I dread the thought of going through my f-list. So I won't. If there was anything important I'd probably know about it already. If not, it wasn't important enough that you would try to get ahold of me by other means. (I still do check my email on a daily basis, you know! xD And notifications for comments on my LJ entries go there, so.)

In other news, I'm back! Kinda. I've been microblogging, mostly, with Twitter and plurk and FB. Stupid FB. It's gone and eaten up about 1-2 hours of my life everyday because of stupid Farmville. I promise, once I get that blasted level 34 building I'mma quit. Or go back maybe once a week or something. I've already more or less weaned myself off RollerCoaster Kingdom since none of my friends seem to be playing it = I can't advance AT ALL. And CafeWorld too. Since there are no goals for that one. I'mma board up my doors soon-ish. So that's what's been up with my life. Besides the fact that I'm applying for PhDs again, and having to write a literature review because of that. And the hetalia RP's still on, of course. And I've been learning how to drive! With a manual car! (i.e. a car that requires you to change the gears manually) I hate the goddamn clutch D: And I've been job-hunting too! Kinda. Meh. I guess I could always look into NAFA. Hm.

Yes, I'm rambling. It's been a long day and I really should get to bed. TV!!!!!!!!!!!!

So! Neil Gaiman (insert swoon here) is coming to Singapore for the SWF (... to be honest, I'm not quite sure if it's the Singapore Writers' Festival or the Singapore Writing Festival, but I suspect it's the former)- he'll be talking about his books on 31st Oct and 1st Nov, as I'm sure some of you already know, as well as co-chairing a panel(?) with Amanda Palmer on the 31st.

WELL, THE POINT OF THIS POST IS, I'VE GOT TICKETS TO SEE NEIL GAIMAN. And since they gave out tickets in sets of two, I have one left over - it's for 31st Oct, 3pm. Who wants to come?!

Edit: No more tickets, sorry!

Ohwait, this was supposed to be the first entry for Cosfest '09. orz

Anyway!

So last last weekend (orz) was Cosfest VIII: A Very Happy Event. And oh, how HAPPY it was. XD



( Sadly, the main cast of Reborn more or less fell out of favour this year. )

• 15:50 ... seriously. Why are insurance companies the only ones asking me for my resume. #
• 15:55 Graaah I have too many ohnoseconds in my life D: #
• 16:47 Anybody want to go try the Absinthe restaurant? #
• 18:35 I'm sorry, but the moment I see you writing 'de' for 'the' I will close the window, regardless of how good your fic may be. #
• 18:58 This word, I do not think you know what it means. #

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• 03:01 Can the blogging service I use stop logging me out? Argh! #
• 03:02 Does anybody know why there is a lagging of the video compared to the audio for .mkvs? (esp those put out by gg >.<) I've used GOM and VLC. #
• 03:03 And more importantly, how to fix that lag? I won't even go near CCCP's Media Player because it takes abt 5 mins to load and lags even worse #
• 17:19 Repeats self - Does anybody know why there is a lagging of the video compared to the audio for .mkvs? (esp those put out by gg >.<) #
• 17:20 I've used GOM and VLC players. I'm not even going to touch Media Player/CCCP because it takes so long to even load! More importantly, #
• 17:21 Does anybody know how to make it stop lagging? T___T #
• 18:00 Is anybody going for the 16 May pinkdot event? pinkdot.sg #

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• 18:41 There is something wrong when I look at a file of about 20MB and think, oh, that's pretty small. #
• 18:45 It doesn't feel like a Monday because my mom and my brother were home almost the whole day - apparently my bro had an extra holiday today. #

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• 17:58 Urgh when can I get my own place! Where people stop bothering me! >.< #
• 18:16 Anybody know how Sgporeans can get twitter updates on their phones? #
• 18:20 tinyurl.com/cbao6w Interesting. I actually learnt about Twitter~ XD #
• 19:34 Does anybody else here thingk it might be fun to be able to ride the train and just get off and on anywhere you want on that line? #
• 19:36 Have been catching up on my flist for the past 2 hours and I'm still not done argh/ #
• 19:37 Epic typing fail. Whatever. #

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• 01:51 Man, suddenly I want to go back and do high school math again. #
• 12:42 Dammit I have the hiccups D: #
• 13:38 I think... that we only know true happiness just before we die. Sometimes not even then. #

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• 10:56 Oh mein gott. My ears buuuuuuurn when I hear the whining of the girls on S Factor commercials. Do I hear EPIC FAIL? #
• 12:40 Anybody have any job openings for biology majors? #
• 15:33 Graaaaaah!!! Why are insurance companies the ones asking for my resume? D: #
• 22:45 I have a theory - part of the reason why local universitties pile their smarter students who are less aware sociologicallyy with so much ... #
• 22:46 ... work is to allow them to have less time to time hard about current government policies and to become activists. #
• 22:47 As has been demonstrated over and over again, university students are the ones most likely to become activits because of the dense conc... #
• 22:48 ...centration of thought and debate that often flourishes on campus grounds. #
• 22:49 Also, the very physical structure of our universities serves to deprive space for student activists to assemble and consequently hold ... #
• 22:49 demonstrations. #
• 22:50 I should elaborate about this more on my blog, shouldn't I? #
• 22:50 TBC. #

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Would you say that I am pretentious? But what if it isn't a false claim to importance/distinction that I am making, just that other people think that I couldn't be possibly as... knowledgeable as I claim to be?

Speaking of which, I need to go read through my Biology textbooks so that I can ground in a big picture the random bits of trivia that I have stored in my brain.

• 01:29 Hates bots randomly following me with the fire of a thousand burning suns. #
• 13:11 AHHHHHH I forgot to watch the Amazing Race on Monday! *cries* #
• 16:18 Hey all! Is White Album any good? #
• 16:22 Suddenly, gaiaonline reminds me of Neopets. Hm. #
• 18:00 Go away, ants! I'm not dead yet so you can't eat me! #
• 18:02 The 9th episode of this season's Amazing Race is amusingly titled 'Our parents will cry themselves to death'. #
• 18:53 Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh the 15th episode of Hetaliaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa #
• 21:08 I love how so many of Victor's quotes are used to name the episodes of this season's Amazing Race. That man gives good sound-bytes. #

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• 00:20 I am getting so frustrated with the standards of English (or lack thereof) in local media, omg. #
• 13:55 My nose is blocked. And I keep sneezing D: #
• 13:58 Graaah the sun is beating down relentlessly again. Anybody has any reccomendations for movies? #

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• 01:27 I really have a love-hate relationship with Chopin. #
• 10:53 I can has ants? D: #
• 10:54 Am going to go for lesson in a bit. Argh. #
• 22:35 Good morning! Haha, I took a nap that ended lasting abut 6-7 hours. #

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• 02:20 The wind/rain sounds weird. It's going to be a hell of a storm tonight. #
• 02:38 Fucking hell the lightning just struck right in front of my house! I could see the shape of the lightning as it went down! #
• 02:38 Just really one straight bolt! OMG. It felt like I could reach out and touch it! #
• 02:41 It just happened again! Fuck! #
• 02:41 So intense, this storm. OMG. #
• 11:32 Haha I guess now my Twitter feed has become a retrospective look at the AWARE meeting? #awaresg #
• 12:07 My father is such an MCP, omg. He just found out that I went to the AWARE meeting yesterday and threw a bit of a hissy fit. #
• 15:08 Teachers were warned by MOE not to go down to the AWARE meeting to support the old exco? #awaresg #
• 19:56 WTF It's only 8pm and I'm falling asleep? This cannot do! #
• 21:40 Damn. Suddenly wants Carl's Jr. #
• 22:15 Actually yeah Josie Lau is quite poor thing, I guess. She did the best she could under the circumstances. #awaresg #
• 22:15 But perhaps she should have learnt to read the atmosphere better. And maybe bow to the floor earlier. #awaresg #

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I have just spent two very eventful days haha. Well, first off was the kimono/yukata outing thing on Friday, then the AWARE EGM today. But I am very tired now, so I shall just leave you with ( the Twitter feed during the EGM. )

I am actually kind of bothered that the timing is so vague like from 10 hours ago and things like that, so I hope that since I've opened my Twitter account to the public again, LoudTwitter will do its work and update the whole feed according to time XD

Will go into more coherent and concise description/blogging tomorrow when I wake up. Night~

Time to break out the thermometers and face masks again, people!

It's been so bloody hot here as of late that I was really glad for the rain yesterday. But it still didn't help my woozyness. Apparently I may be severely dehydrated, causing the general sluggishness and long-lasting low-grade fever. But I don't like to drink water because it's tasteless? Haha. Maybe I should get some lemons to flavour the water slightly or something, because otherwise I'd just mix Ribena concentrate in and that wouldn't help at all.

In other news, yes, the swine flu. We were about overdue for an influenza epidemic of this kind of proportions anyway. Hah, suddenly hit by another philosophical bug. I seem to be getting a few of those these days - like how there isn't actually a 'norm' per se as that is just a social construct which allows the general population to not have to think very hard about the decisions that they make each and every day. (That bug bit me when I was reading Nineteen Eighty-Four.) This bug, on the other hand, involves The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I really should stop reading the classics that will make me question things, shouldn't I? XD

Anyway, yes. The author's proposition is that things in our life matter because they only happen once, and only once, so eventually even the gravest transgressions like war, murder and rape, will be forgiven and forgotten, and perhaps looked back upon not with fear or anger or disgust but rather understanding, and because of that, we are free to do anything and everything that we wish because nothing matters at all. However, if you're looking at the greater picture, things don't go that way. Sure, if you are the individual, things may just happen once and only once. But as a whole, the world really has a tendency of repeating itself. The nature of all global systems are cyclical - disease epidemics, weather, the economy/stock market - they keep rising, and when they can rise no more, they fall. And with a more or less predictable pattern, no less, which means that these things, which impact all of our lives so greatly, may actually have meaning, because we can learn from them, as though we were playing a computer game and hitting save every-so-often, and consequently are heavy. So is it more true that the state of existence is that of unbearable lightness because things have no meaning, or is it filled with unbearable heaviness because of the potential meaning? Or perhaps, because life has no meaning, so it is unbearably heavy; or is it that since life is full of meaning, it is unbearably light?

Don't mind me, it's just a teal dear.

So amused by Time's Global Advisor City Guide to Singapore. Particularly that "Despite years of government campaigns, Singaporeans are not the most courteous lot. ... Street knowledge, too, is often woeful ... [and there] is no accepted side to walking the street, so be prepared to flail through the crowd like a salmon heading upstream." XDDD

And once again, another food place is featured in Time: Singapore's Chocolate Research Facility - does anyone want to join me on a weekend to visit this place? I wanna get the champagne and the Earl Grey already.

On a more serious note, I'm sure that the locals already know about the coup that ousted the old Exco from AWARE. I, for one, am exceedingly disgusted, and not a little angry, about how our foremost local women's rights advocacy group has been taken over by a group of fundamentalist Christians, who likely as not, have the agenda of turning back the clock to a period when women were 贤妻良母 (good wife and mother); when the worth of a woman was determined by how many babies she could give birth to; when all a woman was allowed to do was to stay at home, look after the children and obey her father, her husband and her son.

The members of AWARE who are oppposed to the new Exco, or at least demanding accountability for the new Exco's actions, are having a meeting on Saturday, where they will lobby for an EGM to give the new Exco a vote of no confidence. Please find the website here. If you are a local and comfortable with it, do come join us. Please note that you need to be a member to attend a meeting and cast a vote. Membership is $40 per year, or $5 for students under the age of 25.

edit: I'd said that I'd tell you what I was doing with the tamagoyaki, didn't I?

( It's a charaben! )

And I am never ever doing another charaben again until I can find small but durable scissors, a scapel, and a pair of tweezersforceps. I mean, seriously!

• 17:24 Made fail!tamagoyaki today XD Added too much sugar, forgot the soy sauce, and was too impatient waiting for it to solidify. XD #

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