lishun's musings

Monday, February 27, 2006

recovering what's lost

a huge THANK YOU! goes out to liz - one of the brains behind inkyhands.net - for helping me search for the caches of my old diary-x blog through yahoo!

out of the 159 search results, about 140 could be recovered, including two archive pages, and i hope to put them up at this site pretty soon.

the question now is...how do i do that? do i put all 140 into new posts? how can i keep the old datestamp so i can archive them in chronological order? can the tech-savvy help me out here please?

lishun at 10:09 AM

Sunday, February 26, 2006

it's "hug a debater" day

lishun, would you be interested in learning how to adjudicate in an inter-varsity tournament organised by uitm on the 18th and 19th?

sender:
prasad

yeah sure.

sender:
lishun

*gasps* don't mind my reaction; it's just that this usually doesn't happen as easily...

sender:
prasad

eh don't scare me, can? what am i getting myself into?

sender:
lishun

not scaring...people think debate is all nerdy n stuff n would rather spend their days studying in the library...so we value everyone who gives debating a go. =)

sender:
prasad

---

alright. this is what i don't get: what exactly is so nerdy about debating?! i know alot of people who are/were debaters or public speakers and they are so NOT nerdy! there must be something wrong with us if people think that learning to formulate good arguments and build the confidence to speak in public is uncool.

i have always admired people who dare to go out there and speak their minds. despite my experience as a student leader, i still find it terribly difficult to gather up the courage to talk to a large audience. and debaters...they have to think of counter-arguments as well as defend their stands while overcoming the paralysing fear of public speaking. isn't that something to look up to?

debating is something i have never taken part in myself though i did play the part of an adjudicator once in form 5. didn't do a very good job at it because i only volunteered my services since it meant skipping classes for a week...there aren't any school-going kids reading this, are there? hehe.

but i have no qualms about giving it a go again. it's flattering that the debate team has even considered asking me to be an adjudicator...though my guess is that i was a kinda last resort, considering the reluctance of the general imu population to help them out. haha. don't deny it prasad. =P

anyway, debate is cool. debaters are pretty funky people. i mean...there was even irony in the last sms. an ironic sms! it's a sign of brilliance!

debaters should definitely get the respect they deserve. so hug a debater today!

lishun at 6:17 PM

Saturday, February 25, 2006

let us mourn

the worst has been confirmed. the hard drive failure at diary-x is irrepairable. this means my old blog, lishun.diary-x.com, is permanently dead.

as mentioned in an earlier post, i did not do any backups and so all my entries from the time i started blogging in march 2003 are gone.

of course i have been expecting this news from the time i found out that diary-x is down. nevertheless, seeing the actual words on the site is a terrible blow.

i would like to urge all of you who have linked to my old site to change your links to this address.

thanks for staying with me through the years. i will continue to blog, although i do feel a little unsettled that the diary-x i am so familiar with is now gone. i miss my template and the general look of the blog and it is sad that i will never be able to get the same templates back because the designer's website has been closed down.

well, thanks for everything, guys! =)

*edit: i managed to recover my template. yay!

lishun at 4:29 PM

the xfresh experience

i spent a week interning at xfresh. yes. one week. not much of an internship because i didn't do much except park my butt on a nice comfy chair and type articles. of course i could have stayed longer, but i had stuff planned for my holidays and could only spare one proper week for my elective.

so why did i choose web journalism for my elective rather than opt for something exciting like climbing mt kinabalu - to "learn" about the flora there *cough* - or going diving in redang? well, my tutor thought that those very popular electives were holidays in disguise - *cough* - and so didn't approve of those suggestions. party pooper.

nevermind...i like writing so i didn't sulk about it for very long.

anyway, as my...erm...supervisor william said, if i had stayed longer i would know that the real xfresh experience goes beyond writing stuff and then finding pics to complement the articles before uploading them onto the site. i would have been able to cover events and ~~get lots of freebies~~ gain more insight into the life of a feature journalist.

pity. i could have done with the ~~free concert/movie passes~~ experience.

well, william got me started on writing 10 articles. doesn't sound too bad right? 2 stories a day? and nothing else to do? well, i found that it wasn't that easy sticking to that quota because being the perfectionist i am, it was tough getting the right pictures and the right layout to go with the articles. maybe it's easy but i can never be happy with just any old look so it did take me awhile to get the 10 articles written and posted up.

i told albert that when i got to xfresh, i felt like everyone in the office really belonged there - as in they enjoy their work and have a real passion for what they do. i lamented the fact that i am far more anti-social than the staff at xfresh and my short stint there has sadly proven that i am definitely not entirely tuned to a career in the media industry.

i wonder if any of you remember a post i wrote at my old diary-x blog. i wrote that sometimes i feel like an anti-social individual disguised as a social person. guess it just means that there are limits to how sociable i am, and that was probably the determining factor in my decision to discard the thought of pursuing media studies and go ahead with my childhood dream of being a doctor.

alright. enough of that.

my time at xfresh has taught me that it's pretty easy being a content writer for a webzine, but that's only because everything is nicely pre-programmed now. dreamweaver, photoshop, uploading tools...writers are really spoilt these days. besides that, i've learnt that it's alot more than just a desk job, though i do see most of the staff sitting alot. haha.

speaking of sitting...i'm surprised that everyone in xfresh looks so fit. lol. for people who seem to sit alot. turns out most of them join gyms. figures. i still say jogging in the park beats running on a treadmill anytime.

anyway, i'm sure you know that i'm not a very humble person by nature. edrei has mentioned time and time again that bloggers are actually very narcissistic - hence the need to display their lives for everyone to see. i check my blog for comments several times a day, so i guess it must be true. haha.

well in light of my narcissism, it would only make sense if i put up the links to the 10 articles i wrote during my week at xfresh. do consider that the articles are written with the teenage target audience in mind. happy reading!

Your Epidermis Is Showing! - Medical Dramas Stripped
Love Is Only A Feeling...Not
Overcoming "Bridget Moments"
Stories From The Great Ocean Road
To Stay Or Not To Stay?

Just A First Year Medical Student
The Age-old Debate...Continued!
Three Footie Questions Women Are Too Embarrassed To Ask
Deviation From Education
Loving The Idea Or Really Loving It

lishun at 3:51 PM

Friday, February 24, 2006

the long-awaited return

right. did anyone miss me? hehe.

i know i promised an update a week ago, but i've got a list of excuses for my absence. feel free to berate me for making them up...i mean for being so busy.

1. i am still mourning over my old blog. my 2005 entries are gone because the idiot who runs diary-x didn't check his backup status. bleh.

2. i spent the week at xfresh writing content for them as part of my uni elective. since i only spent 7 days there though, i didn't exactly get the full experience of being a journalist. but i did get confirmation that a desk job is a no-no for me. i'd rather run around like a chicken in an emergency room.

on the other hand chickens, in light of the bird flu situation, should stay home, get plenty of rest, drink lots of fluids and avoid being flustered.

3. i don't like blogspot.

well, now that we've got the excuses out of the way, lemme spoil all of you with some pics i took in aus. i haven't uploaded all of them because i've exceeded my monthly bandwidth at flickr, but here are some of my faves.

it was bright and sunny the day before, but the heavens opened up on my second day in brisbane. on the day we planned to go to surfer's paradise too! i snapped this from the car as we drove away from the beach.

tout v.
tout·ed, tout·ing, touts
v. intr.
1. To solicit customers, votes, or patronage, especially in a brazen way.
2. To obtain and deal in information on racehorses.

God bless digicams with special functions.

a gorgeous rose outside one of the apartments at my cousin's place in melbourne. a friend of mine told me that it's a good use of camera angle. haha. it looks great as wallpaper.

one of my fave pics. this is melbourne central, one of the many shopping centres in the city. the glass roof actually rises like a cone. it looks ghastly from the outside, but it's spectacular inside.

it was 5pm on valentine's day. figures huh. men. *rolls eyes*

this picture surprised me. i didn't intend to make it look like this. all i wanted was to get the fountain and the two signs on the melbourne exhibition centre. what i got though is this lovely shot of the light falling through the pillars onto the taxis.

i love the flinder's street station! the story goes that it was originally designed for a train station in india, but for one reason or another, the materials ended up in melbourne. hence the pretty indian yellow and red bricks. here it is contrasted with the new bridge across the yarra river.

the aforementioned yarra river. this place reminds me so much of the waterfront in singapore.

actually melbourne reminds me of a wider, less-congested singapore city centre. i felt right at home in melbourne. it's too bad i screwed up my twinning program. hope there's still a chance i can make it to melbourne though.

anyway, that's it for now. i'll blog more next week, i promise. it's orientation week next week, so look forward to more photos and some gross accounts of the antics of medical students. so much for preserving a good image. lol.

lishun at 9:28 AM

Saturday, February 18, 2006

diary-x is gone!

yes, i know my previous post links you to my original diary-x blog. i'm not sure if the restoration process will recover my past blog posts, but if it doesn't then well that's 3 years of blog entries gone. i never did backup my entries and i'm not exactly mourning over them, so being the optimist i am, i'm somewhat grateful for a brand new start.

anyway, i'll be back in malaysia tonight - am currently on holiday in aus - and will give you a proper update soon! most probably will eventually move to wordpress and get a proper support system, but till then, blogger is my home.

right. see ya later!

lishun at 5:28 AM

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

a quality meme

it's one week till valentine's day and already everyone's feeling its effects.

first, the star did a feature on why single women choose to be single. then, vincent wrote, in his usual blunt manner, about single women (and men) who claim they choose to be single because they can't hook up with anyone.

and now adeline's tagged me with this meme:

the tagged victim (haha...memes have victims now, lol) has to come up with 8 different points of their perfect lover. need to mention the sex of the target. tag 8 victims to join this game & leave a comment on their page saying they’ve been tagged. if tagged the 2nd time, theres no need to post again.

o__*"

initial thought: why 8? this meme must have been created by someone chinese. hmm.

well, i don't like listing out qualities.

there will be tonnes of women out there who say that it's important to list out qualities so to remind yourself to never settle for anything less. oh you know, gender equality, girl power, feminism, yada yada.

but i don't think it's a good idea to list out qualities because, more often than not, those qualities we choose are influenced by characters we see on the telly or in romantic comedies.

and we all know that romantic comedies only serve to give women unrealistic expectations and put so much pressure on men that they'd rather just let the women drool over fictional characters than compete with mark darcy, top human rights lawyer.

actually i only have one quality to write down. i came up with it sometime when i was in jc, and it was from a poem i jotted down in my diary:

"Lord please send me someone who,
loves me just as much as You do."

multiply that by 8 and there you have it, another complete meme! =)

i won't tag anyone else simply because i have a feeling this meme will circulate itself as fast as any other meme. why? because that's what memes do. circulate. uh-huh.

alrighty. that's it!

lishun at 10:52 AM

Sunday, February 05, 2006

boredom?! bah!

i was looking through the forum topics at the imucampus forum when i came across a long-dead topic called "holiday blues". the thread was about how the imu students coped with their long holidays after sem1 and sem3.

i'm currently enjoying the post-sem1 holiday.

it's been 3 weeks now since my end-of-semester examinations, and a week since my results were released. the most productive thing i've done so far is file up and index my notes. i absolutely positively loathe filing, so it's a huge achievement for me!

also, i've gone to singapore and met up with some friends i hadn't seen since we collected our alevel results last march, and i went on a day trip eating fest to malacca with my sis and bro-in-law.

let's not forget all the weight i've gained. ok, scrap that. let's forget all the weight i've gained.

i cannot believe how people can be bored during the holidays.

alright, so i've had my moments of boredom during my 9-month-post-alevels break, but that was because it was 9 freaking months! i could've carried a baby to full term during that time!

of course on hindsight i could have raised US$11800 to go for the 6-month up with people program, or RM1500 to go for a raleigh international expedition, but one of my new years' resolutions was to work and not bum around or go for programs my parents will eventually have to pay for, so i didn't.

ok fine i did go for the brats green pow wow and my parents paid for it, but i did offer to fund it myself out of the paycheque i received for teaching in my secondary school.

actually, that was the best part of my 9-month holiday. it was fun teaching students that weren't very much younger than me because i found them to be very very different from the way my friends and i were when we were in sec school.

plus i am ever thankful that God closed all the doors to australia because i was around to look after my grandmother and hold her hand through the last 4 months of her life.

so no, i can't totally say there was a real period of time during my 9-month holiday when i was at a total loss of what to do.

at the moment, i'm half-way through my sem1/2 holidays. if i could have been bored at any time, it should have been the last couple of weeks.

call me simple, but i'm happy spending my days in front of the computer downloading stuff. when i'm not doing that, i'm playing with my ageing dog, helping my mother run errands, meeting up with friends, and reading the long-neglected bestsellers on my bedside table. the last couple of weeks have just flown by.

from next week onwards, my schedule is gonna be packed. i'll be off to brisbane and melbourne on friday, then i'll be free labour at xfresh for a week before prepping myself to be ragged with the new batch of sem1s during the m1/06 orientation. after that it'll be only one more week before i start delving into the world of diseases and parasites that all look alike when i get back into the groove of academic activity.

two months. gone. and not a moment of boredom. hurrah!

lishun at 10:49 AM

Thursday, February 02, 2006

the book, not the movie

*note: spoilers!

i read anne proulx's "brokeback mountain" (now a major motion picture from focus features! - so screams the cover) last night.

and i cried.

i tried, several times, to blog about the story. i wanted to write about how despite the fact that i don't approve of it being turned into a gay propaganda film - i'm not homophobic and i'm all for human rights, but i believe that homosexual activity is just not natural - i found proulx's short story to be a profound piece of work.

but i couldn't. so here's an attempt at just writing stuff off the top of my head and trying to make it comprehensible.

the 55-page long story left alot of room for imagination and interpretation, which is just the way i like it. the way she described the growing affection between jack and ennis...

during the day ennis looked across a great gulf and sometimes saw jack, a small dot moving across a high meadow as an insect moves across a tablecloth; jack, in his dark camp, saw ennis as night fire, a red spark on the huge black mass of mountain.

that paragraph not only described the exact way one sees the object of one's infatuation - as the only thing that stands out against a background of plainness - but also expressed the fact that jack had always had stronger feelings for ennis than ennis had for him, even right at the beginning.

i think if i quote every bit of the book i liked, i'd be liable to be sued for using the writer's work without permission.

if you were to ask me which part first shook the tears out of me, i wouldn't be able to give you a satisfactory answer. i guess it could have been the "act-tough" manner jack and ennis first parted after their time at brokeback mountain ended. or maybe it was that scene when alma, after bearing witness to a kiss the malaysian censorship board would definitely scream at, realised that her marriage to ennis has ended.

or perhaps it was this part...

what jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on brokeback when ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger...

...later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. nothing marred it, even the knowledge that ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was jack he held. and maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that. let be, let be.

i'm not sure if my tears flowed when my mind registered those words because i was more aware of the stabbing pain in my heart as it splintered into pieces.

the story didn't change my stand on homosexual activity being unnatural, though it did make me think about discrimination as a whole.

there was a part in the story where ennis talked about seeing the body of a man who was beaten to death and posthumously castrated because he lived with another man and never married. ennis' father brought him to the grisly site when he was a child. it made me sick to the stomach.

by the end of the story, i found myself almost forgetting that the whole plot revolved around an intimate relationship between two manly men.

"brokeback mountain" became a love story that is as heart wrenching as heart wrenching love stories go. it pulled the right cords and resounded the right chords...and i loved it.

i know the movie will never make it to malaysian screens, and i know that it will not mend any relations between the gay population and the church.

but if you enjoy reading good writing and you can separate the raw feel of the plot from the strong feelings you undoubtedly have about the underlying issues...please go grab a copy of "brokeback mountain" and read it before making a visit to your friendly neighbourhood uncle ho.

lishun at 10:47 AM