Epiphaniac

Sat through my first international game today - Singapore vs Australia at the old National Stadium - though I was only present for half a game because the match, for some stupid reason or other, started much earlier than the stated time on the ticket and also because I had to queue 20 minutes for KFC which ate into the match time.

There wasn't much to cheer about, only a lot to groan, whine and bitch about considering the number of clear cut chances that Singapore had and squandered. It's really matches like these that make you wish you could be on the pitch playing so badly instead of those chickens monkeying around such that you feel like you're gonna implode on yourself. One other team that never fails to make me feel this way is Newcastle.

Rachel was quite enthusiastic and the others were going on about it and teasing her quite a bit, but soon enough I started getting quite animated myself. Yins, Mikaela and Angie were clearly quite amused for very irrelevant reasons.

The game ended goal-less. The rain really killed things I think. The atmosphere could've been so much better. Catching the Singapore vs Lebanon qualifier match on wednesday; I'm really hoping quite badly that it'll be a great deal better than today's.

Although I've already decided on 'Is Democracy A Universal Value?' for my political science term paper, I've been struggling to simply get started on it since over a week ago. So I decided to try pretending that I was gonna blog on it like some other random pointless topic by typing it out using blogger.com, and everything just started coming out. And I'm quite damn amazed. Just like how I get mental constipation from attempting to do work in the library, using a formal program like Microsoft Word to work on my essay causes my mind to simply shut off because, well it's no surprise anyway, I hate the idea of doing work.

I have interestingly just managed to fool myself. Hmm.

This unofficial 1-week break is effectively screwing up my whole sleeping cycle. I feel as if, without the civiling influence of school and institutional order, I'm naturally revertible to being nocturnal. Can't help it; night time is preciously zen.

And so I start to forget about it and move on, just like that. And when you think about how hard it is, especially perhaps for girls to do so, it makes me wonder what kinda quantum leap it takes for us to be convinced enough to see the light and take the more enlightened path; the path that would have less pointless self-induced suffering. We're inherently wired differently.

And come to think of it, why did I even have those different states of mind? Why did it have to take such circumstances of rude awakenings and the like before I could have a change of heart? Why couldn't it be a matter of my own will to not get trapped? What kinda will power does it take? It is so fascinating. We are truly such experential creatures at the end of the day. :]




Intel has announced its next chip: the Repentium.

Audio Candy:
Stereophonics - Have A Nice Day

The Accidental Eureka

Sometimes, you read blog posts, and some of them are so 'cryptic' that you just pass. Then days later, you talk to people and someone says something and you go, "hmm that's interesting." Then for some reason you chance upon that old 'cryptic' blog post and you suddenly realise, "oh shit, so that's what he meant," as things come full circle.

Trivial epiphanies in the bigger scheme of things, but still revelatory on a personal scale.

Dreams evaporate into oblivion so easily. I had a pretty quirky one last night which I thought would be funny to share but as the day bore on I could hardly remember any of it.

Added Blogorithm to my recommended links. Has some fantastic bite-sized reads about science, nature and religion.




Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.

Today's Listenables:
Smile Empty Soul - Jesus Is The Manager At Wal-Mart

The First Single

What's there not to love about Singapore? I just travelled around most of the significant places when I went from home to Queensway to many other places in between and finally back to SMU (yes, on a Sunday, and enough with the asking cos its pissing me off. School is town anyway) and it barely took me 3 hours. Here is a place we honestly do not need proper directions for, and every convenience store really is a convenience store. For those who get mugged or end up in road accidents... Well, you probably took the safety for granted.

Anyway, so marks the first paragraph of Pointless Philosophy, and how better than to kickstart it with... Well, totally pointless random thoughts? Ruminations generated off long bus rides.

I suppose to address some 'concerns' at hand, let's just say that I'm really past it when it comes to saying I have aspirations of being a web designer (this is analogous, so don't take it literally). So that inherently makes all my anti-blog, pro-HTML efforts quite pointless and to the point where I do get lazy and put off blogging (yes I've officially defected to the army of conforming bloggers now so I shall use that term very indiscriminately from now on) because it's just quite a pain to do so most of the time when I have to activate Dreamweaver (or freakin' notepad when I'm inspired to post without my laptop), work out the code, and then activate more programs to upload it via FTP. I'm through with that.

So from where I last left off, I must say I owe alot of the memorable moments I had last month to everyone who had made the effort to celebrate my birthday. I've always said that it's a quantum leap from 0 to 1 (by this I mean, for example, the difference between 0 and 1 is infinitely more than 1 to 10, which is mathematically true), so it has been absolutely amazing finding that from not expecting anything at all, you end up having 3 birthday celebrations. I did not ask for anything and I couldn't have asked for more.

There was Kee's very trademarked cute surprise of the small cake and impromptu candle(s?) on set at Food For Thought, and I've always liked the simplicity of it all. Thanks for the "practical gifts" (in your own words) and the shirt; you know I always never end up getting down to buying the things I need haha.

There was the RK supper I innocuously organised which was transformed into a total birthday celebration complete with a really nice cake (one of the seriously better ones I've had, which is quite a thing to say since I don't like pastry), and thanks to all who chipped in some way or other to make this happen (including the nice soccer shoes which I just changed for a correct fit and will probably never wear to play soccer in considering my damaging style of play); I'll be repeating this next haha.

And last but not least the BBQ and so-called 'real' celebration at Yitwen's. I doubt I'd wanna recollect and verbalise the debaucherous events of the night (other than stating the obvious fact that the influence of alcohol can be quite potent on group effervescence), but I know all of you enjoy the fact that I puked with my hands in my pocket 'cos I'm cool like that so I'll proudly and publicly announce it here. Hoho.

Thanks once again to everyone. And a special mention to our resident party-planner Yinyin, without whom the brains of all this would've been non-existent and we'd probably end up forcing me to go down to NYDC or something for a boring dinner just for the sake of it.

So there, I've blogged about 'stuff' like you've wanted me too. Haha. On behalf of everyone, stop emo-ing already! You know you deserve more than the shit you put yourself through. :]

This must mildly be what it feels like to be a celebrity, because you just go out there and do your thing while everyone else does the saikang for you. Now that livejournal settles the posting crap for me, it's much less a pain to just blog more regularly I guess. And dispense more pointless philosophy for your pointless reading.

I might continue my stupid say-of-the-days and listenables but not for now.

Blogicide

Learnt of a new term (or internet fad) not long ago: Blogicide; basically a merge of the words blog and suicide. The act of killing your own blog.

Now I suppose everyone has a certain right to do so, especially when like a situation arises where people have been reading your private information and have been mistreating it, and you cease the blog's existence to protect your own dignity.

But when people commit blogicide for the sake of publicity? Now that sounds very much like a disorder to me. It almost sounds irritatingly cute in fact, with a Happy-Tree-Friends-esque feel to it when people actually subject their fondly tangible blogs to homicide. I guess it's just sad what society's turning to because of all the possible avenues of getting famous provided by the mass media like the internet and reality TV.

When blogging first began, the attraction and appeal of it all lay in the fact that it was almost an ironic desire to have a diary that is not only privy to the writer but to that of many other internet surfers as well. In other words, there was a subliminal novelty in the idea that your so-called private details can be seen by anyone else, either deliberately or in all randomness.

But now, pop-blogging is all about telling the world about yourself. Where it was once a bold move to splurge a secret on oneself to the rest of the world, people now actively participate in thoroughly attention-seeking expressions of 'private' info. Exhibitionists emerge claiming it isn't for the fame. Who're they kidding?

Man... No point getting too worked up over this though. It just happens to be one of my online pet peeves. Maybe next time someone wants to proclaim to the world about his or her sex life or present a plastic pretty face, just do us all a favour and proclaim that it is for the infamy and stop acting all coy because it really is very irritating to say the least.