life

apathetic, bored, cloyed, cool, disenchanted, disentranced, fed up, glutted, indifferent, jaded, knowing, laid back, lukewarm, mellow, mondaine, offhand, satiated, sick of, sophisticate, sophisticated, surfeited, unconcerned, unexcited, uninterested, unmoved, weary, world-weary, annoyed, blasé, blue*, bored, depressed, discontented, dismal, dissatisfied, down, gloomy, glum, jaded, sated, satiated, surfeited, tired, weary, absent, absent-minded, apathetic, blind, bored, careless, deaf, distracted, distrait, distraught, diverted, dreamy, faraway, flighty, giddy, heedless, in clouds, inadvertent, indifferent, inobservant, listless, lost*, musing, neglectful, oblivious, off guard, preoccupied, rapt, regardless, remiss, removed, scatterbrained*, thoughtless, unconscious, undiscerning, unheeding, unmindful, unnoticing, unobservant, unobserving, unperceiving, unthinking, unwatchful, vague, woolgathering, blah*, blasé, bored, cool*, dulled, exhausted, fagged out, fatigued, fed up*, had it*, laid back, mellow, satiated, sick of*, spent, surfeited, tired, tired-out*, wearied, weary, worn, worn-down, worn-out, absent, abstracted, apathetic, blah*, bored, careless, dormant, dreamy, drowsy, dull, easygoing, energyless, enervated, faint, heavy, heedless, impassive, inanimate, inattentive, indifferent, indolent, inert, insouciant, lackadaisical, lagging, laid back, languid, languishing, languorous, leaden, lethargic, lifeless, limp, lukewarm, lymphatic, mopish, neutral, passive, phlegmatic, slack, sleepy, slow, sluggish, stupid, supine, thoughtless, torpid, uninterested, vacant, aloof, apathetic, blase, bored, bored stiff*, casual, detached, disinterested, distant, hard-hearted*, impassive, incurious, indifferent, listless, remote, thick-skinned*, turned off*, unconcerned, uncurious, uninvolved, unresponsive, weary, withdrawn

booreee

Not that its anything new, but i was feeling terribly bored today, again. yes again.

So sent a few sms, try my luck to see any close friends free. Pauleon happened to be free, treated me to dinner, in the bored and frustrated life, i really appreciate friends and feel blessed.

yes, thank God, i do feel better, blessed, because of family and friends.

10 ways to cyberslack

Aug 29 (Reuters) - Employees all over the world spend up to
a fifth of their working day cyberslacking, or wasting time on
the Internet, studies show.
Here are 10 ways cyberslackers can pass the time at work.
(Warning: Your workplace may prohibit access to the sites)

1. Network:
Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) is popular with students
and business professionals. MySpace (http://www.myspace.com)
uses more graphics and video. Companies, bands and celebrities
often use the site to promote themselves.

2. Rant about work:
Rant about fellow employees on the Annoying Coworker site
(http://www.annoyingcoworker.net). Are customers getting you
down? Try Customers Suck (http://customerssuck.livejournal.com).

3. Going once...:
Buy or bid for rare things not usually found in shops. Score
vintage clothes, old music records or even that sword from the
Lord of the Rings movies you've been eyeing on Ebay
(http://www.ebay.com).

4. Judge beauty contests:
Rate people (http://www.hotornot.com), animals
(http://www.ratemypuppy.com) or rooms -- even college dorms
(http://ratemyspace.hgtv.com). Let puppies (http://puppywar.com)
and kittens (http://kittenwar.com) battle it out for cuteness.

5. Catch up on celebrity gossip:
It may be superficial, but it sure is fun. Read about
celebrities' latest exploits at The Superficial
(http://www.thesuperficial.com) or Oh No They Didn't
(http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com).

6. Write in a personal blog:
Post stories, rants and pictures on your own online journal.
Popular hosts include Blogger (http://www.blogger.com) and
Livejournal (http://www.livejournal.com). You can also link to
your friends' journals and exchange comments on separate posts.

7. Put a story behind the face:
Read what it's like to be a waiter
(http://www.waiterrant.net) and you may end up tipping better.
Or read about the life of a coffee barista
(http://baristabrat.blogspot.com), a New York City taxi driver
(http://newyorkhack.blogspot.com) or a London subway station
supervisor (http://lifeonthetube.blogspot.com).

8. All work and no play
Turn the sound down on your computer if people are around
and play online card, arcade or word games at Yahoo!
(http://games.yahoo.com) or MSN (http://games.msn.com).

9. Run your own sports team:
Sports fans can manage their own virtual team in a fantasy
league (http://fantasysports.yahoo.com).

10. I'm no slacker:
Keep your cyberslacking secret. If you are using Windows,
push the Windows button and M to minimise your programs. Or
toggle from the site where you are cyberslacking to Don's Boss
Page (http://www.donsbosspage.com), which displays a fake
spreadsheet to fool your supervisor.

Bush to invoke Vietnam in arguing against Iraq pullout

from here: Bush to invoke Vietnam in arguing against Iraq pullout

The president will also make the argument that withdrawing from Vietnam emboldened today's terrorists by compromising U.S. credibility, citing a quote from al Qaeda leader Osama bin ladin that the American people would rise against the Iraq war the same way they rose against the war in Vietnam, according to the excerpts.

"Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility, but the terrorists see things differently," Bush will say.

HUH......????????? EVERY DAY, there is people dying of car-bombs and chopper crashes, those westpoint kids go to the frontline and die after they graduate, just graduate; and that stopped terrorism? maybe someone can compile a statistics, what is the cost (deaths, financial, time, energy, tension, causing people to be homeless, governmentless etc) per terrorist caught.

everything's broken

I think i have a personal best record, i finished reading a regular sized book in 2 days, working days.

my laptop can be pronounced total death already.

my guitar string broke.

what else am i left to do at home? there's nothing to watch on tv, i read most of the books already, so i coveted this book from dunno who, it was lying there, heroes of the greek mythology, and read. now i know the who's who in greek mythology.

HF redemption

source: FT Alphaville

cause and causality

"A journalist is trained in methods to express himself rather than to plumb the depth of things - the selection process favors the most communicative, not necessarily the most knowledgeable."

(fooled by randomness, Nassim Taleb)

Some claims that medical journalists do not understand andything about medicine and biology, often making mistakes. I am often surprised by what some "professional" financial spokesman comments, and utterly could not stand those information providers that easily attributes certain events to the most obvious cause. Tomorrow morning, when you see the financial news headlines, you will see something similar to "market rallies..." or "market down...", quickly cover the following words in the sentence and make your own guess "due to....". Most of the time, a financially untrained reader will get it right. Just fill in the most current news, for now, its subprime. People attribute everything possible, to 'fill in the blanks' or to find a reason, where two things have no proven causal relationship.

Maybe you find a person you so called trust, that recommends you to something, say, a real-estate proposition, or more commonly for us, a financial-plan (what a gloss, just means sell insurance la - basically i sell you a insurance, whether life/term/investment-linked, then if you are younger, i put more money into equity, if you are older, i put more money into bonds/money-market. what risk-profile, nice-words that means little, do they truly understand the risk associated with bond/equity? ask your insurance agent next time you meet him/her what is the method one quantify the risk of a bond/equity). Have you ever, ever wondered whether these trusted acquaintances of yours really know what they are recommending? As much as i trust a sony salesman to sell me only sony products, i would trust an "expert" of one company to only recommend me the product of his own company, right?

The question is, do you even bother to do your own research to protect yourself? Well, most of us are trusting, unlike me, opinionated, cynical and critical, right?

We often claim that we are an agent of a greater governing value or cause, may it be what you believe in or may it be a greater divine purpose, purports to truth and depth; but most of the time, we are just forwarding our egoism in self governing ideas (everybody has their OWN RIGHT to express their own views/this is MY interpretation/this is MY life). Emotions are often used as an excuse for certain behavior, or i-am-mere-human claims. Time, equated to a factor directly contributing of healing and reconciliation. Priorities, a reason for things undone; incompetency, a resort of unwillingness.

How much a person claims that we have different profiles or personality and we can live or not live with uncertainty, all of us need a reason. Those that say they can live without a reason is pure bollocks. That is why a need for news, a need for gossip, love of tabloid, need of "sharing" and "unloading". Having this need for us to find a reason, makes us arrive at conclusion swiftly without consideration; makes us associate and lay down causal relationship to events that are possibly non-related.

Then there comes this thing called "belief" or "faith", and faith is not suppose to be blind. (or was it love?)

So if we cannot just put faith in things then how are we to live? No we can't because "faith" gives us certainty in life! With faith, we then can push anything we do not want to face or solve to, "ok i trust in a greater power or vision", or oh anything i cannot solve or lazy to put effort is, "by faith"; well or even more refined way is, to use "by faith" to move forward things we already planned in mind to achieve, blame it on the greater purpose, anyway the greater purpose won't bite you back right, might as well.


Merovingian: But do you? You think you do but you do not. You are here because you were sent here, you were told to come here and you obeyed. [Laughs] It is, of course, the way of all things. You see, there is only one constant, one universal, it is the only real truth: causality. Action. Reaction. Cause and effect.

Morpheus: Everything begins with choice.

Merovingian: No. Wrong. Choice is an illusion, created between those with power, and those without. Look there, at that woman. My God, just look at her. Affecting everyone around her, so obvious, so bourgeois, so boring. But wait... Watch - you see, I have sent her dessert, a very special dessert. I wrote it myself. It starts so simply, each line of the program creating a new effect, just like poetry. First, a rush... heat... her heart flutters. You can see it, Neo, yes? She does not understand why - is it the wine? No. What is it then, what is the reason? And soon it does not matter, soon the why and the reason are gone, and all that matters is the feeling itself. This is the nature of the universe. We struggle against it, we fight to deny it, but it is of course pretense, it is a lie. Beneath our poised appearance, the truth is we are completely out of control. Causality. There is no escape from it, we are forever slaves to it. Our only hope, our only peace is to understand it, to understand the "why". "Why" is what separates us from them, you from me. `Why' is the only real social power, without it you are powerless. And this is how you come to me, without `why,' without power. Another link in the chain. But fear not, since I have seen how good you are at following orders, I will tell you what to do next. Run back, and give the fortune teller this message: Her time is almost up. Now I have some real business to do, I will say adieu and goodbye.

hmm house items

Some chair where u can park your manhood.. hmmm

Cool knives.. i need a set of these..

modern

What do you think of modern Manhattan mothers? “They’re these overqualified women with nothing to do. They’re frustrated and miserable so they become controlling, neurotic, or just self-obsessed.” —Laura Linney

Not that man are any better, but i think the above describes woman in the city very well, especially big cities. not just mothers. ahem.

coffee

The coffee from the foodcourt opposite my office is actually quite nice.. most of the time that is.. nothing can be consistent, in this world..

some chinese local writer once said that life is like coffee.. with the richness and aroma, carries a little of bitterness.. well it wouldn't be nice if there is no bitterness.. coffee that's too sweet is boring and un-tasteful.

Yes, we are wretched. we don't want things that are all good or all sweet. don't want things that makes perfect sense.. common sense is the most uncommon feature around. fine and well, maybe that's what gives life a kick..

bored bored bored

Tears
Death

I'm bored til.

范晓萱 - 氧气(缺氧版)

沉入越来越深的海底
我开始想念你
我好孤寂
跌进越来越冷的爱里
我快不能呼吸
我想要你
人活著赖著一口氧气
氧气是你

如果你爱我
你会来找我
你会知道我
快不能活
如果你爱我
你会来救我
空气很稀薄
因为寂寞

跌进越来越冷的爱里
我快不能呼吸
我想要你
人活著赖著一口氧气
氧气是你

To live like you were dyin' - Tim Mcgraw

He said I was in my early forties, with a lot of life before me
And one moment came that stopped me on a dime
I spent most of the next days, looking at the x-rays
Talking bout' the options and talking bout' sweet times.

I asked him when it sank in, that this might really be the real end
How's it hit 'cha when you get that kind of news?
Man what did ya do?He said

I went skydiving
I went rocky mountain climbing
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chew
And I loved deeper And I spoke sweeter
And I gave forgiveness I'd been denyin'

And he said some day I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dyin'

He said I was finally the husband, that most the time I wasn't
And I became a friend, a friend would like to have
And all of a sudden goin' fishin, wasn't such an imposition
And I went three times that year I lost my dad

Well I finally read the good book, and I took a good long hard look
At what I'd do if I could do it all again
And then

I went skydiving
I went rocky mountain climbing
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chew
And I loved deeper And I spoke sweeter
And I gave forgiveness I'd been denyin'

And he said some day I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dyin'

Like tomorrow was a gift
And ya got eternity to think about what to do with it
What could you do with it
What did I do with it
What would I do with it

things that makes us Malaysian/things that bring Malaysians together

I read this in today's STAR, N17, 50 things Malaysian:

• Food - 1. nasi lemak, 2. nasi kandar, 3. roti canai, 4. teh tarik, 5. kajang Satay, 6. ramly burger, 7. char koay teow, 8. ABC(air batu campur), 9. rojak, 10. yee sang
• Expressions - 11. lah, 12. maachan, 13. brudder, 14. ta pau, 15. cin-cai, 16. aiyo, 17. (my favourite, most of the time used sacarstically) malaysia boleh
• .......the rest lazy to type.. haha..

For those singaporean readers out there, roti canai is like roti parta but NOT i repeat, NOT equivalent, cos roti canai much nicer. hahaha.. ABC is like ice-kacang la, but of course, not equal, for the same reasons. Some food are also more equal.

things you can do when you balik kampung in Ipoh

1. EAT the pinnacle of good Malaysian hawker food. laksa, beef noodle, cow-stomach, white coffee, etc etc etc
2. SLEEP sleep in Ipoh is much more peaceful than in Singapore, for me. Such strange sense of security and peace when i sleep in my own room
3. CHANNEL SURFING endlessly. Astro, and i have only patience to watch every channel for abour 5 mins average
4. WATCH MOVIES RM5 for Wednesdays, and RM8-10 for weekends. Its the same TGV cinemas that you get in Singapore mind you
5. PLAY WITH COUSIN'S KIDS many many of them. all age ranges. My favourite pair is my cousin sister's 2 daughters. so cute.
6. VISIT MY FAVOURITE 3RD AUNTIE my mum's closest sister. auntie my family is very close to.
7. READ MAGAZINES many many magazines selling at low prices (since i earn Sing $$, God bless MAS). economist sells cheaper, some funny hongkong art/fashion magazines, and KLUE. BTW i read this in KLUE: How to make use of Vodka Beyond Drinking: 1. stretching the life of razorblades - after shaving, let the blades soak completely into cup of vodka, will disinfect the blade and prevent rusting. 2. treating dandruff - mix one cup vodka with two teaspoon crushed rosemary. let it sit for two days, then strain the mixture out. massage it into your scalp (hmm.. not so sure about this). 3. keep cut flowers fresh - add few drops of vodka to vase water with 1 tsp. sugar minimises the growth of bacteria, which cause flowers to rot.
8. BLOG duh

True

The mountains and the seas
The lark and the gulls
The draping leaves and howling wind
The gathering sads, pouring rain

Its all for you

The sea and the penguins
The sigh and the song
The flake of a snow
Its all for you

To sing and to dance
To run and to laugh
To safe and to salvation
Its all for you

To jinggle and to pray
To cry I may say
To breathe without restrain
Its all for you

True freedom is this
that you will live true indeed

down with M

two of the largest PC makers in the world, Lenovo, and Dell is going to use Linux as their operating system for certain PC models they pushing out.

"The PC maker, at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo beginning Aug. 14 , will announce a plan to pre-load Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 on one of its ThinkPad notebooks, sources familiar with the two company's plans said.

Lenovo, whose ThinkPads have long been a favorite of Linux users, will become the first PC manufacturer in recent history to allow individual customers to buy one of its notebooks, a ThinkPad T60p mobile workstation model, with the operating system pre-installed, the sources said. " (quoted)

Its high time. Microsoft does not deserve the kind of market share. so much cash in the company only means that private equity should raid it, squeeze it dry. Let the open source rise up. Let the free people rise up.

Bat-sy's Batpod

yea, everybody wants a piece of apple rite, everything pod, now BATpod, gosh..

The businessweek's writer has a verdict, which i thought was quite funny : Seriously cool. But where's Robin going to sit?

well, guess he just has to run along, ain't it?

bellwether

Wether is a ram, usually to be the leader of the sheep herd, with a bell around its neck. Therefore, bellwether.

Nowadays, this tem is synonymous with trendsetters, or leaders of a pack. Something or someone that influence the industry or similar followings.

More on sheeping, ram is usually a term for a intact male of a sheep, meaning, reproduce-able. While a wether is usually castrated. Proud as it may be, being the leader of the pack, it has.. erm.. no balls.

So why the need? apparently for taming purposes. Those lifestocks that are castrated grows bigger and fatter (chicken, pig etc), easier to be tamed for haulage and plouging (for the case of horses and bulls).

"
In so far as the shepherd views the castrated male leader as a member of the flock, it belongs to the category of the dominated group. But being castrated, he is alienated from being an essential element of the flock's reproductive process. From the point of view of the culture or learnt behaviour of the sheep, the flock leader is an agent of the dominator. Tani's thesis is that the bellwether is a mediator between the dominating shepherd and the dominated flock. If most of the flock consists of ewes, the wether takes the role of the guardian of the female group.
Any technique of herd control can be regarded as a pastoralist people's cultural expression of how they look upon and treat their domestic animals, and, in the past, their slaves. From this premise Tani goes on to propose that the position of the eunuch in ancient human societies corresponded to that of the castrated male flock-leader. The eunuch was a mediator between the king, (the dominator) and his harem, (the dominated). "

interesting piece i read about domestication of animals. So, the bellwether is made to be a subdued leader of the shepherd, kinda like a middle-manager. Mediator, hmm.. you go think about the anology yourself.

models

There is an apocryphal story about a bar in New York, a hangout for models. It is about a cruel joke played on a young, 20-something quant* employed in an investment bank. The traders suspected that the geeky young man had never had a date. They took him to the bar and told him that it was frequented by his type of woman - modellers**. The young man was dubious, sensing that he was being set up, but he desperately wanted to bond with the traders to reduce the constant ragging that he endured.

They took their places at the bar and fuelled themselves to an appropriate level of intoxication. 'You see that girl,' a trader nudged the quant. The quant focused his glasses on a tall woman sitting at a table. 'She's giving you the eye,' the trader continued. 'Go over,' he commanded. 'Talk to her.'

The quant sensed danger; this was not smart. The other traders now joined in, urging him to make a move. Left without choice, he pushed back his chair and began to walk in the general direction of the woman. The traders were taking bets on the result of the encounter: the betting favored the quant being slapped and told to 'F*&$ off'.

The quant made his way to the table. 'Can i join you?' he asked. The woman scrutinized her suitor. He did not look like a sexual deviant. She nodded.

The quant set down, thinking of a way to start a conversation. He remember they were modellers. 'I'm working on a new model that adapts the Black-Scholes framework to incorporate mean reversion in commodities,' he blurted out. The woman looked at him strangely. 'You know,' she drawled. 'I did my PhD on a similar problem. That's before i realized that there's more money in strutting up and down catwalks in your underwear.' She smiled at the young man. 'Where are you from?' The quant smiled back broadly. Models*** are sometimes full of surprises.

The worlds of derivatives and models frequently collide..

(adapted from Traders, Guns & money - Satyajit Das, 2006; good entry level book to know about derivatives beyond the classroom.)

*quant, root word "quantitative". name for person who's highly educated in quantitative methods or mathematics, hired by trading desks to create mathematical models. Usually PhDs in finance or physics or any other quantitative science. Often known as rocket scientists, some of them, incidentally, really are rocket scientists before dabbling in the world of finance
**people who create mathematical models
***pun. fashion models, not mathematical models in the sentence's first intentions. But both intended

Come and listen

Come and listen, come to the water's edge, all you who know and fear the Lord.

Come and listen, come to the water's edge all you who are thirsty, come.

Let me tell you what He has done for me.

Let me tell you what He has done for me,He has done for you,He has done for us.

Come and listen,come and listen to what He's done.

Come and listen,come and listen to what He's done.

Praise our God for He is good.

Praise our God for He is good.

Praise our God for He is good.

Praise our God for He is good.

He has done for me,He has done for you,He has done for us.

Come and listen,come and listen to what He's done.

Come and listen,come and listen to what He's done.

heart beating

Saw this on friend's msn sub-nick:

"
she turns and says "are you alright?" I said "I must be fine cause my heart's still beating"

"

yes. my heart's still beating.

Whale

A teacher was telling a little girl that it is impossible for a whale to swallow a human being because although it is a large mammal, it has a very small throat. But the little girl insisted that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.

The teacher repeated his point only to be refused by the little girl, saying, "I will ask Jonah when i go to heaven,"

The teacher, frustrated, asked ,"what if Jonah went to hell?"

The little girl replied, "you will ask him, then."

stupidity

“Stupidity - Quitters never win, winners never quit, but those who never win AND never win are idiots.”

“Procrastination: Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now”

-Larry Kersten

there is no stupid lie, only stupid people
there is no stupid life, only stupid people
there is no stupid questions, only stupid pple
there is no stupid reply, only stupid pple

there is no stupid people, but only stupid people