In my dream last night I was an anthropologist studying a tribe called Nabeesh who lives in Berlin / the Yangtze River. I was there for some sort of grassroots education programme. The tribesmen were supersticious and distrusted outsiders, so the whole team had to participate in some weird rituals to blend in. I was riding a black 4-hoofed creature (a bison maybe?), like the rest of the tribe. We were gathering on our bisons in the middle of a river, knee deep in muddy yellow water.

Me thinks AutoCAD has cracked my head.

Finally, I can take a brief pause on my comp:
Chic enough to wear! Yummy enough to drool over!
Virgina dialogues - some cheery Tampon art for those "auntie visit" days
On a more serious note ~ Baghdad Snapshot Action: because a picture speaks more than a thousand words

[all via Cheesedip]

Apologies if i'm boring Whoever Reading This with tidbit unhappenings in my life. been so busy working have no time to google random things of interest.
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After spending Friday night, Sunday and Monday night at the lifeless Windows Athena cluster, I've decided that the new must have accessory for Spring 2003 is a coffee-making, sweet-talking, AutoCAD expert boyfriend.
I have also come to the conclusion that I'm a crap model maker, be it balsa wood and concrete or digital.
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Sad attempt at finding a suitable boy has yet again failed. In desperation, I did the MIT/Harvard/Wellesley computer match-up thingy. I have sunk that low.
I got an e-mail from some dude in Cali who wants to be penpals. When it comes to male-luring tactics, I'm as clueless as I was back in 2's [8th grade for u Stateside ppl]
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Who needs boys anyway when you can get all dressed up with ya girlfriend? Jess and I have decided to accompany each other to our respective senior gala / ball. Now I have an excuse to wear my dashing white suit :)

Academics forsaken for snow sculpting:

I made my first snowperson! "She" looks like the green M&M lady, since I couldn't find pebbles for her facial features, she got some curled up leaves instead for long, lush lashes and a lovely pout.

Did Hell just freeze over?? [for the 2nd time in history]

yes!!! no school tomorrow, no more cause for sorrow ~~
All hail 2 ft-thick snow blizzard!~
but then I'm stuck in computer cluster doing AutoCAD shit. *blech*

Must stop eating chunky peanut butter / crema de nocciola as meals. Must get back to AutoCAD hell. But inclement weather is prohibiting me from stepping outdoors.

Thoughts on War:

I'm glad there's still sense left in some of us. I've been really disappointed by the indifference, or worse, pro-war attitude around the MIT campus. How is it possible that the most educated people in this country can be so blind and ignorant??

The American main stream media certainly isn't helping people know about the truth. I may be preaching to the choir here, but this deserves to be heard.

From me mate KK's blog:

Pictures from the last Gulf War published in the Guardian today, not pics of oily avian life or missles in the air or comic-like strategic diagrams, but photos of eg. an Iraqi soldier whose body's been pulverised to a liquidy goo with only the head in tact.... and generally well, of dead people, starving people and people grieving generally. Can't seem to remember seeing much of those around when the thing was actually happening... but then I was very young then and those WERE hong kong newspapers......*sigh* they should publish pictures of these more often, especially in America, but then they'd probably be slammed/ sued for
1) not doing their patriotic duty
2) disturbing the delicate sensibilities of US people whose idea of war is probably v. much like a PSII game.....

The articles accompanying the pics can be found here, but the pics are not on the internet....

Mucho Amor del Tipo [much geek love] from Nerdland on Valentine's Day.
[courtesy of Shortfuse, aka Nerdsphere Superstar]
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A belated birthday shout to my mate Jento!
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I�ve come to the conclusion that I�m highly susceptible to day-long schizophrenic transformations on other ppl�s birthdays, morphing from Hermit Crab in her Shell to Social Crackhead. Can�t decide whether it�s a good thing or not, cos I hardly ever party but I also hardly ever work.
Danced on a platform for the first time last night. Was fun but would hate to see myself dancing if I were anyone else. Must say the tequila shot and the presence of 4 sassy and not-so-sober friends helped dissolve all sense of dignity ;P

Azianz reprazent! at the Oscars, that is.
As cheesy as the Oscars are, I'm very happy that Spirited Away and Hero made the Best Animated Film and Best Foreign Film nominations.

spent the whole afternoon + evening in library / comp lab. Eyeballs are about to drop out of socket from AutoCAD incompetence / overdose. *eww*
But am movtivated today by sheer guilt. My dad had to lie to the parent of a fellow student; he claimed that i was double-majoring to justify my not graduating on schedule. Am v. v. sad that I failed to make my parents proud.
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Virtual Tuck Shop from my childhood :d [via muxway]
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The Ice Man Cometh: Ice Man - new story from Haruki Murakami, one of my fav writers. [via shortfuse]
If i can find time this term, I'd like to read something by Banana Yoshimoto too. [I had a crush on a TA whose username was banana, but that's another insignificant story.]

No normal person would spend a lovely sunny Saturday afternoon on their knees ironing plastic supermarket bags onto bits of 16mm film.

Except me.

The animation class instructor taught us the said "technique" of imprinting dotty coloured ink onto film, which partly explains my strange behaviour. With no lightable, I had to kneel on the floor next to the window to work. I had also inhaled far too much volatile substances. The cocktail of nail polish remover + Xylene [think Sharpie / permanent marker vapour but as a can of liquid] was supposed to strip layers of tint from the film. Neither "techniques" worked half of the time, which only added to my dementedness to try more of the same to get the look I want.

I better become famous. [as an artist / mental experimental filmaker, whatever]

If one day you come across a micro-short film with a man inexplicably lying on the floor, some psychedelic colours and random flashes of �_��, ������, men on ��, �j�k�}�~�|, ���m���p��, etc. etc., you'll know who made that awful thing.

Londinium etc. Part II:

Over �Φ~��, our family met the guardian of my lil' bro's friend, a Malaysian-born Chinese who works for the BBC as a news correspondent. We were also introduced to her friend, who turned out to be TV chef Ken Hom [ok, so he's no Jamie Oliver...but he is a good few notches above Yan from Yan can Cook] The two guests, both dressed in beatnik-chic black turtlenecks, were the best-travelled people I've ever met.
Jenny, the news correspondent, has just about visited every country on this planet. Ken spends most of his time living in France, and he entertained us with his ventures in search of exotic and exquisite cuisine. As the jovial dinner progressed, we got to hear the inside scoop on Jenny's news stories.

When asked which was her most memorial project, Jenny recounted her favourite - covering Russia during the transition period between the collapse of the Communist regime and the rise of the new government. Of her many anecdotes, I thought this was the best:

Previously in the Soviet, consumer choice, being the epitomy of bourgeois capitalist ideas, was a concept simply unheard of and was as alien as can be. The news crew decided to set up and film an experiment to see how a bunch of peasant women would react to a choice of soaps. The spectrum ranged from Chanel No. 5 (being the creme de la creme of course) to the skanky, rough Russian standard-issue, manufactured and distributed by Soviet government units.

Producer: "Which soap would you buy at a shop?"
The women were all at a loss. No one knew what to answer and all were baffled. When forced to give an answer, all the women chose the Russian soap.
Producer: "Wouldn't you choose the Chanel No. 5 one?"
Women: "Why?"
Producer: "Well...just smell it!"
So the women all did as they were told. Oh the revelation!!

-CIA = Central Idiocy Agency / Community of Inefficient Agents?-

[By now I'm truly ashamed to be American (even under normal circumstances I won't admit it, but damn my passport)]

As a grad student at Harvard, Jenny studied Management in Govt. Agencies, where she analysed the Iraq-Iran conflict as a case study. Guess what she found?
The American ground communication reports revealed that NONE of the CIA field agents posted in Iran could speak Farsi, the spoken language of Iran!!!
Makes you wonder about CIA's credibility, huh?

I've always been prone to believe in conspiracy theories. After hearing this, it only added to my distrust of American officials' spins on whatever "peace-keeping" they claim to be doing...

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Word on War

Take this with a pinch of salt.
The ex-Gurka chauffeur whom my parents hire whenever they are going to / fro to Heathrow, got word from his buddies who are still serving in the Army, that the date for war against Iraq will be 27th Feb.
Rumour has it that the old deadline was suppose to be 27th Jan, but it got postponed with new inspections etc.
I'm anti-war, but let's wait and see.....

oh the dread of Reg Day...am sadly back in Nerdsylvania, already drowning in the sea of geekdom

londinium etc:

-gossip-

B-list Cantopop starspotting: Miriam Yeung ���d�_ shopping at Harvey Nic's Foodmarket. She seemed to be on holiday with her family. The girl was actually not bad-looking in real life, prolly because she was fully made up, but hell she was short and skinny. I'm not a fan of hers so I didn't really look, but my mum was being rather unsubtle about the whole 8ing and almost made us miss the elevator.

-unfashionably late...-

1. Arrival caused by slippery runway at Heathrow. God I thought the English are used to snow showers. Apparently not, as the Tube and local train services were stopped, leaving the masses stranded in the Capital.
2. Departure [flight scheduled at 6:55 am] caused by:
i) 5:45 my oversleeping
ii) 6:00 Heathrow Express getting cancelled in event of heavy rain (?!!!! now this is getting ridiculous)
iii) 6:07 the need to stop by an ATM as I did not have enough cash on me to "fly taxi" ['scuse the Chinglish]
iv) 6:10 my panic as time was running out, and where I promptly forgot the PIN number for my credit card
v) 6:15 the need to beg the very very nice taxi driver to take me to Heathrow in spite of my lack of $$$
vi) 7:00 the gate for the flight was still not open
vii) 8:00 the pilot took forever to announce that the emergency door was faulty and needed to be replaced
viii) 11:00 the flight finally took off

-anti-wrinkle cream overdose?-

got carded when purchasing the 24 hour Party People DVD, rated 18 and over. The sales asked for my ID in all seriousness. He must have been really stoned, or severely short-sighted (without realising so), for the last time I got IDed, I was 15. I sincerely hope my DIY pixie coif wasn't making me look spastic. Or should I cut back on the seemingly ineffective anti-aging cream?