dangerous times.

saturday morning we are living in dangerous times. wars in iraq and afganistan. the financial crisis. fluctuating oil prices. unstable political platforms in asia and middle east. global warming. the list goes on. perilous times.

summer break.

wednesday morning i've been home since early sunday morning. the flight was the worse i've ever taken. for starters, the domestic flight was an hour of nothing but turbulance. to be fair, the pilot did a very good job given the heavy crosswinds and incessant headwind.

so we landed in sydney on time and before long, we found out that our flight back to singapore was delayed for 2 hours. apparently the cause of the delay was because the plane had to stop in melbourne to refuel before being able to continue on to sydney. add to that the fact that the plane was to stop in singapore for a bit before continuing on to frankfurt. it's surprising that the plane didn't have enough fuel. we finally boarded the plane at 7.45pm. the plane taxied to the runway, revved up the engines in preparation for take-off before the announcement came to inform the passengers that there was an engine failure of sorts and that the plane would be heading back to the terminal to get it fixed. so that was another 1 hour delay.

when the plane eventually took off, the in-flight entertainment system was ridiculously incapable of erm, entertaining. first, the movie-on-demand function didn't work, then the sound system went all bonkers with nothing but loud static.

one can only imagine the relief when the plane finally landed in singapore. it was long, tiring and uncomfortable. unfortunately i have a return ticket for qantas next year when i return for the new semester. after that, it's singapore airlines all the way for me.

anyhows, back for the summer. a relatively long 2 and a half months break. will be off to do a bit of travelling, taipei, batam, bangkok and maybe even kuala lumpur on the agenda. the hols have started with a blast so far. been hanging out with the anu people the past 2 days or so. can't wait for the rest of my friends to end their exams this week and next before the meet-ups become much more frequent.

wow.

wednesday morning i'm amazed at the amount of stuff i have. it's only been 4 months. packing's almost all done so that's all good.

murdered.

sunday morning i got killed by math. again. it's sickening knowing the amount of time and effort put into it and yet it does not pay off. gah!

damn it!

friday afternoon there goes the 3 distinctions. aargh!

going crazy...and blind

friday morning imagine trying to squeeze 11 weeks worth of lectures, notes and tutorials into a single piece of A4 paper. my eyes are bloodshot and i've been running a slight fever the past week or so. blame it on exhaustion blame it on dehydration. i can't wait for saturday afternoon to come. i really need the rest.

i must reiterate that i've never studied harder in my life other than for O levels and OOP in poly. this takes it to a whole new different level. burning (literally)through the night till 4 sometimes 5am. waking up at 10 or 11 and starting work again. it's insane. and if singapore unis are supposed to be worse, i shudder to think how my friends are suffering now (unless they tell me otherwise...).

mounting pressures.

monday night what do you do when disappointment strikes? what do you do when pressure mounts and the stress becomes ever more apparent?

you get back on your two feet. you grit your teeth and you punch through the barriers with all your might.

you stand up for what you believe and you fight for it.

---

if stress were a really hot chick i'd embrace her right away.
(un)fortunately stress isn't. stress is a tranny that still walks, talks and sounds like a guy and it scares the shit out of me. funnily enough, i thrive under pressure. hmm..

c'mon!

Nelly Furtado - In God's Hands

I looked at your face I saw that all the love had died
I saw that we had forgotten to take the time
I, I saw that you couldn't care less about what you do
Couldn't care less about the lies
You couldn't find the time to cry

We forgot about love
We forgot about faith
We forgot about trust
We forgot about us

Now our love's floating out the window
Our love's floating out the back door
Our love's floating up in the sky in heaven
Where it began back in God's hands

You said that you had said all that you had to say
You said baby it's the end of the day
And we gave a lot but it wasn't enough
We got so tired that we just gave up

We didn't respect it
We went and neglected it
We didn't deserve it
But I never expected this

Our love floated out the window
Our love floated out the back door
Our love floated up in the sky to heaven
It's part of a plan
It's back in God's hands
Back in God's hands

It didn't last
It's a thing of the past
Oh we didn't understand
Just what we had
Oh I want it back
Just what we had
Oh I want it back
Oh just what we had

monday morning i have nothing specific to blog about but i just felt writing. i'm WAY behind my study schedule now. just completed comp3410. looks like i'll have to be very selective with comp3900. the only upside is that we are permitted to bring in a cheatsheet (notes on one piece of A4, two sided).

-pours more oil-

Importance of the Pen.

sunday night i have a blister on my left thumb that came about partly because of my eBusiness paper on thursday. the whole paper was structured in a way that even the short answer questions were not "short". in essence, you had to write 6 essays in 3 hours. imagine that.

in any case, that exam further reiterated my belief that pens are an important aspect to any exam. comfort ranks highest in choosing the right pen. especially so because i'm left-handed so writing in binded books can be a pain. so yes, comfort. imagine having to write fast. how you hold the pen depends on how fast your hand is going to cramp up. also, if you are the kind to have sweaty palms, the grip on the pen is that much more important.

after comfort comes the "smoothness" of writing. being able to find a pen that writes smoothly over most types of paper is essential because you never know the kind of paper that you'll be writing on. some exam booklets are more coarse than others while some happen to be smooth.

using ink pens can be a hassle sometimes when they smudge, add to that the use of correction fluid (or liquid paper as some would call it), ink pens just don't cut it for most left-handed people. because you want to be able to write without the pen getting stuck in the paper like some pens do, the diameter of the pen tip is another factor. most would choose either a 0.5mm or 0.7mm tip. the choice of tips depends very much on one's style of handwriting. if it's as small (or minute even) as mine, then a 0.7 is just too thick.

so to fulfill all my requirements, my choice of pen is the pilot g2 0.5mm.

sadly. i ran out of ink for both my blue ones and they don't sell refills here. to buy a brand new pen would set me back A$8.50 (yeah. no kidding). i ended up buying an artline pen instead. unfortunately it's still not as comfortable and my thumb really hurts.

1 down. 3 to go!

Dear Fergie.

Dear Sir Alex,

With all due respect, you're shite. Your team selection bemuses us Manchester United fans. How do you explain good ol' Gary Neville as right back in a game like this, knowing it was going to be uptempo and end-to-end. Gary's been a good servant for the club, no one disputes that. But realise that he no longer has the legs to run up and down the right flank like he used to 10 years a go. You already have the foresight to use Giggs sparingly, if only you could do the same for Neville.

Berbatov. No one's saying he is a lousy player. He's just plain lazy and does not defend. Even Saha and van Nisterooy did their fair share of defending. And how in the world did you get into the mess of screwing up Carlos Tevez? There are other ways to structure your midfield. Here's an example:

Nani - Rooney (sitting behind the front two) -Hargreaves/Carrick/Anderson - Ronaldo

As a striker back in your playing days, perhaps its time to start teaching Anderson how to shoot. He has taken a lot of shots but none of them seem to be able to find the net. Perhaps the lad needs a little enlightenment from you yes?

Of course Anderson's not alone in that respect, Nani's shite as well. But so was Ronaldo when he came. So I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here. And oh, how could we forget. The loss to Arsenal highlights the glaring need for a defensive midfielder to protect the back four when they are having off days like today.

Is it any irony also that the defeats so far have come from defensive errors? None more glaring than that of Van der Sar flapping and mis-punching corners and/or free-kicks?

Let's face it. It's time for the seniors to make way. Foster has proven time and time again that he is more than capable. VDS on the other, has proven this season that his time is almost up. Neville doesn't have the legs anymore. Giggs and Scholes just do not suit the style that the team has the capacity for.

Here's what I think the team should be like now:

---------- Foster ----------

Rafael - Ferdinand - Vidic - Evra

Ronaldo - Hargreaves - Nani

---------- Rooney ----------

--- Tevez ----- Berbatov ---

Play it fast like we used to. Play it hard like we used to. Please Fergie. Wake up and smell reality. It's time to let the old men go.

Yours Sincerely,
Jason

MU fan since 1996.

asswipes.

saturday night apparently the concept of "kiasu-ism" isn't lost on westerners as well. case in point: for the past couple of days, it's been my dumb luck to want to play table tennis in the common area with my friends when others want to play too. and all 3 times it has always turned out the same way - the westerners running and grabbing the table tennis bets before we do. and the annoying part? they celebrate the fact that they get to play with chest-beating and cheering. fuck off you pissheads.

and china is asking the world to "ditch their unsustainable lifestyles". talk about ironies. they're not exactly very "green" themselves. pot calling the kettle black? i'd say so..

oh. is it me or are the china nationals naturally irritating and inconsiderate?

shit.

saturday morning had my first paper on thursday. it went better than expected and i couldn't have been more pleased with it other than for the retrospective. there were some answers that i thought could have been done a little better. all in all it was "easy" to answer and was straight forward enough. so that's all good.

my study plan has been thrown out the window. i'm stuck on comp3410 and why? facebook and tetris. they're a mightily awful distraction. the past two days have been relatively productive but it could have been better. i'm about halfway done with it and intend to finish it all by tonight. sunday's going to be the start of comp3900 before i start on my crash course in math1005 on wednesday. think that should allow me to cover all bases.. we'll see..


i want red alert 3. i want gears of war 2. i want football manager 2009. i want fifa 2009.
the new eee pc is tempting.
i want a new digital camera
more importantly, i still want to get my touch diamond pro.

time to prioritize..
touch diamond pro
gow2/fm09
ra3
fifa09
digi cam
scratch out eee pc

and oh. arsenal versus manchester united. how am i ever going to miss that?

change.

wednesday afternoon in typical preacher-like voice and chanting, "yes we can". the tag-line of the obama campaign. i don't claim to know much about US politics but all i can say is, the next four years are interesting times. how does a country cope with 2 wars, a nuclear stand-off with one of its nemesis, a financial crisis that many are claiming to be the worse in a century? in time we'll know if america made the right choice, if america can regain its foothold as a financial and military superpower.

that said, mccain's concessionary speech was one to remember. not so much because he was conceeding defeat but because of the manner in which he did it and underlying message in it. to be gracious in defeat is one of the most difficult things anyone can do, to reach out to the victor and pledge to help him it brings things to another level. it was a heart-felt speech and knowing that he was sincere and that he will remain true to his word. his was a speech of reconciliation, repairing ties and relationships torn apart by a brutal election campaign.

mccain might have lost the elections but this wasn't a battle that was done and dusted right from the start. one can argue that purely because of his relation to the incumbent, he never stood a chance. one could also argue that if it weren't for the financial crisis that struck in september, he might have won. but all that's done now. obama has won and we wait in earnest to see the outcomes of his policies. come janurary 20, 2009, the first black american president will be inaugurated.

perhaps the biggest victory is that democracy won out. race was no longer a factor and that's one lesson that people around the world need to learn. being tolerant is fine but why can't we be accepting instead? martin luther king had a dream. that dream has now be fulfilled.

its amazing how americans all over the world can remain so patriotic, so nationalistic. it remains one of the challenges that i feel, singapore has. it is annoying knowing a few people who are singaporeans yet choose to behave that they are not and choose to disassociate themselves from singapore.

so, after following the elections since i woke up at 9am, its back to the books. first paper is tomorrow and i'm feeling fairly confident about it. just need to finish up the mock exam paper and i'll take a break till after the paper tomorrow..

and oh. i'm not a supporter of any one of the presidential candidates. this is just me and my random thoughts. and in any case, why can't singaporeans pay more attention to local politics and be more involved? what an irony that many are interested in what happens overseas but not in their own country..

wth?

monday afternoon what's the purpose of going to a quiet room to study when you're there talking loudly, laughing incessantly and just irritating the hell out of others? may we have some peace and quiet please? piss off!

...

sunday afternoon jokes and fun aside, even between friends, there is a line that cannot be crossed. step over the line and you are pushing the limits. a few are moving towards crossing that line and once crossed, you can forget about finding your way back into my good books.

you want to take me for granted, take things without asking, taking them and then losing it? well. what more can i say? tell me how happy you are when people do the same to you. i'm not angry... not yet anyway. i'm just frustrated. very frustrated.

call me harsh and unforgiving. call me what you will. but i'm a person who's loyal to his friends and i expect the same. step over the line and that loyalty turns into something else.

yes. i can be vicious and vengeful. but even then, it's towards a select "special" few.

---

revision is going well so far. am already done studying for my first paper and i'm moving onto the next module. it's fairly intimidating when no materials are permitted for the exams. it makes me feel... insecure if you will. no matter how much i've studied for it, there's always that niggling feeling that i missed out on something important or haven't covered any topic as thoroughly as i would like to. then there's the nightmare of freezing up in the exam hall. it has only happened once and the feeling stinks..

Coldplay - Fix You

When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home,
And ignite your bones,
And I will try to fix you,

High up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it go
But if you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Tears stream down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face
And I

Tears stream down your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down your face
And I

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you