unexpected visitor

have you ever seen a real firefly upclose, like UPCLOSE?
neither have i... until yesterday.

so i walked into my room after dinner and i saw this phantom light thingy on my table and i freaked out. okay maybe not totally freaked out, but i thought maybe my dad had swapped my optical mouse (which had the typical red laser thingy on the bottom) for his (which had a green glow).


and so i turned on the light and saw that my mouse was still where it had been, and this little fellow was just sitting on my table motionless.


and so i used a pen and tried to poke it a little, and it just moved a few steps and settled down again. and so i got more bold and flipped it over. and voila!


omfgwtfbbq!!! i've never seen something so freakishly wicked in my life! two V shaped strips of fluorescent sweetness. at this juncture i thought about what a horde of these little creatures could be saying to me, maybe something like:

all your base are belong to us... muahaha

ok that's it for now. tonight those damn bokkes are going DOWN.



+listening to: going down by G3

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time to think

these couple of days have been absolute peace compared to the turbulent past couple of weeks, the frenzied shuttling from places to places, the incessant but never finished to-do lists, the endless shopping trips, and the annoying but necessary placement testings that needed to be done before school starts.

so i have had the luxury of really sitting down and doing nothing. and just think, about anything and everything there is. i wasn't thinking about anything in particular, but rather about the greater scheme of things.

where do we come from? why are we here?

i've been looking at this picture a lot since i came across it 2 days ago:


it is a photo (click for high res.) taken by the aging hubble telescope as it completed its recent 100,000th orbit. and somehow looking at it gave me a strange sense of serenity.

it's just that staring into the abyss makes me feel infinitely small, and i think i take comfort in knowing that no matter what i did in this life, no matter how it turns out in the end, it would be infinitely minuscule compared to the great beyond.

that doesn't mean that i would give up trying to do good things and being a good person, it just gives me that confidence to venture into whatever unfamiliar territories ahead. i would say dare to fail is the point of the whole realization/espisode or whatever you call it.

the peace before the storm somehow always seem the sweetest.


+listening to: neon by john mayer

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wth is wrong with my internet

okay posting this using the email blogging function, so i'm praying it works.

my internet's has suddenly decided that i'm not worthy. maybe it's because of the olympics and everyone watching the live streams online?

i wouldn't know, because i haven't watched much of the games, other than the dream team smashing china to bits (ouch!) and some swimming events, and oh fencing. it actually looked pretty exhilarating.

and now i shall go back to packing, 4 more days to go!

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the old bitch is the new bitch

damn, time runs like stink on shit.

it's time to start packing my bags again. which is one of my least favourite activities on this whole planet. and just after about a month since i last endured this soul-sucking activity.


to think that a week from now i'd be at the opposite end of the world (literally) is both mind boggling and scary. the new life would probably be both a joy and a bitch, but hopefully there will be a little bit more joy than bitch.

and today i learned about the ghastly fact that the engineering library on campus opens 24/7. i think that's also the only one to do so. it gave me much comfort in knowing that being an engineer would do wonders to my social life.

a typical undergrad's life would be something like:
classes, a bit of work, chill, sleep.

an engineering undergrad's life would be:
classes, more classes, work, more work.


i'm wondering if i've made the right choice? life's a bitch.


+listening to: temporary saint by gov't mule

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the olympics!!! (here we go again...)

an interesting phenomenon to note: shopping centers and just about everywhere else are closing early today so people could all flock home to watch the opening ceremony of the olympics.

this has never happened before. the last time all the shops closed before 10pm was probably when the japanese invaded during the second world war and took over the power stations.

anyways here's something funny while i was browsing casually through all the repetitive news headlines. it's a good thing that people still have a sense of humor (or maybe it was intended for real):


this probably happened after the french president nicolas sarkozy announced that he wouldn't be showing up at the opening ceremony over human rights issues.

oh by the way here's something even funnier:
http://thegidcumbs.com/dblog/archives/china-olympics-firing-squad-cartoon.jpg

but i don't really want to post it up here in fear of my blog being blacklisted by the government. it wouldn't be funny anymore if i can't even access my own blog. that would be the most embarrassing cop-out in history.


+listening to: masters of war by eddie vedder

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a sad sad day for league *sobs*

this has got to be the best piece of news all year: sonny bill williams has officially converted to rugby (union that is).

let me give you some analogies just to show you the magnitude of this unexpected piece of good news: sonny bill converting to union is akin to dan carter moving over to play league; or in the soccer world, it would be like cristiano ronaldo suddenly deciding he wanted to play futsal for a living.

now, a little rugby tidbit for those unknowing fools: the rugby universe exists as the rugby dichotomy. there's rugby union (the real deal) and then there's rugby league (or league in short, the not-so-real deal, ymmv).

if you must know more, here's a short lesson highlighting the main differences:


i never got how the league people think of themselves as THE only thing out there. they seem to think that rugby union doesn't exist. and somehow it is always okay for league to poach players from union, but the reverse is considered a taboo.

what the league fanatics don't realise is that besides the odd handful of them, no one really cares about rugby league, or have even heard of it. with rugby union being the international game it is, at least it has the potential to take on soccer, and crush league on the way to achieving that.

grow up, league lovers. go have a drink at your local pub and laugh yourselves silly at the six tackles rule. that's like calling your mommy when you can't win a fight fair and square. and what's with the stoppage every time a tackle is made? need to make sure you look goodie-two-shoes on tv?

now if you'll excuse me, i need to go play some rugby 08. oh i'm sorry, i totally forgot, it's union only.


+listening to: slow dancing in a burning room by john mayer

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le patriote

as i was casually scrolling through my playlist, the song patriot came up again.

I am a patriot, I love my country
Because my country is all I know
I wanna be with my family
People who understand me
I got no place else to go...
I am a patriot...

and i was thinking, i only just realised how close the olympics were to starting. because for the past couple of days i've been wandering the streets window shopping, and i see all these olympic merchandise being peddled everywhere.



and it struck me: one of the most watched sporting event is gonna be held in my country.

you see usually i don't give a flying hoot about olympics and whatnot. it has about the same overall aesthetic appeal to me as a giraffe's tongue. i'd rather be sitting on the couch on a fine saturday afternoon with a beer in one hand and the tv remote in the other enjoying a fine game of rugby being played out (okay save for the beer part).

i don't know what happened but something clicked inside and i did the only thing i know how to do best when feeling irrational: i went out and bought something, in this case a t-shirt:


there was also another version with a purely yellow/red colourway which reminded too much of the old chinese high chicken suit, so naturally i took a pass on that.

and for once, the made-in-china label seemed to be the logical choice - i wouldn't want to have it made anywhere else, in case some douchebag screws up the chinese characters or tries to put some hidden nazi message into the design.

so there you go. i guess that was my patriotic moment in a nutshell. now back to the olympics... what did i want to say again? argh i can't remember. bah.

oh and here's something funny related to nazis: behind the door of a toilet cubicle on a university campus, someone scribbled

"the Americans are the Nazis of the 20th century"

and below that someone else scribbled in red

"the Nazis are the Nazis of the 20th century you dumbf*ck"

+listening to: patriot by pearl jam

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battered and bruised

man i'm smashed. hammered. whatever u call it. i reek of alcohol, my piss smells like alcohol.

as you can probably see in the pic, at this juncture i wish someone would just shoot me in the head now. it feels like my skull has just shrunk 2 sizes and my brain is trying to bust out of it.

let me just do an overall summation before i completely lose my memory of today:

lunch
9 shots of 52% alcohol by volume chinese wine
2 bottles of beer

kbox
unfathomable number of pints of beer, between 5 people we downed 3 dozens

dinner
2 bottles of beer


this family reunion sure was fun, but it made me feel like crap physically. and it was noisy as HELL after all the gents (my 3 uncles, 3 cousins, 1 cousin in law, plus my dad) got piss drunk. and this is a whole new level of drunk from the chalet type of drunk. we're talking full grown men who love to drink here.

i was genuinely fearing for my life as i was forced to drink with them. it was also the first time i've actually seen my dad drunk, and he was acting like some INSANE shit.

i managed to take some pics at the kbox while the rest were parking (they were all driving under the influence after lunch, which is a miracle in itself that nobody totalled their car)

in case you can't read, it says budweiser, 160RMB for 2 dozens (pints). that's about 30 sing dollars.

drunkards trying to sing

i will so regret this tomorrow morning...


+listening to: my brain mashing against my skull

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