<thought />

Okay.. this isn't the actual post I had in mind for breaking the angst cycle on my blog, but uhmm.. NADD took over and made me lazy in writing it (if you're reading this Tom, "Look behind you! A three-headed monkey!").

First up, an interesting find from the Natural Selection Forums. If you're reading my blog, it's likely that you're a geek/nerd (take your pick) and if you're a nerd, you're likely to be a afflicted with Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder. Some symptoms of NADD: insane amount of multi-tasking (tabbed programs, ie: firefox, just feeds this), control freakishness over computer setting (looks at Edison) and inability to focus BUT when you do get focused, you get insanely focused.

I can attest to the last symptom. I have so many project left unfinished cause of me losing interest in it, but the projects that I have managed to complete usually had me going at it for long periods of time with zeal and focus.

It's not all that bad though. For some jobs, like programming, having NADD can be a good thing. Another thing geeks may have is autism or, more likely, it's more milder form, Asperger's syndrome. Here's a good read on it over at Wired, and there's even an Autism Quotient Test you can take to see how Autistic you might be. It's not a defenitive diagnosis tool, but it's there for you. I think I scored around the upper side of the mid 20's when I took it the other time.

On a different note, a redeeming thing I find about the malls around my school, where I'm pretty much forced to hang out in, is that they have art galleries! I find myself spending time alone by myself in these malls, and the art galleries just make me happy.

Walking around the galleries, looking at the paintings, I find that it's an intensely personal activity. I can spend time gazing at a painting without being forced to move along 'cause the person I'm with is bored. I can spend time analyzing it, seeing how it affects me, what I like about it, how it makes me feel. Generally though, at least one art gallery would only have what I call "hang-em-ups", paintings that don't really evoke any feelings and are there just to decorate the house.

I've also come to the conclusion that if you're going to go to a coffee place, you have to bring along a good book OR good company. Sitting alone in a coffee place just drinking coffee is the lose. Also, Starbucks mochas in Shang taste really really plasticky and must be avoided at all cost. Go to Coffee Beanery, Mocha Blends or Figaros for your coffee fix instead (Figaros also smells especially delicious).

Oh, and weird/funny incident at school today. I was climbing the stairs behind these two girls on my way to class (at this point, I'm wondering if one of them would fall down cause she was wearing heels. Hey, I have weird thoughts) when I notice they're giggling and that one of them glanced back towards me. I'm weirded out but in my head I just go "okaaay" and just shrug it off.

So we head to the same floor and I was walking past them as they went into a classroom when one of them says to the other in a loud voice, "You want to know his name?" (in tagalog). In the classroom, you could hear the other girl protesting which amused me somewhat. Not really flattered, I'm not flattered easily, but it was funny in a way. As I walked away, the first girl called out to me and asked me to introduce myself to the other girl.

I kinda knew the one who called me cause, well, she's quite chio, not my type though. Just cause it's funny to make people slightly uncomfortable, I turned around, went into the classroom and poked my head in to say hi. I even went as far as to extending my hand for a handshake (they have something about handshakes here...) but it wasn't reciprocated. Walked away from that incident quite amused but with a slight ding to my ego as, while I was going away, I heard the girl saying something about "Not my type!" in a pretty loud voice. Not in a mean way though, but still.. mah ego!

Gotta wonder though.. is this karmaic payback for the Neil incident?

Countdown: 2 days to Half

P.S.: Marmite sucks.

P.P.S.: Peanut butter owns your face, especially the crunchy kind.

Wow. Look, another post on feelings. Don't worry, I'll make it short, just wanted to thank Paully for the advice he gave me.

paully_slag@hotmail.com wrote:

bleh.. that is nothing! just don't get too serious too fast. She is way too young.

I think his advice is just what I needed to hear. I've been agonizing over my feelings too much, taking it too seriously. Thanks you red-bearded bastage!

Edit, cause I didn't want to make a new post. This is now in my school file.

Megatokyo, strip 613

18th September 2004

I'll remember this date for now. Some dates possess a beauty to them. Yesterday was September 17. It's not a date that I'd call beautiful. 18th September. There's something to the way it comes off your lips. The tone, the meter, Eight'eenth of Sept'emb'uhr.

I'll remember you, for now.

Whats so special about you? (as I type this, it's now officially 19th of September, 00:00) You were a Saturday, a school day, a rainy day, a hazy day. A day that almost broke my heart.

You started off clothed in haze, a noxious grey veil that concealed your beauty, that engulfed the city. A day perfect for misery when the air you breath ends your life.

And later, when I was feeling morose, when I was feeling down, from the heavens you sent the unselfish lover. You made me smile as I watched her fall, as I watched her dance, as she washed away the clinging veil that hid your beatiful face. Rain makes me smile so much, so much emotions get uncovered. I remembered my other her, while the rain fell. I had so much I wanted her to know, so much I wanted to know about her. She made me happy.

Then I saw her again. Expectations converse. Sometimes I feel like my love/like for her has waned, simmered. When you think about the person you want, you have all these expectations. You project it to the person you fall for and unfairly you expect them to be That One, the ideal that you created in your mind. Expectations converse. Talking to her makes me realize that she isn't this image, that shes reality, not my imagination.

It almost cured me.

And I was almost ready to take the cure. To give up, to start forgetting. As I watched her go, I contemplated the cure. To take it would have set my world right. To take it would have meant to creep back into the shadows of loneliness. It would have meant coldness, moroseness, but it would have set my world right. No longer would my heart take flight when I'm around her. No longer would her presence befuddle my mind. No longer would I smile over the little things about her. Back to the Emptiness that defined my world.

But in a moment of serendipity I realize, that is her beauty. She is not from a fantasy. She is from reality. I love/like her for who she is, not what I think she is. Reality swingback.

PS: I know I promised something about my last post about her...

If you're still seeing the old layout, click here to load up the new one.

Ignore the crappy attempt at a french joke (redux, deux. retrois, trois. get it? sigh nevermind). <thought/>'s 3rd redesign is up baby! This version isn't the final yet, but I've been itching to post my new design for quite a bit now. Hmm... lesse.. first Mia redesigns, then Lystra and now me! I see a pattern here. Does my family redesign in phases?

I dub this stylesheet Clean, and as always you can choose which style you prefer to view the page in under Alternate Stylesheets, all the way down in the navigation bar. And what is it with the blue blogbar? It seems to be able to blend in with all of my stylesheets.

Tweaks I need to make on the design:

• I need to tweak the whitespacing. Right now, clean seems to suffer from crowdedness of text. Text needs to be further apart to make reading it less of a pain.

• More graphics. You can never have enough graphics in your webpage! I am trying for a minimalist approach to Clean, but it could use a little icon or two here and there.

• Colo(u)r tweaks. I sorta like the not-quite-black main text color I'm using, but it does make the design look too soft. And I'm not quite happy with the hover color for the menu text.

I didn't make much changes to the underlying XHTML. Just a few new hooks for when I finally get around to enhancing the page with javascript, and to show the comment count in the archive pages. Oh, and just to show off a neat new thing I added to the stylesheet.

Look at the purty quotation mark! Isn't it pretty! I find myself using <blockquote> quite a bit so I thought it would be nice to spruce it's presentation up some

And ColorWhore is such a neat site. It's like a free color inspiration book! And some of the colours run in a series that inspires me. I can definitely see some colour schemes I want to use in future designs there.

Geeks rule. We have our own olympiads to celebrate each countries best geeks. It's kind of fitting. Geeks sound so much like greeks eh? [Sidenote: etymological root of geek is kinda bad compared to nerd].

Man I wish I could be smart enough to take part in the programmer olympiads. The people you get to meet there must be incredibly mentally stimulating. Philippines is probably too poor to field a team though.. heh.

Wonder if these olympiads will ever garner attention like the atheletic olympics. Heck, even the special olympics get some attention..

Here's a cool little meme by Mia. List down all the names people know you by. Mine will be really really short I bet.

If you call me...

• Jeiel (correctly pronounced). You either know me or have a knack for pronouncing people's names correctly. My name is so weird to read that I've been resigned to people mercilessly slaughtering it all my life. You could also be Regan, the only online friend I have that calls me by my proper name.

• Jail/Jeh-ee-el/(insert mangling of my name of your choice). You're attempting to read out my name and failing badly. I can tell by the way you're scrunching up your face as you puzzle over how to pronounce my name that you're about to call me and I'm readying myself to correct you. If you're smart you'll ask how to pronounce it. If not you'll just steamroll over it to get it over and done with.

• Jei-eel. You're my primary school maths teacher Mr. Goh Tiak Hee. I hate you.

• Yo !@#$. Either you really hate me, or you're one of my close friends from Singapore. It's probably the latter since I don't know enough people to get them to hate me yet. Oh and YO DAMN SHIT!

• ZeroByte. You know me from one of the forums I frequent. Fastfood, Natural Selection, TAF. Take your pick. Prolly only well known in TAF and Fastfood though. You could also know me from deviantART or the pixelation forums. If you're from the pixelation forums, you should be thanking me for click-to-zoom! Actually if you call me ZeroByte, you could be almost anyone who knows me online. It's my primary online identity. IRC, Forums, etc.

• Ancient One. You're an old timer from the Brainchild Design forums, the first forum I was ever active in. You were part of the community when I was one of the more popular guys in that forum. Somehow through all these years you still remember me. And possibly Bloodat (I forget his original name) and Baraka.

• Hun. You're Bunny bint! My online granma! Although you call everybody hun really... You need to get your blog back online Michelle! If you're reading this, take care of yourself in the UK granma!

• ZB. You're from #abandongames or #danwa. You're a lazy bastard and shorten my nick ZeroByte into ZB. You also probably call me other names... but.. they're unmentionable. This is a PG-13 blog damnit!

• Kuy/Kor. You're Lystra. You want something from me or just want to annoy me with more stories of your boys. Love ya ;)

• Lystra's bodyguard. You're a friend of Lystra, probably calling me that cause I had to go with her before my parents allowed her to go. Being the big brother means you're the KJ (killjoy, learned new slang terms today). Or you could also be one of the guys from my class in AMA. I just want you to know I hate you all.

• Kuya Je. You're either Mi or Jo (Joren needs his journal Mia!). I'm stil kinda weirded out by people other than Lystra calling me kuya, but I love you guys :) You guys are the best. It's incredible that we can still click together like that after all those years.

• Genius. You're one of my former NYP classmates from DIT0316. I miss you guys muchos! You call me that cause I'm the class nerd and you want to ask for my help :D I didn't mind though as long as you were learning something.

• Oi. A classmate from B1 cause I still haven't introduced myself. :P

• ChemiKhazi. You're playing Natural Selection with me. You're probably Singaporean and you're probably talking cock over the voice comm. If I'm playing commander, you're probably pissed at me. If I'm a Gorge you're probably pissed at me too! I miss playing NS and I miss the SG servers.

• Marine Na Bei. You're playing Counter-Strike with me. That was kinda fun till it got stupid. Oh well.

• [LoTC] God of Lag. You're the L^P mofo's playing Warcraft 3 with me. You're also probably bitching about the lag I blessed the battles with. I so love my PC.

• Coconut. (new) You're my cousins and Lystra when I came back to Philippines for a vacation. You sang the whole coconut song as a way to tease me. "A coconut nut is a big big nut...". Yeah.

If you can add anymore names for me, go ahead and leave it in the comments.

These past few days/week have been quite unkind to my mental state. I had gotten so nervous I was having moodswings. One moment I'd feel unaccountably peaceful, another and I'm brooding. I put it down to the issues I've been having with my feelings for a certain girl. Thinking too much about things. Argh.

Finally, today she came to school. Just seeing her made my day, but it also put things back in perspective. I'm definitely not head over heels in love, but I am attracted to her.

Is it bad that my attraction isn't the heart thudding kind? I don't know if I can call it a deep attraction either. Matters of the heart are so not my specialty. I can say and will say that she makes me smile. That being near her makes me happy.

We talked as friends today. We both had a break in between classes and we just talked to kill the time (there's a story behind this too but I don't want to over analyze. maybe if you asked me. maybe). It was fun, finding out little things about her. [Sidenote: I didn't have to employ the Regan ploy] She's nicer than I realize, also we're kinda similar but not. Found out that I use the same shampoo as her. Never noticed that even though I loved the scent of her hair. Almost kinda like a shampoo commercial when I caught a whiff of it the first time XD. Little beautys abound in her :) (ugh sappy).

Also, she put my mind at ease about the whole non-replied SMS thing. Turns out she's just not getting them. Some phone/SIM thing (unimportant now). I'm happy now. Stability achieved. I'm content. At least I know we're still friends. Can it develop further? I don't know. For now I'll go with Plan A and not get freaked out into going for Plan B.

I'll try to make this my last post solely about her. Hopefully now I can move on to writing about things other than her. Which is probably a good idea cause I might actually link her to this someday...

I just feel the need to make a music recommendation post. I've just recently had a few bands introduced to me that make me really really happy. A whole different genre from the ones I recommended in my last music recommendations.

First up, we have Love Me Butch. This recommendation comes by way of P3k. They're Malaysian rockers and damn do I love them. Rocking, JTFU-ing, moshing-in-your-room music. At times brooding, but always kicking your ass with their music. Get The Protector at least, if you just wanna rock. For a slower sound, go with It's Over In Space. Never Ending Tunnel is a ass-kicking combination of harsh rock and sweet slow vocals.

• The Protector
• Never Ending Tunnel
• It's Over in Space
• Freefall

For punk rock, I don't think you can go wrong with Pilot to Gunner. Rapid 'choons, much like machine gunners. Not exactly uplifting but hey, they make me happy that's all I need to know. On second thought, go read 3hive's review. I don't think I do them justice. Oh and Lystra, the song that I woke you up with is It's So Good To Be Here In Paris. The songs available are just samplers. So now I think I have another band to my imaginary CD wishlist.

• Barrio Superstar
• We Got Games At High Speed
• It's So Good To Be Here in Paris

Bloc Party demonstrates 3hive's impeccable taste really (they were on the 3hive five once). The rock this group has put out. Damn. Bloody. Good. Irunno. Again I'm at a loss on how to describe their greatness. It's not a kick-ass-jump-up rock, but it feels like what rock ought to be. There's a purity to their rock. Or maybe that's just my anglophile-side kicking in. They sound like Brit rockers (well cause they are... ehh). Anyway, get all of their downloadable songs. You won't regret it. If not, at least toss a coin and download either Staying Fat or Banquet

• Banquet
• Staying Fat
• She's Hearing Voices

Okay, maybe the title shouldn't be so melodramatic. I'll just weep for the Singaporeans who put their blogs in Blogger. The "Next Blog" button on the blogbar is such an amazing tool for finding blogs. I found quite a few great blogs (for living vicariously through :D) but my journey through the jungle that is blogspot was not without dangers.

I cannot believe how many Singaporeans have blogs and I equally cannot believe how many of them make me want to take a tire iron to the authors faces. Or maybe just to mine, to end my misery.

So without further ado, here's the blogs that I've found so far that are worthy of reading.

• Deus Ex Machina: Singaporean Blog. Intelligently Angsty, Funnily Insulting. Kinda reminds me of Tom in real life. Tom's blog is so sedate compared to his real self.

• Kitabkhana: Fascinatingly intelligent. I think. I haven't actually read much of it, but a quick glance through the posts make me think that reading it would be quite enjoyable.

• No longer studying abroad Peter Krupa: Quite a chin scratching title for a blog. Not because it's intelligent, just cause it's strange. The writer has some genuinely funny writing, but I do so wish I could write about love/like as eloquently or at least as coherently as he does in Going to Plan B

I'll probably find a few more blogs that I like through the "Next Blog" button, and a whole boat load of blogs that'll make me despair for humanity. I'll post any more gems I find at a later time. And of course, feel free to check out the blogs I've linked up too. I guarantee that none of them are mind numbingly stupid.

Do me a favour though. If you don't see me online in the next few days, look for a news article about somebody who bludgeoned himself to death in front of a computer while reading a website.

Most likely aforementioned website will be written in AlTeRnAtE cApZ and would have had you click at least 5 javascript alerts before you can enter the site (I'm serious about the javascript alerts too).

Talking to Regan, reading his blog. I really ought to start reading up philosophy texts. Quite a few of the people I consider important in my life or influential to me do the whole philosophy thing. It's intimidating, but it kinda attracts me (no Tom, not that way you gay bastard) in the intellectual sense.

Irunno, I have the yearning to expand my mind beyond the technical things I dabble in. I just don't seem to have the drive to actually go out and find these books. Maybe a library (school library sucks). Hmm. Or I could go bug my cousins about lending me one of the plethora of philo books they seem to have.

Meep. I can't stop myself from putting down all this crap into my blog. Oh well. I suppose it would be a nice way to look back when all this passes.

A couple of songs that I found appropriate to what I'm feeling right now. Lifehouse's Breathing and Voh's Pull it Off. Although Breathing is kinda stalker freaky in the lyrics.

I wish she would stop sending me forwards and reply to something. At the very least, tell me if I'm bothering her. Tell me to go away, stop it, fuck off, whatever. I... I don't know. At least I would know how she feels. At least I would know to start forgetting... (or maybe that should be to start trying more? meh)

I hope she comes to school next week. At least I'll get to see her and uhm, ask her if it annoys her/disturbs her/makes her want to get a restraining order on me. Irunno. Or maybe I'll stop being so damn oblique and ask her outright, or tell her outright. Bleh. I've contemplated calling her up but it just feels wrong to do that. Idunno why either.

Okay, enough of this crap. I still can't sort it out but whatever. Cross it when I come to the bridge.

Anyway, went out in the rain again today. Damn I love it. I give todays rain two thumbs up. It had everything. A great build up, suspense, action. Woo.

I went out to sit by myself before the rain properly began, to think about things and to be alone. I didn't have to wait long before it started. The drizzle started, riding the high wind, getting whipped into icy darts that hit you with force, like kisses from an ice queen.

I step out of the cover of the carport into the rain itself. A mad exhilirating rush. The wind, the rain. They envelope me in their mad, twisting, passionate dance. The rain being carried by the wind. Sigh. It was so so cold but it made me feel alive. I love the elements :)

Later in the evening, as far as I can remember, the first blackout I'd experienced here! That was kind of a surprise. One moment I'm watching Dark Angel, drooling over Jessica Alba (so hawt) the next I'm sitting alone in the darkness, wondering wtf happened. It was kinda fun in the new experience kind of way. The whole subdivision was plunged into darkness. No streetlights, no nothing. We just sat around the living room, hunkered down with the rest of the family carrying flashlights.

During the blackout (which couldn't have lasted for more than an hour, maybe it was around 45 minutes), I sent her part of the lyrics (whoops, back to this) to Lifehouse - Breathing.

'Cause I'm hanging on every word you say

And even if you don't want to speak tonight

It's alright, alright with me

See? Stalker-ish lyrics. At least I didn't send her the next part which was about.. sitting outside her door.. and listening to her breathing.. yeah. Maybe a bad choice of song.

Must. Rant. About. School. I hate the start of school terms. They're such wastes of time. And this term especially. So we're supposed to be doing webcasted learning, cause well, the school's too poor to pay for teachers (g effin' g). So now we're expected to learn stuff by trying to discern things from a small arse video feed, a buggy presentation and really really bad audio. How I so love AMA. Aurrrghhh......... (misses NYP)

This came from her in a SMS while I was playing a game of iSketch.

A boy was so sad cause he thought that the girl he loved didn't love him back. Years later, he saw the girl carrying her son. He asked, "What's his name?". She smiled and said "Same as yours.."

Yeah, one of those things everybody else seems to be forwarding to everyone else... but.. augh. Irunno. Part of me hopes it means something, another is screaming in terror. !!!!!