Emo

I feel horrible all day because I think one of my friends is snubbing me on Facebook for accidentally offending her.

I can't stand being disliked by people I like. I wanted to cry all day in lab when my advisor scolded me for not making enough progress on my project. It's very childish, but when I think a friend is angry with me, it doesn't leave my mind for days on end.

Also, I talked to my second sister on the phone last night. Talking to either of my sisters is generally a downer because they're such wonderful girls (FlowerMoonFish especially is a huge overachiever and at the same time projects an aura of "sweet young thing") and I'm always left with the bitter feeling of being the shitty beta version full of bugs.

I wish I wasn't so emo.

Baiting the trap

Someone at work is stealing my snacks out of my desk drawer and I'm fecking pissed about it.

Our lab is pretty casual about sharing snacks and sometimes we bring food to share with one another. Coffee is consumed so fast it's almost a resource like electricity or pipette tips rather than an "item".

However, the general consensus is that stuff in the fridge or personal desk drawers should be left alone.

Mostly due to my genetic background, I burn through calories like a steam train, so having snacks at work is important to my sanity and productivity late in the day. Several months ago, however, I opened my drawer to get a granola bar and found an empty box. Now if there's one thing I have a good memory about, it's food. Also, leaving empty disposable containers around is definitely not my style.

One incident of cheap snacks missing wasn't a big deal, but later I bought an expensive canister of powdered protein shake mix and the level of that dropped precipitously too.

Inquiries revealed that a few other people had experience the same problem of food going missing, but it was stuff that they had kept in the common fridge. I was extra mad because someone had clearly been digging around in my drawer.

I'd been toying with the idea of booby-trapping some bait with something that would taste unexpectedly disgusting, like denatonium benzoate (trade name: Bitrex) or produce unpleasant but harmless physical symptoms, like a laxative. However, it seemed like too much trouble.

Just now I opened the drawer and found that a plastic Ziploc bag of marshmallows had been emptied, leaving some sticky crusts of sugar behind. I KNOW I didn't eat those marshmallows because they had partially melted in my backpack and stuck to the bag, so I was planning to throw away the bag when it was emptied (rather than reusing it). Also, there were marshmallows in there earlier this afternoon and I hadn't eaten any today.

So...I'm definitely going to spike my next snack with something interesting. Hopefully the thief will get the message without me having to spell it out.

Le Carre's latest

Full book review from AP via The Star here. I got to read it early and for free because I'm an Amazon Vine reviewer. Got a special pre-release edition (albeit with a lot of typos and funny line breaks) with a print of a handwritten note from Le Carre to his fans on the cover. *syiok sendiri*

By JILL LAWLESS

John le Carre’s new book tackles the war on terror.

...

Ian Fleming’s action-hero James Bond may be more famous, but le Carre’s universe has the ring of truth. His secret agents exist in a world of stalemate, moral compromise, ambiguity and betrayal.

That’s again the terrain of his 21st novel, A Most Wanted Man, but in some ways the landscape has changed. The end of the Cold War changed things. The Sept 11 attacks changed them again, revealing a frightening new menace and adding a glossary of chilling new terms - “war on terror,’’ “extraordinary rendition’’ - to our common language.

“I have no nostalgia for the Cold War,’’ says le Carre, who worked for British intelligence in Germany in the 1960s, when tensions with the Soviet Union were at their chilliest. “I think I have nostalgia for the hope that existed during the Cold War that when it ended we would redesign the world. We never did that. We missed the whole trick.’’

A Most Wanted Man, which came out on Oct 7, is set firmly in our jittery post-9/11 world. Le Carre locates the action in Hamburg, the German port city where several of the 9/11 hijackers planned their attacks. Its central character is Issa, an enigmatic half-Chechen refugee who appears in Hamburg sporting a long black coat, muddy motives and a claim to a mysterious fortune.

To Annabel Richter, an idealistic young human rights lawyer who takes up his case, Issa is a challenge. To the German, British and American spies who hone in on him, he is a possible asset and a potential threat.

Le Carre is fascinated by the way globalisation and immigration have brought disparate peoples closer together, without bridging the gaps in culture, wealth and experience that divide them. Despite attempts at mutual understanding, the novel’s characters are on a collision course.

“We know so little, we understand so little, the cultural differences that separate us, the thought processes that separate us,’’ says the writer, whose real name is David Cornwell. “It’s very difficult to find a common ground. I’m not offering solutions here, but trying to paint a moment in our time. I’m very hung up on trying to catch the moment of where we are and trying to make a neat little story that reflects our feelings.’’

John Le Carre: ‘In my day – in the spook world – we saw ourselves almost as people with a priestly calling to tell the truth.’

Visit Malaysia! Just avoid Chow Kit.

You can't make this stuff up.

I repeat, you can't make this shit up.

Seriously.

Policemen beat a retreat

KUALA LUMPUR: A police beat base located in the Chow Kit area of downtown Kuala Lumpur has been shut down because the “presence of criminals could make it unsafe” for police officers.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar said the beat base was located in a dirty area where police faced the possibility of being exposed to contagious diseases.

The presence of criminals also posed a threat to the safety of police officers.

Full story here.

A PAS MP does point out that "the only kind of contagious disease in the area was sexually transmitted, adding that getting infected was a matter of choice," with insinuations as to what our boys in blue do on their coffee breaks.

Sick unto death

I'm getting damn bloody sick of the racial politcs in both the USA and Malaysia.

I think anybody who brings up skin colour in politics any more should be beaten, stabbed, and drowned in a vat of green paint.

I've lived in the USA for a total of 9 years of my 25. The first time I came here we lived in a Chicago suburb. I entered a 8th grade class with white and black kids and a Chinese teacher. Pretty "muhibbah". Even though I was the only Asian student, nobody made me feel uncomfortable for that.

9 years on I'm bitter, enraged at ignorant hicks calling a churchgoing Christian born and raised in the USA a "Muslim", "Arab", and "terrorist", and increasingly paranoid about closet white supremacists.

No, it's not just paranoia. I sat at dinner with my boyfriend and some of his friends and heard one of them say "Someone needs to kill him" and others agree. I can't stand the thought of breaking bread with that guy ever again.

Racism in Malaysia is alive and kicking too, but it's a more familiar species of demon...I can't explain why but it's easier to deal with psychologically. Maybe because the bulk of the bastards aren't calling themselves Christians. I can't stand the sheer hypocrisy.

I just want to finish my studies and get the hell out of here.

---

NB: Sorry, need to clarify something. I have a number of American friends who support a certain political party and I don't mean that everyone who supports your political party is a closet white supremacist - obviously, in that case I wouldn't be dating a supporter of that party. But some of your fellows have been saying appalling, inexcusable**, hate-filled things, and the leaders of your party have been doing next to nothing to stop it.

** Had to clarify due to a comment someone posted on my Facebook note: The inexcusable thing I am referring to is the calling for the murder of an innocent man.

Of course political campaigns involve plenty of mudslinging and insults that would be unthinkable in any other social situation (except perhaps sports). Advocating murder crosses the line. Murdering someone for political reasons is essentially terrorism, and that's what some of these people would like to see.

Japanese Tea Garden, Bukit Tinggi

You let me violate you
You let me desecrate you
You let me penetrate you
You let me complicate you

(Help me...)
I broke apart my insides
(Help me...)
I've got no soul to sell
(Help me...)
The only thing that works for me
Help me get away from myself,

I wanna fuck you like an animal
I wanna feel you from the inside
I wanna fuck you like an animal
My whole existence is flawed
You get me closer to God

You can have my isolation
You can have the hate that it brings
You can have my absence of faith
You can have my everything

(Help me...)
You tear down my reason
(Help me...)
It's your sex I can smell
(Help me...)
You make me perfect
Help me become somebody else

I wanna fuck you like an animal
I wanna feel you from the inside
I wanna fuck you like an animal
My whole existence is flawed
You get me closer to God

Through every forest
Above the trees
Within my stomach
Scraped off my knees
I drink the honey, inside your hive...
You are the reason I stay alive...
- Nine Inch Nails, "Closer"

(Post title is where I took these photos. I had my camera bare inches away from the mating dragonflies. Something that I think is really cool about animals is that they're so intensely into whatever they're doing.)

Nine Inch Nails was about the only thing that Steve and EK both agreed on when I was dating EK and Steve was chasing me...

Babies are scary

I just found out that another couple of my bible study "kaki-lang" (as Mum would say) are pregnant. They actually knew before the first pair announced it about a month ago but they were keeping quiet so as not to steal their thunder =)

So I'm rather bemused by the explosion of friends who are reproducing this year. The first ones were Tim and Magda who had Kirana in April. She's quite enormous now...I wish they weren't in California! Even my Form Five class monitor from MGSS Melaka recently had a daughter - actually she looked kind of "tomboy" in school but I saw her wedding photos on FB and she looks so pretty and feminine. Another friend I know who's a bit older is trying to have a baby with his wife by artificial reproductive technology so I've got my fingers crossed for them (not tagged in this note).

I guess that's part of growing up: when you see people in your generation starting to have their own children, you realize you REALLY can't call yourself "a kid" or "just a student" any more even if you're still in school, not married, and don't have your own house. I don't mind growing up.

I'm very happy for all of them but the idea of doing it personally...I won't say "disgusts" or "horrifies" me but I really don't ever want to have a baby. I'm not averse to the idea of having children per se, but not children of my own body. It's a finely tuned machine and I hate the idea of having it not running normally for 9+ months, all the nausea, weight, funny movements, limited activities, etc. Also, I work in a lab with viruses and many potentially teratogenic chemicals.

I would rather go and sterilize myself before getting married (or better yet, make my fiance go).

I told Steve, if we stay together and if he wants kids, we would have to adopt. Maybe we can get an Indian baby and confuse everybody...

Hope nobody is offended by these thoughts. Like I said, I'm happy for all of you and enjoying seeing the cute babies (and looking forward to seeing the ones that are still in utero, I just don't want to do it myself. I know at least one other girl who feels this way (Magda: hint: she's another one of your friends also) so I'm not completely weird.

Q2-Q3 report on New Year's resolution

OK so I'm not making very good progress toward hitting my New Year's resolution for the middle 6 months of this year. Also, any strange people reading this please note that I don't have a lot of money so I'm not worth kidnapping or robbing. Any undergraduates reading this, please note that grad students don't make much. =P

The other striking thing about this is that I apparently didn't do anything fun in July. And that's the month of my BIRTHDAY summore. Oh yeah, I was stuck in lab doing RNA preps.

Also, still not sure whether or not to count the price of my new bike that was stolen after one week =( If I don't, that actually puts me quite close to my goal on the humanitarian/religious side.

Regarding the animal-oriented part of my resolution, I at least owe the Four Lakes Wildlife Center some blood money for raising (successfully!) this goofy-looking little bird that Lina brought home unhurt back in July. It turned out to be a Red-Winged Blackbird, strangely enough. Princess Furball's not very expensive except that she had some vaccinations in the spring, plus I bought Heartgard. According to my coworker who's a vet student, heartworm-infected cats, unlike dogs, don't show a lot of symptoms...then suddenly drop dead.

---

I got into the Amazon Vine program, which is a program where you get free stuff to preview if other Amazon users have rated a lot of your reviews helpful. (Nyah nyah.) One of the 2 books I ordered this month is Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don't Give Away More Money. In the first chapter, the authors lay out the incredible things that could be done, both in the religious and secular humanitarian [which obviously can overlap] spheres, if even only people describing themselves as "committed Christians"/regular churchgoers gave 10% of their income to charity. We're talking BILLIONS of dollars here. We could literally change the world.

In the second chapter, they provide detailed statistics from several different sources on the dismal reality: Most people give little to nothing. Significant proportions of people who describe themselves as Christians, regardless of denomination, say they give nothing to their church or charities. Americans Christians do give more than non-religious Americans and people from countries with less religious influence, but still less than Americans of other religions (not that they do so well either).

The 3rd chapter presents nine hypotheses as to why Christians don't give more. The "we can't afford to" excuse is refuted with the billions of dollars spent per year on candy, beverages, entertainment, sport vehicles, cars, fast food, etc. (since the majority of Americans are Christian, it's reasonable to assume that a good chunk of this luxury spending is by them).

Anyway, from doing my accounts and reading this book, I realize I need to buck up. I don't want to be a person who goes through life making stupid excuses. Again, if we don't count the stolen bike, my original target is attainable.

Drat - I just realized that since I use Microsoft Money to keep track of my accounts already, I could have gotten it to generate this spreadsheet automatically...

Halp! Tabbies!