right, i just realised i've been contradicting myself on many accounts in my posts. sometimes i sympathise with troubled people, sometimes i don't. sometimes i believe in an afterlife, and sometimes i don't. sometimes i practise what i preach, and sometimes i'm just plain hypocritical. oh well, so i apologise. for being human.

in the meantime i shall continue to be a bundle of contradictions, oxymorons and conundrums.

but anyways, it's one week into the prelims! i dunno what the HECK i'm doing here on the com since there's still half the papers left! aww shucks, i deserve a leeetle break. heh. then i shall go back and immerse myself in the cosmically exciting and wondrous world of maths. oh joy.

soo, even as i'm prepping to type something so curiously incisive and extraordinarily brilliant, my genius fails me. AS USUAL. once again i run out of things to say. it's hard to talk sometimes y'know. have you tried sitting in one place with one person for hours and hours and racking your BRAINS to come up with something that doesn't make you sound dull or just plain weird? can't talk about the weather (cos you're indoors), can't talk about the scenery either. anything interesting happened recently? not really. dammit.

see. it's hard to talk sometimes. it used to be much harder, but i picked up skills and techniques along the way. Wow, that's a nice phone. What model is it? I've always wanted ..... but because.... so i got...... instead. Ya precisely! I think Nokia phones are better to use but Sony Ericsson and LG phones sometimes look soo much better.... Of course the iPhone's cool! But it's probably just the branding that's got everyone so worked up. Did you see the latest Sony ads on TV? Supposed to be some breakthrough in computer graphics effects, but it doesn't look anything miraculous!

so, i conclude. sometimes when you find it the hardest to speak, don't. don't rack your brains to come up with some funny anecdote or overused tale. just sit quietly till the urge to speak totally overwhelms you and a torrent of words flow out of your mouth like a person who hasn't shat in ten days but recently ingested massive amounts of prunes and bananas. then the person you've been sitting with will probably think you're boring or just plain weird. so the topic will probably change to the weather or scenery, or maybe how nice it is to be sitting here talking as though we were old chums.

for those of you living under rocks, or in deep caverns, or on towering mountain-tops, here's the news. the polar bears are going to die out! first, it was the penguins, now the polar bears. seriously, i think the world is reaching its end soon. and i'm thankful our lifetime is coming to an end before that happens, so that we won't witness the appalling and "tragic" fall of a "noble" race, as we humans like to think ourselves.

but how typical of us. to reach the culmination and the pinnacle with great bombast! the clatter of swords and the last stand! the kamikaze as flags fly high! the swan song! might as well take the entire population with us if we're gonna go! we're dying? take them all out then! polar bears, penguins, eagles, elephants, rhinos, tigers, whatever and whoever!

how typical of us selfish beings. we populate the world and encroach into the rightful land of age-old creatures that dominated years ago. then we kill them all off. in turn guaranteeing our own slow and inexorable path to destruction.

it's sad, but it's life. i'm just glad i won't live to see the embarrassing state the world would've sunken into in future. and i'm also glad that some people at least have the sense to try to rescue the situation, but i doubt it'll be of any use. renewable sources of energy, reduced carbon emissions, environmentally-friendly products? too bad, it's too late and too insignificant to help much.

but after all this business of dying and destruction, then what? whatever we do here on earth doesn't really matter does it? i dunno. sheesh, i'm floundering with this idea of the meaning of life and our purpose here again. what ON EARTH are we all supposed to work towards in life?? good grades, a good job, nice family? is that it? no more? what else? so we just come here to earth, get a frickin A in our maths paper, find a $3000 a month job to go to every day, go back to a nice cosy home, then die years later? then what would the purpose of all that hard work be? just to make our stay here enjoyable and fufilling?

i'm confused. but oh well, these are just temporary swattings of summer flies. they'll pass away, and i'll be getting a nice job, start a nice family in future, work hard. be human. then, like any other, i'll be (hopefully) leaving for another world. possibly full of expectations of enlightenment and true wisdom, only to discover i may have been reincarnated into a monkey. then i'll probably get poached by some hunter or have my home cut down to be made into a frickin storybook.

heh check this out. i was up in the study when i heard this roffling noise. so i went to the window to take a look, and lookee what i found!

a guilty-looking dog, sneaking a look at the back door. maybe to check if anyone's spying on his midday sunbath.

then i called out his name. and he looked quite confused, spinning around to see who on earth was calling him. finally slumped back down into a sit when he couldn't find me. HAHA. but he eventually looked up.

today we had mock chem prelims. which was an absolute disaster. never before have i felt so clueless during a paper (ok, actually i have!). i got a fair amount of wrong answers and a generous smattering of questions were unanswered too. this is terrible. horrible. unthinkable. pure DISASTER. dieeeeeeeee diiiiiieeeeeeeeeee.

oh well. at least it was just a mock prelim.

anyways, i met brendan (my brother, for the uninitiated) after the mock prelims. bought lunch from subway and ice-cream mooncakes from swensens! i was looking at the haagendazs brochure, thinking Hmmm, Looks Nice... until i saw the price.

$78 bucks for 4 mooncakes! rrrrrright. that's way over-priced. no surprise.
swensens' was only $21.90 for 4. and i got the sticky chewy chocolate. heh. yummm.

my randomness has brought me back to post these 2 cute photos.

a miniature cake, with kiwi slices and cream sandwiched between pastry and topped with a rasperry?, blurberries and whipped cream. of course i didn't make it la! not so bo liao. i found it on the net.


and a welsh corgi, in an unglam pose.

He was about to take a drink when he caught sight of the cameraman, then his narcissistic instincts kicked in and he absolutely HAD to strike a pose, forgetting all about his poor friend who was helpful enough to turn the tap on for him.

As of 5th Sept 2007, 9.30am, I am officially fasiculation-free! yeah man! my stress-relief methods worked after all. for those who need to relieve anxiety and stress, feel free to ask me and i will magnanimously divulge SOME of my secret methods.

and again, i have another confession to make.

I am deathly afraid......

Afraid of being made use of, then being thrown aside like some forgotten and unwanted piece of junk. i'm also afraid that people try to cosy up to me and act all chummy just for personal gains when they don't really mean it. even if they're truly well-intentioned, i just get this nagging feeling that perhaps they're after something else, like something i have and they don't. oh well, one of life's hard lessons i guess. that many humans aren't at all trustworthy and some are not even worth knowing.

but fortunately, life IS sometimes fair. you get rotten eggs? no matter! just use them to hurl at that pesky neighbour of yours! bottomline is, with fairweathered friends and treacherous pals, there comes a generous serving of well-meaning and kind folks out there too! like you gluttons i guess. and possibly more, some people i know, teammates, friends, classmates and definitely family and relatives.

oh well. maybe i'm just catching at dust particles or chasing mosquitoes, and being paranoid.

ok i realised that i'm quite an intolerant person sometimes, especially towards those that i can't seem to make sense of. so i shall TRY to be more tolerant and APPRECIATE the differences existing between humans.

ANYWAYS, i'm back here again to publicise BSB's latest song INCONSOLABLE !!!!!! their album is coming out in october! but i think Kevin has left the band, NoOOOOooOOoOo! sigh, good things always come to an end, which seems to occur at approximately ten times the speed bad things come to their end. oh weeell, that's life.

on friday, us gluttons finally had FULL attendance for our outing! haha, i realised a while ago.. except that 4 of us had to rush off to watch ratatouille. and by the way, i forgot to say this also. the sandwich i had was super nice! the cheese steak meltdown or something like that. right, meifen?

ok that's besides the point. the reason i'm here is that my cheek muscle has been twitching constantly for about 9 hours 28 mins since last night. i checked it up, to make sure it wasn't like some potentially fatal disease or something. (ok i'm paranoid, i know)

this is what the all-knowing Wikipedia said:
A fasciculation (or "muscle twitch") is a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction (twitching) visible under the skin arising from the spontaneous discharge of a bundle of skeletal muscle fibers.
Stimulants can cause fasciculations directly. These include caffeine, pseudoephedrine (Sudafed®), and the asthma bronchodilators albuterol/salbutamol (e.g. Proventil®, Combivent®, Ventolin®). Fasciculation also often occurs during a rest period after sustained stress, such as that brought on by unconsciously tense muscles. Reducing stress and anxiety is therefore another useful treatment.

this is living proof that i'm mugging TOO hard, and drinking TOO much coffee and tea. which is why i'm here now, trying to " reduce stress and anxiety" and drinking lots of water. in the meantime, my cheek muscle is still involuntarily twitching, and i shall post here again to inform you of the effectiveness of my stress-relief.

and i was just trawling through the wikipedia site one day when i discovered these. Epitaphs from the graves of famous people. here are some i like!

Nikos Kazantzakis (by himself)
"Then elpizo tipota. The fovamai tipota. Eimai eleftheros." ("Δεν ελπιζω τιποτα. Δε φοβαμαι τιποτα. Είμαι ελευθερος")
Translation: "I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free."

Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty I'm Free At Last."
Lyrics of an old Negro Spiritual he frequently quoted.

Osho
"Never born, Never died: visited the planet earth between December 11, 1931 and, January 19, 1990."

then of course, there are the funny ones.

from Fable
"Blimey it's darker than I thought in here."
"No man can hold his breath for ten minutes."
"What you lookin' at?"
"You're standing on my head."
"Rover was a true friend and pet, but ran in thunderstorms when wet."
"Not dead only sleeping, buried me anyway. Unlucky."
"I finished before you in the human race."
"Anyone want to swap places?"
"Thank you for reading this grave now bugger off!"
"Let me out!"

Peter Ustinov (suggested by himself) - 1921-2004
"Do not walk on the grass"

Harry Edsel Smith (unknown) - 1903-1942
"Looked up the elevator shaftTo seeIf the car was on the way down.It was."

Matthew Mudd (unknown) from Massachusetts:
"Here lies Matthew Mudd,Death did him no hurt;When alive he was only Mudd,But now he's only dirt."

Werner Heisenberg (unknown)
"He lies here, somewhere."

Ludwig Boltzmann (by himself) - 1844-1906
"S = k log W"