Yeah, you know, guys can grow boobs too. Have you ever seen Jack Black not wearing a shirt?

Alcohol does link to man boobs. Or moobs. Ugh. I never thought I'd be discussing this here. Anyway, alcohol has a certain effect where it basically dulls your whole cognitive ability. It also stops you from feeling full. When you're at a buffet, and you're intoxicated, you'll tend to eat more, because your body isn't feeling that you're stuffed. Over time, it gets you eating more and more. Multiply it over a dozen buffets and you're getting fat.

Add another couple of dozen and guys start to grow boobs.

It's all because of th excess fat. I'm pretty sure there's some effect of alcohol involving increasing the concentration of triglycerides in the blood. So that adds to the boob-growing, too.

Oh, and if you couldn't help it and Googled "Jack Black shirtless"... I claim no responsibility for mental damage. Or any other kind of damage, really.

*Runs*

Anyhow, this whole business about a terrorist leader on the loose is mighty interesting. One must wonder how he escaped in the first place. With great effort, I tried not to conjure images of him phasing through the walls, or freezing time and walking out of the place. It didn't work. So I'm just giving up on being able to imagine something without evolved abilities, The Force, conspiracy theories, or Gregory House.

However, I am fortunate enough to have enough RAM in my noggin to think of other ways he could have escaped. Two scenarios immediately come to mind. Either he had outside help, or his detainers slipped up somehow. Or a combination of both. Since the authorities(cough, conspiracy, cough) did not release any information other than that he escaped and is now running around screaming "For Great Jihad!!!!", we don't have a clue on what actually happened in that detention facility.

I mean, this is the real world. You can't Splinter Cell your way out of a prison. No one has that kind of skill. Except maybe those bionically enhanced secret agents that the government doesn't want us to know about... Gasp! Hey! Who are you, the one wearing the tuxedo?

*Flash*

Due to the lack of information, all we have are our imaginations. Perhaps the guard had to take a piss and mister terrorist took the opportunity.

Okay, great. Now my mind is churning out ideas involving the fourth spacial dimension and wormholes. I guess I could stay on this for a long time and never come to a conclusion.

Anyway, Singapore's law enforcement system is good. People need not be afraid. He'll be caught, sooner or later.

"Now we'll all have to wonder if the next dark skinned guy you see coming up the alley and staring at you with red rimmed eyes and a sinister smile is going to whack you and thrash you"

That, ma'am, is the devil. The terrorist looks like an overweight middle-aged man exhausted from his nine hours at the office.

Paranoia, much?
-Joe

So... I just spent about a hundred bucks today. Meep.

I bought three things. One of which I am very satisfied with. One of which I am just sorta fine with. The other one... Well, it isn't useful to me yet.

The edition of Digital Life we got during the Chinese New Year week featured a bunch of gadgets which I thought were really cool. Specifically, this:
The X-Mini Capsule Speaker.

Mind you, when they say "mini", they mean it. That picture makes it look really huge, but really. When I saw it, I was surprised. From the article in Digital Life, I figured it was about two and a half, maybe three inches across. it's really actually only about half that.

It's really cute. Yeah. The design was one thing, but being an audiophile like me(shut up, Leonard), the quality of music it produced was a more important factor. And woah, it was brilliant. The clarity was superb. Many, many, many times better than the speaker you get on your Walkman phone. So $35 dollars well spent.

Crud. My internet thingy is giving me problems. It just disconnected me. And I can't log in to MSN. Damnit. Singnet, you tricked me.

Other than that fantabulous speaker, I also got a nice new headset for my computer use. See, there was a problem with my old one. A piece of junk I procured from Popular Bookstore. They had this genius idea of putting the microphone right next to the speaker. This basically meant that everything that came out of the speaker also went into the microphone. This wasn't a problem until I tried making internet calls. The problem, as you may already have deduced, involved the person on the other side hearing himself twice; once when he spoke, and again a second later when he hears it through my microphone again. Which, apparently, was really annoying. So I stopped using that.

Yeah, so that's pretty much why I spent $30 on a new headset today. Plus it looks nice.

I also got a new mouse. Argh. That was a mistake. It was too small for my hand. The response was good, the accuracy and all... But it just didn't fit my hand. That wasn't good. However, not to worry. I can still use this new mouse for a laptop. When I get one.

If I get one.

So yeah. That's how I spent a hundred buckaroos today. Remind me never to buy a mouse without feeling it properly first.

Ah, and I just found out that 12/08 has been cubing... Yes. It's working. Just a little more time... Wait, did I just say that out loud? I mean, look over there! I'm changing the subject!




Yeah, donuts. They're nice. You should eat them.

-Joe

Sadism +2

Okay, not really. Wait, maybe really. I don't know.

Well here's the story. There's been a little rodenty thingy living in our garden for a while, and my parents didn't like that. So they set up a mouse trap for the thing. We did catch the shrew once, but it was small enough to escape through the gap between the trapdoor and the cage. So the mousetrap was set out again.

Only this time, it didn't catch a mouse, or a rodent of any sort. About one week ago, a juvenile water monitor found its way into the wondrous contraption, and(obvious) got trapped. If you don't know what a water monitor is... Google it. Or use Wiki.

Okay, so the thing is, my mom didn't dare go near it. My dad's overseas on work. My brother... Well he's like my mom. That leaves me. And I am not like my mom, or my brother.

For the past week or so, I didn't bother looking at it because I was busy, what with um... Social obligations and all. But today, my mom was pestering me to go do something about our little reptilian friend. Obviously she meant "kill it and dispose of its body".

So I did.

It was about five thirty in the afternoon. The sun was hidden behind a blanket of clouds. Wasn't too hot, so I didn't object. I stepped out into the garden and located the black-scaled fiend. It was curled motionless inside a rusting mesh cage. I strode boldly towards it, picked up the cage, and brought it to the centre of the garden.

"How the **** do you open this thing?"

No, seriously. That was the first thing that came to my mind. Not "eww a lizard". I do not ever go "eww a lizard". Ever.

Armed with a foot-long icepick, I tried stabbing the monitor through the holes in the cage. It was not easy. Even though the reptile had been starved for about a week, it still had its reflexes. It snapped at the spike and hissed viciously, as I tried again and again to impale its sinuous body. Soon, I realised that my current method wasn't going anywhere. I needed to revise my approach.

At that point, I could only see one way of getting around this problem. I walked around the shed and retrieved some gardening gloves from the dusty pile of junk that just... exists... there. I pulled on the fibrous gauntlets and tried to work open the cage. Honestly, that was the biggest challenge I faced throughout the whole thing. Opening the damn cage. After a minute or so. I figured it out, and the trapdoor sprang open.

The lizard suddenly fired up its claws, with surprising speed and strength for a week-starved reptile. It started climbing up the chain-link sides of the trap. But that was just not enough. I have been trained since young for situations like this. I now know what all those years of watching The Crocodile Hunter were for...

So I reached in and grabbed the serpent by the neck, totally Steve Irwin style. It thrashed its long tail and clawed feet in the air, twisting and whipping. I pushed it onto the grass and reached for my weapon. Wielding the icepick like a stake, I performed a classic vampire slaying that Van Helsing would refer to for the rest of his life... If we was still alive, that is.

But, mercy, the black hellspawn wouldn't die. It had a metal spike driven right through its tiny head. I heard the skull shatter myself as I pierced it. Right between the eyes. But still, the tail whipped back and forth, struggling. I raised the icepick again, and impaled it yet again. But to no avail. It just kept thrashing. I was not expecting this. This monitor's undead prowess was astounding. Again and again I drove the spike through its head. It would stop moving, but after I let go it would wriggle defiantly again.

I soon realised that the only way to make it stop was to sever its head completely. My mother helpfully gave me a large meat knife to perform the deed.

Chop.

Okay, it took more than that. Scaley skin is tougher than you'd expect. Perhaps owing to my inexperience with a knife, but I ended up making several wild Jack-The-Ripper-esque slashes.

Yeah, so it died eventually.

I should gain some good experience points from this... I think I'm almost leveled.

You know, I actually found this fun. Not "ah, interesting" fun. Fun. Just, really fun. Everyone should try it one day.


-Joe

So then, I was reading the Sunday Comics, and there was something about a Bucket List. A Bucket List is basically a list of what you want to do before you die.

Sounds pretty normal, eh? Yes, but I was doing some spontaneous thinking, and I realised that bucket lists presented potential logical paradoxes.

You would agree, that we all have a finite amount of time to live. Thus, you would also agree that our lists have to be finite. If our lists are finite, it is only logical to list down the things which we most want to do. The ones which we, well, put at the tops of our lists.

Now, assuming that we have chosen activities wisely such that we can accomplish all of them within our lifetime, we essentially have a good list. But, how long these activities take is but only one factor. One must also take into account the nature of these activities, and most importantly, whether or not they will affect the nature of the other activities.

By that, I mean whether or not we get killed/crippled while doing one activity, thus stopping us from completing the rest of them.

Take bungee jumping for example. It is not uncommon to see “bungee jump the Grand Canyon” on people's bucket lists. After all, it is exciting and is considered a fulfilling experience by many. A person with bungee jumping on his bucket list must take into account the risk factor of this human slingshot. It is safe to say that there is a chance of the person getting seriously injured, or dying, due to some unforseen mishap. Even though these crazy activities are getting safer(somewhat...), there is still that little risk factor there.

There are other dangerous activities that people would like to do before they die. Swimming with sharks, hang-gliding over the Pacific, staring down the barrel of a shotgun...

Given how easy it is for someone to die when bullet fragments explode through his brain, it would be logical to place the more dangerous activities further down the timescale, thus allowing you to achieve more of your bucket list activities. Basically, put the less dangerous ones sooner, more dangerous ones later.

However, many of the more dangerous bucket list activities are also highly physical. This means that they would be more easily performed by someone who is healthy and fit. Also assuming that none of us have Claire Bennet's regeneration abilities, we will all get old, weak, and fragile.

Now, I'm going to make a generalisation here and say that the older you are, the more fragile you are, and therefore the higher the chance of you biting the bullet while doing a dangerous activity. We can try to explain this mathematically. The probability of you dying whilst attempting a dangerous activity is a product of your fragility and the level of danger of this activity.

This basically works out to... Uh... The older you are, the more likely you'll die while bungee jumping.

So, if we consider bungee jumping a dangerous activity, in contrast to something like... Shaking hands with your favourite celebrity as a non-dangerous activity(I know, bad example), and we follow the first rule of putting dangerous things last, we would find that by the time we have completed the non-dangerous activities, we would be so old that our risk of dying would have increased substantially when we attempt the later activities.

This could mean a few things. One, when we attempt our later, more dangerous activities, we would have an extremely large chance of kicking the bucket right there. Assuming that our lists consist of dangerous, not so dangerous, and petting-zoo-with-stuffed-animals dangerous activities in equal proportions, we would essentially be almost guaranteed to complete all the low to mid level of danger activities. We're assuming that the hyper-dangerous ones are in a comparatively small proportion. Because people with entire bucket lists filled with “Swim with Great White without shark cage, Explore belly of live killer whale, see what happens when I shoot myself up with 1kg of morphine etc” are not normal people. Suicidal maniacs...

Okay, sorry. My brain is exploding. So I'm going to just skip all the other blather which my brain is currently producing. It's so hard to put into words.

Basically, all I'm saying is that there has to be some kind of ideal bucket list for everyone. A bucket list equilibrium, which gives the user the highest chance of completing as many bucket list activities as he can. It will factor in the number and nature of activities, the well-being of the individual, and other external factors. Such as whether or not he'll die outside of his activities. You know, stuff like nuclear holocausts and bad eugenics programs...

So yeah, that's about it. I hope you guys can sorta grasp what I'm getting at here. Use your imagination, people. I'm not very good at maths, so I'll leave the formulae for someone else to figure out. Meanwhile...

-Joe

EDIT: I was really bored so I decided to draw this...

Yeah, the right leg wasn't outlined properly. I sorta forgot to do that. And the drill could probably have been neater... How the hell do you draw blood splatter with a pencil, anyway?

Aah it's been a while. Haven't posted since... Tuesday? I think?

Anyway... World, prepare yourself. I exercised. Voluntarily. Gasp! Seizure! It was Shaun who got me into it. Gasp! Spasm! Choke! Yes, I believe that was the more surprising one. He actually ran over to my place and we walked back to his, where we continued to play badminton.

Badminton in a real court sucks. I feel like it's too bloody small. I remember when we used to play at Montfort's Foyer. We basically had this giant area to play in. Maybe one and a half times the size of a regular badminton court to smash and hit fly-shots to our hearts' content. When you could put an entire arm swing into every shot, then wait for your opponent to slam it back to you as fast as a speeding bullet, all in the time frame of less than five seconds... I'm just saying, it's more fun without the rules.

So, anyway. Back to my point. The badminton courts near Shaun's house were basically concrete platforms with paint markings on them. On either end of the court, there would be a very-annoying staircase. This means that whenever I tried one of my smashy thingies, the bloody shuttlecock flew way beyond Shaun, landing somewhere behind the staircase. Back at school, we could've run backwards and returned the shot, but thanks to those goddamn stairs, we were hopelessly stuck within the horrible constrains of their concrete impediments.

If that wasn't enough, there were also these plant-pit thingies full of some kind of razor grass. Given that neither of us have played badminton since our last PE lesson at Montfort, we generally couldn't aim as well as we used to. Not that we had excellent aim in the first place. Long story short, I made a wild save to one of his asshole shots(wait, that sounds wrong) and swiped the shuttlecock right into the middle of the frickin' razor grass.

Back in Montfort, the only problem we had with wild shots were running through a barrage of other shuttlecocks and having your classmates yell at you. Not as in yellish yell, more like the hey-what-the-*expletive*-are-you-doing-get-off-my-court yell.

Eventually, we gave up and went for a shower. After which we met up with Jeremy and Daniel to go bowling.

We played... A lot of games. My body aches. A lot.

It was so hard getting out of bed this morning. I mean, afternoon.

Okay, well that concludes today's... Picture picture picture picture picture....


Double pun for those who went bowling!
-Joe

Oh, sweet glorious holiday! For my fellow polytechnic students and myself, that is. Yep, I've been accepted into the molecular biology course at Nanyang Polytechnic. Not that's it's really a surprise. What was a surprise, was that there are another 3 people from 4e1 who are entering the very same course as I am! Oh wait. That's untrue. It's not a surprise. Mathematically, the probability was really high anyway.

Well, we decided to grab this one day of respite to have a bit of fun. So the bunch of us got together for a movie marathon. Well, not so much a marathon as watching two movies in a row. Juno. Brilliant, marvelous movie. It's surprising, coming from me. Normally I don't say I like movies unless it has a complex storyline, full of little twisties and obscure connections. Juno is a simple movie. But it is a great movie. It's full of pop-culture references(incidentally, I love those) and features a lot of satirical humour. And a bunch of really crude comments which I must confess to enjoying very much. Such as handing out babies for adoption like free iPods in China.

Jumper... Wasn't a great movie. But it wasn't bad either. Most of the enjoyment I got out of it was watching them use their powers. Thus explaining why I am a Heroes fan. The show basically covers a guy who discovers that he can teleport to any location which he can see. Unlike the usual super-power stories, this guy doesn't become a vigilante. Instead, he makes off with loads of cash from the bank. The main issue with the story is that it's too centered around that girl... We've all seen that literally hundreds of times. It just gets old really fast.

Excuse me while I fantasize about never having to wait for the bus again.

And being able to lock people I don't like in indestructable vaults.

And my lightsabers. Can you imagine how cool it would be if Obi-Wan could teleport?

Aaand, we played Citadels! Or whatever it's called. A really cool card game which involves constructing districts with the aid of special characters. It's a simple, but fun game. I didn't win. Oh well.

After that, we decided to go bowling. That was partially because we were hogging a table at Macdonald's with just a medium coke. And bowling... Sweet Jesus, it's addictive. My first couple of bowls(is that the right term?) were completely retarded. Even though it had such a large mass, I could hardly aim it. However, after watching my friends for a while, I sort of got the hang of it. I ended up just powering the balls down the lane, reaching fifteen, sixteen miles per hour in speed. And it wasn't a bad strategy, either. I managed to pull of a strike and a spare, bringing my position to match Shaun's.

My middle finger ached a little after that.

Even though I didn't win in the end, I thought it was a brilliant game. I definitely want to give it another go soon.

-Joe

1.5 months have passed since the beginning of this year. The posting for all ‘O’ level graduates are coming out this coming Tuesday. Some will be elated to be able to enter their dream course/JC, while there may be those who grieve over not getting what they wanted. Either try to appeal to your dream courses, or just simply look forward to what lies ahead. The course you may have not expected to get may just turn out to be what your true calling is. So regardless of the posting, all of us ‘O’ level graduates can only look forward to the future.

Coming back to the few months that have passed this year, it had been a short taste of JC life for me. After this experience I’m certain that it doesn’t suit me; I’m lazy. Laziness is definitely not good if you’re taking ‘A’ level. Firstly, you've got to keep up with your homework. Secondly, you got to put in lots of time into studying and revising.

They will be abolishing the PAE system soon, which is, sad because many students could not experience the ‘JC’ before choosing. It will be great, in the sense that; you can know your fixed school in the three or four months earlier, and get to settle down after one intake instead of changing school after the ‘experience’.

And do tag your future institute in the tag box tomorrow after 8am!^^

-Shaun

Oh, the humanity.

Remember the Virginia Tech shooting? Now we have the Northern Illinois University shooting.

On the 14th of February, the lives of the families and friends of five Illinois residents took a turn for the worst. Some people in Illinois now don't have a friend, a brother, a sister, a son, or a daughter, that they had the previous morning.

On the morning of Valentine's Day itself, a man interrupted a routine lecture. He then proceeded to pump a shotgun and fire into the first two rows. People were screaming, running. He fired again, and again. When his bucks were spent, he pulled a pistol from his pocket, and carried on.

After which he turned it on himself and put a bullet in his brain.

The similarities to Virginia Tech, which occurred less than a year ago(last April, to be exact), are uncanny. Back then, it was called "Columbine all over again." Now it's Columbine AND Virginia Tech again.

This is horrible. We can't even get through two years without another school massacre. It's stupid. Why do people do that? There's no point looking for "reason" or "sense" in any of this. People died on some idiot's whim.

I can't continue. I analyse things. I make sense of them. I understand and evaluate. This is just... Not possible. Not for me.

Events like this... Suck. A lot.

-Joe

The wind blew softly, a gentle whir in their ears. The sky, a brilliant, but fading red. They sat there in the cooling air looking out over the plains, listening to the cries of an unseen fowl. She puts his hand on his. At that ever-so-sweet touch, he turns to face her, gazing into those hazel eyes, They look longingly upon one another, though they are merely inches apart. Suddenly, all is dark.

“Crud.We just missed it, didn’t we?.”


Yeah, Happy Valentine’s Day, all. You know, it’s funny, to me. Having been in a all-dude school for a full ten years, Valentine’s Day has always been “just another day”. No commeration, not even a special acknowledgement. As a good friend of mine put it, can you imagine how gay it would look with all the gift-giving and hugs?

No longer do I reside in a monastery, but it doesn’t change much for me. I’ll be spending Valentine’s Day like I always do: With my books and my music. And my computer. And my phone. And my copy of Super Mario World.

I find it ironic that the human race has dedicated a day solely for the purpose of love. Number one, no one really knows how Valentine’s Day came about. The stories you hear may or may not be true. We know all about the many people named Saint Valentine. Yes, there were multiple Saint Valentines. But the legend goes something like this…

The Roman emperor Claudius II had a notion that married men made poor soldiers, and forbade all young males from marriage, so as to expand his military. Yadda yadda yadda. Somehow, it was found out that a certain someone was secretly and illegally performing marital ceremonies for couples. He was arrested, and was ordered to be executed. The evening before his death, he wrote a note signed with “from your Valentine” to someone. This is where everything gets fuzzy. Some accounts say that it was addressed to the daughter of the jailkeeper, who was originally blind, but then was healed via a miracle by St. Valentine himself. Another version is that the addressee of this note was none other than St. Valentine’s own beloved one. Other accounts suggest that both of these were correct.

But this doesn’t really have much to do with love as we know it. There are really no links between romantic love and any saints named Valentinus. Here comes another little piece of history that… Might… Be slightly weird. Depending on your point of view.

In Ancient Rome, Febuary the 15th was Lupercalia, a day connected to rites of fertility

Lupercalia, of which many write that it was anciently celebrated by shepherds, and has also some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea. At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy

I think that says something right there.

So much for knowing about its origins. If you would refer to the archives… Christmas wasn’t so nice and fuzzy either. Fuzzy. Like bacteria growing on nutrient-filled jelly…

So now, here I am bringing you trauma, as always. Because today I shan’t discuss love in humans… But rather, voles! FYI, a vole is basically this little rodenty thing. It’s like a prairie dog. In fact, I believe it is a prairie dog.

For ages, artists and philosphers have tried to understand this inconceivable human emotion. Poets and playwrights conjuring endless sonnets and stories to illustrate, but never satisfactorily explain it.

Science has an answer. Okay, I can hear everyone groaning and yelling at me now… Shush…

Believe it or not, voles can fall in love, so to speak. When two voles pair up, they basically undergo rodent marital rites. The male becomes extremely protective over the female. When they have young, both parents become attentive and caring parents. They will avoid meeting new potential mates, and stay together for life.

The funny thing is, that another very closely related vole does not share a single similarity in parenting behaviour. Just a handful of genes turned this other vole into an uncaring partner, with no interest in partnership beyond the what-goes-where process.

Why, you ask, are they so different? It’s got to do with how the brain works. In the known animal kingdom, only about 3% of all the species(including us) are monogamous. Or at least make an effort to be monogamous(again, referring to us). The brains of generally monogamous animals have these happy little things we call oxytocin and vasopressin receptors in the areas associated with reward and reinforcement. Other animals lack these, and only have dopamin receptors.

When a person feels something pleasurable, dopamine is released and it flows around the brain. This could be anything from eating ice-cream, watching a movie, or having a nice little happy time with himself. From the first experience, the person links dopamine production with the action which he is performing, and so seeks to carry it out again in the future to achieve similar rewards.

But, when a person experiences something pleasurable with someone else, those two other neurotransmitters are released. Oxytocin and vasopressin. These hormones make a person remember the other person in the vicinity. That’s where the bond comes from. It might also be interesting to note that a similar thing happens when a mother nurses her child. So basically here’s what happens. People enjoy themselves together, they get happy chemicals released in their brains. Their brains connect the people together with the happiness, and so both people simultaneously develop a bond with one another.

If you’re wondering how people make friends. That’s it right there. Enjoyable stuff doesn’t necessarily have to go into the what-goes-where region. The more fun you have with other people, the better your relationship will be.

But do you know what the scary(ish) part of this is? The closer you get to someone, the more… Addicted you become to this person. Blame it on the pleasure-reward system of our brains. Instead of using cocaine and morphine to induce pleasure and euphoria, we achieve these very same effects from being around the people we like. Ever wondered why you get lonely? It’s because you’ve been cut off from your most healthy, ready, supply of happiness.

While I think I’m nicely fitting science and society together… I’m also going to leave you with one last thought.

Love is not magical. It’s chemical. I don’t care what anyone else, says. It’s all neurotransmitters firing off. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it. I love my friends and my family. When I say that, it means that I enjoy being with them. They enjoy being with me. Of course, it’s a huge understatement, but it’s difficult to express it in words.

Okay, so here it is. If everything that we’ve ever appreciated in other people. Their friendship, their affection… If it is all chemicals, then theoretically, we could simulate relationships. Just think: Get two people who are unlikely to ever become friends. Put electrodes in their brain which stimulate the production of oxytocin when they interact… They will become friends!

I think I’ve just got a great idea for world peace…

Until then, have fun, guys. Try not to think of the chemicals in your brain, though.

-Joe

*Microsoft Word’s spell-check doesn’t seem to be working. So if something doesn’t make sense/sounds really offensive it’s probably a typo on my part.

I need a break from JC life.. Hehe.. My exploding apologies for not posting for SO long and for using ridiculously overexaggerated metaphors that will burst the ear cells in your ear.

So. What has GuoWei been poking his smelly nose into during the december holidays... GuoWei was working at Takashimaya Square selling helicopters for MegCorp.. hehe Earned quite abit of money... enough to fill a bathtub with 1cent coins i think...

GuoWei is now currently still studying at VJC taking the subject comb: Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Economics and Knowledge&Inquiry. Yes. All at H2. ARh... Ok.. I've done all tutorials to keep me free for 2 weeks with the exception of tests and the KI essay about foundations of knowledge which is due tomorrow. (Thank goodness no word limit or minimum word).. hehehe

I'll post my essay here if i get good marks.

Till then, happy mugging for those you bother to!...

Well. I spliced my palm on the pull-up bar. I've just ran 4.4km. My hand hurts...

But you know what's even more retarded? I sprayed alcohol on the wound. Twice. And not by accident... What was I thinking?

Aside from that stinging feel and the way my arms seem to be unable to support themselves, I'm fine, I guess.

Today's presentation went well, I suppose. I didn't really sense any attacks in particular. Lucky me, then.

Man, that's a lot of two-line paragraphs today. Anyway, has anyone realised that "analysis" can be seen as a combination of "anal" and "lysis"? So that basically means... To split using ass. Great.

Oh, and I remembered something about our happy apocalypse theories. While a swap in magnetic field would do nothing except mess with our navigation, the disappearance of it could result in the end of the world. Now, this is not impossible. Most geologists agree in the liquid dynamo theory thing. I don't really understand it myself, but it's got to do with that the fluid motion of molten iron in the outer core causes a magnetic field to be generated.

Now, consider this: The earth is cooling. The initial heat produced during the formation of the earth has been dissipating over the last 5 billion years or so. The only heat we're getting back is from the sun, and that doesn't get very far in. So basically, the core of the earth is cooling down, and eventually, it'll solidify. When that happens, the magnetic field will be lost. Yeah, go search "liquid dynamo". Maybe someone with a better knowledge of magnetism will be able to explain it better.

Our magnetic field does many things for us. Other than the obvious boon for navigation, it also protects us against cosmic rays by diverting them away from the face of the earth. Solar wind. The deflection is weakest at the poles, so the space stuffies get closer to the planet, resulting in aurora borealis.

When our magnetic shielding is gone... Well, the rest is self explanatory. The earth will be continually bombarded with cosmic radiation and other solar particles. It'll be like living in Chernobyl. For the rest of your life. Everywhere.

Wait, shit. I just did some reading, and apparently, a pole shift could cause the same effects. According to the source, the swap isn't immediate. It takes some time. And in that time, we might get(according to computer simulations) multiple, random, magnetic poles "wandering" around the earth. So you might suddenly have a north pole in your back yard. While this may sound really cool and all, the disruption of a continuous magnetic field from pole to pole will have a similar effect to having no magnetic field at all.

So if the poles are really going to swap, we're all going to get cancer. We'll all be a bunch of cancerous mutants, unable to use the telephone or the internet(because cosmic radiation kills all forms of transmission). All that we can hope for is that they give us Fantastic 4-ish powers instead of tumours.

Whoop te doo.

Oh wait, we may not have to wait that long. Without a magnetic field, solar particles will be free to react with and remove our atmosphere. Literally blowing it away. Without the atmosphere, all water will be lost too. So yeah, we may not have to worry about cancer.


Does anyone find this a little disturbing?

-Joe

If the world is about to end, it'll be because of a perfectly logical, explainable event. Like massive asteroid deciding that it wanted to smash itself into earth. Or a volcanic eruption that covers the sky, blocking off sunlight for decades. Or some idiot/genius decides that humanity isn't worth it anymore and pushes the nuke button. There isn't going to be a pillar of fire extending to the heavens, or a great flood pouring down on us all.

Because water doesn't magically appear out of nothing.

However, there could be a way it might happen. We all know that the most abundant elements in the universe are the light, small ones. Hydrogen, helium, lithium, and so on. We're living in a second generation solar system. We know this because we're not living on clouds of hydrogen.

You see, in the beginning, only these light elements existed. Through nuclear processes, the elements started to fuse together. It's how stars can burn. The hydrogen in them undergoes nuclear fusion, and it becomes helium. When all the hydrogen is used up, the helium starts fusing together. And so on, creating heavier and heavier elements.

However, this does not occur at the same rate all over the universe. That means that there are still massive hydrogen clouds floating around out there. If one day, one of these happy hydrogen clouds decided to visit earth, it would... Do a lot of stuff. Now, I can't remember most of it, but I do know that the massive amount of hydrogen(note that this cloud is bigger than earth itself) would enter the atmosphere and start reacting with oxygen in the air. Hydrogen and oxygen make water. It might be explosive. I'm pretty sure that that reaction is exothermic. So, assuming that we aren't all piles of ashes then, the water would condense and splash down on all of us.

But we'd have detected a hydrogen cloud long before it arrived, so we'd know by now if we're going to have Noah's flood again. If it happened in the first place.

Well, Chinese New Year visiting is now over. My mega weekend has vanished. The reunions were alright, but not really as fun as they used to be. I noticed a distinct drop in the amount of talking and laughing this time, as compared to our previous get-togethers. Why? I don't know. I could probably come up with a wacko theory about social dynamics, but I'd just feel like I'm lying to myself. Maybe we're all just changing. People are growing up, getting jobs, moving on to higher education. In fact, quite a few of us are experiencing a major change in our lives. How does that link to CNY being less fun? I don't know. I certainly felt much more subdued this time. Whenever I tried to say anything it felt like I hadn't been talking in a long time. Who knows? Maybe I haven't been. There's a problem with the philosophy "If you've got nothing good to say, don't say it." You see, it ends up with you just shutting up most of the time.

Sigh. I'm still so shy. I can't say anything that I usually do in the presence of my family. It's just difficult for me to talk to most people. They don't vibrate on the same frequencies as I do. Wait, correction: I'm just weird. Weird such that the only friends I have also happen to have their own little quirks and obsessions. Weird such that I find "normal" people the most boring things on the planet. Usually I'm proud of my "uniqueness", but there are those times when I realise that I can't ever say anything naturally to strangers...

Whatever. I'll just forget about that. That's probably not the most healthy thing to do right now, but I've got other things to take care of. Like the KI presentation that I was planning to complete two days ago.


-Joe

It's Chinese New Year. I should be happy. Only I'm not.

It's come at a really bad time. A combination of too much coke and thinking is keeping me up this night. What have I been thinking of? Something entirely unrelated to the New Year.

I think that I have lost everything I had for games. Yes, that's why I'm not happy. It may be a difficult concept for some people to grasp, but believe me, the feelings are very real here. It's that sensation of there being a venomous bubble ever inflating in my chest... It grows, pushing at my heart, my lungs. I can't breathe, even though there's nothing obstructing my air. My heart feels heavy, swollen, even though nothing has happened to it. And then there's the worst part. I can't cry. The whole thing... It's agonising. Like there's something ripping my chest apart, but never quite finishes. It goes on, and on, and on.

There was once a time when I would jump to the computer and fire up Jedi Outcast or Diablo at a moment's chance. I would play for hours on end, delighting myself in the many ways I could cut someone's head off with a lightsaber, push a helpless stormtrooper off a cliff, burn demons to the ground and back to the very flames which they came from. I would experiment with coding, different ways to get around an obstacle. I would manipulate the game so that I could play differently. And then there would come the time that I'd have to turn it off, to do my homework or face some other responsibility. At that point in my life, I yearned to simply play, and play, and play.

But then Secondary School came along. Gaming had to slow down. It wasn't my choice. At least, not until sometime later. For the first couple of years, gaming was still my refuge. The time which I spent to forget about my problems at school. I even got to know a good friend through them. Eventually, however, I realised that I could not play forever. I was doing well in school and I was under pressure(by myself, mostly) to keep it up, and maybe do better. That, I did. That, I am proud and satisfied of. As more and more of my time shifted from blasting TIE Fighters out of the sky to expanding my knowledge in symbiosis and evolution, I began to lose touch of my former favorite activity.

My gaming hours dwindled to few. I started staying back in school to study, or to hang out with my friends. My lightsabers and magical elixirs grew dusty. The Force had long since abandoned me. I clung on to it, but to no avail. Once or twice, I was under the impression that I had actually caught some of the metaphorical water, but... Well, I held on to it as well as people usually do with water. Every game I'd really gotten into was great while it lasted; but as my friends began to lose interest, so did I. Anyone remember Infinity? Rakion?

Why? Why did I move on so quickly... Games that I thought I'd be enjoying for years to come, were tossed aside after less than a month of play. The gamer within me has withered and died. I should have seen it coming. I never had the reflexes to match others in online shooters, nor the patience and resilience of a MMORPG fan. I did not have the tactical skill of a strategy master. It should have been obvious. I could never have played games "seriously".

Not that it matters. But I do have one friend who I've known since my primary school days. The only reason that we are friends today is that we played games together. Online role playing games, action-packed shooters. Great adventures and impossible racers. We enjoyed each gem, and flamed each let-down.

And then there's now. I don't even have the heart to play Bioshock through a third time. I basically wasted seventy bucks on Hellgate: London, having abandoned it due to poor gameplay and a horrible storyline. Splinter Cell still entertains, but it only does so much...

I tried getting immersed into a new MMORPG, hoping that I would reignite that little passion I once had for them. To be honest, it sucked. People who make games, idiots. Really. They have yet to understand what people want in a a role playing game. RPGs are about character development. The name itself gives you a big clue... Role Playing. The entire point of RPGs is to pretend to be someone else. A wizard, a knight, a superhero. If the game fails to draw you in, fails to make you feel like a wizard... The game has failed entirely.

And the people, oh, the people. I remember when I was only twelve, and having a great time playing Diablo II online. I could talk to people who I didn't know, find friends in party members. I could really connect with people. I laughed, I really did. It's difficult to describe, but it made my experience wonderful. Today, everyone is just an asshole. It's impossible to talk to anyone without getting an idiotic comment. The territorial nature of people these days...

The role-playing games of today fail miserably. There, I said it. If anyone's playing any kind of MMORPG, you're wasting your time. You're killing your braincells when you're interacting with idiots.

Gaming has lost its meaning. Gaming is not just about grinding endlessly for levels, or farming for items for hours on end... It's about that sense of adventure, the thrill of facing the unknown, journeying to the ends of the earth and back with your troupe of trusty friends...

I have, so to speak, logged off from Arcadion.

Until another game captures my attention again, I'm sticking to books.

Great timing... /Sarcasm

-Joe

10...
9...
8...
7...
6...
5...
4...
3...
2...
1...

Wait, crud. I'm late.

But whatever.

The Quaver wishes everyone a very happy New Year.

…Again.

You know, there’s a great thing about living in Singapore. On this blazing rock, we celebrate both western and eastern cultures. Thanks to the fact that most of us are Chinese, we also partake in the forced revelry of the Chinese New Year. Which, according to my PD tutor, is not actually the Lunar New Year. The Chinese don’t use a purely lunar calendar. Rather, it’s a combination of both the solar and lunar cycles, known as the Lunisolar Calendar. It’s basically a calendar that includes both the moon phases and the time of a solar year(one revolution around the sun).

But who cares? Okay, plenty of people. But I’ve never really been bothered. After all, one day in the distant future… All the peoples of the earth will use the same calendar. The same currency, the same… Okay, I’ll cut the Martin Luther King Jr thing here…

Chinese New Year is a time that most of us relate to oriental feasts, family reunions, throat-killing yummies, and many, many more. It is a time when we get to see our cousins, our uncles, our aunts, our grandparents… For some, maybe even their siblings or parents, after nearly a year of absence. Unless you celebrate Christmas, of course. But let’s not deny it: We’re not complaining.

Many of us have been through as many CNYs as we have birthdays, and I think it would be safe to say that they are generally a pleasurable experience. Even if you, like Shaun, are not interested in meeting a select few of your relatives, there are always the red packets to cheer you up! Yeah, I know, not the point of the New Year, but who says we can’t enjoy that too?

So, everyone, since we can’t get firecrackers here in Singapore, thou shalt improvise. Sparklers are readily available. As are matchsticks. And water, electrodes, and flames… Plus butane. Even though we don’t happen to have happy magnesium-packed rockets at our disposal, it doesn’t mean that we can’t make a pyrotechnic show that would put even Gandalf’s famous fireworks to shame.

Okay, that was a lie. Gandalf’s fireworks are unbeatable.

But still, yeah. Jeremy, I’m still thinking of your store cupboard. We need to get those fire hazards out and… Neutralize them. Yeah, that’s a good word. Neutralize. Not explode. Because it’s not in any way explosive or potentially dangerous… Yeah, why would I lie?

But before we go off having fire parties, rejoice, my friends! Go do something crazy and worth retelling so that your kids won’t think that you’re really boring. We’ve got a mega weekend ahead of us. So, enjoy yourselves. That is an order.

$$Ka-ching$$

Noooo. My 170MB picture collection has failed me! Nothing about Chinese New Year!

-Joe

I am going to have to build a fortress for eugenics...

Anyway, I'd like everyone to take a very close look at this...


This is the front cover for a recent installment of the Super Mario Series, Super Mario Galaxy. Just in case you were colour blind and couldn't tell what that was. And if you really are that colour blind, this might be difficult for me to explain.

Take a closer look. Even closer. More than that. No, stop looking at the star streaks. Look at the words... The nice big shiny words "Super Mario Galaxy." The fact that Mario is showing a large amount of his crotch, while disturbing, is irrelevant.

Okay, does anyone notice that several of the letters have this sparkly shiny-star thing on one of their corners? Now, take note of all the letters which have this star thingy shining on them...

U...R...M...R...G...

Yeah. It totally spells, U R Mr. Gay. Look, I've highlighted it for you just in case you still can't see it.


Okay?

Now, we realise that Nintendo is in fact telling everyone who plays a Wii that he is gay! And it doesn't help that they called the damn console "Wii". Because it sounds so much like... Ack. I've always wondered why they thought up that name. Or rather, why they used that name. Right now, millions of kids are saying "I'm going home to play with my Wii!" If that doesn't sound like a very blatant attempt to make people accidentally confess to their masturbation habits, I don't know what does.

So there you have it. Shigeru Miyamoto has got a really wicked sense of humour.

-Joe

Well, I just had my last band practice in AJ Band. If you could count that as a practice. It was really just a full-dress rehearsal for the Chinese New Year concert this Wednesday. So we basically played through the songs about twice and spent the rest of the time doing our own stuff. I took the abundant free time to play a few songs that I love so very much. One which I salvaged from the old homely but hellish Montfort Bandroom. Hellish because of the idiots. Homely... Well, I like that room. Even though the floor must be encrusted with spit and the cabinets are all still broken. But it was a place which I found comforting and welcoming, somewhere that I would hang out whenever possible, so long as there weren't too many people around.

So all in all, an enjoyable last practice. It made me remember how alive I used to feel when I was playing solos for my own enjoyment in a deserted bandroom. And also having my friends and peers look at me with wonder and envy. Yeah, those were the times...

Well. Goodbye, ten thousand dollar euphonium. In fact, goodbye euphoniums in general... At least, for now. Good news, everybody! I'm going to try the trumpet again. And I'm praying that I will be able to overcome the problems which I faced the last time I tried.

Well, after I get out of JC I'll have like a month or so to practice. So yeah, in answer to everyone who asks me "What the hell are you going to do for a month and a half anyway? Go get a job!"... There you have it. I'll be honing my musical skills. Whee...

Well, I've still got a while more to go. I've basically given up on math and use the lessons to make origami and doodle extensively. After which I make people take my "art" home. I don't really know why. I'm just weird that way.

KI is pretty much all I'm staying for right now. But if my mom didn't want me to stay on till JAE results, I'd leave that too...

And I'd like to buy a vowel, please.


-Joe

That result slip would give me orgasms if it weren't for chemistry.

And a word of general advice... Unless you're extremely skilled in the art of eating ice-cream out off a tiny inverted cone, don't. Get a bowl, seriously. While interesting, it was not altogether pleasurable to eat my cookies & cream out of a napkin today at Island Creamery.

I've been looking to get a new MP3 player for a while now. 1GB just doesn't cut it anymore. I've been looking out for those with a similar structure to my Samsung YP-U1. It's old, but I like it. Naturally, I spent hours looking for information and reviews of anything that interested me, and there was just this one little thing that ticked me off.

Touchpads.

Why on earth did anyone even invent those infernal contraptions, anyway? Sure, they look all cool and futuristic, but they're killers for anyone with big fingers. I happen to take pride in having slender digits(for a guy, anyway...), but I still hate the entire concept of touchscreens and pads.

Some of them work based on measuring the amount of infra-red radiation(or heat) that your fingers give off. Which basically means that after you've been trying to develop cryogenic abilities in the O' Level examination hall, the damn touchpad won't work until you steal some energy from your friends who have more cold-resistance charms.

Then there are the others that basically work on pressure. When you put your finger on the pad, it detects a tiny little amount of pressure and relays it to the gadget. So it's basically a traditional button made for people with the finger strength of a tapeworm. The thing is, that if your fingertip is any wider than 0.6 centimetres across, you'll be activating the touchpad right next to the one you were intending on poking.

The worst thing is, they don't always work properly. Put aside the 'gargantuan' finger problems, the damn touchpads are sometimes calibrated inproperly, or don't respond to your prods. Worse, the whole damn interface can sometimes be so sensitive that you end up pushing the pause button every time you sit down with the thing in your pocket. So they invented the 'hold' switch...

And there's also the issue of FINGERPRINTING. If CSI were asked to extract and identify fingerrpints from all the iPhones in the just Singapore alone, they'd kill themselves and let the next batch take over. Which would also kill themselves. Did the inventor of the touchscreen realise that people would be mashing their sweaty, oily fingers onto that once-so-shiny screen, smothering the digital interface so utterly that one could not fail to appreciate the refraction of light through finger-sweat?

I can see where they got their inspiration from. Anyone remember Minority Report? You know the one where Tom Cruise believes he is being set up because a crime-predicting pre-cognitive system says that he would be killing someone who he didn't know, when in fact this said person had seriously wronged Tom Cruise in the past and thus made Cruise want to kill him? But in the end the dude suicides and everything is fine? Yeah, that one. Anyway, while not the focus of the story, there were these rather interesting computer interfaces where Tom Cruise could physically drag images around and magnify them by waving his arms. While this may have looked really cool in the movie, it's one of the most retarded concepts of the modern world.

Look at it this way. We invented computers and the Internet so that stuff would become more convenient for us. We have the mouse and its buttons, and the keyboard to perform simple actions on Windows. We can send emails from the comfort of our home, rather than ride forty days and forty nights on a smelly animal to deliver a bill. We can call each other up on this nifty little device called the telephone. Not sure if you've heard of it yet, but yeah. It's a great thing. But then just recently, we have been creating computers that make use of motion sensors for us to navigate an operating system. You can see them at the Science Centre. If you're a gamer, you might already have one in your Wii. Okay, that sounded wrong. In case you've been living in Rapture, these motion sensing technologies involve you waving your arms over a beam generator to move the cursor around. You move your arms retardedly in a wide, sweeping motion to flip a page, and make yourself look spastic when you jerk your hand forward to select an icon. Repeatedly, because our current motion-sensing calibration technologies are horrendously inaccurate. Also, if you have particularly reflective or translucent hands for some reason, the whole thing becomes simply impossible. So really, would you rather move a mouse four inches and make a few clickies, or wave your arms around multiple times like an idiot to push the "back" button on your browser?

The main reason I hear for putting touchpads on MP3 players is "for style". People, whatever Dr. Steinman tells you, aesthetics are not a moral imperative. Functionality is.

Gadget designers have forgotten the wonders of good, traditional, tactile buttons. The kind that lets you know that you're actually pressing something without having you need to look at the display. The kind that lets you skip a track or adjust the volume through the fabric of your jeans. The kind that doesn't do any random bullshit when you get the occasional finger spasm while using it. The kind that doesn't force you to take it our of your pocket and go "Whee, look! I'm only touching it lightly and it's responding!", all the while making yourself look like you have some unhealthy sexual obsession with your iPod.

Maybe I've been corrupted so much over my years at Montfort, but the whole "moving your finger in a circular motion continuously" thing that iPods have looks extremely suggestive to me. Can I say rim------

In my honest, and humble(or not) opinion, we should just effing destroy touchscreens and replace them with good old springy buttons. I am not going to become an old geezer. I'm too geeky for that. However, it must be known that touchpads are not the keyboards of the future. Can you imagine typing an essay without any tactile feedback from your keyboard? Touch Technology is too impractical and inaccurate for efficient use. So yeah, bring back the buttons.

The only time we should ever leave buttons, is when we can bloody integrate those things into our brains and adjust The Beegees to blare at full volume using only neural control.

Which isn't going to happen too soon. So buttons, please.

-Joe