offside

Picture by Mike D'Angelo on flickr

There is this footballing adage:

You can’t win without scoring. You can’t lose without conceding.

Kind of applies to many other things too.

bus fuss and train pain

This has been an entry waiting to be written for a while. The links to the articles have been stored for a while. Decided to just write and get them off my Read Later list.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/cna/20091026/tap-766-lta-poll-shows-fewer-people-publ-231650b.html

Apparently a recent survey has found that the public transport share has shrunk.  Which suggests that more people drive. And of course the authorities don’t like that. Roads are meant to be clear for businesses and rich people.

How about an alternative explanation. The respondents this round could be a richer bunch, or the people who are poor (and hence take public transport) aren’t free enough to respond, because they are juggling 2 jobs, and spending 3 hrs each day on the road jammed in a bus.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/cna/20091102/tap-247-steep-drop-number-offenders-caug-231650b.html

So here we have a report on eating and drinking on the train offenses dropping. Well, good job SMRT, you’re closer to having your first hospital case from some elderly person dehydrating and fainting. They’ll just say they have mentioned that special accommodations could be made, and that a person with special needs can just talk to the station staff before hand.

I get the feeling that some people would rather suffer than to go through the trouble.

Never mind. We can just spend two hours jammed in the train, melting in the stuffiness and enjoying the olfatory feast, unable to drink or to have a mint in the mouth. Wait, they said they’ll do the enforcement during off peak hours. It’s not like you could even walk half a step in a packed train. So that’s a chance to sneak a drink right?

Except that it’s near impossible to even half raise your arm.

This is why I rush home after lessons on certain days, and hang around on others.

I know how S’poreans feel

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/cna/20091107/tap-677-new-immigrants-help-sustain-enri-231650b.html

Just an unenlightened, uncooperative, lazy, xenophobic Singaporean having some questions here:

Have you tried to take public transport during rush hour traffic these days?

Have you tried to buy a flat with a household combined salary of less than 10k a month these days?

Are you studying in a government university these days?

Are you out of a job and looking for one these days?

Heck, is your job even threatened these days?

Have you had to pay hospital bills these days?

Or how about waiting for your turn to see a doctor at a polyclinic?

=-=-=-=-=

Maybe being a student, I can’t comment that much. But how about something that is something I personally experience. Come to school and take a look at the proportion of locals to FTs. Staff, students, janitors, canteen workers.. It doesn’t look nice.

And the FTs are just around to make us feel like crappe. Sure the aim is to make us work harder, give us a more competitive environment or we’d stagnate. But from what I’ve heard, apparently an FT was commenting to his fellow national, “新加坡人是拿来垫底的”, roughly translated to Singaporeans are just there to be bottom ranking makeweights. And overhearing a comment that goes “the A’s are not meant for us. They’re for the FT’s” is not uncommon.

And we have parents complaining their kids having overly difficult PSLE papers such that they won’t be able to score brilliantly (i.e. full marks, A*) and that will cause them to lose interest in a subject. Adult undergraduates I suppose are expected to just go on and “suck thumb” at not getting brilliant results for their efforts.

Neh, we don’t deserve brilliant marks. We’re simply just inferior.

Even if the FTs just mess up our projects, refuse to turn up for group presentation/demos.

from a cup of java to java code

I had two cups today in fact.

Probably a record low.

And what did it produce? My first Java program, and loads of piss.

506 lines of code took slightly more than 12 hours’ of effort. Works out to be 42 lines an hour, and less than 1 a minute. Sounds like a fairly expensive program.

And it’s not even bug free.

small grouses

to hide the big ones. But I’m not going to talk about those.

Am feeling particularly anti-FT for the moment. Or anti-suddenly-chup-into-your-project-group sort of people.

Let’s see. One guy just decided to disappear from the group presentation.

The other is even more amazing. For weeks he raised no issues with the basis on which the project is proceeding, something which was collectively decided upon during the first meeting. Many email updates have been going back and forth during these weeks. And 2 days before the report submission he suggests big changes which don’t sound right. And I get the feeling he was looking at the project for the first time.

Another one of them almost joined this group of buggers, emailing me days before our presentation wondering if he could join because he didn’t have a group. It was week 10. I didn’t ask why he wasn’t without a group. But I just gave some excuses and rejected. Maybe he did have a good reason to be groupless at this stage. But we were almost done, and it wouldn’t be fair to let someone join in so late. If he did have reasons for being unable to get a group, surely it can be negotiated with the lecturers. Otherwise it would mean he left it late, and it’s just too bad.

End of school grouses. Continuing to other stuff.

Spurs lost to that French team. 3-0 to boot. IRRITATING.

Stupidly got a copy of Football Manager 2010. I see the likelihood of feeling hardworking suddenly and mugging just dwindled further.

Haven’t been running lately. And taking a bit more junk food these days to stay sane too. Sheets.

And on this topic. A month or so back, I bought a can of Pringles chips. Seaweed flavoured. It’s not really nice, but that’s not the point. It says Jumbo can, supposedly extra 15 or 40%. Whatever the figure, it turns out they were referring to the air content probably. Because upon tearing off the seal, I found the first piece two inches in. Two whole inches.

And my Wii just seems so interesting these days. Thanks to a couple of games bought in Johor for 5 ringgit.

Oh my books are going to miss me. Wait, they never really knew me before to begin with.

weird news

Just a quickie before I go for lab.

Weird news abound. Some 112 year old Somali marries a 17 year old girl. His age is 6.59 times the bride’s.

And talk about expansion. Now Wal-Mart sells coffins too.

 

vroom

Increasingly I find myself egging on the approaching cars to speed up while I’m crossing the road and hit me. Then I feel disappointed when they slow down and stop.

what was i trying to prove

and what was actually proven

moixa

There are some truths in this world we should never forget.

You can only be betrayed by someone you trust.

and today this happened

MS Paint really rocks