A long night at work

Sigh.. was working till 4am rushing some work. Flat like pancakes now!

Anyway: from Key:

1. Hm... you're a good finanical planner!
2. Babysit Erin and Emily for a day!
3. blue... composed (sometimes) and organized...
4. your patience with me..
5. the guy who got cut near his eye by his glasses (which broke) during a basketball game.
6. Puppy....
7. why me?

Randomly Lari

And now something for Lari!

1. You're the best poet I know. (Like, as in personally)
2. Get something published!
3. The red of autumn leaves - bright but also faded, somehow. Both that you're so lively and yet reserving a bit of yourself.
4. You're so enthusiastic about other people...
5. OBS, and you and Penny asking so enthusiastically about me and Keying. LoL
6. Puss from Shrek - cute, but sharp... ...
7. Why are you so sad sometimes?

Oh. and to answer Lari's question: I travel a lot because I like travelling, and because I'm lucky.. lol..

Randomly about Key

First random list is for Key, who asked offline...

1. I think you're definitely the more popular half..
2. Try to totally "qian jiu" your mom for 1 week.
3. Orange, bright bright orange!
4. You are so willing to go out of your way to help whoever.
5. That first time when Nekki introduced us on the 151...
6. Dolphin! Dolphin!!
7. When did you first, first, first have the tiniest suspicion I was trying to date you?

7 random things

Got this from Lari..

reply to this comment and,
1. I'll respond with something random about you
2. I'll challenge you to try something
3. I'll pick a colour that I associate with you
4. I'll tell you something I like about you
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on your blog

So.. if you want me to try it with you, drop a tag or a comment!

And first, Lari's response!
1) He's a basketball fannn!
2) erm.... hahah. Meet me and penny. Lol.
3) Blue, calm and cool ^^
4) You're really creative about your solutions. we couldn't have made it past more than half our challenges without you ^^
5) First and clearest: The guy who gave a real creative solution in our first challenge at OBS^^
6) Monkey - Smart!
7) Why is it that you travel so often?!?!

Back from Florida and New York

So I'm back from the US. Will probably have to post a blow-for-blow if I ever get my pictures uploaded, lol. But as usual, I'm wayyyy too busy to think much about doing anything as mundane as keeping track of what happened.

Part of it is simply the crush of work and 400 unread work emails. Still - I'm glad I went. Managed to spend mucho time traveling with darling Key, and not worrying about things like work and living....

Crazy over board position

Well, not strictly true. Board position's a Magic:the Gathering term. What I did was buy 2 board games strictly on impulse. Lol.. Bought Shadows over Camelot and Betrayal at House on the Hill. Now all I need is some players!

Twins!

Lol.. during tea break today I saw Beng Choo, and I've not seen her basically since Stanford, so I went over to say hi. When I caught her attention she didn't seem to recognise me, so I said, "Hi, Beng Choo, right?" and she paused and replied, "Oh that's my sister".

Oops... never had that happen to me before!

Fury of Dracula

Was playing "Fury of Dracula" with Shaun, Poon, Tongli, and Poon's "little friend" on Sat night - Sunday morning.. 2 hours.. lol. I remember from our last visit to Settlers Cafe (Andy, Poon, Tongli, and beloved Key) that we should double the estimated play time when we're playing - and true enough we took 6 hours to play including breakfast!
I wonder why, though...

Anyway, all of us were new to the game, so I volunteered to be Dracula. For your info, four vampire hunters (Lord Godalmine, Dr Seward, van Helsing, and Mina Harker) hunt Dracula all over Europe.

It's a fun game, I think - good combination of deduction, luck, and devious thinking required for the game.. though maybe it was more fun for me than them! (I volunteered to be Dracula, since (a) I think vampires are cool, and (b) I like being the devious , scheming one.) I would recommend this game, especially if your group doesn't like to have free for alls where everyone backstabs everyone else.. Only one guy has to feel ostracized, lol.

Warning: I thought it was pretty tough being Dracula, since I got away by the skin of my teeth several times -- And I was already not fighting much, to Shaun's frustration. I just kept running, in weird and tricky ways that kept them guessing at my intentions. And even then I could not get fully away! So if you volunteer to be Dracula, pretty much be prepared to be staked and watch your spawn get hunted down...

Chemical anagram?

This New York Times post on the dangers of second hand smoke.

Told me that nicotine is metabolized into cotinine.

Cute! It's an anagram!

Didn't this happen before? (Deja vu)

Not sure whether these thoughts are inspired by Neil Gaiman, Ted Chiang, or just recent happenings.

But recently, I've been having waves of deja vu.

Things like: I'm about to email someone at work for something, and I have this feeling that I've already done it. In fact, I can remember the chain of events leading up to it.

But there's nothing in my archives. And when I check with the person, yes, it's my first time asking for it.

Or, someone asks me for something, and I have the feeling this has happened before, and I know exactly what's going to happen next. And what my response is/will be. And a feeling that I have to respond in that way.

The feeling, like I've dreamt it before somewhere. And it's coming more often, and stronger, than ever before.

I wonder if people with photographic memory can remember their dreams.
I wonder, if dreams can portend the future, or possible futures. How can it be, when the future has not happened? Or if time is truly an illusion, and our paths are already set out from before we were born, or even before our grandparents or their grandparents were born?

And, if deja vu is happening more frequently, what does that mean? Is it like when you're near the side of the swimming pool, and the waves bouncing off the wall are coming back more quickly and higher?

Songs in context, out of context

Sometime back I blogged about the last episode of Ghost in the Shell: 2nd Gig. A really poignant episode, which touched on the what it means to live.

Anyway, one of the sad parts was this "Tachikoma's song" which was sung by the cute little Tachikomas.. a song which all of them sang together. Because of their high-pitched voices and the translation of the lyrics, it sounded like some kind of children's folk song, and the context plus instrumentals made it sound really dramatic and tragic... And I kept wondering what the song was!

Today, I checked my mail and discovered that a visitor somehow knew the song. There were even youtube music videos by some singers who I was not aware of. But when I went to see the videos, I was shocked to find that the song was a bouncy-bouncy, dance to the rhythm dance to the beat bubble-gum pop song!

Eh. not exactly what I was hoping for.. waiting for the GITS CD...

Destiny in the Sandman

Kinokuniya's having a 20% sale!! Awesome stuff! lol..

Anyway, I went ahead and bought all the remaining Sandman books in the series. Started reading The Season Of Mists.

Introduction by Harlan Ellison: did I mention I like his style of writing?

anyway, as I started reading, I was struck by a certain resonance in the character of Destiny: a character, carrying his book, which records everything that has happened, and possibly everything that has ever happened.

Examining his book, he finds the encounter with the three women outlined there in every detail. Reading on, he knows what he must do.

Once, I read a short story by Ted Chiang, "Story of Your Life". In it, an interpreter learns the language of an alien species. Their language has a different structure from human language, and reflects a difference in how they view life/time -- they do not seem to see a cause/effect structure in time, but rather that cause and effect are bound up together in time. Kind of like, if the effect did not happen, then there would not be a cause.

The analogy drawn in Ted Chiang's story is of a person who finds a book that writes out exactly how the future will happen. Having found out the future, there are normally two storylines that play out from there in classical fiction: (1) that the person changes her future, or (2) that the person's efforts to change the future result in the predicted future happening. Ted's protagonist posits a different possibility: that the person will be unable to choose otherwise than how the book has written.

(The linked Wiki has a much better explanation of this)

Anyway, it seems to me that Destiny is like that. He sees the book's contents and has no choice but to do exactly as it says, no?

Anyway, Ted's story is a good read. If you want to read it, I have it in one of my Dozois' annual collections. :> The Sandman is also good, and now I have the set!

Back from Geneva. Swiss Air ground service sucks!

Got back in abt 7am this morning, but feel asleep until close to lunch.. lol.


Swiss Air sucks!
The flight started badly. One thing I consistently found from Geneva is that the service isn't very good at all, unless you speak French. Surprising, cos people keep telling me they have these hotel and tourism schools there.. Anyway, what happened was that we handed 3 passports and 3 sets of tickets to the check-in counter, and they lost one of the tickets (my mom's), and insisted they hadn't taken it. The staff even went through my mom's ticket folder searching for it.. Then she directed my mom to go to the ticketing counter to see if we can get a replacement. And I'm thinking, look my mom booked her ticket, you have her passport there, so why can't you check her in, even without a paper ticket? Those E-tickets are pretty much nothing but a name as well!

At the same time, there was a queue forming up behind us, and the next lady in line pointedly said that we should hurry up and move on cos lots of people are waiting and she's got a nine am flight to catch.
Eh.. Our flight is at 10.20. I got into the queue at 8.40am. Your flight is at 9. You came in after me. Right.. blame it on me, yes!

So, my mom went to ticketing, where they said this is not their responsibility and the check-in staff should call their supervisor. We're just heading back to check-in when the staff reappears holding my mom's ticket.. Oh, they dropped it behind the counter (just like we guessed), they're sorry.. Took us back to the counter. The staff was going off duty I think, and her replacement checked my mom in, but refused to check in my mom for her transfer to the Zurich-Singapore flight... asked her to do it in Geneva.

!@#$%^ service standards.

June 16, a national holiday in South Africa

Discovered that today's a national holiday in South Africa, to commemorate the Soweto uprising against apartheid, June 16, 1976.

High school students in Soweto protested for better education, and were answered with teargas and bullets. 23 died, and the protests were followed by more riots and more deaths.

Without you

Without you I am...
A field without flowers
An ocean without fishes

When will I hear
the music of your voice,
and see
the end of sadness?

Sigh...