Have a Googley Christmas

I'm now legally married! And I've turned 24.

A few days ago, I saw that a huge branch of a tree had fallen on a parked car. It was a newish white car, and the green leaves covered much of it.

Updated blogger settings so that there's "word verification" for comments, meaning you have to type in the word in a graphic before you can post the comment, thwarting automated scripts. Haven't logged on to blogger for a long time, because I've been using this small program that lets me post directly from my desktop (it saves the login settings onto disk).

HDB should soon be done with the pre-renovations. They've done the smooth cement flooring for the bedrooms, but in the process muddied the walls a little with cement.

Did a little coding today, expanding and modularizing a chunk of the VBA code for MS Excel. Have explored macros for OOo, but haven't gotten very far. But I have found some pretty good tutorials and code samples to work from. The thing though is that we're getting kinda busy at work, with the more clerical odds and ends that comes with physical files.

Might be doing a little Christmas shopping later. Am planning for a little Christmas tennis on Sunday morning. Just got an email about Aimee Mann's new album, "The Forgotten Arm".

Life is good. But I need to try to read more and write some poetry. Tennis is good, though Saturday tennis has been scrapped, at least temporarily.

By the way, it's amazing the stuff that Google has been coming up with. Some very good initiatives, and mostly browser based. Because when they develop for MS Windows, I can't quite use it on GNU/Linux.

Empathy

Granny is doing much better these days. She's able to speak rather clearly, and able to comprehend her surroundings as well as what we say. In fact, she cracked a joke. She burped, and I burped, then she burped again, and then asked if I had any more.

Went to celebrate my birthday/marriage with Aaron, Jasper, and Say Yang. Ate at Greenland, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant in Serangoon. That's where we were planning to go exactly one year ago, which was when my granny developed a stroke, and the dinner was cancelled.

Anyway, we went into a pet store and there were all these puppies locked up in cages. The rest of them seemed to think that puppies might like it better being caged up (or at least be ok with it) because they get fed and taken care of, not having to fight for survival outside. Yet they felt that if Jasper was locked in a cage, he would prefer freedom.

My lovey is going to arrive back in Singapore soon! Back to work for me again... Say Yang has been going wake-boarding, and it sounds damn fun. I'll try to join then if I can. Probably the closest I'll get to snowboarding for some time...

IPPT

By the way, I failed my IPPT. Managed to do only 4 chin-ups (need 6 to pass), and then after that my running also not within passing timing. My thighs ache rather badly.

The Death Penalty

I don't believe in the death penalty because I think it's horribly cruel to kill someone when you have a choice not to. It's horribly cruel especially when the death brings no benefits. Life imprisonment is a much better solution if you don't want that person to re-enter society.

People believe that the death penalty is a huge deterrence, but statistics (in the US, for example) do not suggest this. At least, that's what I've heard, though I haven't studied the data myself. I've also read that deterrence value is derived from the perceived probability of getting caught, and not so much from the harsh penalty of getting caught (with certain assumptions, of course, like assuming that that penalty isn't just a slap on the wrist).

Singapore institutes a mandatory death penalty for drug smugglers. This policy does not help with nabbing the kingpins, though it kills the pawn, who is sacrificed by the drug lords. People still smuggle drugs even though there is the death penalty, probably because they are at their wits' end, and they just can't not do this. This doesn't make it OK, of course, but I think it's very wrong to murder a desperate man. The ones really making a profit from this "business" are the drug lords, not the pawns.

Let's talk about owning responsibility. Let's talk about sex. Humans generally have sexual urges, and there is a proliferation of porn sites, should the government crack down on all these sites to prevent addiction? Or gambling. Should the government ban gambling to prevent addiction? Should the government kill all drug smugglers to prevent addiction?

In all these examples, the victim is his own enabler. And it's all about money. The addict pays for the addiction, and is responsible in part. This is not to say that the casinos and drug dealers don't take advantage of the addiction. And we (humans, mammals, animals) are all biologically similar, and susceptible to addiction, just a matter of degree.

The situation with drug trafficking bears resemblance to a war. War on drugs, as Bush would say. Say you catch a smuggler, who surrenders like the enemy. In a war, do you open fire on enemy troops who have surrendered? Not unless gripped by fear and suspicion. There is no reason for you to kill unless your own life is at risk.

The drug users are the ones with the money that funds the drug trade. If I hire an assassin to take out my enemy, who is the murderer? If the assassin gets caught, hang the guy, and problem solved? The assassin is certainly part of the problem, but the root cause is actually me, the person who ordered the hit. If you eat meat, the workers at the farms and slaughterhouse are confronted with and bear the burden of the cruelty that this entails, but you must recognize that your money is what keeps the bloody business going.

The addiction is the core problem with drugs, and the true enabler driving the system is money, which flows from the drug users to the drug lords through the smuggler.

'Yes' to harsh punishments and severe penalties for those involved in the drug trade, because there is some deterrence effect in sending someone to prison, and because they are dangerous to drug addicts and potential drug addicts like all of us. Remove that link in the chain, and keep society safe.

But not death, not murder. Don't take away a life because it cannot be returned. There is no rehabilitation for the dead, and blood is on our hands.

Fiddling with GNOME

Hello, here I am again, fiddling with my gnome desktop. Customized the "panel" by deleting the one on top and fattening up the one below. Used the big foot icon, which is equivalent to the Windows "Start" button.

My lovey is in the US now, should be touching down in a couple of hours. It's been many an agonizing hour since she left for the airport this morning... It's easy to forget how much you can really miss someone when you've been with the person almost every day for the past few months.

Christmas is coming, and with it should come some holidays, but not that many, I guess. Back at work, it's more or less routine stuff, so I'm trying to explore macros for OpenOffice.org, and by the way, OOo2.0 looks very pretty compared to OOo1.1. Version 2 has a database component, but it seems they threw in a lot of Java dependence, which some people aren't happy about because Java is not open source.

I'm thinking of writing about the death penalty soon, and maybe write in a letter to The Straits Times about it. It's good that you have "SQL view" with a MS Access query, because though the "Design view" is more user friendly, SQL lends itself to a simple "Find and Replace" using a text editor (to modify it to use a different source table).

For some strange reason, I was down with a sore and runny nose over the weekend, but I'm better now. I guess I should be able to take IPPT on Wednesday, but passing it this time is a different matter.

Tennis this weekend looks promising; last Saturday I was playing against the wall at NUS... I brought back two wooden kendo swords from Korea. I wonder if they'll come in useful someday.

Lots of staff movement in the coming months. This month one of the officers leaving. A new one to take her place. Soon my boss and her boss will leave, but I think the dates aren't fixed just yet. In a manner of speaking, I'll be leaving a few months after that too. But that's still quite a ways away.

I wonder if anyone still pokes around this place besides the spambots. If so, hello! Chances are I haven't seen you in a long time too. Oh well. Perhaps I've never even seen you before.

Take Back the Blog!

Alright, it's very disconcerting that even the tag-board is now filling up with spam. Comments filling up with spam is quite expected, though why did it happen when I stopped blogging? Broken window theory that when there are signs of cobwebs and dilapidation, graffiti and vandalism follow, with scams and spam close on its heels?

Some updates. MINDEF didn't get top 3 in the PS21 ExCEL Convention, but we got to see the Dim Sum Dollies perform. Pretty funny. Put new overgrips on my tennis racquets, which are really sweet. Hot pink and tacky (in the tactile sense). Looks like no Saturday tennis for 2 weeks in a row (the week that just passed and the week about to come). Sunday tennis seems to be going strong, though. NIE having its holidays now, so Eugene quite free.

Getting quite busy at work. Boss movements occurring soon. A-M's twin brother's baby boy is 1 year old. I got a pair of tennis shoes.

Watched Harry Potter Goblet of Fire, which was ok. Before I bombard you with more useless information, good night. I'm tired.

Comments

Wow, a lot of comments on my blog recently. A very few posts on my blog recently. Incidentally, the comments are spam, and not worth reading. That sucks.

Are my posts spam and not worth reading? The way this is going, I think so.

Information Technology

Five JC students were suspended for three days for writing not so nice things about their students on their blogs. You shouldn't say not so nice things about your teachers because I'm going to be a teacher. No lah, some teachers not so good, but you shouldn't say not so nice things about them lor.

My PSC interview is today, I guess I'd better get ready to leave soon. Office environment nowadays is kinda interesting. The branch head has been away for a long time now, on course. It's a month long course, she'll be back soon. Another officer was gone for two weeks on honeymoon, back now.

The Ranking and Bonuses Program that we did last year is getting implemented MINDEF/SAF-wide, gave a tutorial session last Friday. Making some enhancements to it, the thing is that programs can always have more and more functionality, at the risk of bloat. But it's fun working on it.

One thing is that these macros now tie us to Microsoft Excel, and there's a MINDEF/SAF-wide push to OpenOffice.org. Not only that, they want to pull already-installed MS Office software from our PCs. So have to specially request to keep it. MS Access is missing from OpenOffice.org version 1, and we need to keep Excel if we want to use the macros. The pressure is definitely on to port the macros over to OpenOffice.org.

There's even talk of distributing the Ranking and Bonuses Program to the rest of the Civil Service, but honestly the fact that it's written in MS Excel is a huge, huge barrier. I'm not sure what the situation is like in the rest of the Civil Service, but I think almost everyone uses MS Office 97.

Been learning tennis from the internet, it's really quite cool. Techniques for the serve. Need to keep elbow bent otherwise you'll hurt the elbow. When returning the ball, the way to impart topspin is to brush up against the back of the ball, with the face vertical, rather than trying to brush the top of the ball with the face horizontal. The ball moves too quickly for you to have enough contact with it using the latter method. Looser strings impart more power because more of the energy transfer is done by the strings (rather than the ball), and strings are more elastically efficient than balls.

Alright, I'm probably going to be late. Might be able to have 2 tennis sessions this Saturday, hooray! It's children's day. Resuming reading The Messiah of Stockholm. Should try to find the time to learn more about linux. I messed up Say Yang's hard disk that time by running cfdisk from the hard disk itself, and as a result scared him off linux. I think.

Oh well.

Negligent Blogger

It's been a long time... oh well... it's always like that. Anyway, feeling a little under the weather, but recovering. Found out a little about SAP and PeopleSoft today.

Getting busy at work. Lovey is busy at her work too. Been meeting her after work because we both work in the West and so we have dinner then go home together.

I'm tired. Fixed the date for ROM three months from now. Have yet to hear about when my PSC interview is. If you want to do ROM at ROM, log in to the system at the stroke of midnight.

Say Yang having problems with his computer. Sam moved into his new place, and we might play tennis there this weekend.

Played a little ping pong with gz last Saturday. Wonder how the AHM was for them. Wonder how Jasper is doing, haven't seen him for a long time.

It seems my uncle broke his back in Batam, and my dad's trying to arrange for him to be brought back to Singapore.

Annalakshmi, 5 Coleman Street #02-10, Excelsior Hotel & Shopping Centre. That's the place with the good Indian Vegetarian "pay what you want" place.

Bought new tennis balls, thinking of whether to buy tennis shoes. Probably not, I guess. Not able to find out if there are tennis competitions online.

We are more or less done with the WITs project from last year, got Silver for the NIQCC. The only other thing is the trip to Korea in November, I suppose. That's going to be about a week long.

Time flies.

TGIF

The psychologist interview was pretty interesting. Jasper found his really interesting. Just went for the NIQCC presentation, wonder how we did in the end. Will know tomorrow, I believe. Been looking around for hotels for the wedding dinner. It won't be anything grand, just for family mostly. But that's still quite a bunch.

The right pedal of my bike broke several days ago while I was cycling up an incline, and the chain slipped off too. Can't use a pedal from the old bike because the screw diameter is different. Used the headlight when cycling home just now.

Went to this Indian Vegetarian restaurant several days ago, it's nice, in Peninsula Plaza (or Tower, not sure). It's buffet style, and it's part of a charity for culture/arts, so you just go and eat and then you pay what you want to pay. The food is pretty good. I'll post the restaurant name some other day, I've got the name card.

Tennis seems to no longer be in De En's place anymore, and it looks like it'll be shifted to morning. Which conflicts with my other tennis session. So this Saturday just playing once in the morning, and not with Sam. A pity, but maybe there'll be some way to fit both in eventually.

Going to Say Yang's place on Saturday night to reinstall linux. I've had strange problems burning a Debian CD. Errors when I used a CD-R, which ruined the disc. Then I upgraded software and used a CD-RW, and it seemed to work fine. I tried again with a CD-R and it got trashed. Also, on the other computer at home, the CD-RW drive has disappeared in Windows XP. Totally weird, the drive not detected at all. And it used to work perfectly.

The scroll-wheel of my mouse stopped working after I did a system software upgrade. Which was weird. Added two characters to a config file, rebooted and it worked again. Another weird thing is that my Windows FAT32 partition gets mounted automatically when Linux starts up. Not sure when also, whether the OS or the desktop environment is responsible for it. The /etc/fstab hasn't been touched, though, it's still on "noauto".

I've been busy... oh, and I'd better remember to return my library books this Saturday, if not tomorrow. Maybe I should return them tomorrow. Friday, I mean. Which is today.

Absence

I apologize for my long absence. I've been away from my computer for quite some time now. Check email quite infrequently. There are tons of updates to be made, from the mundane to the earth-shaking.

Jasper's birthday is tomorrow. I think Andy's one is the day after, I'll have to check with him. Work-wise, been quite busy, but not too busy, making it a point to go home on time. Working on the website, adding features here and there and I'm afraid I'll have to take stock and simplify the whole mass of code. Cycled my bike a couple of times to lovey's place. The chain slipped the last time I did that, and for unrelated reasons, I haven't rode back from her place yet.

Didn't play tennis on Saturday, so it was just gz and hb at Hume Park (near MINDEF) in the morning. Br Hd saw Sam at the Civil Service 1/4 marathon. Her team came in 2nd, I believe. Got a pewter cup for a trophy.

Went to see lovey's brother's place, it's nice, on a really high floor. Got a view of the tennis court, which is always occupied. More on homes and living spaces later.

Installing avast! antivirus for lovey. Looks very pretty. Made a big oops. Must always remember to uninstall other antivirus on Windows before installing new antivirus. Screwed up the system badly, couldn't start. Eventually figured out it was because I was installing a second antivirus, so went into Safe Mode and got rid of the old program. Took a bit of trouble getting into Safe Mode, because got BIOS password, but luckily when get to the Windows logon screen it doesn't freeze right away and can choose to reboot.

Planning on Wednesday to fix the linux installation I did for sy that day. We had lots of weird problems with his new motherboard (not to mention his new hard disk). It seems there's this "feature" that if the computer is improperly switched off, if you switch it on again without waiting like many minutes, it make a constant beeping sound and refuses to start up. Took us much head-scratching before we figured out that what we need to do is wait (and not open up the case and poke around).

The linux installation was sort of ok (though not very functional), but I think I screwed it up because I ran cfdisk from the hard disk itself. Simplest is probably to just reinstall, should be a breeze this time. Since we already know the answers. I'm updating my CD (to upgrade my system also), so can burn an up-to-date copy for him.

Some more his motherboard is 64bit one, and the hard disk is SATA or something even fancier (not IDE, which I guess is a thing of the past). So the installer initially couldn't find the hard disk, it was ultimately assigned as hde! So that was quite fun. One thing is he seems to have lost his Windows XP authorization code or whatever it's called.

Have hardly read the books I've borrowed from the library. Oh well. Busy busy. Just checked my email and have to send some emails to PSC by today. Going for psychologist interview tomorrow. Yinglan is on leave, in China for some thingy. Went to the gym at Gombak today, and last Friday. It's good, got a lot of interesting weights machines.

Met Yvonne at the underground City Hall place where she was juggling. I guess the weeks went by so fast in part due to the physics symposium we went for. That was on the 10th of August. Not bad. But all the way in NTU. But soon NTU will be home. Or at least, it'll be near home.

Latest and greatest news! PSC has agreed to transfer lovey's bond to NUS, so she'll start work there really soon. Oh, and we also made an "Option to Purchase" a 5-room HDB flat in Jurong West, quite near to Boon Lay MRT.

Got new bike, got a headlight for the bike, collected my sunglasses, got this resistance tube with handles on both sides. Got a new LCD TV at home also. Reusing an old wallet that I've patched with duct tape. My sis lost her wallet and handphone at arcade. New car should be coming soon.

Bought two CDs also, listened to one of them today. I guess I'd better sleep soon. The antivirus scan for lovey's computer is done, and the Debian ISO image is downloaded. Using jigdo of course, which is so cool. Looking forward to tennis this Saturday, hopefully it materializes.

Bike Theft!

My phone now seems to have the same problem as gz's phone. The vibration doesn't seem to work at all, so I miss calls and messages like anything when I put it to silent mode. Maybe it's just that the phone's now old.

My bicycle got stolen yesterday. Came back at night and it was just not there. Not even a trace of the lock. I think this one CSI also can't help me. The thing to do is probably invest in a monster lock, maybe even one that employs aggressive defence. Just kidding.

So been walking in and out. Played tennis with Sam this morning, it was just the two of us, Yinglan pulled out yesterday, and Sam's friend Ben was reportedly hung-over. But Sam has definitely improved quite a bit, he's going to start "intermediate" lessons soon. He got a girlfriend now, someone at church he has known for some time already.

Going to meet gz and hb for tennis. Andy can't make it this week. Probably joining Aaron and Jasper for gym tomorrow. Ate durians just now, parents bought from Malaysia, damn good. Much cheaper than in Singapore, they pack into styrofoam boxes, and the boxes are bigger than the ones in NTUC, and they really stuff the boxes. Supposed to be 15 Ringgit for one box but my parents got 3 boxes for 28.

Bought a pair of sunglasses just now from a shop in Ang Mo Kio, it'll take about a week to make the lenses. The lens cost $100, but got quite a cheap brandless frame for another $40. They can put a mirror coating to the lens but it would be easily damaged by scratching, and there was some mention of mercury.

Went to the library and borrowed some books. Initially was going to just borrow the same books I borrowed that time but haven't finished, in the end borrowed several books on linux. I hope to have more time to fiddle with my computer. Haven't been fiddling with it much, really. 3 books on linux and 1 is a book I almost finished reading that time, but didn't.

Might write more about work some other time. Basically quite busy. But I guess a lot of that can be attributed to the fact that I'm going to take off next week, and will only go to work on Thursday. W00t!

Show and Tell

Boston Public is such an awesome show. A dramatization of the roller-coaster of public school life in America, you get these amazing situations. One moment it looks desperate, like what are the teachers going to do with this student, then it's so heart-warming and touching to see that the student is actually gentle and sweet, then something gets stolen, and it's "obvious" who stole it, then the teacher discovers the student is being framed...

And many other co-plots developing contemporaneously, each as interesting as the next, each with its own unpredictable emotional trajectory, each resolved interestingly and believably. And everyone finds their own way and it all kind of makes sense, it all kind of works out, so it's incredibly touching and inspiring. And they're going to move it from its midnight timeslot to 1 am. How nice.

CSI was great too, lots of sad stories too. This guy brought about $100,000 to the casino to play blackjack, and used a double-up method. Start with say $1,000, if he loses, he bets $2,000, if lose, bet $4,000, etc. This is practically miraculous, but he lost all the way. The last hand he bet about $50,000 (this probably doesn't add up, but bear with me) and got two picture cards, I think. Then the dealer has small cards, and keeps opening small cards. Dealer has 7 cards and only 13 points. Opens an ace, and another ace. Then opens a 6, for 21 points.

The guy goes home, desperate, in shock, in disbelief, strokes a knife. Jams the butt into a recess in the door frame and turns his back and rams into the knife. Moves forward, then rams against the knife again, 5 times. Turns around, throws his chest into the knife a couple of times, then staggers to the middle of the room and lies there to die. His mentally retarded brother, whose life savings he "borrowed" thinking it was a sure bet, would get a million dollars if the cause of death was murder.

And in real life, I've got quite a lot of work to do these days and I am going to sleep now.

Because we love our land, and we want it to be free...

I was complaining on Friday about a funeral procession that took up the entire left lane of a 3-lane road. This was in Yishun, on the main road that runs beside the MRT track. So there were probably 100 people walking slowly, with a few vehicles somewhere in the mix. People carrying a coffin, banging on drums and cymbals and the like. I was felt to be insensitive to complain about this. But must they take the main road? It completely kills off left turns for several minutes!

Got to use my new tennis racquet on Saturday. I feel like saying the string tension feels too low. Was feeling better in the evening, so decided to play after all. Cancelled the morning session, though. Andy joined us this time, he used to be school team in Secondary School. gz was able to make it also, and it was fun. 4 is a great number for tennis. 4 is also the number of points you need to win a game (unless you get to deuce).

Intending to write a letter to Straits Times or something about how public buses are in desperate need of upgrades. So many of their buses are out to bust our eardrums. The brakes are worn so thin it's metal against metal. What's the use of TV Mobile if your hearing has gone to bits before you've even boarded the bus?

On Thursday, went to see MO. Took afternoon off to rest at home. Met Aaron and Jasper that evening for dinner. Went to work on Friday morning, was feeling better. Went for PSC Career Fair in the afternoon. Then went for dinner with lovey and her parents. On Saturday went to Sim Lim, bought a graphics card for office and ordered a replacement projector lamp, also for the office.

Went to Mass with lovey this morning (Sunday), went my granny's place in the evening. She's ok, can move her arms about, can be fed solid food. There art thou happy. I'm almost fully recovered now, I don't feel sick, but still have a sore throat and a stuffy nose. At least I don't feel weak and no more muscle aches.

I think the crucial reason why public toilets get really dirty is the "dirty cascade". Someone gets it dirty then the next person at best leaves the toilet no worse than he/she found it, but more likely makes it worse in response to the bad state.

Tag-board seems to be down. Can't read it.

Arrival Debrief

Yo yo, been quite busy since returning. I could write about the flight, about how we watched several movies. I watched Fever Pitch, Hitch, and Guess Who. All not bad, some quite good.

Meeting Aaron and Jasper (and possibly Say Yang) for dinner tomorrow. My lovey just got a cell phone. Very nice, of course. Had dinner with her parents at Newton Circus, then the car parked next to her dad's car had a lorry that probably didn't put handbrake opposite that rolled backwards and was pushing against the car so probably if he drove off the lorry would roll more and that would be bad.

Well, with the very boring story I should probably go sleep. Feeling a little sick, haven't slept much I guess. Stepped on a snail and heard its shell crack. That was yesterday, when I was walking home from the bus stop. Didn't look. Too squeamish to go back and put it out of its misery.

Rudely awakened by the screeching bus yesterday morning, welcoming me back to Singapore, back to work. The screech is actually very controlled and purposeful, intentional and calmly irritating.

Bloody cockles. Oozing blood from the folds of their bulging flesh. Macbeth should have used lime juice. That might have worked.

I've inserted double insoles in my office shoes, and they're much more comfortable now. Snug as a bug. Or a hug. Maybe even a rug.

Did a science experiment Monday night. Trying to figure out if my new tennis racquet is heavier than the one I have. Tied pieces of thread to each racquet, then hung the threads on 2 ends of a very symmetrical plastic clothes hanger, and see which way it tipped. Conclusion is that my old racquet is probably heavier, but then I realized why the new one seems quite much heavier. The balance is further from the handle. The c.g. is near the chin of the racquet face, while my older racquet has the c.g. at the throat.

So we got back safely, my shoulder is pretty much back to normal, although it still hurts when I stretch it to weird angles (like backwards). Had to check-in my racquet, but it seems to have survived the trip buried amongst clothes. If there are fractures they're internal and invisible.

Assembled a cupboard on Monday night with my dad, we took about 3+ plus in total. It's a rather nice, big cupboard in the dining room, tall, many compartments, with some nice doors. Replaces the cupboard that was ruined by water that leaked from the wall due to a broken pipe, which was fixed while I was away.

Rode out my new bike this morning, and rode it back in the evening. It's good. It's yellow, and nice. We both got clip-on sunglasses in LA, which is kinda cute when we both wear them. Spent most of Monday relaxing, unpacking stuff at her place.

Haven't been given much work yet, as everyone's so busy, preparing for ISO audit. Helped Yinglan a little today with simplifying the process of doing some similar analysis 12 times (on 12 different populations).

Looking forward to the weekend, it's been a long time since I've played tennis. My lovey's new cell phone has a tennis game on it. Meeting Sam at Kallang Tennis Courts Saturday morning, and De En and Andy at De En's place at night. gz can't make it, unfortunately.

Brought 1kg of dark chocolate to office and offered to people. Half of it is almost gone. And I probably ate half of that half. Oh, and while we were checking-in our bags in LAX, lovey realized that we were missing the laptop bag! So I scrambled outside and the guy outside directed us inside and I went in and out and then he pointed me to this room and there it was, kept safely for us to find it. Whew.

My parents bought a new Toyota Camry, it's scheduled to arrive in September. Lovey sold her Toyota Corolla in the US. I got to see the Toyota Prius, I actually expected to see a small sedan, but it looked more like an SUV. Cool.

Postcards from France

Hello all! It's me again. It's been a nice two weeks so far in sunny Los Angeles, hope everyone is doing well! The packing is ok, you know the drill, selling stuff, giving away stuff, cleaning the apartment. The kind of stuff you do all the time, like when you've completed a doctoral degree after four years.

Anyway, I arrived safe and sound, and hope to go back in one piece. But there will be two of us, lovey and me. But in a sense that's just one. Went around the town, the first night was in this bar with red dark lighting and dolls hanging from the walls and shelves.

I actually semi-dislocated my left arm. Was in the ocean helping get the kayaks get offshore. The waves were pretty mean. Capsized many a kayak that hardly got two meters from the sand. I saw a capsized canoe about 3 meters away, and tried to wade towards it, then a huge wave came. I didn't know how to deal with waves, but now I know. Anyway, I kinda turned to use my right side to block the watery onslaught, and got knocked into the water, and when I came up I had lost the sunglasses on my face to the shallow depths (never found it), and my left shoulder felt weird.

I guess it's a semi-dislocation in that the arm probably never got out of socket, but sprained. Good thing is that it's most healed now, I can use it almost as good as new. Couldn't really use it without pain for about 5 days, actually. Took anti-inflammatories, and iced it the first couple of days. This was in Malibu. Sat by the ocean watching people surf.

When a wave comes, if it hasn't broken, you can pretty much just ride it, bobbing up and down as it passes by. But if it's about to break, dive under it, go below the surface of the water before it hits you. Then it crashes harmlessly above you. And doesn't dislocate your shoulder. Saw people surf in a variety of methods. One that's pretty cool is a long surfboard and the guy holds an oar, so you can surf normally plus paddle with the oar further from the beach.

My lovey bought me a pack of cool bicycle cards, that are negative-image like, so all cards are the same color, the background is pink. My dad bought me a bicycle while I was away, so will be getting to see that when I'm back. Seems my granny is doing better, they're feeding her porridge again.

My lovey also bought me a tennis racquet! US$55, after taxes. It's a Prince racquet, and pretty solid. She is so sweet to me. So now I guess I don't have to lend my super-lousy $10 racquet to people who don't have racquet. Bought some head tape too for protecting the frame from superficial damage. Hope that there won't be problems bringing the racquet back, for I hope to hand-carry it...

We also went for a Catholic Engaged Encounter weekend retreat last weekend, and it was quite good. Basically to deal with relationship issues, and start or improve communication on crucial issues, as the case may be. Writing exercises, sharing of experiences, that kind of thing.

We watched Cinderella Man, which was really good. The cinema offered a money-back guarantee if the movie was, like, not so good. We got our money back anyway =)

I'm going to miss the soy ice cream and vegetable meat (ground beef, beef burgers, sausage patties). Can't quite find these in Singapore, but will look harder if we do start cooking seriously. I think I've seen soy cheese in Singapore. The ice cream we bought this time was damn good, same brand (Turtle Mountain) but they have a "purely decadent" line. It's chocolate ice cream with peanut butter swirls. I'm bringing back about 2kg of dark chocolate, by the way.

Flying off tomorrow morning.

Parting Words

Just to inform everyone again to make a mental/electronic/physical note in their calendars or whatever your biological/logical clock is sync'd to, that I am flying in a few hours' time, and will only be back around midnight of Sunday, 24th July (Singapore Time).

I'm taking my mum's tri-band phone, and listening to the radio built into her phone now as I type this. I miss having a radio that I can carry with me all the time and listen to, a radio encapsulated in an object I already carry with me all the time.

The cholesterol specialist (upon the voicing of my concern about my muscle aches) decided that I can go off CRESTOR for a month and have a blood test + checkup done then. Actually when she called me regarding the results of the new test, she said it wasn't bad, and that I could continue taking the drug. But that was because I said I didn't really feel muscle pain or stiffness and that sort of thing that day.

Doreen's mother in law passed away, and so she's flying to Pakistan. Things are pretty bad there, no proper water and stuff, riots and stuff (which she says are attracted by weddings and funerals). And women need to wear shawl and all that, otherwise...

Death and Disease

London has won the bid for the 2012 Olympics. London has just been racked with terrorist bomb blasts. Bombs went off in the underground and buses, during morning rush hour.

Went to see the specialist for cholesterol yesterday, and there's pretty bad news. Creatine kinase (CK) level is about 1.5 times the upper limit of normal (ULN). The link says CK leaks into the blood when muscle is damaged. Cell lysis or something, I guess. I reproduce the relevant passage in the explanatory sheet that comes with Crestor (rosuvastatin), which I'm currently taking, 10 mg/day.

Skeletal muscle:
As with other HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, effects on skeletal muscle e.g. uncomplicated myalgia and myopathy, have been reported in CRESTOR treated patients. Rare cases of rhabdomyolysis have been reported in subjects receiving rosuvastatin 80 mg in investigational clinical trials which were occasionally associated with impairment of renal function. All cases improved on cessation of therapy.

Patients who develop any signs or symptoms suggestive of myopathy should have their CK levels measured. CRESTOR therapy should be discontinued if CK levels are markedly elevated (>10xULN) or if myopathy is diagnosed or suspected.

[... paragraph on complications with concomitant therapy... ]

CRESTOR should be temporarily withheld in any patient with an acute serious condition suggestive of myopathy or predisposing to the development of renal failure secondary to rhabdomyolysis (e.g. sepsis, hypotension, major surgery, trauma severe metabolic, endocrine and electrolyte disorders; or uncontrolled seizures).

It says in the same sheet that adverse effects can be split into common and rare. Common (>1%, <10%) include headache, myalgia, asthenia, constipation, dizziness, nausea, abdominal pain. Rare (>0.01%, <0.1%) is just myopathy.

So... I'm feeling some muscle ache (myalgia) in my legs, and if this is serious (myopathy), and CRESTOR is bad for me, I'm quite screwed. Other statins are bad for my liver. In which case I can pick my poison: look forward to a heart attack in a decade's time, acute hepatitis, or some rhabdomyolysis which screws with the kidneys too.

Anyway, the specialist said increased exercise can also cause CK levels to rise. Had more blood drawn that day, awaiting results. I think I'll skip my dose tonight, though, just to be safe. Since the time-scales for myopathy and cardiovascular disease are very different.

Played tennis with James yesterday, after that appointment in Tan Tock Seng, after I took a Hepatitis A booster jab at Tan Tock Seng, after I went to polyclinic to get a cream for that inflammation under my left eye. With lunch somewhere in between, at the newly opened Kopitiam at Tan Tock Seng Hospital.

Tennis ball bonanza. Found 20+ balls in the dustbin on the tennis court (which is really weird, first of all that there is a dustbin there, and secondly that there were only tennis balls in it, and thirdly that there were so many perfectly good, but I guess contaminated, tennis balls). I now have 34 good tennis balls, but I guess many of those need some disinfecting in the sun.

Didn't ride my bicycle out today, the front tire was totally flat. I think it's busted. Don't know what happened. Probably need to get a new bicycle if I want to have a bicycle. Or can repair the tire, I guess.

Need to pack my bags. My boss is going off on a week-long holiday (to Shanghai) tonight, she notified everyone yesterday. My other boss is going on honeymoon (New Zealand) in a few months' time. I fly on Saturday morning. Yinglan will probably have to do shredding when I'm gone.

Just bought flight insurance. $78 for $200,000 coverage. Quite expensive, I wouldn't have gone for it but my parents asked me to get. Can buy a tennis racquet lor.

This is Ben's website.

Mega Update

We are post-promotion ceremony but still busy. At least I got to go home on time today, and could take Friday and Wednesday off last week. Happy 4th of July! I've got a huge pimple right below my left eye, which makes it look like I got in a fight and got whacked below the eye. But, as everyone knows, if I got in a fight I won't get whacked lor.

So, to go back in time... went back to work today, did some miscellaneous work that involved a little running around. Yesterday went kayaking in Sentosa (where all the cool kids go, including my sister, who was in Sentosa yesterday also, and my cousin as well) with Aaron and Say Yang. Jasper came along too, but didn't kayak with us. It was ok, but not that fun actually. Capsized twice, but didn't really get sunburnt. Wore long sleeves, a hat, gloves and sunglasses, and put on sunblock.

Not sure how we made it through canoeing for 3 or 4 days during the 21 day OBS. I guess it's not so boring when you have like 20+ people on 10+ canoes, and I guess it's an experience being out on a choppy sea, eating dried food on a rocky canoe.

That was Sunday, met Shaowei after Sentosa, he's in Singapore working for a year before he goes to do his PhD. Another one of the twists in A*Star's contract. The PSC contract also changed in my last year in USA. They took away the allowance they were going to pay us, pro-rating the final year's allowance up till the date we graduated. And this was announced a couple of months before graduation, I think. In my case they paid me only until the end of May even though commencement was held in the first week of June.

M1 is giving free IDD calls to the US today and tomorrow, but the catch is that need to use mobile phone to call. Need to check if I've got roaming. The World Health Organization is calling for ruthlessness in dealing with bird flu. Influenza viruses carry their genes in RNA, which tends to mutate more quickly than DNA.

Played tennis on Saturday morning, took a nap at home, went for dinner with Jasper, bought sunblock for Sunday. At Royal Sporting House, they were playing trance music, and there was this song that kept going "the table, the table, the table". Talk about hard sells. I bought a Wilson backpack for about $40 (2 sig. fig.) after a 15% discount. It's spacious and designed to hold tennis racquets. Can fit 1 or 2 racquets.

If I do buy another racquet, it would be something that has heft, feels solid, weighs about 300 grams (10.5 ounces), and costs less than $100. Other things I might buy even though I have already: a new computer (already got a 5 year old laptop), a new bicycle (mine quite old already, rather rusty, though it still works).

SMU's campus in the city is nice, quite big considering its location. Bus fares are up... Jasper stayed over at Aaron's place on Saturday night. Taking off again this coming Wednesday. Got medical in the morning.

Was off on Friday, played tennis with James, who learnt really fast. Then went for dinner with him, Say Yang, and Pasha. Say Yang told us about this Kelatan clinic or whatever it's called, it's for sexual diseases, how the patients are asked to show their sores or whatever but there's no sink for them to wash their hands after that, which means the door handles are crying out for a WITs suggestion.

Worked late on Thursday rushing something. Not that late, though. Played badminton and tennis on Wednesday, which makes it a total of 3 tennis sessions last week. None for this week, or at most one. Tuesday's promotion ceremony ended not as late as I thought, but later than planned.

The End is Near!

Did a little OT tonight. I guess now I've been conditioned to consider it "little". But I'm taking off this Wednesday and Friday. Probably play badminton on Wednesday with James. Sam ORD-ed today. Eugene already started NIE, says instructor is experienced and inspiring. That's wonderful to hear.

I should sleep soon. Tomorrow will be a long day. Probably will only be home close to midnight. Quite tired at work, wasn't very productive. Ate groundnuts at my desk. Groundnuts are peanuts, right? Shredded lots of paper. I can only hope it gets recycled. Showed Yinglan the Throw Vanish.

Tried to write a macro to automate the process of inserting a picture for each NRIC in MS Access, but quite hard to figure out the syntax. Still haven't quite found my way around the OOo syntax either, but I did find a hefty official guide online, guess that would give me a good foundation. It seems they're trying to make it robust and language independent, but for now I don't have any handle on it.

Brought my C++ book to office also, maybe I should learn it again. Well, I want to. But one thing really is that it's quite hard to code when there isn't the benefit of the internet. Takes longer, definitely, because there's a good chance someone else has done a similar thing and put it online.

Dr Lovey

My lovey has her PhD! She's awesome. And I'll see her soon, and she'll be back soon too!

Used my bicycle pump just now. Could only inflate the rear tire because the valve for the front tire is blocked by a spoke... but otherwise the pump works wonderfully.

Went to the driving range this morning with my parents. Whacked a few balls. Got a couple of blisters, even on the gloved left hand.

Played tennis twice yesterday, my favorite stroke is the forehand topspin volley, it's damn shiok to hit! Woke up aching all over today.

Jasper has successfully downgraded to PES C2! That's wonderful news. Will be going for modified BMT in October.

Borrowed more books from the library. I think my next goal at work is to port my MS Excel macros over to OpenOffice.org Calc, the equivalent spreadsheeting program.

Killed a caterpillar and a cockroach just now. Very gross.

Over Time

Wah, today was bad man. Stayed past 11pm. Felt so irritated and dyspeptic. One piece of good news is that this Saturday I'll have another tennis session in the evening, at 8pm. I hope gz is able to make it at that time.

Watched "Worst-case Scenario" on TV, it's pretty cool. They made this guy with a fear of flying land a small propeller plane after 6 hours of training!

Microsoft Madness

Stayed back in office until past eight today. Now that Eugene is gone, I am now the PA to my branch head. If I didn't already mention that. Quite tired. Need to return library books already, read roughly half of each of the two books. One tennis session confirmed for this Saturday morning, 10am at Yio Chu Kang.

Trying to get MS Outlook to automate the process of sending different emails to different people. Kinda stuck at the part of feeding it a database, but it won't bite. Fiddled around with MS Access also, but just simple query stuff.

Watched Mr & Mrs Smith on Monday night, expected it to be not that good, but it was actually not bad at all. Can't wait for the weekend to come...

Practical Magic

Jasper and James managed to come down to the 18th MINDEF PRIDE Day yesterday, though James arrived at about 9pm and we had closed shop already. Then we went to Jalan Kayu for roti prata. Then James bought prata for some person (having called and asked if and what he/she wanted), who he was going to meet, but refused to tell me who he/she is!!! Then I asked to see his handphone, if it was new or what, but he refused to show me also. He just came back from Bristol yesterday afternoon.

Then yesterday at the PRIDE Day got magician and balloon sculptor, the magician very good one. Then at the end my boss got him to come over and teach us some tricks. A magic gig pays quite well, if you can get one. At least, that's if you're as good as he is. My parents also popped by. I managed to go round to the other booths and get explanations of their projects, which was quite cool. There's one by ST Engineering, the technology is basically software processing of a video feed. Can "draw" a line on the screen to trigger an alert when something crosses it. Can calibrate and measure speed of tennis serve also, that's probably how it's done.

On the News there's a feature on how terrible high-heeled, unstable shoes are and how women should wear more sensible shoes. In Sinagpore, an average of 5 women a day go in for physiotherapy due to high-heeled shoes. Enough with the high heels, ok? Maybe got tennis this week, but still doesn't look good.

Long, Long Week

Stayed back at work till about 11pm last night. Will have so much to do on Monday, because I'll be the only NSF around. Will have to get used to this, because afterall when Yinglan comes back, it'll only be him and me in our branch. So yesterday Sam was giving me a crash course on how to do their work.

Going to Tampines Mall soon. Might play tennis with gz tomorrow. Seems like there was absolutely nobody at the MINDEF PRIDE exhibition yesterday at Ngee Ann Poly. Probably no one will be at Tampines Mall either. SAFTI MI was pretty bustling, though, because buses offload their cache of uniformed personnel every now and then.

Oh yes, Linux (on the desktop) might be making its way into MINDEF/SAF soon. It is probably used as server technology already.

Embedded Report

Quite a lot of people came to our exhibit and because the place is generally loud, my throat was dry after talking to each person. Most of them were interested in when they could get their hands on the program. In due time, I say. Tiring standing up the whole day, but not a bad experience.

Tomorrow I'll be there in the morning all by myself because we're in a seriously busy period and this thing is severely draining our manpower. Will go back to work in the afternoon. Everyone has been rushing work, I think they did OT last night. I hope no need to OT tomorrow.

Anyway, the Minister of Defence came by and my boss talked to him, and he asked who the programmer was, so then he talked to me a bit, asked me how long I took to write it (or was that someone else?). The photo that captured my interaction with him is pretty funny, I'm in a weird pose because I'm like leaning forward and smiling and it's all blur from the movement.

There was this "silent drill" performance, which isn't exactly silent because there's music with which they coordinate their movements. But they shouldn't twirl and throw rifles around, especially if there are attached bayonets. Someone dropped a rifle.

Also got these high-tech soldiers walking around wearing what look like sunglasses and a rearview mirror (which is probably some visual feed). It would have been nice to check out some of the other exhibits, but that wasn't really possible. Got some quite cool, high-tech ones.

So it was kinda ironic, the team next to us promoting the use of OpenOffice.org, and we showcasing macros written for MS Excel, which don't automatically port over to OpenOffice. The guy from that booth realized that this was one rather big factor they failed to consider, after someone asked about it. Anyway I said I'll look into it. The thing is that the language is just a different dialect, but the "objects" (or at least the organization of the objects) are quite different. He's a teaching scholar and is going to ORD end of this month, like Sam.

And I just learnt that there was yet another casualty from office on Wednesday, when I was at SAFTI for rehearsal. Freaky day, the 15th of June, 2005. The branch head from the other branch had his retina detached or something. Also, this is going to sound dumb, but it seems the doctors have decided that my granny has a urinary tract infection, not a lung infection.

Maybe can have tennis one of the weekday nights next week... I'm even considering going to a court myself this weekend and just practising my serve...

Saw on the news today that parts of a chopped up woman were found in two cardboard boxes, the first one found was washed up on the shore. The other was discovered upon searching the area. And seems some NS person drowned...

OpenOffice.org

When writing the title for my last post, which I just posted, I was reminded of the WITs project that is just next to ours. It advocates the use of OpenOffice.org and open source in general. MINDEF has thousands of Office97 licenses, but 1997 is like so long ago. Using OpenOffice.org instead of upgrading to Office 2003 will save about $15 million, in their projection.

OpenOffice.org is great: it's advanced, using an XML file format and allowing 1-click publishing in PDF format (an open file format), and it also has stuff like bibliography built in (though when I tried it this is still quite raw). The switch from MS Word to OpenOffice.org Writer is practically seamless, because typing up a document is relatively straightforward.

One thing I really like about OpenOffice.org Writer is that there's this "stylist", which greatly encourages and assists structural (rather than just purely cosmetic) markup. You just specify that this line of text is a "title", rather than making the font bigger, making bold, and centering. You get consistency and structure, something that is usually sorely lacking in a WYSIWYG interface. You can change the formatting style for a "heading" and all lines marked "heading" will change in tandem.

Have you made the switch yet? You're otherwise stuck between a rock and a hard place: pay hundreds of dollars for software (and tie yourself to a proprietary file format), or get an illegal, pirated version, which MS is pushing the government to crack down on, and I think if you report a copyright violation that's going on in a business you can collect a nice $20,000 if I remember correctly.

Out of Office

Left the house at 0600 hrs this morning. So sleepy, throughout the bus journey to MRT then the MRT journey to the western tip of Singapore, then a bus to SAFTI. Ended up spending the whole day there, they did 2 runs of the rehearsal. There was a squashed frog on the pavement. It rained really heavily, but thankfully only after I arrived and was safe in the exhibition hall.

Looks like there won't be any activity this Saturday, no tennis, no kayaking. Looks like I'll have to wake up before 0600 hrs tomorrow and the day after, and head to SAFTI. I cut my hair with a scissors behind my head last night, and got comments. I saw what it looked like just now when I used 2 mirrors. No wonder everyone notices immediately. My dad helped me tidy it up.

I needn't have bothered with the script actually, because can just explain the posters and the key points would be covered, then don't need to memorize also. It seems the project is going to go up to the Public Service level. And we can send 2 people to Korea for some thingy. And soon, when this ranking cycle is over, my boss will coordinate the dissemination of the project throughout the SAF, and I'll probably be holding training sessions.

Yinglan is in hospital, and will be there for a week or so. And secretary to the CO sprained her ankle and was at NUH. The office is going to be pretty empty the next couple of days. But I won't be in at all until next week. I can bring camera and take photos! See you guys on Saturday!

Preparations

Been so sleepy and tired, especially last night. Finished up some preparation for the MINDEF PRIDE Day today, basically prepared a script to present our project (within 2 minutes) to the Minister of Defence, who happened to be Minister of Education when he presented my teaching scholarship to me. Need to rehearse tonight, in preparation for the rehearsal tomorrow. I think I need to wake up super early, have to be at SAFTI MI by 7:45am.

Yesterday was even more flustered, I guess maybe that made me so tired. Was going to give a briefing in the morning, but that was cancelled last minute. Anyway, had to prepare the stuff for the PRIDE Day. I think there was some other work but I forget.

The Channel 5 show, "My Sassy Neighbor", is quite funny! Stupid but funny. My granny is in hospital now, it seems she had a seizure and is resting in hospital for a couple of weeks. Lung infection. Hope she gets better...

This is but a Taste of the Terror...

Muscles aching quite pervasively, very tired today. I bought wristbands and a vibration dampener for my tennis racquet, which is supposed to reduce the risk of tennis elbow. I fear that the peak of tennis playing for me has passed, because each week now there seems to less and less. But that could be ascribing a "trend" to a random fluctuation. This is but a taste of the terror...

This Saturday is the exhibition! There will be some prizes for people who play our game and win (though I don't know what the prizes are yet). Details:

18th June 2005
Tampines Mall, Open Plaza, level 4
4.00pm - 9.00pm

Actually it starts at 11.00am, but I will be taking the afternoon/night shift.

There should be at least one tennis session a week when gz gets to book out. Might not get to play at all this week. Eugene's now thinking of playing in the evenings instead of Saturday morning, because the sun's too bright. This is but a taste of the terror...

Karlovic just hit 3 aces in a row, and for the last point to win the game, Roddick couldn't return his second serve. Wonder why he can't serve this way on clay as well as on grass. Maybe he does. But if he does, how can he lose? I think surface probably doesn't matter that much for a service game. Second set, second tie break. I think this isn't actually Wimbledon, but it's at Wimbledon? Not sure lah.

Played tennis at the SAFRA Toa Payoh, it's quite a quiet court, it's right next to the Expressway (I think it's the PIE). A couple of balls flew out and seem to have been lost to the road. Went for lunch with Jasper and Aaron, then we walked around Junction 8. There's this sports shop that sells tents, quite cool, a 2-person pop-up tent folds into a circle not that big and not that small but not that heavy either. If I hold it standing with my arm straightened to the ground, it would almost touch the ground.

Sam says he has a friend who goes rock climbing, so might be able to hook me up with that. Aaron suggests going kayaking Saturday morning, but he's on call on Friday and only finishes at noon on Saturday, and ought to be sleep-deprived at that point.

Went to Seletar today and yesterday also, yesterday afternoon the swimming pool was filled with kids learning to swim. I went with Jasper for dinner at Ang Mo Kio, and went shopping in town. Then met Aaron again for supper at Jalan Kayu, the curry that comes with the prata is good stuff, and they're not stingy, they gave a big bowl (other places usually give a plate, as a result of which I also go back for a refill).

So got home pretty late, and fell asleep on the couch watching this expose on how pro-wrestlers improvise and coordinate their crazy stunts in the ring. Stuff like backbreaker and suplex and the most dangerous of all, the pile driver. Even though it's "fake", they can get seriously injured if they make just a slight mistake. They fall from so high, and if they don't tuck in their head enough or don't fall at the right angle, they're totally screwed.

Regained consciousness for a while and went up to my room to sleep. But I think I still left the light on. Anyway, went to the club again in the morning, went to the gym, to swim, and play Virtua Cop. Say Yang couldn't join us, because he was meeting some other friends. Then went for lunch in town, then went to Cafe Revive, where Jasper likes the cashier/waitress. She wasn't around, but someone "even better" was there. This is but a taste of the terror...

There was an episode on CSI on Star World just now, so that was good. Monday again, back to work... my boss says she has projects in mind for me, which sounds exciting. I think my work is inversely correlated with everyone else's: when they are busy, I'm not, and when they're not, then they have the luxury of thinking up things they want and I can try to realize those things.

One of these days I want to try to make some cornflake confectionery, make from cornflakes/cereal, plus honey, and hopefully, plus melted chocolate. I think it would be great, but I imagine it might be quite messy.

I cut my fingernails and put on an overgrip for my tennis racquet. I felt that the grip was kinda slippery, hence the wristband too. What I need to practise is eye-on-the-ball, take a full backswing, and whip the racquet with greater speed.

My lovey is about to graduate! Her parents are with her now. But I'm not... =(

Less Tennis This Week

My parents bought durians again, and they're again really good. Had some with Aaron, who came over for a while. Wimbledon is on TV now, the men's serves are so freaking fast. Ace after ace. I think this game between Hewitt and Karlovic they've played 16 games already and no one has broken serve. And this Karlovic guy is so tall, I think they say he's 6 foot 10. The top of Hewitt's head reaches his neck.

Cleaned out Eugene's table today, and also organized the "empty" table on my left. Playing tennis tomorrow. Meeting Jasper and Aaron for lunch.

On The Wire

Figured out the mystery of the packed 163 this morning. Luckily today it wasn't packed to the max, I could still squeeze onto the bus. Two stops after I got on, a whole lot of NCC kids got off, and there were seats for everyone after they de-bussed. Maybe they got some camp or something at Amoy Quee, I think it should be school holidays now, right?

I almost died today, and I'm still not sure why I didn't. Accidentally touched an exposed live wire. The rubber coating of an extension wire had worn off on the side away from me, so I didn't see that the copper was bare! It hurt where my finger contacted the wire, and I was able to withdraw after what seemed like two seconds. I think I almost died, but it wasn't a near-death experience.

Watching LOST on TV, it's a scary series about this plane that crashed on an island, with spooky huge creatures that attack humans. It's really quite scary.

Today was pretty much Eugene's last day at work. Last day in office and at his desk, at least. Soon Sam will also be gone, next week is pretty much his last week. Hopefully the tennis will go on.

The briefing today went well, just need to change a bit of stuff and write up some notes for it. I'm alive, so that's magnificent. Took a nap when I came home today. Perhaps I need another strategy for catching my transport tomorrow, because it's kinda risky depending on the 163 being not totally full...

Today

My lovey's mum is featured on Today newspaper, for setting up Singapore's first non-profit maid agency (though "housekeeper" is a preferred term). It charges the foreign workers about $300, which is 6 to 8 times less than what other agencies charge.

Word on the street seems to be that A*Star is no longer as attractive as it was a few months ago. Read from Molly's blog that Singapore has banned the "Nation.05" party this year, though it was allowed for several years now.

Anyway, that German Open I talked about was actually held before the French Open. So Justine Henin-Hardenne won both of them already.

It's exactly a month more before I fly to the US! Happened to see as I flipped the Today newspaper that I don't have to worry about getting a visa, because it's before October 2005, and I have a machine-readable passport. Singapore needs to issue biometric passports by October this year, I think, in order for the visa waiver to continue.

Giving a briefing tomorrow morning to the rest about the MINDEF PRIDE Day Exhibition. Monday is another briefing on the website thingy, which I haven't really touched for some time now.

Sucky Buses Suck

Public buses suck!! The 163 came late this morning, and when it came, it was so packed the bus didn't even stop for me. Usually it's only about half full. So I took a taxi to catch my transport. On the way home, the 163 that came is so terrible! The screech of its brakes are deafening to the max. A full 3 seconds of ear-splitting noise.

It's pouring viciously now. Henin-Hardenne is playing Sharapova on clay (Qatar Total German Open), and seems to be having a hard time getting points! I'm surprised. Just lost the first 2 sets, having won only 1 point so far. She's getting her game back, though, with 2 break points in the 3rd game. She's now trashing Sharapova, yay!

Wonder if I should watch Phua Chu Kang the musical, which is 50% off for SAF personnel on one of the Sunday matinees. But still not cheap. I've also been thinking of joining a tennis tournament one of these days, not that soon though, because I still suck.

My sister is back from Bintan, and bought me a T-shirt. Oh, and I think I haven't mentioned, probably because I haven't seen it for myself, but they've taken out my granny's feeding tube. She's able to be fed enough food by mouth now.

Nothing much exciting at work these days, but quite busy today just before it was time to go home. Good thing can do the rest tomorrow morning, so caught transport home. Next week is the MINDEF PRIDE Day, remind you all again, ok? Saturday 18th June at Tampines Mall. This Friday we'll be talking about the WITs project again at "Touch Time".

Blood on my Hands

Booked a tennis court at SAFRA Toa Payoh this Saturday from 9 to 11 am. Need to figure out how to go, might not be that near to the MRT station...

Got to hear a little French because of the French Open. Looked at tennis racquets today, look so nice! With tennis racquets, lightweight isn't the best, unlike with badminton racquets. Light racquets with big heads are good for beginners, but heavier racquets with smaller heads provide more control.

I think I'm quite lousy at shaving lor. I cut myself quite often, like I did last night. It will be a bloody disaster if I try to shave my head with my razor. Bought a bicycle pump just now. It's sleek and professional looking, hope it lasts a long time. Though I might not have much use for a bicycle in the future, if it gets too inconvenient...

Just had a nose bleed, damn...

French Closed

Justine Henin-Hardenne, the 2005 French Open Women's Singles Champion, plays amazing tennis! Totally outclassed Mary Pierce. Won 6-1, 6-1. She has a fantastic one-handed backhand. And her serves are killer. Seems she was World No. 1 then some serious illness and then injury took her out completely for a year or more.

Rafael Nadal is also amazing, he's 4th seed and probably going to win the finals. He's very good looking too. Won Federer in the semi-finals. There was a point Federer won by hitting 3 volleys in a row. As Federer pointed out after the match, Nadal being a leftie does indeed shake things up a bit. That certainly works in his favor.

Just watched Nadal beat Puerta in the Men's Singles. It was a really close match, Puerta put up a good fight. He won the first set but lost the next three. In the fourth set, he was actually up 5-4 and had 2 set points on his service game, but dropped both, then went up with the advantage, but dropped it and dropped the game. Nadal went on to win 7-5 after breaking Puerta in the following game. It was a wonderful match. Puerta is also left-handed.

I'm done with my tennis sessions for this week, and ball stocks are up one point at this week's close. Going to retire one ball that's quite bald and bounces too much. Tennis prospects in the coming week don't look promising. Eugene has something on, and gz will be unable to book out for 3 full weeks. I've re-marked my tennis balls, the letters faded really quickly after yesterday's tennis.

The Men's Doubles were on yesterday, but stopped by rain after the teams had one set each. The last set was played today. The USA team consists of identical twins, one an inch taller than the other, one a leftie and one a rightie. As an American Scientist article I recently read said, "DNA is never destiny". The identical (homozygous) twin of an alcoholic has only a 50% chance of being an alcoholic.

Doubles is much more complicated, and faster-paced. The many-body problem in action. The twins looked strong at the beginning but lost in the end. I think they only play best of three sets. I took a nap in the afternoon. Took a nap yesterday at NUS between tennis sessions. The half-court is pretty good for practice, gets you tired out very quickly.

Ate durians yesterday and just now, delicious. Met Say Yang and Jasper today, went to eat at this vegetarian restaurant in Serangoon. Greenland. It's the place we were going to go to celebrate my birthday, but my granny fell down and had a stroke... for what it's worth, the food was very good.

I feel motivated to train up at the gym so I can play better tennis. Observed the people playing on the next court at NUS yesterday, when they grip the racquet in the forehand position, the racquet face is horizontal. Then I began to notice how the pros grip their racquets at Roland Garros, and that's how they grip it too. Gives more topspin.

Fell asleep early last night, was too tired to complete this blog post. The following is a letter I intend to send in to the Straits Times.

Over the weekend, I had a horrendous experience at Sportslink. I had bought a tennis racquet that was on offer, just that it was not strung. When I brought it elsewhere to be strung (the Sportslink in Funan didn't have the equipment), I was told that the racquet frame was missing the bottom grommet: a little (but critical) rubber piece.

I went back to the Funan branch thinking they would give me a replacement. But it seems that rubber piece was not part of the deal, though I was not informed of this "defect" when the racquet was sold to me. I tried to get a refund or exchange, but an exchange was only possible if the goods are in "selling condition".

Apparently, the racquet was no longer in selling condition because I had taken off the plastic wrap around the handle. It is outrageous that the racquet is however deemed "in selling condition" even with a missing grommet strip. I am exceedingly frustrated and appalled.

A word about programming now. Programming is a lot like magic. Neither achieve the impossible, they just appear to. It's an illusion of intelligence in one, an illusion of reality in the other. It's not that the macros I write in VBA do what Excel can't do or what a human can't do, it's just that it makes it more convenient. Repetitive, procedural actions are activated by a mouse click, which activates a pre-programmed series of instructions.

It's not that Excel can't do this or that, it's a matter of optimization, stringing together an oft-required series of steps in a "macro" so you don't have to click here and there and type this and that each time. It simplifies a complicated procedure by sweeping the repetitive motions under the rug of code.

Updates

Our team won at the MPDIV Life Day, but the prize was pretty pathetic compared to what we are used to. A $60 Swensen's voucher, to be split more than 10 ways. It seems we might get more money from the WITs thingy, not cash, but for purchases. 1 GB of RAM for each computer would be cool!

I realized that there is a faster way to get home from Expo, which I took last night. Take MRT to Bedok (which is nearer to Expo than Paya Lebar), then 854 straight home. The bus only took about 45 minutes. The dinner was ok, the food passable, the company not too obnoxious, the entertainment rather lively so somewhat enjoyable. I took the opportunity to dress up.

The signs on the East-West line are very misleading for people going to Expo and Changi Airport. The signs suggest that for the East-bound track there are trains going to Pasir Ris and trains going to Changi Airport. So I waited, and each time the train came it said it was going to Pasir Ris, so I waited for the next train. I assumed maybe since more people would go to Pasir Ris, the ratio would be something like 2 is to 1 or similar. But after a third Pasir Ris train came, and given that I was running late, I took it anyway. When I got to Tanah Merah, I realized that I was hoodwinked!

The reality is that all trains go to Pasir Ris; to go to Expo and Changi Airport, you have to get off at Tanah Merah and switch to the train on the middle track! Imagine the disaster if someone was going to the airport and waited for the Changi Airport train in vain! The signs need to be changed, to say that the East-West train goes to Pasir Ris/Changi Airport, instead of saying no. 1 goes to Pasir Ris and no. 3 goes to Changi Airport, except at Tanah Merah Station (where the signs make sense).

The tennis racquet Eugene bought was defective; it is missing some parts and thus cannot be strung! I think tomorrow I'll plan to stay out instead of coming home after tennis in the morning, since I'll be playing quite early in the afternoon again. A good exercise for the forearm is to bounce a tennis ball on the floor using a racquet. It takes some skill too.

Say Yang is free this Sunday and the next, he says. Went to the library just now on the way home. Borrowed two books, one on evolution (a very short introduction). I realize I know hardly anything about evolution, which is a terrible thing.

The poster for the MINDEF PRIDE Day exhibition is about to be printed, and we can view it before no more changes can be made. The exhibition is in 2 weeks' time. James might be back in time for it. The current CO is going to be gone really soon. There's a new NSF in the other branch, an understudy to Simon. He studied in Japan, and looks really old.

Cool, there are some advertisements in the Straits Times today for computers, there's a desktop system (sans monitor) for less than $400, and a military-strength laptop from $1,999. Both of them come with a Linux OS. I've applied for my Exit Permit already, by the way.

Financial Jokes

Why is it socially acceptable for a life-size image of a woman in underwear to be plastered repeatedly on the exterior of every carriage of an MRT train, while it is unacceptable for me to walk the streets in my underwear? There is that moving human statue along Orchard Road who is only in underwear, but he wears a full-body coat of gold paint.

There's a funny article on the front page of the Straits Times today, about how civil servants are getting $200 and a 0.4 month mid-year bonus. This $200 is supposed to narrow the income gap between high-income and lower-income servants. Do you not see that "In percentage terms, it amounts to a larger payout for [low-income employees] than employees who earn twice of three times more"?

So you give the exact same amount ($200) but it would benefit the lower-income more because it's a higher percentage of their salary? I don't suppose I'm getting that bonus. The bottom 20% of salary earners earn less than about $1000, which is more than twice what I'm earning. Anyway, $200 goes really fast. Handphone bills, internet connection bills, water and electricity bills...

Tonight's dinner costs $100. The GST on that would buy a decent dinner. As Molly has observed, the income gap would be considered as staying the same if percentage-wise the top earners' salary and the bottom earners' salary changed by the same amount. Say I earn $x, and you earn $5x. Our salaries both double in 5 years', so I earn $2x and you earn $10x. Salary gap has not widened.

Here is a photo of myself from yesterday, and a photo of Eugene, looking desolate and despondent.

Point and Shoot

Brought my camera with me today, so had a field day taking photos at Expo, at the conference, at MRT station, at Paya Lebar while walking to the bus stop to take bus 70 home. I think the best way is to take 70 from my house to Paya Lebar MRT then take MRT to Expo. I fell asleep on the bus ride home, and it was quite a long ride, seemed to be about an hour.

There was lots of food at the conference, I fell asleep during one of the first talks, wasn't much fun until lunch and after lunch. Lunch was good because there was quite good food. And we had lunch in one of the Exhibition Halls, in a small part of it; the other part of it is huge! It would be so shiok to play soccer or something in there.

The talks before lunch were in very general, "theoretical" terms about quality control and productivity and that kind of thing; after lunch there were "concurrent sessions" in adjoining rooms. In each room there's one group talking about their particular success with innovation and quality control. It was interesting because there were presenters from various Asian countries. Most of them had very distorted accents, the Thais add a melodic twang to English, the Indians speak at the speed of sound.

Seagate had a presentation about outgassing affecting hard disk heads and platters. Organic compounds that vaporize at high temperature, and cause problems in drive assemblies. It was very technical, without much time for the jargon to be explained, so it was just cool to listen and pretend to understand. Some of the presentations quite funny, especially the one by the team from India. Their powerpoint slides were filled with animated graphics, like that of a pointing finger, which is hilarious. The finger curls and unfurls continually.

Eugene is going to ORD really soon. He'll be going to NIE, and getting a much more decent income. It'll be more than a year before that happens to me...

June Bug

It's a new month, a pity I had to end the month doing OT. Worked till about 10pm. Doing crappy stuff, preparing files, "flagging" them with itsy bitsy pieces of cardboard. Missed CSI. Glad that I will be out of the office for the next 2 days. Will be seeing my lovey next month!

Jasper got his results, not bad, but quite like my 12:21 timing for my 2.4 in the IPPT. Speaking of which, I'll probably have to take again soon. Did a mail merge in MS Word for the first time today.

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.

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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!