December 2014

During the Christmas week this month, my grandparents booked a villa in Changi. Each bedroom came equipped with a smart TV, which had a youtube app, which could be paired with a mobile device, so that you could queue up youtube videos. I was impressed. It was also the most relaxing event in the whole year. I really did feel better. It was also the 1st time I entered a swimming pool since injury and saying I would. I previously said I would but didn't because I was quite ashamed of my body (not that I'm happy with it now).

In that week, I also finished watching the remaining 3 books in the Legend of Korra. As a bonus, I managed to get my little cousin interested in it. She now wants to go through Aang's adventure, but she's got to go back to London, and we don't have enough time. I liked the series overall, but I tended to like the villains (particularly Zaheer) and not so much Korra. I also feel that she was less effective than Aang, and her avatar state bending abilities seemed a lot less powerful than Aang's.

At work, my design is coming to life, with fabrication and testing of one major part of it being carried out. I hope this goes well, and that I can iron out any kinks.

For music, I came across Logic's Young Sinatra mixtape. Right up my alley. Also finally caught up with Kanye West's MBDTF and his sampling and flow is as usual, top notch. Only thing some lyrics felt a bit misogynistic. My favourite instrumental from the album has got to be from Hell of a life. In the album you can still hear some influence from 808s & heartbreaks, but applied better this time in my opinion.

Also this month (but more like culmination of the past year), the girl I had grown to like in the past 2 or 3 years chose someone else. Perhaps I was not forward enough. Perhaps I was stingy with my emotions and their expression. Perhaps I'm severely lacking in certain aspects.  Perhaps whatever. I wish I got it right. I haven't gotten teary over anyone in about 7 years. I'll write about this in a separate entry.

November 2014

It's been 3 years since I last blogged. I do intend to start doing so more frequently, and maybe write about some of my recurring thoughts instead of just what's been happening.

Let's start with what's happening first though.

In March this year, I broke the 5th metatarsal of my left foot, by way of recklessness and misjudging distance. After resting it until about July or August, I began dancing again, and in September, I returned to contemporary dance class, where I fractured it again in the same spot. Apparently 4 months isn't long enough a time to heal. I am still paying for it, and it sucks big time.

The good thing about March though, was that I landed my first real job as a design engineer though this was after searching for a long time with about 7 months of bumming. (There's a whole story here too which I'll write about next time.) I've somehow managed to stay employed here.

As of right now, except for work, there has been absolutely nothing going on in my life. Whatever I have been doing (dancing, karate) has had to be suspended in light of this injury. I hope to return by early 2015. But anyway, I have just been working, watching friends dance and when not injured, attempt to dance. Okay, other than that, I've changed from using an iphone 4 to a Z3 compact, and gained a lot of, and then lost some weight. See mundane huh.

I do feel happy for some of my friends though. One has recently begun his career in auditing, and over the past year or so has become a really good street dancer. Wait a sec, he was good before that, now just better. Actually a whole bunch of them have become really good dancers, but while happy for them, I feel left behind and am getting pretty frustrated about it. Another dancing friend from another dancing genre also graduated from a course in dance, and just 1 year after getting her bachelor's degree. What's impressive about it is tht the course is supposed to be 2 or 3 years long.

While my friends are doing all these amazing things, I'm sitting here without an ambition and turning into a sack of shit. I don't like my circumstances, and I would like to do more to improve them. Maybe earn some weekend cash (but how to do so legally?). I don't know what to do. I feel stuck, and tied up. I can only envision a bleak future, if any at all.

April 2011

Exams are really close. I'm definitely more prepared than I was at the same point last semester, but it is still not enough.







This pokemon, Archeops is really powerful.
Archeops has a very impressive base attack of 140.
It has access to many strong physical attacks with bonus due to it's typing.

Being a bit kiasu, it also has a base special attack of 112. (They've recently put in un-square numbers to break the domination that certain pokemon have over competitive gameplay)
And an a lot better than average base speed of 110,
as well as a base health of 75,
and both base defense and special defense of 65.

This adds up to a total of 567, which is 54th place out of 650 pokemon (after taking away the multiple versions of a few others). If you take away legendaries, he moves up to 7 out of 603.
Either way, thats an A+ on the bell curve

Unfortunately, Archeops has one major flaw.
It has the ability "Defeatist", which halves it's effectiveness when it's left with less than half health.

I must not be like an Archeops.
I will persist.

FebruMarch 2011

I didn't write anything here for the whole month of February.I've been packed with stuff.
There was the the hall cheerleading followed by the hall dance thing. Major consumers of time, but I really learned a lot, even if not exactly what I had in mind. I get the feeling that this sudden deluge of physical activity might be me trying to compensate for the complete lack of it in primary and secondary school.

There was also rugby which is my first team sport since primary school unless you count those for fun basketball sessions in which I only occupied a slot in my team and committed technical fouls :/ . The downside is that i gained an ankle injury which still bugs me everyday, so I'm out of order. Can't wait to heal up. Needa get an ankle brace in the meantime. Also gotta watch what I eat or I'll balloon in no time.

Also, earlier this week, I had the first test in NTU that I was completely confident of doing. I am still pretty sure that I got full marks for that one. I guess there is a big difference between studying and giving my notes a stare down. Oh watching video recordings can really make a big difference. I need to keep at it. Actually, I also need to more disciplined and not let my mind wander to other topics that are only of trivial interest.

Speaking of trivial things, I played through the whole of Pokemon Black in about 2 and a half days. Faster than previous versions because they changed the experience point system. If your critter is of a lower level than the thing it just knocked out, it gains more experience than if were the same level. Vice versa for higher levels, which is nice because it helps to de-emphasize level grinding. I would like to see a pokemon game in which the AI or at least the boss AI uses decisive switch-ins (e.g switching in something with levitate when your ground pokemon is about to use earthquake) instead of just hyper potions in their strategy though.

My exams begin 7 May and end 20 May, so I'd better gain some studying experience points to level up. I guess that's why I like Pokemon, because you get to do stuff at your own pace.

January 2011

I think the word to describe me now is lackadaisical.

I know my work is not up to scratch, but worse still is that I have thrown what little determination I had left far away, and all that's left to do is to feel bad about it.

It's actually a new semester now, and I have failed thermodynamics, so I'm taking it again. I am seriously beginning to doubt my ability to make it as an engineer now. As a result, I've started doing layout in the campus newspaper. If I cannot increase the quality of my skills, then let me at least increase the quantity of skills.

For this period of time, I've had to cut out rock climbing and dance, so as to be able to practice Cheer every weeknight. We all know our hall isn't going to be number 1, yet the people are still so enthusiastic. Another way I've heard it being described was "fun-loving". My functionality as a base is rather limited, and despite being at a good height for shoulder stands, I'm not. My specialty is supposed to be gymnastics, which means I can do a decent toe-touch, cartwheel, and land front handsprings. Beyond that, my role is pretty limited and I just need to support other bases and get a 'liberty' up.

I need drive. I want something immaterial to look forward to.

November +December 2010

I haven't had the time to post for a pretty long while now. November and December was exam time. I don't think I did well. Whatever positive motivation I originally had seems to have been snuffed out in poly, and all that was driving me was fear and worry, which is definitely not a good thing. Also, I think I have fallen into the trap of mental laziness, which is when looking at a question, and instead of thinking about how to work it out, your eyes just sort of glaze over, and you just couldn't care less about it. Maybe my curiosity died and I don't care about how stuff works anymore. That seems like a road to ruin.The last day of exams was on 23 December, which I think was quite a mean thing to do on the year planner's parts. But I'm glad it's over. That's about all I'm willing to say about it.

I am currently in KL or somewhere near there staying at my Uncle's place, using their laptop to surf and type this out. We are going to Langkawi in a few days, and I'm pretty hyped up about it, because we get to kayak to some spot to see eagles. I hear there's a place for indoor climbing at a shopping centre nearby, so I'll go by and check it out if I get the chance. This is also the first holiday in a long one where i've sat down to read a book in a long time.

Christmas was spent here with family, and we paid a visit to my grand-aunt and grand-uncle's grave, and also had a really big dinner, and heard stories of cane toad golf, and camel spiders in the gulf.

As for January, which is just a few days away, I'm going to change my sleeping pattern so that I can have more time per 24 hour period. I haven't chosen the exact sleeping pattern to follow, but all of them have multiple short periods of sleep at set times. I can't decide if I shall go for a period of core sleep with multiple short naps, or just multiple not so short naps, or breaking my sleep into 2 periods of core sleep.

Also in January, will be the inter-hall games, so I'm making sure I don't fatten up too much so that I can still run at a decent speed, jump high enough and throw well. (Throw flyers up, opponents down, and balls far) Yes, flyers for cheerleading. They didn't have enough guys, I swear!

My idea for this month, would be to have chemical suits with zip ties, so that in case there is a tear, the person in the suit can quickly isolate the tear by pulling the zip ties, and preventing further exposure to the environment.

Unigrind

I'm now about two thirds of my way through this semester, and I'm still not confident of my abilities to do the questions in most of the modules. It's probably a sign that I'm not trying hard enough. Zoning out is still a major issue, and it's starting to snowball because I'm beginning to not know what the lecturer is talking about even when I do pay attention! Right now I really don't think my report card is going to look good, so I've really got to work on it. Also I need to put together a proper resume.

For a lot of (thankfully not all) subject content, I find myself turning to the notes and lectures of other universities to grasp new concepts and their nitty-gritty details. One example would be matrices with things like subspaces and eigen vectors. Also new to me would be 3D graphs and integration and differentiation of 3 planes. So now I'm really grateful for all the universities who have made their course materials available online (e.g MIT's opencourseware), and also as my senior dubbed it, the "University of Youtube", which can teach in 10 minutes what a lecturer may take half an hour to explain with us still not getting it. As all this happens, I believe that I still enjoy learning, unfortunately as we hastily rush through the lectures, I think this enjoyment is being stifled.

For the last couple of weeks, I find that it has been mainly non-academic things that I have been looking forward to, and also these things keeping me going. And I believe I have over-committed myself a bit. I've got some physical activity everyday of the week except Sunday. So between the 6 days, it's either rock climbing, dance, or karate, with karate being my anchor activity. That means if I ever become so incredibly busy that I have not enough time, I would still make time for karate. During my meal times, I usually have the same company or none at all. I thought I could go around my hall and make friends with everyone, but then I realized that my skin isn't thick enough, and so within my hall I guess I have a lot of new acquaintances. This also means that I have less people to group study with, which makes things a lot less fun, on the upside a bit less distracting. Yup, a bit because I still get distracted. >.<"

Here's a summary of how I think I'm doing and what needs to be worked on for the various activities:
Karate
Landing combinations - I tend to break away and retreat after landing a good clean hit, instead of following up with more. Also during my combinations, I need to take over the spot which my opponent was standing on.
Throwing feints when breaking away - this would discourage my opponent from coming forward as I retreat, usually something like a blind jab would be sufficient, but the foot work still feels very unatural,
Triangle kicks - When throwing these, I tend to land my instep on the chest, when ideally I should be using the ball of my foot, so as to penetrate the solar plexus or ribs.
Keeping my guard up - I tend to drop my guard when throwing just about any technique, but I tend to open up even more when throwing kicks.
Facing the opponent - I think I need to get in closer to my opponent because if I overextend myself to punch, I actually expose my back to hooks from tall opponents.

Dance
I don't really know what to look out for in dance, because I don't know what technique is considered good or what points to look out for. I'm still at the monkey-see monkey-do stage, except that I probably move more like a gorilla . =X

Rock climbing
As for this, I'm going to keep off the high walls outside first because those have entry fees meaning that my wallet will take a big hit. So I'm working on making it worth it by gaining some basic techniques and wall sticking endurance. That means staying on the low school wall, and practicing first. Not that I'm very good on the low wall anyway. Also rock climbing is not something that is very cheap to get into, and thus I've yet to buy climbing shoes, but that's okay, because I believe I can adapt.

Other than that, I've been wondering whether it would be good for me to take a year's break and during this time, go learn the stuff that I'd be learning when I return, so that I can kick ass, and score a really shiny GPA, since a lot of the content can be found online anyway. The thing is that I'd need to find out what topics our version of the modules contain. The crux of the issue then would be my discipline I guess.

Oh and my idea for the month would a be a tablespoon with markings for the 5ml and 10 ml levels, with the markings done like the contour lines of a topographic map, this way people who cook, or people who need to take medicine can accurately measure out a teaspoon (5ml), and tablespoon (10ml), and the more common dosages of liquid medicine which if I remember correctly come in increments of 5 or 10ml as well.

Long Enough to Read in Parts

I think I'm allergic to studying. Every time I sit down to seriously study (instead of just going through the motions), attempting to gain real understanding, scribbling little sub-script questions, referring to references and all, I get the sniffles. Maybe I shouldn't be needing to study, or more likely it just means a box of tissue and a bin is mandatory.

During lectures, I get the very strong feeling that the lecturers are there to race the clock and rush through their slides. One of the lecturers is at lecture 8, has yet to start tutorial 2, but still has the majority of us clueless about how to tackle tutorial 1. I hope it doesn't become that extreme for the other modules too.

Sometimes (lots of times), I find myself zoning out. This happens in a few different ways.

Mind just wanders.

I stare at the slide, hear what lecturer is saying, get the idea, but when I try to repeat the method in my head, I get a lot of questions (maybe I'll note 1 or 2 down), and I lose track of whatever it was that the lecturer was saying.

I find myself paying attention but I don't really grasp the concept, but in a few minutes, I find animalistic noises coming out of my lecturer's mouth, and when I look at the slide, it seems to have nothing to do with those animal noises. This seems to happen more for certain lecturers, particularly if they sound like ducks and don't bother to enunciate their words.

Good thing I've got 2 people from my previous course to ask. They make up the majority of my company during lessons. Lessons start at 8.30am every day, so it kind of sucks to look at other people's timetables and see that they have days stating at 9.30am AND have blank days.

After lessons and stuff, I return to my hall (12) and during the travel time back, I always feel I ought to study. So after taking a nap, which is something totally new to me, I wake up, take out the notes, flip to relevant pages, stare at them for a few minutes, and then decide I'll do it later. X:

Within my hall, I still don't know many people, nor do I hang out with any, but I now know my neighbors (so that's a start!). The gender ratio is pretty skewed though, because except for the 2 units joining my block to another one, my floor is all guys (and no I don't know the people in the joining units).

As for CCAs, I think I've joined rock climbing. I wanted to join Judo, but they seem non-existent. Even though I don't need the academic units, I've started illustrating for the campus paper. I want to draw, but more of as a hobby, and I doing this should allow me to keep my basic drawing skills in check.

Also I tried something I never ever thought I would do: I auditioned for contemporary dance. I think I was the worst overall, but it was a lot more interesting and intense than I thought it would be. So obviously I didn't get in, but now I'm interested. I'm pretty sure that I could learn lighter footwork, and the flow of motion ("ability to link movements better").

One thing I feel that I need to get into more of would be 'leadership positions'. While I see other people in the hall running for committee, and writing down their past experience in similar positions, I realize that in all my work and activities so far, I have avoided taking up such positions. I think I need to get some experience before the working world looks and passes me over. I guess what I could do now, would be to try for some sub-committee, then if that goes well, a main position.

Now that I've finished typing this out, I think my post should be read in parts. It also contains a lot of 'I', and not enough 'we'. Maybe in future.

August 2010

I feel obligated to type something here at least once a month, mainly because I have been typing stuff here at a frequency of about once a month.

Well this month has been pretty eventful, though not wholly in a positive way. It started off on the first day of the month with a bang. The bang of a body falling from at least 10 floors and hitting the ground. The fact that made it more unfortunate was that the body belonged to my younger brother. Suicide? I hope not, because then I'd lose some sympathy for him, even if the rest of the family didn't.

During the course of the month at work, I managed to get a vague idea of how people get rich. It seemed that they need to be kind but somewhat stern, and have be able to stay on task. I also got a bit of insight into why some people never have enough. It's about how you manage your money. Permanence seems to have better value than things that deteriorate, even if the permanent item may seem more expensive at first. Also, some just don't save.

As for books, I actually managed to finish one. To date, I have never finished a book over a span of more than 2 weeks. My pattern seems to be finishing it quickly in a few days, or not reading at all. Angry White Pyjamas was completed. I shall attempt to stretch To Kill A Mockingbird.

At the end of the month I entered University. And checked into a hostel. The hostel room has more space than my home room and a faster, more consistent internet speed. I've yet to get to know anyone other than my room mate in the hostel, but I will make the effort. Reason being that I like the location of the hostel. Its less than 100m away from thick forested area, so our air feels cooler, making for a good night's sleep.

The idea that I had this month was to carry a notebook to list my thoughts and ideas. Maybe even dreams, so that I don't forget them and have something to write about here. Uh, same for dreams.

SaChoom

I watched Sachoom. It's a dance musical, or as they call it, 'dancical'. It was my first time watching one of these theatre dance things and I was amazed. Previously I wanted to watch Jump which also happened to be by a Korean production (but didn't).

The dance moves were all very nice to watch. There wasn't really a storyline, and loosely used the growing up years of the 3 main characters to string their dances together. All 3 main characters had one syllable names (only remember a 'Jun'), with one being an average guy trying to make it, a macho guy who gets all the chicks and is there to look good, and a girl who just is there to look good. Not that the characters were significant anyway.

The thing that was significant was the dancing, coordination and physical ability. I think every one of them can dance all the genres. They used very little props, but there was a part with them spinning glow-in-the-dark nun-chucks. Though I do wonder how much time they've spent to get this good.

There was also a part in which they tried to get everyone to dance along to their theme song with some hands in the air dance. After coming home and trying to find them on youtube, I realized that they took out all the lyrics except one line, which makes sense to me because I don't speak korean, and would assume that not many people in the audience save for the korean PRs could either. Anyway, the one line was "salanghamyeon choomel chula" which means "dance when you are in love" (googled that).

(Oh wait, I do speak korean: Kimchi, Hyundai, Taekwondo, Samsung!)

Also, I really really liked the soundtrack (the whole thing, not just their theme song), and if I could, I would have bought the soundtrack. My favourite part of the show was the "sensuality and temptations" bit (which I couldn't find on youtube )= ). 'nuff said.

Sketch Pads & Film-fu

The other day I stepped into a certain chain of stationery stores for the first time in a really long while. I bought myself an A5 sketch pad. A5 is a good portable size, not too big and easily bending like A4 and bigger, yet not too small. It just happened to occur to me a few moments earlier that I should start drawing again. By drawings I mean graphics that stand boldly in the middle of the page between other pages of drawings, rather than the guerrilla doodles that have to hide at the corners of my lecture notes and occasionally pop out to surprise people.

I think that if I ever have kids, I'm going to make them carry A5 sketch pads so they can draw while waiting for me to come pick them up, while sitting on the bus or between things. Then maybe they'll become really good at drawing, if not I might at least have a better idea of what they might be thinking about.

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Another other day, I also happened to step into a cinema for the first time since watching Warlords in 2007. How to Train Your Dragon was watched. After watching, I went home googled it, and read up the wikipedia article. Much of the plot was changed, leaving little similarity between the movie and the book series save for a few names of characters.

It made me wonder if they had reduced their potential earnings by having a single movie rather than one for each book in the series, like Harry Potter. Then again as a children's book, maybe it had insufficient content per book that the people at DreamWorks would rather just pick apart the original thing but keep just enough likeliness to keep the title, and put it all in a single movie.

Oh, How to Train Your Dragon was delayed so we were given the chance to catch another movie for free within the next 2 weeks. A few suggested Clash of the Titans, which I think I'd rather miss. In the trailer I saw a lot of big CGI monsters, actors on the landing half of a leap with weapons raised above their heads and that’s about it. If I want to see a show with fighting, I want to see good fight scenes, with people attacking, and defending, and best of all, following up their attacks to make sure their opponent is downed. One good example would be Jason Bourne fighting Desh in the Bourne Ultimatum.

But I don't absolutely like everything in what some consider a good fight scene. One thing I don't like about some fight scenes is the kick (usually a side kick) that pushes a random henchman away. Somehow when the henchman gets pushed away, he is immediately defeated. I think this happens a lot in kungfu movies where the hero happens to fight many people at once.

Intense Play

I read some online article about how hackers build their reputation and the pre-requisite skills like programming and such. One of the sentences caught me. It said that their work should not be viewed as a chore, but rather, as a form of intense play. I should apply that to my studies.

I also have an assignment to do about heroes. I'm picking John Aaron, and from what I've read and watched so far, I would guess that he was one of those people who did the intense play thing, otherwise, he would have been a lot less likely to know what to do when the Signal Conditioning Equipment was affected by the lightning strike during the Apollo 12 launch.

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If You Can't Create or Innovate, then Cheaper, Better, Faster is the way to go.
This seems to be happening a lot lately. For example,If you aren't the owner with the patent for a product, you can't leverage the patent period to get a head start and jack up the price charge for your technology. So if you can't create something new, do something old cheaper, better and faster. This might explain outsourcing. And because some of us can't keep up, we have to create space for ourselves by moving up the value chain. So instead of maintaining and repairing aircraft parts, we crawl up to manufacturing, and then designing the parts, and then I hope, designing the aircraft.

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Okay, here are the links to the videos of the free sparring sessions I wrote about earlier. I shall crawl into a cave and hide from the embarrassment. Or I could laugh it off and suck it up.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oDhWUk72aA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuIQLJ436b0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o413JIdf6tw

Hitting People I Don't Know

I had my first free spar against a different club today, and I learned quite a bit. Many people perform differently under stress, and I find that I'm no exception, in this case, I have to admit that I did pretty badly.

It made me realize that I fight one dimensionally, by this I mean that when I fight, I tend to only move backwards and forwards. Sideways movement makes for more opportunies. Someone also pointed out to me that I need to activate my hind leg when moving, instead of freezing it there, and slowly dragging it along like a ball and chain. When moving backwards, I also need to not-commit to retreating so much, so that I would be able lunge fore sooner, I guess I can do this by moving to a smaller (with tension) stance for that moment.

I also need to pigeon toe a wee bit more to guard from groin shots, and to help me exert the hip power better. Also need to shoot out my punches instead of just pushing them out.

For kicks, I think I should chamber more before releasing. I also need to think about what to follow up with after my kick, because that seems to be an important moment in which I got caught. Same for punches. Also need to take note of my posture when kicking, think I tilt too much. Need to practice more combinations.

One last important thing. Facial expressions should remain neutral, and not frowning and straining, maybe a smile would do.

Looks like I got a lot to drill. Might as well throw in some stamina building stuff too.

Sort Stuff Soon

This Saturday I'm going to have an exam. An exam for SDC. System Dynamics and Control. This exam will remind me that I enjoyed myself too much in China. That's because we were supposed to be learning the stuff and immersing ourselves at the same time. The final exam has a weightage of 40%. I have built a ceiling over my self. The best I can reach now is a B+, assuming I ace the the final.

Another thing on my mind is reorganizing my music. I realize that I listen mainly to 6 kinds of music. But I think I'd just store 3 or 4 kinds on the music player.

Somewhat intense rap; e.g Nas - Hero
Somewhat laid-back rap; e.g Wyclef Jean - Slow Down
Grungy Riffy Rockish Stuff; e.g Creed - Higher
Laid-back not so intense stuff with guitar; e.g Matchbox Twenty - If You're Gone
Vocal-centric poppy stuff; e.g Joss Stone - Understand
Oldies; e.g The Carpenters
But, I'll do the playlists that after this exam.
/edit: There's 1 more - Instrumentals. e.g Moonlight Dancing Song

I also realized that my laptop's main drive is almost maxed out, and so Vista keeps giving me that Low disk memory crap. Unfortunately, I can't seem to single out any particular software in my C drive, because they're all utilities that the computer uses and I don't! Maybe I ought to remove all the support stuff and a certain piece of software that grows really fast. It's called Symantec antivirus.
Again, after the exam.

The last thing to mention would be Chengdu photos. I haven't given thought to which to upload, but I do know that a lot of us would not be very comfortable with some photos being uploaded. Have to pick carefully.
After exam.

回来了!!!

Back from Guanghan, China

Can't help noticing the sound of an endless amount of traffic rushing by.
Can't help noticing that the banana trees here are shorter than 4 metres.
Can't help noticing the presence of double decked buses.
Can't help noticing that pedestrians have right of way at zebra crossings.
Can't help noticing that there are many big though not straight trees along the roads.
Can't help noticing that the portions of food here are smaller but more pricey.
Can't find my ez-link card. May have left it there... Bleh.

How have I grown this trip ?
I'm not sure I have. Made a few friends here and there though, at obviously a shallower level than a lot of my peers. Still, I'm learning trying to learn. Core module in bad shape. Need 97% for the final paper for a chance of finding an A.

Was it fun ?
Definitely.

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F&B I liked and will miss
盖焦饭 (Rice covered in sauce)Variations include 回锅肉盖焦饭 which I have no idea what to call in English

肠（Sausages)

Meat on sticks like upsized satays with lots of chilli powder and 花椒 (Peppercorn)

500ml Yoghurt drinks

王老吉 (Wang Lao Ji)

Some variation of Xiao Long Baos called Guan Tang Baos, 3 Yuan for a tray of 8 !
(Wish I knew the Chinese words for GTBs)

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Guess the first line said to me by my mum
a) "could you help me clear the rubbish"
b) "Welcome home"
c) "Where are the photos?"

Well you know what, it's a). Back to real life. Suck it up.
Intend to stick some pictures up here soon.

Kelabing

On Friday night, I did something new. It's called clubbing. I guess that there are 2 important parts to this activity (to make it 'fun').

1. Get tipsy.
2. Convulse within a tiny pocket of space.

Sometimes, a person gets too tipsy. At this point, instead of feeling 'high' they must feel pretty shitty, judging from the their sprawling on the floor and attempts to force vomit.

Not being used to social settings such as this, I started to have trouble with vocal communication and spent majority of time in the club with jaw locked shut. Fortunately as the night passed, I began to speak to a few of the people I was more familiar with. But I still felt very uncomfortable and out of place.

All in all, it was pretty okay. I liked the music save for a few songs. And the bass was super strong, to the point where your whole body vibrates as the speaker or sub-woofer of whatever you call it blasts out its sound.

An eye opening experience for me.

Situation Normalizing

Haven't added a single word here in slightly over 2 weeks now.
It also means I've not been looking closely enough at things to get that "Wow! Amazing!" thought/feeling for slightly over 2 weeks.

But I pondered what someone has recently blogged about. The idea was that instead of offering solutions to someone's problems, comfort them instead.

I think that doing so is quite wasteful.
I see it like this.
Why waste resources procrastinating and avoiding the problem?
I'd rather offer a solution and help where I can, even if it may piss my friend off, and even if it doesn't completely eradicate the problem.
Because at least I tried to help, and if I had just provided temporary comfort, I'd be no better than an extra stiff drink.

(Note that my definition of friend is very narrow)

I stay true to my word even if it may put me in an embarrassing situation or some other disadvantage.

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The focus of the past few weeks was organizing, clearing and moving a lot of stuff in my cave. Stuff like that crappy porcelain painting that is, according to my mum, antique.

Having no internet at home doesn't help. The office still has, but then again, there isn't much time to use it, and lots of coding is blocked. Thus I haven't been adding any/many comments except on the pages of a lucky/unlucky few.

But it's good too.
I spend more time reading, and not just newspapers, magazines and fighting books anymore (though still a lot).
And I'm waking up earlier on weekends, which is great because I tend to get more stuff done in the earlier parts of the day.

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'Rupt

Here's what happening, an order of bankruptcy has been placed on the gate of the place where I usually sleep. It worries me for there will be intrusion upon my resting ground. At the same time I am gleeful to get it over and done with. It's a bit sick, but I really do feel it's partly a blessing.

It is not my family that has gone bankrupt as of now. It is that he has (finally) been discovered as bankrupt. Not that he ever provided properly/willingly/painlessly/lovingly.
A real man will provide for his family, not suck his wife dry and ditch her. A real man will not suck anyone dry for that matter.

On the physical side, it allows for more than a decade of unnecessary baggage to be removed, hopefully sold for what little compensation it can get us. So many books, so little knowledge. What a pretentious place.

And I had to go through my things. There weren't many, as I had been doing my part to box up my unneeded things. A lot of it can actually be thrown away, and I'd be happy to finally get the chance to do so.

The precious/valuable things that I own are a laptop, a few insurance papers (for laptop, bag, etc), papers containing my list of contacts and a few letters, some ang paos which had been opened but not used, a bicycle left behind by my real father, Introduction to Flight which is likely to be my bread and butter, and the OG21'2007 jacket from NYJC because those people allowed me to realize how much I had yet to grow, and how lousy I had been.

The rain did not just begin, it has loitered for a long time. I am sure that this is a point of change.

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I think I should just take the bout of steroids for my lungs.
Someone teach me to swim please.

Weighing Options

I asked for some opinion on my options,
here's what I gather so far.

1. If I decide to enlist here, my current passport will be replaced. I was told that this would not be desirable. Also, I'm asthmatic, and can't swim (yet).

2. I am aware of what my passions are. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that I will be able to make a living doing my passions, thus if I decide to pursue them as work, chances are that they'd have to be a sideline-in-my-own-capacity kind of thing.

3. I have already spent the last 2++ years in studying engineering stuff, I can get most of it, and perhaps would have gotten mechanics of flight right if I had put in effort.

I think you can see where this is going right ?

Communicate

Earlier today I was at my grandparents watching TV, reading newspaper and basking in their company. My grandpa uses snail mail to keep in touch with all his friends, mostly because he couldn't quite care for using computers, not that he completely can't but I guess it's just a matter of preference.

One of the many people he keeps in touch with is my grand-aunt, his younger sister, and every Sunday, without fail, he'd cut out 2 comics - Chew on it (Yes the definitive Singapore comic strip) and Pickles. So once in a while when the comics build up to a certain number, he'd mail them, together with a lengthy letter over to her. Whether she responds similarly, I have no idea.

Anyway the thing is that I notice that in letters (informal), people generally write a lot of stuff (judging from the amount of text squeezed into a piece of paper at while sniping glance at a distance).

On the other hand, it might be just my experience, but emails (informal) are usually so bloody short, and to some extent just don't convey the same warmth and/or character as handwriting and a real personal signature does. The longest emails I get are usually chain emails...

I guess that's why they call it the good old days.

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Later in the evening, I watched some history channel. In my opinion, they've taken over showing the cool stuff that discovery used to show. Anyway, I watched some show about body language.

It was pretty cool to learn about the various clues that give how someone is really feeling away, as well as when there might be more questions to ask. Stuff they showed included the bodily gestures, like placement of hands.

E.g. If someone starts using one hand to hold another or fold their arms or grip something in way that they could do so tighter or grip something that doesn't need gripping, it probably means that they are on the defensive, or said something that they may have doubts in saying.

By the end of the show, I realized that I tend to fold my arms a lot, and am generally pretty defensive anyway. Another question came to my mind, if these people are experts at identifying body language, would they be experts in masking their own too ?

Other than that, I think I should go dig out my secondary school art stuff, and start practicing painting, because I think it is the single most valuable skill to have in art. I was a bit inspired after reading the recruit section at the back of the classifieds. The guy does caricature as a job AND hobby.