Affairs of State

Tennis is such a gruelling game, the men play best of 5, which is first to win 3 sets, and each set you need at least 6 games, and each game you need at least 4 points. If you total all that up and consider the points you play but lose, that's a huge amount! They play for like 4 hours, with a few minutes' rest now and then. And they do this every day for about a week? Or until they lose.

Field Hockey is a really fast, intense game, because it's 70 minutes compared to soccer's 90. And there are "rolling" (no need to stop play), unlimited substitutions allowed. I guess it's more tiring running around carrying a stick and bending down.

If anyone still uses bar soap like I do, here's a tip. When the soap gets too small to use comfortably, don't throw it away! Open a new bar and then moisten both bars, and squish the smaller soap into the new one. Then you minimize wastage.

Everyone at my granny's place thought I had my hair cut at the barber's. That day Ms Wang (or her friend) also commented about my Hawaiian dress. Replaced the insoles of my office shoes. I really need to get a new bicycle pump, this one is really quite defunct. It does not articulate well; in fact it makes a horrible load metal squeaking noise each time the piston shaft goes in and out.

Everyone in office is quite busy, except Eugene and me. I have ventured to help, so there's some MS Access coding for me to do tomorrow. Again, to do with the seating arrangement, but this time not for a dinner, but for a presentation ceremony. And I won't be in office on Wednesday and Thursday, got that IEIQC convention.

I vaguely remember rousing this morning to a swirl of delicate, poetic turns of phrase, but what do they matter. They wander through my mind, percolate past my consciousness, and disperse in the morning light. They whisper to me that all is right with the world and having fulfilled their purpose, linger no longer than necessary.

Should NSFs receive different monetary "allowances"? Should it not be a more communist system, because everyone in it does not have a choice? Rather than paying according to rank as is natural for Regulars, might not everyone get the same allowance, whether Recruit, Private, or Officer? If you pay a Regular Officer less, the person may decide to join the private sector. If you pay an NSF Officer less, is he going to grumble more and choose not to be an Officer?

Bus and MRT fares are going up, by a few cents. I think effective this July. And my allowance is going to stay the same. Of course, assuming that I spend an extra 5 cents a day, that's only $1.50 a month. And that's slightly less than 0.5% of my allowance. And that could probably feed a couple of kids in Africa for a day.

SAFRA tennis courts get booked up pretty rapidly. Tried to book for 8 to 10 am on Saturday, and it's already taken up, probably since 2 days ago even. Last night F-1 racing the race leader had just one more lap to go and then the front wheel just broke off from the car! Talk about unlucky. It's like running a marathon and then with just 100 meters to go, your foot breaks off.

If you still want something to read, Juggleress has a post with photos of her fun in the sun, including a shot of her riding regal atop a tractor, ruling over dirt.

Lost Balls

Tennis on Saturday morning was good, took a nap, went for dinner and tennis in the evening, which was good too. Lost about 2 balls each session, though. Have now marked all my tennis balls. Might buy more balls if I lose any more, might also want to replace the grip and eventually the strings of my racquet.

Played St Petersburg with Aaron on Saturday night, with the rules laid out in the instruction booklet. The game definitely ends much sooner, which is a good thing. At home, we're leaving the kitchen light home at night so cockroaches won't scurry around. I saw a cockroach on the kitchen counter for the first time that day. Usually I see it on the floor.

Woke up this morning aching from all the tennis the day before. Had a good workout at the gym nonetheless, and felt very fit today. Did tuck jumps and bicep curls and shoulder presses in the gym. The foosball machine at the club was giving out an endless supply of balls for free, so we played that for a bit. Sad to say, that was already fixed by the time we were going to leave. Ran down the corridor in Tan Tock Seng Hospital, and my phone fell out my pocket, but it still works.

Met Ms Wang, our maths teacher in RJC. She noticed that my face is rounder. She asked if I had a blog and told me not to be like Jiahao like that. She was with some other teachers and they had cake at Four Seasons Bakery in Thompson Plaza. We ate there too, that place is has a cafe also. Came home after that, damn tired, took a nap, saw my granny, we had roti prata brought from supermarket. It actually looks like a flat circle of dough, but when you fry then the burn patterns are produced.

Jasper is always right, and I am always true. I say "right, right" and he says "true, true". Eugene just bought a tennis racquet, but it doesn't come strung (it comes with string), so he still needs to get it strung up. I look to be on track for tennis on Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon this week. I think I need a bigger and quicker swing in order to generate more topspin.

I found out that there are actually a lot of interesting buses outside Seletar camp. There is one that goes in quite close to the club, and there is one that goes to Changi Airport by Expressway. There is one going to Tampines MRT, another goes to Tampines SAFRA. Another goes to Bedok. Many of them take Expressway, so should be quite speedy. Of course, good ol' 86 goes to my house, Ang Mo Kio, and Sengkang.

Like a Positron

Watched Australia play field hockey against Korea just now. Korea was up 1-0 in the first half, then scored another in the opening minutes of the second. Then, with about 10 minutes remaining, Australia scored one, then another, then another. Then in injury time, Korea pulled back one.

Must seriously sleep early tonight. Tennis at 7am, and 7pm. The Great Singapore Sale is on, so should be quite a good time to buy stuff. But I guess my lovey won't be back in time to catch it.

Yinglan has agreed to bring his carrom board and leave it in office one of these days. It should be awesome. Or at least quite fun. Quite some time ago in my parents' car on the radio in the morning, there was this song that went "got to get it on, like a positron"...

Blog Conscious

Managed to use the BreadTalk card Aaron got that day, which is buy 3 get 1 free. It is valid only at some outlets, and is valid until the end of June 2005.

The 4 of us guys from our branch played some putt-putt golf at Royal Sporting House in Suntec. Eugene is a natural, sinking putts from pretty far off though he's never played before. There's this black and red putter that looks like a Sith putter.

On Saturday, tennis courts booked at 7am (for 2 hours) and at 7pm (for 1 hour). Will need to sleep early tomorrow then. I had better sleep early tonight as well, was really tired today. Sam bought a replacement grip for his racquet at Royal Sporting House.

After dinner (to celebrate ORD and the WITs), we were wondering what to do, it was still somewhat early. Eugene suggested pool, but we were rather too full to bend over. Karaoke would have made it way too late. Air Hockey is also rather too violent after a buffet.

Then Eugene suggested carrom, as we were inching closer to the MRT station. Yinglan has a board at home he doesn't use, so theoretically it would be great if can bring to office and play in the conference room. Foosball would also have been great, except that I think the only place you can play that is probably at some club.

Carrie is the new American Idol. My parents don't believe me when I tell them that voting for American Idol is free, unlike voting for Singapore Idol. Free in the sense of free beer this time, not free speech.

This is the first time I've checked, and came across it because I googled "physicalpoet", since I've been passed this "Musical Baton". My blogshare. Its price seems to risen, when gambitch bought some of the stock. I don't know how this works, but looks like got a bit of money.

On to the musical baton(s). I first found out I had one from Juggleress, who gave me 3, actually. I suspect I'll have similar troubles giving away batons, I guess I'll have to check if the person has already passed it on. I'm not inclined to check if the person has already received one and not yet responded. And I got another from Elio Diodati (which came first, actually, since Juggleress got hers from there too), whose blog has some Latin name. Speaking of which, profugus is also Latin.

---

Total volume of music files on my computer:
1. Naturally in the natural units of 878.8 MB, which doesn't really say much. It would be better if I said 900 MB, since "volume" is dependent on quality, compression algorithm, etc. Anyway, it's close to 200 songs.

Last CD I bought:
The Bends by Radiohead.

Song playing right now:
I don't listen to the songs on my computer nowadays. Firstly, my computer is in the living room, and usually the TV is on. Secondly, practically all of them were illegally downloaded several years ago. Thirdly, they are on a FAT32 partition, which I do not mount automatically on boot.

5 songs that I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

1. Tori Amos, Gold Dust
2. Tina Arena, Burn
3. Train, Drops of Jupiter
4. Goo Goo Dolls, Black Balloon
5. Aimee Mann, It's Not

5 people to whom I am passing the baton on to:
You, reading this blog, who has a blog. I count 5 of you. Actually I don't think anyone will be bothered to do this. But let me know if you bother.

Quantum Psychology

Watched The Revenge of the Sith tonight, not bad, though rather anticlimactic at the end. I guess it makes you want to watch what happens next, which has happened already. Yoda's Zen Buddhisms are on the spot as always, like how the fear of losing someone important to death can lead to the dark side. Which is why seeing glimpses into a future that one would see eventually can be a curse, especially if the future you see is accurately inevitable...

Insightful political and philosophical commentary as well, about how democracy goes out with thunderous applause, and only those on the Dark Side deal in absolutes. "If you're not with me, you're against me."

Talked about quantum pigeonholing with B00n T4t over dinner (before the movie), and he also got this maths question. Have n boxes, each box individually can have between 1 and n balls (inclusive). Show that if the number of balls in any non-zero collection of boxes is not a multiple of n+1, then the number of balls in each of the boxes is the same!

For example, having 1 ball in each box clearly satisfies the "number of balls in any non-zero collection of boxes is not a multiple of n+1" condition, because there are only n balls total, but note that it isn't necessary that other numbers always work.

It rained heavily this morning, the entire office landscape festooned with umbrellas of all colors, filtering the light that falls on our work. My parents are back from their holiday.

Natural Guts

Jasper came for dinner last night, and we had spaghetti. We went for a walk after that, and talked philosophy. Jasper was saying how we shouldn't restrict people, say if a 10 year old wants to drive a car. So I asked if someone should be allowed to buy a knife given that there is always a chance, however small, that the knife could be used to hurt or kill someone. So though he thought people should be free to do what they want as long as they don't hurt others, he tended towards stopping people from doing things just as long as there was a chance of others getting hurt.

But then maybe can let children drive, because they'll be unhappy if you don't allow them, and accidents happen lor, just have to accept. If they got not enough money then different story, basically as long as buyer and seller can settle it among themselves, third parties (like government) have no place in the equation. The general idea is that others should not intervene; what is between A and B should be resolved by A and B.

So what if A and B are married, then A has an affair, and B wants to be compensated with a million dollars, while A refuses to give a cent to B? A kills B, gets custody of the kids, which becomes end of story. Conflict is resolved, A shouldn't be put in jail or anything because it's not as if A is going to kill other people. Well, B's brother might kill A, and if so, nothing should happen to B's brother either.

If everyone in this universe played nice, things would be fine and there would be no problems. It's precisely because not everyone plays nice that legal, justice systems developed, nations arm themselves... anyway, to summarize, Jasper's philosophy is classic utilitarian, to maximize happiness and minimize suffering, but of course, as I pointed out, the measure for that is quite important. Do you sum over all experiences in the universe then average out over the number of consciousnesses? Or would it make more sense to integrate over the life of a conscious being, since happiness and suffering are felt only by that being.

Played St. Petersburg with Aaron after Jasper went home. It was a very close game. I flipped through the instructions after the game and found out that for the "observatory", you're actually not supposed to "observe" the last card in a stack. Reading further, I discovered that we have been playing the game "wrongly" for the past few months, ever since we started playing it! The rules are supposed to be that at the end of each phase, the card don't go "down", but go "right", and only at the end of each round do the cards go "down". You're supposed to have 8 cards open at any time except for the first phase of the first round, where you have 2n cards open (where n is the number of players, 1<n<5). Cards go off the board only after someone takes them or after they spend an entire round in the "down" state.

Playing tennis with the guys from the branch again this Saturday morning. After some tedious coordination through SMS, I tried to book courts at Kallang, but they have a tournament this Saturday morning. Then tried SAFRA Tampines, but they only have courts available after 10 am. Then tried to book 8 to 10 am at Yio Chu Kang courts, but they didn't have courts from 9 to 10. Now the booking is for 7 to 9 am, which is super early. But that's ok for me because it's so near. Eugene says he can make it that early, so most likely it'll be two of us first. Unless I wake up late again...

French Open (tennis) has been showing on TV, needless to say they're damn good. But I've been watching (and mimicking) their strokes, especially on the slow motion replays, so watch out! =)

At Royal Sporting House in Centerpoint, they sold natural gut, which is tennis string made out of cow's guts. Selling for about $80, compared to high-end synthetic gut for about $50. I wonder how much it'll cost for me to restring my racquet.

Didn't have too much to do at work, but did quite a bit of vertical running. Went up 6 floors about 3 times. Agassi is good, man! He's 35 and 6th seeded in the world. But I guess 35 isn't really that old, though he's supposedly the oldest in the tournament. The men serve so blazingly fast... at least when the women serve you can see there's time to react, but with the men, it's like, WTF?

Long Weekend

As is not surprising, Ms Chng Zhenzhi was misquoted and misrepresented by the Straits Times, and agrees that the photo of her was "unnecessarily large". Of course, this means this time she has her photo on the front page of today's newspaper. It's like when you're not supposed to talk but you do, then you say sorry and that means you're talking again.

Played tennis with Jasper and Aaron today. Played tennis on Saturday morning also. Woke up late for that one, took a taxi to Kallang. I suppose this is boring. It might be refreshing to take a look at Juggleress, who has revamped the look of her blog.

connect dots acidflask is doomed to

Something happened with the supposed permalink, so I'm trying to get the permalink to link to the new permalink.

Sorry for the trouble! In case that wasn't clear, click here to read about how physicalpoet remarks wryly on the conflation of true facts to make a false statement that will probably go down in history.

Connect The Dots

AcidFlask is doomed to being known as affiliated with A*Star. Put together "ex-scholar" and "made defamatory comments about A*Star" so you get him being an A*Star scholar.

Luck is so capricious. One second it's good, one second it's bad. I failed my IPPT by 1 second. Did 12:21, passing is 12:20. The thing though is that at first it seemed that my timing was 12:19, then when results came out it was 12:21, and they explained that they had 2 stopwatches, the first stopwatch started timing late (button was stuck or something), so the one that reads 12:21 is the accurate one. They didn't budge even with my CO's intervention.

I managed to pass the other stations, including an incredible 9.2 seconds on the shuttle run. Obviously some uncertainty/error introduced by the human timer. I scraped a 6th chin-up, but a while after I dismounted, I had the weirdest sensation. I was like my entire body was about the self-destruct, like my ribs were stretching apart and my legs about to crumble. I think after I squatted down and made myself small it went away and I was ok.

Sit ups could comfortably do 35, which is 3 points. Standing Broad Jump not too bad, did 240cm, which pales in comparison with 280cm that I did in my prime, but then again everything else does. Except shuttle run. I have NEVER even heard of a 9.2 second one before.

My thighs are aching. Going up stairs is a painful process. Going to play tennis with the branch guys tomorrow morning. Playing tennis with Aaron and Jasper on Sunday morning (which is the day after tomorrow). Haven't heard back from gz whether we're playing this weekend. So hopefully with three "potentially regular" sessions I can average at least one a weekend.

Squash might be a regular weekday evening event too, and maybe even badminton. Must find a way to reinstitute "LIFE Day" in the department, which was originally supposed to be every Thursday afternoon free to do some sports and exercise.

The US is totally due for an increase in gas mileage standards. It conserves resources, saves money, and creates jobs. I'm totally due for some rest, otherwise tomorrow tennis will die. But I can also do without running, and just hit the ball. The badminton+squash+IPPT has taken its toll on me.

Cloning is the solution to all sorts of things. It simplifies tedious work like preparing 10 copies of a file, which would otherwise involve photocopying (at least this type of cloning exists), punching holes, affixing "flags", filing... it's also been suggested that cloning me might be useful.

Happy 20052005!

IPPT!

Played badminton and squash. Now legs aching. Oh dear. Then need to wake up around 0530 tomorrow to go for IPPT. Was quite busy today, luckily managed to go down for badminton at about 3 plus.

Here's an artist's impression of what I look like now:

Don't be Jealous

What my lovey wrote on the tagboard, earliest on top:

u would think that MOE would have been smart enough to have figured out that the acronym TAF, spelt backwards, is FAT

and that kids in the program are probably going to be called fat, fatso, or other variants of FAT.

they probably knew that but didn't care.

it bugs me that pp in singapore are so judgemental of pp who are bigger in size

that includes my parents, my friends, the old, the young, scholars, non-scholars etc.

making derogatory comments about someone's weight is seen as okay. and pp are so unaware of the detrimental effects that such comments have on a person's body and self-esteem.

I bet the acronym TAF was chosen precisely because it's FAT spelt backwards, which is "clever" or "witty" or whatever. And probably argued that the programme "reverses" FAT-ness, but it's a seriously bad idea.

There was a study done in the US, I think, not too long ago, where people went to shopping centers in "fat suits", and the "fat" version of the people were treated more badly by salespersons. But if the "fat" people expressed a desire to lose weight, they were treated the same as when they were not wearing the fat suit.

On a lighter note, life is good, went for tea break today, been stopping by Alvin's corner quite a bit and watching him use Adobe Photoshop. Playing squash tomorrow. Meeting CO at 0630 at Ang Mo Kio MRT to go take IPPT.

It's so sad that there's a polio outbreak again. Change the world. Men who change diapers change the world. Sleep deprivation is roughly equal to intoxication from alcohol. It's dangerous to drive when you're sleepy, especially at night. You get high and lose inhibitions.

I found out that bus 70 goes very close to Kallang Tennis Center, which is great! That means I can take bus straight from my house to Kallang on Saturday. It goes by Serangoon and Paya Lebar before going to Kallang.

You won't believe this, but we were getting the magnetic strips from ancient times, those days when ranking was done on a whiteboard, with names on magnets shifted up and down. And guess whose name I saw? Aaron's dad!

I'm not sure why, but lately the transport timing sending me home is perfect. The 163 comes soon after to take me home, capping a wonderfully relaxing day. It's not long before I fly to LA! My leave application has been approved.

Work and Work

Friends is so funny and touching. Monica and Chandler are now engaged, Chandler was trying to surprise Monica by saying that he would never get married, then she surprised him in the end because Joey told Chandler that Monica had run off to her parents' place to think.

I'm not going to make it for the Golden Point Award submission... the closing deadline is Monday! IPPT is now this Friday, not Thursday. Which means I have one more day, but had planned to do a lot of strenuous activity on Thursday.

Haven't heard anything from TTSH about my medical bills. Maybe they've settled it with the SAF?

Work is slowing down somewhat, though I guess there's always work for me to do if I want to. Can write the documentation for the website and put the final touches on it. Can continue exploring writing code for Access Database operations.

The posters for the MINDEF PRIDE Day are mostly done, and look quite good. But I think they want to retake the photographs of "Ranking in Action". Managed to get Sam and Yinglan to install OpenOffice.org on their computers at work, though that was largely just a matter of making them aware of the network drive that stored the setup program. The one-click conversion to PDF offered by OpenOffice.org is definitely something MS Office lacks.

I still have about 5 days of off to clear, I should probably take some time to work on personal interests instead of going to work. Have to wake up earlier every day because the transport comes earlier... Actually after yesterday I thought maybe no need, because it came at the same time, just that the bus was full. Which means about 10 minutes early for the people being picked up first, but about the same time for me. But today it came about 5 minutes earlier...

The implementation of charts in MS Excel is quite nice, today did some "pie charts" to represent the seating arrangement around some tables. A lot of elements are cluttered in the chart, but click patiently in different places with proper tempo and you can select a single slice, explode the pie, enlarge or shrink or move the pie, etc.

Reports

Interestingly, no one at office had a violent reaction to my loss of hair. Everyone seems to like it, Janet says I look cute and the CO says it looks cool.

This Thursday is chock-full of activity. IPPT in the morning, then badminton/squash in the afternoon (during office hours), and squash after work (if we're still up to it). I hope there will be someone bringing shuttlecocks on Thursday, because I don't have any. I think Eugene is clearing leave, but maybe can induce him to come to work for it.

Booked tennis courts at Kallang for this Saturday morning, for a game with the guys from my branch. gz is going to try to book courts for Saturday evening/night as well.

Jasper reports that his unit seems good, which is great news. Was talking to Aaron last night about blackjack and how it's the only game in the casino where the odds be in your favor if you know what you're doing. There was an MIT team that did it.

Newsweek apologizes for the error it made regarding something about flushing the Koran down the toilet (I think), that had sparked violent protests (and a few deaths as a result). The mass media has unholy power.

The Trim and Fit (TAF) programme in schools made headlines today, and I think the way it's executed is very problematic. Overweight kids are singled out and made to exercise during recess time, they can't eat or play with friends during that time. And TAF spells FAT in reverse, so as you can imagine a lot of teasing probably goes on, to great detriment of the kid's psyche.

The Wimpy Sex

Our society is highly sexualized. An anthropologist would probably ask how come women are supposed to have long hair, but short hair for men. Why skirts and dresses for women but not for men, make-up for women and not for men, unless you're a faggot.

By the way, I just shaved my hair so I'm "botak" now. Wonder what my bosses and colleagues will say. It's much cooler now, can feel the wind.

One thing I notice about those male/female social distinctions is that the women stuff is more impractical, and this is probably because of the centuries of female subjugation. Long hair supposedly looks good but can get in the way, same for skirts and dresses, skirts seldom have pockets (though they can), and expose the legs, though I guess the main impracticality that it can be looked up isn't really an impracticality, as it's another social thing. But surely make-up is a waste of time, just to look good, doesn't actually do anything useful. Except maybe attract mates and reproduce...

Something about NS in the expanding Philip Yeo saga. "I don't want whining Singapore boys. They are not mature even though they have national service and are over 22 years old when they take up undergraduate studies. They give me so much trouble and waste our precious time."

And then, "Maybe I should give more scholarships to non-Singaporeans who are bright, eager and hungry, and then help them get Singapore passports. The rest, I give to the A-level girls are 19 years old."

In the Sunday Times (Sunday version of Straits Times), this article includes a huge photo of Ms Chng Zhenzhi, an A*Star scholarship holder. It takes up almost a quarter of the page. And why? She's the model of what an archetypal A*Star scholar should be like.

She says: "It's quite obvious that the female scholars are more aggressive, Type-A, go-getting types, while the males are more soft-spoken and tend to be easily bullied by females."

And then, "The local boys are OK until they enter national service. Once they enter NS, they complain a lot. I didn't know that guys could talk about the most minute things. Perhaps they're not used to the physical training or regimentation."

Maybe she was misunderstood or misquoted, which can certainly happen, and certainly does happen, but...

Do you mean to say that you thought only girls "talk about the most minute things"? Yah, boys complain a lot when they enter NS. Maybe NS sucks?! Maybe it's that when you go in for BMT they bend your will and break your spirit, teaching you to cower in fear because you're only a puny recruit and everyone can basically ask you to do anything and punish you for not shouting loudly enough. Where you are drilled to do stupid things like marching with arms flailing in a controlled, dignified manner when walking would make a thousand times more sense.

Respect the rank, reply in a subdued, obedient tone, apologizing for your existence, for having been seen, for not being perfect. Going outfield is kinda fun for the first few hours, you know, you get to run around with a rifle and pretend there's an enemy there, and fire blanks, and charge, but then you lie down on an ant nest, you don't get to shower for 5 days, you try not to shit for 5 days, you probably don't brush teeth for 5 days, you get soaked in the rain...

The little things start to count, like having horlicks sweets in your field rations, standing in a line and getting hosed because that's as good a shower as you'll be getting, having training cancelled because of bad weather, falling sick and not having to join the rest, going home on Saturday morning at 10am instead of 1pm in the afternoon...

I'd be amazed if you don't complain about being turned out in the middle of the night in the middle of the jungle and have to pack up all the tents and assemble and fast march with rifles overhead and your vision is blurred and you're practically running, with fullpack on your back and rifle weighing a ton over your head.

I'd be amazed if you don't complain about starting each morning with a 3km run and breakfast, and have to face a full day of training. Or just before going to bed, a "change parade" where you're asked to assemble downstairs in some combination of attire, then some other combination, and another, and everyone else waits downstairs for you in push-up position if you're taking a little longer to change from T-shirt to army uniform and boots...

Don't even get me started on those most fucking minute things known as mosquitoes.

Again, I cannot stress how lucky I am to be going to work where I am tomorrow morning.

Virtual Tennis

Met Peter at the PSC psychometric test on Friday, he tells me that ORA has 3 hockey teams, one each in Division 1, 2, and 3. I'm thinking of joining him in the Div 3 team, but will probably wait until I'm in fitter condition, since I asked him what the standard was like, and he said "You can get Silver for IPPT, right?"

The chalet was pretty fun, had quite a bit of work on Friday so left late, and Ben got slightly lost on the way there, so got there kinda late. The tennis courts were all booked up, so kicked around a soccer ball, which was a great workout.

Daniel was there, he tells me he reads this blog, so hi! Hello also to everyone else. My granny is in my house now, they brought her here and there's a barbeque at my place tonight.

We had dinner at the chalet, where we drew lots to see who had to go back to office on Saturday. Out of the 4 of us, 2 had to go back, so it was 50-50, but then it turns out Sam was excluded because his name was not put in for clearance. That Sam and Eugene are going to ORD is a reason both for them to not go back and to go back, so Sam thought drawing lots was best.

Anyway, so it was 2 out of 3, so got out 3 mahjong tiles, 2 of which matched. Yinglan got his girlfriend to pick for him, then I picked, and I was the odd one out! But I owed Yinglan one, and he was doing something with his girlfriend on Saturday, so now he owes me one.

I did a magic trick for Eugene, and soon I was doing it for the boss of my boss, and more and more people came and I was asked to do the trick over and over again. It's easy to notice what happens, especially the "surprise" part that's part of the trick. I think I need to learn more tricks.

ORD plaques were presented, birthday celebration, we played cards, it's probably to the dealer's advantage to open the first card in blackjack. I'm quite lucky, won both games of "tai di" that I played.

Around midnight, we went bowling, I had a turkey (also known as a "sexually explicit") in frames 2 to 4, had a good score of about 170. Had time for only one game before they closed at 1:30. There was a group of kids that were screaming excitedly as they played.

On X-box, played an army game, your character can stand up, crouch, or prone. Then if move when prone, do leopard crawl. That's fun for a while because it's effortless, unlike in real life. Leopard crawl all the way. It's slow but not tiring. Then played a car-racing game, smashed up the car very quickly, the rear window broken for ventilation.

Got to play tennis! On X-box, but still. Quite fun, nonetheless. Went down, they were still playing mahjong, I played one game, then brushed teeth and went to sleep. Woke up and went to work... and had to lug all my gear (tennis racquets and soccer ball) up the hill...

The highlight of that was playing tennis with Eugene. No one was in office except Susan, we played in the corridor. We were finally done close to 3pm, I think...

Was so tired when I got home, slept, today went gym and swim, with Aaron and Jasper. Aaron was on call in the afternoon, we went with him to KK then walked to United Square in Novena. Maybe we can go kayaking one of these weekends, or play tennis. Aaron has lots of tickets for Star Wars, so the bunch of us might go watch together.

The blisters on my toes have mostly hardened, but there's a huge one on my right little toe. Note to myself that my transport is arriving 10 minutes earlier henchforth. Another note is that bus 852 actually goes from Yio Chu Kang to Bukit Batok, and might be a quicker way than MRT, if I'm at the MRT.

What a Year

This year is the centennial of Einstein's Miracle Year, when he published several seminal papers on quantum theory, special relativity... each of which would easily have won him the Nobel Prize.

Got an SMS from the transport uncle, he says from tomorrow the pick-up timing will be 10 minutes earlier. That would involve getting up earlier...

The magnetic game is addictive, but strangely only for me. Eugene didn't even give it a go. Staying over at the department chalet tomorrow night, so must remember to bring stuff like toothbrush and my medications (otherwise I go insane). We might play tennis tomorrow before dinner, but might not be able to leave work that early...

Work has suddenly hotted up because of the MINDEF PRIDE Day, need to prepare an "interactive" exhibit as well as two A1-size static displays (it would be nice if we could get extra copies of the posters for ourselves!). And the deadlines are too soon... but I'm doing all this for you guys! Can visit the exhibits at Tampines Mall, 4th floor, on 18th June, Saturday from 11am to 9pm (though I'm assigned to do the second shift, from about 4pm to the end).

The chalet should be fun, hope can go kayaking. My parents are going to go Malaysia soon with my sister for holiday, I can't go because not enough leave. Off is not leave, cannot go out of country. Party at my house, anyone? Haha...

For some reason (probably M$) the computer at work is screwy. Excel has been acting up. I found a horrible bug in Excel, when I do Alt-F4 to close it, it doesn't prompt me to save changes to hidden workbooks, and doesn't save the changes. So this morning I went to work and much of the coding I did yesterday was gone! I couldn't figure out how that happened until it happened again during the day! Sheesh. Be careful. And Excel also has this tendency to crash when I'm trying to work with a formula.

I'm quite excited about the chalet because of all the fun stuff that can be done there. But I don't think I'm so much like a little kid that I can't fall asleep because of the anticipation. Good night!

Foolish Games

Had a basketball session just now, we decided to try SPE since it's not so ulu. We had only 5 people because some pulled out at last minute, so there was this guy, and we asked him to join us. Then his friend came, and another, until there were 5 of them too. We got whacked silly, since it culminated in a 5 on 5 full court game.

Fixed up with Ben to play squash next Thursday at MINDEF after work. He has 2 racquets, so he can lend me. Aaron says he's free for our Sunday gym and swim session, not sure if Jasper is free. He'll be reporting back to his old unit on Monday...

So, next Thursday morning is the IPPT date. I just got my US tax refund in the mail, it's worth about 2 months my current allowance. Interesting changes afoot in our branch. Susan is now a "Mdm" because she's a Staff Officer now. Then Janet has taken up Susan's Chief Clerk position, which Janet has kind of been doing for a long while now anyway.

Janet wasn't happy about Yinglan continuously calling her "Aunty Janet" because of this. It will take some getting used to, plus there's going to be a new CO also. So now when applying for off must email "Mdms and Janet", rather than "Mdms and Susan".

Today Yinglan and I played a fun office game. He came up with the idea, but I beat him at his game. The objective is to throw these flat rectangular fridge magnets at the metal cabinet and get them to stick. In the classic variation, stand about a meter or two in front of the cabinet, then toss the magnet at it. That is like a penalty kick. There is a variation that is like a corner kick, you stand beside the target surface and try to get the magnet to stick with a glancing throw.

The canonical method of throwing is to hold the top corner of the magnet with your wrist pointing down and the magnetic surface facing the cabinet (for penalty kicks). Then toss the magnet in a high trajectory, imparting a good deal of spin on it.

For corner kicks, if you use your right hand and stand to the right of the target, you can use the same stroke. If you stand on the other side, you can hold the far corner of the magnet, your wrist pointing up, then spin the magnet with a downward flick of the wrist.

At short distances in front of the cabinet, a surprisingly effective throw is a stupid throw, where you place the magnet on your palm and just do a baseball style throw at the cabinet. It has a good chance of sticking if the magnet side hits the cabinet. The spin throw is fantastic all-round, though, I managed to make a successful toss from about 5 or 6 meters away!

Then I saw Yinglan make a toss successfully, and using that same stroke, I managed to make 5 magnets in a row! It is akin to the stupid throw, in that there is no spin. Hold the magnet in front of you by a side corner, almost as though making a spin throw. But this time throw it using a back-forward straight throw motion, and it should go straight for the cabinet provided you are relatively near.

It's a pity that in the early stages of the game, I threw some magnets too high or too much to the side, and they ended up in the black hole behind the metal filing cabinets. There is no way to save them from their depths of despair.

There's an interesting new project to do. It involves automatically assigning seats around tables to VIPs. There are m tables and n people per table, and the VIPs are supposed to be evenly distributed among the tables, with a seating arrangement within a table that goes like this: the biggest guy sits first, then the next biggest sits opposite, then the next biggest sits somewhere else, etc.

Actually it's not that hard, the tricky bit is the visualization, they want to actually see round tables and the names of the VIPs sitting at the tables. With inputs from Yinglan, I think I'm going to use Excel to generate the seating arrangement, then make a pie chart in Excel representing each table.

The website I was doing is now more or less done, I think, I'm now writing documentation for it. As always, documentation is usually the most boring part, but the thing is that I can also spice up the documentation with quirks. I'm also kinda sick of looking at the ASP/HTML code at this point.

Disturbing Luck

Watched "Divergence" just now, quite gruesome, quite random and confusing. Kill here kill there plots here twist there... got home in time to catch CSI, tonight's episode features a case right out of a nightmare. A body buried in the sand up to the neck, face slashed deeply to attract wild animals.

It's official, our WITs project has been deemed the Best WITs Project (Admin Category) in MINDEF! There was some mention that the prize will be awarded during the MINDEF PRIDE Day. I'm really lucky to be in this position. My bosses were looking for someone to improve the program, and they decided that I would be that person, though my programming experience is largely informal (though it did start with doing a simple simulation in C++ for a research project).

Did you know there are high quality tennis racquet strings made from cows' guts? Rather disturbing, but afterall, soccer balls and such are made from cows' skin, and shuttlecocks from goose feathers, etc.

Playing basketball tomorrow evening, if it isn't cancelled. Can I seriously be faulted for such a disclaimer? I mean, it's reasonable, and it doesn't exactly make the statement meaningless simply because it is tautological. Right?

Bloody Money

Won another $1,500 from the presentation on Friday. The question is how the money is going to trickle down to my lowly pocket. I am definitely in the red every month. Take in about $400, go out at least $400-500. Transport costs at least $120 a month, and estimating $10 for food and drink a day, that pops the $400 already.

But red is good, I like bright colors. Bought 5 pairs of shorts, 2 of them colorful ones. Yay. In view of tennis, I need sports shorts that have several pockets. By the way, "regular" tennis this Saturday might not happen, unless we find other courts. Seems like Friday will be a big PSC gathering for psychometric test.

Medication is expensive, but of course (why of course?) not as expensive as in the US. Got discharged by the liver specialist today, my seroconversion seems to be stable (since about January this year), so she thinks I can be managed by polyclinic (until complications develop). Tried to go to the Ang Mo Kio Polyclinic but managed to arrive only at 4:30pm, which happens to be the time they close.

Saw my granny yesterday, they shouldn't have taken so much of her brain out... she would probably be much more herself now if they had realized it was a stroke sooner, and operated earlier. Oh well, what to do.

Need to prepare some static display for the exhibitions for MINDEF PRIDE Day. I think a screenshot of the VBA code would be neat. Apart from the necessary, prosaic description of the program, of course.

Went on a shopping spree with Jasper on Sunday. He bought a new line of T-shirts, so he'll look different from now on. He also bought socks and shoes. I bought shorts, as I mentioned above.

Ran on Saturday, did 14.5 min for 2.4km, my excuse is that played tennis with Eugene on Friday night so legs were tired. Whenever we go and run, I see a lot of people with hockey sticks, I guess because we run on Saturday at SPE and then go someplace nearby for drinks. Nowadays the sticks look very high tech.

Jiahao's unreserved apology is accepted! It's all over the news. It made "News 5 Tonight". Don't laugh, this is a serious, adult matter. Words matter, phraseology matters, nuances, tone, inflection and intention are not to be taken lightly. People will think you are sincere if you take care to mirror back their words to them. You are what you see.

I don't like milk chocolate but I love chocolate milk. There is some pain in my left knee, sorta like a dull ache, since tennis on Saturday. I had the best Mee Goreng ever at the Bishan S-11, at the vegetarian stall. It was top-class, spicy and full-flavored, sedap! I give it 5 thumbs up.

I wanted, since Saturday, to write something about how humans are highly sexualized creatures, and about sexual urges and victimless crimes (an oxymoron). But now it's late and I'm tired. And it's Monday already. It really looks like there won't be a poem from me for a while...

Weekend Issue

Played tennis with Eugene just now. Had booked the court from 6 to 7pm, but my transport left late, and I ended up getting there only at about 6:20pm, and had to change up. It had just rained heavily, so the courts were wet, but the court we played on was actually an artificial turf surface, so it soaked up the water. Eugene is a fast learner. I told him about $10 racquets.

Going running tomorrow morning, quite early, 8:30am at the SPE track. Hope my 2.4 timing is better! Will have to push myself harder... then in evening, tennis again.

Not sure how the WITs presentation was today, it went smoothly, at any rate. The boss of my boss seems quite optimistice about it. I think that was my first time seeing COA (MG Kuek).

Aaron says no gym on Sunday because he is on call on Saturday night, and will only be free on Sunday afternoon. He was telling me about an experience he had in the abortion ward, this woman didn't go for regular checkups and came in because her water bag burst and was having contractions, then when the baby came out (about a month premature) it was full of problems. Eyes fused together (cyclops), some other weird abnormality. Basically they left the baby there and it died about 3 hours later.

If the baby had a better chance of survival it would probably have been put in the ICU. Also, there's the question of what good it would do to know in advance that something like this was going to happen, ie. if the mum had gone for regular checkups. Given that there's nothing medical science can really do for the foetus, the only thing would be mental preparation and/or abortion.

Had a chat with Janet today, nothing much to do in the afternoon, I was dozing off in front of the PC. She was talking about how filial her husband is to his mum, and about her son (Mothers' Day is coming, you know). Well, I think I've never gotten anything for my mum for Mothers' Day, or her birthday. It just becomes too much of an obligation once you start =)

OPC chalet next weekend, hope to go kayaking. If no one else wants, tennis would be good too. Spent the day today fiddling with some computer hardware, and fooled around a bit with writing VBA macros.

Just a note to myself, the Northpoint foodcourt is due to open in mid-May this year. Time to sleep now!

This is Not a Sex Blog

The incoming CO came in today. There's a WITs presentation tomorrow. Going to play tennis with Eugene after work. Removed the hard drives from the old office laptops. The laptops were all the same kind but the hard drives all different! In order of decreasing thickness, Hitachi, Toshiba, IBM.

I don't know if I did anything wrong by creating a partition on my active hard disk (that had other partitions mounted). I probably should have booted from floppy, but I was lazy. Everything seems ok now, so can't be that bad. Labelled the new partition today using "e2label /dev/hda7 /var".

It seems Jasper's laptop optical drive is a CD-writer and can read DVDs! That's cool. They are advertising these "TV Games" that are plug and play. Just a handheld console that plugs into the TV set, with the software and hardware all loaded in that little package. That's cool.

Happy 05/05/05!

Beware of Root

No basketball tomorrow, too bad.

Was fiddling around with my filesystem just now, had a new partition (stole it from windows), wrote to the partition table with cfdisk, formatted it using mke2fs, mounted it and then copied /var over (after dropping into init level 1). Then umounted /var and mounted the new partition as /var, then was wondering how to free up the space on the original partition.

Got a little careless, dropped back into runlevel 1 and did "rm -r *" in /var as root without thinking! Was half watching soccer on TV somemore! So I just wiped out the new /var I created, but luckily the original copy I wiped out was still there. So had to umount /var (which I should have done first...), then mount it as /mnt again, copy the files over, wipe out /var, then mount the new partition as /var again. But it's all good now.

This is the first time I've really quaked at the power of root, felt that sickening, awful power as I watched the computer churn, doing what I told it to do but didn't mean for it to do. Having to take responsibility for it, because I issued the command!

Oh, and a bit before that, I tried to backup the old /var by doing a cp -a /var /var.old but I typed /var/old instead! That was a crazy recursion, luckily I didn't crash the computer by filling up the root volume with infinity.

Caught my transport home today, and took 163 home. The 163 was so damn crowded. And MRT trains also get really crowded. Would I rather more buses and trains and no TV Mobile? Yes, if you're going to show some stupid show on Tuesday nights at 10pm instead of showing CSI that's on Channel 5.

Shopping

Walked past the Istana today, and it was actually open to public, so I asked "is it open house?" then the guy was a little upset and said no lah it's the past president's body on display or something like that, so I said I meant is it open to public and he said yes, so I walked past him, then immediately got two policemen (one woman actually) who said I need to wear pants (I was wearing shorts, in case anyone gets the wrong idea). Oh well. I think I've never been in there before.

Went shopping with Jasper, I bought an old Radiohead CD (The Bends), a backpack (orange color), duct tape, little notepads, a hole puncher, and a Sigg water bottle. Jasper also bought a Sigg water bottle. You know, those aluminum Say Yang got one so I also want one kind.

Went to the toilet in the basement of Far East Plaza, and got scolded by the toilet lady. I walked up the stairs into the toilet and when I walked out she called out to me (actually I heard "hello hello" as I was walking in, but didn't hear "xiao di" or something so didn't know it was intended for me), then I realized she was speaking to me, so then I turned around and saw the sign that it was 10 cents per entry and so I gave her 10 cents but she scolded me in dialect and I have the impression she said something like how this is her only source of income.

It's back to work again...

Exertions

Badminton was good. Damn tiring. Shirt was soaked right through. Was in a semi-conscious state on the way home and crashed upon getting home.

Going to be playing tennis with Eugene after work on Friday at the Yishun SAFRA. I think there'll be basketball on Thursday, and then Saturday morning got run and evening got tennis again.

Tried out for the first time the cool functionality that my laptop has as a CD player. Just put in a disc in the drive and it's able to play the music CD without booting into an OS. Pretty nice.

Call for Volunteers

Playing badminton with Eugene and his friends tomorrow, then on Saturday evening playing tennis with gz and friends. Condo courts still need to pay, though it's cheap: only $4 for 2 hours. Hope to mark as "regular event".

Went gym today, I've definitely gone soft. Did the legs bent 90 degrees back resting against a pillar but couldn't will myself to hold the position for long. Last time I used to do the same thing against the wall of my room, and I think the mental distance I would go back then was farther.

Fiddled with the XML file for the GDM login screen, and I felt happy. Did a bit more fiddling just now and when I was almost done, I did a stupid thing. Deleted a line "" so was thrown an error, so I replaced it with "" and was thrown another XML error, so I didn't know what happened. Used a diff viewer (meld) to compare with the original file and finally traced the error.

Met gz last night, he lent me an Aimee Mann CD (gz: I think the CD is from Cash Converters, since there was a Cash Converters sticker on it), and I also bought a Garbage CD (beautifulgarbage) from HMV, which was having a sale. It was $16, as was Damien Rice's CD, so that kinda sucked because I bought the latter at CD-RAMA that day for $21.

Went to granny's place just now, there was a scare because she was choking for some time on her porridge. Could go install linux for my uncle tomorrow, but too rushed in the morning since I'm planning to play badminton. So still haven't installed linux for anyone except myself yet. Any volunteers? =)

Aaron told us today how there are many women going in for abortions. It's cool that he doesn't have to be involved because he objects. It's good that he realizes that making abortion illegal is also not the way to go, because that leads to unregulated operations that oftentimes lead to the death of the mother as well. Sigh.

When out with gz last night, saw my dad's friend's young daughter with a boy, though I guess like my sister, she's not so young anymore. Also saw this guy who works in MINDEF and sometimes arrives at about the same time as me. He walks like he's falling, has quite a bad deformity of some sort in his legs, but amazingly he keeps his balance. Must have taken loads of practice. His legs constantly seem as though they're buckling under him, I think it's mostly his right leg because he's always right-leaning.

Then on the way home, waiting for 70 at Yio Chu Kang MRT, there was a thug behind me talking on his cell phone. I say he's a thug because he was telling this guy how he met this guy who I think said something about him and he grabbed the guy's shirt and "scared the wits out of him", twisted his right arm too. I think the 2 gangs are going to meet and then he and that guy will go at it 1-on-1.

I plan to read The Messiah of Stockholm by Cynthia Ozick, I think this was recommended by my professor in Princeton. This is the professor I had in my first semester, for a Freshman Seminar, and the books we read for the course were really amazing.

Jasper is done with his exams, and needs to pass his Psychology modules, and get an A- average on his two Mathematics modules in order to get a 1st class honours. I spell that with a "u" because this is an NUS honors. He has a week to vacate his hostel room.

Garbage is quite pleasant to listen to. On a casual listen, Androgyny stands out. SMRT has submitted an application to raise public transport fares. Singaporeans put about $600 million in jackpot machines last year. I need to jump. My lovey says Once Were Warriors is a great film, if I got it right. Jasper tells me that movie prices have taken a hike yet again. It's now $9.50 on "weekends", which I think extend possibly until Thursdays!!