Monthly Archive
Browsing entries posted on March 2007
Scruffy is a hero
Some background information: Scruffy is one of the hall kitties. She is the grande dame of the felines of Eusoff, having been here since my seniors (who have since graduated) were freshmen. That’s a long time, and she’s even earned a mention in our Dance Production along with Bendy (RIP), so named for her kinked tail, and Bendy’s daughter Wang Hai (missing, presumed dead). Scruffy responds to her name and will follow you if she wants, although she doesn’t belong to anyone - she’s above petty ownership.
So today I was getting back to my room, and uncharacteristically took the B1 route instead of my usual B2 route, since there was a bit of congestion at B2. At the bottom of the stairs, I met Scruffy. As I bent to say hello to her, I noticed a fresh red wound above her right eye, and the gory remains of a lizard strewn across the tiles.
Not just any old lizard, either. This wasn’t one of those translucent-bellied little geckos - it was twice as large, and scaly. In fact it looked quite like the chameleon lizards that like to sunbathe on the staircase leading up to the carpark. Oh dear. Perhaps she was hungry and hunted one down, because I don’t see any other reason for a lizard to take on a cat that’s twenty times bigger.
And now for the gory details. The triangular head, with beady eyes staring, was what I had initially taken to be a withered white strawberry. (My vision was particularly impaired today.) The lower body, with hind legs and tail, was several inches away. Between these two lay a severed foot. No doubt the lizard had put up quite a fight, only for Scruffy to dispatch it gruesomely. Bleah, I can’t believe she was eating that. I didn’t actually see her eat it, but like I said, I don’t think she was hunting for fun.
Well, it was too late for the lizard, and my immediate concern was for Scruffy’s battle wound. I enticed her to the empty space in B1 where there was more sunlight, and ran back to my room for cotton, antiseptic cream and a can of tuna. While she nibbled daintily at the food, I tried to clean her wound. She flinched every time, so the cream ended up leaving white specks all over her face. Since she didn’t seem to be troubled by it, I gave up on my veterinary ambitions and moved the tuna (and by extension, Scruffy) to the end of my corridor where I could keep a closer eye on her.
Pictures after the jump as they’re really very gory. She finished the can of tuna and went off somewhere - she’s a Eusoff nomad, we’ll see her when we see her. I’m sure she’ll recover fine, especially since she seems to be getting enough food - she’s tubby.
A Beautiful End To A Horrible Year
After months of preparations, a gazillion meeting-hours, and a dozen headaches, our Annual Dinner and Dance occurred last Friday. And although I wasn’t pleased with the event, being the nitpicky organiser-person that I am, the guests seemed to enjoy themselves.
I suppose it wasn’t as fun as last year, but we had our own people emceeing instead of a professional, so that might have been it. We lost a lot of momentum when someone somewhere dropped the ball, and things got a bit messy for a while, and people walked out to take pictures instead of staying throughout for the event.
But as always, Eusoffians can be relied on to be their insane selves. The D4 guys, most of whom are graduating this year, came as an assortment of wrestlers, among them Mankind, The Undertaker, and Hulk Hogan. Obviously, they stole the show, although they had some competition from the likes of the C4 Chinese Mafia who, upon entering, started beating up a rival boss with rolled-up newspapers. Eh, okay.
The girls, not to be outdone, came as ragdolls, retards and refreshed towel babes. Those were among the more inspired interpretations of the acronym W.A.R. I would have come dressed to the theme as well, except that I couldn’t get (into) a costume in time, and besides I had to sit at the main comm table so we were all dressed relatively formally.
Well, now that it’s all over, I have one less thing to worry about. I can’t honestly say it’s been fun swanning around as vice-head, because most of the time people assumed I was a programmer, seeing how I have been one for the past 2 years. While we were packing up, I looked at my fellow hall residents, busily wandering around the hall taking pictures for keepsakes. You could barely move for fear of wandering unannounced into yet another person’s photograph. And for the third year running, there was no dance to follow my dinner. I got a lift home from my block’s Resident Fellow, along with a few blockmates. But at least this year, I got to lounge around in the hotel room, sitting on the plush bed and watching MTV while pretending to oversee operations. Hehe. Hey, I’ve worked long and hard for the privilege of a few hours in comfort!
DnD is traditionally the crowning achievement for the Eusoffian calendar year, since it’s the last major event after IHG and Dance Production. This year, DnD is a bit bittersweet for me since it’s the last one I’ll be actively a part of - as a 4th year next year, it’s a bit extra and unnecessary for me to join any committees, plus I should really make way for the younger kids. It marks the end (well, almost) of what have been a most trying 2 semesters.
I’ve never been busier, or more overworked, and I’ve certainly not done so badly in exams since my very first semester. In between all the shit that I’ve had to deal with, it’s a wonder I came through with heart and wrists intact (nod to Fall Out Boy). It’s really been an annus horribilis for me, and I know I’m not the only one who’s glad to see the end of 2006/2007.
So that’s what DnD means to me, personally. The final headache to cap all the major and minor headaches I’ve faced along the way. But I’ve learned a lot, both about myself and about others. As usual, experience is a tough teacher.
*Edited 31st March* Photos available here.
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The Faces We Never Show
There’s a song by 3 Doors Down that goes “You love me but you don’t know who I am”. I found a link to the video, which is actually pretty good. A little bit cliched, but interesting watching.
I think the lyrics for the chorus are so true. How many of us truly know the people we hang out with? There are so many aspects to personality, indeed, one could argue that personality is just a series of masks we wear, such that different people see different masks.
Just when you think you really know someone, they do or say something totally unexpected, such that you never look at them the same way again. Even if it wasn’t a negative thing, for your schema of them to be so drastically revised, that’s a pretty big change.
And maybe because we don’t want people to look at us differently from the way we did before, we hold back from opening up to them. Can you love someone if you don’t know who they are, inside? Why not, indeed. You love the person you see, but whether you could accept the person behind the masks - that’s another matter.
Issues of self and other’s perceptions make my head hurt.
Hola!
*Paid Post*
I remember 2 years ago, there was all this talk of a Spanish revolution happening at my beloved Liverpool. Our Spanish coach brought in a bucketful of Spanish players, and because of the huge successes he’s achieved, I’m quite positively biased towards Spain now.
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The Dark Side Of Hall Life
It’s that time of year when hall people start turning into blubbering, time-starved mounds of flesh. After the little hiatus post-Dance Production, the madness has started up again with Open House last weekend, Amplitude this weekend, DnD next week and finally DramaFeste the week after that. That’s just for me, and I still have 2 term papers to hand up that aren’t even so much as a blank Word document yet.
I suppose with Open House just concluded, I’m thinking about all the innocent little chiddlers, fresh from A-Levels and NS, eagerly exploring the campus and looking forward to the fun, happening and very sexy hall life they’ve been hearing so much about. Yeah well, trust the Open House exhibition to not tell you the dark side, eh?
Besides the madness of hall activities, which I have already documented many times, there are the little niggly hassles of actually living with 500 of your peers. 500 crazy young people in one place are enough havoc on their own, but it seems outsiders want in on the fun as well. Recently we’ve had a spate of intruders, much more than I ever remember having in the 2 years past. I blame it on the pretty girls living in short wing, all the perverts are probably drawn here because of them. They should do us all a favour and move out, and stop endangering the likes of me who only wants to live peacefully.
People can be inconsiderate too. There’s only one fridge, one microwave oven, one sink. And yet some people think it’s solely for their use. Today, while I was nuking my noodles, the office support staff (basically the auntie) came in and left her food there while she waited for her turn. Unfortunately for her, the moment I took my food out, another girl just went ahead and plunked her stuff inside without even looking around.
Okay, to be fair, the auntie had walked off, so how would we know? But there was just something in the way the girl barged in, that predisposed me towards a great dislike of her. I can’t stand the likes of her, but unfortunately my corridor is populated with them. At least I can deal with the noise now that I have my own aural-assault weapons to drown out their shrill voices and bad taste in music.
And of course, these are probably the same people who leave food debris in the sink, with the whole “someone will clean up after me” attitude. I don’t know what they learnt growing up, but maybe they need more than a language immersion programme when they first arrive here. Things that would get me whacked at home, such as not cleaning up after myself and leaving my rubbish everywhere, seems to be de rigeur with them.
Some days I really dislike living in hall, or rather living in hall with these people. Incoming freshmen would really do well to heed my warning and consider carefully their decision to move in. International cooperation and culture-mixing, my foot.
Show Your Feet Some Reef Love
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Emo Lovin’ Time!
I just ran my Fall Out Boy CD, Infinity On High, a couple of times. It’s not mind-blowingly awesome, but I’m new to the punk scene so perhaps I’m not quite used to their type of all-over-the-place mentality yet. I like my song choruses to actually have the title of the song in there, but Fall Out Boy apparently don’t subscribe to that ethos. Tracks 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 don’t have titles in the choruses. Or anywhere else for that matter.
Of course it doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the music, but it would help if I knew which parts were which, because when I want to play along to the song, I need to keep track of where I am on the page. It all gets a bit overwhelming sometimes.
Andy Hurley’s drumming is solid, as usual. He’s probably the most consistent member of the band. I have no opinions of Joe Trohman’s guitar playing, since I don’t play guitar and punk is supposed to be a bit messy, so what I take to be sloppy playing might just be his own style. Some online reviews have mentioned that Patrick Stump’s singing has slacked off a bit. I’m not really sure how to interpret his singing. I mean, I’m not blown away by it, but it works with the sound as a whole, even when they’re throwing in gospel and hip-hop influences. I just wish I could differentiate when Pete Wentz is singing harmony. His basslines are phat, although nothing spectacular - punk isn’t renowned for artistry in that department.
As usual, the lyrics are divisive. Some love the emo honesty of Pete’s words, some hate them for precisely that reason. Well, not being a fan of emo poetry, I find the references to morbidity a bit loser-ish sometimes. Like in “Sugar, We’re Going Down”, a line goes “Lie in the grass, next to the mausoleum”. What relevance does a mausoleum have to anything? Nothing, it’s just there as a romantic memento mori. There’s less navel-gazing in this album, or at least it’s not too whiny about it. There is a reference to keeping your “hearts and wrists intact”, which is such a cliche, really.
I wonder if I could ever date an emo boy. Probably not, since they’re kinda rare in my age range. Like I said, after 18 (or was it 21?), being emo is just immature. And by emo, I mean scene-emo, with the hair and the eyeliner. Being depressed is not the same as being emo. I have no problems with people expressing their pain and sorrow, I just don’t see why it has to come along with an entire subculture. And if you’re going to throw my Pete Wentz obsession in my face, I will just say that he’s the bassist, and I have a thing for bassists. My acquaintance pool has a funny knack of throwing them up every so often, and it’s not because I only befriend bassists. Probability and availability heuristics, coupled with saliency effects, are funny things.
So I lied. I don’t love emo people, quite the contrary, in fact. But I will concede, their preferred brand of music isn’t half bad.
What’s Up At Your Startup
*Paid Post*
The PayPerPost people have been tantalising us with hints of a big announcement just over the horizon. And being the fun-loving, always-up-for-a-good-time peeps that they are, they’ve asked us to present our conjectures regarding possible announcements.
It really could be anything, ranging from a blogger’s meetup (but that’s already coming, it’s PostieCon 07) to maybe a brand spanking new interface - not that anything’s wrong with the current one. It could be that they’ve secured a contract with a huge conglomerate, or they’re being bought over by Google.
Actually, the Google one is quite plausible, after all Google wants to be number one in everything Internet-related. They own Blogger.com, they bought YouTube for the videos, so maybe online advertising via blogs is their next frontier of exploration. Okay, even if it isn’t Google, it could be some other biggie like Yahoo, MSN, or AOL.
Considering that they have a picture of someone dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow as an ad for their $1000 blog opportunity, maybe they’re going to film a movie. They already have a reality TV series called Rock Startup, which chronicles the journey PayPerPost has taken so far. That would be huge news indeed! A movie like that wouldn’t really hit the big time, since paid blogging is a relatively new enterprise, but it could muster up a cult following. Then again, I am the same person who sat through a movie about Steve Jobs’ early life (like say college-age) so I might be biased in favour of such computer-related movies. The movie’s called “Pirates of Silicon Valley”, in case you’re curious. Oooh! Just like Pirates of the Carribbean!
Well, those are my guesses anyway. PayPerPost is such an unpredictable place, it could really be anything. And I mean that in a nice way.
Honesty Burns
I’ll never sing again.
Every year I make a fool out of myself singing in front of an audience. This year, song dedications went ok, but Jam Aloud didn’t. Not only did we not rank among the top 3, but when I watched the video for our original song, it was one huge cringefest after another.
After the performance, my bro Albert told me I was a bit screamy and pitchy. I see now why he said so. Honestly, it’s terrible! Videos here.
And I was running a search for one of the other bands in the competition, and came across this. You have to scroll down to where it says “Jam Aloud”. I was hoping to find out more about the other bands, and maybe I shouldn’t have finished reading the post. But morbid curiosity got the better of me, and while the author’s opinions are hugely negative and still irk me a bit, I have to admit that wasn’t one of my better performances. (On the other hand, let’s see you get up on stage and work it without falling apart like a shaken jelly, beeyatch.)
Sometimes I feel guilty that where it all fell apart was my vocals. To be frank, I never really felt very comfortable singing that song. I love rock music, but it’s true that my voice is too “pure” and choir-ish to really bring across the growl of rock n’ roll. But I guess you can’t please everyone. On the one hand, I get feedback that my sweet voice doesn’t blend well with the rock feel of the song and the lead singer’s vocals, and on the other, when I try to rockify it, it just gets out of control, which is what someone else said. Sigh. There’s really no pleasing everyone.
Thank goodness I’m not as emotionally fragile as Pete Wentz who, despite being a platinum-selling rock star worshipped by teenagers, still stays awake at night fuming over negative LiveJournal entries. Ok, so I was just looking for an excuse to mention him. But there’s an important lesson for us all, aye? Can’t let people get to you.
But I’m still not going to sing that kind of song anymore, really. My new rule of thumb is - if I have to scream it, it’s not meant for me. Of course, my choice of songs to perform are limited by the people I’m performing with, and I’m incapable of accompanying myself, so… it’s either I give in, or risk a huge fight over artistic differences.
I should just stick to playing an instrument la.
PostieCon 2007
*Paid Post*
There’s an upcoming blogging conference happening soon, and this one is targeted at bloggers who want to use their blog not just as a vehicle of expression, but also as an income generator.
PostieCon 2007’s theme is “You’re A Rock Star”, based on the premise that bloggers and Internet personalities are the new generation of rock stars. As part of the programme, noted bloggers will be giving talks on becoming a better blogger, and building traffic and readership for your blog. Besides the talks by the likes of Robert Scoble, David Ponce and Dan Rua, the event will conclude with the Bloggers’ Choice Awards ceremony.
The conference runs over two days, from June 1st to June 2nd in Orlando, Florida. Ticket prices are US$199.95 from now until May 18th, after which the price goes up to US$249.95. It promises to be a fun, entertaining and informative event, well worth the ticket price. After all, you could probably recoup that through increased blog revenue after applying the lessons you learned from the rock stars of blogging!
There’s no restriction on who can attend, besides the obvious parameter of the number of attendees. Those non-US-based bloggers could probably make a “school trip” out of this, and strengthen the bonds between bloggers in their country as well. Start making your plans now!
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