True by Michael Cordy

I’ve just finished reading this book yesterday night on the bus back home. I must say I quite like this book. Michael Cordy is now one of my favourite authors. I have never disliked any of the books he wrote. I’ve read The Miracle Strain, as well as many other books including the Lucifer Code. I’ve had problems finding The Venus Conspiracy in the Library.

True is about this drug that a scientist has created that can make you love someone. You just need that person’s DNA and you can make a drug that when injected onto yourself, will make you love the person wholeheartedly. The scientist believed it was good for mankind and it is the cure for divorce. However, when he tried to get funding from a small swiss bank, the owners of the bank are actually the swiss mafia. These gangsters exploited his technology to their advantage and even killed the scientist.

Read the story to find out who wins in the end. It is definitely an interesting read.

Rating: PG
Language: Japanese with Chinese and English subtitles
Genre: Animation / Fantasy
Director: Mamoru Hosoda
Cast: Riisa Naka, Takuya Ishida, Ayami Kakiuchi, Sachie Hara, Mitsutaka Itakuru

Awards: Animation of the Year, Japan Academy Prize; Special Award, Hochi Film Awards; Best Animation Film, Mainichi Film Concours

When 17-year-old Makoto Konno gains the ability to, quite literally, “leap” backwards through time, she immediately sets about improving her grades and preventing personal mishaps. However, she soon realises that changing the past isn’t as simple as it seems, and eventually, will have to rely on her new powers to shape the future of her and her friends.

I watched it yesterday night. I would say the standard belongs to those of Tokimeki Memorial: Only Love. The plot and excitement is not high enough to be considered near Bleach or GhostHunt, but the whole thing is not as lame as Kyo No Go No Ni or Shinigami No Ballad.

However its not the best Movie Anime (Movime) that I have watched. The best is Spirited Away followed by Howl’s Moving Castle and lastly it is The Girl who leapt through time.

Anyway I really enjoyed watching the movie especially hearing the Japanese words coming from their mouths. =) If you’ve got money to spare and loves Japanese like me, then go watch it. Cathay’s prices are 50cents lesser than GV and Shaw!

The government knows that not many people wants to be teachers. People who want to teach are also put off by the heavy workload. Thus the government wants to have newer policies like raising pay to attract more people to join the workforce. But is the pay the only concern? I guess not.

Five-day work week? Not for his teacher wife

EVEN though the Singapore Government has been advocating a five-day work week, especially in the Civil Service, it remains to be seen whether it is being implemented on the ground.

My wife, a primary-school teacher, has to go back for school-related matters on many Saturdays. I understand that most teachers need to go back to school on Saturday for major school activities (about four Saturdays a year). Besides these, my wife has five or six Saturdays burnt because of Co-Curricular Activities (CCA). So, in total, there are nine or 10 Saturdays burnt in a year.

It is even more infuriating when she can’t claim time off and travel expenses on the Saturdays she spent on CCA.

In addition to her CCA involvement on Saturdays, she has CCA on a normal weekday afternoon. So, at times, she may be involved in CCA twice a week. Thus she ends up having to prepare for the coming week’s lessons on Sunday.

I do not understand how we are going to contribute to the nation’s birth rate if she is so stressed out.

People often comment that she spends more time with her pupils than with our children.

It makes me wonder why the five-day work week was implemented in the first place.

Nah Yong Hwee

Teachers are working past 5 days. That’s ok since in the past CCAs are all on Saturdays. However, since CCAs was moved to the weekends, the writer says that his wife has to work on Sundays (at home) to prepare for lessons.

Another interesting point raised up by someone in the forum. I quote:

This issue is not new. It doesn’t alleviate the situation when most schools have made it compulsory to give 5% of their teachers D grades for their performance ranking at the end of every year. Under such a system, teachers feel pressured to outdo each other in terms of accepting more work, so as to avoid getting Ds for their performance ranking at the end of the year.

Compulsory to give 5% of their teachers D grades. Are we doing some bell curve now? If the teachers are good, but they are just not the best in the same institution, then they will receive a D grade as compared to a lousy teacher who is middle in ranking in a normal school who will more probably receive a B or C grade? Thats totally unfair isn’t it?

If the above is true, then teaching will only become more tiring and stressful. No matter how much money I am given, I will not choose teaching if I have to work so much. Come to think of it, teacher’s working hours are long too. They start school at 8 and most work till 6 to provide remedial lessons etc. One would have to really have a passion for teaching to join the workforce. Plus with the parents pampering their kids so much, teachers will only have a harder time. So thank your teachers this coming teachers day by behaving well for the entire year.

I was going to meet my girlfriend yesterday and I bought the New Paper to entertain myself on the ride from Lakeside to Tanjong Pagar. 2 pieces of news caught my eye.

Firstly, bus captain abuse. Yes Singaporeans, we have gone up another level. From child abuse to pet abuse and now bus captain abuse. Sooner or later we are going to have abuse on ourselves and we probably enjoy it. Some statistics featured on the Newpaper. 14 bus captains whacked last year. 18 bus captains whacked in the last 6 months. Now if you think that last year includes the past 6 months, then please join SBS and get whacked.

The statistics are alarming, assuming that they are not inflated to sensationalize things. We have scored more in terms of whacking in the past 6 months compared to last year. Assuming that whacking occurs at a constant rate per year, the stats will read, 36 whacked in this year compared to 14 last year. A whooping 22 bus captain increase!

Now I’m sure that bus captain doesn’t have a face that says beat me, and that there isn’t a JC of Singapore Bus etiquettes, if not we just need to whack 3 more bus captains to have a L1R5 too big to enter any JC in Singapore. It doesn’t help if you study higher mother tongue though. Or a good CCA grade.

The reasons to whack the bus drivers are also lame. Punching a bus driver because he confiscated your friends ezlink card. That’s lame. You can complain and make the bus driver sorry if he was wrong, but punching him for something like that? Hell, its not even your card.

Another story that can make it into the Oscar’s list is a passenger who wanted to continue smoking, so he asks the bus driver to wait. The bus driver told him politely that it will not be fair to the other passengers to wait for him to finish smoking, so this guy snubbed his cigarette, and boarded the bus and hit the bus captain. Who’s fault is it really?

Education? Well, I guess its time to bring out the fine city thing again. After all, if you are a law-abiding good citizen, will you be afraid of the fines? Absolutely not. I guess it is time to increase the penalty of causing hurt.

Let me introduce you to a character in an anime called Bleach. This guy is called Tousen. He has his own sense of justice, and he believes in doing things for the greater good and he doesn’t like other people compromising on his brand of justice. So now, I shall implement my version of justice which I shall call Tousen’s Law.

By Tousen’s Law, I will punish this unlawful citizen to 1 year of jail where he will get to smoke 10,000 cigarettes a day, of which 10 must be in his mouth at any one time. I believe he will not get to live past the 1 year. Hahaha. Quite sadistic huh? Yet if Singapore really becomes so sadistic, crime might just drop. Of course, there will be civil unrest, so thats not good.

The next set of Statistics is talking about mosquitoes. Yes its the dengue fever outbreak again and the polls shows that:

43% of the people do not know if they are living in hotspots.
38% do not know that Aedes mosquitoes prefer to bread indoors.
21% do not check key breeding areas such as vases, flower pot, plates, pails etc.
72% say that there is no need for heavier fines.

Well, I think that the situation is getting out of hand if we are breeding more mosquitoes. The worst thing is that the mosquitoes you breed do not bite you but bite others. I would say this is an act of voluntary causing grevious hurt to others. If your actions cause hurt to other people and not yourself, then I definately cannot forgive. Especially if your ignorance or your selfishness or your can’t be bothered attitude is acting up.

If only Little Dragon Girl can attract Aedes Mosquitoes, I will go and ask her to be my shifu and attack all those who breed these mosquitoes and endanger other’s lives.

So if your house has plenty of retained water, please clear them today and purchase insecticide from your nearest friendly [insert stall name here] now!

Got this image from Jiahao’s wordpress. Yes Jiahao introduced this to me via his blog and I went to watch it on youtube. Animenfo says there are 4 eps but I can only find 3 in youtube. Nevertheless, I have watched quite a substantial part of it and I noticed how this anime likes to make the guy seem to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Each episodes has a few parts, 5 actually, divided into “lessons” and they are 5 short stories which are somewhat lame but entertaining. I watched it on my way home yesterday and they entertained me. Though I feel if anyone was watching my back they probably would feel that it is some pervertic anime since the lead character, Ryota always seems to enter the nursing room when the girls are doing some hanky panky inside.

Kyo No Go No Ni is a funny and entertaining anime which only has 4 episodes. I rate it a 3/5.

I went online to try to find out if I could sell some of my novels for some money, since some novels are bought on impulse and I didn’t read it past chapter 1. The constant gardener is one of those. Thus I began by searching on ebay.

There were a few listings on ebay, however they are all situated outside Singapore, in places like the United Kingdom. It is sold for a price of S$2.50 now. There is still shipping to consider though.

In amazon.com, they list new and old books at US$0.40 minimum. Which means you can buy the stupid book for S$0.80? However the shipping to international places costs $12 plus.

I tried finding sites for Singapore sellers. I managed to find one listed in emall.sg, however they do not sell many books that I want.

Conclusion: It is cheaper to buy a book in MPH or Kino or it is at least comparable, when you compare a new book to another new book. Selling an old book doesn’t seem to be easy in Singapore, unless I go and try on ebay. However the rates are so low!

Perhaps one day when I am free I will start to put up the constant gardener for sale in ebay for 10 dollars and see if anyone is interested. =(

A pretty interesting letter that was sent to the Straits Time forum. It is about NSmen’s haircut. Read on before I start to comment.

Can NSmen keep their hair during 1-week ICT?

I ATTENDED my first reservist In-Camp Training (ICT) last week. I trimmed my hair before the ICT, making sure it did not reach my collar and ears, and my fringe did not reach beyond my eyebrows.

On the very first day, to my bewilderment, a warrant officer ordered me to hand over my civilian IC. His reason was that my hair was ‘not in line with SAF standards’. I was then told to join the long queue to get my hair cut.

When my turn came, the barber went through every strand of my hair with the shaver and left me with a crew cut, not much different from a recruit’s.

During the next few days of the ICT, I was surprised to see many NSmen with long, sloppy fringes. Then there was one NSman with dyed golden-brown hair.

Were the barbers instructed to trim every NSman’s hair so that they look like fresh recruits, when trimming the sides and the back would suffice?

If the warrant officer was there to check NSmen’s attire and hair, how was it possible that many with floppy and even coloured hair managed to escape his notice?

During ICT, shouldn’t the focus be on refreshing the NSmen’s skills to make them effective soldiers, rather than on the length of their hair?

How about those NSmen who have civilian careers which require them to keep their hair? Can they obtain permission to do so when they go for their ICT?

Even as we fulfil our national obligation by going for ICT, we have wonderful civilian careers where our physical appearance plays an integral part.

Take the media and entertainment industries. An actor may get to play certain roles based on his looks and appearance, and this would determine his career path.

In the competitive corporate world, where first impressions matter and we are more likely to do business with people we like, one’s looks may just make or break a deal.

Do we have to sacrifice our looks just because of a one-week ICT?

Lim Chin Yuen

This won’t be like my typical answer style where I scold the poster, as this guy makes much sense. In fact, when I was in National Service, I do see some cases of people booking in for ICT. Indeed, they are allowed to have decent length hair and by decent I do not mean bald or recruit-style hairstyle. By decent I mean its the normal kind of hairstyle outside for civilians. After all, a ICT just lasts for a week or so for a low key ICT. My impression was formed that it is ok to have such decent hairstyle for ICT.

However the above letter made me realise that the SAF is still as rigid. Alarm bells are now set in my mind to automatically cut my hair before any upcoming ICT. However if you were to surf the forums you will see a comment that states that there was a guy who trimmed his hair before he booked in, and yet, is still asked to go to the barber in camp to cut a recruit’s hairstyle.

To me, this is really unacceptable. What is even more unacceptable is that there is bias and unfairness in the system. If you ask 1 guy to cut a recruit hairstyle because that is the only acceptable hairstyle, then I feel that you should get everyone to sport the same hairstyle. If you ask one person to cut it like that but allow others to have longer hair, what are we trying to show? Would that guy be loyal to the unit and would that guy be happy for his duration of his ICT?

In war we fight like brothers, but yet, some brothers are more equal than others in terms of hair?

Wayang has always been part and parcel of life. Even in the corporate world, there is wayang. People want to be promoted, so they wayang. However, when they wayang they cause so much distress to everyone. In our 3G SAF (which coincidentally does not allow 3G handphones), our military capabilities have improved. However, is our rulebook still stuck in the 1980s?

Should there be a decent revision to our rulebook regarding NSmen’s hairstyle? I believe if its neat and tidy, we should not penalize our NSmen. Our NSFs are allowed to have non-recruit length hairstyle. Surely our NSmen, who have done more than our NSF’s, be allowed to have the privilege to sport the same hairstyle?

If Mindef wishes for Singapore citizens to be patriotic and serve their ICTs with pride and honour, maybe we should not damage their own personal pride and feelings. Asking one person to cut but allowing others not to is really stupid. If this continues, maybe we should call the SAF a Stupid Acting Farce.

I hate wayang. Especially when your wayang gives me trouble. That, I cannot forgive.

Hi all,

I opted for a clean look without fanciful designs. I guess I realized that my weakness is in the photoshopping skills. I cannot seem to create good graphics, so I can’t make the design seem fanciful. I also learnt that a blog is not so much about a design but the content. I shall be working hard to provide better quality content. As you can see, Version 4 is not really finished, construction is still on-going.

I will be cleaning up the site by changing the categories. =)

Good day to all of you!

Oh well, been a whole daze and laze week since I arrived back in Japan. Apart from finishing my work for the tuition agency, I haven’t accomplished much. Version 4 is still on the planning stages. I thought I planned the thing quite well but in the end it sucks because I can’t seem to draw on Photoshop properly. I can visualize, but it just doesn’t come up the way I want it to.

Its quite frustrating actually.

However I discovered something today. The main point about a blog is not about its design, but what you put in it. My friend Kian Hean puts up news about himself, mostly on his coding and his Apple Macbook, as well as latest news on Apple. Haha. Jia Hao puts up his rumble fish game in AMK hub, movie reviews, game reviews, vcd/dvd reviews and anime reviews which I really like.

What have i put up? Lame, uninteresting stuff about how I failed to complete my nexttutor blabla. Be gone, negative thoughts! I should start to change my blog and its content, and I should start making use of my time online doing stuff so I can blog about it.

Wanted to put an airport, plane theme for my blog but I can’t draw an airport for nuts. Haha. I will be putting up anime stuff ba..haha..or put up a pic of my zen vision m..take from creative website.. =)

Shall see how..till then..byebye

Well I will be continuing to watch Tokimeki Memorial Only Love, 1 episode at a time slowly, just like Bleach, as the fansubs have not finished subbing the rest of the episodes..I’m now at 12, I think the anime is subbed till 16. Haha. Got 10 more episodes to sub!

Ghost Hunt is something recommended on Jiahao’s blog, so I thought I will try it. Shall utilize my Zen Vision. If not, buy for what? =)

Hope the anime’s will be nice to watch. At least can entertain abit ma. =)