I don’t normally do this i.e. criticise things/people/places in public spaces, so you can guess how pissed off I must be in order to make a post about this.

My friends and I had actually planned to head to Five Izakaya Bar for drinks, but we took a detour to have a very late dinner.

Unfortunately, we hadn’t taken into account the Bar’s early closing time, so we headed to the next nearest dig, which was Bar Opiume.

I will never go back there again, and I hope you don’t either, because that place is the dumps.

First, we had to wait for someone to ask us if we wanted a table. Then we had to wait for menus which never came.

You might think I’m being unreasonable here, but:

• when your entire table has been seated by a somewhat reluctant server (which is stupid – you’ve got a table that wants to spend its money), and
• the table has been waiting for menus for five minutes, and to top it off,
• the table has been glaring at a bunch of bartenders and servers who are looking right back at the table and laughing and joking about god knows what,

this is a bar that must be brought down. Why?

Because it not only has bad service, it has bad service to good customers like myself:

I was once a waiter and now I’m a customer. I go out to eat … and I have boatloads of sympathy for servers and tip generously. But the reason the staff … pissed us off was because we acted like perfectly reasonable customers and they still treated us like shit. If we had been demanding and pushy I could understand, but we weren’t.

– Waiter Rant, Vive La France

Remember, ladies and gentlemen: avoid Bar Opiume like the plague.

What they want/why they are searching for me.

And why they don’t just say hi.

First, text her/him this message:

Given 9x – 7i > 3(3x – 7u), solve for i.

If she/he can obtain the answer, then you can skip the rest of this post. This assumes you’re not a dunderhead and that you’ve managed to obtain the answer too.

Otherwise, she or he will probably convey her/his uncertainty to you via “Huh???” or some other less graceful reply. If that happens, then you can proceed to demonstrate your mathematical prowess in this manner!

(Running commentary in the hyperlinks in case you need the explanation – just move your mouse cursor over the hyperlink and wait for a while. An explanation will pop up shortly.)

9x – 7i > 3(3x – 7u)
9x – 7i > 9x – 21u
9x – 9x > 7i – 21u
0 > 7i – 21u
21u > 7i
7i < 21u
i < 3u

= i <3 u or i ♥ u

Cute right? Got this idea from this website.

DISCLAIMER

1. There is a possibility that this is old news. If it is, please forgive my dinosaurian ways.
2. The worst thing I foresee happening: a text message that inadvertently breaks up your relationship or marriage. I disavow any responsibility if that happens. But I’d be interested in knowing about it if it does – it’ll make a nice story to tell the grandkids, I think.

Happy very belated Valentine’s Day, everyone!

The aftermath:

As though I had never been there at all!

I feel an immense sense of guilt every time I kill a cockroach. That’s because I don’t like the idea of killing another living being.

But with cockroaches, I decided a long time ago that:

• even though these buggers have been around a long, long year,
• and will continue to be around for many a long year to come,

between me and them, I’ll be damned if I let them win while I’m still alive.

Damn you, cockroaches. Damn you, he thought to himself as he imagined himself shaking his fist in a display of defiance at arthropods that were lurking around, somewhere.

Or: Why I have stopped adding people I know as friends on Facebook.

1. Hey, many updates in my ‘Live Feed’!
2. Hey, that’s a funny comment on someone’s status message/picture/video/etc!
3. Hey, that name/face sounds/looks familiar!
4. Hey, it’s a person I know/used to know!
5. Hey, let’s add that person as a friend!
6. Hey, perhaps I should ‘Add a personal message’ to let the person know who I am in case she/he has forgotten me!
7. Hey, perhaps I should let said person know how I found her/his profile in case she/he thinks I actively went to search for her/him!
8. Hey… The message looks over-explained, over-apologetic and hence, extremely creepy.
9. Hey, er… Delete.

I don’t add students either, though I approve friend requests from students. But that’s another story for another time.

…Dr Wong seems to suggest the PAP may have a better chance of winning SMCs when this may not be the case as younger and less experienced PAP candidates may be pitted against opposition heavyweights who have worked the ground over the years. If the number of SMCs is expanded, these less experienced PAP candidates may no longer have the ’shield’ of contesting a GRC led by a PAP heavyweight.

– Robin Chee, More single seats may disadvantage PAP

Perhaps it’s symptomatic of age. More likely it is because I am too afraid to name the beast.

This is a painting entitled “The Nightmare” (1781) by Henry Fuseli and it depicts the condition of sleep paralysis/night terrors.

I used to suffer from this condition. I probably still have it but its occurrences have diminished somewhat since I started:

• Having (somewhat) regular sleep patterns,
• Getting (somewhat) more rest, and
• Moderating my caffeine intake.

Anyway, I just found out that someone close to me suffers from this condition, so I decided to read up about it again. This condition supposedly affects Asians and teens* more than it does other people, so I thought I’d post up some info here so that you can find out how to deal with this condition if you suffer from it too**:

• All in the Mind?: An article by Paul Chambers.
• Sleep paralysis: Facts and data.

  and of course, how could I not leave you without

• The Horla, a short story by Guy de Maupassant***.

Have a good rest tonight.

• Of ignorance: I thought it was ’spirits’, and the people around me weren’t inclined to discourage me from adopting that point of view, and
• It never occurred to me to do research on the conditions I was afflicted with until I was slightly older. Then again, Googling for information has become a norm, so it could also be techno-cultural evolution, I guess.

*** Oh! I think Charlotte Bronte and Roald Dahl may have made references to sleep paralysis in their stories (Wuthering Heights and a short story about a snake in a bed, respectively) too, although it seemed they might not have known about this condition at those times. I’ll need to dig up the stories again to be sure.