labeling all my ns stuff

2 stories

2 great stories i like to share, from the words of Rory Sutherland

Frederick the Great of Prussia was very keen for the Germans to adopt the potato and to eat it, because if you had 2 sources of carbohydrates, wheat and potatoes, you get less price volatility in bread and you get a far lower risk of famine because you had 2 crops to fall back on. The only problem was it looked pretty disgusting and also 18th century Prussians ate very very little vegetables. He tried making it compulsory, but the Prussian peasantry said they couldn't get the dogs to eat this damn things, they're absolutely disgusting, good for nothing. They're even records of people being executed for refusing to grow potatoes. So he tried Plan B, the marketing approach. He declared the potato as the royal vegetable and none but the royal family could consume it and he planted it in a royal potato patch, with guards who had instructions to guard over it, night and day, but with the secret instructions of not to guard it very well. 18th century peasants know there's one pretty safe rule in life, if something's worth guarding, it's worth stealing. Before long, there was massive underground potato growing operation in Germany. What he effectively done was he rebranded the potato.

Another story of the veil. Atatürk of Turkey, mush like Nikolas Sarkozy, was very keen to discourage the wearing of the veil in Turkey to modernize it. Now, boring people would have simply banned the veil, but that would have ended with a lot of awful kickback and a hell of a lot of resistance. Now Ataturk was a lateral thinker. He made it compulsory for prostitutes to wear the veil.

It's not very fully, but you could see 2 things. How creative both these men were, and how effective that rebranding was to acheive what they wanted.

another example comes from signs and lights that showed you how fast you were going, with smiley faces and frowny faces that indicated whether of not you went over the speed limit. it baffels modern economists because these signs cost only 10% of a conventional speed camera to operate and work better than a fine and demerit points to your license.

it's hard to change reality, it's easy to change perception

off to shave my head

beauty

yesterday before i faded into unconsciousness, i decided to think a bit about the idea of beauty. by decided i meant just so happened, and by faded into consciousness, i meant held against my will while someone injects doxylamine in to the artery in my neck.

once, while i was surfing the net, i came across an article that talked about "rating" women based on how they look. As sexist as that may have sounded, there is probably more merit in it than we care to admit. with that said, i have tried "rating" people, not just women, only once. When? you'll never figure out.

most of what i say (write) would be about women, because i prefer looking at women. enough said.

anyway, i think beauty, the outward kind, has really 4 categories for women. there's the "cute" type of women, which evolution would have us believe that we find them aesthetically pleasing because they look like newly-born or the young, creating a hormonal reaction in your brain to, at least want to, "take care" of them. it's basically why China zoos will never go poor as long as they have a steady supply of pandas and why the German zoo may soon be since, well, since this ...

people that i would consider cute, would definitely be different from whom i would consider in other categories, which i'll talk about later. some defining characteristics were obviously young age (or at least looking like), and i can't really think of any others because i'm sucked in by how cute she looks. anyway, some examples are people like Hayden Panetierre and Lindsay Lohan before she got drugged up.


Another category i would make up out of thin air is the "hot" type of women. it is essentially calling people sexy, which for some reason not socially acceptable anymore. i think just by describing people as sexy brings another "viewpoint" to what we perceive as aesthetically pleasing, so i shall not delve into that anymore than i should. some people that would be called hot would be , well , Megan Fox, and some other people, i guess.

"Beautiful" is also another category. i use it to describe very elegant and classy style of beauty. beautiful is what i would use to describe a date to prom, but only when she is wearing a prom dress that does not look like it's made with less fabric than a handkerchief. the one person that i would describe as beautiful, but not in the other 3 categories, and i would be a little (very) biased is Emma Watson. Also, just so you're not mistaken that people can only look good in a evening dress gown thing, here's another where she still retains beauty without sacrificing any time picking out a intricate dress.


The last category would be "pretty". just to be clear, there's a difference between pretty and beautiful. let me explain. someone who would be described as pretty would be one who looks very girl-next-door-ish, a very close to home feeling when you see her. A little like that old high school crush from back in the day that always seem to be in the movies. A simple way to tell the difference between "beautiful" and "pretty" is the difference between Emma Watson and Jessica Alba. Pretty tends to have a effect of making people breathe a sigh of "idontknowwhatthehellthatis", then their eyes go into dreamy mode.


now that i've fully wasted my time talking about something that is only marginally important. let's talk about actually "rating" women, the ridiculously sexist way of giving numbers to girls based on how they look, all in the comfort of your own brain. and they don't even have real units, they are just arbitrary numbers that don't have any relation to anything

For some reason i feel compelled that i must admit that i have different tastes and standards in what i perceive as beauty. Many times have i looked at people, astonished and (vice versa) when they say so-and-so looks better than so-and-so when i thought it was the other way around.

originally i wanted to present this information in the form of a bell curve, where i showed that my "median" shifted either left or right. but then i realised that beauty extends beyond a linear scale of what can be called "eye candy" and "my eyes are bleeding from the inside". also, a shifting of the bell curve would imply that my standards were either lower or higher than my peers.

what i'm trying to say is that what i think is beautiful can sometimes be nowhere near what my friends or even the majority would feel is beautiful. everytime i see a person and i would instantly figure out whether i think the person is beautiful or i think the MAJORITY thinks is beautiful. take the example of Megan fox. when i (like the rest of the world) first saw her in the Transformer movie, i was pretty meh about it. i didn't know much about the rest of the worlds' opinion at that time though, simply because the movie came out after the o levels, meaning that the after-movie buzz could not really be shared with anyone since i'm a hermit that stays at home most of the time. so, i never really expected much hooplah about her anyway. when the Transformers 2 movie came out, i came to be rather surprised (and slightly hungry) at the fact that Megan Fox has become the de facto standard for beauty that all media seems to use. i found that fact to be that using her as a basis for what a goddess should look like is slightly discomforting, simply because i don't put her on that pedestal that everyone else seems to be doing. Even once when i was asked the question "what if a girl that was so hot, like as hot as Megan Fox, decided to talk to you and ask you out, even though you have never talked to her before, what would you do?" i felt that i needed to surpress the instinct to point out that she is not pretty, just to conform with everyone elses' beliefs, much like prison.

To understand why i don't think Megan Fox is hot, per se, is to understand that she does not look natural. not like "of course she's not natural, she's a goddess.", it's more of a she's looks airbrushed, and bronze, like shining. also, she's sounds stupid, or at least, she sounds American public school stupid. that's over-generalising, but that's about as descriptive as i can be as to why i don't think she's that hot. i mean she doesn't have any physical deformity, so i can't really point that out and laugh at her. she may be "hot" but she's not the 10 everyone thinks she is, she may be the 6 or 7, but she has the body that was destinined to be a model, and that's not really a compliment, it's more of a fact, like how some people look like they were meant to be bodybuilders and weightlifters even though you're not really complimenting them.

i have found many many differences between who i think are beautiful and what (i perceive as) the majority thinks is beautiful. which is really really strange to me. often times i found myself saying to other men, hey this girl is pretty, or at least prettier than (whomever you keep bringing up), give her some credit. afterwhich it usually fades away, never to be heard again. i know beauty is subjective, but even then, there has to be some kind of basis for what me and the rest of the world agrees with. it cannot be healthy to often find yourself disagreeing with everyone over something like this. what i'm trying to say is that there has to be an underlying "condition" if you will, something that we can all agree on.

this obvious deviation of tastes between myself and the rest of the world is quite difficult to demonstrate in celebrities simply because they are celebrities simply because they can do what they do on the idiot box or the silver screen without making people want to throw up. i would love to do so by describing people i have met in real life and know by their first name, but that would be unfair and biased, not to mention incredibly demeaning to them.





so i'm going to do it anyway. unfortunately for people who only know me in JC won't understand this story so feel free to put a blindfold over you head and scroll down roughly 3 and a half times on the mouse wheel. that should be enough. remember when we were sec 3 and all through out our upper sec years, we would always proclaim to the heavens that all the pretty girls went to 3/4 Unity (which is a class). Normally i would disagree the hell out of the guy, but then i had no choice but to realise that if you simply turned you head around and saw the other classes, then by simple math, you'd too have to admit that all the pretty girls went to that class. Now in that class, were a few girls that would be infamously known as "the-people-we-would-always-use-as-a-reference-to-pretty-girls-in-our-class group". In other words, they came to become generic names for (comparisons to) pretty girls, like Oprah is to talkshow hosts, scotch is to tape, Maggi is to instant noodles. So for some reason, the majority of not only guys but also girls always referred to these few people as the most beautiful in the school, which truly baffles me, because they aren't THAT pretty, even by school standards, they were like at most a 7.

But unlike Megan Fox, i had a more easily explainable reason for why they aren't as pretty as legends claim them to be. one, for the instances of not getting sued, shall be named Wriscillia. (now my ass is safe from any and all legal matters) she was this girl was okay in looks, but never really stood out to me as someone really really attractive, and you know this because if you were to look out into a crowd, especially so if you were from a slightly elevated position, you (should) instantly see the most attractive person out there. For her, you never really did. Also, if you tried really hard to see why she's as beautiful as they say (like i did), you'd see that she actually looks like either she's only sleeping for 2 hours a day, or she's drugged or she's messed up. Another girl, Lhelsa, would on the other hand, be among guys' top five, if only she did not sound like someone who is really uptight (and bitchy). Both what she says, and what her voice sounds like points to my "conclusion". so i shall not delve into the matter any longer.

Like most (legally sane) I have my own "list" of people i think are the most attractive. I wouldn't go as far as to call them my "eye candy" simply because if i did, then i would be doing them a disfavour by not looking at them enough, as proven by my many friends who constantly gaze dreamily at their own eye candy, which is fortunate because at least their eye candy doesn't know them in person, also they have abs made out of iron and painted with the finest of bronzes, which in case you don't know what i'm talking about is the korean pop groups like (i have no idea who they are).

I would be rather fine with you, any of my loyal readers, that's all five of you, if you asked me who my top 5 were. of course, stastically, you would only know 2 and a half of them, which is sad, since the other half said you looked kind of cute.

plans to eat some lasagna within the next 6 days. anyone?

My Safe-Word

"Bona-Fide" will now be my new safeword.

if i ever say that to you in the form of a sentence, i.e "this is my bona-fide new date" or "my mom's at the door, Bona-fide!!!" or "I'm held against my will, Bona-fide."

basically, if you ever hear that word out of my mouth, it means to shut up and find a way to talk to me in private because i can't speak of said matter in front of other people.

so the appropriate response should be "dude, can you help me with something, far far away from here"

this safe word because nobody really knows what it means and we need a way to say alert without giving it away.

And the eleven day countdown starts now.

with 11 days remaining.

within these 11 days, i intend to :

play soccer with friends
buy army things
watch a movie with friends
play pool with friends
edit a photo
finish fallout 3
pack up my books

and then get disappointed over doing none of these things

i know i shouldn't

but i really want to watch this



saw a few clips of it on the intertubes. this is the first disney princess movie with a african american princess, which is apparently ground shattering. also, it's funny to listen to their accents. not in a racist kind of way, but just an observing kind of way, like how people like to sit around and just "people-watch" as some term it. this is probably my way of "people-watching".

Fishbowl Vision Activate

my parents just finished making my new army specs. need to wear them for a while to get used to the fishbowl vision effect.

also, on an unrelated note, my intestines were rebeling against the rest of my body. you don't need to know the details.

also, i'm still available (to go out and do stuff)

also, can anyone lend me an army cap for a photoshop thing? no need peak cap, just the green normal recruit one.

Remember When

i promised to write some stuff about the multiplayer in cod modern warfare 2. right now, the connection is so bad i can't get a decent game without spasming, both me and the game character.

although i did in fact played it for a few hours (days) before the connection went out the window, i doubt anyone really cares about how i felt about the game.

Why?

because firstly, none of my readers (that's the person sitting in the chair looking at the computer screen) own an xbox 360 or any console, so is unlikely to buy one and hence cannot enjoy the games that i am about to offer them. but if you actually do, drop me an sms.

secondly, if you were going to buy this game already then my words won't sway you. ever. otherwise i couldn't really care

but on to more important topics, ASSASSIN'S CREED 2



If you've always wanted to visit italy or venice, but is too cheap or afraid of planes, this game is the closest you'll get to being there. it's probably even better than being high. the scenery is just so amazing. but i have to warn you though. when i started playing in the first 10 minutes, the ridiculously fugly models of people just totally freaked me out, i was going to yell at the television screen and demand my money back, until i actually went into florence and saw the "real" people there.

it's really ironic how people in the real world look less real and more disgusting than in the Animus.

the gameplay has really stepped up, although greater depth is needed for it to really shine. combat has a lot more variety with new weapons and the ability to disarm your opponents. i found myself regularly disarming them, stabbing them and then dropping their weapon just to disarm another one. the free running parts are still incredibly fun, although it's hard to find a way down after going up, especially without interrupting the flow of the movement.

the storyline is lot more beefed up, Ezio has a much greater personality than Altair, although he seems to be a little too eager to help out people he just met. the sci-fi part is a little too abstract i think, so it won't be easy to tie it up at the end. but i still have to give props to the guy whoi came up with the idea for the glyphs and the "truth". if you play the game, you'll hear this quite often "nothing is true, everything is permitted" so the glyph has you do puzzles regarding many moments in history where many great people that we hold as "pioneers" like Thomas Edison, were actually just using the Piece of Eden and manipulating the view of the public, which is very conspiracy theory-ey and puts people like john wilkes booth as the "hero" or the "assassin" who "safeguard the evolution of humanity". it's really interesting to think about how the victors write history and the fact that the assassin's work in the shadows.

the soundtrack composed for the game is also incredible, albeit a little too "soft". but i think it's the kind of thing that really adds to the atmosphere rather than being a great standalone piece. regardless, it's still "feels" great to just play the game. although at the end, there's really not much to do once you completed it.

and speaking of completing it, now i just finished what i already planned for my next 11 days. wth am i going to do at home now.


this was actually going to be another post but i got bored and lazy after that day and the subsequent ones. here's a story i'll probably tell my grandkids or at least anyone interested enough to hear.

so me and edmund went to the starbucks in sengkang to study for chem. we saw a few SR people there like xiying, but they sat separately since it was a really small place. so we study and study and study. then around the afternoon, this guy just comes out of nowhere and says hey i need to use my laptop and there's an electrical point there. this is a place for everybody so you should move to the other seat so i can use it. there actually was a smaller seat that we used to put out paper and books and periodic tables and stuff, so we' out of sheer kindness and goodwill' decide to let him have a place there so he could use it. we cleared up the papers and edmund sat on the small chair, it was more like a stool cushion. so this guy just took out his laptop and just plugged in and just charged and went on to read his papers. he wasn't even using the goddamned laptop. i wanted to say something, but figured i have just as little right to sit there, figured i shut up. i got pissed off after a while and decided to ask xiying to pretend to come in as if we were waiting for her all along. so she comes along and we ask him, nicely, mind you, to please move to another seat so that our friend can sit because we were waiting for her. who would have thought that he actually raised his voice and said this is the community space and i can sit wherever i want. so i said hey if you and your family were sitting together, i wouldn't come in and just break you guys up because i needed to sit there. he just kept interrupting me and said i don't want to talk about it, i don't want to talk about it. of course i got fucking pissed. so xiying, just decided to leave. he lowered his voice saying that, you can ask your friend to sit at that seat, which is occupied by a bag. edmund just used his logic and said don't want to talk about this everytime he opened his mouth. so he diam diam sit there do his stuff. when he was about to leave, he started to pack his stuff and as he went, this is what i said (shouted across starbucks) to him "Bye Bye Uncle! Merry Christmas! Cross the road be more careful hor!. it took him a few seconds before he came back, all the way around the winding shop to where i was sitting, and said,

"what are you trying to say" .

then edmund just pointed to his stack of newspaper that he didn't put back

so all i said was be careful since there was a rain.

you trying to be "zhuai" isit you want to guai lan with me isit. i careful anot also none of you business

i'm just trying to be polite

you so kaypo go and ask everybody what they drink for coffee la

ok la, i will i waiting for you to go nia

then he just turns around to another guy who was drinking and said, eh this boy want to know what you drinking

orh orh i drinking "some coffee"

so i pretended to write down.

u trying to be zhuai isit, no respect for your senior isit, tell me your school and number

ok la, i wrote down on a piece of paper my school, the website and my name along with that i'm a jc 2 councillor, just for kicks

u trying to be zhuai with me isit,

so the guy next to him, who is just a stranger, tries to calm him down and say eh they just children la don't need to uptight la

u dunno him ar, no respect. eh where is the number

how i noe the number, i only got the website

nevermind i will send to letter to your prinicipal to complain ar

edmund is still pointing to the newspaper, eh you never put back

now he pai seh, i going to put back la, i going to toilet first.

ok, den put back la.

den he pai seh, go back and put the newspaper and walk away.

so the stranger turns around and talks to us, you don't need liddat talk back to him one

so we explained what happened

he said, aiya this kind of people is liddat one la and goes back to drinking his coffee.

and the worst part was, HE DIN EVEN BUY ANY COFFEE TO BEGIN WITH.

hahas, i actaully wrote a "warning" letter to the school to warn about the complain( and make really stupid jokes about him) , but it got bounced by some administrative manager or something.



i only have one last paper left, next monday, its the physics mcq. had the physics paper 3 today, got a lot of really small details that i couldn't remember like resonance or the fact that angular frequency is 2 pi f. i actually rememebred that with 3 minutes to the end, but i din have enough time to change all the answers, since they were continuation of the first. i doubt i'll get an A, so i'm kinda scared to look up the internet for answers. my parents still haven;t really absorbed the news that i actually can repeat my J2 year so they think that this is do-or-die. i feel kinda pathetic having to use retaining as a safety net. damn.

i also need to cut my hair soon and get some ns stuff. in about 2 weeks, i will be another botak going to the army and learning broken english

in case you're wondering why i'm up blogging at this time right now, i actually went to school thinking i had chem today. then the only ppl there were lit ppls. stupid lit ppls

Highlighting My Enthusiasm

my parents just came back from dinner with my brother and also celebrating my paternal grandmother's birthday. to highlight how enthusiastic i was about it, the first thing i asked my brother when he came back was how the food tasted. I was more interested in what food (and it's tastiness) i was missing then i was about my grandmother.

And to add to , contrasting how i felt about this, last week, my grand godmother, or god grandmother if you're that stuck up about names, celebrated her birthday last week, hers was actually a few days before or after, but she decided to celebrate on a weekend. she called me one week before to tell me about it and i was just "ok can" on the phone, without consulting my brother or my parents. just yess, off the cuff, no questions asked. and just to put a little perspective to that, it was actually 3 days before my math paper. i managed to get out of today's get-together because of my supposed sickness and the fact that i would be "studying".

Speaking of "studying", modern warfare 2 is amazing, except for the ridiculous lag i'm experiencing right now. if you are going to take away dedicated servers, at least have the dignity to put something as competent. anyway the lag right now is so ridiculous i can shoot a few bullets and later see the bullest come back into my magazine.

i'm gong to give my take on the campaign and non-online components, so if you're sensitive to stuff like that, eat some icecream then. anyway, the campaign this time around consists of more missions but they are now smaller in length so it rounds up to about the same time, which is rather to cheap considering that they give the impression of a longer game. but anyway, the shorter missions tend to end and alternate between the different characters, which is fine, except that there are so many friggin characters. At the start, you're using PFC john allen, which you have grown some attachment to, only to find out that he dies at his second mission. that really pissed me off. any sense of connection of the different plotlines between each character's story is quite weak and the short missions don't give enough satisfaction when you finish it. the breach scenes are very cool, although its' not very realistic. there are more variety in the objectives but the fact that a quarter of them rely on "following" the team leader, who usually doesn't move unless you do becomes problematic when you don't know where to go. also, the fact that almost all of the missions end with some kind of (scripted) failure or mishap means that there seems to always be some sort of miraculous "Hollywood" scenario to fix the problem kind of threatens the suspension of disbelief that you are willing to suspend for this game. there are a lot of twists and turns at each corner, so that keeps you at the edge of your seat. the only problem is that it doesn't draw you in at the start like the first Modern Warfare, it's almost as if the first game felt that it had somethig to prove and pulled out all the stops while its' big brother knew that there was going to be people who would be interested and just focused on the big explosions. overall, this is kind of like the Hollywood big budget sequel to the original, complete with over the top explosions. they also keep using the military lingo Oscar Mike alot, which is quite annoying when you don't know what it means, also Hooah, which translates to yes in brutespeak.

the special ops on the other hand is a real piece of work. never before had there been a good fps co-op that allows for split screen. this mode alone is reason enough to buy the game. being a 2 player game mode, it allows for a lot of 2 player tactics and communication which is lacking in most online games. me and my brother took on most of the scenarios in veteran so we ended up dying about 20 times before we finally succeeded. anyway, just believe me when i say it's great.

i'll talk about the multiplayer parts next time, for now i need to go back to actual studying.

i read my old posts about the t shirt incident thing back in HIHS

i just started laughing

i'm such an evil person

A level math

paper 1 was done a few days ago, i did it sick and coughing

i actually gt the flu the day before the paper, then the days it self i got a combination of both flu and sore throat, then i took medicine, now my flu's gone, but i developed coughing. now i have coughing, sore throat and a build up of phlegm, and not to mention a sore right eye, which feels like i got punched in the eye, but i actually didn't, unless somebody hypnotized me and made me sleep walk into an ongoing bar fight.

anyway, on to what you actually care about



my math results.

in case you were wondering where i got the answers, TA-DA, wonder no more. i just googled for answers and out it came, pretty nifty huh.

also, i wrote down all my answers, just the final answers, of my paper 1 so that i could check and gauge roughly how much i could have gotten.

the magic number here is 57

upon 100

which is like i said just a rough gauge, lots of things that i can't really take into consideration like error carried forward, which would affect about 2 qns which is about 8 marks ( meaning if they were generous i should get about 5 marks out of 8), also a lot of "exact values" type answers, which i could be marked down for because i always take the physics way out and just write all the numbers in 3 sig fig. that will affect roughly 4 marks i think, and lastly some show and proofing type qns which i couldn't really add to my answer sheet, which should also be around 4-ish marks.

and not forgetting moderation which is essentially the "My-head-is-a-lemon-your-argument-is-invalid" method of avoiding arguing with parents over marks.



oh yeah i went there.

anyway, i'm not putting my hopes up to high and can safely (or naively) believe that i can get within 60-70, which is the B range. also, that means that if i can get my paper 2 to be above 80, i can almost definitely get an A. that is if i'm not dreaming.

GP also passed sometime ago. i did qns 7, thanks for asking. to those not taking the paper, it's actually "how far should religion influence political decisions?" i can almost hear all of the millions and millions of GASPS going "he didn't do the science question?!?" i was actually thinking of which of the 2 to do, and because they were actually side by side, being qns 7 and 8. i just decided to start thining of ideas for both at the same time. qns 7 was just lucky to be the number that is higher that 8. Qns 8 must be thinking "Curse you, number 7 for being one less than me!!!!"

content wise, i don't think there should be a major problem, should be just largely nit-picking at words that i should not have used but used anyway, things that make the red alert in the marker's head go off, like the word "still" or "always" and stupid things like that.

the comprehension was a lot tougher though. the stupid author decided to talk about something stupid like work and play, which made it s much harder to paraphrase since all the words that have the same meaning are already used by him, like leisure, and activity.

still have a lot more papers to go, probably the least confidence i have is in economics, because i will probably do-or-die with chemistry, you know, just like o levels.

also, if any of you sharp-eyed freaks have noticed, i actually have a double eyelid in one eye and a single eyelid in the other. Thanks, flu disease, you just disfigured my face, now anyone who sees me will turn into stone. I hope you're happy.

tried to tag all my posts today, guess how productive that was,

Only managed to finish the ones in'06, i was an emo kid back then

also note to self, talk about the lady melissa sometime soon

Why an Economist shouldn't be a viable job prospect

Running on (possibly) limited information, and sleep deprivation, its easy to argue why economists are actually in fact good for the society.

unfortunately, because of retards, i need to preface this with the fact that i don't think economics is bad, just that economists are pointless. you'll see what i mean.

As much as i hate economics, which isn't really much to begin with, it is undeniably a way for us to understand the most fundamental human actions, to get more money. and it is very helpful knowledge to anyone who has a wallet. but the problem lies not in the subject, but the job itself. The Economists (Dun dun dunnnnn). while economics helps businesses and their managers, as well as politicians, when you job revolves around sitting on a chair and telling people what they should or shouldn't do, you better at least get it right. the problem is that economists always appear so divided on issues that actually matter, like what the Government should do during the recession, and the only time they ever really agree on anything is after it has been proven to work, like a fiscal policy back in Keynes' time, that through some crazy logic, actually helps the country earn more by spending. And in case you thought i was bullshitting with the economists divided thing, here's some proof.

Very few jobs in the world rely on just observing and thinking about the world around us, without really doing anything, most of them are in the vein of telling others what to do, and yess these jobs do actually exist. Jobs like theoretical physicists, psychiatrists and unfortunately economists. the difference is that in most cases the others are correct, or at least lower probability of being wrong then say a coin toss. the only real important thing that we expect out of economists, literally people who make their knowledge of economics the only aspect of their job, is to predict future trends based on what already happened and the proper course of action. everything else they do is just nitty-gritty details. And even then, they still cannot agree over what to do.

the problem lies in the fact that economics is such a "soft" "science", and i use the term science very loosely, that when you come up with an argument for, you can just as easily come up with an argument against and both will seemingly make sense, especially to scared, confused and usually uneducated about economics, public. An extension of that would be the use of often unneccessary jargon. anyone who knows why i prefer not to go into business is because of the stupid technical jargon and buzzword that don't really make sense. Economics has a lot of that. What can already be explained in plain english needs to have another word for it, worse when the word used already exists with another (close but distinct) difference. Students, at least in my school, are often critcised for using "coffeeshop talk" in their essays, in other (theirs') words, language so simple my grandma could understand, which to me doesn't make sense, because so long as the meaning is the same, and the reader understands it the same way, there shouldn't be any difference. Now, i understand that certain words are invented for the sake of shortening sentences, like elasticity. but words like demand and quantity demanded should not have such a different meaning. everytime i hear a teacher complaining about coffeeshop talk, i think to myself, why isn't she praising him/her for using simply understood english.

So back to the point about the irrelevance of Economists. let me use an analogy. Say a guy came for an interview for a job at your firm. he's is extremely well educated about say tables.

So you ask him :"what are the skills you possess that we would need?"

interviewee: "Well, i am very well educated in the field of tables."

you: " Ah, so can you build them?"

interviewee: "Actually, no, i just know a lot about them"

you: "Okay, so can you give me advice on how i should build my tables?"

interviewee: "Well, you see, i could, but all of my knowledge of tables are based on models where all else remain constant. So i cannot reliably give advice in th real world. I could tell you what i think, but the guy sitting beside me would probably disagree."

you: " Hmmm, so can you teach others about tables?"

interviewee: "Ah yes, that i can do, but you would probably end up with people who only know what i know and that isn't really helpful, now is it?"

then you realised that the univers was playing a sick twisted joke on you.

Economists have no "real"(as they like to call it) value to the society, and when combined with the other train wreck that is the media can create a lot of fear-mongering. while now that my awesome exposé has created a black hole where your dreams of becoming an economist used to be, you'd think to yourself "now what am i going to do with my awesome knowledge of economics?" remember when i talked about how businesses use economics to help them in their decisions, you can too. economics is more of additional knowledge, then primary expertise, in the sense that you would rather have a skill where you would be wanted in the job market, such as sports or music or vast knowledge of human anatomy, and then use your economics knowledge to put yourself ahead of the competition, "hedge your bets" a little, like how knowing psychology is incredibly useful even outside of the service sector, where office politics can be much better handled, and stuff like that.

damn, its already 1.15am

My Love/Hate realtionship With Economics and some other stuff

Lots of things i wanted to talk about since my last real post, and by last real post i meant those that were so long that you probably didn't even read, (you bastard). The last 2 were really posts, there were more like tweets, my thoughts in 4 lines or less to show my readers, all 5 of you, that i'm still (somewhat) alive.

Anyway, like i said, lots of stuff i wanted to talk about since, some issues important, some even more important.

with less than 120 hours left on the clock til the A levels officially start (for me at least), its quite terrifying going to a national exam when you cant friggin do half the questions on a mock paper. i don't know why i came off the prelim 2s feeling so confident when i needed to refer to the answers for 80% of the question on a math paper i did yesterday. and the truly terrifying thing is not knowing whether the paper will actually be that difficult or other schools are over exaggerating the difficulty of the paper. Either way it's scary. right now i have to contend with the fact that i may actually have to end up repeating JC2, something which i haven't discussed with my parents, but the most expected reaction would be SEE LAH PLAY SOMEMORE.

but you know the worst part about my revision. knowing that i can't ever feel confident about my economics paper. for the poly people who read my blog, yes, i'm talking about you, i'd like to think of econs as the "social studies" of A level syllabus. it's the essay paper that most people take because trying to avoid would mean jumping through so many loopholes that just friggin doing it would save us all the time and energy. it's also similar in the sense that while they do teach you the whole syllabus, you just end up studying a little more than half of it and hope that it comes up.

economics is the kind of subject where i have no idea how good i am at it. it's not like math where i know i don't know how to do this particular topic like quotient rule in differentiation. Nor is it like General Paper where you see how bad at it you truly are, no matter how hard you try. No, economics takes all of your expectations and screws with it like a sick twisted plaything. i'm not saying economics is bad because i suck at it, i'm saying i have no idea how i got my score. everytime i think i may score well on 1 essay, i end up failing or when i feel like i wrote something wrongly, i end up getting great scores. and i can't even learn from my mistakes or successes because they always feel so random and "out of place", like when you wrote something intuitively, which you thought everyone else would too, but end up being heavily praised for that one single sentence. in fact i almost always/never really know why or what i did to deserve really good marks when i do get them. when i score well, i feel good about myself, and think "hey i've improved and that must means i'm doing something right." then the next paper comes to bite me in the ass and i end up failing.

the worst instance of this is after the common test. basically after a year and a quarter of studying the subject i thought to myself " hey, i know how this subject works and what i need to do to do well" and then come Mid-Year, all the questions are so ridiculously difficult that the textbooks don't even have the answers. one example. Explain the importance of resource allocation [25 marks]. i would usually answer that in 3 sentences. but unfortunately you must write all the stuff that just tangentially has any little (if not completely unnecessary) relation to resource allocation. typically the teacher would "expect" you to write about pretty much everything, from the definition, to the policies, to where the policies should apply, tow what the policy maker had for lunch to the time on the giant clock. essentially all that in 45 minutes or less. and the worst part( yes i know i used the worst part more than once) is the spill-over effect. in a span of 2 hrs and 15 minutes, we need to look at 6 different question and do 3 of them, not to mention choosing the questions, planning each essay and actually putting pen to paper. just picking the questions alone takes more than 5 minutes. everytime i read all 6 questions one time through, 3 minutes passed and then i go more in-depth to actually start picking the questions, more than 7 has passed. and then there's the actual planning of the essay where you write down roughly what to write in each paragraph of the individaul essay, which in itself takes time. so even though teachers say you have 45 minutes per essay, you really only have 35 odd minutes to write 4 pages, and yes that is without leaving any lines. that's basically why when i write, i don't think, which sounds surprising, until you realise that i'm not the only one. so when you exceed the time you give yourself, that eats away what ever time you have of the other essasys, and assuming that you hit exactly 45 minutes on the 2nd one (which doesn't always happen, usually you end up 5 minutes over) you end up with approximately 30 minutes to bang out an essay that is supposed to be of equal quality with the other 2 which you probably has the least confidence in since you did it last. this usually results in the last essay being short of a few paragraphs. all that for 20 friggin points.

and that about sums up my thoughts on economics, i love it why i score, even though i don't know why, and i hate it when i don't, because i should have thought about what i missed out in my paper when i was doing it, but hey, i wasn't thinking.

In other news, President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize,in other words, he won the Nobel "I-Am-Not-George-Bush-Award", according to Stephen Colbert. while i do find it odd that the committee gave him the prize before he accomplished anything, i find it ridiculous that there are people vehemently contesting the decision in the media. this is just good old sensationalism. i mean yeah, it''s odd, but it's not going up to a camera and looking all angry. he didn't even offend you, and if they gave the prize to someone else, you would have gone on with your life not caring about what he did to deserve his prize.

i have also been watching Gluttony For Punishment. great show on Discovery travel and living on sundays at 6pm or 630, i can't remember. bob blumer is a great host, optimistic and fun. and the fact that he regularly challenges experts in international competition with only 5 days of training. i think this show is so great in that it basically emphasizes the only real reason people should travel to strange lands, no not take photos wth buildings, but to try new things. most holidays just involve going to one place and eating and taking photos. while that in itself is not a bad idea in the first place, i think the "experience" part of the trip has been left out and the tourist loses out a the great culture and activity of the host nation.

Also, The Men Who Stare At Goats, great premise, great actors, hopes are high for this one.

Modern warfare 2 is also coming in 2 days, so if i fail A levels, it's totally Infinite Ward's fault

Also, brutal legend,
and Assassin's creed 2
and Arkham Asylum,
and NFS Shift,
and shadow Complex, i still can't believe i haven't played it yet.

last year's actual A Level papers were so friggin difficult. i can't believe it. *pout

Boomz is not funny

it wasn't even funny in the video itself, it's just something you raise your eyebrow over, not roll on the floor laughing

so people saying it in real life doesn't make it funny too

p.s Neither is shingz

If i sleep now and wake up tomorrow still pissed off about someting i have no control over

then i'm officially in the Popsicle Mutilation Symposium.

HOLY CRAPZ TEKONGZ? NOWZ? REALLYZ? NO! I MEAN YAY! NO! shit

now i have a headache

been long since i blogged anything substantial

i kind of just gave up on the daily blog thing, it wasn't working. i made it a chore to come up with something to write, and even more so since i have no motivation to do so since only 5 people get to read it everyday.

anyway, lots of things happened between then and now. lots of issues i've been thinking about which never fully blossomed into full fledged views and ideas that i found worthy enough to blog. that and the fact that i can't remember anything now.

if you've guessed that i just struck the lottery, you'd be 0% correct. actually i just got hit with the letter to go into NS just now. i've actually been fretting (is that a real word?) about it since i heard from yuan hong's malay friend whose name i can't remember until now, latiff, yes that's him, i think. i have a headache. anyway, overheard him talking about going into police, which he said was racist and that his brother was an officer so he's damn pissed. in a joking sort of way. so i asked yh about how to check the enlistment date and he said the ns website did that. so i've been checking it every few days and not getting any real response. it just wrote: you will be enlisted between dec 09 and may 2010, which is essentially useless information.

anyway, finally got the letter today, going to BASIC MILITARY TRAINING CENTRE SCHOOL 3, on 11-Dec-2009 and for those who don't know where that is, its' in tekong, directly in tekong. and in case you're wondering why this early. it's cause i'm fat and can't run to save my life, although i'm pretty sure i could in an urban environment.

i actually have absolutely no idea what to feel right now, even though i'm feeling really intense right now, like intensely scared or anxious or idunno it feels like how i felt the day before getting my streaming results. i still have no idea what that felt like exactly, but i know it feels like this. like your heart is very "tight" but there's no real good or bad feeling about it.

i feel both very good and very bad about army at the same time, which apparently is not good for the heart.

on one hand, i know i'm probably going to die from not being able to run and do all the physical stuff in the army and kenna tekan a lot. and also because of my retarded reflexes that the stupid test thinks i have. i will probably not go into a vocation with good "credentials" at least, intellectually. so i don't think my luck in the army will be very good.

but on the other hand, i get to touch a gun.

but still, the ippt and all that stuff, failing it is just going to limit where you can go, and more importantly getting screwed by the officers.

but on the other hand, the freaking gun.

so that kind of sums up what i feel about the army. i get the feeling that im not like most people in their perception of the army. most people think that the army is a waste of time and resources and that people who try to be leaders are either stuck up or boot lickers or both. i'm from the school of thought that i want to make the most out the my time there, and the only way i can do so is put myself out there and get attention, be high profile that sort of thing but i get the feeling that most people will probably hate me for it. so i feel kind of weird for thinking this way.

am i really the exception, and more importantly is thinking like that gonna get me screwed by my own platoon? i have never really talked about it to anyone who has attended to army yet so if your reading this post and you fulfill the strict criteria of going through ns and having my email, please send me an email to tell me something about this.

another thing that happened recently. some of us in jc went for lunch after physics paper 2 at kfc. wee teck couldn't so he went to the kopitiam instead, i joined him because i didn't feel like getting kfc for 2 days in the same week. so we talked and he started to talk about a few people in our class whom he thought was , since the pre a levels, quite obvious that they were going up. he atually said that there were quite a lot. which when i asked him to name, he couldnt name more than half the class, which he initially thought. And i think this thought was quite frightening, 40% of the class is at least, somewhat capable and shown proof that they were able to get into a university after the a levels, which means people like us get left behind. and now i have a cough. what happens when you feel like you're going to fail. and please don't say the self-fulfilling prophecy thing because that's just crap. this is the second time this year that i've felt like i was going to and i have no idea what to do. it feels like i have no one to talk to even though i'm online all the time. it's quite scary to do this alone. what's the medical term for feeling alone when there are in fect options available but you just aren't taking it. i'm going to invent one now. i'm lonerscrewed. and i need help.

also i decided i wanted to add another thing to a list of what i want to do in the future. skydiving instructor. because that is awesome. also, i read that you actually need at least 15 plus tandem (stuck with an instructor) jumps before you can do solo jumps and after that you need some solo jumps before you can do instructing.

I highly suspect that my life will end in a suicide

it's like this weird nagging feeling.

not like a this much work is killing me kind of way.

but like a holy crap, i'm gonna die alone, and with a gun possibly


and most importantly, facebook isn't helping.

Munchausen

i don't have anything to blog about today because i spent the whole day playing red alert 3

Friends and a rant about complainers

no picture today

went to compass to study with jelena. put in a solid 3 hours in maths and a bit in chem. its ok, but i could have done more, its quite irritating to lose momentum once you start, because you just don't wanna start again.

went home and ate dinner with family outside.

anyway, lets' talk about something that's arbitrarily important.

FRIENDS

i have never been the most approachable guy in the room, not even when i'm alone. so i tend to wait for people to talk to me before i open my mouth, which is admittedly a bad habit. most of my friends know that i ususally have something to say about something, but most of the time i just don't say it. i just keep feeling like there's never a good opportunity to say certain things. i'll admit im a very loud person, it has to do with my upbringing. but so many times, i feel like everytime i open my mouth, i'm not really contributing to anything positively, i'm just filling my ego.

so i end up with less friends than i could have. in my class, we have a mean score of 54 out of 90, which is great and everything. but like some people pointed out, these scores were done by people who just do their work alone and they stand out, which i feel is quite sad actually. i mean i'm not undermining their efforts, i just felt that if they had shared, and if we had been more open to this kind of input, we'd score even better. elizabeth pointed out that in 2s02, which is like the best science class presently, i think, they have a great class bond and they share help with each other, like the best in certain subjects just teach what they know and the others do the same. this is also true in 2a06, the best arts class. so yeah, teamwork does help. the teachers have said it, the principal has said it, now i have said it (yeah i just put myself in the same league as teachers and principals).

i think what really stops us from getting even better results is the lack of social interaction. i used to describe our class as having too many negatives (as in charges, if you take physics you'd understand), and too few positives. too many of us in our class are reliant on people talking to them before they contribute. there is like only what 2 positives in our class and they can't do all the heavy lifting. i mean it's probably already too late to really do anything about it, but i'm just saying

(oh boy html humor)

also, another thing i cannot understand. people like to equate volunteering and trying to be a leader to boot licking and kissing ass. i hear a lot of these stories from army. i have been on both sides of the fence, i was once a follower who thought they kissed ass, and a leader (in some aspect, what have you). being a leader made me realise how minor and meaningless most people's complaints are. everyone likes to complain that we don't do this, don't do that, never help the students, say this say that during election then in liao then never do anything. if we take a very consequentialist viewpoint (look it up), we can say that you stood to lose nothing through the votes and you didn't after it, so unless you lost a pound of flesh when you draw that circle on the oas, you can't really have anything to say.

i mean people stand up and we volunteer and we say, hey maybe i can do something to help. and people shoot us down and say, you selfish, you useless, you this you that. take a moment and think about how unfair and more importantly how unjustified that statement was. i mean, sometimes, people out of sheer goodwill and altruism, decide to help his fellow man and people take advantage. scott adams was right, people are selfish, greedy and horny, and that will never change.

if we took another point of view and said, but you really didn't help me with . think about that request for a minute, and then think about how ridiculously selfish it was. chances are 9 out of 10 times, the request directly benefitted you, and more importantly, at the expense of someone or something else, and also, did you think of the adverse impact on someone else when you complained. i mean, if we could do something to help you that will not directly or indirectly affect something else adversely, we'll do it, and we'll do it happily. here's an example, during the student forum last year, one of the biggest complaint was how the timetable was screwed up. some people wanted it to be longer, some wanted it to be shorter. how in the world is mrs tan supposed to make everyone happy like that, she has to accommodate everyone, encluding the teachers, who graciously have accepted what they were given, in other words they didn't even have a say in it (i think). now think back and ask yourself if you thought about the teachers or even better, the uncles and aunties who lock up after you leave. so ya, people are retarded.

so think about it, if you were to rate all the individual councillors on how they helped you, they would probably all fail. because you are THAT selfish.

(oh the geekyness)

for the longest time i have had friends who are anti-social. and more importantly, because i tried to be more like them, i became more anti-social as well. i kind of think that was a dumb mistake on my part. a lot of times i wanted to do something and because i had no friends who wanted to join me, i ended up backing out, which i sometimes regretted. in this kind of scenarios, i really don't know how to act. should i go for it and end up alienating my friends, or should i not go and waste a perfectly good opportunity.

as i grew up, i became more appreciative of opportunities, especially to do things i have hever tried before. but the reluctance and the hesitation never went away with age. with each new endeavour, i felt equally or even more afraid of trying. and sometimes without my friends, i ended up wasting it. i think that's what people in the industry like to call peer pressure. but i don't really know, it just feels like a lack of support.

also another thing as i grew up, i became more detached from "cliques" and just became this like wanderer from said "cliques". i mean it has it's benefits, at least i have a greater network now. but once in a while, i would think back and wonder what it would like to have a clique, just an exclusive group of maybe 4-6 friends who know anything and everything about each other. i think one thing is for sure, i certainly missed out on telling people my secrets, that's for sure. and whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is open to interpretation.

something jelena asked me as we boarded the mrt, you don't talk to your old friends one meh. then what if you'all like got something to say, you just don't say to anybody? i can't say this for all guys, but i now thts pretty much all that is from me. i don't really share with other people. that's why i keep a blog in the first place (actually that's the second reason, the first is to . that's not to say i'm not a good friend. i mean if i see someone that i am friends with, someone that i click with, i automatically have something to say and the other party also. just because we don't say things randomly, doesn't mean we have nothing to talk about when we in fact do meet. i thnk that if you can click with someone, even if you don't talk to them in a while, you won't ever really feel awkward around that person, not even in a million years.

it's never easy finding friends, but you will never feel that they be the ones who are stopping you from doing what you want.


unless you're taking drugs, then they'll stop you.

NS letter

so, my parents came home and got a letter from the army. so my mum calls me down to open my letter (i was upstairs). and i was like, oh crap going to enlist liao, shhhhhhiiiiiittttt.

then i saw the letter, and it was from the navy, i was like im going to the navy . then i opened the letter and saw the weird cardboard thing. inside got the weird grayish looking paper that's basically an advertisement to entice you to get into the navy along with a weird reply card with no instructions or anything. anyway, you can see in one of those pictures that my name is repeated 3 times, if you can't read the words above them are, commanding officer, powerpoint supervisor, excel sheet manager. which the last 2 is supposed to (ithink) sound bad. it actually took me a few minutes to register that "joke". also, there's 2 small triangle thing so you can fold it and make into some cheap table stand thing. which is quite funny, and my mum was like, wah liddat spend the money one ar. hahas

anyway, after i read finish the letter then i realised how much i sweat(ed). in case, you didn't know, after writing yesterday's post, i suddenly felt so overwhelmed by the future. it's like it just suddenly hit me and i didn't know what was going to happen after jc. and more importantly, it was scary. it's terrifying to not know what is going to happen. in school there's always more school more education, promoting to the next year of education, but no more, not now anyway.

i mean i thought about my career so many times in the past, i just never got around to link them together neatly, so they always remained fragmented ideas and just thoughts floating around. until yesterday, i have never felt so unsure before. why is that?

this is not healthy

just a short post today, but hey pictures!

i need to drop this baggage before i go in for the exams, anyone free?

Career Choice

yesterday was actually the NS forum, which was kind of cool because at least 2 out of 5 teachers have vocations that are classified, which makes it sound so much more cool than it probably is.

anyway, i actually wrote this now, because i didn't have much thought about it except, the song at the end was so cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYTGdi1w-Cs, here for you to hear.

ya so, i thought about today as i was going home. it's basically the same few things since my o levels, but with a few additions here and there. but i'm gonna start the story from sec 4 so you can follow on.

so the time now is 2007, before o levels. during this period, i remember telling my friends, eh, you know ar, i never study i kanna c6, i go and study, come out fail. that's why better not to study. which was really ridiculous, because that was i sincerely believed, everytime i tried to study, i ended up getting worse. so my friends were used to seeing me not study. so i had this friend, eugene who also doesn't study, but he probably does at home, that's why he got better than me. anyway, we always go down play soccer with unity (another class) and normal acad people. so as the exams drew nearer, we played that much harder, in fact the closer it was, the more we would play. maybe we were trying to destress, maybe we were venting our anger. but it didn't really matter. what mattered was we played, and i never really improved much.

so the night study starts in our school, and it was getting to 6, and i was just sitting around at one of the canteen tables, i was telling my friends
if i pass, i'm going on to a jc. and definitely not sr, because i'd rather go to a poly than end up there. and then after i get through jc, im gonna go be an engineer, maybe sign on to the army or something.
if i just borderline, i'll most probably go to poly, but i'm definitely not going to take p engineering there, because i don't wanna end up as some uni guy's ka kia. i will maybe take up optometry and take over my father if i get to a poly.
if i flat out fail, i'll go to ite or some training thing and learn to be a bartender. only because i love to throw bottles.

a few of my close friends in secondary school have heard of this story, so they usually end up surprised i ended up in sr.

anyway, i got my o levels back, and i got l1r5 of 15. at first i was like, oh, fuck. pretty much. but most i got b3 with the shocker being bio with a c5. i mean i didn't expect to get a1 for it, but you know not that bad la. so i remember i went home, i talked to my parents i cried a little, or a lot, i can't really remember how much. but i remember my mum telling me, in a soft ocnsoling voice, what do you expect me to feel, i mean i can't say i didn't expect it, i mean this is how you do it. except in chinese. so, at that point i felt even more fucked. but i got over it. and then i went to sr.

i remember telling some of my friends hey the best thing that happened to me in pae was picking h1 bio because im never gonna h1 bio ever again, EVAR.

anyway, throughout this 2 years in interim adulthood, i picked up a few interests that i never really explored in the past. one was architecture, which was really similar to engineering, except it had more to do with design. i mean i'd love to design, but i'm just not talented enough. but i'd give architecture a run for its money. the problem is, i actually heard from a cousin who just graduated from NUS, i think, i cant really remember. anyway, he says architects are always in high demand in singapore because there is only one class of them in singapore each year, which got me really interested. if i actually did do this, i would have embarked on a path similar to my dad, because he also went to optometry when it was a diploma only subject, and only one at that time had the classes, (i think). optometry was special in that there is no degree of optometry in singapore, just a diploma. anyway, back to me. the problem is, according from my cousin, you need to go in for a COMPULSORY interview, which is not a problem (mostly), with a portfolio. WTF, when you think about it honestly, people go into architecture class because they DON'T have any experience and hence have no previous designs. but apparently they want to see it so as to weed out those who do not have "the passion" so now i'm stuck. because i can't ever reliably put architecture as a plan A, it alwasy need a reliable plan B.

also, this year, i picked up magic, which was really fun, but i don't really have any interest in performance, because i suck on stage and can't smile for my life. however, i am actually interested in croupier position, which is basically the guy who deals cards in a casino. unfortunately, the IR hiring fair is now over and at that time i wasn't 21 yet and i couldn't send in my application. Damn it, because they were offering to pay for their training courses too.

another thing. i have always been interested in signing on to the army, even though people like to say, no you're wasting your life. i think i like army life because it's never really boring. if there's one job i hate, it's office jobs. i want to do something outside. but the thing is the only thing that's realistically keeping me from signing on is my fitness. never once in my life have i ever said to myself, i am finally fit. i may have been healthy at some point, but never fit, ever. so i'm kinda hesistant about signing on. i mean no point signing on if i'm just gonna be some guy there. at least be an officer or at the very least a specialist. i don't mind going in to be an engineer or something because i have an interest in that field. i just hope i can get into ocs.

also another thing that's been on my mind about the army. i don't really know whether i want to maintain a low profile there or just try to chiong all the way. there's benefits to both so i can't really decide. i want to maintain a low profile because i am not a very social person and i want to avoid as much punishment as possible. unfortunately, from my life lessons in npcc, i realised that it's never good to be invisible, because you don't wanna regret going in and not getting the opportunity that you wanted. so you know, lazy vs getting kicked in the ass and not getting rewarded.

also another sidetrack, some of you guys may know that i screwed up my aptitude test, which means, i have a much lower chance than everyone else to get into sispec or ocs, which is really depressing.

anyway, back to the main topic. as of late, i'm becoming interested in being a teacher, particuarly a gp teacher. my mum thinks i shouldn't because i'm quite an asshole to my brother. who knows, maybe that helps. anyway, i don't wanna be a maths or physics teacher because they seem to be the most boring departments (no offense to teachers). but the problem (there's always a goddamn problem) is i won't take literature or english language as my degree. if i were to take the plunge and be a teacher, i'll most probably be in philosophy or psychology. while both are interesting to study, they don't make the most stable of jobs. jialat.


now you see that most of my career choices are screwed up. things i want to be would most probably not go my way and things that are, would probably be underwhelming.


so help! i need somebody, help! not just anybody, help! you know i need someone, hhhheeeeelllllpppp!

by the beatles, my anti-drug.

also, something for you to take home. i don't want to leave srjc with a large network but no friends. i'm sure you do too.

Feminism

i realised i have a lot of things to say but i HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO START

anyway, hey from me

parts of these may seem like they don't make sense or contradict each other. most likely because these are just fragmented wide-ranging views that i have about this topic and never really got around to connecting them. and you know trying to make sense.

i have a really strong feeling that the feminist movement won't likely ever succeed, as in the modern one, like the third or something. basically its' because (i think) girls don't know what the hell they want. or in an attempt to get more language marks, they do not have a universal set of goals and targets that they can set out to achieve.



in case that was a little hard to understand, here's a little analogy. imagine you're a minority and you have been marginalized for a very long time. you have been denied rights that should be deemed equal for all human beings but yet find yourself living without them. so you know, after maybe, some guy says this awesome speech or after a barfight where everyone just got really drunk, BOOM, you find out that there's actually a movement out there to right the wrongs that you have been suffering all your life. so everyone's all protesting and shit, and you know what, they all have a somewhat sketchy idea of what they want. basically equality and stuff that i would proceed to bore you with if i went through listing them, but i won't. because i'm merciful.

so anyway, that's at least how a movement starts. and the problem with the feminist movement is that they have no fucking clue what they want. i mean the first and the second were great and all, getting you ladies into jobs and schools say that we have hot chicks in uniforms to look at. but that's pretty much where everyone just have no clue where else to go from. some chicks go no we don't want to be objectified in ads anymore, and then the others go, we're just so very proud of our sexuality that we just want to do porn and be prostitutes for fun. then here's the point you go, " wow Nil, you magnificent little princess, is that the only thing where chicks are all estrogeny about?" of course not, silly little internet person. there are of course those, if i may borrow from Cracked, chronicly offended, at FUCKING EVERYTHING. "fucking is being used here as adjective and not literally sexing up everything. See, we can be educational too!

anyway, feminism right now is being so screwed up because of this clash of ideals. because no one has a clear idea of what equality really means. unlike obama. if you want to start off with the PG-13 stuff, some girls actually like guys who are gentlemanly, you know open the doors, shift the chairs, say thank you, non-douchebag behaviour. but some actually criticise them for being condescending, saying like "i can do it for myself, you chavinistic pig, exclamation mark" i have absolutely no idea where she got that idea from. is she like saying that these gentlemanly guys are going that extra mile just to get in their pants or something, because somewhere that chain of thought doesn't make sense. why go to all that trouble when all you need to do is be a jerk and girls will be drooling over you. which is another thing that i find really disturbing, because girls don't go for the nice guys, they always end up in the "friend-zone". i'm sure you all have stories of those fairytale ending types, but stop being so narcissitic and over-attentive to yourself, the men are talking about the real world here.

then you have the objectification in ads. this is lip service most often paid by people who study any form of arguing above high school. they just go "oh look at that provocative posture, how can you exploit women like that." which i find really stupid because number 1, these are mainly ads that cater to the male demographic and 2, men are chavinstic pigs. objectification of women happens because there's money to be made, guys are easily swayed over by boobs and tight and/or no clothes. remember that everytime you go up to a guy with a flag day donation tin. is it unfair? probably, but think about it, why does objectification of men so much less prevalent. then honestly think about it, would you buy a product, if it was advertised by a guy showing off his gigantic eyes. probably not. there is virtually no scenario where showing off penii will ever get more customers, except maybe the porn industry. but with that said, that doesn't mean that there is no objectification whatsoever. right now the koreans are perfecting the technique with 12 men flailing their hands and feet to a rhythm, they call them super junior. which i find disturbing and mildly gay. it's like in the back of your mind, you're wondering, there has to be at least 2 of them that are gay and making out behind the scenes.

and THEN you have the women who enjoy doing porn and prostitution. some women actually believe that by alloing such women to do so, they would undermine what they have tried to achieve all these years. which i kinda get, but yet at the same time find very ridiculous. it's a very contradicting feeling when you actually feel that both parties are right at the same time. think about it, if say i really enjoyed blowing balloons (this is not a metaphor, it was just the first thing that entered my mind) and some other guys would be saying that hey don't blow balloons, you'll make us look gay. and i'm like what? i enjoy blowing balloons and i'm not hurting anyone. so i'm kinda on the fence about this one. on one hand, it would tarnish the image of strong independent women that they're trying to cultivate, but on the other hand, i'm a chavinistic pig.

i mean, i can't say for certain that women will never achieve equal rights, but i'm positive that their idea of "equal" will change so many times that they will lose track of it. the reason that feminism is so unlike other movements like gay rights and african american rights and even animal righs is that its not possible to say that one is "equal" to another in all aspects. i can say that i am as equal to a gay man as i am to a black guy, because we have no conflicting ideologies or practices. feminism is so much more complex, because men are fundamentally different. we are biologically wired to tap that. and what that means is that one party will find a way to get into the other's pants, and they will say or do anything to get there. so while the woman is saying "equal rights!" all the guys are hearing "blablabla get me a diamond ring and i'll fake it like i've never faked it before" ( a line taken from sinfest).

we are biologically wired to approach women differently from how we would approach a black dude or a gay guy or even a puppy. that's just how we are. shallow chavinistic pigs. and i don't even know what chauvinistic means.

some guy

WHAT UP BITCHES !!

awake, yet? still trying out the greeting thing, anyway, back to stuff that doesn't matters.

the dude you see above is douglas, and he came to our school and talked to us, which was cool. he comes off as a really semi domesticated culturised japanese, which i have no idea what that means. but he's singaporean, very singaporean. he's most probably brought up in a chinese environment, since he can just spew off couplets ( repeat after me Cheng Yu !!) like just off the cuffs. i probably just misused the phrase off the cuffs. anyway, he comes to our school, talks about his life at this company called apex-pal, which honestly is a really retarded name for a company, no matter how small that is. i mean, can you imagine a bunch of directors and bigwigs sitting at a table going, hmm, glennard pte ltd, no, glennard incorporated, no, glennard he's so awesome enterprise, no, and then little douglas meekly whispers, apex-pal? and then the directors going WHOOOOO!!!!! WE GOT IT!! like a frat party.

just wondering if you could imagine that.

anyway, what astonishes me (ok, exaggeration) was that he just took chances and things just worked out for him. i suspect that there was more going on in the shadows, but really, "i just chose vitamin E because i was introduced to it" Come on. and all 4 of his sons nams start with do and have 3 syllables, like dominic, donovan and some other name i can't remember.

also, he came off as this guy who was really committed to what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it. he was like "VALUES SYSTEM !!!" and then pointing out his index finger at the student who asked a question, and then rainbows came out and a unicorn jumped over the table. ok i was kidding that din happen.

but still, he was very committed and he talked about how he got 4 jobs within the 3 months after a levels and before ns. which when you think about it is quite amazing. he had a job in a power plant in the morning, a teaching stint for 10 weeks (2 and a half months for you all who suck at math), a job at a bakery and another doing market research (ie dumbass surveys). all of these jobs are time-consuming and tiring and still he held on to them for 3 months, which is kinda amazing. even more amazing was that during ns itself, he managed to pack 8 2-hour tuition lessons into those weekends, letting him rack up 5-6k per month, completely pwning his ns (officer, that is) pay of 1k.

as i heard about him talk about his jobs and also people asking for internships (is it just me, or is it becoming a recurring question?), i was thinking about going to a job agency and telling the clerk, get me the craziest job that i have the qualification for. which is awesome, because i have no idea what the hell i'm gonna do. imagine like, suddenly, the clerk calls you and says, "we have an opening for a parachute tester, would you li---- HELL,YES!!"

hahas.




also, breaking news, i have been singing get back by the beatles wrongly for the past week,
...
and i just found out about it
like jojo was a man who thought he was a loner, but he nanananananana
amd then that for about 3,4 more lines then, GET BACK, GET BACK, which is essentially the chorus, and that was awesome to sing, out loud, when people seem to be staring at me, is that a chinese dude, what's in his bag?



YOU'LL NEVER KNOW!!



and you know, the douglas i was talking about, he's the CEO of Sakae Sushi.

Mancave

Pictured above is actually my god grandmother's (or grand godmother, which kind of makes less sense when i think about it.) current house. it now houses her, my god grandfather and her grandchildren and sometimes her sons, now less so since they're already married. i just tried to remake the floor plan from memory


That was the rough floor plan of what i thought would be my future bachelor pad would look like. it had just enough space for one (or two, wink) people. which i proceeded to feel guilty about since it was once home to 5 people at the same time.

Actually before thinking about my future potential Mancave™, i was at the state prior to being unconscious (i.e sleep), i was thinking about the first list of things i would need to buy if i were to uproot myself and go to another place or country with nothing but my phone, wallet and possibly passport. the first thing that hit me was food and medicine, particularly, cough drops, and eggs and bread came after that.

Well, since you're probably more interested about my Mancave™, it'll most likely have as much space as my Ah ma's place. a nice estimate of that size would be to imagine the size of 2 classrooms (i think, because the rooms are screwing up my projections of the size).

Anyway, important things first, internet, computer, xbox, pool table. Duh, but unfortunately there's no way to make the pool table fit into any room other than the living room, but that's just sad. so i'll have to leave it out until i get a bigger house. Since i would only sleep in one room, the other would be converted into an awesome room. Why? because i can.

The awesome room would contain beanbag chairs, because beanbag chairs are awesome. also, xbox and plastic instruments. i'll probably soundproof the room, or if that proves too expensive, i'll semi-soundproof the room with things like styrofoam and bubble wrap, i'll think of something. In the awesome room, i will also probably include either a projector or a effing big screen to look at stuff, and by stuff i mean things that are not porn.

i'll probably leave a blank wall in the awesome room or the living room to practice graffiti.

i just realised how freaking difficult it is to describe what i want in my bachelor pad. because so much of its' appeal lies in the overall decor and artsy stuff like that, so understanding that, i'll probably do up a photoshop, when i get that bored. i doubt i ever become that bored, because the beatles rock band and pieces of plastic shaped like guitars are waiting for me.

I need a new greeting

I need a greeting, especially since im' gonna do this everyday.

like hello internet, but that's already taken

anyway, spent the last hour doing some work, actually the hour before my dinner. but before you go out and say " Nil, you awesomely slacking compatriot, are you mugging IN THE CLOSET?!?" actually, i did my work over feeling guilty over (yes i used over twice in the same sentence) not doing anything constructive over the long weekend, which is 3/2 times longer than most weekends. heck, its' not even revision, it's just work i would have otherwise done in class today, had there been class today. officially i have spent at least a week not revising any work. the first week of school, i just had absolutely no mood whatsoever to do any kind of "real" work. maybe it was because the beatles rock band is coming, which i now own and is AWESOME, or that nobody is really around in school anymore, which makes not knowing how to do your work all the more irritating.

i'll be honest, i have to study around other people, because firstly i suck, and secondly, i suck and i end up pestering other people on how to do simple questions. so certain people get really annoyed when i do that, but it's not the majority so i still have a vast pool of resources to tap into (Muhahaha, people who are not annoyed).

so yeah, studying by yourself, no matter where you are is incredibly unfruitful (i'm not sure if that is a word), so i avoid it. but you can only avoid your work for so long before it finally catches up with you. and now i end up doing papers from at least 2 weeks since the teachers gone through them, so that when i ask my friends, they have some clue what i'm talking about.

we got our prelim results over the past friday. everyone in our class got our ranking points calculated wrongly. and more importantly, our scores and subsequently, our class average, should jump by around 5 points more. this is really weird because our class was the only one affected by the wrong calculation (i could be wrong but the other classes don't seem to be complaining), so when the principal showed the top classes, we might have beaten some of them. and by we i mean, elizabeth jason and the other freaks who actually study. anyway, our class average is around 50ish, which is not that bad until you remember, this score is after all the moderation(s). i'm not sure if i can call this "hypocritical" but you keep bashing us about not studying more and not working hard enough and not paying more attention to the question and yet, still give us extra points that we don't even deserve. How Dare You!?!?.

correct me if i'm wrong but any sort of moderation should be done using a bell curve (ask your local neighbourhood math tutor). our form or moderation just involves adding 5 or in the case of physics 7 more marks on top of what you already had. This, number 1, makes everybody equally better, which means relatively, there hasn't been any change whatsoever, so we aren't pulling the people at the rock bottom up so they don't feel insecure, but everyone, so we all feel better about ourselves. Number 2, why the need for this? we aren't going to be using this for any sort of assessment in the future and more importantly, this gives us the facade (pronounced far-car-dee) of being smart enough to pass our A levels, when we know we can't.

moderation like this is like going to the archery olympics and the referee saying that, since retard number 1 is going up against superman, i'll move the target closer for retard number 1 so he won't feel bad if he loses. what the hell? if exams were meant to make people feel adequate about their intelligence, might as well use primary school papers.

i'm not bashing on people who did poorly in exams, because i know and genuinely believe that they worked hard, sometimes, we are just that unlucky. but i felt that jumping one grade for everyone is necessary. especially since i felt the i deserved my original score because i am that unfocused. and even more so after i've come to terms with how retarded i was (at that one specific paper).

anyway before you start shouting "Nil, you cheeky backstabbing monkey, does that mean you did very well for this prelims" heck no. allow me to rephrase myself. HECK NO. officially i got a 50, which for my non-jc friends, is upon 90, which means i am passing. well, non-jc friends. not really, because on average, people need upwards of 70 to get into a local university. furthermore, that was after moderation. if based on my actual results, i should have gotten a 30 + 10 for PW. essentially meaning that i got 2 E and 3 S, you go and do the calculations yourself, but that essentially means fucked up, if this happens again in A levels. and this realization is made so much worse when you realize that other people are getting upwards of 70, and they did the same paper as you.

you're so screwed.

New News

Just some things to clear up before i go into blogging mode. i want to try this new thing out about photo-blogging, daily. yes, daily. essentially being the attention whore that i am, i want to get as many hits on my blog as possible, ok at least i try to. if you go to blogs of other people who are popular (i.e not me) you will see that there are essentially 4 basic paths you can take.

1) Have many friends who are as bored as you are

2) Be hot, in a way that people are interested in your business, even though you don't even know who that guy is.

3) Be funny

4) Update regularly


because steps 1 and 2 are out of the equation as i am neither hot nor have more than 5 incredibly bored friends. i am left with 3 and 4. and 3 is also difficult to pull off because firstly, its not easy being funny when writing, since the facial expression and voice tonality is completely variable. i could be writing about some retard and you think im insinuating something about your mother. secondly, i am not funny, as hard as i try, i am not. and the huge box of irony comes crashing down as trying to be funny is one of the few, VERY few things i work hard at, the other being getting girls.

so i'm left with option 4. which is okay, but incredibly tiring. so now i'm stuck with a dilema. i usually write awe-inspiring and thought-provoking events and happenings (i.e not about what i ate for lunch and who i went shopping with). but given that most people generate ridiculous amounts of hits writing mundane stuff like, i didn't go for lessons and stayed at home and facebooked the whole day, its coming off as mixed signals. should i continue writing stuff in my head or stuff i do (which is incredibly boring), anyway, for the 5 people who frequent my blog (I LOVE you Guys), leave your thoughts about what you liked about my blog and what you wanna see disappear, like me being emo and stuff.


anyway, knowing the person that i am, i doubt i'll be able to keep daily photo-blogging up for long. keep in mind that photo-blogging is not a revolutionary concept( OH MI God !), but i just never really tried it before, so i figured hey why not.

for the actual stuff happening today, it's actually hari raya puasa. which is malay for something. and since they celebrate by breaking fast (i.e eating weird sweet stuff that i can't pronounce) i thought i posted a picture of cookies. yes cookies. why cookies? because i don't really know what they eat during hari raya, i don't even know how they celebrate it. all i know is that the colour green keeps popping up somewhere in the equation and families like to dress up in colour coded groups. which is kind of cool, i have to admit, but the appeal wears off after one or two years. i imagine, i'd be like wow cool i get to wear bright colours and go out for the first year, and i'm like what we have to do this again NEXT year?! i figured it'd be a lot easier to find your kid if you lost him in a crowded place. some security guard would find him and just match him up to the next family that dresses like him. he'd be like blue, green, blue, blue, green, pink, yellow ah there's your parents.

anyway, a selemat hari raya puasa to all muslims friends, which i figure only like 1 ever visits my blog. selemat hari raya to you bro!


and just to side track, i had around 30 hits since someone last left a LOL at my tagbox. it takes my friend roughly a few hours to generate that number, and her blog is protected, meaning random stalkers and possibly perverts ca't see it.