Jan 2004

iv - 1/29/2004






Actually - I've cancelled this entry like twice.  Because I'm looking for a "decent melody" - essentially - the plot is this.  I want to complain about how school is all about everything except teaching and learning.  That minimal effort can be put into the classroom, as long as you wayang in all the other important facets of school life.  The College is celebrating its don't know what anniversary - so all our efforts have to be channelled in that direction.  Thank god for people that are more "on"/ obedient than me - they can go celebrate all they want and cook up a storm - I'll just tag along and do whatever crap they want - actually an important principle in these matters - for stuff like that - less is more ... who is gonna care who celebrated what after the event.

Of course there's the moral issue about the amount of money that is going to be spent on the celebrations.  But 10 yeas in ACS - every year donating money for some cause or other - has taught me that pple will go to all sorts of lengths to raise money - even if its for a silly book that glorifies the achievements of a school - even if it's for a silly plaque to hang on the wall - there are lots of rich pple out there folks - who are willing to buy their little piece of gratitude from schools that have a reputation to sell.

On a more sickening note - I'm supposed to help with some MP attachment programme.  This is like an eternal joke played out over and over again.  Suck at Mandarin - get posted to SAP school. Don't like grammar drills - end up teaching English.  Vote for opposition - now need to arrange programme for students to be attached to "political leaders" (most of whom I might add have never stood for election and have never won the popular vote).  Even better - I get to play clerk - to make all the bloody arrangements so the creme de la creme can saunter in to "shadow" the "political leaders", and learn about the delicate issues that shape our "plural society".  At least I don't have to go down to any meetings - but I still have to talk to these pple assoc pple about arrangements.  Ok - it hasn't been that bad so far - I've talked to one and she said she would settle the programme.  Whatever.  I think the kids should just go for it and be completely mercenary - it looks good on their profile.

On a brighter note - I've been quite a computer nerd this last month in school - been designing a computer quiz that'll knock the socks off the kids (hopefully).  It's all about western art - a little on music.  Was nice to look at all of those pictures again and to read about the stuff.  I actually think that one gets more into this kind of stuff when there's a reason for you to - I mean I never thought twice about visual art - or at least art history - until I was in JC - and that had a lot to do with studying Hist Paper 5.  Anyway - one of the most awe inspiring times - was at the end of J1- we went to St. Petersburg - and visited the Hermitage - brilliant - Peter Paul Rubens.  That's a man who knows the attraction of the body, or corpulance.  So - that got the interest going.  I still like Baroque and Renaissance painters - but really am more in the abstraction of the 20th C - Matisse esp.  Actually it's a damn poseur thing - must like that which is esoteric.  Whaterever.

On an even brighter note - I've done reasonably well for all the exams that I killed brain cells studying for in Dec!  I got 760 (99%) for the Verbal (ok slightly embarassing cause I teach english - it was the reading compre I tell you ...) and 800 (92%) for the Math  (that's one for the Arts crowd!) in the GRE General test.  I also got 6/6 (95%) for the writing.  My proudest score was for the Lit GRE - 730 (98%) - not bad for three bloody hours of 230 MCQs ... - of course the scores really don't mean a thing if a uni thinks that you studied in Singapore and therefore suck anyway - but let me just savour the moment?

One for the road -

 

Henri Matisse Jazz "Icarus"

:)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Right on! (I am a teacher also!) [bent twig]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Those are some insane scores... I feel very su now...

congrats in any case! Would love to try out your quiz, but it doesn't seem to be suited for me in anyway at all. [Grandioso]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

hahaha... mr lim... ur ranting damn funny.. :) [AnGeL^6587]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Aloha. U're a good teacher, really. Sorry that class couldn't be any better.



- The Cynical, Callous Bastard :)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

mr lim, congrats!! woah... they sound like astronomical results to me... =P

i simply adore magritte's works!! heez...

yeah, this anniversary thingy's really getting on ppl's nerves nowadays... just cos someone's got the dough, others have to do the work... oh well... =S

^_^ [moi~]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

=) [public_prosecutor]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

love the picture, impressive scores. -fey

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

wow that's super high scores u got...congrats!



*mutterx...clever scheme,,,grabbing the "future elites" and brainwashin em to be pro-pap...blast em...* [psst]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

eh donate to my card leh. maybe they'll name the fire extinguisher after you. you know the "lim meng teck fire extinguisher"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

eek. the amount of crap admin work i see my mum doing just to get a decent period of teaching in... i totally sympathise with you...



~mi'er

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 2003

i - 12/12/2003






The Quest motif is the journey of Summer, of the Romance, of the optimistic and the return to the harmonious.  The archetypical quest - the Odyssey.  The Biblical quest - Moses' flight from Egypt then return and subsequent leading of the children of Israel out.  Quests revolve around individuals, so even the social event that was the flight from Egypt is seen through a heroic figure leading an often hard-headed people.  The quest means obstacles, which must be overcome by either violence or guile.  Odysseus is the archetype of the wily survivor whose cunning gets him home.  Moses - gets it right most of the time - but when wisdom was called for - "speak to the rock" - he resorted to violence and struck it - the bitter waters and desire unfulfilled.  The quest is a movement through levels of existence and experience.  In Frye's notion of things - there are four levels -

the highest - the unchanging heavenlies

the next - and Edenic original state or promised land

and third - our world - fallen and chaotic

and beneath that - the subterranean world of hell

To view one's in these terms - sheer hubris.

Another kind of quest - I've just sent off my applications to the US unis - an epic experience indeed in terms of commitment, obstacles (it's amazing how long people take to respond to your requests for documents) and conquests - and tomorrow I take my last GRE exam - the end of one kind of quest - hopefully engenders the seeds of another ...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good luck! [Grandioso]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------





ii - 12/13/2003






I took the GRE Lit Test today.  It was tiring and because of my usual exam anxieties I didn't sleep a wink the night before but I don't think that had an effect on my performance.  It was harder than the practice that ETS supplies with some options being rather close. 

Interestingly, at the test center, there were hardly any Singaporeans.  The chap in front of my was from the PRC - he was doing Math.  The Guys beside me and behind me were also both fom the PRC - they were doing Chem.  The Row of Guys to my right were from Taiwan - they were doing Physics.  Some other chaps from India in my row were doing the Math test too.  I think there were about 25 of us in the room and not more than 8 of us were Singaporean.  These were mainly doing Bio and Psyche.  Oh yes - as the lady at the reception counter pointed out - "English Lit?  Oh yes - you're the only one."  Story of my Life I guess.

The invigilator was exceedingly irrirating and kept trying to crack jokes before the paper.  I don't think anyone in the room appreciated his rather weak attempts at humour.  He was also rather silly about coming in and out of the room.  He should have just shut the door and left us.  But he kept coming in and going out, opening the door and closing it.  Highly distracting.  However, I must say that he was conscientious about getting us to fill in the form correctly: one of the chaps from India was taking ages with it - I don't think he understood the instructions on the sheet very well - but it doesn't matter if you're a math genius does it - and this added to the tension that everyone was feeling (this plus the fact that come chaps had come for the exam without pencils ... and had to borrow ...)

Half and hour into the paper and my bladder started to urge me to pay the loo a visit.  But I persevered and didn't go until after the paper - two and half hours later.  If I get bladder trouble or tract infection, I'll blame it on my keeness to do an exam properly.

Of interest - there were some playful questions on the paper - such as:

noting that the word "diurnal" puns on the word "urn" thus plays with the notion of being buried ...  noting that the word "embarkation" is another pun that links the action in the poem to the myth of Daphne being pursued by the god Apollo and being changed into a tree - an ironic pun because to "embark" is to go on a trip whereas Daphne's flight was stopped when she became a tree (but of course this enabled her to flee Apollo - another kind of flight) ... see http://www.crawfordmanor.com/daphne.html 

For those interested and very bored - check out the sample test - it's like playing one very long trivia quiz!

ftp://ftp.ets.org/pub/gre/007626.pdf

 

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

That whole chunk - I couldn't understand anything... Urgh... You're one of a kind, truly...

Hey, any interesting reads to recommend? I'm so bored these days I think I'm slipping into non-existence. Stuff that's preferably palatable and quite accessible to a layman like myself... while retaining some sort of interest. Haha... or is that mutually exclusive?

[Grandioso]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for the recommendations! Truth is, I don't quite know yet... I can only tell once I get my results back. It's really russian roulette to me. And preferably local, since I'm not a really adventurous person... but I'll just have to wait and see... [Grandioso]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

29 blinks by the green man is one of the reasons why i still visit your blog. good luck with the GREs, i couldn't open it cos i didn't have acrobat reader :\ oh well, take care now! - fey

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

i hate gp and teaching isn't exactly what i want to do. But i don't doubt that teaching at a jc would be more fun, though i still haven't reconciled myself with the fact that i've left jc. ah well.

=)

[cellistic]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------





Frivolity - 12/16/2003

see - I told you Karl Marx was still alive and well -

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

hahaha...i'm speechless~

-Jac [Shores]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

*chuckles* good ol' mr lim... tee-hee~ [AnGeL^6587]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

A friend of mine compared the guy to a photo of Charles Manson. :P

[inner me]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

haha. good one! [public_prosecutor]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------





iii - 12/18/2003






Been on a reading binge after the exams and applications and essays that I've had to do.  Finished all 917 pages of quicksilver last week - waiting for April next year for another 900 pages of verbosity - to find ou the fate of calculus -

Reading a biography on Elizabeth I - quite dry but nice bits about court intrigue and some very moralistic writing.  Another book - by Christopher Hill - on radical religious movements during the English Revolution in the middle of the 17th C.  nice details about how martyrs were put to death - yup - they roasted ppl until their intestines were falling out - but made sure they weren't quite dead yet.  And yes - if you recanted (ie embraced Catholicism instead of sticking to heresy) you were mercifully dealt with being stoned to death or buried alive instead of being burnt ...  Another historical book - Trevelyn's Social History of England - some nice details about monastries and the corruption that took place in Henry VIII's england.

As for sci-fi - I finished a Philip K Dick (minority report, do androids dream of electric sheep?) book called "The Man in the High Castle".  It's a "what if book".  What if Japan and Germany won world war two.  Quite a revisionist intepretation of things - of course the perspectives are filtered through characters who have their own prejudices.  Most ppl think that the Jap government is highly benign vs the cold efficency of Nazi Germany.  Anyway - the "clever" bit about the book - is that there's a banned book in the story (the author of the banned book is the man in the high castle) which is itself a sci-fi and proposes a what if - what if Britain and the US had won the war ... Quite enthralling because it plays out  different factions within the Nazi regime - struggling for power (btw Hitler's been committed to an asylum now, in about the early 1960s) ...

Got the books - amongst others at the brilliant penguin warehouse sale - :)

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I picked up Quicksilver, though it's kinda driving me nuts - I don't quite grasp what's going on, at least in the first few chapters...

Hmm will read Angels and Demons by Dan Brown first... haha... lighter stuff... fascinating, though - like the Da Vinci Code, another cool book by Dan Brown! [Grandioso]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

i know they have warehouse sales for clothes and creative's disastrous attempt at puns (i.e. prodikeys) but books? and penguin, at that?



why don't you tell me about such things?! :P -fey

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

'cos if i didn't tell him he also wouldn't know.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

i'm on pg 400smth of quicksilver ;)

yes, how come you didn't put out a notice or something about the penguin sale? [lassitude]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

argh... what penguin warehouse sale? only managed to catch the library fair this hols... =S

^_^ [moi~]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

November 2003

You know - 11/5/2003






the end of a day that's been run off routinely sounds like a note held too long, one that puffs right at the end, struggling to pitch precisely but faltering ever so slightly.

Nothing neat comes out after reaching in too deeply - running off in all directions I guess - before I catch up with myself.  I'm looking here there everywhere - and standing on the margins/ a sidewalk existence, not quite stepping onto the road, watching - more likely fearing the rush of the on-coming cars.  I wait for the Green Man.  I've waited for him all my life you know.  I've got a whole bull-shit philosophy about the Green Man and only crossing when he pops out and starts his digital count down.  You know, way back when I was in sec. school and the AYE wasn't too developed yet and there was a traffic light across the slip road from the expressway, turning into clementi avenue 6, I could swear that the Green Man would blink for the longest time.  So that coming in from the MRT station and walking home I could watch the Green Man appear, buy an ice cream from the Mama Shoppe and still make it across the road.  29 times I believe that Green Man blinked.  Now it's just a damn long overhead bridge and I'm too lazy to walk in from the MRT anyway.  But I've been running home in the rain - as if that compares to the insistence and the deliberation of planning your route so you have a snack in hand earphones and a book while walking walking home.

I don't mind running in the rain once in the while.  Perhaps it beats standing in the rain and waiting for the Green Man.

 by Henri Matisse ... There's something to be said about that bold stroke of green coming straight down the middle of her face, becoming her nose, the foreground dividing what lies in the back into RED and GREEN-

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Haha that's quite amusing... I don't notice, since most roads are the same to me with or without the green man appearing... [Grandioso]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

=D [public_prosecutor]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

provoking thoughts.. =)) [i||uXioN]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------





In a while - 11/23/2003






I've been studying.  Yes yes mock me if you will but it's hard work after not doing it for a long time.  Took a month to prepare for my GREs - which are a souped up version of the SATs - which are required for Grad School in the US.  The interesting thing about the exam is that it's a CAT - Computer Adaptive Test.  That means that the questions adapt to your responses.  Which means that if you're doing "well" the questoins get tougher and tougher (the system is set up so that you can't skip - you need to just guess if you don't know and move on).  Anyway - it was a real polishing up for the math - after so long - could hear the rusty math gears in my head creak when I tried to solve problems - obviously making matters worse is the fact that the GRE is made up of tricky math ... 

Am NOW studying for the GRE Lit exam (which is pretty much like a bloody triva quiz) - 230 MCQ questions on Lit.  And it isn't even about your ability to be CHIM and to understand complex passages - it's more like "here's two lines of poetry" - who wrote it?  Or "What was the year the poem was written in ..." or "what does it in the poem refer to?"  And you can't always tell from the style cause the answers are very similar - they'll like have Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Shelley all as answer choices ... so you have to know ...  it's a real humbling experience to try the test - after years to reading and reading about reading, there's still so much I don't know - still so much to know!

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

gd luck~ [É÷÷\]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can lah, your literature is manly.

As for the math, I understand. And so does the rest of our faculty.

Good luck! [Grandioso]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, °∞Do I dare?°± and, °∞Do I dare?°±



[anonymousnoises.blogspot.com]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

all e best! [psst]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

haha

all the best mr lim! hope you're happy and healthy [public_prosecutor]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

November 2003

You know - 11/5/2003






the end of a day that's been run off routinely sounds like a note held too long, one that puffs right at the end, struggling to pitch precisely but faltering ever so slightly.

Nothing neat comes out after reaching in too deeply - running off in all directions I guess - before I catch up with myself.  I'm looking here there everywhere - and standing on the margins/ a sidewalk existence, not quite stepping onto the road, watching - more likely fearing the rush of the on-coming cars.  I wait for the Green Man.  I've waited for him all my life you know.  I've got a whole bull-shit philosophy about the Green Man and only crossing when he pops out and starts his digital count down.  You know, way back when I was in sec. school and the AYE wasn't too developed yet and there was a traffic light across the slip road from the expressway, turning into clementi avenue 6, I could swear that the Green Man would blink for the longest time.  So that coming in from the MRT station and walking home I could watch the Green Man appear, buy an ice cream from the Mama Shoppe and still make it across the road.  29 times I believe that Green Man blinked.  Now it's just a damn long overhead bridge and I'm too lazy to walk in from the MRT anyway.  But I've been running home in the rain - as if that compares to the insistence and the deliberation of planning your route so you have a snack in hand earphones and a book while walking walking home.

I don't mind running in the rain once in the while.  Perhaps it beats standing in the rain and waiting for the Green Man.

 by Henri Matisse ... There's something to be said about that bold stroke of green coming straight down the middle of her face, becoming her nose, the foreground dividing what lies in the back into RED and GREEN-

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Haha that's quite amusing... I don't notice, since most roads are the same to me with or without the green man appearing... [Grandioso]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

=D [public_prosecutor]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

provoking thoughts.. =)) [i||uXioN]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------





In a while - 11/23/2003






I've been studying.  Yes yes mock me if you will but it's hard work after not doing it for a long time.  Took a month to prepare for my GREs - which are a souped up version of the SATs - which are required for Grad School in the US.  The interesting thing about the exam is that it's a CAT - Computer Adaptive Test.  That means that the questions adapt to your responses.  Which means that if you're doing "well" the questoins get tougher and tougher (the system is set up so that you can't skip - you need to just guess if you don't know and move on).  Anyway - it was a real polishing up for the math - after so long - could hear the rusty math gears in my head creak when I tried to solve problems - obviously making matters worse is the fact that the GRE is made up of tricky math ... 

Am NOW studying for the GRE Lit exam (which is pretty much like a bloody triva quiz) - 230 MCQ questions on Lit.  And it isn't even about your ability to be CHIM and to understand complex passages - it's more like "here's two lines of poetry" - who wrote it?  Or "What was the year the poem was written in ..." or "what does it in the poem refer to?"  And you can't always tell from the style cause the answers are very similar - they'll like have Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Shelley all as answer choices ... so you have to know ...  it's a real humbling experience to try the test - after years to reading and reading about reading, there's still so much I don't know - still so much to know!

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

gd luck~ [É÷÷\]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can lah, your literature is manly.

As for the math, I understand. And so does the rest of our faculty.

Good luck! [Grandioso]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, °∞Do I dare?°± and, °∞Do I dare?°±



[anonymousnoises.blogspot.com]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

all e best! [psst]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

haha

all the best mr lim! hope you're happy and healthy [public_prosecutor]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 2003

Having not been - 10/13/2003






Very active in writing on these pages lately - I am pleasantly surpurised by this strange new look - it's as if text is not enough - or is not distant enough from thought and now must be accompanied by font and colour.  But of course, one does not need to participate in all that - though the ability to insert images on these pages should be a useful function.  Of course forgive me for being absolutely clueless about these things.  i'd like to think that the primary function of text is to convey that complex relationship between our thoughts and the world.

Been busy with the end of the year.  I'm coming to the end of sort of a four-year cycle with teaching, having seen sec3 through to J2.  I guess that's a pretty interesting kind of rhythmn to follow.  The next kind of cycle that I want to try is doing sec one all the way to year 6 - there are some opportunities for that now - in our "varied educational landscape".  And I want to teach in a single sex school.  But till then, I'll be content to play along and smile pleasantly at this wondrous concoction called the educational system. 

Ok - really wanted to make sure my OD was still alive ...

Don't laugh at the bald man - he was much smarter than many brains put together and working in the same direction - and much more knowledgeable.

 

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

so ...who's that bald manz??? [j.O.n. E≤]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

haha, yah. who's he? [AnGeL^6587]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

It really was an interesting 4 year ride with you. [eagle eye]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

that website says he's "Michel Foucault" (although i think Michel is a typo :P isit?) yeah mr lim yer entries r inspiring... -shaoxuan

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

no mistake. michel foucault - french philosopher. -fey





---------------------------------------------------------------------------





FouCault - 10/17/2003






The bald man - probably the most dazzling philospher of his generation.  At least the most radical in terms of renewing (or challenging) how the social studies are approached.  His methods / approaches / theories apply to a wide range of disciplines - from history, literature, sociology, psychology -

Quick thoughts on foucault -

The author is dead -

deny "common sense" - look instead for the "constructedness" of systems - that appear natural - speech, routines, classifications - are the manifestation of power relations - of power seeking to systemise, to "naturalise" inequalities.

Crime - reform is a meaner more subtle form of subjugation.  The Law, a tyranny not only of the body but enjoining the mind and the soul to be subservient to a politics that erases its traces by defining criminal and outlaw through the structures of language.

Madness - the shadowland of sanity is hardened - made distinct - drawn apart - with the overlaps occulded.  Therapy - manacles over the being -

The individual - don't privilege it.  Don't believe you exist primarily as yourself - but examine the forces that constitute your being.  If there is to be freedom to be found - the consciousness of the how we are contructed is a semblance of freedom.

THeory is practice.  Theory that ceases / is not relevant does not even enter into the world.

Discourse - dug / found - rooted in historicity.  A fascination with how structures imbue themselves with reflexivity and order.  The historicity of truth is part of its being - situated truth makes plainer where the appropirations exist -

"The indignity of speaking for others"

"soemthing essential is taking place : ... the tracking down of all varieties of facism, from the enormous ones that surround and crush us to the petty ones that constitute the tyrannical bitterness of our everyday lives".

Who sings for those who once knew the Spirit?

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sounds interesting... but to be honest I've never heard of him... have any specifics to share? Might pick it up in my free time, harhar... [Grandioso]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

never heard of him as well.. but it does interest me though [enfant terrible]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

=) [public_prosecutor]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

ok let's see.. not so nice to talk bout my prelims results online since it's like nothin to be proud abt.. CCC.. oh well slosh of sangrai came abt coz i ws looking for s words! ya know how hard it was to find a 's' drink? if not slosh den wat? haha i'd love to have dinner wif the rest of the class man.. and if u're free, can ya pls help us wif a cool gathering before mingde goes into ns? [i||uXioN]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------





Depression - 10/27/2003






Part two - but there ain;t no part one cause it didn't get saved cause I was too slow in typing it all down and it got timed out - I must say that save for the occasional burst of rage I am coping with all these dying ones around me quite well.  Dying ones around me - they like to sing the songs of death like they were melodies made for the voices that had nothing better to hum.  My lips are sealed about your thirty something angst might as well get it now before you kill yourself at sixty.  how the world goes revolves and turns on its back like a walking snail slugging across the race track then crack goes its shell and all its goo splats - a memory on the road.  I pick up snails once in a while - I avoid stepping on them most of the time.  Am I or you snailing in the wrong race, out of place while we dance the misstep - and walk out of synch - slug along really - in the dance of time?

 What I had for breakfast ...

good ya?

geddit?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

hey mr lim! hope u're doing fine at hcjc =) [Alt^John2]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

ewww. [AnGeL^6587]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

you're not satan...and you don't have kids

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

morbid.. but i like..



sprinkle salt on the snail and watch it shrivel in the hot morning sun, a more peaceful and less dirty way of removing from this world [enfant terrible]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's a little... disturbing...

Type out your entry in word first before pasting it over... a lesson I learnt a long time ago after countless bouts of rage and unmentionable curses... [Grandioso]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Am I or you snailing in the wrong race, out of place while we dance the misstep - and walk out of synch - slug along really - in the dance of time?



I often ask myself that too. Maybe that sprinter on the track will by chance launch a swift kick that will send that snail sailing across the length of the track. What a way to feel the wind upon its face, huh. :-p

[Tempest Blue]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------





Quick as quick can be ... - 10/30/2003






If, you've wondered about how words and poetry could be fused with the lean tautness of science and math, I would highly recommend that you read Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson.  One of the few things that I read that actually got reviewed by Life! (2 days ago) - well sort of reviewed - it's a glorious read - and halfway into the book (I'm at page 451) with most of my evenings with the book propped on my chest (it's a heavy book so I can't lug it around and read it on the bus ...) I think that anyone who is interested in the way knowledge gets constructured, coverted, contested and circulated should dip into the adventure.

It's sort of a geek's book I suppose, tracing the famous dispute between Lebiniz and Newton (about who REALLY discovered calculus) in a most tangential (you're suppose to snigger)fashion.  Favourite bit so far - Newton conducting experiments as an undergrad at Trinity, Cambridge, sticking a stick into his eye and using thus manipulating the curvature of his lens and taking measurements ... I suppose science practicals used be be much more imaginative ...

Check it out ...

http://www.nealstephenson.com/

Oh - plus for some unfathomable reason, the first edition hard covers are going at 27 buckeroos (20 % off the cover price of 33 ) at Kino.  which is really strange cause the paperback costs 44 bucks ... another reason to get the book ...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interesting! I guess I'll go dig up tuesday's Life! section and see what it really is about.



I didn't understand what you meant at first about

"I will move into a mode of abstraction - where observations are merely reflected thought" until I read a few of your other entries. Such 'cheemalogical' abstraction!



Very interesting Diary indeed!:-)



~random noter [Tempest Blue]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ah okay I'll be sure to pick that up as well - couldn't find the Foucault book you recommended at either Kino or Borders, so I picked up another one of his instead. Of course with exams coming up haven't read much - but so far, it's very... confusing, haha. [Grandioso]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------





Bloody COmputer - 10/31/2003






In an age of maximum security where everyone thinks that their info is important or precious - you have passwords to get for the slightest function.  Passwords used to be the secrets of chlidren's games, parts of myth and fairy tales (rumpelstiltskin... yes i stand corrected forgive the desperate spelling) - unreal.  But the reality of passwords have taken on a whole new bloody inconvenient real world irritating impediment to my efficency as a human being.

I'm rather a sluggard when it comes to admin work but I try my best.  I fill in the forms that are NECESSARY which means a good many I don't bother to fill in - shoot that reminds me I need to fill in the ACTUAL attendance file - and I haven't done that since June cause I keep my records separately ... shoot - looks like I need to go back to school TML - shoot ... anyway this week I managed to log myself out of TWO MOE systems because I can't remember my bloody password

Actually - I've got a system that makes my life straightforward.  Just Have One Password.  All my stuff is governed by One PassWord.  And I really don't care if people can Hack into my MOE systems and like give themselves 25 CCA points ... But the trouble begins with systems that refuse to allow me to USE my password over and over and insist on me changing it.  Some systems even complain that adding a single digit at the end of the password isn't enough.  So - I change these passwords into strange variations of the original and get screwed.  Of course I write them down ... SOMEWHERE - but when you need to access your info immediately - or need to update something and get LOGGED OUT it's damn irritating.  Plus I read somewhere that it actually costs something like 100 buckeroos to reset the password ... really?  And the best thing is this message that one gets - You've been Logged out of the system - contact your systems administrator.  I actually tried FINDING OUT who the systems administrator is/was - to no avail.  So I shot off random e-mails - I suppose that's what keeps some people busy ... no wonder I appear slack ... cause I ...

Anyway - I'm passwordless - but at least I have a name ... and have recalled a bit of a poem ... relating to a sort of passage - and passwords I suppose ...

Who is stronger than hope?  Death.Who is stronger than the will?  Death.Stronger than love?Death.Stronger than life? Death.But who is stronger than death?                                            Me, evidently,Pass, Crow.

from Examination at the Womb Door by Ted hughes

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Haha that's the first time I've seen you use mild swears... Cool thing about the fairy tales, never did notice... [Grandioso]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

rumpelstiltskin? =)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

ryn: thx for the link. I'll go check it out in borders soon. Haven't figured out from the review what genre the book falls under,(historical fiction?) though i suspect its the kind that resists any kind of generic classification.



I have 3-4 levels of security p/w . crucial ones that involve $$( banking, phone, ISP), impt ones e.g ICQ & email, and couple of generic ones for fun & games related [Tempest Blue]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

[i||uXioN]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

u noe wad...

i have the same problem...

ttx y i have two close frenx who can memorise my atm pin, among other stuff...who cares if it's not safe....i dun have enough money anyway. [psst]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

=) i guess we'll have to live with it. so much for the 'IT = convenience' equation huh... [public_prosecutor]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

actually they do have only ONE password these days. it's called GDS or something. but i've lost mine since ACSI doesnt use MOE systems very much. :)



---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ah - but the breeliance of MOE is that the Global DS password is used for "ALL" systems except ... pac@gov, traisi and cockpit - damn "smart" right...? [limitlim]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

well, how about 2 passwords and alternating between the two? :) [::orange::]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

haha, sth similar happened to me yesterday too... forgotten my pin coz i remembered it by sequence, not the numbers...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

FouCault

The bald man - probably the most dazzling philospher of his generation. At least the most radical in terms of renewing (or challenging) how the social studies are approached. His methods / approaches / theories apply to a wide range of disciplines - from history, literature, sociology, psychology -


Quick thoughts on foucault -


The author is dead -


deny "common sense" - look instead for the "constructedness" of systems - that appear natural - speech, routines, classifications - are the manifestation of power relations - of power seeking to systemise, to "naturalise" inequalities.


Crime - reform is a meaner more subtle form of subjugation. The Law, a tyranny not only of the body but enjoining the mind and the soul to be subservient to a politics that erases its traces by defining criminal and outlaw through the structures of language.


Madness - the shadowland of sanity is hardened - made distinct - drawn apart - with the overlaps occulded. Therapy - manacles over the being -


The individual - don't privilege it. Don't believe you exist primarily as yourself - but examine the forces that constitute your being. If there is to be freedom to be found - the consciousness of the how we are contructed is a semblance of freedom.


THeory is practice. Theory that ceases / is not relevant does not even enter into the world.


Discourse - dug / found - rooted in historicity. A fascination with how structures imbue themselves with reflexivity and order. The historicity of truth is part of its being - situated truth makes plainer where the appropirations exist -


"The indignity of speaking for others"


"soemthing essential is taking place : ... the tracking down of all varieties of facism, from the enormous ones that surround and crush us to the petty ones that constitute the tyrannical bitterness of our everyday lives".


Who sings for those who once knew the Spirit?

August 2003

I've actually - 8/28/2003





tried to think up a baby/ children's book for my little niece isabelle - it kinda relates to having a brother and sister, cause my good old lao ta is pregnant again. So anyway - here's how it's set up:

Mum's got a baby in her tum
She told me today
There's a baby on the way
Mum's got a baby in her tum

Ok so after that it's supposed to be sorting of a counting rhyme - as in 3 months, 4 months etc ... then we get to 9 mths and the months INSIDE convert into months outside ... until the baby grows to 1 year old ... It's not only a counting book but an inquiry into prosaic notions of time ... is inside time longer than time out of the womb - is time cyclical - symbolically at least - if numbers recycle themselves (months invariably turn into years ... as well)

Mum's got a baby in her tum
It's been that way
Two months to the day
Mum's got a baby in her tum.

Do you think "Mummy's got a baby in her tummy" is better - there's a stronger beat cause the "-my" off beat is articulated ...

Mummy's got a baby in her tummy
He just turned three
So he's much younger than me
Mummy's got a baby in her tummy ...

I'll probabbly have to read up on the development of the foetus in order to get this nicvely done ... something distracting to think about ...:)









---------------------------------------------------------------------------

rather interesting=)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't know, I guess I would add a -my. Like the rhyming couplets - unfortunately, I've only been taught to analyse, and when it comes down to re-creation, I kinda fall into obsolescence... :(

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think that tum-my is better.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

LOL~

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

tummy do sound a little better but even if u wirte as tum, the final stress on mmm makes it sound like tummy.. dat's wat i feel... hehe quite an interesting idea u've got there.. but is the whole thing just gonna be bout time? how bout the development of the baby?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wow ok... chim1 baby book...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

hm...I'd rather leave out the "my" though...Sounds a little funny with it. [silent.scream]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

July 2003

Hello - 7/9/2003





Haven't much to say?
Guess not ...
Then why are you here in the first place
Cause I felt sense of ...
Of what? Responsibility to speak those thoughts that creep about in the recesses of your mind ...?
Since you put it that way ... yes ....
Just as i thought - and the place
Place?
Yes, the place ... where were you in your thoughts?
I was hiding behind a bush - out of sight - with someone else
Did you see who the other person was?
Not really but I was holding onto him/her
for your life? Or out of love?
does it make a difference?
It could ... given the way your thoughts always appear in monochrome ...







---------------------------------------------------------------------------

*raises eyebrow* haha... mr lim and his psychedelic thoughts. whoosh. =D

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

the best often die by their own hand

just to get away,

and those left behind

can never quite understand

why anybody

would ever want to

get away

from

them







Cause and Effect.....charles bukowski

---------------------------------------------------------------------------





Oh ho ho - 7/21/2003





yes it's that time of year again when we get bogged down in week 4 and can't see the forest from the trees and every deadline and ruptured vine in front of you is smashing your specs into smithereens - don't forget to pick out the bits from your cornea before they merge and become part of your lenses cause those aren't easily replaceable. Note that the difficulty of walking on air is seldom acknowledged, a skill required to precariously dodge the various shards of light that make up your life, often assumed. Make sure that you turn the combustionable engine one before you zoom into the hidden reaches that fall back and recede from the clear vision of your mind's eye. Once I danced through zero land and hopped on a foot till the time came for me to claim a bride - at which I gulped and woke up and found myself- miraculously only dreaming. My pockets are full and there's no place left for the sweets keychains and ammo. If you shot me now you wouldn't hear a retort in reply cause i've run dry of whisky and of rum. The smartest man on earth couldn't do mental sums without fiddling his thumbs backward and forward till the skin between them went sore if he had the weight of trivialities nagging and bitching at his ear - like I do.



Me misses me books. I'm saddled with bad essays. But at least I have incomprehensible jazz.







---------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's deep... Incomprehensible jazz is the best...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yea i miss books too...but nowadays rarely get the time to read them

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

wow...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------





Again - 7/31/2003





how many times have looked at what goes on in my head and fear the worst. It cannot be the worst - for nothing is nothing and the worst cannot be called the worst. If the consciousness were a tool with which we shaped our thoughts, carefully, not these thrown out scraps of interstatial fiddlings, what would the worst be? And now I am become the worst - not I but become because I perceive the worst dripping and sloshing all around me.

I need to go mark - would like to wonder about the trivialities of sending out thank you for coming to College day hope you will continue to support the ever increasing budget of a newly independant institution but will not because my cheque isn't cashed and lately I've been running on faith.





---------------------------------------------------------------------------

well, at least u still have faith.

Feel better soon~ *smilez*

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

n recently, my faith has been running low. :) take care mr lim~

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

faith more reliable than cheques anyway :)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

oh my gosh... is that y u were on the vegetable soup diet? *grinz* -exu-

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I guess you shouldn't have to worry bout the worst, cos there's only better things to look forward to after that? If you think you've been feeling this way cos of the people around you, just try to hang on in there and stay strong yup? Would love to see you smiling more often okay? :D

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 2003

Zust Zoking - 6/8/2003





You must be pretty strange to try to speak like that, with your teeth in a deranged line-up against that thick slab tongue. You try to make the sounds without moving the wind that clutters your mouth and makes everything sound high-strung. If you did it once, you'd be able to try again, but this time without the help of the Sun. You see he took a holiday the day you came around and now you're stuck in between the noon and the plus one. When you hear crying, pray for the bottomless child whose mother is risen from the slave ship's hour and the waving feted clouds signal to you that the trees waiting for the hanging to be done - the leaves waiting for the reaching to be over and we run for cover because the starships crashing into the moonlight hour and the sparkles are hurting our eyes o'er and o'er here and there and in old everywhere we say and swear the dress you're wearing is a refund from the box beneath the stair-case. I would love you better if O'd seen you more often rather than merely recognise the dark sound of a creaking door open when the late night twinkle of mosquitoes sounds like the drone of a heart beating with the flesh of life in its wing-span. They often come near with sounds that half-awakened spiders creep away from. They often come near to dress your ceek bone in sweat and saliva - that your long forgotten spittle from when you were little. I would have loved you better if from the time we were born to the time that is now you'd sat patiently and let him hit you repeatedly with the brown belt cover and the brass open buckle and felt the violence prick your conscience like the pin drop that makes these night sounds diminish and drop and feel like the felt covers under which we snuggle and try to hide from the night sounds of the creaking stairs and the crying stars and the frightened moon and the broken sun. We fleece the clouds for the clods of a better day. Tomorrow perhaps, we'll have our way.

So when I hear crying I pray for the child whose mother is grieving over the lost opportunities and the screeching cats provide the solemn overture for a final Mass that cannot be left unspoken. If lines were to be unbroken and the circle his course run, then surely my breath is a mere token, of all the left undone.





---------------------------------------------------------------------------





How Often - 6/11/2003





Does one try to persist in the memory of the Other, an hour after the death, all greif is swept aside like the dust that accumulates for years in the silent corner gets sucked up by the vacuum of the moment. You cried with he passed away and tried never to recall how those hurting barbs would rear their prickly pokey points and come crashing down like a throny crown O lord show me the way as we go down into the valley of ashes, the slim pits of today compare with the carbon dates and racist hate and furies flying with the Fates of despair. Describe to me an emotion and I'll make it personal, give it shape, hew from the abstract a living stone to colour and protect you all the days of my life and we'll run into the waters before the waters cover the sea, that's right, ride with the tumble-down seaweed brown - but you must move away from the allusions that persist as sound - words become nouns that objectify meaning and make concrete the heartbeats bearing only the trace of waste and gravity. How long how long before the frowns of yesterday take their toil on the foreheads of tomorrow, when the wigs and false teeth fail their duty of concealing all that the past robs us of. We try to remember time and it slips past us like a school boy on tip toe sniggling past the teacher who he's sure doesn't remember his name because it was so long ago- You taught me once in a memory - you taught me once history - but now I can only remember the dull ache of forgetting what year it was when Phil the Second took over the Spanish crown was it even spain in the land where the they call fire caldara - is it even right to claim that sight of lace and satin - all the conventions of grouped lexis falling like an impenetrable cloud - and I'm away that I've used the word like four no just now five times now - even though I thought that I'd try to avoid the simplest of similes craft and sullen art combine to rob me of what otherwise would be Words only Words. You mouth them as the Prince of denmark struts his stuff on the stage if there were a quote to remember you should try to remember words only words - so easy you can recall it at the needle drop at the dropping of a hat words only words - and I seem to smell the heat of a summer's day indeed there is no cultural pretension here for indeed it was a summer's day and the rambling goes on its way as we stand in the sun to watch the swaying players make their presence felt on the stage the last moments before the curtains (but wait - the globe is transparent - they have no curtains) come down and tell us of a seaman found - drowned, clutching clumps of hair like seaweed brown, left open in the sun scorched beach - oh the rhyming leads me to peach I swear it - but its all fast forward and reversed time when you play it out in your mind. I will not go down under the ground because Bobby Dylan has got the worst sound. And I will not go down under to die- when I pray to my God - Adonai - Eloi Eloi Lama -Sabac... - I cannot recall the sounds now - they've drifted past somehow.





---------------------------------------------------------------------------





Today - 6/13/2003





I will write badly. As if I had a choice, nothing interesting seems to strike me anymore. Perhaps I'm genuinely becoming strange, eccentric or just plain weird. You no, weirdness is just a pose you carry off so that people who you don't want to talk to won't talk to you. But lately I think I've become genuinely weird. Then again, that awareness may be an indication that I'm actually quite normal and am not weird. Then again, that whole normal/weird complex is a false dialectic manufactured by society's elites who want to cordon off a space for themselves where they reign supreme in their definition of normalcy. Of course I don't mean this merely in terms of a particular society but as a historical-global phenomenon. We've come to regard outspokeness, "balanced views", SMILING to STRANGERS, constructive comments, encouragement and extrovertedness (I'm sure you get the picture) as norms which socially integrated people fulfill perfectly well. Anyway I'm itchy now - so I can't write properly. Thought stutters, half-broken, synapses slipping. Perhaps it is easier to mix yourself in a mode of free form thought than to actually try to work out something intelligible - which is the point of socially accepted discourse. If you've bothered to think about it, perhaps the stream of unconsciousness (?) entries that have recently plagued this page are an attempt at resistance. yes perhaps - that's it. Writing as a kind of therapy - writing to resist the conditionals and conventions of the communicative act. A recourse to discourse perhaps - merely bumming off the puns to regain a certain vitality that I've always associated to language - yes that's right - de-territorialising language - or allowing language to no longer surface only in the strictures of ordained discourse - a "groundless language" (foucault).

Back to basics. I catch myself. Creeing in thought - eccentric moments of wanting to hit someone else awfully hard. Eccentric moments of scratching an imagined itch. Eccentric moments of actually bursting into a lyric or two that has been playing in my head. Eccentric moments of talking out loud to myself. Eccentric moments of prolonging silence when in conversation just so the other person will feel uncomfortable. How strange one becomes, wrapped up in this bubble wrap of books and strange dylanesque. Eccentric moments of trying to recount strange details and hoarding irrelevant information tidbits that only the blue popinjays on a shampoo bottle would recognise.

you know when I was a kid they had this children's programme that had these strange HUGE muppet like chracters - it was called the GREAT SPACE COASTER I think. I wonder if I remember correctly. But there was this character in it - called Gary. But he wasn't human. No he was Gary Gnu. If you don't know what a Gnu is go find out. Anyway I had a schoolmate how used to call me Gary Gnu. Like only the two of us ever made reference to that reference. and like I met him last year - he's a banker now - and like the most natural thing in the world - "Hey Gnu" ... i remember these strange things when after school I sat straight in front of that old black white box TV cabinet - TV only started after 6 pm then and watched these strange prancings. Yes I remember - Gary Gnu was the news reader on that programme - read the news in a silly manner I believe. If anyone has information that might tell me more about Gary Gnu - I haven't searched the Web - maybe in some alternate space - there, is Gary Gnu - reading the news like all Good Gnus (that's right - another line from the prgramme) should.

I am haunted by these black and white pixilations that normally remain white noise. Only in moments of strange clarity, I sense the immediacy of memory and who I have been is jolted, sharp into focus. Lay it down carefully. Whose voice speaks quietly?







---------------------------------------------------------------------------

[É÷÷\]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

hahaha.. interesting entry..

-Gabriel

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr Lim, i miss you.

Eileen (2D2K) [sugaraddict]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

yea how interesting... [j.O.n. E≤]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

this is probably one of those few entries I have any idea at all of what you're talking about. [NiceShorts]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

=) [public_prosecutor]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://briansworld.nova.org/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

finally, somethin direct n easily understandable.......keep it up!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

i watched "far from heaven" n i really hated the way tt woman talked. standard polite answers for every conversation but tt was how her community worked anyway. this gave me a different view on "talking"... what's it for anyway...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------





Today I - 6/16/2003







will write conventionally.

7.02 am - need the loo. Late nights do not condition your bladder to store fluid for uninterrupted snoozes into mid-morning. The siezure of sleep is broken.

7.30 am - start thinking about the work I need to do before I'm through with the day. Sigh.

8 am plus? Still lying in bed but unable to work out the purpose of thought ...

8.30 am - get up and brush up. yes that's term I've used for a long time. Brushing Up. Upstrokes only I suppose. But that's all redundant now that I use an Oral B Electric toothbrush. Which has an interesting history. When I went back to the army for the second time after NUS, I had pretty nice Officers working the same office - of course they were nice - they were about my age and had been to NUS at the same time as me ... anyway there was a particular chap who used to drive us out for lunch in his nice car ... and he gave me the Oral B Electric Brush as an ORD present ... with the advice, "Next time you in school, after lunch, when all the other teachers use normal toothbrush to brush their teeth - you can take out your Electric Tooth Brush and laugh at them!" I haven't brushed my teeth in school yet, much less with an Electric Toothbrush. But I suppose if you really want someone to think about you everyday - by them an Electric toothbrush for a present ...

8.31 am- yes i'm done - the Brush ran out of battery and I thought it would be silly to try to use it like a regular toothbrush ... sigh ... keep forgetting to charge the thing. Never mind will brush extra long tonight .... Growing up with both your parents as dental surgeons, NOT brushing your teeth is like major rebellion. Up to JC, I lived in fear of being caught not brushing my teeth ... and I religiously did so. Of course the army meant less time for everything and brushing one's teeth became kinda optional on occasion when I discovered that not brushing my teeth didn't mean they would all fall out ... hmmm quite a shift in mindsets for me. Anyway I'm supposedly blessed with enzymes in my saliva that prevent tooth decay - don't have a single filling in spite of my tardy (these days) brush habits.

9 am - Start work on some stuff. Hard-going. Terrible job organising my thoughts. Much rather read but this has to be done. Get at least a page down. Decide to work on the mechanical bits (the bibliography instead. Am rather pleased to see quite a number of books I've looked at ... One doesn't get a sense of the amount we actually imbibe until we list things out ...

The rest of the day help an auntie fill out a damn long survey form Ambi Pure Air stuff - never heard of it "Oh you're a teacher, no wonder you're so patient in helping me fill out this survey - tennis - lunch of two crispy pratas in Upper thomson - scrounging around for a space to sit and read in orchard and almost having a nervous breakdown in the middle to Taka when the dual forces of wanting to be in crowd and not being able to conceal the sense that disorder is robbing my sense of identity from a distinct purposefulness cave in on me. I want to scream for a moment then laugh at myself a half chuckle. Finger a CD - coltrane's Ascension for a good ten minutes before putting it down and hopping onto an Express 502 sleeping along with the bobbing of a cranky suspension - play scales and finger exercises - eat dinner - play with isabelle - listen to some DYLAN - read a page of delany - realise that I need to do some work - and end up writing a diary entry ...

I just go walking in the rain, when I hear breath, strong like an easy fantasy


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

yea...i luv walking in the rain the heavier the better..esp in thunderstorm..gives me a very relaxed feeling [j.O.n. E≤]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

May 2003

Wow-zers - 5/14/2003





The last two weeks have been terribly draining. Been emotionally drained by all that's going around and zapped out psychologically by the deadlines that I need to meet. Sigh - too many things up in the air all at once. Of course, this probably cannot compare with what most people go through - with their numerous projects and subjects and deals to cut and ladders to climb and bosses to please - perhaps sometimes I wish I were made of sterner stuff and were not so easily affected by things.

Sigh - I guess what one's seen or heard or been through does colour the emphasis of one's being. Anyway - I really glad for the holiday tomorrow - even if it only does mean that I'll have the oportunity to work through the day and get ahead of my schedule (used as a generic almost illusory term of course, as if I actually keep a schedule ...)

What I really want to do - is to sleep and wake up to find that all the boring mundane stuff that needs to be done has magically been cleared out - I think to be haunted with what ifs is terrible ... If you could read my mind, i would ask of you this: that you carved out a box there, right there, in between all the brain mush, and let all this get packed in. Then we'd ship all this business of deadlines, gridlines, right-hand margin lines and lines of contact, off on a round the world never to be seen or heard from again journey. And the lines would lose themselves in the space of that box. Because everyone knows that lines in boxes are merely the intersections of space and time and if you spin a box of the mind fast enough - the lines recede, with the ever fading horizon.









---------------------------------------------------------------------------

ah bless,feel beta soon.

faith x x x [wild orchid]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

feeling tired eh..go for a massage..hehe..or spa...jaccuzi..wateva=p

take care~ [É÷÷\]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

take leave from sch :)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think u need MC..LOL..



juz dropping by to see how you're doing

-bryan(if u still remember) [Outrageous Outlaw]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

ahaha...u should use the holiday to realli take a break...free yur mind from all those deadlines...worry abt them after the holiday..

Jonathan Ee

RVHS

2D 2002 [j.O.n. E≤]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

beautiful box! can i have it for my birthday?? =P [i||uXioN]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------





Hey - 5/22/2003





Mr Tambourine man - play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey Mr Tambourine man - play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning, I'll come following you-

And I know that evening 's empire
Has returned into sand
has vanished from my hand
left me blindly here to stand while still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me
i'm branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming ...

Bob Dylan

Gets it right everytime I hear him smile into the guitar chords and laugh into the harp. You know that all the anger of a generation lost in space comes crashing into a moment of tired fizzled out I tried too hard I told you sos.

Ah ...





---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey yeah I remember that song when you played it in class... Bob Dylan's got some funky background...

Oh yeah if you're still interested in jazz, I've got this really, really insane CD. Mostly acid swingjazz sort, coupled with fusion and new age, comprising of a one time union of the best soloists in the world... fun stuff... [Grandioso]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

i remembered the song you sang for us during graduation i think... =) i still keep the song lyric you printed out for each and everyone of us... =) [i||uXioN]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

A teacher who likes Bob Dylan? Rather much of a coincidence? Btw I used to be a teacher and Mr Tambourine Man is a favourite of mine. Shall have fun reading this dialogue between the teacher and his class. You hang in there. [perrin]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

still remember the time when you played that song in class...miss your lit lessons mr lim... -kel

---------------------------------------------------------------------------





Slave to Technology? - 5/25/2003





I've never really regarded myself as one chained by the sheckles of technology to the latest, fastest or trendiest. After all, my computer is several generations old, my laptop is clunky and my palm ... is in good ol black and white. Ok - so I'm not exactly a luddite but neither do I try to be too up to date either. So it did strike me as somewhat significant when I had to return the nifty (ok to ME) handphone that I've been using to the friend that I borrowed it from. Nifty to me - it was a nokia 8210 (I think) - because the phone I had lost (misplaced?) was a nokia 3310. So my friend had another spare phone - a nokia 6110 (?) - a rather large affair, complete with non-detachable antenna. Anyway - I was quite pleased with how the phone looked - at least I could throw it at unsuspecting students who fall asleep in my classes and actually do some damage ...

But on trying it out I realised - horrors - it didn't have a vibration mode! Now those of you who have actually tried calling me know that I hardly pick up my phone cause it's always on silent mode and on the off chance that I feel the vibration, I'm usually too slow anyway ... So to not have a vibration mode on the phone was really - i felt - one step too far in the direction of even worse handphone answering habits ... (even the first generation motorola pager that could only store 6 numbers that I had way back when had a vibration mode ...) And playing with the phone some more, I found that it didn't have a smart SMS function. Yup - you had to key in everything letter by letter. At which point I caved in and told myself that I coudn't survive with this phone. But did I relent and buy a new phone for myself ... not exactly ...

I just switched phones with my mom ... so now I'm back to using that trusty 3210 (which is actually Ms Tan's - my mom is taking care of it while she's in NY) I guess that's a small step in the direction of being a techno snob ...









---------------------------------------------------------------------------

hahahax...its seriously time to upgrade [j.O.n. E≤]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

"shackles"...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Aww man, there should be a law against those. It's so old it's almost illegal... i think... [Grandioso]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

ah well. a phone which you can juz phone with is all well and good. but a phone which you can keep hidden in a shirt pocket is great. and a phone in colour with WAP functions and polyphonic ringtones-- now that's really quite brilliant...

brilliant phone for a brilliant teacher O = ) go get one.

[lassitude]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yah...agree with Drew...Fashion police should have you arrested. [eagle eye]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

3210?? haha you are so easily satisfied... i'm not in much position to comment but a colour phone is pretty much the norm nowadays.. haha =P I KNOW wat you are going to say! yes yes, i'm insecure and driven by trends and fashion... whatever... =P [i||uXioN]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

well, what can i say? your phone matches your clothes? =D -fey

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

hope ur pocket's big enough. i'm depressed enough already with my 3315. [psst]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ooo..No vibration and NO smart SMS function. Geez. I would have died with that phone. [silent.scream]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------





Maybe - 5/29/2003





Maybe it's the way you wear your hair that makes them think of you this way. An abstract line goes nowhere like the strands that curl like curtains lost for a rail and nailed still on the window pane caressing the heartaches brought on by drought and rain. Still, perhaps the tone of your voice allures the purring cats whose pawing flick forward on the narrow edge of a half-attended garden hedge, creeping still path forward against backward glance scrounging for a bite to eat in the broken down moonshine of a brick wall flattened rat. Opening up the line, they dine and pounce on the fluttering shadows as if the feathers left behind by the cool wind whips could suggest more than the lingering taste of a rat's tail dallying through luscious lips. No its counterfactual all I think they really hunt to show us all what's made of instinct after the Fall: what is left behind is body and bones a neat rip and tear at the neck - all the maosers eat is head. When you wake up to the squawking sounds of a finalised moment when the sounds are shut off from here to head to there and toes screech and claw to an aweful silence. I've never heard it of course but I imagine it everytime I need to shoo a blood drenched (of course I exaggerate for effect)maoser from the torn plumage of a once complete now replete with the finality of flesh carcase. So we started with love and infatuation and followed on to death and intrigue walking an infinitely tight rope down this strange page fired by the sounds of open ended piano jazz melody closed off by the textures of discord.





---------------------------------------------------------------------------

[i||uXioN]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------