Botero's crow

i have asked the plump crow at the cbd what it sees. it sits there plumply, not saying anything. but there's a contradictory chattiness in its silent round eyes. one day, it will shake out its plumpy wings and waddle across uob plaza.

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Kerouac love.

Bleeeeargh!

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!
i'm turning into a blimp :(
exam stress, thesis stress, job-hunting stress....
who am i kidding, i'm addressing none of the above haha.
it's because i've morphed into an eating and sleeping machine.
i haven't exercised in fuck long and i need both hands to count the number of meals i have a day. raaaaaaaawr!

You don't know Pain until you've studied Engineering

I totally ripped this list of a fb group called:
"Childbirth? ... You don't know Pain until you've studied Engineering"
I've only taken the ones that I personally felt haha... the list is way more extensive than this,

You know you're studying engineering when…

You come out of a lecture and feel that you wouldn’t mind being hit by a bus.

You are doing maths that the maths students don’t cover until the 2nd year.

You know the Greek and Arabic alphabets better than the language students.

A 4 hour day is an easy day.

A 9 hour day is still an easy day.

You are up at 3am in the morning trying to finish yet another piece of coursework asking yourself… why?

You feel bitter contempt towards anyone complaining of 2 lectures in a row.

Someone complains about ‘take away exams’ you feel a sudden urge to hospitalise them.

It’s the norm that you can’t fit an equation on 1 line of a page.

Handing in an assignment just means that’s there’s a new one to complete.

Time is measured in submission deadlines.

You find out you have 3x as many exams as practically everyone else.

You frequently ask yourself why the fuck are you doing this.

You are used to covering a ridiculously large span of subjects to the same standard as the respective degree students.

Breasts in a lecture theatre generally means there's a guy who's let himself go a bit.

You would assume a horse is a sphere to make the maths easier.

Your best friend is your calculator.

Things I've added to the list:
You've wondered if the alcohol in the lab could make the hours a little easier and have contemplated adding a squirt into your coffee.

You've been warned that the chemicals used in your experiments are cancerous/ you could potentially be exposed to radiation/ your equipment has the capacity to electrocute the motion out of you or slice your fingers in a heartbeat.

You start appreciating classmates for basic things like showering at least once a day.

You tend to know at least 70% of your classmates and most of their wardrobe because you see them almost every day (refer to lecture hours point above) and because each year, the class size dwindles and no one really has much fashion sense.

Freddie Mercury is Alive

On memory and existence.

Someone is really dead only when there remains not a single person with memories of them.
This thought emerged in the midst of the whimsical and the random that make a good Sunday afternoon conversation with a friend who faced a common loss.

So I say Freddie Mercury is alive! Caveat, I'm not claiming he literally exists in a corporeal form at this moment in time. What I mean is that his memory remains and we can vicariously (Youtube, music tapes, biographies) experience his genius. Eight generations from now, he may still be remembered. Say what you will, Bohemian Rhapsody is as much a masterpiece (and probably as overplayed) as Beethoven's symphony in C minor.

Lets put aside the likes of Freddy, Newton and Shakespeare, the thought applies to us mere mortals too. The day not a single person in the world remembers you, is the day you truly are dead. Dammit, I better record an album do some worth it shizz with my life. Do we crave immortality more than we think or somethink or nuthink at all...

We are earthworms.

I went to the garden of remembrance with Azad today. It was great catching up over avocado and chili chocolate ice-cream cones after. He hasn't been around hall much, and I know the unfortunate story behind that now :(

We were talking about the after life and covered the different religions and their conception of what happens after someone dies. The three religions of the book belief in after life, either a better existence, or a lesser one. The other major eastern religions (hinduism and buddhism notably) believe in transmigration of the soul. But, what if we just die?
Die, period. Cease to exist. Not be. Nothing after.


pawsome picture from chinese buddhism site. is it trippy or is it trippy?!

We humans regard ourselves as superior since we are thinking beings. We are not the strongest, fastest or most resilient organism and yet we survive. How? "By exploiting our surroundings" appears to be too simplistic, but it's the most pragmatic explanation. In a highly intrusive fashion, we change our surroundings to suit us.
Not just because we can, but perhaps because we must? This may be our evolutionary advantage after all. Okay...maybe "finding opportunity in our circumstances" is a nicer way of putting it. We being thinking beings has kept us in the mad game of existence.

I proposed the following theory to Azad.
We are no different from earth worms. We are mere matter and that is what we will continue to be after death... just a slightly more decomposed form of that matter... maybe fossilized after a bunch of centuries.
So what happens after you die? Are you that same being? Do you still even think? Maybe not, so do you cease to exist? Maybe so.
Perhaps there really is nothing after death, but being the species-centric race that we are, believing we are superior to earthworms, we cannot accept that. Hence the creation of heavens/ hells/ rebirths etc.

He said he could grasp that logically, but that is not how he feels about this issue. he intuitively feels there is a God and cannot believe that the play we put on daily has a futile end... to make room for new puppets on the stage of life.

In any case, my heart wants to agree with him, my brain doesn't know... after all, there may be an earthworm heaven.

McBunny

Since we live in different blocks now, phone conversation:

consumerism bunny. i heart her illustrations.

Val: Hallloouuu*yawn*uuuhmmm, just woke up.
Eva: Happy Easter!
Val: Errr... Thanks. Happy Easter to you too.
Eva: Lets go for service.
Val: ...
Eva: Breakfast service at McD's until noon on weekends

Val layans my lame jokes (and doesn't slow clap at them haha).

The deluxe breakfast is awesome but the only person who's had it with me is Shokers since everyone else kinda balks at its size.

Background noise reduction

on the thesis front, i am more dismally behind than ever. wrenched mesself from bed and away from most, evidently not all, distractions. i'm camping out at engin. the sun has been down for many hours but human traffic remains pretty high, quite a contrast to the deserted arts passages on my way here. peak project season in engin innit.

it was pretty noisy. and the sounds, a cacophony of random languages, punctuated by grunts of frustration and the occasional screech when programs failed and equations went awry. t'was getting to me. tried blasting some owl city through my earphones. didn't work. i was typing the lyrics instead of my report. mozart was either drowning my thoughts or not masking theirs sufficiently.

basic high school wave superposition theory came to mind. didn't know how accurate it would be. i searched for white noise and listened to it on loop. it sufficiently canceled out their sound hahaha. pink or brown noise might work better maybe? shall test this hypothesis at some point. geeky me (:

Coprolalia

when i grow up,
i will have a cat.
i will have some children.
my children will go to school.
in show & tell they'd say:
"i have a pussy named cunt."
i will be summoned to school
and shall tell the teacher
my cat's name is kant.

Kant, i hate your language. May your convoluted writings never be my formal readings, brilliant as your thoughts are.
The word "cunt" is actually a nice one. Never has there been so wonderfully grandiloquent (and i mean that in the best possible way) a title as "Queen Cunt of Fuck Mountain" . We'll let the cat decide if it should be gratified or insulted.

Ponens, tollens, pollen, tones?

My dearth of knowledge in theoretical philosophy is a pretty big setback, especially in the higher level philo modules. Phrases are flung about the class casually and I have to note it, usually in bahasa baku, if the terms are not in (plain) english.
The next task, deciphering my scrawly writing in order to google said word/phrases, is no simple one... not just because of the writing but due to the permutation and combination games played with the various alphabets in the search bar, trying to get the right word.
Anywho, a lot ponen-ing, tollen-ing, and a bunch of modus-es, have been going around the class for the past couple of weeks, time to get the terms down pat!

syllogism and ornithology
more penguin facts and humour here (:

4 simple argument forms seen in philosophy classes. Of the 4, the modus ponens and modus tollens arguments are most frequently used. The last two are intuitively graspable and with similar logical laws to the first two, so I didn't bother to expand the explanatory portion.

(1) Modus ponens:
Short for modus ponendo ponens,
Latin: the way that affirms by affirming.

(i) If P, then Q.

(ii) P.

Conclusion: Therefore, Q

The first premis is an "if-then" or conditional claim

P implies Q,

The second premise is that P, the antecedent of the conditional claim (i.e. the if part), is true.

Thus one could logically conclude that Q, the consequent of the conditional claim (i.e. the then bit) must be true too.

If the if is true, then the then is true.

(2) Modus tollens:
Short for modus tollendo tollens,
Latin: the way that denies by denying.

(i) If P, then Q.

(ii) ¬Q

Conclusion: Therefore, ¬P

Again, the first premis is an "if-then" or conditional claim
Once more, P implies Q,
The second premise is that Q, is false.
Thus one could logically conclude that P is false.
(for those not too familiar with the symbols: if P, then Q. Not Q. Therefore, not P)

By transposing the premise with material implication (i.e. the if-then statement), one can switch modus ponens to tollens and vice versa.
If the then is false, then the if is false.


(3) Modus ponendo tollens:
Latin: mode that by affirming, denies.

(i) Not both P and Q
(ii) P
Conclusion: Therefore, not Q


(4) Modus tollendo ponens:
Latin: mode by which denying, affirms.

(i) P or Q

(ii) Not P

Conclusion: Therefore, Q

I will chuck in a bunch of examples in another post. For now, back to thesis writing *raaaawr*

# 100

The natural number following 99 and preceding 101.

Ladies and gentlemen, lads and lasses, the po and ho faced, my hundredth post.
Being shamelessly irony-deficient, it shall be dedicated to a select few, random, awesome things about the roman numeral C (centum).
It is:

the divinely divine to Pythagoreans since it is the square of the divine decad,
10² = 100

sum of the 1st four cube numbers
1³ + 2³ + 3³ + 4³ = 1 + 8 + 27 + 64 = 100

sum of the 1st ten odd numbers
1 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 9 + 11 + 13 + 15 + 17 + 19 = 100

sum of the 1st nine prime numbers
2 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 = 100

a Leyland number (i.e. of the form x^y + y^x, with 1 < y ≤ x)
2⁶ + 6² = 100


Other random fact:
A Googol is 1 followed by 100 zeroes, 10¹⁰⁰ :) and this is where Google got it's name perchance?

and finally, the simple discovery that delighted my geeky 9 year old self,
using every number sequentially and only once on the calculator, with the + and - operators alone, you could get 100:
123 + 45 - 67 + 8 - 9 = 100

Date request phail

i am handsome. you're a ho.
dinner is for losers. lets go!

thesis progress

my room smells of:
coffee, cigarettes, cardamom.
the alliteration unintentional.
a motley mélange of scents not entirely my own.

Refer to Figure 1. for thesis progress

Figure 1: The caffeine curve.

status quo: translate this graph 7 hours forward.
i've entered the feeling worthless zone.
frankly speaking, the "excellent work habits" ended at approximately 6pm.