Also, I added a new page for applications that I write in my free time. Most of the applications will be written to suit my needs, but maybe someone out there might be able to make use of it. I wrote the “Amos Reminder Application” in a few hours yesterday. If there are any bugs, then too bad, since it works on my side :P

Anyway, here are some photos I took during New Year’s Day 2010 countdown. We booked a hotel at Pan Pacific with a view of the fireworks, although the Marina Floating platform was blocked by Mandarin Oriental hotel. Taking photos seem fun enough, but my interests don’t seem to last long enough and thus I don’t think I should get a DSLR camera. And these interests include blogging, writing programs and taking photos coincidentally. Click continue to view the pictures…

Anyway, being the Economist that I am, I realise that people really do respond to incentives. Like duh! And sleep is one of the strongest motivators out there. I went to school early for lessons @ 9am. I was supposed to have lessons until 6, and then a project meeting at 630pm. However, the project meeting got cancelled, and so I was supposed to end at 6. Then I thought to myself, the tutorial at 5 to 6 can be skipped and I can go home at 4 to sleep since I have a break from 4 to 5. Further into my lessons I thought that the programming lab too could be skipped since I did not have much to do at the lab anyways so I could go home at 2! By the end of the lesson, I decided not to go for the Statistics lecture since the lecturer would put me to sleep anyway.  So here I am, through the rain and at home @ 12! For a day that was supposed to end at 7+ and which ended @ 12 I think that is really good!

On a side note, I got 34/40 for my Econs Mid Term MCQ test, so I guess last minute studying really does pay off!

Just a thought,  Li Lin did said in The Leap Years movie that “it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”. I wonder if I can synonymously say the same “it’s better to have studied and failed than never to have studied at all!”. Somehow, it just doesn’t have the same meaning when used in this context…

Anyway, went to school today after 1 week of “holidays”. Most of my friends were busy with projects and stuff for this so-called holidays, or recess week to be exact, except it didn’t seem much like a recess. Ok, it was not supposed to feel like a recess week for me too, since I had some assignments and projects to do, and also had to study for an Economics test I have this thursday. However, I made it more or less like a recess week by the fact that I procrastinated and did close to nothing for the whole week! So, now I have to rush a few assignments and also study for the test! And they say time flies when you’re having fun! I think time flies when you’re not working/studying! Unless you’re Kermit, then “time’s fun when you’re having flies!”.

On a side note, it’s the recess week of NUS today! I asked my mini boss whether she wanted me to go in for work more days this week, but apparently the medium boss thinks there’s no need for it, so here I am slacking my time away at home. I actually have a few projects and stuffs to do, but I’m too lazy to even touch them! Maybe I will start on them later. Or maybe not :P

Anyway, on my way home, there was a massive traffic jam on the CTE. I thought that it was due to people rushing home for their tuan yuan fan (reunion dinner), or maybe it was because certain roads around chinatown were closed, and so people were forced onto the CTE. It was highly unusual for a traffic jam on CTE at 4pm on normal days. However, when just before the PIE exit, I saw 5-6 cars along the shoulder of the expressway, and most of them weren’t in very good shape. I can only imagine there was a 5-6 chain accident, since most of the cars seem to have either their front or rear or both smashed. I guess that explains the accident. I wonder if the upcoming ERP gantries will prevent jams due to accidents and such. “85% of motorists will have a smoother ride”. “Road tax prices will be reduced”. “CEO prices will be reduced.” What they don’t tell you is ERP gantries will be come up by the dozens, so you should buy a car, pay instalments, and not drive it. One thing the Government is wrong about though, a car is not a luxury item, driving a car is. This podcast from Mr Brown more or less sums it up all.

Also, on my way home, I had to pump petrol, since my tank was already on the reserve fuel and anymore travelling without refueling would need me to get down and push my bike to the nearest petrol station. Going past the petrol stations, I saw many cars trying to turn into the stations, and I was wondering why. Then I realised most of them were turning in to get their car washed, and so promptly went ahead and zoomed into the petrol station to refuel my bike. I wonder why everyone needs to wash their car on the eve of CNY. Is it because of some unspoken tradition, or simply because of a “since everyone else is doing it, I must do it too” mentality. Who cares anyway? My bike is washed my nature, and I don’t really take the effort of washing it :P

Anyway day 1 of CNY was uninteresting. Went Bai Nian-ing at a few places, and proceeded home to sleep. I also tried learning how to play a guitar, since Joanne passed me her guitar. My fingers hurt now, and I’m trying to play Ronan Keating’s When You Say Nothing At All. Oh well, I can play up to the chorus now, but more practice is definitely needed. I don’t really like playing chords, since it seems like playing twister with my fingers, and my fingers are too fat! :( The 2nd day of CNY wasn’t all the interesting too, but after dinner at my cousin’s place, I got together with my cousins and talked for a few hours about stuff. We only see each other once a year, so the talk was definitely good for catching up and stuff. Anyway, after that we decided to go back to my uncle’s house, where it looked more like a makeshift gambling den. The younger generation (my cousins and I) proved we weren’t that lousy at gambling after all. At the end of the day, I won $40, Mei Ching won $115, and Kian Ann won $15. $40 wasn’t too bad for my 15 rounds of ban luck (chinese version of blackjack) after all…

Didn’t go to work yesterday, because my boss fired me for one day! She was on MC on Monday and didn’t have time to prepare work for me. How ironic is that? I mean, I thought by my going to work I should lessen the workload for them, but since they need to prepare work for me, I guess I’m causing them more work?! Maybe I should work slower in the future, and prevent these situations from surfacing again! Yea, I’m considerate this way, so don’t think I’m making excuses when I work slowly okay?!

And, last but not least, someone tried to kill me today! I was on my way to school, and was going a road when this car wanted to turn right out of NUH carpark. So he inched out, and stopped. It’s important to emphasize that he stopped, since if he carried on I would have been forewarned that an idiot was going to turn out without caring about oncoming traffic and I would slow down. However, he stopped, so I mistook that for him being not an idiot and that he stopped cause he saw the oncoming traffic. Apparently, he was only checking the left side for traffic, and didn’t care to look to the right. I mean, who the f*** turns right and not check for traffic from the right. So there I was, thinking that he was not the idiot I thought he would be, and almost knocked into his car and flew. Thankfully, SSDC did teach me well, and I applied an emergency brake and slowed down, and managed to avoid him. And I didn’t even horn that guy too. I think I underuse my horn too much, as I hardly horn other road users when it is blatantly clear they are in the wrong. Oh well, at least if I did fly I would have been just outside NUH?

One more random thing to add: Raw broccoli is not nice. Somethings are nice when eaten raw, whereas for broccoli, let’s just say they taste better when cooked. Raw broccolis just taste too… green.

Anyway, I had my wisdom tooth extracted yesterday. All the horror stories I have heard, about the pain and the amount of money you need to spend. Well, I can say that my experience wasn’t that bad. Only paid $77, and the extraction took all of 10 minutes. So, I went to the dentist at around 4:20pm. Sat on the dental chair, and let the dentist do some routine checking. After she checked, she injected me with 2 injections of anaesthetic, and waited for around 5 minutes. After that, she said she would test first, and before I knew it my wisdom tooth was out. I guess I’m one of the luckier ones who don’t have wisdom teeth that grow at odd angles and where you need to cut your gem to get the tooth out.

Also, had my 9 to 6 marathon in school today. Would have had only 1 hour of break at 4pm, but my lab sessions have not started so I had 3 hours of break. Therefore, I went to the computer lab to do some surfing and chatting, and customizing my PortableApps FireFox. PortableApps is a cool idea which lets you install applications on your usb drive which you can bring to different computers to use. But I digress. I was spending most of my time reading http://419eater.com/, which is a site which does scambaiting. Basically it is about how they scam people, mostly those Princes from Nigeria, who send you emails that they want to give you 1 million. So it’s like giving them a taste of their own medicine. Anyway, on my way home, I saw something funny. Something was walking on the expressway pushing his bike in the opposite direction. He was probably pushing it to the exit before, possibly because no one told him that ERP changed and there was a gantry before the Upper Serangoon exit on CTE.

After my 6 hours marathon of lectures, I met Jing Xian to get Econs notes and textbook from her, and headed home in the rain. On my way home, I gotta say that the rain I experienced was the heaviest I ever saw! The visibility was about 5-10 meters and as for the lightning, all I can say is that you wouldn’t be surprised if you got struck by it… And no, I didn’t do any big wrongs the past few days… not that I know of anyway! However, when I was reaching AMK Ave 1 along the CTE, there was no rain. I wished it didn’t rain near to school and rained around my house, rather than the other way round. I know you might think the amount of rain would be the same, but you can’t be more wrong. If it rained nearer to my house, I would just get wet and reach home. For the other scenario, which I experienced today I might add, you would get wet at the start, then have no rain for the rest of the journey. What you might forget would be that you would still be wet from the rain, and riding on a bike at 90kmph (around there at least) all wet is no fun at all!

* withdraws bid of 307 points from the 2nd module, since stupid CORS won’t let you lower the bid, but only lets you withdraw and bid again

* system slows to a crawl, and dies on me

* logs in to CORS again, and see that my bid point for 2nd module is 0, but my points left is 0 too

* panic starts to set in

* logs in again to see if problem will be rectified

* sees a message that the bid round has ended, checks clock and handphone to see that the time is only 450pm

* GREATER panic sets in

* dials CORS helpline to ask them what is going on

me: Hi, the CORS website says that the bid round has ended, but it’s not 5pm yet.

CORS helpdesk girl: The system was experiencing some problems earlier on, but it should be rectified now.

* logs in again, and sees that the round time has not ended, but remaining points left is still 0

me: I tried withdrawing a bid earlier, to increase the bid of another module, but my points seem to have been eaten up by the system

CORS girl: Please give me your details…

me: (details given)

CORS girl: Ok I’ll help you get your points refunded, but I don’t think I can do it before 5pm.

me: So there’s nothing I can do? I have 1 module with 1000 points and my other module has 0 points left.

CORS girl: Maybe you can try bidding for it in another round?

me: Should I withdraw the other module, to have points to bid for my 2nd module? I’m scared my points will be eaten up again, and I will have 0 points left with no modules.

CORS girl: The system should be rectified now, so you should get your points if you withdraw now.

me: Ok… Thanks for your help.

* abit angry with the system for eating up my points

* withdraws 1000 points from 1st module to bid 900 points to the 1st module and 100 points to the 2nd module

So, at the end of the round, I went from 1000 points and 307 points to the modules to 900 points and 100 points to the module. So much for trying to increase my chances of getting the modules. I know the CORS girl couldn’t do much, since she probably wasn’t in charge of the system or anything, but I was kinda angry that I had less points at the end of it and there was nothing I could do about it. Thankfully, that was not the end of it all, in a good sense that is.

* Receives call at 515pm from CORS girl

CORS girl: Hi, we know the round has ended, but since you were affected by the problem with the system, we decide to help you change your bid accordingly. We see that you’ve bidded 100 points for your 2nd module, so…

me: (gives details on changes to be made)

me: Thanks for your help.

So in the end, I did indeed get my bid of 1207 and 100 points for the respective modules. But, alas, my worry was all for nothing anyway, and I probably would have been better off not bothering about the bids in the first place. I got my 1st module for 301 points, and my 2nd module for 1 point. So much making myself worried for nothing…