Techno.Ranti

356

2011-12-17T20:45:00.000+08:00

That is the number of days I have left in my national service. Or at least, my full-time national service. God knows where I will be posted to when that fabled date of 071211 arrives. Most likely a combat battallion, but I hope not. Until then, just slightly than a year left.

And here I am again. Posting an entry in camp during weekend duty. It has been more than a month since I last wrote anything here, and I suppose there is no better time than now to post up something. I do not think I will write a "Reflections of 2011" post. That has been done to death by millions of others, and I would prefer to keep my entries light. Furthermore, it would be much too personal (for that, I reserve my second outlet). What I will do is muse about some key things that happen to me in the year that are right now lingering in my head, waiting for the opportunity to make the jump from my mind to this ridiculously tiny screen in front of me. Warning: it's mostly army related issues. But take it in context: I'm in camp right now, and I am a military personnel; I do not really have the time to ponder about civilian issues during my free time (if I even have any).

Right now, Week 6 of the 04/11 BMT/ENHANCED/LEADERSHIP just ended. That leaves the recruits 3 more weeks on the island, and 3 more weeks to the end of my first batch of recruits. How well have they done? I cannot say. I have no appropriate point of reference. It would be unfair to use my experience as a recruit as a measure of their performance. That would be completely illogical. I will say, however, I have come to better appreciate the difficulties in turning fresh-faced young men into battle-ready soldiers.

BMT Commanders like to say that "Recruits will always be Recruits". It is a realisation that comes to you the moment you try to get them to do something. Anything at all. Somebody will always do something else so spectacularly strange (or stupid, if I'm feeling mean) and unexpected (and so far from what you actually instructed), that you would come to question whether that individual has any damned common sense at all. But then we are trained to first accept it as our fault, that we had made too many assumptions in our instructions, leading to miscommunication. So at times I find myself giving seemingly redundant instructions, or repeating a phrase again and again, just to ensure that they get it.

But "Recruits will always be Recruits" is not to generalise the whole lot of them. Recruits are common in the sense that they will all give you some problem or other that you have to solve. That's where the commonality ends, and 64 unique problems emerge. For example, you have a recruit that keeps reporting sick for the slightest of problems: a runny nose here, a muscle ache there. Yet you cannot stop him from reporting sick: you cannot reserve that right. You do not want to accuse him of malingering, as that would be quite a serious allegation. You want to encourage him to push on, but he whines so much that you just want to give him a good smack across the face. And then you have another recruit: extremely motivated, but he has a real medical problem that prevents him from participating in training, yet he choses not to report sick. Another recruit, always being lazy, getting the platoon into trouble. So on and so forth for 64 times. It gets worse when the recruits treat commanders like almighty deities who can provide a solution to all their problems and a balm to all their wounds.

But that's not all you have to contend with. As a BMT Commander you will most likely have to deal with overly concerned parents. So that is another potential 64 problems (assuming parents worry about different things from their sons, and both parents worry about the same thing). I gather from some of my interactions with some of these parents that they simply do not trust the SAF to take care of their son. (I do not blame them, given how the organisation is infamous for having servicemen dying during training, or simply just exercising.) This is particularly frustrating as the parents are technically our paymasters, given that all military personnel are in fact in the civil service. So parents do have a lot of power to (for a lack of a better phrase) stir all kinds of shit for the organisation through their ever-dedicated MPs and get everybody down the chain of command into trouble. If they think that we do not take care of their sons, I share the opposite sentiment: the organisation cares too much. I do not think it is the SAF's responsibility to teach men how to take care of their own well-being. That job falls squarely on the shoulders of parents. My job is to train soldiers: teach basic soldiering skills and prepare them for military life. Not help them wipe their asses everytime they take a metaphorical shit in their pants. If parents did their job, my job would be a lot easier.

So simply put, being an instructor/commander at BMTC is not a breeze, as many would like to think. One has to manage people of all types: motivated, unmotivated, lazy, diligent, overzealous et cetera. This is compounded by the fact that this is the starting point of national service, and thus a sizeable number of every kind of recruit exists. So one simply cannot afford to just focus his efforts on one type of recruit.

I just realise this post has gotten extremely long. I'll keep it light by ending the post here, even though there are more thoughts running through my head now.

Yang Pertama Dan Utama

2011-11-06T20:04:00.000+08:00

Truth be told, I am not suppose to be making an entry into this blog. Not right now, anyway. But worse crimes have been committed under the name of Core Value Number 8. That statement alone should be sufficient in telling you where I am right now as I type out this entry. It is also why I am being more cryptic usual; not because I do not want to be found out, but because if I am found out, they (whoever they are) cannot make any claim of divulging restricted information to the public domain. Even as a thousand and one ideas buzz in my mind, begging to be digitised on to the screen in front of me, I am bound by law to refrain from doing so. It would be sufficient to say that my next several weeks will herald a new life experience, an experience both exciting and terrifying in equal measure. It will reveal to me what my life will be like for the next 11 months or so. Now I have said too much. You should know what I am talking about now.

Anyway, I know for a fact that what I want to talk about can be spoken quite openly, so I shall dispense with being cryptic. As you can tell them from the title, this post is pretty much SAF-related (if you are a Singaporean male who has gone through or is going through full-time national service and have not realised the nature of this post yet, shame on you! You should be 'summary-trialed'!). The intent of this entry is not to laud or lambast some obscure defence-related policy, or the whole concept of the SAF itself, but to address a seemingly innocent Question and Answer session with MG Ravinder Singh that my cohort of Specialist Cadets and I had about a month or so ago.

One cadet had stated that older soldiers had a tendency to use the term '3G Soldier' in rather derogatory tones, especially towards soldiers of my generation. The cadet stated that these older soldiers were in fact insinuating that the current crop of soldiers were weaker than them. The cadet enquired COA's thoughts on this, and whether the whole 3G Soldier concept is really just an euphemism for soft soldiers and an excuse for easier training simply because youngsters nowadays lack the mettle and grit to overcome the challenges pose by NS.

COA replied that whether we were weak or not, was irrelevant, as the idiosyncracies of our generation were perfectly suited for the kind of warfare prevalent on the battlefield in these troubled times. He made mention of the high-usage of technology and how our generation finds it completely natural to employ such technology as compared to the First and Second generations. So yes, we were just right for the kind of national defence in this day and age.

Personally, I think he had completely evaded the question by dismissing what the cadet thought was a matter of importance and relevance in his ability to lead his men. If I were to be a harsher critic, I would say COA had failed to understand the question and hence did not answer satisfactorily at all. The question simply demanded a simple 'yes, you are weaker soldiers' or a 'no, you are not weaker', followed by an elaboration of that response. Instead he twisted the intent of the question and answered it in terms of our generation's abilities. A diplomatic response, yes, but it still does not change the fact we are in truth weaker/not weaker than the previous two generations of the SAF. In my opinion, we are weaker than the previous generations of soldiers, and I believe that that is the opinion of COA as well. It is quite clear really, training demands and requirement have been made easier over the past several years. Not to increase the number of soldiers with this so and so skills or that so and so qualifications, but just to maintain the number. Of course, it would be extremely unfair for me to insinuate that he had evaded the question to lie to us. I am sure he did it to boost morale amongst us young specialists-to-be. But personally, I would have appreciated a more straightforward and genuine answer.

Secondly, I am of the opinion that COA has his cause and effect mixed up. It is more likely that the SAF realised how tech-savvy we are and pushed for a defence force more technologically advanced rather than the other way around, which COA's answer seems to imply. It would be a very sloppy way of running an organisation by serendipitiously coming to have a group of soldiers just when you are about to make a big push of technology integration. I honestly doubt the SAF would have upgraded so hard and fast if our generation turned out to be as technologically-handicapped as the previous generations.

That is all I have for now. I need to go on doing whatever it is I have been doing the past day on this lonely island.

Politico

2011-10-24T22:09:00.001+08:00

Once again, I am forcing myself to write. Well, partly anyway. At least this time I have something I would like to discuss (read: rant) about. This post is partly about politics, as the title suggests, and more specifically, about the current state of Singapore politics. I hope YOU have been paying attention to such current affairs, not only because it would make this entry a lot less bewildering to you, but also because being interested in Singapore politics seems to be the in-thing among youngsters nowadays. Just so all of you know, I was interested in Singapore politics way before it was cool to do so. So yes, I am saying that I am a trailblazer and trendsetter. Of sorts. Most of you were probably ignorant of events in local politics preceding GE2011, and it was the advent of social media in campaigning that led to your political awakening.

Indeed, social media seems to have played a very important part in this years elections, both PE and GE. Many analysts believe the prevalence of Facebook and Twitter in our daily lives will permanently change the way in which the Government engages with the electorate. With the aforementioned political awakening of Singaporeans, the stage is set for Singapore politics to evolve even further. This is what many analysts, as well as the media, like to call the 'new normal'. Frankly, that phrase is pretty cliche now, given that GE2011 was a good 5 months ago, and PE, 2 months. Thus, in my opinion, all the speakers in Parliament, political analysts and journalists should stop throwing that phrase around to make their speeches or essays sound more profound and/or current, because it no longer does sound profound and/or current.

And that is my first point of contention with the current state of local politics. Seems trivial, no doubt, to be annoyed over a mere adjective, but it is one thing that is being abused by all parties invested in politics: Analysts and journalists keep using it in their commentaries and essays to sound like they are about to provide some new insight, when they are merely rehashing what has been already said many times over; the PAP using it in their speeches to sound remorseful and humble so that you will believe that they are aware that Singaporeans are unhappy; the Opposition using it in their speeches as if it was some great triumph over the PAP when its still 81 against 6 (excluding NCMPs). Honestly, the 'new normal' is merely the 'old normal' plus a lot more people talking at once, and potentially in angrier tones. If I were an MP, I would move to have all usages of the term 'new normal' banned from the all speeches in the 12th Parliament. Any MP who breaks this rule will be thrown out of Parliament and stripped of his MP status, and can only run for office in the next GE if there is an actual change in Singapore's political landscape again.

Thus concludes my first point of contention. The second thing I am annoyed with is the fact that they are DEBATING over the Presidents' Opening Speech. I may be annoyed by this only because I am unaware of how Parliament actually functions, but the fact that one is debating over it can mean two things: either the President's speech was not clear in its intent of positing the focus of the 12th Parliament, or we have elected a bunch of idiots who could not understand what was proper standard English, a standard of English so sought after by the very Government they have been chosen to run. Of course, this could be just a poor choice of words on the part of the media. From the reports, the MPs are not so much debating over the Presidents' Speech as they are debating about how they should proceed with the 12th Parliament and what they should do first. Given that it is still a PAP majority in Parliament, and the PAP had a good 5 months to think about what to do before that, I am rather surprised that it is taking them so long to decide what to actually do with the 5 years we have given them. Yes, yes, I know this is all in the name of discussion, so that there more ideas can be sounded off. There seems to be very little development in that front.

My third point, and hopefully, my last is the fact that the PAP has been consistently thumbing down the Opposition again and again, even when their speech was, for lack of a better word, good. I do not want to sound like my Mr. Low (though I have to admit I have a soft spot for the Opposition, as I do with all underdogs), but I think he is justified in his indignation. For example, there was that big hullabaloo over the mentioning of Bhutan's Gross Happiness Index (or something like that) and how we should have something like it. Ms Sylvia Lim argued that the Government should focus on Singaporeans' happiness and well-being instead of just GDP. This drew criticism from Khaw Boon Wan, no less, and he mentions how Bhutanese are not all that happy. Well Mr. Khaw, that is beside the point isn't it? The argument is about focusing on happiness and well-being, not whether Bhutanese are happy or whether the GHI actually works. Then there was Mr. Gerald Giam (if I'm not wrong) who alleged that PAP's policies in the past decade were a 'failure' since it created so many problems in society. While I agree that to accuse PAP's policies of being failures is pretty harsh, but the defending it as a success is a bit of a stretch as well. The fact that there are a lot of unhappy Singaporeans is a result of some of those economic policies. Sure, many of us have benefitted from the economic policies of the last decade, but others have suffered as well. This was the weak point in Giam's argument that PAP failed to use to their advantage, and chose to be all defensive instead.

Of course, I have to admit that I'm not making a very convincing argument, and that is not my intention. Politics is a very heavy subject, and I am not interested in writing out a full-bodied KI-style critical analysis when I have not done so for the past year. The abovementioned is merely what I have observed thus far. Here's the non-political bit of this entry.

My notebook is spiralling down into digital dementia. I have to force-shut down every once in a while these days, and the frequency has been increasing. That's to be expected I guess, given that most notebooks' functioning lifespans are no more than 2 years. This computer has been around for almost 3. And given then abuse that I put the damn thing through, it's quite a miracle. I only hope that it will last all the way until I enter university, or at least until I reach my ORD,

Well that was a very long entry. Hopefully I have the stomach to write something so long soon.

Enforced Entry

2011-10-08T21:47:00.001+08:00

As the title suggests, I am forcing myself to make an entry into the blog. It occured to me that I am going to have to start applying for a placing in UK universities (again) in less than a year's time, and I cannot afford to have my facility with writing deteriorate further. If I am to communicate my passion and dedication to physics then I need my essay-crafting abilities to be at its peak. Furthermore, I have also been considering US universities as well, since I can no longer be certain of a good UK university offering me a spot (because of that single accursed B). But the so-called Common Application is only common in the sense that most US universities require to apply to them using that system first, after which they'll inundate you with a whole slew of other requirements, with each University having their own unique system of selection in place.

And as my recent SAT I results seem to indicate, my American standard of reasoning has worsened from last year. That will also impede my applications to the US if it ever comes to that.

With that out of the way, I shall begin to recount the significant events that have occured since the last entry. First off, I have put in some effort to rebuild the blog, though it still seems a little makeshift. For example, I have completely no idea on what to do with the profile page, except to insert a link to my Facebook profile, which seems to do the job just fine, but makes the make page itself seem pointless altogether. Perhaps I'll just leave it at that.

And as you can tell, I have added the Specialists' Creed to the navigation bar, and also the Specialists' Motto on the front page, to commemorate my graduation as a specialist of the SAF. I have been (fortunately) posted to BMTC (cue "circle is complete" jokes) as an instructor, and will most likely go back to the company that I trained in as a recruit.

That is all that has happened so far, and I do not have anything else to discuss. Hopefully, writing will become easier again.

Return

2011-08-30T23:08:00.000+08:00

Evidently, I am going to begin by stating that I have not made an(other) entry for an(other) extended period of time. And then I will go on to write how I am a lazy writer, but since this is my blog I have a right to it (being lazy about writing) as well. Of course, there is also the fact of National Service: not just as an obstacle of time, but an obstacle of content as well. I am bound by law never to speak of my training on the public domain (whatever that may be these days: It's their words, not mine), and since the only thing I ever do these days is train, I have pretty nothing left to write.

But I have decided to revive my writing again, for my mind's sake. Truth be told, I have been wondering about what to do with my blog for the past few months. I have tried time and again to avoid writing personal entries on the blog, but to no avail. Trying to write an argumentative piece can be quite taxing, and I can ill-afford the time commitment needed. So I have given in once more: to re-orientate this blog to something more personal instead of a blog with a topical focus. I will have to self-censor at times, to avoid divulging too much information about myself, or what I think. Fortunately, I have other avenues for catharsis if witholding such opinions becomes too much to bare...

Back to the point: I have decided to write again, only because I fear that not doing so would leave my mind to rot and end up as nothing more than an empty shell. I have changed the skin from the one I started with two years ago: a symbolic gesture of change in the nature of the blog. But I made a mistake of not saving the blog infrastructural code from the old template, such as the code for the tagboard and links. So if you are reading this, and you did have your blog linked to mine and it is no longer there, tell me. If you are a friend, you should know how to find me. But I don't expect anyone of course. I have rebuild part of the list using links from my old class blog, which made up large part of my original set of links anyway. Furthermore, most of the original set of links lead to dead blogs now. That's the death of long essays for you. The only live blog as of now is Amanda's.

If you are reading this entry as a Note on Facebook, it is because I have imported my blog to my Facebook notes as an RSS feed. I recommend that you read this on the blog instead. Not because there's anything different, but because I'm somewhat of a purist.

Anyway, bear with me and mind the dust as the blog is being reconstructed.

Rant and Review: Tron Legacy

2011-01-26T00:27:00.009+08:00

Yes. I know. It has been a good 8 months since I last posted anything, due to sloth or being busy. Mostly the former. But as they say - "I'm back, bitches!" And within these past 8 months a great many things have come to past, many of which I would have Time weather away their details until I recall nought but their mere occurence. Suffice to say, 2010 was my Annus Horribilis. But one thing has not changed: I am still vehemently against being too personal with this blog. I created it with the sole purpose of being able to argue and/or rant about the world besides myself, and it shall remain so. That is why I have labelled this post as Rant and Review (instead of that damned APAPP), so that I can quickly write off my prolonged abscence without needing to justify it with some kind of annoying detail I would rather forget.

Anyway, I would be pretty surprised if anyone still reads this damned thing. If you have been checking back every few weeks in hopes of finding something fresh on this site, I applaud your persistence and faith in my future desire to write, and, at the same time, laugh at you for the same reasons. And if you are still here after reading that, then I separately applaud your sense of humour

Anyway, let's get to the meat of this post. From December till now, I have managed to watch two films. Today, I present to you: Tron Legacy.

Tron Legacy

Tron Legacy is the "sequel" to the original Tron of 1982. "Sequel" because you don't exactly need to have watched the first film to understand the plot, though obviously it will be easier to appreciate the concepts (and also jokes and references to the first film) proposed in Legacy if you have watched Tron. Legacy does, of course, continue the story of Kevin Flynn, this time vicariously through his son Sam Flynn. Flynn Senior has gone missing for some 25 years, and Flynn Junior owns Encom, Flynn Senior's corporate empire. You'll have to go watch the original Tron if you want to learn how Senior becomes the head of Encom in the first place. As it turns out, Senior is trapped in the Grid, a "digital frontier" that he created, and Junior stumbles into it almost by accident (this is where you really have to watch the first film to understand how the hell he got into the Grid in the first place. It has to do with lasers, atomisation and digitisation).

And so begins the reunification of father and son, and their journey to return to the real world. This plot arc is the weakest part of Legacy, because the events that occur in Legacy are extremely similar to those that happen in Tron. Go to Games. Break out of Games. Consult with someone familar with the digital world. Take the Solar Sail. Go to nearest Beam tower. Do the poster pose. Escape. End (of line? Ha! Tron reference, sorry). Of course, I have left out several details, but this is the gist of the plot for both films. You can say whatever you want about the Father-Son story, but it is just an excuse to reuse the same plot.

Which brings me to a very big problem with Legacy: The film is not bold enough as a Sci-Fi film (which it is, so sod off, sci-fi haters). What is a good Sci-Fi film? It is one that evokes themes, ideas and concepts that very little people have thought about. It isn't about lasers or aliens or spaceships. That's just the stage by which Sci-Fi presents its discussion. The first Tron became a cult Sci-Fi hit because it was talking about a whole digital world inside our computers, in which the User is some kind of personal God to his or her programme. In that digital world, the programmes are personified by the people that created them (even more religious undertones). Now think back to 1982. That was before the Internet and the rise of Microsoft or Apple. So the number of people who have come across, much less use, a computer was minimal. And here you have a film using worlds like Users and Programmes and information exchange way before it entered the global lexicon. That is why Tron became a classic. What does Legacy have to show for it? ISOs: Programmes that are spontaneously created within a computer system, i.e. they have no Users. While this isn't exactly a feeble concept (it's not very bold either), the film failed to push the idea far enough in my opinion. Kevin Flynn says that "it changes eveything. Science, philosophy religion..." but its mere lip service: We are left only to imagine how it actually does "change everything" with little direction.

You must be thinking right now: But who or what the balls is Tron?! This is another annoying thing about Legacy. No, he is not Kevin Flynn's programme (that would be CLU). Tron is actually the programme of Kevin's close friend (who we see early in the film advising Sam Flynn) and is also Kevin's main ally in the digital world in the first film. In Legacy, Tron mainly appears in flashbacks detailing how Kevin created the Grid with CLU and Tron. In the main story itself, he is absent and the flashbacks are ambiguous about his fate. So you'd expect there to be some dramatic reveal about the fate of Tron right? Wrong! The reveal was anti-climatic, and you could have missed it easily enough. It's as if you called your movie The Lion King and focused 90% of your movie on Timon, Pumba and Simba trying to hunt for the biggest bug in the world and then conveniently mention halfway through the film that Simba is the rightful head of a lion pride, and THEN still continue the quest for the biggest bug in the world. It doesn't make any fucking sense!

As an action film, Legacy is certainly one of the best. The aesthetic of the film is mesmerising, and the acting is decent. The film score is an appropriate mix of techno and symphonic sounds, and gets your adrenaline pumping. But these don't hold a Sci-Fi film together. Tron Legacy is merely good enough, when it could have been great.

Post-Script: To be fair to Disney, they obviously want to market the film to a wider audience, and with film-making budgets these days, I suppose they can ill-afford to spent so much money on a philosophical discussion on ISOs. From that stand-point, I would say that Legacy is not so much a sequel as it is a reboot, so that Tron becomes a more marketable franchise. Looking at my analysis of the plot, that actually makes sense. The film-makers reused the same plot-arc, but with this very important detail change [SPOILER ALERT]: Kevin Flynn dies in the system and does not make it back to the real world like the last time. Disney is, I believe, trying to symbolically and literally severe off whatever ties the original Tron may potentially have with the new franchise. Ungrateful bastards.

Retirement

2010-05-01T02:06:00.000+08:00

He went up. This was his last time doing so. He would never need to do it again. He saw his comrades and he was proud of them. He had finished the lap, he had come to the end; his work was finished. All that was left was that last swansong, and once he came down, it would be finally, truly over.

A very good morning to our Guest-of-Honour, Miss Joscelin Yeo, our principal, Mr. Chan, vice principals, Mr. Chew and Ms. Chen, teachers, parents and fellow Victorians.

I would like to first thank Guest-of-Honour, Miss Yeo for taking time out today to grace this occasion. Thank you, Miss Yeo.

I think most of us, including myself, can’t wait to enjoy our half-day, so I promise that the rest of this speech will not take more than a minute long.

I would like to sum up the experience of the 18th CT Council by evoking three simple ideas. The first two are efficiency in execution and excellence in service, for that is something we have always strived for in our duties to the college. Whatever it was, be it the lockers, the Igloo, our ushering services or the Poster Regulation, the CT Council saw to make good on the promise in our Council pledge: that is to do the utmost for the welfare of the student community.

The third idea is gratitude to the College, because we know that whatever we have achieved as a council would not have been possible without the understanding and appreciation of the administration, staff, parents and especially you, our fellow Victorians. We are forever in your debt, and we can only repay you with our gratitude. So thank you VJ, thank you for everything.

With this, I bid you all good day, and good luck.

A Persistently Annoying Personal Post #8: B

2010-04-18T21:55:00.003+08:00

Fuck. I realise, despite my propensity to profanities, my entries are usually "Family-friendly" (as far as language is concerned), and this is way out of character for me (at least in terms of my virtual persona. Fuck, Because this is APAPP #8. I remember clearly that I never wanted this to Be the most frequent column, but now it is. I never wanted it to Be the most frequent column because I didn't want this site to Become just an annoying personal ranting ground (hence the title APAPP).

And fuck, Because of what this entry is really about. Just so everyBody knows, I did not come to this college to get Bloody second-rate grades. I know I kept on saying that "I didn't give a shit aBout it". I realised in the end that, actually, I just didn't want to give a shit aBout it so that I could avoid disappointments if they happened. But at the end of the day, I just can't escape my own competitive nature.

Yes. I still Believe that the only institutions in the world that do give a shit aBout it are Singapore universities and proBaBly the PSC. And even then only to a small degree. However, it still sucks knowing that I am in the Bottom 50% of the cohort and everyone else I know getting their Bloody distinctions.

Perhaps it would not have Been so Bad if noBody actually had any expectations of me. I tried my Best to avoid that trap again, where I let my expectations be coloured By the expectations of others. But when everyone is asking me aBout whether I'm ok, or that they are sorry for talking aBout it Because they thought I was in the fortunate 50%, it Becomes extremely difficult to sustain my apathetic stand towards it Because I am somehow suppose to feel disappointed or I am somehow suppose to Be in the correct half. But that is precisely what I don't want. Sympathy. It makes me feel useless and incompetent. And neither do I want empathy. Because all I want to do is suck it up, and move on; not wallow in negativity. But its damn fucking difficult if I am always weighed down with either.

So yeah, By asking me whether I'm ok, you have only made it less so by reminding me how much effort I put in, how much I pushed my group, how many late nights were spent doing it. How all that is for nought. I would have Been actaully ok if I did not give a shit in the first place, Because I proBaBly would have Believed that I deserved what I had received. But I cared too much aBout it right from the start, and I only tried to forget aBout it when it was finally over. So don't you dare Bring it up in a conversation. Or I will make you eat your parents. Seriously.

A suBstantial number of people have already gotten over it. Not for me. I know I will never get over it. It will always Be etched in my mind: a reminder of incompetence. There is no point appealing for a review, Because it will not change anything and I will never Be able to achieve closure, regardless of how satisfactory the explanation is. I know I will never be able to escape myself, and as Mick Jagger sang, I can't always get what I want (which is to escape my nature).

So fuck it. Fuck it and fuck then Education Minister Tharman Shamugaratnam and his grand plan of transforming Singapore education. Minister is damn fucking lucky to be in MOF now, Because I would have Burned his office to the ground if he were still at MOE. It is now a personal vendetta. If I am ever working for the latter Ministry, it will be the first thing I am aBolishing. Fuck.

A Persistently Annoying Personal Post #7: I'll be BBBEC

2009-10-31T01:12:00.002+08:00

It has been slightly more than 4 months since my last entry. My reasons for not committing myself to updating this blog? Well, they are varied. Within those 4 months I was probably too lazy, too busy, or had nothing interesting to write (actually that's not entirely true, but due to the public nature of this blog, it is not exactly appropriate to talk about it here). But mostly because I was too lazy. I warned you about that.

So if you have persistently checked this site for updates time and again for the past 4 months, I applaud (and appreciate) and mock your dogged perserverance. Or maybe it's just muscle memory. Either way your loyalty has been rewarded with this (almost) meaningless entry. Hooray.

Anyway, the previous entry, also known as the "Worst. Entry. Ever." was an update concerning my creation of a Facebook account. Like I have mentioned before, I don't create anything online without a very good reason for doing so. Facebook is certainly becoming a potent online force and I decided to see how powerful it really is. If you strip it to its bare essentials, its a social networking site with an 'innovative' twist (Project Work Co-ordinators, please take note): It is suppose to reconnect you with your old, long lost friends, not just connect with your current friends.

Seriously? But isn't that what MySpace was used for as well? Just because you describe a function already inherent within the system that has yet to be described before does not make it innovative. Insightful maybe, but not innovative. Of course, it would be unfair to Facebook to just talk about its original intent. The site has grown, with increasingly more useful and useless functions. I just read the other day that the Singapore Police Force uses Facebook to catch criminals.

But I still stand firm on my belief that Facebook will go the way of Friendster one day. Or maybe not. Maybe the world and the infrastructure of the Internet back then just was not ready for something like Facebook yet. Maybe now it is. Only time will tell. But that's besides the point. Creating a Facebook account was part of a series of experiments: the first was to see how people would react when they find out a person like me, a quintessential on- and off-line hermit, was on Facebook. Most reacted with disbelief. Some with relief. Some with indignance. Some were vindicated.

The second experiment was to see how many "Friends" I would (re)connect with as a passive user. Now by "passive", I mean a user who does not actively go out to add friends, and instead waits for others to add him. Over the past 4 months, I now have 143 friends. Not too bad for a passive user. But the greatest increase happened right at the start, when I first created my account. So adding me was most likely based on incredulity or curiosity (I think). Therefore, not as powerful as you might think. Because if the system works, as I reconnect with more people, the more people I can potentially reconnect with, because Facebook alerts you to 'mutual friends'. The more mutual friends that two supposed strangers have, the more likely they are to be friends in real life. Well, sometimes. I have already gotten 3 friends requests from people I have completely never met before, much less actually come from VJC. So if you have more friends, the more mutual friends you might share with someone you did not know that you knew. Freaky.

Anyway, enough with the Microsoft monstrosity that is Facebook. The real beef is that you'll be seeing a lot more updates the coming weeks, as I plan to conduct a slight more academic venture with this site. Most likely dealing with GP and KI stuff. So be prepared to be bored to death by my longwinded prose, or be timelessly entertained by my witty but obscure references to underground pop culture that you might barely aware of. You get to read something either way, and I get to work on my essay skills. How fun.

Worst. Entry. Ever.

2009-06-23T22:16:00.001+08:00

If you were (pleasantly) shocked by VJC's decision to postpone the examinations,

YOU ARE NOT PREPARED

for what I am going to do next.

Observation: Technological Decade

2009-06-20T13:49:00.002+08:00

This essay was written at the start of the year for the application of an academic scholarship. I was declined of the scholarship because of the "overwhelming number of good applicants", and hence they "regret" to be unable offer it to me. That's a terribly nice way to say I am one of the underwhelming number of poor applicants. But that's beside the point. I have nothing original to offer, so I am just control-c-ing, control-v-ing my essay on to this entry. Enjoy.

10 years after 1999, in a strange clash of irony, the world is increasingly connected through the Internet, but only because of increased wireless coverage. 10 years from now, this is only likely to become more widespread, hence I believe that defence technology should direct research towards wireless technologies and the Internet.

The Internet gave birth to a new threat: the virtual virus. A simple line of code is all that is required to bring down elaborate systems. Recall the unfounded, but reasonable, fears of the Y2K bug. World economists and computer experts feared that because of how computers perceived the passage of time, systems that ran the economy would malfunction, resulting in an apocalyptic collapse. That never happened of course, but something like this is certainly plausible. Therefore, I feel that defence technology should focus on protecting computer systems from the attacks of such viruses and internal glitches. With the slow but inevitable death of a wired Internet, a wireless one makes attacks only so much more likely to happen. Such a technology must be adaptive, meaning that it can learn on the job even after development is complete, so that it requires much less human maintenance. Such a technology should not only be used in the military but in the commercial sectors as well.

There has also been news lately of how there are increasingly more terrorists who have been radicalised through the Internet, through access of information glorifying acts of terrorism. Such extremist groups understand that to recruit the young, their influence must reach them through the appropriate channels, i.e. the Internet. These ‘self-radicalised’ individuals are a lot more dangerous than organised groups as they are a lot more difficult to monitor. Defence technology must hence develop ways in which the fight against terrorism can be brought to the virtual world. A system can be in place to seek out and investigate website that seem to advocate martyrdom and wars. Of course, care must be taken so that such a system will not be abused by a government to deprive its country of its liberties.

Wireless technology also means wireless control. There should also be a focus on the development of machines that will be used in battle that can be controlled wirelessly efficiently. Mass production of such unmanned units can help drastically reduce casualties in war. Such a wireless technology can no longer depend on the simple concept of electromagnetic signals, as they could be easily disrupted when travelling from one point to another. Focus must hence be on the world of quantum mechanics, where the conventional rules of time and space break down, and where non-local (meaning that there is no need to send something from point A so as to influence something to happen at point B) communication is possible.

In conclusion, with the ubiquity of wireless technologies only likely to increase with time, defence technology must learn how to cope with the possible dangers that it can pose to the safety of people.

One Final Effort

2009-04-30T23:44:00.001+08:00

He went up, and came down. Went up again. That was the last time that he would ever had to do it twice. This was his final lap. But until that end, there was still more work to be done.

A very good morning to our Guest-of-Honour, Ms. Sheila Esther Wee, our principal, Mr. Chan, our vice-principals, Mr. Fong and Ms. Chen, our teachers, parents and fellow Victorians.

It is an incredible honour for me to stand here today to deliver this speech on behalf of my fellow CT Councillors. Seeing as how this is the sixth speech you are hearing today, I also realise how boring this might be for a few of you. But I assure you that this will be the last speech you will be hearing for this investiture, and I promise to keep my speech, as our dearest principal Mr. Chan is fond of saying, short, sharp and sweet.

Firstly, I would like to thank our Guest-of-Honour, Ms. Wee, our former vice principal, for taking time out of her busy schedule to grace this special occasion. Thank you. We sincerely hope that your trip back to the college has brought back many fond memories.

I would like to begin by turning the clock backwards, exactly 1 year ago. 1 year ago, our seniors, the 17^th CT Councillors, had just been invested. The theme of their investiture was ‘Catalyst’, and it served as a symbol for their vision of their role in the college: an agent of positive change. It also made them quite popular with the Chemistry teachers.

And now 1 year on, the 17^th CT Councillors have completed their term in office. We hope that that they have been the Catalyst for positive changes that they had wanted to be. For the 18^th CT Council, we know very well that they have been that Catalyst for us. Right from the start of our journey as council initiates, our seniors served as our mentors, putting in a significant amount of effort to mould us into the leaders that the college needed us to be. They were also our friends, helping us ease into the fast-paced college routine that is new for many of us. They disciplined our hearts, and our minds, so that we would be ready for the challenges that we had to face when they could no longer hold our hands in this journey. And as it is evident today, our seniors have succeeded as the Catalyst that has changed us from students who were eager to serve, to leaders who arenot only eager, but also ready to serve. To our seniors, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts, for all the support and guidance that you have given us.

And so here we are today, at the beginning of our journey as CT Councillors. The theme for this year’s investiture, Diamond, like our seniors’ theme before this, symbolises the hopes and dreams that we as a council have for our term in office: to serve the school with excellence, to shine under the greatest pressure, and to carry on the legacy left by our seniors with strength. As our seniors have done, we hope to make the college a more interesting and vibrant place to be with new initiatives, with greater involvement of the Victorian Community. We also wish to continue to offer excellence in our service through the ushering of events, administration of lockers, the running of the Igloo, and much more.

As the president of the 18^th CT Council, I promise you, the college, that we, the 18^th CT Council, will serve you to the best of our abilities and make the coming year an extremely enjoyable one for everyone: the administration, the teachers and the students alike.

To end off, we would like to thank our principal, Mr. Chan, and vice-principals, Mr. Fong and Ms. Chen for their continued support.

We would like to thank our teachers-in-charge, Mr. Hoe Gim Yau, Miss Kerin Chua and Miss Rachel Teo, for their guidance, and more importantly, their friendship. We look forward to working closely with you.

To our parents, we thank you for the love and understanding that you have given us thus far. Your support for our many council endeavours will be invaluable in our term in office.

Finally, and most importantly, to our fellow Victorians, we eagerly anticipate the coming months as we strive to serve you better and work closely together for the betterment of our college. You guys will be of utmost importance to us through our journey as councillors, because this college is not made excellent because we are great leaders; we only become excellent leaders because this college, the people in this college, you, are so great in the first place.

Nil Sine Labore.

Thank you.

Observation: Colonial Artefact (History, One Year On)

2009-03-29T19:44:00.000+08:00

I am an incorrigible sloth with a strange, out-of-place and oxymoronic sense of responsibility to his readers. I proudly present an old essay for your reading pleasure.

The word ‘street’ has somehow always invoked an image of a narrow passage, wide enough only for two small sized vehicles to pass through. The Street is the physically inferior brother of the Road. Hence, Eu Tong Sen Street, in terms of physical size, is somewhat of a misnomer. There is nothing physically inferior about it, relative to the road; it is not a narrow passage but is in fact almost as wide as a normal road. The only stark observable difference between a normal road and Eu Tong Sen Street, is that Eu Tong Sen Street is one-way (its complementary road being New Bridge Road).

Size and width aside, Eu Tong Sen Street is also the only existing (or at least one of the few) street names that takes after the full name of the person it is named after (an example of another road with a full name is Gan Eng Seng Road, which has been expunged). Usually, for streets named after Chinese, its name would only contain the last two names of the person, and not their surname (which would be their first name). It could be said that this takes after Western street nomenclature of using the last names of people as street names, but it could also be seen as a colonial assertion of power: that the Asians were not worthy enough to have a street named after their surname. But what makes Eu Tong Sen so special that he is deserving of a street named completely after him?

The street itself is also relatively long (further questioning the idea of a street and a road), stretching from Havelock Road, all the way to the end of Coleman Bridge. Interestingly the street was not always known as Eu Tong Sen Street, but was in fact part of a longer street known as Wayang Street (so named due to the Chinese opera theatres in operation at that time, now expunged). It was only named after Mr. Eu in 1919 when he funded the rebuilding of the street and acquired the two existing Chinese opera theatres (which is where the People’s Park Complex is now). Is it just because of his business acquisitions in the area and rebuilding of the street that compelled the colonial masters to name the entire street after his full name? There is certainly more to it than just that.

Eu Tong Sen was certainly a very rich man, make no mistake about that. In fact, he was one of the best-heeled Chinese in the Straits Settlements at that time. He owned several businesses, including tin-mining, rubber plantations, real estate, banking (opened a bank for the Cantonese, known as Lee Wah Bank, but was acquired by UOB in 1973) and also traditional Chinese medicine, manifesting in the form of the famous Eu Yan Seng brand name (still very much under the control of his family). A Chinese man of Confucian values, Eu Tong Sen was also philanthropist. His generosity benefited not just the street named after him, but also the building of Raffles College and those who received his relief funds. He also reportedly donated a tank and an aeroplane to the British during WWI.

He was also politically active: representing the Chinese in the Federal Council for 9 years. If money equates power, then it is perhaps of Eu Tong Sen’s contributions to the British Empire that earned him the right (in the eyes of the British) to be deserving of having a street named entirely after him. Still, however, it was given the title of ‘Street’ not ‘Road’, which can possibly be seen as the colonial masters’ way of showing that they are the ones still in power.

Perhaps it is not a misnomer, and that it was simply called a street because it is only one-way. It might qualify to be a road if New Bridge Road (interestingly, about the same size as Eu Tong Sen Street and also one-way) was merged with Eu Tong Sen Street, and named as Eu Tong Sen Road instead. This is possible, since both can be seen together as a normal road, instead of two one-way roads. Regarding the issue of changing its name, I feel there is no need. Firstly, because the only other available name would be Wayang Street, but there are no more Chinese Wayang theatres there anymore. Secondly, Eu Tong Sen, judging by his contributions to not just Singapore but the several parts of the world, is indeed deserving of having a street named after him, as he can be seen as one of the major founding fathers of Singapore.

An Persistently Annoying Personal Post #6

2009-03-27T21:59:00.001+08:00

It has been about a month and half since I last posted an entry, and now I shall endeavour to be as concise as I can regarding my recent abscence from the blogosphere, future articles, as well as (unfortunately) small updates about myself.

Contrary to popular belief, the fact that I have not posted anything for a considerable amount of time does not mean that I have, quoting a reader, "quit the blogosphere". What it really means, is that I have not posted anything for a considerable amount of time. It is as simple as that. Such a gross generalisation as "quitting the blogosphere" is not only insulting but also extremely presumptuous on the part of the reader. For the record, in the event that I do really quit, this site would have long been deleted, tossed into the infinite depths of the digital void. I am not so foolish as to leave conspicuous traces of my online existence lying around.

Fortunately, more discerning readers understand that sometimes, when I do not post, it might mean that I feel there is nothing worth discussing about. They have called for me to be less stringent with my writing discipline and post, irregradless of whether the entry contains any discursive content. That fact saddens me. It proves to me once again, that none of you have bothered to at least empathise my position as the author of this blog. '

Truth be told, I have been busy. Most of you know what kind of person I am, and what standards I expect of myself. Being part of 2 councils simultaneously is not an easy task, with the added fact that I am part of the last official event of one, and the first official event of the other. Though I am not competing this year, I am still training to support my team mates, and that consumes a large part of my time. The rest of it is spent completing homework and related research, trying my best not slide down the slippery slope of procastination. Before any of you ask me to get a life, do realise that I am a student, and what I am doing now is getting as much as I can out of my college life. So stop telling me to get a life and go get a life.

If time permits, I will attempt to do a Rant and Review on the Harry Potter series, as I have promised a friend. There is also another article that I have promised another reader, but I will have to check back my comments again to find out what. As I have mentioned before, I might post up my DSTA Application Essay as an Observation article, but I'll have to wait till the agency hands me that nice wad of cash I'm eyeing, or just taunts me with it and gives it to someone else.

Anyway, that is all I can write for now. Do realise that the time I have spent writing this APAPP could have made the difference between a successful or a disastrous event.

"So long, and thanks for all the fish!"

2009-02-08T10:56:00.308+08:00

(This is a tribute article. The author requests the reader to keep the site music playing to increase the melodramtic effect.)

I am a sentimental person. Really. I appear cold and unemotional, even perhaps a tad gleeful, about my class' inevitable dissolution because one thing I have learned about sentimentality is that it holds you back, tightens your grip to the past when you should let it go and move on. Sentimentality is Regret's sympathetic cousin: one revels in past delights, irrationally hoping that they may manifest one last time, and irrationally fearing that the future holds nothing comparable. Irrational because what is past, is past and there is nothing one can do to bring it to the present. Irrational because, as cliche as it sounds, the future is ours to make: to believe that any happy experience is predetermined is foolish. We tend to forget that the happy experiences of the past were forged by ourselves and nothing else, and the future is the same. And when we forget this, all that is left at the end of the future when it has come to past, is Regret, simply because we could not let go.

By now, you should have managed to deduce at least 2 pieces of information. Firstly, that this is my tribute entry, and secondly, the paradox of this entry. If I resent the pains of Sentimentality so much, why bother with this entry. Well, simply because this tribute is borne of both Sentimentality and Regret, and my only hope is that through this entry, I can resolve both, and move on.

Because I am a lazy bastard, I shall write only a generalised tribute to 07V13, instead of those time-consuming individual tributes. I am also doing this, because like some of you lament, I do not take efforts to know many of you personally (neither do many of you really know me personally anyway), and hence it would be insincere to try to write a tribute that has gotten most of the facts wrong. I am writing it like this, because as the CT Rep of 07V13, I know you people better as a whole class than your individual parts.

07V13
In some ways, this is is an extension of my tribute video clip that was shown during our IP D&D. It is intended to be a further elaboration of my apology, as well as additional things I had to refrain from saying due to time constraints. In other ways, it is intended to be a farewell speech of sorts which some of you have begged me to give a little more than a week ago.

I do not want to risk being a hypcrite, and suggest ways in which things could have been done differently (please refer to my previous entry "28 Months Later: A Persistently Annoying Personal Post #3"). Instead, I will simply list out the issues, explain them from my point of view and apologise for them.

You people claim that I shouted too much at the beginning of IP1, and that, fortunately, I had improved come IP2. For that, I sincerely apologise if I had caused any distress. I have to say that if you think that my shouting was horrible in IP1, then you would have really killed me if you knew me when I was in Catholic High in Secondary 1 and 2. My disciplinarian attitude in IP1 was a far cry from my previous loud hailer days in secondary school (you can go and check with Colin, Thai Yong and Kenneth, even Jonathan if you are lucky to meet him. If you know Robin (who would know best), Leonard, Wei Rong, Jia Jin and Jing Wei, you can check with them as well, they are all in VJC). I had sworn to improve when I entered IP, and I did, out of sheer will and forced patience. I have to also thank you people as well, I guess, for you all forced me to change my leadership strategy from a lot of "pushing and shoving" to a lot of "carrot-dangling".

Frankly, you guys were in some ways, far easier to handle than my Secondary 1 class (which was quite a handful, I assure you), and in some ways, far more difficult. Noise management was a real killer for me: You people were, frankly, inconsiderate bastards and bitches (bitches > bastards, sorry) who could not give a rat's fuck if you bothered the other classes with your screaming and wailing and shouting. No offence. This is really just my opinion, and its fine by me if you like to say that "why anyone should be annoyed by our melodious singing" (I won't be the one handling you guys for the next 2 years anyway) After a while, I just couldn't be bothered with noise management anymore. Of course, you people were a lot easier to handle in that you were more willing to listen and follow. As a result, I tried my best to listen more as well. But it really irks me that sometimes I cannot depend on you people to do the sensible thing. There is no reason why I have to tell you people to go for assembly every single morning. I hate it when I have to talk sense into you to do something obvious. It annoys the hell out of me because I have higher expectations of you people.

And on a lot of occasions, I feel that you people could have cut the teachers some slack. You know what I am talking about. Sure sometimes, I, too, feel that the teachers may be unreasonable, but most of the time, I don't think they deserve the kind of treatment that you guys are metting out behind their backs, or even right in front of them. I honestly don't think a response by a teacher to a question by a student such as "I don't really know about this, why don't you go back and find out" is a sign of incompetence. Its a mark of humility, and a willingness to admit ignorance. You might think that the teachers should be teaching you everything, but are IP students not suppose to be independent learners who can find things out for themselves? Granted, like I said before, some teachers are really incompetent or unreasonable, but simply whining and bitching after lessons is not the way to go about resolving it. It would have been far more helpful if you people had the guts to take up the offence with the teachers themselves. I know you people did it once, with a bit of my help. I suppose my advice to you people for the next 2 years is: Don't complain and do nothing, just find a way to fix the problem. If there is no way to fix the problem, don't complain, just endure and move on.

I am sorry if I was cold to you, or I had offended you anytime in the past 2 years. I may not trust you, or be nice to you, is not because I am autistic or emotionally incapable of doing so. It is simply because far too many people have betrayed my trust for me to do so anymore. You might say that that is preventing me from learning about others, and that stops me from building trust, thus enclosing myself within a shell. But, I do learn how to trust you people, but only with regards to certain things. I can't trust you people about everything, but I know I can depend on you people with some things. Trust to me, is far more valuable than anything, and that is why I don't go distributing it like some socialist government distributing cash handouts.

I agree I am very critical of others, and I apologise for that. But do know that I am also extremely critical of myself. I am not a perfectionist, as some of you might claim. There is a difference. A perfectionist will envision an end to his or her efforts, culminating in one product that is of the highest quality. For me, I do not envision such an end. That is just an excuse to be complacent. If you do not keep putting in effort to improve yourself, you will eventually lag behind, perfectionist or not. I am critical, because I know you all can be better. I am critical, because self-praise will get you nothing but the disgust of others. Yes, I do find you all quite disgusting when you start praising yourselves to high heaven, and for that I apologise if it offends you. And when any of you praise my efforts, I cannot help but feel a sense of guilt of not living up to the praise.

I know that your attmepts to change me, to make me a 'nicer, happier, friendlier' person is all very well-meaning. But, frankly, I do not appreciate it. It seems a tad unfair that while I am forcing myself to accept you people the way you people are, some of you simply cannot stand the sight of me being who I am, and constantly try to change me and fit me in with the crowd. I apologise if my lack of appreciation puts you off, but it is difficult to appreciate something that offends you or undermines your efforts in handling people.

I also like to apologise for my cold attitude towards the "Norman Appreciation Club". Again, I know it is all well-meaning, but to me, such a... clique would only represent me as a disgusting egotist. That was something I could not and would not accept. I value actions more than words, which is why I absolutely cannot tolerate any degree of hypocrisy from myself or anyone else, and also why I believed that if you people truly appreciated me, I wouldn't have needed to molly-coddle you people into going for assembly, and doing other very obvious things, thus significantly lightening my load as a CT Rep. Sure your words of appreciation all sounded nice, but they all fell flat when I had to slog it out every day just to get you guys to do something that you already have the backbone to do yourself.

I honestly do not think I am a good leader. By my own standards, I have failed miserably. But do know that everything I have done as a leader I did it for the class. I apologise if I came across as aloof and uncaring, and if I still am in your opinions. Being in 07V13, there were good times and there were bad times, but like I said, I would not mention anything about changing it, because it has forced me to mature as a person and as a leader. Handling you people has taught me valuable lessons that would not have come to pass had I done anything differently. I do not need you guys to remember me as a person who was fun-loving, or nice, or humourous. If anything, I would like you people to accept my apologies and remember me as a person who cared about his class above everything else.

So long, and thanks for all the fish, both the good and the bad.

Annoyance in Persistence:A Persistently Annoying Personal Post #5

2009-01-29T21:31:00.037+08:00

As the title of this post suggests, the nature of this entry has taken a whole new literal meaning. Firstly, recent comments (from reality, not the virtual world) about my setting up of my blog has certainly riled me up quite a big. The select group of individuals (henceforth shall be known as the Sadly Misinformed) who have made the abovementioned comments seem to assume that just becuase I have set up a blog means that I have changed, and that I am becoming more like them.

Misinformation: I have not changed (in fact, I would say that the setting up of this blog is an affirmation of the self). The setting up of this blog has already been justified in the first official entry and the second overall entry entitled "One". The fact that the Sadly Misinformed have made such a gross generalisation about my character as a person proves to me that while they are aware of the existence of this blog, they have certainly not paid attention to any of my entries, especially the one pertaining to the reasons of the setting up of this blog. I kindly advise all readers to do some reading on this blog before deciding on what kinds of comments to make, be it real or virtual.

Maybe I should write about things that really piss me off, and keep "Annoyance in Persistence" as an entirely new column. It certainly does not make me feel any better, but it is fun to imagine those that I have antagonize reading the entry.

A Business Proposition

2009-01-25T20:54:00.001+08:00

Chinese New Year's Eve. More accurately (and certainly, more culturally sensitive), Lunar New Year's Eve. The family arrives at the Matriarch's house, the first of few. The car enters the porch, sky overcast. A woman steps out, and opens the iron gates, muttering something about forgetting to close the windows. How inane, her teenage son thinks, his arse comfortably rested on the leather seats. What seemed like an affordable option nearly half a decade ago now seems overtly decadent and wasteful now. But that was 5 years ago. Nobody knew such a day would come (or perhaps it was inevitable, as Mr. Marx believed).

That is beside the point. The father steps out of the driver's seat. A little agitated, a little excited, a little confused, ever ready to do what he is planning to do. Someone is missing. A girl, no a lady. She is 20 this year. Currently 19 years and 5 months old. But she is not here, her father thinks. No, she is waiting, somewhere across the expanse of the ocean, in a house surrounded by winter's chill. No, she isn't that far off, he thinks. She is waiting in his machine. And if his machine fails to cross that distance, his son's machine will not. They tested it before coming. But the distance of that test compared to the distance of what he is planning is atomic. Certainly by the limits of technology, there would be lag. But that was a small sacrifice.

The father requests his son to take out his machine, and they hook it up to the invisible signals oscillating in the air. In a moment, the machine is connected to the rest of the world. Invisible signals. Amazing. That is what will cross the distance. More of the Matriarch's children and their children stream into the House. 70s architectural design. Concrete fading into a sickly yellow, but for all of the Matriarch's bloodline, a nostalgic chrome. The son operates the machine, self-assured, annoyed by the oncoming gimmick. His sister is waiting. The distance shortened to a virtual scroll and a mouse click away He scrolls. He clicks. He greets her, sure that his sister is aware of what is to come.

The rest gather for the feast. There is no waiting. The kitchen is too small to fit the whole family. You finish your share and pass the seat to those who arrive late. It has always been like that. The reunion does not lie in the dinner. When they have had their fill, the son clicks on 'Video' and warns his sibling to ready herself. The father takes over his son's seat. Now he is only excited. He greets her, but not like his son. He speaks. He can see her, and whatever is behind her. A door, and further back, a book shelf: typical. She speaks back like her father. She, too, can see what is behind him. An antique couch with ornate Oriental graving, with red cushions. And further back, the white floral-patterned curtains. It is bright outside. Her house is swallowed by the dark. Those present gather to speak to her, promising the arrival of others.

She converses with them. Its barely been half a year since she last saw them. But their enthusiasm seems to indicate years. Or perhaps its a manic response to ignorance of technology. They joke about her not getting any red packets this year. An unfortunate break in tradition. She jokes back that perhaps they can remit the money to her. They laugh. Her brother chuckles to himself. Not at the joke. He rarely laughs at jokes unless it is really hilarious. He realises something. A business opportunity: Electronic remmitance.

Imagine, every single foreign worker using his system to send money back home, for a cut. His system will deal with the red-tape-obsessed authorities. All they have to do is to press a button. And during the festive season: Electronic Red Packets. Eng Baos. Interested?

Writer's Block:A Persistently Annoying Personal Post #4

2009-01-23T15:07:00.001+08:00

I have not written anything for nearly a fortnight now, and the site has staled considerably. A really awful side-effect of the persistently annoying ailment of Writer's Block is a really pungent tang of digital decay. Most manage to be cured of WB completely, but only temporarily (time taken varies from writer to writer). Suggested cures range from very intangible methods such as "seeking inspiration" to the much easier "just chill" mantra. What is known, however, is that WB spreads through the mind swiftly and may potentially be harmful to the professional writer if he or she is not cured in time.

Gruesome details of the epidemic known as WB aside, you MAY (I must emphasize the "may", as the following is subject to my availability and sloth) soon see this site on WordPress instead. I have done some research, and it turns out that WordPress has functionalities that well-suited to the dynamics of my site. That means, of course, a complete site layout and design overhaul, which I'm not planning on doing anytime soon.

To be frank, I have written quite a bit these past few days, some bits and pieces here and there for proposals, but I have also managed to complete a 500 word essay in the past few days. This essay was meant to be submitted with my scholarship application to a defence science institute (I suppose you could easily guess which, but I rather not have any fingers pointing at me just in case I have violated some term or condition that I never bothered reading anyway). I have planned to post it up here for the sake of posterity, but I do not intend on being disqualified from the scholarship because I "plagarised" content from the Internet. I will post it up as soon as the final results are out.

Side-note: I am immensely disappointed by my government. Budget 2009 showed no reports of cabinet members taking a pay cut. While they have advised employers time and again to reduce operation costs by cutting the wages of senior management instead of giving the sack to low-skill employees, the government has failed to follow suit, despite the fact that they are all the most senior of management in the country. And when I speak of a pay cut I'm not talking about 5% drop that will make an MP whine and kick like a baby, but an immense cut of up to 50% that is unprecedented. I honestly do not believe that our politicians really need that much money. I believe they can get along just fine with 50% less of salary. Even with 50% of what they have left, they lives would still be considered luxuriously decadent by most standards. Perhaps if they tasted the hardship of the common person, implementation of economic policies would be a bloody lot more efficient. Hypocrisy at its finest.

Editor's Post Note: Damn. It would seem that all senior civil servants did take a 19% - 25% pay cut at begininning of the year 2009. But still, do they really need that much money? There should be public audits of the accounts of ALL cabinet members for the general population to judge. In a time of recession like this, if they still have the guile to maintain the lifestyle of Boom economics, then they should receive the highest pay cut. Only pay your employees what they need first; talk benefits later. If they really are our leaders, they should lead by example and shed of their wants to maintain their needs.

28 Months Later: A Persistently Annoying Personal Post #3

2009-01-10T19:11:00.004+08:00

So New Year's Day has come and gone, but it still feels like 2008. I have been increasingly disenchanted by the concept of the New Year. Firstly, it is because its location and frequency in time is rather arbritrary. Why does it have to be 1 January and not 1 April (which was the New Year's Day of France for a while, but it ended up becoming April Fools' Day)? I'm sure there are perfectly good historical reasons for that, but as far as the Laws of Nature are concerned, Time is a road with no milestones, no sign-posts, no landmarks. And why does it have to be every 365 days (a more precise figure would 365 days and 6 hours). Of course its the length of time in which the Earth makes one orbit around the Sun. But isn't it a little strange that we celeberate the moment in which the Earth passes the same spot it passed by 1 year ago? If we do that for one day, we should do it for every other day, since 2 January the Earth also passes by the same point in space that it did a year ago, and so will 3 Jan, 4 Jan ad infinitum. If anything, we should be celebrating the Laws of Gravitational Attraction that ensures we actually do pass by that same spot every year.

Some people also say that such days are for us to be nice to one another, to forgive each other, to change, and to take steps to make the world a better place. Bullshit. Those who say it are change-fearing hypocrites. As one of my favourite television doctors once said "Dying people lie too. Wish they'd worked less, been nicer, opened orphanages for kittens. If you really want to do something, you do it. You don't save it for a sound bite." If we really wanted to be nice to each other, or forgive each other, or change or improve the world, we do it every single day, and not wait for some special day for us to do it.

Anyway, I finally own my first laptop, a Compaq CQ45 - 122TX, kindly sponsored by my father. He got it at a rather good price of S$1280, about S$800 cheaper than its retail price. And its brand new! And yes I'm using it to write this article and it has been working very well so far. The best part is that it has a nVidia Graphics Card that comes installed with it, and one that is quite respectable.

My class chalet was held over 3 days and 2 nights starting last Wednesday. It was enjoyable, with the BBQ finally burning well enough for us to cook (with a little of Mr. Yang's help again of course).

Anyway, for those of you who are interested. This is my last post. My last post before I put on braces. Treatment is estimated to be 28 months long, and it will be a long time before I will be able to enjoy some of my favourite foods, like steak and chocolate.

Observation: The Scholastic Approach

2009-01-06T23:43:00.002+08:00

A reader recently requested me to post an entry concerning the purpose of school, which I very willingly accepted. This subject matter was something that intrigued me, as I have not given an idle moment's thought about it before. I personally vowed that this article would be my first entry of the year, and that no other matter, however interesting to me, would precede it. As evident from the dearth of entries since the start of the New Year, I have made good on it, and now it shall be fulfilled.

The concept of an organised and centralised institution of learning, that is a 'school', dates as far back as Ancient China. From my brief research, it is probably not unfair to assert here there with the rise of any form of civilisation, schools will also tend to form. Of course the purpose of school is really quite simple, even if it is as crude and as propagandistic as it sounds: it is a place for learning, so that we may be well-equipped with the knowledge to overcome the challenges of the future. But I assume that my reader is already aware of that, and is looking for a more nuanced response.

For those who resent going to school, it is hardly a challenge to discover the reasons why. Hence, it is certainly extremely ironic for me to learn, in the course of my research, that the word 'school' comes from the word 'schole', which is Greek for 'leisure' (I am actually quoting Wikipedia here so it may not be the most exact meaning), and also 'that in which leisure is employed'. Most of us certainly will associate our time in school with anything but leisure. While schooling, we are advised to prioritise our study time and our leisure time; we definitely do not see them as one.

Before we go any further, it is important to differentiate 'education' from 'school'. While the former is the practice of learning, the latter is an institution, physically and coneptually, complete with a system upon which it is run, and as well as people who keep that system in check. Education is not exclusive to our species only: throughout the animal kingdom, especially among mammals, education is being carried out constantly. Parents must pass learned skills on so that the young may survive when they mature. As humans, we learn how to speak, how to walk, how to run, how to manipulate our fingers et cetera so that we are equipped with most basic survival skills. Education has been in existence long before there was a word to describe it.

A school, however, exists only when some form of organised society emerges. This is where culture is born. It is my own personal theory that it is probably our primal instinct to pass on our skills to the young that we also desire to pass on the knowledge created from our own culture. To carry out an education beyond basic survival skills and towards knowledge requires more time, due to its increasing complexity. However, it is wholly inefficient if all of society's parents were to devote their time into teaching such knowledge to their children. Such a society would collapse as there is very little to no people left running it. Having a centralised insitution of learning, that is a school, solves that problem of inefficiency. One person, a teacher, under the employment of such an insitution, could teach several children at once. Since society also depends on culture to survive, having a school is the most efficient method of passing on skills that would ensure the continuity of civilised society.

Politically, a school is useful for not just propaganda and garnering popular support, as most cynics would immediately denounce, but also a way of influencing the way in which a nation develops. Consider this hypothetical scenario: here exists a society where the only school that stands is one that teachers engineering. Eventually the children of such a society would grow up to become engineers, and industries that require engineering skills would flourish, forming the bedrock of this society's economy. Of course, realistically, you will not find a society that is completely devoted to only engineering, but by changing the availability of different insitutions, the State can encourage the development of perhaps a neglected sector of the economy.

So, if a school is really meant to be leisurely, the only way for it to be so is to take up subjects that you would enjoy. Of course, no bureacrat would be so leftist as to reform the education system so that you only learn the things that you are interested in (such an idea was actually made into a film, but I can't seem to recall its name). But I suppose it would not hurt to try to suggest it.

Post Script: For those of you wondering, I did not time this entry to be published just as school is about to begin (if you are a JC2 or IP1 or IP2 student). But it certainly does add a nice, and eerily propangandistic touch, does it not?

Post Post Script: Date of publication should actually be January 10 2009, not January 6 2009. I was working on a draft on that date, but had not published yet. Apparently Blogger assumes that publication occurs from the time you start typing. Idiots.

Rant and Review: Twilight (Film)

2008-12-31T16:18:00.003+08:00

Introduction to Rant and Review

The title of the column is really quite self-explanatory, though for all intents and purposes it is really less of the former and more of the latter. From a certain point of view, you could say it is a more civilised, more refined and less biased iteration of the "Things I Hate About..." columns. At least, that is what I plan to develop it into. I suppose it is inevitable that I would start something like this, seeing as how blogs are really designed as an avenue for the expression of opinions. And what better way to express one's opinions then to do so under the guise of a review column!

Do not be misled by the fact that the first item being reviewed in this entry is a film and conclude that this series is dedicated only to film. Truth be told, this review column has no restrictions in terms of subject matter whatsoever. I will be reviewing a whole range of things, as long as they pique my interest, and that there is enough to be said about it. In fact, if you would like me to review something for you, just post a request in the comments (not tagboard), and if it is interesting enough I will go about reviewing it. That said, I must warn you that I'm under a tight budget (in other words, zero dollars), and I won't review anything unless you can provide the said subject matter for me, or it is something I can get for free.

Anyway, the column will be structured as so. If the subject matter warrants a quick summary, I will write one. I will then move on to the good points about the subject matter, followed by the negative aspects. This will then be concluded with a final verdict and other recommendations for the user. And so here is the review of the Catherine Hardwicke film, Twilight.

Summary

Twilight is a film adapted from the bestselling Stephenie Meyer novel of the same name, directed by Catherine Hardwicke. Twilight (Novel) is the first book in a series of four books, otherwise known as the Twilight series (editor's note: Personally, if it were up to me, I would really call the series 'Of the Sun and Moon' or 'Sol/Luna', seeing as how all book titles have to do with effects of light by or upon the Sun and Moon). The novels are targeted at young-adults, but its appeal is most palpable among the post-Harry Potter teenagers, especially girls. Many have seen this as a phenomenon akin to the early years of Harry Potter, with legions of ardent fans captivated, and the series is sometimes described as Harry Potter's succesor. To a certain extent this is true, with the last swansong of the Harry Potter series, Deathly Hallows, having been sung, it is only natural for the fans to move on to the next big thing. But I have not read the novels, which makes it easier to judge the film without the prejudices of hindsight. So let's talk about the film.

The plot follows a teenage girl, Isabella Swan (portrayed by Kristen Stewart), who moves from Phoenix, Arizona to Forks, Washington to live with her father, who is divorced from her mother. In the new school that she goes to, she falls head over heels for Edward Cullen (protrayed by Robert Pattinson of Cedric Diggory fame), a rather anaemic and initially constipated-looking guy. As it turns out, Edward and his family are all vampires. Fortunately for her, the Cullen family are vampire 'vegetarians', and will not consume the blood of normal humans. In a sense, they are animalians. And so the film decribes the trials and tribulations of Bella and Edward's relationship, and the dangers on Bella's life while fraternizing with vampires.

The Good

First up, Stewart portrays her character, Bella, quite well as the "suffering in silence type", as described by the character herself. Her melancholic, bordering on an emotion-less, portrayal fits perfectly with the fish-out-of-water theme. She displays the common neuroses of a homesick person quite convincingly, so much so that its quite easy to imagine her going insane while being trapped in an instituition, if not for Edward.

Pattinson's first few scenes are quite well done in my opinion. Perhaps some leftover spark from his Harry Potter days. His constipated look in trying to resist his bloodlust (definition wise, it is the wrong use of word, but given the situation, it makes sense) for Bella is quite convincing, though a little humourous at times. Since becoming a vampire, Edward slowly loses his social aptitude as a within as he becomes withdrawn from the world outside. Pattinson's portrayal of initial awkwardness around Bella was certainly good acting. Edward's angst over his weakness and lust Bella and his inability to satisfy that lust is similar to Bella's initial neuroses, and is a part of him that I'd like to learn about more..

Billy Burke, who portrays Charlie Swan, Bella's father, shares an undeniable on-screen chemistry with Stewart. I must say the scenes with Charlie and Bella alone are probably the scenes I found the most enjoyable. As the chief of police, he is friendly with the folks, but retains his professionalism; he is funny, but not so much that you would think he is a clown. Bella and Charlie obviously share the same kind of silence. Credit must go to the script, and perhaps Meyer, for providing Charlie with succinct wisdom and humour rather then just cheesy one-liners.

Kudos to all the actors of the rest of the Cullen family as well. There is a good mix of the well-adjusted and the still socially awkward, providing facets of different vampire psyches. Carlisle Cullen (Peter Facinelli) and Rosalie Hale (Nikki Reed) were in my opinion the most interesting vampires in the movie (yes, Edward was boring). Carlisle having lived 300 years, carries an air of unparalled wisdom and caution, matched only by his compassion for humans and utter self-restraint over human blood. He commands respect as a father figure and as the leader of the family, and Facinelli portrays this convincingly. Rosalie has a lot of pent-up anger and jealousy within her, against Bella and probably other aspects of her super-normal life. She can let her own animosity get the better of her, resenting even Edward for hooking up with Bella.

The ending credits sequence was also very well done. Switching from colour to black and white was a good throwback to Nosferatu of German expressionism (yes, I took it from the Language Arts notes if you must ask).

The Bad

First off, it was without a doubt the least emotionally engaging film I have watched in years. There is no way to describe all the problems that made me feel bored while watching the movie completely. Perhaps this is understandable. The novel is quite a tome (from what I have seen of it), and the film clocked in at a 130 minutes: several scenes were proably cut so as to make it less of a drag. But the lack of interest that I felt makes me wonder whether they cut any major scene from the film. Many films have a wow factor that makes it memorable. For Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, it is that magical world beyond our own, complete with its own myths and legends, and even social problems. For The Dark Knight, it comes as a memorable character such as Heath Ledger's haunting portrayal of the Joker, or the cold calculativeness of Christian Bale's Batman. You can't help but feel like you wish that such a world or some character existed when you walk out of the cinema. With Twilight, I just did not feel that wow factor.

Firstly, despite my praises for Stewart before, at times she can be emotionally uninteresting. She just drones on and on without emotion. The only part that it gets exciting is her argument with her father, and that was a fake argument. Pattinson just cannot act angrily or angsty enough to be convincing. It is just too damn cheesy. Thai Yong was laughing is head off in the theatre when Edward revealed his sparkling skin. When he tries to assure Bella about his determination to protect her, I can't help but feel he didn't really mean it. It just lacked that depth of commitment. Other than that, many of his lines were said with little emotional value or inflection involved. According to sources, Edward is suppose to be a romantic. At some points he is, but most of the time Pattinson shows him as just a horny sonofagun who can't have sex with his girlfriend without fearing to pass on an STD known as vampirism.

Secondly, very little of the characters received any proper development. The only minor character that got much attention was Charlie. Many of them ended up being very 2 dimensional, just there in existence because it moved the story along or added a small but unengaging side-plot. This is especially so for Bella's normal friends, who are either appear to be jocks, nerds or bimbos. It is also more of a pity that the Cullens, especially Rosalie and Carlisle weren't paid much attention to, since they are part of the core of the plot. I was really interested to know the reasons for Rosalie's deep resentment. I'm not sure whether the novel is like that as well, but this was one of the reasons why the movie failed. It was suffering from the abundance of characters, but the lack of substance to go around. The book was probably thick enough to cover many aspects of many characters. But this is a holiday film, and has to be short enough to be commerically viable, and teenage girls probably don't want to watch anything else but Edward and Bella. Fucking demographics. Perhpas they are saving the characterisation for the sequels, well in that case: Fucking film studio executives.

Finally (I think), the world presented by the film is just too straight forward. It seems so perfect for the Cullens to be living as they are, despite Edward's angst. I just couldn't see why he couldn't enjoy his near perfect life even after he explained why he couldn't. To me he seemed to be just a whiny bastard. Probably that's one of the side-effects of vampirism, you become immortal, but your personality doesn't change. So he became a vampire as a whiny bastard, and is staying a whiny bastard. Another problem with the world is that it lacked magic, it failed to challenge the viewer's imagination of what was possible (except for the Cullens' super-human abilities, which was kind of taken for granted), and that is its biggest fault. For a fantasy film, it just was not fantastical enough. It lacked the mystery of Harry Potter, and it had little of the legends of The Lord of the Rings.

The Verdict

The film, to me, came across as incomplete, or else little effort was put into the development of all characters. If anything, the film was probably the most expensive advertising campaign to increase readership of the books. The characters were unfulfilling, which I hope is not a case with the books. Or else it was really to squeeze the pockets of all teenage girls captivated by Edward Cullens outdated romanticisms. So much for progress. If you are a serious literature reader, and have read the books, I recommend that you do not watch the movie. If you have watched the movie, I suppose the next obvious step is to read the books to see how different the film is from the novel. Anyhow, here's my gratitude for staying on the end of this review.

Things I Hate About... Internet Explorer 7

2008-12-30T22:28:00.000+08:00

If the titular statement is true, then you could easily deduce that I probably use Firefox 3.0. However, I would like to remind the reader that this list concerning my dislike for Internet Explorer (IE) only applies to IE7, and not any other versions of IE. In fact, I enjoyed using the previous versions of Internet Explorer, especially version 6. It was only until I discovered the simplicity and plain fun of using Mozilla Firefox that I made the switch. This is also not a bashing of Microsoft (though I do find a few aspects of the company a tad annoying), so to all you ardent Microsoft-haters and doggedly faithful Apple-lovers, be gone! However, let it be known that I respect, even admire, both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, two great men in their own right. There are many things I like about Microsoft (I can't say the same for Apple though), but IE7 is certainly not one of them. And so here is the list of things I hate about IE7.

1. I hate the (lack of) virus secuirty
2. I hate the fact that the IE design team took so long to adapt the tabs system perfected by Firefox 2.0, and still managed to screw it up
3. I hate the fact that IE7 doesn't run as smoothly on XP as it does on Vista operating systems
4. I hate the pathetic pop-up blocker which doesn't really block any damn pop-ups at all
5. I hate the browser speed
6. I hate the fact that the only things that you can customise for your browser are the few add-ons, which is really another Firefox 2.0 feature, and which they also screwed up.
7. I hate how it is intrinsically linked with Windows Live Messenger, so that I have to use IE7 whenever I want to check my hotmail account from Messenger
8. I hate how when it claims to reduce pop-ups, every time they do block a pop-up, they inform me by using another pop-up
9. I hate the default user-interface, which makes it difficult for IE6 users to adapt to IE7

I suppose we will have to wait to see how IE8 turns out when it is released.

A Persistently Annoying Personal Post #2

2008-12-30T14:45:00.001+08:00

Come 2009, I have only one New Year resolution in mind: I resolute to not resolve any of my resolutions. That will be my most challenging resolution to date. If I am able to accomplish such a feat, then I would have tread a path few men have dared to tread, solving a paradox in mockery against Infinity. And like Homer in the 17th episode of the 17th season of The Simpsons, I shall celebrate my apotheosis (that is my promotion to the rank of a god).

Delusions of grandeur aside, Christmas Week heralded the much-welcomed and long-awaited end of the year's training. With considerable free time in my hands, I chose to spend some of it with my classmates, much to their subtly disguised ire and (not so subtle) shock. The first trip was to watch Gabriel's perfomance, which was a interestingly post-modern rendition of the Nativity Story. It was there that I officially declared Gabriel's catch-phrase to be "Do I have a for you!" It even has a specific tone that I believe is unique only to Gabriel. In his usual fashion, Gabriel's eccentric sense of humour (probably) led him to play as himself, or at least the role of whom his name represents: The Archangel Gabriel. Overall the show was enjoyable, though a little confusing at times. When I mentioned it being post-modern, I really meant it. Towards the middle of the play, there was a blurring between the immediate reality of the play, and the personal assistant's tale. However, it was a refreshing change from the norm, and was worth the 45 minutes I had spend with 3 of my other classmates standing and watching. The guy who acted as the Geisha was, in my opinion, the best actor in the cast. He exuded, to quote his character, 'profesionalism'.

The second sojourn was to be a movie with about half a dozen of my classmates, initiated by Asyraf. However, due to scheduling conflicts and Asyraf's (bless him) unwavering faith in Allah, I could only afford to have lunch with them. They were intending to watch 'Bedtime Stories' starring Adam Sandler. I arrived at Orchard Cineleisure early and decided to walk around, only to have my ass kicked by Thai Yong. He was also there to catch a movie: Catherine Hardwicke's adaptation of Stephanie Meyer's hit vampire romance 'Twilight'. When he told me that, I started laughing. Hysterically. He told me he only came because another two guys from his class were coming as well, but due to scheduling conflicts (again) the other two would not be able to come. And now he had to watch with only 3 girls. He would have no such thing. He claims he had already lost one of his balls watching 'Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging', and he would not risk losing his other one. And so Thai Yong invited me to join him for the movie, as the sole guardian of whatever was left of his manhood. I acceded to his request without giving much thought about it. I reasoned that I was there to watch a movie in the first place, but was denied of it due to the cruelty of Time, and here was an opportunity to watch something that went well with my schedule, which I took. I relented only after the tickets were bought. I had forgotten about lunch with my classmates. And I had promised Asyraf I wouldn't leave until he came. So to you Asyraf, as a character from the Cold War era BBC comedy 'Mind Your Language' was fond of saying, I offer you 'a thousand apologies' for my absence. I will do my utmost to make it up to you, if Time allows it.

And here I shall announce the last two entries for the year 2008. First up will be one more "Things I Hate About' column, subject matter shall be revealed in due course. The second and last entry will be a new column I have been intending to include for a while now, entitled "Rant and Review". This will be a column that will be reviewing all manner of things, and the first such thing will be 'Twilight' the movie.

Site Update #2

2008-12-30T00:17:00.003+08:00

As you can see, I have made a few changes to the overall site layout, and I would like to first introduce you to the new streaming music player I have just started using.

Hypster.com

I have made the switch from Radio.Blog to Hypster.com for one fundamental reason: It is easier to upload my own music on to the player. The steps required to do so with Radio.Blog was just fraught with red tape, and I decided to take the easier path. Of course, the user-interface of Radio.Blog is certainly more appealing as a whole compared to Hypster.com, and it integrated well with my site layout and colour scheme. I will be trying to find a go-around to the red tape, but until then Hypster.com will be the current site player.

Another change I have made is the choice in music that I will be offering you. Which is really no choice at all. Now, instead of several (2, by my last count) playlists for you to pick a track to play from (which you people don't anyway), I have elected to place all the power in your on-site audio experience in my hands. In other words, there will only be one track available at all times, which will be decided by me. I will change the tracks once in a while so that you won't go bored or annoyed by it. I have also toggled 'autoplay' on, so it will automatically play the track immediately (subject to internet speeds, but it won't interfere with the loading of site content) once you enter the site. If you really do get annoyed or bored with it, there is always the 'stop' and 'pause' buttons situated on the far left of the player. The other two buttons by the sides of the 'stop' and 'pause' buttons are 'skip track' buttons, which in these circumstances, is rather irrelevant, though there is no way I can remove it. Beside the button array is the track title bar, and on the far right rests the volume control. To increase or decrease the volume, just click on the volume bars.

For those of you displeased by this undemocratic and anti-capitalist turn of events, I would like to refer you to the current financial crisis, which has made Marxism and Central Government all the rage right now, so I can be as oppresive as I want, as long as political fashion allows it. Alas, poor Francis Fukuyama!

The Bold and The Intellectual

Many have griped that the font on my site is far too small for comfortable reading, and there has been at least one reader complaining that my entries are, of all things, too intellectual. For the latter issue concerning the nature of my entries, I am afraid that is something I will not be changing anytime soon, since that is the purpose of this blog. But if it is possible, I will add a widget that links to dictionary.com so you won't have so much trouble understanding. For the former issue concerning font sizes, I have emboldened all post entries so that less strain will be placed on your eyes. I decided against changing the font size by even 1 point as it made the words look extremely out of place, and I found emboldening the text was more effective.

Summary of Changes

Problems
1. Users complain about small text
2. Radio.Blog too difficult to upload personal music
3. Barely anyone listening to Radio.Blog

Fixes
1. Embolden entry text
2. Switch to Hypster.com
3. Switch to 'autoplay' on one track only

Additions
1. Added extra ambiguous profile information concerning video games, favourite reading material and favourtie band
2. Replaced nicknames with teasing statement

Site version updated to 1.2

Transit of Janus

I will be attempting to post 2 -3 more entries before the end of 2008, excluding this particular post. So that will make a grand total of about 12 -13 posts in my first month, which will all be available in my archives.

Observation: The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Intelligence

2008-12-27T00:32:00.003+08:00

One of the philosophical problems that has really irked me for about a few years now, is the problem of Man's (over)reliance on technology to survive. I am not denouncing such progress and ingeniuty in the use of our own intelligence as a harbinger of some apocalyptic finale as a result of overly enthusiastic and self aware machines a la "The Matrix" and "The Terminator". SkyNet is not launching anytime soon, nor has the Source been booted up, if you know what I'm talking about. In fact, you can say I am exceedingly optimistic about mankind's future with artificial intelligence; I believe that the likelihood of our own machines even being able to harbour rebellious sentiments is very low indeed, however sentient they become. But the reasons for my beliefs are for another entry on another time.

It is common knowledge skimmed off documentaries of the Great Apes that infants learn by imitating their parents. Of course, such imitation is pointless in practice unless the infant knows and understands (I suppose a large number of naturalists who specialise in the Great Apes would agree that these animals have at least a rudimentary form of such an ability, if not a very well-developed one) the reasons for imitating said action. There is no reason why a chimpanzee infant should be able to understand why he is imitating his mother by picking off fruit and consuming it unless he realises that it quenches his thirst and satisfies his hunger. Eventually, I suppose the infant will somehow get it, likely due to the fact that such an imitation is done only when he or she is hungry or thirsty. A good tool that bridges the gap between reason and action is communication, with the most well-developed being those of Man's. It is certainly a great help for a parent to explain the reasons for, say, eating vegetables instead of mindlessly eating your greens in the hope that your child will be amused and copy you.

With communication, comes intelligence, for it is the tool by which we exchange information and grow our ideas. And with intelligence and ideas, comes creativity and ingenuity, the ability to innovate, invent and create new things. We do this, because it allows us to wean ourselves off our dependence on our natural, but sometimes flawed, instincts. We do this, because it allows us to go beyond plain imitation, to not just imitate but improve and make more efficient. Have a look, we now have milk formulas that claim to boost your children's intelligence, so that, hopefully, they won't just know and understand why they have to eat their vegetables, but they will also want to eat their vegetables as well. Intelligence is like the Internet, as I have expounded in Brave New (Digital) World, a system propagated by positive feedback.

And here is the philosophical problem: If by some ridiculously remote chance, say God, or some other superior being(s), intrigued by the same philosophical problem as I am, decided to conduct a little experiment and cause all the technologies we depend upon daily to disappear and throw us back into the jungles of our long dead ancestors (but now belonging to our other, not too far off cousins, the Great Apes), and see how we would survive, would we? The first implication is most obvious: all stock markets will crash, banks will lose track of all their financial records. The result would be the Greatest Depression. Millions will die instantly, largely because of their dependence on external devices to keep their body running (Assisted Death 1; Sanctity of Life 0). Global crime rate will rise, now that there is nothing to assist the authorities in maintaining law and order. Anarchy will assume its position as the New World Order, and everything will be reduced to a classic (if I may presume to evoke the spectre of the past) Hobbesean Nightmare. The only Law that will preside is the Law of the Jungle: survival of the fittest. Now imagine that you are the alone in this jungle, would you know how to survive? Would you know how to forage for food, seek for shelter or flee from predators? Would you dare to catch a small animal, and eat it raw? Unlikely.

This entry will, unfortunately, paint a negative image of intelligence as a product of evolution. Rather, I see intelligence as a regression of species evolution, instead of progress. I am trying to present a picture that shows Intelligence as the anti-thesis of Nature itself. Yes, Intelligence has provided us with many miracles that helped us to overcome the challenges posed to us by Nature. But it has sterilised our environment in such a way that takes away the need for us to adapt, to evolve. It has allowed the weakest of us to survive in an environment in which he or she should have rightfully died. For example, if the world's medical experts had not bothered to research a vaccine for malaria, and allowed Nature to run its course, only two possibilities would have occurred: either we died as a species, the weakest of Earth's children forever cast out; or some of us lived, and mankind emerges ever stronger, and ever ready for the next challenge. But the doctors did invent a vaccine for malaria, and those who were tittering on the precipice over death were brought back to life again, perhaps (in an evolutionary sense) undeservedly so.

Furthermore, the advent of all our technologies, has allowed us to forgo many of our instinctive habits. For example, we might have as well been grooming each other by picking off and eating the ticks we find on the bodies of our partners. But the comb brought an end to that practice. And because we forgo them, we no longer pass them down to the next generation, simply because there is no need to. Eventually the entirety of such a practice is forgotten. Even if the practice is essential to survival in a harsh environment, once it is rendered obsolete by technology, it is discarded. We may not have changed much from the humans of 5 millenia ago in a biological sense, but in terms of behaviour, there is a stark difference.

This, combined with a sterilised environment, means it is unlikely that we will ever survive without the technology that we have manifested with our intelligence, if we are ever thrown back into the wild, unsterilised universe with nothing but our brains. Physically, many of us may not be able to survive even the first few days. We now lack the instincts and behaviours we would need, and which we very happily discarded for easier technology. Intelligence is like a crippled leg to our survivability, and technology its crutch. If you take the crutch from the cripple, it is nothing short of murder. The true question lies in whether Intelligence will once again prevail, given the above conditions, and if it does, how long will it take?

A Persistently Annoying Personal Post #1

2008-12-22T21:57:00.001+08:00

Good Lord. Everyone's (Ok, not everyone. But certainly a substantial number) busying themselves with some form of temporary work, earning extra cash by the side. It makes me feel guilty for not finding my own job. Of course I haven't wasted my holidays: I have been reading intensively these past few weeks, and I have gone for almost every training. Hell, I even went back for Maths tuition just so that I had something to do when I didn't have training and didn't feel like reading.

Then again, I shouldn't be feeling guilty. Because in reality, I have my own stash of cash for holiday spending. Without even lifting a finger. Sound investment choices (yes, even now in Great Depression II) have made sure that I got a tidy sum of dividends at year end. I will not disclose how much I have received, but I shall say I have invested in SGX shares. Of course their share price has dropped significantly since that metaphorically vertigo-inducing high of the long gone boom, but I still have made an overall net profit. Yes, I have followed the principles I have learned from my Financial Literacy Week. I have made my money work for me.

So here's my sales pitch as a stakeholder of SGX. Buy their shares. Now that it is relatively low. Then its share price will be driven up by the demand. And I will have an even nicer wad of cash for myself next holiday season. And so will you.

Things I Hate About... MapleStory Part II

2008-12-21T18:19:00.001+08:00

Don't worry. I am not going to give another list of (rather long-winded, in hindsight, but undoubtedly well-intentioned) reasons as to why I believe MapleStory sucks. Technically, the post is a misnomer; it should include neopets.com as well. But if that's the case then it should also include all Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) and other obscure Internet-based activities that make use of virtual currency. Hence, for all intents and purposes, the above title is merely a throwback for you to refer to the previous entry and nothing more.

If you are an MMO gamer, then you should be well-aware of the problem that real-world trading poses: a unbalanced game economy, making it harder for newcomers to join in. This was one of the reasons why I stated for my dislike of both MapleStory and neopets.com. It is probably also the single reason why I will hate any other MMOG if I don't hate them already: real-world trading is prevalent in all MMOGs. Coincidentally, The Straits Times published an article on 17 December 2008, Wednesday on page A2, titled "Should the taxman go after virtual gold?"

The writer (who looks pretty much like a gamer himself) was tinkering with the idea of including "gold-farming" (in less technical jargon: this simply means selling virtual currency for real currency) into the list of occupations that should be subject to income taxation, seeing as how many "gold-farmers" actually make a substantial income of around $2000 a month. He also presented two precendents: South Korea requires gold farmers to pay up to 40% of their profits in taxes and China requires resident gold-farmers to declare their income and pay 20% of it. Of course, the article also lists out the logistical issues in taxing this form of income. Gamers can easily choose not to declare their income; it is the Internet after all. The IRAS cannot attempt to monitor gold-farmers without raising a big hoo-haa about one's rights to privacy. Even then, real-world trading of virtual currency can happen quite instantly, all it requires is substantial amounts of the virtual currency and a willing buyer. This means that a 9 year old kid who is engaing in such a form of trading could be subjected to income tax as well, even though he is not even of legal age to work.

It is of course easy to imagine how the IRAS can keep track of a gamer's gold-farming income (even without violating privacy rights). But there are also a million and one ways in which the more creative demographic of the gaming population will find or devise to beat the system.

I, however, can only vehemently disagree with taxing gold-farming income. It legitimizes an act that has been explicitly prohibited in virtually all MMOGs, and real-world trading puts the player at risk of being banned from the game permanently. It also destroys all the hard work put into the game by the game developers in coming up with measures to reduce real-world trading, some of which, I believe are quite effective (the one employed by MapleStory is not) in its attempts to protect the balance of the game economy.

Post Script: Once upon a time, neopets.com actually came up with a rather brilliant idea of balancing the virtual economy, but it was not without irony. In 2006, the developers came up with a policy that users would have to pay a tax (in virtual currency) every time they clicked on a page to any part of the site. I thought it made good sense, since it helped control site traffic by discouraging over-surfing, and forced inflation down by ensuring that some of the virtual currency is returned to the system. I was also pretty sure that it would lead to a decrease in real-world trading. But alas, it was not meant to be, for it was part of the site's annual April Fools' Joke.

Post Post Script: I have a bone to pick with a certain Prof. Lim mentioned in the article. The Prof. implied that the virtual world does not ban gold-farming and real-world trading. It is obvious that Prof. Lim's knowledge of MMOGs is lacking, and has certainly not done any form of research whatsoever concerning the issue. Hell, I'm not even talking about a very strict and regimented form of research: merely just playing a few MMOGs would have sufficed for me.

Post Post Post Script: The only MMOG which allows virtual currency-real currency exchange that I know if is Second Life. And even then, exchange is extremely controlled and monitored.

Observation: Brave New (Digital) World

2008-12-19T15:53:00.003+08:00

You would think that the Internet is the ultimate culminating product of all that Globalisation has wrought, as well as its final harbinger, something that only serves to accelerate and spread the effects of the process that created it in the first place. Like what Global Warming is to the melting of Ice (to those whom I have their interest piqued, or have at least made remotely curious, you can go google "global warming and positive feedback". You should be able to get something substantial to explain what it is). You would think that the seemingly instantaneous communication brought forth would have rendered physical geographical distances a mere, though constant and omnipresent, itch. The resulting rate at which information is exchanged, would hence nullify the cultural differences that makes every nation quite distinct from all the rest. You would think that, and you would be wrong.

To presume that cultural differences would willingly submit to the Guillotine of Globalisation is quite naive. Culture has proven, over the past few centuries, to be quite the stubborn convict. Culture can absorb, adapt and evolve, but the differences that separate one from another never dies. This is certainly, and ironically, evident from the Internet itself.

Something that I have noticed while blog-hopping, is that most Singaporean blogs tend to have very complex blog templates. This is something that I hardly find on blogs from our Western counterparts. In fact, most of the time, one would find Western blogs using the standard blog template provided by blogger. If you use Blogger, just go to your Dashboard and click on "Blogs of Note". They have a list of highly popular blogs, mostly, if not all, are from Western bloggers (although I am not making a case of cultural bias here, it certainly serves to prove, in a way, my following point). And they all use standard Blogger-provided templates.

Perhaps the differences I have described is something worth further analysis by new-age cyber-anthropologists (and perhaps discover something interesting). But the real point is that Culture pervades even in the virtual world. I realised I have originally described the Internet is nothing more than just a system of tubes and electrical bleeps, but through this system, it has literally created a whole new world. Short of uniting all beliefs and practices into one monoculture, the Internet has become an avenue for culture to thrive, in whole new digital way.

Site Update #1

2008-12-15T21:17:00.006+08:00

Intoduction to the Site Update

Partly because of the fact that the initial stages in terms of coding are usually fraught with errors, resulting in a rather precarious visual manifestation; and partly because of the usual high-spirited interest and enthusiasm that is often felt whenever one starts on something new, constant changes to the look of the site are only inevitable.

I just realised I never really did give a simple legend or reference as to how to navigate around the site, as I had assumed all my visitors would be capable in learning how to do so. Not a bad or invalid assumption of course, given that the intuition of an Internet-savvy individual would direct the person towards the letters, seeing as how they are the only visual elements that appear on the page initially. Of course, my visitors thus far have learned how to exploit the site - 2 of them (the most unexpected lot) even actually commented instead of tag - to as full a potential as they can. But I cannot help but feel some parts of my site have not been visited, it would seem as if only my blog entries and the tagboard were the only parts of blog that existed, even though they were but just 2 of the 5 'pages' available. Then again, maybe to the general audience, the entries and the tagboard are the only real, useful parts of the blog. This, I find, a rather narrow-minded view of the potential of a blog, given the usefulness of CSS coding. Hence, I have decided to elucidate what feature of the blog each sub-link of the title "RANTI" will lead you to.

R - My profile. Mostly written in cryptic fashion to encourage thinking, as well as to protect myself.
A - Entries. As you might have already noticed.
N - Tagboard. Which I truly detest.
T - Links, Archives and Credits. The only page with any similarity to Super 3-in-1 Coffee Mix
I - Youtube page. Where I show my favourite Youtube videos.

I might add more 'pages' with future Site Updates, depending on what I might find interesting enough to add on to the site.

Radio.Blog

As you should have noticed, I have added a radio.blog that will be streaming music from my account at radioblog.com. I originally wanted to set-up a new page, but there's no way for me to add a detach function to it. Hence there would be no way for anyone to listen to it while surfing the blog. Hence, I decided to add as a permanent fixture at the top of the blog. (Details of the grueling task in setting it up is very technically described below, The Actual Site Update).

There are currently only 2 playlists on the radio.blog, each containing full albums - "Halo 2 Vol. 1 OST", and U2's "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb". You can choose any album you wish to listen to by just clicking the name (so idiot-proof, I don't know why I need to explain this) of the album and then double-clicking the song title. The button beside the play button skips to the next track. The volume control (directly below the skip and play buttons) is used as such: Click on to the volume bar and move your cursor right or left to increase or decrease the volume respectively. You may click on the loudspeaker icon to mute the music, but it does not unmute when you click on it after muting.

There are 4 buttons at the bottom of the playlists. One is quite obviously the link to radioblog.com. The other 3 have interesting functions. The first button from the left is the "Shuffle" button. Shuffle is toggled on if the small white square is shaded grey. Same goes for the other buttons. The next button is the "Repeat" playlist button. If toggled, it will repeat the entire playlist again once it has played through every single track. If toggled with shuffle, it will play each track randomly once, and then repeat the entire process randomly again once all tracks are exhausted. The last button is the "Crossfade" effect. This means when toggled, the player will fade out the current track as it ends, and fade in the next track. Don't toggle this if you want to hear the entire song, down to the last second.

The Actual Site Update

Problems
1. Initial title head "EMPTY" did not correspond with concept of blog
2. Font size of individual letters of title head were not of the same size
3. Top post cause bottom posts to lose "justify" alignment format
4. Comment footer had an oversized edit icon at the end
5. To comment, user had to click comment link, and will then get refreshed back to welcome page, and then had to go to entries page again to write comment
6. "Zero" entry periodically appeared in welcome screen
7. Attempt at providing "detach" function for radio.blog resulted in browser error feedback on Internet Explorer 7.0. Radio.Blog did not appear as well.
8. Attempt at aligning hover effects on title head leads to mis-alignment of entire title-head.
9. Attempt at aligning title-head with radio-blog leads to overlapping of many site elements

Fixes
1. Changed to "RANTI"
2. Changed font to "Century gothic"
3. Fixed faulty div tag
4. Removed the appropriate tag with reference from Asyraf's blog source
5. Changed preference to pop-up comment window
6. Fixed faulty div tag (again)
7. Reverted back to original coding
8. Increase width of title-head table
9. Reduced font size of title head from 94pt to 70pt, created 2
tags to push content downward, provided separate table for radio.blog and pushed it to the top

Additions
1. Added profile, tagboard, links and youtube video
2. Added comment function
3. Added radio.blog
4. Added site version number to bottom of site
5. Added extra profile information concerning nicknames

Site version updated to 1.1

Things I Hate About... Maplestory

2008-12-14T17:18:00.004+08:00

1. I hate the screwed up game economy
2. I hate the rife real-world trading, just like neopets.

Sidenote: Apparently Maple mesos are a bloody lot cheaper than neopoints. If my maths has not failed me. 10 mesos can get you about one 1 neopoint. What the fish, I can't believe I just discovered the exchange rate. Too bad real-world trading has yet to be considered a crime, I'd give anything to watch an episode of Crime-watch where some n00b gets pwned by the cops.

3. I hate their really bad English. Not just their grammar, but their overall sentence structure. What the hell happened to the Speak Good English Movement?
4. I hate the quests
5. I hate the game balance
6. I hate the over-repetition (Editor's note: A kind reader had pointed out a spelling error. But it did serve to prove my point. In an ironic fashion.) required to level-up
7. I hate the fact that for a game that claims to be free, the only way to truly immerse yourself in the game is to spend real money on cash items, some which give players an unfair advantage in leveling up
8. I hate the fact the for a game that claims to be a social game in which you can just show off your avatar, the only way to express individuality is, guess what, spend on cash items.
9. I hate the fact that there are so many n00bs that ask me to cc (change channel*, for the uninitiated) in a hunting ground which they are in. This is the internet, n00bcake, nobody owns it, so wake up your damn idea.
10. I hate the fact that this game is 1GB in size. Not a challenge to current hard drive standards, of course, but its a 2D side-scrolling game, for crying out loud! It only has standard background images and environment assets. Where the hell did the 1GB com from?
11. AND I especially hate the fact that a monster can hit you with damage even though you did not even attack it. How the hell does a mushroom hit me if it doesn't even have hands?

*Again for the really, really uninitiated. Maplestory is an MMORPG that separates the gaming world into separate servers. Players cannot use their characters in one server to interact with other players and their characters in another server. Here's where it gets a little complex. Each server runs several game "worlds" in what are known as channels (a "world" exists in a channel). A character that is created in a particular server can make use of any of the channels available in a particular server. The channels are a tool to handle a large number of players during peak periods. Think of it this way, even if your server has a capacity to hold 1 million players, it still isn't very fun if all one million players were playing in the same world right? The biggest problem this poses is the lack of monsters for the more hardcore fraction of the player population to kill. Hence, channels reduce the crowding problem by giving players a choice in where they want to play (not very effective, in my opinion. Human psychology dictates the player to pick the first the channel they come across, and that's easily Channel 1. That is what happens in reality). When players are 'hunting' for monsters, they usually stay in one map of the game world. But what annoys them most is if other players come into the same map, to hunt the same monsters ( an unfortunate side effect of bad quest design). Hence they will 'shout' at you to 'cc' or 'change channel', since every channel in the server has that exact same map, just different players. What irks me is that because of the bad quest design, the same map in every channel has the same cranky players asking you too 'cc' because they are doing the exact same quest, hunting the exact same monsters as you are.

Things I Hate About... neopets.com

2008-12-14T16:49:00.002+08:00

Since I am quite free as of now, I have decided to carry on with my aforementioned plans of posting the original 2 rants that had inspired the setting up of this blog, or else I would continue procrastinating about it and never get it done. Hopefully the following 2 posts are but one of the many "Things I Hate About..." columns I hope to write.

Before I begin, I would like to remind the reader that the statements made below are entirely my personal opinions, and they do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of others. Of course, you can go ahead and love a screwed up virtual economy. Everyone's doing it these days anyway.

1. I hate the new web design
2. I hate the neopets mall
3. I hate the fact that some users can pay to get things free users will never get
4. I hate the heavy merchandising
5. I hate the bloody sponsored ads
6. I hate the fact that you can't do your own HTML and CSS coding like last time
7. I hate the fact that getting sick is cheap
8. I hate the fact that there are no consequences for neglect: My neopet is able to cheat death even though half the time, he's 'dying'. And PETA wonders why the world is still so cruel to animals.
9. I hate the fact that the creators haven't taken an active stand against real-world trading. I'm still seeing profit-minded 8 year-olds hawking their neopoints for S$8/million.
10. I hate the fact that you can trade your pets with other users now. So much for wanting to keep neopoints-neopet trading under control for so many years.
11. I hate the fact that neopets.com sold their soul to Viacom. What a cheap whore.
12. I hate the concept of the premium membership.

One

2008-12-13T16:40:00.009+08:00

As mentioned before, the post I made on December 9 was not meant to be the first official post, but merely a testing post to see how all the coding would ultimately manifest to what you see on your screen. For the sake of posterity (so that the previous sentence, and perhaps the later part of this post, make sense), however, I have decided to leave it be.

Inevitable

First thing's first, of course. Why have I decided to start blogging now? (You can skip this part if you like, it's more of something to remind myself rather than explain anything to you people). Blogging, officially started in the late 90s, and only became popular practice a few years after Y2K. As a result, some HTML and CSS knowledge became a rather essential blogging tool as well, which was something I tried dabbling in. But I never really did start a blog. Why?

1. I was too lazy. And I couldn't be bothered to spend the time and effort to maintain one.
2. The social implications had seemed really screwed up to me: You are publishing your personal life on the Internet, a system of tubes and electrical bleeps that is not exactly known for its security.
3. I perceived it to be a fad. Its appeal lasting only as long as it's novelty captivated the public. Or until some other cool novel idea was invented, diverting everyone's attention and/or rendering blogging obsolete. Of course, the problem with it being a fad is that I did not want to create an account which I would lack the effort to commit to, which I would ultimately leave any email relating to blogging to accumulate and consume my email storage space. Which leads back to my first point: I was too lazy. Including deleting unwanted mail.

So what changed? I had certainly not become anymore committed now than I was before. If anything, I have become more of an IT degenerate and sloth. The social implications still seem screwed up to me. As mentioned in the foreword above, I find personal posts annoying. If I am to commit to anything, it is to maintain this blog's impersonal to low-personal nature.

Point 3 changed. I have realised that blogging is no longer a fad, as evident from its unwavering popularity as a practice on the Internet. It has become part of the mainstay of what is now called New Media, and has, without a doubt, revolutionised the way in which people communicate. If Youtube is the Internet equivalent of TV, then blogging is certainly the Internet equivalent of all physical written text, from newspapers to books.

And that is why I have started to blog. Because as much as I am a lazy bastard, I will not be able to prevent myself from blogging forever, it is only inevitable. And again because I am lazy bastard, if I were to record all my ideas on to paper, it would probably be left somewhere to grow mouldy insomuch that the ink would be as yellow as the paper itself, and hence unreadable. What better way to keep it than electronically?

Titular Origins

This part of the post attempts to explain the origin of my blog name: Techno.Ranti.

The origin of the blog name stems from the the original reasons and intended purposes for starting this blog. If you are from my class, 07V13, you should know that the following feud had occured: About 3 members of my class were arguing about the virtues and vices of participating in the activities of 2 once rather popular Internet fads, namely the virtual pet website, neopets.com, and the unbearably cute 2D side-scrolling MMORPG, Maplestory. 2 of them were adamant that neopets.com was the more entertaining Internet-based actvity, while the other was unwavering in his belief for Maplestory (not sure whether he still is now though.)

As the class blog space was reserved for more important announcements, they decided to utilise the tagboard instead. I read through all their arguments, and bluntly dismissed them. Having once been a long-time (unfortunately) paricipant of both before having become disillusioned by the inherent flaws within each, I took the stand that stated why both neopets.com and Maplestory, well, sucked.

I proceeded to justify my stand by first listing and expounding on the reasons as to why neopets.com sucked on the tagboard. This was then swiftly followed by my reasons for quitting Maplestory on the same tagboard the next day. When I reviewed my reasons again in the tagboard history, I then realised the amount of space that I had consumed in the process. It was n0t s0 much of spam as it was ranting. I was sorely apologetic about taking up so much space and thought it would be better if I had used a blog instead. And hence, one of the first motivators for starting my blog was born.

I thought it good fun to have rants like this on a blog, and when I came round to starting one, I was trying to come up with an interesting name for it. I thought of Technorati, and decided to add in the 'n' in 'rati' so as to allude that the blog was full of rants. I left "Techno" as I was originally ranting about things that had its ties to technology. I placed a '.' in between 'Techno' and 'Ranti' as an added measure to prevent angry emails from the actual Technorati.

And yes, I will be posting the rants that I had typed into the tagboard in readable format. Hopefuly, I will be able to continue such rants on other Internet-based activities as well

Closing Comments

Since I have explained the origins of my blog name, I would like to just state how I would you people to use my blog: Anyway you want really. But it would be greatly appreciated if you would comment instead of tag. I have provided a tagboard just in case some of you find it too difficult to comment (or too irrisistible to tag), but I have taken painstaking efforts to make commenting as idiot-proof as possible, so I don't see why you should be unable to comment. Unless of course, you are ranked below 'Idiot'.

Oh god, what a bloody long post.

Zero

2008-12-09T00:02:00.002+08:00

Ha. So I finally set up a blog. After all these years of resisting the urge to start one, I finally gave in. Not without good reasons, of course. I would never take any action that would seem to betray my principles. Then again, it wasn't much of a Resistance as it was an Indifference. I just couldn't be bothered to produce that effort to start a blog, not to mention maintaining it.

As far as this post is concerned, I wouldn't say it is my first post, more of a pre-first post. This post is just meant to test out the blog templates. I like simple-looking templates, but the trade-off for this liking happens to be a bloody lot of complexities for the end user. Apparently DancingSheep seems to be quite a creative (and hence, quite a code-savvy) individual. Timothy uses her blogskin as well.