I am a dictator, that’s what. Under the hood of the nice demeanor, you find a raging monster. Mwahahahaha! It was an awfully long time since I last took this psychological test, but here’s my results when I took the test back in 2003, while I was still in JC:
You are a Pioneer!
Outstanding Traits
People see you as an aggressive, factual, impatient, systematic person. You respond quickly to a challenge with mobility and flexibility. You are a versatile self-starter who responds rapidly to competition. You try to avoid unnecessary risk or trouble. You are sensitive to nuances and tend to look for hidden meanings. Generally, you need confirmation of the correctness of your action or decision, but in a crucial situation you will tend to go with your intuition. You are logical, critical, and incisive in your approach to attaining goals. You are challenged by problems requiring original and analytical effort.
Basic Desires and Internal Drive
Basically you are apt to be a perfectionist, and you have an equal striving for accomplishment and quality. You are not satisfied with just any answer; you want the best answer. In your daily activities, you see a need to resolve your perfectionism on the side of practical action. You are quickly decisive on routine matters; on major issues, you weigh all pros and cons very carefully. You prefer an ever-changing environment — the unusual and different. You want to find the answers for yourself. You want authority and important assignments; advancement and challenge are important to you.
Need for Possible Improvement
You may have some difficulties with people — for under pressure you can be cool and blunt. You can be critical and fault finding when your standards are not met. You can become impatient and dissatisfied if you feel your life is becoming routine. Under stress you may seem to waver and appear indecisive when you encounter a conflict between the need to consider the big picture and at the same time attend to details.
How to Encourage and Manage
You work best with direct, straightforward associates with whom you can “level” and negotiate commitments on a basis of equality. You should be given difficult assignments that will challenge and extend you. You need to be aware of — and try to soften — your sometimes too-strong impact on people.
The Pioneer of the Dark Side…
I sometimes wonder whether I’m just a monster wearing a little Bo-Beep mask 
When we did this test in class, I remembered that only 3 other of my classmates were in the Dominance side of the DISC representation graph (Influence, Steadiness and Compliance were the other three), so we were pretty much in the rarefied atmosphere.
At any rate, I remembered that the description was very fitting; in fact, I dare go as far as to say that it described me to a tee. If this website is any indicator, not many people have a personal website with their own domain names, so the same old still powers my engine. So do you feel any difference between the pkchukiss of 2003, and the pkchukiss of 2007?
Scribbled under:
General
I am rather miffed at myself for being a really bad prick today.
It wasn’t so much of me actively jabbing somebody on their backsides, but more of driving the troll out into the open. And I couldn’t help but feed it. Very bad, very bad.
What happened was that I have a fellow classmate who is really a joy to be around, because he gets so excited easily, and I can have really great conversations with him. The trouble is, he isn’t a geek-oriented type of person, so it ended up that whenever we had lessons in the classroom, he had to ask me what the teacher has already mentioned just barely a few seconds ago.
I’d admit that it is entirely my fault, but the troll started getting the better of me after his 20th question in the same hour. I started to ignore the bumbling young boy (he’s 5 years my junior, through pure virtue of me being over-aged) and concentrated on my own work instead. The poor thing was left with an empty template, and absolutely nothing in his assignment (he had trouble recalling what was taught in the previous lessons, so all the programming stuff stumped him real bad).
At one point in time, it crossed my mind to become a mean green monster and chew him out, but when I saw how nice and helpful my lecturers were, I felt guilty for being such a prick to him. In the end, I promised him that I would get online in the evening, after I had finished my own assignments, to help him complete his own programming homework.
He called me just a few minutes ago, wanting help with a not-so-important piece of software: he didn’t know how to configure uTorrent to maximise its capabilities. Again, for some reason, my annoyance arose, and I found myself snapping instructions to him, while asking him to read the manual for the umpteenth time in an unpleasant tone. It wasn’t outright rage, but I felt that it was a form of abuse that I had to confess to. It was my fault for letting things get to me. I couldn’t imagine if my teachers were to snap at me for every thing that I didn’t know about, or even neglected to read the manual about: I would be one really scarred person.
And just for making it up to him for being a bad, I’ll treat him to lunch on Monday and apologise to him.
If you are reading this, I am really sorry for snapping at you. That was really arrogant of me.
[tags]prick, school, homework, angry, guilty[/tags]
Scribbled under:
General
Ever wonder what happens when professionals can no longer perfect their sports specialisation?
The answer: they create a new sport.
[MEDIA=9]
Here’s one guy who on purpose, strikes 9 specific pins out of 10, to leave the last for the blast. Now who’s ashamed to step up to the bowling alley?
[tags]bowling, tricks[/tags]
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General
I hate to write about irony, because it has been hammering me on my head for the past few days: so much so that I’m getting a tad annoyed.
Well, you see: there is this freshmen orientation programme in school this week, and we have this special flag day to sell round stickers to the public to raise funds for the President’s Challenge. The trouble is, the storm around the National Kidney Foundation, and its ex-Chairman’s obsession with golden bathroom taps bought on public charity dollars is still stirring around the heartlands. You could almost hear the bad vibes towards charity in the air, with a very gleeful Singapore Press Holdings (which exposed the entire scandal when Duari sued them for reporting rumours of the golden taps) inking head-liners on the civil and criminal proceedings.
So, I wasn’t really keen to be raising funds for charity at this time - who knows what merciless grilling may come for a measly few coinage? The public is not ready for the plethora of charities that remain penniless after NKF successfully mopped up most Singaporeans’ charity funds. It really is just a zero-sum game, where the rest had fallen behind in the dust.
Nevertheless, I couldn’t forget that the people in need don’t disappear just because NKF sucked up public funds - the poor still need money to pay for food, the handicapped still need to be equipped with aids to level the playing field in this world.
The world won’t stop because people stop donating; it’ll only severely affect the quality of life for the small section of our society that relies upon public assistance. That thought was what drove me to pound the concrete today at Outram Park.
Getting people to donate is really a simple game. First, you need to find a place where people get trapped easily (like a traffic junction, escalator landing, areas near MRT station exits). The aim is to predict a start-stop flow of human passage, so that there is enough time to ask everyone for donations.
Next, you would need to know details of the charity that you are raising funds for. People do ask you for those to make sure you know your stuff.
When working through the crowds, always smile, and look at them in the eye. I find that when I made that effort to personalise the contact, people tend to be more generous. I initially thought that it had something to do with the fact that I was really handsome, but when a mirror told me the truth, I realised that a friendly, personable face is all it takes to get people to pop notes, instead of coins into the collection tin.
The next point was where I figure most people don’t do well in: to ask for the donation. I’ve had some classmates tell me that they are embarrassed to open their mouths, but that is more like being a salesman who shows the customer the product, gives the customer a glass of water, and keep silent by the side. You don’t get a sale if you don’t ask for one. That got proven many times when I could see people passing silent collectors, only to donate into my can when I simply asked them.
At the very end, when we broke the seals to count the donations, I managed to hit $74. Not bad for 4 hours of soliciting, though it could have been more. The rest of my time was spent helping one of my other classmates fill his tin, since it felt very light, and I decided to help him add to his tin’s heft before the stringent scrutiny back in school.
I had a really great time too, when we took a break just outside the MRT station. An uncle, who looked around 40-ish, came around to chat with us. He really had some radical ideas to raise funds, like giving each student a donation card, and going from CBD office to CBD office to get donations. In addition, we found out that he was related to the famous 16-year old violinist who was initially turned down for deferment from National Service to pursue his studies.
An interesting tidbit: his friend was one of the winners of NKF’s charity prizes, winning a condominium, AND car. The media made quite a big story out of that one, so I was surprised to hear about the story from a close source. We learnt that that friend was later blocked from making donations to NKF’s latter charity shows, most probably because of the public outcry over the controversial scooping of both the first and second prize.
That’s controversial alright: the uncle himself looked to be 45, but he claims to be 78 years old. With jet-black hair and buldging muscles, I was wondering whether his entire story was true at all! I leave it to you to draw the conclusions.
[tags]singapore polytechnic, singapore poly, president’s challenge, charity, flag day[/tags]
Scribbled under:
General
The Internet has more than revolutionalised the world: it has brought together people, irregardless of geographical borders. You know, it is amazing that you can read about news as it is developing on the other side of the world? Or even to chat online with your long-distant cousin?
However, along with the unrivaled power granted to us, privacy on the web has become arbitrary. There is a risk we all take whenever we start a web presence. Your web page stands out there, ready to be served to anyone who requests it. Friends, relatives, future employers: they have the power to seek out your server - be it private, or public - just because it is there. Of course, everything is well and good if they do not wish us harm; but sadly, our world isn’t some Utopia.
Hackers, griefers, ill-wishers, and many undesirable elements lurk around the Internet, with the purpose of taking advantage of whatever you place online. This may include privileged information like your own financial details, physical address, your friends’ names, and many other personalised information that can be used to hurt you.
It is a very sobering thought. Just a few days ago, 4.7 million credit card numbers were compromised by a single firm - just because they did not secure the information properly. When our information is a thin veil from full-blown exposure, we must try our utmost to add to that almost-non-existent layer of security, in order to continue enabling us to share our favourite moments with our loved ones - without letting in undesirable elements.
However, the challenge of improving access security usually comes at a compromise to usability. And even then, a tight seal cannot be guaranteed. The Internet is the battleground of the constant war of wits between security professionals, and the black hatters. As each security algorithm is invented, it starts to age as hackers race to crack the code, and break down yet another wall of defense.
So how do we effectively ensure that our information is available to the ones whom we want to share with, yet out of the hands of the bad guys?
The answer lies in being as small a target as possible.
There will always be ignorant targets on the Internet. They use out-of-date security defense mechanisms, or use none at all. They openly flaunt their information, or for some reason have the largest repository of information. Sometimes, they are the target of some malicious agenda. Amongst these big lumbering giants, if our outfit remains compact, leaves no foot-print, and use modern security schemes - most hackers would have absolutely no reason to attempt to mess with our system.
Of course, there would always be the rare occasion where bored kiddies would prod and pry around - it comes with being in the Wild Wild Internet - that’s where empowered system administrators come in. They break the script-kiddies’ crowbars, and leave them to dust.
As long as these rules are followed, the chances of being targeted are reduced; and hopefully, the Internet would become a slightly less wild land.
Scribbled under:
Writings
We humans tend to get a little bit cocky sometimes, especially when things seem to go on a roll. What we do not expect, is Murphy’s Law following close behind.
The chickens getting counted before they are hatched: the 1, 000, 000, 000++th episode:
[MEDIA=8]
[tags]car race, Murphy’s Law, counting chickens before they are hatched[/tags]
Scribbled under:
General
So it came to this. I ditched my cable for DSL, which in this case meant changing from MaxOnline to SingNet. Since I had a personal vendetta against Singnet, it was an ironic joke on me. It’s making me sheepish just thinking how strongly I had recommended MaxOnline just a few months ago.
(more…)
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General
I’m officially pinning my postless streak onto the sun! All my thoughts evaporate into the sky along with that glass of water from 15 minutes ago. Ack, the sun had to spoil it all by being too hot! And no, it has nothing to do with the fact that I’m a lazy bum who decided that “Extreme Makeover Home Edition” is a better thing to waste time on rather than blogging. Really!
“Oh, that conniving pkchukiss…”
Things have been moving in jerks and pauses: just last week, I rushed down to my new school (Singapore Polytechnic) to finish my enrolment, make a student card with a really ugly mug-shot, and to break my budget with a compulsory laptop purchase from the school.
It looks really messy though, when I hit the train station (Dover) just outside the school, there was absolutely no directional signs where I should walk to the enrolment centre. That made me extremely grateful for knowing how to read a map!
The campus itself is a contrasting picture of the new and old, with the entire mash-up looking like a mis-matched wedding. Midst of renewal, I guess, but the condition of the old buildings really caused those newly built ones to stick out prominently. I’d post pictures, though I couldn’t take them on my last trip because my camera is still out. Just imagine a glass facade next to a brownish-stained supposedly white-washed buildings, along with a gate that looks out of place next to the small man-made stream created as a natural fence.
That oddity… I like it.
After a mercifully painless wait for the student card, the long road lined right in front. The seniors were out to recruit members for the various organisation’s orientation camps: and they did a really good job with the pressure part. I even felt the heat to scribble something on the application form just to get away from their spiel, even though they were really friendly.
So it was out a door, and into the next door, to hear yet another pitch for a different orientation camp. I must say, after the 4th presentation, I was really, really tired and bored. It was just about as good as listening in to a MLM sales talk, so I used the “Get out of Jail Free” card: I told them that I had to work.
Out I popped from the other end, into the exhibition hall where the laptop sales were held, where I spent another 2 hours waiting to collect the laptop and to wait in another room to have the notebook configured for campus access. I was asleep by the time everything finally finished, and I lugged the 3+ kg package with accessories onto the train.
Look ma, absolutely no hands to flash the fare-card!
[tags]singapore polytechnic, sp, singapore poly, freshman, orientation, mercy[/tags]
Scribbled under:
General
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