Have you seen LOLcats yet? I like the cute expressions on the cats, and their captions are enormously funny!
Now, having read about the stories about antics of their pets from other pet owners, like Mr Miyagi, as well as the adventures of a SPCA Volunteer, I giggled myself silly at the prospect of having my own animal stories to tell. And then stopped short.
I’m not sure if getting a pet is a good proposition at all. For the better part of my early childhood, I had hamsters, which were supposedly meant to be my playmates. They were interesting to me for a little while, but being the couch potato television addict that I was, left them alone in their cages. My mom cleaned their cages and fed them. But the hamsters bred fast, and since they don’t have notions of incest, leaving a son and mother together for too long will soon find the cage filled with little hamsters.
Despite her urging me to help take care of them, I always walked past the cage without taking a second look. The hamsters didn’t stink (or at least their smell wasn’t smelly to me), but if I was not going to take care of the hamsters, I shouldn’t be allowed to have pets. And with that, she gave the newborns to other people once they were big enough, and we kept the incestuous son and mother hamster in a blue tank originally meant for fishes until they passed away of old age.
After that point, I was banned from having any pets. Not that I really cared anyway, since I was always hanging out in the media resource room in school after classes until the sun set. The Internet industry in Singapore was in its infancy, and I was already an addict. That marked the end of the age where pets were in my lives — perhaps for their good.
10 years later, and I find myself out of National Service. With the Internet so prevalent in Singapore it is easy for pet owners to go online and share their pet experiences with the world. Reading their blogs sometimes make me wish to have a pet, but deep within my heart I know that I’m still not sure if I can, or am willing to take care of an animal. Dogs may be lovable, excitable and easily satisfied, but with me coming home from school at 5-6pm in the evening, and leaving the house at 7am in the morning, I”m doubtful that I can devote enough attention to one. Sure, I can feed it, clean its litter or give it a shower, but if I can’t find time to play with it, that would be tantamount to bringing in a pet, and then wasting its time in my house. I’d rather not adopt one, so that it has a better chance of finding a good family to adopt it.
Maybe I should give myself another 10 years to think this over.
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General
This is the 2nd anniversary of my release from full time National Service! Just thought that I’ll write a bit about it, since I’ve only just noticed the date! The freedom is sweet! I don’t like military life very much, since army life is communal, while I’m a individualistic person.
Sharing a room with many other people may be fun, but there are times when I just want to be alone and stay in bed all day. I’m the sensitive new age guy who needs down-time. Yeah, I even have No-Phone days. In fact, I never pick up the house phone: if it rings while I’m alone in the house, I’ll just unplug the extension  But that’s a story for another day.
Getting ordered around in uniform is ugly, but it’s a reflection of the real world out there in the mini-ecosystem. While it provides a peek at the world, I don’t think that the real bosses out there in the world would scream at you for the little nits. The working world out there doesn’t care if you have a thread straying from your shirt, neither does it mandate that you have to spend your own money to sew a new rank on the shoulder (local promotion without any allowance increase), only to take them down and sew a new one the next month. (I’m still sore over that one)
Anyway, this post will surely attract all some of those old reservist personnel thinking that I’m a young punk who hasn’t worked a single day in his life.
If you’re the above, let me tell you this: having worked one whole year in a local company, and two and a third years in the army, I prefer working in the real world better. Do what fits you, but in my opinion, the real world is the better choice.
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Army Days, General
Also known as “camera-whoring” in the forest. I was in National Service for 2 whole years, and I definitely have not forgotten about the mosquito bites and smelly clothes (though you usually stop thinking that you smell after a few hours; I could stink passer-bys to death and not know why), but yesterday I found myself walking through the vegetation again - this time as a photograph apprentice.
You see, I got myself a Fujifilm S5800 point-and-shoot camera around one moon ago, after my Casio QV-R61 camera went kaput. The new camera allows me to play with the shot aperture and shutter timing, and I learnt quite a bit about the photography world. Plus a friend, his uncle and his uncle’s friend, all three whom are insanely into photography (I’m looking at you, Xiang Ju), I got sucked deeply into the world of filling up memory cards with RAW and JPEG files.
Well, without further ado:
Welcome back to the jungle
There are many things you can take pictures of, and the beauty of the place cannot be something you are able to appreciate, especially when you are busy hiding inside of it. To put it into perspective, you can’t really care what prickly or ant-infested plant you’re hiding behind when the battle is raging all around you. (Until you get angry ants biting chunks off you)
I’m not sure if the water is totally safe to drink, but if it were some 20km from the nearest civilisation, just like how Brunei’s forests were, I would have no problems drinking it… if I had purification tablets (haha!). The clear stream flows steadily, and had a nice gurgling sound that I wouldn’t mind sitting down and staring at. I simply have no problem watching water flow past me all day.
I managed to capture a picture of a dragonfly!
It was nice enough to let me close in to take a picture of it, but it flew off after I snapped this picture. I wanted to snap more of it in this pose since it looked really good, and I was afraid that this photo turned out blurry. Thank goodness ISO 400 was enough to use a high speed shutter to counteract my shakey hands!
This is Xiang Ju trying to take a picture of a snail with his dSLR, the Nikon D80. dSLRs are professional level cameras that serious photographers use to take pictures. It is many times better than my point-and-shoot camera, especially in terms of ISO performance. These cameras can really go up to ISO 1600 without introducing too much noise into the picture. Already, I’m using ISO 400, and the image quality is starting to suffer.
Now, my camera may not be too good with pictures, I dare say it is good enough for photography beginners like me. This flower looks really pretty, but I don’t know its name. I also over-exposed its white parts, though I didn’t have the time to re-do this, since everybody was going on ahead without me already.
Xiang Ju was extremely shagged out by the climb, so he took a rest on the floor, while I snapped some pictures discreetly. You can call this his personal portfolio
Later, Xiang Ju’s uncle treated us to Roti Prata at Shibly Indian Restaurant. It’s the stretch off Old Thomson Road, at Casurina Drive (I think). I knew that I should have taken a picture of the road name to remind me!
The Roti Prata tastes a bit cheesy, but has a firm bounce with a slight crisp. Probably a bit over-done, but I like it all the same. They might need to work on spreading the egg, since the egg yolk was clustered near the centre. The egg white is essentially tasteless, so parts of the prata tastes like the plain version.
Here ends my first photo-shoot with my “bridge” camera. Critiques and comments (only on the pictures!) are welcome! If you have any photo-shoot, please ask me along too! I hope to learn as much as possible!
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General
My lunch today:
Vegetarian Bee Hoon with mock meat, accompanied by cabbage. When you are a poor student, this is all you can afford for lunch. It’s nice though, and since I like vegetarian food a lot, this is one of the meal that I eat as a staple diet. That’s how I’m getting fat!
Vegetarian food consists of a lot of flour, since the mock meat is usually formed from the flour, and then mixed with food colouring. Seasoning is added to get a taste close to the real thing.
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General
Well, after the last post on how I feel that Singapore Polytechnics’ servers are underwhelming, it caused some concerns about the attitude that that post was made in. While I didn’t show it at that time, I am agreeable that positive criticism is always a better platform to get things done, rather than just ranting about it on my blog.
However, at times, the huge amount of red tape hanging around most government institutions make it a frustrating process to get things done in a timely manner. Where certain time sensitive issues are concerned, it might have been far too late to have it settled through normal channels. For example, I don’t believe that a certain laptop provider would have revised the prices of the products in time for the enrollment drive if we had not raised our concerns directly with the Principal. Already, a check on its website still shows the old, more expensive offers for other polytechnics. I won’t elaborate on this, because it isn’t the point of this post.
The issue that I would like to address is the appropriate use of channels for complaints. After the letter regarding the pricing of the laptops was sent in, I received word that we caused some unhappiness that we had skipped over the chain of command, and had worded the complaint too strongly. While the issue is now closed, I would like to clarify my rationale on why we acted as we did.
Firstly, the letter was written on the weekend prior to the start of the enrollment drive - the freshmen would have been purchasing laptops based on the official price list given by the vendor, which is outdated, and more expensive. I believe that this is not a fair deal for the incoming first years, as it is always implied that the laptop offers in the school would always be cheaper than the recommended retail price. Leaving the situation as it is would be unconscionable. There simply wasn’t enough time to send an email to a generic feedback line and hope for an answer: the last time I used that, it took one week to get an answer, which if it happened this time round, would have been too late to salvage the situation.
Secondly, there was no way to contact the department or a person in charge of the event. No emails nor telephone numbers were listed on the laptop road show web page. Facing the lack of an immediate way of reaching the decision maker, that was when I decided that we should write to the Principal.
Now, while I believe that the level of escalation was appropriate, I don’t believe that the tone of our letter was correct. Inside the email that was eventually sent out, I added the word “blatant fleecing”, which was a really negative and accusative phrase to use in the context of sending in a complaint. I agree that my tone was wrong, and for that I do owe the recipients of the letter an apology. The most constructive feedback, and one that would get the swiftest response would be the one that is positive, and targeting only the issue on hand.
It is a lesson learnt, and I do hope that fellow frustrated people out there will similarly keep your cool and do the thing that is most beneficial to the situation. After all, we do start out with the eventual goal of solving the situation. Using the wrong tone would only heighten tensions: even if the problem was resolved, the new cracks that appear in your relationship may eventually lead to more communication problems down the road.
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General
Update: I managed to register for the GEMs during the second registration period, which was 10 hours long. I also wrote about the issue about my thoughts on feedback
There are 30 minutes to register GEMs for this semester, and I spent the entire 30 minutes trying to log in. Here’s what I got 99% of the time within the registration system:
This is not the first time that SP’s computer systems have failed during critical times. At the start of last semester, the wireless internet access around the school campus was very slow, downloading notes and Powerpoint slides took atrociously long (anyone would be pissed to get 5 kB/s thoroughput from the school servers).
Then came the wireless access point upgrades, which closed off all ports except 80, and also caused my laptop to have a hard time just trying to associating with the access point. The entire fiasco took a long time to resolve, and ended with me spending money out of my pocket to sign up for a HSDPA plan from SingTel to tide over the ridiculous situation.
I also had problems connecting to my MySQL server at port 3306 to upload the database needed for my assignment to work. It was only when I finally got my HSDPA modem that I could get this done.
The computer infrastructure in Singapore Polytechnic is abysmal, with erratic problems cropping up all the time. This nightmare might continue tonight, as I attempt to register for the GEMs again during the next open registration window.
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General
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