无聊的星期一晚上

Met up with LL after work. She drove by in her ex-bf car to pick me up. Supposedly to return the car tonight, but some how I don’t think its likely. Hee hee…

Drove to Newton Circle to enjoy some sinful food. BBQ chicken wings, Stingray, fishballs noodles, oyster omelets. Aiyah. Just feel like eating fishballs noddles. Felt the sinful food coursing through my veins and arteries, must have been some time since I ate such oily foods. But damn shiok lor. Wahaha…… :o

Drove later to Geylang shell station to pump up petrol. But the attendant pumped in the most expensive petrol because LL only said “top up full”. Must be specific when pumping in petrol. Yeah. The vice trade is still active along Geylang as usual. Feels weird standing with LL along the street with the streetwalkers while waiting for car to be washed. Ha ha… Do I look like a pimp? :p

For some weird reasons, we went drove to Mustafa Centre to look for a cheap transistor radio. At $8 for a Sony radio, we still tried our luck to bargain, but as expected, the salesman was firm even under barrage of feminine charm. Ha ha… Weird though, her charms usually work on Indians. Or maybe only on northern ones???

As expected, LL felt too tired and decided to return the vehicle tomorrow. Luckily she still got some conscience to at least send me to City Hall. Got home around 1230hrs to watch 娱乐百份百 which was hosted by 小S and 小猪. The theme of the competition is trying to act cute. Damn funny. 小S won.

Lesson learnt for the day–
1. Be specific in your needs.
2. Vices are the result of both Demand and Supply.
3. Only go to Mustafa Centre during weekdays and never weekends.

Diminishing Asset

Actually on recall manning this week from 22/8/05 to 30/8/05. Apparently my callsign is Sharp Spear or Armour Plate. 好土啊！ My fullpack is not even prepared. So much for operational-readiness.

Went to the library last night at 2000hrs. Borrowed 4 books which I will read in this order.

1) The Psychology of Investing – reference book
2) Debt of Bones – Friction / Fantasy
3) Soros : the life and times of a Messianic Billionaire – Biography
4) Zen and the art of anything – Something to read before sleeping

Seems like you can only borrow 4 books at one go. Always thought that I can borrow 5 books. Ha ha… Yeah, it has been a long time…

Finally drove the 1.6 Nissan Presea 92 bought under my name. Aside from the weird sound during left turns and CDs cannot be loaded in the front, otherwise the car looks ok. Will get the dealer to do the rectification. And no, this car will be shared among the family. Going to be broke for a long long time.

(Sample Pic)

The Nature of Things

Two monks were washing their bowls in the river when they noticed a scorpion that was drowning. One monk immediately scooped it up and set it upon the bank. In the process he was stung. He went back to washing his bowl and again the scorpion fell in. The monk saved the scorpion and was again stung.

The other monk asked him, "Friend, why do you continue to save the scorpion when you know it's nature is to sting?"

"Because," the monk replied, "to save it is my nature."

Without Fear

During the civil wars in feudal Japan, an invading army would quickly sweep into a town and take control. In one particular village, everyone fled just before the army arrived - everyone except the Zen master.

Curious about this old fellow, the general went to the temple to see for himself what kind of man this master was. When he wasn't treated with the deference and submissiveness to which he was accustomed, the general burst into anger. "You fool," he shouted as he reached for his sword, "don't you realize you are standing before a man who could run you through without blinking an eye!"

But despite the threat, the master seemed unmoved. "And do you realize," the master replied calmly, "that you are standing before a man who can be run through without blinking an eye?"

Fear

And hopefully you will realise the meaning of life.

Poor Mr Kuan

Initially I do not wish to comment on this subject as countless others have already expounded on this misnomer of the elected presidency.

However even as a not-so loyal citizen of this 641.4 sq. km of land, I still feel that I have to add my voice to my disappointment and abhorrence at this whole state of affair particular on the process, the parties involved, the end results. Although the end result can be easily extrapolated, the cold and hard reality from this exercise in futility is still kind of hard to stomach.

The Process

Stringent criterions should also be required for people chosen to be in the Presidential Election Committee (PEC) which are of great importance. These people should not only be independent from the government but should be made known to the public, so that they can be fully accountant for their decisions and the risk of any bias can be minimized. If they are just some not so well known statutory board civil servant or PAP linked personnel, the decisions for the issuance of the Certificate of Eligibility cannot be discounted as unbiased in the eyes of the already skeptic public. Also is there any criteria for any person to be part of the PEC? Who knows?

The following persons make up the PEC :

Dr Andrew Chew (Chairman)
Chairman of the Public Service Commission

Mr Lim Siong Guan (Member)
Chairman of the Accounting and
Corporate Regulatory Authority

Mr H R Hochstadt (Member)
A member of the Presidential Council
for Minority Rights nominated by the
Chairman of that Council pursuant to
Article 18 (2) (c) of the Constitution

Mr Lim Hup Seng, Deputy Secretary (Administration) of the
Ministry of Defence, is the Secretary of the Committee.

Who in the world are these people?

One other ridiculous thing that I had observed is that the Nomination Centre is actually at the PAP Headquarter. Even the announcement of the “result” is outside the PAP HQ. Luckily I did not catch any lightning logo shown behind SRN. Think something fundamental is wrong already at the start of the whole process.

The Parties involved

Gov’t cum MP – Their favoritism is too painfully obvious lah.

State controlled papers – These guys only dare to dig up dirty on non-PAP endorsed candidates. I want to see them dig up dirty on the gov't endorsed candidates or the really important people for a chance.

Gov’t-linked Corporations – Yeah lah, pro-PAP again.

The end results

On a final note, either SRN or any Government-endorsed person or whoever that gets into the office doesn’t really matter much as long as he is presentable enough to show face at required events as his duty or scope of work is limited even if its important. Actually the president can be over-ruled or kicked out of office by the ruling party when the going gets too tough. Ha ha….

And poor Mr. Andrew Kuan. Don’t he can find any employment on this land for a long time. Let’s hope he was also prepared for the super strong stick on shit when he said he was prepared for the election. Well, I don't think he will ever get the certificate of eligibility even if he dare to try again next time. Or for that matter, anyone else that are not endorsed by the ruling party.

Some show huh?

As a mark of encouragement for someone who actually dared, here's his website for anyone to read before it gets erased from existence. http://www.andrewkuan.com/5.htm

Steam

Was driving to my old office to take something around 2245hrs on Sunday (14/8/05) when the temperature of water for the engine went steaming. Was somewhere along AYE when I stopped the car at the road shoulder. Waited for the temperature to come down before filling it up with water again. But then the engine cannot start. Got my 2nd brother to come down with my father to assist me on his motorbike. Sadly the engine cannot make it. Got the tow trunk to tow it to my father’s friend’s workshop which cost $40.

Think have to change to a new car as this old one is giving too much problems especially with this overheating problem. Think will buy a second hand car that is of 2 or 3 years old. Have to buy it under my personal capacity as my father is unable to get a loan.

Anyway, continued my way to finish what I had started out to do. Got home around 0130hrs. Forgot to brush my teeth before sleeping again.

Oh well… another week ahead.

Stockholm Syndrome

Something that I learned from a H.K drama.

Too lazy to type so this link is here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

Cheers

Annalakshmi

Went to this Annalakshmi Restaurant (#02-01) in Excelsior Hotel / tower which serves Indian vegetarian to catch up with my salsa friends on Saturday 13/8/05.

Interestingly you can pay any amount of money for the food that you eat there. And the staffs including the cooks are all voluntarily. The money received from the grace of the patrons of the restaurant goes directly to a cultural fund/trust that is used to sustain and promote various Indian cultural arts, music, prayer etc etc. According to a waitress, this restaurant had been around since 1987 and there are branches around places like Perth, Malaysia and some other countries. The surrounding units and levels in the Excelsior towers consist mainly of studios that promotes Indian arts / music and are funded by the proceeds from this restaurant. Cool. Looks legitimate enough. Cool.

The food is all right although limited. The service is good. My glass of water keeps getting refilled frequently. The staffs are friendly too. Gave $5 although I was thinking of $7. The mix of customers are varied, from the base clients to local Chinese, foreigners and tourist.

Went to my salsa handout later. But not much friends around. Stood around for a while before retreat back home. But luck upon luck, I met my friend K on my way out. Apparently she was at a BBQ and would be meeting her brother who will be picking her up to go back to her home. Realisd my dancing is going haywire as I had not been practicing this past month or so… Jialat leh.

Sadly missed the last train but got my brother to fetch me back as he was rotting at home. Don’t think it is worthwhile to spend $15 on a cab. The last schedule for the west-bound train is at 2349hrs for all days.

Anyway K’s brother got to her around 0128hrs. Glad to have seen her again after a long while. Think she has gotten prettier. The problem with old infatuation is that sometimes it will quietly jump back at you when you least expected it. Hopefully time will dilute it to plain water soon.

Food for thought :

“The best way to love someone who really will never love you back is not to love them ? ”

The Parable of the Programmer and Breakfast

Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his top advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever.

"What do you think this is ?"

One advisor, the Chief Engineer, answered first. "It is a toaster." he said.

The king asked,"How would you design an embedded computer for it ?"

The engineer replied, "Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype."

The second advisor, the Master Programmer, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they also can warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will surely demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few short years."

"With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard-boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelet classes."

"The ham and cheese omelet class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, 'Cook yourself.' The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs."

"Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too."

"We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message 'Booting UNIX v.8.3' appears on the screen. (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to the market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook."

"Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel 80386 with 8MB of memory, a 30MB hard disk, and a VGA monitor should be sufficient. When you select a multi-tasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap. (Imagine the difficulty we would have had if we had foolishly allowed a hardware-first design strategy to lock us into a four-bit micro-controller !)."

The king wisely had the Master Programmer beheaded at once,and they all lived happily ever after.

A koan

"Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?"

Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769)

Do u understand? ;)

New Original Terminologies

Encyclopedia Syndrome (noun) - a psychological term used to describe people who buy books (either with or without the intention to read them) but in the end, the books will just end up on the shelves or table as decorations or show off items like an encyclopedia.

example of use : eh, you got Encyclopedia Syndrome ar. Buy so much books as if you will read them all.

Zoe-tayed (verb) - to describe women who experienced a generous increase in bust size after child birth.

Example of use - hey man, is it my imagination or did your wife Zoe-tayed after giving birth? you are one lucky man leh.

Lion City but where's the lion?

Was eating my dinner watching the TV yesterday. Nothing on TV except for the parade, yes for all channels. Why can't they provide alternatives for those not so patriotic citizens like us?

It was on the segment of Sang Nila Utama that this puzzle popped up. When was there any lions on this island? History books, if my memories didn't fail me, wrote that we had a problems with tigers on this island, which are running around causing havoc but never was there any mention of lions. Could it be that our ulu prince mistook the tiger for the lion??? If there were any lions, how come we had never heard any thing about them in our history books?? I have heard of the malayan tigers but malayan lions?

We should always take history with a pinch of salt, yeah??? It would be funny though if it was actually a tiger and we should had been the Tiger City though. ha ha...

Anyway, gave up on national tv. Went to watch the VCD of "Good Will Hunting" by Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Ben Affleck and Minnie Driver instead.

BTW, heard students are having holidays declared for 9/8 and 10/8. Lucky punks...

Here's something from the movie "Good Will Hunting" or something like that :

"You are not perfect.
The woman you love will not be perfect.
The important thing to consider is whether you are perfect together.
Then the imperfections will become the best part of your relationship."

Thoughts on a Sunday

Listened to the 2 albums that i bought. Can agree with the Londoner's comments. Corrinne May's album is quite good. For the Clementine's album, only that few songs that i had sampled are ok, the rest are so-so.

Sunday Times published a report on 7/8/05, that relates a straw poll of some local women that indicates that 80% of them would not marry men of some trades / jobs, i.e. Construction workers, cleaners, morticians, Karang Guni man etc. The overall impression is that most women are likely to marry upwards. What else is new. In some ways that are not surprising, they also dislike pilots, lawyers, doctors as these men spend most of theri time at work aka no time for them. Local women also discount accoutants for being too calculative, policemen for being too authoritative etc etc. Ha ha... what can i say...

And men, being men, will marry any woman of any trade as long as they like them. Hee... thats men alright. I think there might be a backlash report in Straits Times that will try to protray the "proper facts" on the "diversity" of men and women. Humans just like to save their face even if realities show otherwise. ha ha....

Seduced by Sampling

Went to IP to find a decent toilet. But was seduced by Gramophone's music.

In the end, I bought 2 albums.

Safe In A Crazy World by Corrinne May

Local born artist but based in LA. You can find out more at her website (http://www.corrinnemay.com/). Although only 10+1 songs, it is worth it at $18.95. Her songs are interesting. Somehow can connect with her music. Looks promising.

Made in France by Clementine

French Bossa. Don’t understand a word of French. Like her romantic rendition of some popular songs. Hmm… maybe it sounds romantic because its in French?? At $22.95, it is not that cheap, partly as it is an imported item.

Hmm… Although both albums are good, I had initially wanted to buy the Midnight Lounge by Janet Seidel (green cover) which I had been eyeing for some months. Think I will buy it next month.

Left with $96.95 until payday. Think I will rot at home most of the time with my music. Ha ha ha… Think the commuting cost will probably bankrupt me first. ha ha....

Quote of the Day

He who defends everything defends nothing - Frederick II

4th day @ Marymount Station

So far so good at this new project. Of course busy at work lah... not as lobo as before.

Only thing is that i have to wake up early to get to work due to the distance involved i.e 6.15am !!! What to do ?

Limited access to the computer for now. So this blog may be a neglected for this while.

Think i should go and pay up my singnet account to re-activate my internet account.... but too broke this month. think will pay up the $100+ bill next month.

Blar!

853

First day at 853 Marymount Station. Reading through BQs for tendering. Big rain by afternoon but luckily it stopped. Now 5.30pm.
Looks another unevendul day... So far so good. Let see how it goes from now.