I love chatting—I mean, instant messaging online-type chatting. It’s great, because I can think about what I’m saying AND I don’t really have to pay much attention to the other person, meaning I can browse Wikipedia or whatever. Talking in real life is too much freakin’ work—ya gotta maintain your face in a happy, interested grimace, and you’ve got to keep a pace, like marching in a marching band. Makes me tired. Real-life chats are best when I can lay around in a semi-comatose state, may be with a stylish drool line, prompting my accompanying chatter to check my pulse every now and then. Aww yeah, now that’s socializing.
Monthly Archive for September, 2006
Everyone here keeps pronouncing OMA (Rem Koolhaas’ firm) as “ooohma” (rhymes with “Barcelona,” sort of). Dammit, it’s O-M-A!
Also, I’m dying for a sandwich. There’s a Subway here, but amazingly it’s crappier than the ones in the States—no, I’m talking about a Togos pastrami sandwich, an Arby’s Market Fresh sandwich, a Cafe Intermezzo chicken salad sandwich. I want white food!
People wonder why I seem to know a lot of words—it’s because I look up a bunch of stuff.
The following are words (plus respective page) I looked up while reading Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris.
- Apocrypha (30): “As for Ravintzer and The Little Apocrypha“
- simulacra (68): “that I had defeated the ’simulacra’”
- serous (69), serum, coagulate, serous membrane: “they exuded a serous liquid”
- ampoule (73): “I remembered I’d left these… these ampoules in a drawer.”
- demonomania (76): “a sort of elementary demonomania” *not in dictionary
- cerebroside (77): “one of the constituents of the cerebrosides”
- discomfiture (77): “enjoying my discomfiture”
- laconic (81): “the entries in the log were laconic and negative”
- colloidal (82), emulsion, miscible: “a thick colloidal substance”
- treacle (83): “it was like a very thick treacle”
- apiary (84): “that I recognized an apiary”
- compress (96): “Do you want a compress for your forehead?”
- auscultation (101): “A little auscultation, eh?”
- corpuscle (102): “red corpuscles”
- albumen (103): “nebulous outlines of threads of albumen”
- perspicacious (107), keen: “less perspicacious”
- cretinous (108): “cohabiting with a cretinous dwarf”
- monograph (115): “already relatively obsolescent monograph”
- obsolescent (115), obsolete: “already relatively obsolescent monograph”
- alimentary (118): “conveyed alimentary materials”
- mimoid (118): “The ‘mimoid’ formations are considerably more complex” *not in dictionary
- vehement (118): “elicit a more vehement response”
- conscientious (119): “The conscientious Giese”
- tegument (119), integument: “ejects a thick tegument”
- capriciousness (122): “the total instability and capriciousness”
- vitrifies (123): “vitrifies and begins to shine”
I think the translators went a little nuts. They’re probably linguists or something.
Holy shit folks, there’s been a coup d’etat in Thailand!
Update:
I had a chat with my Thai colleague… may be I’ll summarize this later:
Gary says: Egg, what do you think of the revolution in Thailand?
Egg says: peaceful actually
Egg says: this will gone in 1 or 2 days
Gary says: really?
Egg says: Bangkok love festival and dont like wall
Egg says: yeah
Gary says: so there’s no threat to the prime minister?
Egg says: no
Egg says: they are happy now
Gary says: so people like the prime minister?
Egg says: not at all
Egg says: he not good
Egg says: that why we happy
Gary says: so you think the military is just going to give up to the prime minister, when he comes back from new york?
Egg says: umm he wont back to thailand yet
Egg says: and family are in London
Egg says: they will fly here to set up something to fight by mouth
Gary says: and you think he’s going to win?
Egg says: i dont think so
Gary says: so you think the military is going to stay in power?
Egg says: yeah but not the bad power
Egg says: it’s good power
Gary says: but what if they don’t give up their power?
Gary says: didn’t this happen in 1991, and the military wanted to stay in power?
Egg says: no that one is only 1 man who hungry
Gary says: so what’s the military going to do this time? what’s their plan?
Egg says: it just make the prime minister not come to power again cos he want to sell our country
Gary says: he wants to sell thailand?
Egg says: part of thailand the land
Egg says: sell everything
Egg says: he quite dangerous
Gary says: well, when is the military going to give up their power?
Egg says: the power is still but we will vote for good ppl again
Egg says: we need good prime minister
Gary says: so they’re going to have another election?
Egg says: after we clear all bad away first
Gary says: seems like that might be hard…
Egg says: yeah but we have to
Egg says: our country lost so many thing for him already
Gary says: what kinds of things has he done?
Egg says: many
Egg says: all about money
Gary says: hmm… thanks for filling me in
I’ve ranted on the suffocatingly serene, the grinding vanilla of the corporation and of the Singaporean society that magnifies it. But, the situation’s not unforgiveable. Let me explain.
For a moment, I’m going to step in front of myself and look back. This corporate way helps define me. My identity comes from my desire to resist it, from my modest disgust with it, from my —in short, what I am is how I react, and this is what I’m currently reacting against. The corporation lets me feel unique; it’s my fount of individuality.
In a perverse way, it galvanizes me to be me—it prods me to seek out new music, interesting art, intriguing movies, and all that other hipster crap I’m into. Of course, I do these foremost because I like ‘em, but snug in my subconscious is the threat: stop and lose what you see as yourself.
Imagine that the whole world has the same values you do. Everyone thinks what you think is great; everyone praises your decisions because they’re their own; everyone has your morals and shares your delights and your disgusts, you taste and your thoughts. How would you define yourself? You wouldn’t—definition comes from difference.
Yes, I don’t squint when I look at the bright side, because I’m out of here in a year and my many colleagues aren’t. But that, itself, is part of the point.
Do I think bland complacency with life is bad? Do I think that living a secure but pointless life is bad? Do I dislike peeling myself away for pennies so that others may profusely profit? With my best brief black-and-white Bush-ness, I’ll say “sure.” But are these things really?
Don’t praise mediocrity, but appreciate it.
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