wk1over

First week of lectures over! And I have yet to log on to the dreaded CORS to ballot for tutorials. And the Electrical Engineering lecture will probably be a problem. When the lecturer decides to say a string of words in quick succession, there’s no way to comprehend the words given the accent.

And two of my other lecturers aren’t very local too. That’s more than half. Really a nice indication of the direction the country is taking.

National Day over, nice to remember the pledge. Haven’t uttered if since graduating from junior college. And I still remember half the Chinese version from my horrible secondary school days. Especially that bit on 不分種族，言語，宗教，團結一致，建設公正平等的民主社會。 I suppose they sure got the equality bit right, since it even applies to foreigners in the job market or in education. But one forgets only locals say the pledge.

MM Lee questions younger Singaporeans’ desire for multi—party politics

We seem to be getting a lot of such comments recently, about why the current party is the best and that it should not be removed from power. Of course the people telling us all these are they themselves in the first place.

With the Games going on even these comments have taken a sports theme. The ruling party is the Division One team (Division One being the best).  And that in wanting to have a different party in charge, we may (note the italics) vote in a Division Three government, one with no talent.

In deciding who belongs to Division One or Two or Three, obviously there has to be competition to distinguish the strongest people. How can we say the current leaders are truly Division One, since they haven’t gone through any competition at all.

Taking football as an example, we have the current party in the Division One. And there is only one position on Division One. Therefore there is no concept of relegation. On the other hand, the other groups are in the lower divisions. The process of entering the competition is very difficult, and require much resources, which the lower teams are very unlikely to have.

And should the lower division teams play well, suddenly they will find themselves being charged with infringing certain regulations, and then brought before a disciplinary board whose members are affiliated with the Division One team. Certain key players then get suspended, fined, and the team may possibly be docked points.

Perhaps this wasn’t a very good analogy (if it even qualifies as one). We should just be happy and content. What we have here is probably one powerful team in charge, winning the title every season, while the others provide some fodder, and to fill up the table. Kind of like the Scottish League with only either Celtic or Rangers. Correct me if I’m wrong and there are other teams that can actually stand a good chance of winning the title. I have lost touch with football for a while, having been priced out of cable TV.

Since we’re at the Sports topic, the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games wasn’t that wonderful as we thought.

Post from BBC Correspondent’s blog

So the host admitted that the singer was only miming, and the fireworks seen on TV weren’t all real. No issue with that. It’s all a production anyway. And it was a nice show. Wonder how many people got whipped when they made mistakes during rehearsals. That’s not the point.

The interesting bit was not the main post itself, but the long list of comments posted by readers at the bottom. Debates/Discussions have been going on. The only nice point I would like to point out is, while we can’t really fault the organisers for wanting to present the perfect show, one would think the girl who supplied the voice wouldn’t be that happy at not being chosen to appear in person. No references to their looks or their ‘ability of expression’ physically. But I doubt the girl herself would mind; she’ll probably be bursting with pride thinking that it was her voice (and just her voice) being chosen out of millions of girls, and that it was such a great honour to bring her beloved country success.

So while we have people actively contributing to the Games, there are people who are contributing by not doing anything. Closed factories keep the horrific pollution levels down, but it’s not just pollution that gets lowered. Supply gets a hit too. And at an important industry too - drugs, including asthma medication. I don’t suppose the organisers, busy with presenting the perfect Games to the world, will be losing sleep over this.

Changed the banner image to a cuter one (or so I think it seems). The programming module lecturer showed the students the GIF animation in it’s full gory, I mean glory, saying that maybe we may end up looking like that while programming. I certainly hope that doesn’t happen.

So this country is guaranteed an Olympic medal. Wonder how proud we can feel, with the issue of the athlete’s country of birth. And it’s going to cost the taxpayers too, since medals equates to cash. More outflow of funds, after the fireworks and all from N-Day?

tortilla

Don’t really know what to put for the title. So an unimaginative one it shall be.

Inconveniently have a 0800-1000 lecture at Engineering on Tuesdays. Pretty tough waking at up 6+ these days after a nice long break from the army routine. Won the battle against the urge to take in caffeine. I normally only drink when there is a serious need, one that could affect my life literally, such as before a driving lesson when I’m half zonked out.

Went straight home after lecture to find that there’s no one in the house and I had to settle lunch. Conveniently, there’s a pack of Chipotle Chili and Peppers Flour Tortillas lying around, very recently bought and never been used. Inconveniently I don’t have a lot ideas on what to do with it, as well as ingredients. So I got some Ham and Cheddar Cheese slices from the mart downstairs and got rightaway to cooking lunch at 11 since the cereal breakfast at 7 in the morning has long disappeared.

Then I dug out a very lonely sausage from the fridge and decided to end its loneliness but sending it to sausage-heaven, a trip to my stomach en route.

So the meat got cut into nice and small pieces and slightly fried. Cheese is melted on the tortilla with more seasoning (decided to add to the spice with Cajun seasoning) and then tossed the meat on top.

The cheese is melting

And the (processed) meat goes in

でた！

Result: It wasn’t spicy. But it was alright. Probably will need tons of improvements to make it better.

national day and yahoo sg

Click for bigger view

This time of the year again. It’s hard to forget that it’s National Day. Not when the flags start appearing everywhere except outside the windows of the apartments in my estate (because the residents are mainly FT’s). Big boards featuring the faces of our MPs are up everywhere. I suppose it’s the idea of having the government celebrating with us, but I can’t help but suspect they’re trying to link the country/the country’s ’success’ to the people in the posters (or rather the party they belong to).

The screenshot has a few parts of it labeled for discussion here. Hoho. One thing not labeled is the nice red theme. I suppose the guys at Yahoo can reuse this for CNY.

I - My first reaction to the poll was that quite a few people were hired to poll favourably (to whom?). An interesting 7% had no idea it’s national day. I can only conclude that they are people either too busy, or locked up at home with no access to TV or radio. It’s full of banners and flags outside (as well as very strange indication that almost half of Singapore falls in the Tanjong Pagar GRC) it’s hard to not notice. TV and radio constant broadcast this year’s theme for the National Day (another flop I feel).

II - One answer: No. That’s why we need FT’s.

III - Always nice to cushion bad news with the festivities. We’ve been seeing lowering of the forecasts for a while now. Perhaps people don’t notice if it’s 1 percentage point at a time.

IV - I sure hope there was some great social bonding (through screaming at the people in front to not stand up, blocking the view of those behind). Penny pinching and narrow-minded (oh so much like the opposition) this may sound, but it’s going to take a lot of intangible benefits gained to justify the expenditure.

V - Slightly unrelated. I figure the culprit got the wrong target. And it’s convenient he jumped. Dead men tell no tales. I wonder if this line of mine can be considered insinuation of sorts that might get me into trouble.

Lectures started. A type of module that no other student outside of this country has to take (guess what I’m referring to) sure is boring. And I’m so not interested.

fishy pasta

Nothing wrong. Just that it has fish.

Remember the frozen Alaskan pollock fillets? Used another slab in this pasta which I don’t really know how it is named.

Used half a can of Campbell’s soup in the process for the sauce. The other half became soup. Cream of Mushroom with Roasted Garlic is pretty good!

Didn’t taste half-bad too. Perhaps will add more stuff into the next round. More spices and stuff perhaps.

mummy 3

I’ve watched the first movie countless times, and the second as well as the spin-off (The Scorpion King). So it was weird to note that Rachel Weisz didn’t want to play the role for this movie. After watching it, I suppose I can’t really blame her.

Wasn’t fantastic, but wasn’t downright bad as some reviews rated it. True, we’ve a whole lot of Hollywood movies borrowing on Chinese culture these days, and this show is just another one. Maybe it has something to do with promoting the Olympics. Ha.

CG wasn’t bad, but not top notch either. Think I caught an instance of them reusing a sequence (the part when the Emperor sort of has flames going through his face and regenerating that layer of stone). Speaking of stone, not to give a spoiler, but the ‘mummy’ isn’t really a mummy since the poor chap lying in the sarcophagus is a fake and the emperor turns out to be the stony friend on the chariot. And he got reanimated due to pure chance when the heroes intervened.

Goes to prove one thing, Murphy’s Laws and its corollaries are really accurate. One can trust that whatever that can screw up will screw up, and at the most inopportune moment in the worst possible way.

Take take two nice examples. Was rushing to catch the movie from school. Finally got the bus after a wait. And the bus decided to breakdown after a couple of stops.

Bought Nachos and a drink (why did they raise the price of the combo to $7!). The straw had to drop when I was trying to poke it into the drink, and into the cheese in the box of Nachos.

Murphy is indeed powerful.

Anyway back to the movie. It wasn’t great to see hordes of undead fight each other. There just isn’t that oomph since they’re already dead and there’s no harm dying again.

I suppose I’ve given plenty of spoilers. What I’d say in conclusion is that for Mummy fans, this show can be watched with an open mind. But don’t expect to be thrilled.

// Update

Saw this movie poster for Sing to the Dawn. Remembered this as the literature text studied during lower sec. Can’t really remember the story. But kind of interested in the movie, for some reason.

olympics iii

At least it should be. Am too lazy and amateurish to bother checking if this indeed is the 3rd entry to have a title obviously to do with the Games coming.

Also think that the iii is a good reference, since there are 3 articles I would like to share here.

China apologises for roughing up journalists on eve of Games

I guess the local authorities are too used to what they usually do. You can hide the ugly buildings, evict the undesirables but in the end you cannot hide one’s character or culture. Seeing that in such a refined and classy country as Stinkapore, one could still have 5 cops knocking on your hotel door should you post something deemed very undesirable in a blog, a foreign reporter who writes something unfavourable to the Chinese can probably expect a tank bashing into the hotel lobby.

Masked US cyclists apologize to Olympic organizers

Sure it’s poor form to disgrace your hosts. But to sacrifice one’s health? Or the efforts of countless years put in to achieve a gold? Not a very good trade. Particularly to a host who cannot live up to promises.

Olympics clean-up hides the real Beijing

Perhaps somehow they’ll just spirit anyone wearing masks away in some cellar, hidden from view, since anything that doesn’t seem nice has to go. Industries and construction can stop. People can stop driving. One’s livelihood can be chucked aside too. What’s the point? The moment the foreigners leave, the construction sites and all will come back in full swing in destroying the environment to make sure the next generation doesn’t live too long anyway.

I hope there isn’t anyone who can think for themselves who cannot see what’s really going on behind the Olympeeks.

1st and 2nd article: AFP shown in Yahoo News.
3rd article: AP in Yahoo News.

BBC’s being quiet. Other than the monitoring of the air quality.

SoC-style cold jokes

Okay.. Perhaps I should say ‘joke’ as in the singular.

Really feel like I’m in SoC. And it’s not like we did a lot of cheering and all the games stuff and all. But that the first lame joke I heard on the first day for Orientation was so SoC’esque.

There were one big bunch of people at the LT. More were coming in. So the guy in charge told us to compact, to not leave empty sits in between people.

Of course this being Stinkapore, the word compress was used. I would have expected squeeze, but compress was the chosen word.

And then it was suggested that Winzip™ could be used to do that.

Thankfully we weren’t in COM1. Otherwise we could seriously be seeing snow.

On a less cheerful note, orientation’s ending. Lessons are starting. Seems like CE will be full of Math. And I am a bugger who passed A Level Math with nothing less than a miracle.

firework$

This year’s NDP will have fireworks that end up showing an ‘S’ for Shine Singapore Spirit. The organisers probably forgot about the ‘11′ to form a $ in the sky instead. Watching a dollar-sign shaped firework fade off from the sky after being blown will really be apt.

And the commentators like to say things like “There they go!” when the Air Force jets fly across the venue. Perhaps they could add “along with it a lot of our tax money burnt as fuel too!”. The plumes of smoke the planes leave behind may well be the ashes of burnt notes.

Petty bean counting. What’s this insignificant expenses compared to the happiness and brainwashing our citizens get? Not only does everyone get a good chance to bond, we also get the opportunity to showcase our business talents in the sale of NDP tickets. It used to be a show of national perseverance when they had the queuing system for issuing tickets.

But how many locals will be watching? I for one won’t watch the performance part much. Every year’s a rehash of what’s done earlier, with the same old storyline of this hell hole having overcome adversities and become oh-so-great now. It’ll be more likely I’d catch a bit more of the parade segment, when I can laugh at the poor sods standing somewhat still in formation. Having gone through many parades of a slightly smaller scale I can understand it’s not great fun. But at least it’s over, and they probably burnt more weekends and wasted more time for this one parade than all those that I have done.

And I agree with one other blogger. Interesting to note that while all the spectators (well probably most of them) are showing their participation in the festivities (I never said patriotism or love for the country) by wearing red, the esteemed leaders we have chose to appear in the party uniform of sorts. A good reminder that we don’t need any other party since it is they who brought us to where we are and that so far other parties do not have talent of an equal or higher calibre.

sakana

Made use of an opportunity to cook. My mom decided to go out around lunch time and offered to buy takeaway back. Being eager as usual to mess up the kitchen I kindly declined the offer and proceeded to take some ingredients that have been sitting in the freezer for eternity.

Not really too long ago, I got frozen Alaskan pollock fillets from Fairprice in anticipation of using it someday. Better that getting the Sutchi Fillet thing that was gigantic. This is actually smaller and more manageable. Can just defrost one piece and use all of it at one go since whenever I cook it’s usually for one (and that’s me). You could signal your interest in becoming my guinea pig and I’d be glad to cook. However I must declare that this is to be done at your own risk, and no part of any subsequent medical fees will be covered.

Anyway, wanted to make a creamy pasta, but I ran out of some ingredients, and given the lack of ingredients a) I can use b) know how to use c) generally in the house, I decided to just do something like a small fish and chips without the chips, salad, mixed vegetables or whatever else that exists. I mean to say there’s only fish, with some leftover egg that was fried so as to not waste it and to make cleaning the skillet slightly easier.

Added some Cajun seasoning but in the end I couldn’t taste it. Butter was used and I tricked my mom into having a piece. Very disappointed since she did not express any revulsion at having been conned into taking butter. She just nonchalantly said she couldn’t taste any butter.

Goes to show that when I cook, whatever that does inside ends up tasteless? Maybe just the fish smell? And the garlic smell?

Boohoo.

More school activities tomorrow. Orientation stuff. Kind of interesting to have a couple of days that start at noon and last for four hours only. I guess this is the new life. No more irritating wake up disgustingly early in the morning to go to school. This semester won’t be too great though. Even though at this point of time I have been allocated 3 modules, the lecture timetable alone for these 3 gives me five day-week. Wait til I get the other two modules and tutorials and lab.

And it practically snows in SoC.

news bites

Or just my quite bites back at two pieces of trashy news. I’m so miffed I can’t even be bothered to include links.

Transport costs will increase soon. Again. SMRT and SBS Transit submitted applications for fare adjustments. Apparently even by a maximum adjustment of 3% they will still not solve the problems due to the crazy oil prices.

And it’s stale news that some cab companies have adopted the 30c diesel surcharge.

And then we’re told that increasing wages is not the solution.

Quite nice to know that we have to pay more to squeeze and shove in public transport even as we’re being priced out of private cars.

Don’t suppose we can expect the guys who will be sitting at the grand stand in NDP, having been driven there, to be over-burdened with thoughts such as these as they cheer watching our expensive military jets flying overhead, guzzling even more expensive aviation fuel.

And I nearly forgot the planes have been flying a lot during rehearsals and everything too.

And then a member of the top brass now says that Singaporeans should vote in a new party should we find the current lacking in abilities. Of course it’d be a viable action should there actually be another party who can be voted in to make changes. Probably they have problems mustering enough talented people who are not ‘narrow-minded’ to even contest a significant number of constituencies.

And it’s irritating, I only got three out of four modules I bid for during the last round of CORS. Nice to see that in education we cannot get what we get, and even there are somethings like market forces in action.