Harry Potter mistaken as a Hobbit.

This article is almost delightful to read. I always say those two looks alike. And there!!

I particularly like this quote from the article: "So often people shout out, 'Hey Frodo!' as they think I'm Elija - who frankly is a very good-looking guy so I take it as a compliment."

So Daniel thinks those freaky eyes are cute huh...

The one line that really hits home is how much that boy's worth now. And the thing is he can't even act that well. Ron is probably the one who was best with acting in that series, but alas, he's not Harry Potter... *sigh*

Anyway, aside from this, life's not too bad. Stuck in research as usual, but yeah, heading to the beach soon this weekend. Can't wait! :D

Curse Chuck Palahniuk...

... for being so damned good a writer!! Couldn't put down the book, it was 1:20 in the morning. I wanted to sleep early and wake up early... but NO... he has to write a damn good book and I just kept saying to myself "just one more chapter"...

In case you're wondering, I'm reading Lullaby. Fantastic book, and Palahnuik's has yet to disappoint me so far. I've read Survivor as well, which was also bloody good. I managed to stop myself from finishing it. I'll probably put up a review of the book later. :P

Speaking of reviews, friendster now has this review function, where you can go and review what you're reading, listening, watching, etc etc. Maybe I should put it in a blog as well... :P

We'll see. :)

Christmas comes early for people who wants free software!!

With all due respect, no everyone likes to pay for software like anti-virus, spyware removal, and whatnots. Now here's a nifty list of freeware, from free broswer to free software suite to replace clippy's kingdom (aka MS Office). Go on. You know you wanna click the link. Even just to look at the list, it's worth it. :)

At the very least I'll highly recommend you to take a look at the free anti-virus and spyware removal software to protect your computers. I dunno how many computer I've heard of that's plagued with those nasty little spyware and slow the whole thing down. While you're at it, go download Firefox! Do your computer a favour. YES I realise it's probably just because not that many hackers are targetting FF as opposed to IE, but the fact remains, it's better.

That's is from me. Christmas countdown will officially start soon. :P

The problem with drawing faces...

Human's brain is funny, and it has a very intricate network to process information about faces. Which is why it's bloody hard to draw a sketch of someone's face and make it look like the person you're supposed to draw. *sigh*

Take this for example. It's another one of my midnight impulse sketch. (Most of my good drawing were done after midnight. Go figure.) I took a nice picture of an actress (Petey if you think I'll say who the actress is, well you're wrong. Muhahahaha :P You can keep guessing.) and try to render it in pencil. It looks like a face. But doesn't look like her face. Even the smallest difference makes the face completely different.

Maybe I should stick with drawing imaginary characters. :P

Feel free to guess who she is. Bet you can't. :P

But it does go to show how good human's brain is in recognising faces. Fascinating eh? :)

Various thoughts on "Love"

Recently I've been talking to various people about various relationship. These rank from "She's so lucky to have found him" to "Just why the hell is he putting up with her again?" (I'm not naming names. :P) And that sorta sparked some thoughts in this little head of mine...

True Love

I still remember when I was in high school, and the priest who was taking the religious studies class made the statement that "There is no true love, only an imitation that you think is true love". Now, if you are going to teach a bunch of 16 year olds, and you happen to be a priest (and/or never married), DO NOT attempt to make that statment. It was amazing that the priest survived that class.

Anyway, now that I'm a bit older, and hopefully a bit wiser, I suddenly came back to that line, and think on it a bit. I think I'm starting to understand what he meant. If God is the essence of Love (Which I do believe, read the Bible! Clues are everywhere.), then we, as human, in our flesh and bones, and with our wants and desire and a biochemical plant in our head, would not be capable for the True Love in the sense that God loves us. Makes sense?

I'm not saying we're not trying hard enough, I'm saying we wouldn't even be able to comprehend that. Am I saying we should, and we should try to approach that sense of True Love? No, I'm not. In fact, I don't even think it's God's intension to understand and mimic it.

I once read a novel with the idea that it's our bodies that limits us to perfection, or Nirvana. Sometimes I think that's true. But on the other hand, you will never be able to experience this level of emotion without one. Enjoy it.

Selfless Love

People seems to glorified this term. I used to think to love is to only think of the other person, and it's about sacrificing myself. And then I realise there's some flaw in that logic.

While there are heroic acts, such as a mother sacrificing herself for her child, Love should not be completely selfless. Because the person whom you should learn to love first, is yourself. Out of the love for yourself then come love for others.

At first glance that sounds extremely selfish, but do bare with me for a little bit more. The person you know the best, whom you spend most of your time with, is yourself. If you can't even love yourself, and take care of yourself, how are you going to love and care for others?

The problem with us mortals is that we try to think that we're immortal and can be perfect. We aren't and we can't. Don't expect us to be.

Loving relationship

Here's a short list of what I consider as signs of good/bad relationship. The list is composed using experience from myself and friends alike, and Dr Phil :P

• A good relationship is a partnership


• A bad relationship is a dictatorship


• A good relationship helps both of you to feel better about yourselves


• A bad relationship makes you doubt yourself even more


• A good relationship makes you feel like you're the luckiest person


• A bad relationship makes you feel like you're a martyr of Love


• A good relationship is where you think he/she is the one


• A bad relationship is where you think that would do

But the number one rule, or paradox, of good/bad relationship:
When you're in a bad relationship, you probably wouldn't have realise it. But If you're in a good relationship, you'll know, right away.

Speaking of bad relationships...

It's funning how when I look back, I always thought those bad (or not so happy) relationships were going to last. I always thought he was the best, or at least whom I'm meant to be with. Forgetting the fact that half the time, I'm not even happy there.

In Conclusion

Those are just some of my thoughts and observation. I don't claim to know everything. To be honest I don't think we can ever tell what "love" really is, and how to actually tell whether it's a good/bad relationship we're in. (Let's face it: when you're in the middle on something, you can't really tell what really is going on. Blame that biochemical plant in your head.) The best advice I can give is to look after yourself and love yourself. You know that much. And if something doesn't make you happy, try consider taking a step back to analyse it. Chances are nothing is really worth you making yourself to suffer.

Gothic ring. Tada!!

ONe of my best friends, Caz, came back to the country after being in HK for 10 months. Bought me my first birthday pressie :D (Which is... ridiculously early. :P But hey!! :D) It's a cool metalic gothic ring. :D It's slightly too small, but it kinda fits my pinky. :)

You know, sometimes I do think I'm a goth at heart. But then again, sometimes I feel like I'm a goth, sometimes I feel like doing the whole professional elegant look, or just victorian (Well... gothic lolita. Maybe :P I'm a Japanese goth at heart :P) I feel like doing some Goth drawing for a while.

I feel like doing a lot of things.

Anyway, right now I think I'm just gonna be happy with my gothic ring. Wee..

(Going into uni tomorrow too.. gotta plan what I have to say to my supervisor..)

Didn't get burnt!!

Yay me! I spent yesterday at teh beach, beautoful weather, and I didn't get burnt!! AND: no allergy to the sunscreen either. Yay me indeedy. :)

Anyway, went into work today. Pretty good productive day, chatted with the peopel there to see whether they think I'm on track, and what they think of my ideas and all. ALL pretty good. :)

Alrighty. Me off for today. Still pretty tired today. Don't know why, I shouldn't be THIS tired. Ah well. Still. Hopefully weather would be nice like yesterday when we're off to the bach :D

My Brother's Friend's Brother...

Stephen (my favourite brother... also my only brother) told me today his friend's brother is currently in the hospital, becuase his lungs collasped, and suffered internal bleeding. Apparently he was completely healthy before, and just suffered some chest pain. The first doctor he saw told him it's nothing, he'd be alright in 2 days. The second doctor told him that he doesn't undergo surgery immediately he'll die.

Charming.

Anyway, as soon as I heard that, my ears started hurting again. It's scary. They haven't hurt for a long time. It's like... they just hurt on cue now!

If it's not painful and creepy it's almost cool.

Anyway, it's going to be a slow day today, I knew it. :P

tired. :|

I think I've been bumming around way too much. Now I can't sleep until like 3 in the morning, and feel sleepy if I don't get my 10 hours of sleep. That's really not good man. :(

As for work... I think I actualyl need to do some creative work here. Which is good in a way, I quite like it. So hopefully by the end of this week (which means, er, by tomorrow) I get some good ideas that I can implement.

*yawn*... I got a feeling it's going to be another unproductive day :P

A Discworld Wedding!

I was just thinking (while I was reading Art of Discworld... LOVE Paul Kidby's work btw. I wish I can paint like that :P) why not, instead of a fantasy wedding, we go all out for a Discworld theme? :D

Feel free to drop in any suggestion of table names. :P So far I have the idea of sticking everyone from Auckland in table names related to Ankh-Morpork, so, say, head table can be the Patrician's palace, and other places like Unseen University, City Watch, or even the Assassin Guild. (heh) Anyone from Aussie can be stuck in the XXXX table :P Counterweight for all my friends and rellies coming from Asia or something...

I got a feeling I might run out of names too quickly though. Or that people may either object to being seated at a certain table, or want to sit at a particular table. (Funny enough, both of these can happen to the table labelled Death's Domain. Death rules.)

(I can dress as Susan!! Can I? :D Petey you can be Lobsang :P Although it's not really clear whether those tow are actually together, but meh.)

Not that it's going to happen anytime soon... I still got ages to go in my research :(

Quick and dirty blog update

It's another day of mind blank out. So I think I'll use one of those "email survey" template that I saw in someone's DA journal, as a snapshot of how/who I am at the moment :P

(I did say it's quick and dirty :P)

[My name is]: Lisa Wong
[in the morning i was]: Sleeping in. :P
[all i need now is]: More time to paint, or motivation to work.
[love is]: a verb, a doing word. ;)
[i'm afraid of]: Slopes, spiders, insects, height, acceleration.
[i dream about]: making a ground breaking discovery in my research.

You:
-- Middle name: Nope
-- Birth time: 2 minutes before midnight.
-- Birthplace:Hong Kong
-- Last place traveled: within NZ: Coromandel. Outside of NZ: Paris
-- Eye Color: I call it black. On a good day you can see the brown...
-- Nail Color: ... white-ish? That's the colour of nails right?
-- Height: 165cm I think
-- Zodiac Sign: Capricorn with moon in Pieces and Libra rising

Describe:
-- Your heritage: Asian
-- The shoes you wore today: Teddy bear slippers. (Ah... research student is all good)
-- Your hair: Long straight black and boring. With split ends.
-- Your weakness: Cheesecake!!
-- Your perfect pizza: Seafood with extra cheese. :P

What is:
-- Your most overused phrase: "My shoulder hurts. My whole body hurts"
-- Your thoughts first waking up: "It's only 9. I'm sleeping in."
-- Your current worry: Finishing the segementation by end of month.
-- Your plans tomorrow: work at home, and maybe to the bank...
-- Your best physical feature: Fingers? Pete said I have pianist fingers... (tehehe... pianist..)
-- Your bedtime: 1 ish I think.

You prefer:
-- sunrise or sunset: Sunset. I'm never awake at sunrise. But the colours at sunset!!!
-- gore or horror: Horror. Hate gore.
-- eastside or westside: Live in East for WAY too long... HK East, Auckland East...
-- stripes or polka dots: Stripes. (polka dots?! o_O)
-- Planes or trains: Planes I guess. They're cleaner.
-- metal or hardcore: Alternative? :P
-- Pools or hot tubs: Hot tubs. :)

Do You:
-- Do you think you've been in love: I am indeed.
-- Want to get married: Yeah. :)
-- Type w/ your fingers: no, with my toes. o_O Of course with fingers!
-- Like to take baths: kinda. I always ended up soaking for too long and get dizzy.
-- Get motion sickness: Big time.
-- Like talking on the phone: Not really. Scared of the phone.
-- Like thunderstorms: Depends. Am I inside? Or out on a field holding a metal rod?
-- Play an instrument: Piano. Kinda guitar.
-- Workout: No pain, NO PAIN!!! What's the matter with you people? :P
-- Like reading: Can't live without books.

Favorite:
-- Body part: Eyes maybe?
-- Kind of fruit: That's a hard one.. maybe mango actually.
-- Music to fall asleep to: Can't really sleep with music on... or any sound for that matter
-- Car: One that moves! :P (or my cute red integra :P)
-- Number: pi. 3.14159.
-- Thing to do: Bumming in Borders with Petey. Or maybe painting.
-- Horror movie: I dunno.. Sixth Sense maybe?
-- Color:Blue, bright fire engine red.
-- Food: Cheesecake! (Or pavlova... it's a tough call.)

The Future:
-- Age you hope to be married: ... not QUITE future now is it? Maybe 26? That's saying I should finish my PhD by the time I'm 26... T_T
-- Numbers and Names of Children: 2, 3 max. Girl would be Sophia, Evelyn, or Maria. Boys would be Arthur, Dominic or Marvin (tehehe). Or Lucifer Cheesecake. (CHEESECAKE!)
-- Describe your Dream Wedding: Think we've decided on a fantasy wedding so far. :P
-- How do you want to die: In my sleep. When I'm old.
-- What do you want to be when you grow up: Grow up? :P (I'm working on research now, that I know)
-- What country would you most like to visit: Japan (done that), Croatia, Italy, England (done that), Egypt

Opposite Sex:
-- Best eye color: Green eyes. (*cough* or blue *cough*)
-- Best hair color: .. ginger? :P
-- Best personality trait: Caring and romantic. And a bloody genius :P
-- Best height: Yes. :P
-- Best articles of clothing: ... (This is getting TOO teenagey...)
-- Best first date location: ...
-- Best first kiss location: ...

Finish:
-- I eat: Cheesecake!
-- I think: Now how the hell do I improve this algo?
-- I am: a geek.
-- I adore: Petey :)
-- I suck at: Sports
-- I am obsessed with: Penguins!!!
-- I can: BS a lot in my meetings with my supervisor.
-- I can't wait: til I have a break next!
-- I am annoyed with: The mortgage rate keep going up. o_O


--
That's it folks. I wasted half an hour. Yay me! :P Back to work :P

Big Boys Toys, Sushi, Art Exhibition, and other bits and pieces

It's time for an update about my weekend :P

Big Boys Toys

It quite quite fun, besides a few oddities like having a little remote control cars in the condom stand (Lots of little kids where there, that's what confuse me) and the Garnier stand (I got my freebies though :P But I thought it's Big Boys Toys... skin care product doesn't quite come under that does it?) And there's a long queue to see the XBox 360 (Didn't got sucked into that. You don'teven get to play it anyway. Kinda waiting for Revolution actually. :P I'm getting more and more obscure by the day.) Other than that, it was all good. I get free beer, cheap jerky, see cool cars and gadgets. It was a good day on the whole. What I liked most though was this art sculpture made entirely out of car parts. They got some very impressive looking model of the alien from Aliens vs Preditors. Me like! :D

And that was my weekend... and now, today:

Sushis

I've decided that 6 sushi isn't quite enough and today I bought more. Now I'm really full... I thought I'd share. :P

Art Exhibition

Also: it's the opening of my friend's art exhibition thingy. :) It's quite cool... having an art exhbition when you're an engineer. :P (I think it was mostly the robotoic/fine art project stuff...) Too bad he told us today, and I don't have my camera with me today. :P That sucks.

Other Bits and Pieces

I'm really tired today for some reason. I've been tired for a few days now anyway. Also kidna stressed about nothing too. *sigh* Maybe if I focus on my work a bit more it'd get better... me hopes. :(

Encrypting your paper. WTF?!

Holy. Friggin. Farking. ARGH!!!

I can't believe I spent a whole week to try to understand the maths in this paper, and when I finally figured out what they're trying to say, it's basically saying that the energy of the signal is the square of the signal's voltage. (Or something similar)

REALLY not amused.

I'm sick and tired of people writing their paper in the most convoluted way!! ARGH! I know that easy maths isn't as impressive, but dammit if you want to present your paper just write the bloody algorithm out and explain rather than dressing it up with more integral signs that I can count with my fingers. ARGH!

Sadly my supervisor told me to do similar things before: write everything out in maths equations. Yes it looks very impressive. But ALL I wanted to say is just "sum the damned thing", I don't need no summation series or whatnots.

Sooner or later maybe I too will lose my ability to speak in plain English. And THAT is plain scary.

Low motivation

I've got quite a few different things to do in terms of my research, but so far, I've got nothing. No motivation or anything. Sat in front of the computer, and words aren't forming meanings. ARGH! I hate these days! It's as if my brain's on strike. I could hardly type, let alone trying to parse all these maths formula in my head. :(

Hopefully I'll get my motivation back tomorrow. I need to get this done before Monday afternoon. :(

ARGH! :(

Art: Now and Then

Had two very interesting conversations about art the past few days, with very different views on the issue of "art" these days.

View #1: Art is about feeling
The first view I came across was that art isn't what it was back in the days before photography. It's no longer about technique and realism, but about expressing feelings and emotion. It's art, not documentation. It's about putting feelings into shapes and colours.

View #2: Art is about what you write about it
The second view, which is a wee bit more cynical, basically say art nowadays has nothing to do with art anymore. It's all about what is said about the piece of art. That accounts for the fact that nowsadys it's hard to tell apart a masterpiece, and something a 4 year old painted. (There was an article on that before, but I can't seem to find it now)

In my case: I paint things that are neitehr skillful or too emotional. In fact, it's more for decorations. So maybe it's should really be called art at all. Just... colours that look good around the house.

*sigh*... Probably shouldn't quit my day job eh?

Child Prodigies

Came across this one one slashdot today. Eight year old boy going into uni to study physics.

You know, when I was young, all I ever wanted was to be a prodigy. It's a little secret of mine. I don't really know just exactly in what field I want to be a prodigy in, and by the looks of things I don't think my folks do either. I thought it'd be cool to be a prodigy in music, until I realise by the age of 9 I still haven't master having instrument to performance levels (my dad tried by "letting me" learn violin at the age of 4. Then again, I probbaly did ask for it. Knowing me.) I also thought it'd be cool to be a prodigy in poetry, Chinese poetry to be exact. I did memorise A LOT of poems by around 10, and know the stories and lives of quite a lot of different poets. What about art? I loved to draw... maybe I can be an artist! Or maths maybe? I was the top of the class afterall... When I was around 12 it hits me that I would never be a prodigy.

I was somewhat annoyed at the fact Mozart wrote a bloody symphony at the age of 14 (Or something like that. I never aimed to be a prodigy in the field of remembering historical details, or any details for that matter). And knowing that at the age of 16, my piano teacher still complained about my harmony exercise.

Over the years, I'm still somewhat obsessed with IQ tests, desperately trying to proof to myself I'm smarter than average. Right now, however, I think I got over that obsession. Purely because I disagree with the way how intelligence is measured.

Now I'm wondering whether it's because my brain isn't all crammed with some sort of special talent, which made me come up with that conclusion. But given the choice, maybe growing up and getting ridiculous philosophical might actually be better than being obsessed about one subject from a young age.

Maybe it's just me.

Guy Fawkes

Guy Fawkes night found us in this really terrible weather. The rain stopped a little when we get to Bucklands Beach. Man it was more like eating sand. It was SO windy that's almost impossible to play fireworks. That didn't stop most people, just stopped us that's all. I managed to actually take my picture though: my experiment with light and photography. This one is entitled Dancing Fire. You can see the path of those little sparks, it's so pretty. No doubt more of these will be available. :P I'll upload to DeviantART when I got it. :P (This one is on DA already)

Anyway, I'm still confused about Guy Fawkes. Why are we celebrating because some guys try to burn down the parliament? I'm sure there's a good reason for it, but right now: I can't think of any. Probably because it's late, and I'm tired. :P

More rambling later. :)

Cleaning the shower with a toothbrush

Mum handed me a toothbrush and told me to clean the shower today. Yup. An old toothbrush.

I swear she must be in the military in a fomer life.

Anyway, I didn't know quite what to say when I saw the toothbrush: it was my old Macleans with those wipey thingy that "polish your teeth as you brush!" sort of "new and improved" toothbrush.

You know, modern toothbrush is not made to be used to clean shower. The nice "bendable joint", which is there to protect your gum, means I can't scrub hard. Mind you I do like the diamond shape head, it does make it easier to scrub the "hard to reach places", like all those corners and stuff.

For the whole entire time, I can't help wodering whether the plastic wipey thingy is actually polishing the shower as I scrub...

I think there's definitely a whole market there in making bigger version of these toothbrush (without the bendy joint thingy) for scrubbing showers.

Human need more hands

I was walking back from the cafe where I normally get my pie from.. with a pie, a bottle of ginger beer, and my wallet.

Since you read the title of this post, you see the problem.

At the ends I ended up pressing the bottle onto my chest with my arm and pray it'd stay there, it did. But it felt weird walking on the street like that.

So: how about giving each human 4 hands huh? Don't tell me it looks weird, you only think so because you're used to 2-handed/armed human. But imagine the possibility!!

• You can do your nails AND drive at the same time!


• Eat a steak dinner while playing computer games!


• Stabilise youself better in rock climbing!


• Hold one of those really thick books open AND flip the page without risking losing the page! (okay... that one it's probably just me)


• Finally be able to play Debussy's La fille aux cheveux de lin! (Still convinced you need at elast 3 hands to play that one o_O)


• ... alternatively, you may just want to play Heart and Soul over and over again


• AND! You can carry your pie, ginger beer, AND your wallet at the SAME TIME!

Are you convinced yet?

Anyway, silliness aside, I thought I got better and got into uni today... nope I'm still sick as a dog. Should've stayed in bed. Stupid flu.

Who doesn't cough rhymes with dough?

It just intrigues me, you know. How some English words look like they rhymes but don't. So I just put that question to Pete, why doesn't cough rhymes with dough? (He was coughing a lot). I think his exact answer was *"Because! Dough is spelt d-o-u-g-h, and cough is spelt... oh."

And people wonder WHY I can't spell? Pfft.

In honour of my victory in proving English is a difficult, if not impossible, language to learn (and that "spelling by phonics" is a myth), allow me to blatantly plagiarise the following poem**:

Similar Sentiment

I take it you already know
of TOUGH and BOUGH and COUGH and DOUGH.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On words like HICCOUGH, THOROUGH, and THROUGH.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of HEARD, a dreadful word
That looks like BEARD and sounds like BIRD.
And DEAD - it's said like BED, not BEAD.
For goodness sake, don't call it DEED!
Watch out for MEAT and GREAT and THREAT.
They rhyme with SUITE and STRAIGHT and DEBT.

A MOTH is not a MOTH in MOTHER,
Nor BOTH in BOTHER, BROTH in BROTHER,
And HERE is not a match for THERE,
Nor DEAR and FEAR for PEAR and BEAR.
And then there's DOSE and ROSE and LOSE -
Just look them up - and GOOSE and CHOOSE.
And CORK and WORK and CARD and WARD.
And FONT and FRONT and WORD and SWORD.
And DO and GO, then THWART and CART.
Come, come I've hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive,
I'd mastered it when I was five!

* Pete probably won't admit it. ;) Don't blame him... afterall he's supposed to be the one who can spell in this relationship... I still love you Petey!!

**Don't look at me for some of them... I always think dose rhymes with rose... is it just me? What about goose and choose? If they do indeed sound different, I've yet to be enlightened. Probably it's my Asian accent. Some Asians are still convinced that chip sounds the same as cheap...

SPUD!

Last night I got a bit hungry around 9:30pm, since I couldn't have too much dinner with my sore throat. So Pete, my brother, and myself went to Denny's for a quick bite. Pete and my brother ordered desserts, and I ordered potato and gravy. Coz I like their mashed potatoes. Plus it won't hurt my throat too much.

So we waited for a while, Pete's dessert came, my brother's oreo sundae came, and no sight of my potato. How hard could it be? Scoope the mashed potato they have, and add gravy. Done. And then, the waitress came to the table. With a potato.

Now let me describe the scene better: we were, sitting at our booth, and this waitress just walked to our table, with a whole potato (I assumed it's baked, although it does look quite raw...) on a dish. Nothing else. Potato, and dish. The potato was wobbling a bit. I could only do so much to tell the waitress I ordered a potato and gravy, which I assumed is mashed (since they never asked.. and I always got mashed potato if I order it anyway), and the waitress went back to the kitchen, and we just broke out laughing.

it's just something very funny about a whole potato sitting on a plate with absolutely nothing else on it. That made our days.

So there you have it: if you're having a bad day, go get a potato and put it on a dish. It might help if you say "SPUD!" a few times too, like we did last night, but that's not really neccessary.

We're WAY too easily ammused.