Jedixus: I am shallow! I am primitive! I am uncivilized! I am animal!
Anarchy: Think of him as T-Rex in human form.

Just in case you ever wondered what conversation with these 2 would be like. :)

I'm visiting Japan alone as friends have either been there before, or are saving up for another travel destination. I'm fine but probably going to lie to my mum again.. gotta tell her that I'm going there with friends so she won't freak out. The last time I travelled alone in Austria, I only told her when I got home safe and sound. This is the first time I'll be bringing my digital camera while travelling. I wonder if I should bring my lomo too. I can't wait. :)

So tired I slept 10 hours last night. Woke up to a mop of unruly hair. It's quite funny cos when I had long hair, there was no such thing as Bad Hair Day. Don't feel like styling my hair with gel so I wore a cap to work. Some of my guy colleagues have this habit of wearing caps in the office (thinking cap?) so now I've joined their ranks, hohoho. I think the cap does help cos it flattens my hair till it's more manageable. Problem is, I don't like to wear the cap with the bill in front cos it blocks my view. Then I have to turn the cap around and wear it like a retro bad-ass rap kid. Am I glad it's still NBA season.

Dropped by the travel agency during lunchtime today. Asked about going to Japan the last week of March and Poland in beginning May. It's been a long while since I went on a longer vacation. Time to pamper myself.

Decided to kickstart my reading again so I dropped by the library last night and borrowed some books. I even managed to finish reading one the same night. I guess I'm lagging cos I spend a lot of time reading music magazines. I read every single article and review, so a magazine takes up more time than a book (save for works like LOTR of cos). For me, reading about music is nearly as enjoyable as listening to it. Odd.

Bought a hardcover copy of David Wingrove's fantasy classic The Middle Kingdom from the not-so-mobile bookfair during lunchtime today. I vaguely remember reading this book but I'm not sure. I've either read it before 2000 since I've tracked every book read since then, or I've never succeeded in finishing it. Due to this uncertainty, I suspect this book will float to the bottom of my reading list which is already way too long.

Just received another set of tender (yes, think hundreds of pages) and the corny thought I had was Jackson Browne's song Tender is the Night, though of cos they're utterly unrelated. Urgh. Maybe I'm thinking Tender through the night instead. :(

The Dilbert daily calendar stays neglected on my office desk until the rare times I realise it's there and guiltily flip over a few days all at once. Now I remember why I've never had any daily calendars.

How it feels like for a boy. When Jedixus joined me, Yoyo and B12 for drinks, but couldn't spot us initially cos he saw only 3 guys seated together. lol.

Weird search phrase that led to my blog: "Chile attitudes towards customer service". Huh?

We're not in the best shape now but things can be much worse. There's too much to do in too little time. I don't have time to be unhappy. Even if that's my stoic logical self taking control, it does tide me through the days. I'm the only one who can make me happy so I better not fuck up.

I had my first Mac Choco-cone yesterday. I should have tried one earlier, this stuff is fantastic! So I indulged and had another one again today. It's probably one of the simplest and cheapest way to keep up my spirits.

Today a friend tried to explain the concept of circuit emulation to me. It's like this: a program can be debugged by inserting break-points selectively within it, but a circuit board is a tiny hardcoded program chip with no break-points (to put it in layman terms). To trouble-shoot an erroneous circuit board, a larger emulator is used to simulate the circuitry and yet allow for break-points to occur. So I learnt something new today. How nice. :)

I like holding up my Jellybean Be@rBrick to the light. The bear has this translucent greenish glow, it reminds me of an enlarged Gummibear candy. On the other hand, I've renamed my Horror Be@rbrick. It's now called Frank on account of the Frankenstein-like stitches.

Hang on to the little things that make you smile.

I don't know how to put it.. I don't believe cheating in relationships is wrong. I know it's strange coming from me. Not that I've cheated before and especially since somehow I've been the second party in Love Bermuda Triangles. But I'm not a victim. When someone I love doesn't love me the same anymore, they should not be duty-bound to stay. 3 unhappy people instead of 1. Where's the logic in that? Everyone deserves the best for themselves. It's time to move on.

Yesterday I made myself happy watching a movie that made me sad.

Beloved be the one who sits down.
- Cesar Vallejo. This line recurs through the Swedish film Songs from the Second Floor. Excellent show.

My eternity has died and I am waking it.
- Cesar Vallejo

Hegemony's new blog. :)

The Be@rBricks I skipped dinner to buy before attending the film society screenings with Yoyo. Didn't really like tonight's movies A Taste of Cherry or Peeping Tom though the former is more tolerable to me. A Taste of Cherry is an iranian movie about a man who is attempting to get help to bury himself after he commits suicide. Peeping Tom is about a voyeur (think abused childhood) who likes to make short films of his murder victims before killing them.

Not exactly your Friday night entertainment. Man, I miss pool.

During lunchtime today, I bought hair wax gel and a hardcover copy of The Letters of Evelyn Waugh and Diana Cooper (from the mobile book fair which decided to show up again). What a strange combination.

Ran out of hair wax gel this morning. omg. One can only lasts less than 3 weeks!

Maxwell's Demon. Another odd nugget of knowledge from my best friend.

While having dinner with my best friend just now, his other best friend phoned long distance from Malaysia. Surreal! I asked if I can say hi to the other best friend but my best friend didn't oblige. Aww. Anyway, my best friend commented that most of his friends seemed to be cynical funsters. Well, except me. He said I'm not cynical even after all this time. I hope I'm still fun. :P

I stumbled across this star-crossed lovers' blog. Will Lane in America and Stu in Australia have a happy ending? Hmm.

Courtesy of Quest. He predicted correctly what my test results will be. At least I'm water in a solid state. I can live with that. :)



Which drink are you?

I was late in the office this morning. By 5 minutes. It's no biggie cos others have come in much later before, and besides it's NBA season again (No Boss Around. Boss is on a business trip to Germany). But it irked my anal-retentive "I'm-never-punctual-cos-I'm-early" self. I'm amused at my own reactions... guess it's one of those unwavering codes I abide by.

The more expensive your ticket at a concert, the less likely you are to stand up and dance.
- my music buddy's observation at the jamiroquai concert

Tonight's dinner appointment cancelled at the last minute again. I went shopping instead and bought my first accapella CD.. Best of the Flying Pickets. I think they sound better than all these compilations of Gregorian chant adaptations of hit singles saturating the market.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.
- Albert Camus

This corner of the earth is like me in many ways
I can sit for hours here and watch the emerald feathers play
On the face of it I'm blessed
When the sunlight comes for free
I know this corner of the earth it smiles at me
- from Jamiroquai's song Corner of the Earth

Just found out that for Singaporeans, no visa is needed to travel to Poland if the planned stay does not exceed 30 days. But there's no avoiding getting a visa though if travelling up to Russia. Here's the link for more info.

Spontaniety led me to the jamiroquai concert. It's odd cos I didn't expect to attend at all. I had a dinner appointment which got postponed to Wednesday night, so I tried to ask my best friend to swap our dinner appointment to Tuesday night. He wasn't up to it so suddenly I had a free time slot at 5.30pm. Don't feel like another late night at work so I decided to make the night worth it... I impulsively joined a music buddy at the jamiroquai concert. Even though I only know one of their songs called Virtual Insanity. Which they never played. It didn't matter really. :) I had fun. Beer before concerts is something new to me but I think it's not a bad idea really. Will try that next time. I didn't sit at where I'm supposed to, in fact I never even touched the seat. We ended up standing at sections nearer the stage though we didn't hit the standing-room section. I suspect my music buddy would have made it there without me, but he didn't want to leave me behind. Thanks. I met more strangers than I ever did at any concert. My music buddy was so friendly he chatted with people sitting/ standing near us, the merchandise sellers... it was so amazing. And I thought I was a people person. lol. I bought the latest jamiroquai album after the concert and am listening to it now as I'm blogging.

It's time to sleep now or I'll never make it at work. Just wanted to say how you can get the most enjoyment out of every moment if you follow your impulse and do something unexpected.

Received a handful of mistaken calls on my cell phone this morning. What's wrong with these people who ring you up and ask you to identify yourself without telling you who they are?

To paraphrase something 3TapRiff said... When you fall in love, it shouldn't be with someone who only makes you blink. It should be someone who'll make you flutter your eyelashes. Or something to that effect. Now are you happy boy? :)

Good morning world! Woohoo! Who needs drugs when you can have music?

And then I had a rare little chat with my best friend who's inbetween overseas trips, and I'm glad. :)

Forgot to bring my office keys to work today and ended up hijacking another colleague's laptop again. Busy till I skipped dinner and my regular badminton session. Last person to leave the office again but the work isn't done yet. Came home and was surprised to read a lengthy entry in my best friend's .plan. Enjoyed reading about his other best friend's wedding. Yes, there are 2 best friends and we have never met all this time.

Hmm, tomorrow's going to be another long day preparing for a tender. Why is a tender called a tender anyway? There's nothing tender about slogging through the mountain of documentation and debating about compliance to clauses. Sigh.

Music separates existing from living.

My first Be@rbrick. Isn't it cute? :)

Strangest new info I gathered today. There is a bra which moisturizes. By releasing aloe vera. And is marketed as a cosmetic bra. omg.

Dream is destiny.
- from the movie Waking Life

In Waking Life, the protagonist keeps waking up from one dream to find he's in another one, yet he has lucid philosophical conversations with people in his dreams. In comparison, my rare dreams aren't that deep. Sometimes I'll dream that I've got exams coming up and I'll stop in mid-check and go, No way! I'm working now! And then my dream consciousness will reply, Oh it's fine then. We'll just carry on dreaming anyway.

Listening to Uncut's copy of Rolling Stones cover songs. I've never been into Rolling Stones but hearing the covers was an eye-opener. There's even a chirpy accapella cover of Get Off my Cloud by the Flying Pickets... I wonder what the original sounds like? ttj once mentioned that Rolling Stones and Beatles fans don't mix, you're mostly either one or the other. Up till now I'm pro-Beatles but maybe, it's time to check out their nemesis.

My weekend started wonderfully. I met up with 3TapRiff and Pupi for dinner. 3TapRiff was so sweet! He passed me some of his wedding pics I was in, and the VCD for Waking Life. :) Then Pupi and I played only 1 game of pool and decided to whisk off for drinks and girl talk. We chatted till 3+ am and I really enjoyed myself. Sometimes it's odd how you don't have to meet someone regularly to just chat at ease. Hiaks.

Slept around 5 am and woke just after 9 am to call laptop tech support. Trouble-shooting over the phone didn't work so tech support summoned me and my laptop to the service center. I hopped over and the technician was really efficient. He offered me Mentos candy while he swapped a new internal modem for me, and everything was fixed just like that. Wow. Then when he dialled in to my internet service provider to test the new modem, I asked him to double-click on my ICQ icon to see who's online and we both just grinned spontaneously at the list of friends online on my icq list. Quest was (as usual) online and I thought it would be funny to just message and say "Hi! Guess where I am now?". But I decided not to waste the nice technician's time.

On my way home, I dropped by a CD shop and saw a REAL bargain CD. Patti Smith's Peace and Noise for 88 cents. It was too ridiculous cos Patti Smith is hey, PATTI SMITH! But I bought it of cos. :)

Everything is rolling on so well and the day has only just begun!

Courtesy of da blind mouse. Should have thought I should be a coke float rather than chicken McNuggets. I hardly ever order that, duh.

I took the McDonalds test, and guess what I got?


You can take the
McDonalds Product Test by Matio64
here!

Someone once said learning jazz is like learning a foreign language. You're only proficient when you can dream and think in it, when translating emotions from your heart to your hands becomes second nature. And jazz is open-ended music, with room for deviations each time it's performed. This leads me to think that if jazz is like a book, the book margins will be filled in with handwritten comments, much as jazz is about improvisions.

Now playing St. Germain's Rose Rouge.

My modem fiasco. *hide face*

Baking analogy at work today. The sales guy jokingly suggested that one way of promoting sales is to mention that all our bakers don't smoke. So not only are they in better health to serve our customers, they also cut down on time spent on ciggie breaks. Eh. Come to think of it, the sales guy is the only smoker in the whole company. Smoking is always a lonely activity for him during office hours.

It's time for me to read rather than write.

I witnessed the aftermath of a road accident on my way home tonight. Ambulance sirens, knocked down motorbike and anxious policemen. I had a sudden panic attack there and then along the lines of "life is too short". It was real sobering.

Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.
- George Jean Nathan

All set to be the last one to leave the office today too. Damn.

Baking analogy at work. It's easier to arrange lunch appointments with friends when I was baking cakes than when I'm selling them. Now, even lunchtime is an opportunity for meetings. Sorry for postponing!

See, though you can't tell what I'm doing from my blog, you can tell what I'm thinking. From my point of view, I've saved you lots of legal tender for my thoughts. What more?

Last one to leave the office yesterday, got home, watched an Italian VCD movie We All Fall Down. Didn't really enjoy it cos certain scenes were cut, making the movie disjointed. It was nice seeing Italy again but it also reminded me of that famous fountain in Rome (the name escapes me right now) where if you make a wish, you'd return to Rome within 5 years... well, that wish didn't work for me. At least I had a good sleep last night. :)

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.
- Charles Peguy

On sports, duck (Hegemony!) and love. In the game of cricket, the term duck has the same meaning as love in tennis, ie. zero. The former is cos it's a short form for duck egg, which looks like zero; the latter is cos of the french l'oeuf. What I don't understand is, how hard is it to say zero instead?

The movie I'm looking forward to watch. There's a line in it that goes "free the reckless god within" which I particularly took a fancy to.

in pop terms, Norway is now officially the new Japan.
- Stephen Dalton, in a music review.

I've always had a soft spot for Nordic musicians. Wonder if all that snow helps to shape their sound.

Pupi emailed me her short hair pic and she looked really pixie and wonderful. :)

so they frisked me cos they saw a nail clipper in my bag. for a while, i thot they were gonna feak out over that! geez, whats the world coming to?
- message from leslie_ back in America.

Paranoid androids rule us all.

Speed-blog. Visited customer, juggled problems, tweaked more service agreement proposals. Turning into a bot. Meow.

Desperately searching for lyrics to Spoon's album Girls Can Tell. Didn't manage to locate that album and strangely intrigued by the album title. Nonsensical refrains pop in my head, like:

Girls can tell when they're in hell.
Girls can tell; boys can spell.
Girls can tell what's beneath the shell.

What can girls tell?

Courtesy of bedlamite from Chronoscape.

I am Mario.

I like to jump around, and would lead a fairly serene and aimless existence if it weren't for my friends always getting into trouble. I love to help out, even when it puts me at risk. I seem to make friends with people who just can't stay out of trouble.
What Video Game Character Are You?

Prior to watching the movie The Others, Yoyo and I already knew the ending. Me cos I always know the ending, him cos he read a review which gave away the surprise. As a result, we were more amused with audience reaction than being traumatised with fear. There were quite a few false alarm screamers (screamed when there was no evident suspense) followed by peals of laughter. The best part is when one woman actually spoke loud and clear "Oh. My. God."

Movie is good but the audience is cuter.

Ended up doing conventional ear-piercing (one hole on each side). Left earlobe is more sensitive and tingly but otherwise fine. Not supposed to take off the earrings or wear turtlenecks for 2 months. Hmm.

Relaxing Friday night. We ate noodles and bee hoon deliciously cooked by a friend downed with a lil' beer, before playing one-on-one pool. I knew you wouldn't like my new hair. Across from us is the same martial arts TV actor I saw playing at the pool joint last weekend. I won some but you won more. Somehow along the way, we made a bet that I would pierce my ears if you won, and you said the number of earholes would be determined by the number of remaining balls I'd have left. I freaked out but lost two subsequent games to you.. with one and two remaining balls consecutively. You told me I could choose to pierce a ear or both, and I wondered if it's actually the sum of both games, making it 3 earholes. I asked you if you thought I would really go ahead and pierce my ears cos of this, and you replied why not? I guess it's probably as good a reason as any, and I've probably done far stranger things for less.

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.
- Albert Schweitzer

In biometric verification, a goat is a system end-user who is refused access to the system because their biometric data pattern is outside the range recognized by the system. The term comes from a research paper on speech recognition published in 1998 by George L. Doddington. The paper, "Sheep, Goats, Lambs and Wolves - An Analysis of Individual Differences in Speaker Recognition Performance" used a menagerie analogy to explain the differences in speech recognition.
Sheep were speakers whose voice patterns were easily accepted by the system, goats were speakers who were exceptionally unsuccessful at being accepted, lambs were speakers who were exceptionally vulnerable to impersonation, and wolves were speakers who were exceptionally successful at impersonation. Because false rejection rates are often high when testing a biometric verification system, goats are probably better known than the other animals in Doddington's menagerie.
- Goat; Word-of-the-day from WhatIs.com

Quirky analogies that make me smile.

The crudest curriculum vitae crows and flaps its wings in a style peculiar to the undersigner. I doubt whether you can even give your telephone number without giving something of yourself.
- Nabokov's Nikolai Gogol

Actually it's true about telephone numbers. I remember scanning through lists of available cell phone numbers just to find the ideal one [1) doesn't end with a 4, which sounds like Death in cantonese; 2) consisting of a pattern sequence I can remember]. Does that say I'm mildly superstitious at least?

I bought Stacy Schiff's biography on Mrs Vladimir Nabokov (the book is titled Vera) for only $1. I can't believe how such a well-researched work can be so under-valued and was really quite indignant though I got a bargain deal. Sigh.

It was a bullet train.
- on love, from Pupi's last entry.

Take care and send me a pic of your new haircut ok?

Gotan project's La Revancha del Tango is sensual tango, flooded with bandonions (a small South American form of accordion), and Latin inspired beats. I'm amazed at how progressive yet heartbreaking the accordion can sound.

In a meeting that lasted nearly whole of today. Tucked in my feet discreetly on the seat of the swivel chair to be more comfy, and my colleague quickly kicked my shoe under the table to the far side. We looked like kids at the dining table waiting to be excused.

Hey, maybe you shouldn't get a new bed.. after all you won't be using it.
- Mrs 3TapRiff's comment on the one line that came closest to a proposal from her hubby. Muahahaha! :)

Baking analogy at work today. The sales guy had a mock-serious discussion with me on my hair. Unbelievably, he has this idea that like the TV show Felicity, cutting hair so short leads to a drop in TV ratings, and in our case, cake sales. His previous grouse was I looked too young to sell the kind of cake we sell. Now, I look more a creative media sort and it's even harder for him to sell me while I sell cakes.

How is it that when I have long hair no one gives a hoot, and now there's so much focus on so little hair?

Odd. My female colleagues have asked me to go pierce my ears so I can wear earrings and soften the look of my short hair. How did cutting my hair snowball into this? On the other hand, hairstyling tip of the day is to grab little tufts of hair, twist them into little cockscrews and apply wax on the tips for an edgy look. Will try that tomorrow. :)

Well, you know what I feel like today? It's like this: the last little while I've been feeling as if - as if I've come back from a long trip away - and I've been continuing on with my life again, but it's only today that I realized something went missing while I was gone. And I think it's you, and I want to see you again so badly I think I'm going blind. So call me.
- from Douglas Coupland's book Miss Wyoming. The most touching answering machine message no one ever got.

Evolution got me here to where I am
But I'd believe in anyone who promised me
The sun would shine today
- from Cosmic Rough Riders' Revolution (in the Summertime?)

ttj just lent me 3 albums which I nearly bought. Luckily I checked if he had them first so I could borrow. So this is the highlight of this busy day: Trembling Blue Stars' Alive to every Smile, Gotan Project's la ravancha del tango and Cosmic Rough Riders' Enjoy the Melodic Sunshine. Thanks.

You're so brave but don't hurt anyone.
- a quirky sms from Yoyo after he saw a pic of my latest hairdo.

He also thought that it's nice, even if it's not an afro. An afro was never in consideration ok, lol. Well, guy friends are actually sharing their hair gel techniques with me now. Never thought I'll bond with them over hair gel but hey, there you go. :)

I like to hover my hand above the top of my head now cos I can brush against my spiky hair. My hair has never stood before, it was always too long to have such lift. Somehow I find it amusing that my hair has a will of its own now.

So far, my best friend and my mum are the 2 most vocal supporters of my short hair. lol.

I had dim sum lunch with my family today and spent time catching up with my bro. I don't meet him often enough since he's married and moved out. Well, today I found out something new. I found that contrary to my belief that he is a Dog person, my bro is really a Cat person.

It's like this: my bro was explaining that he saw a cat yesterday on the road, in front of a bus stop lazily licking its paws.. nonchalant to the fact that it's in the path of approaching buses. My bro considered shooing the cat to safety but had no idea if the cat is savvy enough to run to the correct side of the road instead of into oncoming traffic. So he just lifted the cat to a safer place out of the road, whereby the cat ignored him and carried on licking itself. I'm amazed that my bro bothered to do this at all.

He went on to recite another cat incident. Back when he was still in junior college, the school cat wandered into the lecture hall during a Physics lecture, and promptly disappeared into the store room located behind the lecturer. The lecturer put a stop to the lecture and asked for a volunteer to bring the cat out. To my surprise, my reserved bro did it and received a sitting ovation from his lecture group.

I never realised my bro is the little shepherd boy of cats. :)

Initially I wanted to do something safe like rebond my hair or cut it like Meg Ryan's shaggy style. However, my UK travel mate reminded me that rebonding means I can't tie up my hair to do sports for a certain time period, and I'm not keen on that. Besides, my best friend also voted against rebonding (but then, he voted against drinking bubble pearl tea too, so his opinion is quite iffy).

My UK travel mate and I pored over the hairstyle magazines at my hairdresser's and she picked out this gorgeous pixie-looking model with the shortest crop possible. Wow, never had my hair cut that short before. My hairdresser thought that the cut could work with my face, and I thought ok, why not? Before I could waver, my hairdresser whipped out a huge pair of scissors and hacked off my hair at the nape first. After that, my heart kept sinking as more hair fluttered to the floor. When he's through, I looked like a butch. omg. Not a single hair on my head is longer than a finger joint now. When he styled my hair, it got slightly better... now I looked like a little boy who just tumbled out of bed with tousled hair. Hohoho. My UK travel mate thought I looked fresher with short hair though. That's really the best thing you can say about this haircut actually, though I do like it secretly. lol.

I guess Jedixus explained it best with this weird analogy:
My character is like a mango, my old long hairstyle is like an apple, and my current hairstyle is like a durian. So I'm still on the lookout for a mango look, though I've not achieved it yet.

I received a trivial phone call after only 3 hours of sleep. Sigh. I didn't go back to sleep but called up my UK travel mate, and we thought about changing our hairstyles today. So we made appointments at the same hairdresser's and I'd know in 2 hours' time what haircut to start the year with.

On hearing my own recorded voice, I recall limabean telling me once before that I sound better when I'm sad.

I've just been given a handheld Billiards game set so I guess I don't have to wait for Friday nights to play pool. lol. Heard that you were looking for a mini-pool table where you can poke at the pool balls with a tiny cue stick, but that kind of novelty item is hard to find. Thanks for trying. :) I've wondered if it's possible to kiss the cue ball of a mini-pool set, or will the ball be too tiny?

While drinking at nearly 3am, Jedixus was asking Anarchy and Quest if they knew how to fold a paper napkin into a rose. No one knew how and all 3 started folding origami cranes or what nots instead. Inbetween, Jedixus and Anarchy took lots of digital pics. I don't think Quest will get any sleep at all before he boards that plane to Australia, but hope it's a good flight. :)

Compacted more than 25Mb of office email and the darn compaction program is still running. Urgh.

My colleague and I did pseudo-shopping at Watson's during lunchtime, ie. we bought necessities but felt happy going back to our office not empty-handed. So today my day is made cos I've acquired dental floss, saline solution, facial blotters and a flower pen. My favourite purchase is of cos the flower pen, which is simply a fake flower with huge purplish-blue petals set on top of a green stem containing the ink cartridge.

I'm looking forward to twirling the flower pen during meetings to alleviate boredom. omg. I'm so easy to please.

The most common name among my guy friends seems to be Eric. It doesn't help when Erics who call don't mention their surnames or nicknames. Most times I'm left bewildered as to which Eric it is.

Strange what information you can garner from bonding with your girlfriends. Like the fact that if you're real bosomy and slimmed down so fast you need to downgrade your cup-size, you're likely to get stretch marks. Not that I have to worry, since Shanghai Baby and Her Maximiser have decided that I'm more like a battery. [Private joke] :)

Thank goodness for Fridays and girlfriends.

So I've found out about 3TapRiff's journal from Dave's blog. Hiaks.

Watched Vanilla Sky with ttj and yoyo. The guys gave the movie more credit than I did. What I wondered about was why Beach Boys' song Good Vibrations appeared in a movie which gave me bad vibes?

Google is a play on the word "googol", which was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, to refer to the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. A googol is a very large number. There isn't a googol of anything in the universe. Not stars, not dust particles, not atoms. Google's use of the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense, seemingly infinite, amount of information available on the web.
- on why Google is so named

Every man is a damned fool for at least five minutes every day. Wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.
- Elbert Hubbard, author, editor, printer (1856-1915)

From a previous post on WhatIs.com which I've just managed to read:
"TWAIN is a widely-used program that lets you scan an image (using a scanner) directly into the application (such as PhotoShop) where you want to work with the image. Without TWAIN, you would have to close an application that was open, open a special application to receive the image, and then move the image to the application where you wanted to work with it...

In several accounts, TWAIN was an acronym developed playfully from "technology without an important name." However, the TWAIN Working Group says that after the name chosen originally turned out to be already trademarked, an 11th hour meeting of the group came up with TWAIN, deriving it from the saying "Ne'er the twain shall meet," because the program sits between the driver and the application. The name is not intended to be an acronym."

Somehow, I'll like it better if it was intended as an acronym too.

Make that 3 books I've read yesterday. Back to work today, it was a good break while it lasted. :)

ttj and my best friend went to the booksale today and overloaded on books too. As I've asked them for the list of books they've purchased, I'll put up my list here too.

1) Arielle Eckstut & Dennis Ashton's Pride and Promiscuity
Imaginary lost sex scenes in Jane Austen works. Hilarious.

2) Gaby Hauptman's In Search of an impotent Man
Translation of German bestselling fiction about a woman in search of a man who's more interested in a relationship than sex. Finished reading this today, didn't find it particularly well-written. My worst buy of the lot.

3) Ayn Rand's Romantic Manifesto
One of three Ayn Rand books I own now, all unread. The first Ayn Rand book I've bought some time back is Atlas Shrugged, and it's only selling for $4 now at the booksale!

4) Ayn Rand's We the Living
A semi-biography of sorts. I confess that I just like Ayn Rand's name even before I know of her extensive works.

5) Chuck Palahniuk's Choke
Skirted round a stack of books and missed seeing a hard cover copy of this the first time. Luckily I saw this on closer inspection. It's probably the only copy left when I was there. My best buy of the lot.

6) Douglas Coupland's Miss Wyoming
Up to now, my favourite Douglas Coupland book is Microserfs but maybe it's cos I'm educated as a techie. You can't go wrong with his books.

7) Germaine Greer's The Whole Woman
This is the supposed inferior follow-up to Germaine Greer's classic feminist bible The Female Eunuch. Incidentally Yoyo bought a copy of The Female Eunuch at the sale and refused to let me have it instead. Boo to you! lol.

8) Haruki Murakami's Underground
Murakami is my favourite Japanese author (not that I know many to begin with) because he references music a lot in his writing. Does that make sense?

9) James Collins & Jerry Porras' Built to Last
A classic on visionary companies which comes highly recommended by my best friend.

10) Michael Paterniti's Driving Mr Albert
A scientific roadtrip with Albert Einstein's pickled brain. Cute.

11) Naomi Klein's No Logo
Even Eddie Vedder of the band Pearl Jam has read it. On evils of branding.

12) Naomi Wolf's Promiscuities (The Secret Struggle for Womanhood)
Feminism and the history of the slut. And yes, I own but no, I haven't read The Beauty Myth, also by her.

13) Robert Rodi's What they did to Princess Paragon
On updating a comic series called Princess Paragon by firstly making the Princess a dyke.

14) Stuart Stevens' Feeding Frenzy
On taking a road trip through Europe looking for the perfect meal.

15) Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring
Spinning a yarn about a same-titled painting. Interesting storyline.

Oh well, at least I've read 2 books today.

I finished reading one more book just seconds before the countdown into the New Year. I would take that as a good omen. :) Maybe it's time to stop reading so many books concurrently and concentrate on reading them one by one.