple kills them, the smugness of fools destroys them." - Proverbs 1: 7,8,32


am i a fool, am i simple?

omg now they introduce this referral program. why only now!!? dahz. well whoever wants me to refer them, just tell me =]

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=78285

We’re proud to announce the Turbine Referral Program, a great way to earn free game time by introducing your family and friends to The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™! It's so easy an orc can do it!

The Turbine Referral Program lets paying subscribers of The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ refer friends to play the game and receive free game time for successful referrals, subject to certain terms and conditions (see myaccount.turbine.com/referral/rules). Each of your referred friends will be sent a Guest Key to try the game for free for ten (10) consecutive days!

For every friend that buys the retail edition of the game, registers a retail product key at myaccount.turbine.com, and subscribes to the game, you'll get a referral credit that can be redeemed for 30 days of FREE game time to be added to your subscription for the game! If you're already a Lifetime Member we'll issue you a 30 day game card key to give to a friend who is a game subscriber.

If you have Founder's pricing, you can also offer Founder's pricing to your friends! The first 10 friends you invite can take advantage of the special Founder's pricing plans offered through the Founder's Program. See www.lotro.com/founder for more details on the Founder's pricing terms.

Finally, to celebrate the launch of this new referral program we're proud to announce a special offer: For a limited time (ending on September 30, 2007), you will receive a referral credit for every retail product key activation! That's right, you don't even need to wait for your friend to subscribe before collecting your free game time! So get started today by visiting myaccount.turbine.com!

driving, to me, is like being trapped. being obliged to stay at the wheel, having to pay attention to the road, the traffic, the other cars, the traffic lights.

it's like having to stay in the lane, having to follow the rules, having to watch out for other people, moving at the same speed (or slower) than other fat old people who cannot walk as fast as me

it's about having no freedom from the lanes and kerbs. it's about forever being on tar, and never being able to get off. (perhaps it's a city thing)

above all, what i've come to realise, i can't do an Crazy Ivan, if you know what i'm talking about. i've always loved the twist of the ankle, the long second of time where i hang in the mid-air and glance back, and the next twist back forward. lovely. the elegance and exquisiteness.

zero degrees celsius, is it?


Scenario:

A quantity of water, perhaps in a glass. It's inside one of those imaginary environments, zero energy transfer with the outside world, isolated. The environment has an atmosphere, at exactly zero degrees celsius. [side question: is all the water in the air gone? condensed? just to check. but it's not important to me]

So this glass of water is at zero degrees too. yeah. But it's a glass of water, in liquid form. Everything is at exactly zero degrees.

Question:
Will the water freeze?

[I'm serious]

i think i would miss the lovely thunderstorms in singapore

如果 ．爱

每个人都想明白
谁是自己生命不该错过的真爱

i guess Mr. Jacky Cheung really likes this theme. I recall there was another song along the same lines or title. someday when we are old enough we will understand

still don't have the energy to think deep thoughts. haha.

it's been a difficult and also a nice week. ah well, at least some things are over.

nice things:

wednesday. nice jap food dinner. i like the noodles at waraku. at least i actually had interesting things to choose between instead of standard boring "fast-food" jap outlets. it's like western-food = chicken cutlet, chicken chop... jap-food = normal boring food. so unlike what real western (european) food should be, and what real jap food should be.
it's rather silly that european food is commonly referred to as western food. each individual country should be classified separately.
ok so nice jap food. The Central has nice shops. I shall go explore it when it's fully up.

friday. nice class gathering. although half of it was discussing medical stuff. goshness. seems like this class will never get away with bio stuff. it's obsessive. but it was a nice grown-up stay-home round-table dinner-talk loungey-home setting. very nice.

saturday. 14 July. Bastille Day. ze french national day. haha went for little celebration at The Pichon restaurant at Boat Quay. free flow wine and pastis(zis alcoholic apertif) and orangina and perrier. and also some nice sausages and other tarts. nice!! the restaurant is on my hit list.

Phrase: "the sun makes the shade cool"

Question: do you agree, and why?

imagine this as part of a larger ficticious conversation

Phrase: "I assume that my assumption is correct"

Question: How many assumptions were made in the above phrase, and why?

Scenario:

We have a Cup, a normal cup, filled to the brim with ice cubes. Square ice cubes, let's say 3 cm long on each side, for details sake. The ice cubes do not protrude out of the top of the cup, but are fully packed in. The ice cubes are frozen from distilled water, with no air bubbles in them.

Next we pour in distilled water at zero degrees Celsius, such that total volume of ice-cubes + total volume of added water = total capacity of the cup. Which means (and also does not mean) fill the cup with water.

The Question is: What will you observe upon the end of adding in the water?

-
i hope you can give me some answers

-
Remark: "Square ice-cubes" is such a stupid phrase. I shall blame it upon those manufacturers who produce rounded ice 'cubes'.

biggest boss i've seen so far. still many levels to go before i get to come here properly...


Summer Festival drinking game. starts off with a sober mind, 6 beers per station


getting fuzzy


48 beers later...the screen shifts around, i can't see nothing, i can't walk straight


smoking time. this pipeweed gives 2 smoke rings. each kind a different animation. so fun


discovered that i can lie down underwater. blub blub. i can also set campfires in shallow water and whatnot. tsk.


Summer Festival fireworks. what a way to waste our coins


now u can see the smoking pipe


and more


somebody already playing with the chickens, maybe that's where they got the idea for the new chicken roleplaying feature


dead ghost. this one loses it's head. hm.


highlight of last night. a surprise encounter with a tortoise. ridiculously big. but so easy to kill

nus stuff is driving me crazy. i hate anything to do with modules. .

woo i like transformers. great pace of action, bewildering battles, cool transformations, rather realistic stuff. and i like Industrial Light and Magic. yupz.

i still don't see what's the point in a Simpson movie.

i still can't get over the insane transformations and the funky camera angles and the non stop 2+ hrs. wowz.

oh and nobody kissed, no romantic hugs, no soppy moments, nobody declared their love for anybody. and the guy and the girl din really get into it. finally someone realises that any decent testosterone-filled guy watching such a movie would be more interested in the slug-pumping than irksome romance side-stories.

watch the movie on DVD, in Slow-Motion.

some movie info:

Bay: "The Generation One robots were very blocky which would have been like using the unarticulated marshmallow man from ‘Ghostbusters.’ Our Optimus Prime® has 10,108 parts, each of which move." (Rep, love the G1 but have to agree).

Bay: "These robots are the most complex modules ILM has ever made. We couldn’t have accomplished this two years ago.

Script secret during shoot with actors only receiving pages for own scenes.

Hardware "borrowed" included CV-22 (combo helicopter and airplane), F-117, C-130 cargo planes, C-17 (Bay: "spooky gun ship"), and F-22 Raptor (Starscream I think).

- It takes ILM 38 hours to render one frame of movement. Generally I think it takes 24 frames for one second of footage. Usually there are render farms (basically a building full of servers) for this so not sure if it means that value is X computers times taking Y minutes = 38 hours per frame or if it means one huge render farm working took 38 hours.

http://transformerslive.blogspot.com/2007/06/eni-transformers-articles.html