Myopic

On the last day of 2009, I made a sudden discovery. It's not really sudden per se; it is just that the realisation happened really suddenly. In an instance, I suddenly realised that the as the world grows richer, the people tend to look at the shorter term gains. Failing to consider or even choose to ignore the longer term vested interest. It is happening on all level and it's scary. One fine day, "The Age of Stupid" may be a real life event instead of a film. Financial crisis will occur again and again. And looking at history, you will know that history always repeats itself. If human race can't stop looking only at the short term goals, benefits, profits.... Fast pace of life, quick results (look at the number of EPL managers sacked) and the ever competitive world just make things worse. With that being said, I can offer no solutions at all. Maybe someone out there has one and has the will, power and motivation to materialise it. I hope it will be soon.

Gaps

Diversity manifests itself in so many ways that it always hit you before you realised it. Big distinct differences are obvious -- hobbies, interests, preferences, the explicit stuffs. Smaller ones result in strangely small yet powerful differences. Some people see minor tasks like life threatening jobs that should be avoided at all cost, since they stand to lose so much like the unthinkable 15 min of their time. Some people choose to think that they are older, wiser, more mature, pick up a stray responsibility and shove it to someone who they "think" should be responsible instead. Topping it up with different working styles, the "simply bo chap", the "everything I da with shitty results", the "why am I here so i am going to piss everyone off", the "lets have some fun while working".... you'll get a really weird bunch of people.

The non confrontational nature of Singaporeans doesn't really help. While supposedly mature young adults try to diffuse the invisible tension building up in the air via painfully subtle ways, I painfully watch by the side. Too many times I have tried to surface the problems and talk about it like adults and too many times they have tried to avoid and laugh obviously serious matters off as jokes to be brushed aside. Since I can't beat them, join them. Standing at the sideline watching the differences grow, laughing at matters I find disgustingly serious, are tiring habits I can't keep up with.

Aunty syndrome

I made 2 new discoveries today:

Discovery one: all cleaning aunties love to chat. They will start going on and on the moment they find a willing soul to exchange a few words. They will immediately go back to work when someone else approaches.

Discovery two: the best way to insinuate someone is looking much more mature than they do. First, say "you look really young!". Second, say "let me guess, you are (real age + 5)". Scenario to apply: act cute girls (acg) age 25 acting cute again, so you can go, "woah, you look really young. Any secrets to share? You sure look like you only 30!" Disclaimer: Don't attempt it on females. They are known to react violently to such taunts.

Sengkang New Park

It has been almost 10 years since I shift to this corner of SG. From the ulu town which no taxi drivers know and only 2 bus services, it has grow to a bustling new town 20 min away from town via MRT and numerous bus connection. Now, more amenities are built, hockey stadium, swimming pools, and a new riverside park. Hope it will continue become more vibrant.

The Day I Almost Cried

People cry for many reasons. Although guys are not supposed to cry while females have all the rights in the world to do so, this social norm seem to get more blurred as the society progresses. Guys who cry nowadays are sensitive, understanding and everything nice while those who did in the the past are emotional, weak and everything bad. Today, the tears in my tear glands almost overflowed but that was the furthest it went. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't especially sad, angry or happy; I went to see a sensei regarding my nagging ankle problems. Disclaimer first, I didn't not cry because my auspicious 49 days excuse from running ended; I almost cried because of the pain, something I thought I could handle. I dare say it was one of my most painful experience ever. The thought of carrying out an Adebayor celebration did come across my mind but i simply can't run nor even walk half the pitch. No pain no gain. I do feel better after the earthshaking pain inflicting session. Hopefully, I will get to jog pain free soon.

Careless bet

Made a wrong bet and I only realised after the match! Damn. It's double whammy when my predicted results actually come true. Damn damn.....

Finally got my dslr. Next is to buy a proper lens and shoot.

Weekend soccer frenzy

Since I was bored at home I decided to dig into the weekend soccer matches, with every intend to bet on them. Betting increase the spectator adrenaline rush if you watch the game. Anyway, I decided to start off searching the net, the place that has it all. To my surprise, tips actually cost money. There are actually punters charging people for tips. If they are so good they might as well be a full time soccer gambler. After a little more intense searching, I found free tips -- from an arsenal fan website (who else). The tips actually do serve it's purpose. After reading them, I either agree with them or disagree with them, which gave me a direction to bet on. With 3 of my 5 matches down, I have already break even, hopefully my luck will serve me till the end of the last match. I know I am leaning here, more than just luck is required for Aston Villa to beat Liverpool.

Poker and MJ

Long weekends are great. Everyone loves them and it always seems that so much can be accomplished in a three days weekend. Of course other than typing a disgustingly boring report, I had some fun pokering and MJing. Life would suck real bad without them. Life would less bad if I hadn't lose $30 in 14 hours of gambling....

Diversity at work

I know everyone comes from very diverse background, culturally, economically and academically. My HR project was on diversity and the benefits of embracing it in wide open arms. Maybe I was too engrossed in promoting diversity at workplace, I myself totally believed in it. The joy of working in an environment where diversity thrives is something that I once looked forward to. With different inputs, ideas and perspectives, complimenting each other, great things are just waiting to be achieved. One small flaw in this hypothetical situation is the assumption that everyone one will contribute constructively. There just seem to be a special breed of people who just know how to make non constructive protests to stop work from being done, including endless excuses to not work, creating unnecessarily delays and making life difficult for everyone, in short kpkb. Sometimes I really wish these people will just shut up instead of opening their mouth. If I have the chance, I would make some minor amendments on my HR project and emphasize more on the word "constructive". This led me to another question, how did kpkb-ers get recruited in the first place.

Murphy's Law

Even when works of many dedicated, hardworking and really smart statisticians say that there's a really minute chance of an event happening, that event almost always happen. Or so it seems. Well, the famous murphy's law has been busted by Mythbusters, haven't it? So what makes murphy's law so endearing to most people? I see it this way:

When everything goes according to stats, you/me/everyone will most likely treat it as a normal occurrence and pay a normal amount of attention on it. After a few days, weeks, months... that occurrence will simply be eased from our memories to clear up spaces for more normal occurrences. What people usually remember, for a really long time are the anomalies. i.e. events when murphy's law strike. These are usually traumatic events like going all in with ACE pair only to be beaten by someone with 8 3 offsuit without even seeing the flop. These get ingrained in the memories and being really interesting stories, are retold, reiterated and refined many times over. After a few cycles, they become long lasting memories together with other ML events. If you live long enough, engaged in a little socialising, you should have gathered enough ML stories to share and when such stories are traded, everyone gets the illusion that ML events are occurring everywhere. When in actual fact, life is still very well predicted by simple and boring statistics.

The most superstitious people are gamblers. The very gist of gambling is the excitement of beating the odds. Luck is an over-rated factor here. If anyone can quantify luck, please contact me, I would love to meet you. So when weird events happen at a gambling table, superstitious ideas and really weird suggestions appear to be the most obvious thing to do. Some times, high stakes are even more powerful than intoxicants like alcohol. Don't you just love gambling.

Commencement

Finally a graduate! Although I don't mind a few more years of lectures and tutorials, they have to be put on hold for a while, at least. Who am I kidding right? Like I really love to attend lessons. What I actually miss is the freedom that allowed endless mahjong sessions, spontaneous suppers, drinking and talking cock sessions.

Rantings

This few weeks easily qualify as the busiest period of my entire 4 years in NUS -- which isn't what I envision my year 4 life to be. I don't know why but I am actually typing this despite the need to hand up my second draft in 6 days time, Materials homework in 5 days, and term paper in 2. Something, maybe my inner devil, is always telling me official works can wait.

Imbal photoshopping

Sheares Hall Dinner & Dance 2009 - Photoshop Timelapse Video 1 from Ervine Lin on Vimeo.


Sheares Hall Dinner & Dance 2009 - Photoshop Timelapse Video 2 from Ervine Lin on Vimeo.

Floorball

Being the last year that I get to play IHG, naturally I wanted it to be a good one. Well, it was almost good. Last year I flew off after the third match. In the first three matches, I was literally flying everywhere in the court. I picked up floorball thinking that it is a technically inclined sport that don't not have much body contact, I was so totally wrong. The rude realisation happened during IHG last year. This year I went in mentally prepared. However, being IHG, where hall pride is at stake, people tend to get carried off more easily. Obvious fouls and tackles were still committed despite repeated warnings, manhandling seemed to be the norm. So I managed to stayed on the ground for the first 4 matches and started flying only on the fifth when it seemed like I was in a match with one team trying to play floorball, the other trying to play wrestling.

With that being said, I think the most difficult role on the court in the fifth match (against raffles hall) was definitely being the referees. Numerous times, they must had been wondering if they need to go on their knees, slap the floor and count to ten. They better be paid quite a lot to go through such a traumatic experience. I admire the RH players for putting their heart and soul into the game, squeezed a win against KR with the wrestling tactics. Played really hard against all KE, EH and TH which they gathered so many fouls and send off that would have qualify them for the "smelliest" team ever in modern history. To name an example, the RH keeper hug the opponent players to prevent him for scoring (maybe the opponent was too cute for him to control his inner desire). Maybe it's not players fault, most of them seem really convinced that they did nothing wrong and even tried arguing with the referee; someone must had taught them this and it's that someone's fault. I really don't understand how can a team be happy when they know they don't deserve the result, getting a 4th placing is really unfair to the other two halls which played much better and fairer.

Being IHG and being SH, there will be supporters during games. That's something Sh do best and the convening comm should seriously give an award hall with the best supporters. Then we can definitely win something every year. Then comes the egoistic part of players. The need to impress suddenly set in when we are up against a technically less gifted team, everyone wanted to play and maybe show off too. Repeated failed solo dribbles and refusal to substitute yourself when you know you are useless on court aside, complacency creep in. From one goal up to a draw. Something seemingly impossible happened and everyone panicked. People get frustrated, dejected, demoralised, and things never really pick up from then on. That was quite a sad ending to an otherwise wonderful IHG outing.

Race of Life

When we were young

Age must be catching up with me. Suddenly, I feel really old, even though I am not even a quarter of century old. It must be the younger ones, filling the atmosphere with so much energy. Either that or it's all the reminiscences during all the drinking sessions, meetups or even random spontaneous talk cock sessions. Maybe it is the year of Bull again. 2 cycles. Many years ago, 1 cycle seem eternity. Now it just comes and goes. Or maybe, my friends are getting married; it just shows we are moving on to the next stage in life.

Then, the stupid thoughts I held when I was young came flowing back to me. There was this project in primary school where we had to research on Singapore history and make a scrape book (yes, that was in primary school). I went to the library, found a nicely illustrated book for just that, describing Singapore history. Thinking that I can't do a better job than the author (I was 10 years old then), I zapped part of the book, binded them and hand up to the teacher, thinking that I am so gonna do well since after looking glancing through my classmates' works. Then the mother of all horror struck me, my teacher told me that my work was not up the standard.... slip short.... badly done..... I went like, how an it be, mine definitely has more "stuff" than all the others. The concept of plagiarism wasn't really made clear to me. How dumb I was. Maybe I was just plain lazy. All I need to do then was rewrite everything in my ugly handwriting, editing is totally unnecessary, rearrange some of the pictures, add a cover page... then I would have done a magnificent job (by my teacher's standard). The power of packaging.

Rise of the machines

Interesting find.