I gotta stop all this nonsense of being too preoccupied that I keep coming back after 9pm on weekdays.

I should take Erick's advice and not attend a couple of lectures and not go to classes for a bit. And they should refund me money for classes I don't go to. Yeah. Serious. Every class I take is worth like... hmm... let's see I play a thousand dollars a week for 18 creds, so that makes it about 50 dollars per credit. But that doesn't work, I pay about a thousand dollars for 5 classes a week. Technically if I don't go to school for one week, they should refund me a thousand dollars. Yeah damn straight! That's what they should do, god damn bloodsuckers.

Hmm... by this logic, shouldn't Erick be a millionaire by now?

Anyway, I was heading to work this morning, at an ungodly hour of 9:30am, (c'mon, which college student is up by that hour?) and there was this preacher on the train. He was telling everyone that God is coming, and God is coming, and God is coming. I think to myself, that's great, that's nice. If he drops by NYC, I'll show him around. Take him to a couple of bars, take him to my favourite watering hole. That kind of stuff.

The NYU Graduate Students strike and picket line seems to be diminishing. After all the administration has came down hard, and given them the ultimatum of docking their pay and not rehiring them this spring if they don't stop by December 5th. I wonder what is actually going on, me being the uninformed student don't really know what's happening. And I suppose all opinions I form are effectively null and void.

Just like my life. It's basically null and void and I don't really want to carry on thinking right about now and let's see what crap I can type out.

I was telling Erick that I was at this bar, and there was this chick who gave me a drink. I asked her, "Hey, are you trying to get me drunk?" and to which, she said, "Yes" Now usually that would be a great thing and all... c'mon, a chick trying to get me drunk... until somehow in the midst of swimming in the alcohol, my brain realises, wait a minute, that was the bartender.

Aerosmith sang "J-J-J-J-Jaded!!" and I suppose that's how I am right now. I can't feel any outrage of any sort towards any injustice that is imposed upon me. After all, perhaps, I am like this little Chinese sweatshop in the middle of Chinatown, producing high quality pirated goods for the benefit of others at measly pay. I mean, if someone gives me sh*t, I usually take it because I'm too lazy to give it back. Oh trust me, I don't like people walking all over me, but damn straight I don't give a f*ck about a lot of things you say and do, it doesn't really matter, when the time comes, with a flick of the wrist, wave of the pen, I shall make you pay a billion timesfold in blood and money. And I take credit cards.

I asked this professor who specialized in US history on why there was this sort of division between the Republican states and Democrat states, and well, I think it stretches back to the US Civil war, and again finds its roots in slavery. Oh yes, and racism and ignorance too.

I saw these two cars outside Madison Square Garden... two Nascars... I wonder who's in town? But I don't care, Nascar isn't really a sport as much as it is a gala event. Like the circus.

You know dude, you've always said you won't get a girlfriend, that I can't even begin to imagine what might happen if you do get one. It's like you set this image up so well that hell, you can't go back.

Ah nuff mumbling, I'm just making up for lost blog post. I always have something in my head, but by the time I get back to my dorm, it's all gone. Maybe I can find it at the bottom of a bottle of tequila.

I've been somewhat occupied in meatspace. (Yes, Erick, I refrained from the word 'busy')

My schedule, perhaps seems to be not much different from high-school days, and I'm doing some complex juggling maneuvours of school work (damned presentations), part-time work (damned transcriptions and tapes), looking for a better job (damned resumes) and social life (Oooh... beer!). This often leads to various negligence, first of all, negligence of my blog, negligence of my WarCraft III record, negligence of various friends, negligence of my guitar, negligence of my harmonica, negligence of my juggling balls and negligence of my liqour collection.

But then there is just so much things to do... so much things to do which needs money to do them... so in short, I need to find time to actually bother to visit the American Musuem of Natural History, scrounge up enough money to buy a camera and take over the world. Not in any particular order of course.

And so comes along something else which adds a little variety to my life, but I'm sure it's just another thing which will take up more time. Erick might find it sacrilegious that I'm sleeping about 5-7 hours a day, In the past 72 hours, I think I only did about 10 hours of sleep, as compared to his err... 14 in his past 24 hours? But you see, it wasn't entirely my fault, there was this whole thing involving my roommate queueing up to buy the XBox 360 in the cold rain and for 12 hours, only to game the rest of the night, because it was an awesome machine. (But not as awesome as the PS3... I'll always support the PS3 over the XBox 360.)

So what's my initial impression? I only saw the game Need For Speed and Call of Duty. Somewhat I seem disappointed in the graphics for Call of Duty, I thought it looked better on the PC. But Need For Speed was a really awesome game, really uber-awesome, great soundtrack, brilliant detailed graphics and all. That's what the XBox 360 is capable of, really awesome graphics. But that's about it. My impression of it was somewhat dulled by the fact that it seems more of a power-machine rather than an innovative one. It's just the CPU, GPU, RAM upped to extreme amounts. And that's about it. Where's the new innovation? The new tricks? The technological edge? The really awesome cool thing which makes it different and stands out? I mean, the PS3 got its Blu-Ray thing and a couple of surprises I hope. The Nitendo Revolution has it's ultra-cool and snazzy proto-lightsaber-like controls. The XBox 360? I believe it offers a home media centre? Wtf? That it? Most people already have that.

Well, I thought 2005 was a disappointing year for games. Hmm... Civ 4? F.E.A.R? Yeah, well, okay, but think about Metal Gear Substance coming out on PS3? Doesn't that want to make Ivan sh*t in his pants? And in 2004? Half-Life 2?? Doom 3 deserves credit for causing all that hype but never delivered on the goods. Kinda like Ivan, all talk but still limp. Quake 4 doesn't look all too impressive, I kinda thought it looked like Quake 3. Oh wait, it is Quake 3: Arena just put on an XBox platform. The main problem with XBox 360 is that there is no game that gives the reason to buy this. There is no game good enough to say, "This is why you need the XBox 360" Right now, I can think of Shadow of the Colossus which is a damn good reason to buy the PS2, but only overshadowed by the looming incoming presence of the PS3.

Err... yeah... nuff with the gaming thing. Look, 2 hours till I get off from work. Until then I keep dreaming of WarCraft III.

I know now why I can't support the NYU Graduate Student Strike.

It just sort of hit me yesterday. If these grad students are getting paid more, where is the money coming from? Us undergraduates of course. Because grad students don't pay as much for grad school, since the university has first dibs on everything they make.

Whether NYU can afford it or not is a moot point. The more money NYU has, the more it'll spend on it's students. Which is probably why I support NYU in trying to get the cheapest labor for it's buck. Which probably also involves sweatshops and non-unionized workers. Dumb neo-liberals. Why the hell should I degrade my quality of life when it is no better than the graduate students right now if not worst?

The Princeton Review just came out, and guess what? NYU ranks number 1 in dissatisfaction for financial aid. Nothing else. It even flopped in the ranks for gay and lesbian tolerance. It doesn't reflect as either a horribly bad school or an outstandingly good school. It's kinda like a mediocre. And perhaps the worst label is mediocrity. I guess the students aren't really that satisfied with a lot of things in NYU. So since the whole problem revolves around money, I don't see why those morons should go and try and make us pay more when the average undergrad has $60k in student loans when he graduates. And the lucky ones are those who get a job when they graduate. Even as a grad student.

My parents are apparently worried about the NYU Graduate Student strike. I suppose it must worry them to see that some of the people who are supposed to educate me are busy worrying about their paycheck to educate me. But then again I remain somewhat unaffected by the graduate student strike as firstly, I don't have recitations or tutorials, and I don't really attend those unless attendance is compulsory, and secondly I have never relied on teaching assistants. However, I'm still wondering what the strike is about, and apparently the graduate students see themselves as employees, while the university sees them as students. So this might have some importance to me if I become a graduate student, but then again we will see what happens.

However that's not the point of this post. While I was happily checking my mail and sorting through my junk email during lunch hour, my friend came up to me excitedly and asked if I have been through Washington Square Park. Since my classes were exclusively within the Tisch Hall, I rarely venture out that direction, staying away from Bobst Library which is next to Washington Square Park. He tells me,"Hey, when I was passing by Washington Square Park, there was another inflatable rat and an inflatable man there. I thought it was another strike to protest the graduate student strike. But when I got closer, wait... here, read this."

He showed me an interesting flyer, all decorated in nice pastel colours, looking happy and sweet. The flyer had one purpose: to protest the use of rats, inflatable or real as negative portrayals in strikes.

Let me repeat that in layman terms. These people believe that rats... no that's politically incorrect now, I mean Great Pointed Archers, should not be demonised as in strikes and they offer an inflatable man as replacement instead.

Rats. Really... I mean Great Pointed Archers. These Great Pointed Archers are benevolent creatures, who are, as the flyer I have in my hand right now says, "We're not so different after all."

I choke in disbelief. Seriously, I really do choke in disbelief... these are the same rats... I mean Great Pointed Archers who are also responsible for the Great Plague in London, bubonic plague in many areas of the world, the same creatures that spread diseases from the granaries of ancient Egypt to stowing aboard ships and terrorizing New America when the first ships came over. Yup, those animals. Really. I don't know what to say.

In a city where people can protest anything and do protest everything, I wonder whether these things really do exist. So I took a stroll down to Washington Square Park and see if these people were really there. And apparently they were. I've learnt a bit about their motives, and their slogan goes, "Don't Hate, Deflate"

But anyway, these groups do exist, and I got the T-shirt to prove it.

No serious, they were giving out T-shirts to support their cause.

Okay, fine, I wasn't the least bit curious about their cause, I just went to Washington Square Park because I heard they were giving out free T-shirts. So sue me.

Everytime I walk by Ground Zero, I feel a sort of two-fold, no maybe three-fold tragedy. I see the hole in the ground as the embodiment of a huge metaphorical loss and discontinuity in New York, since September 11. Sometimes I see these plaques on the walls of buildings I walk into, commemorating the names of those who live and died in the tragedy. These ghosts of the past remain, watching our daily movements, reminding us of what is not there anymore. On the first anniversary of September 11, many people showed up for church service, commemoration, lighting candles and all that and more.

And yet somehow today, I can't feel that Ground Zero is hallowed ground anymore. Between the bungling of the Iraq war and the death of maybe up to 100,000 Iraqis, I wonder whether any sort of sympathy for crimes against America can be felt the same way after all the crimes against Iraq committed.

Furthermore, there is a kind of contention of what to do with the piece of prime real estate. 4 years later, we're still back to the drawing board of what to do with the place.

Yup, it's a hole in the ground. Where it used to be a hole gaping in the New York skyline, it is now pretty much the hole in the morality of the war. Where it used to be a discontinuity in New York, it is now representing the disagreement between everyone of what should be the replacement. Where it is something missing in New York, it represents the missing cause for war.

And it doesn't do justice to those who lost their lives there, to have their deaths spark a chain of events that lead far beyond the borders of rationality to the hells of human greed.

If a blog is not updated, does it cease to exist?

"Hey, you know what? There aren't romantics like us anymore," Guf yawned as he kicked back and took a long drag on his smoke.

"Huh? What do you mean?" I mumbled, without looking up from the WSJ.

"You know, romantics. People who live for dreams. Just where the ordinary won't do, we like things that happen around us to be special."

"Eh? What sh*t are you smoking? I want some of that."

"Heh, finest cigarettes you can get out of Mom & Pops. Yeah, but screw that." He took another drag. "You know, the feeling you get, of just riding off into the sunset?"

"Hmm... so... like a cowboy?" I glanced up at him. He was in one of those moods again. I wondered what hit him.

"Naw... not just a cowboy... sort of like being the hero in a story. The Malboro Man, the brave soldier, the lone gunman." He took another puff.

"Is that why you're smoking?"

He waved off that comment with the cigarette between his fingers as though he was brushing off a fly. Guf was pretty much like that, no one could get through his "ego-shield" as we would call it. "Dude, it's like, our lives is like a movie. Every moment full of action and drama. When we fall in love, it's the greatest love story ever. When we fight, it's the toughest fight of our lives. When we are defeated, we rise up again like Rocky."

"When we get drunk and start talking rubbish, it's the funniest comedy ever?" I quipped.

"Yup, pretty much. Damn straight. The melodrama just keeps on coming. But that's what makes life beautiful. Coz we live it like romantics."

I've always grappled with the fact that the Asian society seems somewhat, I don't know, less practical and more conventional than the West. And maybe I never quite understood the whole concept of be nice to others first, so that they be nice to you. It's sort of a concept. Anyway, I suppose right now, I just had a philosophical epiphany, and perhaps finally explain why it pays to be nice to your parents and support them in their late days in a very down-to-earth and practical sense.

Note: This is a disclaimer that I am not not a filial child. I just want to put it across as an argument why it works out better for us if we care for our parents. Actually I just remembered why I think of it this way. I always tried to argue that all morality has some sort of practical basis which we have forgotten all these while and sort of taken these moralities as a form of superstition.

Anyway, the entire reason that we should be nice to our parents is because they have the power to screw us over even in their late years. I present first of all, the case study of America. America today, or rather American society, has three chronic problems, which is a direct result of the Bush administration, and also an indirect result of the voters of America. These three problems are, a top-heavy social welfare system, a humongous trade deficit (which probably means nothing, but we don't know for sure) and a zealous wave of conservatism that's sweeping everywhere particularly right now in the Supreme Court.

First of all, we'd like to see the voters of America, or rather the groups of voters of America. Well, the number one voters in America, I don't really know, but I suspect it has something to do with old middle-class White America who votes the most. Well, old people as in those above 50s and those probably with nothing better to do than to go vote. I mean, if you're sitting at a hospice for months, surely there's no greater excitement in your life than to go vote, right? After all, your kids don't even visit you anymore and your driver's license got suspended and you're sitting next to Ralph who can't speak and drools when he's eating.

On the other hand, I got this off Real Time with Bill Mayer, on HBO, that the group of eligible voters who has the least turnout is single young women.

Now note the disparity. So we can somehow, tentatively, perhaps, but with a degree of certainty say that it is the older generation of America who get a say how the country is run. So what happens next? The voters vote for things that help them. Namely lower taxes, conservatism and more welfare. The voters vote for the people who "promise" things that help them. Namely Republicans.

Now, I can't blame the Republicans for doing these sort of sh*t. I'm not taking it out on the Republicans or Democrats. I'm just saying if you want this, someone's gonna stand up and say he'll get you that if you vote for him, right? That's what the Republicans did, while the Democrats seem to be pussy-footing around.

So who gets the short end of the stick when these Republicans are voted into office by the older generation of Americans? Namely single young women. They have to invest their own money for social welfare now, since Bush recommended that young people take their money to go invest as they can't rely on Social Services anymore. Young single women probably won't be allowed to have abortions if a new conservative judge is put into the Supreme Court. And young single women would then have to suffer the increasing tax deficits which effects won't be clear until in the future, and it'll probably be too late by then if sh*t does hit the fan.

So we can see this now perfectly in a simple cause-effect thing just to oversimplify things. Old people are bored -> Old people vote. Young people go to parties, get drunk, chase dreams and money -> Young people don't give a crap about voting.

Therefore old people decide who gets into office. Which probably explains how Bush got there, nice reformed born-again Christian poster boy from Texas. So America basically got screwed over by old people, who are reaping the benefits right now, and leaving the younger generation with the bill.

SO... what does this have to do with morality and filial duty? It's just that if we pay more attention to our parents, call when we said we would, and visit during the holidays, they wouldn't be so bored as to go and vote and screw up the country for the rest of us. Yeah, which reminds me, I better call my parents.

I have sort of come to the conclusion that there are only three very basic and primal feelings that are easily identifiable and probably are real. I'm throwing some skepticism that other feelings are not real, and probably just a figment of someone's imagination. Just like how most of you are also a figment of my imagination.

The first feeling is one of the most basic ones. It's basically the feeling of hunger. That is the feeling that I can most relate to, and I'm pretty sure as far as I'm concerned it's a real feeling that's there. I mean, well, I feel it, I really do.

The second feeling is kinda usual for a typical college student wandering the streets, drunk at 2am in the morning with enough alcohol in him to sterilize the sidewalk. He's feeling tired. Well yeah, drunk too, but that's under the influence of a lot of alcohol, but being drunk means different things for different people, where some are nice drunks, some are asshole drunks and some are crazy drunks. But, at the end of the day, these drunks all feel tired. And that's also why a lot of college kids and non-college kids sleep in class.

The final feeling that I sort of identified is one where a person feels fear. And fear is a very real and amusing emotion, having spawn a whole series of reality tv show. Like Fear Factor.

So I'm not really even sure whether the other feelings exist or not, I'll just like to dismiss it as a whole big global lie to distinguish ourselves from primal beings. But perhaps all other feelings are just these three feelings put together in some way. You know, like a proton, neutron and electron. Forget being complex beings. Coz I don't really think we are.

WARNING: Long post ahead.

I feel that somehow I must make up for all the lack of words that I have not posted here in the past recent weeks. Somehow, I’ve been swamped with work from school, and furthermore, my schedule has not been too kind to me as of late. But I try to get along, and so far, I think I shall make it past next week. Next week is one of those Week of Doom, Death and Destruction For Ye Who Dare Thread This Path for me, and after that, I should be home free until the finals. But I suppose the finals don’t pose much of a problem, as yet.

Recently I feel that I’m getting more stupid as time passes by. It seems that my mind has not been functioning as well as I could have remembered, and that it is slowing down. I don’t take this as a sign of old age no matter what everyone else says. Instead, I found a culprit in alcohol. Seriously, you know you’re stupid when you go out drinking on a Monday night, regularly. And 4 straight kamikaze shots does not do wonders for academic performance, that I can testify to. I don’t know, but I feel this mainly with one of my classes of financial mathematics. It’s one of those classes that I know what I’m suppose to do, but I can’t do it right. While I’m doing well in my probability class, I think maybe it’s just because I don’t feel that I’m learning anything.

But perhaps the evils of alcohol is much better apparent when my friend goes on one of his strange journeys under the influence of alcohol; he ended up buying weed once, going to a poker game and bs-ed a guy of almost five hundred dollars in a very unsportsmanlike behavior, going to the hospital two blocks away in a 900 dollar ambulance ride and his latest regrettable incident which will keep him unsettled for at least the next month, if you get my drift.

You know, there’s a song playing right now in my head, Punk Rock Princess by Something Corporate. And I think jh might like this song. But yeah, that’s the mood right now. Loud. And break stuff.

Maybe I’ve grown up but I just don’t realize it yet. One day, I’m just mucking around like another college school kid, and the next day, I’m working and worrying about money and taxes. I stopped worrying about death a long time ago. I suppose I’m at a point where I must somehow organize my life. Or get what I want out of life. But I’m not getting what I want out of life. But what do I want out of life?

I really want a digital camera. Because in photos, there is no future, no past, no wrong, no right, no causes and no consequences. Just the moment. A photograph is a moment captured in time, freeze-framed to remember the value and the memories of the moment. If Icarus enjoyed the Power Of Now, the a photo is that physical manifestation of that Now remembered as is for eternity. What was that cheesy line again? Our lives are not measured by the moments we breath, but the moments that take our breath away? No, I don’t think so. I appreciate the power of a photograph to hold things still just long enough for me to appreciate what happened. Otherwise things passes by too quickly. A moment’s too brief to enjoy.

A photograph is also signposts in the journey of time. A souvenir of time itself. Of a time gone by. I don’t know. Does it matter? Do I rely on the past too much?

But I still want a digital camera.

I remember asking Icarus once, “Do you believe in omens?” But conversely, I could have asked, “Do you believe in coincidence?” Does anything every happen by chance or by the outline of some divine grand plan? I don’t know, sometimes the hilarity of the situation lies in the sheer un-probability that it happens. Like Essien’s feeble tap rolls the ball against the right goal post which bounces off and rolls across the goal line, millimeters from a possible draw, and hits the left goal post and bounces out. Like finding five Euros at Frankfurt airport when I needed change to call home. Like meeting a friend at the bus stop coincidentally just prior to meeting her somewhere else. Like just finding something out about Quake 4, which is then asked by a promoter giving away prizes. Like me going to London, while you come to New York.

I don’t know, but what do all these events say? I am sort of grappling with the entire idea of chance and luck. Maybe that’s why I do better in probability than in financial math. Or maybe some divine being out there is playing a practical joke on me and having a really good laugh. I just don’t know, and it’s something I will never know.

But speaking of God and all, I find myself engrossed in Civilizations 4. As Kemal can testify, what other game is so addictive that it has its own inbuilt alarm clock? The game mechanics are simple, it takes a while to get use to the curve but I can’t even find time in my busy schedule to play Civ 4. And I’m already only having 5-7 hours of sleep a day. Far from some lazy people’s usual 9-11 hours not including naps during the day and in lectures. I guess I’ll have to apologise to uncle here, for all those hours of not playing WarCraft 3. And though we’re currently ranked like 600++ on Azeroth, perhaps we could have done a lot better if I had a better mouse. Of course if I even had time to play online, it would have helped a whole lot more. But yeah.

Some people don’t understand one thing that money can buy time. Time has it’s own value, far from the interest rates which I spend most of my hours awake counting, in preparation for my actuarial exam this coming Wednesday. Money does buy time. Consider that it takes 40 minutes to take the shuttle bus from my dorm to college grounds. Consider that it takes 2 dollars and 30 minutes to take a subway from my dorm to college. Consider it takes 8 dollars and 20 minutes to take a taxi to class. Well, if 2 dollars can buy me 10 minutes, isn’t it sort of like buying time? Wouldn’t that mean that I can sleep an extra 10 minutes in exchange for two dollars? To take this example further, think about traveling. Now, flying to Malaysia’s a b*tch, right? Now a direct flight from New York to Malaysia does not exist, but a direct flight from New York to Singapore does exist at a cost of three times more normal fare. So what’s this? What are you paying extra for? A faster flight, convenience, and above all, a chance to fly over the North Pole. So money does buy time.

But yeah, while my meandering thoughts have gone so far, I just await for affirmation that money can buy success. After all, if success is measured by money, then yeah shouldn’t that be the case? After all if money was invented to be the mode of exchange, then wouldn’t it be redundant if money can’t buy everything?

Hmm... doesn't work? Try this.

C'mon, everytime you donate, a miracle happens somewhere on this planet.