Wei Kiat's Blog

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there concludes my life as a year one student in anderson junior college, which in my opinion, is the worst jc in existence. the way students mug brainlessly there, the way teachers lavish on good food during their yearly self-improvement workshop while students had to endure rusty and shaky retort stands that can't even work well enough for an accurate physics experiment that is so crucial for our learning and a totally run down and non-air conditioned gym (unlike other jcs) that i first thought was a storeroom for old gym equipments. For example, there are only 2 threadmills in the gym, and the last time i checked, one of it is spoilt.

also concluded is the year where i can slack to my heart's content without worrying too much about my academic performance, which i totally heck care about. This is rather unbecoming of someone who scored 269 for PSLE and went into The Chinese High School. But hate it or love it, this is the way i live. There is no point studying too much when only less than 5~10% of the knowledge gained through the educational system will ever be used in our adulthood. Yes, high educational wastage might be a problem, but without teaching students such a wide field of academic subjects, how will they discover their talents? So i don't really mind the wastage problem, and it shouldn't really be a problem. I just find it annoying to study so much physics and fmaths when i'm bound to forget what i learnt when i went into NS. So i just studied enough to get by. Since this year, 2006 is a more crucial year for all of us melancholic people, i suspect i'll just study abit harder.

I used to enjoy programming as a hobby, as it provides an overwhelming sense of satisfaction when i see that from a totally blank developement workspace, i can create a feature packed application in just a few weeks. Although the debugging process was hell, the satisfaction from knowing that i've just fixed another bug is fasinating. Sadly, in this new year, programming seems more and more "inconvient" for me as i could no longer afford to spend much time on it. There is just too much work and too little time. Its an irony of education. Education is preventing myself from educating myself about things i really need to be educated about. Sigh.

With programming strictly reserved for school work and not for personal hobby, i just had to find a new hobby. And i found it through assembling gundam model kits. I had always wanted to buy some serious model assembly kits of stuffs like cars and ships ever since i played with Tamiya Mini 4-wheel when i was much younger. However, the hefty price always put me off. Yet for some reason, when poh wei's bro told me his friend was going to japan and he could get a gundam assembly kit for 30bucks less than what it cost in Singapore, i jumped at the chance. When it finally arrived, it will be my birthday present to myself.

2004 saw the purchase of my Creative MuVo Slim 256mb mp3 player, which i, along with many others who bought it, regretted totally. Within weeks after the purchase, its price dropped from 336bucks to 279, and then further to 219 when the founder of Creative declared a seemingly non-existence mp3 player war on Apple. How can it be a war, when Apple didn't even react?

The beginning of 2005 saw the purchase of a Hi-MD player, for a sky high 549bucks. People often show off their iPod because they are among those few who could afford it. Well, i bought a little known device that cost way more than a useless iPod which very few people know about, because of the charm of the MD format, the high sound quality it offers, and an escape from the vanity of the human race in buying a plain looking mp3 player that sounded more like a radio. True, at times i felt like i had made a wrong choice in purchasing the Hi-MD player, but its sound quality never ceased to amaze me everytime i plug it in. I also bought a sony in-ear phone for 80 bucks, which sounded more like a 2.1 subwoofer system rather than just a earphone. Its bass is so nice that i thought i am listening to those big tower speakers. It is that good. The only problem with it was a build issue which caused the rubber cable to sort of melt after a few months of usage. Although i'm sure i won't be buying this earphone again, it sound quality is still the best i've heard so far. I also own an Audio Technica Clip-on phone. Audio Technica was a manufacturer for professional audio devices, but had recently invaded the consumer market with its family of extremely clear earphones with weak bass. Even the design of Creative's current earphone is copied from Audio Technica. Better still, do a search for Creative's and Audio-Technica's logo on the net. You will discover that the letter "A" in Creative's logo looks extremely similar to Audio-Technica's logo. Creative is indeed anything but creative. Although my audio technica phone does not sound as "dynamic" as that of sony's, the clarity of the music makes me feel an audio equivant of looking through a prefectly flawless glass. The only setback with this is that i have to use extremely high quality music, or it will sound sucky on my earphone. ha. I've seen some guy using an audio phile headphone (those extremely big type which is suppose to produce very accurate sound) on a lowy mp3 player. I was laughing secretly in my heart, wondering how much artifacts (distortion in the music brought about by compression) he was hearing. Artifacts exists as long as you are not listening to your Audio CD. Formats like mp3, ogg, wma and atrac3plus contains lots of artifacts and i've train my ear to hear them. While most people are happy with a bitrate of 128kbps, i need at least 256kbps or 352kbps before i'll stop noticing the artifacts and start enjoying the audio. Yes, my ears are that sensitive. Of course, that is only true when using sensitive equipments. Using an iPod and its signature white earbuds, artifacts won't really be heard. This is because the earbuds and iPod are unable to produce sound accurately. Is this a good thing? No. Not being able to produce sound accurately means you are listening to more junk than how the song really sound like. Much as i hated creative, creative players sounds alot better than any model of iPod.

I also got my first real girlfriend this year, and hope that this relationship not only lasted into the 2006, but also last till the day when I've fulfilled my purpose in life and gladfully accept the return to mother nature, with molecules on my body recycled by nature's working to be put into much better use.

Poh wei gave me an idea yesterday. Perhaps i should write down a set of new year resolution which i would stick to for the rest of this year? On a second thought, no. Partly because i was too lazy to do so, and partly because i've yet to experience a year which i going to be drastically different from the previous (no more senseless studying, gianatic workload and stuffs) and hence i really don't consider 2006 a new year. It's just a slight change in the seris of number i write in the top right hand corner of my worksheets. Since its not a new year, why is there a need for a new year's resolution?

A lack of new year resolution may leave me without a guide on how to surive this nasty year, but i've always have had a something that i've always followed in my life.

Be happy. Enjoy life. While it last.