Thursday 21 June 2007

Rant 062 / You Aren't Supposed to Eat the Readers' Digest!

After taking German 1 in the previous Inter-semester Special Term, I find that Spanish 1 is easier to learn. I don't know exactly why this is so, since there are many possibilities:
1) Because Spanish is similar to German in some ways, just like Japanese and Chinese,
2) because the tutor looks good, even though I cannot confidently judge her age just by looking at her(I have little first-hand experience with Europeans),
3) because Spanish may be easier than German and English at this level,
4) because Spanish 1 introduces fewer things than German 1.

Now I really believe that the English language may be the hardest of the 3. English alphabets can be pronounced in so many ways and there are numerous irregularities in the language. For example, in English, "A" can be pronounced as "ah", "eh", "er", "ay". In both Spanish and German, it can only be "ah".

Maybe it is because I know too little about these languages compared to English.

But German is still pretty hard due to the conjugations of all objects. Non-living things are always "it" in English, but in German, a glass is female, and dog is male and few things are actually "it". There is no single rule to follow to tell whether an object is male or female, and this can only be learnt through experience. Together with the fact that "a/an" in German must be in the proper conjugation for he/she/it (einen/eine/ein), I find it hard to properly write anything more than a simple sentence.

Spanish has different rules too. Like German, "to be" has a different conjugation for he/she/I/you alone/you all/they. However, there is usually no need to write "I/he/she/etc" in Spanish since the each conjugation already shows which one one is using. Eg saying "I am..." in Spanish is " Yo soy...", but I can just say "Soy...". Convenient, and the memory work here is little. There are going to be more rules to learn, but for now things are too easy.

Pronunciation of the words is never a significant problem for me in these 2 languages, since the few rules there are to govern the phonetics are always constant! As long as I can memorise the pronunciation of all 26 alphabets, all is fine. The only tough one in German is "ch", which is like the gurgling sound you make when you try to get the phlegm out of your throat.

In Spanish, one has to get used to the fact that v is the same as b, and c is sometimes pronounced as th of English the same goes for z in Spanish ( there is no English z sound in Spanish).

Right now I have to make a conscious effort to pronounce v like b during Spanish class, and whenever someone mentions Vivocity I think of it as Bibocity in my mind. I dread the day when this slips out of my mouth...

Anyway, vivo in Spanish means I live (in), as in "Vivo en Sentosa" which means " I live in Sentosa".

And the frequent usage of the sound of "th" is irritating.. Like when I say "page 3, exercise 2" in Spanish, it is " pagina tres, ejercicios dos". I'm really not used to this.







The aerodynamic design of the airplane's wing is absolutely ingenious. Doesn't it defy common sense, all the way till you see the calculations that derive the results?

Thursday 14 June 2007

Rant 061 / Wendersnaven! Oh, the Wendersnaven!

Recently I was thinking about the GST Offset Package Singaporeans are getting now. At first glance, it was a dream come true, like the one before - free money! But when I dwelled upon longer, I realized that this money, all S$5b of it, is entirely from taxpayers' pockets! That's practically just giving our money back to us!

First of all, have we forgotten what taxes are for? Why isn't the government spending our money on more practical things! For S$5, they could have done many other things that can offset the lower income group, like raising the pay, directly or indirectly, of lower income jobs, or blue-collar jobs. They could have raised the pay of teachers. They could have created a trust fund for some charity, and stop fukin making students waste their time selling fukin flags!

True, it does exactly what the name says - it offsets the GST hikes. But, aren't there many ways to achieve the same goal for the "lower-income groups"?

I must admit I am no economist, but is this not common sense? This money is of little use to us in the long term, but it sure grabs our attention. While giving us our own money seems like a damned good way to help us, for S$5b, you could have built and maintained a few free clinics for the needy for years! Or set up a pro bono legal firm for them!

Heck, with the things the government is capable of doing, they can easily make it compulsory for all practicing lawyers to spend a few days per year in that firm. Like NS, except it's for lawyers. Maybe it's already done, I don't know. But I know for sure S$5b can cover all the expenses for a few of such firms for decades. Pro bono firms won't have much in the way of expenses except for rent and utility bills and beverages. Very likely, they wont even hit S$10k a month!

That's what they have in the U.S.! According to this link here, all their lawyers donate at least 50 hours a year for precisely those who cannot afford a lawyer. What would the poor need a lawyer for? What about a will, just so that drug addict in the family won't get a single dime from a dying parent? What about for the elderly father to sue his son for selling his home without his consent?

And free clinics! Why not? At the moment, we pay about S$10-20 for simple medicine like those for flu or a cough in polyclinics. I don't know if they are already completely subsidised for the very poor or the elderly, but if they aren't, with S$5 they could have easily done so!

With free clinics, you can allow entry only for the "lower-income groups" and the elderly. How can that be done? Simple. You can always issue special passes or set up IC scanners at the entrances. C'mon, if they are able to save that S$10-20 everytime they fall sick, that's about 5-15 meals for a lot of people. At the same time, you can reduce the queue time in polyclinics.

I never thought there are such poor people in Singapore, until recently I remembered those elderly women (or men, sometimes), searching within public trash bins for empty cans. Sometimes, if one goes to the hawker centres at the right time, you can see kind-hearted hawkers giving them a free lunch. Sometimes, they can be seen in the wet market asking for the cheapest stuff available - leftovers that no one is buying and will never buy, aka stuff that are almost (or already is) rotting.

This is something the regular guy doesn't see unless he is aware of this and keeps an eye out for such. These days, my family doesn't throw our cans in the bin anymore, because my mum frequently sees this old lady who collects them to sell somewhere. What is really surprising to me is that she actually thanked my mum profusely when she first "donated" them.

These people deserve to live too! So what if they grab the free tabloids, like Today, from the racks in stacks? Let them! We don't need it, we only want it. They not only want it, they need it! Needs come before wants, and that's pure common sense.

I'm not thinking about karang guni when I mention "lower-income". They buy newspapers from us for a few cents per stack, or sometimes pick them up for free outside our flats. Then they choose all the usable pieces and resell them to hawkers and anyone else for about $0.50( I think) per kg. And you think they're "poor"? I'd put them under "lower-middle"!

I cannot get rid of this thought from my mind. S$5b wasted just like that! Half of it is probably given to those who don't need it. Think of how much can be accomplished with just a mere third of this sum!

Tuesday 12 June 2007

Rant 060 / Mr Anonymous must be older than God





Cute...











And you thought hobbits were short?











Bet you never wondered if Mao ever had a Christian name...










From http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21883831-2702,00.html?from=public_rss

"... We're talking about turning over Australia's only nationwide telecommunications network to a consortia run by the Singapore Government. That's a government that executes people, number one... It's unbelievable."

Oh wow.






Finished Olympos yesterday. Couldn't let it go until I finished half of Chapter 3 and the whole of Chapter 4. It was a very good read, but the ending was not as I expected it to be. And the 2 books, Ilium and Olympos have too many references to Shakespearean sonnets and plays for me to understand everything.

For one, the ultimate villain was a thing called Setebos, which is apparently a creature from Tempest(I think), and the Iliad. There were also Prospero, Caliban, Sycorax and Circe - names that I could not relate to because I have little knowledge regarding Shakespearean works. I believe there were special significance in these names which could only be understood by those familiar with classical literature.

Even though this duology is like a sci-fi adaptation of the Iliad, unlike the latter, there are those who die nameless in this story. I can see much effort made in naming everyone who died, but near the end, things were moving too fast for the writer to identify everyone.

But still, the humans in this books have almost every special ability that anyone can think of, from instantaneous teleportation to invisibility to sharing knowledge by just touching.

And the scientific explanation to the invulnerability of Archilles is astounding- his life's probabilities were changed such that the chance of him dying his appointed death (being killed by Paris) was an absolute 100%, leaving no chance for him to be killed by anything and anyone but Paris(not Hilton, but the lover of Helen).





Just watched Next, a movie starring Nicholas Cage. It was quite fascinating to see how the ability to see into the future, even if it's only only 2 mins ahead, can be used in such ways. A person like that can do anything he wants and have anything! He can always know what to say, and what to do. He will never be killed, except by old age or disease, because any unnatural death will be known 2 mins before it happens. It's freaking cool.



On the other hand, I wasted a few hours of my life watching this horrifying british movie named Hot Fuzz. An absolute waste of time, combining gory violence with ridiculous stupidity, I did laugh at some parts at first, but the complete illogic at the end totally put me off. In fact, I was appalled by the actual plot revealed by the "twist" near the end of the film.

It is like getting a girl with really huge boobs stripping in front of you, only to find that they sag so much they almost touch her pubic hair. I am so sorry I watched it. I will never do it again, I promise.



On a happier note, my German exam just ended. I hope for at least some decent results, aber meine deutsche ist Scheiße. Holidays again, albeit only for a weekend. Next: Spanish 1.



Tschüss!

Sunday 10 June 2007

Rant 59 / 2 Rights Make A Wrong, 3 Rights Make A Left, And 4 Rights Make A Square

Ever noticed how experience is valued that saying that one has decades of experience in a certain field automatically makes one an expert?

So if some really bad parents who teach their children all the wrong things and end up with kids who are alive( but wishing they were dead) comes up to you and cite their 30 years of successful (hey, their kids are still doing well... in rehab) experience in the field of Parental Guidance, would you listen to their advices or buy their "How-to-be-a-successful-parent" books?

Experience would have been a useful measure of expertise, if not for the millions of losers who suck at what they do and still stay in their jobs.

Now why is that?

Simple. There are jobs that will always be there, whether or not anyone wants to fill that seat. If no one smart goes for it, then eventually, someone not-so-smart will appear and take that job. And all hell breaks lose, as it always does these days.

Like all the people whining about the government, never stopping to breathe and take a break, and making a fuss out of every little thing that the government does. If they're so smart to notice all those things that were done wrong, and knows how to do all these things right, why don't they come up and do it?

It's fine to speak up about things that don't satisfy you once in a while, but if you are going to talk as if you find the world offensive, why don't you do something about it?

This sense of belonging is overrated. Loyalty to a country is fine only if you are satisfied with the state of it. If you are really against how things are done in your country, why don't you just leave it for another country that does things just the way you like it? Instead of whining day and night about how high taxes are and how jobs are hard to find these days and how the government should do something about it?

Yea, this is what I'm saying: If you are unhappy about your country, and has no desire to do anything to improve it other than describing it to the world, then leave. It's not like anyone is going to try to kill you if you leave.

This sense of belonging is overrated. Loyalty to a country is not necessary if you do not love the country. The government is the country. The people is the country. And since the people chose the government, why doesn't the government represent the country?

And when I say "chose", I mean allowing them to wield power. Not doing anything about the government is the same as allowing them to go on, and that amounts to choosing them. Because if you aren't choosing them as your leaders, why do nothing about it except whine?

It is bullshit when someone digs up all sorts of deeds of the government, and put them in such a way that they seem so wrong, then end up doing nothing after that.

If you have a better way of doing things, use it. If you don't, make do with what you have. You can't have everything under the sun!


Sometimes, it is hard to tell whether suicide is the bravest thing a human can do, or the most cowardly. How can you say it is easier to die than to face your troubles, when no one alive has any personal experience in this? How can you say suicide is the hardest thing to do, when it seems so much like an escape instead of a solution?

Therefore, it is pointless to say that it is an extreme method. It is really just another method of dealing with trouble. There are worse ways than suicide when dealing with deep shit. At least it doesn't make the situation worse, after a while.



When someone accidentally makes a mistake, should he be held responsible for whatever happens from it?

How can he not be? If someone accidentally knocks a person down and kills him while driving, does it make him less guilty? Is the guy lying there less dead?

It is bullshit if you completely forgive someone who does something wrong by accident. People make mistakes alright. So... let's forgive all the soldiers who had, have and will kill their friends with their "friendly fire". Let's forgive all drivers who had, have and will cause accidents. Let's forgive all crimes that were done without deliberate intent. Including manslaughter.

Friday 1 June 2007

Rant 058 / Games, Life and Books



NS2 concept art:
Marine in railcar pissing in pants while facing a charging onos

NS2 isn't anywhere near completion, but what they're revealing to us players are really interesting. The onos will be there, and it will be bigger than ever! Or so it seems in this picture.

Me luv ONOS!

Okay, I admit: I suck at onosing. A proficient onos never dies. It is able to ass-rape several marines who are firing at it the whole time, dance on the corpses for a bit and run to a gorge for heals.

Me?

Let's just say I don't know when to retreat. I charge into a group of marines, ass-rape a few, and die in their midst, wasting 75 res for 2-3 enemies. And to explain the significance of 75 res, usually it takes abt 8-10 mins from start of game to accumulate this much.

I'm much at better as a gutless lerk. Never the sort who flies in for a few bits. Not me. I prefer to fly to a remote spot, spray gas, and fly off. Let the skulks do the biting; I'll soften the enemies for them with my gas. I'm an Adrenaline Lerk, not a Celerity Lerk.



Today, a professor was telling my lecture group about this genius senior who got a scholarship from MIT 7 years ago. Absolute genius, publishing a textook, several international research papers, a patent, but no girlfriend. And one friend of mine later attributed it to the reason: "God is fair."

We all LOL'ed.



Just when I got a new router to replace my old one, my desktop breaks down. For $35 I had it checked at Sim Lim. And the problem? MOTHERBOARD KAPUTT!!! AAAAAA!!!!

This is so fucked up! Just when I thought I will be able to play the whole night without disturbance. Well, I still can, but this is only 'cos my bro just went to bed. Tomorrow, I will have to return to Sim Lim to pick up my desktop. Not my bro, who's the one who needs it most, but me, 'cos he needs to go do some stuff for NDP.

That comp is only 1+ year-old!!! This totally sucks!




Ilium is the best Sci-fi novel I have ever read. Its sequel, Olympos, is equally outstanding.

Ilium is like a modern translation of the Iliad, set in the distant future of our Solar System. Apparently, the Trojan War is occuring again 6000 years after the actual War we have all read about! This time, there are reconstructed (or cloned using their ancient DNAs) scholars, who are experts in the Iliad, watching the whole event in the background, and reporting to a Muse daily on how close things are following the real Iliad.

Futuristic technologies are employed by these scholars (aka scholics here) and the immortals, like Quantum Teleport (QT), nanocytes (nano-robot healers) and etc.

Almost all the Greek gods and goddesses and heroes are in this story, just like the Iliad. Zeus is the ultimate Greek god, and he actually shows his strength in the story. He is the only god in this story who knows how the events will turn out, and will stop at nothing to make things happen that way, including banishing fellow immortals to the pits of Tartarus.

Archilles is god-like in the Iliad, and he is still so here. In fact, he gets to kill quite a few gods in the war, like Hades, for one. He is able to move ultra-fast like the gods, which helps him kill the gods before they can QT away. And he is inhumanly strong and etc.

Unfortunately, gods are gods. Here, they can be resurrected in "healing vats" on Mount Olympus, as long as at least a sliver of their body remains undestroyed.

So what's the difference between reading the Iliad and this? Big diff! The actual story starts when Aphrodite, the goddess in charge of the Muse controlling the scholics, summons our hero, a 21st century classics professor, and instructs him to find an opportunity to kill Athena. Giving him the Hades Helm(every teenage boy's dream: invisibility even from the gods, except Aphrodite herself) and a QT medallion which can trace other QTs' destination.

This wasn't mentioned in the Iliad. Scholics don't exist there! And this is where all the actions starts.

There are lots of fighting scenes in the 2 novels. In one part, Pallas Athena injects certain nano-robots into Diomedes, which transforms him into a superhuman for a while and amplifying his natural electro-magnetic fields into "an aura of fire", making him just like what Homer (author of the Iliad) said he would be. He became so strong, he managed to injure Aphrodite in spite of the forcefield around her.

And who can forget Helen? The most beautiful woman in the world - and a slut, according to this book. Yes, she is one of the more important people in the story, and she's having sex with not just Paris this time.

Sci-fi always has robots, and here, robots come in swarms. In this story, our robots are called moravecs, and are a combination of organic material and metals. More metals and organic stuff here, but they have a combo of organic and electronic brains. Convenient, when you want to forget something. Just shut away the organic side, and delete the memory in the electronic side.

The weird thing is, the robots here are often fans of our classical masterpieces. The 2 most important robots in this story are practically experts of Shakespeare and Proust respectively. I skipped many paragraphs in their conversations out of my complete ignorance of these 2 guys' works.

And Earth! Earth is still here, but humans here are evolved to such a degree that they are born with nano stuff that allows them to connect to much higher forms of the Internet. In this era, there are the proxnet(like radar on your palms), farnet(the higher form of the Internet, allows users to even see other people through invisible cameras from the air at any angle), and the most amazing Allnet(allows user to see ANYTHING, even flows of photons in place of sunlight, every molecules in everything and etc).

Dan Simmons, author of Ilium and Olympos, seems to be really good. I'm going to buy his older works some day. Like Hyperion, and its sequels.


By the way, Ilium is Troy. And Patroclus is revealed to be the gay buddy of Archilles! More depth, woohoo!