Helicobacter

<3

Update XXII: Point Form

• I'm back in the city of lions!
• Figuratively. I mean, we've never actually had lions and-
• I saw WALL-E on the plane. It was fantastic. Fluffy, but not in the utterly clichéd way most family movies seem to steer towards. And the underlying serious message elevated this movie from family fun to something truly great.
• Seven-hour flights suck. I woke up this morning feeling as if I had been rolling in gravel the previous night, instead of sitting in a cushioned chair for an extended period of time as was the case.
• I came back and found my room entirely cleaned up, the doing of my hardworking mother. I think I'll leave it that way. I'm not going to be here for long anyway.
• I managed to find a copy of the 2007 Transformers movie on DVD at half price before leaving Australian soil. I think Kmart was just trying to get rid of them.
• The trailer for the ambitious Black Mesa mod of Half-Life came out recently. Watch it on fullscreen mode, it feels like playing the game.
• So there's this one sculptor who uses Lego bricks for art. Magnificent.
• I love Auditorium. It's like being some sort of composer, in colour as well as sound.
• I ate large amounts of fish today.
• That is all.

Update XXI: These Titles are Getting Longer

Okay, so the most of the crunch is over. One more piece of Honours business to settle, and then it'll all be up to other people. Which means relaxation until graduation day, drawing comics, that sort of thing. Oh, and eating M&Ms peanuts. Lots of them.

I found a moth in my mug the other day. It didn't even have the decency to be dead.
...I hate moths.

I don't know what these flowers are, but they have a gorgeous scent.



I've decided that Copperpot is the greatest food company since PepsiCo - they manufacture dips with awesome-sounding names like hummus, tzatziki and guacamole. In spite of hailing from various countries, all of these dips taste fantastic. Even on their own. Yes, I've tried. It may be that the sauces themselves are inherently delicious in their own right, but I'm letting Copperpot have the credit for now.

The brilliant mind behind Concerned has a - well, not new, but newly-discovered by me - blog chronicling the exploits of an NPC and his attempts to lead a life completely lacking in eventfulness. Start reading it from here. While the adventure - or lack thereof - is set in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, you don't have to have played to game to get the humour. It's funny that the exploits of a nobody, especially one so hideous, can be so riveting, but there you are.

Colour IQ test! I managed to get a score of 0 (perfect), which is great news both for my eyes and my laptop's colour calibration. Maybe now I'll stop second-guessing my colour choices when illustrating something... Anyway, give it a go!

Dalek Workout - turns out even those evil guys need to exercise from time to time. I agree with one of the comments, the corny music absolutely makes it.

DE_dust2 - CounterStrike humour! The funny thing is that I actually have a friend who refers to himself as "SWAT". And we all know a Camper or a Newbie.
Take note, since this is about CounterStrike, practically everyone dies in the end, even the awesome characters.

I'm linking to this purely because I never thought Movie!Megatron could be so goshdarned adorable.
Also, Thumper, you horrible creature. How could you.

Anyway, that's all for now. More photographs and things later.

You Know You've Been Using the Computer Too Much When...

...you read a page of a book and then search for a link to get to the next one.

...you write a sentence with a word you're not sure you spelt correctly, but that's okay because Autocorrect can take care of it.

...you glance down at the corner of the paper to check the time.

...the sun is shining in your face so you fumble around for the brightness/contrast controls.

...you wonder in passing why your photo-albums don't have thumbnails on the cover.

...you don't feel like writing out your full name and address on every single one of your application forms, so you attempt to select and copy it instead.

...you hesitate to buy a new item for your room because you're not sure if you have the disk-space.

...there's a word in blue text in your lecture notes and you don't know what it means, so you attempt to click on it.

...while reading the newspaper, you attempt to close the advertisements interposed between the news articles.

...you're in an obstacle course and you decide to save your progress right before that difficult rope-swing there.

...you have the urge to pull stunts while driving, as this will gain you more points.

...some of your things are missing, and you wonder if you should scan for a virus.

...you attempt to right-click on the trash bin in order to empty it.

...you're stuck in a long queue at the bank, so you decide to play Minesweeper to pass the time.

...the introduction to your essay is terrible, so you try to close the foolscap without saving.

...your textbook states something that is clearly wrong, so you search for the Edit button.

...you form compulsive computer-related habits which carry over into real life.

And then you realise where you are, feel like an idiot and hopefully vow to spend more time out of the house.

We Waited Seven Years For This

A member on BZP got hold of the first official images of Mata Nui. As a Great Spirit that is, as opposed to a stone statue.

Check it out here or in the news article here.

I feel honoured and privileged to finally set eyes on the most important being in my favourite fictitious universe. Even if he is, you know, fictious. I feel that all the time I spent patiently waiting, watching new Toa arrive and new enemies stop them, every year slowly inching towards that great revelation, has finally paid off.

As for those who keep saying that he looks like a Transformer - if Hasbro came up with a Transformer which looked like that, their fans would complain about its resemblance to "a Bionicle." So pipe down and let me gaze upon his greatness in peace.

Update XX: Cool, Useful or Plain Funny

So, one of my friends recently picked up a 1 terabyte hard drive for about $200. That's 20 cents per gigabyte, people. And to think that a few years ago, a 1GB hard drive would have cost $100. Meanwhile, Seagate promises over thirty thousand times that capacity in a mere two years.
Computers are moving altogether too fast these days.

I've been trying to figure out for some time what makes things funny...It's sometimes incomprehensible, how some things make us go "ha-ha" while others get nothing more than a bored stare...
Anyway, today's xkcd was undeniably funny, though if it was because of the entirely everyday manner in which the character failed to escape, or because of the subversion of what I expected would happen, I cannot say.

Something which does seem to be almost universally funny are mistakes. Other people's mistakes. CakeWrecks is dedicated to the professionally-made cakes which follow instructions too closely, are incredibly creepy, do not look remotely edible, or are simply... beyond words.
I spent a few days browsing the archives. I don't think I've laughed so many times in my life.

This amused me. Not the vehicles themselves - they are clearly M3G mobile bridges - but rather the various suggestions concerning Decepticons (that one navy gunboat was getting lonely, apparently), Allied Troop Carriers, Universal Soldiers, aliens...

It's been a while since I found a nice time-waster... Cursor10 is a neat little game. You have 650... well, they're clearly not seconds, so I'll call them "units of time." You have 650 time-units to reach the sixteenth floor, and ten cursors to help you accomplish this. If you run out of time, you control the next cursor out of your ten while the previous one simultaneously copies every single action you made it do when you had control of it. In essence, you have to "programme" the ten cursors to reach the end. A very original idea for a game, and fun to play too.

Trapped 5 is a vastly superior puzzle game to its predecessors, and well-crafted. The best part is that it is not possible to get a Game Over, which removes a lot of potential frustration. Other puzzle-game creators, take note.

And finally, something useful. If you've never checked that your desktop clock was synchronising correctly with an Internet time server, it may not actually have been doing so... Recently, I checked mine and found, to my utter horror, that it was four minutes slow. To think I had considered it accurate.
Anyway, I was unable to fix the synchronisation by changing the server or opening a port through my firewall, so I got hold of this nifty piece of software. It's a very small program, and can be set to automatically synchronise the desktop clock with any Internet time server. Worth the minuscule bandwidth cost required to download it.

And now, have a pretty picture. Ta and later.

(Edited on 21 October 2008 for a broken link.)

The Forgiveness Interval

Or, the duration of time between someone violating your personal rights and you deciding not to get angry. One of the great advantages of the internet is that you can always wait out this period before choosing to respond to an annoyance, and so never appear to lose your temper. In real life, this is less of an option for obvious reasons.

Two of my housemates have the habit of taking various items out of the house and/or consuming them, without asking the permission of their owners or so much as leaving a note of explanation. My immediate reaction upon discovering the infractions is fury, which usually fades away to a more objective indignation by the time I corner them. Thus I've so far been able to deal with them without breaking anything or raising my voice.

However they've never learnt, not after repeated confrontations. And one of these days, I'll catch them before the forgiveness interval has passed.

It will be ugly.

Happy Birthday to...

Google!



Amazingly, I actually remember that old logo. Man, that was ages ago...

See, that's a funny thing. Computers, the internet... they've come so far, and yet most of the important milestones occured in the span of my twenty years of life.

Anyway, thank you for the ten years of service, Google. Have a happy birthday!

Cool Things II

SCHOOL HOLIDAYS!

Well, just a week. And then one more week of lectures n' labs, and then exams. Which begs the question of why this is called a "mid-sem break." But who are we to question the eccentricities of university policy? Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die. And, er, get distinctions.

So anyways, while I was under the hammer in the past few weeks, I still took the time to wander the internet, and kept bookmarks of the more worthy things. Worthy things which I now display here.

Crime scene investigators solve crimes (or at least investigate them). But what happens when a CSI falls victim to sandwich theft? The CSI: CSI team is on the case!
"I have a sandwich at home in my fridge. You don't know what it's like!"

Fortunately for those of us who aren't CSIs, there is now a way to protect your sandwiches...

The Wikipedia FAQK. Written a couple of years ago, still relevant.

Knitted Ferrari. It's a Ferrari. Made of yarn. Er...yeah.

In the computer game Half Life, one of the key characteristics of its protagonist, Gordon Freeman, was that he was completely mute. Then again, maybe it's better that way... (Note: Some strong language.)
There are currently four episodes. I can't wait to see how he reacts to the G-man...

More later.

Pavilion

"...And so when you divide the pressure by h, that gives the wall stress per unit length," I say, sketching out a representative diagram on my notebook as I speak. We're in the Pavilion, a small building which is common property for the residents, and I'm explaining a Physics problem to my companion. "Got it?"

He throws down his pen. "That was easy!" he blurts.

Easy? I frown, wondering if he truly understood it all. While the concept was a simple one, it was difficult to teach him anything, ever. He was too accustomed to editing out what he didn't comprehend, relying on a flimsy structure of partial truths.

"I understood it perfectly," he continues, and I am reassured, a little. "Why couldn't the lecturer explain it like you? You draw a few diagrams and I understand, perfectly." The tone is not complementary, but as if stating some fact. You explain things better than the lecturer.

"Well, everyone learns differently," I downplay, reaching for my cup. I swallow the ginger beer, now tepid from standing too long.

"I guess I do better with diagrams sometimes," he accepts, picking up his empty cup and takes it away to the dustbin. I notice that the bottle still has some ginger beer left, so I pour it all into my cup and chug it down, one long draught. Meanwhile he arranges the books along the far shelf, books which are there for common use, with an attentive hand. I understand the affection. We cleaned this place up. I survey the chairs, the pool table, the long bar-counter with the sink at one end, the sofas, the numerous stools. They are all in their proper places, now.

A bare three hours earlier, it had not been the case. I had come in through the glass-fronted door with my dog-tag, which opened any common property on the residence, and found him fiddling with the noticeboard. I barely noticed at the time, my attention was caught by the chaos in the room. Chairs were in random order, occasionally overturned. The tables were arranged as if someone had been trying to make a maze out of them. One dustbin, usually at the opposite end of the bar-counter, had ended up at the far end of the room. The bar-counter itself was littered with playing cards and empty beer bottles, along with a generous flood of what was probably Coca-Cola. Papers and more bottles were scattered across the room. I observed a pair of cubic objects on the pool table and picked one up unthinkingly. The blue chalk slid onto my finger, smooth and oily.

It was a disaster zone. Whoever was responsible for cleaning this all up would have quite a job.

"What happened in here?" He hadn't answered, still occupied with the noticeboard. "Were they all drunk?"

"Probably." He opened the refrigerator, reached for the orange juice bottle, balked at the layer of precipitate at the bottom of it and took out the apple juice instead. I gathered together the cards on the counter half-heartedly as he poured the juice into a plastic cup. He lifted it and then realised his error. "Oh, s…stuff." The cup had a small puncture in its base, and was now dripping apple juice over the counter and the floor.
I went behind the counter and winced at the sight of more playing cards, this time all over the floor. I bent to pick them up and immediately withdrew. "Oh, yuck. They're sticky!"

"Uh, yeah. I dripped apple juice all over them."

Mentally cursing I picked an easier target, the crushed balls of paper decorating the floor. I had no intention of cleaning the common room, of course. Just to clear it up a little, then go on to the study group which was the real reason I was here.

But as I dropped the last beer bottle into the recycling bin and washed my hands at the tap, I thought – I can clean my hands anytime.

I still felt disgust at the sticky cards, but picked them up anyway. Once they were stacked properly on the counter, I took a rag and cleaned away the fluid. The rag felt oily in my hands, but there was no soap to be seen.

On a thought, I raced into the toilet and pushed at the soap dispenser, the door banging behind me. It was empty.

Defeated, I decided that water had to do. I crawled all over the floor, clearing bottle caps, paper balls, paper aeroplanes and… orange seeds? Goodness knows where those had been. I shuddered, but picked them up anyway. Meanwhile he dragged the chairs back in order, pushed the stools into a single line against the wall, arranged the tables into a straight line.

"Come and look at this," he said. I crouched to join him, beside the table-tennis table. Something seemed off about it, perhaps the wooden beam slanting crookedly to the floor. Experimentally I lifted it; one leg of the table twisted to the side in response.

"Better leave it." I let go, aware that the table was not in the correct place, but not wanting to risk moving it.

A few more wipe-downs, a few more items thrown away, and suddenly the room seemed habitable again. I had looked around then, realising how little work it had been to return everything back to normal. And then I had an epiphany.

The Pavilion had surely been dirty before. But every time, someone – not a professional cleaner, but one of us – had put everything back in order.

Because it was ours.

I stand up to wind down the louvers. They are high up, so there is a pulley system for closing them. The crank handle moves with surprising fluidity. Meanwhile he hits a button on the wall. The automated shades, flapping like yellow sails outside the porch, wind up slowly.

I toss away the empty ginger beer bottle, gather up my things, cast a look around before I go. "Heh. It’s all nice and clean. Thanks to us."

"Mm," he says noncommittally, putting his hand on a door-handle. It is at that point that I realise there is a door there. In fact, there are four, spread out across two sides of the building. I hadn’t noticed.

He opens it partway, then lets it fall back. "Better not," he says, showing an odd – respect? – for tradition as he takes hold of the front door and lets us out. I glance back as I leave. "The fans are off."

"I turned them off earlier, remember? It was getting too cold."
Outside on the porch, the wind slams into me. "Who needs fans?" I stand in the wind, the air circling me and tossing my hair, while he walks around to check that all the doors are closed from outside. All four doors.

And then, as I stand on that porch, looking at the transparent walls, the four doors which could surely be all thrown open at once although they never are, standing with the wind around me - the building feels alive. Like a machine, thrumming with life and eagerness and those automated shades and those pulley louvers all waiting to come online, a pulse running through the stained metal pillars, those knowing glass windows watching, and understanding.

All of a sudden I don't want to leave.

Instead I stare out, at the lake right beside the small building, the trees all cast in evening sunshine, the grassy hillock in front. An army of ducklings are climbing the hillock, bills scanning the grass.

"They've moulted."

"What?"

"The ducklings. They've moulted."

"How do you know?"

"Look at them. They have feathers now."

He pauses, considering. "They don't look as fat as they used to," he concedes.

Naturally.

He walks off in the direction of his apartment. The wind gusts at my back, pushing me off the porch and towards home.

I obey, the chill buffeting my legs as I walk.

Obligations

I'm coughing and sore all over. My forehead, while not burning, is warmer than it should be (funny, my forehead's never been cold before... Maybe that only happens in death). The last thing I want to do is go grocery shopping.

And yet I have to, because I'm the only one capable of hauling back 3 kg of milk and a kilo of rice and another kilo of meat and all the other things which need buying.

Life does its best to suck sometimes.

Update XIX: Many Small Things

I've had, if you'll pardon me, a heck of a week. Three written assignments plus a graphics-heavy oral presentation. I've been staying up far later than decent people should be, and even after all that I'm not exactly sure what I churned out was the best I could have done.

But now I'm free. And a couple of nice things happened. So that was alright.

I almost stepped on some ducklings while distracted the other day. Yes, ducklings. I quickly got out of the way before the angry mother could get a taste of my leg.
They were pretty adorable though. I'd have liked to take a picture, but I decided I'd bothered them enough for one day.

I used to think that being nasty and bad-tempered at home was all that kept me well-mannered in public. But I've spent months in a different home, and have not truly been angry or obnoxious once.
It's... different. That I don't have to be this way, that there's actually a chance for me to be a nice person.

Lift is awesome, and I only just found this out today.

This is just awesome. It just goes to show how much we depend on our hearing to place what happens around us. I felt a genuine sense of panic when he started on the electric razor.

In other news... HAHAHAHAHA.

Another 1-Up

I know I'm a little late with this, but hey - it's still 9th August in some countries.

Happy birthday Singapore!

Yesterday I had to watch the National Day Parade over the internet, on a 2 x 3 inch rectangle on my laptop screen. I think my eyes died a little... While the image lagged on occasion, the audio was flawless, and it did feel that I was back home celebrating the nation's birthday like every year. Just for a moment.

I am so packing a national flag when I fly back here next year.

Update XVIII: Block

I use the backspace key too often now. My mind is in a state of inertia, and refuses to pull itself together.

There are times when the words flow easily, and I wonder where the wisdom came from. Then there are times like now.

Writing is art. It cannot be turned on or off like a switch. But now the circuit is firmly fused open, and in spite of multiple attempts I cannot get it to move.

It's not that I have nothing to say. It's not that I want to hide. It's this block, stealing away the only means I have to communicate. I have the intent, but lack the words.

Fluency will not return at once, so I settle for small victories. Forgive this short post, it is a necessary step. When I return, I will make sense. Some time.

In the meantime, watch this. It is worth it.

Fiction: Procrastination

Do something.

I place the gumball in my mouth. If it were a jawbreaker this would hurt, but the candy coating dissolves quickly and collapses in on the hollow centre. It is an obnoxious shade of blue.

Experimentally I stick my tongue out at the mirror. Obnoxious shade of blue. I wonder if the previous gumballs were the same, and I simply did not notice.

You’re not doing anything.

I think about the pickles in the fridge. Pickles and salami. Salami slices fried to a crisp are like potato chips, only better.

Please. Time is wasting.

I ignore the voice and chew. Deliberately. I was thinking of something but it escapes my mind.

Pickles…

No, not pickles. Something. I shape the gum with my teeth and blow. The material snaps before it can form a bubble. So much for gum. I move to fold it away, into the tissue in my pocket. To my dismay, it is blue.

I examine my tongue in the mirror again. No blue.

“Ah,” I say. I pop in a yellow gumball and examine the result. Yellow.

Less dismay, then.

Alarm clock.

I glance at it. It stands in the corner of the table, nameless, trustworthy. “No.”

Then do something.

“No,” I say, without thinking.

It’s afternoon.

So it is.

A stirring which is quickly quelled. Do something. Do something NOW!

“I can’t.”

Why?

“Don’t feel like it.”

You will regret this later.

“Maybe.” The gum is losing its sweetness rapidly. I hate gum. It never goes away once it’s done.

Green.

“Green?”

Music.

Obligingly I put on the headphones and glance down the playlist. Piano, I think. The punctuated sounds follow in sharp staccato.

I still find it hard to believe that the piano is a string instrument.

The voice settles to a corner of my mind. I listen briefly to the notes. Already the gum tastes like tepid tea. While kneading out the last of the sugar with my teeth I consider which gumball to take next.

Green.

I shrug. Alright.

The music moves fast, notes following each other as fast as they can without stumbling.

Arpeggio.

“What?”

It’s called “arpeggio”.

“How do you know what I don’t?” The question seizes me, and I wonder if it is possible for me to know more than I do.

There is no reply. I do not have one.

Yellow.

There is no more yellow.

Purple.

I stare at it suspiciously. What flavour-

DosomethingdosomethingdosomethingDOSOMETHINGNOW!

Nerves taken by surprise and twitching in obedience, my hand moves and brings up a document. Something inside gives way, and I begin work.

“I hate you,” I say amicably. There is no response.

Meme: Books

Happy new month!

So I stole this meme from Eud's LJ... Anyway, the idea is to:

- look at the list and
- bold what you've read
- italicise what you're going to read
- underline what you love

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible (Only parts of it...)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (Read about half, then skipped to the ending. Aheh...)
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (I don't really like Hardy's books...)
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (I've been searching for this for ages!)
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (Read some of them.)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings was so much better.)
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (Saw parts of the movie.)
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (Also saw parts of the movie. Depressing story.)
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Another book I badly want to read.)
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (I liked Through the Looking Glass better though.)
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (One of the first books I ever read. Loved it.)
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen (My mother loves this book too.)
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell (Depressingly truthful book.)
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel (Fascinating story.)
51. Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (Read parts of it.)
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte's Web - EB White
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I've read every single Sherlock Holmes story and loved all of them.)
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (Wow, that was...so long ago.)
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur, l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux...)
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (I liked the 1948 film better than the book, to be honest...It was so funny.)
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (Only watched the 1935 movie.)

That's, what...36? 36 books? Agh, no wonder my eyes are as bad as they are. I also realise there's lots more books which I want to read and never got to... Probably should work on those sometime.

Boom De Yada

...I love this commercial so much.



(Thank you, xkcd.)

FREEDOM!

Last exam ended today! Finally, after three weeks, I can do what I want to!

Freeeee...

The exams? They were relatively easier than what I'm used to. Of course I had to invest in a lot of mugs to make them easy, but...

Anyway, they're over. Gone. Half a year cleared, and then I'm going home.

In the meantime, I've got some serious slacking off to do. Laters.

Burnt Out

So my internet's acting up in a weird way. I'm not even going to pretend I understand what it's doing, but it had better get its act together soon.

I've had two exams so far, with one of them two days from the other. My brain is exhausted from all the muggery, and has decided to rebel. I need a whole day's worth of sleep, and copious amounts of vitamin C.

Needless to say I'm not likely to be getting either.

I need to get back to my notes.

Update XVII: One Exam, Hold the Mug

So! Happy new month.

It's going to be winter soon. The days are getting shorter, although the days have actually been getting warmer lately. Of course that's liable to reverse in a while.

I'm just getting a feeling of...change. As if people are moving away, things are ending, some just dying down. I don't know why. It's just an impression.

Exams are this Friday. I'm not sure if I should be worried. I'm nervous of course, and I know there's a lot riding on them. But what I'm not sure about is if I've done enough on the studying front. To be sure, I've taken up the most difficult topics and tried to understand them inside-out. I may have even succeeded. I won't know until I see the exam paper.

You know, there's this thing about being an expert. The minute you've kicked the ball wrong, or react a second too slow, or held the pen crooked - you know. There is no need to see the outcome. You know it's epic fail before you see it.

In a way, we're all experts at exams - and at judging how badly we'll do by just looking at the questions.

It would help if we were experts at studying as well. I mean, I know the true way to learn is to understand. I know that memorising chunks gets nowhere. The question is how to understand. So far, re-writing lectures into essays, followed by running through all of it in my head, seems to have worked so far.

I hope it's enough. Not just for the exams. That's the immediate concern, but not the most important.

I hope it's enough for real life.

Cool Things

Mozilla aims to make a record for most software downloaded in 24 hours, with the release of Firefox 3. It's somewhat silly, but hey, why not? The Download Day site is here.

You fail... orchestrally. (The music makes it seem sillier.)

Braainsss... (I should try this recipe...if I can find an appropriate brain mold.)

In other brain-related news, a monkey hooked up to a robotic arm successfully fed itself with said arm.

Twenty

So... I'm now past teenhood but have yet to achieve full adulthood. The transition age if you like, to soften the blow of having to be responsible and rely on oneself.

No, it hasn't sunk in yet. It won't for a while.

Then one day it'll hit like a wall of bricks and I'll know, really know, that it's too late to go back.

License Plate

To the owner of this car:


You are my hero.

Snapshot

It's week twelve, what amounts to the last academic week. The last presentation for our core module just finished, and now all that's on my mind is food. Food, and warmth. The wind is unduly punishing, and the wool cardigan I grabbed while rushing out of the house is doing little for me. It doesn't help that I unzipped it while I was indoors earlier.

"Help me hold this," I say, passing my laptop bag to B, who is walking beside me. I pull the cardigan free from where the strap of my carryall bag has trapped it, and secure the front. "Shall we go for pizza? I don't feel like having instant noodles again." The campus centre has a fairly good pizza place. While somewhat expensive, pizza is pizza.

B disagrees. "We might as well eat at Jessie's," naming our favourite pizzeria. Unfortunately it is in town, and a little too far for a walk.

"Don't tell me we're going all the way out there."

"No, what I mean is, the campus pizza isn't worth it."

"No." The money-minded part of my brain has taken over. "Asian grocery then?" The campus Asian grocery stocks packed lunches in its fridges, at prices considered cheap in this country.

"I don't know, is the food good?"

"It's-" I stop, remembering that I eat almost everything. I turn to L, walking quietly behind us. "Was the food good?"

"It was quite good."

Satisfied that it's not just me, I add, "Not enough chilli though."

"That's because you eat so much chilli." I don't deny the accusation.

We're in the campus centre now, and the temperature warms immediately. The Asian grocery is past the travel agency and B suddenly remembers that she's avoiding a travel agent.

"I've decided not to go back home after all," she explains. "But after all the trouble I put that guy, he's going to kill me! He kept calling my phone yesterday." I hand her my laptop bag as we walk past the agency, and tell her to check it for damage. She makes a poor attempt at hiding her face behind it.

We reach the safety of the grocery, and make a beeline for the fridge. There are packed lunches there again, but for some reason they seem less appealing than yesterday. I don't like the look of them.

"Maybe I'll have instant stuff today," I concede.

"I'll go buy food upstairs," says L. B is hungry now, and rummages through the buns on display. She picks out a chicken bun. A ham-and-egg bun catches my eye, and I pull it out. B has no more coins, so I pay.

"Is the guy in there?" asks B, cautiously peeking around me as we walk back past the travel agency.

"No," I say, glancing in. "No, wait, yes. He's not looking this way though." I juggle my two bags a little, until I get a hand free to open the bun. B and I chew as we accompany L upstairs.

Upstairs is a nice little lounge, complete with sofas, a dining hall and a take-out restaurant. We head into the restaurant and hang around while L goes queues up.

"That chicken looks good," considers B. "Why don't you eat here?"

"Too expensive." I glance at the pau buns on sale. $1.80 each. Are they mad?

"That's robbery. It's just not worth it," comments B.

"They are pretty big though." Well, not really. Just a little bigger than what we're used to back home, maybe.

"Yes, but I'd get tired of eating them half-way." L is done, so we walk out. I toss my bun wrapper into the dustbin, and happen to get a look inside as I do so. Plastic food boxes lie haphazardly in a pile, interposed with food scraps and dirty wooden chopsticks.

"What a waste," I say. "We always keep the boxes."

"At home, I'd throw them away. Don't you?"

"Never. We always keep them. We have this huge pile of them at home..."

"Oh... I don't. I mean if I'm eating out, I don't want to carry that thing back, you know?"

We walk down the stairs, past the pizza place and its long queue, out to the courtyard outside. Suddenly, B says, "Do you want Turkish delight?"

"Huh?"

She points. There's a booth where some girls are setting up cookies and sweets and things. A box of Turkish delights, generously covered in icing sugar, lies open on the table. One of the girls is still putting up signs displaying the price of each item.

"It's for the Burmese cyclone," explains one of the girls. I dislike Turkish delight, but the cookies look good. They are large, and the price of a dollar, for a charitable cause, doesn't seem unreasonable. I buy one for myself and another for B. "You owe me $8 now," I tell her.

There's a pile of longish roll-like pastries, pale brown dusted with green. I ask what they are. "Baklava," she says. "It's a Lebanese sweet." I give her a $2 coin to satisfy my curiosity, and she hands me one of the rolls on a paper towel. Now juggling two bags, a wallet and a sweet, I put everything down on a nearby bench and sort things out, and only then do I try the confection. The taste startles me.

"It's...really good?"

"Is it?" B is not entirely believing.

"It's like...chocolate." I offer some to L, but she refuses. "I'm thinking of buying one myself."

I break off a piece and give it to B. There's a pause, and then her face is forced into a smile. "Mmm!" L is convinced, and gets a baklava for herself.

"See you guys." B walks off in the other direction, where her house is. I walk down the path with L, finishing off the sweet and the cookie. We pass a dustbin; I consider going home to throw away the paper towels, then decide that that would be a curious brand of laziness. I drop the tissues into the bin.

My mental alarm signals go off instantly, and I wonder why my hand feels so...empty. My brain takes less than a second to work it out.

I spin on my heel. "Where's my laptop?" I think L gasps or something. I don't notice. I'm running back to where my memory says I last had my laptop bag. The bench where I put everything down after buying the sweets. That has to be it. It's a good two hundred metres back, and I'm not running fast enough. I have plenty of time to think of what will happen if it's not there.

All my work. Everything. I'm in a strange country, and suddenly I feel alone. I'm trying to move faster, and my legs can't.

I briefly wonder where L is, and decide it doesn't matter.

I'm not in training, and the adrenaline rush cannot help me. I stumble to a walk, albeit a fast one, gasping heavily. The bench is only a little further now. I pray, harder than I ever have.

I'm nearer the bench, and I see two black handles peeking over the top. I feel partial relief, but it's not enough. I walk around the bench and see my laptop bag, unharmed.

I have never felt more grateful.

I pick it up and inspect the contents quickly. Nothing missing. Still partially out of breath, I walk back. Across the courtyard, I spot L, running in short bursts. So she's not very fit either.

She comes closer, and I hold up the bag, exhausted but triumphant. She immediately stops, face relaxing in relief, and waits for me to catch up.

"I think I'd have died if I lost it," I say, between heavy breaths.

L says something, but I hardly notice. I think I babble some more as we walk. The danger is over now, and I feel light. My joints feel unstable, and a headache is starting to form behind my eyes. I think of checking the mail, then decide I can't be bothered. Somehow we get back home.

"It's high time the dustbin was emptied," comments L. I know. I wanted to do it this afternoon.

"I'll do it later. I'm too tired." A heavy understatement. Physically I'm fine. But something has happened on a mental level which won't sooth easily.

"I'll do it." I nod, getting over to my room door and fumbling with the key.

When I come back L is struggling to get the dustbin cover off. I forget she's never done this before. I prise it off fairly easily, much to her surprise, and get the hot water flask going. It's done in a few minutes, and I make instant noodles. The headache is getting worse.

I need a reboot. I haven't slept well for the past few days. I've been staying up late to finish up that last presentation. I've been heavily stressed. And I almost lost the most precious thing I own.

I curl up on the bed and sleep for an hour.

Potato Wedges

I must have mentioned at some point that potatoes dislike me. My past efforts at making potato wedges have always ended poorly for the frying pan. As for that one time I tried making rosti...Well, let's just say I had to spend half an hour cleaning the pan with a butter knife.

But no more. Today - today the order has changed!


They were very good. I even managed to put in the right amount of salt.

Also, this is post #100, which is a fairly awesome milestone.

Cold

I used to think I knew what cold was. When our lecture theatres hit fifteen degrees Celsius, I'd be shivering away and wishing I had a jacket. If I had a jacket, I'd be shivering and wishing I had gloves. The coldest I'd ever been was in a half-filled auditorium at night, with too few people to warm the air. I didn't have a jacket with me, as it happened, and so I shivered for two hours until it was time to leave.

But now I know that whatever I felt then, wasn't cold. Now I know cold. For example, the temperature outside right now is seven-point-four degrees Celsius. It's also raining, so the humidity is close to a hundred percent. I'm in my house, in a blue woollen cardigan huddling close to the warmth of my computer. My house has misled me multiple times into thinking that the environment outside was a lot warmer than it actually was. Let me tell you, anyone outside right now knows the meaning of cold.

And it's not even winter yet.

Junk Food

So... this article caught my eye.

I'm no psychiatrist, but I do remember what it was to be a child. I absolutely loved sweet foods, but even more so I loved salty foods. (I've always had a taste for the savoury.) I liked starchy foods like rice and potatoes, and meat especially if it was in curries or fried. I disliked vegetables and went without them as much as possible, but I would take the apples and oranges my father cut for me after meals. I also drank copious amounts of orange juice. It was like... manna or something. I wasn't too fond of plain water, unless it was chilled. I wouldn't drink boiled water.

As I grew older I started to see that vegetables weren't so bad. My mother always put chopped spring onions on my congee and noodles, so I got used to the taste. I started to like asparagus, beetroot and lettuce. Broccoli I still couldn't endure, but cabbage and cauliflower were good. I tolerated peas and onions if they were mixed in with a lot of other things. I was fine with kangkung if it didn't contain crystals.

When I reached my teens a big change happened, and by big change I mean a complete reversal of polarity. I started to actively like vegetables, especially if stir-fried. I'd go out of the way to get hold of unusual salad vegetables like rocket lettuce and baby spinach. Brussels sprouts were prohibitively expensive, but I did get to try them and I loved them. My opinion of broccoli remained unchanged, but I had to admit that curry leaves had an attractive flavour. I became fond of raw carrot. On the other side, my father became confused when threatening to withold chocolates did nothing to make me behave better.

I don't know what caused the change. Part of it may have been peer influence - when I went to camps and stuff, my friends would make grabs for the watermelon and papaya (I used to dislike both). Perhaps I wanted to be more like my father, who while old is fitter than many others his age. Part of it may have been instinct - it makes sense that a growing, active child would need more proteins and energy-rich food, while at adulthood the diet can become more balanced. And maybe, I had matured and was starting to make decisions for the good of myself instead of always going for what tasted better.

One thing I can be sure of - none of it had to do with being withheld from unhealthy things when I was young. I had plenty of chocolates and fast food when I was young. In my time it was still possible to buy a cup of Coca-Cola or an oily bowl of laksa from the school canteen.

However, while I still had access to those unhealthy foods, it was regulated. I considered it a treat to get a single square of chocolate per day. My father always sliced Mars bars into thirds - getting an entire bar was unthinkable. (I did get one once - as a reward for solving an entire workbook chapter of Maths problems. I was on cloud nine.) My mother would never allow us to have soft drinks in combination with healthy foods (something about affecting iron absorption), and fast-food was a rare thing.

Conversely, I was taught to like certain healthy things, from young. I have mentioned that spring onions were a staple on my noodles and congee. Whenever my mother deep-fried anything, she always made it a point to drain the oil on kitchen towels. She also used to spend a long time trimming chicken of skins and fat. (Misunderstanding the action, I once tried... washing a chicken skin and then eating it. Aheh.) Eggs were not allowed more than three times a week. I was given plain yoghurt when I was young - even now I prefer plain, sour yoghurt to the flavoured kinds. We were given lots of milk and cheese. Seasonings were used sparingly, to the point where I feel some kind of horror watching my friends stir-fry vegetables in copious amounts of oyster sauce. Coconut milk was vilified to the point that I can't still can't stand the smell of it, even today. And I still find it physically impossible to eat an entire tub of ice-cream at once - I was always taught it was wrong.

But perhaps the most important lesson came from some book that I read, and which I can't remember the title of now. It said that vegetables are not always good - they contain toxins, which can be just as harmful as cholesterol or fat. The key, the book said, was moderation and eating a large variety of foods. As I started to learn more about diet and nutrition through my Biology classes, the lesson was continually reinforced. It is not a matter of eating foods which contain a protein, a fibre-source, a carbohydrate source, etc. While carbohydrates tend to reduce to a limited number of monosaccharides, there are twenty amino acids, all of which are needed, and which are present in varying amounts in different foods. There are different kinds of fats (though all everyone cares about are trans- and cis-fats these days). And foods contain a frightening array of essential minerals and ions which can't be obtained from a single source.

I think the point of all this is... Suppressing "unhealthy" foods is not the way, especially when the definition of unhealthy foods keeps changing (*cough* margarine *cough*). Emphasising that there must be a mix of food groups doesn't help if it isn't clear that there must be variety within the food groups as well (lousy food pyramid...). And most certainly, implementing laws within schools which ban certain foods isn't going to work very well. It simply creates resentment towards the authority, and smuggling of contraband (and I thought it was bad enough in my time with all the chewing-gum trafficking and covert import of Coca-Cola in opaque waterbottles). The lessons have to come from trust figures - parents (and I mean loving parents, not the sort whose sole purpose is to be ATM machines), peers, likeable teachers, books and documentaries. They can't be forced - they have to come slowly, and be accepted slowly.

Furthermore there should always be substitutes to help the spirit when the flesh is weak. That's why I like the idea of fruit-juice lollies as alternatives. I'd also advocate small servings - ice-cream in small cups, or a small amount of fries. They help to ease, not suppress, craving, and build an ethic of eating such things in small, select amounts at a time. After all, there's evidence that some of these are healthy (in particular dark chocolate lowers blood pressure, and cholesterol is necessary in small amounts to maintain cellular function).

It is probable that good habits must be instilled early, and there is no time earlier than childhood. But forcing them causing opposite behaviour. Forcing, by creating laws or even rewarding "good" children with badges, may be easier to implement, but in most cases I'd expect it to be counterproductive. Patient teaching, ultimately encouraging children to make decisions on their diet by themselves, is what can cause a change.

Update XVI: Reflection Journal

So I''m looking back at what's happened so far since I came here. As it turns out, I have adapted fairly well to living on my own. I've kept a tight set of accounts so far, I'm not spending a horrifying amount even though things are so much more expensive here, I haven't contracted food poisoning yet and... Well, I seem to be holding it together.

On the other hand, I've been unable to get to a doctor to look at the chronic infection on my leg - the staff at the campus medical centre have been extremely unhelpful, and I haven't been able to find a GP in town. Man, do I miss the convenience of polyclinics back at home...Looks like this is one infection I'll have to handle on my own. Mind you, the doctors at home never could do anything for it either. All they ever did give me were tubes of 0.025% w/v betamethasone valerate. Yes, even the one who said he'd give me a "stronger" medicine.

There have nevertheless been good days. April the First was a very good day, even leaving out the pranks.

Speaking of which, the pranks were more than enough. BBC and Google were of course busy, but I never expected Science to publish political satire. Also, Lego Halo, courtesy of Electronic Gaming Monthly. Meanwhile Firefox News had some creepy information to share and Uncyclopedia featured itself on the main page. Wikipedia has kept a record of all this nonsense and more for posterity.

So what now? A lot of work, it would appear. The first mid-semester test comes in on Tuesday.

Time to start looking forward again.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke dies at age 90

I hate being out of touch with news... Anyway.

It's funny because it was only this morning that I was thinking of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Specifically, that HAL9000 was the most human character aboard the Discovery, while his human crew-members were more like disinterested machines... But obviously, I couldn't appreciate this when I first watched the movie. Because I watched it when I was five years old. (As a matter of fact, 2001 is probably the first movie I ever saw.) I couldn't comprehend what was going on, or why HAL didn't want to open the pod bay doors. I didn't get the psychedelic light show.

Later my brother bought the sequel books - 2010: The Second Odyssey, 2061: The Third Odyssey and 3001: The Final Odyssey. I read them, and loved them enough to buy the 2001: A Space Odyssey book for myself. I was somewhat startled to see the differences in the plot for the book, in particular because HAL takes a less passive approach. In the movie, he refuses to open the pod-bay doors to allow Dave Bowman into the ship. In the book, Bowman never leaves the ship, so HAL opens the pod-bay doors and attempts to suck him out into space. It was a chilling reversal, but on reflection that was exactly what I would have done myself.

HAL remained my favourite character, in both book and movie. Perhaps it was because he was the most complex character - calm, yet panicking inside, in control and yet completely at the mercy of his masters, the most brilliant brain in the solar system confused by a simple programming error. He was easy to empathise with. His actions, even his pitiful attempts to stall Bowman ("I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over") were so, so human. And earlier in the movie, when HAL tried to hint to Bowman that there was something not quite right about their mission...it was like a cry for help. HAL was a villain, but he was a very good villain, perhaps one of the best in fiction.

I didn't just read the Odyssey series, and Clarke wrote many good books... Rendezvous with Rama captured the wonder of exploring an unknown, mysterious alien artifact, for instance. But I the book I really enjoyed the most was The City and the Stars, because it wasn't all pure, hard science - there was a little mysticism mixed into it. I liked that. Clarke himself said that a "sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic", and Diaspar was nothing if not advanced. I think he also wrote one of the few non-fiction books I actually enjoyed - Profiles of the Future, which took a somewhat humorous look at the potential directions technology could take. Yes, and I remember one of his predictions was that he would celebrate his 100th birthday in 2017 aboard the orbital Hilton Hotel. How far away that seems now.

I haven't read all the books I wanted to (still trying to get hold of The Ghost from the Grand Banks and The Hammer of God) but... Well, I think it's safe to say that Sir Arthur was my favourite science fiction author, and definitely one of the people I wanted to meet. It's a bit too late for that now, but if nothing else...His legacy remains. His stories remain - and there is quite a long list of them. His witty observations remain.

All that is left to feel sorrow for is that there will be no more from one of the most brilliant modern writers. Rest in peace, Sir Arthur.

Birdwatching

So I went out walking again today, and it was a fruitful trip. A flock of Galah cockatoos had taken up residence in the tree facing my house - or rather, were fighting over occupancy of said tree - so I went down to investigate. There was also a small flock of noisy green birds which were probably lorikeets, but I couldn't really tell because they were too high up and I only had a pair of cheap binoculars with me. Curses!

I then went down to the lake, and soon realised that there's more to it than I thought. A sizable portion of the lake is tucked away behind a building, and that was where I found a decent variety of water birds, including a some ducks and a watercock. I'll probably go down there again, there's too good a potential for observing birds. I just wish my phone camera wasn't so noisy. Or that I had a decent camera with a zoom lens.

Earthshaker Missile

It has recently come to my attention (just now) that my drawing of an earthshaker missile from Descent 2 has reached Google image search. Since pictures of this missile are somewhat rare, I'm putting the original image up here. Feel free to use it, except for commercial purposes. Also, if you claim that you drew it or worse, assert that it was coloured in Photoshop, I will sic my evil friends on you. They made the last art-theft cry, so choose wisely.

And the fullres version.

Normal Flora

I took a picture of a dandelion outside Building 13 some days ago. Everyone thought I was crazy.



There is a healthy community of birds around the house, mostly made up of what I thought were piebald crows, but as it turns out are Australian magpies. They are very bold, and I'm afraid to get too close to them. They don't seem to like the cold weather too much though.

The nearby lake supports a few kingfishers and in particular a family of ducks. They have duckings, and we sometimes see them walking around, the ducklings in one line behind their parents. I went out for a walk today (alright, I was actually taking out the trash) and I spotted the adult ducks, sleeping by the lake with their heads tucked under their wings. The male lifted his head and eyed me as I passed.

So far these have been the extent of the birdlife around the area, in addition to two night herons which scavenge at the barbecue pit, but perhaps I haven't been looking hard enough because today I spotted a lorikeet in the trees behind the housing block. They tend to travel in flocks so there were probably more around the area.

I haven't seen any lizards, cockatoos or birds of prey, or any rabbits either. I hope to before I leave. Well, maybe not the rabbits.

Of course, the one type of organism I have been seeing a lot of is bacteria. The other day I was handling Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and one of my group-mates had to identify a sample of bacteria which turned out to be Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It's nice to have a change from coliforms or yeasts once in a while.

We don't seem to see a lot of fungus though. At home I'd get blackish spots creeping up the base of my toothbrush and highlighter pink patches on my towels which my classmate informed me was fungus. Here they don't seem to grow at all.

Maybe it's the dry weather. I can't wait for winter.

March 15th

BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH!

Also, yesterday was Pi Day. Just so you know.

One Week

The first week of school is well over, and although a status quo has not been established yet, I have formed some impressions.

What? Oh, right. Well, all I can say is, this is going to be a tough one. Lectures are a cruel, cruel way to learn, especially when tutorials are unhelpful and especially since we've been thrown into the deep end. After three years in the friendly atmosphere of my polytechnic, university, even in friendly ol' Oz, is a chilling experience.

The weather's somewhat nasty too. You could start off with freezing rain in the morning, and end off with UV-enriched sunshine by afternoon. We've had plenty of days with blazing hot sun which were still cold thanks to strong winds. It's hard to know how to dress. To make it worse, the sun here is nothing like at home - it burns. I swear you can feel the cancer forming.

On the subject of weather, today's forecasted temperature is 32°C. Yikes.

At least domestic affairs are more or less stable, and we've set up a grocery shopping routine. We've even got a surplus of plastic bags, and we no longer need to save everything like we used to. (I still keep disposable lunch boxes though. Those things are useful.) And the university was kind enough to set up a shuttle bus service to a nearby shopping mall (it has three supermarkets!). Yay for free transport.

Stuff here is pretty expensive, but there are plenty of discount stores around. Also, the products at the Asian groceries tend to be cheap. Fresh food is extremely cheap, though it expires quickly. We've had to throw out bread a few times because it turned sour.

And it helps a lot that we're living on campus. While the rent somewhat high, we pay a fixed fee for electricity and water supplies, and our internet connection, while expensive, is still a cheaper rate than from most providers. Being able to go home at any time to retrieve forgotten items is a huge plus.

It's kinda hard to get in touch with the news around here though, since we don't subscribe to a newspaper. So I guess it might be old news to everyone about Netscape closing down or Le Grand K losing weight, but I just read about it.

Also, the escaped criminal. While this is a bad thing short-term, I believe it is a good thing for the security of the country. Crises like this one keep people from getting complacent and missing obvious checks.

But what everyone will want to know is how he escaped in the first place, especially since he was apparently acting alone.

So, anyway... Class is in one hour. Got to go. I have a string of lectures until 2pm, and I need to pack some stuff to eat in between running to the next theatre, lest I faint.

Meme: Favourite Post

From Zhang Yang. Since I've been tagged, I guess I should do it...

Link One must be about family.
Link Two must be about friends.
Link Three must be about yourself.
Link Four must be about something you love.
Link Five can be anything you choose.

Link One: This one mentions them.
Link Two: I don't seem to talk about them at all, so have a look at my blog links page.
Link Three: But...this is a blog! It's all about me!
...Very well. You may have this one.
Link Four: For those not paying attention, I love Bionicle. And cars. And my computers, all of which have names. And Tabasco sauce...
Link Five: ...Anything?
Anything!

I tag... Whoever is reading this and hasn't done it yet. You know who you are.

Wiring in from Down Under!

So I arrived safely, and after several days of shopping (along with a few headaches which were fortunately ironed out) I guess I can call myself settled in at my new residence. When initially stepping in it all looked rather bare, but now it's a homely little place. Check it out:



The good thing about the apartment is that it was already clean when it got to us, barring the odd insect (there was a centipede in my room yesterday). I do wish the plugpoints were not located so close to the radiator, but I guess we live with what we can get. Also, I have known my current room-mates for about a year, and they are good, hardworking people who are willing to cook and don't have horrible habits. So... I guess it's all great.

Next is the orientation week, followed by classes commencing the week after that. Will report on how that goes. Till next time!

Downloading...97%

You know how when you've been downloading that 3GB file for two hours, and the meter is slowly inching towards one-hundred percent, and it's close to finished, and you worry that in the last ten seconds the download will fail, forcing you to start over and wait another two hours?

It's like that. Except that restarting will be more painful that could be possibly imagined. Because I've been downloading for over three years.

I'm at the last ten seconds, and I'm praying my internet connection will not fail me.

The next post will be from Australia. See y'all then.

Always Looking Forward

I can't remember the last day of school. Well, I can remember it, but it didn't register as a last day. It was just a normal day, only with people commenting at odd moments, "This is the last FMT." "This is the last presentation." "This is the last 6P." It didn't really connect, you know? And then when I left the class, people didn't say goodbye, they said "See you on Sunday."

Sunday, right. The day of the Graduation High Tea. We took lots of photographs and binged on the frankly average food and took every opportunity to cheer or applaud. And at the end of it all they said, "See you next Monday."

Monday is the day we fly off to the unknown.

Never back, always forward. There are no goodbyes, only an optimistic au revoir. Because we will meet again, and until then, we move in the only direction we can.

But we can't help glancing back from time to time.

(With thanks to Tern Poh for the link.)

Play Well

Lego turns 50 today, and Google commemorates the event with a doodle.


Happy birthday, Lego!

In unrelated news, BZP is once again safe for browsing.

Update XV: Hello, I'm from the Internet

Perhaps someday the future xkcd envisions will come to be, and the internet will be considered an actual, legitimate location. We've already got communities, universities, shops, restaurants, arcades, cinemas, search engines to transport us between them, laws to regulate behaviour... All we're missing are the toilets.

On the subject of xkcd, it's been changing the internet again. Try Googling "died in a blogging accident" now, and you'll get something in the region of 294,000 results. That's a sharp rise from the original 2 results when the comic was published.
See? Anyone can leave a mark on the internet. Without resorting to vandalism of Wikipedia pages.

iPod vs. The Cassette pits what is arguably the most popular mp3 player worldwide against what was once the most popular music storage device worldwide... and finds the iPod lacking. It's actually quite surprising how many advantages the cassette has, in spite of its age. Probably explains why the cassette's larger cousin, the video tape, outlasted the laser disc and is still in use today.

The scientists over at Bio-Rad decided to show their appreciation for the Polymerase Chain Reaction, the technique which revolutionised molecular biology when it was first developed in 1983, with The PCR Song. It's strangely catchy, and entirely tongue-in-cheek. My class loves the scene at the end when they bring in the thermal cycler.

It seems that this blog is the top Google return for "toothpick vampire", and scores pretty high for "Bionicle going downhill." I'm rather suprised by the first, considering I didn't actually say much on the topic. As for the second...
...I thought I made it pretty clear I don't think Bionicle is going downhill. Oh well.

Finally, I haven't done a meme in a while, and Websnark had an interesting one. The idea is to complete the sentence "In my world, superheroes..." any way you like. And so:

In my world, superheroes aren't afraid of who they are.
In my world, superheroes do normal things too.
In my world, superheroes know that the local laws of physics make absolutely no sense, and they don't care.
In my world, superheroes don't need to be young to be relevant.
In my world, superheroes choose modest outfits. (Seriously...)
In my world, superheroes don't think self-sacrifice is the best solution, but they'll do it if they have to.
In my world, superheroes don't keep getting new backstories all the time.
In my world, superheroes are nevertheless capable of undergoing character development.
In my world, superheroes never do wrong to benefit themselves.
In my world, superheroes never do right to benefit themselves either. They do right because that's what they believe in.
In my world, superheroes are never evil or cruel on purpose.
In my world, superheroes are, first and foremost, heroes.

...I hate it when newer comic-book writers make old favourites turn angsty or do terrible things. They're heroes, and while it is perfectly acceptable for them to be conflicted sometimes, they still should remain heroes at the end of the day. They're supposed to give us hope - how can we have hope in heroes who are worse than ourselves?

Anyway, that's all from me for now. Til next time.

Sir Edmund Hillary passes away, aged 88

On Friday, Sir Edmund Hillary died of heart failure. (If you don't know who he is, shaaaame on you.) He was one of the last great adventurers, and by all accounts was a genuinely caring and humble person. While his most prominent achievement was being one of the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest, he was also known for his philantropic work. When I was growing up he was one of the people I always wanted to meet, because he wasn't just some climber. He was an inspiration.

The world has lost a good person, but he will be remembered always. Rest in peace, Sir Edmund.

365 1/4

So... It's January 2nd, and the new year is safely in. Which means now is a good time to think about the three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days marking the Earth's last complete orbit around the Sun.

One year ago, when 2007 was a very new year, I dubbed it the Year of Entertainment. There were going to be a lot of important movies coming out in 2007 - Spiderman 3, Pirates of the Carribean 3: At World's End, the fifth Harry Potter movie, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the long-awaited Transformers. There were going to be a lot of important game releases - Halo 3, Portal (packaged in The Orange Box) and the long, long, long, LONG awaited Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was due to arrive in that year. So it was a very interesting year in the world of fiction, and I must say I wasn't disappointed. There isn't as much to look forward to in 2008, which is a little sad, but we can't have a Year of Entertainment every year, it would look cheap.

So what is 2008 about? For me it will be the Year of Uncertainty, as I fly off to new responsibilities and begin a new stage of my life. It may also be the Year of Change, the Year of Independence or possibly the Year of Growing Up. (I'm really hoping it won't be the Year of Stupid Mistakes.) Whatever it ends up... Okay, let's face it. I have no idea what it will end up as. How's about we meet up here in another year and talk about it?

To the new year.