Work and non-work got to me this week. I was frustrated, but then I realised you were working more than I was, yet taking it all in stride. It's just that sometimes I wonder if there is any worth in what I do at all, despite the fact that I'm good at it.

And then I'm thankful for you, for making me aware that all it takes to make me happy is just to flick my feet playfully against yours.

I finished reading the trilogy of His Dark Materials, and am now reading about how one man tried to unearth every copy (both first and second editions) of Copernicus' "De revolutionibus" (in which Copernicus first suggested that the Sun was the centre of the universe rather than the earth).

I'm impressed by the diligence in which the author would read the comments scribbled in margins by past owners of the books, and from there deduce if the book was just a bookshelf showpiece, or used as a tool of understanding. Not only that, in some cases, he would track the copies from their source to final resting place too.

It's like Bookcrossing of the past.

Check out Coltrane Motion, and especially their song "Pi is Exactly Three". lol.

There's something strangely satisfying about staying home on a rainy Sunday afternoon listening to new music, especially the quirky Rondo Brothers.

By the age of six the average child will have completed the basic American education. ... From television, the child will have learned how to pick a lock, commit a fairly elaborate bank holdup, prevent wetness all day long, get the laundry twice as white, and kill people with a variety of sophisticated armaments.
- Russell Baker

I am in love with a google god.

I don't know what combinations of words or phrases you use to help in your searches, but somehow you'll worm out information much faster or more accurately than I do. Or maybe it doesn't help that I tend to invent new spellings for words.

Though I'm in the middle of reading the 3rd His Dark Materials book, I couldn't resist dropping by the library to borrow this.

In a teleconference, a weathered Dutch gentleman said what I thought was my most important message today.
He said wryly: "We cannot make it more fun for you, but we can make it easier."

If only everyone thinks like this.

Talk is cheap.

Why I shouldn't treat people with the same attention span I give to books.

SOME books I'm in the middle of reading which are currently lying within arm's length around me (ranked from the ones most likely to be finished first):
Pg 150 of Philip Pullman's 2nd book in His Dark Materials: "The Subtle Knife"
Pg 92 of Ruth Wajnryb's "Expletive Deleted: A Good Look at Bad Language"
Pg 100 of Barry Schwarz's "The Paradox of Choice"
Pg 24 of John Ratey's "A User's Guide to the Brain"
Pg 30 of Richard Feynman's "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out"
Pg 67 of Douglas Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid"

Well maybe not. I'll need to read the 3rd book from Philip Pullman's fantasy series first right?

Poetry from William Matthews: Rising and Falling.

What I didn't know about buying prawns.

1) I didn't know how heavy 400 grams is, and it didn't help that the weighing machine is all the way on the other side of the supermarket at the checkout counter. I also didn't want to dash back from the checkout counter to add additional prawns to my bag either.

2) I didn't know if grey prawns or red prawns were a better pick. I quizzed the uncle choosing prawns beside me, but he turned and told me he's korean. Erm. So I chose grey prawns, just because they were smaller (and hence a more manageable size).

3) I also didn't know how to tell the freshness of prawns. I thought more curled up prawns were fresher than the straightened up ones, but you thought otherwise. (On the other hand, you've never bought prawns before either).

What resulted was I bought 310 grams worth of prawns, rather than the required 400 grams. But I counted the prawns (16 in all), which came up to about 20 grams per medium sized prawn, and figured that I should count the number of prawns I buy next time and mutiply by estimated unit weight.

Just giving a formula to this calmed me down.

From washing dishes to cutting food ingredients, you've now bumped me up to solo grocery shopping. Girlfriends of mine would have told you how traumatised I was just walking along supermarket aisles with them. Nobody would've entrusted me to shop alone for any foodstuff outside the range of cup noodles and ice-cream, but then nobody had informed you.

So this evening I'll buy my first non-vegetable food product.
Thank goodness for small adventures.

I had an ex-colleague who used to chain-smoke for years. He tried different means but couldn't seem to stop. Then one morning, he just woke up and decided to quit from that moment on. And inexplicably, he succeeded this time.

Later, when we asked him how, he replied that he just woke up and smelt the air.

We should all wake up and smell the air.

We rode to the end of the world
We rode searching
climbed skyscrapers
which later exploded
The peace was gone
balance leaks out
I fall down
I slide myself forward through my head
I always return to the same place

Total silence
No answer
But the best thing God created
is a new day
- Sigur Ros, Good Weather for Airstrikes

Courtesy of VJ, who once introduced me to the music of Gang of Four. :)

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.
- Albert Camus

Anyone who wants to be amused at work should sign themselves up for my teleconference calls.

Like how participants from each country are supposed to call their own local telco number in order to save on overseas phone charges, but are instead given only the local telco number of the teleconference-hosting country (and no one complains).

Or how for weeks, a strange untraceable echo has emerged in teleconferences, during which no one can concentrate on the calls (since they are speaking and stopping jerkily, so to be heard over the echo).

Or how there are so many participants in a teleconference that most of the time you need to put your phone on mute (and then when you're required to speak, you forget to un-mute).

Or how sometimes you just know when a participant with a strong accent speaks, that no one else understands him (yes, it's always him). And you have to try to be the tactful asian and pretend to rephrase his statement, just so the others can comprehend.

I'm only glad we're not required to video-conference.

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

Go watch this arm wrestling gem, and check out the schedule. ;)

Good work Dave!

We fall asleep hard, tired, holding each other. We may have twenty years left, or three months, or forty years, or more: but it is a finite unit, like the quantity of anything in the world, and I do not take it for granted, but rather, try to be surprised at its continued presence, and thankful that, at the surface, anyway, its waning is not apparent.
- Rick Bass

We've compromised.

You'll attend a Mogwai concert, while I'll watch Verdi's opera Rigoletto (you told me to be thankful it's not Wagner's Ring cycle).

I think we'll be fine.

"Do you think it's possible to have fifteen sincere relationships?"
"Not even one," she says. "Let me tie you to the bed."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't want you to."
"But I'll stop when you tell me. Just don't say 'stop'. That only excites me. Say 'tomato' or something."
- Leonard Michaels

Every family is a conspiracy of heartbreak, and thus a family traveling together becomes a small band of smugglers. You wait and wait. One of you smokes and another of you hates it. The people who go by probably belong here and have ordinary lives. Then the train stutters and rolls off. Customs agents pass through the train like a combine through a field. Instead of a heart you have a rabbit in your chest. But it's no use. They come and go. You'll never be discovered. It will always be this way.
- William Matthews