Modern day Alchemist

So Long WOW

2010-12-04T18:46:00.000-08:00

The unthinkable has been done, I have quit World of Warcraft (WOW).For those who have been living under a rock for the past 6 years, WOW is an MMORPG(Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). Known to be highly addictive, difficut to quit and having a subscriber base of 12 million to date, WOW is the de facto industry leader in fantasy themed MMORPGs. For myself, I was introduced to the game back in 2006 and since then I have had the chance to see the game progress from a maximum level 60 to level 80. When it was released initially WOW had a maximum level of 40 compared to other MMORPGs such as Ragnarok Online which allowed a maximum level of 100 and higher. However it proved to be both a profitable and sustainable strategy of expanding the maximum levels slowly in stages as gamers will not be affected by the unbalance that occurs when working adults get ass wiped by teenagers who have more time on their hands for leveling of the characters.

The strategy WOW used to entice players to keep playing(USD $15/mth subscription fee) is the gear reward system. The more you play the higher the chance of you getting that epic piece of equipment for your character. Walking into cities with full epic equipment means you're elite because the stats on the equipments lets your character hit harder/increases your health bar so you can take more damage/heal more with every cast( depending on which character class one plays). To get these epic equipment one has to spend countless hours(3 hours on weekdays, 5-8 on weekends) fighting monsters with 25 to 40 other players. Most guilds used a point system to calculate your attendance in these fights(we call them raids). When a piece of random equipment drops from monsters, you will be able to use these points to bid for the piece if its meant for your role/class.

As the game progressed, Blizzard realised that although they removed much of the "grind"(tedium of leveling up one's character endlessly) compared to most other MMORPGs, there was still issues of working adults feeling ostracized because they lacked the time to organise 40 people to raid or spend time in battlegrounds getting PvP gear(Player vs Player combat ). Hence in the 2nd expansion of the game called Burning Crusade, the raids were reduced to 10-25 man sizes. Arenas were also introduced so players could fight short combat rounds and gain points to purchase PvP gear. In the 2nd expansion they also introduced 2 new races, flying mounts that allowed the players to ride gryphons and chimera in a new continent named Outlands and 10 more levels to a maximum level of 70. The 3rd expansion named Wrath of the Lich King had the maximum level increased to 80 and introduced a new class: death knights. At the same time Blizzard was acquired by Vivendi and grouped with Activision into Activision Blizzard. This was also the time when the number crunching came to WOW, they started selling vanity pets and mounts. As an experienced gamer with more than 20yrs of gaming under my belt I could see where the game was heading : Profit Margin Maximization and dumbing down of the game to satisfy the majority of casual lazy gamers who don't bother learning their characters mechanics or maximising their gear.

And as expected the coming expansion Cataclysm(SGD$60) which will hit stores tomorrow, will only have 5 more levels, bringing the maximum to 85. The other cosmetic changes were bringing in 2 new races: goblins and worgens, allowing some races to roll classes previously unallowed eg Tauren Paladins and Human hunters, changing the original Azeroth map and allowing flying mounts in Azeroth. There was also a bit of reduction in unecessary stats like Mana Recovery and introduction of "stored power" for special attacks in various classes. All in all not attractive enough to entice me to continue my subscription. Also my calculations showed me how much this game has costed me financially and how I can buy 5 new single player games for every year I spent playing WOW. Moreover 4 years of raiding without much success(thanks to guild dramas & work commitments) I have seen probably only about 50% of the high end raid content. Coupled with high latency of 500-800ms compared to US players of sub 100ms its a miracle I stayed for 4 years. That also attests to the addictive nature of the game.

So to close my WOW chapter I will say So Long WOW. To the guildies who I have played with I hope you guys will continue to enjoy the game. Hopefully I have entertained you guys with my silly naked dancing Rezzledaz and my awesome pink pigtailed Ashikubido(which means Art of the Ankle btw). Meanwhile I will pick up my old love of photography and start heading to the gym to build myself. And to say goodbye together are my lovely Level 80 characters:

风云2 Movie Review

2009-12-15T03:07:00.000-08:00

Had to write something because this movie sucked so bad. In short the Pang brothers managed to mutilate 风云 with their horrible cinematography. Non comic books fans will probably leave the cinema with question marks floating above their heads as there was a substantial portion of the storyline that was unaccounted for. The first was the poisoning of the pugilists. Although there was a chunk of introductory text, it failed to portray the rich story that explains the grudge between 无名 & 绝无神 and also the intricate plotting by 绝无神 which led to the poisoning of the pugilists. The movie also failed to explain what the spinal cord signifies and why super powered kungfu masters were fighting over that piece of ancient vertebrate.

The movie had a good portion of it being presented a la 300(The spartan movie which was also comic derived) style. Felt like an insult to Chinese comics. Why do we need to flatter Western comics by pirating the 300 cinematography? 风云 is such a classic Chinese comic with its own rich storylines and mythos. I blame the directors for the failure. The actors were doing fine except for Charlene Choi, and its probably not her fault because it was more of a casting issue. Charlene Choi's cheerful face is a foil for the comic's 第二梦 who is more of a reserved and melancholic personality. Kenny Ho was great as 无名 he has a more intense and suave look than Sun Xing who portrays 无名 in the TV series. The veteran villain Simon Yam was 杀很大 and was particularly impressive with that line "从此武林，我就是神话!".

The other saving grace was probably the 万剑归宗 Vs 不灭金身 scene. It was quite a CGI Spectacle that was true to the comics.万剑归宗 in 风云 comics is the pinnacle of swordsmanship.Only a handful of masters grasped this technique.无名 was the master in that era who mastered the skill. When 万剑归宗 is unleashed thousands of surrounding swords are levitated telekinetically and hurled towards the opponent in a relentless maelstrom of fury. It's more of a 终极招数 aka final technique and as per described one can imagine it is only used against an extremely formidable common enemy who has slain numerous pugilists, otherwise there wouldn't be this many swords lying around would it?

Take a look

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTE3MjUxNTg0.html

Please stick to the horror genre, Pang brothers. I give this movie -6/10. Fail! Movie goers save that money for a better show. If you want a solid 风云 movie stick to the original or watch 风云决(The animated version).

Rebooting the Immune System

2008-11-18T20:55:00.000-08:00

Did you guys hear the good news? German doctors have cured AIDs. Actually they didn't start out trying to cure AIDs, they were simply trying to do a bone marrow transplant for a patient with leukemia & AIDs. This however is not just any old marrow transplant. The marrow comes from a guy with a resistance to the HIV, meaning he has the CCR5-Delta 32 gene. So it was a pretty new procedure. The patient probably figured he had nothing to lose. Anyway in the end, the doctors realised that the HIV in the patient's bloodstream reduced to a extremely low level and so the guy was cured of his AIDs.

For those who are unaware of what stem cells are. Stem cells are part of the repair system of multicellular organisms. These reproduce through mitotic division and can differentiate into different cell types. Stem cells can be found in the bone marrow and since the marrow came from a donor with CCR5-Delta 32 gene it grows into T cells with receptors that does not allow the HIV to "dock" and insert its viral DNA which causes the cells to be infected. The bad news is finding people who have the HIV resistance gene CCR5-Delta 32 because this gene is completely absent in East Asians. This gene is more prevalent (about 10%) in European populations as it was a resistance built up after the Black Death plague. So like they say, that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Well I guess the first biotech to find an Asian embryo with the CCR5-Delta 32 will be a forerunner in stem cell lines producing marrow to cure the rich AIDs victims. Meanwhile its still retroviral treatments.

Whats your Totem?!

2008-11-02T23:47:00.000-08:00

In the native american culture the people believed in animal spirit guides. American Indians see animal spirit guides or totems as powerful guardians of the land or spirits of living animals. Some psychologists conjecture that a vision or message from an animal spirit guide may be certain aspects of the human psyche resurfacing from the pre-conscious ancient human mind. For example, fish living in the sea are associated with the unconscious mind and symbolize a deep mind. Perhaps evolutionary memory may exist, we don't really know since memory is still largely a mystery.

Carl Jung believed that personalities can be categorised into archetypes. The Self, the regulating center of the psyche and facilitator of individuation.The Shadow, the opposite of the ego image, often containing qualities that the ego does not identify with but possesses nonetheless. The Anima, the feminine image in a man's psyche. The Animus, the masculine image in a woman's psyche. The Persona, how we present to the world. Based on his analytical psychology theories there are quite a few personality classification tests that arose. One of the most commonly used is the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator or better known by its abbreviation MBTI. Here's a good link where you can take this test and check for yourself what personality type you are.

So it turns out that I'm a INTJ- Introverted Inuitive Thinking Judging. Apparently people of this personality type are a mere 1% of the population. Great... we are nearly extinct. I guess that's logical since socializing isn't very high on our scorecards, we are unlikely to sow wild oats all over to beget little INTJs =p. Joking, personality does depend a lot on influences other than genes. Think this test is pretty spot on. If given autonomy and freedom of creation, I'll be at my best form. Rationality is my baseline and that really poses a problem in that I seldom fall head over heels in love. Guess that's my fatal personality flaw.

Also having this INTJ personality tends to make people think I'm arrogant and distant. People who know me well though will tell you that I'm a dedicated friend in deed and one who keeps friends for life. I just tend to think a lot, read a lot and analyse a lot. Just ring a bell to grab my attention to wake me from my waking meditation and I'll be there haha. If I were to identify a spirit animal most like me I would say its a cat. Give me my ball of wool and I'll amuse myself for a looong time. Here kitty kitty!

Money Matters

2008-10-26T22:18:00.000-07:00

Came across a valuable piece of golden financial advice in Yahoo pages. It can be accessed with this link : http://finance.yahoo.com/retirement/article/106000/10-Steps-to-Retire-a-Millionaire.

Most of us obsess over money and know its important. We strive to study hard and then work hard at our jobs to earn it. And as we earn more, we desire better things: a comfortable home we can be proud of, a comfortable car we can be proud of, holidays we can remember for life. Oh wait bankruptcy! Hey I shouldn't be bankrupt?! I'm well educated, have a decent job, am smart as hell etc. Yaddah yaddah. As mentioned in the advice prescribed within the Yahoo page link, it is a lack of planning, a lack of patience and a lack of savings.

Planning isn't just laying out the goals: Condo, car,holidays. It is how to achieve all these step by step without going into an oversized debt and having enough emergency funds to tide one and family through sickness/unemployment.

Economy function in cycles, there will be booms and recessions. One can expect to meet 1 recession at least once during their lifetime. Money should be saved during economic booms,purchases/travel trips made during recessions and investments performed on the upcurve of the recession. That's how assets grow.

Never ever invest in something we do not understand about. If you only understand property invest in properties and rent out. Equities are good if you can understand the country and the companies its being invested in. Shares are great if you possess a keen awareness of that particular industry and know about the latest developments, major government projects or blockbuster products. Never trust others with your life savings, do that homework and understand the investment. Consult 2nd or 3rd opinions with people who are experienced in that field. Do not take out a loan over an investment, that's akin to gambling. Invest a substantial amount of your savings but never all of it. Keep an emergency fund that will last you half a year.If you can't do that it means you have affordability issues and your financial state is brittle. Fludity is important it allows transfer of funds to investment, to pay for that stay in hospital etc. Cash is king.

An asset in my opinion is something you own/pay >50% of. A liability is something you can manage to own 10-20% of and strive to service a loan for. Liabilities get you into debt. Debt is the best way to ensure one's stay in poverty. Financial freedom is about getting away from debt. A small loan is better than a large one. Affordability should be a huge consideration in purchasing. Think about it why do companies like Courts offer installments, its because it lulls the customer into thinking he/she can afford 10 items when in fact his/her financials may allow for much less.

When friends or relatives approach for loans, issue an IOU. Loans are easy to make out but if you ever intended to recover that sum, make sure you know that debt recovery is one of the worst jobs one can find. Just look at the amount of bad debts banks chalk up.

Credit cards are one of the worst temptations ever in my book. If you lack discipline just take out 1 visa and 1 masters and that should be enough. When you issue sub cards, make sure you understand the person well. If that person is prone to spending spree and has responsibility issues, put a low limit on that card. Similarly if you have no financial discipline, rein yourself by setting a low credit limit on that credit card.

There's a difference in spending on what we need, spending on what we want and frivolous spending. Have a expenditure budget and challenge yourself to find out that minimal sum you can survive on. You'll find that you don't require much to survive. Remind yourself daily that money doesn't come easy and financial falls are difficult to recover from, it may possibly break your marriage, estrange you from your family/friends, cause your death because of the inability to pay for that crucial medical procedure. Now we don't want that do we?

Be patient, save, work hard and afford what you can. One step at a time. Start small. We all learnt to crawl, walk and then run. True there are those who start running faster but make sure you're utterly convinced that you're that special running baby, otherwise you may just cripple yourself for life.

Dark Knight

2008-07-30T08:02:00.000-07:00

This is the sequel to Batman Begins and continues in the tradition of humanizing the hero. Great cast with sterling performances by the late Heath Ledger as Joker, Gary Oldman as police lieutenant James Gordon and Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent aka Harvey 2 Face. Yes the villains stole the show for this one. That is not to say that the good guys are lousy. Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine stood well and were convincing characters. Heath Ledger is the core of this movie, if he stood on the street today you'll be clenching your fist at his Joker. He has truly surpassed Jack Nicholson's rendition and brought much depth to the villain.

Joker is a twisted psychopath hell bent on wreaking havoc and bringing chaos by mass murder. He enjoys bringing people to their limits where the distinction between good and evil mashes into a blur. Kill or be killed, ridicule the hunted hero etc.The Joker challenges the principles and the plans of the goody two shoes, has a blatant disregard for life and generally does what he feels like. He brings the bad guys to their knees as well. An agent of utter chaos.

Harvey Dent as the new DA(district attorney) is a tough as nails lawyer seeking to clean up Gotham city's underworld. He put the mob boss trial and threatens the criminals in busting their money laundering by the Hong Kong accountant Lau. Lauded as the White Knight of Gotham he is soon thrown into a horrible situation of being a target of Joker's brainwashing. First his life fell into jeopardy as Joker hunt shim down during a fundraiser ball. This was followed by the kidnapping of both himself and his girlfriend Rachel Dawes in which Rachel perished. He begins to doubt the system of justice and is eventually broken down by Joker to give into his own madness. He begins vengeance on all who were involved in the course of events which led to Rachels death, deciding the fate of his victims with a toss of his coin.

I don't want to give away much of the plot because its a must watch 2008 movie.Overall I give it a high 8.5/10. Great acting, good action, well melded CGI. Very Impressive piece of work.

赤壁 Review

2008-07-12T05:58:00.000-07:00

赤壁 aka Red Cliffs is the site of a famous battle near the end of the Han dynasty. It is also the title of John Woo's latest war epic. This movie boasts a stellar cast including: Tony Leung(Zhou Yu), Takeshi Kaneshiro (Zhuge Liang), Zhang Fengyi(Cao Cao),Zhao Wei(Sun Shang Xiang), Chang Chen(Sun Quan), Li Chi Ling(Xiao Qiao, Hu Jun(Zhao Yun) etc.

Before the movie screened I watched the trailer and had doubts about the choice of casting Takeshi Kaneshiro as Zhuge Liang. I was proven to be right. Takeshi didn't manage to deliver an in depth interpretation of Zhuge Liang. He had large shoes to fill with remarkable performances by predecessors like Tang Guo Qiang. Takeshi didn't manage to bring across Zhuge Liang's brilliance. Historically Zhuge Liang was described as a tall good looking man with his trademark goose feather fan. Takeshi fits the profile but to me he is just too pretty to imagine him being married to an ugly wife. ps:The real Zhuge Liang was married to an ugly daughter of scholar Huang Chengyan.

Tony Leung's Zhou Yu was intense, sometimes brooding and generally well portrayed as a renaissance man. Zhou Yu was an accomplished musician and tactician. Kudos to Tony Leung for his ability to bring the character to life. Downside, he looked a bit too old and gruff as Zhou Yu. I had always imagined Zhou Yu to look more refined, cultured and younger.

Zhang Fengyi was good as Cao Cao. He delivered as usual. His Cao Cao was proud , lusty, cocky and cynical. I'm slightly disappointed though that the deeply suspicious nature Cao Cao was missing in action. Other than that I'm pretty happy with his portrayal.

Now comes the horrible Liu Bei and the Zhao, Guan, Zhang cast. It was utterly bad. You Yong's Liu Bei looked like a decrepit farmer, Guan Yu was portrayed like a gentle teacher on steroids who morphs into incredible hulk during battle and Zhao Yun was just plain brutish. It was especially disgusting in the Bagua Formation when the fighting scenes looked like they came straight out of the Dynasty Warriors video games. Unrealistic battle where the Wei soldiers just ran like lemmings into the formation without fighting the Sun-Liu soldiers.

End of the day I give it a 6.5/10 and do not recommend hardcore fans or people with no inkling of 三国 personalities and events to watch this movie. John Woo should stick to guns. Sweeping war epics should be left to directors like Ridley Scott.

Homecoming

2008-07-02T18:33:00.000-07:00

A year has gone by since I first stepped into the airport at Sydenham, Sydney. The past year has been one of recuperation from the "perils" of work. Reviewing my life at this juncture, there's this maelstrom of thoughts churning in my mind. Penning it out will be a good way to equilibrate myself.

Singapore is a "paper society" that places much emphasis on academic meritocracy . A person's worth is judged by his/her qualifications, a hallmark of the Confucian management style. If you hail from an elite school, it makes you special & valuable. Frankly I think this is a load of bull. I study because I like to understand my discipline better and because I like to analyse things and tinker with high tech instruments that cost over a million bucks. Basically I'm just a hoarder of knowledge. Does that make me better than the hawker who makes his living cooking noodles? I think not.Study requires a good memory, some understanding and the ability to regurgitate; eventually to apply principles. To kickstart a business requires acumen, determination and the ability to anticipate customer preferences; eventually to produce a product. Isn't the ability to create superior to the ability to comprehend.

A good insight into the value of creativity versus stellar academic achievements is the case of Mr Sim Wong Hoo, a polytechnic graduate who is way richer than most of the Singaporean Oxbridge grduates. Mr Sim is always dreaming up new gadgets when we the so called "highly educated intellectuals" are finding ways of fine tuning things, chasing the next storage barrier and trouble shooting problems. Smart people can do a bad job as well. As in the case of the design of the Creative MP3 players. Apple is so successful with Ipods because its products are broad spectrum design. Anyone from 7 to 70 is able to use Apple with ease. Creative MP3 players although fantastic in function are terribly narrow spectrum design products. As a consumer using a gadget daily , do I need a 50000 songs storage space or do I need a 5000 song storage but a quick and user friendly way of getting to a song I want? As a gadget owner I wanna show off my cool gadget. I may want to give it as a gift to my Dad/Mum, but they are gadget dummies who have no idea how tech works so which do I choose? Creative Zen or Ipod? Which person doesn't want to be seen as being cool? In its tech race Creative lost its creativity when it focused solely on scoring high marks in tech barriers.

I feel that the more we study the more limitations we impose on our thinking. Its funny because when one reaches PHD level, the scope of study is so extremely narrow and specialised. A macro view changes to a micro view as one climbs the academic ladder. Makes one wonder if all highly educated people eventually become afflicted with tunnel vision. Brilliance requires a free & inquisitive mind. One with no shackles. The benzene molecule was dreamt up as an ouroboros by Kekule when he opened his eyes to bright sunlight. Teflon was discovered because some chemist was curious enough to saw open a gas cylinder. An act which would be deemed crazy by most singaporeans.

Like homegrown Creative, Singaporeans have such a shackled mindset. In our race to the Mortar and gown, the directorship of a company etc we tend to forget the fun creative things like beer helmets and sportsmanship. We become afraid of failure as that consigns us to the bottom of the heap in a meritocratic society. Thats not true, a winner is one who fights against all odds and thrives. At the very least you will learn to respect yourself. There is no worse enemy than ourselves. Fear is not an external entity. It is within. Fear shackles us. Then again like the Gopher game in the arcade, we get hit by a huge hammer whenever we try to stand up and that doesn't help at all.

Teochew Ah Hia jiak teochew muay

2008-06-12T22:45:00.000-07:00

Ta gair hor. Wa si teochew ah hia ji zuung na orr jeu tak ze. Ji gai cheek guek hoong zu tak lio oi sai tng lai chuay gang zhor. Wa si tak huey harg gai shuak shi. Na ji or jeu jing jia sior gair sor yi ging jit wa zu zhi tam por teochew muey lai jia toin. Gaig piak gai tng nang supermarket hao kao wu buey kiam chai puk kuey bor buey oh nam.Bor pang huat ching chai zu hor. Buey tam por san zhang bar lai zhi lou. Ji zuung ti si narng sor yi jiak tam por pui bar. Ji gor jit si buey tarr ging jiak narng puk kuey ahm mare zu oi narng. Wa eh dang pang jing kor liang ji zuung kao zek yi lei kam mao diang lor kar sao. Dang wa kao zek lio wa kor leng zhi tam por bak chor mee lai jia. Ai wa ker tak zek lio, gair gui jit zu kao lio.

Translation:

Hi all. I'm Teochew Big Brother who is studying in Australia at the moment. Come July I'll be finishing my studies and will return home for job hunting. I'm studying for my Masters in Chemistry. Being in Australia, I miss home terribly that's why I'm cooking Teochew porridge today. Thankfully the neighborhood Chinese supermarket sells salted vegetables but no salted olives available. Oh well I'll just make do. Bought some pork belly for stew. The weather is cold so its good to take a bit of fatty meat. Here the weather is cool in the day and cold at night. Pity my roommate who is down with flu and having a bad cough during this exam period. After the exams I'll probably cook some minced pork noodles. Ok I'm off to study, exams in a few days time.

Warning MSN virus on the loose

2008-04-24T21:52:00.000-07:00

Seeing that 2 of my contacts in MSN have fallen prey to the new MSN virus, I figured that I should write about it. The modus operandi of this virus is that it sends an offline message containing a link to the MSN contacts found in the host account.Once the contact clicks on that link his/her account will be compromised and the bot located in the server logs on when the MSN user is offline to further propagate this virus. So to keep yourself safe, don't click on any links sent to you as an offline message. In fact do not click on any files sent to you unless you verify with the MSN contact. Take note when receiving files from people you're not familiar with. Always perform a scan of the file. Try to back up your critical files whenever possible. A virus attack is often very damaging and you can spend a lot of time trying to recover your files.

I have had backdoor trojan before and its rather frightening because the hacker can actually control your computer remotely. When you find your typing being overwritten or your drives opening and closing by themselves it is most likely you have fallen victim to this. The only way is to disconnect from internet and run a full system scan. You will also have to change your passwords.

Kaspersky Antivirus software is rather effective and I would recommend it as a good protection for your computers. Although it can be slightly irritating at times, it does its job well.

My very own Sous Chef

2008-03-27T17:46:00.000-07:00

Hear ye! Hear ye! Ol Ed has found himself a new pad with 4 other dudes. Too bad there aren't any girls around =(. Destiny has yet again denied me of some female company for this semester. This time round the housemates are older, most of them being at least 24 and doing their postgrads except for one 22 year old. And yup I'm the resident fossil again at the ripe old age of 32. Once again I have taken in disciples for lessons in cooking. This time round I have got 2 housemates apprenticing me. Makes me feel kinda like the Master Bai Mei from Kill Bill Volumes. Haha! So over the past week I have imparted breakfast dishes, chinese stirfrys, pasta dishes and steak. One of the guys is so enamoured of good food now he's beginning to search the web for recipes to hone his cooking skills. The other day he came in after his meal of seafood marinara and said "Ah..zhe jiu shi sheng huo.." In French that would be C'est La vie aka That's Life. I'm a true beliver of leading a quality life, maybe because my job as a quality chemist rubbed off on me lol. Seriously why eat a plate of horrible food when you can eat a meal of much better quality?! And so I just had to rescue them from a dreary student's life of bland & unimaginative meals!Onward to culinary greatness! How did I do it? Seduction with plates of steaming steaks, flavored rice and sphaghetti. Like what my housemate said "Pao mian shi wang shi le" meaning "Instant noodles is a thing of the past".

People have often asked me that since I cooked pretty ok and have a great interest & knowledge of food and drink, that why I'm not opening an eatery or restaurant. When you open a restaurant, the economics come in. That's when the soda bicarbonates comes in to soften beef of inferior quality, the half eaten lobster shells going back to the pot for tomorrow's lobster bisque and roast chicken leftovers going into the curry. I'm have a humanitarian nature, I cant do this to people. If I open a eatery it will have to be on my own terms and with a significant amount of capital because I'm not compromising on quality. Eventually I will open a beach pub cum eatery serving quality meals. A place where you can have real roast beef sandwiches with a good Belgium/German beer and bask in the warm glow of the sun. It will be a pub where you can eat crispy bbq chicken wings with a tangy dip sauce and zone out with a cocktail. Soft music help people drift off an oasis of calm. However I need my first pot of gold or some financial support so I'll need day jobs.

It is my dream to give people and myself a piece of paradise. Life is too short for wars, famines and poltical repression. A mere 70 years shouldn't be wasted on these acts. I always recall how happy people are in the company of good friends, great food and drinks. Life should be good and even more wonderful if I'm able to offer people that. I'm not going to just sell good food , I'm going to sell fond memories. That'll be my life's business!

Back in the Land of the Dreaming

2008-03-05T16:48:00.000-08:00

Took a hiatus from blogging and now I'm back. Here I am in the land of the Dreaming again. WTF?! Land of the Dreaming... what the heck is that?! Well the Dreaming is a a term used by Australian aboriginal people to describe relations between the spiritual, natural and moral elements of the world. It relates to a period before living memory or experience - a time of creator ancestors and supernatural beings. Yea and before you say anything, white man don't own this piece of land down under no Sir/ Madam the original owners were the aborigines. Captain James Cook was an invader to the native australian aborigines like Columbus was to the American Indians. Thousands of aborigines were driven out of their ancestral homelands and forced to become slaves. Yep and thats Australia's dark beginnings as a British convict colony, but whats past is past and with the new times the Australians are beginning to look into the aboriginal rights. And that is cool.

Anyways these days I'm kinda marooned in a cheap motel with no internet access until the 8th when I can finally move into my room down in Kingsford. Apparently the previous tenant needed some time to pack and scoot off. So these few days I had to survive on Maccas, sandwiches and pasta from the UNSW eateries and instant noodles. Gonna cook myself a big bloody steak when I get to the kitchen! The weather's been dissappointing, its been god-damned warm and I was expecting a cool autumn coming in when I arrived. Apparently according to the weatherman there's been a warm front which is bringing in a week of warm weather to NSW. The bad thing, I packed thick clothes for autumn and winter zzzzz....... The good thing is eye candy in the form of skimpily dressed babes.Nice.....

As I wandered about UNSW in this Week 0 busy with subject enrolment and getting a renewed student card, I was surrounded by truckloads of freshies parading themselves on campus. Saw a couple of them who had their feet tied together and were trying to climb the stairs to the library. Public humiliation, pretty funny stuff. Reminded me of my Army days when instructors called our names, called out the time while we had to position our arms in the correct positions like clocks and if we failed we were given 20 pushups. Orientation Seniors were dressed in yellow T-shirts and were leading group tours around the campus. Gave me the impression of chickens leading chicks to the academic slaughterfest. The walkway from the main entrance to the stairway of the upper campus was crowded with the stalls of the different clubs and societies trying to sell themselves to the freshies. It was like some medieval gauntlet the freshies had to go through. Me being a moldie scuttered to the shaded sidewalks and alternate paths to escape the hard selling seniors.

This semester is even shorter than the last as UNSW cut the term by 1 week so basically next week we'll start Week 1 and end with the exams in late Jun. Pretty fast I would say. Graduation ceremony would be late July at Shangri La Singapore. Hopefully I'll be able to join that session! Shouldn't be a problem considering the fact that I'm only doing 4subjects this semester, compared to the 6 I did last semester. Ok time for lunch! Will write some more again soon!

Fast Foodie

2007-10-26T21:22:00.000-07:00

A junior of mine is going to New York soon for a year or two. Being of the non-cooking type she has requested me to put up some easy to cook recipes so here they are:

-Rezzle's Juicy Beef Burger-
This takes up probably 15mins or less of your time if you have the necessary ingredients. Why beef burger when you can get it at all fast food outlets? Well the "beef patties" that we get contain only a small portion of beef and a large part are really fillers which are cheap and make up the bulk. Its junk food. Real beef patties on the other hand are wholesome nutritious stuff.

Ingredients: minced beef, salt, pepper, 1 egg, onion, tomato-basil sauce, plain flour, Turkish rolls or any bun, tomato, lettuce and mayonnaise. (For the ultimate version you will need fresh button mushrooms, garlic and balsamic vinegar.) Basically these are simple day to day ingredients.

Steps: Slice a few strips of onion and dice it. The amount depends on how much you like onions. Throw this into a bowl with minced beef, crack an egg into it and start blending. Pour in bits of flour to make it into a soft dough-like consistency. Put it 2 tablespoons of tomato-basil sauce. Add in salt and pepper. Those who are more into flavor may want to blend in some Worchester Sauce into the patty as well so that it tastes even better. Mix it up till its slightly firm. Take a portion with a tablespoon and roll it into a ball with your hands and flatten it but not too thin ( about thickness of two fingers or 1 and a half depending on whether you have fat fingers or not). Prepare a hot frying pan with oil and lay it on. 1min on each side to brown it nicely (the interior and center will still be somewhat pinky don't worry), take it out and chuck it into the microwave for 1.2 mins. This will give you a juicy patty. Most burger joints just grill the patty totally and this makes it dry out real easy. Using my method you will produce a juicy patty instead of a dried out hard patty. Even non-cooks can make a nice burger with this method. The next step is to just put on the patty , slices of tomato and lettuce plus add some mayonnaise to the veges. Wala! Juicy beef burger express mode. The more lavish ultimate version is to exclude tomato slices but throw in a stir-fried mushroom mix. For those with an extra 5mins do the following: fry some garlic and throw in sliced button mushroom, fry till mushroom bleeds water, add salt, pepper and balsamic vinegar to taste. Scoop and lay on the patty before adding the lettuce. No need to add mayonnaise if you have this mushroom mix. For those who are really gourmets you may want to apply some butter to both sides of the bun and toast it lightly on a pan.

-Rezzle's Yummy Fried Rice-
This is a cheaper alternate version of yangzhou fried rice. A fast meal as well. A classmate commented on how restaurant-like my fried rice is. Hehe yea well I like quality in my food if I can help it. Plus it doesn't take too much time.

Ingredients: refrigerated cooked rice, luncheon meat, onion, mixed vege(peas, carrots, corn), prawns, 1 egg, salt, pepper, soya sauce and sesame seed oil.

Steps: Dice the onion, just a small palm bit of onions will do. Fry diced onions till its fragrant, add luncheon meat and fry till its slightly crisp, throw in prawns and fry till they turn orange white. Throw in rice and fry for a bit . Beat an egg in a bowl and add it in. Stir quickly to coat the rice in egg evenly. Throw in mixed veges. Add salt, pepper, soya sauce and sesame seed oil to taste and stir well. The important thing is speed here as most of the frying is done on high heat so don't dilly dally. Stir fast and don't let the stuff burn.

- Chicken Mushroom Bee Hoon soup-
Refreshing asian style bee hoon soup is a nice choice on hot summer days when your appetite isn't good.

Ingredients: shitake mushroom, chicken wings, Knows Chicken cube, Bak Choy, fried onions, soya sauce, sesame seed oil and ginger.

Steps: Heat a pot of water, bring it to a boil and add bee hoon. Upon softening, empty the contents of the pot into a sieve and rinse bee hoon with cold water. Set aside first. To another pot add water chicken wings and ginger, bring it to a boil and then lower heat to simmer, add the Knows chicken cube. let the soup simmer for half an hour. Meanwhile take garlic fry till fragrant and add shitake mushroom. Fry it it bleed water add salt , pepper and soya sauce. Set it aside. When soup bas is ready add bak choy and cook till it softens to a light translucent green. Add in bee hoon and shitake mushrooms. Taste the soup if not tasty add soya sauce and salt till its right. Also add pepper and sesame seed oil. Finally throw some fried onions in and there's your lunch.

-ABC SOUP-
Traditional Hainanese light soup.

Ingredients: Chicken wings/ Pork ribs, carrots, potato and onion.

Steps: To a pot of cold water add chicken or pork, bring it to a boil and then lower the heat. Throw in potatoes, onions and carrots. Just cut them into fish ball size bits will do. Cover the lid and simmer for 1 hr.

Reports for perpetuity

2007-10-03T19:21:00.000-07:00

Blah seems I have been typing reports & papers forever... zzz. My fellow gamer Harri from Finland remarked:" Wow you live on MSN" to which I replied "Lol yep, typing reports for perpetuity...the current flavor is Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. Like some?". Kinda sick of writing after that whole chunk of technical typing. Unfortunately I still have 1 paper, 1 project and another report to deal with plus there's this axis of evil they formed with the abnormally hot spring weather in Sydney. It was like 33 degrees Clesius in my room yesterday. Can't imagine what summer would be like, but my bet is on 42 degrees at least. I took 6 subjects this semester...pretty stressful, thats why my coursemates & housemates think I'm nuts. Thanks to the unrelenting academic workload, entertainment's been on the low side. Still it's not all dark and dreary, theres always Heroes Season 2 yea! Watched the 1st and second episodes: 4 months later & Lizards. It's still as cool as ever and they upped the hotness factor in the new characters of Maya (played by Dania Ramirez), Yaeko( played by Eriko Tamura) and West (played by Nick D’Agosto).

The premier episode opened to a lecture by Mohinder Suresh about the virus affecting people who possessed the mutant gene. The lecture attendance was pathetic and amongst them was a balding middle aged man who approached Suresh for his autograph on his father's book. Suresh pinned him to a wall, upon realizing he was from The Company. The Company guy persuaded Suresh to a tea session and subsequently offered Suresh a position in the Company to perform research on the virus. Suresh commented on how expensive the research would be and the guy transmuted a teaspoon into gold right before his eyes and quipped "Let's just say we have our private Fort Knox." How cool is that?Mr Midas reborn!The only other person I know of who can do this sort of alchemical transformation is Mr Durai. Transmuting charity money into gold taps, can't beat that! And seeing how he can get a job in Dubai despite his ongoing trial only testifies to his power as a superhero. Anyway back to the story. The premier also shows Hiro going back in time to 1671 where he finds himself in the middle of a battle outside Kyoto. There was a group of guys shooting at his childhood hero Takezo Kensei. Stopping time he saved himself from a barrage of arrows and teleported away with Takezo Kensei and his horse. Wow he's getting good at timespace manipulation! The rider turned out to be a frightened impostor hired by the real Takezo Kensei to divert the attention of the bandits while he hid and tried to snipe their leader with a crossbow which would have earned him a bounty. As the real Takezo Kensei berated Hiro for fouling up his plans he reveals himself as a gaijin (caucasian or foreigner) from England. Hiro realises that his childhood hero was a little different from the heroic figure he had admired. In fact he was no more than a mercenary alcoholic who fights using underhanded means. As they made their way ahead they met up with refugees from the village of Otsu which Hiro had learnt from legend that Takezo Kensei saved from a group of wayward samurais. At this moment Yaeko the swordsmith's daughter gave Kensei a slap and took away his katana yelling at him for failing to save the village as he promised. The roguish Kensei was disinterested and just lifted off a gourd of sake from a refugee's cart and gulped it down. Hiro anxious that his arrival may have altered the timeline urged Kensei to fight for the greater good and rescue the swordsmith, for his efforts he got punched in the face. I feel Eriko Tamura who plays Yaeko is a good addition to the cast, there are too few chio asian girls around in american entertainment scene. For a 34 year old Eriko looks good and a decade younger than she really is!

Claire Bennet and family had relocated to Coasta Verde, California to lead a normal low profile life away from the Company. Changing their surname to Butler, Claire was instructed by Noah(the adopted father who is an ex-company man) to stay low and not attract any attention to herself. He himself went to work in a copy shop and was constantly harassed by a male bitch of a manager. Later it became known that he and Suresh were plotting to destroy the Company and Suresh was to infltrate the Company. At school Claire met this guy West who was beginning to hit on her and had peeping tom tendencies. Guess what like Claire's biological daddy Nathan, West can fly as well. The premier also introduces Maya and Alejandro, a pair of twins from Dominican Republic on the run to America. Seems that they were wanted for murder and the reason is shown when Maya exhibited a lethal power which killed a truckload of latin americans on their way to the Mexico border. Maya is seeking a cure as she had read Chandra Suresh's book Activating Evolution. She believes that Chandra Suresh may hold answers to her accursed abilities, unaware that the good scientist is dead. Regardless of that Dania Ramirez who plays Maya is totally hot! She didn't look half as good playing Callisto with that horrible hairstyle and stupid face tattoo.

Matt Parkman who has the most boring and irritating ability of hearing people's thoughts had moved to NYC and passed the detective exam. Finally....and he had to use his powers to do so. Quite pathetic. Of all the characters, Parkman seems the most redundant but in fact he is relevant simply because he represents the underachieving everyman and I guess that imparts a sort of depth to the whole Heroes theme that all sorts of people can be special. Molly Walker who had survived from episode 1 after being cured with Suresh's blood serum was under his adoptive care. Parkman was in the middle of his divorce from his adulterous wife Janice. However something was going on with Molly, she was having tormenting nightmares daily from an unknown person and kept drawing the helix symbol and falling asleep in class. And then Nathan Petrelli and Peter Petrelli. Nathan survived the explosion and has become an alcoholic, he blames his mother Angela for his brother's death and is disgusted with her scheming evil plan. He drives her out of his apartment and as Angela leaves the apartment she finds a photo of herself with a helix sumbol in red drawn over her face.It was a deathnote signifying death of the marked person in 24hrs. Kaito Nakamura (Hiro's father played by George Takei from Star Trek) received the deathnote as well and arranged to meet Angela on the Deveraux building loft. Kaito is soon murdered by a guy wearing a hoodie who pushed him over the loft. The murderer disappeared without leaving a trace. Meanwhile Peter was found in Cork, Ireland in a container by a gang who was supposed to find a stash of ipods in that particular container. Peter had one of his hands handcuffed ,was without a shirt and wearing a necklace with the helix symbol. As one of the thugs tried to hit him he shot a ball of lightning and hurled the guy outside the container. The other 2 thugs shone their torchlights on his face questioning who he was and where the ipods went to. It appears that Peter is suffering from amnesia.

What I think of episode 1: Good accounting of the various characters and nice new additions. Especially the babes Maya and Yaeko! A bit sad they killed George Takei so soon. No respect for the SF icon! I want to know what happens to Micah though , I love his technopath powers. Unlimited credit and atm withdrawals wooo! Wish I have that power! That's what makes Heroes and lotteries tick isn't it? Life is about hope and dreams, without which we are but ashes adrift in the wind.

Much ado about CPF

2007-09-09T20:59:00.000-07:00

This was taken from one of the online Singaporean forums. Some interesting facts and figures on the workings of CPF. I figure Singaporeans need to read up on this issue to fully understand what annuity effect has on your money. Thanks to Scroobal for the following information:

I do realise that not many people are not aware how CPF functions. Here are couple of points. More than happy if folks out there can correct if the understanding is wrong.

CPF Board is an accounting and administrative body. It plays no part in managing CPF funds for investment purposes. By law it is not allowed and neither is it equipped. There are exception which are Insurance schemes where funds are relatively small.
In 2006, out of current members' balance of $125B, $108B are in long term deposits
The $108B was handed over to MAS in return for Special Issue Goverment Securities. This is where it disappears into a black hole as I can't it in the MAS financial records.
The interest received in return was $4B which makes this about 3.7% interest return.
The CPF Board determines the interest for this investment but the methodology is not revealed. However the interest given to member balances cannot exceed 2.5% unless approved by Minister of Finace. The methodology for determining member interet is well known and published in their website.
By this arrangement, technically if the $108B yielded 20% return via investment, the Govt is not obliged to declare a bumper bonus and has never done so. It has never returned anything higher.
Granted that CPF balances are guaranteed by the Govt, and a fee may be order to acknowledge this but retaining excessive profits is basically placing an indirect tax on the returns.
Financial Report also shows that surplus income of CPF Board gos to the Consolidated Fund and this amounted to $66M in 2006. This is despite CPF performing a number of functions for various Govt bodies and which are only billed on a cost recovery basis.

From the above, one can surmise the following

Additional returns no matter how high are retained by the Govt
Someone is making management fees from the funds invested
In view of the indirect tax, CPF members incur higer rate of taxation.
Did the money given out on the eve of elections come from these returns
If from the onset, all returns from investment are returned to member balance via higher interest minus of course management and guarantor's fees, the compunding effect on the balances would have been tremendous over 25 years using an accepatble Global Pension Fund as benchmark

Some interesting tidbits

Academic in Universities in the past were allowed to run their own Provident Fund which was managed by OCBC. Wonder why the special allowance. To many questions from smart people and to buy their silence. One wonders
No wonder the selfemployed and businessmen never found CPF attractive
Admin and Intelligence Service now and the rest of the Civil Service in the past were on pensionable service and therefore their opportunity cost was lesser. Certainly no motivation to improve the CPF system as it does not affect them.

I bet my bottom dollar that the investment returns retained by the Govt over 48 years in total was higher than the returns given to CPF members.

Is the current scheme morally wrong? Is this a bad deal facilitated by legislation? Will transparency help address misconceptions and wrong perception? Is there room to improve?

Chardonnay 2006- Jacob's Creek & Tesla

2007-09-02T05:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's dinner consisted of a roasted chicken drumstick and baked pizza stub. The meal was paired off with a Chardonnay 2006 from Jacob's Creek.This winery is a pretty well established brand and is located in Barossa Valley, Melbourne. Aside from the trademark cream of Chardonnay it's really sweet and has a bit of melon, color is light pine with a slight tinge of green. Low acidity and tannin on this wine , aftertaste is weakly lingering. Went well with my chicken drumstick. For 8 AUD no complains but I've had better chardonnays. It only gets a 6.3/10 from me. Was looking for the Old Bastard brand but didn't manage to find it so I settled for the chardonnay. The next grape I will hop to will be Riesling, my personal favourite.

Did some reading on my quality management subject, got a bit bored and started surfing. Did a google on Tesla. How many of you have heard of him?Tes who you ask? Nikola Tesla, contemporary of Edison and Einstein; is one of the greatest contributors to modern science. Unfortunately he was kinda weird and pissed off JP Morgan who financed his experiments. Eventually he died poor and forgotten. Sad... Heaven makes sport of men. Especially those with exceptional talent. If it weren't for this guy there would be no A/C power, radio and a host of other engineering contraptions. Tesla fits exactly in the mold of the mad scientist, but he was a humanitarian with a hatred for war. He envisioned free power for all which was the reason why the businessmen stopped financing him.

Tesla had some interesting concepts on electromagnetic waves and he believes that FTL(Faster than light) is possible. He puts forward that scalar waves travel at 1.5c. I have similar sentiments that FTL is definitely possible. Although I think the Theory of Relativity is a beautiful explanation, it has also limited us severely in terms of scientific progress. Recent years have seen only a few leaps in terms of theoretical physics and it seems that relativity has this dampening effect. The fact remains that there are unexplained UFO cases that seem to violate our known physics and Tesla's explanation seems a plausible platform to expound on the possibilities of these gravity defying flight patterns of the UFOs. Logically if UFOs exist and are unexplained then there are 2 possibilities: 1)they are of alien origin 2)they are man made. If they are of alien origin some form of FTL is very likely possible. Secondly if they are man made, there has already been a breakthrough in gravity manipulation or some form of advanced field propulsion.

It will be a cosmic joke if we are the only sentient lifeform out of the 200 billion stars in Milky Way. Given that we believe evolution spawned humans through chance and natural selection, it works out too in terms of probability that aliens are really not that far fetched. Interesting thought isn't it? Perhaps one day we can live life amongst the stars sipping a Chardonnay 2006 with an alien friend.

Apec 2007

2007-09-01T01:13:00.000-07:00

Depending on your perspective, Sydney in the upcoming days will be either the safest place in the world or the most dangerous. Why do I say so? Well it’s APEC 2007-Sydney! Leaders and their entourages from 21 countries representing 40% of the world population will be descending on this city .To safeguard the dignitaries, 7^th of September has been declared a holiday for Sydney in order to minimize traffic flow and residents have been advised to plan for a weekend out of town. I guess the fishing spots and hiking trails will be mighty crowded. So far traffic has been rerouted and Anzac Parade (one of the main roads) not far from where I stay is going to be cleared at certain timings over the week to come. As I write this, a chopper just flew past overhead. Part of the stepped up security measures no doubt.

Sydney did a remarkable job in the 2000 Olympics, the stadium is a magnificent piece of architecture and the security did a pretty neat job in maintaining order. I hope for all our sakes they repeat the sterling performance. The current landscape is unlike 2000, it’s a gloomier world these days with epic natural disasters, wars and rampant acts of terrorism. Year 2000 was a huge celebration for mankind, where we ushered in a new millennium and laid to rest the yakking of sulky doomsayers. I remember holding a big barbeque party for my Polytechnic classmates back then. In the past 7 years, things have changed a lot: 9/11 in September 2001, Indian Ocean Tsunami 2004, Hurricane Katrina 2005, possibility of an impending US recession and even Harry Potter plots grew darker to reflect the changing times.

Some issues I hope the leaders will address are: global warming, renewable energy, widening wealth-gaps and auditing of international charities. Venerable MM Lee himself has been concerned about the global warming issue and has consulted Holland on how to build dikes. Global warming is a huge concern for island nations and it’s not something to be taken lightly. Millions of lives are at stake here it’s not something that will happen in the far future that time is well in our lifetime! With the Industrial Revolution (IR), humankind birthed the monstrous entity named Corporation, which hastens our progress towards inevitable doom. Greenhouse gases have increased at an exponential rate since the IR, causing glaciers and ice masses to melt; climate changes. I hope that for once the oil sheiks and executives of petroleum corporations will put obsessing about profits aside and think of the future, of their fellow men for a change. Suffer a loss in profit but we get to exist longer as a species. Sacrifice is often needed for progress. Open the safes and take out the promising research, do not seek to hinder the progress of alternative energy. Do not see an undermining of profits as a threat to the corporation; it is the corporation that is the threat to our very existence! Humans should rein in the corporation and not let the profit charts take away our rights to exist. Civilization is so very fragile; we learn from history that great civilizations can vanish in a twinkling of an eye. If we do not start actively using safer alternative energy forms it will be too late.

Al Gore has stated very plain facts on his documentary An Inconvenient Truth. He showed glaciers and ice masses melting, weather changes and some changes in ecology. The fact is the damage goes deeper than that. Increased temperatures also bring about an increased rate of temperature-sensitive mutations in viruses and those dormant viruses locked in by the last Ice Age will emerge. Mosquitoes thriving in warmer climates will now be able to travel to what used to be cooler places on Earth and spread hemorrhagic fever. We have no immunities against these new biological threats. Natural cycles of insects are altered and may cause breeding to grow out of control. Warmer weather also mean that the hurricanes grow more energetic, causing greater damages. Katrina is only a show of what’s coming on Nature’s agenda. The only reason why there’s been little public paranoia is because the education has not sunk in. People need to see real world impact before they realize the gravity of the situation, often not it’s already too late to remedy.

The critical task that lay before mankind in this century is to come up with energy efficient transportation, effective alternative energy sources, improvements on recycling technologies and methods of waste disposal. For example Brazil is doing a great job at biofuels. Also places like Ireland are using tidal arrays to harness the currents for good use. Developments in high temperature superconducting magnets will help to secure alternative energy sources as reliable. Surfaces that aid in catalytic combustion will also be an area of research as well as molecules with ability to increase the octane power of biofuels. USA is a critical player in this global warming issue as it is the largest contributor of greenhouse gases. More US states must start using alternative means of energy to break OPEC’s dominance.

Next is about wealth gaps. People should have a minimal standard of living worldwide shouldn’t they; after all it’s the 21^st century? Some people rationalize: oh that poor people may not have the material luxury but they are happy blah blah. These people should probably stay a month in Botswana with the Aids victims and the famine victims in Zimbabwe or tsunami victims in Sulawesi. Others are simply apathetic over what happens elsewhere in the world as long as they themselves are living in their comfortable wells. Currently the rich are getting ridiculously rich while the poor starve to death. One end of the spectrum we have people gorging on Big Macs until their BMI is 35 and the other end we see malnutritioned people at 17 BMI. Think about the inches you will add to your waist and the poor people in Zambia before you take that bite. Perhaps you should be thinking of how to send that Big Mac to a starving kid. What makes it worse is that wealth is so poorly distributed. The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of global household wealth. Alone, the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. In comparison the bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth. This is from a study by WIDER. We see people like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and George Soros donating away a large part of their assets. This is admirable and really necessary for proper wealth distribution. What about the rest of us? Read the WIDER report and find out where you stand and do something. There are now indications that biofuels may bring about a change in Africa. Tough strains of bioefficient crops can be engineered to grow in Africa. That spells hope but in the mean time they are still starving.

Last of all we need to have an inbuilt transparency and auditing for International Charities. There are unscrupulous and selfish people in this world who work for charities and siphon money off these organizations. Charities have innate operating costs but surely there is no need for an extremely posh office or for executives to fly all over the world in First Class or to pay themselves huge salaries. Charities need to be accountable to the public. Their priority is first and foremost to famine victims and they should be morally and legally accountable if charity funds are not used in the most efficient way possible. There should never be the situation where we donate 10 dollars and only $0.50 goes to the victim. Read about corruption here.

Panspermic Papayas & Memetical Mice

2007-08-23T18:01:00.000-07:00

There in the void of space, exists a myriad of lifeforms searching for others like themselves. Located in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way is such a race: The Panspermic Papayas. An austere and enlightened race, Panspermic Papayas have evolved to a stage where they have become successful in hermaphroditic reproduction. This power to reproduce infinitely and their eugenic experiments have allowed their civilization to reach great heights in authoritarian political dominance, interstellar investments, coldblooded logic gate applications and social engineering. Having lived off numerous dying planetary systems parasitically over millenniums, the Papayas decided they needed more resources to defile. Once more they got onto their mothership, a gargantuan blue rimmed disk-shaped spaceship named Itsnotmyfaultyouaredumb. Armed with a lightning pulse generator drive it's a fearsome battlecruiser that smites unfortunate enemies with a deadly charge of defamaton beam. As it flew out of the dying planet Suckeddry in hyper escape velocity, the light from the nearby white dwarf sun of the system reflected brightly off its hull making it appear whiter than white. The pilot of Itsnotmyfaultyouaredumb engaged the lightning pulse generator drive and a slow hum begun. The craft vibrated subtly as a red plasma streak resembling crimson lightning appeared across the diameter of the ship in the direction of travel. The lightning pulse grew brighter and started warping the gravity of the nearby planet Suckeddry. In an instant of less than 0.5 picoseconds, the planet wobbled on its axis and a wormhole engulfed the Itsnotmyfaultyouaredumb launching it forward into warp space. Minutes later a huge tectonic upheaval tore apart the dying planet, revealing its molten core. Billions of screams evaporated as they were silenced by the vacuum of space. The race of Keeppayingplebiansanddiehahaha was no more. A gigantic amorphous cloud appeared near orbital distance of the fragmented planet, it looked upon the grotesque terraform sprouting magma into the thinned out atmosphere and dimmed as if it felt great sorrow. The amorphous form glowed yellow and multi hued auras floated within it's cloud-like body. It was a Galactic Watcher belonging to the bureau of Karmic Transgression Management(KTM). Beginning a slow orbit around the devastated planet, the amorphous form took mental pictures of the transgression . Vibrating in harmonious musical notes, it added the event to a mounting archive on the sins of the Panspermic Papayas.

The Intergalactic Good Karma Convention held on the Planet Dontgiveashitabouthague had passed a bill 10 millenniums ago which outlawed interstellar travel via planetary destruction and member races signed a treaty allowing application of Unified Karmic Laws across star system borders to apprehend criminals who violate this act . The Panspermic Papayas had refused to be part of the member list, existing outside jurisdiction of the KTM. As a result Panspermic Papayas seek an eternal physical existence to avoid reincarnation as it falls within KTM jurisdiction. Eternal physical existence requires heavy sustenance in forms of physical resources. To lead princely lives the Panspermic Papayas had assumed a leech mentality in order to propagate their eternal physical existence. Utilization and social engineering of backward species and fresh planets became a priority in Papaya doctrines. Over the millenniums Papayas have siphoned at the rate of 500 planets/millennium. Recent surges in expenditure on lifestyle products has increased their quota to 700 planets/millennium. The Great Leader of Papayas, GrandHighhandedLord Toobrightanyew had repeatedly insisted that the quota increase as necessary to prevent a devolution trend from happening and that it was critical to the maintenance of a viable ruling Panspermic Papaya existence. Editor Note : We at the Bombastic Legion Of Great Intergalactic Publishers think its total crap talk.

In the year 6661965666, the Itsnotmyfaultyouaredumb appeared hurtling out of warp space into the opposite end of the Milky Way. Activating long range bioscanners, the Panspermic Papayas found 3091200 viable locations for exploitative cultivation. Powering the immense thrusters, Itsnotmyfaultyouaredumb sped towards the nearest Planet they codenamed Secret Garden. Taking a variety of stolen genetic technology from the star system Iwonnobleprizehireme, the Papayas produced a race of rodents and seeded them on Secret Garden. The grand plan as proposed by GrandDuke Dimwitdraconian, offspring sired by GrandHighhandedLord Toobrightanyew was to milk the natural resources of Secret Garden and to alter the social structure of the planted mice species for the benefit of Papayas. Then the Papayas would take the mice harvested peanuts to power their other planetary conquests. They named the mice Getoutofmyeliteface Extremelystupidplebians. Using accelerated evolution they shaped the mice into sentient lifeforms in a matter of minutes and proceeded to image themselves as godlike entities sent to administrate the advance of the mice. . The mice at this stage of evolution were a scattered race which populated a small continent on the watery planet Secret Garden. Infighting and cannibalism was common place for the mice. To control the chaos, Panspermic Papayas decided that the inferior race of mice needed part of their divine genetic material , hence they created hybrids from the mice, inserting Papaya genes into selected family trees. Out of these hybrids a particularly docile and cooperative lineage was formed: IamaSuckyDork. Panspermic Papayas obtained unwavering loyalty from these rodent hybrids by grand promises of afterlife . Thinking about the rosy picture of having 42 virgin wives and unlimited powers of arrest, IamaSuckyDork agents work hard controlling the population of Getoutofmyeliteface Extremelystupidplebians.

To further cement their dominance over the mice, Panspermic Papayas began building great monuments of power to show the mice that they had the mandate of heavens and their rule was to be unquestionable. The IamaSuckyDork agents equipped with invisibility suits lurking about augmented the mystical propaganda by arranging disappearing acts for naughty mice who refused the religion. Memes like studying is good, infighting is bad, work hard to grow peanuts, birth control, the gods care about you etc were implanted in the mice society. Cold blooded logic gates technology enforced the obedience: Work OR Die! Pay AND pay! Freedom NOT worthwhile! IF you oppose, you vanish!Over time the coldblooded logic gates and memetic technology fused to become unchallenged memeplexes which conducted the evolution of the mice in a manner that suited the Panspermic Papayas. The mice were becoming timid, docile and hardworking, providing the Papaya gods with all the peanuts they need. As days went past the Papaya gods demanded higher amounts of peanuts as tribute from the mice. Powerful as the Papayas were they could not control the randomness which is Nature. The mice soon discovered that the peanuts they so painstakingly grew were flaunted and spent carelessly by the Papaya gods. Some Gods like Fatflatulentlady were even feeding pet monkeys with excessive peanuts for leisure. Eventually over 4ooyears of repression some mice mutated naturally, taking on a more inquisitive and bold nature. They had escaped the memetical control regime!The new mice contacted the outer star systems establishing contact with the Bombastic Legion Of Great Intergalactic Publishers. They tried building a safe haven in the remote region of Whitehorse Nebula known as blogspace where the publishers dwell. Alas the Papayas had wide contacts and Whitehorse Nebula was filled with Papaya cronies for who made life difficult for the new mice. In desperation a mice named CheerSalutationsJoy sabotaged the air fields of the Papaya gods, launched several escape pods modified with cloaking technology and leaped into warp space; escaping the clutches of the Papayas. Hiding in secret locales outside the scanner range of the false Papaya gods, CheerSalutationsJoy and other renegade mice work hard to spread awareness on the memetically imposed oligarchy seeking to free their trapped brethen. Will the memetical mice ever be freed? It remains unanswered but with each new dawn another mice awakens.

Auhor's Note:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used ficticiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Wise words of Zhuge Kongming

2007-08-22T21:58:00.001-07:00

One of the most revered military strategists and public administrators since the period of 3 Kingdoms, Zhuge Kongming was a man of noble birth, forged by the rigors destiny had in store for him and found his way into the annals of history. He is known by his nickname "Dragon in Repose" (Wo Long in Hanyu Pinyin) and was a farmer before he was approached by Liu Bei. Zhuge Kongming had written many essays about governance and selection/classifications of generals. The following are some enlightening excerpts from his essays, courtesy of http://kongming.net/:

Observant Government

An observant and perceptive government is one that looks at subtle phenomena and listens to small voices. When phenomena are subtle they are not seen, and when voices are small they are not heard; therefore an enlightened leader looks closely at the subtle and listens for the importance of the small voice.

This harmonizes the outside with the inside, and harmonizes the inside with the outside; so the Way of government involves the effort to see and hear much.

Thus when you are alert to what the people in the lower echelons have to say, and take it into consideration, so that your plan include the rank and file, then all people are your eyes and a multitude of voices helps your ears. This is the reason for the classic saying, “A sage has no constant mind - the people are the sage’s mind.”

Chasing Evils

There are five types of harm in decadence among national armed forces. First is the formation of factions that band together for character assassination, criticizing an vilifying the wise and the good. Second is luxury is uniforms.
Third is wild tales and confabulations about the supernatural.
Fourth is judgment based on private views, mobilizing groups for personal reasons.
Fifth is making secret alliances with enemies, watching for where the advantage may lie.

All people like this are treacherous and immoral. You should distance yourself from them and not associate with them.

Arrogance in Generals
Generals should not be arrogant, for if they are arrogant they will become discourteous, and if they are discourteous people will become alienated from them. When people are alienated, they become rebellious.

General should not be stingy, for if they are stingy they will not reward the trustworthy, and if they do not reward the trustworthy, the soldiers will not be dedicated., the armed forces are ineffective, and if the armed forces are ineffective, the nation is empty. When the nation is empty, its opponents are full.

Confucius said, “People may have the finest talents, but if they are arrogant and stingy, their others qualities are not worthy of consideration.”

Self-exertion
Sages follow the rules of heaven; the wise obey the laws of earth; the intelligent follow precedent. Harm comes to the arrogant; calamity visits the proud. Few people trust those who talk too much; few people feel indebted to the self-serving. Rewarding the unworthy causes alienation; punishing the innocent causes resentment. Those whose appreciation or anger are unpredictable perish.

Adjudication
When rulers adjudicate criminal cases and execute punishments, they worry that they may be unclear. The innocent may be punished while the guilty may be released. The powerful may arrogate to themselves alone the right to speak, while the powerless may have their rights infringed upon by those who bear grudges against them. Honesty may be distorted; those who are wronged may not get a chance to express themselves. The trustworthy may be suspected; the loyal may be attacked. These are all perversions, problems causing disaster and violence, aberrations causing calamity and chaos.

Pillars of State
For strong pillars you need straight trees; for wise public servants you need upright people. Straight trees are found in remote forests; upright people come from the humble masses. Therefore when rulers are going to make appointments they need to look in obscure places.

Sometimes there are disenfranchised people with something of value in them; sometimes there are people with extraordinary talent who go unrecognized. Sometimes there are paragons of virtue who are not promoted by their hometown; sometimes there are people who live in obscurity on purpose.

Sometimes there are people who are dutiful and righteous for purely philosophical or religious reasons. Sometimes there are loyal people who are straightforward with rulers but are slandered by cliques. Ancient kings are known to have hired unknowns and nobodies, finding in them the human qualities whereby they were able to bring peace.

What Hurts the People
There are five things that hurt the people:
1. There are local officials who use public office for personal benefit, taking improper advantage of their authority, holding weapons in one hand and people’s livelihood in the other, corrupting their offices, and bleeding the people.
2. There are cases where serious offenses are given light penalties; there is inequality before the law, and the innocents are subjected to punishment, even execution. Sometimes serious crimes are pardoned, the strong are supported, and the weak are oppressed. Harsh penalties are applied, unjustly torturing people to get at facts.
3. Sometimes there are officials who condone crime and vice, punishing those who protest against this, cutting off the avenue of appeal and hiding the truth, plundering and ruining lives, unjust and arbitrary.
4. Sometimes there are senior officials who repeatedly change department heads so as to monopolize the government administration, favoring their friends and relatives while treating those they dislike with unjust harshness, oppressive in their actions, prejudiced and unruly. They also use taxation to reap profit, enriching themselves and their families by exactions and fraud.
5. Sometimes local officials extensively tailor awards and fines, welfare projects, and general expenditures, arbitrarily determining prices and measures, with the result that people lose their jobs.
These five things are harmful to the people, and anyone who does any of these should be dismissed from the office.

Rewards and Penalties
A policy of rewards and penalties means rewarding the good and penalizing wrongdoers. Rewarding the good is to promote achievement; penalizing wrongdoers is to prevent treachery.

It is imperative that rewards and punishments be fair and impartial. When they know rewards are to be given, courageous warriors know what they are dying for; when they know penalties are to be applied, villains know what to fear.

Therefore, rewards should not be given without reason, and penalties should not be applied arbitrary. If rewards are given for no reason, those who have worked hard in public service will be resentful; if penalties are applied arbitrary, upright people will be bitter.

Pink Malady

2007-08-21T05:27:00.000-07:00

I read with much concern an incident which happened to a group of gay and lesbian joggers along the Singapore River. A detailed account has been written in Yawning Bread. My perspective on this issue is that it's about time we review the Assemblies and Processions section of the Miscellaneous Offenses Act and it's legal boundaries. The following are sections taken out of the Singapore Constitution and Miscellaneous Offenses Act.

Constitution

Freedom of speech, assembly and association
14. —(1) Subject to clauses (2) and (3) —

(a) every citizen of Singapore has the right to freedom of speech and expression;

(b) all citizens of Singapore have the right to assemble peaceably and without arms; and

(2) Parliament may by law impose —

(a) on the rights conferred by clause (1) (a), such restrictions as it considers necessary or expedient in the interest of the security of Singapore or any part thereof, friendly relations with other countries, public order or morality and restrictions designed to protect the privileges of Parliament or to provide against contempt of court, defamation or incitement to any offence;

(b) on the right conferred by clause (1) (b), such restrictions as it considers necessary or expedient in the interest of the security of Singapore or any part thereof or public order; and

(c) on the right conferred by clause (1) (c), such restrictions as it considers necessary or expedient in the interest of the security of Singapore or any part thereof, public order or morality

Miscellaneous Offenses Act

Assemblies and processions
5. —(1) The Minister may make rules —

(a) regulating assemblies and processions in public roads, public places and places of public resort;

(b) providing for the grant of permits for holding assemblies and processions in public roads, public places and places of public resort, and the fees to be charged therefor;

(c) for keeping order and preventing obstruction or inconvenience in public roads, bridges, landing places, and all public places and places of public resort; and

(d) prescribing the punishment by a fine not exceeding $5,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months or both for any act or omission in contravention of the provisions of any such rules.
[10/89]

(2) The Minister may by order prohibit or restrict, subject to such conditions as may be specified in the order, the holding of any assembly or procession in any public road, public place or place of public resort specified in the order.

[10/89]

(3) A Deputy Commissioner of Police may, with the concurrence of the Minister, prohibit or restrict the holding of any assembly or procession in any specified public road, public place or place of public resort in any particular case where the Deputy Commissioner is satisfied that the holding of such assembly or procession may result in public disorder, damage to property or disruption to the life of the community.

[10/89]

(4) Any person who —

(a) organises or assists in organising any assembly or procession in any public road, public place or place of public resort in contravention of any order under subsection (2) or any prohibition or restriction under subsection (3) shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $10,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or to both; or

(b) participates in any assembly or procession in any public road, public place or place of public resort where he knows or ought reasonably to have known that the assembly or procession is held in contravention of an order under subsection (2) or any prohibition or restriction under subsection (3) shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $1,000.

Adherence to law is no doubt the thread of civility that keeps a society bound together in an orderly fashion and brings about general peace. It's true the organizers committed an infringement by not submitting an application for the Pink Run along Singapore River. This is the case in strict accordance to the legislation. Let us not forget however that the law is also highly dependent on interpretation and reasoning. As stated in the Constitution, citizens are supposed to have their freedom of expression and assembly. To protect the interests of the Republic further laws were passed to ensure that assemblies of unwanted nature are prevented. Unwanted nature has been specified as: 1.Threats to the security of the republic 2.Disruption to diplomatic relationships 3.Impacts to public order/morality 4. Threats to restrictions designed to protect privileges of the Parliament 5. Contempt against court 6.Defamation or incitement to any offense. Frankly I don't see how a group of people jogging in pink T- Shirts are in anyway considered an assembly of unwanted nature. They are gay but they are not doing anything unwholesome, just jogging. Apparently gay people jogging does not fall into the category of public disorder/damage to property/disruption to the life of the community either. So I ask is it illegal if one organizes a Chinese New Year dinner for an extended family of 20 people and lead the family in walking a few hundred meters along the road to the restaurant?Do I have to apply for a permit? This is the kind of ridiculous questions that we want to ask the police? If so I guess the legislation might be the real cause of public disorder/ disruption if Chinese New Year comes and everyone starts jamming their hot line with the same question.

Its fearful when one realizes that the law enforcers sworn to uphold the law are so meticulously concerned in applying the law to the letter that they forget what the letters mean as a sum. Another question, who checks on the Minister then in ensuring that his/her prohibitions are just and non-partisan? Why are there no exclusions included in the act to make allowances for non-political social gatherings? It's been a good 40 years and a new generation has sprung up. A literate and law-abiding populace, so are we being too hung up on the 1960s riots? Yes, riots are detrimental to the well being of the society but what about diminished space for personal expression? Is it healthy for the Singaporean psychology? If we want graduates to progress from washing test tubes its time for a change in perspective. My Professor fielded a question to the class today and he said: "Come on people...think! Have an opinion. I'm not going to call your names from the register and ask you questions individually. You are not kids." Absolutely true. If our leaders in the 1960s had the bonsai mentality, where would Singapore be today?The thought of eking out a dwarfed existence without bearing fruit is unbearable.

Bin 333 & 444. Salut!

2007-08-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

What the heck?! Simi Bin333 & 444?! Has Rezzledaz finally lost it and gone stark raving mad? No lah! Bin 333 & 444 are a vineyard's trademark for their pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon. Ole Rezzledaz here is a vinophiliac (For the record I coined this word first!). I love my alcohol. Besides, cold weather and resveratrol are good excuses for drinking hehe. Here in Kingsford, Sydney the wine price is around 13.99 AUD/bottle for Wyndham Estate's Bin series at the local liquor shop. That's probably about 18.80 SGD. Don't drink lagi wasted! Wyndham Estate's most famous grape is Shiraz but I drink that pretty often and it's quite well known so I guess I'll skip on the review of that. For those who want to try the Shiraz its known by the trademark Bin555. Should be able to find it at most shops in SG.

Pinot Noir is a tough grape, sometimes its spectacular sometimes like sai. Best one of course is from Burgundy in France but Rezzledaz is poor so cannot afford to fly in a cask or two. This Bin333 is berry red, fresh raspberry first notes with a bit of cassis. It's lightly sweet lower in dryness(tannins). After taste is earthy and lightly spice, doesn't linger too long. I will give it a 6.8/10. Winespectator gave it a 87 points. I think Pinot Noir can be better, but just my personal opinion .I'm not a trained sommelier so don't take my word for it. I think it will taste good mixed with brut (non-Champagne region produced bubbly wines). Will try and let you guys know, after my tests keke. For beef stew though it imparts some pretty neat flavors. I added it into my beef stew cooked in the afternoon with some rosemary. Wah shiok man. Yah I cooked my chop-chop red wine beef stew because I have evening classes so cooked it during lunch and scooped it on some rice and garlic bread for dinner. Nice!Those who know me should know I'm quite picky about food hurhur. Ah if you guys want the beef stew recipe can MSN me or drop a comment. I use the easy method hehe.

Bin444 is cabernet sauvignon. Full bodied , smoky and ripe berries. Quite typical of the usual cabernet. Stronger tannins than Bin333. More lingering in my opinion. I give it a 7.2/10. Cabernet sauvignon's pretty much a safe bet in most wine producing regions. Its an old variety. For cooking I used it in deglazing the pan and making red-wine sauce for lamb chop or steaks. Last week I made red wine sauce with Bin444 on lamb cutlet. Not bad. Enhances the lamb with it's flavors. The carbo I paired it with was mint potatoes ,quite a good complement. You guys might want to try.

Ok next will be a review of Chardonnay I guess. Yea because I need a drink to go with my chao fan(fried rice) haha. I think the creamy old chardonnay should be a perfect match to go along. Oh yes Ah Huey I haven't tried Old Bastard brand you tasked me to. Will give you a review of that soon!

Legacy of Heres Leonidus- Part I

2007-08-15T18:11:00.000-07:00

As he strutted proudly up the the white marbled steps of the Senate, Heres Leonidus sucked in a deep breath and adjusted his gold and purple toga. Ah another hot summer day, another wrestling match with the insufferable fools he mused. " All Hail Rex Heres Leonidus!" the usher shouted as Heres made a grand entrance in slow deliberate steps, soaking in the greetings and salutations by the patricians. "Please, my comrades. Be seated." A blood curdling scream grounded the fawning on Heres to an abrupt halt. At the top of the steps was Lenis Auctoritas, the heretic philosopher and rhetor. Bloodied from a gash by the side of his arm, he cried out " Corruptio optimi pessima! Rex Heres, Monstra Mihi Pecuniam!" Two stern Praetorians appeared in an instant and held him back as he tried to hurl himself across the floor of the Curia Hostilia. "What outrage is this?!"Praetor Faveo Risumus glowered. " Why hasn't this man been disposed of yet?!" Heres fumed, his hand clutching the hilt of his gladius. " Yes Rex, he will be dealt with immediately! Praetorians! Take him to the carcer!"Faveo howled at the two Praetorians, who dragged Lenis away forcefully. "Praetor..was it not my Father's order to have that nuisance permanently removed?"Heres murmured, while tossing his gladius between hands playfully. "Rex indeed it was. Allow me to explain. Lenis had the support of some wayward barbarians in Gaul and somehow he managed to escape incarceration with help from these supporters."Faveo responded in a strained voice, bowing. "Perhaps we should engage a more assertive Praetor... We can't have madmen running in to disturb our routine can we?"Heres threatened the seemingly shrunken Faveo. Stifled laughs were heard from the ranks of the Senators. Faveo straightened his red and white toga , retaliating " Rex, I have been in the office since the rule of the great Augustus Lucius Leonidus. Over the years I have served your Father and you with due diligence." "That only means that you should start enjoying the fruits of your labor. I heard you have a well appointed residence in Florence do you not? I think you should learn to enjoy more of it's grounds."Heres signaled to his Magister Militum Lepos Virtus, who escorted the aged Praetor out of the curia grounds immediately.

"Now lets get back to business shall we? What is the agenda for the day, Princep?"Heres questioned the Princep Senatus Servus Dominus who reads out agenda for the Senate meetings. " Rex and fellow members of the Senate, the first issue of the day is the Loss of our hold in Asia Minor. The Governor of Temeritus Hold , the esteemed Callidus Pacalis has lost a shipment of one hundred thousand aureus to the rebel plebian army and the trading town of Shineas Corpus has been sacked." "Callidus should be held accountable for the losses!"cried Moenias, a popular senator who holds a pro-republic stance. Senator Adstruo Orientis, long-time friend of Moenias tugged at his sleeve and whispered tersely "What are you thinking Moenias?! Callidus is his lover!" Meanwhile the other senators exchanged muted looks and broke into odd bits of conversation now and then. " And so you think you can do a better job then, Moenias?"Heres countered, one hand on the arm-rest of his grey marble seat, the other on the hilt of the gladius he was spinning on he floor. Standing up, he walked over to the row of Senators where Moenias stood. Waving an arc with his gladius across the row of Senators he challenged them "Is there any amongst you willing to replace Callidus?!" An uncomfortable pregnant pause crushed the air, Heres satisfied with his successful intimidation returned to his seat. "We still have to account to the people of Rome, Rex" Moenias ventured. "What is Rome, Wise Moenias?"Heres asked, leaning comfortably into his seat. "Rome is the people, this Senate and the lands that stretch from here to Numidia."Moenias replied.

" No Moenias, I am Rome."Heres thundered. " Then we should disband this Senate and go back to our farms."Moenias laughed. Adstruo Metonius intervened "My old friend Moenias must be delirious from the wine we shared. Haha he's equal parts lousy drinker and good orator. A potent mix is it not?Haha.." Speaking in soft tones to Moenias , "Think of your family if not of yourself my friend."Adstruo pretended to falter in the action of putting his arm around Moenias. "Ah perhaps I myself am not a good drinker as well. We should go rest, Moenias."Adstruo added, trying desperately to salvage the situation. Pontifex Maximus Coitus Primus stepped in and mediated, whispering to Heres "Moenias is still of use. We need him in the Senate to keep the mob happy. We have eyes on him, everything is within our control." Heres pondered the situation and decided that a show of magnanimity would be the best solution. " Take your friend and leave, Adstruo. Remember to send me some of that wine!"Heres remarked and the Senators broke into guffaws.

As Adstruo and Moenias hurried away from the Curia Hostilia, Adstruo reprimanded the younger man "Moenias that was too brash, even for you! Do you not know that Callidus is Heres's lover?!" "I know well what they are, Adstruo. You have my respect for being an honorable man, but I am prepared to stand and fight for the right cause. Callidus has the calibre of a mule and we both know that very well."Moenias argued, face flushed with anger. "Heres has the love of the praetorians and the legions. What do you think will happen to your family and yourself if you were to cross him too much. Moenias my friend, we are not indispensible, we have a voice in the Senate because he allows it. Can you really bear the thought of your wife being raped, your son being sodomised before they kill them in front of you? "Adstruo counseled. "It is not without a glimmer of hope, Moenias. I do know a way we can bring down Heres and democracy back to Rome. There is a secret which will empower us. Come let us go to the lavatorium and talk. It will be safe there."Adustruo motioned for Moenias to follow and the duo walked brisly into the distance. Unnoticed in the shadows of a pillar was a cloaked man, surveying their every move. Glancing around he started to follow the pair.

To be Continued

Auhor's Note:

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used ficticiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Remember the Tenants

2007-08-11T06:24:00.000-07:00

In the previous post I mentioned in brief some of my fellow tenants. Lets delve into greater detail with this post. At this very moment there are 5 people in the 2 storey townhouse. T, A, Jin, Jin's gf and me. Technically Jin's gf is not a tenant, she just a licensee whom we tolerate. She happens to be on a 2 week visit here so the landlords decided that she could stay and we gave our consent too. T was the first to move in followed by me. A moved in 3 days after I did while Jin and his gf just moved in this morning. T is a strapping young man who does most of the cooking for the duo while his buddy A is slimmer and does most of the washing up. Both are from Sichuan. Jin and gf are from Shanghai, both are pretty good looking people.

Characteristics wise, the T & A duo keep to themselves generally and they prefer to cook their own dishes: mainly capsicum and leek with pork, leek with pork, pasta, fried rice with egg etc. Rustic stuff. They like to converse in their native direct and speak Mandarin or English only when they are communicating with others. I had suggested we could share the cooking burden but they didn't seem keen on the idea. So normally they cook theirs and I cook mine. Its a hassle when it comes to meal times and everyone is making a beeline for the kitchen. I guess they just aren't used to communal living. T is an easy going kinda guy while A is more distant and reserved. Perhaps the discipline one studies has some form of impact on a person's character, T's an engineering student while A majors in accounting and finance. Once I used some cooking oil and salt belonging to T& A. A came up to me and told me that China guys are very independent and I should get my own seasonings. In fact it was T who had told me earlier I could use the salt. Well I used my own condiments like soya sauce and pepper. So in reality I had only used some oil. Seriously who can finish a bag of 1 kg salt? It takes a really long time to consume that much salt. He also told me that I could use the pots and pans they bought but I should put them back in the cabinet after washing. A asked if I understood and I nodded "Yea ok". Later I explained that I was drying the pots and pans by the sink because I didn't want to keep them while they are wet as bacteria might grow.

So I decided to shut A up , I bought a nice posh stainless steel electric kettle and told him that everyone can use it. I also put a strainer for public use. Its funny having a 19yr old kid trying to set boundaries. Obviously he lacks the foresight to see the advantages of sharing resources with Uncle Rezzle who has deeper pockets. Oh well I guess its their loss of not being able to enjoy red wines, steaks and curries or yong tau foo. The other day I was watching T&A cook as I wanted to see how different Sichuan cuisine was. So T was explaining while chopping up the veges and meat about Sichuan food. A helped by washing the veges and peeling the garlic. It was rather comical when A tried using a swiss knife no bigger than a nail cutter to peel garlic cloves. I showed him the professional way : smashed the clove with the side of a chopper, chop off the two ends and it was peeled. T was also laboriously cutting strips of meat from some slabs of pork chop. I advised him that strips of pork were available at the supermarket. Today A was at it again during dinner time when they could not find one of their pans. I told them that Jin and gf had used it earlier. Later on we found out that Jin had put the pan into the dishwasher compartment. A then came down and pasted Post its indicating which were their stuff and how they were not for public use. Like most PRCs, T & A aspire to stay in australia for work after graduation. Its a wise move as overseas exposure can increase one's market value. I'm not so worried for T as he's a pretty laidback and easy going dude , A however needs to work on his xenophobic tendencies. If he can't even manage to get on friendly terms with Chinese housemates what about colleagues in the future? And if one wants to stick with just their own kind then why venture overseas for studies?

Now Jin and gf provided me much comic relief the first time I saw them. Jin's a 2nd yr student in actuarial science and had been staying at Barker street. The reason he moved here was that the gf couldn't stand him staying with 4 girls. She was so concerned about competition that she asked my evil landlady J three times on whether she was married. J was relating to me and her hubby on how impossible it would be for her to fall for a kid like Jin and vice versa for Jin to fall for a plump auntie like herself. We all agreed that the gf was way too paranoid. And its not like she's ugly, in fact shes pretty and has got a nice figure. Such low self esteem hehe. Looking at the well groomed Jin, its kinda obvious he's from a wealthy background. And from parts of conversation with me and the landlords we could tell that money wasn't of that much of a concern for him. He had even volunteered to pay for a gas leak alarm as he was scared that a gas leak might occur as his space is near the kitchen. Funny part is he's renting the cheapest room in the house, the living room because the gf wanted it cheap. In fact there's still another room in the garage which is better in terms of privacy and closed off from the kitchen. We figured that its part of the gf's agenda to keep him in public view so that he can't get up to any hanky panky when she's gone. I joked that I could probably act as double agent for both Jin and his gf. The gf would probably get me to spy on Jin and at the same time Jin would pay me to lie to the gf haha. We reckon its likely he'll just pay the rent and move to another place after the gf leaves.
Now I shall have to think of a codename for myself =D

Steak Out!

2007-08-08T03:02:00.000-07:00

My evil landlady has a plan, she intends to fatten me up. Each day she will unfailingly remind me to eat more (she measures in terms of Aussie size servings). To quell her frequent admonishments, I decided to cook something heavy to show her I'm eating a fair amount. Browsing through the range of meats at the supermarket I decided on my choice of retaliation: steak! Sun Tzu said: "When the strike of a hawk breaks the body of its prey, it is because of timing". Therefore for the strike to be effective and on target, I timed my cooking show to make sure she'll bump into me cooking up my scrumptious steak. Starting at around half past 5 I began marinating my slab of meat. Gave it some serious whacking with the back of my chopper to tenderise it and started rubbing salt, black pepper plus Worchester sauce. Meanwhile I put a pot of water on stove and waited for it to boil. While waiting I decided to stir fry some mixed vegetables consisting of peas, carrots and cauliflower. Heating up a pan I lobed some magarine in and tossed the mixed veges with a bit of salt and pepper till they were pliant and aromatic. As the water in the pot boiled I threw in some potatoes.

Ah ha! As I was plating my veges, a couple came to view the house. " I heard there're 2 China guys and 1 Singaporean living here."the girl remarked in Mandarin. T, my housemate pointed me out as the Singaporean. And she followed with , " Does he speak mandarin?". "Am I not speaking Mandarin?"I replied in a joking tone. The girl was utterly surprised "Oh you speak Mandarin? Singaporeans know Mandarin?". T jumped to the Singaporean defence "Yea Singaporeans speak everything under the sun. Malay, English , Mandarin etc." My...we have a reputation lol. Even an 19yr old Sichuan guy knows Singapore. Soon enough my evil landlady arrived. It's all going according to plan, hurhur! So I hollered "Hey look J! I cooking steak hor!" And off she went regaling the new tenants with her evil plan of fattening me up. As the pan was hot I eased my steak in and pressed it flat with 2 forks. The steak sizzled, J looked on and said : " Aussie size serving bigger leh!" . " I haven't add my mash potato yet loh.And if you haven't noticed Im not exactly Aussie size yet."I quipped, while poking my fork into the potatoes. Urgh.. still not done yet. Flipped over the steak and pressed with my forks again.

The new tenants walked around the house and the guy reached out a hand to me, which I shook and introduced myself. He asked me what my major is and I explained that I'm doing Msc in a chemical related field, to which he remarked "Must be abtruse stuff." I brushed it off " Nah just earning a living.". Soon enough my steak was medium, I plated it and started making the sauce. Added some magarine and scooped in my garlic followed shortly by fresh button mushrooms. Cooked the shrooms till they bled water and seasoned with salt and good old black pepper. Topped the mix off with a little water, Worchester sauce and more butter. Simmered into a sauce which I poured over the steak. The potatoes were finally cooked. Sheesh stubborn spuds! I mashed them with a trusty fork and added the magarine into a pot followed by the mash. Poured in the remaining drizzle of my 2l milk and stirred copiously on low heat. J asked me " Then you go back Singapore become pharmacist ah?" Somehow the word Chemist has been used so much to refer to pharmacies in Western countries that people no longer know what chemists do anymore. Sigh..."No Im gonna be a consultant I guess."I replied. " Wah then need to work shift. Pharma companies work 24hrs right?" "No lah. When Im consultant, people pay me I talk and they work." "Ohhhh".

Happy with my mash potato consistency I plated and started on my steak. J began "I think I will get a bigger plate lah. Like that your steak will be bigger. Then you will boom boom boom become fatter." I rolled my eyes...There's no winning this battle.

Clearing the Cache

2007-08-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

One of the foremost bloggers in Singapore which I hold in esteem is Mr Wang. His socio-political-scientific blog is a refreshing fount of insight and I strongly recommend people to read it. In a few of his posts Mr Wang talked about meditation and prayer. Meditation was something I used to do when I was in my teens. Funny isn't it? I do things in reverse order haha. What I can affirm is that meditation does indeed produce a multitude of benefits. Like a computer , our brain interprets the world around us using signals triggered by our sensory receptors in our sense organs. In meditation we slow our breathing rate, heart rate, shut off most of our senses, clear our thoughts and relax our muscles. Think of the brain as a browser, during the day or even the night it goes over many webpages and downloaded lots of files etc. Meditation clears our cache. It produces an inner calm, a center of peace and this notion has been written by many gurus. One can think rationally and clearly when he/she is calm. The clearing of gibberish thoughts can also improve one's memory. And this is just a novice induction into meditation. Some forms can even allow a person to self-heal better, produce body heat to sustain one through extreme cold or even deep hibernation. On the other hand prayer is a form of directed thought. Thought with direction is extremely powerful.

Think in terms of quantum mechanics. At this level , things are broken down into wave functions and probability distributions of where the particles are. Particles are also dual-natured having both particle characteristics and waveform characteristics. Its all about energy levels, vibrations and rotations of the particle-wave entities. Material existence is such, basically frequency is the basis for many things. Consider this. During meditation the brain gives out alpha-waves 8-12Hz(low frequency) and gamma waves 26-40Hz(higher frequency) when we are involved in higher mental activities. One may argue what such relatively low frequencies can do. Well there is such a thing called constructive wave interference. When waves of similar frequencies converge they get amplified. Take for example a Christian prayer session or a Buddhist prayer session. People's brains are affected by the music and chanting, so its possible that they are emitting oscillations/frequencies which are highly similar. Imagine how strong the energies will be when the crowd is hundreds or thousands strong. This could be a possible explanation to why people often report supernatural events occurring like miracle heals and seeing lights or hearing divine music. Is it really that supernatural? Perhaps like what Mr Wang says, science has yet to catch up yet. Whether the amplified brainwaves affect the environment I can't say for sure without experimentations, but in my personal context fervent prayer has certainly helped me in those desperate moments when I really felt I was going to black out for exams or my brain was overloaded from studying. I'm a free thinker btw.

Writing about this I think I should go back to my meditation practice again. Seeing now that I'm past 30 and beginning to notice the loss in my mental sharpness. I stopped the practice gradually after O Levels. A funny incident happened in my secondary school , a group of school bullies came up to me while I was meditating before assembly, ridiculed me and jokingly asked for 4D numbers. Looking back, its amusing how shallow some people can be. I guess I also felt weird and out of place by meditating. Kids my age then probably weren't reading books titled like Beyond Supernature. Can't help it I'm a geek by nature.

D+14

2007-08-05T21:54:00.001-07:00

Its now D+14. In military terms D means Day of attack/operation and the subsequent term is usually a variable referencing to the start date eg D+1 is the day after the attack date. Sunny outlook to the weather today at a warm 19 degrees Celsius and I had my first morning lecture after a span of 5years+. The lecturer was a burly guy with a sense of humor. He did'nt even bat an eyelid when I told him I only enrolled on the 02 Aug 07 ( I missed 4 of his lectures and was without a work group). In typical Australian style assurance was given, several questions asked and everything was alrite and dandy mate! Transfer this scenario to an Asian setting and I would probably have been sentenced to academic doom.

Tolerance is a familiar term to me, in my line of work it means a set of variation limits which an instrument/test must achieve to validate its performance being reliable. In life however tolerance is so much more than meets the eye. So far in my 2 weeks+1 , I have found the locals to be a tolerant lot generally. Gay couples holding hands in streets, professors dressing down, treating students enrolling in late cordially etc. Most of the Uni staff I have come into contact with seem to understand difficulties faced by international students. In addition, options are open to students for alternative modules to get credit accumulations aside from those offered as part of the course packages. Wow, academic flexibility. I have had little of this back in my alma mater. I recall in my sophomore year, my request to switch to the degree course in food science and technology was rejected outright by a professor and was told if I wanted to take that up I had to quit and reapply. This was despite the fact that I had a food science and technology diploma. Resigned to fate, I completed my basic degree and graduated without attending the convocation. Honors year wasn't even a consideration, I was incensed and felt stifled. I was robbed of an opportunity to study my subject of interest in my very own homeland. And I wasn't even a bad student with crappy grades. Perhaps I'm dull but I never understood the reason why I had no right to pursue an area of my interest even though I had the relevant qualifications.

Hence fast forward to 5years later, when my financials allowed I applied for an Msc with UNSW. I was choosing an alternative module to replace one which was unavailable and my professor offered me a postgraduate food science module to which I replied " Yea I can do that I have a diploma in food science & technology." "Brilliant!"he said. And thats what flexible learning should be.

By clamping down on students' interests the majority produced will be book-crunching grade chasing graduates with little drive & passion for their discipline outside of the classroom(from experience most fresh graduates I see in work forget the stuff they learn at our local universities). Do not forget that the majority of the people fall into the middle range of the cumulative curve. Outright geniuses are few, so if you just focus on these you end up with a ton of mediocres. Pareto Logic at work breeding scholars?Focus on 20% of the significant who may contribute to the nation's success? My humble opinion is: To improve the quality of workforce, people should be encouraged to take up subjects which interest them and their education should be broadbased so that they will possess knowledge across the board and the drive to improve/upgrade. Who knows , maybe one day they may even contribute to the progress of their subjects. Geniuses are not the only ones who come up with discoveries. Serendipity occurs for many great findings, but in the hands of a person with mediocre understanding he/she won't even recognize the discovery. Which is why we should not be producing people who know how to rattle off the abcs of their trade but lack the deeper understanding on how to apply their discipline. This is the age of knowledge based economy. Technology unites many disciplines, thus there is need to produce talents who can apply their knowledge and not just statistical numbers to meet industrial requirements.

One can fish in rivers of trout and catch a good meal, but it is in the seas that you catch a trophy like the marlin-> Part of the reason why Australia has got a number nobel prize winners while Singapore is still trying in vain to breed some. Luring scientists with $ is not a long term solution at all. Believe in the people, nurture them and they will deliver. As far back as my polytechnic days I have had ideas for Singapore: Having areas on top of HDB Flats for horticulture. Also about 8 years ago I had I thought about utilizing a combination of air-flushing toilets with biogas technology and solar energy for fueling military camps. Its both strategically wise and Nsfs can be trained to use air-flushing toilets easily. This will condition an entire generation to the biogas system and this is good because natural gas and oil will run out one day. Then what will Singapore run on? The current trend seems that we are emulating Monaco and Las Vegas. Good forward thinking but we should do more and start thinking on what our energy options are. What about tidal energy? We are surrounded by water and are we taking advantage of this? Instead of the overwhelming costs of building tidal dams why don't we try an array of undersea turbines to generate tidal energy. Even if we lack the sea space for practical application, at least we are able to develop and sell the technology. Do we have scholars involved in research on super-conducting transformers as well? I can assure you that there are a number of Singaporeans with sound ideas out there but will anyone listen? No because the general idea is if you are not a scholar, step aside.

Its Frickin' Freezing in here, Mr Bigglesworth!

2007-08-02T22:44:00.000-07:00

As Dr Evil said to his bald kitty when he was stuck in the cryogenic chamber of his escape rocket:"Its fricking freezing in here, Mr Bigglesworth!". The temperature now in Sydney is a mere 10 degrees Celsius, thanks to the rain which has been pouring down periodically since the morning . Sheesh! Had to wind up the heater to keep warm brrrr...... All that mashed potato(I threw a glob of margarine in there) and fried chicken(with skin!) didn't manage to warm me either. I guess its time to hit the bottle! Time to take to the streets and scout for liqour.

I'm actually pretty pissed with the weather, it spoilt my plan of doing laundry today. Somehow whenever I'm in the mood for washing it's either cloudy or raining. Which sparked a chain of thought in my head: Chinese have long worshiped a myriad of deities that preside over nature and things that transpire in our lives(eg Lottery Luck) or over certain geographical locations(eg mountains). Now there happens to be a domestic deity we call Zao Jun in Chinese who happens to have dominion over the Kitchen. I wonder if his powers extended over to laundry, because if it does I better start offering some joss sticks. Need more Laundromatic Luck!

Cooking101

2007-08-01T18:17:00.000-07:00

Aside from the usual academic load, foreign students like me usually have to grapple with extra home economics modules: Cooking101 & Laundry101. These are necessary evils, if one wishes to cut living expenses. Especially here in Sydney where a normal sandwich and cappuccino amounts to 8AUD. That's like 11SGD for me. Advantage of taking Cooking101: Makes one appreciate their mother. Sentimentalities aside, theres a lot of sh|t in Cooking101. First you have to plan your weekly grocery trip. Have an idea of what you would like to eat during the week and buy them all together. Time management is essential when you have classes and homework to do as well. For stuff like pasta and rice, cook in bulk and store them in plastic tubs for future use. This can be done over the weekends when you have more time. Here are some of the stuff I cook :

Mash Potatoes
Make a cut around circumference of each potato, throw into boiling water with a tiny bit of salt.
To tell if they're cooked plunge a fork into the potato, if it goes all the way through its toasted!
Take out the cooked potatoes and wash them in cold water. You should be able to peel off the skin easily now. Use a fork and mash them. In a hot pot, melt some butter throw in your mash and add some milk. Stir on low heat. Season with pepper and salt. If you are into cooking bigtime, you can do green apples in the same way add it to the mix. Brown some onions to caramelise them throw in the mash apples n potatoes with butter and some milk. Great with pork chop!

Soba
I like green tea soba. So I tend to cook this a lot. Grab probably 2-3 handfuls(depending on the size of your hand I guess). Throw in boiling water with a tiny bit of salt. Cook till soft , probably around 5-6 minutes. Take out soak in cold water. Pour in soba sauce, which is a mix of soya sauce, mirin and sugar. These are available in ready made bottles too from supermarkets.

Half boiled Egg
Tasty stuff to go with toasted bread and soba as well. Have a pot of boiling water. Throw in an egg. Time around 3minutes +/1 20secs. Take out and crack. The egg white should be semi solid whitish and opaque whilst the yolk is still runny. Great with soya sauce and white pepper. A part of the classic Singapore style breakfast : half-boiled egg + black coffee + toasted bread. Yum!

Teriyaki Cod
Marinate cod in Teriyaki sauce and black pepper. Can be left overnight in chiller. Fry up till golden. Leave the oil, throw in some garlic and onions to brown, add Teriyaki sauce, sugar some water and a tiny bit of corn starch to thicken.

Tuna filling for sandwiches/croissants(recommended with croissants)
Open a can of tuna in oil or brine, drain dry. Use a fork to break up chunks, do this in a bowl.
Add 2-2 1/2 tablespoons of mayonnaise, stir it in good. Squeeze a 1/3 lemon in and sprinkle generously with ground black pepper. We can store this in a tub or Ziploc bag for future use.

Honey Mustard Sauce for salmon and other assorted seafood
Add some water , 4 tablespoons of honey, 2 teaspoon sugar, 1/3 cup of lemon juice, 3 tablespoons of mustard to a pan with some melted butter. Stir till creamy. You can replace butter with cream if you like.

Rosemary with chicken
Take a piece of chicken, make some cuts along the meat. Rub salt, pepper and rosemary.Drizzle with olive oil , let it marinate for at least 4hrs or overnight. Fry up. Taste great with a bit of chili sauce. PS: Remember to use palm oil for frying. Its a more hardy oil with higher BP(boiling point).

Porkchop
Take a few fillets of pork and tenderize them. Meaning u beat them with the back of your knife/chopper. This is to release enzymes that soften the meat Season with salt and white pepper. Break an egg, take the yolk and beat it up on a bowl. Dip pork fillets into egg yolk and coat them with pulverized wheat biscuit crumbs. Fry till golden.

Mini Pizza
Take some left over bagel and slice them diagonally, slap pizza or pasta sauce on them sprinkle with grated mozarella cheese. Add whatever toppings you prefer. You can add some canned mushrooms, toasted capsicum and leftover chicken or beef. Toast in a toaster/oven/microwave!

Highly Pressured Lean Person (HPLC)

2007-08-01T05:29:00.000-07:00

HPLC Ps Waters SG Engineers : Hi Guys remember my commission!

Postgrad. Sounds like something I really wanted to be for a long time. Oh wait I'm one. Time really flies in the truest sense of the word. A few weeks ago I was still in my comfort zone with a stable-stagnant-smeagol pay, friends, family and my cherished game. Boom! I'm now in a mad rush to finish my enrolment and playing catch up to my missed lectures. Thanks to some Hippocratically-related bungling, stiff-necked bureaucracy (Yep I started the process 40,00years back) and nationalistic obligations (Cheers Mr Brown, you're my hero! Rock on!) I had arrived a day late into the semester. Reckon we should have some Red Tape Hate Day event of epic proportions, which would be infinitely better than the hypocritical tree hugging Earth Day.

Anyway, I had intended for this change. As an Aries, its probably in my blood to do so. Astrology so unscientific and superstitious!!!! Curious that a guy versed in scientific methods would deign to consider such an occult practice as reasons for his academic advancement. Yea well, underneath that labcoat I'm still a paranoid, self-deluded star gazing geek with grand ambition =p. I'm Chinese ok, so I have to live up to the Confucian Scholar stereotype reciting all those theories and formulas plus getting good grades in maths and science. Point is I'm a person who needs change and I think Dr Johnson is pretty spot on , so thats why I'm here. Oh yea but Astrology thats an interesting subject, so much argument over the years on its authenticity. It's a hit with the girls(Yea all you buayas out there better learn it) and a lot of people fall into the described traits because personality by nature is a rather complex and dynamic set of characteristics or people can be possibly affected by Confirmation Bias. In fact my profile from Herman's Brain Dominance (Blue-Green) has parts which are in direct contrast with my astrological profile. Funny stuff =) so I ask , Can I be a controlled impulsive person?

Rezzledaz In Sydney

2007-08-01T05:18:00.000-07:00

Just a brief introduction. I'm a Singaporean postgrad in Sydney who plays a gnome mage in World of Warcraft. My blog is named after my gnome mage. For those who have no idea what World of Warcraft is, kindly click this link. Also, in the words of the great Eric Cartman, " Join the online sensation which is the World of Warcraft before we murder you". Well if you haven't the slightest inkling of who Eric Cartman is, you must either come from a galaxy far far away or you're in serious need of a breath test.