Saturday 30 April 2011

Eliza, the chat-bot

"Say, do you have any psychological problems?"
-Eliza the chat bot-

Sometimes, when I get bored and lonely, I go to my dashboard and have a little chat with Eliza, the chat-bot on my Mac. She's quite the repetitive character, not to mention dense and not making sense most of the time, but when you're on the verge of insanity, you don't have much of a choice.

Was chatting with her again today, when she said something I've never seen her say before, and honestly, was pretty surprised by the relevancy of it.


Let's forget for a while the fact that chatting with a bot on a daily basis may show that I do have some slight psychological problems.




But when even a bot detects there's something wrong with you, you know you're doomed. 

Tuesday 19 April 2011

3 years

"I don't need to manufacture trauma in my life to be creative. I have a big enough reservoir of sadness or emotional trauma to last me."
-Sting-


You know the drill.

I'll give some lame comment on how t's been a long, long time since my last update.

And then I'll express my overwhelming guilt for the crime of not being a faithful blogger, but never bothered to do anything about it.

And then I'll start giving excuses for not blogging. Some examples are "My life's too boring to have anything exciting to blog about", "I'm busy with my studies", and so on and so forth. 

Anyhoo.

At least now I'm here. 

It's been three years since I've moved out from my home in Malaysia, and I've been out here in Singapore since then.

It is also approximately 3 years ago that I started to have these weird recurring dreams of me and my mother getting into a heated argument, or my mother yelling at me for no apparent reason at all, apparently just to show her supremacy over me. 

The dreams don't come that often, maybe just once a month or so. But it's been 3 years, and this morning, after having my latest dream of my mum yelling at me for being rude to her (isn't yelling at me rude as well?), I started thinking maybe it has something to do with me and my childhood.

How is it that, at the time I start living away from home, these dreams start as well? And why do I have these dreams? It's been 3 years, and they're still coming routinely. Will it ever go away?

Here's a little background on my childhood life: I was pretty disobedient as a kid, and was quite the rebellious child in my teens. I hated my parents for being more strict towards me than any other of my friends' parents. This isn't just the immature teenage me talking, even now, as an adult, I think back of what my parents did and I still think they could have been less strict on me during my teens and let me have more fun.

Sorry guys, but the whole "You may hate us now for being strict towards you, but you'll understand when you grow up" ruse isn't at all working. 

Me and my mum constantly got into fights, mostly because I was a "freedom fighter". Because I didn't get what I wanted, I took revenge by hurting those who took it away from me. 

They say that if they weren't that strict towards me, I would have gone bad. Rotten bad. Got myself raped, and going around mixing with the wrong kind of people, and making the wrong decisions and ruining my entire future. 

Blah, blah, blah. 

Like, hello? Mixing with the "wrong kind of people"? As you can see, my best friends back then are now all successful university graduates. None of them school dropouts, none of them got raped, none of them are doing drugs or being a failure, and none of them are wishing they could do better in life. All of them had more freedom than I did. What makes their success any less than mine, just because they had more fun as a teenager? Are you actually comparing me with other insensible teens out there who have no sense of direction in their lives, fuck their lives up so bad that they don't even graduate from school with a decent O-level qualification, and end up serving plates in a coffee shop to make ends meet? 

Please. I'm your kid. I'm sure you'll think me better than that. Having fun is what a teen does. It does not mean he/she will end up on the streets jobless and uneducated, being a prostitute or garbage collector or whatever stereotypes parents like to use to scare their kids. It just means he/she will grow up having better memories of his/her childhood, and not have dreams of their mothers yelling at them when they grow up.

The way I see it, if they weren't that strict towards me, our parent-child relationship would have improved, I would lead a more vibrant childhood, have no regrets as an adult, and more importantly, NOT HAVE THESE RECURRING NIGHTMARES. 

Why do these dreams occur? 

Is it that now, after I've moved out, the real-live nightmare is gone, that it has come to haunt me in my dreams instead? Is it that, I've become so accustomed to being yelled by my mum and getting into fights with her that, the subconscious me can't live without it, and hence my subconscious dreams of it, because it actually wants me to get into fights with my mum?

Or is it that (I'm not being overly dramatic here) I've been traumatized by my past and now the trauma is showing it's ugly head? Is it possible that, because of all these years of being refused of the freedom I craved, I am psychologically not as right as other people? Maybe I had been traumatized, but the trauma was so minor that it never really actually showed, except for these dreams.

I know it doesn't play well to blame my parents for making me regret that my childhood isn't as vibrant as I wanted it to be, for making me wish I could turn back time and have more fun with my girl friends back then, and for giving me these recurring nightmares of my mother yelling at me, which has been ongoing for the past 3 years.

I just wished things were different back then. Maybe it'd make a difference today.

Sometimes, I feel that I'm not as normal as I'd want to be. 

It's been 3 years. Somebody tell me why I'm having these nightmares right after I move away from the source of it, and when will it stop. 

Wednesday 6 April 2011

Lomolicious!

"With Lomography, photography is redefined."
-Lomolicious-



LOMOLICIOUS IS OFFICIALLY OPEN FOR BUSINESS!


Click on Lomolicious' logo below to check out our latest range of lomo cameras and instant cameras:


Send us a personal message on Facebook for enquiries and ordering! Alternatively, you may drop us an e-mail and add us on MSN at lomolicious@live.com.

Click HERE to follow us on Twitter!

We are also holding our first ever event sale, with details as follows:

Photography Redefined
Date: 11th and 12th of April 2011 (Monday & Tuesday)
Venue: NTU SU Flea Market, @ Canopy K

Click here to attend our event!

Some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this

"The only real failure in life is the failure to try."
-Unknown Author-



I'm not bragging, just sharing my happiness for achieving my lifelong dream.

I know for now it's nothing much, but still. Let's wait and see where this goes. 

Friday 1 April 2011

a total mess.

"It’s so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don’t say it."
-Sean, Facebook-

This semester's a total mess. 

As compared to an average of 20 blog entries per month in the previous year, as of 2011, my blog entries have dwindled to a sad average figure of 5 per month.

Maybe I'm just getting wiser? 

prank me please

"Somebody prank me please... I can't have a boring April Fool's day!"
-Chean Ling, Facebook-





Yes, thank you, Google.

Though I wasn't all that enthusiastic about the idea of having to move around so much just to compose a single e-mail (I'm trying to guess how much weight I'd lose just by attempting to create a spreadsheet using Google Docs Motion).

Now we know you have a sense of humor.