"Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock." - John Barrymore

Random Playlist Song: Beethoven - Piano Sonata 29, Op 106 - 'Hammerklavier' - Mvt 3 (Mei-Ting Sun)

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For what it's worth, happy 2005.

One of my correspondents: "May the fleas of a thousand camels infest the ass of the person who f***s up ur year and may his arms grow too short to scratch his ass!"

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Emma Lahana's eyeshadow makes her look like she's on drugs

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Someone: "seriously, i admire how you can remain so concerned about singapore =) I used to care much about such stuff but after NS, I feel that most Singaporaens like things the way it is and i decided to be a quitter and find my own happiness, instead of helping other (unworthy?) people find theirs

i think the main stumbling blocks are that the majority of singaporeans do not udnerstand what a true liberal democracy is like (majority beleives we are a democracy); and that even fi they did, they don't udenrstand its value"


Someone else: "i think you will make a great journalist, but not in s'pore haha"

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Haoxiang on the new RJC:

"The new RJ campus is huge. The entire RI population lined the street to the new campus making a helluva noise and clapping whenever anybody walked past. We (Weihao, KK, NJ, Morris, Me, CW) concluded that

1) There are many make-out spots (insight)
2) The RI guys are so lucky
3) In more ways than one
4) Junction 8 is definitely more exciting to hang out in
5) No more ODAC room :( The rock wall isn't up too :(
6) LT1 is like a movie theatre
7) LT1s are always above atriums
8) What is a 'Mezzanine?'

But it's a huge school. More like a polytechnic or university than a junior college."

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Who Owns the Alphabet?

"Companies strive for brand-name recognition, and adopt common phrases ("Where do you want to go today?") and even single words ("True") as being representative of that company, and no other. However, sometimes a word or phrase can be used by two very different companies, perhaps in different product spaces, who then have to fight it out for mind-share.

This page takes that to its logical limit, and asks: in the space of human awareness, who has won the battle for the basic building blocks, the very letters that make up the words with which we express ourselves? Who does the Internet's collective consciousness associate most closely with each of our 26 alphabet atoms?

As with so many things, Google has the answer. Googling for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet produces the following results:"

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Someone: no rebonding is the right choice, haha

Me: haha why why

Someone: just looks wrong on guys to me

Me: haha what about long hair then
it looks wrong on girls too heh

Someone: actually on girls i also prefer no dyeing or rebonding. but rebonding is sort of for them a way to match most guy's fantasy for straight long hair. they quite pathetic, muahaha

Me: haha yeah man
I like au naturel :P

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On liberalism:

"how many present-day 'liberal' philosophers are utilitarian? off the top of my
head, preeminent liberals like ackerman, kymlicka, and barry all have philosophies
founded on bases of dialogic neutrality, common social understandings, and impartiality respectively. i don't think any of these are immune from the charge of being arbitrary in an 'ultimate' sense, but i can't quite see how any of these take refuge in utilitarianism to justify themselves..."

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Where are all the dead animals? Sri Lanka asks - "Sri Lankan wildlife officials are stunned -- the worst tsunami in memory has killed around 22,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast, but they can't find any dead animals."

Bangladesh Escapes Tsunami Unscathed - "Cyclones, famine and floods are so common in this South Asian nation that singer-songwriter Joan Baez once lamented: When the sun sinks in the West, die a million people of Bangladesh... 'Allah has saved us'"
Too bad he couldn't save them from the 1970 cyclone that killed nearly half a million people. Or the 1991 cyclone that killed 138,000. Or the seemingly yearly floods and other disasters. Or the alternately late and early monsoons.