:: talfryn.net ::

REACH! committee dinner at Nando's tonight... well-deserved, mates! Busy night - for under the pretence of needing to convene in the Fisher common room to wrap up accounts and stuff... we had a humble little surprise celebration for birthday boys Marc (who's bday is tomorrow) and ChongWai (who so happens to be one of the rare few born on the 2005-wise non-existent 29th of Feb). And after that... we had the last ExCo birthday celebration (before the handover) for Yanda at his place... blah darn tired now, all that rush and running in the cold wind.

30 days' planning for a 3-hour charity show...

This is the only photo I have taken of a REACH! performance, and being taken during a rehearsal it unfortunately isn't the real thing; I didn't take any during the show itself. :| It's Yangwen & the Three Humjis, and the in the spotlight there is Marvin (mwahaha).

The freshers in the organising comm were absolutely great, having run the entire show on their own... the dances, skits and songs were awesome, and the whole thing came and went about as smoothly as we could have hoped it could be. Deep deeeep breather phew! Plus... oh oh... plus the cherry on the icing on the cake... Kaileng "Minogue"'s dance! Hehe~ Miss SingSoc President is such a sport. ;) But arms are aching now... from the carrying of the chairs... must train more heh... bah can't go fencing this way if my arms tire so easily...

Thanks fellow REACHers - Dajie Kai, Marv sook sook, ticketmasters Grace & Liangwei, external liaison'ers ChongWai & Edwin, logistics'ers Marc & Raj & Jiamin, stage managers Lester & Lianglong... and all who came to help on that day. *pat pat*!! For charity!

REACH!

It's over...

Tired... but happy. :)

Zzzz first...

No more last-minute rushing of reports for me... although... 2000-word practical write-ups don't come by our way that often, thank goodness. Was forced to wag the morning lecture since I couldn't get out of bed in time... but anyway... today's Water Management lectures were by a certain Mediterraneanish PhD'er who has an accent so thick and unintelligable I might be just as well off listening to some Greek audiobook. Resource Management has proven to be interesting so far though, and being more of an applied science it's more engaging and in-your-face than expected.

Had the termly biology dinner at Carluccio's by South Ken. Vongole pasta mmm... while I tried to convince the juniors that the Marine Ecology field trip is definitely a better alternative to the dissertation option (and while trying to prevent the dissertation people *ahem* from arguing otherwise; they're just jealous hah!).

Still hungry from the rather meagre portions, we rushed off to the Union to watch "HaiJade's musical", although she was only a part of the assemble/chorus and had only a solo line or two. The proper name for the performance would be Imperial College's Musical Theatre Society's Spring Musical: Chess. Such was the ganging power of the Singaporean community... one close friend goes, calls the rest, and the supporters just fall in line without really knowing what they were up for.

Speaking of which... we'll be totally bogged down tomorrow with the preparations for REACH! which will take place at night. More to come later...

Men speak in C ; women speak in Java

Brace yourself for a long post. Read it at your leisure... it's a funny one. Makes some generalisations, no doubt, but it's somewhat true. ;) Found it while clearing my email archive... pity it's got no source or author acknowledged.

=================================

Tonight, at dinner, I asked my mom if this was a carry-your-plate-around meal or a pass-the-food-around meal. The response was, "Well, it's kinda hard to pass the food..."

"So then it's a carry-your-plate-around meal?"

"Yes."

Now, this situation is not all that odd. But just you wait till I bring history into the discussion. My mother and I have had similar interchanges once every two weeks for about a year. I ask a really simply question with a binary answer, and I get an explanation of the answer back. Mind you, and this is important, the answer is never returned, only the explanation. After I confirm the relation between the explanation and the answer, the interchange is over.

This is such a darn simple attempt at communication that I am almost 100% sure the reason we have problems is due to our inherently different communication styles. I ask for a boolean answer. Yes or no. Right or wrong. 0 OR 1 FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! And what do I get? A text string. A freaking text string I have to parse through and comprehend! Like, where did I say I expected a text string answer? NOWHERE!!!

Being the programming nerd I am, I immediately hypothesized that men speak (and think, mostly, but that is another rant) in something like C. It's low-level, precise and efficient. Women, on the other hand, speak in something like Java. It does more per statement, requires interpreting on every machine by a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and loses performance overhead like there's no tomorrow.

What do I mean by this? Let me examine men first. In the absence of women, men often resort to grunting as a form of communication. A grunt clearly correlates to a 1, and no grunt clearly correlates to a 0. We have a 1 and a 0, we got binary!

But seriously, let me take the three adjectives I used above to prove men speak in C. The three are "low-level, precise and efficient." I can prove the middle with one shot. Remember my question above? It had two clearly defined (even named) answers, and it clearly should have been answered with one of them. Right there, my question was precise in both form and expected answer. It was clearly a runtime error to get a text string return type.

Or how about "low-level" and "efficient"? The two go hand-in-hand. When I say, "I need to go to the store," I mean "I need to go to the store." There really is not a simpler way to define the need. That's a low-level definition. Do I imply anything by the statement? Am I really trying to tell you you look fat? NO! I am merely telling you about my need. And since my entire intention in communicating was phrased in that one easy to understand sentence, it is efficient. There are no wasted words. It takes exactly zero processor overhead to interpret the sentence, for there is no interpretation that needs done. And no overhead is the same thing as efficiency.

And what about women? Well, I have not forgotten them. I explained that women's language "does more per statement, requires interpreting on every machine by a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and loses performance overhead like there's no tomorrow." Notice that I cannot even simplify the characteristics of their language without using lengthy phrases. For men's C, I used three adjectives, one of which was hyphenated. See a pattern yet?

Women's Java does more per statement, so it appears to be a higher powered language. Note that this is directly antagonistic to the low-level quality of men's C. Women have perfected the art of telling volumes of detail in a few sentences. They are so good that they can communicate whole sentences of men's C by body language. Rumor has it that women shuck the spoken word completely when men are not around and simply communicate by subtle eye motions and throat clearings. I can neither confirm nor deny these rumors, as I am never around a group of women who have no men around. Go figure. Anyway, on to the next characteristic. Women's Java requires interpretation to something like men's C by every listener. This ties in very closely to the above point about high/low level of language. This system, you would think, is doomed to failure because meaning is decided separately by every listener.

More on this later. Suffice to say (in this paragraph) that this is the source of unending communication problems between men and women. Last we have that women's Java loses performance overhead. Men can speak sentences on end, and the listeners are ready for more right afterwards. Why? Because no time is spent on interpreting his words. Women, however, can say something that takes days to interpret. This is commonly referred to as "playing hard to get." She says "no," but she really means "Yes, and bring a dozen daises with you next time. I promise I will be surprised if I get them. Otherwise, I will be despondent because you OBVIOUSLY do not know how to take a 'no'." Clearly, the average male can spend days or even weeks to decode this, for the real answer has absolutely nothing at all to do with the words used to communicate the answer. In the extreme case, men simply grow sluggish in their movements and stop making sense because their mind is taken by trying to understand what she said. A few have even been known to die because the interpretation process goes into an infinite loop and takes away all processing time. This language CLEARLY loses performance overhead. But wait! There's more!

Can we explain the problems of communicating between the sexes based on the hypothesis of men's C and women's Java? You had better believe we can! Let's take men's C and its ability to be efficient. Many men are so used to being efficient that excess information or processing is abhorrent to them. For example, every month or so, my mother tells me the details of a situation I neither care about, will ever care about or will remember tomorrow. Usually, I ask why I got all this worthless data. Now, get this, she answers, "I just thought you might want to know." I might want to know? When in the last 20 years of my existence (which is all of it) have I even hinted that I wanted to know information about things irrelevant to me? NEVER! Now we change roles and see what happens:

"I_D (she calls me by my real name, actually), how was school today?"

"Fine."

See, I so love efficient speech that I culled all the worthless, irrelevant data out of my day to minimize the stress I would put my mom through hearing about my day. But is she thankful? Does she kiss my feet? NO! She wants more detail! The very detail I omitted because it doesn't matter to her! Problem is, I omitted it so hard I forgot it. Come on, though. I basically sorted all the junk mail out of her mailbox and she wants to know what I sorted out. This might explain the phenomenon of the ubiquity of junk mail, but that's another rant.

But the wonder of my hypothesis goes way beyond explaining those two stereotypical male/female communication issues. You see, the real core of men's C is low-level, efficient statements. The real core of women's Java is high-level, interpreted (inefficient) statements. They are clearly incompatible with each other.

Take the above sample men's C sentence, "I need to go to the store." Another man hears this as "I need to go to the store." He does this because he presumes the words mean exactly what they literally mean. A woman, however, often hears the sentence and thinks it's really women's Java. Thus, she hears: "I am offering you a golden opportunity to tell me whatever you need at the store. Whatever you tell me, I will pick up. And I will pick up the right kind, even though you never told me which 'the right kind' is. Furthermore, I will stroll through the aisles looking for great sales and stock up on products we are already stocked up on. Lastly, I will wait happily here beside the door for several minutes with keys in hand and shoes on feet waiting for you to gather your list."

The study of language is amazing, is it not? This one men's C statement, if interpreted through a women's JVM (more on different JVM's later) turns into a monstrous paragraph of detailed intentions that a normal man would not think of ever. Even if he sat down and tried to generate all that detail, his inherent bent on efficiency and irrelevant data culling would preclude him from making all that.

And, I might add, the problem goes in reverse as well. Men try, Lord love them, to understand statements in women's Java as though they are men's C. When she says, "Do I look fat?" she is not looking for a boolean, integer or floating point answer. If she gets one, she generates what might be euphemistically called a "stack overflow". My own personal interpretation of this question is, "I hate you and am trying to find an excuse to do so." When she says, "How in love were you with other women before you met me?" well, I have no clue what the answer is supposed to be. You'd have to ask a woman. But we men don't admit defeat that easily! No! We try on helplessly for many years trying to build our own JVM. Note that the perfect version of the JVM is inside every woman's brain somewhere. Men do not have that or anything like that. Thus, men build up their own sets of interpretations of women's Java statements into men's C statements. I gave one of mine above about the notorious "fat" question. One problem is, women's Java is context-sensitive: it means different things in different settings or with different tones.

Another problem is that men can only build their JVM's one statement at a time in a trial-and-error process. These two problems clearly prohibit men from ever completely understanding women's Java.

Is there adequate support for my hypothesis? I believe I have given enough support to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that, indeed, men speak in C and women speak in Java.
=================================

Is Evolution Predictable?

An excerpted blurb from the LSE events page:

"If evolution could be re-run many times, what regularities might we find? Although we cannot run this experiment, the history of evolution offers several ‘natural experiments’, such as prolonged geographical isolation or speciation. And their patterns are revealing. They suggest that evolution is more predictable than some contemporary orthodoxies claim. This lecture develops ideas touched on in Richard Dawkins’s most recent book, The Ancestor’s Tale."

Such honour and privilege to be able to attend his lecture! Richard Dawkins may look stern and uninteresting but he's really good when it comes to explaining his stuff... and he knows his stuff. Very, very well.

Prof Richard Dawkins (next to mic)

REACH! is drawing near...

Rehearsals were today... all set for the big day on Saturday.

Hmmm...

Marv and I feel so uninvolved in its organisation...

Which is good.

'Cos after Kai set things in motion, they flowed. Good on'em freshers... they took over... which was what we wanted.

General Elections coming soon... there are still no nominations yet, but we know that there will be runners. They're testing the wind first...

To all who're running... best of luck! :)

"World Guides and Scouts Day"

Non-Guides and Scouts always wonder at our choice of a name for what could simply be called a 'world Guides and Scouts day'. Why Thinking Day? WAGGGS and WOSM chose 22nd Feb as it was the joint birthdays of Lord Baden-Powell, our Founder, and his wife the then World Chief Guide. Thinking Day would be a day when Guides and Scouts around the world think of each other, the Movement, its ideals and reaffirm their commitment to international friendship and understanding.

Just like Thinking Day last year, I'm still unattached to a unit. But I'm still loyal to the Movement... and here's to my sisters and brothers around the world. *salutes*

Link: World Thinking Day 2005 official website

Let's party and let it snow!

Housemate Fidel's birthday today... don't know why it turned out this way, but it was a party of chicken and cakes. And people. Lots of chicken. And people. Shall be having leftover chicken for tomorrow's dinner. Took mainly videos, so too bad, no pics to show. Just like Viv's birthday, there was a little video made and dedicated to the birthday boy... mostly compiled of photos from his trips with friends. Sweet. :) Some socialising, chit-chatting, and random stuff afterwards... till the snow stole the thunder.

Snow! When we had almost given up all hope for some snow this warm winter. They were just small flakes, white and mild, and they came late. Last year... last year's first snow hit in late January. But still... it's SNOW!! In London... at Emperor's Gate and judging from the many excited MSN nicks, many places elsewhere too. Oh I hope I hope I hope... there'll be more snow... so that we can go to Hyde Park... and build another mini Mr Churchill...

The view from my window

Emperor's Gatew00t! And Wo0ot again!!

Bah, wonder why the dresscode for the dinner and show had to be formal... the dinner was a typical university over-the-counter-buffet-type lunch/dinner in a typical school canteen, where the only drink to be served was plain water, and as for the show... hmm we sat on plastic chairs.

The skit in Warwick's Malaysian Night was a rather poor production... trying too hard to be a complex plot and mix of suspense, thriller, comedy (I think?) and mystery and all that... but the script was quite pathetic and the audience was left hanging. Cultural dances were not bad... the dikir barat was excellente.

I would have yakked more in Amar's room if I weren't so doped with that little Clarinase tablet I had earlier that morning. Totally zoned me out for the rest of the day. Was drifting in and out of sleep while we laughed over video clips and Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Prolly one of the randomest movie I've seen... funny yeah, but it's substanceless. "The universe tends to unfold as it should" lol! Well. Seven people squeezed into a single hall room. We got as much sleep as we could get for what remained of the night.

A packed week ahead... with most evenings occupied, and not (only) by academic work. I love such weeks. "Busy, but can't complain"... I love that feeling. It makes days feel fuller... excerpts from the many exciting facets of a youngster's life.

Outta London for a while...

A few of us old Linstead types will be heading a few hours up westwards to Warwick, where buddy Amar's gonna play host as the sardine can. It's their Malaysian Night see... and we're all obliged see... 'cos Amar cheoreographed some dances see... and he was my fencing partner see... and he comes to visit us in London quite often see...

Oh, and heard from Luke, a SWCombiner that John Nash, the mastermind behind the Game Theory and the inspiration for A Beautiful Mind, is gonna be there for the economics summit. Knowing how big their campus is, however, I doubt if I'll be able to sneak a peek. Besides Luke, Kuraine also lives around Warwick. Am hoping to meet up with them... it would be an interesting experience... meeting fellow online RPG gamers face-to-face, out-of-character.

Some photos; the gallery still isn't back up yet though - the restoration of the backups didn't entirely work, apparently. Still waiting...

CNY steamboat dinner at Emperor's Gate

The entertainers of the night

SingSoc CNY dinner at Habour City... (my table... one out of 10 tables...)

The SingSoc I-Night crew

Why have I grown so lazy? Or was I simply too discouraged by last season's matches that I don't have the effort to compete anymore, knowing that we'd be easily thrashed by those national-player "Team GB" types that seem to be found in almost every opposing team we've faced so far? Or was I too put off by the attitude of our captain?

I bumped into Midori two nights ago at Haijade's party. She's my fencing teammate... and the club treasurer... and one of the best sabreurs around. She asked why I haven't been training as often and competing lately... and I was apologetic. "C'mon... come back to us, don't let your kit rust at home." I promised that I'd return after my term in SingSoc's up. After the Easter hols... yeah I'll train hard. The season's over... Imperial Women's 1sts came in second in the South Eastern Conference (out of, erm, a total of three places? Since up to three other universities pulled out at the beginning of the season. Dunno why.) The most points came from the matches played against Brunel. Their team is new, so that wasn't such a big deal, really. There won't be such good luck next time.

Happy Valentines & Happy Friendship Day

If this were a song, which is isn't, I'd say... I'd like to dedicate this to everyone I know...

Since I read Rick Bass' novel of the wilderness Wild to the Heart many years ago, I have fallen in love with this passage. Some friends may recall me scribbling these few lines on napkins or scrap sheets of paper at odd times:

"If it’s wild to your own heart, protect it. Preserve it. Love it.
And fight for it, and dedicate yourself to it...
It doesn’t matter if it’s wild to anyone else:
if it’s what makes your heart sing,
if it’s what makes your days soar like a hawk in the summertime,
then focus on it.
Because for sure, it’s wild,
and if it’s wild, it’ll mean you’re still free.
No matter where you are."
May you find inspiration in its simple wisdom. All of us have a wild fluttering within... it may be hidden in the furthest corners of our minds, but it is there. There must be something that is "wild to everyone's heart"... an experience... a truth... a feeling... a thought. Find it, and love it... and stay happy mates. :)

Keep your eye on those balls

By Ruth Wajnryb
February 12, 2005
(The Sydney Morning Herald)

The simple truth is that we're consumed by our bodies. In our obsession with appearance, with the appeal of veneer, we now have airbrushed beauty, fashionable thinness, extreme makeovers. That we have soaring rates of obesity, as well as anorexia, certainly bespeaks the pathology.

But the body thing is not new. Michelangelo's David had not a skerrick of clothing. The impassioned Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People has one breast hanging out and no one called that "wardrobe malfunction". Manet's Olympia has even less inhibition. And neither Gauguin's nor Picasso's women kept their clothes on for long.

If art bears witness to an enduring fascination with the body, so, too, does language. A close analysis reveals how deeply notions of the body have permeated the metaphoric structure of everyday English. For example, we say the heart of the city, the foot of the mountain, the mouth of a cave, the nose of a plane. We lend a hand, head up a team, have a good nose for a story, have a sweet tooth and a green thumb, keep our eye on the ball and our ear to the ground. We've got a weight on our shoulders, but lack the stomach for action. We speak of broadening the mind, costing an arm and a leg, being a pain in the neck and, rather oddly, making it by the skin of our teeth.

Body metaphors can be starkly, even harshly, direct, creating unambiguous meanings and perspectives. Perhaps for this reason they find a natural home in the political lexicon. Politicians are accused of short-sightedness, being deaf to the constituency, having skin-deep compassion, or their hand in the till. An election can be neck and neck, and the winner can make it by a nose. Voters have the wool pulled over their eyes, or they give the pollies the thumbs up or down. They can stand firm and give voice to their convictions or back down.

Because of their embedded emotion and their universality, body metaphors are instantly recognisable. We use tear-jerking to suggest sadness, stomach-churning to suggest apprehension, knee-jerking to suggest an automatic reaction. We relate to these because we've all cried from sadness, felt fear in our stomach, and reacted on reflex.

But the body metaphors don't stop there. Consider the following, and their related associations: chin-wagging (gossip), beard-stroking (wisdom), jaw-dropping (shock), back-breaking (hard), leg-slapping (joy), foot-stamping (applause/protest), arm-flapping (hysteria), eyebrow-raising (disapproval), head-scratching (figuring out), heart-breaking (emotionally painful), heart-wrenching (tragic), finger-licking (delicious), tummy-tickling (giggly), side-splitting (hilarious), hair-raising (frightening), brow-knitting (displeasure), brow-beating (nagging), elbow-greasing (hard yakka), palm-greasing (bribing), lip-smacking (tasty), gob-smacking (surprise), neck-breaking (dangerous), spine-chilling (terrifying), spleen-venting ( anger release), wrist-slapping (rebuke).

Sometimes the metaphor is transparent and entirely consistent, as when we say head of the company, head of the table, head of the class, head of the queue. Others, such as face, pick up on a range of different nuances. We have straight-faced, poker-faced, red-faced, two-faced, blue in the face, long face, brave face. And verb phrases galore: to face up to your problems, get egg on your face, get a slap in the face, blow up in someone's face, do an about-face, fall flat on your face, put your best face on, show your face, wipe the smile off someone's face, among others.

But it's puzzling, given the range of available body metaphors in English, that to compliment a woman's courage and tenacity many would say she's "got balls".

My deskplace is such an 'international' space. I've got souvenirs (mostly from friends) from so many places -

the wooden hedgehog and Lego AT-AT from Hamburg or someplace in Germany...
clog keyrings from Holland...
the miniature horse statue from some pony farm near Exeter...
a cigar from France...
a wooden countrylady toy from Austria...
some badges and pins from Prague, Spain and Brussels...
a cute little Spanish black cow...
a wooden doggie bookmarkish thing from Madrid...
a Nurnberg funnel + postcard from Germany...
a doorsign from Brussels...
a wookpecker structure thingy from Greenwich...
a scented candleholder from Phuket...
a mini Totoro from Osaka Japan...
and an Aussie bullroarer and boomerang...

I remember all who gave those to me. :) Thank you, tomodachi!

Just went for Haijade's 21st at the Gardening Club at Covent Garden. How sweet of Tai Gor's all I can think of... :) Poor Haijade so unexpectedly thrust into the limelight with so many tens and dozens of her friends around didn't quite know how to react to this surprise party. At quite a posh-ish-looking club too. The cake was wicked... it was like that rum cake Lionel had, and the finger-food was delicious too. Just wished there had been more food... and a little less people... and noise. Yell-talking over the blast of the heavy band music from outside the VIP room didn't do any good to my sorethroat, which still lingers.

I wanna travel somewhere...

I really shouldn't be consuming chunks of spicy Nandos chicken or gobbling down glassfuls of coke when my sorethroat isn't fully cured. There's no end to the edibles that contribute to phlegmy huskiness. And there's still nian gaos and other CNY goodies in the kitchen. And many packets of Capri-Sun... hmmm Capri-Sun... it's addictive. Like the pine nuts which I am still dutifully popping into my mouth every now and then.

I don't get how The House of Flying Daggers can garner such high votes on IMDB... it's artistic, yeah, artistically-directed and the backdrops and such are elaborate and all... but... it's a joke, really. "Too drama liaoz". Just like Hero, also by the same director. Perhaps I just don't know how to appreciate such films.

I wanna sleep... but I can't seem to be able to fall asleep. I'm bored, but I don't wanna game or mug... bleh I just feel like spacing out.

Chinese New Year steamboat on Wednesday CNY night... I'd post up pics if I could, but I'd like to wait till the backups are restored for the defaced pages first. Yeah, my gallery pages were not spared too. It was a little night of friendships rekindled, in a way... the FRIENDS of Emperor's Gate. All thumbs up for Flat 1 for preparing the many dishes of chicken, pork, beef, meatballs, veggies, fish, prawns, crabmeat, spring rolls, calamari rings and whatnot! w00t... what a feast!12am that night - Lionel's birthday. Had some lovely rum cake, and a singing session with guitar accompaniment. Households gone wild, and poor bruised pomelo!

Did a presentation on Fire Ecology on Thursday... and there marked the end of the ecology module. Enjoyed every moment of it. Next week starts Resource Management. Long-time-common-module-wacky-coursemate XiYu heads for Virology... and so do most of the rest of the biology peeps. Haven't seen many of them for such a long time, it seems. I'm all nigelised again, with only my laptop for good company for the next few weeks. Why do most people flock to the boring modules and the big lecture theatre G34? Hahaa... leaving us ecologists and zoologists smaller rooms and more attention (from the lecturers).

REACH! Charity Show meeting on Friday. Everything's coming along well. I hardly speak at all during meetings anymore... Kai's still leading the charge but the freshers are slowly taking over. Good good... :) ExCo nominations opening soon... I remember last year's elections quite well; it had formed the bulk of conversations then. This year's should be interesting as well...

Back to the 'ole feeling of dazedness and heavy-headedness in the days of yesteryear Linstead. Four freshers of a feral nature + Darren @ Emperor's Gate @ 3am, most squeezing onto a bed bludging in front of a laptop, wanting to do something but doing nothing in particular...

Slept a lot this arvo. Gotta get back my sleep cycles.

I think I just concussed a fly.

Flies in London in winter get it bad.

The weather's cold, fly flies slow, fly buzzes around, person gets irritable, fly gets whacked. Quite easily.

Wheredaheck did the fly come from anyway?

This one was hovering above my laptop, checking out my fluorescent desk lamp. I took aim with my pointer finger and actually flicked it. It hit a window panel and ricocheted back onto my desk, where it lay upside-down for a while, its legs cycling the air. I left it alone for a while and it was gone when I returned. Silly fly. Flies belong outdoors. Or in science labs.

Eh... Chinese New Year?

When's that?

Haha...

In the days and weeks drawing near CNY, nobody was even sure. And today on the eve of the biggest day in the Chinese calendar, we just had a little humble reunion dinner for the Flat 2 Emperor's Gate family. Noodles, rice, fish, chicken, and an assortment of veggies... And worth mentioning was the fact that we had dinner at the dining table in the kitchen (finally, for once! again since the beginning to term) and not in front of the laptop watching FRIENDS. So worthy of note was this that even Viv blogged about it. :P Although we still watched two episodes after dinner... lol...

Spring cleaning was in order. And now... Viv at her laptop, Marv perhaps worrying about his scientific poster, Fidel studying for his exam, and me living at the moment off some seriously addictive pine nuts and fruit sherbet lollies... and it leaves you wondering... so that's it? Steamboat dinner tomorrow when the biochem guys are done with their first paper. Ex-Linsteadians might be reminiscing last's years CNY dinner...

Boy it scares me... fifth year away from home. It doesn't seem all that long when I think of it. Family's now in Hong Kong with relatives and grandparents and all... suddenly homesick for HK... think I'll be going back in Easter. Darn, I think I use 'go back' too freely. Go back to Singapore, go back to Sydney, go back to Hong Kong, go back to London... but after some time the distinction between going and going back becomes blurred... *yawn*

Early start tomorrow. Thank goodness MSN is down for I'd be doing some chatting right now, no doubt eating into the wee early morn. Feeling full. I'll finish up my lolly (prolly shouldn't be doing that... sorethroat⁺ ah...) and go to bed. 'Night mates. And Gong Xi Fa Cai!

⁺_{the box of erm, speclalantipyretic larynx tablets which Viv passed me is supposedly extremely effective in curing 'soar throats'. Gotta love reading Chinese spellings of English words. There's always some laugh to it. ;)}

The world's leading evolutionary zoologist Ernst Mayr dies... :| Many called him the modern-day Charles Darwin. One great scientist... many invaluable books and thoughts. I shall be reading his works with an even greater appreciation from now on.

News from The Scientist

Sweetness! I had nearly forgotten that my laptop's ATI Radeon IGP video memory runs with the default 16MB, and that it could be tweaked. Even while I struggled with some graphics-intense games, I failed to recall this wonderful spec of my preciouss. After maxing it out to a whooping 128MB... everything runs addictively smoothly. Haha!! Half-Life 2 at best performance, UT2004 at high settings, Call of Duty... OpFlashPoint... played a few rounds of all my games and I love it! Time to reinstall Far Cry. ;)

Having mugged for the past week or so mellows down my conscience a tad. Yay!

I-Night...

... was one long night.

Went to the Great Hall at 5pm for a briefing for performers and helpers. Apparently, all the helpers were from SingSoc. Heh, 'our own people'. Hmmm even the Overseas Student Committee's (OSC) almost dominated by Singaporeans... anyway Viv and I were assigned the simple task of assisting with the international food stalls. Representing OSC, we sold kebabs. "Kebabs... lamb and chicken kebabs!" Sold over 90 of them w00t! It was quite funny, for at some point of time some patron commented that we "don't look quite Lebabese", and we had to quickly explain that although we were selling Lebanese food, we were in no way affiliated with the Lebanese Society.

Leaving the last two kebabs to be sold in Supersaleswoman Viv's care :P, I went back up to the holding area to meet up with the rest of the SingSoc skit crew. I was roped in just the day before to narrate the two little bits - extremely, very, little effort needed when compared to what the others had to perform. It was a whole 10+ min musical they were presenting. An impressive one too, to say the least. A far cry from the Coxford Singlish Dictionary skit of last year's I-Night. This time round it was a story that many people could relate to... a heartwarming tale about a young Singaporean's life during NS and beyond, when he went to London to study, and his changing relationship with his family. Raj masterminding the story and the script, with Justin as the composer and musical director, and Alwyn behind the piano (boy are those guys gifted!)... combined with the vocal and acting talents of Xiao, Marv and Raj... it was a production to be reckoned with. It was so sooo good. The audience was laughing, orrhh-ing... and crying even (yes, we've got eyewitnesses!). We haven't seen the last of them yet. The cast will be performing again for REACH!, the SingSoc charity show coming up on the 26th. Bravo folks! And thanks Chongwai and Melvin for stagehanding. :P

Aside from that... all the other society's performances were also improved from last year's... more or less. My goodness, the way some Latin American or Arabic dancers can sway their hips or belly-dance... I daresay they got the guys drooling haha. JapSoc's creativity shone through once again... plot, props and people as elaborate and hilarious as always; and no doubt... Funkology rulez!

12am... it ended right before the fire alarms started ringing lol.

Soft chilled at BK... yakked. Think we all talked and yelled and screamed and cahooted too much throughout the night. All sore-throaty and and hoarsy now.

(Oh, lookit Viv's blog post too.)

Hacked!

Apparently not only the website domains, but the DNS servers have been hacked. Some group calling itself Command Tribulation hacked all the top-level pages of talfryn.net and ic-singsoc.net, replacing the indexes with some Jesus message. Needa haul in the backups asap... the overall server security over at the webhost's seems to be lacking some.

Argghh my laptop was infected with the Bropia worm after a friend sent me something over over msn, then I scanned the drives and found a few trojans... so I spent the whole day yesterday purging my laptop of viruses and worms. And scanned some more and defragged and cleaned it up good.

And now... this.

Hate defacements.

Boohoo... yesterday's conservation workshop was cancelled. What a slack course. Only had 7 hours of lectures in the whole week. Free day again today... International Night later... helping out and stuff... should be fun.

SingSoc's CNY reunion dinner tonight. Was fun. Lots of people... 100 exactly... took up two floors of the restaurant. Good to have a chance to see some old faces (year 2s and 3s and 4s lol) and be on a little high. Food was gooood... and it was good to be able to converse in good old authentic-Hong-Kong-ish Cantonese without the tainted accents. Even if the people I was talking to were only the restaurant staff. Always felt good to be able to use my native language (dialect?) with others... felt more at home... hmmm forgive my limited vocab tonight. Good is good. Oh, the ice-cream aftersession was good too.

Straits Times online, (3 Feb 05) -

Firefighters battle Marina bush blaze: "A large bush fire broke out yesterday on a plot of forested land in Marina East, off Fort and East Coast Park Service roads... ... Eyewitnesses said they could see and smell the smoke as far away as Orchard Road."

That bad, huh. Ouch... wonder what I would have seen if I was still living in the East. I know which patch of land they are referring to... I would have a clear view of the fire from my window... perhaps about 500m away... and the smog would've been awful. Scary stuff, fires.

On the Iraqi election...

Illustration: Alan Moir
(28 Jan 05, Sydney Morning Herald)

'Return To Innocence' by Enigma

I had ignored this song, never knowing it was even in my music collection until I tried looking for it after hearing it in the upcoming SingSoc skit. I didn't realise how much I love this song until a moment ago, when I actually read - and heard - the lyrics. The words speak so loud... though as fragile as a whisper... and the chants, though unintelligible, carry such an ambience that's close to heart... it's intangible. The song and the music's all so beautifully simple. Haunting and mysterious, yes, but beautiful.

Love - Devotion
Feeling - Emotion
Don't be afraid to be weak
Don't be too proud to be strong
Just look into your heart my friend
That will be the return to yourself
The return to innocence.
If you want, then start to laugh
If you must, then start to cry
Be yourself don't hide
Just believe in destiny.
Don't care what people say
Just follow your own way
Don't give up and use the chance
To return to innocence.
That's not the beginning of the end
That's the return to yourself
The return to innocence.

Ps. Yep, the time of this post is correct... I've been reinducted into NocSoc. It's just one of those times again, I guess.

Sunday, February 27, 2005

30 days' planning for a 3-hour charity show...

REACH!

Friday, February 25, 2005

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Men speak in C ; women speak in Java

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Is Evolution Predictable?

REACH! is drawing near...

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

"World Guides and Scouts Day"

Monday, February 21, 2005

Let's party and let it snow!

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Outta London for a while...

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Monday, February 14, 2005

Happy Valentines & Happy Friendship Day

Keep your eye on those balls

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Saturday, February 05, 2005

Friday, February 04, 2005

Hacked!

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

On the Iraqi election...

'Return To Innocence' by Enigma