Day of departure

I changed the background of this page. Looks brighter isn't it? I guess you all can't see the background, but it's a picture of bamboos. Bamboos make me think of pandas, and pandas make me think of China, the place I'm going to! But that's not the reason I change the background. I change it simply because I think it's too dark, and MSN spaces make it easy for me to change it! Most probably I'll change the background every now and then. =) Added a few more sections to my blogsite. Looks more sophisticated now. I'm pleased. 

My flight is MU544 at 0055 tonight, so the title of this entry is not very accurate. But well, who cares? Anwz I'm all set and ready to go! ... Is it me or this background?? Somehow I don't feel excited at all. Maybe green makes people feel more calm. Going to change the background when I come back.  

Btw, I've been thinking of my story no. 2 le. Haha... Suddenly I find myself love to write things, even though there's no audience. I haven't think of the plot yet, but it's going to consist of things I most interested in. The keywords are magician, drugs, poker cards, universe, psychology, illusions, thief, coins, tarot, ghost, sleights of hand, subconcious, black, envelope, spy, guild, physics. How will you link these words together to form a story?

I will try to think of a story on my trip, hopefully there will be something interesting created. Now I'm feeling more excited! Wow! Going to Shanghai! Sure to take lots of beautiful pictures with my new eh siu camera! Finally a chance to test out my photography skills. Going to do lots of shopping also!

Cya in 8 days time!

 

 

Afterword

Okie, back to the real world. Finally step out my first step to be come a writer (坐家), most probably my last step though. =P For me I'll give my story a 2 to 5/2 stars. Not a very great mark, but the result is not important, what matters is the process. I had great fun brainstorming for ideas to add into my story and fooling around with Lan Yu (and 'myself').

A little background on the story. Goh Lan Yu  is inspired by Ubik. However, if you all realise, I've gotten most of my ideas from Sophie's World , only the ending is a tiny bit similar to Ubik. Therefore this story is not quite original. But, well, I admit I'm not a original or creative person. I'm a just a postmodern person.

Another thing, if you read the story closely enough (which I doubt anyone will, coz even I don't), you will realise there are quite a few indiscrepencies throughout the story. Not that I purposely make it that way, just that the 'future' I choose for Lan Yu sometimes rendered the 'past' invalid. For example, Lan Yu's dreams of 'me' supposedly serve a purpose. I was thinking of incorporating Lao Zi's "When I dreamt of a butterfly, is it I who dreamt of the butterfly, or is it the butterfly who dreamt of me" philosophy in the story. However in the end, the idea is not used, but I was too lazy to edit the 'past' already. Maybe it'll demostrate the fact better that, in the world I created, anything can happened. =P

(Ok ok, I'm just lazy.)

Anwz, I was thinking, if I want to get rich by writing, writing novels requires too much brain power le. If I'm going to write, maybe I'll write self-help books. =)

 

 

Goh Lan Yu (Part 3)

Lan Yu quickly copy and paste the address into her Internet Explorer and wait for the page to load, hands trembling. After a few seconds, the page finally finished loading and facing her is the most recent blog entry, titled:

 

Goh Lan Yu

 

She feels a jolt to her head, but she struggles to read on.

 

'The setting of the story is present day, 2005 as I write this, or whatever era is it when you read this, Singapore...'

 

As she continues, Lan Yu feels that she's looking at someone's discontinued life from JC to this present moment. This person and this life seems familiar. This person is her, this life is her life!

 

Head starting to ache...

 

Suddenly, she has a feeling that someone else is looking at her and her life. Then she realises that someone is also her.

 

Dizzy...

 

As Lan Yu looks into her screen, she can feel an infinite number of hers looking at herselves, and the world begin to spins.

 

Darkness.

 

********

 

At this point of time, this joker, Jiefeng, also know as Intercept Wind, was at his Woodlands HDB in his room listening to 933 and writing his blog/short story. This point of time: 20 Jun 2005, 10.17pm. He is laughing and feeling quite please with himself. Laughing because he thinks the story he writes is damn cock. Feeling quite please because he is finally almost finish with the story.

 

Actually, he has thought of lots of small and interesting scenes to be put into his story. One of the scenarios is that he wants to tell Lan Yu through MSN that though he's 'God', creator, writer or whatever, he's a slacker. In fact, he's so slack that Lan Yu's world only consists of Lan Yu, the things in her room, and lastly, her room. Lan Yu walks to the door and hesitates. Eventually she summons enough courage and opens the door. Emptiness, darkness, nothing. The living room she was familiar with isn't there...

 

Aaaaahhhhhh!

 

Jiefeng thinks that this scene would describe his personality pretty well. However he can't think of how to continue from there, so in the end he has no choice but to use the current 'see his blog' ending. Still, he thinks that the scene is quite good, if only he can include it in the story somehow. Add some 'parallel universes' element, perhaps?

 

Anyway, he's still laughing at his own cock story, though he feels a bit guilty also. Maybe he's a bit too mean to put Lan Yu through so much torment, since she's his HC 'junior' after all. Well, too bad he can't think of a happier ending.

 

Finally, he's going to end the story here, so as not to bore his reader to death, if they were not bore to death already. After he clicks the 'Publish Entry' button, he decides to go kitchen to get a drink. However, when he opens the door of his air-conditioned room, he can't believe his eyes. Outside his room, where the living room supposed to be, there is...

 

Emptiness, darkness, nothing.

 

 

Goh Lan Yu (Part 2)

Block Rain?? Lan yu was surprised. This is not the nickname she used normally. Normally she use Blue Feather. Block Rain. A nickname given to her by her JC GP teacher. She can still remember the day, when she introduced herself as Lan Yu on the very first GP lesson. The teacher suddenly smiled and replied, "Block Rain ah?" Lan Yu was stunned and puzzled for a few seconds before she realised that it's her name's direct translation. An innovative nickname, but it sucks.

 

"Who are you? How do you know my nick? This nick."

 

"Who I am is not important. Let me ask you a question. Do you find something strange in your world? Like... me appearing in your dreams, you don't remember your life, or sometimes, time seems to stop?"

 

"What the heck are you talking about??" Lan Yu is getting more and more uneasy about this funny guy, this guy who comes out of nowhere.

 

"Can you guess why?" The boy smiles. Even though Lan Yu can't see him, somehow she knows he's smiling. "You are nothing but my figment of my imagination. You, and the world around you."

 

"Who do you think you're? God? I don't believe you."

 

"You've read Sophie's World  before, don't you? You should know George Berkeley."

 

Of course Lan Yu has read Sophie's World  before. She loves to read novels, and Sophie's World  is one of the more well-known novels presently. However, some may argue that it's actually a philosophy textbook in disguise, hence the name Sophie's World. Anyway, having the exceptional ability of photographic memory, Lan Yu had the whole 'textbook' memorised. As a result, George Berkeley is no stranger to her. He was an Irish philosopher who lived from 1685 to 1753. He was the first who questioned the reality of the material world. He argued that even though you can see the table, feel the table, it doesn't mean that the table exist. The image and the feeling of the table you saw and felt may be nothing more than a thought, a mental illusion. In short, he denied that existence of the material world beyond the human mind. It's the central idea of stories like Matrix and Sophie's World.

 

Actually in Lan Yu's opinion, Sophie's World  is more than a philosophy textbook, it's a work of a creative genius! The story is about a girl named Sophie, who is actually a fictional character in a book written by Hilde's father in the real world. When Sophie learnt from Alberto that their world is simply created by Hilde's father, they tried to escape into the real world. They almost succeed in the end. After Lan Yu finished the book, she thought it's quite ironical for Sophie to escape into the real world, since both her world and Hilde (and her father's)'s world are both created by Jostein Gaader. At that time, she was also wondering maybe the world as she knows it may be created by someone else.

 

Then it strikes a chord. What if...

 

"How do I know you are not a figment of my imagination instead? Or some joker from the net?" Lan Yu cannot believe, refused to believe.

 

"Will you take the Red pill or the Blue pill?"

 

Lan Yu senses that at another part of the world, or another world, this joker is laughing at her. He knew what her answer will be long before she answers. "Red."

 

"Red, the truth. Haha, as expected, or should I say, as I've written?" Lan Yu is very miserable now. This guy is having fun, at her expense.

 

"Go to this website, and you'll know the truth.
http://spaces.msn.com/members/fengyanfengyu/

It's my blog =)"

 

(To be continued...)

 

 

 

Goh Lan Yu (Part 1)

The setting of the story is present day, 2005 as I write this, or whatever era is it when you read this, Singapore. Anyway, it doesn't matter. The main character of this story is a girl, 165cm, shoulder length hair, looks a bit bookish with her specs but otherwise not bad looking. An ordinary girl in all aspects.

 

Her name is Goh Lan Yu, 吴蓝羽.

 

Currently her 'occupation' is student. NTU business year 1 student to be exact. She graduated from HwaChong and St Nicolas Secondary. Being the last batch of students to graduate from HwaChong Junior College, she was both glad and sad. Glad because she graduated just in time to be considered a 高中生. Sad because her beloved school has changed its name to something unbelievably stupid - 华侨中学. But no matter what, she is still extremely proud of her school. Anyway, it has been more than a year, she has long since put this issue out of her mind. She has more important things to worry about than this.

 

(Did I say the setting of this story is whatever time you read this? You must be wondering that if you read this in 2006, or 2007, or 2008 etc, how can there be anyone who graduated from HC just before it change name in 2004 and still be in year 1 in, say, 2008?? Did she da bao? The answer is no. Her IQ is 149, and that means she's extrordinarily smart. Why then? Well as I said, it doesn't matter. There's no answer to every questions in the universe. Please read on.)

 

Lan Yu has just finished her special sem exam on HP101: An Introduction to Psychology. By right she should be going out with friends and enjoying herself. Yet recently she feels that there's something wrong with her brain. Sometimes she feels that time has suddenly fast forward a great deal or just paused suddenly.

 

Take for example, just a minute ago, while she was typing her blog, she felt that world has paused for about 3 seconds. She messages her friends on msn (some in China), but none of them say they feel anything different.

 

Then it seems to her that she's suffering from dissociative amnesia. A term she learnt from her psychology lessons, meaning memory loss caused be extensive psychological stress. She doesn't remember anything from her St Nicks or Hwa Chong days other than the fact that she graduated from there. In fact, she can't really remember anything before yesterday. She just knows that she had taken a psychology exam a few days ago and she felt strange. It is as if she is jus... there, recently. But then she doesn't really care about it. Maybe her illness is better termed as dissociative fugue.

 

However, what worries her most is that, for most of the nights these days, she keep dreaming of a boy, about the same age as her, maybe slightly older, trying desparately to tell her something. Although in her dreams she tried very hard to understand what he's saying, she just can't. What he says is all rubbish.

 

And wierdest thing is, sometimes, when she's chatting on msn, she receives messages from the boy. The boy whose msn is not in her address book. The boy in her dreams!

 

(How did she know the msg is from the boy in her dreams? I've no idea, although the boy only put the picture of Kakashi as his display picture, she just knows.)

 

And in this very moment, just a few minutes after she finished asking her friends about the world stopping phenomenon, she hears the familiar tone of a new incoming message:

 

"Hello Block Rain!"

 

(To be continued...)

 

Ramblings...

Ramblings... I found that there's a certain seduction in writing one's day to day activities (which no one is interested)... seduction of the dark side. Thoughts are generated everyday every minute every second. And a blogger'll want to pen those thoughts down. I was thinking if it is possible that one day, every single topic in the universe has been written such that there there isn't anything else to write anymore. Then I think the answer is no. When this happen, people will write about the fact that every single topic in the universe has been written. And this will go on and on...

Ramblings... Yesterday is the last day of ACCA invilgilation. Another temp job ended. More 过客s flashed pass...

Ramblings... Finally found the way to enlarge the font of this stupid blog space. 1st, you must copy your entry to the Wordpad. Then you change the size of the font. Then you copy and paste back to the writing area of the blog space. Stupid MSN spaces. Can't be bothered for this entry.

Ramblings... There are quite a few posts you can do in the ACCA invilgilation. Classroom IC - very busy for the 1st hour, taking attendence, checking their id etc etc. Then looking at the same class of pple for 2 more hours. You suffered for 2 hrs. Corridor IC - supposedly the best job. Do nothing for the 1st hour, and the subsequent hours also. You suffered for 3 hrs, unless you have other corridor ics to chat with. Classroom relief - 1st hour break. Substitude classroom ics at 30 mins interval after the 1st hour. Different people to look at. More chances of finding a chio candidate in the class. Best job, I think.

Ramblings... Thought about the various ways to get rich when I was doing classroom relief. Business. Stock/futures. Real estate. Network marketing. Write books. One fine day I'll be as famous as J K Rowling... Dreaming...

Ramblings... How would you feel when you know that your OC in camp is your uni friend's girl friend? 

Ramblings... KTV. Had a fun time yesterday! Actually I like to sing. Too bad my voice not good. Dunno many songs also. However, I find that people in ktv is unusually tolerant of bad singing. So I can sing as bad as I can.

Ramblings... Yeah! Finally finalise the final plan to go Shanghai le!

Ramblings... Timetable planning is a chore. However just found out that going into some stupid programme can make your life easier in uni.  At least you don't have to fight with others during subject registration. Wow!

Ramblings... Like real! A friend in this stupid programme can't even get a single core subject.

Ramblings... Things to do in the hols:

• Finish my Goh Lan Yu story today
• Go Shanghai on Thurs
• Swim or run everyday, after I come back from Shanghai
• Study my prescribe elective in advance
• Piece a 1000/500 pieces jigsaw
• Find and read Frank Herbert's Dune
• Work, perhap?
• Learn programming, perhaps?

 

 

Follow the movement of ants

Duration: about 30 minutes

Props: an anthill

Effect: reflective  

 

We've all done it, but it still works. To spend a bit of time observing a column of ants is thought-provoking. Attend to their dogged regularity. And note, even if you've done so a hundred times before, how they follow each other, pass each other, construct the regularly moving tread of their passage. Grasp the general design of their journeys, with their tiny individual variations and momentary turning back. Spot the weary heroisms and the implausible ferryings.

And then take up those banal reflections everyone has already made. Ask yourself how such a life is to be conceived. Ponder the idea of a biological community, of a society without language. Perplex yourself with imagining an unhuman city. Gulp in front of the depiction of an organism made up of a multiplicity of individuals.

Finally, try and imagine yourself as an ant. Pushing a breadcrumb, crossing a pebble, moving around a piece of broken glass. How do you know where you are going? What task you're meant to be accomplishing? Are you hungry? What does that mean? What are you thinking about? And what does that mean? What's it like - being an ant?

You know these questions have no answers. There do exist parallel worlds, opaque to each other, non-communicating, and we are really in error when we speak of a single universe. Planet Ant is not Human Earth. It's not included within it, hardly situated within it. You will conclude that the plurality of worlds exists under our nose, is always there, and we still don't really understand the first thing about it, the why and wherefore.

In short you will find that the ants provoke in us no new ideas, and certainly no interesting ones.

 

********   

 

This blog page finally got its 1st comment!! It's by .(fullstop) and it says 'You sucks', directed to my last entry.

Sometime I'm really amazed by the plurality of worlds that exist, even among us humans.

I've no need of comments by a punctuation mark, so I've deleted the comment. But I'm happy that at least something is reading my blog. Keep it up!

 

 

13rd of June 2005

What am I doing recently?? With so many 'date entries', am I starting to write a diary? I don't want to turn my blog into a diary! But maybe there's something worth noting down in 13rd of June.

I looove making new friends, despite being an introvert (according to Carl Jung's personality test). And I made quite a few yesterday during the Adventure Trail Challenge, working as a helper. The most notable one is Xin Yi (Sim Yee). She was publicity in-charge in ODAC (publicity, what a familiar name), and also the driver in charge of ferrying us around. What's extrordinary not that she's a female driver, though it's quite rare. What's even rarer is that she's one year younger than me and she's driving a lorry! And she's as confident with the lorry as I'm confident with a sedan, which is quite confident. Girls nowadays are as good as boys in many areas that boys are traditionally known to be better at.

Later then I learnt that she's from HC, a pleasant surprise! I'm always doubly happy when I meet someone from HC, since I'm in a HC-deprived environment. She's from 01S79. Anyone I know from 79?

Anwz, one day has passed, ATC is over. Though she's one girl I 欣赏 quite a lot, I'm starting to forget her name. I guess within a year, if I meet her somewhere again, I think she will be nothing more than a familiar face, but a stranger nonetheless. I realised long ago that friendships have half-lifes. Maintaining friendship is very important. However there is another element that's very important, that is 'common ground'. If you've no common ground, it's hard maintain friendship even if you want to. Then it all goes down to 缘分. If there is, you'll become friends again sometime in future. If not...

过客 n. 1. someone notable who was once in your life, but not anymore. (The person must be notable, if not he/she will not even be considered as 过客 )

I wish there ain't so 过客 many in my life. Some of them were once very good friends.

Ramble again, just like an old man. Anwz yesterday was quite enjoyable, working with friends, old and new, go MacRitchie Resevoir 'hiking' for 2 hrs, 'holland' (n. 1. a country in Europe adj. 2. lost one's way 3. did not reach one's intended destination) on a straight track, drive a lorry for 10mins, sitting behind the lorry feeling the wind, go east coast walk walk, ride bike, trying to pick lock etc etc. Tired but happy, to use a primary school student phrase. =)

PS. A space of 3 days, 2 HC juniors, 1 very old friend, the other very new, different thoughts on friendship.

 

 

10th of June 2005

Yesterday was a truely enjoyable day. Watched Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with 2 old friends Youjie and Chioboo. Hitchhiker is a very interesting show, quite 另类 , also quite 无厘头, basically I enjoyed watching it. Strongly recommended. 15/4 stars.

'Chatted through the night' after the movie at Starbucks until 11 pm, also very enjoyable. (Pardon me for my limited vocab =) However, I felt very strongly that deciding to chat at Starbucks until 11pm was a very wrong move... 1 hr after I tried to sleep at 1230.

According to my psychology textbook, caffaine is a stimulant which present in coffee and chocolate, both of which happen to present in my ice blended mocha. Anwz, knowing that I was suffering from insomnia, I woke up and finished reading my novel: Ubik by Philips. K. Dick. This book is terribly exciting and mind provoking. The author is a genius! The story is as mind provoking as the Matrix and Sophie's World. And just as exciting (as the Matrix I mean)! And it's written in 1969, way before Sophie's World and the Matrix.

Recently read another book by Dan Brown (author of Da Vinci's Code) called Angels and Demons. Also very exciting, a very good book to read, but compared to Ubik, it pales. Coz Dan Brown's books are just typical detective stories with lots of arts and symbols inside. I quite like Dan Brown though, because his books are easy to read and you get into story fast, unlike books by Philips K Dick. Reading his books is like looking at 3D drawings. You have to stare very hard at the drawing for quite sometime before you get the picture. The picture is usually mavellous, but it can be quite fustrating at times.

Btw if you don't known who's Philips K Dick, he's famous for his Minority Report and Blade Runner.

Ok, where was I? Yup, exciting and thought provoking. Since the novel is so damn exciting and thought provoking, naturally I still couldn't sleep after I finished the book. Damned. As I was lying on the bed I was thinking, since Philips K Dick, the Wachowski brothers and Jostein Gaader can come out with such interesting stories, why can't I?? Hence Goh Lan Yu was borned while I was half asleep and half awake...

Haha I've finished the 1st part of the short story, so full of shit... although I think that the story is so rubbish that no one will read it, but I've my fun doing something creative. Indulge me if you're feeling very bored and full of free time by reading my story and give comments. It's free of charge anwz. =P

 

 

Meet up with an old friend

Duration: 2 to 3 hours

Props: a friend from the past

Effect: chronological

 

This is an experiment which can be carried out at different ages, and it takes on a different colouring depending on where one is in life. Children who haven't seen each other for 2 or 3 years scarcely recognize each other, even if they are old enough to remember and have played a lot together. 'It's Anthony, isn't it? Do you remember him? Yes you do... It's Marion, look, she's got the same eyes!' Embarrassed smiles, avoidance of eye contact. They'll get to know each other, but remember nothing, or almost nothing, and the little they do remember is a blur.

In adolescence, when one hasn't seen a friend for a long while, the experience is both amusing and disturbing. The mixture of amusement and uneasiness comes from the fact that features remembered clearly are now accompanied by breasts, and hair, and everything else that is growing in those years. You see you smaller selves in grown-up bodies. And that's bizarre.

Adults can go for longer. Ten, tewnty, thirty years without seeing one another. The anticipation in the restaurant or the cafe, wondering if you'll recognize each other and in what guise, with what wrinkles, all the wear of time. It's a rare mixture of apprehension and tenderness, and you scarcely know whether the apprehension is for yourself or for the other. The tendency is likewise.

And the strange incredulity with which - having recognized the other instantly (how? the eyes? the smile?) - you scrutinize those ravages of time. The other person has aged, clearly. You too, as you're aware, though you can't see it. And then, in a strangely moving way, time's terrible passage hits you with a sudden dread, obliquely, as you suspect that you, also...

 

********

I've wanted to do the above philosopical experiment when I met an old friend yesterday whom I never see for a year. But surprisingly the experiment didn't work leh. She still as 蹦蹦跳跳 as before =P Maybe we won't change that much in one year. Or maybe we're more at ease when we're together with old friends. Maybe it just shows that we're still young! Something we need to treasure, a lot a lot.

 

 

Consider humanity to be an error

Duration: about one hour

Props: none

Effect: bracing

 

How often have we been told that we are exceptional! Centre of the world, children of God, universal conciousness, intelligence, language beings, spirit of science, vector of progress. Our existence has been so celebrated by myths, religions, philisophies, that it's hard to comprehend our failures, our vileness, our interminable wars and our endless filth. Naturally, there has beenany amount of special pleading, to explain our fall, our malediction, outwo-facedness.

There's a way of experimenting with a more radical form of disillusionment, which is doubtless more beneficial. Rid yourself of anything that resembles a meaning to our exixtence. Consider humnaity as a result of pure chance, a mistake, a biological accident. It developed without order, on some lost pebble in some small benighted corner. One day it will disappear for ever, unremembered and unmourned. For the tens of thousands of years of its survival, our species stagnated.Then it multiplied unreasonably, and plundered its own habitat. And before disappearing, it will have charged to its account a weight of suffering both unimaginable and futile, massacres and famines, enslavements and tyrennies.

Take a clear-eyed look at this absurb and violent species. Confront its lack of justification and ephemeral, irrational existence. Train yourself to endure this vision of humanity as fundamentally meaningless and futureless. For against this background of unmeaning and horror, every sublime thing shines out the more as a matchless gift. Perfect music, unforgettable paintings, the glory of cathedrals, grief-stricken poems, lovers' laughter... Such are the endless surprising fruits of this aberration that is to us.

 

From 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life by Roger-Pol Droit