Old Personal: June 2003 Archives

I just spent about 50 pnds on CDs :). God damn that record industry, saying we don't buy CDs anymore. Here's what I bought:

Pixies - Doolittle
Breeders - title TK
REM - Murmur
Soundgarden - Louder than Love
Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger
The Smiths - Strangeways, Here We Come
The Smiths - The World Won't Listen

Basically delving a bit deeper in to the classics and getting the new Breeders CD, which, from what I've heard so far, is superb. The rest are just things I'm embarassed I don't have more of, especially the Pixies. Bought all of it from this place in York called Track Records, near the Burger King.

Seems like a pretty good place for alternative stuff, ie not the pop-alt stuff that they sell at chain stores. And they had most of the stuff I bought at about 5.99, which is nice.

I'm sure I could get this stuff on Amazon from resellers and stuff for that price, but it's just nice buying a whole bunch of CD's from an independant store. And it's nice sifting through bargain shelves and finding exactly what you should be buying/what you wanted to buy.

I suppose my taste is a bit dated by now, which is why what I bought was in the bargain section anyway...

Oh, and the TV reception depends on the weather apparently, so whatever. Shall now go e-mail Cari to ask her if she wants a slightly damaged TV cabinet.

Have moved into Ingram H, where I'll be until graduation. Depressingly, it's that much of a nicer room than my old one - the TV reception is absolutely flawless and sharp after the intense fuzziness I've become accustomed to.

Emen will be over in a minute, as will the curry (again). Everyone seems to be pretty damn sick of moving and carrying all this crap all over the fuck-shop. I know Delwyn and Dion are pretty grumpy having to keep going back and forth to Manchester.

But well, will be leaving for Holland on Tuesday, which is actually when my results come out, but *what-ever*. I've pretty much got the route to Stansted, we'll have to pre-book the parking so it's cheaper, and we've got accomodation sussed for both Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

I think the plan is that we just spend the last day farting around Eindhoven, but not actually staying there. Apparently it's that boring that hostels aren't actually a priority.

I've found "What Katy Read", so I'll see what Su-lin says, whether she wants me to try and get the money back or whether she wants a last reminder of her time in York, a souvenir if you will. Like I planned to do with the Golding books in the RJC library - which no one ever took out :P.

I'm feeling pretty shitty now after a night of packing, and I've just been looking at websites about speeding in the UK. The good news is that if indeed I got snapped, then all Dion has to do is state that he was not the driver, and that it was me driving. I just wonder what they'll do when the discover I'm not a UK citizen...

I'll probably ask Dion to give my Singapore address and we'll just see what happens. But the speeding laws really do look fucking draconian. Fine there were speed camera signs all over the place, but... I just suspect that because I was going to overtake someone, that my speed might well have been rather high, which would mean a larger fine/more points. Not that it really matters about the points, since I won't be driving in the UK anytime soon. Bastards.

Maybe Louis should stay away from manual cars.

Aside from the fact that I left the handbrake on while driving for a considerable amount of time (sorry Dion), I was sweating like crazy for most of the time (it was hot, but not that hot). I can't remember driving that badly since I first started driving. Had problems moving off, stalled a couple of times, became far too fond of stepping on the clutch... I should be shot.

But yes Karen now has a place to store all her crap, one that she will gladly pay for - won't you Karen? The fact that she'll be getting most of my crap thoughtfully leftover presents should be a lovely consolation.

Just been through a Firefly marathon. I really cannot praise the series enough. It's just the way it stands up to multiple viewing that impresses me to no end. Of course certain portions are a bit affected, but the rest that isn't genuinely moving is just gorram funny. I have no doubt that it's the feelings of loss that accompany it's less than illustrious history that allows it that particular poignancy, but that is special in itself, and worthy of comment. If only the movies are this good. Movies. Plural.

Delwyn and Michel are nice company, and so is Chateau Online. Delwyn I have no doubt I will see again, but thinking of Michel strikes me as a particular kind of redemption. Michel's nice. And above all nice to me, which is nice.

Because, as Firefly is testament to, that sentimentalism is never quite complete without the uproariously hilarious, have a look at this, and wonder. We wish we all had Cheezy Bao.

Saw Claire today, and must remember to go and meet her again at 10.15 on Friday in Vanbrugh. Claire, as always, is nice, and she wasn't just ignoring me, since she only finished her stuff 2 weeks ago and is still recovering. I saw her in Vanbrugh where I was going to have a sandwich.

I must endeavour to promote my site to her, since she's not one who's likely to be online perpetually with messenger, and the forums might be a nice spontaneous place for her to come once in a while.

And of course since she wants to know all about me, she can come and read this lovely blog. I shall endeavour to send her an e-mail (which. like all my e-mails now, contain a subtly placed link to this site) with my internal no. so she can perhaps remind me of our meeting so I won't forget.

Hope Dion found his car radio place, if not he's a bit cock :D. Should have mentioned to him that slot loading players are probably the way to go rather than disc changers, but I suppose they're cheaper anyway, so he shouldn't go wrong there. Hope my boxes are able to get delivered, Parcelforce should be smart enough to put it with the porter if no one answers the door.

Otherwise when I'm not packing I might go and practise driving manual again, which shouldn't be too bad of a stretch. Still haven't remembered to go buy cucumber. Might try and drive to somewhere with cucumbers then.

Andrew's been a bit tardy with his e-mailing me the number of the storage company, but I suppose he's having exams. I might give him a call tomorrow or something.

Michel's coming over for dinner, shall try and message him to bring me a copy of the unaired firefly episodes.

I'm returning to being impressed with Chateau Online, since the mixed case they sent Delwyn looks pretty good. Granted we probably drank the nicest bottle of the lot, but it was rather superlatively pleasant, and very smooth.

Have decided that even though this is a long entry, because there is no central thread or link to the various portions of it, that using the extended entry function would not be a good idea. To use the extended entry function, the entry body would really be like a kind of teaser to the rest - Showtalkers does that a lot - and the best bits of the entry (referred to in the title) should be in the extended portion. In this case, since it's rather meandering, that wouldn't make much sense - though if the content spread across a no. of categories, I'd probably split up the entry, as I have done.

I'm feeling sombre. That fucking bitch Yu-wen probably has something to do with it. :P If she ever reads this, ah well, who cares. Louis likes to burn bridges, not that there was much of a bridge to burn anyway.

I know I'm an ass in so many ways, well, in a lot of ways, but at least I know that I always try to make thing better between myself and other people. The martyrdom involved no doubt is part of the appeal, but then I always feel very earnest doing it. Is that too cryptic? Sucks huh?

I mean, fine, you fuck things up and you know it, boo hoo. But trying to be nice and being ignored? Yahtzee...

Delwyn was right, the new guys this year lack drama. But I suppose the rest of us make up for it.

Feeling a swell of sympathy for Spong right now, knowing that Kuan Ming probably fucked him over in Cambridge. That's not right. I'm crying me a river right now.

Dion posted in my forum, which is nice of him, you can find his sparkling witticisms here. You can also see how he voted in my ongoing poll.

Oh, apparently the random fetching women in the Wimbledon stands were not so much random or girlfriends but convenient representatives of the BBC, who are now pottering about in filler between matches. Hanging out and cozying up to more dishy tennis men.

I've just cleaned out the rice-cookers in the kitchen. It would be wrong to say things were alive in them, more that things had evolved and civilisations crumbled. Not that I'm one to talk.

Am planning a dinner for the psycho students who have finished their first exam today, so I can make use of the Emperor chicken spices I have. Chicken rice is planned for Wednesday. Wonder if there'll be enough food for everyone. Emen's in a mood so he's not joining us for what ostensibly would have been his brithday dinner.

Hopefully celery and oyster mushrooms will be enough. If not I could just make the steamed egg. I've got to remember to buy cucumbers for wednesday.

Wimbledon's on, though I can't seem to find out when Henin is playing. It's all men's tennis now, with gratuitious shots of pretty women in the audience (I assume the girlfriends of the dishy male players). Bored now.

It's so god-damn humid here right now, having just rained. It's been about an hour or more since I moved all my books and tapes out onto the landing (and into the bath). They will all be packed by tuesday night after I get all my lovely boxes from seven seas (my moving company).

I'm hoping to fit everything into about 3 boxes, since I really don't have a lot of clothes that I want to keep. The weight limit of 30kg per box might be an issue, but I'll try and spread the weight out.

Thinking about looking for a job is fucking depressing. I wonder where the hell I'm gonna get a suit.

Hopefully I can get them to ship my stuff later so I don't have to hold on to the stuff here before shipping it. All my crap is going to storage. Karen had better know what Paypal is.

Yup. Bought a car. Which I could have done. But no. No car for me. I'm so getting a car in Chicago.

He got a pretty nice Vauxhall, about 9 years old, but runs pretty well. A bit rough round the edges and the non-facade externals are showing a bit of wear, but otherwise quite nice. Seems to purr along quite admirably. But not exactly the ideal road trip car - need to get air conditioning and a slightly less rickety car for that. And Ryan Air is like 40pnds return, so... And they fly to Eindhoven :D.

I feel bad for being so snarky about Sulin's site. I've not been able to reach her to show her my 5 minutes of work on a new template she can use for her blog: here. Very rough work, I just changed the colour of an existing template to the first green colours I could find.

If Su-Lin comes to York she can get short tutorial in how to change colours in HTML code (well actually in the template CSS...). But yes, as Peishan pointed out I like things nice and clean none of this huge image background malarky.

I will now blog out of boredom. I'm surprised by how much I like "No Code", one of

The link above is to www.allmusic.com, which is a fantastic resource for quick overviews of artists and their albums - very canonical and very biased towards the popular and the mainstream, but a useful resource nonetheless. It's where I sent Peishan when she asked me about political activism in rap/popular music.

May I recommend to you the blog of the esteemable Sulin, to be found here. (Sulin, did you get my ICQ messages about your new template?)

I'm sure Sulin will be ever so cross, but I just have to speculate as to the nature of her blog's Title: Fitzie's Arms. I surmised that it was probably a rather ironic reference to Fitzie's distinct lack of arms, but Su-Lin assures me otherwise. The real reason for the name is somewhat more pedestrian :P.

Just at this moment Sulin's blog is having issues with templates. Or to be more exact, I'm having issues with her templates - Su-Lin, dear, background images fuck the hell up this wonderful thing called smooth scrolling and are the work of the devil and the bane of the internet (well them and spam, pop-ups, animated gifs, embedded sound files, flash, and any browser other than Opera).

Nice to listen to Rage Against the Machine again. Peishan was asking about political activism in rap, so obviously they came up. And as I suspected, the forum was a bit too much for Peishan to handle ;). Oh, and Su-Lin's comp is acting up, suspect it's her modem drivers - if Su-Lin's reading this, please just go to windowsupdate and download whatever new available drivers there are...

Site seems pretty much sewn up, in terms of formatting. Spent far too much time tweaking the layout of the style sheet... But yes the content will get there eventually. Teo seemed rather disappointed that my resume wasn't up.. :P

Oh yes, just wanted to comment that whoever's been downloading my Klip, hoorah for you, since you'll probably be reading this quite regularly. Good for you :D. At least I know Teo will be proficient enough to figure out how Klipfolio works...

Andrew's over with a couple of bottles of wine, but it's just a bit early at the moment. Xiao Ran's coming over for mahjong, so that should be a good time. Bumped in to her after seeing Clarissa going towards her and Michelle's place. Michelle's funny :D. Lots to say about being pampered upper middle class in this country that privileges ghetto cred - also has lots to say about the innumerable racial encounters she's had. Must be something about her demeanour. Her and Ve-Yin... *sigh*.

It's just past 3.30 at night right now. I didn't sleep the night before, thought I sort of made up for that last night already. I've had an excruciating day at my computer classes, so much so my eyes are vaguely swimming as I read myself typing this.

I suppose I'm being stubborn, as I tend to be, under certain circumstances, late at night, when I decide I'm not too fond of sleeping just yet - which is why I was awake to go and see Su-Lin the day before yesterday.

The visit with Su-Lin went well, she's handed in her stuff, I watched her photocopy and bind her thesis and hand it in. Apparently that bitch Alison (Alyson?) O'byrne is a TA at Leeds now. I gave her name the finger on the staff name list on Emen's behalf. Her kind (including Ulrika obviously) deserve nothing less than damnation.

The revival of Su-Lin's computer went well, she now has a reasonably up-to-date Operating System that wasn't installed 4 years ago. She's also made Opera her default browser the clever girl. If only all my evangelising went so well. Cross cable is a wonderful thing - as are PCMCIA network cards. I must remember to bring back whatever spare parts I can from HK's place to Singapore.

The Category system for the site is pretty useful, if a bit paranoid making since I tend to be composing halfway and thing of something that's more applicable to another categoy and switch halfway to another post. But it's all good, as long as Peishan doensn't whine to me about reading too much computer stuff (I'm not letting it go - boo hoo; muahaha).

I'm a bit torn about whether I should go to Andrew's birthday party on Friday, since it would be an ideal time to go to Leeds and play bridge with Su-Lin. Again, we'll see. It's nice to know that Emen's going to Andrew's do though, so I'll know someone at least. Shouldn't I remember that I hate events like these?

By the time anyone reads this, probably Su-Lin will be done, but she's struggling hard away with her thesis right now, and I'm sure she could do with some positive thoughts flowing her way. And anyway it's just nice to be able to support the wonder that is Su-Lin.

Louis will be going to visit her when she's done, in about 3 or so hours. It should be a hoot, and we shall have a nice lunch and I shall come away with nice food and Su-lin will hopefully have a nice newly formatted computer.

Beginnings, supposedly, are alway hard, and this has been no exception. I've spent most of the past day setting stuff up. It's late. Or early. Certainly brings to mind the fact that this beginning is not one that is a Beginning - but then, so few instances are.

So if we are really to pretend that this is the start when we know it is not, then let us not bother with half-delusions - which is why this is the The First post. And as we all know, in the beginning, when things are just minted, we are to create rules, things to make things tidy and neat and organised.