Work, work, work your ass off

As Clint Eastwood would have said it "your ass is mine", mine really was my boss's today as she hosed me down with some choice words of pure malice which I didn't take to too kindly. Imagine your mother in a state of pure agitation and amp that up by a factor of ten. You'll then get my boss's mood today after further finding out that answer to the power of ten.

 Me being me, I didn't give up without firing a few parting shots back over her bow. What a bitch. I'm not making it up. I mean REALLY bitchy. And to top it all off, it wasn't even my fault, I promise faithfully.

Worked two jobs today back to back - TCC in the afternoon and 7-Eleven in the night. Totally exhausted. Gonna go read my Top Gear magazine now. My only retreat for now. My sole solace.

My First Time

Broke a standee during work today. You know those little signs on the table telling you the month's special? Yeah I dropped that and broke it. Ironically 1. the first thing I break isn't glass, 2. it wasn't on a hard floor (on carpet actually). What the hell. Someone left her name and cellphone number on the receipt she left behind for me to call. No really. Since I was the only guy working there I deduce that she meant that for me. And I was working at the smaller TCC outlet at Bugis. There were only 4 girls and 1 guy, i.e. yours truly, so that narrows the search field further. "Hi I'm ________ (forgot name). My handphone number is _______ (forgot number). I'm single and available."

I'm gonna get laid!

Lunched with Best at Ajisen Ramen at Taka. Nice food, service could obviously be improved. The Audi R8 and S8 were both displayed outside Taka and that drew crowds no end. Obviously everyone went for the R8 because ooh it's sleek and so sexy. But no-one went for the V-10 S8 cos it's anodyne and so unremarkable. Me being me, I went for the S8 because that represents a totally different breed of car. A Terminator in sheep's clothing. Helen Mirren in a leather rompus suit. Bill Gates in a strip club getting it on with the hookers. That engine has more horsepower and more torque than the R8's, stuffed into a completely standard Audi A8 chassis and I can safely bet most of the idiots crowding over the R8 didn't know that. Ah but well, no-one can resist the lure of a perfectly well-balanced supercar - the R8. Sent Best back home after some proper, quality time out which cheered me up immensely before work.

Something happened which I prefer not to say out of respect and deference for the person who has had to go through such a painful and traumatising experience. I'd just want to say that although we live our days out like there's no tomorrow, the fact is that it very well could be just that. For some people, there just isn't any tomorrow. People die and people live, and sometimes for the living it's the only thing in the world which can break even the strongest man.

Life as we know it, is transient. It will never last long, no matter what scientists invent to prolong it. The thin line between death and life will always be there and we should make ourselves aware of it.

Because you never know when you might cross the line.

Ass, Idiot, Moron

Work Makes You Tired.

Work Is Dangerous.

Work Dissolves Grey Matter.

Work is a peril.

Work Kills. 

Work Makes Your Arms Ache.

Work Makes You Hungry.

Just got back from work. Hope you noticed the time on this entry cos it sure as hell ain't early. Or late. Depending how you want to look at it. The company bus drive got completely lost going to my house and when we got there we conveniently sailed past my house because he was on the phone and didn't hear me screaming TURN RIGHT TURN RIGHT. Brings "so near yet so far" to a whole new dimension. I was practically at my house already for goodness' sake. Next time hand me the wheel.

Saw a Lamborghini Gallardo boom past in a bass rumble of V-10 thunder after work. That's what I call proper motoring. Not some second-rate Corolla with a bit of bodykit and fancy rims slapped on. Italian cavallini any day.

Last day of work tomorrow before I rest me poor aching arms and settle down for the rest of the week. I seem to be talking a lot about work these few days right. Probably because I feel quite strongly about it. Joyce seems to be enjoying herself at her outlet and I think I am too. The people here and nice, friendly, very understanding and totally forgiving toward a rookie like myself, even though I did give a shot at attempting a Lewis Hamilton-style takeover of the joint and shocking everyone.

Alas.

Audrey has taken it upon herself to give 3 of us nicknames. I shall let you guess which. 

TCC

I had missed my last bus but thankfully I made it home alive. Without some strange man following me. Nah just kidding.

I can't even begin to describe how exhausted I am. Not only because of work but also because I missed my last bus and that made me walk so long just to take another someplace else, possibly Mexico by the looks of it. Speaking of work, Best came by with her friend and smirked at me and Bert and Jerold also came by and smirked at me. Smirks aside, those visits genuinely helped calm me down in some unknown way and thanks to you three wonderful people who all actually took the effort to come down and see me at work. I am so appreciative of that.

Work's been very tiring but very rewarding. You really have to learn quick in order to adapt and improvise, just as Clint Eastwood said in Heartbreak Ridge. Bah whatever. I'm completely plonked out.

Ouch

I'm aching like crap all over. Thank you Yiming for dragging me to the gym and torturing my aching muscles further by dousing me in the swimming pool for a coupla laps. I'm hurting in parts of my body I really never knew existed.

Work yesterday was crazy. For the first 3 hours it felt like I was descending through the 7 circles of hell, but it became more pleasant after that because I think I got into the groove of things and then I just started to do things right. Still the odd hiccup here and there but it was all great. The learning curve was so steep it was practically vertical, I tell you. 20 minutes of training and after that bye-bye, you're on your own (though I hadn't wished it were so because I was trained by this really hot chick). Tomorrow's my next shift and I'm pretty nervous about it because since it's my second day on the job they expect me to make less mistakes. I fear :S.

Wish me luck and do visit me, people.

Power (Metal)!

I suppose it is a bit late to be acknowledging this but thanks goes to Bert for introducing me to Dragonforce and all their Pac-Man music. Not exactly thew-thew-thew music but they used to create in-game music for several games, and their music is heavily influenced by that. Suffice to say their songs are really good if you can appreciate it and I do, albeit being an amateur. At least when I'm bored I listen to Operation Ground and Pound and I feel alive again. Bring on the Pac Man.

Podcasted at Reddot Traffic down Maxwell Road yesterday cos GT was closed. That place is a horror to find, especially if the taxi driver misheard it as Middle Road. Middle. Maxwell. Mellllll. Maybe he heard that instead. He was kind enough to reset the meter otherwise I would have ended up paying $10 frigginating bucks for a taxi ride that would have cost no more than $6. And I won't tell you where I got lost until I had to take a cab. You'd laugh till your sides burst, I tell you.

Went out with the guys after that to Purvis Street for cheeken rise. Quite excellent but the damn chicken was too bony and I kept getting bits of bone crap stuck in between my teeth. It It was a good feeling to be together again, just the 4 of us crapping about and being a nuisance wherever we go. Speaking of being a nuisance, we did live up to our expectations when we went to the foodcourt at Bugis with our pre-bought drinks at Cold Storage and were promptly chased out by the manager after 20 minutes because "no outside food and/or drinks are allowed". Screw him. Bumped into Audrey and TYM aka the Other Two Musketeers before that, paktor-ing as usual.

OH yes I got my job at TCC! I'm so elated. Now I can stop worrying about the lack of funds because guess what: they're paying me $5.50 an hour! Screw 7-Eleven! But the tradeoff - for me at least - is ungodly working hours. They do have transport to send you home though, so that's a good thing. Monday's the orientation/training and Joyce and I are gonna go together. Excited and nervous at the same time. Wish me luck!

228th post!

Same old bored-to-tears day today except for some fun times. Clean room in the morning as usual with Weller and I fiddling stupidly with diskettes aka 65 million-year-old tetnologee, as Gilbert put it. Pathetic really. For a technology so 21st-century, the least they could give us is some equipment at least belonging to the 20th century. But oh no the fees we pay SP obviously aren't enough and so we remain trapped in the dinosaur age where 3.5-inch floppies were all the rage. Screw them.

Went jogging with Audrey and Yiming and then went for dinner with them after that to Makansutra at Esplanade. Mr. Tay was nice enough to treat us all to dinner, which wasn't cheap mind you. Real naise of him to treat both of us. All 3 of us had really a great time. It's quite a pleasant feeling knowing that you're among friends who really treasure you and really mean something to you, and I think that's what's been happening recently. For whatever reason we've grown closer during these few weeks of holiday. I'd say especially Audrey and I. To be quite honest we never saw eye to eye on certain matters and weren't as friendly toward each other, but it's changed dramatically recently. It's a good feeling this, and I do wish it wouldn't go away.

Some inane stuff from Best's blog about me. She's really gone off her rocker on this one:


OMG HOW ABOUT BESTEST?

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Wong Kaiyi!

1. Wong Kaiyi can drink over 25 gallons of water at a time.
2. A lump of Wong Kaiyi the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court.
3. It takes more than 500 peanuts to make Wong Kaiyi!
4. Wong Kaiyi can taste with his feet.
5. Wong Kaiyi has 118 ridges around the edge.
6. You should always store Wong Kaiyi in an airtight container in the fridge.
7. Wong Kaiyi is physically incapable of sticking his tongue out!
8. Britain's Millennium Dome is more than double the size of Wong Kaiyi.
9. Wong Kaiyi will often rub up against people to lay his scent and mark his territory.
10. It is bad luck to walk under Wong Kaiyi.

Personality disorder

Yeah I always knew something was wrong with me. Jokes aside though, this personality test really is quite freaky in that it really does state what some of the things bothering me now are. Here's the whole thing, and you can take your own test here if you want to:


"You have always longed for tenderness, love and a sensitivity of feeling into which you would like to blend. You are a very gentle warm person and responsive to 'All things bright and beautiful'. This personifies a caring person, a person who 'needs' and indeed 'needs to be needed'.

You are feeling very disillusioned at this time and you feel that you are being left out of things. You know - or you think you know - what you want, but you seem unable to exert the effort to achieve your objectives. As a consequence, you are feeling left out and neglected. You would like to be afforded greater security and fewer problems.

Enough is enough - but the problems never seem to stop. They never stop. You feel, and maybe you are right, that the problems seem to go on and on and you have indeed had more than your fair share of trials and tribulations. But to give you credit - you bounce back time and time again - you stick to your beliefs because deep down you have that inner knowledge, that 'belief' system that in the end, everything will turn out OK - and you are right -it will!

You are feeling trapped by the situation as it stands at this time and what is more, you feel powerless to remedy it. You are stressful, angry and disgruntled. You feel that everything that you try to do to change the situation is thwarted and your hopes and aspirations all seem to be receding into the ever distant future. You have reached the state where you now doubt whether your dreams will ever be achieved and this is not only causing mental stress but heartache. You need to get away from it all - you need to have time to think, to recuperate, to be able to make your own decisions.

You wish to be left in peace... no more conflict and no more differences of opinion. In fact you just don't want to be involved in arguments of any shape or form. All you want is for 'them' to get on with it - and to leave you alone."


Seriously this is uncannily accurate in some ways. Not entirely correct, granted - cos it's the internet, after all - but it's unsettling how correct a program can get.

Australian Grand Prix

LEWIS HAMILTON TAKES POLE! YES!

It was a completely topsy turvy race, this. I cannot remember a race in recent history when both Ferraris failed to complete and to see Raikkonen outbrake himself into a corner trying to overtake Timo Glock in the Toyota is simply unheard of. The field finished with only 9 of the original 22 cars, with everyone else crashing out. Slight disappointment over Timo Glock and Nelson Piquet Jr.'s unfinished races, with Force India's drivers predictably failing to finish. But Quick Nick and Nico Rosberg took 2nd and 3rd place respectively and that demands huge respect, for having Williams clinch their first championship points so early on and having BMW cement their position as the field's number 3 team after Ferrari and McLaren. Kudos too to Honda for winning their first points of the season through Rubens Barrichello. A far cry from last year where they damn near finished at the bottom every single race.

I can't wait for Malaysia.

Happy Pi Day!

Not many people know this but today is Pi Day, the celebration in recognition of the most elusive and enigmatic numbers the world has ever seen: Pi, 3.14 - March 14. Yes it isn't enough to warrant to name a national holiday in honor of it. But think of how important Pi is to us: from calculating the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, to astronomers calculating the span of galaxies to helping us fail exams, it's all there in Pi. The BBC has a very good article on Pi Day, you should read it up and see how Pi runs our lives.


" Sir, I send a rhyme excelling
In sacred truth and rigid spelling
Numerical sprites elucidate
For me the lexicon's full weight"



3.14


Remember March 14


Anyway on a more intelligent and coherent note, Best came over to my place for some studying today. In the spirit of helping her concentrate on studying and not do any other monkey business except study, I played my computer games on full blast. Not really, I didn't get to do that because firstly she has the attention span of a donkey with a red-hot poker shoved up its ass (no pun intended) and secondly, we were having too much fun. Always the camwhore she made me succumb to her devious and cunning ways and made me pose for photos. Not that I'm much of a poser. No really. Again it was all great fun. Loved it all :)

Driving

Goodness me has anyone seen the rain these past few days? It has been pouring so much that I think it has even made the fish drown. Obviously someone down here has pissed off The Big Guy residing up there.

That said, it hasn't made driving any easier. Since rain decreases visibility and your good judgment, you have to drive slower as dictated so clearly by the sleep-intoxicated instructor sitting on your left. It isn't a monotonous experience by far, but rather a scary one. To make matters worse I have my lessons at night now, where every driver on the road is seemingly hell-bent on getting home in the fastest time possible at the fastest speed imaginable. Couple that with lights reflected everywhere and fogged mirrors, and you have a recipe for pee-in-your-pants, knuckle-whitening moments.

Still I managed to hang on and not get stabbed by a random guy in a Suzuki. It's not really that difficult to drive in the night, really. It's your instructor that makes you nervous, with comments like "Aiya you see, like that instant failure", "no no nooooo, cannot cut like that, must slower feelter into the lane". Worse thing was he was taking me on various test routes and familiarizing me with the different routes I might encounter. So it was 2 hours worth of test routes 1, 3, 5 and 9, with me screwing up on test route 5 because I didn't turn in time. Screw the rain.

I don't need no steenkin rain.

Homegrown Shows

Can I just say something. From the very unbiased and highly informed viewpoint of a bored student taking buses equipped with TV Mobile daily, I fear things have come to a head.

You see, when TV Mobile was first introduced, I remember that although commuters riled its very existence that prevented them from having that nice evening nap on the way home on the bus, it served its purpose well, entertaining the thousands of people who take the bus to school or work and then back home again. It promised snippets of interesting, humorous shows to liven up the otherwise dull and pathologically mundane commute. And for a while, it did exactly that. Good shows like the proverbial Just For Laughs (Jus Pour Gags?) and Switching Kitchens and some makeover show which I've forgotten the name were screened which mentally shortened the journey and made it just that bit more enjoyable.

But of late, things have changed. Instead of the easily-digestible, quirky, short and sweet shows, on have come these hour long, sluggish, uninteresting, ponderous and ultimately nail-bitingly awkward shows. Let me name a few that I've seen gestate in the past few weeks. In no order of merit (because they have none) they are: Heartlanders, First Mums, Lifeline (should have been called Flatline), some Chinese drama serial and some more god-awful English soap operas.

Lest you think I'm some Singapore-bashing redneck who lambasts every locally conceived idea at the slightest chance, I'm not. I honestly want Singapore's TV shows to shine and some of them have. Even so, these shows are pathetic. The concepts of these shows are really quite catchy but the way they are produced just leaves me staggered. I'm not any sort of actor but even so with a bit of training I sincerely believe I can do better than some of members of the cast on some shows. Some of them - if not most - have awkward line delivery. Pauses exist where there should be none and intonations are many. Very good, except that they're in the wrong places. I remember watching one girl act on Heartlanders one week back and I had to physically remove my eyes from the screen and my jaw from the floor because her acting reminded me of my primary school speech and drama audition session. It was shockingly bad. I paraphrase:

"Do YOU really beLIEVE that I will beLIEVE YOU? What KIND of a PERSON are YOU anyway. How DARE you treat my MUDDER that WAY? I cannot STAND YOU you know."

Emphasis on words has been typed in uppercase letters.

You see what I mean?

The thing is though, this rant would have sounded very convincing save for the fact that her face was more expressionless than a fossilized frog stuck in concrete and that her intonations were all over the place. I don't want to even start on her accent because it would really be unfair to her. She did try.

I know you're bored with all this writing (part of preparing for my column, see) so I shall keep it short. I don't want to mention other bad examples of acting I've watched, because I'm sure the actors and actresses are probably as bored of this as we are. But let's face it: we need to bring our acts up to speed. And while we're it, the dialogue too. God knows who are writing the scripts for these shows.

To round off, I propose a few attainable and highly realistic ways to improve Singapore's film industry:



1. Shoot the scriptwriters and hire those that do films like There Will Be Blood, or just stop outsourcing scriptwriting to India.

2. Find better shooting locations that don't include random children running around in a playground and grinning into the camera in the background

3. Pay your actors better. Money may be the root of all evil but damn it works wonders when you dangle it.

4. Hire ugly actors. People don't want to watch highly polished cast members. They want fleshy, bumbling, dopey La-Z-Boy-sized actors to spice up the screen. Must be hired intentionally.

5. Stop the crying scenes. We have enough heartache during work and school in the day and have no more need for screen tears than we do extra armpit hair.

I eagerly await my next bus ride.

The Constant Reminder

Plastic substrate for OLED. Time to pull up my socks and realise that this project I'm undertaking now is more important than ever. If those few words meant nothing to you, don't worry yet because if our plan goes through, my group will be the first polytechnic students ever to create something astonishing, totally mindblowing and you heard about it here first! Not exactly something brand new and unheard of, because it's seen development elsewhere, but this might be the first time it sees development in the hands of rank amateurs. Keep your fingers tightly crossed laydeez and gennermen.

Anyway owing to the urging of a certain Sabrina, I have now added words into my blog to produce an entry! *shock horror* Speaking of which, I met her today for dinner. Walked around a bit till we discovered Pastamania at Bugis, where we ate. Walked around after that, talked shop and then went home, me sending her to her station before that cos I figured I had time to burn. But Jerold and Bert were at AMK Hub and they had to go soon. Not one for missing a session of TCSS I rushed down and as usual, the sound of the Kopitiam echoed to jokes which only we could understand and laughter which, well, only we could laugh. Long and loud. LOL.



Cleaning the clean room tomorrow. I am not joking.

Physicists Successfully Store and Retrieve Nothing

I do that all the time. It's called a bank acccount.

If that title wasn't enough to bamboozle you, this article should. I do not boast but my level of language comprehension is pretty competent, above average. Even so, I still could not make head or tail of exactly what they were trying to explain, even after reading it twice over with a fine-tooth comb. See what you make of it.

Mas Selamat Kastari

All things considered in these past few days, I think the thing first and foremost on our minds should be to look out for that cunning and devious MSK. How the hell he managed to escape from a high-security facility, we only need to wait for the preliminary reports from the Government. It is quite scary to know that for the first time, a terrorist has escaped state custody and is on the run and is dangerous, and that this is happening right in your own backyard right here, in Singapore. It's like a real-life The Fugitive without the stylish countenance of Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones gracing the show but instead a steely-faced force of SOC and special forces men and a limping terrorist. Sounds a bit impotent if you're anywhere other than Singapore but believe me, it's plenty worrying.

On a lighter note, the Geneva Motor Show is coming up and I'm pretty excited about it. A lot of new and very clever cars are going to be unveiled. Here are some specifically:

• Rolls Royce Phantom Coupe
• New Ford Fiesta
• Abarth 500
• VW Scirocco
• Volvo XC60
• KTM X-Bow
• Koenigsegg CCRX

Holy mother.