helping a blind man (and feeling slightly stupid)

I was on my way to NUS, alighted at Bukit Timah to change bus. At the bus stop I saw this blind man standing there waiting for bus. He was asking aloud what service number were the buses that had arrived. I went forward to help him. (observation: a few girls were standing very far away. Normally girls sit on the benches at that stop. The blind man was standing near the bench. The benches were empty)

This time round, I decided to wait for him to board his bus before I continued on to campus. It felt kinda weird to see the bus you are taking (151) leave the bus stop. So while waiting, the blind man asked me to help him with his handphone in a demanding tone. Asking me which page it was at, what song it was playing, how to play the previous song he was listening to (how the heck I would know!), how to convert wma to mp3 on his handphone... etc. Somemore the menu was in Chinese. -_-" Actually I wanted to sit down on the bench, so I asked him if he want to sit, then he said no. So I stood there with him until his bus arrived. I could sense the weird stares the girls gave me.

Sigh. Once you have done one good deed (no matter how tiny it is), you can't pull out of it. I want to be evil please.

first to fry a380

A Singapore Airlines A380 was grounded last Saturday due to fuel pump problem. This is the 3rd time in 2 months that SIA grounds the A380 for similar problem. I'm sure there are other glitches.

There is a saying that you don't need the best solution, you only need an okay solution but you be the first one to push it into the market. So now you see? Flying an Airbus is not quite the same as driving a land bus, especially one with wheels off the ground.

We need mechanical engineers.

(ps. insider source told me that a particular airline in Singapore blocks this blog on their company network. Now you know why they don't serve chilli crab on their flights. Flight hazard ok!)

hot or cold

Do you think that there is a correlation between the temperature of the beverage and the maturity of the person?

In simpler terms, do you think that people who prefer hot drinks are generally more matured than those who like cold drinks?

(nb: childish me like hot coffee. I just proved my theory wrong)

Ad:

vibration expert at supermarket

This morning I was at Ang Mo Kio NTUC supermarket's checkout counter when I saw this uncle in the next lane with helluva stuff. I was thinking "wow", then looked at his face and guess who he is...

Chye Heng!! (aka Prof Chew), my lecturer for ME3112 Mechanics of Machines last semester and EG2401 Engineering Professionalism this semester!!

Prof Chew from NUS Department of Mechanical Engineering is an expert in the field of sound and vibration and is a Professional Engineer. He taught us "don't sign anything". I'm sure he didn't sign anything at the checkout counter, he was paying cash.

Now you know when and where to find him for consultation.

yabbering at yebber 1st anniversary

Went for the Yebber 1st Anniversary event at mint museum of toys. Thanks claudia for the invitation! (VVIP ok!)

Yebber is a lifestyle site where people write reviews for almost anything under the sun. It's pretty informative, do check them out =)

Saw a lot of familiar faces there (duh, bloggers). So while the adults rubbed shoulders and made themselves busy exchanging namecards, me the school kid was enjoying the food and fooling around. The buffet dinner was delicious, and the waitresses were efficient enough to clear our tables to make way for more plates =)

anyone watched Shutter?
The programme was great too. The bingo was so uber exciting I was fidgeting as the emcee announced each number... And for the lucky draw, the sponsors were pretty generous. There were so many prizes, I feel lucky to be the few who didn't win anything!

Ok, at least the goodie bag has an adult magazine inside.

(some observations: microphone and speaker would be nice to catch the crowd's attention. Guests were busy talking among themselves while the anniversary cake was being cut. Other than that I think the event was professionally run! =))

work experience, experience work

There are a lot of schools of thoughts with regards to work experience.

Big company or small?
Some say, go for big companies, so that your curriculum vitae looks nice. But some say, in big companies, they make you do very specific job. For example, an architecture friend of mine said if you join those big firms, you may be designing toilet for the rest of your life.

Others say, go for small companies, so that you can learn more stuffs. From making coffee to manning reception counter to accompanying client's wife. Am talking about engineer.

Hop or stay?
There's also this thing about job hopping. Some say, hop more to learn more and get higher salary. You learn a bit of this a bit of that, and you get pay increment indirectly by switching job.

Others say, stay with one company and become the expert in that field, and when you become the only such expert in the region (likely?) then you will be in high demand and everyone will want to hire you. Imagine it's Sunday morning and you receive a call from the company saying "you are the only person in the continent who can handle it"

Experienced
The other day a friend asked me, how do I define "experienced". A worker who took 1 month to learn the trick and repeats the same task for 10 years, or a worker who keeps learning things and value-add for 10 years?

(now, why am I thinking so much when I am still a student)

not helping a pregnant woman

This morning I was on a crowded bus 151 on the way to NUS. I was sitting at the windows seat and I saw this pregnant woman standing.

I was in a dilemma. If I offered my seat to her, then she would have to squeeze her big tummy past that person at the aisle seat in order to take my seat. Well, could be, if I offered my seat, the aisle seat person would shift in and let the pregnant lady take the aisle seat instead, but that sounds like volunteering others. I have seen strangers asking another stranger to offer his/her seat to a strange pregnant woman.

But the strange thing is, in that portion of the bus, those seated at the aisle seats were all girls! All looking oblivious. One girl even had her face right in front of the pregnant stomach.

Maybe they all have been pregnant before, they know it isn’t a big deal to stand during bus journeys.

I feel bad. What should I have done? What would you do?

laptop gets loud

Yesterday I was at the library when I saw this guy booting up his laptop, then as the Windows XP started up, that loud startup tune came blaring out from the speaker. I mean LOUD. With that little embarrassed face, he hurriedly closed the laptop's screen, and I gave him that is-that-going-to-help face. He looked more embarrassed. Then he opened the laptop again when Windows finally shut up.

Am I mean?

Well, it's always good to turn off the sound everytime before shutting down, just like flushing the toilet after peeing.

(that reminds me of the time during lecture when this guy was playing games on his laptop, then it hanged and the laptop blared nonsensical noise. The guy hugged his laptop and dashed out of the lecture theatre)

result hinders process

Sometimes knowing the end result may not be a good idea. Especially when the result is wrong.For close to 2 months I have been working on this plate deflection problem. A lot of the classical mechanics problems are well documented, so I went to look up my favourite author's book and voila~ I found the exact example, with final answer. So all this while I was like any innocent school kids who look at the back of their textbook for the answer and work towards it... but I just can't get to the answer!

Mind you, it's 2nd order partial differentiation and simultaneous equations solving for 4 unknowns with hyperbolic trigonometric functions involved. I lost count of how many forest I have destroyed just for this question.

Finally I couldn't take it, I did dimensional analysis and what the heck, my favourite mechanics author gave wrong answer! I borrowed another book instead and start from square one again.

Lesson learnt: bulldozing ahead blindly may not be a bad idea.

heat transfer the chocolate bunny way

Easter was just over and here is a little clip I saw on makezine.
(warning: may cause discomfort)
Heat transfer takes place in 3 ways, namely conduction, convection and radiation. Here, with a little help from dear chocolate bunny, we can see the effect of the 3 modes of heat transfer.


That's why, science and technology is not for the faint-hearted.

daphne's birthday

It's daphne's birthday and uzyn threw a surprise party for her at Swensen's at Plaza Singapura. A few of us were already ambushing in the restaurant when sekling brought daphne in.

Birthday girl ready to murder the cake.
Is that a spark?
the ice cream cake was hard.
If we had thrown it at the birthday girl, she could have gotten brain damage
adam burning some money
you do this when you didn't bring flashlight
I don't mean the hand signal
arzhou recreated the Moses scene. (look closely between the chairs)
He just had to trip and fall and the resultant shockwave would tilt the 2 columns of tables over
farinelli checking if he could use the chilli sauce for chillycraps
Happy birthday Daphne!

wokking solution

This is going to sound weird, but does anyone know where to buy a good Chinese cooking wok in Singapore? I am pushing my old wok to the limit each day and the replacement that my mother bought is rusting on cooking oil. -_-"

I am looking for commercially off the shelf solution (COTS), so please don't ask me to design a wok and come up with engineering drawings, send them in to contractor and have them fabricate it. If that's the case, I would have designed something with aircraft grade titanium alloy or added a thermal sensor or something.

By the way, a lot of the great engineering designs are kitchen ware.

my house = hdb hub

Yesterday I was doing my nuclear energy report at home when my mother called home, informing me that some family friends whom she was having lunch with (2 aunties + 1 uncle) wanted to come to our house so that I could help them buy flat. I was like, WTF!!! (no I didn't say it out)

But still, I had to entertain them right? Even if I don't like it, I still must give my mother face. So before they arrived I was boiling water, making tea, tidying the house and waiting for their grand arrival. They arrived, I served them tea, and guess what, this auntie darted straight into my study room, standing right in front of my computer and waiting for me to make things happen. What manners!

They wanted to apply for a new flat, so they wanted me to help them with the online application. But the thing is, they have computer at home, they have a daughter the same age as me, can't they ask their empress dowager aka dear daughter to do the stuff? Do I look like real estate housing agent to them?

So there I was, showing them the HDB website, letting them poke their fingers on my screen at the flat's floorplans, printing stacks of information sheets + application forms and explaining the blueprints to them which side is North which side is South. They would love it if I built a 3D computer model for them

After a few hours, the wife declared not to buy the flat anymore, saying that the area isn't near the MRT station. What the, how long do you need to realize that?! It is like you go into a Chinese restaurant, look at the menu for a full hour and then say you don't want to eat Chinese food...

I can't believe I behaved so professionally despite cursing heavily in my mind.
(NB: please, go to HDB Hub if you want to buy flat)

cute ntu girl the 3rd encounter

Remember the cute NTU girl?

I spotted her the third time on Thursday at Boon Lay Bus Interchange. Same time, same place, same day of the week as the previous 2 encounters. She looked embarrassed this time round.

Somehow it didn't feel as exciting as the previous 2 times. It felt like stalking cos I sort of know when and where she would appear. And no I wasn't stalking her, I was on official business at Boon Lay. I guess you don't feel high seeing your next door auntie everyday, do you?

"Once is a mistake, twice is stupidity". Thrice?

pingster japanese food outing

Went for the ping.sg Japanese Food outing at Waraku at Starhub Centre today. In the attendance list we had daphnemaia, champagne, wenderella, snowbiscuits, uray (who has no connection with uzyn), uzyn, farinelli, brokenshardz, adamzhang, paced (oh I left out chillycraps, nvm) I had so much crap in my Kanimi Ankake Don (crab meat rice) I didn't take photos at Waraku...

uzyn shared some photos with me:

wenderella, snowbiscuits, champagne.
snowie looks sad with no food in front of her.
wendy's big bowl doesn't help
adam trying to heat his food up with the camera
wendy did likewise.
But I did take some photos at TCC later on~ (dhope joined us there)
I got 3 pings!
farinelli, uzyn, adam
brokenshardz playing sudoku on uzyn's iphone. Sorry, national service bored him.
champagne enjoying his cake while adam had a piece of his Canon EOS.
paced meditating, and her readership skyrocketed!
dhope, uzyn and daphne pretending not to see paced
daphne wants to have a go with qi-gong too.
Had much fun and laughter meeting the pingsters =)
When is the next gathering?

my s/u doesn't work

(for people not familiar with NUS lingo, S/U means satisfactory/unsatisfactory option. When student uses the S/U option, his/her module will not be graded A,B,C,D... but instead S or U. Anything above C is a S. In simpler term, it is a license to slack. Not for me)

I saw someone posted in the module IVLE forum looking for project groupmate. He said he is not S/U-ing the module, as if trying to imply that he won't be a slacking project member. I almost laughed at the screen. Alright, there is a general misconception that people who S/U the module are going to be slackers for group project. Not always true. I remember I S/U-ed my history module but I spent so much time on it I felt more like a history major then engineering.

So for my current module, the group project doesn't seem to be moving in any direction. No meeting, no nothing. If no one does anything, should I do nothing? Well... you all know I ain't that particular about grades, so I should be the least bothered, but I found myself being the one sending emails trying to arrange for meetings and stuff.

Then I tried to pull stunt. I told the pretty groupmate that I'm going to S/U this module and slack for the project. She was like "NOOOOOOOOO!" at first, then gave me that "you are a nice guy right?" trick. -_-"

In the end I still have to take the lead...

taxi driver and retribution

This morning my groupmates and I went to the supplier to collect our goods. After our business there, we were deciding on how to get back to NUS from the ulu end of Boon Lay. So yh decided to call a cab. Meanwhile, the rest of us spotted an available taxi coming from the opposite side of the road, so we flagged it. Just as we were waiting for the right moment to cross the busy road, the taxi that yh booked arrived. Being nice and responsible people, we boarded the taxi that we booked.

Once on the taxi, we started crapping with the 50+ years old taxi driver. We were saying we were deciding which taxi to board and stuff, then the driver said we did the right thing and we were responsible people. Then dunno why he said don’t cheat people, will have retribution and stuff... he kept talking about retribution and karma for the rest of the journey.

Our vocal yh told the driver that he doesn’t believe in retribution. And guess what the driver said to him? "then 你 continue 做 lah!" -_-" sounds like yh is doing all the evil stuffs on earth all this while.

And guess what, when we reached NUS, the driver realized he didn’t start the fare meter. Retribution... eh?

education evolution

During lecture yesterday, my Professor, a very senior person in the university, wrote something on the white board to explain some circuits to us, then wiped it off himself. This very simple act became some food for thought.

I remember during primary school or secondary school days, there was something known as class duty in which students follow a roster to clean the white board. I think I experienced the dusty black board as well. I don't know if you can see the contrast, but now at tertiary level students are like sitting there to be served.

And served indeed, we become more like customers. Public holidays were like joy to the world to school kids, but now some of us don't even like public holidays. The thought of make-up lesson or missing class is kinda sickening. And sometimes the lecturers reduce the syllabus. I heard one friend complain that he pays so much tuition fee and now he learns less. You won't hear such stuff below tertiary level. Some of us just want to squeeze the most out of our tuition fee. Last time was teacher drag you for remedial lesson, now is you drag the lecturer for consultation.

On a slightly unrelated note: I feel that time is shrinking. In primary school and secondary school, we could have time to do silly stuff like watching Power Ranger and still could hand in our homework the next day. And we had like... 10 subjects? Now I have 5 modules and I'm like half-past dead.

bevel gear for dr chee

Dr Chee from NUS Mechanical Engineering (NOT the politician one): you are looking for bevel gears right? Maybe you would want to check out this supplier which I previously had dealings with. They usually can deliver within 1 week.

Hope this helps. =)

efficiencity

I am a member of Greenpeace, but not an activist. I don't do fun stuff like abseiling down a power station's smoke stack.

Greenpeace UK has launched a virtual town called EfficienCity. Although it is virtual, but the energy efficient stuff shown inside are actually in place and in operation in various parts of the United Kingdom. Things like the famous Pelamis wave energy converter or even the combined heat and power (CHP) plant in your favourite football club’s home stadium. Even their brewery is energy efficient.


I'm sure we can apply some of them here in Singapore.

arzhou in lecture

Meet arzhou, fellow blogger / pingster / coursemate from NUS Engineering.


One moment he was lecturing me to pay attention to the lecture, the next moment he was sound asleep and threatening to collapse onto me. Then all out of a sudden he would spring up and scribble pointers in his lecture notes. And he rocks! Every nod from his head would send the row of lecture seats shaking.

I swear I heard him singing in his sleep. And yeah he attracted a lot of attention from other coursemates, they were like turning back to look at him.

EDIT: there's another arzhou joke today here.

advertising joke

Early in the morning and I received this email from an advertiser that says

and we're sorry to say that so far the minimum statistical sample of 10 unique visitors has not been met

hur hur hur, I wonder what kind of tracking method do they use. According to Google Analytics, my daily absolute unique visitors is 3 digits to the left of the decimal point.

What's the use of selling ads for them if they are going to give me "discount" anyway.

wind turbine gone berserk

Wind turbine is one of my favourite engineering structures and watching this video clip makes my heart ache...


Seems like a brake wasn't working and a storm just K.O. it.

2 wrong invitations

Today I received 2 wrong invitations.

Wrong invitation 1:
I got invited to apply for Assistant Financial Consultant
dot dot dot... of all things, financial consultant??

Wrong invitation 2:
I got invited to the Department's Tea & Feedback session.
Why me? Although I have a friend who looks like the Head of Department, but...
Anyway I am nowhere near the Dean's List, so unless they are choosing the bottom few students, then...

I still have no idea how they ended up choosing me.

oil and guess

The price of oil has overshot the $110 per barrel mark. This doesn't sound like news.

So do you actually get onto the bandwagon and enter the oil and gas industry knowing that you can earn big bucks, or do you go into the opposing industry and look into alternative energy?

I know I can be extremely naively noble, but I don't like the offshore oil and gas industry. It is like, you are learning how to dig more oil from Mother Earth. Unless you tell me something like, oh I am learning how to dig oil more efficiently so that there is less wastage or something, but still you are exploiting our Earth's natural resources. Sounds like killing someone with less pain.

No doubt you can have double digit bonuses each year, but it is still something that I find it hard to convince myself to accept. (true, I don't have to accept it) True, the very electricity that powers my computer that enables me to blog is a result of burning fossil fuel, but that's because our power grid doesn't use renewable resources. My fault. Hey at least my calculator has solar cell.

Engineers and engineers-wannabe should ask ourselves: is money all that we are after?

hot mrt seat: reserved but not taken

A few days ago I saw this letter to the Chinese newspaper.

The sender is a man, probably not young man. He was traveling on the MRT when he saw this mother juggling with a few kids. Being nice, the man offered his seat to them. Instead of sitting down, the mother told her kids not to sit down cos the seat was hot. The man felt like being slapped on his face. He felt so humiliated he alighted at the next station and took the next train.

I had similar experience before. Some auntie would stand in front of the empty seat, not wanting to sit down yet not wanting others to take the seat. Once I actually told the person I want to sit NOW, then she reluctantly sat down and had her ass fried.

I mean, what's the big deal about hot seat? Is it going to transmit piles or something? Then I see some people like to pat/slap the seat a few times before sitting down. Isn't it more unhygienic, your hand touches the place where people put their butt, then your hand touches your face and lips and nose and everywhere else. Piles on face, eew!

Anyway, from a thermodynamics / heat transfer point of view, a hot seat is better than cold seat. If you sit on a cold seat, there is a net flow of heat energy from your body to the seat, thus your body loses energy. Fare so expensive you still want to lose more?

nokia e51

Recently I have switched from my old trusty Nokia 3120 to a Nokia E51.

I don't usually spend on stuff that ain't edible, but at S$48 it was a real bargain. This candy bar (ironically I don't trust stuff that has too many mechanical components) has got a shiny stainless steel casing, 240 x 320 pixels screen, 2 megapixel camera, but what attracted me was the integrated WLAN (IEEE 802.11g)! (erm, in simpler term, it has wireless) It is the cheapest machine around that has WiFi!

I don't carry a laptop to school and the wireless is pretty useful. It's like in the middle of a tutorial question I can look up wikipedia for formulas and stuff. And I can open up MSN Messenger too.

But it has got quite a bit of weaknesses too. If you set auto keypad lock, it will lock your menu forever until you restart the phone -_-" The media player hangs on startup. The lack of qwerty keyboard also results in lotsa weird typo mistake thanks to the predictive text. Oh and it's a sucker on battery, normally can't last more than 3 days. (I dunno, my previous phone can easily last for 1 week)

And this is my first camera phone. I don't quite like the fake shutter sound. Anyone knows how to hack it?

quotes of the day

power and greed are the worst things in life
-- Prof Liew talking about Power Grid (Greed)

Don't go and kill your mother unnecessarily.
-- Prof Liew talking about wiring up the live wire and neutral wire wrongly
Do you know that if you connect these 2 wires wrongly, your appliance can still work, but when there is a leakage, hoho...

blogger survey

My friend otc from electrical engineering has asked me to help him out with a little survey about blogging. I tried it out, it has 8 questions, killed a few insignificant braincells and that's about it.

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/survey.zgi?p=WEB227KNZ87W99

This survey is only for bloggers. Non-bloggers, if you insist on doing this survey, please start blogging before attempting the survey. =P

pi day

Yesterday (14 March) was Pi Day.

The Greek letter π (not American Pie) is the ratio of circumference of a circle to its diameter. It is irrational.

So how did you celebrate Pi Day 2008? I was cursing and swearing while calculating some engineering problems involving Pi.

2 buses, 2 guys, 1 girl, and many smses

This is another of my romance on a bus crap.

This afternoon I was doing my revision at my favourite spot outside the lab. Then there was this girl who came out from one of the rooms. Thin, long hair, the cool looking type by my lousy standard.

After lesson, I saw her again at the bus stop. We both boarded bus 151, she sat at the inner most seat at the last row, next to her was yk, and next was me. I chatted with yk during the bus ride and naturally could catch an occasional glimpse of her.

I changed to bus 74 which was right behind 151, got a seat in the first row on the upper deck and could see the last row of 151. Knowing yk's honest personality, I decided to try something funny. I SMSed yk, asking him to help me tell the girl that I find her pretty. Then yk replied saying that "e prob is u find her chio i find her ave" *smack forehead* Anyway, I can't imagine yk's loud voice booming in the bus when he started talking to her...

What happened next was, yk typed my message on his phone and show it to the girl, saying I want to know her!

So guys, if you want to know a girl, find yk from NUS ME3!

(I was grinning for the remaining of my bus journey, I think the other passengers must have thought I am mentally ill)