Illusion of Words

Near Fall Break

It is almost the middle of the semester, which means fall break is in sight. And this blog has degenerated in some sort of lame commentary on my life, which is quite pathetic, considering that one of the rules to successful blogging is ’specific topics’. Not that I’m trying to be successful.

A lot of people are busy. Schoolwork, friends, everything else. A favorite topic at lunch is ‘how many hours one slept last night.’ And it can be surprising how many people actually sleep less than five hours a night. Perhaps I’m just not quite at that point yet, because I have never felt the need to stay up any later than midnight for homework. In fact, I have never done so. After all, isn’t sleep important for memory?

Someday, I may actually have something substantial to blog about. Until then, suffer through these lame posts.

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Update

No, I’m not cut off from internet, or dead, or anything. Just have been lazy updating the blog. Anyway, school has been going on for a couple of weeks, and wait - is it only September? I thought I’d been through 3 months of school already.

Alright, granted, I haven’t had any ‘real’ exams yet. Although I did fail miserably on one mini-test, the first time I’ve done so here. Flu season isn’t quite officially here, I think, but already it feels like nearly everyone went down with the flu at one point or another. Thank God I am unscathed so far. But everyone was dropping like flies, swine flu or not. Psychological?

I miss TV, really. And I’m using a free wireless connection, totally unsafe and unreliable. And slow, although the speed is already probably ten times Malaysia’s. TV season starts next month, mostly. While I don’t catch any dramas, except for the occasional CSI:Miami (at least, during the last tv season), I do want to watch documentaries. Discovery Channel, Spike, History Channel, Nat Geo and all that (some) good stuff. You see, with dramas, the internet is rife with them. The network websites usually have the full episodes on after a couple of hours or a day. But you can’t get the documentaries as easily. And I miss watching documentaries. And not to mention some random movies that might come on - Turner Classic Movies channel, anyone?

Let’s see, have I seen any movies lately? Watched ‘Spirited Away’, and ‘Eternal Sunshine of …’. Good stuff. Latter was thought provoking. Why would anyone want to erase memories of somebody? So if the breakup is painful and all, but there are always the pleasant memories, and all that you go through, pain included, makes you who you are - hopefully a better person. I especially can’t quite forget the lady who wanted to erase memories of her dog - her dog! What could be so painful that you had to forget your cute little pet forever? The movie can be slightly confusing if you don’t pay attention, since the timeline appears to jump around at times.

Since this post is quite long, my faithful readers deserve a picture or two.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

A mess, that’s for certain. I cleaned it up, but now, a week later, it is almost as bad as the picture. I thought of buying a new guitar amp, but considering the small apartment, and having no other situation in which I play, it is just not feasible. So I take a deep breath and let go of that thought, for the time being.

Posted in School, TV/Movies | 3 Comments »

Back To School

All things must end at some point, especially if it’s a pleasant thing. Which would explain why the summer flew by, a sentiment that is surely shared by just about every person. It’s not that bad, really, going back to school. Finally, I don’t have to squander time by just eating, sleeping, and surfing the net.

Back to school then. I officially live off-campus, so the apartment is bare and I’m looking at sleeping on the carpeted floor for maybe a week, until the promised donated furniture comes in. The floor is strewn with my belongings, my neck is sore from having to operate the computer on the ground. But I got to see my guitar again - although it stank pretty bad. Must have been the environment over the past three months, changing the strings removed only a little of the smell.

Meanwhile, classes begin and I wonder what the heck I’m doing in an introduction to engineering class, when everyone around me are freshmen and aspiring engineers. If only it wouldn’t count in the grade, then I would be glad to take it. But looks like quite a bit of effort is required, and I don’t think I’m prepared to dish out that amount of hard work for something I’m 95% certain of not majoring in. Well, unless something happens along the way.

The first day is over, and the whole semester stretches out endlessly before me. Certainly an adventure.

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Summer

So I’m spending summer in the north. At least, it’s not as hot as it would have normally been, since sometimes these days we’ve had to wear jackets outside. Was at Michigan for a week, where I basically spent all my time indoors in front of the computer. Then went to Chicago, supposedly. I actually haven’t been inside the city proper, besides the initial arrival at Union Station. Too cold, too lazy, and the rest of the same old excuses. But of course, some time I’ll have to go, perhaps during the weekend.

Distant view of Chicago from the bus.

Distant view (maybe not so distant) of Northwestern University’s campus. From the park around it. Not exactly sure where I am.

Rocks at the park, where you can paint your own rock. I think it’s overlooking Lake Michigan if I’m not mistaken.

After almost a year, I finally had a chance to drink a Starbucks coffee. Yes, I never tried it because 1. I’m too frugal. and 2. I don’t drink coffee. But since my hosts have a gift card, why not? I got a caramel frappuccino.

Oh btw, can you tell which pictures were taken with a proper camera and which were with a crappy 1.3 megapixel camera phone? Sadly, I can’t, not when the pictures are so teeny (but of course, I know which is which. I just can’t tell if they weren’t my pictures).

Posted in School, Travel | No Comments »

Heading for Summer

For students here, summer means one thing: holidays. A whole year of studies is over. I’m no longer a freshman! It’s weird. The whole process, however, is extremely exhausting. Who knew packing was so hard? Tons of boxes, and having to depend on kind people to store the stuff. The box sitting in the middle of the living room is formidable. It’s a tv box, the type that a child could use as a house in an imaginary game. Or the perfect box for Spongebob Squarepants, in that episode where he and Patrick play pretend. Yes, I actually remember such an episode. Truth is, it’s not just a time or two when wanting to watch a show that I hardly ever watch, the tv broadcasts the exact same episode that I had watched before. Of the tons of episodes, what are the chances of the same episode showing? Bah. Well, I digress.

So back to packing. Why do I have so much stuff? I should have got rid of my textbooks, but it’s too late for that. The luggage is piling high.. but I’m fairly confident that I could crush the clothes enough to zip it shut. There’s the printer, and the guitar amp. I was going to sell that, but well, this is a remote place, and an advertisement on Craigslist doesn’t get many hits. So now I’m stuck with one more thing for people to store. And I wish I could bring my guitar along, but I’m not about to risk it in a gig bag, on a plane which might be too full. And not to mention quite a bit of traveling in the next couple of months. Not quite worth the extra worry.

Posted in General, School, Travel | No Comments »

Homestretch

It’s the homestretch. One more week of finals, then it’s all over for the year. And suddenly I will never again be a freshman (Hmm.. why aren’t people hyped up over it being ‘freshman‘? Freshperson! haha.)

People are excited. There’s a bunch of exams coming hard, and for some, it is ever hard to concentrate. So close to 3 months of holidays, yet so far.

Me? I am not a person prone to much excitement. In fact, I feel somewhat reluctant. For some, time can’t go by quickly enough. For me, time is too fast. I want it to slow down. I’ve got a lot of things to study, but most importantly, I want to have more time to play my guitar.

It’s probably the primary reason that I’m not as excited about the holidays. I’ll have to leave my guitar for 3 months. And not to mention that I just bought the Digitech RP255 - hoping to sell my amp in its place. And of course, this buying and selling is probably the first of many to come.

Trifling matters. I will always have my guitar and stuff waiting for me when I get back. But hardly again the chance to stay in Michigan and Chicago the whole summer. And visit New York in the process. It’s awesome, and for most people, terribly exciting. But I guess in part character, in part all that I leave behind, in part the fact that I like school and all the subjects I will never get the chance to take again. Arts in Western Civilization, which opened my eyes up to art and music, and pulled together the entire history of music in one coherent string. History, awesome subject. English, where I was gratified by the good comments the teacher gave. Biology, which despite not being my favorite subject, is probably going to be what I’m majoring in. Because let’s face it, things like history and english have hardly any future save for teaching. And teaching is one thing that I will not do.

(Thought I’d share a pic of the pedal)

Posted in Music, School | No Comments »

Charlie Hall / Phil Wickham Concert

I saw the poster for this concert early on, and it said $2 for students, $10 for others. 2 bucks? I’m in! And so I got the ticket, and went to the concert. Obviously.

I got there the moment the doors opened. Not really because I was that eager to sit way in the front, but because I didn’t have anywhere else to go after dinner, and I really didn’t want to walk all the way back to the dorms. Anyway, that being there an hour early is indeed an overkill. But I spent that hour reading Orwell’s 1984 on the iPod touch, which eventually gave me a headache. Ebooks are nice and convenient especially when the environment is dark, but nothing compares to ink and paper. There’s the smell, the turning of the pages.. (By the way, the smell of a book is very important. Before buying a book, I flip through the pages and sniff it. Because honestly, I’ve come across a book or two that stank, which obviously subtracted from the overall enjoyment of reading.)

So Charlie Hall and his band played first. Then after a break, Phil Wickham and his band played. The difference between the two is that Charlie Hall is more ‘conventional’. Well, actually, I don’t know how to say it. Phil Wickham was more like a ’stage person’. More flamboyant. Kind of.

They played their own songs, obviously. Which to non-fans, takes a while to actually singalong. In fact, Charlie Hall’s songs are probably a tad more singalong-able.

Towards the end, Phil Wickham got everybody raising their hands like you see in Hillsong videos. Was pretty awesome seeing hands lifted to God all over the place - well, at least the couple of rows in front of me.

Although I must admit, I was a tad disappointed. Not sure why. Maybe it’s because my view of the electric guitarist was blocked nearly completely (dang!). Maybe because for some reason, this type of praise & worship isn’t my type. Or maybe I’d expected something more.

Anyway, it was a good 2 dollars spent. Good music (I won’t say great), and tired legs from standing at least 2 and a half hours.

(Looking back over the post, I realize that I actually spend a third or so of it talking about ebooks and books. Strange.)

Posted in Books, Music, School | No Comments »

Life after Spring Break

I haven’t updated in a while, but then there isn’t much to talk about. Back to the routine of school, but it’s already mid-April, and in a month’s time, this semester would be over. It’s hard to believe sometimes. Papers coming up, of which I have barely started, or started and got more confused than ever. Like that biology career paper. It’s just confusing me more and more.

Too many documentaries recorded on my tv tuner finally got to my hard drive with its scanty 160GB. The sad thing is I’d to delete some documentaries before even watching them so as to make room for new ones. Ok, so I admit, I record them but I don’t necessarily watch at once. Or for a while. Anyway, I was keeping an eye out for a good deal on external drives. For that, Slickdeals is one awesome site. Members post deals they find, which are commented on by others, so it’s much more reliable. So I finally found a WD 640GB drive for about $57, which included a bunch of fillers since I’d to use a $25 off $75 coupon.

My poor iPod Touch’s headphone jack crapped out on me. So now, it’s basically just a sort of PDA, and no longer the media player it used to be. It’s still under warranty, however, so I suppose I could get a replacement of sorts. Of course, I say that, but who knows when I’m going to start doing something about it.

On a side note, one of best shows on TV is finally back. Guess what it is? Mythbusters! Would be very interesting to do something like that in the future - not on TV, however. Back in the present, I’m still undecided about a major. I’d like to take a whole bunch of random classes, but money - it’s always the deciding factor.

Posted in School, TV/Movies, Computers | No Comments »

Snow Again

This time, in a different place, with much more snow. Perhaps 8 inches of it or so. It snowed all the evening, pretty heavily. I watched as the afternoon rain turned into mush, then into snow. Within a few hours, everything was blanketed in snow. It was beautiful - I only wished it wasn’t night, because then it was hard to see.

Still, night doesn’t mean you can’t go out to have fun in the snow, so that was what I did. I crunched through the snow - an awesome feeling. Made a huge snowman. Of course, I nearly froze my fingers off in the process. Fumbling for keys with numbed fingers is definitely not fun - made me think about how people die in cold places (after falling in water or the like) not because they don’t have the necessary fire-making stuff, but because their fingers were too numbed to strike a match/flint/whatever. And how do I know that? Watching too much “Man vs Wild” and “Survivorman”, that’s why.

The snow all over the land. Wait. Who is that talking to some ghostly snowman-ish apparition?

It was snowing hard. Proof? This picture.

Me and Mr Snowman. He’s a nice guy, although too fat and heavy.

Snow is just so pretty. But ice is treacherous. On a sunny day after a snowy day, the snow begins to melt. But the water doesn’t melt fast enough for the night to come. At which point, they all freeze up on the ground due to the low temperatures. And school is delayed an hour, and every class is cut back 10 minutes - the best part of it all. But it’s not exactly easy maneuvering my way through the ice and snow - the trick is to either pick the clear, obviously non-iced/snowed parts to walk, or to pick the pure white snow place to walk. Walking on ice? Not a good idea - unless you have spiked boots or the like.

The snow was thick, as you can see in comparison to the thin brown needle under all the white stuff.

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Stuff Learned in Classes

I look over the Biology book, and I know that I’ve learnt all of them before and things far more difficult. And it seems almost impossible. I look at the chemistry book I brought along, and wonder at how I actually knew it all at one time. It’s been nearly two years, I might as well be learning everything from scratch. Not to mention it’s all in a different language. It’s all somewhat frustrating, having to learn things that I know I’ve learnt before but can’t remember anyway.

Which is why, perhaps, that I prefer stuff like history or arts, for the time being. Things I’ve never studied that much, although I’ve heard of before. Always a sense of pride when China’s history is talked about. Granted, it’s been nearly 4 years since I last studied history in school, but how many people from Malaysia actually get the chance to study China’s history? A brilliant history - very very lengthy though.

Books are terribly expensive and terribly thick. There are always ways to get around it - used books are a great source. Or rentals. I think used books would be better, because you can sell it and get back some money. Of course, unless a new edition comes out, which will make your book drop a lot in value, which is what is happening to a few of my books. Which is sad.

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