Just yesterday, I came down with a serious case of the common bug. Though I didn’t go crazy and bite someone (it wasn’t rabies; I think it transmit through animal bites), the fever literally annoyed.
It actually happened on Sunday evening, just when we were having a chalet to celebrate a friend’s birthday. After the guests had left, and the friend’s parents left, we happily broke out the alcohol, intending to intoxicate the birthday boy.
After only 4 bowls - we didn’t have cups left, since the guests wiped off the entire supply during the dinner earlier - my body glowed a dangerous lobster shade. Under normal circumstances, I would have been able to survive the resulting knock-back from the alcohol, but for unknown reasons, I felt my concentration slipping. My head wasn’t spinning, but I could hear my heart-beat throbbing painfully in my head.
I got behind the wheel, and managed to crash the car on a road divider. Apparently, the car was speeding too fast to swerve into the lane safely. Thankfully, nothing came out of the accident, since the game automatically regenerates the car, and in just seconds, I had a brand new car to crash at the next barrier.
Later, we adjourned to one of the two bedrooms for the movie marathon. As I sat down, I lose the focus of the laptop, and closed my eyes. My friends saw this, and suggested that I sleep off some of the alcohol in the next room.
The next room’s temperature was set at 23 degrees. My body trembled involuntarily the moment I entered the room, and I was unable to bear the cold. I laid down for a few minutes, but the cold seemed to seep through my bones, which made the experience a torture.
Having gained some semblence of a consciousness, I stole one of the mattresses, and went to sleep in the living room, which, thankfully, was the only non-airconditioned room in the entire place.
It was there I shivered till dawn, unable to fall asleep, driven by the alcohol induced state.
Was that the feeling of being drunk? I seriously doubt so; I had gone for drinking sessions where I polished off more alcohol than usual, but this was the first time I started swimming in my mind. I pin this on the illness, probably including the fever that prevented me from sleeping in the air-conditioned room. Then again, drunks have always insisted that they were sober 
The illness progressed to the next stage on Monday morning: we were due to go for a karoke session in the afternoon. My friend commented that I looked sick, so he lent me his windbreaker.
It proved to be a life-saver. The place had a ridiculously cold temperature setting, and we all huddled close for warmth, till the extent that we probably looked like a bunch of homosexuals to the staff there.
I attained the sore throat there. It was the ultimate killer for the session, since I couldn’t reasonably sing with the sore throat.
The flu virus couldn’t decide whether it wanted me to have a high fever, or a sore throat, so I ended up having a mild fever that was enough of an annoyance, but not enough to warrant spending on paracetamol, and a sore throat with a random timer set.
The doctor has prescribed some medicine for the illness, but I don’t think I can safely eat the pills at work. Already, they make me feel drowsy, and I ended up on the bed more than I was doing something else.
If things don’t improve tomorrow, I might have to load up on the caffeine just to work.
Scribbled under:
General
I got this in my Friendster Bulletin Board; though I already saw it spreading through e-mail previously. The email depicts a young man who gives up his helmet to his girlfriend just before the motorbike they were on crashed:
Do u love someone this much
Guy: No, this is fun.
Girl: No it’s not. Please it’s too scary!
Guy: Then tell me you love me.
Girl: Fine I love you. Slow down!
Guy: Now give me a BIG hug.
Girl : *hugs him*
Guy: Can you take my helmet off and put it on
yourself? It’s bugging me.
Girl: Alright, now slow down
Guy: I love you babe
Girl: I love you too, please just slow down now!
Please…
(in the paper the next day):
A motorcycle had crashed into a building because
of brake failure. Two people were on it, but only 1
had survived. The truth was that halfway down
the
road, the guy realized that his brakes broke, but he
didn’t want to let the girl know. Instead, he had her
say she loved him and felt her hug one last time,
then he had her wear his helmet so that she would
live even though it meant that he would die. If u
love
any one this much re-post this ….and….the love of
your life will relize they feel the same ….
Not-withstanding that it is illogical for only one of them to be wearing a helmet at this time (it is also illegal NOT to wear helmets while you are on a bike!), the story is extremely touching, and pulls at our heart-strings: especially after all the fatal motorcycle accidents in the news.
However, this accident could have been averted had the guy been properly trained to stop the bike with his engine, even as both brakes failed.
The moral of the story: Get a fricking driving licence before you get on the roads!
Scribbled under:
General
The sun need not bake down on your head to get the body’s cooling system into over-drive: the ever-present humidity and the warmth radiating from the ground is enough to roast, albeit like a slow-cooker.
School kids, grateful that their school uniforms are white, walk hurriedly to their next class, while unlucky ones whose uniform happened to be black in colour curse at being turned into an oven.
As for me, I shiver in steamy frustration at the air vent directly above me in the office. This, when I am wearing a long-sleeved shirt, which itself is covered by a jacket, makes the experience unwieldy. As someone used to the heat, the cold made my hands numb, and easily (though ironically) hot-headed. And the comments on the computer turned an overcast shade.
The nonsense about keeping the server cool (I don’t understand why we have to be kept frozen together with the server; if it likes being cold so much, we might as well have kept it in the Artics) and the fact that the remote controls in the room do absolutely nothing (they are linked to the central controls) make the situation look really ridiculous.
Already, outside the building, office workers were wiping sweat off their brows as they exit the shade during lunchtime. I zipped up my jacket. And sneezed. The cold sometimes got way over the top that people were turning in sick. I sometimes wonder whether I was keeping healthy by way of sheer will.
Oh, by the way, I wish to thank the management of the corporation for visiting this blog; please kindly disregard above said post. I mean nothing by that. Really!
Scribbled under:
General
I was around Suntec City yesterday, and was surprised to see that World War I memorial fenced up like a prison:
(Sorry for the poor picture quality; Nokia’s 2 megapixel cameras are good for daylight pictures, not twilight pictures)
In the name of security for IMF delegates, Suntec City faced the same fate:
Anti-personnel fences that are tested against the weight of potential protestors. Apparently, the government is extremely worried for the welfare of the IMF delegates.
Amidst all the security measures, you can find scenes of unusual vibrancy. Talk about the Disneyland with the death penalty!
Already, the pumped up security measures have taken a huge toll on the number of shoppers in the mall. Usually, the passageways are so crowded that you would nearly have to squeeze between the gaps in the slowly flowing crowd in order to even get somewhere.
Here’s a picture of an arcade on 10 Sep 2006:
And all that hyped up security? WAIT! Is that a hole I see in their fence?
Oh, and did you hear? Hotel retailers in Singapore are complaining about the falling occupancy rates, after raising prices in anticipation of high take-up rates. Apparently, the Singapore government forgot that the “high take-up rates” are caused by non-governmental organisations, which follow the IMF each year, to every location to demonstrate.
When they kicked them out, they also killed the room up-take. Not to mention that visitors normally shy away from the host of the IMF for the duration of the meeting because of the protests.
Now we can only just hope that the 16,000 figure is sufficient to fill the Suntec City’s malls when the rest of Singapore is kept away from it.
Scribbled under:
General
Which is a better location for an exhibition that attracts humans like termites to wood, Suntec City, or Singapore Expo?
I got kind of caught in this, since where my house is located, it is a relatively moot point. As you know, this year’s local gathering of technological gadgets, Comex, was held at Singapore Expo, instead of the usual Suntec City.
Not only does travelling to Expo mean a troublesome train transfer, it means having to pack in with the rest of the geeks, and religious church followers (some churches have set themselves up at Expo): which mean extremely packed trains, and more armpit smells than usual.
Suntec doesn’t fare as well, though it doesn’t hit the nerves as badly as the travelling goes, its exhibition size is extremely constrained, and the resulting breathing space is hazardous if you are not of a sufficient height to break out of the canopy. Kind of like shifting the jam from the trains to the exhibition floor.
Come to think of it, neither was Expo that much of a relief to the previous Comexes at Suntec City. The jam was still shoulder to shoulder, and it was similarly tough to stand at a booth to examine an item without getting shoved to one side by people trying to get past you. To think they boasted of 4m wide walk-ways!
Perhaps the exhibition organisers may do the unthinkable: implement a ticketing system that allows only a set limit number of people to mill around the halls. And please! Ban strollers and brawling kids! I don’t understand the need for them to be at the IT show if they are only going to be sleeping, or crying.
[tags]Comex[/tags]
Scribbled under:
General
You know, sometimes it is kind of hard to say what you feel when you know that people whom you know in real life are actually reading your blog. In a Singaporean society, this usually means an automatic taboo - a censoring of what you feel that may previously be plastered all over your blog.
Some people may say, “Come on, I am sure it isn’t that bad; I am sure they are just interested in your inner thoughts on them”. Well, a real-life test by me has already garned the negative receptivity by some whom I know. And as you know, a hardened freedom of speech advocate is the hardest to silence.
To reach a compromise, I have start an anonymous blog somewhere else, where I can write freely under better anonymity. I still write here, but you won’t find the nitro-pumped action that you would see on the other blog. It won’t even be under SgBlogging, so you guys would have to be pretty lucky to hit onto that blog.
Let’s see how good your sleuthing skills are
Scribbled under:
General
One of my friends asked me about laser printers some time back: I think it was around the August period where he just realised that he had way too much notes to print, and too little trees to kill.
Not that the rest of the world cares, but since he approached me regarding this technical problem, I was obliged to give him a blow-by-blow account on the differences between the two.
Laser:
Laser printers, other than sounding chic, are just printing implements that suck up more expensive powder ink, and iron same said ink on the page with heat. If you print any significant number of pages, you would realise that the printer tends to get hotter.
And a dire warning in case you get any funny ideas about dismantling the heating element while the printer is working: your print job may be screwed up, just like it did when I opened the printer top cover back when I was during a rush job for an audit back in January. Thank goodness it was my own print job, and not someone else’s, or I would get something more than just another piece of paper in the shredder. Oh, and by the way, your hands may be burnt by the heating element, but that is a secondary consideration to your job. You can have your hands, but they are nothing without a job, right?
Do note that if you get addicted to the smell of freshly printed paper, like the ones that come out from my office’s network printer, your printing hobby can get pretty expensive. Since the smell fades away after a while, you are stuck trying to satisfy your addiction, eventually racking an enormous replacement cartridge bill. You would be better off eating some real food that has the same smell.
On top of that, printing in colour may be a justifiable cost if your printing practice is moderate. However, bear in mind that there are third-party refills for ink-jets that make them a better choice for colour printing.
Ink-jets
Coming on the heels of the razor-blade sales model (in case you don’t know, this means to sell the initial package at a bargain basement price, and to murder your customer’s wallets with exhorbitant after-sales support and replacement cartridges), you usually are better off buying a new ink-jet after finishing the inks, rather than replace the ink cartridges.
I suspect that the only thought that prevents our landfills from being choked by cartridgeless new ink-jet printers is the hassle of disconnecting the old one, and connecting a new one in its place.
I guess the slightly above replacement price for the cartridges help too.
Irregardless, third-party ink refills hope to lick the problem: with extremely cheap packages that boost 3 to 5 times the number of printable pages for the same amount of money, you stand to reap a lot of savings from dumping money to voracious manufacturers: that is, if you know how to manage the refilling process.
The Conclusion
Personally, I prefer laser printers. They print fast, have the addictive smell, and produce crisp lines that ink-jets sometime struggle with. However, the cost of replacement cartridges can put off wide-spread implementation, though if you are a heavy user, replacement cartridges are the way to go.
Ink-jets can be extremely cheap, if you know how to get the refill into the cartridge.
However, for the rest of us, there is always the office
Scribbled under:
General
|
|
