A Really Random Post

In this post, you will find information, randomly placed.


I almost did not want to put this picture here, for fear that you might think that this random allocation style of working is my style of management. But it was too unique a picture to stay hidden in the depths of my D drive for too long. Even closer than the Tessarina condo, which I was hoping so badly I could stay in. So, disclaimer here : I am not haphazard with my work! This is just a picture!
This random picture captures my dessert which I shared with Dad and Jie at the Bedok Hawker Centre. The Green syrup tasted more like Kiwi than, and there was not gula melaka - a must have with chendol - but it was still great! This reminds me of that particular dessert store in Chinatown which sells ice kachang topped by only one flavouring - gula melaka - but still tastes a whole lot more flavourful than those multi-coloured, ice-cream and chocolate rice topped ones you get at foodcourts.
Mango Shaved Ice, from the same stall. Incredibly smooth and tasty ice shavings.

I am so thankful to Jie for introducing me to the wonders of www.mysoju.com .

Once the holiday swings by, I log on, choose a random show from the Korean/Japanese offerings and watch it till I want to stop. I started with 'Dear Friends', it could not get past the 1:00min mark due to the faulty connection, and the lack of an engaging plot which prevented me from hitting F5. Now I'm on to 'The Chaser'.

Can you string together 'serial killer, prostitute, deaths, stabbed'? I guess I have read of a number of serial killers who murder prostitutes by stabbing them. But I might have left out another word though - impotence. Apparently, it is common for these type of serial killers to be impotent men.
Imagine a man, driven to so much shame, anger, pain by his inability to have an erection that he has to seek an alternative phallus. In this case, a chisel. Which he hammers into a woman's head to exhibit the ultimate display of authority to her.

Almost an All-Nighter

There is this love-hate relationship I have with pulling all-nighters. Not that I have actually, the furthest I have gone was to finally shut down my laptop at 5:30am this morning after stringing together a bunch of words and quotations from The Island of Doctor Moreau and pepper them with punctuation, and call it an essay. I submitted that chunk of writing some 11.5 hours later, at 5pm, after a quick, but necessarily fervent prayer for the Good Lord's mercy.

I do not like to turn in late. In fact, I often wish, and try to hit the sack by midnight. Yet, logging off msn while the majority of my friends are still online is somehow unsettling. I cannot help but formulate some equation which goes like: sleeping early = not working as hard :-S Furthermore, hearing the choruses of 'I didn't sleep at all last night' ringing everywhere after one of those '3 essays and presentation and text' week after waking up from the comparatively long 6 hours or so I had only serves to send trains of 'omg what if I could have spent those extra hours editing' through my head.

So, why the exception this morning? I'd like to think that it was a genuine case of writer's block. I remember reading sections of the novel over and over again, writing out various ideas, typing sentence after sentence which had no relation together, and it was only at 1am that I managed to force some sense of cohesion to my thoughts. I droned out word by word, my typing frequently interrupted by rearranging paragraphs and editing my thesis statement, till I hit the 3:30am mark. Jie went off to sleep first. Amazingly, it felt as if I was writing the essay at 3:30pm. I was wide awake, typing and hitting backspace, editing, doing whatever I could for an essay which was due that very same day. I was never in such a situation before, and beneath the panic that was gripping me as the minute hand ticked by, I felt this sense of excitement. As I hit 4am, I stopped for a moment to wonder if I should actually sleep at all. But I had to shelve that thought as quickly as it appeared when I realized I was only at the 600 word mark. 5am beckoned and the sleepiness kicked in. It was way too late to turn back then, I had to soldier on. There was this strange allure to pulling an all-nighter for my essay. I had finally experienced this quintessentially university phenomenon.

Amazingly, the earlier experienced onset of tiredness dissipated when I actually hit the sack. I had trouble going to sleep, and no trouble getting up on time for school. But, it was in school that I was reduced to a 'zombie' state. I finally understood what it meant, to feel that sense of mild dizziness and reduced senses despite normal functioning of the limbs. That was scary enough. It was a state of mind paralysis I never want to experience again.

So, no more all nighters for me!

I have come to realize that of the many times when I go 'oh, but I did my best already' as I sigh forlorn at bad outcomes, a large percentage were actually the result of anything but 'my best already'.

Why, self, did this revelation come so late?

Crossing

I initially reckoned that the fact that I was scheduled to present assignment 2 on week 6 was a blessing indeed. How much more I could have done with that extra week! However, that simply meant I would have to report to school at 9am on the Wednesday after the Chinese New Year week though Wednesday, with classes beginning only at 2:30pm, is usually my dedicated 'sleep in' day. Nothing much to gripe about though, since Dad, having taken a look at the bulky accesory package of tripod stand and camera declared 'you NEED a lift' and offered to give me one.



The journey to school was largely uneventful apart from Dad's occasional one-liners. I eventually lapsed into a similar silence too, and started to car-watch, noticing a really rundown boneshaker throttling along with an old man behind the wheel, a permed red pouffant hair aunty in her mercedes benz, till the traffic came to a major and sudden stop.



I was all ready to dismiss it with 'must have been some drunkard driving home after last minute CNY binging' or 'bet someone did not get a good night sleep after all that festivitity' till the offending cause of the multi-car slowdown came walking towards our car.

I could not believe how the offender, despite having made tons of cars and trucks and several heavy vehicles slam their brakes, could continute to stroll across all 3 lanes, ignorant of the resounding symphony of car horns and flashing brake lights. It took a whole of 5 minutes for the offender to get across to the Chevron marking before Dad could resume normal speed and continued the drive to school.

Maybe it was the shock of seeing how the offender did not match my initial profile image, but I did not manage to whisk out my camera phone in time to snap a picture. Either way, I really should have, because there was something very visually intriguing about him/her (preciesely! the gender was unclear). Nevermind, I managed to procure a picture of the internet which bore a remarkable resemblance to the offender.

And here it is:

It was a dog......

My goodness!

Oh my goodness indeed. It has been so long since I touched this blog, and I feel like jumping platform to tumblr.

Water stop!

Option 1 : The past 4 days have been crazy...

Option 2: It must have been the hectic craziness of the past 4 days leading up to today's presentation, that I remained completely numb during the 2 pop quizzes thrown at me yesterday and today...

Option 3: I had to take care of 2 babies over the past 4 days. It was crazy. One couldn't speak, the other was just plain slow.

Option 4: I'm so glad the presentation is over, and that it went well.

4 options to being this blog post, with all 4 being wholly formulaic types.

I used the word 'crazy' in 3 of them, and '4' in all 4 of them. Ok, at least I got the latter accurate. As for 'crazy', maybe there could be a better word.

Just that I cannot think of it now.