e pur si muove

He who has no reason, seeks pretexts - Seneca, in The Coronation of Poppea (L’Incoronazione Di Poppea)

The worse side always prevails/When force and reason conflict - ibid

I was listening to the strains of Monteverdi on period instruments while doing my last quantum mechanics homework set ever at score seats the back of the theater. Occasionally I looked up at the performance unfolding onstage and caught a few interesting scenes.

Normally I love operas, but not when I have a homework set which I had yet to start on due Monday. And a math test to boot. Bah.

These lamps and lights by Paul Cocksedge are just too beautiful to ignore.

I went to pak chiu cheng yesterday.

Out in the boondocks of campus, the (Sports) Rehabilitation Building features a little used corridor which was converted to a makeshift air rifle range. It only has two lanes, but that was okay since I was the only other person there. The other guy who was in charge of the air rifle clinic that evening turned out to be an awfully nice chap; he grew up on a farm in Southern Illinois and often went hunting for pests (he said raccoons and possums were particuarly troublesome). I finally got to shoot an air rifle; it may be somewhat of a letdown after BMT and all that, but I was pretty happy to get the opportunity to just lash out at something, even if it were just a few innocent patterns of ink on printer paper. A semester’s frustration, taken out with .59 lead pellets with surprising accuracy: my best grouping spread at 25m was about 1″ or so. The workshop guy was impressed, and wished he could do as well. But considering how he’s legally blind without his spectacles, I am quite impressed with his shooting too. He said that shooting was a good way for people like him to train their vision; after a moment I was able to appreciate his point of view.

Two hundred pellets; two hundred popping sighs; two hundred causes for annoyance shot clean through as cleanly as round lead pellets could.

The firearms club on campus also has a very amusing thing that looked like a metal box with dangling utensils but was really a five-piece target. Imagine two soup spoons on the outside, two teaspoons toward the center, and a butter knife right in the middle. Now add the scars of thousands of pepper shots. That’s what I was aiming to bring down. Again. And again. And again. Those damned Platonian cave shadows.

The unfortunately acronymized DCGSAC organized a happy hour today. Despite the dreary weather today there were about thirty chemistry graduate students at the White Horse Inn tonight. It’s quite a feat really, but then again considering how they practically bribed everyone to go with free food, it’s perhaps not too surprising. The hot wings and nachos were absolutely spectacular. The piping hot hot wings were liberally doused in hot sauce whose name was deserved only by the sheer temperature at which it was served; it was more sweet and salty than anything else. But they were incredibly addictive. So were the nachos; the ground beef and beans were so fresh, every bite was a minor epiphany of calorie-laden bliss. I also tried potato skins which were pretty good, and breaded mushrooms which were pretty ordinary, but I loved them all the same.

Mmm, junk food and beer. That's how to get a graduate student to forget dreary days of fighting for attention in class with the Daily Illini, trying to trace a memory leak that disappears when the program is recompiled with debugging flags, listen to Pet Monkey whine yet again (this time about not applying for a partial scholarship for an upcoming conference in the summer, and not having been able to convince more people to show up for the DCGSAC Happy Hour.)

For once, I’m actually not too upset to listen to Pet Monkey go on and on again, especially in the context of my recent ordeal. I’m tired; I don’t want to fight anymore. I’m really sapped, and not to mention terribly distracted from my real purpose in coming here. Forcing myself away from cyberspace jacks (i.e. computer labs) has worked somewhat, but very bleah-ifying.

Gotta go now, a prospective roommate for the summer is planning to visit my place tomorrow. Time for some scrubwork.

I appear to be dead.

It seems that a significant fraction of the Singapore blogosphere has lamented; the offlining of my blog. I even have an obituary, written by someone I do not know. Interestingly, I seem to have touched more than a few hearts, even those of whom I do not know in real life.

It seems remarkable that in the 274 days that my blog was online, a circulation of 44,291 visitor-days managed to incur the wrath of one much more powerful than I. Whether the light of reason did illuminate a festering sore, or did words so irritate like a mosquito to a dragon, I do not know. But at any rate, it seems that I had grown out of my “lesser-known blog” status months ago.

I wrote my first post when the movers back in Singapore were packing up around me. There were scant moments left for me to express my profound sorrow at leaving home, for as permanently as the foreseeable future could be. The irony of having a bunch of moulding posts on a little folder on my desktop is not lost on me.

It appears to be, in every detail, my own wake, the behaviours of various people included. There are the first to know; there are those who mope around; there are those who call every one up; there are those who memorialize my achievements; there are those who selflessly help the bereaved to collect tokens of pei kum; there are those who are frightened; by the prospect of mortality; there are those who learn to value every day of their life; there are those who ponder the meaninglessness of it all; there are those who cry out at the sheer injustice of it all; there are those who have encouraged jovility and a calling to move on.

It was a death borne out of pragmatism, a death of uncompromising principles, yet another scar of paranoia where the small risk became outweighed by the sheer necessity of resources. It was a death that for some spelt the end of a golden age, and for others, a solemn reminder of the geographical localization of ethereal cyberspace. For them, it was a death that cast an imperceptible gloom on many who chose civic discourse over personal mundania and ennui.

A community had liked it enough to become regular visitors. They will sorely miss it, as I will.

The flame has gone out, but the wick’s spark glows still.