Y'know, if sweeping dirt and dust away is sort of alike to sweeping away all the good luck by Chinese New Year Tradition, then by the state of my room, I'm the luckiest person in the world.

Wow, Hamas won. That is... wow. I don't know. Speechless. It's really a huge thing, to see a radical group emerge as the popular majority in Palestine.

What does this mean for Israel? US? The rest of the world?

It's pretty simple for Israel. They now get to bomb Palestine with unabated renew and zest. After all, with Hamas at the helm of Palestine, it's not like they don't have the right to "defend themselves" by launching "tactical strikes" against their neighbouring country with such "precision" (read: massive collateral damage) without fear of international repercussion. C'mon who would back Hamas up openly? I don't know... I mean, Israel can now basically invade Palestine and set up Jewish settlements there. Oh, what, they already did? Oh, my bad.

I suppose some terrorists organisations should stay underground, and I suppose some don't. Hamas is one of them. But then again, I wouldn't say it's the brightest thing they could do, emerging from the crowds to take control. Because it would mean that technically they are a state. And we know what America does to terrorist states. Short of trading oil with them and blowing them up afterwards when the deal sours. But the irony of it all is that Hamas won the elections legitly and democratically. There wasn't a hint or a whisper of election fraud or Jack-Abramoff-like allegations in Palestine. Well at these those I didn't heard of anyway.

But the fact remains that Hamas won the elections legitly. I couldn't really imagine Bush calling in to Abbas saying, "Congratulations on a fair elections." After all, didn't a terrorist group rise legitimately through America's sanctioned method of governance to take control of a country?

The question that is answered in this example is, "Is a weak democracy better than a strong dictatorship?"

The previous Palestinian administration was full of alleged corruption, mismanagement of funds and poor public services. And so, steps up Hamas, to fight this, to fight for the Palestinian people. They have been fighting for the Palestinian people since... since... since Israel!

But how do I the next 10 years of Israel-Palestine relationship? First of all, I don't think Hamas would be so volatile or radical anymore; it needs to seek legitimacy on the international stage, so that other countries would accept it, trade with it and probably allow it into the UN at some very later date and time. Secondly, it needs to manage itself internally, which takes away significant focus from the more radical aspects of the group. There would be more internal issues to handle, and not just retaliation with force. The hardline seems to have gone, well, the demands for the annihiliation of Israel is still there, but not as trumpeted or voiced so adamantly. While some might cast doubt over the future of peace in the Middle East, I'd like to think that this is a positive outcome. After all, managing a guerilla outfit isn't quite the same as managing a bureaucratic giant known as government.

Anyway, chances are I'll offend some people with this post and will have to remove it soon. So don't take my word for it, and much less, don't quote me on that.

Now, picture this. It is raining... no, pouring... and there's flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder. You are driving your two-seater sports car up the road, when suddenly you see at a bus stop three figures. As you turn up your headlights, and your wipers going way past the max speed, you slowly make out the faces of the three people standing at the bus stop.

The first of them is your best friend. The second is, your heart skips a beat, the girl of your dreams. The third is this old lady, who looks really sick. You know the bus won't come, you saw it broke down 2 miles back. Your car can only take two... what do you do? What do you do?

I would give my best friend the keys to the car to take the old lady to the hospital, so that I can stand at the bus stop in the pouring rain with the girl of my dreams.

My blog needs a new look. I will work on it as soon as I have the time. Else I'd do what most people in my position to do; outsource the project to a third world country paying sub-par salary, and then claim all credit as mine.

Yeah...

Okay, I gotta finish this post. It has been sitting here officially for 24 hours, and I still have no idea what to write.

Just now I went out for this club meeting, called Investment Analysis Group (IAG) and they gave this really dismal presentation on this company Build-A-Bear Workshop. The presentation was dismal because the speakers were dismal, the slides were dismal and the way the company was presented was dismal, and to my dismay, I sat through the whole thing learning nothing. (Disclaimer: I said nothing bad about Build-A-Bear Workshop, just that the whole damn presentation was a waste of time.)

But that wasn't pretty much the point. The point was more on Build-A-Bear Workshop. The dismal presentation just reminded me of this company, Build-A-Bear and it sort of sparked off a string of thoughts.

My first encounter with the company was when I was with my younger sister, and she kept dragging me to this store in a mall called, you guessed it, Build-A-Bear... and like all younger sisters who THINK they have a nice dependable older brother with lots of disposable income, she asked me for the obvious. Naturally, I walked away, and walked away hurriedly I did. Beyond the exorbitant prices, the glassy eyes of stuffed animals which closely resemble rags and the really expensive price tag. I just gotta stress that it's really expensive, especially for a poor college kid.

But I did consider the investment opportunity of buying a teddy bear for my younger sister, in return for many years to come of, "I bought you a teddy bear for your birthday, what did you get me?" And I figured if I could spread the cost among my family, I could shoulder minimal burden, but extort my younger sister for favours or, my favourite, simply guilt her into not bothering me next time because I was such a nice brother for buying her an exorbitantly expensive teddy bear. Yes, I go to business school, and I don't believe that anything is free.

So after conspiring that much, I set my plan into motion by convincing my parents to consent, i.e. provide most of the much necessary ka-ching, and then finally we went back to the store, and I told my younger sister that she could finally have her bear.

She was of course elated, and I could see my plan falling into place, and I figured she'll owe me a big one for the rest of her life. Kinda like selling her soul to her devilish older brother for a teddy bear, which was mostly funded by her parents.

But then, nothing ever goes according to plan. Suddenly, my younger sister was presented with this whole array of choices from stuffed animal skins to pre-recorded voices to outfits, and she was sort of overwhelmed by the whole thing that she couldn't make up her mind. And the thing was, this was something she had always wanted. Seriously always wanted. As in, she always walked by the store with this look in her eyes that she wants it really bad. Well, not bad enough for her to pay for one herself. But she was always looking. And since she finally couldn't make up her mind, she walked away.

Yes, I share your sentiment... which pretty much is summed up in three letters; W-T-F????

Somehow, I couldn't really understand that, and neither did I try to bother understanding that, until about a month ago, when I chanced upon this article about pension plans, 401k plans and mutual fund plans. I think it was on MSN Money. But anyway, the idea is that if a person is offered too many choices, he cannot and will not decide even if it is to his detriment. That is the problem why many people don't have a 401k plan or retirement plan here in America, just that there are so many to choose from that no one knows how to choose.

So with some sort of similar circumstance to my younger sister and Build-A-Bear Workshop, I reflect on it a little, and wonder how true it is; that we do not make decisions just because there are too many choices.

Just how true it is? That we walk into a hypermarket, and basically see shelves and shelves of cereal that we don't know how to pick one, and at the end of the day, we get so turned off by it we go over and buy some bacon and sausages for that all-American cholestrol-packed, fat-saturated, preservatives-choked breakfast. Or we walk into a bookstore with a basket and start pulling books off the shelves, and just as we are about to reach the checkout counter, we look into the basket and realise, "Damn, I can't read all of that." And thus disillusioned, we leave the basket aside and leave the store.

I think the problem might be there, and the problem gets more complex when it starts involving things we don't know. Groceries and books are relatively easy stuff to choose from. What about when we get into more complex stuff like pension funds, retirement plans, banking accounts, mortgages, insurances and other financial instruments? That's where we lose out by not choosing at all.

I suppose this is a problem which would not only not go away, but get worse. As the world gets smaller, our number of choices get a lot larger. But whatever happens we still need to choose.

So where am I going with all this rambling? I think, after looking at choice, and the problem of too many choices, I'd like to look at choice's counterpart; chance. Because, I suppose, chance is a temporary solution to the whole entire complex problem of choice. Chance greatly reduces our choice, just by presenting us with the choice, Yes or No. It's kinda like chance is that force that gently nudges that box of cereal off the shelves to fall at our feet. Or wind that blows the flyer into your windshield. Or sheer coincidence of omens. It's kinda like that, chance is perhaps just an over-simplification of choice.

But then again nothing is ever simple, and I suppose the only way we could not shortchange ourselves by choosing a disgusting brand of cereal, or closing our eyes to the other great choices out there, is by discerning every choice there is. Sure it's a painful task, but since when in life could everything be answered by, "Yes" or "No"?

Anyway, the story of the whole Build-A-Bear thing and my sister didn't end like that, with my plans completely in the dust. Instead, I attempted to salvage whatever I could from that brief moment of apparent philanthropy and started berrating my younger sister for not appreciating my good intentions and that she better not ask anything from me ever again just because this one time, I was about to give it to her and she didn't want it anymore.

Yup, that's the kind of brother I am because that's the kind of brother I chose to be.

I hate it when my textbooks cost more than my monthly expenditures.

Dusk falls, the long shadow looms,
The twice-fallen general sets forth his resolve,
Thoughts askewed with wounded pride,
To defeat his arch-nemesis,
Waiting leagues apart.
He pens a note, sends it forth,
On fleet of foot, on immediate receipt,
The challenge was accepted,
The reply brief and haughty.

"So doth the gauntlet thrown,
Thy come full of pomp and confidence,
Lightning flashed as gods watch,
The battle of mere mortals to come,
For blood would seep thy earth,
For bones lay broken upon the hearth,
Thy dogs of war has let slip,
Thy challenge be meet,
But Attila will not go quietly into the night."

So the two giants reared,
As land shook beneath the drums of war,
The metal shrieked through the air,
Shrieked through the gaping wounds of fallen men.
The general rallied his troops,
Readied for the final blow,
Lest his army fall below the march of swords.

Striking fast, he moved in quick,
But too quick, for the trap was sprung,
For the feeble wooden stick,
Was no match indeed,
Could scorch the wall of steel,
Scattered and fleeing did he run,
The general, twice wounded, thrice fallen,
But he swears on the death of his men,
He should triumph the four time.

I made it a point not to put a blog on my birthday, as I'll be tempted to say a lot of unnecessary rants about how old I've become, wait... how young I am... what my hopes for the year is, what I plan to accomplish before my next birthday, and yadda yadda, a lot of other semi-ranting bullsh*t that might come to mind.

But that aside, to me, well, I always felt that there was nothing special about a birthday. But then again, I suppose yesterday was the day where everyone would show that they care for me. Which of course, if they did, they wouldn't call me at ungodly hours in the morning wishing me happy birthday, like my sister. But yeah, thanks for all the well wishes, I appreciate them. Thanks for finding a way to communicate, phonecalls, emails, IMs, TheFacebook, etc.

Yeah, well. I was asked what I would wish for, for my birthday. (Note: See?? I can do grammar and noun clauses!) I suppose a wish would be useful if I have dreams. But I suppose I'm not much of a dreamer. One guy told me that I was pretty much the "Just Do It" kinda guy. So when I dream of something, I pretty much do it. It's kinda like somewhere between living in the moment, and living for the moment. But whatever goes on in my mind, I suppose I have to be grateful that there is nothing much to really wish for. Do you think wishes are like supermarket coupons? Could I postpone my wish till next year so that I got two wishes for my next birthday? I'm saving it pretty much for something really important.

This post has basically taken me something like 5 hours to type out because I get interrupted in between by Saw 2, WarCraft 3 and yeah, today I just found out I got the 4.0 for last sem. Yeah, pretty much my life is about numbers, but good numbers so far.

Anyway, I don't know what I'm trying to say here. But I suppose life's been good. And life's pretty much like that... it treats you really nice and well, and then it suddenly hamstrings you. Yeah.

Anyway, here's an interesting site: http://thesurrealist.co.uk/slogan.cgi. It pretty much tosses out slogans... you know, based on your word of choice. Insert some pretty interesting words and you'll get hilarious results. Uncle was basically fooling around with my last name. Yeah.

Maybe I'm still a bit hung over... Meh, who cares?

Perhaps it was a weird idea, perhaps not. But then again, hungry, lazy people tend to come up with creative solutions to solve their hunger. After all... lazy people never saw their laziness as a problem.

But hunger, yes, hunger is a strong compelling force that drives one to scrounge around the kitchen looking for food. Hunger forced our ancestors to sharpen their sticks and knives, then because of some lazy person's innovation to make hunting easier, lock and load their guns. Hunger made people fight wars, bring about the rise and fall of civilisations and made life go on. Hunger danced with insanity, frolicked with deprived but was never a guest at dinner. Yes, this same hunger, a primal force of deity-proportions, forced me to glance around my bare kitchen to cook up a meal worthy of kings and gods.

Yeah, so ten satchets of ketchup, and three handfuls of rice, and viola! Tomato gumbo soup. It's in the microwave. Just thought I'll creatively put something in my blog this time. Yeah, the ingredients are real, the taste I kid you not, the cost, hmm... less than 25 cents.

It was just a faux pas, a foot in the mouth, but then again it could just be a Freudian slip. Someone asked me when did my holidays begin, and I accidentally typed "16 months" instead of "16 weeks."

I suppose this is how 2006 opens. I've done 3 semesters in NYU to date, and have 3 more to go. Technically this is my halfway point. I just never realised that, until I made that slip up. Technically I graduate in 16 months, give or take a couple of weeks. If everything goes to plan.

There isn't technically a New Year's resolution this time. I sort of resolved to wake up early to go jogging, but the weather, and lack of motivation forbids. But the whole idea this year is to "Redesign, Reinvent, Redefine." Perhaps it's the same thing with me all these past years, I just want to make myself better.

Why?

I don't know. The reason I don't know is because I don't know what I want in life. Rather, I don't want anything right now. The kind of feeling that anything can happen and it'll all be alright. Yeah, strange words, coming from a guy who seems to be doing everything normal in life, studying, doing well, etc. I just do those things because there's nothing else. I carry on with life because there is nothing else to do. It's not really sad or pathetic, it's like just going through life. Not living, just existing. It's kinda like a weird condition, even to me. Because the future doesn't really matter. Maybe it's a permanent state of mind where I sort of settled into the mentality that nothing does matter.

What are my dreams? It's kinda like the same question as above. What do I want out of life? What do I want in life? I don't really know how I want to live. Wait. No that's not it. I can't live the way I want to live. Someone told me not to wear my heart on my sleeve. You know, didn't that come from a book or a movie? It seems so familiar, that in that book, I think it was a book, it could be Harry Potter, that the evil villian echoes, "Only fools wear their hearts on their sleeves."

Maybe I don't know how to live.

I've been consulting my good friend and online "psychiatrist" for lack of a better word. Thing is, I think I'm somewhat delusional. You know how some people are sour grapes, where if they don't get something they think it doesn't matter, it must be bad anyway? Then again I'm kinda like a much more perversed version of that. Whatever happens to me must be for the best. Right? My mind has somehow conned itself so well into thinking that whatever happens, it's going to be good, great and probably the best thing that could happen. And you wondered where I learnt to lie.

Maybe I've tried so hard to be happy, that I forgot that I was sad.

No matter what, I still don't understand people. My sister and I had a small falling out during my visit to her in Manchester. I could never understand why she wanted me to stay for as long as possible. Until almost at the end of my visit. Perhaps, she was always my elder sister, the one to forge on ahead, try everything first with a gung-ho attitude and adventurous. Then again, I never knew her to be emotional. But I couldn't understand her motivations when we had that small argument. And I've known her for 21 years. Does that make me a failure as a brother?

Sometimes I feel that I'm delusional, sometimes my words are just plain insane. But the thing is, insane people don't know they are insane. So what does that make me?

2006 is suppose to be a good year for me. So say the stars. But then again, human lives aren't ruled by stars or omens or fate. Human lives are ruled by humans. Other humans.

Anyway, I'll continue posting as usual. But right now, I think I've taken to scribbling on paper again. But I couldn't blog because I have no idea what to say. At the end of the day, I know something's missing. Yeah. Something's always been missing. Yet I keep on chuggling along.