This is for my Teeth

Was so tired last night when I got back that I fell asleep on my bed without brushing teeth or switching off the lights. Was lying in bed thinking about the stuff to post here and the errands I need to run.

We didn't watch a movie afterall, me and Jasper, that is. Plan to watch Wicker Park this Friday; the male lead looked familiar, and I was going to do a google of him, but today's Life! section in the Straits Times spared me that. So he was one of the actors in Pearl Harbor. By the way, Jasper still hasn't laced his new shoes and hasn't opened up the boxes of dumbbells.

Anyway, we went to the Japanese restaurant in Takashimaya, the same place I had the wild plant udon, and this time I got the udon with beancurd skin (the sweet kind), and Jasper got udon with tempura batter, and he was expecting some tempura, but there was only batter. That's why Japanese places suck: too damn expensive. Furthermore, I don't know what they were thinking, but the tea was cold. Not cold, cold, but room temperature. Distasteful.

We did some maths there: simple, elementary stuff. Like proving the infinity of primes, the division algorithm, uniqueness of prime factorization, and one tricky bit about how if a prime divides the product ab, then it divides either a or b. Had to use gcd's to prove it: Hardy's book that was at Borders also ended up using the same method. But on the bus home we got stuck on this thing Jasper said someone said before, that the product of n consecutive numbers is divisible by n!. It seems to me to be true, but it could also be false. Any proofs?

On simpler matters, before taking 132 back to Ang Mo Kio to take 86, we were walking to the 132 bus stop and went into that condom shop in Lucky Plaza that's next to the street. Jasper was wondering why that shop wasn't banned, but I guess technically it's not selling pornography, just bondage equipment and dildos and the like. To answer Jasper's question as to whether there is the other-sex counterpart to the dildo, click here [WARNING! NOT CHILD-SAFE!].

It's a bummer depositing cheques in US$ here. I have a US$14 cheque that's as good as a lousy piece of paper because too many fees are involved. As Jasper notes, I'd be quite screwed if I had 100 of those cheques, because it would cost about that much to fly to the US and back in order to deposit them there.

And in Borders, Jasper saw this quote about how no one changes the world who isn't obsessed, not by anonymous, but I forget by who. But there are healthy and unhealthy obsessions, of course. What is the antipode of Singapore, asked Jasper's professor, John Berrick. It would probably be some place south of New York, I guess. New York got Statue of Liberty, Singapore got Liberty of Stat-ing.

I bought two more phonecards yesterday; bought another of the 2.5 cent per minute (to the US) card but with 30 cent connection fee; bought another card that is 4.5 cent per minute without connection fee. At least buying the cards is convenient, since there are two stalls along the stretch of Orchard Road near Centerpoint.

So the Japanese place was like a conspiracy, making us spend more money eating more food. The Taka exhibition place had all sorts of food on sale, mostly mooncakes, but other stuff like dragon beard candy and some deep fried stuff and some grilled noodles+salmon+quail egg square. They had ice-cream mooncakes shaped like peaches, pears, and something else. Really supposed to look like a peach: skin outside looks real, then inside they have a chocolate pit and orangey ice cream.

We bought some cookies from Taka, but this place isn't part of the exhibition, more of a regular fixture. They also sold all sorts of brownies, which looked awesome. Totally hot. We had lots of samples of mooncake and even dragon beard candy, which was supposedly more special because the beard was melt in your mouth and they had some coconut and other stuff in the peanut mix.

Jasper has a knack for spotting people. Saw Wong Li Lin at Borders browsing through magazines, and I was able to confirm the visual. I think they're doing some TV special regarding the stages of her pregnancy. He also recognized quite a few people he knew as we were walking and stuff. Helped him recycle a can: Florida's Natural Apple Juice.

Trying to settle financial matters... anyone know where a Bank of America ATM is in Singapore? Will ask my mom to see if she knows the answer to that one... that would be a solution to the US$14 cheque problem.

Have a new mousepad; found it among the photo albums in the house. It's circular and it's from DBS. Comes with a silver mouse, the pad is one side silver and the working side is black rubber. It's better than the army recruitment mousepad I've been using. I think I'll try out the silver mouse too! That one has a middle mouse button instead of a scroll wheel.

Found many packs of poker cards in the house. Parents playing golf. Anyone happen to have any ideas on what could be wrong if the operation times out when contacting certain sites? Not all sites, but only some sites? And the problem is probably not with the site, because it can be accessed from another computer...