my home is in empty spaces.

When a friend asked me how I'd spent my weekend, I told him I had nightmares.

He then asked if they were interesting. (I have interesting friends.)

It was of a haunted house. And there was one corner of it where two players sat with a gameboard. Their pieces were on adjacent squares. Those squares had words. And the game required them to jump two spaces each time they moved.

I remember the words on the squares. Each square landed on represented a dream, to be left always unfulfilled when the game player's piece landed on it.

The game was over only when both their pieces were on the same square. Which was to say, never.

And they sat there playing quietly.

Two days ago, on 24 July 2008 in the afternoon, my first nephew was born.

This is to remind me in the years to come, in case I forget his age. :P

I think many of us do not realize how alone we really are. We are born alone, we live our lives like flickering torches, and we die alone.

Somehow this engenders fear in the people who've never really thought about the meaning of life. The people who think that having loyal friends, having an enjoyable job, having a happy family, are ends in themselves. But if you rip those all away, what would you have left? You have You.

And what are You?

*faint, faint smiles*

Much along the same lines of thought, I would like to thank my first ex Brandon. You will read this someday. I am sure, for reasons I will not say here outright but have hinted at, that you will. I mean the following in only the best way: Thank you for ripping my life away, and thereby showing me in a time when I thought I would die, that life is worth living in all its colours and forms. Thank you for being so talented in your own right, and there showing me that the most bejewelled and laurelled of men can yet have the most rot-infested hearts, that their jewels and laurels mean nothing at all, nothing worth the slightest notice. Thank you too for allowing me to learn what is love, and what is forgiveness, and what is sorrow, and despair, and the various meanings of eternity.

I wish to thank you, for helping in your very own ....unique.... way to contribute to who I am today. And I wish you well.

me: the past 2 weeks have been pretty overwhelming. it's only now when i sit down for a while that i realise just how much work i've done in that period.
Friend: ok
me: i can't control my sleep anymore
nightmares, memories, hopes, wishes, dreams. they march past, i can still remember them when i wake but there is no resolution and i remain tired.
Friend: you realise that's normal sleep for most people.
me: heh
the waking up tired part isn't really.
Friend: don't know about that
me: mm
Friend: I feel tired just thinking about waking up tomorrow
it's not that I wake up any earlier than I do on weekends
me: *nods*
me: i haven't enough strength to even get to the 'thinking' bit of that yet :P

I have caught a hot case. It will reap great returns with directed minimal effort. This pleases me.

Also I have managed to close up previous cases, which is always good.

“What would you write to Singapore if she were a person?”

I left one under an unrecognizable name. :)

Psychosomatic neck and shoulder pains. Need to stop being so stressed.

I am stunningly misanthropic these days.

Exasperated, irritable, and irritated with myself for being irritable.

I'm starting to pick up the techniques of this job. But the endurance..... ah, the endurance. It's unimaginable. I believe the vast majority of you reading this will find it unimaginable too. Working with six strangers and their whole kampongs day after day is beyond my ability to describe it. The endless phone tag. The malfunctioning numbers no longer in use. The fact that the documentation system times out after some period of inactivity and that long periods of AFK are inevitable. The constant embarrassment at having to ask my very busy supervisor to log into the system for me again and again when I return from AFK. The thought that I now run my work primarily by pen and paper.

Pen. Paper. Illegible handwriting. *holds head in hands*

At least my handwriting's not illegible.

The sneaking thought that I should be thanking God for small mercies, when there is no God and intransigent suffering exists that I cannot mediate.

The curious thought that people higher up in the hierarchy have no idea what we do, because we make everything look so easy at multidisciplinary meetings.

Through it all, the thought that minds do not necessarily exist. I find myself racked with fear when the person-stranger sitting across from me nods and bends her head and smiles - will she only remember me for my niceness instead of what I said? Am I just a palliative drug? Should I be less nice? After observing my supervisor in session and thereafter discussing with her what she did, I do not doubt that this job has no check on the capacity for self-delusion. And in the end, it's not us who suffers for it, but the stranger-person who nods and smiles through it all. And then returns home and harms herself again. She nods. She smiles. She has no mind for me to interact with. Ad infinitum ad nauseam.

I got hooked onto xkcd because of this one.

It was published early this year.

The tagline for this one is "Checking whether build environment is sane ... build environment is grinning and holding a spatula. Guess not."

Turing test extra credit: Convince the examiner that he's a computer.

-----

I think it's called "managing expectations" in the jargon.

Cool-hot cynicism.

Alright and this sums up my power, violence and sex series from (again) the one and only xkcd.

And more from xkcd. This gory one is totally my style. Completely.

From xkcd, the one and only.