Thursday 31 March 2011

Rant 756 / D.O.

So it's strange. In cases where a sentence mentions a cause and an effect, I've never noticed that the English language prefers to place the effect first and the cause second, using conjunctions like "because" and "as" to connect the two.

I asked the lecturer why "so" doesn't seem to be taken into account here, because this word could be used to place the cause first (John was injured, so he couldn't run). That's why I remember this so clearly. Asking helps the learning process.

"So" is more frequently used to connect compound sentences, apparently. In the cause and effect case, the sentences are complex ones.

Just to give a brief recap: a compound sentence has 2 independent clauses, like your mother and father; a complex sentence has one clause that is dependent on the other, like you and your mother; a complex-compound sentence has 2 independent clauses and at least one dependent one, like you, your mother and your stepfather.

According to her, "so" implies a much vaguer link between the two clauses and doesn't always clearly express the cause-and-effect relation, ie quoting her, "looser".

I never noticed it, but she knew that somehow because she also explained that this was caused by a lot of intermixing of Chinese and English sentence structures by Singaporeans, a symptom of an incomplete education in the two languages.

This, in turn, is because in Chinese, the cause is almost always stated first before the effect (因为,所以;因此). Occasionally flipping them over is fine, but if there are too many of these in an essay, the writer can be regarded as having a poor command of written Chinese and the essay may end up being confusing to readers.

But all these do not affect my frequent usage of "so" because I'm usually not using it to express such a relation, as shown in the first sentence of this rant.








The 3D Sex and Zen film is going to be shown here with 18mins less "Sex" here. Are they going to compensate with 18mins of "Zen"?

I'm not sure if I'm ever going to be interested in appreciating the principles of Zen Buddhism while having an erection.








I think Pastamania has become my bro's favourite delivery service because that's what he ordered the last two times.

Can't say much about the pizzas. By the time I got home they were cold, and all cold pizzas taste the same.

The spaghetti, on the other hand, was much better.





This was the Chicken Cheese Salsiccla spaghetti, non-spicy. It was still quite warm when I got back roughly 2-2.5 hours after it was delivered, unlike the pizzas and the paninis. It was basically a tomato-based sauce with chicken cheese sausages slightly larger than a thumb, though they were all invisible because the sauce covered them.

The sauce was too sour, but other than that, it was alright.

As for the paninis, never leave them overnight. The hashbrown inside will never get better unless drastic measures are taken, like re-frying it. Merely reheating the panini in an oven does not improve the taste of the hashbrown that was left in the fridge overnight

And that's my set up when I eat - waste paper ( in this case, a KFC flyer and a Readers' Digest lottery letter) to cover the keyboard, a small towel/handkerchief for emergencies and the big yellow cover from a MCD Big Breakfast now being reused as my coaster (damage reduction measure during spills).









Why are they complaining about the change to paperless tickets? I think that's a great idea for people who want to pay decent prices to concerts and other events. This is a strong measure to prevent scalping, which is the practice of reselling tickets at higher prices for profit.

The only people who should be unhappy about it are those who resell tickets to make money. For the real consumers, it's just an inconvenience.

In short, the article is pointless.









One of the most under-appreciated joys in life has to be the feel of relieving an exploding bladder under a hot shower.

Yes, I'm a guy.

Another is probably the taste of your favourite food when you're starving.








I'm pretty sure a crow or two has set up a home on the floor either above or below mine. I keep seeing crows flying up and down my window like 5-6 times a day and it's probably the same bird. No little birds are heard yet but they may be trying to make some.

Tuesday 29 March 2011

Rant 755 / I Am Suddenly Interested In Playing Silent Hill 2

Monday



I'm slightly surprised at the weekend that just ended. Between browsing EDMW, watching the stream on Vidya2, doing work, blogging and eating, I found that I didn't have much time to play games at all! All I did was complete the final round of the newbie campaign and go halfway through the second round of the second campaign of Caesar IV (completed the first round earlier last week).

What a busy weekend I had!

Speaking of Vidya2, one guy was streaming himself playing the WiNi. The WiNi is like a Wii in terms of appearance but has a number of built-in games.

Apparently he bought it at a very low price, though no actual number was ever mentioned. Just because it had Sudoku and a Bomberman-like game (a rip offone of the early ones, with colour), he said it was worth the money. I think it's easy to judge from that comment.

He's from the Netherlands, so it's interesting how far Chinese bootleg versions of modern gaming consoles can spread.

That WiNi had several key differences from the Wii.

- There's a capital N in the name.
- The graphics are from the SNES era.
- Most of the games are similar to those in old 2G colour-screen phones.
- The controller response timing was terrible. It had a split-second lag as far as I could tell when he was playing the music games.
- Almost every game used the literal name for the activity as the game title, eg the boxing game was entitled "Boxing", although there was no jazz music in the music game with the word "Jazz" in its name.
- Here's the most important feature of all - there is no disc drive.









Just read about gaman on Wikipedia.

Showing gaman is seen as a sign of maturity and strength. Keeping your private affairs, problems and complaints silent demonstrates strength and politeness as others have seemingly larger problems as well.

So instead of whining about my problems to people I know, I keep this blog which I passively try to keep apart from my real identity. I said "passively" because I don't actually do anything; all I really do is not mention this blog IRL and mention my identity here.

This means I do whine, except in secret (from the point of view of people who know me IRL). From this, I can deduce that I'm only pretending to show gaman because I pretend to keep my "private affairs, problems and complaints silent".

But it's true that I'm not the only one with problems. In fact, sometimes I feel that a lot of my friends have bigger problems that I do

One issue I'm going to have, I thought of only yesterday.

The work that we do is unique to us and the buyer. Other stores do things quite differently, in a much harder way (for us). This means that when she retires, there is no guarantee her successor will allow us to keep doing what we do now. In fact, there is too much competition in Singapore for me to safely assume that it is likely she will continue what the current buyer is doing.

And judging from her age, I'm guessing I'll be in my 30s by the time she retires, or earlier if she gets promoted to elsewhere. If she stays there till retirement, it's not going to make it any easier for me to find a job if I close the business down then.

All these leave me only 3 options in the long term:

1) Learn fashion design, which is risky since, again, I have no background in this at all.

2) Diversify into other products in the future, which is very risky IMO.

3) Rely on my degree.

Despite saying that options 1 and 2 are risky, I feel that I'm inclined to go with both. Anything to escape the dreaded 8-to-5 (with OT everyday).







Ok, I've just most definitely screwed up my second of three assignment of this Contrastive Analysis of Chinese/English module. Managed to somehow get an "average" score for the first (according to the lecturer, anything over 70 from her was a distinction), but this time, I'm very sure it was not done well. This subject is hard. The entire assignment had only one question - analyse and compare the original sentence and the translated sentence, except each question required the analysis to come from different angles and the final question was to use any angle.

I'm just not familiar with this enough and I was not familiar with this subject prior to taking this module unlike all the stuff in other modules.

Damn. I need to do better for the last then.







Tuesday



Oh no, I'm close to getting sick. This coffee tastes strangely bitter, only at the back of my tongue. Either I'm too heaty or the condensed milk has expired.

Let me taste this again...

It's just the back of the tongue.

Fortunately I have plenty of herbal teas in the fridge, including 2 (300ml?) bottles of the "24-herbs" herbal tea, aka 廿四味 (nian4 si4 wei4). AFAIK that's one of the strongest cooling herbal tea in traditional chinese medicine and since I was young, that was what I was always given when lesser herbal teas like chrysanthemum tea didn't work.

I'm not saying I actually believe in the heat and coolness system in traditional chinese medicine but after at least 3000 years of refining and trials-and-error, it has to be doing something correctly. I mean, if your entire race has been throwing darts from 500m away for over 3 millenia, some of them have to end up with a perfect bullseye, right?

Furthermore, legend has it that in ancient times, physicians test unknown herbs on their disciples to record the effects, and if they run out of those, they test it on themselves. Let's not let those lives go to waste.

Anyway it's strange that 廿 is pronounced nian4 because in Cantonese, it's pronounced "ya" (can't translate the tone). Almost all words I know in Cantonese are pronounced pretty similarly to their Mandarin pronunciation, yet "ya" and "nian" are seriously worlds apart.

Speaking of chrysanthemum tea, I've only recently learnt that I'm not supposed to boil it. All I need to do is to bring the pot of water to boil and dump the dried flowers into the boiling water before turning off the heat. Sugar's added last after the flowers have been sieved out, and to taste.

I boiled a pot of it for a minute or so, and it tasted much stronger than what I'm used to. Perfectly drinkable, just not as pleasant. The taste was too heavy, not sure that's the correct way to describe it.








The colours in my job are weird due to the crappy quality of dyes (I think) in the Chinese factories. Certain shades of red, if I wanted to order my goods in those, have to be called another shade of red in order to have the right shade.

If one is unlucky, they might get end up delivering diarrhoea brown instead of burgundy. I admit I'm exaggerating here, but not by much.

In any case, I wouldn't be able send it back and ask for refund if that happens. The Chinese Chinese, they're great at pretending to be stupid. Together with their irresistibly low prices, that's how they make money.

After all, that's what they call 扮猪吃老虎 (translation: pretend to be a pig to eat the tiger).







I don't get it. Why would the stats of my blog be of interest to anyone? Yet if it interests no one, why is it that every time I mention it, my page views rise a little?

Yesterday (Monday) I looked at the total page views for this blog on the day before, and I thought maybe the slight increase was due to it being a weekend. Then I looked at it again today and it had remained constant yesterday, a Monday. Moreover, the last rant had a particularly low view count since it was published, so the rise probably wasn't caused by it.

This could mean it has been at that rate since the last time I checked.

(My first attempt at using Memegenerator)



No, I'm not going to give any specific numbers this time.


Disclaimer: Given that I only check the numbers once a week at most, I may have been completely wrong. Who knows? Better yet, who cares?

Sunday 27 March 2011

Rant 754 / Elbow Pit Hair

I'm not very familiar with the Japanese adult video industry news, hence it's only now that I learnt that they have made just 2 anaglyphic 3D films so far - one starring Mika Kayama and another starring Yuma Asami.

Unlike the first 3D video I've seen a long time ago, these 2 videos do not make anything "pop up" and appear close to the viewer. Instead, all the 3D effect does is give the screen depth, just like a certain 3D movie I've seen last year, as if the room is just behind the screen and that if the viewer can get a hand through it, he'd be able to touch the people in the video.

I wonder how different the techniques are and why they can't make anything "pop up" like the first one I saw did.

Another thing is, why not Sora Aoi?









The Straits Times needs a reality check. I need to tone down on my anti-PAP rants.

But I can't help it whenever I encounter something so ridiculous. This guy is actually comparing our ministers' salaries with the ICT (In-Camp Training, ie reservist) compensation for NSmen!

The arguments can go like this: that if one wants to serve the nation, one must be prepared to sacrifice and forgo one's income worth.

Very true, yes.

If one were to use this line of logic, does it mean we should also not compensate our national servicemen during their in-camp training? After all, they should be prepared to sacrifice for their country and it's only income and not their lives they are sacrificing. This would save lots of taxpayer money.

You know what? I agree with this too.


What he failed to mention is that while ministers are free to leave their jobs whenever they want, we can't just quit our National Service and refuse to go for ICT. Their ministerial positions in the government are not their only jobs! Some of them even hold multiple directorships in other organizations.

Furthermore, the ministers receive annual bonuses pegged to our GDP, up to 8 months' pay this year.

These flaws in his logic are apparently too minuscule for him to notice, I guess.






I'm very sure I'm not being exposed to the PAP's point of view enough. However, I feel that the PAP isn't trying to reach out of the people online at all, even though that's where most of the current generation of voters are.

Where's the PAP Youtube channel? Even the DPRK has one.

The PAP's Facebook page is disappointing. All it contains is a short history copied from Wikipedia and is like by only 498 people (or 5 people with about 99 alt accounts each).

Can that even be considered as trying?

Oh wait... they have a website.


Remembered this only when I read this article saying that our ministers' pay is fair. I fully agree with this article and finds that it helps give me more balanced perspective that I remember having last week.










For some strange reason this made me lol.






Maybe I was bored but this made me laugh so hard.






And another.






Because random Jamaican men singing at your bathroom window are perfectly safe.






There are so many!





GI Joe, now in Japanese.










Wow this is certainly embarrassing. I've only just learnt the difference between a Current account and Savings account - a Current account doesn't accumulate interests and can be used with a chequebook, while Savings is the opposite.

Man...

Also been reading a little on private banking. I know it's useless but who knows? Maybe it will be useful someday.

Private banking originally began when wealthy men needed a dedicated banker for themselves whom they can contact at any time to discuss money matters.

Nowadays, private banking has been greatly cheapened and no longer involves such a cool service for everyone. At the cheapest level, you get a phone number to a call centre which would sound posher than the usual bank tellers. On a higher, more expensive level, you get a direct number to a specific banker, whose number is available to only a couple hundred of other "wealthy" men like you and is able to re-direct you to specialists according to your needs.

That's probably what most rich people can get.

All these services also cost money and they don't come cheap (obviously).

As for the minimum sum required, I can only get numbers from UK articles, where the lowest number was 50k GBP.

Saturday 26 March 2011

Rant 753 / 卫斯理

Are air-cons that cold in local malls? Or are they just trying to attract more attention to Earth Hour by making this issue bigger than it really is?

Personally I never feel too cold anywhere.

On the other hand, I remember the malls in Penang that turned theirs to full blast instead of employing other measures to keep the cool air in. I can still clearly recall how every time I walked past an entrance, there was always a strong cold wind.

Not only did they not use an air door to seal the entrances, I often saw manual glass doors that were just left open.

I know electricity is cheap in Malaysia, but seriously?










A new office chair!

Actually it's not new at all. In fact, I had to spend several minutes dusting it. My family's been using it for storage purposes so it had been buried under a lot of old junk, including brochures and insurance documents dating from 2009.

Hence I had completely forgotten about it; I'm not even sure what it was originally meant for.

It's just some crappy 5-wheeled adjustable office chair that's bound to be terribly warm. To slow down the inevitable putrefying process caused by an accumulation of dried sweat, I've covered it with a large towel that is going to be changed every few days.

The stool was getting really painful on my ass.









So I just noticed I've a significant number of invites on Messenger.  Never looked at them before. Apparently they were some kind of spam. I bet if I accepted them all I'll get fcktons of spam messages.

It's easy to tell they're not real. All of the those whose profiles I opened randomly were the same - white females in their mid-20s. Makes no sense, even though they typed personal descriptions on their profiles.

One of the advantages of being an Asian in Asia, I guess.



Also got a number of legit ones from friends who changed their emails. Ignored them as well. I don't use Messenger these days.










Everyone's busy working these days except my mum. This is starting to look good, but I'm not sure.

On the other hand, I'm beginning to see that for most people, the amount of free time they have is inversely proportional to the amount of money in their wallets.

Well, again, except for my mum. Come to think about it, I believe it's because she's so experienced in her line of work that she knows exactly how much she can push to her employees.

Yet again, I'm unsure about this. It could very well be that they're cutting her some slack because everyone working with her is aware that her health hasn't been too good in recent years.

Which leads me to this puzzling question of why they're are so eager to help me get into this business and eventually take over.

Unlike my father, I'm no artist and I've no experience with management. The closest to leadership I've ever tried was being a section leader for a year in NS, which basically isn't much of a leadership position since there were only 4-5 guys under me. Furthermore, unlike my mother, I've no experience with textiles and knitting.

In short, I was never groomed for this. Then again, I gave up on what I was groomed for a few years ago.

Doubt.

It is human to doubt. It is my nature to be cautious.

I can understand why her employees were relieved to hear I was starting to help her. Their jobs were on the line after all. But what about her buyer, the main one? What does she have to lose by losing a supplier when there are quite a few others trying to compete with us, eg my cousin? She hasn't been doing well recently according to the buyer, so she would have jumped at the opportunity.

I cannot figure that out. Are we that honest and reliable?

I don't believe I've mentioned this cousin before. It's not something I like to think about.

Before my father passed away, he wanted her to come over with her husband to help him handle his business while he was being treated for his illness. Little did anyone expect him to die back then, not even himself. Of course he didn't. He was only 50 then and had even survived a stomach surgery two decades before because he had drunk and smoked too much, something all Chinese men in this region who could afford it did.

So after he died, my mum tried to talk them into an agreement in which she would invest the money he left behind while they handled the business. Yea I know what that sounds like, but she hadn't worked for a decade (my father told her to quit her job and be a housewife) and they knew more about the operation of the business than she did. My father, who had taken the advice of his scum-of-the-society elder brother, never trusted my mother with anything related to the management of the business, and didn't even have a joint bank account with her.

I have a rather negative impression of my uncle for very good reasons. He was the reason we had to flee Hong Kong, but that's another story.

Anyway, not only did they refuse the offer, but they also tried to get my mum to sign a letter of authorization that basically would have transferred the business to them.

That was a big deal. The business had a good reputation and had clients among some of the biggest chain stores in Singapore. We no longer do now because my mum couldn't handle the work. Allowing my paternal relatives to take over the business would have been a very bad thing, almost a repeat of history, which is part of the "another story".

Fortunately, my mum handed the letter to the lawyer who handled the intestate business for our family before signing it, who told her that not only should she never do it, but to also renew her business license before it expired, because at that point they could register their business under our name.

The next part I might have mentioned before, but I think I had been referring to her as "my aunt", which she wasn't since she's one of my father's sisters' daughter, making her my cousin.

They didn't leave Singapore after that, probably expecting that my father would strangely leave his business to them. Why would any father do something like that? What sense would that have made? But why else did they try to take over the business, other than greed? I don't believe greed alone had motivated them back then. But greed might have convinced them that the above was true, that he was going to hand the business to them if something happened to him.

What they did after that was to rent an office near hers and went into exactly the same business, probably because those two were the only things they were familiar with in Singapore. At first they were successful, judging from news that she had showered my relatives with expensive gifts and even bought houses back in China.

Moreover, they were never nice or anything to us even when my father was only recently dead. Whether the offer my mum made insulted them I'll likely never know, but what I do know is that for years they were talking behind her back, trying to influence her clients to stop doing business with her. It only backfired, but nevertheless, my mum was unable to handle the amount of work that my father could, so she stopped doing business with the more demanding (and hence more expensive/prestigious) chain stores anyway.

After a couple of years, things apparently went sour for them. According to my paternal great-uncle (my paternal grandfather's brother) and his daughters (also my aunts, I guess), the only paternal relatives on good terms with my family, she wiped out her husband's entire life savings, which probably caused their divorce.

So now both of them are still here and still in the same business, but on a smaller scale. Not that it really matters to me since our business does not work with any of the stores/boutiques close to those that they work with.

But this is why I'm curious. Ours is a rather niche market, so there aren't that many people involved. The buyer could easily just buy from her when my mum stops working. Why would it be a bad thing to her if our business closes down?

Is it because this relationship has some kind of deeper meaning for her? Because she knew both my parents and regard them as personal friends? This is probably the best explanation I have for this but I can't confirm.











Here's an interesting read that touches on a lot of things I've read about but never dwelled on.

I think I'll copy and paste some parts. This is by no means complete though.



Given that Singapore’s poor are amongst the Developed World’s poorest, while living standards are amongst the highest in the world, it is not difficult to see why the Government’s ridiculous salaries are distastefully inflated.



Environment Minister Yaacob Ibrahim said that the government knew the diversion canal was not big enough to take the rainwaters. He claimed that because this sort of “freak events” occur only once every 50 years, there was nothing the government could do about it. The Bukit Timah Canal was constructed in 1972, almost 40 years ago – about time something that happens “once every 50 years” would occur. Additionally, meteorologists reported that ‘this flood comes three years after one of Singapore’s worst floodings in recent history, in December 2006‘.



It is a well-known fact that GIC and Temasek Holdings, Singapore’s two sovereign wealth funds, are both headed by members of the Lee family. Both have reported a ridiculous loss of $41.6 Billion and $39.91 Billion respective and have yet to answer to the real stakeholders – Singaporeans – on how this could have happened.

“When we invest, we invest for the long-term”, Lee Kuan Yew, who heads GIC, said when Temasek Holdings purchased Bank of America shares and then sold it off a few months later, losing between US$2.3 to US$4.6 billion just like that.


Masquerading as an independent paper, the Straits Times, while not necessarily fabricating facts on its own (at least I hope not), blatantly twists them. For example (extracted from here), the media was full of praise of Temasek CEO Ho Ching for earning a few million dollars on paper, but failed to highlight her disastrous investment decisions such as buying the shares of Barclays bank at a high and selling them at a low a few months later.


The Straits Times credited the Singapore Internal Security Department for providing the crucial “intelligence” which led to the capture of escaped terrorist Mas Selamat Kasteri by the Malaysian Special Branch. It turned out that the operation was part of a joint collaboration by the Malaysian, Singapore and Indonesian police and the Singapore ISD actually played only a minor role in the capture of Mas Selamat, but the Straits Times did not mention this to give the public the full picture, choosing rather to mislead Singaporeans into believing that ISD had indeed “redeemed” itself.





On 2 February 1963, just a few months before the elections, Operation Coldstore was launched and more than a hundred people were arrested and detained without trial, including the Secretary-General and other key members of the Barisan Sosialis, the PAP’s biggest threat.

Despite the heavy blow, which was obviously undermined the Barisan Sosialis’ success at the Elections, they won 33.2% of the popular vote and the PAP took 46.9%. What do you think the PAP would have gotten if it hadn’t carried out Operation Coldstore?


At the age of 22, Lim Chin Siong was elected into the Legislative Assembly, and he was so popular among the people that Lee Kuan Yew was prompted to promise that he would be ‘our future Prime Minister‘ (guess who became PM instead?).

However, he soon grew disillusioned with the PAP and left to form the Barisan Sosialis in 1961. Under the pretext of being a communist, he was detained without trial under Operation Coldstore for SIX YEARS until he was forced to renounce politics and went into exile in 1969.

Lee Kuan Yew himself said of him “I liked and respected him for his simple lifestyle and his selflessness. He did not seek financial gain or political glory. He was totally committed to the advancement of his cause“.




The fact that practically no young Singaporean knows about important people like Lim Chin Siong, or even David Marshall, our first Chief Minister, is testament to the spectacular failure of our education system. All they ever learn about our country’s history is LKY and Raffles, LKY and Raffles, LKY and Raffles, and maybe a bit about the War.



As if insensitive MPs are not enough, the PAP is fielding hyper-sensitive wimps behind the shadows with their GRC Trick. Tell me who on earth has ever been afraid of being killed by an aluminium chair slammed against a door?




tldr,

VOTE WISELY

Friday 25 March 2011

Rant 752 / Qu'ils Mangent De La Brioche

So a factory we do business with in China requested a letter of authorization to use our brand name and logo. For some reason they're encountering problems with this legal issue only now. Why? What law was changed recently in China?

They faxed my boss a letter of authorization for her to sign... except it was a little too general IMO.


[business name] hereby authorizes [factory name] to manufacture and export apparel bearing our brand name and/or logo produced in their factory located at [factory address]. This authorization is valid through December 31, 2011. If you require additional information, please contact me directly at [hp no.] or via email [email].

My problem with this was that this was going to allow them to produce those "apparel" for any purpose, including export to other stores in Singapore without our knowing.

So I had raised this issue and was instructed to make some changes. This is the end result. I haven't printed it yet. Probably will do that tomorrow or something.


[business name] hereby authorizes [factory name] to manufacture and export for us apparel bearing our brand name and/or logo produced in their factory located at [factory address]. [business name] does not authorize the use of such apparel for any other purposes. This authorization is valid through December 31, 2011. If you require additional information, please contact me directly at [hp no.] or via email [email].

Brand:
Logo:

Looks better this way, but it still doesn't look right. For one, it doesn't sound very natural to me. The extra line about what it doesn't authorize wasn't my idea. I didn't like it due to its redundancy but there's no harm being too careful about such documents.

Heck, I'm not even sure if the changes are necessary.







I need a chair. I broke my chair some months ago but it could still support me. Now I'm feeling a little worried when I use it after it shifted a little yesterday, so I've switched to a stool.

Unfortunately the stool is too tall, so it's getting quite uncomfortable. Without something to lean back on, it's also pretty painful for my back. Now I have to stand up every once in a while or else it'll get painful to stand straight.

But I'm still too lazy to find a new chair.









So someone called a local radio station to say that people who are underdressed when going to Holland V are heartlanders with no class, and even went on further to state which areas of Singapore they're most likely from. To top it all off, she tells them to stay away from that place.

Oh yes, that far. So not only is she insulting every single blue-collar worker out there, she's also pissing off residents of those areas she mentioned.

Holland Village, aka Holland V, is a street with a number of bars and restaurants, ie that's one place to go to for nightlife. As the name implies, it's pretty westernised, and one can always find white people there, both tourists and residents.

As much as I agree with the fact that being underdressed = lacking class for most people, I'm not sure how it's necessary to wear better clothes just to drink at a bar. A t-shirt and bermudas are perfectly fine for such an activity, IMO. Furthermore, being underdressed does not always necessarily imply a lack of wealth, culture or class.

If she was serious, she needs to get out of the country and take a look around. If she wasn't, I think she just trolled half the island.

Either way, she's the one without class and culture. Blatant elitism is never cool.

If she was being honest on air, then she probably has money.

However, in order to inject some positivity into this blog, I'll rephrase what I was actually going to say:

She's an important part of our society because people like her help make capitalism work. All businesspeople should love people like her. If everyone who has money is also smart, it wouldn't be easy to make profits.

Thursday 24 March 2011

Rant 751 / Coffee With Sweetened Condensed Milk

Lurking in EDMW too long will make you want to vote for anyone but the PAP, just to piss them off. This was probably the last straw for me.

Some dude wrote to the Straits Times a rather negative letter. What ST did was rephrase it with less negative data and made it sound very positive.

Original letter:


I read with keen interest the news that social mobility in Singapore’s education system is still alive and well (“School system still ‘best way to move up’”; Monday).
It is indeed heartwarming to learn that only 90% of children from one-to-three-room flats do not make it to university.
I firmly agree with our Education Minister Dr Ng Eng Hen, who declared that “education remains the great social leveller in Singaporean society”. His statement is backed up with the statistic that 50% of children from the bottom third of the socio-economic ladder score in the bottom third of the Primary School Leaving Examination.
In recent years, there has been much debate about elitism and the impact that a family’s financial background has on a child’s educational prospects. Therefore, it was greatly reassuring to read about Dr Ng’s great faith in our “unique, meritocratic Singapore system”, which ensures that good, able students from the middle-and-high income groups are not circumscribed or restricted in any way in the name of helping financially disadvantaged students.
I would like to commend Ms Rachel Chang on her outstanding article. On behalf of the financially disadvantaged students of Singapore, I thank the fine journalists of the Straits Times for their tireless work in bringing to Singaporeans accurate and objective reporting.

Published letter:


A reassuring experience of meritocratic system
I READ with keen interest the news that social mobility in Singapore’s education system is still alive and well (‘School system still ‘best way to move up”; March 8).
It is indeed heartwarming to learn that almost 50 per cent of children from one- to three-room flats make it to university and polytechnics.
I firmly agree with Education Minister Ng Eng Hen, who said that education remains the great social leveller in Singapore society.
His statement is backed by the statistic that about 50 per cent of children from the bottom third of the socio-economic bracket score within the top two-thirds of their Primary School Leaving Examination cohort.
There has been much debate about elitism and the impact that a family’s financial background has on a child’s educational prospects. Therefore, it was reassuring to read about Dr Ng’s own experience of the ‘unique, meritocratic Singapore system’: he grew up in a three-room flat with five other siblings, and his medical studies at the National University of Singapore were heavily subsidised; later, he trained as a cancer surgeon in the United States using a government scholarship.
The system also ensures that good, able students from the middle- and high-income groups are not circumscribed or restricted in any way in the name of helping financially disadvantaged students.

For all I know, both letters are accurate. What matters is how great the change of perspective is between them.

This is rather overboard. If this is what they've been doing all along, I'm very disappointed.

Another thing is how the other day, some PAP candidate said he knew what it was like to be poor because he grew up in a 4-room flat. A 4-room flat in Singapore is an apartment with 2 rooms, a living room, a kitchen and 1 or 2 bathroom(s).

Yea, that's totally poor... for someone aspiring to be a minister.

Not that I'll definitely vote for anyone not in the PAP but this just makes me more inclined to vote at all.







One thing I've found out today is the huge different between adding real milk and condensed milk into my coffee. Had to taste it to find the difference. The logic is simple, the effect was greater than expected.

Another thing I realized is that each filter bag is costing me more than the tablespoon of coffee and the water combined. I've barely used a quarter of the half-kg bag and it costs S$6. That packet of filter bags contained about 20-30, so even if it was priced at $1, which is the lowest I can imagine for such a product, it's still more expensive than the coffee. In fact, in order to match the tablespoon of coffee each bag would probably have to cost me a single cent.

I should probably get a reusable filter if possible.








Watching Criminal Minds. Pretty interesting. Somehow I could kind of relate to one of the psychos in the first season, except I stopped that kind of thought more than a decade ago while he kept on harbouring that kind of mentality till he went mad and started killing people.

Better still, it lacked the gruesome scenes that the CSI series loved to use. Makes it easier for me to eat while watching.

And I really like how I have another 4 seasons of this show to watch. I don't think I'll be needing to find more for quite some time.







Heroes of Might and Magic 6 is coming out in June. Isn't that roughly the same time Witcher 2 is being released? Oh wait, that's May.

Holy crap! I won't be bored during the holidays then! Yay!








So I got the Black Emporium DLC for Dragon Age 2 in order to buy the potion to re-allocate my ability and attribute points, and lowered the difficulty to Normal. Still, I get this sense of dislike whenever I see the game icon. I should never have played on Hard. I'm not that good and/or it's not that fun.

Now I know where I'm going with my Rogue's abilities. Shadow Assassin - lots of crits with 2 disappearing abilities to get out when I get too much attention from the enemies.







I've been getting some comments that are ending up in the Spam bin. Some were automatically filtered, not that I mind since they're mostly in Russian or very broken English. Others were sent there because they mentioned their blogs, either in their names (signed in) or in the comment itself.

I don't know if this is going to sound offensive, and I'm sorry if it does, but all comments posted here that contain links to other blogs or websites will be treated as spam.

There are simply too many people trying to boost their own blogs' viewcounts (and hence income via AdSense) by posting inane flattery on other blogs.

Tuesday 22 March 2011

Rant 750 / Monday The Thirteenth - It's Like Friday The Thirteenth, Except It's On A Monday

It's probably pretty annoying to the poor when the top tells them to cut costs when the country faces financial trouble.

I mean, they're most definitely overworked and unlikely to be particularly intelligent to begin with. Saving money and cutting costs require planning, and planning takes time and brainpower.

It's probably a better idea to show them how they can save money. Merely telling them to "cut costs" isn't going to cut it.

For example, I like this idea of having a logo stating which hawker stalls are offering food at lower prices. Too bad it's only available at Bedok.

Like the free water-saving thimbles offered by the PUB (just call them for some), they should probably be provided with a list of products that are very cheap, although that would be advertising, which may cause another problem.

I wonder how much manpower it would require to complete this research and keep the list updated.

Once that's done, runners could probably be hired to offer delivery services for the poor, FOC. That will definitely require the help of charitable organizations. If that's possible, they could replace flag-selling with deliveries for the schoolkids completing their volunteer work requirement. That would educate them more than flag-selling ever could since they will be able to see what it's like to be earning less than S$1k a month.









Just found this site called Deal Extreme. Looks interesting. Prices appear to be very low and if I guessed correctly, they are automatically adjusted to our countries when we visit it. The reason for this guess is that it seems to be based in Hong Kong, yet if the prices I see are in HKD, it would be a little too extreme.

And the best thing about it is free shipping worldwide.

Even if the shipping fee has already been added into the prices of the products, it just doesn't feel necessary to order more items to make the shipping fee worth the money.

EDIT: Prices are in USD.






Work. Work is daunting. It scares me. People are friendly but I feel uncomfortable. I know they're never going to be honest with me, yet it is necessary to deal with them.

Learnt to type some documents the other day. Nothing big.

Met a buyer with my boss to show her our samples. I used to think women were fussy. That wasn't completely true. That buyer was probably the pinnacle of fussiness. Other women are men compared to her. Then again, she's the buyer.

But she's got tastes, better than the salesgirls despite their direct contact with the customers. Makes sense, since she's got the job instead of them.

The thing is, I'm more or less the antisocial kind of guy, but necessity dictates that I'm going to have to learn to be professional and not feel awkward whenever I touch the models, who were also the salesgirls. My boss had to, to show the buyer the hard-to-see details of the samples and the possible changes to the designs to counter the issues the buyer raised.

I just stood by and watched without speaking a word unless spoken to directly, as instructed. I'm still a complete newbie, so it wouldn't be right to suggest anything. Still, the buyer asked me twice for my opinion, which I believe was a test. I don't know whether I passed or failed, but when I simply agreed with everything she said (and not what the boss said, since the customer is always right), I most definitely revealed my noobness.

The only consolation was that she told me not to give up, citing herself as an example, saying that she too had to learn her job from scratch. I wouldn't say that's the whole truth. Women are just born fussier than men; all she had to do with improve on that. I'm the one who really has to start from scratch because I'm the "anything" kind of guy.

As for the design I drew for my first lesson some time ago, it's still not done yet. Not that it matters much, since it's not my idea (and I had none), but it allows me to gauge the time it takes for a drawn design to become a sample.

Contrary to my initial belief, it's impractical for me to take design courses in the art schools in Singapore.

Oh right, I also saw some white professional models in the reception area, most likely waiting for a photo shoot. They looked exactly as I expected (I haven't seen any in real life before) - tall, slim, thick make-up, probably Russian.

Not my type.

No photos. They might charge a fee if I had taken any.

Sunday 20 March 2011

Rant 749 / Someone Just Did The Impossible And Made Friday Sound Bad













Coffee. Ever since I began using ground coffee, I've been wondering what I could do with the grounds after I'm done with the first cup.

I use a slightly heaped tablespoon of grounded coffee to brew in roughly 8oz of water. I did try using it for a second cup, albeit with about half the water volume, but it was very bland, as if I was drinking canned coffee.

I'm not interested in making coffee-flavoured water the way I do with teabags.

However, the used grounds still smell nice, and they still have some flavour.

All I gathered is that they could be used to cooking coffee-flavoured stuff, like perhaps coffee bread or coffee ribs (if there's orange ribs, why not coffee ribs?).

Too troublesome.








Is there no way to be everybody's friend in DA2? Why must it be so realistic? If I want that kind of realism I'd just shut down the computer!

I try to be a hero, I get +5 Rivalry after the conversation.

I joke a lot, I get +5 Rivalry after the conversation.

I become a complete asshole... and get +5 Rivalry after the conversation.

Must I lose someone? I don't want to make enemies in case the ending is similar to ME2's, where companions not close to you die in the end.

You know what? I'm sick of this. I'll just do what I want and get half the party killed if that happens.

I'm also frustrated by the combat. They're hard, but not because it's really that hard. I believe it's because of the skills learnt by everyone.

The problem is that I never had a plan, so I spent my skill points haphazardly, choosing abilities that seemed useful at that time and probably later, yet not taking into account the synergy (or the absence of) that would result in those skills.

That, in turn, was because I did not know whether I'll be using the same people for the rest of the game.

Now that I no longer give a damn about their preferences, I should probably plan ahead.

Which would mean playing it again.

Which I don't want to.


...



Now I wish there's a way to stop my party members from doing anything. Apparently there's no way to tell them to just stand there and do nothing!

WHY CAN'T THEY JUST WAIT?!?

I want my tank to get out there, make all the monsters focus all their attention on her and then let everyone else attack!

But no, when the monsters appear, they all attack everything separately, like it's a race to see how kills more first.

Oh wait, I can set their behaviour to Passive.

But that's not all. They keep using disabling skills (Miasmic Flask and Sleep) on the same enemies at the same time!

AAAAAA!

Yea I didn't get enough sleep last night.

My tank can't hold the agro on all 10 monsters simultaneously, and it's always better to focus on one enemy at a time.

But even when I tell them all to focus fire on one, whenever that target dies they just attack random target again.

Why can't I make them focus only on the tank's target? WHY?

These are BASIC tactics used in MMORPGS! I'm not even describing anything complicated!

Ugh! I need sleep, but it's so bright.

And why can't I have a simple option to disable all automatic tactics? I don't want them to keep using skills that aren't useful during different situations!

I don't want to keep spamming spacebar!









Somehow I find that Singapore has never been particularly friendly with Japan since independence. Our leaders' responses to Japan's actions have mostly been non-existent, merely lukewarm or, on at least one occasion, offensive.

I suspect that the Lee family doesn't want to do that for 2 possible reasons:

- to compensate for the fact that more than one of the old guards in the PAP have worked for the Japanese during the occupation.

- they had a genuine dislike for the Japanese due to certain things they may have seen/experienced during WWII.

I did consider the possibility that this was to suck up to China, but the fact that we were not friendlier with Japan back when the name "China" referred to "Taiwan" made me dismiss it.

Either way, it now makes sense that Singapore has not done more than send 5 dogs with their handlers and donate S$500k to Japan.

Furthermore, I noticed that Singaporeans did not support LHL when he made that offensive remark. This, in turn, could be due to the following possibilities:

- Singaporeans, despite all those childish hate-mongering propaganda from the opposition about LKY and Nathan working for the Japanese during the Occupation (IMO that's as good as name-calling), are not holding their grudge as long as expected, or at least, as long as the Lee family.

- Singaporeans in general would rather annoy its own leadership than Japan despite the Occupation half a century ago.

After all, what LHL said then did have a point. They were offended their PM's visit to that particular shrine. If people had a little more confidence in Singapore, they'd have said the republic was learning to flex its muscle outside SEA. But that didn't happen, so it allowed us to gauge certain things from the response.

Disclaimer: I did not do exhaustive research before commencing on this rant. It is entirely possible these conjectures are based on incomplete data.








Today was my final real IPT (IPPT Prep Training) session. The official final IPT session will be on the coming Tuesday, which is really an IPPT (Individual Physical Proficiency Test) session. So I'm done with all the workouts till after August, when the new system forces me to try out the brand new IPT system.

According to the PTI (Physical Training Instructor), the new system will affect us overweight people differently from the others. While these other healthier failures will have to meet certain requirements which are basically lowered versions of the actual passing standards, overweight guys will have to reduce their weight instead.

By how much, I have no idea. Nevertheless, I'm definitely going for IPT because there two options for me are:

1) Go for 10 sessions of IPT spread over nine months. If I fail to meet whatever standards I have to achieve, I got for another 8 sessions of RT spread over three months.

2) Go for 20 sessions of RT spread over three months.

Yea, I'm picking 1) even though I get paid $120 less (I get about $10 per RT sessions, nothing for IPT) and IPT is supposed to be tougher. But if they put me in the overweight group, how hard can it get? Furthermore, 20 sessions over three months means 20 sessions over 12 weeks and the variety of toughness I can get ranges from 3 sessions per week for 7 weeks (2 sessions for 7th week) to 2 sessions per week for 8 weeks plus a single weekly session for another 4 weeks.

I can't choose consecutive days.

Nothing can beat 18 sessions over an entire year. Nothing.

As for the coming Tuesday, I'm starting to see the advantages of going to a school next to Maju Camp. Go for IPPT at 5.30pm, finish by 7pm at the very most, then class at 7.30pm. Such a perfectly arranged evening.








After the 2-hour nap I took after the angry rant above and the exercise during the IPT session, I managed to beat that battle that started my anger. Not easily but it wasn't as hard as the ones mentioned in the previous battle.

Tired minds don't perform as well and they're grumpier. True story.

That battle was the one that took place in the old Deep Roads where the end of Act 1 took place, but this time I revisited it for a quest in Act 2.

It had nothing to do with the quest but just one that blocked my path to some loot.

Two waves of spiders. Nothing much.

Thursday 17 March 2011

Rant 748 / Decimus And Saarebas

Some people are saying they should continue to build nuclear power plants and learn from the current disaster in Japan, which at this point has caused radiation level in the capital, Tokyo, to be 10 times the norm.

I'm not saying this opinion is wrong. In fact I do not mind this idea.

What I feel is that this is unrealistic. Japan has shown us that even the best safety precautions today (they had extensive backup measures in that plant) cannot protect us against reality, and that in reality, shit happens.

Just look at what occurred there - a 9.0 earthquake followed by a huge tsunami, now there's even a 6.0 earthquake, probably an aftershock.

This immediately raised one question in my head:

Who the heck would plan for disasters of this magnitude?

Even if it was suggested by the engineers or architects, I'm sure many at the top would have given that age-old argument that it was impractical to prepare for something so rare and that it would cost them too much to protect themselves from something that probably wouldn't happen in their lifetimes.

Well, Mother Nature's triple-hit Fatality combo on Japan just smashed this logic to pieces. There's no longer such a thing as "too unlikely to happen" now, because it just did!

Other than the slow horrible deaths for those affected by the radiation and the numerous quick deaths earlier, the price being paid by Japan just got a lot more expensive because of the nuclear radiation. Here, we can use Ukraine's Chernobyl to predict what is going to happen:

Japan, for at least decades if not centuries, is going to spend millions every year to compensate for this mistake. First, it has to take care of all those affected by the radiation. Subsidies, treatments, decontamination, everything.

Second, it's possible they're going to have to build a giant concrete casing around the plant to contain the radiation, unless they come up with something more advanced. Who knows? But this casing will have to be constantly monitored and maintained, which will be extremely expensive.

Finally, the land around it will not be safe for housing or agriculture for centuries, if not millennia.

So yes, I'm still okay with nuclear energy, but they're going to have to spend a lot more to prevent even disasters like this, probably to the point where nuclear energy stops being cheap anymore.




I bet somewhere down the road, people will recall this and all the other nuclear plant incidents before this and form the opinion that nuclear energy was never cheap.

As for now, one thing is for sure - heads are about to roll. Dozens of them.








Those NPCs in Dragon Age are 2 weird. I've noticed this whore during my excursions into Lowtown at night.


This is one of the busier zones in this area where I've had quite a number of fights. Yet every single time, this prostitute would be there on the upper right leaning on the wooden scaffolding is there, even when there's nobody around.




She just leans there coolly watching us fight over 9000 bandits right there in front of her, and every time I get close to her accidentally she asks me "Do you want to see my diddies?" or sometimes "I'll be here all night."

Like I'm horny while I'm busy trying to backstab someone!

I'm not backstabbing with that!





Yea, that's her. Not exactly the kind of beauty that would stop me in my tracks.







Do you want to see my diddies?




I'll be here...





all...






night...





long.






Oh Dragon Age 2.



So I believe I've completed all the side quests in Kirkwall at this point. The problem is that I forgot to save up 50 sovereigns, so now I think I have to resort to doing the "Friends in Low Places" quest in which a shady dwarf loans me the money with the agreement that I return double later.

I don't know how this is going to affect the game in the long run but I don't really have a choice anymore.

Also, I keep making decisions that piss Fenris off (being too much of a whiteknight)  so I had to replace him with Isabella. Had to take some time to decide between her and Merrill but in the end I decided that my party is generally too weak already, since my protagonist is a rogue (as shown above) and Bethany is a mage. Having a blood mage, who consumes health at times instead of mana to cast spells, would reduce the overall toughness of the party.

Yea, overall. Whenever one party member gets KO'ed during battle, the effects are more than just having three left. One also has to take into account what he/she could have contributed to the battle had he/she survived, like heal someone or gave everybody a buff.



Anyway the bosses were soooo hard, some of them. These may not seem hard to you if you're playing on Normal, I don't know, but on Hard, things are hard. Unless you've found some bug to exploit or whatever.

The first incredibly hard battle I fought was with Decimus, a blood mage. His blood magic was so powerful and he seems to have two extremely lethal spells - some kind of blood nova that does a ton of damage in an area, and a similar one that he casts onto himself that damages us significantly over a bloody long period of time.

The trick was to focus on Decimus himself right from the beginning and make full use of every disabling abilities and spells from all party members to prevent his spellcasting. When he casts that second spell onto himself, it's insanely hard, if not impossible, to interrupt him. I had used Aveline's Shield Bash and Assault on him to no effect.

A mage!

Therefore, it is completely necessary to keep him disabled before he even casts a spell and once he casts the second spell, it's too late - KILL HIM AT ALL COST!!!

Running will only make things worse because you will also be surrounded by his minions and it will be hard to chase him especially when there are archers and more mages reinforcing them after a while.

The best thing is to kill him before the mages arrive. Those guys may have short HP bars but if your party is anything like mine, their fireballs will hurt you more than any other minion present at that battle.



The second incredibly hard battle would be the one with the Tal-Vashoth in the cave. Not the boss or archers, irritating as they are. No, the hard part is the Saarebas, aka the mage. He needs to die as soon as possible due to his lightnight spell. However, he can teleport and he's tough.

For this battle, when I killed him, I only had Hawke and Aveline left. Bethany while running after the Saarebas. Isabella died trying to kill it. Finally, Hawke died after we killed everybody except the two toughest enemies when they both ganged up on him. Aveline had to fight them 1v2... and survived. Her damage was so bad but so was theirs. Furthermore, I had plenty of potions. Perhaps that's the reason I couldn't save up 50 sovereigns.

Wednesday 16 March 2011

Rant 747 / Fcking Boeings, How Do They Work?











Watched the final episodes of Lost just now. Turned out that the last 2 episodes (the finale was split into 2 episodes) were labelled incorrectly. So I watched part 2 before I realized I found out the one labelled "part 2" was actually "part 1". It was a little confusing in the beginning but all it did was make it a little disjointed, nothing that would have gotten me lost. Still, I sadden.







This pair of earphone (DF H214) does have its shortcomings. Well, shortcoming. The wire hook isn't as ergonomic as it should be, so after wearing it for several hours, I felt an ache on one tiny spot at the back of one ear.

In other words, it's almost perfect... for its price.








Now that I've played for a longer period of time, I can see certain things to complain about in Dragon Age 2.

1) Bethany's fingers are monstrous!! During one conversation scene while completing her quests, she raised her hand onto her head. That's when I saw those dark and unnaturally long fingers.

2) Certain enemies are hard to point at during battle, even during a pause. For example, an early monster that's giving me problems is the Ghoul, the dark purple slime-thing sometimes accompanied by Abominations. When it bends forward while moving, somehow my cursor doesn't highlight it when I point at its body. It doesn't kill me or anything because I can highlight it eventually through trial and error, but it can get annoying during battles involving these creatures.

3) Edges of clothing and armour entering the body. Whenever one of those heavily armoured people like the templars or guardsmen raise their arms, their shoulder armour pierces into their body due to crappy graphics.

But it's not all bad. Battles got much easier now that I have that speed buff from Bethany and the threat-reduction skill from my protagonist to save Bethany with.

Unfortunately, it appears to be inadvisable to be a Rogue at this point because I have 2 other Rogues that I really wouldn't mind being in my current party. Then again, I also have 2 mages that I can choose from, except I'm not picking Anders because the only way to get into his good books seems to be the same way that leads to his bed. Not doing it.








When SM Goh said the government was planning to reduce dependency on foreign workers, I felt it was bad news for Singaporeans. On the other hand, Singaporeans seem to feel either of the following:

- it's good news. "Foreign talents" (FT) take all our jobs and get treated better than locals.
- it's bullshit. He's saying this only because the elections are coming. They're not going to do it.

I'm not sure it's a good thing if they actually do it, because there are a few types of FTs in Singapore.

1) The sort that actually fills the jobs that no locals want to do, like shitty construction jobs.
2) The sort that's highly qualified, taking well-paying positions in companies and corporations.

Nowhere did SM Goh specify which type the government is going to get rid of, and I do not believe he's talking about the second one because that would not be profitable at all. These guy pay lots of taxes every year and whenever they spend money, they get no subsidies.

It's obvious where this line of reasoning leads to.

I have no idea why anyone would be happy about this news.

Besides, when he said, "...the government is determined to reduce the dependency on foreign labour and raise the productivity and incomes of Singaporeans" I have this picture in my mind that raising productivity means encouraging OT and even longer working hours or worse... bringing back the half-day on Saturdays.

Which is necessary I guess. If you really don't want to rely on others, someone's got to do the work, y'know? The dislike for "tiongs" (Chinese mainlanders) makes no sense from a pragmatic point of view. These guys and their fellow countrymen keep prices for everything lower than what they should be. They work for crap pay here so that the stuff we buy and the services we pay for are cheaper than what it would have been if we had hired Malaysians or just Singaporeans.

Imagine if we had no foreign workers. Sure, we wouldn't have this ugly image of the Chinese, but holy crap, we'd be just another Southeast Asian island since we can't afford the expensive things that are expensive only because we refuse to employ cheaper labour.

Disliking foreigners is pointless. If we're to be wealthy, if you want more money, you're going to need others to do some of the work for you.

I'm not saying those haters are stupid.

I'm just implying it.

We need foreign workers, whether the locals like it or not.

To be honest, we're fucked either way, so we might as well take the one that leads to more money. Maybe we can make enough to GTFO before everything goes to hell.




Typed the above because I've been visiting EDMW at HWZ. Man, the anti-PAP sentiments are just so overwhelming. Those guys are pretty amazing. I'm sure some of them are trolls because all they do is try to twist everything to make the PAP look bad. But a number of the others appear to be real government-haters.

Or maybe I'm just gullible and susceptible to trolling techniques.

I gave up on reasoning with them after a few threads. Yes I know that was stupid, but no harm trying, right?


Sometimes, I feel like all they can see is what is right in front of them. Other times, I remember that these guys are so spoilt they'll never be satisfied.

Tuesday 15 March 2011

Rant 746 / It's Really Useful To Know They Slash Laptop Prices By The Hundreds Of Dollars During The Final Evenings Of The Computer Fairs

It was until this latest earthquake in Japan that made me think about the survivors. It used to be that I thought, hey, they're still alive right?

But what about after things have settled down? What happened to the people in New Orleans, for example? Most of them couldn't have moved back in like nothing happened. Their houses were probably not there anymore.

So where are the Japanese survivors going to stay? Next, what's going to happen now that they've only got their clothes on their backs? They lost all their documents and any belongings that might have sentimental value to them (like their diaries, thank goodness I blog instead), and together with the massive number of people in such a situation, how long will it be before they can find a place to live, get back their documents, get free food aid, withdraw money from ATMs and get a job again?

These things never seem to appear on the news. Reporters are more keen to discuss the bad things then the recoveries unless the news help restore public confidence, which would help certain people at the top.

First, what about clothes? The survivors of the tsunamis were probably all wet. Who has been providing free clothes for them? What about the rather large ones? What if some of the survivors were sumo wrestlers? I'm not joking; we're talking about Japan here. Would those charities have clothes that fit them, even tightly if at all?

Next, where are they sleeping? And are they sleeping on made-shift bunks, mats or the ground? Who's providing those? Was it that easy to find dry ground after a tsunami?

Third, what are the banks doing to prepare for the incoming flood of lost document reports and desperate need for cash withdrawals?

Fourth, what about all the cash that was lost during the disasters? Would such a strong earthquake damage the bank vaults? Would the following tsunami and flood be able to enter them and thus damage their cash stores? Could those bills still be used after soaking in seawater for days? I mean, banks usually give out kind-of-new notes right? You can never find a bank that hands you a wrinkly note that feels as if someone crumpled it into a ball and tried to straighten it again afterwards. Or are the banks going to employ some methods unknown to me to restore them?

Fifth, certain sources said all their supplies of bottled water from the PRC are getting bought up by the Japanese. They're also buying massive amounts of Chinese rice. What else are they buying up? Fish?

Sixth, what happens to those who didn't have much savings in their bank accounts? What about those low-income workers who have lost everything and had little or no savings to fall back on? Do they get monetary aid from the government?

Seventh, wouldn't seawater eventually cause a buildup of materials (minerals?) on the plant, causing an increase in insulation and hence lowering the effectiveness of the seawater? I mean, all steam power plants use chemically treated water for that very reason, right?

Eighth, what jobs? Is it going to be a decent-paying job to be a recovery worker (or whatever they call those guys who clean up the mess after the earthquake and tsunami) after the disaster so that the blue collar workers can at least afford food when it becomes available?

Ninth, how long before they properly restore the power grid? Won't that have to take place only after everything is dry or something? What other conditions need to be fulfilled before they can begin to restore it?




So after visiting Reuters, I found an answer to one of the questions.

A supermarket, probably in the less affected areas.

As for all those people who said this was karma, I'd say that this Mr Karma dude's half a century late.







After digging out the box containing all the documents for my previous desktop, I confirmed that I had bought a WD My Book Essential then too, which is the external hard drive I'm currently using. Haven't used the new My Book Essential that I'd just bought yesterday since it's not urgently needed.

But they are different. For one, the current one only has USB2.0. It also has the Mimeo Autobackup feature but only as a 30-day trial. Also according to the manual, its power LED is supposed to switch off when I click on "Safely Remove Hardware" but it never does.








EA contacted my school last week to recruit translators.



Hmm........................................................................................................................

No, really. I'm chuckling right now and considering whether I should give it a try. Nowhere does it say I need a degree or a certificate of any sort to apply. All I need to do is to pass their aptitude test.

Doesn't this job sound like a game tester but without the play-the-games-100-times monotony? Wouldn't this mean I'm going to be able to test Battlefield 3? AND GET PAID FOR IT?!???

I'm obviously proficient in English and I'm kind of fluent in Simplified Chinese. I have plenty of gaming experience outside the sports genre. I'm proficient in MS Office, Windows (I can even hack the Win95 password) but I don't know what "database applications" refers to. I'm also unsure if I can "work under pressure in a dynamic, team-oriented and deadline-driven environment". I only have excellent interpersonal and communication skills when I have sufficient sleep. I'll probably be a "team player with positive attitude and commitment to help develop great games" if I like those games I'll be working on. I have nothing against working on a contractual basis and as far as I can tell, I'm most likely residing in Singapore currently.

But what about my current commitment?









Tried Dragon Age 2. After all the anti-hype about how bad it was, I was curious about how bad it really could get, especially when Bioware has such a good reputation in the RPG genre IMO.

A few days ago I had watched someone stream the game. All I watched was the early introduction part where they were running from Lothering. As far as I could tell, it looked decent enough, but the other viewers were blasting at how bad it looked compared to the previous game.

I didn't have that fantastic an experience with Dragon Age 2. I felt it got too tedious after playing half the game.

Now that I've tried it, I don't actually mind the graphics. I'll go as far as to say it's pretty good in today's standard, about as good as ME2. The point is that as long as it doesn't hurt my eyes, as long as I can see the expression and understand what it's expressing, it's decent enough. I mean, c'mon, if that's bad then what about The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and the two recent Fallout games?

What I believe is that Bioware is trying to accommodate to the general slowness in graphics card upgrades among the gamers nowadays.

Story-wise, the game is good enough atm. I'm only in the very beginning where I just got my first quest from companion working in the cityguards. Can't comment much about it.

Voice acting is bad though. As usual, not enough emotion.

Music was nice since they made improved versions of the theme music, which brought back certain memories that I'd associated with the previous game.

The last thing I feel I should mention is that the Hard difficulty is indeed rather challenging and requires a lot more than brute force in order to survive the battles.








Oh wow what did I type that was so interesting to so many people??



172 views yesterday? Over 30 views on the last rant just today alone? And I'm getting views from China if I'm seeing the Audience map correctly?

What?

This is my norm, judging from my occasional visits to the Stats page: roughly 100 views a day, 0-10 views for the newest rants within 24 hours after they're published.

Hence my surprise.

The last rant merely described what I did at the IT Show, what I had for dinner and breakfast and that I bought some ground coffee on Saturday. It's kinda like Lord of The Rings, which was just an unnecessarily long account of some dudes who trudged to a volcano and dumped a ring inside.

I guess some people visit the blog more for the language and less for the content.

Too bad for them I don't type like that all the time.

Monday 14 March 2011

Rant 745 / Squeezing Through Crowds - The Cheapest Alternative To Polygamy

Saturday

So I bought a half-kg bag of ground coffee just now. I've been interested in it ever since I really noticed how different instant coffee tastes compared to the stuff sold in coffeeshops in my neighbourhood.

And it looks like it's cheaper.

Initially, all I wanted was to get a haircut when I left my home. But when I saw the Food Lion store next to the barbershop displaying a set of 4 different types of coffee beans priced at $15, $12, $11, $10 per kg outside the store, I couldn't resist trying it out.

Well, after the haircut, of course.

I stared at them for a while, realising I know jack shit about those beans. What could I do? I went into the shop and asked the cashier. The cashier then directed me to the boss, who was surprisingly friendly and gave me a brief description of all 4 types.

He began with the $12 beans, which were roasted with margarine and stuff, and were 100% pure Arabica beans, a name I've seen so often on the labels of Nescafe packets. That was probably my first time seeing whole Arabica beans and knowing what they were.

The fact is that my parents came from HK, and most in HK and China are tea people. Coffee is an exotic product that people in HK fly to Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia to shop for. Or at least that was what my parents and their friends and family did when they visited this region, back before we migrated here.

That's why Chinese restaurants are called 茶楼 and 酒楼, which mean teashops and wineshops respectively (nowadays the only difference is the prices on the menus), but never coffeeshops. Interestingly, since 茶楼 are usually cheaper restaurants due to traditionally lower tea prices relative to wine prices, then coffeeshops, which are cheaper versions of foodcourts (which in turn are a cheaper source of cooked food than restaurants) here in Singapore, would imply that coffee is cheaper than tea.

Whether that is true I don't know. What I do know is that it's way easier to find coffee beans in Singapore than tea leaves.

As for me, even after living here all these years, I know little about making coffee other than what I've seen and heard what locals do. For example, one of my mother's colleagues brew her coffee in her kettle (instead of water) because her entire family needs their daily morning caffeine fix.

Anyway, let's go on with the coffee beans before I forget them.

The $11 and $10 beans were actually mixed with maize, if I heard correctly. He used a Hokkien term most of the time but I just nodded because it really wasn't too important. Besides, I only know a few words in that dialect. What was important was what he told me when I asked him directly if that meant that these were blander. He laughed and explained that people who sell coffee prefer to use these blends. Which presumably is an affirmative answer. One of the blends had 30% maize, forgot about the other number.

The $15 beans were also a blend of Arabica and something. Again, I can't recall what he said because I didn't understand the term he used. Yet again, I wasn't very interested in it so I didn't ask any further.

My relative lack of interests was due to my habit of trying the original stuff before going for mixed flavours whenever it comes to food and drinks. I had already decided I wanted the pure beans first before I move on to the rest. When I do, I can ask him about those others.

Now that I have half a kilo of pure Arabica, I need to know how I can brew them. IIRC I cannot just dump a spoon of it into hot water like I do with instant coffee. Instead, I'm pretty sure I need to "brew" it. What I need to find out is what this "brew" process means. And how I can adapt if I don't have a machine.

So I need a filter. Guess I need to do some shopping. Once I get it right, I'll probably stop using instant coffee for the rest of my life.

Turns out I do have some filters at home. Not reusable ones though. My mum had bought a packet of Japanese-made filter bags that the shopkeeper said most of her customers used for brewing coffee, except my mum used it for making  卤汁, a kind of dark gravy.


That's it, except we also added chicken, pork and eggs, which I believe is the norm. From what I've gathered, its a mix of soy sauce and spices. The bag she used was for those spices so that we wouldn't get them in our food.







Sunday

Great coffee. Got to remember certain details from now on, like not dumping the bag into the cup before pouring hot water in because the grounds float and seep out of the bag from the top.

...

Finally I can listen to some L'Estasi dell Oro from my blog that's produced with some decent quality earphones.

Went to the IT Show 2011 just now. Left home at about 2.40pm and took a cab to Plaza Singapura to transfer the ownership of the account of my mobile phone to me, only to find out that this is going to be effective only after 2 days.

So I couldn't do a recontract.

That didn't make me turn around and return home because I had other objectives to complete.

Primary objective: Earphones with hooks.
Secondary objective: Speakers for my bro so that he can give me his old ones.
Tertiary objectives: Buy a camera and screen protector for HX.

The tertiary objective didn't appear until I was done with the above matter at Plaza Singapura. HX had initially contacted me earlier to ask me when I was going to the IT Show, to which I replied I had no set time but had to go to Plaza Singapura to settle the above matter.

After I was done, I called him and found out he had work to complete by 4pm, which was like 15mins from then, so he asked me to buy some stuff for him. Surprised that I was not planning to take a cab back, he asked me to just get a camera for him, a Canon IXUS 115 HS.

The excuse was obviously very flimsy since, as I've stated, he only needed to work for another 15mins before he could join me. The thing is, if I were in his shoes, I'd definitely do the same and hope he'd just play along. I hate crowds too.

As expected, the Suntec Convention Halls were crowded from top to bottom. The taxi queue was as long as I expected too.

The primary objective was easy. I walked around in random directions and looked at every booth I passed with earphones, asking the salespeople for earphones with hooks whenever I didn't spot any. Unfortunately, the one I was expecting to buy, the Cresyn C220E, was sold out. It was the only earphone model with earhooks that was in the $10-20 range ($16.90, to be more specific) in the brochures at bootstrike.com.

Other models I expected to buy were the Logitech Ultimate Ears 300 at $59, which I planned to be the final resort in case everything was sold out, and the SonicGear Nano Clip 100/200/300 at $9.90.

Fortunately for me, I quickly found booths selling $10-15 earphones with hooks, so I didn't bother to search for the above two models specifically and just bought as I went.

In the end I bought a HS900 of the Ranger brand from the Maxell booth, which cost me $9.90, a H214 of the df brand (David's Formula) priced at $14.90, and a HA-E33-S of the brand JVC from the Case Logic booth priced at $11, which they had made very clear with multiple price tags that it originally was priced at $22, although I'm sceptical of the credibility of the claim.

Completed my second objective with ease because the Creative booth was huge and there was only a small crowd at the counters. Got a Creative Inspire T12 since that's what my bro wanted. The backup plan was the T3130. In return, I get his old TEC brand CPT-709 speakers, and after trying them out I can honestly say they suck balls harder than a vacuum cleaner with a black hole inside.

The only reason I wanted them was because I needed something as my final backup when my earphones die out, which had happened before this and led to my aforementioned primary objective. Hence this was my secondary objective.

The third objective was 100% more troublesome than the previous 2 objectives. Everything above was found and bought at the 6th floor, but for cameras I had to go to the 4th floor, which meant more squeezing in the crowds on the escalator, where at one point we were stopped in order to let the escalator empty because the guys at the bottom were dangerously close to the point of not being to leave the moving steps due to the slow-moving traffic in front.

The only thing going for me was that the Canon camera booth was huge and was pretty close to the entrance. It didn't take long for me to find it and get all the brochures. After that I only needed to find a quiet corner at the back where they stored their printers, put down my bags and called HX to ask for his opinions.

At which point, I was informed he was really getting it for CM, therefore he had to call her.

:\

After 5mins of waiting, I was confused about whether he wanted me to call her or if he was going to ask her himself. So I called CM just in case. Asked her about the warranty extension offers and the photo printer offers (warranty extension at $60-70 for 2-3 years, the dealer I asked couldn't give me accurate numbers due to noobness, while the printer could be bought for $60 less than usual, at $139, with the purchase of the camera) and she wanted neither. As for the colour, she couldn't decide since she couldn't see the brochures while outside, so she told me to ask HX.

:\

HX then told me they wanted the purple. After that, I went straight to a random free dealer, told him what I wanted, got the order form, went to the cashier, paid and got the camera and left. I've got to say they had some nice service there. Not the dealer, the dealer was like "meh" but the guy who handed me the camera was very friendly and took out each component inside the box to show me that everything was in order. Finally he handed me a nicely folded warranty card and receipt and told me to use it to redeem the free gifts at the first floor.

Sounded easy enough but was, in fact, far from it.

There were two sides to the free gift redemption booth. On the left, there were the counters for customers who bought Canon cameras. On the right half were the counters for those who bought Canon printers.

The right half had some decently short queues with like 5-7 people each. The left half had such a horrendously long queue they extended all the way to the furthest end of the right side, despite the usual snaking queue formation directed by the red bands. In addition, there were about 6-7 people who checked everyone in the queue to make sure they had bought cameras. According to the guy who checked mine, someone had reached the counters only to tell them he had bought a printer. I lol'ed.

That was not all though. During the queueing I remembered HX had also asked me to buy a screen protector for him (or her, whatever). I wasn't in the mood to do things halfway and give up then, after going through so much trouble, so I squeezed my way back up to the fourth floor.

On my way I went past the Starhub booths, so I asked them whether I could recontract. None of them knew and the final guy told me to call their service hotline, 1633, to enquire and passed me a queue ticket in case I could, so that I didn't have wait too long.

Unfortunately, the guy on 1633 said that although I could do a recontract, they couldn't give me my vouchers until 3 months later. Now I have to admit I have no idea what this "voucher" is, but it sounded ominous enough that I gave up the notion of getting a new phone there. Besides, come to think about it, I was right not to. In 3 months there is going to be another technological fair, the PC Show 2011. I'm sure Starhub will have some new offers then and I will be able to get everything.

As for the screen protectors, I couldn't find any booth offering them on the 4th floor. Not wanting to go to the 6th floor, I asked a random dealer at the Canon counters. According to him, there were no booths selling those and from what I've seen, there were no booths selling camera accessories there at all other than tripods.

Which was strange if you ask me, which you did not.

Upon completing all objectives to the best of my abilities, I looked for a way home. A single glance at the taxi stand from the escalator was all I needed to forget about taxis. But before I could go home, I needed dinner.

Hence I crossed the road and went to Marina Square, hoping for a Burger King. After all that recent hype about BK's Tendergrill, I had to get some.

Marina Square brought back some memories. I haven't been here for so long. The last time I was here, it had much less class but there was something much more important - an indoor amusement park on the top floor IIRC. I remember going there for the rides in times past, and once my family went there with one of my aunt and her family. I remembered quite clearly how my cousin (his sister hadn't been born yet then) was still a toddler and when I took one of the more exciting rides with him, he cried so loudly the operator stopped the ride so that he could get off.

I didn't get off with him though. Fun ride > pussy cousin.

But anyway, as I looked through the mall's directory, I learnt that there was also a Long John Silver's right next to BK. That was a hard decision. I haven't had Long John in a very long time. What tilted the scale to BK's way (which is my way by the way) was the fact that I was planning to put the food in my bag when I ride the MRT. I can't have food in my hands when I enter the station; I might get stopped for bringing food into the trains.

Long John's food could spill when I slide them vertically into my sling bag, but you can't spill burgers, not that way, not BK's way, not my way.

BK it was.

Ordered two Tendergrills, a Swiss Mushroom Tendergrill and a Black Pepper Double, got to plan for my breakfast tomorrow too. On my way to the Esplanade MRT I found that there was a sale for confectionaries. Bought some Australian-made GB brand Nougats, two 100g packets, an Original Soft and an Original Crunchy. They were having a 2-for-$8 offer for those. According to the receipt, it was sold by John Little. Huh, didn't know that, but I wasn't looking hard anyway.

When I reached the Esplanade MRT, the closest to Suntec, I saw the sign that said I could walk directly to Raffles Place station. For illogical reasons probably due to fatigue (wanted to avoid confusion since I've never been to this station before and I might end up taking the wrong train or something), I decided to walk to Raffles Place.

Eventually got home, passed CM her bag when she got here, and tested out my earphones. She appeared tired, so I stopped myself from giving her long replies to her polite obligatory questions like "Was it crowded?"

First to be tested was the Ranger HS900. I plugged it into the speakers and immediately I heard the light static that is produced when there is no sound in some old speakers and TVs. I played L'Estasi Dell Oro anyway and it was as terrible as the speakers, extremely muffled. Wanting to make sure the lack of quality was not caused by the speakers, I plugged it directly into the PC.

It was much better, but still pretty muffled.

Next I tested df's H214. Damn, it was so comfortable! It felt like I wasn't wearing anything on my ears! The sound was also much better than the HS900 but I've heard better from headphones I used in the past. Oh well, I can't expect the same from a $15 earphone.

After that, I didn't feel like testing the last one anymore. Didn't feel like messing up more wires by unwinding and rewinding them and, besides, I was very satisfied with the H214.

Got to remember to get those with thin wire-like earhooks in the future. I like this design.


EDIT: Forgot to mention I also got a Western Digital My Book Essential 1TB for $99.90. I couldn't have gone through such troubles only to spend $36 for myself. This is the cheapest 1TB external hard disk that has USB3.0. The actual cheapest 1TB external HDD was offered by Seagate at $89.90 but only had USB2.0.

I'm likely going to make use of its Automatic Backup function from now on.