Rant 758 / Too Sweet

My biggest gripe about Dragon Age 2 has to be the agro/threat system where it involves enemy Rogues.

More specifically, they completely ignore threat from everyone and will attack the weakest party member randomly.

At one point I had only the tank and my mage alive in a battle while the other side only had 2 Assassins left. My tank was doing all she could to keep her threat up while the mage's AI was set to Passive and did absolutely nothing.

A while later they went into Stealth mode and Backstabbed the mage.

WHY? SHE WAS NOT DOING SHIT!

But she survived, so I thought they were going to go back to the tank.

I was wrong. They stayed on the mage, reducing her remaining HP to zero in seconds.

WHY?!?

That's a major reason why I'm not going back to DA2. Every single time I see the game's icon, I recall that moment and get irritated.

Why bother having the threat system when there are enemies that ignore it?

Worse, those are Rogues who can turn invisible and there is no way I can break their Stealth mode.

...

I know. The only way to deal with them is to kill them first and disable them as much as possible. It's just that that is so hard to do when I'm on Hard mode.















So this journalist is saying that netizens are sexist. 

But what has struck me is how criticism of the female candidates has been based on them being, well, female.

For example, Ms Tin is not just attacked for being young. She is dismissed as a “gold-digging”, “sexy xiao mei mei” (Chinese for little sister) who is “act-cute” – to describe her in some terms used by netizens.

Another new PAP female candidate, Foo Mee Har, has been the subject of controversy for being a new citizen. But she has also been criticised as being a pretty but empty-headed “flower vase”.

Similar disparaging remarks have been made even about the looks of female opposition figures.

Lina Chiam, from the Singapore People’s Party, has been called an “aunty” and “Ah Soh” for her dressing and the way she talks, while Hazel Poa, a candidate from National Solidarity Party, has had her looks jeered at.

Except this journalist is both twisting and omitting some facts.

Like how the same netizens also love Lily Neo and Sylvia Lim, especially for the latter's recent speeches (you can find those on Youtube). Not to forget, Eunice Olsen didn't get this much flak either back when she became a NMP.

In addition, most of the flaming on Foo Mee Har is focused on the fact that she was not a Singapore citizen till 2008. That's only 3 years ago. That's so frickin new for someone who's trying to be a MP!! Furthermore, since she's been here since 1989, I'm not sure I can trust someone who has rejected citizenship for almost 2 decades before accepting it just 3 years prior to joining the PAP.

Can we be sure she's going to be dedicated to her duties to Singapore?

Worse is that she's not the only one. Dr Puthucheary also became a Singapore citizen the same year! And his excuse for not serving NS like the rest of us? He saved kids' lives for 10 years and that offsets this fact. Right. So what about Singaporean doctors who also served NS?

The fact that he responded so defensively on the media to the point where no form of word-twisting could prevent the negative reactions from many Singaporean males proved he was not particularly talented in the job he's trying to get.

Finally, there's the question of what happens if there is serious diplomatic trouble between us and Malaysia, as neighbours tend to have. Will we be able to trust our own MPs then? Oh wait, we don't even trust our own MPs now anyway. Never mind. Forget I even asked.

Back to the original track, that there has been almost no flaming on any of the non-PAP female politicians in recent weeks.

Yea we're totally sexist... and even racist. On EDMW, the name that's used to refer to our current President is "prataman". That's amazingly racist, but nobody cares. Why? Because the boss of Hardware Zone (HWZ, the website where EDMW is) is an Indian guy called Vijay. If we're actually racist, we wouldn't even be there.

This article saying netizens are sexist reminds me of those African-Americans who scream, "RACISTS!!!!" every time a non-African-American offends one of them.

What netizens are doing to these candidates is nothing compared to what was done to opposition leaders in the past. Compared to lawsuits, bankruptcy, exile and imprisonment, an online smear campaign doesn't do a thing.

And you can't blame netizens for not stopping the flame on Tin when we see things like this animated gif:

Doesn't this fit the definition of "acting cute"? One look at this and I doubt I'd vote for her. I'm sorry but I just can't.

And then there's also this:



Yea, Singapore's healthcare is totally affordable... post-mortem.

If a Singaporean doesn't have a degree, he'd better not get any serious illnesses.

To make things worse, here's an excerpt from a recent speech she made:

http://www.pap.org.sg/articleview.php?id=2746&cid=23

This is not a new topic.  Besides studying whether the gap is widening, it is more important to find out if the lowest-income group is able to get by and not fall into the vicious cycle.  Many people are complaining and blaming the government for this problem.  But is this really the responsibility of the government?  I don’t think so.

According to her, the government is not obligated to remedy the issue of the widening income gap. Yep, she actually said that. I applaud her metaphorical balls wholeheartedly. Those aren't mere manly balls; those are manly balls of steel. That's probably how SM Goh found steel in her.

Young Pei Ling has been traumatized. Saw her yesterday with trauma specialist, Fatimah. While doc examined her, I observed. Her initial hurt n pain have subsided. Gave her clean of health. In the process, discovered steel in her. She will grow in strength. --- Goh Chok Tong

I think the PAP is just using her as the replacement lightning rod because LKY is getting too old for it.


The Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts tells her to "shut out the noise and focus on the task at hand."

Yes, pay attention by all means to the feedback that is given by others, particularly if it is constructive feedback on how we can improve ourselves - we all need to do that, not just the new candidates.

He's got a point, which IMO was very obvious right from the start. It's the internet. They shouldn't even be reporting on online forum discussions in the media in the first place.


As for the girl herself, she's going to get the last laugh anyway. It's the PAP - they never lose. She may be getting all the shit now, but in the coming years she's going to get paid S$15k a month and maybe in 20 years, even get a shot at Presidency.


Who knows?








Everything the PAP says is doubted by the people. Seriously, everything. Everything done by them is perceived as some way to suck money out of the populace, and it's always to PAP's benefit.



I'm not saying whether this is true and neither am I qualified to even imply it. I'm just saying they've lost the trust of just about everyone. The only reason people still voted for them is because they're convinced they owe them their lives since LKY was the one who made Singapore what it is today.


That the PAP has a great track record is no longer something I truly believe in. People should visit wet markets more often and notice the old women who pick up unwanted vegetables from the sellers. It's a sight that many locals don't see because they now only visit supermarkets and it's a sight that reminds me that there are more poor people in Singapore than what everyone else believes.



This place is turning into what Hong Kong used to be - full of gleaming towers and broken dreams, and the locals are being cheated and bullied by Chinese immigrants who are used to a more competitive environment.



I'm not saying Singaporeans should learn to lie, cheat and steal like them. What I'm saying is that they cannot be trusted to the same degree as natives. Hongkongers have learnt that a very long time ago, but have never been able to completely avoid falling for their tricks. 

How long before Singaporeans wisen up too? How long before they learn their lesson from the many mistakes they made, like the Suzhou Industrial Park and the numerous middle-aged divorcees forced to pay alimony to their Chinese wives, and realize they are more cunning than they seem? 

Do they think cunning people behave like those guys on TV? That they always have that sinister smile and look at you funny? No man, they smile at you with utmost sincerity and can be very polite and thoughtful, sometimes even complimenting you for things they think you'd like to believe you are.

And that thing about them accepting lower pay and that Singaporeans should also whine less and be less fussy about salaries is utter nonsense. Where do they live and where do we live? How much do they pay for their homes and how much do we pay for ours? Where do their parents get their medical care and where do ours get theirs?

Most importantly, how many actually want to be citizens?

Ask any person who has frequent interactions with foreigners here and any foreign workers on this island, and you'll find that the common consensus is that most foreign workers in Singapore do not plan to stay here for the rest of their lives (just like certain MPs-to-be before they were invited to go into their current line of work). In other words, they have no stakes here and never will. Therefore they will never have the same level of expenses that we have. Ergo, they can easily accept much lower salaries without much hesitation.

How's it fair that the locals have to accept the same salaries as they do?

Yet, from the employers' point of view, how can they resist paying less?







Apparently that forum that was aired on CNA featuring a members of the various political parties in Singapore was, in a way, rigged.

First, as has been reported on this website, the host insisted that all participants should fulfill three criteria: they should be a member of their party’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) and an office-bearer, and eligible to stand for election.

Its justification was that it wanted participants who had a stake in the coming elections, an unstable line of reasoning since all members of political parties have a stake in elections: the winning of seats in Parliament is one of the key tasks of a political party.

No doubt, the criteria set by CNA were designed to keep from participating in the programme the SDP’s Secretary-General, Dr Chee Soon Juan, by far its most eloquent and compelling advocate.

However, the SDP complied with CNA’s criteria and appointed me to represent the party, and I considered it an honour to address my fellow citizens on what the SDP is able to offer the nation.

Prior to recording on Caldecott Hill, I asked the CNA executives if both the PAP participants (yes, the PAP was allocated two places, the opposition parties only one each) met the criteria set by CNA and I was assured that they did.

The PAP’s representatives were Josephine Teo, MP, and Finance Minister, Tharman Shanmugaratnam. It is curious that while other forums have included rank and file PAP MPs, this forum, the first to feature the SDP, caused it to send a cabinet minister.

No matter. Having led on the SDP’s Shadow Budget, I was eager to debate Minister Tharman, a call that many netizens have made since our Shadow Budget was published.

I had asked CNA for the names of the other participants; this information was not given to me. So, I only found out who the PAP reps were on the day. The following day, I checked up the PAP website and found that Josephine Teo meets only 33% of CNA’s criteria, ie she is eligible to stand for elections. She is neither a CEC member nor an office-bearer within it.

I telephoned the same CNA executive who had refused to give me the names of the other participants and was first told that Ms Teo was an MP. I reminded my interlocutor that this met only one of the criteria.

I was then told that the criteria only applied to the opposition participants. I reminded her that this was not made known in advance and reminded her also of her reluctance to reveal the names of the other participants. Clearly, they did not wish me to query Ms Teo’s inclusion in the programme, since she did not meet the criteria.

And the PAP sent two people there while all other parties were only allowed a single representative each.

Why is the PAP resorting to dirty tricks these days? Where is their integrity?



The Malaysia My Second Home Programme sounds great. Too bad I can't afford it yet. I need a monthly income of 10k MYR and liquid assets of 500k MYR to qualify.



Constructive criticism: 

How can there be constructive criticism when most Singaporeans aren't even aware that there are problems, when even negative comments on certain Facebook pages regarding Singapore politics are being censored?










HoN 2.0 arrives at Garena! Free of charge I think but I've been too busy to try it. It's got an in-game item store so it's most likely free.















Apparently those power-saving fluorescent bulbs are much more dangerous than incandescent bulbs when both are broken. When an incandescent bulb breaks, all you need to worry about is how you can get all the broken glass out.

But when a fluorescent bulb breaks, there is also the danger of mercury poisoning.

It seems that the mercury vaporises when exposed to open air, so it's recommended that the shards and whatever traces of the white stuff are removed asap when a bulb breaks. Meanwhile, the room needs to be aired to get rid of the vapours.

Unless you're in a windowless office.









Confucius said, man who walk through airport scanner sideways is going to Bangkok.








So strengthening you hip abductors will reduce knee pain. I managed to find a few forms of exercises designed to train these muscles on Google and I'll probably try them... someday.

Rant 757 / April Fools' Day 2011

No I'm not doing anything for this year's April Fools' Day. Didn't come up with anything interesting. Wanted to embed an invisible music player but didn't want to break the trust of visitors too often. I can understand this because there have been times when I visit 4chan only to be greeted loud gay music blasting through my headphones when I wasn't expecting it. Not a pleasant experience.








Trying out Mythos currently. It's based in the EU but is open to everyone around the world. No idea what's going to happen with the US version.

Initial impression: it's such a Diablo 2 ripoff.

There are 4 races and 3 classes, although each of the latter can be further split into sub-classes that are close to the standard MMO classes.

Races: Human, Gremlin, Satyr and Cyclops
Classes: Gadgeteer, Bloodletter and Pyromancer

So far I've only tried a Cyclops Bloodletter and as far as I can tell, one can play as a summoner, a tank or a DD by choosing the proper skill tree. In fact I believe all 3 classes can be played as summoners. The Pyromancers have that big fire golem, the Gadgeteers have their robots and the Bloodletters have two types of minions.

Race only affect stats AFAIK, eg Cyclops have more Str.

Gameplay is so D2-like. Go into a dungeon, kill stuff, pick up loot, open chests/trash piles, etc. The sounds for loot dropping and chest opening are so similar to those from D2.

Anyway it's not really worthwhile to go through all the troubles to get a beta key for the current closed beta since there will a wipe before open beta begins on the 12th of April. Open beta doesn't require a beta key.

Currently I'm unsure what is supposed to make this game stand out other than the unusual races and classes. Gameplay is pretty normal as far as I can tell after hitting level 7.








Facebook personalities apply to people outside of FB too.

The women surveyed were also asked to indentify personality types they were friends with on Facebook.  The results are as follows:

65 % were friends with a "documentarian" - someone who constantly documents his or her life
61 % said they were friends with "a drama queen"
57 % were friends with '"a proud mama"
46 % were friends with "a liker" - someone who constantly "likes" Facebook posts
40 % were friends with "a poser"
35 % were friends with a "frenemy - an enemy whom both parties pretend is a friend
30 % were friends with a "one upper" - someone who constantly tries to do things better than others.
26 % were friends with an "airbrusher" - a person who alters photos to appear more attractive

I think it's obvious which one I am, except I don't do it on Facebook.

Maybe someday there will be a field called "Internet psychology" just because people behave very differently online and IRL due to various reasons including anonymity and different tools available to netizens.







A few comments in the Spam box look too legit to be spam. How did they get there? What's Google trying to accomplish by categorizing every single comment posted in this blog as spam? 他们真的宁可杀错，不可放过? (Translate: they would really rather kill the innocents than let the guilty ones escape?)

While trying to translate the above, I was somehow reminded of yet another difference between the two languages.

In Chinese, having a noun as the subject in a sentence is not always necessary. While English can almost never omit the noun and escape the standard templates of SVO (subject-verb-object), SVOC (subject-verb-object-complement) and etc, Chinese only requires a predicate(谓语) in its sentences (eg 下雨了。).

A predicate, in English, is always a verb, so to English users, predicate may as well be synonymous with verb. But in Chinese, a predicate can be formed by the following 4 categories:

- verbs (他走了。)
- nouns (昨天星期四。)
- adjectives (她很美。)
- subject-predicates (我手脚灵活。)

The predicates are underlined in the above examples. I could translate the example sentences but in order to do that, I'd have to add in missing words that would beat the purpose.

Anyway, it's ok if a student says in class,"老师，上厕所。(direct translation: teacher, go washroom.)"

In Chinese, that's a perfectly correct sentence whose purpose is ask the teacher for permission to go to the washroom. In English, the exact same sentence would be telling the teacher to go to the washroom.

This is a simple example (but often used by younger students in Singapore in both languages) to show how a subject noun is not a requirement in Chinese sentences but is of absolute importance in English.







OMG! Wendy's is having a promotion for its Double Stack Combo.

$9 for 2 Double Stack Combo plus 2 6oz Frosty. There's a Wendy's that replaced the BK at Holland V some months ago but I'm too lazy to go there just for this.

Meanwhile, McDonald's come up with "new" products using old ingredients.

Kind of interesting but the ideas are getting old. The salad's been done by KFC long ago using their popcorn chicken. The Double is an ancient idea that's been used on every burger MCD has on its menu.

The question is, why isn't BK responding this time?

Are they... chickening out?

Rant 756 / D.O.

So it's strange. In cases where a sentence mentions a cause and an effect, I've never noticed that the English language prefers to place the effect first and the cause second, using conjunctions like "because" and "as" to connect the two.

I asked the lecturer why "so" doesn't seem to be taken into account here, because this word could be used to place the cause first (John was injured, so he couldn't run). That's why I remember this so clearly. Asking helps the learning process.

"So" is more frequently used to connect compound sentences, apparently. In the cause and effect case, the sentences are complex ones.

Just to give a brief recap: a compound sentence has 2 independent clauses, like your mother and father; a complex sentence has one clause that is dependent on the other, like you and your mother; a complex-compound sentence has 2 independent clauses and at least one dependent one, like you, your mother and your stepfather.

According to her, "so" implies a much vaguer link between the two clauses and doesn't always clearly express the cause-and-effect relation, ie quoting her, "looser".

I never noticed it, but she knew that somehow because she also explained that this was caused by a lot of intermixing of Chinese and English sentence structures by Singaporeans, a symptom of an incomplete education in the two languages.

This, in turn, is because in Chinese, the cause is almost always stated first before the effect (因为，所以；因此). Occasionally flipping them over is fine, but if there are too many of these in an essay, the writer can be regarded as having a poor command of written Chinese and the essay may end up being confusing to readers.

But all these do not affect my frequent usage of "so" because I'm usually not using it to express such a relation, as shown in the first sentence of this rant.








The 3D Sex and Zen film is going to be shown here with 18mins less "Sex" here. Are they going to compensate with 18mins of "Zen"?

I'm not sure if I'm ever going to be interested in appreciating the principles of Zen Buddhism while having an erection.








I think Pastamania has become my bro's favourite delivery service because that's what he ordered the last two times.

Can't say much about the pizzas. By the time I got home they were cold, and all cold pizzas taste the same.

The spaghetti, on the other hand, was much better.

This was the Chicken Cheese Salsiccla spaghetti, non-spicy. It was still quite warm when I got back roughly 2-2.5 hours after it was delivered, unlike the pizzas and the paninis. It was basically a tomato-based sauce with chicken cheese sausages slightly larger than a thumb, though they were all invisible because the sauce covered them.

The sauce was too sour, but other than that, it was alright.

As for the paninis, never leave them overnight. The hashbrown inside will never get better unless drastic measures are taken, like re-frying it. Merely reheating the panini in an oven does not improve the taste of the hashbrown that was left in the fridge overnight

And that's my set up when I eat - waste paper ( in this case, a KFC flyer and a Readers' Digest lottery letter) to cover the keyboard, a small towel/handkerchief for emergencies and the big yellow cover from a MCD Big Breakfast now being reused as my coaster (damage reduction measure during spills).









Why are they complaining about the change to paperless tickets? I think that's a great idea for people who want to pay decent prices to concerts and other events. This is a strong measure to prevent scalping, which is the practice of reselling tickets at higher prices for profit.

The only people who should be unhappy about it are those who resell tickets to make money. For the real consumers, it's just an inconvenience.

In short, the article is pointless.









One of the most under-appreciated joys in life has to be the feel of relieving an exploding bladder under a hot shower.

Yes, I'm a guy.

Another is probably the taste of your favourite food when you're starving.








I'm pretty sure a crow or two has set up a home on the floor either above or below mine. I keep seeing crows flying up and down my window like 5-6 times a day and it's probably the same bird. No little birds are heard yet but they may be trying to make some.

Rant 755 / I Am Suddenly Interested In Playing Silent Hill 2

Monday



I'm slightly surprised at the weekend that just ended. Between browsing EDMW, watching the stream on Vidya2, doing work, blogging and eating, I found that I didn't have much time to play games at all! All I did was complete the final round of the newbie campaign and go halfway through the second round of the second campaign of Caesar IV (completed the first round earlier last week).

What a busy weekend I had!

Speaking of Vidya2, one guy was streaming himself playing the WiNi. The WiNi is like a Wii in terms of appearance but has a number of built-in games.

Apparently he bought it at a very low price, though no actual number was ever mentioned. Just because it had Sudoku and a Bomberman-like game (a rip offone of the early ones, with colour), he said it was worth the money. I think it's easy to judge from that comment.

He's from the Netherlands, so it's interesting how far Chinese bootleg versions of modern gaming consoles can spread.

That WiNi had several key differences from the Wii.

- There's a capital N in the name.
- The graphics are from the SNES era.
- Most of the games are similar to those in old 2G colour-screen phones.
- The controller response timing was terrible. It had a split-second lag as far as I could tell when he was playing the music games.
- Almost every game used the literal name for the activity as the game title, eg the boxing game was entitled "Boxing", although there was no jazz music in the music game with the word "Jazz" in its name.
- Here's the most important feature of all - there is no disc drive.









Just read about gaman on Wikipedia.

Showing gaman is seen as a sign of maturity and strength. Keeping your private affairs, problems and complaints silent demonstrates strength and politeness as others have seemingly larger problems as well.

So instead of whining about my problems to people I know, I keep this blog which I passively try to keep apart from my real identity. I said "passively" because I don't actually do anything; all I really do is not mention this blog IRL and mention my identity here.

This means I do whine, except in secret (from the point of view of people who know me IRL). From this, I can deduce that I'm only pretending to show gaman because I pretend to keep my "private affairs, problems and complaints silent".

But it's true that I'm not the only one with problems. In fact, sometimes I feel that a lot of my friends have bigger problems that I do

One issue I'm going to have, I thought of only yesterday.

The work that we do is unique to us and the buyer. Other stores do things quite differently, in a much harder way (for us). This means that when she retires, there is no guarantee her successor will allow us to keep doing what we do now. In fact, there is too much competition in Singapore for me to safely assume that it is likely she will continue what the current buyer is doing.

And judging from her age, I'm guessing I'll be in my 30s by the time she retires, or earlier if she gets promoted to elsewhere. If she stays there till retirement, it's not going to make it any easier for me to find a job if I close the business down then.

All these leave me only 3 options in the long term:

1) Learn fashion design, which is risky since, again, I have no background in this at all.

2) Diversify into other products in the future, which is very risky IMO.

3) Rely on my degree.

Despite saying that options 1 and 2 are risky, I feel that I'm inclined to go with both. Anything to escape the dreaded 8-to-5 (with OT everyday).







Ok, I've just most definitely screwed up my second of three assignment of this Contrastive Analysis of Chinese/English module. Managed to somehow get an "average" score for the first (according to the lecturer, anything over 70 from her was a distinction), but this time, I'm very sure it was not done well. This subject is hard. The entire assignment had only one question - analyse and compare the original sentence and the translated sentence, except each question required the analysis to come from different angles and the final question was to use any angle.

I'm just not familiar with this enough and I was not familiar with this subject prior to taking this module unlike all the stuff in other modules.

Damn. I need to do better for the last then.







Tuesday



Oh no, I'm close to getting sick. This coffee tastes strangely bitter, only at the back of my tongue. Either I'm too heaty or the condensed milk has expired.

Let me taste this again...

It's just the back of the tongue.

Fortunately I have plenty of herbal teas in the fridge, including 2 (300ml?) bottles of the "24-herbs" herbal tea, aka 廿四味 (nian4 si4 wei4). AFAIK that's one of the strongest cooling herbal tea in traditional chinese medicine and since I was young, that was what I was always given when lesser herbal teas like chrysanthemum tea didn't work.

I'm not saying I actually believe in the heat and coolness system in traditional chinese medicine but after at least 3000 years of refining and trials-and-error, it has to be doing something correctly. I mean, if your entire race has been throwing darts from 500m away for over 3 millenia, some of them have to end up with a perfect bullseye, right?

Furthermore, legend has it that in ancient times, physicians test unknown herbs on their disciples to record the effects, and if they run out of those, they test it on themselves. Let's not let those lives go to waste.

Anyway it's strange that 廿 is pronounced nian4 because in Cantonese, it's pronounced "ya" (can't translate the tone). Almost all words I know in Cantonese are pronounced pretty similarly to their Mandarin pronunciation, yet "ya" and "nian" are seriously worlds apart.

Speaking of chrysanthemum tea, I've only recently learnt that I'm not supposed to boil it. All I need to do is to bring the pot of water to boil and dump the dried flowers into the boiling water before turning off the heat. Sugar's added last after the flowers have been sieved out, and to taste.

I boiled a pot of it for a minute or so, and it tasted much stronger than what I'm used to. Perfectly drinkable, just not as pleasant. The taste was too heavy, not sure that's the correct way to describe it.








The colours in my job are weird due to the crappy quality of dyes (I think) in the Chinese factories. Certain shades of red, if I wanted to order my goods in those, have to be called another shade of red in order to have the right shade.

If one is unlucky, they might get end up delivering diarrhoea brown instead of burgundy. I admit I'm exaggerating here, but not by much.

In any case, I wouldn't be able send it back and ask for refund if that happens. The Chinese Chinese, they're great at pretending to be stupid. Together with their irresistibly low prices, that's how they make money.

After all, that's what they call 扮猪吃老虎 (translation: pretend to be a pig to eat the tiger).







I don't get it. Why would the stats of my blog be of interest to anyone? Yet if it interests no one, why is it that every time I mention it, my page views rise a little?

Yesterday (Monday) I looked at the total page views for this blog on the day before, and I thought maybe the slight increase was due to it being a weekend. Then I looked at it again today and it had remained constant yesterday, a Monday. Moreover, the last rant had a particularly low view count since it was published, so the rise probably wasn't caused by it.

This could mean it has been at that rate since the last time I checked.

(My first attempt at using Memegenerator)

No, I'm not going to give any specific numbers this time.


Disclaimer: Given that I only check the numbers once a week at most, I may have been completely wrong. Who knows? Better yet, who cares?

Rant 754 / Elbow Pit Hair

I'm not very familiar with the Japanese adult video industry news, hence it's only now that I learnt that they have made just 2 anaglyphic 3D films so far - one starring Mika Kayama and another starring Yuma Asami.

Unlike the first 3D video I've seen a long time ago, these 2 videos do not make anything "pop up" and appear close to the viewer. Instead, all the 3D effect does is give the screen depth, just like a certain 3D movie I've seen last year, as if the room is just behind the screen and that if the viewer can get a hand through it, he'd be able to touch the people in the video.

I wonder how different the techniques are and why they can't make anything "pop up" like the first one I saw did.

Another thing is, why not Sora Aoi?









The Straits Times needs a reality check. I need to tone down on my anti-PAP rants.

But I can't help it whenever I encounter something so ridiculous. This guy is actually comparing our ministers' salaries with the ICT (In-Camp Training, ie reservist) compensation for NSmen!

The arguments can go like this: that if one wants to serve the nation, one must be prepared to sacrifice and forgo one's income worth.

Very true, yes.

If one were to use this line of logic, does it mean we should also not compensate our national servicemen during their in-camp training? After all, they should be prepared to sacrifice for their country and it's only income and not their lives they are sacrificing. This would save lots of taxpayer money.

You know what? I agree with this too.


What he failed to mention is that while ministers are free to leave their jobs whenever they want, we can't just quit our National Service and refuse to go for ICT. Their ministerial positions in the government are not their only jobs! Some of them even hold multiple directorships in other organizations.

Furthermore, the ministers receive annual bonuses pegged to our GDP, up to 8 months' pay this year.

These flaws in his logic are apparently too minuscule for him to notice, I guess.






I'm very sure I'm not being exposed to the PAP's point of view enough. However, I feel that the PAP isn't trying to reach out of the people online at all, even though that's where most of the current generation of voters are.

Where's the PAP Youtube channel? Even the DPRK has one.

The PAP's Facebook page is disappointing. All it contains is a short history copied from Wikipedia and is like by only 498 people (or 5 people with about 99 alt accounts each).

Can that even be considered as trying?

Oh wait... they have a website.


Remembered this only when I read this article saying that our ministers' pay is fair. I fully agree with this article and finds that it helps give me more balanced perspective that I remember having last week.










For some strange reason this made me lol.






Maybe I was bored but this made me laugh so hard.






And another.






Because random Jamaican men singing at your bathroom window are perfectly safe.






There are so many!





GI Joe, now in Japanese.










Wow this is certainly embarrassing. I've only just learnt the difference between a Current account and Savings account - a Current account doesn't accumulate interests and can be used with a chequebook, while Savings is the opposite.

Man...

Also been reading a little on private banking. I know it's useless but who knows? Maybe it will be useful someday.

Private banking originally began when wealthy men needed a dedicated banker for themselves whom they can contact at any time to discuss money matters.

Nowadays, private banking has been greatly cheapened and no longer involves such a cool service for everyone. At the cheapest level, you get a phone number to a call centre which would sound posher than the usual bank tellers. On a higher, more expensive level, you get a direct number to a specific banker, whose number is available to only a couple hundred of other "wealthy" men like you and is able to re-direct you to specialists according to your needs.

That's probably what most rich people can get.

All these services also cost money and they don't come cheap (obviously).

As for the minimum sum required, I can only get numbers from UK articles, where the lowest number was 50k GBP.

Rant 753 / 卫斯理

Are air-cons that cold in local malls? Or are they just trying to attract more attention to Earth Hour by making this issue bigger than it really is?

Personally I never feel too cold anywhere.

On the other hand, I remember the malls in Penang that turned theirs to full blast instead of employing other measures to keep the cool air in. I can still clearly recall how every time I walked past an entrance, there was always a strong cold wind.

Not only did they not use an air door to seal the entrances, I often saw manual glass doors that were just left open.

I know electricity is cheap in Malaysia, but seriously?










A new office chair!

Actually it's not new at all. In fact, I had to spend several minutes dusting it. My family's been using it for storage purposes so it had been buried under a lot of old junk, including brochures and insurance documents dating from 2009.

Hence I had completely forgotten about it; I'm not even sure what it was originally meant for.

It's just some crappy 5-wheeled adjustable office chair that's bound to be terribly warm. To slow down the inevitable putrefying process caused by an accumulation of dried sweat, I've covered it with a large towel that is going to be changed every few days.

The stool was getting really painful on my ass.









So I just noticed I've a significant number of invites on Messenger.  Never looked at them before. Apparently they were some kind of spam. I bet if I accepted them all I'll get fcktons of spam messages.

It's easy to tell they're not real. All of the those whose profiles I opened randomly were the same - white females in their mid-20s. Makes no sense, even though they typed personal descriptions on their profiles.

One of the advantages of being an Asian in Asia, I guess.



Also got a number of legit ones from friends who changed their emails. Ignored them as well. I don't use Messenger these days.










Everyone's busy working these days except my mum. This is starting to look good, but I'm not sure.

On the other hand, I'm beginning to see that for most people, the amount of free time they have is inversely proportional to the amount of money in their wallets.

Well, again, except for my mum. Come to think about it, I believe it's because she's so experienced in her line of work that she knows exactly how much she can push to her employees.

Yet again, I'm unsure about this. It could very well be that they're cutting her some slack because everyone working with her is aware that her health hasn't been too good in recent years.

Which leads me to this puzzling question of why they're are so eager to help me get into this business and eventually take over.

Unlike my father, I'm no artist and I've no experience with management. The closest to leadership I've ever tried was being a section leader for a year in NS, which basically isn't much of a leadership position since there were only 4-5 guys under me. Furthermore, unlike my mother, I've no experience with textiles and knitting.

In short, I was never groomed for this. Then again, I gave up on what I was groomed for a few years ago.

Doubt.

It is human to doubt. It is my nature to be cautious.

I can understand why her employees were relieved to hear I was starting to help her. Their jobs were on the line after all. But what about her buyer, the main one? What does she have to lose by losing a supplier when there are quite a few others trying to compete with us, eg my cousin? She hasn't been doing well recently according to the buyer, so she would have jumped at the opportunity.

I cannot figure that out. Are we that honest and reliable?

I don't believe I've mentioned this cousin before. It's not something I like to think about.

Before my father passed away, he wanted her to come over with her husband to help him handle his business while he was being treated for his illness. Little did anyone expect him to die back then, not even himself. Of course he didn't. He was only 50 then and had even survived a stomach surgery two decades before because he had drunk and smoked too much, something all Chinese men in this region who could afford it did.

So after he died, my mum tried to talk them into an agreement in which she would invest the money he left behind while they handled the business. Yea I know what that sounds like, but she hadn't worked for a decade (my father told her to quit her job and be a housewife) and they knew more about the operation of the business than she did. My father, who had taken the advice of his scum-of-the-society elder brother, never trusted my mother with anything related to the management of the business, and didn't even have a joint bank account with her.

I have a rather negative impression of my uncle for very good reasons. He was the reason we had to flee Hong Kong, but that's another story.

Anyway, not only did they refuse the offer, but they also tried to get my mum to sign a letter of authorization that basically would have transferred the business to them.

That was a big deal. The business had a good reputation and had clients among some of the biggest chain stores in Singapore. We no longer do now because my mum couldn't handle the work. Allowing my paternal relatives to take over the business would have been a very bad thing, almost a repeat of history, which is part of the "another story".

Fortunately, my mum handed the letter to the lawyer who handled the intestate business for our family before signing it, who told her that not only should she never do it, but to also renew her business license before it expired, because at that point they could register their business under our name.

The next part I might have mentioned before, but I think I had been referring to her as "my aunt", which she wasn't since she's one of my father's sisters' daughter, making her my cousin.

They didn't leave Singapore after that, probably expecting that my father would strangely leave his business to them. Why would any father do something like that? What sense would that have made? But why else did they try to take over the business, other than greed? I don't believe greed alone had motivated them back then. But greed might have convinced them that the above was true, that he was going to hand the business to them if something happened to him.

What they did after that was to rent an office near hers and went into exactly the same business, probably because those two were the only things they were familiar with in Singapore. At first they were successful, judging from news that she had showered my relatives with expensive gifts and even bought houses back in China.

Moreover, they were never nice or anything to us even when my father was only recently dead. Whether the offer my mum made insulted them I'll likely never know, but what I do know is that for years they were talking behind her back, trying to influence her clients to stop doing business with her. It only backfired, but nevertheless, my mum was unable to handle the amount of work that my father could, so she stopped doing business with the more demanding (and hence more expensive/prestigious) chain stores anyway.

After a couple of years, things apparently went sour for them. According to my paternal great-uncle (my paternal grandfather's brother) and his daughters (also my aunts, I guess), the only paternal relatives on good terms with my family, she wiped out her husband's entire life savings, which probably caused their divorce.

So now both of them are still here and still in the same business, but on a smaller scale. Not that it really matters to me since our business does not work with any of the stores/boutiques close to those that they work with.

But this is why I'm curious. Ours is a rather niche market, so there aren't that many people involved. The buyer could easily just buy from her when my mum stops working. Why would it be a bad thing to her if our business closes down?

Is it because this relationship has some kind of deeper meaning for her? Because she knew both my parents and regard them as personal friends? This is probably the best explanation I have for this but I can't confirm.











Here's an interesting read that touches on a lot of things I've read about but never dwelled on.

I think I'll copy and paste some parts. This is by no means complete though.

Given that Singapore’s poor are amongst the Developed World’s poorest, while living standards are amongst the highest in the world, it is not difficult to see why the Government’s ridiculous salaries are distastefully inflated.



Environment Minister Yaacob Ibrahim said that the government knew the diversion canal was not big enough to take the rainwaters. He claimed that because this sort of “freak events” occur only once every 50 years, there was nothing the government could do about it. The Bukit Timah Canal was constructed in 1972, almost 40 years ago – about time something that happens “once every 50 years” would occur. Additionally, meteorologists reported that ‘this flood comes three years after one of Singapore’s worst floodings in recent history, in December 2006‘.



It is a well-known fact that GIC and Temasek Holdings, Singapore’s two sovereign wealth funds, are both headed by members of the Lee family. Both have reported a ridiculous loss of $41.6 Billion and $39.91 Billion respective and have yet to answer to the real stakeholders – Singaporeans – on how this could have happened.

“When we invest, we invest for the long-term”, Lee Kuan Yew, who heads GIC, said when Temasek Holdings purchased Bank of America shares and then sold it off a few months later, losing between US$2.3 to US$4.6 billion just like that.

Masquerading as an independent paper, the Straits Times, while not necessarily fabricating facts on its own (at least I hope not), blatantly twists them. For example (extracted from here), the media was full of praise of Temasek CEO Ho Ching for earning a few million dollars on paper, but failed to highlight her disastrous investment decisions such as buying the shares of Barclays bank at a high and selling them at a low a few months later.


The Straits Times credited the Singapore Internal Security Department for providing the crucial “intelligence” which led to the capture of escaped terrorist Mas Selamat Kasteri by the Malaysian Special Branch. It turned out that the operation was part of a joint collaboration by the Malaysian, Singapore and Indonesian police and the Singapore ISD actually played only a minor role in the capture of Mas Selamat, but the Straits Times did not mention this to give the public the full picture, choosing rather to mislead Singaporeans into believing that ISD had indeed “redeemed” itself.

On 2 February 1963, just a few months before the elections, Operation Coldstore was launched and more than a hundred people were arrested and detained without trial, including the Secretary-General and other key members of the Barisan Sosialis, the PAP’s biggest threat.

Despite the heavy blow, which was obviously undermined the Barisan Sosialis’ success at the Elections, they won 33.2% of the popular vote and the PAP took 46.9%. What do you think the PAP would have gotten if it hadn’t carried out Operation Coldstore?

At the age of 22, Lim Chin Siong was elected into the Legislative Assembly, and he was so popular among the people that Lee Kuan Yew was prompted to promise that he would be ‘our future Prime Minister‘ (guess who became PM instead?).

However, he soon grew disillusioned with the PAP and left to form the Barisan Sosialis in 1961. Under the pretext of being a communist, he was detained without trial under Operation Coldstore for SIX YEARS until he was forced to renounce politics and went into exile in 1969.

Lee Kuan Yew himself said of him “I liked and respected him for his simple lifestyle and his selflessness. He did not seek financial gain or political glory. He was totally committed to the advancement of his cause“.

The fact that practically no young Singaporean knows about important people like Lim Chin Siong, or even David Marshall, our first Chief Minister, is testament to the spectacular failure of our education system. All they ever learn about our country’s history is LKY and Raffles, LKY and Raffles, LKY and Raffles, and maybe a bit about the War.



As if insensitive MPs are not enough, the PAP is fielding hyper-sensitive wimps behind the shadows with their GRC Trick. Tell me who on earth has ever been afraid of being killed by an aluminium chair slammed against a door?

tldr,

VOTE WISELY

Rant 752 / Qu'ils Mangent De La Brioche

So a factory we do business with in China requested a letter of authorization to use our brand name and logo. For some reason they're encountering problems with this legal issue only now. Why? What law was changed recently in China?

They faxed my boss a letter of authorization for her to sign... except it was a little too general IMO.

[business name] hereby authorizes [factory name] to manufacture and export apparel bearing our brand name and/or logo produced in their factory located at [factory address]. This authorization is valid through December 31, 2011. If you require additional information, please contact me directly at [hp no.] or via email [email].

My problem with this was that this was going to allow them to produce those "apparel" for any purpose, including export to other stores in Singapore without our knowing.

So I had raised this issue and was instructed to make some changes. This is the end result. I haven't printed it yet. Probably will do that tomorrow or something.

[business name] hereby authorizes [factory name] to manufacture and export for us apparel bearing our brand name and/or logo produced in their factory located at [factory address]. [business name] does not authorize the use of such apparel for any other purposes. This authorization is valid through December 31, 2011. If you require additional information, please contact me directly at [hp no.] or via email [email].

Brand:

Logo:

Looks better this way, but it still doesn't look right. For one, it doesn't sound very natural to me. The extra line about what it doesn't authorize wasn't my idea. I didn't like it due to its redundancy but there's no harm being too careful about such documents.

Heck, I'm not even sure if the changes are necessary.







I need a chair. I broke my chair some months ago but it could still support me. Now I'm feeling a little worried when I use it after it shifted a little yesterday, so I've switched to a stool.

Unfortunately the stool is too tall, so it's getting quite uncomfortable. Without something to lean back on, it's also pretty painful for my back. Now I have to stand up every once in a while or else it'll get painful to stand straight.

But I'm still too lazy to find a new chair.









So someone called a local radio station to say that people who are underdressed when going to Holland V are heartlanders with no class, and even went on further to state which areas of Singapore they're most likely from. To top it all off, she tells them to stay away from that place.

Oh yes, that far. So not only is she insulting every single blue-collar worker out there, she's also pissing off residents of those areas she mentioned.

Holland Village, aka Holland V, is a street with a number of bars and restaurants, ie that's one place to go to for nightlife. As the name implies, it's pretty westernised, and one can always find white people there, both tourists and residents.

As much as I agree with the fact that being underdressed = lacking class for most people, I'm not sure how it's necessary to wear better clothes just to drink at a bar. A t-shirt and bermudas are perfectly fine for such an activity, IMO. Furthermore, being underdressed does not always necessarily imply a lack of wealth, culture or class.

If she was serious, she needs to get out of the country and take a look around. If she wasn't, I think she just trolled half the island.

Either way, she's the one without class and culture. Blatant elitism is never cool.

If she was being honest on air, then she probably has money.

However, in order to inject some positivity into this blog, I'll rephrase what I was actually going to say:

She's an important part of our society because people like her help make capitalism work. All businesspeople should love people like her. If everyone who has money is also smart, it wouldn't be easy to make profits.