The waiting game

Day 60

As is turns out, I never quite expected waiting for graduate schools to reply to be as torturous as this. Coupled with the constant deluge of information on how other applicants are doing, the 24 hours a day updates of people getting acceptances, rejections available over the internet. It is ridiculously hard to take a step back and realise how meaningless this obsession is. Let's take a deep breath and decide that checking gmail 10-20 times a day isn't going to make the admissions committee work any faster. I WISH IT WERE THAT EASY.

Quote about admissions committees:

("You know... nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills... [admissions committees] only want boyfriends with skills.")

Plausible. That's from Napoleon Dynamite (mostly) btw. If only they would hurry up and decide who has the skills!

Time lapse photography

Just discovered that the built-in isight on my macbook allows time lapse photography. I've always wanted to make a time lapse video capturing the motion of clouds and during tea break today I did just that. Sat my macbook on one of the seats facing the window and set time lapse to 1 frame every 20 frames. Thats about 1 frame a sec ... so this vid being about half a min spans about 10 mins in "real" time. Quite a lot of motion for such a short time span. Singapore clouds make for a surprisingly interesting video. That little black thing in the top left corner is the top of Fusionopolis. At about 25s it looks like a storm cloud is forming on the left side, really dark and ominous one. Oh I wanted to put Faye Wong's 天空 as background music but sorry don't have. I made do with 天天.

I found some time lapse vids on youtube ( what isn't on youtube?). This one is pretty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdkIwaF2ujs&feature=channel see how the sky seems like its on fire at 18s.

Dreams that go wow

I've literally just had a dream that made me go wow. I'm still groggy from sleep and its kind of hot here in the middle of the morning. Can't get back to sleep for the moment.

The dream started out a bit foggy. I was with a couple of friends and we were taking this big lift like thing but instead of going down it goes horizontally. Kind of like a one car train. It was after the dream that I surmised that we were travelling in a foreign country of some sort. So there were nine buttons near the door labelled 1 to 9. We were trying to get from 9 to 1. I figured that since this was a lift it would take like a few seconds. So a few seconds passed and we still hadn't even got to 8. I started to notice lights flashing across the windows (which suddenly appeared). As I peered out of the windows, I saw what looked like a tunnel. On the tunnel walls were windows and some were lit up. I peered up and saw that there was a no ceiling and that I was actually travelling in the narrow alley between 2 rows of buildings. The buildings had many levels and every 3 or so windows there would be a walkway connecting either side of what now seemed more like a train track than an elevator shaft. This repeated for about a minute and I was starting to wonder if it might go on forever. In the back of my mind (if you allow that I had a back of my mind in my dream) I thought that this was pretty neat organisation if a little bland. After a bit we finally reached station 8. The train (it became more of train in my mind after this) stopped and there was a short announcement which over the PA which I cannot recall but I did make out that the station was called "carrot". A few people hopped on but I didn't really take notice. In a short time, the train started moving again. I was hoping that the landscape would change because I was getting a little creeped out by the neverending windows. Just then, we left the narrow alley way and burst out into a somewhat open field. In the near distance I could see a highway carrying what I suppose were box cars similar to my own. In the shadow of the highway was a long row of little houses each one a little more run down than the next. It was then that I noticed a cute school girl sitting (I only just realised there were seats) opposite me. She was obviously curious about us but did not speak a word. We finally reached the next stop and the PA made a short announcement again. The girl got up and said something to the effect of "well bye bye". There was an earnest smile on her face and I sort of got the feeling she was trying to be friendly but didn't know if she was over-stepping herself. As she was about to hop off, my friend nudged me. I don't know if words were exchanged but I knew my friend wanted me to ask the girl where we were. I caught her arm just as she was about to get off and asked here where we were. She smiled and said, "Pizza. We're at pizza." As she hopped off the train, she was joined by a few of her school friends. The train slowly chugged off and I began to notice some of the houses look like they had been damaged by a storm. A little boy walked up to one of the houses joined by the cute school girl and another friend. The train was moving off but I could still make out what they were saying from a distance. The boy obviously lived in one of the damaged houses. There was a little note at the door which he read out loud, "We are sorry to inform you that your legal guardians and your house have been damaged by the storm. Be assured that new guardians will be sent to take care of you as soon as possible." There was no sense of loss in the boy's voice that would lead me to believe that these legal guardians were his own parents. As I pondered what kind of society this was that was so well organised and would go as far as to relocate children from their parents, whose watchful eye was aware of the daily needs of even a single child, a rush of excitement came to me. I realised that I was no longer Singapore. It was then that I awoke, the images still fresh in my head.

Ok. I've got to get back to bed. It's a really stuff night.