What's Wrong

I guess the day started with just 4 hours of sleep. Somehow can't seem to sleep properly, toss and turn in bed. Ended up pacing aimlessly around the house in the dark. Sat randomly on all the chairs in the house.

Just the beginning of a crazy day.

Got off the bus, went into the IS building to look for the library. Walked around wandering where is the glass door before realising it's not the library building. Stoned around at the usual table in the library until my interview. I think the interview is the only good thing that happen today, probably not the only good thing, but the only thing that didn't go wrong, I think.

Walked to Plaza Singapura for lunch. They were trimming the huge tree outside SOTA and blocked up the pedestrian way. I stood there stoning for some time, processing how to walk across, when just right and left of me, people were either using the stairs or walking along the road. Then wasted time wandering around the mall thinking of what to eat.

The afternoon was then spent stoning at my computer screen and pacing the library, probably irritating a lot of people in the process. Helped van with a bit of her stuff, hopefully I didn't give wrong info.

Then there was the wrong location for the briefing for finance directors. Went to the correct SR number at the wrong building. Realised it, attempted to go from Accounts to Business. Instead of crossing the road, I exited the back door and walked towards fort canning. Champion. Realised it, now it's the correct building but the wrong SR. Realised that a class is starting, instead of my briefing.

Missed 2 bus on the way back. I would have missed the 3rd one if xw hasn't turn up and 'woke me up'. Then I guess the most epic one was when I got home. Get this, I took out my matric card, tapped at the door handle, stood back and waited for it to open. It then struck me that nothing is going to happen and how stupid I look standing there. I burst out laughing.

Can't believe a person can do all these things. Wake up wake up. You have a presentation practice tomorrow, fund raising event to organise on Sunday, exams and a presentation to make on Monday.

I haven't even started to prepare for anything yet...

~wished upon a star~

22nd Anniversary of Existence

Many many thanks to the many well wishes from so many people. Thanks to all who remembered.

I would guess especially memorable was lf and xp who popped up suddenly on Friday. xp messaged to asked where I was, they thought I was in school. Well, normally I would be, but there is the IT Show going on that day, so was at Suntec with jw, ch and cm. Anyway, they and luu got me presents, wonderful presents. Even remembered my favourite flavour from my favourite tea and chocolate brand. So extremely touched by them. Well, like lf mentioned, 8 years of friendship and going is not easy. She says that I seem easy to please too. Well, I would have to dispute that. I'm super fussy and difficult, not easy to please at all, but I'm very appreciative of what others do for me. Things that need not be done, the little extra things. =)

Then there was diva who dug out something 'antique', snapped a picture of it and sent it to me. It was a 想当年 kind of moment.

Many thanks to the beloved Jack Sparrow who treated me to lunch at Chijmes and the birthday cake. Also xw, who being unable to join for lunch, left a little something at our usual mugging table.

Being a small school also has its benefits though. People shouting out to me almost every other place I go. Then there was also my boss back from Kraft who still remembered me. Quite surprised though, it was almost a year since I was there.

I guess the best thing today was from a certain 'sweet 16 year old'.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone who remembered. My birthday wish? Those who know will know.

~wished upon a star~

New Toy

I went down to the IT Show yesterday. Sony just launched the new Xperia S phone, wholly under the Sony Mobile brand name now. So...

Gorgeous screen, top notch camera, latest hardware, beautiful design. How to resist?

~wished upon a star~

Flat Tyre

Had a flat tyre just now. Ran over some screw. Then the stupid wheel won't come out of the wheel hub, got stuck there somehow. Won't bulge even after kicking furiously at it. Was resigned to waiting for the AA people to come when some kind soul came to help, used a big block of wood to knock free the wheel.

So kind of him. I attribute it to the good karma I clocked up when I help that lady change tyre in the rain by the side of the expressway some time ago.

Still, got all sweaty and dirty. Next time I'm going to have run flat tyres on my car. No tyre changing even when it is flat. While at it, I'll add the option of having self inflating pump, so I won't need to queue at the petrol kiosk to top up air.

~wished upon a star~

Public Funding for Private Companies

Of course this is an issue regarding the recent announcement of government funding for our transport companies to purchase new buses.

Actually I forgotten to put up a post some time back. Was having lunch with my friends when one of them brought this up again.

So the government is committing 1.1b over the next 10 years. My first reaction was similar to what everyone feels - why use public funds to support private companies. Then in defend of this announcement, various news sources brought up many justifications on why this 1.1b should be spent. I'm not sure whether this should be the correct way of supporting our transport companies. There are pros and cons in providing such funding and it's kind of difficult to objectively quantify it. Then again, once such funding starts, it might just keep on increasing. What I know is these 2 companies are more profitable than our national carrier (ROI is 4 to 8 times higher). And I find the justifications kind of fishy.

Some time ago the papers put that such funding are necessary for the companies to renew their buses, and that the bus business has always been a loss making business unit. It is then reported that SMRT had a PATMI of around 40m. Sounds dodgy. For the past 5 years, SMRT has been enjoying a PATMI of well above 150m, with only 2 years dipping just slightly under this figure. So suddenly profits can drop by almost 4 times? Then the loss making reason, which seems to be only half true. SBS Transit has not been making any losses. SMRT has only been making a marginal loss of 2m and 4m in the last 2 years. So if a loss of 4m requires such a gigantic funding, shouldn't the rail unit, with a unit profit of 130m throw some big discount for commuters?

Continuing on from this loss, it seems to throw up another question. Every time there is a fare increase, fleet renewal, along with diesel cost, is quickly brought up as the main reason. For diesel, I guess it's justifiable since it can't be predicted, but I don't seem to see fares coming down when diesel falls.

As for fleet renewal, why is the cost passed on directly to commuters? Isn't this supposed to be part of the operation costing structure of a company? Shouldn't this have already been accounted for within the fares? If it is not, then what is the management doing when they were doing up the budget? So they projected for a company that they expect to be around for only 17 years? Since the buses are tagged with a 17 years lifespan. Without renewal allowance, it simply means the company will close after the initial fleet of vehicles are sent to the scrapyard.

All right, then yesterday DPM clarifies that this 1.1b will be purely used to purchase the buses and cover their maintenance, any profits that operators make from these 550 buses will be repaid to the government. Sounds legit, but why so long before making this announcement? Now it seems to me that it is just another pacifying statement. So they mentioned is to cover losses, to renew fleet, to benefit commuters to no avail, then someone craft out this final statement. If it is the actual intention, why take almost 2 weeks to publish it?

Finally, which brings me to the cost tracking of these buses. How are they supposed to "closely monitor and scrutinise" the exact cost incurred by these 550 buses? I can foresee countless loopholes here. Perhaps among the easiest will be to track the maintenance of the bus and the revenue from all the EzLink tapping on that bus. Then again, any logical operator will put these 'free' buses on loss making routes and they will never make a profit, in fact, now the operator will get more than the 1.1b allocated. Brilliant indeed.

~wished upon a star~

Useless Fun Fact - Leap Years

So there are 3 rules to counting leap years. Sounds legit.

~wished upon a star~

Module Planning

The BOSS office is dangling incentives for us to complete our module planning, so they can better allocate slots. I took half a day yesterday to plan it out with some of my friends, mine's still not complete. It is such a pain. How to map it properly?

I was thinking after that, why hasn't anyone created something called a Module Advisor. MA. Since there exist Financial Advisor who advises and manages the assets of clients, why not someone to manage my module planning for me?

By definition of planning, I mean really planning. Taking charge of everything concerned with module planning and degree progress. Making sure everything goes on smoothly. Just like how a Financial Advisor works.

I threw around the idea a little. I will gladly pay for such a service. So will almost all of the people I asked. It is a lucrative service, but I can't enter the market yet - don't have the relevant knowledge.

Any Year 4s or alumni interested? I have a master plan to sell.

~wished upon a star~

Down on Luck

The other time my SSD failed. Half of my data was gone. But much thanks to Sony who totally went beyond their SOP to get it back in full working condition within half a day. Lucky managed to pull back some of the (back dated) lost data from my storage array.

The other day I pass one of my HDD around and somehow it got infected from someone's computer. My over zealous anti-virus and firewall kicked in wipe out the infected files. And some of those files just have to be my important archived stuff that I put into that HDD. Ok, probably my fault too, I should have known better to pass around the actual HDD, next time I should just copy it out onto a memory stick purely for file transfer purpose and pass that around instead.

My computer never got infected before, but this is the 4th time something I passed around came back with virus. Why don't people scan their computers properly and stop clicking on 'the 1 millionth visitor' button. And please just install an anti-virus, even if you're a Mac user. Yes, I've gotten virus from Mac before too.

Anyway, I used data recovery files to do a full surface sweeping and it just returns me the .lnk files. I know the data is still in there cause it's occupying space but I just can't retrieve it out. If anyone knows how to do it, please let me know.

I think time to reorganise my backups. Apparently spanning 3 HDD, 1 network array and 2 cloud isn't a very good idea. Especially when they're all complementary instead of redundancy.

~wished upon a star~

How To Reject A Rejection

I thought this is interesting. Someone try it for their internship or any application and tell me if it works.

via

~wished upon a star~

Week 6

It's the end of week 6 now. It has been a good week. Hmm... maybe not, cause there is 2 midterms, but still, it's a good week. Fine. I'm not making much sense.

Anyway, I just booked myself another holiday again. This is exciting. So it means I'll be flying twice this summer vacation. Aunt call me the other day, SIA's on half price to Korea this summer. I was extremely tempted to go, but well, there is quite some things I have to do during the vacation. There is he OCSP to Kashgar, almost 3 weeks. Then I'm scheduling for an internship when I return, which means I can't go during the June period. Might as well, don't like to squeeze with all the June holiday crowd. So in the end, I'm flying like 2 weeks before school starts, and coming back the day before school. So there, my summer is all filled to the brim.

The week's just as busy, still trying to catch up with the lagging behind work. Got very paranoid for my accounting midterm. So much marks for just a little bit of working.

My friend told me on Tuesday morning that there is a mock quiz that day. Got me all panicky and started rushing through all the slides. Eventually it was just showing us the sample questions for the exams. Shorten my life for nothing. Went out s too.

Another test on MC, was controlling my urge to throw out long complicated sentences with tons of cheemology. I think I did quite alright in the end.

Ah well.. End of my 3 day work week (haters gonna hate). Anyway, got to catch up on projects and the lagging behind work.

~wished upon a star~

Another Week~~

This is more of a obligatory post. Busy busy busy.

I thought after business law presentation last week there will slacken slightly. But out pop more things to do and I'm up to my neck in work again.

Sunday had new year gathering at van's. A few amongst us seemed to get over passionate with her dog and sort of violated it.

Monday was pretty normal. Rushed project after my evening class and dropped by Ion on the way home to do a little shopping for something.

Tuesday was normal. Did project again.

Wednesday was supposed to be an off day, but ended up in school for project. Met s in the evening.

Thursday was gone in a blur rushing out other stuff.

Friday met with the company for our project.

Saturday... oh... Saturday's tomorrow.

Midterms starts next week... Faints.

~wished upon a star~

All In A Week's Work

The week seems to pass by in a flash. Probably cause I was in school everyday, even Sunday.

Mainly the week was taken up by my project meetings. Much to do and analyse. In fact, we seem to be over analysing the case, according to prof. The presentation was pretty nerve wrecking. 20 minutes of presentation and 45 minutes of questioning. The prof went from the first to the last slide, asking about every sentence and law. We were the first group to present, by the first five minutes of questioning, we can see the expression of the second group that day - jaw dropped.

What else happened during the week? Can't exactly remember, all the bandwidth taken up by law.

Ah... lunch today with daddy. Then studied in school before the audit interview in the evening and wait for s to go for dinner.

Nice...

~wished upon a star~

The Demise and Revival of My Laptop

I thought the title sounds sort of cool.

Anyway, like I mentioned, the computer went into a coma some time last week. I put the laptop to sleep and suddenly it just wont wake up, telling me that the operating system was not found. Well, it's not Sony's fault. Apparently the problem lies in my 3rd party SSD.

It was fortunate that all my school stuff was automatically backup onto my NSA and the cloud. But it wasn't so fortunate that I lost a lot of pictures and some music which the backup wasn't set to automatic. Need to tweak my backup settings soon.

The SSD was only less than a year old. Just a month ago, jw's also spoilt. This type of thing are not designed to fail so fast, thought it was just his model being faulty. Turned out that the problem lies with OCZ, so next time not going for this brand ever again, at least until they get their act together and fix this problem. Anyway, I decided that someone's going to receive hell for this. Well, have to right? I'm put into so much inconvenience and the lost of data. The 'hell' part paid off though, I exchanged my faulty unit with the manufacturer for the latest model.

Sony side was great. Since my laptop was quite customised, the warranty's not supposed to cover it anymore. But the people there very kindly extended their support to all the 3rd party stuff, and seeing that I urgently need it back, got everything up and running again in 2 hours. So did someone say some fruit provide better service?

Which brings me along to another thought. It made me ponder about what people do when they lost their data. I've seen people getting angry over it, being frustrated, complain and make a lot of noise. No idea why. Shouting and stamping is not going to get back the data anyway, so why expand all the energy doing that?

I'm thinking I should name my laptop Lazarus.

~wished upon a star~

Chinese New Year Week

It's the season of red, gold and food, along with "you're so tall", "where you studying now" and "got girlfriend already".

I have still been eating a lot during these few days. The junk food and every meal being a feast during the eve and first 2 days. It's the constantly self reminder that this only happens only once a year, so it's alright to indulge a little. The only problem is that this reminder continues on throughout the entire year. It's a wonder that I still keep my weight. Time to make myself feel guilty and cut down on food.

The new year was pretty good. It's good investment going around just sitting and practicing my hand-eye-mouth coordination. I won't mind doing this as a job, seeing the high hourly rate it yields. The injection of always welcomed FDI. The only little peeve I had to endure this time round was the mixing up of my school with certain establishment near Bukit Timah. It's not good to name, but I would put it somewhere in between Maju Camp and Ngee Ann Polytechnic with the white building frontage. It's fine, we'll see who has the last laugh from the graduate survey.

The rest of the week was quite hectic. Similar to the past 2 weeks, didn't have much of a breather. Coupled with the demise of my laptop's SSD, it was quite hellish. Still, managed to have lunch with daddy and grandma at Orchard Hotel yesterday.

Back in school on Saturday again. Quite an achievement. 3rd weekend in school, and it's only week 3. Well done. Then it's the annual new year steamboat with S405. A good time spent talking, catching up and kaypohing into this and thats.

That's it. 2 meetings again tomorrow. Looking forward.. Of course.

~wished upon a star~

Pre Chinese New Year

New Year's coming again! It feels pretty rushed this year. Perhaps cause it's early in January and school just started. Or I had already started spending the weekends of week 1 and 2 in school. Either way, didn't prepare much for the new year, didn't do any shopping too. Enough clothes anyway.

Had reunion dinner for the maternal side on Friday night. 3 tables at Grand Shanghai. The food there is generally good, except for some snow pea dish which was pretty tasteless. Though I regret to say that a couple of sharks were sacrificed. Atmosphere was good, they have a songstress who was singing those oldies, captivating. Much better place than Global Kitchen on Tuesday.

Supposed to wash the car, have not washed it for some time already. Brought it to the car wash this morning since I was lazy. Up price during the new year period never mind, end up they were just rushing through the job. Didn't bother to wash the car properly, foam machine not working, still dare to charge more. Discovered still got some patches of dust, so I turned back and made them wash it again. This time they got 3 staff just to foam the car up properly.

Mummy told me I can't wear red or green this new year. Apparently it clashes with something. Fine with me. Then she went on that I also can't take any alcohol this new year too, which mean the only time I can open my wine is tonight. Suddenly this sounds a bit suspicious. Ah well, I think xp see already she will agree totally.

Got to prepare for reunion dinner.

~wished upon a star~

ASoc CNY Dinner

It’s here and over after months of planning. According to various sources, it went pretty well too.

All the hard work paid off well. The entire day was spent running all about the place making sure everything was going according to plan, all the items and people arrive on time, decorations go up properly, nothing is missed out.

Some minor last minute changes but everything turned out well. Much credit goes to the fantastic organising team.

~wished upon a star~

Randomness

I'm supposed to be reading law now. Ah well, after a whole day of interviewing people, just feel like slacking for a little while.

Chinese New Year is coming so fast. Been busy with school, no time to go shopping for anything yet.

Had dinner with aunts and cousins at Pan Pacific yesterday. The standards at Global Kitchen has fallen by a lot. The food is very common, nothing special. The quality dropped by a lot. The free flow alcohol took forever to come and refill. The service is bad, so bad that we were considering not paying the service charge portion. My cousins kept doing the 'small plate test' which was rather amusing. Their reservation is also pretty irritating. Shan't go too much into that, otherwise 没完没了.

The whitening kit I ordered from the US arrived earlier than expected. Nice, now I can have white looking teeth during the new year. Haha... Had been wanting to go for teeth whitening at those clinics but those are so expensive. Anyway, let's see how effective those self whitening kits are.

Tomorrow's my ASoc Chinese New Year event. Spent so much time over the past 2 months planning for it. Yep. It will be good. Hopefully.

~wished upon a star~

Week 1

Hectic week. Just week 1 has been hectic enough. Rush out some of my OCSP's stuff, finalise and iron out the details for the upcoming ASoc Chinese New Year Dinner which is happening this coming week. Meeting for drafting out the idea for another CSP.

My modules this sem all seem to be pretty interesting with interesting profs. Which is good. Timings are also not bad, well sorted out throughout the day and also mean 3 day work week. Fantastic.

The week wrapped up with me ironing out one of my module. Finally managed to sort it out, meaning I will be able to max out the allowed credits. Also fixed another of my screw up. Things are going well again.

It seems to be a good start to the sem. Hope this will continue on.

~wished upon a star~

ASOC Goes To JB

Johor with the accounts school!

Signed up initially for the karting and seafood dinner, but due to unforeseen circumstances, the dinner has to be changed. At least still got go kart.

First stop at Desaru was kind of boring. The weather was pretty hot and I spent most of my time hiding under an umbrella. There was a small animal farm there with animals that look kind of malnourished. Naked chicken, skinny goats and rabbits that seem to have turfs of fur missing. I guess the most interesting moment was when one of the goats opened the lock of their pen door, and r and her group ran screaming out of the pen. Ah well, wait till you get chewed by a goat.

Lunch was at Jusco and it was A&W. Sadly the only thing worth it was the root beer, the fries and the burger was a big disappointment.

Go kart after that, which was something I was looking forward to. It isn't the tortoise kart that we have here, those things can reach almost 100 km/h. I've always wanted to go on one of this and I can't wait to start. First thing, I spun my kart the moment I exited the pit lane, luckily wearing full face helmet, don't think anyone recognised it was me. Think the tyres aren't hot enough yet. Warmed up the tyres and started doing my laps. My practising on the roads paid off, overtook almost everyone at least twice. After couple of laps I think I managed to clip all the apexes correctly and follow the best line, even drifted a little around some corners. I was clocking my own lap time too. My best lap was 1 minute 10 seconds, the bottom of the professional leader board was 54 seconds. Means I was doing an average of 72 km/h around the stated 1.4 km track. Not bad I would say, seeing that the kart we were using are those lousy stock karts.

There were some Singaporeans there playing. Learnt from them a entry level tuned kart will cost about $8000. 2 stroke 120 cc engine, rear 4 piston disc calliper, aerofoil and can nearly reach 120 km/h. Sounds legit. Maybe I can consider being a part time racer. Still, one of my dreams would be to have a car capable of attending track day at Sepang without blowing the engine or gearbox.

Dinner was good, though we may have ordered a bit too much. But no matter, after that there's always room for desserts, cause desserts goes in the other compartment.

School's starting tomorrow. Can't decide if I'm dreading or welcoming it more.

~wished upon a star~

Mood

Jittery over things that rounds of fiendish level Sudukos can't get rid of.

Rah!!!

~wished upon a star~

New Year Week

First day of the new year was spent at ber’s who kindly offered his place for the get together. Played Kinect, cards, board games and chatted a bit. Not much to chat about though since we were practically seeing everybody in school.

Food was too much that night. We got pizza, not knowing his mum also ordered pizza for us. While we were just sitting around after dinner, someone suggested reliving primary school memories. Reliving primary school memories means hide and seek, block catching, colour catching, marco polo and the likes. Since the princess brought along the prince, they went off for their own ECA while we ran crazily around the neighbourhood.

It’s pretty amusing seeing a group of uni students running around and playing such games. Guess it’s the difference between them N’US. Hmm… Or I would think that day was a time where we discover a different U.

Buffet again on Monday at Orchard Hotel. Kept eating and eating ever since I got back from China. Well, I also ate a lot in China, so that makes it go way back to during exams. Yes, I totally blame it on this card.

Went Orchard with xp yesterday afternoon. My original plan was to stay at home. Was about to sit down to an afternoon of Discovery Channel when she called and ask for company to get her shoes. Tried the new Calpis drink from Gong Cha, which wasn’t very good. Wonder why all the Calpis here don’t have the carbonated variety. The cold drink made me start coughing again though, got an earful from xp on why never take medicine and still drink cold stuff. Pharmacist…

~wished upon a star~

Resolution

It’s the new year and everyone’s making resolution.

Why do people wait till the new year before listing down what they want to change? Shouldn’t change happen as and when it is necessary?

I’m thinking perhaps it has something to do with a reference point in time. The start of the year gives people the motivation to start anew. A definite time frame of 1 year to do what they want to do, what they want to change. Without a timeframe, most tend to procrastinate. Perhaps also the feel good factor people get when they know that they are making plans (for the better) in the brand new year.

Somehow, I been feeling kind of off for the past week. 七上八下.

So what’s my resolution? 3840 x 2160 QFHD. Cause 1080p is so last year.

~wished upon a star~

Year 2011

This had been another exciting year. Finally started school after such a long wait. Good year? I suppose so, though it could have ended on a better note. I’m going to work harder to make 2012 a better year. Some items that hopefully can be accomplished in the coming year.

Thanks for everyone who helped me in one way or another. Especially in school. And to my new found friends from university, it has been great knowing and working with you all, look forward to the coming sem. Jack Sparrow~~

I lost some photos to the abyss of Facebook. There are some which I want to put here but I really can’t find it, though I’m sure I’ve seen it somewhere before. Nonetheless, the annual selective photo log of the outgoing year, in chronological order.

cousin birthday

yj birthday

chinese new year flower festival at Sentosa

universal studios

Marketing Executive at Kraft Foods

fun in Office of Undergraduate Admissions

lusandra birthday

lf birthday

‘graduating’ from the Office of Undergraduate Admission

Freshmen Team Building camp

ASOC camp

Inspirar Sentosa outing

van and x birthday

Convocation 2011

Jack Sparrow outing

ASOC Day

CT fun at Singapore Arts Museum

CT Marina Bay Sands retreat

xp birthday

brunch at Wild Honey

Creative Thinking final group presentation

using the prof’s Mac to camwhore like a boss

Financial Accounting final presentation

Technology and World Change final group presentation

shan birthday

Kashgar recee trip

Beijing R&R after recee

prawning midnight adventure

ASOC CNY 2012 Organising Committee

S405 brunch at Prive

~wished upon a star~

Last Week of 2011

The final week of 2011. There are some things that I had wanted to do before the year ends but well. We are, after all, citizens of the largest nation on Earth. Almost the entire week had been spent eating and being out of house.

Dinner with family on Christmas. Sherlock Holmes with van, bwee and d on Monday. Then steamboat buffet dinner at Bugis. Had a meeting on Tuesday in school and Manhattan Fish Market for lunch. They had this one for one meal promotion till the end of the year. Sadly, they didn’t let me ‘downgrade’ my red snapper fish to a dory.

Wednesday was brunch with secondary school class. Or supposedly the secondary school class. Eventually only slightly under half of the people turned up. Had been pushing back a meal with diva and yj ever since midterms break. Brunch was at Prive, which was a beautiful location by the sea. Surprising, I saw 2 person from school that I knew there too. One was there with friends for a meal. The other was there to go out to sea. Diva got kind of excited when I pointed out the boating one out to her. Students nowadays sure know how to enjoy.

Mission Impossible with s on Thursday at Vivocity. After the Orchard week, this week seems to be the Harbour Front week.

Did a little bit of shopping just before Christmas too. Tailored some shirts with jw and ch. Actually, I’m the one who wanted to make shirts initially, but they were convinced into making too while I was pouring over the many cloths deciding which one to choose. I was at Orchard when the ‘ponding’ occurred. Anyway, that wasn’t the point. The point is, I bought a shirt that was extremely common. Ever since I bought it, I already seen 7 people wearing it on the street. 2 are even people from school.

Got the card from jw in the mail, which arrived pretty late. An extremely meaningful card. Miss the days where we talk in class and lecture. Making comments or conversations that seem totally i_l. but conveys stuff that lies 6 feet under. Those were the days.

~wished upon a star~

Spread of Religions a la GGS Style

The other day I was pondering about the spread and movement of religion across the world. Somehow, it seems that the region whereby some of the more recent religions are dominant in are not the birth place of the religion. On the other hand, the birth place of these religion do not follow it.

Christianity originated from Israel. However, it is not the dominant religion in Israel or even the Middle East now. Instead, the Middle East is now generally dominated by Judaism, which originated before Christianity, and Islam, which surfaced shortly after the start of the Common Era. Instead, Christianity spread to Europe and America and gained foothold there. For a short period, it even displaced Buddhism as the dominant religion in China.

Buddhism was ‘founded’ in India. However, the belief of Hinduism in India was never really challenged. Buddhism moved upwards to gain majority status in China, Korea (which also widely embrace Christianity), Japan (a hybrid of Buddhism and Shinto) and the majority of Asia.

The Maya religion, despite being started later than Christianity, was subsequently ‘abandoned’ in favour of Christianity when it became popular in America.

The main thing I’m curious about is not how it spread, as it can be quite clearly seen from records. Rather why did it spread in this manner? Why didn’t Christianity became the dominant religion in the Middle East, Buddhism in India and the Maya retains the Central America foothold?

Is it due to the type of people and race living in the area? Could it be that as I am a Malay therefore I believe in Islam instead of my religion is Islam therefore I’m Muslim. Then again, what about Singapore? A multi-religious country where race doesn’t necessary determine religion. Why do some Chinese follow Buddhism, some Christianity and some Toaism?

In TWC, it is explained that Jared Diamond determined that civilisation developed based on geographic factor, contributing to other factors such as guns, germs and steel. Prof would point out that to bring it one more step forward, he would add in 2 other factors – freedom to think and productivity.

So, like the spread of civilisation, is there a reason on the scatter pattern of religion?

Unless…

~wished upon a star~

Prawning

Went prawning at this Punggol Marina Club the other day. What a ulu and god forsaken place. Single lane road in with sparse lighting. Going up was during peak period, so had to take KPE to avoid the jam on CTE and I dislike taking KPE. Ah wells.

First time prawning. K taught us how to  measure the water depth, adjust the float, hook the worms, catch the prawns. Prawning was quite fun, at the beginning that is. After some time nearing the end of our session I got a little bored of it already.

During the day mummy was still telling me how troublesome it was, and why not just buy prawns at the market. The prawns were extremely tasty though. Fresh from the water. Some of them were even still alive while we BBQ them. With 2 rods, we caught 32 prawns which was pretty good I guess.

I must make a note that next time got any boring activities must bring zh along. Some of the things she said were really epic.

We were sitting by the pond playing with the rod while waiting for K to settle the bait and the other rod, zh asked me if prawns will bite a bait-less hook.

zh : Ai… You think will have prawn or not?

Me : *gives weird look*

zh : I don’t know. I mean if I were a prawn, I see a hook I will be curious and bite it to see what will happen.

It just have to be around that moment where this prawn went to bite the bait-less hook. Seriously. I can’t believe such prawns exist.

Then there were :

“you think prawns will like my feet if I put it in the water?”

“the prawns here not hungry, where got hungry prawns ah?”

“I’m bored, let’s change tactics, we spear the prawns using the rod instead?”

There were more, but I can’t recall all. Just knew that I kept laughing all the time. Doesn’t help that i was constantly in danger of being spear by the rod.

Went around posing for pictures at 1am along the pier. And another photo opportunity along the road out of the club. Awesome.

Pretty late by the time we went home. But Punggol to home in 15 minutes. Hmm… Not bad.

~wished upon a star~

Who Would You Hang (Part 2)

Some time ago I posted this question : Who would you hang? A rapist or a murderer.

After thinking for a while, I would hang the rapist. Couple of reasons.

There could be an underlying cause for murder, but there is no reason to rape. Then when someone is murdered, the victim is no longer 'concious' or 'suffering'. But in a rape, the victim might be traumatised for the rest of his life (his as in the generic he). Meaning that rape will have a more dire long lasting effect. It can be like the murderer has been tortured or humiliated etc. and snapped and decided to kill.

Then someone added that the reason for rape and murder could be the same, but the person could have chosen to rape instead of kill mainly because of the above reason - he wants the victim to suffer. This means that the person has proven to be more 'evil' and hence he will hang the rapist.

Just some points to ponder.

~wished upon a star~

Of Good Service and Half Naked Men

Finally a restaurant with exceptionally good service here.

Lunched with whole family at Grand Park Orchard today. They are one of the increasing number of places who need to take down card information for large reservations. Well, fair enough.

Point is, their service is very good, probably among the best I encountered so far. Staff is attentive, always smiling, very fast, patient, no attitude etc. I forgot my soya sauce for the sashimi and they got one for me without me asking. Coffee's cold after being there for a while and they took the initiative to change a new cup for me. Took food and the staff offered to bring it back to my table first so I need not carry it. Sis forgot her chopsticks and they promptly got one for her too.

For some reason, almost half of their staff are Japanese. Kind of weird. Normally it would be Chinese or somewhere SEA. Isn't Japanese much more expensive?

Anyway, now hotel entrances are kind of hidden in one corner, with the front façade given to shops. Like how Mandarin's entrance is hidden at the side, Grand Park's one is also at the side. The front is given to Abercrombie and the others.

On the topic of Abercrombie, I realised they did a very good marketing with the half naked men. If that can be called marketing. Couple of friends gave this response.

Me : Went A&F already?

Friend : Huh? What's that?

Me : You don't know?? Tsk... Thee 30 half naked men la.

Friend : OOOooooOOOHhhhhhh! I know I know!! The one across the road from Paragon one right? So that is A&F...

Me : Yes~~~ =.="

Like many other high end stores, A&F also used their perfume to scent their outlet (I think). The smell is so over powering that I can puke standing at the junction almost 20 metres away from the door. Learn from Ferragamo, which I think did it best. Subtle scent of F for Fascinating Night lingering in the air when you enter.

Another rant before I sign off. The city's all jammed up. No train service. But I'm guessing the people who got stuck are pretty fortunate though, in a way. It was peak period but the stuck trains did not have the peak period load. Imagine being in the dark without proper ventilation for hours in that type of condition. Don't event have space to use the fire extinguisher to break the glass.

~wished upon a star~

Meeting Day

2 meetings in school today. Morning all the way to mid afternoon. Quite a number of things to follow up.

Had a very late lunch with the group at Nando's. Wanted to try it out ever since I heard about it from Joanne Peh's complain. The chicken's good. I think only the wedges and peri peri chips are nice, the rest of the sides aren't worth mentioning about.

There's a wine fair going on at the atrium. Got myself 2 bottles of eiswein and another bottle for jw.

On a separate note, I wish I have a reset button to thump on. Time to do some serious reflections.

~wished upon a star~

All In A Week's Work

Been back for a week now. Busy catching up with everyone that I had 'broken off with' previously due to finals.

Went buffet on Sunday with family. Daddy actually wanted to go eat on the last day of my paper, but everything was in a rush so didn't go instead. Not bad, with my hotel member and card promotion, 4 person pay the price of 1. Best discount ever.

Monday went with jw to go Ubi to change his SSD. What a ulu place. The road there is so confusing. Nice to have service centres located in such areas, half the people won't want to go there in the first place.

Had lunch with one of my project group on Tuesday, then met xp for 2 movies. Quite long since we watched multiple movies in a sitting. I bought a new toothbrush too. Didn't like the Colgate one I was using. Changed to that when the battery in my old Braun died. Wanted to get back Braun but I saw this new model - ultra sonic toothbrush. 7000 vibrations a minute, silver ions, infra-red technology, anti bacteria, anti plaque, whitening, ultra soft ceramics brush and made in Japan. Sounds like I'm buying some space or lab equipment. Not sure how true it is, all I know is my hand continues to hum for some time after I finish brushing my teeth.

Finally met up with my JC classmates after almost 3 years. It's been a long long time. Only half the class turned up though, cause the rest are still scattered all over the globe. Much to talk about and catch up on. Though I spent $1.07 on a 8 minutes parking. Entered the carpark 8 minutes before the per entry charges start. Rah~~! On after thoughts, I should have just stopped in front of the gantry and wait. I might also be doing the rest of the people behind me a service by saving them $1.07. They will have to thank me for making them wait.

My aunt came back from France today. 2 weeks holiday! Wasn't able to go with her cause I was in Kashgar. Ah well, another time. Still have a number of Christmas cards to write, and I kind of spoilt my laser printer while printing the words on the card. The cards are probably too thick for it.

~wished upon a star~

China – 30 November to 8 December 2011 [Part 2]

Day 5 Urumqi --> Beijing

Prove that duct tape fixes everything together, even planes.

Finally made it to Beijing in one piece. Weather's very bad. There is heavy smog/fog and snow left over from the previous day. Took a train down to the city centre and spent almost 2 hours walking around in circles with our luggage looking for the hotel. Stupid Google Maps gave me the wrong direction. Not fun walking around pulling a luggage, holding a tablet in sub zero temperatures and risk losing your life due to the reckless driving. Damn you Google Maps. It also doesn't help that the direction the hotel staff gave was pretty vague and the smog/fog meant that we can't see any landmarks either.

I wanted dinner at Shangri La but my friends complained it being too expensive. Ended up eating at 海底捞 steamboat. Their service was excellent, extremely responsive and attentive. We concluded that we have been condemned as the 'noob' table as the staff kept stopping by to help us cook this cook that, pour drinks and stuff. The food and spread are very good and it only cost us SGD 11 each for that 'buffet'.

Day 6 天坛宫 --> 天安门 --> 故宫 --> 东直门 --> 王府井街

Took a train down to the 'round round thing that is always seen on TV'. It's the 天坛 which is the Temple of Heaven. A breeze walk through it took us almost 2 hours. Beijing is well connected by subway and the entire system is quite new. The trains are more crowded than Singapore and I think can rival Japan during peak hours. Each ride is extremely cheap though, a flat rate of SGD 0.40.

Hopped back on the train down to 天安门 after that. Had lunch at a peking duck restaurant behind the Great Hall of the People. The food's good and cheap. A duck, all the condiments, beef, 小笼包, soup, vegetable, fried rice, 老北京炸浆面 and drinks cost the 5 of us only SGD 12 each.

Went to the outer wall of the forbidden city after that, since we were rushing for time, we only stood around on the outside and took pictures. Headed over to Raffles City after that for a bit of shopping. Yes! It's. The Raffles City that our CapitaMall opened in Beijing. Nothing much special there though, mainly most of the shops that can be found in Singapore, and they brought in a lot of the local brands. Eric and ber went back to the hotel to pick up their luggage for their flight back while the rest of us took a cab down to 王府井街 to do more shopping, this place is something like our Orchard Road.

Day 7 居庸关长城 --> 明十三陵 --> 秀水街 --> 王府井街

Spot what’s wrong in the map

Managed to hire a MPV to bring us to the great wall. Good, can travel around in comfort and go wherever we want, no need to wait and squeeze in the crowded bus or their tiny taxi. My cousin actually recommended the 慕田峪 portion, with its cable car and toboggan. It's much further away so we decided to go to 居庸关 instead, and the Ming dynasty tombs are in that area anyway. At first I just thought that the great wall is just a flight of stairs to climb. How hard can climbing stairs be? Turns out to be very hard. As X puts it, it's not a flight of stairs, it's the stairways to heaven. It's amazing looking up and wondering how the people used to build the wall back in those days. We chose the easier side to climb and yet it's still difficult. Then there is the strong wind. Despite the sub zero temperatures, I was perspiring by the time I got to the top.

Go tomb seeing after lunch. It's the burial place and underground palace of the Ming dynasty emperors. Of the 13 tombs, only 1 was excavated as China experienced 3 major disasters after that was opened, so they decided to leave the rest untouched. The tomb was pretty deep down, again, amazing that something this scale could be done hundreds of years ago. Seems more secure and well made than those bomb shelters of today.

Got the driver to drop us off at 秀水街 to do more shopping. Bought a lot of shoes on this trip. 3 pairs in fact. A Zara, a Timberland and a Sebago. Met my cousin for dinner at 王府井街. She wanted to bring us to eat dog meat and dear meat but the restaurant had already closed. Quite surprised that they actually have ‘high end’ dog meat there. The restaurant was supposedly located in a posh shopping mall, similar to our Ion and Paragon. Ended up with steamboat again. Though it wasn't as good as the one we had on the first day in Beijing. My cousin accidentally left her phone at the restaurant after dinner, I was quite surprised that it is still around when she went back to pick it up.

Day 8 中关村 --> Beijing Capital International --> Singapore

Woke up early in the morning to go to their electronics market, somewhat like our Sim Lim and Funan, only that it is 6 shopping malls of it. Wanted to get some accessories for my laptop but thought otherwise. Probably more practical to change laptop in due time rather than to buy spare parts. There are a lot of cheap electronics parts and items there. Mainly their local brands which is like 60% cheaper than the international brands.

As usual, I exceeded my luggage allowance again. Fortunately x and bwee were well below their allowance. What surprised me though was that Air China only allowed 1 piece of luggage to be checked in for each person. I mean like why!? Isn't it supposed to be calculated using weight? Why are they not allowing me to check in more than 1 luggage? Not like the plane will be lighter if I were to carry on the bag. The flight back was like a China market. People chatting loudly, 2 kids running about and this old man who just have to use the toilet when the plane is taking off on the runway. Probably all the jingling is too much for his bladder.

Anyway, this trip to Kashgar has really been a good experience, an eye opener. Beijing too. It has been a fun trip. The food in the capital is good, though I dislike the air, the taste of the water and the constant traffic jams. Worth a second visit.

~wished upon a star~