H

05:48 pm: something i should have done a long time ago, now that i am obsessed with clean floors....

get one of these carpet or rather floor crawlers:

http://www.irobot.com/uk/product.aspx?id=485

strange, i lived in a 20 qm apartment i never bothered to even sweep, and now that i am in a 60-qm i am obsessed with vacuuming and spreading (any) remaining dust with wet cloth attached to a stick every sunday. maybe it's the thought that:

1. In this new* apartment, the landlord is NOT allowed to increase the rent, EVER. The pain of 12% increase in rent in less than 8 months when salary increases were a laughable 2% a year will stay with me, forever. Sorry, commuting sucks and sharing an apartment with other 30 y.o.s sucks, so here I am struggling with an impossible language and less-impossible weather. I mean, it is easier to buy small insurances like Zusaztzahnversicherung (sic) online, but big things like Privatrentenversicherung, hmmm. Also, I dunno, it would be better to be able to complain in German when hospitalized, just in case. (As usual, unlike all short-sighted people, I have the big picture - old-age sickness, catastrophic surgery, etc in mind. The visionary!)

2. If I live here long enough, it actually gets harder for the landlord to evict me, if ever.

Workers' heaven is also tenants' heaven. Not like someplace I know.

* not really new! I am already here >1 year, and the spring season has not ceased to be amazing the second time around. we will see next year.

01:14 pm: *shudders* I have dined with these, back in lrd days i think.

http://www.metafilter.com/115833/Modern-snake-oil-salesmen#4340007

MLM salespersons do attend church.

and supposedly smart people do not/are not able (or worse will not) to call them out on their fraud.

kinda sad, how my opinion of people gets lower the longer i know them. which is why i avoid getting to really know people these days. and germany (even bavaria) is good for the "polite and nice" but "don't want to socialize after work" kind of thing.

12:51 pm: analytical thinkers were made, not born
And once made, cannot be re-made into the OTHER.

http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/intuitive-analytical-thinker/

Example: Q1. A bat and ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

I can never respect or empathize with a human being, who, when faced with this sort of question, does NOT take up a pen and paper, and write down:

x = price of bat
y = price of ball

x+y = 1.1 ---- (1)
x-y = 1 ------ (2)

(1)+(2): 2x = 2.1 and so on.

Yet, there are still (surprise, surprise) people in my life who are the so-called (shudder), OTHER. You know, intuitive people.

Just like the perfect pretty woman who has perfect make-up and never sweats or grows bodily hair, they are Alien life to me.

Also, I think that the stereotype: Female=Intuitive stems from the simple social anomaly where girls (are encouraged to think that they) just suck at maths, and thus do not venture into fields where they are trained to do what I did with Question 1.

04:28 pm: bad vibes from budapest
that place really reminds me of home - seedy looking cabbies soliciting business just outside of train stations (ohoooh, how familiar), women with warpaints, S-sized people (Europe size 34), people who walk too close to you (cringeworthy lack of respect for personal boundaries) - bad, bad, bad.

the attitude too, the small-mindedness -

e.g. in Germany if I buy a train ticket I will be expected to honor the limitations (time, train type), if not and I get caught, then I get fined 40 Euro. Short and sweet. No lectures treating me like a child.

In Budapest, a good 12 hours BEFORE my 72-hour travel pass expires, I received patronizing admonitions about not using the pass after 9.15pm (that would be a good 8 hours after I am out of this stupid little city, located physically in Europe but mentally right in the heart of SE Asia - they belong together.)

http://www.filolog.com/hungarian_mentality_uncertainty.html

it is not Ankh-Morpork, twin cities, river or no.

Why should these gloomy people have the best portion of Danube?

Views are splendid. Still. City is just like the people, male or female. Beautiful on the outside, very lacking on the inside.

(Next time: Stick with western Europe. I liked Venice so much better, despite being more expensive and merchantile.)

10:03 pm: some reasons why I was angrier than I am now
because it occurs to me, as I discovered that it is better to be friendless and rich* in a foreign country than friendless and poor in a familiar culture **, that I have CORRECTED the bad situation I was born, through no fault of my own, into.

And this book, it articulates it so well for me.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Birthright-Lottery-Citizenship-Inequality/dp/0674032713

* all things are relative. Germany is really poor and a bad place to live in compared to Switzerland.

** it used to make me ANGRIER when men (usually they are male) trotted their stuff around as so-called "Expatriates" (read: Colonials) in little red dot. WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE WHITE MEN? What makes you "better" than I? Do your lives have higher value than mine?

I note that in Germany I have never felt this way. Or only on rare occassions, when talking to racist Russians who keep mistaking me for a PRC Chinese, or an Indian who cannot say my name correctly.

07:25 pm: wenn man genug Geld verdient, wird alles in Ordnung (?)
Now that I am past 35, it is time to worry about:
-diabetes
-heart diseases bla bla
-gout
-arthritis
-menopause (nothing to worry about, but research should be done, e.g., where and how to get creams etc)

I am wiling to exercise every day for 45 minutes and am doing that [since I have a home machine, great if strange excuse to avoid socializing, actually], but i don't want to quit nicotine...! T__________T (Apparently switching to electric smokes [or patches for that matter] does not help when it comes to diabetes <-> nicotine, not tar.)

So, on Monday I will again bring dismay to my doctor's receptionist with my horrible German, asking for eine Vorsogeuntersuchung.

10:41 pm: you all yellow people look the same to me
so says I at the moment.

Re: asiatic self-effacing behaviour which now makes no sense to mauvecloud, despite the fact that she grew up in SE Asia

A conversation via das Handy

Me: Sorry, I can't hear you very well, I am on the bus now.
Woman: My handy is not a good one, it is old, sorry.
Me: (thinking, WTF?!?) No, I can-not-hear-you-well-because-of-this-noise-from-the-engine.

Needless to say, woman is of asian origin.

The thing is, I am guessing that the me in, say, 2001 would have made nothing of this kind of behaviour.

The me in 2012 is really disturbed when someone talks badly of themselves or their kids or their mobile phones - whether they mean it or no. In case of this asian self-effacing thing, I guess, no, they do not mean it. Based on my former asian mindset, I can even guess that perhaps they even expect me to say, No, your phone looks pretty good/modern/fashionable to me. Having known myself better these days, I refuse to play ball. (Nasty or selfish, intelligent or short-sighted, this is me. I do not change it for anyone or any amount, not under 100,000€ a year, anyway. [Haha, I have yet to check the April increment to see how far I am from that number])

The good news is that I have never yet met a German who would ever impose such a mental ball game on me. (I note that some Italians do things similar to this fishing for compliments thing....)

09:41 am: This is not me.
http://www.metafilter.com/user/102189

And I did not write that!

http://www.metafilter.com/99760/Tell-the-class-what-the-minority-perspective-on-this-is#3477509

or this

http://ask.metafilter.com/185977/How-to-deal-with-absentee-friend-now-returned#2677610

02:22 pm: Uncoupling
http://www.amazon.com/The-Uncoupling-Meg-Wolitzer/dp/159448788X

I would read it, if it were about, .e.g,

the consequence to the crew of SS Cuckoo after a mysterious bearing failure breaks the connection between two shafts.

But when it is about a bunch of pre-space-age humans and their relationships with their owners/victims...

NO.

I also found Jane Austen pretty horrible.

05:11 pm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

this 1564 rule applies only to western musick, oder?

- keyboard ear-player of miscellaneous j-dorama osts (fuurin kaazan!)

12:40 am: forgetfulness, therefore happiness?
2011 was the first year I experienced bouts of happiness (euphoria, whatever, I do not have enough experience to distinguish between the two), and the causes were NOT human related, again something new to me.

It's almost always due to simple facts, e.g., the sun is shining, the food I prepared tastes good, the particular dorama I am starting to watch looks promising, or even the cheesy fact that the actor in the dorama mimics the act of eating good food well ("Umaaaaiii").

I also started to notice memory lapses. I looked it up on the Intarwebs and apparently these things are pretty normal (decreasing level of estrogen, peri-menopause bla bla), although there was one article which I could not find again relating these and strange outburst of happiness to some brain disease or another. But the slightly alarming thing is that this had never happened to me before. Maybe I had above-average tenacity in terms of memory, but once something popped up in my mind that I wanted to look up, no matter what sort of distraction occurred, I NEVER forgot it.

E.g., last week, I was thinking of googling something. A minute later, a post on some LJ community about good old Gackt caught my eye and since then, I have not been able to recall what that something was...

[Gackt should be around 39 this year. He does not look too good, plastic or otherwise. In his memoirs the self-styled Chevalier de Seingalt (ok, Casanova) candidly recounted how, at the age of 38, he was rebuffed for the first time by a 17-year old courtesan. Since neither plastic surgery nor viagra had been marketed yet in the 18th century, things went downhill pretty quick for him since then. Ladies, repeat this ad nauseam the next time some oily balding asian men tell you, ad nauseam, that women, like Japanese Christmas cakes, expire by a certain age.]

As I mentioned (no I did not forget that I mentioned it): This has never happened to me in all my 1.9 decades of Intarwebbing :(

05:33 pm: I am amused by the people "back home" leading the Standard Scripted Life (finance house, cars, kids, work 9-5, watch crappy HK/Taiwan dramas, sleep) who

1. pity me
2. think that I am homesick for whatever crap they eat "back home"

and keep saying I am welcome to "stay in their house" when I "go back."

The truth is, I do not intend to. The only tie to home is the passport, which I sadly cannot exchange for the German one for a while yet. Even then, I am thinking more of going to Frankfurt (grr grr the consulate in Munich closed shop a while ago) when the time comes to renew it.

Refutations:
1. I have stopped thinking I am a failure (or do that less) ever since I begin life here. I am a smart person doing smart work which very few people could do, and certainly many of my detractors (aka the Winner Dogs and other [asian] people who I see now are to pitied rather than feared for their muddled thinking [e.g. "a woman's happiness is tied to having family and kids AND CAREER"]) cannot do. Whether I am sharing mortgage with a man or breeding with him or no is not relevant.

2a. My crappy "cooking" skills are matched by my crappy eating tendencies. I do not particularly dislike Bavarian food and I do not particularly miss Southeast Asian cuisine either. Anyhow, Germans being more international in their tastes than Australians, stores here stock lotsa asian stuff anyway. Soysauce is all I need for the rare occassions my tastebuds feel homesick.

2b. The money I would have to spend to fly "home", I could use to visit Venice (or Budapest or whatever) many times over. WHY SPEND MONEY TO GO "HOME" TO BE MISERABLE, when I am perfectly fine even just being surrounded by the mountains of Bavaria? (I donot believe in god, but I think he puts me here surrounded by these gorgeous mountains because he knows I am a lazy tourist.) Also, the people back home, how many of them get to see Venice and Budapest within the space of 2 months?

But I have no guilt. I wrap no red packets for weddings or nieces.
Just because I have a life which even I think is good, is no reason for me to be generous to people living lives they, for the sake of this sick asian thing called "Face" maintain as "not bad" but is actually Hellish Wage Slavery. (In comparison, mine is slightly less malignant Wage Slavery - less than 25% goes to rent and I get 30*** days off year). Also, I gotta rid myself of my Enabler traits.

*** I know this korean woman (maybe a bit older than my 36 years) who spends all 30 days in Korea - every year for 15 years. She has never been to Venice - thoughout her 15 years in Germany. Korea and Korean culture being what they are, I can only imagine that she must be a Masochist and/or desperately lonely. Giving up even just spending the holiday in Germany to be in Korea and be taunted as a failure (near 40, female, single, no kids yadda yadda).

In the meantime, I better plan for my old age - no gingerbread cottage, but luxury nursing home with WiFi and gym (or better yet, space enough for personal home gym), of course :)

... too many edits... 私の英語がだんだん悪くなる und mein Deutsch ist noch nicht guuuuuuuuuuuut

12:12 am: lessons from venice (joke: former naval power also has a lion mascot)
Z) People will always see and react to your skin color first, your spoken language next. None will see beyond your wallet.

A) There are only 2 types of people in the world:

1. people who know where they are going, i.e., if not blessed with innate navigating talent (i.e., makes do with just the sun during daytime and stars otherwise), at least know how to use compass and map (or that OVI map thing if you own a Nokia phone)

2. sad (yes i judge you) tag-alongs and time-wasters

Type 1: NEVER GO ON A TRIP WITH TYPE 2, unless you have such a low self-esteem that you need these sad people to validate your existence (as their navigator).

Type 2: TRY YOUR BEST to identify Type 1 with self-esteem problem and tag along, in your usual sweet manipulative manner.


B) In a strange place, compass/map combo = essential backups in case of phone and/or GPS failure

C) Venice is kinda sad. A tourist trap which keeps harping on its past glory, a bit like Malacca. Full of noisy Americans and Japanese (almost everywhere except the Jewish quarters, where one gets Zionists from all over the world*) and worst, the inevitable hateful Chinese. Only redemption: beautiful beautiful things they make in Murano Island, which was quieter and less crowded. At least: no Chinese tourists there: perhaps they thought the imitations they get back home are just as pretty.

D) The Japanese of the Japanese language tour guide at the Doge's Palace is possibly better than the English of the English language tour guide. Of course, it could be my elementary Japanese vs. native-level English thing.

E) The funny incident with the woman at the reception of the art gallery.

Me: I would like an audio guide, please (in English)

Woman (twiddling with audio guide thing): Would you like a Japanese audio guide?

Me: No, English please. (also, just to confuse her further, makes that typical shocked face they always make in j-dramas)

Woman: Ok, we need an ID in exchange
(they hold your ID hostage until you return the audio guide thing)

Me: (hands over residence permit)

Woman: Would you like it in Deutsch?

Me: English please.

:(

Most pictures there could be classified into either of 2 variations:

1. Woman with Halo Holding Baby (looks like every Venetian noblewoman borrowed a photogenic baby and sat for a session in those days)
2. Dying man in (varying) vicinity of crucifix, surrounded by friends, pseudo-friends, and Roman soldiers - these 3 groups in varying proportions.

I felt like *puking* after 2 hours of those. There were some OK stuff, like the ones depicting the life of some saint or another, but that's it. Apparently, most of the political ones (and thus interesting ones, to me at least) are at the Doge's Palace.

* In the same sense, one gets farty arty types in art galleries. Also, back to the Jewish quarter thing, the only reason I was there aside from the usual desire to escape the crowd, is of course, curiosity. It worked both ways, because that was the only place in Venice where I got stared at. (Of course, and then I remembered, that was most probably because I am yellow, and everyone *knows* that there are no yellow Zionists. LOL.-)

10:50 am: let me insults two nations at once
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-akE4FPJp4wQ/T1LF6aNp7MI/AAAAAAAASNM/GYHy8nYmc5E/s400/onback.herdollsreallyscareme.jpg

Since Americans are generally ignorant about all things Asian, one would have to assume that the poster meant "from PRC" when they said "Chinese" (and not Vietnamese or Southeast Asians of Chinese extractions, for example.)

In that case, I heart this post. Sharing a city state with Chinese people has made me racist too, and I am even of the same coloring as most of them. Uncouth, stinky, loud pigs. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to share a crowded street/mall with them knows exactly how applicable these 3 adjectives are to these cursed mainlanders. Uncouth or stinky could be subjective, but the noise level... <333

04:57 pm: I made mine, now up yours
Is the life of a laborer in Country X worth less than that of a cubicle monkey in Country Y?

Yes. If laborer born in Country X knows that X is a worse place to end up in and did not attempt to haul their ass out of X.

Also, I am not obligated to less fortunate humans whose only fault is being born in the wrong place.

Because they look, but do not see. If they saw, they would make an effort to get out, not excuses to stay in.

01:59 pm: what good was learning a useless language
of a backward useless country?

http://ask.metafilter.com/208794/What-are-common-pronunciation-mistakes-English-speakers-make-in-other-languages

Pronunciation is never a problem when learning German if you have the background of a native Malay speaker. "Native" has to be qualified for ethnic chinese malaysians, esp. those residing in the southern half of the peninsula and thus exposed to the hazards of singaporean teevee. I still remember how I once cringed at a woman attempting to speak Malay at a bank in JB. I do not like my country, but I am still proud of my proficiency and am vicariously embarrassed of malaysian passport holders who do NOT speak Malay well, even though it is a completely USELESS language. I can't think of any use for my Malay now tho :P

Also, supposedly Hokkien helps too. The German "z" is equivalent to the Hokkien "tch". And Mandarin speakers will get ü easily.

09:35 am: what i love about this place
no one can tell you to cancel your vacation, ever. not for *any* reason. things will be worked around your vacation. of course, from your POV, things will have to be worked around other people's vacations too.

i love how the culture here holds vacations sacrosanct.

coming from a place where a boss once told people "finish this, or... just don't go on leave", this is heaven.

10:04 am: ingolstadt, 23 april?
i avoid USA news lately, but i am just disturbed by the fact that a world power does not recognize separation of state from church. something even the lousiest western europe country accepts.

on the know yourself front: i do not like to spend time with people because i fear them judging me (unfavorably - but these days even if the judgment turns out to be favorable it does not please me anymore because i realize how fallible people simply are). because i fear their judgement, i become the person i am not when i am with people - social, talkative, to the extend of putting their needs first and suppressing mine - something i recognize as unhealthy.

the only interactions with human beings i can/have to stomach occur at work, but that is fine, because there are rules, and anyway, on the advice of an also introverted boss (thank god for europe, where even the extroverted are slightly introverted!), think of it as ROLEPLAY. Yes, i roleplay a bioinformatician/consultant/project team member for 8.75 hours 5 days a week and then i go home and be myself. hopefully between that and the safety of home i do not have to roleplay the FRIENDLY FOREIGN COLLEAGUE while riding the bus. where i just want to stop being this bright cheery person already because it is killing my face.

Thanks RAW.

on the other hand, i have to visit ingolstadt and perhaps sneer at traces of adam weishaupt. during my remaining 7 days of vacation, to be merged with the long easter weekend. or maybe 2 weeks later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus!_Trilogy

I wonder how it would have been if I had read this one at 14 (instead of the milder historical version, meant to be a pentalogy but will never be completed with RAW's untimely demise - but of course the demise of persons we are fond of is never timely? conspiracy, conspiracy)

To complete my old person rambling about my hallucinations of conspiracies, I acquired the second book of The Historical Illuminatus Chronicle as a prize for scoring above everybody else in all subjects except chinese in middle school. What a joke. To this day, I wonder who the perpetrator was. (1) Did they just randomly pick the book from the bookstore, or (2) were they related to a bookstore owner foisting some otherwise immovable stock on them? Knowing Muddy Town, that erudite center of learning and culture, sure, it is more (2) then (1). I will not even consider (3), that someone in Muddy Town even knew back then, difference between Knights of Malta and the Assassins. Or even what these organizations meant in history.

06:17 pm: Hmm, I am not the only one who feel that way about my cuntry of birth. I still bet being Portuguese sucks less than being a southeast asian, tho.

http://www.metafilter.com/112310/I-was-looking-for-a-job-and-I-never-found-a-job-and-heaven-knows-Im-still-miserable#4163762

After all, Portugal did take Malacca, 600 years ago.

12:57 pm: yes i know megaupload is more important***
http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.html#GGengl_000P16

Now that I have secured an unlimited residence permit, the only hurdle to complete security is my malaysian citizenship (the finger in my eye, ow). It will take a few years before I can even start considering applying for citizenship here (language - i do my best with the weekly class and homework, but i am not gonna sacrifice sleep and dorama***-time just to accelerate my proficiency; tax paid a.k.a. contribution into the social system, etc).

My nightmare, is that, during these crucial years, the racist regime will somehow come to realize what hurts overseas malaysians the most - take away their rights to reside outside of malaysia, by simply refusing our applications to renew our passports. Most residence permits (including the unlimited German ones) are dependent on the validity of your passports ...

So, in this case, can malaysians of chinese ethnicity finally be classified as political, and not mere economical, asylum-seekers?

08:18 pm: I strongly believe that this little American city and I share a soul.

http://www.yelp.com/topic/seattle-seattle-native-responds-to-the-seattle-freeze

We really think alike! Examples:

"I don't care what you think of me. I don't even want you to think of me."

"Stay out of my personal space! and I promise to stay out of yours."

"I can tell you're not from Seattle if you are still pretending you're so innocent. You're not trying to make new friends. You're networking. You're trying to find the vein of gold to stake your claim. I know what you're doing. Don't bother with a social. There are very rich veins in Seattle where a little bit of leather goes a long way. Admit it and get on with it."

One reason to attend the next monthly foreigners lunch just to find out if there is any new arrival from Seattle. (But OTOH, they would not attend something that stinks so strongly of "networking", right?)

Me, I am just superstitious that if I really went my way of happily not EVER engaging with human beings outside of work, my tonker would fall off or something. I mean, the majority of humanity are screaming extravert monkeys, so being this friendless and shut-in must be somehow unnatural and may lead to something adverse, right? So says my logical left brain. But my hedonist right brain tells me I am happy when I am alone, away from people. Which to listen to? There is also this nagging feeling of guilt whenever I reject desperate invites from "fellow" foreigners. However, I am happy to report that these days for non-work* obligations I do not make any excuses anymore - I simply state the truth. E.g.: "Sorry, I just woke up and I would like to have my usual 2-hour weekend read-cum-eat session [ON MY OWN], after which I would like to do my usual 45-minute exercise routing."

And you know what, the good thing is, unlike the olden days in Asia ("You can exercise some other day", "Reading, so boring, lah") I never get obnoxious counter-invites (and I do not care why).

And maybe, because I am not like them, I do not really understand these people. There is this one colleague who keeps bombarding my inbox with complaints of being bored in this little town and hints about wanting to do something (but no outright invite). So, being the efficient problem solver that I am, I sent her a link to the events website of this "boring little town", hoping that she would FIND SOMETHING TO DO ON HER OWN and leave me the fuck alone. And she emailed back asking if I would like to go with her to one of the events... I do not get it. Ever since the day I got my broadband, I have never ever been bored or in fear of being bored. There are simply not enough hours in a day, and that is not including all these stupid social stuff. So the mystery is, where do these people find the time to be bored and lonely?

* For work-related ones, I either lie outrageously, or grit my teeth and go along. It's usually not that bad, and leaving early is not bad form hereabouts.

07:01 pm: I wish that stupid triangular subcontinent would just sink into the sea
Me: Hello! (Aggressively* greeting a person I dislike who happens to be taking the same 17.30 bus home. Luckily, not a colleague in the same department, just some Asiatic intern.)

Person: Servus! (Proudly showing off their elementary Austro-Bavarian German. This gives you a hint of Asiatic person's origin. One of those millions of over-confident, purportedly English-speaking bastards who say "I have a doubt" when they mean that they have a question)

Person: Quite early today, eh?

Me: NO! IT IS ALREADY VERY LATE FOR ME.

It turned out that Asiatic person was taking the 17.30 bus because they have some business downtown. Usually they board the 18.00 bus (or God knows maybe even the last bus at 19.30), which is one more reason for me to make sure I finish early.

God, I hate them so much. Why do they devalue their own skills and time and person by spending more than 8 hours to do 6 hours worth of work and be proud of that and look down on efficient people like me, who spend 6 hours doing 8 hours work?

Also, I am sure these people would be breaking the labor laws here were they real employees. Thank god all the crazy long-houring Asiatics I have had the bad luck to encounter here are either postdocs or interns. Not people with unlimited contracts like me.


*Aggression as defence, since they already saw me and there was nowhere to run/hide.

Also, on a happier note: http://www.metafilter.com/64718/A-cunning-plan#1837534

01:42 am: Greensleeves by ear
after hearing it from this episode (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bells_(Blackadder))

I can still do it.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensleeves)

For a given value of by ear. Part of my 'talent' is to transpose, whatever the original key, to whatever the key that minimizes the number of black keys i have to touch. (sorry, my erstwhile moosick teacher, i gone forgot all the theories. and of course, i have always hated playing by sight. i am pretty sure that the organ for [non]music is the ears. not. the. eyes.)

By ear I can always figure out the chords fine, just left-hand laziness always wanting to stick to the same 1-3-5 pattern if waltz, 1-5-3-5-1-5-3-5 if typical 4/4 time.

So in 30 years time, nothing much has changed there, except that as a kid unexposed to the world I did find it easier ("ooh, what's this nice tune from that Richard Clayderman album the parent's just bought? Let's try and see if we could replicate that on this teensy keyboard.") Because I did not know then what I know now (that Clayderman is a hack, and what is the value of being able to do something that is even less complicated than what the hack could do?) :)

05:09 pm: non native anglais, whatever that is
there is also a sameness in the style.
http://www.imdb.com/user/ur0317399/comments

dimsumdolly also uses it.

i am sure there is a distinct malaysian style as well. whatever it is, i sure hope no one reads whatever i write and immediately thought - ooh, malaysian. no matter how polished or (not) well-trained, still the style that is so beneath at least the MeFi level.

07:46 pm: duh
http://www.metafilter.com/111055/Fat-The-Gift-that-Keeps-On-Giving

It is not about "near-daily" exercise vs. 2-3 times a week.

For me, daily absolutely and UNTIL THE DAY I DIE, but are 45 minutes enough? At maximum resistance, is my machine giving me enough work to do? Should I get a better machine? When I (have to) go for vacation, I look for hilly places....

(That's why everyone else is weak and fat...)

Also I hate it when obvious she-Singaporeans come in on MeFI and ruin my reading pleasure with their lame references to Malaysian food they think as theirs... and bragging about their oh tininess being same weight no matter what they eat from 16 to 32 bla bla bla.