Look! i'm not dead! but my desktop at home is though, and that explains (1) the absence of posts for such a long time, (2) me staying in school until around midnight almost every day this past week. it's definitely not good for health (i've already missed a japanese tutorial because i simply could not force myself awake), and i'm hoping that after this coming week of presentations, i can keep more human-like hours.

about my computer...it simply won't start. i mean it will start, but it makes this odd whirring sound and nothing comes up on the monitor. i SOS-ed my friends over whatsapp, and after doing some component-switching, we've (they've) narrowed the problem down to the power supply unit or the motherboard. really really hope it's the former, because replacing the PSU would me much easier than replacing the motherboard. but well...i'll probably look into getting new parts during reading week, earliest. more likely to be during summer break though.

so last you heard i was scheduled to take grading. i've taken it and kind-of passed. i think i passed the kata component (results are not out yet, but if i failed, at least 80% of the rest would go down with me). was quite nervous initially, and the examiners had the bright idea to shift the judges 90 degrees, meaning that while we'd been previously practising along the width of the dojo, we now had to perform along its length. as you can probably guess, all the reference points changed. managed to adapt fairly ok-ishly, although i went to the wrong side after a technique. hope they don't count that as "forgotten technique", because that cuts the score in half. the normal techniques were ok. i got quite easy throws and groundwork...and still managed to screw one up. well, shouldn't be a big deal.

the shiai component, however, didn't go so well. decided not to use the doctor's note, so i fought. only managed to get 1 point out of the required 2. that means that i have to go down for the next grading to fight again, and get another 2 points, and pay another $50. although i understand the rationale, i personally feel that it's a waste of time and money. i mean, there are national fighters there. what are the odds of a kata guy winning a sparring match? and if they expect kata athletes to be able to spar well, the expectation for the national fighters' kata better be equally high. from what i saw, the standard of kata was...not good. i'm no expert, so if i can say it's bad, it probably is quite horrible. but well...can't blame the athletes. it's the system. example: national schools doesn't have a kata event, so the kids only learn sparring and some techniques for grading. i'm not saying that kata should be implemented at a school level, because there are various difficulties as well. guess i'll have to burn more money than expected. wonder if fundraising is a side-quest for grading?

don't know if i've said this here yet, but national schools starts tomorrow, with the team event first, then the individuals next week. this year, i'm set to referee 4 out of 6 days...or at least i was. this past week, it seems that the CJC/SJI coach has some family issues, so he can't make it for the first 3 days. long story short, i'm acting as the SJI/CJC coach tomorrow. it's my first time in this role for judo, so i'm mildly worried/nervous. the C-division and A-division are playing tomorrow, so that means SJI lower secondary and CJC. not too concerned about CJC, because the number of players is limited, and there are only 4 schools anyway. if they win the first bout (against hwa chong), they'll make it to the finals, which is on wednesday, so i don't have to worry about that anyway. SJI is the more crucial one, because in order to even stand a chance for third place, they have to win their first bout. and i really don't want to be responsible in any way if they somehow do lose. so i have to be in top form tomorrow.

oh. remember there was this huge thing to which i couldn't find the reason? after going for SJI/CJC training yesterday, i think that one of my initial guesses might be right. oddly enough, the guess was "hormones"...though not how i initially thought. or i might (still) be off. but well. i'm not supposed to think about it...though no matter how i try, i slip sometimes. sucks.

all that stuff aside, there are some other arrows...like asymmetric presentation (tuesday), japanese presentation (wednesday), making an appointment for car inspection (ASAP). might be my imagination, but somehow, the car's engine seems to be louder these past few weeks. hope it's nothing serious. in fact, i hope it's nothing at all.

-random thought of the day: Must blog more often.-

Once in a while, i will do things that trigger a certain type of thought in my head. these thoughts generally take 2 forms: "how have i survived 25 years on earth so far?" and "i shouldn't be allowed to breed". as you might be able to guess, this happens when i do things which are mind-bogglingly stupid. can't think of any examples off-hand now, but i'm sure something will come up soon.

thankfully, that's not the main focus of this post. that was just something i've wanted to say for a while. the past few days were horrible! so many early days, plus deadlines converged again. i seem to have multiple deadline convergence points this semester. i actually stayed up until 4:30am last night to finish the japanese essay. miraculously, i woke up at 8:22am, 3 minutes before my alarm was scheduled to go off. guess i somehow convinced my body that the short sleep was a power nap. to top it all off, my computer is starting to show signs of dying. got a blue screen yesterday as i was starting to write the essay. do you know how scary that is!?? that sort of sheer panic is something i don't want to experience too often...like once in 5 years, tops. to my extreme delight/relief, it resolved itself somehow. so lucky. should go buy 4D. i was almost prepared to shower and drive back to school to spend the night in the student room if the problem had persisted. if my computer is due for a breakdown, i hope it happens during summer break. that way, i can devote a day or to to cleaning and troubleshooting. at the very worst, during reading week might work too, but definitely not in the following month. i still have 2 presentations to go!

over the past 2 weeks or so, i am reminded how fortunate i am to have such great friends/seniors/teammates every time i go for kata practice. like i said before, my current partner is helping me purely out of his own kindness. and quite honestly, i feel he has went above and beyond what a training partner should do. and i feel so bad every time he takes a bad fall because of me. believe me, i'm not doing it on purpose. i would hate to have the same thing done to me. in fact, if i met someone who threw me so badly so many times, i'd have reacted so violently it wouldn't be funny. but still, he's doing this without expecting anything in return, which makes me even more indebted to him. well, if he needs a partner for katame no kata, all he ever has to do is ask.

as for the kata itself, i think we i made great progress today! the only reason i say "i" instead of "we" is because my partner doesn't really need to make progress for me; his level is more than sufficient for the grading. but that's not to say he's stagnating. i believe he has his own takeaways, some (or most) of which are not apparent to me. coming back to my performance today, i think that there was a vast improvement from last time. some of the throws went better, but there are still a fair few i have to work quite hard on. definitely not competition standard yet, but for grading purposes, i THINK it should be sufficient. with grading 3 days away(!), hopefully we can squeeze in another session or two before the actual day. there's still 1 technique in particular that's bugging the hell out of me, because i can't catch the timing/key element. for reference's sake, i'll just do a quick list of the key points for each technique. feel free to skip the next 15 lines or so.

1.1: second step slightly bigger, pull down/slightly diagonal, don't let wrists bounce.
1.2: block convincingly as partner's arm is coming down. turn in, grab as high as possible. drive down to complete the throw.
1.3: strong pulling, lift from the legs. make sure partner is loaded well. shoulders square to the front, legs close up to shoulder width.

2.1: step in, shoulder dropped, half-hip. pull in, draw a circle with foot, arm flips up and over at the same time as foot moves.
2.2: place hand on second step, turn from the hip and pull in on third, prop other arm, leg comes up strongly.
2.3: pull up and towards on third step. turn in, squat low. throw is overhead.

3.1: arms push first, legs follow. sweep strongly.
3.2: lead foot must get behind rear foot during sidestep. pull upwards and across. find the magic pivot point.
3.3: small circle rotational force.make sure hands don't go up and down.

4.1: push equally with body weight. avoid extending too far on third push. pull up, lean. foot targets the belt knot, knee in line.
4.2: enter with back straight, face-on. generate more upward force; use partner's striking momentum. push up and away.
4.3: circular pulling, make sure feet are symmetrical about throw axis. lift up, lean slightly, hook, keep leaning, throw.

5.1: push sleeve in, collar against jaw. should be very off balance. hook one leg into the other.
5.2: higher entry than 4.2, in, down, up, go. control foot placement so as not to trap partner's knee.
5.3: down, up, up. pull up and float for one beat, then go. stretch more to the side, "flick" element required.

don't worry if you don't understand any/everything. you're not supposed to, unless you have some significant judo experience (like blue or brown belt at least). even then, what i'm trying to describe may not be immediately clear, since i'm using my own terms. it *is* for my own reference, after all.

i had to make a difficult decision today. since this week is the march holidays, the training times for SJI/CJC got modified a little. originally, i had wanted to go for SJI/CJC training, then go straight down to SJF for kata. but in the end, i stayed in NUS. the decision was largely due to me reminding myself that my degree takes top priority, and also because i read something which made me realize i'm not ready to go back there yet. i guess this qualifies as one of the times that those 2 thoughts from the first paragraph will manifest in my head. but in all seriousness though, i'd thought the (emotional) wound was healed sufficiently to withstand reopening. guess not. is past experience is anything to go by, it will take 1 to 2 years of only seeing the person very sporadically (or better yet, not at all) before i can interact normally. i don't have that kind of time now! well. slowly by slowly i guess.

i seem to want to blog about one more thing...though it escapes me now. hmm. well, as i'm fond of saying, it's probably not that important if i can't even remember what it is. upcoming arrows include an SSC doctor's appointment (tomorrow), more lab work as usual, 2 presentations, a test for materials (but that's still far off), grading, refereeing at national schools (more to say about this another time). for now, i think i have to make up the hours of sleep debt i owe. oh. interestingly, i napped for about an hour in school today. it felt weird, like i was asleep, dreaming, but somehow i was sleeping lightly enough to be somewhat aware of my surroundings...like i knew when my senior moved me. if i'm not wrong, dreaming occurs in REM sleep, which is a deep sleep stage. so how that happened, i don't know. but i thought that it's kind of interesting, and worth a few words.

-random thought of the day: Must start preparing asymmetric slides soon.-

Rain! like FINALLY. it was a little too heavy though. probably making up for the past weeks. but i'm not complaining. in fact, i'm so tempted to take a nap now, especially since i've been kind of sleep-deprived these last 3 days. but i have to blog a little first.

as i mentioned last time, there was the SJC internal competition, which i helped to referee. my refereeing was off today. i could feel it, and the senior referees there said as much. the most important feedback i got was that my movement and gestures were sluggish, and that i appeared unconfident. wonder if it's because i haven't refereed for so long (the most recent time was last september or so i think)? so yes. have to improve in time for nationals.

refereeing itself was a challenge. since this was just an intra-club competition, the organizers had great leeway with the rules. there were a few rules which i didn't quite like, because they contradicted with the IJF rules. but well...small-scale competition, not really official...i suppose eyes can be closed here and there. something this one person did kind of made me lose respect for him though. it actually ties in to the confusion about the rules. the announcement to the athletes was that leg grabs would be allowed as long as there was a follow-up technique. so, this person decided to sacrifice a penalty to get his technique in. at this point in time, the referees hadn't been informed about this detail yet, so the main referee stopped the match as soon as contact was made. and the guy kicked up a fuss about it. by IJF standards, the referee was right, but not for this competition. so we cleared up the confusion and finished the match. in another bout involving this same person (i think i was the main referee this time round, though i quite honestly forgot), someone grabbed his leg and executed a technique. the referee gave a score to the other guy, then subsequently penalized him for the leg grab. at this point, the other guy said something to the effect of, "how can there be a score if there's a penalty?" but going back to the first bout, if we had let him continue, he would probably have gotten a score from groundwork or submission, then got penalized for the takedown, which i think was his main motive. so it's kind of annoying to see that a black belt would practise this sort of double-standards. but well. the world is made up of all sorts. and thankfully, i don't have to interact with him all that often.

after the rain stopped, i went to bras basah complex to check out the fountain pens. price-wise, i think getting it from the NUS co-op is better (also since i have a 5% discount). i picked up a black extra-fine nib, so that gives me more incentive to go through with the purchase. the guy at the shop i went to was friendly and gave me good recommendations, for which i'm grateful. the nib costs $16, by the way. don't think shipping it in would be any cheaper (after including shipping costs), and there'd be a wait, too. so guess i'll go down to the co-op tomorrow and get the pen and some ink. hope they stock the matte black version.

the original plan was to leave the car at SJF, and go down by train. but after finding out that parking was charged at HDB rates, i decided to drive down. parking came up to 60 cents, while taking the train would have cost me $2.16 total. yes i know it's not accurate since i didn't factor in gas money and all that. but i don't think the difference could have been that much. plus, i'm also not counting the additional convenience from driving. hard to put a price on that. while searching for parking at bras basah complex, a car backed into my front right corner. this was despite me horning, mind you. thankfully, there was no visible damage. but still, to be safe, i took the guy's car plate and contact. hope i don't have to use them. somehow, i think it would be nice to treat others like how you would like to be treated. had i been in the wrong, i would definitely not want to meet an angry driver who insists i pay, especially if the damage is minuscule. that's provided the damage *is* minuscule, that is. guess i'll find out when i send the car in for inspection by this month.

it's raining again! think i'm going to take advantage of the cool weather and have a little lie-down. i think i need a little bit more relaxation this weekend.

-random thought of the day: Wonder if the reaction worked?-

Seems like my service experiences are ending up in 1 good to 1 bad recently. today, we had research group lunch at tajimaya at vivocity. it's a japanese grilled meat place, similar to gyu kaku at novena. they had the interesting fume hood vents as well! my professor had been there at least once before, and he said it was not bad. the food was good, i'll give them that (pro tip: skip the pork...the beef and sashimi are much more worth it). but for some reason, the service sucked so bad it wasn't funny. let's start with the reservation process. i called them on thursday to make the reservation (admittedly 1.5 days' advance notice is a little rushed). since i was reserving for the whole research group (16 of us including my professor), they were a little reluctant to confirm right away, which i understand as well. in fact, the receptionist i spoke to said that she had to confirm with her manager, which was fine. i asked her when she could let me know, and she replied, "my manager is out now. how ah?". i don't know about you, but i think i wouldn't ask my customer that. i'd probably offer an alternative, or ask in a more...professional manner.

but that's still forgivable. the dining experience SUCKED. consider this. the restaurant closed off the back third, and the remaining 2/3 was about 60% full, meaning the restaurant was operating at 40% total capacity. based on that, i really don't see how it could have taken half an hour for our food to arrive! what's worse is that we ordered, waited, asked them to check on the order, waited more, until i finally had enough and went to approach the wait staff. and then they came to our table only to reconfirm the order! what the hell were they writing in their little notepads the previous 2 times!?? and the next round was delayed too, until we had to approach them again. and they forgot our drink refills. best part is that when we were trying to get their attention, the manager was doing his best not to look our way. i'm not saying that we're special or deserve more attention, but you'd think it would be hard not to notice/remember the party of SIXTEEN, right? and they were not very busy either, because some of the staff were chatting to each other. what kind of staff are they hiring? such blur wait staff, useless managers. not going to play the race card here, because the staff consisted of both singaporeans and foreigners. maybe it's the work culture of the place.

on the bright side though, dinner with some of the other shelter volunteers was nice. we went to xin wang cafe in white sands, and i was super impressed with our waiter. he had most of the menu memorized, and could give us the name of the dish we wanted when we gave him the number. he did make a mistake, but he admitted to it and laughed it off, which i though was a good way to handle it. he also went beyond his required job scope by introducing himself, engaging us in some pleasant small talk, and afterwards, asking us for feedback on the food! quite nice. although he had a bit of a speech impediment, i admired him for trying. i actually thanked him on the way out, which is something i don't really do that often. the typical thing is a nod/smile combination.

the food here, though, was nothing to shout about. not feeling that hungry, i skipped the mains and got a "hei shan' (literal translation from chinese: black mountain). it was actually a tower of shaved ice, with "yuan yang" (mix of coffee and tea popular in hong kong), corn, red beans, and grass jelly. could pass off as ice kachang in a pinch i guess. just needed the coloured syrups. although i normally love corn, i didn't really like the corn here. it felt a little out of place. the other volunteers got various stuff. kind of a hit-and-miss. some stuff was good, most of it was bad (we had 3/5 people dissatisfied with their food - i don't count because i didn't get a main). but well, i guess you get what you pay for.

i was just thinking, can good food make up for bad service, and vice versa? i would think that good service can quite easily make up for bad food (unless the food is really inedible), but you'd have to have really excellent food to make up for bad service. is it so difficult to find a place with good food AND good service these days? off the top of my head, i think ramenplay qualifies, though it's a little pricey.

anyway. refereeing tomorrow! my first competition this year. hope i'm alert, and not too rusty.

-random thought of the day: Get black fountain pen nibs!-

Guess who has a 9:00am class tomorrow? and guess who's going to spend at least 2 hours from now blogging and maybe editing presentation slides? it's not healthy, i know, but there's stuff i want to get off my chest.

the week so far has been reasonable-ish, i guess. was feeling stressed on monday and tuesday about some deadlines converging, but after getting some work done yesterday, and having a mid-term today, the pressure seems to have eased off somewhat. it's good; i'll take any break i can get. another reason why i'm not feeling too happy recently is because i'm sick. for the first time in about 3 to 4 years, i'm taking longer than a weekend to recover from a cold/flu and upset stomach combination. must be due to the haze.

regarding the haze problem, i think indonesia is being extremely inconsiderate. let's scale things down from countries to, say, neighbours. imagine this. you have a neighbour who periodically burns huge amounts of stuff, causing smoke to drift into your house, leaving a burnt smell everywhere. you have expressed your disapproval several times, but this goes on for years, because apparently, if he doesn't burn all this stuff, the people in his house won't be able to work. and it's extra bad this year because it hasn't rained for coming-to 2 months. what would you do about it? personally, i would file a police report. on an international scale, the police would be the UN. i'm not sure if this has been brought to the UN's attention yet. if it hasn't, it should be. if it has, why the hell hasn't anything been done about it?? surely some loan or subsidy can be given, right? if that can be arranged, i'm sure the government can turn away those big companies who apparently are the root cause of the burning. the last resort would be to use force to get them to stop. it'll create a whole lot of other problems, so i can understand why this hasn't been done yet. it IS looking increasingly tempting, though. on the bright side, at least no moron minister has made any "why don't you thank us for the fresh air we usually give you?" remarks yet.

haze actually reminds me of smoking. some time back, i read a post on NUS confessions, presumably made by a smoker. s/he (he from now on for convenience) said that the non-smoking student body should let smokers smoke in peace, as they try to go to hidden corners and all that. first major problem: NUS is supposed to be smoke-free, not smoke-minimized or smoke-ninja. i think at this point, i should say that i am quite against smoking. but if smokers in school see me coming and move away or direct the smoke elsewhere, i'm generally fine with that. it's smokers who say it's their freedom to smoke that really annoy me. just as you have the right to smoke, i also have the right not to inhale your smoke. i guess what's worse is that it's harmful. if smoking increased a person's lifespan, made them smarter, and the smoke smelled pleasant to boot, i'd be hanging around smokers all day! or i might just pick up the habit myself. seriously though, i feel that no concessions should be given to smokers...simply because it's a choice they made. it's kind of like race and religion. it's wrong to hate a person based on their race, but the gloves are off as far as religion is concerned, especially what with the militant christians these days, most of whom hold everyone else to higher standards than they hold themselves to. or actually, a better analogy would be like 2 AIDS patients, one who's had it from birth, while the other contracted it by sleeping around. the former deserves sympathy, because circumstances were out of his control. the latter, however, i'd say it serves him right (though specific cases may be different). but well. it's complicated.

just had the japanese mid-term today. surprisingly, it was better than expected. or maybe i've been used to more difficult tests in previous japanese modules? for the amount of study i did (2 hours before the test), i'd be happy with 55/70. as usual, the listening was a bugger though. but then again, it's true. NUS japanese listening conversation speech is roughly the same as japanese people's normal speaking speed. guess i shouldn't worry too much about marks here though...as long as i pass, which shouldn't be that hard.

i remember mentioning some time back that my professor got promoted to associate. we're having a group lunch this saturday to welcome a new postdoc, so we also decided to use the opportunity to give him a congratulatory gift. we got a pen and a remote presenter (with green laser!), which i still have to find some way to wrap up. shouldn't be too hard. i suppose this is also a test of whether my professor has found this blog or not. if he has, he won't be surprised on saturday since he knows that we got him stuff, but if he isn't surprised, then i'll know that he's read this, so he'll definitely look surprised either way to prevent me from knowing that he knows i blog (if he even knows in the first place). guess i have to determine whether his surprise is real or faked. and yes, i know i'm thinking way too much. but it's fun.

while pen shopping, i saw that the NUS co-op does sell fountain pens. also, there are several websites geared towards fountain pen enthusiasts. it's actually kind of scary, how in-depth they go. what's scarier, pens sell for thousands of USD! can you imagine that?? like one pen can cost more than my entire computer (monitors etc. all inclusive). i don't understand why people would spend that kind of money on a pen. a watch, MAYBE, because you can have all sorts of cool functions like diving meters/gauges, stopwatch, etc. but a PEN!? for that price, i'd expect a super high-tech spy pen that can record hours of HD video. but no, it's just a fountain pen. no matter how good they say the writing experience will be, i think there's an upper limit, right? how much difference can there be between a $20 pen and a $3000 pen? i'm drawing a parallel here to judo equipment. granted that there is a huge difference between a $70 gi and a $200 made-in-japan one, but the pricier $300 adidas gi seems to be nothing more special. on a side note, i think that paying about $125 for my black belt is worth it. it's been 3 years and it still feels solid. guess i'll never find out about the pens, because i sure as hell won't spend that kind of money. besides, i've always been more of a pilot G1 kid. i find decent pleasure in writing with that as it is. a little tempted to get a G3...though i heard it's just a G1 with a bigger cap. better not mess with the classics. but i will say that i'm actually quite interested to get a fountain pen, just for trying's sake. will probably go for one of the cheaper models in the co-op. only thing is, i wonder if i'll ever write enough with it. come to think of it, i don't really have much to write about. i mean, i blog here, so that basically covers it already.

or maybe i should write a book! the thought has been bugging me for some time already. problem is, i don't know what kind of book i want to write. at present, i'm thinking it'll definitely be fiction (i'm not knowledgeable enough about history/other topics, nor has anything interesting enough happened to me to allow me to write non-fiction). i googled about writing, and one of the suggestions was to identify your target audience, and plan the book out before even writing the story proper. if i had to choose, i think i'd write for teenagers/youths (like between 10 to 20+). wizards have been done, as have robots, vampires, and dragons. not too keen on zombies or ghosts either. well...at least time is on my side here. i can sleep on it for as long as i need/want to.

time is not on my side for sleeping tonight, though. looks like i won't have time to edit my slides today. well, there's always tomorrow and (half of) saturday.

-random thought of the day: Stupid missing chemical.-

Think i should blog a little to clear my head. there's definitely quite a lot of stuff backed up in there after close to 2 weeks.

i guess i should start with the QE. to be honest here, i'm not too optimistic. i know i more or less had the organic question down, but the rest were shaky. i'm estimating my chance of passing at 30%. fingers crossed here. like i said before, failing this won't be the end of the world, but passing after just 1 attempt would be so much more convenient.

as for research...things are coming along slow-ish. as much as i would love to do like 10 reactions a day and publish a paper every 1 to 2 months, it's not exactly possible now. you know, it's only after recess week that i realized how disruptive classes are. during recess week, everything went much better because i only focused on research. looks like japanese 6 is not going to be in my future. but well. an intermediate certificate from NUS should be enough. plus, it will serve as a reminder that i still have some ways to go as far as japanese is concerned.

judo-wise, i realize that i am extremely lucky to have such patient seniors/friends to guide me on kata. had i been in their shoes, i probably would have given up on me already. what makes it worse is that they're so nice about it! i can't get angry with them without looking like a total *insert profanity of choice here*. then again, i have no good reason to be angry with them. if anything, i should be angry at myself for not being as quick on the uptake as i would like. grading's in 2 weeks and 2 days, and my confidence level for kata fluctuates from 35% to about 70%, depending on mood, physical condition, and various other factors. part of it stems from my reluctance to throw. my (temporary) partner has told me many times, "just throw only". but even in spite of that, i feel so bad! he's doing most of the painful work actually. i just have to get into position and help him breakfall. and i think this is a good reminder of a very important lesson - what looks effortless may not necessarily be easy to do, and may have taken countless hours of practice to get just right.

this past thursday, we hosted some students from kagoshima university as part of a japanese project. i really really treasure chances to interact with japanese people. they're so nice (even though it *may* be superficial), and they're so encouraging when we try to speak japanese! in particular, the guy that we got for our group presentation was the perfect audience, giving us us all the necessary verbal and nonverbal cues to show that he was attentively listening and engaged in the presentation. it felt good, but not having presented in japanese before, i got a little nervous and reverted mostly back to elementary-level speech patterns. have to improve on that.

i think that's basically all the major events for now. week 7 just ended, so there are 6 weeks to go before reading week and exams. in these 6 weeks, i have 2 grad seminar presentations (topic outside research area, online), 3 seminar write-ups, 1 asymmetric presentation, usual japanese homework, quizzes and 1 more presentation, along with a materials test (the first one went so-so...don't think i'll do too well). how is all that going to fit into 6 weeks!? not forgetting grading, TA, research, and the usual school stuff. have to find a way, i guess. also reminder to self. find some time to blog about some thoughts regarding cars, drivers, and other things that aren't mere recollections.

-random thought of the day: Damned haze.-