away from keyboard

hey people, I will be away from keyboard starting today till 2007.
I've included the Games Room above to occupy you in the absence of my craps.
For urgent matters I can still be contactable via SMS (your hamster giving birth is NOT urgent)
Feel free to crap in the comments page if you want.

See you next year and Merry Christmas!

terrorising atm

I was withdrawing money from the ATM machine, then I must be daydreaming about the nice red colour $10 notes that were about to spill out, I forgot I had selected to print receipt. So after taking back my ATM card and the cash, I walked away from the ATM machine.

After walking for around 200m I realised I didn't take the receipt, so I walked back. When I reached the ATM machine, I saw the other ATM machines had long queues, while the one I used was vacant, with my receipt hanging there untouched.

Didn't know a hanging receipt could be so menacing.

Tag: atm

squeeze the promoter dry

That day we went NTUC FairPrice. Christmas is around the corner, so the supermarket marked out an area specially for Christmas related goods, such as chocolate.

So we were looking at the pile of Merci, and a promoter was standing there babbling away. We asked if we could try some sample, and the promoter said there's no sampling, but went on to say how nice is the brand's chocolate. If there's no sampling, then the promoter seemed quite redundant. So we walked away towards the stacks of Ferrero Rocher and Cadbury and other brands...

Guess what, out of some magic the Merci's promoter dug out some chocolate for us to try -_-"

My brother said we should have grabbed a dozen boxes of Merci to make the promoter happy, then go and dump them at the supermarket's normal chocolate section shelf.

inequality

Read an article on a Chinese magazine and find it make some sense.

It says that our world is never equal. Some people govern others, while some to be governed; There are few shopowners, but many shoppers; Few performers, many spectators; One president, many citizens; Closer to home, we spent 15 weeks to prepare for a 2 hour exam (this one's from me, although some may only spend the night before) From a functionalist point of view, everything exists for a reason. A master can't be a master unless he has slaves (so by right he should thank the slaves for giving him the title)

It was argued that the fight for fairness is itself unfair, cos it denies opportunity for the gifted ones. (to be honest, I don't get the point here) Maybe if they had insisted Einstein or Mozart or whoever to pass PSLE, O Level and A Level, our world wouldn't be quite the same.

So the question is, do you want to be unique (c'mon, we all are unique) or do you want to fight for equality and become one of the many identical products from the production lines?

Tag: inequality

the idea factory

Finished reading The Idea Factory by Pepper White.

It's the author's personal account of his master's degree course in mechanical engineering at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) written in a diary form. Talking about the world's top technological university. NUS made 8th, not bad.

It's really nice reading this book cos there's a lot of common frequency. Our old friends Newton, Carnot, Bernoulli, Lagrange, Boole (remember Boolean algebra?), Diesel, all came out. Is entropy your friend too?

Actually our life in NUS is relatively quite easy. Over there the author had to find his own sponsors, signing up as tutor to get free dormitory, fighting against time for projects, trying to smoke the professor (out of point. but I do that too) etc etc. And getting a C in the result slip was like the end of everything (for the sucidal few). Real elitist.

There are a lot of funny and meaningful lines in the book. Really a nice read especially if you are studying mechanical engineering. Suddenly I feel motivated.

Tag: mit, engineering

northern island xhaustion

Came back from the Northern Island Xpedition organized by the NUS Canoeing Sub-club yesterday.

I was kind of cheated into joining by hj cos I really knew noone there (actually I know a lot of them, just that they dunno me), and hj being in the committee had to take the single kayak while the participants like me took double kayaks. By the way that kid was the one who drove the lorry and transported the kayaks to Changi. Impressed.

The particpants ranged from year 1 to PhD students, and the level of proficiency from no experience to 2 stars generals like me. Actually it doesn't matter much about your experience, you don't sink can already.

I partnered with Shi Yao who was my Sec 3&4 classmate. Actually both of us kayaked in Ubin together (not same boat though) before. I did a lot of stupid things yesterday, such as my favourite water spraying with the paddle which I picked up during ODAC days. hj got it worst from me. Then I was passing Shi Yao's oreo around on my paddle,then the whole packet rolled off into the sea... when I picked it up it had become soggy biscuit (boy's school guys should know the joke)

As for the organization, hmm... the navigator was way too fast and he didn't take into account the sweeper's distance. The right marker also seemed like kayaking side by side with the navigator, so the supposedly diamond formation (which they didn't make known) became like kite or sometimes inverted triangle. The navigator also asked for a raft-up way too close to the rocks, not a good choice. And the beaching up was messy. And they didn't do a floating test for out PFDs (personal floatation device) Ok fine, most of the committee members are year 1.

Anyway, now I can appreciate free-surface effect more. When the inside of your kayak is half-filled with water, you'll know how it's like. What metacentre?

Tags: kayak, canoe

leaking bladder

I was packing my stuff for expedition when I found out both of my water bags (aka water bladder or hydration pack) were leaking. In both cases the plastic stopper at the drainage hole had cracked. Sian. Luckily I checked.

There's a saying "take care of your equipment and your equipment will take care of you."
C'mon, it's not as though I kept them under extreme condition right?
Shucks imagine my climbing equipment snaps!

at the hawker centre

• Saw a man going round begging money. Then I saw him order soft drink and lighting up cigarette at an empty table. =_="
  How contrasting it was when I saw Bangladesh workers working hard and eating plain rice + curry sauce for lunch at the void deck.


• A guy brought his dog into the hawker centre. I told myself it was the ingredient for the claypot dog meat.


• Old aunties keeping a close eye on aluminium cans. They keep coming back to ask if you have finished your can's content, very much like 冤魂 (spirit)
  Luckily I don't usually order canned drinks. Spared.


• Cleaner pushed the trolley to beside my table, threw the other table's soup bowl into the tray. On impact the soup flew out and landed on my table, together with the saliva of the one who ate that bowl-of-whatever-it-was. Conservation of mass and linear momentum proven. What goes in must come out...

baboks meet miss clarity

We had our 3rd Babok Club gathering yesterday evening at Miss Clarity Cafe. It has been more than a year since we last met, and for me there was a lot of mixed feelings.

Coincidentally all four of us are doing engineering: Janan in NTU aerospace engineering, SQ in NTU triple E (not some kind of clan, just electrical eletronic engineering), Wei Guang in NUS bioengineering, and of cos me in NUS crappy engineering.

Janan has put on weight, thanks to good (junk) food in NTU. If there's anyone whom I can't suan, that's SQ, cos he always manages to outsuan me with deadly accuracy. Maybe Navy has trained him well to fire Harpoon missile. And Wei Guang came to the rescue with discount card!

Really glad that everyone made it last night. Couldn't quite believe my butt was sticking to the chair for more than 3 hours, but zee-monster got me at around 10pm...

babok @ miss clarity

compare how much everyone has changed here.

SQ and Janan.
Janan is about to strike with coffee cup hiding behind the water

SQ: why you eat my chicken?!
Later I send a nuclear submarine to your toilet bowl then you know...

Wei Guang: Janan, realrun = you really-should-run, cos I'm gonna eat you up!

boring drawing

Sometimes when you are bored, you draw. And when you draw, you usually draw things that you like, things that you miss, or things that are absolute rubbish.

That's a SAR-21 rifle modelled using SolidWorks.
Don't expect to see firing mechanism or moving parts.

If I can get my hands on schematics from ST Engineering, maybe I can model it so detailed that you can even unscrew the muzzle.

Wait long long.

crappy exam

It has been more than one week since my exam has ended. Really wanted to do an after-action review, but it seems meaningless when the results aren't out. (But when the results are out I won't have the mood to talk about it, so might as well review now.)

This semester's exam preparation was arguably the best. (that doesn't mean the result will go in linear relation) It was perhaps the first time in my life that I developed eyebags and the eyelid kept twitching non-stop. The after-effects are still around. And I actually stayed back in school (till 3pm, NOT 3am.) to study, and stayed up till 10:30pm at home to revise. One big step for mankind.

This semester I had never stepped into NUS Rock Gym an inch, and the number of Saturdays spent climbing at Yishun also dropped drastically. One thing did increase, coffee intake skyrocketed.

The result better be good.

Tag: exam

dreams do come true

Dear Siu Hang

Dreams do come true!

Swee Chiow

(Autograph from Khoo Swee Chiow, fourth person in the world to complete the Adventure Grand Slam.
That's the only autograph of celebrity that I have)

Do dreams really come true?
Or do people change their dreams when they realise their dreams can't be achieved?
How many people actually bother about dreams, or about dreaming?

Part of my mind still refuses to give up my dream.
That's annoying.

Tag: dream

lifting earth with pulleys

Do you know that Archimedes invented the compound pulleys system?

I was thinking about this sort-of-myth:

• with 1 pulley we can lift a load L with the force F=L;
• with 2 pulleys, F=L/2;
• with 3 pulleys, F=L/3;
• with 4 pulleys, F=L/4.

So with "infinitely" many pulleys set up in similar manner, we can lift the Planet Earth!

For someone who said "Give me a place to stand and rest my lever on, and I can move the Earth", Archimedes was quite an interesting ingénieur.

Tag: pulley

dripping justice

My laundry was hanging behind the kitchen when someone's wet laundry started to drip water down. It was like heavy rain.

I leaned out of the window (people don't try unless you know how to counter your centre of gravity with support force) and saw which level was the inconsiderate people staying on. Then I went to look for trouble.

me: auntie, 你的衣服是不是放在后面? 滴水了leh.
woman: 你住哪一层?
me: 楼下啦 (不然楼上咩)
woman: 把你衣服收进来啦
(I almost said "what the *beep*")
me: (with eyes widened) aye, 你知不知道你弄湿我的衣服!
auntie: ok 对不起对不起.

If you can't bring them to justice, bring justice to them.

horny garang kuni

There are 2 types of garang kuni: one type walks along the corridor and ask for old newspaper; the other type chooses to stay at the ground level, sound his noisy horn while walking around on the grass patch, and only comes up the HDB block when he sees someone waves at him.

Want to do business also so lazy (and irritating), it never crosses my mind to sell my newspaper to those who only know how to sound their horn on the ground level. Actually there is a popular garang kuni in my neighbourhood whom everyone keeps his/her old newspaper and wait for him to come. He gives good price and his trolley is always full. And he doesn't horn.

One of these days I'm going to stick my middle finger out of my kitchen window at those horny garang kunis.

how they treasure "friendship"

Two days ago I had an exchange of SMSes with a friend, trying to organize a gathering.
Today, I gave him a gentle reminder on MSN.
And what he said? "What's your number again?"

I can establish 2 things:
1) my number doesn't exist in his handphone.
2) he didn't care much about the SMS I sent. Surely my number appeared in the SMS, no?

Kind of regret asking him for the gathering, since another friend did suggest we go ahead without him. Just because of him the rest of us made arrangement on our routine. And he just can't be bothered.

At least he didn't ask who am I. Maybe he didn't know and was hiding it.

Tag: friendship

first climb in two months

Due to excuses such as exams and etc, I haven't been climbing for 2 months.

This morning I went to the playground at Ang Mo Kio Town Garden and well, rockclimbed. Sort of.

Didn't bring my climbing shoes and chalkbag though.
(I was the only kid around that early in the morning)

delete the elite

(It was funny to see in the same newspaper article yesterday 2 people who have taught me: Sociologist Dr Tan Ern Ser and Political Scientist Dr Kenneth Paul Tan. They were talking about elite, and maybe I should crap about elite too. By the way I'm in engineering.)

So how do you define "elite"? Graduating from secondary schools with the big R in front of their names? (no I don't mean River Valley =P) Oh actually I came from the secondary school whose name starts with "The".

I remember a teacher from my school's Gifted Education Programme said something like the name itself is stupid cos everyone of us is gifted in one way or another, so why specially make a Gifted programme? Maybe some of us are gifted in ways that are useful to the government. Most aren't. The government doesn't give a damn if you are gifted in crapping.

Some of my close friends are PSC and SAF scholars. A Sec3&4 classmate of mine is a President Scholar. To be honest, they are just human like you and I, sometimes dumber. But they are almost like born to it, mostly thanks to the teachers. In the teachers' eyes it is normal for scholars to do better than us normal living things, but if you happen to do better than them, the teachers think you are just pure lucky and continue to forget your name. By the way I'm not a scholar, couldn't even secure Father-Mother Scholarship and have to pay for my own university tuition fee.

(I hate long entries and let's make this quick) Let's do a comparison between 2 guys of the same calibre, make it less extreme. One is a scholar, the other not. The scholar has free university education, pocket money, a job waiting for him even before he graduates, higher salary, and faster promotion rate. The non-scholar has non of these. Is the scholar more capable? Not neccesarily. But surely he has less worries. Come to think of it, the non-scholar saves quite a lot of tax-payers' money.

By being a so-called elite, do you just sit there comfortably in your planned career path? Or do you really stand up and wholeheartedly serve the country? Maybe society's pillars don't need to move an inch.

It's just a label, and people do paste the label wrongly sometimes.

Tags: elite, scholar

kaopei walker 12月號

It used to be my favourite pasttime walking around in the city area, but it sort of died down after I injured my foot during national service.

Maybe I can pick it up again.

Went to Raffles' Place to have lunch with Alex yesterday (I took the MRT there -_-"). He must have grumbled cos I always disturb his routine lunch with pretty OLs. =P

This is the route I took after lunch:
Raffles' Place --> Tanjong Pagar --> Chinatown --> City Hall --> National Museum --> National Library --> Lavender --> Beach Road --> Bugis

Roughly 6 MRT stations' distance.
Oh there were always people asking me for direction. I always suspect my forehead has the words "Street Directory" =P

watched 墨攻

Don't watch 墨攻 (A Battle of Wits) if you don't like sad movies. As a war movie, it's sad. As a love story, it's sad. As a philosophical story, it's sad.

The story is based on a Japanese manga of the same name. Around 2200 years ago, the strong 赵国 wanted to invade 燕国, but the small 梁国 stood in its way, so 赵国 had to take 梁国 as well. Facing 100000-men strong army, 梁国 with only 4000 men asked for help from the 墨家. The 墨家, an ideology group, was having some internal makeover, and refused to send help to 梁国. But 革离, a hardcore believer of 墨家 ideology, insisted on helping the weak. So he went to help 梁国 alone...

革离 believes in the 墨子's ideology of 兼爱非攻 (love all, not attack), but in reality this doesn't work. Like how the African slave put it, you love everyone because you don't know how to choose who to love. Do human natures of greed and jealousy allow for everyone to love one another?

And I kind of wish the female cavalry general didn't have to die in the end.

Tag: 墨攻

reverse power surge

Don't connect more than one computer to the same extension socket.

This morning I was using both my desktop and the laptop side by side to test something. After I was done, I shut down the laptop properly (I still needed my desktop running though). Then in the normal proper manner, I unplugged the laptop's power plug from the socket. The moment the copper pins left the socket, my desktop went dead too. I stoned there like "what the..."

Applying what I've learned in ME2143 Sensors & Actuators, there was a sudden drop in magnetic field in the adaptor and blah blah blah...

Not as if I'll design a voltage regulator. Next time just don't connect 2 computers to the same extension socket.

narrow broadband

I'm not a geek, but I sure know the difference in subscription fee between 512kbps and 1500kbps ADSL.

I just upgraded my broadband from 512 to 1500, but nothing seemed to have changed. Plus, I finally ran out of my 5-6 years long patience for the intermittent internet connection. So I called the SingNet customer service hotline.

I gave the operator no chance at all, I just (nicely) bombarded him with all the possible excuses he could give. No virus, hardware is fine, modem is fine, microfilter is fine, etc etc (ie, don't let them push the blame to yourself). He was quite shocked and speechless for a few seconds before he said he would send a technician down the next day.

So the technician came yesterday and he was quite shocked at his test result. He said the connection was worse than 56k dial-up! (ahem, so all this years I was quite easily contented with slow connection huh?) Then he went down to some switch room at the void deck and did some magic, changed the circuit, fixed~.

Sometimes you meet their hardware requirement, but they don't meet their own hardware requirement.

Tags: broadband, adsl, singnet

stop writing like real (part 2)

I just have to bitch about this again cos it really pisses me off.

Call me stupid, but yesterday had I just continued to write for just that extra few seconds, I could have finsihed writing that few more alphabets and that close bracket in the equation to complete my last question. I didn't.

And that guy on my left was busy pressing his calculator and scribbling answer, and coincidentally he's my that-cheaterbug-friend's friend. I stared at him for a long time, but he seemed to find it normal to write beyond the time limit. Really very tempted to shout across and say "ooi, stop writing liao lah!" (and then the whole exam hall will look at me cos everyone was still writing after time's up... =_= no lah kidding. There are still good people around)

I wonder were the invigilators performing lip service when they said "If you continue to write your answers, you are considered to have cheated. Your identity will be noted and disciplinary action will be taken"

When doing the wrong thing seems to be the norm (and widely accepted), then doing the right thing would seem socially unacceptable.

Tag: exam

pole vault in ang mo kio

This is the second time this kind of thing happens.

This time round no bra no underwear no bedsheet, just towels and clothes hanging in mid air with the bamboo pole.

I must say today it's quite windy, so it is possible that the wind got the laundry pole. But then I also notice some aunties like to overload the maximum number of bamboo poles they can put behind their kitchen. Not uncommon to see poles sticking out in all kinds of angles.

This time round I'm not calling the police to stage another rescue since it's not at my column. Don't expect me to lean out to the next unit.

ikea experience

Went to the new Ikea Tampines today.

At the shuttle bus pick-up point at Ang Mo Kio, there was a queue from the taxi stand stretching all the way to the MRT station entrance. The chartered bus came, and suddenly all hell let loose as everyone screwed the queue and rushed onto the bus. My experience with NUS internal shuttle bus instinctively told me to board from the rear door, and guess what, although we were originally at the tail of the queue, we managed to find seats.

Actually the goods at Tampines are about the same as at Alexandra, just that the store is new and really big, so they can put up more variations on display (just like maths permutation and combination). Anyway I had a good time hugging all the cushions and pillows.

And I walked out with the popular heart-shaped cushion + the trademark Ikea shopping bag... FREE!

Tag: ikea

door cock

If you are travelling on bus 151 and find that the "Door Closing" sign is not working, chances are the bus is the same bus that I took today.

My head hit the sign when I was alighting... with a very loud bang that caught everyone's attention. (=_=")

of group eating

Supposed to meet a friend for lunch at 12pm.

Even told me to go book table at canteen first.

He came 15 minutes late.

The first thing he said was "Don't tell me you haven't eaten hor."

...

That's why I always feel the burden of group living.

stop writing like real

Have been seeing people continue to write after the invigilator had said "stop writing". Saw a friend of mine keep pressing his calculator and writing answer right till the moment the invigilator was standing beside him waiting to collect his answer booklet. To be honest I was very disappointed. (I thought he's decent since he's a true Christian)

You may gain some marks, but you lose your integrity.

I remember during secondary school time, there was once during a test the time was up but I saw a classmate still scribbling away. I snatched his paper away.

sometimes I really think my naive honesty and foolish obedience make me the only dumb person on earth...

Tag: exam

chartered runners

to those who are running the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon tomorrow:

Godspeed!

(NOT cock split)

to those who paid the registration fee just to get the event singlet:
Good for you, since I did the same thing before for climbing competition.

to those who show off their 2006 Singapore Marathon singlet before the actual day itself:
Lagi best.

tag: marathon

invigilators' instructions

Please ensure that you do not have any unauthorised materials, audio equipment or handheld PCs with you. Any candidate found with unauthorised materials will be liable to disciplinary action which may result in your explosion from the University.
-- A/P CJ Tay

...2 Sections from Question A and 2 Sections from Question B...
(he meant "2 Questions from Section A and 2 Questions from Section B". Think he got exam stress)
-- Dr Kenneth Paul Tan

psychological warfare

Exam is like psychological warfare.

How to win this battle? Go and blog about how you finished your paper within 1 hour of the 2 hours given, or write about how many questions you didn't get full marks when some people are struggling to get some marks out of it. In a nutshell, just say you find the paper easy and someone out there will get traumatised.

Of course, the ultimate psychological offense is to sleep inside the exam hall. The best I can do is to drink water shake leg. (it worked before, there was once the guy beside me told me he got stressed seeing me so relaxed during the exam)