"I have the heart of a child. I keep it in a jar on my shelf." - Robert Bloch

***

My friend was making plans to celebrate his Xth anniversary with his girlfriend, and was looking to convince her somehow to have the dinner on a weekday (a price in the low-100 range) instead of a weekend (mid-100 range). I pointed out that it was very sexist for him to have to not only plan but pay for the thing, and he just shrugged helplessly. Later I was musing to someone else about the equally sexist practise of men having to propose marriage, and his reply was that: "i dun think it's sexist lar. it all depends on how you look at it. i think of it as a nice gesture. and it would be a nice gesture of the lady to give some solid bedroom action after the dinner HAHAHAHAHA"

In theory I'm for women having the right to wear the tudung if they want, but in practise there are many complications. When you hear of parents forcing their daughters to cover themselves (some of whom take them off when they leave the house or go clubbing), or of Imams who preach that Muslim women who don't wear it will have their hair scorched off when they go to hell, you wonder.

The trouble with vigorously suing people for defamation and proclaiming that repetition of the lie makes it credible is that when you don't, people automatically think that what is said is credible. And since there will always be many people out there saying bad things about you, you're never going to be able to find them. In contrast, if you ignore people who slime you, others are more likely to think that they are crackpots (a la Conspiracy Theorists).

Mindef is so anal that when you call them to ask for event sponsorship, they ask what colour the carpet in the hotel will be.

I was mildly annoyed to see a $0.50 deduction for the CDAC fund on my paycheque. I investigated the optout procedure, and it turns out to be slightly extended (you need to print out and fill in a form, giving it to your employer) - not worth it for only 2 months (in this case, 1 month since I've already 'donated' once).

If a girl says she’s fat, she’s probably not. If a girl says she’s thin, she is.

A good analogy for the difference between Japanese and US RPGs: the former are like taking a theme park ride and the latter like going on a free-and-easy roadtrip throughout the country. In the first you have virtually no autonomy but are guaranteed a controlled (and hopefully good) experience, but in the latter you get to explore different possibilities (which really is what a game is about - playing). The same can apply to Macs and PCs.


Apparently, in 1994 pot and alcohol were freely available in NUS (so if my theory about the 2 main lubricants of creativity is correct, NUS students were more creative then than now), and students were very lively (even publishing samizdat - 'Subterranean' [being under the Ridge] piles of which would be thrown away by the administration). Coincidentally or otherwise, this was also when the administration was a lot less tolerable. Seeing as some have observed that NUS is a microcosm of Singapore, this makes sense uner the paradigm of calibrated coercion.

Escape from Paradise is in MD/SC and HSSML General Reading. Haha

John Abizaid, the ex-Commander of the US Central Command, is currently a fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford. NUS's Lee Kuan Yew school wouldn't accept him, however, because he doesn't have a PhD and has never published before. This despite his wealth of experience and having a Masters Thesis described as "absolutely the best seminar paper I ever got in my 30-plus years at Harvard."


Using sago starch or mixing an equal portion of rice flour into your corn flour makes for crispier deep fry coating.

Thomas Kemper Root Beer is good, but it lacks a depth to its flavour which would let it linger ever-so-lightly on the tongue as it slips down the throat.

Yogurt gelato is very weird. I don't recommend it.


"If you have to explain satire to someone, you might as well give up." - Barry Humphries

I'm considering removing the "satire" tag from all the posts that have it. There is the complication, though, of whether I should leave it on satire that I didn't write.