(I Just) Died in your Arms

(I Just) Died In Your Arms------Cutting Crew

Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must have been something you said
I just died in your arms tonight

I keep looking for something I can't get
Broken hearts lie all around me
And I don't see an easy way to get out of this
Her diary it sits on the bedside table
The curtains are closed, the cats in the cradle
Who would've thought that a boy like me could come to this

Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must've been something you said
I just died in your arms tonight
Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must've been some kind of kiss
I should've walked away

Is there any just cause for feeling like this?
On the surface I'm a name on a list
I try to be discreet, but then blow it again
I've lost and found, it's my final mistake
She's loving by proxy, no give and all take
'Cos I've been thrilled to fantasy one too many times

Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must've been something you said
I just died in your arms tonight
Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must've been some kind of kiss
I should've walked away

It was a long hot night
She made it easy, she made it feel right
But now it's over the moment has gone
I followed my hands not my head, i know i was wrong

Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must've been something you said
I just died in your arms tonight
Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must've been some kind of kiss
I should've walked away

Upgrade Day?

Today seems to be a day of system updates. Edythe-EEE has Xubuntu Karmic Koala running sweetly, and she is still continuing in her task of performing trial factoring for Mersenne prime numbers during the [long] hours that I have nothing to run on her. Elyse just had her 64-bit edition of Xubuntu Jaunty Jackalope updated to the 64-bit edition of Karmic Koala, and things seem to be dandy for her also, though I probably need to muck around with getting the PPA version of Pidgin working so that Pidgin is always updated each time a new release comes out---there are just too many wonky things that happen that require an update to ensure that things are working, something about having to deal with the legions of people who are still on propriety networks whose protocols are not very intuitive nor reasonable.

Apart from the various Xubuntu upgrades, Elyse also has her cygwin environment upgraded. There's no real compelling reason for that to occur, except that it's something shiny, and since I'm already in the mood of updating systems, I might as well do it too. In other news, I have also gotten SDL and MinGW in the guise of Dev-C++ up and running. I need SDL to muck around with preparing an emulated version of this, which is a rather cute little small-pixel system. MinGW is so that I can actually compile the code across a whole slew of platforms to run them on, which is always awesome.

Alright, I need to go for a run; I think I'm addicted to endorphins. Till next time.

The Koala Moves

After about a day or so of arm-wrestling, I've managed to get Xubuntu Karmic Koala running on Edythe-EEE. Things are surprisingly smooth, with everything seemingly working out of the box. However, I take offense at the default colour scheme and layout, and had to change it back to something that I preferred on the rather small pixel estate. I've even tested the external monitor VGA socket, and it appears to work flawlessly. Hurray, I suppose.

In the Driver's Seat

Now that I'm back in the driver's seat once more, I find that I missed being in control of things in general. For too long I have relinquished the power of control to others, simply because I was not exactly in the right state of mind to handle myself, but I suppose that it is time for me to figure out things that will better benefit me, considering that the worst is just about to be over.

Remember how I think that life sucks completely? Well, it still does, in my book, but I think that at the end of the day, the amount of suckage is highly dependent on the amount of crap that you are willing to put up with. If you are willing to put up with a lot of crap, then suckage will increase correspondingly, but if you take your life seriously enough, you may reduce the amount of suckage that you need to actually take in. Long story short, we have some control on our lives, and no one and nothing should make us relinquish this control easily.

That said, here's a pet peeve: the word ``utilise'' or ``utilize'' for those of you who think that the `z' spelling is cooler (it isn't, and it requires me to move my left pinky down on the QWERTY keyboard). I cannot understand why anyone would keep using that word instead of the semantically equivalent (and much easier on the eyes/brain!) word ``use''. So, instead of saying things like ``he used the computer to do something'', many people will write ``the computer is utilised to do something'' or ``he utilised the computer to do something''. To me, these sound worse than some of the scrawlings that I have written; somehow people seem to think that the word ``utilise'' is more sophisticated and aristocratic than plain old ``use'', but I beg to differ. Actually, I take offense to people who keep throwing around bombast for the sake of appearing intelligent, without actually using the word in the correct context to provide the necessary nuance, which incidentally is the only reason that I condone the use of words that do not appear in common conversation. What's the purpose of a language for communication when the people keep trying to obfuscate meanings with long and hard-to-understand words?

December is fast reaching a close, and the year of 2009 is wrapping up quickly. Soon, 2010 will arrive, and with a new year comes new resolutions and new viewpoints on life. Maybe by then I will discover even more about myself that I never knew before.

Imagine

Ever felt an itch before? You know, the kind you feel immediately after being stung by some insect that you didn't realise existed? Remember that itch yet? Yes?

Now imagine that itch is all over your body, from your face, to your neck to your torso, to your upper and lower arms, to the back of your knee, to your calves to the tops of your feet---everywhere where there might be skin, it itches. Feeling it yet?

Now imagine further that you try to relieve that itch. How would you do that? By scratching at it, right? Imagine how you might relieve an itch that is all over the body at once. Imagine that the itching is intense, and that you need to relieve it at all costs, because it is highly annoying right?

Normal scratching doesn't seem to work, does it, since the more you scratch at it, the itchier it becomes. You'll keep scratching until your nail inadvertently breaks the fragile skin from over scratching. Now there's something new: you have a small skin wound that hurts like hell when water is run over it. Worse, since the itch is extensive and you had to scratch everywhere, you are covered with many of these micro wounds throughout your skin.

Imagine taking a shower in that. Imagine taking a shower using antiseptic bath lotions with that. Now imagine leaving the shower. The skin will slowly dry itself up and suddenly you find yourself in this rather uncomfortable and stiff situation. What do you do now? The itch returns; it always does. You put moisturiser and hope for the best. But the itch will never go away.

Imagined all that yet? Welcome to my world of living hell.

December Look-Back

It's a Sunday now, not something that I am annoyed at, but I just have a general sense of laziness that comes from this rather traditional day of rest. Life is chugging along, and bullets are being bitten, and at times I just keep wondering about what is just beyond the horizon of my view on life. It's also December, which is usually a good time to start wrapping up the year that was 2009 and to wonder and plan for the year that is to come, namely 2010.

So many things have happened throughout this year, and yet the saga hasn't quite ended yet because there are more epic struggles to come. It's a struggle always from one end of life to the other, but eventually, things will work out right, as long as I keep on living and thinking. I'm keeping few contacts these days, preferring to just sit down and hide behind my persona and computer, to do quite a bit of introspection and to ``sort things out'' in my head. It's a new-found feeling, when the ancient ``curse'' of wanting someone to love has reduced in its strength to the point that I am just uncaring about that particular aspect of life. I've loved once, maybe that's enough for this lifetime. If I continue to do things that can help myself as well as others, perhaps it will be more rewarding that seeking out that ``other for me''.

Time has taught me a lot. The past year alone has taught me so much about myself that even I get a little scared at what I learnt. In the past, I longed to return to the work place and do things, but somehow now that I am in there, I long for the academic life where I could just study, eat and drink with little care in the world except for the work that I needed to do. But these feelings are not of regret, but of nostalgia---truth is, it is still more fulfilling to work than do just do homework upon homework all the time.

My perpetual job of keeping myself sane has taken a new twist in events: I am branching out in the things that I am doing other than work. A while back, I started taking Aikido lessons, and now I'm part of the department's ``gym-team''. NaNoWriMo set my writing fire ablaze into a conflagaration of pure desire, and I suddenly have an insatiable need to write as opposed to merely a voracious one. Soon, when time permits, I will return to sketching, and to master a few more tricks with juggling balls; these things are the other random stuff that I do to keep sane in this very messed up and very hurried world.

I think I'm starting to ``sink down'' more comfortably into myself now, ever since I decided that going around trying to woo anyone is a fruitless exercise on my part---if a girl is interested in me, she should also bear an equal amount of effort in convincing me that she's the ``right one''. Time is a strange mistress, but I think I'll slowly learn her moves and figure things out.

Okay, enough of procrastination---the weather is comfortable, and I still have graduate school applications to clear. Time to haul it.

Inspiration for NaNoWriMo 2009

In a previous post, I promised to write about the inspiration for the entry, and so here it is. Since there's a lot of potentially spoiler material, things are kept in code as usual. [Ed: I removed the code, since it really isn't necessary I suppose.]

If you happen to have crossed paths with me in life before, you would find that the source material in this novel to be strangely familiar. You are not too far from the truth; a large part of the story draws parallels that have gone one in one aspect of my life. The chief difference of course is that the characters are all fictional, and so are the events that are presented. The locations and mannerisms of some of the cast are based on some of the places that I have been to and the people that I have interacted, with heavy fictionalisation of course. Actually, let's just introduce the full cast and talk more about them here. All these information comes from my idea file, which, as you might recall, is my master planning document.

Heng Kar

This guy is the protagonist's protagonist. I planned my story to have two inter-weaving story lines, one in first person perspective, the other in third person perspective. Heng Kar is the one that I chose to write in first person. His name is a play on the word ``hacker'', which is basically what he is: an aspiring programmer within the computer club of the school. I chose Heng Kar to be the first person perspective due to the ease in conveying his thoughts and ideas to the reader; it's hard to go wrong with talking about what a geek is thinking, particularly on rather objective things like computer programs, and even remarking on the behaviours of people around him/her. I gave him a few ``typical'' roles that he might play in school life, like being a subject representative for Mathematics, and liking soya bean milk. Initially, I had wanted Heng Kar to ``merge'' with Kah Hao later on as two conflicting parts of the same person, but decided somewhere during the middle of the writing to avoid doing so to avoid the cliché ``multiple personality syndrome'' trope that will most likely occur. Due to that rather last minute change, I made it such that Heng Kar used to be in Chinese Orchestra as a dizi (笛子) player, which made the eventual merging easier.

Kah Hao

This guy is the other protagonist, but due to his third person style of presentation, he seems a little more distant to the reader than Heng Kar. The choice of name was sort of random; only sort of because the initials of Kah Hao were deliberately chosen to be the reverse of Heng Kar, which plays upon my earlier concept of them being a part of the same person, a concept that I ditched midway due to the implausibility of the matter. Kah Hao's choice of musical instrument is the dizi (笛子), which is coincidentally the one that I play in real life. Actually, it's not coincidental; the details of his instrument bag are exactly like that of the one that I own, and Kah Hao is a strong reflection of the younger musician in me back in the day. I chose to keep him far away from school to show his penchant of sleeping on buses, which made his three-thousand-ish-word-long dream sequence more relevant when he slept on the bus on the way back from the rehearsal at the orchestra. Again, since I wanted him to ``merge'' with Heng Kar in the end, I didn't make him a part of the school orchestra till much later, which made it easier for them to meet and lead to the final conclusion that I wrote for the novel.

Siew Wah

Siew Wah is a joke, literally. His name sounds like 笑话 in Cantonese, which means literally ``a joke''. He's kinda the smart sidekick of Heng Kar, and I liked to use him as a general geekier-than-thou-art character, which is useful when I need to graft in the reasons as to why Heng Kar could transfer out of the robotics division into a hard core programming division. I also wanted a sounding board for Heng Kar, in the sense that I find it nice for Heng Kar to actually talk to someone as opposed to thinking deeply about things in his head without verbalising, which makes him sound neurotic more than anything else.

Ms Tan

She's a Scary Teacher, but one who is reasonable. She is based on an old teacher I once had, but I made Ms Tan a little milder than the one I had for class (sorry), otherwise Siew Wah would not get away with the things that he has done, and the story will probably be stuck where they are trying to get out of trouble from her.

Tiffany

She's a real mystery. I don't really know much about her, but she seems to have some kind of liking for Kah Hao, or at least, I tried to insinuate that she had some kind of liking of Kah Hao. It was hard to work in a romance angle, and I didn't really try to force the issue---two thirteen-year-olds dating while I'm trying to weave the two story lines of Heng Kar and Kah Hao together? No thanks... too much work. I just kept her as a good yangqin (扬琴) player who accompanies Kah Hao. Tiffany is an amalgamation of two girls that I know who also played the yangqin (扬琴), and I'm not telling if the crush that Kah Hao had on Tiffany is reflective of what I might have felt.

Mr Ang

I had some fun writing Mr Ang, the retired professional musician who is trying to keep the orchestra together while maintaining an element of fun while he looks like a scary being. The observations that he made of the music that they played are based on the words that I have heard a few of my music directors said before, and I liberally used what they said while tailoring them to the pieces that were played. Oh, the music are real, so are the titles and the nuances that I highlighted through the commentary---it is as real as it gets.

Zhang Jie

I basically needed a reason for Kah Hao to be running up the stairs and colliding with Heng Kar for that initial meeting and the first step for the merge of the two storylines. It would sound a bit weird if the main conductor (Mr Tew) were doing the conducting and then they all disappeared half-way---the timing also meant that it was probably more believable if a student conductor were present, which was based on what I had observed from some of the school-based orchestras that I have seen.

Tian Kun

I needed a character to have more prowess in dizi playing than Kah Hao, both to show that Kah Hao had external training, and to provide a natural means of ``unearthing'' Heng Kar's hidden talent at dizi playing. Remember that at the time of the novel, Kah Hao had to rehearse with Tiffany for a concert, so having him ``vet'' Heng Kar was unrealistic. Besides, I needed an oxymoron character (muscular guy playing dizi? hahahaha) who has more purchasing power than the thirteen-year-olds to supply the dizi for Heng Kar to play.

Mr Cheong

He was an excuse for me to write that whole excursion to Sum Lum Mall. It's my play on the shopping habits of the über-geeks.

So that's the cast of ``A Slice of Life with a Twist of Lemon''. The locations where all the action takes place are also inspired in part by real life and my reawakened imagination. They are further described below.

Hilltop High School

Ah hahahahaha! This one is quite fun; it's a play on my old secondary school (can you guess how?). In fact, the old campus of my old secondary school features prominently in the story, particularly that spiral staircase where I spent many hundreds of words describing as people walked up and down, ran up and down and crashing into each other. That old campus is probably gone by now, since the said school has since moved away to a bigger campus to accommodate the increasing number of students from a slew of new programmes that they have come up with over the years.

Chinese Orchestra of the Community Club

This one keeps remaining unnamed in the story, but the location and the orchestra itself is loosely based on the Chinese Orchestra that I play with at Teck Ghee Community Club. That said, the people involved are not wholly based on the people who are in the orchestra; specifically Mr Ang is really a figment of my imagination. Honest! The description of the room is vaguely similar to the actual layout in the actual room where the inspiration was drawn from.

Computer Laboratory at Hilltop High School

Like all the sub-locations in the Hilltop High campus, this one is based on a real computer laboratory that I spent many afternoons in. Most of the descriptions are about the computer lab circa 2000, when they revamped the old layout of computers into the new one. But I was bummed enough to not write a definite year in the story, who knows when it occurred?

Sum Lum Mall

Hahahahaha... my personal favourite. This is really a weakly disguised version of ``Sim Lim Square'', the biggest computer parts selling complex in Singapore. I just tried to mangle one aspect of the name, which gave me that weird sounding one of ``Sum Lum Mall''.

Alright, so that's the [main] cast and the [main] locations. Bus rides and excruciating waiting times at the pedestrian crossings are just a fairly cheap way of keeping the word count moving as I stalled for some self-thinking processes to occur in the characters, especially for Kah Hao and Heng Kar.

Initially, I started off with the idea of writing two seemingly divergent story lines, with one told from a first person perspective, and the other with the third person perspective, and to unify them towards the end. It was originally meant to be an ``inner struggle'' story, with two competing ideologies within the head of the protagonist manifesting themselves as two completely different people, but as noted earlier, I found that a bit risky and not worth the careful segregation that was needed to make the story believable. So I modified it such that two real people were involved, and then the rest of the story concept was still the same.

Was I satisfied with the work? Well, sort of, since there are so many sub-plots that I didn't have the chance to flesh out, from Kah Hao's relationship with his parents, Kah Hao's seeming crush on Tiffany, Heng Kar's rise towards programming eliteness, Kah Hao and Heng Kar's frienship with each other, Ms Tan's views on the ``meteoric'' rise of Heng Kar, more computer algorithms lessons from Mr Kang, geeky jokes---well you get the idea. So much to write, so little to write them; I had to make sure I actually ended the story by November in order to ``count'' for NaNoWriMo.

So there you have it. The ``spoilers'' and inspirations on how I got to writing ``A Slice of Life with a Twist of Lemon''. What are you waiting for? Download the original draft of the novel here and start reading! (=

A Rant

Now that I am sufficiently recovered from the month of literary abandon, I think that I can probably write a few more things here.

Time does fly rather quickly when one is not paying too much attention to it, either through the flow of time itself, or through pure procrastination. So many things have occurred within the month of November, and sometimes I just wonder if I truly knew what was going on or more importantly, what had happened. The month of literary abandon; it's probably an escapism for me, to run away from the issues that have been troubling me all these while, to hide from my worries in the hope that when I'm finally ready to meet them, I would be strong enough to face them one by one in a controlled manner, as opposed to being completely lost in my senses in dealing with them all in one go.

I'm making lots of changes in life. November is a month of change, in many ways. The sadness that plagued me in the past still exists, but is even more carefully wrapped up among the layers of time and shielding and protective shell that I have constructed around myself. Time will come again when these layers are once more removed to expose the rather vulnerable self that is the ``real'' me. Meanwhile, more and more changes are coming in place. One novel done, a few revisions of an aimless personal statement for graduate school applications have been written and discarded; I'm finally ready to start writing personal statements that actually concretely answers the questions that are asked in each of the seven different applications. Yes, there is large amounts of change alright.

I've decided to grow out a moustache. I'm still deciding whether to wear my hair long or short, but given the circumstance in which I am in (hot and humid weather that is Singapore), I'm probably just going to go for the short hair as per usual. Maybe when I'm in graduate school, I will just keep my hair long and tie it in a pony tail or something, just to separate the me from the past from the me in the present who is going towards the future. Oh, a moustache, `why?' one might ask. It's a characteristic change; facial hair has always been deemed ``masculine'', and moustaches have a way of keeping women away, something that I am most inclined to do for this upcoming two years---I swore an oath to myself to not be involved in petty relationship-related things during the upcoming two years, starting from August this year. I just don't want to be hurt again; it is hard on myself because I need to actually recover from the blow, and the recovery process tends to be nearly twice as long as a relationship truly took. Recovery is not fun nor easy; it doesn't help when one's surroundings are full of peers who have married/are getting married, since it just keeps opening up the wounds that were just barely freshly healing.

Wounds. Deep, deep wounds of the heart, things that cannot be easily fixed, as far as I know. There's no known cure for healing the heart; the best that we have to date is to let time do the healing. Yet time itself is a double-edged sword; it heals alright, but it also causes a lot of discomfort along the way, with all the yearnings that need to be controlled, the musings of what-if that needs to be reduced, and the sudden pangs of sadness that strike when one suddenly feels the absence of one who was once so close to the self. These are feelings that are hard to put precisely in words; maybe only those who have fallen in and out of love can truly comprehend what I am saying here.

Weirdness. Till now, I am still as weird/odd as ever. Few people see me beyond that veneer of happiness that I show around, with my wacky ways and somewhat relaxed outlook. But that is just a façade that I put up for the world---I've said many times that it is easier to just project one particular personality to certain groups of people so that it makes it easier for them to process the [limited] complexity that governs my personality and behaviour.

Occult calculations and other pseudo-scientific methods of divination have predicted that it is my life path to be loved by everyone than by an other, and as time goes by, I am starting to become a believer of that prophecy myself, given all that I have been through and all else that I think I will be going through. But like all skeptics, I still have my reservations in believing completely in something that is not well reasoned from first principles, but that nagging sensation is getting harder and harder to ignore. Maybe there is a higher purpose in my life that transcends getting closer to a special someone to love; maybe the assimilation of knowledge is the purpose of my life, instead of love. But how would I know?

Past and present, juxtapositions of different temporal zones. Sometimes I feel as though I'm trapped in some kind of time trap, with no easy way to escape. There is always this feeling of a higher dimension that I am vaguely aware of, yet cannot fully attain---it is puzzling indeed. But why would I care anyway? I'm a fatalist in many ways, believing to a large degree that there's a limit on what we can do under the ambit of free will; all that we think to be free will can most likely be a false feeling of being in control, for is it not true that we all do die in the end, no matter what choices we make? Seeing life as an end of the means is just the most ridiculous way of looking at things---it is the most depressing. Life is about the journey, not the destination. Screw higher purpose, screw meaning; we make things up as we go along with life: the things that make more sense, we keep them and for those that don't make any sense, we can just dump them and move on. What's the point of dogma or the idea that there exists one true idea that all must conform to?

Okay, I'm getting off tangent. That's the problem of splitting up a post into multiple writing sessions, since it gets increasingly hard to keep the line of thought more or less consistent, particularly also when the afternoon heat is getting to the mind and keeping it sufficiently sedated that sleep seems to be the most welcoming thing now.

Maybe something less incoherent the next time.

NaNoWriMo 2009! Official Winner!

After churning 61,907 words, I think I don't need to say more about this. Do visit my personal domain to download the manuscript for the first draft. (=

还是会寂寞

I like the riff on this piece, very catchy:

《还是会寂寞》——陈绮贞

早已忘了想你的滋味是什么
因为每分每秒都被你占据在心中
你的一举一动牵扯在我生活的隙缝
谁能告诉我离开你的我会有多自由

也曾想过躲进别人温暖的怀中
可是这么一来就一点意义也没有
我的高尚情操一直不断提醒着我
离开你的我不论过多久 还是会寂寞

别对我小心翼翼 别让我看轻你
跟着我 勇敢的走下去
别劝我回心转意 这不是廉价的爱情
看着我 对我说着爱我

Lyrics courtesy of www.inkui.com.

Technical Aspect of NaNoWriMo 2009

Now that I have completed the main task of NaNoWriMo to hit 50k words (up to now, I even have a 2k word buffer), I suppose it might be interesting to talk a little about the set up that I used to work on the novel this month.

For starters, I used vim as my workhorse text editor. I kept a running skeleton/outline of my story thus far, including cast, locations and other relevant information in a file aptly known as idea. It was a very basic set up using a semi-hierarchy system, without any other plugins or things that provided better outlining support. As for the actual novel, I ran two different tools, vim when I was working on Edythe-EEE, and Q10, a minimalistic full screen text editor with live word count and word count target setting, and a clock when I was working on Elyse. I made some modifications for vim on Edythe-EEE though; I remapped j and k to gj and gk respectively, and made sure to unset the textwidth variable. The cumulation of these changes made vim much easier to use to edit ``single-line paragraphs'', since the gj and gk commands allow screen-based movements across the line, instead of just skipping lines (and thus paragraphs!).

I also had a LaTeX source file set up which included the various text files that comprise my chapters. The LaTeX file was set up for A5 paper and would be the means in which I would be typesetting my text. I could have done everything in one file, but the tagging from LaTeX would interfere with the word count, and that it would start to get very unwieldy when all the text of the novel were in one place: the huge quantities of text just makes things unnecessary fatiguing. These were supplemented by a simple bash script that ran pdflatex and wc to get the PDF file of the novel and the word count of the text respectively.

To top everything up, all the files were version controlled using subversion on a space that I had on Assembla, which made synchronising between Edythe-EEE and Elyse an easy task to do.

Maybe I will talk about my inspiration for this piece of writing some other time.

I Has 50,019 Words!

Greetings and salutations and all forms of well wishes from me! I am half-back from NaNoWriMo, having hit the 50k barrier today. As of now, my word count stands at 50,019 words, and to be honest, I'm not quite down with the story yet---there's still a bunch of things to tie up and conclude.

What does this mean?

I am continuing to write the story despite ``winning'' NaNoWriMo in the conventional sense. The aim this time, of course, is to end the story, and so we'll see how far that goes.

Meanwhile, I think I deserve a drink for a job well done.

I Love the Whole World and All Its Messed Up Folks

In reference to this:

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

First Slack from NaNoWriMo

M3h. I'm a bad person---I took a day off from NaNoWriMo yesterday to work on my personal statement, which still needs to be reworked. Grr...

Some times I wish I were smarter. Or dead... one of those two.

Just means I don't have to deal with the messes of life. Or something like that.

Crash out time.

More Mumblings...

Things must always be... complicated. Or so it seems. I really don't know. I'm running out of words, having used up nearly 2,000 of them each day for NaNoWriMo. To date, I have reached about 34,014 words, and am fast on my way to the next big milestone before the 50,000---the 35,000 mark. It's a psychological thing; things seem to look really far and impossible until at least half the distance (be it by count or time or anything for that matter) has occurred, and then the magic barrier of three-quarters is reached, everything suddenly seems to be tractable, and even pleasurable at times.

Anyway, I have gone all off-tangent again, such a common occurrence. Right, things are always complicated in my world, it seems. It is as though it has been ordained in the heavens that whatever I do must be plagued with all kinds of nasties, so that the eventual outcome will always be tainted by a bittersweet flavour.

Weak in the Presence of Beauty

Mulling

Well, I'm still alive and well, I suppose, considering that I have not really said much here for quite a while. It has been quite a ride for the last few days in this month of November, suffice to say, there is a lot to be done, and I hope that I can catch up with everything eventually without killing myself out or tiring myself to the point that I cannot do anything productive.

I think I might be slipping into a mild depression of sorts, if cycles are of any indication. At the very least, I am still in good company, with family and a few remaining friends around to quietly support me. Sometimes I just like throwing in the towel and giving up on everything, but then some survival instinct kicks in and I can't just quit quite so, and I end up being a fighter all over again. Such is my life, I suppose.

I wonder sometimes if the path of the ronin is indeed the one that I am destined to walk. It seems that each time I start to look at the people around me, I find that they are drifting further and further away, making things just a little more sad and depressing. The great pillars of support that I used to have can be seen as basically being non-existent---I'm not sure if I can just survive based on myself alone without these support.

*sighs*

Life is so complicated; sometimes I envy those who decided to take matters into their own hands and just end it---at least they end based on their own terms and conditions, unbeholden to the other people that are around them. Perhaps that's why I keep feeling sorry for myself, since I never seem to have the guts necessary to make a break from the past and to go on my own vision of my future. Or maybe my values are strong enough to disallow me to just cut loose and run from life, since responsibilities weigh me down and making me unable to just make a break for it in the most irresponsible manner.

Maybe I will post more in the near future about what is troubling me; or maybe not. Who really knows?

NaNoWriMo 2009!

NaNoWriMo 2009 in progress... I'm currently writing my butt off, in addition to doing all the graduate school applications.

If you are interested in keeping track of my word count progress, you can track it here.

I Will Survive

What a Painful Awakening... You Used to be My Everything...

This song is fairly meaningful too, about awakening to what could have been a wrong love. Strangely related huh?

《领悟》------辛晓琪

我以为我会哭 但是我没有
我只是怔怔望着你的脚步
给你我最的祝福
这何尝不是一种领悟 让我把自己看清楚
虽然那无爱的痛苦 将日夜夜 在我灵魂最深处

我以为我会报复 但是我没有
当我看到我深爱过的男人
竟然 像孩子一样无助
这何尝不是一种领悟 让你把自己看清楚
被爱是奢侈的幸福 可惜你 从来不在乎

啊!一段感情就此结束
啊!一颗心眼看要荒芜
我们的爱若是错误 愿你我没有白白受苦
若曾真心真意付出 就应该满足

啊!多么痛的领悟 你曾是我的全部
只是我回首来时路的 每一步 都走的好孤独
啊!多么痛的领悟 你曾是我的全部
只愿你挣脱情的枷锁 爱的束缚 任意追逐
别再为爱受苦

Lyrics courtesy of www.inkui.com.

Time, Changer Of Seasons...

This is one very meaningful song---I remembered the song when I was listening to some remixes that I had on hand.

Somewhere In The World------Boney M

Time, changer of seasons, time will see another flower growing.
Climb over the mountains, there you'll find warm winds blowing.

Somewhere in the world, there is peace of mind.
Somewhere in the world, that's what I must find.
Somewhere in the world, there's a place for me in this world.

I cannot believe it, everywhere I see lonely faces.
Why have we no answers, just some more empty places?

Somewhere in the world, there is peace of mind.
Somewhere in the world, that's what I must find.
Somewhere in the world, there's a place for me in this world.

Time, changer of seasons, time will see another flower growing.
Climb over the mountains, there you'll find warm winds blowing.

Somewhere in the world, there is peace of mind.
Somewhere in the world, that's what I must find.
Somewhere in the world, there's a place for me in this world.

Somewhere in the world, there is peace of mind.
Somewhere in the world, that's what I must find.

Lyrics courtesy of www.lyricsfreak.com.

GRE is Coming Again (Urgh)

So the last few entries were rather cryptic in many senses, and here's why: I think that I am stressed out by the fact that I am taking the GRE [again] this Friday and have been looking for diversions to keep myself from worrying too much about things. That said, this song was one that I have been searching around for a long time, simply because of the clear female vocals and the rather catchy lyrics, which upon further analysis, will reveal that it has more meaning than just wanting to write a song.

So, right. Life. It goes on... once the GRE is done (and hopefully without any other news other than great news!) I will need to kick into high gear for the multitude of things that need settling, including applying to graduate school as well as preparing for the run up for NaNoWriMo. Oh, not to mention, this whole thing called work, which is really two projects masquerading as one.

So busy.

I think I might slowly be driven insane with the stuff I'm doing. They all said that life after CMU is more smooth-sailing and one will feel that the pace of life will slow down, but as far as I am concerned, that is definitely inapplicable here. So many things, so little time---at the very least I am emotionally more controlled now and can thus channel my cerebral powers towards the tasks that require dealing with, as opposed to the crap that I was basically stuck in a few months back.

I keep looking back huh. Even after so long, I still do a lot of retrospection and thinking about the past, ruminating ever so often, and sometimes even lapsing into moments of silent melancholy when I remember the good times that are no longer here. But I suppose that is the normal functioning of a person---no one will remember things that didn't affect them deeply in some way, good or bad. But as someone once told me, a break-up (and everything else for that matter) must be viewed not in a fatalistic manner but with one that provides different values to what has occurred. An example of this is to attach different values to some of the gifts that were exchanged during the relationship (or whatever)---instead of seeing it as a token of love, it is more productive to see it just as a gift from a good friend to another, and to downplay all that emotional baggage thing. But of course, doing more stuff to distract (and allow the venting of) the mind is probably another viable solution.

This place is getting more and more muggy; the humidity is so high that I am practically bathing in my own perspiration. Obviously, this is causing me grief because my rashes have started to appear all over again. Heh. I think that one of the reasons that govern why I don't feel attracted to people here could be that the whole skin rash/allergic reaction just makes me feel inferior, like as though there is some genetic impairment that stands out like a sore thumb. Put it in a Freudian way, I don't feel sexy enough whenever I am back in Singapore---how does one feel sexy/confident if one has rashes all over the bloody place? At least this theory accounts for the fact that I am neither a misogynist nor a misogamist.

It really does take a little effort to cut through all the protective barriers I put between myself and the outside world to know the ``real'' me inside.

That said, I made a pact with myself to stay clear from the whole relationship business for two years, with the intention of using those two years to concentrate on recovering from my self-diagnosed image problems and depression. Not that I am going to shed that geeky exterior, but perhaps it is time to think beyond the geek and wonder about the whole ``reintegration into society'' aspect of things.

Life seems to be made up of skirmishes that lead to high-stake battles which end up in a full-scale total war, only to end up with a bang (or a whimper) at the end of it all, where one leaves as how one was born---naked and alone.

等着黑夜轻轻轻轻落下...

I've been searching this one for a very long time, and I have finally found it. Xinyao (新谣) is a really nice genre of easy-listening music.

《让夜轻轻落下》——潘盈

等着黑夜轻轻轻轻落下
将你我来覆盖 等着黎明的安排
过去已经过去 未来未必存在
让我们继续相信现在

对你从来不改变 千种柔情说着一种语言
昙花的笑靥 星光的乍现
是我羞涩散乱的思念

你也从来不改变 一种沉默说着千种亏欠
紧紧拥抱我 轻轻放开我
像放开无处安放的依眷

曾经我将无助的爱情
静静枕在你的臂弯里
以为它将为我阻挡风雨
共我面对寂寞的潮汐

可是在你宽阔温暖的胸怀里
总是听到冷冷的叹息
你那不屑说谎的眼睛
始终教我自己回避

也许已经不是爱 只是一种坚持的情怀
也许依然还有爱 也许是慢慢生长的悲哀

等着黑夜轻轻轻轻落下
将你我来覆盖 等着黎明的安排
过去已经过去 未来未必存在
让我们继续相信现在

可是在你宽阔温暖的胸怀里
总是听到冷冷的叹息
你那不屑说谎的眼睛
始终教我自己回避

Lyrics courtesy www.inkui.com.

From the Bottom of My Broken Heart

And this came to mind, back when her songs still sounded nice and made some sense:

``From the Bottom of My Broken Heart''------Britney Spears

"Never look back," we said
How was I to know I'd miss you so?
Loneliness up ahead, emptiness behind
Where do I go?

And you didn't hear
All my joy through my tears
All my hopes through my fears
Did you know, still I miss you somehow

[CHORUS:]
From the bottom of my broken heart
There's just a thing or two I'd like you to know
You were my first love, you were my true love
From the first kisses to the very last rose
From the bottom of my broken heart
Even though time may find me somebody new
You were my real love, I never knew love
'Til there was you
From the bottom of my broken heart

"Baby," I said, "please stay.
Give our love a chance for one more day"
We could have worked things out
Taking time is what love's all about

But you put a dart
Through my dreams through my heart
And I'm back where I started again
Never thought it would end

[Repeat CHORUS]

You promised yourself
But to somebody else
And you made it so perfectly clear
Still I wish you were here

[Repeat CHORUS]

"Never look back," we said
How was I to know I'd miss you so?

Lyrics courtesy of www.azlyrics.com.

Satomi Hakken-Den

Satomi Hakken-Den------John O'Banion

You and I didn't see the evening fly
There was magic in the air
With times enough to spare
Now in hours I have to say goodbye
Well you know I have to go
But still it hurts me so

(*)
I don't want this night to end
Don't say goodbye
Just hold me close my darling
I don't want this night to end
Pretend awhile
And let's forget tomorrow

Feeling blue I can see it in your eyes
But I have got a job to do
Got to see things through
But I will be near even when I am out of sight
Counting seconds till the day
I'm coming home to stay
(Repeat *)


Oh my darling love me tonight
And chase the morning shadow with you heavenly light
I find my strength inside your arms
So love me tonight and keep my heart besides you when you go, oh...
(Repeat *)

Lyrics courtesy from spynets.com.

Ronin

Loneliness is the path of the ronin.

I ought to learn how to walk that path with dignity and pride.

Ouroboros

Strange how things have gone full circle. Three years ago, I was wondering if I could get into a decent US University, and ended up at Carnegie Mellon. Now, I'm done with university and am looking to get into graduate school, and again am applying to many places.

Three years ago, I was not in love, and now, I still am [not in love].

Three years ago, I felt that I had died, and now, I am still dead.

Three years ago, I started this blog, and now, I am still here, with all the memories from all three years buried within the text of this place.

Three years ago, I was not a human, and now, I still am not a human.

Strange how things have gone full circle. Three years ago, I was wondering if I could get into a decent US University, and ended up at Carnegie Mellon. Now, I'm done with university and am looking to get into graduate school, and again am applying to many places.

I'm Making a Note Here---Huge Success!

So, in spite of the embarassing defeat, and against my better judgement, I went for yet another round of drinking at the local pub/club. To my utter surprise, I actually enjoyed it this time round, partially because at all times I was sober and was able to take in the environment as it presented itself.

The crowd was not too shabby, yet not overfull, and the music was especially fine. For obvious reasons I did not imbibe anything heavy alcohol-wise---this means no Graveyard this time round. But it was all in all a good thing, since by not being drunk/wasted, I actually got to observe the surroundings more.

Well, I'm tired now. So I'll just crash out instead of writing. Till next time.

Easy Life

Recently there has been a lot of debates with regards to how the foreign talents are ``eating into'' the livelihoods of the locals to the point that many are expressing indignation and some are starting to show xenophobic behaviour. While I am not saying that the fears of the local populace are unfounded, I would like to remind people that at the end of the day, we ourselves are responsible for how well we do in life, and not the government. Thus, if we choose to establish affirmative actions like quotas or even display ``favouritism'' for the locals, it will tend to defeat the entire premise of meritocracy, the one thing that this country prides itself as being the ultimate leveller.

But of course, reality is often different. The theories that are often expounded on egalitarianism are only applicable if all things are equal---clearly all things are not equal. It is a delicate balance between the labour required and the labour supplied; there are few employers who are willing to pay more for a local worker if for less they can hire a foreign worker who is willing to put in more hours. The basis of most businesses is to make a profit, and not to actually provide jobs for people---this is a fundamental thing that many people must learn to comprehend. If we view things from this perspective, then we can see that there is a strong (and stiff!) competition between the locals and the foreigners for the job market.

People are generally pampered these days, with many relying heavily on the multitude of government-led schemes in order to better provide for themselves. I am not insinuating that this is wrong, but this does mean that the newer generation of folks need to learn the meaning of hard work, and to be willing to put in the hard work in order to literally earn one's keep. Already there are many who want the easy way out---just look at the number of ``idol hopefuls'' who throng the auditions for the various reality television programmes which promise a large measure of fame and what is mostly a simple chance towards making good money. Of course, the standard argument here is that many are there for interests sake, and are just auditioning to see if they got lucky, much like why people are still buying lottery tickets when the probability of a payout is ridiculously small. I'm not saying that attending such auditions for celebrity-type events is a bad thing, but I seriously question the intent behind many of these people.

Society is on its way to ruins, that we have known for a while, with the increasingly easy life that the urbanites have grown to adore. Money is plentiful for many people, but almost everyone wants more. All these things are hard to mitigate away, and perhaps it is from all of these affluence will disaster strike us. In many cases, wars come about because one of two extremes exist; either the country is ruinous to the point that the people are no longer happy, and their anger drives them to fight for more rights and material gains, or if the country is too affluent and enjoys so much power and prestige that it involves itself with world politics in order to further strengthen its power and influence in the world domain, with restraint being a non-existent word.

Okay, so I'm bitter about the world today, and bitter at some of the happenings in my country. I could go on, but I don't really want to, seeing as to how all this yelling on top my soapbox is not going to do anything productive by any form of measure. So perhaps another time I will talk about other stuff.

[Slight] Clarifications

So, my previous post probably raised a few more eyebrows than what I might want, so I suppose I ought to say some things to justify what exactly do I mean there.

Here's the general idea: I'm sick of my old self and old life, like, really sick of it. So I'm undergoing a renewal process, which includes, among other things, the cleaning up of various online credentials that I have. If you are reading this, chances are, you're already a part of the renewal process; hurray for you because you are important enough to be on the ``inner sanctum'', which is just a fancy name for ``you appear on my newer account''.

If you are not on the newer account, then you're probably dropped from my ``inner sanctum'' because either we have not talked for so long that I think you've forgotten me, or you and I have ``issues'' that need resolution [but I'm not actually interested in resolving them]. Whatever the case, don't bitch about it (you probably won't, because people who even realise that I am hardly available are probably added to the list anyway, and thus not realise that I am ``missing'').

Pretentiousness aside, I just want to keep my sanity. So much has happened, and I'm officially an adult now, in most senses of the word, considering the fact that I have graduated with a degree and so on. Perhaps it is time to actually start thinking like an adult, instead of some overgrown oversized kid who thinks is cool to write computer programs all day and do nothing else.

If you have the [un]fortunate chance of actually interacting with me, you would also realise that there is something innately different in the way I carry myself and do things. Let's just say I have developed a jaded outlook on life and view everything as being existent without having the strong attachments to its existence. Is this a good thing? Nah, I doubt it. But I'm seriously sick of waiting for people to let me down---I might as well seize life by the balls myself and deal with things my way instead of relying on people for help.

Okay, enough angsty rambling. Off to bed I go, and tomorrow is a long day.

Ominous Words

It has begun: odium drove me to fork and SIGKILL aspects of my old life. Soon, the_laptop that you once knew will no longer be the same again.

Fire of Life

It is a well-known saying that one cannot choose one's family but one can choose one's friends. Inasmuch as I don't really want to admit it, the veracity of the statement cannot be denied. Bearing that in mind then, I find myself making a few rather... unpleasant choices when it comes to friends.

You see, I have this predilection of ``dropping'' people whom I deem to be rather... useless to some degree or another. I am of course not looking at this from a purely monetary/power perspective, but rather along the base principles of hedonism---is the presence of the person happiness inducing or wrath/distress inducing? If it is of the former, then I suppose it is fine to have him/her around a little longer, but if it is more of the latter, then perhaps I will have less to do with this person.

The axiom that all people are, by nature, good, has been shattered over the course of the last twenty years of my existence. I have placed trust in many people, and have discovered rather painfully that in most of these people, the trust was misplaced. Now, after a third of my predicted life expectancy has passed, I think it is time to prune the list of people whom I trust to something that is more... manageable.

As ironic as it sounds, I am a rather private person in general. Sure, I keep blogs, I talk a lot and do many things out there, but there are enough parts of me that I do not reveal---they stay within me and nowhere else. Now, as the stakes get higher and the old alliances get shifted or shattered, it is time to withdraw ever more from the cacophony that is the world stage.

So, if you claim to be a friend of mine, and yet have not spoken to me in a manner that I deem to be earnest, chances are, you will hear ever increasingly less from me. It is not that I have a grudge against you, it is just that situation dictates me to take a step backwards into reticence and seek a certain balance within myself. Or it could mean that you were an asshole to me in the past---that is something that you ought to know yourself and should you require me to be explicit about it, you probably should never talk to me again.

It is with great hope that the careful management and pruning of this list of... trusted people will rekindle the fire of life that once lived inside me.

der Steppenwolf

And slowly, I will be the only person walking on this path: der Steppenwolf in its full glory.

Life Sucks, Right?

It is a while since I last wrote anything here, and for good cause. There's just so much that is happening in life right now that I... don't really want to think too much about it. Except things are never like that---what we refuse to acknowledge can and most definitely will hurt us if we are not careful about things.

I basically had a whole week of disasters of some sort---I think I turned a few friends into foes, dug deeper into my shell, got stood up by almost all the events that were supposed to happen last week, and got hit with bad news all over the spot, realised that I made a few dumb mistakes prior to everything... well you get the idea.

Life still sucks.

Sometimes I look at myself in despair, and wonder why things are so. Occasionally during those moments I feel like just crying to let out all that uncontrollable stress and tension, but I realise that it has gotten to the point that I no longer know how to cry.

Great. Just great. Already I do not know how to smile, and now I don't know how to cry either. The next thing I'll learn might be that I cannot be angered either.

But as usual, I digress. Despair in life seems to be a relative concept I suppose. Situations are moral-less fixtures---whether the situation is good or bad is highly dependent on the perspective in which the situation is being viewed from. Thus, it is completely likely that the same situation is both positive and negative simutaneously, but I think it probably requires a truly objective mind to identify this duality.

I doubt I have that sort of mind, however. Something about just vacillating between good and bad affect just seems to make it such that I'm literally dominated by emotions to a certain extent. Don't get me wrong, I still operate by logos; it is just that I found that some moments are best dealt with using pathos, and to keep logos as far as possible.

Again, I digress.

I have just read a nice book---maybe I will write about what I read next time.

Tango to Evora

And something a little easier on the ears:

Better Off Alone?

Oh yeah, EuroDance/Techno!

Let the Challenge Begin

Life seems to be one colossal dream---the people you meet, the things you do, the things you think about, the successes you enjoyed, the pain that you anguished over, the fear that you experienced---all of these are just figments of an overall dream that makes you who you are. And there doesn't seem to be a provable way of waking from this dream; some might say that one will awaken from the dream when one is dead, but that is something that cannot really be proven given our current understanding.

One colossal dream, marked by periods of happiness and long periods of intense depression; such is the life of a damned person. Am I a damned person? Sometimes I wonder deeply about that thought... many indications seem to suggest that I am actually not that damned, but given the premise that life is one colossal dream, do I even trust what I seem to be seeing?

Hmm... if this life is just a dream, then why am I treating it so seriously? Why am I still unable to take things up and put them down in a more carefree way?

Perhaps life is not a dream after all, and I'm just being all confused about what is real and what isn't. Maybe I'm just delusional and am in need of treatment, or maybe I'm just a crank, a crackpot, an eccentric oddity trying to fit into an orderly world.

Or maybe I'm overanalysing this again... anyway...

The reason why I brought this up was that after being in Singapore for more than 3 months, everything that happened in Pittsburgh seems like a dream away. The people whom I studied, ate, drank, dated and had fun with all seem like apparitions from a bygone past, a past that I'm soon trying to keep unacknowledged. This is almost as bad as back in secondary school, I suppose, where till now I still have... issues... about that place and some of the people.

I think the times I spent in Carnegie-Mellon University were among the best years of my life, having done things that I could only dream about wistfully here. Yet the irony is that the same place that gave me all the joy I could ever dream of, is currently giving me the biggest misery that I ever had to deal with.

Eventually, thinks will work out, one way or another. One way or another indeed...

The chief difference here is that this time, I'm really going this alone.

More Damnation

What's the point of having people surround you when you yourself are not willing to engage in them? Why not just push them away as fiercely as possible, and hope that they never return?

Only then will you have enough to believe that the world hates you and you can continue to hate the world and let that consume the last of your passions.

A reciprocating vicious cycle. Time to be damned.

Misaligned Ramble...

It feels a little different, writing on Elysie instead of Elyse (no, there's no typo there). First of all, I am sitting much further from my text on Elysie than on Elyse---something about having a fairly large screen I suppose. Secondly, things just feel a little different when one is just sitting down and chilling out a little, with the help of a little bit of alcohol to help soothe the nerves.

The night time air always feels different for me. It is as though being nocturnal was something that I secretly loved to do, that somehow I commune better when there is less light outside. Unfortunately, it would appear that ever since that I have done the LASIK surgery, my night vision hasn't really been the same as it was, and that the glare of lights are still playing havoc on my overall perception of objects around me. For that reason, I actually wear sunglasses even when it is dark out, relying heavily on my rods to provide the necessary resolving power to see better in the dark.

Well, I'm rambling again. I started off trying to write something, and then got severely side tracked as I get FL Studio 9.0 to install on Elyse. Ugh... I can't multitask at all.

This sucks.

Shoot Me In The Heart...

I realise recently that there's a strange progression that is going on. I am starting to become more and more emotionally disturbed, swinging very strongly from one polarity to another. One moment I feel like I don't need the world, and that going alone has always been my destiny, while the next moment I feel wretched and crave for that special someone just to be with.

What the hell is wrong with me?

明月心

Somehow, this song strikes a really deep chord within me:

Spooked

So I am basically rather spooked. This morning, when I woke up, I found that the only thing I could remember was that I was sobbing in my dreams, and someone was hugging me only in my dreams to tell me that things are alright. Of course, the strange thing was that it wasn't any random person, but a particular #cslounge denizen (she shall remain unnamed, though by this description, I have radically reduced the set to something that is rather small to enumerate).

I don't know what my unconscious/subconscious is trying to tell me here. Is it trying to tell me that things are alright? Or is it telling me that it is feeling rather sad that I'm all alone and single and things like that? Or is it telling me somehow that even though I am somewhat ambivalent in terms of emotion, I am actually not in really good shape and thus it is trying to reassure me?

So many interpretations available, each having enough merits to suggest that it is the ``right'' one. But these are all just interpretations of a dream---there is hardly any way of ascertaining which is the most ``correct'' interpretation of them all.

I suppose I don't really know what my unconscious/subconscious is trying to tell me after all.

And yes, life. The last few posts were rather erratic in content---expect this one to develop in a similar fashion. I just find that as the days go by, I end up being grouchier and grouchier, either as a result of people leaving or as the cause of people leaving, where by ``leaving'' I do mean in terms of getting less involved with me in my sorry life.

I don't know... somehow it feels that the people that I once thought I know are like strangers to me now---I hardly know what they are thinking anymore. Maybe I'm turning into a more cynical person having had my emotions ``toyed'' with and my heart torn and smashed into smithereens. Or maybe these folks are like me and have changed their form into something that is much different from before.

What makes this time period special is that this time, I am truly alone. The old support network that I used to rely on to help me get back on my feet is no longer existent due to a variety of reasons, the most striking of which is that people gradually drift away into their own lives. Let's face it---I'm nowhere near any of those people whom I claim to be a part of my support network, so the tendency to drift away eventually is natural.

Besides, if the law of reciprocity were true, this is yet another natural application of the law, since the folks who made up my support network have hardly seek advice from me. Call it karma or dharma (cannot remember which is the correct technical term).

Perhaps it is the time for a revolution of sorts, a reorganising of life, the changing from one phase of life to another. I had more or less foresaw this quite a while back, and perhaps that's why I'm still rather calm as compared to the most obvious reaction I would have a few years back. Well, perhaps not that calm---I still some have some strange macabre thoughts involving blood-drawing and death, but they are not disruptive enough to be considered anything more than a lapse in judgement due to exhaustion from thinking; bottomline is that I'm somewhat calm, and most certainly calm enough to just get things done.

I think that the hot and humid weather doesn't really help much in calming the mind and the soul---there's always this sticky layer of perspiration that clings on the surface of the skin. That said layer is not thick enough to disintegrate into sweat droplets (and thus fall off said skin), nor is it thin enough that it will evaporate fast on its own. Overall muggy feeling---that must contribute to some aspect of the crabby feeling.

Life progresses I suppose, in one way or another. I'm not consumed by an obsession to find a girlfriend and/or get laid, nor am I desperately seeking nonsensical distractions to keep my mind away from things like that. I'm just deciding to take a step backwards and outwards, to withdraw a little into my shell, and contemplate about the next moves that I want to make.

The world's a cruel place man... anyone who says otherwise is either too damn rich or too damn good a liar...

Friends are Transient---Only Death and Taxes are Certain

And so it begins again, the self-imposed social isolation from the things that distract and annoy me at the same time. Once more I find that the so-called ``friends'' of mine are just nothing but apparitions that flit about carelessly, tipping trash cans and crashing into fragile feelings.

People's lives are evolving yet again, and we find that as time goes by, the divergence gets greater and greater.

I've been a fool to think that friends last forever.

Nothing lasts forever---for every beginning, there is an end. For every end, there will be a new beginning. And the cycle repeats itself, ad nauseum.

Why the sudden bitterness? Probably from a few revelations that I seem to be getting from observing how my world is simultaneously recreating itself and destroying it self at the same time, and from watching other people's manoeuvres in life. It seems that I'm not in the best possible shape there is.

Alright, I'm rambling even now... I should stop. Maybe more will come later...

Confused Lamentations

Charades after charades, conspiracies after conspiracies, love after love, pain after pain.

Things do occur in cycles huh.

Again, I am lamenting a little about life (or what is left of it), and just contemplating about the various aspects of life that I cannot fully control. It is strange though, to be thinking about things such as this, when there are probably more weighty issues to think about.

One thing that you might have noticed from reading posts here is that the number of posts have gone down, and are getting more and more sporadic in nature---that's because I've [re]started writing entries in a personal log that is no where available online, just so that I can spew more words than what the standard social norms might want to allow.

I'm not sure if I'm feeling down only because I am feeling as though I'm about to come down with something---the body is lethargic and the mind is slow while the brain has a dull throbbing headache through it. So disquieting.

I have a couple of personal projects lined up, and if time permits, I might be able to talk more about them. Meanwhile, I probably ought to get back to work or something like that...

Unbeautiful

Hmm... RX linked this up some time back, right about when Ida broke up with me, and only now do I have the time to listen to it.

Unbeautiful------Lesley Roy

Don't hang up, can we talk?
So confused, it's like I'm lost.
What went wrong? What made you go?
Don't pretend you don't know...
This is me, I'm unchangeable.

When did we fall apart?
Or did you lie from the start?
When you said it's only you;
I was blind, such a fool...
Thinking we were unbreakable.

It was you and me against the world,
And you promised me forever more.
Was it something that I said?
Was it something that I did?
'Cause I gotta know what made me unbeautiful.

I've been told what's done is done,
To let it go and carry on.
And deep inside I know that's true,
I'm stuck in time, stuck on you...
We were still untouchable.

It was you and me against the world,
And you promised me forever more.
Was it something that I said?
Was it something that I did?
'Cause I gotta know what made me unbeautiful.

Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up,
'Cause I'm only dreamin'.
Get out, get out, get out, get out
Get out of my head now...

Because we're much better all together...
Can't let go!

It was you and me against the world,
And you promised me forever more...
Was it something that I said?
Was it something that I did?
'Cause I gotta know what made me unbeautiful...

It was you and me against the world,
And you promised me forever more...
Was it something that I said?
Was it something that I did?
'Cause I gotta know what made me unbeautiful...
Made me unbeautiful.

I dunno... I seem to still be affected by this song...

Maybe I will talk more some other time...

You Should Have Flashed Me Instead of Making Fun of Me

So yesterday I was going home from work, and was walking past a covered amphitheatre to get to the shopping mall when I was accosted by a pretty young thing in a black two-piece business suit with a skirt. Naturally, I was not too enthused at that time because it was late (nearly 2000hrs) and I wanted to get some errands done, so I just walked on, with no change in my velocity vector.

Usually that would spell the end of things, and there wouldn't be a post.

What happened was simultaneously the most silly and disturbing thing that occurred. No, she did not flash at me, but rather, she made a very snarky comment.

``Oh, the sun is very bright hor?''

Eight o'clock at night, and the sun being bright? Surely you jest? To put things into a better perspective, I was listening to my music player which was integrated with my sunglasses [so that I don't have to waste time using my eyes to tell people to leave me alone]. The sunglasses help too even though it is fairly dark because it helps to reduce the glare and halo from those point sources of light.

And so, because of the said sunglasses, I was greeted with such a snarky comment. I mean, in the bid to be ``friendlier'' so that she could get what she wanted (which was very likely some survey of some sort, or even some credit application thing), she decided to make what she thought was a witty and interesting comment, without realising that not all comments that one thinks are witty are indeed so. Heck, she probably had a better chance of catching my attention by flashing at me.

All she did now was to make me chagrined enough to write an entry on how people now are not using their brains correctly to obtain what they want.

It is true though, the overall scheme of things. People these days have become so individualistic that they sort of forgot that if they have want help from others, they will need to ``prostrate themselves'' in order to get the said help, and of course I do not mean this literally. It is a fact of life that one tries to at least appear sincere or serious when one is seeking another's help. So imagine my confusion and anger when I am greeted by such a snarky comment. What if I had a true medical condition that demanded that I wear sunglasses (conjunctivitis comes to mind)? What would happen then?

I suppose this ties in with the whole ``I will try to put you down as much as I can'' situation that is common in Singapore. Ever since I was young with all the rather obvious skin allergies and rashes, I've sort of known this fact. In a bid to be friendly, people become too forward, and very quickly create an odious aura about them. The veneer of civility seems to be grossly misinterpreted by a lot of people here.

How can we be world class if we don't even know when to be friendly?

New Icon, New Terror

Oh how life goes! One moment one is happy, the next, angry and annoyed, and then suddenly all depressed. This is such a confusing thing... and to make matters worst, enough of the close friends of mine have all seem to have big problems of their own, and they are all starting to drift away trying to deal with them.

So if you've looked closely at the profile pictures, you would find that my emblem now has a dark triangle in the upper left corner, a concept that I call ``half-shrouded in darkness''. What's the significance, you might ask. Well, it is the embodiment of the current state of affairs, where I am teetering between the light and the dark, the orthodox and the unorthodox, the---you get the idea. What was essentially a ``pure'' symbol now finds the darkness corrupting itself from the top-left, symbolic because the left is where the logical side of the mind rests. That's right, the logic itself is getting corrupted by the darkness, and the only thing that is resisting it is the hacker side in the lower right corner, as shown by the glider, which is the universal hacker symbol.

So, bordering between darkness and light, a confused throng of uncomfortable feelings and thoughts, all amalgamated into what is the current me. Perhaps this life of mine is on the verge of ending, but somehow I think not---the trials and tribulations are just what makes life interestingly hard and provide just enough kick to see one's true mettle, I suppose.

*sigh*

Am I just blathering here to make myself feel better?

Minor Chit-chat

Life's weird huh. When you think that things are going to be alright, something funky gets thrown in your path.

But in my case, it's not that big of an issue---I am moving on in life already. What has happened in the past remains the in the past, locked behind the barriers of time. A memory is all I take, and a memory is all I need I suppose.

Juvpu rkcynvaf jul V qvqa'g dhvgr haqrefgnaq jul Vqn gubhtug gung V jnf tbvat gb gel gb ``jva'' ure onpx va gur shgher, nf abgrq ol ure engure pelcgvp nffregvba bire VZ gung jr jrer abg tbvat gb trg onpx gbtrgure ab znggre gur pvephzfgnapr.

V qhaab ubj orfg gb vagrecerg guvf. Rvgure V pna frr vg nf ure gelvat gb or sevraqyl naq erzvaqvat zr gb zbir ba jvgu yvsr naq abg guvax bs jnlf gb trg onpx jvgu ure, be V pna frr vg nf n cebibpngvir fgngrzrag zrnag gb fvax zl yvsr wnpxrg. Xabjvat ure, V nz zber vapyvarq gb fgvpx jvgu gur sbezre vagrecergngvba---fur'f nf oyhag nf V nz jura vg pbzrf gb pbzzhavpngvat vqrnf/rzbgvbaf, fb V nz abg ng nyy fhecevfrq vs ure vagragvbaf jrer ernyyl ba gur tbbq fvqr nf bccbfrq gb gur znyribyrag bar. Nf hfhny, V ree ba gur fvqr bs pnhgvba naq jnag gb pynevsl gur pynevsvpngvba (juvpu jnf pelcgvp ururu) gb znxr fher gung V nz trggvat gur evtug zrnavat.

Anyway, life moves on. There are higher goals that I need to look into, and the whole relationship thing is taking a back seat for now. If life were dominated only by the search for the Significant Other, I think there's little that one can achieve at the end of it all.

Till next time.

It Could Have Been Me...

First, this.

Now, realise that that could've been me. And the scariest part is, I'm not joking about that.

I remember the many times that I walk on the same stairs, and looked down the particular stairwell. That stairwell was deep and large---it's called ``architect's leap'' for a reason. Each time I walked by that stairwell, there was always this strange fascination about what it would feel like to leap off it, as suggested by the ``Burma Shave'' ditty written on each platform.

I remember why I didn't bother jumping (or killing myself or anything like that). Killing oneself on one's own terms needed guts, that's for sure. But more guts are needed to live on through whatever life throws at you, and that was ultimately why I am still alive now and writing here.

That said, may you find peace, my fellow CS brother.

Amen.

Do You Wanna Date My Avatar

Mmm... I should have found out about this a long time ago:

First a Researcher, then a Hacker

I must learn that I am first a researcher and then (only then!) a hacker.

Otherwise I might need to rethink my career options...

A New Dawn Awaits

The pillars of support, they seem to fall one by one, and I suddenly find myself standing out in the cold almost alone with no one else to comfort me. It is a strange feeling, since on the one hand there is a weird sense of serenity, yet on the other hand there is this sense of foreboding that lurks just beyond the precipice of darkness.

Life can be very cruel in all its ways, yet one thing seems certain---I end up being a survivor. No matter how bad the world treats me, no matter how hard the uphill struggle, I still hold my ground and stand on my own two feet and charge on forwards, not looking back.

The choice to move forwards is often a hard one---there are many obstacles that just seem to get in the way. But at the end of the day, no matter how bad the world treats me, or at least, no matter how bad I think the world is treating me, I will find a way.

I am a human; I am not a human. This duality works to my advantage should I choose it well. Literally let bygones be bygones, and not think about the past that has made me so forlorn for so very long. The path ahead is full of thickets of bushes, but if I do not clear the way and move onwards, who will?

The battle has ended, yet the war has just begun. Blood will be shed, reckoning will be done. And through it all, I will stand tall and face whatever Fate dares throw into my path. Arrogant? Perhaps, but sometimes a little arrogance is necessary to provide the momentum to just hurtle forwards through time and to deal with whatever that comes my way.

Life sucks, heck, life sucks big time. Yet there is always hope to believe in, and people to trust. Never mind that half the people that one trusted before can turn around and backstab---never mind that the other half are probably helping under the pretext that it will provide them with some side benefit. The forward movement is all that matters, all that matters!

Learning to live, learning to cope, learning to say goodbye and never to look back---why have I gone weak in this regard? Where has my youthful exuberance gone? Where has that youthful bravado and never-say-die attitude gone? Have I gone soft and meek as the years advance?

Onward! Onward I say. Never mind what others think---they think whatever they want and there's nothing that I can do about it. Never mind what others do, for it is only my own actions that I am responsible for. Have faith in myself, know that I will find my niche in time to come. Time may be short, but time is still around---I still have that short amount of time around, so I better make good use of it. There has been enough false starts, but the time for the dream to end is now.

A new dawn awaits.

Mutterings

I've never felt more socially isolated than now. This is rather worrying.

V pnaabg rkcynva jul V srry guvf jnl. Znlor orpnhfr bar bs gur gevttref bppheerq erpragyl, nf va, gur zrrgvat jvgu gur erfg bs gur fpubynef ng bar bs gubfr betnavfrq riragf. Fbzrubj V frrz gb or hanoyr gb fueht bss gung hapnaal srryvat gung V nz fbzrubj vasrevbe va fbzr jnl, qrfcvgr zr orvat n fpubyne yvxr gur erfg bs gurz.

Ab pyhr.

Yvsr frrzf n yvggyr zber pbzcyvpngrq guna hfhny, naq V unir yvggyr vqrnf ba ubj zhpu bs vg vf qhr gb zr orvat nyy bireyl frafvgvir naq ubj zhpu bs vg vf qhr gb npghny ernyvgl. Fb znal pbzcyvpngrq rzbgvbaf, fb znal fgenatr rapbhagref, fb zhpu lrneavat gung V pnaabg frrz gb chg njnl.

Naq V fhqqrayl srry yvxr xrrcvat n png sbe n crg. Gung gubhtug fhecevfrq zr, gb chg vg va n zvyq jnl. V'ir arire ernyyl fnj zlfrys nf n crg-xrrcvat crefba, lrg jura guvf gubhtug fhqqrayl svygrerq guebhtu zl zvaq, V jnf nf fubpxrq nf pna or. Ohg bs pbhefr, V jba'g or xrrcvat n png abj---cbbe yvggyr pevggre jvyy abg unir gur cynpr gb jnyx nebhaq naq rkcyber, tvira gung zl pheerag qjryyvat vf snveyl shyy bs fghss sebz gur gjragl bqq lrnef gung jr'ir orra yvivat va.

Nsgre n irel fubeg juvyr, lrg nabgure gubhtug fgevxrf zr. Nz V punaaryyvat gubhtugf sebz zl rk-tveysevraq? Vs gung jrer gehr, gura creuncf gung jbhyq or fhssvpvrag rkcynangvba nf gb jul V jnf srryvat guvf jrveq ng guvf gvzr. Vg pbhyq or na nznytnzngvba bs frireny riragf---gur zrrgvat jvgu gur bgure fpubynef, gur qrnqyvarf sbe gur inevbhf cebwrpgf, gur veengvbany srne bs nccylvat gb tenq fpubby, gur frafr bs ``jung-vs'' gung creinqrf qhr gb gur ortvaavat bs gur snyy frzrfgre, gur trareny ynpx bs pbzcnal urer nf pbzcnerq gb orvat onpx va gur 'ohetu, yvggyr guvatf yvxr gung gung nqq hc gb n pbafvqrenoyr cvyr bs zrff.

Jryy, nyy fnvq naq qbar, ng yrnfg V guvax gung znlor V unir vqragvsvrq n srj bs gur ceboyrz nernf gung V nz snpvat. Gvzr gb qrny jvgu gurz bar fgrc ng n gvzr.

If I do not live this life and seize it to call my own, no one will.

Careless Whisper

Check out this version, it is more different, and more awesome!

prettyprint.js Does a Good Job

Pick some historical content on this blog. Observe that anything that had " used has become smart quotes.

I've upgraded the pretty print script to do some automagic conversion from simple double quotes to the prettier ``smart'' ones. The caveat will be that unbalanced double quotes will cause the regex converter to go wonky---I don't see this as a big problem though. At the very least, if we had only a single double quote character starting a line, and have the next line starting with yet another single double quote, as long as there are intervening tags in between, prettyprint.js will actually do the right job.

The things that I do to obtain better viewing for the stuff I write...

...till next time.

Brother Louie

First look at this. Now look at this:And the lyrics are below:

Deep love is a burnin' fire stay
'cause then the flame grows higher babe
Don't let him steal your heart
It's easy easy
Girl this game can't last forever why
We cannot live together try
Don't let him take your love from me

You're no good can't you see
Brother Louie Louie Louie
I'm in love set her free
Oh she's only lookin' to me
Only love breaks her heart
Brother Louie Louie Louie
Only love's paradise
Oh she's only lookin' to me

Brother Louie Louie Louie
Oh she's only lookin' to me
Oh let it Louie
She's under cover
Brother Louie Louie Louie
Oh doin' what he's doin'
So leave it Louie
'cause I'm her lover

Stay 'cause this boy wants to gamble stay
Love's more than he can handle girl
Oh come on stay by me
Forever ever
Why does he go on pretendin' that
His love is never ending babe
Don't let him steal your love from me

Lyrics courtesy www.lyrics007.com.

The question is: why these two songs have almost similar tunes?!

Reminiscince

These days, I think I'm probably scaring a lot of people. Many times, people ask me if I am sad, and I ask them in return ``do I look sad to you?'' and then many times they reply ``well I don't really know, you look kinda okay'' before I follow up with ``well, I'm always sad, it is just a matter of degree''.

So I'm not actually lying about that---I am always sad; and it is just a matter of degree. Many people like to think that if someone is smiling a lot and is very jovial, then the person is probably not sad at all. That, as many have grown to realise eventually, is a sham. In fact, those who look the most jovial, laugh the most readily and appear to be the most happy need to have more scrutiny---often times they might be hiding some deep sadness that they are unwilling to talk to anyone about.

The trick into seeing these people is through the eyes---the eyes show it all, whether you are happy or sad. Ever heard of the phrase ``smiling with your eyes''? Well that is exactly what I am referring to.

So, sure, I might joke a lot, be awkward, laugh readily, be snappy with people and generally exude a certain sense of well-being. But if you actually took the time to look deep enough into my eyes, you will find that there is a very deep pain and sadness within. What this pain and sadness is is clearly not something that I want to talk about---suffice to say, it is related to life and life in general. Heh... maybe this is related to why I don't fear very many things, including death.

So, me. Was I ever happy? Well... yes, here and there, but overall, I think that sadness dominates my personality. I will smile a lot, I can be as crazy as the next guy, but if you lock me in a room and gave me strong liquor to knock me out, all you'll find is just a very sad looking drunk [who writes essays].

The next logical question will be, what makes me happy? I think that the answer to this is rather straightforward (and it might sound a little desperate, but whatever)---I am happy when I am doing things for the one I love. Sappy? Yeah, probably, but I don't really care all that much. I've been pretty much a walking husk since I turned 20, yet in between those years I have learnt what being human is all about, and have been nourished by all the possible human emotions that one can experience, from euphoria to caution to being concerned and to being contented---I have met with all of them at some time or another.

Heh... I'm still quite human after all.

But I guess all that I can do now is to wait it out and do things that are actually productive---this has something to do with how the entire schedule for the upcoming 6 years are going to be rather hellish.

Okay, enough of weightier issues... till next time.

Semi-Serious Rambling

It has been a rather long day, fraught with many last minute changes in schedules. But all that is said and done, I find myself sitting around quietly once more, sinking deeper into the consciousness that is me.

This is a rather strange feeling---to be able to just sink deep and feel the sensuality of feeling simultaneously from all the active senses that I have. From the visual (looking at the screen), to the aural (the soft click-clack of the scissor-keys), to the tactile (the soft breeze from the ventilator), and to the olfactory (the sweet smell of summer sweat lingering), I can feel them all with ease---it is almost as though I am aware of all these extensions that make up my body.

One of the things that I have grown to realise and appreciate is that I seem to know my body much better than before. For instance, I can now decide without trying what my body is capable/incapable of doing. I am also learning to have a better feel on where my head is positioned, so that I can easily dodge my head without causing too big of a movement, which can harm the already fragile neck.

But sensualities aside, the one thing that I seem to have cultivated over the years is the strange air of detachment. It is an oxymoron no doubt---how can I be both immersed within myself and be detached at the same time? But like many things in life, this one has a straightforward answer---I just let the signals from the senses flow through my being without attempting to make sense of them. This is a rather interesting concept though, since for most people, when they sense something, it is more often than not that they try to assign some meaning to the feeling, and even to ``process'' the signal as quickly as they can so that they can always be immersive in the world.

That's where I start to differ from the normal person.

You see, I've never really felt at one with the world in the sense that I feel belonged. It didn't begin this way of course and is a phenomenon that is of a more recent vintage if I dare say. Life, with all its ups and downs, have made me walk around this Earth as an avatar, walking close to other people, but never walking with them. Now that Ida has officially broken up with me (and for a good enough time too I might add), I think that it is safe enough for me to reveal the revelation that I had.

I have known almost 4 months earlier today that we were heading for a break-up. I just chose to not believe it.

How I know about this is beyond my reasoning---call it a gut reaction. Somehow I could sense the drift earlier on---the preternatural ease in which I can sense bad events is a trait that I have mostly kept tucked away until now.

Perhaps I am truly an avatar, a kind of supernatural being walking within the mortal realm, with a natural draw for both the miraculous and the condemned, and that somehow establishes some kind of cosmic balance that is beyond the level of human comprehension. Of course, it is also equally likely that I'm just a nut job and all that is said and done are just a bunch of coincidences.

Yet again I digress... it was a good thing that we broke up the time we did. At the very least, I managed to purge all the negative emotions out of myself within the early stages of my work (and also preparation for the next phase of my career/life), and to perhaps seal away the broken heart inside somewhere safe so that it can heal over more completely and be ready to accept the true love that might come its way again. But that is the future, and clairvoyance I have not.

So who am I actually? I cannot give a straightforward answer. I am who I am, I am not who I appear to be, and I am not who I think I might be. How does the future hold for me? Again, I appeal to the lack of clairvoyance, but the future is not bleak---there is much work to be done and much good to perform; it is in some senses a blessing to move onward without emotional baggages weighing one down.

That all said and done, the reason why I was feeling really down in the period succeeding the break-up is that the feeling felt then was not of a girlfriend breaking up with a boyfriend---it felt more like a wife of many years divorcing the husband, despite him being faithful and caring for her. That is the depth of my love for Ida, that is how much she affects me, both good and not-so-good. How about now, one might ask; how do I feel now and why do I seem a little calmer? I have not forgotten about Ida---far from it, I remember her even more. But the things I remember have the meanings changed over time to lessen the blows and the amount of effect they have on my affect. Indeed, one of the remedies of a break-up that is available in lore is to cast everything that reminds one of the other away so as to start afresh---I choose to learn to face things that remind me of her head-on so that I will actually end up dealing with the blow dealt instead of just denying myself the proper grieving.

Again, I digress.

Future huh... I've given my predictions. On the subject of my love life, I am not going to think too much about it---once one hits 25 years old (which I will be in nearly 5 more months) and is still unattached, chances are there will be little hope left about the love life anyway, so I might as well concentrate on doing things that I can still do. More pertinently, given the volatility of the macro-state-of-affairs, it is unlikely that any relationship begun here will lead to fruition; a similar argument can be made about when I'm not in Singapore.

So at the end of the day, I suppose that it is into the hands of Fate that will see if I end up settling down in this life or not.