Panthera Sapiens: Proceeding to Singapore

[Monday, April 23]

I received news on Saturday morning that I've been accepted to NTU for a bioengineering course. It does sound very attractive, of course; and my parents are all up in the air about it--it's been a long, long time since I got such happy emails from them, and (woot!) my father has finally approved me getting a laptop as long as I install some course-appropriate software (Herr Robson says all courses that end in "-engineering" require at least passing knowledge of Frontpage and/or SolidWorks) and Skype with the parents frequently.

Both conditions are, I think, easily met, unless I wind up with rotten connection speeds or something.

At any rate I suppose I'm quite contented with the way it's turned out--thank God! From my point of view, it's a miracle that I managed to get in there at all, since they are apparently a rather difficult school to get into. And it's nice to have the family seal of approval in it (though the laptop helps too). It's definitely very nice to have some concrete plans at last, apart from "work until university news arrives". Of course this means I won't be going to Monash or the UK: I'll have to respectfully decline any offers I receive from now on, but I think UCAS provides (partial) refunds for the moment. Gotta work fast on that... forgot it last weekend, but I'll make a note of it.

All the same, it's going to be decidedly inconvenient to have to find another church to serve in, another few circles of friends (one for school, one for church and one for the hostel as well as one in any club I happen to join), and so on. I guess it's obvious I'm not a people person... not very much anyway. And you know, I'm going to have to start praying for a nicer roommate. If I get another one like Niche, it'll make for some interesting scenes--I'm not planning to give up my bugs for awhile yet.

...but I'll just pray. God probably knows what I need (and want) more than I do anyway. I'm hoping to get somebody in more or less my field so I can copy his answers when I need 'em... but then again I can always just copy in class. *shrug* As long as he doesn't bother me too much, I don't think I'll bother him too much either--unless, of course, he happens to have lots of anime theme songs that I just happen to be looking for. (Incidentally, that reminds me I might want to get LimeWire too.) But people like those are quite difficult to find. After all, I only found one of 'em in my last hostel.

But they're quite a windfall when found--I'm still carrying that 830MB of songs from him... *grin* and it's likely that all those songs are going to be with me for a long time more. My laptop, when I get it, is going to be pumped full of songs and soundtracks and various little things I find interesting. Not many games, of course, but then I'm not a serious gamer--merely stress relief. I bet Niche never managed to figure out why I always cheated at DotA. (I think he finally assumed I was just devoid of skill and too lazy to bother to learn--which quite likely might be the case.) Also this way I'll probably have little trouble persuading brats to stay away from it--no pretty pictures, just lots of songs in a language they don't understand at all, almost no games, and loads of dead bugs' pictures. Very un-kid-friendly.

But enough about what I plan to do with my laptop--best not to plan too much just yet or I might get disappointed somehow.

[Tuesday]

I only found out this morning why my pencilcase seemed suspiciously empty last week. You see, I keep all manner of things in there--it's 30cm long and roughly 10cm wide (no height, it's a cloth case) so I can stuff a lot of stuff in. My brother, who bought it for me, knows it--obviously. And last week, when I found it out of its usual place, I found it surprisingly limp (as compared to normal circumstances, in which it can hardly bend).

This morning the youngest Brat found my calculator (it's a pretty large one) in his toy box, and told the maid while changing that the middle Brat (the opinion-less one) had stashed it there. Naturally it soon turned into a one-against-one fight between the two of them ("Did too!" "Did not!" "Did too!" ad infinitum), but in my opinion it was the middle Brat. Maybe I'm wrong, but when I asked her how come she knew where it was stashed, she came up with a rather fake story about looking for textbooks in the toy box.

And when I asked the second time, the details changed. And she wouldn't look me in the eye (I know it's overrated, but it really is rather difficult to look in people's eyes when lying. Personally I don't look into people's eyes at all anyway, in case they attach wrong impressions to that. Eyeball gazing these days seems to be limited to the romantic context.) while talking, though she habitually stares into people's faces while accusing them or during normal conversation. I had proof of that during their little two-word argument. And--well, the youngest Brat is too outspoken to be a thief and to frame someone else, I think. He's not got that sort of cunning, yet. His personality is the sort that I'd say might murder somebody else in fury, but probably wouldn't try to foist it off on someone else, and would fail miserably if they tried.

The middle Brat, though, is a girl. Less outspoken, more hidden, so I can't say too much about her at the moment except that I don't trust her much more than I can throw her. I'm not going to make it too obvious, though this morning's series of questions might have given that away already... as long as she thinks I'm some dullwitted boy in the office who comes back to watch cartoons at night, I don't think she'll make up too elaborate schemes. *shrug* If she ever reads this, she might or might not get mad at me, but by then she'll have some measure of what I've been going through.

My comfort is that the calculator is 4 years old and hasn't had a battery change yet, so it's due to die sometime soon; and that I've changed a lot of buttons around--anyone who's tried to use it before knows--so it's almost unusable except by people who don't look at the buttons to press them; and that it only cost 30-something in the first place so by now it's probably depreciated to about 10-something.

[Wednesday]

I just decided, on a random whim, to start adding Genre information to the songs in my thumbdrive. With 267 of those, it'll occupy me for a bit of time... of course, I'll need to get the English translations of the Japanese songs before I can classify them--since my "Genre" information simply indicates the kind of mood in the song, or its type. (For example, most of the Witch Hunter Robin tunes are Angst/Instrumental, except a few that are Peaceful.) I've never been good at simply listening to a tune and deducing its type from that alone-- I can't even distinguish between "punk rock" and "pop" and "normal rock", for example.

At this rate, I'll soon be able to cobble together a playlist for pretty much any mood I want to put myself into... by the way, it's alarming how many of my songs have turned out to be love songs of a sort--some of them being the I-miss-you-please-come-back (like, obviously, I Miss You), which I'll shorten to Nostalgic Love; or the I-am-going-to-get-you (You're Beautiful; That Thing You Do), which becomes Desirous Love; or I-love-I-love-I-love-you!!! (like Sk8ter Boi), which will be just plain Love. And that's just the English ones--I'm pretty sure a lot of the Japanese tunes are going to turn out to have soppy lyrics that I'm going to regret looking at.
On the other hand, I wonder how I'm going to define songs like We Go Together, where the main sentiment seems to be We-are-Siamese-twins-without-the-weird-skin. Or Hero--motivational?

[Thursday]

The newspaper says there's been a rape attempt at TAR, some time ago. Quite recently, I think, although one can't really tell. In any case it's just surprising that the perpetrator was a guard instead of the usual suspects, ie the people-of-unidentified-origin who man the canteen and generally roam the hostel area. But then again it's not stated exactly where the attempt occurred. Judging from the little information given, it would seem to have occurred within the campus itself, not the hostel area; so I needn't worry too much.

My sister (who from now on shall be identified as the Empress) doesn's stay too late in school to begin with anyway.

But really, it shouldn't surprise me too much that the quality of the guards around has dropped drastically. Last year, I think, Jogger found two guards engaged in a rather violent argument involving fists and torn uniforms... so it only makes sense that they should have degenerated to this. It's rather distasteful, but I suppose it's only human nature to keep getting worse. At this rate we shall have to get a completely new set of guards for the entire place. Very inconvenient for the management, but there you go.

...I've told my uncle (my boss) that I'll likely leave the company around the end of June. Well, actually I told my aunt first (since she's the main boss of the company) and she told my uncle. Now he wants a celebratory dinner, which rather surprised me when he suggested it because... well, I guess because I haven't actually got it all in place yet. Heavens, all I've got right now is an email saying I've been accepted... and I haven't even clicked the little link that accepts their offer. (But everybody's already treating it as a fait accompli, so oh well.)

I know I don't sound very enthusiastic about it. My father's probably more than a little unhappy about this trait of mine... I found a stack of old Reader's Digests in church the other day and D-Kun commented that he'd never seen me so genuinely happy before, which (considering he's been seeing me on a roughly weekly basis for the last two years) is a bit telling... and right now, when I probably (if I were normal) should be bouncing off the walls in pure joy, I'm still going about my life the way I did before I got that email. In fact I'm sure most people don't react this way when they get accepted to a good university into a pretty attractive course... which just confirms that my future roommate is going to find me more than a little dull for awhile.

[Friday]

Einstein just called to say Just Cash just called him to inform him of yet another reunion--this one for Hat, who's going off to Canada pretty soon. We took a bit of time grumbling about students who organise everything on the spur of the moment without thinking of working people who need to apply for leaves to attend reunions... obviously it's another reunion I'm going to miss. Still, what would I do there anyway but spend more money? As it is I want to save up a bit for some laptop accessories.

...but being told like this does make one feel rather left out. But then again I don't know many people who would think of me when they hear the word "fun". Generally the words people seem to associate with me are "English", "dictionary", and "homework"; "piano" crops up occasionally, as well as "China". *shrug* Oh well.

Just to cement that impression on you, I stayed up 'til 2am this morning reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Apparently the title (which never made sense before) refers to a character's belief that killing mockingbirds is evil, because mockingbirds don't do anything remotely harmful to human activities and just hang around amusing people... oh, and they're also pretty much defenseless against guns or projectiles of any sort. It's a very nice book... I think the Pulitzer Prize list is going to be somewhat more trustworthy than most other lists of that sort. Generally prize-winning books are drier than dust to me--because most of them seem to be written with the aim to win prizes, so they come out as show-off books where the author drags out every single word, simile, metaphor, and plot twist s/he can think of to try and impress whoever reads it; plus those books tend to be very full of tedious detail about some perfectly uninteresting people in some uninteresting place, that are supposed to represent something of global import or incredibly profound...

Personally, if I wanted to be knocked over the head by somebody proclaiming how deep their minds are for finding this new moral in the unlikeliest of places, I'd go talk to some of my relatives whose speech sounds something like a Moral textbook.

I don't get why Niche, Gawk Hour, etc. complained that To Kill a Mockingbird is boring--and then went and chose the Da Vinci Code to study in English class. As far as I'm concerned, that just makes them more or less humourless. Or rather blind to the written sense of humour... or maybe they're just still too young for heavier stuff than high-speed chases around exotic places. They should go read the Hardy Boys series for that kind of stuff. (On the other hand, the Hardy Boys Casefiles is much better. I do recommend it more, but Agatha Christie still tops my list of crimewriting, along with Arthur C Doyle.) Unfortunately the Empress also falls into the category that finds Mockingbird boring. It's proof that setting a good example doesn't always bring results.

(Then again, Christ set the perfect example and we're all still nowhere near that. So I shouldn't complain, I guess.)

I'm in a bit of a stew at the moment... my magnets disappeared. The Brats took them... I found out last night. I have a quite nice little collection of magnets, prize among them being a particularly strong one that came with a bottle of slim I bought at least 4 years ago. (The slime wasn't particularly fun after it dried up, but the magnet has always been fun.) And apparently the Brats took them to play with, and then lost the magnets or something... and when I got back after work, I found my pencilcase magnet-less and the three of them spouting stories about wild monkeys in my room who swallow magnets to help with their digestion. I tried to get the truth out of them, but they still maintain, even now, that my magnets are in some monkey's digestive system.

I muttered that there must've been three of those monkeys, but I guess it flew right over their heads. In any case I'm magnet-less and it's rather annoying. I like having magnets nearby to keep things together--coupled or with metal, they form excellent makeshift clips. I used them quite frequently on bugs, so I know. Besides, they're just fun to push around.

So I'm reviving the ol' grudge against the Brats. It's a pity, after almost 5 straight days of peace, but it just goes to show humanity is utterly corrupt.