Right...
That's a lot of porridge he's eating.
Which reminds me that I still haven't been able to make the sort of porridge sold in Chinese restaurants, the kind that's almost like glue.
I'm able to make Teochew and Hokkien porridge. They're the same - just rice cooked in too much water. The grains of rice are almost ready to disintegrate but still whole, and there's a lot of water in the mixture.
What I have yet to create is Cantonese porridge, which has a homogeneous consistency due to cooking the rice to the point where the bits of rice that remain within are no different in texture from the starchy water.
In short, it's really a watery paste.
For some reason, I burn my porridge before they can turn that mushy.
What do?
So I was doing some simple research on problem-gambling in Singapore for an assignment when I noticed this bullshit:
The surveys regarding gambling participation among Singaporeans, which included a section detailing the prevalence of problem-gambling here, stopped in 2008.
The problem is that the two casinos in Singapore were opened in 2010. Whatever data that exists about problem gambling before that don't seem too useful now.
In other words, this site is crap for my research when I expected it to be the most useful.
I think the biggest problem with essays and such that I write outside of this blog is that I always don't know how to begin.
In this blog, I can always just start with "So...." and nobody is going to tell me it's annoying to see the same bloody word over and over again.
Probably because that's the least of the grammatical mistakes featured in most of my rants.
I know anyone who knows me would find it hard to believe but I've actually lost some weight recently.
The difference isn't much, but I have to wear a belt now.
One thing always leads to another, and my belt is now giving me a minor problem - the paint is flaking off so quickly.
It's an old belt that I haven't used for years, and ever since it had to start bending back and forth, and stretch a bit, the paint seems to be unable to handle it.
Now I'm dropping black flakes whenever I put it on and take it off.
My terrapin loves tuna.
Usually it stretches its neck up to look at me when it wants a second helping.
I've never seen it stretch as hard for any food but canned tuna, the only meat that I feed it.
I only buy generic house brand tuna-in-brine for it. S$1.85 per can of No Frills tuna, 185g. I buy 2 for $3.50.
Have to spend a bit more than usual for that but not a lot. I want to keep its diet as varied as I can at as low a price as possible. With my current income it's impractical to spend much on my pet.
So I received feedback from HX that the randomness of topics in this blog is making him skip too many things as he tries to scroll pass all my rants about games.
The thing is, I have realized that I actually care about the incoming traffic to this blog.
I originally didn't give a damn, but seeing the constant rate of 100 pageviews a day has become some sort of compliment to me, except I didn't really do anything but type/paste shit here.
So I may consider changing the way my rants are structured from now on. Maybe create general categories and creating hyperlinks for each on every rant.
I'm still not going to label or tag or whatever because I'm not interested in attracting more traffic. Just maintaining the status quo is good enough for me. It's more like I don't like it when readers accidentally skip parts that they came here for.
As for FB Like, Google +1 and stuff, yea that was a pretty fail move. But it also showed me some things regarding the people who come to this blog.
As I tried to type a Chinese essay for an assignment, I find myself considering the possibility that perhaps I'm not capable of completing this degree.
If I'm struggling just to write a short 700-word Chinese essay for a 1st-year module, how am I supposed to translate entire essays and reports from English to Chinese later into the programme?
Am I being lazy or realistic?
Perhaps I should apply for a course transfer to a business-related course, even though it's known that most of such courses are highly popular right now in Singapore, meaning my chances of getting in are low.
However, that degree may prove to be more practical than what I'm working for now.
UniSIM has a Bachelor of Business course and I heard it gets lots of applications.
Those fools! It's not like a Business degree is so much better than most of the other degrees.
According to statistics provided by the Ministry of Education, the employability of the various degrees by the three local universities in Singapore (excluding UniSIM which is a private university) are:
- NUS Business Admin without Honours: 90.4% overall employment, 80.9% full-time employment
- NUS Business Admin with Honours: 95.5% overall employment, 89.6% full-time employment
- NTU Business, direct Honours: 93.4% overall employment, 86.3% full-time employment
- SMU Business Admin, with and without Honours: 100% overall employment, 95.8% full-time employment
True that generally speaking, these numbers are high, but they are definitely not the highest and therefore undeserving of the hype, ie they are overhyped!
For example, NUS Accountancy with Honours has a 100% employment rate and 100% full-time employment rate. Same goes for NUS Dental Surgery, Medicine and Surgery, and Law.
As for NTU, Biomedical Sciences has the perfect scores too. Degrees without perfect scores but still hit at least 95% and 90% for overall employment and FT employment respectively are:
(NUS)
- Communication and Media
- Computer Science
- Architecture
- Civil Engineering
- Pharmacy
(NTU)
- Accountancy
- Aerospace Engineering
- Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
- Civil Engineering
- Maritime Studies
(SMU)
- Economics (but only Cum Laude and above)
- Information Systems Management (also only Cum Laude and above)
And if we want to talk about mean salaries of the full-time employees,
- NUS Business Admin without Honours: S$3008
- NUS Business Admin with Honours: S$3232
- NTU Business, direct Honours: S$2933
- SMU Business Admin, with and without Honours: S$3292
Degrees with mean starting salaries exceeding S$3200 for 2010 are:
(NUS)
- Computer Science
- Information Systems
- Architecture
- Chemical Engineering
- Electrical Engineering
- Industrial and Systems Engineering
- Law
- Medicine and Surgery
- Pharmacy
(NTU)
- Aerospace Engineering
- Computer Engineering
- Computer Science
(SMU)
- Accountancy (but only Cum Laude and above)
- Economics
- Information Systems Management
- Social Sciences (only Cum Laude and above)
Just saying that unless you're taking Business in NUS (and graduate with Honours) or SMU, the Business degree you're trying to get isn't the best thing ever! Stop trying so hard to get there and let people like me, for whom such degrees are more practical, get in!
One reason why it's practical is because one of the modules is on accounting.
It would be nice to be able to do my own accounting instead of hiring a public accountant, even if she's the niece of my employee.
Then comes the inevitable "What if it doesn't happen?" question.
What if my application for course transfer is unsuccessful?
What then?
Do I stay on?
Because if I do, I'm going to have to do something to significantly improve my command of the Chinese language. My foundation just isn't solid enough.
I could afford to take a year off to do my own reading and stuff only if I can handle the business properly. If things go downhill and don't recover, I will be needing my degree ASAP.
Problems. The only constant in life.
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