For the first time in years (or indeed living memory), the TV was not switched on during Reunion Dinner, and this seemed to lubricate the flow of small talk (even if its quality was not much improved). There was a CD, however, of elevator music playing in the background. I think it was Richard Clayderman, but everything on the CD cover was in Chinese, so I'm not sure.

The relatives were taking bets on how long I'd keep my hair out, eventually agreeing that it was a phase I'd grow out of, especially if prompted to do so by a putative girlfriend. I wonder how they'd have reacted if I'd sprung the customary line on them in response to their predictions.

***

Someone: those damn ri choir boys are always spontaneously breaking into song in place of speech
don't you know any ri choir boys
they have a flair for the hyperdramatic
(also all flaming gooses, but still)

... well about 60% of those in my year were so gay it was blinding

ok since *** has turned into hyper christian i guess he's not that flamboyant any more
but *** are you kidding me. *** is a total diva
he's going to be an english teacher, oh dear god.
they totally shaped my impression of ri choir boys

... haha
bitterness
OMG pokpok alimpako

we used to HATE acjc for singing it
every. single. bloody. time.

Me: it sounds like something you'd hear in hell

Someone: uh no. the devil woudln't stand for it either


Someone on Potong Pasir: my mom really wants him to win says the property prices in my neighbourhood will shoot up if he becomes MP

my mother is er malaysian
and doesnt give a hoot about democracy or politics
your typical auntie-auntie type

Me: yah lah
that's why singapore is doomed


!@#$

***

Pursuant to my earlier post about why I don't use RSS, I was flirting again with RSS the other day and realised that many site feeds (mostly Blogspot ones) don't let me see the number of comments on each post. For these feeds, the URL to the post in question is not provided, so if I want to leave a comment, view existing comments or link to the post, I have to visit the site and manually scroll down (which defeats the point of using RSS in the first place).

Meanwhile, the feeds that do provide links to the posts load the whole page template, which results in each post taking a hideously long time to load (cumulatively, longer than if I had just loaded the page in my web browser). Again, this defeats the point of RSS.

There is also the problem, still, that not all 20 blogs I follow semi-actively use RSS, so once again I have decided not to use it. For now, I have moved my blogroll to my personal toolbar folder, making it easier to check and whittle down piecemeal.

Despite my eschewing of RSS, I read my LJ friends list most days. Partially, this is because if not, I'll be overwhelmed, but also this is because there's a comments count on each post, I can comment from the same interface and it strikes a middle way in complexity and functionality of interface, stripping the crap layout from people's LJs without making the interface as barren, spartan and functionless as a normal RSS feed.

I think the only good thing about RSS is that you can see your backlog (how many posts are unread), and you don't have to read the new posts from a site all at once lest you forget where you stopped.