how science is sometimes trumped by your mom

mom: (re: the terrier we're dogsitting): do you think she can tell us apart by looking at us?
me: dogs rely more on smells and sounds than visual cues i think.
me: and anyway, even if they could tell us apart by sight, they probably wouldn't be very good at it. animals' brains evolve so that they're specialised at distinguishing members of their own species but not others.
mom: that's not true. i can recognize all the lizards in the kitchen.

and...winner.

(this is a lot funnier if you know the history of my mom and lizards)

wednesday: dinner with nat. i had bumped into him after the crab thing and was looking forward to catching up, the kinship of course having been forged by all going through all those math s tutorials together (one rung down from life in the trenches). we settled on suntec for food and then managed to choose just about the worst restaurant from those round the fountain (the thai one: avoid if possible).

the last time i had spoken with him was over kopi peng in the smm canteen, 9/9/2000, so there was five years to catch up on. still, there was time by evening's end to chat about intelligent design and schroedinger's cat (and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings) -- and there always should be. my ringing cry: don't be defined by what you do!

so it was fun, and he'd like to catch up with y'all as well (unless i was the only person among us who was nat's friend back in rj in which case please return to your regularly scheduled lives).

believe it or not, it's bob loblaw's law blog

so that we don't inadvertently land up in jail

it appears that google is killing us, so here comes further censorship. cp is already cp, and he suggests slye for his colleague (ugh. suggestions?). i'm not sure if minz needs further contraction (and i can't imagine what i'd change it to). i suppose justin is a sufficiently anonymous name. fs. jh. von. addy. jy. the brother and the mother and the father and the other brother. that covers more or less everyone i mention on a regular basis right? message me indignantly if i've left you out, and you can blame the police state for this.

a thought

one of the things i look forward to when i do eventually go to grad school is getting to blog about things that are not completely inconsequential.

Merry Christmas

The house smells like roasting, as it should, and everyone that I love has gotten through this year in more or less one piece. I suppose that's all that matters for now. Happy holidays all!

futureme

i guess that by now people would have heard of the new fad of sending emails to yourself in the future. the idea doesn't appeal to me too much; after all, what might one say?

1) i trust that by now you'll have accomplished ________
(an obvious setup for disappointment)

2) please remember to continue eating your vegetables/getting sunshine and exercise/loving your neighbour etc.
(as if failing to keep resolutions one year at a time is not enough, you can now look back over a span of five or more years and realise what a failure you've been during that time.)

3) you are a child of the universe, no less than the trees or the stars, etc.
(if you know it, you know it. if you don't, there's no point telling yourself)

4) the mundane
(keep a journal)

5) the random
(get a life. yes, that refers to me as well. and you.)

so, eliminating all the above, i guess i'd be left with something like this

dear j_______,

this message was written on the 22nd of december, 2005. lots will happen between now and when you next read this. some of it will be awesome, and some of it will make you wish you could vanish into a singularity and never re-emerge.

i hope more of it was awesome.

sincerely
~j_______

everyone is insisting that i change my blog template because it hurts their eyes, so i shall. on new year's day, because that's what i did this year.

please god

golden globes

nominations are out. they usually manage to squeeze in at least one nom in each tv category that i completely disagree with, but this year, they've outdone themselves. lost, prison break and commander-in-chief for best drama? (i mean, since lost is probably going to take the award again, they could at least have filled the category with good shows otherwise, right? i was thinking more along the lines of rome, grey's anatomy, house, veronica mars or nip/tuck as fillers). curb your enthusiasm does not belong in best comedy this year, particularly considering that both scrubs and arrested development are missing from it. finally: matthew fox and wentworth miller for best actor...the hell? i really hope the emmy noms don't resemble this lineup.

tuesday evening began with dinner at eng seng with choir people and yj's guest dan from AZ in the good old us of a. eng seng turned out to be one of those places like the infamous chinatown chicken rice stall - where you stand an even chance of getting a tongue-lashing from the owner, a chance you take only because the food is absolutely worth it. so: hor fun, salad you tiao, and 2 each of the pepper and chili crabs which we demolished within a half hour.

after the meal, cp, jiahao and i ended up with dan (long story) which was awkward until it turned out that he was kind of cool. he wanted to see the town, we were tempted by sneaks for the monkey show, so we scrambled for tickets and got seats for an 11 o'clock. our consensus adjective for the movie: fat. a little too much of peter jackson's style poking through where it really shouldn't have, but it did keep to the spirit of the original, and i definitely can't say that i hated it (although cp and i ended up riffing about half the movie: the brother would be pleased).

1. it's 4:37, tuesday afternoon, and more than anything else, i just want to be out of the office right now.

2. the mother left for CM last week. she's back on wednesday night with the other brother, and i'm looking forward to that because the house has been intolerably quiet in the mornings and i have no one to watch arrested development with at night.

3. in a scintillating burst of efficiency, i managed to finish a large chunk of my christmas shopping over the weekend. this was no mean feat -- i do tend to think rather hard about what to buy for people, and dither.

4. no more night shift - back to regular schedule till february at the earliest. it was definitely fun while it lasted.

5. word to su-lin on the bonuses.

in my mailbox today:

two cadbury flake bars, and two large blocks of dairy milk chocolate, in a plastic bag, unaddressed. highly strange. should i eat them, or is someone trying to poison me?

working nights does have its plus points. i've been pottering around town with cp and justin and making up for lost coffee, cake and book time -- it's not quite the same as skipping lectures to go to holland v but it will do.

*

one thing i did not foresee: people start looking at you...differently when you tell them that you do shift work. askance? i guess i see the associations, but it's a bit unenlightened to be a slave to such stereotypical views, no? my mom's friend, whom we met for coffee today, suggests that when they follow up by asking me what i do, i should tell them that i'm a bartop dancer, and that i get lots of tips. i must say that i'm tempted.

Currently reading:
The Discovery of Slowness - Sten Nadolny

just saying

no, you can't have prostrate cancer, even if you are bedridden

on saturday, there was a life-sized stuffed pooh bear in the office. today, he was gone.

words that aren't #1

mantrap (v.)
e.g. "procedures in event of lift breakdown and mantrap"
cf. womantrap, dogtrap etc.