Friday, April 29, 2005
- Well, we've reached the end of the month, and for those in the know, its that time of the month again. By this I mean, of course, that it's time to pay those credit cards. Credit card bills are funny. They are like a summary of your month, a snapshot of your life if you will. You may not remember the time you foolishly tried to impress that girl in class, the time you tried to beat that red light or the time you walked into the bathroom without knocking until you get the bill for the flowers, the ticket or the Dettol you had to buy to sterilize your eyes.
So I got my credit card bill this month:
Looks typical? Let's look a little bit closer:
Yes, what you see is a $150.00 bill from Superb Solutions Locksmiths, Bronx, New York. Now why would an innocent college student like myself get such a whopping bill from a locksmith in New York?
Because I am a dumbass.
So this happened, as the bill indicates, on the weekend of the 2nd of April, 2005. This was a rather stressful Saturday because we were supposed to drive down to Urbana Champaign for the Midwest Games (some inter-Singaporean Student Association thing). The games started at noon, which meant that we had to leave campus around 8 am or so.
The night before, I went to Justin's birthday party. Being the good, responsible person I am I did not drink much, knowing I'd have to get up early the next day. Unfortunately, no one else in the room did, and by the time the party was over there were few that were sober. So being the car-owner I had to ferry a number of drunk people home, and I only pulled up outside my house at 2.
I was thinking, shoot, I'm screwed for tomorrow, better run upstairs and get into bed as soon as possible. So I parked, and in one swift, fluid motion hit the car lock button, got out of the car and slammed the door shut.
You will notice that the step "took my keys out of the ignition" was conspicuously missing from my swift, fluid motion.
Fortunately, I had a spare key to my car. Unfortunately, that said spare key was in Stanford, California with Zhihui.
And so there I am, locked outside my car at 2 in the morning, having to wake up in about 5 and a half hours to pick up 3 people to drive down to Urbana Champaign for a day of sporting action, and my spare key is in Stanford.
I spend the next 3 hours or so trying to figure out whether or not I should just skip the games and watch the car and wait for Zhihui to get back, but in the end I just decide to call the darn locksmith in the morning. He comes, and in one swift, fluid motion picks the lock to my car in about 90 seconds. In an even swifter and more fluid motion, he swipes my credit card for the $150 you see displayed up there.
So I wind up driving 2.5 hours on 2 hours of sleep for a day of soccer. After all this, I drive home, nearly fall asleep on the road and almost crash into Weiyu's car. Luckily, Alex alertly screams into my ear, something I don't remember exactly but the gist of which was "We're gonna die!!" and I swerve and avoid a)the crash and b)another 4 lines or so on the credit card bill.
The only good news is that we won the soccer tournament. Yaay.
And that, as Visa kindly reminds me, was my 2nd of April, 2005.
nayko |2:26 PM
Sunday, April 24, 2005
- Wow, its Sunday night already. Where did my weekend go? It's funny because on Thursday, after I finished my last class, I distinctly remember telling myself that I had a lot of work to do, and lot of reading to catch up on, and THIS WOULD BE THE WEEKEND TO DO IT.
And then I told myself the three fatal words that plagues all of us:
I'll start tomorrow.
This quarter is very strange. It is the only quarter in my entire U of C career where I have no classes on Friday, i.e I have a long weekend every week. And yet this quarter I have, without doubt, done the least work ever per weekend.
This, of course, is hardly a surprise. Anyone who thinks more time to do work = more work done is at best naive, at worst, er, very naive. Over the years, I have found myself exceedingly accomplished at wasting perfectly productive time; this, in my opinion, is one of the most crucial skills for surviving those dreaded university years.
How do I go about this noble job of time wasting? Well, for starters, I surf the wonderful internet and look for funny things. Most of the time, I am grossly unsuccessful. On good days, however, I find things like this:
Courtesy of Ebaumsworld
or this:
Courtesy of Avolites Limited
or this:
Courtesy of: Everywhere.
Actually, I don't dislike Bush all that much. He does have pretty good ideas on how to run a country. He just has a funny face.
Anyway, here's my contribution to the infinite mass of Internet Image Humour:
From Boulders Beach, Cape Town.
Apparently, this is a quite a problem because penguins just go to sleep in the shade, behind a tyre and before you know it, boom.
So that's where my time goes. This weekend I also manged a trip up to Northwestern to visit Chengzhan and Aaron. They have a really lovely place with a rather nice home entertainment system. I offered to buy it for 5 bucks but they refused. Booo. So stingy ;). Anyway Evanston is quite a pretty place, and it's worth checking out.
Chengzhan also introduced me to this site Wing Tunes which has some music which is positively William Hung-esque. Interesting and highly amusing. 'Fernando' and 'I want to hold your hand' are my personal favourites. I also had dinner at Xinghong's place today and got to sample his Japanese cooking which is rather excellent.
So that's where all my productive time goes, but I have to say that I don't regret it one bit. I mean, given a choice between completing a problem set and watching Spiderman prance around, I think the answer is obvious. And so I will start this week hopelessly behind in my work again. But it's ok. I will make the same promises for this weekend. Oh, and remind me not to forget to check behind my tyres for those darn penguins.
nayko |8:23 PM
Thursday, April 21, 2005
- And so Gary and I commenced on our great cooking adventure. Wisely, Gary decided to cook porridge. With carrots and mushrooms. My contribution was a wonderful piece of onion fishcake. Anyway, for some reason, Gary picked a rather small pot to cook our porridge in. We chucked in our carrots, mushrooms, fishcakes and rice. At which point, our pot starts boiling over.
Me: Hmm, do you think our pot is a little small?
Gary (assesses the situation): I think ok lah.
Me: Why don't we just use the bigger pot?
(I then get the bigger pot. At which point the boiling subsides)
Gary: Looks fine now...
Me: Ya, I think we'll be fine.
(We add a bit of water. Pot boils over, spilling water all over our stove.)
Oops.
(Stir stir stir. After a while..)
Gary and me: Eh, what is that burning smell?
Turns out that we managed to burn our entire bottom layer of rice onto the pot. The rice marks are still there. I have pictures of our final product, but for some reason my camera's not working right, so until my camera is fixed no pictures =(. Anyway, at the end of all this, we dish out the porridge. It smells a little funky, so we are left with little choice but to unleash our super secret Chinese cooking ingredients - sesame oil and soy sauce.
And the dish turns out fine. Looks and smells a little weird, but tastes great.
So the moral of this story is: Please do not ever let 2 guys cook together. If absolutely necessary, have lots of sesame oil nearby. And if men ever have the desire to cook, restrain them till that urge goes away. Unless you have a fire extinguisher nearby.
nayko |10:48 PM
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
- You know how sometimes you think everything in life is going fine and then, suddenly, something happens and it becomes painfully clear that it's not? That happened to me a while ago when I received my bank statement in the mail and realized that my bank account is in a extremely unhealthy state. I wish that by 'unhealthy' I meant 'grossly obese, due to the large wads of stuff I put in it, such as cash, cheques, tuna, dolphins, glue, staplers, etc', but unfortunately, this was not the case. My bank account is rather pitiful. If it were a human, it'd be Calista Flockhart. If it were a dog it'd be a chihuahua. And if it were a viral video it would most definitely be Chin2 (Warning: contains footage of semi-dressed korean boys) - short and nasty, but amusing and repulsive at the same time.
In case any one didn't get the idea, I'm rather poor. (No thanks to things like food, rent, colour pencils, basketball games and the cute stuffed doggie sitting on my pillow).
ANYWAY, these few days I've been trying to save money, mostly by eating at home and stuff like that. So today I was wondering what to do for dinner when Gary walks by and asks if I want to chip in stuff and cook porridge.
Two of us cooking dinner. Anyone who knows us both would rightly assume one word - disaster. The wise thing to do at this point would have been to leap up screaming, pour kerosene all over our kitchen and set the house on fire. Seeing how a) there was a very real chance that this would happen anyway and b) this would *probably* dissuade us from trying to do anything as foolish in future, this wasn't a bad choice at all. Unfortunately, I said 'Yes.'
---
Ok, have to go do some homework first. Will continue this story later. Do Allan and Gary blow up the house? Do they get food poisoning? Or do they simply end up cooking instant mee? Stay tuned...
nayko |12:52 AM
Monday, April 18, 2005
- The origins of the MSN nick
Published Oct 13, 1997 by Max Cannon
nayko |9:37 AM
- I just realized that many many things have happened over the past few weeks, most of which would be rather amusing to document if not for the fact that 1) I don't really have the time to do so and 2) that even if I did, I would probably elect to do something more useful, such as playing pool, doing the crossword, pondering the meaning of life, counting my fingernails, making funny noises with a bottle and a paperclip... you get the idea. Anyway, in order to keep all my dear friends updated on what exactly has been going on in my life, here's a streamlined, 10 sentence summary.
1. I went go to a Bulls game on Friday, where the Bulls destroyed the Magic 117 - 77, we got free Big Macs, and my wallet got absolutely scorched.
2. I managed to see 84 different species of birds in the Kruger Park.
3. I got into Yale, and am most likely heading there in the fall, away from Zhihui =(.
4. Two weeks ago I successfully managed to lock myself out of my car for the 2nd time in my short driving career, contriving to do so when 1) I needed to be in Urbana the next morning and 2) Zhihui, who has my spare keys, was in Stanford.
5. Getting into my car again cost me $150.
6. I found an IBM DVD drive in my car boot, and nobody has claimed it to date.
7. I submitted my graduation application late and was threatened by my rather displeased advisor with graduation in the summer.
8. Fortunately, I am still graduating in June, I think.
9. How Straits Times charges its print subscribers for the online edition is absolutely beyond me.
10. Having not done Econ/Math for quite a while, I took 5 hours to complete 2 simple questions on a problem set, and it is now past 3 am.
11. I cannot count.
nayko |1:33 AM
Saturday, April 16, 2005
- In my quest to waste time instead of productively doing work today, I stumbled upon this lovely little game:
Nation States
This is a lovely little nation simulator which allows you to govern a virtual nation anyway you want. So this is what I have so far:
---
Name: The Oppressed Peoples of Whevan
Motto: "Where your opinion is most unwelcome"
UN Category: Corporate Police State
Civil Rights: Rare
Economy: Thriving
Political Freedoms: Outlawed
The Oppressed Peoples of Whevan is a tiny, economically powerful nation, remarkable for its absence of drug laws. Its hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical population of 5 million are ruled with an iron fist by the corrupt, dictatorship government, which oppresses anyone who isn't on the board of a Fortune 500 company. Large corporations tend to be above the law, and use their financial clout to gain ever-increasing government benefits at the expense of the poor and unemployed.
There is no government in the normal sense the word; however, a small group of community-minded, corrupt, moralistic individuals juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Commerce, and Defence. Income tax is unheard of. A healthy private sector is led by the Basket Weaving, Information Technology, and Woodchip Exports industries.
Crime is a serious problem. Whevan's national animal is the purple spotted otter, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its currency is the whevan.
---I've always wanted to run a nation with my evil side, and this game sounds amazing already. I just decided to remove the need for free speech: who needs it anyway? Such a waste of time...
nayko |3:48 PM
Friday, April 15, 2005
- Some ideas are just so incredibly brilliant...
Hide and seek Alarm Clock
LONDON (Reuters) - Can't get out of bed in the morning?
Scientists at MIT's Media Lab in the United States have invented an alarm clock called Clocky to make even the doziest sleepers, who repeatedly hit the snooze button, leap out of bed.
After the snooze button is pressed, the clock, which is equipped with a set of wheels, rolls off the table to another part of the room.
"When the alarm sounds again, simply finding Clocky ought to be strenuous enough to prevent even the doziest owner from going back to sleep," New Scientist said on Tuesday.
... but others, not quite so brilliant.
A Dutch war memorial that goes up and down, and spurts flames may be scrapped after complaints it looks like a giant penis.
The Liberation Monument is a giant copper obelisk that rises and falls depending on the level of sunlight, and spurts flames out of the top during important festivals.
It is due to go on show in the village of Wageningen where the German capitulation was signed at the end of the Second World War 60 years ago.
In full sunlight, the erection reaches a height of ten metres, shrinking back to just six metres when the light dims.
It was due to be exposed to the public at an official ceremony in May but now village councillors say it should either be scrapped or radically redesigned.
A spokesman said: "Any association with a phallus is undesirable, whether justified or unjustified, and is to be avoided at all costs."
Yes, I checked. They were not referring to the Kallang War Memorial (which, when viewed behind the twin domes of the Esplanade, is a glorious sight indeed). Also, please note that the source for the phallic mounment thingy is ananova.com, so if its false, please don't come after me with a giant club. Or a chocolate milkshake.
nayko |2:35 PM
Sunday, April 10, 2005
- How ironic, that 1 day after Saturday's little incident this article should pop up in the New York Times... (Thanks to my dear roommate Alex for pointing this out to me)
The Man Date
This is a long article so I won't post it in full here... go read it! Here, though, are some choice exercpts:
...Anyone who finds a date with a potential romantic partner to be a minefield of unspoken rules should consider the man date, a rendezvous between two straight men that is even more socially perilous.
...Simply defined a man date is two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports. It is two guys meeting for the kind of outing a straight man might reasonably arrange with a woman. Dining together across a table without the aid of a television is a man date; eating at a bar is not. Taking a walk in the park together is a man date; going for a jog is not. Attending the movie "Friday Night Lights" is a man date, but going to see the Jets play is definitely not.
Amazing, huh. Looks like I need to buck up on my masculinity. Er, Bears game with beer and beef, anyone?
nayko |9:38 PM
Saturday, April 09, 2005
- I went with Mike to the Medici for lunch today. It was right after Wushu training and we were both rather tired. So we staggered into the Med and decided to order appetizers since neither of us were very hungry. Mike ordered baked potato skins and a chocolate shake, and I had the Quesadillas (which turned out to be rather disappointing, but that's beside the point).
Anyway, when Mike's shake came, the waiter put the shake in the middle of the table and gave us two straws.
I think I will need counselling. And a more manly haircut.
AAAArrrrrrrrrrrrrrggghhhhhhhhhhh
nayko |4:12 PM