AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT A G THANG

 

So that's that. See you soon xo

In Pitch Dark I Go Walking In Your Landscape

It's weird walking around campus knowing that it has all ended. I don't know if I'm happier or sadder about it. Went for Slade's grad show yesterday evening great way to spend a Friday evening.

It feels like a lot of small worries are piling up in my head and preventing me from feeling intensely about anything. Or it could be just the dreams. But talking it out always helps especially the caffeine light-headedness induced type of talking. We were talking about how commitments make a person, and so it makes good sense for us to make certain commitments in our lives but in the end, the only commitments that count for anything and make you anything are only those that you didn't choose. Consciousness is all fog and mirrors.

I'm really going to miss my friends so much

Everything and Anything

"Maybe all our wants are just regrettable necessities, 

maybe productive activity does no better than to satisfy the wants which it generates; 

maybe our net welfare product is tautologically zero."

- Nordaus and Tobin, 1972

0000

DONE WITH SCHOOL FOR LIKE EVER

HELLOOOO PARTY TIME

first order of business: sleep

The Uncanny

Sorry to disappoint but I have not actually died, just spending a helluva fun time with my favourite German buddies, Siggy Freud and Hans Bellmer who are officially freaking me out. Just a peek at what I'm writing about and because I think I need to share my pain with the world:

Hans Bellmer, Le Jeux de Poupée, 1949

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh why oh why I love this class but I hate myself now

Uncanny Valley

Mori's original hypothesis states that as the appearance of a robot is made more human, a human observer's emotional response to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong revulsion. However, as the robot's appearance continues to become less distinguishable from that of a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.

This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a "barely human" and "fully human" entity is called the uncanny valley. The name captures the idea that an almost human-looking robot will seem overly "strange" to a human being and thus will fail to evoke the empathic response required for productive human-robot interaction.


Wikipedia

On Aura Tout Vu

Watch the video in fullscreen... Even in crappy internet resolution the drop still makes my stomach drop. One day I will ride this rollercoaster for real.


Reading week was underwhelming, I really prefer going to class and dealing with the day to day readings and work. The best thing was having my dad around and visiting my cousin... Family is the best thing in the world, even though capitalism has supposedly caused the disintegration of familial relations. Reading Marx is really the most uplifting yet depressing academic experience I have had in a long, long long time. 


Also, I ate at Nizuni 3 times this week, so I think our relationship is getting quite serious. It started out as a convenient affair (literally 2 minutes from my flat) but the service is so endearing and the food is so good I really can't be bothered to go anywhere else. 

Sake Don

LOOK AT THAT BEAUTY. I almost burst into tears when the waitress brought this to our table. For around £10, you get: 

• deceptively large serving of rice
• a veritable Bitchload (12 pieces?!) x salmon sashimi 
• 1 x  good load of roe
• 1 x pickled ginger, wasabi 
• 1 x tasty salad (i need to know what dressing is this, it's so #@^%$@ tasty)
• 3 x hunks of tamago (why?? why not??)
• 1 croquette (again, why?? but seriously, i don't care)
• 1 x quail egg (when was the last time I ate a quail egg???)

And all this time I had been living with plain salmon+roe+rice Sake Don... God just look at the picture, the composition is so perfect!


*** Alright this is by no means an objective review, I just love this place so much and it is really, heads and shoulders above the many Japanese restaurants in Soho/Fitzoria so if you want to get in on the awesomeness, head there asap >>


Nizuni 
22 Charlotte Street
Fitzrovia
London, W1T 2NB
Tel: 020 7580 7447
http://www.nizuni.com/


Even the website is adorably quaint and super Asian~

Bye Bye Summer 2011

OK I think this has been the longest summer of my life

London

Singapore

Taiwan

Hong Kong

New York City + Philadelphia

Summer Internship

In the end coming back to London just feels SO GOOD I have missed these streets so much. And now that all my buddies are up it's officially party time!!!

Also, this year I am taking these modules:

Ethics in Applied Economics

International Trade

Money and Banking

Advanced Class in Philosophy of Mind

Aristotle

Marxism

Global Health and Justice

19th and 20th Century Art in London Collections

Time to kick some ass

frustration

it is not enough to just be

i must keep expecting more from myself, more than anybody else ever will. if i don't swim harder i will eventually drown...

things just aren't terribly fun these days, but reading philosophy gives me peace.

x

01

So much for writing my Plato essay in 1 day..

At this time I can still read and understand okay if I were just reading notes but all my sentences are coming out as elongated weirdly phrased messes of words that are grammatically confusing and potentially misleading due to the lack of punctuation and excessive and inappropriate use of "and"

This is a skype snapshot of my older sister who has great taste and skinny shoulders. She has a blog at http://matchstiks.tumblr.com and writes for Catalog Magazine in Singapore.