I’ve got a few to hand out as well.. (via ashwin)

A man jumped into a panda’s enclosure and tried to hug it while under the influence. “He felt a sudden urge to touch the panda with his hand,” reports the Beijing Morning Post. What an idiot. (CNN)

Apparently my priorities are skewed - since the coup that’s been staged in Bangkok only has 2 points of significance for me:

1. Wouldn’t it be really cool if I could get photos of the action - the tanks, the soldiers, the guns!!!
2. Oh my god what if the restaurants that I’ve been looking foward to eating at aren’t open?!!!!

It’s time for me to go and reflect.

So I’m supposed to be in Bangkok on Friday, but no one really seems to know what’s going on, seeing as some people say it’s relatively peaceful there despite the coup, and others say that it looks like they’re in the middle of war. How now, brown cow.

It would probably do the gahmen good to implement spelling/grammar checks on their posters before they try to extol the virtues of speaking “good” English. And I’m not trying to nitpick, but if you’re gonna go down that road, it should really be “standard” English or RP - considering how in Singaporean English, the words “alphabet” and “letter” no longer have different meanings. Yes, that’s the sad state of Singaporean English today.

Ah well. Let it be known - to Shoptheft is Criminal.

(Photo courtesy of belle. See the rest of her pictures on her photostream, now that she’s licensed to shoot with a brand spanking new ixus 800 IS. It’s the coolest point and shoot ever!!)

NUS is so fucking full of shit. Seriously. Lit tutors that tell you an analysis of a poem of wrong because IT’S LIKE THIS. THIS IS WHAT I TOOK IT TO MEAN. YOUR ANSWER IS WRONG. Then email you later to tell you oh actually my analysis was wrong too. Lit lecturers who tell you that if you don’t define anything your essay is worth jackshit (e.g. “imagery” seriously is that REALLY necessary), lit lecturers who don’t know how to PRONOUNCE anything, development becomes dair-vlup-mern, COME ON GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK you’re a LITERATURE LECTURER can’t you even PRONOUNCE anything? E lang profs who make you watch stupid fucking j.lo videos because she’s a talented dancer - how does this contribute to the literary stylistics of the song, PRAY tell me. Stupid Science profs who tell you to use stupid jack shit programmes that don’t work to calculate and print out the dietary assessment of a week’s worth of bingeing and then tell you if the programme doesn’t work, go do it MANUALLY, that’s right go weigh out how many grams of fat there are in a plate of nasi briyani who cares how you would know, just GO DO IT. Oh but please don’t change your diet just for this project. Lecturers who mumble in class, lecturers who sound like they’re on the late night show, lecturers that YELL AT YOU and tell you that YOU MUST NOT EMAIL HER and lecturers who sound like they’re drunk and are singing (as in LITERALLY singing) the fucking benefits of PROBIOTICS.

If not for all the bullshit I’d have run far away. Seriously, this degree doesn’t mean shit to me. And if not for you not wanting to date a fucking non graduate I would have packed it all in and left for good by now. Why work so fucking hard for money anyway? It’s just that - money. We can get by perfectly well waiting tables and being sales assistants, so why do we bother to be anything more? Don’t tell me that your career defines you because it DOESN’T and if you NEED a career to define you then there’s something wrong with YOU, not with the world you live in.

The coolest everrrrrrrrrr. (via Andrea)

Immanuel Kant was a real piss-ant who was very rarely stable.
Heideggar, Heideggar was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel.
And Whittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nieizsche couldn’t teach ‘ya ’bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stewart Mill, of his own free will, after half a pint of shanty was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
And Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
“I drink, therefore I am.”
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed.

I think I’m missing out.

If students get marked down from reading straight from powerpoint slides in presentations, why is it that lecturers get away with doing the exact same thing - in fact, they get PAID to do it?!

Seriously.

It’s not a wonder that the Min Jiang branch at Rochester Park seems to be getting so much bad press. That entire area seems rife with service issues (I’ll talk about the-service-that-makes-me-want-to-scratch-my-own-eyeballs-out-Graze in a couple of days), and I was reading the Sunday Times’ Lifestyle interview with Goh Chee Kong - Head Chef of Min Jiang at One North.

Apparently his favourite restaurants in Singapore are My Humble House (asspensif, not very good) at The Esplanade, Lei Garden at Chijmes (equally asssspensif and you can probably get better soup/dim sum elsewhere, say at Wah Lok), and - get this - Boon Tong Kee Chicken Rice (famous and really not great). He also likes Cheng Mun Chee Kee pigs organ soup (at Foch Road) which I’ve never heard of or tried, so to be fair this could be fantastic, but I really wouldn’t know.

It’s worrying when a chef cites mostly famous/expensive-but-not-good-quality food as his favourites. It makes you wonder if those are the same principles he applies to the restaurant he’s heading, and if he just aims to make it famous and expensive, but oh screw the quality.