N is for Nigel

discoverynews: teamepiphany: Virtual supermarkets are popping...

Fri, 24 May 2013 07:24:09 +0800

teamepiphany:

Virtual supermarkets are popping up in subway stations in South Korea, where commuters can virtually shop for items while waiting for the train to come. Customers simply scan an item’s QR code using the free “Homeplus” app and can have it delivered to their doorstep before they even get home. Ranked as the 2nd most hard-working country in the world to Japan, South Korea is rewarding its workers with this timesaving gem.

Wow! I kinda love this idea.

We fly next monday or tuesday, to Edmonton, Alberta, which is in...

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:07:15 +0800

We fly next monday or tuesday, to Edmonton, Alberta, which is in Canada. The visa for Alaska didn’t work out in the end, so we are being re-directed. This is a dream, I won’t believe it’s real until I see the plane tickets. Time to finally get packing.

Nobody who ever was disenfranchised was not first entitled.

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:04:34 +0800

Nobody who ever was disenfranchised was not first entitled.

RESTAURANT 848: Today's Menu

Mon, 20 May 2013 09:38:49 +0800

Breakfast

Freshly baked chocolate cookies

Beef stew

Can You

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:51:21 +0800

badkidsjokes:

CAN YOU FART

DO IT NOW

Question of the Day

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:03:38 +0800

Where can I find a big enough rock to hide under?

Which is Worse

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:24:01 +0800

A) Coming home to find your room converted to a laundry/storage area, and your bed packed away into storage

B) Coming home to a quiet, empty house

Somehow can’t seem to shake this persistent feeling of transience I get ever since Feb 2011, which is when army started. I’ve had so many houses away from home, and expended tremendous energy making homes out of them.

Far from melancholy, the emotion/feeling/thing I feel most strongly when I come home to find it strange and familiar is lost. It’s not even that I miss home that badly. To be completely honest, my family is fun and awesome and all that, but I don’t miss them all that much either.

I have always considered myself a flexible person. Recent events have forced me to finally give the antithesis its due consideration, and my new postulate is as follows: I am a flexible person insofar as I initiated, or am in control of the direction and magnitude of the change.

I guess humans are creatures of habit, after all. And perhaps desires for change come about only when extreme tedium or ennui subdue the habit impulse. Desiring change can become a habit. Otherwise it can conveniently be labelled as anomalous.

“We were walking home. Everybody else playing Saturday donkey; pannier laden either side with vegetables and meat. The queues at the bus-stop, the shop-neon switching off, the roar of the garbage trucks clearing forests of cardboard. All this familiar and far away. I wanted to buy something the way I want to flex my fingers when they are chilled. Still there? All still there? Normal, and I a part of it. If all these lives are as before why not mine?”

There's Always Something About Coming Home

Sun, 12 May 2013 23:15:58 +0800

Home is where you don’t have to check 3 times that you have everything with you before you hit the shower.

Some JB things I will probably never forget

Thu, 09 May 2013 22:29:55 +0800

Alleged dengue, Doctor John, and 1 litre of 100plus
Charlie Mike and Communal Denial
Half-a-Hug from Raegan
Cinema Landak Kawan
Half-wings and 5RM for 1.3l sugarcane
2 hour bus-waits
1 hour bus rides
It’s My Life, Vhatewer I Wanna Do (& others)
Separate breakfasts, concurrently
Aunty Ros’ house
Water Filter of Dubious Cleanliness

"go to sleep, everything will be alright the next morning."

Sun, 05 May 2013 06:35:35 +0800

“go to sleep, everything will be alright the next morning.”

- thoughts to note. (via limwj)

I prefer to think that everything will be better. That’s as much as I can be sure of, at least.

Photo

Thu, 02 May 2013 09:15:53 +0800

fear is a friend who’s misunderstood but I know the...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:16:03 +0800

fear is a friend who’s misunderstood

but I know

the heart

of life

is good

Posterity

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:14:00 +0800

Partly for records’ sake, partly for all you people who follow/check this space, here’s a ~~short~~ summary of what’s been happening since I last posted. (don’t count the last post or the many reblogs)

Life in the past month has been marked by transience, indecision, interesting (awkward) social situations and a general state of malaise (particularly online). Yup.

Usually there would be one or two people who would know about the events surrounding the abovementioned feelings, but this time, no, because I didn’t tell anyone about anything. So add to the list, disconnection. Not necessarily a bad thing, I suppose. One of my Chinese New Year Resolutions (I missed 1 Jan but I thought, better late than never) was to learn a little more restraint in sharing my 心事.

I wrote in early Feb, I am trying to learn that not everything needs to be talked out. Not everything needs to be expressed to someone else. Not everything needs to be Analysed publicly on tumblr, sometimes things can be kept to myself.

Maybe it’s just the stress - not that anything I’ve been doing can be called particularly stressful - but I seem to have developed lactose intolerance after not having milk for about a month or so. I chugged about half a litre of the stuff yesterday afternoon (oh, how I missed the slightly sweet, smooth flavor of fresh, full-cream milk) and have been doing some serious toileting since. Talk about keeping things to myself. Moral of the story: sometimes you need to let it all out. So here goes.

Throwing chronology out the window, here’s a thematic breakdown of stuff on my mind recently:

transience mainly arises from the fact that, last Thursday, April 25th, we got news that our layover in JB - originally slated to end Friday April 26th - would be extended till further notice. 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, who knows. We are all pretty well acquainted with ambiguity, and his friend uncertainty. The announcement that we were extending our stay did not come as a surprise at all. So we live as if we are already in Alaska; and yet, we’ve come home so many times, and yet, we are so close to home, and yet; we know we will be back again before we fly.

indecision about college goes beyond the Colgate waitlist VS Reed admission dilemma; that one is quite a no brainer seeing as I don’t particularly prefer either, though Reed seems a good fit, and a cool place. Besides, why would I pass up the certainty of a place at Reed for another roll of the die that is college admissions? I’m pretty settled on that, I guess, but when Colgate emailed saying that they were taking me off because I missed the deadline, I just wish I’d told them “no, thank you” instead. It’d have been nicer, both for them and for me.

indecision now surrounds the Reed offer as well, because it was never a dichotomy of choices to begin with; I now have a choice of accepting Reed, or not. To accept is to close the door on every other US university, and, in all likelihood, the majority of Singaporean scholarship boards as well. To reject is to open the door to another round of SAT, SAT II, recommendations, essays, and deadlines - all while in Alaska - not a pleasant thought even though I can technically start on it right now.

interesting (awkward) social situations arise because we now live in a house, rented semi-permanently by the JB church we are attached to, with 4 not-new not-friends-not-acquaintances. We also work with them and eat with them (sometimes) but living together - while not a challenge in itself - has been interesting. Not in a bad way.

I spent the last 2 Mondays hosting friends at home; really good, cheap, tasty fun, that we cooked ourselves. Somehow the groups that turned up on both Mondays turned out to be just the right mix of everyone. This wasn’t awkward, but last night was. I think it was Wednesday night when, in a state of food deprivation (not hunger, mind you, I’m pretty ok with hunger nowadays) I hastily made plans to go to Pepperoni Pizza with whoever could make it - a bad move because the dynamics of this ragtag bunch were unprecedentedly awkward, and I got a strong feeling that I was dragging people to a party only I was really that keen on.

But, Pepperoni Pizza being Pepperoni Pizza, everyone was pretty blown away by the 21 inchers, and suitably impressed by the quality. Pancetta proved to be the flavor of the night though now I am dreaming of something with spinach on it. Not craving it, but just wondering if they have a pizza like that, and if they do, what it tastes like. Anyway. I stressed myself out about it pretty badly and was probably a little too strung out to fully enjoy it. Lesson learnt.

A general state of malaise (particularly online) is related in the most part to the sloppiness of the internet connection where we live. It’s slow, unreliable, overloaded (with 10 of us, no surprise there) and the wi-fi from the room I stay in is really weak and inconsistent. Because we went in thinking/knowing we would be cut off from fingertip access to 24/7 data, I hardly crave it, nor do I need it, nor can I have it, even if I wanted it. Youtube has started showing me advertisements with Ringgit notes in them though.

Today was supposed to be our last day in Singapore (apart from the final break just before we fly) so I took my bedsheets off of my foldable mattress and prepared the mattress bag. As luck would have it, 2 minutes later I got news that we’re staying in Singapore for the Momentum Conference, and that means we’re here (at least) till Wednesday evening 6pm. Oh look guys, it’s my friend uncertainty, there he goes again.

There’s been a lot of madness (I mean, fun) on my instagram but we all know that none of the tedium, sadness, anger, or confusion goes on that thing. In fact, I wager that the madness is a response to tedium/sadness/anger/confusion, and that they probably increase in proportion.

I tell everyone who asks me questions (whether or not they are the now-inane “when are you leaving?”): “I don’t know. Whatever questions you have… I have them too. I’m sorry, but I really don’t know.” It really shuts them up, which is so good, and so bad. Like I said, disconnection. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you guys, it’s just hard I guess. Between not having answers, being tired and slightly ashamed of giving the same old unsatisfactory explainations, and just being that much less contactable, I feel like I’m falling out of touch with everyone except Jaime, who I have literally seen every single day since mid-Jan.

Also, my room is a pit-stop. Can’t afford to slow down when life is moving so quickly. With so many ‘last’s that turn out not to be, it’s really a carpe-diem, all-we-have-is-now, we-don’t-know-the-future kind of thing.

Today looks set to be a fun day, if I can get my mind off of what lies ahead tomorrow. Meeting Aunty Carol, then Abigail, then Weng Keong, and it’s Burgers and Fries for dinner. Tomorrow will worry about itself, which, I think, can be translated simply as “#YOLO”.

Attachment

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 07:24:39 +0800

inuffishthought:

If the mother is psychologically unavailable for and unresponsive to her child the child will consistently perform badly on all measures of security and social interactions. They are observed to be angry, frustrated and noncompliant at 24 months.

The results from this group is worse than the psychologically unavailable + physical abuse group.

It is proposed that the contact from physical abuse is better than no contact at all.

Haven't Posted in a While

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 08:06:05 +0800

There.

twitterthecomic: “dead space more like dad space” dad gimme...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:15:06 +0800

twitterthecomic:

“dead space more like dad space” dad gimme back my xbox “more like call of daddy” get out of my room “more like grandfather auto IV” stop
— 808s&Human Sacrifice (@CRIMEGOLEM) January 21, 2013

rachelyeo: Cookout: Clam chowder Homemade buns (several with...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 08:49:29 +0800

rachelyeo:

Cookout:

Clam chowder
Homemade buns (several with cheddar cheese)
Chicken fillets with Italian herb
Hassleback potatoes

Yums yums :p

Not So Good At Vectors

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 21:10:37 +0800

Now I realise what panic I must have caused my doctor when he pressed my ribs on both sides and I told him it hurt - one symptom of an enlarged spleen, which points to Malaria.

That was some years ago, it was my 4th consecutive day of fever (during the school holidays, no less!) and it was no wonder that I was sent for immediate blood test.

The Shame Game

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:40:52 +0800

I went to bed last night feeling slightly poorly; mild body aches, a bit of a phlegmy cough (yep, it was the green kind) and an unpleasant warmth behind my eyelids.

I’ve not been sick since last year’s bad food poisoning stint (in which I woke up in bunk sweating under my blanket after shivering myself to sleep just hours ago) and I think it’s fair to say that I hardly ever get sick. But when it’s coming, I can usually see it from a mile away.

True enough, this morning I woke up with a proper fever. After choking out some of that green gunk it has started flowing out of my nose in varying viscosity.

7 hours, 4 panadols, and 2 litres of water later, I feel no different from how I did this morning. On my way up from my 4th toilet visit I brought up a toilet paper roll to soak up my leaking nose. Its loose end flaps incessantly under the blowing of the stand fan. I should be sleeping, and after the panadol I should be drowsy, but I can’t sleep any more.

I remember thinking, sometime during Phase 2, oh how nice it would be to perhaps be sick for just one day, then I’d get to rest at least. I didn’t get sick after all, and deep down I know that if I had indeed fallen ill at that time, I would have felt so guilty.

That’s how I feel now I guess. Not that I wanted or asked to be sick this time, but the fact that I’ve entertained such thoughts in the past just kind of weighs on my conscience.

So right now, absurdly, I’m feeling, bored, tired, pitiful, lonely, and yet, guilty that I’m any of the above.

Rachie breaks bread

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 22:23:00 +0800

Rachie breaks bread