quote of the day

没时间悲伤了!
--csh

(translation: no time to be sad!)

finished watching 電車男

The drama version of 電車男 (densha otoko, Train Man) is really worse than the book, in a pleasant way. Train Man is really cannot-make-it in the drama. It's worse than beauty and the beast. Everytime he whines and cries, I really feel like slapping him. (although I can't be much better than him) The physical difference in height between Train Man and Hermes (Hermes is taller) is like showing the audience how different the 2 of them are.

In the book, the story is like a straight line graph with positive gradient, everything going more or less smoothly. In the drama, however, for dramatic effect the story differs a little from the original book, with quite a bit of ups and downs. In the 11 episodes drama, everyone (including the BBS people) is given a personality. There are baseball fan, manga fan, Gundam fan, bookworm, military nut, etc etc. It gets quite funny when they bump into each other in real life, not knowing each other, when online they are like talking to each other everyday. (I wonder do I bump into ppl reading my blog...) It is really touching when the BBS people try to give strength to Train Man, but in the process they also find strength from Train Man for their own personal problems.

The element of crappiness is there for dramatic effect, with a few cock characters in the drama. In the SP2 episode, people were like imitating the Train Man story, I couldn't help laughing out in front of the screen~!

Can't help fantasizing about Hermes, just like those BBS people in the drama =)

Tags: 電車男, densha otoko, train man

volare

The ultimate karaoke.

Click HERE to play.

Anyway volare means "to fly" in Italian.

one sardine less

(If you dunno what the fish I'm talking about, read this)
Had my first paper yesterday. One sardine down, four more to swallow.

Sensors and Actuators. There seems to be quite a bit of unhappiness over the errors in the exam paper. The guy who pointed out the missing information in the motor question was seated just next to me, and he kept raising his hand like Olympic torch relay.

Somehow I wonder did the examiners try out the questions themselves before the exam? It wasn't really fair when he only announced the error like near the end of the paper when the question was somewhere in the middle. I heard some people got stuck there for half an hour. Just for that dunno-how-many ampere of current.

But didn't affect me, cos I was too slow to reach that question when he annouced the error =P (or did I skip it?)

Tag: exam

scientific abacus

A few days ago I was joking to my family about loaning calculators outside exam hall to those who forget to bring theirs. This morning I couldn't find my own calculator.

It wasn't quite funny when the paper was 5 hours away. I searched at the usual spots but just couldn't find it. Then I found it in my brother's drawer...

If I really couldn't find it, I might have to bring a scientific abacus into exam hall.

Huh? What pi? What raised to power 10? Natural log?

quote of the day

to people from Mechanical Engineering...

anything mechanical,
give it a good bash
--Commander Colin Maud
Beach Master Royal Navy
The Longest Day

exam seating plan

Please note down all the emergency escape routes and exits.

Now I really want to blow the exam hall up.
(click picture for larger version of Airbus A340's exit plan)

rapist caught on camera

He should be caned and sent to jail.

exam in a sardine can

What happens if you need to fit 5 sardines inside a can but they just can't fit in?

You take a knife, make 2 cuts on the fish's body, throw away the middle portion, combine the head and tail, and there you go, now you can fit 5 sardines inside the can.

Do likewise when revising the 5 modules for your exam.

rubbish picture essay

suggested topics:

1) Toyota stands in for rubbish truck, wants to collect rubbish with its boot.
2) Rubbish truck finds big rubbish at refuse chute.
3) Illiterate driver can't understand No Parking.
4) Car covers the word "No", driver assumes it is Parking lot.
5) Monster truck madness, rubbish truck about to roll over Toyota.
6) Ugly rubbish truck colour scheme.
7) Garage at HDB flat.

Town council and HDB have been notified about the picture essay competition.

(it gets really irritating when the rubbish truck driver keeps honking for the car owner)

licensed to kill (aunties)

A few guys like to call me auntie killer. (especially when they see canteen aunties or cleaner aunties in school)

Yesterday I helped my mother buy some meat from the market. I went to the usual stall, did my killer smile, ordered $2 minced meat from the pork auntie. When the auntie handed me the plastic bag i was thinking, how come $2 meat weigh so heavy... I thought it was just me, but when I reached home my mother was shocked too. "wah! 童臾無欺!". Yeah, student discount.

Next semester I should take marketing modules from Business School. Supermarket, wet-market, dry-market. I'm only lousy at stock market.

happy thanksgiving

Don't worry, I'm not going to eat Turkey today.

電車男

Just finished reading 電車男 (Densha Otoko, Train Man)

It's a real life online love story of Train Man and Hermes. It started with Train Man saving a train load of women from a drunkard, and one of the passengers was Hermes. Train Man found Hermes attractive, but he's those no-life geek who has been single and virgin all this while (22 years old, erm not that bad lah) So he turned to the BBS for help. All the strangers from the BBS gave him all sorts of advice, while Train Man reported his progress regularly on the BBS. It's funny to see the reaction from the message board people, cos most of them are single nerds as well.

The whole book is actually an extract from the actual message board, and maybe cos I'm a frequent forum visitor myself, so I find the feeling very familiar, just that I've never seen a 1000 post long thread -_-" The original version can be found here. (English version here)

Simple, sweet, funny, touching, motivational, I kind of wish I can be like Train Man, finding romance on a train. Maybe I should be Bus Man. 巴士男!

Tag: 電車男, densha otoko, train man

mobile mugger

(mobile: Japanese, pronounced as mo-bee-le. See Mobile Suit Gundam)

This 2 weeks I was like mugging all over the place.

Faculty of Engineering, Central Library, Yusof Ishak House, National Library, library@esplanade, library@orchard... National University Hopsital, School of Medicine, Faculty of Law.

Yes you heard me, NUH, MD and Law! Law Fac has a really nice study room with lots of empty tables, although it feels weird revising First Law of Thermodynamics in Faculty of Law...

radioactive me

All I have to do is to pee in the drain, and Singapore will face its first nuclear diaster... (just kidding, doesn't work that way)

Had my third dose of nuclear isotope injection in my life from those gigantic monster syringe with digital meter at its side...

Think I'm glowing green now. Try placing a Geiger-Müller tube next to me and you should get a radiation reading.

dracula ant

Yesterday I was doing chin-up in Bishan Park. Halfway I felt a sharp irritation on my hand, then I saw it was a red ant biting me. I sent it flying in projectile motion, then I discovered Dracula's teeth marks on my hand: 2 red dots...

By right I should be turned into another vampire right?

exam preparation

Time to train your leg muscles, cos...

Luckily MPSH is only 2 storeys high.

signs

Someone was asking in forum what does this sign mean.

"equal to by definition"

Why do people like to dig into those unimportant details?

This is not the time to be fundamental, it's time to be functional!

quote of the day

（ ´ ＾`　 吸

（ - o - 　 呼・・・

-- post 569, 電車男 (Train Man)

吸 = inhale
呼 = exhale

bush in nus

As if Iraq is not enough, George W Bush wants to turn NUS into another war zone.

The carpark in front of Block EA was full of armed-to-the-teeth Gurkhas policemen, RSAF Super Puma helicopter circling above campus, the whole stretch of Kent Ridge Crescent in front of UCC was closed. Thanks to him, all the traffic got to detour and I had to walk further to take bus. Oh the last I heard was his convoy was made up of 20 cars.

I was studying outside Forum Co-op, which was where the invited students registered and boarded the ISB to UCC. They couldn't be intelligent students, cos intelligent students would ask intelligent questions during Q&A, and intelligent questions would embarrass Mr President (eg, how come his party lost recently). Anyway those invited students made so much noise and disturbed my revision. Didn't know seeing a donkey make them feel high.

Tag: bush

alex's birthday

Time flies when yesteryear felt like yesterday, and yesterday was Alex's birthday. Soon he'll be using purple ezlink card.

Following our climbing gang's practise of eating Japanese food during birthday, we had dinner at Sushi Tei at Ngee Ann City yesterday. The Russian(-speaking) Mafia is in Thailand, so only left with Alex, Nicholl and I. 三缺一, but we still had fun talking cock, gossiping, crapping...

Do you know Alex is so popular that if you want to eat with him, you need to book in advance? Actually I was in the reserve list, and there was another group behind us in the queue, but the first group opted out, so in the end we got him. Must take queue number.

student feedback

"What you write is your answer"
The lecturer who told us to copy homework from seniors.
"今天的功课今天做完"

Time to change your laser pointer's batteries.
You haven't taught us H5N1 is what fitting.

Time to change your notes' old NUS logo.

Nice video in the air-con lab!

Please include nanotechnology in the syllabus. We need to squeeze the formulae in our helpsheet.

one nut less to crack

Had my Engineering Visualization & Modelling quiz just now. 25 minutes, 50 questions, total weightage 50%. No time to think, you think, you're dead.

Some of the diagrams were really blur, I almost had to kiss the screen to see clearly. I had already solved that blur question when the tutor came over and tried to adjust the contrast of the monitor, and he doesn't know how to use the buttons! Imagine he tried to use the mouse to click the monitor's in-built menu.... -_-" In a normal exam you can't really blame the invigilator for wasting your time while he announces the error in the question paper right? Blame Kim Seng for the blur diagrams.

5 more papers left.

muggers of the world unite

Today my backside itchy, went to the Study Lounge at National Library to revise.

I thought the library opens at 10am, but when I reached at 10:05 the Study Lounge was already packed. Couldn't find a table but at least got myself a sofa. Somehow got the feeling I was the only engineering student there...

Saw something atrocious. At 11am, these 5 kids at the sofa went off for lunch, leaving their belongings on the sofa. What a way to reserve seats. I should have alerted the security guards for suspicious articles.

After an interesting lunch with Wongsan who happened to be at SMU, I shifted to library@esplanade. At least I got a table there, but... the table was so high I could almost kiss my notes. I was revising halfway then there's this cute girl beside me, she tilted her head and looked at me. I looked up, realised that she wanted to catch my attention (but too shy too tap or call me) and asked me to shift my stool a bit so that her friend could squeeze in... -_-"

Cute girls are bad for revision. Library has lots of them. Library is bad for revision.

weird neighbour, newspaper

The uncle next door is quite weird. Yesterday he knocked on my door, askimg me to help him buy Straits Times today cos he is bringing his wife to see the doctor early in the morning.

I was thinking, how early can that be? Even if you have to leave your house early, you can always buy the newspaper from the newstand at the bus stop or MRT station, or even the convenience store when you've reached the hospital.

Somemore, it's not like we have nothing to do, we have to work or go to school (fine, today I have no lessons) So I asked, after I've bought the newspaper I put it outside your door? (I can't be waiting at home whole day long just to hand the newspaper to you right?) Then he said no, scare ppl know inside no people, and asked me to pass the newspaper to the lady next door. -_-" What the... in the first place he could have just asked that lady to buy the paper right? Have to mobilise 3 households just to buy newspaper...

Sometimes people just like to get convenience at the expense of other people's inconvenience.

fat or pregnant

Just now on the bus I couldn't tell if the woman was having a tummy or having a baby...

Feel quite guilty for not giving up my seat.

(actually I used to have this sadistic idea. If a fat woman wants to fight for seat with me, I'll happily let her have the seat and suan her about being pregnant...)

quote of the day

Sometimes the majority only means that all the fools are on the same side
--Ameet

Ameet's MSN nick always makes good food for thought.
Engineering canteen's Indian food is nice.

selfish-nus

Share your knowledge.
It's a way to achieve immortality
-- Dalai Lama

Have you heard of the saying that people from NUS (both grads and ugrads) are more selfish than others? At first I rebutted, but now I start to buy that idea.

Just because competition is stiff, that's why everyone is all out for him/herself? Helping one another means you lose an advantage?

So all this while I have been living in a false consciousness thinking that when you share with others, others will share with you. How naive can I be.

And I am getting more and more disheartened with the so-called friends. Oh, they didn't declare they were my friends anyway. In fact they didn't ask me to share, it's I voluntarily email them the questions. My fault.

crappy met service

I think my oversensitivity can match the meteorological service.

Regardless of how big or small the magnitude, I can always sense it when someone kick the back of my seat or shake his leg during lecture. Very soon I can plot the tremor on the Richter scale.

Without turning my head I can tell which girl is entering from the back of LT7 and predict where she sits. Tracking down typhoon? (some girls can be more destructive than tropical storm)

Precipitation? I dunno, but I do know it when the tide is high.

escalator accident

This is not funny, especially when you can lose your toes on the escalator.

Sometimes I think this kind of accidents can be prevented lor. I always see kids playing treadmill on the escalator, or parents letting their kids run wild in shopping malls. Holding their hands may save their toes.

And I seldom see signages at escalators. If they can publicise road safety, surely they can publicise escalator safety. (just spare a few advertisement space lah)

lipton in ivle

What happens when you cut a Lipton tea bag? The tea leaves spread.

I'm trying very hard to convince myself that Lip Tong is trying to share his knowledge in Mechanics' IVLE forum, and not trying to gain publicity (like me =P), although it seems weird that he posted things out of nowhere when no one posted any queries.
(btw in JC, our GP tutor gave Lip Tong a nickname "Lipton".)

Recently feel very weird, keep getting oversensitive over small things, such as friends with different value systems, or getting annoyed during lunchtime, etc...

It feels bad when you keep your temper.

the last lab

Had my last lab session for the semester yesterday. Just look at the P-H diagram for R-22 and your first reaction is... sian. (click to enlarge. Doesn't help much though)

Thermodynamics is my weakest module and before the lab I was so worried, but surprisingly I find yesterday's experiment easy~ In fact a lot of people asked me for help with the calculations and surprisingly I could explain to them. I was the first to leave the lab ^__________^

Fuhao, one of my lab partner, is a Malaysian, and for the past 8 lab sessions the 2 of us always use Cantonese to communicate, ie gossip and discuss. That's quite useful cos we could say bad things in front of someone, ie the other lab partner =P. Anyway the rest of the lab group seem to find it amusing...

I was also the largest foolscap and liquid paper supplier yesterday. There's this girl in my lab group, she's ususally very outgoing with her friends, then suddenly when she tapped my arm and ask me for foolscap she like sound so timid... then throughout the lab she kept glancing at me. hoho, shy?

night vision goggles for lecture

I think next time we need to wear night vision goggles to lecture.

Today, Kim Seng decided to use non-visible infra-red pointer instead of red laser pointer for lecture.


(this was the second time A/P Lee's laser pointer's battery went flat. I don't blame him, sometimes my mp3 player's batteries go flat too)

my ezlink card reader

I know I'm slightly tall lah, but...

The bus was very packed this morning, and I was standing right in front of the Ezlink card reader(the one on your right when you board the bus) Then this fella dunno why he so enthu about tapping his card, he really took my groin area as the card reader...

Hello, can't you wait until you have shifted in and when there's an open space directly in front of the card reader before tapping? Tapping early doesn't give you rebate you know? (in fact, tapping late does give you "discount")

pm's day out

Living in the Prime Minister's constituency, I seem to have quite a bit of chances of seeing him in person. With my observant eyes for unimportant details, this is what I've observed:

First the army's EOD team (aka bomb squad) will be on site, its dog sniffing every corner for suspicious articles, ie bomb. Then the PM arrives, with 2 police motorbikes leading the column, a white Volvo with bodyguards from the police Security Command, then a white Mercz with the PM inside, followed by a white SUV with even more bodyguards. Then of course the PM alights, waves, walks around, shakes hands, kisses babies. Whereever he goes, 1-2 bodyguards will be leading the way, opening the path. They are equiped with wireless intercoms and electric batons on their belt, but can't see if they have pistols underneath their clothes or not. Some are seen carrying laptop cases which I suspect contain MP-5 submachine guns (for goodness sake, why would they carry laptops around...).

Sometimes a member of the public wants to approach the PM to reflect on his/her case, and guess what, before he/she can get close, some non-uniformed personels would have cornered him/her to one side and check his/her IC and bag. Wanting to shake his hand seems easier.

Luckily I'm a good guy, cos I spotted loopholes...
(by right minister means servant. Now a servant has got bodyguards and travels in a Mercz, what kind of master-servant relationship is this?)

guest appearance

averii: ROAR!
chillycraps: RRUUGGGHHH!

Where are my eyes!
(picture leeched from averii.blogspot.com)

bus fair

Semester is ending soon and I was deciding whether to buy bus concession, then I discovered something interesting.

Changing bus at different location actually makes a difference. Take my route for example. I board bus 74 at Ang Mo Kio, transfer to 151 at Bukit Timah Road and alight at NUS. The bus fare (assume air-con) is $1.08 + $1.18 - $0.25(rebate) = $2.01

If I board the same bus 74 from the same location, transfer to 151 at somewhere along Clementi Road, alight at the same location in NUS, the fare will look like $1.28 + $0.65 - $0.25(rebate) = $1.68

One day twice, one month around 22 days, that should be quite a bit of money huh? (no no no, not giving an excuse for you to skip school!)

OK, this time round I'm not going to fall for the trap and buy concession for holiday...

nus mug

Do you know why NUS gave each of us a mug?

encounter on the bus

When you don't like someone, you really find splinter in every word from his mouth.

Yesterday on the bus I saw motor-mouth, my former army camp mate.

In a demanding voice, he asked "Why are you here?"
Chow: "Why can't I be here? This is a public bus lor!"
...
(then he asked if I have a girl friend. What's so interesting about that?)
motor-mouth: "Loser leh you! Still can't find girl friend!"
Huh? You mean staying single is losery? Oh well, of course, if you compare me with people who have casual sex every now and then, or change girl friend every other week, then I seem very losery. Maybe in his opinion every virgin is a loser too.

You want to win, go ahead. I don't mind being such loser.

solidmoron

My last SolidWorks tutorial and still must meet this kind of people.

We had the unseen CAD today, and there was this guy who came in late. He took up the computer beside mine and for the whole 30 minutes of the quiz he was cursing and swearing and making all sorts of constipation sounds. Hello? You dunno how to do doesn't mean you must disturb others to make others also dunno how to do right? It's a quiz for goodness sake. Anyway I've encountered such morons in tests and exams before, equally irritating.

What's more, I suspect he did his CT5 at home! I looked at his screen and I saw him drawing non-sensical things (trust me, really non-sensical shapes!) and pop, out of nowhere all his solid parts were done. It's just not fair to the rest who played by the rules.

Moronic Engineering.

quote of the day

This module the forum is like yours.
-- Lip Tong, before Mechanics of Materials tutorial

I kind of regretted being so nosy in the IVLE forum. Now it backfires.
The lecturer now knows who I'm, asked me to present my answer on her tablet PC in tutorial class, saved my solution, and distribute to the class...

For those in ME2, you can guess who CSH is...

sdu

哗! 飞虎队!
-- me to my brother when he first received letter from SDU

Cos my brother just graduated this year, recently he has been receiving letters and brochures and publications from Social Development Unit. To put it simply, it's a matchmaking service from the government that organizes activities such as halloween ghost hunt (so that the girls will be scared and hold onto the guys.. -_-")

I notice that all the people in the brochure are Chinese.

(another SDU: Special Duties Unit, an elite force in the Hong Kong Police, better known as 飞虎队)

ps test

I don't play Playstation and I don't hang out at Plaza Singapura, so how to expect me to do well in PS test?

Q: name the different party systems.
A: err... birthday party, halloween party, christmas party...

(PS = Political Science)

nus polo-tee

I think NUS's polo tee is very nice, but too bad I'm not in any IVP team and I don't want to buy the shirt from co-op bookshop.

One way to get the shirt is to join Office of Estate & Development as a maintenance man, then you will get the NUS polo-tee with the words OED on the sleeve, somemore during exam period you can go into the exam hall before the paper starts =P

And if you want to act like a doctor, just dress formally, wear your matric card around your neck and walk around in NUH. (medicine students always have their orange matric card around their necks) For better effect, hang your mp3 player's headphones around you neck to simulate a stethoscope.

some people's wife

On Monday I was at NUH Clinic B and I saw this scene.

A man was on wheelchair, with documents in hand, he struggled his way towards the counter. Behind him, his wife and his toddler son followed. His wife had nothing in her hands, and she did nothing other than looking at her son play with a toy handphone which made real lot of noise.

The husband reached the counter, struggled to stand up on one leg, and talked to the counter staff, all on his own. His wife, did nothing other than looking at her son play with that noisy toy handphone.

Tsk... the husband so poor thing already, then the stupid wife couldn't do the least to push the wheelchair or go to the counter to register for him?? (as far as I know, you don't need to see the person's face to register at hospital. This is not like immigration checkpoint) In the first place what did the woman and the kid go there for? Sightseeing in hospital?

Then I saw the men struggled away from the counter. I pity him, not for his injury, but for having married such woman.