colours on the wall

We were talking about climbing routes, then someone said blue route makes you feel blue, then Bernard said blue route is climb once in a blue moon, Angie said green is climb when it is sunny and green, then I said red route is climb when it is hot.

Recently have been going for rainbow more often. (Joe made me lead climb rainbow as warm up today...)

climbing politics

Angie was telling me climbing also has politics. There's this climber girl, who always has this unfriendly look. According to Angie, this girl likes to take advantage of others to belay her, then after that she would simply walk off. Today she wanted to borrow runners from Angie's boyfriend and somehow he rejected her. Quite fun to gossip while waiting to climb =P (not gonna mention name though)

Something interesting happened last Saturday. According to climbers from my gang,

Anyway, for those who haven't climbed the week that just went, no loss. For it was a DAMN long waiting time at the Q, because WHY? Some inconsiderate group of so-called good climbers were hogging lanes 1 & 2 for the longest time ever, despite the fact that lanes 5 & 6 were obviously closed exclusively to a corporate event. These Hoggers (that's the term for people exhibiting such characteristics) are easily identifiable by their team-spirited attire and can always be seen seated in an auditorium fashion in front of the lanes they hog. They have an invisible multiplying ability amidst the actual group size...from 3 more to another 5 more people in the Q.

That group of hoggers was actually NUS climbing team... luckily I wasn't there last Saturday.

quote of the day

我是来踢馆的
--Chow

Happened to walk through SMU when they were having their Sports Fiesta today at their Campus Green. Then bumped into what-is-his-name (Kilo PC who is Tan Chee Wei's friend) and had a little chat.

Their Sports Fiesta was quite happening, had street soccer, frisbee, male netball, floor ball, dodge ball, and... BOULDERING!

If I did jump onto their bouldering wall, then it would really be 踢馆~
(我是来踢馆的, Chinese, I am here to kick house. Erm, just means to find trouble at other people's place)

software soft option

It is like, I'm using 2004 version of a particular software. Then the school is using 2005 version, so when I download files from IVLE I can't open them at home. No choice, have to upgrade my software. But when I have upgraded mine, I can't spot the difference between the 2 versions other than the version number (and maybe nicer start-up screen).

Do software companies simply put a code into their new release so as to force users to upgrade their software every year?

Notepad is still the best. One version fits all.

counselling

its unhealthy (though people do it) to take on guilt for someone feeling bad over things that was not caused by you.

You can care for someone, but you don't have to take on the guilt esp if you are not guilty.

you need to know where to draw the line and not take on other people's problems as your own

that will be $50 for counselling...
-- my counsellor

magnetic flux no linkage

Sometimes I wonder if boy-girl-relationship is like magnetic flux: opposing the change.

You want to come near me, I push you away;
You want to go away from me, I pull you back.

So horrible, no wonder they always say don't place near magnetic field.

finished watching School Rumble 2

School Rumble - Second Semester just ended this week. It's a TV anime that continues the story from the first series, about this guy Harima who is having a crush on this stupid girl Tenma, who is having a crush on this nerd Karasumaru... (pretty complicated if you want the whole picture of the food web)

The height of this second series is at the very last 2 episodes. Finally the spirit inside Yakumo tells her that she actually likes Harima, but Yakumo wants Tenma, her elder sister, to be with Harima... sad case, since in my opinion Yakumo is the best girl in the whole story (anyone would want to be with her). If only Yakumo goes with Harima, and Tenma goes with Karasumaru, then it will be a happy ending~

Argh, why another open-ended ending??

Tags: School Rumble

solidcraps 2006 service pack 2

Phew, at least my first weekday of the mid-term break is kinda constructive.
(I think the opening is too big liao, backside too small then the person will fall into the crappy water. Crappy design. But if I made it too realistic then kids may pee/poo onto their computer screen...)

Click here for SolidCraps 2006 release 1.

Tags: solidworks, CAD

mid semestral crisis

Mid term break means half a semester is gone (and half a semester left). If you look at the graph to the right, erm, can see that I have almost no mood to study anymore.

It has always been like that for me (since Junior College). At the beginning of each semester I have lots of drive and motivation to study. I can pia tutorials until 2 weeks in advance of the normal pace. Then the motivation decays exponentially (my record was being still at tutorial 1 at the end of the semester)

I can foresee my CAP point also decaying exponentially.

conformité européenne or chinese export

Was reading an article from my favourite magazine Professional Engineering. Quite concerned to see it says that low-quality products from China incorrectly bear the CE safety markings of conformance, i.e. the Chinese factories just anyhow put the CE markings on their products when they were not even tested.

What is so important about the CE marks? It is a marking to indicate the products' conformity with safety requirements. It can be found in products such as electrical appliances, toys, safety equipment (such as climbing equipment), etc.

Sigh. Engineers also must have ethics lah, no doubt reducing cost (by manufacturing in China) means earning more, but the end-users' safety should never be compromised.

engin day

Yesterday was Engin Day! A lot of engin undergrads would be very happy cos they had no lessons/skipped lessons. Anyway I went to school cos I had Sensors and Actuators tutorial and yesterday's session was by the lecturer himself, and going to school is more productive than staying at home.

Interestingly I met a lot of "old" friends from engineering~. Ameet (surfing *ahem* in PC cluster), Hong Jun (ok not counted), Tiong Chuan (with a bunch of girls, as usual), Alex the Indonesian, Kimmy, Zhonghua, Wee Hong, Rizwan... somehow I seldom see them during normal days.

Let me see what goodies I took... writing pad, notepad, juice, coffee... COFFEE!
No free engine giveaway though.

milo‧sevic

That day, I took the last paper cup and drank the last concentrated drip of Milo from the truck, with a long disappointed queue behind me.

That day I was deciding if I should wait for my bus or cross the road to drink Milo. My bus came.

That day I waited for the Milo truck to park properly and drank the truck's 3rd cup of Milo of the day.

If Engin canteen coffee is my enriched uranium, then Milo truck is at least my fuel truck. It's all psychological, the unwritten word "free" is very powerful. Imagine how sadistic I feel when I am holding a paper cup of free fresh Milo then see someone holding a packet of stale Milo bought from the vending machine.

Do you know what is the best soccer team in the world? Milo team. They always score (in the advertisement). That's why no real team wants their sponsorship, too much pressure, must win every match. Actually this idea is bad for kids, cos in real life you don't win all the time, you win some you lose some. So don't let your kids drink Milo, give them Red Bull instead, cos Red Bull gives you wings!

rot climber

ARGH! Another week without climbing! This is like so...urghh!

Mother has been making noise saying that I should spend my Saturday with family instead of climbing, then always end up they can't decide where to go. Wanted to head down to NUS rock gym on weekday this week but somehow felt bad if I didn't have dinner at home, so... tsk... Soon, Angie is going to strike my name out from the Yishun gang, and NUS climbing sub-club is going to classify me as sleeping member.

I need to crush some fibreglass to destress. (btw I have one climbing hold at home. Maybe should install a finger board like Alex's.)

v for

V for velocity
V for volume
V for deflection
V for viscocity
V for voltage
V for ...

One V for one module. Can they like standardize all the notations?

crappy compilation

Keep wanting to listen to these songs.
Almost all my favourite songs are sad songs.
I'm sad.

爱我的人和我爱的人
如果不能到永远
心淡
好心分手
无赖
别爱我
给自己的情书
容易受伤的男人
执迷不悔
感情线上
不拖不欠
I will survive

Can I cry?
(please do not download, I don't want to get caught)

cake monster

Jack's birthday is around the corner, so during lunch break today Hong Jun decided to buy a slice of cake for him.

Suddenly I saw Hong Jun eating the slice of cake by himself...
He must be hungry.

silent bomb

Yesterday's experiment was on the oxygen bomb calorimeter. Didn't hear any explosion though.

Kinda sick of one of my lab partners. He is like forever not bothered about the experiment at all, either he's dreaming at one corner or asking the graduate assistant some lecture-related questions. Then somemore he speaks with that commanding tone, like "what you doing?", when he himself hardly takes part in the procedures and conveniently copy our readings at the end of the experiment. (somehow our lab group's lab partners are more or less fixed.)

At least yesterday I kind of made him wash up the apparatus after the experiment.
(by the way, have you seen me wearing the bomb suit?)

nightrider in lt7

Today I saw an orange NightRider bus girl in LT7.

Actually there are lots of interesting people in the lecture. Other than the group who likes to chant, the girl who performs puppet show, there are the few who bring laptops to lecture just to play games. (one of them we call him Steve Irwin, cos he always wear boots to school. If you peep at his laptop he has all kinds of funny games, eg golf. Then halfway through lecture he would walk out of the LT, most probably just cleared one level of his game.)

And lecture tidbits have reached a new level~! Today we saw people buying chicken drumsticks during the mid-lecture break. I thought I was already quite extreme when I walked to canteen to buy coffee...

问题天天都多

问题天天都多 from cartoon Chibi Maruko-chan (ちびまる子ちゃん, 樱桃小丸子, Cantonese version)
(original Japanese version)

My problematic day (again) reminds me of this cute Cantonese song. Early in the morning broke my beloved comb which I got from the Museum some 6 years ago. Worst is I seldom use it cos I don't keep long hair. Then for Thermodynamics test I totally blanked out. If I was doing it on my own I could have gotten the answer easily. Somehow in quiz condition I totally forgot how to use the steam table. One of these days I should book MPSH to practise doing questions in exam conditions.

During Sensor and Actuators lecture a girl was entertaining the whole lecture group with puppet show...

quote of the day

Dr Rappa: You look like you have suffered a lot...
me: How do you know one?
Dr Rappa, asking the males in the class opinions on what type of women we like, during Political Science tutorial.
I gave him a politically correct answer.

porcupine hair

Was trying to comb my hair just now when suddenly *CRACK*, the comb snapped.

Must calculate the stiffness of my hair and the maximum shear stress of the comb.
Safety factor? Dunno.

changing mindscape

how should I start...

Ok there's this girl who told me a month ago that she liked me. But I rejected her. (I can see all the disapproving fingers pointing at me now)

Then recently she told me actually she didn't like me, and girls who like me have weird taste. -_-"

oh well, if that can make her feel better, why not?

horrible dream

I had a very horrible dream last night:

of my brother reading my blog...

demo-crazy

(this blog is apolitical, but don't be surprised if this blog vanishes from this planet within 24 hours. The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) monitors this blog regularly. Maybe one of the employees is my regular reader..)

Wanted to see Dr Chee at Speakers' Corner yesterday. Saw a big crowd there when my bus passed by Hong Lim Park. Too bad I was hungry, went to have lunch instead =P

The following photos are from Reuters which you will never find in local newsmedia. Straits Times didn't even have photos.

ST: crowd made up mostly of newsmedia.
So if you carry a camera, you are a reporter?

Oh, so majority of Chee's supporters were actually police officers~

defending Beckham's freekick? or somekind of team building games again?

Again, the police said someone from the public complained to them, that's why they took action. Wonder if that member of public was wearing police uniform.

(*NB, I don't support Dr Chee)

political cows

SOCIALISM:
You have two cows, you give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM:
You have two cows, the government take both and give you the milk

APPLIED COMMUNISM:
You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

FASCISM:
You have two cows, the government take both and shoot you.

CAPITALISM:
You have two cows, you sell one and buy a bull.

HONG KONG CAPITALISM:
You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the right to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because of bad "feng shui".

TRADE UNIONISM:
You have two cows, they take both from you, shoot one, milk the other and throw away the milk.

FEUDALISM:
You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

MILITARISM:
You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you into the army.

TOTALITARIANISM:
You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

PURE DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows. All your neighbours decide who gets the milk.

BRITISH DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows.
You feed them sheep's brains and they go mad. The government doesn't do anything.

SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows.
The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment.

baby's day out

Went to Botanic Gardens today. At the new Botany Centre near Tanglin there's this big lobby in front of the information counter, surrounded by a pond. The surface of the pond was carpeted with algae and water lily and was flush with the ground, so from afar it really looked like a perimeter of green grass patch. There were no railings or any obstacles.

There was this Caucasian toddler walking around near the edge. He... err... stepped onto the floating algae and walked straight into the pond...I was only in time to see his maid lift him under his armpits out from the water, think the water level was about his height.

He just did a confidence jump.

2 undergrads, 1 leaking bus air-con, engineering

Was going home on 151 with Wei Chuan yesterday. Somehow the air-con was leaking and 5 rows of seats at the back were wet. (it was only 1 stop from Kent Ridge terminal. So the driver didn't check the bus before setting off huh?)

The two of us observed the leakage from all the holes and gaps of the air-con, occasionally the dripping became pouring when the bus went up-slope (fluid mechanics). Then we were saying the water was clean cos it's just condensation water (thermodynamics), but the holes and gaps where it flowed through were super dusty, so... Then we discussed the path taken by the water droplets (kinematics) and compared it with pendulum, stuffs like reference frame (relativity)... And when we alighted I was quite tempted to unfasten the air-con cover to turn the bus into fish tank (crappy engineering)

Engineers ain't that boring afterall.

singapore idle

Quite pissed off to receive 2 junk mails in my NUS mail telling me to support some stranger who is the Singapore Idol finalist. "Like you, an NUS Undergrad..." Big deal, Dr Chee Soon Juan was a lecturer in NUS, so did you vote for him?

Why should I support him? What do I gain if he wins? Will he like remember your name for the rest of his idol life? Or lend you his notes? Or let you copy tutorials? Or purposely stay on the left side of the bell curve?

If you really have the money to spare, there's always SPCA, Red Cross, Salvation Army and School Pocket Money Fund.

Flame me if you like.

(4) You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. (5) You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, (6) but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments

--Exodus 20:1-17, New Revised Standard Version
The Ten Commandments

Tag: Singapore Idol

song of the day

Just The Way You Are by Billy Joel

I was humming the tune of the song, then a quarter hour later the radio played the same song. Not the first time this was happening. Looks like my brain is connected to the radio station. (or the radio station ran out of tracks)

Dedications anyone?

豆花绑架

Don't quite get it, one bowl of douhua costs 50 cents if you have it at the hawker centre. If you buy one take-away packet, it costs 50 cents too but you will get slightly more than 2 bowls' content. I thought they should charge extra for the container? Hmm maybe the dishwasher charges more than the cost of the disposable containers.

(豆花绑架: douhua kidnap. Actually it's cantonese meaning douhua tied-up.
douhua, noun, Chinese for beancurd dessert)

meder in nus

Meder was in NUS today cos, err NUS is his client. So we met for lunch, and he suggested Arts canteen cos he wanted to check out the girls. -_-" He was dressed in long sleeves and tie, looked kinda "staffy" so we had no trouble finding seats at the peak hour cos we sat at the staff area. -_-" Saw Stephanie at the canteen and she came over to say hi to Meder. She told me Meder is taller than expected, while Meder said Stephanie looks not bad. Wow. Both of them have chance liao~

With less than 1 hour to spare I brought Meder around the campus. Showed him the rock gym, workshop 2, etc etc, then brought him back to Computer Centre.

He wanted to see the girls' dormitory...

过关斩鱼

"...在百万军中取上将首级如探囊取物..."
--关羽 telling 曹操 about his brother 张飞,
Romance of Three Kingdoms

Cos of Singapore 2006, I tell you Suntec is as good as trapped inside a bird cage. Now the only way in is via the overhead bridge near Shaw Towers (forget about CityLink, it's sealed), and even that poor footbridge has metal gate at both ends with policemen guarding. Walking in Suntec has never been so free of inter-molecular collisions, and there seems to be more police prowlers than shoppers. (think they will have phobia of Suntec after the whole S2006 is over) The mata have gas mask and kevlar helmet+army webbing, and the Gurkha even have shotguns and MP-5 submachine guns. Massive guard duty. (don't expect to find 陀枪师姐, the local versions are... ermm... nvm)

In the end I bought a gigantic fish head from Carrefour.

Tag: Singapore 2006

four day week

Because the lecturer cancelled the lecture today and I don't have lab session this week, so I didn't have to go to school today~ See? Engineering also can have 4-day week!

Oh well if you skip all your classes, you can have a zero day week.

world press photo 06

Hey people! If you have the time, do check out the World Press Photo 06 exhibition at National Library. What you'll see are award-winning dramatic photographs from around the world, scenes like the aftermath of Katrina, Iraq war, civil wars in Africa, child labour in Bangladesh, etc etc. World Press Photo is a non-profit organization based in Netherlands.

The exhibition is at level 7 and 8 of National Library. It is open till 28th September 2006. Admission is free.

enchanted LT

Join in my ME2 lectures, sit at the left rear side of the lecture theatre, and you will hear chanting... endless chanting... in a different language from mine (ie, not English or Chinese)... occasionally stopping when the guys are nodding off... and the chanting will make you appreciate the lecturer more.

Since first semester, there's this group of guys who just like to talk and talk during lectures. (let's not mention their ethnic group but you should get the hint) Yesterday we were unlucky enough to be sitting right in front of them. It is moment like this when you know you want to pay attention to the lecturers.

In year 1 they were chanting.
In year 2 they are still chanting.
Bless them.