mugging at ica

This morning I was reading my lecture notes at ICA Building (Immigration & Checkpoints Authority) . Although there are no tables other than those for filling up forms, but the seats are comfortable, and it was quite quiet this morning. Anyway nearby Beach Road Market has nice food.

Occasionally you must pretend to look up at the queue number. Luckily no one approached me to offer assistance, seeing that I had been waiting for my queue number for ages =P

C'mon, I didn't have a queue number.

Ok next stop, mugging at police station! (erm, I think better not.)

gun as birthday present

Tata my coursemate from ME3 has been bugging me to get her a gun.

A Bostik Hot Melt glue gun to be exact. Able to deliver 15 watts of power and melting the glue sticks at 193°C, this Weapon of Mass Distortion (WMD) is NOT the dream toy of most girls. But it looks kinda cool eh?

But the problem is, it comes with a weird 2-pin plug, the Australian AS3112 power plug which is like... \ / -_-"

Oh, last Sunday was tata's birthday. I only delivered the goods today. Can't help it, it's a gun for goodness sake!

bus ride log

(Someone once said my bus rides are always so happening. I think so too.)

• On my way to school, saw 2 empty seats with suspicious article on it. It was a shopping bag with some newspaper inside. Then someone tossed it aside and sat down and it exploded. Think another passenger informed the driver who stopped the bus and came behind to check. He resumed driving seeing that someone was sitting beside the suspicious article and nothing happened. (actually if it's a real bomb, you wouldn't even want to poke it)


• Saw an auntie tapping with a primary school ezlink card. Ok, maybe she's really studying in a primary school.


• Saw a man boarding from the exit and tried to tap his ezlink card at the exit. He likes backdoor entry?


• There was this office lady with a tennis racket and I found her so uber cool. Then when I saw her putting the racket horizontally on her laps and refused to let other passenger take the empty window seat, all my earlier grading of her went to zero.


• One of the seats was wet, and there's an auntie sitting on the aisle seat. The bus got crowded, and one standing auntie insisted the aisle-seat-auntie to move in so that herself can take the dry seat.


• Saw a mother scolding her son for not offering his seat to a blind man.


• Whenever I'm at the window seat and after someone takes the aisle seat, he/she will turn his/her head 90 degrees to study my face. What, do I look like suspicious article or something?

lecturer with muscle

Can you imagine your lecturer coming to lecture,
flexing bicep muscle,
hand holding on to a can of Perrier (or was it Heineken?)
then crushing the aluminium can in mid-sentence?

Associate Professor Justine Burley is from the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS.
She is our lecturer for EG2401 Engineering Professionalism.

I scare she will break my neck.

25 degrees of separation

Recently there has been some campaigns about running your air-conditioner at 25 degrees Celsius for energy efficiency and to save the environment.

Let me put it this way. It doesn't work for everyone. For someone like me who doesn't use the air-con at home, insisting to maintain a temperature of 25°C by means such as keeping your fridge door open or otherwise, will result in higher usage/wastage of electricity. I think the 25 shouldn't be kept as a rule but rather a general guideline. It will be equally stupid to keep freezer at 25°C.

I read a brochure from Hong Kong's Electrical and Mechanical Services Department and they say that if you raise the temperature from 22.5°C to 25.5°C, it can save 9% of energy. I know I studied thermodynamics, but don't ask me to verify. But if you raise it to 31°C, won't you save even more energy?

There is a term called "thermal comfort". In simple terms it means whether a person feels warm or cold, and this is determined by factors such as air temperature, air speed, humidity, human activity, clothing insulation, etc.[Cornell University Ergonomics Web] According to the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Standard 55-2004, different humidity will have different temperature range for comfort. For example, if the relative humidity is 30%, the acceptable operative temperature range would be 24.5-28°C. It would be 23-25.5°C for 60% relative humidity. Sounds logical.

Whatever it is, I think our human body is the best thermometer. One look and you know if the girl is hot or not.

mrt has offer

That day I was on my way home and I saw an old lady offering her seat to an older lady. I thought it should be the girl sitting beside the old lady who should have offered her seat.

Sometimes I do find it difficult to decide. You can't tell if the lady is pregnant or obese, you can't tell if the man is old or just having more white hair than the rest. Maybe you should do the cruel thing, stand up and watch the rest fight it out for the seat.

Actually there is that bit of selfish thought in me when I offer my seat. My parents are aging and I really hope others will offer their seats to them on public transport when they get older.

Sigh. How to decide who needs the seat more than you do?

the complaints choir singapore lyrics

As promised, the wonderful lyrics of
The Complaints Choir Singapore.

We get fined for almost anything
Drivers won't give chance when you want to change lane
The indoors are cold, the outdoors are hot;
And the humid air, it wrecks my hair
Those answering machines always make you hold
Only to hang up on you

When a pregnant lady gets on the train
Everyone pretends to be asleep
I'm stuck with my parents till I'm 35
Cause I can't apply for HDB
We don't recycle any plastic bags
But we purify our pee

*chorus:
What's wrong with Singapore?
Losing always makes me feel so sore
Cause if you're not the best
Then you're just one of the rest

My oh my Singapore
What exactly are we voting for?
What's not expressly permitted
is prohibited

"Ooh"

When I'm hungry at the food court, I see
People chope seats with their tissue paper
To the auntie staying upstairs:
Your laundry's dripping on my bed sheets
Please don't squat on the toilet seats
And don't clip your nails on MRT

Stray cats get into noisy affairs
At night my neighbor makes weird animal sounds
People put on fake accents to sound posh
And queue up 3 hours for donuts
Will I ever live till eighty five
to collect CPF?

*chorus

Singaporeans too kiasu! (so scared to lose)
Singaporeans too kiasi! (so scared to die)
Singaporeans too kiabor! (scared of their wives)
Maybe we’re just too stressed out! (even the kids)

"Ooh"

Old National Library was replaced by an ugly tunnel
Singaporean men can’t take independent women
People blow their nose into the swimming pool (and pee too)
And fall asleep on my shoulder in the train

Singapore’s national bird is the crane (the one with yellow steel girders)
Real estate agents’ leaflets clogging up my mailbox (en bloc, en bloc, en bloc, en bloc)
Why can’t we be buried when we die?
No one wants to climb Bukit Timah with me

*chorus

There are not enough public holidays
My neighbor sings KTV all night
Wedding dinners never start on time
My hair is always cut shorter than I want
Channel 5 commercials are way too long
Why do men turn bald?

*At first it was to speak more mandarin
Then it was to speak proper English
What’s wrong with my powderful Singlish?

People sit down during rock concerts
We have to pay for tap water at restaurants
ERP gantries are everywhere
But I can still see traffic jams on the road
All the bus stops have tilted benches
Cannot access playboy.com

*chorus

Just see how many lines you agree with.

*disclaimer: there is absolutely NO political motive in this post. Zero. None. And I'm a patriotic Singaporean. Those who are reading my blog daily as part of your job, you should know my profile anyway.

start-up@singapore emerging industry series: alternative energy

Attended the Alternative Energy talk yesterday. Held at the National Library Seminar Room Possibility, it was part of the Emerging Industry Series by Start-Up@Singapore. For the panelists we had Prof SK Chou from NUS, Frédéric Crampé from ReEx Capital Asia, A/Prof Hawlader from NUS, Allan Lim from Alpha Synovate, and Asst/Prof Birgersson from NUS. A/P Hawlader taught me last semester.

The thing about alternative energy is that, it is not restricted to just renewable energy. One example is Bio-fuel which can come from waste vegetable oil. So they were saying if you pump bio-diesel into your vehicle, your exhaust will smell like hawker centre!

Was a bit not pleased when some course mates saw me there and asked why was I there. Ok, I know many of them were attending to clear their Technopreneurship Incubation Program (TIP) requirement, and I didn't enroll into the programme, but does that mean I (or rather, anyone) cannot attend? (or does that make me look foolish to attend just because I don't need to sign the attendance form at the counter?) Alternative energy just happens to be one of my interests.

Start-up isn't my interest though.

complaints choir project

A few of us pingsters (mintea & sis, rinaz, ntt, nicole and chillycraps) were very honoured to be *ahem* invited to attend The Complaints Choir Project performance at The Chamber at The Arts House.

It's very interesting, The Arts House used to be the Parliament House where national issues were being discussed and debated upon. Now, social issues were being expressed (or, bitched, if you prefer to use the term) in the form of choir singing. Every line in the lyrics was spot on in our daily complaints, some really struck my heart. Ntt was fighting hard not to laugh out loud. I really don't see why there are people making a fuss about foreigners meddling with our local politics through this project. I mean, how political can "people chope seats with tissue paper" be? Everyone enjoyed the perfomance.

Not going to be a spoiler, maybe I'll post up the lyrics after the final performance they have tomorrow. Or will they complain?

mechanical pencil and mechanical engineering

I was happily taking down notes with my Pentel PG305 mechanical pencil when it ran out of lead. So I took out the cap at the back, inserted a new piece of Mitsubishi Uni 0.5mm lead, and clicked away.

After what seemed like eternity of clicking, there was still no lead coming out from the tip. So I took out the cap again, tilted the pencil, and to my surprise, there was no lead inside! Where did it go???

Some mechanical problem can't be solved. Or, I solved it by inserting a new piece of lead.
(and you won't deny that mechanical pencil is one of the greatest mechanical devices invented)

quote of the day

A/P Chau: engineers have 3M: Manpower, Material, Money.
nicholas: then time?
yi hui: when you have money you have the rest already.
siu hang: (scribbling away)

which zhang

I kind of like this advertisement from FedEx. It's like the whole factory shopfloor is full of people with surname Zhang, is that a Zhang's Factory or something?

If you want to be a production engineer, you should include China in your consideration. Your command of Chinese and English will prove invaluable if you work in foreign companies' production plants in China, provided you can speak proper Chinese and English.

Is that a lathe machine (not latte machine!) at the last few seconds of the ad? So hot!

There's an edited version here.

Which Zhang? =P

bus comes when you smoke

For the smokers, have you ever experienced this: you were halfway enjoying your Marlboro moment when your bus came. What do you do? Do you extinguish the stick and put it back into the pack, or do you take a deep lungful of it, board the bus and let it out inside the bus?

That day I was on the bus when I saw this 2 boys in ITE uniform taking the last mouthful of nicotine before boarding the bus. The bus driver waited more than 5 seconds before opening the door.

I got a feeling the bus driver was waiting for the 2 boys to choke on their own smoke before letting them board.

chilled crabs at kuishin-bo

It was a bit gory thinking of eating chillycraps' legs and pincers...

Went to pig out at Kuishin-Bo last night with fabbie and tata. I think fabbie is a veteran there, the moment the sound system went "dong dong dong, 1,2,3..." he was already at the queue for the special food, leaving me and tata at the table looking puzzled.

I was in front of the counter looking at the mouth-watering food when a staff tipped a kami-nabe stove off the counter and I was like dancing there to avoid the metal stove. If you have seen those stoves, they are not your normal light stainless steel ones but those thick heavy black steel one. I was wearing sandals. Think safety boots needed. -_-"

We crapped a lot, joked, gossiped, doing stupid things like biting the crab leg and screaming pain... And tata finished another table's plate of teppanyaki! Oh, fabbie ate so much that he ran off to the mall's toilet after leaving a $50 note with me.

Be strong, fabbie! Next time settle the bill before running off to the toilet!

my timetable

By request of OTC, this is my timetable for this semester.

Looks disgusting... cos I have a 40 hours break from Wednesday to Friday =P

I should be in campus during the white boxes (including Thursday), so feel free to find me for lunch, coffee or mugging session =)

Yes, I need lunch partner, everyone is taking different modules this semester =S
If not I will be buying sandwiches and eat while I mug.

diesel, electric, or diesel-electric

Have you ridden on a diesel-electric train before? The Malaysian KTM trains are pulled by diesel-electric locomotives, and I believe the SMRT maintenance vehicle that broke down yesterday also runs on diesel-electric.

What is diesel-electric? Basically you feed it with diesel to run the diesel generator, which produces electrical power that in turn runs the electric motors, which turn the wheels. From mechanical to electrical and back to mechanical, you must be wondering why not use a direct drive system and directly turn the wheels with the diesel engine?

Unlike a car which normally only has to power 2 wheels, a locomotive has so many axles it will require some really messy gear box for transmission if we are to use direct drive system. And we haven't talked about maintenance.

This sounds like eating vegetable that you fertilised using your own crap.

used textbook and drug

I think buying/selling of used textbook is like drug trafficking that we see in movies.

Most of the time, the buyer and seller don't know each other. They settle the price, arrange for meet-up at a certain location, the buyer checks the condition of the goods, sniff sniff, then hands over the money while the seller counts the cash.

And the seller I met today is a very cute girl!! I know her name and I have her handphone number, wahaha. But she doesn't know me... -_-"

Oh please, I didn't sniff the book that I bought today.

bullying kids

I always think that adults like to bully kids.

Yesterday I was having lunch at Food Republic at Wisma Atria. You know they have those long benches that can sit 4 on each side? So I was sitting at the far end, eating my noodles. There was this group of 4, 2 women and 2 girls of below 5 years old, at the other end of the bench. The 2 women and 1 of the girls went to hunt for more food leaving 1 girl to eat her whatever food in front of her. While the 3 were away, some people who were hunting for seats did ask the little girl if the seats were occupied or not (hmm, the mother didn't teach her not to talk to strangers)

And then here came a couple, sitting down with their trays of food without asking. The poor little girl was looking at the couple helplessly. I mean, hello, where on earth do you see such a small girl going to a food court at Orchard all on her own? If the couple had some common sense, they should know that the seats were occupied by whoever came with the girl.

Actually in this story, I was the most evil person. I could have told the couple on the girl's behalf that the seats were occupied. BUT, the girls were like jumping around and shaking the bench and table disturbing my lunch, and I did let their mothers know but they refused to make crowd children control, let's just say I was a bit revengeful.

I went off before the women returned.

chillycraps climb again

Went climbing with Edwin yesterday, with 3 UNSW girls and his civil engineer colleague. Saw Bernard and Angie that gang and also NUS climbing team there too.

It has been about 6 months since I last climbed, and getting into my climbing harness must have been like getting into underwear that hasn't been worn for months. Ok that I dunno how it's like.

Something amazing happened. The second time I tied the figure-of-8 knot, I forgot how to tie it. How did I manage to tie it the first time? It's so shocking it was like waking up in the morning and you realize you can't raise your arm. I had to ask a climber friend to help, so embarrassing! But that also shows how long I haven't been climbing.

Must I retake Level 1 course again?

(check out some of the photos HERE)

It's like seasonal, when I don't climb, I go kayaking; when I don't kayak, I go climbing.

quote of the day 2

evil servant: you are the only idiot who calls himself chillycrabs

This evil servant from a particular ministry was asking me to be a contributor for a particular government blog.
I turned him down.
Then he said my blog "very bo".
And then I pissed him off. Will I go to jail for that?

quote of the day

chow: gals dun go for nice guys
they go for guys that can make their heart pump fast

kline: yalor..
u can be the most heartless guy
but if tt gal feels smthg for u.. then HO SEY

chillycraps and chlorinated water

A series of experiment spanned over 2 semesters was conducted in NUS to investigate the effect of chlorine on chillycraps. During each experiment run, chillycraps was dipped in the swimming pool for at least 30 minutes. The findings/observations are as follows:

• keep blowing nose for about 10 hours
• perform magic trick with endless supply of toilet paper from pocket
  
• red eyes
• blurred vision, not able to recognise the most pretty of girls
  
• hair turns brown and dry
• smell of chlorine
  

Conclusion of experiment: never keep crabs in water tanks.

*disclaimer: some animals might have been harmed in the process of this experiment*

sold but available

I was hunting for used textbook in the IVLE forum.

One by one, I SMSed the sellers that I'm interested in, I mean the item that I'm interested in. Some of the replies were one-word: sold.

Maybe it didn't occur to the sellers, but I thought it would be nice if their posted items were sold, they could have gone back to the forum entry and edit it by adding the four letter S-word. Some nice sellers actually even added the word "reserved" while waiting for the actual transaction to take place.

It sounds like, you are attached or married already, but you still list your name in matchmaking services. Fine, maybe some people do want that.

Why waste everyone's time, effort and... feelings? I thought I could find a good deal.

professor professionalism

• During specialization, one prof was giving us briefing while his colleague was sound asleep beside him. And do you know the reason why there were 2 profs? One went out to answer the phone and the sleeping one took over the lesson from where he paused. Engineers love safety factor. FOS 2 in this case.
  


• During mechanics of thin-walled structures,the prof gave us 1 hour break halfway through the lecture.


• I have seen prof wearing shirts and pants, I have seen prof wearing polo-t and jeans, I have seen prof wearing shorts and slippers, I have seen prof naked (in the changing room), but I'm kinda impressed by the prof wearing suit and tie in financial accounting lecture.


• Chye Heng played a 70 minutes video of a MIT lecture during engineering professionalism lecture. If they do the same for all modules, we can study at home. Or they can do away with lecture theatres. Anyway this semester I have heard stories about the vibration expert. Some people are more than meets the eye.
  

2 museums in 1 day with chillycraps

I visited 2 museums yesterday.

In the afternoon, visited the NUS Museum with life science girl. At the main entrance there, a childish boy saw the glass door not opening, so he jumped in front of the door and looked up at the sensor above, hoping it will open like magic, then a staff opened the door and said that they were having a function in the lobby. They were 捞-ing 鱼生 -_-" Nevertheless the galleries were open.

After NUS Museum, the life science girl and mechanical engineering boy met up with the chemical engineering guy for lunch. The chemical guy has been very busy lately with facebook =P

In the evening, the mechanical engineering boy met up with another mechanical type and an electrical engineering guy to visit National Museum of Singapore for the exhibits from Musée du Louvre. It has been some 7 years since I last did guided tours, kids workshops and curatorial stuff at the then Singapore History Museum. So last night I was like pointing out the haunted spiral staircase and talking about linear actuator with them. By the way, we didn't get to see the Louvre exhibits cos that gallery is not open in the evening. The Singapore Living Galleries are free admission from 6pm.

I can squeeze in more museums in one day. Anyone wants to sign up?

my first fire drill in nus

This is my 6th semester in NUS and I had my 1st fire drill yesterday.

Ok I know this mentality is wrong, but usually when I receive notice that a particular building is going to have fire drill on a certain date, I will try to avoid that building on that day as much as I can. Luckily or unluckily, I was having lecture at Block E1 yesterday morning when they conducted the fire drill.

The alarm was quite punctual, 10am sharp and it rang. We students at level 6 were extremely calm and orderly, we took our time to pack our notes (which we only took out minutes ago for the lesson), made our way to the assembly area at EW1. Don't even think of hiding in the room, the fire warden checked every single room.

The funny thing is, over at the assembly area the fire wardens marked attendance, not for us students but the perm staffs working in the building. On one hand, it is near impossible to generate the name list of students in the particular building at a particular time in case of fire(i wonder were there any lucky souls at the study bench), on the other hand, it just feels very weird not to count us.

We realize, we could have made the canteen our unofficial assembly area. Why did we play along?

quote of the day

Q: Name me the power stations in Singapore.
A: St James.
-- during GEM2501 Electric Energy - Powering the New Millenium lecture

Built in 1927, St James Power Station was Singapore's first coal-fired power station until it got transformed into a gigantic nightclub in 2006.

Can we have a site visit there?

canteen upgrade

Do you know that Techno Edge (aka ENG/SDE canteen aka engin canteen) got upgraded? Now they accept reservation, like this...



Don't ask me what number to call for reservation. And please don't try the campus security number.

It was like 4 or 6 tables at one go during peak hour. But I must say, the group of students from China were quite creative.

(photos taken by alvin's handphone and transmitted by liau's pda)

quote of the day

I KEEL YOU!
saw a sign that says "SILENCE" at the business library,
then I couldn't help shouting out the next line

If you are not aware of the quote, please refer to Achmed the Dead Terrorist.

"week 1" and "library" doesn't mix well.

my guest blog post is up

Woohoo, my guest blogging post on the Water Cube is up at Beijing Olympics FAN!


Check out the post HERE.

Water Cube, chillycraps style eh?

If you want to contribute articles related to the Beijing Olympics 2008, do contact them at tips[at]beijingolympicsfan.com

If you want to guest blog here, be my guest.

d two or d squared

Given the following expression for second derivative:
Do you call it d-two-y-d-x-squared,
or should it be d-squared-y-d-x-squared?

Anyway for the module I am taking, we have d-four-y-d-x-four =_="

after first day of school

I'm back from my unofficial first day of school.

Attended a 2-hour lecture and the lecturer used a very apt term, "shopping" for modules, and I was basically shopping for leftover modules. Have you seen those discounted sports shoes on the cart? What you see is what you get (provided no one grabs it before you)

It was nice to see friends in the campus after the 1-month break. Tata (who has no link with Tata Steel) and Matt had lecture in the room next to mine; ambushed Dr Chee and Swee Kim on engin bridge; bumped into Jianxiang who asked me to crash his lecture at LT3, saw Minhui there too; met the twin brothers one after the other at YIH's long stairs. Will be seeing more of them tomorrow in my first official lecture of the semester.

And I saw zee monster also! Have you seen people nodding off during lesson with the tip of their pen moving in Brownian motion on the writing pad?

first day of school

It's the first day of semester and I'm so excited about it!

Actually, I don't have lesson today, but like I said, I'm sitting-in for some modules that I may be taking... or still bidding for.

I'm in upper university already, why still so excited?

(NB: primary 1,2,3 is lower primary, primary 4,5,6 is upper primary;
secondary 1,2 is lower secondary, secondary 3,4,5 is upper secondary;
year 1,2 is lower university, year 3,4 is upper university (although "tertiary" sounds more correct)
Then those taking double degree which spans over 5 y