the white stripes, and Siglap Link

i read the paper yesterday, as i always try to, so that i can keep up with the latest developments in propaganda, when, lo and behold, at 02:45pm, [i had been awake for only fifteen minutes]? i found the Next Phase Of The Victoria School PR Plan!

Solar Panels! EcoPond! Biodegradable rice-husk-and-bamboo KarmicWare! "A school in the garden!" "I heard we can even have PE lessons at East Coast Park!" A Hyundai Tuscani two-door coupe [i refuse to call it a sports car] in the Principal's parking lot! [oops. how did that ever get in there?]

Victoria School Goes Green - New Siglap premises to have biodegradable plates, solar power, green projects - PAGE H9

raise your hands, those who are sickened. i wonder how PR will help us, acadamically.

today, i awoke at 9am, because StarHub Telescope touted MTV's Five Night Stand featuring Garbage at 11am, and i wanted to record it. i forgot my rule to Always Go To The Source, and blindly trusted it. i ended up recording some crap music videos on Non-Stop Hits [on my head]. the MTV Asia website stated calmly that Five Night Stand was due on the 28th at 12 noon, even as i railed at it endlessly for not informing me.

while in my mom's cheerfuly red Suzuki Swift GL, i was listening to New This Week, this crappy segement on P10 where "Dan The Man" goes all demented and introduces the tracks that've been served up on a platter to them, for them to murder. Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes was on the list. the short clip demonstrated that Seven Nation Army was thrashy, but then i remembered that Matt listens to The White Stripes. you can imagine his reaction when i told him, can't you?

it was a surprise to him because he doesn't listen to the radio [except the BBC World Service, not unlike Mrs Raj], and rightly so too. to answer "Why do You listen to the radio, then?", here's a list of all the radio stations that ever feature on my mom's Kenwood car stereo:

91.3 Mhz WKRZ 91.3 [for the techno]
95.0 Mhz Class 95 FM
98.7 Mhz Perfect 10
98.0 Mhz Power 98
93.8 Mhz NewsRadio 93.8 [strictly for traffic info only]

"Shut the damn thing off" is never an option, which is why i splurged on my Palm Tungsten|T, so i have music i can put into my pocket, as opposed to bringing an entire haversack because a smaller bag looks silly [those sling-type Discman-sized ones i used to carry around until i realized it was a male equivalent to a purse. you might argue that the haversack is one, or the shoebag is another, but i don't carry a shoebag because of that, and the haversack was my last option]

"I won't take you as you are
Please don't take me as i am
Find your lonely life bizzare
You'll see this in love
You'll see this in life"

- "Above You, Below Me", Badly Drawn Boy

fan nokian

i kinda promised myself that there would be no more confusing splash pages for my blog, but that was too good to pass up. if you look closely, [i work in 1280x1024 hence i had to dumb it down, for those not using 17" Flat Panel LCD monitors, on the splash page] you'll see it's apparently Matthias Yao's blog, proudly brought to you by aklwIncorporated.

when i turned on the TV after i got home at 10:21am this morning, i saw, in this order, while channel surfing:

-> credits for The Price Is Right
-> some Cheena kid's programme trying to teach physics [i'm not kidding]
-> an Avril Lavinge video
-> another-

i shut the damn thing off.

"Come see what we all talk about
People moving to the moon
Stop baby don't go stop here
Never stop living here
Till it eats the heart from your soul
Keeps down the sound of your
Silent sigh"

- "Silent Sigh", Badly Drawn Boy

Ow-Cowabunga!

i really wanted to go in-depth with my account of The Days Between Last Friday And Today, but too much has happened, and something that really took the piss out of me cropped up today, so it's a quick run-through before i move onto today.

Saturday the 17th
-> my mom bought the About A Boy VCD for me. i've watched it four times since. it's That good. and i re-read the book, also for the fourth time

Sunday the 18th
-> birthday of one of my mom's friends. went to Costa Sands Resort, where they wouldn't let us in at a gate closer to our chalet because they wanted to screen everyone for SARS
-> my mom and my aunt [birds of a feather] called up the management and told them [in so many words] that their system was screwed up, as they didn't take our temperature at the door or when we collected the keys, hence if anyone in out party had SARS, so would the Costa Sands Resort staff by now
-> CSR staff persist in making us lug three carfuls of stuff through the front gate, the full length of the resort away from our chalet
-> by three carfuls, i mean one Toyota Ipsum [MPV used as a hatchback], one Honda Stream [MPV used as a hatchback] and one Suzuki Swift [hatchback used as an MPV]. guess which one belongs to my family? only the Cheenas would lug a mahjong table and stand fan everywhere they go
-> we went through the front gate, having no choice as all the side gates were locked, snubbing all those asking us for our SARS declaration forms. we also breezed thorugh the temp-checking station, because no-one bothered to stop us
-> i had a crap time, after shifting the stuff around i spent the day in the upstairs air-con room, watching TV, reading About A Boy and having four Cokes, one Tonic Water and three packets of crisps until it was time to go home
-> however we didn't leave until three hours after the pre-set time, and i found myself wandering in the painfully hip 'restored' 'old-town' area of East Coast Park. if i had my wallet i'd be in The Coffee Bean, but i didn't and my sis' boyfriend very kindly paid for refreshments
-> oh, and me and my aunt stopped to admire the New Victoria School on the way to CSR. it looked fantastic, and i wondered why she'd never noticed it. she actually did, but never believed anyone [except me] who told her it was a school

Monday the 19th
-> Cheena Paper One. 'nuff said.

Tuesday the 20th
-> English Paper One and EHistory
-> crapped up my SBQ becuase i was distracted by the sudden change in question 1c, where 'more' was changed into 'less'
-> i was doing the sections backwards and was already on 1b, i panicked, hastily reworded my answer, five minutes later i realized that all i had to do was change all my 'more's into 'less's, but it was too late
-> was extremely distracted after that, and chose the wrong SEQ to do - World War One impact
-> didn't realize i had nothing to say until i was into my first paragraph of 3a, with ten minutes left on the paper
-> also realized i had Much more to say about The Pacific War, question 2a and b, as it had been harped to death after we went all Cumulative on our Pacific War CA1
-> i gave up on the paper.

Today
-> i clearly did not sleep enough, because i went all snarky on my CME MidYear and will probably get a 0 for it, unless whoever marks it has a sense of humour, is not pregnant/married/has kids/dating/engaged/elderly, or less they'll be seriously offended. but i don't think having a sense of humour will help me much, as no marks can be awarded for my snarkiness. well, at least no one can accuse me of not being honest. plus, in all my years of experience with the OMM [Optical Marking Machine] in the AVMediaResouce [spanking new name, eh?], it's never laughed at any of my jokes, hence i really don't think it'll appreciate my answers
-> my lack of sleep was also noticable because it took ALL of my energy to concentrate on my Cheena Listening Comprehension, and my Geography Paper also horrendously suffered, as it took even more of an age to recall anything, and i, as usual, only managed to complete 3 out of 4 questions. this's what happens when you devote more time to your books and less to sleep. hmmph.
-> had to schlepp down to Olympus Studio at High Street Center on Hill Street to collect my broken C-2020 Zoom. i decided it wasn't worth the $200 to fix a camera that only speaks Japanese, so i will be shameless bothering my father for a C-750 UltraZoom when he comes back. it costs over a thousand, which is where i drawn the line for spending my own money for my own things
-> i took the bus in the wrong direction there, ended up in Eunos. i also took the bus in the wrong direction a few more time after that:

School > 61 > Eunos Interchange > MRT > City Hall > Funan Center Coffee Bean > Olympus Studio > 61 > HaborFront Center > 143 > Trellis Towers > 105 > Chuan Park

it could have been:

School > 61 > Olympus Studio > 61 > School > 107 > Serangoon Interchange > 105 > Chuan Park

I Need A Car! And A Driving Licence!

finally, what really took the piss out of me. these past few days, there have been one or two letters written into newspapers asking for the MOE to relax the education regime in Singapore. what interested me was the one in Today about Mother Tongue, and how it really wasn't a Mother Tongue, as most people find it as alien as Yiddish, and how a pass should be mandatory but not hellish to obtain, and how no-one's going to notice, anyway

i was all for it, and happy that people were [once again] taking notice of the failure of our mothers' tongues, until this Duman High Bitch wrote into ST to say the the Cheenese were having it much worse in Cheena, and how her life is all 'work' but she thinks it's all good, so that our future leaders can compete with Cheena's future leaders, basically going on about shit that the Ministry and the Government wants to hear, but no-one needed going on about.

who does she think she is?!

she is either a govermental spy meant to brainwash us all into being good Confucians, a brown-noser trying to get into the [young] PAP, seriously delusional, a spy for the Cheena government trying to bring about the downfall of Singapore by turning us all into slavedriven muggers, or is having her period.

if any of you out there happen to see Rebecca Lim Sin Mei [Ms] on the streets, would you be so kind as to hack her to death for me?

- "S.P.A.T.", Badly Drawn Boy

we love SARS

KarmicWare thermometers were given on wednesday
-> cheapo looking [read; Made In Cheena]
-> also called Becton Dickinson Europe 521807
-> proudly proclaims MADE IN CHINA [sic] ?on the back
-> ?Becton Dickinson Europe must be damn proud that they took advantage of stupidpeople
-> said people are stupid enough to manufacture poor-quality devices at dirt-cheap prices
->called KarmicWare thermometers because they bear more than a passing resemblance to the recyclable, biodegradable, save-the-fucking-world crap they're using in place of actual cutlery
-> these thermometers will used to conduct VS's largest PR project so far? [the KarmicWare job was a flop]
-> our dear Doraemon will grace the event by embrassing the school with his three-act dramedy play, entitled How To Take Your Oral Temperature
-> thank goodness i don't have to be in school today.

went out with more 1987-ers after that
-> pat wouldn't stop his drop-thermometer-on-floor-and-put-it-back-in-his-mouth-immediately routine?
-> the lot wouldn't stop making obsence remarks in the b??ack of the bus
-> the foodcourt at Le Merdien was zapped out of Golden Mile Complex. all Thai.
-> matt dragged us all to Books Kinokuniya to look for a book he later decided to order from Amazon.com because the one they had on sale was to expensive [what's that? i hear a little bird chirping! and it's going: Cheap! Cheap! Cheap!]
-> after giving up on the Age Of Reason by Thomas whatshisname, he procceded to look for a photography book
-> this is disturbing because it wasn't "Photography For Dummies - A Reference For The Rest Of Us!", and as we all know, he can't work anything more complicated than his Nokia 8210, Jonathan's Canon Ixus, my defucnt Olympus C-2020 Zoom, and his Packard Bell PC, so what is he doing looking for a professional photography book? ??
-> the afternoon wasn't a complete bust, though. i'll have to admit that watching matt try to work the KinoHelper was hilarous, which goes to show that matt simply cannot work anything that runs on AC current, let alone a touch-screen terminal with non-QWERTY on-screen keyboard

had a party later in the night
-> had a great time. saw people i haven't seen in ages, and set me up nicely for my long weekend

"I hear you say it
Play it smart girl
Win the game love
Give’em what they want
What they want to see and you could be a big star
You could go far
Make a landmark
What have you been reading you smart girl?
Win the game love
Give’em what they want
What they want to see and you could be a big star
You could go far
Make a landmark
Make a shitload"

- "Shut Your Mouth", Garbage

somebody get me out of here, i'm tearing up myself

the sad state i'm in can be defined by the fact that i've promised myself that my webpage should be up by now. and though it is, it isn't in it's full glory.

why's that, you ask?

well, here's a sampling of Shit That's Happended To Me Since My Last Entry:

- i had to ship my PC to Papua New Guinea [no, MSN addicts, i wasn't kidding. and i built the damn thing myself.]
- i ended up buying a Dell to replace the PC now used for illegal stuff [becuase i'm rich and lazy]
- i had to transfer my data over to my new PC without destroying it [not a success. i accidentally reformatted it, and some, meaning most, of the files are gone forever]
- i''ve dropped my Palm Tungsten | T. Twice.
- my brother got a Nokia 7250, and my mother subsequently got a 6100
- the new Ericsson T610 is Nokian!!! [more on that later]
- MidYears are here, and i'm not sure if i'm ready.
- people are still calling each other x-Kiat [eg. Peng-Kiat [Matthias Chew] Boon-Kiat [Benjamin Keng] Sng-Kiat [James Sng]
- people are still calling me Khoo-Kiat, which i do not respond to
- i'm trying to organize a class gathering, but the class is uncooperative. no RSVPs? people assume that we have a food synthesizer that'll serve any number of people, surprise guests or otherwise?

matt apparently had his birthday on the 11th. i had no idea i was actually sending him messages about his birthday [or so it seemed]. i was just having a really crap mothers' day dinner at Swensen's, and needed a snarkish break.

to add to that, i spent monday after-exam with matt and this kenneth guy. he had to go to his place near one of my old houses, at Jalan Besar. as is expected, they ended up having a great time with Monopoly on my Palm, while i sat there trying not to encourage the crazy loon [no, really, he was insane] sitting near us to continue being excessively vocal [i do not mean matt, at least not this time]

and then hongxuan, jondax and patrick went over to thrash matt's house some time after we three split ways. busy day for matt.

i'll end with three questions [hey, like i did for my cheena compo! or was that two?]

1 - why did matt open the door?
2 - should i even ask why there exists a photo of matt gyrating in front of Tweety Bird?
3 - why, Ericsson, why?!

oh, and i need photos, people. don't tell me you went all the way to Tampines to wreck matt's house and didn't bring a camera.

"somebody get me out of here, i'm tearing up myself
nobody gives a damn about me, or anybody else"

- "Medication", Garbage