misquoting Esther

Anyways, i sure did spend a lot of time following this - having cable proved a boon cos i watched the election returns on the Australia Network - in some ways it was more exciting than election night here, just cos there actually was a competition going on... Am pleasantly pleased with the result - no surprise i'm not a fan of Howard anyways. Oh the perils of associating oneself with Bush...

I also was sad to hear of the deaths of the five national dragonboaters. It's so hard to believe that something like that could happen. At the same time though, i wonder how many people actually know that there was a sixth person killed during the same event as well, just that he happened to be a Cambodian. The local coverage of that was limited to one paragraph in the Straits Times, to the best of my knowledge (and forgive me if i'm wrong here) Although definitely five Singaporeans ought to receive the bulk of the local coverage, at the end of the day should we really forget that there was someone else who also died? Kinda reminds me of what happened in the wake of the Virginia Tech Incident - one country's own tragedy (and i'm not taking anything away from this) blots out everything else.

And lastly, ah so yet another coup thingy in the Philippines - sigh will these never end? I know that typical S'pore crisis mentality means that no one here would be too interested in going there now (or at least their parents would not be), but oh well, that's just part of life over there really... I'd personally still go there in a heartbeat, and anyways, if i perish, i perish :p

oh the pain...

i really feel for these people if they don't know how unintentionally hilarious their little attempt to be trendy or whatever you want to call it actually is. But if they didn't writhe in pain when negotiating some of the lyrics of this piece (or when they saw the finished product for themselves) then well maybe they deserve it... And whoever conceptualized and produced this in the first place, well - i also dunno what to say... In comparison, it makes even the PCK SAR-Vivor Rap seem like a grammy contender...

anyways, with our mass media in the hands of creative geniuses like these, no wonder why sometimes i'm not too big on staying cooped up here...

if anyone ever wants a good cry...

(and is not in the mood for any ridiculous, ott Northeast Asian soaps)

this is just the thing...

A Little Fall of Rain = A Huge Flow of Tears

(or is it just me?)

side note: ah i'll eternally regret falling asleep watching Les Mis on Broadway (even though i didn't miss this part - just the boring part in the first quarter of the show)

aside: dear downstairs neighbor, please turn down your atrociously loud and repeating Chinese music say about a hundred notches k...

edit: whoops, it got taken down =p - anyways for the record, it was Lea Salonga (Éponine) and Michael Ball (Marius) singing A Little Fall of Rain from the Les Misérables Tenth Anniversary Concert - great stuff.

physically un-proficient, mentally even less so...

Can't seem to get away from noisy and therefore distracting people around keeping me from getting real productive work done while in the engin com lab so...

Just got back from ippt - was the first time i've taken it when i failed - i'm not too annoyed that i failed (and anyway, as i've only recently come to realize, being a full-time student precludes having to sign up for rt even though i failed), but it's the way in which i failed which is so frustrating for me.

Managed to finish the four static stations with little trouble (as in just barely cleared all of them save for shuttle run, even though to my slight surprise i almost couldn't to enough sit-ups). So i needed to get a 12:20 to pass and an 11:00 to get $100. I was not too convinced that i could do 11min though it was vaguely possible, but 12:20 was definitely no prob. Or at least so i thought...

Cos of my number tag (091) i was placed in the first detail (i.e. all those whose numbers ended in '1'). And when the clock started, (and only cos think everyone else in my detail was older and therefore didn't need to run faster) i immediately went to the front and hence led the way. Things were good until say the 500 meter mark - btw this was the first time i was running in Maju Camp - and one thing about the route here is that, unlike Bedok, where you've to do 6 laps of the track; here you do three laps of a road route. Now, i actually prefer the road route, cos it feels shorter than the same distance run on the track. The problem was that since i was not familiar with the route, and i was in the lead, there was no one for me to follow - so i happily turned right instead of left (cos they had said follow the yellow line and there was a yellow line turning right as well - the line left was actually broken since it was across the junction and when one is running at such a speed one usually is less-than-observant). I went on in the wrong direction for at least half a minute before turning around and realizing that no one was behind me - i knew i couldn't have been that fast, so it was only then when i realized that i salah. Think whoever was behind me must have been more aware of what was going on and so went the correct way. So i ran across a portion of the parade square to rejoin the actual route - but the whole think took out so much from me both physically and mentally that by the end of it all, i stood no chance... Must have lost methinks at least near a minute owing to my error based on the extra distance alone, and prob more due to an inability to recover from that.

Well, what are the odds that things came together in such a way that i just happened to be the fool leading the way? Thankfully i'm more or less beyond being too worked up about this (though admittedly it's mainly cos there are no adverse consequences to failing). I also can't help but see the irony - running is basically the only prep that i did for ippt (and i did quite a fair bit of that), and in the end it was the very thing that did me in. Heh.

as if

The other day i randomly came across the news that the latest Times Higher Education Supplement World University Rankings (you know, the one where NUS was methinks two years or so ago ranked #16) were out. And then last night, after piecing together my thoughts for the think piece, i went over to the library and finally read the newspaper for the first time this week (excluding Sunday) and came across the article that had a headline with "NUS drops from 19 to 33 in World University Rankings" or something to that effect. After a big laugh (silently, as i was in the library), i read the subtitle to the headline which of course had to attribute the big drop to a change in ranking criteria, which saw student-to-faculty ratio counting more. Then i forget who was defending NUS, talking about how it doesn't have the kinda endowments that other schools have to get lots of faculty, and how it has to take in more students blah blah... Oh well, whatever, criteria schmiteria...

So i just came across the rankings online, and here are some excerpts of it:

Seriously, even though NUS dropped 14 places, it's still better than the likes of Beida, UCLA and U of Toronto???!!!

Ack and egads! UNC is joint 151st? I wonder if they mean just UNC at Chapel Hill or every single member of the UNC system as a whole - i'm inclined to think the latter since they didn't clarify it on the ranking, unlike say California or Texas, but oh well... Any ranking that had NUS at #16 before is inherently suspect in my books... I remember reading that report a couple of years ago, and i nearly gagging in response to that. Kinda like how i felt when i heard that the batch after me at ACJC had put it into the top 5 JCs (where it apparently still is today?)...

Oh well, i'm not anti-NUS or anything, just that i can't imagine how it's that good of a school as the rankings suggest it is. I'm thankful to be here all the same, though something tells me that if they included students' own impressions of their own schools as part of the criteria, NUS would be even further down there... And of course, i don't want to do my part to further perpetuate S'pore's obsession with rankings [e.g. corruption-free, living standards, ministerial pay (heh maybe that's not one they'd want to broadcast eh)]. Of course there are other rankings like press freedom, human rights and democracy that are far less harped upon, but well, i'll leave that off the record...

no regrets, no consolation

i received back ca grades for one of my classes a couple of days ago, and though they were not exactly spectacular, i can't say i was expecting anything more than what i got actually. So, semi-irrational worries over how this may help to pull me down to the next class aside; i'm pretty at peace with what i ended up getting, and guess am a biiiit extra motivated for the final to put in much more effort into the class than my (inherently lacking) interest in the subject would require.

what i'm sorta annoyed about is the class participation grade, not because i didn't deserve it (cos i so did), but more because i don't see how i could have gone about things in such a way as to get anything higher than the B- that i got. Basically class participation for this particular class equals to asking question s at the end of each person's presentations. My beef is that i honestly believe that my brain generally processes info at a slower rate than many others in my class - so what happens is that once each presentation ends hands tend to shoot up all over the class in order to ask questions - and not once has one of those hands belonged to me, simply because in such a short time frame, i normally am still processing what has just been presented, and therefore i'm not able to ask anything that would not make me out as a total doofus (e.g. - "uh, i don't quite understand your presentation - can you repeat it again please?"). and basically, the time allocated for the questions tends to zoom by with intelligent question after intelligent question being asked, and once the question time ends (rather abruptly, due to time constraints), i'm left still grasping at random straws with which i can ask questions with...

so this has gone on for pretty much the whole semester, and before i knew it, and after two token questions that by God's grace have come out of my mouth, that's the end of my chances for this 15%. Doesn't help that the other 45% ca component is far less than stellar (even trash like the Hyundai Stellar) as well. And that i feel somewhat helpless where this participation grade is since i dunno how things could have gone differently, and in any case i do so hate asking questions/ commenting just for the sake of it, and without any constructive purpose being served for the person whose presentation i'm responding to (not that i'm insinuating that anyone else in my class did so, of course - they have the same purposes in mind, they just think far faster than i ever could)... One feels like such a loser at times like these - ah crap.

vaguely voyeuristic

In the mood for some randomness so...

About two weeks ago went together with Clem, SJ and Weichang to Astons, where we had a real good meal. Here's a more-than-decent New York Strip with house salad and coleslaw, all for just $13.80.


What was a bit intriguing about the meal is that we did not head over to near my old place in Katong to have dinner, but rather we went to, of all places, pgp... Yup Astons has just opened an express outlet in the pgp food court, which is really quite an unlikely place for so atas an establishment wouldn't you say? But well business appears to be good for them, even though from my observation the prices are no cheaper than they are at Katong. But well, the prices are really reasonable given the quality anyways, so no complaints there. One other good thing is that while the ambience is hardly as good as that in Katong, at least one doesn't have to wait in line for at least half-an-hour outside the restaurant inhaling car exhaust to even get seated. I suspect that a good proportion of their clientele comes from western exchange students who are hard-pressed to find more authentic so-called 'western' food close enough to nus than that at Astons...

Anyways, yours truly is looking for excuses to go there again so if anyone is ever in school with a somewhat padded wallet and in the mood for a good steak/burger etc just buzz me heh...

In other news, it was a little sad to hear of Martina Hingis' abrupt second retirement from pro tennis under a cloud of suspicion, especially when it involves something like cocaine of all things. Well drugs aside, it's a pity that such an impressive career had to end in such a manner... Women's tennis is nowadays chockfull of hard-hitting banshees in the general mode of Maria "make every shot a power shot" Sharapova, and Hingis' clever and nuanced way of playing flies in the face of all that. Even though Hingis used to be a bit of a brat when she was playing long ago, since she returned to the sport all that's by and large gone, and she'd become one of my more favorite players. And with Anastasia Myskina also out of commission for now, it's hard to find another top-tier female player in that mould... Ah heck, i reckon most people reading this wouldn't have a clue what i'm rambling on about... Heh.

I was wandering around Cold Storage yesterday when i came across this - Saffron - the world's most expensive spice. One gram of the stuff retailing at $11.01. Fwah. But in any case, you must admit, the packaging is such a clear example of excess - the stuff is so expensive that i suppose it has to be well-showcased... I don't see what's the big deal about saffron though, all it does is add a nice orange-y color, i don't taste any difference when it's added to food...


After that, and while killing time before heading to law for some thingy, i took a brief walk around the botanics, and chanced upon the Wildlife Stampede thingy that was going on - to spread the conservation message, something close to my heart as well. While there was a really long line of people who took part, definitely more than half of them were ang mohs, and even many of the Asians who i saw were from SAS. Sadly, i don't think most S'poreans could care two hoots about conservation. While S'pore doesn't really have a lot left to conserve, it doesn't mean we should not bother to do anything at all... The recent motorcross thingy that they agreed to open in Kranji or somewhere in the general northwestern direction at the expense of an important site for local birdlife, and @#$% golf courses that take up lots of space, destroy valuable habitat, and are by and large catered to the elite do so annoy me...

Oh, but anyways, i've digressed. My point in mentioning this was that i managed to catch sight and take a distant picture of Dame Jane Goodall. Cheap thrill, but ah well...

And in keeping in the spirit of boliaoness, she's probably about the fourth most famous person i've ever sneakily taken a picture of, after John Edwards, Elizabeth Edwards, and Chris Matthews (Well actually, if you're not American, you'd probably not have heard of these three people, but conversely, i reckon that most Americans have no idea who's Jane Goodall but will know who the other three are, in descending order...)

In other news, the Tar Heels are #1 - woo! Go heels!