Saturday 31 December 2011

Rant 915 / It Was Never There!

Since I'm not bound by normal office hours, I find that there is no need for me to complete my tasks during weekdays and between late morning and early evening.

In fact, I can work at any time I want, including during holidays.

I'm not bound by the concept of "office hours" directly, although for tasks that involve other people I have no choice but to do them within the proper hours.

For example, since I have nothing going on on Monday, which is a public holiday due to the New Year's Day falling on the preceding Sunday, I'll be working then.

Why not?

Basically, there is nothing separating working hours and rest time for me. As long as I can complete my tasks on time, when I do them does not matter.

Hence I'm working tomorrow and Monday.















Maybe someday, employees will be paid based on the entire company's performance.

I'm not talking about bonuses.

I'm thinking perhaps they will peg their salary to the net revenue of the company.

Maybe 0.007% in a large company, for example.

It would be kinda like shareholders. In fact, employees and shareholders should be regarded as the same, except they contribute differently to the company.

It's like the difference between volunteers and donators - it really isn't that big.

This way, it will be much fairer and it strongly instils into everyone's minds the fact that they're all working together in the same organization.

This will obviously accompany huge changes in the economy, either followed by them or following them.

For example, a company that pays its employees this way can easily create its own currency for reasons like meals and such services provided by the company. Subsequently, it can pay its employees with it.

For example, a meal in the company's canteen can cost 0.00000015%. Obviously they're going to find some way to shorten that. Maybe remove all the zeroes the way we use the term "calories" (they're never in calories, but kilocalories, yet nobody cares because it's shorter).

This way, it won't have to issue actual money, which definitely is a good thing because it can then keep a smaller pool of liquid assets.

This currency will basically be denoted by a percentage of the expected annual performance, that of the previous year or that of each quarter. The exchange rate can then be adjusted on a quarterly or annual basis.

This may encourage employees to hold on to their company's currency longer hoping that it will give them a better rate in the future, especially if a new product launch is planned in the near future.

If these happen, then it will be inevitable that there will be exchange rates between each company's currencies unless it becomes explicitly banned by law, perhaps because it threatens the existence of each country's own currency.

Because to be honest, would you prefer the Indian Rupee to the Apple Inc Dollar?

Friday 30 December 2011

Rant 914 / Candles. Lots Of Them.



I totally didn't expect that.



























Been buying quite a number of games I've been waiting for.

Solar 2 and Nuclear Dawn were probably my best decisions.

The former was very interesting, although I'm not sure if it's going to last long.

I've already got the achievement award and gone through the Big Crunch. Technically I've completed the game but I don't think the game's merely about growing.

As for Nuclear Dawn, it's just like Empires (HL2 mod) but focused entirely on infantry combat.

Too bad. Tanks would have been totally epic.

Still, it's one of the few lesser-known games out there that's really professionally made and pretty much crash-free for me.

And today, I shall buy New Vegas with all the DLCs that contain campaigns and Sandbox Universe.

I'll most likely open the latter soon to get the achievement.

Speaking of achievements, I've gotten them for the ones I can play on Steam except for Rise of the Immortals and Crimecraft Gangwars. 19 in total at this point.

Other than coals, all I've received are 2 useless 50% off coupons.

My bro got something better, but it was just the Tropico trilogy.

Never got around to giving away any games. That was a bad idea to begin with.

Tuesday 27 December 2011

Rant 913 / Art Is Money



And I thought Malaysian movie trailers were bad.

Then movie trailers from Ghana surfaced on Youtube.














Perhaps things aren't as bad they look. Perhaps it's just my mentality.

Perhaps I just need to find ways to make things more enjoyable for myself.











It doesn't matter what I do anymore regarding my mother, I think.

I wonder if the doctors can raise the dosage and bring her back again.

All she does is stare at me when I visit. She recognizes me but her short term memory doesn't seem to work very well anymore.

She responds once in a while but mostly, she just stares at me as I describe my work to her in my daily monologues.

I wonder if she remembers her short stay at home on Christmas.

She thinks I joke when I ask her whether she recognizes me.

How can I tell if she does when she doesn't react to most of the things I say?

For all I know I could be a total stranger to her.

There would have been too many things that I regret if not for the fact that I wouldn't have known nor learnt if this isn't happening.

Things that one can regret are the mistakes made after the lesson was already learnt.

They aren't these.

Her memory isn't completely gone - she still remembers her phone. She asked me for it today after I forgot to hand it back to her when I accompanied her back to the hospice after the home visit.

But she is confused. Contrary to what she recalled to me, my bro never visited her yesterday.

I wonder what my bro is thinking.

He seems to be thinking that as long as I visit her, it's ok that he doesn't.

Does he treat this as some kind of chore?

Or is he such an escapist?

If the doctor can't revert her condition by raising the dosage again, I don't think she will be conscious by Feb.

There aren't many opportunities for us to talk to her anymore.

Why does he visit her only weekly at most?

He fears too much.

I fear too, but I've long come to the conclusion that not thinking about something will not make it go away. In most situations, ignoring an issue will only make it worse.

One of the volunteers asked me why he rarely comes.

I couldn't answer her.

Neither do I want to talk to him about it.

It is a bad idea to strain my relationship with him because we live in the same flat.

I remind him to visit her once in a while, but I do not want to push.

I'm hoping his girlfriend would do it for me, although I have a feeling that his girlfriend is as much of an escapist as he is.

I wonder if he understands the magnitude of the sorrow he will feel when it finally hits him that he will never be able to talk to her again, and that he never did even when she was around.

For me, I have the rest of my life to feel sad about how I barely know anything about my father's life.














His mother is lonely. We spoke to her at length about some things after the Christmas dinner, but one topic stood out in our conversation - her marriage.

The overall feel I get by the end of the discussion is that she is lonely and unable to let go of him.

It may not be his fault that his heart changed and he got bored of this steady marriage, but it is his fault to act on it despite their mutual trust not to break the matrimony.

On one hand, it is the rest of his life that we're talking about after all.

On the other hand, it also concerns the rest of her life.

In such a situation, the fault lies in the person who acts first for his/her own benefit.

If one had acted in favour of the other's interest, then can one say that nobody is at fault.

The reason is that the root of the problem is the ability of both parties to let go.

If either side is unable to do so, neither should do it.

That she is so eager to talk about such private matters with people she sees only once or twice a year shows how much she needs someone to talk to and how much she needs to release her frustrations.

I wonder if she will become depressed like my mother did.

She probably shouldn't be left alone. If she's anything like my mother, she's going to arrive at strange conclusions after thinking too much on her own.

In the years following my father's death, my mother came up with all kinds of reasons to explain it, including the feng shui of his usual dining chair.

That, IMO, definitely wasn't normal, but I didn't know what to do then.

By the time I realized she was passively suicidal, it was already too late.













What one wants and what one gets are not always the same.

It's like a river - one can try and shift it but one cannot just stop it wherever one wants it to.

Hence, compromise.

I don't want to work but I have to. So I compromise by spending more to make it more comfortable for myself.

Everyone makes compromises in life.

It's like Rule 34 - no exceptions.

People just can't live without compromising. It's as simple as that!

Saturday 24 December 2011

Rant 912 / Why Aren't They Telling Business Owners At Orchard That They Should Just Set Up Their Shops Elsewhere If They Can't Handle The Floods?





You know something has to be wrong when you think that this teacher had sex with a 14-year-old married father.












I have difficulty deciding how large a bonus I should give my workers.

I know how much my mum used to pay them, yet I cannot give the same.

It's not just about the lower profits this year but also about how much they work.

For once, my mum is not answering my question about work when I asked her this.

Even in her current confused state, she is willing to give me advice, albeit unreliable ones.

This is the only part of the job where she is not telling me what to do at all.

I don't want to give them as much as they are used to but neither do I want to offend them.

What if they complain to me about the smaller bonus?

What if they compare it with what my mum used to pay them?

They have to have less respect for me already by now. I don't want them to dislike me enough to think they can take advantage of my lack of experience.

Why do people seem to envy my job?

In a couple years' time, I'll probably have to sack the older one too.

How do I fire someone who's worked with my predecessor for over a decade and with me for half that?

Yet I won't be able to let her stay. There is simply no work here for someone with a bad back and failing memory, things which are typical of people past their retirement age.

As the owner of this business, I must keep in mind its primary purpose - to profit.

Of course I'll keep her as long as she remains a productive employee, but after that, I wonder if she will understand.

It would be for the best if she would voluntarily retire before that happens to take care of her grandchildren like her predecessor did.

Funny. I used to think that that would really suck because I'd lose an experienced helper.

Now, I see that it is really the best case scenario.














Yet again, I'm learning a new lesson.

I must always book my business trips early. Always.

The nightly rates of the hotel I'm planning to book has just been raised. Now I have to fork out a few hundred dollars more for the trip to Korea.

I will still ask my friends because it feels wasteful to have a twin bed room to myself, which is sometimes the cheapest room available. Even the double bed felt a little excessive.

Despite the prices of the rooms of this hotel, breakfast is not included.

It's not exactly an issue because it's located among plenty of malls, but it just means it's more expensive than I expected for a 3-star hotel.

Coincidentally this hotel also appeared in a "best value hotels in Seoul" list in Yahoo that appeared today.

I wonder if that made the hotel jack up the prices.

I also wonder if I'm looking at the right places.

As of now, I have yet to discover whether there is a place where the Korean wholesalers congregate the way the Shanghainese ones do at Qipu Road.

All attempts at googling for an answer led me to online wholesalers instead.

Since I can't find their physical locations, I'm settling for a shopping trip instead.


I also have the same idea for Milan. If I were to go to Europe, Paris and Milan are the two places that come to my mind first.

I have read and heard a lot about the former, but really little about the latter.

Going to Milan is not a necessity for my job but I'm willing to organize a shopping trip for my friends during winter.

Thursday 22 December 2011

Rant 911 / Luggage Stores

It used to be normal that I would feel sleepy throughout the day, but not quite to the degree that I'd be able to fall asleep. Just lethargic, and don't want to do anything but sit and play.

I haven't felt that since some time ago.

I still want to sit and play all day but I don't feel lethargic even though I've been sleeping only 6 hours every night since I returned from Shanghai, except for the first night I returned.

Yet I'm not losing weight. I must be eating too much unhealthy stuff, like BK and the durians.

Or I've been gaining muscle mass.

There goes my prediction that I could lose that 2kg by Christmas and get out of IPT.













As much as I'd like to say that things are awesome and I'm going to make my first million by 30, I cannot.

I'm making plenty of mistakes that my mother had warned me about before, one of which was the mistake of forgetting about the other costs of selling something. I've been reminding myself about them for almost everything except that one time when I was deciding the prices for the rejected samples.

Small mistakes, but mistakes nonetheless.

I have a feeling that I'm failing, but I must keep going. It's not about confidence and optimism, nor is it about what I can or want to do; it's about doing what must be done.

This is what I learnt from observing the Chinese mainlanders. They don't just look at opportunities within their limits. Like 50 Cent's album, they "get rich or die tryin'." Plenty of them have died trying but people just don't talk about those.

It's also partly what I learnt from my own parents, because that's exactly what they did. Selling clothing was never the expertise of my father. He was into silk printing for most of his working life before he set up this business in Singapore.

I came to this conclusion only when I found ancient certificates of registration of a partnership firm that does silk printing in the dusty drawers at home, and combined this with the things my mother told me about his life when he first started working in Hong Kong.

For my mother, she was only a seamstress before she took over the business. In other words, she had even less experience in running a business than I did before I took over. My father never taught her anything, unlike how she did for me.

Believe it or not, my bro and I had to lend her sizable amounts of money from our (sacred, almost untouchable) inheritance every year until about 3-4 years ago.

Now it's my turn. In exchange for a ready-made system that's already working fine, I have other prices to pay.

And issues to watch out for.

For example, I just realized a buyer, despite her friendliness, is trying to manipulate me to do part of her job for her.

Unfortunately, doing that benefits me too. It's basically a win-win situation but still, I don't like how she made it sound like it's all about helping me.










Water transport on the Singapore River?

Inb4 they charge river taxes similar to road taxes: ERP - Electronic River Pricing.




Is it just me or does ERP also read like "ear rape"?
















Next destination in my list is South Korea. I must go during winter, but due to work commitments and festivals, there is only a short period of time in January in which I can go there.

Currently planning to go on the 9th and returning on the 13th, but the only flights remaining by now leave at midnight of Friday, meaning I need to get out of the hotel on Thursday.

The alternative is Saturday, but Expedia.com.sg is not showing any available flights for pre-dawn on Saturday. Instead on that day, I get that really convenient timing of 8.55am.

So it's either book the hotel for 3 nights from Monday to Wed (check out on Thu), or 5 nights from Mon to Fri (check out on Sat).

I can't get the 5D4N that I wanted unless I pay hundreds more for a more expensive flight that leaves at the time I want.

I guess everyone wants to get home by Saturday afternoon.

As for hotel, obviously it will be in Seoul. I'm only going for one or two parts of the city, because I only want to see the best area(s) for now.

If I go for the 3-night stay, it will be cheaper. The 5-night option is more expensive per night on average, probably because of the Friday night.

Fine, I'll take the Mon-Sat option. Both flights would depart at in the morning and arrive in the evening.

That should give me 4 days.

Wednesday 21 December 2011

Rant 910 / Survivalists Are OP In Die2Nite

That feel when I pay for a S$245 bottle of Martell XO cognac with a S$1000 bill.

That feel, man.

That fricking awesome feel.

There's also another awesome feeling when I realized I had made the cashier clear her store of S$100 and S$50 bills, but that's a lot less significant.

It happened at the duty-free shop at the airport and I forgot about it until now.

It's not going to repeat a lot in the rest of my life, so I've got to note this down in case I forget this forever.


(Note: I'm not filthy rich. That bottle's an offering for my late father.)










It's so ironic when the church near my mum's hospice says "All are welcome," in bold outside, yet the gate and door are always closed.

It gets more ironic when the Hindu temple next door is really always open even though they don't say it with a big sign.











Busy busy busy. Not as busy as my buyers. Those are really busy. It's amazing how long and hard they work.

Personally I don't think it's worth the money, but that's just my opinion.

In the medium term, there are lots of things to do.

In fact I think I'll only stop being busy... oh wait, I'll never stop being busy as long as I want to maintain my current level of income.

Things will cool down a little after the lunar new year though. I'll still not be able to stay home and play as much as I used to, but it will get closer.

I think.









Managers are not merely the central gear of a machine that drives other smaller gears.

No, managers are also the lubricant of the machine.

One person, two jobs (at least).










This year, I will not make as much as I could have.

Too late to do much.

The best I can do is pressure my workers.

Meanwhile I have people to talk to and questions to ask.

Very annoying people.

Buggers received my orders months ago and I'm not seeing a frickin thread being delivered here yet.

It's already frickin CHRISTMAS ON SUNDAY!

I'm going to have to settle for Chinese New Year next month.

This month's Christmas is confirmed FUBAR.

Obviously I'm not happy but on a brighter note, I'm still making more than what I'd ever imagined I'll make.

Hence I'm buying plenty of discounted games on Steam. Stockpiling them before I decide what to send to who just before Christmas.

For example, I've got Recettear and Chantelise and I think I know who to send them to.

Doesn't matter if they give anything back to me - it's stupid to call something a "gift" if you expect something in return.

It would be a trade instead, and there are no freebies in a trade.

Every time someone gives you a freebie for buying something, it's actually covered by the price of the item you bought.

I can sell a motorboat, or I can sell a boat with a free motor for the same price.

Tuesday 20 December 2011

Rant 909 / Why Did I Wake Up At 8.30AM?

My workers are slacking.

I've finally come to this very disappointing conclusion yesterday.

Before, I've never checked the orders that we receive from the buyers. I trust them to process and send everything that is being asked for.

I've received multiple complaints of orders not being fully delivered in recent months, but I'd always thought it was because they were out of stock.

Yesterday, when one buyer gave me two designs to check, both of which were listed in her previous two orders, I discovered we had plenty of those in stock.

Blame, firstly, falls on myself for being too lax.

Being a complete newbie in management, I'd expected the workers to do their jobs just because my mum, their ex-boss, is dying.

If not for me, do it for her, right?

But no, they had to slack despite knowing that the more they work now during this peak period, the larger the bonus I pay them.

I'm too trusting but they, as middle-aged women with children, should have understood the meaning of "obligations" better than I do.

No wonder they're still stuck with a part-time job at this stage of their lives.

I don't want to micromanage.

I don't have a choice now.












I've finally got a reply from Mindef.

It wasn't from Mindef directly, and they didn't give me an answer in black and white.

Whatever.

My interpretation of the answer I've received, which may or may not be accurate, is that they don't even want to clarify what is and isn't allowed to be discussed.

I understand.

Therefore I'll keep it off my blog.

After all, I'm in no position to argue - there isn't a single star on my rank epaulette.

Nobody wants these 909 rants to disappear all of a sudden, least of all myself.














Youtube has surprisingly many girls using their looks to make really bad reply videos that are basically... empty, kinda like that chick whose videos are just her staring into the camera.

Except there are words for these video replies.

Why bother?











Steam Xmas sale is up and I made several impulsive decisions to buy games that I don't really want.

Bunch of Heroes was a particularly bad choice, and it's only the first day of the sale which will end on New Years Day next year.

The game itself really isn't bad, but it just crashes too much.

Monday 19 December 2011

Rant 908 / Steam Xmas Sale 2011 BEGINS!

The CEO of SMRT stays for now, but her explanation reeks of bullshit.

"No good leader will leave the field when the battle is on. I am staying put now to do my work, and put everything right."

Right.

Except this issue with the breakdowns began months ago.

If she was actually capable of it, she could have done this long ago, and not after the PM announced a full public inquiry on this problem.

The fact that she started saying that she would fix the issue only after it turned into an actual issue that needed the attention of the PM himself makes her unworthy of managing something as important as our MRT system.

If you need your boss's boss's direct attention to make you really work, you shouldn't be a CEO in the first place.













Mailed some stuff just now, including another 2-year extension of my National Geographic Magazine subscription.

I've long forgotten how to mail anything, so I was planning to queue up to ask the people at the post office.

But there was a long queue when I arrived, so I took my bro's advice to use the SAM machine outside. He wasn't sure if it offered postal services, hence I didn't plan to use it.

The SAM machine, I discovered, doesn't sell stamps.

What it does is it weighs each envelope, tells me how much it costs to mail it to the destination country, and sells postage labels.

The subscription form and cheque costs S$0.26 because they weigh less than 20g, but some of the envelopes cost S$0.32 for weighing over 30g. GST was also not included in these prices.

After that, things were easy. The only payment option was NETS but that was fine with me.

It printed the labels and I pasted them onto the envelopes before throwing them into the mailbox.

No stamps.












Does paying for something justify the act of completely wasting a product made with the sweat and blood of hundreds?












Sunday 18 December 2011

Rant 907 / Tired Feet And Deadened Mind

First day at Shanghai was a little bad. So is the second day as I type this but it remains to be seen if things will improve.



Brb lunch.

..

Mmm… cabbage and pork dumplings… Not that fantastic. Little meat, plenty of skin. It was from a little shop in one of the back alleys of Qipu Road so I didn’t expect much. It’s just like how I don’t expect good food from the food court at Sim Lim Square back in Singapore.





Anyway, first day.

Checking in at the airport was simple. Hong Kong Airlines was easy to spot. I was one of the first to queue up but discovered that the front seats that have extra leg space cost HK$160 more each.

I was given an aisle seat near the front of the plane and I was fine with that. I really didn’t care where I sat.

First flight from SG to HK was uneventful.  A lady in her early 30s sat next to me, kinda pretty but X-Men: First Class was more interesting. There was dinner, some kind of stewed beef with mashed potato and boiled broccoli and carrots.

That last made me realize I could do the same. I had cooked the same before at home, except the broccoli just wasn’t salty enough. The key was the salt.





Intermission…

I’m having the TV switched on to make the room less silent and the ads made me ask myself this:

Do all the companies in China hire the same damn guy for all their ads? Because the voice always seems to be the same one, kinda like how Hollywood trailers always seem to have the same narrator.

End of intermission.






The wait between flights was shorter than expected.

The moment we got off the plane, we were hastily led by one of the air stewardesses to the next gate because it was going to leave in an hour. The gates always open 30mins before departure.

Then at the gate, after everyone rushed to queue up (other than myself and some others), we were informed that the flight would be delayed for another 45mins due to technical difficulties.

I was comfortably seated on one of the empty benches so it was fine. The rest, too bad.

The second flight was slightly more interesting.  This time a cute Taiwanese girl, probably just several years younger, was next to me. The catch, and there is always a catch, was that her parents were also next to her on the other side.

Again, I didn’t give much of a damn. It was past 10pm and I was tired from the previous flight. The only reason we spoke to each other at all was because of the arrival card.

Initially when she saw that I took one of those, she asked me if they, as Taiwanese citizens, had to fill that too.

I’m really not familiar with their political situation so I told her I didn’t know.

I also wanted to add that she should just fill it because there was no harm in doing so even if it was unnecessary, while not having it done when it was actually necessary meant they would have to stand that the immigration point to complete it, slowing down the queue.

In the end I just didn’t give a damn.

Then she had to borrow a pen because apparently none of the three had one on them.

:\

The snack was just a chicken mushroom bun.

The tea was pretty good; the coffee was almost decent.

The way out of Pudong Airport was simple. At the immigration point they had a scanner for facial recognition and the officer was pretty friendly.

Then I took the wrong escalator down one storey. I probably wasn’t supposed to bring my luggage case on that escalator but I didn’t see the flat one on the opposite side until I was halfway down.

Nobody cared. It was 1am by then.

The taxi driver was quite friendly and tried to introduce me to the places we passed.  I asked him when the shops at Qipu Road opens and he not only replied to that but also told me how to go there from my hotel as we approached it.

He even recommended that I use Hongqiao Airport instead of Pudong due to my hotel’s location. That was not news to me though.

Then when we discovered a different name on the sign outside the hotel, he came up with me to check if it was the right one.

After I confirmed that it was the right one, I asked him for a receipt and he ran back to his taxi for it and back up to the lobby.

Then I didn’t tip him.

I’m so sorry about that, driver of 970-70.853882. I should have just told you to keep the change. It was only 30RMB versus a 221RMB fare.

The hotel kinda small and the girl at the counter who greeted me at 2am when I arrived was probably sleeping on the job.

1) She sat so low I didn’t even know she was there until the porter pointed me to the counter.

2) Red eyes.

While she was getting me my room, a guest (probably local judging from his accent) came up and told her the room he was just given was already occupied by a "lao wai" (Caucasian foreigner) and threw his key card onto the counter.

Amazing. I wonder how awkward it was for both of them.

I made sure I locked the door with both the hook thing and the knob that night, in addition to the Do Not Disturb sign.

The room was pretty damn good, and even had an internet cable for guests.

It was only at that moment when I saw it that I realized I didn’t have the right adaptor for my laptop’s plug.



Oh wow.

The view was quite good.









(These were NOT taken on the first night!)



Explored the TV and realized the OK button was faulty and therefore I couldn’t do much with the TV.

But it was late, past 3am by the time I showered and all, so I just went to bed.

And woke up too late for breakfast. Got up and 9am and down by 9.50am.

Breakfast ends at 9.30am for the normal breakfast buffet for the lower class guests on the 3rd floor, and 10am for the VIPs at the restaurant on the 18th floor.

Didn’t matter. I just went to a nearby store and got myself a bottle of yoghurt drink.

But not before I went back up to apply moisturizer on my face. The wind outside was so cold and dry my face felt like it was freezing (and maybe petrifying) 10mins out of the hotel.

Walked the 1km to Qipu Road and realized that this particular 1km was harder than expected… only because I thought it was going to be a straight, flat path.

Nope. There were staircases to climb, bridges to cross and motorbikes to dodge.

At Qipu Road, I learnt that there was indeed more shops than I could possibly fully explore within the two days I have.

I strolled through the milling crowds, many pulling trolleys and some bringing hot food. Apparently some shops offer lunch delivery service to the sellers there.

Today, I decided to just look and see. I can go back and buy tomorrow.

Honestly, there were so many designs of sweaters and jackets they just overloaded my mind.

Halfway through some random guy persuaded me to follow him to his shop where they sold good imitations.  Very secretive.

I was also kinda worried it was some sort of robbery trap but I felt confident enough to follow him. The gate was kept closed until one of their own shouts to the gatekeeper (I guess that’s the best name for him) outside to open it.

I looked through many but in the end, I didn’t buy a thing. I can’t sell those, and I don’t need a new jacket despite the fact that I feel so out of place wearing it.

It’s just such an old design that I pretty much stand out from the crowd. I’m wearing it only because it was the newest jacket for this temperature range that my business has got that had my size and wasn’t sold out.

Not to mention I seem to be the only guy in Shanghai wearing a waist pouch.

Got his business card though.

By 2pm I was tired enough to just call it a day. If the malls were like the ones in Singapore, I wouldn’t be exhausted so quickly, but:

1) The number of different products in each shop on the lower floors is just mind-blowing.
2) There are so many things to dodge while looking, like trolleys and young children. I kicked a few of the former accidentally; fortunately I kicked none of the latter.

I know, probably another wrong move to get out so early but I was tired and hungry.

Bought the bowl of rice dumplings for 20RMB I think. Or maybe 15. Pretty large bowl.

Then got some of the roasted chicken (6 sticks) also for the same price. I definitely got scammed there but she looked so poor I wasn’t about to make a fuss over a few dollars.

Anyway I’m still kinda suspicious about all street foods after my bad experience in Malaysia so I’ve only eaten a single piece so far. It’s good but… suspicious. Smells like satay. It could be a Shanghainese variant of satay.

The biggest issue I have with living here is my nose is suffering from the dryness. I think the winter is freezing the mucus in my nose.

How does one handle this problem? I really need to find out before I return next time.

Today’s catch is more than I thought I’d get. I didn’t even plan to buy anything but I found something that looked pretty nice on one of the upper floors.

At Qipu Road, the height on which a shop is located is proportional to the quality (and price) of its products, as far as I can tell.

Despite its appearance, I fear it probably won’t be accepted by my buyers. They prefer practicality over appearance, and I don’t have much confidence in its insulation.

And it’s really a bad idea to haggle too hard on the upper floors.  After she quoted me a price that’s 50% of the one on the tag, I asked for a price that’s roughly 25%. She just gave me a pissed off face, turned away to put it back, and told me it wasn’t negotiable.

EPIC FAIL!

So I bought it at her price. Most likely it’s too expensive but I’m sure it will be lower when I order in bulk.





Intermission

It's been 30mins after I ate the rice dumplings and the piece of chicken. I don’t feel any discomfort. Phew! Maybe I’ll eat the rest when dinnertime comes.

End of intermission.






And now I've just discovered… I'd also forgotten my deordorant.

Bathing 3 times a day in this cold isn’t fun. Luckily the bathrobe provided by the hotel fits me, so it’s not all bad.

Speaking of the cold, it is AWESOME. Well, other than the issues with showering and nasal dryness. I don’t sweat other than my arms from holding my jacket while indoors. How nice.

The best thing about staying alone in a hotel room meant for two is that I get all these extra towels. It's interesting how one can come up with all kinds of uses for towels when there are too many of them around.

For example, I can wipe my lips after meals with one.





Intermission


Just saw a Pizza Hut ad on TV. It's giving away a free bottle of red wine with every order of the Cheesy Bites pizza meal or something.

Then again, it's Chinese red wine. Not sure if want.

End of intermission





Third day.

Breakfast was kinda disappointing but the bacon compensates for the lack of variety.  There was also a plate of steamed ribs but it was empty and not refilled by the time I got there.

At least the hotel breakfast had decent coffee.

Took three cups of that with three plates of food because I was planning to skip lunch. Accidently spilled some coffee onto the tablecloth.





After going back to the room to put on my moisturizer, I went straight to Qipu Road. Took an alternate path there, ie a different bridge.

Nothing much.

This time, I walked from 10am till 3pm non-stop. I’m really getting the hang of strolling really slowly.

The guy who pulled me to his secret gallery of imitation branded goods recognized me and tried to start a conversation with me by commenting that I'd finally found something I want (I had bought one item at that point).

I just ignored him.

Got a little lost and went to the same mall twice but in the end I think I had gone through most of the shops along that road.

I’m not saying I’ve seen everything sold there. Looking is one thing, seeing is another. By 2pm I was pretty tired, so I probably missed quite a bit.

Still, I managed to find 3 more items that look good. The prices, on the other hand, are going to be a problem.

Mainly it’s because I just can’t seem to find good stuff till I hit the 3rd floor. Only one of the three was bought on the second floor of one of the buildings.

The worst was probably the sweater that cost me RMB300. It appeared to be selling so well they didn’t even have the time to hang another one after the last piece on the racks was sold. I only saw it because they had one on a mannequin at the window.

I looked at all the important details but pretended to have missed the price tag and asked her for the price. Tag said 980RMB; she said 400. (All prices listed on the tags are fictitious. Any resemblance to real prices is purely coincidental.)

At first I told her directly that that was a little too high, and explained I was buying a sample and may order a shipment from her. She dropped it to 350 and told me there were cheaper designs at the 100RMB and 200RMB ranges. She even showed me a kinda similar one in the latter price range.

I refused 350, then 320, so she stopped lowering and asked me what I was willing to pay instead.

I tried 250 and she just turned and put it back onto the rack like the other one I met yesterday.

When I said 300, she had to ask her boss if it was ok. Either the sweater was that good or it was all an act. Most likely it was the latter, but I seriously never saw another one of the same design before and after that.

Service was good but that wasn’t important. Still, I must say it was nice of her to pack one of the my bags which was starting to break (after like 3 hours of swinging on my hand and getting kicked) into a new bag.

I think they're actually trying to make it feel like a branded store instead of what it actually is.

After 3pm I decided enough was enough. So I went in the direction of my hotel, which was south, and looked for food.

Found a little shop selling beef dumplings at 25 for 7RMB. It appeared to be a family business and the kids were helping out. The boy who cooked my dumplings was probably 12 or something. I gave him a 10 RMB note and told him to keep the change.

Walked back to the hotel. Nice doormen there at the Bund Riverside Hotel. Opened the door for me every time except for once because the one handling that door I was heading to was busy with another guest.

I’m satisfied with the hotel, mainly because of the location. Walking to and from Qipu Road is not boring at all. Even the climbing the stairs to the bridge didn’t feel like an annoyance.

For example, today I watched this old guy pushing his motorbike up the bridge. Couldn’t get my phone out in time to take a picture of that but I did catch him with his bike on the bridge.



I guess that's why motorbikes are more common there than in Singapore. They have an advantage there that bikers here lack: the ability to use the pedestrian pavements and bridges.



4.30pm now. I really should eat the beef dumplings. They must be so damn soggy by now.

No picture for them. They look pretty much the same as the ones from yesterday except for the brown beef soup.

Even if they're soggy, I’m going to eat it. I’m so tired, I’d call for room service if I don’t.

They do have some affordable stuff here, like the dim sum set that included a bowl of fried rice, a bowl of soup, with a platter of dim sum pastries and 3 spring rolls that was priced at 68 RMB. That’s about S$14, and I think it’s pretty worth when I’m this tired.

Decent dumplings. Can’t really tell that it’s beef but at least I can taste beef in the soup.





Intermission

It’s so cold my breath condenses right in front of me when I’m outside. But that stops after a while. I think it just freezes before it even leaves my nose at that point.

And my nose stops being runny outdoors; I just grow nasal icicles.


End of intermission






Tomorrow I return to Singapore.

7.55am flight. That means reaching the airport by 6am, or 5.55am to be exact. I forgot to time my taxi ride the first time. I think I’ll go early just to be on the safe side. Maybe check out of the hotel at 4.30am. If I don’t find a taxi right outside the hotel, I’ll just ask the hotel to call one for me.





This trip has been a failure as far as my main objective goes.

But it’s also been a pretty expensive lesson that drove home a lot of things I didn’t expect to learn, many of which aren’t mentioned here.

Most of the time when people are in my way I just make my footsteps louder. When it’s crowded and noisy, I just nudged them out of my way as I strolled through the largest gap.

The air is so cold I avoid talking and breathing hard as much as I can.

But there was once when there was no gap at all, and without thinking, I just instinctively said,” Excuse me.”

I think everyone turned their heads towards me expecting to see a lao wai.

At least the path cleared quickly.

Speaking of lao wai, I didn’t see any white person there at all. The only one I spotted was eating a roll of waffle near a small Western-style confectionary on my way back to my hotel. For some reason they roll it up when they sell it after toasting (or whatever the process is called) it flat.

I’d expected more to be there given that Qipu Road seemed so well-known online when I was researching it before the trip.





So many people were there touting for secret shops selling pirated goods that I realized that I needed to ignore them like the locals did in order to stop them. After getting harassed by 3 of them in half an hour I realized saying no was only making them more determined to pull me to their shops.

Ignoring them, on the other hand, worked perfectly.

Seriously, one of them went to me three times when I got lost as I had mentioned previously.



Didn’t get to try most of the food I saw. The suspicious-looking food sold by the carts were automatically filtered from my sight and the rest just didn’t seem to interesting.

The sticks of roasted meats seemed interesting but I wasn't hungry at that point, just tired, and they didn’t sell them in bags, I think.


Aaaaaaaand…. I didn’t buy anything for anyone.

On the bright side, I’ve also not spent much this trip. I haven’t and most likely will not spend more than S$1000. Right now there are about 500 RMB in my wallet remaining and I expect to get the entire 700 RMB deposit back from the hotel.

There’s still the 200 RMB taxi ride, so it looks like I’ll be bringing back about 1000RMB. That’s just for the stack I removed from my luggage. I brought more in case I decided to order a whole shipment.

Total expenditure is now going to be about S$800, excluding plane tickets that cost over S$600 but including the hotel charge.

The hotel’s worth the S$65/night mainly because of its proximity to Qipu Road. The walk to Qipu Road in the morning after a heavy breakfast is really pleasant.

And it’s called “Sietong Hotel” or something like that out at the front of the building.

The Bund Riverside Hotel sounds far better than that to me, but I guess they need an English transliteration of its Chinese name for the Chinese citizens who make up the bulk of the guests in this hotel and still maintain a degree of Westernization.

The English name is still carved above the main entrance but it’s hard to notice at night.








I'm typing this now at home at 10pm.

Last night was alright. This morning wasn't.

There was this child getting punished or something next door and he/she kept crying till 2am. I barely got any sleep before 3.50am when I gave up on sleep because I kept thinking about the rest of the day.

Got to the lobby at 4.30am and was pleasantly surprised that this receptionist, although resting her head on her hand and sitting really low, didn't have red eyes.

She did sound a little sleepy but it was 4.30am.

Service was prompt for the most parts although the guy who was responsible for checking my room required several calls to wake up.

He did finish his job really quickly and I was relieved he said nothing, because I was kinda worried I had left something behind or put something belonging to them in my luggage in my haste. I do stupid stuff like that when I'm tired, that's why sometimes in some rants, I make particularly more grammatical and spelling mistakes.

Anyway while they were settling all that, I went to the door to check for taxis. When I arrived the first night, I noticed one just waiting outside. There was none this morning.

So I told the receptionist-cum-clerk-cum-cashier (and now, also -cum-concierge) to call one for me to bring me to Pudong Airport.

She delegated that to the bellboy who walked out and in less than a minute, summoned one right to our doorstep.

Didn't even need to call, so I didn't have to pay extra for booking, if such a thing exists in Shanghai.

The taxis don't have anything explaining the different charges so I don't know.

The bellboy came back to tell me a cab was waiting, so I pointed at the cashier.

The cashier then handed me the receipt which didn't include the final night's charge.

According to her, it hadn't been entered into the system yet.

Kinda understandable, yet not.

4.30am is a rather unreasonable timing, but hotels are supposed to be better than that, especially one that boasts a 4-star rating.

In any case, at least she calculated the total charge right. I thanked her and carried my luggage to the door.

The bellboy came right away and offered to help me with it.

How nice. He could have stayed in his dark corner to rest and I wouldn't have cared, but he didn't.

Got into the cab and told the driver my destination.

He replied that he'd need to go to the petrol station because his tank hadn't been refilled since the day before, which wasn't that long ago given that it was like 4.50am at that point.

So I told him that was fine with me, but I'd like to get there asap to get something to eat.

In the end he just decided against it. Instead, he kept his speed at 80 to conserve fuel. The journey, according to my two receipts, was between 45-50km.

I think the best thing about going for flights at such unholy hours is that there roads are just so empty, so the driver can go at any speed.

Took me a while to realize he was going so slowly because he was conserving petrol.

When I got there, only the 24-hr convenience store was opened, so I got a crappy bottle of coffee at 8RMB. Not worth it at all, but it was the only coffee available in the airport at that point.

The earliest the restaurants open was 6.30am AFAIK.

I sat around, caught a few winks and walked around.

At 5.50am I was the first person not in a group to check in.

Got the same window seat on the same row for both journeys... and later on the way back to Singapore, they were also on the exact same plane.

I wish they could have let me stayed on the plane. I could have slept more if I didn't have to go through all the trouble of walking through the huge airport just to go back to the exact same seat.

The first ride was ok. I was sleeping for the most parts, and near the end, a old man from across the aisle asked me if he could switch seats with me because he wanted to look out of the window.

I got his meaning. I was sleeping the whole time anyway, so the view was completely wasted on me.

Hence I went to his seat and continued with my nap.


Hong Kong International Airport has free wifi internet access for everyone. I didn't even have to log in!

Changi Airport also has the same but I have to talk to the service counter or something to log in.

Anyway, nothing really happened. I got on the plane, and this time the person sitting next to me was some guy in a black suit who really wanted the armrest between us, so much so his elbow kept poking into my body.

I kinda understand. He couldn't fold his arms like I did because it had to be pretty warm in the two layers of clothes, but he could have tried to avoid poking me with his elbow.

>:(

I wonder which one of us made more money last month. Nice suits don't mean shit!

However, I didn't bother telling him because I was just so sleepy. Leaning onto the window to sleep was simpler, and prevents my head from landing on him later.

Not sleeping at all overnight doesn't really bother me at night. The real impact starts only after sunrise. I still don't know why.

So now I'm back. 4 samples I'm not really confident of and lots of experienced gained.

Just don't ask me for advice on travelling to Shanghai. I wasn't there to "travel" exactly, as you can tell by now.

Wednesday 14 December 2011

Rant 906 / Those Little Fees And Charges Do Add Up

First time encountering the situation where someone actually wants to buy from us directly. She wanted to come over to buy directly, but that isn't how things work here.

I don't think I can. Whoa! I'm so new to this I don't even know for sure.

But I don't believe I can sell the same designs to multiple stores.










Walked a lot today. Went to Bugis Junction for the Starhub shop to buy a prepaid SIM card before going to the nearby OG for some luggage locks (I have a membership card there).

Got kinda lost so I went to the Bugis MRT station for the map to reorientate myself. The map in my phone was zoomed into too small an area, such that the first road name I saw outside Bugis Junction couldn't be found in my map.

Went to several other places today to settle other stuff that I normally could spread over several working days.

Then when I finally reached the POSBank near my place, it was 4.55pm and the bank was closed.

That was really annoying.

So now I have to settle that issue after I return on Sunday.

As for my office phone, I'm not transferring it to my bro's phone this time. He's kinda bad at taking down messages for me. I'm just going to have to pay more for my phone bill this month. I don't think I can divert calls to a prepaid number.

I'm kinda surprised by how little I perspired today after so much walking. My hair wasn't dripping by the time I reach OG, and it was pretty sunny until a few hours later.

I think the physical conditioning from the ICT is still effective.













First time using a prepaid SIM card.

I needed one because my current mobile plan only has a on-demand roaming service, ie it charges exorbitant rates. Last month I called someone in China for a total time of over a minute. I was charged over a dollar.

That's more than what my mum pays in some months.

Strangely I'm unable to register with her IDD service. I need to go call them up next time. Been forgetting about it for so long.

So, I paid $15 for a $18 Green Prepaid Mobile SIM Card. The main thing is that it has roaming.

I'm probably being an idiot getting screwed over by buying this card, but we all have got to start somewhere.

I'm so noob at this, I didn't even know why I was being told that I had to register this SIM card after sticking it into my phone for the first time.

I only found out after calling the toll-free customer service hotline that it takes at least an hour after putting it into my phone for it to automatically register.

This could very well also be my final time using a prepaid card, so this knowledge may turn obsolete for me after this trip.

I'm certainly making sure that I can use the Chatchat IDD and roaming services for my next trip.

...


What nonsense is this? It's been 2 hours since I used it and it's still not registered.

Are they talking about office hours?

Because it was 9pm when I opened the packaging.

...


Ok it was finally registered at 12am. Activated a number of stuff including free incoming calls (costs S$0.59 for activation WTF?) and 1GB of data download that expires after 7 days.

I believe the 1GB might be useful if I get lost in Shanghai. Who knows how much I'm going to need when using Google Maps? The next smaller option is 200MB and that sounds really little IMO.

Threw in another $10 because it must have at least $8 for me to make an international roaming call with it.

Total amount spent on this card excluding transport to the shop: $25

"Freebies" I've received:

- incoming calls
- 100 SMS
- $1.50 bonus credit for topping up online
- $3 because it originally contained $18 worth of credit and was priced at $15.


Worth it? No, but I haven't got a better alternative due to my laziness.













Bank of China is rather pointlessly named here in Singapore.

Bank accounts opened at its Singapore branches are not linked to its branches in China.

In other words, they might as well be separate banks.

What nonsense!

The only solution, if I want to spend the money from my BOC account over in China, is to apply for a BOC credit card.

Pffft...

I'd rather use my DBS Visa debit card. At least that doesn't have an annual fee.











Packed everything. Hopefully I didn't miss much, and whatever I do miss I can buy over there. Shouldn't be an issue for most things.

Passport ready. E-ticket ready. Clothes not ready, some still drying. Photocopies of my passport and IC ready. Currencies ready. Laptop ready. Prepaid SIM card most likely ready. Jacket ready. Waist pouch ready. Luggage locks ready. Bathroom necessities (just in case) ready. MFA and Singapore embassy numbers ready. Cheap travel insurance ready (MSIG's TravellerShield Classic, $24)

I just hope I don't get robbed or cheated or fall sick.

Late afternoon flight, reaching there at midnight. I wonder how bad it's going to be.

So far, it's been a educational experience. I'm noting down all my mistakes in this particular rant just in case I forget them.

Tuesday 13 December 2011

Rant 905 / There Are No Guarantees In Life - Even Life Itself Isn't Guaranteed.

I'm in a charitable mood right now and I've just come up with an interesting idea.

From now on, whoever wants to borrow money from me will have to repay me by volunteering at whatever charity I feel like supporting (including the Senor Hybrido Public Transport Fund, which aids this poor person called Senor Hybrido in dealing with rising public transport fares), at a rate of one hour for every $10 borrowed with an interest rate of 10% per annum.

5% p.a. if borrower insists on repaying in cash. The reason is inflation.

For this, I've found some volunteer application forms AND learnt to write a simple IOU which also includes naming a security, eg a car, in case the borrower goes bankrupt.

I predict that this will never be used anyway because I seldom have the money to lend anyone.

If I were rich I wouldn't be buying discounted buns every night for breakfast.

Right now for dinner I've just sauteed two large pieces of chicken breast marinated in sage, rosemary and a pinch of salt.

Chicken breasts go for $10.50 for 5 chickens' worth, or $2.10 for two pieces, at the wet market. The other day he was offering a buy-5-get-1-free deal but he wasn't on Sunday when I bought my current batch.

By sheer luck, I managed to cook them perfectly, such that in the slightly thicker piece I discovered a very thin layer, less than 1mm thick, of pink raw meat.














With the fare revisions by two of the largest taxi companies here, taxi fares have just been effectively raised.

Now we can no longer see peak hour surcharges as extra fees.

The peak hour rate is the new norm; off-peak hour fares are just discounted prices for times when there are low demand.

They might as well use the peak hour rate as the normal rate, then add a discount meter for non-peak hours to calculate how much discount the passenger gets for the ride.

It would probably feel so damn awesome compared to this.











Whoa! Maybank is offering 1.35% p.a. for SGD time deposits that are at least $25,000 and last 24 months, plus 440% on the 0.25% upfront interest at maturity.

That last bit is rather unnecessarily complicated but simply put, it's just an extra 1.1% of the deposit, making the total interest rate 1.90% p.a..

The fees and charges for counter services are pretty annoying though. It's like they're totally discouraging that in favour of online services.

Makes sense, but it's like the bank is trying too hard to hasten the change if you ask me.












I've been exercising less. No motivation.

Still, my LoL win rate has improved dramatically for the last several days.

Then again, that may be because I've been going for a short walk to a bakery nearby at around 8pm for the nightly pre-closing discounts.

My bro doesn't really like those buns, but they make a cheap and convenient breakfast.












No reply from Mindef yet. I wonder how long this is going to take.

Friday 9 December 2011

Rant 904 / Awaiting Their Reply

Exercise refreshes the mind. This ICT confirms it again. Things seem clearer than before, or maybe I've forgotten too much.

This ICT was definitely NOT what I expected.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to wait for a reply from Mindef about what I can and cannot discuss in public about my ICT before I describe my 5 days there in this blog.

I was actually waiting for it until Saturday evening because in the late morning they gave me a reply that they're forwarding my query to the "relevant department".

Until then, I'll just rant like it never happened.

Because if I do mention the wrong things and the Military Security Department finds out, it's not going to be pleasant for me.
















So true!










The video editing seems much better this season.











Meanwhile, I'm frankly surprised at how the traffic to this blog stayed steadily above 100 Monday through Friday and only dropped on Saturday.

As a matter of fact, my last rant got significantly more views than usual even though it contained nothing particularly interesting IMO.













Now that I've got over 6300IPs in LoL and no champion that I want to buy, I'm considering the option of a whole new rune page for some unorthodox rune strategy.

I'm the sort of player who prefer all-rounded runes in order for each page to be useful for a large variety of champions in case I feel to picking different ones for each game.

I do that sometimes.

I already have one for magic penetration and another for armour penetration, both of which have the same yellows and blues. For the seals (yellow), half of them are flat armour ones with 3 flat mana regen and 1 magic resist (per level). For the glyphs (blue), half are cooldown reductions and the other half are magic resists. Two magic resists are per level and the rest are flat.

I know there are some that aren't exactly right, like the mana regen, the MR seal and the per level MR, but the difference is minimal.

Hence I'm thinking I should get a new page for some new runes.

Perhaps it shall be all about dodge, and I'll name the page "The Dodgemaster".

All seals with be 0.75% dodge and the quintessences with be 1.5% dodge.

With these, the total dodge will reach 9 * 0.75% + 3 * 1.5% = 6.75% + 4.5% = 11.25%

IMO, dodge is no different from damage reduction overall. The real difference is only in the short term.

If I have a graph of damage taken over time for someone with 10% dodge and another with 10% damage reduction, they will both look the same when zoomed out.

Unless the champion is squishy, ie low HP, this short term difference is not going to be significant, and in fact it could even be beneficial.

The disadvantage of 10% dodge over 10% damage reduction is that it is too likely that an insane burst of damage will have its full impact on you, ie 90% * (number of blows dealt within the split second).

The advantage, in contrast, is as follows:

- 10% chance of avoiding a disabling any special effects that an autoattack could cause
- 10% chance of avoiding a fatal blow
- 10% to piss off the other guy

Basically, what I'm saying is that a non-squishy champion will benefit more from dodge than damage reduction.

Unfortunately, Riot Games is phasing out dodge. Their first move was to remove the mastery, and now they're gradually refunding players for their Evasion runes. Eventually, the rune itself will be unavailable.

Their reason for this is because it's imba, probably for the advantages I described.

"...dodge is an entirely new defense type that doesn’t have a series of sensible counters to it."

In other words, imba.

And I figured that out too late.

I just wonder what new runes they're coming up with, because I'm kinda interested in spend a bit of cash on the game if they offer some good promotions for Christmas.







There are still more runes that benefit everyone, like HP and HP regen. Maybe...

HP is obviously better than HP regen. There are many ways to recover HP, but never enough to handle unexpected gang rapes.

Let's see how much HP we can get if I go all out HP boosts.

Marks (red): 9 * 3.47 = 31.23
Seals: 9 * 5.35 = 48.15
Glyphs: 9 * 2.67 = 24.03
Quintessences: 3 * 26 = 78

Total: 181.41

Not worth it at all.








Or I can focus on cooldown reductions. Those are always useful.

The only catch to this is that it's capped at 40%.

Also, it's probably one of the few rune types out there that are more effective when using the per-level sort compared to the flat ones, because more of it in the early game just isn't as awesome as having more of it in late game.


However, the 40% limit means that the runes stop being awesome once my item build is nearing completion, because I can get 35% just from Morello's Evil Tome and Shurelya's Reverie.

Sunday 4 December 2011

Rant 903 / What Will It Be Like?

Spent a whole evening packing. My bro wasn't of much help since he'd only seen reservists at his Air Force camp, but he did tell me a few useful things.

Now I've got most of the things for my field pack and an incredibly heavy bag for the rest of the stuff. The clothes and other necessities aren't heavy - the SBO (standard battle order) and helmet are.

Since the stuff in the field pack are mainly for show, I've used a few items that I can't use, like a pair of PT shorts that too small for me, because I don't have enough of them. All I have are 2 PT shorts that fit and I have IPPT during the week-long in-camp training. I need one pair as my pajamas.

There were surprisingly few problems with the packing. I had expected worse but the only thing that is unexpected missing is my own field pack aka backpack.

It's GONE!

I'd always thought it was above my cupboard but when I pulled down everything from there, all I got was the camouflaged bottle and my SBO.

Fortunately my bro's field pack is still easily found with all the dangling straps neatly taped, and the straps fit me too.

He had also packed everything nicely due to some sort of field pack packing competition back in his unit before he left, but I didn't need those.

The most major thing that's missing is the torch but I can probably buy one tomorrow.

My in-camp reservist training aka ICT begins tomorrow and ends on Friday, so obviously I won't be blogging for some time.

Phone's mostly prepared too. I've to switch to another phone because I can't bring a camera phone to camp. I've got most of the important (ie work) contacts transferred to my shitty non-camera phone but I'm too lazy to add my friends. If they call, I can probably tell from the voice anyway.



The uniforms are terrible though. Whoever did the measurements, he/she was so damn bad at estimating the length increments for each size. Either that or our body sizes vary too much for him/her to handle.

Either way, the uniforms were badly designed, such that pants that fit my waist are too damn long and shirts that barely fit my torso have sleeves that are too large and too long.

My uniform looks baggy on me now, except it's not. The pants fit my waist nicely but it can cover half my sole if I stand barefooted. My shirt can fit my torso snugly but the sleeves cover half my palm and can probably hold two of each of my arms.

I'm whining so much about this because I handle such design problems in my job. Manufactories don't automatically know how large your sleeves should be or how slim your waists are. That's where the designer comes in and that's part of my jobscope.

As a matter of fact, handling this was one of the first things I was taught when I joined this business.

The pants, in this case, isn't as huge a problem as the shirts, because when we put on our boots, we have garters to tied the bottom of the pants to keep them above our boots.

The shirts, on the other hand, are pure shittiness. The designer was probably not even Asian. If he was, he either didn't know much about Singaporean body shapes or he was told to make sure everyone can wear the sizes they're supposed to wear regardless of any irregularities in body shape so that nobody has to order custom-made uniforms.

In the latter case, it would mean making everything excessively large, which also fits my observations.

I bet if I used my measuring tape on this set of uniform in front of me, my mind would be blown even if I compare it with the standards for thick jackets.




As for my work, I think my bro's prepared. I've given him instructions, photos, keys and phone numbers. As long as I have access to my phone once in a while during office hours everyday, he should be able handle everything.

Quite a bit is happening at work in the coming week though, so I expect him to call me about something I have yet to speak to him about.

I can't teach him everything in a few days; I don't even know what I missed.

Friday 2 December 2011

Rant 902 / Free MMOs Everywhere!

It's now 4.30pm on Friday. I'm already 600g lighter than I was on Wednesday during my first IPT session.

I think I'll be light enough even before I get out of camp on the coming Friday.

Did a lot of walking today. Not much yesterday due to bad sleep.

Slept much better last night and got more productive during the day. The fact that I can't do anything next week also helped motivate me to do more today.












Made two fixed deposit today after purchasing 2 cashier's orders from POSB. First was free but the second cost me S$5. If I bought them online they would have been free but for some reason, the max was far lower than necessary. Even stranger was how the service was not available when I tried to get multiple cheques to bypass the limit.

One deposit was at UOB since it was having a promotional rate of 0.95% for 18 months .

The banker tried to get me to sign up for other programmes that offer more interest rates but I decided to spend some time to mull on it.

First thing she tried to get me to get was some long-term thing that offered 3% interest per annum. "Long-term" in this case means at least 15 years, during which I can only withdraw 15% max after 2 years. But it's risk-free and it's got a whopping 3% interest rate versus the 0.95% of the fixed deposit's promotional rate.

The second one had minimal risk and will incur a low fee. Those made my ears switch off and I can currently remember nothing about it. Something about emerging market bonds. Whatever.

I'm also not inclined to get the first because plenty of things change in 15-25 years. After such a long time, the Singapore Dollar can be worth as much as the Indonesian Rupiah is today. Who knows?

Certainly not the Indonesians 15 years ago.

And it felt weird when she kept exclaiming about how young I was to have the money I was depositing.

I have to lose both parents for it. That's one reason I'm not as excited about having it as she seems to think I should be.





After that I went to Hong Leong to upsize my current fixed deposit that had already matured earlier last month.

With my current deposit amount, I qualify for a pretty damn high promotional interest rate.

I agreed to 2 years for the even higher rate.

Honestly speaking, I've never got such a high interest rate before since I started putting my money into fixed deposits, so what I signed up for is fantastic. In fact the highest I can remember getting was around 0.8%.

Right now the lowest promotional rate for 1 year is 1%.

Also received 2 sets of 2-tier ceramic casserole aka tingkat as free gifts. They will cost me S$40 if I make an early withdrawal, which isn't an issue at all but shit happens, so it's something to take note of.

But I don't think it's a good idea to put all my money into one bank, or I'd be getting an even better rate. However, placing all your cash into one bank is exactly what all banks want.

And I like how nonchalant that bank teller was. The amount was about twice that of what I deposited at UOB and she didn't appear to give a damn about it.











Garena is getting Firefall!

The game looked pretty good back when I first saw it but I have reservations about it as usual because games tend to get overhyped a lot these days.

Garena seems to be getting really successful at what it's doing, and surprisingly so given that it thrived on piracy, IMO. Then again, it was standing on this really grey area by saying that it is giving gamers a new platform, kinda like Battlenet except for all games.

The problem is that the games would need to be kinda cracked to be able to play on Garena, which means you can't tell if a player is using a legit copy because it doesn't matter.

And it worked. Now it's even managed to publish good games for free!

I'm looking forward to playing Firefall. Maybe I'll even spend some money to support it... if I survive the coming year.











Corpse Party looks like a really awesome game. Spent more than an hour watching someone playing on live on Vidyavidya. It's a classic JRPG-style game, except it's in the horror genre.

The Japanese are good at horror stuff, so the game turned out to be quite successful, according to Wikipedia.

Too bad it was 3am by the time he finished the first chapter, so I had to go to bed.

I'd buy that game but it's on PSP. Totally sucks. Maybe I'll watch recordings of it on Youtube but it's just never as fun to watch it live where you can talk to the player.










Lineage 2 is now free to play. According to my bro they made it much more casual than the original, ie much less grinding which the game was notorious for.

Still not interested. I'm still haunted by my bad memories of it back when it was first released. I was addicted to it but at the same time I found the grinding so painful.

Thursday 1 December 2011

Rant 901 / New IPT BMI Programme

First IPPT Preparatory Training (IPT) session tonight. It certainly was informative.

Apparently obese guys like myself can opt for the weight-loss programme aka "BMI programme" instead of the normal one that involves Personal Performance Targets (PPT).

In the former, all we've got to do is to lose a certain amount of weight. Everyone has to fall under a certain height and weight level to begin with, and we must reach the next level by losing weight within 9 months, or we'll have to go for another 8 sessions of Remedial Training spread over 3 months.

Each level is only 3-4kgs apart as far as I can tell, so each of us are expected to lose that much over 9 whole months.

Sounds pretty easy for me, but only because of my current situation.

Ever since I started working where I am now, I've been steadily losing weight. So far I've dropped 7kgs and it doesn't seem to be slowing down. I can't remember how long exactly I've been working but it's probably since March.

If so, that's almost 1kg/month.

I won't even have to attend any of the sessions -  I just got to go to work!

At any point within the 9 months after my last birthday, if I'm confident that I've hit the next level's weight requirement, I can just book a session and, before it begins, request that my height and weight be measured.

Then I'll be considered to have pass my IPPT till my birthday.

I'm only 2kgs away from my next level, so I'm not even planning to attend any sessions till I feel like it, probably somewhere in February.

Maybe even just before Christmas, when I'm back from reservist training and Shanghai trip, both of which I believe will make me lose even more weight.

Firstly, I handle a machine gun in my current unit, and that's pretty heavy. Handling it will probably be tiring work.

Second, since I'm going to be alone in Shanghai, I'll probably not eat a lot. Perhaps I'll buy a lot of food back to the hotel for dinner but I won't be eating outside if I can help it. There is only one food that I absolutely won't eat in the hotel - fermented beancurd. I'd be asking for it if I do.




As for the PPT programme, it's significantly harder. Then again, if not for my job, even losing 2kgs would be hard.

Anyway, everyone in that programme fall into different categories depending on their best result since their last IPPT window. They must reach the standards of the next level in order to get out of this.

The main problem isn't that. The trouble really lies in the fact that in the following year, they will remain in the level they had reached and must hit the standards of the next higher level in order to pass regardless of whether their performance had become worse since they last came for training.

I have no idea if it's the same for the BMI programme, and I don't really care. From today onwards I have practically no problem with IPPT till my birthday next year.