Cookies on the Bloglines blog: Links to the Deadly Squirrels and the Guy Who Bought a Car By Blogging. This is to free up space on this blog to talk about

Lindy Graduation

Note: The following key may help those uninitiated with Lindy Hop. Readers like goldfish can just skip the whole damn lot. Or read through and see whether I made any mistakes. ^_^!

Lindy 1, 2, 3 = classes of varying levels in the school, with Lindy 1 as the basic class and 3 the highest
triple step = one of the basic steps in Lindy. In music, it's like a ta--- ti- ta---
8 step = a series of steps based on 8 beats in the music
6 step = a series of steps based on 6 beats instead
Leads and Follows = men are the ones generally leading the dance, giving direction to the follow [the lady] by way of various hand and body gestures to indicate which moves or routines he would want to go into.

And for those interested, read more at the Jitterbugs Website.

One last turn, one last spin, with an extra flourish added at the end, and with that, Jules and I 'graduated' from Lindy 1. ^_^ It's been a great 8 weeks of lessons, ploughing through the basics, triple-stepping, and trying not to injure yourself and your classmates in the process. [as Jules did with his elbow to my ear once]

And after our teachers declared ourselves 'graduated', they opened the door to another crowd of much-experienced-looking dancers, and gleefully told us that this would be our dancing partners for our last dance in Lindy 1. Much to much aghast on the face of the male leads in our class, since they were now expected to lead dances for dancers much more experienced than they were.

I wonder whether that was responsible for the low transfer rate to Lindy 2. It seems that most of the dances with the Lindy 3 people were, well, not exactly smooth trippin'. The guy who danced with me led me into strange routines and counts that I had not done before [wait, what're you tryin' to do? Is this the 6 step? Spin? You mean now? Whoa!] and the Lindy 1 guys confessed that during the dance, their follows did mostly the opposite of what they wanted them to do. ^_^! "I wanted to lead her into a 6 step, and she went and did an 8 instead!"

So maybe after that harrowing [and very humbling] experience, I think most of them decided they needed more practice before attempting the faster music in Lindy 2...... ^_^! what a waste...

And thus, after that dance, only Jules and I and another lady were daring enough to try our hand at Lindy 2 next week. ^_^! Here's to next week, and hoping that I don't triplestep into anyone's feet.

I tell you, what's the point of going wireless when your family just insists on switching off the blardy router whenever they stop using the PC, thereby shutting down the entire network and making you have to go into the room anyway to switch it on? Why don't I just use the damn PC then anyway???

Days of Yesterday

I've just started reading Good Morning Yesterday, a blog started by Mr Lam Chun See, who writes about his memories of Singapore Past. One interesting thing about this blog, firstly, is the age of the writer. Mr Lam is about 55 and writes this blog because "it's good for our aging brains". Besides that, he has tons of memories about Singapore in the 60s and reading this from a first person perspective is probably more interesting than watching all those period dramas on national television. Like one of his observations on Bishan:

"I remember him telling me that the Pik San Teng [ ?????] cemetery ( located off Thomson Road and Braddell Road) was generally scarce and scanty with graves but beginning from the early 50s it began to get crowded. That Pik San Teng had now become the land for the living…the Bishan housing estate, and the mass rapid transit (underground subway) runs through it, geographically dissecting through the whole area.

Ironically enough, the ex-occupants of this area were underground. Now the MRT runs through it above ground, in fact, this is the first train station where it begins to surface above ground after all the city stations that are underground. This route winds its way round the north and western part of the island of Singapore (all above ground) till it returns to the city area in an almost anti-clockwise format. Again this is just an observation."

yea, an interesting observation nonetheless. :p

Been feeling gross these few days... I suspect I had a case of gastric flu or something, having hurriedly chomped down my food 2 nites ago while mildly gastricky. [I only suspect gastric because I haven't barfed anything, hence, not diarrhea or food poisoning]

After that, I was attacked by stomach gas half the night, and woke up the next morn still experiencing mild stomach cramps and a mild fever @_@ Lesson: Never chomp down your food, and never delay mealtimes in order to finish Spider Solitaire games.

The fever receded last night, though I'm still feeling slight cramps in my stomach here and there. *ugh* The only good thing that could come out of this is that I might lose some weight, seeing as I have no appetite to eat anything except porridge and soft foods. Yes, I have gone vegetarian, but only for this short while, because I have no appetite to eat anything resembling solid foods.

Not to mention the pounding headaches that came along with it.

This highly sucks.

On the bright side, I am feeling mildly better today so I'm hoping this thing is leaving my body for good anytime now. *fingers crossed* Now lemme fall back onto me bed......

I've 2 pretty lengthy posts up for today, being in a most writeworthy mood, so the following links may help you:

Movie Review: HP4 sucks
Pretty much sums up my whole opinion about the movie

Use Your Brain, Please!
A reflective piece on the dangers of blind obedience, and how we come so naturally towards it. Based on an incident in the States

Note: The 2 links would probably open up separate windows with only the blog posts in them, and not the entire blog. If you don't want this, you can always scroll down as usual.

THE MOVIE SUCKS!!!

note: Yenn n I never had that particular conversation, but the 'barbarian' part is one of my favourite comments to her... hahaha... Not the 'elitist' one though...

I may be a literary purist at heart, but I think HP4 really bombed on this one.

Ok, imagine you take a HP4 book.

Now open the pages at random, and cut out chunks of text. If you don't have a pair of scissors, just tear them out. [but NO F**KING WAY you do this to MY COPY!!!!!]

Once you're done, read through what you have left, and write a new HP story based on the remnants of the book.

And THAT in my opinion is what the HP4 movie turned out like. ^_^!

Whole portions in the start of the film, which were intended to place setting and orientation, ALL GONE.

Other areas, integral to character development and depth, CHUCKED OUT.

I know that this is a common thing to happen to book-movie adaptations, and yes, it happened to HP1, 2 and 3 and LOTR and a whole lot of other books as well, but the difference is that those turned out good. While I did not particularly like the first 3 movies, I did feel that they remained more or less true to the spirit of the book, and the directors did a rather good adaptation.

THIS WAS UTTER RUBBISH. AND IT'S ABT AN HOUR LONGER SOMEMORE. Whole blardy thing should've just gotten expelliarmus-ed into the nearest dustbin.

*spoiler ahead*

Like for example, in the opening scene after the dream with Voldemort in it, Harry is immediately waking up in Ron's room in the Burrow, while Hermione is nagging them to quickly get a move on.

A move on where? What's he doing there? Where are they going?

Then the next scene, the whole family is walking up a grassy hill.

Where are they going? Why are they there?

That's why I feel the opening scene is so cut-up. Because a lot of info that was supposed to establish orientation was simply NOT THERE. And if I had not read the book beforehand, I might've been left wondering what the hell was going on.

Also the ending: Why did Harry's wand have that effect when Voldemort cast the Avada curse on him? Why didn't Harry die [again]? Again, a lot of vital plot information, LOST.

*fuming in a fit of righteous indignation*

The part that the movie is strongest in is in its portrayal of the students as real students. Only when watching the movie and seeing the antics of Harry and the other Hogwarts students interacting on the school premises did the students become more real, more realistic. Because the book centers mainly around Harry and all the other life-threatening events that happen around him, you tend to forget that at heart, he is really a student. And there are other students around him. The movie serves to flesh out this part, and complements it very nicely, especially in the scene where they are studying in the Great Hall and whispering under their breath to one another, only to get whacked on the head by Snape. ^_^!

So this would have to be the best part of it. To be able to see the students being portrayed as students, who are there to study, make friends, and cheer their houses on.

Other than that, I seriously implore to all of you: READ THE BOOK. It's thick but it's a much more satisfying experience than the !@#$%^& movie.

Note: The original source for the following post is my bloglines blog, but I think it's something that we should all be seriously concerned about, so you guys should see it as well.

Use Your Brain, PLEASE!

A common complain in Singapore is that people here tend to be followers, that they just blindly do whatever the gahmen tells them to do, and don't think enough for themselves.

Well, guess what? Apparently this is not a trait that is exclusive to Singaporeans alone. According to the research of Stanley Milgram, a controversial social psychologist, this innate need to obey authority is within all of us, and can make us do the most unethical of actions.

For example, in an experiment he found that two-thirds of people will generally give electric shocks to protesting victims under the command of an authority. And under pressure from this authority, people will generally buckle down and do whatever that authority tells them to do, no matter how heinous the act.

This may sound fantastic, but this could explain the hoax that affected a number of fast food restaurants in America last year. [Read a more detailed report of the case here]

What happened was that a mysterious caller called fast food restaurants, identifying himself as a police officer, and instructed the managers there to strip search and perform other perverse sexual acts on their employees. And the shocking thing is that many managers did exactly what the caller asked them to do, despite lack of identification whatsoever.

One of the most horrifying cases concerned 18-year old Louise Ogborn, who had been abused by the assistant manager and her fiancee over a shocking 4 hour period, because a voice on the phone told them that it had been cleared by 'corporate'.

Obviously, the girl is now pretty much traumatized for life, and there are lawsuits flying swiftly from each party to the other, but one of the most shocking aspects of the case is that never once did the asst manager or the fiancee ever think that this could be wrong, and refuse to follow instructions.

In fact, the only way the girl got saved, was through a 58-year old janitor, who refused to play along with the caller's game, and hung up. And the moment he did, a spell seemed to break, and the asst manager finally realised the severity of her act.

What is utterly amazing to me is that the need to follow instructions from a higher authority is apparently so strong within us, that we are actually capable of following such orders. The asst manager must have had some high school education or another, and even she didn't even stop to think that this could be morally wrong. And it took a janitor to stop the act?

Just how unthinking, or unwilling to think are we as a human being?

And if one day, someone commanded you to do something that was wrong, would you have the courage to say, "No"?

Most people apparently would not. In the electric shock experiment mentioned above, only about one third of the experiment participants refused to do it. So most of us would pretty much do whatever a higher authority tells us to do.

I wonder whether this tendency could be stronger in Singapore. Because here, we are raised with the Confucian ethic to respect and obey thy parents, and this moral of filial piety is pretty much repeated in most religions here. And because we are raised to obey parents when we are children, we are also conditioned to obey our leaders when we are adults ourselves.

But most people forget another aspect of this philosophy as well. Which is that although you have the right to command obedience from your children/followers, Confucianism also demands that you MUST be a wise leader as well. In other words, you have to be deserving of the obedience that you demand. It doesn't advocate blind obedience.

I suppose, though, that it's convenient to forget this part when you want someone to do something for you.

So the next time you are commanded to do something you don't agree with, I hope you remember this case, and the case of Louise Ogborn.

Just because someone asks you to do something, doesn't mean it's right. Before you blindly go along and do it, ask yourself whether you'll be able to live with it.

ph43r 3 h4xx0r5

f1201V1 3 13L0gL11V35 13L0g:

1-14v3 j00 3v3r 1-134r1) 0f H4xx0r!???!?!?!?!?!?!? I+"S 4 f0rIVI 0f 0NL1n3 kl1ng0N 1V1aY13e 1)eVel0pe1) bY H4xx0r5 VV1-10 VV4n7e1) 4n071-1eR VV4Y 0f 74Lk11Vg 01VLi1V3.

fr01V1 13011Vg2 1-13r3"5 4 PSD C01V1p3717101V 71-147 15 l337!!!!!! 31Vj0Y!

2 m4k3 yr 0VV1V h4xx0r, u c41V 7rY 71-115 l11Vk.

[back to normal programming in a while......]

This probably just shows I spend too much time online, but well... it's a fun thing to learn. Be warned though, the dialectizer link may not necessarily translate everything you see on this page, cos some of the words I came up myself. You could call it a variation [or distortion] of l337. ^_^ Translate it for you? No way! That won't be fun anymore... XD

Kinda shows you how much variation there is within the English language nowadays, all entirely thanks to the advent of modern technology that has made it possible. Think about it, if we didn't have hackers trying to look cool, would we have h4xx0r? 1 71-111Vk 1V07. Most of the typed lingos all evolved through the use of modern keyboards.

And then with handphones becoming the next lifestyle staple of Singaporeans, you get another dialect coming up which is SMS lingo, and which is totally indecipherable to people who believe that phones are only for making phone calls.

Whch means dat if i typ in SMS den evrytin on dis pg wll look lke dis instd. e ideas 2 del vwels u don need n udder xtra stuff. n lke h4xx0r SMS's only a wrtten lingo.

So if you were read out everything I wrote in h4xx0r and SMS, it would seem like perfectly normal English. That's the beauty of the typed lingos. ^_^

Then you get the smileys, which evolved from the basic :) [i suppose you could call this the root smiley?] to about a thousand variations, like ;) :D >) >D XP and countless others. Smileys spice up any online conversation, and unlike the two, would be completely incomprehensible if you were to try to use it in spoken language. "Hi there, colon closing bracket!" ?????

I kinda like h4xx0r though, because of the way the meaning of the way the words are written out so plainly, and yet totally indecipherable at first glance. The only trouble is that if you're not used to it, like I am, you'll find one hell of a time trying to type in the whole thing. ^_^!

Oh and btw, the key to deciphering h4xx0r is simply that: Look for the words. They're written clear as day. >D

In other news...

For those who just luv to read about dirt on SG bloggers [or those who just luv drama] , here's 2 links you can read about SG's more notorious bloggers.

Top 5 SG Bloggers We All Hate by TuaPehKong.com
Survival of the Blog Goddesses by bryyin