hmm.... Haven't blogged in 2 weeks. bad me.

well, feel slightly justified - finals + plane trips + lack of net access because nessa's brother hogs the computer = no blog opportunities.

anyway, there's actually bunches of stuff to say, but have now forgotten most of it and am too blissed out to care. i'll stick to the high points.

ROTK!! Peter Jackson strikes again! Excellent film. My opinion is that i prefer the extended two towers, but then it's probably because i have a soft spot of sean bean (whom tara chace of Queen and Country likes, i must add) and also because of the final fragcount scene between gimli and legolas. still twitching, indeed! In rotk we see why elves are famed for their dex (and legolas has an _obscene_ dex score). the attack of spider-elf!

think that theoden and eomer are probably more inspiring than aragon and faramir. largely because eomer possibly has more sense than faramir (ie will not let himself get killed for no reason) and theoden makes better pre-battle speaches than aragon (whose slightly nasal voice can be a bit off-putting). also it's odd than aragon never upgrades to better armour than chainmail. the wonders of a high dex score, i presume. love the witch king of angmar. must be so cool being a bodiless spectral being of malign supernatural power. and the semi-invulnerability wouldn't hurt too. my impression is that if eowyn wasn't on hand to kill him gimli or legolas would have done it.

on returning to singapore i realised that i felt horribly disconnected from society there. also feel a bit disconnected from the singaporean students in berkeley. am one of the odd ones who spends more time with american people than people from "home." feel that 1)am a loner by nature, or at least am now. 2)have interests which are so bizzarre that few people would willingly associate with me in the long term lest i bring up something weird. and no, i do not have an off switch for the strangeness factor, and neither would i want to. am thankful that my, and nessa's friends are largely inured to this, being all either extremely liberal or in some way weird.

one of the main sources of this sense of disconnection is the fact that lots of people now speak chinese in singapore. and there seem to be a lot of young people hanging around and goofing off. it's orchard road, i know, and it's the school hols, and you can call me an old geezer if you want, but it discomfits me to see 14-15 year old pai kia couples wandering all over the place. *sigh*

i suspect the change in social climate that i'm noticing (increased use of chinese, pai kianess becoming more socially acceptable, etc) is a result of the governments admission to an underclass. this is my theory: before the heartlander/cosmpolitan social classes were acknowledged to exist, society tried to conform with what was assumed to be the "superior" or dominant culture - that of the english speaking elite. so if people didn't speak perfect english, at least they spoke singlish all the time. (for example, most parents, even if chinese educated, might place special effort in ensuring their kids learned good english, simply because good english skill was seen as a means of moving up in the world) when the government admitted to the existence of two seperate types of singaporean, it created an awareness on both sides of the existence of class structure. it also legitamatised "heartlanders," - where once they were seen as a class of people working upwards to the cosmopolitan way of life, now they were acknowledged as a class who not only existed, but whose culture could be admirable too. (for the willingness to work hard, strong sense of traditional values, for being reliable, average joe, unlike the cosmopolitans were were brain draining the country, breaking their scholarship bonds and otherwise exhibiting snotty upper class behavior)

is all this bad for the country? i wouldn't know, i'm not a social theorist. on the one hand, it saved the government at the polls because there was growing discontent among the heartlanders that they were not adaquately represented (and they should be, in any nation what is considered the "lower" class doubtless makes up the majority and democracies are obligated to represent the will of the people) it was also a well deserved slap in the face for the cosmopolitans, for by enfranchising the heartlanders and giving them a say, it meant that the cosmopolitans could no longer take for granted the wealth, position and power they had. on the other hand, there are certainly people like me, who's distinctly singaporean but no longer feels comfortable in a singaporean society that had radically redefined itself along bipartisan lines. i like swearing in hokkien, and i enjoy using slang. when i speak to other singaporeans, i enjoy messing around with my english. in a sense, i like to remind myself and the people around me of my middle-class roots. at the same time, i take pride in my academics, i like playing with ideas, with concepts and paradigms. i am an extremely verbose writer. i may not be a much of a poet, but i can argue that i'm a good engineer. i definitely have ideas and aspirations that are radical by many standards, even so-called liberal comopolitans. by defining two social groups, singaporean society has left the middleground empty - there is no place for someone who would say they belong to both camps. at the same time, both sides have begun to actively exclude those who do not belong to their own side - use of language is one way to do this (ie: if heartlanders actively speak chinese and cosmopolitans "queen's english", then the other group is excluded by the language barrier). where does that leave me, self confessed weirdo that i am? (i can't speak chinese and i don't feel fully comfortable being classified with the rest of the cosmopolitans, with whom i probably have deep philosophical differences, ditto with the heartlanders)

here's a question i'd like to have answered - when i was in the army, i found that some people (the majority of those who would be considered "heartlanders") seemed to despise book learning, and found it profoundly disturbing that anyone would enjoy it. (i recall i was harrassed for reading a math textbook in my spare time. i admit that this sort of behavior might well be disturbing to almost everyone, though.) now, did this attitude exist prior to the heartlander/cosmopolitan divide? was there already resentment and did it grow (or did those who felt it feel more justified to express it) with the acknowledgement of singapore as a divided society?

comments, anyone? mail me, and maybe i can start some sort of email thing going. blogouts are waaaaayyy too small for this sort of stuff. but anyway, that's the gist of what i have to say about the matter. it's more complete because i've had time to think and talk about it with people, but my organisation is lacking, and i may have not paid enough attention to the key points.

went to kino in taka last week, and i noticed that the "gender relations" section contained books largely pertaining to gay couples. it is a good thing that taka doesn't feel obligated to make that part of the store "adult only," and it's placement with education bodes well for their respecting the topic (ie, it wasn't squeezed into the new age and tarot sections, though it is close), but why are they all about gay people? hetrosexual people make up the majority of the population, so why don't they have books on gender relations? same with bi people. it's weird.

nessa and me went to the library and to harvey norman today. waffle makers are bafflingly expensive - A$50 a piece! and they aren't even the type i like. these make the thick pancake like ones which are kinda spongy. nessa likes those though. i prefer the crunchy, fluffy type. ah well... at the library i was suprised to find compendiums of firearms and a book on sniper rifles stacked with woodworking. sniper rifles are cool, but i'm hardly a steady enough hand to handle them all that well. can say that i'm better at silent scope than either ness or her brother though. *grin*

we also went to perth yesterday to comic shop. sadly it is confirmed that age of magic #25 is the last of the series. damn, i liked it. at least i can claim to have a full collection. very annoying because i have been hunting it down for the last 6 months and it was only the guys at absolute comics who bothered to check with wizard and find out that issue 25 was the last. nick's hotdogs were also mildly dissapointing. they's still twice the size for the same price at top dog, and onions and cheese are still free, but the lady doing the dogs yesterday didn't toast the bread or heap as much onions and cheese as nick normally does. =( still good dogs, though. heartily recommended. nick's is in central perth near the train station outside myers and near the entrance to picaddilly arcade. speaking of which, we caught kill bill vol 1 at picadilly for $5 each. excellent price, and the run down cinema really adds to the atmosphere of kill bill, which was alternatively cool and hilarious. nessa got more of the older pop references (anything before the 80s) while i knew the bruce lee ones. i know i enjoyed the blood and gore a lot more than she did. disturbing that the two of were chuckling away in an otherwise quiet cinema as people were getting hacked up on-screen. but then as tarantino said: "no one's going to take this stuff seriously"

have discovered that i am not an anime fan. sadly have too high expectations of my media to be satisfied with most anime. still like eva for the psychodrama, but any programming the doesn't force me to think i don't really enjoy. which is why i watch CSI/without a trace/law and order, etc... really.

nessa likes my hair long. her first comment was that "it looks gorgeous." biased as she is, i'll still take that as a compliment. ;P