Somnolence

So Sleepy Slumberous
My weary droopy eye
Both eyes, didymus oculus
Or is that oculi?

I won’t be gone too long
Just a lee-tle shut-eye
For the split of the splat
In the sweet by and bye.

Have you been to the zoo?
I think it is the rain
Or played a zither?
On my window pane?

Mambo Jambo
New Orleans Jumbo
Jumbling Jumpers
Jab me again.

Read More!

Breakfast treats

One cup of Nissin spicy seafood flavour instant noodles for me and one glob of live squirmy bloodworms for the fishies. This is the first time they are getting live food. I hope it doesn't spoil their taste for colour-enhancing dried flakes or they'll be a bunch of very discontented fish.

Read More!

A Place

Write me a song and rekindle my hope
In a place far away and certain
A place by the stream in the wood
A moment full and still.

The robin will sing an ode to love
The waters reply in rousing song
Woods will echo deep to deep
Spring will glisten in the dew.

The sun’s journey in the sky
Blazes fiercely in the noonday glare
Shadows grow as the days trudge on
Bodies break with dark despair.

Come and play in the sparkling stream
Do cartwheels on the rolling hills
Water will wash it all away
At the quiet place
By the stream
In the wood.

Read More!

Diversion from Article 1

It is interesting. Right after penning the previous entry and lingering on the first Article of Religion, this song came to my head on my way home:

Our God is far greater than words can make known
Exalted and holy, he reigns from his throne
In infinite splendour he rules over all
Yet he feeds the poor sparrow
And he knows when they fall.

His power is great and will ever endure
His wisdom is peaceable, gentle and pure
But greater than all of these glories I see
Is the glorious promise that he cares for me.

Our God is far greater than words or Articles of Religion can make known... The way we perceive and understand things around us is limited and restrained by the human instrument. (see Immanual Kant's refutation of the watchmaker argument for God.) For example, the ideas I can express to you now is limited by my command of the English language, and further by the words available in the language itself. In the same way, everything I think, understand and put to words is limited by the fives senses, the mind, the emotions, the memory, etc.

If how I perceive is three-dimensional, God must be four-dimensional. He is greater than what words can express, yet he exists perfectly in our dimension, and we can understand him fully, but there will always be mystery. It is like how a three-dimsension box has a point aspect (a corner), a one dimension aspect (a line), a two-dimension aspect (a surface), and also a three-dimension aspect (the whole box). In this way, our understanding of him is perfectly true, but at the same time not complete.

Read More!

Article 1

There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body or parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity-the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

• God lives, meaning he is alive, meaning that God is not a concept or an idea.
• God is everlasting, meaning God is forever, meaning God does not die, decay or deteriorate.
• God is true, meaning that it is not a lie.
• God is without body or parts, meaning God cannot be split up, meaning that God is whole.
• God has infinite power, wisdom and goodness, meaning that God has the ability to do anything he wills, but this power is guided and restrained by wisdom and goodness.
• God is the maker and preserver of all things, meaning that God made everything both visible and invisible, meaning that this world cannot continue without God willing it to, meaning God has not left this world like an orphaned child, meaning all life is in his hands.
• God, in three persons, is of one substance, power, and unity, meaning the Holy Spirit cannot act apart from Christ, meaning that God can have conversations with himself, meaning God is very interesting and very powerful.
  
  

Read More!

one cup of coffee

How long does a cup of coffee last? This cup is lasting a long time. It is 3pm already and I am still sipping on my first cup. It's temperature is exactly halfway between a fresh cup of kopi-O and a glass of iced latte.

I've been making photo collages in my free time. I made one of my trip to East Coast Australia, and one of my great wacky heartland friends. I like them a lot.

Check it out. onemillionpictures

Read More!

no comprehendo

I cooked myself some Korean instant noodles for dinner today. Everything on the packet was in Korean, and the only reason why I didn’t botch things up was because of the pictures that came with the instructions. The first picture showed a hand putting the noodles and the contents of the orange packet into boiling water. The second picture showed the noodles being drained, and the third, a big bowl of noodles with brown gravy and bits of mushroom on top. I figured (correctly) that the contents of the last two packets were to be put in at this step. Hooray! Perfectly cooked noodles.



The worst instructions I’ve ever read were for a game a friend gave me.

“Rules of the game – a game for two persons – KALAHA has simple rules, but many tactical possibilities. In each of the round pits are put six balls. Each of the two players has his 6 pits in front of him and his KALAHA and the larger bin to each player’s right. The first move is determined by lot. The player who begins with the first move picks up the balls in anyone of his own six pits and sows the 6 balls only to the right, one in the following pits and in his KALAHA. No. ball is put into the opponent’s KAHALA, If the player’s last ball lands in his own KAHALA, he gets anotherturn, also several times successively, in the case of repeating. Its’ now the other player’s turn, During the game the pits are emptied on both sides, Always, when the last own ball is landing as the last ball in an own empty pit the player can capture his own ball and all balls in the opposite pit of the openent and put them in his own KAHALA. The game is over when one of the both sides = 6 pits is empty and accordingly a player can not move anymore, The remaining possible balls are put in the KAKAHA of the concerned player. Winner of the game is the player who has the most balls in his KALAHA.”

I think I read it like 5 times before I decided to make up my own rules. :)

I wonder how large the illiterate market is? I bet it isn't very big (or at least not very important a vote) cos they took out the colour coding on the trains and replaced it with very confusing English. Have you ever used the LRT at Bukit Panjang? Just about impossible. It has trains leaving from the same side of the station that go to different stations so to know which train to get on, you have to look at the English sign above the train that will say something like “Buangkok 5mins” and then conclude that if you want to go to Buangkok, you must not board the train waiting at the dock, but wait five minutes for the next one. I'm so glad they are putting in multi-lingual signs. Now all they need is colour-coding and Singapore will be illiterate-friendly

People are important regardless of whether they can read.

Read More!

All things Coke-sher

Study: Soda linked to diabetes in women
CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Women who drink more than one sweetened soft drink a day are slightly more likely to develop diabetes than women who drink less than one a month, according to a new study. To CNN article

ack! If I ever get diabetes, it will be because of Coke. I had a coke everyday since Monday, and it keeps tasting better and better every day. One of my favorite things is opening a can of coke, pouring it into a large glass of ice, putting my ear close to hear the fizzle, sticking a straw in so that the tip is just below the ice, and taking a large gulp. Ah..

I've heard all these awful Coke stories though. Have you heard the one about the tooth that completely disintegrated after being left in a cup of coke for a few days? In Russia, they believe that Coke can smooth wrinkles. In Haiti, Coke can revive a person from the dead; in Barbados, Coke can turn copper into silver; Coke mixed with rum is Cuba Libre in the Carribean, aguadiente in Bolivia, and goodness knows what else in other countries. Howes (in Globalization and Culture) calls the re-interpreting of a product (in this case a quintessentially American drink) in different cultures the "creolization of global cultures", that is, the formation of "third cultures". At least all I do is drink it ;)

Other Coke snippets:

• Flat coke is an excellent booster while running the marathon (according to Hal Higdon)
• The drinks store uncle always cajoles me to pay 20 cents more for a piece of lemon in my coke. In my opinion, that's bordering on the sacrilegious.
• Coca-cola was named for its two "medicinal" ingredients: coca leaves and kola nuts. Coca leaves contains an alkaloid that may be synthesised to make cocaine.
• Coke did not become cocaine-free until 1929.

Well, that's it for now. I'm having soya bean milk with my toast this morning instead.

Read More!

motto for the day..

do, don't think.

Read More!

No guts!

I'm so chicken. I really want to go for this macromedia-java-all-in-one-course but i don't dare to ask my boss. I have the email all typed out already, and I know that the most he can say is no, but the email is still penitently sitting in my draft folder.

Read More!

feeling blue

i'm such a wimp about letting go of the past. how do people cope with it? by looking forward to something else? i feel as if all enthusiasm for life has gone out of me, and all i want is for the hours and the days and the months to wash over me quickly, so i can get it over and done with.

Read More!

LOTR vs Narnia; Catholics vs Protestants

I finished reading LOTR a few months back and am now starting on C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. I really enjoyed reading LOTR - was swept up in Tolkien's marvelous story telling. Narnia is taking a bit longer because of the intrusive narrator gets on my nerves, and the willful kids irritate me too, sad to say.

One of the differences between LOTR and Narnia is that Tolkien refused to allow any allusions to be made with the Bible (see his foreword), unlike C.S Lewis' work where you cannot miss the allusion of Aslan dying and then rising again even if you wanted to. I think the difference between LOTR and Narnia is similar to the difference between Catholics and Protestants. Catholics tell stories - they go through the stations of the cross, enjoy the sensation of the host on their tongue, and weep because Jesus died on a cross. Protestants are concerned with the meaning behind the stories - the atonement, the justification, the freedom from sin, the assurance of salvation - and tell the gospel in four bullet points.

Which is better? LOTR does not mention God a single time, yet speaks of the epic battle between good and evil, the leadership of men like Aragon who led by example and inspired their followers with courage to fight a battle they cannot even imagine, and the final triumph of good, hope against hope. C.S. Lewis pulls off a perfect allusion to the gospel in all its essential points in The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe.

Perhaps they are like two harmony lines to a single song?

Read More!

You know you have a butter fetish when..

1. You forego having honey and butter on your toast and opt for butter and butter instead.
2. The butter drops off your spreading knife onto the counter and you can pick up the whole slab of it and transfer it to your bread without making too much of a mess.
3. You place your toast buttered-side-up on a piece of paper and you notice grease spots when you pick it up again.
4. The middle of the toast sags.
5. The cross-section of your toast is yellow all the way.
6. When writing down the first five words that come to mind when prompted with the word "butter", love-handles, saturated fat, cholesterol, and clogged arteries don't make the list.
7. You have to run to the loo 5 minutes after breakfast.

Read More!

i want to..

..crumple together all the pieces of paper on my table and the loose ends that have no resolution into a gigantic paper ball, light a sparkler and set it aflame.

Truth be told, I don't dare to put my thoughts online. I have many dairies - a paper dairy (the present book is one in a series that started circa 1991), an electronic dairy on my hard disk, and this online - and I've grown increasingly guarded in all of them. I use pseudonyms, drop miniscule pathetic hints about what really happened, hoping and crossing my fingers that somehow it'll all come back to me when I need it.

Who am I bluffing? I have a terrible memory! Sometimes I read my diary entries and can't even convince myself that the words describe my life. Sometimes I can hardly remember who I was 5 years ago.

I wonder if the me of the future will again become the me of the past in its wandering through life.

In fact, I think I'll give the me of the past some kindly (and useless) advice with the brillant help of hindsight:

(sorry. can't think of anything right now. ha!)

Read More!

blogging at work

one of the advantages of blogging at work is that you get free broadand access.

one of the disadvantages is that the subjects of your posts range entirely between "frustrated with powerpoint" to "what i ate to keep myself from utter boredom".

Read More!