Duke has a program for P-Frosh (potential freshmen). They come to Duke, tour the campus, sit in on classes, and stay in a dorm room for the night. A Day In The Life sort of an affair. That explains the guy sitting in our room watching South Park (Kenny: "Mmrf grbl? Hmf schl krk xidjhrtl!") and incessantly SMSing his friends. We were planning to go out, but the roads iced over (weather again) and it's not terribly safe to drive anywhere. Stuck inside we are.

Topic of the day: do things have intrinsic, objective value, or do they possess value solely because of the fact that we are appraising them? Does a work of art, for example, have an innate quantity of "goodness" (or "badness" as the case may be)? Are we, therefore, connected to and an influence on the world through our reason and emotion, or simply independent beings who have no effect on the value or meaning of the existence we are in? Other pressing questions: why can't Americans make scrambled eggs? Why does Rob Lowe want to leave a show about politicians for a show about vampire slayers? Will Nate get on the bus? Does anyone care?

Department of fiction, fabrication and half-truth:
The ginger cat that lives outside of the Physics building was seen hunting squirrels. It actually caught one. They tussled briefly, and then the squirrel made this weird, high-pitched "eek" sound and died. The cat had broken its neck. It was seen carefully carrying the squirrel's limp body off into the bushes before methodically peeling strips of squirrel meat off for its (three) kittens. As far as I know, neither the cat, nor its kittens, have yet been given names. None of the other on-campus felines has been observed displaying this behavior.

Just when the weather seems to be getting warmer, the forecast for the next three days says that there's going to be snow. I'm finding it a little hard to believe. It was 60 degrees outside today. I was just about to put away my thick coat.

There's no time for anything anymore. Work - 5 hours; Lab report - 3 hours (and a total disaster this was as well; couldn't finish it because we didn't understand how on earth to get the computer program to work right); Take-home midterm - 3 hours, and here I am at 1 in the morning wondering where the day went. And this on a day with no classes. I guess it was partly because I didn't get stuff done over the weekend, but that wasn't entirely my fault either.

Why I am complaining about this here? I think I'm going to take a different tack entirely from now on. There's too much truth and banality written down here. I think some fabrication is necessary to keep us all on our toes. Who wants to hear about the weather or my homework anyway? Everyone knows about the proverbial lives of quiet desperation already.

Food:
Wanted snow crab legs, but didn't have time. Next week.

Winston-Salem was...well, it was...exhausting. Being musical director is one hell of a headache, I'm sorry to say. And that's all I have to say about that.

Jesica Santillan is dead. Here come the lawsuits. I'm hearing stories about how our tuition is raised every year so that the medical center has enough money to pay out to people whose operations they've botched.

From The Abolition of Man
To reduce the Tao to a mere natural product is a step of that kind. Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something,though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on 'explaining away' forever; you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.

I hate this website. It is broken.

Oops. Forgot something. I might have to eat my words about the Duke Hospital not being able to do anything. It seems they found another donor after all. What were the odds? God works in mysterious ways.

Good news. I have finagled my way into switching a presentation I had during exam period forward a week, which means that I have NO FINAL EXAMS this semester. How amazing is that? I've been looking into plane tickets to California for flights that leave on April 25th and rubbing it in with every single person I've met today. Hehhehheh.

I'm leaving for an R&B retreat to Winston-Salem tomorrow afternoon. Coming back sometime on Saturday.

Last thing before I go to bed...the Singapore Students' Assocation had its AGM a few hours ago, and, well, I'm on the excom now. Secretary. Look at it this way...it will look good on a resume, and people wanted me to do it. Pro patria, pro gloriam. Stop it. Stop laughing. Now.

I suppose that everyone's seen the article about the "tragic error" at Duke University Hospital where the girl got a heart and lungs of the wrong blood type. It's really kind of shocking that something like that could still happen in this day and age. I mean, complications arising from surgery, fine. Mismatched blood types from the best surgeons in the country? Not so acceptable. As if that wasn't bad enough, the poor gir's family was told that the mistake was made due to a "clerical error". "Sorry, Mrs Santillan, your daughter's going to die because someone couldn't tell the difference between the letters 'A' and 'O'". Geez. I think even Elmo could manage to get his vowels right on a good day. Time to dust off those Sesame Street tapes, Dr. Fulkerson.

So, as I write this, Duke leads Maryland by 4 at the halfway mark, the U.S. comtinues on its inexorable march towards war, and this poor girl is dying somewhere in the large building 2 quadrangles away from me. I really feel kind of sad about it. Say a prayer with me. All the medical expertise in this University isn't going to save her now.

Ben Affleck should just stop acting in movies before he rends the known universe in two. And he should stop writing movies too. And while he's at it, maybe he should just go and become a used car salesman in Sasketchewan. Joe Pantoliano, in the mean while, rocks my world. Rock on, Joey Pants!

My IM is in a state of ruination, so forgive me if things are going badly on that front.

I've graduated from soldering to drilling holes, so it's not far to the Nobel Prize now. At least my pay checks are beginning to come in.

Food:
Synthetic tempura

Music:
Walk On - U2

Books:
Number Ten - Sue Townsend

The reason that I hardly drop the names of any of my friends in here is that I feel really uncomfortable talking about them "in public". I surfed through an e-journal of one of my friends once and I was just totally weirded out by seeing my name appear in some entries. I'd rather not put anyone through that. Anyway, it's more fun to be randomly selective and twist the truth.

Stupidity
I forgot Shaun's birthday. Every time I do that I tell myself that I have to create a system for remembering people's birthdays, and then I put it off, and then it happens again.

Junk Food
I found banana chips in the lobby shop. They're more sugary than the ones you can find in S.E. Asia, but they're a fair substitute.

Marine Lab
No one can help me! I don't want to sink $150 into their coffers! Respond, Helen Nearing!

Pigeons
One of them keeps pecking me every time I go to take it out of its cage. Talk about biting the hand which feeds you. I really feel like smacking it, but somehow I don't think that it will help, and the more extreme measure of wringing its stupid chicken neck might not go down so well with Dr. Buhusi. It has yet to draw blood, but if it does, there will be soup, employment be damned.

Taxes
%^(*%@&#^)($^&*(@^#^&^*&^#*@

Hmm...it's been a while. Laziness becomes me.

I got my letter from the marine lab today saying that they've accepted me for the summer course and that they want a $150 deposit to confirm my place. Problem is the deposit is non-refundable and I won't know whether they're giving me a scholarship until April 1st. Blech. Now I have to haul myself down to the Bursar's office and ask them what they make of that. They'd better be helpful. On top of that, the course that I wanted to do (Marine Oceanography) isn't being offered this summer. I've ended up with my second choice (Marine Invertebrate Zoology), which is not exactly what I wanted to do.

Mmm...zooplankton.

I found this great new file sharing device. It's called bit torrent, which you can download here. It's really fast, which is great, but what's even better is that this website posts torrent files of TV shows before they even air on TV. It's the ultimate in spoiler technology. Get broadband! Tell your friends! Don't let the megacorporations win their war!

JKS's take on bowling:
"...the natural pastime for Americans to take to since it basically involves staying in one place and hurling a ball at things." Sedentary...and free anger management at the same time.

I do like bowling, though, and I think I'd like it a lot more if I were a little better at it. I think I'm doing something fundamentally wrong because my thumb always feels like it's broken the day after.

Got my first shout-out on TWOP this week (I'm Iago, in case you didn't know).

Otherwise: too much work. Too many tests. Time to hit the ephedrine.

So lust is a worse sin than gluttony because there is no pornographic equivalent of pate de foie gras. Unless Gourmet magazine counts. Mmm...prime rib.

I have received the ying1 xiong2 VCD. Shout-out to Poods. Now all I need to do is find time to actually watch it. It has to go in the line with the five million other movies I've downloaded and haven't had the time to view.

We were supposed to go to the EEG lab today for a tour but it snowed and our professor didn't trust us crossing Erwin Road because of the treacherous 2 inches of precipitation. Wuss. Instead, he did a lame in-class demonstration which didn't work because the cap with the electrodes couldn't fit over his head. $35,000 a year for this.

Food:
Cannoli, probably not authentic

Music:
Cabaret, the musical

I wish that people would stop insisting that I have a British accent. It would be wonderful if I did, but given the olla podrida of influences that have been thrown into the stewpot of my speech patterns over the years, I find it strange that people pick upon the one accent that has probably affected me the least. I think I've given up all hope of ever acquiring a faux American accent. I just don't seem to be malleable in that respect. Speaking like an American is overrated anyway, from what I hear.

Apparently, 60% of people from Asian descent are incapable of metabolizing acetyaldehyes (the product of the breakdown of alcohol) because of a certain allele that predominates in the ethnic group. This isn't dangerous, on the contrary, it makes people feel sick and causes flushing and nausea, thus putting sufferers off drinking and preventing them from becoming alcoholics. It's funny, though, because I can't say I know anyone who has this condition, never mind 6 out of 10. Just thought you'd like to know.

Sometimes, you just feel like crying.

blah blah blah blah Georgetown blah blah blah concert blah blah blah sketchy house; three kegs of beer blah blah blah questions about ownership rights and trespassing blah blah blah police etc.

so no, none of us are languishing in gaol, but i'll leave off the exciting albeit somewhat complicated details of the weekend. oh all right, a few more details.

wendy's frosty freezes
unintentional busking
an 18-year old who looked 12 named steve
mental math
numerous long island ice teas
being hit on the head by a door
Lost In Hell

Food:
Nothing nutritious