paamayim nekudotayim

“Radar.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll get a hold of Major Burns…”
“I want you to get a hold of Major Burns…”
“…tell him to hold a couple day surgeons over into the night shift.”
“Tell him we’re going to have hold a couple of surgeons over from the day shift out of the night shift.”
“I’ll put in a call to General Hammond in Seoul…”
“Get General Hammond down there in Seoul, tell him to send us those new surgeons right away.”
“…I hope he sends us those two new surgeons. We’re sure gonna need’em.”

*rolling on the floor laughin’ out loud*

What a strange night. They always said not to drink and drive. What a mess.
“Oh, you gotta be fucking kidding me. Someone’s gonna die. Someone’s gonna fucking die. Guarnere, look at this shit!”

for half an hour I was reading a book on a technical stuff, when out of nowhere came the thought of my mother. I swear that nothing whatsoever written on that book of any sentimental value.

my mother. The precise occasion that came on top of the book I was reading, was about this one time my mother didn’t come out of her room for the day (she usually got up early before sunrise and off to market at once). Odd as it may sound, neither me nor my brothers bothered to knock and ask was she feeling unwell.

My father had passed away quite a while before that. Relatives didn’t come over often. So when she’s not feeling well, she’s got only us. Why, you can certainly rely on your three sons. But no. She might had been lying down with something aching, and hoping one of us come knocking on her door to see if she’s alright. She was waiting in pain. And in vain. Day had gone dark when I heard her calling me with a low voice.
“Oh, mother is apparently sick”.

Right. Time for some random thought.

It never actually occurred to me the possible loneliness of her. We (the sons) were not very close to her (except perhaps my little brother). We mostly hanged around the other house in the family (we have this “mall” of houses of four families). These three other families were not too close to her either; it’s a rare sight of her chatting around with them. So at home my mother were practically on her own. Perhaps that’s why she spent most of her waking hours at the market where she was a hard-laboring coolie.

A widower with not much gratitude from her sons. (Alright I do exaggerate things a little here; my little brother had in fact been helpful with the house affair).

Gee, I can’t recall how many times I had quarrels with her. One night the quarrel was a little unbearable; my father took me out of the house and I slept the night at his office.

Fast forward.

Godbless times have now changed. We’re gaining on age and can thus think a little about our mother. And my mother too, has now managed to blend well with the rest of the families. Happier times.

A little over six years ago, mother and I had our first real sit-down chat. She told how how she was afraid of us not taking care of her as time goes by. By us I mean me and my older brother. My older brother, he’s been distant from my mother for a very long time. Physically, that is (despite living under the same roof). Of course I know he’s always cared for mother, except that some history bore more influence on his out-and-awk-ward attitude to her.

During that little chat, mother reminded me how my older brother and me were getting more and more distanced from her. By that time I had studied (and lived) at other cities for five years, and I barely kept in touch, so I could understand the sentiment. I think she cried. But I assured her, the process of taking care of the family comes as a nature, in spite of whatever hints she’d observed.

Anyway.

My mother, she’s strong. I mean to have to go through all that alone.

She’s strong physically, too. Carrying on top of hear head sacks of rice, fruits, sugar, what have you. And she’s a tiny woman! That sack of rice could easily weigh a hundred kgs.

I should’d been in her place to do that physically demanding works, but shuck she couldn’t even count on my help with the house works. What a shame on me.

Anyway.

The other day I had a telephone call with a friend, and was told “My, I haven’t heard your voice for two years!”.

Never mind two years, I haven’t heard my own mother’s voice in six and a half years.

I feel good. I feel good after three consecutive morning of splishin’ and splashin’ in the swimming pool. That’s right. I decided to learn some swimming, just enough to get me floating and moving. There are quite a number of swimming complex-es reachable with one-bus-ride around here. So I visited different one each time. Splendid, ain’t it?

A while after the turn of the year, last week I turned 27. A friend suggested that we catch a late night movie and afterwards spend the rest of the night at some beach. I immediately agreed.

So we went to that rather new giga mall (I’ve never been there before, boy it’s really gigantic), and watched The Curse of Golden Flower, the new Gong Li’s film. Strong acting from Gong Li, but a rather mediocre performance from other casts. The story is not too outstanding, either. But all in all, it’s pretty much entertaining.

Unfortunately the plan to stay overnight at the beach had to be canceled altogether; the rain. It’d been pouring for more than two days nonstop, so I kind of hoped it might be clearing up that night. Apparently it still got enough raindrops in the sky. A little disappointed, we went home early.

anyway, happy birthday to me. Twenty seven years old, no money, no job, no degree, no nothing. Barely enough juice of youth to be alive and kicking : )

I practically confined myself to my room for the past few days. In fact, since the new year day. I didn’t feel like going out. Besides, I’ve got the damn nasty ulcer for about a week (and it’s not gone yet). Boy I ain’t got ulcer for quite long time. Then again perhaps this chronic ulcer DOES come once in a long time.

But yesterday I dragged my ass halfway across the island to meet my part-time client (or boss, if we see it differently). Afterwards, I hiked for a good three or four kilometers. Nothing noteworthy of that, except that I was doing it well past midnight, walking in some strange, quiet, place I’d never been before. Practically no other pedestrian in sight (or rather, none that I can see, who knew about the “unseen ones”, God forbid. Not so long ago my house mate told me that she’d seen the unseen somewhere at the coast area where she was having barbecue party) .

Anyway, the purpose of the march was to get to the nearest Night Rider bus stop at which I hoped to board a ride downtown. The night bus comes only once in half an hour (or even in longer waiting period). It came alright, and for the next hour it took me cruising along this country’s empty roads (makes you wonder where all those vehicles come from in daytime). The bus passed by the famous prostitution spot, too (thus for the first time I saw them girls at work : P).

I got off downtown at the heart of the island for I had to board another night bus to reach home. So there I was, waiting, watching different night riders with different service codes came and went (there are two main bus operators here, each offering only 8 night services, but half of them called themselves Night Owl instead of Night Rider).

When most services already came more than once, I began to wonder whether I was waiting at the right bus stop. My Bus Guide dated back to 2005, so it’s liable to give me outdated information. Convinced that my bus won’t be passing the busstop, I decided to stay there until sunrise, when the normal service resume. I brought my mp3 player loaded with a certain movie audio track, so killing a good two hours of time wouldn’t be much of a problem. I brought a novel, too, so killing another good two hours of time wouldn’t be much of a problem either.

I even managed to get myself strolling around on that most famous road in the city. On its daytime peak there would be thousands of people packing that street leaving not enough room to swing your arms about. But there I was all alone.

I think the longest time I spent on a bus stop was two hours. Now it’s four hours. You know what, next time I will bring a printed copy of The British Throne’s line of succession, and try to memorize the 872 candidates during the course of four hours waiting.

(I wonder how do I manage to write that much about one not so important a subject, I mean things like that happen all the time, but then again I just feel like writing)

I was about to shoot myself in the head, but before long I thanked my star for not doing so. Besides, what do I have to shoot my head with? I don’t even have a toy pistol let alone the real one.

Actually not so serious. I was playing around with some partitions of my harddisk, to make room for more linux-es. There are already ten partitions for them, but there are a lot of interesting distros around, so I thought I could use some extra partitions.

Apparently I was met with hard luck when there was an error in the partition table right after I altered it, causing one NTFS partition to disappear. Some hdd geometry error, whatever, I don’t have any idea. So at that point, losing 40 GBs of data, my heart stopped for a beat (or was it pounding even hard, louder?). Where’s that pistol?

In some desperate, clueless attempts, I went through various options that PMagic has to offer. And to my hopeful joy there is a feature to “scan for possible deleted partition recovery”. So there, I got the missing partition back.

No shooting. Afterall, this is not Big Whiskey, and there’s no Bill Munny nor is there Little Bill Dagget the sheriff.

Of course we should always backup our important data before doing a major harddrive re-partitioning. But I did a lot of partition reorganization before, and from that experience I was quite sure that this time the things I did wouldn’t affect those NTFS partitions.
Apparently we can’t just be too sure.

by the way, my new desktop wallpaper.

I’m not particularly good at adapting to different situations. I tend to mix the customs and etiquettes.

Recently friends pointed out my “unusual” way of replying to a mailing list mail (or to any email, in that matter). I usually reply with bottom-posting style. And this, according to them, requires more effort to read my email. They prefer top-posting.

I, of course, started to throw into the conversation some guideline I read somewhere on the internet. For that, I was accused of having made it up, the guideline. To my rescue I soon realized that we’re hanging around different places on the internet, my friends and I, so I decided not to argue too much about the merit of top and bottom-posting.

Another example. When we hang around the IRC discussion channel, #svn, #gentoo, whatever,.. there is one [unwritten] rule that says “Don’t ask to ask. Just ask”. We all know why.

But things are different outside the IRC. There’s one occasion, a fella asked me several questions about some technical thing, and said “Can I ask another question?” almost before every question he had. So I said “Don’t ask to ask. Just ask”. And for that I was accused of being rude.

And of course, this “don’t ask to ask” rule doesn’t apply to most non-techie aspects of life. Two people in a romantic conversation, for example.

So I guess I’m not particularly good at adapting to different situations. My own mother was once a little surprised at some language I used to talk to her. Apparently I was used to that kind of language at school, and forgot that at home it carries different context.

Of course it’s not a crime. We’re excused for this honest mistake.

James Caan, portraying a tough, bad-tempered Sonny in The Godfather, forgot that he’s having dinner at home when he said “Hey Ma, pass me the fucking salt, will you?”.

at the end of those exact thousand lines, the sun sets in the west, you’re ashore, and I say, happy new year, O Captain my Captain.