What a tiring day.. started off discussing samurai power structures in class. It was quite cool, being the one listening instead of talking for a change, and to have such a knowledgable classmate. Even Dr Steben stopped to comment on his grasp of Japanese culture.

*sniff* I want my printer. I don’t like the idea of being dependent on people or organizations. I know you can’t live alone in this world, I’m just trying to be as independent as possible. When you depend on others, it decreases your control over your life. Yes, I am a control freak. It is a sign of mild obsession.

I had a look at the fictionalley.org online shop. The items are so gorgeous and tasteful. It consists mostly of apparel and general merchandise, decorated with art from the site. I want the Draco thingies! I do! But the shop site itself is run by this company that doesn’t accept money orders or international bank drafts, which is my preferred method of payment.

Was reading the first volume of the collected Sandman series. It’s dark, edgy and somewhat disturbing. Yummy. It’s not as dark as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which did actually turn me off with its graphic and somewhat gratuitious violence. I’m not putting down Alan Moore, his stuff is fantastic. It’s just that I don’t know if a man who gleefully whacks someone’s brains out is really supposed to be saving the world by that action. I guess it’s the humane perspective on that. The victim didn’t deserve what was coming to him. I think that was what disturbed me the most.

I personally feel, after reading the 1st story arc, that Sandman is a kinder, less vindictive being than Lucifer. Lucifer does not hesitate to punish those who have offended him. He sentenced a demon lord to eternal damnation just because he felt that he had been manipulated by said demon. I know that you don’t get to be Lord of Hell by being soft-hearted, but it just shows what kind of person Lucifer is. And somehow it attracts me. I love a man who is confident in his power. *grr*

Dream of the Endless, on the other hand, was faced with a maniac intent on taking over his dreamworld, and mocked most rudely, and yet in the end, all he did was send the maniac back to the asylum. And not in a mean way either; he gave them peaceful slumber that night as well. Which is impossible to find in a house of bedlam.

About the Tamagotchis.. well I finally procured a properly-sized screwdriver, and inserted batteries into both the eggs, but my sister’s purple one is even worse off than mine. NONE of the buttons work. At least mine only had one button not working. But when you only have 3 buttons, all the buttons are essential to using the toy, so both of them are write-offs. Pity. I was so hoping to resurrect them. I suppose I’ll have to settle for playing Sims again.

Thanks to all who viewed my blog!

Dear all who posted comments hoping for my recovery, thanks very much! I’m pretty much recovered now. My brain is working at full speed again, which is a good thing because classes have started in earnest.

We started doing Plato’s Meno in Philosophy, leaving Euthyphro behind. This means that a paper due on Euthyphro can’t be far behind. However, a change from the current topic of holiness and unholiness is welcomed.. now we’re discussing virtue! Philosophists are funny creatures. They only want to debate and research those topics which are vague, difficult to define and controversial. A love of wisdom, true. But also of neverending arguments, both the logical and verbal kind.

I never knew printers were so very VERY cheap to produce. The newest Canon printer model is now available on campus, I saw it yesterday. It already costs only 79 Singaporean dollars, which makes it the cheapest printer among my current choices. The thing that really amazes me is that it comes with ink cartridges (duh) which are worth, on retail, a total of 33 dollars. Now even if we assume that Canon are making truckloads of money selling overpriced ink, and hence lower the cost of the cartridges to, say, 15 dollars, that means that the printer, its cables and installation software only cost 64 dollars. No wonder my senior said you could make your own printer if you wanted to. It’s so darn cheap! I’m going to the pc fair today, I hope to get even better bargains there.

The only thing that rankles me about buying a printer is this: I fail to see the logic behind not supplying a USB cable with the printer. So, the printer company sells me a peripheral to attach to my pc, which actually needs my pc in order to have any sort of useful function, but! they don’t give you the cable to connect the pc to the peripheral. The logic fails me here. I just plain don’t know what is going on in the collective mind of the company. It never used to be this way. Back when all computers had parallel and serial ports, the cable that came with your printer was good enough. Everybody was happy. Then along came USB, and then USB printers, and now practicallly all new printers connect to PC via USB. (We are not discussing network or portable printers here.) So I have a USB port and a USB printer, but no USB cable. It just doesn’t compute. I know you can buy it outside, from any computer shop. I know it’s cheap. But since it’s so cheap and easily available, why don’t the manufacturers just PUT ONE IN WITH THE PRINTER?

It’s a conspiracy, I tell you.

Shouldn’t discuss this any more, my blood pressure is shooting up. Let’s talk about Harry Potter. I want to canvass all you HP fans who read fanfiction. (If you don’t know what that is, then you don’t read it.) Is Neville-Ginny a good ship? Is it acceptable? I mean, it’s not improbable. Although I might get bashed from Neville-Luna and Neville-other ppl shippers. I just need some feedback.

I have just finished a total of 5 hours of lectures. Whoa. We started off heavy, with Philosophy… and Socratic twists and turns of logic. After that I went off to the library to read this charming little book written nearly 100 years ago by Dr. Nitobe Inazo, it’s entitled Bushido, and it’s about the “Knightly Code” of the samurai. I thought the lecturer was a bit of a stretch to give us the whole book as a reading assignment, but it turns out the type is comfortably large, and the pages small. I suppose paper was cheaper then. It’s printed on really good, thick paper. Maybe that’s what parchment at Hogwarts is like.

My flu is still in full swing. It sucks. I had a tickly throat in lecture but I didn’t want to make too much noise, so I didn’t cough. But it only resulted in it itching some more. And I have a cold sore to boot! Chicken pox is, well.. now that I think about it, the whole reason we get immunity against chicken pox is because of cell memory. Unfortunately it’s also kinda the reason for my big, ugly cold sore. Because some of the virus remained dormant in my body, waiting for a suitable time to strike… I could make it sound dramatic and say I have herpes. Except that it’s not, it’s varicella zoster.

The Japanese samurai are a really really fascinating topic. No, really, beyond the hara-kiri and the swords, there are still more things to discover. I love learning about the niceties of other cultures. Not that the samurai were renowned for niceties, but they did have a solid social code. I am and always have been an amateur anthropologist. If our world was created by random gods who really couldn’t care less about us, I can still see why they brought us into existence. We’re so fun to watch!

I was talking to my sister online and she informed me that “The Scream” has been stolen. This is awful! It was a very bold robbery, done in broad daylight in front of staff and visitors. Terrible. I don’t know what else to say. It seems to me that life as a famous painting must suck. If you’re not being ‘imprisoned’ and put on display, you’re being kidnapped. Poor painting.

I was hankering after the New Tamagotchi Plus/Connexion/Connection (it depends where you’re from) because I saw it in Carrefour. I used to have the original one, it was yellow and orange. At 30 Singaporean dollars, the new one costs more than what I paid for my original. But it has that nifty IR port.. I wanted to get a pair and give one to my boyfriend, but he dislikes the idea severely.

If you look on eBay and other online sites, they do offer quite a good deal, but I’m not interested. I ended up downloading the Tamagotchi Simulator by this Thai guy called Tooh, but unfortunately I’ve forgotten the URL, so just search for it on Google or AltaVista or whatever search engine you use. It works just like the original Tamagotchi. You can even change the skins because it comes with a whole complement of them. I started out with the default magenta one, changed to the yellow one and got rid of it because it clashed horribly with my desktop wallpaper. It’s silver now.

North Korea won the table-tennis match. How about that. The Hermit Kingdom gets a bronze.

Not the computer kind. An actual, replicating-in-my-body virus. It looks like a mild flu. I swear it isn’t bird flu! There’s some concern in this country because there’s been another outbreak of H5N1 in the region, but because I don’t go near birds, it’s highly unlikely. (This is for the benefit of any government officials who may see fit to quarantine me.)

If anyone has been following the Singapore Olympic team’s fortunes, they would have noticed a real odd thing: The 2 medal hopefuls aren’t Singaporean. Not really. Ronald Susilo was the badminton hopeful, but he crashed out. He was Indonesian. Li Jia Wei (who is also Susilo’s girlfriend) is/was the table-tennis medal hopeful. (I haven’t seen the match outcome yet.) Funny isn’t it?

Something that’s even more interesting, to me anyway. Blame this on my increased awareness following my Singapore Studies module, but both the above-mentioned athletes are Chinese, and one of them is an Overseas Chinese (he IS Chinese, right?) and they met in a country where the majority of the population claim descent from someone who left the Homeland China. The Chinese Diaspora, baby! I think that for the ethnic Chinese, it’s easy to find a mate overseas because our ancestors went ALL over the place. Seriously. I have friends from Mauritius, for goodness’ sake! I didn’t know there were Chinese ppl in Mauritius! And when they were casting Cho Chang for HP4, I found out there were Chinese ppl in Scotland as well. I know we went everywhere. It’s just that Scotland doesn’t seem like an obvious choice.

Thanks to all those who read and post on my blog. It’s very much appreciated!

Has anyone noticed that the timing of this thing is off? I quite distinctly said I’m GMT +8, but somehow the timestamp on my posts is about 2 hours ahead. We’ll see.

It was absolutely pouring just now. The wind was buffeting the laundry on the lines and my t shirt (which I had forgotten about) fell to the damp ground. Ugh. Now I’ll have to wash it again.

Been thinking about getting a printer after all. There’s a lovely $129 Canon one, but it doesn’t come with Think Tanksâ„¢ technology which is a drawback, because I’ll mostly be printing lecture notes. Hmm. Maybe not, after all. It isn’t worth it to me

Dinner was ok today. Probably a large part of that is due to my decision to take the salad instead of the other veggies available. (I am aware that salad is not a vegetable per se.)

The watermelon was actually ok, rich red and juicy. Perhaps too juicy. Sticky hands are not the best thing to answer your phone with. Your shiny new phone.

I wonder if my recent feelings of warmth (as in body temperature) are due to the pills I’m eating. They are thermogenic, and I was very thirsty yesterday as well. NO for those of you who are wondering, they are not Ecstasy pills. I feel warm again. I need a shower. *ew*

I forgot about my laundry again, this is the 2nd time it has happened. Why did I forget? Cos I was doing this blog, that’s why!!! And surfing the Net (do ppl actually still use that term?) looking at laptops. This time someone had taken out my laundry for me, because they needed the machine. Nothing was missing, although when I got to the dining hall, there was a rumour of an underwear thief floating around. Gross isn’t it? Pervert. Hmm, reminds me of Ranma 1/2.. the grandpa who was a real Peeping Tom.

The cat was downstairs, I think she was trying to scratch an itch. Her little kitten is adorable, it’s fluffy and wide-eyed. (Aren’t all babies like that?) But her owners say the kitten is stupid. Oh well.
I just checked the stats, it would appear that ppl are actually reading this! Yay! Thanks very much!

I was walking back from lt11 today when I was thinking about something. I don’t know what it was I thought but it must have been pretty profound. I felt a need to write it down except that a) I had no paper on me and b) I don’t like to write much. Because I think much much faster than I write. Then I decided, the time has come to get a blog. I don’t have any excuse to put it off anymore, now that I have 24 hour broadband (this is what I pay tuition fees for, you see).

I just spent hours looking at laptops online. I’ve finally decided that the Acer 4000 series has the model I want. Well actually the model I really wanted was the Travelmate 292LCi, but it’s no longer available.

In lecture today, in front of me was a girl and her brand-new Apple iBook. Mac envy struck me, and it struck me HARD. Hence the trawling of the Apple site… I didn’t know that Apples were actually under the uni’s notebook loan scheme. But it doesn’t matter, because none of the models have the SuperDrive. They are of course extremely pleasing to the eye, and were wireless long before Centrino came out on the market. Sigh.

I really should learn HTML. The CBLC ppl still haven’t got back to me regarding the interview outcome. I need the money, I need the money… ooops. I hope none of them find this page.

You know, there’s a sidebar on the right of the page. I just looked at it. I’m advertising “log cabins”?? Isn’t there some feature you can put in, like what song you’re listening to or what mood you’re in, etc? I’ll have to go look at my friends’ blogs, they’re so much nicer.. *looks sadly at her amateurish blog page*