Word of the day

syncategorematic \sin-kat-uh-gor-uh-MAT-ik\

forming a meaningful expression only in conjunction with a denotative expression (as a content word)

Example sentence:
“In any language, there will be what are called syncategorematic words, such as prepositions and articles,” explained Dr. Lewis.

Listen to pronunciation here.

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Wet day today

Wet day today. Never wear running shoes and thick cotton socks on a wet day. Because they will get wet. And stay wet all day long. And then they'll start to stink, that sour, stale smell that old socks specialize in. Then you can't take them off because they'll smell; and you can't leave them on because they are damp.

I am full of important thoughts today.

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Minuscule student woes

Having trouble starting my essay (so I blog instead). Theoretically, this is an easy essay to write — all I have to do is to churn out 1,000 words and compare two different literary theories — but for some reason, the introduction is stumping me big-time.

All I need is one central idea to anchor this essay... before I fall asleep tonight...

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Fishies among the Flowers

In memory of Su's grandfather.

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Shards of conversation

You: "So, have you dated before?"

Me: "Yah.."

You: "Was your ex a jerk?"

Me: "No, no. Not at all. He was good as gold."

You: *disbelief* "...."

Me: "Well, he really was..."

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Movie overload

Midnight. I'm chomping down on cold samosas and writing in this blog. There is a big 1.25l bottle of cold water beside me, and I take a glug every three bites or so. This school business is throwing my meal-times way out of whack.

Watched The Home Song Stories tonight. This has nothing at all to do with the quality of the film—it is a good show— but I feel like if I have to suspend my disbelief one more time, I will, well, keel over and die. Too. many. movies.

In other news, Joan Chen is gorgeous in the movie. It's for people like her that cheongsams were made for, if you know what I mean. Uncle Joe is good-looking too.

Okay, I'm going to put the rest of the cold samosas back in the fridge now...

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Dying at a Hospital, 1993

A film by Ichikawa Jun about what it is like to die in a hospital. It is a very slow and long-drawn film, but that creates the effect of time slowing down at the end... As one of the characters say in the film, "TV shows aren't realistic 'cos the patients in the hospitals get well too fast."

The blurb on Singapore Film Society's website:

This film comprises the stories of various families dealing with death inside a hospital – a young father dying slowly, an elderly couple in separate hospitals who want to be together and a woman who fights to stay alive. Ichikawa deliberately shoots his actors' fine performances from a distance – middle and long shots, no close-ups – painting a realistic picture of people dealing with death. Interspersed with these stories are lyrical montages of life outside the hospital. The end result is a hopeful yet sensitive treatment of life and living. By Ichikawa's own admission, this is “perhaps the closest [he's] come to an Ozu movie”.

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917.

She found herself daydreaming, following the road,and ending up in a strange place with no sign posts.

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Squashed hips

Played squash by myself yesterday. The racquets they loan out at my school are better than the ones I own! I think that's amusing; and awesome for me, 'cos that means I don't have to lug my Cash Converter racquet all the way to to the boondog parts of the island.

After pitting myself against the unforgiving wall and working myself up to a dripping, hot and happy state, I went to do some hip exercises for my sore ITB at the gym. I used the lever machine you see on the left. I'm planning to work on my hips every other day. I suppose this is just about my last resort when it comes to my ITB. The thought of never being able to run a LSD makes me sad.


You could do the exercise with a cable machine as well but I've never tried it. I used to do my hip abductor exercises with a ball in between my legs. But I think it may be less effective than going to the gym and working on it consistently with weights. I'm not sure. I'm hoping for the best in any case.



Below is a pic of a seated hip abductor exercise. This webpage gives good information on everything you can do with your hips. Erm, just about everything unexciting anyway. ;) All the animated gifs in this post were taken from http://www.exrx.net/.

Tomorrow, I shall swim! The revenge of the slow marlin!

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Quote about grammar

I realise that only one person (whose name starts with a "B" and ends with an "n") voted for "Grammar" in the recent online poll, making "Grammar" the least popular topic by far. But I've just got to post this quote. I think it is funny, in a grammarian-humour-kinda-way. Okay, maybe only slightly amusing. Please oblige me...

Grammar is something of a "more or less" phenomenon, with some rules applying more consistently than others. (Batstone)

And therefore:

The process of learning grammar will involve a progressive shift from more to less *idealized notions of how grammar works: in other words, a gradual `descent' from more to less idealization... (Batstone)

*Idealizing about grammar: making very general statements about grammar

Which would explain why so many advanced speakers of English cannot seem to formulate grammar rules... I can't formulate rules from my working knowledge of the English grammar either. I have to relearn it from the bottom-up.

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Terry Fox Run: Photos

At Siloso beach



Late!



Running on an island



Stretching my painful ITB



A very inspiring man



Post-run banana and activities

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Faraway Sunset (1992)

I must be in a weepy mood. Yesterday, The Ballad of Narayama made me tear. Today I couldn't even keep the taps off at Faraway Sunset. Dang it, it is supposed to be a happy success story! I'm in such a strange mood.

Faraway Sunset is the biography of Noguchi Hideyo, a famous bacteriologist known for discovering the bacteria that caused syphilis. It is also the story of a mother and her son — her extraordinary, yet in some ways, perfectly ordinary, love for her son.

Considering my weepy mood, I really wonder if I should continue with my plan to watch Dying at a Hospital this Tuesday.

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Terry Fox Run: 6am

6am: "Why does it rain _every_single_year?"
7am: Eating a rather stale piece of coffee bread
8am: Stuck in jam in taxi
9am: Feeling a little faint and nauseous from the stale piece of bread
10am: Limping

It was quite an inspiring run. There was a guy on crutches who was doing the 8km. He had only one good leg. And a lot of cute little red and blond headed kids.

[I must have been tired when I wrote that. I don't mean that he had a lot of cute kids. I meant there were a lot of cute kids at the run.]

My ITB in my good leg acted up. Sigh. 8km only.

(Photos later..)

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The Ballad of Narayama (1983)

A heart-breaking film by Shohei Imamura.

Why is it that the other Japanese show I watched was also set in a really poor village, where they lived such bitter, hard lives?

Driven by poverty, the villages live out John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism. They make laws so that the village as a community will survive: thieves are buried alive, those who are 70 years old are carried up the mountain to die. It's sad. Heart-wrenchingly so. Is this what we become when you take away our food, lodging, warmth, lodging? Are all our ethics and principles just sentimental fluff, suitable only for the well-fed?

The show intersperses cuts of animals mating with each other or devouring each other, almost like a periodic reminder that only the fittest survive — that life is nasty, brutish, short.

Watching grandma made me tear. She is too stoic, too selfless, too much like my own grandma.

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Visitor Map

Once in a while I take a look at my statcounter page — okay, I lie, I'm a bit obsessed about my statcounter page — and look at the visitor map. I get more random hits nowadays from people looking for Walt Reynold's ITB Special, how to remove a mole with string?, how to secure a dlink connection?, and even abjunct, subjunct, disjunct searches.

So it means the folks are coming from all over the world. Someone came from Fayetteville, AR the other day, and Sabah, Malaysia too, not to mention New York, New York; England, London... I think it is pretty cool.

Of course, these are transient visitors who pop by primarily for information. They check in, read the horror story of the infarcted mole, and check out, hopefully with the moral of the story.

Only a handful stop by not looking for information — you, perhaps — you are the one I write for.

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