Strange encounter at Borders. I was there to check out CDs and spotted a triple CD compilation by Billy Bragg. When I picked it up, an Australian gentleman in his 40s standing beside me said he was just looking at that. I smiled and told him he could have it, and he asked dubiously if I've actually heard of Billy Bragg. I replied that I like his song A New England most, and the man started recounting to me how he was looking for the Woodie Guthrie songs covered by Billy Bragg but couldn't find them. I told him he could check out "W" since Wilco collaborated with Billy Bragg on this, and after another few sentences, I moved on to the next shelf.

I guess he couldn't quite believe he actually found someone who knew Billy Bragg too, cos he caught up with me to pass me his namecard. So we stood around and talked a bit more on music, and he wandered over to the classical music section. He came back bearing 2 Gorecki albums he was planning to buy and showed them to me. The bizarre thing is though I don't listen to much classical music, Gorecki is the only composer I'm more familiar with, and I actually own one of the two albums he was planning to buy. Then I recommended him Lamb's Best of album, where they have a love song entitled Gorecki and he decided to buy it.

Weird. After all these years browsing CDs, this is the first time I've actually made an acquaintance over music.

I really enjoyed watching 2046. Now I can understand why a friend has watched it 9 times and counting, though I'm not about to do the same. I can rave about the lush colours, gorgeous music, cinematography, acting and all, but the thing that stuck in my mind most immediately was Faye Wong's character as the retarded android.

Eh. I guess there's a spoiler coming up.

The scene that made me smile most is this: Kimura Takuya is a traveller in the science fiction story entitled 2046 in the movie. He meets with the android acted by Faye Wong, and relates to her how people in the past used to tell their secrets. They would go to the mountains and tell their secret into a hole in a tree, and seal it up with earth forever. Faye Wong's android then makes an OK sign with her hand to signify a hole, for him to speak his secret to. He looks curiously at her but leans closer to her hand anyway to divulge his secret, and she shifts her hand away with a blank look on her face. Still he follows the hole made by her hand in an attempt to spill his secret, and she continues to shift her hand all the while with that blank expression.

I liked that somehow.

"I dreamt I was Julia Roberts in that movie."
"Which one?"
"I can't remember the title."
"Was it a romantic comedy or one of those mock-serious ones?"
"I guess it's a comedy but it wasn't funny in my dream."
"Who's the leading man? George Clooney? Brad Pitt? Hugh Grant?"
"No, I don't think so."
"What do you remember?"
"I was wearing something weird."
"Long knee-length killer boots?"
"No, not the shoes."
"Were you in a wedding dress?"
"Which movie is that?"
"My Best Friend's Wedding. Wait that's a bridesmaid dress. She wore one in Runaway Bride."
"Yeah, I think that's the one."
"Well what happened?"
"I think I was walking down the church aisle laughing and all ready to marry Richard Gere, and then suddenly I froze and wanted to bolt. That's what I remember."

My life so far:
A friend gave me a song, another lent me a CD and a stranger gave me a plane over Paris.

Last week during the audio equipment audition, I came across a Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass collaborative album entitled Passages. The audiophile who owned it said the album would be difficult to find, but yet today I bought it from the first music store I stepped into since that day. Hmm. This month's music purchases were either classical or cinematic instrumental pieces. I wonder if I've, as someone will wryly proclaim, joined the dark side.

I realise I can play pool like a man and quietly strategize my moves, but I'll rather not. Sometimes I miss swearing during the game, as well as suspending our moves every now and then to make way for exchanging gossip.

And it's time to try to sleep.

Glenn Gould's recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations was much longer in 1981 than in 1955. He grew... generous. He left spaces inbetween the notes for them to breathe. In 1981, it wasn't about showmanship to leave no doubt on how well he could play, but rather, "Hey listen to this, it's a pretty piece of music isn't it?"

And it is. A pretty piece of music.

Last person in the office last night and first person in this morning. Escaped from a meeting to find myself answering one emergency phone call after another, and msg'd online by those who couldn't reach me via phone. There's so much work I can't bring myself to laugh. Did anyone mention burnout?

"Have you seen the Promised Land?"
"No."
"Then how do you know there is one?"
"It's shown on the map."
"What map?"
She thumped her heart.

She thumped her heart and looked away. She was such a mixture of cynicism and credulity. She believed what her heart told her, but she could never follow it. Her heart was like a bird that flew away and returned with stories in its beak. She heard, but she could not follow.
- Jeanette Winterson, The PowerBook

"Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased.. Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little."
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Alone again in the office. Biscuits, Xavier Cugat's Perfidia on auto-repeat and me.

Meetings are getting ridiculous. Yesterday, while discussing on who should attend a customer's meeting, a colleague started counting the seating capacity in the customer's meeting room. "Why?" I asked. "To check how many of us can attend," he replied.

Today was spent mostly unproductively in meetings too. I walked out on the last one despite being outranked by nearly everyone else in it. Dang. The company didn't pay me to attend meetings so why does it seem like that's all I do?

She doesn't sample discs... she listens to the whole album.
She doesn't test drive cars... she takes it and embarks on her own journey.
- b12, on my approach to life

To answer you, I quote whatever I'm reading at the moment. It may just as well have been from a cereal box cover or a scientific journal. Simple as that. I'm not sending a message out across the universe. Someone said that I'm predictable in choosing the unpredictable, and I agree with that. Some things I don't think about. I just do. Things that are significant to others may not be significant to me.

So don't sweat too much over it. It's only words.

My internet connection was crawling last night and I couldn't blog. Urgh. Now I've got limited time before I wolf down breakfast and dash to work, and I'm torn between blogging about the strange lunchtime conversation in which a colleague from the Netherlands confessed his dream job is to be a weatherman (the weather is fickle because most of his country is below sea level), or dinnertime conversation with a friend (dinner was shorter than the time it took to travel to dinner, but good company is worth it), and I decided I would quote an excerpt from a book instead.

And yes, that WAS a long sentence wasn't it? Here we go:

There's no such thing as effortless beauty - you should know that.
There's no effort which is not beautiful - lifting a heavy stone or loving you.
Loving you is like lifting a heavy stone. It would be easier not to do it and I'm not quite sure why I am doing it. It takes all my strength and all my determination, and I said I wouldn't love someone again like this. Is there any sense in loving someone you can only wake up to by chance?
- Jeanette Winterson, The PowerBook

I just realised that you will affect a lot of people whether you are happy or sad.
- Pumpkin boy's sms to me today, on the ripple effect I'll cause due to my tight network of friends

Thank you (for the random remark to a complete stranger on what you think of me.. to be complimented by a girlfriend is really wonderful), you (who were busy and had more reason to vent but instead said, "Give me 30 seconds, I'm running to the printer, wait ok, no, make it 10 seconds, anyway wait") and you ("I think you just cost me my sleep pumpkin").

Thank you.

Horowitz is tremendously emotional, Gould is essentially emotionless. Most music, especially pre-20th Century music, has emotional content and is sometimes downright emotional, so why would I have a higher regard for Gould, who shows no emotion, than for Horwitz, who shows perhaps too much? What makes Gould’s playing so overwhelmingly convincing is a perfectionism and an intense intellect brought to bear on the score. What makes Horowitz’s playing oftentimes not convincing is a perfectionism and intellect brought to bear on the audience. Both of these great pianists raise idiosyncratic playing to high art; I just happen to find Glenn Gould’s egocentricity far more interesting and fruitful than Horowitz’s.
- Extract of a review by Russell Lichter, sent to me courtesy of b12.

Yes! This is the exact reason I've thought Glenn Gould could be the drum & bass equivalent of classical music too.

Why is it no one ever sends me project documentation despite my constant reminders until it's 20 minutes before the teleconference and I am expected to read, digest and comment on it intelligently?!

D@^$&$&*(*%^*#^@%@ BEETLES.

My dad was the most forgiving man that I knew. He was always kind and good natured, right up to his illness and death. And he was amazingly tolerant, to the point where others would take advantage of him. He could tell, but it's just that it took so much more emotional strength to be kind and see the good in other people again and again, when it was so much easier to cave in and be cynical.. and he chose the more difficult path. He had emotional integrity.

I want to be my father's girl and I strive to be the same, but often I falter. I've become more of an emotional retard by comparison, and sometimes I fail. I get overwhelmed and I react.

I failed him again today.
Sorry dad.

In a bid not to swear too offensively in the office *roll eyes*, the new swear word (courtesy of b12) shall be "Dung Beetle".

Glenn Gould's piano recording for Bach's Goldberg Variations in 1955 and 1981 are his so-called Alpha and Omega albums, his first and his last. I bought the album State of Wonder (which includes both renditions) yesterday and brought it along for an audio equipment audition with b12. There we were, a handful of strangers sitting in a dark room listening to the album, and the other audiophiles spotted Glenn Gould humming to his piano before I did. It was oddly endearing.

The voice was clear.
The voice had a tinge of laughter.
If you had silenced the voice every few seconds to hear the snatches of words inbetween, this is what you would have heard.
The voice said, "Thank you."
The voice said, "But I wish I was coming home to you."
The voice said, "Go back to sleep."
The voice said, "I love you."

The more I write, the more I discover that the partition between real and invented is as thin as a wall in a cheap hotel room. I can hear voices on the other side, running water, the clink of bottles, the sound of a door opening and closing. When I get up and go out into the corridor, everything is silent, no one is there. Then, as soon as I reckon I know the geography of what isn't and what is, a chair scrapes in the room beyond the wall and a woman's voice says, "You don't understand, do you?"
- Jeanette Winterson, The PowerBook

In the film The Thirty-Two Short Films about Glenn Gould, there's a short story which consists of a single tracking shot on the actor cast as Glenn Gould sitting in a chair. The camera slowly zooms in on him across an empty room while the music plays on, and he looks unflinchingly into the camera with this intense gaze for the longest time until it homes in on his face. Then he closes his eyes deliberately to listen.

For some strange reason I feel this scene is really me.

I keep forgetting to shut down yahoo when I'm in a net meeting. lol.

Empty but not hungry. Sitting alone in the office with cold cold hands grasping a book I can't seem to concentrate on. Waiting for the countdown to yet another clueless teleconference.

I want out. Right now.

Went to run at 11km/h ambitiously just now, and my left knee protested 10 minutes into the run. It remembered all too well its previous injury (visits to the doctor; sleeping with my legs curled up cos I couldn't straighten them) and then it spoke its mind. I decided not to push my luck but still I felt deflated.

Bum knee. Bum day. Still working alone in the office. Sigh.

Today a colleague and I discovered that we could actually talk to each other on our laptops via NetMeeting. What I mean is: we could connect to each other's laptop IP address remotely and hold a verbal conversation through our embedded laptop speakers like a hands-free phone set, rather than pick up the phone to call. We probably looked crazy talking at our laptop screens, but boy was it fun!

The flipside is I had to revise grammatical errors in a cartload of documentation. Dang.

I'm basically empty of all thoughts except for the following today:
#1: Perhaps it's runners like me freaking out the office gym staff, cos they've set the timer limit to only 20 minutes now for the treadmill. Hence today I only ran 3.5km at 10.5km/h for 20 minutes. At this rate will I have to change tack and run faster instead of longer, and how fast can I actually run in 20 minutes then?

#2: In the film The Story of the Weeping Camel, a "violin" (it's got 2 strings and looks nothing like the typical violin though) was hung on the hump of a mother camel, so that she could tune herself to its pitch and along the way, reconcile with the baby colt she was rejecting. Eh. The question is: how on earth did people know they had to hang the "violin" on the camel, and that music was the solution?

I seldom have decent meals while working late cos there isn't an eatery open within walking distance of my office. There's a supply of biscuits but that's hardly appetising. So thanks for the company and the drive round the island looking for a place to eat so late. :) It was nice.

Was so exhausted I slept for 10 hours last night. When I awoke, Athena has already descended upon us. Welcome dear. :)

Night. The search engines are quiet.
I keep throwing the stories overboard, like a message in a bottle, hoping you'll read them, hoping you'll respond.
You don't respond.
I warned you that the story might change under my hands. I forgot that the storyteller changes too. I was under your hands.
- Jeanette Winterson, The PowerBook

Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his. In the lives of emperors there is a moment which follows pride in the boundless extension of the territories we have conquered, and the melancholy and relief of knowing we shall soon give up any thought of knowing and understanding them. There is a sense of emptiness that comes over us at evening, with the odor of the elephants after the rain and the sandalwood ashes growing cold in the braziers, a dizziness that makes rivers and mountains tremble on the fallow curves of the planispheres where they are portrayed, and rolls up, one after the other, the despatches announcing to us the collapse of the last enemy troops, from defeat to defeat, and flakes the wax of the seals of obscure kings who beseech our armies' protection, offering in exchange annual tributes of precious metals, tanned hides, and tortoise shell. it is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin, that corruption's gangrene has spread too far to be healed by our scepter, that the triumph over enemy sovereigns has made us the heirs of their long undoing. Only in Marco Polo's accounts was Kublai Khan able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites' gnawing.
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

I like to read Murakami not because he's Japanese, nor Italo Calvino because he's Italian. I like to read them cos they write beautifully, cos though they don't belong in my world, their words do. Nationality shouldn't be a basis on which one judges books or anything else, for that matter.

Rooting for M and K. :)

I think I'm starting to talk less and write less as a whole. I feel a sluggish reluctance to let the world in on what I really think cos it doesn't matter does it.

Today I met the cutest doctor I've ever seen and got locked out of my home, in that order.

To be more specific: I woke up with a disturbing sore throat and sneeze, and finally got round to visiting the company doctor whom at least half my team has already consulted. I've never seen him before, but I'm made aware of his charms cos everytime someone comes back from the clinic, the first question asked isn't "How are you feeling?" but rather "So how? You saw that cute doctor?"

When I got there, I was disgruntled cos there was a queue at the clinic. There seems to be only 1 doctor though there're 2 consultation rooms, so it took some time before it was my turn. Hence, my regretful opening line to the cutest doctor I've ever seen was: "So what happened to the other doctor?"

And then I REALLY looked at him and stopped. This is not a doctor. This is a pop idol. Eurasian looking features, tall, beautiful smile, lively eyes. The sort that will send aunties into schoolgirl giggles and blushes. Haha. If there had been another doctor, he probably would have a hard time coaxing the patients to consult him instead. Gosh. Did I just sound shallow and superficial?

Anyway, he was sweet and gave me medication and medical leave. Then I wandered home in a daze to find that I'm locked out (there're 3 locks and I only have 2 keys, damn it). Got in touch with bro who had no idea where our mum was, and she doesn't carry a mobile phone. I scribbled a note and stuck it in our door for her to call me when she got home, but removed it after second thoughts cos advertising that no one's home seemed a bad idea.

What transpired was I managed to round up a kind soul to meet for lunch while I waited for mum, and now I'm looking forward to falling ill again.

I've gotten the game set for Go (or Weiqi) but haven't learnt how to play it. Instead, we've tried to limit the size of the game board and used the black and white seeds to play Othello instead. It was a hassle swapping the coloured seeds every move we made, and now I really appreciate why Othello seeds were coloured differently on each side.

Pool is definitely better.

I can't understand it but despite having decent intelligence and despairing at the way the world works sometimes, I've not turned cynical as I've grown older. I've not become wary of people and their intentions, and I can still be amused at behaviour that will turn others indignant. What is it in my constitution that makes me so upbeat, so able to accept small pleasures in life and magnify them? There's no more angst in me.

How can I say this? I don't want to be a doormat; I strive to be the door.

Dream #545:
Goodbye. You're supposed to know how to say goodbye. You don't stand at the glass windows at the departure lounge waiting long after the plane has flown off. You don't wait for the plane to come back cos even when it does, it won't have the same passengers. Move. Step on the travellator and let it whisk you off if you can't make yourself walk away. Why is all that luggage lying round here instead of loaded onto the plane? It's not yours to keep. Everyday people say goodbye. What's so special about you?

Goodbye. Repeat after me. Good bye.

What kind of Hubby you feel like hiring today? lol.

Nonsensical conversation overhead after lunch.
"When I'm hungry, I've got to eat rice. When I'm not hungry, I can eat anything else."
Pause.
Then came the reply: "When I'm not hungry, I don't eat."

By the time I got back to my cubicle after a long day of meetings yesterday, I found an ad stuck on my cabinet by a colleague. It read: "Rent a husband. He tries harder" and proceeds with the information on how to go about renting one. Actually, it may not be that bad an idea. I really need help.

Today.
I walked up unhesitantly to greet people first, without thinking, without wondering if they really wanted to talk to me actually.
I didn't take offence easily, and didn't return a dish despite finding a strand of hair in it.
I looked forward to seeing my first strand of white hair, cos I'm curious about if and how that will change me.
I fought sleep deprivation to watch a film, and then came home to search for mp3s by the group which scored the film soundtrack.
I chose blogging over sleeping.

Goodbye. I forgot to say goodbye.

I can see the future. I predict I'll be curled up asleep at the screening tonight. Nowadays I'm starting to be like da mouse. I need coffee to survive the morning.

Is this time correct?

While sharing a cab home, Z and I encountered a slightly eccentric taxi driver with a very prosperous-looking license plate (SHA 888E) on his 10th day on the job. I've always been eh, blessed with strange taxi encounters, but this was probably the first time I've had an eye witness. So while the taxi driver made an illegal turn or two, we had a bizarre conversation where the taxi driver mentioned he's braindead; we became backseat drivers guiding him; he mentioned picking up 2 women passengers (one Malaysian and one Australian) who voted him as the cheeriest cab driver and eh, the rest escaped me.

So now we're both home, online and sleepy, and trying to pass the bucket (Z says it's the parcel, not the bucket.. but you get the idea) on whose turn it is blog about the taxi driver. No parcel for guessing who caved in first.

And now I'm really going to bed. Dang. I keep thinking it's my hols too.

My favourite scene in the film Evil is the precise brutality. "Are you left handed or right handed?" was asked so the other arm could be broken instead. How considerate. lol.

Flight trial #1:
Paper airplane with raised tail flew 40 feet (shoe size 7.5 - 8) from a height of approximately 10 feet.
Flight trial #2:
Paper airplane without raised tail flew 31 feet (shoe size 5.5 - 6) from same height.

Conclusion:
I've lost my math capabilities cos I needed to phone my best friend to find out that angle calculation equals inv tangent (height/ distance). Well, hopefully.

Baking analogy at work today. A customer finds that the recipe we offer isn't exciting enough. But baking isn't supposed to be exciting.
Baking isn't sexy.
Baking isn't progressive.
Baking gets the bread out of the oven and onto the table, damn it. We're just explaining baking to folks who've only eaten cereal.

When I saw Re-minisce's online shot of people playing chess in the park, I was reminded of a picture I've once seen, of young chess genius Josh Waitzkin playing a game.

I'm now alone in the office listening to Bach and I'm not inclined to work. In fact, I was so tired I laid my head down and slept near the end of the day when my colleagues were leaving. When I arose, I was all by myself, as if everyone else had been magically whisked away. I wondered idly if it would have been possible to have slept all the way till tomorrow, and to be discovered by the cleaning auntie when she comes in. But then I got sensible and went to run in the office gym instead. I ran 8km, which was longer than I had run in a long while. I can't even recall the last time I ran 10km, and somehow that felt sad.

What I remember most about yesterday is that strange orange sun just perched on top of a building in the early evening, when it was still bright. It was tinged with a layer of smog, but its dying rays weren't fanned across the sky like most sunsets do. It looked oddly displaced but cool, and that was a nice little moment.

Premise of Jon Jost's film All the Vermeers in New York:
They meet in the Vermeer Room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She's a struggling French actress and he's a frazzled financial broker. He asks her out for coffee cos she resembles one of his favourite Vermeer paintings. Along the way, they attempt to overcome their personal baggage and fall in love.

Side-effect of work #14:
I've learnt that a heartbeat is a periodic handshake between paired systems over communication paths. If the secondary system in a pair doesn't receive the heartbeat, steps are taken to verify if the primary has stopped processing and recovery kicks in.

If only human hearts have buddy systems too.

Something a friend said today struck me. He said he felt like a leaf being blown any which way and ending up wherever he was, rather than having made any conscious attempt to take charge. He could tell I was like that too from my entries. And I must admit I am. I'm letting work rule my life more than I should, and I'm not doing so cos I'm keen on focusing on my career. I'm just.. responsible. Life today is similar to life last year and the year before, give or take some variations. I'm not sure it will change much next year either.

I guess I feel emptied out.
Or rather, I yearn to burn.

Baking analogy at work today. To bakers, the oven is a black box.. we only know what we put in and what we take out. Now an oven has to be shifted between 2 countries before baking can resume, and I've been tasked amongst the bakers to speak to the oven folks. However, oven folks don't like to talk to bakers cos bakers aren't as hardcore and they need to speak in layman terms to be understood. Suffice to say I know more than I'll ever care to know about ovens and hope to have the chance to inflict the same pain on oven folks by educating them on baking.

Side-effect of work #215:
I can tell skin colour just by listening to the voice. I'm currently on a project where there are at least 7 nationalities, and even then, there are more different races than nationalities. I've not seen half these people but I can tell where they come from just by listening to them on teleconferences.

Side-effect of work #214:
All my meals today have been buns.

Oh yeah. The office printers are possessed. They hum out of the blue and threaten to spew printouts I've not sent for printing. Shit happens only when I work alone.

Right this instant. I'm the last person in the office, blasting music as I churn out documentation for the customer which will ironically probably be given a 5 second glance. However someone has to write the drivel, and this weekend seems quite burnt. And yes, there is still the 9.30pm teleconference call coming up which hopefully will only last 1 hour.

I'm also the proud but mystified owner of 3 ciggie cases of varying sizes. If I choose to fully stuff them, I will be able to carry 56 ciggie sticks on me at one go. But why? How can I explain that flipping the lids open and shut with one hand magically calms me down? Dad used to smoke but never had a ciggie case. I bet mum won't even recognise one. Does my brother crave for a ciggie case too, just that he doesn't know it yet?

I need to work.

Resfest picks on Sputnik7.com.

If I had 3 hours to live in perpetuity, it might be hours 5, 6 and 7 after we first met.
- a line from Pupae, the website of one of the animators featured in Waking Life

After a gruelling day at work, I decided to skip a film screening and instead bought myself a cigarette case on my way home. Strangely that cigarette case was the highlight of my day.

To the second-degree friend. A long time after we've lost contact, I was at a bar and spotted a mutual friend, and I wondered if you were there too. So I sms'd you, and you replied immediately that you weren't. We could have stopped there, but suddenly you added that you were going through a tough breakup though I didn't even know you got into a relationship in the first place. You were upset that you fell in love so deeply, and the only answer I could give is there's no point to love if not deeply. You had no rebuttal to that and we didn't speak again.

This is how I watch DVDs. I watch them off my laptop with earphones plugged in, though I've external speakers I can hook up. I leave the subtitles on even if the film is in English, just so I won't miss any great lines. Sometimes I'll disrupt the film and fast forward right till the very end to know what happens, before I resume watching from where I've left off. Maybe I'll fish amongst my earrings lying on the table and absentmindedly put them on, just cos it feels weird to do so while I'm wearing earphones. Mostly I sit with one leg tucked under the other. I don't snack. I wear a watch to time the film. If I'm lucky and there is an excellent soundtrack, I'll watch the entire credits roll and wait for the track listing.

I seldom watch the same film again.

In Jim Jarmusch's film Stranger than Paradise, the female lead is a young woman from Hungary who constantly listens to only one song on her cassette recorder. The song is Screamin' Jay Hawkins' rendition of I Put a Spell on You, and I've read somewhere that Screamin' Jay used to lie in a coffin and perform this song while he climbed out of it. Eh. But he sang (or yowled) the song very well, and I'm now hooked and looking for this song without success. So if you've got it or know where to get it, let me know please. :)

You can never understand one language until you understand at least two.
- Ronald Searle, artist

After giving a friend his third cigarette case in a row, I realised that it's actually his cigarette lighter he kept losing. Though I don't smoke, I do have a cigarette lighter in the office, to light birthday cake candles when the occasion demands for it. It was something I swiped off a colleague, and strange as it may sound, I've never learnt how to light it.

I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.
- Antonio Porchia, writer (1886-1968)