Tuesday, August 30

tickets to the Opera

Opera is throwing a 10-year birthday party and is handing out free registration codes to anyone who signs up at their site today [the US today, I don’t know what time that’s until].

http://my.opera.com/community/party/

That’s the link. Go try it out, Opera is a decent alternative browser, and said to be the fastest on the market.

Monday, August 29

Kill yourself, or get over it.

If you're ever contemplating killing yourself and need someone to talk you out of it, do not, under any circumstances, call kenneth foo.

That is all.

time is on my side

Cerys Matthews [of the now-defunct band Catatonia] covered The Rolling Stones' "Time Is On My Side" for a Mercedes-Benz ad in 2002. i want that song, that ad, a sixty-second mp3 ripped straight from the commercial, SOMETHING.

"chocolate charlie and the factory"

my brother just said the above.

it's not cute. he's fifteen.

Sunday, August 28

08-24-05_2129


08-24-05_2129
Originally uploaded by aklw.
smile like you mean it.

comment spam (actual)

sorry kids. i had to switch word verification on for commenting. just far too much spam. i hope this doesn't discourage anyone from commenting, though, 'cause that would just mean that the spam won.

i've found cupcakes

White Cupcakes

Makes 3 dozen


4 1/2 cups sifted cake flour (not self-rising)

2 tablespoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups milk

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (2 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

2 1/4 cups sugar

7 large egg whites

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Line cupcake or muffin tins with papers; set aside. Into a medium bowl, sift together cake flour, baking powder, and salt. Combine milk and vanilla in a glass measuring cup.

2. Place butter in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, and beat until pale and creamy. With mixer on medium speed, gradually add sugar in a steady stream; continue beating until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to low.

3. Add flour mixture to butter mixture in three batches, alternating with the milk mixture and starting and ending with the flour. Do not overbeat.

4. In a clean bowl of electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat egg whites on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form. Fold one-third of the whites into flour mixture to lighten. Fold in remaining egg whites in two batches, being careful not to deflate the whites.

5. Pour batter into prepared tins, filling cups to about 1/2 inch from the tops. Bake until a cake tester inserted near the centers comes out clean and the tops spring back when pressed lightly in the center, 18 to 20 minutes. Remove from oven; let cool completely before icing or storing.

From Martha Stewart Living. That Martha sure knows how to live. Now all I need are the above ingredients, a cupcake tin, my treasured Braun mixer back, and an oven. I might need a whisk, too. I don’t think I’ve spotted one here before.

cupcake

I am craving me a cupcake. One with rich icing on it. Strangely I don’t want a chocolate cupcake, I want a buttercream or vanilla or even a lemon cupcake, but IT MUST HAVE ICING.

Yeah, I’m a few bricks short of a wall at a moment. Back next week.

No, wait, might not be back next week. Don’t count on that.

Saturday, August 27

rare ram

i want two hundred twenty-five dollars to upgrade the Dell. ninety-five to get a 512 MB stick of [very rare and amazingly cheap right now and probably not for long] RDRAM, and the rest for a 7200rpm, 120GB, 8MB buffer hard disk drive. and i could even donate the smaller drive it'd be replacing to kenneth for his broken eMac. save him two bundles by not only giving him a free hard drive but also convincing him to install it DIY instead of going to a shop.

sadly my mom's not very understanding with regard to why technology is needed and why upgrading is necessary at all [for us it's years between computer upgrades, and that's only after bitching about the slow PC for at least a year prior, to the point where i've given up hope of ever getting funding to upgrade the Dell to make it more decent to run].

if only i had the ninety-five dollars. the hard disk drive upgrade isn't as crucial as the need to have more than 256MB of RAM.

o/cd

this is going to be a stay at home weekend, i guess. i don't know why this upsets me now, when i used to be perfectly content staying at home on weekends, doing nothing. right now though it's driving me freaking nuts. it doesn't make sense--not everyone goes out every weekend, right?

Tuesday, August 23

sympatico

I've only just realized this, but i'm slowly sliding backwards.

Once again, my mind is thinking of a million questions and problems a minute but comes up with no answers or solutions. Doesn't shut down or switch off or even slow down unless severely distracted, affecting all faculties and function, including sleep. Always angry, pissed off, upset, worrying or bitching about something.

I don't want to have to think so much. I don't want to have to think, period. I don't want to work. I don't want to lunch. I want only to forget. And then I sleep.

Sunday, August 21

08-21-05_1516.jpg


08-21-05_1516.jpg
Originally uploaded by aklw.
Royston's music? Must be some bad shit, man.

andalucia

For some reason, I have suddenly and recently become very afraid of being by myself.

Also, apologies for the stunningly accurate capitalization. I’m trying out the Blogger For Word plug-in.

Surprisingly, amos was the only one that questioned if my motives for wanting to transfer into VSC were right. If I felt pressured to transfer and join VSC because all my friends in design school were either all there [check] or close to the people in VSC [check].

While I can say it’s not the main, pressing reason, I can’t pretend it's not or deny the fact that it’s an issue. They're great people, and there is just no one in PID. But what about when [if!] I transfer to VSC? What if, after my friends graduate, I’m back to the desolate feeling I have when I was in my first PID semester? Will loving the work at VSC more than the work at PID keep me moving?

I think I’m making a huge mistake. And I think the fact that everyone’s leaving for the China trip very soon, with me by myself here, is a huge, ginormous, pink-elephant-in-the-room indication of my future to come. It’s so weird that I have such abandonment issues when I should feel used to being abandoned by now. I actually have become open to going to China and actually experiencing the country and the people, first-handing, with relatively minimal bitching, if it meant I didn’t have to be by myself here, and could have one of those vital coming-of-age experiences with a group of good friends, overseas, experiencing a new country and a new culture.

That’s just not going to happen.

“Subject to approval”. My third cousin, daughter of my first uncle, just said that in the conversation they’re having next to me. I feel like that’s what I am now. Subject to approval.

Friday, August 19

also

i hate the china trip. i don't want to hear about it. really.

command Q, command Z

yes, i waited too long. but that's me, isn't it.

how

i breezed in and attempted to breeze right into hon's office and get it done. the faster you do it, the less pain there is, right?

no. he wasn't in his office. and rumor has it he's gone home. i'll call every quarter hour until six pm.

Thursday, August 18

i'm spinning around

i'm experiencing that weird sensation again.

the one where i'm perfectly still but feel like i'm spinning like a bloody top.

Wednesday, August 17

perry

i just came back from my cut at Toni & Guy Academy. it's neater but not much shorter. and having sat there for three hours while the student hairdresser tried to figure out my hair, i wasn't really motivated to ask him to get it even shorter after he asked me once and cut off another half-inch. i'll probably end up going back in less than a month.

and so that this isn't one of those one-paragraph posts, here is another sentence thrown into the mix just for the heck of it.

profusion

and i know, i can feel bad
when i get in a bad mood
and the world can look so sad ...

...

Tuesday, August 16

the day after

so, last night i went to my primary school's 88th anniversary alumni dinner. and today kailyn came online from NUS. i said:

kill yourself, or get over it. says: (1:19:07 PM)
hi

and, promptly, she said:

kai's favourite bags says: (1:19:27 PM)
hey i have diarrhoea do you

Sunday, August 14

tomorrow's monday.

... and i don't feel like talking about it any more.

08-14-05_1629


08-14-05_1629
Originally uploaded by aklw.
total bitch lip balm.

for those who demand the very best.

weirdest dreams.

i'm having the weirdest dreams again.

Friday, August 12

boreders

borders is open until midnight at the weekend. wonder how i never noticed that.

Charlie And The Chocolate Factory was interesting. i don't like it because it strayed far too far from Roald Dahl's book, but it would have been fantastic if it hadn't. it was visually perfect and aurally amazing. shame about the script.

i am buying three CDs later. i shouldn't, but i am.

fucking fuckity fuck-fuck

Apple just emailed me about the new iBook. and i have just come to realization that Royston's new iBook is actually faster than my PowerBook.

sous la pluie

why does it rain now, when i can't enjoy it?

Thursday, August 11

where the fuck is my fucking coffee?

i left eleven packets of Aik Cheong Ice Coffee in the shared locker. i clearly labeled them as mine, and to ask before taking any. i wasn't asked if any could be taken. none are left.

where the fucking fuck is my fucking coffee that i had to buy from fucking melaka?

Wednesday, August 10

A perfect slurpee

You may have woken up late, on the wrong side of the bed, gotten to the hospital and had to discuss unpleasant things, but life can't be that bad if you can still get a perfect cherry slurpee, can it?

Sunday, August 7

mac at mac's

finally, a mac-based post.

i'm at McDonald's Takashimaya now. ordering royston's iBook and iPod. and he can't think of what to laser-engrave on his iPod.

sigh.

boys

second Windows post in a row.

i'm at alvin chow's house now. and i have a huge problem.

no, i'm not going to say what it is. but anyway, today i dropped my iPod, and my RAZR, the former of which has two dents on the back and the latter of which has a blunted edge. all because i was carrying xuan's adidas jersey and i got called twice at the same time by pat and dax.

and the lot of them are inebriated. post-Lancer-joyride, post-Ploop!, post-SlapJack, post-mahjong, post-whiskey, post-port, post-broken beer mug.

ruiwen is so wasted he's spent the night giggling and coming on to us whilst swinging a tennis racquet around.

what am i doing? and i'm supposed to be going out later today? didn't i promise myself to stop going to these things?

Friday, August 5

my resolve? it's slipping

i just booted a windows machine just to upload my phone's pictures. if it wasn't for that silly bug in my motorola's software that times out bluetooth browsing of its pictures folder once the number of items in it goes over certain unknown number...

oh well. i have my A&F photos. i'm happy. i wonder if crap shots taken by a hack using a RAZR that are 640 x 480 pixels can form part of a portfolio.

lazy-hazy-crazy days

i've managed to clear up my desktop to the point that there're now three spots for new icons to appear.

shooting Polaroids with the classic, old-style camera was fun. well, not so much fun, but surreal, lazy-hazy-crazy, soothing, that kind of thing. sitting in the middle of a soccer field, in my Levi's, Kenneth Coles, Topman blazer and Heineken Rugby World Cup jersey, surfing the internet on my PowerBook and listening to Ron Sexsmith, Leona Naess, Imogen Heap and the like. dawn obsessing and shooting and jinghui blowing bubbles all over the field and sitting on Terence's chair in front of a goal post, reading a book. and, then, me on the same chair in the same place, reading my PowerBook. it felt so Abercrombie & Fitch-y. Casual Luxury. exactly what i'd want to do if were ever to do a fashion shoot. in any case, it was, at worst, like we were shooting Shooting Stars and i was Taufik-in-a-blazer. okay, ew.

i also got Minute Maid Lemonade on my PowerBook and RAZR today, the latter of which i'd just finished paying off. now i'm waiting to see how long i can hold out with the waiting game before i put the battery back in and fire it up, fingers crossed and eyes wanting to shut but staying open.

just one of those lazy-hazy-crazy days. i decided to block out the bits of the day that weren't entirely complementary to the lazy-hazy surreal feel.

Thursday, August 4

Sociology 101

jinghui: "i am very dying."

Tuesday, August 2

do i quit?

dare i?

it makes no sense to keep on going nowhere.

it makes no sense to keep on.

25th August.

Monday, August 1

divorce

it would be so much easier if they weren't married to begin with.

"Je ne veux pas travailler
Je ne veux pas déjeuner
Je veux seulement l'oublier
Et puis je fume

Je ne suis pas fière de ça
Vie qui veut me tuer
C'est magnifique
Être sympathique
Mais je ne le connais jamais
"