Decided to password protect the rant because it, being so promulgated, gives me the obligation to narrate the whole story everytime someone asks (which is tiresome after a while). I absolutely hate it when someone purposely let on the existence of a potentially juicy cocktail story and then refuses to divulge more or anything to my satisfaction. Like, “I tell you! He’s so scandalous! But I can’t tell you anything more!” “In that case, stfu?”

I won’t do that to anyone. It’s kept away and you can’t ask me!

You may be wondering what THIS is about instead. Well… the whole purpose of this post is to inform you that I no longer want to talk about it. I’m just trying appear like I’m doing you a favour instead….But I realised I can be even NICER by confessing my real intention and being so honest with you. Gosh, I’m awesome as usual. Love me right?

Started as an innocent fonts spree, ended up with a brand new design. Hah, what’s new. I’m not going to code it anytime soon though. Coding has always been my least favourite part of webdesigning.

Right… for yesterday’s effusive outburst. Hmm…you can say that I got bullied by some vulgar asswipe but I didn’t quite lose out due to my ability to exhibit servile compliance to the people of authority. Which is disgusting I know. I always pride myself on never resorting to sycophancy to get what I want. But how else am I suppose to win. He can break me into clean halves if he desires, and I’m sure he did, so I didn’t try anything funny. Aileen tried to kick him though, I think, I was laughing inside despite the situation.

Bloglines has been down since morning and they are using this Bloglines Plumber to distract people from their sloppy service.

Firstly, a plumber have no business here. Secondly, using an image of a slovenly dressed and helpless looking plumber is not very assuring? I want my reads…I’m bored.

Anyway, new song in my Radioblog! One of my favourite Disney tunes. Lyrics under the cut.
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I just found out the only thing I like about the laptops. They let you use the computer and lie down, at the same time! Wonderful! I can now trancient from machine to dreamland without going through that painful, heart wrenching physical separation.

I still hate the tiny ones though. Sure they are cute as hell but as annoying as the 800×600 screen resolution. By the way, If you are still using that resolution, please increase the resolution and look out the window cuz the world you see before you, has become a better place.

Straits times was asking for someone from tomorrow.sg to do a short interview about the growth of blogosphere and shianux said I should do it. The only thing I know about the local blogscene is that right in the beginning there was me, reverie and a handful of other bloggers (who have mostly moved on). Fast forward a few thousand years and all that’s left of the blogosphere will be me, reverie and a handful of cockroaches.

I think my morals are high to the level of naivity, as some people have mentioned. When morals crash, every good attributes of the person will attenuate into nothingless and any respect for the person will fade. This is not something I want but I can’t control it.

Plugging: Sylvia Ji. Her work kinda reminds me of Audrey Kawasaki girls, but with pink hairs y’all. I prefer Sylvia.

You all will love me for this because I going to point you to a place with the prettiest wallpapers you’ll ever lay your eyes on. Ready? Check this out! They are so pretty I was quite reluctant to share it. Ahh…vectors and rainbows. Lethal combination!!

Anyway, I’m reading this new book titled Designs of the Times by Lakshmi Bhaskaran, it is a book about key movements and styles for contemporary design. It has detail write-ups about Modernism, Art Nouveau, Pop art, Minimalism, Beaux-art and also includes many lesser known styles. Each style comes with key representations from architecture, product designs, graphics, typography and furnitures. I’ve learnt that the famous Barcelona chair was designed in 1929, under the Bauhaus movement. And my panton chair belongs to my favourite category Pop Art. *smirks* I love popart! In fact I love the art culture in the 60s…twiggy, space age, clockwork orange-ish. <3

I'm in a great mood today, unlike yesterday... the book certainly cheered me up a lot. The other thing that can cheer me up will be food.

I like it, a nice change from type of buffets my family enjoy. Look at my belt! I’ve been wanting to buy one for the longest time but the only nice ones I can find costs 70 and above. I told my mum what I was looking for by wrapping a black scarf around the dress showing her how the belt should look like and she immediately went and dug one out from her closet. It’s not the first time she dug out fashionable vintage treasures from her past. My mum rocks!

Most people are boring aren’t they, self-revolving and self-absorb. We may think we’re the most interesting person around but THAT is the exact belief that makes us so boring. I’m no exception and I don’t even remember meeting anyone that truly intrigues me. Not one.

I’m sick of chats about trivials that doesn’t even matter to me. But then again, what can one talk about when it is not the topic, but the dying need to express oneself behaviour, which I find so repulsive.

I don’t wanna hang out, chat, chill or hear whatever stories people want to say. I only wanna do that with people who really matter to me and to be honest, there aren’t many.

I think you CAN have too many friends. Especially evident today when I’m feeling anti-social.

Here’s the fun bit. If you think I’m talking about you, then I most probably am. Because you thinking that I’m talking about you shows that you’re exactly the type of self-absorb person I’m talking about. Though I may not be talking about you in the first place, I suddenly am! It’s magic!

And me thinking that you actually care a shit if my post is about you puts me in the same disgusting group. Something that I’ve already established. I’ve proved myself right about myself. Gosh, I’m awesome.

Went ahead and got the satin comforter from Victoria’s Secret. With the price I’m paying, I’m expecting silk but whatever I don’t really care, I’m too annoyed with the lack or nonexistence of ready made satin quilt covers in Singapore (If you happen to know where to get them, do me a favour and not let me know). The closest I can find is a set of silk comforter from John Little but it was in a beige. Sure, it was luxurious but beige is really not my color.

Note to self: Leggings looks bad on me.

I was watching the last 15 minutes of Miss Universe. Miss Japan should win! She’s so charming and she looks genuinely sincere. I kinda think Singapore should just judge our contestant based on looks alone because we don’t get to the interview anyway. If we did and she turned mute, it is still an achievement for Singapore isn’t it?

WordPress rocks because there are so many brilliant programmers contributing freely so that programming idiots like me can enjoy them. Here is a list of some of the best plugins I’m using.

1. Falbum
A wonderful plugin for displaying your Flickr photosets and photos in a gallery format on your WordPress site. See it in action.

2. A Different Monthly Archive Script
A different slant to your date based archives. Results in the nicely organised monthly archives you see on your right.

3. Flikr Post Bar
Displays a Flickr bar at the top of your edit screen, which allows you to easily add Flickr photos to your posts with one click. I find this immensely useful when I’m posting pictures in my entries, it auto resizes the image and link them to the original flickr page. In just one click. Godsent.

4. runPHP
Allows you to put PHP code into a post and have it eval()’d. It means you can have all the goodness and convenience of PHP even in your wordpress pages.

5. Brian’s Threaded Comments
This gave me my threaded comments which I can reply to and so on. It can get a bit messy and you need to go in and edit a few lines of script in order for it to sync perfectly with your templates. But nothing a little bit of thinking couldn’t solve, I’m not a programmer myself so if I can do it, so can you.

6. Akismet
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web serivce to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use this service. You can review the spam it catches under “Manage” and it automatically deletes old spam after 15 days.

That’s it….all the key utilities that you must have! I’ve yet to find a good auto link script though. I want a script that auto links text that matches my blogline feeds and churn out respective urls instead of rss. Plugins makes me super lazy. Heh.

Revamped my portfolio. Took me a neat amount of time owing to the brilliance of simpleviewer. No comments allowed this time to prevent the agony of being harassed by teenyboppers. Peace.

Redid my links page too, please take a look because I put in a lot of thought into each link recommendation. I swear they are so good, they may just CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

I took down all my friends’ links because it has become a huge hassle to update them. If you want to check out my friend’s blogs, please visit my Bloglines Feeds instead. I might add descriptions to everyone but I don’t know all of them very well so maybe not. PS: I’m not a stalker merely fortunate enough to possess an outstanding level of curiousity. PPS: Those with locked journals are not added but I still read them avidly (forbidden fruit is always sweet). PPPS: Some of you have unreadable feeds and you need to be spanked, send your asses to Miss Spank over here.

Those classified under blogs are people I do not know but they are still interesting enough for me to follow. Good stuff, in other words.

MSN Screens

Graphic design for my friendster account. As you can see, I’m utterly boliao. Not working is definitely a torture, thinking about what to do tomorrow is such a big pain in the ass.

Anyway, I’m currently reading a very good book, Perfume. It got me hooked right from the beginning. And instead of screening through the pages, which I sometimes do, I’m digesting every single word, getting myself lost into the plot and era. It is highly addictive! Love love love fiction!

*edits* Perfume is a Penguin Red Classics. Damn, now I want all of them!

New Layout Dahling! My newest attempt to blind people, and am I’m getting ever closer to succeeding or what? This is also a celebration of my freedom from tame primary colours, narrow color palettes, simple lines and most importantly, all the suffocating heuristics for good website usability. Don’t know how to navigate? I don’t care! Muahaha!

Anyway, I guess some things never change, designing still makes me very happy. It is also an area familiar to me so I’m better off spending time on it than to say, try my hands on something potentially disastrous. Like household chores.

When Aileen had her dinner party, I helped wash the dishes and was so surprisingly successful at it, my friends started snapping pictures of me, so I can look back in fondness and remember the day where my delicate skin made contact with the harsh soap and grim and (omg!) washed the dishes. I think my friends were more amuse at the IMAGE of me washing dishes, nobody actually noticed how SQUEAKY CLEAN the dishes are. Anyway, after this little episode, I got braver.

Yesterday, I tried to iron the clothes.

I imprint a little design of my own on my Mum’s G2000 skirt. Alright, the design belongs to Panasonic NI-B55TS. But the rest is a result of my genius and flair for handling hot irons.

Sigh, I can’t cook, I can’t do the laundry, I can’t iron. I’m a useless old fart.

Lastly, here’s a little tag from Vicki

Meme: 10 Things I’ve Done You Probably Haven’t

1) Screw up ironing, cooking and laundry. Hat trick baby.
2) Got so constipated I cannot even pee straight
3) Volunteered in the zoo
4) Sang at Victoria Theatre
5) Stole shoes from the next block (I was young and impressionable)
6) Got paid to dance in a club
7) Fought with a guy and ended up in the principal office
Fought with another guy and ended up in the hospital, getting stitches on my forehead
9) Worked in a Feng Shui Company
10) Skinnydipping

Firstly, thanks for nice colleagues who treat me to a farewell meal on Thursday. Schweet!

Also much thanks to the friends looking out for me when I got sloshed on Friday. I’m not getting so intoxicated ever again. Not fun. When I was up and about, I sing aloud, a lot. And when I’m horizontally inclined, I metamorphose into a pile of rocks. My head and limbs were just so heavy and every attempt to get up seemed to turn the world upside down and back up again. Puked twice, DIY a few more times with my finger, just to feel better…ahh gross. I fell asleep worrying about a hangover but I woke up all new and light. Thank goodness!

I didn’t plan on getting high, it is a case of not knowing the limits and drinking on an empty stomach. No worries, it will not happen again.

What else…watched some movies (Pirates of the Caribbean, quite nice!), ate some buffet. Nothing new. Okee Doke…back to TV.

Check out Fafi’s new Collette show, her exhibition room makes my room look like a sewage dump.

My room is full of rubbish. There is this decorative beads curtain and fairylights hanging from the ceiling, I have rustic furnitures from the eighties, poorly modernised by coats of synthetic paint. Unwanted pieces from the living room found permanent place in my room. It happened when my mum decided to go for the ubiquitous zen look. Her interpretation of Zen is throwing everything out leaving only the TV and something to sit on. And by now, it’s quite clear that her interpretation of out is my room. My wardrobe and computer table is modern chic, courtesy of Ikea…dirt cheap, can’t complain. And finally, in the middle of it all, stands a very awkard looking Panton chair.

Digression: Panton chair is supposed to be ergonomic. Bollocks. Buy only if you need help to quit sitting.

Anyway, I started with wanting a flashy disco diva studio 54 look, then I kinda settle for the motley hippy look ala Dharma and Greg. Lately, I want a victorian gothic look, being highly ornamented and a little prudish. Kinda like Fafi’s room but not as pink. My room is nowhere near any of those. I want to throw out so many furnitures but they house a lot of my computer stuff and other various thingamajigs… how.

My mum thinks that doing my masters is also known as idling.

Which alien world did she hailed from I do not know.

Maybe the brilliant woman foresees my libra scales tipping to the other side again, the side of Oprah Winfrey mornings and lazy afternoons. Yes, part of me yearns for days like that but I hated them mostly, they are far too comfortable to heave out of.

Ramblings
I’ve started on the piano again. My parents tricked me into piano classes when my vocabulary was only enough for me to convey my daily functioning needs. Kids in that stage can only decifer what’s good from evil through voice tones. My parents asked if I wanna learn piano in a sugar-coated tone which misguided me into thinking they’re bringing me to Disneyland. So imagine my surprise when I never saw Disneyland. What came instead was years and years of torture, learning something I know I’d never be good at. I still suck at it but there are times where it felt truly therapeutic in ways nothing else can give. I guess my parents always meant well, even though it sometimes took me years to realise that.

My school time table is out, I have so many decisions to make. Don’t even get me started on the options or how they are going to affect the next two years of my life. Two years now feels a lot different from two years ten years back. It feels ten times as precious because I’m so not young anymore. *bawls*

I wonder if I can complete my masters in one year, saving time but effectively speeds up the aging process. No win-win situation here, still deciding the lesser of two evils. Haha.

Anyway, this Friday will be my last day at work. These 3 months felt draggy yet swift, which doesn’t make sense but it is exactly how it is. I’ve made some evil friends who very sucessfully turned me into a dog crazed monster. Well done guys. Anyway, I know some of you kpos read the blog even when you’re working cuz the company’s ip address was logged even when I’m at home (twas funny). Do your work hor! *piakpiak* Go!

School starts in August 7th. Ok I need to rant! NTU seems super boring, I’m not sure if I can live without the NUS buzz I was so used to. I was looking forward to good ol days of skipping lectures and taking kopi breaks in the school canteen, nattering with my fellow ICM coursemates about how working life is so gonna suck compared to this. I really can’t see that happening in NTU.

And what’s with all these locating schools on HILLS. I thought I’ve since escaped Kent Ridge’s frustrating maze of stairs, but NTU’s slopes are even more intimidating. Argh, stairs. Tch.

Anyway, here is a little preview on my core modules. I know they’ll kill me later but reading about them now gives me innocent little tingles. I know, I’m a geek.

CI6101 Information Architecture
Key concepts related to information discovery and methods of navigation and searching on Web sites; Information architecture as an approach for site development and organisation (involving knowledge from multiplicity of fields). Tools, techniques and processes needed to build and maintain the architecture. Issues related to site design and interface, contents and context, and users and usability. Forms of discourse and text structure suitable to the Web environment. Information organisation: metadata, controlled vocabularies, classification schemes, knowledge maps, and taxonomies. Description and indexing of WWW resources.

CI6102 Object-Oriented Information Systems
Overview of the software development life cycle; software process models; traditional software engineering methods. Requirements analysis and systems specification; Fundamentals of object-oriented programming: encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism. Object-oriented analysis and design concepts and techniques including use of the Unified Modeling Language (UML); Design patterns and object-oriented frameworks; Software testing.

This site is not under negligence. In fact, I’ve just renewed the domain name. Some of the informed ones will know that nunames doesn’t come cheap. Do you call such strong display of generosity neglect? Don’t know? Will you pay for your blog? There, my point exactly. Note: internet subscriptions not counted hor.

Anyway, it has been a refreshing week because for once, I’m not preoccupied with gadgets or food. You can say that I’m preoccupied with Yorkshires, if by preoccupied you mean having distressing intrusive thoughts or compulsions that interfere with the individual’s daily functioning. If you think that the description sounds exactly like the symtoms for obsessive-compulsive disorder, bingo. You’re sharp!

So anyway, here’s a little reminder of how boring my life has been. Snore.

Books
I finished reading Frank Herbert’s Dune, let’s just say I won’t be following the sequels. Dune is really not my cuppa Sci-fic tea. I’m turning to ChickLits for a while, reading Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, which is quirky and breezy when compared to the dusty world of Dune. I’m also reading the following: Puppies for Dummies, Choosing the Right Breed, and Yorkshire Terriers. *sighs* The Puppy Saga Continues…

Movies
Whether Superman returns or not is something I don’t care about. The only superhero I need is Spiderman. Check out the teaser for Spiderman 3 if you haven’t, very hot! The spiderman of my young imagination wasn’t very Toby but I’ve grown used to him all the same. I’m also looking forward to Pirates of the Carribean and Transformers! Anyway, the fifth Harry Potter movie is not happening this year, argh.. SLOW. I can’t wait to put a real face to Dolores Umbridge, a face I can imagine vicious things happening to. Imelda Staunton…beware!

Girly Art
Artworks from Donovan Crosby’s exhibition, titled Kindertotenlieder is up in sixspace. Check it out if you like girlie art with gothic victorian themes. If you want Girly Art that is even more haunting, I’d recommend Audrey Kawasaki. Her girls are gorgeous!

Ice-cream
I’m enjoying Ben and Jerry’s Strawberry Cheesecake ice-cream as I type. Haagen Dazs has its own heavenly version. I don’t care which company came up with it first. The question is, why didn’t anyone thought of it earlier? I mean, strawberries and Cheesecake, that’s so logical. They go together like fish and chips / coke and sugar / britney and justin. Mmm..it’s so good I can’t concentrate, and I’m typing these incoherent mambo jumbo which kinda make sense but doesn’t. Eat Strawberry Cheesecake ice-cream y’all.

If you don’t know which brand to try, here’s a little help, always Haagen Dazs.

A little digression. Haagen is not pronounced as Hay-gen. It’s open your mouth wide Ha-gen. I heard Reuben Mattus’s son say it himself. Don’t argue.