Wee... New Skin

This is my first post this year. Hahaha. And to celebrate this "special" occasion I had a new skin for my blog. I did this skin myself. Yes, I really did this blog skin myself. I did not steal it from nowhere. I made this skin using pictures from a hentai game: Cafe Little Wish. You can try this link if you don't believe me. Rest assured that there is no naked, or anything near, pictures in my blog. My friend sent me a wallpaper one fine day, and months after it I transform that into the picture you see above. Yes I know my photoshop and HTML skills sux, but that is the best I can managed for now. Hey don't complain. I learn it myself without help from any manual. And I WILL KILL WHOEVER WHO THINK THIS BLOG BELONG TO A GAL. You may need to change your mind set if you still think that only girls like "anime" and pink colour. =P.

I also understand that my new blog skin may be very ugly compared to most of the other blogs. Yes, I can always hunt for a much nicer layout in blogskins.com, but my experience with skins from blogskins.com is not always a good one. Most of my friend get their new blog layout from that site, and a few ended up with lots of pop-ups and at times, even viruses. By doing everything on my own I can at least make sure that nothing is screw up. One of the main reason why my blogs loads so slowly (for the last post) is that I have too much pictures. Thus, I have decided to create an alternative blog for my anime screen shots. From now on you won't be able to find recent screen shots from this blog anymore. If you missed my blog's old skin, you can find it at that blog too. I will be adding a jukebox to my blog in the near future, so look forward to it.

 

Marching order sent after just four days of work

Today is one of the worst day in my life. After just four weekdays of work (16 - 21 march) my supervisor told me (and 2 others): Today will be the last day of your contract here in this warehouse. You don't need to come again tomorrow. Thank you for your help for the past four days. It is not that I expect it to happen, but it just came far too soon. A little background situation before I go on: after the Astro Outreach (which killed one week of my holiday) I decided to get a job to kill the remaining 6 weeks of my holiday and get some income (I have no idea where to spent that extra pocket money at the moment except for leaving it in bank to gain interest) at the same time. I happen to find this factory work which does packaging. I apply for it, and the agent called me the same night. He assign me to warehouse (in Tampines) of the same company instead.

This warehouse is at least four times bigger than the previous workplace one. The goods there were not as small as a diode though. Most of it are Cooler Master heat sinks packed in 600 per pallet, or 500 McAfee CD-roms for business servers in the pallet of the same size. There are almost the small amount of Polycom and Toshiba brochures (I think), and items locked inside a "bird cage" which they consider as very expensive, like McAfee Intrushield 4010. 600 heat sinks or 500 CD-roms are bulky, so they are stacked on racks 3 level high. Only specialized forklift can put these goods high up on the racks, or take them down during picking.

I am not the only new worker there on that day. There are 5 other people who came together with me for the first time, and all of us don't know how to use the forklift and other equipments, except for hand jack. That render us (the new workers) useless when it comes to picking items high up on the racks, or placing the new goods on the racks. Furthermore, the goods going in and out and not much. The usual truck-trailer only make 2 or 3 trips per day to collect not a lot of goods to factories, and new goods only arrived on fridays (as far as I know). That means that we have almost nothing to do, and we ended up walking around talking nonsense.

Look, no company will employ someone to walk around doing nothing, and they should have him transfer off to other departments. 2 were transferred off to another department at Ubi within the next hour after we first arrived. For us, however, we were told to inform our agent about it, and hope the agent will place us in another job (four working days later). If I am being posted to another job in the same company, I think there is a problem with Moduslink HR on temporary workers. My ex-workplace can transfer me to anywhere shorthanded for a few days attachment, but I need to go through my agent here. I think it's funny for a logistic company to have this problem.

 

Unreasonable school rules?

A girl from some school (not mentioned in newspaper) was caught wearing colour undergarments. Yes that whatever school it is had a school rule which states that students can only wear white undergarments. The school ordered her to take out her underwear and have it confiscated. That means for the rest of the day she have to walk around uncovered. How I wish I was in that school on that particular day. XD. Ask yourself (everyone, including guys), do you wear white undergarments everyday to school or campus? Majority will say no, and the main reason is not because to follow the trend or fashion; It is a little too hard to find white undergarments today (just try finding a white undergarment in shops today).

The hair is also another issue with a lot find it unreasonable. For someone like me who don't bother to keep long hair or have it dyed, I have no problems with the school rules. It is brought up in the old Peicai Care Forum that schools should allow students to leave long hair since it doesn't affect studies. A member in another forum state that by allowing students to dye their hair, it will be easier to identify which students have relations with gangsters outside school (I cannot agree with him after I come to polytechnic). Why is something which hardly affects studies had to be banned? To keep a good image of the school? In my opinion the only way to keep a good image of a school is to nurture students comparable with those from top institutions.

 

NYP porn video

So the story goes: Another girl from NYP lost her phone in campus, and inside that phone contains sex videos of her boyfriend and her. She was so unlucky that her phone was pick up by her "enemy", and those home-made sex video are being uploaded online (youtube or related sites). The same video also spreads via handphone. For one month that video spread like wildfire in Singapore, and it is like "one of the top videos for download". Newspaper even reported that the video is being sold in Malaysia and US. I personally don't know anything about it until the press reported it, and the press are always slow in reporting these kind of gossip.

I did managed to get the video from my friend a few days later. To make things clear before I continue: I NO LONGER HAVE THE FUCKING FILE WITH ME NOW. I deleted it off my computer and overwrite that filename 30 times. To be honest, I agree with my friends: That video is boring. One can always find much better quality porn online with just a few mouse click. Everyone makes a big fuss about it just because it is "Made in Singapore", probably because locals (including me) did not get to see too much local porn. XD. Maybe Singapore should just build up its porn industry a little and have a QC to make sure all "Made in Singapore" porn are not boring.

 

Astronomy club

I don't think I have introduce my Co-Cirriculm Activity in the last post. I do have a CCA in polytechnic. On the third week as a new student in Ngee Ann Polytechnic, one of my classmate said that there are a lot of pretty ladies inside astronomy club, and thus I was "being tricked" to join this club, along with 2 other classmates. Well there were really a lot of pretty ones at first, but most quitted after just half a year.

NP astronomy club have 4 Celestron C8 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes (all 16 years of age, 1 spoilt), 1 Celestron StarHopper (8 inch or 10 inch) Dobsonian (too bulky so it is normally left alone), 1 Takahashi (I don't know what model it is. Japanese like to make their unique mount for their telescopes. Since the mount for Takahashi is spoilt, the telescope also cannot be used.), and 1 Megrez 80 (Very small, portable and powerful, suitable for upskirt XD) by William-Optics. Compared against other 4 Polytechnics, we have the most number of telescopes. That's one plus point about our club. The other (to me) will be that Astronomy club is where I relax after school on friday, and where I get a third of my anime from now. I normally came early for the meetings every friday, and every friday a small group of us who came early will have a match or share anime before the actual thing starts around 1830.

I cannot think of any more good points at the moment, but I can list out a lot of places which needs improvement. The first will be the places in campus which can be used to view the night sky. Put it this way: in Singapore, the most you can see is what is directly above you, even if there is a clear sky. Everything from horizon to 50 degrees up will most likely be covered by city lights. That is one major drawback for sky watching anywhere in Singapore. The remaining minus points are not related to astronomy.

The first astronomy club camp i attend (Astronomical Network for institute of Education) is one of the worst camp I had. ANE camp is a camp cater for secondary school students to let them learn more about astronomy (lol duh). I am a logistic during the camp, and my job is to teach the participants about astronomy (which I almost did not help out at all), and show them how to roughly use a telescope. A few reason why I think it is a total flop:
- On the first night, the sky is so bad and our telescopes are so weak and thus we can only see the great orion nebula and Pleiades.
- There is too little time for too many events.
- The lunch and dinner for the second day are almost the same.
- There is one whole afternoon to play games but only 2 hours in the morning for lectures.
- The games are largely unrelated to astronomy.
- It is like "free for all" at night. There's no events scheduled for 1900 to midnight, events are only after midnight.
- The whole of morning on the third day was spend playing "make-up" or something.
- People say I sleep too much, which I never realized.
- To me, that camp is a fun camp. I was told in a debrief later on that it is a learning camp.

I feel that a lot of things are not right somewhere and I hope it can be corrected by the next camp:
- We probably have to find places which C8 can at least see something. It is no fun looking at only Pleiades and Orion Nebula (sometimes beehive and a few others) through all 5 telescopes. Maybe we have to blame the city lights for it.
- I hope to eat something else rather than chicken wing in the afternoon and again at night. Now I wonder where all the money the participants pay goes to.
- Scrap some events (to make space for emergency situations) or make the camp longer. The night walk on the first night is supposed to begin right after the night observation at 1am. It took them whole 2 hours to prepare, and the night walk started at 3am instead. It ended at 6am with me and my friends as the last batch. What's the fun left if you had night walk at 6am? Right after lecture (which started at 11am) on the second day (lunch time is in-between), they scheduled 3 hours of game time (2pm to 5pm) before shower and dinner. Due to an accident, and screw-ups in some stations, the games ended after 8pm instead. They have to cancel another lecture and disco night, which is supposed to be right after dinner at 7pm. If there is a little time allowance for situations like this, there won't be a need to delay or put off any events.
- If the main purpose of the camp is to have fun, I have no complains over that. BUT if the objective is that secondary school students have to learn something about astronomy, I will suggest scraping those useless games. I cannot find connections between astronomy and games like "meteor shower", "butterhill". Who says it is impossible to create a fun game related to astronomy? You just did not put on your thinking hat!
- I do not think it is a wise idea to conduct a lecturer 4 times. Both the audience and the lecturer will get tired over it. Book a single big lecture theater and let logistic do their presentation all in one shot.
- I still don't know why people say I sleep too much when they never wake me up in the middle of the night.
- INSTILL DISCLIPINE. We must first have ourselves disciplined before we even move on. If guy A is not willing to do his job and others have to cover for him, what is that guy A there for in the first place? We are actually not short of people to help out in the camp, we are short of people who are willing to help out at any time. If everyone plays their part, a lot of things can be accomplish at a shorter time.
I will think of more to add. hahaha.

To me, the ANE camp brought good and bad things to our batch. ANE had served an effective ice-breaker for our batch, for me especially. Before the camp, except for my classmates and his close friends, I know no one else of my batch in astronomy club. Right after ANE, I get to know a lot more people. ANE also had our batch split into 3 distinct group: the Logistic, the Group Leaders, and the neutrals. We signed up for our roles (logistics, group leaders, or helpers) before the ANE camp, and the GL ended up as the most popular choice among my batch. During the camp, these 3 groups "only cared about themselves". There is little interaction with each other (not even attempts to interact), even though everyone stayed in the same room. From that point on, we logistics started to do our own things and discussions first in the clubhouse, while the GL clique gather at canteen before they make their way up for the usual meeting every friday. A group of helpers, who is not happy with what happened for ANE, disappeared from astronomy club completely.

On the surface, we astronomy club looked pretty much united, but deep down, misunderstandings grew day by day. The upcoming Astronomy Fiesta camp had most major appointments taken by the GLs, and they began to make their own decisions within their own clique. From what I heard, they will be using the same programs and timetable used in ANE. I am pretty sure that there are a few others, not just me, who thinks that the timetable and some programs needs to be changed. The other problem will be the shortage of GL for AF, since most of the supposed-to-be-GL already had appointments for the camp. The first place they look for people to fill up the shortage is from the logistics side. There are only 7 logistics out of around 40 members, why did you want to grab people from logistics first? Logistics does play a big part during the camp, and we are barely coping with our little manpower. Why can't you just get those people who went missing after ANE? I seriously do not understand what they are thinking.

 

Normal-stream students vs Special-stream students

The general elections in Singapore is round the corner, and I can predict the outcome of the election: PAP (the dominating party) will win almost all the seats in the parliament. Worse come to worse PAP will not lose more than 5 seats. I will use a simple analogy to explain what I mean. I copied this analogy off Rockson's blog and modify it a little to suit the current situation. Sometime I think the Opposition party is like the lousy school those normal-stream student and the PAP is like the RI those special-stream student.

Is there any way for Normal-stream students to win those in Special-stream? My conclusion will be: No Way! Lets compare them in studies. If Normal-stream students can score 60 marks for the paper Special-stream students can score 100 marks. If Normal-stream students can score 100 marks for the paper Special-stream students can show you that they can get 110 marks for their paper. With all the best resources (best teachers, best equipments, ...) given to the Special-stream students, how can they lose?

Ok, lets compare in sports instead. Normal-stream students sent one sports champion to contest during sports day, while the Special-stream sent 5 representatives instead. It is announce later over the speakers: Sorry, this event only can 5-man team then you can join one. Your Normal-stream one-man show must go and fuck spider. Since no other Normal-stream students from other schools can produce a 5-man team, Special-stream students from RI get walkover... automatic win!

Never mind, there is always a sports day next time. For the next sports day, Normal-stream students sent a 5-man team (since all the one-man champions are sent for one-man events). The special-stream will sent... yes, also a 5-man team, but with 2 ace in it. A normal team against another team with 2 pros, excluding teamwork, you can see for yourself who will win.

Before you say that it is Normal-stream school problem that they cannot sent a group capable of winning, ask yourself: if you are good in studies (sometimes sports) will you choose to enter Special-stream school or Normal-stream school? Even if you want to go Normal-stream school, the Special-stream school will grab you in. How can Normal-stream school get people to beat you Special-stream school students? Wait, next time all the MP's in parliament will be taken by Special-stream school students anyway, Normal-stream students now lose also never mind.

There are other ways PAP used to secure their votes.
- GRC or multiple-member constituency, contested by a team of three to six candidates, at least one of whom must be a Malay, Indian or a person belonging to other minority communities. Implemented since the early days of Singapore independence, it also ensured that the "normally low in members" oppositions cannot have high chance of winning.
- Redrawing election boundaries. Everyone knows that the elections department has nothing to do with PAP, but the redrawn boundaries are always in favor of PAP.
- When people start getting a lot of money from country financial budget, it means either singapore economy is so horrible that government need to help out, or an election is round the corner. It is pretty obvious this time round what the financial budget is for.
- Vote PAP = your flat will get to upgrade (at a small cost). Don't vote PAP = your flat will not be upgraded. The same old method used to get voters in opposition wards to vote for them.
- Opening of facilities (Buangkok MRT station) which they considered unable to make much profit in the past. They did not open Buangkok MRT station initially because that area is not fully develop. Now, in the same area which has not develop for the past few years, they open the MRT station. SBS claimed the opening of MRT station had nothing to do with politics, but a lot think otherwise.

It is not that I hate PAP a lot; PAP had hold on to power since independence and had done a good job in changing Singapore into what we have today. Countries which keep having their government changed will not be able to progress much. The problem lies in that PAP had almost all the seats in the parliament. There is a need for more oppositions in the parliament to look at things and voice out problems seen from a different point of view.

 

I start writing this post on 21st March 2006. hahaha.