When can I rest? But I've only just started...

I'm so tired...

After a week of intensive training and some less stressful mental exertions, I'm finally ready to start work. Sort of. Still got a lot to learn actually. And a lot of sleep debt to 'clear'.

In short, I'm now a somnambulistic entity with an engorged brain, aching back and numb legs.

Hope AMK will yield better returns. May I be blessed with helpful souls who will in turn get to benefit from my service. I believe the liars at Bukit Batok today are an anomaly (I hope).

~Alas! The world is ridden with deceit. Pragmatism rules over conscience! I shall attempt to resist the devastating plague. No filling of resume with blatant lies or avoiding people doing survey with chants of " I'm busy ", only to be seen loitering in the area for the subsequent hour.~

'07 Exams - Part 2 : Temporary freedom from academic imprisonment

Holidays...somehow it does not feel very different from the exam period. I guess this means I could (and should) have studied harder. Whatever. It's too late now.

PBF was not quite up to expectations. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that all-important 'A'. Then again, it's not quite realistic to keep my fingers crossed for the next few months. Perhaps I should find some four-leaf clovers.

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There was a fire in a flat in the opposite block on Sunday. I was not aware of it even though my room was facing that flat. Somehow I managed to smell the smoke only when my mum alerted me to it - a case of delayed reaction? Rushing to the windows, I saw that a crowd had gathered below, looking up at the billowing smoke. Some were taking photos - perhaps to send to STomp? I took shots with my phone's camera, but they were rather blur. Too bad, no pictures for this kay poh...

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Was at AMK Central today. AMK Hub was so different from the last time I went there, when occupancy was barely 50%. Now it seems like a fusion of J8 and TPY bus interchange.

The other areas of AMK Central was much quieter than my last visit, which was not at all surprising. The inexorable invasion of malls into the heartlands is undeniably detrimental to the neighbourhood shops, but there can only be sympathy for these legacies from a period of lower population. The space crunch and the general(younger) population's preference for a 'all-in-one' concept will eventually result in the decimation of most neighbourhood shops - or at least those in town centre... (I'm not quite sure where this is heading, so let's change the topic)

Anyway, I met quite a few old friends today: Yin Lin, Shawn, and of course, Peng Fei. I met Peng Fei at the bus interchange while waiting for the same bus. Apparently, he was having nights off, and was going back to camp after buying a $5 pillow. Good investment I suppose, but not absolutely necessary. Afterall, I spent many months with mouldy pillows in the army, and my head's fine! Other than the occasional itch, but I doubt it has anything to do with the pillows. I believe they are usable as long as you wash the cover regularly. Besides, he's only got 5 more months to go.

I found out he is in my former camp, but different unit. Chatting with him about camp brought back so many memories of that quaint settlement of British legacy - an ancient civilisation sheltered by lush greenery from towering HDB flats a few kilometres away. An interesting milieu indeed!

Oh, I also met Mediacorp actress, Carole Lin. Looks pretty much the same in real life...

'07 Exams - Part 1

During the exams...

Econs and Stats were terrible. Thanks to a serving of contaminated curry, I was plagued by diarrhoea throughout the two days. I ended up in the toilet for 10mins on each day, during my exam. I did not manage to finish either paper, although the toilet trip was not the main reason. I was too slow in a relatively easy Econs paper, while the Stats paper was truly a monster. The most of the supposely easy questions require either lots of critical thinking or tedious workings, while the tougher questions were allocated huge chunks of marks. It did not help that Section A was a real killer, and following the examiner's advice of doing Section A first(she said we should do it first because it is easier), I was depleted of time and energy by the time I reached the relatively easier Section B. She probably found it funny to award four measly marks to the calculation of mean, median, range and interquartile range of 12 numbers! In my opinion, the interquartile range alone is worth four marks.

Maths was better, but not as good as I had hoped for. Given my poor performance for Stats, I figured I would need at least 90 for Maths to achieve an A for Maths/Stats (they have to be combined as each is a half-unit). No joy there, unfortunately. Still, I should get A for Maths...


Outside the exam hall...

I met Alvin outside Expo MRT after my Econs paper, and he almost did not recognise me. He is working for Kaplan, and was giving out brochures for ACCA courses, specifically targeted at UOL students. I was not interested in the courses, but the free pen was good. Haha..

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Last Saturday was a warm day. I was trying hard to keep my eyes open while reading the papers when I received a dreaded call.

"...You have been mobilised..."

It sparked a flurry of calls and SMSes to friends to find out what I was supposed to bring when reporting. No one knew. There was also no relevant information on the NS website, and no one answered the phone at the admin centre. I even made a call to BMTC School 1 by accident.

Turns out we only had to report in our uniform. Thankfully, with advice from my father, I did not bring too much unnecessary stuff, unlike some of my friends. It was nice to meet up with friends and catch up with one another, if not for the fact I was in the midst of my exam...

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On Monday afternoon, I watched Spiderman 3 with Kang, after my Maths paper. I thought it was pretty good, though there were too many elements in the show. Sam Raimi tried to do too much, which resulted in the movie flitting from one scene to another. There were also some minor inaccuracies that Spiderman fans would not be too thrilled about. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the spectacular fighting scenes and the touching moments, especially the one near the end where Harry and Peter became friends again and fought Venom and Sandman to save Mary Jane.

Pre-exam

Hiaz... One weekend in Gentings and I chalked up an excess $25 in my phone bill. What really surprised me though, was how I had to pay more for the incoming calls. Since mum kept calling me to ask about JY, who's almost always ignorant of her calls, I ended up with the biggest bill in the house, even though my usage was the least...

Just found out yesterday that Cher is on holidays in Hong Kong and parts of China. Through SMS. I wonder how much the 4 SMS (2 sent, 2 received) will cost me. Or my dad, rather.

Recent news mentioned the use of dry walls in the wake of Indonesia's sand ban and the resulting sand crisis. Apparently, the walls can resist fire for an hour and every point of the wall can withstand 25kg of pressure. Wonder how the walls perform with 25kg of pressure at a point in a fire...

Then there's Mr 'Newsoil', who found a way to build roads using soil with special chemicals added. I thought that was pretty cool!

There's also the Bring Your Own Bag Day (BYOBD), which has seen total participation from Ikea from Earth Day onwards, as opposed to having it only on the 1st Wednesday of every month. I was intrigued by the oxo-biodegradable plastic bags they use. Apparently they biodegrade under room condition, which I suppose, means that they biodegrade in air. I wonder what they biodegrade into...

Exams are round the corner - literally. Econs paper falls on next Wednesday! Excited at the prospect of having my exams at Expo (a totally new experience!), yet nervous about my 1st actual exam in a long time...

Hope I do well.

Murphy's Law

Today, I would like to give a little illustration of the presence of Murphy’s Law in my life. From my observations, you should be able to sense my frustrations at the unwelcome coincidences. I will add more case studies should I come across them.

Case 1

Background:
Whenever I take bus 74 home from school, there are two bus stops which I may alight from, to transfer to a feeder bus to get home. The first stop requires me to cross a short stretch of road, whereas the second stop necessitates the crossing of an overhead bridge. However, there are two buses that I can transfer to at the second stop(119 and 136), compared to only one(119) at the first stop.

Murphy’s Law comes into play…
Often, when I alight at the first stop, 119 take ages to arrive (typically 15mins and above). On the other hand, if I decide to alight at the second stop, 119 will appear just after my bus leaves the first stop. I will then end up watching the sun go down while waiting for 15mins or more at the second stop. On a few occasions, I watched 119 go pass as my bus leaves the first stop, only to wait for 20mins before boarding 119 at the second stop. The 136 driver probably had to make a detour to the toilet on those occasions.


Case 2

Background:
There is this road that I have to cross whenever I have to go to the mall near my house. I almost always cross at the traffic junction (because I am a law-abiding citizen. Haha!).

Murphy’s Law comes into play…
From my experience, the pedestrian lights are only in my favour on three occasions out of every 10 trips I make. (I include favourable light changes within ten seconds of arrival)

First World Hotel stinks!

I probably lost 5 years of my life from all that smoke inhaled. But I’ll come back to that later.

I travelled to Genting Highlands over the Good Friday weekend via coach. By Five Stars Tours Pte Ltd. On a 1st Class coach.

It was a truly enjoyable ride. My seat seemed to be able to accommodate two of me, and there was a wide choice of (Nintendo-typed)games and videos to choose from. And since we traveled on Thursday night, it was nice to be able to catch forty winks on a reclining seat that opens to 150 degrees (I think). Pity the thigh massager in my seat wasn’t functioning, otherwise I could have a complete massage. I never thought I would be able to enjoy such VIP treatment (though apparently, they offer all the above, complemented by in-bus stewardess to provide refreshments; ironically, their VIP coaches are one rung below the 1st Class coaches).

We had a very fast and efficient driver who got us to First World Hotel in less than four hours, excluding a half hour stop in Yong Peng for toilet break and refreshments. It was surprising to learn that the hotel holds the Guiness World Record for the most number of hotel rooms. Another surprise was meeting Meng Keong at the lobby. The poor guy had to wait in queue for his room while I was able to check in straight away, having paid a little more in booking fees.
The hotel is pretty huge, and it takes quite a while to orientate myself around the myriad of shops. There is a good mix of retail, F&B, and entertainment outlets around, on top of the usual outdoor theme park, but there is a dearth of signage and directories. I missed out on some indoor rides, as I was not able to locate them on the first day, when I got a day pass for unlimited rides. I was also disappointed with the exorbitant fees for the LAN shops. 12RM an hour would have provided me with six times as much entertainment in Singapore! The pool/billiard and bowling are set at decent prices though, at 12RM per hour and 6RM per game respectively. Watching a movie costs only 10RM, but tickets to Mr Bean’s Holiday were sold out when I wanted to watch it.

The trip was generally fun, but it would have been better if smoking were not allowed in the hotel. I had thought the casino would be the only haven for smokers – how wrong I was to be. Whether one is in the toilet, in the lift, queuing for tickets or taking photos with the mock Statue of Liberty, there’s just no escaping the smoke. Even in the few areas where smoking is banned, regulation is lax. The no-smoking signs did not stop smokers in the billiard shop; neither did the counter girl, who probably has eyes on her feet, and nose in her hair. Similarly, signs that restrict smoking in the hotel passageways were ignored. I was not surprised though; nobody would be. Not when you provide rubbish bins with ashtrays on the lift landings of every floor! So what if you have an anti-smoking sign above the bin?

I’m glad Singapore is largely smoke-free.


Another surprise was the great disparity in cigarette prices compared to Singapore. While cigarettes in Singapore typically cost S$10 – S$11 per pack, in Malaysia, they only cost around RM$7! I know our cigarette tax is huge, but it is only now that I realise how significant it is.

Help! Help! My house is 'falling'!

Maybe it's time to move.

Over the past few weeks, various accessories in my house has started to break down - both metaphorically and literally. Apart from the leather sofa where the split has been widening for two years now, there's also the cranky printer, telephones, washing machine that broke down, the leaking kitchen sink. I've seen all those before, so I wasn't surprised(esp. since we've been here for almost 10 years). What surprised me was the toilet tap which broke! I was the one who broke it by the way, though I'm pretty sure it was not because of any giant strength that I gained.

As a result of the broken tap, I was greatly inconvenienced in my daily teeth-brushing and face-washing. For almost a week in fact - because my dad decided to wait till weekend when he's free to get a new tap. Speaking of taps, I wonder what happend to the golden taps in Durai's ex-office. Are they still there?

Had stats revision lecture today. Got back my prelim exam script - I passed on the dot with 34. Hiaz... Was expecting a little more, but well, at least I passed. The UOL lecturer spoke slowly and gave lots of long breaks. Kind of similar to Raymond Teo. Is that the trademark of stats lecturers? Lecturers for other subjects are always speaking much faster, yet they struggle to complete their lesson on time. The stats lecturers, on the other hand, seem to have the best job in SIM.

Maybe I should become a stats lecturer in SIM when I graduate.