Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Monday, July 30, 2007

寂寞猫来伴

周末一早就被屋外的升降机警铃惊醒。

没心再睡下去,匆匆换了衣服就往屋外走。去到升降机坪看到原来是升降机故障, 把隔壁的老邻居给困住。 有个住二楼的阿姨说已打了电话给维修公司,可是等了半天依然苍蝇也看不到一只。我亲自再打了一通,然后跟那阿姨说我去买报纸,回过头时如果维修员还没来我再打。

早上的天气不赖,可是老天爷最近就常愁眉苦脸,就算不下雨也很难看到太阳。 回到去时老邻居已给人救出来,我松了一口气, 开始想这星期六应怎么过。

找蜗牛出来?打了电话给他, 洗着衣服。 约了时间我便往外逛。

不想找 girlie cat 了。。。他妈的,对她好就吊高来卖。 “唯小人与女子难养也“,孔夫子这老头儿几百年前肯定吃过女人亏,不然不会有感而发。后生小子岂可不慎乎?

这次我去找住斜对面的大黄猫, 他看到我可不得了啦,对我大声招呼,十分亲热,就只差没捧他主人的啤酒来请我喝。


哥儿们就应有哥儿们的玩意儿。 我找了一根短绳,放在地上做滚动状,大黄看到立刻眼放精光,野性大发,追着绳子又咬又踢,好几次差点就把我老人家的手指做了点心。

我拉着绳子在五脚基跑,而大黄在我身后追。跑了一回,轮我追他时,大黄却赖在地上装死猪,死拖硬推就是不肯跑。我没法,虽然不怀好意的想拖他洗个大澡,看看时间也不早,只能作罢。

不了解女人。。。 girlie cat 或。。。 那 girlie kak 我到现在怎都不懂。 无能为力。。。

ToDo

  1. To have ToDo...

Friday, July 27, 2007

How To Talk Like A Politician (Part 1)

Introduction:
This installment sets out to introduce the infinite wisdom of the politicians in a fictional place called Boleh-Land, where everything is possible, say, magically turning the capital city into Venice after moderate rain.

Example:
"The rise of police reports is due to Boleh-Land people are more crime conscious and more brave to report to the authority" - a politician's reply when asked to comment on the recent spike in crime numbers

His Main Point:
1. Number of crime rate has not increased, thus he pushed the accusation of "the crime rate has shot up" aside

Points He Shunned:
1. The question on the absolute number which is high in any measure. As expected, he did once again compare with other messier countries. "We are much better than country X where people need to hire gun men to protect themselves. You are very blessed as you have dedicated police force for you. You are still robbed and raped? Well, too bad, don't expect the government to patrol in front of your house everyday, OK? "

Now the more interesting part: Application. Note this application is something that I have seen or heard personally. Really no play play one. Ok, here we go.

How to Apply:

Scenario: The project you design has a lot of 'issues' and these bugs are found by the test engineer or/and customers. What do you say when confronted by fuming boss?

Steps:
  1. Before you start, shake your head slowly as if your boss has asked a silly question
  2. Stare in his/her eyes, and say slowly "No no no, you don't understand."
  3. "I didn't inject any new defects in the design. See, the test engineer and customer are more acquainted with the product after working extensively with me. Therefore, they have a deeper insight on the product and the issues just surface more quickly. There is no new defects."
  4. If your boss isn't convinced, say "In fact, these are new features that are yet to be documented. The specs are out-dated."
  5. Turn your face away from your boss and keep working, leaving your appalled boss on the spot to repent for the silly question asked.
Final note: Use at your own risk

Monday, July 23, 2007

On Pasir Ris


Pasir Ris is at the east side of Singapore, close to the sea.

Last Sunday I went to Tampines and casually hopped to the MRT and arrived Pasir Ris.

Right next to the MRT station are 3 fishing ponds: main pond, pro pond, and hehe pond.

These names are very interesting, especially the last one: hehe pond. 'Hehe' is the laughter which implies you will be happy if you fish there, 'for kids', I thought. The 'pro pond' sounds like a place that is very challenging and exciting. The fish could be very hard to catch.

I went closer to see and found out the main pond is the largest pond, followed by pro with about quarter of the main pond, and the hehe pond is only roughly measured 6' x 8'.

I was a little bit confused, pros should take more challenges, why the pond is getting smaller? Is there are only 3 fish inside? After some investigations it seems pros for this place like the easy way out and indeed pro pond has the same amount of fish like the main pond, with its smaller size, the density is way higher. The hehe pond pushes this to the extreme by literally stuffing the fish into the pond.

"Losers", I told myself. This place reminds me of an emperor in old days China. He was a lousy archer but liked to hunt anyway, so he ordered his soldiers to get some deers, confined those animals in a small place and shot them with arrows. However a loser he was, sometimes he still missed. Pissed, he asked the soldiers to hold spears to goad the animals closer to him. The hehe pond really reminds me of this emperor.

Hereby I rename the pond: Loser Pond.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Deep Slumber

I woke up early today at 6:45a.m. to jog in the Bedok Reservoir Park. It is refreshing to exercise in the morning and gives me a better sleep at night.

After shower and breakfast I went to work and saw this cat sleeping in a very cozy posture


Some people may think this looks like a dead cat. Nope, its leg was even kicking slightly when I took this picture. Wonder what it had in its dreams? :)

Thursday, July 19, 2007

They Didn't Study

After long nights of studies, you are in the exam hall and sitting in front of the test paper. Though the test questions look somewhat familiar, your brain isn't in the right mood to function and you are not sure how to answer.

OR

You just goofed off and didn't study at all.

What will you do?

Let's look how others dealt creatively when they are stuck in exams here.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

End of Day Thoughts

  • Bad Mood: I was not in a good mood starting from lunch. When the clock struck 6, I just couldn't sit still anymore. What was wrong? It could be the earlier company-wide meeting about our company's screw ups financial challenges, or it could due to someone somehow still decides not to talk to me, or the haze from Indonesia which struck Asia again, or my stomach was empty and I was hungry. The last reason was the culprit I felt. At once I stood up, rushed out the office, ordered a bowl of noodle and ate it as if I had no food for ten years. The noodle resolved my problem and everything is in order now. Now I just need to figure out how to get that girlie someone to talk to me....
  • On technology: I watched Linus' talk given at Google on git. Linus is not only a good programmer, he speaks quite well also. Git sounds a promising source control system. If you use cvs or svn regularly and find these tools are good, go ahead a take a look what Linus has to say. ;)

Monday, July 16, 2007

I Owe You What?

I read with amusement on the statistics of US trade deficit with China is growing at a whopping US$20 billion per day. Yes, it is per day. Now US is mired in a deep deep abyss of debt (trade deficit is debt, on top of the budget deficit for funding war in Iraq...).

Is China really the culprit causing US in such huge debt? Actually no, the wars that it has engaged are.

Why can't the countries live in harmony? Greed and fear? I don't know.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

iPod, You, Lightning Storm

A 37-year-old Canadian man was serious injured while he jogged in thunderstorm while listening to iPod. The detail is here.

I just came across an article which I feel obliged to post it here so that my dear readers: one who likes to cycle around in Korea and cause noise pollution at the same time by singing; and another one is also an avid cyclist who may still do cycling in Singapore with some media player possibly from her father (actually I am not sure if her father really gave her an iPod during her birthday, neither could I sure that iPod can store all music from her CDs)

Mathematically: E (iPod, you, Thunder storm) => (you, fried)

English: if there exist: iPod, you, and thunder storm, it implies you will be fried

Nah, no need to thank me, or what are friends for?

But if you really insist, do send me a Mac Book Pro and make sure it comes with 2Gb of RAM.

Additional cash or check is optional.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

I come, I see, I bowl

Our supplier invited us for a bowling tournament recently, obviously it has earned a lot from our business and wants to make sure we won't run away to its competitors.

The game was fun and there were even trophies, though they spelled our company name wrongly. Ouch!

The artistic picture was taken by shaky hands after 3 games of bowling. It looks superb, I know.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Slaying the Dragon


Generations of compiler writers have used the Dragon book, either in college or at work, partly because it is well-written, and partly because there wasn't many choices then anyway. Since this book is written by academia, its level of readability I conjectured was on par with the phone directory, but I am glad this conjecture is not valid in this aspect. In fact, the new edition is very readable.


What is shown above is the cover of the second edition of the book, which I bought recently from Clementi bookstore. At least this dragon book is an interesting read, to the point after work everyday I still will pick it up and read a few pages.

On the surface I seem very busy, deep down in my heart I still miss MAK.

I keep hearing the little Cuppa in my head asking "What if she is out there and you only need to email her one more time.......?"

Monday, July 09, 2007

Really, There Is No One Out There

"Really, there is no one out there."

My head kept on echoing these words on my way back from Bugis Junction.

This stems from last Christmas while I visited Singapore. I thought MAK was in Singapore, I tried very hard to get in touch with her, just to meet up with her.
When everything failed, I went back to Penang depressed. My mood hit an all-time low, to the point my body immunization mal-functioned. In the midst of a particular night, a thought flashed through: "Maybe.., there is no one out there."

So it goes a few months and the thought starts to gain more ground.

Last Saturday I made one more try, and emailed her for a movie. As usual, there was no reply from her end. Instead, I got an anonymous blank email which I always naively assumed those are her 'responses'.

When the tickets were booked, I planned to tell Mr. Snail I would not be available on Saturday. But I was struck by the thought again, the thought there is no one out there and everything is fictional. Since Mr Snail knew the story between I and her, I told him my plan. To be honest, he never believes this relationship exists, let alone it will work. Still he was kind enough to agree as a back up, just in case if MAK didn't show up ('probability of showing up is 0.0001', he said).

I arrived Bugis around two. Before that I stopped at Kallang to gaze upon the canal, and observed briefly a big brown cat drinking water by the roadside.

Maybe I sounded quite serious on the possibility of her showing up, Mr. Snail brought along two friends so that he had company if I was with her. At around 4:20, we two stood near the elevator at the Cineplex floor, overseeing the lower floors. With my prior experiences, I expected the worst, though I still hoped I could
be right. People came, people left, no hit. It ended up I went in the theater with Mr. Snail (the two other guys went in first).

On my way home, I tried not to think about this, but that night was proven long and bitter. Many thoughts hovered around the room: the emotions, the feelings, and all the memories.

"I am exhausted...", I heard myself saying

"Really, there is no one out there"

I know I have to bite the bullet and accept the reality. How long can I live in self-denial?

So far my story sounds naive, if not silly. I admit it is.

The reason I have been doing this is I don't want to wreck a potential relationship for some solvable factors like miscommunications, or just for some stupid ego. I don't want to leave any regret in my later years to learn the relationship didn't work out just because I didn't say "I love you" frequent enough, I didn't coax convincingly enough, or I didn't pursue her hard enough while she had been waiting.
I can't afford to leave any stone unturned. No matter how small the chance is, I want to try.

"Really, there is no one out there". Now I know, and I am learning to accept.

On a happier note: To move on, I plan to start dating again. :D

Stay tuned...

Friday, July 06, 2007

What Pole is This Pole?

A few days when I waited to cross the road, a little sign on the lighting pole caught my attention. "Lycorpole", sounds very advanced, is Lycor a special type of material?



I searched the web and found out Lycorpole is a brand name by a Malaysian company. Stood corrected :)

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

On Me, Myself, and Cuppa

A random note :-

  1. On Transformers: Mr. Snail asked why Bolehons should transform into ducks. Well, saying they can transform in to autonomous robots is something no one will believe. Those guys in Proton don't seem competent enough to assemble the basic Lego set properly, let alone robots. Becoming cats is an insult to felines, which may cause all the girlie cats in my neighborhood to hate me. Duck is the most apt animal Bolehons could transform to.
  2. On my techie stuff: Recently I didn't blog much about technical stuff. There are a few reasons, first is my beloved Linux box is not with me and I have to live with a Windoze box with a somewhat broken Cygwin environment. Duh. The second reason is I am currently doing some intense kernel porting work. Since this is something to do with business intelligence, I am not in liberty to divulge much. Of course, exceptions always exist, say a treat of bottles of beer and some good food, then I will tell you how the timer interrupts work. Oops... did I say anything? :P
  3. On investment: I just opened an account to trade SG shares. No progress on this front yet.

Monday, July 02, 2007

Battle of Metal Clumps

In the weekend I went to watch Transformers in Bugis. The executive summary is a one-liner:

It's a battle between clumps of metal for a piece of metal

The longer version is: Once upon a time, there was a group of good metal clumps, calling themselves Autobots. As usual, there was another group of bad metal clumps called the Decepticons. To make this story relevant, they choose planet earth as a place to screw around and are condescend enough to be vehicles, more specifically, they choose to be vehicles in America where the emission control standard is high, and the gas price is expensive. Also note the Transformers series were created mostly by Japanese.

I am still conjecturing with the current technology of GM, can those robots transform properly without losing some parts every time in between the transformations.

Back to the movie, the special effects are horrendous as I spent a lot of effort to differentiate which metal pieces should belong to which robot, and if the loosen piece is a kill, or just a normal transformation. When I got out from the cineplex, my mind boggled with a lot of metal pieces. So much for Transformers.

As a patriotic person, I strongly encourage our national car maker participate and sponsor the making of Transformer 2. In this installment, the third tribe will be added. For lack of better description, I propose let's call it Bolehons. The script shall go this way: these tribe is quite peaceful in nature, and are Proton cars in disguise. Upon transformation, which happens usually for useless reasons like wanting to enter the Book of Guinness, they will just turned into ducks. Yelling 'Proton Boleh!' during transformation is optional.

In view of the technology level Bolehons are currently wielding, Decepticons and Autobots are advised to stay a safe distance during Bolehons' transformations, as they may turn into roasted ducks.

You are warned.