A significant moment today.

I probably shouldn't share potty tales, but eh.
Today was the first time in almost EVER that the autoflush toilet sensor actually worked well for me!
Most of the time it flushes before I'm done. This is annoying. Very annoying.
This time it waited until I put my belt back on. Booyah.
Jurong east 4th floor toilet, you are the shit.
Brownie points for you.
Chocolate, of course.


Time to dump. Phone notes:

"Personal hell"

"unshatterable glass cups and stuff."
Note: Unshatterable. As in, hit the ground and go 'clunk'. Or 'clang'. Or 'not-smash'. As if it were metal, only with a see-through, glass-like appearance.
Or maybe if they were shatterable, but the shattering would appear as some sort of design on the cup/bowl/whatever. Like spider-webbish. Like broken windshield glass, only not broken.

"Remember hashbrowns?"
It's been so long.

"Spatial needs"
Oh, lol, sounds like 'special needs'. hurhurhur punny

"Mirrors that record and replay."
Came to mind. No doubt they've appeared in some sci-fi flick or story somewhere. But in years to come, if nobody's gonna make em, I'm going to have to try.

"14 march"
Blub blub blub

"highlighter 'sheets', translucent phosphorous rectangles shaped in various sizes that you could stick on longer sections of text"
Eh. If anyone wants to highlight.. paragraphs, I guess.

"Rapidly self-drying tissue. You could use the same one forever!"
Probably should be self-cleaning, too. Nanobot disinfectant steamers embedded within the tissue fabric.

"I wonder if the norm for the writing tool - a small, thin, stick-shaped solid - will ever evolve. Or if it can, at all. It probably can."
I mean, what if holding a little stick in your hand and gliding or scratching it against a surface was never the most efficicent, comfortable, intuitive way to write? Why did we not develop finger-painting on cave walls instead? Like finger-writing gloves with mini cartridges in each of the 'writing' fingers (probably all of them except the ringfinger and pinkie). Or something else?

k thassit

back to studying two very polar-opposittey subjects.

-Zan

8/23 Days

Fourteen seperate papers.
Fourteen seperate one-to-three-hour moments
to show off. to do it right. to peak.
the best you'll ever need to be. ever. university and work doesn't exist to you yet.
grab them. grab for the good one.

GP1,GP2,BIO2
MATH1
MATH2, CLB1, CLB2
PHYS2, CLB3
ECON1
PHYS3, ECON2
PHYS1
BIO1



-Zan

Pretend I posted this on Saturday, 18 September, 2010.

Grand crusty opening! After almost 19 years, the shell comes to light and is subsequently partially broken into a million yellow bits. Things become clearer. More distinct. A world unearthed. Perspectives shifted.
Too bad it's not over, though. Too bad the door will probably remain that way, never renovated.

(Yes it's cryptic. You're not supposed to get it. This post is for me. I need to mark the day for its personal significance. Weehee.)

side-idea-I-thought-of-in-mrt: Imagine if everyone had lasers, like the ones on gun scopes, in their eyes. You could see exactly which direction each eye was 'pointed' at. A ride in the mrt would look like some laser-guarded Mission-Impossible room or something.

-Zan

Япония

Looking at the old meiji-era photographs, I walk around and feel how everything around me will eventually become the old stuff. and then the present, yesterday's tomorrow, becomes my imagination's past.The feeling is so strong I don't even have to picture being in a future to make everything around me 'feel' old. Especially the architecture. Even in the mrt.

Mmmmmmmm. Pleasant morning.


likeohmaigoodness.
Stupid book, made me look.
Search, rather.

-Zan

Ha! Caught you, July.

Time to dump my handphone notes again. I didn't know I had only a limited number I could keep. Dang. Here goes.

"Resolution for the teleporting mechanism of superheroes:
Problem - when they teleport, do they 'fuse' with the atmospheric molecules that were there?
Solution - they simply switch places with the molecules that were there."

"Advantages of walking behind couples in crowds sometimes"
I guess I already elaborated on this in a June post, but didn't specifically state couples. I guess their added benefit to the 'tagger' is that they push aside more people - hence clearing the way - when they decide to walk directly beside each other at every point in their walking.

"peoplecount"
Not a clue.

"Danny yung. Tian tian shang."
I wanted to find more about that artist who did these comic tiles in PageOne (Vivo). The framed, square-ish comics they have displayed around a particular section.

"If only money were time."

-description of a dream-

"Apex = ahpeks."

"Is it considered good luck to take an opened umbrella indoors and close it?"

"I wonder if dried papaya or dried watermelon exist."
Apparently both do.

"7.7.10, 3.20pm
random urge to burst a balloon underwater."
I bet it'd look really cool.

"From my dream: the blue bag. It is zip-lock. It is underground. It contains everything you've decided you actually need, and when the rest of your life comes crumbling to the ashes, you pull it through all the shit and the rubble and it. is. there. for. you."
I might have been subconsciously inspired by the end of the book 1984. That's what this reminded me of.



-Zan

I FEEL SO ALIVE.

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!

-ME

Weak in the Knees

What're you lookin' at, frog? What do you want? What do you mean?

I shall do this post in chunks.. screw you, coherence and flow.

Was having an interesting time taking a visual approach to studying. Bio and Econs, specifically. It's.. closing my eyes and seeing the points in my notes flow together as a visual story (bio) or closing my eyes and starting with a problem in my head from absolute scratch, and progressing with the answer from there (econs). And I think this visually thinkingy thingy works very well for me. WOO.
Then I went on applying it to other weird headproblems. Like how I would defeat myself in a battle of two other clones with identical relative starting points. Cool stuffzorxz. Really. Really!

And the day before, I noticed something odd in the mrt. I was walking from Outram's purple line to the green line at about 8:30am in the morning when I realised all I could hear around me was the stamping, the consistent marching, of feet. Nobody was talking. The fact that it was very, very crowded made it odder. I realise I hadn't consciously noticed the ambient verbal rambling of the crowd until that morning. Heh.

Third chunk: One of the best places to be alone in is a club washroom. With grooming tools by a huge mirror. And fantastic shower facilities. And a sauna. Oh yes.

Fourth: I have increasingly found usefulness in the practice of 'tagging' onto people publically. Usefulness, particularly, in getting oneself through crowds with ease.

For instance, you are in a crowded mrt cab. You are leaning on one door, and your stop comes. The door on the other side opens. You need to get through. Normally, one would have to do the uncomfortable "excuse me" routine several times as one passes through the idle, rigid bodies, rushing with the fear that the door will soon close.

However! If you are lucky and have someone beside/around you who must go through the same problem, you may simply 'tag' onto them. This means as they push through the people to get to the door, simply follow directly behind them in the temporary space they have made by getting through people.This way you can depend completely on the other person to get you through without doing the 'excuse-me's.

(If the person you've tagged happens to be very slow, or the crowd is particularly thick, and so you two don't make it to the door on time, at least you are in it together ey?)
This also works wonderfully when one is moving through a large crowd in, say, a shopping aisle in Bangkok..

Fifth: There should be some sort of sport where you can use all manner of hand and foot techniques (from soccer, basketball, handball, etc.) to get the ball to the other team's net. This game would be called "Ball".

First, we would all be in a large, empty expanse. We would be sitting on a chair each, and a table, facing each other to form a perfect equilateral triangle. Because we're all me, anything I do would be exactly what the other two would do. They'd be thinking the same thoughts, working out this problem too. The only way to get out of our identical mindpath would be to screw it up with the forces of randomness. So I'd throw something in the centre of the 'triangle', knowing they would do the same. I (and therefore we) decide that the first person to be targeted would be the one who had the thrown objects located closer to them after the collision. So I would go about beating him first, before setting myself on the other clone. One would eventually win, despite identical physical ability, as there is bound to be a difference in our responses due to different starting positions in the fight. Especially given close contact.
Of course, I would have to anticipate what I would do were it myself who ended up the 'loser' in the throw-things-to-the-centre gamble. I would immediately dash in the backwards direction and continue running. As the other two would have started out behind me, there will eventually come a point where they have just enough energy to travel the distance between me and them, and I can stay still to wait for them to do so. I use this equal amount of energy to recuperate, while they have expended it in their last steps.
Then, having thought of that, I would need to find a counter-measure. Because I would want to chase someone till my death. So I guess my starting move towards the first clone victim would be to throw the furniture I have at them. yay for long range weaponry, I guess.
And then I would have to think of a counter for that! And the list would go on!
Crap.
Maybe I would end up just.. chionging into the fight of three.


-Zan

Farewell, Gentle Way.

Time for the true test. They will either remove "南初柔道 IPPON!" from their nicnames, or leave them there forever.

I NEED TO EXPLORE THIS:

After finishing the warm part of my shower, I turn the heat off and spray the water at my feet. I look at the showerhead with reluctance.
I turn up the cold water to a higher force, and suddenly my fears subside. I spray an icy cold blast to my chest and back, and it feels fine.

Yes. I need to explore 'Just zam'.
That's all. Been a while.

-Zan

Why I Support Manchester United: An Anecdote.

Long ago, when I was still of a single-digit age, there came the day when my elder sister introduced me to paper soccer.

"First, we draw the field on the paper. Then this is your starting point. Then you flick your pencil like this -"

she pressed the lead end of the pencil down onto the paper, one finger on the rubberised end. Shifting this one-finger grip slightly, the pencil flicked forward, leaving a tapered line on the paper 'field'.

" - and we play until one person reaches the other person's goal."

"okay!"

"kay lets start. Wait, must choose our teams first. Who you want to be?"

"er, don't know.."

"kay uh.. you be Man U. I choose Liverpool"

"but I want liverpool!"

"Cannot! I already choose. I always choose liverpool when I play one"

And so, from then on, I always played that game as Manchester United. And this is why I am biased, slightly, towards Man Utd supporters.

red devils go

-Zan

As You Sit,

Things are happening.

What is happening? [PHYSICS, BIO, GP,]
How is it happening? [PHYSICS, BIO, ECONS]
Why is it happening? [GP, ECONS]
What if I don't care? [MATH]

And now to be hellboy.

-Zan

Coraggio

Interesting marketing concept I thought of. Probably not new.

Say a shopkeeper wishes for a certain group of products to be sold (e.g. coke cans, bananas and toilet paper. A potent mix).
He/she sets up an attractive offer - a free gift for every X dollars spent on goods. No more, no less.
To get you buying those products, he/she does this: altering all prices of goods sold in the store such that no (or very few) combinations of things purchased total up in cost to exactly X.
So that, in order to get that free gift, the only thing you can do to do so is to buy that combination of goods that he/she wants you to buy.

And these are the assumptions/conditions:
-The gift must be desirable to some extent (no tissue paper, thanks).
-The combination of goods in question must be obvious to the consumers. i.e. it must not be difficult to see that they add up perfectly to make X.
+The shop may have few other goods in the shop, to facilitate this.
+The shop may present the prices of the predetermined goods very prominently.
+The shop may be small in size.


-Zan

Doppelmadhyastha. And limits.

Trips on the NEL night train beg me to theorise this. Every caucasian/European face has a twin somewhere in India.
That is all.



The finish line stares you directly in the face.
You are going to die. Maybe it is far. Even so, it is present. Unless.
An empty road lies before you.
What do you do?


-Zan

Frangipani

The forest flowers sigh an olfactory swan song. I sigh back.
It's time I blogged again. Goodness, I skipped May!
I guess I'll type about the recent blood donation-ing.

Entered the hall, saw a couple of familiar judo faces, filled in my form. Went to get screened by the doctor, followed by a blood check (for haemoglobin count. And maybe disease. :-o). Sat down with JK, then LY, in the waiting line.
My turn. Took the left-hand bench and reclined. A little more waiting before a nurse comes over to give me a wee injection in my arm. A little pinch.
A little more waiting, and she's back. She prepares the big one. I make it a point not to look away while she's inserting it. I'll seldom get the chance to do so anyway. So I look. By now the anasthetic injection appears to have kicked in; the needle doesn't bring a sensation. But once it's in, I feel very aware of the piece of metal embedded within my left arm. I make it a point not to move me left arm or hand. At all. And so it lays dead still. Before I realise what's happening, the tube is already dark red and the bag fills up. The tube to the bag feels warm along my arm. Nice!
I recline. I read the book. I look at stuff. I answer the phone. I smile at JK's taunts. Another wait.
I feel discomfort. Something feels odd. Like my skin is going 'ooowwwWWW' slowly. I don't consider the possibility that the anasthetic wasn't that powerful. Instead I notice that the bag looks really full, and notice that no nurses notice that the bag looks full. So I fret a little. Is there some kind of backflow going on or something? What's happening? Somebody, COME HERE AND LOOK. I continue silently fretting.
The blood-checking nurse points at me while talking to another nurse. This other nurse comes by. At this point I feel very giddy. Very weak, very numb. The needle comes out painlessly, but I feel no comfort. I musta looked horrid, because the nurse set my bench down and propped my legs up. "A bit giddy is it?" "Ya a bit."
I lay there, ears numb and vision whitened (for some reason) (with the edges blurred) while I sweat. I feel the nurse wrap up my arm. I lay there to rest.
I feel better! Mr G comes over and says I look really pale. I don't feel pale. I ask around. I was apparently really pale. I decide I feel fine and proceed to get off the bench. Nurse stops me and says I have to wait for the doctor.
More waiting. Doctor comes over and checks me up. Blood pressure, are-you-feeling-fines, the usual. All is well. I proceed to the feed-me-lotsa-sweets table. Escorted by a red cross person. "Are you okay?" Then escorted by a red cross person and Mr G. Then seated down and brought food by the two. "I'm fine la I'm fine."
Then waited for JK, LY, M and headed off.

Interesting first time!
Odd to consider that an ex-fraction of my body's blood may end up in another body for use. Coo'.

NNNEXT.

Handphone notes. Time to dump em here.

"You may have long lost twins or clones that you've never met, living in foreign countries. That you will never meet. Ever."
Speaks for itself, really. A wee fantasy.

"A world with people that have the non-mirrored organs of their body horizontally flipped along the body's 'y-axis'. e.g. their hearts on their right, their stomachs on their right."
Odd thought. After which it appeared in this emo comic book I read and the movie Ninja Assassin. Kwinkydink.

"Aint no need to rush for the same late train."
No idea why this arrangement of words popped into head. I've yet to think about it and consider how it may be applied. If at all.

"It's been a long time since I called another person Alex. What are the chances of that happening?"
Mm.

-something-

-something-
I'm saving these two for a later post. They're a bit long.

"Ice cream prata? wtf?"
Saw a sign for it while walking to tuition. Still strikes me as a bit weird. And should probably be put here.

"The fuzzy, primal enclave.
There is a $1 coin in the sky."
Random phrase. And it was a full moon that night.

"can you hear the whistle blow a hundred miles"
Guess I remembered that song and didn't want to forget it again. heh

"The whole world smells like shit today.
-22 march 2010, 8.21am"
Was feeling real emo on the walk to school that morning. I remember that day being the first time I harnessed emo power during training. And it made me slightly awesome. But that's gone nao.

On that note, HUGE judo dinner earlier. Plus lame games on the roof of J8.

And off I go.
Yay, I blogged!

TGIGF tomorrow
and
Happy April fools.

-Zan

Standard

Standard conversation I've had with many, many people upon just meeting them. 354

Are you Singaporean?
"Yep. Born here."
You're mixed/mixedblood/Eurasian?
"Yep."
So your dad is from..
"Canada."
Oh. [Insert possible comment about Canada] So you go there every year to meet your relatives?
"Twice. Ever. Once when I was a baby."

From which the rest of the conversation tends to follow. mramrm.

When walking towards a certain destination, sometimes people will walk up from beside or behind you in a direction different to yours. Impulsively, I sometimes follow their direction quickly in order to pass them to continue travelling your way. To get out of their way, while still moving forward.
Sometimes, when this does not prove as smooth as I intended, the following occur.

1: The person perceives you as you perceive them, a person-in-the-way, and attempts the same maneuver. This results in a little race where at least one person ends up travelling an unnecesarily long path to where they intended to go, wasting a fair bit of time (and energy) in doing so.

2: The person, oblivious to your action, keeps moving. But you are unable to overtake them within a short period of time, as they walk at a similar or higher speed than you. This results in a little race where you end up travelling an unnecesarily long path to where you intended to go, wasting a fair bit of time (and energy) in doing so.

Not only is time wasted when you sidetrack
and energy wasted when you accelerate
but you may end up travelling the same distance it would have taken you to get to the end, only ending up at another location, like some wall, due to the abberated path.

An alternative approach is simply to pause momentarily, have the person walk in their direction in front of you, and carry on in your direction.
The sacrifice is that you may take a longer time to reach your destination due to the pause. But there is no risk of veering off track in the first place.

Sometimes I forget to use this method, in my oft-hurried walk.

Because sometimes I blur.

-Zan

To Health.

I have failed. There was just too much stuff to have to be done for me to go all sleepy like that. Not the right time.
:c

Here, have a compensatory drawing.






















-Zan

Happycheen!

Don't be sad that it ended, be happy that it happened.
Don't be sad that it happened, be happy that it ended.

Works both ways under different contexts, lawl.

My report on night 1 of sleeplessness. That's the night of Feb 12/morning of Feb 13.

11.10pm: I look at the clock and think 'you are so not prepared..'
11.59pm: first yawn.
12.23am: drowsy, fidgeting eyes.
12.41am: very heavy eyelidding. So soon? Probably because of judo earlier. Ohboy.
12.59am: k not as drowsy any more.
1.40am: I realise I have about 22 hours before I sleep. I should designate them into work.
2.05am: Tip: do not search for sleep-related articles on Wikipedia.
3.02am: were those dark spots under my eyes there before?
3.04am: time for 5 almonds.
3.45am: time to shut down the compy and read bookz.
4.10am: concentrating on the story proves to be highly unsuccessful due to drowsiness. I go for a walk.
5.30am: back. shower. turn on lights and read in the living room.
somewhereinbetween: seriously going off tangent mentally when reading book. Ocassional 'snap out of it!' moments when I realise my eyes are closed.
9.30am: woah, I look terrible.
[day continues as per normal]
noonish: Thoughts of "I realise I am going to sleep tonight. YYYYEESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!"

Thassall. Post-mortem reflection: It felt terrible. It became very difficult to do work on the second half of the 48-hour day. Though I did feel back to full capacity around 2pm. Probably the best I felt was during the walk from St Theresa's and back. There was no reluctance to abuptly stop walking and look around. No rush or pressure at all. Felt serene. Felt nice.

Oh well, the second one's tonight. See what happens.

CNY celebrations today. Went to the Concorde for lion dance, followed by a heavy lunch at Marché. First time there, nice place. Great food. I regret not having my own shredded-potato-thing (called a rösti, I think it was).
Off to family dinner part 2 later today.
Almost done with Heinlein's Stranger. I'm finally at the end!

The End.

-Zan

Dormis

Before I lose the chance.

Rules.
-Sleep alternate nights for the following period or more: Feb 12 - Feb 20
-Persevere.
-Do not consume caffeine.
-Spend majority of awake-night hours doing productive things. (aka 'don't stone')
-Record observances if any.
-Refrain from acting on potential increased irritability. Be nice.
-No naps until the 16th.


Summary of CNY celebrations @NYJC:
-Sat all the way in the back due to seating arrangements. Rar.
-CO people with instrumental version of what sounded like the Mortal Kombat theme.
-Lion dance. (drums could've been more energetic!)
-Get pulled out with S to go onstage for costume contest thing (because we wore special shirts)
-Gong Xi Fa Cai! *swerves hands in synchrony with partner*
-Embarrass self by over-talking on stage
-2nd for guys category, ho ho
-Judo

-Zan

Personal side-project.

Construct poetry/song lyrics for the following.

-Structure of DNA
-Transcription Process
-Translation Process
-Interphase (G1, S, G2)
-Functions of Golgi

I don't feel like dancing.

Dancing.

Dancing.

-Zan

A Letter to My Wallet

Dear Arrow,

I am sorry.
I am so, so sorry.
I know it's been a rough week
and yet I can't let you rest this weekend, not yet.
Please, just bear with me until it's over.
Just a few more days.
I promise.

-Zan

Bodies in Motion

Sweaty right hand. Right hand's sweaty. Sweaty hand on my right. Past few days. Why why why.

Claire's loud friends propagating large quantities of Obnoxium (Obx). Uergh.

Learnt the 32nd mass dance today. Woot woot woot.

22!

-Zan