Woe is me

» Written on June 11, 2006 at 1:17 AM «

So now apparently, doing sit-ups is bad for your health. That is according to Mrs Siew, Pf.D in Medical Science. Pure Fucking Dumbass. (No, my mother does not really have any Ph.D of sorts) The sad background of this statement encompasses a wave of idiocy that mere time cannot wash away. Indeed, I can almost feel myself beginning to lose the very edges of that thing most people hate seeing, my temper.

It was in the car, going home from a fruitful tuition class, I suppose, where it all began. The simple statement made by me that I didn’t want to eat lunch and wanted to go home to work on something must have been a trigger to a gun that I didn’t know existed. In .45 cal, too; for once the trigger was pulled, the resulting exponent of waveforms that erupted from that big mouth could have easily outclassed a gunshot from a real .45. Or a .50, even.

Accusations, curses and just plain good ‘ol pure mindless ranting continued for the 15-minute-drive back to my home, or cell, if you want to call a spade a spade. It even continued after I had extracted myself from the car and entered the home through the cold bars that serve as a barrier or sorts. It finally cut off, at least, for a moment, after I had swiftly propelled myself up to the second floor.

I then began my usual routine of a few simple exercises before taking a shower, whereupon the lady herself stormed in and started screaming, really, screaming that I was being stupid by doing so. Stupid, she exclaimed, before leaving and slamming the door shut behind her.

Well.

So I continue on, unperturbed, though slightly amused at this point (though mixed with a dash of irritation), and on the 150th rep of my crunches, she enters again and makes a few of the same repeated lines, along with mentions of me being “irresponsible” and “spoilt” in Chinese and dialect, before leaving the same way she did before.

The funniness does wear off after a while, you know. And for someone who can’t even run ten metres without whining and bitching, or do a single girls’ push-up, I have to say, she sure acts like she knows a whole lot about how much one can do before they reach their limits.

I can hear her washing the bathroom now with as much violence as she can muster; pails and brushes are being flung around with some interesting percussion effects. Perhaps she should join a fucking band and stop bitching about her work, too; I should indeed propose that little jig to her and see what kind of response I get, if my head doesn’t spontaneously combust from amusement and irriation first.

Anyway, as I mentioned above, I was heading home to prepare a little something for my tuition teacher. But here’s a little back story first.

The Standard Chartered marathon is coming up in December, and my tuition teacher, being the awesome crazy mad guy he is, is spending around 20 000 fucking dollars (SGD, but still!) buying athletics shirts for all his classes who will be participating in the run, along with holding not one, but two celebratory chalets at the end of the year. With wine. Now, with that kind of deal hanging on the line, surely the shirt must have a design that would be worthy of such an investment.

So he held a little challenge to his students: to come up with a design for a T-shirt. Well. I’d never done a design for a T-shirt before up to that point in my life, and I thought it would be an interesting exercise.

So I went home and whipped up something in Illustrator. That was months ago. Today, he came back, and not only was my design going to be accepted, he was going to give me a free shirt too (even though I’m not participating in the run, but goddamnit, 42 kilometres?!?) After much discussion over the design and a little bit of shuttle diplomacy between his student’s contacts in a T-shirt printing company and us, here’s the final design. The T-shirt shape was modified from threadless.com‘s T-shirt contest template, but apart from that, the rest of the design is entirely original. Take a look.

It’s completely in vectors, so rescaling shouldn’t be an issue. You may not understand the catchphrase or the lollipop (I hope you could see that it was a lollipop, I tried my best to keep it simple) issue, but basically it’s about ratios, which he uses to apply to many, many different Physics and Chemistry concepts. I’m not a fan of the red trim, but he wanted that in, so I obliged.

Hopefully it doesn’t seem too goudy or too over-simplified, and I look forward to putting the D50 to good use on game day. Which reminds me: anyone out there willing to mail me a zoom lens that fits with this camera body? It would be highly appreciated.

Try talking to me about running when you can walk, mmkay?

   

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