Steady the sights

The end of my A levels is now clearly plain in sight. With most of my papers done, the results is surely and definitely in the hands of the Almighty.

Setting off to Vietnam for my epic backpacking adventure on the 4th of Dec.

I'll be attempting to do in two weeks what the Americans tried but failed to do in over 10 years -Get from South Vietnam to North Vietnam.

The trip will be about 1700km and I intend to do quite a bit of culture tourism exchanges.

Will be back on the 19th.

And my Traffic Police Test will be on the 20th. Hopefully I'll pass the first time. :)

So those are my plans for the coming month ahead. Sure is going to be jam packed and busy.

And yes I'm enlisting on the 7th of Feb into the Commandos..

TOFU out. Hopefully will see you guys soon

they are not what you think they are

Something boldly different from my usual humdrums. I signed up, and joined NP's LEO Club for an activity, teaching children at a Methodist Home how to sew teddy bears for Christmas.

Truthfully, the steps were simple to the point of a practical joke, but teaching them to "needy, disadvantaged" children seemed like a Herculean task. After all, who knows how adept they are, physically and mentally?

Initial thoughts sitting in the Home's canteen: oh god, rowdy kids. mega trouble ahead.

So I got assigned a chubby kid, very insistent on doing things his way, and generally hyper-active. Kid lied about his name (all the boys did, strange huh), took the colored pens and started coloring the bear cut-out they were supposed to use as stencils to trace onto the cloth.

Patience and understanding prevailed, kid agrees to trace, and work begins, cutting, then sewing.

I speak from experience, that handling a needle is not easy, and I'm sure a random poll of say, 50 guys, would reveal that at best 10 of them know how to sew. This kid, probably a disadvantaged family, gamely took the needle, insisted he knows how to do it because his mom does it at home, and started sewing. Thats right, he sewed, very simple and messy lines, but still, he managed to stitch those 2 bear-shaped pieces of cloth together.

Now this kid, hyper-active and slightly socially-inadequate, took up a marker, and started decorating the bear, ending with "I ♥ MOM".

At the end of the 2-3hour event, I was done. I finished helping my charge make a teddy bear to give to his mom on Christmas. But no, that was not all. I helped him, and his other friends I happened to be seating next to, achieve something, express something.

Of course, it was certainly strange to hear them address us guys as "kor kor", but then, I realized that hey, could it be that these kids, like the ones I met in China, have no siblings? Its true, I don't know why, and I'm not allowed to ask, they are in the home. But it was satisfying, knowing that at the very least, I now know, that they are not weird. They are not "special". They are just children, like we all once were. And I think the biggest lesson I bring home today, is that it sure is nice to volunteer. Yes, I am going to do this again.

Returning to writing

I know I have never properly completed a single script, a full-length play. This time I'll do it. Why? Because this holiday was the not the gaming-day-after-day holiday of old; I did things this time. I did some things I'm not so happy with, but I did a few things that I am proud of, and even though everyone is moving faster and has their head starts, I feel like I'm in the race again.

I have to write and stage a play by July. I have already promised a few people, and some of these people I care about what they think of me. So yes, I'm losing my carefree childhood expanse. But I'd much less like losing some of the people I've gotten to know. There are stakes now and I can't drop out this time.

And besides, I'm starting to think having a crush might be healthy for me.

I'm thankful

I just chatted with some China secondary school students I meet while on my trip in March this year, and one of them was in their last year and had just graduated in June. To move on from secondary school (初中) to the next level of education (高中) in China, you need to do well in the final exam of secondary school.

The student I talked to didn't manage to progress. So I asked very simply, what are you going to do now? She just said, I don't know, I no longer feel like studying, are you disappointed/angry that I didn't make it? Of course I said no, but it got me thinking really really hard.

We keep complaining about our education system, about how competitive it is, and how hard it is to secure spots just to further our education.

Putting it in perspective now, I realized how lucky we are. Apart from a much smaller population, our abundance of schools and institutions allow us to keep studying even if it isn't what we want. After secondary school, if you can't go to Junior College, there are Polytechnics, and if not, there are still the ITEs.

In China, sure their population is exponentially larger than ours and they are still a developing country, but if you fail to further your education, it means you enter the workforce, and in the case of the student, at 16 years old.

I remember in 2008 when I was sitting for my O Levels to decide where I fill continue my education, there was a small debate on forums about how the government wasn't doing enough to give students equal opportunities to study in the JC/Poly course of their choice. Right now, all I can say is be glad that we are still studying, because no matter how tough it gets, working life is way harder than a student's life.

Even if you can't climb the ladder as high as you would like, be thankful a net is there to catch you in the end, and you can continue climbing again.

WORST.PAPER.EVER

all because I chose not to listen to people with lower GPAs. i'm such a prick. an elitist prick.

Have you settled your life plan?

So last night, taking a break from revision, this guy talks to me after like, 3821931493481 years. I must say I don't particularly like him, which could be an understatement. In every circle of friends and network of acquaintances, you always see people like him. Overly self-confident, minimal actual ability, talks too much, does too little, a general irritating prick.
To give you a rough summary, we were in the same secondary school, same CCA, and thankfully we're now in different polytechnics. This guy, Fas, a malay, apparently has "started" his own business, Just Diamonds by Defred, which uses Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) to expand its business. And his real motive in talking to me (second time so far), I believe, is to recruit me. And I know this because TOFU has likewise been approached, and tricked into visiting the Recruiting Headquarters.

Fas Sup

Fas How are your exams

Giant not started yet

Fas When is it?

Giant friday and next monday

Fas Nic

Fas Nice

Fas Mass Com?

Giant no

Giant shipping and business stuff

Giant so hows your business

Giant recruited anyone recently

Fas Doing great

Fas Recruited?

Fas What are yo u talking about?

Giant defred?

Giant multi-level marketing

Fas How sure ar eyou?

Giant pretty sure, from what i've heard, being used as an example in class, and news articles

Fas De Fred is in your school work?

Fas Nice

Giant no its not

Giant marketing and purchasing is

Fas Well, that's why we're going global bro

Fas 26 different countries

Fas in two to three months time

Giant and would it be presumptuous to say this is part of your pitch?

Giant to try and recruit people? i.e. me right now?

Fas Try?

Fas I never try

Fas I just do it

Fas Recruit doesn't sounds right

Fas Well, you got your own style of living

Fas to get rich

Fas Pretty much, your life plan is settled?

Giant well as they say, beg borrow or steal

Fas Cool story, bro

Giant you keep trying, but if you have the time, do read up on ponzi schemes

Giant ok?

Fas Dude

Fas Don't act smart

Fas I know what I'm doing

Giant its never wrong to err on the side of caution

Fas I'm just checking on how my captan is doing that's all

Fas Caution? That's why Singaporean enver succeed

Giant im not your captain

Fas Used to be

Giant i'm just that fat guy who sits there pretending to be useful during cca

Fas Still

Fas Captain

Giant anyway however you see it

Giant we are a free democracy

Giant come find me when i'm truly broke and bankrupt and desperate

Fas Haha

Fas Dude

Fas I'm nto interested

Fas Seriously

Fas Just catching up

Fas Don't think too far

Giant sure

Giant i'm just being singaporean

Giant and by that i mean being cautious

Fas I'm off

Fas See you

These head-in-the-clouds, get-rick-quick schemes never work, and are never sustainable. Just mention "Ponzi Scheme" and see how his tone changed for a bit. Seriously, wake up and don't get uppity with me, fool.

Growing Up 1

Indeed, nothing really compares... And there's so much more to think about now. No longer the raging hair on fire kind of take on the world persona. Guess I have to be a little bit more reserved and low profile now.

Guess that's part of growing up, and part of having a girlfriend.

Sometimes I do guess I enjoy singlehood and the attention I can give to all the different girls at once. But guess now it's time to grow up and put that behind me.

Well nothing lost though.

MIGRATION: being an owner

I'm currently writing this post using my phone so I'd guess by the end if this post I would probably have made up my mind about swype.
Basically, I'm just going to put some short notes about my first couple of weeks of usage.

1)if you thought from my previous post that my phone is now blazing fast, I'm sorry to (may) have mislead you, but then again I am holding the fastest android phone around. No complaints there.

2)battery life while improved, is still rather woeful. (I just remembered that the 3g I used to hold is 2 years old.) With all the hype of the super amoled being extremely energy saving, it isn't much better. But it lasts more than a day, 2 if I am careful. But from my past experiences, I got kind of sick of being careful with the iphone.

3) with regards to internet, the galaxy s is faster. HOWEVER, the two browsers work differently. The iphone likes to show you the page as if loads while the android likes to wait for the page to be almost done before showing you the whole page. Because of this, it sometimes may seem as if safari loads quicker. Is this intentional?...No contest in youtube though, the galaxy s wins.

4)With the iPhone being so damn ubiquitous in Singapore, if you want something good without making you look like an ignorant ass, this is the phone to get. To protect myself from this, lets make it clear I bought the iPhone 3g on the first month. Thats WAYY before people started hyping (and buying) the 3gs. Plus, with the crazy money Samsung puts in advertising nowadays, its not like no one will know what your phone is. However if you're the brand conscious type, Samsung is a bit..yeah..but still, getting an iPhone now will make you look idiotic. Getting the iPhone 4 NOW won't, but its only a matter of time...unfortunately. Maybe try HTC?

p.s. If you're thinking of blackberry cause all the cool kids have it, DON'T. The Blackberry is not for kids, it makes you look pretentious.

5) iPhone accessories are everywhere, which is good for the iPhone owner. Just trying to be "fair and balanced" here.


6)Do I like swype? for the most part a huge yes. But occasionally it does slew you down when you notice a wrong spelling after racing through a sentence. Did I just type 'slew'?
Damn.

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MIGRATION: journey from apple to android (an update on apps)

I decided to only make this post after I've decided how i felt about the phone after using it normally for a few days.

I installed kies, basically the Samsung program to sync you phone to your computer, again usless for me unless I had the music files on my pc in the first place. But its kind of a must to get updates. (its itunes all over again) Anyway, the new update, (note: its not android 2.2 Froyo, thats in september for the Galaxy S) basically tries to solve all problems relating to general efficiency, theres a samsung widget that helps you uninstall apks (android apps) and an easy to use task manager. I suspect it also helps you automatically kill apps when you back(as in the button) your way to the home screen. So that really helps solve all the gripes I had about lag and battery life. Great.

You must be thinking, I cant delete apps just by holding on the icon and pressing an "x" button? Nope sorry, theres no itunes so theres no app library you can sync to. I think deleting an app means you've got to re-install it from the market. But don't worry, downloading into your phone only takes seconds ;)

Another thing about apps, a paid app store isn't available in Singapore yet, just as how an itunes music store isn't. To get paid apps, you've got to torrent them and install using an "apk installer" app on the market place. Whats good is that unlike the iPhone, you don't have to do any jailbreaking shenanigans. Bad new is, some of them just don't work. I've got a gmaeboy and SNES emulator here and I'm still trying to find the right roms to get it working. But before you make any rash decision, as you'd expect,app content isn't as rich as itunes.(But the Android market isn't bad AT ALL)

MIGRATION: journey from apple to android (day 2)

I just realised how incoherent my first post looked, at least i'm not intending to be a journalist.

Anyway, before I start proper, I'd just want to say that the phone is still slow at times, I find myself having to kill apps frequently. I'm not so sure if this multitask issue applies to the iPhone, but from what I saw from the keynote, I think apple is handling it better. Still, android has 2.2 coming out, we'll see.

At the start of today, I set an agenda for myself.
This included:

1)syncing the address book properly
2)Get my music in the phone organized
3) solve that dumb facebook contacts thing.

The solutions: (note, I synced my iPhone with a macbook, the way Steve Jobs would have liked, if you're using a windows, i'd reckon it'll be easier than this :( )

1) It took awhile to find out how to get my contacts from address book, but its just a simple export in a vcard format to any folder, and importing to gmail from within gmail. I'd link you right here, but I kind of forgot the link.
Anyways, from gmail, it automatically syncs all contacts to your phone, thats great. What isn't great is that I imported contacts from both hotmail(same method but..in from hotmail) and I get a mass of email addresses and phone numbers in my contacts folder in gmail. God knows how much time i spent merging contacts.

I ended up deleting many contacts of people I'm kinda no longer in contact with, this included classmates or acquaintances I couldn't match faces to, ( I had 2 "chris" in there, I don't even remember knowing any chris.

2)I initially downloaded doubletwist on my windows, thinking I could finally not have to turn on my mac everytime I wanted to sync in this 1 song in my head. (keeps happening, damn you music bank) You could export your library from your mac itunes to your windows itunes, and have doubletwist sync from there BUT you must have the same song files in your windows computer. (tl;dr, this libray export only includes song info, artist info, album covers, playlists and the like) not horribly important but with so much downloaded music, (PIRATE)I really can't bear to see it in a mess (track 1 by !@#&* anybody?)
So I downloaded doubletwist into my mac and its working fine.

3) I can just choose to not show those contacts, though my OCD is telling me do do something about it. sigh.

In all, I've solved all my problems and tomorrow will be a brighter day. In case you think the iPhone is wayyy beter, think of ms office editing and pdfs, plus youtube looks a little nicer, I could be wrong though.