[Of birds and fish...]
My (maternal) cousin got married last night. It was a hectic day for the family, because it was the same day as the 1-year anniversary of my (paternal) grandmother's passing.
Anyway, the wedding dinner was held in this posh hotel which name escapes me at the moment. For some reason, many hotels (and even office buildings) like to give their rooms names these days. I've seen various naming schemes, from continents to country names to celebrity names. This hotel decided to use the name of birds.
If you don't get why this is funny (in the local context), I can't help you. God-speed.
When I came home, I found a cherry barb on my computer table. Fishes jump out of my aquarium once in a while. Usually, it's when they are sick or when there's something wrong with the water parameters. I don't know what's wrong with this one...It was pretty dried out by the time I saw it. I couldn't pick it up either, it was stuck to the table. Scraping it off left behind some...fish stuff on my table. Ew.
Qing Ming's coming. On my father's side, they have to visit a number of graves every year. Four to be exact, five from next year onwards. Traditionally, I do not go along on these excursions because I usually have a ton of work to do on weekends due to school. Now that I'm done with school, I went along for the "full tour" today.
I'll say this...We say that we "扫墓" during Qing Ming, literally translated, it means to "sweep the graves". Truth is, if your relatives are buried at the major cemeteries, there really isn't much to "sweep". We visited a total of three graves today in the CCK/LCK area and all of them were very well maintained by the workers there.
The last grave on our list was located at an old cemetery off Adam Road. Now that is "扫墓" for real. The graves there were all at least 60 years old. And it's not like the cemeteries at LCK where everything is laid out neatly. Graves are all over the place, and the place is a hilly area. I can't imagine how they got some of the coffins (coffins at that time were huge and insanely heavy) up some of those steep hills.
It was easy to see which graves still had visitors and which did not. Those that had were very much visible. Those that did not were covered with growth. We were there for my grandfather's brother's grave and I was standing about a metre away from the grave and I did not even realise that I was actually standing on a grave until a while later because there was just so much growth.
My uncles visit the grave once a year and they brought along sickles (that's right, sickles) to clear the growth on the grave. It was like outfield, except that I was wearing Teva sandals instead of Goretex army boots. And it was raining. All we needed was combat rations and the experience would be complete.
The service-person came to my place earlier to take a look at my printer. He took out the imaging unit and then the transfer belt. The transfer belt was pretty much destroyed.
He only brought along a new transfer belt, which was disappointing because I had hoped to get a new imaging unit as well. Changing these two components would effectively mean that I'm getting a new printer.
So I was glad to see that whatever was caught in the imaging unit pretty much ruined it as well. The service-person went down to his truck and brought up a new imaging unit. Yay? Nope, not yet.
With the two new components installed, I turned on the printer. The imaging unit's page count has been reset, but not the transfer belt. For those who are unaware, laser printers are programmed to stop working after a certain number of pages. In this case, if both the page counts of the imaging unit and transfer belt were both reset, then it would be just like getting a new printer. But no, the page count for the transfer belt stayed the same.
I'm not sure what this means, but the page count is pretty close to the limit. The limit was 12,500 pages for colour and 20,000 for black/white. The page count for the transfer belt right now is about 11,000+.
I'm curious to know what would happen when the numbers hit the limit. I'm also curious to know why the transfer belt's page count did not reset when a new one has been installed. I'm thankful, though, that Samsung decided that they would replace these two consumables for free.
[Insane ramblings...]
We have this little toaster oven in our kitchen, right above the microwave. We don't use it much.
I noticed something weird about it today. Specifically, the instructions on the time dial.
It says, "For less than 5, turn past 6 and set to exact time."
I don't get it. If we needed it to be on for less than 5 minutes, why not just set it at the notches less than 5? Why turn past 6? And if we the dial past 6, how can we set it to the "exact time" when we need it to be 5 minutes or less?
Who the hell made this toaster oven? More importantly, what were they smoking?
My printer died last night. Long story short, something snapped inside. I tried fiddling around with it but couldn't remove the imaging unit because whatever it was that snapped was caught between the imaging unit and the rest of the printer. It's a laser printer, so there's a certain number of pages it can print before the imaging unit would pack up and call it a day. It's rated at 20,000 pages for black and 12,500 pages for colour. The printer stats show 10,977 pages. Eeks....I hope they give me a new imaging unit.
Anyway, I called them up to arrange for servicing. These days, having a warranty alone is not enough. They want to see your receipt. Problem was, I didn't have one. I bought the printer from someone who got it for free. The guy on the phone said that the warranty card was good enough, but "try to" find the receipt.
While I understand why companies want to look at the receipt together with the warranty card (actually in some cases, the warranty card is useless or there is no warranty card to begin with, just the receipt will do), sometimes it's really not necessary. The reason is simple...The warranty is for a period of three years and the printer hasn't even been on the market for that long.
Case in point: When I sent my display card for servicing two months ago, they didn't ask to see my receipt at all. The card has been on the market for less than a year, hence they just worked and it without checking to see if the warranty was still valid.
[Tree sex...]
For those people who have MSN: Do you ever read through the display names and personal messages of all your contacts?
I do. But it's not as if I open up the window and stare at it the whole time, cause that would be rather disturbing if you ask me. I read through the stuff when I first connect/log-in, and sometimes when I log-off.
You can learn a lot about people and what's going on in their lives through their MSN messages. From the cryptic messages that leave you with "WTF?" and the long-winded, I'm-in-so-much-pain or life-sucks-I-hate-everyone messages, you know that you're not alone.
That said, I've seen my fair share of messages that people type out without thinking. One was racist, and blames everyone else for his/her troubles but him/herself. One leaves behind messages with the intelligence of a 5-year old. One leaves behind messages that I couldn't believe came from such a person because he/she didn't seem like such a deep person in real life.
I use "he/she" because I don't want to give any clues to who I'm talking about. Hey, I may think that they're not all there, but they have a right to be....not all there, if so they wish.
Recently, someone took the cake. This person always has some "meaningful" (in quotes because I think only he/she thinks they are meaningful...I personally think it's just whiny) quotes about love as their personal message. I get so irritated reading them I just want to slap him/her. Today, I read through his/her message again (it wasn't new), and only now did I manage to read between the lines. In a twisted way.
This person's message is saying that dating is tree sex.
Who's more twisted? Me or said person? It wouldn't be nice to screen capture all the quotes...Otherwise I would.
[New boxes of tissues...]
I don't know about you, but I hate new boxes of tissues.
You need to pull one piece out to get things going, and it's an impossible task. It's packed so tightly that pulling just one piece will result in that piece getting ripped. If you pull more, well, that's what happens.
They've invented a little tab thingy at the bottom of the box to help people with the tissue dispensing when the tissues are low...You would think that they would have figured out a way to get things going by now.
[Why pay?]
Since Mas Selamat escaped god-knows-how-long ago, I believe some private companies have been offering rewards for information leading to his capture. In today's papers, some manpower company offered $50,000.
Morons.
I cannot understand why would private companies do such a thing. Publicity? Bullshit. Stupidity? Hell yes. If anyone should put up a reward, it should be the government.
Why should anyone else pay for the mistakes made by the government?
[Lab-based versus non lab-based...]
I just realised something.
In NUS, there are two types of fee structure. Lab-based and non lab-based. This doesn't include courses of study such as Medicine, Dentistry, etc. But generally speaking, the amount you pay depends on whether or not you have lab sessions.
For the three years I spent in NUS, I've taken exactly ONE module that had lab sessions. And I paid lab-based fees for all three years. And our computing modules' lab isn't even as sophisticated as those in Life Science or anything.
[How Mas Selamat escaped...]
I went for a job interview at a government agency today, which shall remain nameless. The office was located in a government building and as far as I could tell, all the other tenants were government agencies as well.
I was told to bring along my IC to exchange for a visitor's pass. My interview was at 5:10pm and I got there at 5:05pm. It was raining and I was pretty wet (and I had an umbrella). All I cared about at that point was getting to the place where the interview was held.
The lifts didn't help...They were confusing as hell. Of the six lifts, only one stopped at the level I needed to go to, and the best part was it didn't stop at level one. I was at level one.
So after figuring out the puzzle of the lifts, I reached the interview venue. That's when I saw the other guy who's also there for an interview and I realised I forgot to get a visitor's pass.
Screw it. I was right on time and didn't have time to backtrack. There were security guards around at the level one lift landing and they didn't say anything. Balls to them.
After my interview, I took the lift down to the second floor, then walked down the stairs to the first floor, and went on my merry way.
I passed by a total of 4 to 6 security guards (I'm not sure how many, but there were plenty). None of them stopped me because I wasn't wearing a visitor's pass. No one in the government agency said anything about a pass neither when they saw I wasn't wearing one.
And people wonder how Mas Selamat escaped. I'll tell you how...Humans are the weakest link. You can have the best security system in the world, but if the people in the system do not follow the procedures nor enforce the rules, even the best security system in the world would be useless.
[Sexy party!]
I was bumming around on Youtube, watching videos and one thing led to another and I chanced upon Stewie's Sexy Party MTV.
It's sort of a running gag on Family Guy...Stewie sometimes throw these "sexy parties" with him running chasing after underwear models while laughing/giggling all the way. And now they've made a MTV for it.
[Giant-killing night...]
Last night was a disappointment, football-wise.
10 minutes into the Man United-Portsmouth match, I said to my Dad that it wasn't a question of whether United won or loss, but how many goals would they score.
Famous last words.
I think one of the turning points was when the referee denied United a penalty early on in the first half when Ronaldo was brought down. I'm no fan of Andy Gray's, but I agreed with him this time...It was a clear-cut penalty. Not given. Sheesh....
To be fair to Portsmouth, they defended well. They took everything United threw at them. When they broke free and counter-attacked with two players (I didn't know who they were) and when I saw that the two United players tracking them were, of all people, Rooney and Anderson, I knew that the shit was about to hit the fan. Rooney and Anderson made the mistake of tracking the same player, leaving the other unmarked. When the unmarked player got the ball, Kuszczak had to come out and the rest was history.
Sir Alex Ferguson, as well as the media, as said that this was possibly the best United side ever. I beg to differ. The current United squad plays well and good when things are going well. When things are not, all of them basically goes apeshit and knocks the ball to Rooney and Ronaldo as much as they could in hopes of them pulling off some sort of magic. Their passing goes to hell and they start playing like semi-professionals.
United squads of the past came from behind many times to draw level or even win the match. How often has this happened in recent memory? Not that many times. In the 98/99 treble winning season, they came back from the brink of defeat to win on several occasions. Against Liverpool in the FA Cup, against Arsenal in the last-ever FA Cup semi-final replay where Ryan Giggs scored that famous goal after an amazing run. Come-from-behind victories against Juventus and Bayern Munich in the Champions League.
I couldn't find a single, complete video of the 98/99 season highlights, but I did find this of United's classic comebacks which includes the Liverpool, Juventus and Bayern Munich matches:
And while searching, I found this hilarious video of Rudd van Nistelrooy:
I've been having upper back/neck/shoulder pains for about a week. I started feeling the pain after I laid in bed in an awkward position. The thing is, I've laid in the same position before in the past with no problems. Not sure what went wrong this time.
[Is it not working?]
In the past, I've poked fun at people who arrive at traffic light crossings or lift landings and then pressed the buttons for either the traffic light or the lift furiously. I always thought, wouldn't the people who were already there have pressed the button?
I take back all the stuff I said about such people. No, not really...Okay, maybe just half of what I said.
I went running today. Excellent, cool weather. When I got to the lift landing, there was a girl there but she walked away when she saw me and stood at the corridor, looking outwards (is there such a word?) and seemingly uninterested about the lift. Whatever. Anyway, I realised that she hasn't pressed the button for the lift.
Later on, I was at a traffic light crossing with a family of three when my phone rang. I walked a short distance away so that I could hear the caller more clearly. When I was done with my call, I went back and the family was still there and the mother was lamenting, "So long already, are the traffic lights not working?" At this time, I need to point out that four teenagers have arrived at the crossing as well.
I looked at the traffic light button. No one's pressed the button the entire time. When you do, the red light comes on. It wasn't.
So I take back half of what I said about people who arrive late at a lift landing or traffic light crossing. There actually are people who are silly enough to stand there without having pressed any of the buttons.
Man...This is a boring post. I need to get a job soon.
I've sent out around 15+ (20+ if you count the ones I sent out tonight) job applications, but I've only been called for one interview. What gives?
I've just applied for six positions at one go with an organisation that was at the bottom of my want-to-work-for list. I did not keep track of the six positions I applied for and I realised now that there's a fairly good chance that should they call me down for an interview, I would not really know what each position would be about. The descriptions for each position wasn't too detailed, so that may work in my favour. Oh well...What's done is done.
Why do organisations ask for your CAP and then make you type out every single module you've taken as well as the grade you got? Wouldn't it be easier for everyone if they just asked to see the transcript? They need to verify it again later anyway.
Current fear: A better job offer coming along after I've already accepted one which I don't really like. Eeks. Nice problem to have, though.
Broken for now. :( If anyone knows of a good way to display tweets without using Twitter's awful looking widgets, please let me know. Preferably something that allows me to retrieve my tweets in plain-text format.
What's this about?
Anything and everything under the sun. I write about my day, my thoughts, things I see in public, things to get off my chest, or sometimes just some senseless rants that make sense only to me.
About Me
30 year old male. Always with too many ideas in his head and too little time. For my 15 minutes of fame, I want to be a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman.
Interests
Movies, TV, cycling, computers, planted tanks, cherry shrimps, P2P legal issues, Manchester United, WWE, TNA, UFC, etc...
Disclaimer
Best viewed @ 1280*1024 or above. Views are expressed are mine and mine only, and are not meant to offend or influence anyone. Designed for readers with a sense of humour. If you can't laugh at yourself, you probably won't like my style of humour.
