I was momentarily wondering where my July 7 went this year. It is rather… unlike myself… to let that date pass by without any sort of action, even symbolic. Then I remembered. I was at Jesus Camp. With around 150 Chinese people. Not a single one of them even bothered to mention anything. Not even in passing. Not that it surprises me in the least. Chinese Christians are, generally, self-hating cheapskate opportunistic hypocrites with a contemptible liking for Japanese cars. (The last attribute could be applied to most first-gen overseas mainland Chinese, though).
So I suppose it is my own fault for forgetting. A highly regrettable occurrence. It wasn’t just any July 7 this year, but the 70th anniversary. It’ll be another seven years before the 77th year of 7.7, and I let that day fly past me. Damn. Let’s hope I won’t forget August 13 or September 9 this year…
¶
Posted 18 July 2007
§
Life
‡
Turns out there was some problems with my debit card so my order didn’t go through as planned. Which turned out to be a good thing, as I found a (better) bargain that saved me a small but not-insignificant amount of green. Total was about $51, but then I found on amazon (don’t know why I didn’t look there the first time; brain seizure perhaps?) a better deal at $58, but with $15 MIR.
Previous: $40 + ~$3 taxes and ~$7 S&H = ~$51
Current: $54 + ~4 taxes + $0 S&H - $15 S&H = ~$43
So about 8 bucks saved. Of course, I won’t get the rebate money back until 3 months later, so that’s a tiny bit of interest lost… 3.5 bucks, in fact (at 7.25% per month). So I saved about 5 bucks? Wow.
Someone should have told me that doing introspection at night causes insomnia. Ah well. 8 hours is nothing in the grand scheme of things. The details of that introspective guilt trip shall only be privy to myself, of course. But to get that off my mind, I need to rant. Unfortunately I am currently out of political stuff to rant about (not that there is nothing to rant about, just that I am not particularly inspired at the moment to politirant,) so I could just whine and bitch about how life sucks, or just chronicle my rather uneventful day.
I take that back. It was actually quite an eventful day as I actually got a few things done. Ordered a bunch of express mail boxes from USPS. Mum wants to partner with a friend to manage the ebay/online part of her Chinese art & crafts shop. The boxes could come in handy if she takes the job, though I would probably not ship delicate porcelain with those… maybe things like fabric and books. FYI, the boxes (and envelopes, and labels, and other stuff) are completely free and it is illegal under federal law to use them for anything other than shipping them with USPS. Of course, whether they can enforce that law is a separate matter.
Cleaned my rooms today. Cleared out lots of trash, including all my high school homework/tests/notes. It felt good. I didn’t have enough room on my bookshelves to put all my books. Chinese books, fiction, nonfiction, all my AP/SAT books and all my textbooks (those that I haven’t already sold… and yes they are still for sale), and the rest. I realized that I almost have a complete Jinyong/Louis Cha collection. Too bad they are not all of the same publisher/edition. He needs to finish his 3rd edition revisions and immediately kick the bucket so I can get a definitive final edition of his books. Next in line on my reading list and book-buying list are the Ringworld novels and more libertarian propaganda. Yummy.
Also bought a PCIe graphics card for the Lenovo desktop tonight. GeForce 7300 GS, released about a year and a half ago, a mainstream light-duty card, for $39.99 sans S&H and tax. Grand total came to about $51. A decent deal for a budget upgrade, as I don’t want to spend too much money while I am still undecided whether to take the desktop to college and get the $200 ASUS (or was it Acer?) laptop, or buy a ~$1000 desktop replacement (probably a Thinkpad or the HP dv6000t). We’ll see how much improvement I can get with this card. Right now I’m getting an jaw-dropping 600-something with the integrated graphics on 3D Mark 05, so hopefully this will allow me to finally enjoy Halo 2, Oblivion, MTW2, Fallout 3 when it comes out, and Vista (as crappy as it may be).
I finally finished a chapter, with high school and graduation behind me. Now it’s 3 months of R&R before I start penning the next chapter.
High school was… fun. I moved around a lot, so I attended a whole bunch of high schools as well. It was a different experience in each one. The Chinese High School was, well, different. It was a private school, not that that meant much in Singapore (where the actual difference in the degree of control excercised over public/government and private schools is nominal at best). It was also bilingual, and although I did not like Chinese much (despite picking up a bit of calligraph skills), it did prevent me from becoming… like some other people I currently know. I doubt I will ever forget the political attacks we leveraged against the Student Union, the communist/German songs we sang, the show trials we held, the Russians we impersonated (Miborovsky & Viborovsky, ha!), the non-functional political parties we organised, the goose-steps we drilled, the stupid, stupid things we did. 30-something boys in the same class for 3 years can do that. Then I moved to California for about half a year, intermittently. I played and had fun at Folsom High School with not a care in the world, which was not something easily done at TCHS. It was a… refreshing change of pace. And then finally two and a half years at Olympia High School, with its horde of new faces, minds, hearts and personalities, I have finished walking this road. I expect myself to write something angsty here, something reflective, something emotional to justify this loss of childhood and innocence, but, no… all that are behind me, but they are not lost. I still keep them, not so much in yearbooks but in my memory.
I don’t usually talk (or for that matter, write) like that.
Haven’t blogged in a long while. Too busy with homework, projects papers and AP exams. But now that most of them are finished and over with, it’s time to breathe a sigh of relief. 25 days left and counting every single one of them. It’s been a good week so far.
今天教會來了個做聖經翻譯工作的人。談到他要參考各中英兩希譯本，會後我心血來潮，突然想到去問他有沒有接觸過文言文的聖經。我這個人比較反動，喜歡古典的東西，所以對這個突然有了興趣。我有一本西元一六一一年，也就是萬曆三十九年的欽定版，所以也想找到本文言文的聖經讀讀。
回家做了點研究，發現有文言文聖經叫«文理版»，有兩版，一八二零年代一版、一九零幾一版。書大概是沒有得賣了，但好歹找到了個網上下載，只不過是圖片。
讀了讀，味道很不一樣。«以士帖紀»計十章，六頁就印完了。我知道故事如何，所以還勉強讀完了，要不然還真夠跄。
下面搞來一段大家都該熟悉的經文，約翰福音第一章前幾節。
元始有道、道偕上帝、道即上帝也
是道元始與上帝偕也
萬有由之而造、凡受造者、無不由之而造焉
似乎沒有四書五經那麼難懂，也不知道是好事還是壞事。聖經嗎應該是本文學著作，不能是紅樓夢類的下三濫貨色。不過太陽春白雪了的話有沒有人會去讀了……
下一步就是要找景教的經書了……渾元經……名字很雅嘛，呵呵。
I haven’t updated in a long, long time, even though I have made several choices lately that definitely warrant an entry here. Time seems to be flying past at the speed of light and I find myself standing still. Even though the distant date, June 18, still seems faraway, the weeks between seem to be going awfully fast. AP exams, finals and project deadlines are edging closer and closer everyday, and I find myself wanting to press the “skip” button and leave all that behind. Wishful thinking, to be sure.
Presentation tomorrow. Just finished the powerpoint.
Statistics on Tuesday. 1 more night to cram and it’s show time. We’ll see how well my 6-week crash course went.
Calc on Wednesday. Shouldn’t be any trouble.
Retarded autobiography project due Thursday. Barely started yet.
Physics C:Mechanics next Monday. Shouldn’t be any trouble.
Macro- and microeconomics on Thursday. Not in the least bit worried about macro, but micro might be a bit troublesome. Good thing I can most of next week to prepare for it.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I had recently dug up my collection of mp3s that I burned to CDs more than 2 years ago. While carefully sifting through it last night, I found a couple of gems: 3 versions of the CHS school song! As I played them over and over again, it suddenly came to be that I should share them with someone… Someone who would likely appreciate it. Not Vib and his ilk, since they were not online at the time and are probably still singing it every week (and thus, by mindless repetition, not appreciating it fully); Nor any of the ABCs I know, since they would not be able to understand anything higher than a Chinese 4th-grade reading level, not to mention a classical Chinese poem that I barely figured out myself a few years ago after hogging a 2000-page dictionary for an hour. But in the midst of crackas and bananas (yummy) there is one person who would be able to fully appreciate the most awesome of all school songs that appropriated the tune of Annie Lisle - an old boy.
(paraphrased)
Mib: Hey there’s this REALLY COOL mp3 file that your dad needs to listen to… I’m sending it over to you now
Andrew: Erm he’s sleeping right now
Mib: Darn, make sure you play it to him!
Andrew: OK I’ll do it first thing in the morning
(The next evening)
Mib: Did you play the mp3 to your dad???
Andrew: Yeah he started laughing right off
Mib: AWESOME!!!
The stars themselves must have lined up or something for this to happen. What are the odds of finding/knowing someone who went to the same high school 30 years ago as you did, living in the same city 13000 km away and going to the same church? Pretty slim, I daresay. And although I take it for granted that all TCHS old boys should remember what the school song sounds like, if I remember correctly it was only written in the ’70s, meaning he might not have had that song as his school song… not to mention I sent him the “techno remix” version, apparently the version played at the end of the play “Tan Kah Kee” that we were all forced to go watch in Sec2, or was it Sec3.
Chinese familial relations question: If we two went to the same school, then he is my 學長 and I am his 學弟. Does that mean that his sons are my 學姪, and I am their 學叔?
Chinese General familial relations question #2: If someone went to the same school as his father, does one become the brother-dad and one become the brother-son? (Assuming they do not already have such a relationship from non-academic activities.)
(And the lyrics, of course)
海天寥廓 雲樹蒼籠 中有我華中
禮門義路 時雨春風 吾儕托帡幪
猗與華中 南方之強 我中華之光
雄立獅島 式是炎荒 萬世其無疆
人生茫茫 學海洋洋 吾儕當自強
朝乾夕惕 日就月將 莫負好時光
猗與華中 南方之強 我中華之光
雄立獅島 式是炎荒 萬世其無疆
迨予庶士 篤實輝光 斐然已成章
膂力方剛 經營四方 前途浩且長
猗與華中 南方之強 我中華之光
雄立獅島 式是炎荒 萬世其無疆
Did a Keirsey Temperament Sorter today, and to be honest, I wasn’t that surprised with what personality type I got - INTP, or Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceptive. I guess I’ve always roughly known what kind of personality I had, and this test is either a reflection of or a result of that fact. INTP is the critic, the scientist, the architect and the atheist. I can easily see myself as a critic, and maybe the scientist. But I am definitely no planner, and thank God I’m not an atheist. So like the good critic that I am, I don’t put much stock into things that try to categorically classify these that are not necessarily classifiable… personality for example. In my case T&P both won by a very slim margin in Thinking/Feeling and Perceptive/Judging. A point each, to be exact. While I pride myself on being rational and objective, there are certain issues and topics which I willingly let my emotions get ahead. I suppose these represent my near-FJ-ness, manifesting in an alternate personality locked up in a little corner, to be released when the situation calls for it… I could have a multiple personality disorder, or I just know when to use my head and when to use my heart. A valuable personality trait, I’m sure.
I wonder what kind of temperament Cho Seung-Hui had… ISFJ?
¶
Posted 19 April 2007
§
Life
‡
Just spent about an hour transferring about 9 CDs’ worth of data to the “new” computer (260GB HDD). These CDs were burnt at a time when my iPod (4th gen) had a larger hard drive than my laptop, hence the need for so many CDs to store my school projects, web designs, PhotoJobs and other miscellaneous junk. The assortment of 2-or-3-year-old stuff was fascinating to look back at as it provided something to flash back to… what I did, who I talked to, what kind of classes I took. I had forgotten a lot about the past, even though it has only been 3 years…
Among some of the more interesting things I found in the pile:
- Mozilla Firefox v0.92 - Just as Firefox 3 is about to be released
- John the Ripper and pwdump2 - Which McAfee Security definitely did not want me to copy to my hard drive
- Daniel Pearl’s execution video - Who still remembers Daniel Pearl today? I sure did not, until today.
- ebook The Hacker Crackdown - By Bruce Sterling, a good read
- My (almost) entire propaganda songs/national anthems collection! I thought I had lost them all when my iPod expired, but fortunately not.
- mp3 files with Chinese file names that did not copy over correctly… Guess that teaches me not to do that in the future…
- Video clips that I shot of a stuffed pig being rolled over by a truck in mud, hacked to pieces with a machete and decapitated then put on a stake, Lord of the Flies style (April 2005, I believe)
Some files failed to copy over at all, like Celine Dion’s One Heart album… CDs are, after all, much less durable than hard drives in terms of preventing data corruption. Sure a CD player’s got a laser, but one gash to a CD and it’s expired, but it takes a hammer to bash a hard drive. When it comes to storing data over a long period of time, magnetic physical drives are still the best way to go. With a decent-sized hard drive, I can actually rely on my HDD to store stuff now. Goodie.