Why my laptop can't connect

"I've been trying to connect my laptop with the LAN point in my room, but it doesn't seem to work. It doesn't even sense the LAN connection"

"Hm, I see... Lemme see now......" [does some clicking here and there] "Ah, I see the problem."

"What?"

"You've never tried to use this LAN point, have you?"

"No, why?"

"Because this isn't a real LAN port."

"What??"

"It's just a fake LAN port. A dummy port. It doesn't work. You need to get a local LAN network card to connect."

[feeling stupid and muttering some choice expletives under her breath, she trudges her way through the North and South spines to the computer shop at the other end of campus.]

"Hi, do you sell local LAN network cards for laptops?"

"Er, we're out of stock for those..." short, bespectacled guy cringes nervously around me. And I was just asking cordially. Is my teacher aura so strong already?

"Ok, are you gonna have new stock soon?"

"Er, not really..... " shuffles nervously "Nowadays, all the laptops come with inbuilt ones......" shuffle shuffle.

"..............................." Except for my almost-antique one anyway....................

It's all about the nose

And indeed the nose, one of the most underappreciated of our senses, is the theme of this blog entry.

One reason is because i'm currently in midst of possible flu. I'm not so much sick, as irritated, because my nose keeps running the 2.4 without me, and I have to have a box of tissue on hand just in case something crosses the finish line.

Man this sucks.

And maybe one reason why is because of the stink emanating from some of the guys' rooms below us.

Imagine perspiration, stale clothing, decaying food and other olfactory horrors rolled up into one double room. I truly dunno how some of these guys live with that kind of stench. I know they trained to live in the jungle for weeks on end with no clean underwear, but f'godssake! There are other clean, hygiene-loving people living in this block as well!

One horror in particular is this one room which is next to the kitchen.

One time, long ago, I was walking past their room to get to my room, and the door was open at the time.

At first, I was walking in clean, fresh air. Suddenly, when I walked past their open doorway, the stale stench hit me.

BLEAH!!!!! Never in all my life I have seen/smelt a room that was so STINK! And since their door was open, I could clearly see the piles of clothing strewn all over the floor and bed that was clearly contributing to the smell! What a blardy cesspit!

[thank goodness I didn't see other unmentionables.......]

So I hurriedly walked past, and lo and behold, the minute I walked past their doorway, the clean air returned to my nose. So apparently the smell was so bad it was almost creating its own force field around the room.

NVM. I went back and ranted to Yenn about that room.

A week later, Yenn and her sister walked past that same corridor, to curiously peek [and smell] that same room. And then they came into the room, and asked me whether it was the one that was 2 doors down from the kitchen.

"Huh? No, it was the one right beside the kitchen."

"Huh?? The one we smelt was 2 doors down from the kitchen!"

So now the Dark Force is even spreading to other rooms........ The power is strong, this one........

[Can I stress here that none of us ever purposely walked near the rooms, or even tried to enter them? All these were smelt just by walking along the corridors like ordinary folk. These people should be fined for air pollution or something...]

Now just yesterday, I went down to the kitchen in the morning to fill up the hot water flask for breakfast.

Just as I was approaching the kitchen, [and half contemplating whether I should go near their rooms, just to see/smell whether the stink was just as bad] THE SMELL HIT ME.

This time I wasn't even near their rooms. Heck, I wasn't even AT the kitchen. I was just APPROACHING the kitchen. AND THE STINK WAS ALREADY THERE.

So the force field had now extended its boundaries BEYOND their room. Still, not so bad. You know what was the best part?

THEIR BLARDY DOOR WAS CLOSED SHUT. THE SMELL WAS EXTENDING BEYOND THEIR ROOM, EVEN WITH THE DOOR SHUT. How da af do some human beings even LIVE in such conditions you tell me??????

This one really took the cake. So maybe that's the reason for my runny nose. My nose has automatically gone into detox mode with all the olfactory tortures I've been subjecting it to, and now it's frantically washing itself out to purge it of all the disgusting stuff that's been lodged in it.

Next time I approach THAT room, or even the kitchen for that matter, I'm going armed with air fresheners...............

Save the starving children

Yenn and I are eating in the Jurong Point food court when she notices me chucking unwanted egg yolk and cucumbers into the soup that came with the chicken rice.

"You're not eating that?"

"Nope." I grimace. I've always found chicken rice soup too bland for my taste.

And then comes the highly cliched line: "Think of all the starving children in Africa."

Pause. "Would me not eating the food help the starving children?"

Yenn looks up from her food, wondering what crap I'm about to come up with.

"If I finish the food, does it help the starving children in Africa? No! In fact, you're taking away much-needed food from them!"

Yenn stares.

"And if I didn't finish it, would it help them? No! Because there's no way for this bowl of cucumber egg yolk soup to reach any starving children in time for them to save them!"

Yenn stares.

"And even if there was a way to fly this bowl of soup over there, would it reach the starving children before it spoiled? No!"

"And even if there was a way to bring this bowl of soup over there before it spoiled, and in such a way that it would not spill a single drop of soup, would it help? No! Because this bowl of soup would only feed one child! And even then, this serving would not be enough to save him from starvation!"

"And even if miraculously, it did manage to save him from starvation, you'll only be feeding him for one day! There's no guarantee there'll be another bowl of soup for him, and there's no guarantee that this one bowl of soup will save his economic situation and find him a job so that he can earn more money to buy more bowls of soup for his family!"

"So that line about the starving children just carries no balls, because whether or not I drink this bowl of soup, it's not gonna do anything about the famine situation in Africa!"

Yen: "........................................................."

This is how you know we've been working too hard............

I. MUST. WATCH. THIS. MOVIE.

Click to see the movie trailer!

Is it a big deal?

In regards to Slayer's comments about tristefemme........ [krystal: this link shld work]

Hmmmm.....

It wasn't really the abortion part that struck me as much, I guess, as her description of the relationship between her ex and herself. Her ex apparently had been showing her a false front all along, and all those overtures of care and concern was not because he truly cared, but because he thought that was what a boyfriend should do.

And what a selfish pig he turned out to be in the end. Claiming how he hurt her and his family, when really it was HER side who would always suffer from the stigma. PIG! [getting all feminist now]

Slayer's comment:
"I really think she's old enough to make her own decisions...Abortion isn't a form of contraception but it IS an option..."

I spoke to Slayer a bit more to get a clearer view on her comment..... Her view was that the girl was mature enough to know what she had to do, and old enough to get an abortion if she wanted to [she didn't], so she didn't like the fact that she seemed to be victimizing herself in the blog. To her, it's not quite the big deal the girl makes it out to be in her blog.

These are my views:

1. As to her age, I don't really know whether the fact that she's 26 makes her more mature and more able to handle her pregnancy. After all, we do know some over 20s who act as if they should be in diapers....... but I digress.

To me, whether you're 16 or 26, an unwanted pregnancy can hit pretty hard. Mental trauma aside, you'd have to care for the child through the term, and live with the stigma throughout. Not to mention the hurt and disappointment on the parents as well.

True enough, being older may mean that she has more options at hand, than if she were underage, but that doesn't necessarily lessen the stress.

2. To the victimizing part... Hey, everyone with a blog rants once in a while. :p If you were to read selective entries from my blog, [esp. those regarding one block of an insect] you could think I was a neurotic psycho hair-pulling female who just loved to cry to the whole world about her boyfriend. [which I'm not, ok??]

And sometimes, the act of just typing it out, or telling someone about it is therapeutic in itself, and helps one to deal with the situation better. She may seem "victimizing", but everyone needs a shoulder [or a laptop] once in a while. Let her have that break.

Gimme more big talk

It's good that I never went into marketing, because I decided that I'm really tired of small talk.

"How are you?" "How's class?" "How's your projects?" "That GESL thing, sucks huh?"

Good god! I never really realised how tiring it was to keep thinking up common topics between a person I hardly know, and myself. What IS there to talk about?? The ramifications of US trade policy in the Saudi region? [and me hardly understanding the statement I just typed] Or the different graphic styles in each Sandman volume and how it affects the storyline in question? Or the Christian connotations in Angel Sanctuary?

No, it's "how are your assignments?" most of the time. Bleah.

And yet, as a form of social obligation, you have to at least make some kind of pathetic attempt, even if it's just "Hi." That way you are still "part of the community" [makes the little aprostrophe signs with her two fingers] and people still "like you" [makes the little signs again], otherwise you are "out of it" [frantically making little signs again]

What's wrong with being out of it? Sometimes, I feel it's easier on me. I come for class, I listen, I do my work, and I leave. No need to worry about what people think of me. No one to attempt to talk petty topics with other people, and no need to hear other people's sanitized comments in return.

And not only that, but at least I know that if other people come to talk to me, it's because they are genuinely interested in doing so, and not because they don't want to appear dao. I know there are people like that, but at the same time, there are people also who just talk to you on the surface, so that they can absolve themselves of the responsibility. "Well, I tried talking to her, but we didn't really click, so like that lor." That way, it sounds as if they tried, and the reason why we didn't click it off as bosom lifelong friends is entirely due to me.

It's mainly because of the 2nd group of people that I feel like branding myself the local pariah.

But yet, at the same time, you have to do group/pair work, and you have to work with others. So one has to have some kind of basic socializing. *haiz*

Being human stinks, sometimes.

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