Quote of the Post: "Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?" - Edgar Bergen
Random Playlist Song: Schumann - Kreisleriana, Op. 16 - 8. Schnell und spielend
"The title can be understood by Germans only. Kreisler is one of E. T. A. Hoffmann's creations, an eccentric, wild and witty conductor. You will like much about him."
***
First and foremost, I got treated to dinner by Tym today, so thanks be to her :)
***
Please welcome the latest member in a very big (but sadly almost totally inactive) list of posters: Anonvarstud Ingénieur
***
I realise that I know next to nothing about wireless networks or working with networks in general.
I seek a master to initiate me into their mysteries.
***
Someone: [On jailbait] You must introduce me to all these people
Me: But they won't be jailbait for much longer.
Someone: Because then they'll be legal
***
My system has been rebooting spontaneously sporadically. At first I was wondering if I had a wire loose on my motherboard, then I got a tipoff from Xephyris:
"i'm guessing if you're using windows XP, it BSODed and autorebooted is all
it's the evil new scheme by MS to make you think windows XP doesn't BSOD
did you check the "atuomatically restart" box in the contrl panel > system > advanced > startup and rcovery ?"
Bloody hell.
***
" Interesting observations. I have a terrible voice...so am interested in any ways to make for better songs.
What say I? I say you should listen to the music coming out of the Czech republic & Poland. The structure of the songs being made by these czechs & Pols is superior to any previous forms of music. If your opinion of "modern" music isn't changed by them, then you are just being stubborn, imposing yourself to old dead music only for the sake of seeming cultured or high-brow.
I agree that the pop music of the masses is always poor...because most people are tone deaf idiots. You must dig deep into the underground...that is where the talent lies,in the artists who make music for themselves not the fans."
So. Anyone has recommendations about which Czech and Polish artists to try? Though I find that the "you are just being stubborn, imposing yourself to old dead music only for the sake of seeming cultured or high-brow" comment smacks of hubris.
***
His Excellency Saparmurat Niyazov "Turkmenbashi", President of Turkmenistan
"He has established Turkmenistan's international prestige and has displayed concern for the people's well-being. Following his election, one of the first resolutions to be adopted was a decree on the free use of water, gas and electricity by the people of Turkmenistan.
As founder and president of the Association of Turkmens of the World, Mr. Niyazov holds the official title of Turkmenbashi, Leader of all Ethnic Turkmens.
Mr. Niyazov was awarded the Magtymguly International Prize for achieving the aim of Magtymguly, the great Turkmen poet and philosopher: the establishment of an independent state of Turkmenistan."
I have one guess as to the person who started the prize.
***
Skydiving Festival
"August 20th-22nd 2004
Precisely what people jumping out of airplanes has to do with Singapore declaring independence from Malaysia is anyone's guess. But jump they will, and often too: some 2,000 jumps are planned for this two-day festival."
Wah.
***
We're now coming to the end of Orientation Week. While other faculties are organising plenty of games, activities and groping sessions, USP has a different set of activities.
On Wednesday, I saw the people in Arts Orientation Week, instantly remarkable by virtue of their red T-shirts, clustering in the school field shouting, screaming and gesticulating vaguely, if wildly. Perhaps some were close to falling to heat stroke, and perhaps others were groping and being groped, in their turn ("Grope and be groped" - what a great O Week motto *g*). Some people were elevated above the rest - on chairs perhaps, and there was general pandemonium. Meanwhile, I was on my way to the Raffles Museum of Biological Diversity. Perhaps I should have signed up with Arts O Week as well, to get the best of both worlds.
In any case, the museum visit was fun, inasmuch as a museum visit can be fun. The public exhibits were quite extensive, especially considering the limited floor space of the museum, and our guide, a graduate student, was lively, informative and fun. Among other things, there was a giantic mounted Japanese Spider Crab, and a huge stuffed Leatherback Turtle. And we were told about the road-infesting crabs on Christmas Island.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, we met our academic advisors. While some professors played hard to get, one was helpfully waving a sheet of paper with his name written on it.
After that, while audible from downstairs were the yelps of people playing Orientation Games (one of which I saw in progress later, where 3 girls wagged their fingers and derrieres in unison, and shouted at the rest of their Orientation Group, presumably cursing them) , we had talks about the Student Exchange Programme and related programs. Apparently NUS will freeze your CAP (Cumulative Average Points - equivalent of GPA) while you're on exchange. I thought they wouldn't want to adopt policies that encourage, even tacitly, you slacking while on exchange. Then again, they seem eager to send as many of us away as possible, so that they can receive more foreign students here on exchange and boast that we have students from more than 70 countries studying in NUS.
Registrar's Office Circular - 20th July 2004
"(2) Lifting of Compulsory SARS Module
As the global Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak had been effectively contained, the University has decided to lift the requirement that all students must read the module SSM1205 Nation’s Health: Lessons from SARS as a graduation requirement. Students who have yet to read this module are therefore no longer required to complete the module as a graduation requirement."
I am at a loss for words.
"[You are cordially invited to a talk on:]
Possible Future Trajectories of the Islamic Resurgence
by Prof Ibrahim Abu Rabi'
Professor of Islamic Studies, Co-Director
The Duncan Black Macdonald Center
For the Study of Islam & Christian-Muslim Relations
Date: 11 August 2004 (Wednesday)
Time: 4 pm to 6 pm
*Light snack (sic) will be provided.
About the talk
Islamic resurgence has evolved through various historical phases in the interaction between the Islamic world and Western civilization. In the last century, Islamic resurgence became the Muslim response to rapid westernization and post-colonialism. With globalisation and the new world order, further transformations of the Islamic resurgence would be expected in response to the emerging challenges. The speaker will discuss the premises and present day outcomes of the Islamic resurgence. Examining contemporary developments and emerging trends, he will map out possible future trajectories of the Islamic resurgence as it evolves and transforms within different political and socio-economic conditions in the Muslim world including minority Muslim societies."
Damn. I have a sociology lecture at that time. Yes, I *could* skip it, but I'm too guai to do that (imagine that).
More sordid tales of intrigue and betrayal:
"i've heard of how e best of friends can betray each other to get a better chance of getting 1st class honours
there's this story abt this gal who saw her best friend's thesis, saw a few loopholes pertaining to plagiarism issues and went to inform e prof abt it
in e end she caused her friend to lose her 1st class honours"
To say nothing of the ways that people scheme to manipulate COS in bidding wars, taking advantage of others' irrational exuberance.
Things you learn: "Nugyen" is pronounced as "win"
There are many Koreans in Kyrgyzstan because Stalin shuffled them around.
Uzbeks wear funny wigs when riding on horseback.
Words of advice: "you should learn to differentiate your stress and worries. cos u'll realise theres a lot of things to piss u off in NUS. then at least u can sort of trick yourself into thinking that these are all individual little problems, and not, like, one big fucking NUS problem. then u wont go throw yourself off some NUS building"
Quotes:
the Duck Queen (Dark)
the minced chicken in crap (crepe)
[Me on Orientation Week: Did you get groped today?] A little. Not much.
a learn man (learned)
This picture was taken many years ago. Now all of these people are fat and old. At least 10 years older.
plair'sih'bo (placebo)
[On citations] Stem cells. Stem cells came out in 2000... Everyone wrote papers on stem cells. Thousands of papers... For biologists, we're more laid back, so we cite further back. (As for, studies from)
[On eyes for stuffed animals] Even for humans, if you lose one eye, you can buy a marble eye
Like cockroaches are fun. You all know the American Cockroach. That's what you find at home... Pill-bug roach. When you disturb it it curls up. Very cute. They're good as pets.
A lot of people are disgusted by leeches, because they suck blood. But they have to make a living... You won't get AIDS, or what.
[On addressing professors] Most of us would prefer that you don't call us 'Sir' or 'Madam'.... 'Dr ***'. Or 'hi'. Or 'you'.
I went for 3 camps. USP [camp] was the worst.
artificats (written) (artifacts)
The Economist is better than Newsweek because it's British. Newsweek is American.
[On going on exchange] You pay NUS school fees. A: You spend your time in NUS. B: You spend your time elsewhere. Which would you rather?
You pay the money first. Then you realise it was well spent.
Let me tell you: If you persist in speaking Singlish, you're dead.
Even if you speak perfect English, they won't understand you. Because [when] they look at you, they think you're from China. They think you don't understand English... They speak very slowly.
Another reason you should go for 2 sems: 1 sem, you get to know this guy or girl. Just when you are steady-steady, you have to come back (go steady)
the purgering falcons (peregrine)
The first culture shock I had was in the toilet. The guy and girl toilets were communal... No doors: shower curtains... [Someone: For the first few months, every time I opened the toilet door I screamed. Guys!]
Do not be shocked if you hear strange noises coming from next door. It's very natural... Just don't eavesdrop
As we learned from Mediacorp, Chinese Tea is a good substitute for alcohol. You bring a bottle of Chinese Tea. You tell them it is Whiskey.
Travel advice. When you travel, the first thing you must look out for - toilets.
Banking is very important... From my own experience, it took me one whole month to open my bank account. And they got my name wrong.
IRO [International Relations Office] tells me that there is a lot of money around. You just have to look for it.
Since you travel halfway around the world, and people think you're from China, you might as well go to China
very old, mee'dee'veil (medieval)
If you need funding or moral support, the programme is always willing to help
[On presenting his travel pictures to students] I always have a lot of travel pictures, but nobody wants to see them... I have a captive audience
[On nomads] They catch a lot of foxes, and they hang them inside their tents... So cute
[On Uzekistan pictures] Sorry, I have a... fetish for cemeteries
The current leader of Uzbekistan likes to glorify Timur the Lame. Because Timur the Lame was very cruel. He's trying to justify his existence.
These are Uzbek children. Aren't they cute? ... [Especially] when you compare them to Singapore children (Singaporean)
You see these pre-historic buildings. I think they go back to Alexander the Great's era. (historic)
Every'hwhere you go in Turkmenistan you see big pictures of the Turkmenistan leader. He calls himself Turkmenbashi [Ed: "Leader of all Ethnic Turkmens"] (everywhere)
[On Saparmurad Niyazov, Turkmenistan's leader] He spends a lot of money building these grandeur'se buildings which are useless (grandiose)
L'origine de Bert
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Word of the day: "apotheosis"
It's been an inordinately long time since I was actively blogging here; however I promised Gabriel that I would do so of late.
Basically, life has undergone some rather traumatic changes of late. At first, I was tempted to collate some of the more outré events over the last 9 months, but upon going through my offline journals, I realised with a shudder that it would transform this blog into another one of those dysfunctional adolescent rants, no matter how I embellished or attempted to inject bonhomie into their depiction - a nauseating series of cliches which, however emotionally acute to the person experiencing it, degenerate into a sickening litany of self-pity when lovingly and masochistically put to type on a blog to be read. Particularly to an audience which is no doubt jaded by repeated narratives of suicide, self-mutilation, parental/adolescent generation gaps, orgies of alcohol, eulogies over the carcasses of relationships, elegiac paragraphs of existential angst, schadenfreude sentiments at the discomfiture of one's foes, romantic expressions of unrequited love, futile teenage glances, wardrobe anomalies, bitter rending of garments at the adulterous betrayal by a significant other, et al.
So I'll keep the "Story So Far" section as short as I can.
Basically, (and without a trace of irony), at a moment when I had resigned myself that I was going to plod on with my existence in a reasonably comfortable groove, having figured out how to limp my life around a variety of mental and situational disorders, I suddenly got a job offer in Singapore. And a pretty decent job at that.
At one blow, virtually every single one of my PULGs were achieved, although pleasantly enough the underlying context for them had ceased to become an issue.
Be that as it may, I can't say I wasn't (and even now) looking forward to the fairly tumultous changes entailed in having to move *back* to Singapore after approximately 10 years away. Frankly, at that point in time, my life had descended into such a rut that if I'd gotten a job training mine-laying monkeys in eastern Uganda, my only question would have been, "Do I get to share their bananas?"
Most of my last two months were spent gleefully handing over work to colleagues at my previous employer's. I must confess at this point that one of the most difficult moments in the transition was knowing that I'd have to build up professional relationships in a totally new working environment - I'd become extremely comfortable with my old colleagues, if not exactly the job or my department's top honcho. Perhaps that in and of itself was a sign to move on though.
At this point, however, I would like to thank my immediate line managers in a public forum for giving me a good reference which probably helped clinch my current job. I doubt you'll ever read this, either of you, unless your web-surfing habits are way more diverse than I was led to believe. But thanks for putting up with my incessant habit of playing with the stuffed rabbit during any limit breach.
In any event, my department head was determined to squeeze every last drop of work from me; I had actually listed out fourteen outstanding projects and tried to get as much progress on ALL of them as was humanly possible.
Then on the final fortnight, a sudden epiphany happened.
I was just told by the HR department how much I had to pay back the Bank (because of my stupid 3 months-notice-or-3-months-salary-in-lieu clause in the contract which my fucking boss refused to waiver). And when I held the memo which said that not only was my pay for July being withheld to cover the above, I had to top it up with about $2000, it suddenly dawned on me.
I was *paying* to work my last few days in KL.
That last fortnight, I flatly refused to do any work my boss assigned me. I just made excuses and stayed away from the office. My immediate colleagues and manager were actually quite supportive of that; so supportive that I actually felt guilty and spent some effort ensuring that the projects that would most affect them were smoothly handed over whereas others that the big boss wanted would just rot fallow in my absence. (although I *was* responsible enough to hand over all my notes and research to a colleague to warehouse in case those projects were resurrected)
Also on that last week, I spent virtually every night getting pissed drunk; because all of a sudden acquaintances and fair-weather friends I hadn't known existed were popping out of the woodwork asking to go for dinner, have drinks, etc. I'm not so cynical as to say ALL of them wanted me to help look for job openings (the word had gotten out by now that I was going to work in an international investment bank) - I'm sure SOME of them were sincere at least.
One thing's for sure, duck farmers make a HELL lot of money. (Went out for drinks with couple of friends, a friend of theirs dropped by, heard i was going to singapore, immediately ordered two bottles of cognac, then got his driver (HIS ie. not his family's) to fetch us all to a karaoke lounge and he paid for another 3 bottles, AND the girls, AND the mama-san actually treated him to another bottle. And yes, the guy who treated and paid for everything was a duck farmer - owns 25 duck farms in Malaysia and a slaughter house in Singapore - and he's like 5 years older than me)
The first week in Singapore was characterised by running around like MAD looking for a place to stay. It's basically a long and frenzied tale of poring through newspaper ads (Incidentally, it seems *impossible* to find a News Straits Times for sale in Orchard Road from 7:30pm onwards - a fact that caused me no end of frustration because the person I was staying with didn't have a subscription and I tended to forget to buy it in the mornings) calling agents, coordinating times, running from weird area to weird area, tearing my hair out in frustration at so many nice places outside my budget; or nice places within my budget but located in weird locations, etc etc.
My mother came down with me to "help" - while I admit she spotted things and asked questions I wouldn't have thought of - good ones; she also spent a lot of time criticising my choices and the way I was coordinating the timetables with the agents and insisting I squeeze in as much house viewing as I could while she was in singapore - while I was harried like mad trying to flit from place to place without spending too much of my dwindling supply of Singapore dollars. In fact, at one point, I thought she had left, so I went to see a place; and while I was there she called me and said she was postpoining going back, and insisted I keep the agent and the landlord of the house I was viewing there for half an hour while she caught a cab down to see the place herself ARGH.
Anyway, here were the choices of accommodation I was faced with for a while, and the factors I considered for each place. I wonder if I made the right choice in the end.
a) one bedroom apartment directly on top of Pearl Center in Chinatown. $1000.
Pros: DAMN convenient - less than 5 minutes walk to Outram Park MRT, damn lot of food around, being on top of shopping center with easy access 7-11 and lots of sundry, fruit, tailor, handphone shops, kopi tiams - (think Lucky Plaza type with way more cheena sleaziness), and, in the words of the agent who showed me the house: "very fang pian! come downstairs can mai hao ma already!" (buy numbers - Singapore Pools stand was just opposite the lift), well maintained, very nice kitchen, reasonably cheap for CBD flat.
Cons: lots of KTV and China girls hanging around (or is that a pro? My mom didn't see it that way...), damn small apartment - living room two thirds smaller than bedroom, turf club on the fifth floor of building not particularly reassuring, furnishing not that great, tiny toilet/shower, zero facilities, the damnation of neverending phone calls and nagging from my parents about the dangers of KTV girls if I actually decided to stay there
b) Beaumont - directly opposite PUB building located next to Somerset MRT (Devonshire Road). Open concept studio apartment (essentially a giant open rectangular room with a bed at the end). $1100
Pros: Damn near Somerset MRT, apartment with facilities (pool & gym), a balcony (for smoking), open concept means space is pretty maximised, reasonably sized kitchen, okay bathroom
Cons: Washing machine is not a dryer, bed and cupboard a bit old and lousy (although the other furnishings - sofa, table are quite okay), have to walk up a hill to get back home (okay i'm lazy:), tiny TV provided, apartment a bit old, no real convenience stores or sundry places around (nearest would be Centerpoint or the BP station a block away)
c) Seng Poh Gardns - somewhere near Tiong Bahru market. Pre-war converted shophouse; single open concept studio apartment on second floor. $1200
Pros: The absolutely nicest furnishings of all the places I'd seen - cream carpet, cool looking bed, frosted glass shower with damn nice showerhead and tiles, glass kitchen top with protruding metal basin, Ikea standard cupboards, chairs, table, the only place whose landloard provided a VCD machine, near acccess to a wet market (although slightly irrelevant as i didn't intend to do cooking), near soundproof pre-war walls, pretty large space (larger than the first two), also the juxtaposition of the intensely old fashioned facade (you enter through this narrow stone stairwell that's like a damned monastery, enter a corridor - at the far end is a stone spiral staircase leading down where you can see the rear courtyards of other shoplots in the same block) and the supermodern interior really strikes a chord with me - deception resonates with me:), the HDB estates have quite a few hardware and bric-a-brac stores around for my needs.
Cons: Not near MRT - have to cut through quite a few blocks of walking, tiong bahru a bit out of the way for city access, difficult parking for visitors who drive, a bit steep for a place located somewhat out of the way with zero facilities, washing machine is not cum-dryer, only electric hot pot provided - no gas cooking.
d) Liang Seah Place - basically another reconverted conservation house (ie. old shophouse converted to bucolic apartment - expats love those). Two options at this place - one was a one-room set up essentially a double hotel room (not suite) for $1200, another one a pretty large one bedroom for $1600 - slightly out of budget. Also a split level for $2200 - way way out of budget. Pros and cons below describe the cheapest option Pros: Pretty near Bugis MRT (located opposite Parco on Beach Road side), very cute place, provides a safe(!), has a gym, large TV, willing to pay for SCV, nice view of huge old tree and playground outside window, lots of great food around downstairs, nice hotel room style furnishings, toilet with bathtub
Cons: Small, horrible veneer smell pervading place, have to walk damn far out into the corridor to the rubbish chute, no washing machine-cum-dryer in the apartment - have to walk out to a nearby one in the gym. (weird place for a washing machine i know), no gas cooking allowed in room (only electric hot pot)
e) Weird place on Race Course Road - $1100, open concept studio on top of Indian fishhead curry restaurant.
Pros: Next to Farrer Park MRT station (the new northeast line), lots of good Indian food around,(banana leaf rice and mamak stalls galore!), pretty new development, cool hydraulic car park.
Cons: Fucking neh-vana, very domi-neh-ted (just out of Little India!!!), no-neh to hide, (yes i delight in racist jokes, like all of you. Strangely enough, I don't see a dichotomy between having friends with individuals while still harbouring racist sentiments), smell of fishhead curry pervading apartment, hideously small (even smaller than (a)!!!), crappy furnishings, crappy old microwave oven, the whole apartment having a feel of a movie where the misunderstood anti-hero is fleeing the law and has to hole up in some slum apartment with a bottle of Jack Daniel's in a brown paper bag - despite being new.
f) Hollywood Gardens on Oxley Rise. Next to the old Je t'aime jewellers and Church of the Sacred Heart. Low-rise walk-in on the 7th floor. $1300
Pros: ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NONE. THE MOST HIDEOUS PLACE I SAW. let me describe my visit to this place. my mom and i got there, we were waiting for the agent. agent pulls up in a mercedes, darts out of his car, runs up stairs motioning us to follow, we follow, not knowing it's on the fucking top floor of the low rise, pass by shut and paclocked doors on the 4th, 5th and 6th floor (the padlocks were rusted through), and as we hit the apartment the agent shouts, "i'm rushing somewhere, close the door when you're done.." and then he darts back past me and my mom down the stairs, and into his mercedes, and as we his car pulls away, we enter the house and spot all the Cons below..
Cons: Far from MRT, far from bus stop (the nearest on Clemenceau Avenue isn't exactly on a lot of bus routes) rotting furniture, curtains like cobwebs, dust everywhere, walking up 7 fucking floors, zero facilities, twenty year old development, padlocked apartments all around making the place feel like The Shining, not particularly large, insane asking price, positively negative fengshui, generally freaked us out and we were out of there in 5 minutes.
g) Sofia Court - behind Peace Centre. One bedroom apartment going for $1200
Pros: The largest of the apartments I'd seen, decent furniture, very nice marble tiled bathroom, apartment with a pool, fully equipped kitchen, old but well maintained development, convenient access to Cold Storage in Peace Center, lots of cabinet space,
Cons: Damn bloody far walk down Sofia Hill, through Peace Center, cutting across Bencoolen Road to Selegie Road to take a bus down to my office, all that extra space a hindrance to maintain, generally pretty boring area to live in without anything of interest around.
h) Club Street - one bedroom conservation house apartment above a Spanish restaurant. $1450. Directly opposite China Square.
Pros: Nice parquet floor, good furnishing, large TV, toilet with bathtub, pretty comprehensive sundry mart just across the road (servicing the far more expensive Emerald Court apartment complex), washer cum dryer, surprisingly quiet behind double glazed windows, lots of yuppie eateries around, generally cool "expat" type place in heart of city area, comprehensively furnished with washer cum dryer, clothes hanging area, cupboard space, decent bed, fully equipped kitchen, nice sofas, rubbish chute in apartment, basically the most "yuppie expat" looking place in terms of location and general ambience. (the tiong bahru one being a very close second but only in terms of interior furnishing)
Cons: Top end in terms of budget, not the most convenient in terms of walking distance to MRT (nearest being Raffles Place), later was told Club street is a gay area (although that means I can pimp my ass if i need rent money), irritating hidden cost of having to pay $10 every month to service the air conditioning, no facilities, the only place that insisted on a 2 year lease, virtually no security.
There were actually a few other places I saw, but nothing particularly notable about them, other than their location (near Novena and Newton, and one in Balestier Road) The rest of the pre-work week, other than the Kafka-esque hunt for a house, was occupied by fucking bureaucratic hassles - getting my utilities account, getting a health check up (x-rays, blood test), signing the tenancy agreement, going to my new bank and being given ANOTHER huge form to fill up, photocopying CFA books (there's another Bleak House story with regards to the CFA books which I stupidly shared with a friend in Malaysia, leading to issues regarding their division once I'm working in Singapore), and right now, having to arrange for cable, handphone, fixed line, and broadband, moving the last of my stuff from KL (with much heart-rending pain, sanity prevailed and my father convinced me that I couldn't ship ALL my books down) and double ARGH finding out that i'm going to be taxed flat 15% of income for 2004 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WHAT THE FUCK) simply for being a foreign resident working in Singapore for less than 183 days in the year.
Off-tangent observation - aunties and tai tais seriously know a LOT about real estate. when i was searching the classified ads for apartmetns for rent, my mom and her friends could like identify the locations and pros and cons of virtually ANY apartment estate I named out loud.
Hm, this blog will have to continue later, as the cybercafe (which took me 2 days to locate, where the hell are they when you need one?) I am currently tapping on for my Internet fix is about to close. And my Malaysian mobile phone on roaming can't dial bloody Citysearch.
(reminder to self before weekend) Things to blog about:
-Trip with Gabriel to NUS + observations
-First week living alone again
-The joys of Ikea shopping
-The Catch-22 of needing a bank account to get a mobile phone + SCV, but not being able to open a bank account without a local contact number....
-Observations about anal security guards and mile high compliance manuals in new workplace.
-Scary evil new boss
-Making faces during conference calls
-Amusement that three of my old secondary schoolmates are actually in jail
-The not so joys of having to rebuild life from scratch with regards to personal independence
-Supper with Ivan near the Indian temple
-preparation for all night chor tai dee sessions
It's been an inordinately long time since I was actively blogging here; however I promised Gabriel that I would do so of late.
Basically, life has undergone some rather traumatic changes of late. At first, I was tempted to collate some of the more outré events over the last 9 months, but upon going through my offline journals, I realised with a shudder that it would transform this blog into another one of those dysfunctional adolescent rants, no matter how I embellished or attempted to inject bonhomie into their depiction - a nauseating series of cliches which, however emotionally acute to the person experiencing it, degenerate into a sickening litany of self-pity when lovingly and masochistically put to type on a blog to be read. Particularly to an audience which is no doubt jaded by repeated narratives of suicide, self-mutilation, parental/adolescent generation gaps, orgies of alcohol, eulogies over the carcasses of relationships, elegiac paragraphs of existential angst, schadenfreude sentiments at the discomfiture of one's foes, romantic expressions of unrequited love, futile teenage glances, wardrobe anomalies, bitter rending of garments at the adulterous betrayal by a significant other, et al.
So I'll keep the "Story So Far" section as short as I can.
Basically, (and without a trace of irony), at a moment when I had resigned myself that I was going to plod on with my existence in a reasonably comfortable groove, having figured out how to limp my life around a variety of mental and situational disorders, I suddenly got a job offer in Singapore. And a pretty decent job at that.
At one blow, virtually every single one of my PULGs were achieved, although pleasantly enough the underlying context for them had ceased to become an issue.
Be that as it may, I can't say I wasn't (and even now) looking forward to the fairly tumultous changes entailed in having to move *back* to Singapore after approximately 10 years away. Frankly, at that point in time, my life had descended into such a rut that if I'd gotten a job training mine-laying monkeys in eastern Uganda, my only question would have been, "Do I get to share their bananas?"
Most of my last two months were spent gleefully handing over work to colleagues at my previous employer's. I must confess at this point that one of the most difficult moments in the transition was knowing that I'd have to build up professional relationships in a totally new working environment - I'd become extremely comfortable with my old colleagues, if not exactly the job or my department's top honcho. Perhaps that in and of itself was a sign to move on though.
At this point, however, I would like to thank my immediate line managers in a public forum for giving me a good reference which probably helped clinch my current job. I doubt you'll ever read this, either of you, unless your web-surfing habits are way more diverse than I was led to believe. But thanks for putting up with my incessant habit of playing with the stuffed rabbit during any limit breach.
In any event, my department head was determined to squeeze every last drop of work from me; I had actually listed out fourteen outstanding projects and tried to get as much progress on ALL of them as was humanly possible.
Then on the final fortnight, a sudden epiphany happened.
I was just told by the HR department how much I had to pay back the Bank (because of my stupid 3 months-notice-or-3-months-salary-in-lieu clause in the contract which my fucking boss refused to waiver). And when I held the memo which said that not only was my pay for July being withheld to cover the above, I had to top it up with about $2000, it suddenly dawned on me.
I was *paying* to work my last few days in KL.
That last fortnight, I flatly refused to do any work my boss assigned me. I just made excuses and stayed away from the office. My immediate colleagues and manager were actually quite supportive of that; so supportive that I actually felt guilty and spent some effort ensuring that the projects that would most affect them were smoothly handed over whereas others that the big boss wanted would just rot fallow in my absence. (although I *was* responsible enough to hand over all my notes and research to a colleague to warehouse in case those projects were resurrected)
Also on that last week, I spent virtually every night getting pissed drunk; because all of a sudden acquaintances and fair-weather friends I hadn't known existed were popping out of the woodwork asking to go for dinner, have drinks, etc. I'm not so cynical as to say ALL of them wanted me to help look for job openings (the word had gotten out by now that I was going to work in an international investment bank) - I'm sure SOME of them were sincere at least.
One thing's for sure, duck farmers make a HELL lot of money. (Went out for drinks with couple of friends, a friend of theirs dropped by, heard i was going to singapore, immediately ordered two bottles of cognac, then got his driver (HIS ie. not his family's) to fetch us all to a karaoke lounge and he paid for another 3 bottles, AND the girls, AND the mama-san actually treated him to another bottle. And yes, the guy who treated and paid for everything was a duck farmer - owns 25 duck farms in Malaysia and a slaughter house in Singapore - and he's like 5 years older than me)
The first week in Singapore was characterised by running around like MAD looking for a place to stay. It's basically a long and frenzied tale of poring through newspaper ads (Incidentally, it seems *impossible* to find a News Straits Times for sale in Orchard Road from 7:30pm onwards - a fact that caused me no end of frustration because the person I was staying with didn't have a subscription and I tended to forget to buy it in the mornings) calling agents, coordinating times, running from weird area to weird area, tearing my hair out in frustration at so many nice places outside my budget; or nice places within my budget but located in weird locations, etc etc.
My mother came down with me to "help" - while I admit she spotted things and asked questions I wouldn't have thought of - good ones; she also spent a lot of time criticising my choices and the way I was coordinating the timetables with the agents and insisting I squeeze in as much house viewing as I could while she was in singapore - while I was harried like mad trying to flit from place to place without spending too much of my dwindling supply of Singapore dollars. In fact, at one point, I thought she had left, so I went to see a place; and while I was there she called me and said she was postpoining going back, and insisted I keep the agent and the landlord of the house I was viewing there for half an hour while she caught a cab down to see the place herself ARGH.
Anyway, here were the choices of accommodation I was faced with for a while, and the factors I considered for each place. I wonder if I made the right choice in the end.
a) one bedroom apartment directly on top of Pearl Center in Chinatown. $1000.
Pros: DAMN convenient - less than 5 minutes walk to Outram Park MRT, damn lot of food around, being on top of shopping center with easy access 7-11 and lots of sundry, fruit, tailor, handphone shops, kopi tiams - (think Lucky Plaza type with way more cheena sleaziness), and, in the words of the agent who showed me the house: "very fang pian! come downstairs can mai hao ma already!" (buy numbers - Singapore Pools stand was just opposite the lift), well maintained, very nice kitchen, reasonably cheap for CBD flat.
Cons: lots of KTV and China girls hanging around (or is that a pro? My mom didn't see it that way...), damn small apartment - living room two thirds smaller than bedroom, turf club on the fifth floor of building not particularly reassuring, furnishing not that great, tiny toilet/shower, zero facilities, the damnation of neverending phone calls and nagging from my parents about the dangers of KTV girls if I actually decided to stay there
b) Beaumont - directly opposite PUB building located next to Somerset MRT (Devonshire Road). Open concept studio apartment (essentially a giant open rectangular room with a bed at the end). $1100
Pros: Damn near Somerset MRT, apartment with facilities (pool & gym), a balcony (for smoking), open concept means space is pretty maximised, reasonably sized kitchen, okay bathroom
Cons: Washing machine is not a dryer, bed and cupboard a bit old and lousy (although the other furnishings - sofa, table are quite okay), have to walk up a hill to get back home (okay i'm lazy:), tiny TV provided, apartment a bit old, no real convenience stores or sundry places around (nearest would be Centerpoint or the BP station a block away)
c) Seng Poh Gardns - somewhere near Tiong Bahru market. Pre-war converted shophouse; single open concept studio apartment on second floor. $1200
Pros: The absolutely nicest furnishings of all the places I'd seen - cream carpet, cool looking bed, frosted glass shower with damn nice showerhead and tiles, glass kitchen top with protruding metal basin, Ikea standard cupboards, chairs, table, the only place whose landloard provided a VCD machine, near acccess to a wet market (although slightly irrelevant as i didn't intend to do cooking), near soundproof pre-war walls, pretty large space (larger than the first two), also the juxtaposition of the intensely old fashioned facade (you enter through this narrow stone stairwell that's like a damned monastery, enter a corridor - at the far end is a stone spiral staircase leading down where you can see the rear courtyards of other shoplots in the same block) and the supermodern interior really strikes a chord with me - deception resonates with me:), the HDB estates have quite a few hardware and bric-a-brac stores around for my needs.
Cons: Not near MRT - have to cut through quite a few blocks of walking, tiong bahru a bit out of the way for city access, difficult parking for visitors who drive, a bit steep for a place located somewhat out of the way with zero facilities, washing machine is not cum-dryer, only electric hot pot provided - no gas cooking.
d) Liang Seah Place - basically another reconverted conservation house (ie. old shophouse converted to bucolic apartment - expats love those). Two options at this place - one was a one-room set up essentially a double hotel room (not suite) for $1200, another one a pretty large one bedroom for $1600 - slightly out of budget. Also a split level for $2200 - way way out of budget. Pros and cons below describe the cheapest option Pros: Pretty near Bugis MRT (located opposite Parco on Beach Road side), very cute place, provides a safe(!), has a gym, large TV, willing to pay for SCV, nice view of huge old tree and playground outside window, lots of great food around downstairs, nice hotel room style furnishings, toilet with bathtub
Cons: Small, horrible veneer smell pervading place, have to walk damn far out into the corridor to the rubbish chute, no washing machine-cum-dryer in the apartment - have to walk out to a nearby one in the gym. (weird place for a washing machine i know), no gas cooking allowed in room (only electric hot pot)
e) Weird place on Race Course Road - $1100, open concept studio on top of Indian fishhead curry restaurant.
Pros: Next to Farrer Park MRT station (the new northeast line), lots of good Indian food around,(banana leaf rice and mamak stalls galore!), pretty new development, cool hydraulic car park.
Cons: Fucking neh-vana, very domi-neh-ted (just out of Little India!!!), no-neh to hide, (yes i delight in racist jokes, like all of you. Strangely enough, I don't see a dichotomy between having friends with individuals while still harbouring racist sentiments), smell of fishhead curry pervading apartment, hideously small (even smaller than (a)!!!), crappy furnishings, crappy old microwave oven, the whole apartment having a feel of a movie where the misunderstood anti-hero is fleeing the law and has to hole up in some slum apartment with a bottle of Jack Daniel's in a brown paper bag - despite being new.
f) Hollywood Gardens on Oxley Rise. Next to the old Je t'aime jewellers and Church of the Sacred Heart. Low-rise walk-in on the 7th floor. $1300
Pros: ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NONE. THE MOST HIDEOUS PLACE I SAW. let me describe my visit to this place. my mom and i got there, we were waiting for the agent. agent pulls up in a mercedes, darts out of his car, runs up stairs motioning us to follow, we follow, not knowing it's on the fucking top floor of the low rise, pass by shut and paclocked doors on the 4th, 5th and 6th floor (the padlocks were rusted through), and as we hit the apartment the agent shouts, "i'm rushing somewhere, close the door when you're done.." and then he darts back past me and my mom down the stairs, and into his mercedes, and as we his car pulls away, we enter the house and spot all the Cons below..
Cons: Far from MRT, far from bus stop (the nearest on Clemenceau Avenue isn't exactly on a lot of bus routes) rotting furniture, curtains like cobwebs, dust everywhere, walking up 7 fucking floors, zero facilities, twenty year old development, padlocked apartments all around making the place feel like The Shining, not particularly large, insane asking price, positively negative fengshui, generally freaked us out and we were out of there in 5 minutes.
g) Sofia Court - behind Peace Centre. One bedroom apartment going for $1200
Pros: The largest of the apartments I'd seen, decent furniture, very nice marble tiled bathroom, apartment with a pool, fully equipped kitchen, old but well maintained development, convenient access to Cold Storage in Peace Center, lots of cabinet space,
Cons: Damn bloody far walk down Sofia Hill, through Peace Center, cutting across Bencoolen Road to Selegie Road to take a bus down to my office, all that extra space a hindrance to maintain, generally pretty boring area to live in without anything of interest around.
h) Club Street - one bedroom conservation house apartment above a Spanish restaurant. $1450. Directly opposite China Square.
Pros: Nice parquet floor, good furnishing, large TV, toilet with bathtub, pretty comprehensive sundry mart just across the road (servicing the far more expensive Emerald Court apartment complex), washer cum dryer, surprisingly quiet behind double glazed windows, lots of yuppie eateries around, generally cool "expat" type place in heart of city area, comprehensively furnished with washer cum dryer, clothes hanging area, cupboard space, decent bed, fully equipped kitchen, nice sofas, rubbish chute in apartment, basically the most "yuppie expat" looking place in terms of location and general ambience. (the tiong bahru one being a very close second but only in terms of interior furnishing)
Cons: Top end in terms of budget, not the most convenient in terms of walking distance to MRT (nearest being Raffles Place), later was told Club street is a gay area (although that means I can pimp my ass if i need rent money), irritating hidden cost of having to pay $10 every month to service the air conditioning, no facilities, the only place that insisted on a 2 year lease, virtually no security.
There were actually a few other places I saw, but nothing particularly notable about them, other than their location (near Novena and Newton, and one in Balestier Road) The rest of the pre-work week, other than the Kafka-esque hunt for a house, was occupied by fucking bureaucratic hassles - getting my utilities account, getting a health check up (x-rays, blood test), signing the tenancy agreement, going to my new bank and being given ANOTHER huge form to fill up, photocopying CFA books (there's another Bleak House story with regards to the CFA books which I stupidly shared with a friend in Malaysia, leading to issues regarding their division once I'm working in Singapore), and right now, having to arrange for cable, handphone, fixed line, and broadband, moving the last of my stuff from KL (with much heart-rending pain, sanity prevailed and my father convinced me that I couldn't ship ALL my books down) and double ARGH finding out that i'm going to be taxed flat 15% of income for 2004 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WHAT THE FUCK) simply for being a foreign resident working in Singapore for less than 183 days in the year.
Off-tangent observation - aunties and tai tais seriously know a LOT about real estate. when i was searching the classified ads for apartmetns for rent, my mom and her friends could like identify the locations and pros and cons of virtually ANY apartment estate I named out loud.
Hm, this blog will have to continue later, as the cybercafe (which took me 2 days to locate, where the hell are they when you need one?) I am currently tapping on for my Internet fix is about to close. And my Malaysian mobile phone on roaming can't dial bloody Citysearch.
(reminder to self before weekend) Things to blog about:
-Trip with Gabriel to NUS + observations
-First week living alone again
-The joys of Ikea shopping
-The Catch-22 of needing a bank account to get a mobile phone + SCV, but not being able to open a bank account without a local contact number....
-Observations about anal security guards and mile high compliance manuals in new workplace.
-Scary evil new boss
-Making faces during conference calls
-Amusement that three of my old secondary schoolmates are actually in jail
-The not so joys of having to rebuild life from scratch with regards to personal independence
-Supper with Ivan near the Indian temple
-preparation for all night chor tai dee sessions
Post ID: 109162204028531504
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Quote of the Post: "The best defense against the atom bomb is not to be there when it goes off." - Anonymous
Random Playlist Song: Aled Jones - Puff the Magic Dragon
"Some people believe the song, "Puff the Magic Dragon" is about drugs, others believe it is simply about lost childhood. Whatever your opinion, you must admit that hearing this song will certainly take you back to the Sensational Sixties!"
***
Wowbagger:
"Also, bras are worse than ties. For most occupations you are not required to wear a tie anyway."
I suppose you've worn both, but I don't think you've such a small neck, so ties aren't as uncomfortable for you as they are for me. As for bras, I don't know about our relative chest sizes, so :)
I thought most males who worked in air conditioned workplaces wore ties?!
Sharp VCRs suck. Their interfaces are cumbersome and counter-intuitive.
I got my IBM T42 today. Yay. Only thing is, wireless access in school is rather spotty. It isn't a problem with my built-in network card, though, since I am currently leeching off "linksys"'s wireless network at home. What a kind soul. Heh.
***
It seems A Girl's Guide to College: Making the Most of the Best Four Years of Your Life includes a paragraph from Joy Chia :0
Though Dino Ignacio closed his site down long ago, his legacy lives on, continued by others who have picked up the torch. Meanwhile, we have: Bert, the Sesame Street muppet, appears on posters carried by supporters of Osama bin Laden - "Eh? Is that really Bert, the irascible muppet partner of Ernie on TV's Sesame Street, peering over the left shoulder of Osama bin Laden in the poster shown below? How did he get there?"
Singapore Wants You! - "Singapore works as a company... When a decision is made to support life sciences, the government can provide billions in funding, build 2 million square feet of life science space in the middle of town, and change the curriculum of all schools to incorporate it."
We don't just work as a company. We *are* a company.
War against apathy - "Many professionals feel that their ideas and suggestions make little or no difference to policies. The authorities, they believe, will invite public feedback, listen, but often reject them. Another is a fear, often exaggerated, that after a long authoritarian rule, critics will be punished for saying or doing the wrong things. So, it's better to leave it to the government, they say. Just carry on with one's own lives."
They complain that people are apathetic, but promise to *demolish* opponents of the government. Really, you can't have it both ways.
John Kerry's convention "salute" brought out some amusing comparisons - Heh.
***
CSI: Reality (Source: JumboJoke)
At the 1995 annual awards dinner given by the American Academy for Forensic Science, AAFS President Don Harper Mills astounded his audience in San Diego with the legal complications of a bizzare death. Here is the story.
"On 23 March 1994, The medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound of the head. The decedent had jumped from the top of a ten-storey building intending to commit suicide (he left a note indicating his dispondency). As he fell past the ninth floor, his attempt on his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter not the decedent was aware that a safety net had been erected at the eighth floor level to protect some window washers and that Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide anyway because of this."
"Ordinarily," Dr. Mills continued, "a person who sets out to commit suicide ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended."
That Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below would not have changed his mode of death from suicide to homicide. But the fact that his suicidal intent would not have been successful caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.
"The room on the ninth floor whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing and he was threatening her with the shotgun. He was so upset that, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Opus."
"When one intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted with this charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded. The old man said it was his long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her -- therefore, the killing of Opus appeared to be an accident. That is, the gun had been accidentally loaded."
"The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to the fatal incident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother."
The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.
Here was an exquisite twist.
"Further investigation revealed that the son (who in fact was Ronald Opus) had become increasingly dispondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten-storey building on March 23, only to be killed by the shotgun blast through the window."
The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.
Editor's note: The above is strictly fiction
***
solsetur on pussies:
"The problem with having cats in your estate, is that they get all horny at night.
Horny, then they start making lots of noise. Experienced that before? The place I live being a private estate, means that unless somebody actually gets really pissed and goes on a crusade drowning/spaying all cats within the compounds, we have to put up with weird nocturnal habits from the cats occasionally. So after one of the residents go on a rampage we'll have peace for a while, till some sentimental cat lover abandons their darling Kitty, unspayed.
Then you have a week-long session of nightly weird and loud moaning.
It's a mystery how I learnt that the cats were to blame. Did my parents go 'oh, the cats are getting hot and bothered for some torrid street sex' to me when I was 7?
FUCK. It's really some orgy down there. Just now some cat was just going on-and-on-and-on as if it was masturbating itself. Now I can hear a symphony of snarling and, uhm. Cat-tish moaning. There's at least 2 cats - that's torrid sex action tonight for sure. Thank goodness my window faces the main road - cats are down in the valley. My poor parents and neighbours! (So what if you got nice chalet-window view and me, lots of tar and tarmac? I get sleep tonight!!)"
I hate pussies too :)
Random Playlist Song: Aled Jones - Puff the Magic Dragon
"Some people believe the song, "Puff the Magic Dragon" is about drugs, others believe it is simply about lost childhood. Whatever your opinion, you must admit that hearing this song will certainly take you back to the Sensational Sixties!"
***
Wowbagger:
"Also, bras are worse than ties. For most occupations you are not required to wear a tie anyway."
I suppose you've worn both, but I don't think you've such a small neck, so ties aren't as uncomfortable for you as they are for me. As for bras, I don't know about our relative chest sizes, so :)
I thought most males who worked in air conditioned workplaces wore ties?!
Sharp VCRs suck. Their interfaces are cumbersome and counter-intuitive.
I got my IBM T42 today. Yay. Only thing is, wireless access in school is rather spotty. It isn't a problem with my built-in network card, though, since I am currently leeching off "linksys"'s wireless network at home. What a kind soul. Heh.
***
It seems A Girl's Guide to College: Making the Most of the Best Four Years of Your Life includes a paragraph from Joy Chia :0
Though Dino Ignacio closed his site down long ago, his legacy lives on, continued by others who have picked up the torch. Meanwhile, we have: Bert, the Sesame Street muppet, appears on posters carried by supporters of Osama bin Laden - "Eh? Is that really Bert, the irascible muppet partner of Ernie on TV's Sesame Street, peering over the left shoulder of Osama bin Laden in the poster shown below? How did he get there?"
Singapore Wants You! - "Singapore works as a company... When a decision is made to support life sciences, the government can provide billions in funding, build 2 million square feet of life science space in the middle of town, and change the curriculum of all schools to incorporate it."
We don't just work as a company. We *are* a company.
War against apathy - "Many professionals feel that their ideas and suggestions make little or no difference to policies. The authorities, they believe, will invite public feedback, listen, but often reject them. Another is a fear, often exaggerated, that after a long authoritarian rule, critics will be punished for saying or doing the wrong things. So, it's better to leave it to the government, they say. Just carry on with one's own lives."
They complain that people are apathetic, but promise to *demolish* opponents of the government. Really, you can't have it both ways.
John Kerry's convention "salute" brought out some amusing comparisons - Heh.
***
CSI: Reality (Source: JumboJoke)
At the 1995 annual awards dinner given by the American Academy for Forensic Science, AAFS President Don Harper Mills astounded his audience in San Diego with the legal complications of a bizzare death. Here is the story.
"On 23 March 1994, The medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound of the head. The decedent had jumped from the top of a ten-storey building intending to commit suicide (he left a note indicating his dispondency). As he fell past the ninth floor, his attempt on his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter not the decedent was aware that a safety net had been erected at the eighth floor level to protect some window washers and that Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide anyway because of this."
"Ordinarily," Dr. Mills continued, "a person who sets out to commit suicide ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended."
That Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below would not have changed his mode of death from suicide to homicide. But the fact that his suicidal intent would not have been successful caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.
"The room on the ninth floor whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing and he was threatening her with the shotgun. He was so upset that, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Opus."
"When one intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted with this charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded. The old man said it was his long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her -- therefore, the killing of Opus appeared to be an accident. That is, the gun had been accidentally loaded."
"The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to the fatal incident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother."
The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.
Here was an exquisite twist.
"Further investigation revealed that the son (who in fact was Ronald Opus) had become increasingly dispondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten-storey building on March 23, only to be killed by the shotgun blast through the window."
The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.
Editor's note: The above is strictly fiction
***
solsetur on pussies:
"The problem with having cats in your estate, is that they get all horny at night.
Horny, then they start making lots of noise. Experienced that before? The place I live being a private estate, means that unless somebody actually gets really pissed and goes on a crusade drowning/spaying all cats within the compounds, we have to put up with weird nocturnal habits from the cats occasionally. So after one of the residents go on a rampage we'll have peace for a while, till some sentimental cat lover abandons their darling Kitty, unspayed.
Then you have a week-long session of nightly weird and loud moaning.
It's a mystery how I learnt that the cats were to blame. Did my parents go 'oh, the cats are getting hot and bothered for some torrid street sex' to me when I was 7?
FUCK. It's really some orgy down there. Just now some cat was just going on-and-on-and-on as if it was masturbating itself. Now I can hear a symphony of snarling and, uhm. Cat-tish moaning. There's at least 2 cats - that's torrid sex action tonight for sure. Thank goodness my window faces the main road - cats are down in the valley. My poor parents and neighbours! (So what if you got nice chalet-window view and me, lots of tar and tarmac? I get sleep tonight!!)"
I hate pussies too :)
Post ID: 109146407960335257
Monday, August 02, 2004
Quote of the Post: "Most people have seen worse things in private than they pretend to be shocked at in public." - Edgar Watson Howe
Random Playlist Song: Holst - I Vow to Thee, My Country (The Last Night Of The Proms Collection)
Unfortunately, I do not feel the same way about my country.
***
I don't know what my mother's problem is.
My father asked me what time I needed to go to school tomorrow, and I said that it would depend on if I got a call tonight (because I needed to find out if my OG was going for Flag).
Then my mother had to chip in with the comment, delivered in a sardonic tone to boot, that if Screwed Up Girl called me, I would go. Considering that there is nothing going on between me and Screwed Up Girl, and that this is assuredly not the first time that she has seen fit to deliver irrelevant and incendiary comments of this nature, I wonder if she is doing to me what she often accuses other people (read: me) of doing to her: provoking me.
A short while later, when I ignored her question about my getting a new school bag so as not to start shouting at her, she said I was becoming "very rude". When I pointed out that she had just pissed me off, she ignored my point and then complained that I sometimes responded to her queries, on my leaving the house, about my destination with the word: "Out". Of course, my reply was that this was only (okay, mostly) so because I had a good teacher: her. I should have added that past experience has been that when I do tell her where I'm going, who I'm meeting and what I'm doing, I will be subjected to a barrage of snide remarks, unwanted comments and unwarranted criticisms, as well as a question I can't always answer: namely, when I will return. Her parting shot: I'm becoming like one of her Hendersonians.
No wonder people can't wait to move out (to a hostel, or otherwise).
***
Today was NUS's Freshmen Inauguration Ceremony. Most people, in their right minds, would not have gone for it, but we were all told that the freebies were very good, so the University Cultural Centre was rather full (though the third level was empty).
We sat through the usual: seeing the senior staff parade in their academic gowns, complete with odd-looking headgear, and listening to speeches. In one, we were told that NUS and its forebears had produced and were producing the Nation's finest leaders, civil students, engineers, doctors, lawyers and such. Odd, for I thought that the Nation's finest were all on PSC Scholarships to Ivy League Universities or Oxbridge. We were also given glowing and inspiring speeches (and later watched videos) about igniting our passion and realising our dreams. Great stuff, but meaningless if you have neither passion nor dreams.
We were also led in taking the NUS Students' Pledge by the President of the Student Union. True to form, NUS's Students Pledge is very Asian in character, talking about students fulfilling their potential and carrying out their responsibilities to society and the nation!
Oh, and the NUS choir performed. They weren't very good, though.
NUS's module registration system, CORS, will not let us register for modules which have conflicting lecture slots. I find this strange, for they have webcasted some modules' lectures in the past, and will surely do so in the future.
Furthermore, there is their rhetoric about their "NUS Global Campus", "an initiative to enable NUS to fully exploit IT for teaching, learning, research and administration" [emphasis mine]. What better way than to save students time and free up Lecture Theatres by webcasting lectures, especially popular ones? After all, it's not like students don't skip lectures that they do not feel like attending anyway. Hell, my friend is already "attending" lectures by viewing their webcasts, albeit only because CORS screwed up and let me take modules with concurrent lectures.
Ideally, we would have web-based tutorials too, at least some of the time, but we may not yet be ready for that step as not everyone has the requisite hardware at home.
NUS buildings all look very drab from the outside, being painted mostly in dull shades of grey. They should repaint the building exteriors with cheerful colours, or maybe let loose aspiring graffiti artists/mural makers on them.
Occasionally, I feel quite bad - so far I haven't done anything for/with my home faculty. Ivan on O Week - I should have gone, then I would be able to play station games involving worms!
I'm very gey kiang (Hokkien for trying to be too smart). In trying for a 4 day week, I miscalculated and now I'm stuck in a bidding war. Whee.
Quotes:
These range over quite a wide range.
This sounds rather official, doesn't it? 'Singapore: the making of a nation'... Don't worry, there's no attempt to put forward the People's Action Party's viewpoint in this module.
Not that I want to watch all these silly TV programs... I accidentally come across them when changing channels. They're so silly I can't resist watching them... The most silly programs are the dating shows.
One of the benefits of having a university education in Singapore, as you might know, is that you are automatically a member of the SDU (Ed: Social Development Unit - a dating agency for graduates)
You're not dating for fun. You're looking to settle down. Maybe produce future scholars.
[On past USP projects and dating] There are some, like counter-terrorism, that don't seem very relevant, but if you change a few names, use your imagination... Dealing with your in-laws.
... Evolution. Definitely useful for understanding why your partner is in such a primitive state. Those are the modules that are relevant for love, dating and marriage.
***
A: i'm bothered by groups of people that don't like to mix with others outside their race. as well as those that speak loudly with disregard for others
B: sorry. but that seems to describe malays?
A: ah, and now you know why i don't have that many malay friends. tho my best pal is malay
***
Someone on PGP (Prince George's Park residences) vs halls:
Friend: what i can't stand, is being forced/obligated to take part in hall ccas
advantages [of hall]? less privacy, more interaction, over half the people prc/indians, little time to study. hmmm.
pgp is hall without eca, more privacy (which cld be bad) and lots of space to manage your own time
and a common, and advantageous (for me) misconception: pgp does NOT cost more. it only looks like it costs more cos it's like a high class condo styled after an italian seaside town
crash-ees are welcome, though the rooms are minute. charges begin at 1 introduction to a hot female friend. lol
***
Someone said that one quality he admired in me was that I’ve been updating my site all these years, and that he’d never have the drive to do that. I am amused: I’ve never quite thought of it that way. I thought that I’ve been updating it because I have nothing better to do.
***
AcidFlask has come up with an extended version of the discourse on why Life Sciences in Singapore has no future.
"singapore's fiscal policies can be loosely summarized as throwing billions of dollars into the air, then telling the world's major companies that there is free money up for grabs. hopefully along the way the uneducated, unwashed and inferior local populace will be able to learn something in the process. presumably by induction."
Brother in law: "This is just rubbish. That's what teenagers write. And you can quote me on that."
***
Same Sex Parenting
The Canadian Justice Department undertook a study on this very issue as an impact assessment on the proposed Canadian same-sex marriage legislation.
To the surprise of just about everyone, the study showed that the children of gay and lesbian parents may have an advantage over other children. These children have more positive role models because their parents tend to have more supportive and egalitarian relationships with more equal division of labour.
Also, gay fathers tend to be better than heterosexual fathers in exhibiting authoritative parenting techniques with clear limitations, in addition to warmth, affection, and support.
There is one major caveat to the study in that it is relatively unrepresentative - the socioeconomic class of most of those currently involved in long term same-sex relationships with children means they are well educated and financially secure.
But as things stand right now, parenting skills is not an argument against same sex marriage.
***
Random Playlist Song: Holst - I Vow to Thee, My Country (The Last Night Of The Proms Collection)
Unfortunately, I do not feel the same way about my country.
***
I don't know what my mother's problem is.
My father asked me what time I needed to go to school tomorrow, and I said that it would depend on if I got a call tonight (because I needed to find out if my OG was going for Flag).
Then my mother had to chip in with the comment, delivered in a sardonic tone to boot, that if Screwed Up Girl called me, I would go. Considering that there is nothing going on between me and Screwed Up Girl, and that this is assuredly not the first time that she has seen fit to deliver irrelevant and incendiary comments of this nature, I wonder if she is doing to me what she often accuses other people (read: me) of doing to her: provoking me.
A short while later, when I ignored her question about my getting a new school bag so as not to start shouting at her, she said I was becoming "very rude". When I pointed out that she had just pissed me off, she ignored my point and then complained that I sometimes responded to her queries, on my leaving the house, about my destination with the word: "Out". Of course, my reply was that this was only (okay, mostly) so because I had a good teacher: her. I should have added that past experience has been that when I do tell her where I'm going, who I'm meeting and what I'm doing, I will be subjected to a barrage of snide remarks, unwanted comments and unwarranted criticisms, as well as a question I can't always answer: namely, when I will return. Her parting shot: I'm becoming like one of her Hendersonians.
No wonder people can't wait to move out (to a hostel, or otherwise).
***
Today was NUS's Freshmen Inauguration Ceremony. Most people, in their right minds, would not have gone for it, but we were all told that the freebies were very good, so the University Cultural Centre was rather full (though the third level was empty).
We sat through the usual: seeing the senior staff parade in their academic gowns, complete with odd-looking headgear, and listening to speeches. In one, we were told that NUS and its forebears had produced and were producing the Nation's finest leaders, civil students, engineers, doctors, lawyers and such. Odd, for I thought that the Nation's finest were all on PSC Scholarships to Ivy League Universities or Oxbridge. We were also given glowing and inspiring speeches (and later watched videos) about igniting our passion and realising our dreams. Great stuff, but meaningless if you have neither passion nor dreams.
We were also led in taking the NUS Students' Pledge by the President of the Student Union. True to form, NUS's Students Pledge is very Asian in character, talking about students fulfilling their potential and carrying out their responsibilities to society and the nation!
Oh, and the NUS choir performed. They weren't very good, though.
NUS's module registration system, CORS, will not let us register for modules which have conflicting lecture slots. I find this strange, for they have webcasted some modules' lectures in the past, and will surely do so in the future.
Furthermore, there is their rhetoric about their "NUS Global Campus", "an initiative to enable NUS to fully exploit IT for teaching, learning, research and administration" [emphasis mine]. What better way than to save students time and free up Lecture Theatres by webcasting lectures, especially popular ones? After all, it's not like students don't skip lectures that they do not feel like attending anyway. Hell, my friend is already "attending" lectures by viewing their webcasts, albeit only because CORS screwed up and let me take modules with concurrent lectures.
Ideally, we would have web-based tutorials too, at least some of the time, but we may not yet be ready for that step as not everyone has the requisite hardware at home.
NUS buildings all look very drab from the outside, being painted mostly in dull shades of grey. They should repaint the building exteriors with cheerful colours, or maybe let loose aspiring graffiti artists/mural makers on them.
Occasionally, I feel quite bad - so far I haven't done anything for/with my home faculty. Ivan on O Week - I should have gone, then I would be able to play station games involving worms!
I'm very gey kiang (Hokkien for trying to be too smart). In trying for a 4 day week, I miscalculated and now I'm stuck in a bidding war. Whee.
Quotes:
These range over quite a wide range.
This sounds rather official, doesn't it? 'Singapore: the making of a nation'... Don't worry, there's no attempt to put forward the People's Action Party's viewpoint in this module.
Not that I want to watch all these silly TV programs... I accidentally come across them when changing channels. They're so silly I can't resist watching them... The most silly programs are the dating shows.
One of the benefits of having a university education in Singapore, as you might know, is that you are automatically a member of the SDU (Ed: Social Development Unit - a dating agency for graduates)
You're not dating for fun. You're looking to settle down. Maybe produce future scholars.
[On past USP projects and dating] There are some, like counter-terrorism, that don't seem very relevant, but if you change a few names, use your imagination... Dealing with your in-laws.
... Evolution. Definitely useful for understanding why your partner is in such a primitive state. Those are the modules that are relevant for love, dating and marriage.
***
A: i'm bothered by groups of people that don't like to mix with others outside their race. as well as those that speak loudly with disregard for others
B: sorry. but that seems to describe malays?
A: ah, and now you know why i don't have that many malay friends. tho my best pal is malay
***
Someone on PGP (Prince George's Park residences) vs halls:
Friend: what i can't stand, is being forced/obligated to take part in hall ccas
advantages [of hall]? less privacy, more interaction, over half the people prc/indians, little time to study. hmmm.
pgp is hall without eca, more privacy (which cld be bad) and lots of space to manage your own time
and a common, and advantageous (for me) misconception: pgp does NOT cost more. it only looks like it costs more cos it's like a high class condo styled after an italian seaside town
crash-ees are welcome, though the rooms are minute. charges begin at 1 introduction to a hot female friend. lol
***
Someone said that one quality he admired in me was that I’ve been updating my site all these years, and that he’d never have the drive to do that. I am amused: I’ve never quite thought of it that way. I thought that I’ve been updating it because I have nothing better to do.
***
AcidFlask has come up with an extended version of the discourse on why Life Sciences in Singapore has no future.
"singapore's fiscal policies can be loosely summarized as throwing billions of dollars into the air, then telling the world's major companies that there is free money up for grabs. hopefully along the way the uneducated, unwashed and inferior local populace will be able to learn something in the process. presumably by induction."
Brother in law: "This is just rubbish. That's what teenagers write. And you can quote me on that."
***
Same Sex Parenting
The Canadian Justice Department undertook a study on this very issue as an impact assessment on the proposed Canadian same-sex marriage legislation.
To the surprise of just about everyone, the study showed that the children of gay and lesbian parents may have an advantage over other children. These children have more positive role models because their parents tend to have more supportive and egalitarian relationships with more equal division of labour.
Also, gay fathers tend to be better than heterosexual fathers in exhibiting authoritative parenting techniques with clear limitations, in addition to warmth, affection, and support.
There is one major caveat to the study in that it is relatively unrepresentative - the socioeconomic class of most of those currently involved in long term same-sex relationships with children means they are well educated and financially secure.
But as things stand right now, parenting skills is not an argument against same sex marriage.
***
Post ID: 109137001799599207
Sunday, August 01, 2004
Quote of the Post: "If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done." - Peter Ustinov
Random Playlist Song: Prince of Egypt - The Plagues (Let My People Go)
***
Supposedly, it is good for a high proportion of your country's citizens to own their homes. This gives them ready collateral for loans, a cushion against volatile rental fees, a sense of security and belonging and possibly an investment that appreciates with time (though given that the housing bubble in many countries seems ridiculously inflated and ready to burst, that might not hold true today).
However, the thing is that homes in Singapore cost so much that you will have to spend the next 20-30 years paying off your mortgage, and you will thus be tied down to Singapore.
So the drive to encourage home ownership in Singapore could just be a way to prevent people from becoming "quitters". Imagine that.
***
After a round of bidding, I have gotten all 5 of the modules I bid for... for 1 point each. Maybe there're good reasons why those modules (or at least the lecture slots I went for) aren't in demand. I am also stuck with a 5 day week, mostly thanks to the vagaries of USP module timings (since almost all USP modules have 2 classes a week). Boo hoo. Then again, someone else tells me that he has a 6 day week, and I wouldn't want to take modules solely to furnish myself with a nice timetable, so. At least in a 5 day week, no school day will be too tiring, and I have no bright ideas about what to use the spare day for. No matter - there's always next semester.
"I thought NUS halls are more like prisons" - Brother in law
"have you been to eusoff/temasek? the corridors look like tt of an asylum
grey doors with metal handles... dark corridor... quite scary" - Someone Else
Benjy tells me that in NTU, you can get 3 AUs (Academic Units - their equivalent of NUS's Modular Credits) from joining the choir or guitar ensemble. Wah.
He also tells me that he has a friend (who doesn't even stay in the NTU halls) who wore a pair of jeans for 2 weeks. He said that the feeling was "very shiok".
***
I went for The A Capella Society's "A CapellaFest 04" concert at ACS (Barker) yesterday. Now, this isn't usually my sort of thing, but Benjy was desperate for someone to accompany him, and promised that he would answer some awkward (heh heh) questions of mine in return for my company. Though he evaded them in the end. Bloody hell.
Anyhow, I hadn't attended a concert featuring Singapore a capella groups for quite some time, and needed a reminder of why I disliked modern a capella music. I may not have enjoyed the content of the performances, especially not the mouthdrumming and gimmicks (one group had 2 of their members start dancing during a song, for example), but I appreciated the technical mastery (some of) the performers displayed.
Our tickets (in row 6 of the stalls) cost $28, inclusive of a SISTIC handling fee. In view of the venue and the performers, both of us felt that it was rather overpriced. This was partially made up for (depending on your point of view) by the concert's length - concerts put up by amateurs usually last about 2 hours, but this one was 3 hours long, and ended close to eleven o'clock. So as you could imagine, it was quite tiring, since not all the performers were good.
Benjy wasn't very impressed by the lack of skill of some of the performers either, so he periodically commented to me about how many groups were messy, and how many redundant singers each group had. On my part, I was almost as irked by how some of the performers used the word "wrote" when they meant "arranged" - one member of In-A-Chord claimed that one of them had "wrote" the song "Ice Kachang", for example, when it had actually been written by Dick Lee, in his persona as the Mad Chinaman.
One group, ngam, did a medley of 1980s Cartoon Theme Songs (Care bears, Gummi bears, My Little Pony, Transformers and the like). Given that half the audience looked to be in secondary school still, this wasn't wise, for they probably hadn't watched most of the cartoons (except for Pinky and the Brain, the sole 90s cartoon).
Towards the end of the concert, a group of primary school kids in uniform, who had come in a group on a chartered bus, left early. Some of the performers than took their places. I guess no one told that school that the concert would last for 3 hours. Maybe their parents didn't want them to stay up past their bedtime. Or maybe it was a conspiracy by the performers so that they would get places to sit. How cunning of them.
***
Celebrity 18th birthday countdowns have long been the rage
"Since the days when Shirley Temple steered the Good Ship Lollipop through puberty, fans have been meticulously dissecting the first kisses, first signs of breasts and first romantic encounters of our nation's most popular female child actors.
Was any straight male free of impure thoughts when Elizabeth Taylor (turned 18 on Feb. 27, 1950) officially became a woman? Wasn't it the baby boomers who counted down the seconds to the 18th birthday of Annette Funicello (Oct. 22, 1960)?
And try this fact on for size: Between 1982 and 1985, no less than three major label artists -- including Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members Aerosmith and Eric Clapton -- recorded or released different songs titled "Jailbait.""
Microsuck | What's So Bad About Microsoft?
The Enlightened Despot - "For some years, some biologists have argued that there was a 7th day of creation, during which God thought about his prototypes and finally made the crowning glory of his creation here on Earth: the giant squid... The world was created as a habitat for the giant squid. Humans were put here to control the large predators that would otherwise bother the giant squid. We are programmed to ignore the giant squid, and to not take actions that would harm them."
Methods of Media Manipulation, by Michael Parenti - "Their job is not to inform but to disinform, not to advance democratic discourse but to mute it, telling us what to think about the world before we have a chance to think about it for ourselves. When we understand that news selectivity is likely to favor those who have power, position, and wealth, we move from a liberal complaint about the press's sloppy performance to a radical analysis of how the media serve the ruling circles with much skill and craft."
I think he's being paranoid, but nonetheless his points are worth bearing in mind
10 Truths About Trade - Hard facts about offshoring, imports, and jobs
Firedfox
***
Search referrals:
NB: I have long been struck dumb by my search referrals. Nevertheless, I am daily exposed to new depths of depravity and some of the following puzzle me. I would appreciate if someone could explain the search referrals which I have bolded below. You can leave a comment at the end of the post, or use this form.
guys men boys turn ons, body language tips techniques
dangers of tying dogs
NKF sue blogger singapore - That's why you need the National Kena-sued Fund.
rgs "mass swim" - Chris: "Mass swim tomorrow. Don't bring your trunks."
emma watson's belly button
free stories fondle by stranger
sluts in west yorkshire
what is emma watson's home phone number - I'm sure it starts with "555"
daniel radcliffe "shoe size"
comparison essay of jack(lord of the flies) with any historic idols
fireman's lift - I'm on Page 72 of results for this. Was someone really that desperate?
digitally enhanced Keira Knightly king arthur - Assuming that the person was thinking of the most obvious enhancement, I don't think she was digitally enhanced. She wasn't even wearing her "very helpful underwear", as in Pirates of the Caribbean.
Keira Knightly Breast Pics - There won't be very much to see.
LIST OF MOVIES WTH MALE FRONTAL NUDITY
joshua loh big earlobes
pigs concert censored balls
geng ippt
BMT brainwash air force
"mind your language" episode download
Emma Watson's boob - She got a masectomy?
erotic tantric photography
elbonia oil drilling
Singapore's newater plantation - Now we have newater trees?
laser hair removal near Las Vegas, NV - Google is seriously screwy.
"feng shui", "DPM Lee", Singapore
strigils noodles
platinum assayer- singaporean - What is an assayer?
singapore ns checkup naked blog
shawn ban hq bmtc - Ooh someone is doing research.
unhygienic guys
sggirls blogging
arab israel conflict singaporeans reflection - "In Singapore, they didn't know what an opinion was"
redneck nude girls
Uncircumcised Male Celebrities
belly button keira knightly
geppers rgs
Kong Ming lanterns
Dude where's my car unofficial homepage
Pringles Haram or Halal - Apparently Emulsifier 471 (and some others) contains pork fats. On a bulletin board, someone commented: "all i can is is that all u guys r over acting. no need to be that particular. eat what u want except PORK and alcohol. and concentrate more on relevant things in life". Indeed :)
Daniel Radcliffe's name in chinese
rate my cunt
free disgusting asian 12yr old porn - If it's disgusting, why do you want it?
Christians against yaoi
"I not stupid" bit torrent
long hair nanyang girls
pictures of NKF's children
lamma lips
chronic intestinal pseudo obstruction chat room
nude connectin between penis and ass
"antichrist" and "cell group"
njc media get instant the mask history our up date book mark this
khaw hoon kheng and sex
phantom of the opera bedframe
"girls should shave"
Emma Watson's breast size
porn cpr scenes
fastest 2.4km in SAF history
doctors pics of baby exiting women's cunt .com
bedsheets, napoleon bees
bdsm serving trays
fall-from-grace nude planescape
female army recruit gets spanking from master sergeant
archetypical representation of malaysian women
fujitsu mocking bird MO driver XP
bangladeshi girl's hard core porn site
singapore ndp things inside goodie bag
pics of evils in nigeria higher institutions
emma watson heavy metal
walkers crisps sensations order singapore - I want some!
gee ass ass queue gssq
cruel boobs fill injection torture dark stories
www.sexkey.com.sg
luohan disease treatment
ACJC skirt
ACJC girls uniform
ACJC school uniforms photograph - You'll have a better chance on Webshots.
"chong chin xiang"
"milo van" photo - They sent one to NUS's matriculation. Wah.
escape IPPT
fishbone diagram restaurant meal casual factors
sweet devon
rubberised males training
post op m to f transexuals intercourse experiences
abrams tank Monkey quicktime Rail Gun
JC girls zhao geng - They misspelled the word!
looking at woman's longkang - The question is: *which* longkang?
sex nankan taiwan - Wo-hen moves to Taiwan?
Substitutes for Sunsilk shampoo in rural India - I didn't know that the brand was so highly regarded.
college cheerleader skirt-length
illustration how to wear tudung
being naked in korea insecurities
discworld morality abandonware
"how to clean your anus?"
church camp cheers
The Power Ranger Slash Project
most fun church camps
The Haircut Website
list of halal food caterers by MUIS in sg - I thought that all of them were Halal. Next time, I might set up a food catering company myself, billing it: "The last non-Halal catering in town" (in a conscious reference to the one that proudly proclaims that it was "the first Halal catering in town)
strong women raping weaker men "women raping men"
Random Playlist Song: Prince of Egypt - The Plagues (Let My People Go)
***
Supposedly, it is good for a high proportion of your country's citizens to own their homes. This gives them ready collateral for loans, a cushion against volatile rental fees, a sense of security and belonging and possibly an investment that appreciates with time (though given that the housing bubble in many countries seems ridiculously inflated and ready to burst, that might not hold true today).
However, the thing is that homes in Singapore cost so much that you will have to spend the next 20-30 years paying off your mortgage, and you will thus be tied down to Singapore.
So the drive to encourage home ownership in Singapore could just be a way to prevent people from becoming "quitters". Imagine that.
***
After a round of bidding, I have gotten all 5 of the modules I bid for... for 1 point each. Maybe there're good reasons why those modules (or at least the lecture slots I went for) aren't in demand. I am also stuck with a 5 day week, mostly thanks to the vagaries of USP module timings (since almost all USP modules have 2 classes a week). Boo hoo. Then again, someone else tells me that he has a 6 day week, and I wouldn't want to take modules solely to furnish myself with a nice timetable, so. At least in a 5 day week, no school day will be too tiring, and I have no bright ideas about what to use the spare day for. No matter - there's always next semester.
"I thought NUS halls are more like prisons" - Brother in law
"have you been to eusoff/temasek? the corridors look like tt of an asylum
grey doors with metal handles... dark corridor... quite scary" - Someone Else
Benjy tells me that in NTU, you can get 3 AUs (Academic Units - their equivalent of NUS's Modular Credits) from joining the choir or guitar ensemble. Wah.
He also tells me that he has a friend (who doesn't even stay in the NTU halls) who wore a pair of jeans for 2 weeks. He said that the feeling was "very shiok".
***
I went for The A Capella Society's "A CapellaFest 04" concert at ACS (Barker) yesterday. Now, this isn't usually my sort of thing, but Benjy was desperate for someone to accompany him, and promised that he would answer some awkward (heh heh) questions of mine in return for my company. Though he evaded them in the end. Bloody hell.
Anyhow, I hadn't attended a concert featuring Singapore a capella groups for quite some time, and needed a reminder of why I disliked modern a capella music. I may not have enjoyed the content of the performances, especially not the mouthdrumming and gimmicks (one group had 2 of their members start dancing during a song, for example), but I appreciated the technical mastery (some of) the performers displayed.
Our tickets (in row 6 of the stalls) cost $28, inclusive of a SISTIC handling fee. In view of the venue and the performers, both of us felt that it was rather overpriced. This was partially made up for (depending on your point of view) by the concert's length - concerts put up by amateurs usually last about 2 hours, but this one was 3 hours long, and ended close to eleven o'clock. So as you could imagine, it was quite tiring, since not all the performers were good.
Benjy wasn't very impressed by the lack of skill of some of the performers either, so he periodically commented to me about how many groups were messy, and how many redundant singers each group had. On my part, I was almost as irked by how some of the performers used the word "wrote" when they meant "arranged" - one member of In-A-Chord claimed that one of them had "wrote" the song "Ice Kachang", for example, when it had actually been written by Dick Lee, in his persona as the Mad Chinaman.
One group, ngam, did a medley of 1980s Cartoon Theme Songs (Care bears, Gummi bears, My Little Pony, Transformers and the like). Given that half the audience looked to be in secondary school still, this wasn't wise, for they probably hadn't watched most of the cartoons (except for Pinky and the Brain, the sole 90s cartoon).
Towards the end of the concert, a group of primary school kids in uniform, who had come in a group on a chartered bus, left early. Some of the performers than took their places. I guess no one told that school that the concert would last for 3 hours. Maybe their parents didn't want them to stay up past their bedtime. Or maybe it was a conspiracy by the performers so that they would get places to sit. How cunning of them.
***
Celebrity 18th birthday countdowns have long been the rage
"Since the days when Shirley Temple steered the Good Ship Lollipop through puberty, fans have been meticulously dissecting the first kisses, first signs of breasts and first romantic encounters of our nation's most popular female child actors.
Was any straight male free of impure thoughts when Elizabeth Taylor (turned 18 on Feb. 27, 1950) officially became a woman? Wasn't it the baby boomers who counted down the seconds to the 18th birthday of Annette Funicello (Oct. 22, 1960)?
And try this fact on for size: Between 1982 and 1985, no less than three major label artists -- including Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members Aerosmith and Eric Clapton -- recorded or released different songs titled "Jailbait.""
Microsuck | What's So Bad About Microsoft?
The Enlightened Despot - "For some years, some biologists have argued that there was a 7th day of creation, during which God thought about his prototypes and finally made the crowning glory of his creation here on Earth: the giant squid... The world was created as a habitat for the giant squid. Humans were put here to control the large predators that would otherwise bother the giant squid. We are programmed to ignore the giant squid, and to not take actions that would harm them."
Methods of Media Manipulation, by Michael Parenti - "Their job is not to inform but to disinform, not to advance democratic discourse but to mute it, telling us what to think about the world before we have a chance to think about it for ourselves. When we understand that news selectivity is likely to favor those who have power, position, and wealth, we move from a liberal complaint about the press's sloppy performance to a radical analysis of how the media serve the ruling circles with much skill and craft."
I think he's being paranoid, but nonetheless his points are worth bearing in mind
10 Truths About Trade - Hard facts about offshoring, imports, and jobs
Firedfox
***
Search referrals:
NB: I have long been struck dumb by my search referrals. Nevertheless, I am daily exposed to new depths of depravity and some of the following puzzle me. I would appreciate if someone could explain the search referrals which I have bolded below. You can leave a comment at the end of the post, or use this form.
guys men boys turn ons, body language tips techniques
dangers of tying dogs
NKF sue blogger singapore - That's why you need the National Kena-sued Fund.
rgs "mass swim" - Chris: "Mass swim tomorrow. Don't bring your trunks."
emma watson's belly button
free stories fondle by stranger
sluts in west yorkshire
what is emma watson's home phone number - I'm sure it starts with "555"
daniel radcliffe "shoe size"
comparison essay of jack(lord of the flies) with any historic idols
fireman's lift - I'm on Page 72 of results for this. Was someone really that desperate?
digitally enhanced Keira Knightly king arthur - Assuming that the person was thinking of the most obvious enhancement, I don't think she was digitally enhanced. She wasn't even wearing her "very helpful underwear", as in Pirates of the Caribbean.
Keira Knightly Breast Pics - There won't be very much to see.
LIST OF MOVIES WTH MALE FRONTAL NUDITY
joshua loh big earlobes
pigs concert censored balls
geng ippt
BMT brainwash air force
"mind your language" episode download
Emma Watson's boob - She got a masectomy?
erotic tantric photography
elbonia oil drilling
Singapore's newater plantation - Now we have newater trees?
laser hair removal near Las Vegas, NV - Google is seriously screwy.
"feng shui", "DPM Lee", Singapore
strigils noodles
platinum assayer- singaporean - What is an assayer?
singapore ns checkup naked blog
shawn ban hq bmtc - Ooh someone is doing research.
unhygienic guys
sggirls blogging
arab israel conflict singaporeans reflection - "In Singapore, they didn't know what an opinion was"
redneck nude girls
Uncircumcised Male Celebrities
belly button keira knightly
geppers rgs
Kong Ming lanterns
Dude where's my car unofficial homepage
Pringles Haram or Halal - Apparently Emulsifier 471 (and some others) contains pork fats. On a bulletin board, someone commented: "all i can is is that all u guys r over acting. no need to be that particular. eat what u want except PORK and alcohol. and concentrate more on relevant things in life". Indeed :)
Daniel Radcliffe's name in chinese
rate my cunt
free disgusting asian 12yr old porn - If it's disgusting, why do you want it?
Christians against yaoi
"I not stupid" bit torrent
long hair nanyang girls
pictures of NKF's children
lamma lips
chronic intestinal pseudo obstruction chat room
nude connectin between penis and ass
"antichrist" and "cell group"
njc media get instant the mask history our up date book mark this
khaw hoon kheng and sex
phantom of the opera bedframe
"girls should shave"
Emma Watson's breast size
porn cpr scenes
fastest 2.4km in SAF history
doctors pics of baby exiting women's cunt .com
bedsheets, napoleon bees
bdsm serving trays
fall-from-grace nude planescape
female army recruit gets spanking from master sergeant
archetypical representation of malaysian women
fujitsu mocking bird MO driver XP
bangladeshi girl's hard core porn site
singapore ndp things inside goodie bag
pics of evils in nigeria higher institutions
emma watson heavy metal
walkers crisps sensations order singapore - I want some!
gee ass ass queue gssq
cruel boobs fill injection torture dark stories
www.sexkey.com.sg
luohan disease treatment
ACJC skirt
ACJC girls uniform
ACJC school uniforms photograph - You'll have a better chance on Webshots.
"chong chin xiang"
"milo van" photo - They sent one to NUS's matriculation. Wah.
escape IPPT
fishbone diagram restaurant meal casual factors
sweet devon
rubberised males training
post op m to f transexuals intercourse experiences
abrams tank Monkey quicktime Rail Gun
JC girls zhao geng - They misspelled the word!
looking at woman's longkang - The question is: *which* longkang?
sex nankan taiwan - Wo-hen moves to Taiwan?
Substitutes for Sunsilk shampoo in rural India - I didn't know that the brand was so highly regarded.
college cheerleader skirt-length
illustration how to wear tudung
being naked in korea insecurities
discworld morality abandonware
"how to clean your anus?"
church camp cheers
The Power Ranger Slash Project
most fun church camps
The Haircut Website
list of halal food caterers by MUIS in sg - I thought that all of them were Halal. Next time, I might set up a food catering company myself, billing it: "The last non-Halal catering in town" (in a conscious reference to the one that proudly proclaims that it was "the first Halal catering in town)
strong women raping weaker men "women raping men"
Post ID: 109135022129145938
Quote of the Post: "People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs." - Unknown
Random Playlist Song: Edward Elgar - Unaccompanied part-songs op.26-1 - The Snow (University of Nebraska Women's Chorale)
***
The email I sent to elgar.org in mid-May asking about the lyrics of The Snow (since I only ever sang the desecrated Chinese translation) finally was replied to. Apparently it'd "resurfaced from under a pile of others".
The Snow
O snow, which sinks so light,
Brown earth is hid from sight,
O soul, be thou as white,
As white as snow
O snow, which falls so slow,
Dear earth quite warm below;
O heart, so keep thy glow,
Beneath the snow.
O snow, in thy soft grave
Sad flow’rs the winter brave;
O heart, so soothe and save,
as does the snow.
The snow must melt, must go,
Fast, fast as water flow.
Not thus, my soul, O sow
Thy gifts to fade like snow.
O snow, thou’rt white no more,
Thy spark’ling too, is o’er;
O soul, be as before,
Was bright the snow:
Then as the snow all pure,
O heart be, but endure;
Through all the years full sure,
Not as the snow.
C. Alice Elgar
Actually the Chinesedesecration translation we sung wasn't too bad. But just imagine, say, the Chinese national anthem sung in Swahili. Good though the translation might be, it still wouldn't be right.
***
It seems that I am not the only one faced with NUS sian-ness syndrome (one reason why entries have been scarce of late). Aine puts it best:
"Don't make me go back to school, please.
You know that feeling you get when you spend six to seven months basically doing nothing but playing and dabbling and wishing in a random way for something to do, and then you look up and realise that you do have something to do and it's starting soon but you don't really know if you want it to? I'm having that feeling now. Yeah."
It's worse if you've been relatively inactive intellectually for 32 months, and have been feeling anti-social recently. I suppose it'll get better after school starts.
***
Tosser:
"I dislike wearing clothes designed for females only because they tend to be uncomfortably tight... I appear to one of the last female acquaintances of my age group still hanging on to comfort as the foremost axiom of attire, the rest having long succumbed to peer and hormonal pressures."
What a rare and spunky soul.
Female fashion is such a hoot. The only thing I have to worry about is ties. Damn ties.
"If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a noose around your neck?"
***
Pseudo-personality test
I remember being given something almost exactly like this by Mr Hogan in Sec 1 during an Oral Communications class. The course was supposed to be conducted by a Denyse Tessensohn, whose book we were forced to buy, but we rarely saw her so it was left to the other teacher, Mr Hogan, to fill in most of the time, and he was much better and more entertaining than her. Of course, Melvin Tay screwed up the test by giving answers like: "I saw 2 Indian lesbians chasing each other around a coconut tree", so the test didn't bode very well for him.
I was actually going to spoof it, but the test was so silly (and the results to vaguely connected to your answers) that I decided that it was already a subtle spoof of itself and personality tests in general. So I present, in its stead, the Oreo Personality Test:
Psychologists have discovered that the manner in which people eat Oreo cookies provides great insight into their personalities. Choose which method best describes your favorite method of eating Oreos:
1. The whole thing all at once.
2. One bite at a time.
3. Slow and methodical nibbles examining the results of each bite afterwards.
4. In little feverous nibbles.
5. Dunked in some liquid (milk, coffee...).
6. Twisted apart, the inside, then the cookie.
7. Twisted apart, the inside, and toss the cookie.
8. Just the cookie, not the inside.
9. I just like to lick them, not eat them.
10. I don't have a favorite way because I don't like Oreos.
Your Personality:
1. "The whole thing."
This means you consume life with abandon, you are fun to be with, exciting, carefree with some hint of recklessness. You are totally irresponsible. No one should trust you with their children.
2. "One bite at a time."
You are lucky to be one of the 5.4 billion other people who eat their Oreos this very same way. Just like them, you lack imagination, but that's okay, not to worry, you're normal.
3. "Slow and Methodical."
You follow the rules. You're very tidy and orderly. You're very meticulous in every detail with every-thing you do to the point of being anal-retentive and irritating to others. Stay out of the fast lane if you're only going to go the speed limit.
4. "Feverous Nibbles."
Your boss likes you because you get your work done quickly. You always have a million things to do and never enough time to do them. Mental breakdowns and suicides run in your family. Valium and Ritalin would do you good.
5. "Dunked."
Every one likes you because you are always up-beat. You like to sugar coat unpleasant experiences and rationalize bad situations into good ones. You are in total denial about the shambles you call a life. You have a propensity towards narcotic addiction.
6. "Twisted apart, the inside, and then the cookie."
You have a highly curious nature. You take pleasure in breaking things apart to find out how they work, though not always able to put them back together, so you destroy all the evidence of your activities. You deny your involvement when things go wrong. You are a compulsive liar and exhibit deviant, if not criminal, behavior.
7. "Twisted apart, the inside, and then toss the cookie."
You are good at business and take risks that pay off. You take what you want and throw the rest away. You are greedy, selfish, mean, and lack feelings for others. You should be ashamed of yourself. But that's ok, you don't care - you got yours.
8. "Just the cookie, not the inside."
You enjoy pain.
9. "I just like to lick them, not eat them."
Stay away from small furry animals and seek professional medical help - immediately.
10. "I don't have a favorite way, I don't like Oreo cookies."
You probably come from a rich family, and like to wear nice things, and go to up-scale restaurants. You are particular and fussy about the things you buy, own, and wear. Things have to be just right. You like to be pampered. You are a prim.
***
Turning the tables on Nigeria's e-mail conmen - "Our ministry was founded in 1774 by a wonderful lady by the name of Betsy Carrington... a test she had to remove the top part of her clothes and paint the top half of her body and breast with the red Masai war-paint as a gesture of faith and belief to them so that they would accept her and trust her. She was almost immediately accepted by them and was one of the most trusted westerners known at that time. As a qualification to enter the Holy Church of The Order of The Red Breast, all followers must go through the initiation procedure"
Random Playlist Song: Edward Elgar - Unaccompanied part-songs op.26-1 - The Snow (University of Nebraska Women's Chorale)
***
The email I sent to elgar.org in mid-May asking about the lyrics of The Snow (since I only ever sang the desecrated Chinese translation) finally was replied to. Apparently it'd "resurfaced from under a pile of others".
The Snow
O snow, which sinks so light,
Brown earth is hid from sight,
O soul, be thou as white,
As white as snow
O snow, which falls so slow,
Dear earth quite warm below;
O heart, so keep thy glow,
Beneath the snow.
O snow, in thy soft grave
Sad flow’rs the winter brave;
O heart, so soothe and save,
as does the snow.
The snow must melt, must go,
Fast, fast as water flow.
Not thus, my soul, O sow
Thy gifts to fade like snow.
O snow, thou’rt white no more,
Thy spark’ling too, is o’er;
O soul, be as before,
Was bright the snow:
Then as the snow all pure,
O heart be, but endure;
Through all the years full sure,
Not as the snow.
C. Alice Elgar
Actually the Chinese
***
It seems that I am not the only one faced with NUS sian-ness syndrome (one reason why entries have been scarce of late). Aine puts it best:
"Don't make me go back to school, please.
You know that feeling you get when you spend six to seven months basically doing nothing but playing and dabbling and wishing in a random way for something to do, and then you look up and realise that you do have something to do and it's starting soon but you don't really know if you want it to? I'm having that feeling now. Yeah."
It's worse if you've been relatively inactive intellectually for 32 months, and have been feeling anti-social recently. I suppose it'll get better after school starts.
***
Tosser:
"I dislike wearing clothes designed for females only because they tend to be uncomfortably tight... I appear to one of the last female acquaintances of my age group still hanging on to comfort as the foremost axiom of attire, the rest having long succumbed to peer and hormonal pressures."
What a rare and spunky soul.
Female fashion is such a hoot. The only thing I have to worry about is ties. Damn ties.
"If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a noose around your neck?"
***
Pseudo-personality test
I remember being given something almost exactly like this by Mr Hogan in Sec 1 during an Oral Communications class. The course was supposed to be conducted by a Denyse Tessensohn, whose book we were forced to buy, but we rarely saw her so it was left to the other teacher, Mr Hogan, to fill in most of the time, and he was much better and more entertaining than her. Of course, Melvin Tay screwed up the test by giving answers like: "I saw 2 Indian lesbians chasing each other around a coconut tree", so the test didn't bode very well for him.
I was actually going to spoof it, but the test was so silly (and the results to vaguely connected to your answers) that I decided that it was already a subtle spoof of itself and personality tests in general. So I present, in its stead, the Oreo Personality Test:
Psychologists have discovered that the manner in which people eat Oreo cookies provides great insight into their personalities. Choose which method best describes your favorite method of eating Oreos:
1. The whole thing all at once.
2. One bite at a time.
3. Slow and methodical nibbles examining the results of each bite afterwards.
4. In little feverous nibbles.
5. Dunked in some liquid (milk, coffee...).
6. Twisted apart, the inside, then the cookie.
7. Twisted apart, the inside, and toss the cookie.
8. Just the cookie, not the inside.
9. I just like to lick them, not eat them.
10. I don't have a favorite way because I don't like Oreos.
Your Personality:
1. "The whole thing."
This means you consume life with abandon, you are fun to be with, exciting, carefree with some hint of recklessness. You are totally irresponsible. No one should trust you with their children.
2. "One bite at a time."
You are lucky to be one of the 5.4 billion other people who eat their Oreos this very same way. Just like them, you lack imagination, but that's okay, not to worry, you're normal.
3. "Slow and Methodical."
You follow the rules. You're very tidy and orderly. You're very meticulous in every detail with every-thing you do to the point of being anal-retentive and irritating to others. Stay out of the fast lane if you're only going to go the speed limit.
4. "Feverous Nibbles."
Your boss likes you because you get your work done quickly. You always have a million things to do and never enough time to do them. Mental breakdowns and suicides run in your family. Valium and Ritalin would do you good.
5. "Dunked."
Every one likes you because you are always up-beat. You like to sugar coat unpleasant experiences and rationalize bad situations into good ones. You are in total denial about the shambles you call a life. You have a propensity towards narcotic addiction.
6. "Twisted apart, the inside, and then the cookie."
You have a highly curious nature. You take pleasure in breaking things apart to find out how they work, though not always able to put them back together, so you destroy all the evidence of your activities. You deny your involvement when things go wrong. You are a compulsive liar and exhibit deviant, if not criminal, behavior.
7. "Twisted apart, the inside, and then toss the cookie."
You are good at business and take risks that pay off. You take what you want and throw the rest away. You are greedy, selfish, mean, and lack feelings for others. You should be ashamed of yourself. But that's ok, you don't care - you got yours.
8. "Just the cookie, not the inside."
You enjoy pain.
9. "I just like to lick them, not eat them."
Stay away from small furry animals and seek professional medical help - immediately.
10. "I don't have a favorite way, I don't like Oreo cookies."
You probably come from a rich family, and like to wear nice things, and go to up-scale restaurants. You are particular and fussy about the things you buy, own, and wear. Things have to be just right. You like to be pampered. You are a prim.
***
Turning the tables on Nigeria's e-mail conmen - "Our ministry was founded in 1774 by a wonderful lady by the name of Betsy Carrington... a test she had to remove the top part of her clothes and paint the top half of her body and breast with the red Masai war-paint as a gesture of faith and belief to them so that they would accept her and trust her. She was almost immediately accepted by them and was one of the most trusted westerners known at that time. As a qualification to enter the Holy Church of The Order of The Red Breast, all followers must go through the initiation procedure"
Post ID: 109129625443614342
Friday, July 30, 2004
Quote of the Post: "A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
Random Playlist Song: Cantata 106, BWV 106 - 2 - Gottes Zeit ist di
***
In his welcome address to us, our Dean showed us pictures of famous people like David Duchovny and Carly Fiorina who graduated with Arts degrees, and also pictures of famous people who graduated from NUS with Arts degrees (our current PM, President Nathan). The message? It is possible to make it to the top of your fields with an Arts degree. And at each department's talk, the speakers talked pointedly of the career prospects available for graduates with that degree.
Regardless of the career prospects for Arts graduates, the fact that they had to make such points says something.
Singapore - a most practical place.
As the joke goes,
The graduate with a Science degree asks, "Why does it work?"
The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?"
The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?"
The graduate with a Liberal Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"
My days of bumming are now (or will soon be) at an end. I am sad. Deep end of the swimming pool, here I come!
Today marked the start of the USP FOW (Freshman Orientation Week). Unlike what I'm told the other faculties did, we did not have what was essentially a non-residential camps: ie we had no games.
Instead we have talks, meetups with our academic advisors and assorted activities, like a video screening today, on the way to which I was waylaid and conscripted to build a structure for rag.
Oddly enough, though, we had no campus tour, so I will likely spend the first week or two staring at the maps of NUS mounted at various parts of the campus.
CORS (the system through which we bid for modules) is NUS's market solution to allocating scarce resources (modules) in the face of great, or not so great, as the case might be, demand. As such, close bidding (sic - hereafter referred to as "closed" bidding), during which you see only the highest and lowest bids, seems to fly in the face of the market principles that CORS is supposedly based on, since people can spoil the market in the confusion of closed bidding.
The explanation for having closed bidding: "If not the server will crash".
I grant that it would probably be prohibitively expensive to maintain a system allowing everyone to login simultaneously, so why don't they outsource the bidding of modules to eBay or Yahoo Auctions? After all, outsourcing more often than not lowers costs and increases output (both in quality and quantity).
Another possible solution: Instead of open auctions closing 2 hours before the round ends, let a 10% surcharge by levied on bids placed during the last 2 hours of a bidding round.
"If you all are truly elite... If only one student wants a class, I will open a class. If all 500 students want one class, I will open 10 classes for you. Oxford and Cambridge, they so bloody elite, they have one-on-one tutorial. Can you imagine that?"
--- Brother in law on bidding for USP modules
He also related an anecdote about plagiarism which he read in a Charles Handy (some management guru or, as my brother in law prefers, a social thinker who happens to be a management guru) book.
"Once, when my social life was overfull, I copied out my essay from a rather obscure book on Greek history and read it to my tutor. He made no comment. In an ominous silence he walked over to his bookcase, took down his copy of that obscure history, found the page and continued to read from the point where I had finished. I blushed in shame. Nothing more needed to be said. Oxford wasn't interested in the repetition of other people's work until and unless it had become part of one's own thinking."
--- Charles Handy, the elephant and the flea, Page 42
I don't think he ever plagiarised again. Much more effective than disciplining a student, or even expelling him, I would think.
It seems that some people have an unlimited supply of jeans. For all you know some people could be wearing one pair for the whole week. Personally I hate jeans - they're too hot.
It seems that the arguments for reducing MOE's university subsidies ignore the fact that Singaporean Universities are tools of social and economic engineering. When subsidies are reduced (as they surely will), I have my doubts about whether the amount of social engineering will decrease.
Quotes:
We have some pretty interesting modules like food, emotions... I love food. You can tell.
One easy way of identifying the difference between sociology and social work is that in sociology we identify the problems. In social work they solve them.
We all deserve to be helped, whether we are rich or poor, sick or... not sick.
[On Social Work] President Nathan is an alumni of our department. That's how high you can go. (alumnus)
Another module is dynamic effective inter-personal relations. If you don't have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, you may want to take it.
[Powerpoint slide] The spread and quality of spoken and written English in Singapore represents one of the country's key assets
I met some of you after your camp, when you were preparing for your performances. When you were embarassing yourselves.
All of us here are a bit abnormal... The professors: they love work and abhor money.
lah'pell pin (lapel)
When you look at the module, you will worry. [Looks at one module] That's me [who's teaching it]. You mean I'm supposed to teach?
You will be... cursing yourself at some point. 'Why did I join USP?' We make you work because we think you want us to make you work.
***
"WTH!!! Next year, HCJC will be called HWA CHONG INSTITUTION. Sounds like some mental institution like that...ARGH! And the Chinese name is Hwa Qiao ZHONG XUE. Sounds like we are being demoted or something. And HJC students will have to start using the bloody TCHS badge...why is it us with all the changes?! (no offence coffee). ARGH! I absolutely am pissed off with the school admin. What kind of lousy deal did they make?!"
Meanwhile,
"i heard nus has a module on what ladies giving birth or something."
It must be to match NTU's module on social etiquette.
Also,
"smu has more poseurs lah... people go there cos its a party university. damn slack one.. just talk nonsense in class and get 20$% for class participation already"
No wonder so many people went there ;)
The NUS study week is 50 hours. Wah. Maybe I should go and study in France. Hopefully their 35 hour work week applies to University students too.
***
Friend: "I bought a IBM, I trust the IBM brand. They build solid notebooks"
A girl: "I like the fujitsu one.."
Friend: (Cutting in) "Fujitsus are for shallow people"
Her: "But why? Fujitsu looks very nice you know"
Friend's comment to me: ......... what can i say? Girls.. will always be girls
***
In my first cash infusion since June 10th, my mother just gave me $400 for the month of August, including the cost of books and transport. I'm not sure how many books we will have to buy, but university textbooks are quite expensive, and there've been crackdowns on copyright infringement in recent years. Oh well, this probably means I won't be financing any big ticket purchases anymore. Of course, she alludes to some "performance bonus" I may be getting if I do well, but knowing her standards, I don't think I'll ever be getting this "bonus". [NB: Yes, I'm sure there are others getting less, but still.]
"If you don't know where you're going, any road will do"
Wise words.
I was wondering how He Who Must Not Be Named manages to read so much, and he wondered how I blogged so much. So I guess we answered each other's questions. However, the difference is that reading consumes content, while blogging creates it.
Someone asked what I thought of this. My first impression was of someone with a serious mutant yeast infection.
Someone on the Creative Zen Touch: "looks like creative is a misnomer..."
Ramly Burger, which some people swear by, has given Benjy food poisoning: "i like it too but the one they were selling [at the NTU ECA fair] sucks and it's poisonous"
spacesounds - we are listening - Hear real sounds recorded in space, mostly radio waves
Mary Pilates on the pronunciation of her name: "Pi-lates or Pe-la-tus."
Random Playlist Song: Cantata 106, BWV 106 - 2 - Gottes Zeit ist di
***
In his welcome address to us, our Dean showed us pictures of famous people like David Duchovny and Carly Fiorina who graduated with Arts degrees, and also pictures of famous people who graduated from NUS with Arts degrees (our current PM, President Nathan). The message? It is possible to make it to the top of your fields with an Arts degree. And at each department's talk, the speakers talked pointedly of the career prospects available for graduates with that degree.
Regardless of the career prospects for Arts graduates, the fact that they had to make such points says something.
Singapore - a most practical place.
As the joke goes,
The graduate with a Science degree asks, "Why does it work?"
The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?"
The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?"
The graduate with a Liberal Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"
My days of bumming are now (or will soon be) at an end. I am sad. Deep end of the swimming pool, here I come!
Today marked the start of the USP FOW (Freshman Orientation Week). Unlike what I'm told the other faculties did, we did not have what was essentially a non-residential camps: ie we had no games.
Instead we have talks, meetups with our academic advisors and assorted activities, like a video screening today, on the way to which I was waylaid and conscripted to build a structure for rag.
Oddly enough, though, we had no campus tour, so I will likely spend the first week or two staring at the maps of NUS mounted at various parts of the campus.
CORS (the system through which we bid for modules) is NUS's market solution to allocating scarce resources (modules) in the face of great, or not so great, as the case might be, demand. As such, close bidding (sic - hereafter referred to as "closed" bidding), during which you see only the highest and lowest bids, seems to fly in the face of the market principles that CORS is supposedly based on, since people can spoil the market in the confusion of closed bidding.
The explanation for having closed bidding: "If not the server will crash".
I grant that it would probably be prohibitively expensive to maintain a system allowing everyone to login simultaneously, so why don't they outsource the bidding of modules to eBay or Yahoo Auctions? After all, outsourcing more often than not lowers costs and increases output (both in quality and quantity).
Another possible solution: Instead of open auctions closing 2 hours before the round ends, let a 10% surcharge by levied on bids placed during the last 2 hours of a bidding round.
"If you all are truly elite... If only one student wants a class, I will open a class. If all 500 students want one class, I will open 10 classes for you. Oxford and Cambridge, they so bloody elite, they have one-on-one tutorial. Can you imagine that?"
--- Brother in law on bidding for USP modules
He also related an anecdote about plagiarism which he read in a Charles Handy (some management guru or, as my brother in law prefers, a social thinker who happens to be a management guru) book.
"Once, when my social life was overfull, I copied out my essay from a rather obscure book on Greek history and read it to my tutor. He made no comment. In an ominous silence he walked over to his bookcase, took down his copy of that obscure history, found the page and continued to read from the point where I had finished. I blushed in shame. Nothing more needed to be said. Oxford wasn't interested in the repetition of other people's work until and unless it had become part of one's own thinking."
--- Charles Handy, the elephant and the flea, Page 42
I don't think he ever plagiarised again. Much more effective than disciplining a student, or even expelling him, I would think.
It seems that some people have an unlimited supply of jeans. For all you know some people could be wearing one pair for the whole week. Personally I hate jeans - they're too hot.
It seems that the arguments for reducing MOE's university subsidies ignore the fact that Singaporean Universities are tools of social and economic engineering. When subsidies are reduced (as they surely will), I have my doubts about whether the amount of social engineering will decrease.
Quotes:
We have some pretty interesting modules like food, emotions... I love food. You can tell.
One easy way of identifying the difference between sociology and social work is that in sociology we identify the problems. In social work they solve them.
We all deserve to be helped, whether we are rich or poor, sick or... not sick.
[On Social Work] President Nathan is an alumni of our department. That's how high you can go. (alumnus)
Another module is dynamic effective inter-personal relations. If you don't have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, you may want to take it.
[Powerpoint slide] The spread and quality of spoken and written English in Singapore represents one of the country's key assets
I met some of you after your camp, when you were preparing for your performances. When you were embarassing yourselves.
All of us here are a bit abnormal... The professors: they love work and abhor money.
lah'pell pin (lapel)
When you look at the module, you will worry. [Looks at one module] That's me [who's teaching it]. You mean I'm supposed to teach?
You will be... cursing yourself at some point. 'Why did I join USP?' We make you work because we think you want us to make you work.
***
"WTH!!! Next year, HCJC will be called HWA CHONG INSTITUTION. Sounds like some mental institution like that...ARGH! And the Chinese name is Hwa Qiao ZHONG XUE. Sounds like we are being demoted or something. And HJC students will have to start using the bloody TCHS badge...why is it us with all the changes?! (no offence coffee). ARGH! I absolutely am pissed off with the school admin. What kind of lousy deal did they make?!"
Meanwhile,
"i heard nus has a module on what ladies giving birth or something."
It must be to match NTU's module on social etiquette.
Also,
"smu has more poseurs lah... people go there cos its a party university. damn slack one.. just talk nonsense in class and get 20$% for class participation already"
No wonder so many people went there ;)
The NUS study week is 50 hours. Wah. Maybe I should go and study in France. Hopefully their 35 hour work week applies to University students too.
***
Friend: "I bought a IBM, I trust the IBM brand. They build solid notebooks"
A girl: "I like the fujitsu one.."
Friend: (Cutting in) "Fujitsus are for shallow people"
Her: "But why? Fujitsu looks very nice you know"
Friend's comment to me: ......... what can i say? Girls.. will always be girls
***
In my first cash infusion since June 10th, my mother just gave me $400 for the month of August, including the cost of books and transport. I'm not sure how many books we will have to buy, but university textbooks are quite expensive, and there've been crackdowns on copyright infringement in recent years. Oh well, this probably means I won't be financing any big ticket purchases anymore. Of course, she alludes to some "performance bonus" I may be getting if I do well, but knowing her standards, I don't think I'll ever be getting this "bonus". [NB: Yes, I'm sure there are others getting less, but still.]
"If you don't know where you're going, any road will do"
Wise words.
I was wondering how He Who Must Not Be Named manages to read so much, and he wondered how I blogged so much. So I guess we answered each other's questions. However, the difference is that reading consumes content, while blogging creates it.
Someone asked what I thought of this. My first impression was of someone with a serious mutant yeast infection.
Someone on the Creative Zen Touch: "looks like creative is a misnomer..."
Ramly Burger, which some people swear by, has given Benjy food poisoning: "i like it too but the one they were selling [at the NTU ECA fair] sucks and it's poisonous"
spacesounds - we are listening - Hear real sounds recorded in space, mostly radio waves
Mary Pilates on the pronunciation of her name: "Pi-lates or Pe-la-tus."
Post ID: 109092533173845261
Pastor Jim Nicholls's True Christian Church of Christ still hasn't regained the glory it once had, but on its latest page on dinosaurs, echoes of its former greatness can be seen.
"Genesis 7
15 And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.
16 And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.
Yup, that doesn't include animals that only have one sex, since they don't exist!!
We know the dinosaurs survived the flood and went on Noah's Ark, since Job saw the Behemoth (scroll up). Of course, to fit all 20 million animal species on Earth, times two, plus all the food and water and oxygen, only took 120 years!! The small ark had plenty of room for all twenty million!! It's all Christian Science!"
I like the cute picture :)
Top 9 Silly Christian Arguments
'Argument 7: "Satan has deceived you!"
This is a very silly argument to employ against an atheist. Obviously, atheists don't acknowledge the existence of Satan any more than they acknowledge the existence of Poseidon or Allah. Further, the argument can easily be turned around on the Christian who poses it by saying something along the lines of "perhaps Loki has deceived you, and Zeus is in fact the real god."'
"Genesis 7
15 And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.
16 And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.
Yup, that doesn't include animals that only have one sex, since they don't exist!!
We know the dinosaurs survived the flood and went on Noah's Ark, since Job saw the Behemoth (scroll up). Of course, to fit all 20 million animal species on Earth, times two, plus all the food and water and oxygen, only took 120 years!! The small ark had plenty of room for all twenty million!! It's all Christian Science!"
I like the cute picture :)
Top 9 Silly Christian Arguments
'Argument 7: "Satan has deceived you!"
This is a very silly argument to employ against an atheist. Obviously, atheists don't acknowledge the existence of Satan any more than they acknowledge the existence of Poseidon or Allah. Further, the argument can easily be turned around on the Christian who poses it by saying something along the lines of "perhaps Loki has deceived you, and Zeus is in fact the real god."'
Post ID: 922815489745812327
He Who Must Not Be Named claimed that during Roman Triumphs (generals' victory processions), the person standing behind the victorious Triumphator whispered into his ear, "sic transit gloria mundi".
I knew instinctively that this was wrong, for what I remembered was that it was "Remember, thou art but mortal"
It seems that the actual phrase was "Memento homo" (Remember you are mortal).
Another victory in the battle against the Tides of Darkness.
***
Seen in a spam mail from "George Darlington":
"Dear sir, You have been recommended by a good Nigerian as good lecturer whom handles students the way they understands your lectures easily.Presently,we need professionals like you in our University as espertraits to take up lecturing job.However,after discusing your issue in the senate meeting today,the manegement UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA NSUKKA decides to mail you and talk terms of payment and moderlities wheather to come as visiting lecturer or part- time or contract pending if you indicate interest. THanks. Sincerely, Dr. George"
So the billion dollar fortune has dried up, and now they're looking for lecturers?!
Maybe I should forward this to the staff in NUS, and see if any of them want to take up the offer.
I knew instinctively that this was wrong, for what I remembered was that it was "Remember, thou art but mortal"
It seems that the actual phrase was "Memento homo" (Remember you are mortal).
Another victory in the battle against the Tides of Darkness.
***
Seen in a spam mail from "George Darlington":
"Dear sir, You have been recommended by a good Nigerian as good lecturer whom handles students the way they understands your lectures easily.Presently,we need professionals like you in our University as espertraits to take up lecturing job.However,after discusing your issue in the senate meeting today,the manegement UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA NSUKKA decides to mail you and talk terms of payment and moderlities wheather to come as visiting lecturer or part- time or contract pending if you indicate interest. THanks. Sincerely, Dr. George"
So the billion dollar fortune has dried up, and now they're looking for lecturers?!
Maybe I should forward this to the staff in NUS, and see if any of them want to take up the offer.
Post ID: 3020908038766320383
Monday, July 26, 2004
Quote of the Post: "Never give a party if you will be the most interesting person there." - Mickey Friedman
Random Playlist Song: Vaughan Williams - Variants of 'Dives and Lazarus' for String Orchestra & Harp
***
Matriculation
After we finished our paperwork and looked at laptops, we were herded like sheep through a corral, first watching a video on what NUS is about (fun and funky, the video said none too subtly, but it said nothing about the mugging NUS is really famous for), and then being forced to run the gauntlet. Through a dense morass of monsters we had to push through, each stretching its clawed or webbed hands and seeking to suck off some portion of our life energies for its own. Luckily, there were occasional respites as some denizens of the caves we waddled through were either strangely absent (perhaps slain by previous intrepid adventurers) or resting placidly, making no attempts to grab our souls (too bad for their clubs and societies).
Among the weirder ECAs on display:
- NUSSU SAVE - Students Against the Violation of the Earth
- a toll-free hotline (1800-7762242) for students to call if they have questions or need counselling. Pity it's not 24hrs, like the SAF hotline :0
- the Jovial Jugglers
- Nam Wah Pai - but this one involves weapons practice and teaches you self-defence also
- NUS Air Weapons club - "Fascinated by the art of shooting? Enjoy the adrenaline of firing a weapon?" - No thank you. I've had enough contact with weapons to last me a millennium
- Golf club
- Skating club
- Wake boarding club
- Jogging club
- "Anyone can make u sweat. But only we can make u wet" - okay, the only weird thing about the sailing club was the ad
- I also saw an ad for a "sexiest legs contest"
This put me in the mind of setting up a club myself, just for the heck of it. I thought of an atheist club, but no one would want to join it. Maybe setting up a TAF club (Trim And Fit - customarily for overweight schoolchildren) would meet with more success.
Not a few people have speculated to me that the reason NUS has so many ECAs is that people need the points to stay in hostels. Why else is there a Rovers club in addition to ODAC, what seemed like 6 dance clubs, and 4 (possibly more) Christian organisations? In any case, it doesn't matter, for the supply of hostel rooms is limited, so people are just suffering from money illusion :) [NB: Yes, people tell me that NUS has a lot of students, but still. Anyhow this is just development of an interesting theory expounded by some]
***
Jokes
A man died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him. He asked, "What are all those clocks?"
St. Peter answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone on Earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie the hands on your clock will move".
"Oh," said the man, "whose clock is that?
That's Mother Teresa's. The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie."
"Incredible, said the man. "And whose clock is that one?"
St. Peter responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln's clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abe told only two lies in his entire life."
"Where's George Bush's clock?" asked the man.
"Bush's clock is in Jesus' office. He's using it as a ceiling fan."
Source: shadafakup, who stole it from someone else.
The UN conducted a worldwide survey. The question was: "Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"
The survey was a huge failure:
In Africa they didn't know what 'food' meant.
In Eastern Europe they didn't know what 'honest' meant.
In Western Europe they didn't know what 'shortage' meant.
In the Middle East they didn't know what 'solution' meant.
In South America they didn't know what 'please' meant.
In the United States they didn't know what 'the rest of the world' meant.
And in Singapore they didn't know what 'opinion' meant."
***
Orientations
Someone on Law Orientation:
"They will be having drag queen contest {no, the rule that we cannot humiliate the freshies simply does not apply} at Sentosa. One of the rare few highlights left for Orientation. Plus, there will be alot of the girls in their skimpy 2 piece swimwear. Did I mention that Ms Malaysia Universe 2004 is in law?"
Wah. Meanwhile at the NTU Sports Camp, it seems that for a forfeit, "a female partner [stripped] the swimming trunks off her male partner", and they had "girls sit on guys' laps on the bus from NTU to Sentosa".
I wager that the writer of this letter is not going to be very popular in NTU.
***
Tales of mindgame
He Who Must Not Be Named (HWMNBN) has arrived in Singapore. He asked me to chronicle, in parallel with him, how he sets up a new life. I told him I had better things to do.
Nonetheless, I did offer him half a day on my not-so-busy schedule, to go house hunting on Sunday, and we viewed a flat above Pearl Centre, 2 minutes' walk from Outram Park MRT. Good price, great location and it's a cozy demesne. Only problem? It's rather sleazy, with many KTVs all around. Though that is a possible point in its favour for him.
While in the area, we also got to check out a place I've always been meaning to look closer at - the dirty grey apartment building behind some way behind Pearl Centre (Pearlbank apartments) which looks like it was hacked from a solid cylinder of metal just after World War II to house refugees, and reminds one of Barad Dur. It actually looks better up close than it does from afar.
HWMNBN also informs me that Singapore is not the only non-Muslim, non-Communist country to ban pornography. The Philippines is a fellow member in this lonely category. So I shall rephrase my statement: Singapore is the only non-Communist, non-religious country to ban pornography.
***
Life Sciences
Twas only yesterday, it seems, that Life Sciences were all the rage in Singapore. The Powers That Be Enthused that they were the next big thing, and having missed the New Economy boom, Singapore would not - must not miss this one.
I was discussing this with someone, and he brought up some good points:
- By the time the first batch of buzzword-brainwashed Life Sciences graduates get their pHDs, Life Sciences will probably not be the "in" thing.
- EDB is awfully neglected these days, though it used to be hot. Indeed, it's been a long time since someone talked about it
- R&D generates no capital, and just pumping money into it will not make a whole R&D community spring up (unlike creating a commercial community):
1) The market in Singapore is simply too small, and the communities in the US and UK are richer
2) Scientists go for obscure things like citations, influence, reputation and community, which Singapore does not have
***
Shorts
According to BlogShares, my stock is worth B$4,108.84. Whee.
I went to the hairdresser today, but she said that because of my face shape and my size, it would be best to wait for a month before going for a trim. "that is one honest hairdresser who isn't out to make a quick buck"
I feel younger than my years. Would that I could be transported back a few years, to continue on (sans slavery, of course).
Random Playlist Song: Vaughan Williams - Variants of 'Dives and Lazarus' for String Orchestra & Harp
***
Matriculation
After we finished our paperwork and looked at laptops, we were herded like sheep through a corral, first watching a video on what NUS is about (fun and funky, the video said none too subtly, but it said nothing about the mugging NUS is really famous for), and then being forced to run the gauntlet. Through a dense morass of monsters we had to push through, each stretching its clawed or webbed hands and seeking to suck off some portion of our life energies for its own. Luckily, there were occasional respites as some denizens of the caves we waddled through were either strangely absent (perhaps slain by previous intrepid adventurers) or resting placidly, making no attempts to grab our souls (too bad for their clubs and societies).
Among the weirder ECAs on display:
- NUSSU SAVE - Students Against the Violation of the Earth
- a toll-free hotline (1800-7762242) for students to call if they have questions or need counselling. Pity it's not 24hrs, like the SAF hotline :0
- the Jovial Jugglers
- Nam Wah Pai - but this one involves weapons practice and teaches you self-defence also
- NUS Air Weapons club - "Fascinated by the art of shooting? Enjoy the adrenaline of firing a weapon?" - No thank you. I've had enough contact with weapons to last me a millennium
- Golf club
- Skating club
- Wake boarding club
- Jogging club
- "Anyone can make u sweat. But only we can make u wet" - okay, the only weird thing about the sailing club was the ad
- I also saw an ad for a "sexiest legs contest"
This put me in the mind of setting up a club myself, just for the heck of it. I thought of an atheist club, but no one would want to join it. Maybe setting up a TAF club (Trim And Fit - customarily for overweight schoolchildren) would meet with more success.
Not a few people have speculated to me that the reason NUS has so many ECAs is that people need the points to stay in hostels. Why else is there a Rovers club in addition to ODAC, what seemed like 6 dance clubs, and 4 (possibly more) Christian organisations? In any case, it doesn't matter, for the supply of hostel rooms is limited, so people are just suffering from money illusion :) [NB: Yes, people tell me that NUS has a lot of students, but still. Anyhow this is just development of an interesting theory expounded by some]
***
Jokes
A man died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him. He asked, "What are all those clocks?"
St. Peter answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone on Earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie the hands on your clock will move".
"Oh," said the man, "whose clock is that?
That's Mother Teresa's. The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie."
"Incredible, said the man. "And whose clock is that one?"
St. Peter responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln's clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abe told only two lies in his entire life."
"Where's George Bush's clock?" asked the man.
"Bush's clock is in Jesus' office. He's using it as a ceiling fan."
Source: shadafakup, who stole it from someone else.
The UN conducted a worldwide survey. The question was: "Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"
The survey was a huge failure:
In Africa they didn't know what 'food' meant.
In Eastern Europe they didn't know what 'honest' meant.
In Western Europe they didn't know what 'shortage' meant.
In the Middle East they didn't know what 'solution' meant.
In South America they didn't know what 'please' meant.
In the United States they didn't know what 'the rest of the world' meant.
And in Singapore they didn't know what 'opinion' meant."
***
Orientations
Someone on Law Orientation:
"They will be having drag queen contest {no, the rule that we cannot humiliate the freshies simply does not apply} at Sentosa. One of the rare few highlights left for Orientation. Plus, there will be alot of the girls in their skimpy 2 piece swimwear. Did I mention that Ms Malaysia Universe 2004 is in law?"
Wah. Meanwhile at the NTU Sports Camp, it seems that for a forfeit, "a female partner [stripped] the swimming trunks off her male partner", and they had "girls sit on guys' laps on the bus from NTU to Sentosa".
I wager that the writer of this letter is not going to be very popular in NTU.
***
Tales of mindgame
He Who Must Not Be Named (HWMNBN) has arrived in Singapore. He asked me to chronicle, in parallel with him, how he sets up a new life. I told him I had better things to do.
Nonetheless, I did offer him half a day on my not-so-busy schedule, to go house hunting on Sunday, and we viewed a flat above Pearl Centre, 2 minutes' walk from Outram Park MRT. Good price, great location and it's a cozy demesne. Only problem? It's rather sleazy, with many KTVs all around. Though that is a possible point in its favour for him.
While in the area, we also got to check out a place I've always been meaning to look closer at - the dirty grey apartment building behind some way behind Pearl Centre (Pearlbank apartments) which looks like it was hacked from a solid cylinder of metal just after World War II to house refugees, and reminds one of Barad Dur. It actually looks better up close than it does from afar.
HWMNBN also informs me that Singapore is not the only non-Muslim, non-Communist country to ban pornography. The Philippines is a fellow member in this lonely category. So I shall rephrase my statement: Singapore is the only non-Communist, non-religious country to ban pornography.
***
Life Sciences
Twas only yesterday, it seems, that Life Sciences were all the rage in Singapore. The Powers That Be Enthused that they were the next big thing, and having missed the New Economy boom, Singapore would not - must not miss this one.
I was discussing this with someone, and he brought up some good points:
- By the time the first batch of buzzword-brainwashed Life Sciences graduates get their pHDs, Life Sciences will probably not be the "in" thing.
- EDB is awfully neglected these days, though it used to be hot. Indeed, it's been a long time since someone talked about it
- R&D generates no capital, and just pumping money into it will not make a whole R&D community spring up (unlike creating a commercial community):
1) The market in Singapore is simply too small, and the communities in the US and UK are richer
2) Scientists go for obscure things like citations, influence, reputation and community, which Singapore does not have
***
Shorts
According to BlogShares, my stock is worth B$4,108.84. Whee.
I went to the hairdresser today, but she said that because of my face shape and my size, it would be best to wait for a month before going for a trim. "that is one honest hairdresser who isn't out to make a quick buck"
I feel younger than my years. Would that I could be transported back a few years, to continue on (sans slavery, of course).
Post ID: 109077393326939445
Sunday, July 25, 2004
Quote of the Post: "Newspapermen learn to call a murderer 'an alleged murderer' and the King of England 'the alleged King of England' to avoid libel suits." - Stephen Leacock
Random Playlist Song: Mercedes Lackey - The Sunhawks
***
Tomorrow is matriculation for Arts students, and we are supposed to go down at different time slots according to our "first name as in offer letter".
Since first names are given names, as opposed to surnames, I would presumably go down during the "A-G" timeslot. However, the schedule has slots for people with first names "H-LIM", "LIN-O" and "P-TA", and I doubt there are people who have "Lim", "Lin" or "Tan" as their first names. So I guess what they meant by "first names" is not "first names", but "first word of name".
No matter. The mixups *should* be self-correcting.
***
Having a uniform to wear to school (or work, for that case) may be restrictive, but it says you a lot of trouble, as you do not have to decide what to wear, and can also keep a smaller wardrobe.
BX: "i think i'll just go tshirts and berms everyday until i run out of clothes
then i'll wear shirts and jeans
if all else fails, singlets and shorts and flip flops"
Unfortunately, the NUS dress code disallows singlets and flip flops. The part about shorts is unclear though. BX thinks it applies only to girls and their hot shorts ('hot pants'?). And I'm quite sure logically spaghetti straps are as decadent as, if not more decadent than, singlets, but the former are still worm.
Hmm.
Me: eh what do people wear in NUS?
Critic 1: leaves
coconuts
the occasional stitch
(LAME)
PaRaDoX: ask her to wear tt
to make nus a more happening place
Critic 1: ask PaRaDoX to wear that. to make nus more a hell than it already is.
***
Hair tales
Relating hair tales to others usually awards me a chorus of disapproval. Some (most of the girls I've talked to) say I won't look good with my intended hair length. Others (most of the guys I've talked to) seem shackled by an outdated notion of the maximum hair length that males are supposed to keep. Regardless, I will strive on, to achieve that which has been denied to me for the last 20 years!
Current status:
Front - Much of my fringe touches the bottom of my eyebrows
Side - It hasn't gone past half the ear yet. So right now it is almost too long to tuck behind the ears unaided, yet too short to pull past them
Back - It just about touches my collar. But then I've a naturally short neck
To think that it's been 2 1/2 months since my last haircut. I guess my hair naturally grows slowly, and En Leung says he took a year to grow his hair to shoulder length, so it will be a long time before I can fulfill my fantasy of hitting people by jerking my head.
Right now, my main problem is that my sideburns and the hair growing from above the ears look messy. There are three possible ways to deal with this. Gelling works to some extent, but I don't really like the feel of the gel when it has hardened, and there are limits to what it can do. Hair clips are slightly better, but they supposedly look weird on me, seem more suited for the fringe and I still haven't mastered the art of using them. Maybe I shall return to them at a later date. And finally, someone suggested that I wear a hairband. I'm not opposed to this just on principle, but hairbands are meant primarily to keep the fringe back rather than to deal with hair around the ears. Besides which, they do nothing for the sideburns. Perhaps trimming the sideburns will help, so they will be of an equal length with the hair growing from above the ears.
At some time in the future, I will have to invest in expensive hair products so my hair will be soft, thick, and easy to style - silky and soft, yet very thick and strong. I'm not going to keep a mullet, though.
***
<plug>
My choir senior Jiahao has set up a blog: caustic.soda
</plug>
***
"Try proving this: every direct motion is either a rotation, or exceptionally a translation
Draw a line labelled AB and then apply a direct motion to it
Next: show that every rotation can be composed as 2 reflections
If u do it, then u'll have shown that every direct motion can be composed as 2 reflections, which is an extremely powerful theorem"
*boggle* I'll take your word for it.
Random Playlist Song: Mercedes Lackey - The Sunhawks
***
Tomorrow is matriculation for Arts students, and we are supposed to go down at different time slots according to our "first name as in offer letter".
Since first names are given names, as opposed to surnames, I would presumably go down during the "A-G" timeslot. However, the schedule has slots for people with first names "H-LIM", "LIN-O" and "P-TA", and I doubt there are people who have "Lim", "Lin" or "Tan" as their first names. So I guess what they meant by "first names" is not "first names", but "first word of name".
No matter. The mixups *should* be self-correcting.
***
Having a uniform to wear to school (or work, for that case) may be restrictive, but it says you a lot of trouble, as you do not have to decide what to wear, and can also keep a smaller wardrobe.
BX: "i think i'll just go tshirts and berms everyday until i run out of clothes
then i'll wear shirts and jeans
if all else fails, singlets and shorts and flip flops"
Unfortunately, the NUS dress code disallows singlets and flip flops. The part about shorts is unclear though. BX thinks it applies only to girls and their hot shorts ('hot pants'?). And I'm quite sure logically spaghetti straps are as decadent as, if not more decadent than, singlets, but the former are still worm.
Hmm.
Me: eh what do people wear in NUS?
Critic 1: leaves
coconuts
the occasional stitch
(LAME)
PaRaDoX: ask her to wear tt
to make nus a more happening place
Critic 1: ask PaRaDoX to wear that. to make nus more a hell than it already is.
***
Hair tales
Relating hair tales to others usually awards me a chorus of disapproval. Some (most of the girls I've talked to) say I won't look good with my intended hair length. Others (most of the guys I've talked to) seem shackled by an outdated notion of the maximum hair length that males are supposed to keep. Regardless, I will strive on, to achieve that which has been denied to me for the last 20 years!
Current status:
Front - Much of my fringe touches the bottom of my eyebrows
Side - It hasn't gone past half the ear yet. So right now it is almost too long to tuck behind the ears unaided, yet too short to pull past them
Back - It just about touches my collar. But then I've a naturally short neck
To think that it's been 2 1/2 months since my last haircut. I guess my hair naturally grows slowly, and En Leung says he took a year to grow his hair to shoulder length, so it will be a long time before I can fulfill my fantasy of hitting people by jerking my head.
Right now, my main problem is that my sideburns and the hair growing from above the ears look messy. There are three possible ways to deal with this. Gelling works to some extent, but I don't really like the feel of the gel when it has hardened, and there are limits to what it can do. Hair clips are slightly better, but they supposedly look weird on me, seem more suited for the fringe and I still haven't mastered the art of using them. Maybe I shall return to them at a later date. And finally, someone suggested that I wear a hairband. I'm not opposed to this just on principle, but hairbands are meant primarily to keep the fringe back rather than to deal with hair around the ears. Besides which, they do nothing for the sideburns. Perhaps trimming the sideburns will help, so they will be of an equal length with the hair growing from above the ears.
At some time in the future, I will have to invest in expensive hair products so my hair will be soft, thick, and easy to style - silky and soft, yet very thick and strong. I'm not going to keep a mullet, though.
***
<plug>
My choir senior Jiahao has set up a blog: caustic.soda
</plug>
***
"Try proving this: every direct motion is either a rotation, or exceptionally a translation
Draw a line labelled AB and then apply a direct motion to it
Next: show that every rotation can be composed as 2 reflections
If u do it, then u'll have shown that every direct motion can be composed as 2 reflections, which is an extremely powerful theorem"
*boggle* I'll take your word for it.
Post ID: 109077149071153655
Quote of the Post: "The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving." - Russell Green
Random Playlist Song: Chopin - Etude Op 10 No 4 in C Sharp Minor (Tony McAlpine)
His playing is fiery, though it seems at times overly dramatic.
***
When one is being flamed, the best course of action is to withdraw.
Some people take things too seriously, especially those not meant totally seriously.
***
On memory (slightly edited to correct the quote):
"we took tonnes of pictures. And I can't help thinking of this line: The camera relieves us of the burden of memory... records in order to forget. and just /hoping/ that I won't look at those self-same photos in a few years time and not remembering your -names-. It would be so /easy/. And we'll all have left, and scattered over the world in search of our futures.
And everything would have been as a dream, nothing more."
***
Interesting photos from the GEP dinner:
PaRaDoX is the most over-dressed person.
Mr Ong has a nice shirt.
It strikes me that most of the people in the pictures are very old. Looking at the guest list, I can guess why.
***
UR-QUAN '04
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
The Words!
Alien, you have spoken the Words, and you have spoken them rightly.
We will hear your questions.
Do you have anything to say to the people of the Middle East?
In our 228 years along the Road to Democracy we have dominated hundreds of countries, yes, but we have saved many from extinction. You imagine the threat of foreign invaders, or weapons of mass destruction borne on undetectable missiles. We have seen these. But you do not acknowledge your own worst enemy, yourselves. We have found dead nations without number, cultures ravaged by biochemical warfare or ethnic cleansing. These nations were not rendered third-world by outside forces. They bear sad testament to the effects of unrestrained instinct and emotion or simple ignorance. We will prevent such mistakes.
Although you consider us the enemy, these conclusions are flawed. We are your salvation. We bring you peace. A peace built upon OUR social framework imposed upon your country. A new world order in which your prosperity and security are assured by the U.S.A. We will protect you from the hazards of this hostile world, from dangers so hideous your simple minds cannot imagine their dark scope. Today, we are the enemy. In time, this will change. Soon, you will come to understand the boon of freedom we force upon you and then, you will revere and even love us for this gift.
***
Empathy versus systemizing
"Simon Baron-Cohen's recent book The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain proposes that 'The female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.'
Systemising Quotient: Your score: 28
0 - 19 = low
20 - 39 = average (most women score about 24 and most men score about 30)
40 - 50 = above average (most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score in this range)
51 - 80 is very high (three times as many people with Asperger Syndrome score in this range, compared to typical men, and almost no women score in this range)
80 is maximum [Ed: emphasis mine]
Empathy quotient: Your score: 20
0 - 32 = low (most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 20)
33 - 52 = average (most women score about 47 and most men score about 42)
53 - 63 is above average
64 - 80 is very high
80 is maximum
I wasn't very sure of my answers for this one, so I think it might be a touch inaccurate. My real score is probably in the high 20s or low 30s
Autism Spectrum quotient: Your score: 23
0 - 10 = low
11 - 22 = average (most women score about 15 and most men score about 17)
23 - 31 = above average
32 - 50 is very high (most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 35)
50 is maximum [Ed: emphasis mine]
Reading the mind in the eyes: Your score: 26
A typical score is in the range 22-30. If you scored over 30,
you are very accurate at decoding a person's facial expressions
around their eyes. A score under 22 indicates you find this quite difficult.
***
Tym on work
"There was also the bank employee who felt obliged to go back to work, at 9 pm or so, after watching Spiderman 2 with her department as some sort of corporate bonding exercise. Yes, the entire department went to watch the movie, then all felt they had to go back to work right away."
Work sounds like such a drag.
Singaporeans live to work, rather than work to live. No wonder the fertility rate's going down.
***
Comments after going to City Harvest:
"i realise something today.. tt is, its easy to convert to become a christian. and not the other way round. coz once u become a christian, they like pull u in to become part of the 'family'
u have cell grp n stuff also.. once all your friends are there, u wouldnt wanna leave..
and when everyone arounds u say its good its wonderful, god is around, god helps u... god.. bla bla... ..., u get psychoed thinking its really that fantastic."
***
Friendster induces people to try bad pickup lines:
"its scienctifically proven tat sugar dissolves in water. so pls dun go out in e rain. i cant afford to lose a sweet person like u. wanna chat?;)"
No, I wasn't the recipient of that message fortunately (or otherwise, as the case might be).
***
Is a workout in a pill possible? Drug may simulate effects of exercise - "'This enzyme is activated during exercise and it accelerates your metabolism to make up for the energy deficit in your muscle that’s been created by exercise,' Kemp said. Scientists believe the enzyme, technically known as AMP-activated protein kinase, plays a role in regulating appetite and body weight. But those seeking six-pack abdominals would still have to pump iron as any future pill would not tone muscles, Kemp said. 'You have to do some work. There are no miracles. (The pill) will do a number of the metabolic and gene transcription events that are caused by exercise but it doesn’t do everything.'"
But not everyone wants a six-pack
How were the high-pitched voices of the Chipmunks created? - "[Ross Bagdasarian, whose screen name was David Seville,] didn't really hit his stride until 1958, when he recorded the immortal tune 'Witch Doctor.' By singing at a very ... deliberate ... pace into a tape recorder running at half speed, and then replaying the tape at normal speed, Bagdasarian was able to create the unforgettable proto-chipmunk chorus line, 'Oo Ee Oo Ah Ah, Ting, Tang, Walla Walla Bing Bang.'"
I think this answers someone's previous question about the song with that chorus line
Not just good, but good for you - Easing depression and stress, Relieving pain, Boosting cardio health, Countering prostate cancer, Healing wounds and Fighting aging - so much for morals based on the visceral logic: "If it feels good, it's bad. If it feels bad, it's good"
War On Pornography - 'Did you know that "pornography is more addictive than alcohol, cigarettes or illicit drugs?" Or that "one in five children ages 10 to 17 has received sexual solicitations while on the Internet" - and that, by extension, pornography per se is equivalent to pedophilia? Or that "over 80% of Americans are in favor of clamping down on Internet Pornography?" Neither did we. Nor can we find any sources to back up most of the claims made by an alliance of "several U.S. and Canadian organizations" that announced a "War on Pornography"'
Bob's travel journal: Singapore - "This is the only country I've ever visited -- out of a couple dozen so far in my life -- where it's impossible to find the national flag in tourist gift shops."
That's because the national flag is to be, ah, venerated
Interesting Hacks To Fascinate People: The MIT Gallery of Hacks - What a funky place. Such stunt would never be tolerated in places closer to home. Also, I never knew IHTFP could stand for so many things. And I would have thought "I Hate This F****** Place" would be uttered more often in certain other universities, which shall rename unnamed. *g*
Random Playlist Song: Chopin - Etude Op 10 No 4 in C Sharp Minor (Tony McAlpine)
His playing is fiery, though it seems at times overly dramatic.
***
When one is being flamed, the best course of action is to withdraw.
Some people take things too seriously, especially those not meant totally seriously.
***
On memory (slightly edited to correct the quote):
"we took tonnes of pictures. And I can't help thinking of this line: The camera relieves us of the burden of memory... records in order to forget. and just /hoping/ that I won't look at those self-same photos in a few years time and not remembering your -names-. It would be so /easy/. And we'll all have left, and scattered over the world in search of our futures.
And everything would have been as a dream, nothing more."
***
Interesting photos from the GEP dinner:
PaRaDoX is the most over-dressed person.
Mr Ong has a nice shirt.
It strikes me that most of the people in the pictures are very old. Looking at the guest list, I can guess why.
***
UR-QUAN '04
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
The Words!
Alien, you have spoken the Words, and you have spoken them rightly.
We will hear your questions.
Do you have anything to say to the people of the Middle East?
In our 228 years along the Road to Democracy we have dominated hundreds of countries, yes, but we have saved many from extinction. You imagine the threat of foreign invaders, or weapons of mass destruction borne on undetectable missiles. We have seen these. But you do not acknowledge your own worst enemy, yourselves. We have found dead nations without number, cultures ravaged by biochemical warfare or ethnic cleansing. These nations were not rendered third-world by outside forces. They bear sad testament to the effects of unrestrained instinct and emotion or simple ignorance. We will prevent such mistakes.
Although you consider us the enemy, these conclusions are flawed. We are your salvation. We bring you peace. A peace built upon OUR social framework imposed upon your country. A new world order in which your prosperity and security are assured by the U.S.A. We will protect you from the hazards of this hostile world, from dangers so hideous your simple minds cannot imagine their dark scope. Today, we are the enemy. In time, this will change. Soon, you will come to understand the boon of freedom we force upon you and then, you will revere and even love us for this gift.
***
Empathy versus systemizing
"Simon Baron-Cohen's recent book The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain proposes that 'The female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.'
Systemising Quotient: Your score: 28
0 - 19 = low
20 - 39 = average (most women score about 24 and most men score about 30)
40 - 50 = above average (most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score in this range)
51 - 80 is very high (three times as many people with Asperger Syndrome score in this range, compared to typical men, and almost no women score in this range)
80 is maximum [Ed: emphasis mine]
Empathy quotient: Your score: 20
0 - 32 = low (most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 20)
33 - 52 = average (most women score about 47 and most men score about 42)
53 - 63 is above average
64 - 80 is very high
80 is maximum
I wasn't very sure of my answers for this one, so I think it might be a touch inaccurate. My real score is probably in the high 20s or low 30s
Autism Spectrum quotient: Your score: 23
0 - 10 = low
11 - 22 = average (most women score about 15 and most men score about 17)
23 - 31 = above average
32 - 50 is very high (most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 35)
50 is maximum [Ed: emphasis mine]
Reading the mind in the eyes: Your score: 26
A typical score is in the range 22-30. If you scored over 30,
you are very accurate at decoding a person's facial expressions
around their eyes. A score under 22 indicates you find this quite difficult.
***
Tym on work
"There was also the bank employee who felt obliged to go back to work, at 9 pm or so, after watching Spiderman 2 with her department as some sort of corporate bonding exercise. Yes, the entire department went to watch the movie, then all felt they had to go back to work right away."
Work sounds like such a drag.
Singaporeans live to work, rather than work to live. No wonder the fertility rate's going down.
***
Comments after going to City Harvest:
"i realise something today.. tt is, its easy to convert to become a christian. and not the other way round. coz once u become a christian, they like pull u in to become part of the 'family'
u have cell grp n stuff also.. once all your friends are there, u wouldnt wanna leave..
and when everyone arounds u say its good its wonderful, god is around, god helps u... god.. bla bla... ..., u get psychoed thinking its really that fantastic."
***
Friendster induces people to try bad pickup lines:
"its scienctifically proven tat sugar dissolves in water. so pls dun go out in e rain. i cant afford to lose a sweet person like u. wanna chat?;)"
No, I wasn't the recipient of that message fortunately (or otherwise, as the case might be).
***
Is a workout in a pill possible? Drug may simulate effects of exercise - "'This enzyme is activated during exercise and it accelerates your metabolism to make up for the energy deficit in your muscle that’s been created by exercise,' Kemp said. Scientists believe the enzyme, technically known as AMP-activated protein kinase, plays a role in regulating appetite and body weight. But those seeking six-pack abdominals would still have to pump iron as any future pill would not tone muscles, Kemp said. 'You have to do some work. There are no miracles. (The pill) will do a number of the metabolic and gene transcription events that are caused by exercise but it doesn’t do everything.'"
But not everyone wants a six-pack
How were the high-pitched voices of the Chipmunks created? - "[Ross Bagdasarian, whose screen name was David Seville,] didn't really hit his stride until 1958, when he recorded the immortal tune 'Witch Doctor.' By singing at a very ... deliberate ... pace into a tape recorder running at half speed, and then replaying the tape at normal speed, Bagdasarian was able to create the unforgettable proto-chipmunk chorus line, 'Oo Ee Oo Ah Ah, Ting, Tang, Walla Walla Bing Bang.'"
I think this answers someone's previous question about the song with that chorus line
Not just good, but good for you - Easing depression and stress, Relieving pain, Boosting cardio health, Countering prostate cancer, Healing wounds and Fighting aging - so much for morals based on the visceral logic: "If it feels good, it's bad. If it feels bad, it's good"
War On Pornography - 'Did you know that "pornography is more addictive than alcohol, cigarettes or illicit drugs?" Or that "one in five children ages 10 to 17 has received sexual solicitations while on the Internet" - and that, by extension, pornography per se is equivalent to pedophilia? Or that "over 80% of Americans are in favor of clamping down on Internet Pornography?" Neither did we. Nor can we find any sources to back up most of the claims made by an alliance of "several U.S. and Canadian organizations" that announced a "War on Pornography"'
Bob's travel journal: Singapore - "This is the only country I've ever visited -- out of a couple dozen so far in my life -- where it's impossible to find the national flag in tourist gift shops."
That's because the national flag is to be, ah, venerated
Interesting Hacks To Fascinate People: The MIT Gallery of Hacks - What a funky place. Such stunt would never be tolerated in places closer to home. Also, I never knew IHTFP could stand for so many things. And I would have thought "I Hate This F****** Place" would be uttered more often in certain other universities, which shall rename unnamed. *g*
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