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Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 17:11 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

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Barca Barca

Frantically pecking away at the keyboard with a couple of hours before checkout time.

27 May



Champions League Final day! Football fever has well and truly gripped the city, and other than billboards [2] at transportation areas, fans in jerseys flooded the streets. We saw somewhat more Barcelona ones [3] (a few of whom marched in the middle of the road), though after a night with a bunch of them in the next room, a group United ones arrived in the hostel to balance things up. Two Scholes/Giggs/Rooney/Ronaldo/Ferdinand jerseys spotted throughout the day before reaching the stadium, with a Vidic, Brown, Manucho(!) and P(allister?).

The manager of our B&B kindly agreed to hold our luggage for us until after the final, and after breakfast [1] we killed the remaining hours before kickoff by strolling the Trastevere neighbourhood. Shared half a litre of gelato [4] (ice-cream) from the recommended Gelateria alla Scala, then moved on to the Santa Maria in Trastevere Church (Saint Mary sure appears to be popular here). The church uniquely has fragments embedded into its outer walls [5], and the candles [6] (with wireframe grid to help hold them in place) just happened to remind me of Buddhist temples.

We split after a McDonald's dinner (Filet for me) [7], with sel wandering off to find a pub, while alvin and I tried to get transportation to the stadium proper [8]. We squeezed up a tram filled with Barca supporters, who shook it with their chants (got to find out what that LOLOLOLOL one is about). Got willingly ripped off at the official shop [9], paying 20 Euros for a United scarf (my first), but hey, it's not often that one is happy to overpay. Queued behind a Greek and his wife for an hour to enter.


Didn't quite happen sadly



Colours of the night


Found our seats right at the top of the North-East Stands, beside the designated Barcelona area. The less said of the match itself the better, though it was certainly quite an experience. United were never quite up to it, and from what I could see the Barca fans were more active too - certainly after Eto gave them the lead. It all went steadily downhill after that, with a pickpocket likely striking in the second half as he walked up to give me a friendly pat on the chest. It's easy to forgive when one doesn't lose all that much - the scarf suddenly became a wise investment.

Left dejectedly right after the final whistle, and for once the majority seen were United fans. It was back to the B&B where we collected our baggage, and waited at the Termini station for our bus to Ciampino airport [1, next pic] . Didn't quite expect an elderly Englishman in a suit and a red-and-white striped tie to come up upon seeing my scarf and say, "Sad day, eh?". We ended up having a short chat on the team's performance - it's moments like this that make travelling all worthwhile.


28 May



Arrived at Ciampino with six hours to spare before our early morning flight to Madrid, and were quickly ushered into the empty Arrivals hall [2] by airport security. Claimed a little corner as our own, put down our burdens, and took turns trying to sleep on the hard floor. Free seating and no entertainment on the Ryanair flight, which was just as well as we tried to continue sleeping on the plane.

Had a loaf [3] in Madrid, before hopping on the 12:30 Renfe high-speed train to Barcelona (getting our railpasses validated took some waiting). Lunch, taken on the train, was a sandwich and a bottle of Coke [4]. Played Big Two with the Cathay Pacific playing cards to pass the time, as the scenary wasn't much - over ninety percent of it were scrubbish hills [5], interrupted with sections of tunnels through badly-placed hills.

Found our lodgings at the Rambla & Catalunya Hostel, and more or less got used to the European architecture. Got placed in a six-man bunk [6] despite booking for a ten, though the others being three girls (two from Washington) cramped our freedom of behaviour somewhat. Buffet at FresCo for dinner [7], and loaded up on macaroni and pizza. Caught Barca's open-top bus parade [8] afterwards, and wondered what could have been had we headed to the UK and Manchester instead.

That done, we walked down the famous La Rambla, and soon reached the "Rambla of the Little Birds", i.e. one roadside pet shop. The birds were indeed present, as were rats (with one giant three times the size of the others) [9] and bunnies, and of course, hamsters!


No Mr. Ham, we didn't get a Spanish companion for you


My soles weren't quite as charmed by Europe as my eyes were by the portrait-drawers and artists (including one whom could do wonders with spray paint and old vinyl records), florists, human statues and shell game conmen (or perhaps they deserve to be called performance artists?), and we headed back to our bunk at ten-plus, where I promptly dropped my digital camera. Thankfully it's still working, just that the LCD no longer operates.


29 May




Under (re)construction (Photo credit: alvin)


Checked my results for my dead rubber last semester online - few surprises, passed everything, ho-hum. We had moved down the Ramblas to the Barcelona 4 Fun Hostel (surprisingly neither of my travel mates seemed to have realised its location, thus the Ramblas walk yesterday). Our private room was much bigger [1] than the shared one we slept in last, which was a real relief. Walked the Ramblas once more and visited the Barcelona Cathedral (with geese, and the innovation of electric candles) and the Deacon's House (now the city's archive). Dedicated the early afternoon to laundry [2], as our stock of clean clothes wore low.

Nutella and bread at the previous hostel wasn't that filling, and lunch at a cosy little restaurant called El Gato Pardo was appreciated. Eggs and bacon strips [3] for five and a half Euros was about as good as a bargain as could be had, and we washed it down with mineral water (35 cents a 1.5L bottle) - hey, we're students on a budget. Got to the Camp Nou only to discover we were too late for a stadium tour, so we went to the megastore instead - they even had two kinds of United T-shirts for sale. I also found the Barca version of my official scarf for just 12 Euros...

Came across the Montana State University Chorale [5] on our trip back at the Plaza del Pi. Tickets for their concert were some 15 Euros, though, and I for one didn't have the inclination. Headed to the Travel Bar to take advantage of their Free Dinner offer [6], and for the price of a Coke (that came in a 200ml glass bottle!) with a lemon slice, or pineapple juice from the tap on alvin's part, we each had a filling plate of pasta to tide us over the night, as friendly Swiss fellow guests offered sel an olive. Finally huddled next to the walls of our room to keep the Wifi going and type this entry, as the night sounds of the street we were over floated up unceasingly.



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Wednesday, May 27, 2009 - 08:39 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

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Ten Thousand Kilometres

I'm typing this in the middle of Rome, but perhaps we should start at the beginning of the story. Fair warning: The style of writing used will be rather more clipped than the usual.



(Narrative will be accompanied by 9-in-1 photos, labelled from 1 to 9 from top left horizontally to bottom right) Leaving Mr. Ham [1], who was in a huff after failing to qualify as luggage, I hitched a ride with my parents and grandmother to Changi Airport (drinking fountain shown [2]) - memorable song of the drive there was 中国话 (felt chorus was nice).

Thanks to the miracle economics of the modern airline industry, it was far cheaper to take a Cathay Pacific flight from Singapore to Hong Kong, and only then from Hong Kong to Rome. The six 4O representatives took up two rows of seats somewhat behind the right front wing [3], with yours truly taking the window seat for the Hong Kong leg. Strangely I'm less concerned about aeroplanes than tall structures, despite my dislike of heights.

Cruising at an altitude of some 8km to 10km at a speed of over 800km/h [4], there wasn't much to do but watch inflight movies on the award-winning StudioCX system, where I happily counted many titles that I would have watched but never found the time to. Got midway through The Wrestler [5] before my screen got reset - the data/computing power probably wasn't distributed. Whatever, I switched to An Inconvenient Truth - they probably should have strongly suggested that we watch the full movie in the introductory Geography module. Assuming he got his facts right, Mr. Gore makes a compelling case for global warming, and all this after inventing the Internet! Random facts: Gore is a friend of Carl Sagan, and China's automakers have far higher emission standards than US ones (!)

The rest sat through their selections (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Ip Man, Red Cliff, Stardust, etc), and in about four hours (and dinner [6,7]) we [8] were at Hong Kong International Airport [9], which was still reminiscent of Singapore.


Elation at completing the first leg
(faces will be mosiac-ed for a little bit of privacy & blackmail opportunities)



(Original image source: flex888.com)




After languishing in transit [2,3] for a bit and using HKIA's wifi [1], it was back to the air. More meals [4,5] followed, and while the chicken was tasty, I had little appetite come breakfast. The flight to Rome took 12 hours (learnt that departure and arrival times are quoted as the respective places'), and I felt it appropriate to view Slumdog Millionaire as the plane skirted India. Managed to get a deck of cards and some eyeshades off the flight attendants (whom wore masks with the H1N1 scare continuing), and kept the toiletries bag and towel (they were complimentary, right?), resulting in a net gain of worldly possessions, less a ballpoint pen.

Landed uneventfully in Rome at 6-plus a.m. local time [6], a bit of a bother since we could only book into our first hostel at 2 pm. Separated with the slightly-more-gay trio [7], who were headed for Greece, after wandering about Fiumicino airport for awhile, while alvin, sel and I got on a train (the pompously-named Leonardo Express) to Termini Station [8]. One of my first impressions of Rome was the prevalence of graffiti [9].

Something to chew on: It is said that all roads lead to the Eternal City of Rome. However, consider that all roads are two-way. Then for any road (say the street I live on in Singapore), it must be reachable from Rome. But since all other roads reach Rome, it follows that all roads also lead to my street! In any case, I crossed a number of lines of longitude for the first time, and set foot in Europe for the first time too, so it should be a big deal.



Left most of our stuff [1] in the Overseas B&B, which was right by the train station, and marked by a sign reading 华侨饭店, appropriately enough for three former 华侨中学 students. Yes, the manager's a Chinese (from around the Shanghai area), and quite helpful. She managed to pull out a map and suggest some free attractions to visit, and also remarked on hearing that we had tickets to the CL finals that perhaps half of the English visitors here were looking for them - some of her other guests had asked if she knew of any tickets available. The going price seems to be over 1000 Euros a ticket, unsurprisingly.

Ate a burger and drank Coke (i.e. a Crazy Meal) at the nearby Cafe Crazy [2], and went on a walk [3] through the neighbourhood, where there were far more Chinese establishments than I would have thought; the storefronts leading to basement shops had some character, and so did the traffic, which was a finely balanced game of chicken between drivers and pedestrians that generally works out. Huge columns [4,5] were par for the course, with this one outside the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore [main pic], the grandness within being of the sort which could not be adequately captured by our lesser photography equipment.


Photo of alvin taking photo inside the Papal Basilica


Continued tramping onwards under the scorching Roman sun to the Colosseum [6], where the touring horses stood so motionlessly that I thought they were made of wax. A special Champions League display was by the side, where the trophy was on display. There were a number other booths, including a mini pitch where a few freestyle footballers were doing their tricks. Climbed the incredibly (and some say intrusively) huge Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II [7], where we managed to get yelled at by a police officer for unthinkingly sitting down on a ledge.

Lunch was ham sandwiches [8], more filling than it looks, after we were taken to our rooms on the seventh floor (of ten in total). The lift was tiny, and the furnishing sparse, but comfortable especially after our long trip. We had planned to go on a evening walk, but fatigue took its toll, and we ended up having a late dinner [9] at the Chinese restaurant downstairs and a bath, not necessarily in that order, before calling it a day as flag-waving Barcelona supporters marched down the middle of the road.


A room divided into two brings more revenue


What was that song, "...Lord I'm Six Thousand Two Hundred and Eighteen Miles Away From Home..."? And this is just day one...



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Sunday, May 24, 2009 - 23:03 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

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Takeoff Imminent

Wednesday

A quick rundown of the past few days - met paler-than-usual special guest edmond (with an 'o', not the more common variety with a 'u', though he also went, together with two of the other guys honoured by MSN emoticons, and woof) at Junction 8, Bishan. Nursed a cup of Oreo Frappé for hours, along with their free flow of homemade bread.


Thursday

Watched Angels & Demons at Lot One, Choa Chu Kang. The plot wasn't too much of a surprise, since I had read the book standing in one of the co-ops at NUS some years back (the empty hours between lectures are not always easy to fill).

Visited the library before that to grab a few books on Europe (Spain for Dummies, The Rough Guide to Andalucía, Frommer's England 2008 and England (Lonely Planet)). While they made fair reading, the vast proportion of the text isn't quite relevant (we've already found just about all our accomodations, and don't expect to frequent upmarket restaurants or indeed anything that expects more than a modest payment), and I suppose I would be about as well off with the Internet - see a couple really quite comprehensive websites about Venice and Seville, for instance. The major attractions are presumably universally recognized, and what minor details that are omitted probably won't be missed as we're staying for just a few days in each place.

Of course, an internet connection can't be taken for granted (almost all hostels promise wifi, but it's apparent from the comments on Hostelworld and similar sites that such promises may be optimistic). Therefore, saving such websites to disk is prudent, and my preferred method is using Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro's (free 30 day trial available) built-in create PDF from Web Page function. It takes a root URL (web address), and helpfully crawls through the entire site and saves it as a single PDF document with handy bookmarks.

But back to the movie - it begins with some antimatter being stolen, and four Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church being kidnapped, with the culprits (apparently the Illuminati) threatening to kill one of them every hour as revenge for the Church's past killings of scientists and intellectuals (a comprehensive stifling certainly did happen - see White's The Warfare Of Science With Theology, for instance)

Bearing in mind that the world of the past was probably less kind than the present (burning at the stake might be par for the course), and harsh measures had to be taken to maintain the authority of the Church (though when petty dictators act in the same way nowadays they would be roundly censured by the United Nations, and possibly invaded if they have oil) - the gist of the problem is the insistence that a particular holy book, being divinely inspired, must hold all the answers.

It helps one's authority to claim to know everything, of course - "I don't know" is a not particularly impressive, if rather more honest, answer, for people who have found the perfect (and only) way. Of course, this is a problem, because in actual fact they didn't really know everything, so "facts" had to be cobbled together as they went along.

Unfortunately, some of these "facts", or dogma, would probably turn out to be inaccurate upon deeper investigation. The authority now has a dilemma - if they admit that the "facts" in their eternal holy texts were wrong, it naturally calls into question the truth of the rest of their holy texts, since all were taken on much the same "evidence" i.e. faith. Not admitting it, however, becomes more and more difficult and ridiculous as actual evidence mounts. A salient example is Ussher's chronology of the world, which painstakingly computes the date of Creation from dates in the Bible. His method was scientific, his raw data less so, and thus there is a discrepancy with the best modern estimates by oh, some 4.5 billion years. What are believers to make of that?

Of course, there is a third way, which is to claim that the holy texts are indeed infallible, but that human interpretation of those texts were misguided (and continue to hold with the greatest conviction the current interpretations). Science of course does not have all the answers either, but it does cheerfully admit ignorance where ignorance exists, and is more than happy to admit mistakes and update its textbooks when contrary evidence is found.

Now, I must be careful to state that religion is not always nasty. For every raving fundie, there are likely a dozen reasonable souls, and in any case belief lies on a full spectrum - or rather, many spectrums. I feel myself justified in this statement as, taking Christianity as an example, the definition of "Who is a Christian?" has a multitude of possible replies, depending on who one asks.

Starting with the basics, "accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior" is one measure, and as role models go one could do much worse than Christ. Now we suppose that a convert has accepted with all his heart, but not quite read through the whole Bible (how many can and do, anyway?), and does not know of the less savoury aspects, such as his non-Christian friends burning in hell. Or perhaps he does not, but cannot quite accept it, such that if others ask him of the fate of decent non-Christians, he answers that he sincerely believes that all are saved, not one is left behind, by God's mercy. Is he Christian?

If a person believes, but was never baptized, is he Christian? If he does not take part in Mass, is he Christian? If a person does believe that women should have the same rights as men, and his priest or pastor disagrees, citing passages from the eternal Bible, is he a Christian? If a person believes that slavery is unacceptable, while his priest or pastor sends his slave to drive him away, is he a Christian? If a person believes that gays and lesbians were made as such by God and are entitled to their own happiness in this imperfect world, is he a Christian?

Are Catholics, Christian? Not to some Protestants and evangelicals, I believe. What about Mormons, Arianists (of whom Issac Newton was one), the Orthodox Church? Was Gandhi one? If the average Christian of today met the average Christian of 500 years ago, what are the chances that the latter would accept the former as Christian? How justifiably sure can one be, in the nitty-gritty specifics of one's faith? Pope John Paul II, a great and humble man, did at least recognize the imperfections of his Church in practice, which is more than I can say for those who insist upon their religion being beyond question or reproach (or just practice it in an exceedingly dumb way).

Of course, everyone is entitled to his opinion, and while I may not agree with some views on say, gay marriage, I do acknowledge those with differing views (as say the reigning Miss California USA, Carrie Prejean) to air them in a civil manner. Or to pose for tasteful semi-nude photos, though strictly speaking it went against the pageant rules. But as Miss USA owner Donald Trump affirmed, we are in the twenty-first century, and more importantly the "pictures were lovely".

The other major point of interest was the antimatter bomb, which was touted as having a yield the equivalent of five kilotons (or about a third of "Little Boy", the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima. In the movie, with about five minutes before detonation, the Camerlengo takes it up in the air in an helicopter, and skydives out before the customary big explosion; the onlookers on the ground are shown to be blown aside by the blast, but not forcefully enough to cause many deaths. Is this realistic?

Well, in the case of Hiroshima, the atomic bomb was detonated about 600m above ground for maximum effect, and completely annihilated an area of about 1.6km radius, and destroyed most buildings for maybe another kilometre or two. Keeping in mind that the antimatter bomb was not quite as powerful, we can ask ourselves how high it was sent - helicopters can surprisingly reach an altitude of around 3 to 6km, and military helicopters can rise at a maximum rate of 500m a minute, though rates of 200m to 300m seem more common, and also the rate slows as the air gets thinner with increasing altitude.

Therefore, the helicopter in the movie probably reached like 1.5km in five minutes, and realistically at most about 3km. Would that distance have been sufficient to protect the people on the ground from the force of the explosion? tpk noted that the energy release would be largely in the form of gamma radiation anyway, which isn't good for those who don't want to get cancer - but hey, why spoil an entertaining scene with mere facts?


Friday

Played badminton for what will be the last time in a month, then popped over to the local POSB branch to update my ATM card from the old grey one to the new Cirrus and Maestro compatible version. Probably won't get my debit card in the mail in time, but it won't matter now. alvin's attempts to get a solar charger didn't come off, though, and the looks on the faces of handphone vendors at the request were uniformly strange.

Also, I finally began packing. The good news was that I didn't have to cut anything much, as all the items fitted comfortably into my main backpack, and tipped the scales at just over 6kg - If worst comes to worst, I could probably cram some extra stuff into the daypack to meet Cathay Pacific's 7kg limit (they have a huge list of exemptions), and Ryanair's 10kg all-inclusive limit seems generous enough.

Packing lists, such as the one in the book No Picnic on Mount Kenya, have usually drawn me for some reason, and thus it wouldn't be quite right not to reveal my own:


BAGGAGE

1 backpack [Water Polo, large] (dark blue/black)
1 daypack [Double M "Originate from Japen" {sic}, small] (black)

CLOTHING

7 handkerchiefs
1 jacket [Converse] (dark grey)
1 jacket [Anata] (blue)
1 jeans (blue) [worn on body]
1 long pants (dark green)
1 sandals [Kawasaki, pair]
1 shoes [worn on body]
1 sleeping pants (grey)
4 socks [pairs] (2 green, 2 white) [1 worn on body]
1 spectacles (black) [worn on body]
1 spectacles container (black)
1 sweater [long-sleeved] (orange)
1 swimming goggles [Aquapro] (blue)
1 swimming trunks (black)
4 T-shirts (2 beige, 1 blue, 1 brown) [1 worn on body]
1 towel [small] (blue/white)
2 towels [large] (white/red/blue/yellow, white/green/orange/yellow)
1 trackpants (dark blue)
5 underpants [pairs]

DOCUMENTATION

1 ATM card [POSB Cirrus/Maestro]
1 ISIC card
1 passport [Singapore]
1 stack of printouts [identification, reservations, tickets, etc]

ELECTRONICS

8 batteries [Energizer, AA size]
1 camera [Canon Powershot A400, with 128MB SD card]
1 digital watch [Casio] (black)
1 handphone [Nokia 3220]
1 netbook [MSI Wind U100 Plus] (black)
1 netbook power adapter
1 optical mouse [MSI, wired]
1 travel adapter (white)
1 USB cable [Nokia CA-42]
1 USB cable [camera]
1 USB thumbdrive [Lagan, 1GB]

FIRST AID

10 face masks [pack]
5 Hansaplasts
1 inhaler [Axe Brand]
1 Mopiko [tube]
1 pouch [small] (transparent)
1 thermometer [digital]

10 Buscopan (Hyoscine) [Abdominal pain, tablets]
20 Chloramine [Flu, tablets]
20 Danzan [Antiinflammation (Throat), tablets]
20 Dhamotil [Diarrhoea, tablets]
20 Diclofenac [Fever/Pain, tablets]
10 Fenfedrin [Nasal decongestion, capsules]
18 Merck Ultracarbon (Medicinal charcoal) [Diarrhoea, tablets]
20 Paracetamol (Panadol) [tablets]
10 Veragel-DMS [Peptic Ulcer/Hyperacidity, tablets]

TOILETRIES

1 comb (brown)
1 electric shaver [Panasonic, 2AA batteries] (blue)
1 hand towel (white)
1 toiletries pouch (blue/transparent)
1 toothbrush (green)
1 toothpaste [Darlie, normal]

MISCELLANEOUS

2 ballpoint pens (blue)
1 coin pouch (dark blue)
1 combination lock [cable] (pink)
1 combination lock (black)
1 combination lock (red)
1 money pouch (black)
1 rubber bands [pack] (red)
1 spectacles cleaner [pack]
1 water bottle [500ml]
1 writing notebook [small] (blue)
1 hamster [fat, Winter White] (grey/white)
{Note: Nice try, Mr. Ham}


 I could probably get by with quite a bit less (indeed, a traveller with enough in his bank account could probably get by with just a credit card and a change of clothes in most civilized areas), but as mentioned the sum total isn't that heavy at all.

And before I forget again, Sprocle is a terrific site to while away a couple of hours. Take the Premier League All-Time quiz - I only managed to name 30-odd of the 42 clubs that have once played in the Premier League (and even forgot Middlesbrough!). Or how about their nicknames, or stadium names? If football's not quite your thing, there are many other categories; what's the most popular college major, or the most common murder weapons?

This is also the last day of what looks like another unsuccessful virtual $100 Challenge season, but let's finish it for completeness' sake:

$50 on Aston Villa to draw Newcastle (at 3.35) - would just be like the Magpies to cheat death
$50 on Man Utd to beat Hull City (2.25) - over evens? never thought I would see that, even with a so-called weakened team



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Wednesday, May 20, 2009 - 01:56 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

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Weekend B-activities


Friday - Badminton

Played at Clementi Sports Hall since our usual haunt, the Multi-Purpose Sports Hall at NUS, was still unavailable. Come to think of it, I've never said much about badminton despite it being my ECA/CCA in upper Primary and most of my Secondary school days. This may be partially due to the fact that I liked it, but not that much, and got banned from joining sports that I really liked in my younger and more pliant days - but that's a story for another day.

From what I can remember, the formal training consisted mostly of set drills (e.g. rushing to the net to drop, receive a drop back, clear the ball to the back, run back for the clear, repeat), augmented with free practice - though I was never quite into it in Secondary school. I suppose all the basic stuff like returning to a central position should be obvious to most with some passion for the game; I certainly don't recall any concise how-to guide on badminton strategy.

Anyway, regarding doubles (since that is what is usually played), there's actually just one overriding rule - attack. And attack means "hit smashes as hard as you can whenever possible, and let the opponents worry about it", with "whenever possible" being "almost every shot" in practice. Yes, it's not particularly smart, nor particularly fun if your training/playing buddies are not quite up to it, but it works right up to world-class level if one wishes to win.

Singles is another matter altogether, and the smash-smash-smash rule doesn't apply since there's no partner to watch your back (or more accurately, frontcourt). This doesn't detract from the fact that the optimal stroke for any high return in the mid-court (or further forward) is still the smash, however. In general, aiming the shuttlecock to a specific location (and thus moving the opponent around) is rather more important in singles, and stamina becomes an even more important factor.

Badminton wasn't the most notable thing about Friday, though. I think I might have propositioned for the first time in my life, in Singapore.

Here I was, walking back from the neighbourhood market in the morning, and was at the void deck of the block next to mine when a reasonably well-dressed and foreign-looking lady approached me as I passed by her. Now, this is not an altogether unknown experience, as I have been asked for directions by visitors pretty often on campus. I was expecting a question on how to get to a nearby address, when she asked in a soft voice,

"Are you happy?"

Now that I wasn't expecting, and for a few seconds I struggled to put the query into context. I mean, if it were a philosophical essay, I would probably have to spend five minutes on an outline before an hour or two of writing. As she waited patiently (and a bit too closely for comfort), I could only come out with four main possibilities, in decreasing order of likelihood:

  1. She was propositioning me
  2. She was mentally not all there
  3. She was some combination of very outgoing and very lonely
  4. She was a sociology researcher out to gather data on how people respond to unconventional statements
What could I do other than smile, say "Yes" and quickly walk away in confusion? And I thought seeing saffron-clad monks ambling along in Sim Lim Square would be my incongruous experience of the month.

Oh, and it was only later that I realised that it was actually the equivalent of the "youhappynow?" 4O catchphrase. I'm getting a bit rusty.


Saturday - Basketball

Played at the Block 492 court since the only available people were all Jurongians. Luckily, nobody pangseh-ed despite it looking like rain. Mostly the usual stuff, with alvin being on the two-man team in the 2v3 games and being mostly unstoppable when he felt like it, and the pace dropping off measurably after a while.

The special thing was that a middle-aged uncle asked to play with us, which edchong commented on as follows (I would have linked to his blog, but it seems as if he's determined to try and keep it private, so...):

"And finally you will reach the conclusion that, hey man, we did a good deed today. We helped him roll back the years, we made him feel young again. We fed him through passes, made the runs, and played good D with him (whoever was on his team whenever). And when he go home tonight, eh no he should be home already, he will probably think back to the times when he was playing with his friends. IMAGINE THAT"

Cue warm fuzzy feeling.

Gathered at a kopitiam to watch Man United take on Arsenal for the title, after colin declined to host us this time (well, it was probably too much to ask, him being a Liverpool fan and all). The mathematics were very simple - United simply had to avoid defeat to win the EPL title outright.

Frankly, it was one of the most boring matches between two of the Big Four that I have watched, certainly in a fixture that was known to generate a lot of heat several years ago. No goals is one thing, but the first and only shot on target coming in the 84th minute is another. When the referee blew the final whistle on the dot after the specified three minutes of extra time, it was a little... anticlimactic.


And sixteen years on...
(Main image source: Redcafe; Inset image source: Utdforum)

What did make the match more special than a dozen blood-and-thunder affairs was the result, which however uninspiring, meant that United had equalled Liverpool's long-standing English record of 18 top-flight titles. The two teams' history of titles won makes compelling reading - Liverpool won two by 1906, then United tied it at two apiece by 1911. Liverpool then stretched their take to five in 1947, before a United side that had finished second for four of the previous five seasons finally got their third in 1952, and pulled level again in 1957.

Now neck and neck, Liverpool won their sixth in 1964, and United matched it the next season. Liverpool won their seventh in 1966, and of course United would level again in 1967. It then appeared as if the Merseyside club had finally left their rivals behind as they entered into their glory decades of the 70s and 80s, as they picked up a staggering eleven titles without reply, so that by 1990 the record was 18-7 in their favour. Surely they could not be caught in a lifetime?

The little taunt of "Come back when you've won 18!" appeared safe enough then, even as United finally got their eighth title in 1993; they could not have counted on United nabbing 11 titles in just 17 seasons to return in style. Ferguson's promise to "knock Liverpool off their f**king perch" hasn't quite been achieved, but a nineteenth title would certainly do it - and move United ahead of their most ancient foes for the first time.

As with most magnificent sporting rivalries, the United-Liverpool (or Liverpool-United, depending on your affiliation) one is built on deep foundations. The cities of Manchester and Liverpool, not sixty kilometres apart, would naturally have jostled if only due to their geographical proximity. This was exacerbated by their contrasting economic fortunes as well - Inland Manchester had traditionally been involved in manufacturing and other industry, while coastal Liverpool depended on commerce, leading to the saying, "The Liverpool gentleman and the Manchester man".

The building of the Manchester Ship Canal to bypass Liverpool probably didn't help relations much, but their real decline occurred later on, especially in the 1970s when the docks became obsolete, with the city probably hitting bottom in the 1980s, coinciding with the end of their then-footballing dynasty. Manchester by all accounts adapted somewhat better, becoming a "poor cousin made good", which couldn't have gone down well for the formerly prosperous Scousers.

Personally, some degree of rivalry is good, as the competition serves to keep both parties on their toes and probably perform at greater heights than they could have otherwise. Some light ribbing (heck, it occurs between fans of random sides) is only to be expected.

Of course, there are small minorities that spoil it for everyone, such as United "fans" singing about Hillsborough, and Liverpool "fans" about Munich (which, it has to be said, happened some thirty years earlier). Now, having self-proclaimed "superfans" robbing tickets and rushing gates (this amazingly for a club that suffered Hillsborough) isn't going to help anyone's reputation much, but to be fair it probably happens to some degree for any big club - Idiocy is universal, after all.


A gesture of support by United supporters
(Source: KRAP Campaign Starts Here)

But back to the present, as United were on the verge of picking up the title, Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez couldn't manage anything more than a backhanded statement that "If United have more points, it only means they have more points, that's all, nothing else.". Well, as Wenger once famously said, "Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home." - which is a good thing, mind.

Keeping in mind that Ferguson is not exactly an angel either (with his dogpile on Benitez for being "disrespectful" against Blackburn being slightly ridiculous [see gesture - nothing much in that]), he did manage to acknowledge Chelsea when they won in 2006: "But Chelsea deserve all the plaudits they will get and, especially on their home form, they are worthy champions.".

Mourinho was similarly gracious when the tables were turned next year: "I have to congratulate the champions, the players, the manager, the fans, the board; all the people that helped them to be champions.", though as with Rafa he stopped short of actually acknowledging that United were better. Fair enough, prettier wife and all that. Avram Grant and even old nemesis Wenger too managed it. At the height of the United-Arsenal rivalry in 2002, Ferguson even described them as "worthy champions without question" and offered "sincere congratulations to Arsenal".

Did any of them really mean it? Perhaps, perhaps not. But the point was that they were able to rise above all the mutual barbs and mud-slinging at the end. Well, perhaps Mr. Benitez does not want to say what he does not feel, and that's alright too. But what he does say, that "...but always they spend more than we can spend", thus putting United's achievements down to one of greater resources, is rather questionable.

We can begin by using some statistics. This subject is usually met by the Transfer League website, which attempts to total up the transfer spending by Premier League sides. The exercise is made slightly more complicated with the existence of undisclosed fees and add-on clauses (e.g. the club will pay an additional X pounds if the player makes Y appearances or they win Z title), but it should serve decently as a ballpark estimate as individual fees are comprehensively stated, and there is furthermore an error reporting system. The site counterintuitively has Liverpool outspending United both in the Premier League era (1992 to the present) and the Benitez era (2004 to the present). How can this be?

I checked the Liverpool figures with those put on LFChistory.net (in) (out), and it appears that they are mostly in agreement. There is a 22 million pound difference (about 10%), which is composed mainly of the 14 million pound cost of Cisse (he is arguably a Houllier, not a Benitez signing, but Benitez was presumably speaking of his club spending money, not himself, and anyway he got to use Cisse too), and disagreements on the actual costs of Torres and Keane - Transfer League has them at £26.5M and £20.3M respectively, while LFChistory lists them at £20.2M and £19M respectively. It is possible that the Torres deal was worth just £20M, but otherwise there seems to be no real dispute about the sums.

What about money recouped from transfers out? Transfer League gave a more generous figure for Diouf (by £0.5M) and Mark Gonzalez (by £0.7M), and assigned £0.4M to Hamann against a free from LFChistory. However Transfer League omitted Alou Diarra's transfer to Lens for £2M (easy to get confused with so many Diarras floating around nowadays), and guessed that Nunez's move brought in another £2M despite it being undisclosed. LFChistory also claimed an additional £1M or thereabouts for each of Paletta, Keane and Crouch, and a bit more for Owen, Kirkland and Mellor, with the final disagreement being in the region of £6M, or two-thirds of Dirk Kuyt.

Then, the difference in United's and Liverpool's net spending since the 2004 season should be somewhere between £17M more for Liverpool and £8M more for United, taking the two extremes. In other words, the most Benitez can reasonably claim is that United have spent about 5% more than Liverpool, which is hardly a significant gulf (hint: look south at a certain Arsenal Football Club), and of course the Newcastles and Tottenhams of this world prove that it is very possible to spend and end up with next to nothing.

One might extend the transfer spending analysis to the whole of the Premier League's history (i.e. from 1992 on, just a couple of years after Liverpool won their eighteenth league title, and covering a whole generation of players), and the big surprise is that Transfer League still puts Liverpool ahead in net spending over the period (with Russian-powered Chelsea far ahead of both). But how could that be true?

Season EndingMan UtdLiverpool
19930.3653.075
19942.8501.100
1995-3.98014.600
19962.9003.000
19970.5004.650
1998-2.9503.200
199925.9507.000
200016.05026.600
2001-8.3006.200
200231.15012.360
200329.5007.950
200413.1502.250
200521.15025.300
20061.50025.640
20074.10015.620
200827.90039.350
200938.7504.550
TOTAL200.585202.445

(figures in millions of pounds)

Perhaps the numbers may be out by a bit, but even the most skewed estimates couldn't have United spending even 25% (50 million pounds) more than Liverpool over the period, and looking at the time distribution of spending, it seems pretty balanced too.

The usual argument is that Benitez inherited a crappy team from Houllier (which had finished 4th, 5th, 2nd and 3rd the previous four seasons, and managed to win the Champions League with few modifications), and thus had to rebuild with tons of mid-range squad players, while United had an established, winning team (that would remain titleless for three seasons with luminaries such as Eric Djemba-Djemba) that allowed for buying £30M stars to make the difference.

"Had to" is debatable, and in any event Vidic, who should probably have been Player of the Season, cost only £7M; Evra, the first-choice left back now, £5.5M - hardly that expensive. Benitez has been more than willing to splash as much or more for stars such as Dossena, Riera, Lucas and Pennant in any case.

There is something that skews the balance in United's favour, though, and that is their Golden Generation of home-grown players such as Giggs, Scholes, Beckham, the Nevilles and Butt, whom didn't cost a penny. Beckham left in 2004 for £25M , Butt in 2005 for £2.5M and Philip Neville for £3.5M, though I always suspected they were worth rather more in intangibles alone. Indeed Butt and Neville both went on to captain their new clubs, Newcastle and Everton respectively, neither of them small (though Benitez may respectfully disagree).

Giggs, Scholes and the elder Neville were never, and will probably never be, sold, and as such it will be hard to put a value on them. However, in their prime (probably the early years of this decade), what would they have been worth?

A quick scan at the 2002 transfers shows that Veron cost £28M, van Nistelrooy £19M and Stam £15M. Surely Giggs at his peak could not have been worth less than Beckham's £25M to the right club (and probably even wrong ones), with Scholes worth somewhere from £15 to 20M at least. Defenders generally don't bring as much, but for Gary Neville some £6 to 10M sounds right. That's some £80M of invisible value from Fergie's Fledglings, most of which won't show up on any balance sheet.

So in a way, Benitez was right - United have had the equivalent of huge cash injections, albeit from their youth setup. Then again, whose fault is that exactly?

Benitez has also argued that if only Torres and Gerrard had both stayed fit, Liverpool might well have won. Leaving aside the fact that Liverpool have still performed on par, both in the (just four) games that Gerrard failed to start [getting the equivalent of 76 points for a full season], the 15 that Torres has failed to start [87 points], and the two that both did not start [since they won both, 114 points!], Des Kelly of the Mail Online makes the incisive observation that "...By that logic, my aunt would have been my uncle had she been born with a different set of genitalia."

And of course, other clubs can just as easily present their cases to be crowned Champions of England:

"What if United had started the season with a completely fit Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney? Would the title race have been over long ago?"

"What if Owen Hargreaves [£17M of talent stowed away on the treatment table] had been available and running the midfield?"

"What if Guus Hiddink had been Chelsea manager from the kick-off? What if Michael Essien had been fit all season?"

"What if Arsenal had not lost William Gallas, Tomas Rosicky, Eduardo, Gael Clichy, Robin van Persie, Cesc Fabregas, Theo Walcott and others at various points of the season, do you think that might have made a difference?"

Liverpool have undeniably had a very good season by any standards - they have beaten United home and away (though City did that last season, and Stoke City held them to two 0-0 draws and I don't see Potters fans claiming to be on a par due to that), topped the Top Four League, achieved the best goal difference (barring major upheavals in the last round of games), thrashed Real Madrid 5-0 on aggregate (more fool C.Ronaldo if he still wants a move after that), and actually played some quite entertaining footie. Some of their squad players such as Kuyt and Benayoun have also forced me to re-evaluate them, kind of like Fletcher for United. They have also put in a credible title challenge for the first time in years.

Amid this cheery backdrop, I feel that it is a slight pity that their manager did not show a bit more class - Liverpool have a proud tradition, after all. Xabi Alonso for one appears to have a decent head on his shoulders: "It's only natural to think where would we be if we had managed to get another good result? But then all the teams in the Premier League can say the same thing."

Not that Benitez lacks for support - there are comparisms of him with Abraham Lincoln, his bloodline stems from Zeus, and he commands a quite fanatical belief:

"And some day soon, maybe next May, maybe the one after or the one after that, a middle aged man in a suit will wade through the sea of scarves in front of the Kop, pick one up and tie it around his neck like a docker, make a fist with his left hand and hold the Holy Grail in the other, and stare at us the way the Christ risen looked at his disciples, eyes blazing with an intensity that says:

"Tell me you never questioned me. Tell me you harboured no doubts. Tell me the pain and emptiness was worthwhile. Tell me I've just put flesh on your dearest dream."

(can't help but note the many maybes, and the similarities with doomsday predictions...)

Despite all that, the Reds would still do well to keep him on for a few more years at least, in all seriousness. They just have to look at Newcastle to see where manager-juggling can get you.

And in any case, Liverpool have not even been matched - remember, they won two additional titles when the rest of the country was fighting world wars, so says their official site!


With the top of the table settled, four teams are still in contention for relegation. West Brom are gone, and Middlesborough, Hull, Sunderland and - get this - Newcastle - may yet follow them.

Newcastle United have always been quite huge, as English club sides go. By most measures, they would roughly be in the biggest five sides. Unfortunately, that may not keep them from going down. Their fate is not even in their own hands, since if Sunderland and Hull win, they are down whatever they may manage against Aston Villa. Fortunately for them, Sunderland and Hull face Chelsea and Manchester United, so Newcastle can rightly feel confident if they do manage to beat Villa - but that is in itself a very big if.

Newcastle manager Alan Shearer isn't leaving anything to chance, though, and he trusts that Ferguson will put out a good team against Hull, since a Hull result would mean that even a credible draw would not be able to save the Toon. United however have a Champions League final in a few days, and are well within their rights to field their reserves - other clubs have put out weakened sides for far less significant games.

The situation is intriguing as Ferguson had criticized Benitez for fielding a weak team against Fulham, as Liverpool braced for the 2007 final in Athens. Sheffield United boss Neil Warnock predictably blasted Benitez for that, since Fulham were relegation candidates too, but did Warnock really expect Benitez to risk his best players with a Champions League trophy waiting?

Well, Ferguson could go with something like Kuszczak - Neville Ferdinand Evans Fabio - Nani Fletcher Gibson/Scholes Tosic/Giggs - Welback/Tevez/Berbatov Macheda and risk at most a couple of players whom might expect to play in Rome, where I would expect something like van der Sar - O'Shea Ferdinand Vidic Evra - Ronaldo Carrick Anderson Park - Rooney Berbatov. That would probably be strong enough to give Hull a good go, but I have a hunch that Newcastle won't make it against Villa and render all this discussion moot.


Sunday - Bicycling

occ had the bright idea to go cycling at East Coast Park, and thus a bunch of merry fellows gathered at Paya Lebar MRT station at 2 pm and took a bus to Area C. Bikes were to be had for $6 for two hours (inclusive of a free drink), and I confess that I was mildly apprehensive at getting on one - I hadn't had reason to cycle for years.


Number F-203


The old cliche that one never forgets proved to be true, though, and I was soon happily pedalling away. We kept close at the start, with wenhoo soon taking the lead, and I was soon sold on the merits of cycling, at least with a clear path available - coasting along is a big improvement over running. It was the first time that I remember riding a bike with gears, but I was content to spend all my time in Gear Six as the uphill portions were still manageable.


Proof of exploration (Inset: Route taken in dark blue)


We decided to turn back after an hour, by which time we had made it to Changi Airport, though not quite Changi village. Enjoyed taking in the sights, which included cable skiing, kitesurfing (wondered then if a poor surfer might just take off in flight - there were some cries of "Medic!" though), and a strange ceremony where maybe half a dozen people clad fully in white were surrounded by dozens of watchers... we agreed that it was probably either a baptism, or a PAP initiation.

I also unhappily discovered how annoying it can be to ride in a crowded area on the way back, with little kids trundling about on little bikes the worst culprits, but with rollerbladers in a group not far behind. At least I got my first glimpse of inline skateboards. Downed the free 500ml bottle of Polar distilled water at one go, and followed that with a large Coke Slurpee. Dinner at Parkway Parade, one of my favourite outing locations when I was a small kid for its arcade, where the tiny portion of fried kway teow from the food court was made up for by its taste.

And how far did we cycle? Preliminary discussion on the MRT threw up estimates around 7 or 8km one way, or about 15km both ways. However, given that we spent two hours, this gives a speed of 8km per hour, which is pretty slow - put into perspective, that's 15 minutes for two kilometres, or 18 minutes for the 2.4km, which is not much more than walking pace, and which didn't seem quite right.

smk did the grunt work with maps from the National Parks website and elsewhere, and came up with a distance of about 9km for travelling from Area C to H, and a further 6.8km after that since there was a sign that said 8km to Changi Beach Park at the end of Area H, and we stopped maybe 1.2km from the park. Indeed some sites give the length of the ECP trail as 9km, but since we began at Area C it was probably more like 6 or 7km, which gives a speed range of some 12 to 16km/h. That sounds more reasonable, even if we did take a few breaks along the route.

And I nearly forgot to mention how freakishly difficult it was to download the images from my antique Nokia 3220 using a CA-42 cable - I ended up having to reinstall the drivers that came on the cable's CD each time, just to have it work. Am seriously thinking of getting a model with Bluetooth or infrared someday.



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Friday, May 15, 2009 - 01:16 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

- - + -
My First Portable

changelog v1.12e
---------------
* Long-lasting IE style bug with recent entries menu fixed. "px" required to be specified.


Wednesday

It's been a relatively eventful couple of days - went to meet my probable Ph.D. advisor on Wednesday morning, where I was informed that there happily might be a bit of extra grant money available in the area. That never hurts. Changed for a swim after that, after getting by the lifeguards on duty who were slightly suspicious at seeing a matriculation card beginning with 04. Didn't have to relate my long story, thankfully, and churned out ten laps before leaving for Sim Lim.

Having officially completed my Computer Science degree without a laptop, and more importantly unwilling to venture computerless for a month, I figured it was time to get something cheap and small. After trawling the net to get an idea of what was available, I decided on the MSI Wind (some reviews) for its A) Price B) 160GB hard drive C) 2GB RAM and D) All-around solidness (see a comprehensive comparism without prices, or a briefer one with them). Note that some netbooks have a mere 8GB (or even 2GB[!]) Solid State Drive - I wonder how their users survive.

At some point I realised it was useless dillying any longer, and it was out with the NETS card. A few stores stock the MSI Wind in Sim Lim, and the first one I went to told me I could have any colour as long as it was black, which was fine by me. It would probably somewhat be cheaper during COMEX, but S$699 was still decent (and pretty standard). For that, one gets a rather plain box, and a slightly flimsy but adequate no-frills carrying case:


I confess, being a novice netbook/laptop buyer, that I had no idea what extras would be included in the package. As it turned out, there was a 100-240V, 50-60Hz adapter, which means no power problems in Europe, as well as a little optical USB mouse. That saved me a bit of cash, since I really dislike touchpads in general. It also turned out that the proprietor didn't know that there was a mouse included either, since I nearly bought one from them before asking for the package to be opened for checking.

The externals looked pretty good - a shiny black finish, and the whole thing felt rather solid while not being too heavy (just over 1kg with batteries). There were no screen/keyboard protector freebies, just a basic protector for the cover, which I duly replaced to Manchesterunify it (slightly risky in selected UK cities, I admit):


In any case, I let the netbook go through its first boot uninterrupted as told to, and Windows XP successfully infected it:


First, I checked out its Wifi capabilities, both because a netbook without the Internet is rather pointless, and also because there have been scattered complaints about this functionality. And... nothing. Then, I realised that the Wifi had to be manually activated by pressing Fn+F11. Which makes sense, given that one doesn't want to drain the battery supporting devices that aren't being used, but really the manufacturers should activate all these by default initially. Would prevent quite a few headaches, since I suspect many users wouldn't bother thumbing through the manual or quick start guide.

I also discovered that my wireless router connection hadn't been password-protected since the last time I reset the router, which may explain the connection slowing to a crawl occasionally. Oh well. I corrected that, and soon had the Internet up and running on the Wind. There were a few CDs or DVDs included in the package, which was rather ironic since netbooks generally don't have optical drives. The next step was naturally to let Windows Update do its job, and eventually IE8, WMP11 and all those security fixes were safely installed. Used IE8 to view my blog (which I haven't done for a long while, being a Chrome user), and was dismayed at the prominent menu bug, which should be fixed now.

Next, I plowed through the software that they had bundled in - Adobe Reader and a bunch of company games were nice touches, but a 25-use trial of Office 2007 and an unregistered version of WinZip 11 weren't as impressive. Uninstalled those, and downloaded OpenOffice and 7-Zip as free and fully-functional replacements, using the Free Download Manager (which supports resuming interrupted downloads).

Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox quickly followed, as well as avast! antivirus, CCleaner, the Essentials Codec Pack, FileZilla, GIMP, Launchy, Lavasoft Ad-aware, Notepad++, PDFCreator, Picasa 3, Skype, Startup Inspector and the Windows Live Suite, in alphabetical order. There really isn't a need to spend anything on software if you don't want to.

I also made a few minor adjustments, such as bypassing the select user screen for Windows logon (don't anticipate any sensitive information on the netbook for now, and it won't make much of a difference if stolen), hiding most of the taskbar icons, reverting to my favourite XP Classic Theme, turning off highlighting of newly installed programs, etc. There was still the small issue of the function keys, though, and the little blue icons on them weren't all that intuitive to me. Fortunately, Mr. Ham G. Bacon was waddling around, and a bit of squeezing persuaded him to design a useful custom wallpaper for the desktop. He managed to throw in a few hints along the way:


Now that's what hams are for - Mr. Ham's celebrity wallpaper is also available for download, if you would like a french-fry munching hamster to grace your computer.

Final summary: The MSI Wind works like a charm (so far), and has everything I need from a netbook, or for that matter, a laptop. The screen is pleasingly bright and clear (trust me, I've seen far worse), and the keyboard nearly full-sized. Having a special Function key to the left of the left-Ctrl button, and smaller punctuation keys, takes a bit of getting used to, but is nothing that can't be overcome. The integrated 1.3M webcam is fine, though the microphone isn't too effective. The speakers are a common gripe, and indeed are quite weak, but for a guy who runs his main PC in silent mode this predictably isn't a concern.

The whole thing boots up in about half a minute, and the battery should last for four or five hours, which is decent for a 6-cell battery. Applications load decently fast on the Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor, and it has Bluetooth, a 4-in-1 card reader, three USB ports, and doesn't heat up much. Quite the package, if I say so myself.

Additional note: Tried to find a floppy disk drive to complete my main PC, but it appears as if new internal 3.5-inch floppy drives no longer exist, after trawling most of Sim Lim Square. Settled for a cheap second-hand one, but still considering whether to try and install it. That's another medium gone the way of punch cards and Iomega Zip drives...


Thursday

Watched United play Wigan in the wee hours of the morning, armed with my free Coke glass from McDonald's current Extra Value Meal promotion, filled with iced Pepsi. Ah, the simple pleasures of life. Rooney missed an absolute sitter of a header early on, and Wigan went ahead, but for some reason I was never too worried. Sure enough, Tevez made it 1-1 with a tricky backflick minutes after coming on, and Carrick won it in the 86th minute. Standard Man Utd fare, really.

Headed to school for my pre-admission check up, and got my ISIC card on the spot at the STA travel outlet in the Science Co-op. That was S$15, but I estimate just four nights in a European hostel that offers a 10% discount to cardholders would have it pay for itself comfortably:


Continued on to the University Health Centre for the checkup, where I began my graduate life by paying S$30 (notably, the staff registers Ph.D. students as "postgraduates", which seems a little inaccurate). Went through the usual tests, which showed nothing amiss. The office of the doctor I attended was festooned with little jokes, e.g. "Doctor, I think I'm a garbage can; Don't talk rubbish" on the wastepaper basket. Good sense of humour there.

Today (Friday) looks to be eventful as well...



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Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - 22:23 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Graduated I Presume

"It was once said that a black man
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...

<wenhoo> can u bring your hamster to rome

<wenhoo> we all say

<wenhoo> then u make it wear man u jersey

<wenhoo> can let it get stab by fans also

(btw wenhoo has moved his blog in search of [non-existent] privacy. good luck to him)

He's a Fullham fan actually

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

"BEWARE - Bitchy Evangelistic Women
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.



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Monday, May 11, 2009 - 21:54 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

- + -
The Beautiful Farce

I'm not known for having much sympathy for Chelsea Football Club, but the manner in which they were dumped out of the Champions League (videos) (highlights) was, as the mostly unloved Drogba said, a "f**king disgrace". Little wonder some Chelsea fans have declared that they will be rooting for United in the final.






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Saturday, May 02, 2009 - 19:25 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

- -
AWAREness By Hams

*** g!ys has joined the chat ***
*** H@MgB@c0N has joined the chat ***
*** DaDeaDFISH has joined the chat ***

<g!ys> ok u all got enuff time to research the subject better have something to show today

<H@MgB@c0N> all ready to push the gay agenda here!

<H@MgB@c0N> i hope mr fish wun use being dead as an excuse when he gets the smack down, heh heh

<DaDeaDFISH> ah u wait long long i compose arguments ten times better than u even when dead

<H@MgB@c0N> yah u decompose better oso. tee hee!

<DaDeaDFISH> wtf how come u become so lame oso

<g!ys> hmm ok i see u all are taking your old positions on the issues. velly gd

<g!ys> but b4 we start how's it on the other side mr fish

<DaDeaDFISH> oh life... i mean death's fine down... uh i mean up there

<H@MgB@c0N> hmmm

<g!ys> hmmmmmmmm

<DaDeaDFISH> okok i got busted for biting one of the shiny b*stards with wings there, but the f**ker deserved it for trying to stop me from biting another f**ker that also deserved it

<g!ys> i see

<H@MgB@c0N> nothing new

<DaDeaDFISH> but its not all bad all they do is put u upside down in a toilet roll down here until u r velly velly sowwy

<DaDeaDFISH> tho its horrible wat they do in the lower levels, they put food in your mouth and then push it out of your cheek pouches b4 u can eat

<H@MgB@c0N> eeeeks! *vibrates*

<g!ys> *raises eyebrows* vibrates?!

<H@MgB@c0N> oh i meant *shudders*, paiseh

<g!ys> back to the main biz. who's going first?

<DaDeaDFISH> mememememememe!!!

<H@MgB@c0N> yes, let the dead hamsters get all the breaks. nvm

<DaDeaDFISH> well the case is open and shut for me. u all really want to see half-naked gay perverts molesting your kids? the continued erosion of the very religious values that made our nation great?

<H@MgB@c0N> um first off i dun have kids

<DaDeaDFISH> ya and it's actually all g!ys' fault for not getting some girlhams

<g!ys> ok la my bad

<H@MgB@c0N> and secondly, hasn't singapore always been a secular country???

<DaDeaDFISH> hm wait

<DaDeaDFISH> oh sorry i copied-and-pasted that argument off a forum specific to the USA. ignore it

<DaDeaDFISH> or how about this, i think gays are yucky and the holy book says its adam and eve not adam and steve and all my friends say so?

<H@MgB@c0N> i thot we have gone thru this before, howzat different from saying black pple are inferior and going from the white ham's burden of slavery, then grudgingly to "separate but equal", and finally to acknowledge equality after damn long? or smacking left-handed people, who were obviously in league with the devil, until they velly velly sowwy and turned to the path of light?

<DaDeaDFISH> and the point is...?

<H@MgB@c0N> tat altho religions base their authority on being "right" for eva and eva they often end up being laughably wrong? interestingly enuff if you throw the average reasonable and religious person into Europe mebbe 500 years ago he wuld haf gd reason to b horrified. esp since he wuld prob be lynched for witchcraft when his handphone rings

<DaDeaDFISH> but ah u see, religions are nt liddat anymore leh. there may haf been mistakes in the past (tho i'm not admitting anything), but is all GOOD now! we haf figgered it out. and there is something about gays that makes dem different from nig... i mean, black people, and those creepy left-handed ones! uh let's see... they destroy families! FAMILY BREAKERS!

<g!ys> lemee butt in here. mr ham, i see u have tried to link racist behaviour and stupid superstitions with religion. can u substantiate that non-religious pple do not behave that way too?

<H@MgB@c0N> erm when big religions held real power, non-religious equalled social outcast at best and death at worst, thus the majority were religious. i think it is justified. not that being non-religious implies betta behaviour, but it just goes to show that religion does not imply any claim on correct behaviour

<DaDeaDFISH> but wat abt piety, respect, fellowship, helping the downtrodden, universal love and all those good things? do they not come from religion?

<H@MgB@c0N> so it means if there is no god and no hell u will go around biting pple issit

<DaDeaDFISH> eh sorry u asking the wrong ham, now got god got hell i oso bite pple one

<H@MgB@c0N> oh ya hor

<H@MgB@c0N> but the point is, almost every religion oso claims these good things leh. and mebbe they do help pple to remember these things. but they somehow oso have a knack for mobilizing pple to wack members of other similarly loving religions thruout recorded history leh.

<g!ys> ah yes, "The Muslims massacre the Hindus, the Hindus massacre the Muslims. The Buddhists, everybody massacres the Buddhists." so sayeth The Onion

<g!ys> ok can we move on to the AWARE issue more specifically? we r running out of time

<DaDeaDFISH> so we have a responsible civic-minded lady organizing a few pals to win the right to lead a women's organization thru democratic voting. wat's wrong wif that?

<H@MgB@c0N> actually, nothing

<H@MgB@c0N> just that they suddenly registered a ton of new members. which is legal, fine. budden it turned out that they actual agenda was to be against any acceptance of homosexuality

<g!ys> ham has come across an interesting point here. the old AWARE's stand (it can be hardly called a focus) on homosexuality is, to the best of my knowledge, one of acknowledgement and acceptance, while the view of the new guard is that stuff like anal sex and homosexuality should be seen as negative and not neutral

<DaDeaDFISH> i just thought of a new counterargument. going by inclusiveness and acceptance, what can we be against without being termed bigots? wat about sex with say, animals? or dead bodies? are we allowed to be offended by anything anymore?

<H@MgB@c0N> hmm for one, animals and the dead can't give consent. people can.

<DaDeaDFISH> but you eat animals anyway, and to the non-religious dead is dead right. so why not f**k them?

<H@MgB@c0N> i believe the term is common decency, which the honourable mr fish may feel cannot exist without religion

<DaDeaDFISH> but you would condone it? yes or no?

<H@MgB@c0N> no

<DaDeaDFISH> ah ha! but now u are claiming an arbitrary morality! how is this any difference from me being against gays doing it with one another?

<H@MgB@c0N> well, if the dead person consented before death for his or her body to be used as such, instead of say donating the body to science, i guess i could have no objection. put another way, would u be happy if somebody wanked against the wall of your house? gays can of course give mutual consent, and that is the key difference.

<DaDeaDFISH> but... but its just wrong! i think nobody should have to see gays making out with each other

<H@MgB@c0N> as opposed to say, straight people making out with each other?

*** FAKEBERT has joined the chat ***

<FAKEBERT> that of coz depends on how hot said straight couple is, ma homies!

<H@MgB@c0N> there are laws against obscene public behaviour for everyone lah

<DaDeaDFISH> but being gay is related with all sorts of risky behaviour - promiscuity, STDs, depression, drug abuse, suicides...

<H@MgB@c0N> on the surface, that does seem to be true

<DaDeaDFISH> zing!

<H@MgB@c0N> but i suspect the increased likelihood for stuff like AIDS is due to promiscuity and unprotected sex, not to mention homophobia by health care workers, in which case any campaigns should be targeted at these instead of gayness itself.

<H@MgB@c0N> also for all the ballyhoo abt AIDS, almost as many (presumably straight) Africans (where 6% of adults have HIV) have it as homos (about 8%). but of coz it's rude to criticize the Pope, who preaches against condoms that would help contain the spread of HIV...

<DaDeaDFISH> but its true that abstinence would solve the whole darn thing

<H@MgB@c0N> not that the religious or straight pple have the discipline as a whole either. i repeat, all this is not unique to gays.

<DaDeaDFISH> but you admit the correlation between being gay and these problems. so why not just be against gayness? i dun see the hate for anti-smoking campaigns, for example, altho non-smokers also can get lung cancer

<g!ys> good one

<H@MgB@c0N> yea. so here's the big question. is being gay inborn, or is it learned, and thus "correctible"? many studies have shown that the chance that one identical twin is gay, given that the other is gay, is about 50%

<DaDeaDFISH> ah ha! so part of it is not genetic, and all that is needed is willpower to overcome it then

<H@MgB@c0N> yes, it cannot be ruled out that homosexuality is partly learned

<DaDeaDFISH> so how can you be against pple who simply want to minimize the chances of their kids being taught to become gay?

<H@MgB@c0N> well, despite pple being against certain behaviours, i feel that a bit of exposure is necessary. i don't hear of pple protesting against religious harmony days, for instance, just because their kids may be converted. i doubt ten minutes of knowledge on homosexuality would push a strongly straight kid over the edge and out of the closet

<g!ys> waitamin. strictly speaking, these attitudes towards gays may stem as much from conservative asian values as religion. why is mr ham steering his points around the latter?

<H@MgB@c0N> because six of the new exco coincidentally came from the same religious organization? Their pastor speaks of "a line that God has drawn for us", but I suspect that he is picking and choosing which lines to respect... why not campaign to stone poor guys trying to make a living by working on Sunday, for example? or denounce those who have the temerity to shave their facial hair? or divorce, though plenty of straight, religious people do?

<H@MgB@c0N> there was a ridiculous prohibition against shellfish too, but as is often noted, the dietary restrictions were overturned later on in the good book. let me do my copypasta...

"(The Apostle) Peter is about to meet Cornelius. Cornelius is a gentile. Worse than that, he is a Roman. Worse than that, he is a Roman centurion. Cornelius is about as kosher as a bacon double cheeseburger.

But give Peter credit -- he understood the vision. "Don't call anything unclean that God has made clean." Don't call anyone unclean that God has made clean.

Peter does not treat Cornelius as an unclean outsider. He travels to the centurion's house, where he says, "You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean."

Peter gets it. In this new community that God is building, this church, there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free. No one is excluded as unclean.

This is the unsubtle point that Luke is hammering home for his gentile friend Theophilus. The surrounding chapters of Acts read like a hyper-P.C. after-school special on celebrating diversity. The church embraces Jews and gentiles, Roman soldiers and slaves, men and women, Africans, Greeks and even a token white European..."

 but of coz, neither black nor white, left-handed nor right, took a bit longer; and it is of course easy for those not gay to argue for enforcement on those that are gay, thus keeping to the letter and not the spirit of God's message of Love.

<FAKEBERT> BOORRRRRIIIIINNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGG

*** FAKEBERT has left the chat ***

<H@MgB@c0N> ahem. if i may continue and quote Gandhi:
"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

<DaDeaDFISH> ouch.

<g!ys> low blow, man. uh, ham

<DaDeaDFISH> eh, i... i reserve right of reply

<DaDeaDFISH> i'm scheduled to be upside down in a toilet roll again in five minutes

<g!ys> hokay den, we'll call it a day

<g!ys> and uh, mr fish

<DaDeaDFISH> yes?

<g!ys> u got any EPL tips, what with you being dead & all

<DaDeaDFISH> wtf

<g!ys> c'mon lah

<DaDeaDFISH> ok, how does Newcastle to beat Liverpool 5-0 sound?

<g!ys> er u sure about that

<DaDeaDFISH> no

*** DaDeaDFISH has left the chat ***

<H@MgB@c0N> hahahahahaha

<g!ys> f**ker

*** H@MgB@c0N has left the chat ***
*** g!ys has left the chat ***


Over a month since the last challenge, and it now stands at a virtual $1877.25/$2300 with little chance of making up the shortfall. Here goes nothing:

$100 on Liverpool (-1.5) vs Newcastle (at 1.67)



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Saturday, May 02, 2009 - 03:21 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

IPPT High

That's it for Low-Blog-Activity-April, and to begin May, here's some good news (for myself) - I finally passed my first IPPT in about five years. Getting a silver while in the Army wasn't too hard, but over four years of a sedentary lifestyle is a different matter. I didn't pass the first two after my true ORD after serving my deferment in mid-2006, but then there were no consequences for those. Some smart guy removed the exemption for Remedial Training this time round, sadly, which led to 13 sessions at Bedok Camp for me.

It wasn't all bad as it gave me an excuse to meet up with my parents and siblings, with a few slap-up dinners such as at the Nihon Mura Japanese restaurant at Tampines Swimming Complex, satay beehoon at East Coast Parkway, nasi lemak at some outlet on Clementi Road by NUS, and of course the Bedok Food Court right by the camp. Don't know if this contributed to my weight actually increasing by some 5kg to 72kg over the duration of the training period, but I'm hoping it's muscle :D (unlikely though)

The two-hours-plus of exercises each session weren't too bad - it would begin with warm-ups (extended 5bx), mostly as follows:

  • Jogging on the spot (Slow down then speed up, maybe 10 seconds each, 3 sets)
  • Jumping Jacks (5 counts of 4)
  • High Jumpers (5 counts of 4)
  • Squats (5 counts of 4)
  • Side Stretches (5 counts of 4, both left and right)
  • Push Ups (5 counts of 4)
  • Crunches (5 counts of 4)
  • Hamstring Stretches (5 counts of 4, both left and right)
  • Calf Stretches (5 counts of 4, both left and right)
  • Forward Lunges (5 counts of 4)
  • Rear Lunges (5 counts of 4)
  • Windmill (5 counts of 4)
A short rest, then there would usually be a warm-up jog of 12-15 minutes (not hard to keep up with a brisk walk actually). There would then be many options for the PTIs to choose from, depending on their mood - interval training of up to six sets of 400m, each below 2:00 (though I guess 1:30-1:40 is a more effective time to aim for), with 2:00 of rest between each set, progressing to 800m below 4:00, was a favourite.

Other choices were pull-ups (usually 2 sets of the minimum required to pass), calisthenics (i.e. more push-ups, crunches, flutter kicks, bridging [a killer] etc), lower limb exercises like high leg kicks/crab walks/shuttle run, speed training (i.e. 100m sprinting), and even gym circuit training sessions (pretty low-intensity).

And there were of course the trial 2.4km runs, which was the whole point of it since I joined the running group. Came in at 12 minutes flat in the first trial during the 6th session, which was promising since there was a end-Phase I test on the 8th session, where passing meant I could exit RT. Sadly enough I fell sick on that day, and decided not to risk it. Got my MC, but as is to be expected from the army, their rigid rules meant that I had to continue with at least six more sessions inclusive of the mid-Phase II test. Alright then.

Burnt more Monday, Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, though I can't say that I really disliked the training. The PTIs were quite decent fellas, albeit with their little idiosyncrasies, for example liking to finish the day off with 100 or 140 jumping jacks (not a joke). The 12th session was packed with lower limb exercises such as tuck jumps, tiptoes and ranger hops, and our regular PTI promised to tell whomever took up for our Monday session to go easy on us, in readiness for the Wednesday test. Just had to mention that I saw a Toyota SUV playing a Barney video on the way home that day - Barney!

Of course, our Monday PTI would pack us off on a 2.4km trial run first thing, followed by chin-ups and a bunch of other exercises, claiming that it was already slack. I was torn between running my best for the trial and conserving energy, and ended up putting in a confused 12:30+.

Then the test itself on 29 April (a day before the Macro III paper). They divided us into batches of fifty, with the shuttle run as the first station. Speaking of the shuttle run, I believe it is the only station where I would be able to get maximum points without any preparation. It really is kinda hard to get less than that, with proper turning technique and without decelerating early on the final stretch. So it was with great confidence that I set off, only to be shocked at the first stride as my hamstrings ached magnificently. Put off, I only managed a mere 2 points.


(Source: MINDEF Army Online Student Network)

Chin-ups next, where I thought I did six, but ended up with five (2 points), a far cry from my JC days, but as they say 好汉不提当年勇. As for sit-ups (crunches), I watched a terribly obese guy do 33, then proceeded to barely crank out 31 (2 points) - much better than the 24 I managed three months ago though. Here it might be noted that the percentage difference between a pass and maximum points varies wildly between the stations. For instance, 5 chin-ups is a pass for Category Y (25 years), while 11 (more than double that needed for a pass) gets maximum points (5 points). For sit-ups, 30 is a pass, while 39 is maximum points - but how difficult those last few are!

Those aching hamstrings didn't help as I jumped just under 2.2m for 2 points in the standing broad jump (max points at 18 more centimetres), and a quick calculation showed that I needed 4 points in the 2.4km just to pass (under 11:20). Possible, but not good. Thinking quickly, I went back to the shuttle run station, and with foreknowledge of my hamstring issues managed my 5 points. Still, it didn't bode well for the final run, and to maximize my chances I sat it out until the final detail, where as an added bonus the Indian fella in my group who usually manages a fair sub-12 pace was in.

The 2.4km is as much a mental as a physical race, and it's easy to throw in the towel when one's breathing goes awry and one's sides hurt, and indeed there are those who clearly don't even try to push themselves. Our PTI advised us to go slow the first three laps and then speed up, but realistically I felt a constant 2-minute lap pace was better, giving me a 40 second buffer. I had planned to pace the Indian guy, but as he appeared to follow the slow-start strategy I went it alone and did the first lap in about 1:50. So far so good.

Came in at about 3:55 for the second lap, and 6:00 for the third, and it was evident that I was slowing somewhat, though I was still near the head of the pack (which did not bode well for those behind). My preferred pacer soon caught up, and I completed my fifth lap in about 10:15, which left me with some 2:25 for the final 400m. Despite my best intentions, I slowed to walking pace then to catch my breath. Surely I could not throw it all away? The thought of more burnt afternoons spurred me on, and I managed the last 100m at a sprint to clock a 12:15 or thereabouts. Yay!

That cleared both my current and previous year's obligations, which means that my next IPPT can be as late as January 2011 if I so wish. However, the exercise was almost... enjoyable. In fact, it was probably the hardest test I have attempted in my university life, in a way; one may suffer when studying, but in a different way, never going out of breath. Truly I wouldn't mind continuing, but it is all too easy to come up with excuses without enforcement - tiredness, homework, projects... but as a particularly wise PTI may or may not have said, it is not particularly hard to pass the IPPT if one uses those half-hours spent pcc-ing to run instead.

In fact, it really isn't that far to a Gold award (and $400) - nine more sit-ups, which is surely manageable; six more chin-ups, when I once could manage 15 or 16 honest ones; nothing to be done for the shuttle run; some 10 more cm for the standing broad jump (not that much really), and finally a sub-10:15 for the 2.4km for Cat Y, which I've done - once. Whip a good training program, drop five kilograms, and it's on! Maybe I should try stuff like the 100 pushup or 20 pull up challenges?

Not that the IPPT is a particularly good measure of combat fitness (can't imagine how the ability to do forty good crunches as opposed to thirty matters in a firefight, for instance, and there are opinions that running isn't even very helpful), with rumours that the test format may change drastically (and even RT being outsourced) in the near future. But for now, here's to passing the IPPT once more!



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