Word of the day: "schadenfreude"

On Googling.

Forced myself to sleep at 9pm last night, and I'm still dead exhausted the following day. There's really an interminable amount of work to be done today as well - largely because we're moving offices to another floor. Thankfully, I haven't been here long enough to accumulate the truly gargantuan amount of files and documents that some of my colleagues have - only about a couple of boxes worth for my part.

Was highly amused by the amount of administrative and mystical wrangling that went on during this process. We had to euchre a few warm bodies from the administrative department in order to assist in the moving of desks and cabinets. As for our own PCs - in the admin's head's own words: "Use your chairs as wheelbarrows"

Roight.

Also, when I said 'mystical' wrangling; I meant it literally - because a surprisingly large number of our staff were fairly avid fengshui devotees. Our department head had actually proposed the move to be on the 18th, for obvious reasons; and had hinted that he wanted us all to move at about 7-something in the morning due to various cosmological factors. Thankfully, common sense prevailed; which is why we're moving on Friday the 13th. However, a couple of my colleagues actually borrowed my watch because it had a compass attachment - in order to ascertain which way their desks should face. A few were suggesting lighting up incense, and one even half-jokingly proposed that we scatter a mix of rice grains, tea leaves and salt around the office. Our boss's table is directly facing the window, so when we talk to him, we have to squeeze ourselves into a narrow strip between his desk and the ceiling-to-floor glass pane.

As for me, I'm just going to follow that old custom of jumping over a fire when moving into a new house - I'll get someone to hold my lit lighter at the foot of the cubicle opening and lithely step over it.

Our new workspace is laid out in an incredibly hierarchical fashion. Previously, most of the mid-level team managers shared the same-sized cubicles as the rest of us exec grunts and clerks. Now, the managers actually have much larger partition/offices around the workspace periphery. The rest of us are huddled into a cubicle farm in the center; and each cubicle is approximately 20% smaller than our present ones. Upon beholding our new cells, me and my friend simultaneously broke out into a rendition of "In the Ghetto". On top of that, our uber-boss, who was previously located on another floor, is now in an office about six feet away from where I sit. Sweat broke out on my brow the first time I saw the seating plan, and actually seeing the close physical proxmity has made me realise just how precarious my present situation is.

(Another song that was running through my head.. "Sixteen tonnes.. whaddaya get? / Another year older and deeper in debt / St. Peter don't call me coz I can't go... / I owe my soul to the company store....")

On top of that, my immediate supervisor (who's one of the lucky managers with a periphery office), has a structural column smack in the middle of her partition. She stared at it impassively or a few moments, before noting that there's some space in the corner obscured by the column where we can hide from our bosses if necessary. Someone suggested setting up a mini-fridge there.

We also have a little library of our own now; a room crammed with periodicals and journals accumulated over the years. I suspect that it will be the new department rec-room. (Department games currently include a dartboard, a chess set, a Scrabble board, and a pack of cards)

Am going out to watch Die Another Day today - should be an amusing experience, even if I know I'll be irked by all the censored scenes. However, there's another fillip to tonight's plan - I have *no idea* who I'm going out with.

Two days ago, someone's name whom I didn't recognise flashed up on my mobile phone, and a vaguely familiar voice asked, "Eh, you wanna go watch the new James Bond movie this Wednesday? My friend's buying tickets now."

My mind occupied at the time (driving), I unthinkingly replied, "Sure."

Yesterday, I got an SMS saying - "We're watching the 8:45 show, see you at the box office at 8:30"

Now I have a problem, because I really have no idea who I've just agreed to go see that movie with (unfortunately, it was a male voice, so no hope there), and how I'm going to recognise that person (people?) when I get there. Nonetheless, that person *seemed* to know who I was (at least my name; what are the odds of accidentally dialling a wrong number of someone with exactly the same name as me..), so I'll just look around vaguely until someone waves at me.

In all honesty, I agreed to go more to figure out who the hell it was, as opposed to actually wanting to watch the movie.

My godsister, whom I haven't heard from in years, suddenly called me out for lunch because she wanted some advice on what to do now that she's finished her As. To be perfectly frank, I'm the *last* person I would go to for any practical or even reasonable advice about one's future, but for some obscene reason her parents actually think that I, as a young, socially-mobile(hah!), mature(hah! hah!), responsible(ran out of breath to "hah!" with) adult would be able to guide this tender young mind and steer her through the rocky road of university life.

Well, I can suggest a few techniques for fending off lecherous male pick-ups at clubs, I guess. ("I'd love to go back to a motel room with you! Do you mind if I take my syphilis medication first?")

Comments on recent entries:

That description of HCJC guys is TOTALLY ACCURATE. TOTALLY. COMPLETELY. UTTERLY. Some day I will regale stories about this colony of CHS-HCJC (frankly, is there a difference? For most of those bastards it's just a transition between levels, as opposed to actually changing institutions) engineering students I knew in Melbourne. I call it a colony because seven of them were living in a rather nice two-bedroom apartment, which had turned into a pit of absolute squalor after a year. None of them slept in the same place two nights in a row - because they would just drop supine onto one of the many sleeping bags and mattresses scattered all over the place when fatigue overtook them. There were enough PCs and laptops to start their own LAN cafe. Indeed, the place served as an impromptu network gaming arena which anyone was free to come in and play at anytime - I recall staying there for a couple of days once, and people would just walk in and out at all hours (doors perpetually unlocked) to take their turns playing Counter-Strike. Stacks of porno magazines and wuxia novels were everywhere. The television was constantly playing 'Super Sunday' or one of the few hundred episodes of Taiwanese variety shows in their massive collection. There were at least 80 or so empty bottles of assorted hard liquor on a large bookshelf as decoration.

Damn it, I miss university life.

Incidentally, they were *awfully* nice guys, and a couple of them were among my closest friends. It was really fun with those guys, given my own horrific standards of hygiene. Although the sticky doorknobs and vomit-stained ceiling (yes. CEILING) was a pushing it a tad, I admit.

In Western culture, people hate Jews because of the ancient Christian school of thought that persecutes them as the slayers of Jesus, not to mention a distaste for their insular, Chosen-People-style culture of superiority. It's a bit chicken and egg though, because their close-knit culture of shared ethos and shared religion was both a result of their persecution as well as a reason for it. Some have claimed that their general economic success (Goldman, Sachs, Morgan, Lynch, Rothschild...), is due to their culture of literacy and the extreme intellectual rigour their religion demands of their rabbis (Ever been to a Jewish seminary? Go watch "Keeping the Faith"; I'm told that even in extremely Orthodox ones, the thing about rabbis-in-training getting into badass intellectual, Talmudic gangfights in the library happens a lot). Of course, *all* religions demand extreme intellectual rigour of their priests, in the final analysis; just that, as Umberto Eco said, Moses encoded all the cool stuff in the Pentateuch (think Sefer Yesirah, notarikon, temurah, etc) and gave the Ten Commandments to the masses.

As to the new layout - it's *your* blog.

I wish I could capture every moment, really, on this blog. Because, as boring and mundane as each weary day is, there is always, *always* some little victory, some moment of perfect beauty that transfixes my heart with joy. Whether it's a cynical laugh, a cool drink, a good book, a shared moment, a fragment of joy, a shard of pain, a zhai idea, a piece of work completed, a concept learned, an idea realised, a truth attained - it was there, and it reminded me I was *alive*. And it is always the minor things. Always. The little thing that you don't think of a day or two later, but that held you, for that one instant, captivated, holding every aspect of your perception in its thrall.

And as much as I try to capture on this blog, so many more slip away. Sigh. But they were there; the little victories. And they are all that matters.

Blood Sword rocks! It is easily the most descriptive and well-written fantasy gamebook series of all time! I learned the words "onomastic", "proroguing", "scion", "psychopomp", and many, *many* others. I actually have three out of six Dragon Warriors sourcebooks, and could have acquired all three if I'd been a little less scrupulous and not returned them. Be that as it may, they were a pretty good, albeit seriously flawed system, which I enjoyed more for the world's complexity than for the gameplay mechanic.

Gabriel: I was telling your friend with the accent why the question: "What can change the nature of a man?" is such a compelling one for us. Your friend noted to me: "You seem to have more control."

*dizzying moment of flashback*

"..But you seem so much... calmer. More well-intentioned."

"I became that way, yes. Because for me..." His voice took on a strange echo. "It is *regret* that may change the nature of a man." He sighed. "But it was too late. I was already damned."

"I found that changing my nature was not enough. I needed more time, and I needed more life. So I came to the greatest of the Gray Sisters and asked her for a boon - to try and help me live long enough to rectify all the damage I had done. To make me immortal."

"And Ravel did. But when she first tested your immortality and killed you, you forgot everything. *Everything*" He looked broken at my words.

"And the Planes have been dying ever since. The crime is great, and the blame is mine."

*another dizzying moment of disjoint*

"As I spoke the language of the Uyo, the incarnation's eyes widened, and he stared at me. After a moment of silence, he replied in the same language.

(Only I know the language of the Uyo. How do you know it?)

(You are correct: you are the only one who knows the language of the Uyo. So if I know the language of the Uyo, I must be you.) He was silent, staring at me.

(It is these *others* who are not you, for they do not know the language of the Uyo.) He nodded... slowly.

(I hear you.)

(This place confuses one's perceptions - we are both you, and now we must become as one.) He looked frightened.

"I..." To my surprise, he reverted to normal speech... and all the inflections to his voice were gone. It was calm, level, and much like my own. "I... no longer wish to live like this."

"You no longer have to. You have suffered much. You were born into a world where nothing made sense, where strangers claimed they knew you, they blamed you for things you knew nothing of, and they tried to hurt you.. All the pain and worry and torment of your existence; I will wipe it away."

He looked at me - and I watched as the incarnation lost its mad gleam, and his eyes became more like my own.

"Yes..."

"I will protect you now. You will know peace. For that is all you ever wanted, isn't it?"

[Ed: I watched 'Keeping The Faith' twice. All I remember was that the book was very heavy. And, hey, Jesus was a Jew.

Why don't you let Sarinee scan your Dragon Warriors books too?

Which friend with the accent? I have many friends with accents. And the question is not compelling for me. It's just a damn good game.]