Missing out on the sequel action

Realise I’m no longer a movie buff these days…price of cinema tix is one thing. More importantly, the urge for seeking closure in me has clearly weakened.

In the past few years, I followed through the X-men, the LOR trilogies…

Prior to those, there were Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Alien, Amityville (those 70/80s version), Poltergeist and to some extent, Highlander…yah, you can call me a TV or movie junkie. I was (Miu can probably vouch for that), and still am, I think.

Strangely now, I don’t feel I lost anything when I missed my spidey 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (and now 3!)… Well, I dun mind being a victim of those commecialised movies so I don’t really quite know what happened to me.

Not that it’s work, or the weak story plot of those sequels that dampen my interest…but I simply lose the craving to watch the sequel for some closure (anyway, closure is no longer ‘in’…it’s the cliffhanging ending that is ‘in’ now).

Maybe it’s harder for me now to succumb to these commercialized tactics …knowing that these are only some whimsical moments that help spice up our life.

Breakfast at nomad's

[DevilAngel introduced me to a word-game-blog called Collective Rantings. The rule is to start off on a topic initiated by previous author and end off with another topic...which is to be picked up by the next author. While waiting for a call to come, I went to pick up the thread and so my topic was 'pancakes' and here's my rantings associated with 'pancake']

Had pancake this morning
Complemented with butter and maple syrup
And my aromatic coffee
Yum yum…

Yesterday morning I had toast
Spread with my home-made avocado paste
Mashed avocado, mixed well with a sprinkle of salt, pepper, and some fresh lemon juice
Again, together with my coffee companion
Ooo…I like

The day before yesterday I had toast
With melted cheese and ham on top of toasts
Add a dash of Tabasco sauce to give it an additional spice
Yup, not forgetting my coffee
Mmm…indulgence…

Am I dreaming up all these breakfasts?
Uh-uh, they are my breakfast
Maybe not everyday but at least once a week

It’s a pleasure to prepare breakfast
A new day, a new beginning
Start afresh with a sumptuous meal

Why not?
We need energy for the rest of the day
To face new challenges
Encounter unpleasant episodes
Engage in firefighting at work…
The least we can do is treat ourselves better in the morning

And my topic for the next author: A new beginning
[Above entry can also be found at Collective Rantings.]

Inner voice

Listen hard.
It’s there.

When you are making a decision, responding or reacting to a situation, voices in your head that probably say something like this…

"Yea, that’s the way to go."
"Hold on, you sure you want to do this?"
"Is this the right move?"
"Hmm…something ain’t right…"

Devil’s advocate, true essence of who you are, Freudian’s theory of superego, the voice that can empower one, the gut feel, the sixth sense…whatever name it is called…it’s there.

An irrefutable truth is that you know the voice is right. Try to go against it and you feel a pang of guilt. Which give rise to hesitation…and possibly regret not heeding the voice.

Amid the buzz surrounding us, it’s easy to lose ‘sight’ of it. So don’t lose it.

Believe it's something that connects every one of us. Somehow deep down, we just know it...because sometimes the inner voice echoes the thought of the stranger just seated next to you.

My recent working companion

…for the past week has been Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees.

Perhaps it’s age…I find solace in songs I grew up listening to. Or maybe it’s the melancholy mood of this song that is appealing to me. *chuckle* yes, am drawn to melancholism. It does make me feel gloomy, but I feel at ease with it. I think it’s part of me.

Song is also about mass consumerism…everything turning into plastic, becoming unreal…

"A green plastic watering can
For a fake Chinese rubber plant
In the fake plastic earth…"

Jus to become ‘the someone’ that someone wants you to become…

"And if I could be who you wanted
If I could be who you wanted
All the time, all the time"

And as the chorus goes…"it wears me out, it wears me out"…

Back to working status

...yup, my blog template is working. At last.

Seems that it has something to do with singnet. Apparently singnet users have the same problem like I do (check out the long discussion thread, and I mean really long). I am amazed by how some actually went all the way out to find out the root of the problem - troubleshooting with email, find the link between blogger and singnet (I mean, we are not the only country that blogs), detailing the tracing route, and even got in touch with singnet...gosh...

I am terrible with such, have no idea what those mean, but patient enough to wait for someone to come up with the solution *GRIN*

So I just follow their instructions - applying manual proxy settings on my web browsers. My, I never thot I would need to do my proxy settings in this present era lor...thot it was only in the past when you first sign up for dial-up and need to do those settings thingy.

Anyway, am glad things are back to normal now...

Something's wrong with my blogger...

Am not sure about you, but I am encountering problems with my blogger template settings. I can't view my page elements...can't do anything to it at all. Clear my cache, refresh the page, switching between broswers...nothing works.

Am seriously considering to shut down this site...not sure if I should continue with blogger too. Sigh...

nomad's e-collage

It’s part of our moderation job that we adopt projective techniques with respondents to explore and understand their underlying motivations and hindrances toward particular product/ services (--> here’s what I call my ‘job language’).

As the saying goes, a picture paints a thousand words.
One of the projective techniques we use is called collage building. Respondents are asked to select pictures to build a world of XX (XX could be a noun or a brand), and this world could include representations of people, objects, scenery, landscape, buildings, moods, environment, feeling, colours…so on.

As quali (short form for qualitative researchers), we sometimes joke about doing up our own collages. Or asking our prospective boyfriend/husband to do theirs as well as on many other things…so that we can take a look at our world or their world, or the world of XX…and detect if there’s any skeleton hiding in the cupboard ;)

And guess what I found recently on the net – visual DNA!

Darn. If I had known this sooner, we, the qualis, could have pioneered this! And we will go beyond the simple selection of pictures. We will also do segmentation, profiling, typology…whatever stats models, coming up with more robust stimuli and data…haa…

Anyways, here’s how my visual DNA looks like ...yar, aesthetics, I likes. And oh, you can 'personalise' the descriptions as well... yup, wrote those myself.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Go try it, and share yours :)