Ars · Longa · Vita · Brevis

this has been making the rounds on the internet today and it's a speech by relatively unknown (well till now) New York Senator Diane Savino speaking about the Marriage Equality Bill which disappointingly did not pass yesterday denying the rights of gay people to get married legally in New York.

Whatever you believe with regards to gay rights or gay people, this is a good speech. It's clear, it's personal, it's funny and makes extremely pertinent points about the state of marriage. To top it all off, it was all off the cuff.



"We in government don't determine the quality and the validity of peoples' relationships. If we did, we would not issue three quarters of the licenses that we do..."

*Disclaimer*
Material contained in this entry is not suitable for children who believe in Santa!

i had one of the strangest conversations with my supervisor today. we were talking about christmas shopping and he asked if i celebrated Christmas. and i said- sure i do, my family is Catholic. And now that I have 3 nephews and a niece under the age of 5, it's actually quite fun when some people believe in Santa Claus. To which is replied- How does Santa Claus work?

Err...I had to clarify the question- what do you mean how does Santa Claus work? And he replied- Do your nephews and niece still believe in him?

And I said- i hope so! if not, i don't know how we are going to extract good behaviour from them for the whole of december without invoking the all-seeing stalkerish aspect of Santa. My supervisor than replied: Oh, aren't they a little too old now to believe in Santa? To which I replied- I don't think so, don't most kids twig when they are about 7 or 8? When did you realise that Santa didn't exist?

And he replied- 5.

I related this story to my friends later and it was really fun to see how old they were and why they worked out Santa wasn't real. MW worked out it out when she was 14! Which I reckon is pretty old. She did say though that she figured he probably wasn't real when she was 9 but it was easier to convince herself otherwise and the straw that broke the camel's back (well maybe in this case the reindeer's back) was realising that the present that her brother received came from a nearby toy shop. My other friend CK worked it out when she was about 6 when she found the carrots she'd left out for the reindeer were all back in the fridge the next morning. She said her mother was such an unconvincing liar that she worked it pretty much straightaway.

I worked it out when I was 8 or 9 (i think) when all our presents were from New Zealand because my family had just returned from a holiday in New Zealand and my parents didn't have time to shop in Singapore before Christmas so ended up buying everything on holiday.

So i guess my question is- how old were you when you worked out Santa wasn't real? And why? :)

my only excuse is that i couldn't sleep and this was the only book that was appeared appealing against the other others.

what am i talking about? the fact that i picked up Twilight off my friend's shelf and started reading it last wednesday because I couldn't sleep. fast forward 5 days later and not only have i finished that, I've finished New Moon and stayed up way too late last night finishing Eclipse. Only one book left to go and I think I'll be all set for the release of the movie in a couple of weeks. In my defence, I didn't buy any of the books, I borrowed them from 3 different people (says a lot about the company I hang out with :p) and i commute quite a bit nowadays. I read most of Twilight and New Moon between the London Marylebone Train Station and Leamington Spa Train Station.

I'm actually faintly amused with myself. It's been a long time since I've let myself get sucked into some fictional imaginary world. The last time this happen, it was with Lord of the Rings where I took about 2-3 weeks to finish reading the lot. Perhaps serious literature is not for me. Is the writing great? No not really but she's better than Dan Brown (which is not saying much). 1/3 is pretty bad ( i did wince), 1/3 is serviceable and the remaining 1/3 is not too bad at all. It is true what the critics say about it- it is teenage angst and it is stock characters and stereotypes. But by god, it's bloody (no pun intended) entertaining.

for months now, a few friends have been asking me to catch Glee this new tv show. I'd resisted for a couple of reasons, the title sounded stupid and i was a bit stressed out with this thing called a PhD. But I finally managed to find some episodes online and I must say I'm Hooked!

Glee is essentially (at the moment anyway) a show about a bunch of high school students in the Glee Club who are trying to win a competition. As a choir society they rank pretty much just about bathroom mould in the high school hierarchy. it's daft, it's silly and it's got some of the funniest lines I've seen on tv in a while. It's as if the kids from High School Musical got together and had a baby while high on drugs. it helps too that the creator is Ryan Murphy from Nip/Tuck and Jane Lynch from the Christopher Guest movies is in it too. Kristin Chenoworth has also guest starred in it and it's absolutely fabulous! Hee hee.

The cast are made up from people who are largely unknown but have performed on Broadway (there is a lot of singing and dancing in each show) and iTunes releases the songs they sing after the broadcast of each episode that's screened.

Here's the trailer


A show that has the campiest character become the star kicker in the football team because can dance to Single Ladies makes me very happy....why almost gleeful! hee hee hee

i woke up on wednesday morning and tried to turn on my macbook and it wouldn't start up.
what happened instead was the black screen of death! and lots of random scrolling words.
i freaked out majorly of course! and rang lots of people for help. (thanks deb! thanks henry! thanks gary!)
the first thought that came to my mind was- ARGH! my computer was dead!
and the second:
oh my god! thank goodness it didn't die exactly 1 week ago.

i guess that's what people mean by- small mercies.
if my mac had died one week ago, i think i would have thrown myself off a building ( i do not joke) i would have been about 4 hours from the submission of my thesis.
not having a computer and then losing the almost final draft of my thesis would have been too much too bear.

as of now, i've made an appointment to see a mac technician at the apple store in about an hour. i'm not that keen about buying a new computer- because i still like the one i'm using. but i've had a few days to accept the fact that i might need to get a new one. *sigh*

things can always get worse i keep telling myself. i can still get an academic discount off mac stuff here. so that's 15% off and i think the offer comes with a free ipod touch. so who know...

but right now, keep your fingers cross for my macbook...

it's almost week since I moved to London and the experience so far has been pretty good. It was a crazy first few days with the Notting Hill Carnival taking place outside my window and heading off to Reading Festival to watch Radiohead perform. But things have settled down since. J came over to help me unpack on Tuesday and stayed for dinner while we caught up. She'd moved to London last year from Leamington Spa and it was good to listen to her experiences and comparisons of both places. Today, I'm off to The Berkeley for Pret-a-Portea where if I can't afford to buy an Alexander McQueen dress, I can damn well eat a biscuit made to look like it. :)

My friends in Leam have been fabulous with a couple of them coming up this weekend, next weekend and the weekend after! After which, I have to head back to Leam for the last weekend of the month to celebrate a birthday. I'm still not quite sure if London is the place to be for me, especially when I find out more about my fellowship and work commitments in the next couple of weeks but I think as LW pointed the other day- if anything a PhD prepares you for a life of uncertainty!

so now I'll just adopt a wait and see/ hope for the best attitude!

i'm moving to london this weekend. woo! the big smoke! the bright lights...err...yeah.
to be perfectly honest, i don't think this is one of my smartest decisions. or maybe this is the first time, i'm moving to a new place with no sense of what is going to happen next. Every town I've moved to as always been with a particular purpose, i.e. i live here because i go to uni here.

with london- i'm moving there because...
well there are a variety of reasons, the most obvious is that i can afford the rent while i finish up my thesis and wait till i've been offered some sort of teaching to bump up my income. the other is that my lease expires before my thesis is due (and no, i can't extend the lease)

there are obviously pros and cons with this move (maybe I should adopt Darwin's approach and make a list) but sometimes i wonder if 1 con is equivalent to a couple of pros? it's hard too because, everyone assumes that it would be great to move to London well except for...me. i have come to discover that I'm not really a fan of big cities. Everywhere takes a while to get too and with London in particular, it's just full of tourists. Sure there are heaps of things to do, but i think (in fact, i will be) pretty skint the next couple of months so i doubt i would be able to partake in many of these activities.

so now i'm 2 sleeps away from a new place in a big town and i'm feeling pretty ambivalent about it all. perhaps because the decision has already been made and there's no turning back. maybe cause it is time to move on and i haven't realised yet, and this is the required kick-up-the-bum that i need.

whatever it is, i will be moving to london this weekend.

i heard this morning on the radio, having just woken up, slightly hungover and a little bleary eyed and since then i've spent the time (in between working on my bibliography) looking for other songs and I must say- this guy's pretty amazing. the tunes are great and the lyrics are just fabulous. i hope you like him too.


The Road
Well I've traveled many countries I've washed my feet in many seas
I've drunk with drifters in Vienna and with punks in old DC
And I've driven across deserts driven by the irony
That only being shackled to the the road could ever I be free

To the east to the east
The road beneath my feet
To the west to the west
I haven't got there yet
And to the north to the north
Never to be caught
To the south to the south
My time is running out

Well I guess
Photosynthesis
I should confess that I am starting to get old
All the latest music fads all passed me by and left me cold
All the kids are talking slang I won't pretend to understand
All my friends are getting married, mortagages and pension plans
And it's obvious my angry adolescent days are done
And I'm happy and I'm settled in the person I've become
But that doesn't mean I'm settled up and sitting out the game
Time may change alot but some things may stay the same

And I won't sit down
And I won't shut up
And most of all I will not grow up

so i still have to hand in my thesis (my final draft is with my supervisor at the moment) and i have yet to completely finish packing and move to london (part 1 of the move takes place this weekend). i haven't changed my addresses on banks etc (though I have made a list of who needs to be contacted etc) but what have i done? i've booked flights to go to Naples a week after I hand in my thesis.

a little escapism never hurt anyone i guess :P

in the next 2 weeks i have to:
Re-draft and submit my thesis
Help organise and attend a 2 day conference
Play tour guide and driver to a friend and her friend from America
Head down to London for a day to visit another friend visiting from Singapore
Pack so that I can move to London
Cancel Internet
Notify my Landlord that I'm leaving
Find an external examiner for my thesis
Follow up on two of my students regarding their dissertations
Second mark another students essays

For some funny reason, I don't feel particularly stressed- just very bemused at how I've ended up in a situation like this. Or maybe it's because I seem permanently stuck at item 1 and thus am not thinking about the rest of the things on this list- if i ignore it long enough, it'll go away? hee hee hee

i don't like feeling that i'm being taken for granted. in fact, i'm sure that many of you don't like it either. unfortunately, i've beginning to think that this is what is what has been happening to me in the past few weeks. perhaps it's my personality- when i'm interested in something or i want to do something, i'm usually quite happy to organise it, get a bunch of friends, sort out the details and have a good time. but in recent weeks, i've realised that the people i usually hang out with have gotten used to me doing everything and not even offering to pitch in at all. it's gotten to the point where we'll meet up to do something and everyone will show up and expect me to know what time the train leaves, or arrives, to not only know where the place is but have a map with directions and even how much it costs and if there's a student concession.

in the past few days, after a really crap day at work, i've decided that enough is enough. perhaps the last straw was organising a lift home for a friend who lived in coventry with another friend only to be asked by him at the last minute, if he could get a lift to leamington instead. it sounds really petty but it's bad enough to ask a favour for yourself from a friend, and i feel even worse asking a favour for someone else from a friend (whom they don't even know) and then to be told that..err... could i arrange alternative arrangements again on his behalf. i'll be the first to admit, this is all very daft and silly and god knows, if i was in a better mood, i wouldn't be so hung up about it.

but i guess i'm not in a better mood. work is not going well. i'm running out of time, people around me who are also going through the same course assume that because i'm in the last stages of my work and almost done are thinking that it's easy and not being supportive at all.

perhaps it all boils down to being disappointed with what i hoped would be people who would understand and not be fobbed off when i ask for a little help to make life a little easier for me- i'm sorry, i can't help because i'm really busy. well you know what, i'm busy too.

so i guess, this is it. enough is enough.

it's a bank holiday weekend here this week and it's coincided with one of the sunniest weekends in England since 2005 (no, i am not exaggerating at all). and what am i doing? i'm stuck at home doing work. bah. i can't really complain seeing as i'm going away in a couple of days for a few weeks. but it sucks when it's a lovely 20 degrees outside and your friends are texting you to ask if you want to go to the park and play a little frisbee and all you can say is- i can't! i'm really slow with my work today so i can't leave my desk till i've done enough. yes i am fully aware it's a) saturday and b) it's sunny and both these events haven't coincided for a long time. boo and double boo.

the only highlight was the reply to my text- i'm really sorry but i'm really slow today to which i received the reassurance- you're not slow, just 'special'. be as special as well you want, i don't have anything planned today anyway.

i'm not a big fan of poetry. i think i'm just not patient with it. there are some poems that i do absolutely love though. and one of them is this poem. The BBC are launching a new Poetry Season on TV, in an attempt to get people to learn more about poetry and discover if poetry still has a place in our lives. Perhaps the mark of a good poem is its ability to transcend time, meaning and culture. After all some of Shakespeare's sonnets are still extremely popular today. The poem in this BBC clip is one of my favourites. I had always associated it with the loss of innocence, the loss of a past, a yearning for nostalgia and the desire to go out and change the world and re-create it to what one hopes or wishes it to be. And here, in a new setting, the meaning of it changes completely. The full text of the poem and author is available after the cut. If it sounds familiar, it's also a hymn.



( Poem and Author Here )

To celebrate President Obama's first 100 days at office, White House photographer, Pete Souza released a set of photos on flickr on what he's been up to since he took office. Of the whole set of over 200 photos, this photo really touched me. The lady in the picture is Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and if you don't know why President Obama is looking under the desk, click the tab under the the photo.

( Why? )

here's one for the little girls out there. a little prayer for girls written by Neil Gaiman for Tori Amos's daughter.


...nightmares at 3 or bad husbands at 30
these will not trouble her eyes
dull days at 40, false friends at 15
let her have brave days and truth
let her go places that we've never been
trust and delight in her youth...

i have the most amazing website/ service thingy ever called Spotify. i only downloaded it yesterday but i haven't been able to get off it. the worst thing about it at the moment is that it's only available in certain countries and if you're based in Singapore, I'm really sorry but I'm going to rave about it in the next few paragraphs.

First of all- what is it?
It's an online music manager. The best way I can described Spotify is that it's your personal version of itunes that's based online which is linked to a huge database of songs. When you sign up, you get an account and when you log on, your personal itunes appears which allows you to search for songs, and we're talking whole complete albums here. You can create your own playlists by simply dragging and dropping songs to the list. And there is an amazing amount of stuff. it is a legal website so not everything is available, for example The Beatles but what is available will blow your mind. They have the Taksim Trio which is a turkish jazz band, even Cai Qin songs and on a whim- songs by Lin Dai as well. They have Jay Chou and Tanya Chua as well as Tom Waits! In fact, I haven't been disappointed yet by what they have available. They have all the new albums as well!

What else does it do?
When you've created a playlist, it's so easy to share it with someone else who has Spotify. You just drag your playlist to MSN for example if you're chatting to them. and when they click it, it automatically loads up on their personal Spotify!

I hope they manage to sort out their licensing issues soon so that it can be available everywhere! if you're wondering why it's legal- you can't actually download any music to your computer, but if you work at your computer most of the day, like i do, it's similar opening itunes and listening to it while you work. the issue of ownership doesnt' come into play. and since it's online, i can always go to uni and use another computer (after downloading the program) and still log to my own playlist (something that isn't even possible with itunes.) It does have adbreaks but in an album, they only pop up once or twice.

easter is good here. in the UK, they get both good friday off and easter monday off. so it's 2 four day weeks in a row. i thought that it would be a quiet easter for me here as many of my friends had gone home. thinking about it, it should have been something that I could have considered as well but by the time i realised that i could have, it was too late to go. now the problem is finding a date that i can go home before my ticket expires. i'm in the last states of my phd and it's as if the ground is rushing up to meet me at a exponentially increasing rate.

my easter was nice, for the first time in about 3 or 4 weekends, i didn't cook for anyone but was invited over to a friend's house for some 'dinosaur' meat on saturday. ahahah. it was funny listening to him describe how picking up the leg of lamb from Sainsbury's made him feel as if he was a caveman. the weather, after a week of drizzle, cleared up enough for a decent BBQ. and we sat around and made fun of a friend's vegetarian sausages (63% micro protein- what on earth it that?). she's thinking of having a bbq for her birthday and declared she would be supplying ;vegetarian delicacies' as she put it (a paradox if i ever heard of one :P) we laughed about how Phd students always ask 1 question too far beyond what was considered socially acceptable. Play some music you can dance too with a beer in your hand, someone had asked, to which a fellow Phd student yelled out- do you mean a beer in a can or in a glass? i was also promised guitar lessons which would the new skill i'll pick up this year over summer. my soon to be teacher has promised that i can be a punk guitarist in 10 minutes (it's just one chord and a lot of head banging!) and basic guitarist in 30 minutes ( i highly doubt that, i think after 15 minutes i reckon he'll throw his hands up in the air and yell- this woman is unteachable!)

on sunday, not only did it not rain, the sun came out, and it seemed a shame to meet up for a game of bowling indoors. but i had the chance to walk along the canal to get to the alley where i fed some ducks along the way. i ended up being slightly late but it was worth it. i lost at bowling which was slightly annoying. i was leading till the last frame where my friend decided to strike 3 times in a row to win by 5 pins. and he was complaining about a bung knee as well. liar. after the game, it was still such a gorgeous day, so we ended up sitting on the top of a mini hill in Newbold Common, pointing out landmarks, eating apples and complaining about the return of the working day. it was very bucolic. i half expected the Pastoral Symphony to start playing.

so now i'm back in the library and back to work. i've realised that i've been a lazy blogger the past few weeks. entries have consisted mostly of clips from youtube. i guess what i struggle with is that most of the people who read this are in Singapore who know little or any of my UK friends and i just feel that talking about people who don't know each other, just seems incredibly boring for both sides. which means, the only point of reference would be to talk about me which seems slightly too narcissistic for my taste.

i hope all of you had a good and safe easter and that no one overdosed on chocolate.

right, none of this will make sense unless you actually know what high school musical is all about. but if you do, it's pretty funny. hee hee



I'm here to talk about what happens after you leave East High. Here's the deal: No one sings at college. And from what I can tell this is America's only singing High School!!

one of my favourite radio segments on BBC Radio 1 is The Live Lounge where Jo Whiley invites a band/ artist to sing their latest single, after which they do a cover of any song of their choice. Some covers become so good that they get re-released as a single in their own right- one example would be Leona Lewis's version of Run by Snow Patrol.

My favourites are when the bands take the opportunity to cover song that they seem to derive great guilty pleasure from. These are the most fun!

This week Franz Ferdinand decided to go for this cover, which was pretty amazing in its own crazy way.


Other favourites from the Live Lounge (and BBC does compile them and release them on CD)
The Fray with their take on Hips Don't Lie (they do a great version of Kanye West's Heartless as well)