My First Birthday Present

So I said I would blog about the birthday present I received through the post from Sulz.

I was preparing to go to school for my Pragmatics exam yesterday, when my mother walked into my room with an envelope for me, via EMS from Malaysia. I knew at once it’s from Sulz (apart from the fact that her address was written on the EMS form attached to the envelope). And EMS is so expensive. BAH.

It looked like this:

I hastily cut the envelope open, and out came …

A card and a flowery paper bag.

And in it was a handmade bookmark (edit: not by Sulz as she has admitted in the comment below but I don’t care :D) with my name painted in glitter on a piece of denim with sequins. Sho bling bling. Me like. And with it are 3 bookish buttons, which, I quote Sulz, “Am sure you can find a creative way to use the buttons, whether as book thongs, or sew them on your handmade bag, or maybe even mismatched earrings!”

Hoho. I’m not a big fan of mismatched earrings (I’m a person who require symmetry in my life; that’s why I prefer the letter W more than L or N in my initials. And I prefer vertical symmetry more than horizontal symmetry, so I like Y more than K.) Anyway, it’s so sweet. I don’t know what I’d do with them as of yet, I’ll think of something. Yay!

I love presents!
And now the very nice birthday card is stuck on my wall, next to the Reading postcard.

1 down, 4 more to go

So I finished my pragmatics paper today.
I guess we’d all agree that the exam should be 3 hours, not 2. We hardly have time to finish writing, so what sort of quality answers can be expected anyway?

Anyway, it’s over, so into the cupboard goes the 2 inches of notes. Whee~
And 4 more papers spread over the remain of this week, and till Wednesday next week.

And something non-exam related; I received my first birthday present today before I left for my exam! A small little package from Sulz. I will blog a detail post tomorrow (read: with pictures). Yay thanks!!!

I don’t have commitment issues; I just can’t say no to a better offer

A plausible excuse?

Or does commitment really equate to saying no vehemently to better offers?
Is that commitment then, out of obligation, without true intent?

I don’t know. I am hardly commited to any cause, or to anyone. I live for myself, and while I promise myself, as well as other people, things, I hardly treat it like I’m committed to fulfilling these promises. Sure, a promise has to be realized, and that’s where sometimes genuine desire turns to obligation. So is commitment a promise?

Is commitment measurable? How is it judged?
Say, a man mentally cheats on the wife (i.e. fantasize about some other woman). Is that lack of commitment, or must it be something physical, that can be shown and proved? If yes, then is it fair to say that commitment, in the worst sense, equates to physical enslavement, where it is imperative that one does certain things as promised, but not mental enslavement, since one still has freedom to thought?

So, is commitment obligation?
When is it genuine desire and when is it not?

And this word, commitment. It cannot be translated, clearly showing an Anglo belief system which I refuse to impose unto myself.

A playlist to share

I was listening to Patsy Cline and Charles Aznavour last night and I thought I might share the playlist with all of you; time for you young folks to listen to oldies that an old soul like me likes. (Well, I like my Amy Winehouse and Avril Lavigne too, but that’s another story.)

Click here.

It’s part mellow, part cheerful, part French, part sad, part funny.
Just go listen to it. J’avais 20 ans is a favourite, as well as Crazy. Actually these are the ones I like more, so there.
(I sound so incoherent. Why~~~)

You can put 4 inches into me any day now

4 inches of … readings of course. (Whatever were you thinking? *wink*)

I have to devour these 4 inches. Unlike the other time when I had to do 5 inches, I certainly have to read these cover to cover. Well, at least some 2 inches of it are open book. I can just imagine the invigilator’s looks when we start lugging in 2 kgs worth of notes into the exam hall.

Exams start (for me) 29th April to 7th May, and yes, a very nice birthday present for me at 9am on the 3rd of May. Should be fun I guess. Let’s hope there’s such a thing called birthday luck.

And by the way, I’ll be working for a professor from 15th May. So that leaves me 7 days of post-exam partying. Woot.

Nintendo DS Lite

I know the hype for NDS Lite is quite over … and I finally got myself one in coral pink! And like any gadget that I get, I must pimp it up. Here goes:

Exterior- pink crystal casing with glitter. Pink plaid vinyl skin by DecalGirl from Istyles.

Interior - more vinyl skin that is oh-so-beautiful and so preppy.

I’m now utterly hooked onto Taiko no Tatsujin (太鼓达人) which is a drumming game. You tap on the drum with the stylus following the instructions given. Fun!
And there’s the holy grail game - Cooking Mama, where you’d have to chop your vegetables, stew your miso soup and grill your steak (among others) in attempting to cook a dish! A girls’ game evidently.

So well, this is birthday present part 2 to myself,  I guess. And half the cost is paid for by the dear government’s GST offset package, yay. Now I’ve just to go tear myself away from the games enough to go do my revision for exams. Ack.

Ridiculous scam mail

I received the most ridiculous scam mail today:

Seriously. I laughed so hard when I saw it because who in the right mind would expect someone to actually believe this? To believe that there’s serious political problems in Japan? And that someone would want to borrow a bank account for investment and give you 10% commission? This is so absurd it’s funny. Which suckers will fall for it?!

5 Things Meme

Tagged by Cel, here goes:

5 Things Found in your Bag

1. My pink Fossil wallet containing the oh-so-important The Soup Spoon loyalty card that’s almost filled up
2. My Nokia 5310 handphone that is perpetually in low-batt mode
3. House keys with a keychain from our JC form teacher that reads “give your best shot”.
4. Apple green umbrella that costs $3.90 from OG
5. Apple green silk fan bought from China - the weather gets unbearably hot sometimes!

5 Favourite Things in your Room

1. My stash of brand-new unwashed clothes
2. My bed and all the things at my bedside
   
3. My  3 foot-long killer whale stuffed toy
4. My makeup stash
5. My book stash

5 Things you have always wanted to do

1. Fly a kite
2. Tour Europe
3. Build a model car (1:32 model of Volkswagon Beetle!)
4. Complete a mini triathlon (say, run 5km, bike 20km and swim 1km or something)
5. Own a quaint bookstore

5 things you are currently into

1. Organizing sprees
2. Phonetics
3. Generative Grammar (semantics and syntax, at least)
4. Black sesame soybean milk from Nutrisoy
5. Pilates

5 People you want to tag

1. Sulz
2. Aining
3. Denise
4. and whoever else!

My Southpark avatar

If you looked at the left column, you’d see my Southpark avatar, generated at SP-studio.
I think it’s so damn cute and non-cute at the same time. Mix between naughty and nice, don’t you think? And I love the aviator shades, and the ^raise one eyebrow^ move that I so like to do. The general pissed-off I-can’t-be-bothered-to-breathe-the-same-air-as-you face is so typically me on most days, to most people. And I love the necklace because I actually DO have a necklace that’s multicoloured like that. In fact I have many multi-coloured beaded necklaces.

Anyway, I really like Southpark. To the extent I insist on using Southpark characters in my examples for a semantics homework. Something like, “He(1) likes him(2)” is true iff Cartman likes Kenny (what a joke). (Something along those lines. Can’t be bothered to get technical here.) I think Southpark makes much more sense than the Simpsons. Everyone in the Simpsons is so repulsive, especially Lucy. I can’t stand Lucy. She’s so self-righteous yet not mean enough, and thereby always victimizing herself. I hate that. Southpark is much better. They are cute, mean, and I love them. I love it when Cartman acts cute to the mother (and thereby twisting her arm into getting him things). And I love Butters and his cute singing voice. Aw.

(Sorry if I sound mildly incoherent; I’m sleepy.)

Profanities

Recently I was told to not swear so much, particularly using certain “four-lettered words”.

I don’t see why we can’t use profanities.

Does it change who we fundamentally are? Does spouting fuck and shit make us bad people?

From a linguistic point of view, for the lack of a better word, that’s bollocks. Words in a language like English is arbitrary, that is, its form (pronunciation, spelling) has nothing to do with its meaning. So why is it that fuck is profane, and copulation not? Is there something in the palatal plosive /k/ that makes fuck an undesirable word? That’s a pretty big claim, isn’t it?

Then they may say that it’s the idea and concept that’s put across that’s bad i.e. I shouldn’t be talking about sex when I’m trying to express exasperation. Meaning shift anyone? Just like how the word gay, which innocently meant “happy” in the 50’s has now acquired a more negative meaning, the sense to a word can change. Fuck need not only mean sex. From what I see, and what corpus evidence will duly prove, fuck has multiple senses and functions that are unrelated to the sexual act, like fuck being an interjection of speech. I don’t see what’s so different between “fuck I dropped the bowl!” and “oh no I dropped the bowl!”.

Oh then we can look at the sociolinguistic point of view, that the use of fuck and other profanities indexes undesirable values, which is, in simpler terms, the use of profanities equates a person to the likes of baddies. Which brings me back to my first question, does using profanities fundamentally change who we are? Perhaps gangster were the ones who started using profanities, but who’s to say that anyone who uses fuck is a gangster, or condones the act of being a gangster? To make such loose arbitrary connections is being pretty narrow-minded and subscribing to stereotypes, no? It’s just like claiming “all blondes are stupid” or “all girls like to cry”. Just because they co-occur doesn’t make them facts.

So I still don’t see why we can’t use profanities. Or why in the first place those words are singled out to be called profanities. What’s so different about them? Isn’t this some kind of discrimination? Who decides, anyway? Some stuffed-up clergy? Seriously. It’s the same thing with Singlish isn’t it? Always fearing that it’ll spill over to the oh-so-sanctified “formal” contexts of language that we can’t be left alone to codeswitch in peace. Who’s to say that I can’t keep my fucks out of my essays? (Oh, but I did write an A essay with fuck.)

So as crap as this shit is, it’s worth all da spunk in this fucking world, so suck it. (Or for the innocent eyes, for as weak as this argument may seem, it’s still worth everything I stand for in this world, so take it or leave it.)