Reticent Rambler

Zomg Zombies

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:51:10 GMT

(Science, alcohol, and late-night movies do not mix)

Zombies are a popular figure in pop culture/entertainment and they are usually portrayed as being brought about through an outbreak or epidemic. Consequently, we model a zombie attack, using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies.

...

The key difference between the models presented here and other models of infectious disease is that the dead can come back to life. Clearly, this is an unlikely scenario if taken literally, but possible real-life applications may include allegiance to political parties, or diseases with a dormant infection.

This is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the first mathematical analysis of an outbreak of zombie infection.

[A] zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.

- Munz, P, Hudea, I, Imad, J & Smith, R.J., When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection, Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress (2009).

Baked Salmon

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 16:35:52 GMT

Baked salmon topped with dijonnaise and bread crumbs, with garlic rice and baked cherry tomatoes.

Way too salty due to butter overload and my sprinkling of additional salt. Didn't manage to get the bread crumbs to brown nicely either, otherwise the salmon came out tasting pretty good.

NDPeeps: Parades and Marching

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:34:37 GMT

The men fell out for the parades early each Sunday afternoon and groped their way into ranks of twelve outside the barracks. Groaning with hangovers, they limped in step to their station on the main paradeground, where they stood motionless in the heat for an hour or two with the men from the sixty or seventy other cadet squadrons until enough of them had collapsed to call it a day.

On the edge of the field stood a row of ambulances and teams of trained stretcher bearers with walkie-talkies. On the roofs of the ambulances were spotters with binoculars. A tally clerk kept score. Supervising this entire phase of the operation was a medical officer with a flair for accounting who okayed pulses and checked the figures of the tally clerk. As soon as enough unconscious men had been collected in the ambulances, the medical officer signaled the bandmaster to strike up the band and end the parade. One behind the other, the squadrons marched up the field, executed a cumbersome turn around the reviewing stand and marched down the field and back to their barracks.

Each of the parading squadrons was graded as it marched past the reviewing stand, where a bloated colonel with a big fat mustache sat with the other officers. The best squadron in each wing won a yellow pennant on a pole that was utterly worthless. The best squadron on the base won a red pennant on a longer pole that was worth even less, since the pole was heavier and was that much more of a nuisance to lug around all week until some other squadron won it the following Sunday.

...

Lieutenant Scheisskopf longed desperately to win parades and sat up half the night working on it while his wife waited amorously for him in bed thumbing through Krafft-Ebing to her favorite passages. He read books on marching. He manipulated boxes of chocolate soldiers until they melted in his hands and then maneuvered in ranks of twelve a set of plastic cowboys he had bought from a mail-order house under an assumed name and kept locked away from everyone's eyes during the day. Leonardo's exercises in anatomy proved indispensable. One evening he felt the need for a live model and directed his wife to march around the room.

'Naked?' she asked hopefully.

Lieutenant Scheisskopf smacked his hands over his eyes in exasperation. It was the despair of Lieutenant Scheisskopf's life to be chained to a woman who was incapable of looking beyond her own dirty, sexual desires to the titanic struggles for the unattainable in which noble man could become heroically engaged.

'Why don't you ever whip me?' she pouted one night.
'Because I haven't the time,' he snapped at her impatiently. 'I haven't the time. Don't you know there's a parade going on?'

And he really did not have the time. There it was Sunday already, with only seven days left in the week to get ready for the next parade. He had no idea where the hours went.

Finishing last in three successive parades had given Lieutenant Scheisskopf an unsavory reputation, and he considered every means of improvement, even nailing the twelve men in each rank to a long two-by-four beam of seasoned oak to keep them in line. The plan was not feasible, for making a ninety-degree turn would have been impossible without nickel-alloy swivels inserted in the small of every man's back, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf was not sanguine at all about obtaining that many nickel-alloy swivels from Quartermaster or enlisting the cooperation of the surgeons at the hospital.

The week after Lieutenant Scheisskopf followed Clevinger's recommendation and let the men elect their own cadet officers, the squadron won the yellow pennant. Lieutenant Scheisskopf was so elated by his unexpected achievement that he gave his wife a sharp crack over the head with the pole when she tried to drag him into bed to celebrate by showing their contempt for the sexual mores of the lower middle classes in Western civilization. The next week the squadron won the red flag, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf was beside himself with rapture. And the week after that his squadron made history by winning the red pennant two weeks in a row! Now Lieutenant Scheisskopf had confidence enough in his powers to spring his big surprise. Lieutenant Scheisskopf had discovered in his extensive research that the hands of marchers, instead of swinging freely, as was then the popular fashion, ought never to be moved more than three inches from the center of the thigh, which meant, in effect, that they were scarcely to be swung at all.

Lieutenant Scheisskopf's preparations were elaborate and clandestine. All the cadets in his squadron were sworn to secrecy and rehearsed in the dead of night on the auxiliary parade-ground. They marched in darkness that was pitch and bumped into each other blindly, but they did not panic, and they were learning to march without swinging their hands. Lieutenant Scheisskopf's first thought had been to have a friend of his in the sheet metal shop sink pegs of nickel alloy into each man's thighbones and link them to the wrists by strands of copper wire with exactly three inches of play, but there wasn't time - there was never enough time - and good copper wire was hard to come by in wartime. He remembered also that the men, so hampered, would be unable to fall properly during the impressive fainting ceremony preceding the marching and that an inability to faint properly might affect the unit's rating as a whole.

And all week long he chortled with repressed delight at the officers' club. Speculation grew rampant among his closest friends.

'I wonder what that Shithead is up to,' Lieutenant Engle said.
Lieutenant Scheisskopf responded with a knowing smile to the queries of his colleagues. 'You'll find out Sunday,' he promised. 'You'll find out.'

Lieutenant Scheisskopf unveiled his epochal surprise that Sunday with all the aplomb of an experienced impresario. He said nothing while the other squadrons ambled past the reviewing stand crookedly in their customary manner. He gave no sign even when the first ranks of his own squadron hove into sight with their swingless marching and the first stricken gasps of alarm were hissing from his startled fellow officers. He held back even then until the bloated colonel with the big fat mustache whirled upon him savagely with a purpling face, and then he offered the explanation that made him immortal.

'Look, Colonel,' he announced. 'No hands.'

- Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Thailand

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:46:19 GMT

Superb food at the camp canteen and along the streets
Shaz getting a not-so-subtle declaration of love for a canteen trannie (mayonnaise squeezed in a heart-shape)
6 guys high on beer squeezing on one bed talking cock
Singing cheesy love songs with aaron out of absolute boredom
Playing soccer with the Thais, who tend to grab *stuff* when going for the ball
Thai liasons actually wanting to eat our combat rations
Horny liason who carried porn on his handphone and showed it to random people (without being asked for it)
View from the Hellfire Pass museum, along the Death Railway

The bloody hot weather
Jenny the infamous canteen trannie, with her booming voice, buff upper body, trunk-like legs and hideously short miniskirt
Giant winged ants / beetles flying in the shower / tub and drowning in droves
Not being allowed to flush toilet paper down the toilet bowl - the consequences of doing so were *not* pretty
Almost escalating a soccer brawl with another bunch of singaporeans also from our unit
Watching "Cannibal Holocaust" on the bus (the title is self-explanatory; Thai bus drivers have poor taste in movies)

City of Small Blessings

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:05:19 GMT

There are new buildings, grand renovations, new and plentiful blessings that one should be grateful for. But what used to be, was something more even if they were fewer, more modest. Those were things we worked for, earned, made from little or nothing.

Despite having resided in Singapore since birth, I struggle sometimes to recognise the country I live in. This isn't the Singapore I remember as a child. This must be the tragedy of living in a place too small for the past to have a place, growing too fast for personal histories to be celebrated and remembered. What are the stories of a bygone era in which my grandparents lived? I never found out before they departed, for which I am worse off, for how do we know where we are going if we do not understand where we come from?

What will become of the personal spaces that I think of as home? The iconic Merlion or CBD skyline may come to mind when we think of Singapore, but our own image of home is an individualistic memory - our neighbourhood, a flat lived in as a child, or even an aunt's house we went to after school. The preservation of national heritage sites thus does little to compensate for the sense of personal loss felt with redevelopment, and one should not be surprised at the lack of rootedness amongst Singaporeans.

There will be those who grow richer, and those who enjoy the comforts of air-conditioning, clean and safe streets, and drinkable water from the taps. But for others, these blessings are too meager for the price that they must pay in toil, in freedom and the loss of something that once made them happy. These people will leave this city of small blessings.

- Simon Tay, City of Small Blessings

Edit: I guess this makes me sound intent on emigrating elsewhere, but in truth it reflects a conflict between 2 sentiments - one of reluctance to leave a place where I know so many, and which has profoundly shaped my views and beliefs, and another of dismay at the reality of progress.

As if the 8 years with Bush weren't long enough...

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:34:36 GMT

Wait a second. The start of next year will be delayed by circumstances beyond everyone's control. Time will stand still for one second on New Year's Eve, as we ring in the New Year on that Wednesday night. As a result, you'll have an extra second to celebrate because a "Leap Second" will be added to 2008 to let a lagging Earth catch up to super-accurate clocks.

- 2009 to Arrive Not a Second Too Soon

Potato egg croquette thingy

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:53:05 GMT

Finally got the time to try this out:

The potato wasn't mashed very well so moulding it with the boiled egg into a ball had catastrophic results initially (the yolk broke). Thankfully(!) they stayed in one piece in the pan =p

Tetris

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 12:23:11 GMT

Download

Lol

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:42:13 GMT

McCain gets BarackRoll'd

The Dark Bailout

Environmentalism

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:14:33 GMT

"Turn left ahead." Foot off accelerator pedal, hands shifting to turn a stubborn wheel to the left. Not enough - wheels careered into the next lane as the road bent to the left. Turn more, lurching in a 90 degree turn back on track. Phew. Rover continued to the left, an inexorable gravity pulling it in an inward spiraling orbit. Hands, moments earlier struggling with the steering, now worked frantically in reverse. An upward jerk as the front wheels mounted the kerb, then another as the rear wheels followed suit. The rover stopped turning, homing in on its target. A tree trunk loomed ahead. Foot down to brake; no, shit that was the clutch. The other foot, frozen, hung uselessly. A pedestrian clad in silly white and yellow stood by in slack-jawed silence. Closer, the tree dissolved into awkward blocky shapes of green and brown. Then blackness.

"EH! Sergeant Yang, you love trees so much ah?"

Thank goodness for simulators.

NanoPutians

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 05:18:53 GMT

Described here are the synthetic details en route to an array of 2-nm-tall anthropomorphic molecules in monomeric, dimeric, and polymeric form. These anthropomorphic figures are called, as a class, NanoPutians. Using tools of chemical synthesis, the ultimate in designed miniaturization can be attained while preparing the most widely recognized structures: those that resemble humans.

- Chanteau, S.H. & Tour, J.M., Synthesis of Anthropomorphic Molecules, J. Org. Chem. (2003).

What's with "non un-"?

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:42:42 GMT

The Workers' Party showed at the 2006 polls, for instance, that it was able to put together a not unimpressive line-up of candidates.

- Paul Jacob, Why let losers share podium? (Straits Times, 16 August 2008)

Is it that difficult for the press to acknowledge that the WP fielded an impressive group of candidates at the last elections? Enough with insinuations, now.

Cookie!

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:58:51 GMT

To Da Paolo Gastronomia for making possible 30-minute home-cooked pasta that actually tastes decent! The magic's all in the sauce.

Salmon cream	Seafood marinara

While last year was a year of challenging my limits and stretching boundaries (and I still intend to continue doing so), things have seemingly reversed themselves this year as I find myself being delivered healthy doses of humility, in the realization that outside my strength in academic studies, I am merely average or below average in many other aspects of human capability - physically, in leadership etc. And I've been forced to accept that for some of these things there is absolutely *nothing* I can do! Yet I find this extremely liberating, because it focuses the mind on what can actually be done, and insecurity fades into self-acceptance.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
- Johann Wolfgang van Goethe

Does anyone know the context of this quote?

All hail the regular soldier

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:45:29 GMT

Three times as loyal to country
Three times as much leadership
Three times as disciplined
Three times as professional
Three times as much fighting spirit
Three times as ethical
Three times as caring for soldiers

Three times as much faith and allegiance to the president and the republic
Three times as much support and defence of the constitution
Three times as many lives to give in protecting the honour and independence of our country

And so three times as well-paid as the full-time national serviceman

(No personal offense intended)

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 18:12:00 GMT

Oh, sweet morning
Is your head not right
Did you hear my warning
This is the time of times

And your head feels like your body
You mind is close behind
There’s a teardrop on your shoulder
Says this is the time of times
It’s the time of times again

This is the time of times
It’s the time of times again

Oh, sweet morning
And your head's not right
Did you hear my warning
This is the time of times

And your head feels like your body
Your mind is close behind
There’s a teardrop on your shoulder
Says this is the time of times
It’s the time of times again

The time of times
Yeah this is the time of times

Gas gas gas!

Fri, 30 May 2008 19:43:38 GMT

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

- Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est

I swear this baby gives a kick a gazillion times more powerful than that from any chili* you've ever tasted. Charging into a room filled with tear gas and madly scrambling to put on our gas masks while our eyes teared enough to force them shut, and enough mucus ran down noses to flood our masks. The euphoria felt upon leaving the room, and having the fresh wind clear our faces, can only be understood by those who've been humbled by the numbing spiciness of a hot chili, and then come back for more. Has addiction to tear gas been documented? (Kidding =p)

* - Excepting maybe the Naga Jolokia and Habanero

As an added bonus, synthesis is a short and sweet one-step reaction between 2-chlorobenzaldehyde and malononitrile, catalysed by a weak amine base. <3

I was asked at an interview how I would feel about having my work being appreciated by few, should I choose to pursue a path into research in esoteric fields of science. In my hurry I did not answer as I would have liked, but on hindsight:

My pet field in science is total synthesis. This is the synthesis of complex biological molecules comprising hundreds of atoms, such as vitamin B12, from simple starting materials often comprising just over twenty atoms. I would say that this pursuit is as much a science as it is an art - an opinion espoused by many chemists. For all the obscure reactions that may be employed in the creation of a molecule, and the scientific background that one must possess in order to fully understand, there is an aesthetic quality to the final product that may be appreciated, should one cast away the stereotype of science as a cold and emotionless study.

This comes about in the same way one appreciates an artistic masterpiece without knowing about the artist's exact brush techniques, choice of canvas, or other technicalities. Technical proficiency alone does not make a great piece of art; creative brilliance distinguishes great artists from the rest. In the traditional realm of visual art, great pieces possess significant form (in Clive Bell's philosophy), which comes about from their particular combination of lines and colours. This provokes an aesthetic response in the viewer, and is different from the emotional responses one feels from what is literally represented by the lines and colours.

Similarly, one can find significant form in a total synthesis, except that of course the forms are no longer lines and colours, but reactions and the order in which they are arranged. And it is not enough to learn every reaction known to humankind; creativity and inspiration are requisite to devising a synthetic route that maximises yield, while minimising cost and waste. It this which provokes an aesthetic response. Two syntheses of tropinone illustrate this point:

The first is one devoid of aesthetic quality. Willstätter's synthesis of tropinone was a laborious multi-step monstrosity, introducing each functional group of tropinone one at a time. Unsurprisingly, it gave a yield of only 0.75%.

The second is a legend in total synthesis. Analysing the known structure of tropinone, Robinson logically disconnected its bonds, reducing the molecule into three substructures corresponding to simple starting chemicals. His 1917 masterpiece combined these three chemicals in a single-step, assembling tropinone with one wave of the chemical wand. And elegance often goes hand in hand with efficiency - he obtained a yield of 17%, subsequently improved to over 90%.

It is this which makes me believe that scientific work can be recognised for its non-scientific value by a large body of people.

Gamedev

Sun, 25 May 2008 10:40:14 GMT

I think I'm finally done with this and fiddling with engine code. Time to move on to something else!

Download

And I cannot believe how the overt racism in not posting a vast majority of malays (based on observation) to support and other arms units (combat engineers, artillery, armour, signals etc.) goes unchallenged in the SAF.

I'm alive
And I keep my cool one more time
And you just keep on walking by

Cognitive dissonance

Sun, 04 May 2008 12:32:07 GMT

If one accepts the theories of modern science - that for all our human complexity in cognition and emotion, we are merely medium-sized aggregations of matter, slowly organised by natural evolutionary processes to look and function as we do and interact with other similar lumps of matter.

Then one faces the consequence of not having any pre-defined meaning to one's existence, and is left with the burden of defining one's very own purpose. What a heavy responsibity to shoulder!

How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

- Kierkegaard, Repetition

And then dawns the fact that one is an impossibly minute entity insignificant to the greater scheme of things. Except the fact that maybe there isn't such a scheme after all, because it's left to us to create.

And then what comes next. How do you pick choices in life when what is right and wrong is so subjective, and Kant's moral imperatives just don't seem to cut it?

Sigh. Too much to read and too little time to understand. Should one even bother? I don't know whether to pick the red or blue pill.

That it will never come again, Is what makes life so sweet

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:45:22 GMT

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thougth and love lose their value because they are not everasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the wolrd. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.

- Bertrand Russell

US trip pics

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:04:12 GMT

Went to NYC and Boston over the christmas period - pictures below.

Day 1: New York

We arrive at night, starving, so we walk 2 blocks from our hotel (49th St and Lexington Ave) to Park Avenue to find food. Park Ave has trees down the middle of the road, which is apparently unique in NYC (though certainly not in Singapore).

Found Smith and Wollensky's steak house, which looks famous.

Filet mignon with roquefort (blue) cheese on top. Looks *far* better than it tastes. The first of many lousy-tasting Western meals (ok la, they're not that bad, but just not worth the $$).

Day 2

Lexington Ave; hotel's on the right.

Eggs benedict for breakfast. Didn't look so pretty when puked in a subway passageway at Grand Central, starting off 3 days of indigestion and screwing up sightseeing. (Or maybe it was the blue cheese's fault.)

Subway station at 42nd Street

New York Times building

Day 3

Nice breakfast (it seems to be the only meal that Americans can cook nice food for, at least from the perspective of a Singaporean tongue). Stomach still screwed up so no more pics for the day.

Day 4

Inside Grand Central Terminal, which connects both the subway and regional trains.

Outside Grand Central, with the Chrysler building on the right.

Astor Place, near the NYU campus, and a place we kept going back to because we took the wrong train ~3 times. (It's not like the Singapore MRT, where if you've got the wrong direction you can just get off and take the train on the other side of the platform to go in the opposite direction. For some lines, both tracks on the same platform go in the same direction, so you have to go to another platform for the opposite direction.)

Day 5

Wall Street.

Intersection of Broad Street and Wall Street. (Now I really regret not waiting for a woman to walk by into the picture =p)

NYSE

WTC site.

Museum of Natural History

Roarrr.

Imba dino plate mail. Armor +99.

We cross Central Park to get from the Museum of Natural History to the Metropolitan Museum.

Seems the Americans ~~looted~~ took an obelisk from somewhere in Africa and forgot to put it back.

The three bears posing outside the Metropolitan Museum.

Found one of them snoozing in the bed at night.

Greek black figure pottery. Mum was completely bored so I was wandering around alone.

Mum and Dad couldn't stand the Western food anymore and sought comfort in Chinatown.

Again, the food looked better than it tasted. Definitely authentic Chinese, but nothing spectacular.

Walking along 5th Avenue to see the Christmas decorations.

Saks Fifth Avenue. The window displays are at the side of the building, and the queue to simply look at them stretches around the block.

Giant snowflake suspended over Fifth Avenue.

Day 6

Times Square, with a few Broadway theatres (didn't manage to catch any musicals though).

In a New York minute...

...everything can change.

The Flatiron building, compressed by the need to squeeze in a building on the triangular plot of land at the intersection of Fifth Ave and Broadway, which is not perpendicular to it.

North view from the Empire State Building; the Chrysler building is easily visible. The wait to go up was 2.5 hours long -.- 30 mins spent on the 1st floor queuing to get into the building (security check), 1.5 hours spent on the 2nd floor (buy tickets, wait for elevator, and another security check), and another 30 mins spent on some higher floor waiting for another elevator to the 86th floor observation deck.

South view this time; the Flatiron building can be seen at the intersection of Fifth Ave and Broadway.

Day 7

IMBA breakfast with pro presentation at a place called Lily's.

UN compound.

Security Council chamber, sans bickering diplomats.

General Assembly chamber. Hello, Mauritius.

I went to New York, and all I got was this lousy picture of the Statue of Liberty. The ferry was closed when we went on our last day in New York :(

Day 8: Boston

View of Boston from the hotel window. In the foreground is the Back Bay area, built on reclaimed land. Further out is the Charles River and Cambridge on the other side of the river. The bridge on the left leads immediately into the heart of MIT, and is incongruously named Harvard Bridge. The undergrad dorms are on the left of the bridge overlooking the river, and the campus stretches along both sides of the bridge.

By night. The dome of the Maclaurin building lights up eerily.

Faneuil Hall Marketplace. The Singaporean equivalent would probably be Holland V.

Quincy Market within the marketplace.

Food court inside. A particularly anal busker ducked from sight when I was taking the picture (you can see his stuff on the left), and later came up and insisted that I could only take his photo after tipping. I certainly wasn't gonna feed his ego.

Day 9

MIT's Stata Center.

Undergrad dorms.

<3

Side entrance to Harvard. The sign reads "Enter to grow in wisdom". How Harvard-ish.

Harvard Yard.

John Harvard statue.

Day 10

USS Constitution. Mom was sick of lameass security checks so we decided to skip going in.

The Old State House, where the Declaration of Independence was first read...

But not by this guy.

Fenway Park. Closed when we got there. *shrug*

Nice evening sky.

Indonesia Trip Pics

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:24:53 GMT

(For archival purposes; also on 06S71 class blog; whole album here)

Day 1

We begin by vegetating on wink's sofa in his Jakarta home. What a great start ;)

Day 2

View from the balcony of wink's Jakarta house, situated in a presumably chinese-dominated neighbourhood. Facilities include a manmade river, guards that salute your car when you horn, and riot gates to protect against looters.

An army runs on it's stomach, and an army of 6 slacking holiday-makers is no exception. Noodles with chicken to start the 2nd day.

With reinforcements arriving in the form of yow, we set off by road for the ferry terminal, with Denny's driver at the wheel.

Fairy goh having a personal moment with mitch in the car.

The car ferry that'll take us to Sumatra (aka Denny's island). With only *one* fire in the past 2 years it has an excellent safety record. By indo standards.

View of the Java coast before we set off.

Day 3

Since we've arrived safely in Lampung, Sumatra, food is again necessary for...

Exercising on a stationary treadmill...

And table tennis.

Mundmund being random.

Day 4

Lunch - we grin nervously at the mountain of food. This is for the 4 of us (fairygoh, mitchell, mundmund and me); another mountain looms beside bing, wink, and yow. Just looking at the food, you can feel the fat building up in you. The adults at the other table are busy discussing plans for world domination...

From their current dominion in Sumatra / Denny's island.

Inside the house in Lampung, Sumatra.

Wink driving us around.

The outside of the house.

The garden of Denny.

Bing learning to golf.

We venture to eat at a roadside stall...

And find average bee hoon...

Delicious noodles...

And imba (IMO) fried rice.

Day 5

We drive by some rural scenes on the way back to the ferry terminal.

Back in Jakarta, wink enjoys the company of yow and mitch (dun shy la).

Day 6

A shopping mall in Jakarta with a skating rink on the 3rd floor.

Gary's bespectacled tortoise. It's turned green from being held captive by fairygoh. Speculation is rife about the reason for the missing eye, but all possible explanations involve abuse by fairygoh.

All of us with wink's parents, who've been wonderful hosts throughout our stay.

Us with wink's driver, who skilfully weaved our car through indo's roads, which incidentally have more traffic police than traffic lights.

Clever fairygoh left his phone on during the flight. Thankfully, we're not sleeping with the fishes in the straits of malacca now.

Yow chastising fairygoh for his actions. Actually he had blocked eustachian tubes and was relieving the pain in his ears by playing whack-the-gary.

Good to be home.

La gastronomie

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 19:08:21 GMT

Made breakfast for my dad and me (mom's overseas) on Saturday. As usual, he woke up earlier than me, so it was breakfast at the cluttered dining table, rather than the much nicer breakfast in bed. After an hour in the kitchen...

and...

...with the aid of this book for cooking noobs like myself.

The scrambled eggs tasted authentic, at least. I'd never realised how simple it was to make scrambled eggs till I tried: beat 2 eggs in a bowl, pour into a pan with melted butter, cook till only slightly runny, then remove from heat and let it finish cooking while fluffing with a fork. Cholesterol-averse dad abstained from the eggs, of course.

The French toast had too much of a buttery taste, which made it slightly distasteful by the time I got to eating the last slice. While frying, the bread kept soaking up the melted butter so I had to add more for each slice, hence the butter-spamming. (I assume you're not supposed to fry French toast in a dry pan.) Also, some of the egg white refused to be beaten together in the egg mixture, which explains the white patches of cooked egg white on the topmost slice of bread haha. And lastly, the only frying pan available was 4 inches in diameter and couldn't fit the whole slice of bread, so I ended up cooking half a slice of bread at a time lol. *needs bigger pan*

Unfortunately my cuilinary adventures probably end here, because enlistment looms in January. I just received the notification letter last week; so much for giving pre-enlistees 2 months notice.

Anyway, leaving for Indonesia in 5 hours. Paiseh, I'll be missing the ispark chalet again =p To those who're going, enjoy!

At least in my case, I've come to the conclusion that there's no point to emo posts filled with long and vague ramblings more incomprehensible than an RJC GP passage. For me, it suffices to say that I've walled myself up over the years, and walls sometimes project an aloof image to mask the fear that grips the soul within - this is my regret.

Alright, flu medicine's kicked in so I'll surrender to the drowsiness now. Actually it kicked in 4 hours ago so everything above was written in a near-comatose state and probably doesn't sound usual.

Where are you now?
I'm trying to get by
With never ever knowing at all

Anyone up for donating blood?

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:59:36 GMT

Heard from a classmate (Sylvia) that a baby suffering from leukemia needs blood from B- or O donors urgently. Anyone feeling charitable? :) Just went myself yesterday (I'm A+) and it hurt less than expected. I looked away and the friendly nurse was there to distract from the needle-poking by talking about her kids and niece in HC and blah blah blah. Surprised to learn that only ~3% of the eligible population donates - how do the hospitals ever get by? Although it wasn't very crowded so I couldn't get a representative estimate of the donors, it seemed that most of them were the heartlander-auntie/uncle type. Working professionals probably go during the weekends I guess.
Anyway less crap: the blood bank's located next to SGH, opposite Outram Park MRT. Walking towards SGH from the MRT, the big "BloodBack@HSA" sign is unmissable.

And why the heck does Windows Aero have higher graphics requirements than games like GTA:SA, WC3 or HL2? PS 2.0 and 128 MB of video RAM just for the sake of a few translucency effects?

wtf it's 2.34 am

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 19:06:25 GMT

Figured an anecdote from Feynman on bio might be appropriate 5.5 hours before bio paper 3.

I had always had some interest in biology, and the [biology] guys talked about very interesting things. Some of them invited to come to a course they were going to have in cell physiology.

...

The next paper elected for me [to present] was by Adrian and Bronk. They demonstrated that nerve impulses were sharp, single-pulse phenomena. They had done experiments with cats in which they had measured voltages on nerves.
I began to read the paper. It kept talking about extensors and flexors, the gastrocnemius muscle, and so on. This and that muscle were named, but I hadn't the foggiest idea of where they were located in relation to the nerves tor to the cat. So I went to the librarian in the biology section and asked her if she could find me a map of the cat.
"A map of the cat, sir?" she asked, horrified. "You mean a zoological chart!" From then on there were rumors about some dumb biology graduate student who was looking for a "map of the cat."

When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles.
The other students in the class interrupt me: "We know all that!"
"Oh," I say, "you do? Then no wonder I can catch up with you so fast after you've had four years of biology." They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.

- Richard Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

Slacky physics students have probably been gaming the whole weekend away while the rest of us were cramming for bio :( blym, cow, peng and weilong crashed last fri after chem mcq and ended up watching a movie (too lame to name) and playing worms / swat 4 lol. Next time gimme more warning so I can exercise my internet connection and dvd burner to get better movies for watching on a tv instead of a lousy computer monitor =p And install wc3.

So I did some slacking of my own too =p Rediscovered my itch for game programming while cramming error- and typo-filled econs notes (inspiration comes from weird places) and coded a rudimentary rubik's cube game last thurs. Took 12 hours, but I started from my old game engine so it wasn't created from scratch. Coming up with a control scheme that's intuitive and yet allows for speedy manipulation of the cube is hard. The mouse is out if you want to achieve any sort of speed. So with my clunky keyboard control scheme I ended up taking 30 mins to solve the cube on the computer. Depending on how much time I have before NS enlistment (haven't gotten the date yet wth) I might be able to work on some other stuff.

Never thought I'd like electronic music but Discotech is so addictive!
Attack, we keep it on the dance floor.
Discotech, meet me at the back door...

<3

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:49:33 GMT

Kaleidoscope - The Prototypes

...
I picture the love from the pieces of you
But you turn it around for a different view cause
Love's like a kaleidoscope
In a changing world, in a changing world
Love hangs by a fragile hope
In a changing world, in a changing world
...

Good luck to everyone then.