Gaurav's Blog

This can usually be found on Twitter.

Where I live is finally up on Google Maps. Hope they get it up on Flickr pretty soon, too. The Dover MRT station looks pretty pretty from above, too.

Sometimes I feel really guilty when I've been at work late, trying to get my programming instincts going, and instead just having them splutter helplessly. Sigh. Hopefully, Folsom will be a lot easier to work with ...

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When I come home every night, the last thing I see before I enter the house is Orion, standing tall across the sky, exactly in my path, with Sirius low near the horizon. It's so reassuring to see, proof undeniable of the incredible insignificance of everything. It's very reassuring.

Worked on Folsom just a little today, which is nice. It's such a great experience to just write programs for yourself, to do with as you will - you have so much time to make it come out just right. Perfection is hard, but there's so much more you think about if you just have a minute to think before having to write it down.

I've been watching good/great movies for a while, in addition to my other TV watching; saw much of Ed Wood (great), all of One Night At McCool's (good/great), about fifteen minutes of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (great/good? Well, I do like the opening in any case), and then all of Lord of War (great? Brilliant! Fantastic! Amazing!). Now I'm watching the closing of Final Fantasy XII (the video game, not a movie or anything). It's quite nice and fun. Big musical finales - always fun.

There's not much else to say. There's not much else I can say, or do, or think. It's 2:42 am - well, 2:43 am now. So I'd best be getting along to bed, I guess. I've got some nice books to take with me, so it's all right.

Life is pretty all right right now; so I've got nothing to complain about, except that I really ought to be getting more sleep. Ah well, it'll happen. I'm having the travel itches again - considering that my last trip cost me about 200$ for transport ... even at my current salary, I can still make a trip every two months or so and not really think about it. I ought to, really. It's one lonely planet out there - let's go exploring!

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Things have been happening at a pretty pace this week. I managed to kill my three-week streak of not missing "House, M.D." (having to stay up until 2am, when it replays at night, wasn't quite as much fun, though). I had lunch at Pastamania at Harbourfront with a friend yesterday, stayed up until 6am watching episodes one through seven (or was it eight?) of Neon Genesis Evangelion (a name so cool that it needs must be surrounded by <em> tags), I'm kinda-sorta renegotiating my contract (which, I hope, means improved pay starting around February), and I'm putting down plans for what I'm going to ... well, okay - more accurately, I'm putting up dreams for what I might possibly end up doing eventually.

It's 28th November, which isn't entirely without significance. I've had a nice walk, and I'll have a nice bath, and then I'll have a very nice supper (the second best cornflake brand I've ever tasted, I think; unfortunately, I can't remember which one is number one!). I had a good day at work today, and life, life is slowly returning to a normality I haven't seemed in quite a while, which is decidedly nice. Really, nicely, cleanly nice in a way I haven't seen in a while.

Folsom Prison isn't exactly coming along smoothly, but hey, it's still moving, which is very nice. I'm watching Ed Wood, which is really a beautiful little movie. "Bela Lugosi" (Martin Landau) and "Ed Wood" (Johnny Depp) are brilliant. It's very moving. As an emotional onslaught, I can't say it's been a very bad few days. Stretching your emotional muscle is always something else.

My hot shower is waiting for me now. I'd better get moving. Folsom Prison waits.

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Had a respectably decent Saturday - woke up on time (but went back to sleep and work up late), watched a movie, went to work, went out for dinner, sat around listening to good music for ages.

This is a bad time to bring this up, but just to let y'all (i.e. Rivka) know that as of half a week ago, I'm officially copping out of NaNo this year. There's too much to do, too little time, etc. etc. I might work on this story after the end of the month, I really might, it really is a lot of fun, but then there'll be a lot to do anywheres, anytimes. Maybe after I join the ranks of the unemployed sometime February next year.

Well, okay, I probably won't; but unlike last year, I'm probably not going to just forget the whole thing or anything.

Just saw the most amazingly beautiful thing on BBC World. The reporter was delivering his usual summarise-everything-up final speech, which he was doing from the ground floor of this amazing combination church-and-mall in America (which is an entirely different, but equally interesting story, but I digress), and he's looking up at the camera, which is zooming in on him from the first floor. It's a very nice setup, and looks great, and as he starts talking (into his wireless mike), the camera zooms slowly outwards to show him amongst the masses of people.

Which is when you notice the girl walking just beside and in front of him. She keeps looking back at this strange man talking in a well modulated British accent while staring into the distance, waving his hands and talking extremely enthusiastically - with himself. She kept looking to trying and find the camera, and I think she did finally spot it just as the BBC logo obscured her face. And all this while, obviously, the reporter is completing his report, the cameraman keeps filming, and the world keep spinning.

For me, noticing the people at the edges of the spotlights is exactly what makes life worth living, because in the simplest of views, there are the people in the spotlight, and there's the rest of us; but unlike the rest of us, the people in the edges aren't satisfied with being in the dark. Sometimes they make it, sometimes they just stay here with the rest of us, but sometimes, they slip into the slipstream, and turn up in the corners of the spotlight. Just for a moment or two. Fifteen seconds of fame.

Then again, we're all of us almost always in somebody's spotlights anyway, and sometimes we're just unknown, and sometimes, we're there, and we're not. At the edges of the spotlight. The world entire, but only just barely?, if you see what I'm trying to get at?

Yeah, whatever. I'm dead sleepy, which is why my thoughts are all coming out all backwards. Layer Cake's a pretty decent looking movie, although I got a whole bunch from the rental today. Now it's a nice, hot bath and a cool, lonely night for me, I guess. Also need my fan to get fixing. Sigh, sigh.

In other news ... well, no, the (minor, I know) depression isn't lifting, but it's becoming a little more easier to hold it all together, somehow, I think. You start off depressed, but not really realising you are?, you think maybe life's just a little worse than usual?, but once you realise that yes, you're actually actively being pulled down, it's easier to try and push your way up and out. Maybe. Maybe. Yes.

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For no particular reason, have been wandering about campus lately. Yesterday, walked down from DBS to KE by Kent Ridge road, up to the satellite station, then down past what-used-to-be IMCB, then down past the smelly place, and back around to get back to lab. Today, I walked a friend back up to SoC, then walked back via S11/12/13 corridor to the physics lab, around on the outside (they've had "Danger! Don't go here!"-type signs there for a while now, I notice) to S1A, and then up through S1A back to lab.

Surprisingly large number of memories for such a small area. And not all of them are mine! Nice.

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On the upside, I'm feeling a little better now, so that's good. Otherwise life's been a bit of a complicate wash of emotions - none of them particularly nice - recently. Work is supremely unsatisfying all of a sudden; non-work school stuff is scary and troubling, and future-work stuff just makes me sick to the pit of my stomach with fear. And while what passes for my social life is oh-kay-ish (hanging out with apartment-mates is fun, had a long, late, strange chat with an oldish friend yesternight), it's still pretty lonely, and I hate feeling down and depressed and not having someone I can talk to honestly and openly about all this.

And the best bit about all this is that this particular year, being all shit and all unto itself (too much potty talk? I'm sorry, man, I'm really absolutely not feeling all that good at all, really. I'm sorry. I'll be better tomorrow, I promise, but please just let me rant and rave and jump and so on as much as I want, just for now). And so when I get depressed about something, or someone, it mashes up with the general rottenness of the year - most of which I still haven't in any way shape or form gotten used to, or faced up to, or whatever - and it all sorta comes on down on the top of my head with the force of a barrel of bricks or whatever, and it hurts. I hate feeling my own heart and feeling it actually, physically, hurt. No fun. At all.

I'm realising that I'm copying Tarun's style of a single running unbroken monologue without much by way of punctuation or pause or whatever. It's more fun that way.

You try, and you fail,
And love it like a little dog
And feed it on the scraps you find
And kiss it while you're still asleep

You buy now and pay later

-- The Whitlams, Buy Now, Pay Later (Charlie No. 2)

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Sigh. Wasted too much time today. Life's always like this sometimes.

I need to make just under 8,000 words in one day (impossible!) to catch up now, as well as watch two full movies before returning them before tomorrow night.

On the good side, Fiddler on the Roof really is all it's cracked up to be!

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Have reached 10,000 words on my WriMo! Of course, this puts me 8,000 words behind where I'm supposed to be by this date. Sighs. I'm hoping/planning on getting to 20,000 words by tomorrow night. 10,000 words in two days! And it took me eleven days to get this far! Goralmighty.

On the other hand, I must remember that 'losing' the WriMo means an eleven month pause before I can try again. Eleven months! Shudders.

Have also decided not to put any of it online or send it around until after NaNoEdMo, assuming I finish it by end-November. This is an interesting story, and I wouldn't want you guys to get bogged down in the bad bits towards the starting. It might really shine after polishing, and it'd be no fun to have you guys getting a bad, unedited, rushed version.

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Nice article on lecturing.

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Had a strange, longish, convolutered dream in which my mum is giving me hell because I'm getting only average marks in, err, well, I'm not entirely sure in what - if you look at the first half of the dream, it seems like we're talking about 12th standard ('A' level for you Singaporeans), and if you look at the second half, it looks like we're talking about NUS in general. Or in specific. Or something.

And I wake up and I'm lying there half asleep thinking about how right she is and how I need to change, soon, when it strikes me that I'm not doing so badly now, that I've got a degree, an okayish if somewhat eclectic set of majors and minors, and a pretty decent job (without all that great a pay, but I guess you can't have everything!), so: things are okayish, atleast. Certainly not bad, or anything. Confusing.

I have a vague suspicion that this my subconscious scolding me (through my mother?) for falling behind in 'WriMo again, despite the fact that if I don't make it this year, it'll be another eleven months before I can try again. And, well, that's okay, sort of. This - all of this - isn't how I want to live my life, but until February swings around, that's how I've committed myself to live it, and so that's going to be just exactly how I live it, for better or for worse.

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The BBC has a very nice article on Hinglish. Do read. My favourite bit is actually the first comment, by one DS from Bromley, England.

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Just, in general. You run out of gas sometimes, and then it's kinda hard to go on, and you sit and you wonder why you'd ever bother ever again, and whether anything could possibly really matter at all. And why you bothered to bother in the first place. And then you wonder if anything - anything! - could possibly be worth bothering about, and that bothers you all the more. What a bother!

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?

I'm also watching this movie about Gilligan's Island. It is very impressive - the kind of comedy you need superlative genius to come up with. Very impressive, sort of: supersweet and incredibly snarky all at once. And God, what incredibly sorry story appeal - I'd love to go up and write, but I just can't move - I literally want to read just one scene more. God!

And shoot, I still need to catch up on the 'WriMo. Still, this just might make it easier to get the mood I want in my novel: sort of dark and constricted. Some good might just come of this at the end anyway.

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You really can find anything on the Internets!

That is all. Oh, I'm pimping Facebook left, right and centre these days, so if you're on there, drop by and say hi.

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4 hours 59 minutes into NaNoWriMo 2006, I've written 1,670 words. With any luck, I'll be able to do 1,667 more atleast before midnight, which would put me on a very decent 3,327 word starting on this year's WriMo. Yay!

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