Unfinished business

I have a problem, a book problem. Or maybe it's a mental concentration problem. I can't seem to finish reading these books. So the pile kept growing.

Bored? Yeah, me too.

I was gonna post something last week. 2 things actually they were quite funny in my head but after typing half of them out they weren't very funny anymore. They were just sad. So no posts, I thought that no one would actually care that there's no update whatsoever on this blog, I thought I should stop blogging altogether. I also thought that I should get a tattoo or a piercing. Apparently I've been thinking a lot lately and it's not always about serious things. That's what you do when you get an abundance of time and very little money. And by "you" I meant "me".

So naturally, with all the "thinking" I've been doing lately, I got bored of pretty much everything. So bored that I read my Pharmacology textbook to have a break from boredom. The "official version" of this action in my diary is "stop insulting my own intelligence by doing dumb things". Which version is better? I personally like the blog version, the diary version is too honest it hurts. Don't look at me like I'm a nerd (which I am), that book just happened to be there when I was bored and the chapter on antibiotics got me hooked. Really interesting stuff.

When I wasn't busy being bored I did other things too which I will tell all of you about since you're here and you're bored and you'd probably read rubbish that I churn out. So here goes

8 THINGS I'VE DONE THIS PAST MONTH

1. I decided to stop watching the news. My newspaper subscription ran out at the beginning of December and I was too cheap to pay for summer subscription and too uninterested to read the newspaper everyday. I watched the news on TV when I happened to be having dinner or breakfast at the same time as the news. I just decided to stop watching it yesterday because I genuinely believe that they should change the program name to the "Bad News" instead. Let me see, day after Boxing day and what have we got on the news? First thing in the morning, breaking news is a whole family in the US got massacre by 2 people. Awesome. What's in the afternoon news? A newly-arrived-in-Australia woman got killed when a car ran into the rubbish bin that she was doing the right thing and throwing rubbish into said bin. The kicker? She was out celebrating her birthday. And there's more, a man died when he was deadlocked in his own house and the house burnt down. All those commercial channels only want viewers and what better way to attract viewers by shocking them with this kind of news on a day right after Christmas right? From now on I'm gonna watch SBS world news, at least they don't put this kind of news as breaking news, plus they're not usually on when I have dinner.

UPDATE:
I forgot to mention a teenager got mauled (and later died) by a tiger, a baby got mauled (and later died) by the family's dog and the greatest tragedy of this month, as claimed by tabloids, Britney Spears' sixteen-year-old sister got knocked up. Great journalism is displayed by all these "breaking news" stories.

2. I went to a concert, my first concert ever. Yeah, me the person who hates crowded places. I seriously despise crowded places especially Melbourne Central and Myer on Boxing day, more on that later. I loved that concert probably because of:
It was one of my favourite bands if not the favourite at the moment: Tegan and Sara.
The audience was very polite.
The opening act (Kaki King) was freaking great. She was hailed as a guitar goddess by some magazine so you know that she must be awesome (which I reckon that she is, but this is only the opinion of someone who doesn't play any instruments) or at least good.
T&S has quite a large gay following and mostly women so the audience was probably 80% female. It's not that I'm saying men are impolite, I'm just saying that women are generally more considerate and generally less likely to do crazy shit. I said "generally" because some slightly crazy shit did happen but it was fine in the end, no one got hurt. One thing I have to say about this concert besides T&S was awesome is that I have never seen so many lesbians in one place ever. It felt strange but they were polite and I like polite people.

3. I changed my first name. It's not that I don't like my first name (I actually don't now but I used to like it quite a lot before the move to Australia rendered my name too freaking confusing), I just got tired of having this kind of conversation on the phone all the time.
Me: Hello.
The other end: Hello, I'm looking for "blah blah blah".
Me: I'm sorry?
The other end (in a slightly raised voice): I'm looking for "blah blah blah"
Me: I'm sorry, who are you looking for?
The other end (in a very raised voice and extremely slowly): BLAH BLAH BLAH
Me: I don't know who you're looking for, can you spell the name?
The other end: (spells out "blah blah blah")
Me: Oh, that's me.
And no, the people on the other ends aren't my friends, at least my friends know how to pronounce my name, they're usually some Indian operators calling about signing me up to some life insurance policy or getting me a home loan.
So I changed it to some thing else entirely different and it's kinda weird now that people actually call me by the new name. I went to the bank to change the account name last week (which took a whole hour because I, unfortunately enough, got an operator that's still in training and didn't know what to do, and the supervisors for that trainee were bitches who wouldn't come help out at first and when they did come they had this really annoyed look on their faces and didn't really help with anything at all) and they were talking my account and it took a while for me to register that they were talking about my account. Anyway, if this name doesn't work out, I can always change it to something else. It better works out because changing name is one mofo.

4. I signed up for a Facebook account. I wasn't gonna give into the hype about Facebook just like I haven't given into the whole Myspace thing. But then I got curious and The Alarmist wouldn't stop talking about Facebook and wouldn't stop being on Facebook almost all the time (I think she's addicted to Facebook, very alarming). One of these days my curiosity would be my undoing. The last time I got curious, I watched the 2 Chicks 1 cup thing and it was hilariously disgusting. Like you would never imagine anyone would do that. But they did do it and it was caught all on camera and now it's all over the internet. OK, I'm just trying to spur up your curiosity so that you would go watch the thing. Maybe I should put a link up hey?
Anyway, I signed up, had a look around, went to some pages from people that I know, and got terribly bored. Maybe it's because I'm not really into instant messaging and I don't add a lot of friends to my page. I just don't like Facebook. The other day I got a friend request from someone I have never in real life come into contact with let alone speaking. She was in the Alarmist's year 10 class one year and then they just randomly ran into each other one day and randomly the topic of Facebook popped up in their 2 minute conversation and then she added the Alarmist to her friends list and then requested to add me. I think Facebook is kinda well designed, there's an option for this kind of "friends" something like "I don't even know this person". Facebook is the new Myspace now, I'm pretty sure there's this competition for who's got more friends going on. Count me out on Facebook, I've already wasted enough time without getting addicted to Facebook, imagine what I would be if I am.

5. I went to Geelong with a few friends (wow, real friends, they are a lot better than their Facebook pages) on a 30-degree-Celsius day and it was hot. Like extremely hot and all I can say about Geelong is that it was hot and full of flies. I think they have a fly infestation in Geelong. Insect repellent didn't help so if you're planning to go to Geelong don't try to use it.

6. I watched a bunch of movies. Actually I downloaded a bunch of movies and went to see one. I saw Enchanted and it was alright. I think I would have loved it if I saw this when I was 13. Now that I'm my current age the movie just felt like a fairy tale, everything is too perfect.
The some of the movies I downloaded were excellent. The rest was slightly better than average. Here's a rundown.
Once. For me, the title of this movie says it all. Once is how many times I need to watch this movie. It's not that it's a bad movie. It's just not the type of movie that I enjoy watching. The Alarmist got some high praises for this movie after she saw it earlier this year so I thought I might like it. I didn't.
Death Proof. Now this is my type of movie. This is hilarious. The first half of the movie was really boring but the second half makes up for it. Download it, rent it, do whatever you want just as long as you watch it. It's good
Planet Terror. This movie is not as good as Death Proof but it's a fun horror movie. Plus you get to see Quentin Tarantino working as an actor.
Half Nelson. I like Ryan Gosling in Fracture so I watched this. He's great in the movie. The thing with indie flicks for me is that I usually don't get the movie as a whole. I don't get this movie, I think I need to rewatch it.
Point Break. I actually didn't download this movie. Someone lent it to me. Anyway, all I can say about this movie is that Keanu Reeves couldn't act to save his life.
I watched a few more movies which I can't remember the titles now. That probably means that they're not good enough to be remembered and not bad enough to burn a hole in my brain which means that I shouldn't try to find out and/or write about them.

7. I read a bunch of books. The best being Choke by Chuck Pahlaniuk. That book has quite a lot to say on modern life in bizarre fashion. If you enjoy Fight Club the novel or the movie, then read it. Hilarious is not the right word but it's the first word that comes to mind.

8. I found a bunch of new artists to listen to. I would have written about them here but this post is probably long enough and you would have been bored of this enough by now so I'm gonna stop. Truthfully, I got bored of writing this so you're gonna have to wait for another post.

1 THING I'M GONNA DO IN THE NEXT WEEK

I'm gonna go to the New Years Eve celebration in the city. I'm pretty sure I will not like it. I don't like crowded places. I despise Boxing Day shopping because everywhere you turn there are people. People who don't necessarily observe the escalator unspoken protocol and stand on the right side of the escalator and block my way. People who do annoying things like physically pushing you aside so that they can get their hands on some marked-down overpriced clothing items that even though are marked down are still freaking overpriced. I did enjoy the very crowded concert because it was a band I like and I was only there for 2-3 hours and then I would be on a deserted train home. New Years' Eve is gonna be packed. Apparently it's gonna be a very warm night. That's just great. Just the right icing on the cake I guess. Here's hoping for an old train without aircon on the night. Just some extra icing. Wouldn't it be nice if there's a storm on the night?

That's it folks, hope that you're a little less bored. I'm still bored but that would be remedied soon, I'm gonna read some interesting stuff on Beta-lactam antibiotics, the information antibiotics that work on the synthesis and action of folate was very informative.

To make this post even longer, here's a playlist of songs that I uploaded a while ago but haven't found a post to put them on and a music video. Happy New Year you all if I don't update before then.

Book browsing

I went to see "Ocean's Thirteen" yesterday however, the movie wasn't the highlight of the evening. It was the time spent in Borders waiting and browsing books that was more interesting. I ended up buying 2 CDs and found 2 books that look quite promising. The first one is "God is not great" by Christopher Hitchens. The other one is "The Atheist Manifesto" by Michel Onfray. What's with the religion bashing books huh? I didn't buy any of those since I still haven't quite finished "The God delusion" yet.

Another book that caught my attention was "Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture". It almost won the 'what the f*** book of the day' award had it not been for the metal clad bible I saw 5 minutes later. The guide to emo culture book is really a guide to emo culture. I thought it was satirical but no, it's a straight and narrow guide to how to be cool and yet so uncool at the same time. What I can say about that is, make up your damn mind. Do you want to be cool or uncool?

While we're still on the topic of emo. Let me introduce you to Emo Google. It's Google with an all black emo finish. It gives you the exact results as the normal Google, (sorry, no emo related search results yet) with the benefit of a seriously ugly black background on the main page to hurt your eyeballs and visual cortex.


The metal bible however was hilarious. So much so that I had to take some pictures of it.
The obvious question that popped into my head when I saw these metallic beauties above was "What can you possibly do with a metal bible?". I came up with an answer for that as well. Imagine this:

You are a proud owner of metal bible, you love it so much you bring it with you everywhere because really, you like to have a bible with you at all time and a normal leather bound volume can't withstand the stress and strain of being bounced around in your bag with mobile phones and all the other unholy modern crap like coins, keys and credit cards (but seriously, don't bring it with you all the time, the bible alone is heavy enough, add the extra hard metal cover it's as heavy as a four 30-gig ipods). One day you encounter a mugging and you decided that you will dissuade the mugger to give up his evil deeds by some cleverly chosen passages from your metal clad bible. (In my honest opinion, you gotta be crazy to think that but hey there are some crazy people running around all the time). But surprise surprise the mugger doesn't appreciate old sacred writ and turns the knife on you instead. What are you gonna do now? You have the perfect weapon in your hand. If holy words can't dissuade the mugger, heavy metal applied straight to the head can at least knock him out and give you enough time to run.


This is a shot of the back of said bible. Strange how people say that you can find answers in the bible. I was at a crossroad of sort the other day during my exam. I was stuck on one question: Is Atenolol a beta agonist or is it a beta antagonist. I went home and try to look that up in the bible, guess what? It doesn't give out that sort of answer, it doesn't even give you any direction to where you can find the answer. I propose that we change the saying that "answers can be found in the bible" to "relatively reliable answers can be found on Wikipedia" instead.

3 glorious weeks of holiday

Finally exams are over on Thursday, I thought I would be doing a lot catchup on sleeping but as it turned out, I spent more time awake than when I was studying for exams.

I think I have a motivation problem. I'm motivated to do anything but studying apparently. At least I'm taking the first step in solving my problem: I acknowledged that I have a problem with motivation, great to know I'm not in the denial stage. Now let's see what's the next step? Find something to motivate myself I guess. I hit a brick wall there, there's nothing, absolutely nothing. That's when I attempted to start reading "100 ways to motivate yourself" by Steve Chandler. I said attempted because, so far, I haven't found the motivation to read the book yet.

One thing I don't need any motivation to do is procrastination. And my current favourite place to procrastinate is Last.fm. If you don't know what it is, here's the wikipedia entry for it. And if you're not motivated enough to click on that link and read a whole page of explanation, here's my one paragraph explanation:

Last.fm is a internet radio and music community where users can track their listening habits, display them for anyone with an internet access to see and get similar artists recommendations. Or at least that is the intended purpose of the site. There is always some crazy dickheads who would turn everything into a big competition for "who can listen to more songs from their favourite band so that their avatar can appear on the band's page for one week".

Anyhow, it doesn't sound very interesting and frankly I had misgivings about this when I first signed up in January. I didn't feel like it was a good idea tracking my listening habit which was why I didn't install the tracking program. But once you get started, it's awesome. I discovered my favourite band this week through Last.fm. Actually, I discovered more amazing artists this month than I did the last 2 years. Some of my current favourite artists are quite a surprise for me. Take Feist for example, I didn't think I would like her music but it was actually crazily calming and addictive.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, get a Last.fm account, start scrobbling and discover awesome music. I did and, boy, I love it.

And now to some new music to listen to: Interpol. Their new album "Our love to admire" has leaked so go to wherever you usually get your illegal leaked music and download it then buy the album when it comes out on July 10. My verdict after 3 listens is: I like it.

Yes, I'm still alive

I hate to disappoint but I am in fact still alive. I was so very damn happy with my exam results that I stopped doing everything uni-related and found myself some extremely good books and sat down and read them.

Do you know that Fight Club the movie was first a novel? Yeah, it's a novel by a Chuck Palahniuk [really weird family name if you ask me]. Fight club is on my favourite movie list and it's probably one of my top 5. And no, I don't really like blood and violence that much. And no, I really don't find the pseudo-philosophy of the movie particularly appealingl. But I like Fight Club anyway because it is FUNNY. The book is definitely better than the movie and probably took me less time to finish too.

During the break I had a chance to watch Donnie Darko again. Hell, I still couldn't make up my mind if the movie is a sci-fi movie about time travel or if it's just a thriller about a disturbed teenager. So in order to make up my mind I went to Wikipedia to read up on this. As it turned out, the director's cut version is longer and hence has more time to develop the plot. Now I'm definitely sure that this is a movie about time travel. I should really get one of those director's cut version to watch next holiday.