new blog

i've moved. yet again. please do update your bookmarks and what not's

http://brandonlim.wordpress.com/

tickle your funny bone

We live in a quirky world, don't we? Everyone however, is quirky, though some are just plain quirkier than others. Which one of the following articles do you think is funnier?

this...

or this...

oh anyway, the prospective candidates for the first link can be found here, some aren't bad I must say... =)

guard duty

I'm paying 1200 bucks a semester to stay in PGP, yet for the past 2 night I've either camped over at the Central Forum or the Science Forum till 8am, before dragging my fat carcass back to my room and sleeping till 2pm. now, doesn't make a lot of sense now, does it?

What also makes even lesser sense is what I've been doing to stay awake:

1. Drinking water. lots of it, like 2 litres in 1 night. and then making the ever so occasional trip to the toilet just to pee it out.

2. Push-ups. Every time someone msg me online, I'd do 20. Not as though I can do any more than that. (funny. just as I was typing this, Kent msged me. fucker.)

3. Stapling and Re-stapling my lecture notes. Did you know that prior to today, I hadn't stapled any lecture notes for 2 weeks? wow.

4. Picking up litter. Not that I work for the Environmental Agency.

5. Making routine trips up to Chatterbox (only applicable from 3am onwards) to see if anyone was up there. Not that I really wanted anyone to.

6. Wondering how mosquitoes seem to be able to bite through my NUS windbreaker.

7. Having little existentialist moments and wondering how I got myself in this mess...

and finally...

8. Blogging.

'nuff said. think I need to pee soon.

coffee shop etiquette

here's something you don't want to attempt in a prata shop (watch till the end):



or this, at a kopi tiam...

On Huey and Life

"If you stop struggling, then you stop life..."

-Huey Newton

But really, what are you struggling for? Taken in context, Huey, the once-leader of the Black Panther Party for Self Defence fought, struggled, and eventually, died for the rights of African-Americans. And in so doing, had his name etched in American history. His struggle was his legacy, but again I ask, what's your struggle for?

Maybe under the guises of "freedom", "money", and "grades" its Life itself that we struggle against. Each day we awake to a battle site, like a soldier does in a trench in WWI - our eyes flicker open to be greeted by the same long and bitter battle we have fought each day of our lives, yet one we cannot simply walk away from.

Why should we struggle? Do we struggle just to add a sense of purpose in our lives? What then, does winning the struggle mean? If a shark stops swimming, it dies; but what about us if we stop struggling? Would life be meaningless to live in such a situation? If so, then death certainly must be a respite.

So we're trapped between the possibility of living like a drifting iceberg or running on an everlasting treadmill - the irony is, regardless of whichever path you choose, you won't know where you're headed to... the best way to escape from this cul-de-sac is to be a revolutionary and break free from this life, yet, to quote Huey again: "the first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man".

Newcastle 1 Birmingham 5

Abysmal, embarrassing, humiliating, depressing and plain utterly fucked up.

That would be how I would describe last night's loss.

Perhaps the one thing more pathetic than supporting your team by clicking "refresh" on www.livescore.com every 2 min was the sort of performance that they turned in. I admit, I didn't watch the match, but even so I'd doubt playing simple and decent football would put you on the receiving end of such a trouncing. Numbers don't lie. And if those adjectives I've used above are too harsh on a team who gets hammered 1-5 at home by another team a division lower than they are, just let me know.

You would have thought that after more than a decade of supporting the Magpies that I've seen it all - from having a 12-point lead at Christmas blown apart, to having the most talented bunch of footballers in the world such as *drum roll* Guivarc'h, Ketsbaia, Marcelino et al
don the black-and-white stripes... but no. they just have to keep on rolling out surprise after surprise.

It was our worse ever home FA cup defeat since 1914. How's that for a concluding fact?

owning

after a terrible dull and insipid 0-0 draw against Vietnam across the weekend, you can probably guess my surprise when Huat sent me this link on soccernet:


owning. that's the word.

catharsis

there's something cathartic about running in the rain.

and also about getting a silver for my IPPT, based on my current level of fitness, that is.

maybe i should just run a little more.

of nothing-ness

As the aircraft makes its gradual descent from the skies, the image of Singapore gradually comes into focus - we see a huge island, followed by masses of greenery, and by roads and numerous high-rise buildings, HDB flats, skyscrapers etc, then the airport looms into view, then other planes berthed at their gates like a mouth waiting to be fed. The last thing I see before closing my eyes is the tarmac and its blinking lights guiding the plane to land - a father welcoming its overgrown son into his embrace...

In the picture I just described all is serene and tranquil, and Singapore from a plane looks pretty much like Singapore. But in that very same picture, the roads were empty, the buildings vacant, and not a single thing moved. I could feel it even when I was in the plane - the air outside had a certain stifling heaviness to it that can only be described as a deafening silence that hung over it.

Strange as it is, for all of a few split seconds I was gripped by a sudden irrational fear that when I step out of the plane, everything would be empty, as though every creature that lived had simply... gone. Yet more terrifyingly, everything was the epitome of orderliness - cars were still parked in their lots, breakfast was on the table, clothes hung out to dry, but everyone had just... disappeared.

My fear is a fear of nothing-ness, the state where every morsel of life had been sucked out of its bodies, leaving behind empty shells without a soul. In this state, cigarettes do not light, petrol does not combust and voices do not echo.

My fear was too terrifying for me to bear. And my eyelids jerked open.

results results results

well my CAP improved by 0.05, but at least it didn't drop. My sentiments? could have done a little better, could have done a lot worse - and because the "little" is less than the "more", I'm happy.

After 13 years battling it out in countless exams and assignments I'm just so sick of it all that "an 'A' grade = your future" stuff. I just don't think it matters anymore. At least not as much as it used to, mainly because I'm already happily in the university - the supposed highest rung of the education ladder. And even if you are say, the lowest among the highest, it can't be all that bad now, can it?

I did what I could do... attend (notice I didn't say "prepare") tutorials, hand up my term papers on time, sit for the final examination, resist the temptation to complete a season of FM when at the 33-game mark of the season (which I can assure you is NOT easy)... and that's what matters most to me.

So yes, whoever you are reading this after getting your results - time to smile and move on. If 8 semesters in university don't determine your life, why should a single sem?