Hahaha this is fun. I bought my Zeroshock laptop sleeve yesterday so I could ferry my laptop to class, to keep me awake in lectures. I have a chemistry lecture which is easy, but not very engaging, and there’s not much point going all the way to Science faculty if I fall asleep in lecture.

So here I am, on the NUS network, while a storm rages outside over all of Singapore. I got caught in the preliminary drizzle while walking from the bus stop to the lecture theatre, but I didn’t mind. I love storms. The elemental power is fantastic. The wind, the darkness, the rising steam from the asphalt roads as the water starts to come down… it just makes me feel so alive. Tar roads are something you can only smell when it rains, because the heat from the roads makes the water on it evaporate, releasing the smell. Think about it… the bitumen is made from petroleum, which is basically dead and rotten dinosaurs. That is a smell that was 70 million years in the making! Yeah, the whole “circle of life” thing, isn’t it?

I still remember the big storm that hit KL in April or May 2004, when I was working in an office downtown. At 4 pm the sky darkened, and it soon became so dark that the sun was completely blocked out, and it was as dark as night. It felt like the Apocalypse. In fact I was half afraid that it might be, and that at any time now, the heavens and earth would split apart and we would be witness to The End of Days. That was a truly powerful storm.

Note to self: When bringing laptop to lecture, choose the seats with a non-swivel writing desk. Some desks are simple, you just swing them up. Like the ones I had in JC. The unfortunate thing about these desks is that they don’t lock in place, so your things are liable to spill. And I won’t take that chance with my baby. The LT I’m in has these writing desks that rotate into place, so it’s quite impossible to cause a spill. In any case, the laptop would fall into my lap first, rather than over the far edge and down an LCD-shattering 4 feet.

The bf was right, however. Lugging a 3-kg laptop around campus is no joke. So I’ll only take it to class for this particular lecture. I love you, laptop, but paper is a much more back-friendly option.

I come back to my room, ill and sniffling and disgruntled, to find a note on my door. Grr. I tear it off, only to discover that whichever idiot stuck it there, used glue instead of cellophane tape, meaning that it wasn’t a clean removal. Moron! Who taught you to use GLUE on OTHER PEOPLE’S doors, eh? Just for that, I thought, I’m not going to vote for you. (It’s elections season.)

I put down my bag and read the note, and was angered by its presumptuousness and absolute ridiculousness. Below is a partial reproduction, accompanied with my scathing remarks.

Hi friend, I am XXXXXXX from room xxxx. Would you like to swap room with me? (No.) I am staying in a double room and would like to change to a single room. (Even bigger no. What the hell do you think I work so hard in my committees for?)

My room mate is XXXXX, a cute, nice girl who is very helpful and warm-hearted. (But you don’t say if she’s clean, smelly, noisy etc.) She cares for me a lot, and that’s why I didn’t change room earlier. (It sounds like she’s putting her roommate up for adoption, that’s what.) But my problem is that I am such a light sleeper that I cannot sleep when somebody is around me. (Tough.) It’s worse that I have classes very early in the morning (Yeah, you and everyone else) and I have to go to sleep before 12hrs or else I will not be able to pay attention to the lecturers. (Funny, I sleep in lectures no matter how much sleep I get.)

My room mate, however, would like to study late at night till about 2 hrs. (What is with all this studying? I play games and watch TV till 2 am, that’s what I do.) So if you would like to have a lovely room mate (to take on walks, play fetch and curl up at your feet – oh sorry, this isn’t an SPCA ad) and save more than $600 a year on accommodation (you’re sweet, to worry about my finances, but I’m worried about YOU forking out an additional $600 for a single room, dearie), please contact me at xxx.

What ridiculousness. I don’t even know you and here you are, sticking notes that damage my door, asking if I would like to give you my single room, which I worked honestly for, in exchange for your lousy double room and ‘lovely’ roommate. What the hell do you mean, you can’t sleep with somebody else around? Maybe you should have thought of that before requesting a hall that has double rooms. Perhaps you should have opted for PGP, you silly fool!

You sleep at 12 and your roommate sleeps at 2 am? Here’s a simple solution. Eye masks. Sheesh. These people. Now, don’t say I’m being unsympathetic. I had the same problem last year, with a roommate whose sleep cycle was totally different from mine. The solution: Cover your eyes and ears. And when the chance came around for me to upgrade to a single room in the 2nd semester, I jumped on it straight away. And you know why I got to upgrade? Because it was my due, I collected my hall points and I qualified. So tough luck, honey, learn to roll with the hard knocks.

I admire her initiative in trying to do something about her situation, but her approach is entirely wrong. Why can’t she solve her own problem without involving outsiders? And her poor roommate, she must feel so guilty. If the plan goes through, the unwanted roommate will have to adjust to another newcomer. Then perhaps I’ll see another note on my door. Hmph.

alternative i.e. written by someone who actually knows style is more than just the clothes.

The concept of habituation/dishabituation as applied to dressing to be seen:

Habituation is what happens when you are presented with the same stimulus over and over again until you no longer pay attention to it. Dishabituation occurs when you are presented with a different stimulus and, attracted by its novelty, you dishabituate and pay more attention to the new stimulus. Being the sort of odd genius that I am, I have applied this principle to dressing.

If a girl wears T-shirt and jeans every day, and every time she goes out, soon the boys around her will cease to pay attention to her dressing, because they have habituated. After they have habituated, she should then wear something totally different, like a tube top and miniskirt. The boys will once again pay attention to her, and in fact they will pay her even more attention than they usually do, because the new stimulus of the tube top and miniskirt attracts them.

Similarly, if a girl decides to attract boys by wearing a tube top and miniskirt every day, after a while the boys will cease to look, because they have already habituated to her skimpy dressing. Hence she must dishabituate them by wearing something different, for example a peasant top and long bohemian skirt, so that she can cover up without being unfashionable. After the boys have habituated themselves to this ensemble, she can then wow them again with the tube top and miniskirt.

See? There IS more to style than just the clothes, it’s called “applied psychology”. Hehehe. Now I should trademark the title “The Psychology of Style” in case I ever want to write a book about it.

Dressing to appeal to higher-order thinking:

There’s no need to think too much about your outfits. Just throw on a skimpy top and short-shorts, or a miniskirt, and the boys will be happy. After all, the boobs-butt-legs combo is a guaranteed killer.

Is this what you think? Is this why there are scantily-dressed clones walking around the Arts faculty, who, despite what they think, are not being original and unique? Dahlings, you’re dressing to appeal to the primal senses. Don’t give me shit about celebrating the female form or being aesthetically pleasing. The way you dress sends out one signal only: SEX. And so, the only males you’re going to attract dressed like that, are the ones who only have sex on the brain. Good luck to you making a proper boyfriend out of those.

In order to snag someone with a bit more up there than just copulation, you must also expend some brainpower in your dressing. Being a little quirky helps. The sash-on-the-miniskirt is so overdone, dears. Try a cravat around the neck instead. And if you don’t know what a cravat is, then… sigh. Invest in a dictionary, won’t you?

Singapore, not being a very ‘hat’ country, means that most girls go around bare-headed, the better to show off their funky-coloured highlights with. But a hat really does top off the outfit, know what I mean? I don’t just mean a visor worn sideways to complement your tracksuit and vintage Adidas sneakers. Baseball caps can be worn with most things, not just sporty clothes, and it gives definition to your face. Note well: Not trucker hats. Those have had their day in the sun, and withered away. If you want to be really daring, you could go a bit Ascot and have a proper ladylike hat, but then you’ll have to take it off in lecture and show the world your hat hair. Ugh. Slouchy hats like the newsboy hat popularised by Britney Spears are also good, but they are a bit tricky to carry off. If you have the guts, you can pop down to Topshop and get a fedora. Old-school style with a new vibe. You need bucketloads of confidence to carry one off, though.

The easiest trick in my book is colour-coordination. It works on several levels: It shows that you don’t just randomly throw on whatever comes to hand in the morning, and that you do plan your purchases, so that they’ll always match something you already have in your wardrobe. Case in point: I have a lot of pink stuff. A LOT. My bag and watch are already pink, so every day my accessories match. And if I’m wearing a pink t-shirt, of which I have plenty, I have pink shoes to go with it. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Ugh! All in bubblegum pink! I must be mad! No, darling, not all in the same shade. Goodness, I’m not a Barbie doll. They MUST be in different shades, so that it looks pulled together but not overdone. Guys are much more likely to notice you when you’re coordinated, for the simple reason that it looks good.

If you don’t want to coordinate a whole outfit, pick one very obvious accessory and match your top to it. This works particularly well if it’s an outstanding colour such as turquoise or aqua blue. Black doesn’t count, it’s a bit too plain to have an effect. This girl sitting in my lecture had huge plastic hoop earrings in teal or baby blue (can’t tell, lighting effects) that matched her jacket to within 2 shades. Brilliant move. Because the earrings can’t be ignored (they’re swinging madly on either side of her face, for goodness’ sake) they draw attention to her matching top. Just a word, though: pick a colour that’s easy on the eyes. Happy sunshine yellow, not neon yellow. Cherry pink, not bright shocking pink. You want to amaze people, not blind them.

And finally, for the girl who loves shy, shoe-gazer guys: Paint your toenails. Since he stares at the floor so much, this is a better way to attract his attention, methinks. *grin*

Once in a while, life sucks. I’ve been suspecting it was PMS, but life has been sucking for quite a while, and not all of it is controlled by hormones so therefore, the Great Big Life Planner Up There must have some major malfunctions somewhere.

I am an alligator, because alligators are tough and gnarly and not nice to touch and they snap. 3 hours of sitting in a meeting debating themes for the prom will do that to you. I’m now more convinced than ever that, when it comes to programme teams, you can have cotton candy for brains, but as long as you’re “cute” and “bubbly”, they’ll probably let you on the team. How else does one explain the presence of 4 stupid bimbos whose most profound thought is “I want to dress up as a fairy!” I can’t stand them, they are so incredibly shallow, illiterate (i.e. not well-read) and generally stupid.

And the new service staff in the dining hall serves to piss me off too. Last year we had a rotund Chinese guy and two Indian men who were quite generous with the servings, and they were quick on the job. This year, the Chinese guy got promoted to the position of chef, and the Indian guys were nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, two elderly uncles took over the serving positions. Yesterday, even the old uncles had been replaced with 2 overweight ladies. They are slow. Very very slow. And they are ridiculously stingy with portions. I watched in open-mouthed disbelief as the fat one scooped me a miserable 2 pieces of Japanese tofu. Hello aunty. I know I don’t take that much rice, but I pay the same as the rest, and I want a decent serving of my side dishes ok!

I don’t know if it would be mean to say this, but I suspect she’s a bit slow in the head. I am not discriminating against the mentally disabled – hello, I used to do volunteer work with them – but it’s not her slowness, but rather the fact that she doesn’t even seem to be trying.

And overall, their logistics planning sucks. Yesterday, they ran out of rice. I refused to eat what was left in the pot – burnt crusts of rice – so I only had meat. But either way, they would have run out of rice anyway, as the 7 o’ clock crowd came in. Ridiculous.

That was just the alligator part. I haven’t yet started on why I’m misogynistic.

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Yesterday, it was a lack of food at dinner. Today, my main gripe is a lousy Japanese lecturer.

This lecturer is from the PRC and while I have no qualms about the quality of her Japanese, I only wish she had put as much effort into learning English. I have been told that she is one of the best Japanese teachers around, with precise, traditional pronunciation, but screw that! Her English is quite unintelligible at times. If Agagooga sat in on one of my lectures, he’d have a field day.

Example: “Singapore is a falling word.” Huh? Falling word? You mean like falling tone, that kind of thing? “So we must write using katakana.” Oh shit! Foreign word is it… what the hell.

And because I always do my pre-lecture readings (like we were told to), there is nothing new for me to learn in the lecture. I usually end up falling asleep. It doesn’t help that she talks so slowly, with none of the animated-ness of my Japanese tutors.

I’ve been contemplating taking my laptop to class and hiding in the back rows so that I can play Harvest Moon during boring lectures. I wouldn’t do this for all lectures, my two psychology lectures require full concentration, but for the boring ones like Japanese and Living With Chemistry (not a boring lecture per se, but again, nothing new for me to learn), it might solve 2 problems at once:
How to stay awake in lectures and how to play more Harvest Moon. Now I can stay awake in lectures, never miss anything and still clock a couple more hours of gaming each day!

Now to see if the 3 kg baby will be comfortable in my bag. Am contemplating buying a Zeroshock laptop sleeve to hold it in. The bf wants one as well, so we’ll probably go looking this weekend. I only want Zeroshock. Nothing is too good for my baby, and if you’re going to spend, you might as well get the best.

I’ve been thinking, that cigarettes and carbohydrates are 2 very popular vices. Personally I prefer carbs, but as we shall see below, they have some unflattering side effects. So I began to compare them with ciggies.

Cigarettes:

Pluses:

• Help you stay slim by making you feel satiated. (Or something to that effect.) My senior to me, after a particularly unsatisfying hall dinner: “Okay, that’s it, have to go buy cigarettes now.”
  “Do they really help you feel full?”
  “Not really, but after smoking you feel more satisfied.” So ok.
• You can look cool smoking them, as long as it’s done in the right environment and context. Blowing your smoke as you walk along Orchard on a weekend is not cool. It’s stupid and rude. Some of my friends are smokers and I have no problem with them smoking in front of me, because they have enough manners to excuse themselves, and apologise should the smoke get in my face. Personally I think ciggies would be nice, smoked on a balcony with a view of the night sky, while one contemplates on heavy affairs. It just seems so romantic that way. Ciggies in daytime, at the open-air area of Starbucks, with the smoke indiscriminately blown over to your table by some stupid dying-to-look-cool young woman: not nice.

Minuses:

• Bad breath and general body and clothes odour. The smell isn’t too bad overall, which is why I have no problems letting my smoker friends sit next to me in the lecture theatre right after they’ve had a smoke. But personally I hate the way I stink after I get back from a club.
• If you believe the ad, bad for your skin. Premature aging etc. Well, I suppose it makes sense, all that smoke isn’t exactly La Mer face cream, you know.
• Do I even need to mention the various illnesses? Everytime someone asks me if I smoke, I answer, “No, I have enough trouble breathing as it is.” I already have rhinitis and an increased susceptibility to colds and flus. I don’t need bronchitis and emphysema to accompany me in my old age, assuming I live that long.

Carbs:

Pluses:

• One of the seven major food groups. Minor food groups include alcohol, chocolate and pasta cream sauce. Mmmm. A plus because we need it for energy, duh.
• Comes in delectable variants such as potatoes, pasta, rice, noodles, potato crisps, cakes, yau char kway…
• Cheap. Doesn’t cost 10 dollars per box. Imagine how many yau char kways you could buy for 10 dollars… mmmmm.

Minuses:

• According to the slimming supplements, must be blocked if one is to lose fat and/or weight. Really, all of them seem to have a special “block carbohydrates” function. Hence I presume that they contribute to weight gain, especially with my current diet and physical activity level.
• Usually plain-tasting, so is served with other yummy but even more fattening foods. Eg. cream sauce for pasta, cut into strips and fried in oil for potatoes, iced with sugar frosting for cakes. Don’t lie, you know you like them better that way, too!
• Obesity is also a horrible disease.

I can’t make a decision. They’re both so evil. Smoke and stay slim, or eat carbs and get fat? Smoke and ruin my delicate skin, or eat carbs and ruin my slender figure?