my long overdue self-congratulatory wow post
After languishing at 58 and 59 for about three months now, poor neglected Zyn has finally hit level 60.
Congratulations me!!! *dances wildly*
Of course this wasn't before all the other members of my guild each started a second character (I think one of them is already level 48) and changed the guild message of the day to read "Go, Zyn, go!"
Which, come to think of it, isn't so much encouraging as condescending. But, you know, whatever - I'm zen.
Actually, I'm zyn. Ahahahahaha.
I should go on runs and upgrade my sad, sad gear, but what I really want to do is PVP in battlegrounds even though Alterac Valley is such a complete mess.
Aiyah who am I kidding. Now that I've reached 60 I'll probably go online even less.
It's like how I'm currently in the middle of five books simultaneously - Cherian George's Air-Conditioned Nation, Steven Pinker's Language Instinct, Philip Roth's Everyman, Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness, and Jung Chang/Jon Halliday's Mao - and yet today I bought two more Ishiguros because that's honestly the only thing I'm in the mood for and probably the only books I will get around to finishing within the next month or so.
And now I am going to sleep because I have to work tomorrow (or, rather, later today). But it's all good because - I'm 60!
Go me.
:)
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2:01 AM ::
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skin
It's been a long and arduous week and I'm very, very tired, but I'm so glad I went out tonight. A more coherent entry may come tomorrow (no promises), but for now, in rough chronological order:
Kneeling romance! Love letters! Retarded stalkers! Single strands of hair! Sir Stamford Raffles! 17-minute songs! Masturbating gurkhas! Nipple-pinching!
I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard. We have to do this again.
posted by zyn ::
3:52 AM ::
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headache
I miss J.
I could really do with a drink right now. Even though I had one yesterday. And a few the day before. And one or two the day before that.
Hmmm.
Conversation last night:
HB: My colleague quit drinking coffee because it made him too jittery.
Me: Maybe I should quit smoking. It makes me jittery too.
HB: How come? No caffeine what.
Me: Yeah but it increases your heart rate.
HB: You know how they say you only have a limited number of heartbeats in your life right?
Me: Uh... no.
HB: Yeah you only have a certain number of heartbeats, so when it's used up, you die.
Me: Fuck.
posted by zyn ::
11:04 PM ::
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chewbacca
I never cut and paste instant messaging conversations, but this is ridiculous.
A: u die
Me: u then die
A: u die first
Me: u die worse
And later...
A: u die
A: u die first
A: u die last
A: u die die die
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6:45 PM ::
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finally, a blog after my own heart
There are people who speak only in complete sentences, and then there are these.
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1:06 AM ::
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ode to philip
there are way too many people
who have birthdays in july
(october must be a boring month
but that's a different rhyme)
and of all the july babies
I know only one who'd dare
to take a whole semester off
and design male underwear
though philip may sound crazy
he's actually quite sweet
he'll drive you to the hyatt
and then leave alone, discreet
we're not say super get along
but when I call, he's there
even if I ring at 4am
and he can't bring himself to care
but philip's not all virtuous too
he gave me my first smoke
(he also gave me a shisha pipe;
I think that was a joke)
he longs to be a writer
but he doesn't want to write
he thinks he'd like a classy girl
but none of them fit right
so here's to finding what you want
and liking what you find
happy 24th, philip baby -
to you may life be kind.
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12:52 PM ::
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a dream of me
The thing about living alone is that if you don't buy food, the fridge doesn't magically restock itself. That really sucks, because right now I'm hungry but too lazy to go out and get food and I left the car at the office to avoid drinking and driving last night (see, Zinne, I so responsible).
But it's so nice to have the whole house to myself. Apart from the obvious benefits of being able to (1) blast my music from the top floor and hear it on the bottom; (2) walk around in my underwear; (3) come home at any time and in any state and not suffer the Singaporean Inquisition ("Why you go out so late and make your mother worry?"), there are lots of little perks to being on my own that I'd completely forgotten about after college. (Probably blocked them out under the pain of living with my parents.) Like - taking the newspapers to work and reading them with a cup of tea. That used to be a huge morning ritual for me at Penn; the thought of a steaming mug of Earl Grey was the only thing that got me out of bed on frosty mornings (okay, fine, afternoons).
And then there's the comfort of solitude. After interacting with human beings the whole day, it's a big relief to come home to a quiet house that doesn't expect you to be witty or interesting or indeed even in a good mood. No pressure, no obligations, no guilt. I can be as cranky and irritable and selfish as I want and no one will get in the way.
So. Awesome.
Of course much of this awesomeness may derive from its transience, in which case I shall just revel in it for as long as it lasts.
* * * * * *
so take the photographs and still frames in your mind
hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial
for what it's worth it was worth all the while
it's something unpredictable but in the end it's right
I hope you had the time of your life
-- good riddance (time of your life), green day
posted by zyn ::
10:05 AM ::
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London, baby
After what feels like weeks of mother overdose - but has in reality only been a few days - I finally fly home tomorrow. Between Tues afternoon and Fri night I will have the house and car all to myself, mother-free! Yay!
I was thinking of throwing a party, but that involves, like, a shitload of planning and stuff, so forget it.
It's a bit weird to be back here in the UK. Everything is simultaneously familiar and yet different, like how the physical manifestation of something you've only previously seen in a dream conjures up a sense of deja vu that's a bit off. Between rushing around with my sister's ten thousand luggages and rediscovering a city I've never been fond of, there hasn't been much time to put old ghosts to rest.
Then again, I haven't actually felt the need to.
I've decided that for all my gripes about Britain, I do like London, after all, and Oxford too. But I don't think I'll ever be able to live here, for two main reasons: I can't fit into anything and I don't speak British. Britons say really strange things. I was buying breakfast the other day and asked for tea (I do love tea; it's one of the main reasons I would consider moving here in the first place) and the cashier lady asked me something that sounded like "Tea or report?" Of course I was like, "Beg your pardon?" (taking care not to say "Har??"), and she kept repeating "Tea or report?" until it dawned on me that what she was actually saying was "Tea or a pot?" Which doesn't make much logical sense either but at last I caught the drift and was able to answer, in my best British, "Just a cup, please." But that's way too much effort for tea, man.
On another note, c7676 combines two of his passions - reality tv and travelling - with hilarious results, as usual.
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Happy Birthday, Sports Boy
Here's to being on the wrong side of the 20s.
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4:56 AM ::
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525,600 minutes
Today, July 11 - now, technically, yesterday - marks the end of my first year at work and the fulfilment of a sixth of my bond term. I spent it, fittingly, by working 14 hours (yes I know I've said this a lot but it bears repeating) and then having lots of food and a couple of beers at the newly revamped Newton hawker centre (quite nice, all that fresh air).
For someone like me, to whom birthdays and festivals and special occasions actually hold significant meaning, my one-year work anniversary should be cause for reflection - or at least celebration - but right now I'm so tired that any kind of philosophical thought is beyond me.
So much has happened in the last 12 months. I can't wait to see what the next year has in store.
P.S. Sorry about emails, I'll try to reply soon.
posted by zyn ::
2:09 AM ::
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People I Hate Part One: Hardsellers
So I decided to start a very constructive series of entries describing the people I hate and why I hate them.
Today's topic: people who try to sell me stuff. Incompetently.
Scenario: TrueSpa called me up last week to offer me a free massage. Since I am a sucker for massages, and for free things, I happily accepted. So today I drove down to Taka - in the rain, no less - to get my free massage. It only lasted half an hour and was actually quite good (although I think people are afraid to massage me because there's very little between my skin and my bones; my masseuse today kept asking if I was feeling any pain and pointing out how skinny I was, which was actually quite annoying, but that's for Part Two).
After the massage, the hardsell started. A perfectly coiffed and mascaraed girl in very high heels sat me down with a cup of peppermint tea (nowhere as good as the ginger tea at Raffles Amrita, which is sublime) and proceeded to offer me, in very bad English (Part Three), 28 massage sessions for $2000. That works out to about $70 per massage and isn't a bad deal at all, but yesterday I'd already taken a plunge and committed myself to a year-long facial package, so I was still reeling from, like, making commitments and stuff. I told this mascared girl that I had to go think about it, and she replied, "Why? Why must think?"
Instead of saying what was on my mind ("Don't sound so surprised, some people actually think") I was very nice and made some noncommittal statement about needing to mull over commitment-type decisions. To which she replied, "But why? What is the reason?" And from then on, to everything I said she would simply respond, "Why? What is the reason?" like some kind of badly-programmed telemarketing record. This went on for an interminably long while until I finally lost it, told her: "Look, I'm not going to make a decision now and I really need to leave", and walked out.
If only I could be as firm about saying no to guys. I've missed three calls from this one guy (two accidentally, one kind of on purpose), and have very little inclination to call him back. What I usually do in these situations is ignore it all and hope that it goes away and that I never accidentally run into him again in a bar (which has actually happened once, not cool). I blame this escapism on my star sign but in reality I'm just very bad at letting people down gently. I have no idea how to go about doing it. I should probably learn.
On a sort of related note, I have sworn off Friendster, and now I only check facebook for references, so don't Friendster me anything because I doubt I'll ever log on again.
I'm not very happy with my latest haircut. I'm seriously considering changing my hairstylist, but that seems like such a drastic move and I really like him.
This is such an uncohesive entry that there's no good way to end it, so - yeah.
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contented rambles
As much as I love people, and conversations, and alcohol, and late nights, sometimes it feels so good to just come home early and nest. Quiet time, when you can eat ice cream out of the pint and put on a hairband and slouch around in a tank top and awesome Levi's boxers with a special little square pocket for that special thing you carry when you know you might meet a special someone.
But I do love people. This is, I think, a recent development, and possibly overcompensation for my painfully shy childhood. Fortunately my work is all about meeting people - not just strangers, but also people I work with, who are similar in the important things (smart, sense of humour, can speak good English; yes, go on, judge me) and different in interesting ways. The best thing about other people is that none of them are me. I love learning new things, so I tend only to be attracted to people who can teach me stuff - which, luckily, is most people. I have pledged, for instance, to learn something new about sports every day. Shouldn't be too hard, since I know as much about sports as I do about, say, yetis.
And the best people are those you can hang out with without fear of awkward silences. Either there's so much conversation there's no time to be quiet, or they're comfortable with not talking all the time, both of which are rare. Also rare are truly spontaneous people, who will agree to watch a movie with you half an hour before it starts in a location 20 minutes away.
Here's to people. Except the boring ones who can't hold a conversation for nuts.
* * * * * *
Old and overused quote, but still good.
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...
-- On The Road, Jack Kerouac.
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more notes to self
Thank You For Smoking: Jol, you're right - entertaining but not that clever, trying a bit too hard, I think. Sorry I overhyped it.
Selegie: 24-hour food opposite Roomful of Blues and cheap beer just down the road. What more can one ask for, except maybe good company? Which I'm fortunate enough to be enjoying lots of lately. :)
Weekend: Reschedule massage and fit in mani/pedi, facial, Kino, gym, and another drinks session somehow. There really need to be more hours in a day, I need more time.
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If ST are "running dogs"...
mrbrown's weekly column in MediaCorp's free Today newspaper has been suspended after the MICA debacle (see previous entry). Some of my friends think it's payback for bak chor mee, others hope it stir up enough outrage to make a difference. mrbrown himself seems quite upset about it. I wonder how much he was being paid to write the column.
Agence France-Presse
Last updated 06:35pm (Mla time) 07/06/2006
Singaporean blogger suspended after gov't criticism
SINGAPORE -- A Singaporean newspaper suspended Thursday an Internet blogger's column after the government criticized his latest satirical piece about high living costs.
"The editors of Today have suspended the Mr Brown column with effect from Friday, 7th July, 2006," said a statement from MediaCorp, the newspaper's publisher. No reason was given.
The latest blog from Mr Brown, whose real name is unknown, was entitled "S'poreans are fed, up with progress!" and heaped sarcasm on hikes in transport and electricity costs among other issues.
The Ministry for Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA) issued a strongly worded rebuttal, accusing Mr Brown of distorting the truth.
"His piece is calculated to encourage cynicism and despondency, which can only make things worse, not better, for those he professes to sympathize with," K. Bhavani, press secretary to Information Minister Lee Boon Yang, wrote.
"It is not the role of journalists or newspapers in Singapore to champion issues, or campaign for or against the government," Bhavani stressed.
"If a columnist presents himself as a non-political observer, while exploiting his access to the mass media to undermine the government's standing with the electorate, then he is no longer a constructive critic, but a partisan player in politics."
There was no immediate comment from the Today newspaper.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) described the Singapore government's condemnation of Mr Brown's column as "disturbing" in light of the city-state's already strict curbs on the media.
"This reaction from a Singaporean official is disturbing," the international press freedom group said in a statement.
"It reads like a warning to all journalists and bloggers in a country in which the media are already strictly controlled. The media have a right to criticize the government's actions and express political views."
In April, RSF condemned Singapore's restrictions on political discussions in blogs and websites ahead of general elections held in May.
Last year the group ranked Singapore 140th out of 167 countries in its annual press freedom index, alongside the likes of Egypt and Syria.
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the rising cost of living here
Waiting for my story to clear while saddled with a rare and massive headache, which I've just stupidly compounded by reading my RSS feeds folder titled "Singapore Blogs".
But this is interesting.
mrbrown wrote a column about the rising cost of living in Singapore - a reasonable topic given the recent news about gas/bus/mrt/taxi prices going up.
What may have been a bit less reasonable was the sarcasm he displayed in the piece, in which he insinuated that the news of these price rises had been delayed until after the May elections, for an obvious political agenda:
We are very thankful for the timing of all this good news, of course. Just after the elections, for instance. By that I mean that getting the important event out of the way means we can now concentrate on trying to pay our bills.
It would have been too taxing on the brain if those price increases were announced during the election period, thereby affecting our ability to choose wisely.
The other reason I am glad with the timing of the cost of living increases and wages going down, is that we can now deploy our Progress Package to pay for some of these bills.
Wait, what? You spent it all on that fancy pair of shoes on the day you saw your money in your account? Too bad for you then.
As I break into my Progress Package reserves to see if it is enough to pay the bills, I feel an overwhelming sense of progress. I feel like I am really staying together with my fellow Singaporeans and moving forward.
Maybe he's just trying to be funny; maybe it's the bitterness of a father with an autistic child; maybe he has a point and the govt did indeed plan all this around the elections.
In any case, he incurred the wrath of MICA, who then wrote a very unamused and unhumorous letter in return:
mr brown's views on all these issues distort the truth. They are polemics dressed up as analysis, blaming the Government for all that he is unhappy with. He offers no alternatives or solutions. His piece is calculated to encourage cynicism and despondency, which can only make things worse, not better, for those he professes to sympathise with.
mr brown is entitled to his views. But opinions which are widely circulated in a regular column in a serious newspaper should meet higher standards. Instead of a diatribe mr brown should offer constructive criticism and alternatives. And he should come out from behind his pseudonym to defend his views openly.
It is not the role of journalists or newspapers in Singapore to champion issues, or campaign for or against the Government. If a columnist presents himself as a non-political observer, while exploiting his access to the mass media to undermine the Government's standing with the electorate, then he is no longer a constructive critic, but a partisan player in politics.
The reply is so cliched it's hysterical, in a gotta-laugh-or-you'll-cry way. It conjures up visions of an Orwellian govt machine that churns out standard phrases and sentences in response to key words being fed into it. So if you input "media / political agenda", you get a sentence like "The media should not set the political agenda for this country."
I really don't understand why the govt is so paranoid about the media. I mean, have they actually read it? There is so little in mainstream media to justify any fear about "undermining the Government's standing with the electorate". And how is one supposed to be a "constructive critic" without taking any kind of critical stand? All that talk about how the media should reflect the opinions of the people and not dictate them appears to be bullshit - anyone who writes anything is reflecting some kind of opinion, and if it happens to fall into what the ruling party would define as political dissension, surely we are so much the better for it. Without active and spirited debate, how much progress can we make as a country?
And the thing is, I don't even agree with mrbrown's column. I completely understand the need for a hike in transport and gas prices, given the rising cost of oil and how long it's been since fares rose. Without MICA's response, I would have dismissed the column as just another spoiled Singaporean gripe. But the defensiveness and high-handedness of the reply makes me think there might be something to the conspiracy theories after all.
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9:21 PM ::
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smurf memories
This is really bizarre, but the other day I was telling someone about a Smurfs song I remembered that goes: "A picnic, a picnic/The Smurfs are on their way/To go and have a picnic/This bright and breezy day" - or something like that.
The person I was talking to had absolutely no idea what I was talking about, which I put down to his Smurfy ignorance, but I just googled it on a whim and I can't find anything about it, which means it doesn't exist!! Right? Cos Google has everything, right??
I'm now questioning all my childhood memories. How many of them have I been making up along the way? So freaky.
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12:02 AM ::
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back to earth
My month-long in-house reporting course is finally over - and life, one hopes, will resume normality (i.e. 8 hours a night). This last week has been the craziest since the summer of my Penn graduation, for many of the same reasons: not enough sleep and way too many vices.
But it's been worth it all, I think, to end up with a bunch of friends with a bottomless capacity for bizarre conversations ("Humans are actually mutants and the reason we exist is that aliens from another planet needed to create a race to mine gold, so they mutated their genes with those of monkeys and formed us"), an openness to the occult ("pen spirit, pen spirit, please come out"), and a readiness to trade relationship histories in the same way one displays battle scars ("I can't believe you pretended to like a band just because the guy you were dating was in it - that is sinking really low!").
I'm a bit relieved that it's over, though. It's a charming distraction but ultimately unsustainable. If it had gone on much longer it would have been that much harder to persuade myself of its aberrational quality.
* * * * * *
Watched Neil Gaiman's Mirrormask last night. Okay fine, I use "watched" loosely, seeing that I slept through at least half of it. But the half I saw was gorgeous, in a sublimely surreal kind of way; the perfect movie to watch when you're high. Although I think it was let down by the acting, so I'm going to buy the comic to make up for it. I've bought five books in the last week and there are another two I'm dying to get my hands on - Curtis Sittenfeld's new novel and The Sandman Papers. I don't know where I'm going to find the time to read all this but I shall start by devoting this afternoon to curling up in bed with Ishiguro and tea.
Speaking of sleeping through movies, I also failed in my attempt to watch Superman Returns last week, although I think that was because the movie was actually bad. I don't know what happened in it, but I really needed that two-hour nap in the cinema. Good thing it was free.
I want to watch: Pirates, Guantanamo, and most of all Thank You For Smoking. And there's going to be Clerks II!
* * * * * *
Fascinating article in this week's Economist on homosexuality - about how the more biological elder brothers a man has, the more likely he is to be gay.
Brothers in arms
Jun 29th 2006 | TORONTO
From The Economist print edition
Some men are gay because their mothers have already had many sons
RAY BLANCHARD, a researcher at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, was reviewing some data a few years ago when he noticed something odd: gay men seemed to have more older brothers than straight men.
Intrigued - and sceptical - he decided to investigate. He recruited 302 gay men and the same number of heterosexual controls and inquired about their families. How many siblings did they have, of what sex, and how had the births been spaced? How old had their parents been when they had had them? Dr Blanchard found that only one detail seemed to predict sexual orientation: the more elder brothers a man had, the more likely he was to be gay. Neither elder sisters nor younger siblings of either sex had any effect, but each additional elder brother increased his chance of being gay by about 33% from the population average of one man in 50.
It was a rather perplexing discovery. It implied either that being brought up with a lot of elder brothers affects a boy's sexual orientation, or that a mother's body is somehow able to keep count of how many sons she has conceived, and that this count affects the orientation of future children. Hard as it was to explain, though, the finding was replicated again and again, across different cultures, eras and even psychiatric groups.
Those who argued for a social explanation suggested that having lots of elder brothers makes a boy more likely to engage in same-sex play, and might also increase the chance he is a victim of sexual abuse. But, regardless of whether either of these conjectures is true, neither playing with other boys nor sexual abuse has been scientifically linked to homosexuality.
Anthony Bogaert of Brock University in St Catharines, Ontario, therefore decided to examine the other hypothesis—that the phenomenon is caused by something that happens in the womb. He has just published his results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr Bogaert reasoned that if the effect were social, elder brothers would wield the same power even if they had not been born to the same mother. Lots of half- or step-siblings, or adopted brothers, for instance, would also cause their younger brothers to be gay. On the other hand, if the effect were really due to birth order, biological brothers would make their younger brothers more likely to be gay even if they did not grow up together; indeed, even if the younger boy grew up without any older boys around at all.
Dr Bogaert collected a new sample of several hundred men, this time specifically recruiting those who had grown up with "brothers" to whom they were not biologically related. He collected information on how long they had been reared with each sibling, as well as about biological siblings from whom they had been separated.
He found that only the number of biological elder brothers had an impact on a later-born boy's sexual orientation; non-biological siblings had no effect. This was true even when a boy had grown up surrounded by an enormous gaggle of non-biological elder brothers. By contrast, elder brothers raised in a separate household "influenced" their younger brothers' sexual orientation in exactly the same way as they would have done had they been living with them.
Like many of the best pieces of research, this one raises questions, as well as answering them. One is, how does the mother's body keep count of how many sons she has conceived? A second is, how does that change the environment in the womb? A third is, how does that change affect sexual orientation? And a fourth is, is this an accidental effect, or has it evolved for some reason?
To these questions, Dr Bogaert has no answers, though in some cases he has his suspicions. He speculates that, for reasons as yet unknown, a mother's immune system takes note of the number of male offspring and that each succeeding male fetus is subjected to increased levels of antibodies. These somehow affect its development. Clearly, something strange is going on, because things other than sexual orientation are also affected by birth order. Boys with elder brothers are also likely to have larger-than-normal placentas while in the womb. And despite that apparent nutritional advantage (for a larger placenta should be able to draw more food from the mother's bloodstream), they are also likely to have lower birth-weights than would otherwise be expected.
Dr Blanchard, meanwhile, calculates that about one gay man in seven can chalk his orientation up to having elder brothers. But to the question of whether there is some evolutionary advantage for a mother who has many sons to include a gay one among them, neither he nor Dr Bogaert has an answer.
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2:43 PM ::
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