Gaurav's Blog

This can usually be found on Twitter.

Managed to hit high scores on all three heavy duty activities:

1. Managed to get Family in to see Office and Officemates. Said goodbye all nice and all.
2. Spent hours just fretting over houses to see. Was disappointed when only ended up with one "interesting" and one "maybe", except the "maybe" turned out to be "really interesting" so now - with no further effort - we're juggling three viewings tomorrow, one of which I've said "yes" to, one "maybe" and one unknown. And that's not counting any EMs which show up at three 'o' clock tomorrow unless the deal has already been signed. So yay!
3. Despite the hours spent etc. and leaving the house early to go househunting, I made some very nice progress on coding and work in general. Tomorrow, by hook, crook and lunchtime, PT3 will be completely functional. Hooray!

The house hunt ended up quite surreal, with me ending up forty minutes early (as it was rescheduled thirty minutes later than expected five minutes after I found an available cab on Science Park Dr, a feat on par with one of the minor miracles), resulting in me wandering around our somewhat dingy prospective neighborhood. I knew this would be a nice place when, apropos of nothing, my old friend the SBS Transit Bus #33 showed up out of nowhere. My phone was dying, so I kept turning it on every fifteen minutes and pleading with my agent to give me an address, which she boldly - and baldly - refused to do. She turned up ten minutes late, and then drove me the three houses away to where the place was, whence we waited twenty further minutes until the landlord's agent showed up. Then, it turned out that none of the lights were working, although all the airconditioners were; bizarre, yes, but there you go. I viewed the house by candlelight (or, to be precise: the light of four handphones). Tomorrow, Ifty's going to go check it out, and then we'll know.

Either way, the hours until Ifty reports back are going to be somewhat low-key, and - man oh man - if we go for it, all that massive tension will evaporate and be replaced by the tension of work. Ah, the relief of having only one crazy obsessive thing to worry about!

Labels: good day, tired

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Things to think about:

• Picking folks up from the airport tomorrow. Really? Will have to take a taxi. Would be nice, though. Will I be able to get up early enough?
• Go to work, do the catch-up polka. Probably cancel night plans with family in return for greeting at airport etc.
• Hopefully, will get time to go do the house-hunting-hoedown too. Particularly if I get up superearly for the airport, everything else might slide into place - or be an absolutely corking disaster, one or the other really.

Labels: tomorrow

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1. I had the strength to write a proper blog entry.
2. Was not rushing so much on PT3, and had time to "enjoy the scenery" as it were.
3. There wasn't so much happening this month. Family trip! Moving house! Finding house! Grr.
4. My mouth was enjoying greater pleasure. Stress makes me bite my cheeks, causing awful gashes, and sometimes I get toothaches which come and go. Grr and all that.
5. The Goon Show was on more than one ruddy time a week. But not all the time - there can be too much of a good thing, you know.
6. I had the energy to do something interesting before falling asleep.
7. I could be sure that I will fall asleep, and not toss and turn all night. Then again, in the aircon, in that sheer comfort, I'm not sure relaxation will be optional.
8. I had a car, but that's silly, both in my finanical situation and particularly considering my unwillingness to work with large mechanical things.

Also, I wish I was watching Brazil this weekend. But hey, can't have everything, right?

Labels: any dream will do, can't have everything, wishes

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Went house hunting today; fairly disappointing - we saw two places; I hated one and Ifty hated the other. So. We might be increasing our budget, which will certainly help us find a place. Let's see how that goes; in any cases, we are finding a place ASAP, because I can't take much more of this calling-up-agents stress.

And stress makes me particularly unhappy because: work is stressful! With reason, there are deadlines coming down soon and close, and calling agents and all really throws me off that. On the other hand, work is really exciting these days. Am seriously considering pushing to stay in Singapore another year and get this stuff well and truly done before moving on.

Got my GRE Biology score today: 790/990. 85%. Not so great, not so great at all.

I've got my invitation to Darwin's wedding reception now. Yay!

Labels: bad day, tired, wedding

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So:

• I finally managed to finish the Undead campaign, and praise FSM, for I hate the undead. No class. No society. We've gone back to playing Orcs now, who I love, because Thrall is easily the most charismatic character I've played so far (that dwarf commander wasn't bad, but oh well).
• Incidently, the trick to finishing the campaign isn't micromanaging, it's building heavy buildings. So far, I'd been building ziggurats, which got eaten up by the wizards; this time, I built Necropolii surrounded by Ziggurats, which worked a lot better - upgraded a level, the necros could attack land and air troops, like massive ziggurats, and they could take a much heavier beating. Also, they could sometimes distract forces off of ziggurats, which helps them live longer.
• Yes, it was very, very close, but who cares: I'm done, I win, and now I get to play the Orcs! So woo-hoo all around!

That is all.

Labels: warcraft iii, yay

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A quickie; I'm going to sleep now and don't feel like going, so I'll procrastinate by writing things down.

• Work: Very important to me right now, both to my ego (have to make deadlines, have to make it work, have to make it elegant) and socially (hanging out with friends all day long is fun!). Am going to try to get in earlier next week, try to get a more sensible schedule going so I can have more time in the morning, when I seem to be most productive, and less time in the evenings, when the reverse is true. Of course, at the moment, it works, but, well, improvements would be nice.
• Lab: Satisfied with what I got done, and this is going to be sacrificed somewhat in the coming weeks. Hopefully, sometime in July, I'll still be able to take it on.
• World of Warcraft: Man, I am so creating a new night elf. They have an excellent start location. More, more! Must be done!
• Life: Needs more stuff there. Excuses about having to move etc. notwithstanding, I need to work on more and further away. Something artsy, maybe. Dude, I have no idea.

Don't quote this post; I'll deny everything.

Labels: change, life, status update

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Yeah, surprisingly, eh? After yesterday was such a complete, painful waste, today was enthusiastically pleasant. To begin with, morning was torrid and without life, and I limped into work a little later than usual (but not the foobar that was yesterday). Had a McBreakfast on the way in, and promised myself yet again that I would resort to such horrible means to obtain nutrition in the mornings. Had a late, lazy lunch consequently, which was very nice and oily. (Dinner, if you're curious, was Subway, one of them low-fat subs, delivered to the office by the Boss himself, which was very nice).

While most of today was spent thinking things and putting bits into place, evening and night got very exciting as the final bits of Document.pm and Page.pm came together. Somewhere around six, enough of the code was done that simple upload could be tested. And it was! Much bugfixing later, it worked to a surprisingly large degree, everything sliding perfectly into place and working like a dream! I was so pleased. And then the fun really began.

Let's see: walked to the MRT station, singing loudly as I am wont to do (managed to make it all the way, onto the station, and I think most of the way home singing only Beatles songs. Yum!). The train was crowed, but atleast the airconditioning was working (unlike the morning's train), and it was a smooth ride home. Ice cream. Home. At home, I turned on NGE (so far tonight, I've seen episodes 17:Fourth Children, 18:Ambivalence, 19:Introjection and a part - but hopefully not all! - of 20:Weaving A Story 2: Oral Stage). Somewhere in between I went onto World of Warcraft, where there were huge groups of people, and I had a good time spelunking for quest articles with another elf. My best WoW experience so far!

The bad news - lab stuff. Ugh, ugh, ugh. I don't want to think about it, I want to sleep, to forget, to move on. I hate having multiple things happening all around me for no reason. Ugh, ugh, ugh, no more, no more. Good heavens.

Right now, I figure, I figure I'll do it tomorrow, but I won't. Let's see.

Labels: neon genesis evangelion, nice day, world of warcraft

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Saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off again today, after absolutely forever. Such joyful film-making and acting! Still undecided about whether to buy the DVD (or rather, when to buy the DVD), but probably sooner rather than later, the Amazon-purchase-hold holding back things for a while, though, thankfully. Still, the Ferrari's final scene is one of the few completely laugh-out-loud scenes in moviedom as far as I'm concerned, and so many cute scenes make up the movie - Cameron giggling when caught looking at Sloane naked, the view from the tower, the scene in the restaurant, and the fantastic parade sequence (oh shake it up, baby now ... !), which is only helped by the vocal contribution of Messrs Lennon and company.

I also saw A Shot in the Dark, and - so far - am fairly disappointed. I don't suppose I'll ever appreciate Mr. Edwards' comedy style, and Mr. Sellers seems too unsurefooted and off his usual genius to really make Clouseau work in this movie. Oh well; I suspect the second half might be better. I'm starting to appreciate Mr. Chaplin's movies more in retrospect, particularly "Modern Times", which I've been wishing to re-see. Compared to Mr. Edwards' long, drawn-out comedic situations in which coincidence, accident and surprise lead to the funnies, Mr. Chaplin's tightly knit gags, taking a normal, everyday occurance and exaggerating it beyond belief into supernatural funnies gets me happier. Oh well, perhaps it's best not to think too much about these things, merely to laugh and move on; perhaps?

Also, also: tried to call a friend in Bombay tonight. Didn't happen, will call tomorrow, but appear to have missed my cousin brother yet again. Oh well, so it goes. Another week can't hurt, and perhaps I will e-mail him instead or goodness gracious me write? Suddenly everything seems so possible again, somehow! The logical combination of Ferris Bueller and Evangelion, perhaps? Haha, craziness.

Since I've gone on this long: a friend of mine also wrote a pretty funny entry on her blog just now. Go read!

Labels: comedy, links, movies, random

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Not my fault, is hard to find. Am vaguely impressed that when I finally bought a copy, it was a strange experience of ending up at the store after closing and buying the last copy off the shelves, when I only ended up going to Jurong Point because the dining-in facilities at the Bukit Batok Pizza Hut had closed for the weekend. So it was pretty unexpected all-in-all.

Good things: the price (dead cheap, 49 SGD for the entire TV series and both movies), and - well - Eva! In all it's brain curdling mind fucking brilliance. Oh dear lord.

Bad things: subtitling pretty rotten (I think it's been translated via Chinese), occasional typing mistakes, titles sometimes not translated, et al. And the main menu is entirely in Chinese, so it's kinda hard to figure out what clicking on different things will do.

Good thing, bad thing? I'd vote for Good - I get all my brainfuck, and can go several more years without actually buying the darned thing. Considering how much of a brainfuck this is - I mean, Brazil, the other bf movie I like, doesn't even come close - I think it should keep me going for quite a while.

Question: when is next at-work Eva marathon? Questions, questions, questions!

Labels: neon genesis evangelion, nice day, purchase

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