qing ming

The morning was chilly. I crawled out of bed and floated towards the bathroom; my feet barely touching the cold marble floor. I switched on the lights and looked into the mirror. good lord! Better shave and clean up so that I would not scare anyone at the cemetery later. Late nights do wonders to your eyes. Should I put one some male eyeliner to cover the eye bags? After adam lambert broke into the music scene, there is nothing embarrassing about a guy putting on make up anymore. I toyed with the idea for a while before dropping it. No matching tones to go with my white shirt.

My memory drew a black for what happened between here and arriving at the cemetery. Probably I fell asleep. I got off the car into the semi darkness. A dormitory stood half a mile away from the burial plots. Didn't remember it being there a few years back. What a place to house foreign workers. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw a few families spread out across the whole of Block 13. ah, its the time of the year where dead people grant living beings the right to walk around in pajamas. Why can't people put in a little more effort to dress up a bit?

There's not much cleaning to do. The tomb was well kept by the attendant. Within a short moment, we were already tucking into our breakfast. I hung around and chatted with my cousins whom I have not seen for years. Blue uniforms seems to run in our family. My dad and uncles were police NSFs. My sis and I were from NPCC. Now I have 2 cousins in it too. Our cue to leave came, when the morning sun rose above the horizon.

It was a beautiful sunrise. I'm gg to bed now.

Kakorrhaphiophobia

Here is a new word i have learnt today. Kakorrhaphiophobia which means a fear of failure or defeat. Which brings me to my personal fear hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.

hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia - a fear of long words. aww man!?!? seriously.

googled

I just checked my Google Wave account. After all the hype, its pretty disappointing to see it lying inactive for months. A few new contacts added me to their list; other than that there were no new messages. From my experience, even the later released Buzz is faring better. Are my friends not tech savvy or do I not have a lot of friends? Sorry. At you guys' expense, I decided not to entertain the second thought. hur.

Alright. Got to get the morning started. First, I will check my Google mail, then will read my news on Google Reader, reply to a few messages on Google Buzz, check my schedule for the week on Google Calender, search for academic papers on Google Scholar and check out the exact location of Bt Timah Shopping center for dinner on Google Map.

What to do if Google decides to pull out of Singapore too?

irregular hours

My running plan has been disrupted. Morning rains, late nights rdv, evening lectures, hairline fractures, swollen ankles and continual assignments struck successively and repeatedly. I shall start pounding and cycling again from this weekend.

hot heels. hot wheels.

my kind of humor

"who goes first? the chicken or the egg?"-cj

hur hur.

we came and we ate

The hunt kicked off at 10am. We scurried to the following places in order; following our taste buds more than our heads. We weren't there to win the prize, we were there to eat as a prize. Unlike the foreigners who were acting like eager beavers running from food stalls to food stalls, we moved as we deemed fit. I could tell that our facilitator was slightly disappointed that we weren't running. Anyway, who runs after eating? We hit the stalls in the following order (* are those I personally like) :-

1.2. Zai Fa Mian Jia and Lai Cheng Shu Shi at Jurong west market and food center.
3. 4. Ice Garden Dessert and Boon Lay Fried Carrot Cake and Kway Teow at Boon Lay place market and food village.
5. 928 Laksa* at Blk 928 Yishun Central
6.7. Ban Heng Nasi Lemak* and HK style Zhu Chang Fen* at Chong Pang Food Center
8. 8 Tarts and Pastries at Tampines Mall
9. Xiao Bei Taiwan Food at Century Square
10. Love Bite* at Ubi Teckpark Kopitiam
11. Katong Famous Tau Kwa Pau at 126 East Coast Road
12. Lau Pa Sat Pig's Organ Soup at Marine Parade Food Center
13. 14. Ming hui yu pian tang and Ah Yee's Soon Kueh at Duman Road Food Center
15. 16. 17. 18. Western BBQ *(youan's fav), wang wang crispy puff, Aunty Oats Pancake and Geylang Lorong 20 Banana Fritters *(my all time fav) at Old Airport Road Centre.
19. Sweet Stone Holding* at Beach Road Golden Mile Food Center.

Imagine how much food we have eaten. After such a great eating experience, I came up with my principles of savory utility:-

1st principle of infinite marginal utility: When you are tired and hungry, everything taste good.
2nd principle of max utility: When you are tired and very stuffed, no matter how good the food taste it's just ok food.
3rd principle of Spatial Expansion: Even when you have eaten a full meal, there's always space to take in more desserts and sweet pastries.

So if any of you happen to drop by Tiong Bahru and know of any great local fares there, give me a ring. We go makan boleh.

i don't want to count my calories intake yesterday.

food hunt

Nus FASS Food hunt is on tomorrow! Why did i take part? Because there's food involved. It involves an island wide hunt for mouth watering local flavors. Scattered over more than 30 locations, participating teams can only move around using public transports. As my saying goes, "You can take the personality out of an engineer, but you cannot take the engineer out of your personality." First thing that came to my mind is: let's write a routing algorithm. Being a proponent of stochastic optimization, I have already mentally modeled tomorrow's food race using the famous Traveling Sales man Problem (TSP). Objective: To earn as many points as possible. Constraints: 8hrs time constraint. Using graph theory, the food stalls can be the vertexes while the time between food stalls can be the weights of the non directed edges. Discrete computational optimization? No problem. Genetic algorithm will then be used to generate the best solution! Voila, we have ourselves a winning formula!

what the heck. why not just go there, have fun and enjoy the good food?

engineers. hmpt. people who take the fun away from everything.

imagine

the story told...
"
The car sped along the Central Expressway into the depths of the night. Save for a few taxis, the road was empty. Why would there be anyone at 4am in the morning? The street lamps along the highways flew across above the car at 120km per hour. Having been kept awake for the whole night, I was drowsy in the passenger seat. She, on the other hand, was wide awake on a adrenaline rush. She had make a kill earlier that night and pocketed all the cash her victims had on them. Viciously beaten throughout the whole night, I was trying to stay awake. "Where am I?", I wondered. I have to orientate myself. She muttered a few incoherent words and I grunted a reply. Almost immediately, the car swerved sharply and went out through a filter lane. I caught a sign saying Bukit Timah Exit. For a moment, I panicked. Where is she taking me? I read an earlier news report about dead bodies being found in the Bukit Timah quarry. They were supposedly dumped there in the wee hours of the morning. I shivered. It is always the darkest before the sun rise.

"Where are you kidnapping me to?" I screamed. "I want to reach home before 430am", she said coolly and stepped on the accelerator. I checked my watch. 411am. I gulped. I have got just a few minutes left to live..
"

what actually happened...
"
We were on our way home at 4am after a whole night of mahjong. I sat quietly in the passenger seat.
'Bukit Timah?', she asked.
'Yup', I had heard Bukit Merah. So we exited the wrongly at Bukit Timah exit and end up making a detour to my house.
"

"one life. imagine it."-calvin

real life is so boring..

photos seen

Google Reader Play. Bite size humor.

"2 feet of snow"-cj

"positivity"-cj

"perversely logical"-cj

"two post its sums up economics"-cj

"maths is everywhere in nature"-cj

"boy i recognized that costume. Eiffel tower, Luxemburg, Notre Dame..
he is everywhere"-cj

"network error"-cj

"we like simple things"-cj

its always the small things in life..

finally

Degree conferred: Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical Engineering)

28th Feb 2010

3D

3D video games, 3D cinema.. now we even have 3D newspaper prints.

what's next?

opinion

lifted off Temesek Review ( I thought its an interesting read):

"After much discussion and debate on the Budget lately, only one MP dared to point out the glaring mistakes made by the PAP in the last few years and ironically, he is a PAP MP: its “instant tree” mentality.

“Crowded shopping malls, congested MRT trains and rising HDB prices – these are some of the problems caused by an ‘error of judgment’ by policymakers….The rapid intake of immigrants, coupled with breakneck growth, were both signs of Singapore’s ‘instant tree mentality,” said Mr Inderjit Singh during a recent parliamentary session.

He posed a question which we have been repeating ad nauseum on this site: the need to increase Singapore’s population at such a massive rate by one million within just five years and why infrastructure, especially public housing, has not been beefed up in advance.

In 2003, when Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced his ambitious plan to increase Singapore’s population to 6.5 million people, nobody dared to express a dissenting view.

The floodgates were opened suddenly without warning and too many foreigners were allowed to enter Singapore within too short a period of time such that it is almost impossible to integrate them right now.

As a result of its mistake, a $10-million dollar Community Integration Fund has to be spent to “integrate” the newcomers, an uphill task given the fact that immigrants tend to congregate within their own community.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal, the relentless influx of foreigners into Singapore has depressed the wages of ordinary Singaporeans, increased the cost of living, especially that of public housing, decreased labor productivity and led to an overall decline in the standards of living.

It is too late now to reverse the policy and Singaporeans are already feeling its negative impact in their everyday lives.

This oversight on the part of the PAP is nothing new – it is endemic in any political systems dominated by a single person or party with little checks and balances.

The PAP’s “instant tree” mentality leads to intellectual sclerosis, group-think and one-dimensional thinking which is potential disaster in the making since there is no way a credible alternative can emerge to challenge it right now.

Its classic modus operandi encapsulates three attributes:

1. Paternalism: an ingrained view that only it “knows best” of what is good for Singapore and only it has the “divine right” to lead the nation

2. Stubbornness: inability and unwillingness to listen to feedback from the ground and persists in doing things its own way even though it is wrong

3. Arrogance: refusal to accept responsibility for its mistakes made and covering them up with the help of the state media.

Many Singaporeans including even some PAP MPs had questioned the PAP’s “growth at all cost” policies in the past to no avail.

The key policymakers belong to a small group within the PAP and once the decision is made, e.g. to open two casinos in Singapore, nobody can change their minds.

The state media will be tasked to sell their ideas to Singaporeans and force them down their throats whether they like it or not. It is a recurring theme we see again and again.

As late as last year, the media has been parroting the PAP’s official stance that foreigners are needed in Singapore and now it has made almost a 360 degrees U-turn and focus on productivity again."

what do you think?

kids

My friend daughter's celebrated her first month. She looks so small. I didn't dare to hold her in my arms as I was afraid that I might drop her. But I wanted to play with her. I read somewhere that if you hold your finger near a baby's palm, she will wrap her tiny hand around your finger. So I tried and she did. cool.

now I want one too.

full body workout

This morning, I did a short 2km run and 100 sit ups; as my pledge to workout every morning. A bit of sweat in the morning certainly helps to kick start my day. Today's workout make me realize that my body works as a whole. When I did my run, my lower back started to hurt. Halfway through my sit ups and my shoulder blade began to hurt too. Much that I would like to believe that I do not have a bad running posture, my body is working as one functional system and that my legs and abdominal are merely distributing the stress of exercise to the rest of the body..

They are not true.. I'm unfit.

MOOP

"south park at work"-cj

MOOP. Multi Objective Optimization Problems.

sleepless in singapore

Nowadays, it's getting unbearably warm. The heat is making me drowsy in the afternoon and is keeping me awake at night. Maybe this is Nature's way of imposing selective pressure weeding out those with lower work productivity. I shall not resist this climatic change..

"how i wish i can sleep anywhere too.."-cj

I will just take naps in the afternoons.

first of many

Just came back from my first morning run (usually i do night). Covered less than 4k. Breathless. I am going to make this a daily routine to get myself back in shape for AHM. I need perseverance and more discipline.

today is the first of many to come.