the west wing has been cancelled. i know that a lot of people who liked it back in its salad days gave up on the show once it started becoming crappy (circa the tail end of season 4). you've missed out - the last year or so has been really good, what with alan alda and jimmy smits and janeane garofalo and stephen root(!) joining the cast and debra cahn churning out masterpieces of writing. nevertheless, i'm glad that it's ending this year, and thankfully, the news of cancellation came early enough that the writers will be able to flesh out a proper denouement. it's a good time to wrap up - with bartlet leaving office and the administration moving on to other things - in fact, it's the time i always envisaged the producers would call it quits.

the only bad news: aaron sorkin isn't come back to write the last episode. i can't imagine how someone could create a show and not want to write the finale. my suspicion is that he's still bitter about all the criticism that was levelled at him while he was still writing/producing; if that's the case then he's being awfully childish, and i will not look kindly on studio 7 on the sunset strip when it comes out later this year. (though i will still watch it because i'm weak that way)

memoirs of a geisha

it's watchable, but i've seen spaghetti westerns that are more japanese.

ever since starting my saturday lessons i've found myself proudly telling people that i have "class". to anyone who's been subjected to this and thought i was being a pompous ass, i do apologise. i guess i feel like shouting about it not because the experience is fantastic or anything but because it feels like i'm segueing back onto the right path (i want to say a transition back to being in school full-time, but there's no wood around me to knock on right now).

spent most of saturday manufacturing what felt like a billion pineapple tarts with n. & co. in an oven i doubt i could have fit my head into. this was, i think, my first experience of semi-industrial baking, and from now on i shall remember it whenever i start getting funny business ideas like this one. inertia is definitely not the only thing. the first tray is enjoyable; after that only cussing dulls the pain.

general pastry tips:
1) air-conditioning is your friend
2) what the customer doesn't know can't hurt him
3) carrickfergus is not a baking song

(mostly) for chris

so that we can finally put this argument to rest. (i blame tolkien and company for even making me think about such things.)

as my computer script is running

working overnight. the lab always seems to be a different colour when it's dark outside. yellow-tinted. there's too much light. proper sleep labs keep the illumination constantly below 50 lux, which i would much prefer. it's distressing to be in light for 24 hours, and that's not something people understand unless they've tried it.

it's quiet - until you concentrate and realise that the xserve drives are humming, and the air-conditioning is singing e below middle c.

the lobster in the aquarium has gone into hiding - do they sleep at night? they never talked about that in bermuda. our lobster has several appendages missing; there used to be 2 lobsters but they fought, and as the remaining one would probably say if it could speak: you should have seen the other guy.

the water in that aquarium gets changed about once a year, by the way, and it's been a funny shade of ochre for several months now.

on my desk: an elephantine coffee mug that says "GO AHEAD, I"M ALL EARS", springfresh "azure breeze" air freshener, a siemens calendar, a demotivators desktopper (PROCRASTINATION: Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now), a multi-purpose magnetom device, a stack of unmarked neuropsych tests, a permanent marker, several moldy rubber bands, CD-Rs.

and...it's done.

had three lunches today. the first: leftover beehoon from a gathering of general practitioners at the auditorium upstairs. half an hour later, jh called me up to say that he was free to get some food, not something that happens often. this was the first time, however, that we actually succeeded in getting together for anything other than (ugh) delifrance. then there were leftovers from some party or another going begging that looked awfully appetising, and so it was vegetarian thingummies and walnut brownies and very plump, flaky curry puffs. i'm obviously out of control.

i missed the sun.

i have extirpated all traces of my name from this blog. bwahaha.

(i'm currently at one of the peaks of my sinusoidal paranoia function, by the way)

haji

we made pineapple tarts and filled every available airtight container in the house.

the naming of things

so way back in sec 3, when von and yidong and i were working on five people sitting round a table arguing, we had this lengthy discussion on what the play should be called. five people... was the working title or something like that, and i my argument was that you can't call a play five people sitting around a table arguing because it's just not done. von, of course, was all "why ever not, that's what the play's about isn't it?", and "look at shakespeare, most of his plays have titles that tell you exactly what they're about" (facile, yes, but we were young). and so the play was named five people sitting around a table arguing and it won a bunch of stuff -- but that's not the point of the story. The point is: tell me that this isn't funny -

Simply Budget Terminal, Today 10/1/2006

Singapore's first budget terminal has been named - what else? - the Budget Terminal

Transport Minister Yeo Cheow Tong presented the winner of the "Low Cost Terminal Naming Competition" - 15-year-old Jonathan Sng of St Andrew's Secondary School - with a Starhub-sponsored cash prize of $2,000 and a 3G mobile phone, during a site inspection of the completed airport yesterday.

While 44 of the 12,000 or so entries had suggested "Budget Terminal", it was Jonathan's justification for the name - "short, easy to remember, and representative of what the terminal is" - that clinched him the award, said the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS).

Other suggestions submitted during the three-month contest period included "Funport", "Seabreeze Terminal", "Oasis Terminal" and "Orchid Air Terminal".

Naming the no-frills airport was a no-brainer for Jonathan, who told Today he thought of it over a few minutes in recess.

Currently reading:
A Fire Upon The Deep - Vernor Vinge

(1/17/06) edited to fix the title because I'm an idiot

pictures mean less reading

as some of you know, i recently acquired a new digital camera (8.5 billion years after the rest of the world, admittedly, but perhaps this is one of those better late than never things?) i was going to post some nice photos up here to commemorate the 900th lot of drivel that you fools have had to read; unfortunately, i haven't actually taken any nice photos yet, so all you're going to get is a close-up of a dog.

here:

From Today, 7/1/2006

(on Donald Trump's repeated casting of female models on The Apprentice)

Beauty queens? You're hired!

...

Trump's preference for beautiful female participants has, understandably, drawn flak

Fortunately, viewers who don't share Trump's predilections can look forward to cameos by Microsoft's Bill Gates and Hollywood's George Lucas.

heart of darkness

i bought a copy, and read it, proving that even when i'm not in school i can somehow manage to be a teacher's pet. permission granted for su-lin's students to hate me. seriously though, as i was telling cp in mph, i felt awfully left out of the measure for measure in-jokes (and bitching) last year and thought that i shouldn't miss out this time round. rjc lit students: i can now understand the true measure of your ignorance!

and of course you know what my favourite bit was:

However, as you see, I did not go to join Kurtz there and then. I did not. I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end, and to show my loyalty to Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is-- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself--that comes too late--a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up--he had judged. `The horror!' He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth--the strange commingling of desire and hate. And it is not my own extremity I remember best-- a vision of greyness without form filled with physical pain, and a careless contempt for the evanescence of all things--even of this pain itself. No! It is his extremity that I seem to have lived through. True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps! I like to think my summing-up would not have been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry--much better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory! That is why I have remained loyal to Kurtz to the last, and even beyond, when a long time after I heard once more, not his own voice, but the echo of his magnificent eloquence thrown to me from a soul as translucently pure as a cliff of crystal.

my stomach has been a little queasy for the past couple of days, but it was only today that i managed to end up lying on a maincot unable to move for about half an hour. mostly squeezing pain and sweating and giddiness -- all very dramatic symptoms, unfortunately, and there was no way not to involve the boss, who wanted blood amylase tests and all the rest done before he sent me home. (everything came back negative.) blogging from bed and feeling slightly miserable. i think i'll sleep.

no more '05

and...2006. maybe this will be the year. stay happy, everyone!