Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
- Henry David Thoreau

There's loads to blog about but no time. So here's a lomo snapshot of my life.
Work (a quota on teleconference calls should be enforced). Films (I can't believe The Quiet American is already gone and I'm not too eager to watch Chicago though I managed to catch Frida). Books (I haven't started on the latest one loaned to me by my US travelmate). The absentminded colleague who can't have a coherent conversation with fellow passengers when he's driving ("Why will anyone name a MRT station after a dog?" "DOVER! It's DOVER, not ROVER!"). Discovery of a new Mexican place which serves a sinful chocolate turtle cake. Being advised to only date obedient men (and I had to laugh cos it sounded so absurd). Buying a toy scooter for my Blythe doll. Finding someone else who also likes to dance with eyes closed. Dark circles under eyes from lack of sleep. And music music music.

If I don't blog again till I've got enough sleep, I fear I'd be on a long hiatus. And then I realise I'm already on the way.

Reason why I'd buy classical music.

My magazines are bewildered that I've not gotten round to reading them. Patience dears. I'm chucking books and coming back to you.

Just after 6am. I logged online before starting my daily foray to my customer's, and met my best friend online. Archives still AWOL. Listening to Eminem's Lose Yourself (my latest mp3); searching for lyrics to Delakota (unsuccessful); listening to my best friend recount his dream of DNA and the double-helix structure (I'm not entirely sure I will dream about this) and analysing what it meant.

It's not a bad start to mid week. Strangely peaceful early morning feeling.

Though you only know me remotely, I told you that I blog but I didn't mention the URL. And when I say remotely, I mean you're someone who has a friend who knows another friend who knows my friend (who knows my blog address but probably won't disclose it). So we have one common link of 3 degrees of separation and zilch. Maybe you'd never find it. Maybe you wouldn't bother anyway. But I'd be interested to know if you did manage to find this blog. And if so, hey.

Advice for a girlfriend (aka the sort of thing you'd never expect to hear from me).
If you like him but aren't sure he likes you, don't volunteer your phone number to him if he didn't ask for it.
Cos if he likes you, he'd have asked for it first.
And if you think he's too shy to ask for it, what makes you think he won't be too shy to call?
Besides, if he's got your number and doesn't call, you'd fret over why he isn't. And sleep is more important than love.

Ironic how after having broadband, I've much faster access but am less inclined to blog. I've been hunting down mp3s instead but I've yet to succumb to downloading from Kazaa. Guess I'm mindful of its spyware. One thing at a time I guess.

Speak our secret into your hands
And hold it in between
Plunge your hands into the water
And drown it in the sea
There will be nothing between us, baby
But the air that we breathe
Don’t cry
It’s a wonderful, wonderful life
If you can find it
- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Wonderful Life

A pat on the back by a stranger for work done is inexplicably reaffirming. I think I'll live. :)

Swamped with work and tasks. Frustrated. Not enough sleep. Just called my best friend and broke down crying on the phone. I guess that surprised both of us since it's not like me. I must accept that whatever I do is not perfect but it is good enough. Thanks for reminding me.

What if everyone's got a quota on love and one's past relationships are already counted? So to ask for more will be greedy, since we ought to be queuing behind folks who haven't fulfilled their quota yet right? Or actually there is no quota, just people who aren't willing to love.

See, all you other archives better come back before I spout more garbage. And I can't understand why my self-conscious broadband connection keeps cutting itself off when I haven't even started downloading anything. Sigh.

One. One archive. One archive came back. Muahahaha. This is progress!

Whatever it is, it's not going to work. I must understand that.

I often wage battle against my disappearing archives but then again what the heck. They'll come back after they've had enough fun in the big bad world of internet. lol.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
- William Ernest Henley, Invictus

I'm awake again after only 4 hours of sleep, probably cos I've got a new broadband connection since yesterday that I'm in love with, despite not having even downloaded a single song or movie (and possibly not at this rate I'm going). Also just bought the boxset for an old anime Maison Ikkoku which is probably going to be watched oh, in the next 3 years. Missed going to the gym again cos of work. Realised my dial-up phone line is now free but unfortunately has no phone to the end of it. lol. Maybe it's time to go phone hunting though goodness knows I only use my mobile phone and have never even given out the number of this line.

Is it too soon to look forward to the weekend? I stand accused.

Afraid and intrigued are we.

"I like books," she says, "where all the mysteries and the anguish pass through and cold mind, without shadows, like the mind of a chessplayer."
- Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveller

Online chatting with my Chicago friend. The normal inclination is to ask "How are you?", but for him the better question is often "WHERE are you?". So I asked him how he was, and he replied instead with where, and that he's going this weekend to some remote location no one can possibly go to accidentally. lol.

Going to gym to detox now. It's wonderful just being alive.

Does going to the same pub on 2 consecutive Valentine's constitute a tradition? Last Valentine's I heard 3 different renditions of My Funny Valentine but this year I heard zilch. It's a different band at the pub this time: guitar-based and so indifferent to the fact that it's Valentine's that they even covered Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Asked for a bowl of assorted nuts just before 9pm, but it was nearly 11pm before we realised that the waiter has forgotten to bring it to us. Then we asked for it again, and burrowed through the bowl of nuts looking for our favourite square prawn crackers and roasted peanuts. When these were finished, I'd hide a handful of nuts and ask for a refill, just to get more prawn crackers and roasted peanuts again. After a while, my jc girlfriend admitted that she's afraid to eat the nuts cos I've been palming some of them for so long. lol.

Time to go to bed now and I'm so glad.

When people swoon over receiving poems on Valentine's, it's probably cos they don't have a best friend with a knack for thinking up whimsical pseudo-haikus like:

Choosy friend.
No right man.
Patience then.
Wait will end.

It's damn funny though. :)

Love is like pi - natural, irrational and very important.
- Lisa Hoffman

Honey now if I'm honest
I still don't know what love is
- David Gray, The Other Side

I'm more consoled by the fact that today is a Friday rather than cos it's Valentine's. lol.

What I'm actually thinking about today is how homing pigeons find their way home. Somehow I never understood the sport in taking homing pigeons far from their homes and waiting for them to wing their way home. When they succeed, they'll only be taken further away for the next competition. Maybe it's a test of faith but I feel it's just a tad too sadistic. How will you like to be a homing human?

To be frank, a campaign called Romance Singapore is a bad idea. Isn't the courtesy campaign bad enough? Do we need the government to tell us to fall in love? Heck, I'm more interested in buying lottery for the $10 million draw but I'm stuck at my customer's! When I ask myself whether I will quit if I win $10 million, my first thought is "Let's see after this project ends...". Nuts nuts, I'm going nuts.

Was telling my UK and US travel mates that I normally don't call my customers clients. I see client as a computer term, as in client server architecture. Upon hearing this, the diabolic duo rolled their eyes at each another and started blabbering "one zero one zero". lol. I guess I'm still a geek.

This weekend. Picked up my Broadband modem. Finished reading 2 books inbetween 3 trips to the library. Watched the movie Bollywood/ Hollywood. Had major shopping spree with my UK travel mate (we nearly bought something at every store we visited). Trimmed my hair (but so little was cut that no one noticed it). Ate cheese cake twice (oreo; and tiramisu). Decided to start eating my glucosamine sulphate capsules again. Happy.

All I've done is give you a book. You have to have the courage to learn what's inside it.
- Freida Joy Riley

Yesterday was good. Received a surprise Be@rbrick and coloured printouts of Blythe dolls from friends. Visited Dave's office with the guys and had a nice time playing pool at a new place. I thought playing pool with the guys is similar to eating cake at NYDC with the girls, cos we all end up reading magazines anyway. :)Had fun reading Esquire.

Played on what should be a 9 feet table. Tried measuring it by walking along the table edge, putting one foot in front of the other.. came up to 10 steps. Quite fascinated with the pool table cos it's got 8 number dials for players to register their scores. I turned the number dials to reflect Pi (to 7 decimal places) and b12 countered with another set of numbers. Thought the number sequence looked familiar but couldn't put my finger on it. Asked b12 finally and he said "Don't you recognise your own mobile phone number?". lol.

From WhatIs.com.
The 11th dimension is a characteristic of space-time that has been proposed as a possible answer to questions that arise in superstring theory. The theory ofsuperstrings involves the existence of nine dimensions of space and one dimension of time (a total of 10 dimensions). According to this notion, we observe only three spatial dimensions and one time dimension because the other six spatial dimensions are "curled up" or "compactified".

According to superstring theory, all of the elementary particles in the universe are composed of vibrating, one-dimensional mathematical objects known as strings. The theory does not explicitly state what the strings are made of or where they come from; rather, they are proposed as geometric ideals. Each string has a length of only 10-35 meters, many times smaller than the diameter of the nucleus of an atom. Any given subatomic particle (or hadron) is made of a string that vibrates and rotates at the speed of light. A particular hadron gets its unique identity from the manner in which the string rotates and vibrates according to the dynamics of Einstein's theory of general relativity. The frequency of vibration corresponds to the mass of the particle.

The nagging question remains, "Where do the strings come from?" Also, there are five different versions of superstring theory that explain the way subatomic particles behave. Are all five versions correct, or are some correct and others wrong? In an attempt to answer these questions, some physicists have suggested that there exists an 11th dimension, which is compactified like the other six spatial dimensions we do not directly observe. Superstring theory with the inclusion of the 11th dimension is sometimes called M theory or the theory of everything (TOE).

Beware of people who send emails starting with "I'm very surprised you did/ ask/ say this", especially when cc'd to other recipients who aren't directly involved. Needless to say, folks like this will suffer minute panic attacks if they are often surprised as they state.

I thought that your letter was all one could ask; you gave me your image, and I made it into stories and poems; I talked about it for a while to everyone and told them it was a bronze statue, a bronze boy with a dolphin, who balanced throughout the winter in our gardens with snow on his face, which I brushed off every night I visited him.
- Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals

Recently my hand has become desensitized to the vibration alert of incoming SMS on my mobile phone. I'll be cradling it in my palm and casting absentminded looks at it, only to be surprised to find I've got new messages. Yet when I place the bugger on the table, I'll know instanteously when it does the SMS spasm. Odd.

Baking analogy at work today. Job scope gets blurry. Should a baker with a good command of English be made to write recipes though he/ she was hired to bake cakes instead? Should a baker need to spoon feed others to the extent of reading a recipe, summarizing what's already concise, and reciting the shortened version to people who can't be bothered to read?

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.
- Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower

For 3Tap "I wanna get the hell outta here" Riff.

I am disappointed with the new premier movie magazine in asia if they consider the following a fun fact: "Richard Gere plays a lawyer in his new movie Chicago. Richard is not really a lawyer, but an actor. It's a fact!". Or that the discerning reader will bother with "Some people hated the 'red' section of Hero, but your humble writer loved it. The passion! The betrayal! The Maggie!". Well at least discuss the use of the different colours in the film instead of summing up with "Red rulz, and so does Maggie." Yes, they spell it "rulz".

I should stick with Sight & Sound.

What strikes me as odd is not that everything is falling apart, but that so much continues to be there. It takes a long time for a world to vanish, much longer than you would think. Lives continue to be lived, and each one of us remains the witness of his own little drama. It's true that there are no schools anymore; it's true that the last movie was shown over five years ago; it's true that wine is so scarce now that only the rich can afford it. But is that what we mean by life? Let everything fall away, and then let's see what there is. Perhaps that is the most interesting question of all: to see what happens when there is nothing, and whether or not we will survive that too.
- Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things

I dreamt that Bono is the sole survivor of U2 and he found replacements for the other 3 band members. I felt devastated. Immediately after that I jumped straight into another dream where I was studying for exams (and I haven't had one of those in ages). Suffice to say both were nightmares. Another interesting point to note is ever since I fell in love with running, I've never dreamt of running. Hmm.

It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: After a heavy rainfall, poems titled RAIN pour in from across the nation.
- Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals

And it's been raining heavily the past few days. lol.

Yesterday. Watched the movie Tadpole and met up with my UK and US travelmates for tea. There was a 15% sale at Borders and I bought Manitoba's album Start Breaking my Heart, Interpol's album Turn on the Bright Lights and Sylvia Plath's unabridged journals.

Most surprising buy was Manitoba's album. It wasn't on my to-buy list and I don't think I've even heard of them 'cept maybe subconsciously from my best friend. I just saw the album title Start Breaking my Heart and smiled. It seemed like a subtle joke. The natural tendency of love ballads is to "Stop Breaking my Heart" rather than Start. But then again, this is no album of love ballads, has no lyrics or anything downbeat, and there isn't a song on it which matches the album title. I'd have bought this album just for the title alone, but then that's me.

Perhaps it comes down to this. I am writing to you because you know nothing. Because you are far away from me and know nothing.
- Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things

Yesterday I watched Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, a film of 8 short segments each based on Kurosawa's dreams. Can't confess that I like the film after the first 2 dreams which involve children, cos it became too preachy about nuclear destruction et al.

The first dream is my favourite though. Little boy stands at the doorway of his home compound looking out in the rain. His mum warns him not to go into the forest as the foxes like to hold their wedding in the rain, and will be angry if spied upon. But he slips into the forest and sees them anyway, in a slow surreal wedding procession. They see him and he runs home, but his mum refuses to let him in. She shoves a wooden sheathed knife at him and tells him that an irate fox came looking for him, and left the knife for the boy to kill himself in atonement. The little boy's mother tells him the only way out is to find the foxes to apologise and ask for their forgiveness. And so the little boy sets out to find them, cos they are rumoured to live at the bottom of rainbows after the rain.

What struck me most was that the boy's mum wouldn't let him into the house, and would give him the knife from the fox. How could there be such callousness in a mother?

Happy Chinese New Year everyone! Today I'll try to finish reading Ben Elton's Dead Famous (summed up as "One house, ten contenstants, thirty cameras, forty microphones, one murder.. and no evidence".. funny portrayal of reality TV for someone like me who doesn't watch any). Must make some headway with the stash of movies/ anime VCDs I've got as well. Hmm, and socialise with relatives (darn).