(mutterings down the hall get louder as they get closer, the door unlocks.)
"...only ten dollars, instead of paying those people to come for fifty dollars! hah!"
My parents emerge, triumph and a variant of excitement on my father's face as he wields what looks like some form of household carpet cleaner. My brother grabs the box of oreos and hurries to his room.
fifteen minutes later...
"Is it getting any cleaner or not?"
"I don't know, it's still wet, how to tell?"
"So tiring."
"Maybe we should try the staircase instead. This one is a bad stain, the stairs are just dirt and dust."
ten minutes later...
"Is it any cleaner?"
"It's too dark, cannot see. Suyin, switch on the staircase lights for us!"
"Suyin? Where is that girl!"
"You know, it looks whiter than before."
"I think that's the foam."
"Oh."
"Maybe it's too diluted, i think it's too diluted, lets add more solution."
five minutes later...
"You know, for just fifty dollars someone else will do this for us."
"Are we supposed to scrape the foam off or what?"
I just ate 300g of oreos.
I'm pretty sure that's far too many oreos at once.
(but maybe u can never have too many)
Anyhow, i haven't updated this website in a rather long time. I've been busy, for real, and not with things like vodka and fun, but the sudden flood of academia. Its about 3 weeks to the exams, and this is the time of the year where the lecturers go mad and start handing out assignments like nobody's business; when they go Hah! you don't attend my lectures hrmm? now you Suffer! Mwahahahaha! and then they go off into their offices and write out more indecipherable gibberish for next week's lectures.
*sigh*
The other week, i had a particularly strange psychology tutorial. Now most of them are strange by virtue of i don't know what they're talking about, but this one was different. We spent the whole time watching rats. On video. Doing a maze.
This was basically an experiment (done previously and taped on video) that supplies the data for yet another lab report (due week 14), and instead of just giving us the results like sane people, they had us in class for two whole bloody hours watching rats learn where to find food.
At first though, it was fun. This was a study involving an area of the brain (the dorsal hippocampus), and half of the rats had that area lesioned chemically, and - i think - were supposed to have much poorer spatial memory/learning as a result. The maze is just a small central space where the rat is deposited, surrounded by eight long corridors or 'arms', with food placed at all 8 ends.
So the first rat came on screen.
"Yay! Go Rat Go!"
We were supposed to record the arms the rats went into, and they weren't supposed to re-enter arms if they'd already eaten the food there.
The first rat ran around, sniff sniff, awww.. soooo cuuute..
"Has it gone in?"
"No its furry little butt is still outside."
"But the legs are inside.. Oh its in! Good Rat."
"Where's it now?"
"Maybe it escaped."
"Oh there it is,... noooooo its going into the second arm again! Stupid Rat! Bad Rat! i bet its lesioned."
Eventually it enters all 8 arms and the next rat comes up.
"They all look alike, how can u tell the difference?"
The rat tries to climb over the maze walls.
"This rat is wasting our time. Go into the arms!"
"There it goes!"
"Oh good rat! this one is smart, i like this one. I bet it's not lesioned."
"It's going into the third arm again."
"Nooo!!! Stupid rat. Lesioned rat."
After a few more minutes the second one completes its run and the third one comes on.
"This one's got a brown bum."
"Oh this one's quick, it ran in the fifth arm straight away."
Two minutes later...
"Is it Still in there?"
"Maybe it escaped."
"No, there it is, its coming out..."
"No its not."
"Its not moving!"
"It's sleeping! Wake up rat!"
"Maybe its dead."
Another two minutes pass...
"Is it STILL there?"
"I bet its dead."
"No, it moved... just."
"I can't believe we're sitting here watching a dead rat."
"This one has got to be lesioned."
"You don't say."
Ten minutes later (the limit for each rat), the fourth one comes out. Everyone is losing interest but they still have to record the movements of the rats, so they pay grudging attention. There are 8 rats in total, and eventually the eighth rat does its turn and everyone lets out a collective sigh.
The video screen flashes: .
"What? They have to be kidding."
"No, this is their tenth trial, they're supposed to have learnt how
to find their food by now."
"Oh good, then it'll go faster."
The first rat does well.
"No errors! Good rat! i like this rat."
The second one does it in record time, AND in numerical order.
"YAY Rat!"
The third rat arrives.
"Oh great. brown butt is here again."
"You mean it wasn't dead?"
"No, but its doing fine.. its gone into the fifth arm."
"That's where it stayed last time."
Someone cues in with an ominous tune.
"Its coming out now, that was fast."
"Maybe now it's hungry, maybe it'll go faster."
"It's stopping."
"NOoooooooooooo...."
Ten minutes later...
"I can't believe we're still awake."
"I tell you, that one is dead."
One hour later and the end of the tutorial, the last three trials are
still unrecorded. The class disbands in a state of dazed disbelief, having
just spent two hours watching rats. Everyone makes a mental note about
doing experiments with lesioned rodents and decides to specialise in social
psychology instead.
Having said that though, i reiterate again the wonder why more people aren't more concerned about psychologists, there is a lot an untrained (or unethical) therapist can do to harm people. Things like hypnosis aren't hocus pocus theories, there is nothing magic about it. Its simply about the power of suggestion, and its very real, and happens all the time. Think advertising. Also, those years back when psychoanalysis was so hyped up and popular in the media, people undergoing regression therapy started 'remembering' all kinds of things, including child abuse. The problem with this is that there was no way of confirming that the idea wasn't just suggested to the person in therapy, who then comes to believe it actually happened in their own time, until it results in ugly court cases and alot of innocent people falsely accused.
At the risk of producing another lecture-rant, it is quite frightening
to consider all the ways your mind is being influenced by other people
who don't always have your interests at heart. Like in cults, even way-out
completely incredible cults, you'll find the people in them have normal
minds. And if you talk to them about what they believe in, listen long
enough and even with the most ludicrous of them, you'll find yourself thinking
that their arguments have merit.
It is devastatingly easy to persuade people to do things. According
to a reference i read, things like petitions and surveys sometimes aren't
used for collecting information, but instead serve the purpose of influencing
people's concept of themselves. Of making them think a certain way such
that a following advertising campaign can then capitalise on that and influence
them to buy the products that they've been led to believe they need.
Start small, ask innocuous questions: Do you think you are, in general, an honest person?
Do you think lies can lead to misunderstandings and terrible consequences?
As you can see its unlikely anyone would disagree with the above two questions... Simple innocent little questions. But thereafter the person is far far more likely to answer to a question, that he thinks honesty is for the most part far far better than withholding the truth, even though any number of you will know that is a terribly subjective thing.
An interesting anecdote i read somewhere was with the Chinese in some war with the Americans. The American POWs caught in China were led through what you might call brainwashing, what was simply a gradual process of persuasion, through small things like asking the prisoners to list things that might be wrong in America... or write an essay on how the government in America could be improved. The Chinese would then use those lists and essays to broadcast as propaganda, and the POWs gradually led to believe less in their self-image as patriotic mute soldiers, and instead became co-operative and could even be relied on to turn on each other, reporting escapes and so on, without the use of torture.
Mind you, this is documented stuff, but don't you believe me? heheheh.
It's quite intriguing.
The moral of the story then:
And beware consumer surveys.
| 14 April - Freak of
wonder
I was watching TV just now, this wonderful adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, when my father called me out to the balcony. There was this huge thundering noise coming from the next suburb, and it sounded like a lot of stampeding fat elephants come to visit. I seriously had no idea what it was, not to mention i was also brain dead and so i didn't really care, but my father got ssoo excited. He declared it a storm, a cyclone, and less than five minutes later, he was running around telling me to close all the windows and draw the curtains, it was a hail storm!! In sydney!! i couldn't believe it, i swear, i just followed him around going, harh? you sure or not? I mean, Hail? today was such a warm day, the night was nice and balmy and then suddenly, Whoosh! a torrent of Ice was attacking the city. It was WONDERFUL! Hail, in case anyone hasn't seen it before (nyah nyah, i saw a hailstorm), is not little grey pebbles, its actually HUge Round Balls, very much like snowballs, and rock ice hard. They're large enough to fill your palm, but of course after they start whacking things, they tend to break up and then become little pebbles, like those that landed on my balcony. I have some in a little dish in the freezer to show my mother when she returns (she went back to s'pore for a week). But back to the whacking things, They're Incredible i tell you, my dad said they could smash glass, and they did! Lights all over the city were going Pop! haha! i could see it all from my balcony, like a little spontaneous light show. Wonderful. And then it started smashing things. SmaSH! Car windshields shattered all over the place. On the road along the building i live in, the very surprised drivers caught on the road were trying to huddle under the nearest roof, which was this tiny petrol station, and it was so cute. It looked hilarious from above anyway. Of course, its terribly unfortunate for those people who left their cars outside and now have to deal with the damages... i bet the glass and windshields companies are just delighted though. I don't think anyone got seriously hurt, i hope not, but ambulances were rushing all over the place for some time just now. zip here zip there *blare sirens* zip zip... In fact, it's still going on. My intrepid father went downstairs awhile ago and picked up a hailstone from the road to keep in the freezer too. He was happy because it was bigger than those i harvested from our balcony. Well. Hurh. Wonderful event. Incidentally, Lewis Carroll is wonderful too. some sort of genius. Like those people i call my friends. ARgh, can a person know so many geniuses and stay so me? I'm blubbing about my post-A level ex-classmates, the top students of JCs, the psc scholars, oxbridge / ivy leaguers-to-be and john hopkins research grantees. Impossible people. I'd rather like to be a genius too, if only so i could write a book like alice in wonderland. SOMEONE LEND ME BRAINS!!! 4 March - the Barenaked Ladies LIVE !!! Oh Excellent night!!! I've just returned from the Barenaked Ladies, live at the Metro, and IT WAS TOOOOTTTALLLLYY EXCELLENT!!!! These guys are witty, smart, funny, gentle, talented, and after tonight i want to shag them all. well maybe not, but only because i'd never recover after that, but if i were the kind of girl who cld just shag anyone she fancied, i'd want to shag them all. OH MAAAAAANNnnn.. i am So HIGH. Today i went to school and had hours of super-depressing lectures, following which i went to get my Proof-of-age card, blah blah blah.. getting to the good stuff, yada yadah, met Iswar and another friend, Albert, and got to the club. There i was briefly scared, because iswar hadn't got any proper proof-of-age (thank goodness i did just hours before), and the bouncers didn't let him in, and then he managed to find this dodgy piece of paper with indian writing on it, and passed it off as his drivers licence from India! Wonderful, and because we were nice, the bouncer let him in. Oh yes oh yes. We talked to another bouncer too, and he was one of those hulking large stern Me Big Chief sorts, but he was nice. we met him again later. So we went in, it was 7.30pm thereabouts, and got drinks and stuff. and after some time, the first opening band came out, they're an Aussie group, called Roller, the usual rock band, good, but nothing fantastic. Bass guitarist looked abit like brad pitt though (heheh). After that was waiting for another half and hour, then this other opening band, Primary, came up. They were Aussie too, but they're much more famous than Roller, and pulled their fair share of crowd. They were great !! the lead singer was this totally amazing full-fleshed babe with red and black make-up and red chopsticks in her dreadlocks. Fabulous. So they played a short set, and after waiting for another half an hour, The Barenaked Ladies!!!! Basically, they couldn't disappoint. Song after wonderful song, and in between, they did comedy! they even had these hilarious raps prepared just for the sydney audience, and made up songs as they went along, these guys are brilliant! ohhhh... and they're ADORABLE!!! they don't look so hot on the cd covers, but really. these guys are sooooo cuuuuuuttteee ooohhhhhhhhhhh.. You can tell i'm just going to rave. Anyway just so you know where we were in the general audience, we were in front, about say 3 people from the stage itself, and the crowd was a lovely one, except for these two idiots, one hulking guy and his girlfriend, who were Totally inconsiderate, dancing like nobody's business and bumping into everyone without apology. They just pushed themselves in and didn't care where they were, didn't care who they were blocking, and for the record, that girl stepped on my feet three times, and it HURT. i was sooo pissed off i wanted to hit her, but she kept flinging herself around and her hair flew into my face so often i wanted to pull it off, but i didn't. i need more anger. Anyway one of the vocalists (i don't know their names, yes unforgivable - he was the one without specs.) was throwing guitar picks into the audience and at the end, i nearly got one, but guess who swooped down next to me and grabbed it instead? YEAH. the stupid guy. and he gave it to his stupid hairy girlfriend. I did despise them, except that i don't care anymore. haha! the audience was really in love with them by then and they ended off with this wonderful montage of currently popular songs, like will smith's 'getting jiggy with it' and the titanic 'my heart will go on' and offspring's 'uh-huh, uh-huh!', and so on. they were just hamming it up on stage and i swear they're better than the originals. Anyhow, the crowd wouldn't let them go, and they came back with a few encores, for the fans out there, if i remember correctly, they were 'brian wilson', 'be my yoko ono', and two/three others, im sorry i forgot but it really doesn't matter, they were really good. There's
this one song they have, called 'if i had a million dollars', which is
hilarious, and has this one line where they mention buying Kraft Dinner,
which is basically Macaroni and Cheese, and traditionally, audiences will
lob boxes of that stuff up on stage when they sing the line, but today
there was a sign saying something to the effect of 'Macaroni and Cheese
Boxes Really Hurt'. heheh. And they were smart, nearing that line in the
song, they pre-empted the assault and suddenly turned the lights on the
audience, then did a short comedy routine about a box of m&cheese they
happened to have. : ) Incidentally, two of them met in some gifted
program in their schools in Canada, and that suggests that there is hope
yet for the likes of me. haha. no im not actually serious.
But then after the people started filing out.. i wanted to stay behind, hoping they'd come out and sign autographs. Kelly the BNL Superfan told me they usually stayed behind to meet their fans, but this time it didn't seem likely, but i stayed anyway... and looked really forlornly at all the bouncers obviously to no avail. The lead singer of Roller (the first opening band) stumbled by once and asked for directions to the toilet. heheh. he was super drunk, but when he gets famous i can say i brought him to the toilet! heheh. i felt sorry for him and his band, they weren't the main attraction, not even the hors d'oevres, but like the apéritifs you get, to numb your ears to the volume level. Anyway, after ten minutes of this waiting around, Iswar actually took my STUNT cd and his GORDON, and tried to get in, and Somehow, he got himself a pass! Apparently this guy saw him and decided he looked like a 'real fan', and surreptitiously handed him a pass and he got in to this area where the band was! he got autographs for me and himself, but i couldn't care less, i wanted to meet Them, not their signatures! so i tried to get in, but guess who the bouncer was! the Big Chief guy from the club front earlier that evening. He was pretty adamant about not letting me in, since he'd been given instructions not to allow anyone else in, even with passes... But i had to try. Actually, i was totally chicken and didn't dare try to get in, but iswar pushed me on and i knew i'd be miserable if i didn't at least try, so my fear just went AWOL and i went up the stairs, where Big Chief Bouncer just refused to let me in, so i just stood at the doors (which were open), and made small talk. I'm sure he decided i was just doing that to get myself in, i told him this was my first concert, i doubt he believed me... and then i asked him his name. That's when he said 'none of your business', and smiled. Sigh. Then i just told him i wasn't trying to get in anymore, i'd just wait outside and see if any of them would come out perhaps. And we were both quiet and i just stood there patiently looking in. One of them had already come out previously and signed my cd. it was the cute light-haired guy with the cello. so i was hoping maybe the others would. I didn't talk to the cute cello guy and he looked quite tired. But guess what? Big Chief Bouncer relented and let me in! heheheheheheh. And the first guy i met was the drummer, and he was lovely. i told him it was my first concert and he believed me and made jokes about how no one else could top it, and then i said but beck would be wonderful and he agreed and said beck was a consummate performer, and i thanked him very much for his autograph. On hindsight i wish i'd stayed longer to talk, but i was subsisting on very low levels of bravado, being very much star-struck, so i went around, getting the others' autographs, such lovely people they were too. Really lovely. When i left (they were carrying on personal conversations and i didn't want to disturb them), i just couldn't stop grinning, i swear i was so happy. I met Big Chief Bouncer again outside, and i asked him for his name again, after all now i had no ulterior motive and i was grateful. He said his name was Sam, and he was almost shy about it. He then asked if i was coming for any other concerts and i told him i was planning on seeing Custard on 19th of March (fabulous aussie band), then he said he'd see me there perhaps. a new friend! heheh. although i dare say he probably wouldn't remember me. Now i'm home, i wished i'd asked them more, and talked to them more. i think maybe what every fan wants is for the band/artiste to remember them. in a favourable light of course. I know
they won't remember me, but hey, this was my first time. Just getting ready
for Beck Live, although i dare say i couldn't meet him. it's almost a fear.
Nevertheless, i will get on with life, i'll rave about them for a month
but no regrets, none whatsoever. i got closer to them than most people
ever will and i had an excellent time.
I must be hungry. |
}|{
Blinking
Eye }|{ MangoCentral
}|{ Before
this}|