Rant 669 / So Foxer Won Because His Opponent Didn't Show Up For The Match.

So this is how you do it.








Holy crap! Toothpaste can defog goggles! Just got to rub a little on each lens gently and rinse. I wonder if it works with glasses too. Hmm...

Okay never mind. According to several google results the toothpaste would scratch the lens and/or the anti-glare coating. The difference apparently is that our spectacle lenses aren't made from the same material as those in diving masks and goggles.

One advice that appears repeatedly in my searches is that spit or soap can also be used to defog your glasses. Just coat them in either, wait for it to dry and wipe it clear. Not exactly enthusiastic about trying either yet. Maybe I'll try with an old pair of glasses.






So NTUC Fairprice also offers delivery service. 

Interesting.

But check out the delivery charges of Cold Storage.

Expected NTUC to charge less, right?

But it is very possible that NTUC gives the better deal since their products are usually cheaper. The $1-4 difference can easily be offset by buying more things that are cheaper at NTUC than Cold Storage.

Personally I find $8 to be quite reasonable since the closest NTUC is at Clementi. On the other hand, I don't know if the website has everything I want and I'm not going to do the research today. Also, there's a small Shop N Save just downstairs. Whatever I buy from NTUC has to be something I can't find there, like hashbrowns.







Finally I'm no longer in the red all thanks to Tata! Still, the $100 gain isn't enough to cover the total commissions I've paid for all the trades I've made. Also, it may drop again by next week.

So net change is still a loss of $92. Hope PTR will stop dropping and Tata will keep rising. But for PTR to stop dropping is hard due to the recent Korean troubles. But who knows?

Oh yes I haven't sold a single stock so far. Did buy a little more, especially CSCO stocks since it's been dropping pretty hard recently.








So some advertising company is printing Facebook bullshit into books. Actually, I wouldn't mind having my blog printed into a hard copy. There would be lots of losses of information due to the links and stuff but  since printed books have always been the longer-lasting and more reliable medium, I think it's worth it.






Someday I'm going to create an artificial stream of running water that flows throughout my home. Maybe it will start in a single room as an experiment, then expand it to the rest of the house. It just takes lots of pieces of half-pipes and a water pump. The pump can't be hard to find since there's an aquarium store or whatever it's called nearby. Half-pipes might be hard.

The purpose of this is to cool and clean the air constantly. I guess it should be much wider than it's deep, so the half-pipe should preferably be rectangular or made to be so. Hmm...







Oh shit I haven't checked the score of my second and final assignment of my Chinese module until today and HE ENTERED THE WRONG SCORE!!! I scored 75% for it (partly thanks to Google) and my instructor apparently entered 50 as my score for that assignment.

Could have scored more but I accidentally forgot to explain my answers for one section, making me score less than half the total marks for that part.

As I've mentioned before, the combined score of the 2 assignments makes up 50% of my final grade of the course. This means... a lot. 25 marks in a paper that's basically 25% of my final grade means 6.25% of my final grade. If that's not big then I don't know what is.

So I've emailed him (with apologies of course since I'm 2 weeks late in checking) and hoping for the best. If he tells me no, I'll email the course head.

Anyway since I need only 40% to pass this module, I've calculated that, assuming the score for that assignment is changed, I only need to score 12 points tomorrow to pass.

It's hilarious to think of it this way. If I just want to pass, which I actually had been worrying about before, I can probably just finish the first section on hanyu pinyin plus a bit more and leave the exam hall. Should take less than 5 minutes and will net me more than enough for me to pass this module with.

That's why I'm so serious about that 25 marks. If I don't get it, I'll need to score 13 more marks to pass, which is an increase of more than 100%.

And if you're actually trying to reverse-calculate my score for my first assignment, it's 61. One reason I did better for the second paper is because I googled for the essay question at the end for that paper. Fortunately, some Chinese expert had blogged about 兼語短語的特点, so I just read her article lots of times and rephrased it. Managed to do it well enough that the automated anti-plagiarism system UniSIM uses didn't highlight anything for that section on my paper. In return, I recall giving that article a thumbs up or thanks or something. Some forums also have that sort of function.

Fuck yeah! Full marks for an essay question. I never got that even for English modules.

Contrary to what you may believe, it's not cheating. In fact I believe I'm supposed to do that. Right from the first lesson the Chinese instructor had already told us that we cannot rely solely on our textbooks for this module. Furthermore, what this question asked for is only featured in like 2 lines in our books. I wrote four different points on it in the paper.

Fuck yeah!

Oh yes, almost forgot about this.

I had expected only the last to be wrong, if any.