Spending too much time in the lab, pirated NDP video

Every job has its occupational hazard. Spending too much time in the lab is unhealthy too. You know you have reached the limit when

• you have played battleship using tip boxes
• no one in your family knows what you are doing
• you open the toothpaste with one hand
• you are testing how far away from the rubbish bin can you fire the pipette tip
• you start making patterns in your pipette tip box as you take out the tips. Making a spiral today?
• your nose starts itching and you instinctively scratch it with your upper arm just like you do it in lab and not realising that other people think you are sniffing your armpit
• you rejoice when taking out a handful of eppendorf tubes and it turns out that they are the exact same number you need
• you make a puppet out of a glove and decide to keep it as a pet
• you have used ‘I will like to get into your genes’ as a pickup line
• people wearing shorts under a lab coat disturb you slightly as they look as though they might be naked underneath

Courtesy of Iris

Just watched the heavily criticized NDP music video and the original Japanese one for the children’s foundation. Conclusion: Obviously pirated. Once again showing a lack of creative thinking by Singaporeans. I don’t even want to put the link of the video up, disgusted me. Whoever copied it really had no pride as a Singaporean.Think he/she must be sneezing very hard, getting cursed very badly this few days.

Not going for National Day this year. I’ve seen it live in the last 3 years. Once as a spectator but only during rehearsal, and a few times wearing blue. Miss my days doing duty lots. It was really fun, although always ganna arrowed by JS. And it also makes me feel that many Singaporeans lack simple common sense and courtesy. But I have also seen the darker side of Singapore many times, and it never fails to help me appreciate my family and friends more. A good mental therapy IMO.

Tired

Tired of cooking. The whole process of preparing ingredients, to cooking, eating then washing up takes 3 hours. Shall declare myself a no cooking week next week, at least for the weekdays, and eat falafels everyday. Now the beach soccer world cup is on TV, its nice, more action than on grass. It gets repetitive after a while though, I will still prefer watching football on grass anytime.

I want to watch 赤壁！& Dark Knight too

Having always been a fan of the three kingdoms since playing the computer games based on the story. Played Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2 all the way to the current RTK 11, 三国英杰传，曹操传， 三国群英传，Dynasty Warriors, Dynasty Tactics etc etc. Read the English version of the whole novel, watched the television series of the whole story, spinoff movies such as Andy Lau’s 见龙卸甲。And now, the release of the movie based on the greatest battle in the whole story. And its not shown in theatres here =( Anyone know of a good site where I can see the movie? Besides senselessly enjoying a movie which I will probably know what is going to happen most of the time, there is Lin Chi-ling of course.

And another movie I want to watch is The Dark Knight. Besides being given high ratings (It has a imdb rating of 9.7/10 the last time I checked), the main reason I want to watch the movie is because I love Batman a lot as a child. Ok, not batman that much but Robin. I always imagined I could become Robin as a child. Dunno why I prefer to be the sidekick but not the main character. I think I like Robin’s costume more and not Batman’s freaky rock-hard abdominal muscles-showing uniform. Looking foward for it to come out at Movies Online On Demand, courtesy of Yihui. This site shows up-to-date movie streaming links with nice speed unless its on the irritaing YouKu.

Donations? Where is the $ going to?

Now even Venerable Shi Ming Yi is doing it. Charged with misappropriating funds, these are money that the public donates, mainly via the charity shows organized by Mediacorp. After >T.T< Durai and Joachim Kang, even the person who has 慈祥 written on his forehead succumbed to the temptation of using the power and money at his disposal. This just shows that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, even if you are a very religious  and seemingly upright person.

This brings about the topic of making donations, the act of giving back to society, 饮水思源。 If you are kind enough to spare money for the more unfortunate despite the rising costs of living, where can you make your donation to? Do you make donations on a regular basis, where there are a lot of people in Singapore who still needs help? Or do you wait till special events, like the China earthquake and the Myanmar flooding to make donations to people who are further away from our little red dot?

Is it worth it donate to the school children working on flag days? Depends. At least these donations are seemingly validated. But half the schoolchildren do not put in effort in the event, and when asked where the money really goes to, they are not always sure. So whether the money is well utilised or not, you will never know. And there just seems to be too many of them you can see them almost every other week.

Using schoolchildren again, schools also give out donation cards asking the students to go back and raise donations via their parents and usually parents’ friends. These money usually goes to the school rebuilding fund and is usually binded to a class or individual competition. This leads us to whether this method has too much a competitive element in it and hence losing its real meaning, but this topic is for another day.

Or how about to the many people selling stuff on the streets, claiming that half or more of the money will be going to some sort of charity or for helping ex-convicts find jobs. I usually skip such donations. I do not have a good feeling about such donations. Most looks more like a money-cheating scam than the truth and its really hard to tell on the spot whether the charity in question organized such a donation drive in the first place. I remembered when I was still staying in hall, I was helping another hall mate sell cookies. The hall mate says that some of the money will be going to charity, some as a form of salary payable to me and some as operational costs. So me and another hall mate of mine proceeded to meet the ‘boss’. The ‘boss’ has the face of a thug who does not have a very honest or reliable look if you know what I mean.  I did the selling for one whole night, it was really easy as I claim that some of the money is going to charity, many hall residents bought from me. But I had an uneasy feeling, and together with the other hall mate I was patnering with, we concluded that the scheme is very dubious and hence stopped the selling after one night. Thus, I am now always very skeptical about similar schemes.

Donations via Mediacorp’s charity drive had seemed good in the past. The money seems to be genuinely going to the kIdney patients or the less fortunate. It is highly successful, many people do it, some treating it like buying 4D. Its like gambling for a good cause, get the chance to win something, if not the money goes for a good cause. But with the incidents involving Durai and Venerable Shi, it is really disheartening.

So maybe we shouldn’t donate at all? But remember, if no one is giving donations, a lot of welfare organizations will have difficulty remaining operational. Maybe what we need is a centralized donation scheme? Everything has to be accountable for and made transparent on its website. Minimal overhead expenses to be incurred since its now centralized. There will be difficulty to decide how much to allocate to each welfare organization though. People will complain, why this organization gets more while we get less. And it can become politically sticky, sucking up to the person in charge to hope that you can get some of the money.

Or maybe we should study how other countries do it. After all, the Chinese and Russians are coming to look at how our government works. I will leave this research to someone else. Dead tired after coming back from work from a graveyard shift.

Pls see the truth, my millionaire ministers

Pic from Insane Polygons

Is my country cracking up? Do my ministers (who need salary increases to keep them interested in the job) understand the pain and hardship that our fellow countrymen are going through? From the outside and from the local mainstream media, Singapore looks like a prosperous nation, the ever-rising star, the main joke (at least from my impression in Israel) is the chewing gum ban. But somehow, I just feel that there are too many problems, slowly accumulating. Its like earthquake plate tectonics, the stress building up until the earthquake erupts. I love my country so, and do not wish for that day to happen. While no government is perfect, the current government does have the ability (given their amazing CVs, and in comparison to the opposition) and should be doing more (given their pay rise) to address the problems faced by the country. There are many issues that this country has to face and solve such as:

• Freedom of mainstream media
• Human rights
• Declining birth rate
• Spiraling inflation and yet stagnant wages
• The boom of spoiled brats (from secondary school down)
• Complacency of our civil service (particularly Home Affairs)
• Fear of persecution/mistakes (leading Singaporeans to think within the box only, and become more concerned with not doing wrong than doing right)
• The influx of foreign workers and the loss of jobs for local Singaporeans (look at the bright side, they might just win us a medal in the Olympics)

But what concerns me the most is the widening income gap and increasing poverty of Singaporeans.

Like the picture says, don’t wait till its too late, act now! In a developed country like Singapore, why do so many old people have to work? They don’t choose it, they have to, living on paycheck to paycheck which has stayed constant or increased very little over the years. Why do so many people feel so poor? Young people, including university graduates, find it so difficult to start a family and buy a HDB.

But do the government see it? Everytime the ministers go for a grassroot event, there will be security aplenty to protect the minister, grassroot members dishing out the best wayang show imaginable. Its wonder whether the ministers see the ugly side of Singapore, the cracking up of the country. All we show them is always the good things, the fun and prosperity. Do they go visiting the old people working at MacDonalds, or the karang guni men?

Do I feel a sense of belonging? Do I run away? No! Once you start running, you will always be running away in your life. But what can the armchair critics like me do, I wonder? Do I have the power to change anything other than the chance to vote in the General Elections (if I am lucky enough to have opposition contesting in my GRC)? Can the opposition deliver what my hope is? There seems so much to be done, and yet so little I can do. How can I, and each person who loves the country, start making Singapore, our country, our home, a better place to live in, while stuck in the rat race? Right now, I just seem to be a blind mouse running on the wheel, round and round, along with many others. Can I get off the wheel, not just me, but bringing other people along too?

Pondering on my inner self and wondering about my purpose in life.

What will happen when you find out that you are jobless from tomorrow? Can you survive? The need to save money

In a country where there is no unemployment benefits (which I agree with by the way), where prices of basic necessities and hence the cost of living are continously increasing, and the income divide is becoming more significant, how long do you think you can survive if you lose your job and your income the next morning when you wake up.

I, for one, can’t survive past 2 months. And when I mean survive, I mean scrimping really. Its really difficult to save money in this country (I mean Singapore, not Israel). Having been working for the past one year, I reviewed my finances and discover, not so shockingly though, that I am hardly better off than 1 year ago. Money in my bank account is not growing like ERP gantries. They just disappear into thin air. Being an ex-financial planner, I have no emergency fund to fall back on, thinking of axing my insurance plan for the time being and basically fulfilling all the attributes a person who has been financial-planner trained should NOT have.

Maybe going to University was a wrong choice. The government says that no one should be denied an education because of their financial disability. So what do you do, borrow from the bank lor, the legal loansharks. Everything that you can borrow also borrow. Not enough? borrow from friends la, from close ones to not so close ones, its even better since they don’t charge interest. End result: You have to pay the bank back $500 a month for which one third is just for servicing the monthly interest incurred.. At least friends are nice, they don’t charge interest.. Bah.. There is something wrong in the system, charging so much interest (4.75% p.a.) in the first place, determined to make a profit out of your financial disability. Can’t they make it interest-free or at lower interest? Those who need to borrow so much from the bank means they already are facing some financial difficulty. Charging them so much interest which is easily approaching one month of take-home pay a year is exorbitant. Almost 1/4 of the take-home monthly salary goes into repaying the bank loan of which 1/3 is for interest. No wonder the bank account refuse to grow. Someone like me will be in the mid 30s before I can repay this bank debt before thinking about using the money for something else. And how to support the government of getting married and having children at an earlier age when you are in such trouble.

And that something else will be to plan for the parents’ retirement. Being Asian, my father does not plan any retirement savings. He expects the children to take care of him and the mum. So either provide for them, or they will end up picking soft drink cans or cardboards like the many 70 years old around. No elderly people should be forced to work, they deserve a rest at their age. And yet, I see so many of them working, barely making enough money to make a living. And I am dismayed that I cant make a difference to them, coz I have my own parents and financial difficulties to take care of first. (Selfish, ain’t I?)

In light of Straits Times 30 money-saving tips that makes saving money sound really cool and hip and easy (note: do not try those tips unless you are in the middle-upper class, many people probably won’t have enough budget for the tips), I also have a few money-saving tips in Haifa and the excuses to go with them in case you feel malu.

• Take a 40 min walk to and from school in the hot humid weather instead of the bus. Savings: S$4.50 Reason: Its healthier to walk to school. I eat too much during the night.

• Skipping the conference in Tel Aviv. Savings: >S$20 (inclusive of taxi and train rides) Reason: Conferences are boring, I sleep most of the time.

• Avoid lunching in school. Bring home-cooked food, some bread, buy from the bakery, eat energy bars or cup noodles. Savings: S$3 to 7 a meal depending on your substitute. Reason: I’m dieting/The food in school sux/I miss Singapore food, I don’t have appetite for food here.

• Keep your hair for as long as possible before cutting. Savings: S$ 25 per haircut. Reason: Singapore is too hot for me to keep long hair, I will like to try keeping long hair in Israel.

• Buy a half falafel for dinner instead of one full falafel and be thick skin enough to ask for the other half of the pita bread. Savings: S$ 3 per falafel and you have almost as much for dinner. Reason: Not needed. You don’t have to tell anyone abt it since you eat alone at home. (Note: I don’t do it actually, I just buy half, but it can be done if extreme measures are needed)

• Avoid paying tips for meals in the restaurants. Savings: 10 to 20 % of the total bill. Reason: I from Singapore, muz pay tips one meh, i dunno and dun care. (But you should not be eating in a restaurant anyway if you are trying to save up.)

• Follow your landlord to the swimming pool. Savings: S$20 per swim.

And a few others which cannot be described here. These will be enough for you to get by everyday and the savings can be used to pay the interest to the bank.

No history making of King Fed

Viva España again. Another good news for Spanish sports when Rafael Nadal beats Roger Federer in 5 sets to win Wimbledon.

Caught the whole game live on TV. A 7 hour affair including rain breaks. Never knew that tennis was so compelling. Well, this game has to rank up there as one of the greatest I’m sure. 2 amazing atheletes, so strong physically and mentally, none deserves to lose actually. Kinda disappointed that Federer lost, I supported him since he plays a more beautiful game and wears a gayish cardigan. But alas, he got OWNED and in his own backyard somemore. Looks like the wound inflicted on him during the French Open kinda affected him, he lost his composure making only 1 out of more than 10 break points. If only he could take another 1 or 2 of these important points, especially during the 2nd set, then he might have won it in 4.

Kudos to Nadal though. Amazing bullet-speed forehand and his backhand this time really impressed a lot. Time after time, when Federer thought he had Nadal on the backfoot with his backhand, he answered with a wonderful crosscourt power shot. All thanks to his big biceps, he is gonna become Popeye the Sailor at this rate, and just maybe, the best tennis player of his generation.

I shall aspire to train to have such biceps too lol. Speaking of muscles, take a look at this kid.

(image courtesy of Straits Times)

This kid, Kang Yee Cher, is a manly 9 years old. Yes, you don’t have to rub your eyes again, he is 9 years old only. Look at the muscles he have. I am just a wussy (and practically everyone else) at 9 years old. He can probably beat me in arm wrestling if we have a competition now too. Amazing kid. Look at how small the kid behind him in the picture is. That is what I will call a 9 year old though.

A Cambodian-born Singaporean, he is smashing all records in the 100m and 200m races in his age group. And many people are crying foul, accusing that he is not 9 years old, or saying that he should be competing with older kids.

Parent A: This kid is same age as my son, are you kidding me?

Parent B: Can’t be la, he so bigger size than my boy boy. Where got fair?

Parent A: Ya la, cannot let my son be demoralized. I wan complain to MOE.

Parent B: Not enough, muz also complain to MP. I tink he eat drugs, do they do urine test huh? Muz check u noe, he sure cheat one. Ban him from racing wif my boy boy.

Parent A: Later I call my loyal, sue the organizer. Waste my boy boy time, he cant get number 1. Boy boy come, mummy find you another sport where you can become number 1 k?

Applause! I still remember my Singlish. Back to the story, with the blind accusations (be it true of false), some people are traumatising the child and his family. Trying to make him feel very Naruto eh, where no one accepts him. Come on, please wake up your idea. This may be the most precocious talent that Singapore track and field may have since…i cant think of a name… who is the last great track and field athelete in Singapore anyway? C Kunalun? Cant think of a name. And no disrespect to the few good up and coming ones include Stefen Tseng and Calvin Kang. But this 9 year old can become a world beater if he keeps it up. Still a long way to go.