June x 2

Labels: life-in-general, photos

At the Really Really Free Market in Singapore with Amirah.

Labels: photos, Singapore

Ok sorry I've been missing in action for so long. It's been a crazy couple of weeks and I've been trapped in multiple whirlwinds (imagine a Venn diagram with 5 whirlwinds with one overlapping area - and that overlapping area would be me). I am still stuck but perhaps writing this blog post may help. Or it may not. At any rate it will do me good to purge some of the content in my head, except the unpurgeable parts, of which I blame the fact that this is a public blog with the public reading, and trying to protect it is like trying to hold an invisible fort with invisible walls. (The fort also has an invisible moat and super-range cannons and dragons that will pwn your horse-riding sword-wielding armour-clad mom. It is an awesome fort.)

Research.
So anyway. Confirmation defense is over and I passed it under dubious conditions that my examiners refuse to have to go through my report again. So right now I am dealing with the aftermath of sifting through the debris that is my theoretical framework and hopefully build something that will withstand the test of time and unsympathetic examiners, who keep huffing and puffing at my straw house, damn them.

Travelling.
I am going to Hong Kong in November for a PhD Symposium, and I've been tasked with arranging the logistics for everyone (8 people). That's what you get for having a reputation as a travel junkie.

I'm also working on a research attachment in University of Leipzig, Germany, for next March. The research attachment preparation is a mountainload of paperwork and money. I have also enrolled myself into a German language course so that I will be able to construct a sentence without saying Germany Must Die Or We Can't Live, constipation, or Mitfahrgelegenheit. I am excited but also deathly afraid. German people are stern (but fair) and blond and wear Jack Wolfskin-branded lederhosen. I will never be able to fit in and they will eat me alive.

Work.
TA duties. Readings for audited class on qualitative research methodology. Assignment for said class. Preparing a paper for a conference.

Staying alive.
Not sleeping enough or eating healthy and am torturing my body with various strenuous activities such as dragonboating and running and (the thought of) kickboxing. Occasionally uke-ing.

Censored.
Censored censored censored censored. Censored censored censored censored censored censored censored censored, censored censored, censored censored censored censored censored. Censored. Censored censored censored censored censored censored censored censored censored censored.

Newsflash. The word "censored" has been exhausted and has ceased to be a word. Attention to word-constructors out there: we will need something new and more powerful, a word that is able to not only stifle freedom of speech but also pwn your mom on the side.

Word that is able to not only stifle freedom of speech but also pwn your mom on the side.
Word that is able to not only stifle freedom of speech but also pwn your mom on the side. To the power of x till it implodes and destroys human language as we know it, so that homo sapiens beyond this generation will have to dance like honeybees to communicate. They will be so busy dancing that they will have no time for war or mass consumption or obesity.



You have a good day too.

Labels: rapid-voice-in-my-head, research, travelling

By giving me an email I was waiting for, lovely gifts in the post from Asa and Robert, and a bus driver who waited.

Maybe everything will be alright again. Soon. Haraplah.

Labels: half-baked

Have some unresolved issues hence shall suspend blogging for the time being.

Hope to be back soon.

Labels: announcements, half-baked

So this morning I went to the gym, just like my song said I would. And I had the stupidest accident of all gym accidents: The Classic Slip On The Treadmill where I slipped, crashed on the runway and got thrown back like a rag doll. You know that one.

What happened was, I thought I had finally figured out a way to combat gym boredom - I'd listen to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy audiobooks! So that was what I did. And of course the inevitable happened. I was chuckling at some jokes (really, Douglas Adams can be very funny) when I lost my footing and performed a perfect rendition of The Classic Slip On The Treadmill.

I sat on the floor with a hurt left knee and a scraped right shin, waiting to catch my breath and to get the green light from my legs that they were ready to support my weight again. The treadmill was still running. And you know what happened?

Nothing. Nothing happened. There was 10-15 people in the gym, and they acted like nothing had happened. For the 30 seconds that I sat there, panting and massaging my knee, nobody came up to me to ask if I was okay, or if I needed help. They continued running, lifting weights, admiring themselves in the mirror, etc. It was like I was invisible, and the racket that I made slamming my body weight on the machine and then the ground was in a vacuum and therefore silent.

30 seconds later, I picked myself up, put myself on the treadmill again, and ran another 10 minutes in defiance to the mass apathy of my gymming counterparts.

I am regretting that 10 minutes now. My knee hurts and I have to hobble around. Hopefully it will be alright after some rest. But seriously, people? What does it take to just stop what you're doing for 10 seconds, walk up to a person who looks like she's hurt, and see if she's alright? I mean, I would do it without a thought.

Or maybe I'm just more invisible than I thought I was.

Labels: NTU, Rants, screw-ups, Singapore

I'm going to the gym tomorrow, the gym tomorrow, the gym tomorrow
I'm going to the gym tomorrow, early in the morning~

I'm going back to KL soon, to KL soon, to KL soon,
I'm going back to KL soon, early Thursday morning~

Here is the way I treat insomnia, treat insomnia, treat insomnia
Here is the way I treat insomnia, early in the morning~

I change the words in kiddy songs, in kiddy songs, in kiddy songs
I change the words in kiddy songs, early in the morning~

*sang to the tune of Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush*

Labels: =), music, poetry

I personally like the last one best.

Labels: France, Paris, photos