Hans lunch turns into disappointment

I took my lunch at Hans @ Harbourfront Centre with Jia Lun this afternoon.

Photo of my lunch


The scene after the carnage


Spotted anything between the 2 photos ?

The cali-flower soup takes like warm water and the iced-lemon tea tasted just as weak. No amount of salt and pepper could save the miserable bowl of soup so they were left for dead. I made a comment about the soup to the waiter but he made no offer for me. Not that I expect any but apparently, they have no pride in their food. If they are serving this crap everyday, I will suggest that this branch should be avoided at all cost. I doubt I will be revisiting this branch anytime soon.

By the way, for your information, my list of cheap and nice western food has strunk again. Last year, the Ah Beng western food stall at Adam road hawker centre has closed down, and now the Ah Beng western food at Hougang Centre has also quitted. Aston Prime at East Coast Road (just opposite Katong Mall) has joined the list of recommended steak house on the cheap.

Devil's guide to the movies : The Golden Compass

(Entry updated 9 Dec 2007)

On Thursday, I went for Desmond's movie premier event for The Golden Compass at Great World City. After grabbing a quite bite from the self-service buffet, I redeemed the free drink and popcorn from the junk food counter before making it to the silver screen with Qinghai in tow.

The pre-movie advertisement segment was so long that our popcorn was gone before the movie started. The popcorn was made too long ago and had became soft. It didn't help when the ice in the coke was also half melted too.

Without revealing the plot line, here are some of my thoughts of the movie.

The architecture of the city was nicely done, something like a glorified Rome. The transportation devices in the movie were powered by globes of energy, bearing some similarity to the many transportation devices in The Matrix series. The movie is scores average in the story telling department, the acting generally good and the CG is reminds me of Final Fantasy X in style and design. Nicole Kidman's acting really shines in this movie, as she brought her creepy bad ass lady character alive.

For some crappy reason, the characters in the movie have long and unmemorable names which are basically tongue twisting impressive sounding names which are really hard to pronounce and remember. Everyone in the theater probably got the "What's-up-with-the-name-of-that-XXXX" feeling after the show. In fact, at the end,I only remembered one name, Pan, which is the incidentally the shortest name in the entire movie.

The movie is based on a book, "Northern Lights", featuring people with animal pets that speaks. The pets, called daemons shares a life bond with their human counterpart in which when the human or the pet dies, both will perish together. The daemon will disappear in a puff of rising golden powder, which looked suspiciously like the animation of the defeated Aeons in Final Fantasy X. Oh well, the Daemons are able to fight too, but the fight scenes all ended very quickly.

It didn't take long before it was revealed that the golden compass didn't actually point north or have any navigational properties at all. The Alethiometer as they later call it, is actually more special device for the gifted that "tells you the truth", aka the modern day google search. This brings us a to a grand total of 2 "compasses" that didn't point north in recent movies. Captain Jack Sparrow's version in the pirates series, points to the thing that your heart desires.

The lead character is a young girl who kept lying throughout the movie to achieve her objectives. That's quite different from the normal muscle male hero driven storylines.

Battles scenes in the movie are generally quite lame.

There is a scene where 2 polar bear fought for the royal throne which is actually the best fight scene in the movie. That's until the last part when the good-guy bear stole victory from the bad-guy bear by throwing a fatal strike after apparently feigning an arm injury. That left me a What-the-fXXk feeling when the bad-guy bear got plummeted because he left his guard down while taunting the good-buy bear. It's so sad to see the good guy had to use such a honourless and desperate attack to win the better. Didn't the bad guys hand guide includes a rule that saying something like kill first, talk cock later ? At least the bears wore armour and looked better than the druids in bear form in WoW.

The last battle where witches, children and men fought was utterly disappointing. It's just a big melee where witches flew around like cupid, firing arrows, men firing guns and swinging weapons while children ran for their lives. That's right, the witches didn't have any fireball spells or what-nots, just bows and arrows. Before the battle began, some character in the movie implied that whoever the witches sided with in the battle, it will be be certain defeat for the counter party. I therefore expect a one sided battle with the witches on the good-guy side like the scene in LoTR 2 where the dead human spirit army overran in the invading coalition. But all I saw was witches dropping dead one by one while being shot at by riflemen.

There was also a scene in the movie where a parody of the famous Starwars scene, " I am your father!" by Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker is replicated with "I am your mother!, followed by a resounding "nooooooooo!" which is awfully lame.

And just after the battle draws to a close, the movie ends so abruptly that everyone was stunned when the lights came on. At least they didn't bluntly put up a screen saying, "To be continued suckers !".

I suggest that if you are not in a hurry to catch this movie, wait for the second installment and watch both together instead of leaving the seats after watching a bad cliff hanger like i did.

Also you might want to take note that this story reeks of Atheistism. The bad guys were a obvious reference to the Catholic Church, and this lead some US schools to ban the book from their libraries. If you are aware the accusations against the Church, you will be able to understand the movie better.

For example when Lord Asriel was trying to get fundings to study "dust", the Magisterial, fearing that the truth will destroy their grip on power because their fortunes are built on lies, tried to silence him at every corner. This is quite similar to what happened to astronomy in the early days when talented people like Galileo was labeled a heretic for his discoveries that proved that the Church was wrong.

If the script had went any further with it's pro-Atheist shots at the church, this movie will most likely be virtually banned by the Church.

Ass See Ass SAP engineers strikes again

In the continuing saga of the SCS SAP engineers' effort to solve the world's hardest to align printer in the whole wide world, engineer 'S' came back with another buddy to attempt to bring peace to the world.
For those who didn't read the long complain story yet, you can read it here, under the sub topic, Paper type and Paper Source.

Walking out of the board room after solving a projection problem, I was intrigued when the all too familiar engineer 'S' tried to get hold of me. I knew it would be a blast working with these awe-inspiring guys again, haven't not seen them for a month or two.
We got to the dot matrix printer again, and engineer 'S' showed me that there was something wrong with the printer. It was months after the problem was reported and the problem is still hanging in the air. They claimed that the printer settings couldn't be saved and the network printer settings couldn't be found for the printer. The printer is also different from the setup guide they had with them. The setup guide is the sort that is haphazardly compiled with a load of screenshots made be a lowly paid general clerk with a few barely sensible pieces of English text sticking in-between them, printed on what looks like toilet paper, in full colour.

Guess, what. The two experts are so highly experienced that they couldn't tell that the printer in the setup guide is a laser printer and the one that they were setting up is a dot-matrix printer. And when they finally figured that out when I pointed out the difference, I told them that they were wasting time arguing about the difference of the printer type because the type of printer being setup here doesn't matter at all. For all the normal people out in the streets, so long you can read and follow instructions, preferably applying a IQ of at least 80, all will end well. It's like arguing that a Sony Playstation will not work because you are not using a Sony TV. The two awesome guys took a hint and shut up for good. I guessed that they saw enough of my annoyed and amused face rolled into one for more than a occasion already.
FOR GOODNESS SAKE, DON'T FOLLOW A SETUP GUIDE BLINDLY !!! USE YOUR BRAIN IF YOU STILL GOT ONE !!!
They earned the next scornful reply from me when they told me that they couldn't change the network portion of the printer's settings. It's not like the first time I told them this. We went through this before, and their memory had failed them miserably. I wonder how they couldn't learn from their previous mistake, like what a baby do.
OPEN YOUR BLOODY EYES ! DAMN IT !
With their obvious lack of basic knowledge of networking and Windows, they didn't know how to tell if a printer is a network or a local printer in Windows. I could not forgive them that they failed to see that the printer is attached via a parallel printer cable, not a UTP Ethernet cable. Morever, I have yet to seen a network capable dot matrix printer before, unless in conjunction with a print server. A parallel port printer cable and a UTP cable has completely different connectors on both ends and different thickness in the cable for your information. Has these 2 guys ever installed a printer before ? Which self-respecting IT professional didn't ?
Next they showed me how they couldn't save the customised paper settings for the printer. First, engineer 'S' selected a paper profile, and complained that the "save" button is greyed out. I took a look, and figured out that the paper profile is not editable by design, thus that the "save" button is greyed out.
Next they key in the new paper profile and pressed the "save" button. The profile details disappeared and they claimed that it could not be saved because it, eh...had disappeared into the thin air. It didn't strike them that the profile was already save and all they need to do is to select it from the profile list to see it again. The controls were cleared because the system is waiting for the user to enter another set of new paper profile.
I demonstrated all that and the two IT professionals stood there rooted in silence. It took engineer 'S' a moment to collect his voice and said that he didn't know how this works. This was unacceptable as they are professional software engineers themselves working in a big local company, and they should have seen more user interface designs than I have.
Before he could splutter anymore nonsense, I cut he off rudely in mid-sentence, on purpose of course, saying that I didn't knew anything before hand either. I am so tired of his nonsense and sorry excuses already, and I didn't have the patience to listen to another worthless speech. It took me less than a minute to figure things out and worked the system, not hours. Sarcastically, I asked them if they need any more help before storming off, shaking my head in complete dismay.

If these two sad losers can be IT professionals, they must have bought their certifications from some unknown university with no webpage and falsified their working experience by blindly copying someone else's resume. Or the other possibility is that they somehow earned their living through lies and deceit, somehow getting through day after day. Maybe IT really isn't their cup of tea, so they should help out by offering their positions to some other people who are more attuned to the IT. This is exactly the type of people who gave IT professionals a bad name. Hard working engineers like me have to suffer bad vibes and shame brought on by these leeches of the IT industry. How sad !
(By the way, you can buy your degree and certificates.
Here is my take on engineer 'S'
Technical skill - 4/10 - Some how managed to performing an amazing feat by completing the SAP project without showing that he knew how it works at all. A complete SAP noob like me is able to tell him how a function works by observing the input and output while he couldn't figure it out for weeks and months.
IT Knowledge - 0/10 - Has as much IT knowledge as the dead cat on the streets. Did not demonstrate knowledge on the most common OS, MS-Windows or common hardware like a printer.

Internal PR skill - 0/10 - Lost credibility very quickly due to obvious incompetence. Project manager 1 quit prematurely and his replacement shunned the project as early as possible.

External PR skill - 0/10 - End users and project managers completely lost faith in his ability to deliver anything usable within a reasonable time frame, if they are expecting any at all.

Final score
10 / 100

Quick ! Employ this guy to get your SAP project signed off earlier because the customer will just sign the handover form as fast as possible just because they want to get rid of him for wasting their youth ASAP !!! Just be prepared to see a letter suing you for liquidated damage soon though.

Sotong Devil makes tea

Have you ever wonder when do you need some caffeine to start the day ? I guess I could really use a cup of tea yesterday morning. Feeling sleepy, I went to the pantry to make a cup of lipton tea. Having a high sensitivity to caffeine, means that I do not usually drink coffee as it will cost me my sleep at the end of the day. So I have always sticked to tea.

As usual, I will grab 2 packs of creamer and 1 pack of sugar after drowning the tea bag in hot water. I then made my way back to the storeroom which is really my helpdesk HQ for the past 1.5 years and the foreseeable future.

I have a habit of adding in the creamer and sugar about 2 minutes after adding in the hot water. So it was time to do so. I looked into the cup and saw something astonishing.

The water is still clear.



Wait a minute, tea bags are not computers and they do not malfunction. I stared at the cup for 5 seconds, lost in thoughts. I held the cup closer for a look and saw that the tea bag didn't diffuse it's goodness into the water at all. Then it dawned on me that the cup feels cold and there was no steam rising.

Oh yes, I have added cold water into the cup instead of boiling hot water. So boys and girls, you can't make tea with cold water. It will not work.

The lesser of 2 evils : Marshmallow Fries

I would say MacDonalds is doing an excellent job dominating children's minds with their trade mark golden fries. The happy meal will not be so happy without the little pack of fries right ?


In an apparent effort to take the little kids off the oily real fries, someone came up with a healthier alterative : Marshmallows which look like fries. I found this during a trip to Suntec carrefour and it striked me of how ridiculous things are nowadays. Why can't parents just stop feeding their kids junk food like these? Marshmallows are still full of sugar, and can still give the children an urge for the real thing.

It reminded me when I was in kindergarten, that there was an old lady selling junk food next to the PAP kindergarten I was enrolled in. We were fascinated by the cigarette candy which looked like the real thing. The kids who could afford it, would sometimes buy a stick or two and put in their mouth like a smoker do. It's just mimicking the actions of some bad adult role model or plain play acting but it gives a dangerous idea that smoking is actually cool.

It's a good thing that I am one of the poor kid who couldn't afford a stick or two. And as an adult, I couldn't put myself in the position to smoke a pack or two everyday. It's a expensive and painful way to commit suicide. As the lesser of two evil analogy goes, I take death by junk food over death by smoking.

Hellgate London opens a floodgate of hellish bugs

It's such a romantic idea. The people who made Diablo 2 walked out of Blizzard, setup Flagship Studios and created Hellgate London. I was sold, and bought a copy, expecting the game to be as addictive as Diablo 2 was. I had a blast with Diablo 2 for 3 years, a solid investment with it's only expansion, Lord of Destruction.

I went to Funation at Ang Mo Kio hub and grabbed a copy of the collection's edition for $75 on Tuesday, and went straight home to give it a shot. The games is in full 3D, basically a fast pace action shooter with Diablo 2's skill tree. It was great for a while until the big ugly cracks started to show up.

As this blog always go for the ugly side of things, and with no exceptions made, this post will not be a promotion of the game, but paints a harsh review of reality for this game.

Installation was about 15mins from a DVD, taking 7GB of space. It didn't surprise me when the auto patch screen came right up when I started a multi-player game for the first time. It's kind of expected and didn't take too long to complete.

There were still many bugs in the game and it feels that it was rushed into the market for Halloween. I was expecting game balance issues but that was not the case. The very playability of the game is at stake because of it's numerous crucial bugs. Here is a list of what I have encountered so far.

1. Memory leaks
   The dread "Memory exhausted error". The coding is done pretty badly. The memory leak problem is so bad that no one can play without rebooting once every 3 hours. I haven't seen a commercial game having memory leak problem for a long time. Getting more memory is not the solution, it will just delay the onset of the problem. Sloppy !
   
   
2. Lack of statistical numbers
   The development team has left out the most important feature from Diablo 2 : The numbers. There is no way to find out how an item is different from another when there is only a miserable here and there. The modifers on the items are amazingly confusing and doesn't help in seperating the trash and gems.
   
   
3. Poor icons artwork
   The choices for icons are very bad. Very often, you cannot tell the difference between different grades of a item and the icon itself makes little sense. I have to spend a lot of time trying to use the tooltip to see what the items really are.
   
   
4. Irritating NPCs
   The NPCs made too much noise and there should be a way to shut them up. It''s fresh for the first time, but highly irritating after that.
   
   
5. Invisible party members, update problems to party bars and portraits, teleport to party location not working, party member does not show up on automap
   As a MMO game, these are crucial features of the game that should be working perfectly from day one. It's a real eye sore here. The party member is either invisible to each other, or unable to teleport to each other. Half way through an instance, the party member's torso can just disappear, leaving a floating gun firing alongside with you.
   
   
6. Chat problems
   The chat window itself is badly made. Switching channels is hard and I couldn't figure out how to filter chat channels. During peak hours, you can see a amazingly fast moving chat window flooded by WTB, WTS and WTT requests. This could only get worse if nothing is done about it. The chat window itself had low layer priority and that means whenever you open a menu, it gets hidden under it. Since it cannot be moved either, it became very hard to chat with people while opening the in-game menus like inventory, character, skills etc. Opening certain in-game menus also causes the chat box to go out of the screen. This is awful, a MMO game with serious in-game chat flaws. Come on, Guild Wars and World of Warcraft did way better than this.
   
   
7. Buddy list not working
   A MMO game with a non-working buddy list ? There is no way to know if your good friend is online or not. Terrible. Back to MSN guys.
   
   
8. No Looking for Party/Quest mechanics
   Another glaring problem. I am unable to get a team going to do quests quickly because I have to yell out in general chat before I can get a party started. Suddenly, World of Warcraft's LFG function and Diablo 2's Battle Net support looks so shiny.
   
   
9. Getting stuck in areas
   It's advisable not to jump around at corners because it is likely to get you stuck. I got stuck once every 2 hours because I was jumping randomly at the edges of the instances I was clearing. Poor boundary boxes drawing at fault here. Since there is no /unstuck command, you have to quit the game and start from square one again. No more bunny hopping guys.
   
   
10. No in-game GM assistance
    There is no GM to be found, no in-game ticketing system and so, you are on your own there. It's a wild wild west situation. Be it a game bug, or abuse by other players, there is no law enforcement available. This will eventually lead to the demise of the game if not tackled fast. As with any MMO game, if there is no enforcement guys around, the chat channels will be flooded with rubbish and people will leave the game for good because of the terrible bugs that cannot be submitted fast. As soon as the first duplication bug is exploited, all hell will break loose. The entire in-game economy will collapse and palladium will no crease to have any real value.
    
    
11. Need for identification for items
    It's a legacy feature from Diablo 2 that should have been discarded. It's a waste of time to identify items and does not add value to the game at all.
    
    
12. Lack of support
    There is virtually no support for the game. As I mention earlier, there is no in-game support at all. Asia support is done via hellgate.iahgames.com. You can log to the site, log a case but get no ticket number to trace your case. Not even a auto-email is sent until 15 hours later. The IAH forum is full of gripes from disgruntled players who alse experienced numerous game-stopping problems with the game. There are no replies from the administrators or developers at all. Smart move, because it's so buggy anyway. If there is support, it will be swamped completely and rendered useless.
    
    
13. Connection problem
    You will get disconnected seemingly randomly or cannot connect to a multiplayer game. You just have to keep trying until you get through. The player authentication server is most likely at fault here. The game will tell you to check your firewall, anti-virus settings etc but it's simply a load of bullshit.
    
    
14. Free/Monthly subscription cannot be activated
    The game comes a month of free online subscription that enables additional features such as bigger stash. However, the game still doesn't let us activate the subscription. Very disappointing.
    
    
15. Level cap
    There was a level cap at level 22 until 6 Nov which made many players angry. This is the first time in gaming history that an unannounced level cap was imposed when the actual cap should be 50.
    
    
16. Lack of end-game content
    There is no end-game content like in Guildwars of World of Warcraft. After going through the linear story, you are left with the option to PvP. And that means, to challenge another player without any rewards other than the satisfaction of killing another player and advancing through a ladder. This is another outdated "feature" from Diablo 2. The developers are expecting the gameplay to be the same as Diablo 2 where players just raid normal instances to no-end for items. That's too shallow. If I want to do PvP on a ladder, I will be better off in Guildwars or World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft features tough end-game instances which are so tough that it takes some time to overcome them.
    
    
17. And lastly, unable to load a multi-player game
    The worst problem of them all. I am now completely unable to play a multi-player game. It simply hangs after it starts to load. Re-installations didn't work and my account was fine. So it's a game that I enjoyed for a few hours and that's it. I am not interested in single player games because it's worthless. If I am interested in single player game at all, I would have downloaded a pirated copy off Bittorrent.

This is not all, there were reports of people having other problems as well. Try and do a google search for "hellgate london problem" and you will see 1,930,000 results. Recruiting 10 million players to save London ? I seriously think that they need 10 million man hours to recode the game.

This game should not have be released at all. It belongs to early beta quality. Curse Electronic Arts for allowing this crap to be released at all. I smell corporate greediness in the air. The Flagship studio guys are better off learning a thing from their last company. Blizzard is famous for delaying a game until it is ready. Seldom do they patch a game for show stopping flaws. It has always been game balancing and more features. Guildwars was done properly and also made by people who left Blizzard.

The idea is good, but the implementation is bad. The gameplay is addictive despite it's serious flaws but not having the chance to play the game I have paid for is pissing me off. It will take a couple of hundreds of megabytes of patches to fix this still born game and I hope they can fix this fast.

Game score = 25 15% Very bad game

Hellgate london should have stayed as a beta. Too many show stopping bugs and terrible technical support. If you are considering buying the game, wait for another month and see if they have patched the game to a more playable level.

Latest Update :

On 10 Nov Sat, IAH they announced that all player data will be wiped on Monday ! This is probably the first in MMO history ! Everything will be lost to the nethers ! The character, the items ... everything ! Woah this one tops them all !

Apparently, Asia servers were not patched to patch 0, and they couldn't apply it without screwing all the players. This will go down in gaming history as the worst game ever released.

Update 12/1/08 : In the end, they managed to patch the game without wiping the character database. But to clean up the database, they added a "Elite" mode in a veiled attempt to force people to ditch their pre-patched characters

hellgate.iah.com

[Urgent News] Implementation of Patch0

10/11/2007

Gamers,

Thank you for your patience while we worked to upload Patch0 onto our local servers. For the past two weeks, IAHGames and our partners have worked overnight almost everyday as they attempted to implement Patch0 onto our existing servers.

In the end, it has been determined that there is no way to implement Patch0 onto our Hellgate: London servers without also discarding relevant player data.

Because of this, when Patch0 is installed on Tuesday, there will be a complete character wipe.

We understand this event is frustrating for you, and we are sorry for the problems in implementing Patch0. As compensation, we are providing all gamers who purchased both the Standard and Collector's Edition Box Sets 4 weeks of free subscription benefits. Each box already includes 30 days of free subscription benefits, meaning all of you will be entitled to 80 days of free subscription when the service becomes active around the end of the year.

IAHGames and our partners have taken this event very seriously, and yesterday our CEO and Deputy CEO flew to Seoul to discuss the issue with the CEO of HanbitSoft. As a result of the meeting, HanbitSoft has graciously agreed support IAH Games' decision to provide free subscription time as compensation. HanbitSoft and Flagship Studios have also agreed to provide all further patches on par with US patching time lines, to ensure the SEA version of Hellgate: London stays up-to-date.

The implementation of Patch0 and subsequent character wipe will occur at 1200hrs(GMT+8) on Monday, November 12. After the Patch is implemented, a comprehensive test will be run to ensure there are no further problems. The process will take about 8 hours.

We would like to repeat we are sorry for the delay and the frustration it may have caused you. Please accept the game time as compensation, and thank you for your support until this point.

Sincerely,

Team HGL

Vii is out now !

Yes it's the 威力棒 Vii, not the Nintendo Wii. Our super distant relatives have done it again. After reverse engineering CPUs, mobile phones, cars and a whole chunk of stuff, the world's factory now give us the 威力棒 Vii !

The Chinese guys must have spotted a potential market when the over priced and perpetually unavailable Nintendo came back in 2006. The resulting gaming knockoff looks and plays like the Nintendo Wii, including the star feature, the motion sensor controllers.

However, apart of that, the Vii isn't a outright clone of the original. The most glaring difference is the lack of compatibility with Nintendo Gamecube and Nintendo Wii games. It doesn't seem to have a optical drive, so I assume that it uses cartridge of sorts for games. It do come with some built in games right out of the box.

This also signifies that the the Vii has it's own software and hardware architecture, and basically, it stole the appearance and input controller from the Nintendo Vii. From what it seems to me, it's just a proprietary console made in China that doesn't offer any additional games yet. So for the China folks, this knockoff will be a good and cheap substitute of the real thing, since the little kids are unlikely to be able to tell the difference anyway. Since there is already a library of games built-in, and Nintendo Wii games are largely a load of crap anyway, the Vii indeed makes a nice alternative.

The Vii is so new that there is none posted in eBay yet and no pricing information available. I doubt any of the Vii will land in Singapore, so don't bother to wait for it.

Original Article from Engadget

PSP Buying Tips

I just got a PSP recently, and it's keeping me and my sisters happy. After going through the process of buying and getting it to work, here is the FAQ for buying a PSP if you intend to do so. So you guys didn't have to go through all the sweat and pain that I encountered.

As a warning, this FAQ contains information that might brick your PSP if you are not careful, do don't blame me for your own actions.

1. So what to buy ?
   Buy the latest model, PSP Slim & Light. It comes in many colours and designs, starting from $250 w/o GST. Don't ever get into buying the older PSP. The new PSP is 2/3 the weight of the old model and 5mm thinner, which makes it better to hold.
   
   
2. Can play chiong games or not ?
   Can. But you have to mod your PSP first. Unlike your Xbox 360 and PS2, you are only required to flash the ROM on your PSP. For the PSP slim, it currently version 3.71 M33. Most shops are willing to do it for $20 or you can google and DIY. It will also allow you to do a lot more with the PSP with homebrew applications.
   
   
3. Where to get the games ? Free or not ?
   Games ? It's all over the internet via Bittorrent. For those who haven't BT before, it's time to start. There is no need to pay for any of the PSP sites which offers paid download content.There is no need to buy any UMD games to make the downloaded games work as the M33 custom firmware has a good work around for games that checks for a UMD.
   
   
4. How many games can it hold ?
   The largest memory stick pro duo available is 4GB for around $86 from Sandisk. That's around 10 games. I got mine from Best Bargain at Sim Lim Square.
   
   
5. Battery can tahan how long ?
   Approximately 3 to 4 hours for me.
   
   
6. Still got accessories to buy?
   Got. Buy the screen protector. It will be worth the money sooner than you thought it would. The rest of the accessories are just crap and useless most of the time. I personally like the PSP slim without the plastic casing or silicone skin.
   
   
7. 1 player game no fun lah
   There are many games which allows peer to peer competitive play via WiFi.
   
   
8. Got WiFi ? Meaning can go surf net at MacDonalds ?
   I couldn't get Wireless.sg to work on my PSP because of the way it needs to store cookies on the web browser. However, normal WiFi networks work fine. The strange implementation of the PSP keyboard can be frustrating too.
   
   
9. What else can it do ?
   You can convert a whole bunch of videos to PSP format and use it as a video player. I got a colleague who's friend used it as portable cartoon player for his kids. Loading up the kid;s favorite cartoons on the PSP seems to save him a lot of pain. For me, I installed emulators on it to play old games and some applications to spice things up.
   PSPGenesis - SEGA Megadrive emulator
   NesterJ - Nintendo emulator
   Snex9xTYL - SNES emulator
   
   
10. Can you help me to mod, give me games, and install stuff for me ?
    No. Unless you are a chio bu, single and available.

Devil's guide to the movies - Resident Evil : Extinction

This post will mark the first time that I will put my evil thoughts into reviewing movies. In my crappy reviews, there will be numerous references to parts of the movie, and thus, you are advised to skip my BS if you actually plan to watch the movie. Why is that so? You are almost guaranteed to watch the movie in a completely different light !

The first victim for my sadistic review is the movie based on a video game, Resident Evil (3) : Extinction. While most game based movies are a load of crap, this zombie flick is actually very nice to watch. While the 28 days/weeks later series took a more serious approach to zombies, Resident Evil takes the action-chick-kickass approach. It does help when the female lead is played by Milla Jovovich as Alice. The director did know his job well. There were plenty of scenes with her naked, scenes showing off her tummy and legs while ignoring her obviously flat chest.

Her character in Ultraviolet was simply a serial killer with a strange dose of motherly instinct but in the Resident Evil series, she became a serial zombie and human killer.

So what's new in this installment ? Every new zombie movie always introduces something new. This time round, we have ...

1. Zombie crows (Zombie dogs aren't new anymore)
2. Intelligent zombies, who can run, climb and have increased strength
3. Super zombie with regenerating powers, telekinesis powers and extended reach (Tyrant)
4. Human survivors who preys on other survivors
5. Zombies don't really need to eat, it's just an instinct (WTF?!)
6. The T-Virus can somehow dry up the earth, turning it into a desert
7. You can install a camera in a human and watch it as a satellite feed in high quality and frame rate (imagine the naughty applications of this technology!)
   

Apparently, jumping is a very important move in the movie. Alice and her clones jumped out of trouble so many times over in the movie that it's better than running or shooting.

Obviously, Milla Jovovich isn't a cheap actress to employ. And to get her to sign her up for the 3rd installment of a successful franchise must have really stretched the movie budget to its limits. How do I tell ? The Umbrella's US massive underground desert base is mostly represented in the form of wire frame models and in the scene where Alice cuddles up her newly released clone, the director couldn't find enough budget for a full CGI Alice and had to resort to using the classic camera trick that shows each Alice's face turn by turn. Only when the two Alices are separated, you can see both Alices' faces which can be accomplished by overlapping scenes, another all time favorite director's trick.

There was also a incredible scene where Claire Redfield drove a oil tanker into a whole load of zombies, ignite some dynamites, a cigarette and blew himself in true martyrdom fashion (also known as suicide bomber in most parts of the world). The oil tanker exploded with a big fireball and soon, I realised that it was physically impossible to do so. Just a few scenes ago, Chase was telling everyone that they had only enough fuel in the tanker to drive a hundred miles, which is hardly enough fuel to start a campfire. So I concluded that the aging oil tanker is made of C4 explosives.

At the start of the movie, I was wondering very hard how the Umbrella guys could bare to let so many Alice clones die without doing the manly THING. Hey ! This is a world where most people had turned into zombies, females are in seriously short supply, and babes are very hard to pass up indeed. Are they all gays? In the entire movie, I didn't remember seeing any female members of the Umbrella.

Add a evil twist to the movie logic to their cloning capabilities, it would have been even better ! You see, Umbrella can clone humans. Alice's genetic information can potentially give a cure because her blood can bond with the T-Virus, so hence I can deduce that her off springs will have a 50-50 chance of having immunity too right ? So with so many Alice clones, Umbrella could have started a "reproduction line", and have fun doing it !!!

Ok, that didn't happen of course. Alice was last showed releasing her own personal massive clone army from the cloning facility, showing that not only Darth Vader or Emperor Palpatine could lead a clone army.

It's a great movie to catch, and it probably earned it's NC18 rating from Millia Jovovich's semi naked scenes than the gore from the dying humans and zombies combined. It will probably undergo plenty of cuts before it arrived in DVD and blueray formats, so watch it on the silver screen before it's gone.

Crazy Ang Mo

I haven't write about food for quite sometime. It's not that I am on a diet of instant mee and hence, have nothing to write about. The reality is that I am drowning in work and studies. Now that I ran out of raids to sign up in WoW, I shall share with whoever actually read this blog on a new stall that I have tried with Jia Lun this Tuesday.

Jia Lun first sighted this western food stall online on a forum. It's a hawker stall at Bishan block 272 appropriately named "Crazy Ang Mo". True to it's name sake, it's run by a Australia chap who really knew how to make sales.

For those who are familiar with Botak Jones stall (American), it's the same concept. Basically it's a Caucasian guy fronting a western food stall with locals cooking at the back. The menu was so what similar to Botak Jones. It has mostly burgers, steak, pork chop, and chicken wings. It didn't have soup, but it has pasta, and deserts. The stall owner certainly knew how to be use catchy names for his menu which contains names starting with Ang Mo this and Ang Mo that. Prices is reasonable and affordable.

Taking my first look at his stall, it is certainly well equipped for big business. It has a large LED display showing the queue number, which however, wasn't in use then. Instead, he opted to use his megaphone to broadcast the current queue number being served.

Just a warning to all of you. This guy is a real smooth talker. He will talk people into waiting 30 minutes for their food, upgrading their 80 cents soft serve into a $2.50(?) sundae and changing a "can-be-found-everywhere-in-singapore" pasta to a steak.

I was also one of the big sucker who fell of it. We placed our orders despite his friendly advisory on the waiting time. The ruse of trying out western food sold at a heartland HDB estate at reasonable prices is very appealing indeed. So after paying for our order, we went back to the carpark and put up another hour of parking coupon to ward of the Cisco parking wardens who are insanely active these days.

Things didn't turned out very well for me. We went groceries shopping at Ang Mo, a local supermart, at block 297 and I ended up spending $30 on junk food and instant mee. If not for the 30 min time limit, I could have done even more damage to my wallet. The $90 that I have withdrawn the day before was down to a few red notes already.

Well the 30 minutes estimated waiting time came to about 45 minutes in the end. We order the deluxe version of their burger meal which is a beef burger with a piece of bacon and a slice of pineapple covered in melted cheese. The burger was served with fries. The presentation was eh, just the burger and fries, and it tasted nothing spectacular. The beef patty used was not as good as the Botak Jones version and the food was generally slightly warm, not the piping hot that we were expecting to see for freshing cooked food.

The verdict is, you don't have to come specially to try it out. It's just reasonably priced western food fronted by an Australian guy, cooked by Asian staff, which has a terribly long waiting time on a Tuesday dinner time and didn't look or taste special.

Woah, after writing all this, I really felt that I could have used a few photos which I should have taken during the meal. Felt so weird to be reviewing a food stall without Ang Kong.

Anti-Ang Mo Weirdo on the loose

On my way to work, I have to walk through a bridge linking Harbourfront centre to Harbourfront tower 1. This morning, as I was walking behind a Ang Mo towards tower I, and a dirty and shabby looking 35+ chinese came towards us in the opposite direction. He diverted from his path and came walking towards the Ang Mo.

Guess what, there were no other people on the bridge and this guy just have to came chest to chest with the Ang Mo and snorted really loudly ! That was unbelievably rude ! I was a good 3 metres behind and still hear the sick sounding snorts.

That was a WTF moment. The Ang Mo appeared stunned at his weird behaviour and stood rooted for a second. He turned around, raised his voice at the bloody rude bastard asking what is his problem.

My evil senses alert me of a possible showdown so I decided to hang around for a while longer to kay-po kay-po, hoping for a chance to see a fist fight between the two to start my day. Well you know the saying, happiness must be built on someone else sorrow, and what's the chance of watching a chinese guy fighting against a Ang Mo ? Will it be Bruce Lee style ending where a chinese guy can hum-dum a Ang Mo to tears?

No !!! That was not to be. The chinese guy turned around, and looked at the Ang Mo with a confused look, obviously unable to comprehend the Ang Mo's words or maybe even the situation. I couldn't tell if he did it on purpose but the Ang Mo decided to let it go. My adrenaline fix was denied by the ball-less Ang Mo. So I continue my way back to the office to start another boring day.

The boring day was given a glimpse of hope when my colleague told me that there was a group 2 winner who bought a system 7 Toto ticket at the outlet at Seah Inn market. That's 60k !!! I bought a system 7 ticket there !

And so I took out my ticket from my wallet, cross my fingers and started matching the ticket I have bought. The first 2 numbers matched ! That's so exciting ! And then ......

Obviously I didn't win. I will never be so dumb to announce a big win on my blog. I will go nuts from the attention generated...you know the abalone porridge thingy I always joke about. My bad luck continued as usual, and the ticket of hope became a piece of paper reminding me of my jinxed luck.

The new weight loss diet is here !

Sick of all those useless dieting regime that are simply to hard to follow or ineffective ?

The most over looked method is actually the most effective ! It's easy to follow and enjoyable !



Click on this link to see a presentation on this new diet method !

Miracle Beer Diet - The most amazing home videos are here
Kiss goodbye to your yoga classes, exercise regime, Atkins diet, Sonoma diet, Mayo Clinic diet and what nots.

Anyone wants to join me ? It's better if we do it together !

For more stuff on the sexy guy in the picture above here. Videos, pictures etc.

I have gained a new Job Title !

A user in my customer's office gave me a new fitting title for my job role ...

IT Bangladesh Worker !!!


"Dang! Where is my pay raise and bonus ?"

Well it's true. I almost fits the stereotype migrant Bangladesh construction worker profile in some ways. Actually I thought it would be Maria instead...Maria ! Do this. Maria ! Do that. zZzZzZz

IT Support Enginner who needs IT support

For those who works in a reasonably large office will know about the helpful guys running around fixing all your seemingly endless IT problems. Well, for those who knows me, I am one of them, a IT support engineer. They come in various versions, differing in technical strength and public relation skills. I come to know about this guy, who is definitely not cut to be in the industry, but didn't seem to get a hint of the term, "INCOMPETENCE" is, despite obvious signs everywhere pointing to it.
Almost everyday for the 3 months he was with us, I will receive calls for help from him. It wasn't the typical learning questions expected from a new man on the job. Till the end, it's still the same old layman questions. That's when I ponder why I was giving life support a IT support Engineer who was not under my charge and I do not know personally.
Let us take on a little journey on the horrors regarding this guy, which I will use the name "A" to protect his identity. Although keeping his identity secret is a serious disservice to the world, I have to respect his privacy and reputation in case I kana sued.
Here is how he scores in my Super Helpdesk Engineer grading system ...

"A" - Chinese male guy
Technical skill - 1/10 - Did not demonstrate understanding of area of work
IT Knowledge - 1/10 - Fairly less than a average office guy
Internal PR skill - 0/10 - Lost credibility very quickly due to obvious incompetence
External PR skill - 0/10 - Users unwilling to use his help, to the point of being "banned".
Some Damning Incidents
Notebook rollout
When he first came in, he was assigned to oversee two engineers on a notebook upgrading project. By the time I came into the picture, the dateline was already near. I wasn't so happy to see that it was moving slowly and generally done poorly. He didn't pushed the engineers hard enough. It didn't help when the notebook installation and procedure check list was badly done too, which wasn't his fault. The users weren't too thrill to get notebooks that couldn't perform what their replaced notebook can do, thus, many cases were logged to do the patching up for the months that followed.
I put an end to the nonsense and came up with a universal laptop and desktop checklist soon after, which my predecessor didn't bother to spend time on. The 1/2 page of checklist ballooned to 4 pages long. It will not take a genius to make a guess how much damage can 3.5 pages of incomplete instructions do.
Banning by at least 3 users within the first month
Feedback from users weren't great. I went down to the grounds after a month after the IT Assistant Manager asked me to. It didn't take too long before I received some terrible feedback from a VP and 2 other quite influential users. They didn't want A to touch their computers anymore for obvious reasons. This was in line of what the IT AM had told me about. Another ex-IT colleague also gave thumbs down to his overall performance. In order to keep things simple, he was permanently banned from the all VPs or important people there after.
Server down
To the IT infrastructure team, nothing else can be more crucial than a server outrage. Imagine to the horror to one of our administrator who found himself screaming in horror after he dispatched A to the server room in the morning to check out a non-responding server immediately. An hour later, the administrator found it strange that A didn't report in on the status. He made a call to A and was distraught to hear that A had decided to go down later in the afternoon instead. The boils down to two things : he didn't know what is call priority and he ignored an direct order.
Backup
After 3 months on the job, A still couldn't figure out the backup procedures and regime. Tapes were loaded wrongly, and sent to the wrong party. He still have difficulty operating the backup software and the tape libraries that I took less than a week to pick up. And all along, he was still reading the guide that I had created for the new users. Pfftttttt...
Remote access
Because of the large geographic area at the user's site, there is a constant need to use remote access software to ease our strain. By 3 months, I do expect him to know that the remote access software couldn't work with Windows firewall. He called me out of the blue for help at his new workplace. I was curious what could bug him so much so to call me, so I went on to try. After listening to him for a few seconds, I realised that he didn't turn off the Windows firewall, which he should know by heart now. I asked him if he had checked, and he replied that he did. Then on further questioning, I found that he turned off his firewall but not the user's firewall. Now that's lame.
Domino administrator
Again at his new workplace, he ran into problem creating new users in Lotus Notes Domino server and called me for help. For those who don't know, the Domino server is a email server which requires proper training and experience to manage. I was amazed to hear that he was allowed to administrate such a important IT function without either of the requirements. And guess what, he couldn't even create a new email user, a very basic function in Domino server. His description of the steps he took to create the user and the situation was so vague that it was summarised as "I don't know". That was a lost cause. So I bailed out and said I couldn't help him on this.
------------------------
He is really fortunate that he was not in my team. He would have been the first person that I will get rid of for total incompetence. So after 3 months, my customer let him go for the better good. He did make an attempt to come back to the job by applying for a position with my company. When I was asked for my recommendation, I gave my honest opinion and therefore, i wasn't surprise that he was not considered for the position later on. Phew.
[WARNING !!! SHAMELESS PLUG AHEAD !!!]

Come on, not every IT Support Engineer is as professional as I am, right ? Quick head hunt me for your well paying and yet relax job position now !

Some things are better left unknown

Sometimes, it's better to be a dumbass and not realise ...

1) Nobody washes vegetables before cooking
2) There can be extra sources of protein in your meal

While almost finishing my share of vegetables while having dinner with Jia Lun and Kokkai at a hawker centre, i found ...



Yeah, I continue to finish the rest of the food after casting the bug aside. I hope I didn't eat any of these that I didn't spotted.

Consultants ? Experts ? Outsource ?

For many companies, consultants are frequently used to fill in their ranks when their own staff couldn't perform a particular project or task. The consultants are employed mainly because they are the perceived experts in their fields and the companies they represent. Surely you will not go wrong when you are willing spend a small fortune to outsource your project to a team of people from a well known large local IT company ?

So my customer (i am outsourced to my customer's company as help desk support) bought a contact for a team of consultants, team manager and programmers from the large local IT company to start on a software solution project. We provided them a place in my customer's premises and computers for them, and so my helpdesk team assisted as technical support for them.

It didn't take me very long to find that the people who came on board didn't knew anything except for the software solution itself. That means they didn't know about a lot of other things, and how their software interfaces itself with the rest of the world. In other words, it's like being an expert in cooking steamed rice but know nothing else about cookery. Unfortunately, the rice is only part of a meal, and has to be paired with the appropriate dishes to complete the meal.

In the brief interaction time I have with them, they committed so many deadly sins in IT and uttered so much garbage that I found myself resisting really hard to laugh out loud in their faces and strangle them with mouse cords. So the rant begins here, and it might be quite technical for the layman out there.

Most of the story evolves around the apparent team lead of the software engineers, which I will refer to him as "S".

I wish I could do this to relieve my anger

The forgetful software engineers

Local user accounts were created for each of the computers provided to the team of software engineers. S wasn't happy with our standard default password, so he opted for another password which the software engineers conveniently managed to forget every couple of days, causing an account lockout each time. And so we kept unlocking their account several times a week, until I had to stand next to S, as he key in their passwords right after I had unlocked his account.

Guess what, trying to act impressive and stylish, S keyed in his password really fast and wracked the enter key in less than 2 seconds. Windows rejected his password and prompted him to try again. S did the same thing again, and got exactly the same result. He started to get annoyed and started protesting that the password he had just keyed was correct. I noticed the problem and pointed to the CAPS LOCK indicator. It's on. Passwords are case sensitive. It didn't take a miracle to get him to logon successfully on the 3rd attempt.

It didn't stop here. The software engineers still got themselves locked out because they kept entering the wrong passwords. Finally they relented and pasted the password on the LCD monitors they are working on. But it didn't help. They still get locked out every now and then. Hopeless hopeless hopeless.

Bad migration practices

When they didn't understand the existing customised codes in the system which they were trying to migrate, they simply overwrite the portion with their own code ignoring the much needed customisations without backups of the existing codes ! It didn't take long for the end users to find out that their familiar functions creased to work. The ugly consequences involved angry users hunting down the software engineers who had to work from grounds up because there were no codes to fall back on.

Cannot transfer data

While troubleshooting on a user's computer, they decided to save some log files for further analysis. S claimed that they couldn't do so because their thumbdrive didn't work on the Windows 2000 PC and there was no floppy disk drive. My customer's project supervisor told me about this and I was perplexed by S's unfounded claims. I proceeded to demonstrate Windows 2000 ability to support my thumbdrive and pointed to the floppy disk drive on the computer. I could almost imagine my customer's project supervisor tearing S apart when she confront him.

Remote printing

While troubleshooting a printing problem on the PC mentioned above, they wanted to isolate the problem by asking the user to do a test print on another computer. However, they couldn't see a obvious physical parellel printer cable linking the computer and the printer. In other words, the printer is not shared and thus can only be used with the computer in question. My puzzled user came looking for me and I had to go to tell the noobs that the printer is not shared and this can also be checked in the printer settings. Our dear software engineers are not only blind, they also didn't know how to check the configurations of a Windows printer.

Paper type and paper source

On the same printer problem, I had to demonstrate and explain how Windows printing works when I realised that S and his guys didn't understand the concept at all and thus it's no wonder that they couldn't troubleshoot the problem. Because of their ignorance, they couldn't come up with proper test cases and didn't know how to interpret the results. Despite after a couple of rounds of see and tell, they still didn't get it. I finally gave up and told them that obviously, their print job is using the wrong paper type and source. All they have to do is to modify their print job to do that and yet they refused to do so. I asked him to show me the properties page and S couldn't do it. Now not only he does not understand the Windows print system, he don't know things in his own turf too. At this point, I gave up and left them to rot on their own.

Lack of testing : Phase 1

One of the most glaring mistake they made was to go live without going through proper testing. The only tests they made were apparently on their test servers, and they assumed that their code will work flawlessly in production. The rollout included the automated of configuration files to the over 200 machines which spectacularly failed in most of the cases.

I was summoned to help troubleshoot the problem and it didn't take me more than a moment to point out that they not included a crucial updated configuration file. This could have been caught if they had done a limited rollout on a test group. Initially, the deployment team and the software engineers went through with the process of denial, pointing fingers everywhere except for the missing configuration file, until the truth sets in at the end of day one. The fallout took a whole week to clear, wasting much of the helpdesk resources.

Then the kicker came soon after. The application failed completely under VPN (Virtual Pirvate Network). Clearly they have forgotten what I have brought up a week before the rollout : test the software under VPN.

Lack of testing : Phase 2

Apparently they didn't learn. The second phrase of their implementation also failed completely under VPN. This lead to another round of furious troubleshooting which concluded with the disabling of a portion of the software.

However, they couldn't do it right either. The software engineers gave wrong instructions which resulted in chaos. I had to perform overtime at Jurong island to help troubleshoot the problem with no pay till 8.30pm. I wasn't surprised when we found that they actually didn't know how to disable the portion of the software which we figured how to shortly by trial and error. This just displayed their incompetency in their own product and lousy troubleshooting skills.

Customers troubleshooting your product ??? Give me a break !

... and there are many more incidents like those I mentioned. My impressions is that their IT knowledge is at best, on par with normal end users, and thus I cannot assume their technical expertise is of a high level. Their insane rate of spouting nonsense and vain attempts to act professional is really detestable and terribly annoying. I will not be surprised when the project gets slapped and penalised with liquidated damages.

Oh ya, their project manager bailed out early September by quitting his job. Smart move, I will say.

From the looks of things, this fiasco deserves an entry into http://worsethanfailure.com .

Day 0 - Orientation

I took up a degree course at Bachelor of Science in Business Information System and Computer Science offered by University of Murdoch at Kaplan City campus recently. I went for the orientation today and found to my horror that...

THERE ARE NO FEMALE STUDENTS IN MY COURSE !!!
ALL 12 STUDENTS ARE MALES !!!
ARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH !!!!

No way !!! Dang. Should have sign up for the business courses instead !! I have unknowingly enrolled in 少林寺 !!!

On the bright side, that means that there will be no distractions during the class.

The great Proscar hunt

On Monday night, i popped open my small plastic container holding my Proscar supply and found a grand total of 1 dosage left in it. Yikes ! I am such a lazy ass but I don't want to lose my hair !!! For those who didn't know what's Proscar, read my older post here : When guys go bald.

To summarise the long story ...

Tuesday : I couldn't find my colleague who helped me to buy my last supply at work. So I went to my family clinic at Big Mac Centre to try my luck. It was almost midnight when I reached the clinic, so I couldn't try another clinic when I was told that the last box of Proscar could not be located.

Wednesday : Went to another family clinic near my flat. Still no luck. They don't even sell it.

Thursday : Woke up early and decide to go Johor to buy instead. I haven taken leave today for my sister's doctor appointment, so I could go after the appointment. I set off to JB at 1.30pm from Tan Tock Seng and came back to my flat at 4.30pm. Going to JB on weekday afternoon on public transport is a breeze, no jams, no nothing. Just a smooth smooth trip.



I bought my supply from My Pharmacy near City Square at 86 Jalan Wong Ah Fook. There is a free membership that give 15% discount on prescription drugs and 10% on misc items, so I took it up ASAP since I can immediately use it on my current purchase.

Here is the maths for those interested in treating male hair loss using Proscar :

Propesia (1mg finasteride) 28 pills @ SGD$80 = SGD$2.86 per day
This is what doctors want to sell you because it makes more money.

Proscar (5mg finasteride) 30 pills @ SGD$120 = SGD$0.80 per day
Simply cut the Proscar pill into 5 pieces and you get 150 days supply at SGD$120.

Want to stretch your dollar ? Go Johor Bahru, it's near and cheaper !
Proscar (5mg finasteride) 30 pills @ MYD$195.50 (after 15% discount = SGD $86.50) = SGD$0.56 per day

That's a saving of $45 !! Not bad for 3 hours. I also bought an extra box of Proscar and pill splitter for a close friend who really need them but simply didn't have the motivation to do it. It's so sad to see him losing so much hair right now and I figure this will make a good birthday present.

Back in Singapore, while buying a expensive bottle of Bragg raw unfiltered organic apple cider vinegar at Cold Storage Causeway point, I came across this bloody expensive grape...and I though champagne grapes are expensive, this wins hands down.


Behold ! 300g of Japanese Kyono grape at $16.90 !!! ($5.63 per 100g) Champagne grapes go for $1 per 100g and your typical purple / green grapes a $0.49-$0.69 per 100g. Well they are big and round. It took me sometime to resist the temptation to pluck a grape for "testing".

Death trap

This morning, I went to Ingram Micro Education Centre for a workshop on Brightstor Arcserve Backup for Windows by Computer Associates. While making my way there, my digestion system didn't cooperate and produced a lot of gas. So after arriving at the premises, I raced to the 2nd floor where the reception is, signed in and hunted for the toilet like a madman before I crap in my pants.

I found the toilet sign, navigated a corner at break neck speed and found a door leading to a staircase. I went through the door and saw another opened door...



... which leads to a few compressor on a ledge. So if anyone who is 1/2 asleep and is new here, you could have land yourselves in the hospital cursing and swearing if you are not already dead.

Since I am here complaining about this in my blog, it means I am not dead and yes, unfortunately for you, I am not in the hospital either. The adrenaline rush however, saved me a cup of tea for my morning caffeine boost.

Ladies get your F-Cup here

All the rubbish from the land of the rising sun never failed to amuse me. Now we have the F.Cup cookie !!!

Each box comes with 4 packets of goody goody cookies containing 50mg of fats breast enlarging herb Pueraria Mirifica each. Why insert silicone, dodgy injections or some other weird and dangerous treatment when you can just eat your way to a F cup ?

Edit : Pueraria Mirifica contains phytoestrogens, which is similar to natural estrogen which give women their breasts. Guys, avoid this thing like a plague. Unless you feel like growing your own breasts to molest yourself. Yikes.

Oh did I mention that the fats and calories in the biscuits will not just go to your boobs, it will also balloon your butt, create a large tire around your abdomen and blow up your face as well by the time you get to your desired F cup.

Eh...I pass. I don't need a bigger cup. I need to downsize my spare tire.





Original article from gizomdo.com

And a more scientific view from Plastic Surgery 101

How to die from a heart attack

以型补型，吃脑补脑。(For supplementation, eat food of the same type. Thus to supplement your brain, eat a brain)



However, eating this junk should be classified as attempt suicide. You have to be a real pig to eat this stuff, Pork Brains in milk gravy! (Found on the internet. The Yankees will just eat anything, don't they?)

It's such a no-brainer. Even if you can avoid the fact that mash up brains is so plain gross, you can't missed the nutrition value table labeled on the can.

It screams "Cholesterol 3500mg per serving : 1170% of daily recommended intake"

Kudos to the makers of this suicidal device, they didn't try to hide the fact that it has little nutrition value and is simple a can of salt and cholesterol. By the way, brains are made mostly of cholesterol.

That's the damage for a single serving (per can) ! If you want some blocked arteries really quickly for your insurance claims or wish to go for multiple bypasses for the near-death experience, this is the ticket to do it really fast and furious style.

Any brave soul willing to take a risk and try this yummy looking smudge ?

I am so NOT going to buy this

On 20th July, Friday, I took my sisters for a spin at Vivo city after a hearty meal at Waraku Pasta at Central. What the hell am I doing at Vivo city ?

I am currently working at Harbourfront, so after several months, Vivo city became so damn boring. It didn't help that the fact is, I took leave to go there. To add insult to the injury, I kept getting work related calls in the afternoon. Might as well cancel leave and go back to work. But well, it's a request by my sister, anything goes.

At Giant hypermart, I came across this large water melon that I will not buy for 2 reasons.



1) It's too large (Around 35cm long), I am not going to cart this bad ass home. No way. Too heavy.

2) It cost an amazing $52. I can buy 17 smaller melons with the money. Or better yet, spend it on a nice dinner.

You have to hit me with the water melon till i lose my mind before I buy this monster.

Well Giant have plenty of good deals this week. Large Taiwan mangoes for $2.35 each and Longans at $0.19 per 100 grams.

Quick buy more memory for your computer now !

Enough said. This memory card will turn your computer into a working giant !

These 16Kb RAM card, expandable to 512Kb running at a blazing 4MHz will let you open a tiny text file if you can somehow get it to work for only USD$495 !

For those non-techies, this is a very antiqued advertisement for a memory module for a very old computer, Cromemco Z-1/Z-2.

In comparision against today's computer, 16Kb of memory if an miserable amount. Nowadays, most new computers are equipped with 1GB of memory or more. Just how much is that?

1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes
16Kb = 16,384 bytes

That's a difference of 65536 times. Woah!

Also it's running at 4MHz. Today's commercially available memory modules runs upwards to 1333MHz. That's 333 times faster !

Why does today's computer uses so much memory? Ask Microsoft !

Boring Singapore MacDonalds ?

While surfing the internet during the wee hours on Saturaday, I came across a site showing some of the special stuff on MacDonald's menu worldwide. Although the Samurai burger and Kiasu burger are not listed, it's still an interesting read.

McDonald's Strange Menu Around The World


India's Big Mac Alternative


Japan's Ebi Fillet-O-Fish ?

And more !! Go read it !

Tall guy meet short guy

Found this article while surfing around...

Worlds apart: The moment the tallest man met the shortest

"While Mr Xishun, 56, towers above everyone at an astonishing 7.9ft, 19-year-old Mr Pingping is a mere 2.4ft high."

Woah, the shorty looks like a toy while the tall guy looks like an alien. I am so glad that I am of "normal" height.

A Saturday out with my sisters

On friday, I psycho my sister successfully to forget about going to work OT for free, and go for the dragonboat practice at Kallang Water Sports Centre organised by MDS instead. Why bother to work extra when the bosses are not around to see ? According to my rules of engagement, this is a no-no situation especially when the work involved is never ending. And so today, instead of working so hard, she went to play hard.



Here is my sisters at Kallang Water Sports Centre. Met Hui Ling and Lay Ting from Power Seraya there too. They had came for the earlier time slot as part of the company sports event. Regina had left an hour earlier, so I missed her. Now I know who are the sporting ones at Power Seraya. 3 ladies and no guys. *cough cough*


At the boarding area, we saw some army guys in #4 doing some kind of rehearsal. There is a yellow balloon attached to each of the boats, possibly part of the national day programme. So watch out for it soon.



My sister is in group 11, with students from Bedok Secondary. Here is the safety and basic theory demonstration on dragon boat operation. Instead of starting at 1.30pm, it dragged and dragged to almost 2.30pm before the fun begins.


Fortunately my sister is not heavy, and I have practice lifting her. I loaded her onto the 4th position from the front of dragon boat faster than any of the other folks from MDS. And the water looks dirty to me. Yikes, I am not going to swim in this.


The fun stops after 1 hour on the dragon boat. Her my sister is holding the paddle for display purposes only. She just sat through the whole thing with the rest of the Bedok Secondary kids. After a quick goodbye, we decided to go Suntec for the rest of the day. We got lucky while trying to hail a cab at Oasis. It was a deserted place to begin with. A cab came from a distance away and saw us waving fanatically at him. Hence we saved $$$ because we did not have to call for a cab.



Found a defibrillator outside the toilet at Suntec Convention Hall. Did someone die of a heart attack to prompt the management to do this ?


Wearing socks with slippers surely look weird on me. Luckily, not for long though.


An exit that goes into another dimension.


A rather cheesy dinner at Pizza Hut. A curry chicken pizza with cheese fondue on top and cheese sticks. Woah sinful ! Along with another Aloha lover pizza, our dinner was settled.

Blaming Microsoft Calculators

While sniffing deals on the auction house in Ironforge (Alliance city in WoW), I was trying to confirm a price with the windows calculator. I punched in the following figures ...

me : 196 divide by 14 [ENTER]
windows calculator : *No response*
me : eh ? [Enter]
windows calculator : *returns result* -->> 1

I am not genius in maths, but 196 divided by 14 is NOT equal to 1. I repeated a few times and got the same result. Convinced that this is a bug in windows calculator, I tried the same calculations on my O2 Atom PDA running windows mobile 2003.

Alas, the same crap turned up.

I guess Microsoft programmers have something against 196 divided by 14. It will not yield the correct result. Don't rely too much on the Windows calculator. Who knows what else is affected.

Edit : I cock lah. 196 divided by 14 is 14 !! Early morning blur-ness.

Merlion on the MRT

A young chap standing next to me merlion-ed (aka puked) while the train was pulling into Ang Mo Kio MRT station. I dodged the stream of brownish liquid and avoided soiling my clothes. Before I can offer my pack of tissue to the merlion, he already managed to took out a pack of his own, with another 2 packs being offered by worried people around him.



Being the typical bor-chap Singaporean, I got off the train and walked passed the station control without informing the SMRT guys that they have a clean up job on their hands.

Effects of TV from childhood to adulthood

To many of us, TV is a form of entertainment. Many kids grew up watching day in day out. It's easy to satisfy a kid, just turn on the TV, and woahaha, no more troublesome kid to take care of.

However, there is a dark side to it. In fact, it can ruin lives. I didn't have to look very far to see a living example of that. My youngest sister is a perfect example of a TV addict who grew up learning all the wrong values from TV. The TV is her main source of information which eventually leads her to her very bad position in life.She couldn't tell what is correct or wrong on TV, mindlessly absorbing the foreign values that was burned into the images on the screens without weighing them and getting a skewed picture of life in general.

And behold, the longest dirty laundry washed in this blog's history.

It all started with my lazy parents who didn't want to take care of a crying baby girl when she was a couple of months old. So what my parents did is to show my youngest sister, TV programmes, in particular, advertisements. The addiction was so acute that advertisements were recorded on video tape, and replayed to the amusement of the baby girl.

So it went from advertisements, to power rangers, dramas, Taiwanese variety shows and recently reality TV. The unholy amount of time spent on TV was huge. There is always a price to pay, and she probably has to pay it for the rest of her life.

I am always known to be self-motivating, and can motivate people to progress in their life if I want to make an effort to. However, if a person refuses to admit that there is a problem(s), be willing to do whatever changes necessary to correct the situation and refuses to listen, I will pass. I strongly believe there is no way to help a person who is not willing to help themselves and lying to yourself is the worst thing you can do to yourself.

The American and Japan TV assaulting the younger generation did plenty of damage. My sister grew up with the idea that she is to be respected, and her ego was strong.
It didn't help with my parents who went soft on her, going by the my-child-is-my-friend approach imported wholesale from American culture.

I didn't buy it. My youngest sister is behaving like a brainless brat who didn't know what adulthood means by the age of 20. I told her that because her hearing is impaired in one of her ears, she has to swallow her pride and ask people to repeat themselves if she cannot catch our words. But due to her proud nature, instead of doing so, she will end up misunderstanding the entire conversation. She turned defensive and ended up offending everyone who is trying to help her. It didn't help with her poor general knowledge and bad decision making skills. She cannot hold a conversation at a reasonable level, looking like a complete fool in my eyes.

Of course she will hate me every time when I grilled her thoroughly after getting my statements verified with referees in the conversation. Her loose mouth will get her into trouble sooner or later, and her attitude it really terrible. What makes it worse is that she demands respect for who knows what.

I am so sorry. I am not a person who will give you respect because you demand it. You have to earn it. Last week, we had a big row when she tried avoid the question of what she is doing, what had she done so far and what is her plan for the future. It went on to a point where she complained that I have never respected her before. She accused me of bullying her and never thought about her feelings.

So I shot back at her.

Respect ? Yes I can respect you. But over what? What do you have that I can respect you for ? Can you name something ? Anything at all?

I knew she can't give me an answer. Because she has nothing to be proud of. No hard work, no achievements, no goals in life. In short, her ego was built on rapidly cooling hot air. It's sinking faster than the Titanic.

Then I went on saying that I shoot down her so-called ideals because they were based on faulty logic, and cannot be justified. Her limited general knowledge gives her a narrow view of situations and the whole big picture is completely lost. If an ideal make sense, and the merits out weighs the cost, I will never have to shoot them down.

If you are going to make a bad decision that will affect me, I will overwrite the decision no matter what it takes. My eldest sister is a complete contrast to my youngest. I do make bad calls, and I am very happy that my eldest sister can point them out to me.

Complaining that people is bullying you is childish. If you can stand your ground and fight with you abilities, you will realise that there is no such thing as bullying. It's your inability that is the cause of your problem. This fact doesn't change from childhood to adulthood. If I were to impose bullying tactics, she would have already been forced into a corner, broken.

That's the same thing with feelings. She kept saying that no one understands her and no one cares about her feelings. Come on, this is not a soap drama. This is real life. Nobody, saved for your significant other will bother about how you feel. Complaining that the whole world wronged you, misunderstood you and don't care about you is so childish. The world doesn't owe you a living, blaming others for your own failures is so damn lame and the failure to realise that your very existence is your chance to make good of your own life is so silly.

Having watched too much dramas, she started saying that this is her own life and she makes the decisions. Again, I shot back at her. Not friendly words, and certainly very bitter medicine. Yes she can make your own decisions, so long she can make good decisions on her own. But face it, she can't. Look at the state of her life. I call it a failure. Those guys screaming freedom in US at the age of 18 are living on their own outside their family. Here she is in a typical Asian family shouting freedom when she didn't have the means to. What a corny joke. Can't she see the difference?

Does she have a plan for her own future? A 1 year plan? 5 years? 10 years? Or do I have to tell her my predictions? It's seldom wrong, and it hits home so many times. At the rate she goes, she probably makes some terrible irreversible mistake that will ruin her life forever. I told her to forget bio-tech. It's not for her. The industry is not ready. The government makes it sounds too good to be true. Unlike the IT industy promoted previously, this is a highly specialised industry. Every firm can use an IT department but there is no use for a bio-tech department.

This means that good jobs are highly prized and hard to get. An ITE cert will not cut it. She is not degree material and she didn't even manage to get into a diploma programme of the field. And now, even a degree holder struggles not to be a salesman for some test kit. I don't see a future. I see a grim reality. I told her to switch to engineering instead but she refused. Now she had rotted for the 3rd month at home, refusing to look for work or studies.

She claimed she is under depression and thus, didn't look for jobs so far. But she didn't fit the description of a person under depression. She isn't certified to be a patient thus not under any treatment for it. From the looks of things, she is just slacking with a lousy excuse. I have seen how depressed people looked like, and this is certainly not.

How bad is bad? How about not putting effort to look for jobs at all? For 3 whole months, no resume was ever sent. And her last updated resume was 1 month old on a CDROM. She didn't know how and didn't want to be told how to. Sure, do let me know when ego can be eaten to fill my stomach. Atrocious. Appalling.

She is officially an embarrassment to me now. Every time someone asks me about my 2 sisters, I have nothing good to say about my youngest sister. Her poor working attitude, lack of commitment, interest and drive is seriously horrible. She can't do her chores nor a job without screwing things up. Give her a chance for more rewards and she will just waste it all. When things are given to her, she takes it as a entitlement and start being a ingrate not too soon after.

Even if there is a job opening, I will not bother to let her know about it. She probably screws it up and tarnish my reputation. My friends offered to teach her about real estate, but she let it slide. My other friends' siblings of the same age also didn't make a good start, but they made listened and went on to the right direction.

I tried talking to my parents many times over the years. But they paid only lip service. But hey, I have nothing to lose. Why should I even bother? Why am I more worried than my youngest sister or my parents? I told my parents that if I am going to bring her back to her senses, I will be taking over their role as her parents. And if that is to happen, they are not to interfere any further. Every time I says this, they will come up with more sorry excuses and leave the conversations. I do not understand why I must put in so much effort for negative returns.

Hey, I got better things to do than to waste my time on a useless loser. So there. Don't blame me. Ever. And yes. I blame the TV and lousy parenting for doing the damage to my sister.