"Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today." - Herman Wouk

***

Quotes:

[On Davidoff cigarettes] Dandruff

[Someone: What's Qui Tacet?] Silence means consent [Someone else: ... I'm not talking about age] Gag them before you...

[On Wesley] They have something called the Fuck Truck. It's the bus that goes to Harvard.

The Malaysian microwave oven... When I first moved into hall... When the Malaysian girl put the egg in the microwave oven, she put 15 minutes. It literally exploded. Even when you boil an egg you don't put 15 minutes.

Tell him about the Taiwanese night market. [nw.t: Fuck lah, there were more hot chicks than in the club.]

Where else would I be on New Year's Eve if not with my closest friends? [Someone: Geylang]

Can I join? [Me: You're not desperate what] [nw.t: And you're not a gentleman]

Girls are only for 2 things. One: For sex. Two: For more sex.

If you're good enough friends with an Eskimo, he'll let you fuck his wife.

[On gendered nouns and how the word sounds] In Italy, In France, 90% of the people who wear 'Ellesse' are women

Shopping is a speciality in Singapore

[Student: What do I do?] You spell your name. [Student: U M A] No. No. You spell it in French.

[On the full spelling of her Indian name] I forgot how to spell my father's name

Why French? My fiance is French

[On French] The pronunciation doesn't follow any logic... You can be as smart as you want [but it won't help].

When I first arrived, came to Singapore... The first time I had a class, I asked 'who is Angie'? (Ng)

When you learn the friend language (foreign)

[On 70] Now the serious thing start. 69 (things start)

[On recognising numbers] Usually I hear '86'. This is the first time [I hear]: 'caramel'

Many troubles and kerr'lair'mer'tais (calamities)

[Teacher: C'est ton nom ou ton premon?] Sounds the same

[Teacher on determining masculin or féminin: What did you hear?] I don't know. I look out for the 'il est' only.

I think it was *** who said 'Bonsoir' [Ed: Good evening] then I nearly fell.

[On why island nations have no gender] They are not French colonies?

[On sexism in language and plurals] It's unfair, I know. Elles sont. Only girls

ar'tuh'ree'sees (arthritis)

I don't know if it happened to you. You call someone... It's a man or a woman? If a strong voice tells you 'Je suis française': you say 'Bonjour madame'... If a little voice says 'Je suis français', you say 'Bonjour monsieur' (weak)

[On going too fast] Latter, later. Not so many things at a time. Otherwise you stop after 2 weeks (later)

This has nothing to do with smartness (intelligence)

The pronunciation in French is very important. It would be a pity if you learn French for 1 year, and you go to France, and you speak French, and they say 'Do you speak English'

[On joining words together when pronouncing] It was to ee'd the pace of the conversation (aid)

If you fly the... airlines, they don't link the words... It is not a contest... The purpose is to speak slowly so all the passengers understand.

[On gender] [Tape: Je suis français] [Student: Both.] Both? I don't know if it's possible to be both. Well, today it's possible.

How do you know [the gender]? [Student: Jacques] Okay, but it's not enough.

I have to tell you, when a child in France starts learning French, of course he gets confused at the beginning... his learning process is only based on intuition... It takes them a few years. If you can learn it in 1 year, that is very good... If you, after 3 years, you still don't know the verb 'to be'... 4 years [and] you still don't know how to count till 10, I'll tell you nicely, 'Maybe you should learn another language'

[On not getting a language] Former French President Jacques Chirac. He was a very good student when he was young. He started learning Sri Lankan. Sri Lankan or Pakistani... He gave up, because he couldn't get it. He started learning Russian and he was excellent in Russian (Sinhala?, Urdu?)

Le professeur. Even if you are a woman... There is a difference between the written language and the verbal language. Verbal language, you can say whatever you want... Probably in 20 years 'La professeur' will be in the dictionary. The intellectuals are not the ones who make the language... The ones who make the language are the ones in the street

He's Bel'german, she's Bel'german (German)

[On exceptions to 98% of countries ending with E being feminine] In the French, countries can be masculin and féminin. With the exception of Mexique. Zaïre - I think some of you don't even know where it is (French, or)

If the President of US, or the President of China comes to France, he will be on TV. I have never seen the Prime Minister of anybody of Singapore on TV.

Chypre, Malte. Some French people don't know where it is (they are)

When people say 'L'Amérique' they refer to [the] US. They don't refer to Canada.

"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham

***

Me: Starhub's so broken in accessing Hotmail, I'm reading my mail through the office network (using remote access)

Someone: its not broken for jus hotmail
gmail is disgusting to use too

Me: well starhub's fine with facebook and twitter
and whatever else I'm accessing now

Someone: its ok for normal surfing

but bec gmail and hotmail use really innovative coding that require certain ports to be open for them to work properly

starhub closes these ports on the impression of limiting bit torrent users
and throttling bandwidth

Me: ironically my torrents usually run alright
well even my webdav hotmail downloading sucks

Someone: wierd


Me: UD #6 got screwed in paris

Frigid Girl: by whom

Me: BNP
the landlord
everyone

Frigid Girl: really?
wth?

Me: yah

Frigid Girl: WHAT?
WHAT?

Me: but that was paris

Frigid Girl: whyt
that's fucking ridiculous

Me: why
cos they're assholes

Frigid Girl: next she'll be fucking you

Me: hurr. hurr.

Frigid Girl: that's like... whoring around
whatever for

Me: err
do you know what BNP Is

Frigid Girl: no

i only saw 'landlord'
and i was like WTH

Me: BNP Paribas est un leader européen des services bancaires et financiers, avec une présence significative et en croissance aux Etats-Unis et des positions fortes en Asie. Le groupe possède l’un des plus grands réseaux internationaux, avec une présence dans plus de 85 pays et 173 200 collaborateurs : 132 700 en Europe, dont 19 400 en Italie et 64 200 en France et Dom Tom ; 15 200 en Amérique du Nord et 9 500 en Asie.

Frigid Girl: okay

i took 'fuck' to mean sex
cos it's you, gabriel
face it

Me: hello
I said 'screwed'

you're blind

Frigid Girl: oh yea
i used 'fuck'

sorry

hAhAHHA

Me: .........
honi soit qui mal y pense


Someone: '放して! 止めて! いたい!... そこ...？目... あたしの奥に... いく! いく!'

u could have parsed it in a text-to-speech translation tool....but then of coz it lacks e effect

u ask a gal to pronounce u'll get a slap haha

they should make a text-to-speech translation tool that enables users to choose "seiyu" mode...meaning high pitched anime-like voice


Cunning Linguist on the Real Doll torso:

now its all moldy and holey and disgusting cos i think too many people had the same idea as you (i.e squeezing it). we now know the muse of your breast implant project came from.


Someone: omg foucault..

i tell you
foucault is so repetitive

he taught in berkeley
HAHAHA

shit i want to kill
my readings

let me tell you my reading list
damn european

kant
derrida
descartes
rousseau
mill
marx
habermas
latour
adorno
spivak
zamyatin
hayles
the end

oh
nietzsche
heidegger
hooray

nietzsche was surprisingly easier

Me: nietzsche is ok. just depressing

Someone: marx is...

ya i like him eh
neitzsche i mean
like he makes sense

marx is full of shit
i mean the way he uses his words
very nice to hear
but sometimes doesnt make sense

oh we also read comte
french dude also

i should stop taking philo-like courses

***

Comments on my latest fantasy:

A: yes u r so ssssick haha
watched too much stuff from chikanland?


B: i'm beginning to feel very happily normal compared to you

Me: you very abnormal meh

B: at times when I feel self-consciously deviant (given my rather conservative nature), now I shall think of you and say, I'm more normal


C: you know those people hwo wears the kind of earrings that makes your ear lobes larger?
the ones with big holes

i always have an urge to poke my finger through and pull

D: and there I was thinking you were a gentle giant

my fantasy was to rip those large-hooped earrings out of the lobes


E: what's your problem lol

Me: do you even need to ask

E: yeah you're right
until you get laid
you will continue having the problem :P

"My work is a game, a very serious game." - M. C. Escher

***

"Devant lui, bouche à bouche, ventre à ventre, des femmes nues, se pénétrant l’une l’autre, dansaient des danses sacrées, tandis que, accroupis derrière un paravent, des musiciens, soufflaient dans de courtes flûtes…

Là, d’autres femmes assises en rond ou couchées sur la natte du plancher, dans des poses obscènes, avec des faces de luxure plus tristes que des faces de supplice, attendaient. C’était, devant chaque porte où nous passions, des râles, des voix haletantes, des gestes de damnés, des corps tordus, des corps broyés, toute une douleur grimaçante qui, parfois, hurlait sous le fouet de voluptés atroces et d’onanismes barbares. Je vis, défendant l’entrée d’une salle, un groupe de bronze dont la seule arabesque des lignes me donna une secousse d’horreur… Une pieuvre, de ses tentacules, enlaçait le corps d’une vierge et, de ses ventouses ardentes et puissantes, pompait l’amour, tout l’amour, à la bouche, aux seins, au ventre.

Et je crus que j’étais dans un lieu de torture et non dans une maison de joie et d’amour."

--- Le Jardin des supplices / Octave Mirbeau

Frigid Girl: tu as des problèmes, mon ami.

"Forte est vinum, fortior est rex, fortiores sunt mulieres: super omnia vincit veritas"

"I believe that professional wrestling is clean and everything else in the world is fixed." - Frank Deford

***

World's oldest village shop closes down as latest credit crunch victim - "The local shop, near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, is the oldest independent store of its kind in the world, and at the hub of village life since opening more than 150 years ago. The one shop society co-operative opened in 1856 and made it through two world wars and the great depression of the 30s – but the crisis of recent months has done for it."

Turning crack dealers into chief executives - ""They understand basic leadership and management principles, profitability. "They don't all understand risk management as well as they should because they all got busted when they came to prison, but when it comes to execution and marketing - they get it." Ms Rohr realised that influential convicted felons could be America's most overlooked talent pool... "You see, before you hurt somebody or you promote somebody in the gang you have to investigate everything from A to Z. You cannot leave a single stone unturned."... "Our goal is not to turn a good crack dealer into a better one", she says."

Oddies in subway (71 pics) - "A series of pictures with different interesting and bizarre peoples in the subway."

Healthy, Wealthy, and DEAD?: 5 Reasons Why Getting Up Early Might be Harmful - "Getting up early could be defying your body... Getting up early could affect the quality of your sleep... Getting up early can lead to sleep deprivation... Getting up early could decrease your productivity and creativity... Getting up early could be affecting time with family and loved ones... a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found no correlation between bed habits, income, educational attainment, or mortality rate. Takeaway: early to bed and early to rise is not connected to health, wealth, or wisdom."

We're all sinners but the gates to Hell are marked His and Hers - "Sex discrimination is destined to continue in the scorching fires of Hell, according to a study approved by the Vatican which suggests that men are most likely to commit lustful sins whereas women are beholden to pride... 30 per cent of Catholics no longer considered confession to a priest necessary, and 10 per cent even said that it “impeded their personal dialogue with God”."
One comment: May be I`m not fully understand English humor.. :)
There`s discrimination at all???
Different sins - different punishment
Or not?? :) :)

What is the Monkeysphere? - "What do monkeys have to do with war, oppression, crime, racism and even e-mail spam? You'll see that all of the random ass-headed cruelty of the world will suddenly make perfect sense once we go Inside the Monkeysphere... The Monkeysphere is the group of people who each of us, using our monkeyish brains, are able to conceptualize as people. If the monkey scientists are monkey right, it's physically impossible for this to be a number much larger than 150... Those who exist outside that core group of a few dozen people are not people to us. They're sort of one-dimensional bit characters."
Addendum: This is the Dunbar number

A giving recession? - "There are now around 1.6m non-profits in America, employing one in every 11 workers"

Thou Shalt Not Cut this Tree! - "A Buddhist monk is prohibited from cutting down a tree or having a tree cut down not only because it has life but because it could also be the abode of a deity."
So how do they build their temples? The most popular suggested answer was outsourcing. Smart, just like clerics and maces.

Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit - "“In my entire career, I’ve never heard of anything remotely approaching this,” said Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim, who was appointed by the State Supreme Court this week to determine what should be done with the estimated 5,000 juveniles who have been sentenced by Judge Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2003. Many of them were first-time offenders and some remain in detention."

This is not just a jam sandwich... Oh, actually, it is - "It's hardly a dish that requires great culinary skill and hours of preparation in the kitchen. Yet it seems that some of us lead such busy lives that we are simply unable to knock up a quick strawberry jam sandwich. If that applies to you, then relax. Because Marks & Spencer is going to do it for you - and charge you 75p for the privilege... 'For those who haven't eaten one for years, one bite takes you straight back to your childhood.'"

Visualizing Your Personal Space Around the World - "Like French artist Guy Limone, Platt is interested in bringing numbers to life through image. Using data from the CIA Factbook, Platt divided each country's land area by its population. The results are displayed in the image above."

McDonald's and Starbucks: 43% Yin, 35% Yang - "A Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends survey on where Americans would like to live included the following question: "Just for fun: Would you prefer to live in a place with more McDonald's or more Starbucks?"... In this smackdown between Big Macs and caffe lattes, Americans manage to typecast themselves by just about every demographic and ideological characteristic under the sun."
Stereotypes persist and endure because they are often true.

New blog pic:


Meow

"Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand." - Putt's Law

***

Something that's been floating around the Internet in various forms:


MY Wife sat down on the couch next to me as I was flipping channels.

She asked, 'What's on TV?'

I said, 'Dust.'

And then the fight started...


My wife and I are watching "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" while we were in bed. I turned to her and said, "Do you want to have sex?"

"No," she answered.

I then said, "Is that your final answer?"

She didn't even look at me this time, simply saying, "Yes."

So I said, "Then I'd like to phone a friend."

And then the fight started...


Saturday morning I got up early, quietly dressed, made my lunch, grabbed the dog, and slipped quietly into the garage. I hooked up the boat up to the truck, and proceeded to back out into a torrential downpour. The wind was blowing 50 mph, so I pulled back into the garage, turned on the radio, and discovered that the weather would be bad all day.

I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into bed. I cuddled up to my wife's back, now with a different anticipation, and whispered, "The weather out there is terrible."

My loving wife of 10 years replied, "Can you believe my stupid husband is out fishing in that?"

And that's how the fight started...


I rear-ended a car this morning. So, there we were alongside the road and slowly the other driver got out of his car. You know how sometimes you just get soooo stressed and little things just seem funny? Yeah, well I couldn't believe it.... He was a DWARF!!!

He stormed over to my car, looked up at me, and shouted, "I AM NOT HAPPY!!!"

So, I looked down at him and said, "Well, then which one are you?"

And then the fight started.....


My wife was hinting about what she wanted for our upcoming anniversary.

She said, 'I want something shiny that goes from 0 to 150 in about 3 seconds.'

I bought her a scale.

And then the fight started...


When I got home last night, my wife demanded that I take her someplace expensive.....so, I took her to a gas station!

And then the fight started...


After retiring, I went to the Social Security office to apply for Social Security.

The woman behind the counter asked me for my driver's license to verify my age. I looked in my pockets and realized I had left my wallet at home. I told the woman that I was very sorry, but I would have to go home and come back later.

The woman said, 'Unbutton your shirt'. So I opened my shirt revealing my curly silver hair. She said, 'That silver hair on your chest is proof enough for me' and she processed my Social Security application

When I got home, I excitedly told my wife about my experience at the Social Security office.

She said, 'You should have dropped your pants. You might have gotten disability, too.'

And then the fight started...


My wife and I were sitting at a table at my high school reunion, and I kept staring at a drunken lady swigging her drink as she sat alone at a nearby table.

My wife asked, 'Do you know her?'

'Yes,' I sighed, 'She's my old girlfriend. I understand she took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear she hasn't been sober since.'

'My God!' says my wife, 'who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?'

And then the fight started...


I took my wife to a restaurant. The waiter, for some reason, took my order first.

"I'll have the strip steak, medium rare, please."

He said, "Aren't you worried about the mad cow?""

Nah, she can order for herself."

And then the fight started...


A woman is standing nude, looking in the bedroom mirror.

She is not happy with what she sees and says to her husband, 'I feel horrible; I look old, fat and ugly. I really need you to pay me a compliment.'

The husband replies, 'Your eyesight's damn near perfect.'

And then the fight started.....


I tried to talk my wife into buying a case of Miller Light for $14.95.

Instead, she bought a jar of cold cream for $7.95.

I told her the beer would make her look better at night than the cold cream.

And then the fight started....


My wife asked me if a certain dress made her butt look big. I told her not as much as the dress she wore yesterday

And then the fight started.....


A man and a woman were asleep like two innocent babies.

Suddenly, at 3 o'clock in the morning, a loud noise came from outside.

The woman, bewildered, jumped up from the bed and yelled at the man 'Holy crap! That must be my husband!'

So the man jumped out of the bed; scared and naked jumped out the window. He smashed himself on the ground, ran through a thorn bush and to his car as fast as he could go.

A few minutes later he returned and went up to the bedroom and screamed at the woman, 'I AM your husband!'

The woman yelled back, 'Yeah, then why were you running'

And then the fight started.....


I asked my wife, "Where do you want to go for our anniversary"

It warmed my heart to see her face melt in sweet appreciation. "Somewhere I haven't been in a long time!" she said.

So I suggested, "How about the kitchen"

And that's when the fight started....

"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered." - Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

***

Something that's been floating around the web in various forms:


Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: Knowing when to come in out of the rain; Why the early bird gets the worm; Life isn't always fair; and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an Aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason. He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers;

1. I Know My Rights
2. I Want It Now
3. Someone Else Is To Blame
4. I'm A Victim

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on.. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

The Body as Billboard: Your Ad Here

"With red hair flowing to her waist, Rita Thomas, 35, a stand-up comic and commercial actor from Los Angeles, had more to shear than any other participant. But having lost her mother to cancer a year ago, she took the plunge because the airline had arranged to donate participants' hair to Locks of Love, a group that makes hairpieces for children who have gone bald from illnesses. The gesture was lost on the man she had been dating for three months when he saw her bald head.

"He said, 'I don't find you attractive in the least bit,' " Ms. Thomas said. "And then he totally dumps me."...

Ms. Gardner, whose hair has grown to crewcut length since she shaved it for the airline promotion, said some people at the time asked whether the tattoo on her head was permanent."

Aww...

"Anybody who wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office." - David Broder

***

Me on her nick: (/・・)ノ
this your face?

Someone: haa
that would be upper body

Me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Someone: hahaha what??????!!!!

Me: torso ah

Someone: lol
haaaahmmmmm

okay maybe 1/4 body

WALIOW
sick lahhhhhh

hahahaha

Me: hello
I'm not the one who said that

I thought of face
you thought of upper body

it doesn't look anything like upper body
except...

Someone: the arms flailing

disgusting!!!
omg

haaaa

face + arms


MFTTW: shit man my meringue is not cooked

it's still foamy
wth

bloody hell raw meringue

i feel like taking it off the pie and cooking it again

Me: smash into ***'s face

MFTTW: hello.

Me: I've always wanted to smash a pie into someone's face

MFTTW: >_<

if you want to do that at least go to ntuc and buy a cheapo crappy low quality pie
not my sweat blood pie leh

Me: buy pie crust and spray whipped cream

MFTTW: yah for maximum effect
no need pie crust just spray whip crewam

Me: onto what

MFTTW: into people's faces?

Me: ...............


Someone: when you say 'X is obscurantist', how different is it from saying 'X is a case of invoking the God of the gaps etc.' ?

obscurantism sounds like a cover-all term for anything one doesn't/refuses to understand

Me: obscurantism - you're purposely writing in an unclear way
god of the gaps - when someone asks why, you say god did it
totally different

have you read judith butler?
whatever I label obscurantist I can rewrite in a much simpler way
jargon and impenetrability are a way of excluding the unitiated and making people feel smart

Someone: it isn't universally agreed on what 'clear' might mean
could you try to make economic theory 'clear' for all audiences (incl pri sch kids), in 'plain simple english'?

writing always assume a particular audience

why should political writing always address the widest possible audience? is it necessarily most effective and powerful if it is in journalistic style (accessible to all)?

Me: false analogy
if even people with a university degree don't understand what you're talking about, there's a significant chance you're being obscurantist

and yes I could try to make economic theory clear for general audiences. I could also make it very complicated
good non-specialist writing is targeted at an intelligent reader who is otherwise unaware of the subject matter

again I ask you if you've read judith butler

Someone: i've tried reading her
i can see what she's trying to say sometimes

i can understand butler if i put in some patience and effort
and use her ideas in other areas if i undergo some academic training

Me: well it depends on the purpose of your writing
if it's to go "see how smart I am", obscurantism isn't necessarily bad
if it's to communicate to as wide an audience as practically possible (i.e. making it intelligible but not simplistic) then you have failed

that doesn't mean it's not obscurantist

Someone: by employing the term 'obscurantist' you attribute (perhaps falsely?) certain elitist and exclusivist intentions to the writer

Me: if that's the only way in which such people can write, I feel very sorry for them

Someone: that's not the only way they can write

they choose to write that way
given certain situations, for certain audiences

Me: obscurantism: "A style in art and literature characterized by deliberate vagueness or obliqueness."

then it is self-indulgent literary masturbation in a vacuum

Someone: it is also possible to accuse physicists of obscurantism when they employ terms as 'simple' and 'direct' as energy, momentum

momentum is not even learnt at o level
or, 'ket' and 'bra' in quantum mechanics

i don't see any particular reason why there should be a focus on literary writing as particularly obscurantist

Me: energy and momentum are terms those with a university degree should understand
quantum mechanics not so, but then as even feynman said, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."

the same reason why there's a focus on hunan food as particularly hot

Someone: when sporeans read reuters or the telegraph or the economist they could say they're obscurantist, but that's because they're generally ignorant of world and current affairs

Me: I am not talking about singaporeans
and they don't use the word. most of them don't even know it

Someone: anyway i beg to differ about energy and momentum being terms that are accessible even to graduates

Me: *shrug*

When one writes, one would presumably want to address as large an audience as possible. Obviously it is impossible to address everyone - they key is to hit as large an audience as possible. So for maximum accessibility, one should aim to be as simple as possible - but no simpler.

Even in scientific or technical papers, the ideal is for the abstract, introduction and conclusion to be intelligible to a non-specialist, even if he can't understand the math inside.

Claiming that you can never address everyone, so you're free to address as narrow an audience as possible is like whitewashing a fence by painting it black.


Someone else on the libertarian delusion: i do wonder if letting everything that should fail, fail might be a good reset for the system though.

i mean, we might starve collectively for what, 2 years

but we clean up the systm entirely. and start making mistakes again, hehe.

Me: that's what the communists thought.
see what happened


Me: true, but who would wear diagonal stripes?!

Someone: pple nowadays wear the weirdest things
I'm sure u gotta agree to that

especially in asia

Me: haha why asia
blame the japs lah

Someone: fuck yea man
spread down to taiwan hk and to a lesser degree here

u get fucking kids dressing like emos yet laughing and dancing like ah bengs

fuckin A, at least in Taiwan, the pple are courteous, so whatever they wear is kinda ....... you can look past it

Here ?! Christ ... it's like the worst combo ever

"When ideas fail, words come in very handy." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

***

u r wt u wr Foreign Edition (Baltics):

- 'Guys are always fond of a fun-loving blonde'
- '*Picture of frog with crown sticking tongue out* Kiss me' (See post for visual proof)
- 'Say hello to your future ex'
- 'I would look good on you'
- '*Something* girls meet showgirls at Boston lounge' (Jacket cover, worn by ~12 year old)
- 'Make me crazy'


u r wt u wr Foreign Edition (Japan):

There were a lot of girls with T-shirts with English words on them (and a few guys too) but I didn't note many of them because:

i) Too many words
ii) Bad grammar, so it was hard to catch them
iii) Jap girls have more taste than Singaporean ones, and their T-shirts aren't as suggestive

Of course, there might've been slogans in Jap (e.g. '放して! 止めて! いたい!... そこ...？目... あたしの奥に... いく! いく!') but obviously I wouldn't have been able to read them.

- 'I love nice guys (front)
I love bad guys (back)'
- 'Acquisitive nature'
- 'Take me *picture of sexy ang moh blonde on pile of candy*'
- 'This is just between you and me *something*'
- 'I ♥ haters' (Ang moh)
- 'Have the polar bear' (???)
- 'I ♥ cutely. Give favorable results'
- 'Yo lay me dude'
- 'L♥ve sweet. L♥ve luck. ♥♥♥'
- 'Redheads have more fun' (worn by dark blonde Ang Moh - maybe that's her natural hair colour)
- 'Bad at being good' (Is this the same as 'Good at being bad'?)

- 'Strapping young lad' (Ang Moh guy)

"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." - George Bernard Shaw

***

RoSPA chief: Freedom is at risk from 'mindless' quest for absolute safety - "Tom Mullarkey, the chief executive of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, insisted that individuals must retain the right to take risks so long as they do not injure others. He told safety experts they will be accused of constructing a nanny state and damaging freedom if they meddle unnecessarily in people's private lives, adding that "absolute safety" is an unattainable goal in any case. His comments come amid almost daily reports detailing how over-zealous teachers, council officials and police officers are outlawing innocuous activities in an attempt to meet perceived "health and safety" requirements... Last year Mr Mullarkey highlighted the damage caused to children in particular by health and safety "extremists", whom he accused of hindering the development of young people by wrapping them in cotton wool. He argued that it is "positively necessary" for children to take part in activities that could leave them with a twisted ankle or a scraped knee."

Woman: Ex-boyfriend stole wig - "Police in Port St. Lucie, Fla., say a woman who accused her ex-boyfriend of snatching a wig from her head was unable to recall her former beau's last name. A police report released Monday said the 20-year-old victim was walking home from a party at about 3 a.m. Friday when her ex-boyfriend rode up to her on a bicycle and pulled off the black wig that was sewn to her hair"

Rugged individualism, beer linked - "When they temporarily induced the students to become individualists, they became thirstier for beer. Collectivists became less so. And those impulses were heightened when the students were asked to imagine themselves at a bar with friends."

Drug Turns Crime Victims Into Zombies - "There are so many scopolamine cases that they usually don't make the news unless particularly bizarre. One such incident involved three young Bogota women who preyed on men by smearing the drug on their breasts and luring their victims to take a lick. Losing all willpower, the men readily gave up their bank access codes. The breast-temptress thieves then held them hostage for days while draining their accounts."

Cops: Bystander beat knife-wielding attacker with candy cane

Girl Handing Out Cough Drops Accused Of Selling Drugs At School

Welcome to Yesterland - "Did you ever wonder what happened to Disneyland’s Mine Train, Flying Saucers, or Indian Village? These and other attractions, restaurants, and shops are now collected in Yesterland, a theme park on the Web."

Complaints pour in over 'Lapland' park - "Tensions reached a peak when furious parents allegedly confronted ‘elves’ in a ‘gingerbread house’ and Father Christmas was punched in his grotto, according to angry customers."

No One Wants to Hug a Banker - "It's an example of how the well-heeled heels who flunked Risk Management 101 are also failing PR 101. "There were some basic questions the CEOs couldn't even answer, like 'What happened to the money?' " says Michael Kempner, CEO of MWW Group, a public-relations firm. "The lack of preparation was truly breathtaking." Crisis PR guru Robert Dilenschneider notes that instead of doing the basics, like making constructive statements before, during and after the hearings, the bankers focused on symbolic items like taking the Acela train instead of a private jet. Next time they come to D.C. begging for cash, bankers should take the $25 Chinatown bus... people who have done well in finance tend to think they're really good at everything. (A common taunt on Wall Street: if you're so smart, how come you're not rich?) And so they tend to eschew the advice of their PR staff."

Condoms Do Not Increase Teen Sex Study Shows

Are 'Skinny' Drinks Offensive? - "Much of the controversy focuses on the use of the term skinny to describe the fat- and sugar-free drink. SassySexyShapely questions whether people should be offended by the word. As reported by Starbucks Gossip, one barista refused to use the term, calling it politically incorrect."
When will the race to the bottom hit rock bottom?

ACLU Defends Teacher Suspended for Facebook Gun Photo - "The ACLU of Wisconsin is defending a Beaver Dam teacher who was put on administrative leave after she posted a questionable photo on her Facebook page."
I really love the ACLU, since they're very consistent and principled

Wah lao, Malaysia is disgusting in so many ways. I've given up counting.

"Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way." - Jane Austen

***

I wonder what excuses the Peak Oil crowd are coming up with now, after their crowing not so many months ago.

It is not hard to find proof of the perfidy of humanity and the misery of the human condition, but when you see it in those you know it is doubly saddening.

MFM theorises most jazz musicians are male because jazz requires a lot of improvisation. Someone else points out that it's the same for Early Music.

Denigrate comes from the Latin dēnigrātus/dēnigrāre meaning to blacken, from "de" (completely) and "nigr(āre)" (to make black). More racism in the English language!!!

Lee Kuan Yew is a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour. Uhh.

Except for Chickens and Rats, even female domestic animals aren't allowed on Mount Athos. Meh.

It seems all foreign cultural performances in Singapore are expensive. I heard tickets to see Frances Yip in Sydney went for a flat price of $28. Maybe Singaporeans are just suckers.

RT @mrbrown: "Malaysia receives their first Scorpene submarine, the KD We Boleh. I hear it will fire Proton torpedos and run on palm oil"

I saw a woman whose tattoos extended down into her cleavage. Her tattoo artist must be very skilful(and her weight must not changed much since she got them)

"If you remember Flooz, Beenz, CyberCash, Bitpass, Peppercoin and DigiCash, it's probably because you lost money investing in them" (Source)

RJ now has sex education where they sign pledge cards pledging not to have pre-marital sex. Ugh.

Friend: "I think feminists, like racial minorities enjoy discrimination towards them but make a bitch of a scene at the first sign of prejudice against."

I talked to someone who'd studied in Japan for 9 months, and he said when you first meet Jap girls they talk in a high voice, but later when you know them better and you're at the bar they will talk in their natural voice.

In the past few years I've seen more guys with long hair, but they tend to be one or both of: 1) Above 40 (so the slavemasters don't touch them), 2) In non-professional jobs (hawkers, delivery boys, grasscutters - few are in officewear)

Someone who was from one of the NUS Sports Club's Sub-clubs said that a lot of girls' photos had gotten stolen (including hers) (this is a followup to this post)

I think manual cars are popular in Europe, and automatic ones in the US, partly because fuel is cheap in the latter.

There's a place called "Inaccessible Island" *facepalm*

From @lucian: "migration.com.sg leads to Australia Migration Agency."


I was at Zam Zam at 10+ and they claimed they ran out of Kosong Prata. Wth: how is that possible?!

Great, there're separate Wikipedia entries for Roti prata and Roti canai. They say prata has more variations because Malaysians are poor. Hoho

Someone on Malay food: "it's better in sg cooked by a combi of chinese and indos than in malaysia. Mind, i've had my experience confirmed by malaysian malays. Ghafar baba used to have takeaways of nasi lemak, rendang and suchlike from singapore weekly. Apparently malay food in sg is made with a greater emphasis on freshness and quality of ingredients, hence the better result."

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." - Walt Disney

***

Commenting that "the worldwide trend in conscription is towards reducing or ending it. Except in countries like Taiwan and South Korea and Israel which have REAL enemies" I was asked if I didn't think Singapore had real enemies.

My reply:

"Well, let’s see:

Taiwan - Has 1,500 missiles aimed at it. Is the target of constant sabre-rattling. Has a huge, relatively bellicose neighbor which has never renounced its right to invade and occupy it. Was last in active war in 1949.
South Korea - Has a capital which could be levelled in minutes with artillery from its neighbor. Has most heavily militarised border in the world. Has neighbor which regularly provokes it militarily and has kidnapped its citizens (incidentally, a Singapore citizen was kidnapped by them in the 70s or 80s). Was last in active war in 1953.
Israel - Surrounded by many countries which don’t recognise its right to exist. Was last in active war in 2006/2009 (depending on how you define that). Has been invaded 4 times. Is the active target of terrorist attacks.

Singapore - ???
[Ed: Spends more on defence than both its next-door neighbors COMBINED. Has larger total armed forces (including reservists) than either. Has never been at war.

All countries have real enemies, but you don’t see many bringing back the draft. Or even if they do, it’s short (<1 year) and there’s usually provision for alternative service.

What's So Bad About a Banker Brain Drain?

"For starters, this may simply be an idle threat. There are a lot of questions about how many bankers will really be affected by these pay limitations. And even if they do want to leave, the bankers may not be able to make good on their threat. Anti-banker anger is on the rise just about everywhere and pay caps are being imposed in many of the world's financial centers including London and Paris, and are likely to be instituted elsewhere as well...

So what? The answer is: this may be a blessing in not that much of a disguise. Most economists agree that our financial industry is now too large...

But what about the argument that the pay caps will make us loose the "best brains," as this restructuring takes place? Well, who are the highest paid bankers, the ones who should (but might not) chafe most under the new restrictions? The highest paid bankers are the "deal makers," the "rain makers," the ones who figured out how to create the toxic securities, the structured investment vehicles, the credit default swaps and sell them around the globe. We do not want these kind of deals to be made anymore and so we do not need these top brains - or any brains - to make them. In fact, our real problem has not been a brain drain, but the reverse: a brain rush into banking...

We faced a banking black hole-sucking in many of the good young minds of several generations - never to be seen again in the classrooms of schools, hospital wards, engineering firms, or solar cell manufacturing firms. Never, at least, until now...

So let's say to the government: tighten those pay restrictions, if necessary to make them bite.

And let's say this to the bankers who are threatening to leave: we call your bluff. Make our day."

"A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms." - George Wald

***

Japan trip
Day 17 - 22nd June - Tokyo


Mortuary in the morning

Out of 28 coffins in my mortuary (IIRC there was one more on my floor, though it might not have been the same size), only 1 was unoccupied. There were definitely a lot more unoccupied ones when I went to sleep. These businessmen really party hard.

I then left to meet MR at Tsukiji (and gave him the manta ray I'd been lugging around half of Honshu), one of the last things I wanted to do before leaving Japan (and which he hadn't visited yet).


Map of the area. As you can see, there's nothing else to see in the area.


Last season's courtesy campaign

Reaching Tsukiji at the unearthly time of 6:08am, I was wroth to discover it closed:


Closed on every Wednesday in June, as well as Sundays and Public Holidays (the 2009 calendar reveals a seemingly arbitrary choice of weekdays for closure)

It was slightly comforting to know that we were not the only ones not to know about the closure. Stupid Lonely Planet (even the 2005 calendar reveals the same seemingly arbitrary pattern of closure days).

I suspect Tsukiji is popular among Ang Mohs because they don't go to wet markets, so the novelty factor is greater for them.

I guess the moral of the story is: don't expect the sushi and sashimi you eat on Sundays and Public Holidays and assorted random days to be fresh.

We then adjourned for breakfast.


A tourist-friendly place, which we avoided


The place we went to: "Sushi Donburi No Don" (???)


This was the first time I had unagi which hadn't been marinated into submission

We then parted and I returned to my hotel.


"Club Slow Life", "Hunny Hunt" and "Undies Club Zeus". I don't know what "CS" and "BS" are though.


"Baltic Curry". Funny, I didn't see any curry in the Baltics. Their website is down but apparently it's one of Japan's leading curry & ramen restaurant chains.

After resting a while in my room coffin, I checked out and dumped my backpack in the railway station, and went to meet Xephyris in Akihabara.


In memory of the slashing victims. MR said since the stabbing the atmosphere had not been the same (for example the road used to be closed so people could walk), and there were no cosplayers. I said I should've visited earlier (before I went to tour Honshu), and then he said then I would've been stabbed. Gah.


Love Merci: "Welcome Foreign Buyers!!! Dealer and Exports Inquiries Welcome."

I'd asked MR about "Love Merci" (which I saw the previous night) and he said it was an adult shop. I guess whenever they say "love" they mean "Sex".

Since Xephyris wasn't there yet, I went in and found tons of stuff inside: costumes, underwear, butt plugs, lube (not very useful for non-Japanese speakers - you could get an oil-based lube unknowingly which'd dissolve your condom), vibrators (including Hitachi Magic Wand attachments for masturbation sleeves, torsos to hump, hands to give you handjobs etc ), S&M gear, vibrating masturbating sleeves, masturbation sleeves disguised as pillows, and mattresses and chairs to have sex on (for blowups). I even found the Fabled Hello Kitty Vibrator Vibrating Shoulder Massager:



Interestingly, women were banned from the 3rd and 4th floors (with porn and guy toys). I wonder whose benefit that was for - the men's or the women's.


Yodobashi-Akiba shopping centre


"Learn English so you can seduce gaijin with your schoolgirl charms" (Waseda Prep)
Everyone loves English - but no one wants to speak it.


Bacon McMuffin. Mmm... There's a good reason we don't have Bacon McMuffins in Singapore (replacing it with ham) - unlike Burger King McDonalds knows Turkey Bacon tastes is like cardboard.

I saw my first Burger King in Akihabara. It said it was the first in Japan.


Weird pamphlet I got from Kōfuku no Kagaku ("The Institute for Research in Human Happiness"). It sounded like either:
i) Scientology
ii) Christian evangelism
In reality it's some new age rubbish.


Akihabara

I wasn't an otaku and wasn't that into electronics so I just walked around. For the really interesting things you need a guide anyway.

McDonalds fries with beef extract have a very slight added edge and bite.


Maid cafe ads. I don't get the last - how is it a maid cafe if they're not dressed as maids?

Xephyris said no schools had students who wore school uniforms on Sunday (which made me wonder again why I saw a schoolgirl in Koyasan in uniform).


Disgusting outfit


Bottled drinks: In Memoriam (to the slashing victims). As with so many other things, this puzzled me.


Maid cafe. I wanted to go to one but we had no time. Suffice it to say that Xephyris contrasted the CHIJMES one with the Japanese ones by saying that the ones at CHIJMES were waitresses dressed as maids, whereas the ones in Japan actually spoke and acted like maids.




Presumably if you do well in the arcade game you get to strip her


Maid soliciting outside maid cafe. Presumably this is their best maid. If so, that's quite sad.


Lunch: Pork Cutlet Burger at Mos Burger


Xephyris demonstrating Japanese phone technology, which is so advanced you can watch TV on your phone (but be limited to IR, with no Bluetooth)

After a short rendezvous with Chinx at the station (he was late, bah) I then left for the airport.

On the train there I realised that, shit-o, I'd remembered the time wrongly and I'd left 2 hours too early. At least that was better than leaving 2 hours too late. My only regret was missing the maid cafe (not that I'd understand what they were saying anyway; oh well, there's always the next time).


A rainy Ueno

At the airport I had lots of time, so I walked around.

In Narita they ask you not to jump in elevators. Hah.

One place sold a USB drive in the shape of sushi. Wth. They also had a webcam in the shape of a Japanese Cyclops.


Japanese smut novels, presumably targeting men and not women.

The Cosmo July 2008 cover had: "Denise van Outen on sex and love. Never change yourself for a bloke". Doubtless saying "Never change yourself for a gal" would be considered misogynistic.

There was a book: "D!rty Japanese" by a Matt Fargo. With it you could understand Jap porn. Hah.


"Living with a foreigner" - naturally, it's a white guy. Hurr hurr.

There were schoolgirls in many different uniforms with nametags wandering around the airport. Wth.

I noticed my Northwest Amenities Coupon allowed me to get a serving of alcohol (a cocktail, beer or wine) which was weird, since I thought all airlines served it. In the end I decided to redeem it for airport food, since I was feeling peckish.


Various options. Again, you see more rice with noodles (in one set), and Jap-style Italian food.


What I settled for amidst the tempting choices: Tri-colour soba and udon


You respect the chefs in "Garden Groumet Court" by not bringing in outside food. Hah.


(Pre-)Dinner


Jap tea primer. My thoughts: "There's sweetness in Sencha?!"

Customs Notice: "Exportation of high-tech electronic apparatus is subject to approval from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry". Does the Aibo count?


Oxygen Bar


"Massager". Interestingly, my scribbled note and what I named this picture a few days ago are the same (despite the near-8 month interval): "yeah right"

The self-service NWA checkin here had people standing around ready to assist, but unlike in Singapore I got to press the buttons myself. I guess the Japs are smarter than Singaporeans.

The personal lights in NWA seats fadeout when you turn them off. Interesting.

When I pressed the attendant call button, I was attended to in just over 30 seconds - a world of difference from KLM!


I rock in trivia (the fact that scores are kept across flights implies there's a central database). The picture is blur due to turbulence.


In conclusion, some miscellaneous thoughts about Chikan-land:

There isn't much hand scooped ice cream in Japan. They prefer soft serve. Maybe this is because soft serve uses a machine, and machines are their comparative advantage. In fact, soft serve (except at fast food joints) is typically pre-packaged: there's a machine which pushes ice cream out of a carton to give you instant soft-serve. This is probably the cheapest way of selling ice cream (since you don't need to maintain and clean a machine with liquid flowing through it but just a press and a simple freezer) without descending to the level of ais krim (e.g. using krimer rather than susu, and "nature identical" flavourings rather than natural ones), and you don't get soggy cones too.

IIRC there was one more prayer wheel I turned which upgraded my reincarnation status from woman to man, but I can't remember where it was (my reincarnation projection had previously been upgraded by turning a prayer wheel in Amanohashidate and being blessed by a priest in Osaka). Anyhow it was for naught, since my various deeds pushed me back down to the cockroach level again.

Japanese politeness is much commented on, but if you're always polite, you're polite in more than one way (as in polite laughter in response to a bad joke).

The older women in Hiroshima seemed somewhat better endowed than elsewhere in Japan. My first thought was oysters (no wonder they're an aphrodisiac), but they didn't seem to affect the younger women (I rejected this hypothesis at quite a small test size). Maybe it's the radiation - I need to visit Nagasaki.

Hiroshima was also exceptional in another way: the gender ratio of schoolkids there was about even. Maybe the mothers in the rest of Japan don't eat much (since they must keep their figures), which results in the skewed gender ratio. That said, many of the better-endowed girls compensated by having poorer endowments in other aspects, as if the endowment was fixed. This might be more evidence for my AV girl theory.

It was quite disappointing since the only sort of vending machines I saw sold alcohol, tobacco, drinks, snacks, ice cream, chewing gum, calling cards, newspapers, hot food, ramen/oden and shrine-related material.

Someone said a lot of Japanese women were Ah Lian. I disagreed with the term (since they didn't have the coarse, uncouth Ah Lian edge), but knew what she meant: they were confident and daringly madeup/accessorised/dressed.

The only hair colours I saw were blonde, brown and a couple of redheads (brown-red, at that). I was very disappointed. What happened to green?! Silver?! Or Pink (well, I saw the back of a girl with pink hair)?!

Japanese men seem to cross their legs more often than Japanese women (who don't do it that often), at least on the subway.

Only in Nara did I see anything approaching an even gender ratio for school kids (2 girls to 1 boy). Elsewhere it was 7:3 at least. Where are all the boys? Since they're not in their 20s they can't be hikkimori.

I theorise that Japanese primary schoolkids wear yellow hats to protect them from heatstroke.

For a technologically advanced country which leads the world in camera technology, there's a huge number of people in Japan using disposable cameras. This was especially pronounced in one demographic: I didn't see a single schoolkid with a real camera, though I *might* have seen one or two with phone cameras.

I noticed that when I asked people to help me take pictures, the men took better pictures than the women.

Even the Japanese who can speak English are reluctant to use it, despite being faced not even with chotto nihongo but chotto chotto chotto nihongo.

European trains are more English-friendly than Japanese ones.

Chinx and Xephyris said Jap girls talk in an artificially-high voice until you get to know them well, or you tell them you're not interested.

In my time in Japan I'd only seen 2-3 people in Crocs. The Japanese are sensible.

The Japs mostly didn't jaywalk - unless I set the precedent.

I didn't see any Malaysian Mannikins in Japan!

There's a lot more nice or wth stuff to take photos of in Japan than in the Baltics.

I want to explore Odaiba more thoroughly next time, and in the day, since it's a favourite Sentai filming location.

Apparently a lot of Jap girls are looking for English-speaking, non-Japanese boyfriends.


Advantages of travelling with people: company, you can share food, people watch your back, they can help you take photos/videos (eg of you rolling down a hill), you can outsource planning and navigation, you have people to blame (which is why my sister likes travelling with my brother-in-law so much) and they point out what you miss.

Disadvantages: the loss of freedom, you must accommodate others, they have quirks, it can be more expensive (there're things other people want to see or do, or they have higher expected comfort levels), you have no solitude privacy and personal space and it's harder to mix with other people.

On CNA:

100 people evacuated after fire at Grand Hyatt hotel

The photo accompanying the article?


FAIL!

If you have such FAIL! clipart, you might as well use none (as with some of their other articles)

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." - Ernest Hemingway

***

Man Up! Hedge-Fund Man’s Advice for Wall Street: Michael Lewis - "We’ve all been hearing a lot lately about the dangers of testosterone. A preposterous idea is gaining traction: that the problem with Wall Street is that it is run exclusively by men. News flash: Wall Street always has been run exclusively by men. If this crisis is worse than previous ones it may be because, for the first time in financial history, women were let in. Remember Erin Callan, Zoe Cruz, Sallie Krawcheck?"

9-YEAR-OLD ALEC GREVEN WRITES DATING BOOK "HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS" - "He's only 9, but this pint-sized pickup artist already knows plenty about pleasing the ladies. So much, in fact, that Alec Greven's dating primer, "How to Talk to Girls" - which began as a handwritten, $3 pamphlet sold at his school book fair - hit the shelves nationwide last week. The fourth-grader from Castle Rock, Colo., advises Lothario wannabes to stop showing off, go easy on the compliments to avoid looking desperate - and be wary of "pretty girls.""

Yokoso! loli-chan desu! - "Today, wore a maid costume! served tea to alice!!! 今日、メードのために服装!役立たれた紅茶をalice!に着ていました。"
Uhh... We can't call them Wapanese. Sapanese?

Competence: Is Your Boss Faking It? - ""Dominant individuals behaved in ways that made them appear competent," the researchers write, "above and beyond their actual competence." Troublingly, group members seemed only too willing to follow these underqualified bosses. An overwhelming 94% of the time, the teams used the first answer anyone shouted out — often giving only perfunctory consideration to others that were offered."

DR. BOLI’S LIBRARY OF LOST BOOKS: No. 7.—On the Insufficiency of Grace - "THE RUMOR THAT the Rev. Dr. Carolus Fraile, a respected Lutheran pastor at St. Lydia’s in Esplen, had written a manuscript treatise “On the Insufficiency of Grace” caused much consternation in the synod office. Was Dr. Fraile a heretic? It was not in the nature of Lutherans even to ask such a question, yet the subject was too close to the heart of Lutheran doctrine to ignore... When the committee met again six months later, Pastor Strassenbahn reported that Dr. Fraile was a very nice person, and that he seemed very sincere, although it had been very difficult to get an appointment with him—a difficulty he attributed to his overburdened secretary. When pressed, she admitted that she had not specifically brought up the subject of the manuscript, thinking that it would be somewhat indecorous to mention that its existence had become known when Dr. Fraile had made no effort to put it before the public."

Extinct ibex is resurrected by cloning - "An extinct animal has been brought back to life for the first time after being cloned from frozen tissue."

Excessive chatting on Facebook can lead to depression in teenage girls - "Frequently discussing the same problem can intensify into an unhealthy activity for those who use Facebook and other electronic means to obsess about it, according to the researchers... Dr Davila said: "Texting, instant messaging and social networking make it very easy for adolescents to become even more anxious, which can lead to depression.""

Let there be adverts: Christians hit back at the atheist bus - "Yesterday I walked to work and saw two London buses with the question: 'When the son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?' (Luke 18:8) ... If I wanted to run a bus ad saying 'Beware, there is a giant lion from London Zoo on the loose!' I think I might be asked to show my working and back up my claims."

Bacon Explosion catches fire on Web - "For a nation seeking unity, an American recipe has swept the Internet that seems to unite conservatives and liberals, gun owners and foodies, carnivores and ... well, not vegetarians and health fanatics. Certainly not the vegetarians and health fanatics. This recipe is the Bacon Explosion, modestly called by its inventors "the BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes.""

Call to fill vegetarian scholarship at Wycliffe College - "A £15,000-a-year private school in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire is offering sixth-formers a 10% reduction in their fees if they turn vegetarian... As well as being truly vegetarian "and not getting caught eating a burger", successful applicants also have to be good all round students... Perhaps vegetarianism has become so mainstream – even the UN advocates cutting down on meat for environmental reasons – that it no longer represents an act of rebellion. The hippies of the 1960s are now all grandparents. Copying them can hardly be cool."

UN says eat less meat to curb global warming - "Some ideas were contradictory, he said - for example, one solution to emissions from livestock was to keep them indoors, but this would damage animal welfare. 'Climate change is a very young science and our view is there are a lot of simplistic solutions being proposed,' he said. Last year a major report into the environmental impact of meat eating by the Food Climate Research Network at Surrey University claimed livestock generated 8 per cent of UK emissions - but eating some meat was good for the planet because some habitats benefited from grazing. It also said vegetarian diets that included lots of milk, butter and cheese would probably not noticeably reduce emissions because dairy cows are a major source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas released through flatulence."

AFP: Seductive chemicals hidden in sloppy kisses - "Seductive chemicals are hidden in sloppy kisses, scientists say, but even the most chaste caress can spark an intense hormonal response. "Men like sloppier kisses with more open mouth and that suggests to me that they are unconsciously trying to transfer testosterone to trigger the sex drive in women," said Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey."

"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised." - Marilyn Manson, Columbine statement

***

Someone: 10 min for me to walk there
hopefully

whahaha

Me: ok
wearing comfortable shoes today ah

Someone: never
hahaha

i dun wear comfortable shoes from mon to thurs

Me: haha
yoiur proboem
who ask you

Someone: i can't work w/o high heels

Me: why. high heels put you in work mood ah

Someone: yah


Someone else on the McPork photo: wheee!!! i love this photo of you. it encapsulates your spirit.




Me: italians are quite boring food-wise
they only eat their own food

XMM: yea, true
ut then again
their food culture is good

Me: italian food is more than pasta and pizza :P

and tiramisu
(which is quite recent)

XMM: OOOOH tell me more

i like tiramisu.

the one at al forno's
is heavenly.

Me: you dont know other sorts of italian food meh

XMM: ravioliiiii
:D

i loveeeee ravioli

Me: ... that's pasta also

...

XMM: OH YES PARMA HAM
I LOVE PARMA HAM
I LOVE BALSAMIC VINEGAR TOO
I LOVE NUTELLA AND GELATO TOOOOOOO

omg i'm so excited

Me: ... are you okay?

XMM: I LOVE FOOOOOD


HWMNBN: *reflectively* she said that when she was out in that refugee camp in ethiopia, she managed to resettle about 25 refugees

she went into a pretty harrowing segue about how emotionally and psychologically messed up she was after 3.5 months in an ethiopian refugee camp

(not letting girls go to elementary school apparently counts as "gender-based violence")


Someone: Chiku - gay, duku - lesbian... Chiku and duku come from my friends in professional theatre- seems they're longstanding codewords in the theatre circles :-)


Someone: how the fuck do ppl spend below 600
my monthly spending is likje 3k lor

and as u can see
im home OFTEN
plus i dun wine n dine lar

kns
balrdee hell

Me: women lubricate the economy


Someone else: my favourite posts from your blog are the ones highlighting weird stuff
too bad you're not in uni anymore
haha

Me: or unemployed? haha
what sort of weird stuff?
links? book extracts? weird shit I saw?

Someone else: ya stuff like that
or weird thing you overhear in school
or during lectures
those were the best
ahha

"Art is science made clear." - Jean Cocteau

***

Quote from some unspecified fora on the whole "Why should we let a British director make a film about India?" issue:


"The 'right to depict' debate is interesting. Sensitive post-colonial Westerners are understandably squeamish about speaking for or even of poorer worlds, and we have consumed a lot of dreadful work that illustrates the perils of doing so.

But if that leads to an attitude in which everyone can only talk about and gaze upon their own, narrow cultural space, I believe we are poorer as a result."


"Actually, Bollywood has made several dark, gritty films about various issues in India - Amu or Fire, for example. The problem is that largely there isn't a market for them in India. They tend to be shown at fairly underground cinemas, late at night. In India, everyone goes to the cinema and they are fed exactly the type of films that they want to see - cheesy love stories involving elaborate dance"


And of course, there's the usual politics of grievance ("white/rich men are evil"):

"Following its release in India, the film faced criticism from various members of the public alleging that the film fuels western stereotypes about poverty in India and that it peddles "poverty porn" and "slum voyeurism". Tapeshwar Vishwakarma, a representative of a slum-dwellers' welfare group, has filed a defamation lawsuit against the film's music composer A.R. Rahman and actor Anil Kapoor, alleging that slum-dwellers were depicted in a bad light which would be a violation of their human rights. Vishwakarma's lawsuit alleged that the name of the movie is derogatory and he was particularly displeased that Indians associated with the film did not object to the use of word "slumdog." Nicholas Almeida, a social activist working in Mumbai, organized a protest against the film on the grounds that it intentionally exploited the poor for the purposes of profit, and that the title 'Slumdog millionaire" was offensive, demeaning and insulted their dignity. The protesters were slum dwellers in Mumbai, holding posters like "I am not a dog" who objected to being dehumanized as "dogs" in the film title.

Protests against Slumdog Millionaire have extended beyond Mumbai to other parts of the country. Slum dwellers in Patna, the capital of the Indian state of Bihar, have intensified protests against the movie. Activists have reported that slum dwellers will continue to protest till the film's director deletes the word 'dog' from the title. Protests in Patna intensified on 26 January 2009, when "protesters tore down posters and ransacked a movie theatre" screening the film. The following day, the police in Bihar tightened security "outside theatres in the state to thwart any further attacks."

Hindu Janjagruti Samiti has protested against the film for its allegedly inappropriate portrayal of the Hindu God Rama. The activist group believes that the portrayal of Rama is derogatory and "hurts the sentiments of Hindus". Writing for the conservative Daily Pioneer, Kanchan Gupta reiterated the objections of the activist group that the film provides a one-sided portrayal of the complexities of religious conflict in India, and that the film depicts Hindus as "rapacious monsters"."

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