yen puts it all exactly when she says, about dry philosophical readings which you know are good for you, that they're the sort of thing you wish you had read before so that you didn't have to read them.

on the subject of reading i really should find some time to read nohrnberg's newest shakespeare paper, which he will deliver at smith college next week. it is more than 50 pages long though, and i just can't sit through 50 pages of small print on a computer screen. i can't afford to run down my printing budget just now though, and anyway i never remember to do it when i'm near a lab, and when i come home and look in my inbox i go, damn, haven't printed it, but too lazy to go out again. i need to buy a printer.

shall i write to this dr yeoh chap at nus? he got his a.b., a.m., and phd here. everytime i tell anyone i'm from singapore they say, singapore? we had a brilliant young man here from singapore a few years ago. i don't see how he can be a young man if he graduated in 98. he must be old enough to be my pa, or at least an uncle. i ought not be so unreasonably snarky about him but all in all i am rather miffed everytime anyone says that to me. am i supposed to turn out like him or fill his shoes as the resident singaproean scholar or what? von said i should shrug and reply "ah yes, where i come from we're all brilliant" or something. nah. what i should do is to write to this dr yeoh and be friendly and get it out of my system. can't be snarky if you knew a person and he wasn't more than just an abstraction. well at least not until you knew them very well. then, when you're thick as thieves, you can be snarky again. just look at choonping.

and now i shall descend on my lunch like the wolf on the fold.