I'm scheduled to take a Java Certification Exam tomorrow, so I'm up late studying such thrilling topics as RandomAccessFile invocation parameters and how to instantiate Threads.

While on the subject of 'boring', here's the report from Sunday's game. I continue my offensive onslaught from fullback:

We had the better of the 1st half and scored after a knockdown from Gimson was chested into the goal by Mark S. A fairly even 2nd half in possession but we had many chances to bury them with at least 4-5 clear cut chances. They equalised when a free kick was chipped into the path of their nippy stirker to slot it pass me. After a series of disgracful finishing from us , we won it with the last kick of the game when Kelvin chipped the out-rushing keeper from outside the box.

Next week I'm going to try to score with my hips or butt.

Another thing we're looking forward to doing after we move is taking some classes. Like many of the things on our other this, this isn't necessarily something we're prevented from doing here; it's just that with a new beginning and (hopefully) more money, it seems more possible. And it's also a good way to meet people.

I plan on continuing Japanese, and maybe doing some writing workshops. Marjorie wants more Spanish and photography. Together we may do cooking and scuba diving. Oh, and dog obedience, of course.

We took a vow the other night to never again go six months without taking some sort of class that interests us. Unlike my nail biting/neck cracking vow, let's hope we can stick by this one.

On another note, go see Shrek 2. Side-splittingly funny.

Three cheers. Another forum I'm on has a thread going about remarkable experiences. Here's what I posted:

This is the first thing that came to mind as a "remarkable experience". It was just something I was lucky enough to witness.

I was working at Kennedy Space Center -- must've been about 1992 -- and had seen my share of shuttle (and rocket) launches. Landings, however, had always been done out in California at Edwards Air Force Base. They had built a landing strip at KSC, but had yet to use it, except for landing the special airliner that carries the shuttle back from California.

On a day when the shuttle was scheduled to land in Edwards, I was at work as usual. Word started spreading around the building that, due to a weather pattern approaching California, they were going to land the shuttle, that day, right outside our building!

Everyone filed out at the appropriate time, and waiting in the parking lot that was pretty much right across the street from the landing strip. The funny thing was, no one knew which way to look. We knew it would be coming from the west, but also that it would have to circle a few times to lose speed. So eyes were pointed in every direction.

Finally, someone spotted it, directly overhead, so high up that you could barely see it. Everyone cheered, for the first time of three. We watched it begin to bank into its turn.

Two minutes or so later, the double sonic boom hit us -- BOOM! BOOM! Car alarms went off, and everyone cheered again. It pulled a descending curve over our parking lot, and we could begin to see details on the shuttle itself, as its jet fighter escorts pulled up alongside.

But to everyone's dismay, just before it was to do its final, unimaginably steep descent towards the landing strip, it disappeared behind a cloud bank. We were going to miss the landing! It was hard to tell just how thick the clouds were, and where they stopped. Finally, just as the shuttle was leveling off from its descent, it burst MAJESTICALLY out of its cloud bank, almost directly towards us, and everyone went nuts cheering, one more time! Not that the astronauts could possibly hear us; it was just an unbridled outburst of joy amongst a bunch of space geeks. Finally it dipped below the trees across the road and made its landing. We all went back to work with big stupid grins on our faces.

Yeah, we watch, so what? We've both decided that if Fantasia gets voted off American Idol, we're never watching the show again. The girl's got some pipes.

Singapore Idol starts in two weeks or so. I'm all aquiver. No, really, it's going to be the biggest thing here, ever. I think it will be a hoot, in a train-wreck sort of way. A friend describes Singapore as the worst music town on the planet, and it's hard to argue. But they do love their karaoke, and that's right up Idol's alley. People are already camping out for the audition, I think.

Things we can't wait to buy, own, or otherwise acquire once we move:

Washer and DRYER.

Big refrigerator.

Car.

Dog.

NEW CLOTHES.

Comfy computer chair.

Comfy matress.

High quality sheets and comforter.

MORE CLOTHES.

Coffee maker.

Cookbooks.

Kitchen appliances.

Art.

Magazine subscriptions.

TIVO or its equivalent.

All our stuff from Atlanta.

Their food is to die for. Our favorite Thai restaurant, Diandin Leluk, is unfortunately situated in the Golden Mile complex.

Two weeks ago, the highway behind it collapsed, forcing evacuation of the building.

Today, it was evacuated again -- for supposedly unrelated reasons -- after the building started shaking due to an earthquake across the water in Sumatra. No one else in town seemed to feel a thing, myself included.

One might never want to go near the place again. But only if one hadn't ever tried their green curry soup.

Serves us right. I only knew fifteen minutes beforehand. Marjorie knew all along, but figured if it was a Kevin Smith movie, it couldn't be all bad. The point is, we both knew going in to see Jersey Girl that it starred Ben Affleck, and we went anyway. We got what we deserved.

I've always had issues with how a certain word can be consided obscene,
while another word which means the exact same thing is considered acceptable.
Most times, it's just due to an accident of history, and it makes no sense to
me at all.

Why, then, did I blush for the Singapore newscasters the other day when,
while introducing a story about the tenth anniversary of Viagra being
available in Singapore, they put up a graphic reading "Helping Singaporean
men get it up for ten years"? And then, a second later, when the reporter
started the story with "Are you hard up without a hard on?"

Itig. Back in high school there were two girls -- Tia and Mary -- who had invented their own language. It was much like piglatin in that it was just a bastardization of English, one that could be both spoken and understood, once you knew the trick. It sounded really strange, but they were able to hold conversations out loud without anyone understanding.

One day I got them to tell me the trick to it. Unlike piglatin, which only operates on a single word, they mangled every syllable. The trick was to essentially put two unstressed syllables -- "itig" -- in front of every vowel sound. So the word "word" would become "witigord". "Sound" would become "sitigound". It chains together for multiple syllables -- "teacher" would become "titigeach-itiger".

It sounds hard, but it's pretty straightforward. I quickly got to the point where I could speak it as fast as they could. I find I still can, pretty much. What's weird is that, even though I could encode it fast in my head, I could never really decode it that fast. And my sister, who was also privvy to the trick, could understand it easily when others spoke it but couldn't speak it very good (if I remember correctly).

I just remembered this recently. I don't know why I'm blogging about it, except that it strikes me as interesting.

Senescence. Not that I can possibly make it, but it's been pointed out to me that my twenty year high-school reunion is next month. Twenty years! Next month!

Life seems damnably short sometimes.

I don't feel much different than I remember myself at high school graduation. I did have a sense of immortality at that age that I miss now, though. That I was always going to be that age, with no overhanging sense of urgency about anything other than enjoying life.

At one point I considered going to work for one of the few companies that are working on life extension (such as these guys). But I looked into it, and don't see much to hope for beyond some modest gains in our lifetime. It would still be interesting to work on, but there are things I enjoy more. I'll still be first in line if they manage to bottle it, though.

Found out last night that my new favorite writer, Greg Egan, is Australian. He's a left-coaster, though, so I don't think I'll be hounding him for book signings after we move. Check out his web site, the very fine story of his that I read last night, and a worthy cause he campaigns for.

I don't need to read any more of his stuff while I'm working on my own, though. It's kind of disheartening, how good he is. He writes as if he lives inside the worlds that he creates, and his characters are real people, not the cardboard understudies so common to SF.

Ways to save money in anticipation of a move:

1. Place moratorium on buying new clothes, CDs, housewares. Status: Grudgingly implemented.

2. Get a library card instead of blowing wads of cash down at Borders. Status: Implemented (Mark).

3. Sell back old books to used book store. Status: Marjorie doing first load today.

4. Fill suitcases with housewares during exploratory trip to new destination; trek said goods deep into woods, and cover with plastic tarp. Recover after doing actual move. This saves greatly on shipping and storage expenses. A GPS is recommended. Status: Vetoed by Marjorie.

5. Lunch: hawker center $3 noodles instead of $15 restaurant entree. Status: Implemented (Mark).

6. Switch to Tiger beer, the local brew whose flavor can best be described as "formaldehydy". Status: Grudgingly implemented (Mark).

7. When flying down for actual move, wear three pairs of trousers, five shirts, three pair of socks, to save suitcase space. Status: Can't speak for Marjorie, but I plan to do this.

Oh, my nose! I had been getting so many scoring chances from the back line that the coach today moved me up to center half, late in the game. I lasted only ten minutes before going nose-to-head with an opposing player. I thought I was okay until I looked down and my hands were covered in blood. I thought it was just a bloody nose, but when I got home it looked like my nose was crooked, so we trundled off to the ER. They didn't say much, except that they usually give these things a chance to heal on their own; they don't reset until a week has gone by. I'm supposed to get it x-rayed tomorrow, but now that the swelling is down, it looks straight again. Still, very sore.

We moved around a fair amount when I was a kid, and I was always the first one that ended up having to go to the hospital, for whatever reason. We've been here a year and a half, and I've been three times now.

News. Moving. July. Australia. Melbourne, probably. Sydney, maybe. Woop.

Perfectionism. I read an essay today that struck a chord with me and my current efforts to write. It was about silencing your inner critic, and had particularly harsh things to say about being a perfectionist. I had always taken a sort of pride in my perfectionism, when perhaps I should have seen it for what it is: a voice that always says that the things I do aren't good enough. Not a desire for excellence, but rather an impediment to progress.

You know, now that I read that, it sounds like a load of self-help shinola. It's possible that that perfectionism can become debilitating, I suppose, but there's nothing wrong in general with wanting to create something good. I've still become fairly accomplished at a lot of things. Never mind.

Bedways is rightways. Yesterday, we woke up and were sitting in bed reading. Marjorie said, "Let's just do this all day." So we did, or at least we tried. I switched over to working on my story after a point, starting (again, from scratch) the actual composing of the prose.

I couldn't make it a whole day in bed; eventually I had to run off to the library, where I finally got a library card, after my third try (long story). It's kind of cool, book checkout is all DIY these days. I checked out, among other things Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, which I'm not finding a lot of good advice in. He recommends cheats that I don't really approve of. Not surprising, as he's a writer I don't much care for (though I did like Ender's Game when I first read it; who didn't?).

Anyway, in the evening, we moved the TV into the bedroom so we could watch DVDs from bed -- Curb Your Enthusiasm, Mr. Show, and Larry Sanders.

There should be a National Stay In Bed Day. Give it a go yourself. You might actually get some stuff done. You can afford one day a year.

Last night we caught our first film of the Singapore Film Festival with friends Carolyn and Mike -- the disturbing but engaging Capturing the Friedmans. Seemingly uncensored, too. Wow. We all talked about it for a half hour afterwards, which is a good sign. Next Tuesday (I think) we're seeing Osama.

Oh, and I've given up on Gmail for the present, until they include an address book that works. Bummer.

New email. From being a member of Blogger, I've been offered an early chance to set up a Google Gmail account. I'm excited. The free gig of storage is what sold me -- I hate having to delete old emails. So so long, hotmail, I hardly knew ye. I'll be sending out my new address soon. Any predictions on how long until I get my first spam?

There is a Feng Shui convention in town next month.

Can you imagine the squabbles that go on while they're setting up their booths?

In other news...

From the Gooooooooaaaaaal Dept. comes this report on Sunday's game:

PM played a lacklusture 1st half as the heat forced many to play below par. As with the AM game , it took a goal in the middle of the 2nd half to wake us up. Mark S scored a rare goal off a corner before Kelvin rounded off the comback with a scrambled goal after good work on the left.

I've been averaging about a goal every other game this year. Not too shabby!

From the Too Damn Funny Dept. comes a report on the worst records ever. What's funny is that I've been hearing the "winning" song all over town in the past month, for some reason.

Writing. Six months after vowing to write a science fiction short story, I have the outline half done.

That's not as dire as it sounds. I had stopped work on it for several months. Just in the past two weeks has my interest in finishing it been rekindled, and I have the plot almost completely worked out, thanks to some heavy thinking sessions while riding mass transit. I came up with a narrative device that will let me tell the story much easier. All the pieces of the plot fit together nicely; it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it even has a [gasp] theme. Ninety percent of the time I'm working on it, I think it's going to turn out original and wonderful and hailed by one and all; only the other ten percent of the time do I think it's going to be crap. Which, considering my usual self-doubt on creative efforts, is amazing.

I'm starting to worry about the size of it. Maybe it'll turn out to be a novel after all, although I shudder at the thought. There's a dangerous middle ground, I've learned, where stories are too big for magazines and too small for novels. A rather large gap, in fact: between 20,000 and 40,000 words, a story is useless. I'd rather shoot for under 20,000 than over 40,000, but it seems like I have an awful lot of plot and required expository.

I've heard that fiction can be five times harder than non-fiction to write, and now I believe it. I'm still reluctant to sit down and work on it much of the time. But once I get started I get into it. Still, if I end up with 20,000 words, and get published in one of the top magazines, that would earn me a measley $1000. How do people make a living at this?