Let the chastisements of Juvenal be never so necessary for his new kind of satire; let him declaim as wittily and sharply as he pleases: yet still the nicest and most delicate touches of satire consist in fine raillery....How easy is it to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the grossness of the names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full face, and to make the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of shadowing. This is the mystery of that noble trade, which yet no master can teach to his apprentice: he may give the rules, but the scholar is never the nearer in his practice. Neither is it true that this fineness of raillery is offensive. A witty man is tickled while he is hurt in this manner, and a fool feels it not. The occasion of an offence may possibly be given, but he cannot take it. If it be granted that in effect this way does more mischief; that a man is secretly wounded, and though he be not sensible himself, yet the malicious world will find it for him: yet there is still a vast difference betwixt the slovenly butchering of a man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place.

- John Dryden - A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire

On any given day. You can choose to swim 50 laps. Alternatively, run from your house to the university, then do the slope routine. Or, you can just stay home and watch TV. It is quite simple, really.

Take a piece of blank paper. Make a few straight lines with a pencil.

The Lawful sees unyielding rules, setting up boundaries and restrictions. The Neutral sees guides, signposts in the infinite realm of possibilities, where only creativity limits what can transpire between the lines. The Chaotic sees pencil marks - nothing that an eraser cannot handle.

The Transcendent, on the other hand, sees the Z-plane. Untarnished by graphite, or even paper.

They say, in the past people believed that knowing someone's true name gave them magical powers over that person. Things have not changed much since then. We still seek that perfect word to explain things. Feelings. Phenomena. Convinced that once we have that elusive term from off the tip of our tongue, we will have more power over what it is that defeats us.

I wished I were the one who coined the phrase, but alas, I had to snitch it off a classic.

Two words: emotional discipline.

Empathy sometimes takes awhile to catch up. Today, somebody showed me his funky wonky world where people actually *gasp* delete friends from their MSN contact lists. Not that it makes any more sense now than it did, but well, at least it can be substantiated with relatively plausible excuses. =)

Back in business. In the event that being missed is not a mere figment of my imagination, my sincere apologies. Will be filling in the backlogs as best as I could, between playing tour guide, writing recommendation letters, tying up loose ends at work and starting new loose ends.

Sometimes I really don't get it. I wrote so much code, and all that I have to show for it is a few lousy Excel charts. WTF.

Teething problems, I am certain. But I guess that is part and parcel of growth.

Bummer. Project reassigned. I would have whined if I were more certain that I am faultless.

I am definitely not going to win an award on maturity for this. But frankly, when someone comes and make a fuss, however small, about the ADULT content on your blog, what would your response be? Just so happens that the spiteful child in me happens to be very much alive, too.

Presenting, True Porn Clerk Stories, by Ali Davis.

No hard feelings there. At least it counts as literature of some sort. It could have been worse. *evil grin*

As for the rest of you folks, you may proceed to follow the link. I know you need no further encouragement.

I was planning on prose much longer, but decided to err on the side of economy. For when something magical has touched you, you too would be wary of tarnishing its memory with mere images or words.

Believe me when I say that until 5 days ago, Cambodia was the least probable country I would ever envision as a holiday destination. Self-professed romantic as I am, somehow the concept of looking at ruins and rubble in a high risk malaria zone sounded more masochistic than anything else. But all I knew was that I desperately wanted to spend some time with her, and even if that means walking in landmine infested country, so be it.

I hope that it does not seem as if the valuable lessons from the trip have been all but lost upon me. If nothing else, there is the trite juxtaposition of my own impermanance against the architectural wonders of eons yonder, but that reflection can probably wait till another entry. It was just a very lucky bonus that the story unfolded against cultural artifacts, but for all the romantic qualities the backdrop confers, the protagonists have the focus of the viewfinder for now.

I shall have to contend with mental imagery, which only means that they are all the more vivid for myself. Of skipping across puddles, of darting across thresholds from one crumbling room to another. Of photographing clouds, and watching the scarlet sunset stretch out to a seeming eternity.

She says that I am in love with love. And she could just be right, as she almost always is with her other pithy, piercing observations. If that somehow happened to ring true, however, how much more would I love the person who is the embodiment of it all: passionately stubborn, animatedly silly, tenderly paradoxical and, in all likelihood, a closet romantic.

And then there is my own pedantic grammatical conviction. With all due respect, perhaps the rest of the world has been mistaken in its usage of the word "love". It should have always been less of a noun, and more of a verb.

Holy flying grasshoppers - the world is back on surround sound! Am most willing to suffer my colleague's incessant self-mumbling without the slightest complaint. For today. Hah.

"That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers." - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in Oath of Fealty

There. It is official. They hate us. Which is perfectly fine, because I am not harbouring any goodwill towards techies right now either.

Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
#0 0x4f46741e in mallopt () from /lib/i686/libc.so.6
#1 0x4f466a67 in mallopt () from /lib/i686/libc.so.6
#2 0x4f465c61 in malloc () from /lib/i686/libc.so.6
#3 0x0807e798 in operator new(unsigned) ()
#4 0x4f3a85ff in operator new[](unsigned) () from /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5

WTF. Segfault in malloc. God help me.

Vier. Cuatro. ४. Papat. 肆. Cztery. IV. Dört. 四. ๔. Empat. Four.

I think you get the idea. Yay!

Addendum: Boy does my ass hurt bad though. Hope I would be able to get out of bed tomorrow.

Holy Cow!

If something can be done, it can be accomplished with aplomb and a flourish.
If something can be done, it can be completed with minimal fuss and complaint.
If something can be done, it can be mulled over with painstaking detail.
If something can be done, it can be super-charged with glory and adrenaline.
If something can be done, it can be compressed into an even shorter time-frame.
If something can be done, it can be achieved with a person less. (Extrapolate)
If something can be done, it can be done.

And if something cannot be done, you are responsible. For every forefinger pointed at others, four are pointing back to yourself. They don't play by the rules, you say? That only means that you are not good enough to beat even the cheaters. They are bigger, better, faster, badder, you say? That is only because you let them. They do not give you enough time to prove yourself, you say? Then you ought to work better, faster, smarter. Throw yourself off the top of the building. And when you die, pick up the pieces and make an improved version of yourself to have another go at it. For in the very end, although we can only hope against hope, you either Believe or you don't.

Sianz. Still a one-hit wonder.

I usually have more discretion than this. Honest. Fingers crossed that no minors are reading this. Or for that matter, any of my friends' parents. (You know who you are =) Fresh off Slashdot (of all places):

Husband: Honey, I can't have just one pussy for the rest of my life. I need more pussy than that!"
Wife: "Hey, if you were a little bigger, you'd have more pussy right here!"

Ah well. Since I am already at it, here's something clever I came across in Selling Sin (wait for my book review before passing judgement):

Philip Morries [parent company of Marlboro] has taken a more subtle approach in trying to attract lesbian customers to Virginia Slims. A series of ads showing two women enjoying various activities and Virginia Slims together uses captions such as "The best part of taking a break is who you take it with", "Women aren't opposed to a good line - it just all depends on what it's attached to" (showing one woman netting a fish on the other woman's line) and "If you always follow the straight and narrow, you'll never know what's around the corner" (showing one woman looking over her shoulder at another woman approaching). These ads are vague so as not to offend straight readers, but contain enough between-the-lines messages to attract lesbian readers. (Pg. 119)

Very depressing. It is probably part of growing up when you find out that out of your little enclosed world, you are nowhere near the best. That's okay. I can accept that. It is quite another thing, however, to find out that you are 10 times slower or less efficient than what the world has to offer. It is something like, you are an aspiring sprinter, but you take 100 seconds, or 1 minute 40 seconds, to cover 100 metres. The difference between enthusiasm and capability has never been more starkly illustrated.

I think I should just go and assemble computers for a living or something.

Uh. The general consensus is that you would only find obscure, slightly off-track materials here, so you know that it is a slow day when I condescend to post about something... mainstream. *shudder*

Reviews about Google's beta email service, Gmail, are coming up, and they seem to be pretty favourable so far. Go grab yourself an account when it is officially launched. Anyway, that this piece of information may have the mildest utility to you, is but a unintended side-effect. I was just going to lament on the sorry state of progress. It is 2004, and we celebrate the launch of an... email service?? No slight to Google, from the screenshots it really seems that they have managed to find a sweet spot between functionality and ease-of-use. But the first email was sent in 1971, Knuth stopped using email in 1990, Microsoft acquired Hotmail for $400 million in 1998. Finally, in 2004, normal people have a web-based email service which does not suck. What took us geeks so long?

On a side note, the 'Conversations' feature is a very useful turned-on-by-default feature. I don't remember ever figuring out how to use the threading features of the 4-5 GUI email clients I have used. One thumbs up to Mutt, on that account.

I already feel mundane. I promise I will rant about things more interesting things than email next time.

Ever so often, your mind conceives of devious possibilities, but it takes those very special moments when your body concur as a reluctant accomplice.

A little milestone today: 3 slopes. That would be up and down 30 storeys, thrice, with a 6 tracks thrown in for good measure. I am still one short of my target, but my immediate wish is that I would be able to limp out of bed tomorrow morning. *concuss*

如果有一天我有了大肚腩
你对我是否意兴阑珊
如果有一天你成了黄脸婆
我是否会嫌你又老又罗嗦

Smokescreen. *wink*

Good Stuff^TM. No strings attached. Sigh. I guess it is just too bad my wiring's a little.. different.

也不知道为何平白无故，竟读起《李敖回忆录》了。文摘李敖被国民党软禁时期的日记：

1971年3月11日：
对待诸葛亮的三方式
一、三顾茅庐，请出来帮忙。
二、不顾茅庐，不理他，弃人才于地，但也不干扰他。
三、包围茅庐，软禁他。
国民党对李先生，显然属于第三方式。
国民党笨死了。

Not that I expect anyone to care. I mean, I am already pretty non-chalant about the project myself. Anyhow, here are some vital statistics. I was so bored from writing system documentation that I decided that counting files would be a worthwhile distraction.

• 165 classes.
• 2 code generators, since being lazy requires some effort.
• 73 subversion check-ins. Well, I guess I was not that conscientious.
• 180 spliced images, painstakingly created by hand one by one.
• 250 string literals, translated into Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.
• 602 lines crossed-out on my todo list. Never mind about how many remained standing.
• 71 reiterations of the same joke, about how my boss bragged that I was supposed to be done within 2 weeks. Clocktime is already closer to a year.

Share the love! Share the source! Some German dude sent me a copy of his pre-release software. So instead of having to bang my head on some funky wonky multi-dimensional data structure newly fangled in the 90s, I would only have to bang my head on porting esoteric Makefiles. Yay!

Baffled:

Evolutionary Environments for the Design of Buildings (HK Poly University) - This project proposes an alternative approach to the design of buildings. The proposed methodology relies on a software environment for design that synthesises the design schema tactic with the use of evolutionary algorithms, loosely based on the neo-Darwinian model of evolution through natural selection. The particular system being used is based on XML as its input format for the different representations (genotypes, phenotypes, transformators, parameter lists, etc); ToXgene is used to generate input documents containing initial random populations of genotypes.

5 brownie points to anyone who can shed some perspective of why genetic algorithms have anything to do with architecture.

I geddit! I am the weakest link!

Playlist at 7:30am:

• Gabrille - Somtimes
• Flight of the Bumble Bee (MIDI)
• Duran Duran - I Wanna Take You Higher
• Initial D - Non stop Mega Mix

Sweet cacophony.

There are glam, beautiful, photogenic, symmetrical people. There are ugly people. And then, there are people who know barely enough Photoshop to make themselves look just a little less androgynous.

If anyone is interested, the Apocalypse 12 is out. And if you did not already know that, this is obviously the wrong website for you to obtain your news from. =)

Bracing for impact from Sze Chean.

Picked up a random book from the library shelves. First impressions: essentially a good story hidden in the guide of a sociology treatise. Renegade academic, forbidden relationships (emotionally involved with her supervisor during gradaute school), and hidden feelings. Good read, someone speaking to my thoughts and fears, while I am, possibly, being ignored in my real world. (A schizophrenic conjecture, really.)

I am not usually morbid, but a random thought about death just occured to me. In that inevitable contest against age, which would you rather lose first, your body or your mind? I think I would choose the latter. I would be pretty peeved at myself (and would be mentally competent to do so) if it were my body which gives up first. Better an exhausted brain than a squandered one.

Just a thought.

Okay. So it appears that the prevailing blogging style seems to be swamping the audience with the minute details of one's day. Pithy and not so pithy quotes, the ten thousand and one people whom one crosses paths with. Movies, co-workers, shopping trips, classs. Most importantly, the weather. No, honestly, that is not a slight.

Which is all fine and dainty. I mean, it is not exactly my style. Personally, I believe only depressing issues are worth the writing about, and then, only barely so. But apparently, as I was duely informed this morning, this blog has been nominated for the Best Singapore Blog. The guilty culprit, you know who you are, because I obviously don't. So perhaps it is time to start getting a little more mainstream. A blow by blow, of a perfectly uneventfully depressing day.

2:25am - I hereby promise myself that I would not allow my mind to wander, until I have conquered the Slope. Up and down, 4 times in a single try. Until then, adversity can go take a hike and screw itself.

9:38am - Barely past mid-April, and the air is so hot and stifling that I cannot get to sleep without aircon. Frankly, I would very much prefer shivering under my covers than to wake up drenched in sweat. Nobody here in Hong Kong believes that I was born on the Equator. My utmost respect to everybody back at home.

11:07am - Late for my meeting, as usual. CQ presented a perfect little scheme, which I could not find any fault with, as usual. And if history were to repeat itself, 1 week later when we are in the heat of things, I would be kicking myself for missing a fatal flaw as a result of not conducting a thorough concept check. Sigh. I hope he graduates soon. I want to go back to Malaysia, horrid weather notwithstanding.

12noon - Supposed to be debugging my experiments, but was spending the hour in vain trying to locate Flight of the Bumble Bee. So it really is easier to download Britney Spears than Korsakov. Philistines, all you file sharing pirates! And since I obviously am not getting my way in the things that matter, I figure that I should just make do with being a brat in front of Yee Jiun. The only reason why I am already clobbered to death, is that we are on different continents. Not like things are going to improve with him going to the East Coast when I am hitting the West. Bummer.

1:30pm - The implicit, unwritten rule of dim sum is that you need a sizeable group to hit the tables. The more the merrier, so that you get to order a greater variety of dishes to sample. At the bare minimum, you need two persons so that you get to share. Which probably explains why the waitress was looking at me in a weird way when I told her I need a table for one. I do not want to sound like a social outcast, but it was a delightful little experience. No small talk required, I serve myself tea, and I get all three chao siew bao all to myself! I am either awfully enlightened, or I have lost it altogether.

5:33pm - I hate it when people interrupt my debugging, but for a change, there was a welcome distraction. Emergency meeting to discuss how we should go about flushing a six-figure budget. Hmmm. Maybe it is time again to get an apprentice. New blood, charged with enthusiasm, looking up at me with adoring eyes as he seeks out the expanse that is my wisdom... riiigggghhhht.

7:27pm - Good news, part of the program works right now. Bad news, I spent the better half of the day finding a single typo error.
if (max > n) max = n;
I mean, seriously. Just as well I am going to be a graduate student. This way, I can get some undergraduate underlings and spare the world my terrible code.

8:43pm - Feel horrid before my meal. Feel horrid after my meal. The doctors must be terribly mistaken when they conclude that my stomach discomfort is a result of a stressful lifestyle. I admit I am going through some emotional duress, but none the worse for wear. This is one thing I would be glad to be proven wrong, but I suspect it could be a stomach ulcer. Are stomach ulcers fatal? Ah well. At least then someone would have a legitimate excuse to fly up here to Hong Kong. Either way, I win. *wry smile*

There. Hope this brings a clear message about how I feel about nominations.

On sex, religion and sports cars:

KW:	What do couples do anyway, when the pursuing is over and done with?
XJ:	Sex.
KW:	Sex?
XJ:	Sex.
KW:	All the time?
XJ:	Most of the time.
KW:	Unimaginable.
XJ:	And when they get bored of that, they either break up or get married.
KW:	...
XJ:	The buddha says, "Never buy a car before you test drive it." =)
KW:	Well, I bet he achieved enlightenment in the backseat of an M3.
XJ:	You mean the driver's seat.
KW:	Dude, you so obviously do not get my pun.
XJ:	Dude, you so obviously do not know an M3.
	-poignant pause-
KW:	Oh. You mean M3s do not have backseats?
XJ:	The buddha says, "You will be a bicycle tyre in your next life."

Names may or may not have been changed to protect the guilty.

Thought experiment in progress. Genius at work. Hurhur.

I know. I am a little too old to be infatuated with cheerleaders, even technological cheerleaders. Still, quite excited about the fact that Nicholas Negroponte, founding chairman of MIT's Media Lab and more importantly, a founder of Wired magazine, will be in UST this very afternoon.

You would think "infatuation" would be too strong a word. But circa 1998, stumped by a difficult question posed by my introspective roommate, I weighed the options and reluctantly came to the conclusion that I would still pick my copy of Wired over a date with Jo-an anyday. Sorry girl, you know I adore you, but surely you understand how cheerleaders appeal to teenage boys? *grinz*

I would have blogged. Really, the item has been sitting on my todo list for the past week. It is not so much that I am hard up for inspiration, just that all my time seems to have been spent on trying to start working, and I would rather you listen to someone who actually has something interesting and intelligent to talk about in the meantime. Yes please, as opposed to reading teenage girls who give blow-by-blow expositions on why Zouk rulez over Phuture (or was it the other way round?), or teenage boys who report in painstaking detail their latest dating conquest.

May I recommend Chuck Sigars on Passion of the Christ, Chuck Sigars on babies, Chuck Sigars on Good Friday and Chuck Sigars on Easter Sunday. I think you get the message.

And, now you know what I have been doing with my procrastination time.

The extent men would go to keep the women in their lives happy. Sign. My IDD bills are so gonna spike this month.

You learn something new every day: Liberty University's Reprimands and Consequences.

Mixed feelings about my very first citation. It is one small step up the food chain. Unfortunately, it is because we left a gapping hole open for attack. Sigh. More code to write now. To think I was just hoping for a little more motivation to work: now I am more than a little irked.

Women.

Just a little puzzled. Is CRM so lucrative a business that an industry leader can afford to sponsor the construction of an academic annex? Mmmm?

千里马常有，而伯乐不常有。

Sigh. It is amazing how someone else's mistake 30 years ago would have any hold on me. Wisdom, they call it. =/

Mmmm. Biblical Marriage

I would be really thankful when this whole stomach gas issue blows over. Provided, that it is stomach gas: the doctors are taking an awfully long time to diagnose and pin-point the exact source of my woes. The boys at work are already relaying third-hand lurid tales of ulcers, cancer and internal bleeding. Unfortunately, the only real way that I can find out for sure is to survive swallowing an endoscope and not die from horror when they yank it out of my throat. Hmm. Okay, being a little melodramatic here. Perhaps this whole gas issue is just Someone's way of telling me that I am so full of hot air. *BURP*

I must have been a teenager then. You know those variety shows on TV where they matchmake singles? Gawky looking men and uneasy young ladies? The host would ask every man, "So which part of a girl catches your attention first?" And the textbook-perfect, albeit boring, answer would be, the eyes. Once in a while, someone would get creative and suggest the nose, but for the most part they were sticking to the polite parts of the human anatomy. I remember thinking then, bloody liars. Every man looks at breasts first. In fact, it is nothing short of a miracle if he stops talking to them, ever.

Ah, the wonders of youth. Ms. Soon would feel so vindicated.

Seasoned a little by age, my eyes are no longer quite below eye-level. A little above, in fact. Nowadays, it would be hair that makes my head turn. All colours: natural blonde, bottled blonde, tinted bronze, red streaks, purple fringes. Korean fashion in 2002, now hitting the streets in Hong Kong, and probably in Johor Bahru before the end of the decade: straight hair up to ear length, everything below in curly maggi-mee bangs, preferably in duo-tone brown. Cannot stand Fann Wong-style rebonded hair, the ends are so artificially pokey that they look as if they could pierce your skin. And please don't ever get the Cleopatra style of coconut haircuts. I stopped going into the office because I couldn't stand the hair I have to share a room with. Dreadlocks are neat. And exotic. Even the 80s big curlies can be pretty sensual, if you are simultaneously fresh faced enough to frame it and sophisticated enough to toss it.

But if I have to play favorites, the best haircut of all would be this unique blend of punk rock sassiness with a raw just-out-of-bed look. Layered at the back, careless fringes at the front, and a few touches of wax on the top for character. Equally at home with both an electric guitar, and a dazed glassy look too early in the morning.

Not too sure how the years would change all that, but with a little bit of luck, maybe said hairstyle would actually look good even with gray strands in it. Yea, luck is important. She would be unbelievably lucky to be left with any hair at all, considering that her favorite food is instant noodles, generously seasoned with MSG. =)

4am. So much for resolutions.

Fruitful night, regardless. One more admission offer. I don't want to sound like some perverted over-achiever who wakes up in the middle of the night, rubbing his hands his glee as he delicately adds his latest admission email to his immaculate collection of many others. (Okay, now the imagery's stuck in your head.) It is not even so much a voluntary action. Perhaps I am just a little more anxious than I would let on.

My supervisor teased that my ego has been saved a battering by the offer letters, and in a sense, he is correct. Or maybe not so much. I couldn't have placed my ego on the line, because sincerely I was not expecting any offers at all.

There are some things that you have known all your life, but somehow you cannot quite bring yourself to admit to them. Having being a horrible student is one of those for me. Nah, not talking about skipping lectures, some of the professors have been entirely inept at presenting course materials which they consider beneath them anyway. It is just that, for the most of my 24 years of existence, what I have been really good at is squandering my brains away. Oh, I still manage to do okay at courses which I am interested in, but the highlights of my academic career seems to be the many occasions when I have managed to get the maximum returns with the minimum amount of effort. Silly bragging rights like buying your textbook the evening before your mid-term, squeezing a 3-man 3-week project into a 1-man 3-day one, not failing the EE finals despite attempting less than one third of the questions. The number of times I have honestly worked my ass off, I can count on one hand. No, make that my two eyes.

So. This sounds like a second chance given, so that I can get my act together to study what I really want to do. It is really kind of weird. This would be the first time I am studying Computer Science proper. Forgot why I did not do it at 'O' Levels, thought that my would-be classmates were weird at 'A' Levels. University was particularly bad: I took up Engineering fully knowing that I would hate it, because a B. Eng. gets a higher starting pay. Considering the amount of mistakes I have made, I am not feeling confident about this whole decision process, so please just bear with me if I seem to be dragging my feet.

Of course, any mini-speech like this necessarily ends with a credit roll with zillions of people to thank, but I shall refrain. Suffice to say, there was plenty of ass-prodding done, and when that did not work so well, I was literally dragged kicking and screaming into the heat of things. Thanks for believing before I even knew what was happening.

Pretty surprised, actually. I was fully expecting tears and the works upon receiving the parcel, but life ain't any fun if you simply get what you expected. Was pretty impressed by how the flower shop actually printed out everything in nice lettering, but the birthday card from 2 years ago was the clincher. I was so tickled by it that I simply burst laughing out loud.

As it turned out, I received my birthday card a day earlier than the parcel and actually caught myself thinking that the card was really kinda sloppy. It wasn't till the parcel arrived that the disconnected sentences made any sense. Thanks alot alot for the card. I don't think anybody has ever given me stuff with references that obscure. I am genuinely impressed, especially when I am throughly outdone.

And guess what, little doggie came back. The thing about dogs is that you are so pre-occupied with your own misery, that you do not even notice that they are gone, till they find you back again. This time, I have a name ready for it. "Ralph". Inside joke, as usual. I will introduce everybody to everybody when we all converge at the Equator sometime June or July.

Resolutions for the week:

1. Do not idle.
2. Be in bed by midnight.
3. Do not wake up at 3am to check for messages.

Balancing my books on a Sunday morning. Depending on how I look at it, it does seem as if I sold my camera to pay for my university application fees. Woe betide me, O poor graduate student-to-be.

In that split moment, everything suddenly become crystal clear. It is not as if anybody understands my Pratchet, Douglas, Hickman or Weis references anyway. So.

ZKC: Cannot concentrate on my remaining modules.
KW: How come?
ZKC: Last few courses, finished HYP last semester, so no pressure on my grades.
KW: *reproaching tone* How can you get first class if you get all Cs this semester?
ZKC: Can. But if fail all then cannot lah.

I hate smart juniors.

Waaaaay cool. Met this Swiss dude who clocked faster than me at the half, have done 3 Trailwalkers in all, and is into trail races with helmet and gear. Wish I could join him this weekend, pity I have had no time to train. Plus I cannot swim. Dang. And I appreciate people who do not laugh their heads out of town when they hear stupid comments like mine that go, "I think I am at my most religious when I am running." Fabulous city, Hong Kong.

"You can quibble all day about 0-based indexing vs. 1-based indexing. But ultimately, either way you still end up with off-by-one bugs."
- Kian Win's Theory of Futility

Yay. Happy Birthday to me. Oh Shu Ying, only 2 days away from being in the same boat.

Anna, courtesy of Peir Fen.

I have never figured that chilli was such a big part of my life, but I was very nearly moved to tears by curry today. Make that curries: mutton, chicken, and pork. Not a big fan of long laundry lists of criteria to tick off, but I think I shall make an exception this once. Wherever's accepting me for graduate school, please have curry.

I am so appalled that I hardly know where to start. But start, I would.

To begin, allow me to give a full disclosure of my personal circumstances. This rant is about a test which my sister flunk. Granted, I am not the one with a bruised ego here, but I am factoring the chances that I may have emotional stakes in this somewhat. But lest this simply be dismissed as a case of sour grapes, do please allow me to present the facts so that you the discerning reader may be able to assess them with a mind more objective than mine.

The facts first. The Centralised Qualifying Test (CQT) is applicable to Returning Singapore Citizens, Permanent Residents and new Permanent Residents who wish to seek admission to any of the top 30 secondary schools and top 5 junior colleges within Singapore. The Ministry of Education routinely publishes rank lists for its secondary schools and junior colleges, using academic performance, fitness indicators and academic performance exceeding expectations, and it is most probable that the CQT is applicable for the schools ranked highly in these lists. Unlike Singapore citizens and PRs, foreginers seeking admission into all premier institutions are required to take the CQT, even if said institutions are primary schools.

The CQT is a pre-requisite established by the Ministry, and passing it is essential before any of these premier institutions would admit the above-mentioned students. Passing it does not guarantee the applicant in any particular school, and the applicant would still have to apply for admission to the school of his / her choice on his own merit.

Yada yada. So far so good.

The CQT requirement came into effect in 1999, thus I have not sat for it myself. The official I spoke to described it as a test of general ability, and from verbal accounts, I recognise it as a form of IQ test where the candidate is to answer multiple choice questions on which choices are most similar or dissimilar, or on logic puzzles. (You know those.) The CQT is offered twice every month, but each candidate can only take it once. That would be, once in a lifetime.

It starts getting downhill pretty fast from here. According to the official, exactly the same questions are offered to primary, secondary and pre-tertiary students alike. If a student were to sit for the test twice, she asked, would I not think that said student would have an extra advantage over the rest. Besides, the CQT is a test of general ability. You either have it, or you do not. Quote unquote.

Any form of standardised testing that relies on its secrecy over an extended period of time is poised for trouble. The officials would be well-advised to consider the case of ETS cancelling computer-based Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) testing in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea. This action was prompted by the examination board having uncovered a number of Chinese and Korean websites offering questions from the computer-based GRE General Test. The claims of security breaches notwithstanding, there are more easily verified explanations: GRE cram schools which have sprouted all over in the above 4 countries routinely pay proxies to sit for tests and regurgitate their contents afterwards. Even though ETS changes its question pool every month and offers only a randomized subset to any one test candidate, within a week cram schools would have a sizeable percentage of that month's database. Now, if Singapore were to be established as just as popular a destination to study in, and the same systematic approach were applied to cracking the CQT, I can imagine that its results would be hardly valid. Or maybe its integrity has already been compromised...

Even if the question base is rotated periodically, it simply boggles the mind that someone would imagine an assessment of a student's general ability, whatever that may mean, would be accurate and consistent for up to 12 years. I would like to hazard that the unspoken assumption here is that any amount of years of education is ineffectual in improving a student's cognitive abilities in relation to his peers. Be they mathematical skills, verbal skills, spatial skills, logical reasoning, pattern recognition, general knowledge, short term memory, visual apprehension or classification skills, any one of which could have assessed in an IQ test, none of these would have seen any unanticipated improvement through age, experience or education. We have it all figured out: you either have it, or you do not.

Glance. Stamp. "Second grade". Seal. And you thought the primary school streaming exercise was bad.

I do not want to sound as if failing the CQT is akin to passing a death sentence onto someone. Indeed, it is not. It simply means that you have less choices when you first enter the Singapore education system. You would still be able to progress onto the next stage based on your own merit. As an international student, perhaps I should be thankful enough that I even have a chance to pursue an education in Singapore. No sweat, there are equally good JCs my sister can apply into, too. Yet, one cannot but feel that the administration of the entry requirement test could really be worked on.

And if you asked me, its execution does smell a bit of general ineptitude.

Bored... and boring. Twiddle diddle.

5am. Still fudging data and plotting Excel graphs. Can't wait for the deadline to be over, because I have problems surpressing my urge to slap my collaborator.

Today I learn to appreciate the virtuous practice of partitioning your server's harddisk. Of course, as per every lesson I have come across recently, I learnt it the hard way. Sigh. But really, what are the chances of a Topcoder's program having a bug serious enough to write a single 68 gigabyte file?

Deadline in a few hours. Given up on one paper. Hope Murphy's Law doesn't come true for the remaining.

Coding, to the tune of Bryan Adams. "If Ya Wanna Be Bad Ya Gotta Be Good" still makes me chuckle out loud. Maybe a little bit more so now, with a face to it. *cheeky grin*

Have not been watched TV for eons. No Yes, Dear, no Alias, no Just Shoot Me, no Everybody Loves Raymond. No time. The only TV I have been giving any sort of attention to is the variety they have on Hong Kong KMB buses. Maybe I am biased, but I would think that this is high praise from someone who absolutely detest Mobile TV on Singapore SBS buses. The Hong Kong in-bus TV still makes me feel guilty for looking up from the book I am desperately trying to cram into my daily commute, but well, at least it's, hmm, entertaining. Why else would people watch TV? Cannot fathom why some would imagine that people would actually want to watch antiquated re-runs of Candid Camera, or worse, abysmal local imitations of Candid Camera.

Favorite host: Viann. Reminds me of 阿雅 (but all my Mainland friends thinks I am mistaken). The only person I know who's more 鬼马 has to be Kay.

Favorite ad: Shiseido. Because of the Japanese model in it. Yes yes, I know it's a make-up line from your mum's era, but still. Sliver mascara! Decidedly classier than the purple variety. The only time I have seen someone use purple mascara was during my uncle's wedding, and I remembered running very very fast immediately after I've seen it.

Favorite MTV: Some 陈小春 song. Never got around to finding out the title, but there is this scene where the protagonist runs up and down the beach with a naked flame, igniting torches carefully arranged and planted in the sand. Cut to the female lead, a hint of the lips slowly cracking into a smile as the beach is gradually illuminated. Cut to a bird's eye view. 直到妳不愛我.

Happy. Gave a valid counter-example. Yay! Skeptism rules.

Tidbit: The rejection letter that I forward to Yee Jiun gets tagged as spam by Stanford's mail filters. Weird. You mean Stanford people receive so many rejections that they count as junk mail?

It would be embarassing to sound like I am a fan of the HitchHiker's Guide. No, nothing against Douglas Adam, it is just the fan tag that I am a little uncomfortable with. Regardless, here is my little admission of the day: I actually wrote DO NOT PANIC in big bold letters at the top of my F-Maths mid-term test. Serious. Maths makes me nervous.

I think I still did pretty badly for said Maths test. Still. Typically Kian Win-ish to keep hammering at things in the same way, even if they are demonstrably and provably wrong. So. I am slipping a DO NOT PANIC note into my wallet, just for, erm, good luck. Serious.

Anyway, I am okay. I admit it, this is quite a depressing period, but I am still hanging in there. I would very much prefer a D70 for my birthday than sympathy cold calls. *hint hint*

You know what? Maybe we should introduce Yee Jiun to Ivanna.

My proving sucks.

Whine whine whine. Serves me right for complaining about nametags. Now I get to do something really interesting. Like conduct a lab session for graduate students. Ugh.

True to my Hokkien heritage: WAH LAO EH. Area of Excellence: rejected. Berkeley: rejected. PODS: rejected. Come on. By the Law of the Conservation of Luck, I should have zero-ed out and hit rock bottom by now? Or do I need to conserve some more? Had better be saving up for something worthwhile. *fingers crossed*

Basket turban chee chiong fun bak kut teh. Big deal that I have a high salary. Nothing but a glorified clerical staff. Hey, I came here to save the world, not to print nametags or design program sheets!!

This is one of those days when 2 middle fingers are obviously insufficient.

Boy do I have issues. All the pent up frustration erupting is not a pretty picture. The only two times in my life I have flared up at work they were not particularly pleasant experiences for both parties. Better defuse this before it gets out of hand.

Tally:

Kian Win	0
Yee Jiun	0
Zhu Yi	1

I am not one of those early adopters of technology, you would understand. When the Internet first become in vogue, I thought it was too vast and boundless compared to the safe confines of four-line BBSes. My handphone cannot do colour nor WAP nor GPRS nor polyphonic ringtones. And the one time I tried to live on the cutting edge, I bought a total dud of a digital camera.

But, that is absolutely not an excuse for me not having discovered wireless access earlier. For goodness's sake, it took me all of 8 months to chance upon the fact that the UST library does provide for Internet access. Yes yes yes, Kian Win making a mountain out of a molehill again. But dudes, you do not understand. This does not just mean that I can get out of my poorly ventilated, cubicled lab which is filled to the brim with bizarre personalities that dwarf even those of the ACM lab. This does not just mean that I can have a windowed seat where I work. This means that I have a glorious sea-view from the vantage point of thirty storeys above, every minute of my 10-hour work day!

No shit.

The bad news is the nagging feeling that it is sooner going to be a toss-up between UST and UC Santa Barbara. If I get into Santa Barbara. Oops, Yee Jiun.

迷时境转心，悟时心转境。

Which begs the question, what is a fishstick?

Venture into higher (read: 2-3) dimensional space and what do I get? Discrete cosine transform. Now I wish I had at least put some effort into my engineering Maths class. I call it the Curse of the Numbers: you never know enough Mathematics when you need it most. Gah.

Haha. This is soooooo cool. Stanford admission results would be out on 20th, Berkeley's sometime this week, and SIGMOD acceptance on 23rd. The funny thing is, I am hardly gan jiong. Well, Yee Pern can confirm with you that the last time I went into a devil-may-care cool-as-cucumber trance, something Really Bad happened. Dum dee dum.

Addendum: At the risk of totally stressing Yee Jiun out, I am going to talk about admissions again. I am probably not going to get into Wisconsin this year. The professor whose paper we did an unconvincing attack on would have obviously placed my name on the blacklist, and I am sure my name would have been highlighted in fluorescent pink once it had reached the database group. Serves me right anyway: 3 times my paper got rejected and I could not even be bothered to examine exactly where the concept went wrong. Morale of the story: do not have blind faith in your teammates. Oh, they are definitely brilliant people, but really, if you ever want to get anything done, you would always have to do it yourself. (Yes, Yee Jiun, I heard it from you first.) But, it is okay. We are sooooo going after his ass this time round. Wisconsin, look out, with luck I may just be waltzing with your cows come August 2005. Boo-moo!

Yea. Ego, I know. But it is pretty depressing as it is staring at wonky mathematical symbols and convoluted theorems all day long. Let me have my 5 mins of bravado? Well, for all you know, this is the Fall being setup. Hiak.

Food that I miss, all of a sudden:

• Chinese apple stew
• Post Banana Nut Crunch
• Kaya
• PGP Canteen vegetable fried rice

I am feeling chatty.

There is no question about who is at fault here. The responsibility is all mine. Guilty as charged. But I still shouted at my mother. I must be a bad person.

It is a day late this year, but that is only I chose to go running not on Valentine's day but a day after. I admit it: I am not a big fan of all these mystical mumbo-jumbo. But I am a romantic, and I believe in signs and coincidences and, well, destiny, provided that it does not come from the determinism school of thought. So, anyway, last year I spent Feb 14th running. A victim of circumstances, you would understand, but that does not mean that I did not enjoy myself. This year, Feb 15th, up and down UST's infamous slope. But I swear, the breeze is exactly the same breeze. It is not much actually. I don't write so well. I cannot even wax lyrical to the people I truly love, so please don't expect me to describe in painstaking detail some wispy breeze. But yes, there is the same easy coolness in the air, something light and encouraging. Alright, it's just the wind. But I like it, and it is during those little moments of perfect quaint, blissful moments by myself that important decisions begin to make themselves. I think I made one last year, and I am making the same one this year. Oh, and may I never grow too old and cynical to believe in signs and coincidences and the like. *obligatory star-glazed look*

And when the time comes to do some spring cleaning, perhaps we can get around to fishing hope of the cupboard for an annual dusting or something.

Two foreign languages, simultaneously. Just a little surprising to find that I could actually understand quite abit of both. Hah. Anyways, William and gang do not like the Flower Children that much. Is there a point here? Oh yes. Everybody should just get along. Easier said than done, but hey, nowadays hardly anybody bothers paying lip service to that even.

And I actually miss the electric guitars. Weird, huh?

This is not good. I was actually enjoying my peaceful little Sunday. Complete with apples, cornflakes, orange juice and fresh milk. First time I have done any grocery shopping in over 6 months. And my mother must call me (see above), and I am feeling stressed and vexed. Yea, apparently shouting doesn't help so much with that. Dang.

On second thoughts, maybe I don't mind a curfew that much. Oh, it is probably just the ego talking: show Raymond a thing or two. Hah. And in the meantime, TBNT, it is time to rock and roll!

Over and out.

Mea culpa.

10 years of studying in Singapore, and I have to choose the day my student pass expires to lose my passport. Sorry dear, it has to be the singular most unromantic thing, ever. Poor Gao Xiang had to scrap his plans for Chinese Valentine's, chauffeur me to the police station, share his duvet, fetch my International passport from JB, then stll drive me down to ICA. This, after I played him out on our meet up plans and ditched him for my belle. Owe you a big, big one pal. My girlfriend would still stay up there on my priority list, but I guess I would have to make an exception just for you.

Defiance... is to raise the proverbial rude finger to your doctor who broke the news that you have weak lungs. I mean, what would you do when you wake up on a perfect 7am morning, to slight breathing problems, 2 streets away from a polluted major trunk road, in a residential area where stray dogs make sport of joggers, with nothing to wear except for an ill-fitting pair of shoes? Why, of course. You run.

How many of the 9/11 hijackers were from Iraq?

Sorry to be rude, but this is a good day to reaffirm my pet theory that people should be assumed stupid unless proven otherwise. And contrary to common belief, vindication is not always pretty.

This is decidedly curious, but why would the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange and the Singapore Stock Exchange be the only two exchanges on Yahoo Finance with free real-time quotes? Too many small time investors who are too, erm, cheapskate to pay for the premium services?

And I thought I got away with missing my SIGMOD deadline. "Aim, miss, slacken, aim again? Not effective." Pithy. Pity.

To my admirer(s):
I happen to have someone whom I have adored and fancied since a long while ago. I am not sure how things would work out between us, but in a way, my heart has already been spoken for. Sorry about it. No loss to you there, anyway. =)

Vertical vertigo.

Before I leave Hong Kong, I would be done with you, four times consecutively to be exact. This much I can promise myself.

William: Hey, any interest to do dinner tonight?
KW: Sorry, at work right now.
William: Fine.
KW: You don't say "fine", coz it could be interpreted as being sarcastic. You say "It's okay" instead.
William: FINE.

Err. KH, of course my programming is better than yours. I do it for a living! And truth be known, I copied all my Sec. 1 programming homework. So. No big deal.

But I don't think you are really interested in systems. People who are really passionate roll up their sleeves and get some work done. You just sit on your hands and talk about it a lot. =) Before you go enroll in a course proper, you had better demonstrate that you are more interested in how things work, than in Apple's (admittedly very snazzy) marketing copy.

Mmmm. Interviews.

I am not sure if these are indeed the "most challenging questions" a candidate may be asked, but I am reasonably sure that I had learnt more about interviews by giving them than by sitting on the other end of the table or reading about them on web sites. It is instructive to realize that there are sadistic souls, such as yourself, around who would take candidates up on a single claim and demand solid evidence be delivered. No matter it be taking a 2-hr break from the interview to hack together something from what (little) you know of Flash, or being forced to concede that your definition of "knowing Photoshop" is essentially identical to "having launched the program from the Start Menu in boredom one Saturday afternoon, ever".

By giving interviews, you come to realize that a smooth presentation is impressive, but far less important than assumed when the roles are reversed. You also find out that despite the most incisive of questions, despite the most creative of tests you subject your candidates to, despite the silliest of "team-building" exercises you impose upon the hapless souls (okay, you can tell I did not have these) -- you still make some bad decisions. False positives, as well as false negatives. On more cynical days, I would argue that the inteview process boils down to pure dumb luck. But mostly, I think that the interviewer is just as clueless as the interviewee. =)

Lousy interviewer I may be, the interviews that stuck the most, inevitably, are those which I bombed out on as an interviewee. There was this fashion retard from the Singapore Economic Development Board who, circa 1999, had yet to learn of the invention of the Armani haircut. On 20/20 hindsight, I should have quipped "I thought I came to the interview to let you see what's underneath my scalp, not what's on top" in response, but as all wise cracks go, this only occurred after the crucial moment.

Then there was this Human Resource grunt, whom I assumed to have been higher up the food chain since you normally skip 1-2 steps when the clerk messes up your application, reeling in shock and disgust throughout the interview. Back in 1999, Vivek impressed the hell out of Ho Ching when he launched into an all-out lambast of Singapore, so I thought it would not be such a bad idea telling the Senior Partner or VP that Accenture must be doing something very wrong to require their programmers to work 16-hour days. That must have sounded like heresy (or perhaps just plain idiocy).

The singularly most memorable interview of all, would definitely have to be the MIT admissions interview. For the benefit of those who had the good fortune of avoiding the infamy of it all, here's how it works. When you apply for undergraduate admissions to MIT, MIT would matchmake you with any one of their over-achieving alumnus living in the same region as you, so that they may make sport of you and report their exploits back to HQ. I don't recall my interviewer asking many question, because he did look quite bored throughout the process.

"Tell me something special about yourself", and I launched into a polished account of my stellar achievements in secondary school and junior college (sans grades, I did have a pretty decent resume, or so I thought.)

"No. You have not answered my question. What makes you so special, among all the candidates?" Panic. Stammer. Recompose. Smoke. More smoke.

"No. I am very sorry, but you do not seem to be special." Wtf.

So, understandably, questions such as "Where do you see yourself in 5 years" could probably require some soul-searching to answer, but personally I would be pretty disappointed if that had happen to be the most challenging question from my interviewer.

8 days into the new year, and..

1. Can't work on the project with Andy
2. Yee Pern's not coming over
3. No back-packing trip

Bummer.

Postscript: So pre-occupied with getting pissed that I left my handphone on the bus. Greeeeeeaaaaaaaat. Post-postscript: Guess I am not as gracious a person as I imagined myself to be, but well, I can try.

Gan jiong spider.

What You Can't Say.

The one point Graham is off the mark, is that he seems to be implying that dressing unfashionably is highly correlated with having good ideas, at least amongst nerds. It would almost seem if the average nerd's dress code is desirable. The truth is, apart from a lack of fashion sense, we hardly have any dress sense either. Anyway, sorry for nit-picking. Don't miss the forest for the trees.

There may come the day when I burn out from being surrounded by driven and brilliant workaholics, when I throw in the towel having grown sick of being the slackest and dumbest in the research lab, when I flush my idealism and ambition down the proverbial toilet bowl before slipping into a cushy job that I could excel at without firing more than a dozen neurons. Fortunately, today is not that day.

Spent New Year's Eve evening discussing a proof with Chen Qun. Or rather, asking him to repeat the finer points of his proof, and, in an over-enthusiastic bid to contribute, delivering some wild, absurd assertions only to be shot down within the minute. Right, mathematical cannon fodder. And I saw my supervisor lurking somewhere around the department when I went to get a coffee from the vending machine. Well, at least I am blogging this from home. Zhu Yi is still in the lab, polishing his urm, 14th (I lost track) paper, when he has to wake up at 5am the next morning to catch his flight to a research conference. Insanity. Insanely fun, too.

So. Happy New Year, folks! Hope you are having as much fun as me. Pretty much have the first half of the year planned out: conference papers, journal papers, campus tour (fingers crossed), backpacking trip (doubly so), and The Next Big Thing^TM. Here's to a smashing, swash-buckling 2004. Cheers!

Tickled. See Eric Sink, the non-legendary developer of AbiWord fame. (Yea, corn-fields. I know.) Actual useful content on MSDN column and weblog. Read about the the browser wars from the veteran too.

Entirely impressed by how Kay is handling her pre-U admissions. All things taken into account, I think she's a more clueful teenager than I was. Anyway, sorry that all I have been able to talk about lately is the admissions exercise to various institutions. I promise I would be done Real Soon Now. 9 down, 3 more.

First rejected application. The season has begun in earnest!

Hoho. Just guessing here, but I think somebody probably just let the deadline gently slip by. What a bummer. So. I won Bak Kut Teh, but I don't really suppose it's a cause for celebration. Granted, I am not even supposed to know about this, so it is probably my fault that I am feeling disappointed. Ah well.

At any rate, the accusation plainly smacks of hypocrisy. I have missed enough deadlines this year to last me for a lifetime. Tight-rope walking should only be undertaken by the sure-footed, definitely not the scatter-brained or the panick-fingered. To those incredible folks who are still not disgusted with me, thank you. You are all too kind. Hope I can actually get something done in 2003 before it runs out - this has been quite an unproductive year. Incidentally, I have just discovered, after missing my MIT deadline, that I am not that interested in going there anyway. Ah, the wonders of rationalization.

The blind leading the blind: giving my junior some tips on girls.

Thanks for nothing. I think I must be the greatest dope in the world for pissing my supervisor off, with whom I have done every single project for the past 3 years, on the night when he is supposed to be writing my recommendation letter. Friendship. Gah.

"Your GRE scores are so-so; you don't have CS GRE; your recommendations are so-so; your grades are so-so."

So. Would we by any chance be making a Kit-Kat commercial here?

Not that there has ever been any question about my sexuality, but: why am I not a homosexual? Why are you not a homosexual? You know, just curious.

To preempt all the concerned emails (and dirty looks), please believe me that it is just a rhetorical question. Responses welcome if you actually have a sensible answer.

There are no ugly people - only ugly clothes.

whatif.fishcode.com
Private joke. Huuur Huuur Huuur.

Lax. I was going to say something smart-alecky about the futility of using one's willpower to fight oneself. Then I realised that I have dropped 3 major goals in a week, and am hardly qualified to even talk about willpower. So I would go write my personal statement now instead. My oddball theories would have to wait. *bleah*

One of those rare days when I actually write plain, intelligible, non-cryptic stuff. Enjoy.

SIGMOD's deadline just went past. Specifically, we missed the deadline, but well, I am still kind of happy. As they said, 9 women cannot make a baby in 1 month. So I guess it is okay. Good research takes time, anyway. Yea Yee Jiun. If you would quit laughing for a second. I would proof-read the paper this time round, and make sure that it is in Queen's English. If you don't understand it, it can only be because it is a good paper and you buy me Bak Kut Teh in JB. Deal?

I am hardly a religious man, but thank God for words. Sometimes, the really important stuff is in being able to place a name on stuff. Decidedly grateful for "bisimilarity" and "transitive closure". (Notice the capital G. There is a subtle difference between caps and small. Go figure.)

Old news, but Sir Ranulph Fiennes finished 7 marathons in 7 days at the age of 59, shortly after a double bypass surgery prompted by a heart attack. (Oh, there's Michael Stroud too, but he's 48 and did not have the surgery, so that's a little less newsworthy.)

So you see, the world is kind of screwy. So Sam ran 4 marathons so far - that's cool. So Mr. Gi runs 30-40++ every week or so - that works out for him since he does not have to go for reservist training, in exchange for giving up his Sundays. So this Fiennes raced on 7 continents in a week - more power to him, but I bet a lot of people got egg on their faces coz of him. So Yee Jiun finished one (two?) marathon - that would mean alot alot of egg. (That Yee Jiun consumed, that is, since even though he has some pretty heavy duty legs that have held him up for the better quarter of a century, he must have an extra source of protein to have those extra muscles jutting out from his calves.) So Cheston Tan finished a marathon - that is a little unreasonable, since he has an heart-related permanent medical certificate which he uses for skipping non-soccer PE sessions in JC. So Tommie probably ran a couple - that is not okay since my childhood sweetheart had a crush on him (oh it's no big deal, she is too much of a technological dinosaur to be reading this. *evil grinz*) So yt's Darren is alleged to be the "marathon type" too - that is definitely not okay, because... well, just because.

So the astute reader should know by now where all this is leading to. The ego should really be the most amazing part of the human spirit.

Hey look dude. You can either take my word that your BFS has a worse I/O characteristic than my list traversal, or I can digest 12 pages of mathematical mumjo jumbo and embarass you with hard solid experimental proof. The latter case makes life difficult for both me and you. So do we have a deal?

And yes, Wei Zhu. I guess I am a geek. But only a computer geek. Which is a few levels down the food chain from a mathematics geek. Yes, there is a difference. =(

Lastly, detachment revisted, with apologies to U2: It does not matter that it matters that it does not matter.

Did I say no cryptic stuff? Goodnight, all.

One thing that I have come to appreciate about research is that, not only can I prove that I have been a moron, I can even quantify exactly how moronic I have been. 50x, as a ballpark figure, actually.

痛。

Dear Professors,

I am a nerd. I have below average social skills. I can write some code. My English is not altogether hopeless. Care to take me in for graduate studies?

I guess it is public knowledge that I have an ego that is wildly out of check with reality, but I have just notched myself one mark up the Prima Donna scale. Just rejected my boss. Again. Hope I don't get myself into hot soup. *fingers-crossed*

Y'know, livin' at its longest
is just a short trip to the grave.
So you might as well go ahead and enjoy
what you can along the way.

'Cause if the doctor said
you were going to die,
wouldn't you do as you please?

Listen here brother,
life's just another
terminal disease.

Woooo. With luck, I would have something new to complain about my job. Could possibly be arrowed to go and help out at the warehouse. Like, you know, actually move boxes and stuff? Oooooh, I can't wait.

Programming is a dark art, and it will always be. The programmer is fighting against the two most destructive forces in the universe: entropy and human stupidity. -Damian Conway

(In case my confusion is not already apparent. =p) Just finished Mister God, This is Anna. On some level, it seems to be perfectly complementary to Douglas Adam's "Anything that happens, happens.", just that I am not altogether sure exactly what. You tell me.

Fucked-up schedule.

3 hours. 3 blessed hours when I don't have to worry about my lousy UI which seems to be doomed to inconsistency due to the misconceived paradigm of web browser as lowest common denominator application thin client. When I do not have to fret about the experiments that I were supposed to run eons ago, and sweat out the experiments which I have yet to discuss about. When I am temporarily free from the nagging feeling that I am short-changing myself, not squeezing out every ounce worth from my overseas stint. When I do not have to PPTP into somebody's network and troubleshoot the latest software toy that has grabbed my geek friend's fancy, over laggy GUI desktop possession clients which have lag times that would make even a Zen master's blood boil. When I am not masochistic enough to read optimistic cheery fan-mail style Sorry-I-cannot-be-bothered-to-write-personal-email-but-I-am-so-happy-overseas over the top style of mass mail, that I could have sumply unsubscribed to save myself the agony. When my feet has wings, and when I sprint I fly, and no lousy admissions office clerk or snooty immigration visa officer can clip my wings. When I am not too concerned about writing in my blog in the same freaking style. Oh bother. 3 blessed hours.

或许有点凄美，但绝对找不到一丝浪漫。

隔区区堵墙都可大作文章，如果只差条线该怎办？

Brand new semester at NUS..., and the Eusoff Computer Comm Chair still wants to get in touch with me.

So. Cold weather makes nipples taut. =/

Draw your own conclusions.

Joel Spolsky says

In the software industry we're always saying things like, "scheduling software is inherently difficult because it has never been written before, so it's science. It's not like the building industry, where everyone involved has done the same thing 100 times before and it's possible to make good reliable schedules. The software industry needs to become more like the mature trades with predictable schedules and budgets."

Well, what I've learned from my first large construction project is that this is hogwash. The building industry doesn't know how to do anything on schedule or on budget, either.

A grand total of two architecture students reads this blog, so I am not sure how much of my neck is already on the chopping block. =) My point is, it is precisely of these excuses which programmers weave, that software engineering is in such a dismal state. Just because we fancy those amongst us who draw up software design blueprints as "system architects" does not mean that writing code is anything even vaguely related to bricks and mortar.

Of course, these scathing remarks border on being hypocritical when my own project is way off schedule. Months off schedule. It can only be the optimism of youth when one believes that one could ease into a new IDE (Visual Studio), a new database server (MSSQL), a new language (C#) and a new framework (ASP .Net) in the short span of a month. Not that I knew nuts about the problem domain either. Ah well. Four months and counting.

Now if you would excuse me, I have a SQL stored procedure to optimize. A SQL stored procedure! Geez. What would Yee Jiun say?

In love.

It was a cosy little shop, more of an eatery than a restaurant. Hardly twenty seats around five tables, with a handful of high stools in front of the bar where white collared salaried men would have huddled shoulder to shoulder gulping down ramee if this were smack right in the middle of Kobe. Instead, this was a wayward outlet, a little quiet but not exactly desolated.

I would not know enough about Japanese culture to assess if the decoration was indeed authentically Tokyo-esque. Yet there was something alluring about the simplicity of the layout. Perhaps it was the absence of paraphernalia that, elsewhere, so desperately call attention to the fact that the owners have plundered every idea in the book to fit into the landscape of Japanese restaurants. Lantern red, hiragana glyphs, conspiciously Oriental cutlery: zilch. It was a very unpretentious restaurant, and I loved it for its honesty. Sure, it offered the usual array of cold soba, sashimi, sushi and tempura. But there was no mistaking that this was indeed a restaurant in Hong Kong, judging from the fact that it also served pork chop baked rice and ham fried rice, dishes I swear every single 茶餐廳 in Hong Kong offers. No, from the 15 inch TV broadcasting a semi-muted Cantonese soap opera to the Chinese characters adorning the wall, it was apparent that the restaurant does not have an identity issue.

And the food. Gorgeous, the food. I ordered enough for two, a little of everything on offer. Enough wasabi to puff steam from my ears, miso soup to wash it down, and some Heineken to wash that down in turn. Handrolls that do not crumble to bits when your teeth tugs on the seaweed. Lite spinach noodles that do not turn soggy when water condenses around them. Roe, squid, tuna, salmon, salmon and salmon.

But I digress. The restaurant's not what love is about. It is but one of life's humble luxuries that is just a tad incomplete without you around.

And my dear friends, I would have the honour of presenting the very latest addition to Yahoo Games.

Paris, June. Locking in.

7-Eleven sells these interesting auto-recovery portable umbrellas. When the wind is on the wrong side of the umbrella's canopy, the arms would simultaneously give way and invert the entire umbrella. But before you know it, the wind has swung around to the other side, and the umbrella's, uh, good as rain.

First typhoon in Hong Kong. *rubs hands in glee*

Me and my big mouth.

Symptom: Adding a particular breakpoint in the debugger causes otherwise perfectly functioning code to malfunction.
Behind-the-scenes: Adding the breakpoint causes an object in the watch to come in scope. The object was referenced through an accessor. I wrote the accessor, and at that point in time decided that it was a good idea to include in the accessor an un-orthogonal method call, thereby triggering the buggy part of the code which I was trying to debug.

I think I am a liability to my colleagues in particular, and mankind in general.

This just in. It doesn't seem as if it were entirely my fault. Could be the core libraries' accessors acting up. Bugger me.

"So, what would be the question? Perhaps, 'How about a nice cup of tea'?" Harrods' Earl Grey, Blend No. 42. *wink*

"Product support calls let you participate in the other end of the pipeline. The software is written, it's out there, and now you have to pay for all your mistakes and bad designs when people call in with their problems. It's software karma." - A day in the trenches, Raymond Chen

Life is tough, man.

Up at 1:36am, fully knowing that I have to wake up early tomorrow morning to rush for the one hour commute on the Hong Kong MTR. Just feeling a rush of emotions. Somehow, I feel compelled to offer an apology right now.

Sorry for not having played a good host. To all the ASEAN direct scholars, whom we pretty much left to fend on their own, since we thought them too cliquish to interact with us. To all the PRC students, some of whom I do interact with having left Singapore not having tasted even bak kut teh (porks' rib soup) and chai tow kway (fried carrot cake). Perhaps even to my NUS classmates, for not offering to help ease the entry into the sometimes terrifying field of programming, way back in the first semester when I could still be considered somewhat ahead of my peers. True, I was a foreigner myself in Singapore, but I did have plenty of time to get adjusted. Moreover, that actually makes me all the more guilty for not having being able to emphatize and symphatize.

For now I am feeling it. The general disoriented feeling when one relocates. Already buffered by the fact that I am actually more than capable of reading road-signs and menus, only slightly handicapped by my less than proficient spoken-Cantonese. Already eased by the availability of IDD calling cards at rock bottom prices. Understood by my boss who has not complained a word about me working at only 30% my capacity (I suspect actual figures are less). Smoothed over by technology, having my friends ready to fire-fight my bush fire breakouts of depressions over various forms of IM. Already subsided, when in a bid to recreate a sense of familiarity, I bought Ikea bedsheets and covers identical to those that I had in Singapore. Still, I feel it. To a person feeling homesick, it is of hardly any relief knowing that it is a passing phase which would be over in a wink soon as you start getting on with life. I think I would have sooner thrown in the towel and fly myself back, if not for being stuck in a project that I have not mustered the energy to get over and done with.

Thanks to all those that have listened, patiently no less. Thanks to my wonderful hosts in Hong Kong, who would surely get to know of the existence of this blog some time down the road. Pass it on, they say, and I would surely, to those later in life whom I have the privilege to play host to.

And you can too. Amazingly, even in Hong Kong, where I can read traditional Chinese glyphs, be comprehended when I speak English and be attended to politely when I speak Mandarin, I feel pretty much a second rate denizen since I cannot converse fluently in Cantonese. (Let us not pretend that economic forces have no influence in the state of matters, but that's not the issue here.) Think of the fate that awaits a PRC who is picking up conversational English in Singapore. Or worse, when he falls back on Mandarin after failing to make his point. I think it is sufficiently tell-tale that my Mainland friends in Singapore hardly mix with any other non-PRC classmates.

"God has protected my computer for some time. Amazing that it has not kena bad sector or virus for more than a year." - Su Fang Yu

Tying the knot. *grinz*

Presenting... http;//www.reallivepreacher.com!

What? Stop looking at me like that. =)

Major disconnect. In every way possible.

Maybe the deadline around the corner would make things a little better. Hmm. *yawn* Oh well. At least I am blogging. (Okay, Yee Jiun, writing one-liners.) That shows that I am procrastinating. Which is definitely a start. Bad start, but hey, cut me some slack, kae? Bugger off.

Murphy's Law in overload mode. Spilt soup on the living room floor the first day I moved in. Immigration has issues with my visa application. Hardware went awry the very first time I bought a cheap piece of technology (and threw away the receipt!). Oh, the spate of bad luck started a little earlier with losing half a month's salary and being stuck in a project that seems to be going nowhere. Oh bother.

At long last. Reasonably settled into my own room. 3^rd time moving in 3 months, and have been living out of a suitcase for the past 2. It is weird having housemates, they must think me pretty rude for paying more attention to my laptop. Which, by the way, is pretty darn cool, since I can comfortably IM on it while watching tv. The upshot in living in a miserably small place is that you don't have to buy a repeater to get Wifi working. And the kitchen is just 3 strides away from my room, unlike Andrew's place where I would have forgotten what I wanted by the time I actually reached the laundry room. Guess my housemates would have to give the real grouchy hermit some time to come out of his shell. Have been keeping to myself in various caves for the better part of the past 4 years.

至少两个人中有一个快乐。

You really can find just about anything on the Internet nowadays. I feel your pain buddy. (And Gao Xiang insisted on being credited for finding such perverse, adult content. I have weird friends. I know.)

At work... trying to determine the functional dependencies of the columns in a denormalised database. By looking at the data and JOIN-ing and GROUP-ing. Look Ma, no schema documentation! Basket. About the only relief is that I only have to put up with wrong data, not clean the damn thing.

Is it just me, or do the interfaces of Vim and Photoshop actually have something in common? Vim, and its cousins from the vi family, form an odd species otherwise known as modal editors. In Vim, keys function differently depending on the current mode, which can range from normal, command, insert to visual. Likewise, one can enter different modes within Photoshop, such as normal, selection (marquee, lasso), clone stamp and type (just to name a few that I am most familiar with). In contrast to the key chords one uses under Wordstar and Emacs, the typical operation consists of a single character to trigger the change in mode. The mode change would form the first part of a verb-noun pair, thereafter the Vim user would designate the noun with more key-presses whereas the Photoshop artist would use the mouse to specify the noun.

verb-motion... verb-motion... verb-motion...

More than a little intrigued that Google actually turns up next to nothing on the topic. Do tell me if it is more than a casual coincidence.

"An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl she used to be. A great artist can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is, and force the viewer to se the pretty girl she used to be, more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive, prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart." - Robert Heinlein

Girls are weird. No means yes, and no means no.

I am mightily pissed, but I do not want to take it out on friends and family. So. I am putting an original CD into a plain CD sleeve and carrying it across the causeway on foot. Please, Mr. Customs Officer, for once don't deny me the chance of a good quarrel. A simple man like me does not ask for much.

Satisfaction denied.

"All nations have the governments they deserve." - Charles de Montesquieu

"Don't Just Do Something, Stand There!" Holding my breath, even. Sweet procrastination. Saturday night, and I am the only one in the new lab. No windows, just four walls, and quite a few cubicle partitions. I could wilt and wither here and no one would be the wiser until Monday morning. Was supposed to fly back this afternoon. Not that I am any more productive staying back. *glum* At least ESR is good company.

"There is a legend that some early airline reservation systems allocated exactly one byte for a plane's passenger count. Supposedly they became very confused by the arrival of the Boeing 747, the first plane that could carry more than 255 passengers." =)

"If you are too busy to read, then you are too busy."

Hong Kong colleagues decidedly amused by the expression "先上车，后补票". Public holiday today, two colleagues were part of the 500K to join the protest. Now I know someone personally who have protested. Cool stuff.

花花世界。供我游戏人间。

Picked up the juvenile spaghetti mess that was ASP (global include files with no namespaces?!). Battled with the buggy white elephant that was Sybase (which has an obscure insidious bug specifically preventing an ADO recordset from being deleted if the Interactive Query Client was running). Sworn audibly at the abysmal string manipulation facilities in VBScript (they have stayed exactly the way they are since the QuickBasic days).

That was a few years back, when all that and some crappy school project took all of 3 days. It has been 3 weeks full time here in Hong Kong, and I have not even managed to port my Linux prototype over to .Net.

I really really hope that it is because I really really need my holiday.

今天我 寒夜里看雪飘过
怀着冷却了的心窝漂远方
风雨里追赶
雾里分不清影踪
天空海阔你与我 可会变(谁没在变)
多少次 迎着冷眼与嘲笑
从没有放弃过心中的理想
一刹那恍惚
若有所失的感觉
不知不觉已变淡 心里爱(谁明白我)
原谅我这一生不羁放纵爱自由
也会怕有一天会跌倒
背弃了理想 谁人都可以
哪会怕有一天只你共我(OH!YEAH!)
仍然自由自我
永远高唱我歌
走遍千里

"When my wife can run Quicken on Linux, I will have succeeded." -- Jeremy White, CodeWeavers

What they never taught you in school: when you are the last of the IT department to leave the office, do not ever pop around other cubicles to say bye, even if only to be courteous. Go directly to door. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

Apprenticing in the black art of SQL mangling. Repeat after me: code monkey, code monkey, code monkey. It is simply amazing what twisted contrived contortions people can come up with, in response to arbitrary black-boxed limitations. I think I am pretty sure that second guessing the intricacies of an eclectic query optimizer is not exactly my cup of tea. But till then. Still have to bring bread to the table. And in all honesty, it is still slightly more bearable than navigating the vast spans of hierarchies architectural astronauts have so brilliantly ill-conceived.

Hey. I have to whine. Better this than something else.

The sad state of my culinary skills is such that... I cannot even operate a microwave properly. Frozen 7-Eleven hotdog mutated into french loaf with carbon chunks.

Detachment, in three candy-colour flavours:

• It doesn't really matter.
• It doesn't matter.
• It really doesn't matter.