Money Matters (to me now!!!)

If I want to study architecture in UEL in the UK, it'll cost me something like S$28,000 a year. To practice I need about 5 years of study (though the last year of professional placement might cost less).

That makes a total of about S$115,000, not including living expenses. If I live modestly and get a job there maybe I can get by on S$150,000.

If I pimp my ass at S$100 a night and take 2 customers a night on weekdays and 5 on weekends (I don't know, do people visit prostitutes more often on weekends or weekdays?), I can earn something like SS4,000 in a month, minus living expenses, payment of loans and instalments for the plastic surgery I'll have to go through to become a successful social escort.

That means I'll need about 36 months, or 3 years to raise enough money.

If, instead of pimping my ass, which I doubt I can do for long anyway, I get a decent, respectable job that pays a simple starting salary of S$1,500 a month (optimistic in view of the fact that my current prospects are bellboy at the Fullerton or designer at some small company), I'll take about four times the amount of time, meaning I'll get the money in about 12 years.

I will be 36 by then. And in all probability suffering from AIDS, or cancer, or some other insidious disease (medical term meaning it does not show any symptoms until it is too late) that I cannot help but splurge my savings on because I want to live out the rest of my craven life on a cocktail of medicines and hooked up on happy-tubes.

If I studied in Singapore I could save up enough for the entire course within a fifth of the time (ie. a year pimping ass and three in a decent job). Though I'll still require plastic surgery before I will allow myself to step into NUS as an undergraduate again.

Regardless, financial matters seem to be my largest obstruction. I guess my first step should be to actually start making money and see where that takes me. Incidentally that appears to be my primary coping strategy in life, to just take a step in a direction and see where it takes me (usually someplace uncomfortable and alien). Perhaps I should have paid more attention to Nick and his money-making schemes. Or made more rich friends like my brother. Or started pimping my ass at a younger age, when it was still tender and fresh and could make more than S$100 a pop.

I suppose I could also pray for an outbreak of some debililating disease or catastrohic natural disaster to strike Great Britain, like the Black Death or a tsunami, so that the exchange rate drops like a stone on Jupiter, making my Singapore dollar much more powerful compared to the British Pound (exchanges at about 1:0.32 right now). Of course, at that point the fees would probably hike from the sudden influx of students from China, India or any country on the globe with students clutching their money hoping for exchange rates to fall. And then I'd be arrested for battery and assault of some poor English kid from my participation in some international students' association protesting the dirtiness, smallness or my generic dissatisfaction with the country, promptly deported and end up pimping my ass again.

Ah, to be a Pip.

(I am kidding about the ass-pimping. I have never, at any point in my life, had sex for money, and I doubt I ever will. Not due to any moralistic fibre, but more because of a general lack of good looks. Anyone who wants my ass must therefore have some kind of hideous venereal disease, which S$100 isn't worth getting it for.)

Wherein I Become Less Philosophical

The title is misleading, as it would have you believe that it happened over the course of a day, or the past few days, when in fact the anomaly took me several weeks to notice, and has taken over two years to become significant.

It all started when I joined CBLC, of course (as many other things in my life started off). After commitments there I just didn't have as much time to read or think about things like how to justify an afterlife or whether or not a benevolent God was responsible for the world as it is today. I'd take the bus home with Ty and Ronnie (and sometimes Leonard and infrequently Shiyun) most days, meaning I ended up talking to them a lot, which didn't make for quite enough time to brood and think on the miserable state of the purpose of my existence and existence in general. I suppose I am somewhat lucky in that they were both Ccomputer Science majors and I wasn't, so I could be excused whenever educational issues were brought up. They were never really very interested in the Anthropic Principle and how blinded we were to the issues regarding true randomness and probability, though I half-suspect I brought up the issue more as a form of self-consolatory pat on the back for not being able to name the seven OSI layers.

When I moved into Hall, my travelling time was cut to almost nothing daily, so my bus-time philosophizing was moot. Furthermore, lack of stimulation from walking the same old route to school, meeting the same people, living the same old tired life and eating the same food stifled any creative impulses I might have had and killed my interest in questions beyond what I was going to have for dinner tomorrow. Not the kind of life you should be leading when you're reading about Superman.

Now there's the flurry of ECAs I've joined, and the activities and the discovery that bittorrent works perfectly on the school network and and the sudden enthusiasm with fitness (which I blame Nick for in the large part - he's infectious) which have in all produced an Alex who moans and bitches a lot about how tired and sick he is of being so tired and sick whilst secretly happy that he has something to occupy his life with beyond moaning about how tired and sick he is.

Then there's that thing. Oh, the thing.

In any case - the end result is a less mentally-active Alex. Soon I will devolve further into a neanderthal with huge arms and a small head (accentuated, of course, with a stylish neck accessory and bicep tatoos). Mensa will revoke my membership and I'll have to join the surfer's club (Singapore) instead and paddle about in the Marina Barrage, salvaging waste from the drudges to fund my OP apparel.

Don't laugh - I may not go that far, but the degree of assimilation willl be high, I can assure you. I'm already tempted to go get my ears pierced one of these days. I'd get streaks in my hair but for the fact that I'm due in the military soon (meaning I need black hair) and that would just be a waste of money.

Shallow expectations make for a more fulfilling life. Superman sucks.

Wherein I am Given Pickles in My Sandwich Despite Specific Instructions to the Contrary!!! I HATE PICKLES!!!

My life is so boring I could cry.

Wherein I Give and Receive Cryptic Messages

Someone sent me an SMS which I couldn't really understand - text as follows:

Hi min, gud evng kmsta na? Na masyal ka kanina?

I ignored it, but the next day another one came, which I am unable to reproduce as I deleted it in annoyance. So I replied that the guy had the wrong number and that I was no "min". He (I assume it's a he) replied with a message that had the words "what" and "name" in there somewhere, so I assumed he was requesting my identity.

I gave it to him and never got a reply.

A search on Yahoo! revealed (I hope) the language to be phillipino.

Sometimes people ask me what I study. A course in which the average class size is smaller than 10 would be strange enough to warrant some interest, I guess. I'll describe a lab I just finished.

Question 1: Plot the first six excited states (normalized) of the wavefunction of a (quantum) Harmonic Oscillator by using Hermitian operators as the bases.

If you've taken any quantum (or classical mechanical) physics module you should understand what the above statement means. Otherwise it's really just some squiggly lines - the trick lies in the source code, which for my labs is usually less than a hundred lines, much much less than the Computing student's.

Thing is, our main job is to find the constants that get you the results you want and to get the equations to plot in the first place. Short code means more pen-and-paper equation-writing (which I hate). And, of course, to find the bloody error involved when you perform numerical quadrature instead of analytical integration. In the above case, accuracies of 0.001% could be obtained after about 5000 intervals were used in the case of the ground state.

Question 2: Use the Central Difference Therorem to test the Schrodinger equation for the 0th excited state of a Harmonic Oscillator and confirm the eigenenergy of 0.5(depending on state variables).

Okay, this one was easy too, although a little difficult to explain - basically the Schrodinger equation (H.psi = E0.psi?) allows one to predict wavefunctions that can correspond to specific eigenenergies (quantum states can only exist at certain energies, thus the quantum honorific) and from Question 1 we managed to find the wavefunction, so here we use the Central Difference Method (a simple algorithm to calculate differentials) to test out the results.

And the results are exactly what we want, showing a perfect 0.5 correspondence between the Hamiltonian and the wavefunction.

Whee.

Understanding the question (copied hastily during lectures in poor handwriting with little-to-no comprehension of the subject matter) takes me about two to three hours. Writing the program takes me something like a half hour tops. Debugging and adjusting constants takes hours, in this case two days. I had forgotten to normalize wavefunctions at one point. My gaussian curves looked funny at another because I had neglected a ratio of 0.5 in the exponential.

All this for a couple of squiggly lines.

So really, is it any wonder that I don't want to get into a job to do with my major?

I went back last night after a distress call from sister - she had math problems. She's not doing very well in her studies, unfortunately, and is worrying about whether she can make it into university.

She was asleep by the time I got back - had to do duty until nine and only got home at eleven.

So I went to sleep.

Mother woke me up around six in the morning, pattering around the kitchen getting ready to go to school (my mother is a teacher, but you knew that already). It was hot and stuffy, the only thing alleviating the oppressive heat was the tiny little fan that cooled my feet. Unable to get back to sleep, I went to take a shower. It was a little surreal. I haven't been up so early in ages.

Mother wasn't really in the mood to indulge in conversation other than the standard motherly admonitions to finish up the bread and butter that she loved to stock but no one ate (since I moved out). I sat on the bed and looked out the window at what used to be,in the morning, my neighourhood. It was barely light out, but more than half the windows of the block facing mine were lit, no doubt from families with children preparing, like mother, to go to school. I tried to remember what that was like, but it seemed so far away. I saw some of them walking to school, drowsy like flies in the heat in their uniforms.

One by one my family got up and left. Mother and sister to school, brother off to god-only-knows-where (I have another sad story about how I found his resume lying around one day). Only dad and me were left. I made myself some miloand sat there for another hour waiting for the sun to rise, but it never came. I fell asleep again.

By the time I woke (again), it was almost eleven. Father was still sleeping. He sleeps much these days.

I had an appointment with Faizal at two, so I decided to putter about the house till then and see how I could improve it. My home-improvement theory is to throw things out, to my parents' dismay, but I found it helped to clear the home of clutter. And today's target was to be the sorting, packing and throwing out of my old clothes.

I had no idea I had so many clothes that I couldn't wear anymore. I had outgrown them - if not physically, then in taste. I packed up the hideous things, the things that had holes in them, the things that were no longer my size... I've outgrown so much.

And when I was done, there was so little of it left. Just one or two shirts and a pair of jeans that I liked, but were a little too tight (okay, stop laughing, I know most of my jeans are tight anyways).

It was almost noon when I was done, so I volunteered to go buy lunch for dad as well. We seldom cook, and when we do it's usually instant noodles or mother's ba ku teh. He wanted wanton noodles, so I went off around the neighbourhood looking for a stall that sold them.

When I returned, I found him lying on his cot, moaning a bit. His legs felt sore, he told me, if he stood too long. For the first time since I had moved out, I looked hard at my father. He was old. So old. It wasn't just the dry wrinkled skin, the failing motor skills, the strange pains that came and went, it was something else. Something that told me that he was almost over.

Something is wrong.

18th Singapore International Film Festival

The 18th Singapore International Film festival is here again! I miss it every year because it always comes along during the exam period. I'm determined to catch some of the shows this year, though.

Unfortunately the opening and closing shows are ridiculously priced ($21??), though I'm sure even then they'll be full-house. Steam Boy by Katsuhiro Otomo is bound to draw audiences who loved Akira (ie just about any male under 50 who's watched it) and I needn't explain why people will watch Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.

Evolution of a Fillipino Family is also expensive at $21, but I have heard many good things about it. Everything else is only the standard $8. Remembering that ticketing is done via SISTIC, which means a one dollar charge per ticket, the cost price is about seven a pop. Understandably, booking of venues like Lido and Prince will raise the price than compared to using Allianse Francais, but to double it from seven to 21? Hmmm.

I think I might just go down for one day during the reading week to binge on movies. Unfortunately they no longer sell those all-day passes that allow you to watch films the entire day. Which means I might end up spending over 50 on tickets.

Ah wel. It's one of those things that I keep telling myself I should do. And it'll make up for previous years of lost youth.

Anyone keen to join me for any of the movies?

Which Supreme Pizza are You?

You are a Chicken Supreme Pizza! Be it spicy, roasted or ham, you love them all! Just like your attitude towards friends, you accept and love your friends for who they are. You are also faithful to your family and friends; someone who can be trusted and depended on. One bite into this pizza and you'll love it for life! Which type of Supreme Pizza are you? Brought to you by Pizza Hut

Xuelanghu did this(supposedly)! So support her and her career and play with it!

NUS Biathlon pictures

I've been looking for these ever since the blasted event. Now I'm not sure if I should have bothered. I look... fat. Nick looks fine. Very... normal nick. There are also pictures of us coming out of the water, but considering both Nick and I were in the standard red condom cap and black trunks that half the (male) contestants were wearing I haven't been able to find them. Also I have unrealistic expectations of my body and would never admit that the somewhat pudgy thing rising out of the waves could be me. Probably best this way.

sportsphotoX is selling the pictures (at exhorbitant prices, I might add), which troubles me - just about anyone can buy my picture without my consent. Some horrible sex-crazed maniac might be using me for his sadistic fantasies in 8" x 11" glossy splendour!

Okay, unlikely, with that fat, but... what about the poor girls who get snapped slipping a boob or something? I sure as heck wouldn't want to be on some kind of bra ad with my nipples for the world to see(if I were a girl). We sure as heck didn't sign any model release, and this isn't press. I wonder if it's considered fair use?

Back to Where I Started

Those of you who are up-to-date with my school activities will know that I am webmaster for quite a few ECAs.

And if you've seen my work you'll know that I'm not a very good designer. This is because I started off as a print designer - web design, with the new rules on useability and ergonomics, is still fresh for me. Also, I am usually in charge of creating content and doing up any dynamic stuff, so I'm also stuck with back-end management. Coupled with the fact that I hate to work with other people, it makes for rather sub-standard websites.

But I'm not here to bitch about that. I'm here to make the rather pointless announcement that I am off dynamic module-managed website creation. What do I mean? In the past, my websites were essentially PHP modules, included into a page to form a coherent whole. I thought this was a pretty clever tactic, since it results in having less typing to do when you have an update for all the pages. You don't lose anything and it's all good, I thought.

I didn't really realize the tradeoff until recently. By making everything a module, you lose flexibility in design and content. It's easy to overcome these, but in the mind of the designer, as soon as you start thinking of generality you lose flexibility - and that is not necessarily a good thing for a website. Advertising strategies will tell you that a concentrated, tight approach is far more advantageous than something that looks like it came out of a mould, neat but bland. And when you design for modules you end up with neat but bland.

It's a slight problem with CSS too. I know the "problem" is easily circumvented, but it's not a physical problem per se but a problem in the design strategy of the person doing it. CSS just makes you think in modularly.

Also, I experienced a PHP service-stop once, which killed the entire website. Not to mention the overheads in server-processing when you make things modular. Large-band websites hate this (slashdot, anyone?).

So now I am determind to follow Occam's advice and keep it as simple as possible unless absolutely necessary. Am I making any sense? I don;t know. It's more a preference than anything else. And I'm so sleepy.

Oh, and here's my latest creation - http://sciclub.nus.edu.sg/fop/.

Wherein I Witness Literary Idiocy

Read this article by Preity Zinta, Bollywood superstar, who also moonlights as a columnist on the BBC.

The article is about Preity's recent brushes with death - a bomb at a Bollywood concert where she is the finale act, and the tragic tsunami.

Scenario One: Preity is about to go on-stage (after Shah Ruhk Khan) when the dancers disappear (because of the bomb? Preity's descriptive skils do not provide this information) and everyone discovers that a bomb has detonated in the front row seats (ie amongst the rich). Preity, like any good Indian superstar, runs from the stage and witnesses a woman with a terrible injury screaming for help. Upon which she starts to "run for her life". One wonders what she was running from - the woman with one arm? In case the blood got on her red sequined cat suit (Preity, blood is red too)? In the chaos somebody gropes her. Perhaps it is the missing arm, seeking attention. A pity it groped the wrong person. Preity would only have slapped it.

Instead of staying to see what she might do to help - a superstar, if nothing else, has to have some ability at crowd control - Preity instead runs for Mumbai, confused and a total wreck. Then she finds a friend to talk about "what a close shave it had been" even though it would appear she knew nothing about the bomb or who had put it there. Wake up, Preity! It was the IQ Police out to weed out the trash!

Lucky bitch escaped harm that once.

Scenario Two: After the terrible incident, which would have had most of us thinking about how precious life is and how we should spend more time on our loved ones, Preity decides to dump her family and go off to Phuket for Christmas break. Of course, we all know what happened December 2004, and for once Preity managed to catch up on current affairs, even though she "slept through the tsunami that has killed nearly 6,000 people on Thailand's coast, mostly in Phuket." Awww. Maybe it would have been somewhat better for us if you'd never woken up, Preity. Average human IQ might have gone up. The second terrible event in the short space of a month must have shaken Preity up a little, because she calls her mother the very next day to tell her she'll be home immediately.

But is she? Ah, our favourite intrepid heroine decides instead to stay on in the "war zone", where "all the parties are off". Good for you, Preity! Sacrificing your time to help others! ... But what is this? Preity is not helping the thousands of injured and helpless? Oh phoey. Instead, she takes kick-boxing lessons. I suppose they'll come in useful when someone tries to grope her again in a place where 6,000 are freshly dead.

And then Preity does the "unthinkable". Yes, she goes... diving (gigantic sigh from audience). After witnessing death, destruction and dead bodies floating in the ocean, she goes off and "spends four nights in a yacht near Similan island close to Burma." The trip was to reaffirm her life and help her get over her fear of water, and god forbid that the random and unexpected deaths of thousands by water should give her any fear of it. But it turns out she hates water because she almost drowned as a child (unlike the tsunami victims who drowned completely), not from the newly-drowned. Our Preity has nerves of steel, she does.

Now, normally I don't make fun of people like this, but Preity is not writing for the Bollywood Tabloid Daily. She's bloody writing for Bloody BBC! I can imagine the online-content-editor's face as he read her submission ("okay, maybe if we put a really big picture of her face and trim the stupider parts off?"). The thought that this article was most likely editted by some poor sod at BBC makes me even angrier - it was worse before! And hell, I'd kill (her) for an opportunity to be a columnist for BBC and she gets it because... she's pretty and her standard of English is slightly higher than the standard Bollywood star.

And spare yourself not the readers' comments, my friends. Many Preity fans, of course (I wouldn't have bothered reading drivel by some Bollywood star if I hadn't been out of Six-Feet-Under to watch), who laud her (selfish) actions as being "true to herself" and "normal actions for humans". So ladies and gentlemen, the next time a tsunami washes your home away, kills 6,000 of your people and destroys the local economy, don't expect a Preity fan to help you IF HE IS STANDING THERE BESIDE YOU AT THE MOMENT. Don't worry - even though you may drown, die form lack of supplies, bleed to death from a wound or catch some deadly disease from the poor hygiene conditions, take heart that Preity will dance and sing in a charity concert for you later on and donate up to 10 lakh (about US$230,000, S$380,000). Incidentally she has earnt upwards of 25 lakh for a single role, so god forbid that we criticize her for not donating enough.

Of course, I'm not the only one who sees Preity's actions as cowardly, pathetic, and thoroughly discouraging. Our argument is not that these actions are wrong per se, but that they should be held up by an organization like the BBC for readers to see is just uncomfortable. It seems to tell us that it is alright to be cowardly and unhelpful in situations like this, which it ISN'T. People do it, of course, and if you did then you shouldn't berate yourself too much for it, but you should aspire to be better than that, shouldn't you?

Of course, it may be that the article is meant to be satirical in nature, as some colonialist superiority thing about the selfishness and inferiority of Indians (it is is British Broadcasting Corporation), but I find that unlikely. As far as I'm concerned, this bimbo doesn not deserve to air her view. She gets on screen as an actress because of her looks - surely she and her fans understand that ugly shouldn't be allowed to air?

And if this article's anything to go by, Preity's pretty ugly.

Werein I Must Simply Say Something About My Shortcomings

A common question they ask at interviews is something like... "So, tell me about your strengths."

It never fails to trips me up, that question. I am brought up a simple humble Chinese boy, and blowing my own horn is a very wrong thing to do by our customs. Yet, I hate to look like those idiots you sometimes see who mutter something about having no strengths (except maybe failing at interviews), so usually I sit there for about two seconds before answering, my pulse racing, my mouth half-ajar, my eyes bulging while my brain clicks and pops from the exertion of thinking up something to say that is at once witty, slightly self-deprecating, and yet somehow shows off my better side.

Yes, I've been to a few interviews - enough to know that the question almost always comes, but not enough to have a standard answer yet.

I'll need one soon, of course.

And then there are those party games where you need to think of words to describe yourself? I am a Computational Science student whose speciality is complexity, random behaviour and statistical analysis. I read much philosophy and literature pertaining to the human state. I write long long blog entries that bore the hell out of my friends who keep reading them in the hopes that their names will appear on them.

I am not about to believe that any person can be described in a single word. Unless you use the word "forgotten", in which case it can apply to any person you've never known. But if anyone else has known them then they can be described in relation to that person. Ergo, only non-existent person can be described as being "forgotten". But once you think of a non-existent person, you immediately give him/her/it properties you would normally attribute to the people you have experienced, thus ruining his/her/it's complete and total anonymity, giving it instead the trait of possibility.

What I'm trying to say is, it's stupid to try to describe any person, living or otherwise, in a single word. Currents run deep. And even if they're shallow, they can still carry shit and rubbish with them, so don't judge a perosn by his/her/its cover.

Which means that in games where I do have to describe myself in a word I usually use something like "Allergic", or "Anti-social", or "Reluctant", which doesn't make me seem very fun or interesting - which I really am! I am! REALLY! (you have no right to judge - you're reading this blog). So I need new words.

Of course, introspection probably won't help much here - you are the worst judge of yourself, so they say (especially when it comes to body-odour). Seeking help, I turned to - Friendster.

Yes, Friendster, that monolithic website that my sister frequents daily, that I hardly ever visit these days, that I despise as consisting of inaccurate reflections of human personalities, that I consider to be a poor replacement for actual physical contact (I mean eye-to-eye, you dirty bastards!). Yes, I turned to Friendster. Specifically, I wanted to look at my Testimonials - perhaps therein lay some sort of defining personality trait that I could use to describe myself.

The testimonials, happily enough, seemed to have some common consensus among my friends. Past the good turns I've done for one or the other, prompting the "good friend", "good listener" bullshit, it seems many people think I am:

1. philosophical/boring/studious
2. full of scientific bullshit
3. humourous in a sarcastic/mean/weird way
4. not quite in the same frequency as others

I am unsure if these are truly flatterring traits that I should put on my name tag or inform my potential employer about. I have the suspicion they'll lose me a job more often than not.

And then there are the shortcomings, of course. I have noticed that most testimonials have little in the way of detriment, but mine seems to be littered with them. It's as if my friends wrote them primarily to remind me what a shit I can be sometimes. I am, as one girl puts it, "a wonderful, kind hearted gent after wading through tons of shortcomings". Awww. How sweet. I bet Jason from Friday the Thirteenth was a really nice guy deep down, too.

But I am a happy, optimistic person. These people must really love me to want me to improve like this, right? And to have the guts to criticize me so openly in public, it must be because they know me well enough to be comfortable in knowing they won't offend me?

...

I am a realist. I know. I'm just getting my own back.

From now on I am Antiseptic Alex.

Wherein I am a Narcissist

I went to the IT Fair on Sunday with Gary and Nathan. Being in a financial crisis at the moment, I wasn't expecting to buy anything, but the for company's sake I went anyway. Gary wanted to look at Creative stuff, and Nathan was checking out LCD monitor prices. I regretted the decision as soon as I got off the bus to Suntec. The place was crawling with people. Singaporeans crave free entertainment (as you can tell by the number of people who will throng the streets to ogle at an accident but no one is willing to fork out ten bucks to watch a play) and an IT fair was as good as free entertainment got.

Babies, children barely old enough to walk, pregnant mothers, elderly people, aunties with seven children - all were present at the fair, regardless of the fact that none of them knew what half the items at the fair were for. I personally despise having to have things explained to me by a salesperson(I find it demeaning that a salesperson might know more than me) and I hate seeing it happen to others as well(projection of expectations). So you can imagine my ire at the fair where dozens of computer-illiteraterati stopped to have the concept of megapixel explained to them whilst blocking the way of the hapless idiots like me who had wandered in a moment of folly and were just trying desperately to find a way out. And the children, oh the children! Gary complained that there was NO REASON AT ALL, not a single iota of a reason why you should bring a one, two, or even eight year old to the fair. They don't understand a thing! Little kids should be at home playing with Nintendo or doing programming, not let loose into streets with real live people! The stroller-bounds ones are the worst, taking up enough space for three people to stand in but housing an inhabitant to whom the fair means nothing but a reason to cry.

I became one of those awful people who step on others' feet on purpose and say sarcastically "I'm soooo sorry." in that tone of voice which informs you that remorse is the last thing on their minds. Yes, it came down to that.

On the bright side, I think it would have taken Buddha to remain calm in that situation. But he would have gotten kicked a lot, sitting on the floor to meditate. I would have kicked him several times.

We saw a creative deal for a webcam going for something like 80 bucks for a double set, so me and Gary thought we'd get one. The queue for Creative told us otherwise. So we trudged on along the line of tiny stalls looking for other webcam deals, when we saw this Logitech one going for something like 50 apiece. When I make a decision to spend money I hate to recant, so I just decided to go for it together with Gary. We ended up getting charged only for one at the cashier, though, so it turned out to be only half the price - 29 dollars for a Logitech webcam.

And that is the story of how I got a webcam. And I'm not ashamed to say I've been using it! The drivers work just dandy, but the included software has to be one of the worst I've encountered. Because I have support for East-Asian languages installed or some unicode thing, it installed in Chinese - old fan2 ti3 Chinese - which was impossible to read. In some cases I could make the sounds of the words, but they didn't make any sense to me. For now I'll have to stick with Window's built-in webcam functions.

Taking pictures of yourself is fun.

Next time I go for a high-end Creative. Won't be long till I have purchasing power!

Ummm. I was hungry. 

Super-duper-happy that I got a webcam! 

Contemplating narcissism 

Attack of the person with big teeth! 

Wherein I Finally Solve the Stupid Petal Game

Because of my social circle, I am usually notified of:

1. nice new porn stars with big jugs
2. viral adverts
3. intellectual games

And of course I've known about Petals Around the Rose for a long time. I usually give it a few minutes, realize I'm backlogged on tutorials, and give up.

Tonight, though, I finally solved it! Evidently, Bill Gates took an hour and a half to solve this. I'm not really sure if he got the long or short answer. Yes, it is possible, after thinking for hours, to get a very very long and convoluted answer that has nothing at all to do with the short one. It has to do with moduli. I'm not sure which I would have been more proud of getting. One is technically accomplished, the other clever. Both are trivial(in a mathematical sense).

Well, try it. If you need help, though, I can only say:

1. The name of the game is "Petals Around the Rose"
2. The answer is always even
3. And if you show me a roll I can give you an answer

Now I need a new toy.

Wherein I am Good at English

English Genius

You scored 93% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 88% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!

For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.

Wherein I Am Granted Rewards

Oh my. I looked at my CCA records today and discovered I had well over 50 Residential Hall Admission Points. How much is that? Well, last year, when I was the chairperson of Science CBLC, which was my only extra-curricular activity, I only got about 20 odd points.

And this year I even have points from more than the one category of clubs and societies . I even have points from NUSSU and sports(being the fencing club webmaster).

Wow. I could have the choice of hall I want with these points. Too bad I'm not getting to stay in University.

Missing a Kiss

I just watched The Hours. Beuatiful movie with a wonderful soundtrack, which I enjoyed immensely. The back cover on the VCD packaging quotes Eric Houston of the Houston Chronicle as saying that it is "A compelling, moving film that respects its audience and its source material." With a label like that you don't expect it to be an easy movie to watch or make sense of, I suppose.

And it doesn't. I do agree it's a really good movie.

What gets me is the censorship of lesbian loving. The scenes in which the women kiss each other were cut out. It was done very well, of course, such that you wouldn't have known it unless you were looking out for it - and I was, at the second viewing. For you see, the first viewing made little sense to me when they characters' faces drew closely to each other, there was a sigh and then a breaking away, with the slight impression that a kiss had figured on the horizon but had never made it to centre stage. This would inevitably cause the characters(well, some of them) incredible pain and anguish. Which makes no sense. Only after reading some reviews did I realize the lesbian scenes I had missed, and which were the real sources of the agony, not some phantom fantasy unacted out.

I'm no art critic, but I'm pretty sure that those kisses should have been in. The story just isn't complete without them. Sigh. But, of course, I live in Singapore, and our conservatives will die before they allow a PG rating for a movie showing females kissing(each other). And R(A) just wouldn't have earnt as much, I suppose. Although I'd have left the kisses in and given an R(A) anyways. Little kiddies should not see this show. I can't imagine the damage it'll do to poor little girls who jump off buildings or go to hotels to down sleeping pills.

But if it'll give them some life, maybe that's a good thing.

I'd Like a Ticket, Please

I've lost my ticket.

It was there just a moment ago, but it's gone now. And I know it's too late to look for it, I've already missed the train. A pity, it would have taken me to a peaceful and relaxing place, if not the most fun.

I need another ticket, please.

I will be graduating soon, for those who are not in the know. My grades don't allow me to continue my education in an Honours programme at my university, which is mostly the reason I'm not doing another year. I do try to tell myself and the others who ask that it's because I'm tired of studying, but of course it's a lie and I'd love to stay, if only to escape the rat-race for a while more.

And I do want to evade the rat-race for a while longer. I know what I'm like when I work, and it's not fun. I hate having fun when I work. As far as I'm concerned, working people should be miserable (making me an optimal candidate for an IT job) with horrible bosses, so that they have a challenge to rise to.

I do voluntary overtime.

So working life will be the end of this phase of life for me, I suppose. No more lazing around in my room all afternoon looking at stuff like the fleshlight(warning! not work-safe!), no more pondering my life and writing blog entries about the general state of the world.

No more philo modules.

I've always hated personality suicide.

And before I lose interest in it, atheism is in decline. Of course, there are still many people who do not believe in God, but now there are many more flavours, such as agnosticism(that's me) or spiritualism(which in it's best behaviour comes close to nihilism). And you don't have to be an atheist to sin anymore, so it's probably not as appealing as it used to be - you can still be christian or muslim or buddhist and still be gay, paedophilic or sadistic. Back when christianity was huge, you could be a rebel. Atheists used to be Lucifers in Paradise Lost, fighting romantically against the supreme fate decided on by the Creator, now they're just bores with arguments longer than an MTV.

Atheism has suffered the same fate as the religions it clamoured against - it's followers have simply lost faith. Like the 'christians' who don't attend mass or go to church, but profess to having a 'personal relationship' with God, so have atheists become 'personal unbelievers'.

I'm guilty, too, for being an agnostic. But why? Partly because I live in 'religion-tolerant' Singapore, where any strong religous view, even the strong view of disbelief, is frowned upon. Partly because I come from parents who practice the rituals for Taoist-Budddhism, but only have as much faith in it as far as it will help them strike lottery next week. And partly because the whole argument is stupid.

And that's my religous stand. The original agnostic view - the one that involves no belief or faith, only frustration. Argument about religion is stupid. It won't go anywhere. Let's just stop.

Wherein I Experience Tragedy (yet again)

Okay, remember the last entry where I blogged that I was exhilarated by my repaired laptop? And how I was so happy I no longer have to go cold turkey? Well, shit happens, much as I hate the term, and the guy handing it out likes to give it in intervals. My laptop broke down again, yes. LCD screen refuses to start up. I almost cried when I came back Saturday morning, rebooted and wondered why it was that there was no signal. I banged it, I implored it, I even muttered some apologies for atheism to a sentient deity(name hidden to protect identity). But it was Take's birthday and so I spent the whole day celebrating, instead of bemoaning the loss. I suppose it was better than sitting around at home all day moping. But Sunday rolled along and I knew I couldn't live like this any more. So I went home and carted back sister's old CRT, this ridiculously heavy thing with a tiny screen that she doesn't use any more because red saturation is poor. Now I am seated at my desk, laptop to a side, screen blank, and CRT in front, images flickering occasionally and everything slightly cyan. No updates for a while. This lousy setup is only good for assignments. Hopefully I can get an IBM.

Wherein I Get My Laptop Back

My laptop has been down for a week. In this week I have been most active in non-computing activities. I actually did some tutorials. Now I have it back. My heart is aglow with joy.