Wei Kiat's Blog

Am now very sad, I thought I can at least earn a few thousand to safe keep in my empty bank account.

But no, the meeting yesterday was a complete failure. It didn't work out at all.

Don't ask me why. I signed an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) before the meeting start, so I cannot disclose anything here.

Bad bad day. Its like i'm a rabbit and the carrot just flew away.

Woot, just received an email from some company which offered to buy over my brainchild, The Wicked. He asked me to go for a meeting tml together with other members of the board to have a discussion and negotiate the details regarding takeover price and management details.

The meeting quite near my place so will be going down tml to take a look. After all, nothing bad can come out of potential money coming down my pocket when I'm totally got no pocket money right? Hehe.

From Wikipedia

After William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone had introduced their working telegraph in 1839, the idea of a submarine line across the Atlantic Ocean began to be thought of as a possible triumph of the future. Samuel Morse proclaimed his faith in it as early as the year 1840, and in 1842 he submerged a wire, insulated with tarred hemp and india rubber, in the water of New York harbour, and telegraphed through it. The following autumn Wheatstone performed a similar experiment in Swansea bay. A good insulator to cover the wire and prevent the electric current from leaking into the water was necessary for the success of a long submarine line. India rubber had been tried by Moritz von Jacobi, the Russian electrician, as far back as 1811.

Another insulating gum which could be melted by heat and readily applied to wire made its appearance in 1842. Gutta-percha, the adhesive juice of the Isonandra Gutta tree, was introduced to Europe by William Montgomerie, a Scottish surgeon in the service of the British East India Company. Twenty years earlier he had seen whips made of it in Singapore, and he believed that it would be useful in the fabrication of surgical apparatus. Michael Faraday and Wheatstone soon discovered the merits of gutta-percha as an insulator, and in 1845 the latter suggested that it should be employed to cover the wire which was proposed to be laid from Dover to Calais. It was tried on a wire laid across the Rhine between Deutz and Cologne. In 1849 C.V. Walker, electrician to the South Eastern Railway, submerged a wire coated with it, or, as it is technically called, a gutta-percha core, along the coast off Dover.

LOL!

Long since I last write any poem...

I slept awake in darkness,
witnessing dreams of childhood.
With a loud wail time starts leaking
in a downward spiral of affection.

Laugh laugh, laughter laugh.
Days were fun and joy abundance.
Sadness rare and seldom lasting,
'cos love from the two was felt full and strong.

Tick tick, tickler tick.
Their love is dry, affection abandoned.
Laughter shortened and tears increasing.
Their parental uncaring faces.

As I sat awake in darkness,
scribbling a poem of childhood dreams...

Why is there rain outside the window?

-Wei Kiat

Blade Dancer is a highly RPG on PSP. It features Final Fantasy-like type of gameplay, with a unique item crafting system (craft your own weapons out of raw materials) where i enjoyed experimenting and creating new weapons. Also, the battle system is totally unlike other RPGs I've played. The battle is semi-real time, and the villain and you share the same mana (or Lunar Points as known in the game). This results in interesting battles where you can experiment with different ways to win over tough villains. Key dialogues in the game are also voice acted, resulting in fantastic game presentation.

Got me hooked to such an extend that I play it 4 hours per day.

I bought it together with a Blade Dancer Sound Track CD, but I haven't listen to it yet (too engrossed in the game) so its sealed.

Going for $35.

Includes
-Original Box
-Instruction Guide
-Blade Dancer UMD
-Blade Dancer Sound Track CD (sealed)

Deal in west area. Please contact via hp 81282904 or email tayweikiat@gmail.com

Syphon Filter is a highly rated shooter on PSP. I've completed it and its damn fun. Now selling it so that I can get some cash to buy other games.

Check out http://www.gamespot.com/psp/action/syphonfilter/review.html for more information.

2nd handed but in excellent condition, so going for $30.

Includes
-Original Box
-Instruction Guide
-PlayStation Underground Registration Form
-Syphon Filter UMD.

Deal in west area. Please contact via hp 81282904 or email tayweikiat@gmail.com

Helped out with house painting today. Quite fun.

Later going over to poh wei house for Unreal Tournament rematch. Hehe.

Fun day.

Read @ Yawningbread.org,

Got the following from a local PSP user group forum where they were talking about signing on in NS.

RE:My reason for not signing on....
Hi TS....
my turn to share...
1) Guardsman - didnt go for it.. coz they rejected me @ my BMT... coz they wanted the older gdsman who just ord b4 my intake. they wanted me
again when i'm about to ord... but i rejected them... coz i tink Guards Unit is too much been unappreciated(over work infantry, underpaid commandos) at all by SAF.
2) EOD - Bomb deposal squad...loved the thrill..but my mum kicked me out of the house for 3 months when she found out i was abt to go for my final "signature" contract.
3) SAF shooting contingent - 8am-5pm job to teach people how to shoot for competition. - backed out..coz after 2months of consideration.. shooting for life a bit sian for me.
4) CNB - love the thrill... wanted to be a cop for all my life.... too much movies ... my whole family came down on me hard... scare i kenna stabbed by mobs...
there i am now... 6 years after i ORD... i was lost n scare when i was abt to ord then... thinking of what kinda jobs and future do i have... academically... i'm a screw up... worse than u bro... i dun even have a Poly cert...i'm a person who tried 5 times of O levels... and still got oni merits for 5 certs to combine. neva stepped into a poly to study... oni to go TP design for the nice western food and of course to fetch my ex-gfren from there... and helping out some VSC people to do the short film and photography classes. oh yes... see biz gals too
i decided that the only way for me to survive was to sign on... looking back... i'm so glad i didn't do it...
6 years ago... i neva dream abt.. being who and where i am now...
i'm in europe for a month now... my clients are paying me quite a comfortable amount... traveling in biz/first class flights, staying in posh hotels and having posh food...(for ur info - www.spiritofdubai.ae is the project i'm working on. I'm a photographer, more pics here www.flickr.com/photos/kerpalz)
its indeed a diff life from i have in singapore. bro... there is lotsa jobs out there in and out of singapore... my advise...same as others...
if u have the passion... and super siao on abt signing on any uniform group.. do bear in mind there will be lotsa freedom gonna be cut out of ur life..
from my POV.. i think they are paying peanuts... and they demand lots from you. e.g physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Coz i seen too much of my frens, my sgts, officers who are regulars... even my family members (almost 9/10 is regulars, i'm the oni one who was not signed on from the start.) the only 2 of 9 in my family is working good in the uniform group is a non-uniform regular who is serving with drone plane unit doing survillance. she is with them for 10years.. and the other is a major with the navy but he's trying to switch to Hometeam to be a coast guard officer. the other 7... is trying ways n means to break or endure till their contract ends...
as i say b4... money u sure can earn outside... the uniform groups are not anymore a "metal ricebowl" career..anytime u screw up... they will cut u out.
try enjoy working life outside.. if u dun like singapore, go abroad...
we are asians... we are more hardworking than the "angmohs"... no offences to the hard-working angmohs...sure we can survive here or there.anywhere!
Bro... stay focus... serve ur 2 years first.. u will see whether u like it or not.. Uniform groups will alwiz keep their doors open for u... to welcome u go in.. or for kicking ur arse out...
my 2 cents...
Mr. Kerpalz
in Rome_Italy 7pm
PS: phew... thats a long one.... thanks for reading my broken england...!
i miss singapore food..!

My person take is that all those who "succeed" in life through those sort of academical "pre-planned" routes are really losers because all they can do is to do what everyone else are doing (everyone following the same route). How is one mugger different from another? There is no value that a mugger can offer back to society (other than perhaps becoming a teacher to inspire more muggers?)

However, the system in Singapore may be such that muggers are looked upon highly by misinformed governmental organisations, but I'm sure with time Singapore will mature.

And one day, perhaps, local University will speak like a foreign one.

We look for some originality (in University applications) because nine out of ten essays leave you with a big yawn. "I like science, I like to help people and that's why I want to be a doctor." The common, uninteresting, and unoriginal statement is one that recounts the applicant's academic pursuits and basically repeats what is elsewhere in the application.

What I see as the true and the only way to succeed is by offering genuine and unique value to others that can also reap profit for yourself (think founders of Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Google). Are they successful because they study more books or get more certificates than other people? No, they are successful because they are able to offer value. And value is something that muggers can never offer. What can a mugger offer that a textbook in the bookshop can't offer?

And likewise, value is something that Anderson Junior College can never really offer to any of its students.

Singapore as it is right now is,

Mugging Schools, Mugging Nation.

I, Tay Wei Kiat wishes all my fellow readers a Merry Christmas!



Now to get on with Gunz with my friend who finally get to book out of NS today.

Read here.

Got this from BloggerCL.

Note that the above image, along with the 4 horizontal chinese words underneath were actual packaging and not photoshopped in any way.

We were having lunch. Having lunch around the coffee table, while my TV addict family members enjoy their TV show. Smiling, laughing, making pointless comments about the show when the actors or hosts on the show couldn't even hear them.

I never even bother to glance up. I ate and ate.

Father finished his food, and there sat his empty bowl on the table, while he leaned back to enjoy the show, wearing a silly grin on his face.

A sudden burst of laughter burst out from around me. My sister laughed and slap her thighs. Mother gave that weird sounding laughter of hers.

Soon, she finished her food, and pushed her empty bowl to where father's empty bowl sat. "Wash, she said."

Father made no response as he continue gluing his eyes to the goggle box.

I finished my food. I seized the opportunity and pushed my empty bowl to beside father's. "Thank you," I said.

Mother and father turned around and glared at me. "OK! YOU! GO WASH!" they exclaimed, seemingly able to read each others' mind.

Walao.

An hour later, sister exclaimed, "Papa help me buy tissue!"

Father promptly went to the shop and got it for her.

Sigh.

I returned the my first PicooZ (very hard to control and crazy amount of lift until i balance it with my mod) after the tail rotor refuse to spin on its forth flight. I was given a replacement plane, but this one came with lousy lift and it only flies in the air for 1~2minutes and then hover a few cm off the ground, unwilling to reach for the sky any longer.

I feel like going down and getting one more replacement, but that way super thick skin leh?

Should I do it? I would rather have a PicooZ that performs identical to my first, which with a little bit of scotch tape, I manage make it zip around my room like a charm.

Nabei. Terrible QC there. My Twin-X plane from the same company (Silverit) has no such problem.

Now I am resorting to bending the main rotor blades to get more lift.

While people in USA can buy 3 or 5 PicooZs, test them all out and return those that do not perform up to par, Singapore's return policy ain't that good, and if you are suay (like me), you are suay.

But, PicooZ is still a fantastic product, and is well loved by pets. Don't believe me? Check out this video!

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 treadmills 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 development 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 fascinating. 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 perfectly 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, gigantic 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.

With that large chunk of text, I welcomed the whole new year, the year 2006 to come.

And it came at me with so much force and irregularities that I found myself choking under pressure.

And the first sign of things to come came quite simply. It was in a form of a badly planned timetable.

Poor time table planning has always plagued the entire AJC student population. With long days and irregularly spaced out breaks, one has to have a strong stomach in order to survive. You can enjoy a day with breaks scattered equally throughout the day, or a day with your break and lunch with only 1hr in between. Of course, nothing beats having a break at 8.45am and having nothing to eat till school dismisses at 2.30pm. Recently, in order to cater for the interest for the students, the school shorten all periods to half an hour, instead of 45minutes. This is a great news, if not for the fact that all lessons now occupies at least 2period slots, making lessons to be one hour. In fact, students cheering over the shorten time table will be interested to discover that our breaks has shortened from 45min to half an hour, the only single period "lesson" we have in a day.

You, my reader, should find it unbelievable than when the "shortening" of each period to 30 minutes was announced, enormous cheer and applause actually spread through the AJ Square when this change was first made known. Lessons now occupies 2 periods (1hour) while breaks remain at 1 period (30minutes). Lessons were lengthened and breaks were shortened. Are AJCians so mug-minded that they simply love having more and more lessons? Or are the students so dumb and the school so smart at deceiving students? I have no freaking idea, except for the fact that such an evil move that threatened my ability to slack was greeted with great enthusiasm from the school population.

A new principal came to AJC, and I looked up upon her with great respect, hoping for great changes and improvements to the school. But, guess her opening words? "Challenge yourself as students of AJC." Damn, I felt very challenged having survived for one year already. So there's another year of challenges ahead? Damn, damn, damn! Those were the thoughts that echoed in my head when the sound wave carrying her very words tapped against my ear gently.

The CCA carnival looms ahead and every details of planning went smoothly behind schedule due to the lack of leadership shown by our leader, Vinoth. There were so many problems and me and Darren worked very hard inorder to savage the situation. The following was an email by Darren sent to everyone after the carnival was over. Try reading in between the lines.

Dear All,
Many thanks to the dedicated people who ran the show and the efforts must be commended despite the unfavorable review. After reading through what was in the report, I must say that improvements must be made especially the issue about gaming policy, though that may be a bold statement for one who was not present at the carnival. The issue of gaming has always been a thorn in our side given strict yet poorly defined school guidelines on the subject, so perhaps we can get much more clarification for this matter. Other than that i guess the other glitches aren't really that serious and can be corrected with sufficient and effective planning. It is in fact a beneficial thing for us that things have gone bad even if that might sound twisted. We have ample lessons to draw from this carnival and there is enough time to rectify them. Perhaps for subsequent club meetings, we can stay behind for a little while to spend constructive time (30 effective minutes) in planning our publicity strategy and drafting of manpower. The alleged part of the council screwing up some of our plans, well, i guess we have to work around it. Take heart everyone, for this is but the first intake when not much is yet set in stone, so let us work together for the second intake and produce better results for our club. Once again, kudos to the club members who put in great effort for the carnival.
Darren

And just one day after Darren sent that email, I received a notification from AJC that I'm among the top 20% of the college. I'm in the Alpha List of AJC. Alpha List in AJC is a kind of group that does nothing but boast your ego and allows teachers to volunteer you for stuffs. This is unlike Alpha List in the top 5 JCs (AJC is ranked 6th) where the students in the Alpha List were regularly bombarded by letters of invitations for scholarships and interviews so much that some actually modified their mail boxes to automatically dump every mails they get into the thrash bin near-by. No. I was kidding on that one.

Anyway, what amazed me was that I slacked for an entire year of 2005, and scored a pathetic score of A for Computing, B for Physics, and O (fail) for both my maths. Strangely, this qualified me as top 20% in AJC. This led me to seriously wonder what those self-proclaimed muggers are doing. Is doing each tutorial twice not enough for them? (Just for the record I don't do tutorials.)

An interesting aspect of AJC also showed itself during about that time, and that was SDL (Self Directed Learning).

 

In line with the "Teach less, learn more" slogan that MOE has recently adapted in place of the long forgotten and silently abandoned "Thinking schools, learning nation" that had disappeared into the dark abyss over the years, ABC Junior College has embraced the idea of SDL with so much enthusiasm that everything the teachers refused to teach was classified as SDL. My previous experiences with the concept of SDL were good ones, but ABC Junior College just has to come along and screw that novel idea up completely. SDL were conducted in CHS, but teachers would still go through homework of SDL topics and clarify any of your doubts, schools like RGS allocated one whole week where student stay at home and do their own learning at home through online resources given by the school. ABC Junior College has none of this. When asked anything about "Power Series", our latest SDL topic, teachers would say that this is SDL and we are suppose to find out the answer to the question we post to the teacher ourselves. Teacher's didn't even go through the tutorial, and tutorial for the next topic was due on the eve of the Power Series test. Is this just an innocent SDL being conducted, or irresponsibility on the teachers' part? What a wonderful way to mess up the students, and turning holistic education into holy shit education, directly destroying MOE's attempt to help and nuture students.

While schools like RJC have time table that ends early everyday so that students can go home and study at their own pace, we were forced to do SDL with practically no time to do so. The GP department asks us to read newspapers everyday, but properly reading a newspaper would take around an hour, and that lenght of time is a luxury we couldn't afford. Basically the school just took up most of day and the amount of rubbish we had to do will take us well into the night. Everyday we have to attend school until in the evening, leaving us with only 2~5 hours to do work before we sleep a miserable 5~7 hours and wake up to go to school again the next day. 2~5 hours is highly insufficient properly read newspaper, do homework for 3 subjects and study for a test in the next day if any. Our new prinicpal had stressed that education is about the student, the school and teachers exist because of students, but the welfare of students, in my opinion, is rather neglected. Especially in ABC Junior College where virtually anyone i asked regretted coming to.

In the above, ABC Junior College refers to Anderson Junior College.

I find it strange that AJC's teaching model mainly teaching students the fact that they can teach themselves. Also, lectures and tutorials sessions were so badly conducted in AJC. At the beginning of each topic, lecturers would often take their own sweet time going through simple retarded stuffs (Guys, if you want to know what is 5 times 5, you can press 5, then X, then 5, then = on your calculator) about that topic. And when it was time to go on to harder stuffs about those topics, lecturers ran out of time and just rush through (you see this? Once you see this do this and this. Don't ask me why! I no time to explain. Later ask your own classmate or borrow the textbook from library to read) the rest of the more complex stuffs with perfect disregard as to whether anyone learnt anything or not.

It was just only the first month of the year, but I was already so disillusioned with the monotony and bad learning environment, coupled with the society's blind pursue of academic excellence, that I wrote the following prose.

 

The train left a station specially designed for it and continued on its never ending cycle of wearing out its wheels by running at high speed. It sped past sceneries without bothering to give its occupants so much as a look at it, making its crystal clear windows redundant and something not to peer out off. Any attempt to peer out of it will only make anyone stupid enough to do it even more dizzy.

Instead, be wiser. The same scenery rush past you twice everyday, once towards you and once away from you. There is no point watching it as it pant and wheeze past, while you sit there comfortably listening to your iPod, which you have recently purchase due to its popularity by being the most wanted product in the market and also its easy availability in the second hand market. In fact everything is so peaceful around you that you hardly notice that you are the one moving, not the trees and the buildings. Of course, the pretty girl sitting opposite you is worth a look, but it won't be much help if you are also a girl. Anyway, you started to get uninterested in anything, and you yawned.

A particular effect happened. Since yawning is contagious, the person sitting or standing next to you yawn as well, causing the person sitting or standing next to the person sitting or standing next to you yawn as well. Congratulations! You have successfully triggered a "yawning" wave down the length of the mrt train. Feeling a pang of guilt in triggering this chain effect, you begin to take a closer look at those around you. Most have thick eye bags, many with eyes that are living tributes to the bamboo eating animals that World Wildlife Foundation is trying very hard to save. Most of those people around you also appear to be sleeping, unless they are standing. Closed eyes, shaggy eyes, red eyes, sad eyes, depressed eyes, all kinds of eyes around you. Certainly much more than the variety of fish in a supermarket. You begin to wonder if a nation where everyone on an MRT train look overworked and sleepy is a healthy one. Then your brain wonder off into dreamland where you connect up with those on the same train as you, exploring fantasy worlds and whispering unknown secrets in your sleep.

You awoke with a jolt. Not again. That irritating lady over the speakers had just woke you. Time to alight and get on to school, where fun and enjoyment which are strictly reserved for everyone other than the students starts. Any thought about the ills of the society and how to improve it got buried under a list of maths homework to be done and physics test to study for. Your life is rendered completely meaningless. But fret not. As you look around you, you discovered that you have something in common with the sleepy heads and muggers around you. You slowly become one of them.

Then, 1 week later, I wrote a blog entry that practically exposed the scandalest nature of AJC, and Sexuality Workshops conducted in schools all over Singapore. It was regarding a 4 hour Sexuality Talk Workshop conducted in AJC that was obvious religious in nature, preaching students with different religious background with 1 set of catholic believes and teaching, while AJC tries its best to cover up. Read about it here.

My blog was quoted without my knowledge in the newspaper, and it caused some negative backlash towards the ProLife group which conducted the workshop, and also AJC which in an earlier interview with Channel News Asia actually said that sex talk in AJC was about "touching the values of students".

In an email exchange between me and the Vice Principal of AJC, she said:

 The public will still focus on the
college and question  the college why was this vendor chosen as if we are
not able to make a good decision and have done something wrong to our
students (because you all don't benefit from the programme) .  They did not
question other JCs but unfortunately AJC became the centre of focus.

and also

 Remember the Sexuality Education issues , even if more than
90% of our students found the session useful and they have no issues, but
because of the complaints that was posted on the blog (I believe you have
contributed to the blog), it has aroused so much publicity on the presss
with the public giving their comments and questioning the college.  It was
also mentioned by the MOE officials during meetings etc.  It has created
quite a negative impact on the college and the school leaders.  Ms Leong
has already shared with you all so please don't under-estimate the negative
impact your blog could create.  We can focus our energy and spend time on
more meaningful things than to answer to the press.

I've bolded 3 lines above. The first line seemed to imply that her opinion of the matter was that AJC "suay suay" kana this problem, while other colleges were able to "get away" with it.

I also suspect that the feedback they gathered was so because the non-secular nature of the talk was never mentioned, and many AJCians walked away thinking that the workshop is "right" and that is how things are, without knowing that what they had attended was actually preaching of catholic believes. (Catholic students would have notice it no doubt, but this session is of course useful to them!) I myself also notice that the talk was religious only with hindsight (realize it on my way home on the MRT), while the feedback form was given right after the talk. How many AJCians will notice something wrong with that talk? The talk was very well conducted and neatly packaged. The problem is with the religious content. The real question that should be asked is the reliability of the talk, not the usefulness of it.

Finally, the last bolded statement was very interesting. This is because AJC had previously talked to the press about how good their Sexuality education programmes are, and now the skeleton in the closet surfaced, VP Tay wanted to just hide from the press and focus the energy somewhere else.

I think this entry must be one of the longest I've written so far. Shall stop now. Stay tuned for part 2. So far this entry only talked about the first month in 2006. And so much had happened.

Also, grammar and spelling had been dutiful ignored in this blog entry (the same also applies for all my blog entries actually) to allow me to blog faster and think more.

Can't resist it any longer, I loaded up the remote control with 6 AAs lying around the house and started charging. Charging takes around 20 minute. So I had a long wait.

The first flight was a disaster. It kept spining on the spot and was very hard to steer and control. I was impossible to make it fly forward. It lasted about 5 minutes before the battery gave up. Following the advise on forums, in order to prolong to battery life (get more flight time), I ran it the heli till the auto battery cut-off mechanism cuts in, and switch off the heli automatically to prevent me from completely draining the battery (and causing harm to the battery.)

Then I let it sit on the sofa for 15 minutes before I begin charging again. Indeed, the second flight time was slightly longer.

Also, I added tapes to the nose of the helicopter as shown below.

It was done to "catch" some of the downward wind due to the main rotors, thus pushing the front of the helicopter downwards, making it tilt at an angle automatically. Titling at the angle allows the helicopter to direct some of the downthrust backwards, allowing it to fly forward. (Learnt about forces acting on an helicopter during a Physics of Flight workshop conducted at Hwa Chong Insitution when I was in Chinese High.)

Now I had a heli that constantly flies forward slowly after take off, making it possible to carefully steer the thing around my smallish bedroom, landing it anywhere I want. Careful and gentle adjustments to the throttle is key.

Now charging it for the third flight.

I know I have thanked you many times, but still, thank you, the particular blog reader for such a wonderful Christmas present!

In response to the Ministry of Home Affair’s (MHA) statement (ST, 2 Dec 2006), allow me to state what really took place during my recent imprisonment at the Queenstown Remand Prison from 23 Nov-16 Dec 2006.
When I consumed my meals on the first two days of my jail term, I experienced acute nausea, dizziness and extreme distortion of my auditory senses. Sounds like the jangling of keys or my cell-mates urinating in the latrine became unbearably loud.
When I subsequently skipped a couple of meals, these symptoms did not occur. When I resumed eating, the negative effects re-appeared. This made me rather suspicious and nervous.
Food tray marked
My suspicion was heightened when I noticed that my food tray was marked with the letter ‘S’. Those of my two other cell-mates were not so marked. I then compared the contents of my rations with theirs and found that the servings were similar.
I subsequently found out from my wife that when she asked a Mr Chandra Kumar, who would only identify himself as a “prison officer” from the MHA, he categorically denied that prisoners’ food trays were marked.
I then decided to stop eating whereupon the symptoms I described earlier went away. I told the prison authorities, including the doctor, about the matter and said that I wanted to see my wife.
After a few days without my eating, the doctor said that he wanted to run some tests to check on my health. I consented to giving him urine samples but indicated that I did not want any invasive procedures to be conducted, including extracting blood samples.
Given what I had just experienced, I did not want the prison authorities inserting anything into me such as pricking my finger for blood-sugar tests, taking blood samples, or putting me on intravenous drips.
I repeated that I wanted to see my wife first (to seek independent opinion) before I gave consent to such invasive procedures, however minor they were. Given the circumstances, I had to be extra cautious.
I, however, continued to give urine specimens and allowed my blood pressure to be monitored.
The prison authorities remained intransigent for an entire week until Sunday, 3 Dec when the doctor decided to admit me to Changi General Hospital (CGH) because my blood pressure had begun to fall and traces of blood continued to be present in my urine.
The following morning on 4 Dec, I again indicated to the doctors at CGH that given the situation, I wanted to see my wife first before I agreed to any invasive procedure to be done. But I did not object to X-rays and CT-scans being conducted on me.
When the authorities finally allowed my wife and sister, Chee Siok Chin, to visit me at CGH that morning, I felt more at ease and subsequently consumed the hospital food and allowed my blood to be drawn for tests.
I was informed that all the tests and consultations showed that there was nothing inherently wrong with me that caused me to refuse to eat the prison food or to experience the symptoms when I ate it. Which brings me back to the question: What caused my symptoms when I first ate the prison food?
Sleep deprivation tactics?
When I was subsequently discharged and transferred back to prison on Thursday, 7 Dec, it was already dinner time. When the food trays were brought in, I was told to choose one out of the three (the marking was no longer there).
I did not want to eat the dinner partly because I had an aversion to the food and partly because I had had a late meal at the hospital just before I was brought back to prison.
The prison official in charge gave me five minutes to start eating failing which my family visit, yard time, and consultations with my lawyer would be canceled. When I did not comply, I was taken back to my cell.
The books that I had taken with me to the hospital and brought back were then taken from me. When I asked for them, I was told that they were undergoing “censoring”. I told the officials that they were the same books I had with me since the first day of my imprisonment and asked why they were being censored only now. I received no explanation. The books were only gradually returned to me the following day.
That night the light in my cell was left on the entire night and morning which made sleep impossible. This went on for the remaining nine days of my imprisonment. I told the prison doctor and psychiatrist that the refusal to turn off the lights at night was affecting my ability to rest and sleep and this, in turn, affected my health adding to my inability to eat during the day. Obviously, this fell on deaf ears.
I nevertheless tried to eat as much as possible, usually managing a few mouthfuls, just so that I would not be accused of deliberately refusing to eat. Because of the sleep deprivation, I was not able to gain back the weight I had lost (about 5 kg) when I refused to eat the food during the first week of my incarceration.
Lastly, my lawyer, my family members and I have repeatedly asked for a complete set of my medical test results to be given to us. To date, after more than a week, we still have not received it.
Given what I have just revealed, it is imperative that the Government answer the following questions:
1. Why was my food tray marked ‘S’ when others’ were not?
2. Why were my books taken away from me when I returned to the prison from the hospital?
3. Why was the light in my cell left on throughout the night thus depriving me of sleep?

Should we believe him or not?

There are a few possible scenarios.

1) Someone really want Chee to look like a nut, making him suspicious of prison food etc, by doing unbelievable things such as making the S mark, and giving mild amount of illegal drugs. Once Chee make a fuss about all these, the media then can make use of this to project Chee as a lunatic, like all other news articles about him. Medical report may be withheld to hide the fact that Chee was given drugs. In this case Chee had stupidly fallen into the trap.

2) Chee is really mad, and is making a mountain out of mole hill. Seriously, you are a prisoner, you are not really entitled to much welfare. Who cares if you can sleep well or not! You should stay awake and reflect on your sins (speaking in public places). Sleep is too good for you! In this case Chee is really just a nutcase.

3) Someone want to get rid of Chee. But Chee is too clever and spotted all the tell tale signs.

In any case, it ultimates reflects badly upon Chee in whatever fuss he kicked up. This is because channel 8 is not SDP video podcast, and The Straits Times is not SDP Times. Whatever that means.

If I'm Chee I'll become an actor or a variety show host so that I can public speak all I want. Hehe.

This is one of the best (although somewhat confusing at times that I had to refer to online walkthrough to know where to go next) game on my PSP that I've played. Its a role-playing-game.

The battle system rocks. The crafting system rocks. The graphics rocks. But, because it is only possible to control character movement via the analogue plate on the PSP, my thumb cramps up badly as if on reflex everytime I pick up my PSP.

Now all my characters are at level 27. The game should complete when I am around 50+ levels, meaning there are around 2/5 of the game left to play.

Uh hoo! After that will be another round of trying to sell my PSP UMD, and then buying a new second hand one.

After a long afternoon of wait, finally got the shopping vouchers at Taka from my fellow blog reader!

The courier guy arrived holding a dripping wet umbrella, with a slightly damp huge envelope, and in it lies a small Taka bag, in which lies a small gift envelope, where I finally discover the two $20 vouchers. Yeah!

Will be using it to get PicooZ at the Toy Fair there tomorrow during my girlfriend's lunch break (she work at orchard). Will possibly get blue color, and going to do some slide modding to its nose to get it fly forward faster as recommended on the RC forum.

Whipee!

Looking forward to hours of indoor fun!

Oh, guess my excitement when i received the following email:

Hi Weikiat

I am just someone enjoy reading your blog.  If you don't mind, may I send you shopping voucher for your Picoo-Z as a X'mas present.

Warmest regards
XX

P.S. Please give me your postal address so that I could courier it to you if you do not mind.

Yeah! Finally get to own my own Picoo-Z soon. Had always been interested in miniature RCs, bought Bit Char-G (very small r/c cars), Sliverlit Twin-X (small cheap r/c plane) and now am getting a helicopter!

Whee!

PicooZ and Twin-X are both made by Silverit, and i suspect contain very similar electronics. Both retail for the same price.

My Twin-X is just too much of a hassle to fly. My HDB house is too small, and when I flew it outdoor, its light body and the typical wind blew the plane all over the place, making steering obsolete. It almost crash onto the LRT track and also got stuck on a small tree (I spent half an hour to shake it down, almost in desperation).

Now a generous reader is giving me a PicooZ for Christmas! Have done tonnes of research, and it is really suitable for indoor flight (provided the fan is not on) and being a helicopter, you don't really need alot of room to fly it in.

Went over to http://www.rcgroups.com/forums to do some research on my christmas present, and discovered that it is as rare as gem in countries like the USA because of very high demand. It retail for USD30 to 50 there too! Us Singaporeans are getting a wonderful bargain at $39.90 and stock are plentiful!

Also, Alex on that forum claims to be the guy who actually designed PicooZ. While I'm not sure about that, he certainly did make lots of tutorials teaching people how to improve the performance of their helis. Shall try them out when I get mine.

Let me end of this post by thanking the person (who declined to be named) for her generosity. All can look forward to photos of my PicooZ when I do get it!

Had an online meeting yesterday with the rest of the group for this project under iFoundries mentorship and government funding.

The nature of ARGs allow me to put my puzzle creating experience (not skills) gained by putting my heart and soul in The Wicked into good use.

We are now looking at launching a pilot project, and am looking for partial/full sponsors for this new form of media

I cannot talk too much about this project or what ARGH will be doing here, as it is a rather new way of doing things in Singapore.

However, anyone interested to know the details, can email Hong Jun at hongjun.wang (gmail).

Finally, my girlfriend has a day off today and I'm going out with her.

But!

(Stares stupidly at the $6 left in my drawer.)

Oh yeah, I put up the Original PSP Games for sale at yahoo auction under my aunt's account liao. It is here. Can't seem to locate the page for the other game I put up though. Will check again.

Ok, thats it for today.

The Digital Age began when digital computers and related technologies were developed, in the second-half of the 20th Century.

The present age is variously known as the Digital Age, the Wireless Age and the Information Age.

The Digital Age is such a powerful phrase that inherits so many meanings and implications for mankind, that I've decided to make a song about it.

Inspired by Mr Brown's Harmless Podcast, and techno piece Smoke Machine, I present:

Digital Age

Installing Diablo 2 LOD now, a 5 year old game to play with my few remaining friends who had not yet entered the process of turning into "men". My Gunz mate was enlisted at 10am today, so no more late night gaming for me anymore.

Getting a new PSP RPG tml, and waiting for my aunt to return to Singapore tml to use her Yahoo Auction account to sell one of my psp game.

Money has blurry existence nowadays, and I couldn't even afford Picoo-Z (R/C helicopter mentioned on Mr Brown's blog one day after I saw it at Suntec and felt like buying it). Can someone please donate it to me? I can't afford the $39.90.

Currently no job and no pocket money, but just received an email from Chinese High the other day about going back to teach basic html. Told the teacher that I will be enlisted in March, so she had to go and check with another person to see if they can use me.

Also there's a project doing alternate reality game under iFoundries under government funding, which may or may not happen. All is still in the initial considering phase.

Watching Naruto (super dragging to keep me occupied), and playing Ridge Racer, Burnout Legends, all on my PSP.

Played with Audacity, an opensource sound editor just now and had fun creating a new song similar to Mr Brown's Harmless Podcast based on LHL speech. Will upload soon.

My girlfriend got a job at Mango, and worked like a horse for 6.50 bucks per hour. Her feet suffered greatly with blisters, bruises and all that due to bad shoe and excessive walking/standing. My heart goes out to her.

Met up with her during her dinner break today. Had a mini arguement but was soon resolved. My girlfriend missed me dearly and pained my heart. I wonder what will happen to her when i go for NS. I don't want her to cry in bed every night, pining for me.

Going to play D2 LOD liao. Sotong, whose enlistment date is a month later than mine, is waiting for me.

NS had started its enlistment "drive", and it saddened me to see that slowly but surely, my males friends were all starting to disappear from my life.

The number of male contacts online in my MSN Messenger contact list had been dwindling ever since Prom night.

As my enlistment is set in March next year, I am among the last to be enlisted.

The feeling is akin to growing old and seeing my friends pass away around me. I am the last to die, but the feeling of loneliness can only grow and peak on the day when it was my turn to die.

We all know about the cow examples when learning about political systems (capitalism, communism, socialism etc).

Let me apply it on government's stand towards blogging.

I say that all cows sucks, and then try to genetically create my own.

You look at website 1 and 2. Now tell me if you felt like going the educational institution (or rather, something that tries to be an educational institution) which the websites belongs to.

Contrast with 3.

What does it tell you about school 1 and 2?

 
 
 
  

 

I just came back from Genting. Thanks to Kinghuang and Poh Wei for covering me while my blog went under sttack from a certain ninja. 

Since we have an organiser of the AJC DnD 2006 paying respect to my blog, here are some of the issues put in digestible chunks.

1) Organiser claim since my ticket is a resale ticket, therefore I had no rights to chose a seat. BUT, resale of Prom tickets is damn common, just in my class of 17 who went for the Prom there were 2 who bought resale tickets. In my girlfriend's class there were 2 who sold off their ticket too. If people had actually sticked with the seating arrangement that Organiser had planned, there would be > 20 people affected. So tell me this is a miscount on Organiser's part, of people don't give a damn about the Organiser, and hence solving Organiser's own problem.

2) Instead of having so many lucky draws, just have a few and serve out the real prizes. I'm sure it would remove the impression in outsiders' mind (the Hotel employees and the external Band present) that AJC is a cheapskate school. Also, giving people paper fan sounded DAMN sincere. Really.

3) Dress code Retro? Did you went to count how many followed that dress code? It would be nice for a change for people to respect the Organiser, or for the Organiser to actually know how people think and learn how to really organise.

4) External band performance after Prom? How about serving food after the Prom activity ended for next year's AJC DnD? I'm sure it would show even more creativity on AJC's part.

5) Very low ticket cost. AJC's DnD ticket cost is actually one of the lowest among the JCs in Singapore. But of course, while people pay 80 for 9 course meal and a higher class hotel, we paid 60 for 7 course meal and a lower class hotel. Go figure.

6) Maybe we can have something like this for a change?

7) After the initial seating, it is possible to enter the ballroom and join in the fun without any tickets. A few people who sold their tickets suddenly discover that they can make it to Prom, and did just that.

8) Getting our own Rojak band to play 4 songs in an overkill, especially when external band is hired, and our own band is really of a very low standard. Do they know the difference between high and low volume? Or just full blast all the way? Did you see the look on everybody's face when Ecstasy played on and on and on...?

9) This thing is called Dinner and Dance. But excuse me? Where is the dance? Only those by the Dance Society? Hey, so I attended Dinner and Dance, and there's only Dance. Refund me 50% of the ticket! At least go ahead and call it Prom or something. Or learn from HCI, where is is called Enchante.

10) Only 20 people not sitting with their classes? Oh well, count the number of tables containing more than 1 classes. The number is so high, other JC's Prom night must have hide away in disgrace.

Oh well... Forget this entry all together.

AJC Prom 2006 is a success, because it sticked with the plan, no matter how bad the planning was. And that is an achievement to be proud of.

Whee. I'm so proud of AJC.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

 

Last but not least, the most respectable person in AJC, our principal, appeared and said some words too, although why she did not address us personally when she was present at the Prom was a mystery everyone overlooked. Maybe she was too shy? Maybe she scare someone throw food at her? (There were plenty of food around.)