Forever can never be long enough for me

What British people say and what they really mean

Argh. I wish I had this handy guide with me when I was talking to my supervisor....

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It's about time...

Totally geeked out with my girlfriend yesterday...

... and it was good!

Hacking my brain

Today, I'm starting a new regime for increasing productivity and maintaining motivation. I'm listing down my daily tasks and colour-coding them according to status. As I finish each task, I get to change the colour to green. If it works as expected, then my eagerness to convert the red items to green items should help me get things done faster! I wonder if this works better compared to tick-marks... I suspect colour has a stronger impact on emotion though.

May Ball 2010

A couple of photos from last year's May Ball.

There was a professional photographer on site who took photos of attendees.

Try to spot me

Classic champagne cocktail is awesome!

Went to a pub with my boss for a meeting and he ended up buying me drinks. I'd normally get myself a pint of Guiness or some Hoegaarden but since my boss was buying, I decided to let him choose. Ended up getting this really interesting cocktail called the 'Classic Champagne Cocktail' (yeah... really imaginative name there). Anyway, it consists of a sugar cube that's soaked with bitters, and then added to a champagne flute together with champagne and cognac. I must say I was pretty impressed. Would definitely try it again.

Photo source: http://www.realsimple.com/holidays-entertaining/entertaining/food-drink/start-with-sparkling-wine-00000000023449/index.html

The Lucifer Effect

Just watched this TED talk by Phillip Zimbardo who conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment on how people can become monsters given the right circumstances. We like to think that there is a clear line between good and evil but Phillip argues that certain conditions can result in perfectly upstanding people behaving like monsters. Common ways in which this could happen include the dehumanization of others (it's easier to conduct genocide when the targets are somehow 'subhuman') and dehumanization of self (removing personal sense of identify, which happens in the military through the use of uniforms, which encourage anonymity, as well as training). It may not be comforting to know that we all have the capacity to become monsters, but hopefully being aware of the conditions that facilitate the 'downfall' will make us more resistant to the 'Lucifer Effect'.