watched 'serendipity' the other night, then again later with the director's commentary (on dvd). it was the first time i'd watched a whole movie with director's commentary, and i'd have to say that (in this particular instance anyway) it was a rather enriching experience. it was nice to be able to appreciate (after being told, because i'm too dumb of a viewer to pick up most of the nuances!) the little subtle, background, peripheral stuff. and also to gain some insight into the actual film-making process.

then again, i'm a bit of a sucker for romantic comedies, so that could explain why i particularly enjoyed this one :p having said that, i don't necessarily agree with all of the morals, ethics and beliefs portrayed in the movie (and perhaps typical of movies like this)... so it's a balancing act between having to remind myself of the disparity between the world of movies and the world of real life, and trying to enjoy the movie for what it is - make-believe, fantastical, idealised, entertainment :)

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." -- C.S. Lewis, in 'The Problem of Pain'

received a couple more birthday gifts on the weekend (i'm sure this will be the last of them!)... one from bin, the other from my elder sister. the latter is a watch with a rather interesting "second hand"... take a look for yourself at the fossil chinese tic. the novelty hasn't quite worn off yet ;)

from the "letters to the editor" section of a motoring magazine, pointing out an error in a previously published feature article:

"No-one has the right of way on our roads. The law simply states who should 'give way'."

editor responded saying the magazine stands "admonished and corrected. 'Right of way' is not the correct terminology."

i don't think i realised this... perhaps that should be extended to being not the correct attitude out on the roads.

walked past some trees on the way to work this morning. the wind blew, and the leaves, being wet from earlier rains, proceeded to deposit drops of water to the ground. it was like watching a mini domino-effect shower (these branches were fairly high), and with the light from the rising sun streaming through, it made for quite a simple yet beautiful sight. my words fail to describe it - you'll just have to trust that it was a nice moment in time :)

my (known) readership base has at least doubled! or increased by two... depending on how you look at it :p

i'm actually running quite low on slack time, hence the lack of posts. went for a nap at 8pm last night and stayed in bed till 7am. wasn't asleep for all of that time though, which was a shame cos most of the time that i was awake, i was trying to fall asleep.

for those of you craving more interesting reading than this, check out training europe, a live diary by jerome about his recent travels in europe. i don't actually know the guy (just his siblings) but he's a better writer than i, and i've recently finished reading through his travel tales and found them quite enjoyable. maybe you'll enjoy them too :)

to whet your appetite, here's what he had to say at the end of it all:

In my opinion travel is the best education one can get. It changes your outlook on life and rearranges your priorities. It breeds tolerance and an understanding of different cultures. It has also allowed me to learn about the history and language of a few of the countries I visited. There is nothing as exhilarating as travel, the notion of the unknown, the sense of discovery, the meeting of strangers.

I hope this has inspired some of you to travel. Nevertheless I will leave you with another quote:

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, narrow-mindedness, all foes of real understanding. Likewise tolerance, or broad wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
- Mark Twain

from a keyring sent to me as a gift - for people born on august 6:

People born on this day can be a bit of a charmer. They have a high self-esteem. Will strive for success. They have a very hospitable nature.

is it accurate? perhaps the best judge is the beholder.

heh... proof that someone does read my blog - some user contributed posts / feedback :)

you want suggestions on hair styles, well, a singaporean friend of mine has a standard sort of asian haircut (maybe a shorter version of yours, mainly in the fringe area) and he gets kind of rusty red highlights which actually look really good on black hair. Otherwise, there's an asian salon on Adelaide st near the UQ bus that does funky stuff. You could, if you dare, give them carte blanche and see what happens......

but wait, there's more! no, not steak knives, just a simple quote:

"I'm not king. Christ is king; I'm just a singer." -- Elvis Presley

this post brought to you courtesy of dan the man, my #1 fan ;) :p

ps. feel free to send me feedback if you are so inclined. if you know me, you should know how to reach me. if you don't know me, then look a little harder and you'll see at least one way to reach me.

another pick the flick jackpot went off this morning. just a few minutes ago actually. i knew what it was after yesterday clue, so tried calling in this morning but the phones were busy and i didn't get through. 12 tickets could have been mine... oh well...

"Those things that hurt instruct." -- Ben Franklin

feel like i OD-ed yesterday, so nothing much to say today. except that after writing yesterday's last entry, i thought that perhaps others (esp. those who know me in person) may be perturbed by reading it. well... these are nebulous thoughts of mine, and some do come at apparent random. this isn't necessarily one of them. if you feel prompted to speak to me about it, please do so. if you feel prompted to speak to the Intercessor on my behalf, please do so too. they aren't mutually exclusive options.

or if it's all too hard... to follow, understand, or deal with. forgetaboutit.

i'm glad i'm not working tomorrow.

i am perturbed. (actually i have been for some time now... this probably goes back at least two years, but has no less a contemporary relevance.)

a touch of anger. a spoonful of disappointment. a pinch of frustration. liberal doses of disheartenedness and sadness. plus 11 other secret herbs and spices.

kentucky fried quop.

why is it that sometimes your friends (good, and/or close friends at that) appear to treat you worse than distant friends, acquaintances, or even strangers? it doesn't seem to be any act of deliberate mistreatment, moreover they don't seem to realise that it's happened.

is it just me? am i overly sensitive? are my boundaries and thresholds out of kilter with the rest of society? or is it them? are the boundaries and thresholds of chunks of society out of kilter with mine. or are we perhaps both out of kilter with some other absolute reference?

if i'm mistreated by people from whom i have no reason to expect favourable treatment, i'd probably feel anger and indignation more than anything else, if anything. plus injustice, if i've not been afforded the same fair go as the next person. but i think for the most part i'd get over it... move on.

yet being mistreated by people from whom i have no reason to expect unfavourable treatment, moreover those from whom i'd hope to receive favourable treatment... that's a more bitter pill to swallow. this distraughts me, given that it's happened multiple times with multiple people (multiple friends...). what am i doing wrong? what's wrong with me?

friends... can be a blessing. should be a blessing. is it right, should it be possible, that they can be a curse? i'm still friends with them all... our respective friendships do not appear to have suffered as a result. then again, i've never spoken up about it...

maybe i should. one day i'll need to learn how. without offending, without accusing, with an aim towards mutual understanding... to repair the hurt and to use that as a stepping stone to further and strengthen the friendship.

am i like this to any of my friends? i hope not, but no doubt i have been, and probably will be. when i am, and where i have been, please... please be kind enough to admonish. the power to change others is not within my grasp; even the power to change myself is not fully within my grasp. but it's a start. and you need a start if you're going to get anywhere.

a few quotes from "Help! My Halo's Slipping: The Saga of a first-Term Missionary" by Larry Dinkins, which i'm currently reading:

"If we succeed without suffering, it is because others have suffered before us. If we suffer without success, it is that others may succeed after us." -- son of Adoriram Judson

"God does not waste suffering, nor does He discipline out of caprice. If He plow, it is because He purposes a crop." -- J.O. Sanders

to place or not to place... on the question of eggs and baskets, an interesting (at least in the beginning - it got a bit long and contrived) and sometimes humorous read.

this thing keeps giving me errors after i've been logged in for a while. i'll type away on a post, leave it for a bit (work has a habit of interfering...) come back, go to post/publish and be greeted by a "http 500 - internal server error" message. rather annoying, what. especially since it means i lose whatever i've typed and not yet posted.

backups. backups. backups.

i mean. save. save. save.

- - - - -

the credits keep rolling... got a late email from neece[1], complete with my name in lights, so to speak. she was going to bake me a cake, but apparently it wasn't of sufficiently high quality to be fed to people other than her parents!

she recently helped bring me my birthday present to myself - a canon powershot digital ixus 330. i think i'm mostly sufficiently comfortable with the manual settings on this baby... this from a life-long point-and-shooter. if you're into this sort of thing, here's a rather detailed review of the camera.

[1] this is the "local" neece; i know another neece who lives in a different country. both neece's are from the same country. useless piece of trivia for the day? :]

- - - - -

gave away my free movie ticket...

according to a recent nation-wide IQ test, conducted as a television event, i have an IQ of 146 :o not that i'm an expert in the setting of IQ tests, but i thought some of the questions/categories weren't all that useful in testing intelligence, per se. my score was probably inflated thanks to

• a solid grasp of the english language
  
• having previously seen questions similar in type to some of the items in this test
  
• being older than i was a week ago, which placed me in a more "forgiving" age category!

anyhow, they say that the highly intelligent generally have a deficiency of common sense and/or aren't particularly adept at social graces and tasks associated with day to day living. what happens if you aren't particularly highly intelligent, yet exhibit the above shortcomings? :|

found a birthday card waiting for me when i got home last night, it had been posted from mooks. cute self-deprecating humour, returning the f(l)avour for/of one i had gotten her for her birthday :)

24 started screening on tv last night - looks good, will probably stay with it. found the show that followed, mutant x, to be fairly ok too. dark angel is set to return next week... looks like my weekly tv quota will be jumping up a few hours...

fujitsu pocket loox pda... nice!

ooh, just discovered another email, this one from tcc. didn't see it earlier as it was sent to my other address. too many pop-ups and ads, plus it's web-based - not my mail client of choice.

a local radio station has a "pick the flick" competition in the mornings, where listeners are asked to identify the movie from a soundbite they play. pick the flick and you win two tickets to a sponsoring cinema. get it wrong and the prize pool jackpots for the next day. this morning it was up to 30 tickets. was talking about it post windtalkers the other night, and my pick ended up being correct. pity i didn't try calling in, as the flick finally got picked today.

speaking of free movie tickets, i got one from my sister last night. expires next tuesday, so i'm trying to figure out what's good to watch. there's nothing really compelling, and signs doesn't open till after tuesday... dilemmas dilemmas dilemmas...

more credits... this one from the doris clan aboard the mv doulos. the email was a few days late, but they had a valid excuse - being that the ship was sailing to cape town on the day, which meant they had no email connectivity. ok... fair enough... AND they did a virtual rendition of happy birthday doulos-style, which is what the yfers did live at my office, hehe.

watched "never been kissed" last night, which was ok... if i think about it too much i'll get nit-picky (eg there's no way that the stamp she got at the nightclub could have been transferred to her forehead to read the way it did next morning), so i won't. afterwards there was a suggestion that i should do something to my hair - maybe dye it or get a radical haircut. maybe next jan. hmm... quop goes feral ;) any suggestions for what i should do before i wimp out?

told my manager today in passing that i'm considering a change in the next 6 months. not real sure whether that was a smart thing to do. oh well, it was going to happen sooner or later. i'll live.

got a piece of spam this afternoon which actually owns up to having obtained my email address from a purchased list. they were even kind enough to provide contact details (email and postal) should initial unsubscribe attempts fail. should i care? spam is spam, and deserves no more of my time than to pass on the details to the good folk at spamcop.

i'm still sick, and my head probably wishes it had nothing more to do than sit idle. started taking drugs yesterday. gee that could be taken out of context. drugs as in the prescription kind, prescribed by a doctor, on the basis of my illness. hope they do the job.

roll credits... (in roughly chronological order, and backdated as of yesterday)

• stir fry - mentioned something in a msn conversation last week
  
• bin - talked about getting me a present during a phone conversation on the weekend... told her i was too old for presents :p
  
• mooks - phone call last night
  
• caren - email from last night (i gave her "hiroshima" as a clue to the date)
  
• dad - this morning
  
• algae - sms, wishing me a day of no work at work :) don't think it'll come true though!
  
• ac - sms
  
• mrflomo - sms, psalms 37:4 and ephesians 3:14-21
  
• dee - email
  
• dan - email (probably the only person i know who reads my blog at the moment!)
  
• various yfers: fifi (who was trying to make me think she'd forgotten this morning!), fatte (thanks also for the card), tekken, gg, stir fry (i'm listening to the harry connick jr stuff as i type), slam man, miss ab-do, algae, valley (and pastaofmuppets, who missed it by that much)... these peoples came into my office bearing gifts (cakes and a mandarin "balloon" - photos to come later, hopefully) and sang happy birthday to a wide-eyed, stunned mullet ;) then we all headed downstairs to es, where gg took off and shteppi joined us, and leonie and joey added their wishes.
  
• sheepie - 2 sms's, featuring song and dance. okay, maybe no dance... but there was a song and 3 cheers :p
  
• wobz - while calling to cancel on windtalkers tonight...
  
• yunga - msn
  
• ac (who increased my dvd collection to a grand total of two) and dckt - meeting up for windtalkers
  
• sj - phone call just before movie started
  
• kayakok and girl - over at ac's post movie
  

did i miss anyone? thanks muchly to one and all :)

some famous people with whom i share my birth date:

• (lord) alfred tennyson, english poet
  
• michelle yeoh, hk actress and former miss malaysia winner (yeah, go malaysia! :D)
  
• m. night shyamalan, director of movies such as the sixth sense, unbreakable, and signs (which looks worthy of my cinema patronage)
  
• david robinson, nba (basketball) player
  
• geri halliwell aka ginger spice (not that i was ever a fan of the spice girls... honest!)
  
• soleil moon frye, probably best known (?) for her role in the sitcom punky brewster (yeah i know that probably shows my age... but hey, i used to watch it when it was on... besides, she shares my birth year as well)
  

some notable events that toook place on this day in history:

• "Tim Berners-Lee released files describing his experimental World Wide Web project on the Internet on this day in 1991... by 1990, he had created the basic parameters of the World Wide Web, and a working version was posted on CERN's internal computers in May 1991. On August 6, 16, 19, and 22, Berners-Lee released Web files and requested input from other developers. By late 1991 and early 1992, the Web was widely discussed, and in early 1993, when Marc Andreesen and other graduate students at the University of Illinois released the Mosaic browser (Netscape's precursor), the Web rapidly became a popular communications medium."
  
• "The first atomic bomb used in warfare was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan (1945). Hiroshima was the target of the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a populated area; almost 130,000 people were killed, injured, or missing, and 90% of the city was leveled. Much of the city has been reconstructed, but a gutted section has been set aside as a �Peace City� to illustrate the effects of an atomic bomb. The Peace Memorial Museum is there. Since 1955 an annual world conference against nuclear weapons has met in Hiroshima."
  

the ubiquity of nebulocity

a search on google just now revealed about 420 hits for "nebulocity". dang.

granted, the name isn't terribly original or creative, but i liked it (having been through - still going through? - a rather nebulous stage in the not too distant past) and didn't want to come across as a plagiarist. oh well, my consicence is clear on this matter. while i can't claim exclusive coinage on the term, i did arrive at it without the "assistance" of that UK site, annie lennox, david bowie, ben folds five and co... do a search yourself if you have no idea what i'm talking about.

right, time to call it a day and go home.

"push-button publishing for the people", indeed!

i like it. not least because it's easy and convenient for me! :) really can't be bothered mucking around with html (what little of it i do know), so the combination of blogger and blogspot sounded rather enticing. besides, plaintext is good, and in most cases sufficient.

who knows, if i get up enough motivation and enthusiasm, i might even go and tweak with the template a bit! don't hold your breath on that one though.

cool... my very own blog :)

baby step #1, onwards we go... where we end up, nobody knows!