This can usually be found on Twitter.
Just spoke to someone for one hr 14 mins. Apparently, the record is 5 hrs, and my name's on this. Strange thing to be remembered for, but hey, anything goes, right?
Apparently, we were both at ECP at roughly the same time (me: 6pm-8pm, other person: 6pm-9pm). What if we'd met? Would things have gone the way they did?
Also: I finally asked the question I needed to ask. And it was the right answer. Now, comes the easy bit: learning to deal.
This post was posted by Unknown at 12:40 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment
A quickie; I'm going to sleep now and don't feel like going, so I'll procrastinate by writing things down.
Don't quote this post; I'll deny everything.
Labels: change, life, status update
This post was posted by Unknown at 12:38 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment
... a chip on your shoulder whispering softly in your ear: "once again, you fail it!".
This post was posted by Unknown at 11:26 am | 2 comments | Post a Comment
I'm a little down right now. It might be that our likely next living place is kinda depressing. On the inside, it's much like our present place, except not so much in terms of furniture. It's bigger, though; and kinda prettier in its way. On the outside, though, it doesn't compare. No 7-Eleven across the street, no pretty green patches to walk through right outside your door; likely, no cats snooping around randomly. And the location! Here, we're sitting at the intersection - practically - of Ulu Pandan Road and Clementi Road. OMG! Buses up north to Bukit Timah and Bukit Panjang, buses cross town to Orchard and the City, and south to work and college. This new place, it's tucked away somewhat, with buses into Bukit Batok centre, from where you reroute to all across the island, or atleast where-ever Bukit Batok buses go; sometimes, you'll need to get to Jurong East to reroute somewhere interesting instead. Also, the topography is crazy: hills behind us, buildings in front of us, large green patches every which way. Disappointing, I'm sure.
There's also a certain lack of movement. Is this what it's all about? All this time, and I'm moving sideways into more of the same, except it's not even pretty any more. And more importantly, movement to and from both work and college are going to be hampered somewhat; I'm going to have to work much harder just to keep doing whatever it is I'm doing! Sigh.
There's good sides to this too, I'm sure. I'm going to keep fantasising about getting my own pad. I'm going to keep fantasising about getting out of here, or rattling things up somewhat. And this isn't something millions of people around the world don't do already! And it is a change, even if for the worse, and change is always good. No?
Labels: apartment, life, moving
This post was posted by Unknown at 11:59 pm | 3 comments | Post a Comment
As far as I'm concerned, the primary difference between "strain" and "stress" is that stress is when you're worried, now, and are aware that the stress will end eventually (whether by your body and brain just "shutting down", or by someone falling out of an apartment building, depends on your interpretation). Strain, on the other hand, is what happens when you're stressed out and you know it's not going to end any time soon.
Long day today. After much cool dreamings (see post!), was awoken at two for our quarterly month cleaning, which was a huge success. I was tempted to take "after" photos: it's extremely unlikely we'll ever have things this sparkling clean again. Why? Because we're moving out in early December, it seems. Early December! This means the househunt begins again, and you remember how painful it was the last time around. You don't? That's cool, I'm sure it's in this blog somewhere. Time to practice your 733t G00g7e s[i11s!
Er, hmm. In other news, my parents are now sliding into some sort of super OMG-WE'RE-WORRIED-(but-don't-let-that-worry-or-pressure-you-tee-hee)-BUT-YOU-HAVE-TO-GET-A-JOB-ALREADY-BCOS-WHAT-ARE-YOU-GOING-TO-DO-WITH-YOUR-LIFE-OMG-OMG-OMG mode (I'm sure parents have a better name for this). Which means they intrude into what I have come to quaintly refer to as my "personal" life. Which, as you may be aware, is a move of sheer genius-like proportions, since the only thing I'd hate more than an uncomfortable life is to have aforementioned uncomfortable life intruded on upon. So, hmm. Interesting week again. If things go as I suspect they will, I might have to take up smoking. It is the number one way of "dealing with stressful situations" amongst my friends, apparently. Although if I had to pick a vice, it would have to be alcohol (massive consummation of sugar is NOT a vice. It is merely "no way to lead your life").
So I'm using lots of inverted commas this afternoon. I'm stressed. And likely to remain so for a while. I'm sorry. Deal.
Labels: jobhunting, life, stress
This post was posted by Unknown at 5:18 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment
Al Pacino's AFI Lifetime Achievement Award was on a good couple of hours ago. That was cool. Must be real cool to have that sort of function thrown for you, I guess. Everybody was really nice about it, too, no over-the-top OMG-HE-IZ-DA-KINGZ type dialogue or anything, blessed relief. Lots of fun, lots of jokes, lots of take-downs and nasty humour. I guess when you're at Mr. Pacino's level of career achievement, you can kid about them as much as you like because you know there isn't a chance in hell that anybody's going to take you seriously.
So, ah, life at the moment isn't much for the movements. It's almost two, and I'm dead sleepy (blessed relief), but other than that life is stagnant like a tiny fetid pond. Also the reading of much Questionable Content content isn't doing much good for me at all. So last night, I dreamt I was cycling around Bombay with a girl. No girl in particular, just a hypothetical concept-of-one type thing. And I was cycling! So obviously today I'm all "hmm what would it cost to get back to cycling and oh yeah I wonder where and how I can find a girl". I should probably go back to reading The Year ... Reis again: that's a good book to read at times like this, when you're wondering whether just sitting around doing nothing is in anyway a good way to get on with life (hint: it isn't, but this book will let you in on that slowly, with plenty of buffering and philosophy and literary references and everything). Which hopefully means I eventually (and quickly?) hit the bit where I'm just way too bored with the whole thing to not do something about it, so then I do do something about it, and then - gargh! - have to go back round to step 1. Ah, you know how it is, how it goes, right?
Also this video is pretty good, and I know I should probably listen to more than 1 minute of it before recommending it on but, you know what, it's the 00s, it does have to be good, it just has to be new (or obscure), either way.
Blbhlhlhblbhlh whatever. I guess I should just go and (try to) sleep or something. Y'know, give me something to do and all.
Labels: bored, life, relationships, stagnation
This post was posted by Unknown at 1:36 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment
This is pretty much exactly the sort of black humour you'd expect from the people behind DrMcNinja. Good stuff. And the QC storyline is going fine, too!
Life is confusing and mildly depressing right now. Sigh.
Labels: dr mcninja, life, questionable content
This post was posted by Unknown at 10:49 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment
This time, though, I've both gotten a little sleep, and am well fed and all that. So it's in a pretty nice mood that I'm sitting in the living room, listening to all this music I haven't heard in *ages* ('cos of Karanth's speaker issues, right?). Man, are these beautiful songs. Babu Samjho Ishare is playing, and Memory is coming up soon, followed by Any Dream Will Do. Beautiful, beautiful!
Tomorrow (err, today; like, in another few hours or so) I'm planning on going to lab. Try (probably unsuccessfully) to get some stuff done, I guess. I'm still in midthought on the whole but-but-but-I-don't-like-programming thing. Seriously. I'm really worried about what my folks are going to think if I get an unappetizing job description like "Shipping Clerk" or something, and I. assures me that it's not a good job. But I have to start at the bottom, don't I? And I'd really like a job where I get to do things, not just make pretend things happen on computer screens. Where all my frustrations aren't the result of somebody else's design decisions. I mean, I want to be like the ship captains of old (or, err, now, I guess), where you're doing the best you can with what you've got. That's the kind of functioning (I think) I've always liked. Plus, that way, I can leave work at work, where right now - no, well, okay, that's not a valid complaint, I guess.
I still need to keep the Mac shareware dream alive, otherwise I won't have anything to do in case none of my applications work out (out of 8 applications, only two people have even looked at my resume thus far; one has rejected me, the other has put me "on hold"). I mean, if it comes down to that, I'd much rather be working on my own than working for anybody else.
Ah, here's Memory now :). It's nice to know that however horrible things might be (and trust me, they haven't even started getting horrible yet), you can always put on a song like this and just feel the beauty of the music.
Labels: any dream will do, life, memory, programming, thoughts, today
This post was posted by Unknown at 4:51 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment
Okay, first the really big news: my MacBook Pro (tentatively named "Bathsheba", or daughter of the oath) should be shipping within the week, which means that by next weekend or so, she should be in my hands, and then the fun can really begin, I hope. Also, I'm getting a bit of time off at the moment, since most of my labmates are out of town on conference. Things should get a whole lot dodgier next week, though.
I was hoping that the lack of stress (relative lack of stress?) might help with my weakness fits/heartburn issues, but no such luck. Had a major double whammy yesterday/today (slept early yesterday night, woke up at 2 with usual heartburn, stayed up until morning, then went back to sleep, had weird dreams. Woke up feeling awful, ate a bit, hung around at home until eight-ish when I had a pretty bad attack of the weakness. Like, I walked over to the food court slightly shivering, and guzzled by cola up pretty bad. Rest of the day (popping over to lab, then to SPS, then Clementi, and then back home) was fine, except for the staying-up-all-night bit. I'm not sure what to do about that; try and keep going for the rest of the day, or just forget about it and go to sleep, possibly with the aircon running.
One nice thing about all this is the further strengthening of my position that a "normal" job is just not going to work out for me. I'm feeling pretty weak as I write this, but atleast I don't have anywhere to go tomorrow, I don't have omg-I'm-going-to-be-late anxiety or anything. Well, a bit. Sigh. I don't know, maybe it's all just a bit of a waste.
Maybe it's like some kind of reverse depression. Maybe I need to be happy more. Maybe I ought to get out more.
One nice thing about staying up odd nights is being able to watch late night movies on TV. So far I've managed to catch Grizzly Man (in two parts) and My Date with Drew. They're both really amazing movies, and I'm really glad for the chance to "meet" Timothy Treadwell and Brian Herzlinger.
I wonder who I'll have the pleasure of bumping into next?
Labels: fresh durians, life, movies
This post was posted by Unknown at 5:27 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment
Like, you didn't want to sleep, because you weren't in the kind of life you were comfortable with leaving alone for seven hours or so without any feedback? That you didn't really want to wake up to, because that is just about the most depressing thing you could imagine?
I am to some limited degree therapeuticising myself by writing; it's not very helpful when you're fictional characters have more life than you do. Ah, well. Tomorrow will be tomorrow.
This post was posted by Unknown at 3:49 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment
Just want to register my disdain at still being up at 7am (stupid cough keeping me then, then screwing up my sleep schedule so it's hard to get back to normal), my anger for the programming bugs in Rome: Total War which plague me to the ends of the world, but somehow don't affect anybody else playing that game I know, my love for those who called me up to wish me happy birthday (which it was yesterday, on Friday the 16th, according to the lunar/Hindu/Marathi calendar), gladness that I'm finally well and truely recovering from sicknesses and hopefully well on the path to normality, hooray-ness that Chinese New Year is here at last, a fantastic time for us non-Chinese Singaporeans to have fun, and the morbid recollection that atleast one of the two computers I bought in the last year (I refer to wakywaky, Shruti's old computer) has many strange and fascinating issues, from the power randomly going off to my (custom) Linux kernel refusing to boot up properly on it (yet); it should, however, be noted that Ubuntu worked almost perfectly from the get-go, except for X-Windows (which I'll need if I'm going to play games/write software on this thing) and the power (which I'll need if I'm going to keep it running at all hours as a server machine). So, sigh. I'll potter around with it a bit more, and if there's no dice, I'll just give up on it, move on to Bathsheba, and, err, I don't know - keep it on or a momento, or something? Or just something to tinker with. After the frustrations I go through with R:TW, it's such a blessed relief to know that the computer will (probably) not just up and out, all by itself, for no good reason - that some level of tinkering, googling, and what have you, *should* provide a reasonable answer, and teach me something new in the process. Anybody can lead a rag-tag band of 300+ Britons against a city protecting 600+ Frenchmen - but how many people can correctly determine the one Linux kernel command-line option which stop the kernel from going off into a panic loop, thus allowing you to concentrate on the next kernel panic? Not too many, I'm guessing!
And, by the way, have you seen Get A First Life? Very cute, that.
This post was posted by Unknown at 6:43 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment
"A beach house," he said, "doesn't even have to be on the beach. Though the best ones are. We all like to congregate," he went on, "at boundary conditions". "Really?" said Arthur. "Where land meets water. Where earth meets air. Where body meets mind. Where space meets time. We like to be on one side, and look at the other."