Saturday, March 24, 2007

A stór, a stór an dtiocfaidh tu?

A stór, a stór, a ghra
A stór, a stór an dtiocfaidh tu?
A stór, a stór, a ghra
An dtiocfaidh tu nó an bhfanfaidh tu?


Bhi me la brea samhraidh i mo sheasamh ar an mhargadh
'S is iomai fear a duirt lion: "Monuar, gan tu sa bhaile agam".

Gheall mo ghra domsa cinnte go dtiocfadh si
Ni raibh a culaith Déanta agus sin an rud a choinnigh i

Thart tóin an gharrai, a Mhaire, bhfuilan fhidil leat?
Aicearra na bpratai go dtéimid' sair an fhidileoir

Mhi mise lan den tsaoil is bhi cion amuigh is istigh orm
Nach mór a dathraigh an saol nuair nach bhfuil eion ag duine ar bith orm?


[In English]
My darling, my darling, my love
My darling, my darling, will you come with me
My darling, my darling, my love will you come with me or settled be

My true love promised kindly that she would surely come with me
Her wedding dress not ready, delayed her in joining me.
We have got water from the Eirne, and green grass from the heaven’s stems
Cows udders are near rending from the overflow of milk in them.
By the bottom of the garden, a Mary, is the fiddle there?
The shortcut by the praties, we’ll hasten to the fiddler.
At one time in my life I was dearly loved by everyone
Haven’t times changed when no one cares a whit for me?

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Blackwater album cover

I have missed out a lot in my chronicling, or has it been that this page has fallen from a proper journal to merely a punchbag for my wordwrangling, to an outlet for my unsatisfied passion, to a dried and crumbling library of the events of weeks past, to simply nothing at all? Maybe that was how I felt twelve months ago, but I was blogging profusely and without much prudence. Nevertheless, I start this entry not knowing how long it will stretch, with the hypnotising ballad that had just entered my music library yesterday.

There are a lot of things I can bring myself in to write, although there seemed some persistent eddy currents preventing me from actually writing them down. Some were so petty it would seem an insult to pen them, while others are as usual plain embarrassing. The song above, however, is not plain embarrassing, even if only vaguely embarrassing.

Notice how such a song, so charged with sentiment, isn't sung by a lonely wretch yearning for the girl of his life. Like most Altan songs this one is sung by Mairéad, with the rich, earthly-coloured voices of men backing hers.

A Thought: A relationship between two isn't just their business, but also of those around them. Indoctrinated as I am to the popularised dogma that even the sanctity of puppy love is inviolable, it surprised me to learn that the friends of a couple play a large part in preserving or breaking such bonds. Whereas, my view generally dictates me to stay away from such affairs of other people, bringing with this isolation a sour jealousy.

Listen again to the chorus, even if you don't know the words. It is enlightening.

(Maybe you should stop reading here)
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For the record, in this fortnight and last I have taken to obsessively add entries into my GP scrapbook, covering subjects ranging from governance, religion, the environment, comics and the weather. Where commentary paragraphs are concerned however, I have done nothing.

But maybe it could have helped, because for the General Paper block test this Monday I did inundate my essay with wide and disparate examples when one wonders if it would be better to seriously write instead.

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The Computing papers have never adhered to Cambridge standards, which would make me feel a little cheated at times. Plus I certainly hope that in the real big thing questions would not come out so ambiguous and panic-inducing when somewhere in the paper mentions something you have never learnt at all, but is necessary to remember nonetheless.

My brief go at generating a Mandelbrot Set in a character array helped, at least, in the long tiring questions of writing bunches of C++ codes by hand; namely, the ones concerning classes. I got myself a complex number class in the header file, and wrote two other functions, one for the Mandelbrot set and the other for the Julia. And the results, after a few hours of blindly debugging, was truly gratifying.


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The piccy is the product of screenshots, taken for different numbers of iteration and put together in Adobe Imageready.

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Chunhao's Rubik's Cube

Friends in the library has increased this fortnight.

Regina seemed to shun that place where mugging is concerned, saying that it's best for her to study home. And alone. Enough to make me groan and give up pursuing alternatives.

She was afraid of distractions in the library. I really get less distractions from the library. It is only at home when my sisters watch those silly cartoons on kids central, or turn the music on too loudly next doors. At other times the house would be filled with deafening silence, which draws me to the piano.

I set off thinking the library would be deserted, but on Wednesday Kar Weng was there, and so were Calvin and his girlfriend, Yee Chien and Yeen Seen, Jessica from 7B, Xiangjun, Yuan Yi and Juliana, Regina's sister. Thursday saw quite less people, and today there were Zhang Hao, Chun Hao, Wei Jun and Victor whose table I promptly crashed.

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A Catharsis
I will return when I find more urge to write. And more sleep.
Goodnight.