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bert's blog v1.21 Powered by glolg Programmed with Perl 5.6.1 on Apache/1.3.27 (Red Hat Linux) best viewed at 1024 x 768 resolution on Internet Explorer 6.0+ or Mozilla Firefox 1.5+ entry views: 1896 today's page views: 84 (6 mobile) all-time page views: 3245259 most viewed entry: 18739 views most commented entry: 14 comments number of entries: 1214 page created Wed Apr 16, 2025 08:02:41 |
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would be president when pigs fly. Indeed, 100 days into the Obama presidency, swine flu." - Joke of the month or two (on roastbird's MSN) With Friends Like These...
So anyway, we are going to Rome for our month-long graduation trip (we here means me and assorted 4O pals, not the hamster); Europe, to be both more and less precise. I'll keep the exact itinerary a mystery for now, since a couple of my travelling mates' parents have (probably overblown) concerns about "flying piggy disease", but we'll all be touching down in Fiumicino on 26 May - right in time for the Barcelona vs. Manchester United Champions League final the next day.  Going for over 1000 Euros now. Each. We balloted for the tickets through UEFA's official site, but unfortunately only alvin got lucky. One out of three ain't bad given that the success rate is south of 10% according to my best estimates, and if I were less principled I would try every year for what is effectively a free try at a S$4k prize. Much of the planning (booking of internal flights, railpasses etc) has been done, with intra-europe flights being absurdly cheap sometimes (effectively free before taxes and other fees), but any rescheduling would have been extremely expensive as we found out to our dismay. Read up a bit on the planned destinations through various borrowed guidebooks, Wikitravel, the Lonely Planet forums and other sources, but I suspect we'll end up winging it.  Pack up your troubles in your old kitbag Onebag.com looks like a worthwhile read on the art of packing, and I picked up a 55cm x 36cm x 20cm backpack (dimensions satisfying the mininum for both Cathay Pacific and Ryanair) from a Boon Lay shop as my only luggage for the trip. Looks blockish enough so as to not waste much space, and it feels comfortable enough with the padded hip belt, as far as I can tell without standing in line for hours at some tourist attraction. On the subject of travel, one Greek guy was pretty eager to promote his home country while we were researching the trip at NUS after my FYP presentation. I wouldn't be going, but it made me think about how I might "sell" Singapore abroad. It's a fine city, certainly. Let's see what a guy who's trying to travel around the world says... "My friend Dave, who I stayed with in Singapore, is a professor at the University of Singapore. UoS has quickly become the best university in SE Asia, and next to Tokyo University, probably the best in all of Asia." Okay, so maybe NUS has a bit more brand (or acronym) recognition to build than I thought. Then again with the references to "Harbird" or "Preston U" I see scattered about, fair's fair. Another comment summed up Singapore as "America minus the cool things". Haven't seen the US of A firsthand yet, but I'll soon be able to tell how the ol' Lion City squares up against Europe. Played a bit of football with the 4O guys for once on Saturday. I thought I was fitter after all that RT, but it turns out that 3v3 is still no laughing matter. First time I saw a football burst, and fortunately it wasn't mine. Four And A Half Years And I don't feel much smarter than when I started university. If all goes well, I'll have my two pieces of paper... and stay on for another three to five years for another piece of paper. Haha. I'm slowly getting the idea that nobody really wants to read condensed notes of the modules I take, so suffice to say Natural Language Processing is mainly about resolving ambiguities (and I think I've said this before), and Environmental Economics... well it was the first economics module that discussed social welfare (utility) functions in any detail, which was a bit of a surprise. And it was the first module that had the happy combination of having optional questions (choose 1 from 2, after two compulsory questions), and enough time to do the lot just for fun. Hope it's a good omen. There's so little to say that I even considered posting a very bad picture of the stamp imprint used by the university to indicate that I had passed the temperature check brought on by the swine flu alert, but I thought better of it. Good riddance undergraduate life, welcome graduate life! Aftermaths with Agenda for Re-Education" - seen as another MSN nick somewhere The old guard recaptured AWARE at their EGM on the second of May, though the behavior at the meeting appeared slightly rowdy and undignified. On the plus side, the event raised local civic awareness, and moreover revitalized AWARE. While the new guard's position was defeated, they might at least draw some solace from MOE suspending the AWARE schools' sexuality program which described homosexuality as neutral in its instructor's manual - but it must be remembered that there had been zero complaints against it before that. Regarding the proceedings, it appeared that then-President Josie Lau was given scant respect by the (mostly-hostile) crowd, and had to resort to shouting and invoking security personnel, which didn't work. Personally I felt it was regrettable that the situation degenerated into a form of mob rule, but that's what one can expect after opportunistically hijacking an organization. The whole meeting appeared to be a glorified popularity contest, but given that AWARE always had open membership and a democratic charter, that was what it was going to be about all along. Oh, that and the sense of injustice from being booted out en masse by a bunch of newbies. occ had previously made a quip about the whole exercise being a surreptitious fundraising activity, and lo and behold, "...Please be rational, although $90000 is spent, but we have recouped it by the new membership fees of $120000...", which comes to 3000 new members at $40 a pop. Still, the manner in which the new exco just blew $90000 without seeking approval (as stipulated in their Constitution, for amounts exceeding $20000) was sadly just another example of their disregard for the practices of the organization. So in the end, the old guard are back leading a much bigger AWARE, even if a significant number of these new members are presumably part of the not-anti-but-disapprove-of-gays brigade. Well, they do have a right to push their agenda within the rules. Not that it will do them much good - I predict that within fifty years, gay marriage will be allowed in almost all non-religious states. Note that while most Singaporeans (of any religion) would probably concur with the right for people to marry outside their race (even if they do not personally like it), full freedom of interracial marriage was only allowed in the United States as late as 1967 (barely 40 years ago!), in Loving vs. Virginia. What a difference a few years can make to popular (and popular religious) opinion... Another interesting snippet: Sometime-President "quoted some study from Utah that abstinence is important to help reduce sexual activity amongst adolescents". Actually, perhaps it just leads to more backdooring? Amusingly, the AWARE saga has managed to inspire a forum letter in the Straits Times lauding the Group Representation Constituency (GRC) system because, I quote, "Imagine the situation if Parliament was composed of members from a single race or religion. If there were no GRCs and only single-member constituencies, a freak result could bring about such a crisis." On the surface, this is true since GRCs must include at least one candidate from a minority race, though in practice one could probably slip a crash test dummy into some of the more secure GRCs and have it become a Member of Parliament. Indeed, three years ago, our Senior Minister admitted that GRCs were also meant to make it easier to find top talent, because "...without some assurance of a good chance of winning at least their first election, many able and successful young Singaporeans may not risk their careers to join politics." Well, why not just have minority people as Nominated MPs if it comes down to that? It works well enough for opposition representation... The old guard did take a leaf from politics, and they may be putting into place a one-year volunteerism requirement for future elections. Once bitten, twice shy? Final note: A minister called for a "rainbow coalition" for "meaningful change" regarding this issue. Interestingly enough, the rainbow flag is also the symbol of gay pride. Hmm.  MasSelamat burger chain coming to a location near you (Main image original source: Hardwarezone Forums) (Top-left poster original source: Moonatic) (Newspaper source: occ, i think) Onto other news, Mas Selamat has actually been captured in Malaysia, where he was supposedly making a living selling Ramly burgers; I was almost afraid that his posters (updated with greying hair, crows' feet and liver spots) would still be flapping around come 2030 or thereabouts, outlasting multiple presidents. The Ramly burger is delicious, if not particularly healthy. Would snag one the next time I get the opportunity. Next: My First Portable
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