Sleep...eat...whatever...

Lets see, according to my calculations I stayed awake for...


OMG! 63 hours!!!! But I must admit that I wasn't alert for probably 1/2 the time I was awake with my eyes open. Catching little catnaps in between (in which the longest lasted for 45 minutes) did help though.

Cigarettes help as well.

Carl's Jr. Makes the best burgers, period. I seriously always enjoy the Bacon Double Western thingamajig.
It wasn't as messy as I thought it would've been though. I'm getting skilled @ burger munching. Anyway, dinner with KXXZ was great but sometimes I wonder if she really enjoys my company. Well, I guess I'd have to keep wondering.

There are TV series and then there's "The West Wing"...I've always enjoyed watching stuff written by Aaron Sorkin.

I must say that it did become less witty and interesting after the departure of Sorkin at the end of the fourth season. Naturally, their ratings took a nosedive as well. Of course there will be some fans out there of the series that are trying to get NBC to continue probably to like the 10th season or something.

How many times have I watched an rewatched the series...it's time I completed my collection and bought season 7...the final. I must say though that I think not enough credit has been given to the casting director because without such a great cast, it wouldn't be as good.

Oh well, sometimes, things just fall into place for no apparent reason and they also sometimes fall apart for no apparent reason.

I STILL LOVE MY MacINTEL!

I'm gonna start a section on "New Word of the day".

Today's new word is : Anthropomorpic

MacIntel...Hahaha!

Yeap...it's just another day. Amazingly, I had dinner with KXXZ @ Botak Jones. According to KXXZ, the hungry one will get his/her food last. In the case of today, her prediction came true. So I was enjoying myself stuffing her with chips from my Hot Dog set.

It was a rather good dinner actually. It also gave me the opportunity to flip flop and pour out my frustrations over the past few days, weeks, months and years. At least she can offer a listening ear which is really nice.

Dinner ended on a pretty good note for me although I keep wondering if that was true for her as well. In any case, I shall learn from Commander Taggart (of NSEA Protector) to "Never Give Up, Never Surrender!".

Lets see what happens after...

I did mention to her though that to live a moment of happiness is better than not to have experienced that happiness at all.

Oh...I've got my Mac X86 wireless working by using the D-Link DWL-G122 USB


I've also got an external speaker hooked up to the Travel Pac USB Audio device because the internal SoundMAX 1986 card doesn't seem to have any Mac drivers. So, the Philips speakers are doing their job pretty well.



So the final setup of the Asus A8Fseries laptop running Mac OS X 10.4.9 looks kinda like this:

Big Ass TV

Well, not as big as my old projector but 40 inches is pretty decent don't you think?

Went down to collect the "free gift" of an LG Home Theatre System only to find out that the wait was over an hour. Also, the friggin box is HUGE!

Word of advice to marketing managers out there...it's a bad idea to let 3rd parties handle freebie collections. RewardsLink was the place to go collect the HT set. Guess what? The queue of over an hour was also due to the fact that they were friggin understaffed. Out of 5 counters available, only 2 were manned. Can you imagine?

Obviously, the other three counters are meant to look impressive and serve no other purpose.

I feel that LG should've allowed people to collect their so-called "free gifts" wherever they purchased the principle product from. That would save a huge hassle of going downtown, thus incurring furter costs (such as parking, ERP and transport) to pick up the product.

Also, they ought to have a warning to inform people of the size of the box the HT system came in...most were taken by surprise. The fact that the collection place was so understaffed meant that customers couldn't get a hand in bringing the product to their cars.

The hotline? Gosh, I don't know why they even bother with it. It's impossible to get through and if you ask me, it's probably because they've left the phone off the hook...

Oh well...this is called service HAHAHA!

Night Shift...

It's the night shift in the studios again...

Oh...and I recently grabbed the picture taken by Vincent (Nightlife Sg - my namesake) of us guys @ Double-O for the Kawaii event.



Quite a good night for the three of them and Damian got sabo-ed by us too! Hahaha!

In any case, the night shift affords me some time between doing maintenance and writing my blog. I've also got this other photo of myself playing DJ in the OAS.



I'm still wondering what it is about me that makes me attracted to the wrong people...Oh well...I'll have to keep wondering I guess.

Out of it...

I'm so freaking out of it that everything's an eye opener for me now.

What am I referring to? The clubbing scene that is...

I guess after abstinence for so long, it's only fair to say that I'm no longer with the 'in' crowd. Things are gonna change though cuz tonight at Double-O, I began to realise what I've missed for the past couple of years.

Time for me to move back into the scene before I pass my use-by date. Hah! It was good fun today with D taking the stage and making a fool of himself infront of all of us (and for the benefit of some girls). I say girls because women and ladies would probably not find him as attractive. Youth has its benefits I suppose...

Damn, I sound like a grumpy old man now...

Suckers...

Sometimes, I just wonder what will make me learn the lesson...

Am I such a masochist? or just plain suckered?

When matters of the heart are concerned, I guess I'll never learn from the past. It's kinda like a cycle which happens to me once a year or more...

Lets see....it started post-puberty when I was 14 and it's been having it's semi-annual cycle...

As usual, in the end I get burned but what do I do? Never give up hope...geez.

Such is the power of nature and instinct that I doubt if I'll ever stop. Heh....

Sometimes I wonder...

If I'm placed so low on the "strategically important" list of people that they tend to forget that I exist...

In any case, the dust has pretty much settled on how I feel so it's of little consequence to anyone out there. I just got back from getting a new backup drive which is 500gigs...at least now I can copy the stuff over from the 320 gig drive that I got that's a little defective.

In any case, my tossup now is...should I get another 300gig drive as a replacement? Do I really need that much space?

Yeah, the mind boggling things that I think about. I'm beginning to feel that 1 terabyte ain't enough for all the stuff I had...minus the 120 gigs that I lost when my friggin Seagate died on me. Not to mention the fact that even though I purchased the HDD in 2003, the warranty started from 2002 which means that its 5 years are up. Dammit.

Contradictions...

"Woman's at best a contradiction still." - Alexander Pope

It's strange that one would contradict oneself without knowing it. Perhaps given the situation, one might not realize the contradiction at that point in time.

Women and time are contradictions. One complains about another forgetting the time after falling asleep yet while having a conversation with another friend, she forgets the time herself.

Having passed on other appointments on a saturday night I was eager to at last be able to spend more time together. But alas, it was not to be. Oh well, I shall be magnanimous and say that it's okay, and that it happens especially when conversations about the heart, family and relationships are concerned...NOT!

It was a sore spot I guess which ruined an entire evening for me. Having spent hours driving around wandering aimlessly while waiting for "the call' which never came to be. I guess it's the kinda thing that happens to me more than to others.

The person in question would obviously be reading this and might or might not be bothered about the fact that I was. I guess I did make good use of the earlier time I spent waiting grabbing some songs from my CD collection and compiling them into 1 disc. At least it wasn't a complete waste of my evening...

Aristotle...

"Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."

However, in this case, it should read

"Improbable possibilities are to be preferred to probable impossibilities."

Confused? Yeah you ought to be. This is almost exactly how I felt after having a conversation tonight. Now I won't go into details as to the conversation per se but suffice it to say, that I was probably more confused after it than before it. This is begging for another quote "Post Hoc, Ergo Procter Hoc" or "After it, therefore because of it"

Once again, I am left with a greater dilemma than ever; but as someone very close has mentioned very recently that, "matters of the heart are both confusing and complicated." I couldn't agree more except that my heart is very clear, so is my conscience but I'm confused as to the reaction I received.

In any case, I have no choice but to keep pursuing the matter I suppose until one day, it can be resolved. I need more resolve than what I have now so it's time for high resolutions. Hahaha!

Interestingly as well, I was dropped a bombshell in that that particular heart belongs to another. Well, the ironies in life never stop and fail to amuse me. For once I thought things were great and well...as usual, it got worse again.

C'est la vie, eh?

What's going on?

Things are falling into place, 1 piece at a time. But matters of the mind and heart are pretty different. How does one regard the confusion that sets in when matters of the heart are concerned? It's close to impossible.

But then, impossible is possible with an im....

Does one draw courage from knowing the fact that matters of the heart can and often destroy friendships?

It's such a catch 22...

Power sial!

Hey...it's been a while since I've updated this page. Many apologies to my faithful readers out there. It's been a pretty hectic couple of weeks really. With the job interview that lasted for 3 hours, the contract signing which took another 2, and the super rush to start the job (within 3 days of signing the contract).

That didn't give much time for it to sink in...that I'm now at least getting paid on a regular basis. Hahaha!

The pay was a little disappointing but it doesn't matter cuz it'z the working environment that's important (well, at least it is to me). The people are nice and friendly and even the big boss gave me a nice first-day talk which is pretty rare here.

I must say that I enjoyed my first day at the station so it looks like a good start.

Hope everyone's been doing well too!

Stomp slamming Singaporeans?

When Stomp, The Straits Times' Online portal was launched, I believed that it was an interesting way of getting the news. From people out there who can be on location where things are happening as they are happening.

After some time, I started realising that channels such as "What Bugs Me", "Caught in the Act", "Ugly Commuters", "Motoring Goondus" and "Singapore Sotongs" also are beginning to serve other purposes. One of them being to serve individual "self-righteousness" by posting their peeves about what others do.

To a further extent, it being hosted on the Internet means that what peeves these people have are actually spread around the world.

Should we be supporting this slamming of our own country? I suppose that shame might teach us the lesson of becoming more civic minded and socially responsible but I doubt it will have a lasting effect. Look at what CWO (Corrective Work Order - for littering) has become? Initially, the newspaper coverage and all led to littering offenders being publicly shamed but that was at the initial stage when public interest was high. Now, they don't even bother reporting when CWO is being carried out so what shame is there? It's more like serving a public service sentence now more than anything.

Which is probably whey SPH shouldn't bother keeping those channels in Stomp unless all they're interested in are page view dollars.

Writer's block...

Here I am, instead of trying to write something useful for the mag publisher (which is due in there morning), blogging instead. What's there to blog about?
Dunno really. Spent most of the day wasting away @ C&C Alexandra trying to get the power window fixed.
A job that's supposed to take ½ an hour took closer to 4½hours! :P Why you might ask? Because, they had the part but it was in some warehouse somewhere and they have to get it sent over.
I mean, c'mon...how big is this tiny red dot that we live in? 4 hours to get it? I could've driven myself to the warehouse to collect it and bring the darn thing back for them to replace for pete's sake.
Oh well...at least it wasn't a TOTAL waste. They had a decent enough internet connection with PCs for customers to use so I spent most of my time there trying to sell off stuff that I no longer needed or used...
And all that for what? So that I can pour more into squeezing out more from the car.
Granted it's freakin' ugly but hey, at least it's got a decent motor in it that can punch out some serious torque. One of the guys in our group's already running a dyno proven 300+Nm of torque.
I just realised that feelings that've been buried deep down and left unnoticed can surface with a vengence. Right now I feel pretty crappy which is why I'm banging on the keyboard trying to write something sensible. Ah...to want to write it down yet want to keep it in confidence. That's a major contradiction that I've got to get over. tough but hey, I'm a tough guy ain't I?

Boost

Ever since whenever, I've dreamt of owning a turbocharged car. Now that I've managed to get one, it's as fun as I expected it to be and more.
Being able to tweak the car is even more fun. For the past six months, I've been debating with other owners of the same model of car regarding the issue of Boost Cut. Tonight, after some thought, a little online research and some experimenting, I've finally sorted it out.
Where previously we were limited to 0.8bar of boost, my ride is now capable of 1.2bar which is decent to say the least.
Well, lets just hope that the engine holds out.

Almost half a year on...

If life were a computer game, and I was a character in it, I'd say that the past 10 months or so has given me at least a ton of experience points. However, life is not a computer game (much to my dismay) and experience comes from painful lessons.

Needless to say, the ups and downs just keep coming with downs coming more and more often.

I sold the good ole Mazzy and got myself a Mitsu this time round. It's uglier but at least it outperforms the Mazzy by a huge margin. You'd think that I'd be all excited etc and blog about an event as significant as this but events were happening around me that were bigger than that.

In any case, these couple of weeks have been up weeks so I'm blisfully enjoying myself. I just hope that the downs don't come as hard as they did in Nov/Dec. I don't think I can bear another downer like that.

I was tough getting over it but yeap, I found strengh in myself and worked my way out of the pit. Now, I find someone relatively close to me falling into the same pit and it's a little scary to think that that was how I was 5 or 6 months ago. The only consolation I can give this person is to jump into that pit with him and show him the way out. After all, I've been there before and have an idea of what's inside.

I would should try to update this more often but being as lazy as I am, there will definitely be times where I'll ignore it completely. I just hope that it hasn't put people off reading whenever there are new posts (not that I get alot of readership anyway).

Now, on to commenting other things going on around...

STOMP, the Straits Times web portal for reporter wannabes seems to be getting a pretty decent load of traffic (which I play a part in contributing as well - traffic, not posts). In any case, I'd say it's the best way to get people to do their work for them...for free too.

All they have to do is follow-up after the initial report is posted. How about that! If not for the pathetic speeds, I'd say it's quite an entertaining sight seeing how we're so "concerned" about the people around us. Hahaha!

Well, that's about it for now. Nothing much else to say heh.

Hmm...Upgrades

This picture was taken in 2003 January 16 1519hrs


And this one, 2006 July 12 1143hrs

Obviously the guy has upgraded...keeping up with the times I must say. I guess it wouldn't be nice to post his car number plate on the web so I've deleted it but based on prefix and suffix, you can see that it's the same car...

And both times, he zoomed past me. :P There have been other instances whereby I've seen the same car...for example, last month, I saw the Lancer that ended up in the ditch along Stevens Road with the same guy (in the picture)driving it.

I didn't have enough time to grab a photo though, unfortunately but sufficed to say, the car was repaired.

Okay, so that's about it for my blogging tonight. Just thought I'd share these little interesting coincidences with my readers (if you're still here).

Technology

You gotta love new technology. It makes one feel like a professional providing the opportunity of "instant replay". It also makes things a heck of a lot more affordable than before.

I find it quite amazing that the younger generation's only opportunity to see what used to be common domesticated farm animals such as a chicken running loose would be at the zoo. Younger generation would equal youths that are below twenty this year. Born circa 1986.

Nothing much was accomplished this week or last. I guess it's time to get off the old butt and start working again. Things might be easier if I had an idea of what everything was about. In any case, it's time to get moving.

A Good Time?

Someone must've have had a good time last night. The evidence left behind is way to compelling. Although I must add that it must've been physically uncomfortable for the floor is cold, hard concrete/ceramic tile.

At least they practiced SAFE SEX...

There's always this thrill of making out and getting naked in public I suppose. That the idea of the possibility of being caught is there. It just turns some people on. But the least they could do is clean up afterwards...the lift was littered with used tissue paper...probably remnants of the activities which included the contents of the wrapper left behind.

Well, whoever's the one that scored, the best muffins and bagels are on their way!

Why oppose?

Not being the ruling party doesn't necessarily mean that one MUST oppose the ruling party. So why are they called the "opposition"?

If I had a political party and if the incumbent kept calling me "opposition", I'd want to set the record straight. I would want to be called the "alternative" party, the alternative choice; anything but opposition.

The word opposition has such negative intonations. It's not there to generate good feeling but more to the tune of discontent. The alternative party doesn't necessarily have to oppose new legislation IF it benefits the country and its citizens. It's a matter of questioning and keeping the ruling party in check.

That's what democracies are all about. A 1 party government doesn't have to mean that it is better to rule. If the ruling party cannot handle any line of questioning and would spend more time and energy countering each other, then they are obviously not fit to govern. If they feel that since they are the majority government, they don't have to listen to anyone else to answer to anyone else. Which to put simply means that they can do whatever they want and nobody would keep check on them.

Since when is that good? Sounds very much like a dictatorship to me. Dictators can give handouts once in a while as well. It doesn't mean that because you give out share and create medisave (which incidentally is your own savings anyway) that a government with an overwhelming majority is not a dictatorship.

The term dictator doesn't mean "Adolf Hitler". It doesn't mean misery and suffering. A dictator is one that rules with total authority. A dictator is one that is domineering. A dictator doesn't have to answer to the people. We are lucky that we have elections once every 5 years. This is so that even if we had a dictatorial government they are answerable AND liable to the people. That keeps them in check because if they screw up in any way, nobody would vote for them the next time round.

"What is the opposition's job? It's not to help the PAP do a better job ... because if they help the PAP do a better job, you're going to vote for me again and they're going to be out of a job for a long time. So their job is to make life miserable for me." - PM Lee in a lunchtime election rally.

To be capable of such thought and bring forth into a speech is selfish to say the least. When is the government about winning and when is it NOT about how best to SERVE the public?

Issn't it quite possible that not EVERYTHING the PAP does is in the best interest of the public? We've learnt to accept whatever's been legislated simply because there've been no opposition in parliament. It is as simple as that.

Is the minority voice actually heard? It's usually drowned out by majority noise.

I'm not here to say who's right and who's wrong. I believe that this General Election is gone to the point of character attacks and inelegent bantering between the parties. So much so that the matters at hand, things that concern everyone has been all but ignored.

Concerns such as means testing for healthcare as it was brought up by Sylvia Lim of the Worker's Party. Does the PAP have a ready reply that's good enough to convince borderline cases that fail to obtain subsidies swing their votes?

I wonder if anyone's done a poll about what the people would like to hear and what the major concerns are for the next 5 years.

Whatever the outcome, I believe that this GE has gone off track and it's sad to see it go this way.