Wet

Yesterday I walked down for some eggs and kaya toast.
It was drizzling.
When I was done, it was raining heavy.
So I walked back.

-Zan

Library Sequence

Drop off.

Magazine section. Pace to and fro. Flip flip. More. Flip flip.

Comics section. Nothing new again. Non fiction time.

Science. Nutrition. Exercise. General. Theo. Philo. Singapore section. Engi. Biog.

Fiction only if I have a name in mind. Search on the com. Walk there. Get book (sometimes).

DONE, OUT


-Zan

Busy but not really.

Today's lesson: I'm thinking maybe my standards are too high. Time to use deal breakers, instead of deal makers. Hm.

-Completely disregard of exercise
-Same pose/expression for near-every photograph (unless it's just smileyness)
-Same name as my sisters or mom
-Annoying laugh (It's a bad one, I'm sorry, I know)

PS: LOOPER. UNEXPECTED AWESOME MOVIE. Also, wallflower.

-Zan

Operation Timbre

Today's lesson - Many a time, it pays a price to hesitate. Aiyah, just go lah. Can't hurt. If it does, let it.

-Zan

Weekend self-meals are the bliss

PERFECT POACHED EGG! THANK YOU.

Start:
Blueberries.
Watermelon cubes. (Iknowit'scalleddicedshutup)
Plum cubes.
Banana cubes.
Thin slices of pear.
Oats.
Dragonfruit cubes.
2.5 huge spoon scoops of Greek Yogurt.
Almonds n Peanuts.

Middle:
PEANUT BUTTAH SANDWICH (and some honey)


End:
2 POACHED (POACHED!) EGGS
3 Ryebread toast slices with the garlic n herb cream cheese Claire bought
Chunk of wild smoked salmon, pepper
Onion slices
Tomato slices


Next week, them avocadoes are gonna be ripe.
Can't wait.


-Zan

21

1: Wake up.
2: "Happy Birthday Zan" and I hug my mom from the bed. Claire joins in too. Freeloader.
3: Shave the 5-day-old beard and mustache from my face :c
4: Decide I should at least exercise a little before the mammoth lunch and dinner to come, and I take the merrells out for a wee jog. Blisters I didn't know existed from the day before start burning, and I run back after 10 minutes. Ah well.
5: We make our way to Brazil Churrasco...
6: We all eat a TON, and roll our way back to the car, which rolls its way to Vivo.
7: Some rum n' cherry chocolate cake from Awfully Chocolate!
8: Happy Birthday cake drill done. Oh man we're stuffed. 1630H now. Gosh, I hope I can digest this pile of meat and cake before 9.

And here I am now.
Can't say I feel the same way about turning 21 than most people. I don't have insights attached to this particular number. But I guess I'll benchmark where my life is right now. At least I can look back from the future and assess myself from this point.

Primary Concerns:
-Nutrition and fitness
-My platoon-to-be in NDU
-My future education

-My future occupation
-The happiness of each member of my family
-Attaining a clear mind

 Wants:
-To draw regularly again. Haven't had a rush of creativity in ages.
-A consistently calm head

-Her
-To get rid of the little belly once and for ALL

Spends free time:
-Reading stuff on the net
-Reading nonfiction from the library
-Exercisin'
-Walking around eating from various places

Self-assessment:
 Bloody LOST. You need some form of structure, and the will to stick to it, so that your life isn't so damn in-the-moment. Ostensibly, you're doing just fine. But you know why you're not satisfied. It's just not smooth enough. It's too here-and-there. Recognise when your mind goes to the first principles, and trust them. Don't fall too much to others' opinions.

Kay, done with the introspection! Update on dinner, coming up.

Meanwhile, another phonedump:

- Young at Heart - Tom waits
- What separates ketchup and tomato sauce
- Supporting a ring
- wtf is rangoon
- Velcro-on mp3
- The sound of scissors cutting construction paper
- Bodyheat powered gadgets
- zero-calorie placebo food
- 618822
- paperpeople-shop
- 58 arab st. rattan shop
- Sinema
- culturepush.com/
- chamak by akon
- mint royale
- flavoured fibre designed as common foods
- Do it by the book, but be the author
- Animation idea. Kid terrorising lego city turning out to have effects on a real city

Man, I'm gettin rusty. Gotta get back to this thang

(PS: OH, HAI FIRST POST OF 2012!)

EDIT: Continuation from way above:

9: Stomach gets decimated by the chocolate buffet at MBS. But the view is spectacular, and I wish I wasn't so groggy so I could watch it for hours. Damn I wish my first camera phone.
10: HOME!

-Zan

Used to it. But why now?

Everything. Like throwing myself into the sea.

dang this is emo

-Zan

A Summary. An Exaggeration. But not too far off.

Pumping pumping pumping gettired pumping pumping pumping gettired pumping pumping pumping eat SWIMMING gettired eat randomtiringthingprobablyresultantinpumping sleep.


-Zan

So You Did Good, Boy

How can you screw things up now?

-Forget to apply while in NS
-Do the easiest thing to do regarding Uni application
-Lose A level, O level documents
-Obtaining an irreparable injury
-Pick a job I don't want
-Pick the wrong major for the job I want
-Mess up the interview
-Not send all the required documents
-Stop thinking
-Not doodle
-Let music cloud my head of its thoughts at every living moment
-Identify potential to do better, and fail to do so
-Not use full-stops
-




-Zan

MEANWHILE

Who would believe you were a beauty indeed
When the days get shorter and the nights get long
Lie awake when the rain comes
Nobody will know
when you're old
when you're old
nobody will know


No crypticism or hidden messages, I just really like the way these lyrics sound together in that song.

-Zan

Little Things: SG and Canada's differences.

Specifically, Cedar (Nanaimo) and Victoria, BC.
More specifically, In the winter season.

It's frickin cold outside (I've been there in Summer, too.)
The "green man" traffic light is white.
To be smiled at by strangers, and to smile back, is commonplace and almost expected.
"How's it going"and "Have a good one" are more common.
The sun is down by about 4.30pm.
At 10pm, the city is almost barren. Even in the pubs.
I can't believe that the DASANI BOTTLED WATER is comparable in price to the soft drinks here!
Food and drinks are expensive. Drinks from vending machines are often about $1.75 or more. In Canadian dollars.
You are more likely to be given the right of way on roads.
Cars stop really far from the zebra crossing to let you cross.
You can U-turn anywhere.
More visible homeless people.
Cars are, on average, more crappy looking.
Radio there is AAWEEESOOMMMMEEE.
Where one would find varieties of condoms near the cash register in a Singaporean mart, varieties of gum would be found in a Canadian one.
Food portions are HUGE in restaurants. In many cases, this justifies the high pricing.
When it rains, the rain is seldom a big shower. It is a little over a drizzle in intensity. It is also very annoying.
Seeing a person wearing only a t-shirt outdoors is remarkable.
Nobody wears slippers.
THE AIR. The air smells so fresh!
When you walk through a park, you step not on road, nor on concrete. You tread on the dirt, the mud and fallen leaves.
In Canada, you tip.

That's all I can mentally conjure now. I'll probably update this every time another difference comes to mind.

UPDATE: How could I forget to mention you drive on opposite sides there? In Canada, the driver seat is left, and on the roads you drive on the right lane.

-Zan

Back!

With more hair than necessary.

Summaries ahoy! But not just yet.

The transition in climate from winter-Canada to eternal-summer-Singapore has been smooth. My skin certainly agrees with the humidity. Thankfully there's been no heat shock.

I think it's interesting that, both times my plane touched down, I entered the country on a particular New Year's day. I reached Canada on the first of January and reached Singapore on the third of February (Chinese New year).

Things have changed in Marang Road. Leave for a month, and Home is no longer Home. The house got painted, Mount Faber's got parts of it blocked off for renovation (went jogging today) , and worst of all, Claire and Winnie thought it would be nice to rearrange everything in the house I own. This was cause for much anger. I'm not going to unleash it on Claire, she has enough to stress about given the schoolwork. She just needs to know why the rearranging without my supervision, direction or permission frustrates me incredibly. She must understand. That's all I need.

Looking out the balcony reminds me that trees are gone and the ground is dry and naked. It's nice to see that the grass is returning. It's wonderful to see four banana trees beginning to sprout in place of the two large stumps.

I was thinking about change during the jog. I decided that mongering about it was a futile pursuit, given that I would never escape the reality that even the things closest to me (be they people, objects, concepts, etc.) would inevitably be different in the times to come. This house I've lived in all my life could be rubble tomorrow. For about the next two years of my life, I will never see my hair grow longer than an inch or two. Trees I have been familiar with since birth may fall or be removed eventually. Even I may look through these eyes in a completely different way. There will be times where my mind is buzzing with thought and imagination, and times of dull stagnancy. I am powerless against the shifts.

What if I don't like that?

I decided that I had two options.

1) Mentally set something that would be held constant to me no matter what happened, and comfort myself with it every time a significant change occurred.

2) Embrace change.

Yea, having all my stuff rearranged hit me pretty deep.

Maybe I'm petty.

Na, don't think so.

Happy rabbit CNY!

-Zan

2=0+1+1!

Oh yah, resolutions!

I'll see what I can steal from my holiday resolutions first.
-Hold breath to inhuman limits (I did try, but progress has been slow. A recent breakthrough involved imagining myself as some creature that didn't need to breathe air. Results were very successful. Really a mind over matter thing, it seems.)
-Learn knots (Indispensable for the navy, says the father)
-Learn languages
-Polyphasic sleep (Could be especially useful for NS. The initial sleep deprivation stages, that is.)

Now to think of newbies.
Oh, wait. I can still steal from last year's.

3: Start running regularly again.
7: Read a German book with full comprehension.
8: Read a Mandarin book beyond the primary 3 level with full comprehension.

Kay NOW to conjure n00bs.
Ahem.

-Befriend at least two students from Vic's school. Or the area.
-Write a short story. Bonus pride points if it's a comic.
-Master the drawing of no less than three different animal species.
-Keep a journal that AT LEAST lasts 30 consecutive days. Please.
-Survive NDU's "Hell week".
-Work for money during February.
-If NS permits, go vegetarian for at least a month.
-get grail
-Do best to demolish what politics may arise in my NS experience.
-Learn coin tricks. Minimum of 4.
-Not get my blog deleted.

-Zan

Christmas Conceptions

I sat in the pews at ORPC for their Christmas service, family-tradition dictate, and contemplated the presence of those without pew-seats, standing/sitting in the back. And how they could be cured of their predicament.
Observation told me that only a small fraction of the huge indoor space was being used for the audience - the floor. Gravity-dictate. Unused space existed! Also, there was a lot of empty space in the volume of air above us that could have been used for audience-spaces.

Trying to fix the latter cause (of the space-waste problem) first, I imagined a second floor above the audience, where more seats could be filled. The problem with this hypothetical, of course, was that members further back on the ground level would be obstructed by the new 'ceiling' formed by the second floor.
This could be rectified by lifting the second floor higher, but that would cost the top-floor audience their proper view of the stage. This wasn't good enough. I wanted a solution with no re-allocated costs to the audience.
I imagined antigravity, to simplify things. People could just float around anywhere to view the service at the spatial location of their choosing. Still, in this case, there would inevitably be some people blocking others as they hovered in front of them. Bah!
How would I fix that?
I came to the conclusion that resolving the wastage of space by using the free space within the volume of the room would only be simple if there was some way to render people transparent. Then, people could more efficiently utilise the room as an audience and wouldn't have their view blocked.

But I didn't want to delve into that problem (making people temporarily transparent). So instead I battled with the former cause of the problem - unused surfaces. If other surfaces could be filled, it would cause benefit by adding more audience seats without costing the existing audience their view of the stage (in this case, the choir).

The problem was like a cube. One interior side was being used for the choir, and another side - the bottom - was being used for the audience. If we could fill the other sides with audience, the problem would be greatly lessened.





















click to zoom in, by the way.
Now that I think of it, an antigravity-based solution isn't really necessary.. but whatever. I'll continue.
SO.
What popped into mind was that the church hall could instead be a cylindrical shape in a simulated symmetrical gravity. The great cylinder-church would spin to simulate gravity towards the inner surface of the tube. Like a-this:











Way more surface-efficient!
But one last problem. This way, there would be people seeing the choir upside down. To solve this, the choir would have to be organised a different way - a circular arrangement, as opposed to the usual horizontal columns. Their song would resonate through the tube in a circular symmetry.

Then I extrapolated a bit.
Say this structure of building was commonly used in a world where humans habitated space (i.e. in antigravity, woop). for buildings where a large audience was needed in front of a common "message-giver" (a choir, a musical band, a presentation, a talk, etc.) . There would exist a new problem: Text. For all of the people in the circularly-arranged audience to read the same text without tilting their heads at some angle to the side, lots of copies of that same text would have to be made, and arranged in a circle.











Whether this is done with screens or print, the same problem arises: It's pretty costly, especially if all you want to say is one letter (in the case of the illustration, ''A''). The messagers aren't getting much bang for their buck.
Then I thought: A new text/language that could be developed to suit this circular style of presenting a message. One that could be read from all angles of reading. It would have to be read vertically, for all spectators can see the text's "radius", but text lying on the circumference could only be read partially. And would have to scroll I guess. So.. example!












Liddat. Of course a more fluid text, easier to write in a circle, than mine would be developed.
I guess the circle language would have its limitations. The more letters, the more circles, and each letter would have to cover subsequently larger perimeters. So it's limited to shorter texts I suppose.
It was a cool idea in my head though. ._.

Then the thoughts ended there, and I continued paying attention. Woo! But I thought the circular text thing was a pretty neat idea. Had to save it here lest it be lost forever.

Had to get the tablet plugged up to the office to make some of this clear, would've been too confusing otherwise. FinallyI'm touching dearest tablet after SO LONG. WOOOOO


-Zan

What Goes Up...

:|



-Zan

Something's up.

I've been feeling pretty darn awesome since around 6pm yesterday. Some sense of calm or peace or coolness has bud in me. Perhaps I have fully internalized the fact that the A levels are over - all the way down to the deepest psychological bone.
maybe I just jinxed it. lollerskates.

And for some reason I was being ridiculously jittery in bed last night, thinking about going to the library today. The excitement, the anticipation. The absolute bliss of getting a pile of books, sitting down and reading them without feeling pressured to read something relevant to school syllabi, without being pressured to study, using the library as a library should be used.

So my bag got really fat today; they let us borrow twice as many books now, since it's December.

Something weird happened during the walk up the hill home.
Somewhere ahead, I heard a faint wailing of a man's voice - "..enn"
I looked up. Must have come from the neighbours' house, they had people over this afternoon. The party's probably still on, or something. Look down. Walk.
"... enn"
Look up again. Walk.
"..N"
(it sounded like 'gwenn' or 'whenn' or something. some word ending with the syllable made when you say the letter N. and the voice sounded like it was calling from far away.)

Look up, catch a shadow to my right with my peripheral vision. It's the cat, standing there in the dark. Looking at me. I look at her. She's not usually this far down the road/hill.
I walk on.
I don't hear the voice any more for the rest of the walk.
Creepy.


-Zan

Paisley Bowtie, and an Outstretched Hand to the Whipping Post

Wake up.
Wake up.
See dead, dry, crackled up gecko hanging from its tail off the side of the upper bed bunk. Looking at me with hollowed eyes.
Grab book beside pillow, get to the living room. It's noon.
"It's alive!" Hi Daddy.
Read.
Read.
Eat fruit.
Eat lunch.
Computer.
Freaks & Geeks on Youtube.
Now.

Prom was pretty fun! Glad it didn't just end up being all "I'm only here to eat and take pictures"-ish. At least not for the bunch of us. Gotta be a good audience, you know? (I love my suit, though. Suits. Suuuuit.)
Post-prom was okay. Lively, yes, but I wouldn't give someone that experience if I were trying to convince him how fun clubbing was. My first time. And it was PACKED. Couldn't move anywhere without smashing oneself through the tight, fluctuating corridors between bodies that appeared once in a while.
But okay lah. Okay. Would go again, if only to seek a better time. Clubbing 'properly', har har har.

Gotta work on the cardio for the next judo training. I shan't let the old asthma get the better of me during the next uchikomi. SwimrunrunswimssuriwrLIBRARYrunsmwiunLIBRARYYYY

Oh, and presents. Gotta beat Claire. HOO HAH.


-Zan

ok list things to do.

-Clear the house of scattered papers and such
-Clear the desktop of MCQ files/Notes in pdf/SCHOOL STUFF
-Work on (and finish) that header.
-Work out!
-SUIT UP.
-Get NS phone
-Draw a whole buncha shit
-Prom!
-Post-prom!
-Do nothing!
-0JERO9UXMS2DCPS7OOS!
-Besuch des Vaterlandes
-Vegetate before Youtube
-Vegetate before Reddit
-Vegetate in various public libraries
-Behold in wonderment the hundreds of free tables at library study corners (lookingatyoubugis)
-Hold breath to inhuman limits
-Learn knots
-Learn languages yo
-Relearn judo!
-Get Xmas presents
-Beat Claire at getting Xmas presents
-ENJOY MUSIC
-Have a whack at polyphasic sleep again? Maybe?
-Convince myself that the Pacman moleskines aren't worth it!
-not finish this list!


-Zan

Change-o Colours

-Zan

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