Troubleshot !

April 2011

2011-04-28T15:18:00.007+08:00

Exams are really close. I'm definitely more prepared than I was at the same point last semester, but it is still not enough.

This pokemon, Archeops is really powerful.
Archeops has a very impressive base attack of 140.
It has access to many strong physical attacks with bonus due to it's typing.

Being a bit kiasu, it also has a base special attack of 112. (They've recently put in un-square numbers to break the domination that certain pokemon have over competitive gameplay)
And an a lot better than average base speed of 110,
as well as a base health of 75,
and both base defense and special defense of 65.

This adds up to a total of 567, which is 54th place out of 650 pokemon (after taking away the multiple versions of a few others). If you take away legendaries, he moves up to 7 out of 603.
Either way, thats an A+ on the bell curve

Unfortunately, Archeops has one major flaw.
It has the ability "Defeatist", which halves it's effectiveness when it's left with less than half health.

I must not be like an Archeops.
I will persist.

FebruMarch 2011

2011-03-29T18:02:00.003+08:00

I didn't write anything here for the whole month of February.I've been packed with stuff.
There was the the hall cheerleading followed by the hall dance thing. Major consumers of time, but I really learned a lot, even if not exactly what I had in mind. I get the feeling that this sudden deluge of physical activity might be me trying to compensate for the complete lack of it in primary and secondary school.

There was also rugby which is my first team sport since primary school unless you count those for fun basketball sessions in which I only occupied a slot in my team and committed technical fouls :/ . The downside is that i gained an ankle injury which still bugs me everyday, so I'm out of order. Can't wait to heal up. Needa get an ankle brace in the meantime. Also gotta watch what I eat or I'll balloon in no time.

Also, earlier this week, I had the first test in NTU that I was completely confident of doing. I am still pretty sure that I got full marks for that one. I guess there is a big difference between studying and giving my notes a stare down. Oh watching video recordings can really make a big difference. I need to keep at it. Actually, I also need to more disciplined and not let my mind wander to other topics that are only of trivial interest.

Speaking of trivial things, I played through the whole of Pokemon Black in about 2 and a half days. Faster than previous versions because they changed the experience point system. If your critter is of a lower level than the thing it just knocked out, it gains more experience than if were the same level. Vice versa for higher levels, which is nice because it helps to de-emphasize level grinding. I would like to see a pokemon game in which the AI or at least the boss AI uses decisive switch-ins (e.g switching in something with levitate when your ground pokemon is about to use earthquake) instead of just hyper potions in their strategy though.

My exams begin 7 May and end 20 May, so I'd better gain some studying experience points to level up. I guess that's why I like Pokemon, because you get to do stuff at your own pace.

January 2011

2011-01-28T01:07:00.001+08:00

I think the word to describe me now is lackadaisical.

I know my work is not up to scratch, but worse still is that I have thrown what little determination I had left far away, and all that's left to do is to feel bad about it.

It's actually a new semester now, and I have failed thermodynamics, so I'm taking it again. I am seriously beginning to doubt my ability to make it as an engineer now. As a result, I've started doing layout in the campus newspaper. If I cannot increase the quality of my skills, then let me at least increase the quantity of skills.

For this period of time, I've had to cut out rock climbing and dance, so as to be able to practice Cheer every weeknight. We all know our hall isn't going to be number 1, yet the people are still so enthusiastic. Another way I've heard it being described was "fun-loving". My functionality as a base is rather limited, and despite being at a good height for shoulder stands, I'm not. My specialty is supposed to be gymnastics, which means I can do a decent toe-touch, cartwheel, and land front handsprings. Beyond that, my role is pretty limited and I just need to support other bases and get a 'liberty' up.

I need drive. I want something immaterial to look forward to.

November +December 2010

2010-12-27T20:19:00.004+08:00

I haven't had the time to post for a pretty long while now. November and December was exam time. I don't think I did well. Whatever positive motivation I originally had seems to have been snuffed out in poly, and all that was driving me was fear and worry, which is definitely not a good thing. Also, I think I have fallen into the trap of mental laziness, which is when looking at a question, and instead of thinking about how to work it out, your eyes just sort of glaze over, and you just couldn't care less about it. Maybe my curiosity died and I don't care about how stuff works anymore. That seems like a road to ruin.The last day of exams was on 23 December, which I think was quite a mean thing to do on the year planner's parts. But I'm glad it's over. That's about all I'm willing to say about it.

I am currently in KL or somewhere near there staying at my Uncle's place, using their laptop to surf and type this out. We are going to Langkawi in a few days, and I'm pretty hyped up about it, because we get to kayak to some spot to see eagles. I hear there's a place for indoor climbing at a shopping centre nearby, so I'll go by and check it out if I get the chance. This is also the first holiday in a long one where i've sat down to read a book in a long time.

Christmas was spent here with family, and we paid a visit to my grand-aunt and grand-uncle's grave, and also had a really big dinner, and heard stories of cane toad golf, and camel spiders in the gulf.

As for January, which is just a few days away, I'm going to change my sleeping pattern so that I can have more time per 24 hour period. I haven't chosen the exact sleeping pattern to follow, but all of them have multiple short periods of sleep at set times. I can't decide if I shall go for a period of core sleep with multiple short naps, or just multiple not so short naps, or breaking my sleep into 2 periods of core sleep.

Also in January, will be the inter-hall games, so I'm making sure I don't fatten up too much so that I can still run at a decent speed, jump high enough and throw well. (Throw flyers up, opponents down, and balls far) Yes, flyers for cheerleading. They didn't have enough guys, I swear!

My idea for this month, would be to have chemical suits with zip ties, so that in case there is a tear, the person in the suit can quickly isolate the tear by pulling the zip ties, and preventing further exposure to the environment.

Unigrind

2010-10-31T23:35:00.002+08:00

I'm now about two thirds of my way through this semester, and I'm still not confident of my abilities to do the questions in most of the modules. It's probably a sign that I'm not trying hard enough. Zoning out is still a major issue, and it's starting to snowball because I'm beginning to not know what the lecturer is talking about even when I do pay attention! Right now I really don't think my report card is going to look good, so I've really got to work on it. Also I need to put together a proper resume.

For a lot of (thankfully not all) subject content, I find myself turning to the notes and lectures of other universities to grasp new concepts and their nitty-gritty details. One example would be matrices with things like subspaces and eigen vectors. Also new to me would be 3D graphs and integration and differentiation of 3 planes. So now I'm really grateful for all the universities who have made their course materials available online (e.g MIT's opencourseware), and also as my senior dubbed it, the "University of Youtube", which can teach in 10 minutes what a lecturer may take half an hour to explain with us still not getting it. As all this happens, I believe that I still enjoy learning, unfortunately as we hastily rush through the lectures, I think this enjoyment is being stifled.

For the last couple of weeks, I find that it has been mainly non-academic things that I have been looking forward to, and also these things keeping me going. And I believe I have over-committed myself a bit. I've got some physical activity everyday of the week except Sunday. So between the 6 days, it's either rock climbing, dance, or karate, with karate being my anchor activity. That means if I ever become so incredibly busy that I have not enough time, I would still make time for karate. During my meal times, I usually have the same company or none at all. I thought I could go around my hall and make friends with everyone, but then I realized that my skin isn't thick enough, and so within my hall I guess I have a lot of new acquaintances. This also means that I have less people to group study with, which makes things a lot less fun, on the upside a bit less distracting. Yup, a bit because I still get distracted. >.<"

Here's a summary of how I think I'm doing and what needs to be worked on for the various activities:
Karate
Landing combinations - I tend to break away and retreat after landing a good clean hit, instead of following up with more. Also during my combinations, I need to take over the spot which my opponent was standing on.
Throwing feints when breaking away - this would discourage my opponent from coming forward as I retreat, usually something like a blind jab would be sufficient, but the foot work still feels very unatural,
Triangle kicks - When throwing these, I tend to land my instep on the chest, when ideally I should be using the ball of my foot, so as to penetrate the solar plexus or ribs.
Keeping my guard up - I tend to drop my guard when throwing just about any technique, but I tend to open up even more when throwing kicks.
Facing the opponent - I think I need to get in closer to my opponent because if I overextend myself to punch, I actually expose my back to hooks from tall opponents.

Dance
I don't really know what to look out for in dance, because I don't know what technique is considered good or what points to look out for. I'm still at the monkey-see monkey-do stage, except that I probably move more like a gorilla . =X

Rock climbing
As for this, I'm going to keep off the high walls outside first because those have entry fees meaning that my wallet will take a big hit. So I'm working on making it worth it by gaining some basic techniques and wall sticking endurance. That means staying on the low school wall, and practicing first. Not that I'm very good on the low wall anyway. Also rock climbing is not something that is very cheap to get into, and thus I've yet to buy climbing shoes, but that's okay, because I believe I can adapt.

Other than that, I've been wondering whether it would be good for me to take a year's break and during this time, go learn the stuff that I'd be learning when I return, so that I can kick ass, and score a really shiny GPA, since a lot of the content can be found online anyway. The thing is that I'd need to find out what topics our version of the modules contain. The crux of the issue then would be my discipline I guess.

Oh and my idea for the month would a be a tablespoon with markings for the 5ml and 10 ml levels, with the markings done like the contour lines of a topographic map, this way people who cook, or people who need to take medicine can accurately measure out a teaspoon (5ml), and tablespoon (10ml), and the more common dosages of liquid medicine which if I remember correctly come in increments of 5 or 10ml as well.

Long Enough to Read in Parts

2010-09-24T00:20:00.006+08:00

I think I'm allergic to studying. Every time I sit down to seriously study (instead of just going through the motions), attempting to gain real understanding, scribbling little sub-script questions, referring to references and all, I get the sniffles. Maybe I shouldn't be needing to study, or more likely it just means a box of tissue and a bin is mandatory.

During lectures, I get the very strong feeling that the lecturers are there to race the clock and rush through their slides. One of the lecturers is at lecture 8, has yet to start tutorial 2, but still has the majority of us clueless about how to tackle tutorial 1. I hope it doesn't become that extreme for the other modules too.

Sometimes (lots of times), I find myself zoning out. This happens in a few different ways.

Mind just wanders.

I stare at the slide, hear what lecturer is saying, get the idea, but when I try to repeat the method in my head, I get a lot of questions (maybe I'll note 1 or 2 down), and I lose track of whatever it was that the lecturer was saying.

I find myself paying attention but I don't really grasp the concept, but in a few minutes, I find animalistic noises coming out of my lecturer's mouth, and when I look at the slide, it seems to have nothing to do with those animal noises. This seems to happen more for certain lecturers, particularly if they sound like ducks and don't bother to enunciate their words.

Good thing I've got 2 people from my previous course to ask. They make up the majority of my company during lessons. Lessons start at 8.30am every day, so it kind of sucks to look at other people's timetables and see that they have days stating at 9.30am AND have blank days.

After lessons and stuff, I return to my hall (12) and during the travel time back, I always feel I ought to study. So after taking a nap, which is something totally new to me, I wake up, take out the notes, flip to relevant pages, stare at them for a few minutes, and then decide I'll do it later. X:

Within my hall, I still don't know many people, nor do I hang out with any, but I now know my neighbors (so that's a start!). The gender ratio is pretty skewed though, because except for the 2 units joining my block to another one, my floor is all guys (and no I don't know the people in the joining units).

As for CCAs, I think I've joined rock climbing. I wanted to join Judo, but they seem non-existent. Even though I don't need the academic units, I've started illustrating for the campus paper. I want to draw, but more of as a hobby, and I doing this should allow me to keep my basic drawing skills in check.

Also I tried something I never ever thought I would do: I auditioned for contemporary dance. I think I was the worst overall, but it was a lot more interesting and intense than I thought it would be. So obviously I didn't get in, but now I'm interested. I'm pretty sure that I could learn lighter footwork, and the flow of motion ("ability to link movements better").

One thing I feel that I need to get into more of would be 'leadership positions'. While I see other people in the hall running for committee, and writing down their past experience in similar positions, I realize that in all my work and activities so far, I have avoided taking up such positions. I think I need to get some experience before the working world looks and passes me over. I guess what I could do now, would be to try for some sub-committee, then if that goes well, a main position.

Now that I've finished typing this out, I think my post should be read in parts. It also contains a lot of 'I', and not enough 'we'. Maybe in future.

August 2010

2010-08-30T23:26:00.001+08:00

I feel obligated to type something here at least once a month, mainly because I have been typing stuff here at a frequency of about once a month.

Well this month has been pretty eventful, though not wholly in a positive way. It started off on the first day of the month with a bang. The bang of a body falling from at least 10 floors and hitting the ground. The fact that made it more unfortunate was that the body belonged to my younger brother. Suicide? I hope not, because then I'd lose some sympathy for him, even if the rest of the family didn't.

During the course of the month at work, I managed to get a vague idea of how people get rich. It seemed that they need to be kind but somewhat stern, and have be able to stay on task. I also got a bit of insight into why some people never have enough. It's about how you manage your money. Permanence seems to have better value than things that deteriorate, even if the permanent item may seem more expensive at first. Also, some just don't save.

As for books, I actually managed to finish one. To date, I have never finished a book over a span of more than 2 weeks. My pattern seems to be finishing it quickly in a few days, or not reading at all. Angry White Pyjamas was completed. I shall attempt to stretch To Kill A Mockingbird.

At the end of the month I entered University. And checked into a hostel. The hostel room has more space than my home room and a faster, more consistent internet speed. I've yet to get to know anyone other than my room mate in the hostel, but I will make the effort. Reason being that I like the location of the hostel. Its less than 100m away from thick forested area, so our air feels cooler, making for a good night's sleep.

The idea that I had this month was to carry a notebook to list my thoughts and ideas. Maybe even dreams, so that I don't forget them and have something to write about here. Uh, same for dreams.

SaChoom

2010-07-18T12:43:00.005+08:00

I watched Sachoom. It's a dance musical, or as they call it, 'dancical'. It was my first time watching one of these theatre dance things and I was amazed. Previously I wanted to watch Jump which also happened to be by a Korean production (but didn't).

The dance moves were all very nice to watch. There wasn't really a storyline, and loosely used the growing up years of the 3 main characters to string their dances together. All 3 main characters had one syllable names (only remember a 'Jun'), with one being an average guy trying to make it, a macho guy who gets all the chicks and is there to look good, and a girl who just is there to look good. Not that the characters were significant anyway.

The thing that was significant was the dancing, coordination and physical ability. I think every one of them can dance all the genres. They used very little props, but there was a part with them spinning glow-in-the-dark nun-chucks. Though I do wonder how much time they've spent to get this good.

There was also a part in which they tried to get everyone to dance along to their theme song with some hands in the air dance. After coming home and trying to find them on youtube, I realized that they took out all the lyrics except one line, which makes sense to me because I don't speak korean, and would assume that not many people in the audience save for the korean PRs could either. Anyway, the one line was "salanghamyeon choomel chula" which means "dance when you are in love" (googled that).

(Oh wait, I do speak korean: Kimchi, Hyundai, Taekwondo, Samsung!)

Also, I really really liked the soundtrack (the whole thing, not just their theme song), and if I could, I would have bought the soundtrack. My favourite part of the show was the "sensuality and temptations" bit (which I couldn't find on youtube )= ). 'nuff said.

Ten Thousand Hours

2010-07-01T18:17:00.008+08:00

There's this book that I've been wanting to read, it's called Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. Despite having not read it yet, I've heard that one of the major points is that it takes 10000 hours to become expertly skilled in... most skills.

I guess it's a ball park figure, but then 10000 hours should be enough for a person to become adept at the various permutations and combinations of that skill. So maybe it requires more for some skills, and less for others.

So after hearing of this magic 10000 hours, I decided that I'd spend more time practicing the ashihara style, and maybe swimming.

But after a while it occurred to me that while I'd be able to grasp some expertise in one particular skill over the next decade or two with consistency and intent to improve, parents of young children are in a much better position to help their kids become highly skilled.

Of course there are other factors like availability and cost of being taught the skill. (meaning that your kid is a lot less likely to become a master of the vuvuzela while living in the north pole)

Maybe I should make a guide with sample timetables so that the next generation will be trained up to become a generation of very skillful people. In the meantime, hopefully someone writes another book about how to infuse passion...

Symbols on a Locked Door

2010-05-26T23:30:00.004+08:00

I understand that symbols are powerful. They put suggestions in your mind before you can finish thinking, much like Google's autocomplete giving suggestions before you're done typing, except that there are way less suggestions.

When you a see a "swooshing-tick", you immediately know it's Nike. A cross with an elongated bottom, you'd probably think Christianity or Jesus.

However, to get the suggestion from a symbol, we must have been exposed to it or its meaning before. I'm guessing this is where advertising is used to bridge the gap. If the person does not voluntarily expose themselves to the symbol, then advertising exposes the symbol to the person.

I also realize that Chinese language is a language in which every word is a symbol. Except that maybe the advertising bit doesn't quite apply.

So, near to where I'm working, there is this place with a locked door, and because this place is not within the main area of the building, people are usually not present there, and even if they are, there is no reason to stay around.

The door is not locked conventionally. Instead, the doorknob has been removed, and a chain goes through the resulting hole and loops back out. A padlock then secures the chain to a metal loop protruding from the door frame. The rubbish dump on that floor also has been sealed up.

Okay, I got sidetracked. So the door is locked and its next to a cargo lift, in an often empty place. Well, on the door, the words written are "哭鬼屋" literally, the crying ghost's residence.

Well, when I was alone there waiting for the really slow cargo lift, I believe that I started imagining sounds, like moans and groans. Maybe I did hear them. Can't tell.

What I can tell is that if the words weren't there, then I probably wouldn't even have considered the possibility of a crying ghost. But I guess the symbols had an effect on me...

On the other hand, if the symbols weren't there, I'd probably have gotten the shock of my life so far if I got to find out first hand if it were there. So maybe the placing of those symbols isn't that bad...

Maybe I ought to start learning to channel my qi to do ward them off or something. O_o

-------------

Oh. After hating the Chinese language learning system in school where I was on consistently in the borderline pass (read: borderline fail) zone, I actually like the language and the elements that make up the language a lot more after leaving the system. I'm pretty sure I still wouldn't do very well in O-level Chinese though...

Rain Trees

2010-05-22T20:46:00.003+08:00

I forgot what I wanted to write about so I guess I'll leave you with this...

Rain trees. I just like to gaze at their branches and crowns against the sky, it seems that throughout the length of the tree, the branches, and even the trunk seem to bend at almost identical intervals, and the angle of bending always seems to be the same, just in a different direction.

It's like a spring pulled hard until the coils seems straightened, but upon closer inspection, you see that it is not completely straight, and that there is slight curling of your straight piece of now wire.

And these trees I'm referring to are trees that have been pruned. I wonder how the wild rain trees are different other than having many more branches.

Also, in my pruned rain trees, staring at the crown against the sky seems to have a soothing effect on me.

This View has been Blocked!

2010-05-15T23:11:00.002+08:00

I get quite agitated when someone stands in my line of sight. Especially tall people, because I'm not so tall. One of the possible solutions would be to lop off the perpetrator's head, but that only works if he/she is roughly a head above me. Thus the easiest, cheapest way out I can think of, is to move away...Which I don't like, because I usually take effort to find a good spot to linger. An even dreamier solution would be to grow 2 heads taller.

------------------

I think my last post looks rather crappy. Will consider touching it up.

The Mistake of Being Afraid of Mistakes?

2010-04-13T22:10:00.002+08:00

Most little kids learn and absorb fast, so they pick up skills like using the computer and surprising their parents rather quickly. When you reach an age where your brains aren't so fresh, it seems that you learn slower. But I think that there is a little that the average stale-brained individual can do to learn faster. I think that would be being a lot less afraid of making mistakes.

For example I've heard quite a few tales about how some fellow's kid picked up the computer while he still has trouble using it. I think that his trouble stems from being afraid to make mistakes, which probably stem from being afraid of the consequences. This seems to result in our fellow being less willing to click in unfamiliar places, compared to the kid who does not have this handicap.

Then again the kid may not have this handicap because the kid doesn't know that he/she is making a mistake, or it may be that the kid would have a lot fewer consequences to deal with if they did make a mistake. Just speculating.

Sketch Pads & Film-fu

2010-04-04T14:22:00.000+08:00

The other day I stepped into a certain chain of stationery stores for the first time in a really long while. I bought myself an A5 sketch pad. A5 is a good portable size, not too big and easily bending like A4 and bigger, yet not too small. It just happened to occur to me a few moments earlier that I should start drawing again. By drawings I mean graphics that stand boldly in the middle of the page between other pages of drawings, rather than the guerrilla doodles that have to hide at the corners of my lecture notes and occasionally pop out to surprise people.

I think that if I ever have kids, I'm going to make them carry A5 sketch pads so they can draw while waiting for me to come pick them up, while sitting on the bus or between things. Then maybe they'll become really good at drawing, if not I might at least have a better idea of what they might be thinking about.

-----------------------------

Another other day, I also happened to step into a cinema for the first time since watching Warlords in 2007. How to Train Your Dragon was watched. After watching, I went home googled it, and read up the wikipedia article. Much of the plot was changed, leaving little similarity between the movie and the book series save for a few names of characters.

It made me wonder if they had reduced their potential earnings by having a single movie rather than one for each book in the series, like Harry Potter. Then again as a children's book, maybe it had insufficient content per book that the people at DreamWorks would rather just pick apart the original thing but keep just enough likeliness to keep the title, and put it all in a single movie.

Oh, How to Train Your Dragon was delayed so we were given the chance to catch another movie for free within the next 2 weeks. A few suggested Clash of the Titans, which I think I'd rather miss. In the trailer I saw a lot of big CGI monsters, actors on the landing half of a leap with weapons raised above their heads and that’s about it. If I want to see a show with fighting, I want to see good fight scenes, with people attacking, and defending, and best of all, following up their attacks to make sure their opponent is downed. One good example would be Jason Bourne fighting Desh in the Bourne Ultimatum.

But I don't absolutely like everything in what some consider a good fight scene. One thing I don't like about some fight scenes is the kick (usually a side kick) that pushes a random henchman away. Somehow when the henchman gets pushed away, he is immediately defeated. I think this happens a lot in kungfu movies where the hero happens to fight many people at once.

Unable To Scoop Out Eye

2010-03-15T20:19:00.005+08:00

I've started trying to swim. Think I'm doing fine on my own for now, and can float face down diagonally, and move forward, but only really slowly. The sound of my toe knuckles cracking also seems much louder when my head is under water. The view under the water is a lot blurrier and is probably reduced to a myopic distance of something less than 5 metres.

Maybe its a coincidence, but I've also started having dreams again. Though I've yet to have a pleasant dream, I still think it's a big improvement over not having dreams. This is because it means I'm reaching deeper levels of sleep, which is somehow good for my brain. Need to preserve my deteriorating noggin.

The stuff I dream about is stuff that is pretty gritty, and usually doesn't get a chance to end positively, reason being that I get up first, or transition to a different dream. Then again maybe it does finish happily, but I don't remember it...

Some people say that dreams are predictions of whats going to happen in your life. Others say its the opposite of whats going to happen. Other others say its symbolic of something in your life. I roughly favour the symbolism one.

--------------------------

Anyway, here's what I remember of one of the dreams.

The water was the same blue as a typical swimming pool. I was being driven underwater with some guy with either no eyelids or a permanent glare etched on his face (didn't see any blinking). He was trying to strangle or drown me, and had both hands on either side of my neck. My right arm clinching the back of the guy's neck and he was above, and was continually driving me deeper underwater. So I pulled him along deeper into the water, and tried to improve my position by simultaneously pushing my foot against his bladder area and pulling my opponent to the side.

Soon enough we are side by side, and I try to punch his face using a long fist. That doesn't work, so I try attacking his temples instead. Not even a flinch. It's underwater, so the resistance is greater, and it doesn't work. Next I try digging out one of the fellow's eyes, and despite using a lot of strength, I could reach my pointing or middle finger in behind the eye but couldn't scoop it out. It was as if my opponent's eyes were connected to his brain by steel cable. After a few more tries and a lot of swearing in my head, I begin using the long fist to hit and then press in the same eye, and just about then I think he gets the choke on, and I see a few bubbles rising from my mouth, and in response, purse my lips.

Then I wake up.

I think all this happened in under 5 minutes, but my sense of time was distorted in the dream. The nice thing about it was that I didn't have much breath control problems, until the choke was put into proper position. Yeah, I think I'm going nuts too.

----------------------

Idea for cramming (yet) more people into MRT trains

2010-03-12T19:19:00.007+08:00

As a rule of thumb, Singaporeans don't like to come into physical contact with others. So when riding the MRT, even if the train is pretty crowded, people will still try their best to maintain some sort of personal pocket of space.

A different rule of thumb, would be that businesses are to make money for their owners. So by having more passengers on a train, it would seem safe to assume that the train would be netting more money.

So if SMRT can fit more people into less space on their trains, they should be able to make more money per train (at peak hours at least).

So while riding the train and trying to maintain my own pocket of space today, an idea was fell out of the air and into my head. Here goes.

I noticed that one of the groups of people who took up the least space for money paid were couples standing in loving embrace. This was because they would stand closer to each other than 2 people who don't know each other, or even 2 close friends. So if we can get people to stand closer, we can fit more people in.

Okay, but I also realized that not many of us want to be embracing random strangers.

So how? Stand back to back. Even then I don't like being touched, even if it's not by a hand.

So how? Shove a divider between us. A divider like the kind you find next to the corner seats, only here it is placed in the middle, running along the length of the carriage. But then that'll make moving within the train more difficult.

So how? Create gaps. Instead of a continuous Plexiglas divider, we have a few different dividers, probably next to the poles.

So we would have something roughly like this:

The red spots are the positions of the poles.
The green lines are the proposed dividers.
The dark gray things are the doors.
The seats aren't drawn because I was too lazy.

And to expand my idea a little more, maybe they could have raised bumps (like between seats) on the dividers so that people will follow and fit into lean-against panels.

Alternatively, just import more people from overseas. Maybe people from overseas have different expectations of personal space, or don't mind being touched.

-------------------------------

I think my blog is quite speed readable, this is intentional, and if you think otherwise, tell me about it.

Other than that, I'm quite happy about having random ideas again. Even if they're not the best ideas. Oh and I can open my eyes underwater in the pool, although the gray tint of everything when I come out worries me. Need to start running though :/

A Dose of Ambivalence

2010-03-07T19:00:00.005+08:00

Am through with poly. Shall be in uni soon.
Not very worried about whether I'll be accepted, but very worried about whether I will be in the right mode for studying then. Poly has shown me how important it is to be hardworking if you want to be near the top, but I've been sitting around and wondering how happy I'll be after becoming somewhat successful in my career. Successful by other people's standards. On the other hand, my ego sometimes demands that I have something that if I wanted, could brag about.

Perhaps my ego is right. Having good paper qualifications would open me to more, and as a result, some better careers, which will in turn let me earn more, and do more of what I want (provided I have time).

Anyway, currently working a little to support my activities, and for the near future.
Beyond that, here are my objectives for this less academic period.

Learn to swim
Learn some guitar
Start driving lessons
Finish 3 novels
Get my sidekick powerful & near perfect
Build up stamina by running at least once in three days

Further beyond that, maybe give rock climbing a shot, and maybe a few other activities.

Buck up NKT!

2010-01-24T17:18:00.005+08:00

I have been overcome by sloth.
I'm waaay behind in terms of studying and past year papers to be done, not posted here for a looong time, and I kind of get the feeling that I'm getting more out of shape with each passing day. All this due to laziness. =(

I have barely 4 weeks left until my final exams. I need to be reminded that after that I'll have a month or two to do whatever I like. I hope my learning efficiency is still good enough despite having not been used for quite a while.

I need to reconcile what little passion I used to have for this course, or at least mop this exam up quickly and painlessly. Better still if I can find an internal motivating factor. My good friend can't always be pushing me (though it's much appreciated), because even a good friend's patience can wear thin. I also don't quite want to look back at myself at this point and regret (so much).

Bus Ride Anti-Space Encroachment Tactics

2009-11-29T01:17:00.010+08:00

I don't mind sharing bus seats with people, but sometimes I get a quite irritated (and feel a bit violated) when these people decide to squeeze me in against the window. As such I have devised some tactics to get such people to give me a little more space. And being in this country, I have found that people generally do not like speaking to strangers, especially on public transport, maybe because doing so might bring all the eyes on the bus onto them.

By using these tactics, you are assuming that the other person is pretending to be ignorant of the fact that you are being squeezed in, and thus your response will be a similar false ignorance of their discomfort that you will soon create. Do remember that to use these, you need to be sitting on the inner seat. I make no guarantee that these will work, though I am pretty sure they will.

The Elbow Flail
To do the elbow flail, you need to be in the possession of a bag. Using the arm that is closer to your space encroacher, pretend that one of the zippers on the bag is stuck and begin to tug at it from a few different angles, one at a time. Because the space is tight your elbow will flail around at distances that feel very unsafe to the other person. If you can't pretend your zip is stuck, then you can pretend to be frantically searching for your handphone or a pack of tissue somewhere within the deep recesses of your bag.

Controlled Airflow Coughing
I don't really like this tactic as it may actually spread germs to the person, but it is a tactic, so I'll put it here anyway. Do remember that your objective is to make them let up and stop squeezing you, not to get them sick. But that's beside the point. Using the hand on the arm which is closer to the window that you are being pressed against, position the hand as if you were about to whisper a secret. From whisper position, point the fingers on the hand towards the air in front of the encroacher, if you like, you may turn your head ever so slightly away from the encroacher, and release a deep chesty cough, with one or two throat-clearing aftercoughs.

The Deep Elbow Divider
This should only be used when things get very uncomfortable. I have only used this once when some strange foreign looking person decided that it would be fun to press her thigh and hip against mine. Bad experience. First, fold your arms without tucking in your hands so that the folded arms do not lock into place. This will help to create a little pocket of space. From there, let your wrists fall onto your lap, well sort of. What happens is that the arm motions may be jammed by the environment, namely the encroacher, and the plastic frame that you are being pressed against. From the jammed position, push your elbow closer to the encroacher downward and outward so as not to make it obvious. Elbows are supposed to be the hardest points of the human body, and even if they aren't they are harder than your encroacher's waist.

If all this fails, you could always get up and move somewhere else or maube even ask for some space.

Intense Play

2009-11-09T22:18:00.008+08:00

I read some online article about how hackers build their reputation and the pre-requisite skills like programming and such. One of the sentences caught me. It said that their work should not be viewed as a chore, but rather, as a form of intense play. I should apply that to my studies.

I also have an assignment to do about heroes. I'm picking John Aaron, and from what I've read and watched so far, I would guess that he was one of those people who did the intense play thing, otherwise, he would have been a lot less likely to know what to do when the Signal Conditioning Equipment was affected by the lightning strike during the Apollo 12 launch.

------------------------

If You Can't Create or Innovate, then Cheaper, Better, Faster is the way to go.
This seems to be happening a lot lately. For example,If you aren't the owner with the patent for a product, you can't leverage the patent period to get a head start and ~~jack up the price~~ charge for your technology. So if you can't create something new, do something old cheaper, better and faster. This might explain outsourcing. And because some of us can't keep up, we have to create space for ourselves by moving up the value chain. So instead of maintaining and repairing aircraft parts, we crawl up to manufacturing, and then designing the parts, and then I hope, designing the aircraft.

------------------------

Okay, here are the links to the videos of the free sparring sessions I wrote about earlier. I shall crawl into a cave and hide from the embarrassment. Or I could laugh it off and suck it up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oDhWUk72aA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuIQLJ436b0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o413JIdf6tw

Hitting People I Don't Know

2009-10-30T00:38:00.005+08:00

I had my first free spar against a different club today, and I learned quite a bit. Many people perform differently under stress, and I find that I'm no exception, in this case, I have to admit that I did pretty badly.

It made me realize that I fight one dimensionally, by this I mean that when I fight, I tend to only move backwards and forwards. Sideways movement makes for more opportunies. Someone also pointed out to me that I need to activate my hind leg when moving, instead of freezing it there, and slowly dragging it along like a ball and chain. When moving backwards, I also need to not-commit to retreating so much, so that I would be able lunge fore sooner, I guess I can do this by moving to a smaller (with tension) stance for that moment.

I also need to pigeon toe a wee bit more to guard from groin shots, and to help me exert the hip power better. Also need to shoot out my punches instead of just pushing them out.

For kicks, I think I should chamber more before releasing. I also need to think about what to follow up with after my kick, because that seems to be an important moment in which I got caught. Same for punches. Also need to take note of my posture when kicking, think I tilt too much. Need to practice more combinations.

One last important thing. Facial expressions should remain neutral, and not frowning and straining, maybe a smile would do.

Looks like I got a lot to drill. Might as well throw in some stamina building stuff too.

Sort Stuff Soon

2009-10-21T22:06:00.005+08:00

This Saturday I'm going to have an exam. An exam for SDC. System Dynamics and Control. This exam will remind me that I enjoyed myself too much in China. That's because we were supposed to be learning the stuff and immersing ourselves at the same time. The final exam has a weightage of 40%. I have built a ceiling over my self. The best I can reach now is a B+, assuming I ace the the final.

Another thing on my mind is reorganizing my music. I realize that I listen mainly to 6 kinds of music. But I think I'd just store 3 or 4 kinds on the music player.

Somewhat intense rap; e.g Nas - Hero
Somewhat laid-back rap; e.g Wyclef Jean - Slow Down
Grungy Riffy Rockish Stuff; e.g Creed - Higher
Laid-back not so intense stuff with guitar; e.g Matchbox Twenty - If You're Gone
Vocal-centric poppy stuff; e.g Joss Stone - Understand
Oldies; e.g The Carpenters
But, I'll do the playlists that after this exam.
/edit: There's 1 more - Instrumentals. e.g Moonlight Dancing Song

I also realized that my laptop's main drive is almost maxed out, and so Vista keeps giving me that Low disk memory crap. Unfortunately, I can't seem to single out any particular software in my C drive, because they're all utilities that the computer uses and I don't! Maybe I ought to remove all the support stuff and a certain piece of software that grows really fast. It's called Symantec antivirus.
Again, after the exam.

The last thing to mention would be Chengdu photos. I haven't given thought to which to upload, but I do know that a lot of us would not be very comfortable with some photos being uploaded. Have to pick carefully.
After exam.

回来了!!!

2009-10-16T21:53:00.004+08:00

Back from Guanghan, China

Can't help noticing the sound of an endless amount of traffic rushing by.
Can't help noticing that the banana trees here are shorter than 4 metres.
Can't help noticing the presence of double decked buses.
Can't help noticing that pedestrians have right of way at zebra crossings.
Can't help noticing that there are many big though not straight trees along the roads.
Can't help noticing that the portions of food here are smaller but more pricey.
Can't find my ez-link card. May have left it there... Bleh.

How have I grown this trip ?
I'm not sure I have. Made a few friends here and there though, at obviously a shallower level than a lot of my peers. Still, I'm learning trying to learn. Core module in bad shape. Need 97% for the final paper for a chance of finding an A.

Was it fun ?
Definitely.

------------------------

F&B I liked and will miss
盖焦饭 (Rice covered in sauce)Variations include 回锅肉盖焦饭 which I have no idea what to call in English

肠（Sausages)

Meat on sticks like upsized satays with lots of chilli powder and 花椒 (Peppercorn)

500ml Yoghurt drinks

王老吉 (Wang Lao Ji)

Some variation of Xiao Long Baos called Guan Tang Baos, 3 Yuan for a tray of 8 !
(Wish I knew the Chinese words for GTBs)

-------------------------

Guess the first line said to me by my mum
a) "could you help me clear the rubbish"
b) "Welcome home"
c) "Where are the photos?"

Well you know what, it's a). Back to real life. Suck it up.
Intend to stick some pictures up here soon.

Kelabing

2009-08-30T23:47:00.002+08:00

On Friday night, I did something new. It's called clubbing. I guess that there are 2 important parts to this activity (to make it 'fun').

1. Get tipsy.
2. Convulse within a tiny pocket of space.

Sometimes, a person gets too tipsy. At this point, instead of feeling 'high' they must feel pretty shitty, judging from the their sprawling on the floor and attempts to force vomit.

Not being used to social settings such as this, I started to have trouble with vocal communication and spent majority of time in the club with jaw locked shut. Fortunately as the night passed, I began to speak to a few of the people I was more familiar with. But I still felt very uncomfortable and out of place.

All in all, it was pretty okay. I liked the music save for a few songs. And the bass was super strong, to the point where your whole body vibrates as the speaker or sub-woofer of whatever you call it blasts out its sound.

An eye opening experience for me.

General Holiday Objectives

2009-08-21T18:58:00.003+08:00

1. Run: Minimum 3.2km. Alternate running and jogging. Approx. 15 sec run, 30 sec jog. If weather and air quality permits

2. Read: Minimum 2 books. One must teach me something new or how to do something better.

3. Ready: Prepare for next school relevant modules/semester. Pack stuff properly.

4. Rest: Sleep by 10.30pm every night.

5. Resistance: Do 20 push-ups and 20 sit ups at a set time at every waking hour.

Lazy Rabbits

2009-08-11T17:12:00.006+08:00

The place at which lily bulbs were planted had a hut with two rabbits in it. My family used to keep rabbits, but the way I looked at the rabbits was different from them. I saw those long eared things in my pot of curry. Someone told me that rabbit curry is delicious. When I wanted to kill one to cook, they made such a fuss. In the end one died when they brought it out and some SUV driver reversed onto it's head, and the other, didn't die in an exciting enough way for me to remember.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that these two are really lazy!
We had sugarcane, and I decided to share with the place's rabbits. I stuck in a quarter cane, the rabbits hop up, take a bite then back away. Then when they see my semi-chewed cane with strands of sugar-caney string hanging out, they rush out to pull the strings into thier mouth.

Are domesticated animals just that lazy?
Maybe it's a good thing, because then I won't have to chase my ingredients.

Buah Longlong Kedondong

2009-08-06T12:12:00.004+08:00

Just as in the previous post, I've been spending my weekend digging holes. The difference is that I got to dig in a different place.

Regarding the chiku tree mentioned earlier, I'm mistaken. It was a Buah long-long tree. I have no idea how it got it's name (it isn't that long). And better yet, when you go to the market to order 'buah long long' juice, as my mum did, it is supposed to be called 'kedong-dong'. (Edit: checked wikipedia, it's buah kedondong)

Here's what happened, the objective was to prepare the tree for moving to our targeted location. The thing is that you can't just uproot a tree, and shove it back down in a hole elsewhere, it'll die. And although it would have been nice to get a big lorry to move the tree together with roots in a huge mound of land, we did not have enough resources to do so.

So we had to reduce the root area of the tree. This was done by digging a circular trench around the area of slightly raised land of the tree, and severing what ever sticks out. The logic behind this is that the raised area would contain more major roots, and by cutting of the less major roots, we would be giving the tree time to adjust to having slightly less roots. (Kinda reminds me how some countries squeeze their citizens except that the tree will get more again). If too much of the tree's roots are severed, it will die of shock, or something.

Changkol swinging was pretty good. Would have been better if able swing it into someone I really dislike without repercussions (for me). Built callus on middle phalange of thumb. Liquid filled, but fortunately didn't burst. Also got a bit of that wrinkly burnt skin farmer look, but just a wee bit. Someone mentioned that it made my arm hairs look less prominent.

After searching for photos of buah kedondong online, it seems that it is mostly shown while still green. The ones I saw were bright orange, but that might just have been influence of heat and bright light. (Yeah, I dislike bright light.)

Maybe I could do a degree in hole digging.

Hole Digging

2009-07-27T23:00:00.006+08:00

I got to spend my Sunday gardening,
It wasn't the kind where you trim the barely yellow leaves of your bonsai, as you talk to it and stroke it, nor was it the kind where you just water all your pots which irritate your neighbour because they take up so much space in the corridor.

It was real gardening, as in dig a hole to plant the plant, loosen and mix up the soil properly, and move the earth around kind of gardening. Actually, it was mostly digging holes nicely. The reason for doing so was that we were helping to transplant some lily bulbs from some construction site nearby to our target place.

The first step was to go to the site, and dig out the lily bulbs. If you were a passer-by, you'd probably have thought that we were nicking the bulbs. But hey, the plant isn't likely to survive while impaled on a steel rod and hoping to die quickly under the foundations of your new multi-million dollar property.

We were saving them. And if you had tried to stop us, I just might have impaled you with a steel rod, Vlad style.

Next, we moved to our targeted location, and commenced shovelling the hole in shape. It wasn't quite a hole, it was more like a miniature trench (or soil walled storm drain), but that was how we intended to plant a row of 'dem lilies.

So after setting the bulbs in place and making sure the right parts were where they should be, we were supposed to (loosely) pack the soil into the remaining trench area. I felt pretty stupid for loosening the soil up waaay earlier, because it had clumped up under its own weight again, thus I had to re-loosen it (cue chinese idiom: shi bei gong ban). But I guess I'm pretty okay with changkol swinging. It also made me think about what they say for just about every okinawan weapon I read about online. It can't all be for threshing rice or pounding stuff.

Yeah, and so we did. It took up most of the day. I could have done other stuff, but I guess it was cathartic enough for me. Besides there was a playground with rubber surface, which allowed me to practice those rolling break-falls which I can no longer execute half-right.
At least no one caught me in action.

I get news that there is a chiku tree to rescue. Here I come.

Eyeballs

2009-07-22T23:37:00.007+08:00

I just realize that I spend a lot of my work time having to stare at a computer. I also just realized that doing so is really not going to help my eyesight.

I used to pride myself in having (near) perfect eyesight, but eventually, I kind of messed it up, starting with my left eye. This was because it had ocular dominance. The mode of deterioration was mostly rubbing, and an occasional long stretch of some pointless computer game (c'mon, which isn't?).

So now I have a quite blur left eye, which seems intent on focusing on the nearest object (sometimes my eyelash), and fortunately, a still pretty good right eye (Thank God for that!).

However, I think that there is still hope.
Countermeasures to reduce/prevent/reverse:

Reduce brightness and contrast of computer screen to lowest tolerable values.
Sitting >60cm from the computer screen (>5 metres for the telly).
Eye rotations and movement to muscle extremities and other 'exercises' while aboard bus.
Massages for areas around eyes.
Eye distance focusing and peripheral vision object identification & reading while waiting for bus.
Reading with book at >35cm distance.

I hope this will pay off.

Some of the people of the past saw a lot of shit.
Some of the people of today can't see for shit.

Situation Normalizing

2009-07-12T14:16:00.005+08:00

Haven't added a single word here in slightly over 2 weeks now.
It also means I've not been looking closely enough at things to get that "Wow! Amazing!" thought/feeling for slightly over 2 weeks.

But I pondered what someone has recently blogged about. The idea was that instead of offering solutions to someone's problems, comfort them instead.

I think that doing so is quite wasteful.
I see it like this.
Why waste resources procrastinating and avoiding the problem?
I'd rather offer a solution and help where I can, even if it may piss my friend off, and even if it doesn't completely eradicate the problem.
Because at least I tried to help, and if I had just provided temporary comfort, I'd be no better than an extra stiff drink.

(Note that my definition of friend is very narrow)

I stay true to my word even if it may put me in an embarrassing situation or some other disadvantage.

--------------

The focus of the past few weeks was organizing, clearing and moving a lot of stuff in my cave. Stuff like that crappy porcelain painting that is, according to my mum, antique.

Having no internet at home doesn't help. The office still has, but then again, there isn't much time to use it, and lots of coding is blocked. Thus I haven't been adding any/many comments except on the pages of a lucky/unlucky few.

But it's good too.
I spend more time reading, and not just newspapers, magazines and fighting books anymore (though still a lot).
And I'm waking up earlier on weekends, which is great because I tend to get more stuff done in the earlier parts of the day.

--------------

Stagnation

2009-06-29T10:26:00.002+08:00

My life has pretty much settled into a comfortable, mundane loop. This makes me uneasy. Stagnation is never good.

I can actually break down my time spent in a day into a chart of percentages and exhaustive list of things I do, but I'm too embarrassed to put any of the details up here, because you probably have more fingers.

Because I've been doing the same things, looking at them the same way, and mopping them up the same way, I've had nothing much to say about nothing.

Also, I've haven't had real, meaningful conversation with anyone (much less a girl) for a week plus. Just a lot of technical jargon and/or facts here and there. Some for working, some for fighting.
[I guess I talk mostly like that too =( ]

But I think I have managed to find my close friends, yet we are not very close. For some reason distance and commitments keep us from meeting. Yet when we meet, we also don't have very much to say, and seem mostly contented to bask in each others company.

As for the rest of my little world, I don't know what everyone else is thinking. I try not to care, but in the lapses that I do, I get a little uneasy from their judging, but eventually figure that it mostly never really mattered anyway. I throw in a snide jibe now and then to see if it makes a difference. Maybe I get to incense a few I don't particularly like, but really, nothing gained or lost.

I try my best not to make shit matter, and improve what can be, for when we walk the final journey, we still have to walk alone. A higher being may watch, but still I got to make myself happy.

Maybe I have forced sensory deprivation on myself.

Sloth

2009-06-20T23:48:00.006+08:00

I think my greatest weakness for the past 3 years (maybe many more) is laziness.I'm sure you kind of figured that already, but yeah, I just got reminded of it. It's still not pleasant.

During the 1st 3 months in JC, I made a friend who had a similar interest (that was then, I'm no longer sure about my interest) in aerospace stuff, the difference being that he wanted to go to SP, and study the electronics side.

One day we talked about 'after that'. He said NTU, whereas I being the rather hopeless dreamer, said MIT and talked about it, and started his MIT dream too. So after our time in JC, we went our separate ways, and now, with his scholarships and all, I would think that MIT has just gotten a lot closer for him. On the other hand, sometimes I wonder if NTU is even remotely close to me. And yes, I do feel envious, and want to kick myself (but it still would not help the situation).

I want to find a reason that would drive me. Not many things can beat passion, but I feel that I've already put one foot into this engineering grave, and have little choice but to follow reluctantly, and just need some murmurs to stir me.

However, I do realize that even if I qualified, I doubt I'd be able to go to MIT. Reason: Tuition grant bond.

Actually, that's not the only time I feel envious. Most, if not all the envy I feel comes from academia. Yet, it's because I'm not putting in enough effort. What cheek I have to feel envious!

"Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Turbulent Dream

2009-06-14T12:24:00.005+08:00

It was probably bad because of the decisions I made in the dream. I think I learned my lesson though.

Just because a person may look like someone you like shouldn't make you more likely to listen to them. There is such a thing as a disguise.

Also even if the person is real, there is really no reason for you to listen to them. If someone asks you to eat shit or break multiple laws, you obviously shouldn't do it.

Thirdly, never leave your valuable things especially identity cards unattended. At least stow them somewhere safe and secure.

---------------------

Anyway, it went like this, I infiltrated a certain school to meet a certain someone. I manage to blend in with the rest of the class. However there is a situation. We all want to skip this specific class. So it was suggested that we leave our things and make a dash.

We did, and we only returned when it was dark. The time at which street lamps begin to have their orange glow become more noticeable. The problem was getting back in. Freaking security guards, my bag moved to a new position in the open (meaning that the security guard or whoever in charge had a chance to rummage through)

As it was pretty useless by then to sneak in, I just walked in, only to find that the DM or teacher, whose class we skipped, had photocopied all my cards. I snatched them back, but realized it was likely he had already taken the details back in his office and was just dangling the originals in front of me. I was then notified that the police had been alerted.

And like all sucky dreams, I woke up.
Okay, maybe I need to think more about the consequences of my decisions...

Business Idea: Photographic Lens Rental

2009-06-11T10:35:00.003+08:00

More and more people seem to be taking up photography. Mostly with those big, bulky DSLR type cameras too. I also notice that some people, especially students usually have to save for a while for their camera or camera parts. This means that the add-ons and interchangeables are usually bought one by one.

Yesterday, I overheard a colleague talking about photography, and lenses and all. It was started because some of the people pictures he took had only 1 or 2 clear faces out of a whole group. The lens was blamed. He later went on to explain about the different kind of lenses.

A while back, I also took a module on photography, I used one of the old school digital cameras, and I noticed a few people using the DSLRs. (I got a C for it btw)

I did a quick search for camera lens, and got to some site reviewing cannon lenses. There I just looked at 2 lenses, one was some zoom one (USD $1300), the other, I'm not sure (it costs USD $400). But at least I know that the price range is USD $400 and up.

So the idea here is exactly as the title says, camera lens rental.Take a sum of money, to buy a variety of mid to high-end camera lenses for some popular brand/s, say Cannon or Nikon, then proceed to rent them out.

Maybe the rental charges will depend on the cost of the lens, and there should be some sort of down payment. The money to be made would probably somewhere along the lines of 5 to 10% of the cost of the lens for 3 to 5 days, and maybe a down payment of 40% and some sort of agreement to compensate the shop if the lens is destroyed,damaged etc, of course you'd have to get the renter's details too.

For now nothing's happening. It's just an idea, I don't have enough to start up something like that, not yet anyway.

'Rupt

2009-06-07T20:44:00.009+08:00

Here's what happening, an order of bankruptcy has been placed on the gate of the place where I usually sleep. It worries me for there will be intrusion upon my resting ground. At the same time I am gleeful to get it over and done with. It's a bit sick, but I really do feel it's partly a blessing.

It is not my family that has gone bankrupt as of now. It is that he has (finally) been discovered as bankrupt. Not that he ever provided properly/willingly/painlessly/lovingly.
A real man will provide for his family, not suck his wife dry and ditch her. A real man will not suck anyone dry for that matter.

On the physical side, it allows for more than a decade of unnecessary baggage to be removed, hopefully sold for what little compensation it can get us. So many books, so little knowledge. What a pretentious place.

And I had to go through my things. There weren't many, as I had been doing my part to box up my unneeded things. A lot of it can actually be thrown away, and I'd be happy to finally get the chance to do so.

The precious/valuable things that I own are a laptop, a few insurance papers (for laptop, bag, etc), papers containing my list of contacts and a few letters, some ang paos which had been opened but not used, a bicycle left behind by my real father, Introduction to Flight which is likely to be my bread and butter, and the OG21'2007 jacket from NYJC because those people allowed me to realize how much I had yet to grow, and how lousy I had been.

The rain did not just begin, it has loitered for a long time. I am sure that this is a point of change.

-----------------------------------

I think I should just take the bout of steroids for my lungs.
Someone teach me to swim please.

Weighing Options

2009-06-05T22:25:00.002+08:00

I asked for some opinion on my options,
here's what I gather so far.

1. If I decide to enlist here, my current passport will be replaced. I was told that this would not be desirable. Also, I'm asthmatic, and can't swim (yet).

2. I am aware of what my passions are. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that I will be able to make a living doing my passions, thus if I decide to pursue them as work, chances are that they'd have to be a sideline-in-my-own-capacity kind of thing.

3. I have already spent the last 2++ years in studying engineering stuff, I can get most of it, and perhaps would have gotten mechanics of flight right if I had put in effort.

I think you can see where this is going right ?

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff!

2009-06-02T21:40:00.007+08:00

Some people say, "I've had X years of shit already. I've had more than enough!"

I say, "I've had X years of shit already. I can take more. A little bit o' shit won't hurt!"

( X is usually a positive number that represents a negative effect)
-----------------------------

I've been tossing around a few ideas about my not-far-in-the-distance academic-or-military future.

I have a few options, none of which are particularly appealing at the moment, mainly because I don't know what I want anymore, career wise. And if I go to Uni, I might not even choose Aerospace Eng. or Mechanical Eng.

1. Go straight to University (Most likely NTU, but definitely a Local Uni), get a new 3 year bond replacing the current poly one

2. Go find work for 2 years (clear the bond), then go to Uni, get a new 3 year bond

3. Work for a year, hope that the new engineering Uni opens. Enter (Get the 3 year bond)

4. Enlist for NS, get a PR, go to Uni

5. Go find work for 2 years, go NZ, join military

6. Do NS, go NZ, join military

7. Do NS, sign on

Whatever I choose, it's likely to affect the rest of my life.
Suggestions ?

Communicate

2009-05-31T22:36:00.007+08:00

Earlier today I was at my grandparents watching TV, reading newspaper and basking in their company. My grandpa uses snail mail to keep in touch with all his friends, mostly because he couldn't quite care for using computers, not that he completely can't but I guess it's just a matter of preference.

One of the many people he keeps in touch with is my grand-aunt, his younger sister, and every Sunday, without fail, he'd cut out 2 comics - Chew on it (Yes the definitive Singapore comic strip) and Pickles. So once in a while when the comics build up to a certain number, he'd mail them, together with a lengthy letter over to her. Whether she responds similarly, I have no idea.

Anyway the thing is that I notice that in letters (informal), people generally write a lot of stuff (judging from the amount of text squeezed into a piece of paper at while sniping glance at a distance).

On the other hand, it might be just my experience, but emails (informal) are usually so bloody short, and to some extent just don't convey the same warmth and/or character as handwriting and a real personal signature does. The longest emails I get are usually chain emails...

I guess that's why they call it the good old days.

---------------

Later in the evening, I watched some history channel. In my opinion, they've taken over showing the cool stuff that discovery used to show. Anyway, I watched some show about body language.

It was pretty cool to learn about the various clues that give how someone is really feeling away, as well as when there might be more questions to ask. Stuff they showed included the bodily gestures, like placement of hands.

E.g. If someone starts using one hand to hold another or fold their arms or grip something in way that they could do so tighter or grip something that doesn't need gripping, it probably means that they are on the defensive, or said something that they may have doubts in saying.

By the end of the show, I realized that I tend to fold my arms a lot, and am generally pretty defensive anyway. Another question came to my mind, if these people are experts at identifying body language, would they be experts in masking their own too ?

Other than that, I think I should go dig out my secondary school art stuff, and start practicing painting, because I think it is the single most valuable skill to have in art. I was a bit inspired after reading the recruit section at the back of the classifieds. The guy does caricature as a job AND hobby.

Deer In the Headlights

2009-05-30T00:40:00.005+08:00

Jeremy Monteiro, Ernie Watts, Randy Brecker, Richard Jackson, The T'ang Quartet & all were real good. They all do their thing darn well. I think they played a few tunes which happened to coincide with how I have been feeling recently, or maybe they influenced it with their powerful music.

They played one called the bubula dance, which is supposed to emote a heart fluttering in love, and another, which I could not remember the title of that was supposed to be about going from the loss of something to acceptance (Life goes on?). The not so emotionally involved tune that I liked most was called funk (some skunk funk according to the booklet). But actually, I liked all lah.

I kind like that really big cello thingy that produced all the low bassy sounds (Acoustic Double Bass according to the booklet), and I also think that a trumpet and saxophone sound roughly the same.

I also came to appreciate the drummer, as he knew where his sounds fit in the song, and unlike a lot of hardcore-punk-ass-whatever whose drums always dominate the whole bloody barely-a-song. In future, I think I'll take note whenever I hear about a Jazz show in town. Maybe I ought to learn a few things about music too so that I'm not so dependant on the booklet.

My main objective to enjoy the show was completed. Great virgin experience of going for a Jazz show, and entering the esplanade concert hall (which has real cool architecture by the way).
I think this is one rare good decision that I made.

-----------------------

My side objective was not fulfilled. There was someone I wanted to talk to. We made eye contact for a moment during the seating, and when it was made, I think it was because I was caught like a deer in the headlights, and it took a moment to register that person's presence. Also, I didn't smile or curl up the sides of my mouth, my face was stuck in neutral gear. I guess you might call that 'kena dian' (as in electricity).

Still, I am thankful to have seen & heard.

Bridges

2009-05-26T16:19:00.006+08:00

I need to start building bridges instead of burning down what little I have left.

The main point is not to be needy and wanting inclusiveness of a group, because that is really just pointless. You may appear to have a pack to travel in, when in fact you are a lone wolf prowling.(Someone else points out that you should be with them because you want to, not just for the inclusiveness, and I can't disagree)

I feel that keeping a small circle of close friends, and a larger ring of mutually friendly beings is one of the ways to go. And the only way I can think of at the moment. I think that for the small circle, it will take a lot of time and patience. But for the larger ring, perhaps the beings have tried, but I just have not played my part.

It's like one country building their part of the bridge, but here on this side, divided by a river or strait, I refuse to set aside the resources and manpower to build up my side. Then again, perhaps the the small circle is derived from that larger ring.

Also I need to stop burning them bridges.
Looking back, I really have not been nice (or attempted to be) to my peers. I'd say that at least 60% of my comments then were mean spirited, 30% work related, and the rest barely audible mumbling, a few lousy jokes here and there (esp. in sec 2 right after transfer, but after feedback, I shut up, maybe lousy jokes are good?), a few facts without having a point, and maybe a wee bit of attempt to build the bridges.

Clearly I haven't been making effort (or considered doing so).

Maybe I don't always need to have a point (especially negative ones) when trying to be friendly.

But I'm pretty sure it helps to have a positive point. Maybe a lot of people just don't get what I'm trying to say. I am pretty sure that I do not speak 'cheem-ly' as accused of having been, but speak as a person who regularly uses english does. Despite that I'm pretty happy to find people can understand and talk on the same frequency, even if they don't seem that interested.

I kind of figured this out from sticking my neck out, and sort of smiling at people in my current place of internship. Everyone is friendly, although conversation does not last (back to conversation without having a point)

On the other hand, maybe it's just because I'm not competing with my colleagues for anything. It's not as if I'll eat into their share of bonus. But then again, just about everyone there is nice to each other. I still find their grins a bit creepy though. Perhaps I should stop thinkingso much and just smile to people in my studying environment too.

On the other side of the coin, maybe I ought to stick to my guns, and if people can't take me, so be it. I'd like to have the real and raw me known, not some candy-coated bitter pill. But not a lot of people can handle the bitter pills. And there are different kinds of bitter pills ranging from negative habits to negative pastimes. I'm glad to say mine are less of the negative pastimes.

I guess that this has turned into a cake issue.
Can't have it and eat it.

Perhaps I should just stop looking back to see where I've gone wrong and continue a route of trial and error, albeit with a different trial.

Perhaps I should just wander alone and be comfortable with it.

Ah shit. Lets just take it as it comes and see what happens.

Sensawunda

2009-05-23T23:36:00.004+08:00

I think I need a few good books to help me pry open my clammed up mind.Or some other medium to be the can opener for my head.

Maybe it's the environment, its familiarity that has shut it.
Maybe the jadedness has managed to seep in.
Maybe it has been a lack of non-academic stimulation.
Maybe I just need to open my eyes more.
Maybe I need to go more places.
Maybe I need to examine things closer up.
Maybe I need to observe and shut up.

I need my sense of wonder.

Toilet Paper

2009-05-21T21:51:00.006+08:00

How much more effective is toilet paper with dimples versus toilet paper without dimples ?

If you took toilet paper with dimples and compressed it layer by layer into a the shape of a golf ball, with the dimples showing nicely on the outside, and hit it as you would for a regular golf ball, would it travel further than similarly shaped toilet paper without dimples ?

---------------------------

The thought of backpacking has also crossed my mind a few times the past few weeks. Not that I can afford it now or what, but for now, it's just a thought.

---------------------------

Did you know that there's going to be a new university in 2011 here in Singapore ?

It's focus is going to be engineering, and it will partner up with MIT. Not too clear about all the details, but I'll stick a link when I find a relevant article (or feel like it).

---------------------------
I'm getting a bit riled up with the coding for for the tag box coding. Actually the problem just happens for Internet Explorer 7 and below. I'm not too sure about other browsers, but Firefox works just fine.

Whether people read this or not, I'd still recommend Firefox.

I've also considered changing the whole tag thing to just a button/link. Then when you click the button/link, the tag box will pop up separately and you do the usual tag stuff there.

Actually, as I write this, i wonder why I didn't think of doing what I did for the Preferred music thingy (go check it out!) for the tag box, then there'll surely no overflow problem since the page will extend along with it. And hopefully it will work with IE7.

---------------------------

Last night I had the chance to handle rattan sticks and tonfa. Rattan sticks are those used in kali or eskrima or whatever you care to call it. I learned that tonfa are very effective as anti-stick weapons.

---------------------------

I should train my jumping and landing skills. May be more useful than I think.

I'm also trying to learn to be more emotionally self sufficient. I should be my own source of contentment.

And also to make conversation last longer, because when it comes to the silent part, it really stays as a silent part, except with a few people, and people who know how to get the tires out of the rut.

Talk rubbish with a man, and he is entertained for a while. Teach a man to talk rubbish, and he can entertain himself and the other people around him as he prepares to catch or cook his fish.

Trials And Goals, Ebbs and Flows

2009-05-14T20:00:00.007+08:00

I seem to be seeing more good looking girls nowadays.
I think one or more of the following is happening,
1. I'm getting desperate, my notions of good looking have relaxed.
2. There are more good looking ladies in the part of the island I'm currently frequenting.
3. I travel too more places now.

I'm quite sure it's not the first reason, because I know what I want.
Nick Ng wants his girl to be able to sing Hillsong's 'You'll Come' well.
Here's my criteria:
1. Sincerity
2. Diligence
3. Humility
4. Discipline
5. She must be able to hold on to her beliefs no matter what.
6. Doesn't need me. Wants and loves, just because.
7. Has her own interests and hobbies.

Anything else would be an added bonus.

Of course I have to do my part and become a better person too. (FYI I'm trying)
I'm doing a bit of soul searching, asking a lot of questions.
Maybe I need to open up more, and warm up to people faster.
(Increase my heat transfer co-efficient ?)

I realise,
When I share my tales, they always tell of mange.
That was how it was. That I cannot change.
But I can choose to gather better songs to sing,
Instead of arranging more strings of notes with gloomy things.

If Money & Location Were No Issue

2009-05-11T20:27:00.006+08:00

I'd get a big piece of land. Most of it must be arable. I'll grow my own trees, plants and crops, and grow enough for about 30 people per month. Of course, some fruit will be seasonal. Then I'd be able to store some for poor harvest, and feed my friends and family when having events.

I'd get a piece of sea, and have an outstation with stuff to attract fish, so I can catch them quickly when needed. The fish are always nice, clean, fat, nutritious and uncontaminated. A patch of the beach too.

The piece of land will be near a lot of nature. A waterfall. A rock wall. A cycling route. Birds. Insects. A natural spring. Cool Air.

And yet, not too far from civilization. I could still choose to walk into town, watch movies, shoot pool, shoot hoops, buy ice-cream, visit friends.

And of course there is the main living facility. A hangar for whatever I'm building. An art room for me to paint, sculpt or sketch. A gym with heavy bags, octagon and the like for training. An underground basement for even more of the stuff I'm building as well as a bomb/natural disaster shelter.

A garage for my toys, a bicycle, a canoe, a boat, camping equipment, ropes, diving gear, a land rover-ish vehicle. An APC to be my mobile home. A flying machine for 2 or 3 (that doesn't need a long runway)

An entertainment room when I feel like playing games/watching TV.

Maybe I'll think up a more realistic blueprint for a house in the near future.

In the mean time, you could check this out.

Indirect Forced Formal Dressing

2009-05-05T19:31:00.006+08:00

I went to the Esplanade last night to see if there was any dress code for the event.
There isn't. The lady there told me that it was up to us, and that they weren't strict about it. She added that we should dress according to whether we respect the performer.
Sounds like having a collar is the minimum (for us guys). A few seconds later as I thanked the lady for the info, I began to think about how to enforce a dress code without actually setting a rule in stone.

You may find some of the ideas politically incorrect.
If so, do refer to the FYI section in the column far right.

Here's my first idea: Set the air-con on a really cool setting. This way people are more likely to feel cold and will cover up if they can, and thus, dress less informally in future (since casual clothing is typically less thick/warm). So although they may dress informally the first time, they'd probably do something about it the next time they visit. However, they still may not comply to our invisible rule, they can still bypass it with a jacket or hoodie.

That brings me to attack from a different angle: Cut off discounts to students/NS-Men, the reason being that I feel that this is the age group most likely to dress informally. This way, they'd be discouraged to watch these shows since majority of us do not have solid incomes, and those who are rich would probably own more versatile not-so-informal-ish clothes anyway.

My next idea: Hold more (formal-ish) shows on weekday evenings instead of weekends, this is because a lot of people work on weekdays, thus they have to dress for work, and unfortunately, not a lot jobs give you the freedom of dressing informally to work, so unless the person can be bothered to bring an extra change of informals (which I think would be a minority), most of the audience would be in 'acceptable' attire.

My last idea: Jack up the prices of the tickets so high that only those who really have money to throw around or really desperately want to see the show will come. Reason: Those who really want to see the show probably have a lot of respect for the performer, and those with money to throw around would probably want to look somewhat good/acceptable, and dress accordingly.

So that's about it.
If you haven't realised by now, I have disregarded any other factors that might affect the show. For example, my last idea might result in a very low attendance. But heck, these are just ideas, and they do not have to be implemented. But these ideas can be used to generate further ideas and modifications of existing ones, and in the end, you may end up with a new good idea.

-------------------------------

Oh and if you really didn't notice, this blog has a new skin.
It was chosen in line with blackle.com but I'm not too sure that this colour scheme saves energy, but the higher contrast makes for easier reading. Also, notice there are no lines/dividers on the skin ? This way it looks a bit chaotic, a bit like yours truly. Finally, this skin allows the page to load way faster than the previous one, because it has a smaller size.

Armchair jumping

2009-04-30T22:44:00.005+08:00

For the past few days I've been feeling pretty sluggish & strained, didn't complete any running at all.

But other stuff was done this week.
I found out that there are now many more roguelike games, and they are getting closer to my want of a free to play tactics (like Tactics Ogre & Fire Emblem) kind of roguelike. I'm not too worried whether it's going to have an ASCII GUI or what, the gameplay is more important. I'm not a graphics whore. It also means that I'm no longer limited to the same kind of nethack-ish stuff or those realtime ones that come across as a plan view 2D version of counterstrike.

I also believe I can now deal with a random guy who turns up at my stand-up comedy (if I decide to have one) and hurls random insults or random shit questions at me.
One of the best responses IMO is : "I'm paid to make a fool of myself. What's your excuse ?"
and the response to kids is : "I've only got 20 minutes to make a fool of myself, you've got the rest of your life, so just shut up!"

Recently, I've also managed to get back in touch with one of my primary school friends. I was told that my face hasn't changed, and that I'm still easily recognisable.

I things I learnt this week include the photogrammetry triangulation concept (which eventually veered off into orienteering/location triangulation).

That veered off even further into how to use a stick (the shadow), the position of the Sun and the local time on my watch to determine where north/south is.

That eventually became a read-up on wilderness survival, which in turn went to knives, which in turn went to knife making. I suddenly realised that the machinery in my company would allow me to do up the finishing touches for a survival knife. What I would need to do first would be to design and shape the main blade out of a reasonably thick piece of steel. Then I suppose I could sharpen the blade and get it coated in my company. It then dawned on me why permits are required for industrial equiopment.

Also, I went to go virtually visit the the processes that I'm supposed to be good at, 6 Hats (more fun than 6 sigma), and lateral thinking.

And yeah, I was reminded of why I talk a lot of crap (so some say). I shall now vindicate myself.
A 'crap' idea can be dissected into a few concepts, which can be made use of, and used to churn out good ideas. Don't believe it ? Check this out. But I guess not every problem is solved with creative solutions. Sometimes you just got to drill through.

"You can't get fit in one workout, just as you can't live your life in one day."- Johnny G

-----------------------------

On a side note, I think I should change the design, layout etc. of this page, because I now think this 'tropical' design is more like some kids blanket cover. I might even attempt to make my talking box work properly for IE.

Little Man, Big Man

2009-04-27T23:10:00.011+08:00

Here's the song. I have no idea what video that is though.

----------------

Physical Being.

Belly full of curry and spices. Left achilles tendon slightly pulled from landing wrongly. Fingers hesitant to declassify so many secrets. Wanting to learn to swim (and swim the combat stroke). New goal set: Reach Navy SEAL standard minus the boots and long pants handicap, so in 11 minutes instead (give me chance first lah. One step at a time.)

1. swim 500 yards in 12.5 minutes or less, followed by a 10-minute rest

2. 42 push-ups in under two minutes, followed by a two-minute rest

3. 50 sit-ups in under two minutes, followed by a two-minute rest

4. 6 pull-ups, followed by a 10-minute rest

5. run 1.5 miles in boots and long pants in less than 11.5 minutes

-------------------------

Mental State.

Read a few blogs (kudos to them). Reading Joko Ninomiya's auto-biography. Now have a better idea where I want to see myself spiritually (though not in a worship sense). I want to be a champion in spirit in life, and of life. (Words just don't cut it)

I've been living just for the competition. Just to temporarily boost my own ego when I compete and win against someone. And begin to doubt myself more and more for each defeat. The winning effects don't last, the doubt does. Champion for a fleeting moment. Loser for having not grown.

No matter how fucked up you are, you can still choose to be a Champion. Being a Champion is not about dominating others. Its about dominating myself, my fears, and stimulating my own growth.

In the area of loving others, I feel and agree that you have to love yourself before you can love someone else. Maybe I can just warn/care/lookout for them for now.

If I have an other half, I want it to be like this:

You are the milk in my tea.
Not something I can't live without.
Rather, something I would like everyday, just because.
(Yes this was ripped from someone else, I have trouble writing so subtly)

Of course I have a pretty good idea idea of what virtues I want to see in my other half, but I'ma check and fix myself first. Then hopefully it will reciprocated.

Rice Burner

2009-04-23T21:58:00.017+08:00

I'm having a lot of slow arriving messages with this new version of MSN. Its like a car that has been modified to look 'nice' (nice to the owner and maybe a select crowd, but tacky to the rest of us), but not perform better.

My messages have been coming real slow.
Slow like a few days later kind of slow

I was trying to click someone elses name but clicked on Wilfred's.

And because of this I think Wilfred must be feeling mighty proud of himself. Anyway, here's the message:

So I checked the history to see what I had said to bring make him bring up his pride, and quite frankly, money drain. (Just give me the money. I sure could use it to pay for my intended university degree.)

I couldn't help but laugh, it sure smelled like this. Also, here's the rice burner link.
And now I do remember. I was playing with wikipedia's random article function (that was before I wrote about the find better things to do post).

I quote Nick's facebook note to the ATFKERS (The time has come), because in truth, I doubt anyone is jealous of the kiddo owning a car, certainly not me. If theres something to be jealous about, it would be that parents are willing to throw money at their spoilt child just because. (I'd certainly like to be spoiled once in a while.)

And though its true I have a few sad stories here and there, doesn't everybody have some kind of sad story too ? How would you know what is pleasure, if you have never experienced pain ?
How would you know what is light if there were no darkness ? I hope you get my point.

Speaking of cars, I was talking to a few of the engineers in my company's technical team, because out of 6, only 1 drives. One guy told me that it was because he prioritised buying a house first, another began to explain to me why it wasn't worth buying, and went into details such as usage (How often you need to use it), depreciation (cars rarely, if ever increase in value), and one factor that I never really thought of, your earnings per hour versus the cost & life of the car per hour (Can you earn more than enough to maintain the car and still live comfortably (and support your family)?). He went on to say that it would be most worthit to have a car if you need to move around alot and each decision you make could earn you thousands.

Argh engineers, always breaking stuff down for the real lowdown.

The one who did drive (also a Hyundai Getz btw), had his reasons. If you guessed that it's to show off ~~too~~ , you've got it wrong. This guy is in his late 20's, is already married, and is studying at NTU. His wife is working too. Now do remember that this company is in Loyang.

Repeated for emphasis: LO-fucking-YANG

That means he has to travel from east to west to get to class, and sometimes pick his wife up along the way too (I know because I rode once). And he has to speed all the way just to be on time! Now that's justified.

Not very many people own cars just to show off in a feeble attempt to make others feel jealous. If I wanted to, I guess I could write more, but I think that I have responded sufficiently.

----------------------------------------

In other news, school is going to start. Our QSMM lecturer can joke one. Promise.

----------------------------------------

In more other news, nkt's brother was punched by a known attacker. The visible damages were a heavily swollen right cheek with black eye. Upon visiting the doctor, it was found that both eyes were swollen too. Fancy that, swelling two eyes with one punch. nkt seriously had enough of his brother openly and defiantly disobeying and threatening his mother. nkt knows that he was wrong to have done so, but is not sorry. nkt knows that violence is not the best way to go. nkt is not sure if there's still a chance to change direction. But he still tries.

Oh, and Nick and Alvin if you're reading this and you're considering pulling me to church. No. If I went now I'd be going for the wrong reason. But I'm not going to explain myself here.

'Blind'

2009-04-19T21:46:00.006+08:00

As you may have read earlier, I blacked out.
I'm going to attempt to describe it.

First, I lost my balance as well as sense of balance, and ended up hugging a wall.
Next, I got a bit of help and was seated down.

During this period, I really couldn't see shit. I knew my eyelids were up, eyes open, but I just couldn't see. A few minutes later, I could see a little bit. Not really though, it was more like a negative film thing, except that the lines were really thin and it was 95% black with a wee bit of white/purplish/green outlines (mostly white), and I could only see maybe within less than a metre.
Eventually, as I forced my eyes to remain open, the black slowly lightened up, and about 5 minutes later, I could see, except that the mats where I was (which were supposed to be reddish-pink) looked orange to me. As I sipped 100Plus and breathed deeply, my regualr vision came back.
But for the rest of the day I was left with a floating/headachy feeling at upper-back part of my head.

Later on I heard a few explanations, one of which my body was lacking salt.
This may be true, for I had not eaten dinner the night before or breakfast or lunch earlier. Obviously, a square of dark chocolate and 2 curry puffs is not enough.

Eat your meals people. It's really no fun.

Folding Knives

2009-04-19T17:50:00.008+08:00

Saw the new Swiss Army Soldier. I like.
It has lost the traditional rectangle with semi-circular ends shape, and now sports this more ergonomic (looks like to me) handle thing.
However, I doubt that it is available here yet. It is supposed to be available from 'Spring 2009',
but of course it will take a few months to ship here.

Thus I tried to find out what they currently have in the country. Another brand I found was SOG, which is sold at Sheares somewhere along Selegie Road. If you take a look at their catalogue, you can see that the blades are pretty darn strong, they fired a bullet at the edge and the bullet got sliced in half!

I particularly like the Trident Tanto & Vulcan Tanto.
(Unfortunately, there is no anti-corrosion TiNi black coating on the Vulcan whose specs I like better)(And the Trident for the little slot that for cutting without having to open up the blade.)

Tanto tipped because it looks thicker (thus stronger).
and also because of the slot in the handle that allows for seatbelt/rope/cord cutting.
(Btw, This one is also quite cute)

However, I think that I'd just stick to the SAK for now, because I probably won't have any good reason for owning a SOG-TT, and it seems a lot pricier than the SAK.
Also, the SAK can open bottles !

---------------------------------------

Beyond the knifey stuff, yesterday I blacked out for a while.
Consequence of doing physical activity without having breakfast or lunch, and forgetting to breathe properly. And eating only a piece of chocolate and 2 curry puffs for the whole day.
That is real idiotic. I can't help but laugh at myself.

Bored ?

2009-04-14T15:33:00.007+08:00

I realise that while on this attachment, those of us who are very free (myself included) shouldn't just waste away all our time surfing facebook or random wikipedia articles. I think that this is a really good time to pick up something to read. You might pick a storybook, or if you're pretty religious, I guess you could read your Bible, Quran, Dao De Jing, Vedas, Mahabharata, or Ramayana or reflect upon yourself (or all of the above). I think that beats just sitting there trying to look busy. And maybe you'll learn something.

----------------------------------------
Clicking.
That's pretty much the key to a good friendship (stole the line from Uzzismo).
But unfortunately, I feel like a very specialised enzyme that only processes very few kinds of rare substrate.

Or maybe I get friends like black swan events. Note that friends and acquaintances are different, but an acquaintance might become a friend. On the other hand, I'm not entirely miserable, I'm pretty okay with doing my own thang, but it is nice to go out with friends once in a while. Too often and its called going to class. I've yet to find a good balance.

If you were wondering about this black swan stuff, Nassim Nicholas Taleb came up with it.He obviously got something right.

---------------------------------------------
The Nkt Psyche (Very Long)

I think my psyche has been composed of being rather isolated throughout most of secondary school. So although I'm not enjoying it all, I'm not very surprised either.

In Sec 1, before transferring, I tried, but the whole class couldn't understand any of my jokes. Fortunately there was a guy who could get about half of them. So, to entertain myself, I picked up the bad habit of Magic the Gathering, and made a few friends with the Sec 5. But then they had to focus on 'O's eventually right ?

Then in Sec 2, I got transferred. Transferred far away that is. And it would be the norm for me to get up by 5, be barely on time or late for school, do the fuckshit stuff, then reach home at about 7.45pm, so obviously, it would be really inconvenient for me to 'hang out' (thus I didn't). Also, having arrived a year late, the cliques had generally coagulated.

By the time I left the school, I think the impression that I left was that of being lousy at Chinese, a bit sarcastic, a bit aggressive, a bit anti-religious, not good at light hearted conversation, a bit crazy, and quite a lot unfriendly.

Example:
Chinese New Year. We were supposed to pool money (about $3 each) to use to buy shit and decorate our classrooms. I felt that it was a act of wastage (I still do BTW), so I went around writing on the whiteboard of every class that was in the same year as us, kind of protesting against it. I wrote ,"Why are we paying $2++ each for a 3 in 8 roulette chance of winning a 70 cent cheap plastic file and and a 30 cent snack made in malaysia ? In the end the decorations are still going to be thrown away"

3 in 8 because there were 3 prizes, all the same, and there were 8 classes. 37.5% chance of getting a 'prize'

I got into trouble, and got called out. The teacher in the next class who didn't like my class said that "I wrote something offensive on his classes' whiteboard" I replied that what I wrote was not offensive, for it did not insult anyone. And I wrote it on many other classes' whiteboards too. Then I asked if I was wrong. End of argument, I got sent back to class with a pathetic excuse for a warning.

A few classes got my message and didn't decorate, however I was disappointed that my class people went ahead and decorated the room anyway. So we won, and got our shitty plastic file and 'super' rings. But in the bigger picture, it definitely wasn't a win.

During the first 3 months of JC, I tried putting in a bit of effort into making ~~friends~~ acquaintances, mainly because it was the only objective (otherwise I'd have gone to find work)
It took me a while to start up, and I doubt I made a good impression on my orientation people. Mainly because of the lousy conversational skills thing. But I'm pretty glad for having went for the first three months, because I don't think that I'd have started being less sedentary if I hadn't gone.

So then comes poly. Due to the mutual unfamiliarity, I stick with YJ. Eventually, he gets more familiar and leaves the formation. I tried going to NPSU, Epic fail. More recently, I've just been a shield.

Used to ram, used for knock-back blows.
Used as cover from the hail of arrows.
Yet in modern fencing, thrown away,
In favour of modern Olympic poking swordplay.

So now where am I now? It really doesn't look much better yet. Yet. Because there is still hope.I wouldn't be doing the things I'm doing if I felt that there was no way that they'd work out.

New Stuff, New Feelings of Being Broke

2009-04-13T20:13:00.003+08:00

I got my new running shoes.

I got them at Novena Square.('Velocity' serves only to confuse people when said aloud and make them have to confirm it with you.) The people there made me go through a lot of testing before they let me pick the shoe, that meant that I had to let them sample my gait and running.

Apparently, I've been buying my shoes 1 size too big for the past few years, and also, my feet aren't that wide. I also learnt that I no longer have flat feet, they are now mid to high arch. I guess its thanks to those funny foot support things my grandma used to make me wear. But, just to hose the happiness a little, my left foot has a higher arch than my right. To hose it even more, arched feet doesn't mean that my running, stamina, etc. has improved.

Beyond that, I've come to a realization that I can't afford to wait until I build up enough money to go train grappling. I gotta get experience; ASAP. So I did something about it.

The main downside to all this is that my wallet gets winded...
But I guess that change has to start somewhere...

Review: New Balance M782BK

2009-04-09T22:03:00.005+08:00

Why I bought it.
1. Lack of wide foot shoe choices in Queensway.
2. Did not use the crappy soft mesh, instead uses a (stronger?) wire gauze thingy.
(I dislike the soft mesh because it tears after kicking your average soccer ball a few times.)
3. The parts where the foot casing joins the sole looked reinforced sand-blasted,
my previous shoes had started creasing and the sole seperated from the casing at the ball of the foot

Period of usage: Since around Feb 07 while in NYJC ODAC, after that for on-and-off runs to slow the decline of my physical conditioning (or lack of) until we admission into NP, then for about 2 or 3 or more months of training in canoeing (along with the hope of a lot of CCA points), and finally, whenever I decided to go for a run (which eventually fell to a low of once a fortnight but now averages twice a week), and whenever we were required to wear shoes, and to work (attachment, which is now).

Activities: Running on pavement & track (albeit quite slowly), Vertical Marathon (Staircases), Weight Lifting, Walking and just One game of soccer (Haven't played since).

As you can see, near the 'N' the mesh isn't some loose, soft crappy one, and where the shoe joins the rubber sole, the material is tough and rough, and seems to have a better than average bond.

Anyway, the shoes have been comfortable and fit pretty well, though my feet have caused the shoes to expand sideways and become unevenly stretched. The shoes also have metal 'stirrups' so that you are able to tighten or loosen the laces based on your mood (However, they feel pretty flimsy). Baseline, the shoes are comfortable.

The shoes are have been pretty rugged, and have not torn or had any holes. Of course the sole has been worn down, and the front most ends of the soles eventually started to peel slightly, like bananas.

The insides of the shoes however, are not so tough, the cloth that is under the heel has been worn down, and the vertical area behind the heel has been torn up (might be partially due to me just shoving my feet into the shoe without pulling out the tongue)

So I decide that I'd give the shoe an 8 out of 10. Mainly because its rugged.

Faster?

2009-04-07T23:09:00.005+08:00

Tonight, I put on my really worn shoes and set out to
run. I haven't been running since last week since I
got a little under the weather.

But I decided that I should stay committed to my goal,
so I thought about the chocolate I ate in the last few
days until I felt a bit guilty, then together with the
remnants of the pain of a slightly overstretched
something-in-left-buttock, stretched, rotated, twisted
here and there, and finally went down.

As usual, I walked 2 rounds, before starting my run.

But today was special.
One or more of the following made me run substantially
faster than usual:

-Having Kanye West's Amazing (minus the voice distortion)
looping in my head

-My old worn shoes deciding to unleash its full power
because they know they're going to be replaced real soon

-Thinking about a certain someone and the grace of God
(Because it's supposed to exist)

On the other hand, maybe I was going at the same speed,
just that having not run for a week or so, my body forgot
what usual slow speed felt like. Also, by the time I had
finished running, I didn't feel really stuffy, with slight
difficulty breathing and all that jazz.

I actually felt pretty alright. In fact, I may have felt good.
Also, I intend to shop at Queensway this Saturday for a new
pair of shoes (hopefully without the crappy mesh thing I
see a lot of now). Feel free to join.

I think I want to compile a book of my thoughts, in an
auto-biographish manner.

Going Postal & an Ego-Boost

2009-04-05T21:02:00.007+08:00

Going Postal Simulation.

I think that when those who people go
around shooting other seemingly random
people, before turning the gun on
themselves, would have been thinking
one or more of the following:
"Life has no meaning"
"I'm a bloody fucker who doesn't deserve to live"
"My life has been screwed"

Together with,
"But I have a grudge, these fuckers wronged me.
They screwed with my life"

Then they think,
"Why not make the world a better place and
take out a whole load of fuckers together ?"
(Including him/herself)

"Eureka! What a great idea! Let's move out!"
(cue the"lock n' load" sound from CS)
-------

Or maybe they only considered all this
after hearing of the massacre concept,
or maybe seeing it in a movie.

Or only got the idea after the first
guy went out to do a public shooting.

It makes me wonder if the 1st NTU EE
guy who failed to kill his prof. would
have gone to take out the fellow who took
over his scholarship if he knew who the
fellow was (and if he was successful at
his attempt on the prof.)

-----------------------------------------------------

This is what you call an ego booster:

Free-IQTest.net - Free IQ Test

I think it's skewed. I doubt that being able to
spot a few patterns here and there equates with
being a great mind.

Or if it is indeed accurate, then maybe a lot of
people around my IQ might be like me too.
That may explain why they need to have these
societies which require an IQ of at least x to be
part of.
This way, we have an avenue to be sociable,
not because we may be sociable, but maybe
because we think similar uncommon thoughts
that might offend others or something.

-----------------------------------------------------

Oh, One more thing,
check this out!
http://www.pillowfightday.com/

I'd want to join!

High Class Whore

2009-04-03T22:57:00.006+08:00

Snow White.
She had 7 guys who treated her well enough not to
shoot (or gang-rape or some other miscellaneous act
of sex/violence) even though they could have.

Instead, they showed compassion.
They even let her stay, on the condition that she keep
the house clean. Do remember that they were too busy
mining and stuff to be home. That would mean she just
had to clean up after herself. (Is that so difficult?)

So she makes a mountain out of a molehill and gets a
scene showing her 'cooking & cleaning' for the dwarves.
The dwarves were already doing fine without her!
(Deceitful Spoiled filthy-rich kid!)

The dwarves give her food & shelter.
Mother Theresa did her best to give food & shelter.
The prince gives her a passionate kiss.
Which of the above show love ?

But Hey!
When it came to the love's first kiss of life part,the dwarves'
kisses didn't work, but along came some filthy-rich pretty
boy whom she'd never met before, who got infatuated with
her corpse-like form, gave her a kiss, and she got up!

Guess I figured out what that Hi-Ho' song was about.
The dwarves were ahead of their time, speaking black on the silver screen.

My fave styles of artwork

2009-03-28T00:42:00.008+08:00

Chin Oi Tow!
Now I know whose plant drawings I've been
subconsciously trying to imitate since primary
school, but never quite getting it. Now I also
know why that style is of drawing is so familiar.

Another type of art I like is the polynesian style.
Think Maori tattoos. Though I wouldn't get myself
a tattoo, I still like the lines and swirls of gradually
thickening or thinning polynesian tattoos. I'd like
to print a T-shirt with them on it.

The last (but not least) style of art I like are the
works of Xu BeiHong.
Why ? I like the idea of wild stampeding horses
dashing freely through the plain, and also, I
think his other paintings look really realistic.

Actually there's more, like the carvings on chinese furniture,
and the architecture of quite a lot of buildings, but I think
they are too general to list, ~~and I'm lazy~~.

I guess I'll need a lot of practice, maybe, I'll have
to try to stop my single-frame comic cartoon style,
I guess my current style is pretty easy to do, because any
mechanical pencil will do. But then again it take years of
dedication to do these things.

I think I'm done choosing my hobbies/ interests,
1. Martial Arts (Judo, Jiu-Jitsu, Chen Taiji)
2. Art (More than just my mechanical pencil)
And maybe a pinch of faith won't hurt.

Find your passion.
Find your niche.
Scratch that itch.
Heck and continue even when ashen.

How to be a Pop(e)

2009-03-21T12:13:00.005+08:00

Condemn stuff.
As a Pop(e) you have to condemn stuff.
But of course you're just going to say it, and even
if you mean it, you're not supposed to do anything
about it. (The full-stop is there to remind you to
stop when it comes to taking action.) And usually,
you need to choose some generic bad thing like
'corruption', 'violence'You're just for show,
remember that.
E.g. "The Pop(e) condemns African corruption"

Give really lousy suggestions with very obvious negative effects
As a Pop(e), stirring up people is one of the important
things you just have to do, but there are many ways of
doing this. Remember that there is no standard
operating procedure for stirring people up. You may
do it any way please. Or whichever way you were
told by some higher being to do so (at least you think
so). Also you need to create news to constantly
remind people that you exist.
E.g. Stop using condoms, especially where there are high HIV rates.
(This is to help spread HIV too since your job is kind of to spread stuff.)

One more thing.
Don't forget, the power comes from the .
Refer to 's Top Secret Management Handbook for
more information.

Breakin' It Down

2009-03-19T00:35:00.003+08:00

I wonder if I should pursue a new direction of writing.
A more contemplative one, rather than my usual.

I realize my posting style is mainly

1. A Report
2. A Status check
3. Random Stuff

And my style of writing is rather straight to the point,
sometimes with tiny doses of sarcasm littered here and there.

I realize I have tended to avoid going into philosophy,
religion and the like. Maybe I don't have to write
specifically about religion and philosophy, but I think
I want to write deeper.

I mean, I want to write deeper, not just think I want to.

I should probably start by reading more again.

Sometimes its not just about deconstructing the process.

SPLAT !

2009-03-16T22:20:00.008+08:00

WARNING!

NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED.

THIS POST CONTAINS GRAPHIC
IMAGES WHICH MAY OR MAY
NOT AFFECT YOU IN A NEGATIVE
MANNER. IF YOU DO NOT WISH
TO RISK IT OR BE OFFENDED
AS USUAL,

PLEASE LEAVE
THIS PAGE IMMEDIATELY.

(Actually I don't know how to create a link to show the post by itself)

-

-

-

-

------------------------------------------------------------

Before we start, just to get you warmed up
and maybe a little desensitized,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut_(egg)

It was Sunday. Nkt was went down to the van to help
take out the trash that his younger brother had been
building up for the last few years. (Younger siblings
tend to make messes don't they?) The van needed to
be emptied so that his mum could surprise her friend
the following day. I mean, you wouldn't want to
be knocked down by a garbage truck right ?

This was the plan:
1. Carry the all the junk upstairs.
2. Find some empty space.
3. Relocate junk to empty space.
(In case you were wondering, I wasn't
referring to a landfill.)

Yeah, anyway, Nkt went down. He was about
to open the rear door of the Nissan Urvan.
Then he spotted something. He asked his mum
about it. She said, "It's been there for about 5 days."

"I don't know how it got there, the wind must have blown...."

Nkt thought that it would make a great surprise
for his mum's friend. Nkt's mum thought otherwise.
She was going to wash the van.

To cut a long story short, here are the photos.

Those photography lessons have finally
come in handy! And in case you were
wondering what happened to the unhatched
chick, I've got it in a plastic container in case
you want it ! All you have to do is ask !

Also, I'm kinda beginning to realize why
all my english essays were only worth B3s...

Food

2009-03-15T01:20:00.002+08:00

Okay, its middle of the night,
im thinking about
1. Pandas
2. Dietary Habits
3. Lai Wah Restaurant's chicken
4. Dorothy Ng's cookbooks

So here goes,

Pandas are damn picky. I kind of feel that they deserve
to die for being so picky about their food, and only wanting
to eat YOUNG bamboo shoots. This eventually led me to
wonder the following, we humans can adapt our diet. We
choose to eat meat, go vegetarian or eat vegetarianish
because its healthier/cheaper/more available through
sustenance farming. As it may be difficult for a vegetarian
to adapt to a diet of meat (one particular herbivore went
to Yunnan and fell sick when some essence of meat got
into his food), I wouldn't make the panda eat meat, But
can't I at least teach it to eat or even like to eat some
other more easily available vegetable ?

This afternoon, we celebrated my Grandma's birthday.
We went to Lai Wah Restaurant, the food was pretty good.
I especially liked the chicken (though I'd prepare it with
ginger if I made it). And the food there seems to me to be
some semblance of the first instance of a chinese restaurant
trying to go western. Asian food is usually better IMO.

As for the cookbooks, they are by a Singaporean, and sold
out, in the 1980s. If I'm not wrong they document
perenakan food. Apparently the writer (deceased btw)
did a cooking show for SBC (before it became Mediacorp/
TCS). And if you want to find the books, I think the only
available ones are reference books in the NLB.

And, I'm hungry.

Smile =)

2009-03-10T23:02:00.004+08:00

Watchmen was a pretty dark comic.
To quote my friend from quite some time back,
"What's an X-rated comic doing in NYJC library ?"
That made me read it.

Another great thing about it is that it is just ONE
book, no need to go through all that trouble to
look for each book like Sandman (which was found
pretty near watchmen and was pretty good too)

Since there's a movie of it out, I ought to read it again.
Why? Because all I remember was that
Roscharch is the one doing the investigation of
whats going on, and eventually discovers
Ozy-smartest man in world's plan.
Roscharch tries to stop him, the blue guy intervenes.

Judging from the blurry details of my recount,
I guess I should read it again. But I did remember
enjoying it. And Neil Gaiman's Sandman.
--------------------------------------------------------

Its the second day of my internship.
The company deals in coatings.

Thermal barrier coatings

They seem to take pride in being a 50/50 joint
venture by SIAEC and RRoyce, and I'm
constantly reminded of it everytime I look at
the words below their logo. Why not 51/49 ?
I really don't know, and am probably in no
position to question it.

And I'm more than that warehouse
stock-taker I thought I'd be.
And the thought is quite unnerving.
And they are about to throw me into the
deep end.

Read a lot of stuff, but its all theory.

In theory, there is no difference between theory
and practical.

But in practical, there is.

Hope I don't screw this up.
Hope I impress their socks off.
Hope you people get your desired result.

Time to sleep. G'Night.

Breathe !

2009-03-08T16:47:00.006+08:00

Hoo-boy! Tomorrow attachment starts.
I've put everything I need into place already.
'cept maybe my mind.

Still nervous/excited/worried.
I can't stop thinking about it as well as
a few worst case scenarios.

What if I don't meet their expectations ?
What if they didn't have any expectations of
my skills and stuff in the first place?

I certainly don't want to destroy my career in an
industry in which most of the HR managers know each
other (according to my liason-officer anyway)

Come to think of it, those who recently had received
their A-level results would have had similar feelings.
Just probably on a waaay greater scale.
Stifle yours already. Suck it up.
I hope those I shared air with (and did not dislike based
upon my biased sense of judgment) did well
enough for what they wanted to get into.

Pinpointed

2009-03-04T00:59:00.009+08:00

Today, woke up just to test the traffic conditions I'd be
facing during internship. So yeah, if I'm at the bus stop
by 6.50am, I'd make it on time.

The other people who get onto the bus are either Nan-
Chiau kids, office ladies, or engineers with faces
perpetually unsmiling from the traces of their continually
fading aspirations.

And some fellow who decided to try to flatten me
against the wall of the bus. I'd liked to have just
shoved him away, but he had a briefcase, and looked
like he would be involved in the same industry. And
where he got off screamed Loyang Ind Est. as well.

So 30+ stops later,
and after dropping off 1 stop too early, or 2 too late,
I walk over and discover that,

1)There are quite a number of cars parked there
already,

2)I'm still in pretty good time (8.15am)

3)Large numbers of people are whizzing down
pavements on their bikes

I want to shove the next SOB-on-a-bike I encounter
whose bell ring intention is to get me to move off
the path so that they can cycle on it. Push the
SOB into the drain.

Okay enough with that. 1st objective achieved.
Next to see how long it would take to get to
school. MRT taken towards 'Joo Koon'
Discovered that there are 2 new stations after
Boon Lay, they are Pioneer and Joo Koon.
New to me at least.

So, it took about 1h 30mins to reach school.
This means that you shouldn't even consider
heading to Changi Village to eat. QSMM is 3 creds.
Dropped the pledge form off and saw quite a
number of classmates. No idea whats going on.
Don't exactly care. Especially not this week.

Headed to Thomson plaza, let my friend
check out Yamaha. Then headed to Kinokuniya,
saw a book that I wanted (last copy), didn't like it's condition,
thus didn't get it.

Reached home, fell asleep (Great rainy weather!)
reading about Excel '07. Woke up, typed this.

Just realized this article sounds friggin' narcissistic.
So many Is.

Better Bus Rides

2009-03-02T13:06:00.008+08:00

Today, after being a bit late for the briefing,
seeing some guy present really slowly, seeing
Algie nervously speeding through her presentation and
deciding not to go chill with anyone (Too bad
if you find me anti-social), I rediscovered
something I enjoy doing.

It's called taking an open air 74 from school
towards hougang.

But there are conditions

1. The bus has to be open air, and double-
deckered. (deckered sounds so much
nicer than decked)

2. It must be an off-peak hour, so that
there will be less people on the bus ( even

better if there are none), and less vehicles

on the road.

3. The driver has to stay in the left-most
lane, and must drive at at least 25km/h,
or whatever speed is good for breeze, also
the driver must not drive jerkily, as in the
driver can be a jerk, but must drive smoothly.

4. I have to have the seat further behind on
the upper deck that has 2 window openings
(okay, one-and-a-half) on the left side by
myself. (It should be, for it is an off-peak hour)

5. Less than 3 red lights are encountered.

This experience is enhanced by it being
either an early morning where the air is cool,
fresh and crisp (These effects are generally easier
to feel around the better forested areas like the
area from Adam road to MacRitchie)

After I got down, I thought about taking the
bus back up again so I could ride it down home
again...

And today, Forward O Peasant! caught my eye,
so I'll be using a bit of my 1 week term transition
break to read it.

Change In the Rhythm

2009-02-28T19:58:00.007+08:00

Come 9 March, we will be starting our internship.
I think I'll still be bumping into many course people
because there are so many aviation companies there.
Those of you who own or have access to cars had
better drive on Fridays.

This also means we need to prepare for it.
So I got to get a hair cut. Maybe you too.
I need to achieve high proficiency in MS-Excel.

Other than that, I think I've some personal
things that I want to do.

Gotta maximize this one week.
Gotta stop taking opportunities to make the meanest comments.
Gotta start habits I want to keep for a lifetime.
Gotta start preparing for what I WANT to do.

And it just happened that I was going to go run.
However, the rain has overwritten my want of running.

Get Your Limited Ed Bobble-Headed Deadpan Humorless Lecturer Figurine Now !

2009-02-25T13:24:00.007+08:00

Nod nod nod. Long due.
Not gonna bother making this image clearer.
Don't know how and shouldn't anyway.

I'd like to get a mold of the head.
Maybe those CADM practicals will come in handy.
The one for quality checking/duplicating parts
which beeps.

Then I'll manufacture PEZ dispensers and Nodding Toys
that will sell out all over the world.
And then less american children will get diabetes since
eating sweets will become boring.
And I could run a conspiracy with Big Tobacco to get
more adults to pick up smoking again since
PEZ was created to help people quit smoking.

And I'll work with takara-tomy to make a
special edition of plastic nodding toys.
And they will be a hit. Now the nodding toy
won't just soothe you, and let you talk to it,
it will now help you get to sleep.
Great for insomniacs.

I Didn't

2009-02-18T15:40:00.006+08:00

Today, I was supposed to wake up at 5 and run. I didn't

I was also supposed to head over to ABC's. I didn't

I was also supposed to have finished at least 2 papers.
No surprise. Again I didn't

Certainly not proud of this.
I know I need to change.
Or at least get out of this haze of laze.

I need to re-up my motivation.

I don't think I want publish anymore of my thoughts at this moment.

Physical Feats I Can Only Dream Of Achieving

2009-02-15T17:03:00.008+08:00

1. Throw an enraged grizzly bear

2. Precision jump from HDB flat to another 2 blocks away.

3. Have amazing footwork. Behind you before you realize!

4. Smash and stop a lorry speeding towards me with a punch, and come out maybe just a little bruised

Some people really need to have a bite of one of these...

The Gate of No Gate

2009-02-15T16:43:00.002+08:00

I don't get the concept of
The gate of no gate.

Would you say
Chocolate of no chocolate ?
Achievement of no achievement?

Not making sense right ?
Maybe the the Gate of no gate has to do with making no sense
In other words, bullshit ?

Then maybe this post has achieved the gate of no gate.

Downsize

2009-02-09T01:23:00.004+08:00

To be sleeker, better, more on the ball.
To run faster, fly higher.
To be leaner, and meaner.
To be more effective.

So M-soft could be less of a lumbering giant.
So financial institutions can do cleaner, more fuss free business.

But mainly for this page to load faster when I log in.
And to have an excuse for a skinny (relative to the rest's) ED binder.

And after making the step-by-step instructions for gearbox assembly,
I feel qualified to work at IKEA.

And the bothersome song player thing has been removed.
Come on, who doesn't have their own music to listen to already ?
Why should I compete with that ?

Thanks

2009-02-06T19:53:00.003+08:00

For helping me with the gearbox project.
Yaojun and 7zr for allowing me to check against their calculations.
Edwin and Zeting for showing me how, checking my drawings and more.
Alvin and Nick for offering help for the research bit.
Alvin and Norman for printing help.
Taiga and ~~StressBoy~~ JunLong for being targets for offensive questioning and criticism.

And I think Khairul would be thanking me for getting the pressure on him.

That aside, I have removed the tag box. I discovered that it is the source of occasional pop-ups,
and theres a comment button below each post anyway.

On Future Posts

2009-02-03T15:29:00.003+08:00

Recently, I chanced upon a blog which made for good reading.
It occurred to me that this person didn't update their blog
unless they had something they wanted to say.

I also just realised, that if you just go into your blog and throw down a few drab details of what you have done today, like what crap you cleared at school, then your site is really no different from a computer log. And who would enjoy reading a computer log ?

So, from now on, I won't bother to post the normal crap that happened in my day much anymore.

Rush

2009-01-30T20:28:00.002+08:00

Today was one of much rushing.
Morning-Afternoon: Rush to finish the gearbox stuff.
Afternoon: Rush to finish Safety at work slides (done in half an hour !)
Evening: Rush to finish SoM tutorial 5.

But guess what ? We finished it! We all finished it.
A pat on the back for you all.

Oh. Edwin has joined Kingdom Of Loathing.

And now, I'm curious about what company I will be attached to.
I'm also curious about what I will do and what I will do after getting this diploma.
1)Straight to U ? If I can afford it.
2)Maybe I'll work and be a part time student. But that means the degree will take 5 years !
3)Maybe I'll work for 2 years, to save for U. And to meet you all after you're done with NS.
I suspect that most of you would want me to take option 3. But personally, I'm hoping that I can afford option 1. Then the girls will be either the same age as me, or a year younger. Heh.

But I guess I should worry about this Semester first.
I got 2 chapters of SoM to understand. (Not talking about revising yet)
And lots of backlogged AM.

Bloody gearbox.

Now

2009-01-25T12:49:00.001+08:00

Now, my gearbox parts have been made.
Now, my gearbox has been assembled.
Now, the drawings are mostly completed.
Now, I realize that this Project has taken a lot of our time.
Now, I realize that we are really close to exams, and aren't prepared.
Now, I speculate and think that the gearbox was a diversion.

We've been tricked. Damn~!

Another Wave

2009-01-20T15:34:00.005+08:00

Happy Birthday to Trey ~~Our Old Man~~

I have successfully assembled my gearbox.
Except the handles.

I'm starting to feel a certain sense of urgency because I know the exams are coming.
A bigger reason is that theres quite a bit of stuff I'm not proficient in yet.

Get'cho Arse movin' dammit

To give up and resign myself to failure the easy way.
I will try my best to walk the right way.

Post Common Test Medicore Results Analysis and a Haiku :(

2009-01-10T19:03:00.001+08:00

Didn't do too well.
I think I have hit a wall.
The problem is me.

AM: 83.5%
Hoped to get : >90%
Est. Class Avg: 93%
Excuse(s): Carelessness snowballing from somewhere in the middle of the question to the end of it, Overlooked "impending motion downward" in the friction question.

ASAS: 76%
Hoped to get : >95%
Est. Class Avg: 85%
Excuse(s): Time constraints. Rushed the Method of members question and shear stress question, lost about 1/3 of the total marks achievable in that section.
Overconfidence. Studied for over a week and even made notes. However, was careless in MCQ section, lost 4 marks despite knowing the answers. Also could not describe the bladder fuel cell (removable fuel tanks stored in wings). Answers not having close enough wording to Lecturers, so got pricked 1 mark at a time for many questions.

ED: 79%
Hoped to get: >90%
Est. Class Avg: 87%
Excuse(s): Overlooked the given value and found values for wrong shaft in the systems bearings part of the question, think I got slightly less than half the total marks achievable for that. Forgot to complete the very 1st question, wrote out all the workings except the answer. Amounts to major carelessness.

SOM: 93%
Hoped to get: >95%
Est. Class Avg: 95%
Excuse(s): Messed up the angle of twist part of the 2nd question because I calculated the required stuff looking from opposing directions and forgot to factor that in later...

CADM: 43 of 50% total weightage included so far (I think)
Hoped to get: 47%
Est. Class Avg: 47%
Excuse(s): Just too damn S-L-O-W. Not proficient enough in ProE Wildfire 3.0 .

JPod

2009-01-04T08:28:00.001+08:00

By Douglas Coupland.
About the Google culture.
I think so. Roughly.

School Starts Tomorrow.
Need to find similar books.
What is the genre ?

Am freaking tired.
Couldn't sleep last night. Noisy.
Feeling zombified.

Recognise this style ?
Style of writing. Stop and think.
You don't know ? Don't fret.

From the book (unrelated to main story) :
"Some people like to begin sentences with the word "frankly", and this is very annoying.Ask these people, "Hey, does this mean everything you say that doesn't have 'frankly'in front of it is bullshit?"
~~Hi Vivek.~~

A Merry X'mas & Fruitful New Year To You

2008-12-27T07:49:00.001+08:00

Went to KL for the festive season
left on 21st , came back last night, 26th.

21 Dec : Got up 5.30am, got ready, reached bus place behind Mustafa at 7am, left at 730 Reached our destination in Petaling Jaya in the late afternoon. All of us were damn tired.Mostly slept and had dinner at one of the local SS2 kopitiams. Wonder what SS stands for.

22 Dec :Still tired, wanted to sleep, but my grandad forced us to wake up. Had a quarter of a papaya for pre-breakfast, and later, an onion thosai, pretty good. Walked around neighbourhood shops. Realised that most songs remixed into techno turn into crap, and its difficult to find good chocolate in M'sia because all of it is made there. Ate dinner at Loong Fong, really good duck, and kylan that was cooked a different way than my mum prepares her bitter one. The kylan was good.

23 Dec :Went to Sunway pyramid. The original plan was for my brother and I to go to the lagoon. But neither of us know how to swim. So change of plan. I went hunting for PE shorts, found a book that I thought I would like to read (but didn't buy), and eventually went ice skating. Good stuff, it took about 10 mins before I could skate (slide along floor on skates in a standing position) without hugging the walls. I certainly wasn't the fastest, but soon I was joining in the mass of skaters moving clockwise in the rink, and got a little overconfident every now and then, went a little too fast and lost control (feeling like I'm falling backwards) then twisting to land on hands similar to a front breakfall. The reason for this was that the rink became wetter (bigger, smellier puddles to fall in) as skaters shredded the ice.

WARNING: This is a cautionary complaint against bad footwear.
By the end of it, my ankles were damn sore. Why ? I have wide feet, the skates are stiff, and were not very accomadating to my wide feet, so the knife edges of both feet were being constricted. This was just the base problem, the problem that the constriction caused was that the skate's blades would begin to slant outwards ( / \ ), to try to deal with this problem, I tied on the skates so the blades would be like this ( \ / ). So because the skates are stiff, my ankles get bent. It was fun, but my ankles are still quite sore.
--END OF CAUTIONARY COMPLAINT--

Besides that, I bought PE shorts, clothes for a job interview or funeral (both are generally black and white).

24 Dec : Christmas Eve. Dinner at Jarrod & Rawlins, met cousins I haven't seen for ages, the 24 of us took up half the 2nd floor of the bar/~~restaurant~~ restoran and made sooo much noise that many other patrons of that restoran eventually decided not to dine on the same floor, especially after 2 or 3 futile attemps to drown us out by asking the waiters to turn up the music. Kevin had about 5 glasses of red wine before disappearing into the toilet and reappearing in an apparently okay and not drunk state. I managed to nurse a single glass of red for the whole dinner. A 12-yr old hitting more alcohol than his 18-yr old brother...
Went back to my Aunt's for drinks and being one of the younger cousins, helped prepare pomelo and mango for everyone. Discovered and enjoyed Bitter Lemon, tried a little stored-in-oak 18-year whiskey (and still don't know whats so great about drinking alcohol that tastes like wood). After that squeezed into her friend's hatchback with most of the other people from my generation, and had supper at the Bak-Kut-Teh shop next to Mungo Jerry's. My cousins and aunt swear that Bak-kut-teh is THE cure for intoxication.

25 Dec : Morning, waked throught the Pasar 'Morning'. Visited the Curve, discovered Baskin' Robbins and a great Ice cream flavour : Maui Bros Something. I think it's Chocolate ice-cream with chunks of chocolate chewy, and crushed macadmia nuts
Christmas dinner at Uncle's. Ears turned red after half a cup of wine in a paper cup was asked to smell it (smelt like alcohol swabs and yoghurt, couldn't smell any 'fruity notes'), and a swig of diluted 12 year old Suntori something whiskey(was smooth and did not burn throat). Ate mainly pork, rice and salad. Learned to play Gin Rummy. Have not had that much alcohol over a span of 2 nights. Caught an uncle sleeping, and soon a toy cat turned up on his shoulder.

Upper part of image: Grandma teaching grandson to gamble.

26 Dec: Woke up at 9am, packed up, cleaned up, took bus back to Singapore. Were originally to drop off behind Mustafa where we got on in Singapore, but fortunately a rare moment of my better judgement kicked in. I told my mum that we'd be better off not lugging stuff through Little India on a weekend. I dislike crowds.

Temporary Internet At Home !

2008-12-17T21:48:00.001+08:00

My brother borrowed a little vodafone-M1 modem from my stepdad,

and since his Maple Story Nonsense doesn't seem to work, I got a chance to use it.

So I decided to try do a post here.

I ran "nkt" through google.

I got unexpected results.

Who knew so much shit named NKT was going on ?

1. NKT cells

2. New Kadampa Tradition

3. NKT National College of Modern Tech (in Chennai, India I think)

4. NKT cables

5.NKT Photonics

Also, Ip Man, the movie is opening here tomorrow.

It stars Donnie Yen as Ip Man.

Ip Man was one of the first to teach Wing Chun (ask Marcian and he might teach you the chain punch)

Because it is a film on a famous kung fu man, I'm interested.

But because it stars Donnie Yen, I'm not expecting much from it.

He's good, yes,

but

I just don't like him.

SPL was good, but I didn't like it. Maybe its because of the storyline.

In recent years, I think there have been quite a number of chinese-policeman-finding-excuse-to-fight movies.

Also, Google Chrome has been out. I like the clean layout.

But I still can't say whether it's good.

Now we can kick back for a while.

2008-12-13T13:24:00.002+08:00

For a while. Because some shit will crop up again.
Like a toilet bowl waiting for our environment to release its crap again.

I think about

1. CT has passed.
2. I was more freakin' careless than I think I ever was. How'd ido ?
3. Botango, some game I came across yesterday evening
4. Getting up early to run/cycle every morning so I can afford to eat more for Christmas and CNY
5. Makibishi Comic, a click around puzzle adventure.
6. Learning to not drown.
7. WTF you all might be doing. Can't drink, drive, talk shit all day right ?
8. Imma give this space a new look, and change the screwballz songs.
9. Want to sign up at the budo academy (but won't due to a lack of funds)

Other than that, I feel I can get 80% or better for ASAS1. And maybe feel my head nodding and micro-nodding about 80% more too.

A few interesting comics

2008-11-11T19:06:00.002+08:00

Some are pretty abstract, but I'm sure you'll find a few panels that'll bring a smile to you face.

A Softer World
http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=#

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
http://www.smbc-comics.com/#comic

Xkcd
http://xkcd.com/

Qwantz Dino Comics
http://www.qwantz.com/

Am currently pretty glad I managed to get a solo spot for the ED gearbox project.
Sometimes you just have to cut the rotting limb off.

Have yet to complete AM, AS tutorials.

Did the myers-brigg test. Am a crafter,
ISTP (Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, Perceiving)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crafter_(Role_Variant)

I'll have you know that the following people were crafters too:

Woody Allen
Lance Armstrong
Micheal Jordan
Bruce Lee
Chuck Yeager
Tiger Woods

See, cool right ?

Told my mum about Bruce Lee and Lance A, she said: "See how many people were out to get or backstab Bruce Lee & Lance Armstrong ?"

Spoiler.

I intend to change the music player thingy on the side of this page. I discovered by chance that the 'Right to be wrong' by Joss Stone was someone else's out of out air rendition.

Citadels !

2008-11-06T21:29:00.002+08:00

Yesterday: Taught Norman, Marcian, Sean how to play Citadels, the card game one, We got so engrossed we skipped AM. Aaron just jumped in the deep end and did pretty well today.

Learnt that playing any card game requiring bluffing (poker, citadels, etc) is particularly difficult with Sean.

Helped YJ with his canoe damage stock take, and since we left some of our stuff in school in JunLong's care, we had to come back from Kallang. So we reached school at about 8pm, and after trying to get 100 for the SoM elongation thing, here I am typing this out.

Also rediscovered a musical experiment that I used to, and still very much like, Enigma.
Am going to post why you ought to throw out that 15-year-old bike lock soon. This sentence is supposed to be a reminder.

Heck, I'll post it now.

Using these just tools (and my hands)

On this kind of lock (but a 15+ year-old one.)

It is not difficult to produce this result

And here's the other part of it.

-----------------------

And these are the ingredients for burmese belachan.
Real good stuff.
So good that from the whole batch made,
I just got a little jar that fits nicely in my palm.

Maybe I'll learn from my gramma how to make it.

-------------------------------------

Question:

2008-11-05T08:14:00.001+08:00

Why do dim-sum dishes like siew-mai and ha-gao come in sets of 3 ?
You don't very eat out in sets of 3 people do you ? And if you have mahjong kakis, 4 would be a better number, then each of you can have 1.
Someone please explain.

Went cycling yesterday, took an hour to get to sarting point. Started at east coast, tried to reach marina barrage, according to someone, it can be seen from kallang, so we went there 1st, and we saw it, then tried cycling there, couldn't cycle over water, tried going through esplanade and all, did not get there.

Also discovered why the martial arts supplies store (can get your gi, dobok, groin guard, striking pads, etc. there) at kallang is positioned where it is. Just cross the road, and follow the lorry parks in, and you'll find the martial arts instructior association.

2008-10-26T13:54:00.001+08:00

This was supposed to be out on Sunday, but half way through, I just packed up and went off.

It's Sunday, and guess what ? I'm on campus. Darn.
Reason: To upload the photography assignment due today, 5pm.
So here's what happened, I took a bus to school, on the bus I read the Spin Asia magazine.
(I bought it at NP's cheers yesterday, by the way)

So I started reading the thing, soon I come across an article about the Kent Ridge MTB Trail, and in the last paragraph of the article, they mention "race held by Dirtraction on 31st August".
I realized I'm looking at a month old magazine, and feel kind of cheated.

So next, I try to console myself, I flip back to the cover, and scrutinize it for a date.
There wasn't a visible one. Thus I conclude,the cheers staff probably didn't know it was an old mag either.

But I still feel cheated of $2.

Enough of that. Yesterday, I waited for 12 noon, Alvin declared he was tired and didn't cycle.
Not exactly a bad thing, so I did most of the photography assignment. Not that I care to upload and show it. After the cycling , etc. I got back, and went for a walk. Why ? A question popped up in my head while cycling: Why do they plant various kinds of palm trees along the road sides instead of banana trees.

Banana trees yield edible fruit (although only once), their leaves provide more shade, have a brighter green, their leaves can be used to pack food (nasi lemak & hokkien mee) and best of all, you can use them like heavy bags. Palm trees can't do any of those, and no one harvests the fruit from the roadside anyway

So I went for a walk.

Banana trees don't grow to be as tall as palm trees, and their leaf sections grow old and drop off after a while, and result in quite a mess.

But heck, I still prefer banana trees.

Whatever I intended to post here, I've already forgotten now.

All the best for your last paper today LJL.

A Long Post of Long Overdue Stuff Because I Couldnt Be Bothered to Use the Internet

2008-10-14T08:52:00.001+08:00

Its been at least 4 weeks coming back from Sydney, and thus, the next semester started. I kinda resolve to work work harder this sem, so I won't be feeling sorry for myself like the one that just went by. 3.56 ain't exactly good. The trip was great. During the first few days there I felt as if I were looking at things differently. To quote my mum "Traveling makes you see in a wider perspective". On the other hand, things were probably different. Maybe it seemed nicer because I was unfamiliar with it, like tobacco, the more familiar with it, the more you need to get the same effect.

In general the temperature fluctuated between days. Mostly cold and rainy on the first week, and on the second, days of alternating heat and cool. The main objectives of the trip were: 1. Meet the grandparents (father's side) 2. Allow mum to revamp her wardrobe 3. Relax To cut a long long story short, we did.

We actually spent most of our time walking around the Darling Harbour area, mostly because we were staying there. Near the harbour was the the fish market. And the food there was freshly caught and cooked. I assume they start bringing in fish from 4am to 6am, then they sell till about 3 or 4pm.
Good stuff. Mine !

Then if you continue to walkabout the area, you see some quirks Found on the side of a truck at the fish market

An aboriginal made and owned boat !
I thought YaoJun might appreciate this.

The garbage dump. I think the bird with the hooked beak looks disgusting.

The pelicans are actually damn large

And the gulls ain't afraid of no human. Feed one, and the rest will come for you, no kidding. Something experienced at Bondai beach.
Just wanted a ghetto looking shot for the homie in me ;)

Just a walk across the bridge and 1 or 2 streets more and we'd be walking through Chinatown, which we did. There we found the paddys market which only happens on Fri,Sat, Sun ( I think)
It was mostly an upmarket pasar malam, and above it , many retail outlets. Thus, no photos.
Got a hoodie from there.

I guess I'll slowly be sticking to pictures up, few at a time.
Many of the pics were taken to show the slightly less good looking parts of Sydney,
with exception of some of the scenery.

But not now.

I've got other things on my mind, one of which, cycling / biking.

Alvin got a new bike, appx. $500 (I think)
It's a Marin Pioneer Trail. Entry level HT bike.

In Sydney, I went (window) shopping around for a bike.
Thus went to The St. Clarence Street Cyclery. One of the guys there claims its the oldest bike shop in Australia (or Sydney (my fault, memory lapse)).

I'm asked what I'm looking for, entry level HT. And I was recommended Trek's 4400.
$700 AUD. The guy also tells me that Gary Fisher (one of the/The MTB pioneer(s)) would be visiting at about 4pm. Wow ?

Anyway, I'm glad I didn't buy it. According to Alvin, it's $600 SGD, also I kinda realised that somehow, the rear end of the frame looked like it was part of the top tube slanted back a bit. When I saw a girl, who was probably french (The french school was really nearby) riding one. And was confirmed by 2 boys, one of them on the 4400, the other I didn't really take a look.

Anyway, the most important factor was price, so I just repaired the old black Avanti Montari, which used to belong to my dad in NZ. So first I went to a neighbourhood bike shop in Paya Lebar, and the man saw the gear shifters and told me it couldn't be repaired, so I just replaced the old, broken, brittle and rusting kickstand with a new one, and got new tyre linings. Then we brought the bike to Trek, where the people there helped it get right (But I felt the high of riding).

Now it rides pretty well, no suspensions or what, but it hums aggresively.

The next step is to repaint the frame. A few rust marks can be seen, but nothing major I suppose.
After that I want to find out where the trails are. Alvin said he was intimidated by the one in Tampines.

I ought to ask someone who knows, maybe like this lady I saw on the back page of Mind Your Body a few weeks back. Angela Leow Gray or something. Mountain biking and Muay Thai every week.

Speaking of martial arts, I think I overstretched yesterday morning and partially tore or pulled out something in my right thigh. On the line which the hip joint bends, along the brief line, there is a bump, not prominent but there, and it does hurt when touched. Tried pushing it in, but it won't work.
But at least the temporary increases pain helps dull the constant one. Norman says hernia. I hope not. Wait a week and see.

2008-08-13T08:28:00.002+08:00

Today, work will be done. Am not too worried about E3B, except for Laplace, since I think I've been rather consistent. What worries me is MF. At least we have 6 days to be gratified.
I still feel like a bastard after saying 'Praise the Lord' to Alvin, when clearly, it was mean to do so.
Fortunately, he took it in his stride, and said that it was probably to warn him about a bigger wave coming his way, and thus, to prepare for it.

Whatever it is, here are some photos, mostly overdue.Here showing what Norman+Marcian+Sean+Myself did instead of going for maths. Notice that Its been a week plus since this photo was taken, so Marcian's Proj. Nutz scars are still scabby and visible. The 2nd game we played, I was feeling a little impatient, so I yanked out the side tiles on the lowest rung. Sean took out the 2 sides from the next level, and so, the Hands-of-a-surgeon wannabe eventually lost it, maybe on purpose.

This is the bike thats been sitting around in my place, collecting dust, size 9 US sandal to allow for size comparison. The frame is fine, but I really cannot tell if it's triple butted Cr-Mo Steel like the 10+ yr old sticker says, because it really, really, really, feels like aluminium, 'cause it's rather light compared to the black steel shimano avanti sitting around collecting dust too.

Anyway, I'm hoping to repair this baby (at <$250) by 20th Sept, and start riding round. I know that the cassette and chain-ring need to be changed, no thanks to a certain step fellow's abrupt gear shifting. Maybe thats why the company van is so screwed too, maybe it it wasn't the fellow's employee who messed up the van gears.

Lets AMP2 !

2008-08-06T15:39:00.002+08:00

1. Need to absorb AMP2 facts.

2. Look what I made using just paint.
Its about the vacuum infusion process, for our group project. Made with just MS-Paint.

3. Study properly, not in such a way that info enters in through one end, and exits through another.

Preferred Music

2008-08-01T22:38:00.000+08:00

This is a list of music that I like.
It is not an exhaustive list.

Boot Up

2008-07-29T16:10:00.002+08:00

This is nkt's blog. It has just started. Don't expect too much, or anything at all for that matter.