i find it ironic that the word alcohol is derived from arabic.

and i was going to post this up a while back but i forgot: stephen colbert's bush-smackdown result really exemplified tom lehrer's position that you can't do political satire any more because it's all become true. like awarding the nobel prize to kissinger.

have thing in eye. may be scratch, may be foreign body lodged in there.

makes me think of spacesuits stuck in there in their classic stiff-spaceman pose. for some reason

learned new word: pranged. as in, "he pranged his mother's car, so they got a new one."

i love it.

and had so much fun playing uno and mad magazine game and i've never laughed so hard.

and um dad had his ear torn up. cartilage was showing. blood everywhere. i hear this from my mom. now his ear was cut and stitched up in such a way that it's pointy and smaller than the other ear :
go daddy.

mm sleep. want cuddles.

this kicks ass.

and whenever i see models i think - ribs. too skinny.

hur so chee siok chin is appealing the election results a la thailand on the basis that the elections "were not free and fair". hohoho. 100 bucks says they won't win. no, actually. 10 peanuts says they won't win.

and i will be leaving this shores on aug 22. gods. its not sinking in.

whatthesamhill. makes no sense. how the hell do people spam tag boards????

utilising little girls isthe most insidious and devilish marketing ploy ever known to mankind. you could avoid them by looking straight ahead, but they come up to you and go "please will you buy cookies??" and you go "crap. okay" and watch your cash spirit out of your wallet. in 2 meetings they cleaned me out of 25 bucks. power.

in other thoughts:

"Repression, Sir, is a habit that grows. I am told it is like making love - it is always easier the second time! The first time there may be pangs of conscience, a sense of guilt. But once embarked on this course with constant repetition you get more and more brazen in the attack. All you have to do is to dissolve organizations and societies and banish and detain the key political workers in these societies. Then miraculously everything is tranquil on the surface. Then an intimidated press and the government-controlled radio together can regularly sing your praises, and slowly and steadily the people are made to forget the evil things that have already been done, or if these things are referred to again they're conveniently distorted and distorted with impunity, because there will be no opposition to contradict."

--Lee Kuan Yew as an opposition PAP member speaking to David Marshall, Singapore Legislative Assembly, Debates, 4 October, 1956

hmm.

WA SI HOKKIEN LANG!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *falls off chair and dies laughing*

this so kicks ass.

i went home at three last night, wending my way through silently watching desks that waited for their owners to come and Feed Me, the hungry press. i padded outside in my slippers that muttered "tak, tak" with every two steps i took, i flailed for a taxi and gabbled my way home, watching light0dark0light flash past in the zoetropeic manner it does. i saw a police car, and idly wondered about sugarcoatedcandynights where people jerk around in mindless abandon, and get pulled over for weaving their way home. today i wake up latelatelater than i wanted to, and conspiracies abounded to keep my from my job, which when i got there i found i utterly didn't need. and my phlegm is back again, a product of late nights and later wishes (i did say three, didn't i?)

and so i'm sick and cold. i curled up in a vacated chair for the body warmth and breathed me in again and again, recycling air and taking up smaller space. and this feeling is fading and fading, in smaller circles, and i shall stop

wow. seems like even the party hates some of the top brass too. and i thought the mouthpiece of the party was anti-establishment.

elections five years from now will be very very interesting. VERY interesting. i think whatever they do now can't salvage the fact that they're slipping. slowly, but surely. the old guard is moving out, and the new cynical smart alecks are moving in.

but i'd only vote for the ssf really :D

i've never seen the sky roiling before, light grey upon dark, flaring white in nanoseconds that you can't really say for sure until it's over and your eyes hurt a bit. but when you're on the roof and you're staring at the sky falling over itself in fury and the thunder doesn't stop but keeps sounding like godzilla's on a rampage at the container shipyard and knocking over those huge iron boxes, well, you feel a thrill. and now i know why people are scared of storms.

i think the fact that i actually understand all this should probably make me more than a little worried. but its just so...ridiculously amusing. it's the kind of light humour you get when no one is taking the damn thing seriously and everyone knows it. kinda like casual dating or something.

truthsearch: As a Pastafarian I'm offended by this immitation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It's a blatant mockery of all I find sacred. I demand reparations!
----------
scooter.higher: But this is no mockery! This is an homage... a show of support from the scientific community that they too have been touched by His Noodly Appendage.

They just wanted to be touched more often :-)
----------
Winlin: While I agree with your sentiments, I believe you may have overlooked the most important word in the original post...'reparations' So let's see some outrage, now. I know I have been offended by this invention to the tune of, easily, $500,000.

i'm sorry, i'm sorry. i'll go back to work now.

have you seen what is happening in palestine? have you? because of your deep seated need to punish hamas, you've overreached yourself. because you think economic sanctions will hurt those who make the decisions, because you wish democracy to run your way and dance to your tune you cut off funding. and look what happens. the top brass doesn't suffer. it's the people. and you say humanitarian aid gets through, but you haven't told us what humanitarian aid is, and of course you're not going to any time soon, what with your domestic crisis and all.

and the supreme irony? you say this will force hamas to bow down and accept israel and stop terrorist attacks and this will be a panacea, a solution to all your problems. maybe it will. only then will it be justified, and even then only barely. but what if it's not? palestinians know they're being "punished for their vote for hamas", i quote, from mr ismail siam in the article. what if this only proves to them the inability of the world to accept them for what they are, for their choice? what if this turns them towards hamas? makes them more accepting of the radicalism and the fanaticism and the death that will ensue, because this is the only way they will get their voice heard, and their basic needs met? what if they accede to holding the world hostage? and they just might, because they have nothing to lose.

and yet, i suppose there's no other way, in the minds of our world leaders. apparently waiting it out is not an option, letting democracy and stability change the minds of the people isn't an option. second chances don't figure in the global world policy. everyone seems to want to go down in history as "the one who stopped the war", "the one who save the middle east and possibly the world", remembered for their peace efforts and get a nobel prize. this may not be true, but any surprises why i'm so embittered and cynical with the whole thing? like the recent elections and the night watch, truth, democracy, freedom and love are all very well, but i'm more sure of getting a hard boiled egg with soldiers in the morning.

thing you probably never knew before: rhubarb means altercation, fight, argument, tiff..

yeah, i didn't know either. that's what crosswords do to you. they're very intuitive though.

so i'm looking at the IN selection of letters that complain about the singapore university system. they're worried that foreigners are taking the places of singaporeans, what with the low fees they have to pay, the high proportion of foreign students in singaporean universities and whatnot.

while i can see where they're coming from, i can't help but feel uneasy at how they phrase this, and the ramifications of what will happen if they get their way and singaporeans get preferential treatment. i suppose that because we have so few universities, its kind of hard to guarantee tertiary education for everyone in singapore who wants it, but from their tone of voice, it sounds like they're advocating positive discrimination for singaporeans who want tertiary and post-tertiary education. and that's not always a good thing.

it's probably me, though. i can hardly refute their claims that certain schools have gone so far overboard as to reserve slots for foreign students...i don't really know, see. but that's up to the school, i guess. though i wonder what's happened to meritocracy - do we accept the best of the best, or do we practice affirmative action (either way, for foreigners or for locals)?

the reason why this is bothering me so much is probably because i'm having second and third thoughts about going to the us. of course i want to go. dammit, 3-4 years in the us is definately appealing, and studying with some of the brightest minds in IR? i salivate at the thought (metaphorically speaking). but the cost. the cost. i don't know if my parents really can afford it, or they're just saying it to stop me worrying, or something. it's scary. and i'm not exactly paying my way, as it were. i mean, i'll be taking a job, but how far will that help? and of course, no scholarship means they're bearing all the burdern.

and bloody hell, tufts is expensive.

man he could have just given it away. ah who'm i trying to kid. this is more fun ;D

polling day tmr, and i'm working w0-0t.

oh and the pap is doing their attacking of key opp figures while tackling bread and butter issues, says afp. so it's interesting they've not whacked sylvia lim, who would appear to be the biggest fish.

had interesting talk with nat about singapore politics and straits times and sph and things. just stuffing them here so they can ferment in my brain without being lost. it kinda included: sph and gomezgate, media control, opposition in singapore and their uphill playing field, the ministers with ears on ground and those without, those who can't touch bases with real people, and the poor and the destitute. hmm.

ogay screw this actually i do know i'm dissatisfied and just "notquitethere yet" and just perpetually sleepy and something and SHIT i know not quite why. i think its a factor of things. but i do know how to solve it.

unfortunately i can't quite solve it just yet. #@)%(&!(*@%^!&@%^)( @*%_*#)

so everyone thinks i'm sick or bothered or something's bugging me beyond belief. i dunno. i think i'm just in apathetic mode. i'm just cruising and wondering how i'll last out the week that comes.

ran today. feel better, a bit.

no-cake-week lasted all of one day.

no energy to comment on politics. suffice it to say i think pap is clutching at straws and wp is handling it not bad and sda is a one man party and sdp is a circus.

there is a tissue box stealer in the office. mine disappeared over the weekend. i assume if you leave them around they'll disappear after 3 days >.<

in any case. brought cheese dip to work today. in the immortal words of sam, he is going to "grow fat and die". hur.

does kueh lapis count as a cake or a "kueh", i.e. not a cake? this is for the purposes of testing sam's resolve (which has already failed so nyeh).

my goodness i have nothing useful to say. apart from the frisbee (WHICH PWNS SO MUCHLY) and the line tower wars (which others got pwned at) and the current multiple rallies being broadcast around the newsroom and the confirmed-guaranteed-plus-chop-situation which completely cracks me up. its gonna come back to bite me in the ass, i just KNOW it.

only one person is gonna understand this shit, which is kind of scary.

on a side note, two #%(*&!@ weeks, bloody hell.

musing of the moment - rallies on loudspeakers are noisy and indistinct and irritating because i can't understand. it's like english through the water.
music of the moment - oscar peterson - corcovado
mood of the moment - gwa?