hello world, whoever spends time reading the crap i write (yes i acknowledge the degenerating theme that seems to string all my posts together, if bywk was a stock it would certainly send investors' hearts pumping every night hoping it would jump back up) you should be happy now cuz here is an update from me!

tomorrow at 12am would officially mark the middle of 2009! this is only applicable if you count the year month wise, day wise the middle of 09 would be 2nd june 12am. oh shit my internet just screwed up. its always doing that. sigh. the starhub modem i've been using since 2004 has not been changed since 2004 and perhaps it has decided to take a bow (rihanna lol lol) okay its back up again yay. i can now see all my friends displayed on msn.

have you wondered why we add people on msn? is it really to talk to them? or is it to boost your ego that you have a hell lot of friends? or is it to boost your friend's ego to say that you treasure them enough so you let yourself be contactable when you're online? or is it because they added you? or is it because it just seems like what everybody is doing? or is it because you want to stay in contact with that person but giving your number seems too personal? or is msn more personal for you?

haha. lots of questions and if we can have the answer we'll find out the societal significance of instant messaging in the singaporean community. then again what msn means for me might not be what it means for someone else. singapore albeit a little red dot, still has a significant demographic spectrum. humans themselves are complex and hence we can only draw generalizations from what things mean to us. hence social hypotheses are only as accurate as its level of generalization?

my recent more intensive drowning in bloghopping, twitter and facebook status updates (see the parallel between t and fbsu? fb is trying to copy twitter) has led to a observation that we as a web community seem to be building some sort of anarchist nineteen eighty four (which is obviously a colossal paradox). for those of you who have yet to pick up the orwellian masterpiece, 1984 is a work of fiction that details a society with no access to freedom and no excess of privacy. or wait, no privacy at all. the lives of the people are subject to the scrutiny of the greater power (in this case, the government) and their actions effect huge consequences.

in this case, the anarchist nineteen eighty four seems to be the web that we're spinning (pun intended) as we pour our lives onto walls and twitter timelines and blog entries (which are undoubtedly more passe now then years ago). when blogger caught on as a social craze, naysayers exclaimed at such an explicit concept. today, we have taken this many levels further. i know when somebody is in the toilet, i know when somebody is at starbucks (which one even if i know them well if enough to know where they work, study etc), i know when somebody is cycling, running, working out, eatdrinking. and it won't be long before the location factor comes into popularization. fyi you can tweet your location if you have gps on your phone.

this flurry of knowledge that WE are giving out to the world- webcompanies included, seem oddly parallel to the nineteen eighty four i was talking about. instead of telescreens (two way cameras in the book) that monitor every citizen's movement, the citizens are the one choosing to give out that information. it is self-motivated. what are the consequences of these actions? will they be as tragic as the ones ending in orwell's novels? (i consider them tragic fyi, if you don't, then... get a dprk citizenship)

or will it not be? since the motivations for the proliferation of information is completely different, motivated by a spirit of self-interest instead of state domination. whatever the outcome might be, we must take caution. the hoarding of personal information by billion dollar dotcom firms (fb, twitter) could be exploited financially. how many of you actually read the t&c of facebook anyway?

as web2.0 gets more intimate with us, lets celebrate the change that the internet has brought to mankind. guns were never intended to attack, but to defend. and so were the peaceful purposes of dynamite. think.

p.s. wow look where rambling brought me!

haha im such a loser to be really liking shopaholic- the movie and the book. i finished confessions of a shopaholic in one day, which is usually the sign of one of these
a. easy reading
b. addictive reading
c. bimbo reading
d. really good writing

i think its a combination of all of the above. haha. but a and c hold larger portions. now i just want to finish the whole series.

and yes, ladies and gentlemen, i identify a lot with rebecca bloomwood. no, my money spending habits are not as bad as hers. but how she manages her money is really like how i manage my time.

god, this sucks. it's like a million things gnawing at me.

heya all. cts coming right at ya. i think i should start make a list of things i bade farewell too.

oh. and i realised how impersonal my blog is 99% of the time.

you start thinking why you're doing the things you're doing. studying the intricate details of the cold war, complex formulas of organic chemistry, mathematic equations nobody cares to think of in their daily life, the failed policies of thai kings. and then you realize what you're doing is part of a cycle, a pattern, a structure, a mould. yes, a mould.

it is very important that we remember why we are becoming this mould. are we the clay in moulds because of the mould? or do we have a larger purpose?

think.

List of things I want to eat:

-Footlong Italian BMT with wheat bread, cheese, toasted, vinaigrette.
-Fillet O Fish with fries and chili and mayo and Macdonalds Ice Lemon Tea.
-Carls Junior's natural cut fries with fresh salsa
-Carl's Juniors chili cheese fries
-Blueberry muffin from starbucks and mocha frap
-Smoked salmon pasta, swensons
-Siew mai hargau chee chiong fun with prawns and char siew
-char siew fan with a hell lot of sauce and siew yoke
-KFC's am burito american style thing
-mussels and clams at pastamania
-Arnott's Tim tams
-Bon bons
-Mars Bar
-Chippy's black oil fish and chips
-chicken mushroom puff from old chang kee
-PAO PAO CHA! (OMG OMG OMG. passion fruit + green milk tea + pearls from each a cup)
-KOI MILK TEA
-nice bowl of udon from some random jap house
-ramen? not really sure bout this one [orchard danial? haha]
-cereal prawns!
-beef noodles from east coast park

OKAY THIS SUMS UP THE FIVE MAIN TYPES OF FOOD I LUBX MOST IN MY LIFE:
-Cantonese
-Singaporean
-Jap
-Italian
-Fast

AH! GIVE ME MY FOOD. NOW.

on second thought that tasty pork porridge (EUNOS MARKET) i had for dinner wasn't so bad. I'M JUST LASTING ONE MORE DAY.

i'm on a severe wanna binge on buying books rampage right now but the current shortlist SUCKS. oh wells no discounts will just mean me looking through amazon.com and listing what i want to buy HERE. so bear with me :/

1. Zhao Ziyang's memoirs!
2. My southeast asian history readings.
3. 7 habits of highly effective people
4. Shanghai Girls, Lisa Lee
5. The Reader, Der Vorleser (just watched the movie, SORRY BEUJEH its not a holocaust sympathizer IT ISN'T IT ISN'T)
6. Pride and Prejudice (think i might just join the jane austen book club har har har)
7. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

that'll probably set me back 200 oh wells oh wells oh wells.

YES PEOPLE, the past few days have been terrible. today is officially day number EIGHT i have painful lips. it sucks, i miss subway so much i want an italian bmt but i can't eat anything except porridge (day seven of everything porridge). so yes, thank you nurses at east shore hospital you guys were awesome but my own room is more awesome. har har har. albeit with no one to make my bed.

OKAY GUYS BACK TO MUGGING. cts are in slightly more than a week PLEASE DON'T SCREW UP, lots on the line here :D

hello world! it's been a while since i've updated! it's a monday morning and i'm sitting in my chair waiting for some tv show to finish downloading before i head up into the shower and proceed to pigeonhole #86 to submit my literature assignment at saints village. of which afterward i would proceed to buona vista to meet kyt before going to confucius institute for ayc briefing. and then a 10km run slots in somewhere. and so does hardcore reading and making of notes from sloman's 6th edition (which rocks btw).

damn i'm so far back for econs. i kinda regret sleeping in all those monopoly/oligopoly lectures but then again i would really benefit more by reading sloman by myself. is this a sign that i should be ponning econs lectures and huddling myself in the library mugging sloman the next time? :D

okay preusem was a not bad adhoc event. the people were really fun. i think i would have been a more fun person if not for the headaches and stuff on day4. thanks for the concern on some of your faces people! haha. i'm fine.

pw is still zilch. i have no idea what i'm going to do. damn scared. better chiong early then got more time to back up. okay since i'm blogging as well make more productive use of this time right? i shall published THE LIST on bywk.

THE LIST
-International History Revision (Lectures 1,2,3,4,5,6. 1,2A,2B,3A,3B)
-SEA History Nationalism Revision (Vietnam, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia, Philippines...)
-Economics Revision (SS/DD, Elasticity, Firm Structure, Market Structure)
-Wuthering Heights Chapters 1-10
-Taming of the Shrew
-Literature Unseen Preparation
-Maths!!!!!! Probability, Binomial, Normal Distributions.
-Photocopying of Notes for all the damn readings for everything up there.

YAY. If I do this I will ace my CTs! Wish me luck :D