Back online with the real computerrrrr! OMG, I have so missed my dual screens and overpowered computer! *hugs computer* Although, it is a little odd how, instead of unpacking the computer first, I found myself unpacking kitchen stuff first. What is even odder is that unpacking kitchen stuff actually made me very pleased. (Which reminds me… time to turn on [...] Different week different car I’m now driving a crappy old (2007 model) Toyota Corolla. About 30,000 miles on the odometer. Nondescript brown, a bit dirty and rather worn fabric upholstry, plasticky steering wheel, very very old-fashioned auto-transmission…. the sort you saw about one generation ago - with the very retro-looking auto gearshift, manual seats (the Dodge had [...] Shop Shop Shopping! Ah yes, the joys of outlet shopping. A colleague and I went up to the Leesburg premium outlets yesterday and spent the whole afternoon and a good chunk of the evening there. I bought a bunch of stuff, and I’m quite pleased with my haul - some shirts, a pair of shoes, etc. [...] Country at war Being here in this ship of splendid isolation, it is so easy to forget that this country is at war. At war, with soldiers dying, getting wounded and maimed. With men (and women) killing and getting killed in faraway desert lands. But the wars are far away. And things carry on [...] The White Monster I’m driving a rental car this week. It is a HUGE white monster. A Dodge Charger. Looks like the 2008 model. Judging from the performance of the car, it’s a standard lowest-end boring V6 2.7litre DOHC engine. (It comes in versions of up to a V8 5.7litres and the ultimate [...] Level 70! Third time round. *celebrates* I now have my third level 70. Rawrrr!! Next up… hopefully I can get a fourth before Wrath of the Lich King is released. Quoted anecdote For some reason, I was surfing for something and came across this speech by the US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates. It’s a speech he gave at the Air War College in Maxwell, Alabama in April 2008. I found this little excerpt rather interesting… As this new era continues to unfold before us, the [...] Table-tennis I’m watching the online video of the Singapore-China women’s table-tennis team final. The clip is over two hours long, and I’ve just finished the first singles match component. Well-fought, Singapore! Brave little underdog. For the first singles match in the finals, Chinese-born, but Singapore-naturalised, Feng Tianwei did a more-than-credible job against [...] One world. Really one world. This isn’t some AT&T advertisement. It’s about the Olympics. I happened to catch a women’s beach volleyball match between China and the US Branagh-Young team. The US lost, but I found myself cheering for both teams - not for both sides, but for the players, because it was such a good game. [...] Killer statistic Earlier this week, I read in the Washington Post that this year alone, there have already been 118 homicides (and probably more by today) homicides in Washington DC. Ok… today is the 224th day of the year, and there are already 118 homicides. It’s what, one every other day? It’s scary. [...] Less to … … complain about therefore less to write? I think I’ve become too busy (and too tired) to rant about the things that irk me. And I guess I am settling down a bit more, so I’m a bit less on-edge. My shipment will arrive sometime next week I suppose, and I’ll have the enormous [...] Criminal sense of entitlement Was listening to the radio this morning, and they had callers call in (anonymously) to say if they, as wait staff, had ever added on their own tip to the credit card slip that diners left behind. Quite a number have, I heard. (Which is an incentive to always fill up the tip section [...] Spunky underdog I just watched an Olympics badminton match - Women’s singles, Taiwan versus China. It was a serious case of crash and burn for the poor Taiwanese player (Cheng Shao-Chieh). Lost straight sets: 21-1, 21-9. But in spite of the 1st set drubbing, the Taiwanese player showed incredible spunk and fight to [...] Yay! We win! Small tiny little moment of national pride. Olympics qualification rounds - our women’s badminton doubles team trashed the US women’s doubles team. 2 straight sets, 21-12 and 21-12. Rawr!!!! Not like we were likely to lose, obviously. But nice to win. A less ‘pantang’ tel. no. Ok, instead of 654-4146, it’s now 657-7598. Not so bad, at least. Means I won’t be prosperous for long, but considering how little I prosper anyway, I’ll live with it. Just to avoid my parents making noise about all the 4s in the previous number. Effective tomorrow. So I’ll tell [...] Barely 7 hours Barely 7 hours and already I have voicemail spam. One from some Bank of America fellow (probably wrong number) and one automated greeting from a ‘debt collection company’. Duuh?! I really should get that number changed. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, life carries on normally, no more stupid events like tonight’s. I am ONLINE! WooT! I have phone, tv and internet! (I’m going to change the phone number. I simply have to.) After this ridiculously long wait… bleah… turns out that the tech did show up again at 1.45pm after all. Bah, wasted my time. Well, maybe not a total waste… I caught a long nap [...] Coordination and Control… a bit lacking I called the number I was given to check on the technician’s status, and was told that even though my job was slated for 8-12, the technician’s log had me on an estimated arrival time at 1.44pm. I was like wth!? But, well, what could I do right? So I asked the [...] One in twenty In the Washington Post today, I saw an article that said that an estimated one in twenty residents of Washington DC is HIV-positive. That’s a sobering, scary statistic. You’d think figures like that only existed in Sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV-AIDS is a scourge that afflicts a frightening proportion of the population. But no, [...] I’m on a roll of quotes tonight… A snippet of an 8th Century Sanskrit poem by Bhavabhuti, which I found quoted as an example of Sanskrit poetry in this month’s edition of “The New Republic”, from an article entitled “The Arrow and the Poem” by David Shulman. That state when two become one in joy as in sorrow, where you find rest together and feelings never [...] Good day for quotes… Someone forwarded to me the 2008 NTU Commencement speech by the author of the “Teenage Textbook” Adrian Tan. I’m not going to reproduce the entire thing, since it’s probably copyrighted and in any case, it’s a bit too long, but I’ll just quote a section of it, which I particularly like. I don’t [...] They say, and I hope… … that the Verizon technicians will be coming to my place from 8 - 12 tomorrow morning. I hope they (meaning the Verizon rep who called me today) are right. I’ll happily wake up early and wait for them. I need my internet at home!!! Okay, phone too, and TV too, [...] Interesting quote Found this quote in a tribute (written by Prof Sherwin B Nuland) in The New Republic to the late Dr Michael DeBakey, a pioneering heart surgeon, who passed away on 11 July this year. Dr DeBakey apparently once said, Curiosity and the seeking of knowledge is a transcendent life force - almost, you might say, [...] Random anecdotal evidence… … suggests that Facebook has a rather large following among my fellow residents. I have been spending hours at a stretch in a corner of the lounge, but facing the free internet PCs set up for residents’ use… and I have noticed that about 75% of the time, people who come here to spend [...] Creative writing exercise Wrote this angsty melodramatic piece as an experiment a while back, left it in the drafts section, and never got around to posting it. Mainly because it felt incomplete, like a hanging fragment, and also because it was so over-the-top. I’ve tried to finish it, but I don’t think I can do very [...] Sudden and freaky It’s not often that I get an unexplained momentary panic attack. In fact, I’d say it never happens to me. The last two times I felt this kind of panic, I knew why. The first was staring down a ski slope and realising that I would definitely fall off the face of [...] A little more home-like … I went shopping on Saturday. I hit the Potomac Mills outlet malls… and I spent a BOMB. But at least now it feels more homey. I have lights! My bedroom is at least lit, my living room is better-lit (but I need to assemble three more lamps for the living [...] Fortune cookie say… At lunch today, my lunch companion’s fortune cookie said, “Success is on the way” (or something like that). Guess what mine said? … “It tastes sweet”. Wth?! *Sigh* Moved in… Step one taken. Moved in, furniture is moved in too. So nice to no longer lead a nomadic existence. Finally, not “wu2 jia1 ke3 gui1″ anymore! The apartment looks nice enough now, at least in the daytime. But at night, it’s just waaaaay too dark. There aren’t enough light [...] Moment of truth in less than 12 hours Or at least one of a number of moments of truth. This one will tell me the answer to….”do I get to finally move in successfully?” Went down to the leasing office today to submit my rent cheques and proof of renter’s insurance, plus do an inspection/walk-though. And I found various things not to [...]