Apologies

To all who know me, this is a bad time to start depending heavily on me. I need some space to handle some problems at home. I've actually skipped a couple of days of school already and yet it is never enough. Life sucks yah? Punches your gut at all the wrong moments. I feel so damn burnt out too. Will I last to the end of the semester? Or just fizzle out here and now. I don't know... don't want to think too much about it either.

Catch me sometime next year I suppose. When my troubles are over. Right now, got the english assignment to finish. Alauz Out!


Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
今日の馬鹿，明日の天才

Stroking (Stroke King) Monday 22 Oct 2007

And the day can't get any worse, I was thinking after a horrendeous start to the day. I woke up at around 7am today, got on bus 67 and got off at Bukit Timah Plaza's bus stop to change to 61, 184 or 75 to get to school. I was waiting at Bukit Timah's bus stop from around 7.45am but to my horror, every single bus was skipping the stop because they were too full or simply can't fit my bulk with only 1 or 2 people managing to board the buses that actually stopped by. I waited in frustration and finally gave up waiting for anymore buses around 8.45am. By then I had already missed 10 buses that would have gotten me to school. Despite the fact that it was raining slightly, I ended up walking to school in the rain. I got to my 8.30 am lesson at 9.05 am, apologized and sat down with my shirt soaked in rain and sweat.

The day was short, I got a crappy mid-term grade of 32/40 for my Psychology 101. I know, I know most people wouldn't think that was a bad grade; until you realized that I'm still trying for my straight As then that is completely unacceptable. My head pounded heavily as I got back home. I thought that I might get some rest but it so happens my dad decided that he needs to see a doctor about his condition that started about 2 months ago. I went down to the polyclinic because they said that they assigned an indian doctor and my father only speaks chinese or malay. So I went down and waited from 4pm to 6pm to become my dad's translator. But so happens that the indian doctor had too many patients and my father was transferred to a chinese speaking one.

My dad went in and explained his symptoms and the doctor was suddenly alarmed and told us to report down at NUH's Accident and Emergency because he suspects my father has a minor stroke. We got home, got my dad's medication to show the doctors at NUH and hurried down. The waiting period is a Killer. We got him registered around 6.45pm, only managed to get most of the things settled around 11.15pm. Got home at a god forsaken hour of nearly 12 midnight. I'm so tired, with so much rage, along with my mind playing tricks on me again with them stupid visions. My fever has been with me since last Monday it doesn't seem to want to go away, those dreams come while I have it. They are coming more often now, in high vivid detail. Damn hallucinations I suppose, never want to trust them. Enough, I shall wrap up this nightmarish day Alauz Out!

FUCK
Finishing, but not yet.
Understanding, but not completely.
Contesting, but never fair.
Kindness, but with condition.

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
今日の馬鹿，明日の天才

Background

I suppose I've been busy, with school work and leg work to check out my family's finances without my family knowing what I'm trying to do. I've been trying to suss out a feel of my father's current financial situation as well as understand my family's seemingly troubling situation.

Weirdness abounds because the installment on the family car is two months due while my father says that it will be paid. My mother says that it's because my father's business in Indonesia is suffering, I suppose there's some merit in that statement. With a culmulating credit card debt, my mother ain't looking like a bright beacon of financial savvy to me. My father once had the power to eliminate that credit card debt and cancel the card. But despite my advice, he said that it should be a deterrent to my mother to prevent her from applying more credit cards in his name.

Well that was when his business was booming and he had spare cash lying around. Now when times became leaner, he probably realized that he should have gotten rid of that debt while it was only a measly 8k, now its already grown to 13k over the last 2 years. It was obvious to me that something was going wrong when I started my course here at University of Buffalo back in May this year. So I decided to take a part time job to help my own personal expenses. But little did I know that he would have to borrow from his business partner to pay for this semester's fees. Geez, when it rains it pours. Now I have to think about how am I going to pay for next semester's fees without a bank loan because the stupid banks rejected my applications.

Why didn't I apply for the loans when I started school? Actually I did, and they were rejected then as well. Why? Cause my dad's already 58 this year, the banks wouldn't allow anyone past the age of 62 after the loan tenor has ended, thus putting my father out of the picture. While my mom doesn't work a permanent job as well as having that credit card debt, puts my mom out of the picture as well. My parents seem to think that the banks in Singapore cannot check their credit problems and would allow the loan, but they were proven wrong not by my words but by the rejections that I received at every application. No, we're not bankrupt, just not on good credit right now.

Well, good news is that we won't be bankrupt because the house I'm living in now is fully paid and worth more than 10 times the amount of our current combined debt. But if we sell it, where would we live? Property prices are still hot right now, making it a bad time for us to buy a cheaper location to stay. Sigh, financial debt is this country's way of trying to put anyone else but the elite into slavery. With crazy property and car prices, the only way for the average Singaporean is to "take a loan" aka sell your soul to government slavery in order to provide a roof over their families heads and food in their stomachs. If you cannot instill "loyalty" through passion for nation building, fucking enslave the population using loans that drain their citizens dry created by banks that are APPROVED by the government. So don't tell me the government isn't in on this scheme.

HDB was created to provide affordable housing to all those who cannot afford it, my freaking foot, leaving the property bubble of the private condos and landed property aside, who said that HDB could rise their values to "match" these inflated prices of the completely UNAFFORDABLE houses to the average Singaporean? Only 10 years ago, property price of my place was only 100k. Now it's more than 300k to buy a new flat of a smaller size in Sengkang. 200% inflation over the course of 10 years? How you EVER reduce that into LESS THAN 4% inflation for COMMON people yo?! We don't need houses to stay in? If you freaking factor in the housing prices every 5 years, you'd have the true inflation for the truly poor in Singapore, which is the middle income family that doesn't get any help from the government and has like freaking 50% inflation for every 2.5 years.

If you increase the middle income wages to that equivalent, we'd probably have no reason to complain. Infact we'd probably already have a minimum wage law that mandates employers to pay decent wages for the crazy number of hours that we truly work for these companies. How many of you have family members who work outside of their workplaces? Think about solving a problem or closing a deal while they are not being paid for it? Companies here need to reevaluate our true net worth. We're bring alot more value to their companies than their own inflated EGOS. We work our asses off so that the bosses may look good, so let's not forget about the little people.

We are the people that make the country tick, we are not people who don't pay taxes and yet we don't draw upon society's resources for complete support. We are the very pillars of society, the literal working backbone where the rich get richer BECAUSE of our ever non-parallel increase in income. Without the middle class, the poor will be wiped out and the rich will starve to death. Stop starving us, stop squeezing us for every drop of money we have and stop acting like we can't do anything about it. We can either die from being overworked or stop working from sheer frustration of the lack of welfare, and you can't stop that from happening.

Letting the banks prosper is no different than letting a loan shark prosper in terms of principal. Except that in this case, the banks all have to give "protection money" in terms of taxes to the government and "play by the rules" of this "turf" by following the law. In essence, there is no difference, except that the government has more say than a triad boss. While they say the banks provide convenience of transactions and extending of credit to people who need it, whose to say that the loan sharks cannot fulfil that role if the "boss" of the area demanded that they see to such "conveniences" as a requirement to "service" this area. Whoever has power dictates the law. And all who break the law will face the wrath of the "boss" of that area. The world hasn't changed at all since the first societies formed more than 10 thousand years ago. Every country in the world has a government that acts like the "boss" that says that they are "protecting" their people. This is still a fundamental concept that has NOT evolved over the history of the human race.

Perhaps it's time to change it, would it be better if no one person could have the power over another? Where we can still work together with trust towards a common goal, yet not have a nefarious person/group trying to impose their "version" of reality upon everyone else? Can we not have a world where we are not bound by allegiences to countries and geographical borders, but bound because we're of the same species? We're all humans, shouldn't we work together to further perpetuate our species as a Learned and Evolved Species rather than acting NO better than CHAOTIC herds of feuding feral wolves?

I wonder when it will be a day where the world will exist without borders, where conflict will be with mother nature and dieases instead of among ourselves. Where bonds between humans is enough to instill trust among one another. Enough of my over long rant. Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
今日の馬鹿，明日の天才

Programming 馬鹿

はじめましょ
So it begins, I'm back to programming once more. The love hate relationship has started again. I downloaded the tools of this sinful trade and started banging on the keyboard to relearn all the things that I thought I had forgotten. Why? It's a veiled attempt to earn some maintainance fees when the shit hits the fan when people have to start handing up their computing assignments. Most computing fees start at maybe $150 dollars for a bare minimum job nowadays, but I've been consulting (some will say consorting the devil 悪魔) with another techie in my course and decided to charge $50 bucks per assignment.

Morally wrong? I don't think so. Why? Simple, because the other students are being immoral by getting others to do the work for them in the first place. Haha, have fun thinking about the moral implications. For myself I'm quite happy to profit of the wrongness of it all. To me, I'm just adding a deterent for people to take the easy way out. People really don't understand what the grades mean here in UB. It means the ability of the student to learn for themselves. By "cheating" their way through, it only makes it more and more difficult for them to learn the advanced lessons in the later semesters. In this aspect, I'm an extreme right wing person. If people ask me to help them understand how to do something, I'm always available.

But when they don't even bother to try to understand something, and try to just get it over and done with. I usually can't be bothered with them unless I get some benefit out of it. No such thing as a free lunch, that's how the world works and if people want to behave like they own it, then they got to pay the piper.(私 which is me) I may not have liked how the world works, sought to make people care about what they are learning about, but it was all useless in the end. People don't learn even when it affects their lives are directly impacted by it. Example, math is used by every single person in the world but so few even know how much it truly matters in their lives.

What many people don't know is, that math is not a concrete science. It's not something you can touch and feel like chemistry or biology. It's a pure imagination, it's how we imagine reality works. Yes, it's an entire subject dedicated to our imagination and how we bring it to life. It's just surreal how human imagination can help us overcome this chaos that is our universe. ほんとにすごいでしょ。 Here's me signing off another rant at this crazy crazy world that makes perfect sense. Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

The Idiot’s Thoughts
馬鹿の感想

Today I suppose I'm officially halfway to my desired proficiency of the Japanese language. Besides for a few who know that I've been picking up smatterings of Japanese ever since I started learning Judo almost 9 years ago, I've finally reached a plateau where I can at least converse with as well as write down that smattering. I suppose this learning of Japanese was further spurred on by my watching of unsubtitled animations fresh out of Japanese media.

But with that being said, I'm not sure what the reaction of the people who know me would say. My close friends would know that I played Judo, but they more or less don't know that I had an interest in the language. I'm sure that mastering this language of our past conquerers would do me no harm. Another language is always welcomed in my books. With English, Chinese and now Japanese under my belt. I hope to also pick up Malay, French and German; all in which I have a smattering due to exposure with people who speak them. Perhaps I'm just some dude with a tiny bit of linguistic ability. Then again maybe it's just me. Thinking in another language is always fun. The grammar make up, words restrictions always make for an interesting experience overall while learning how to use it.

It's almost like returning to the time when I was but a baby and learning to speak Chinese and English. My parents told me that my first word was Chinese. *Whew* Haha, at least I'm not some banana from birth. But the experience everytime I learn how to speak abit more of a foreign language never fails to intrigue me. Where I will feel a warm tingling in my brain, slightly above my right eye, right in the smack of my right temple that slowly spreads through my head. After that pleasant fuzzy sensation, that small bit of language sticks with me forever. It's such a pleasant feeling, like I'm growing and expanding my soul piece by piece.

Scary as it may sound, I learnt programming in more or less the same way. But as of all languages, you need to know the logic behind HOW to use it in order to learn it. Eg, normal languages you need to know the grammar. But for programming, the grammar is universal. It is logic. Once you get your logic right, it's shamefully easy to pick up any language. As long as you got your basic logic on how to solve programming problems right, learning a language is like having a new set of lego toys with different shapes. To build a car for example, you need to know what a car looks like and how do you go about assembling your piece to get that shape. A new programming language would be like a new set of shapes available to you to build that car you wanted.

It's that simple, but sadly it's not how most people look at learning a language or programming language nowadays. People in Asia especially, are so concerned about grades, that they would rather "Fast-track" their "Learning" by simply copying and pasting other people's answers into their own without first seeking to understand WHY it is done in that manner. So when asked to replicate or innovate upon their "successes" Asians who grew up under this system of "education" are unable to be creative on their own and come up with ideas that build upon our existing knowledge.

Well, enough ranting for today. I suppose I got to get back to the work at hand. So many things to be done and so little time for relaxation. Haha, I suppose the time for rest has come and gone. Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
今日の馬鹿、明日の天才。

Shan't

I realized that today we almost never hear the word "Shan't" anymore. It's a word I often read in my kindergarden days in "Naughtiest Girl in School" or "The Famous Five". I don't think I EVER heard anyone use it. Not by my friends, classmates, teachers or even literary buffs I meet. Why is that?

It's such a cool word. I mean it starts with a "sh..." that sounds with "shall" in other words is a yes, so it lifts the other party's hopes up, only to CRUSH it with the rest of the word when it comes falling down on your listener. I mean what other word can you such a thing like that?

I adore misdirection when it comes to things like this. I admit I can be rather sadomasochistic when it comes to word play. I don't mind hurting myself in a conversation to make a it more of an emotional rollercoaster ride because it's simply more fun that way. It's the non-verbal aspects of my dialogue that intrigues me so. The tone of my voice, the level of excitement and passion, the eye contact, the body posture, the direction of my voice and even any touch requirements of the conversation is subject to my tweaking.

80% of all face to face communication is conveyed non-verbally. Shocking but true. So I love tweaking the little things, whether the other party notices or not. Often it leads to alot of misunderstandings, I learn so much from such experiences. It's like a psychological experiment of sorts, but the only person who suffers the consequences is me. At least I hope I'm the only one suffering any negative backlash. Well, it seems there's more to life than extremities. My brother's scale of extremity would be I love it, I like it, I don't know, I hate it. Period. I offered him a box of "Collon" Chocolate snacks and he refused it. I asked, "Why? Do you hate it?" Then he explodes on me and tells me, "Can you NOT be so EXTREME?! If I refuse the snack you say I HATE IT?" Oh don't mind me, I mean it's obvious that he doesn't have different levels of hating something. So I ask him, "So what did you want me to say?" Then he replied, "I don't know, just say 'Oh Okay'." I never shocks me how limited he expects people to behave. It's like people have a mere 3 button switch on them, I love, I hate and I don't know. By the heavens I get worried! There's more to the world than those simplistic views.

I'm a complicated kind of guy I suppose. I would rather put my feelings and preferences on a 100 point scale rather than scale it down to a 10 point or *Gulp* 3 point scale. If I say I hate something, I have like a 40 point scale upon that 100 point scale where I can rate how much I hate it.

The lower my score, the more I hate something. Example, a closed minded stranger who behaves like a baffoon in private who is not my boss, my teacher or anyone that I depend on, would rate a zero on my scale of a hundred. A piece of human shit on the ground would rate a 15 on my scale of hundred. Well it's useful as food for bacteria, fertilizer and even NEWater, whereas the useless closed minded stranger would be taking up precious resources by being a closed minded idiot, thus having a negative impact on society.

You can tell that I hate closed minded people. But I don't hate stubborn people, stubborn people can have open minds. Why? Because after their bout of stubborness, they have a period of time where they open their minds so they can learn new things in order to continue resisting an everchanging environment. A closed minded fool is a person who refuses to adapt, change or rethink their ideals not because they have a stubborn nature, but because they are retarded emotionally, intellectually, physically and spiritually. A person that doesn't change his attitude forever, is an example of a closed minded fool. Retarded meaning that they have less capability than the average human being in the matters of being able to change themselves.

I know of stubborn people, but they eventually change one way or another. I like to call them persistant because they know what is perserverance and remain stubborn only to achieve a goal they have set for themselves. But close minded fools do not aim for any goals that they might accomplish, they just refuse to change because they think they are perfect the way they are. Close minded fools are arrogant, blind and refuse to believe that anyone else has the right to make them change for the better.

I believe however, a mass genocide of such people although cruel and seemingly merciless, infact would free up all the resources they are consuming and benefit the rest of humanity that have the capability to continue evolving and setting noble goals to save our planet or advance humanity. People with no other goals other than to accumulate personal wealth and power without consideration of the future of society or humanity are perfect examples of short sighted fools. If through their accumulation of wealth and power, they benefit society, then they aren't fools but useful citizens of society. What better way to give benefit to yourself than to benefit society on a whole? A philantropic view, but one that works well because there's minimal negative effects.

Problem is, most capitalists only seek wealth at the expense of others. For every one person that benefits, hundreds or maybe thousands of others suffer. The stock market is the perfect example of what's wrong with this selfish concept. You cannot profit while selling your stocks without knowing that the person who last touches the stock is the one that makes the biggest loss. For every George Soros, 90% of all the other investors in a single stock market have to make a loss to support the earnings of that one guy. It plays alot like a casino, only except that the dice can be thrown by anyone who has the power for the moment.

Pure speculators will suffer in our current market simply because of the sudden unstableness of our political arena in asia, especially in Japan. With such a sudden wave, the stock market players who have the most capital can start a chain reaction where they can create an upsurge and downsurge at will simply by accumulating large quantities of stock and randomly selling them off at one shot. By buying multiple stocks at a low price and then artificially creating buoyancy, they sell off a different set of stocks they have held on for the past few days to create an artificial flooding of the market, causing all stocks to fall. Then they use that opportunity to buy up more stock that they can use to manupilate the market in the future. By holding, buying and selling command quantity of stock, the speculators with capital suddenly become the "banker" in a casino gambling den. During times of uncertainty, they take the opportunity to take a massive profit from the fears of people who don't know better. During the good times, they sell off small portions of their stocks that hit record highs to increase their wealth. If you control enough of the stock market, it will be easy pickings for you.

As for people who are rich and smart enough to form trading coalitions, they can profit off the "fresh meat" who enter the market everyday. Of course this is supposedly illegal, but who can monitor an open market, where the bids come so hard and fast? All you have to do in this partnerships, is to find a stock with a very large trading volume. Blue chip stocks are usually a good bet. Now, with your trading partners, buy up half of all available stock and keep holding on to that. At first, the stock prices wouldn't rise that much. After all, the price of the stock increases only as the stock demand exceeds its availability. So you then slowly buy up the remaining stock in the open market at an increasing pace. Try to buy to the point where there's no more available stock that's being held by people other than your trading partners. Then you sell the stocks to each other with an increasing bid to artificially inflate the stock value.

Once your satisfied with the amount of profit you and your trading partners would be getting, you sell off all your stocks in a regulated manner. How regulated? A maximum of 2% of the stock per day can be traded to outsiders at an increasing bid, 30% of the total stock you own should still continue to be traded within your trading partners at a constant or increasing bid. With the bids outbidding the let go amount by about 50%. Once your stock level hits around 50% of original total stock volume, you can start the short selling process to earn another uber batch of profits from the stock.

I won't explain too much on the short selling part but this process is usually best wrapped up in a 5 trading day week. Since your partnership owns 50% of the total stock available, to start the short selling process, stop trading between your partners and everyone drop 10% - 15% of their total stock holdings out at one trading morning. Selling 10% - 15% of the stock to the open market per day would signal something wrong with the stock... because your only allowing 2% to be bought by outsiders the difference in demand will go from 2% outsider demand and 30% internal demand to just 2% outsider demand a massive decrease of demand of more than 90% total volume traded. Imagine how much the price will drop? Keep the pressure on by selling the stocks cheaper and cheaper and the price of the stock will plunge like no tomorrow.

Since there's this cap, outsider demand would normally not meet the 10% of your let go amount. But if you estimate that they are above that amount, you need to clear out the remaining buyers in a 20-25% stock dump in a single trading day. After you've hit about 15% of the original stock amount you had at maximum, you can actually start short selling. By this time, the stock price would have started plunging. And it's usually the start of the 2nd or 3rd market day after you've started dumping the stocks 10% at a go. Get rid of your remaining stock in the morning, then short sell every available stock to any available buyers. Stop trading with the stock after 1 or 2 trading days of short selling to avoid detection and enjoy your profits with your partners. But of course you've just become my public enemy number one if you did that.

Enough of this nonsense, Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Repeat of the Phoenix

Oh by all that is HOLY and UNHOLY, it's finally over! My computer troubles are OVER! Although it was not enough a tough and freakishly long battle, drawn out since the last time I wrote on the blog. After that time, my main desktop got infected with an unknown virus and it literally wrecked havoc upon my computer. It suddenly became cranky and decided to shut down randomly at first, then when I found the irritating source, it decided to replicate itself with new filenames every 5 seconds or so.

It was a freaking terror, it ate up my system resources, it made me unable to do anything in my GUI mode. I decided to go hunting after several days of futile attempts to eradicate it via deletion in Windows. So I decided to go all "Medival" upon it's hiney. I booted up my computer in Dos mode and commenced with the deletions. The virus finally went away, but the damage was nearly apocolyptic. My Windows could BARELY start, EVERY SINGLE KEY APPLICATION, Internet Explorer, Outlook, Microsoft Office and Windows Explorer would either create non-stop popups or shut down with a critical error when I try to run them.

I was in the middle of all my work back then, so I decided to let go of my desktop because I simply didn't have the time to fix it up while I had to finish my work. I transferred all my data to my flash drive (that I kept meticulously clean because I didn't use any folders and the virus couldn't hide there for long) and then migrated to my laptop to do my work. Of course if my laptop was working fine, then why didn't I post a blog from there? Now it so happens my laptop decided to do a fast one on me as well. I just found out this afternoon (I sent it to the Compaq Care Center last week) that it had a faulty motherboard issue. And what was this problem? My laptop would just HANG every 10-15 mins. Whoo Hoo! Yay Microsoft and Compaq... could you make my life any worse?

Somehow, I survived the onslaught of work and still managed to get Straight As for my first semester. Thank the HEAVENS for that and damn the HELLS for my troubles. So as my term break appeared, I stayed at home exclusively to battle the two problems non-stop. I tried to retrieve as much data as cleanly as possible. And Just yesterday, I was able to get the last vestiges of my important documents from the grasp of my dying OS.

So today was a day of great relief, where I sat down infront of my monitor, gave my OS it's last rites, and finally put an end to it's pained existence. I put in my Windows XP cd and rebooted my computer. My finger seemed unable to move when I was about to click on reformat C:, I was able to get my work out of my computer, but that's nothing compared to all the other applications I took ages to accumulate and then there's... my PORN! OMG.... I couldn't save it... it was all corrupted. *SOB* And yes, I went through all this time without my porn, if your a single guy without a girl reading this, you probably feel my pain more than others. And no there was no withdrawl symptoms because I was far too tired or I was pumped full of adrenaline while I was on the computer exterminating this threat.

And to think, it all started when my freaking brother wanted to find a Keygen or Serial for his Adobe products that he wanted to install and use on my computer. He didn't know which .exe he opened but that was it. I was infected because my brother wanted to use some pirated copy of adobe suite. I'm NEVER, EVER, letting him install ANY software on my computer without my direct and extremely close supervision. And to think that is the 2nd time this year that he's done it for my computer. OMG, he's like, "But this is a different Exe file what!? Why is it also another virus?" I was like," OMG you use a FREAKING MAC! What the heck would you know about Viruses?!" And the reason why he's using my computer because his mac just celebrated its 7th birthday. It's a G4 Dual 533 MHz ANTIQUE, that can't run any of Adobe's higher end stuff like premier pro and illustrator without coughing out its innards and expiring. But thank the gods it can still run Photoshop like a kitten. Or my brother would be on my desktop like FOREVER.

So lesson learnt, The best Anti-virus in the world is YOURSELF. Having the best antivirus software in the world won't protect you from RETARDS who run infected programs because they WANT to try it and see if it'd CRACK a software. Once your infected, if the anti-virus hasn't seen it before, your SCREWED, when it asks you to bend over, you bloody well just take it and pray it stops sometime soon. (Which normally is NEVER) Getting sick of viruses that affect users have to depend on microsoft solely because they can't FREAKING PLAY THEIR Favourite games without windows. I hope that changes man, I seriously SERIOUSLY hope that happens. I would love gaming on the mac, if there was more mainstream games out there for it. I want to play with the rest of the world! Not just a small community. So all you potential game developers out there whose got any sense at all, make Mac compatible games... NOW! Because if you do, your going to see 40% of the world's market scooting over in a blink of an eye. Plus Apple would LOVE you guys to death and maybe shower you with macbook pros all year long. I bet you'd love dying under an unending pile of macbook pros.

I think I've done enough ranting, I really have to go back and rebuild my PC with all the applications I USED to have. So I'd see you when I see you, Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

The smell of Burnt Soul in the morning


Oh my god. I feel, like a crispy fried banana that's been over fried and on the verge of turning into a charred black unrecognizable lump of charcoal. So what am I going to do about it? Since I'm burning like there's no tomorrow, I'd just go watch Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix tonight. I think I'm in love with Emma Watson and Gary Oldman. Gary is such a good thespian it's amazing. I think I really liked his performances since I first saw this movie a long time ago called "The Fifth Element". The movie was rather senseless, but I fell in love with several of the characters who appeared in the movie. Mainly Gary Oldman who portrayed Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg but also I discovered the joys of watching model turned Actress Milla Jovovich. Mysteriously, the main reason I started watching "The Fifth Element" was supposedly for Bruce Willis. But he did not make as memorable an impact as I hoped he would.

Strangely, I'm a communications student now and I'm in a very good position to use all these media references as material for my portfolio. Thanks to this freshly recycled knowledge, I think I've found inspiration on what I would be doing for my media portfolio. Thank God I decided to work on my blog today. With more and more things are due these two weeks, I find myself in the midst of a frenzy, trying to figure out what I am to complete first before moving on to something else. Sometimes, even the simplest of things elude me and I fall ever so incessantly deeper into the pits of insanity. But not today I suppose, I suppose today will be the day I finish most of my work. And I'd be able to have fun later tonight.

Oh yeah, I have one extra ticket to watch a movie with me and another friend tonight. As mentioned above, it's Harry Potter. 9.50pm at Causeway Point. If you call me by 8pm tonight, your in. Otherwise, well it's just going to be a waste of a perfectly good ticket. Anyways, love yourself, hate yourself, have fun, go through hell on earth and then fall into a deep peaceful slumber everyone. Alauz Out!

Gary Oldman

Greying hair belies razor wit,
Aging posterior shadows eternal youth,
Random musings reflect reality,
Youth is but a passing phase.

Ordinarily extrodinary,
Lithe mind of a snake.
Death is but a moment,
Memory is forever.
All we ever wanted,
Never disappointing.

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Limboistic

And here I hang almost 1 am, waiting futilely for the conflict within to go somewhere. And of course I should probably finish up my work that's been piling up this past 1 week. Thankfully I've already finish all the revision I need to do the finals for all my subjects except for my ESL which has no finals. It's been a weird week, my mind's far away and I've been dreaming of things yet to come again. I don't think I'd be very stable for the next week to come. The walls I've been trying to use to block out this ... curse... have crumbled at the non-stop onslaught.

ARGH, I know I need something to center myself. Because I cannot find it so I'm flowing slowly away from my intended destination. Fighting the flood seems so bloody impossible! RAWR! I will not give up... not again, not this time... I shall move forward, I'm so tired to sliding backwards towards oblivion and the destruction of my future. My will is slipping... my sanity slowly along with it. Will I end up like those mental patients or worse, some martyr soothsayer?

Fuck it, Fuck focus, Fuck the world, Fuck the future. I am seriously sick, SICK of this stupid thing. What's the fucking point of knowing what you can't change? What's the point? Where's the reasoning behind giving me this shit? Why am I seeing this shit?! Must I be there every time someone I know dies? What does it achieve but to sap my will to live? Oh how blessed are the ignorant around in the world. To live without knowing when their time is coming. To live their lives without the burden of knowledge. Knowledge is power?! Knowledge is... sadness... death... change.

Oh how everyone wished that the world will not change and time would just stand still. When things don't get any worse, hahahahahahahaha.... I think I'm on the very verge of snapping right here and now. I ... believe that I'm getting so worked up because I'm frustrated. Frustrated that I cannot change the way things turn out. Sure, when I see something, it's bound to happen. But how I wish that people knew how I wish I would be WRONG. I want to be able to change the things I see, I don't want to play the passive bystander. I want to get involved with all my heart and soul. I don't want to be standing emotionless as things happen as I say.

I want to be there, I want to feel, I want to be there for those who are suffering. I know that sometimes it's better to let them go, but not in such a painful manner. I ... want to change it. But is that wise? If you were a time traveler, what would you know about temporal consequences? If, by saving one person, you cause a chain reaction that leads to the birth of another who destroys the world? Oh what the fuck should I do? All this internal conflict is bound to manifest corporally someday. Will I tear someone apart with my bare hands? I feel so much like screaming my lungs out and then destroying time itself.

Okay... now that I got all of that out in the open. I hope to enlighten the people who read this blog that what I talk about here are the currents that flow under the calm waters that you see in my appearance. If you see me quiet, aloof, distant or just plain generically nice. Be warned not to venture too deep, because your not going to like what you see under the hood. The engine maybe powerful, but it's not for the faint of heart.

On a more alternative note, my research on Gamers and the psychology behind it, has just jumped forward as I get to know and understand the people who "police" the MMOGs that we love. I've been getting closer to the GMs who maintain and runs the private servers of World of Warcraft. The reasons for becoming a GM and owning your own piece of the virtual world seems to cultivate a God complex. It's ... haha.... hahaha.... very interesting to have been interacting with them lately. But hey that's what I've been doing to try and keep my mind off tearing myself apart. Good riddance to Mr. Neutral, what you've been seeing in class is closer to what I was back in my older self. Lots of questions, oppositions and of course the Ego that is part of the package. Have fun trying to understand me. Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Lycan

What is the matter with us? We can't even accept something that even basic animals have come to accept. We can't even accept the fact that we have basic instinctual needs that need to be satisfied or we start degenerating both mentally, physically and even spiritually. We deny our very souls of what we need.

As you have noticed there's something familiar about what I'm talking about. The darker side of me is starting to emerge once more. Too much overloading of work has cause me to pop up through the thining layer of the angel that tries too hard to handle so many things at one go. The things that run through my mind, hahaha.... just makes me grin wickedly this morning when I woke.

Argh, struggling for control is starting once more. Haha, how I love conflict. Shows me how alive I truly am. I can't accept my true character of myself without a hard fight with myself to prove my true character. Show I be good, bad or down right evil? Haha, everyone be warned that until I finish this battle. You'd be subjected to lots of instablity when you interact with me. It couldn't have come at a worse time too. Haha, I can be so mean to myself.

Warping minds and desecrating souls. Oh wonderful day to be free. Stop that! Oh? Whose going to stop me? Well, just wait and we will see...

Darstardy
Evil grins and happy thoughts,
Do they mix or they do not?
Wonderful feeling of kicking people down,
Will I ever get tired of it?
Hideous visage of a darkened soul,
Is that truly me?
Oh how I love being a twin,
Conflict Eternal.

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Tributeries

And for all who attended the RFW concert, you all probably don't need me to tell you that the Singaporean Rock Scene's grown alot since the yester years and I honestly think that they were AWESOME. Oh yeah here's some low quality pictures I managed to take with my crappy phone.

Okay whose not freaked out by the scary look one of my friends gave me when I started taking photos at the concert? Anyway, this was when the concert was about to start.





So this was the drum set of Wayne 'Thunder' Seah. This man has touched the lives of many during his whirlwind on earth.





Then I decided to move up to the 2nd floor of the Pavillion, this was Red Spy Experiment.





Then I went for a quick dinner and came back in time for West Grand Boulevard. And yeah, I gave up the idea of staying on the 2nd floor. The acoustics of the place didn't benefit those on the higher ground. Back on the first level, the music was awesome again.





This was a moment from Electrico, I had 2 really poor pictures from my phone. This is the better one. And YES the light show here blinds us! Keke...



Sometimes I hate the grainy quality when I zoom haha, but this is from the finale, AstroNinja Allstars! Ronin's lead singer has quite a scream.

Did I mention that there was moshing and even body surfing? The concert was as rocking as a concert could be, with people going crazy. But of course I avoided moshing, if you know who I am then you know that I'd probably kill someone by accident while moshing. I truly believe that Wayne's wish for a rocking concert in Singapore by Singaporean bands isn't just a dream anymore but a reality. To all who were there, Pain is only temporary, Glory is Forever!

For Wayne,

To him the world is but an oyster,
He flows like water to conquer.
Under the calm exterior,
Neverending current of Passion.
Dedicated to Rocking and Loving,
Everyday he shall be missed.
Rocking on Forever!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Saturday

And what of this WARM Saturday? There's going to be a concert at Far East Square for the late Wayne 'Thunder' Seah from the Suns. I don't know him personally but I have a classmate that does. My aunt's death still lingers and I feel a strong empathy to pay tribute so I'd be making my way down there as early as I possibly can.

Choice wise, I make the worst decisions. Be it to help others but of course it comes a day after the lecturer decides to give a huge bunch of hints for the mid terms. Probably there won't be a single soul who'd come seeking help but then again I've been wrong all my life haha...

But other than that, I hope to see how the local music scene performs together in a concert such as this. There's this sparking vibe that's driving me to see the fruits of our nation's brightest musical talent. Maybe I'm hoping for too much? Maybe I'd be blown away. I hope that I'd be able to catch the whole gig today.

Angels?

What are Angels but the servants of God?
If so, then we're all potential Angels,
Waiting for our moment to shine.
What are Devils but fallen Angels?
If so, then we're all Devils in disguise,
Waiting for the right time to pounce.

Be it Angel or Devil,
It's all in God's will that we do what we do.
What am I? Angel or Devil?
I'm but a lowly servant,
Not worthy of mention.

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

The Grim Reaper

And thus another week passes and someone else I know passes on from this world. I'm once again afflicted by a sickening fit of coughs as I struggle to hammer out this blog. I suppose I could say that I felt this one coming. No portents, no visions, just a sick gut feeling as if there was suddenly a void in my body.

Who was the person that passed on? It was my Aunty or should I say Grand Aunt, Yvonne. She was my Mother's Aunt. Or should I say used to be uncle but now aunt. I guess I should also mention that my aunty was already an aunty when I was born. I only knew that she wasn't always my aunty when I was 15 or so.

But although I treated her just like any other Aunty, I think it made a really big difference to her. Even after I found out that she wasn't always an aunty, I was unable to treat her any differently than I used to. I suppose ignorance was a big tool in my education of treating people with equality. When you don't take prejudices with you, life seems far more enjoyable than it normally is.

And on Sunday, two of my close friends James and Irene got married to each other. I had promised Irene that I would attend her wedding since the start of the year thus I honored that promise and didn't go to the wake. I felt really conflicted and until today, I'm still feeling very conflicted. But I think celebrating life should take precedence simply because no matter what the fact, the world doesn't stop spinning. Life goes on and we should hold life by the tail and grab every opportunity to acknowledge that we're alive than regret it when we're gone.

And while blogging today, my colleagues came across this little angel of a girl by the name of Connie Talbot from Britain's Got Talent show. Instantly the group of us were smitten by her soulful singing and her daring character. Her voice when singing "Somewhere over the rainbow" was simply filled with emotion and character. The freakiest fact would probably be that she's only 6 years old at the time of her participation and she started singing when she was only 2 years old. It's really nice to know that such talent gets a chance to shine during competitions such as this.

I suppose that since my last post, I've been constantly torn apart by sadness and celebration of life. While I found it hard to choose between the two, I've chosen to celebrate life more than mourn the passing. My aunt's going to a better place, where she'd be free from the trappings of discrimination she has probably faced in life. I wish you a bon voyage dear aunt of mine. May your journey from here on be one that will be filled with joy. Alauz Out!

Wishes upon my soul

Wishing you were here,
Leaving behind a trail.
Wishing you were here,
I met with the devil.
Wishing you were here,
I will always be here for you.

Belief has led me thus far,
Where have you been, my star?
Leading my soul astray,
What have I done?
As I continue on my path,
Is it enough just to have fun?

Our life so brief,
Like a shooting star.
Once the flowers bloom,
We wilt away so fast.
Burning brightly as the sun,
We stand forever changed.

Wishing you were here,
Leaving behind a trail.
Wishing you were here,
I met with the devil.
Wishing you were here,
I will always be here for you.

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Dad as a clock, Humans as a catalyst for change

Yet another month plus has past me without much time for me to notice it flying. Suddenly, I realize that I take my father's monthly visit as a gauge for every month. And it's time for his monthly return on Tuesday night. Why am I only blogging this only today? As a few of you guys know, my desktop is dying under the oppression of a new virus that my anti-virus can't seem to cope or detect. It's frustrating, and I spent almost all my spare time trying to hunt that evil virus down. I found a few of it's locations and deleted the files but the effects seem permanent. It's gone and infected my explorer and now my msn and internet explorer has been rendered truly fucked.

Without my ability to connect to my social network on my desktop was a lousy feeling, at least I still have my laptop. But the desktop still has some internet ability such as playing World of Warcraft and most of the MMOs my brother installed. And since my desktop was mainly meant for play it wasn't a complete loss.

So back to my Dad as a clock. He comes back on a non-regulated basis. It's not on a fixed date or a fixed month, yet I still use his arrival back in Singapore to signify the passing of the months. Why? Well because I don't believe in a strict schedule. Life is not fixed or routine, anything can happen today or tomorrow. I know it probably sounds rather insane, but my Dad comes back every 1 - 2 months on a non-fixed date so it's sort of a mini-routine although it's kinda chaotic. Sometimes he doesn't know when he'd be back, sometimes he comes back unannounced. It reminds me alot of how life truly is. It's truly chaotic, but we try to adhere some routine or sense into things anyways. So taking my dad as a clock makes perfect sense in the way time really works in this chaotic planet.

Oh how I love chaos in order and order in chaos. It's all so fun. To play the role of a sane person but inside, I truly enjoy the chaos that we bring into the universe. So much change and evolution because of our single race. We're a catalyst for change, in essence we are the embodiment of chaos in the purest form. We warp our environment to suit our needs, we destroy all that stand in our way and we also convert the other beings inhabiting our space to our cause. There is nothing we do that stand in harmony with the natural "Law" of the planet. There is no order in the things we do in the eyes of the planet.

But whose to say what is right or wrong? If you say the destruction of the planet is a "wrong" thing to do, then the mass genocide of human beings must be a "right" thing to visualize. But to humans genocide is "wrong" so it MUST BE ABSOLUTELY "right" to destroy our planet. LOL you might say that I shouldn't deal in absolutes but let me put it this way. Humans are a varied bunch, some want to save the planet, some want to consume all it's resources, some want to leave this planet and find a new home. So to NOT HAVE GENOCIDE means there will always be people who want to consume all it's resources and in turn destroy it. Thus there is ZERO way of saving it. As long as humans exist, there will be some of us that seek to destroy it, inadvertly or directly. Don't fool yourself with recycling technology and green technology, what about WAR? Yeah you heard me, the weapons of mass destruction only get more powerful. A nuclear holocaust is just as bad as us consuming all of earth's resources.

So yeah, so I accepted the fact that as long as humans exist, the world is going to die. No two ways about it unless you tell me that your going to strip away the freedom of thought and action for every single human being in the universe. It's bloody cruel and there'd be no point to living after that but yeah the planet would be saved. Woot! Haha, damn that irony yah? Everyone knows that there are people out there without a shred of conscience, thus there is no way you can control them with emotion or talk sense into them. Is the eradication of the human race the only way to preserve our planet? Well I did mention that there were some humans willing to find a new home.

Let's all follow them to ruin another planet if we truly want to save Earth. We can go ruin, Alpha Centauri or the like. If you look at the planets on our solar system, I saw the data on the two planets closest to earth and it almost seems like our ancient predecessors have ruined them with a nuclear war on Mars and overpollution in Venus. Earth was probably the merger of 2 different species struggling for survival from these two planets. Earth could go either way, or would it be a new form of planetary destruction? Haha, we'd truly never know. But I do know one thing, Everyone go forth and sow CHAOS! Have fun while doing it. Alauz Out!

Mars
Oh red star, red star in the sky.
Oh red star, reddest iron in our blood.
Oh red star, rusting with the blood of billions.
Oh red star, how we missed you so.

Venus
Oh white love, white love among the clouds.
Oh white love, whitest clouds floating by.
Oh white love, raining down pure acid.
Oh white love, we loved you dearly so.

Earth
Oh blue ball, blue eye in the space.
Oh blue ball, bluest sky and sea.
Oh blue ball, spinning so innocently.
Oh blue ball, we are killing you like the other two.

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

The day that I was born

Yeah it's the day of the year where I was born. It used to be that on this day I would be really look forward to celebrations and stuff like that. But of course now as I'm officially a quarter of a century old, I'm going to join the 80% of the world population that don't celebrate their day of birth. Yeah most people don't put a significance on the day that they were born. Why? Well simply because it's not in their culture or they simply don't have the resources to go on celebrating if their busy dying or earning a hard living in some poor country.

So I suppose I'm finally one of the majority. And the strangest thing is, I don't feel any different. Some people might say that is the feeling of being jaded but I totally disagree. I kinda feel like a burden is dropped from my shoulders, I have one less thing I have to worry about when the years past me by. One less reminder that I'm getting older and my mortality hangs precariously because of my BMI.

Doctors did say that I'd probably get a heart attack before the age of 35 and a stroke before 45 if the heart attack doesn't kill me first. Haha, well that maybe true but I suppose I'm taking small steps to overcome that scenario. First thing I've done was to start working out as often as I could. Started jogging like a snail early this year, at least I've progressed to jogging like a tortoise now combined with a tiny fraction of sit ups and push ups everyday. But the frequency could be more, average 5 times a week so far and only 1 1/2 hours of working out every session doesn't seem to cut it. But still with work and study, I find it so difficult to push myself past that point.

Perhaps it's in the genes or something, that much is true. My body doesn't seem to want to change from it's old self. It's still much the same from the time I was at Alexandra Hospital and my body almost feels like it's rejecting the changes and trying to change back to the way I was when I tore my knee which of course was a quivering lump of fat. It's an extremely painful process trying to get my body to listen to me. Running everyday regardless of my energy level tests my mental fortitude so fucking much. Especially these couple of weeks when I have less than 5 hours of sleep a day. Today's afternoon run almost felt like my mind was exploding while I struggled near the end.

I suppose, studying hard for straight As, working 15 hours a week, finding out more research material on my possible internship with I2R and attempting to exercise almost everyday has my body on the verge of turning into a total wreck. But I'm afraid that the moment I try to rest, everything will fall into pieces like they did last year. I can smell my soul burning up as my gear has been stuck permanently on overdrive since March. Hopefully I don't disintegrate before I reach the first 2 weeks school holiday. At least then I'd just have to worry more about the internship without worrying about my grades.

Bah, what the heck?! I am a bloody worry wreck! Away with doubt! Sigh... Oh well on with the rest of my life. Fuck the consequences, I will have mutual understanding with my body and stop it's rebellious nature, get my damn As and do as much as I possibly can before I leave this planet. Pain is temporary, Glory is Forever! Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Two Rights don't make a Wrong

Either I'm going crazy or I'm suffering from sleep deprivation. I think it's a little bit of both. Taking some chinese medicine in the past when the government hasn't banned the mercury content probably has me going partially insane as we speak. As you all know, mercury attacks our nerves and eventually turns us into quivering lumps of flesh incapable of any rational thought.

But looking from a short term point of view, it's probably because I'm partially non-logical and base alot of my assumptions on my right brain that I've been able to resist a small portion of the social programming the government is trying to do. Thankfully I'm not some brainless moron that's going all out to get married, have 2 kids and think of nothing but bringing this country to greater glory. Right now, I suppose I'm just a moron overly addled by mercury poisoning cause by some chinese medicine I've taken before I was even old enough to think for myself.

Lacking the basic drive to succeed drilled into my mentality, what the heck makes me tick now? It's probably because of my pursuit of what I deem to be fun for me. Yeah, the learning process is probably what I find the most fun about anything. I questioned myself on what I thought was the most fun part about playing video games and I eventually figured out that learning to play the game was probably the best of playing any game to me. Thus I began applying it to school when I started my uni life here at UB. It's really revolutionized the whole process that I go about studying and I literally went without playing games because there simply wasn't any new games that could cope with my learning curve to remain fun anymore.

I probably will pick up Starcraft 2 when it comes out, mainly to learn how different is to game to play as compared to Command & Conquer 3 and watch the AWESOME movies in it. And also, C&C 3 was alittle boring. It took me merely 14 hours to complete the game and crush every form of brutal AI in all the multiplayer maps included with the game. I ended that affair sadly because I had expected much more from the AI. Perhaps EA was being nice to the new players who were picking up C&C3, but I felt that their brutal computers should have had better employment of tactics than just having more resources and having the same response to every tactic as an easy computer.

I think that the tactics used to draw in new players, the single player games and MMOG market would be the simple game play. But then they also have a responsibility to increase the Intellect of the these gamers by slowly increasing the difficulty of the harder AI to employ different tactics instead of just raw brute power. Players should have an AI that is able to employ complicated tactics and LEARN from the responses taken by the players so that they may even learn a new tactic to employ or learn how to counter the players using the tactics learned from the players themselves.

Yeah, I mentioned long time ago that my interest in games lie predominantly in a pure artificial intelligence complete with emotions and basic instincts. When will it become a reality? I suppose that's why I'm doing research right now on gaming psychology. To better understand how to create artificial intelligence, I gotta know what IS human intelligence and it's response to a computing environment. Otherwise the AI will never be replicated to resemble anything remotely human in an online environment.

Artifical intelligence, it's so difficult to create it because we put the word "Artificial" in the front. In reality, what we're actually trying to create IS Intelligence. Something that's more than the sum of it's parts. Perhaps to play god, perhaps we don't want to be all alone in the universe. Whatever the reasons other have, my hopes are that one day there will be 2 ways that humans can be brought into this world, one from a physical womb and the other one is born from electronic womb. If indeed we are alone in this universe, then it's about time we created a species that can share this vastness of infinity with our lonesome selves. Creation will take many years so meanwhile I seek to understand how humans learn via communicating here at UB.

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Overloadeous

And it's officially been more than 1 week since I've had time to breathe, much less post a blog. Well technically I could have posted a blog, but it'd be at a cost that I would be not willing to sacrifice. Let's see what happened since the last post? Hmmm, there was work done at my workplace. I finally found a way to bring a mug from home to the office, had a quiz, an essay to complete, finished a mid-term exam and homework to do during the days that I didn't get to post.

Mmmm, what else was there that I've still left to do? Oh yeah, I just finished 2 portfolio assignments for my communications class as well. Mmm and then also my economics homework is left hanging with my bonus question hanging in the balance. Tired as heck... Slept like 4 hours or less every night since the day I last posted. Looking more like a panda every day. Haha, serves me right to choose to work and study at the same time.

Oh well, the price of attempting financial independence. Oh yeah, and I missed out my daily jogging for Monday, why? I tore out my soles of my shoes after only 3 freaking weeks of running almost daily. New Balance Sucks damn it. I'm going to see if anyone's available to get a pair with me this evening. Anyone who wants to take me up on that offer can just give me a call on my handphone.

Other than that, what else have I got to say before I finish this blog entry? Oh well besides the fact that I'm feeling dead on the outside, the funny thing is I'm feeling quite satisfied on the inside. It's probably because I feel a small sense of achievement of not having a total physical and mental breakdown handling this overload of work. Well, back to work now. I'm going to break all barriers hopefully. Oh and yeah, E I found another person named E. Probably gonna ask her to coach my chinese.

With all that said and done, let me leave you guys with another poorly thought and written poem. Alauz OUT!!!

Juggler
As the days fly by, neverending cycle of fun and pain.
As the days past by, the repeat of flowers and death.
As the days swallow time, people come and go.
As the days become years, memories are all that are left.
As the days are mine alone, days are for work, learn and play!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Peonization

It has begun, working at SIM has started this week. Why haven't I been posting? It's actually because I've had almost no time to do anything else but work and study this week. Hopefully it'd pay off sometime soon. Anyways, I'm being called back for a mobilization briefing on the 23rd of July. It couldn't have come at a worse time, it's at week 12 of my course and it's probably crunch time and definitely not a period to have any disturbances on the outside if I still want my straight As.

As for work, I can't mention what I'm doing except that I'm doing market research. It's quite cool because I would get some experience for my future internship with I2R. Hopefully this will provide me more of an insight of how I should go forth doing my research in the future. However my schedule is so packed now, you will notice my lack of blogging in this week. Infact I'm blogging from my lecture right now in SIM.

Luckily she's merely repeating the lecture notes and reading through the books I'm more or less refreshing the information that I've already understood. It's quite silly, there's a ton of people who simply can't stand her lectures because they can't seem to understand what she says or what she means. Probably her teaching method simply isn't for the young minds that seem to need alot more prompting to understand a subject.

Well, I suppose I should end this short blog with a message to my newest colleague Michelle. I do think that Michelleism is an interesting point of view with a mild exception that you could be less subjective hahaha. But I hope that things won't be as lonely when the UOL students join us for work. Other than that, try not to freeze in the office okay? Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Pieces of a Jigsaw

No, I'm not becoming Jack the Ripper so do not fear. I just had so many things fall into place this week that I can only attribute it to hardwork, planning and a ton of luck. Good things are happening and I suppose that means I should continue striving for better and better results. Work, work. More work? Work, work. But lately I've been feeling abit "Peonish". Didn't even have a single day where I touched a video game. But however I did finish 4 novels from Sunday to Wednesday.

I had read the first 4 books of the Elminster Quintology, Makings of a Mage, Temptation of Elminster, Elminster in Myth Drannor and Elminster in Hell. I'm missing the book Elminster's Daughter. Which incidentally is the book that I had wanted to read the most. Oh well the first 4 books weren't too shoddy, I finally understood the way Ed Greenwood thinks and feels about Elminster. He's version of Elminster is one of a wily man who seems to get into the pants of almost every pretty magic user that crosses his path. I had this impression of Elminster as a person who was a in love with the goddess of magic Mystra. But obviously this didn't stop him from consorting with countless other sorceresses and mages along the 4 novels that I've devoured.

But I suppose I have some similarities with Elminster than I would like to admit. I associate myself very much with Elminster in the way I handle many situations. Firm but with good intentions. I can be nasty as well which usually spells alot of trouble for me and the person I'm nasty to. And after reading this Quintology on Elminster, it almost serves as a reflection of my own character. And yes, like all guys I do secretly wish I could consort with every hot gal in a position of power. I'm drawn to knowledge like Elminster was and seek to understand the reason behind the actions that befall upon his world. He understands most matters at a much deeper understanding and isn't afraid to play dumb to get the answers he cannot attain on his own.

And I apply this to the way that I study now in my course. I don't necessarily play dumb, but I'm always looking confident for a reason. It's usually because I'm not afraid to make mistakes during lessons. Why? Because by making a mistake, you draw out the correct answers from the lecturer and the people around you. I believe in learning from anyone, especially those younger than me. It's when your young, that you have new perspectives and new ideas. It's not that I cannot generate them, but I am getting older and generate them at a slower pace. No doubt my ideas can come out alittle more polished than some of my peers, but that's not enough for me.

I can never have enough knowledge, it is once said that once your cup is full, you should pour away the contents and fill it up again. I sort of learn things in that manner as well. When I relearn something, I throw away all old concepts I used to have about the matter. That usually allows me to pick up the concept in a different manner and much faster than if I had stuck to my old style of thought with regards to the matter. Of course, not everyone is capable of developing such a style of learning. One first must master the fear of learning new things. When one gets older, one must also abolish the fear of making mistakes.

If you tried to learn a completely new topic while trying not to make a single mistake, you'd probably learn extremely little and would only get by with memorizing the entire textbook. But if you sought to learn the boundaries that this new subject can stretch into, your ability with your new found knowledge can exceed far beyond what the teacher's original intent. This is what drew so much attention to me back when I was in the Polytechnic. I sought to test the knowledge I earned during lessons by interacting with the lecturers and making some mistakes along the way. The teachers admited that I was a brilliant student but my final grades just never reflected this form of learning.

Perhaps if the education system worked in a slightly different manner. Right now the assumption is that if you get the correct answer, it is either because you have made enough mistakes while learning the subject matter to avoid getting the wrong answer. But it is obviously not the case with many of the students out there now. By over emphasizing the need to get a flawless answer, people have already forgone the method of learning from their mistakes. They have adopted the memorize and reguritate the model answer as form of survival. And by forcing the majority of the populace to adopt this method to learning, it's no wonder why we are so hard pressed to find creative minds in our society.

If one wants a creative mind, you cannot teach him by telling him that he can only follow one set model answer for every question. You have to allow him to test and experiment with the question to find out which answers are definately wrong and which ones can be plausible. It may seems rather counter productive in certain subjects such as math and physics. But on the contrary, it's even more desperately needed because of the growing applications that math and physics are being applied on today. Infact, all brilliant mathematicians can come up with their own variations of equations that are deemed to have only 1 way of solving a question. Without a creative mind, you can forget about getting a PHD in math or physics or almost any other subject matter.

To question authority is the basis of creativity. To question what is supposedly set down in "stone" is how people get to discover new things. If everyone continued thinking that the world was flat, did you think that we'd be a global society we are today? Rules are meant to be broken and broken completely and utterly. There must be no trace of the rule left behind to ensure the continued prosperity of humanity.

If the rule that the world was flat was an IRON CLAD rule, we have truly shattered and destroyed that rule that there is no trace but contempt for such an ideal. This is how we must view our current set of rules. How are some rules untrue and used to oppress creativity? These rules were not made with prejudice I know, but they unintentionally impede our growth. Thus we have to remove these obstacles before our mindsets can change as a species and move forward as a whole.

To have continued prosperity, our education system has to move from one that oppresses free form thought to one that promotes creativity. So that this new education system may give rise to minds that perfects cold fusion, longevity, cure for cancer, cure for aids, space travel and countless more advancements that are so badly impeded with our one tracked societal mindsets. If only we can release our minds from being trodden upon, can we truly advance into the future together and hopefully even be able to conquer space within a couple of generations.

The first step is to change the grading system either gradually or in phases. The grading system should abolish exams and concentrate on the learning process. When teaching a subject through correcting mistakes and telling them to try something else, one might be completely surprised at the possibilities that a supposedly one answer question might have. And thus grade the children according to how far can they infer about the subject matter after the exercise to test the limits to the distance that the child can think on the subject. When these children reach the university level, the human race will never have seen such mental ability in our entire history of humankind. It will far outstrip any of our predecessors and perhaps push humanity truly forward in the twenty first century.

Personally, I have learnt my way through life using this method and I'm sure some of the rebellious people out there have also taught themselves via this method. It becomes plainly obvious when it comes to testing our knowledge, that we are not afraid of learning from our mistakes and becoming smarter in the process. However, when you see the people that's brought up under the current education process, you'd see that when you test their knowledge. They will defend their points of view to the death without trying to understand whether or not the opposing point of view has any merit whatsoever.

And when it comes to invention of ideas and technology, you can tell right away if the inventor is creative or a dullard. If a true inventor's ideas get stolen or cheated away from him, he just creates a new invention that's just as innovative or even more innovative than the one that was stolen. But if it's a dullard, that invention would probably be his ONLY invention that would have ANY merit to society. Thus he will die defending his invention because he's totally incapable of coming up with more innovations to credit to his name. This is the sad story that plagues our scientific community.

Creative people should NEVER be isolated merely at the Arts and Humanities, they should be spread through out the spectrum because they are a benefit to every field of study. Creative people's point of view may simply revolutionize our way of handling space travel or the like. Think of the countless trillions of dollars that will be saved if we had a cheaper form of travelling to space safer and faster than our current technology. And that 1 million dollars saved everytime we need a pen because we use a pencil instead in space instead of developing pen that works in zero gravity. All I can say is, without creativity, the world is doomed to making dumb and expensive decisions while thinking that they are getting smarter when they are actually sinking into new depths of retardedness. Alauz OUT!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

God of Rain

Today is one of the stranger days in my life. I was supposed to have an interview at my school's management branch at 12pm. And thus I decided to go there early and have lunch because there's nothing to eat at home. I noticed the sky getting darker on the bus there and I thought nothing much of it. Normally the rain clouds like this take awhile to gather before raining. When I reached my stop later and walked towards the location of my interview I felt a very slight drizzle.

At first I thought nothing of it, but I pressed on faster. And as I changed from walking to running, the rain changed from a drizzle to a cascade of a waterfall. Before I knew it, in a matter of 30 seconds I was drenched head to toe. So I kept running towards the building I was supposed to have my interview, it was a mere 200m away from the bus stop. When I reached the main gates, the rain stopped almost completely as I stepped through it.

Then I wondered to myself, if I had angered a deity that commanded the rain somewhere. I went into the building and asked for the location of the nearest toilet, I had to get myself dried and check all my electrical objects to see if they were ruined. But thankfully, my handphone and laptop were in a waterproof slipcase and were fine. The notes and papers I was carrying in my bag were in another waterproof file and they decided to remain dry as well. I was beginning to feel thankful that I decided to waterproof the objects I bring to school for no particular reason last week.

And the incident didn't end there, after my interview with the wonderful Beatrice I left the building towards the bus stop so I can get back to school on time for classes. And as I stepped out of the gates, the drizzling started almost immediately. I moved with utmost haste to the bus stop just before another heavy downpour covered the area. I am either beginning to think that the sky is so wonderfully in sync with me that it really seems to wants to reward me with lots of drinking water.

And thus ends the strange happenings and interesting things to note for today. I can't seem to make up my mind about the lesson I had on Micro-Economics today, is it just me or does micro-econs seem alittle different from the last time I learnt it. Oh well, I suppose it's just the difference in the lecturer's style of doing things. Most people don't appreciate a hard working lecturer, well at least I can understand him and how he's attempting to bring econs to life. A pity his accent is too deep for most to understand him without paying close to absolute attention. Otherwise, he would definitely be a lecturer who'd have alot student support. And it's time for me to say farewell once again, new things to say the next time. Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Mystery, Suspense, Anti-climax

Thus the day started without much ado, with me clinging onto old mind chains. (Mind chains equals old mindsets duh!) I intrude into other people's lives far too often for their liking, sometimes too often for my own liking as well. To shatter the mind chains I so dearly cling onto as if they were succor of life itself, I decided to have a test of wills with my other self. What other self? Of course the very essence of this day started with my inner selves calling each other out their delusional mindsets.

How does one face his inner selves without breaking the hold on sanity? How does one assume the guise of sanity while the inner selves rage a bitter war for control of the shell that speaks? How will you know which of my selves are speaking right now? It seems that in the constant feud that battles within, it was inevitable that a more cohesive consciousness had to be formed and coalesed before the shell is shattered amidst the fierce battle within.

So who is writing this as we speak? It is I, the newest addition to the collection of souls deep within one's mind. I'm the one of balance and intrigue, the one that doesn't venture too far to the extremes. Although you may say that I've been like this for a long time, it's naught until today that I'm truly my own person. I am free from my inner battles as the good and the evil now are but struggling in the background while I took over. A balance to all things within, a moderate if you so wish to see.

I am no longer bound by the need to serve goodness with a blind fevor, no long irked by the evil doings of the beings beside me. I am no longer bound to be the evil that has to be, to be irked by the lack of mischief in the lives of others. I am truly me, a person who is finally free to do as he wishes. And my wish now? To rise to glory as the flames have heated the steel hot enough to strike! The world is red hot now, while I see all its kinks and flaws. I move ever so surely to strike at my goals, without my greatest enemy to stop me; Myself.

I suppose I've just breached the proverbial line where I kept telling myself never to breach. I just lost all sense of morality, or just the compulsion to good and evil. Today is both a day that was dreading and yet embraced as if it was nothing more than a simple change. Today is the day where I am a new person, reborn without the chains that have bounded me for so long. Hahaha, let's just hope the world doesn't burn to a cinder while I'm around. Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Thursday

And another week has almost past. A lovely week I suppose it is, lots of quizzes and business. And as for my utter enjoyment, comes an invitation to join the Virtual World Summit. I suppose it's nothing big, it's merely people talking about how our future's going to be affected by technology, entertainment and the games that we play. Nothing really earth shaking, IF your a ROCK.

I'm like so excited I'm going to be able to be involved in this summit. No doubt I'd only be an audience, but I'm allowed to ask questions! Questions are best asked when it provokes alot of thought. It doesn't have to be controversial or silly, it just has to make people think about what it means. I have asked a good many questions in my life and I only hope that I don't try and take everyone else's turn.

If my predictions are correct, I would have at least one question that would be answered. And if I'm lucky, probably I could ask up to three before they ban me from asking more. There are so many things I would want to know. What better opportunity, than to ask the people who are involved in the creation of our technological future? Oh glee, oh my, oh yes! I'm going to have so much fun. If words were like a sword to minds, perhaps my questions would be a form of ritualistic torture for thine.

I intend to encircle what is said, then come up with a question thus barbed and tender. Maybe if they answered, they'd barbeque a blender! Hahaha, enough nonsense said! Mayhap I should just go to bed? Nay! I got knowledge to gain! There's a fun thing called a quiz tomorrow, it's never getting me dead! Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Evil Vista

So it is proven, my mother's laptop has suffered much under Vista. And there seems to be a new problem that I discovered today. The laptop has started mysteriously going onto standby all by itself when I attempted to use it. And to make matters worse, the laptop came back from standby with no backlight. I somehow figured that by opening the laptop out to the maximum would help and viola, the lights came back on.

I thought that that was the end of it but I am to be proven wrong again. The occurance repeated itself over 10 times in a span of 3 mins soon after. I am seriously considering returning this laptop due to Vista screwing up the hardware. Even if it wasn't Vista's fault, there obviously is a gigantic problem on my hands if I don't return it. What if it start doing this non-stop when someone is attempting to use it? I'm testing the laptop right now, with and without the battery, on hard surfaces and soft surfaces, with the AC power and without the AC power while the battery is in. And my findings were that this problem happens in everyone of my scenarios. Since I got no school tomorrow, I'm definately bringing this laptop down to suntec tomorrow to get it changed.

And so ends a tiring day of handling stupid Vista computers yet again. Will it never end? Will I be doomed to have to face this retarded OS and faulty computers for the rest of eternity? Only time will tell but I don't think I'm going to want to find out. I wish everyone a Vistaless life. Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

It's official, Vista SUCKS!

I don't have anything to say about Vista that hasn't already been said by others. But at first I didn't want to believe all the downplay Vista has been having. I mean like I thought to myself, "Let's just give Bill a break and pretend that Vista is actually cool." But it seems that Vista is proving itself the number one enemy of simplicity. Perhaps if you guys have encountered Vista, you'd understand what I mean.

Okay, so how did it all happen? How did a sensible guy like me end up with Vista in the first place? Here's a long story short, my mother is a creature of impulses. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but yeah she saw this deal at Suntec today while we were taking her for a walk for an early mother's day and thought that it was a pretty good deal. I looked at the offer and yeah it was a GOOD deal but before I had a chance to ask my mother to reconsider, she was already deep into the haggling process. After about 30 mins, she settled on even more freebies that I thought was extremely impressive.

So after all that, we ended up with a laptop with Dual 1.6 Turion 64 bit processors, 2GB of ram, a lightscribe DVD-RW burner, 160 GB of hdd that came pre-installed with Windows Vista Basic and a 3 year next day on site pickup warranty; all for a mere $1449 dollars. While I was extremely pleased with my mother's persuasion skills, I was also worried about the complications that is bound to come up with a Windows Vista OS working in my house. The fact that I spent nearly 5 hours setting up the basic necessities of this laptop further emphasizes the downfall of the supposedly most user friendly version of Windows ever.

I don't really know if I should go into much details with regards to some of the incessant problems that plagued the Vista. One such irritant was the total unavailability of a simple way to access the command prompt. Coupled with the inability to view my in-built network card's MAC address without accessing the command prompt. This made the simple task of adding my laptop to my wireless router a task take a whopping 15 minutes of pure troubleshooting. I mean, when I spend more than 1 min doing a task that supposed to have taken 15 seconds, I seriously feel that there is a serious design flaw in Vista already.

Other problems include the completely retarded way that Vista maintains network connections. I have a Power Mac G4, 2 Desktop PCs, my mom's older laptop and my brother's Laptop that's currently utilizing my home network. Under XP and Windows 2000, every single one of my computers can access one another's shared folders with no problems whatsoever. Yes, even mac has no problems sharing files with any other computer. The problem with Vista? You cannot even see the other computers on the network because of their new LLTD detection protocol. I mean like what drugs were the people at Microsoft taking to come up with a totally non-backward compatible network detection protocol that completely alienates any other operating system that doesn't possess it?

So with a total inability to even detect my other computers, I was simply flabbergasted for a moment. I honestly don't enjoy the idea of plugging out my printer in my room just to plug it into my mother's new laptop to print a simple document. I searched the net for a suitable solution. Thankfully, I found the solution in about 30 seconds. The solution was relatively retarded as well. For my both XP Desktops to be detected, I had to download a patch for the XP SP2. This patch would install an XP version of the LLTD so that Vista computer could detect them on the private network.

Oh and did I mention that if you had a 1000 computers in your network, you'd have to download and install this patch 1000 times just for 1 SINGLE Vista computer to work with everyone in your network? In computing terms, this monumentally backward step in compatibility only gives me the impression that Microsoft is getting incompetent beyond mortal understanding.

So right now, my Vista computer is supposed to have networking capabilities with both my XP desktops right? Once again Vista has to prove to me that it's retarded capabilities could only get more moronic as I try to attempt simpler and simpler features. I could connect without problems with my XP desktop connected to my printer. (Thank God!) But I couldn't for the love of all that's holy, connect to my other XP desktop. I tried remote logins, turning on the guest account on the desktops, logging in as an administrator and even tried logging in without a user name or password. Nothing works. So right now, my Vista computer can only connect to one computer in my home networks of 2 desktops, 1 Power Mac G4 and 2 other laptops.

I simply cannot understand how Microsoft, who has more money than several small 3rd world countries can come up with such a flawed product design. Have they started resorting to hiring monkeys that only work for peanuts to do their design flow of the work processes in day to day Windows Operations? Or have they decided to screw the world over by forcing everyone to upgrade to Vista or die a horrible death of attempting to solve never ending networking nightmares? My money is on hiring incompetent monkeys who work for peanuts. Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Official Weekend

Time to actually let loose alittle. I had actually focused 100% on studying, working out and actually forgot to play computer games for 5 days since last Sunday. Haha, nah I never really forgot to play my computer games and stuff, it's just that I simply didn't have the time to enjoy a proper 14 hour marathon of gaming. Yeah, sounds like alot of fun right? 14 FREAKING hours of non-stop high adrenaline gaming! But if that happens this weekend, it means that I'd be in a mini-coma after the deed is done. Definately a no-no when it's only past the first week in school.

So what now? My brain feels like it's trying to destroy itself because of the sheer amount of work I'm suddenly piling up. And as for my body? It's been accepting the new daily regime of jogs quite well, perhaps I should increase the intensity for next week. Perhaps I'd add 1 more set on the circuit or something. I suppose it's something I would eventually do anyways.

What do I have to say to all of you whose weekend has arrived? Go and relax, not too much drinking because I want all your livers intact so that I can go destroy when I have time. Hmmm, it seems that this weekend would be a rather quite one with regards to blog time. But who knows? Maybe you'd see more of me tomorrow if I decide that I want to bore you people somemore. And here's the part where I say good night! Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Relationship help from a textbook?

Strange as it may sound, there seems to be a whole chapter on helping people manage their relationships and look at the multitude of ways to create, maintain, salvage and even break away from personal relationships in supposed comparison to actual communication models. It kind of led my imagination out for a joyride. Did the author compare it to a relationship because it was a book meant for North America and they have an easier time understand the concept of interpersonal communications in terms of a couple's relationship? Or is it because that the author was a female thus because females find it easier to relate this to a couple's relationship?

Because seriously as a GUY/MALE/DOM, I don't relish biting into such analogies. She did mention near the end of the chapter that other cultures have a different take on interpersonal relationships, so I shall be more forgiving. But since this is THE textbook that I'm supposed to work with, I really got to be at the very least semi-critical about the approach to this subject matter. If I had decided that because of her analogy of a loving couple to start the melding of the models to the actual processes, I almost could feel myself naseate to the point of almost puking.

Perhaps it's because I'm Asian and that I'm not totally accustomed to the intimacies of the Western culture. But the very notion of self-disclosure screams at my inner soul. I can only make out one sound of my soul's screams, "BLASPHEMY!". I personally find it unnerving to have this inner self suddenly voicing out it's opinion uninitiated. I normally have to search deep within myself to know if I deeply agree or disagree with an idea. Perhaps this is why I'm writing this entry even though I've only read that single chapter tonight. It's disagreeing so violently inside me, that I just simply have to talk about it to balance myself.

Is it because of my cultural conditioning? My gender conditioning? Or even the conditioning I received as a writer? I read about these cultural and gender conditioning from the earlier chapters and it probably does explain some of the reactions I'm having now. But I still find it difficult to swallow the fact that such a simple judgement can cause me to fall so far from balance. Perhaps despite that I primarily disagree with the writer on her approach on things, I'm more disgusted with my own lack of acceptance of another culture.

I can finally picture why the Japanese found it so easy to treat their conquered nations like 2nd class citizens without any sense of guilt or conscience. How do I come to that conclusion? I just took the feeling I just got when I disagreed with author of my textbook and applied it to another culture such as the Japanese. I applied their notion of feeling compassion for those that they oppress and it's in their culture to dominate. They just won't feel a thing for the people that they have conquered.

I think I just found out first hand how our cultures are such a huge hinderance towards learning. Another side of me just realized I just lost a whole chunk of naviety and innocence. In the understanding this fact, I also accept that the world will never accept my point of view no matter how logical or proper I position my point of view. This is one of those fact that you actually wished you never learnt. It's a painful revelation and I suppose my mind's calming down abit. I leave this post with a grim realization, I have a mind that's setting faster than I want it to. It's time for me to expand my horizons as fast as I possibly can to pound it back into mush. Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow

Too much of something

And here I am awake in the darn morning after sleeping later than the prescribed time last night. What time did I get up? 7 freaking AM. Sigh, this is becoming a problem. It's like regimentalization only except that I'm doing it on my own. Anyways, perhaps if there's any of my uni-mates reading this. It'd be nice to note that while I can be quite the workaholic, I can also be rather unpredictable. Like what I'm about to do today, might cause a small raise of the eyebrows laters.

Don't worry, it won't be something crazy like parading around screaming and shouting. That's something I reserve only for the army. Perhaps it's my warped sense of humour, perhaps it's just my non-existant fashion sense. But you'd see later what I mean haha... OPPS! I got something cooking over the fire right now, be right back!

Now that breakfast is almost done, I suppose I got to add that studying is serious work. I mean like reading is fun and all, but when you have to like take notes and stuff the fun level drops by fifty percent. Haha, I don't mind writing at all. But taking notes is not really writing, it's more like putting your thoughts on the chapter down without anyone else but you to judge your own work. Where's the fun in that?

Hmmm, maybe some of you be wondering what a guy like me will make for breakfast? Leftovers in the fridge of course! Hahaha, nah just joking. I kinda made bradwursts today because there was a special purchase order last night. Incidentally, there shouldn't be a breakfast without fiber! So lots of fiber with a mystery ingredient. There isn't much guessing required, it's without a doubt an apple! Yeah, made a list of things to get last night and had someone to do the shopping for me.

Well, I got to go and set the table up and stuff. I'd leave you with a morning chirp. *Chirp*
Alauz OUT!

Depravation
Sleep is like a lullaby,
Always soothing while it lasts.
Sleep is like a lullaby,
Awfully painful when you rise.
Sleep is like a lullaby,
Anyone can do it till they die.
Sleep is like a lullaby,
Alittle bit is not advised.

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow