ignite the flames of passion

2012-02-09T08:06:00.004+08:00

I have a sore throat from viral or bacterial infection. Cant be from acid reflux eating heaty foods the onset was too fast. The inflammation in my throat is really bad and I think I may have a fever tomorrow. And tomorrow is when Im going skydiving fuck my life.

Life lately has been quite routine. Its getting so boring I need to do some interesting things like maybe put a hat in front of me on cornmarket street and play the ukulele just for the heck of it, or crash some other subjects lecture or cycle out of oxford to sightsee.

2012-02-09T01:45:00.003+08:00

I am trying to speed read and do my revision and the way that the constitutional cases are phrased is starting to get on my nerves. Just to give a typical example. this wall of text is ONE SENTENCE and its making me struggle to understand while reading fast.

The defendants plead, 1st, not guilty to the whole declaration, whereupon issue is joined. 2dly, as to the breaking and entering the dwelling-house, and continuing four hours, and all that time disturbing him in the possession thereof, and breaking open the doors to the rooms, and breaking open the boxes, chests, drawers, &c. of the plaintiff in his house, and the searching and examining all the rooms, &c. in his dwelling-house, and all the boxes, &c. so broke open, and reading over, prying into, and examining the private papers, books, &c. of the plaintiff there found, and taking and carrying away the goods and chattels in the declaration first mentioned there found, and also as to taking and carrying away the goods and chattels in the declaration last mentioned, the defendants say, the plaintiff ought not to have his action against them, because they say, that before the supposed trespass, on the 6th of November 1762, and before, until, and all the time of the supposed trespass, the Earl of Halifax was, and yet is, one of the Lords of the King's Privy Council, and one of his principal Secretaries of State, and that the earl, before the trespass on the 6th of November 1762, made his warrant under his hand and seal directed to the defendants, by which the earl did in the King's name authorize and require the defendants, taking a constable to their assistance, to make strict and diligent search for the plaintiff, mentioned in the said warrant to be the author, or one concerned in the writing of several weekly very seditious papers, intitled The Monitor, or British Freeholder , No. 357, 358, 360, 373, 376, 378, and 380; [276] London, printed for J. Wilson and J. Fell in Paternoster-Row, containing gross and scandalous reflections and invectives upon His Majesty's Government, and upon both Houses of Parliament, and him the plaintiff having found, to seize and apprehend and bring together with his books and papers in safe custody, before the Earl of Halifax to be examined concerning the premises, and further dealt with according to law; in the due execution whereof all mayors, sheriffs, justices of the peace, constables, and all other His Majesty's officers civil and military and loving subjects, whom it might concern, were to be aiding and assisting to them the defendants, as there should be occasion: and the defendants further say, that afterwards and before the trespass, on the same day and year, the warrant was delivered to them to be executed, and thereupon they on the same day and year in the declaration, in the day time about 11 o'clock, being the said time when, &c. by virtue and for the execution of the said warrant, entered the plaintiff's dwelling-house, the outer door thereof being then open, to search for and seize the plaintiff and his books and papers in order to bring him and them before the Earl of Halifax, according to the warrant, and the defendants did then and there find the plaintiff, and seized and apprehended him, and did search for his books and papers in his house, and did necessarily search and examine the rooms therein, and also his boxes, chests, &c. there, in order to find and seize his books and papers, and to bring them along with the plaintiff before the said earl, according to the warrant; and upon the said search did then in the said house find and seize the goods and chattels of the plaintiff in the declaration, and on the same day did carry the said books and papers to a house at Westminster, where the said earl then and long before transacted the business of his office, and delivered the same to Lovel Stanhope Esq. who then was, and yet is an assistant to the earl in his office as Secretary of State, to be examined, and who was then authorized to receive the same from them for that purpose, as it was lawful for them to do; and the plaintiff afterwards, (to wit) on the 17th of November in the said year, was discharged out of their custody, and in searching for the books and papers of the plaintiff the defendants did necessarily read over, pry into, and examine the said private papers, books, &c. of the plaintiff in the declaration mentioned then found in his house; and because at the said time when, &c. the said doors in the said house leading to the rooms therein, and the said boxes, chests, &c. were shut and fastened so that the defendants could not search and examine the said rooms, boxes, chests, &c. they, for the necessary searching and examining the same, did then necessarily break and force open the said doors, boxes, chests, &c. as it was lawful for them to do; and on the said occasion the defendants necessarily stayed in the house of the plaintiff for the said four hours, and unavoidably during that time disturbed him in the possession thereof, they the defendants doing as little [277] damage to the plaintiff as they possibly could, which are the same breaking and entering the house of the plaintiff, &c. (and so repeat the trespass covered by this plea) whereof the plaintiff above complains; and this, &c., wherefore they pray judgment, &c. The *809 plaintiff replies to the plea of justification above, that (as to the trespass thereby covered) he, by any thing alledged by the defendants therein, ought not to be barred from having his action against them, because he says, that the defendants at the parish of Stepney, of their own wrong, and without the cause by them in that plea alledged, broke and entered the house of the plaintiff, &c. &c. in manner and form as the plaintiff hath complained above; and this he prays may be inquired of by the country; and the defendants do so likewise.

2012-02-06T18:33:00.003+08:00

This is an extremely hilarious story. Sebastian keejia and I all had a good laugh from it. Keejia was laughing the loudest, she says its so funny that she might not be able to sleep. So here it is:

http://comic.naver.com/webtoon/detail.nhn?titleId=350217&no=31&weekday=tue

Recommended by sebastian. After the first pleasant surprise, don't close the window, there are more to come and in fact it gets better. Enjoy ^^

2012-02-06T02:06:00.001+08:00

+15 °C, Spanish wear caps, gloves and winter coats, Finns are sunbathing.
+10 °C, French desperately try to get their central heating on. Finns plant flowers.
+5 °C, Italian cars won't start. Finns drive with convertibles.
0 °C, Pure water freezes. Water in river Vantaa thickens a bit.
−5 °C, First people are found frozen in California. Finnish midsummer festival ends.
−10 °C, Scottish turn the heat on in their houses. Finns start to use long-sleeve shirts.
−20 °C, Swedes stay indoors. Finns are having last barbeque before winter.
−30 °C, Half of the Greek people have frozen to death. Finns start to dry their laundry indoors.
−50 °C, Polar bears evacuate North Pole. Finnish army starts it's winter training.
−70 °C, Siberian people are moving to Moscow. Finns are furious since the Koskenkorva booze can't be stored outdoors anymore.
−273 °C, Absolute zero. Finns admit that it is quite cold outside.
−300 °C, Hell freezes over. Finland wins the football World Cup.

Everytime we don't give our best, we die a little inside

2012-02-04T22:07:00.004+08:00

Yesterday was entz. It was one of the most enjoyable entzes for me except maybe the first one which was very memorable. The theme was "things that comes in pairs". Like salt and pepper. Or fork and spoon. Or a pair of tits. Wadeva. I had a few ideas. Come as bananas in pyjamas with seb, come as nala and simba with my cute lion, as donkey and diddy kong with ah mung or as seeds. (seeds come in pears).

In the end seb and I decided on bananas and pyjamas. So we shopped for spastic pyjamas and yellow face paint. Clara helped me to apply it with a sponge. She just dipped it in water and wanted to apply it onto my face and I was like "WAIT, shouldn we have, you know, some kind of planning? Cos it involves my face?"

"Yea we should" she said while dabbing my face with the first bits of yellow. The cold sponge and face paint stung a little.

"This is quite funny, you say we should plan but start anyway..."

"Yea! Thats how I do all my essays"

"Hahaha. Well Im not one of your essays am I?"

"You're less important"

LOL

The water in the cup turned orange due to the sponge. Then later seb came and he took that cup away while clara poured herself orange juice and vodka. I was applying facepaint to myself and dipped the sponge into her orange juice thinking it was the first cup HAHAHA she almost drank it I should not have told her but well she might've died which would be sad cos we'd lose our source of vodka.

After the yellow was applied, I looked just like a good banana. Clara says I look like Homer Simpson.

Then I tried to do the eyes and mouth by applying black. Katie and rosie joined us. It was a grotesque process of transformation. Katie says it looks like we were applying gothic makeup. Goths in pyjamas.

When it was finally complete, I looked like the joker from the dark knight. LOL. Why so SERIOUS son???

Clara went as a bunch of cherries. I have no idea how that constitutes a pair but it seemed to work for her. I think she did that so that she could tell other people not to pop her cherry or play with her balls. I heard her tell someone that anyway. Katie and rosie went as non-identical twins. (get it?)

After a couple of vodka with orange juice and jagermeister with redbull, I was feeling really drunk. There were some interesting costumes there. The other sebastian from my staircase was so lazy he just took a rock and a roll of toilet paper and went as rock n roll. There were crayons and colour pencils and of course the classic mario and luigi.

We danced a lot and matthew joined us. When I saw him I was reminded of sebastian's description of him which made me laugh "Eh whos that fat guy who always comes and disturbs us?" lol thats quite mean cos matthew is rly nice.

Oh yea kevin and bobo crashed our entz I have no idea how they got in.

So all in all it was a fun night of dancing and mingling.

Some guy from staircase 8 vomited into the sink and made the whole area stink, not for the first time. God.

The only group shot we had so I was really annoyed that it was this blur

And this is a picture depicting the Singapore lifestyle. WOOHOOO

"Do you sometimes wonder what the purpose of life is? If you are not sure, you may be looking at life the wrong way. You may have a view of life as a path. However, there is another way to see life. Read on to find out what that way is.

Let’s first take a look at the conventional way to understand life as a path. Do you see your life as a path? That’s an image that is often used in the realm of spirituality personal growth. I’m guilty of it myself.

This implies that we are struggling towards a pinnacle. We overcome hardship and climb up and up towards…well, towards what, exactly? In the spiritual realm we might say that we climb towards enlightenment, wisdom, awakening, or…what? In the realm of personal growth we might imagine that we are climbing towards, success, wealth, personal fulfillment, or …what?

We are pulled through life by promises like a donkey by carrots. We are always moving towards that pinnacle. First we go to kindergarten and then we look forward to primary school. We are told how wonderful it will be when we finally go to college. And then to university. Finally, as good citizens we embark on a career, a relationship, maybe a family. It seems that we are at last approaching the pinnacle of our life. (One of our readers, Jonathan Meads, sent me a funny and enlightening cartoon clip that illustrates this. Do have a look at it here.)

What pinnacle? More often than not, the pinnacle turns out to be redundancy, or illness. And then – one day the sun goes behind a cloud – and we die. Just like that.

Now, tell me again – where was that pinnacle? Did I miss it?

The strange thing is that for a long time the pinnacle seems to be in the future. Just out of reach. Then, from one moment to the next, it seems to be in the past. You’re suddenly beyond it. You’re a ‘has-been’. And you can’t quite remember what the pinnacle should have been. All you know is that you’ve missed it.

That’s pretty depressing, isn’t it? But, stop! What if life isn’t a path?

What if life is a dot?

Yes, I said dot.

A dot doesn’t have dimension. There is no before and after. The dot is now. This moment. Now.

What if this moment right now is the pinnacle of our life? What if each moment is the pinnacle? That is, if we actually live it and don’t miss it through dreaming of the future.

What if the smell of fresh ground coffee is the pinnacle? What if the hug at the door as you go to work is the pinnacle?

It would change things, wouldn’t it?

We would focus on what we enjoy, and not on moving up in our career. We would surf more, and dance more, and sing more, and laugh more, and love more, and hug more.

We would feel the wind in our hair. We would watch the moon rise. We would bask in the sun. We would roll in the mud. We would play in the surf.

We would kick up our heels and feel free. Free to be a bit wild. Even zany. We would live with abandon.

We would enjoy that dot. The dot that is life."

- Mary Jaksch

2012-02-02T06:40:00.004+08:00

I can no longer resist the draw of my pensieve.

Yesterday shiyu and I were talking about funny stuff. She sent me this which I've been to before but it was still so funny that I kept laughing

http://damnyouautocorrect.com/category/best-of-dyac/

Then this quite funny picture was posted by xian

http://home.tiac.net/~cri/1998/husband.html

If we invented a super computer that could churn out original ideas and do brilliant calculations. Every 4 hours, the computer needs new batteries. Every 2 hours, it needs to be sprinkled with water to cool it down. Every 2 hours, it would leak water and need to be wiped. Every day, it would expel toxic waste. For every 2 hours it is turned on, it needs to shut down completely for an hour to recharge.

That would be the most dysfunctional invention ever. And we are that.

The other day everyone came to my room. Keejia miles rosie katie clara. It was supposed to be ukulele clarinet and singing but katie refuses to bring her clarinet down. So we played snap instead. Which was quite fun.

Rosie shared this with me which is soo awesome
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

After that we went to pick sebastian up and went to GnDs. On the way rosie snapped pictures and we just talked and laughed. At GnDs, I ordered a waffle with icecream, it was huge. A whole day's worth of calories. After we all took in a ton of sugar sebastian wanted to go to hassans kebab for more calories. So we did.

When leaving, Katie left her non-existent scarf in the shop. Rosie was running in figure 8s around everyone. Thankfully she doesnt drink alcohol because she can get drunk on plain water. I proposed the hypothesis that she doesn't drink alcohol for the same reason obelix cannot drink magic potion. As the night matured, the evidence for my theory was compelling.

Back in college Rosie went crazy again she just suddenly lied down on the floor and stared into the sky. Outdoors. Past midnight. At a temperature below zero. So we gazed up into the skies and talked about constellations for awhile. Star gazing reminds me of JC days. After a while we realised rosie didn intend to budge.

Back in my room, there was only 4 of us left, all on a sugar high. Rosie impressed everyone with her creative genius by composing songs on my ukulele on the spot. The first one was about some homeless guy called jerome or something like that. The second one was recorded by miles as excellent blackmail material.

Next day we played squash. It was really fun. Sometimes I hate being an ectomorph cos all the activities I like are cardio based but I cant do too much of it or I will just get even skinnier and eventually have 0% body fat or something.

Then after that, I went to the MCR with clara. There was this group of people watching television and a pizza box with about 4 slices left inside. I went up and asked "so does anyone still want this?" and they were giving me weird looks while a few of them shook their heads. I took the whole box out of the MCR back to rosie's room LOL.

Rosie and seb called for pizza. Some weird dude called me to pick it up and told me to wait "on the road with the phone in my hand in exactly a few minutes because he cannot call me again the moment he leaves the shop".

I was still hungry that night so I cooked some "Amoy Singaporean noodles" which I've never eaten in singapore before. It tasted damn good! Despite the fact that the whole cooking process was rather frantic and messy. Hahahaha. And I forgot to add the eggs

Im trying to learn how to cut my own hair. Gonna experiment with it soon. Gotta be quite careful. I think its a fine line between looking decent and looking as though I'd been attacked

2012-01-27T23:45:00.005+08:00

Its been REALLY busy for me for awhile and it will just get busier. I don't think I will have time to blog that much anymore after this post until the end of my Mods.

2 days ago I churned out my constit essay in a single day from scratch to finish. It was 2000 words I thought I did a really good job of it. Got a 65% for it, mid second upper so its kind of average. I realised that I can actually finish my week's work in a single day. But theres loads of revision to do.

So after working the whole day, namo clara and I biked out to this indian restaurant to eat. They didn have lights so I didn get my lights either. It was quite crazy risking the 80 pounds fine. And my brakes were faulty. Then we were going through red lights. It was quite stupid really that was really dangerous biking and we went to cowley too so the roads were busy. But I guess all of us were just in a really great mood.

We reached there joking about random stuff all the way. There was this junction where Namo said "left turn" but I turned right and he was like "hey left man, not right. Or is it different in singapore?" hahaha

That became the theme of the night. Something else happened cant remember what and clara asked again "is it different in singapore?"

When we ordered the curry, namo was trying to insist on ordering this particular curry. But all he could describe of it was that it was red.

The papadum was really good. It came with chilli, chutney, yoghurt, cucumber and onions and this unknown, dubious looking vegetable-like entity.

Namo tried to charm the (male)waiter by telling him that we were regular customers which was true to a certain extent cos namo's friends always orders takeaway. I asked if takeaway was cheaper and clara and namo both gave me the look.

"Of course takeaway is cheaper. Its like that everywhere!"

"well, it IS different in singapore"

Thanks to namo, we got free chocolates and free dessert and the dessert was sooo good it was this sweet sausage looking thing with cream.

"What's this called?"

"Dessert"

Namo proposed to clara and they lived happily ever after. They said I was like the distant uncle there to oversee the engagement proceedings.

Then we talked about adopting kids next year and going out and having fun.

"We're quite similar I realise, like...workwise"

"You mean lack-of-work wise"

We talked about taking our kids out fishing and hiking instead of boring pubs. Telling them we had to pay for the worms and right to fish. And telling them about college life.

"Oh you know, occasionally people will give you these pieces of paper with words on them, often ending in a question mark. Not sure what they're for but I don't think its that important really"

Then we talked about how we shared 99% of genes with bananas. Namo says its not true. He says if chimpanzees shared 99% of dna with us then we would share merely 50% with bananas.

"So bananas are a closer relative to chimpanzees than us?"

"Did chimpanzees evolve from bananas? That explains a lot."

"Or maybe its just that old saying. You ARE what you eat"

On the way back we managed to lose clara on the roads. She was trailing behind and I think we were going too fast so she just lagged so far behind that we wouldn see her. When she finally caught up she said her bike was too low so Namo swapped bikes with her for fun and it was a really comical sight. So many other funny things happened but I cannot remember.

Yesterday was CNY reunion dinner. I had no idea there were THIS many singaporeans in oxford. Most of them are what the singaporeans call "unicorns", a rare sight. The food was quite good, I was starving so badly. First non-fillet fish I ate since I stepped foot in oxford. I really liked the chilli flakes with onion and meat thingy. It was at paddy fields restaurant. During conversation, seb and kee told me that on facebook, on my info page, my partner was "my hand". That was the work of clara and I was quite shocked to know it'd been there for like 2 months =.=

I was having a slight sorethroat from the indian curry though and coupled with the huge amounts of talking, I had to leave early or risk losing my voice. Everyone was standing at that point and it was really crowded so I had to squeeze between people to get to keejia. When I was in a particularly awkward position, sandra said hello over the incredible din.

"How are you?"
"Alive"
"Where are you going?"
"In"
"Alive. In."

I turned to look at her and realised how dumb my replies were and we both laughed

Before the reunioin dinner, I skyped shuliang for an hour and a half which added to my sore throat. We sang qing zhen qing shen and ye shi shen qing cos he plays the guitar as well. I was hit by nostalgia I do miss times where 74 sang it together. I managed to figure out chords for the songs which were about 3/4 correct but sounded okay anyway. But I think my hearing is still not good enough to identify all the correct chords by listening to the original song.

Every day we are given a gold coin to spend. You can choose to buy memories and experiences that you may never have again. You can use it to forge friendships, or trade it to acquire skills or academic knowledge. Or you could take no notice of it and let the coin quietly disappear.

As youths, this is our golden time. So, why not spend that gold coin seeking for your true passion, to find a meaningful purpose in life? How would you want to spend your gold coin today? Tomorrow? In the future?

And finally, the first picture is a starcraft reference that is really funny to anyone who gets it.

2012-01-27T09:35:00.003+08:00

According to neurolinguistic programming, we are in different states at different times of the day. State relates to our thoughts emotions and moods. Anchoring is a well-known concept that seeks to anchor us to a certain state, perhaps useful to easily recall states of sheer confidence, happiness or relaxation.

Maybe that explains why some people do have dreams and goals and set forth strict regimes to adhere to but find themselves unable to follow through after awhile. The state of motivation and enthusiasm dies out and is replaced by a state of normal everyday monotone that gravitates towards comfort often at the expense of time that could have been better spent. Then, what is left is how deeply one desires the things he/she strives for.

I find it hard to always do what I should do too sometimes. Like I know I should be at the gym or doing my work in the library or settling those miscellaneous and annoying emails, laundry and everyday hassles but my butt would be plopped comfortably in the chair and its so cold outside and I'd be chatting with someone on msn or listening to music. Then my ass weighs a million pounds and I fritter valuable time away. Electricity isn't alone on the path of least resistance.

2012-01-23T08:20:00.002+08:00

Went for a reunion dinner with the singaporeans at Koi. The singaporeans really gossip a lot. I am so oblivious to all the happenings around me. Didn know so many people disliked brian, some people dislike su yun, some people dislike ben and theres all these weird rivalry things going on. And the worst part is, a lot of it I feel is people just going with the flow cos everyone dislikes them so there must be something wrong with them.

Then conversation was kind of weird as well. Like sebastian admits that he actually finds himself rather boring if he were to be totally honest. Su yun agrees and says that people who think themselves interesting are gay. Then everyone started arguing about the definition of gay and in the end su yun changed it to loser. People who find themself interesting are losers. Well I find myself quite interesting to have conversation with sometimes.

Then they talked about the new singaporean and say hes really weird. Then somehow they started talking about ross whom sebastian doesn really like. He says their conversation is always very awkward and he finds it really weird that ross acts so chummy with him when they have hardly had a proper conversation so he sorta didn respond too enthusiastically till ross gave up trying.

The gathering was infested with lawyers as usual so the conversation naturally turned to law quite a bit. Then kee jia said "law is so interesting" with a smile but she was being sarcastic. But it seems everyone is cut out for law since we were all auditioning to be judges at the dinner table.

Skyped my mum and played and sang xin nian ge with her. Miss my family a lot. Want to go back and talk utter rubbish with my sisters like we always do.

Relationships are weird. Once we're in one, we promptly take the other person for granted and move on to impressing strangers instead.

Played chinese chess with zixian on viwawa. The flashy graphics and grand music were just distracting. Chess should be a form of mental masturbation not visual gratification. It was a really close match.

I feel that xiangqi and english chess are different in that english chess is a lot more strategic and slow paced. Its about capitalizing on every tiny little bit of advantage and ever so slowly snowballing it into a victory. The details matter a lot and advantage of pieces, even pawns tend to be massive. The board is crowded and small and calculations must be that much more precise.

Chinese chess on the other hand is chaotic. Its about the big picture and the grand scheme of things. The bigger board exponentially increases the number of algorithms and possibilities. It is very common for pawns to be facing each other with neither side having the breathing space to take the advantage of a single soldier. The value of moves is significantly greater so pieces matter less. There is also greater diversity because unlike a fight for dominance in the centre in english chess, one can easily succeed in attacking from the flanks. And although I would not say that xiangqi is harder than english chess, it is my belief that it has a higher skill ceiling.

Though Go is still the most profound game.

I miss joining competitions with jinx zx and aw. All the drama of not being put on the same team, the excitement of crucial matches, the ecstacy of domination and the bonding of friends. There was a time when it all mattered. It could never be the same again cos today, even if the four of us were to join a competition, there would not be that hunger, the burning desire to win. All of us have moved on to "more important things" in life. How sad...

2012-01-22T04:14:00.007+08:00

Im sexy and I know it parody

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWF86D_UNxc&feature=player_embedded

Epic lion dance watch from halfway mark

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=053S4B5J0is

And this is really funny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErMWX--UJZ4

And this is amazing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2OEuyF_2u8

Paul 1 v 11ed and beat us in pool. LOL. He has his own pool cue and his cue CASING alone costs more than my bike, lights and basket combined. HAHAHA
Oh and the cue is 270 pounds.

I want to play chess Im craving for it. ARGH chess chess chess chess chess chess chess chess chess chess chess chess

Woo MCR bop is blasting party rock. PARTY ROCK IS IN THE HOUSE TONIGHT, EVERYBODY JUST HAVE A GOOD TIME!
Their music is blasting beside me now and its 10 times better than jcr entz. I should go for MCR bops, wonder if I can get invite my friends to go

2012-01-21T06:47:00.002+08:00

Im quite happy. Its a drunk giddy kind of happy which will wear off as soon as the alcohol wears off lol.

Today was another fun day. Fun means no work done of course. Morning lecture. Craig's lecture. I was so proud of myself. The first craig lecture that I didnt fall asleep in because, having done my first tutorial I finally understand what hes talking about. And turns out it was his last lecture. Damn.

Then I skyped john for 3 hours and we jammed through skype. Ukulele and guitar. There was a lagtime from when he strummed and when the sound reached me and cos I was following his lead, there was twice the lagtime before my uke's sound reached him.

This is 3 hours later lol. Clara turned up, we talked a bit, went to her room, drank even more vodka and went to entz. The alcohol has worn off =.=

Before that, I went for singaporean hillary welcome back drinks. Thought there was food there but no, there wasnt enough. So I walked to redstar and ate what I really missed, chilli beef ramen which was just delicious. Made me sweat which felt good in the cold weather. And cos everyone there knows me its quite awesome cos I get a bigger portion and was served within 3 minutes.

By the time I got back to college from the sg drinks session my face was quite red. I wonder if cycling counts as drink driving.

When I went to the JCR, they were playing some gladiators game. Volunteers would perch themselves on some cushioned chairs and bash at each other with bubblewrap + aluminium clubs, it was funny to watch.

Theme was nineties. Its quite an interesting theme. I was hoping to see 2 people dress up to look like each other cos cloning was first done in the nineties. Clara went as a gameboy, rosie just general 90s clothes, katie as a char in american comedy clueless.

I thought the MCR bop theme was really good, rubicks cube. Dress up as all different colours then try to swap apparels with others to get a uniform colour by the end of the night.

2012-01-20T01:39:00.007+08:00

LOL I should be doing my work but I am being highly amused by the current latest developments in Singapore.

I just skyped my sis for an hour talking about all kinds of random shit. We sang all kinds of songs to my uke which she couldnt identify. I told her it wasnt a guitar (well its a member of the guitar family but not a guitar guitar) but she didn believe me.

"... its even shorter than my arm. See" I held the uke out along my arm.

"so its a... guitar wannabe?" she said.

Then she sent me a link to Aaron tan which shiyu actually mentioned before but I didnt know who she was talking about then. I asked

"Whos he, worldwide famous or just in singapore? Famous for being good at something or bad"

"Bad of course. There are people famous for being good?"

And it is hilarious hahahahaha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e1pnuUIVR8

I actually genuinely feel sorry for him, I dont know why there are so many haters. I mean people could laugh about it cos its really funny but as outsiders theres no reason to judge or post humiliating comments about him.

Then next:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0dnZWTHXdo

Another retard, the video itself wasn't that funny but the top rated comment made me laugh so hard

"This is why I use condoms" LOL

And finally she told me about adelyn hosehbo. And Shiyu told me about the uproar over SMRT trains breaking down. Gosh theres so much drama going on back at home.

Oh yea then I finally saw the mindfuck picture sam was referring to. Thanks to his WONDERFULLY EMOTIVE description, I was actually a little scared when I was looking at the picture. Then I saw it! I quickly scrolled down for one second. Then I scrolled up and looked at it again. And got over it in about 5 seconds hahaha I cant believe he got scared over such a small thing.

Heres the picture (click to enlarge):

Look for it.

So we decided to test if his reaction was justified. When Namo came into the room I minimized skype though sam could still see and hear then I showed him the pic and he was like. "yea wassup? Yea? See what?"

My whole body is aching like a sore banana thanks to Namo's excellent idea of a lunge and squat workout in the middle of nowhere.

Today's roman law lecture was quite funny. Without mens rea, something would not be a crime though injured parties might be able to claim damages. In roman law, property you own you have absolute right over.

So a hypothetical question was brought up. If person A slips and while flailing about, flings his pen which hits B. It causes B to have a bloody nose and physical distress as well as public humiliation. Can B sue A?

The only thing that was damaged was B himself. So the question that came up was, was B property? Does B own himself? Do we own ourselves? If yes why yes? When we talk about ownership, we talk about a relationship between the owner and object. Can one have that relationship with oneself?

If no, there could be 2 possible ways of explaining it that might make sense to most people. No B does not own himself because GOD owns him.

Or B does not own himself because nobody owns him.

The correct answer is that B cannot own himself. Then the lecturer brings up a second case. In the event of a robbery, when it is done with a firearm, even with an imitation firearm, it will lengthen the sentence considerably. So this guy, like Mr bean, with his hand in the shape of a guy under his coat charged into a bank and threatened everyone with the contours of his hand under his jacket.

At court, the incredulous judges were treated to the spectacle that was the weapon used at the scene of the crime: the hand. The question is, was and could the hand be considered an imitation firearm?

Someone raised his hand and said "well subjectively speaking, he did that to threaten and it served the purpose of a firearm so I would say that yes, it can be considered as such"

"Thats a really interesting point!" the lecturer said.

Another person said "Well a hand is part of us so no, one cannot possess one's hand like one does a firearm as a hand is part of oneself"

And the lecturer said "Well, HE (pointing to first guy) is interesting, and HE (second) is right! The romans considered possession to require physical exclusion. Now... what if a person cut off his own hand and put it under his jacket in the shape of the gun. Anyone?"

He pondered for a moment and continued "I think the correct answer to that would be, just give him the money. He really deserves it"

Hahahaha

2012-01-19T07:31:00.004+08:00

Who’s in control of your life? Who’s pulling your strings?

For the majority of us, it’s other people – society, colleagues, friends, family or our religious community. We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. We didn’t want to be singled out by the crowd for being different because this wasn’t such a nice feeling. We learned this way of being so well that, as adults, we continue – mostly through mutual peer pressure – to keep each other in check. Like sheep without any need for a sheepdog, we keep each other in line.

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” – Oscar Wilde

It works both ways. First, we are afraid of disapproval. Am I dressed right? Will people laugh at my accent? Will I look stupid? Will I make a mistake? When we feel that others think badly of us, it makes us feel bad and so we try to avoid this.

Second, we all want to feel important and so we crave the positive attention of others. This is one of our basic needs, according to Dale Carnegie, author of the multi-million best seller, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And so when people stroke our ego and tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We crave this good feeling like a drug – we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can.

We are so desperate for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives, denying huge swathes of ourselves and failing to do the things we really want to do because we’re worried about what other people will think. Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live impoverished lives to keep getting their fix, so we impoverish our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval.

The drug is so addictive that most people will not give it up – they will keep looking for approval because the hit is so intense. But, just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom – the freedom to be ourselves. Do you want your drug or do you want to be free? You cannot have both. If you want to pull your own strings, you need to stop giving away your power – you need to genuinely stop caring what other people think about you.

The truth is that it’s all an illusion anyway – you cannot control what other people think. People have their own agenda, they come with their own baggage and, in the end, they’re more interested in themselves than in you; in fact, they’re thinking about themselves ‘morning, noon and after dinner,’ as Carnegie wrote.

If we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand. Everyone has a different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted and probably pleasing no one in the process.

So how can we take back control? If we are truly ready to give up the drug of approval and importance (which most people are not), I think there’s only one way – make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think.

This doesn’t mean that you should start to treat people badly, step on them or use them. Why would it? I read somewhere recently that the world would be terrible if nobody cared what other people thought of them. But why so? We all know what’s right and wrong. I have written before about guiding your life by means of a set of values – not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic, effective, purposeful and happy life. We will be actualized and successful.

Only one question remains – do you really want to be free?

Written by Michael Miles

What other people say about you is none of your business.

- Sean Stephenson

Today I left my room key behind the wishing well in merton sports ground. Went back to look for it in the darkness with the woods just behind me. But without a strong enough light I had to go back and borrow one before returning. It was dark and the woods were behind and there was no one visible within a kilometre radius.

Breaking was fun though I was really tired. I miss dancing in the studio with nic at clove.

64% for my first constit essay of the term. Constit looks promising, I am enjoying it so far.

Im getting bored of the same piano pieces I am practising but there are no good songs I feel like playing at the moment.

2012-01-18T23:20:00.002+08:00

Laziness is the momentum of inertia.

Its one of those rare times when a quote finds its way into my head, I pop it into google and find that its original.

Xianyun and enloong shared this on fb:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3hSHUV4iXE

2012-01-18T06:10:00.003+08:00

http://www.hwachong.com/college/files/hc.qingzhenqingsheng.mp3

So many things happened today! Im tired in a satisfied sort of way.

I worked the second half of yesterday and the whole of today to rush out my constit law essay. It was supposed to be due on thursday but cos I swapped tutorial timings with ellie, I had to submit my essay a day earlier. So I had to churn out a week's worth of work in 2 days.

When I was explaining this to Namo he asked "so why did you swap timings then? was it cos..."
And I said "I swapped cos she had..."
"OHH she"
"...had netball tryouts and..."
"yea, she. Yea netball" he said grinning and nodding his head knowingly. It was quite funny

Then later, well previously I texted sebastian about having lunch at 1.15. So at 1.15 I was in the hall and namo rosie katie were there so I got my food. He appeared after I just got my food and got damn angry that I didn wait for him outside. So he went to eat with the geographers. When I talked to him later he completely ignored me lol this is not good.

At 8 I was supposed to be at giraffe with the singaporeans but I was still in the library rushing my essay which was due at 8. My phone battery was dying. I couldn ask for directions if I couldn find the place or if they werent there.

At 8.20 I biked to the lodge and submitted my essay. The lodge staff told me my tutor just left =.=

Then, already 20 minutes late for dinner on the other end of oxford, I biked there without lights, gloves or scarf. I balled my hands into fists and steered with 2 fists to prevent my fingers from freezing. On broad street, 2 traffic police were on patrol so I jammed my brakes and dismounted my bike. Then I parked it on broad street and walked there...

Well so Im back in college at last. I just skyped sam and talked to him for like 1.5 hours. He told me about this picture. He says hes been having nightmares and scary thoughts and sleeping with the lights on for the past few nights because of it. I LOLed and reminded him we're 21.

He says no usually hes not afraid of these things ever but that picture was entitled mindfuck. Then when he first saw it he couldn see anything wrong with the picture so he scrolled down to the comments and saw like "omg" and "eww" and "wtf" and "if you don't see it its fine but when you do..." but sam was like yea right, try me. So he went back to the picture and scrutinised it and when he finally saw it he regretted it and its haunted him for these few days and hes creeped out just thinking about it.

LOL that is an amazingly compelling description of a picture. He says it is not some gruesome thing, the picture just makes you feel like you want to die. And he doesnt want to send me the link on facebook cos he doesn want to search for it but he told me how to so I will try searching for it.

So tomorrow im gyming with namo then going break dancing or hip hop with glenn. Namo assures me that after our workout, I wont be doing any dancing on my legs. I hope I don't break anything. And hope it doesn't become hip replacement hop. Lol

Oh and btw I cant wait for the day they invent subtitles in real life. Or we could communicate in thought speech. Would make things A LOT less annoying for me

2012-01-17T02:56:00.000+08:00

http://www.wowwiki.com/Soon

2012-01-16T08:42:00.002+08:00

Sebastian says law is based on morals. We have always learnt that law is separate from morals. So,

What are morals? Are morals subjective or objective? If they are objective, who decides? If they are subjective then moral standard of society does not make sense. The term morals would hardly make sense any more. Or we could say that morals are subjective and the collective subjective moral standards of all in society would make up a kind of average. So something would be immoral if more people felt it was. This way of explaining it feels like it cheapens the concept of morality into a quantifiable and unremarkable entity.

What would you wish for if you had 3 wishes? I ask myself this occasionally. And it scares me that my answer changes every time I consider it even when I was sure that that was what I wanted. For instance, immortality is seductive. But never ever dying, ageing with the universe forever, growing to be a million then a billion years old sounds scarier than death.

To be happy always sounds reasonable. But isnt happiness relative? A beggar on the street will be just as happy with a hot meal as a billionaire is with a new car. So whats going to happen is that my happiness threshold will just keep increasing. Arguably, it is our sad and normal experiences that mark out and define our happy moments.

Perhaps a wish to be always content is better. That sounds so passive though. Where is the drive and the passion to strive for more?

2 paragraphs of a sort of interesting but really too long article:

"In his article, “First Person Plural”, Paul Bloom explores the idea that in each of our bodies resides not one, unified “self” but a multitude of selves, constantly fighting for control over the body and its actions (4). We all, in moments of regret, ask ourselves of past actions: “what was I thinking?!” But perhaps, Bloom proposes, this is not the right question to be asking at all. Instead we should be asking which “I” it was that was thinking and why perhaps this “self” had control of the body at that moment in time instead of the current “self”. Rather than one consistent self sometimes failing to consider all the options or factors when making a decision, perhaps truly different selves with different agendas are making behavioral decisions at different times.

When we look to others and conceptualize “who they are”, we think of bounded entities, removable from their environments and fully containing of all of their selfhood within the confines of their physical body. We could identify their personality traits, how they look, funny things they have done in the past. As far as others concern us, such a representation is fairly functional. But is this who their “self” is, or is this the memory of all the interactions their self has had on us and what we have interpreted those to mean? (I’d say the latter). The conception we each have of ourselves cannot possibly be like this however. One’s own sense of self is an inherently related and relating being. Our “self” is not the mental image we have of our self, but rather it is the effect, the change in our physical organism, of every single interaction we are having with the outside world."

From
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/3296

2012-01-15T07:31:00.004+08:00

I slacked my entire friday evening, night and saturday away without doing anything fruitful at all. Except go with sebastian to Tesco to buy a shaver and a lemon. And I wouldn really call that fruitful except that well... I think lemons qualify.

Read this from somewhere:

"A recent police study found that you are much more likely to get shot by a fat cop if you run"

Really puts the laughter back into manslaughter.

"I dream of a better tomorrow where chickens can cross the road without being questioned about their motives"

I hope that tomorrow will turn out to be a constructive sunday (though thats usually an oxymoron). I have a feeling constit readings are going to be little short of overwhelming. Which should be good I guess. I used to think I worked best under pressure but now I suspect the word "best" isn't in there.

2012-01-14T23:08:00.001+08:00

Reality is subjective. Discuss

2012-01-14T06:07:00.005+08:00

But... Isn't that how all kings start out?

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a tellar but for want of an understanding ear.”

- Stephen King

Collections are OVER! As I am typing this a ladybug is crawling up my wall in front of me nonchalantly. I watch it go and it slows down. And changes its course. Now its crawling sideways like a crab. I've never seen a bug do that before. Upwards again.

Ladybugs are supposed to be an omen of good luck. It is said that when you see one near you, make a wish and blow on it. If it flies away, your wish will come true. So I just blew on it. It dropped onto the floor =.=

Anyway, roman law was a complete disaster. I just kept palming my face and grimacing in wry amusement at how BAD my essay was. If I had the content knowledge, I could have written a better essay in secondary 4 than that crap I submitted.

At the beginning when I got the paper, I stared at the questions and realised my mind was blank. I tried to read the questions and realised I did not understand 3 out of 5 of them. Well, at least I understand 2, and it was 5 choose 2 so it was just right!

Then a random thought popped into my head. It went like this: Hey im really bad at roman law. Maybe... just maybe I should botch this essay up on purpose so that Dr Helleringer knows I need help with roman law which I definitely do. I quickly suppressed that thought. Then when I started doing, I realised I didn have to botch it up on purpose...

So as I wrote at half the speed I did for criminal law, I was trying to use a nicer handwriting to compensate for the total lack of content. You know. Leave a better impression. Maybe. Lol

2012-01-13T21:27:00.001+08:00

Crim collections over! And roman next. I am screwed for roman and its not something that can be unscrewed in half an hour. So even though I have time to study I don't feel like doing anything.

2012-01-13T03:04:00.007+08:00

When I see an open door
Close your eyes
Clear your heart
Cut the chord
Are we human or are we dancer?

I think we are dancers in a really badly choreographed dance.

I found this article quite funny
http://tooxyz.blogspot.com/2011/06/why-introverts-hate-small-talk.html

Small talk can be quite fun. Though not always.

I love this scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfmkRi_tr9c
So many quoteworthy quips.

And http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8PxG5zvgOM&feature=related

It was fun bringing jwong sam lester shiyu around. We went to get Moo Moo's milkshake, I loved my kinderbueno flavour. Then we went to christ church (like 4th time for me) and wanted to go punting. But shiyu didn want to risk freezing and we didn't have enough time anyway.

Oh yea I gave sam his birthday card at last. One year late. Hahaha. These words were printed in front:

"Happy birthday. Why not celebrate it with a lovely wank? Have a good one."

Hahaha it was MADE FOR HIM. Inside I drew a lovely pudge complete with flies.

My new ukulele came and Im having lots of fun practising on it. The way im spending my time anyone would've thought it was a ukulele exam I am sitting for tomorrow.

Speaking of exams, I feel that I am at least sort of prepared for criminal law but roman law is just a massive joke, I have not started anything yet =.= Im pretty sure im going to stare at the roman law exam questions tomorrow and go wtf is this, is this even english?? And the funny thing is, its not, or at least part of it isn't

Yesterday I was craving for niang dou fu so I bought beancurd and cooked rice and vegetables. The rice was cooked twice because for some reason it wasn't cooked the first time. And I had no meat to go with the beancurd and I just boiled it with some other boiled vegetables. I went to all this trouble to cook because I wanted to eat something good but it ended up being the most bland thing I've eaten in months. It was so bland that it was strong.

Was reading street fighting and this made me laugh: Grab/bite ears. They come off with a little bit of force. The psychological effect of having a ear ripped off will stop most fights

Today Katie told me after lunch that collections' schedule was out so I went to check my mail and thankfully so. Because our constit tutor mailed saying there'd be a meeting at 2pm. It was 1.58pm and I had no idea where the classroom III.19 was. That looks like some kind of code doesn't it. So I strolled out to look for it and found that it was in staircase 3 room 19. Our tutorials this term will be 1 to 1. I think its better.

I may be going down to London for an interview next week. Then we might be skydiving next weekend, and I still have another appointment on mon or tues. And damn it this term is the Mods term. Work work

2012-01-08T05:18:00.003+08:00

It is more important to be sure than to be right. Discuss.

I just read this article.

Elite Asian students cheat like mad on US college applications

BANGKOK, Thailand — From sleep to social lives, there is little Asia’s most upwardly mobile students won’t sacriﬁce for education. Though they belong to the so-called “Asian Century,” American colleges remain the premier destination for the elite from Shanghai to Singapore to Seoul.

The path to US college acceptance, however, increasingly compels students to sacriﬁce their integrity. For the right price, unscrupulous college prep agencies offer ghostwritten essays in ﬂawless English, fake awards, manipulated transcripts and even whiz kids for hire who’ll pose as the applicant for SAT exams.

“Oh my God, they can do everything for you,” said Nok, 17-year-old Thai senior in her ﬁnal year at a private Bangkok high school. (She asked GlobalPost to alter her name for this article.) “They can take the SAT for you, no problem. Most students don’t really think it’s wrong.”

Among Asian high society, and particularly in China, parents’ obsession with sending their offspring to US colleges has given rise to a lucrative trade of application brokers. Depending the degree of assistance, families can expect to pay between $5,000 and $15,000.

“The parent says, ‘My kid needs this GPA but, frankly, his scores aren’t that strong.’ Then the unscrupulous agent says ‘Don’t worry. We’ll ﬁgure that out,’” said Tom Melcher, chairman of Zinch China and author of a Chinese-language book on choosing American colleges.

A 250-student survey by Zinch China, a Beijing wing of the California-based Zinch education consultancy, suggests college application fraud among Chinese students is extremely pervasive. According to the survey, roughly 90 percent of recommendation letters to foreign colleges are faked, 70 percent of college essays are ghostwritten and 50 percent of high school transcripts are falsiﬁed.

“For the right price,” Melcher said, “the agent will either fabricate it or work with the school to get a different transcript issued.” Admission into a top 10 or top 30 school, as deﬁned by the US News & World Report, can bring a $3,000 to $10,000 bonus for the agent, he said. The magazine, Melcher said, is commonly confused in China for an official government publication.

Demand for such agents is high and getting higher. Rapid economic growth across China and other parts of Asia has sparked an explosion in foreign students hoping to secure their ascent with a Western diploma.

Chinese citizens currently account for more than one in ﬁve foreign students studying at US colleges. Nearly 158,000 Chinese students are enrolled at any given time, a full 300 percent jump over mid-1990s numbers, according to the Institute of International Education.

Chinese, Indian and South Korean students comprise roughly half of America’s foreign college student population. Vietnam has sent 13 percent more students to the US within the last year, and Malaysia has added 8 percent, the institute reports.

But many American college officials are oblivious to the application ﬁx-it men these foreign students may have paid back home. Worse yet, remaining blind to the deception is often ﬁnancially incentivized.

America’s economic downturn has drained the state tax coffers that provide a funding lifeline to many US colleges. Many schools have resorted to unpopular tuition hikes. But many are also courting wealthy foreign students whose families gladly fork over money for housing and tuition along with out-of-state or even out-of-country fees.

“International students are seen as a source of revenue ... and the trend has exploded in the past two years,” said Dale Gough, international education director for AACRAO, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

Foreign students, through tuition and living expenses, contribute $2.1 billion to the US economy, according to the US Commerce Department. “In short,” Gough said, “they help the bottom line.”

Excuses abound for ignoring fraudulent applications, Gough said. Some assume that kids who cheat will inevitably ﬂame out anyway and never score a degree. Some admissions officers, he said, contend that “that’s just the way it’s done over there.”

Many schools also make sloppy attempts to translate foreign transcripts, calculated by an “indigenous” and unfamiliar methodology, into America’s GPA or “grade point average” system, Gough said.

His association publishes a guide to deciphering foreign scores, the only one of its kind, but fewer than 500 of the 3,500 institutions represented by AACRAO bother to buy a copy.

“Translating foreign grades into a GPA system is meaningless,” Gough said. “They attempt to do it anyway.”

Gough fears that universities’ lax standards, and focus on big foreign tuition payments, will eventually undermine the pedigree of an American diploma. The damage, he said, would be nearly impossible to undo.

“This scenario spells disaster,” Gough said. “Even if a lot of the students who cheat are bright, and they go on to succeed, is this fair to American students? Or [to] the foreign students who play by the rules?”

While America has ceded manufacturing power and foreign inﬂuence to China, an American degree remains the gold standard of educational prestige. Nok, who is currently applying for colleges abroad, never considered applying to universities in Asia.

“Students who study in America are elite, the privileged,” said Nok. “It shows you’re smarter than the others.”

But like most Asian students, Nok has felt baﬄed and overwhelmed by America’s complex application system.

“Here, you take a big test one day and report the score. That’s how you ﬁgure out where you’ll go to college,” she said. “The Americans are different. They want to know the big picture. All these essays. All this stuff about your life.”

America’s liberal arts application system is “fundamentally more confusing,” said Joshua Russo, director of Top Scholars, a college prep and tutoring agency in Bangkok.

Asian families unfamiliar with the process, he said, are justiﬁed in seeking an agency’s help with application strategies and tutoring to build the skills US colleges demand. But Russo’s refrain to parents, he said, is that kids who can’t write their own essays are likely to burn out once enrolled in America.

“Some consultants will promise the world ... and they’re fundamentally preparing students to fail,” Russo said. “Beyond fabricating an essay, they’re fabricating a whole life story. Students will start to believe in the lie. It’s wrong.”

The allure of America’s universities, and the pressure-cooker drive to succeed among Asia’s expanding upper class, will continue to propel Asian students into American schools. Many Chinese teenagers applying abroad, Melcher said, are the sort of highly motivated students colleges desire.

“Chinese kids are typically great,” Melcher said. “They’re not at the tailgate parties drinking. They’re busting their butts. Failure is not an option.”

But college application fraud will continue, he said, so long as the risks are low and the rewards are so high. His consultancy suggests interviewing all Chinese students via online video chats, conducting spot tests in English, and hiring a mainland Chinese staffer in the college’s home office.

“Frankly, I feel really bad for Chinese families who are trying to be honest,” he said. “They’re driving 55 while everyone’s zooming past them. After a while, they throw up their hands and say, ‘Fine, I’ll speed up.’”

Lol. Its sad and I'd be indignant if I was one of those students playing fair. But they're just doing their best to win. As Neil Strauss said: "Don't hate the player. Hate the game."

2012-01-06T07:21:00.007+08:00

Im so tired cramming for criminal law at these last few desperate days. I want to just open the book and cover my face with it and let the information diffuse in. Can science please find a way for us to do that.

Xianyun and liang bing came to oxford yesterday. Met up with them and had dinner and dessert.

Then shiyu, sam, lester and maybe jwong? and honestly i have no idea who else are coming on the 8th of january and im bringing them around so thats another day of revision gone.

Im so tired of studying that im just going to write nonsense till i feel ready to start again. Someone is sniffling outside. Sniff sniff. Doesn sound like crying. It might be the dog choking on a fishball.

Wait they don't have fishballs here. Last I saw a fishball it was in Singapore. I miss fishballs.

I took the dog out for a walk today at burgress nature park. I cycled this time and I was alone. When I was cycling, at one part of the trail the head wind was so strong that it literally ground my bike to a halt. When I was going back on the same path later, the tail wind made my bike ride itself I hardly had to pedal.

The dog had so much fun today. It was so excited when it heard I was going to take it out for a walk, it was wagging its long tail running around the house and back to me and trying to lick my hands. After the walk I went out to buy toothpaste and she went to the door and stared at me leave. I waved goodbye to it and it twitched its ear to bid goodbye.

At the beginning

At the end.

2012-01-04T07:14:00.002+08:00

From the psychology experiment I took part in.

Dear Ex-participants,

You all took part in "The Boss Game Study". The ethical board requires me to send you an email to clear all aspects of the experiment; where, as a participant, you were not fully informed.

Some of you did the experiment so long ago that you might have forgotten about it, so I will quickly summarize what you did. You signed up as pairs, competed on attention task, one person won, you played again, the winner split the money. You also did a short task between round 1 and round 2 where you had to choose pictures/pictures were chosen for you, and remember them later.
So these are the points I have to clear:

First of all: The "winner" of the game was randomly chosen before the experiment even began. None of you won. When a pair of participants signed up, I flipped a coin to choose the Boss without even knowing you. Player "A" always won

So I apologize to those of you were upset that they "lost". Chances are, you did better:)
The reason the experiment was designed that way was because we wanted to show that ANY person, who is put in charge of money (or any valued outcome), would have attention and memory consequences. We didn't want to choose people who actually did better; what matters was that they THOUGHT they did.

The main issues I am investigating in this experiment are the effects of being in control over a desired reward, which in this case was money. There is some old research showing that "bosses" are better at the focussed version, and emplyers on the "divided" version. We are still analyzing the data.

For the picture choosing task, some of you did the version where pics were chosen for you. We were trying to see whether the boss or the employer is better at remembering the other's picture.

Some of you did the version where you chose pics for you and the other. Although you were told that the aim is to match them up later, we were only really interested in how well you remembered your choices later on, depending on whether it was yours/the other's

This is all I am required to tell you. If you want to know more please feel free to email me. I suppose this paper will be published at some point (not too soon), so if you would like to be sent the article just let me know. Please don’t ask me how you did individually on the pictures task because the data is stored by your code names, for ethical purposes.
Thank you for being such great participants:) I would appreciate it if you didn't mention these deception points to a naive participant who talks about doing one of my future experiments

All the best, happy holidays
Riam

2012-01-03T18:47:00.000+08:00

2011-12-23T05:29:00.001+08:00

For starcraft fans

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va1bAn1z9Tk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4NsiMGWgGU

2011-12-23T03:12:00.001+08:00

My fortune cookie read: You will be given the opportunity of a lifetime today.

Ok. Im waiting

2011-12-22T02:00:00.001+08:00

woohoo im being treated to my first movie in months, so happy

2011-12-21T21:44:00.000+08:00

2011-12-20T07:18:00.002+08:00

Father just told me I may not be able to go home in the summer. Just fml

2011-12-17T08:01:00.000+08:00

So much to do so little time!

Too many things to blog about I give up

2011-12-16T08:57:00.003+08:00

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

- W.B.Yeats.

Pretty yet chilling. It is not the beauty of a warm flowery summer but the allure of fluttering snow in a frigid winter. The sincerity is a thin veil for the sardonic undertones yet oddly an adequate mask for the sinisterity. The sacred gift of love, rejected, delicately wrapped in poetic cloth. And finally there is the feeling of nostalgia and yearning, as literature to do with the magnifying lens of old age tend to invoke. What a creepy poem.

2011-12-14T08:13:00.005+08:00

Another day. Slept terribly last night.

I rode to redstar in the snow-rain or sleet. I learnt the word yuxue today, snow in the sky which melts to rain before it hits so its half. But I didn really get to see the snow still.

When working, someone stole my bike. It was locked outside, the glass was totally foggy so we could hardly see it and we were all busy.

The person was messing around with the combination and somehow got it or perhaps i forgot to mess up the combination after closing the lock.

So anyway the person wheeled it off and started to pedal when darren shouted OIE and sprinted for the door. We all turned, all the customers at redstar too. My first thought was "wtf wheres my bike" and we all rushed outside. The person hurriedly dismounted and said some CRAP like "I thought its my bike, my bike was stolen here, so im just taking this bike, its only fair" and just mumbling a lot of rubbish. He kept retreating when he saw the number of us and saying sorry. He looked like a vagabond in his late forties with a red beanie and a bristly unshaven face.

And almost all the restaurant staff rushed out, darren and the kitchen girl were hollering at him and threatening to call the police while I was hunting for my lock and checking for damage on the bike. I am really thankful to them, else I'd be quite sad to lose that bike after less than a month. I greatly treasure friends who will stick up for others because I'd do the same.

Then darren led me around to park it at the backyard where less people were likely to go. After that we were talking about it. Apparently darren saw the guy fiddling with it already. The bike had fallen to the ground where it was locked and darren thought he was being kind and picking it up for me. When he saw him wheel it away he immediately reacted. Then we laughed about how if the person had pulled out a knife he would have gone "oh sorry sir, its okay, you can have the bike"

The really funny twist ending to this is that, when I left the place a couple of hours later, I mounted my bike and then I saw a really familiar face with a really familiar red beanie whizzing past on a bike. I think theres a 50% chance its the same guy on someone else's bike. Omg

Anyway nowadays, im eating so much that it is ridiculous im still not putting on weight. Five huge meals a day with impact weight gainer protein powder on some days and im STILL NOT PUTTING ON WEIGHT. I mean, if I started growing fat and became a fat slob, at least I'd know ok, Im not training hard enough, got to convert the fat to muscle.

But Im not even growing fat. My raging metabolism is just insane. I think if one day I ever got fat, all I got to do is cut down to four huge meals a day and watch tv for a week and it'd be an extremely successful diet for me, I'd be back in shape in no time.

=.=

Indifference is the name of the salt callously applied to the wound of missing a person.

2011-12-13T20:58:00.001+08:00

The first few snowflakes to fall in my proximity in my entire life just came down. And I missed it.

2011-12-12T06:10:00.013+08:00

I found out something. The singaporean accent is easily understood by another nationality, malaysians!!! So at the very least, although china chinese and westerners may have a harder time understanding what we are talking about, at least malaysians dont at all.

Anyway the weather is turning really cold. Im still wearing that fking same old sweater with 2 t shirts inside. Its getting too cold for that. I wish I had my wider selection of clothes from my wardrobe in singapore to choose from.

In light of this freezing weather, I have developed a hypothesis. Everytime someone plants their butt on a freezing toilet seat, the unpleasant sensation reduces lifespan by a few minutes.

I used to think igloos were silly. But some days I was out freezing so badly that forget igloos, I'd have gladly stayed in the loo to keep warm

The day before rosie had one of her moods. So she set me a challenge. Take a picture of something that contains five things in it, one starting with the letter R, one starting with O, one with S, one with I and one with E.

Then, come up with a creative caption for the picture. The caption has to be 5 words, first word starting with the letter R, second with letter O, third with letter S, fourth with I and fifth word with letter E. Bonus points for creativity.

I didn ask what it was for I just thought it'd be fun to do it. I actually thought it might be for some contest that she was entering or something. And I didn even ask her to do one for my name like sebastian did. Here is the picture.

Try to find the things that start with the letters R, O, S, I and E in the picture. E and S are easy, Rosie got them both first. R is harder but rosie got it as well. But she gave up for I and O which are both quite interesting. The words are all very simple ones that anyone would know.

Rosie says this reminds her of the game that goes "I spy with my little eye, something beginning with the letter ___"

Then the caption. I told her she had to come up with a semi-decent one before I told her mine. She actually came up with one that I felt was a little better than mine because of its simplicity. Mine was more contrived, or if I were to put it more nicely, more poetic. I challenge anyone reading this to think of a caption. Its not actually that easy imo.

Anyway hers was "Rising Over, Soaring In Ecstacy!"

And mine was "Rite Of the Self-born, Impotence's Elixir" (a play on the belief of stork delivering babies)

So I actually cant believe I spent so much time on this shit. Its like last time when others would have given up, jinx and I just wouldnt. Its what makes us so good chess players and its just part of our personality. Last time I remember spending up to 5-6 hours on chess puzzles not being allowed to touch the pieces. And brain teasers, sudokus, riddles its all the same, as long as I think the answer is worth the time, I will just not give up.

Next week, I am just going to study hard, work out, sleep at 11 every day except on days I work and be a good boy. I know they say:

Early to rise, early to bed
Makes a man healthy but socially dead

(I think the original was:

Early to bed, early to rise
Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise)

But well, my social life is down with hay fever anyway, it might be better off completely dead for now

2011-12-11T09:40:00.005+08:00

I have so many things to blog about but Im just too tired and busy.

So I will only blog about one thing. I recorded the pro-ed song on my phone today! Its not a professional recording obviously so theres white noise. And I improvised the whole piece, didn't have a score. Some of the chords took a few tries to get right. I actually sang along in the middle a bit but the piano sort of drowned out my voice and my singing is quite terrible anyway.

I was quite happy about it so I will upload it on my blog for awhile.

First I had to extract audio from video. Then file size was too big so I had to compromise on sound quality a little to upload it.

I eagerly await the day I have my own professional recording equipment, studio and white grand piano.

每次苏醒
总是觉得心灵有点空虚
感到彷徨
生活很无望
非常迷惘

我在寻找
一个梦想的天堂
让我停歇
让我依靠
给我力量抚育我成长

博雅温暖的家
填补我空虚的心房
给我心希望
从此不迷惘

全新的我
满怀信心
载着新梦想
以我坚实的翅膀飞向远方

如今我已长大
我们怀念过去
所拥有的时光
期盼着未来

博雅我们一家
同心向着前景
往着前方迈进
直到实现了梦想

And finally 2 random

A new guy in town walks into a bar and reads a sign that hangs over the bar... FREE BEER! FREE BEER FOR THE PERSON WHO CAN PASS THE TEST! So the guy asks the bartender what the test is.

Bartender replies "Well, first you have to drink that whole gallon of pepper tequila, the WHOLE thing at once and you can't make a face while doing it. Second, there's a 'gator out back with a sore tooth...you have to remove it with your bare hands. Third, there's a woman up-stairs who's never had an orgasm. You gotta make things right for her." The guy says, "Well, as much as I would love free beer, I won't do it. You have to be nuts to drink a gallon of pepper tequila and then get crazier from there.

Well, as time goes on and the man drinks a few, he asks, "Wherez zat teeqeelah?"

He grabs the gallon of tequilla with both hands, and downs it with a big slurp and tears streaming down his face. Next, he staggers out back and soon all the people inside hear the most frightening roaring and thumping, then silence. The man staggers back into the bar, his shirt ripped and big scratches all over his body.

"Now" he says "Where's that woman with the sore tooth?"

A guy walks into a bar with his pet monkey. He orders a drink and while he's drinking, the monkey starts jumping all over the place. The monkey grabs some olives off the bar and eats them, then grabs some sliced limes and eats them,then jumps up on the pool table, grabs the cue ball, sticks it in his mouth and swallows it whole.

The bartender screams at the guy, "Did you see what your monkey just did?" The guy says, "No, what?" "He just ate the cue ball off my pool table - whole!" says the bartender. "Yeah, that doesn't surprise me," replies the patron. "He eats everything in sight, the little twerp. I'll pay for the cue ball and stuff." He finishes his drink, pays his bill, and leaves. Two weeks later he's in the bar again, and he has his monkey with him. He orders a drink and the monkey starts running around the bar again.

While the man is drinking, the monkey finds a maraschino cherry on the bar. He grabs it, sticks it up his butt, pulls it out, and eats it. The bartender is disgusted. "Did you see what your monkey did now?" "Now what?" asks the patron. "Well, he stuck a maraschino cherry up his butt, then pulled it out and ate it!" says the barkeeper.

"Yeah, that doesn't surprise me," replies the patron. "He still eats everything in sight, but ever since he ate that damn cue ball he measures everything first!"

2011-12-11T01:21:00.002+08:00

A meaning of life is perhaps a struggle for optimism despite persistent evidence for cynicism

2011-12-09T09:28:00.003+08:00

Today it was raining heavily. I walked in the rain, cycled in the rain, ate a burger in the rain, shopped in the rain and danced in the rain because I was out the whole day.

Not a good feeling at all.

I am really tired now. Went to catz music room to practice, then went to shop for a windbreaker. Oh my I loathe shopping. I just want nice clothes to drop into my lap. How girls can enjoy shopping is completely beyond me. Its torture.

Then when it was dark, dreary, wet and cold, I walked up and down and up and down new road and oxford centre searching for an elusive place.

In my search, I went into oxford castle. There were many christmas stalls set up. Chatted a little with the... person in the bright neon vest. Munched on my apple. Sometimes I bit into it and just left it on my face cos my hands were cold. Took some pictures. It was quite a pretty sight, I felt like a tourist.

Then I found my destination at last. A side door. I'd already walked past it at least 3 times without noticing it. With a different name to confuse. I descended down 3 flights of old stairs into the dungeon. The person I was looking for was nowhere to be found.

I watched groundhog day. It was a really good movie. I usually don't like movies after I watched them cos usually they're crap but this movie was really good. It was about a guy called Phil who kept reliving his february the second, groundhog day. And no matter what he did, next morning, he would wake up again the the febraury the second and nothing he did would change anything.

First it was shock. Then he started to take advantage of it to bed hot women. When this was no longer gratifying, he started to rob banks and perform minor miracles by predicting exactly what would happen. Phil's main target was Rita though but no matter how much he tried he could not get her. He turned suicidal and killed himself many times but he still woke up the next morning. Finally, he broke the curse at the end when he learned enough to bless his day such that his reward was to have it taken from him.

What would a person do if they had to relive a day of their life over and over? Or the real question is, what would people do if nothing they did today had any consequences on tomorrow, either for the reason that there would be no tomorrow or for any other reason.

I don't know what I would do. The world would be a very different place. But I'd love to have that experience. I could learn so much.

The wretch, concentrated all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung
Unwept, unhonoured and unsung

2011-12-08T08:34:00.002+08:00

Sometimes we use time we can't have back to do jobs we don't enjoy to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like. The things you own will end up owning you.

2011-12-07T09:19:00.007+08:00

My life is really weird right now. Every turn is a new adventure. And everyday new weird and interesting things happen. Its not just the weird things that are weird. The normal things are weird too. In a weirdly normal way.

So today I went to redstar to work. There was an interesting assortment of people there. A friendly guy called darren, a cute girl called zoe, another part timer called roy, and the kitchen cooks whose names I have forgotten. They come from everywhere with very varied backgrounds, darren is from malaysia with an engineering degree, zoe from china, roy from china too married to a PhD wife in oxford. There was a woman whose daughter studies in leicester and whose son holds conferences in oxford.

So they taught me what Im supposed to do. I mostly just watched them take and key in orders at the beginning while serving food. Then funny things started to happen. First, there was a dish I was supposed to add sesame seeds to and I took a silver can and shook it vigorously releasing a copious quantity of salt onto the yaki suba LOL oops wrong can. They saw and pointed the correct can out to me but I just couldnt help grinning when I thought of it I think my sense of humour may be screwed.

Then, whilst before it was all serious, darren and zoe starting goofing around. Roy was serving food when darren threw a jellybean at zoe. It missed her and landed in the noodles LOL. BUT ROY DIDNT NOTICE. He continued marching ahead to serve the 2 dishes. So Darren called him and was like "hey, come back!!!"

Roy hesitated, looked at him, gave a confused smile and continued walking the remaining 3 steps.

"NO, stop, come back!!!!" darren whispered as loudly as he dared. Roy stopped when he heard the urgency in his voice but saw me bent over laughing and thought it was a joke so he served the customer the chow mein with a jelly bean perched on the surface.

Then he came to us and asked "so what was that about?" and we told him and he was like omg and he went back to the customer, mumbled something and took away his noodles again hahahahaha

Then later, a kitchen cook came out, I talked to him a bit already. Earlier I was hungry and asked if I could order food. Turns out I could, and its free. He came up to me and said in chinese ”叫什么？" which can be translated badly and literally as "call what?" or "order what?", it could mean both.

So I thought he was asking me what I wanted to order but he was actually asking for my name. It would have been embarassing to reply that my name was "seafood ramen".

Then roy was saying he will follow his wife back to china. Zoe says she has a friend whose husband follows her around where her work commitment takes her too and she says she thinks its quite sweet of the guy. Then roy asked without thinking "wow thats cool. Is your friend a guy or a girl" and the way he asked it and zoe's reaction was so funny

They mostly communicated in canto and mandarin so since I could understand both, it really feels like Im right at home.

Anyway, the food at redstar really looks good. I spent 3 hours enduring my growling stomache in anticipation of the free meal I would get at the end. I was looking through the menu endlessly trying to decide which paradise to sign myself up for, the redstar ramen or the chicken katsu or the garlic and chilli chicken wings.

Then I was told that the chefs at redstar when they cook at the end they dont cook anything on the menu. The menu is for customers. When the chefs get down to work to cook for all the staff including themselves, thats when they cook REAL FOOD.

And OMG THE 滑蛋炒螃蟹 (I dno how to translate, smooth egg gravy with crab?) was to die for it was SO FRICKEN GOOD. And the feeling has a sort of closeness to heart as well. Like it just feels really chinese, like not singapore chinese but china chinese. They all grabbed chopsticks and plates and were all like "吃吧!" and then there was no awkward waiting around or redundant courtesies, it was first come first serve. Every meal in hall and with friends we've always waited for everyone to get food before starting but at this particular meal, the cooks began to eat when others havent even gotten their bowls. It was just so refreshingly informal for a change. No one was going to care if anyone ate too loudly or too fast. And the few dishes that were whipped up were so good anyway that no one had time for much talking it was just yum yum yum FOOD.

Damn I have so many more interesting stories but they are still monitoring my blog so I can't

2011-12-06T06:45:00.006+08:00

Little Bobby is 2 years old. He likes to run around the house naked -- laughing and screaming with joy as his parents chase him from room to room with the camcorder. They tell him to "quit showing everybody that silly poo-poo bottom....", but they think it's hysterical and do nothing to stop it. Why should they? Dashing around butt naked is appropriate, healthy behavior for a 2 year old who's just discovered the most delightful means of coordinating the rapid movement of his legs in such a way that he can now run (a transcendent advancement over mere walking, which was last month's big achievement). Being without clothing is no big deal either, of course, as long as it's not too cold in the house. Life is good. Life is magical.

A year later Bobby is 3, and grandma is visiting. Bobby decides to run out of the bathroom after his bath and surprise grandma... make her laugh and be silly. But today it's Bobby who's in for the surprise. When grandma sees him running towards her au naturel with his ding dong happily bouncing around, she gets an angry look on her face which stops him cold. She scolds him, "Shame on you Bobby, go put some clothes on!". Bobby is confused. Mom and dad never told him anything like that. They never yelled at him for being a silly poo-poo head. As far as he knew, there was no real difference between wearing clothes and not wearing them (except for going outside when it was cold, yikes!).

So what's wrong with grandma? Why is she making Bobby feel so bad all of a sudden? "You shouldn't run around like that," grandma scolds. Bobby looks to his parents, messing around in the kitchen getting dinner ready, for some support. "Mom?" he asks quizzically. But now both his parents have funny looks on their faces, adding to Bobby's dismay, and what... fear? Mom quickly grabs Bobby by the hand and takes him upstairs and gets him into his PJ's. Now when he comes back, grandma is happy again. But why? What was the big deal? What's so important about having clothes on?

In the future, anytime Bobby thinks about running around the house naked, he gets a funny, uncomfortable feeling inside him that he doesn't like. The feeling goes away if he puts his clothes back on. And he would never, ever dream of running around the house naked in front of grandma again! Soon, he won't be comfortable doing it in front of his parents either, and they seem to be okay with that. They never seem to want to play chase my poo-poo bottom with the camcorder any more. Oh well...

Welcome to Behavioral Modification 101.

Bobby has learned to associate the emotion of shame with being naked in front of other people. In the coming years he will learn that it's also shameful to touch himself down there in public (even though it's been feeling pretty good to do so lately...) and to not let anyone watch him when he's in the bathroom on the toilet, and then in the tub either. Things sure are becoming different than when he was younger.

Shame – The Master Controller Emotion

The development of a sense of shame is normal and healthy when it serves to set appropriate boundaries for our actions at various stages in our evolution from toddler to adult. Shame endows our flowering sense of identity with a certain humility that guides our interactions with other individuals in the world around us. Childhood is characterized by a self-centeredness that must yield to a sense of empathy for others as we grow older. We learn to take on more and more responsibility for our actions, slowly becoming aware of how they affect everyone else around us. We need to learn that the Universe doesn't rotate around us as the pivot point.

It's important to understand that the mechanism of shame is mostly one of association, that is, we learn to associate the unpleasant emotional sensations of being ashamed with behaviors that society wishes for us to control or suppress.

Bobby's little sister Betty will also learn to be ashamed to show off her pee pee in public, especially when visitors are over. She will also be taught to cover up her chest in time, even though it looks exactly the same as her brother's at this age. How come? Bobby doesn't get taught to associate shame with his exposed nipples; he feels no shame whatsoever when he walks around with his shirt off. So why does Betty feel so uncomfortable if she lets people see her without a shirt? The world sure becomes weird as we get older...

Shame occurs when we are exposed – either physically or emotionally – in a way that diminishes us in the presence of others, and in a situation
where we are not prepared to experience such exposure.

This negative emotion called shame is very painful and thus very powerful. Shame is commonly wielded by parents and those in authority to modify and control the behavior of people, especially children and adolescents. Morals and values and the boundaries of acceptable public and private behavior are all "taught" to us by way of inducing shameful experiences at some point in our lives. We gradually learn to swerve away from actions and behaviors that threaten to provoke this highly uncomfortable feeling.

To a certain extent this is okay, but the grip that shame can take on our soul increases with repeated exposures, and this gives this strange, uniquely human emotion the potential to run out of control and become toxic.

It's when shame begins to exceed its normal function within our minds, i.e. to provide us with a sense of humility and ground our identity somewhere between God and the lower beasts, that it begins to create problems for us. Humiliation is an extreme form of shame that is so awful men will put their lives in jeopardy in order to avoid experiencing it, especially in combat or even athletic competition. Physical violence and murders routinely are committed because of shame. Emotionally rigid cultures like the Japanese partake of a form of ritual suicide called hara-kiri in order to absolve themselves of extreme shame or "loss of face"... killing oneself to restore honor to their family name.

- M. Pilinski

This is the fourth time in two months I've ended training on the bag in the gym like this:

It doesnt hurt much though, just an irritating stinging sensation.

Today I improvised pro ed's conduct song. Sounded good

2011-12-05T02:03:00.007+08:00

The last 2 days were kinda busy.

I cooked for the last time in the catz kitchen. It was quite delicious but the chicken was over its use by date by a day I think. I've been eating a lot more expired food than I should be.

When I was cracking the first egg to fry, i hit it upon the table too hard and smashed the whole thing and a quarter of it dribbled onto the floor lol.

Which made me remember a conversation I had before.

When someone who cooks well fries an egg, it comes out just right.

When someone who cooks badly fries an egg, it comes out crunchy at the edges cos its burnt.

When someone who cooks like a troll fries an egg, it comes out crunchy cos they are pieces of egg shell inside.

Well at least im not a troll.

But the other day when I fried bacon I did set off the fire alarm. I'd never had crispier bacon. So between setting off the fire alarm and having a disciplinary briefing, thats 2 things to strike off the elusive list of 50 things to do at oxford before graduating.

Yesterday was a hectic day packing. Now Im at P's house at last. For lunch we went to Koi and I had the BEST MEAL since i stepped foot in oxford. Stir-fry beef hor fun, stir-fry beef udon, braised 3-layer meat, black pepper pork ribs, roast duck (omg the first bite of that crispy duck skin with a succulent layer of fat and juicy meat beneath just exploded in my mouth), xiao bai cai, tofu which was verrry good, rice with that "oily chilli flakes" thingy. Too good to be true. DAMN IM HUNGRY JUST THINKING OF IT.

Yesterday I watched russell peters in seb's room till past midnight. And Jeff Dunham with Achmed the dead terrorist. Russell peters was hilarious.

2011-12-04T10:07:00.002+08:00

Quite an inspiring first two minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V74AxCqOTvg&feature=player_embedded#!

When you’re in the eye of the storm of your very own movement – your very own mission in life…then your life is directly intertwined with your followers

You are literally at the epicenter of the market. You command the great masses with your very word. Your power for change and impact is beyond parallel.

You become a leader of men.

You become a leader by standing for something that others might not have the guts to stand for.

Like radical self expression… (at clothing optional festivals in the desert)

Or raising money to help homeless kids.

With a movement behind you, there’s not much that can stop you (even bad press is easy to shrug off when you’re genuinely helping and leading people).

But then, a lot of people would never decide to become a leader…

When you stand up to fight for something you believe in – you’ll notice that other people stand up just to tear you down.

Leadership is dangerous.

It’s something you’ll be ridiculed for – it’s something people will judge you for – even when you’re trying to do something great.

People will stand up and speak out against you.

That’s part of the deal with being a leader, it’s not for everyone.

Another part of what I’ve been thinking about lately is that truly great leaders are heroes. And being a hero is tricky because you don’t necessarily get to decide who you’re going to save or what your mission is going to be…

Sometimes the mission finds YOU…

The question is, are you ready to stand up and do something with your life or are you content with coasting through?

If you want the easy route where you don’t have to make a real impact on anyone – you can make that choice. But when you make the choice and choose to stand up for something… well…

Something incredible starts to happen – people start to follow you…

They start to do things you ask of them – because they WANT to…

Because they believe in the same things YOU believe in – they’ve bought into your dream.

Now the question is: What is your dream?

Source: http://overcomeeverything.com/2536/leader-men/

2011-12-04T00:49:00.006+08:00

Youtube comments are just hilarious. This girl put the title of her video as "fastest female rapper alive" and did the worst rap i've ever watched with the word "nigger" repeated over and over. It actually gained a few million views and these were some of the comments.

what the fuck was that u mutt red neck honkey ass bitch

I am black and proud hitler you fat scum look what the cat dragged back from tthe dead you stupid piece of 16 day old gum on the bustop on the corner

Are you even rappin in english holy shit I think I lost IQ after watchin this... You fuckin suck pls find something in life that you dont have to say anything cuz wow...

people really! if you think shes ugly and cant rap then stop watching the video! i think shes really good

nigga dsjfkfjrhuvhfiunpijuvrpuehrpui nigga nigga difjiuhreuhviruehvirhu nigga nigga nigga hgrtnhsngtnbgt this is lil jd

If your selling some of that crack, here's my address 16 skinnychickenhead drive.

I can honestly say that is the most horrible thing i have ever heard in my entire life, i'll send you a bill for the counselling i need after that.

You ugly Frankenstein hag.

Seriously, do all the "nigga nigga nigga's" a favor and act your damn color. Its white in case you didnt know...

when u rap u look like a fucking psycho :l seriously

Crack is a Helluva Drug

why would you even post something like this? dont quit your day job, if you even have one...

You look like someone is rapping you in the ass

is she half giraffe?....

2011-12-03T05:32:00.004+08:00

I just wrecked my fucking bike. Its barely a fortnight old. I was riding really fast as usual and then decided to act cool and release my left hand off the handlebar and steer only with my right. It was okay for a few seconds then it wobbled out of control at really high speed and just flipped to one side and sent me flying off and sprawled on the road. It hurt. A few people came to help me up and wheel my bike to the sidewalk. They repeatedly asked if I was okay to which I replied I was fine. This older guy who looks like a professor kept asking if I wanted something to drink like coffee tea or water. And this other dude asked if he needed to summon help. So nice people. After I insisted I was okay, they left. And I just sat there feeling dizzy for 15 minutes.

Then spent another 15 minutes re-attaching my basket to my bike. Then tried to mount it and realised it doesnt work anymore. FML MAN I ESPECIALLY NEED MY FUCKING BIKE IN THE HOLS. I've learnt my lesson not to speed like some madman. At least it was a cheap lesson compared to what it could have been. I hope the bike repairs dont cost as much as the bike itself =.=

When I was wheeling my bike back to college, I saw katie and went to town with her. I was counting the number of times she said thank you to me because it was a lot. So the 4th time she said it'd be the last and I said "I bet I can make you say thank you again before we get back". She laughed and was like "bring it on!" well not those exact words because that wouldn't be very katie but the meaning was there. So of course she had to forget about it first. When I returned her phone I actually reminded her of it because I was disappointed that she didn't say thank you. Then when I held the door for her she said it and I won hahaha, her expression was so funny when she realised and when I held the second door open for her with a bow and a hand pointing in she stalked through and was like "THANK YOU". Katie is so nice she cant even pretend to be impolite

All my friends are leaving for good. Well for 5 weeks actually but theres no difference. Haiz.

Holidays, go away
Come again another day
Little children shouldn't play

Katie says im like harry potter cos harry spends all his christmas in hogwarts as well. Well I hope the similarity ends there. When harry didn't get any letters from his friends for the entire holidays he blew up aunt marge and I don't want to blow up aunt pauline. Though technically it was dobby who did that. And I don't mind having a wand.

Had a psychology experiment today. Conducted by a phd student doing a project on brain neurology or something. They had an eye tracking device to track where my eyes was looking so I could only look at a cross in the middle. Had to watch the middle cross while trying to see dollars and pound signs at the periphery amidst a ton of symbols flickering very quickly, 8 of them.

After awhile, I was quite amazed. Its really difficult to do, but after awhile, my eyes just glaze and lose focus and although im still staring at the cross im suddenly a lot more aware of the flickering letters and symbols at both sides. But my eyes cant stay like that for too long and after awhile they will naturally spin a little or just flick to one side and I've got to do it again.

And the weirdest part was, the symbols were flickering so fast that I couldnt actually see them especially because I wasn't even LOOKING at them, but when dollars and pound signs come out they just sort of register in my brain.

Anyway winner of first round would be proclaimed boss and the boss could decide how to split the winnings in the second round. Winner would be decided by accuracy. I lost by 2.45%. Our joint winnings was 6 pounds on top of the 7 we both got and Ian split half half with me which was really nice of him. I was thinking that if I got to be boss I'd maybe give him 2 pounds and keep 4? Im such an asshole but Namo says he will keep it all so its all relative. Hahaha.

2011-12-02T08:00:00.001+08:00

Just once is apparently too much to hope for

2011-12-02T00:08:00.005+08:00

Woohooo im high now my experiment worked!!!!! I got a distinction, 73 for my last criminal law essay of the term yeehaaa

From the first to seventh week all I was getting was high second upper honours score.

I think first 2 weeks, I got 67 and then 68.

Then third week sam came. I had 2+ hours to complete my essay. I still got 67. So I thought hey if I can spend so little time on my essay and still get 67, a first class honours score would be a cinch if I put in a bit more effort.

So the next week my essay was 3000 words and I put in a fuck ton of effort. 67.

The following week I didn put in as much effort and rushed the whole essay out in the morning of the tutorial. Woke up at 9 to rush the whole 3500 words out. BUT I still thought it was a very good piece of work and deserved quite a good mark. To my disappointment, 67.

So I decided this week Im going to leave it to the last minute and put in abit less effort. I woke up at 11 o clock today and started writing the first words of my fucking essay at 11.30. Skipped breakfast and lunch to churn out 2500 words and got a distinction yeaaaa

I know why its like that. Gardner's last weeks comment was that a first class essay requires more pinpoint precision. More discerning as to which pieces of statute or which issues need to be looked at in detail and which are fairly obvious. They should not all be treated as requiring the same level of attention and detail which was my mistake. So my mistake was to go too deep and ramble on about insignificant things too much. All I had to do was literally, CUT THE CRAP

2011-12-01T09:05:00.003+08:00

Love really is blind isn't it?

2011-11-30T09:02:00.003+08:00

I just ate a very sour grapefruit. I cringed my way through but still finished the whole thing though. Cos it can't be sweet all the time or we wouldn appreciate it.

I have so many things to blog about and im very very tired. Just gymed, skipped hanged and stretched in the afternoon. I could just die in my bed now but I have unfinished work and im still blogging because I cant do work because Im answering boonsiew's bio questions on msn now. Im such a good tutor that im still spending time with my students in the uk.

Lets backtrack a long time ago. Clara made spanish omelette for us all. It was good! And rosie made some vegetable dish. I have no idea what its called but it tasted good too.

I went to tutor guy. Biked there. Saw the map previously but on the roads I didn't feel like checking the map so I just rode on and on with fingers crossed, well not literally.

I love the feeling of riding fast with the cold wind whipping my face and my lungs and legs burning from lactic acid buildup with the cold penetrating the bones of my exposed fingers as they become numb and I inhale sharp breaths in the freezing cold, enjoying every sensation of not knowing for sure if i am going the right way.

Anyway I did a kinda sharp uturn and crashed into some railings spraining my pinkie and smashing my bike lights. Well said lights are now stolen anyway so I guess it does not matter.

A lot of funny quotes and stuff have been said the past few days.

When clara asks why katie has so much work, she'd say "well sorry im doing a REAL degree"
And clara would say "yea well, I may be doing an imaginary degree but at least I will get a REAL job and not an imaginery one next time"

Then the other day, in the dark night she was blocking the light so I couldn see and unlock my bike combination. She taught me to say in situations like these "Donkey meat is not transparent you know!"

Another quote "i keep losing weight but it keeps finding me"

Yunfei came into my room to chat. She told me she wants to do work, but it feels like work is doing her instead. Or in other words shes done for. Cos she has a shit ton of it. Hahahaha. Damn i really need to work harder, everyone's dying under work and im like holidaying.

In hall, we were talking about colleges. I said I love st catz and wouldn trade it for any other college cos im beside the law bod, close to iffley, quite close to city centre and pretty much close to most things. Keejia said her human sciences library is damn far away like at st hugh's. Then we started talking about how far st hugh's is. Turns out that even from st hugh's, its a distance away. So st hugh's is so far away from everything that even st hugh's is far from st hugh's.

Sebastian was talking to the singaporens about how I do magic. Like both kinds, card magic and the magic of spilling water over all the time. Then later in hall as he was making some gesture he knocked a cup and it flew across the table. And since we're on the subject of magic, seb says he has a job in mind already but he said it fast so I thought he said he has a job in mind reading.

Clara has lost her rum from entz. Her plastic bag was left on the ground floor of staircase one and her rum and phone was in it. I think its only in oxford uk that someone comes along and steals the rum leaving the phone there.

So we were in keejia's room entertaining the guests. Keejia asked "oh yea hey, do you guys want christmas cards? I bought a whole stack and have a lot left over" We started laughing cos thats got to be the most insincere christmas cards ever and began describing how keejia would write "dear michelle...." in front of them.

Seb left early today despite the fact that the guests were invited by him. He claims he needs to do revision. Clara says she hardly does vision forget about revision.

Then the other day we were talking about essays. Keejia Namo and I. Apparently keejia and namo has a half page word limit and keejia takes her essays very seriously so she always exceeds it. So she writes to 3/4 page then reduces the font to make it half page. We ask her what font she uses and she says 5. LOL. Well at least its not microscopic. Then I turned to Namo and asked what font he uses, like 20? He says word art. LOL

Then we were on the subject of boyfriends. Keejia says shes gonna start hunting for younger guys. Well thats normal, younger than her current boyfriend is normal. But she clarifies, no, that she was looking at younger than her. Namo gave her a weird look and said "well you know, I think theres a primary school in oxford over there..."

A random quote "We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams."

Im finally in a better mood I guess. 3-4 days ago was just depressing. But the looming prospect of the holidays remain a depressing thought.

The job hunt continues. Its still funny.

Chicken sitter required (What, to hatch eggs?)
10 sexy santas (Hmmm I wonder if I can pull off the sexy santa look. Probably. Hehe)
Wipe/clean my bottom (18 pounds per hour for this LOL)
Anyone to rent chair (probably on bad terms with neighbours)

Tomorrow I have an interview with a guy for a catalogue distribution job. I want to do that rather than a waiter in the kitchen. Cos I get flexible hours and I get to talk to people and cycle around so I wont be bored. It sounds ideal to me. I think i prefer outdoors and moving jobs rather than office jobs. I don't mind office jobs if I don't actually have to do work but I'd HATE squinting at the computer doing data entry for 8 hours. Its so unchallenging and mundane I could fall asleep. There would be no interesting stories to tell.

Yesterday I had an audition in this studio. It was quite a cool place, like a place they used to use to professionally record songs and music. So I read from a chinese script in this soundproof room talking into a mike with headphones attached. The chinese script was quite difficult. I couldn't read words like tian zi pang and a bi sai de bi, and got zuo you mixed up and couldn read this shu shi or something. Its an audition to produce voice recordings for tour buses in oxford. So if im successful, tour buses in oxford will be playing my voice hahaha.

I had an interview the same day. In curry digital. "oh yes, I just adore microsoft excel!"

=.=

After that, I went for harris manchester formal. Uneventful.

Anyway I learnt a new thing. Here, "do you need help?" or "you really need help" is supposedly an insult. Like mental help or something. Cos I saw lottie putting up christmas deco and asked if she needed help and she stared at me weirdly and asked if I meant mental help.

2011-11-28T09:07:00.008+08:00

Today I went to babysit Ned and Ivor again. Aunt pauline cooked fried rice and minced meat and tofu which was quite good. I was wolfing my food down. She told me nicely that I was eating too loudly. She says its fine for an informal setting and she completely doesn mind that in her house but for a formal setting it would be considered bad manners. I said I would bear that in mind, but that I don't really think or bother about such things. She said, "yea well, you are going out into the world. It depends on which world you want to stay in"

Well I didn't reply because firstly, I don't have that strong views on that matter and secondly because I didn't want to argue. That said however, if being in the world of the elite, posh and rich means prim, prissy and proper, with excellenet table manners wearing uncomfortable clothes at banquets eating food I can't name, I'd gladly stay in the other world and enjoy slurping my spaghetti and eating barbequed chicken wings at the beach.

Its not that Im arguing the case for being sloppy or having bad table manners or anything. I have completely nothing against people who are tidy and eat quietly with proper etiquette. I find it quite respectable in fact. Its just that I guess I couldnt care less. There aren't many things important in life. Off the top of my head, family is important, friends are important, love is what we live for, sincerity and being genuine is important, so is a passion for life, laughter and appreciating the beauty of nature.

Everything else is just trivia. We live in too rich, too spoilt a society, I feel. We no longer have to fight for food, for survival and for territory like our homo sapien ancestors had to for 2.5 million years. So we turn our attention to petty (and in my opinion pretentious) things like the appropriate use of cutlery and the ability to tell the difference between a wine glass and a champagne glass. The line should be drawn at hygiene and practicality. Anything beyond that for the sake of looking upperclass, cultured and refined just feels unnecessary to me.

Anyway, I just came back from the gym. Some guy beside me was benching 100 kg. It made me really depressed. Fucking Asian genes.

I can only bench like 45 with proper form in a set of maybe 10 reps. I think that guys who cant bench their own weights shouldn't even be allowed to speak in public. Should be against the law with some kind of penalty imposed. Its just too embarassing. Its like that annoying little kid that just wont keep quiet. So since I cant do it myself yet, I will shut up for now

2011-11-26T22:49:00.006+08:00

This is a beautiful song from adele. It gains a million views everyday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQl3WQQoQ0&ob=av2e

Sometimes it lasts, but sometimes it hurts instead

I miss my family. I want to go home, I miss my home the place I grew up in, my friends, my childhood, my memories, the familiarity, my sisters, my games, my dog (I don't even own a dog) and just everything.

Now I know how maids feel when they go overseas to work. Im not even a maid. Physically at least, I have a greater degree of freedom. I do what I like, I study what I like and eat and sleep and talk whenever I like and I have friends. So I can imagine what it must be like for them.

I think elite, educated and privileged people like us should stop labouring under delusions that people are born equal, that we all have inalienable rights, that we all have equal oppportunities, that determination must defeat one's stranglehold of circumstances, that mental strength must overcome nature's curse of mediocrity. Lofty, though no doubt noble aspirations. To strive for might be praiseworthy but to fully subscribe, naivete. Or as Orwell eloquently expresses: all are equal, but some are more equal than others.

When disney sang "it's a small world", they did not elaborate. Its a small world from which we can derive warmth comfort and joy but outside of that, its a big scary and chaotic world in an expanse of a universe without known boundaries, and everyone is just as alone and small and insignificant as each of us struggle to let our voices be heard amidst the roar of the flowing waterfall of time, of which our whole existence is but little less than an atom of the smallest droplet and less significant than the mist on the bedrock.

The defeaning silence of the lonely echoes can be heart-rending. When the lip moves but the heart does not, when the mouth smiles but the eyes do not, when we hear but do not listen, when we possess but do not cherish, the mask of warmth is drawn across an empty void. Blessed are those who believe that physical pain is less than mental.

2011-11-26T11:53:00.002+08:00

Time heals what reason cannot

2011-11-25T01:20:00.000+08:00

I just opened my FUCKING KNUCKLE WOUND AGAIN. Oh damn so pissed off about it.

2011-11-24T09:10:00.003+08:00

Lindsey stirling is so amazing. Finally I hear music that isn't the looping drumbeat and autotune trash thats great for clubbing but not so good to listen to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrF814OnFQ4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp63nbOfxgs

Jon schmidt and steve sharp nelson are really amazing too. As is Sungha Jung's guitar.

Everyone is working so hard. Among my friends besides clara, im probably working the least. Katie seems to have work to rush everyday :(

Im quite broke now. On Monday I sorta organised a gathering at my place to cook and eat. Sara didnt want to come at the last minute, Rita agreed but had an essay due at the last minute though she was still sleeping by 10am, michelle couldn come cos she organised dimsum liaison, nicole had labs and couldn come as well. Keejia had essays as usual and couldn come. Su yun agreed to come, but also agreed to go for dimsum liaison which was just pure retarded. Then she said she got something on at 11.15 and would be coming back at 12 for the food and at 12.20 she was nowhere to be seen with no message or calls so I just messaged her and told her its okay, there isnt enough for you, please go for the dimsum liaison instead. So in the end it was Brian, zhanming, ross imogen katie, keejia (who didn eat) who had the spicy chicken with noodles. They were great company. And the food was really quite good. Zhan ming is just meticulous in every way and it is no exception when he cooks.

Cooking is supposed to be cheaper and I was going to pay for everything and just collect like 1.50 or 2 pounds from everyone for the meat but since all the singaporeans couldn come and I felt bad asking my staircase mates to pay since it was such a last minute invitation, I just treated everyone.

Then I agreed to buy tickets for chinese drama after really much persuasion by yunfei, so im just going to support yunfei, xiao ru and dengbo although no doubt the play will be excellent.

I still have 8 more months before I can go home. Holidays coming soon. I am not looking forward to it at all. Doesn't it sound retarded. Im probably the only person in college not looking forward to my holidays. Almost dreading it.

Still haven't found a job. Haiz. I hate this

2011-11-22T09:07:00.012+08:00

I am finetuning the art of writing rubbish. I just wrote 900 words of my 1500 word essay saying totally nothing at all except defining terms.

This is the art of writing a whole load of garbage while not saying anything at all and my eyes are shutting and Im did all this in 1 hour +

The first 800 words:

It is often said that the Roman conception of ownership was “absolute” or “absolutist”. Do you agree?

There are several key terms which should be defined. The term “Roman” probably refers to the classical period and some time before that. In early law, it is said that full ownership was only confined to res mancipi and even this ownership was not absolute but relative . However, it ceased to be so at the end of the legis action period. It is mostly with reference to this period of time after that that commentators talk about the ‘absoluteness’ of Roman ownership and this is the period that will be addressed. The “Roman conception” suggests some kind of construct or idea and it is referring to the conceptual aspect of ownership, which concerns the question of whether it was designed in such a way that it had “absolute” qualities. Birks draws a distinction between the concept of ownership and the content of ownership but did not explain why such a distinction was drawn. For the purpose of this essay, the concept of ownership shall simply be what it was set out to be in form, in contrast to in substance where it would involve what it practically was, instead of what it was conceptually set out to be.

Ownership may be defined as the unrestricted right of control over a physical thing, and whosoever has this right can claim the thing he owns wherever it is and no matter who possesses it . That is the Roman definition of ownership in contrast to that of today’s law and Roman law draws a sharp distinction between ownership and possession. In earlier part of this period, a person was either owner or not owner at all. But later on, ownership became capable of being divided between one who owns and one who possesses and is in the process of acquiring full ownership via usucapio . The choice of which definition to adopt will affect the “absolute” qualities of ownership. Both will be discussed.

The definition of “absolute” is of great significance and should be tackled with care. I shall first talk about the difficulties involved with defining this term which is important because the definition plays a central role in determining the conclusion drawn.

Birks defines “absolute” in concept as three elements. Firstly, “absolute” means it has to be distinct and disengaged from other superiorities like sovereignty jurisdiction and patriarchal authority. Secondly, it has to be singular and lastly, it has to be exclusive, excluding all others from asserting a similar relationship . In my opinion, “absolute” in the context of this discussion is a very broad and fragmented idea. One should always ask the question: “absolute in what sense?” Birks has given his yardsticks for evaluating the “absoluteness” of the concept of ownership and come to the conclusion that ownership was absolute. Under a different set of standards however, one might draw a difference conclusion. So under what standards are we to judge the “absolute” quality of Roman ownership? One has to avoid the dangers of adopting too literal a definition as the term absolute does deviate to a certain extent from its ordinary meaning, and at the same time avoid the danger of having too arbitrary a set of standards. It does not help that the Romans were very pragmatic and lacked theoretical justification in their laws of ownership.

Also, completely absolute ownership is impossible , Birks argues. It is made less “absolute” in many ways for instance when restrictions are set on the enjoyment of one’s property. Thus, we can view the extent of “absoluteness” of ownership as a point on a spectrum with completely absolute on one end and not at all absolute on the other. The concept of “absolute” is thus actually a relative one. We then have to question, can something that is inherently relative in nature be called absolute? And since complete absolute ownership is impossible, it can be argued that something that is not complete is not “absolute”. When one says a person is “absolutely right”, he means the person is completely or 100% right. Again this hinges heavily upon the definition of “absolute”, and for the purposes of discussion, a less stringent definition has to be used. The second point to consider is, drawing on the analogy of the spectrum, where should the line be drawn to classify systems as absolute or not? Even if one knows exactly where the roman system lied on the spectrum, it would still be difficult to label it as absolute or not absolute. My contention is that any attempt to do so will inevitably be arbitrary. Therefore, for the purpose of this essay I shall discuss the extent to which the Roman conception of ownership was more absolute than the current system we have today and leave it to the individual to decide if that would constitute an “absolute” system. A drawback that can be acknowledged is that the scope of this essay is rather limited by the fact that the comparison is only with regard to current English law for there are many other systems of law one could and indeed should consider as well in determining if the Roman system was indeed absolute, relative to all the other systems. Also, I propose that aspects of ownership in the Roman system are considered more “absolute” if they are more able to exist independently than the same aspects of ownership in another system.

NOW IM STUCK

And my fucking right hand knuckle has started to bleed again. I think i'll look for the nurse tomorrow, don't want this to do any permanent damage.

2011-11-22T06:57:00.003+08:00

I just listened to the puppet dance sound track of orientation.

I miss s74 sooo much

Weiming asked me hows life on oxford.

I answered without thinking and realized with a jolt, that it was too true.

"Oxford is awesome but its just very very different. Im feel like im living in a different world in a different life in a different time. I don't feel like me anymore"

Love cant be bartered
Thats why there is little hope
How many people search with regret at the end
Dreams cant be caught
So we want them
And the web of destiny, how much can it reveal
Thinking you've got it all but just going round in circles
Who can tell the difference between loss and gain
Who doesn want to soar high above the skies
Who doesnt want to escape the jail of circumstances
The richest treasures cannot compare with that smile
Sometimes its all we need
Who doesnt want the world to revolve around them
The most sincere and touching moments
Yet we forget to search for
To gain everything but lose the warmth of a hug
What is there to brag about?

2011-11-21T21:44:00.003+08:00

What are some of the most enjoyable things in life?

For me, eating a sweet orange while listening to music.

The simple things in life :)

2011-11-18T07:39:00.005+08:00

"this is rosie on behalf of katie
she thanks you very much for your kind offer of mashed potatoes but she is currently at rosie's
well im really hungry but we're working :(
help! Rpsie's trapped me :(
yay
noooo help me please..
help me to resist the temptation to try to leave
i really should get some sleep
but im having so much fun being trapped
Shut up Rosie, stop living in your imagination...
Katie stop being weird-she's eaten one too many mushrooms"

Soo scandalous tsk tsk (thats not a 2 way convo btw, thats a slew of messages from "rosie"). Everyone's jealous of rosie now. Katie is too sought after for her own good.

Just came back from the gym. Im so dead tired. My knuckles taking forever to heal, I swear those people who build ripped muscles and have rock hard bodies like bruce lee have superhuman regeneration. They just train and damage themselves and next day they are good as new but stronger.

Yesterday I tried to cook mash potatoes. It was very nearly a disaster. The experience was reminiscent of my old lab days where I would usually pose a hazard just by being in the lab. Fun days.

So I began on my quest. First I tried to cut the potato skin off with a knife. The way I was cutting it, after I was done cutting off the "skin" of the first potato, the potato had shrunk to half its size....

So deciding that was not the best option, I searched around and found this cool looking lantern thing. Well its a cheese grater but it worked fine for grazing the potato skin off. It was a nightmare to wash the thing later though and potato shreds were beginning to mess up the whole kitchen sink.

So I went back to the knife and slowly and painfully cut all 4 potatoes. That took 20 minutes. Next step was to boil them.

At this point, I went back to my room to tell an offline clara on facebook that if she falls asleep Im going to wake her up and force her to eat. Then I snooped around for a pot and found one.

The next mystery to be unravelled was that of the electric hob. It was just totally eccentric. I still have no idea right now which way to turn it because it turns both ways, nor do I know which way turns it stronger to a stronger heat. Well at least I figured out which knob was for which hob.

So I put the potatoes into the water and was almost going to boil it when I realised that I forgot to cut the potato into cubes lol. Thankfully I remembered or it would probably happily boil for 3-4 hours before it could be mashed.

Then after that I put it on the stove and turned it one way. Sam's instructions was to leave it to boil for 20 minutes. I did. And I checked it it was as hard as ever and the water was not boiling yet. I checked another 2 more times before asking sam. Turns out I was supposed to boil the water before putting the potatoes in. Well too late now. So I checked another 2 more times and turned the knob randomly. Hoping that I wouldn trigger the fire alarm

The next time I entered the kitchen there was a burning smell. I didn know boiling stuff could lead to a burning smell. The liquid covering the potato was beginning to look like soup. Well, if I cant make mash potatoes, my as well enjoy potato soup. But I turned the knob around again to lower the heat. There was a sizzling sound. A persistent one. I ignored it.

2 more 5 minutes later (I check every 5 minutes), it was the same. 2 more 5 minutes later, the same. I got an encouraging message from sam "oi dun destroy the kitchen". 2 more 5 minutes later (thats a lot of 5 minutes i know) and all of a sudden the potato began to look droopy. Well if the potato wasnt going to be edible, at least it would be drinkable.

I poured the water out, mashed it up, chopped garlic, added butter and milk and salt and it was ready to serve!!! And it tasted SO GOOD that im my stomache is growling now as I think of it. Well actually my stomache growls at this time of the day EVERY NIGHT but still. I hope imogen and clara liked it

Anyway that day we, being seb keejia rosie katie and I went to noodle nation for dinner on sunday. The one good thing about that place is that its cheap. And the food is not thaaaat bad omg I really need to stop thinking of food im so hungry now.

Anyway we got our fortune cookies. I insisted that we had to close our eyes to pick one so as not to ruin our fortunes. Mine read:

"You will soon have a great revelation"

Then we were all exchanging our notes and looking at each other's. Katie's was

"You will find out something about yourself"

When sebastian read that he smirked and was like "yeaa, katie is lesbian"

And there it was. My great revelation.

And clara's was"

"You will soon achieve your long-awaited goal"

Which was even funnier cos clara likes to hug katie and openly profess her love for her and she achieved her goal!

Rosie's was

"You will be repaid for a good deed"

And the good deed was to give up katie to clara ending the complicated love triangle. It all fit so it was pretty funny and finally sebastian's was

"You will be put in a laughing mood tomorrow"

Well the tomorrow part was wrong.

I think clara is really funny cos shes just totally random. Like the other day we were talking about stuff and seb said to me "you got cream on your lips" and she was like "you want to take it off, sebastian?". And someone said shes short but she insists that shes just concentrated. That day I went to her room to watch THIS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNGExNhLYD4

Which was just soo retarded that we were laughing at it all the way.
"Lady Gaga is part of the illuminati"
"You can't get into heaven if you have sex"
"If you listen to lady gaga's music, you will go to hell"
"I need to go to a confession, this song has literally soiled my soul"
"Lady gaygay"
"Tomorrow is sunday...I really hope all you people go to church... and just listen to the sermon. I hope he touches you... I really hope, the pastor touches you" (In a non-sexual way of course clara said)

And I was like, I wonder how much lady gaga paid her for that promotional video. But shes quite sad I kinda pity her. How do people get so... weird

Ned, who is 12 asked me a maths question today and I couldn solve it. And yunfei took damn long to solve it too. She told me "Just tell him oxford maths student also cannot solve" LOL. This is the question, split into 4 parts:

If you have a sum of money that gains 10% compound interest every year, how long will it take to double the money you have? (This was easy)

If you have a sum of money that depreciates by 10% every year, how long will it take to halve the amount of money you have? (Quite easy too)

Why do the 2 answers differ? (wtf?)

Is there a rate of interest and depreciation that will cause the sum of money to halve (for depreciation) or double (for interest) after the same number of years?

.....

2011-11-16T22:57:00.003+08:00

I still cant find a JOB. Browsing through the jobs section everyday. Heres a sample

Mortuary assistant needed.
Forklift operator
Chef De Partie
Pet tester required
South Indian chef

And also looking through the services provided section to get some inspiration on what kind of services I can offer people.

I repair curtains
I heal souls
Certified cat feeder
Woofy Do's Dog grooming
Sexuality coaching
Thesis proofreading
I check spines

Makes me feel like anything goes. Maybe I'll start a fortune telling booth.

...

2011-11-12T23:00:00.007+08:00

There was once a beautiful girl.

But she was blind. She detested herself for being blind and hated everyone who had the sight that she did not.

But she had a loving boyfriend who was always there for her. He was her companion and he would care for her tirelessly. He described to her the beauty of nature and the colours of life so that she could feel and imagine it and not feel as left out.

She always said to him that she wanted nothing more than to see the world. And if she could see the world, she would marry him.

One day, someone donated a pair of eyes to her. And she could see everything. To her shock, she realized that her boyfriend was blind as well. And he was ugly although he had a smile that lit up his face. And this smile he now beamed upon her and asked

"Now that you can see the world, will you marry me?"

She refused. Now that she could see, she could get so much more out of life and be with someone else so much better. She told her boyfriend she would be leaving.

Her boyfriend was in tears but he nodded and said "I understand. I just want you to be happy".

They saw each other again for one last brief meeting to bid each other farewell. The girl thanked him for taking care of her and told him that she would be moving to a better place. He nodded sadly and handed her a letter. They went their separate ways.

That night, she read the letter.

Your greatest wish was to see the world.
It has finally come true and it makes me so happy to know you are happy.
I am sad that I cannot share my life with you but still, I wish you well.
Just take care of yourself, and my eyes.

Love
Your boyfriend

Time is too slow for those who wait
Too swift for those who fear
Too long for those who grief
Too short for those who rejoice
But for those who love...
Time is Eternity

2011-11-11T23:00:00.002+08:00

Today's date is cool so I've got to post. I only realised its the 11.11.11 when i was watching LMFAO's PARTY ROCK ANTHEM and the top rated comment was

"thumps up if your watching this in 11-11-11"

That song is addictive btw

Remembrance Day (also known as Poppy Day, Armistice Day) is a memorial day observed in Commonwealth countries since the end of World War I to remember the members of their armed forces who have died in the line of duty. This day, or alternative dates, are also recognized as special days for war remembrances in many non-Commonwealth countries. Remembrance Day is observed on 11 November to recall the official end of World War I on that date in 1918; hostilities formally ended "at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month" of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice ("at the 11th hour" refers to the passing of the 11th hour, or 11:00 a.m.)

And this is the 11th year.

Memento mori

2011-11-11T08:05:00.002+08:00

Just came back from "babysitting" ivor and ned. They actually paid me 20 pounds despite already treating me to dinner and despite me refusing repeatedly. Dinner was slightly awkward with cynthia pauline ned ivor and guy. I really hate this language barrier. If only we always communicated by text. It doesn have to be all the time, I just need to not be able to catch what they are saying 10% of the time and vice versa for conversations to stall very quickly after a few sentences. Its usually okay in quiet places but in noisy restaurants/pubs, its usually pretty hopeless.

I mean, it'd be cool and fun to reply with a witty comment after they said something really fast but the reality is usually a "huh?" or a "sorry?" or sometimes I just nod and smile and pretend I heard =.=. I hope my brain rewires quickly enough for me to pick up the nuances of their accent. 21 years immersed in the singaporean accent, 1 month in the UK so far.

But after that it was easy, I just read some criminal law and played their electone and time passed really fast. I really don't even mind doing it for free since they are such nice people, but omg 20 pounds, im so happy.

Ok im going to sleep. Sometimes im not quite sure why I blog. Maybe its a tendency to like talking to myself. Wait, that means i must be pretty interesting right? That or I have weird taste. I wonder if anyone ever reads the random nonsense i post

2011-11-11T00:28:00.011+08:00

Right now im high woohoo. The high that comes from feeling like a boss. For a few reasons. First, Im finally done with this CRAZY week. 2 essays due and had no time to do it at all. I worked on my roman law essay to 4am on tuesday. Then I went to sleep. Sam came over on wednesday afternoon. He arrived in oxford before i got up from bed and i was awakened by his message LOL.

Then I spent the whole of wed bringing sam around and at night we drank and played board games till 2+.

Today morning, I woke up feeilng holy screwed, with a weird voice from talking too much the previous night and with my criminal law essay NOT EVEN STARTED. And tutorial was at 2.45 and tianyi was cooking lunch for us so we had to be at her place at 12. So I rushed out 1500 words of crap based on my readings (or reading cos I only read 1 book out of my whole reading list) within less than 2 hours. And my essay got 66-67 which is a two one score LOL. My essay had neither an introduction nor conclusion. I was quite disappointed at the quality of it quite frankly because I could have done soooooo much better and i know it but I had not the time. Like I identified 15 points but I only wrote 3-4 of them in the essay. When I suggested to simon gardner "Can i rewrite my essay properly and send it to you" and he was like

"oh no no, you see, i think you should just think about what I just told you, your current points... you know, there are things you can learn from there"

And i said "No i mean, I have like other points, which maybe, i could use feedback on?"

And hes like "No no, the thing is, its like a moving conveyor belt, yea? So you just have to move on, and im sure there will be lots to do next week as well."

The lazy bastard. Hahaha. And ralph has been falling behind a little. First week was group tutorial. Second week ralph gave an answer that considered the question at face value so it wasnt good. Third week he came 15 minutes late for tutorial and didn finish his essay and it was described as "catastrophic". Fourth week he improved a bit but it was still two two. But he got 60 for today's essay which was an improvement from the previous week

So he asked SG to look at his work in the holidays and he was like

"oh no, i will be terribly busy as well..."

Anyway, I really like criminal law a lot. I love writing essays and arguing and thinking about the deeper issues. For the same reason, I totally hate roman law. So many facts, I just yawn and feel like falling asleep with all the details.

The last essay I did for Roman law was HORRIBLE. Like seriously I read it and its shit and the foot notes are like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/praetor

LOL. Cos... its a very long story but basically I didn have all my references despite doing my readings. Did the readings in week one before she said we needed to quote all our sources.

Yea and I think roman law is pretty rubbish as well, I mean its good for a general appreciation of the history of law I guess...

Anyway roman law tutor dr helleringer's handwriting is really bad so i could not read half her comments. It also helped me feel a little better about myself because i tried to pretend the squiggle at the top left hand of the first page is an illegible comment and not a 50 although it does look suspiciously like it (50 is a really shitty score).

But this week's roman i submitted a much better essay so im confident it will be less disastrous.

Anyway today was the second time in 2 days I felt like puking. Lets backtrack. Sam came over. We had scaf. Then I brought him to new college and christ church where we snuck past the guard and got in and walked around. Then we shopped for ingredients to buy mash potatoes for a long time. Sam bought baileya wine for me which tastes awesome. Then we had hall which was good as well.

Sam agrees with shuhui and minzhi. They are really preparing us for the posh and rich high life. We are getting served food great food in the dining hall, we have scouts to change our bins everyday, vacuum our floor every week and change our sheets every week.

In hall, starters was 2 chicken wings, then it was some huge lamb chop with rice and vegetables and some pineapple cake with syrup to top it off. It would probably sound nicer if it had fancier names like lemongrass dijon-crusted rack of lamb tenderloin, but the food was pretty good. Well the starters and dessert were REALLY good. But the main course although it was okay, was one of the meals i enjoyed least in hall.

Then we went back to my room where i read a little stuff for my essays. Then katie rosie and clara came over and we played man laws and woman rules and drank rum with coke and baileys. Katie and rosie left at 11 but clara left at 2+. She just stayed on to chat with us for so long and sam was really enjoying the conversation. I was feeling so drunk and my head was spinning. And I only had like 2 cups of rum with coke (rum was 40% alc and filled half the cup) and a few cups of baileys. A few times I nearly fell asleep listening to them talk while lying on my bed and clara would throw stuff at me. First an ICE CUBE (wtf?) and then a packet of chips.

Next day, I went to tianyi's place for lunch. It was awesome, gong bao ji ding, gai lan with fried onion and eggplant with minced pork. Yummmmmmmmmmm I miss such food soo much. I ate so full that I was ready to burst. Then I ate somemore cos sam opened his 2 tubs of haagen daaz raspberry and cheesecake and belgium chocolate ice cream and I just ate and ate. Then when walking sam to the train station, that was the second time I felt like puking.

Oh we were talking about a lot of interesting stuff at lunch. First we were talking about singapore vs UK. Singapore food wins hands down. The western food in singapore doesn even lose to the western food here but the chinese food here cannot compare with singapore. But singapore is so fast paced and while its so relaxed here. And Singapore is getting sooo crowded its ridiculous. Tian yi complains that every corner you turn got some bangla or ah tiong shouting and pushing their way around so that its very irritating. Westerners do seem more civilised than the chinese dont they? I said. But tian yi and sam disagrees, they say thats cos I haven't seen them at sales or whatever, they will push and shout just the same. Sam says to wait for boxing day.

And since tian yi was complaining about ah tiongs, I asked, isnt china even worse? And sam says yeaa it is and he starts laughing and I say but isnt tian yi from China? And she looked at me with a half laughing half shocked expression like "WHAT?" and sam just laughed even harder. Eventually, sam calmed down enough to assure me that he made the same mistake 5 years ago. So I told tianyi its natural, everyone has to make that mistake once. She was like "huhh I look alot like china people meh?" and sam and i agreed. She said "i dont know, only my grandparents were from there, so yea, maybe I haven't evolved yet" and we started laughing again.

Then on the topic of dring clothes. Sam insists that drying clothes in the sun is healthier compared to in a dryer.

We kept asking like WHY??

And he says, dno leh, its just like healthier, more natural.

And I say err its your clothes that go into the dryer not you, so its healthier for your clothes?

And he says no la its like, it can kill the bacteria lor, got all the sun's rays and radiation.

Then tian yi said "oh, then microwave your clothes la"

After that we began talking about the hazards of metal in microwave. The whole conversation was just hilarious.

what exciting thing just happened beside your room?

LOL
wtf
news spreads like fire indeed
they just endend
cleaning up the mess now

it does when sebastians around

hahaha

well?

its the second or third night they been at it

what?

i played some classical music to complement their mood

what is going on

what/

HAHAAAAAA

oh
seb din tell u?

Leslie you are hilarious
no he didnt

well
im sure

he said to ask you exactly what i did

you have already guessed
hahahahaha

not exactly
what mess is there?

oh come on
hahahaha
what mess could there bE??
lolll

im sorry im unsure as to what you're talking about

guess
spell it out (and the answer is not vampire)
sry couldn resist the twilight reference

you'vee just confused me even more

HAHA
ok fine
they are having sex
nxt doors

yeah thats what i assumed but you made it complicated

i said its the second or third night they been at it, and now they cleaning upo the mess and i was playing music to complement their mood
quite obvious whattt
hahaha

riiiight
hahahahahaaaaaaa

lol
they were moaning for half an hour yesterday
=.=\

it must be pretty noisy sex then?
XD

i was trying to study
.....
does classical music go well with sex?

leslie you're making me hysterical

LOL

depends what you chose

hmmm
haberna
now ait

ride of the valkyrie perhaps

habenera
wait i go listen
or is that suppsoed to be a pun

haha just listen to it

i am
sebastian was saying, see if their moans and their pace begin to match my music subconsciously
hahahahaha

hahahaaaaa

that has a nice rhythm i guess
the valkyries thing

HAHAAAA

lolll
i wouldn know

(huge part omitted)

you've got a tough job cut out for you now leslie you know
youve got to beat youre quote
which is now your all time funniest

hahahaha

"Does classical music go well with sex"

damn
thats hard
wanna retire soon

of course followed up by "I was playing classical music to complement their mood"

lolol
i thought they might get the hint

you should have been slective aout the music

like "hey i can hear this guy's music. Does that mean.... HE CAN HEAR ME?"

its not gonna be the same when you hear it again
HAHA!
play the same song everytime
dont want to ruin too many songs for you
its not a good idea when youre in polite company in a concert or something
and the song comes on

hahahahaha

and youll be like oh this is the sex song

OMG
and i subconsciously start doing... oh lets not get there

hey ive got a song from les mis which is about prostitutes
HAHAAAAAA
let's not
you should play that

wads the title

the docks
or loely ladies
*lovely

k cool
shall listen
oh btw where do i browse the movies they can pig to me?
i went on catz site
couldn find it

ill send the link
ive got the song
i can play it for you next time youre round
its a good song

for a moment i thought you were gonna whip out a guitar and play it for me
then i realised oh... technology

hahaaaaaa
well i could if you want
but it wouldnt be very good
because i cant play the guitar

thats cool
ohhh

and it requires an orchestra

yea its quite nice

nice XD
always nice
:P

its soooo gooooooood
quite nice is apparently an insult here

hahaaaa
no its just not always the most appropriate word

i went to my aunt's house for dinner and she asked how was everything and how were they as hosts
i said i think they are quite cool people
and she was silent for awhile and she said
quite cool only means NOT very cool
hahahaha

HAHAAAAA
your aunt is a wise woman

lol!
technically shes not my aunt
since i only met her twice
in my life

well is she your aunt or not?
i mean is she the sister of one of your parents

shes trying to be. Everyone wants to be related to me

of course

u can be my grandma

but youre being cryptic again
oh thanks very much

hahahahaha

you're younger grandma
*your

that doesn make sense

yed
*yes
i cant type
i am your younger grandma

hahahaha
first of a kind

but actually is she your aunt?
you avoided the question!

that "aunt" is my friend's aunt but i call her aunt too she lives in oxford
\and her husband is supposed to own a castle, they are very rich and powerful people

right
glad that's clear
can she be my aunt too?

yea
u can as well

what's her name?

aunt pauline

their full name- i wanna google them
see if they're worth my time

the husband is called martin fiennes i think
LOL
worth yr time
hahahaha
er i just googled martin
wtf he does appear
this is crazy

he owns a cast;e!
*castle

omg pauline kang
appears too
lolol

hahaaaaa
yeah

LOL their children's names appear
guy ned and ivor

theyre worth my time

they are so cute
i was playing chess with guy
in the past i used to feel
such people were very intimidating
but now
na
theres no difference

for you maybe
but you are master of all things magical

hahahaha

you have a different standing to us commoners

indeed :p
i did feel a little awkward
twhen they invivted me for dinner though
and
i wanted to get something for them
and
nothing was open cos it was 6 o clock on a sunday
like no chocolates except those 99p ones
so i got them a kfc super value meal
cos its rude to show up empty handed

you are joking?

im joking about the kfc
hahahaha

awww

the rest is true

its hard to tell with you
i wouldnt put it past you

:p

:P

LOL

but still that was hilarious

that would be aan incredible faux pas

congratulations
you ALMOST beat your quote

LOL

if you'd actually done it

i'll try harder

you'd have beaten it hands down

yea i would also have been beaten by my aunt hands down

nah she wouldve been ALLLLRIIIGHHT I'M STARVING!

except for the little fact that she cooked dinner

yeah but what she really wanted was a nice bit of fried chicken

hahahahaha

did you take anything in the end then?

imagine she was craving it and i turned up with exactly what she wanted
yea i bought cookies, had to dig out every last shred of my coins it cost me 8 pounds

she wouldve been like here have my castle

LOL

:O
what?!

why? very expensive?

they better return that favour and more!

each cookie was like 1.37 or something i bought 6

£8 for cookies?
i guess 1.37 isnt terrible

yea it should be a proportionate thing like 8 pounds is 1% of my net worth so they should give me 1% of theirs

but its still a very expensive cookie
I like that

hahaha

you're on a roll today leslie
for sure

lol!
glad to hear

but hey you're worth £800?

hmm

maybe i should start being a bit nicer to you!

u sorta turn the 8 on its side
thats my net worth

:P
loaded
oh nice

loaded?

it means loads of money

800 pounds?!

colloquial though

thats the cost of my toothpaste

yeah man
nice
what you doing hanging around with those losers then
charity work?
their castle need a new roof?

yea man sorta like I thought I would help
LOL
yea

thought there was something a bit fishy about you not having a scholarship.....

yea i mean, i was busy giving them out
or at least my subordinates were

amazing that you manage to fit in all this charity work along with spying

hahahaha
yea its my job

i guess you dont get that rich without good time management

cant ignore a complaint that their gold toielt bowl is not 100%
i dunt have good time management
as evidence by me talking to u right now

hehe

hahaha

what about me?!
i should be asleep

nothing

9 oclock lecture

whoa
thats crazy
mine is at 10
well at least mine is optional

mine is also at 10
and 11

9, 10 and 11?

and a biological chemistry class in the afternoon

you are a source of inspiration

thats ow we roll in biochem

i should work harder

dont work too hard
the librarian is gonna start noticing your snoring
:P

LOL
im trying not to
u should read my latest post
i typed it in the library reading roman law

ooh a blog
:D
it says you're 20
arent you a little young to be lyin about your age already

yea it says my desire is to get back my pink IC too
its severely outdated
oh i get my pink IC when i leave the army btw
cant be bothered with the appearance was never good with websites
hahaha

i like your post

hey youre only allowed to read the topmost post
k
thanks
:)

i have now found my daily entertainment

omg no please

why?.....

would u want people reading
your posts
of when u were
5 years younger?

:D

OH TODAY I SAW A GUY HE WAS SOOO CUTEE OMG

did you?
that's nice....
ahem

er i wasnt like that of course
hahahaha

:P
i should print screen that

ok this is not good
but no one can tell its me right
this isnt msn
where it goes like
Leslie says: asdagdsaf

wow you say weird things

no seriously please dont
read
my old archives
oh damn

ok fine

read my more mature
posts
actually
dun even do that
hahahaha
its not good for health
trust me
i've been there

aw why not

no in fact i am there

hahaaa

lol okay im going off to sleeep
yea
last words

ill send you the print screen

come on!
i'll just say u photoshopped it
thank god u have a reputation for that
hahahaha

dang it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
why have i done this to myself

awww :p

noone will ever believe anything
:'(
nah actually
theyll believe you said that
:P
see you tomorrow
x

cya! nitez

Leslie convo.PNG

oh gosh. This shall be our secret

no no- this shall be my blackmail
so you better behave yourself
Oh and I'm weighing up whether youve managed to beat your record
"They're gonna disect it later"

what happens if i beat my record? Do i get a high score or something? Can i redeem soft toys or key chains with accumulated points?

Yeah sure but seeing as you're setting the challenge and competing only against yourself then logically you should provide the prize. Good luck- hope you win! :D

.....................

If I was on a roll she wasnt rolling too far behind me

2011-11-09T05:48:00.003+08:00

Jesus Christ, Chuck Norris and a normal man were on a boat. They had to get to land, but had no oars.

Jesus starts walking across the water, and finally makes it safely to the other side.
Chuck joins Jesus, and walks safely across too.

The normal man thought, if they can do it, I can do it. He walks out of the boat, falls into the water, and drowns.

Jesus frowns, looks at Chuck and says "You think we should have told him about the rocks?"

Chuck looks back and says "What rocks?"

Chuck Norris won the World unlimited offshore pwerboat race, - but was later disqualified, - apparently you have to use a boat.

Chuck Norris doesn believe in evolution. Evolution believes in Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris can kill 2 stones with 1 bird.

If you had $5 and Chuck Norris had $5, Chuck Norris has more money than you.

If it looks like chicken, sounds like chicken, smells like chicken and tastes like chicken but Chuck Norris says its beef, then its beef.

Chuck Norris died 12 years ago but death has not mustered up the courage to tell him.

If you look on the back of China, it says "Made by Chuck Norris"

Chuck Norris once uppercut a horse and giraffes were created.

Chuck Norris and 2 cowboys were at a campfire telling storys of how hardcore each of them was.

One cowboy told a story of when he was charged by a bull and he ripped the horns off of the bull and kill it with them.

The other cowboy told the story when he was swimming in the Amazonian river and he was attacked by an Anaconda.He choked the snake to death while they were underwater.
Chuck just smiled and continued to tend to the fire with his penis.

God and Chuck Norris had a bet, loser had to sacrifice their son.

When Chuck Norris goes swimming, he doesn get wet. Water gets Chuck Norrised.

Chuck Norris counted to infinity. Twice.

Jesus walks on water and Chuck Norris walks on Jesus.

The day Alexander Bell invented the telephone, he got 3 missed calls from Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris's fists made the speed of light wish it was faster.

Superman wears Chuck Norris pyjamas to sleep.

Jesus can walk on water but Chuck Norris can swim through land.

God wanted to make the Earth in 10 days. Chuck Norris gave him 7.

On a high school maths test, Chuck Norris answered Violence to every single problem sum and got full marks

Chuck Norris once got bitten by a cobra. After enduring excruciating pain and agony, the cobra finally died.

Chuck Norris once visited the Virgin Islands. Now it is only known as the Islands.

Ghosts sit around a campfire and tell Chuck Norris stories.

Chuck Norris doesn turn the lights on, he turns the dark off.

Chuck Norris was born in the house he built.

When Chuck Norris does push-ups, hes actually pushing the Earth down.

Chuck Norris has a grizzly bear carpet in his living room. The bear is not dead, its just too afraid to move.

Chuck Norris wears sunglasses to protect the sun from his eyes.

Chuck Norris once appeared on cartoon network, its been renamed CN.

There is no evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris allowed to live.

2011-11-08T05:44:00.017+08:00

Options may be a delusion of the privileged. Some doors may not always be open. But choices will always be for us to make.

He who laughs last... has missed the whole point of the interaction.

I don't think so, therefore Im probably not.

We don't stop laughing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop laughing.

The cup is actually full, half of water and half of air.

To love a person is to learn the song of their heart, and sing it to them when they have forgotten.

Language is the dress of thought

Things which matter most to yourself should never be at the mercy of things which matter most to others.

Live, breathe, love.

Explore and experiment. Get lost often. That is the only way to find yourself and who you truly are.

All emotions are beautiful. When you eat, appreciate every last bite

Life is short. We only live once. Ignite the flames of passion and live your dream. Laugh loud, live proud. And dazzle the night sky with your bright burning potential.

Thats you with purple and red wings soaring beside the golden shooting stars

Guy fawkes day fireworks at somerville which we watched on friday, after attending somerville's... "formal"?

Pictures courtesy of zhanming, an incredible photographer

2011-11-06T00:57:00.003+08:00

Roman law books have an uncanny ability to induce in me an irresistable desire for deep peaceful slumber.

From the moment i carry the book back to my desk, the musty smell of the pages and the small print just makes my eyes glaze over the words as my eyeballs sweep across them registering nothing. Slowly, I get a heady and spiralling sensation and my eyelids begin to creep downwards. Soon I will be squinting at the book and nodding my head repeatedly and involuntarily while i try to convince myself i am nodding because i understand.

Yes...I understand. And I am typing this... to keep awake. Stay awake. Do not sleep. Do not sleeohgw85 y639 gsodfugs

Screw this, im going to read criminal law instead

2011-11-05T00:51:00.002+08:00

Mind = blown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcNE3yx_3D8&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqV-c_npeJ4&feature=related

hilarious as well

2011-11-04T09:14:00.008+08:00

I just got my hair cut by nicole today. Its the first time shes cutting a guy's hair. So my nice hairstyle is completely gone and I sport a quite primary school, toot-looking hairstyle now. My sideburn is 1/4 the length it was originally :( The feeling is quite liberating actually. It makes me care a lot less about how I look which isnt all that important for a guy.

Sebastian says the front of it looks ok. Well yea it does because she didn cut the front lol. But still, hair can grow back and Im quite thankful to nicole for saving me 12 pounds for a haircut.

Click on the first image else its too small to read

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=136013

2011-11-03T09:46:00.002+08:00

When does an unlawful killing count as murder? And as involuntary manslaughter? Are these areas of the law in need of reform?

Its due tomorrow. I have finished my readings but barely started my essay. And frankly Im quite pissed off with the essay question. ARE THESE AREAS IN NEED OF REFORM, REALLY? 10 books wouldnt be enough to cover the sheer amount of content that such a question encompasses and Im expected to do that in a 2000 word essay. I already identified about 10+ different areas which I need to address. I don't see myself coming up with a comprehensive answer or one I can be satisfied with anytime soon. =.=

2011-11-02T05:07:00.008+08:00

This was being shared on facebook and its hilarious:

Sunday = 伤day
Monday = 忙day
Tuesday = 求死day
Wednesday = 未死day
Thursday = 受死day
Friday = 福来day
Saturday = 洒脱day

I told celia that I had a discplinary briefing today. She says "yea they know you need it, smart of them"

And I was like "No you don't quite understand. Its not a briefing to warn me not to get into trouble. Its a briefing because I ALREADY got into trouble".

LOL but it wasnt my fault at all. Staircase 8 had one too many crazy parties and the reason the master dean called us down was for the party and for moving furniture from other staircase which we werent supposed to (namely a bench).

No one took it too seriously. ("this is like a staircase outing" "yea! shall we go for a pint after that?")

It was all handled in a very mature manner. I like the way the dean just told whoever it was who moved the benches to email them and they would suffer a sanction, not too heavy, which was only fair.

After the outing, we gathered around at the staircase and they were like saying "hey we should host a staircase party to celebrate the end of the briefing" and someone else said "yea, lets make the theme a "bring-your-own-bench party"

Nights get pretty lonely here. Actually its not really nights its just studying. Studying is always lonely I guess.

I think Im gonna go on saturdays to check out sparring. Anyway, my thoughts on muay thai training so far is that I honestly have better technique than like 90% of the advanced class. Like no kidding no shit. Training under ah heng really makes one pretty good. But I really hate being small scrawny wiry thin and light. Being on average 30 kg lighter than everyone is just not fun at all. Oh and all the coaches' technique are pretty good as well. They look good too like muscular and all. But I held pads for and seen some of their moves, and im pretty sure ah heng can come here and play football with them. As the ball. Cos his legs are as dense and hard as metal its scary

Try to see the 2 perspectives. See how long it takes. :) I took about a minute. Everything has an OTHER side to it

2011-11-01T08:19:00.007+08:00

Once upon a time, there was this guy...who was walking down the street...and there was a beautiful girl that was walking down the street towards him.

And when they saw each other, they stopped...and deciding to start talking. It was a totally natural and spontaneous thing and it wasn't something that these people usually do. It just happened.

And they just connected with each other on every word and at every level. It was as if, they had already known each other for so long, even though they had only known each other a matter of minutes...but it soon came a couple hours. And the incredible connection these two made was so strong it was as if there was a glowing light between these two people. They were 100% perfect for each other. The chance of having 2 people perfect for each other are close to zero and it is for these special situations that stories are written. They felt their connection grow and it was as though it would be painful to be torn from the other. So it was then that they decided that their meeting must be FATE.

To test this out, the two went on their separate ways...and decided that if they met again, they would KNOW for sure that it was their DESTINY to be together. So they departed. They went on their separate ways.

And as the years passed, a plague hit their city. Many people died. There was huge change taking place in the city and huge technological advances. New people were born and old people died. Outwardly, they changed too, the 2 of them, though inside they remained true. The 2 of them met new people who were maybe 75% or 50% or 25% perfect for them but it was never quite the same. And in the back of their minds, a sweet memory lingered, the unanswered mystery.

And years later...there was this guy...who was walking down the street...and there was a beautiful girl that was walking down the street towards him. And as they passed each other, both people recalled a faint glimpse of a memory of having seen each other before. Both felt a stirring in their chest that they could not understand.

But they continued walking their own separate ways.

2011-10-31T00:11:00.018+08:00

Summer by joe hisaishi is amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEb4TG10jW8

Somehow though, it sounded way better when michelle played it for me, maybe cos being next to the piano and hearing it through a screen is too different. Her feel of the music and the way she expressed and interpreted it was... breathtaking.

Life here is really good. Besides my family and friends, I dont want to go back to singapore anymore. Haiz. Haha. College is supposed to be the best time of our lives right? Well its not falling short of expectations.

On friday 28 oct we had our second entz or halloween bob. The theme was worst nightmare. I had NO IDEA what to go as. I tried asking for suggestions but mainly people asked me to go as myself. Hahaha. Sheila asked me to go as a giant hamburger. On the day of entz I still had no idea what to go as. Getting a costume was becoming the worst nightmare.

Seb had a really cool idea actually. He said keejia him and i could go as rock paper and scissors and be each other's worst nightmares.

Wanted to go as a devil cos poundland and pure party were selling the devil props really cheap. But in the end I got inspiration and went as a MAD SCIENTIST. Hahaha.

My mom's reaction to that was "hahaha, scary mehhhh" and im like "no... of course not scary la, scary costumes all cost money leh" and I could hear my sis laughing in the background of skype cos its like a running joke and recurrent theme in our family and I said "worst nightmare is not having enough money, i should go as that, pull my pockets out like bunny ears"

Anyway, some pics!

Before the party. My mad scientist er "costume". Im standing beside bella swan and edward cullen.

Edward attacking me while carlisle watches.

Not only is Bella good at attracting vampires, shes good at photoshop as well.

Sebastian with the measles, me holding the cure to it in my hands (looks like urine though) and a cute devil

Death separates the mad scientist and... i dno what his costume is sorry LOL. And amazingly, i identified death as nic despite him being completely covered.

Random pic. That dinosaur papier mache thingy took him 5 hours to make.

Random pic number 2

Random pic number 3

I can understand why army is his worst nightmare

Isi! Btw staircase 8 is the most awesome staircase. Her costume was that of childbirth, she had a baby hanging below her dress and bloodstained legs.

Random pic number 4

My sweatstained shirt and the banner after a night of crazy dancing.

Namo!

My staircase people are really fun btw. They seem to have crazy parties too often, sing loudly at the top of their voices and club way too often. The other day, the whole lot of them were out at the staircase and there were banging noises shouting and laughter. People were tobogganing down the stairs in a cardboard box while other people at the top threw empty cans and bits of stuff at them. Another time they were having fun sliding down the banisters of the staircase, which is plain dangerous, just imagine losing your balance and falling on the other side. Just crazy. And I've been partying so much more here than I ever did in singapore and its great fun. Though sometimes, like the time rosie organised the major lashhhhhh, i would be tired and just want to drink and not feel like clubbing.

I performed magic for rosie katie and clara in katie's room the other day. And rosie likes it alot shes been asking me to perform so often ever since. So that day in the hall i was just having lunch as usual with su yun and rosie came over and threw me a deck of cards. Sebastian confiscated my plate with one last fry on it. And they demanded I perform. Demanded is not an exaggeration. Sebastian says my last fry was at stake if i ever wanted it back. And there was this group of like 5-10 random people behind watching with su yun seb katie and rosie. Omg. So i was like hmm i'll just do a simple trick. So i did classic force (which didn work but it didn matter), then glimpse, then pretended to get the wrong card using DL and then flipped over the correct card and they were quite amazed. The ketchup-stained french fry was returned to me. It tasted sweeter than usual.

And in hall the other day with clara katie rosie and seb i did spoon bending. It was so cool that they were amazed again. Although I don't really want to perform much cos i dun want a label as the magician when i feel i dun deserve it, i am at the same time quite flattered that people can appreciate my showmanship. I don't really mind performing although I keep saying i don't want to. The point is, when i perform, i don't want it to be about me, i just want anyone who watches to be entertained and enjoy it, and for it just to be fun.

Anyway someone posted on facebook that they saw emma watson. Hmm i dno whats the fuss about her actually although this sentence may come off as ironic as im blogging about it. Anyway i heard someone saw her in a club and took a picture of her. One of her 2 burly bodyguards came over, grabbed the phone, deleted the picture and returned it to him. LOL

Btw, to all starcraft 2 players, this is HILARIOUS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6CVd4CAZ70&feature=fvwrel

And this song is sad and melancholic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_Am4cHMBKM&feature=related

After entz that day, rosie, seb, clara, katie and i sat in a circle on the floor out in the open in front of the 2 glass classrooms that are staircase 14. And we just talked and talked until chased away by people. Then we went back to my room where we just played all kinds of youtube songs and videos and talked till it was about 4am in the morning. Clara mostly requested spanish songs, seb wanted old songs and a gay video charlie the unicorn. Rosie and katie were abit of everytihng. And i listen to piano songs and songs that no one listens to so when i had to play music that everyone knew and liked it was hard. Hahaha. Everyone seems to know more about the pop songs and current cool songs much better than i do. Not much has changed, it seems :)

Oh yea rosie and i went to play badminton as well. There we met sogre (dno how to spell). We played 3 matches of doubles. Every match, the side i was on lost LOL. Everyone there was supposed to be "casual" but yea right. Rosie was on her school team for badminton and good enough to be captain. And the others were just as good. But still, it was really fun. I want to go again next week. Namo still insists that girls shouldn be allowed to play badminton though. Hahahaha.

Ytd keejia came over to study. Then namo came over and all former pretense of studying ceased. We just talked.

Today I was invited to have dinner at aunt pauline's and martin's place with michelle. They are really really cool people. I dno if they are supposed to be super super rich or what because i have heard and think they are but they dun put on airs at all. I was afraid it might be awkward since i only met P once before but she makes me feel totally at home.

Before that i was supposed to get something for them for it would be rude to go empty handed. But tesco and sainsbury and just about everything was closed. Nothing much opens at 6pm on a sunday. Finally i bought some cookies with all that was left of my money, i had to dig out all my coins too. I told michelle i bought them a kfc super value meal cos it was the only thing that was open and she was calmly like "and you are going to give it to them?" hahahaha interesting reaction

We had a great dinner with rice, soup and tofu and vegetables because she thought we might miss singapore food and YES i do miss singapore food, i ate so much at dinner and even as i type this now my stomache growls.

After that, i played chinese chess with guy. Hes surprisingly good, probably because of his international chess foundation. Anyway, i knew i wouldn lose because it would be embarassing to after 6 years on the HWACHONG chess team. But i really never expected to see much less play xiangqi here. I do miss it.

Then we helped guy with hw abit. Michelle just gets overexcited and goes on and on and on about hw and drawing graphs. Shes really passionate about things sometimes which is quite an attractive personality trait, i feel. Too bad hw is boring. And i cant really say what i feel because michelle's advice is every mother's dream "practise and grind 50 hours a day and you'll just get better, write down all your formulas and even though you don't like it at first you will soon cross a threshold after which doing maths will become really enjoyable. Oh and do you have ten year series, you should keep doing that it helps a lot" And pauline began asking her about where she got the ten year series and whether she could buy one for him etc etc hahahaha. Its very typical, mothers all want their children to do well, i cant blame her.

Then pauline was like "yea u will not like it at first but after you've practised a ton you will grow to like it, don't you agree, leslie?"

And im like "oh yea, thats... true haha" LOL. My advice to guy would probably be "hey, youre smart, its in your genes. Just screw around and have fun, u will do fine, trust me"

After that we fixed up the keyboard. Pauline has perfect pitch but only to the white notes. A weird concept. Its not really relative pitch because she doesn need a base note to identify the white notes. But shes not sure if she has perfect pitch. Anyway michelle played first, summer. A lot more mistakes than when she played for me. Its harder to play without warming up first and under pressure. Then she played river flows in you and i was like "oh damn, youre playing the only song i can play properly from start to end" hahaha.

After that it was my turn. Michelle say i can play river flows again, its a different interpretation after all. But i played secret time travel theme. With quite a bit of mistakes. The starting was a bit shaky but I did well at the first sticking point where i tend to screw up more. Then the arpeggios were not very good, it is way better when i practise alone. But they enjoyed it and pauline asked me for the score.

Then pauline played a small portion of a piece. After which ivor played with one hand and she just hopped in with accompaniment and it sounded really good. Shes talented thats for sure.

She drove us back and dapaoéd some of that soup for me. I look forward to going back and playing fun songs on their electone.

Oh yes and shuhui and minzhi came over.

Im quite behind on work. Sam is coming a week from now so i really got to mug like crazy. Not only do i need to catch up i need to get ahead so i can have fun the few days hes around. But life here is still AWESOME

2011-10-26T07:58:00.009+08:00

I already went to sleep but I got up again to post this. Thats one thing about me, when i go to sleep, my brain just wont shut up. So it takes me a long time to fall asleep. And in the library when im trying to get my brain to work it goes to sleep, especially after lunch =.=

I realised that we should learn for knowledge. Ultimately, that is what it is all for. Everything else is icing on the cake, the degree, the recognition, everything else. We chose the subjects we do in university, we should love the subject. If you don't like your current subject, stop doing it and stop wasting time. Time is so precious. If you can't do what you really wanted to do because your grades werent good enough or cos (insert excuse), you haven't tried hard enough. There is always a way. So we should all have passion for what we are studying.

Having said that, along the way, work gets monotonous. It gets routine. It becomes a chore. We get bogged down by assignments and tests and we complain and whine about the endless essays. We lose focus. And most importantly, we lose the joy that should come from doing what we have chosen and what we like to do. We differentiate work and play. "Oh yea just let me finish this fking essay before I celebrate the completion of my 30 hour assignment!" No, I say. The essay should be part of the celebration. Why shouldn it be, when its on a subject one is passionate about?

Stop chasing deadlines, stop chasing grades, stop chasing that first class honours. Focus on learning which should be your heart's desire and everything should fall into place. And if it doesnt, so be it, nothing was lost. After all, there is always the interference of luck and fate. People say, the greater the expectation and hope, the greater the disappointment when it fails to come true. That doesn mean stop putting in effort so that one will not be disappointed at the end. It does mean not being dependent on the outcome, but being in it for the process of learning and discovery.

And then I thought about my journey studying law so far and how all that is applicable. Reading after tons of readings. So many! Essays following essays. It does feel like a chore, it also feels a lot like work. I thought abit more and realised that there are a few parts to getting good at a subject.

There is the knowledge acquisition where one reads or attends clases or tutorials and learns. That part is probably the most interesting, we get to learn what we've always wanted to.

THEN there is the structuring and organising of the knowledge into 1) notes (soft or hard copy) and in 2) our brains. This is the really boring part. Without some form of structure, it is very unlikely that one can just read and read and keep acquiring knowledge. The brain will be like a sieve, the information will go in and some of it will stay, other important bits will come out again. There has to be some way to organise it inside, it cannot simply be haphazard bits of information floating about everywhere. Without organising of knowledge, it is also impossible to revise for exams. Unfortunately, this aspect of any subject is not only laboured with tedium but also extremely time consuming.

And finally comes the memorising part where, after structuring your notes and knowledge perfectly, all that is left is to memorise. This is the easiest part imo, much of it should already be intuitive from doing so much of organising the information.

I am fortunate enough to study in the university of oxford where no exams count except the final exam at the end of year 3 and there is no promotion criteria whatsoever. This gives immense room for trial and error, and for trying new approaches to learning the subject. I think I want to start from the beginning and only follow loosely, the structure I have been given by the school. For instance, I keep doing essays on recklessness, non fatal offences, causation. The essays are just memorising and regurgitation with a bit of shallow thought about the issues at hand. There isnt a deeper appreciation involved.

I only superficially understand some of the important functions the law serves (retributory/deterrence etc), but I probably cannot answer some of the questions like "Why should we have law? Is this the best way to govern a society? Isnt there any other way? What are the functions of the law and what if their objectives contradict? How does law in practice differ from what it should be due to resource/manpower constraints?"

I think I am going to start from the beginning and try to learn more amidst my perpetual state of essay crisis. Work less, learn more

2011-10-25T07:37:00.000+08:00

Steph recommended me this song which I quite liked: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5Xv97raW7w&feature=player_embedded

2011-10-24T04:09:00.007+08:00

I went to eat at noodle nation with the singaporeans today. And really, I feel Im not going to make any real friends here, sad as it may sound. I shouldn blame people. The problem probably lies with me.

When I reached 2 of them were talking about work. Shes always going on about her essay crises, worrying about work and talking about the ton of stuff she has to study and how she thinks shes not doing enough and bla bla bla bla bla.

We sat down and ordered food. The conversation at the dinner table was something like this, someone says something, someone else slams his something and makes a judgement call, the first someone tries to defend himself and they end up arguing endlessly over STUPID THINGS.

Like we were paying money and counting loose change and he said

"oh yea dun take the cabs here. They dont have spare change and if you dont have exact amount then they will just rip you off. Thats what happened to nicole"

"LOL, why would anyone be stupid enough to take a cab here?!"

"No cos nicole went somewhere far."

"oh.. where did she go"

"she went post office i think to collect stuff"

"Why does she need to go far, there are so many post offices around!"

"i think she needed to get it from a DHL post office or something"

"Can't she just collect it from _____"

"yea but... bla bla bla"

AND IT JUST GOES ON AND ON AND ON

Someone stated some econs thing and got the whole table to argue over some stupid econs AD curve and gradient for 10 minutes.

Another someone said some equation and they argued for another 10 minutes.

And this other time they argued over which was better used for identification, a passport or an identity card

Before that we were talking about constitutional law and i said something quite dumb. I said "arent members of parliament chosen by the cabinet?" its more like members of the cabinet are chosen from the parliament. My knowledge of politics while bad isnt THIS bad, i know that members of the parliament are elected but being completely politically apathetic, its easy to confuse things. But well everyone else just loves and enjoys reading these stuff, they can probably spell the names of every MP and minister backwards in reverse alphabetical order.

So this was the basis for the next shit. We were walking back and I said I don't really care much for politics, don't find it interesting.

And he asked "i don't understand why u are studying law."

I said well im not going to abandon the whole subject because I dont like a certain small aspect of it.

He says but its not a small aspect, its a huge aspect as law serves politics.

So i said legal dealings doesn necessarily have to involve a lot of politics.

He says politics forms the basis of and is where the law was derived. As one can imagine, it went on and on and on and on and on and on till i said,

"well yea sure it is important, and im going to have to study the political aspect right?"

And he said no, when are you going to?

I replied next term, when im doing constitutional law.

He asked what about singapore if you are going to serve in singapore, are you going to read up on all the constitutional and political stuff?

I said if it does not interest me, no

Came the reply there you have it, you can't practise effectively if you don't know these things.

And I said ok then i won't practise.

He asked so what are you going to be? youre studying law right now

And I say i will be whatever makes me happy

And from there we talked about life. I said, Im living life for myself.

He says its not practical and one has no choice but to do what is right.

I say if I don't like it, and if it doesnt make me happy, I won't do it.

He says if thats the way you think, I really dont know how you are going to enter marriage if you are not even going to care for your kids and your wife

I said i didn say that. All i meant was that i live by my own values and on my own terms, and not do things because society or my parents or the media has placed those expectations on me

He says well if you have lots of problems with your wife then youre not going to care, youre just going to divorce her

I said that indeed, if we cannot get along, i would do that. And i asked him, wouldnt you? Or will you continue to suffer in silence for the rest of your life

He said no the point is, you wont even try

I said i didn say that

He says he often does things he doesn like to do because he has to and its the right thing to do. He asks what I am going to do if i dont want to practise law.

I said worse come to worse, if i really hate the practice of law, i can always go back to giving tuition and i can draw 2k + a month.

He says i think like that because I havent tried surviving on 2k + a month trying to pay for all the bills and food and water.

I asked him, so if theres a job you hate that draws money and a job you like that pays you 2k +, youre gonna do the job that you hate?

He says ya, you have no choice! Else you cant even survive.

I ask him what is the point of so much money when you do a job you hate which takes up the majority of your life and you hate your life

He says well it may be something I hate but maybe im bonded for only the next 6 years? Or ten years or so? And im ok with that! and begins to give a breakdown of how much it costs to pay for everything and how 2k is pathetic to the point of absurdity. He says, yea sure you can survive, if you walk everywhere you go, skip some meals etc.

I say Im ok with making sacrifices. I rather do that than do something I dont like and earn so much money... for what? And i say so we're just different.

And different we are. I dno whats the point of these superficial and shallow friendships I am making. More shallow than a toilet bowl. Stick a hand in and fingers will scrape rock bottom before the shit stains your wrist. Contrived interactions and friendships as artificial as food colouring. It colours your life to give a superficial appetising appeal but adds nothing to the taste and substance of it.

And really, reality is sad enough without people constantly reminding you that you've got to be practical. I don't care much for money or material possession. I like to believe that I care more for values, friendships and people, and I hope i can live up to that. I hope i won't be rudely awakened from this delusional fantasy one day

2011-10-22T04:15:00.002+08:00

Shuhui and minzhi just left. I find myself blasting simple plan's "perfect" alone in my room while the rest of my staircase is partying their friday night away. I was sick a week ago with fresher's flu and still havent fully recovered. Then yesterday was OUMSSA drinks with the hong kongers and the pub was noisy and the music loud so i spent the whole night socialising and straining my voice.

Then today, shuhui and minzhi came. It was kind of a last minute thing, they told me last night they'd be coming and I said great! i'll show you around. First they came up to my room and we skyped shiyu and yingli at the same time. Then we visited christ church. Im so jealous, christ church is really beautiful and old and awesome. Then we visited st john's the richest college in oxford. Ian and nicole very kindly acted as our tour guides.

Then we had dinner in hall. It was much easier inviting 2 non-ox students than I thought. Hall today was great although by hall standards its just so so. Mushroom soup, some beef wrap in salsa and some pudding and cream dessert. Im so full now.

Anyway im still having a sore throat and if i socialise or party anymore im seriously going to lose my voice. I really cant wait to recover.

Oh yea the people here are generally very good looking. Like 1 in 10 singaporeans are good looking, but its probably 1 in 10 here who are not. Almost all the asians, and there are quite a lot, i've seen are good looking.

This monday, 4 days ago, i went for my first kickboxing training and paid 50 pounds to sign up. It was awesome, padwork is the best destresser known to mankind and it makes me more high than alcohol.

Oh, just signed up for indoor skydiving in the hols! At least I have something to look forward to even if i cant go for the varsity ski trip which made me quite sad

So many things happening. Blog another day, too tired and i really need to do more work im slacking way too much

2011-10-12T18:39:00.001+08:00

Jesus: Hello. Did you call me?

Man: Called you? No.... Who is this?

Jesus: This is Jesus. I heard your prayers. So I thought I will chat.

Man: I do pray. Just makes me feel good. I am actually busy now. I am in the midst of something.

Jesus: What are you busy at? Ants are busy too.

Man: Don’t know. But I can’t find free time. Life has become hectic. It’s rush hour all the time.

Jesus: Sure. Activity gets you busy. But productivity gets you results. Activity consumes time. Productivity frees it.

Man: I understand. But I still can’t figure out. By the way, I was not expecting YOU to buzz me on instant messaging chat.

Jesus: Well I wanted to resolve your fight for time, by giving you some clarity. In this net era, I wanted to reach you through the medium you are comfortable with.

Man: Tell me, why has life become complicated now?

Jesus: Stop analyzing life. Just live it. Analysis is what makes it complicated.

Man: why are we then constantly unhappy?

Jesus: Your today is the tomorrow that you worried about yesterday. You are worrying because you are analyzing. Worrying has become your habit. That’s why you are not happy.

Man: But how can we not worry when there is so much uncertainty?

Jesus: Uncertainty is inevitable, but worrying is optional.

Man: But then, there is so much pain due to uncertainty.

Jesus: Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.

Man: If suffering is optional, why do good people always suffer?

Jesus: Diamond cannot be polished without friction. Gold cannot be purified without fire. Good people go through trials, but don’t suffer. With that experience their life become better not bitter.

Man: You mean to say such experience is useful?

Jesus: Yes. In every term, Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first and the lessons afterwards.

Man: But still, why should we go through such tests? Why can’t we be free from problems?

Jesus: Problems are Purposeful Roadblocks Offering Beneficial Lessons (to) Enhance Mental Strength. Inner strength comes from struggle and endurance, not when you are free from problems.

Man: Frankly in the midst of so many problems, we don’t know where we are heading.

Jesus: If you look outside you will not know where you are heading. Look inside. Looking outside, you dream. Looking inside, you awaken. Eyes provide sight. Heart provides insight.

Man: Sometimes not succeeding fast seems to hurt more than moving in the right direction. What should I do?

Jesus: Success is a measure as decided by others. Satisfaction is a measure as decided by you. Knowing the road ahead is more satisfying than knowing you rode ahead. You work with the compass. Let others work with the clock.

Man: In tough times, how do you stay motivated?

Jesus: Always look at how far you have come rather than how far you have to go. Always count your blessing, not what you are missing.

Man: What surprises you about people?

Jesus: When they suffer they ask, “Why me?" When they prosper, they never ask “Why me” Everyone wishes to have truth on their side, but few want to be on the side of the truth.

Man: Sometimes I ask, who I am, why am I here. I can’t get the answer.

Jesus: Seek not to find who you are, but to determine who you want to be. Stop looking for a purpose as to why you are here. Create it. Life is not a process of discovery but a process of creation.

Man: How can I get the best out of life?

Jesus: Face your past without regret. Handle your present with confidence. Prepare for the future without fear.

Man: One last question. Sometimes I feel my prayers are not answered.

Jesus: There are no unanswered prayers. At times the answer is NO.

Man: Thank you for this wonderful chat. I am so happy to start the day with a new sense of inspiration.

Jesus: Well. Keep the faith and drop the fear. Don’t believe your doubts and doubt your beliefs. Life is a mystery to solve not a problem to resolve. Trust me. Life is wonderful if you know how to live.

Man: Thank you so much.

Jesus: You are always welcome. Have a good day my friend. "Always remember, God's Word is the Word for YOU ."

2011-10-12T06:14:00.005+08:00

The card my hc friends made for me. The queen of spades comment really made me laugh out loud.

Where are the cards?

Lamzy and the divinesage

Kai the ghost

Greeting a very late mingwei

The shane sim

The .... what was zixian's epic name for our chess team? Something like 残剑队。残 meant handicap. We were christened as such because after JC we kinda stopped playing and lost touch. But i prefer to think of it as, when we're done with our opponents, they're gonna be handicapped. Hahaha. After all we were unstoppable in secondary sch and jc.

So heres the 4 of us, zixian, alvin, the dustbin and I. The dustbin is there in place of jinxiang who bangsehed for a stupid bridge comp hahaha.

Xiao xiang, kill jianxing, incredible leslie, soon-to-be-doctor enloong and xianny

Jacque and christina

Random

In a frenzy thinking I was late for the flight and fishing for my boarding pass.

Thats the photo album uploaded by xian. Most of the photos are with 4th gu zhe though so I've only got some.

Today's dinner in hall, for apetisers its some cold dish like salad or something. There was some creamy thing on top. I asked ross and its goat cheese. I took a small bite of it. It was yucky. But i try to give new things a chance so i tried the goat cheese with this thing that looked like a grape (but was actually an olive, i'd never eaten an olive whole before) and omg it was so bitter and disgusting that i felt like puking. Eating an entire olive with goat cheese is possibly the worst thing i've tasted except besides pig liver or something.

But i ate the rest of the salad and smeared abit of the cheese and actually started to like it. Before i reached the end of the dish i was enjoying the cheese and finished it all. I ate another half an olive. Still hated it.

Then in the law bod, thanks to the damn cheese, i had diarrhoea twice =.=

Anyway the toilet cubicle in the law bod has tons of scribbles on it. Above the toilet paper was this

"Free law degrees. Please take one"

Then there was an essay question

"Life is a toilet and death the final flush. Discuss"

And random quotes

"Grunt. Poo. Grunt"

And continued discussions from different patrons of the same cubicle

"lawyers are cunts"
"Depends on what we're going on about... wait what?"
"Depends on your definition of cunt"
"Im no gynaecologist... but LAWYERS?"

Today, sirk's lecture was a joke. Hes a roman law lecturer but spent the first half an hour showing us art paintings and describing how beautiful it was. Thats taking bachelor of ARTS jurisprudence a little too literally.

Then we had tut with dr helleringer. I experienced first hand the pain of awkward and total silence. But it went quite well more or less. She spent most of it telling us the proper way to write an essay and I spent a lot of time nodding and saying yea. Nodding isnt hard.

Then I went for a third lecture and slept throughout. Like i just told myself ok im gonna rest my head on the wall and listen with my eyes shut. And that was it LOL. After the lecture these 2 brits were like "you had a really enjoyable lecture", laughed and asked if i was really sleeping.

2011-10-11T05:15:00.016+08:00

I keep trying to get everything I want to blog about up to date before blogging. But things are happening so fast and Im so busy that the day will never come so I will just blog in bits and pieces about my life in oxford. This was typed on my second or third day here:

11:11. Celia once told me that it means someone is missing you. I sure hope so. Im really missing Singapore.

On day 1 i met a new zealander. There were lotsa people talking and socialising in the JCR. We were supposed to meet there.

With some courage I walked in and sat down. The very nice JCR president Benson came soon after. We all talked. Its quite hard to talk to the brits/europeans/USA or well, whites. Their accent is heavy and our cultural differences and slangs are quite different. Though we can mostly understand each other of course. But its very different. For instance hugging is quite a standard greeting between guys and girls. And they drink a lot and club a lot. But a lot of them seem to be really nice people.

So anyway, the new zealander called Ralph was the only other chinese in the room. I talked to him and we built some rapport. But he kept asking about whether I read the reading list already and being worried about the impending workload. Me, Im not worried at all not cause Im very good or anything, but Im just chilling and taking things as they come. So we went to a pub to socialise on the first night Im here in oxford. I met a lot of other very nice people. At the end of the night, Ralph said he didn meet too many first year law students and was disappointed. Cos he wanted to "size up the competition". I should have known Uni would be like that, although Im still disappointed.

Yesterday I met another singaporean from catz. She was very pleasant to talk to and we went around ox settling bank stuff and settling miscellaneous registration and internet stuff. It was quite enjoyable to shop with her. At the end of the day, we went back to catz. My internet still couldn work although it was supposed to have been settled. Her internet was working though so I asked if I could come over to see how she logged in. She said her parents set a "no one visits"rule. How refreshingly singaporean in this open brit culture. So I said my internet wasn working and asked if she minded coming over to help. A 2 minute walk. And she said sorry, she had "a lot of things to settle".

Disillusioned, I went back to unpacking all my stuff. Sebastian called at 7.10 and we went to dinner together. I said hi to this other chinese girl I happened across on the way down the stairs. She queued behind us. Turns out shes called yunfei and shes from china and went to study in singapore for 4 years and shes from hwachong too. So the three of us went to get dinner together. We queued for like an hour but conversation with them lifted my mood considerably. In fact I think we were talking and laughing the loudest when queueing and at dinner. Cant really remember all the things we said but there was this one time we asked yunfei how to say "this queue is taking forever"in her wuxi dialect. And she said it in chinese and we were like staring at her and i said "ërm i can understand that, thats mandarin". And her expression was so funny apparently being in the uk screws with your ability to distinguish between languages.

Then sebastian said he was trying to sms in chinese that day and forgot how to say good morning =.= After that we asked yunfei's cca and she said SSRC. Cool i was in ssrc too. Then she said maths appreciation club and seb and I couldn stop laughing, like maths APPRECIATION LOL. So seb was really curious and asked what they do for club meetings. Yunfei said math appreciation talks. Seb asks if they talk in maths but yunfei says they teach you how to appreciate maths but they speak in english. And seb asked if they learn to appreciate the art form that is the plus sign Hahaha

Dinner was a lot of stuff. Beef shepherd pie, fries, orange juice, ice cream, ginger cake in cream, mushroom soup and a banana. Wow. I thought it was pretty awesome, take as much as I want for a fixed price even if I cant finish them all. Then i realised i was paying for each individual item fml. Well, i didn take a fruit and a drink when i first came out and because I thought i was entitled to take as much as i wanted, i went back into the kitchen and took a banana and orange juice and went out without paying LOL. So technically I stole a banana and orange juice. But the requisite mens rea was absent so a conviction cannot be establi... let's not get there.

After dinner seb and yunfei came over to fix my internet. Yunfei's isnt working as well, its a staircase 8 thing, not my problem, we found out, cos seb couldn fix it despite him being able to use the internet over at staircase 5.

So now im communicationless. I cant use my phone and I dont have an internet. But i think jingyi may give me her spare giffgaff sim shes rly nice. Then all I need to do is to wait for my visa/debitcard to ship from Lloyds and I can start using it.

Anyway, the weather in the uk is really nice! Its like perma air conditioning outdoors but not cold enough such that a single t shirt wouldn be enough.

Anyway, lets backtrack a little. At the airport, so many people came to see me off and Im really thankful that you guys came. So its shoutouts to

My parents and 2 of the best sisters in the world.
Da gu ma, da gu zhang and lionel who gave me a huge hongbao and came to send me off
Er gu zhang er gu ma for the lunch treat and the hongbao
Jacqueline and Christina who came to send me off
San gu zhe who came to send me off and gave a hongbao
Er shu and benjamin who came to send me off
Si gu zhe si gu zhang, ken, keith and shawn for the treat, hongbao and sending me off
John mingwei yongxiang for the cute lion and card, for sending me off, for being the best friends in the world and for asking where my monkey's passport was
Enloong and xianyun who are awesome as always and who came to send me off
Pingshun, nic ang, kuanhui and lamzy for the card, the book and for sending me off although you guys arrived 30 seconds before I had to run for my flight hahaha
Alvin, zixian and the dustbin for being the best chinese chess team singapore has ever seen. And will ever see. And for sending me off.
Shane for being such a great friend since secondary school and for coming to send me off.
Shiyu, cheryl, yingli, vivian, boon siew, puku, bianca, gabrielle for caring enough to message.
Noelle and her family for the card and book and well wishes.

I hope I didn miss out anyone! Thanks for everything!!

Anyway, a few funny things happened on my way to st catz. First, barely after I stepped into the hall thingy to run for my flight, my bag sling strap broke. Then I reached the checkpt or something where I was told to open my bag and give my boarding pass. As I was already late for the flight, or so I thought, I hurriedly scrambled for it while the bag strap dangled annoyingly in front of the officer. Then the lion that yx and mw gave dropped outa the bag as i retrieved my boarding pass and he narrowed his eyes at it probably thinking I was trying to be funny LOL.

As the other passengers and I were walking through the passageway to board the flight, there was a blackout. Im beginning to suspect I have some Xmen mutant powers to jam IT systems and electronic devices. When I was registering for the enrolment cert with keejia, the system worked everytime for her and screwed up everytime for me. Same system same comp just different person using. Then when registering for a bank account at Lloyds, the lady was like telling me she was so happy cos she thought my registration would be a fast and easy one and she was just getting it done really quickly when the computer hanged. Then my staircase's internet refuses to work.

So anyway, in the darkness, someone muttered "this isnt good"and everyone laughed nervously. Thank goodness I didn crash the plane we were in. Anyway, i got randomly assigned aisle seats twice for both flights which was great.

At the singapore customs, they told me to put my laptop separately into a basket to pass it through the detector. I had an envelope of some cash stashed and tucked in the laptop and the officer was like staring at the screen trying to decide if I was smuggling money out of Singapore lol

The flights were long, sleepless and uncomfortable. The queue at the airport was an hour too at the uk side.

At the airport, I took the heathrow-oxford bus to high street and dragged my 30 kg luggage and 10 kg handheld up a slope to get to st catz. On the way i met seb. I have a tendency to meet people I know but not know that Im supposed to know them.

Happened for keejia too. So anyway I asked him his name and he said seb and i said leslie and we were both like "öhh i know you". Anyway seb runs and gyms too so it looks like theres someone who can do those with me at least

Anyway my room sucks. Its small, doesn have a fridge, wash basin or toilets, tends to attract bees and is the farthest room from the entrance. But to be honest I dun really mind. It has quite a cosy feel to it now that I've settled in somewhat and there are ups to being farther away, its more quiet for instance. Im trying to find ways to use the muay thai hitting thing without generating too much noise to irritate my neighbours. And I have no idea where to get sand for my sandbags.

Anyway oxford's matric week is like 15th oct. UCL would have had 3 weeks of school already by then and we just matriculated! And then oxford's holidays starts one of the earliest LOL. 8 weeks per term 3 terms a year omfg its the slackest shit ever. And yunfei who is studying maths has only 11 hours of lectures and tutorials a week, thats 2 hours a day only in weekdays LOL I bet nus people stay in school 11 hours a DAY. I asked what shes gonna do in the rest of the time and she just said "sleep"

I wonder when my internet will go up so I can post this. Anyway, going for lunch now:)

End of draft

Its been several days since. I have settled in considerably. The first few days were quite friendless and lonely. They brought me out to pubs and stuff and i bought like CHINESE FOOD at wok n roll on the first day and didn really talk to anyone much. Although i dont strongly feel the need to, it still remains that i was unable to fit in at all. But as i was telling seb and keejia, there are people who have it way harder. Theres this guy called tom in catz. Hes blind, and needs a hearing aid and cant walk properly and hes here studying in oxford. People like that really put our problems in perspective. Like wow im so homesick while that guy is blind, half deaf and lame. And music also keeps me going

I like this place more than singapore although i miss singapore for a lot of things. If i grew up here, it would have been the best of both worlds, i wouldn miss my friends and family, wouldn have such a massive cultural gap w the brits and woulda had a better environment.

I cant even remember what I did in fresher's week. Mainly there was a lot of clubbing, partying and dancing. Like every single night there would be tickets for oxford nightclubs available. Tian yi said I would get a cultural shock when i got here. I didnt. At least i didnt till the night of the name game entz. See the theme of it was that we were to dress up in costumes that began with the same letter as the first letter of our names. So I had to go in something that began with the letter L. I couldn think of anything at all. Lion is so laaaaaaaame. Someone said lobster. Yea right. Someone else suggested lemon. Lol i guess i could wear a yellow shirt and stuff pillows in it to give it the shape. I thought of going as L in deathnote. How hard would that be, some dark eyeliner, wear a white longsleeve sweatshirt with no longer and sit down with my legs on the chair. Easy peasy. But there is a high likelihood that no one here has read deathnote.

So i couldn really be bothered about it, i was thinking at worst i'd just go as myself and say i went as a Lawyer cos im a law student LOL. But descending a flight of stairs this guy called joe (who smokes, drinks, spouts profanities and has this huge sign on his bedroom door JOE'S ROOM. NO PANTS, NO PROBLEM) suggested "Go as a LADY" and i thought oh cool why not.

So i called steph and asked to borrow her clothes to which she agreed. But before I had a chance to get them from her, my staircase mates offered to lend me theirs and before long there were like 3 or 4 of them fussing all over me trying to put my dress and bra on properly and putting on lipstick, offering makeup and asking if i wanted to take off my jeans and go in fishnets. It was soo funny, like they stuck out the bra and i lifted my hands expecting it to go under and they all started giggling and like "hes never put on a bra before!" (LIKE DUH)and the worst part is I dno the name of the girl whos bra i was wearing, in fact i didn know the names of half my staircase people cos i forgot and was embarassed to ask and even right now, i dunt know the names of a few of them.

So anyway i rejected the offer to remove my jeans hoping to preserve a shred of dignity. I didn feel totally out of place though cos everyone was in pretty wacky costumes in my staircase. I shall post pictures next time (not of myself obviously) the costumes were pretty cool.

The party was supposed to start at 8 but apparently its customary to go 2 hours late so we just sat around in one of their rooms and talked for 2 hours. Well they talked, no one really talked to me and i didn really talk to anyone besides the occassional small talk. it was enjoyable enough to listen actually. Cos usually when they sat around like that i wouldn even be a part of their group and it'd feel weird to self invite. Listening to them is like the best exposure of real brit culture that i can never expect to learn in a school or from a textbook. This was what i came for.

They talked about all kinds of things. Anything and everything. And really, brits are quite hilarious to listen to they are alot more humorous than singaporeans. Its just through training i guess cos they have a culture of trying to be witty i suppose. There were drinks passed around too (obviously) and then they played never ever have i ever. Like a person says never ever have i ever done something and if the others have, they drink. So this guy came in and said "never ever have i ever had a cock in my mouth". And from there the conversation spun outa control.

Its quite interesting to hear about the sexual escapedes of the brits. They fuck a lot and are adventurous, they do it in parks, on buses, in libraries. And all these were from the girls, who arent ashamed to talk about it at all. None of the girls in the room were virgins and a few of them had like 10 different sex partners or thereabouts. One of them stayed with her boyfriend and says she has to do it with him like 12 times a week LOL. And they talked about the age groups of the people they were together with and how they hooked up, whether the girls cummed on orgasm and whether they have done it with strangers. I shall spare the details. But quite apparently, intelligence has nothing to do with promiscuity and partying everyday doesn affect one's ability to do well academically.

After that we turned up at the name game entz party. I had some english cidar or something and took a few pictures. Was really quite high at that time. The music started and we all started dancing. I danced so hard it was crazy i was sweating and actually feeling slightly out of breath from dancing. The music was loud and blasting and it was great to just let loose. I was with seb keejia rosie namo and kathy in a circle doing both guys and girls dance moves cos im crossed dressed. The feeling of liberation and not being judged (or maybe it was just the effects of alcohol) was exhilarating.

Other noteworthy events were like fresher's fair. I signed up for way to many things although I already know im only going to stick in kickboxing and wingchun. I have not been training since i got here though and have not even been conditioning my shins or knuckles at all because of the noise it generates. I dont really want people knocking and asking why im hammering something into the dorm walls when i use that wooden thingy. So im probably gonna be abit outa touch when i first go back. I really want to train i just wish i had the space to do it. Maybe i can book the music room everyday and have the privacy to condition there, it should be sound proof right? Anyway my college has a bookable music room with 2 grand pianos and a harpischord so its awesome i already booked it for this friday and am looking forward to it.

Fresher's fair had tons of other interesting stuff. Like they pay you to get infected with malaria then they try to treat you. And there was this communist society that approached kianyang LOL

I also missed some compulsory briefings. Like the one after the fresher's fair, I took mel around to buy her groceries cos she was sick and missed it so I wont be able to identify all the important people in the college cos they were introduced there. Way to go, school hasnt even started and im skipping stuff. Though I intend to skip tons of lectures in future because i think im more suited to self study.

I also went to oxford club lava ignite with sebastian keejia rosie and namo. It was really crowded because of all the fresher's probably so I didn really enjoy it. Its quite similar to singapore clubs though. I dun like the techno/trance music that clubs play too, they played a few songs like firework which i really enjoyed in the club, wish there were more, there are tons of clubbing songs or house music they could play.

Went to dinner with tianyi, kianyang and philip. Some posh french restaurant with really awesome food and really not-awesome prices. Then we headed back to tian's college, worcestor college bar to get some drinks. Emma watson's college. Tian offered to show us her pidgeon hole lol but none of us were really interested. She also said when she answered a question in tut or lecture or something someone shouted "And thats 10 points for GRYFFINDOR!" which made her damn pissed off.

I also remember in the library. I was hunting for all the sources for my readings. The first lecture or tutorial has not even started and we had 2 essays due. When we went for our law briefing, the first thing the tutors said to us (the gist of it not actual words):

"In oxford, the first thing you have to get used to is feeling mediocre. We understand that you are probably used to doing really well and being at the forefront of your academic pursuits in all your previous schools. But here in oxford, you have to come to terms with the fact that there are people who are better than you. Deal with it

Secondly, we know that previously, most of you are probably used to putting in minimal amounts of work and still being able to do reasonably well. We can tell you quite frankly that that ends here. In oxford, you need to put in a LOT of hard work just to get by!"

And the speech continues. A very sobering morning for us, as hugh aptly describes. The instructions on the paper were not any less reassuring: "Note that you are probably not required to spend, on average, more than 30 hours of work on a given tutorial" LOL fuck, work i do in jc i spend 2 hours tops and its done.

So as i was saying, I was in the library searching for all my books. Took an hour. After i finally got them all, like 5-6 of them, the bell rang. It was the first time in my life that i prayed it was a firebell. But nope. It was the library closing.

i'd like to share some really funny epic fails. Singaporean education system makes it so that we are half assed in chinese and english at the same time instead of being very proficient in both. And somehow along the way we managed to develop an accent such that our chinese sounds different from china and our english sounds different from all the western countries.

It was a night where i was just back from lava. I was brushing my teeth and all that when my staircase mate came into the common area and gave his typical greeting like "hey y'all right?"

So i was like "yea im good" and he went like "Good night."

So i waved a little and said "yea good night". Then i realised he was asking me if i had a good night LOL EPIC FAIL. He probably said "Had a good night?" really fast. It was really funny.

Then i was eating with ralph. I was like eating my chicken pie with spoon, like spooning the potatoes and chicken outa it cos the crust is burnt. So ralph said to me in chinese like "ni yong shou zi qie." and i was like "huh? yong shou zi qie??" he said "shi ah" and he made a cutting gesture with his hand. And im like "Huhh?" i stuck out my index finger and looked at it and looked at him and made a slicing gesture wondering if new zealanders use their index fingers to cut food. Then i realised he means shao zi which is spoon LOL fail number 2, he was asking why i was cutting with a spoon.

Number 3 isnt that funny its just one example out of the many many many. I saw kathy downstairs and shes like "So many berks, i just got them"

And she actually means BOOKS but thats how they pronounce it. Lol

I wanna buy a bike so I can travel around faster. Im mostly doing everything myself now. Sometime in the future I will want to cook my own meals I am getting sick of college food already although its really quite tasty.

Anyway, here is my first roman law essay which i have no idea how to write and probably spent less time on than this blog post:

Ubi remedium, ibi ius (“Wherever the remedy, there is also the right”): according to Nicholas (p.19), this was the governing principle in Roman law (as opposed to modern law). How was this principle expressed in the activities of the Praetor? What sort of difficulties might it have caused in the evolution of substantive law?

Ubi remedium, ibi ius means that where a remedy is given, a right is present, or at least implicitly conferred. Edicts issued by the Praetor tended to focus on remedies rather than rights. The emphasis on remedies suggests that Roman law was primarily concerned with putting right what was perceived as wrongdoing, with less emphasis on intention or motivation of a particular form of action. Roman law classified certain acts as wrongdoings and awarded remedies accordingly, in contrast to modern law which identifies the rights of individuals, then delivers remedies when the rights are impinged upon.

While very different in theory, the differences in application are more subtle. Praetors had a large amount of control over remedies. By manipulating the level of reward and punishment for different actions, Praetors could influence the actions of the citizens. A simple example would be for instance, if a Praetor were to call for heavier compensation to the injured party in the event of domestic violence. This would reinforce the idea that people had the right not to be subject to abuse. Praetors could make law in this sense and therefore serve several important functions. They can support civil law by granting more effective remedies, supplement it by giving remedies where civil law is silent and correct it by granting exceptions to bar the enforcement of a civil right or deny remedies. Praetors also grant a needed degree of flexibility to the rigid statutes of civil law. Thus the Praetor plays an important part in “making law” through his discretion.

This discretion comes in the form of edicts, issued at the beginning of a Praetor’s term, normally lasting a year. Praetors had the power to completely change the type of remedies awarded by the previous Praetor although most of them maintained the basic form and made only minor changes.

The approach of Roman law in this sense is more practical rather than idealistic (the ideals of human rights). There are limitations to this approach. It is far more difficult to obtain a comprehensive list of actions which would constitute wrongdoings than it would be to identify a set of fundamental rights which would require remedy when violated. To award remedy only against certain forms of actions set out by the magistrates, as civil law does, covers a more narrow range and is possibly open to exploitation. Though it persists that Praetors can still grant remedy where the civil law does not, this forces the Praetor to have to come up with many exceptions to the law set forth by magistrates, which might undermine it or result in separate systems of law running at the same time with differing standards. Both of the outcomes are undesirable.

The second limitation to the Praetor’s powers is that he is still bound by civil law and cannot directly contradict it. This example quoted from Barry Nicholas’s “An Introduction To Roman Law” can demonstrate this. By civil law, ownership of a slave can only be transferred by formal conveyance. If A sold his slave to B but omitted the formal conveyance, he could reclaim the slave. The Praetor however can bar such an action from taking place and effectively, B had the remedies of an owner but A did not. However, while the Praetor could give B title of the slave, B does not have the official rights to set the slave free in civil law as only the true owner can do so. If it were not set forth in law that only a true owner can manumit the slave, the Praetor might be able to grant an exception and allow B to free the slave but in this case, the Praetor is clearly powerless to grant the slave the legal rights of a free man.

Substantive law is the statutory or written law that defines rights and duties. It can be very broad and varied and different parts may evolve in different directions at different speeds. The evolution of substantive law was probably affected by many factors and the remedy-focused approach of Roman law was one of them. It would be possible to argue that Ubi remedium, ibi ius presented a difficulty for the evolution of substantive law to a certain form (for instance the more rights-centric approach of modern law). However, as the question is posed about the evolution of substantive law in general, the principle of Ubi remedium, ibi ius would merely have caused it to evolve differently. In other words, the direction of the evolution of substantive law should probably not be labeled as a “difficulty” presented. However if we are to regard evolution as an agent of change, the impact of the principle on the rate of change of substantive law can be examined as follows.

The greatest challenge that Ubi remedium, ibi ius presented to the evolution of substantive law was that it slowed it down considerably. Where civil law was inadequate, Praetor law was able to shore the gaps and made it seamless once again. The inadequacy of the statutory instrument, if indeed it was lacking, would not have been reflected and change would have been slow to take place. The edicts of the Praetors were not part of the Roman civil law and while these edicts evolved quickly changing from year to year, the codified statutes of the civil law remained unchanged.

The Praetors, by being able to manipulate remedies, also enjoyed power greater than civil law. This should have stunted the evolution of substantive law as well because the system would have been over reliant upon the Praetors instead of the statutes to oversee justice. There exists no incentive or push for written law to change or evolve. If the powers of the Praetors were limited to the control of the levels of reward and punishment, the degree of flexibility in the Roman law system might have been more desirable. But because the Praetors were able to grant new remedies and bar enforcement of rights, they were in effect able to void and create new laws. The only limit to their power was the ability to directly contradict a term put forth by the statutes, constitutions of emperors or the edicts of the magistrates.

That the principles embodied by Praetor law should present difficulties in the evolution of substantive law should be regarded as a shame. Praetors changed and issued new edicts yearly which allowed for experimentation of changes to the “law” every year. The changes to the edicts issued by the Praetors yearly mostly improved the system and moved it towards greater equity. Assimilation of the improvements made and positive changes in the civil law after careful consideration of their different impacts would have sped up the evolution of substantive law considerably.

Just kidding I think i spent more time on the essay.

Lets end with some fun stuff.

"I said glass of juice not gas the jews!"
- Hitler trolling

3 male dogs try to win the heart of a female dog. The female dog asked for them to make the best sentence with liver and cheese..

Dog1: Liver is best with cheese.
Female Dog: Not good enough.
Dog2: Cheese is best with Liver, like you and me.
Female Dog: Still no good enough..
Dog3: ... LIVER alone! CHEESE mine.

Q: What's black and white, black and white, black and white, black and white, black and white, black and white-
A: A penguin rolling down a hill. :)

Q: What's black and white laughing?
A: The penguin who pushed him.

For all tuition teachers, when your student asks
What does ________ (insert foreign greek/bombastic word) mean?

For instance:
"What does floccinaucinihilipilification mean?"

Meaning is a very abstract concept. Meaning can change simply through a change of understanding. Meaning can vary on a level of person to person.

For example, a person with a fear of cats will feel that cats mean something very different to them than a person who loves cats. However, if this person overcame his fear, and changed his understanding of cats, he might learn to at least tolerate them, as he now has a different meaning.

As cats are to those two people, floccinaucinihilipilification is something to us. It may have one definition, which only the author knows, but the meaning is something we derive outselves. It is something we seek. Is it a poor anagram of another word? Is it an acyonym for something that only you perceive? It could be one, or both, or maybe even more. Whether it is a few letters or an entire encyclopedia entry worth of meaning all depends on who you are and what you understand.

(Thats a real word by the way. It means the act of regarding something as unimportant i think)

I would tell you a chemistry joke but all the good ones Argon.
Do you wanna hear a joke about Potassium? K

2011-10-07T19:23:00.002+08:00

One of the most moving and inspirational speeches I have ever read. Steve Job's address at Stanford University:

I am honoured to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2bn company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologise for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumour on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumour. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful … that's what matters to me."

2011-09-30T14:54:00.007+08:00

Today is friday. Im flying tomorrow! Im a little scared, a little nervous and quite excited.

Will REALLY MISS ALL MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS.

I took this yesterday while packing. The shirt is my youngest sis's farewell gift to me, the cap and the tie was her 21st birthday present to me hehe. It has my name on it. As shown in the second picture

And thats my extremely overweight luggage. Weighing in at 30 kg when the allowed is 23......... Haha

And I know im going to miss my beloved piano too. So yesterday, i played 2 of my favourite songs, secret time travel theme and river flows in you and recorded them. And i put up river flows in you on my blog. For some reason it changes the blog formatting to look quite ugly and I have no idea how to make it look nicer. But whatever. Hahaha.

The last part of the song i was half sight reading due to lack of practise and made tons of mistakes so its quite crappy :p

2011-09-27T00:17:00.002+08:00

Went out with 4th gu zhe and 2nd gu ma today. They treated me to sushi teh and haagen dazs. $9.50 for 2 scoops of haagen dazs wtf? And they gave me hongbao too.

And my sis bought me CK aqua eternity eau de toilette. Smells good. We went round and round lucky plaza searching for one that smells nice till both my hands were sprayed on all the different places with all kinds of perfumes. Then we went to tang plaza where they recommended the CK eternity which i thought smelled nice. Ferrari essence smells nice too but the smell fades too quickly. Antonio bandera was too strong imo. CK 1 and CK summer was okay i guess. Anyway the CK eternity cost $69. My sister always spends way more on my present than i do on hers. Makes me feel guilty

2011-09-23T21:39:00.004+08:00

"yx and mw always not free"

"No la its yx. He damn busy what. He got exams next week and he has tuition. And he got gf already"

"Yea la walao. Got gf then ignore friends"

"Yea. Chicks over dicks. When you go over to uk and get a gf there must let me know"

"Sure"

"Just pretend youre korea, with your hair, they'll love it"

"Yea speak a few korean words. Kumsiahamida"

"Ha mi daa. Learn a few korean songs too. Its so hawt (w mock korean accent)"

"Yea its so... cold. Why would it be hot there"

"As in the songs are hot"

"Oh yea. I luck (like) dis place. Its really naise (mock retarded foreigner accent)"

*laughs*

"And I luck your aise (eyes)"

"You like my arse?"

"No no no, not your aise, your aise!!"

"Ohh... wait what? My arse?"

"No, not your aise, your aise! The one that can see!"

"You want to see my arse?"

"Ya can see. Your aise is soft and brown. Its bitiful (beautiful)"

"Hahaha"

"Soft and brown is probably what comes out of it. Really pitiful"

Both of us burst out laughing.

This is the stuff heaven is made of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzGgX1DihPw

Im kinda liking the song stereo love now too.

Today johnny bravo kiew came over. I been going out so much lately cos im flying off and meeting alot of friends before i leave. We played si shou lian tan duet, the third time for me. Jacque is way more serious and plays damn well. But its very fun to fool around with john too. We tried playing it really really fast and we played it over and over for moer than an hour, and recorded a ton of them. Most of our recordings ended in hilarious screw ups and laughter.

Also, we watched funny videos on youtube. Neg's urban sports is really funny. Go watch it.

Im flying off in ONE WEEK and i HAVENT PACKED. Im doing my packlist now. The reality is slowly sinking in. ONE WEEK. Haiz im gonna miss my family and friends and relatives soo much.

Today, my tutee told me a story. She was messaging a teacher for the password to some portal but distracted as she was by the television, she messaged "Azahar, may i know the password to the portal?" Instead of saying MR azahar which would be more respectful.

Came the reply "Its Mister. And its handsome"

And i told her to reply "Er Mr handsome, whats the password to the portal?"

LOL. Who the hell uses handsome as a password anyway hahaha.

IM STUCK FOR WHAT TO PACK. I got my clothes, toiletries and some miscellaneous stuff. If there are any things that you have the experience of forgetting to bring then going FML when you reach, soon is a good time to let me know. Thanks hahaha.

That said, i'd like to share some of my other thoughts. I think we belong in an era of jumpy impatience and have a strong need for instant gratification. I got these thoughts cos my sis was reading and she says she doesn like it. She gets impatient too easily and prefers watching videos. She also says whenever she reaches some descriptive part she just skips the whole part. Imo videos are more brainless and is information simply fed to us. Reading might be a chore to some, it requires the use of imagination at the very least.

So i wondered, whence lies the virtue of patience? Then i asked myself. Where is the value of the virtue of patience. Life is short, after all. And then I realise I have no answer to that. Someone, enlighten me

2011-09-20T00:42:00.004+08:00

I just watched this show, three idiots, recommended by my youngest sis. An indian show with english subs LOL. It starts off a little slow but its light hearted, hilarious and sooo meaningful, anyone who watches it to the end will not regret it I guarantee

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa5rnx6ORfE&feature=related

Follow excellence. Success will chase you, pants down.

2011-09-16T23:55:00.002+08:00

Singapore weather is so hot that I get all sweaty and sticky everytime i step out of the house and have the urge to change t shirts every 2 hours. Totally disgusting.

Anyway, i had an eventful day. tuition in the morning, then i went to michelle's house cos she agreed to teach me piano for free. We played some pieces. And mostly, she just made me realise what an incredibly long way i still have to go.

I found this comment funny lol

Blizzard: Infestor change has been reverted however the range has been decreased from 9 to 7 effectively castrating the spell regardless. We feel dealing with numbers instead of words like "Massive" help to confuse a large portion of our community as they are less likely to clue into how hard they are being fucked. Past studies have also shown that players are alot more receptive to these kinds of changes if we re-wrap the rape in such a way that it makes us look like we spent some time thinking about it.

Mediocrity cannot understand excellence.

If you feel you are doing a lot already and feel like giving yourself a pat on the back, youre probably not doing enough.

2011-09-15T00:03:00.004+08:00

Hi world, im really hungry and its 12 at night i hate being hungry all the time.

Nicole still doesn listen to me she plays all the time, begs me to end tuition early and spends tuition time arguing with me over whos a dumb blonde.

Anyway i remember something funny. The other day i was asking vivien and boon siew for their emails and viv said her email was v_4good@hotmail or something and i heard B FOR BOOB at hotmail.com and was like WHAT?! hahaha

So the other day i went to my dad's student's house to meet his daughter whos gonna give me advice cos shes already studying in ox. His student is this guy called peter tai whos frigging rich like another wei hong from hong leong.

So anyway i met aunt pauline, peter's gd friend whose husband owns a CASTLE in oxford, sarah, johnathan and michelle for the first time that day. My dad and i got treated to a dinner at seafood paradise. Lobster dinner was so delicious.

They shared some really funny and interesting stories. About the ability to think on your feet etc. For instance:

This guy is a helper of a vegetable shop. This customer comes in and asks "excuse me, do you sell half a head of lettuce?"

The helper, annoyed at this weird request went to the storeroom at the back to look for his boss. He then complained loudly

"I have this IDIOT who wants to buy half a head of lettuce..."

then to his utter horror realises the customer was behind him, having followed him to the storeroom. Now he needs to get his ass outa this deep shit. What can he say?

C'mon think, what would YOU say if you were in this situation?

Well, the guy continued: "... and this very kind gentlemen who has agreed to buy the other half"

Ingenious

The second story is some dude meets this other dude and says "wow man, new zealanders are either rugby players or whores"

And the other guy goes "Excuse me? My wife is from new zealand"

And the first guy goes "Oh cool. Which position did she play?"

Oh yea nicholas is always complaining that the girls from his class damn gg. Yet he keeps trying to find time to "socialise" with them. So one day he was talking about them again.

Nic "Im whiling my time away. Everyday. At utown subway. Socialising"

kuanhui "LOL. with chicks?"

Nic "pimping. Hahaha"

Kh "UTOWN NO SUBWAY. YOU LIAR"

Me "pimping out chicks to people who need them kh. Like you"

Nic "Got la. Bitchhhh"

Me "Hahahahaha"

Kh "ITS STARBUCKS"

Nic "there is koufu. And subway. And fish and co and cheers. I go there everyday. Haha. Anyway, not exactly chicks. Its my class girls. Testing waters yo."

Me "chicks with a dick?"

Nic "no dicks"

Me "Nice. got moustache?"

Nic "Plucked"

Me "LOL"

Nic "LOL. Tweezers man. Thats whats up"

Anyway i went to my Oxford's fresher's chalet too. Day 1. Theme: Sport till you drop.

I played frisbee (and sucked badly) for 2 games. Then played captain's ball with mabel, shawn (spelling?) and jingyi on my team. Shawn and I just attacked so well, we scored tons and tons they had to keep shifting people cos our side was too imbalanced. Well shawn was from water polo and his throwing technique is really good.

Oh we played some ice breakers too. Like wacko. Then double wacko and my first partner was DSTA nicole. Then we played some other games. Like ring of fire. Mine was soo boring man. Guys stand up and sing a song for the girls. Turns out the guys in the group dun listen to pop music they are terrible at it just like i am hahaha. And some of them got shoot shag marry and had to choose between the year 2s. I think that game is really stupid to play in the presence of the people being chosen to shoot shag or marry. There was a girl who was shot by some guy and she tried not to act like it but I could tell she was hurt, she was like saying after that "eh actually you guys play this should play amongst yourselves, we are from this other side so the others really shouldn know"

After captain's ball we played somemore frisbee. I was supposed to be marking this guy but instead i just camped in the huge square box waiting for the frisbee so i could score. So i think i scored more than i threw frisbees. Not that im particularly good at scoring, more of the fact that i cant throw a frisbee without wobbling to save my life. But it was still really fun. My shirt was totally drenched and soaked after that.

Then we played cards like all the way the whole night. Saboteur, bridge, asshole dai di and more saboteur with mingyu zhanming michelle siew yun kovan and i cant remember the others. Till it got really boring and the miners went on strike and built a roman empire on the floor together with the saboteurs. The extremely ridiculous part was that despite the labyrinth fraught with dead ends, the miners still WON. Time for a game design overhaul if u ask me.

Anyway, i have 3 riddles. Correct answers get a cookie. Sam sent me these riddles as i was playing bridge in ox chalet could hardly concentrate. But I did solve them eventually.

I have 3 coins. One gold one silver and one bronze. You tell me a statement. If that statement is true, I will give you any of those 3 coins, its my choice. If that statement is false, I will not give you any coins. Say a statement that will force me to give you the gold coin.

So for instance you could say "im a guy". If that were true, i might give u the silver coin. Or bronze or gold coin. If that were false I'd not give you anything.

Second question: You have 2 ropes and a lighter. Both ropes are of unequal length and burn unevenly (some parts faster than others). But both ropes take exactly one hour to finish burning. How do you measure out 15 minutes exactly using these 2 ropes?

And finally the last riddle asked by john. This one is too easy so you get a pat on the back instead of a cookie.

2 soldiers met on a bridge. One is the father of the other one's son. What is their relationship?

I just finished watching 画皮. I was watching like crazy the past few days but now im kinda sad its over. Hahaha. First few episodes are really nice. But the middle part gets kinda draggy because the females talk soooooooo slowly while trying to convey emotion so its like i can skip 10 second 10 second ahead only hearing snippets of the conversation and still know exactly whats going on. Then later on the action picks up and it gets really exciting again. The last episode was really touching imo.

This is the theme song of the show. I really like it now although I probably would not have liked it had i not been forced to listen to it countless times in the show. These things grow on me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWynYb9HGec&feature=related

After watching the show, I really felt like writing a literary analysis of it. There are such deep and overarching themes and the characterisation is mental masturbation for a literary aficionado. Not that im one, the last time i wrote any literature related thing was in sec 4.

The theme of love is a prevailing one of course. The entire show is centred around it. A demon comes to earth and searches for the meaning of love. She wants to become human and was given the opportunity to, on the condition that she cannot love. But fall in love she did with a demon subduer (for lack of a better term).

She loved him deeply but was betrayed by him. He never loved her but only wanted to destroy her. She went berserk and killed him and everyone in the vicinity. From then on she lost faith in the idea that human and demon could ever fall in love and be together.

This particular demon had to eat human hearts to sustain her attractive appearance. If she ate the heart of people who loved her, she'd grow much stronger. So she took on the appearance of a married girl and killed her. But her husband noticed the change. She tries her best to fuss on her husband and make him fall more in love with her. But he notices the change. He says

"你不是小唯。你处处都比小唯好，没有一个地方比不上她。但是，我爱的是小唯，不是你。对不起"

He was killed. The demon now named xiao wei met the commander of an army, wang sheng. They had saved each other's lives before although he didn know it. She tried to make him fall in love with her and in the process really fell in love with him. But he was married to peirong. So the demon tried to destroy the marriage in every way and killed peirong's loved ones in front of her. In the process, she killed tons of people for human hearts to sustain herself. Wangsheng swore vengence upon the murderer and began investigations to hunt it down himself.

Xiao wei then shifted the blame for the murders on peirong by changing her appearance to that of a demon thinking wangsheng would leave her at last. When wangsheng saw that the end of his investigations led him to his wife after countless murders of loved ones around him, he was dumbstruck. Backed by his army and all the villagers who lost loved ones. He walked forward towards peirong who was crouching in a corner crying with the incriminating demon ears, pale skin and long white hair.

"你真的是妖。高翔是你杀的." He whispered drawing his sword and advancing upon his wife and staring at her with teary eyes burning with disappointment.
"但是作为丈夫，我怎么能放弃你" he whispered. "你真的是妖?"

“是” peirong whispered “人都是我杀的”

“佩蓉不管你做了什么，我们都一起承担，好吗？”

”我求你。杀了我”

“我是你的丈夫。不管你是妖还是人，我都爱你。永远。”

In a burst of emotion she pushed him away and stabbed herself. Wangsheng begs xiaowei to save his wife and xiaowei says she will on the condition that he is willing to die. Wangsheng stabs himself.

And the demon, who loved him as well, shrieks and leaps forward to stop him but to no avail.　And finally she saw what she'd been to blind to see. That love is blind and true love does indeed exist.

Such a simplistic summary is an injustice to the depth of the original novel and the depth of the characters involved. Liao Zai is a very talented writer. The show has its flaws definitely but the story is just beautiful and there is much to learn from it.

2011-09-10T01:43:00.002+08:00

Omg i just got a comment via email for the previous post:

Awww, its ok leslie, I understand... its OK to be that way ok, if you need someone to talk to, I'm here for you ok? :)

Fuck off, im perfectly straight HAHA this is absurd

Edit: sam told me that was him =.=

2011-09-09T22:08:00.009+08:00

"Homosexuality is like alcoholism; we all know people don't consciously choose to have it, yet even so, it does not point to the fact that they were born with it.

Choice aside, there is a difference between nature and nuture, and people need to recognise that.

Environmental factors and personal lifestyles (the things which you choose to participate or even indulge in) influence your thinking and direct your inclinations as you grow. And if homosexuality is something that can be "caught", it will also be something that can be shaken off, through a reverse in the processes of things.

And might I ask, how does Christians' disagreement with homosexuality make them homophobics? If the people who throw this accusation at them can't even distinguish between 'fearing' and 'disagreeing', the argument isn't going to get very far.

And if the family unit was constructed to comprise of a Man, a Woman, and their offsprings, then it should stay that way and none of us should defy the work of nature even if it weren't the work of "god".

Because in the first place, countless research studies have failed to testify that people can be 'born gay', as the very genes that alter the norm of sexual orientation (i.e. gay genes), do not even exist."

I read this from another blog and got quite pissed off at how narrow minded some people can be.

In the first paragraph, she argues in the negative. It does not point to the fact that people aren't born with it and it does not point to the fact that people are. Simply put, it is non-conclusive and therefore completely irrelevant.

She then argued that choice aside, there is difference between nature and nurture, then it goes on to say that nurture encompasses personal lifestyles and the "things you choose to participate in". I fail to see how lifestyle choices are not considered to be a choice. The contradiction makes the argument harder to follow.

Contradiction aside, she argues that people choose to participate in certain things which influence their inclinations. This is linked to the principle of individual autonomy, that each individual should be treated as responsible for his/her own behaviour. Whether this is true cannot be demonstrated conclusively. Over the centuries, the "free will" argument has been contradicted by the 'determinist' claim that all human behaviour is determined by causes that ultimately each individual cannot control. There is an immense literature on these issues which the uninformed would do well not to make presumptions about.

Her next point is that if something can be caught, it will be something that can be shaken off. Is that even an argument? I can jump down a building, can i fly up a building?

"If the family unit was constructed to be a Man, Woman and their offsprings, then we should not defy the work of nature"
Why should we not? That very sentence is a contradiction. Nature is not about should or shouldn'ts. Nature is about is and is nots. Nature is letting things be natural, in fact thats probably how the word came about. Instead of letting a SHOULD or a SHOULD NOT get in the way of WHAT ORIGINALLY WAS.

And even say, for the sake of argument, that we should not defy the work of nature. The argument reeks of the presumption of choice. Which is a weak foundation to the argument.

Quoting research studies is nice I guess. Extremely useful too, the best way to argue is to quote authoritative sources like the Bible and research studies so that there can be no possible counter argument. After all, countless other people said so.

2011-09-06T23:04:00.006+08:00

Was sweating buckets all over my living room floor. Just gymed then trained with my father. We were play sparring. Cool right, how many people get to fight their dad. We werent using strength though, just techniques. But my shin is like bleeding and i dno why.

Tomorrow im going on a food trail at old airoprt road then dno where then dno where. Organised by michelle. Only she'd think of ideas like this and actually organise it into fruition. Thats a compliment... i guess hahaha.

Then dinner with jacque on thurs. Shes coming over first so we can practise the si shou lian tan duet before i play it w mich. After i quit DLS, life is actually pretty damn good man. I got to practise like 3 hours of piano today and im really thankful for that woo.

Appreciate the good life while it lasts! Cos it wont be this good again, it'll only get BETTER

2011-09-05T01:04:00.002+08:00

I finally finished my scrapbook comic collection. 3-4 years of collecting them man!

I also practised my official signature a few days ago. Didn have one then except the anyhow one i always used.

Watched 画皮 on tv. The appeal of wu xia xiao shuo still hasnt worn off on me. I started watching from episode 2.

So the story begans with 2 people fighting. One of them carried a girl called peirong he was forced to marry. His name was wang sheng and he was rescuing her from something. The other guy, yong ge, was there to find the girl who is his lover. They fight but realised they were both good guys and became like brothers.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, there was a young girl, bingbing, who was sniffing for demons. Her master told her to hunt them but she had no idea how to. She saw this incredibly attractive girl and urged her to escape from town as the city was under siege by bandits and was burning everywhere. The girl innocently asked what she was doing there. Bingbing said she was there to hunt demons but tells her not to be afraid. Hugging her close, she whispered with a gleeful expression that demons were scared of demoncatchers like her and would not appear in front of her.

Well it turned out the attractive girl she was with was a demon but she didn know. The girl giggles and they ran off together. They were caught by bandits. The demon hypnotised the bandits and they were then freed. But bingbing still didn know she was a demon. They stumbled upon bingbing's master, who recognised her demon aura at once. They fought briefly and he won, and banished her under a tree. Her powers ebbing away slowly, she struggled but to no avail. Bingbing cried for her master to save her.

Meanwhile, wangsheng went back to his home and discovered that everything was in ashes. He lost his parents and his home. His father was a tyrant and got his just desserts although he was a good father to him. Wang sheng and yong ge together slayed the bandits who killed his family but wang sheng was trapped under the collapsed and burning roof of a house. He struggled and screamed for help.

At the same time, the demon girl struggled and screamed. Bingbing asked if she would die and her master said she would if she continued struggling and letting her powers dissipate. Bingbing begged her to stop but she continued struggling. In her mind, all she wanted was to be human. She had only been human for one day and now she was going to die. So she would not permit it. She heard too, from far away, the screams of wang sheng.

Wangsheng had saved her life earlier when she was in fox form. She got trapped in a animal trap laid by the demoncatchers and he freed her from it. His cries empowered her. In a burst of strength she threw the log off and flew to wangsheng's side. She saw the burning roof on his legs and called rain down to put the fire out and save his life. Cradling him in her arms, she asked his name and said she would remember it forever. Then she left.

Soon the demoncatchers caught up with her. Bingbing begged her master for mercy and he relented. The demon wanted to be human and the old master agreed on 3 conditions.

First, never use your demonic powers. Second, never love. Third, never harm anyone.

"Whats love?" The demon asked. She agreed to the conditions. Her name was xuxu. Bingbing sniffed xuxu and complained that she couldn smell any demonic smell at all. She turned to her old master and complained saying he told her to use yr nose by pointing at his nose. The old master sighed and said "NO, i said if u cant find demons, find me, i was pointing to myself!" And bingbing and xuxu became like sisters.

2011-09-01T13:47:00.021+08:00

I chose to go to ox partly for the freedom and independence but i feel like im just adding more burden to myself when I graduate.

Its like the helium balloon which was tied to a stand by strings. To free itself, the helium balloon grabbed hold of a kit with sharp scissors and saws to cleave its way to liberty. Slowly, slowly, bit by bit, the balloon toiled away at its barrier to unbridled freedom. Except that after sawing through the binding strings, the balloon realised that the weight of the kit it now carried had rendered it too heavy and therefore flightless. And also that flapping in the cool breeze with limited freedom once upon a time was preferable to being grounded firmly upon a cramped and uncomfortable table.

K lets talk about older stuff. I went for my last muay thai training a few weeks ago. It wasnt as I imagined. I wanted to take some pictures to remember the memorable times i've had training there (and to capture the peak of my kicking technique which most likely will go downhill lol) but yongxiang didn go so i went alone. Training was pretty uneventful. I kicked the bag 200 times with passion despite a sprained ankle, knowing that it would probably be the last time i'd be kicking those bags. (And my ankle still hasnt fully recovered. Nor has my finger for that matter).

Then I skipped 5 minutes nonstop. It was a feat i could accomplish last december but lost the ability to after i slackened off, around the time yongxiang was into his 2nd month of training. But i told myself i would do it before i left so i did it and it wasnt that tiring i could have gone longer.

Lets finish up law camp.

Nice group pic isnt it? One of the rare few. Issac and cat, my remakrable OGLs are in red at the sides.

Another random group pic.

Night view of nus law building

Playing ice breakers

Another group photo. This was on the last day of camp. I was standing with my secret palz kelly although I dun think its that clear in this picture.

Some of the outdoor games we played and cheated marvellously at.

random pic of issac taking up more space than usual. Which is saying something.

Some plug the hole in the bucket game. And thats me.

Grp pic with year 2s in it.

Much clearer picture at the pool.

Fire burning on the dance floor

zh and i clowning around

Being led to our doom, i mean, to our secret pals.

Thats me behind. Im the quidditch goal post =.=

We played games late into the night every night. It was memorable. We sat in circles and played games. Our og game is the i-cant-remember-what-its-called but it had big titty cow girls, barnhouse and clampdowns. lol. And we played "I have never". Then we played "I have. Some guy said "I have failed my driving test 4 times" and everyone lost a life. And issac said to him "Ok la, give it to you la, you really deserve this"

And another person said "I have never..." when we were playing "I have". Then he realised his mistake and swore "Fuck". So it became "I have never fuck" LOL and we could see who the virgins were and who the naughty ones were. Hahaha.

Then another joke i remember clearly cos it was damn funny. Issac likes to bully and tease the year 2 girls. Then this other year 2 guy, cant remember his name was joking around with angelia and he pushed her. It came as a surprise when issac stepped up and said "Eh whats this, how dare you push her. You push my friend, im gonna push your friend too" he said and pushed angelia into the lockers a second time. LOL

And i remember I had to act out "I shitted my pants" with facial expression in one of the games and it was damn hilarious. Then at the end of it, we were clamouring for bonus points so the og that could come up with the funnier answer to the extremely though unintentionally constipated expression of the guy in front would get bonus points. Our og won, someone said of the expression "porn download failed at 99%" hahahaha

Anyway on the second night, I got lamely locked outa my own room cos the door screwed up and my key was in the room. So i had to sleep an entire night in darren's room on the floor and only had 5-6 hours sleep on the floor. Damn screwed up and uncomfortable

K thats the end of law camp. Anyway i have 2 new j2 bio students. Something happened which is very funny but quite bad at the same time. Basically, I went early for the first lesson feeling only slightly nervous cos im so used to teaching bio already. So there i was outside the door and i messaged saying "hey im early can i come in?"

And waiting for the door to open, i was sorta going through in my head what i would say, something like extend a handshake, say "hi, im leslie, you are?" (I had to ask cos the 2 students are together and i didn know who was who).

The door opened was opened and... I didn know if that was the girl i was teaching or the maid. So i was trying to decide how to act. Introducing myself to the maid would be an incredible faux pas hahahaha. The girl didn look me in the eye once and neither did she say anything. So i kept awkwardly silent and walked in, took off my shoes and looked around for my students. Couldn see any so i turned to her and enquired "You are?"

And she told me her name and that was her. Omg, fail.

Then we had a few ox gatherings. Went to some rich girl, cant remember her name's house and met my "family"

Then we had a family outing where brian, zhan ming, scott and i went to david's house to play tennis and get some drinks. Tennis is really fun.

Then we had a chalet. Had so much fun there and met alot of friends. Maybe I will blog about it another day. I think its enough for now

2011-09-01T13:17:00.006+08:00

2011-08-23T20:33:00.004+08:00

I was playing canon in d on the piano after not having played it for quite awhile. Decided to listen to it on youtube. Its so classic and beautiful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wpPk8qk3uQ

But while I was listening my sis shushed me cos she wanted to listen to her pop song with the heavy drumbeat and speedy tune like oh almost all pop songs. Not that I have anything against pop songs some of them are quite nice. Just slightly sick of autotune and mindless throbbing at the moment.

I have 3 quotes. They just came to me. But I cant remember the third =.=

You have to first love and accept yourself, before you can love and accept others.

Physical possession is mental baggage and money is the heaviest of them all.

So today I was playing my piano and chewing some cucumber and tomatoes. Rabbit food. But miraculously i discovered that chewing cucumber makes me play better lol! Cos first, i realised when i play, im so focused that i always stop chewing. Especially at the more difficult bits. So i forced myself to continue chewing. Then i realised that thinking of chewing the cucumber takes my mind off where my hands are supposed to be next and what im supposed to play next and just lets my subconscious take over the playing. It works i have no idea why.

K im going to the gym now. The things i have to blog about are getting overwhelming again argh i shall find another time