Thursday, September 28, 2006
retail therapy
Labels: foto
10:38 PM
its not funny
i am absolutely fuming MAD! ARGH! theives should just GO AND DIE.. like seriously.
i had almost $40 worth of groceries this week. it's like waaay more than what i usually buy, cos i had good stuff this time - smoked salmon, boursin cheese, salad vegetables, a cucumber, grapes, soy milk. and now.. its. all. gone. and guess what, i just bought it on tuesday night! i havent eaten any of that stuff! thankfully, i left my yoghurt and blueberries in hwajung's fridge so i still have that left to eat. but STILL, WHY WOULD ANYONE DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!?!!?!?!?!? argh, i need to vent.
and i was supposed to start saving money. been pretty extravagant this semester, i dont know why. BAH. absolutely PISSED OFF. food donations please?
Labels: daily scoops
10:04 AM
negatives
top: tennis
bottom: guy lying on the grass with people playing frisbee in the background, exposure that was damaged in the process of developing
top: coffee, bagel and a book by the window
bottom: vending machine (i tried to capture a packet of m&ms falling but i was too slow, so all you get is the candy)
Labels: foto
12:39 AM
hot cakes
jeanette! my roomie.. i love her hair
beef pastrami with arugula and gorgonzola cream
its not white chocolate, its its-too-pretty-to-be-eaten butter!
salad sampler: penne with roasted vegetables, tomatoes and artichokes, broccoli and cauliflower cream
Labels: daily scoops
12:24 AM
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
happiness is 2 lucky charms in a cereal box
cherie is coming to new york!!!!! cherie, you're coming to new york!!!! its gonna be the awesome threesome! =D
i developed my first roll of film today! it was a nerve wreck cos we had to do everything in the dark - prying open the canister, snipping the film off the roll, winding the film into the spiral (tts not the real name for it) and then putting it into the developing can (tts not the real name for it either).
alot of screw ups along the way but it didnt matter. i opened my camera before i unwound the film. i didnt wind the film into the spiral properly so i lost some pictures, but thank goodness they werent the important ones. we didnt have all the solutions made up so we had to multitask and develop the film
while making up the solutions. there was a crack in the lid of my developing can! but its all fine =)
my books from amazon came!nothing too exciting about textbooks, but i just love going to the mailroom to pick up parcels. makes me feel important! hehe.
i am going skydiving!!!!!enough said. everytime i think about it i can't help but *squeal*!
happiness!Labels: a-musing
4:21 PM
Monday, September 25, 2006
finito
its over. im done. i dont want to have anything more to do with you. and so this chapter is closed.
goodbye marx. u made me sit on my butt the whole weekend. i couldn't have any fun at all, all because of you. and i think im going to badly on this paper.
[on a side note, i do love my anthro professor even though he made me read marx. he emailed me after i sent him my paper, and he said "I was going to ask you how it went but as the class was ending you never looked up." awww!]
highlights this weekend:
a blue cotton candy cloud
lots of birthday cake
msn pictionary
clean sheets
and that's about it. sigh! at least you dont have to hear about the M-C-M' stuff anymore.
Labels: a-musing
12:09 PM
Friday, September 22, 2006
M-M'
spheres of exchange. there are four of them:
M-M'
M-C-M'
C-M-C' and
C-C',
where C represents 'commodity' and M represents 'money'.
the most basic form of exchange, is the C-C' sphere, which is really just barter trading. one cow for three pigs, assuming one cow has the same
exchange value of three pigs. however, one cow and three pigs have different
use values, because you can get milk, leather and beef from one, and pork, ham and toothbrushes from the other. their physical properties are different.
as you progress from one sphere of exchange to another, you are almost progressing up the social hierarchy of money. barter trade seems primitive, and the M-M' sphere is now the new trend of the season, where you trade money for more money e.g. through stocks and bonds and what have you. M-M'.
although the M-M' sphere dominates all the other categories, it really is the least productive sphere of all, imo. no commodity is produced as a result, and the money is not used for the purpose for which it was created, that is, to mediate the exchange of commodities. money shouldn't be an end in itself, for you can do nothing with it except maybe fold origami, if it lost its mediation property. consumption, the satisfaction of needs, should be the goal of these exchanges. otherwise, we end up being money hoarding, mercenary creatures who enjoy the smell of money and nothing more.
to me, the M-M' sphere is made-up, created. we could live without it, because we need to satisfy our needs, as achieved in the C-M-C sphere but not in the M-M' or M-C-M' (which is really just an extension of the former) spheres. this is why, or this was why, the finance field is not for me. because i do not believe in it. i could never articulate it, but i found my answers from Marx.
Labels: a-musing
12:26 PM
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
russian humour
"...Use-values must therefore never be treated as the immediate aim of the capitalist; nor must the profit on any single transaction. Hi aim is rather the unceasing movement of profit-making. This boundless drive for enrichment, this passionae chase after value, is common to the capitalst and the miser; but while the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser. The ceaseless augmentation of value, which the miser seeks to attain by saving his money from circulation, is achieved by the more acute capitalist by means of throwing his his money again and again into circulation."
"...But the money itself is only one of the two forms of value. Unless it takes the form of some commodity, it does not become capital. There is here no antagonism, as in the case of hoarding, between the money and commodities. The capitalist knows that all commodities, however tattered the may look, or however badly the may smell, are in faith and in truth money, are by nature circumcised Jews, and, what is more, a wonderful means for making still more money out of money."Capital
- Karl Marx
*things you find funny after taking one and a half hours to read 8 pages of karl marx's theories on commodities and money, first written in russian and then badly (if i may say so) translated into english.
just cut to the chase dude!
10:47 PM
Sunday, September 17, 2006
a bad rep
i have a notorious reputation going around. its bad.
in my negotiation class, people think im cutthroat, vicious, stingy, miserly, what have you. i 'gave' a $200 tip in our last case, when the average tip was about $500. especially in america, you should never under tip, or so they say. i blame it on my cultural ignorance, and my asian background. our negotiation today required me to take on the role of a recruiter negotiating salary with a potential employee. it took 1 hour, and i thought i was pretty generous but compared to this other pair, i was awfully stingy. my partner said he wanted to quit the firm after that. he seemed really pissed off with me.
i never thought i'd be the vicious bargainer. it was traumatizing having to bargain in shanghai, i thought i was getting ripped off all the time. and i feel that in every negotiation, i sell out and agree to a price higher than i hoped for. why do they think im mean?!?!
5:35 PM
Saturday, September 16, 2006
united 93
5 years on from the 9/11 attacks. while the term 911 now has means something different, i feel like nothing much else had changed. the tragedy of this event seems to only have served as a hollow reminder of the fragility of life.
the 91 minutes of the movie has left me in a state of shock. while we all knew the global impact of the terrorist attacks, it was hard to comprehend the individual experience. but clearly, the one thing that stood out was that, at the end of the day, what's most important are the people that you love and the faith that you have. because in such a situation, those are the only things that you have to hold on to. and while life must go on, suddenly it feels like getting good grades, earning money are such microscopic purposes. it feels like when we focus on these small things, we are missing the bigger, more important picture.
i remember it was the day before physics olevel prelims, and when i saw the news, it made no sense to me. i remember turning my back and going back to my books. i remember the sms-es that were going around, joking about the planes flying into the twin towers. today, we were (almost) the only ones in the cinema and we pretended to be the twin towers and the planes. the movie served as a good reminder, a rude awakening, of how uncertain and fragile life can be. i almost feel ashamed of how i made trivial this series of events.
when i walked back after the movie, my heart felt tight, squeezed up. the impact the movie has on me is perhaps only temporary, and i will probably continue living my microscopic life when i wake up tomorrow. but i hope that i will hold on tight to the people i love, and to my faith, and never give them up for anything else.
2:08 AM
Friday, September 15, 2006
guilt ridden, ugg!
i've got more intelligent things to blog about, but those can wait.
i'm guilty. i'm a terrible person.
i went to the supermarket, and got distracted along the way because i saw.. a SHOE SALE! and i was just thinking of buying a pair of winter boots to keep my feet warm and comfy when i go to new york and boston in december. it was meant to be! not really.. i ended up buying a pair of uggs for waaaaayyyy too much money (esp after buying my camera, omg! *faints*) that i dont really need.
and because i was shopping, i was late for tennis. and i couldnt come up with a decent excuse as to why i was late (wat wld i say? 'i was shopping and forgot about the time'?'), so i decided not to go at all.
omg, tell me its ok please!
1:30 PM
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
where i belong
my corner of the world
where the serious stuff (like work, and uhm... online shopping?) gets done
my food stash - top shelf: fruit, middle shelf: noodles etc, bottom shelf: cooking stuff (i love the baskets!)
the view from my window
7:18 PM
my other other baby
da bomb, which burnt a huge hole in my pocket.
9:48 AM
Monday, September 11, 2006
magnetic poetry
you are cute as a cocktail
i love the dandelion hair
2:06 AM
Sunday, September 03, 2006
good ol' company
everyone, meet bear.
age: young, but kinda old at heart
occupation: retired pilot (the crazy kind)
hobbies/pasttimes: lounging around in bed all day
pretending to be fierce when he's really just lazy and grumpy
currently learning how to type (he's really bad at it though cos his paws r so fat he presses more than one key at a time, but if u leave him a tag he will reply!)
sporadically does sit ups to trim that tummy (he's so fat his shirt scrunches up above his belly!)
best friend: the other bear, who is almost the complete opposite of him
6:28 PM
Friday, September 01, 2006
fortune cookie wisdom
chinese takeout and chick flicks make for very intelligent people. you know how fortune cookie fortunes never make any sense? today i discovered the wisdom behind them all -
Alas! You are the apple of my eye.
Always, always practice humility.
Learn to enjoy every minute of your life.
totally makes sense when you add these two words at the end of it: in bed.
10:24 PM
rain, rain, go away
so the hurricane is no fun at all. everyone's stuck indoors because its cold and wet outside and nobody wants to be cold and wet. i had to go to the library earlier today, and that was no fun too. the wind was blowing my umbrella and my skirt, and there were puddles water everywhere. wet shoes are no fun if they aren't wellies, boo. tennis, obviously, was cancelled, or so i assumed. no fun. was supposed to meet vickypei for lunch but we cancelled because of the rain. no fun. its cold and all i wana do is curl up under my covers. now that is some fun ;) but u can only do that for so long (well apparently i managed to do that for 60 hours once *haha*). we ordered take out, and it should be coming soon. maybe that would be some fun. maybe i should just go splash in the puddles and get all wet.
i want the sun to shine again, so that i can go to farmers' market, have brunch, sunbathe, have dinner on the corner, get some drinks. that's the plan for tomorrow, so sun, please come out to play.
7:03 PM
when it rains, it pours
funny how freak weather fascinates singaporeans, or me. like that 'tornado' at sentosa.
right now, we are experiencing a hurricane. although its just neverending rain, im still excited. haha. unfortunately, UVa never cancels classes. dang. i got rained on last night, because my head is by the window and the rain was coming through. i thought it felt nice, heh, but when i woke up this morning, my window sill was flooded. yeeps.
check out the weather map. find washington dc, trace slightly to the left and the slightly downwards and that's where charlottesville is.
cool shit! =D this rain is much welcomed, since previously, virginia was actually experiencing a drought. WHOA, freak weather.
8:53 AM
