December—A month of sorrow

WHEN I FALL IN LOVE (Celine Dion)

When I fall in love
It will be forever
Or I'll never fall in love

In a restless world
Like this is
Love is ended before it's begun
And too many
Moonlight kisses
Seem to cool in the warmth of the sun

When I give my heart
I give it completely
Or I'll never give my heart

And the moment I can feel that you feel that way too
Is when I fall in love with you

A simple, sad-ish song, quite apt for sentimental December. Away from people, far from anywhere I truly know, I start to go ever deeper into my shell of comfort. Thinking about the past year, just makes me want to sit down and cry. So many things have happened, some good, mostly bad. Hurt from every direction from people whom I had once trusted, spurned by people whom I once thought were friends, ignored by people whom I thought I could be friends with, I just dunno what is really holding me together all these while.

I miss the moon; I loathe the sun. I hate the heat; I miss the cold. At least, in the cold, when everyone is all huddled up in their warm things, no one will see the coldness and harshness of their eyes when you look at them, and no one will stop for light conversation; the only moment when I truly felt as being a part of the human community. Unfortunately, that has not happened yet, and so I'm still as I was... dissociated with almost everyone.

I feel glad for most people. They have a life to look forward to, a significant other to meet up with, places to go, things to do. I look at myself, beyond the faux façade that I present to the world, and discover a certain hollowness deep within. This... hollowness, I cannot explain. I have no idea what has come over me; I'm simply not like the me I was before. I still have the energy, but I don't seem to have any strong... feelings for anything anymore. It is as though I'm just an empty shell of a person walking around with a functioning logical unit, and that's about it. Not much different from a slightly intelligent zombie, I guess.

I miss the days where I just talk with MW, Irene and Su about anything under the sun, from current affairs to some finer aspects of traditional Chinese medicine. I miss the days when I would listen to the tales of "the Old Army" as told by AC; I miss the days when I sat with Kelvin at the canteen drinking tea and talking about cryptography. I miss the days when KX and I would meet up at the Jalan Kayu Thasevi prata shop and eat insane amounts of roti prata and talk about everything that happened. I miss the days when YT and I would slug it out on MSN messenger, I miss the days when BK and I would "wrestle" each other; I miss the days when I was a much happier person.

Is this the by-product of growing up? Or is this a self-inflicted coping mechanism for the whole plethora of bad things that I've been experiencing lately? I... don't think that I will find an answer to this anytime soon.

December to February is a period that I traditionally don't like. Despite of me thinking of myself as an island of mankind, I realise that I'm still very much a human by nature—I still need to be in the company of friends. I don't need to speak; just sitting there and listening to them speak is more than enough for me. It's the... company that I need, I realise. Maybe... it can also be the company of just one special person, whoever she may be.

Maybe one day I'll know the answer.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

First the book, and finally the movie! A dream come true, I guess, to be able to watch Breakfast at Tiffany's with Audrey Hepburn in her full glory as Ms Holly Golightly.

This is perhaps one of the few times where I'm actually pleased with the the divergence of the plot of the movie as compared to that of the novella. In the novella, Holly was supposed to have left New York City, never to return, leaving the protagonist and Joe Bell and a whole lot of other people very very broken hearted. However, the movie twisted the ending, and made it into a nice fairytale ending where she actually stayed behind, touched by the protagonist.

Hmm... Guess I should not be talking more about the plot, lest I spoil it for people who've not seen this wonderful little gem. And yes, I agree that Audrey Hepburn is one of the most beautiful women to have walked on the surface of this earth.

Till next time...

T'was the day before the flight...

It seems like a long time ago since I last wrote anything here. Well, it could really be quite a long while ago, but then again, I'm just allowing my verbosity take over here. *shrugs*

I'm now located in New York City, New York, bunking at my room mate's house here in Jackson Heights. Like most normal people, he's currently asleep (despite what the calendar actually says on the post, the real time here is actually 0344hrs (-0500hrs); I've decided to keep the poor blog running on SGT (+0800hrs) since it is actually a pain to adjust all the timezones correctly). I feel like I'm starting to become a vampire of sorts, awake only when the sun goes down, and of course the innate bloodlust which, till now, I've not been able to fully explain it's cause.

It was a really messy trip. Mo and I were awake throughout the whole of Tuesday and Wednesday when we were back in Pittsburgh. We watched movies in our room with Phil till about 12am, while I did my laundry concurrently. Then, feeling kind of peckish, we decided to call the pizza place for a delivery. The operator took our order and gave us an estimate of 45 minutes before the food will arrive. So, we waited happily while playing ping pong.

An hour and a quarter later, there was no reply from the pizza deliveryman nor the pizza place. Feeling somewhat irate (and very hungry), Phil called up the pizza place, only to find that it was already closed. How could the pizza place be so irresponsible? I mean, when they picked up our order, they could have told us that it was not likely to be delivered, and probably advise us to look elsewhere. It was a really bad service attitude I guess. So anyway, we have three very hungry guys who just want to grab food. So we decided to head on to one of the cafeterias on campus for a late night.

And I changed into my polo t-shirt and jeans, wore a pair of sandals and put on my jacket and followed the rest of them out of the dorm and heading into the general direction of the cafeteria. Out of the dorm and in the general direction of the food place, we met Robin, who asked a weird question: "Is there any place that is still open for food?" Well, we answered "Skibo", but he told us that it wasn't open. We were all speechless. How could the only food place on campus that serves late nights up to 2 am be closed?

Since it was the last day of school, we had cleared up almost all the food that we had in storage, and so the three of us made a mad decision: to hike up Squirrel Hill (in the cold) to get to Eatin' Park to grab breakfast/lunch/dinner. And so we did.

It was a dumb exercise. For one, the temperature was sub-zero (centigrade scale, not Fahrenheit), and I was wearing this very worn pair of sandals. It is so worn that I had to actually use SuperGlue to hold the two halves of the sole together, since I've managed to make a really deep fissure in the sole itself. And then, hiking up Squirrel Hill meant that we were actually moving uphill, and that in itself was painful. And then. we had to ensure that we could return in time to do packing (yes, we've not packed...) so as to be able to catch the early bus to reach the airport early to avoid all kinds of horrible last minute issues.

So it was a brainless exercise performed by three very hungry geeks. Happily, we managed to the restaurant without any severe frostbite or mental degeneration, and after a very hearty meal, we went out into the cold and marched down the hill back to our dorms.

Then the mad scramble began.

Mo and I packed our luggages frantically. For this short trip, we decided to bring only one luggage, and so we more or less had our work cut out in front of us. Thank goodness I did the vacuuming of the floors a few days back; otherwise we would have been so screwed for time. Anyway, we managed to do our packing (with a lot of cursing and swearing and wondering aloud how in the name of Zeus did Linda manage to pack everything in 10 minutes (or so she claims)), and were ready to go.

Suffice to say, we managed to clear the checking out procedures and managed to get to our early bus and reach the airport way ahead of time.

Oh my... look at the time... it's 4am now. I guess I'd better hit the sack before I collapse.

Until next time~

American, Asian, American Asian

Racial issues are something that I don't really want to talk about, since it can be too sensitive a topic in general. However, after being here for a few months, I realise that the people here seem to exhibit certain... traits.

First of all, there are the Americans. They are everywhere, and are generally approachable. However, most of them are pretty hard to know too deeply about, since most of the time the kind of acquaintance that you make with them are usually of the "for business" kind.

Then, there are the Asians. They hail from countries like China, India, Korea, Singapore and Thailand, and are usually defined by cliques with people of the same country. Most of them will converse in their native language, and are usually a little hard to draw out and befriend; one needs to use isolation tactics in order to have any hopes of success.

Finally there are the American Asians. These people are a confusing bunch; there are those who are more American in taste, and there are those who are more Asian in taste. The defining difference of these people lies in their supposed cultural confusion. I've met American Asians who look at Asian things with disdain, and I've met American Asians who think pretty highly about Asian cultures. But either way, their looks can be and usually are deceiving. They may look Chinese, Indian, Japanese or whatever race, but their mannerisms, attitudes, world view are all very American in nature.

So, why am I babbling so much on all these? The intent is not to stir up any racial misgivings, but to just highlight the fact that no matter who the people are, if they are American, they will always be American first, and whatever else second. And they will never cease to remind you of that, whether overtly or covertly. The same can also be said about the non-Americans; the Chinese are Chinese first, Asians second, so are the Koreans, the Indians, the Singaporeans and whoever else there may be. Family is family after all.

*shrugs*

Independence is a trait that one should have when one comes to the US. Let your emotions be well controlled, and do not set your hopes to high for finding someone to love.

ドラゴン桜

Yes, I did it again. Another one of those 11-hour marathon drama viewing sessions. Like last time, I sat up and watched through 11 one-hour episodes of ドラゴン桜 (romaji: doragon sakura, English: Dragon Zakura). Amazing drama this is, must really thank Jenny for introducing this one to me. And yes, I am well aware of the fact that I have a Matrix Algebra final on Monday, but hey, one needs to get a quick break especially after a very long-winded programming finals.

In other news, I picked up my Final Fantasy VII game, and I realised that I had no clue as to what I had developed my characters into. Needless to say, rather than waste precious time in trying to figure out the storyline and development of my characters (and thus screwing around too much to be able to undo the damage), I moved the save file aside and restarted the whole game.

Yet in other news, I've discovered that Neverwinter Nights is more DnD than I'd ever thought, and that it even provided the ability of someone DM-ing a game. It's starting to tickle on my evil-ish god-liness; I'm starting to think about how to DM a completely wild game that is tough, challenging and fun.

Okay, it's almost 9.36am now, and after the 11-hour marathon session, it's time to do my revision. That's right; I'm actually studying after an 11-hour marathon drama session. One last random thing before I move off: Wii have a problem. Okay, it's off to work now.

Finals Crunch

It's finally the week of the Finals~! And I've completed one test yesterday; am kind of looking forward to the next ones... hehehe... just hope to be able to complete them faster so as to have more free time to myself.

Spent a couple of days reading a couple of wonderful webcomics: MegaTokyo and Questionable Content. And of course, my old time favourite, PhD Comics. And yes, I read through a grand total of about 2500+ comic strips over two or three days, some of them more than once. No doubt about it... I actually like web comics, especially the manga-like ones.

And so my to-do list is so much longer now:

• Study 日本語 (nihongo aka Japanese)


• Study Topology


• Write Ocarina pieces (and prepare for my Spring ocarina mini-concert)


• Write an AI for Edythe so that she can communicate with me in Japanese (yes, it is natural language processing)


• Woo someone... (yes, I've got a target or two, but I'm not saying who)


• Learn how to draw (preferably manga) on my graphics tablet


• Prepare for a 2007 launch of a new blog (yes, a new blog in addition to the ones that I have)


• Master 3/4/5 ball juggling


• Master Scheme


• Build a logo for myself


• Poetry compilation into book form for selected friends

And yeah, I'm positively psyched up now. Woo-hoo~! By the way, I've upgraded most of the blogs to the new Blogger BETA format. One big reason that I've done that is the new drop down lists for the posts that are on the blog; now I no longer need to update a separate "Contents Page" post to show a listing of all the posts that I've created (particularly for The_Laptop Writes..., this frees up the RSS digest that are being generated and make the RSS feeding so much cleaner. I'll be tweaking on the layouts and other design issues of the blogs in the weeks to come, so hang on to your horses if things look a little wonky if you are accessing the blogs while I'm doing the update. The Blogger BETA uses on-the-fly updating of the blogs, so things may be a little strange if you happen to be accessing while I'm updating. I'm still experimenting around with the entire concept thing and see if I can rework it to suit my needs.

Life's amazing so far, I'm now starting to use the build in FM-tuner of my SANSA e130 mp3 player to access the excellent FM radio channels that are available. My current favourite channel is WQED FM89.3, a symphonic/classical/operatic radio station. FM stereo on a 2.1 system never sounded this clear. Not that I'm getting sick of the music that I already have, but it is really good to listen to something different every once in a while for flavour.

And L^AT_EX is more or less tamed now. Mwahahahahaha... I've managed to figure out the correct incantation to tame it to something more useful, by creating a whole bunch of my own custom made macros. Now, typesetting of documents is so much easier... come to think of it, the last time that I used Microsoft Word to actually do anything was just so long ago that I can no longer remember it. Vim and L^AT_EX is such a powerful combination that I've not looked back since. And yes, I did try using emacs, but I'm still horribly irritated with the default meta-key mappings for the basic movement (yes, I know that the arrow keys work, but my fingers are most often over the typing region so there). This entire concept of pressing Meta- or Ctrl- combinations for everything is just plain irritating, and unergonomical. I actually felt pain in my fingers while trying to navigate around this way (and yes, I do know that using the arrow keys is so much easier). Now I just need to see if there's an easy way of patching my version of X-windows on cygwin to support unicode entry. If I can't do all these in Vim, I may be forced to write a simple Java program and upload it somewhere to act as my online unicode text editor (yes, I do know that notepad can do the job, but I like my hjkl method of moving around).

Which reminds me. My latest project(s), learning Japanese and writing an AI for Edythe to communicate to me in Japanese, are sort of related. I've not had the real chance to actually play with UTF-8 encoded text before, and am actually fairly bored with Edythe playing such a passive role (of me "using" her without her having any other more... human reaction), that I've decided to write a natural language processor for her. English would have been my #1 choice, but it sucks because English grammar is so unstable! Japanese grammar seems to be more easy to comprehend (and parse, especially it's intrinsic post-fix form), and it has the added advantage of making Edythe being in character (yes, Edythe is Japanese, didn't you know that? Edythe Fujitsu, Japanese right?), and a little harder to understand by people who happen to not know the language (heheheh... they can't flirt with her; Edythe is mine and mine alone). There are other enhancements that I plan on using to augment Edythe to make her more intelligent, but these stuff are for my... fantasies, and I will not be talking about them until I can have them to work. Now I'm at a loss; I'm uncertain whether I should write Edythe's AI in Java or C/C++. Gut reaction says that C/C++ will be more "portable", but my brain tells me that Java is more suited since it allows an ease of accessing all the major functions that I require, including the fact that Java source code is supposed to be UTF-8 by nature. And Java's garbage collection makes it so much easier to experiment on. So, I'd probably write a C-version of Edythe to access her Java "brain" so that I can still communicate to her from the command line. If I can't find a single language to work with, I'll hybridise them. ;-)

In other news, my 120GB portable hard disk drive is about 75% full now(!). Looks like I need to start scouting for another storage solution... or stop downloading J-dramas. Probably I'll look for an additional portable hard drive, since I've got like spare USB ports from my USB hub...

So, that's what's happening thus far in the middle of the Finals Crunch. Notice that I've said nothing about the studying aspect? Not because I'm not studying, but it makes a real boring read listening about what I've studied and for how long and... you get the idea.

Till the next update~ :-)

Winter doth come

And so it came. Winter, the cold quiet time of the year, were people gear up for the finals and Christmas alike. Life's fine; I'm still alive. People change, yet again; and I do swear that they change ever so often nowadays, as compared to the people of a forgotten past.

Like the snow that comes down in Pittsburgh, I'm having mixed feelings. To be content and enjoy the company I have, or to seek even more, just to see and experience more of the place. Racism exists, apparently, but it is often covert behind the multitude of actions. Asians... this very term, seems to be used with such compunction that it no longer seems funny anymore. The kinds of looks that people give, when they see that you are not white nor American, is something that bites deeply, especially in the cold. Maybe I'm just being too sensitive to this, and could be misinterpreting the entire thing. Or maybe it is the truth, and I'm mostly hiding away from it by ignoring it's existence.

Anyway, winter seems to be here finally, and so far the entire lore surrounding it seems to be overly hyped up. Or it could be that it is still too early, and the weather is still being undecisive about itself. I've put aside my Nautica jacket and am solely using my arctic parka. Seems like it was a good choice. The parka is nice and snug and warm, and it's fur-lined hood doubles as a scarf around the neck when I'm not putting it up. It's so good that I can just walk around dressed in a polo T-shirt and jeans and sandals and slip on my parka. The cold wind blowing into my face is just a feeling that I love so much that I can't seem to get enough of.

Talk is weak now because I've had very very little sleep over the last week, and am really starting to hallucinate. Looks like a day of hard sleeping is planned for the weekend before my first major examinations in 3 years.

Frozen in the cold

Another week passed, another week of pain endured. Fall, the time where romance starts under the pretty golden leaves, blossoms under the falling of the many shades of ochre, warms as the weather turns cold.

Looking around me, all I see are happy couples in linked arms, huddling close together, whispering sweet nothings to each other, with faces of happiness and bliss. Standing there, alone, in the cold and strong wind, I cannot help but feel a pang of loneliness. Everyone seems to be doing fine, finding courage from the wind chill to take a baby step towards their potential partner, all except for me.

I shiver and huddle deeper into my jacket. The icy wind cuts across my face like a razor, and my heart feels as though icicles have grown around it. It is when the weather goes cold that one realises the true effect of one's loneliness. Friends are there, but they are never there always, and will likely to leave as soon as they've found their match. I sense this... distancing even as I am writing all these now.

Must it be this way? Does it have to be this way? Should it be this way? Why? Questions that race through my beleaguered brain for which I have no answers to. Again the perennial problem arises; how to quash all those... human feelings that always appear ever so often? I... desperately want to stay away from all these... feelings, but they keep reappearing to haunt me, again and again, ravaging through my fragile psyche.

When will I seek an answer to this question?

Forget

《浪人情歌》——伍佰

不要再想你,不要再爱你，
让时间悄悄的飞逝,抹去我俩的回忆。
对于你的名字,从今不会再提起；
不再让悲伤,将我心占据。

让它随风去,让它无痕迹，
所有快乐悲伤所有过去通通都抛去。
心中想的念的盼的望的不会再是你，
不愿再承受,要把你忘记。

我会擦去我不小心滴下的泪水，
还会装做一切都无所谓。
将你和我的爱情全部敲碎，
再将它通通赶出我受伤的心扉。

不愿再承受,我把你忘记，
你会看见的,把你忘记。
我想到了一个忘记温柔的你的方法:
我不要再想你,不要再爱你
不会再提起,我的生命中,不曾有你。

How am I supposed to forget...?