//beconfused

These days I have been taking more taxi rides. I take taxi rides home to get home quicker. It’s just much faster at the expense of my money. But somehow I feel happier when I ride taxi.

And so the taxi driver would try to pick a conversation with me for some strange reason. Even when I’m reading a magazine, they just had to speak to me. Of course, when people speak to me, I kindly entertain them. That was until I really got too bored of entertaining them.

(Silvercab in Singapore which I took picture of.)

And the problem? They always talked about the same thing.

You see, I used to return home in green (uniform) so no points for the taxi driver figuring out where I work as. And they’ll start talking.

Taxi driver: So which camp you from eh?
Mr. Dew: Pulau Tekong.
Taxi driver: Wah… Recruit eh?
Mr. Dew: Yeah, still one.
Taxi driver: Last time my army time so bad. I was the in the worst company for… [Blah blah blah...] And… [Blah blah blah...] So which company are you from?
Mr. Dew: [MyCompany]
Taxi driver: You very fortunate already. That time, Uncle have to… [Blah blah blah...] That was… [Blah blah blah...] And… [Blah blah blah...] Then… [Blah blah blah...] So you which camp?
Mr. Dew: Pulau Tekong.

If I meet male drivers, they just talk about their army experience. If I meet female drivers, some actually went to talk about their kids. One female driver even told me her own experience in the army!

One thing I have to admit though. Most of the drivers’ stories are amazing. And the way that they’ve gone through makes me feel that the army is quite inhuman, if you get what I mean.

I like listening to what people have to say generally. Unfortunately, after listening to so many taxi drivers, I can’t help but to wish that they won’t talk about army during my ride back. I just want to forget everything about army and have this tiny little break.

Yay, I have returned home again, although it is rather late once again. But I am getting a little more used to it. I figured out that you can never expect too much from the army. They tend to cut things here and there. And it gets very upsetting when you realize that your book out timing is in the evening when you keep expecting it to be before noon.

Army is a waste of time, most people serve the army because they are forced to. I always try to learn something when I am forced to wait. I learn to observe.

There are many ways of observing things. I doubt that I ever observe the surrounding. If a terrorist who boarded the train is sitting right beside me, I just won’t remember how that fellow looks like.

I spend my free time observing human interaction and reaction. I have found this very interesting. I picked targets to observe.

My targets to observe are people who are disliked by the platoon. I observe them when they are happy and try to understand what causes these people to be happy. Ironically, in many cases, most of these disliked people are made happy by the very people who dislike them.

I don’t understand why. Do they not know that they are being disliked upon. And why do the people who dislike them try to make them happy. And of course, I want to know what is the quality that caused these poor folks to be disliked.

During times when I am stuck there waiting, I start to think. I have been caught “dreaming” in foot drills because I found it too boring and think about such things. And at the end of the day, I try to consolidate what I have thought and work out what is the quality that people like and dislike.

Through this thoughts, I hope to understand people better. Also, I hope to be a better person.

This Brazilian girl is just expressionless! She just look all the same! Even I can look ugly at times and uglier at other times and ugliest at most times. But this girl just looks the same!

(This girl is just expressionless. You don’t get it now do you? Watch the Flash video.)

Don’t get what I mean?

I expected that. You have to see for yourself. It’s a Flash media with pretty loud music. Anyway, here are the original photographs.

[via BoingBoing]

These days, I have been feeling down. I can’t explain why though. I just felt lethargic, just felt that I don’t want to do anything. Perhaps just to laze around; perhaps just to play computer games.

I sat in front of my 17-inch monitor and gazed at the what-is-supposed-to-be tellytubby land of Windows XP (the default wallpaper). It’s quite nicely drawn, I thought. I launched Photoshop and started to brush and paint patches of gradients and clouds around. Tadah, my work is complete.

Then I look at my wallpaper, alt-tab and look back at my creation. It looks like anything but the Windows XP wallpaper. My version is nothing more than a Clouds filter at the background and a couple of gradient patches on the grass. It’s disappointing. It is gross.

I hope one day I can spice up some images to that standard. I would have to wait long for that also.

After one setback, I went to my bed, I just don’t know what to do. So I thought a sleep would be good. It didn’t go right even. I just don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to sleep.

I just sit up on my bed and start reading a book on Visual C# which I clearly don’t understand. I picked an intermediate book and much of my time is spend reading up on how the garbage collector works. I finished that portion of the book and left my bed. I don’t recall a single thing I read now, I just know it’s garbage. Pure garbage.

And there’s the TV, I switched on the television. It has been 2 months since I last press the TV remote. I looked at Sharon Au jumping around in a food information segment of a program. Sharon Au did not excite me though, nor the other 2 hosts in the program. It was just boring.

What is this syndrome? I am bored. I want to do something. I don’t want to do anything. I want to rest and sleep. No, I don’t want to sleep. I can’t fall asleep. I am confused. Beconfused.

Yesterday, I participated in a symposium, it’s like the one I went previously, just that this time - I actually participated…

…As the usher.

Not that usher that sings, I’m that usher that hands out programme sheets.

It turns out that being the usher isn’t that bad. I get 30 people to thank me for distributing them the programme sheet. It felt good to be thanked even though it’s just a simple act of handing them the programme sheet.

Well, I am bored while waiting. I walked around the 4th floor of Matrix building. I paced to the lift and stared at the digital display. And when I see a lift is preparing to go up to the 4th floor, I went back to the door and prepare. And chances are high that people would come to the symposium.

I was helping out my supervisor to usher a symposium that he organized. It’s a biomarkers discovery symposium and it’s more like an interactive session. The lipoprotein part is very informative - at least to me - and I jotted down quite a lot of things that may be relevant to my report.

I thought his talk is a little rough in the beginning, but it gets much better at the lipoprotein section. It’s well delivered in the end and I hope he can get interested parties to collaborate with him. His project is worth to be collaborated with in my opinion. It’s about verifying if phosphofructokinase is the rate limiting step in glycolysis. That may just be incorrect and may be changed in all biochemistry textbooks.

Immediately after I wake up, I’d check the time. See if I were late for work or something. That step is kinda unnecessary these few days because it has become apparent to me that no matter how early I wake up in the morning, I’ll still be around 5 to 10 minutes lates.

Yes, it’s a bad habit. And everytime I am late. I feel that I am early. Why? Jason and Daniel hasn’t reached yet. I told Zhiyang, who basically likes to come to the office early to play a nasty prank on Daniel’s pedestal, that I am early so long as I don’t see the two.

As I look across the office, there’ll be people working around. Some noise here and there. Occasionally these things get kind of distracting you know.

Today, it’s quiet. Most people left this huge room. They’ve moved to the room right opposite ours. Ended are the noises and the activity in the room.

The whole room has just gotten kinda boring. It’s like - you have this huge room all by yourself. Well, it sure is good to start shouting around and play checkers with your friends without disturbance, but still it’s just too quiet - too boring.

So that means noise is interesting? Immediately after I wake up from my lazy fifteen-minute afternoon slumber, I realized that I actually prefer the noise around.

Celine Dion sang “A new day has come”. Indeed it has. Nothing is more refreshing in the morning than Windows Media Player performing a random function on my song list of a thousand and outputting Celine’s song through my speakers.

I have assignments, tests, examinations. Many things to do. Sometimes I rather time just stop so that I can continue with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I mean, for Yoda’s sake, I am still at Sand People territory where the Sand People have their territories. Certainly made sense, it’s less than half the game played.

I am not the busiest of all people however. If I were to be really busy, I wouldn’t even have time to blog. I wouldn’t have time to be able to chat at 2 AM with a friend of a different time zone. I wouldn’t be able to watch anime. And there’ll be no Star Wars game for me.

If I minus this and that, my time will be a lot more free. I refused. All these are part of enjoyment. I like what I am doing, which is rather problematic because chatting helps nothing in my school, Yoda doesn’t help me too, and watching anime least helped me.

Perhaps I am missing out on a lot of things. Most of the things I listed revolves around the computer. I watch anime on the computer; I blog through a computer. I need a change.

I am reading a book called “Fish!” which Shawn just returned to me. Apparently, I bought the book for shelving purposes. It’s one of those self help books. It’s a bestseller. The book didn’t induce me any change at the moment, I haven’t finish it too. It’s just that: when I pick it up, I am constantly reminded of the fact that I need help. I guess that’s what self help books are about: make you realize you need help. [I'll continue to read the book, I'm at page 51.]

Animes are slowly being cut down. Games too. Blog is what I refuse to cut down. But it doesn’t take much time anyway. The next time I use my PC, I am going to use Visual Studio .NET [VS.NET] since it has more things to do with my course. I launch Flash more than VS.NET which seriously should be the other way round.

I stopped clicking on Yoda too. I am going to stop playing games for 1 month, that includes even solitaire and minesweeper. [I usually play an hour of Minesweeper.] I’ll see what happens with my test results.

May the force be with me (and Celion Dion, her career seems to be going down).

[By the way, in the game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, there isn't Yoda, some other fellow was there who looked like Yoda. I just call him Yoda, I forgot his name.]