Happy new year 2006

The year is over. Or atleast its gonna be over soon. It ain't considered over for me so long as i've not slept and wake up. Yinyin asked me over msn on why i do not go for a countdown party or some stuff like that. I do not know how to answer..

But looking at most of the people i know, the ones who do go out on holiday eves, like christmas eve, new year eve, are the ones who are attached. So it does kind of imply something about holiday eves and it also serves as a rather good explanation of why i do not go to any countdown parties. There's no one to go with me, no one to count with me, no one to give a little hug and fleeting kiss when the counter reaches zero, and no one to go home with.

If there are moments of confusion in my life, it has to be the holiday season. I'm pretty happy to live through the holiday, but i'm also very sad to have to live through the eve of it. I remember last christmas eve i went to bishan to catch a late night movie. It seems this year i've lost interest even in doing something special, simply becoz it is a holiday eve.

Gah.. i hate depression when it sets in. The downward ride of the roller coaster is never fun. Brings about severe bouts of blogger's block, and even in the comments, i become reluctant to reply further. Hmm.. Happy new year : )

My office is a microwave

My mug of water in the office always seem to have a layer of blackish residue in it. I tried changing mugs, overturning the mug before i go home, a layer of filth still appears when i return to the office the next day.

The thing is, when i overturn the mug, i would have supposed that nothing could have gone into the mug. Yet the layer of sooty grime appears! This is kind of thing never happened to the mugs at home. And the only difference between my home and the office that i can think of, is the pressence of hundreds of rfid devices, some active, thus transmitting signals overnight.

Could the blackish layer be a layer of something else, charred by cooking in the office, like how microwave works? I have no idea.. I thought i needed a tan, but i didn't think getting microwaved was the way to do it..

Where did my patty go?

I remember couple years ago, when i was walking home from a school that now no longer exists, i stopped by at the esso petrol station to buy a burger. Thay had this microwave where you could heat the burger yourself which make the burger more.. well.. i just like it when i get to do little things like this. Which really explains why i like to buy heftily priced chicken rolls from seven eleven.

Somewhere along the way, under the void deck of some block in bishan, i unwrapped my piping hot burger. As i was going to take my first bite, the beef patty dropped out of my burger onto the floor. And i was like what the hell, and the patty was like neh nay nee boo boo.

Since i had walked quite a distance away from the petrol station, i didn't want to go back to get another burger. I think the actual reason was that i felt it was embarassing to go back to the petrol station to get another burger. As if the cashier would magically know that i dropped my patty on the floor. The cashier would probably have locked himself in the storeroom and laughed his intestines out. Evil cashiers.

Anyway, i picked up the patty from the floor and try to blow some of the unseen dirt off. Then i decided that the patty wasn't going to look any different no matter how hard i blow at it. So i giap-ed the patty between the bun and took my first bite.

It didn't seem so bad at first, except that my beef burger had tuned into sand burger. And a couple more steps along the way, i heard something pop underfoot. Turning back, i saw on the floor a piece of cockroach patty. The cockroach patty was sharing the same floor as my beef patty!

I don't really remember, but i think i didn't finish my sand burger whose beef patty shared the same floor with a cockroach patty.

Wait a minute

What has happened or what is going to happen to the money in the reserves? Are the kid-nee patients finally going to get the money?

Olio Do me

I watched Narnia yesterday. But since i said i wasn't gonna write any post regarding religion, only excerpts, there'll be no review for Narnia. Heh. Anyway, its a rather okay show.

After the movie, i went to Olio Dome in Bishan for dinner. In the middle of the cafe, in the ceiling, was a dome shape hole. Drawn onto the sides of the hole was an atlas of the world, with names of popular locations dotting it. Names like Brazil, Kuala Lumpur and Bishan. You should take a look at it if you ever go there.

Also printed on the walls of the hole is the cafe's brand name Dome. But the designers made it into some sort of a squarish logo that looked like:
DO
ME

It seems the designers missed out on the colloquial meaning of the words do me.

From a random sample of twenty persons, how likely is it for atleast two persons to share a birthday?

Since this tiny statistic bopped at me twice already, i thought i'll just bopped it at you guys too. Answers can range from one percent to one in a million, in general, the consensus is usually unlikely.

Quite on the contrary, the answer to the question is closer to 50%. See article here.

Excerpt :
"The explanation for this is that there is a large number of pairs of students upon whom the coincidence may fall. For 23 students, there are 231 ways (22×21÷2) of picking two students from the class, which means 231 potential coincidences that may occur. We expect pairs to have the same birthday once in every 365 times, so with 231 pairs it is unsurprising when one of them strikes lucky."

**

For those planning to spend more than $100 at the upcoming casinos integrated resorts (entrance fee is $100), do continue reading the link about Gambler's Fallacy. Basically, if you've lost many times already, it doesn't make your next chance at winning higher.

If you flip a coin 999 times and each time you flipped heads. The chance of flipping heads the 1000th time is not 1 / (2 ^ 1000). It's still 1/2. Why? Coz the coin has no memory of its previous flips. The probability of arriving at 1000 heads is indeed 1 / (2 ^ 1000) but the likelihood of getting a head for that flip is still 1/2! Perhaps rewriting the probability of a thousand heads would help. The probability is : (1 / (2 ^ 999)) x (1/2)

It is important to note that normally you're not betting on 1000 flips being head but you're betting on every flip along the way. If you're gambling, do not commit Gambler's Fallacy. Stop if you keep losing.

Disclaimer : I might get the mathmatics wrong, if i do, let me know.

Technorati Tags : Gambler's Fallacy, Integrated Resort

Leg cramps for nothing.. boo hoo

Gah... i'm getting cramps lots lately.. Twice while i was in bed (once for each calf on different nights) and once while... while nothing. It just cramped overnight for the whole of next day. I didn't even do any exercise. And one more time was when i did a light jog. All in the space of two weeks. Gosh.. something is wrong with my legs : ( Gotta train the cramps away or something.. wanna do that biathlon thingy.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone. I got a Seven Swords vcd and a Corpse Bride sound track. Yippee.

X'mas presents sold out

I saw some plushies i thought were quite cute yesterday. I thought i would buy them as christmas presents for my sisters abroad, but when i returned to the shop, the plushies were gone. Sold out! Not on display anymore..

Um.. yeah, buying christmas presents now is kind of late, since it would take considerable length of time to get overseas. Guess i'll have to wait till the christmas shopping spree is over before i get them the x'mas presents.

The lunar christmas

Today is the winter day in the chinese lunar calender. On this day, we're supposed to.. i have no idea what happens on the chinese winter festival, only that we get to eat balls of white and pink glutinous dough called tong yun (canto). In fact, i don't even know if the winter day is supposed to signify the begining or the end of winter. To me, its like the chinese christmas, a christmas without the gift exchange.

Speaking of tong yun, i remember one of my cousins do not eat it because she wear braces. Gets gooey glutinous dough stuck or so the reasoning goes. And when she did eat it, she did it by swallowing the whole ball. Ball by ball.. Anyway, that was when she had braces on.

Speaking of gift exchange on christmas, i think it was more fun a many years back where everybody bought something and which present goes to who, was determined randomly. These years, the recipient of the gift is randomly decided way before christmas. The difference is that in the former, everyone bought what they liked while the later everyone bought what they thought the designated person liked.

Suffice to say, the former generated alot more hee hur hoo har and was thus more fun.

Also of note was that thinking what a person would like for christmas does not necessarily mean the person really would like it. As evidenced in last year's lego saga. And this year my cousin random gift recipient is my brother. I can only speculate as to whether my brother is gonna get a starwars episode five lego set: the empire strikes back.

Intense personal experiences

I often find it hard to discuss with people who rely on personal experiences for justification of supernatural or paranormal beliefs. Because personal experiences are much like opinions, they are rather.. personal and perspective binding. Such experiences should not be exempted from skepticism.

Take for example an addict. He claims that after consuming drugs, he receives visions from his own personal version of god. But yet, we would naturally suspect that his intense euphoria is nothing more than drug induced. What if the light at the end of the tunnel is nothing more than the flourescent light in a surgical room?

Excerpt from atheism.about.com mail bag. All emphasis my own.

"As a matter of fact, people who have intense experiences should be especially careful about how they interpret them as well as what they claim about them. It's a known fact that people have a very poor track record when it comes to accurately reporting traumatic events that carry a lot of emotional intensity, like accidents or injuries. Why should we believe that a "near death experience" would be any different?

A second problem here is one that is also true of mystical experiences and the attempts by some to use them as justification for religious beliefs: how can a person claim to recognize God? What arguments or evidence, without resorting to question begging, can a person use to claim that whatever they experienced is necessarily that of the god they believe in? TL here, for example, claims to have never believed in god — so what basis for evaluation did he use to conclude that his experience was of God and not something else?

...

TL here doesn't seem to understand an important distinction: the truth of the existence of an experience is not the same as the truth of the interpretation of that experience. One can grant that TL had a very important, very profound, very intense experience that changed his life in a multitude of (good) ways. This does not, however, require agreeing that TL had an experience of "God," either in the orthodox Christian sense or in some personally defined sense. TL could be completely wrong in his interpretation of what he experienced without that affecting the truth of having had an experience.

I'm not quite sure why so many people feel to realize and appreciate this crucial distinction. It's one that they are able to make in other situations, but when it comes to "religious" or "mystical" experience, all common sense and skepticism go right out the window."

Read full article

Technorati Tags : atheism, personal experiences

The dog, the maid and an ugly can of worms.

Its not once but many times that i've seen maids taking dogs out for a walk. I always thought spending time together was an expression of love. So i thought if the dog owner really loved his/her dog, then he/she should spend time with their own dog, which includes taking the dog out for a walk. So why is the maid taking the dog out for a walk instead?

If someone cannot afford to spend time with the dog, then why adopt the pet in the first place. If you're gonna get a dog, and then get a maid to walk your dog, then why not use the money to fund a pet shop instead? Or even fund the monkeys to let them earn their peanuts.

And the maids who walk the dogs, most of them that i see, were not holding onto any pieces of paper which could be used to scoop up after the dog!

Speaking of maids, i shall digress. It truly is distressing to hear that there are employers who do not see the need to be humane enough to give their maids a weekly off. "Once a month is what is commonly given by other employers." i was told.. wth

Gah.. even more distressing when such an employer also happens to employ me..

Technorati Tags : Irresponsible Pet Owners

Is Christmas Pagan

A study to find out whether Christmas is a pagan holiday by from Good News About God

"The Bible does not tell us when Jesus was born. However, we know that the angels announced the birth of Christ to the Bethlehem shepherds in the open fields who were tending their flocks by night.. This fact certainly implies that the birth of Jesus could NOT have been on the 25th of December. "The cold of the night in Palestine between December and February is very piercing, and it was not customary for the shepherds of Judea to watch their flocks in the open fields later than about the end of October." Hislop, A., The Two Babylons, Loiseaux Brothers, Neptune, N.J. pg 91

...

The Christianization of Pagan holidays began about the fourth century A.D. when the Roman Emperor Constantine, became (or feigned becoming) a Christian. In order to consolidate his rule, he incorporated the Pagan holidays and festivals into the church ritual - attracting the Pagans, but he gave the holidays and festivals new "Christian" names and identities - thus appeasing the Christians. Over the centuries, this practice has continued until the present time where we find the two systems, Paganism and Christianity, almost indistinguishable."

Read full article

Technorati Tags : Christmas Pagan Origins

Accidents

Was onto mr Wang's series of posts on articles/letters about marriage. I'll quote some of the comments.

Excerpt :
Gabrielle : "Being married means having to be ready for kids, even if u say u don't want kids, there are ACCIDENTS."
Mr Wang : "Heheh. If you're single, you also have to be ready for kids. Even if you say you don't want kids, there are ACCIDENTS. Of course, if you permanently abstain from sex, then there will be no ACCIDENTS, but then, boy, if you permanently abstain, then you really suffer from a lack of QOL. Kekeke."

QOL is acronym for Quality Of Life.

Don't worry, the Bandit is not going to start espousing the importance of breaking chastity vows even if you intend to keep a celibacy vow (Though there are definitions of celibacy by some dictionaries which includes non-nookie). Nor am i going to start discussing whether marriage is expensive or not. Burden or not. Financial planning or not. Though it is certainly mind boggling to think that marriage is nothing more than a certificate to buy houses below the age of 35 (or was it 30?) and license for moral nookie.

I'm sure every now and then we hear from married friends that they didn't want to have kids or didn't want them yet, but had an accident and thus a new begining was um.. begun. And such accidents are surprisingly common enough. But it makes me wonder however, whether these accidents that occured was due to failure of contraceptive or failure to use contraceptive (properly).

A quick survey from a rather fond friend was that of the many accidents that my friend has heard of, it seemed, is always due to a failure to use contraceptive. That instead of protection (causes lost of feeling or loses the moment during its application, or so i was told) the couples try to time their nookie during the non-ovulation period of the menstrual cycle. But since human bodies are not precise clocks..

As such, i find that to avoid marriage or nookie because of a fear of accidents as not a very good reason. With failure rate of only 3% with proper protection, unwanted pregnancy should be the least of worries (if children is not desired that is). Now.. what does 3% mean? It doesn't mean 3 times out of 100 nookie, a girl would get pregnant. The study was done in the context of, 3 girls out of a 100 girls, who use proper protection over a period of 1 year, would get pregnant.

But if you get statistics from religious pro-life sites, you'll find that they claim condoms as useless, or something to that effect. They often use out of context statistics for their claims. The reason being that they are trying to advocate abstinence, not safe nookie. The detrimental side effect is that people might think that since contraception is useless, they go without it instead.

But i digressed.

Help fight HIV/AIDS, teach safe sex, not abstinence.

One long weekend ago

Note to self, never to underestimate the power of the sun. I got a nasty sunburn on my back and right shoulder during the weekend. Reason why my left shoulder managed to escape the wrath of the sun god was that i managed to get some sun block lotion slathered onto it. It was alright the first day of burn, but later on, it was unbearable to sleep on my right side.

I shall digress. People who have heard me speak in person might have heard me saying that i'm gonna quit after getting the year end bonus. Lessons 101, if you suspect that your employees are going to quit after bonus, what are you going to do? Easy lah, don't give bonus loh, or so i heard that's what's going to be happening. *sigh*

More digression. Memoirs of a Geisha is going on big screen in around a month's time. And i haven't started reading the book yet. Gotta hurry and read quickly. I don't wanna watch the movie before i read the book and i don't wanna miss the movie either.

Digress back. Woah, Wild Wild Wet in downtown east is really nice. If nothing else, i could spend all day there just looking at babes in bikini : D

Movie Review

The Promise

The show is pretty weird. I was told that the actors and actresses were chosen for the movie and a script and storyline was built around them. Some kind of a bottom up movie making.

The problem with the show was that it seems to be trying to incorporate too many story/movie elements and unfolding all of them in a string of two second revelations. The result was that the storyline was so lame and non-sequitur that it was hilarious. The show ended with me laughing, not with the movie but at the movie.

Horrigible.

My rating * (out of five)

Fake horoscope works just as well?

The following excerpt is from Astrology Zine, written and copyrighted 2001 by Michael Star, titled A Skeptic's Bait-and-Switch Trick.

Excerpt :
"I once saw a documentary show on public television about a skeptic named "the Amazing Randi" - who had worked as a professional magician. He told a group of young men and women in a classroom that they would be given horoscope readings about themselves if they submitted their birth data. When they were handed out their printed "horoscope readings" and had read them over, they were polled by asking them to raise their hands if they thought the readings accurately described them. Most everyone put up his or her hand.

Then Randi told them to hand the reading to the person behind them and read that "horoscope" to see how accurately IT described them. That was when each of them noticed that they had all been reading a copy of the SAME printed reading!

...

This so-called "experiment" only "proved" that someone like Randi could write a FAKE horoscope reading that WOULD apply to anyone; and that he could LIE to them to make them think they were reading a real horoscope reading about themselves, and that they would agree that the fake reading did appear to accurately describe them.

It did NOT prove that a REAL horoscope reading would or would not describe them accurately; and it did NOT prove that if they exchanged their REAL horoscope reading with another person, then that person would agree that it also described them accurately. No REAL horoscopes were even used in this "experiment". Real horoscopes based on the unique time and place of birth of each individual in the group would all have been different, not the same. "

***********************************

Seems almost believable. Though one might think to ask in what sense would horoscope matter to anyone if both fake and real horoscope accurately describes the person. The argument is nothing more than a variation of a Not a True Scotsman fallacy. Fake horoscope is not a "REAL" horoscope. Inaccurate horoscope are not "REAL" horoscope. Probably the only "REAL" horoscope is as and when Michael says so.

Techorati Tags : horoscope Michael Star Not a true Scotsman Non falsifiability

I bleeped on Guy Watch Radar

I was in the northeast mrt, going home slightly later, coz a customer came to look at stuff rather late. Reading through Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, with the main character, Robert Langdon, almost dying before getting to have nookie married with the main girl of the story, i had my babe watch radar switched off. Though i had a feeler of consciousness primed for the words "Serangoon" so i won't miss my stop.

When the mrt was about to reach my stop, i went "scuse me" in my usual can't-feel-the-words-in-the-voicebox whisper. Squeezing through towards the door and then..

Heartbeat.

Did the girl just look at me? I casually (as casual as looking at girls could be) glanced at her, eyes meet and then the all too familiar ritual of averting the eyes by both kicked in. Okie.. anyway, the girl looked kind of pretty, and since i was gonna alight soon, i started stuffing my book into my bag and then..

Heartbeat.

Did the girl just shift her body facing towards me and looked at me directly? I glance one more time at her and frankly, i'm more used to girls noticing me looking at them than me noticing them looking at me. Maybe i had a mushroom growing on my head or something. Then again..

Godammit, smile Bandit! Next time smile at the girl!

Not bad leh.. I bleeped on someone's Guy Watch Radar. I feel so sexy now. Oi.. show some support lah, stop vommiting.

And yah.. the universe revolves around me.

Numa Numa song

The numa numa craze. The original song is either Dragostea din Tei by O-Zone or Haiducii by Paula Mitrache. Many parodys have since been made. There's Chicken Little singing it, there's Guo Mei Mei in the mandarin version.
Wiki Dragostea din Tei
Wiki Haiducii
Wiki Numa Numa

A rather popular paraody by Gary Bolsma. (Warning, this version is somewhat uncut. Obscenities contatined within. For the cut version, try this link instead.)


Lyrics of the numa numa song mimicked by Gary Bolsma. The original song by O-Zone has a fourth set of lyrics not mimicked by Gary Bolsma. But i'm not at liberty to post it here.

[Ma-ia-hii
Ma-ia-hoo
Ma-ia-ha
Ma-ia-haha] x 4

Alo, Salut, sunt eu, un haiduc,
Si te rog, iubirea mea, primeste fericirea.
Alo, alo, sunt eu Picasso,
Ti-am dat beep, si sunt voinic,
Dar sa stii nu-ti cer nimic.

[Vrei sa pleci dar nu ma, nu ma iei,
Nu ma, nu ma iei, nu ma, nu ma, nu ma iei.
Chipul tau si dragostea din tei,
Mi-amintesc de ochii tai.] x 2

English Translation

Ma-ia-hii
Ma-ia-hoo
Ma-ia-ha
Ma-ia-haha

Hello [on a cellphone], greetings, it’s me, an outlaw,
I ask you, my love, to accept happiness.
Hello, hello, it’s me, Picasso,
I sent you a beep [cellphone signal], and I’m brave [or strong],
But you should know that I’m not asking for anything from you.

You want to leave but you don’t want don’t want to take me, don’t want don’t want to take me, don’t want don’t want don’t want to take me.
Your face and the love from the linden trees,
And I remember your eyes.

Numa numa Gary Bolsma

Waffle with two ice-cream at Gelare for only $2.50

Dancin Kid called me sometime during work yesterday for a dinner. The arrangement was such that she would choose an mrt station, and i would choose the food to eat. When i said that we should eat japanese at Far East Plaza, she grimaced. Apparently, she had japanese buffet the day before. Oh well..

The tiny jap restaurant at level five of Far East Plaza is kind of nice. Despite being served by a grumpy frumpy chef, who seems to be more amusing than angry, the tiny-ness of the place makes dining rather cozy. The place is so tiny that only a maximum of twelve customers could eat at one time.

The tiny restaurant is definitely one of the places i would return to. But given the limited number of dining seats, i wouldn't be able to go with a larger group of friends. Which kind of sux when half the people i know do not take sushi.

After dinner and some shopping, we headed to Gelare for some ice-cream (two) on waffle (one). Kind of got fogged when i asked her how much the stuff were. Five dollars she said. Looking at the menu, the waffle was four dollars, so the price of the ice-cream was 50c each, which kind of didn't make sense considering the comparative price of the waffle.

Turns out that she assumed that i would try to pay for the whole thing, she conveniently divided the cost in half before telling me to avoid me paying for the whole thing. But considering the amount of additional stuff that came on top of the waffle, i do believe the price to be much more than ten dollars. Hmm.. Cunning.

All i wish for christmas is my two front teeth... and world peace

Since i hadn't had enough sleep, it's hard to get enough sleep when they're showing Ma Xiao Ling on Tv on Sunday nights (i like the story, not the girl), and not having anything to talk about, and having a little too much on my mind which i do not talk about, i've decided to blog a little about what anyone can buy me for Christmas. Yeah, another of my cheap shot at getting christmas presents.

As some of you would know, i have a hobby in collectible cards, namely Magic the Gathering. But do not buy me any Magic the Gathering products because if there is any card that i wanted, i would have bought it myself already. Even books, i buy them as they get released. Unless you're planning to buy me a 1000usd Black Lotus. And if you did, i would say you're siao (insane).

The easiest buy for me would actually be books. Well.. i've been hoping to get The Annotated Alice. But then, there is game theory involved. What if you (whoever) gave me the book, but someone else who also reads this blog (whoever) also gives me the book. Then i would have two or more copies of The Annotated Alice. Conversely, if everyone thought the same way (that someone else was gonna give it to me), than i would have zero copies of The Annotated Alice.

One way around the game theory problem is to call dibs on the book in the comments section, then the rest would know not to get me the book. Not that i think anyone is gonna get me Christmas presents lol : D Think of it as a form of Pascal's Wager.

Alternatively, if anyone wanted to buy me a book, he/she could get me a book that's not The Annotated Alice. So i'll provide a list of books which i already have, as far as i could remember, so that he/she would know what genre of books i prefer.

- Harry Potter One to Four
- Pain in the Neck by Grace Chow
- Dan Brown's books, the two which has Robert Langdon as main character in it.
- Memoirs of a Geisha
- Dragonlance, combined with my cousin, i think we have almost the entire collection
- Asiapac Comics, combined with my cousins, i think we have almost the entire collection of the older books.
- Celestial Zone comic, i stopped somewhere in the middle of series one. You could be a darling and buy me the rest of series one and the whole of series two : p
- Two serial killer books by Mark Billingham (Scary huh, me reading these books.) I have Scaredy Cat and Sleepy Head.

There is an alternative wishlist which is not much different from Runnin' Kid's.

I need new pants : (

Bleahz.. you know you're becoming fat when the button on your pants just burst and fly away when you zip up. I need exercise..

heartless-bitches.com

I have no idea what keywords i was googling for. One moment i was sieving through the game theory and prisoner dilemma articles, the next moment, i was at Heartless Bitches reading the similarities between a nice guy and me. Omg, i'm a nice guy.. but.. but.., i'm nasty >:-) Oh well..

Heartless Bitches has several really good articles which i'm linking to here.
Overcoming "Niceguy-itus" Series Part One
Overcoming "Niceguy-itus" Series Part Two
Nice guys we can do without
What is Misogyny?

And some humour. Maybe not humour, but i find it funny, so i call it humour. Lawyers always get shite slinging their way lol.

10 Reasons Women (who aren't Heartless Bitches!) Date Jerks Instead of Nice Guys

Do spend some time reading through Heartless Bitches.

Formula for love

A rather interesting article :) A laboratory experiment for love. SDU has lessons to learn. Gives me the chills to think that match making might one day come down to behavior influencing.

Excerpts from estephen at emf.net

Excerpt :
"Here's how it's done in a lab: Take two people who have never met, put them in a room together for 90 minutes and instruct them to exchange intimate information, such as their most embarrassing moment and how they would feel if they lost a parent.

Have them stare into each other's eyes for two minutes without talking. At intervals, bring in a researcher who says, "OK, tell the other person what you already like about him.""

What are the risks?

Excerpt :
"Self disclosure is tricky, Aron admits. It has to be reciprocal. If you're the only one pouring out your heart, your date is likely to recommend a good shrink. However, mutual disclosure creates a connection on a deeper level and shows the other person that you trust him or her.

By talking intimately, his subjects risked being embarrassed, and risk is another factor in forging an immediate attraction.

The bigger the risk, the faster you become attracted. My friend Michael fell in love with his wife on their second date when he spun the car around on an icy road in front of a bus.

"We ended up in a ditch. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it tightly. It was a very dear moment," he recalled.

I am not suggesting going to these lengths. However, if the thought doesn't absolutely terrify you, you might consider a river rafting trip or scuba diving lessons. You can never tell whose hand you will end up with in a moment of panic."

Read the full article

Where's my brain?

The second day was rather.. sleepy. I woke up at eight am, went for the included buffet breakfast and returned to the room to sleep till tweleve pm. Since i was not able to get a delaying of the check out, i had to check out of the room by one pm even though the bus leaves only at six forty-five pm. Before i left the room, i double checked if i left anything behind. Then i tripled checked. Satisfied, i took the lift down to the lobby. Apparently, i did leave something behind, my brain.

After checking out, i decided to leave my bag with the baggage section. I approached the porter and he asked me for my room. Having slept so much and having left my brain in the room, i went like "Uh.. uh.. four.. uh.. four.. four-five-one". The porter thought about it abit, then went like, "Four-one-five?", and i went like "Ya ya.", apparently there wasn't any room four-five-one in the hotel.

When i left the hotel to head towards KLCC, i realised that four-five-one could not possibly be the correct number, coz i stayed at level five! But i didn't give much care to it as i didn't think there would be any problem with mixed up baggage. Except that my bus ticket home was in my bag..

Then the idea extrapolated. What if i get arrested by police under the suspicion of leaving a bomb behind under someone else's name? And more extrapolation. What if i get arrested because someone from room four-one-five left a bomb behind!

Nagging conspiracy theories, however improbable, soon became a burden heavier than my bag and i figured i'll just trade it away for the bag.

And so i lugged my bag to KLCC for lunch, then went back to the hotel's cafe/bar for a cup of coffee to read my book. The boarding of the bus was at the same hotel.

Boarded the bus, returned to Nogum's Waterfront Plaza at around one am. Pleasantly, there were bunches of babes in spagehtti, halter necks, tube tops, short skirts and short shorts hanging out around the taxi stand of the hotel. They just finished their partying or something. Ah.. at last, long legs and ample shoulders, despite the merciless rain, the powers that be seemed merciful that night. What a beautiful night.

KLCC and more

I'm back from KL. Stuff was over fast and furious in day one. Things always ends quickly when i keep nodding my head in agreement to whatever. Fortunately, my colleague, who told me not to call her, answered my phone call and helped me out. God bless her.

Anyway, the uninteresting things aside, that evening, i went to KLCC, which was five minutes walk away from the hotel. The place was huge, packing Starbucks, Secret Recipe, Coffee Bean, one on top of each other in different levels. Ikea, or was it Isetan, spanned all six levels. Perfume shops set up booths all around to spray their samples. Behind the shopping complex was a fountain park which i guess would have been nice to walk with your girlfriend or boyfriend were it not sunny a moment and raining the next.

But shops to me are like the different brands of cigarettes to a non-smoker.

My boss was with me as we went for dinner together, and i was eager to get back to the hotel on the pretext that i wanted to sleep (at eight pm). Only then would i have managed to ditch him to return to KLCC to start shopping alone. I wonder what it is with old men that makes them think i like to shop with them.. I'll shop with girls anytime any day, but shopping with old men who spend more time at work than at home, hmm.. the thought of it sends shivers. Ditching my boss was of paramount importance if i didn't want him to start talking about work.

Back at the hotel, after a not so quick shower, the sky began pouring water onto the ground, making it impossible to get back to KLCC, much less getting a cup of latte from starbucks. I then headed to the cafe/bar in the hotel to grab some drinks. I figured if i didn't get coffee, i'll get alcohol instead.

Not thinking that i'll pick anyone up or get picked up by anyone, i slipped into my sandals and went to the cafe/bar, wearing a T-shirt. I doubted that anyone would be attracted by the extreme lack of charm.

The cafe/bar was featuring a band for the week, the band was D Mystique. The band consist of four members, two ladies and two guys. Of the four, three were singers, so it was one guy who did all of the musical instruments. The band's from Philipines and was here in Nogum in 2002 to perform in Orchard Towers, or so i was told by one of the members. And one of the ladies, was rather gorgeous. She had a very nice voice too.



I was sitting at the blue table facing the red podium. In fact, my table was the only table that was left of the podium, behind me was a wall. So for anyone in the band to look at me while facing the majority of the audience, the person would have to do a sort of 90 degree turn with the neck. And i swear, the gorgeous singer was peeking at me every now and then.

After their first set, the band went around shaking hands, chatting with the audience asking where everyone was from. The other lady came over and asked me, "You're alone?". A question which i had no idea how to answer, especially when its coming from a lady. Its not like i could reply, "Coz i anti-social mah" {Thinking back, i could have replied, "i've got you to keep me company" (Don't be so lecherous lah, by you i meant plural, the whole band)}. Then the gorgeous singer came over and went like, "You're alone!" That wasn't even a question..

And i went like, "I have an empty bed in my room, come and stay with me!"
And she went like, "Yeah sure, i have no place to stay anyway!"
And then i kind of woke up from my fantasy to sip my ever so alone alcohol.

I left after their second set, they had four sets to do. A note to self, if i ever wanted to drink, i should either go for value for quantity (beer) or value for quality (brandy). Getting drinks that rate somewhere in the middle was definitely not worth it. As it was, two glasses of one third full drinks costed me 72 ringgit.

Oh.. there was a girl, Linda, among the audience with her friends. She exuded a rather cute personality, giggly, prancy and stuff. Um.. yeah giggly and prancy are attractive, not the quiet too-serious demeanour. That is if anyone cares to heed this bit of advice from the bandit.

Anyway, there was this other mixed group some tables away. Couple of the ang mos got up, walked over to Linda's table, asked for her name. Um.. that's how i got her name, when they called to her later from their table. And i was like, wa... 原來 so easy 的. Um.. to know the name that is..

Office politics

Death in the most interesting variation. Most people would have thought that small companies are like a little family with little need for office politics. It would seem that i've thought wrongly. Even friends who claim so are merciless in their own agenda. I am in a word, dissapointed.

I would understand if someone tries to backstab me so that he/she could advance her career further. Though i would not be happy, atleast i would understand. It's after all a dog eat dog world, to each his/her own (survival).

What i do not understand is how petty arguments between bosses and colleagues (who is turning rebellious because she is planning to leave [1]) would end up having to use me as implements of vengeance. My bosses wants me to take over my colleague's project because they're unhappy with my colleague. My colleague, on the other hand, asks me not to get help from her since my bosses 'feels' that i could do the job. Both parties seemed to be acting on emotional impulsion.

Since the universe revolves around me, the most pitiful and innocent would of course be me. And this evening, i would embark on a long journey to KL, to face the customers, to smile at them weakly and say "I haven't got a clue as to what is going on.", to suffer whatever emotional manipulation the customer would implement on my dissapointing pressence, to suffer whatever additional politics that exists between the two companies, and to feel bad about myself. Don't you find it all very exciting?

But hey, i get to travel in the job wor, so i am very happy. Not.

Mood : I am ready to leave whether anot there is another job for me to go to.

[1] I also going to leave wat, so i should try to be nasty also is it?

The Left Behind Lot : Standard Charter Marathon

This marathon, i'm running twenty one kilometers (half), with much less training than what i had in the army half marathon a couple months back in september. Babe watch for the full run seemed pretty good this year, but the bulk of them still runs half marathon. Kind of explains why i am running half marathon instead of the full marathon, doesn't it?

My capacity for exertion was abyssmal, i turned into walk-a-jog at the eight km mark. Previously i would have gone something like 12 to 14 km before walk-a-jog starts. An important lesson from the run was that induced insomnia and running doesn't really mix. Incidentally, eight km was also the mark where i became dizzy. And fearing that Christianity might be true and that i would have earned a free ride to hell, i decided to solve the impending dilemma, "Sleep, walk or die". Or trilemma.

What has any of these got to do with my degree, Bachelor of Computing? As usual, i would try to run with any babes i come across (More like they come across me since they are overtaking me). But this time, when the girl leaves me behind, instead of considering myself as one with the Left Behind Lot, i assumed that the girl has a boyfriend or husband and i didn't really want to follow too closely as i didn't want to "Tio Mae" (get beaten : literally). Strangely and inexplicably, all the babes either had a boyfriend or husband.

Hmm.. oh well.. i'm having a headache, too tired to think of any graphs to draw.. And i probably won't be able to follow up coz i'll be off to malaysia for three days of work.

Condolences

to La Idler's family and friends.

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World AIDS Day

The Bandit supports World AIDS Day.



The Bandit suggests to the gahmen, "Please.. enough of teaching of abstinence. Educate people on safer sex instead. De-stigmatize sexuality."

Blog Roll and Web Links

Please note that I do not endorse any of the content of the blogs or websites which I link to in my blog roll on web links. Their content do not neccessarily reflect my ideas or motivations. The links are there for me to use my blog as a portal, where bookmarks are not adequate, to content which I find to be of my personal interest to pursue, be it in agreement or in critique.

Adapting the environment to oneself

I went to Ang Mo Kio yesterday, and was waiting for my bus home when i bumped into a rather wierd incident yesterday. See scene reconstruction below.



The dark gray area is the road and bus bay while the lighter gray area is the pavement at the bus stop. The blue rectangle is a top down view of the signboard which shows what numbers are available from that stop. The green dot is a green garbage bin and the yellow dot is Lady B at the bus stop waiting for her bus.

All seems normal and uneventful, until Lady A came along. Lady A then moved towards Lady B (who was minding her own business waiting for the bus) and then decided to squeeze herself into the tiny space between Lady B and the garbage bin. I mean, of all the places to stand..

Lady B then feeling a little crowded, coz the space between the garbage bin was not really enuff for another person to fit in, moved away. Lady A then assumes the position which Lady B was at previously.

Then suddenly, the evil green garbage bin lashed out with it smelly stink, or so i assumed. Lady A began to use her foot to push the green garbage bin along the path of the dotted line to the spot marked by the red X. After that, Lady A walked back to the yellow circle position and waited for the bus except that now, the whole bus stop of people were peeping at her.

I might not have drawn accurately, but the bin in the new position was gonna be a hindrance for movement of commuters running for the bus. Not that i'm saying people should run for the bus, but some do.

I cannot help but remember George Lam's advertisment for some beer where he say he'll rather change the surrounding to suit him.

Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'

Article from Times Online (empahsis my own)

Excerpt :

"RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society. "

Read more.

Please note that the conclusions from the study only asserts that worship of God is unneccessary for a healthy society. It hypothesize that worship of God may contribute to social problems.

Disclaimer: Just in case anyone wanna point out that i said i was not gonna talk about religion anymore (atleast until the elections are over for some time), i did not say anything about religion. I merely linked to an article (Which i will continue to do so).

I met someone i wanted to marry

You know how it is i would always profess about my true love in this blog and that i wanna marry my one true love. They're all my one true love, ya see. But most of them were selected with careful thought that i would never meet any of them. Except for Mail Order Bride (link in blog roll), since i could potentially bump into her if i went to those blogger convention/gathering/party.

This morning, there was a free breakfast and networking thingy organised by JTC for the building's tenants. Greedy as i was, greedy both for food and some eye candy, i went for it. Turn out that the CEO of 3i technologies was also there!

Having had dealings with our company, and knowing my colleague, she came over to talk to my colleague. My colleague introduced me and i got to shake hands with the CEO. Omg, and i wanted to marry her! What a beautiful day..

Running : Coming through!

So i'll just talk about the happenings of my luxurious life. A couple moments ago, i went for my light jog. Along the way, i met another of my one and only true love of my dreams. There was this girl with long brown hair tied into a pony tail, fair skin, big eyes, sporty attire (just finished her own exercise), walking towards me. But since she was going the other direction, she walked past me and i ran past her and true love never blossomed. Oh well..

Turn out that she was doing a warm down walk and weaved through the residential buildings. And i was making a big outer loop. Eventually i saw her on the main road again, still walking, but this time, our direction was the same. Ah.. no more excuses. But i didn't really want to miss my weekly three km run, which started from last week, is already inadequate training for the Standard Charter twenty one km run (yeah, i'm a weakling, i dare not go for fourty two again) on the first weekend of december. Oh well..

So i thought maybe when i ran past her i could turn around and jog backwards (never a wise thing to do when jogging in the roads/pavement) a little to.. i don't know to what.. maybe ah beng her.. But i figured that she might take it as some kind of a challenge and start to race with me. Having neither speed nor stamina nor training, i would probably just malu (embarass) myself by losing to her in a race. Note that it is perfectly possible to have training but still have neither speed nor stamina. Atleast i would have tried my best. But still equally malu. Bleahz male chuavanism.

In the end i decided to play safe and not run backwards into cars, people, lamp posts etc. Oh well..

Just my opinion

i was told by a cousin (no aliases here, but its not difficult to guess which cousin chats with me) that i should blog about things which are important to me. She said that i've blog quite alot about religion already and that i should dedicate some posts to topics like the extended family.

Which in a sense is quite true. Why should i try so hard to banish credulity. Why should i care if people believed in intelligent design or noodly appendages? I should stop blogging about sensitive stuff like religion and religious beliefs.

Especially when the very people calls me infantile, narrow minded, navel gazing, word playing, satan possessed, arrogant fool. Which i actually do kind of agree. Reading thru atheist comments/blogs, they always seem to adhere to a pattern of speech that goes like "Your claims of blah that infers blah because of blah is not logical because of blah as such i cannot believe in blah but remain blah. But of course that's just my opinion". Now that last sentence is important, especially in SG, because it is a last line of defence which basically shouts out "Hey, don't sue me, coz if you do, you're just not acceptable of other people's opinions. And if you disagree with me, that's just your opinion."

So you see, atheists are all opionated people full of their own opinions. And of course, everything else is everyone else's opinion. And in a macro view, its hard to understand why we're social animals if everyone has their own opinions. It should be obvious that people's own opinions are important to themselves, otherwise it wouldn't be called an opinion.

But of course, how could i subsribe to the unproven theory of evolution? Intelligent design deserves mention too, i'm sure. "And in a macro view, its hard to understand why we're social animals OR social beings" And of course, earth does not revolve around the sun. Not that the sun revolves around earth either. You'll be happy to know that the entire universe revolves around me. But that's just my opinion.

More Sleep

In a bid to recover lost sleep, i continued sleeping after waking up multiple times this morning. End up i slept till 2:45pm. But the recovered sleep doesn't seem to help much since i wasn't sleeping any earlier today. But atleast my headaches have gone away. Yay. What a beautiful day, or what remains of it.

Oh.. my days end only after i've slept and woken up.

Wa.. just now a girl come to my office to look for my boss. Quite the pretty somemore. The she see me bio her she smile at me (forgive me, but i dun get many smiles from pretty girls). Woooo.. what a beautiful day.

Link to Alonzo Fyfe

Do take some time out to read Alonzo Fyfe's Meaning of Life.

Excerpt (It's the same excerpt provided by atheism.about.com

"Imagine a distant land, occupied by humans, but whose customs differ from our own. In this land, a young girl faces her eighth birthday. On this special day, her parents give her a small paper box that fits in her hand, and they tell her, "This box contains an egg. It is very fragile, and you must take very good care of it. You must keep it with you at all times, but you must always make sure that it never gets too warm. You must keep it from being struck or dropped, because if this happens the egg will surely break."

These egg boxes are made at a temple. There is an elaborate ceremony in which a priest puts a box together according to time-honored rituals. It is sealed shut then, with a prayer, it is said that an egg enters this world from a land beyond space and time. However, if the box is ever opened or the egg is damaged, it will return to the land from which it came.

If the egg survives until death of its owner, the person's essence will enter the egg. When the egg returns to its own land, it will carry that essence with it."

Lethal Efficiency

It is sad to see people championing for certain causes saying that they support the death penalty. What many do not realise is the difference between a death penalty and a mandatory death penalty.

It is not in my interests to discuss whether the death penalty is effective as a deterent or not, whether the concept of a life for a life is sound or not, whether the issue of a wrong conviction matters or not, whether the burden of proof lies with the for or against or not.

Rather, i like to propose a new penalty, much harsher than the death penalty. Since the death penalty is supposedly to be a good deterant, being lethal as it is, it is only fair to assume that an even harsher penalty would work as a deterent even better.

I propose that we implement the mandatory torture penalty. Anyone who is sentenced to such a penalty would be tortured. For the rest of his life. 生不如死.

In fact, it is such a good deterant that we should propagate the use of it to all kinds of crime. First time offenders will be made to watch the torture. Let them hear the screaming. Second time offenders will be sent into the torture chambers. The length of torture would be exponentially proportional to the seriousness of the crime.

Have i got you ticking yet? Or not? Learn the word humane.

Harry Potter 4 Review

Warning: Spoiler ahead.


"Bleahz, Boys"

Ok, that's just Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, not the full cast. But she's my favorite witch of the story. Professor Snape queues up second as a wizard, not witch though. I was trying to look for a full Hermione Granger in pink dress and flourishing her charming smile to pin up. But there don't seem to be any such picture around in the web. Emma Watson has become much prettier since.

The show was pretty good, but the storyline portrayed was jerky. Perhaps reading the book before watching the show is a requirement for smooth understanding of the story. It is not easy when you've got to start memorizing their incantations to know what the wizards and witches were casting (Eg. the torture curse). For the amount of intricate details, or lack thereof, the show lasted pretty long. It felt as if the audience is being hurried through an extremely long story, thus the resultant effect of the storyline feeling jerky.

The villian gloating syndrome was rather pronounced, coz a couple days before the show, while watching The Chamber of Secrets, my brother complained that Harry Potter had gloating villians tell the story, filling up the gaps of what really happened. Usually they will fail to do what they want to do after telling the story.

I guess reading the book is really a neccesity. Or i would be hard pressed to know what.. now what his name.. the Hogwarts principal.. anyway, i won't know what exactly he was pulling out of his head to put into the pool of water.

Another thing is that Harry Potter was supposed to be using a wand that was once used by Voldemort (See Philosopher's Stone). Weren't they suppose to be sharing a wand? Unless Voldemort stopped using Harry Potter's wand to use another wand some time in the past, then this would be a considerable linker error.

Rating ****/5

someone ah beng-ed me today

Had a rather bad start today. Sleep, as usual, was lacking and when the morning alarm sounded, the one-more-last-snooze symptom kicked in. I think it would have helped if it weren't raining and so cold. When i finally woke up, i was running kind of late for my usual bus. Finished the morning rituals as quickly as possible before flying to the bus stop. And to my pleasant surprise, i was still on time for my usual bus.

And when the arrived, i checked my pockets and went like, "Where's my handphone?". Apparently, in my hurry, i've forgotten to take my handphone. If i didn't have to go out today, i would have gone to work without my handphone. As it is, i went back home to get my handphone. Not a very good start.

Arrived at the destination bus stop, alighted at the front of it, and decided to move to the back of the bus stop. Since it was still splattering with droplets, i decided to keep the parts of me that were still alive inside the bus stop's shelter. And while moving to the back of the bus, i brushed against the bag of a nus student (i assume he is a student, i assume all people who board bus 95 during those hours are students).

And den the guy was very boh song (hokkien: unhappy), and stared at me the whole time, trying to ah beng me. wth.

Some random email

My friend was having problems with some email with a guy. So she forwarded it to me and asked me what to make of it. After reading the email, i could not tahan the arrogance of that guy anymore and i helped her draft a reply.

But my friend is rather benign and will only bite the wrong people. She decided to be more politcally correct and friendly in a reply and didn't use my reply. So i thought i'll just pin it up for some reading.

WARNING: Offensive Language
Rating: M18

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"Wow, you really want to test me."
You really should wake up your ideas. Test... test what test? This is a game meh? If you like to play game then you keep to speed dating can liao.

"Well, I cannot say "subdue" you easily; this is a quite powerful word. You should say more likely that you I can "win" over heart easily."
Arrogance. Pure arrogance is not an appeal factor. It is REPULSIVE.

"Firstly, when I asked you out, you always will try your best to go out. Remember the incident that you still went to ECP with me alone, despite you at home after bathing."
So you think i very easy going is it? You think you Qin Sheng is it? You think you can twiddle me around and i'll still love you for it? So do you have a liking for me only because i am the only one who is kind enough to go out with you? Do you have a slightest idea of what it means to take things for granted. So, are you sure that you can win my heart "very easily"? Please do not insult my intellect. You pathetic sonofabitch. I demand an apology.

"Love experts have said that if you go out with a person more than 3 times, he can safely conclude that the person is keen on you. This is not to say that the person can be your partner, this is just an expression of "liking" only."
Is that all you have to show for? A TEXTBOOK? You can't even figure out love without someone telling you about it! Your love expert is WRONG. I am not your average easily swept off the feet (read cheated) by [name] type of girl.

"Secondly, I feel you can "tarhan" my characters."
I can tarhan your character? So what does that mean? That so long as someone in this world can tolerate you, you're then considered flawless and correct and desirable?

"Thirdly, you "fulfil" some of my basic requirements, like sharing same religion, got the height, although the weight is not that "ideal". I thinking fulfilling the basic requirements is the first step to know you better. You have told me you will not consider a bald head guy, so this is your basic requirements."
[Not a reply, i wrote to my friend] This one catch 22 liao. You told [name] you cannot accept a bald guy (physical attribute). So likewise he can say he prefer a girl with lesser weight.

"I also listened to a lot of people advice before I made that statement, "I got 99% chances" to choose you. One of my friends has advised me that it is not easily to find someone reciprocate the same feeling/action to you. Just like you keen on [initials], but he does not think the same way. So he chose to leave you."
Listen to alot of people? So do you like me or do people like me? Make up your mind. If it is people who like me, then I rather reciprocate towards them.

"So now is your turn to tell me why you "keen" on me?"
Keen on you? Don't make me laugh, you snniveling worm, sonofabitch, bastard. The world revolves around ME, NOT YOU. Well... so long, dream on, i'll leave you to your own world where you think you're the only guy in the world. Even then, you're still not desirable.

[The guy then sent an sms to a guy whom my friend kind of like]

SMS: "Do u think it is possible for u and [my friend's name] to develop further,not remain as friend but to become couple? I was toldby someone to ask.[guy's name]."
Fuck you understand. My relationships with whoever will be handled by ME and WHOEVER AND DOES NOT CONCERN YOU. WE WILL PROCEED IN OUR OWN TIME, PLEASE STOP RUINING OUR LIVES, be it whoever the other person is. [I noe this sounds hypocritical, coz, i'm meddling into someonelses realtionships, but some things are just so wrong]

"I shall wait for your candid answers"
Candid answers? You think my words are very funny? You think I'm making a fool of myself? You na beh cheebye mother fucker, your penis will rot in hell.

[Notice that the guy never once mentioned that he wants to make a commitment. He keeps focusing on, "All your base are mine anytime i want it". Right to the end of the email, the guy was still so full of himself.

To that guy, please.. if you like a girl, go and chase her, tell her you like her. Don't waltz up to her and tell her to chase you!! While i agree that this day and age girls should take up more initiative, its shameful to tell the girl to make a commitment while you stand back and say "Oh.. i want to see first."]

I evolved from Sun Wu Kong?

Read the "Man's evolution from monkey a proven scientific fact?" newspaper article from various links. The best portal for this article would be this tomorrow's post. Click through the trackbacks.

So what do i make of it?; "Man's evolution from monkey a proven scientific fact?".

Wa liao eh! Of course it is not a fact lah. To say that man evolved from monkeys is utterly lame and stupid and shows little for reading up. The answers are all around! I guess this is the problem with not playing magic the gathering. There's no issue of classifying a species wrongly when the gaming card's company's R&D try to play God.

We evolved from APES NOT MONKEYS!

Friendster

Just popped over from Friendster. It used to have Open Relationship and Close Relationship status. As if anyone would really know the actual meaning of those relationships. Anyway, Friendster did away with those two status, collapsing it into a single In a Relationship status.

They've also added a new status, Complicated. As such, i've changed my own status from Single to Complicated. For no reason other than that a Complicated status sounds more mysterious and exciting. Single sounds kind of boring.

i need more sleep

I'm tired, coz i wanna sleep. But i wanna blog, so i'm trying to blog. But i've got nothing to blog about, so i wanna sleep. But i dun wanna sleep, coz i wanna blog. But its probably not very interesting to read me going through this infinite loop process, so i try to do something else. But i still wanna sleep and blog.

In case anyone is expecting me to blog something about tonight, no don't wait, coz i'm not gonna blog about it. Ah... the dangling carrot, tantalising is it not?

Gloomy Afternoon said... Link deliberately not provided, but hey, dun be lazy, the link's just in the side bar.

Anyway, i commented in her blog saying her poems always haf birds trapped not in closed cages but open cages. She mentions that birds trapped in open cages are hilarious.. Bah.. what a cruel and wierd sense of humor, that evil witch. Birds are hilarious only when they are chopped up and served in plates with gravy. Funny not? Muahahahha >: )

Boh gas liao

"Eh, cham siong, le ye card boh gas(English) liao.", that's what the bus driver said after making his way to the back of the bus. Don't ask me to translate cham siong, i never knew it was a noun! Anyway, the driver was telling the guy that his EzLink card (RFID E-purse card) didn't have a positive amount of cash value for deduction.

Until i ascertain what cham siong means in context, i can only assume that the driver said boh gas instead of boh lui, was to make it seem like a friendly banter, less embarassing for everyone.

Ok, i read too much into words..

In any case, saying gas can only be a result of Hollywood indoctrination. I have never seen any gas stations in Nogum city. Mainly because there are absolutely no vehicles that run on gas in Nogum city. Although one could say that having no gas stations effects into nobody wants to import vehicles that run on gas. But its always safer to place the bets on demand as the driving force.

Not that i'm saying people don't want to buy gas powered vehicles. Sometimes, other things get in the way. In fact, the only places i can think of that uses gas as a fuel is the kitchen. Though i'm not exactly sure if the kitchen's gas stove's gas is the same gas that powers gas powered vehicles. (I love this kind sentences, despite not being very readable)

So next time, if you're running low on petrol, don't say you wanna go to the petrol station to pump gas. Coz its petrol, not gas.

Aliens Ecology

Just a thought, i think not many people know about the life cycle of the aliens in the movie Alien 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or whatever, up to the last show where the people went back to Earth or something and Ripley is a clone from the dead Ripley who had an alien in her.

If you remember, in one of the numbers, Ripley killed the mama alien in a gundam suit prototype version negative one thousand. So... that's really a good point to start with, the mama alien.

In the begining, there was mama alien... And what mama alien did was to lay eggs. Not very sure if she needed any nookie (Alien Ressurection seems to indicate a need for it) to start laying eggs. Anyway, these eggs then hatches into little creepy crawlies floor hugging aliens. They are not the ones that open their mouths to spit out another mouth. What these floor huggers does is to climb onto human beings face and lays an egg into the human stomach/lung via the trachea.

Now.. if some alien climbs onto the face to shit into his/her mouth, wouldn't he/she brush it off his/her face or something? Well no, coz the aliens have a paralyzing tail which they use to paralyze the victims first. Or they could do it while the victim is asleep.

So these aliens inside the stomach/lung then grows up and eats its way out. And we get to see the alien bursting from the chest. After bursting from the chest, the aliens then grow up into workers, soldiers, drones. The workers collect more humans for food and reproduction. Some drones, much like ant colonies, might evolve into queen status and thus, the ecological cycle is complete.

Sky High Review

Another of those shows where the hero is an unbeatable force. *sigh* The hands on fire guy was kind of cool, throughtout the whole show, i was waiting for him to be immolating, entire person on fire, but it seems only the hands had the fuel. Kind of liked it when the fire guy grabbed the ice girl's hand and neutralised each other at the end of the show in the ballroom.

My Rating **.5/5

The truth wounds deeper than any knife

Just browsed over to minishorts and read the post about dimwits. minishorts said, "no dim-witted guy should EVER deserve a girlfriend".

NOOooooooo.. (hands reaching out and away from oblivion)

The truth hurts. I don't deserve Ponz Goo.. Boohoooo : ( But Daibido (Teflon) left her a comment, and there is still a glimmer of hope for dimwits me. Can try possiblity number four "Don’t date, just sleep around". Yay : D

Or possiblity three, "Skip the dating part … skip straight to getting married!", Yippee! Miss Goo, despite not having met you at all and not knowing you beyond being a name in the newspapers, i'm not dimwit! I.. i.. i lub *cough*..

Oh well.. i'm dimwit..

Dog eat dog world

The other day, i had yet another of my Close Encounters of the Dog Kind again. The dog was on a leash, but running loose. The owner, busy with her boyfriend had chosen to hold something other than the leash.. The boyfriend's hand lah..

Anyway, the dog came up to me, sniffle my toes (i was wearing sandals), and gave them a tiny wash with its own tongue. How nice it is to know that there are dogs in this world that would not attack me on sight.

No more hot shower

After almost a year of addiction to hot shower, i'm gonna quit it. I'm going to shower in cold water, no matter the room temperature. Um.. so long as i don't go to a country that's sporting a winter that is..

Just got a call from an overseas client to my personal handphone. Argh.. Believe it anot, but my boss puts my phone number in the name card but refuses to let me claim for the subscibtion.. that's just low. Anyway, the call was regarding software that refuses to work.. seems like i'm gonna be having a long week ahead..

But i wanna watch Harry Potter on Wednesday..

Ya.. lots of double dots in this post..

Faith in Science

"I think, therefore I am", Descartes said. "A rose by any other name, smells just as sweet.", someone else said.

Ask me anytime of the day on why i would not believe a religion by faith, and i would answer by saying that there is no science to it. One can postulate the existence of God, one can genuinely believe to have seen the works of gods, one can claim of past lives and an adherence to a karmic cycle. From arguments by morality, free will, intelligent design, meaning of life, definition of English words, misinterpretation of second law of thermodynamics, right down to Pascal's wager. I would say that i fail to believe due to the lack of adequate evidence.

What about Einstein's theory of special relativity? Why should i believe Einstein? Have i personally conducted science experiments to prove his theory right or wrong? And if John Doe wanted to buy a can of fizzy drink from a vending machine, should i tell him to stop and do a science experiment to prove that the capacitors in the electronic circuits within the vending machine does indeed works the way that scientists and/or engineers claim them to?

"But i just want a drink." John Doe would probably say.

With pseudoscience never dying down and people, with impressive qualifications no less, start performing experiments and claim to have applied proper controls, and passing off and/or publishing it believably as science, how then is the common man like me, who cannot afford or construct or even understand the said experiment to believe what is true?

Would not belief in Newton's laws of motion become just a leap of faith? How do i know that Newton did not have some flaws in his experiments? When i catch someone staring at me, how can i say it is not not pattern finding but PSI energy generated from the brain of the person staring at me?

Incidentally, it seems i am adopting Descartes's method of discourse as seen in his Meditations on First Philosophy? That nothing i see and sense could be believed to be true. That some malevolent being might be lying to me, could possibly even be meddling with whatever science experiments that i conduct, so i would never know the truth.

But Meditations on First Philosophy has a serious flaw. I think, therefore i am. But no more. Nothing else can be proven. I can prove my existence, i can prove mathematics, but that's about as far as we could ever go with total discourse. To disbelieve everything would then amount to irrational paranoia, resulting only in stagnation, for nothing else can be proven.

I shall digress and talk a little about Mediations on First Philosophy. Descartes suggest that nothing can be believed to be true as a malevolent being could be lying to him. The apple he sees might in fact not be an apple. But if a malevolent being was lying to him, then he must be existential to be lied to. With this, Descartes uses as proof that thinking beings exists, cogito ergo sum (i think therefore i am).

Why does Mathematics exist as true then? "A rose by any other name smells just as sweet". One plus one equals two. You can use any language, call it by any other name, but the only way to count an accumulation of things is or atleast is the equivalent of the addition of one and one.

And from these simple mathematics, we can expand into many other things like Pythagoras Theorem, c² = a² + b². From that, we know that right-angle triangles exists. Shapes exists. But one can only prove that it exists conceptually, no more.

Perhaps Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy encounters such obstacles because it does not consider tangibility. An apple, even if it is a lie, interacts tangibily with its surroundings. One can reach out, grab the apple and eat it for sustenance. Sure it might all be a lie, but within the system itself, it is producing reliable reactance. John Doe need not care whether the vending machine exists anot, he only needs to insert his coins, press the buttons and he'll have a can of fizzy drink.

Which brings us back to square one. That for the common man, believing in physics seems to be no different than believing in pseudophysics. For all the common man like me would know, there is absolutely no difference. All it takes is a certain amount of faith.

But that is most certainly not true. For if ever the common man did start to conduct his own experiments, he would find that science experiments are replicable while pseudoscience experiments are not. Given that, is it still truthful to believe in pseudoscience?

One might then argue that to totally disregard pseudoscience is to be narrow-minded and unscientific. They contend that pseudoscience is pseudo only because of the limitations of current sciences, that pseudoscience is infact actually protoscience or undiscovered science. More importantly, proponents of psychic abilities, spirituality, alternative healing, creation science or pseudoscience, would always claim that their 'research' are protoscience. However, pseudoscience often discard failed experiments, focus on the people's tendency towards superstition and publish only successful tries in their experiments.

Where do we draw the line between the open minded and full blown credulity?

My poor laptop

I shall henceforth note that if i ever pull out one the the keys from my laptop out of frustration, i shall not pull another key from my laptop out of curiosity. Turns out that the key which i pulled out in frustration managed to fit back nicely while the one i pulled to sate my curiosity can no longer be fitted back properly. It now sits on my laptop lopsided : (

And in case if anyone is doing any typing on my auntie's laptop and finds that the key 'O' just drops out by itself, i swear, i never pulled the keys of my auntie's laptop. Neither out of curiosity and nor out of frustration. It was already like dat when i went to do typing.

Fire Alarm

If ever there was a real fire, i would surely perish. Coz even as the alarm is ringing non-stop, i'm sitting in the office blogging away and practically, the entire level of people is adopting the same 'bo chap' (don't give a dam) attitude.

Hmm.. i think i better leave the building.. Ciao

Update:

Turn out that its only a drill.

What the hell, the fire drill was for only one company. That company should have sent mail to all the other companies to say tell us that we not involved wat.

Anyway, i managed to drag my colleague to leave the office with me. She was complaining the whole way, from needing to send email to leg pain to feeling stupid for being the only two persons to be taking the stairs down while others were taking the stairs up to get to wherever they were headed.

Why were we the only two persons to be going down the stairs? What about the company for which the drill was intended. I guess they were the only informed company and thus have long evacuated.

Moral of the story: Response time improves with knowledge that it is a drill and the need for whatever ISO conformance because it is a drill.

End up my colleague and i, instead of going to the assembly point, i doubt they were gonna take our head count since the drill was not meant for us, went to the canteen to get some drinks.

Oh well...

Ow, my tushee hurts

No it doesn't. I was looking at the front half page of Sunday Times (Me reading newspapers, surprised huh? Notice i say front half page, which means i wasn't reading, just that the newspaper happen to catch my attention by lying on the floor), and notice an interesting gossip value headline. Someone who has a wife had commited suicide and nominated 30% his CPF fund to his girlfriend.

No comment on that article.

I picked up the newspaper, and the bottom half flipped into view and i saw Xiaxue's photograph. Thinking it might be related to the recent talk show, i flipped to the correct page and found out that it was talking about Xiaxue using disbled toilet*. Um... while she is still very abled that is.

Overall, the article is disapproving of Xiaxue's choice of toilet and quoted her comments to make her sound like a controversial young brat. Having shared a house with six other people in Gippy, one of them wheel chair bound, I can understand the outrage when one of the non-disabled housemates started using the disabled toilet. The house was one of the two houses of the sixty something houses that have disabled toilet in addition to the two usual toilets.

But the outrage is irrational.

Sure, common courtesy dictates that we should avoid using disabled toilet for want of luxury. But Xiaxue's choice of toilet is hardly evil or life threatening. Was it really neccessary to splash it onto the front page? I didn't want to risk offending my intellect by reading the rest of the paper to see if there are any other news worthy of making front page though. But c'mon journalists people, do not treat disabled people like they're handicapped. Do they want such attention? Do they want to be treated differently, 'special'? Sarong Party Girl has it right, please do not patronize them.

What's patronizing? Well, i don't know. Maybe it has something to do with the newspaper finding it appropriate to publish a quote that goes like, "Disabled people have poor bladder control.". Disregarding the absurdity of the claim, it is patronizing.

Patronize - To treat in a condescending manner.
Condescending - Displaying a patronizingly superior attitude.

What the hell, what kind of a stupid dictionary is that? But anyway, u get the idea of the meaning.

One concerned citizen was quoted as saying something like, "She should think about karma, she will one day grow old too"

Laughs.

Given my limited understanding of the karmic cycle, i assume that someone with bad karma would be reborn into a hard life and someone with good karma would be blessed with good future lives. So, is the concerned citizen anymore gracious/courteous than Xiaxue to avoid using dsiabled toilet, not because she finds it gracious/courteous, but because she wants a better future life. Don't pretend to be sympathetic if you're only concerned about your own karma.

Another quote, "What if everyone starts thinking like her and starts using disabled toilet?"

So... are people going to queue up outside the disabled toilet? How likely is such a scenario going to happen? That tens of people queue up at the disabled toilet refusing to go to the other toilet even if it is empty. And i'm sure they're all gonna to continue queueing up when someone wheels up in her chair.

And the thing is, my disabled housemate told me that she didn't mind any of us using the disabled toilet.

* Disabled toilet in my case is trying to indicate toilet for the disabled, not that the toiet is spoilt.

Bdae card

Got a pleasant surprise from hong kong last night. Seems like only Little miss Tv remembered that i like cards, especially if they're from overseas. Enclosed in the envelope was :



Whoop, my obsession with butterflies.



Thank You Little miss Tv.

Talk shows without substance...

[Here's a transcript of a mandarin talk show regarding blogger responsibilities, brought to us by Cogito Ergo Sum, made known to me via Tomorrow.sg.

It is sadly, a show that has little or no substance, with plenty of questions unanswered. The show features our famous or infamous blog girl, depending on your perspective, personally i think should be called famous, Xiaxue. Notice how the lawyer guy gives her no chance at any coherent explanation. And how some others put words in her mouth, literally...]

Excerpt:
"So are you saying that as long as the audiences like it, then it's fine to write it?"

More Excerpt:
"It's very obvious that blog is a thing for the youngsters."

[Admittedly, this is a flawed speech that i employ sometimes too. If it is obvious, then it is obvious, why point out the obvious? Yes, it is a translation, but the mandarin form of the statement is also... obvious : D

Some of the questions that are unanswered.]

"In law, there's a thing called motive. If you break the law, there should be an associated motive. However, there are two points to note. Let's say i'm talking to you about some sensitive racial topics, and others can hear it, then it's illegal."
"It's rather frightening when you touched on this point. Just like what i've mentioned at the start of the show, let's change the scene to a casual chat in a fast food restaurant. Let's just say there are Teacher Zhao... or just say all of us here. If what i say is overheard by someone else then i'll be in trouble."
"Yes, i've handled such case before."

[I wonder what was the original mandarin words that translated into motive. Anyway, it makes me wonder what exactly the motive is in the eavesdropping case. It does seem to me there's no motive, but its illegal anyway...]

"Another viewer Flying Angle asked, "If gambling on a casino cruise on the international waters isn't subject to the local jurisdiction, then when is a site considered a local space or a local site? Are foreign sites subject to our country's jurisdiction? Is the law used only to govern the locals and not the foreigners even if they have acted unruly on the local sites? Hope there's a clarification on this question.""

[Not answered.]

Last One:
"In May this year, a blogger criticized the scholarship system and policies of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research of Singapore and slandered its Chairman Mr. Philip Yeo. The blogger subsequently issued two apologies to the said organization."

[Oh wow... what a politically correct summary of what happened.]

[Edit: I re-read my post and found it rather confusing with excerpts all over the place, sorry. I've placed words that are my own in square brackets.]

Little one

Yesterday, i carried my almost one year old niece for the very first time in my life. The little one is so... little. Eeee.

Charmed, season seven ends.

Season seven of the Charmed ones ended yesterday. Kind of a sad thing, but luckily, there seems to be a season eight. But even the good runs have to end eventually, like Sex and the City, though i wasn't really such a big fan of that show. Season eight could well be the last season for the sisters to fling their magic around.

My favourite sister is Phoebe, the one with the tattoos. She's so hot and cute. Paige did seem quite pretty at first, but as time goes on, she seem to be too fair for my liking. I wanna marry Alyssa Milano! And Ponz Goo too.

I am so gonna quit

"Beware of the dark side. Anger...fear...aggression. The dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight."

I can't help but seethe with anger. My boss just sms me 'asking' if i could go back on friday to "load software". What the hell... the rest of the people cannot load software!? And cannot ask me to go back today to load software meh? Must be friday meh? My one week long weekend now kena chop in the middle into three days and two days.

And it's friday! My boss cancelled my leave on my birthday...

Tom Yam Goong

Happy Halloween, my lovely blogders. It's an unearthly hour for me to be blogging. But not to worry, my mental and emotional health is sane and stable. No sweet young thing has broken my fragile heart, not that there is anyone to break it in the first place.

Warning: Some Tom Yam Goong spoiler below.

I just came back from the movie, Tom Yam Goong. The movie was rather like Ong Bak, with an indestructable main character who's a one man show, single handedly dislocating the joints of armies of villians. Not my kind of show. Anyone who knows my previous nick knows my favourite character from 絕代雙驕 is 小魚兒, not 花無缺. I much prefer the main character to be sub-par fighter, but one who uses wits to overcome the enemies.

Anyway, before the movie began, i was following the guys around to look for some drinks in Carefour. There, one of the guys pointed out to me, cartons and cartons of Coca Cola (fortunately, my sweet tooth binge-ing came the day before). And looking at the cartons that were stacked together with something else, i can't help but think back about the data-mining lessons i had, like how people who bought beer were likely to buy diapers. Don't ask me for the correlation, i'm not eloquent enough, in writing, to answer that.

Stacked together with Coca Cola was cartons of Jim Bean Bourbone Whiskey. Quite evidently, the correlation between the two was Bourbone Coke. I didn't know the drink was such a favourite until a couple hours ago.

Anyway, the show ended well into two am in the wee hours. I thought years of late night gaming studying would have made me understood what midnight hunger was. But i kind of forgotten about it and when the show ended, i was ravenous. Yvonne asked me if i was gonna blog or sleep when i reached home, well.. i guess the answer is neither, coz i began scavenging for food the moment i was home.

Well, all in all, Tom Yam Goong is a show to watch if you're looking for slick moves akin to Jackie Chan movies, with the reduction in female inferiority which always seem to be prevalent in Jackie's movies.

My Rating *** (out of 5)

One week break

Yippee, i'm going on a one week break. I'm so excited. And i still wanna marry Ponz Goo.

argh.. the dull throb in the head is back.. and i can't blame it on lack of sleep, for i slept a full tweleve hours last night. Maybe too much sleep brings the headaches too : (

I'm not an IT person

I have finally found my true calling. I was never meant to be in the IT line, nor was i meant to do programmming. Rather, i was born to be an actor, acting in roles like Zorro from Legend of Zorro. Then i would be able to kiss Catherine Zeta-Jones more times than i could count and if i died, i would have died a happy man. Gosh... i want to marry her too!

Took a cab home just now. On the way back, the driver answered a phone call. From the smatterings pieced together, it appears that his friend was calling him about making an overseas trip. The driver quickly agreed, saying his own last trip was very good. Then just as quickly, he becomes crest fallen when his friend says he is travelling with his family. The driver says, "i'll consider and let you know."

Then they went on and the driver started saying, "Clean.. sure clean one. Clean anot is you yourself one mah."

What the hell...

Now, i take a neutral view about prostitution and pursuants of such services, it is a personal thing, i contend. But how could the taxi driver's friend bring his whole family abroad, wife and possibly children, so he could have some nookie with a service provider!? Have that guy no decency?

Bish. That guy's teeth all fall out.

Is that a bracelet?

In case anyone for any reason (like u got knocked in the head or something (come to think of it, i'm not referring to anyone by the knocked in the head, i'm speaking generally)), want to give me some gift, then please... please do not give me a watch. Nothing will replace my Nokia brand watch. I have no need for watches, i do not need to tell the time, thus explaining why i would never achieve anything, and i will never wear a watch. Sorry.

Shh.. dun tell anyone okie?

Me and my lil manipulative persuasive wild ideas, i got my boss to give me leave for wednesday and friday, and if nothing goes wrong, i'll have a huge ego boost to my powers of manipulation persuasion. Though you might notice that there was a compromise on my part, i'm going to work on monday.

Hmm... ego boost is no good though.

My colleague just told me that she knew why i wanted to take leave. I was wondering how she would know why i wanted to take leave when i didn't even know myself. After some afterthoughts, i figured that she thought she knew why i wanted to take leave because my day of the year is just round the corner. It would have been likely the reason why i wanted to take leave except that i've pretty much forgotten about the day myself.

Oh... the simplistic reason for taking leave is that having two public holidays in a week is just too good an opportunity to let slip without taking a long rest.

Just as i did last year, i'll leave you, my lovely, kind, generous, benevolent, smart, handsome and pretty blogders a wishlist. Last year i asked for world peace and got a world of relative peace. Asked for a 1.7 million two seater personal submarine and got one that was priceless.

My wishlist this year:
- World Peace
- Freedom From Religion
- More Sleep
- No Starvation In The World
- More Funds For Medical Research
- One New Laptop (lol, i'm devious, this might be gift-able.)

In case anyone is wondering, my next trip would be around 21st november plus minus a couple days.

My lil update.

19 October 2005, one week ago from today, my Nogum meme has claimed one more unsuspecting victim as she too begins using the term Nogum in her post. Muahahahaha...

Huh?

Oh the evil laugh. Muahahahaha >:)

It's a fine day in Nogum City today, except for the rain. Not much news in babe report as i was busily unconscious catching up much needed sleep. Missed, today's daily does of cartoon though, mobile Tv was missing.

Having fewer stuff to chat with Little miss Tv these days, which is kind of a sad thing. Received a sms from 大家姐 at close to midnight a couple days ago which says i was on her mind. Kind of fell from the heaven when it turned out that it was a forwarded sms that more than just me received.

For those going overseas this holiday, just go and don't come back i mean go and come back for national duty.

Just as Gloomy Afternoon is trading EQ for IQ, i'm losing IQ from lack of sleep and having a non-existent EQ, i don't have much of AnyQ left in me. Unless its a queue instead, of which i'm always the last in line, the left behind. Omg, alliteration! I feel so much more eloquent liao.

And yes, my blog has taken a slight detour around the usual "Omg! i want to marry so and so" kind of inane stuff but sadly widely loved (imo) by majority of my blogders. But i cannot let people slip into a fantasy-cal world while doing nothing.

Oh well...

Flying Spaghetti Monster

I am stunned. I had always thought that the Invisible Pink Unicorn is the one true god, but i was wrong. There is irrefutable evidence of the existence of one other god. The Flying Spaghetti Monster revealed to us recently by Bobby Henderson. With ten million believers world wide, the truth of Flying Spaghetti Monster cannot be denied.

Also of interest is the correlation between global warming and shrinking number of pirates as shown in the graph below.



As we can see, "there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature". We now know that science is faulty and evolution is nothing more than a fairytale.

Blessed is the Noodly Appendage.

another of my weird ideas

This is going to sound weird, but i'm serious. If i ever got into an accident, and fell unconscious, could someone, anyone, quickly take a cotton bud and start cleaning my belly button before i regain consciousness?

Couldn't i clean it myself? Coz everytime i clean it, if feels like i'm poking my finger right into my stomach, kind of "Eeee" (and no, i do not get orgasms out of it)... I clean it by running water over if, but not scrubbing it, so there's some kind of accumulation down there. So i figure the only way to get my belly button scrubbed without feelings like i was stabbed by a dagger is to do it while i'm unconscious.