Month: April 2004

I can’t sleep. I am aware I have a tongue.

I’m very glad I bought “A Short History of Nearly Everything“, because it’s the most interesting book I ‘ve read in a while. I’d have said it was ‘unputdownable’, but it isn’t, because it is quite heavy. Not only will you become quite knowlegeable about the only planet you’ll ever live on, but you’ll probably get toned forearms as well, from propping the book up to read.

I’d also put this book as a case for the promotion of the study of literature and language in Singapore, not in place of, but with the sciences, which, for the past decade or so, have been viewed as the only fields of study with any practical usability.

Read this book and realise science comes alive only when you have the tools of expression.

You can put billions of dollars into technopreneurship (a term I detest), and all you’ll ever come up with is a company called “Creative Technologies”, which makes glorified radio-clock-like devices like a PC coupled with a piano keyboard. (Stay tuned for the PC guitar, and for the Asian market, the PC Angklong). Same shit, different bucket.

More Steve Jobs and fewer Sim Mong Hoos please!

If we don’t up the emphasis on our ability to express ourselves better, we* are dead in the water. Chaotic thoughts from the old milennium indeed^.

*Sadly, I’m talking about Singapore.
^Though I’ve nothing against this man’s business acumen, but that is just it: business acumen. Nothing to do with creativity or world-shaking, ground- breaking achievements.

It’s Monday, but I think I had a good day at the office, followed by a good hour and a half at the gym, followed by a good dinner cooked by, of all people, my mother.
She had been having a bad run with cabin fever setting in good and fast, but bless her heart, she managed to put some of that restless energy to good use, with the help of Jamie Oliver’s cookbook, and we had the best dinner at home for the longest time.
It would be closer to the perfect Monday if I could find my nail clippers. My fingernails are long enough to annoy me at this point. You know how it is when you suddenly become aware of some part of yourself, and it bothers you no end?
Like when you’re about to fall asleep, and you suddenly and inexplicably realise you have a tongue?
Gotta find them clippers.

Funny how the google ad banner is blank at this point. I know I must have been damned gorblok not to realise the google banner shows ads based on keywords their search engine finds on the page.

Yesterday it advertised for pest control products here.

And just now when I was browsing someone’s blog, and found that the google banner there was displaying ads for anti-depressants. Then I read the blog, and found that, yes, the blogger really needed some of those.

What does your banner say today?

I don’t know what to write about!

Not that much has happened over the weekend, and the things that did occur are hardly noteworthy. I did spend an inordinate amount of time fiddling with putting some bells and whistles on the page, so maybe that’s why nothing else happened.

There are still ants on and in my car.

This afternoon, I reverse-parked the tank against shrubbery growing on the fence at Chatsworth School, and twenty colonies of ants decided today was a good day for an exodus, and the tank looked like the Promised Land. Three hours later, there are several black masses (which l fortunately managed to pick out against the dark blue of the car) on various parts of the tank’s surface. It looked worse when the doors were opened. Black streams picking out choice resettlement locations under the rubber seals, seat pockets, et cetera. I’d have been mesmerised if not for the fact it was my car they were looking to possess.

And PP thinks ants in her water jug is something to shout about. Bah! You call that an infestation?

After a good half hour swatting several dozen off my limbs, I managed to sweep off the majority of the exodus onto the road, and some while trying to drive quickly. Am waiting for it to storm heavily so the rest will be swept off. The rest of the diaspora can suffocate in the car, hopefully.

(Ben’s Benz: Mercedes-Benz 300SEL [1986], the original MPV: you can fit 20,000 ants, 4 golf bags and a mini-trampoline in the back seat. Not that I play golf).