A bit of fluff at the end of a long week...
As i was doing my usual mid-journey-back-home-from-faraway-nie retreat from the heat by chilling a bit in the nearby Cold Storage, i was remarking to myself how it has quite a good choice of music as far as businesses go - i forget exactly what songs were being played but at least i remember that 1) they were original (i.e. not some half-baked pirated remake version) and 2) they were in English.
So of course it had to be that today, just after making that observation, that on my way back i popped in there again, and what should be playing but Josh Groban and You Raise Me Up. Now, i just so happen to think that this is just about as tacky as songs get, but never mind, at least hearing it once in a while is worth the odd chuckle here and there.
But then as time went by, i realized that, horror of horrors, all that was playing was a neverending loop of You Raise Me Up - once the song ended, it would start again. Goodness. There's only so much chuckle and snigger-worthy moments that i can entertain... Well needless to say i didn't last there much longer.
I'm now somewhat wary to step in there again, especially once cny hits. Time to bring out the earplugs...
Friday, October 31, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
up (literally) atas places
Thought that it might be good to take a bit of a break in between pieces of work to ramble on a bit here.
Oh who am i kidding - the entire long long weekend (Deepavali mon off plus free days on fri and tue) has been spent basically doing what i am doing now - slacking. And i actually don't really regret it (hmm ok, maybe after being reminded in class today of what exactly is due next wed, that's not entirely true). But the break was good nevertheless - and at least i did try to do some work, but ah well, the flesh was week.
I spent the long weekend instead doing a wide range of stuff with generally similarly (the unwilling english teacher in me wonders if two adverbs side by side like that is permissible) low productivity levels. There's been too much time spent playing brainless (ok maybe that's not the right word to use - one of the games, after all, is "Who has the biggest brain?") games on facebook, breaking various weekly, monthly, and all-time records in the process. Also too much time has been spent watching campaign trail coverage and surfing all sorts of political websites i never previously knew existed. (When i heard that next wed's English class would be cancelled, i was happy firstly because i can now stay home til later to catch the results, barring any cockups, and not because that would mean i would have more time to do my work). And of course catching almost every snl video i could get my hands (or more accurately, cursor) on. Yup, not just even the Fey/Palin ones. Take this one laden with hilarious, if un-family-entertainment-worthy double entendres for example. Though it's not half as good (or bad?) as this one...
But i also had the opportunity to do a day trip to climb Gunung Panti (translate that however you wish), near Kota Tinggi in Johor. It was a very satisfying experience, encounters with some of God's less popular members of creation notwithstanding:
Oh well, i was invading their turf anyways, so i psyched myself up not to be too bothered with them - yup the leech can suck my blood for all i care - how ironic though that i don't want to lift a finger to hurt a leech but relish whacking the irritating existence out of every mosquito i come across - maybe it's because the blood splatter patterns (not to mention the dismembered body parts) are certainly far less gross for the latter.
Next stop: Mt Kinabalu. Or at least soon enough before these joints and muscles get too old and worn out for that sort of thing...
Oh who am i kidding - the entire long long weekend (Deepavali mon off plus free days on fri and tue) has been spent basically doing what i am doing now - slacking. And i actually don't really regret it (hmm ok, maybe after being reminded in class today of what exactly is due next wed, that's not entirely true). But the break was good nevertheless - and at least i did try to do some work, but ah well, the flesh was week.
I spent the long weekend instead doing a wide range of stuff with generally similarly (the unwilling english teacher in me wonders if two adverbs side by side like that is permissible) low productivity levels. There's been too much time spent playing brainless (ok maybe that's not the right word to use - one of the games, after all, is "Who has the biggest brain?") games on facebook, breaking various weekly, monthly, and all-time records in the process. Also too much time has been spent watching campaign trail coverage and surfing all sorts of political websites i never previously knew existed. (When i heard that next wed's English class would be cancelled, i was happy firstly because i can now stay home til later to catch the results, barring any cockups, and not because that would mean i would have more time to do my work). And of course catching almost every snl video i could get my hands (or more accurately, cursor) on. Yup, not just even the Fey/Palin ones. Take this one laden with hilarious, if un-family-entertainment-worthy double entendres for example. Though it's not half as good (or bad?) as this one...
But i also had the opportunity to do a day trip to climb Gunung Panti (translate that however you wish), near Kota Tinggi in Johor. It was a very satisfying experience, encounters with some of God's less popular members of creation notwithstanding:
Oh well, i was invading their turf anyways, so i psyched myself up not to be too bothered with them - yup the leech can suck my blood for all i care - how ironic though that i don't want to lift a finger to hurt a leech but relish whacking the irritating existence out of every mosquito i come across - maybe it's because the blood splatter patterns (not to mention the dismembered body parts) are certainly far less gross for the latter.
Next stop: Mt Kinabalu. Or at least soon enough before these joints and muscles get too old and worn out for that sort of thing...
Sunday, October 12, 2008
turning blue
The other thing apart from the stuff below that has been taking up quite a bit of time is campaign watching. I dunno if it's a boon or a bane that now that there's cable in my house, cos while with cnn and bbc and (if all else fails, the 'fair and balanced' fox news) there's no shortage of coverage on everything that's been going on, it also means that i spend way too much time watching these thingies. And this is even before we talk about the less serious stuff like the Colbert Report and SNL, which takes up that much more time. All in all, i think i probably know more about who each state is likely to vote for than about, say, theories on motivation in ed psych (which speaks volumes about my own motivation eh) or the process method of writing (i don't really know anything about the latter actually).
I'm sure that my limited exposure to the so-called liberal zoo that is Chapel Hill within the conservative heartland that is NC played a role in it, but as of now, and in fact, generally speaking, methinks i've always been more inclined towards the Dems. Of course the negative campaigning, which has been especially prevalent among McPalin, has helped to sway me the other way. And also the fact that it seems to be the very basis of their campaign - not the issues, but rather, that you should not vote for the other because yaddayaddayadda... And i think it would be so regrettable if McPalin were to win on the basis of the opponent being a purported Arab, a Muslim, and a terrorist's associate, among other negatives. And the way things are going, the only way i see them winning is this way - the sad thing being that there exists way too many of the kind of voters that can be swayed by crap like that for this to be the case. I guess it's good to see for a change that both sides have sort of agreed to tone down the negativity, and that McCain even corrected some of his terribly myopic supporters' misguided views on Obama - "he's an Arab" being one of them. Unfortunately, the people running his campaign seem to be more willing than him to use lies and half-truths to get him to the White House, if that's the only way they have left. And all the nonsense that Palin continues to say is exactly the kind of fluff that the aforementioned clueless hick voter relishes with much aplomb. That's why i've given up listening to her nonsense - might as well just stick to Tina Fey's more substantial and humorous version.
Thinking back a bit though, one other regrettable thing about this election is the almost total silence on the issue of poverty, both domestically and abroad. For all of John Edwards' moral failings (and the somewhat hypocritical fact that he's a multi-millionaire residing in a giant mansion in Chapel Hill), one thing i've always appreciated about him is that he made tackling poverty a central issue of his campaign(s). Having seen my fair share of it even in the US itself, i know it's an issue that has to be raised. For some strange reason though (or maybe i've not been paying enough attention), i've not heard either McCain or Obama talk about the working class, at least not explicitly. The closest anyone has gotten has been Biden using his working class roots to his advantage. Generally though it all seems to be about the middle class (for Obama, i mean - McCain doesn't even talk about them), and now all the more so in the wake of this financial mess that affects them the most. But while they're at it, how about those below the middle class who never had it good to begin with, and definitely will not have it any better in this current situation? Do they not form a big enough voting bloc to matter to the campaign? With the economy in the crap state that it is in now, one sad thing from my point of view is that those who have already been neglected will only be even more neglected as the $700 billion focus shifts elsewhere...
I'm sure that my limited exposure to the so-called liberal zoo that is Chapel Hill within the conservative heartland that is NC played a role in it, but as of now, and in fact, generally speaking, methinks i've always been more inclined towards the Dems. Of course the negative campaigning, which has been especially prevalent among McPalin, has helped to sway me the other way. And also the fact that it seems to be the very basis of their campaign - not the issues, but rather, that you should not vote for the other because yaddayaddayadda... And i think it would be so regrettable if McPalin were to win on the basis of the opponent being a purported Arab, a Muslim, and a terrorist's associate, among other negatives. And the way things are going, the only way i see them winning is this way - the sad thing being that there exists way too many of the kind of voters that can be swayed by crap like that for this to be the case. I guess it's good to see for a change that both sides have sort of agreed to tone down the negativity, and that McCain even corrected some of his terribly myopic supporters' misguided views on Obama - "he's an Arab" being one of them. Unfortunately, the people running his campaign seem to be more willing than him to use lies and half-truths to get him to the White House, if that's the only way they have left. And all the nonsense that Palin continues to say is exactly the kind of fluff that the aforementioned clueless hick voter relishes with much aplomb. That's why i've given up listening to her nonsense - might as well just stick to Tina Fey's more substantial and humorous version.
Thinking back a bit though, one other regrettable thing about this election is the almost total silence on the issue of poverty, both domestically and abroad. For all of John Edwards' moral failings (and the somewhat hypocritical fact that he's a multi-millionaire residing in a giant mansion in Chapel Hill), one thing i've always appreciated about him is that he made tackling poverty a central issue of his campaign(s). Having seen my fair share of it even in the US itself, i know it's an issue that has to be raised. For some strange reason though (or maybe i've not been paying enough attention), i've not heard either McCain or Obama talk about the working class, at least not explicitly. The closest anyone has gotten has been Biden using his working class roots to his advantage. Generally though it all seems to be about the middle class (for Obama, i mean - McCain doesn't even talk about them), and now all the more so in the wake of this financial mess that affects them the most. But while they're at it, how about those below the middle class who never had it good to begin with, and definitely will not have it any better in this current situation? Do they not form a big enough voting bloc to matter to the campaign? With the economy in the crap state that it is in now, one sad thing from my point of view is that those who have already been neglected will only be even more neglected as the $700 billion focus shifts elsewhere...
up to speed
It’s been a bit of a while since the last time here, mainly because there has been a lot of nie stuff to do, the first big wave of which has more or less come to a close. Don’t get the impression, though, that i’ve been hard at work. Not really. Think it’s been by God’s grace that things have actually still been rather manageable, and for all my latent complaints about irrelevance and a wasting of my time, looking back things were hardly as tortuous as i initially would have imagined them to be (Not that i’m saying that i’ve changed my mind about the irrelevance and a wasting of time. More that i’ve had somewhat of a change of heart at least to the extent that i’ve realized that there definitely is a reason why there’s nie, for after all God has put me here right. Just that my own human limitations are such that i’m at least at this time not able to see what these higher purposes are.).
In the meantime there’s been various stuff that has been going on – the noise i’ve just heard on the tv as they were reporting on the F1 Japan Grand Prix reminds me of that horrible racket that I had no choice but to tahan when the S’pore leg of the race was in town. I never was a big fan of living in town, and at least for the next four years or so i’ve another reason to be reticent since come every September I’ll be plagued by the seemingly endless whirring of the cars doing their laps. It just so happens that my room window faces the race, so it gets that much more annoying. And for me F1 has never been much more than a waste of fuel, unnecessary carbon emissions, and a bunch of people with too much money on their hands flaunting it left right and center and rubbing it in the faces of us ordinary folk. Ah well, call me a nimby if you want to, but at least I would be perfectly fine with having foreign workers live in my neighborhood…
Just the other day, i happened to be feeling quite hungry, and the only thing within immediate reach of me at home was a bag of fun size M&Ms – and they just so happened to be made in China. After a split second, my empty stomach won the rock paper scissors with my skeptical brain, and i wolfed down one of the small packets. That’s not wholly representative of my attitude towards Chinese-made food though. As much as white rabbit candies have been an integral part of my childhood (my favorite way to eat them was to try, usually in vain, to peel the rice paper off and let it melt in my mouth first before eating the candy proper – gosh, i sound like i’m delivering a eulogy here), i don’t think i’ll be having another one of them anytime soon – at least not unless i get hungry again =p
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