Absolute: Reality - The party to be at!

Hmmzah

So Bigf*ck actually went and got himself famous enough for the papers:



Which is oddly amusing, since it wasn't that long ago when we were talking in pierce and he mentioned how he wanted to start a blog and boost its hits and massage his ego (or, well, he put it in slightly different terms) and see how far it could go, and he said it wasn't too difficult to get a wildly popular blog with decent readership.
"got so easy meh?"

But he went about doing it, and yesh his writing style is pretty amusing, and so he managed to achieve a reasonable amount of fame for it.

congrats? haha to think it all started with an ambition in pierce.

oh and in case you're wondering, the bigf*** who's been abusing my flooble isn't him.

Debt

Straits Times 20 July 2005:
Banks are offering goodies for customers who pay just the minimum balance on their bills, including the chance to win O2 XDA II phones in lucky draws. WHAT???? Other countries have problems with bad debt and we have to give freebies to make people not pay. Insane.

In case you think this is a good idea: Once you owe money the 30-day interest waiver lapses, and you pay high interest rates from the time of purchase.

Draco

So today whilst walking the path from the MRT to office, I realised two things of great import:

1. Damn early ah. (sorry alex.)
1b. I probably could've squirmed out of this meeting, why didn't i? who was i trying to impress?
1c. Actually this is a super crucial philosophical meeting about the meaning of life (well, ok, the purpose of my division) which would probably have some sort of ramifications (3) on me if i came back to the same place later.

2. The fine for smoking in the MRT STATION is $1000 and $5000 for carrying flammable liquids or gasses.
2b. I never really felt these were too draconian or uncalled for because i never was ever restricted in my actions by them (since i don't smoke, or carry flammable liquids, and certainly not both at the same time), but that's a lousy gut feeling way of measuring if a law is too draconian. And when the day comes, and i get charged for smoking in an MRT, and i complain "wah, the fine so expensive, how i know?!" it will be too late.

snip

So with great clarity, i realise what it is that sometimes makes people into cutters.

clock watching

A thought: how cool the working culture is in a company can be measured by how slowly the office empties after the mandatory end time: If people want to stay on longer and chit chat or stuff, that's good, isn't it? Like they're not just watching the clock and waiting to run home. *coughcougharmyahemcough* Then again taken to the extreme it's a lousy work culture when nobody really leaves at the supposed end work time anymore. =(

HBP

Just finished it, and now i can't believe it's going to be a year at least till the next. argh. by which time of course i'll have forgotten what happened in this book, just like all the other 5.

Lack of posts

Have been chiefly because life as a whole has been completely and utterly busy-fying, the internship has started picking up pace to the point where i voluntarily stay beyond going-home time and finish up stuff that's due the next day... (well ok maybe not voluntarily, but i do it anyway.)

But so, all this also means:

1. I have not enough braincells left after work to read things like "an introduction to technical analysis"


2. thus i read things like "The boy and his horse" and "Prince Caspian".


3. And of course, that which came via owl this morning (since my sis ordered in): the latest instalment in the whole harry potter saga, which could possibly be longer drawn out than the iraq war, and also be worth more money, too.


4. But i have been busy! yes. so after i come home i am suddenly faced with all the strange stuff like Absolute and working on E2K5 and random birthdays (so many kids born in july...) and facing guilt about citylights since i haven't done very much about that.


5. And then aya had to burn me a copy of ROSE. Which i don't dare take out of its CD case in case it turns around and hexes me with sleeplessness. Which, by the way, is one of the few words with 3 doubled letters in it.

Also thought i might put up an amusing picture just for the heck of it.


A handicapped scooter which has been modified to fit a wheelchair. How cool is that?

Office Reports

are like trying to write a 5 page paper in 5 days on a book you haven't read. But some of the pages are missing. And you don't know which ones. argh!

Errors

404 vs 403

which is worse?

discuss.

Chilled porpoises

Haven't been blogging coz i've been busy on many other things, but here's a snippet i overheard on the MRT a few days ago, made all the more eerie by the bomb attacks on London today...

A: "so exciting ah, they're going to vote on the olympics today, wonder who will win."
B: "oh, who are you supporting?"
A: "oh nobody la, all the same to me."

Maybe the drama of the competition is good enough for some people, huh.

Jeremy Monteiro and the Chicago Connection

Most amazing night of jazz to date. Ironic that i went to a concert with Chicago musicians in Singapore, and i haven't really been to a jazz bar in Chicago yet! (the blues bar in orientation doesn't count)

think: 1 x jeremy monteiro, 6 x awesome chicago jazz musicians, 2 x singaporean players (drum and sorta muted guitar). In the awesome acoustical temple of music that is the esplanade. With funky mood lighting (purple and green? have you ever seen the esplanade concert hall in purple and green??) Largely improvised, cadenza after cadenza, scat after scat.... a song could break for 3 minutes for extended cadenzas then go back to the also embellished lyrical section. Imagine walking down a street, and stopping to dance around aimlessly because you felt like it, and run and leap through the air, before settling once more on your slow journey towards your destination, taking in all the sights around you as you go along. Magical. The pieces were familiar, the musicians were virtuosic, and they had styyyyyle.

What sort of style? well there was the zhai pianist (Judy Roberts) who played Route 66, among other things, and was the most amazing accompaniment. She plays piano with a passion. She'd rock on the chair and whoop and beat time with her hands on the chair and have so much energy that sometimes she'd be half standing up, and her feet and legs were in constant dynamo motion on the pedals. She was having FUN. In fact with all her actions and spirit, her piano playing almost turned into quite something else altogether. She played a piano duel with Jeremy Monteiro, which ended with him strumming the strings of the open piano (!!) and with a big flourish.

Better yet was Howard Levy on the harmonica: he had a few. He played the diatonic super chromatically, and was nimble enough to make it sound like a saxophone, a banjo, and a bagpipe......all at the same time. Most amazing stuff. And his hands barely seemed to move! He seemed to traverse scales with the slightest tip of his head and twitch of his hands.

But nobody was as animated as the bass player, Eldee Young. Imagine an old man with a crop of white hair, diminuitive in stature but slightly portly, making his entrance singing "what a wonderful world" in about as charismatic a fashion as it gets. Then imagine him picking up a double bass which was taller than him. Looks cute? don't be deceived. The old man was sprightly and had as much energy as a bumblebee on speed. Rocked the double bass to and fro like he was seranading and dancing with a lady (1.5 heads taller than him), and strummed and plucked with fingers that seemed to be oscillating so fast they were probably piezoelectric on an AC current (yes i'm running out of descriptive language)....

It was simply quite an experience. And i haven't even started on the piece that everyone played in... vibraphones and drums and guitar x 2 and all... wow.