The Green Mile

3 papers down, 1 more to go...

It's always at the final step that my willpower seems to falter. Let's hope that this time it gets a little better.

The end of the year seems a little uncertain now. Bangkok doesn't look rather happening right now... unless you're the kind that likes to wade through a crowd of yellow shirted people trying to walk from the airport back to the city.

Ah well. Politics has always been a messy business. The impact of the December events on Thailand will be very strong.

But for me, I've got a lot of process modelling and numerical simulation left to do.

" but oh God, sometimes the Green Mile seems so long..."

Aaaaaaand......

Those were the days...

Iwannapickupmyguitaragain.

ZOMG

The songs from Avenue Q are...... infectious.

I can't stop playing them!!! *wail*

"It sucks to be meeeeeee......"

And one of the puppets sound like my prof. :p

Personality test 2008

Your view on yourself:

You are down-to-earth and people like you because you are so straightforward. You are an efficient problem solver because you will listen to both sides of an argument before making a decision that usually appeals to both parties.

The type of girlfriend/boyfriend you are looking for:

You are a true romantic. When you are in love, you will do anything and everything to keep your love true.

Your readiness to commit to a relationship:

You are ready to commit as soon as you meet the right person. And you believe you will pretty much know as soon as you might that person.

The seriousness of your love:

You like to flirt and behave seductively. The opposite sex finds this very attractive, and that's why you'll always have admirers hanging off your arms. But how serious are you about choosing someone to be in a relationship with?

Your views on education

Education is very important in life. You want to study hard and learn as much as you can.

The right job for you:

You have plenty of dream jobs but have little chance of doing any of them if you don't focus on something in particular. You need to choose something and go for it to be happy and achieve success.

How do you view success:

You are afraid of failure and scared to have a go at the career you would like to have in case you don't succeed. Don't give up when you haven't yet even started! Be courageous.

What are you most afraid of:

You are afraid of having no one to rely on in times of trouble. You don't ever want to be unable to take care of yourself. Independence is important to you.

Who is your true self:

You are mature, reasonable, honest and give good advice. People ask for your comments on all sorts of different issues. Sometimes you might find yourself in a dilemma when trapped with a problem, which your heart rather than your head needs to solve.

I do these about once a year? Haha.

And IM A FLIRT. Who are you kidding. I couldn't flirt to save my life... or so i think?

http://www.quizbox.com/personality/test82.aspx

Magnifique

I managed to catch Avenue Q yesterday, and I must say, it was good. Refreshing, witty, and it brought a new take onto theatre that I didnt quite notice.

Having puppets as a prop on stage brings a whole new dimension to the acting - It's like watching 2 people acting at the same time - but with the same voice. I can't remember who told me about watching the actors faces, but it did bring added nuances to their performance.

The set was... well, classic New York gutter style. Really brings about the feel of the dream of moving to the big city crashing on the shores of reality.

The songs! Oh the songs. Each an instant classic in it's own right. "It sucks to be me", "If you were gay", "Everyone's a little bit racist"... and of course the cheerful little ditty, "The internet is for porn".

Well I thoroughly enjoyed it. Too bad for those who didn't catch it, yesterday was the last day of the run.

Looking forward to many more of these... when I get there. :)

War.

They grazed in silence, until his own words reminded him of something he had wanted to ask.

"The sentries," he asked. "Are we at war?"

She did not understand the word.

"War?"

"Are we fighting people?"

"Fighting?" she asked doubtfully. "The men fight sometimes about their wives and that. Of course there is no bloodshed - only scuffling, to find the better man. Is that what you mean?"

"No, I meant fighting against armies - against other geese, for instance."

She was amused.

"How ridiculous! You mean a lot of geese all scuffling at the same time. It would be fun to watch."

Her tone suprised him, for his heart was still a kind one, being a boy's.

"Fun to watch them kill each other?"

"To kill each other? An army of geese kill each other?"

She began to understand this idea slowly and doubtfully, an expression of distaste coming over her face. When it had sank in, she left him. She went away to another part of the field in silence. He followed, but she turned her back. Moving round to get a glimpse of her eyes, he was startled by their dislike - a look as if he had made some obscene suggestion.

He said lamely: "I am sorry. I don't understand."

"Leave talking about it."

"I am sorry."

Later he aded, with annoyance, "A person can ask, I suppose. It seems a natural question, with the sentries."
But she was thoroughly angry.

"Will you stop about it at once! What a horrible mind you must have! You have no right to sy such things. And of course there are sentries. There are the jar-falcons and the peregrines, aren't there: the foxes and the ermines and the humans with their nets? These are natural enemies. But what creature could be so low as to go about in bands, to murder others of its own blood?"

"Ants do," he said obstinately. "And i was only trying to learn."

She relented with an effort to be good-natured. She wanted to be broad-minded if she could, for she was rather a blue stocking.

"My name is Lyo-lyok. YOu had better call yourself Kee-kwa, and then the rest will think you came from Hungary."

"Do you all come here from different places?"

"Well, in parties of course. There are some here from Siberia, some from Lapland and i can see one or two from Iceland."

"But don't they fight each other for the pasture?"

"Dear me you are a silly," she said. "There are no boundaries among geese."

"What are boundaries please?"

"Imaginary lines on the earth I suppose. How can you have boundaries if you fly? These ants of yours - and the humans too - would have to stop fighting in the end, if they took to the air."

"I like fighting," said the Wart. "It is knightly."

"Because you're a baby."

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The Once and Future King, T.H. White

Roundround getaround I get around

Whew. The end of the year draws closer and closer with every breath I take. And there much more to be done...

The semester's gone by in a rush, and frankly, I'm not looking forward to it ending. It's not that I haven't learnt anything, which for that i'm rather amazed. Somethings actually seem to have crept into my lulling mind as i waltzed the semester away. But there's yet so much more to do!

Rapidly pacing up and down Orchard earlier today, I remembered the thrill I get from having a goal. Short, as it may be, but a goal nonetheless. Just having the urge to push yourself to get things done - That's my ambrosia. My sweet nectar. The thrill of the chase.

For me it seems to have been a semester of recovery, from emotional trauma, and refocusing my life on my fundamentals. I'm still looking for my fundamentals, and I think I might yet be a step closer to getting to know what I'm really about. 

And of course along comes the occasional revelation. "It takes two hands to clap", that's one. "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink", that's another. "It's not the triumph, it's the struggle." I learnt a lot from struggling. 

And the one phrase that sums up my first half of my year -

"When you're heart's on fire, you must realise smoke gets in your eyes."

Top Hat!

Fred Astaire isn't exactly the most handsome pick of the lot, but boy can he dance. He has a certain debonair style, with which he plays the part of one who is supremely confident of his own abilities, and knows what he wants.

The movie as a whole was not too bad, a more successful blend of light hearted humour and romance than "Singing in the Rain". But of course, thats my own opinion, some may beg to differ.  I find that as the dance scenes go, Fred Astaire really can carry off the compositions well, enhancing the scene with moves that suggest the mood. Point taken in "Isn't this a lovely day (to get caught in the rain)" and "Cheek to Cheek". What really struck me is how the sequences speak much better than the dialogue in describing their conditions.

And the "Cheek to Cheek" sequence rocks! I always liked that song, now i like it even more!

Twilight

No wonder my tuition kid can't put this book down when i'm teaching. Its hilarious really - She'll sulk and ask for breaks and tell me not to teach so that she can read her book. Its' the first time that had ever happened to me, I was at a loss to impose my decree to continue with math or let her carry on with her fascination with the written word.

I would think one of the main draws of the abovementioned novel is that it reads like a classic romance...... girl meets boy, girl finds something wierd about boy....... they undergo several hardships, but eventually live happily ever after. Of course, the main character being female, the book has obvious attractions to the average female student. It doesn't help that the prose is peppered with liberal sprinklings of how "his shirt could not hide his chiselled chest" and "the slabs of muscle on his arms flexed in a raw display of power" and all that. Oh, how my heart is a-flutter. The author does go about it rather discreetly though, drawing the potrait of love without the usual physical hangups.

The pacing of the novel is not bad, although it spends the majority of it's time exploring the growing relationship between the two lead characters. It almost felt as if the antagonist of the latter half of the story was thrown in as an afterthought. Of course, their star-crossed love would face difficulties throughout the course of the novel, but it is hardly noticeable. And of course it's so exciting to do something that everyone disapproves of... Stirs up the rebel in everyone.

Overall, it was unputdownable. Whilst i know most people would tell me thats not a word, but i beg to differ. No other word comes close to describing the zest and vim of a novel that keeps the reader sufficiently entertained from cover to cover. I had a test today, so I HAD to put it down last night before sleeping. Today i had no such excuse, and finished it off thoroughly and satisfactorily.

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Now, because i have a bad habit of doing other things when i should be doing my work, let's take a look into an analysis of "Twilight" in the framework of the monomyth (The Hero's Journey)

Can anyone identify the 17 Stages of the Monomyth?

1. Departure

a. Call to Adventure

b. Refusal of the call

c. Supernatural aid

d. The crossing of the first threshold

e. Belly of the whale

2. Initiation

a. The road of trials

b. Mother as Goddess

c. Woman(man in this case) as temptress

d. Atonement with the Father

e. Apotheosis

f. The Ultimate Boon

3. Return

a. Refusal of the Return

b. The Magic Flight

c. Rescue from without

d. The crossing of the return threshold

e. Master of Two Worlds

f. Freedom to Live

This is taken liberally from the wikipedia article on the monomyth.

I know what homework someone is getting next week....... muahahahahhaha.