One hardly notices the strings in the background the first time you listen to a song

Nothing is ever what it seems on its surface.

Nothing.

All that undertones that people speak in, silent words surreptitiously slipped between sentences, a flicker of body language that's supposed to mean a thousand words - I just don't get it. I must be slightly autistic or something.

In Asian culture, every freaking thing is implied. It's implied that when a relative offers you help, you're expected to pay it back. When someone is of higher seniority than you, it is implied that whatever he says has gotta be right. If not, it's implied that you gotta pretend.

All this business irks me. Can't we just be honest and say out loud the words that we expect to be silently assumed? It's not hard to see why the westerners see Asian culture as an impenetrable wall of secrecy and unpredictability.

Another related grouse. When was the last time anyone here started a sentence with 'I feel that'? It might be Asian pride to look infallible and heroic and not express our doubts, but it's surely going to be seen as inflexibility and stubbornness.

Talk it out if you have to. Discuss things. Express your concerns. Before communication breakdown sets in and war ensues.

Nausea

Bloody military turboprop planes creating a din throughout a peaceful afternoon.

==

Why the fuck am I nauseous?

No, this is not a metaphysical Sartre discourse. Existentialism as a philosophy rocks, but it doesn't explain why my stomach is churning itself out like a washing machine set to maximum spin.

Argh.

Maybe it's psychosomatic. The more I blog about it the worse I feel.

At least it's a physical distraction from my crappy sorry state. I'd stay strong, be a pillar of strength for those around me. Keep the people around me happy, do well in school. But where do I find that strength? Nothing really motivates me.

Even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat.

Sometimes I wish I aren't as good a listening ear as I am. It sucks being saddled by the emotional baggage of friends, and AUGH. DO I LOOK LIKE A FREAKING SHRINK TO YOU. I HAVE PRESSURE. YOU HAVE PRESSURE.

And the worst thing is, the nausea is probably an impending gastroenteritis. Judging by the number of people I know who had recently suffered a similar fate.

==

And here's a smorgasbord of songs that I've been listening to lately.


The Rolling Stones - Angie


The Zutons - Tired of Hanging Around


Eels - Novocaine For The Soul


Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go

==

P.S. : Might it be the dead monitor lizard I stepped on the other day? They're known to harbour salmonella, a bad diarrhoea-causing bug.

P.P.S. : Be careful of what you trod over or roll over in Old Upper Thomson Road. It's where snakes/monkeys/lizards/birds/etc go to die.

I plead futility

Screw it. Things go right for me too rarely. Honestly, I'm totally sick of this helplessness.

How does one reconcile with the fact that I'm absolutely unimportant to anyone at all?

I could go on, pretend I'm ok, but the farce wears off pretty quickly and I'm knocked down into place again. I'm worthless shit who deserves neither to be seen nor heard.

In a world where failure begets failure, perhaps an escape route is necessary.

Misshapes, Mistakes, Misfits

Photos, photos, lemme rummage through a photo, just for the hell of adding colour to this photo. What's something Christmassy?

I could pass off the photo of a chicken I cooked as a turkey, but 1. it's only chicken breast 2. it's embarrassingly pitiful.

Ah whatever. Christmas is about lotsa red and green I reckon, so hell, I'll dig up 2 random photos of those colours.





Whatever. Can I admit that I have a compelling reason to blog, yet nothing to blog about?

==

Actually my life's pitifully boring. Damn you, boring school days!

Memory Man

Can you stand the Monday blues? It can't be the best of mornings when I gotta squeeze up a crowded SMRT bus (they're all impossibly crowded) for the first day of my new posting.

Hmmm I hope things will go alright, or else the exams at the end will be doomed!

Sometimes, I wish I were better liked.

My metal steed

I'm a freaking geek.



Yeah I admit it; I turn on the computer just to check the weather radar before I ride my bicycle. Rain doesn't ruin a ride, but it sure makes things uncomfortable.

Today's ride was smooth and good, except for the fact that I'm still a little weak after the bad cold the past week.

Finally adjusted the rebound on my suspension to give a plusher ride. I don't need a setting so stiff, since I'm much lighter than when I last adjusted it...



Rode on my cracking Larsen TT tyres, and after the ride, I realised that OMG the cracks have deepened. Alot. I gotta change them.



Being the cheapskate that I am, I'm fitting my old, abandoned Tioga Factory XC 1.95 rear tyre from 4 years ago that came stock with the old bike. The rolling resistance is embarrassingly bad; the tread profile would be what I consider an all-rounder - gripless on the road, and equally gripless off-road.

Figured, I should wear them out so that I can throw them out, before they start to undergo rubber rot. When it dies, my fast and light Schwalbe Racing Ralph will be rotated in.

Removing the tyres from my Sun Rims 0deg XC is a PAIN. PAIN in my fingers and hands, trying to pry out the tyre beads. Tyres fit really tightly on these rims. Ouch.

With stained fingers, painful hands and an exhausted body, you can tell why I'm not at my chirpiest.

==

It's tempting to get a new phone. And a 3.5G data plan to boot so I can surf the net and blog anywhere. But phones with good cameras don't have 3.5G, phones with 3.5G don't usually have good cameras, and phones with good cameras AND 3.5G cost an arm, a leg and possibly an eye.

But my Sony Ericsson k750i takes such damned good photos. I'd miss it if I ditch it for a Nokia.

But still, at it's price, the Nokia 6120 Classic seems tempting, for its smartphone capabilities, 3.5G and memory slot.

Those controls, those switches, the kinda precision needed

It's as though I'm In the flight deck of a large aircraft.



Pretty frustrated at the amount of upkeep computers and the data inside them require. Back up regularly, ensure that everything is working fine, get the software and antivirus updates to date, I can't believe the amount of time I spend keeping the computers working smooth.



Techmology. Iz it good or iz it wack?

==



The iPod Nano 3G I own is possibly one of the most boring iPods ever made in history. It's not even half a year, but people seem to have stopped talking about it altogether.

Rather, they're cooing and cawing over the new iPod Touch with its highly-smudgable touchscreen, cut-throat pricing and embarrassing bulk. But why?

The Nano 3G is simply too boring to talk about, because it's already doing everything right, while not throwing in any newfangled gimmicks. Fits into a breast pocket? Check. Reasonable capacity for its price? Check. Good usability? Check. And those are what, in my opinion, makes a good player. But they're never anything to shout about.

But there's this part of me that's resentful at having bought the most boring iPod ever. Sigh.

==

It must be true that I've been perkier and happier lately, as I've been enjoying alot of pretty funny conversations in school lately! Sometimes my mood fluctuations.... they scare me.

Random fact: a ketogenic (i.e. only having fat and certain amino acids) milk formula for the treatment of drug-resistant epilepsy in childhood costs $90 per tin. Each tin can last as little as 1.5 days in a 10 year old child.

==

I'm listening to Bloc Party pelting out pseudo-random rhythms. I don't even know why I bother.

In tutorial now!

Having a tute in a really cold room! Yay I'm blogging now just because I can!

Yeah. Obviously I'm not paying attention. I can't wait for the weekend!

Friday!

Yesterday was frustrating. Computer acted funny, took like forever to get a definitive fix for it. Had to install the old BIOS, then the new one to reset it.

Thank goodness it's friday! Time for a rest soon!

I'm pretty tempted to learn swimming. Peer pressure compels me to. And it's good upper body exercise I suppose. But I'm not too sure if I'll be able to figure it out by myself. Despite swimming lessons long ago I never seem to get it!

This has to be

one of the worst post exercise muscle aches I've ever had.

I'm lying in bed right now, dreading the likely probablity that I'll ache even more tomorrow.

Gee, I didn't even work out as hard I usually do. Did I really lose this much strength recuperating from being ill the past week and a half?

I've got alot of catching up to do. From now on, I have to push myself each time so I'll ache at least a little! I won't slack off anymore.

Cold!

Cold day! Cold weather! Cold room! For the first time in a long long time I'd feeling cold.

If only it'd snow too! It's the time of the year for chocolates, turkeys and Santa suits!

I'm happy today. I'm headache free for the first time since I quit coffee!

Yay!

This is where it happened

After a long day, I plonked myself in the front seat of the top deck of the double-decker.

It rained earlier, and the street-lights illuminating the rain-streaked mist on the windscreen was worth a photo.

It was only after taking the photo that I saw the FATAL ACCIDENT sign there.

It was my online friend's FATAL ACCIDENT. Didn't know him all that well, but even then there's the lingering regret of not having known him better.

Human beings, they keep on dying. I don't know when's my turn. And while the people around me are still alive, I had better get my ass moving to get to know them better. There's never enough time for regret.

Crash

Crash! I've just quit coffee cold turkey since Monday, to stabilise my sleeping and also not be dependent on chemicals to cheat myself through a day.

And now I'm literally dying of withdrawal headaches. Ouch! And I've been sleeping for like 10h a day.

But I won't give up! I'm trying to quit a bad habit a day. I'm now trying to eat better and put more time in schoolwork too!

Industrial Revolutions

Alec (thanks Alec!) kindly told me on IRC that RAM is pretty much dirt cheap these days, so I really ought to upgrade while the prices are at its nadir.

I mean, seriously, $33 per 1GB stick of the fastest (667MHz) and latest (DDR2) notebook RAM?



I'm still smarting from the fact that I once paid more than $100 for a stick of RAM that was half that size, and that's not even 2 years ago.



Headed out.



After the bumpy bus ride, I'm at Sim Lim Square.



Got the 2 sticks of RAM. Yay! Am I the only person who calls those longish RAM circuit boards 'sticks'?



Bought a card reader. The internal card reader of the notebook died, and I'm not going to take the risk of replacing it under warranty - yet - because it's hardwired to the motherboard, and the rest of the motherboard is working fine now. I don't wanna get some refurbished lemon in return just to fix the card reader.



And a USB hub, because right now I have too many USB devices to grapple with. I was cheated. After I tested this at home, it turned out not to be USB 2.0 compliant so it's relegated to light duty and low data speed use.



Got the Wombats CD and headed back before the skies started to open up and pour relentlessly.

A quick guide on how to replace notebook RAM:

1. Have safe electrostatic static discharge practices. What I like to do is to simply touch the metal part of an electrical appliance that has a 3-pin plug. The back of a desktop computer, the stand of a stand fan, the back of the microwave oven, they're all fair game.



2. Shut down the computer. Don't just put it in suspend or hibernate. Remove the battery and all cables and adaptor.

3. Carefully remove the screws of the back panel, then slide it away.



4. Orientate yourself to where everything is. You can see the 2 old RAM sticks stacked one above another, and the Wifi module above it.



5. Remove the sticks, by disengaging the catch shown in the following picture.



6. Slide in the new sticks at an angle, then press them back into position.



7. Replace the back panel, put back the battery, boot it up, and confirm that everything's fine and dandy.



Photoshop runs alot smoother when handling large numbers of photos at tandem!

The Wombats - A Guide To Love, Loss & Desperation

So you're asking - is this another one of those B-grade indie bands given a reprieve from mediocrity because of online hype?

You've heard of the Arctic Monkeys, they aren't B-grade. And their fame started off online.

I'm happy to announce that The Wombats is not hype. And they deserve even more fame than the Arctic Monkeys.



You just gotta love their Futureheads-like exuberance and the infectious catchiness of - oh wait, I haven't really heard any indie stuff this catchy before!

Take a listen and enjoy, or take a place in the world of the square and boring.

Whatever

Listening to Star's Your Ex Lover Is Dead on my iPod, sitting on the hard bus seat waiting for Toa Payoh to arrive. Family. Parents. They aren't on talking terms. With me or with each other.

It's quite pathetic really. I'd like to whine - but what good will it do?

Just listening to Stars above the quibble of the parents, the droning engine. It should be bliss enough...

At least, I got The Wombats on CD at home waiting for me.

Leona Lewis/Mariah Carey

I've always thought they sound alike. Thus, when Leona Lewis got popular, I simply go 'meh' and consider Mariah Carey the Real Deal. The female chanteuse that I liked when I was a kid for her silky un-intrusive voice.

It was only random surfing on Youtube that I realise that Leona Lewis was a lab-grown genetic experiment made entirely of Mariah Carey's singing genes.

Mariah Carey:


Leona Lewis:


Hear it for yourself!

I'm testing blogging using Singtel Mobilemail!

Hope this works!

Sunset Stripping

It's a surreal experience, groggy from antihistamines, waking up to the hifi playing Arctic Monkeys, only to realise that the sunrise outside your window had been swapped for a maroon sunset.

Like Pink Floyd croons:
There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ships smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I cant hear what you're saying.
When I was a child I had a fever.
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I got that feeling once again.
I can't explain, you would not understand.
This is not how I am.
I have become comfortably numb.

I can barely remember the dreams I'm having but there were doctors, bats and prostitutes. And for the life of me I can't seem to piece them together.

And while our bodies get older and frailer, we suddenly realise we're closer to death than we thought. Things we'll never get to do, places we'll never get to go. And who knows what will happen the minute we cease to exist?

It happens to our grandparents, then our parents, then us. Death, it's inevitable.

For what it's worth, the innocence we had is long dead. There are things I wish I had never seen, ideas I wish I had never understood, people I wish I had never known, choices I wish I had never made.

I'm clutching at the straws of cleanliness and purity and innocence.

Hi William Blake.

Sepia

It's not a good time for me to blog. Dazed, in sniffles, red eyes, wishing that everything would be good and nice again.

Well duh. I'm still having that bad cold and am coughing and sneezing badly still.



I guess, when one is at his lowest, there's no way to go but up.

Life has been a rollercoaster. Some nasty things do happen, things that I'd never expect. The cordiality between groupmates had taken a nosedive, and seriously, I'm starting to be pretty glad that we'll all be re-shuffled in a few weeks anyhow. Months of working together like perfect clockwork, only to end like this? It's pretty sad, but hey it was good while the good times lasted.

Today was a happy day for me. Mainly because I was hanging around people who are NOT my groupmates. And that really opened my eyes to how bad that groupmate situation has degenerated lately.



And a friend did some pretty crazy stuff lately, making me wonder, what possessed him to do that? He'd prolly regret it, I know it. Whatever he did, it's so wrong on so many levels. But it's his life, and I gotta admit, I can't really see things in his shoes.

Oh well, as my good classmate SH says, whatever it is, everyone who has a choice has every right to choose. Even if it harms him. Because it's his own life in the end. I won't even try to talk to him about it.

He most probably won't listen. And I don't think I care enough to bother.



Wanru says she saw an even funnier sign on the bus. Think, 'BREAK GLASS TO OPEN', minus the 'GL'.

I wish I can wake up tomorrow refreshed and, most of all, with a clear nose.

Pen A Doll

Pretty grateful for being headache free right now, thanks to the paracetamol and caffeine coursing through my polluted veins.

Pretty exhausting day at school. There's this mock debate thing at school which exposed my misogynist prejudices and sick, dry, sick humour.

So in school, word has got around that I have an incredibly mindblowingly huge music collection. Yes it's true. I've got 30 gigabytes of schweet schweet music in iTunes right now. And I don't even dare to calculate how much I had spent so far on my music CDs so far.



Last 2 purchases: Mika's Life In Cartoon Motion (Yeah. I know. Despite the fruity colours and Queen-like disposition, I refuse to be ridiculed for my honest love for good music.) and Timbaland's Shock Value. I like them both.

==

I like good coffee.



Really expensive though, at $6.40 for 10 modest doses of perfectly creamy caffeine.



So now you know why it costs so much.

==



I like good ice-cream. If you like Oreos, this is for you. Creamy ice-cream sandwiched by soft crumbly chocolate biscuits. Heavenly.

==

Mootivation

Guess I need some mootivation to get through school after all, after spending the larger part of the weekend in front of the TV and the computer.



Speaking of which, The Simpsons is pretty much rubbish these days, while Fantastic Four the movie isn't really as much a flop as I had imagined it to be. Definitely nothing better than a B-, but it ain't the C-grade stuff that most people make it out to be. The acting was lacklustre, pacing was rubbish, but the effects and the casting did work out in the end.

Cows are so docile and unmootivated, all they do is moo and they won't budge even when you tip them over.

Don't mind me if I snap, being down with a blocked nose and a sore throat is doing a number on my mood.

Bee Movie

You'd prolly have watched at least one trailer of Bee Movie in the past year or so they'd been screening them.

Jerry Seinfeld dons a bee-suit and goes wire-borne, comedically encountering a series of painful technical failures. Seinfeld voices his frustrations to Spielberg, who then decided to make Bee Movie a cartoon instead.

Sadly, Bee Movie does live up to its homonym, the B-movie. It's forgettable, bland and only occasionally funny.

It's the typical young rebellious insect protagonist who eschews the stifling communal insect colony life that is expected of him and engineers a series of events that leads to his eventual freedom which dumps him into situations he had never expected but he however finds his way eventually but ends up inadvertently bringing impending doom to the whole colony which he finally corrects in the nick of time therefore earning him respect in the colony despite being the rebellious individualist he is and then the story ends happily ever after.

Whether I was describing Bee Movie, Antz or A Bug's Life; or all 3 at once, I don't even know. They're all that formulaic.

Give Bee Movie a miss, if you're looking for something more than a cookie-cutter-insect-computer-generated-animation-comedy.

Speaking of which, why are there so many insect animations? And even more so, mice? Mickey Mouse, Fievel of An American Tail, the rats of Flushed Away, Pinky and the Brain, Stuart Little.

Anyway. If it's any consolation, Singtel paid for my ticket.

Bushed

Pretty exhausted lately, I swear I'm falling ill. Blocked noses are no fun.

Check out this video of one of my current favourite songs, Travis's Selfish Jean:

One Deeper Valley

Woke up late, groggy, thanking the stars that I didn't even have a smidgeon of a hangover.

Oh, I'm supposed to study my heart out today, but an old friend wanna meet up! How can I pass this opportunity by?

Plan: Rollerblading in East Coast Park.



I look tired. Bad sleep last night. Kept on waking to either close the windows in the cold or open the windows from the stuffiness.



Buses to the east of Singapore are always slow and frustrating, as every bus that traverses the east has to wind around the numerous small roads, rather than speeding through arterial roads like in central and west Singapore.

==

Talked a whole lot! Used to be good friends, but drifted apart. Human beings are very strange creatures. People with similar world-views and personalities tend to end up hating each other at some point in time (perhaps seeing oneself too much in another person?) but when they patch things up, friendships usually continue as though there wasn't any issue to being with.

Public holiday. Crowds. Weekend prices for rollerblades. As we were both noobs at rollerblading, the idea of skating into an oncoming cyclist suddenly became rather distasteful.

Ended up not rollerblading and just walking around, looking at people wakeboarding at the cable-ski area.

Bloody crowds. Figured, I might as well go practice by myself in Bishan Park and hone in my skills in private on a weekday, like how those Shaolin masters hide in the caves to master their art alone.

==

Having developed a new allergy for crowds, we decided to head to the business district for dinner. Everything's closed, Maxwell food market too, so a trek to Lau Pa Sat...



... where all the stalls were practically open but were devoid of the usual peak-hour queues. Yay!

Korean food there looks good.



And tastes pretty good too. This is bibimbap, served in a hot stone bowl. Won't recommended it though, my friend bought the beef set and instead of the egg and vegetables, he had a whole huge plateful of beef!



I like kimchi.

Just walked around that area, around Maxwell food market, and took some photos just because we're bored. Friend has the full works - digicam and tripod, and we shared a couple of tips and all. Yay for another photo-taking friend! He sorta showed me that the autopilot (landscape, portrait, night shot, etc) modes aren't too shabby too, since I take most photos in the manual modes anyway. Somehow I don;t feel comfortable going autopilot after having been brought up on manual-focus, manual-everything cameras.

Starbucks, where we just caught up on stuff and talked about everything. Turns out, he's pretty disillusioned about school too. I can't help; I'm equally disillusioned. But turns out he has similar interests in school, which was a major surprise.



Everyone has his or her issues, everyone's sad in a way. I feel some pride in being able to let my friends loosen up and talk about themselves, but I can't help. I'm too messed up myself.

It was great catching up on stuff! And it surely beats having a mopey public holiday at home.

Into Oblivion

I'm trying to prop myself up against my principles and choices and who I am.

But I fail. You - the world and I, we just don't get along well, do we? A clean divorce from you would be great, but we're just too freaking enmeshed. I hate you, world, and the feelings are probably mutual. But what the hell can I do about it?

If anyone cares, anyone at all... sigh. I'd just mope and hopefully someday, someone would just tell me that I'm more than a nameless face in the crowd.

Maybe it's the alcohol, disappointment in school, the late night or physical exhaustion. I dunno. I feel pretty much like a downed fighter jet right now.

I wish someone cared.

RandomPhotoWhore

Just back from a scenic but tiring run. Damn the spicy lunch I had, it was nauseating trying to keep it down while careening down across the puddles.

Random photo pics that somehow didn't really fit into any entries and had to make the cut:



Shish kebab thingamajig from NUS Business canteen. Tasty and healthy!



Peach Garden Thomson Plaza. Celebrated uncle's birthday!



School is in full swing again.



(Resized to hide JPG artifacts)

I look freaky!

Crazy Ang Mo - Bishan St. 22

Most any foodie would have heard of Botak Jones, Crazy Ang Mo and the debate about which makes the better burgers.



A quick recap: First there was Botak Jones, that brought (relatively) low-cost but tasty steak and burgers to the HDB estates around Singapore. Touting itself as serving authentic American food, it soon got a ravenous following of foodie fans who are willing to wait for more than an hour for their food. Starting at first from Tuas and Ang Mo Kio, branches have sprouted in Toa Payoh, Clementi, Woodlands and Depot Road.

And about a month ago, a new competitor has landed. Crazy Ang Mo is a similar set-up selling authentic Australian burgers and steak. Battles have emerged, including a head-on-head review of it versus Botak Jones in Straits Time's Sunday Lifestyle. Conclusion? Both are about on par.

==

And so this afternoon, craving a hearty and proper lunch, I made the long and arduous trek to Crazy Ang Mo from the bus stop I usually alight from.

About 5 minutes later (yeah, I do live that near), I found myself ordering a Crazy Burger, their flagship burger with 'the lot', meaning a vertical smorgasbord of: Sesame bun, cheese, fried egg, fried onions, crispy bacon, a beefy beefy patty with its edges seared just right, pineapple, tomato, lettuce, beetroot and a margarine-smeared bottom bun.

It was almost 3pm, so there wasn't really a queue. Mom says that last Sunday, the lunchtime wait was about 45 minutes. The wait for them to cook and stack the ingredients (must have been rather troublesome!) took about 15 minutes.

A bit about the food court where Crazy Ang Mo is. When I moved into Bishan about 17 years ago, that very location was a dim sum restaurant. After a few years of poor business, it then changed hands to another restaurant which didn't do too well either.

That location is cursed with a terrible location, as it's deep within the shopping area, with only an empty field on one side and a block of flats on another. Most people simply don't notice that secluded corner.

It was converted into a food court, and had changed hands twice (at least) before this current management. It had a rocky start, until they finally found 2 excellent anchor tenants. One is the chicken rice stall that is known for its juicy chicken and chicken rice balls.

The other is Crazy Ang Mo.



Don't ask me how the beetroot goes with the beef patty, because there was no way I could eat the burger whole without dislocating my jaw. Fine by me anyway, because I don't usually eat my burgers that way anyway.

While the burger wasn't flawless, it tasted pretty good.

Especially the patty, which was meaty, flavourful and cooked just right so the edges are seared to a crisp, and the inside is still juicy.

But 2 gripes: One, the cheese wasn't nicely melted over the pineapple, I would have loved melty cheese. Two, the base was coated with margarine, and you know how much I abhor the artificial trans-fat containing paste that human beings pass off for food these days.

The fries, well, they're the usual run-of-the-mill and the Straits Times review says to pay more for the proper steak fries.

Still, I like it. I'd go for it again and again, if not for the fact that it costs a whopping $7.90.

Oh and did I mention? I live only 5 minutes away.

Mcfly - Don't Stop Me Now

Mcfly performing a mindblowingly good cover of Queen's classic Don't Stop Me Now. The original version had a recent revival solely attributable to the cult comedy Shaun of the Dead!

Take That - Shine

Sometimes, sappy music can go easy on the ears too.

Tamiya RC Truck and Bus Race

Leet! They actually retrofitted some Tamiya trucks with intricately-detailed DIY bus bodies, complete with Chu Qian Yi Ding (or Chut Qin Yat Ding in Cantonese) advertising livery!

Too bad those Tamiya RC trucks cost $456 US Dollars. OMG.

Stop! Hammertime!

I'm still alive.

Just that, not enough blogworthy material for a good entry yet.

Stay tuned, ok?

Comfortably Numb

Been sleeping, like 10h a day on average lately after the controlled caffeine crash.

i.e. my self-devised protocol of 2/3 the previous day's coffee, except when I get headaches I top up the 1/3 and try again the next day.

Eyebags disappearing!

I've been forcing myself to study harder, it's either that or my downfall. The group I'm in makes no attempt to avoid making me feel stupid and lazy. It's sorta crazy, developing an obsession and compulsion for revision. (That last line would prolly make a great hip-hop lyrical hook.) But hey, almost all my classmates are more OCD'd about it. Rumour has it that someone in my class kneels when he studies so that he won't fall asleep on his books despite being exhausted.

So if you see me online less, and blogging less (beyond the typical blogging lull that comes with school weeks) it means I've been grinding at the textbooks and all.

I'm still peeved at the fact that I'm retarded at flying the remote-controlled plane on the FMS simulator. I just can't level the wings gently enough or to flare the landing at the right time! And it incenses me that kids at the age of 17 can fly a REAL LIVE ACTION turboprop plane in Youth Flying Club, and I can't even master a simulator.

Music wise, I'm getting totally hooked on Timbaland. He pwns all of RnB combined. Check out his latest single Apologize and his older stuff such as the Nelly Furtado and Timberlake collaboration Give It To Me. Oh did I mention? He produced Justin Timberlake's SexyBack and My Love, though they sorta sounded too processed for me. Anyhow, those 2 are quite respectable songs for an ex-boyband guy.

Timberlake, Timbaland, say them 10 times fast.

I never imagined myself starting to like RnB. Timbaland - along with Kanye West and Outkast - is as good as RnB gets.

Screw you, Akon, Usher and Black Eyed Peas!