Tuesday 29th December 2005

tapping away...

Must be something about the year end that gets us tapping away on the keyboard. Visited a few new blogs filled with interesting jottings and to top it off, I realized that i have penned down my record largest amount of junk this month. *a nice pat on my head* Let's cram it all in folks before the year shuts down.

Anyways, recently my advisor suggested that maybe more ideas will come popping into our heads if we observed more seasonal changes in our lives (like the basic 4 seasons, and all the holidays - x'mases, new years, easter, good fridays, etc. etc.). So, i've decided to go a step further (uh... yes... i'm desperately in need of ideas if i ever wanna graduate... *moan*) and bought myself Lleweyn's Witches' Datebook. A diary cum book that lists down all the moon cycles, planetary movements (direct or retrograde) and star signs atop of planting & harvesting days, old holidays, simple witch rituals and colors for every day of the year (perfect for finding the right blouse/shirt for the day). I haven't had any urge yet to be drawing pentagrams, getting a black cat, reading tarrot cards and lighting black candles, so, friends and family, fear not. Today's lucky colour is supposed to be white by the way.

Currently reading: Metro Girl by Janet Evanovich (she was recommended by SF who loved and read all her books) - Bout Alex looking for her missing brother Bill, and hooked up with Sam Hooker(uh ya... wat a name...), a NASCAR circuit racer, coz her bro "borrowed" Hooker's boat (called Happy Hooker) before he dissappeared.

Just finished reading: Murder by Magic: 20 tales of uhm... supernatural and murder? (:P forgot..) edited by Rosemary Edghill - A nice book. Loved all the short stories inside & Lucky Dog by Mark Barrowcliffe - About a poker addict who got himself a talking dog (only he understands wat the dog is saying). Didn't like his gambling habit much, so, didn't wholly enjoy the ending.

Tuesday 27th December 2005

resolutions ahoy!

Ah... x'mas mood is slowly dissipating. Eve had been quite a nightmarish experience. The four hours of waiting in between caroling gigs spent shopping around town & being stuck in human traffic so bad, it takes half an hour to get from one block to another. *shudder* Brings a whole refreshing course to the phrase "Nightmare Before Christmas". Thank goodness the last gig ended early, and transport home is pretty comfortable. Sorry ru, was way too washed out to head for ur place.

Aik... but all unpleasant stuff wiped off, Boxing Day was spent laughing away at a Korean drama (My Lovely Samsoon) and trying out the face mask gifted by HL. hehe... thnx ya?!

So, now let's get down to the serious matter at hand. Listing out resolutions for the coming year...

1. Sleep before 12 and wakeup before 7 everyday. (ya... i know... same 'ol... same 'ol...)
2. No to procrastination
3. Graduate by end of the year.
4. More vegetables and fruits in my diet.
5. End all the stuff that I started...

Ok. Let's see how this coming year fares.

Friday 23rd December 2005

drunk on parfume

After a fun caroling session last night (people actually listened!) , we (Lil & i) went on a err... eve of a eve of the eve of x'mas look-around in town. Apart from the very packed crowd, it was all swell and festive.

Lil was looking for a parfume to brighten up her days, and we started spraying bottle after fancy glass bottle of eau de toilette onto those test thin papers to get a whiff of passion, happiness, nail polish, lemon, flowers and forest. After awhile, we found ourselves giggling till no end at the slightest things and realized we had gotten drunk after excess inhaling of all the alcohol fumes.

Anyways, we ended up not buying anything, which is a nice treat to my pocket.

Here's wishing everyone a jolly merry christmas & happy holidays.....

Thursday 22nd December 2005

behavioural study...

Observations of group behaviour in test groups Alpha, Omega & Theta

Alpha group consists of junior college students. Observations have confirmed that group tend to hop from one subject to another at speed of light. Older human species tend to get lost easily. Dominant members (usually everyone) tend to talk non-stop on subjects that they fancy. However, when said member is faced with a situation less familiar, will suddenly cease to be in conversation. All members of group tend to ignore the existence of any other beings which are not from the clique. No attempt is (ever) made to help older species to understand what is going on. Giggles with joy when species finds foul words. Endless fascination with someone elses' blogs.

Omega group are undergraduates. Fully confident and tend to think they are the superior beings of the world (especially the female species of better genes). The world revolves around them and only them. Feels no qualms about correcting others. One strong difference from group Alpha is there are more dicernable differences between each member of group Omega. Classification is much more unfair if pressed to make. Allows more interaction from older species and are sometimes quite respectful out of the compassion of their heart.

Group Theta. Members are mostly people who are working members of society. Haughty towards members of Alpha and Omega (else, they'll have to resort to feeling left out). Tend to repeat a topic of conversation or line of thought over and over again (over the span of years) to different members of the group. May be caused by old age (forgetfulness) or just a dry spell in the area of interesting topics. Male species is always drawn to hi-tech, expensive toys and female species adores shopping.

Disclaimer: There are always, ALWAYS exception to the cases above.

Wednesday 21st December 2005

quiet lady...

Random thoughts....

A quiet lady can be liketh to an aged old bottle of red wine
Fragrant when uncorked. Mysterious and matured.
Red and passionate beneath the dark green bottle.
Yet, after tantalizing the tongue,
It is yet to know whether it will sour ones stomach
Or warmeth ones heart
And after every drop has been drained...
Nothing is left but an empty old bottle.
Vintage no longer matters...

Thursday 20th December 2005

gross game...

Hit the cats a few times like you would hit a tennis ball and hear them yowl...

WARNING!!! If & when u miss, it ain't a pretty sight.

Monday 19th December 2005

brain or beauty

Over the weekend, we watched a drama called 'ye ban ge sheng' (A drama tribute from the director to the late Leslie Cheung's movie of the same title).

The couple of songs inside (sung by the actor, Peter Ho - aka He Run Dong) were very nice indeed. I'm planning to rip it one of these days. Too bad there weren't more songs. *laments*

Most of the plot was extremely draggy. We criticized the director and scripwriter till no end (plus the fact that the director is also one of the actor. So, we actually have a face to throw all our displeasure at.). The thing that got us most egged was the fact that they changed the main actor (Peter Ho) after episode 5 (the lead got disfigured, so he wore the face mask of another person to avoid recognition), and we got stuck with watching another actor for the remaining 25 episodes *groan*. There were too little scenes concerning the stage affairs and too much concentrated on the evil bad husband (who is *surprise surprise* none other than the director himself.)

But this short conversation between the lead-actress (Big S) and the substitute lead was quite interesting...

Fake Peter: ... so if you can choose either to be extremely intelligent or to be extremely beautiful, which would you rather be?

Big S: I would choose to be neither because life would be so dull with no aspirations to reach.

Thursday 15th December 2005

bandwidth problem again!

I think the bravenet host makes it a compulsory annual action to actually make us suffer a week or so of bandwidth exceeding problem to trigger us to either up and leave the site or subscribe to the paid-package. i'm obstinately doing neither. (of course!).

So, until this whole fiasco is over, i'll be taking a break from this blogging business ... hehe ...

Currently reading: Memory by K. J. Parker (Book 3 of The Scavenger Trilogy) - Bout Poldarn (Ciartan) who lost his memory has returned to the Empire, working in the foundry. He is slowly regaining his memory everytime he dreams (he found a way to recall his dreams with some crow business). Things aren't looking too good so far. He had just got burned so badly his nose is like a melted disfigurement. Eeee! [ending: the old lady he had been helping along the way turned out to be a mother out on a vengence against the whole Empire. She was spreading a plague by letting loose a cage of mice in every major city and Poldarn's assistance had helped her done just that. So, Poldarn really turned out to be the God in the cart that will bring on the end of the world.]

Just finished reading: Statue of Limitations by Tamar Myers - Abigail Timberlake is an antique shop owner that gets involved with murders in every one of the books in this Tamar Myers series. Pretty nice writer.

Monday 12th December 2005

1st Aid Awareness

Grateful thnx to LP & SJ for so kindful and thoughtfully driving me to school when they heard tht i overslept (again!) for the first aid awareness and fire emergency course that everyone in school is forced to attend.

The whole thing was pretty short and fun. Us ewwing and 'ee'ing at the more horrible wounds. The creepiest picture was that of a door handle that punctured through this kid's eye socket (Or was it cheekbone?). Supposedly, when faced with such incidents, the first thing is NOT to make those horrified expressions (u'd scare the kid off), be calm, and call the ambulance.

Felt like a refresher course to the 1st aid stuff we learnt back in high school. Haha... those were quite fun times. We formed a group of 6 to join this annual school first aid competition in our district. The pinnacle of the competition, aside from some fancy marching, quiz and oral test on our first aid knowledge, is a critical situation scenario at the end. It could be anything from the scene of a car accident, robbery, fire, etc. So, during our training period, every morning, we had to endure some marching, and on certain afternoons and weekends, we would have friends marked up with chalk (red for blood, white for potruding bones, blue for bruises, etc etc.), and in the stipulated time, we'll perform all the necessary 1st aid, like diagnosing, bandaging, CPR, carrying patients (2-hand seat, 3-hand seat) and using the stretcher to ferry patients to safety. There's also a person in charge of noting down the injuries of each patient, and doing all the odd jobs. That was me. hehe...

So anyways, on the day of the competition itself, we got plenty of real liquid red ink instead of the usual dry stuff we worked with, and there were a round of judges noting down our actions and all. *lol* Here was where i screwed up. haaha. One of our patients had amputated a finger. A nice juicy sausage-like finger with really cool blood gore at the end was at the scene next to the unfortunate victim. So, in the course of transporting him to safety, I had conveniently left the nicely packed finger at the scene. A big NO-no. *shake head* Sufficient to say, we did not win that particular event. :P

Friday 9th December 2005

Bored stiff ^_^

It's so easy to be irritable when a person is bored. It's like having a wedgie in ur drawers, or an itch that u can't scratch. You know it is getting to u in the worst way, but u can't do a ding about it.

Just had another annoying instance just now when someone messaged me the question, "Can I ask you a personal question?"

I mean, sheeesh... that is like the World's Most Nerve-Poking Rhetorical Question ever.

Wednesday 7th November 2005

Overslept!

So ashamed of myself today. I distinctly remember setting the alarm to ring at 6.45am, but awoke at 9am in horror, having missed the chance to reach school in time to catch L's 1st year presentation.

Luckily, alls well ends well. He passed. Yay! & I got myself a few extra hours of sleep. *hehehe*

Tuesday 6th November 2005

consecutive shopping

Today will be the 2nd day I'll be milling about the shopping centre near school. The hunt for xmas gifts have begun. I'm thinking simple chocolate treats for colleagues & every other person i'll be meeting around x'mas season and some silver jewelleries for others. (Fine... call me cheapo all u want.) Although I was tempted to get some discounted stuff thnx to A's gf, I'm way too lazy to travel that far. *ah...my aching old bones...*

No way i'm gonna try anymore hands-on projects especially like the different flower making stunts i pulled before. The very last one was when i spent a whole night making a couple dozen of tulips for the carolling gang and ended up with shoulder-ache afterwards. :P Although there were some better success, like drawing out little mini potraits of friends (A-levels). That was quite fun. Doubt they still keep those tiny cards laying about though. *hmmm* And making little snow-flake balls (water and gold-dust paint) and picture clays for my little cousins back oh, about a decade or more years ago. haha... thinking back about all my brilliant little projects, the worst was when i cooked up the idea of using newspaper to make make recycled Lunar New Year cards. It was a goey and blackening adventure alrite.

Consumerism... here i come a-hopping...

Monday 5th December 2005

ding-dong merrily on high...

Yay! Christmas is here...

Shopping! Shopping! Shopping!

Currently reading: Pattern by K. J. Parker (Book 2 of The Scavenger Trilogy) - Bout Poldarn (Ciartan) who lost his memory, trying to live in a little village where everyone else can read each other's minds. Everytime he dreams, he remembers more, but when he wakes up, he forgets again. (which is really annoying!)

Just finished reading: Nobody but you by Julie Kenner - Romance detective book

Friday 2nd December 2005

Financial planning

After a few phone calls from this lady, P, I thought it was about time i got myself some sort of insurance plan. But her recent patronizing tone over the phone really irked me, and I am dreading the meeting next week. sigh!

Alright fine, it was my fault for rescheduling out first meeting. But, she didn't have to keep rubbing it in. And at the end of the conversation, she ever so kindly 'advised' me to make sure that I don't do it again. I mean sure, she sugar coated the advise with stuff like, "Oh, I don't mean to pry", and "It's alright really, but, but, really, it would be better if you..." and, this one, I totally loathed, "You can tell your little friends, that you already have another appointment...", but in the end, she was really just being a b...bad bad agent.

Maybe I should stick to some of the financial planning that banks offer instead. Afterall, it's like the prime principal of people like myself to shun away from these mundane chores. & it might also save me fm the hassle of listening to a 'sales-pitch' talk. U know, the type that make u go "Oh, uh-huh, hmm... ya, oh really" while you wonder when the person will end their rehearsed speech.

But then again, she might turn out to be some sort of psycho lady with glowing red eyes, a mohawk hairstyle and sharp talons. That would be so cool.

Thursday 1st December 2005

Blindingly Brilliant

Today CW told me bout this girl who got her phD excelling in mathematics. The most amazing fact being, she is actually blind. So, she set about resolving complicated problems all in her head.

That is so amazing, i'm still trying to wrap my little brain around the idea. I mean, could you imagine solving any mathematical equations without at least a paper and pencil? And this spunky lady actually did it all like figuratively blindfolded. And when she presented her thesis, she did it all verbally, without any presentation slides. Like... cool.