Is that an oxymoron to you? I guess so. How can someone be at the two opposite ends of the spectrum, one being totally shy (introverted) and keeping to themselves, and one being extremely outgoing (extroverted)? Actually, you can. The idea is that it’s not at the same time, but at different times and different scenarios.

I’m bugged by this problem actually. On the one hand, I’m extroverted when I’m with my own friends. I talk excitedly like a GPMG, crack jokes and try to make everyone laugh. However, I am most hesistant in meeting new people. There’s just this initial layer of fear, except that once I overcome it, I will become extroverted. It’s like a wrapped present, you’ll never know what’s inside until the wrapper comes off. For me, I think the wrapper’s the hard part.

I’ve got friends who tell me they are introverted. How can that be? They seem very extroverted to me. I guess they belong to somewhat the same classification of people like I am, introverted at times and extroverted at other times.

I think I need a comfortable place, once for me to shed my initial wrapper, and then I can be at ease with myself. I know it’s an irritating thing, especially when the whole world is about networking and if you want to be successful in life, you have to learn how to take off that wrapper. (In a Bleach way, it’s like getting out of your gigai in super quick speed). Or in a superman way, it’s dragging that S out of your chest in double quick time.

This split personality thing must have come from the stars, since I am born a Gemini. Lol. There seems to be much “truth” in this double personality thing, because other gemini’s seem to have some same characteristics too. On the other hand, it seems that I can pretty much bond better with Gemini people. I mean, some of my good friends are Gemini, and even if they are not Gemini, they are close to being on. Waikit is a Gemini, just one day younger than me. Alan, my NS Encik-to-be, is also a Gemini. The Empress in school is also a Gemini. Lol. Jiahao, though not a Gemini, is exactly 1 month younger, and is close to the Gemini timeslot. My girlfriend is also a gemini. Sorry for digressing.

Anyway as I was saying, the world’s becoming more “together” now. Social networking sites like Facebook are coming out. Social marketing, social events are increasing in frequency. Even bloggers are given more attention. How many times have I seen bloggers from Ping.sg attending some nice event, like the LG phone or the Canon Camcorder? Thus it is really important to shed that wrapper, or even, present an alternative look so that people think the wrapper is gone, but still allow myself to slowly shed the wrapper? Well I guess I have plenty to improve on myself.

What about you guys? Do you feel the same way too?

I’m sure everyone is by now, very knowledgeable about the entire Mas Selamat COI findings, and can probably tell me what are the 3 confluence of factors that contributed to his escape. I’m also sure that you have either read about the incident on the papers or heard it from the news, or from friends, or from Ping.sg, like I did.

There have been discussions, published on the National Paper today, of course, regarding whether heads should roll, and featuring our PM defending his minister. Well personally I don’t think our minister has to resign, but I think the person who should resign and answer for this is the ISD head, or whoever that’s in charge of matters in the Whitley Detention Center.

There are many points raised on the blogsphere, of which I will attempt to reproduce it to the best that I can, and say why I think heads should roll. Firstly, let me start by saying that someone did a really lousy job, and has failed in his duty, and hence should be considered incompetent in this aspect.

1) Why are the CCTV’s not recording?
This is the greatest and most stupid blunder anyone could ever have. This is a security facility housing terrorist’s wannabes and we do not have CCTV to help us guard against them. Having a CCTV that doesn’t record is even worse. Having a CCTV that nobody’s looking at is the worst.

2) Urinal doors that have doors?
This got to be one of the most stupidest luxury that terrorists wannabes have. If I remember the picture correctly, there are two urinals and the door can be locked. (If not why need to kick the door open? Can just push it right?) I mean, which male uses two urinals? Not to mention, which male pees for 11 minutes straight? Either he drank a whole swimming pool, or he’s probably masturbating. Can’t be changing for that long either. Unless he’s shitting in the urinal? Else, how can you explain the need to place toilet rolls at the urinal section so that he can break his fall? Which male uses the toilet paper (7 rolls!!) after he finishes peeing?

3) Un-grilled windows
Again another dumb idea. As the head of the facility, surely it is your job to ensure that your prisoners do not escape. When there is a misunderstanding with the contractor, why are steps not taken to ensure that either the contractor does the job, or get another contractor to install the grill windows? I’m sure that money spent on grills is money well spent. Plus, who in the right mind would consider sawing off the handles a good substitute for grills? If so, the grill installing companies will have no more jobs. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that we can push the window out right? That is a big security mistake that any NSF can tell you.

4) Tall ledge that goes all the way to the fence
As the supervisor or the one in command of WDC, shouldn’t all matters be under someone’s command? I mean, surely someone knows that there is this ledge or zinc roof that goes all the way to the fence (as it seems to be at the 10 o clock news the day before). That is a huge security loophole. You might as well not fence it.

5) Who build the fence so near the detention center?
It took a trained soldier 49 seconds (around there?) to escape from the toilet and out of the detention center. Why are we making it so easy for escape? Since it is so near the fence, why then are we taking the risk by having ungrilled windows?

I can hardly call it complacency. It’s a serious lack of responsibility. Someone is drinking Milo Dinosaur when he is supposed to make his rounds round the detention center and make sure that things are done. Even in NS, we have the RSM who ensures that the BOS checks the ground for cleanliness. The guard duty personnel are also supposed to check that the fences are not cut etc. But someone is not walking the ground, or that someone is taking it for granted that things will go well.

We need to show that the civil service is not an iron rice bowl. No matter what, it is a serious error to be the head of a detention facility and view security as such a minute issue. Seriously, someone is not doing his job well. I can’t say that our minister is at fault, because WDC is not the only thing he has to govern. The person who governs the facility at WDC should be punished severely. If not, then what meritocracy are we talking about? No matter what mistakes were made, we will always forgive and forget?

They better catch the terrorist before other countries do, else it would be a serious shame on our faces. I guess, more work should be done rather than to rebut Mr Chiam of Potong Pasir, asking him if he is a police dog expert.

I just had my C++ programming practical exam yesterday, and I must say I feel quite good even though I did not manage to finish the question. I am nearly there, I think, because I didn’t manage to check my answers for question 2, and I left 2 functions empty for question 2.

These days I have been pondering over my future. What will I become? What kind of electrical engineer will I be? What specialization would I take?

I wanted to work for SIA a few months back. I thought it would be great that I can contribute to a big Singapore company, and be part of the team when it gets better achievements. Then I thought, they didn’t even want me when I applied for a scholarship. If I ever do work there, will I be at the scholarship holder’s feet constantly? I do not know.

Then today I thought about Google. I think Google is coming into Singapore soon. I forgot when I read the news about them being willing to launch a branch here in Singapore. I took a look at their website, and they are hiring primarily software engineers, with a Bachelors in Computer Science and be good at programming. Hmm. Am I good enough? In the first place, I’m studying EE, not computer science. Ah well, guess that wonderful work life culture won’t be mine.

So what exactly am I going to be? I don’t know. It’s one year more to choosing my specialization and I have honestly no idea what I want to become. Help~~

Now, why must I not lose my laptop? The other day at the Computer Center bus stop at NUS, I saw this A4 sized poster pasted on one of the pillars. This guy actually lost his laptop and in it is his final year project. He is even willing to pay $500 for whoever who found the laptop!

Whilst I do not have my final year project inside my laptop (hey I’m still a freshie..well not going to be one soon..lol), I have something important inside. No it’s not the lecture notes because I can always re download them again. No it’s not the past sem’s lecture notes either. Actually if you look at the photo closely, the laptop is at the NextTutor website!

Yes, NextTutor is my baby, my pet project, my “CCA” or whatever you can call it. It’s like Paddy’s Bak2u, Blog2u and all the other start up he has, except on a much smaller scale. Losing my laptop would mean that the files are gone. Although most files are uploaded on the web host, the important files that have not been uploaded are at risk. After all, I’m remaking NextTutor. It is really terrible to if I were to lose my laptop.

Besides that, my laptop have all my photos! While I am not Edison Chen and I do not have that kind of photos (no one wants to watch anyway. lol), but hey I never release my photo until I am forced to. Lol. (Looks at this post)..Just joking.

Thanks Bak2u for giving me this free VereyPC software, and it’s an added protection for my laptop. (No my laptop doesn’t have a rubber cover..got silicon keyboard protector though).

Read this off Ping.sg. I’m now listed at the million Blog list.

I’m # 200

Well, I think this math question for my 1506 module will tell us a reason why there is a brain drain in Singapore:

Both Elves and Dwarves live in Rivendell, but there is a certain irrational resentment
between the two groups [placed in their hearts, no doubt, by Sauron]. The amount of
racial prejudice is not the same on both sides, Elves tending to be more intolerant than
Dwarves, but both groups are inclined to move out of Rivendell at a rate controlled by
the number of the other group. Apart from this, both groups reproduce as usual, but
Elves can only be killed by violence –they never grow old– so their overall death rate
per capita is lower than that of the Dwarves; also, the Elvish birth rate per capita is
higher since Dwarf women are scarce [ever seen one?]. Both groups have more births
than deaths. We can set up a model of this situation using a pair of simultaneous ODEs
with a matrix [where the first row describes the rate of change of the Elf population]
5 -4
-1 2

Explain why this matrix does represent the situation we described. At a
certain time, the number of Dwarves is slightly larger than the number of Elves. Predict
what will happen to the population of Elves. This pattern has in fact often been observed
in racially discriminatory societies.

Well I have been ranting and raving and am nearly starking mad, but the situation is still the same in Singapore. Of course, many of us have done the same, cursing and swearing and displaying our anger at certain foreigners in Singapore, but of course, they are still considered Foreign Talents, and seem to be higher valued than us, peasants of Singapore. Well they tell us when we were in primary school that one chopstick break easily, many chopstick not so easily. Sounds great but it’s false. How many of us are pissed off already? Thus this is my new law:

One Singaporean Chopstick break easily, one bunch of Singaporean Chopstick break easily too, but One (insert expletive here) foreign talent chopstick cannot break.

Isn’t it? I feed sad for us.

In my past entry, I spoke about a moron. The saga continues, sadly. The discussion progressed after I wrote that post, and it branched out to his ignorance (not me ignorantsoup ok? I am ignorantsoup but you don’t address me as my ignorance ok?) saying that teachers are like the average karung guni men on the street, they deserve no different amount of respect, that teachers are paid workers and should resign if they cannot do the job. Well, naturally Soup is super pissed off, because his ignorance is so rude to the lecturers / the lab coordinators. Thus Soup said that since we are talking about prices, then the person who doesn’t pay for the good shall not complain. Naturally this makes sense, his ignorance is on a free education. His ignorance is a foreign talent ok? Don’t pway pway. He even said it himself that our government is valuing (insert hokkien expletive here) foreign talents so why we brainwashed peasants (ok he said citizens) are not following.

CNN! BCC! AXN and Cartoon Network!!!

His ignorance actually considers himself a foreign talent.

Foreign criminal more like.

Pui. This peasant spits at you.

Anyway, the discussion about free education went on, and he says that he isn’t receiving a free education. Got 6 year bond wor. Ok la, he is also an economic major so he probably consider it opportunity cost. But what the fish? If I am applying for a scholarship, I would treat it like a job interview lo. Because soup wants to work with an established good company. But judging from his ignorance’s words, it seems that he treats the 6 year bond as a cost, which means he can’t be bothered about working here loh. If you are genuinely interested in coming in Singapore to work and live, Soup welcomes you and can treat you like a fellow peasant talent loh. But you show this kind of bloody attitude, Soup knows you can’t wait to fly off to another country. Soup knows, but Soup’s superiors don’t.

So this is the main point. Some of them don’t care about living and contributing here. They see the 6 years as a repayment for the free education, and them its time to serve and f**k off. (Walau summore they never serve NS..can S A F off one sia).

That’s it. Harsh reality that no one bothers because soup is only a peasant. Where are our elites to come and fight with this talent? Oh..They are on scholarship at foreign universities, and they may never come back. Oh well, only peasants can fight lo.

To end off, I would like to give you an easter egg code:


void easterEgg()
{
cout<<" /" "<
cout<<" | ./ |"<
cout<<" | |"<
cout<<" | |"<
cout<<" |>~<|"<
cout<<" | |"<
cout<<" /'| |/'.."<
cout<<" /~| | | | "<
cout<<" | =[@]= | | "<
cout<<" | | | | | "<
cout<<" | ~ ~ ~ ~ |` )"<
cout<<" | /"<
cout<<" /"<
cout<<" /"<
cout<<" _____ /"<
cout<<" |--//''`--|"<
cout<<" | (( +==)) |"<
cout<<" |--_|_//--|"<

}

Ok la paste here le the shape weird liao..but you know what i mean. EasterEgg you!

Here’s a link to the correct image..dunno why my code function got problem.

I just had my CS1102C Practical Exam today at NUS. It’s the C++ programming practical examination, and there were many problems that all of us faced. The main problem is that the server was very laggy and we had to wait for many seconds before we could continue. Towards the end of the examination, it was more laggy because everyone tried to compile their work and the servers need plenty of resources for this to be done.

During normal days, a compile would at most take 10 seconds, but today it took an average of 3-5 minutes per compile. This meant that I couldn’t debug properly because I tried to put cout (equivalent of printf) statements to debug, but everytime it lagged during compilation, so I gave up and went to continue doing other parts of my lab. Thus, I could only finish 1 question, with question 2 having some weird error at the start of the code.

However, in the end everyone (or rather, most of us) took it in our stride. We may be whining and complaining, but we never became overly angry. After all, most of us or all of us suffered from the lag, and in a way it is quite fair. I doubt that there is anyone who lags lesser than others, because it is a server issue and since everyone is connected to the same machine, we should all have an average amount of lagness.

But someone had to come to the IVLE forum and spoil the day. This guy is my number one most hated list now because of his attitude problem and his way of demanding apology from the Lab Technicians. For your info, this guy is named Zhao Ke, and he is the hacker who hacked into the RJC network to get the results of his peers. He ended up with a conviction by the courts, and has to either go to jail or pay the fine. He couldn’t pay, and landed up on the country’s newspaper where other Chinese immigrants donated the money needed for the fine. In short, he is unpunished.

What made me angry is that he is very rude to the lecturers and the lab assistants.

3. since the server is not capable of supporting so many ppl running java at the same time, why don’t the school get a few new servers? Don’t tell us you have no money, if you have money for the alumni complex, the warran campus, i am 100% sure that u can spare some for the comparably inexpensive servers. Apparently NUS is much more interested in beautifying itself than improving its teaching facilities and student welfare, which can also be seen from the recent accomodation incident.

Wow, I wanted to make a personal attack, but I decided to lessen the impact by writing less angrily on the reply at the forum, but this is my blog and I can make all the attacks I want. I mean, of all people, you come and complain about NUS having no money when you are on an NUS scholarship? Buy new servers? Why not. Let us take away your f**king scholarship and we have money to pay for the servers. What is his problem by talking about the Alumni complex as well as the new Warren Town? It’s obvious this asshole has never worked before in his life. Some people do not need to go NS but get more benefits than Singaporean males anyway. Some people just never failed to realize that money is allocated to the faculties and they work their own budget.

I don’t mind pulling out all my guns against this idiot. Even though he is from the same course as me, but what has he done to deserve my respect? These few months, his posts on the forum just justifies my opinion of him. His constant reverence to Apple products are constantly shown in most of his posts. Even in this Practical Exam, he took a chance to dig at window’s DevCpp software. I mean, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

I will leave you with the full extract of his post on the forum, and you judge for yourself. Please do not post any flame comments. I will just delete them. I’m in a bad mood now.

just a few thoughts abt the pe today:

1. since you have been conducting pe for so many yrs aldy (i assume, at least this is not the first yr), how come such problem occurs?

2. before pe, you mentioned that due to the low capability of the server, we would be divided into 2 grps, this showed that u should be aware of the problem but have not paid sufficient attention to it.

3. since the server is not capable of supporting so many ppl running java at the same time, why don’t the school get a few new servers? Don’t tell us you have no money, if you have money for the alumni complex, the warran campus, i am 100% sure that u can spare some for the comparably inexpensive servers. Apparently NUS is much more interested in beautifying itself than improving its teaching facilities and student welfare, which can also be seen from the recent accomodation incident.

4. well, if you are really really that poor (maybe NUS should announce all its endorsement, tuition fees and govt subsidies received and expenditure, or are they avaliable aldy?), why use such a system? Just let students program on individual workstations and mark them one-by-one, or is it too troublesome for you? I believe any responsible teacher will agree that student’s exam results are more impt than their own comfort and ease. Don’t say that exams are not impt as long as we learn something, under the current system u cannot deny they are very impt. So we expect the pe to reflects our ability and skills rather than such being a “fun” comedy.

5. extremely horrible crisis management. well, the problem occured and time could not go backward, but at least something should be done to alleviate the problem. However we saw no such attempts at all, the TA just told us to be more patient and wait longer without doing anything useful. The technicians responded very slowly, appeared innocent and incompetent, kept giving blatantly useless instructions.

6. the worst part: you even told the students to use Dev C++! this is the most unfair part in the incident. I thought it was you who told us not to use dev c++ when proramming??? obviously some of us have absolutely no experience in dev c++ before (especially mac users, arrh, ugly dev c) and had difficulties in linking up the .h and system files, yet the TA innocently said he didnt know as well. Those who are familiar with dev c will have huge advantages over those who are not.

7. why you gave extra time??? before extra time was given, at least it was fair for everybody, the system was laggy for all. but during the extra time some of us could use dev cpp while the others had to tolerate with the sunfire. Instead, the pe should be immediately suspended (well, at least for some groups) and time passed to be taken down so that they can continue in future.

8. why did you allow the 2nd group to proceed?? The TA happily told us after the java group has done that the 2nd group is coming in so you are going to experience huge lag soon! Have fun lagging! Are you intentionally exacerbating the problem?

9. i expect an apology from all the lab technicians and teaching staffs and promise such incidents will not happen to future students (and i believe many of us as well). I know it is unintentional, but so what? culpable homicide is still punishable. you got to be reponsible when something goes wrong, especially it reflects so many problems with the management of the incidents which should not have happened at all.

Comments welcomed.

Mas Selamat has been at large for over a month and a half or so already, and all we get are words. I believe that a majority of us are getting pissed off over this incident, and it does not make it any better when it seems to be our fault. Mr Brown has an excellent “letter” that sums everything up.

How can you and I be blamed for his escape? It is not our duty to stand and guard him. In what way are we “complacent” in this matter? Why then, do they talk about complacency amongst citizens? True, we had been living in a sense of safeness and security, believing that nothing can go wrong in Singapore, because we have an efficient government who has been leading us for decades. Had we been complacent because we keep thinking that way? Then that must change. People, do not be complacent and think that the situation in Singapore will remain that way. We should always look for the winds of change and perhaps in a few years down the road, we should all change like Malaysia.

This letter below is quite a good one. Notice that we do not know who is to blame for the terrorist’s escape. We only know it’s the damned fucking guard that’s at fault. But surely some department should take responsibility? I mean, it’s not the first time someone escaped from the freaking toilet. Even Channel 8 knows that. Hence, why have we not taken active steps to prevent escape from different venues?

Questions that have been going on in my mind include:
1) Why wasn’t the toilet windows locked? Or grilled? Maybe they should change the windows to those Mc Donald’s style glass, where it will only break when Singaporeans all queue for Hello Kitty. Ventilation can be in the form of ventilation fans which are small squares that a full grown adult cannot escape from.
2) Why wasn’t the criminal tagged? It seems that in certain prisons, they tag their prisoners so they know where they are at any point in time.
3) Why information was so slow to be distributed to us?

Many many other questions. And has the report from the inquiry been out yet? Or have I been studying too much that I missed the report? Perhaps I am too complacent, believing that the inquiry will do everything.

Govt has to take some responsibility too

I REFER to last Saturday’s article ‘Guards were negligent, says MM’. Like MM Lee, I very much agree that the Government is not to be blamed for the escape of Mas Selamat Kastari.

The good track record of the Singapore Government should not be diminished by this unfortunate incident. However, there should be some level of accountability by the Home Affairs Ministry and not only by the guards who were in charge of the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) detainee who had once planned to crash a plane into Changi Airport.

The ministry had a role to play in ensuring all this did not happen in the first place.

But none of the statements from the ministry suggested that it was apologetic over the incident and there was no admission that there could have been an oversight on its part. Ironically, an Insight report in The Straits Times on the same day cited Dr Michael Benoliel, an associate professor of organisational behaviour at the Singapore Management University, as saying ‘All the great corporations collapsed because they underestimated the competition’.

Is it fair that accountability lies only with certain strata of staff members of a corporation?

Let us all ponder this since we have often compared our Government to a large corporation.

Mohd Rashed Badarudin

Before you read on, do look at this video in question where it shows Japan fishermen killing Dolphins by the tens. In fact, the video may make you feel that their methods are too extreme.

I had a discussion, or rather, my friends had a discussion about this dolphin video, and I just kept quiet throughout the process because I disagreed with quite a few points, just that I didn’t want to start a heated argument in the canteen @ NUS. I took note of some of the comments I disagreed with and I thought I should just let it out here, if not I will be bottling it up and it’s unhealthy.

Firstly, one of the remarks was “People who tell you not to be cruel to animals are hypocrites when they turn around and have a meat burger”. Now, I think to use it in terms of this context is totally wrong. In fact, having a meat burger does not mean cruelty to animals. Animals that are reared for human consumption can be killed humanely, from the brief idea I had of Islam, I believe that the food can only be considered to be Halal if there is minimal suffering done to the animal during the slaughter. As such, the slaughter is done in a quick manner to deal immediate death so that the animal does not suffer. If you look at the video, the fishermen cuts the dolphin neck, letting the dolphin bleed and move, whilst he continues hacking at the dolphin. The dolphin suffers, doesn’t it? I don’t think these people are hypocrites when they tell you not to be cruel to animals.

Secondly, it is said that it has been the tradition of the Japanese to kill dolphins for food, and it has been going round for centuries, so why make a fuss? Now, doing something for a very long period of time does not make something right. We see some countries who sentence women to death for being raped. Does that mean that their law is right and should not be changed? Even when human perception and understanding has evolved, we should just let things be?

Thirdly, dolphins are compared to sardines. We catch sardines and eat them anyway, so why feel so much for dolphins? Well I honestly do not know what to say. Can we even compare them this way? I think the sardine dies faster than the dolphins, and dolphins are not our normal food on the plate, just for the Japanese. Besides, I think they are selling them as whale meat, which makes everything seem more, unethical?

Fourthly, there are other things that we should spend more time to protect, why waste time on dolphins? Now that is shallow thinking. I mean, how can we judge if we should spend more time to protect something over another? Should we focus more on cats and neglect the dolphins? Now I think these people who are trying their best to stop this practice are very nice and dedicated people. In fact, I think it is their freedom to decide what cause they want to support. Other species may be more endangered, but should we wait till dolphins become endangered before we do something? Anyway, the main point is not why they are killing dolphins, but why they are doing it in a inhumane fashion, dragging the poor mammal on the road for miles to the slaughter place.

Lastly, that animals are being killed for food anyway. Again I emphasize that it is the way those dolphins are treated, not whether they are used for food. Imagine dragging a cow for miles. I would be alarmed too. Meat is in our diet and we are used to it. We just want to minimize the suffering necessary and not cause to much pain.

Anyway, what’s up with respecting those who go vegetarian? As if vegetarians do not cause harm to animals or life. Now, when those tractors go through to harvest those grains, do you think those rabbits who live there come up alive? Every one of them? There is a definite risk to animals too.

Now, if only veggies can yell in pain.