When prata stall don't have any prata to sell

One of my favorite breakfast spot is the Banquet food court at Harbourfront centre. In order to fulfill my destiny of growing fat and die, I will often go for the roti prata stall to get my morning fix. It's not cheap, as the plain prata goes for $0.90 and egg prata for $1.80. Well I guess even at that kind of pricing, Banquet can't be bothered to make sure that they have prata to sell me.

Me : 1 egg 1 kor-song !
Indian guy : *Shaking head in response*
Me : Eh 1 egg 1 kor-song !
Indian guy : *Waves hand*
Me : Huh ? (looks around and found no prata dough around)
Indian guy : Teh Tarik ?
Me : *Walks off*

Well I guess the hike in food prices caused a massive increase in flour prices, resulting in the fact that $0.90 cannot buy me a plain prata anymore.

Career Murder : A dangerous precedence

Selfish motivations

A bloodless murder has been committed, and I felt no guilt

It appeared that in the process of protecting my own interest, I have played a major role in committing a career murder. By exposing Malar and providing evidence to prove that she is an incompetent lecturer, she had lost her lecturer role in both BIS1 and BIS2. This will effectively kill her chances of getting a job at APMI Kaplan again, or maybe even worse, the whole of Singapore. I will term this as the Malar Incident.

So what exactly is my interest in this matter? To put it simply, I want to get what I had paid for. I bought and paid for a quality university education and I will not settle for anything less. I am working very hard to pay for my degree and I expect APMI Kaplan and Murdoch to deliver their product.

I admit that I had practically driven and orchestrated the whole chain of events to achieve my goal, for I perceived Malar as a threat to my future. By doing so, I have surely burnt a lot of bridges and got myself highly ranked in Murdoch and APMI Kaplan's trouble maker list.

Burning desires

The road to success is paved with the skulls of my victims

My motivation for getting a quality degree is driven by my desire to advance my career to higher levels. I have allocated and spent time, money and effort investing in my university education in order to achieve this. It will be my own fault should I neglect my own parts in my studies but it is a different story if APMI Kaplan or Murdoch fouls up.

In this case, if I had allowed Malar to get away with this, the percussions will be great indeed. Despite paying full attention in every lecture, I will score badly in the examination and ruin my results. Murdoch will not compensate me for this. APMI Kaplan will not admit their negligence and will let things slide. The biggest loser will therefore be me if I choose to maintain my silence.

If my results suffered as a direct result of Malar’s incompetency, it will be reflected in my results forever. I will suffer great losses in the future financially and in my career. I cannot imagine the loss of opportunities that would have occurred, If the Malar Incident cause a delay in my graduation, I will not be able to qualify for a higher pay bracket which I am waiting for. Will I be able to sue Malar for liquidated damage for loss of future income ?

After giving Malar a few chances to redeem herself, all Malar did was to manage to squander every bit of faith and patience that I have. I knew I had to do something to put a stop to her nonsense. Malar will be the biggest loser of all. I promised myself that. Malar should have considered herself lucky and thanks her lucky stars for I did not blow up and give her a good dressing down for her failures.

What you pay for is what you get

Hanging a goat's head and selling dog meat sucks

From my point of view, I will regard APMI Kaplan as an educational service provider, Murdoch BIS course as the product and Malar as the service delivery medium. My expectation is simple. APMI Kaplan works out the administrative stuff, Murdoch gives use quality material and Malar to add value to the subject.

Since I have paid for instructor-led lectures, I do expect something more than a walking acrobat reader. The lecturer should have a good grip of the subject, and able to answer my questions. Yes, I did encounter boring lecturers who could not impact their knowledge to me effectively due to teaching styles but all of them had the required knowledge to teach in the subject. With the exception of Malar, all the lecturers I had studied under so far knew what was needed to get me to understand the subject and pass my examinations. Unfortunately, Malar obviously failed to comprehend the subject, and did not sufficiently prepare for the lectures. There was no knowledge to impart and the corruption in her knowledge is so blindingly obvious.

The price that we pay

There is no right or wrong, it's a matter of perception.

However, this does come with a heavy price for everyone entangled in this mess. Removing a lecturer in the midst of a running course is a very drastic thing to do and should only be done when the class has no faith in the lecturer ability to perform the job. From trimester 1 and 2, I know very well that Murdoch had set a high standard for the BIS course and the sudden drop in standards really stands out like a sore thumb.Whether the results justified the means is really hard to tell at this point in time, but somebody have to do the dirty job and bring out the trash right?

The Aftermath

Blowing things up is easy, cleaning up is hard

After a month since trimester 3 commenced, it has been a hell of a ride for the Software Architecture module. On 9th June, good news was delivered in the afternoon when Carol announced in the latest BIS newsletter that Malar had been replaced by Dr Loo for the subject. The dark shroud that hanged over our cohort had been lifted and we were happy that APMI Kaplan and Murdoch had acted promptly and gave us the best outcome possible in the Malar Incident.

I believe the Malar Incident should have caused plenty of unhappiness between Murdoch and APMI Kaplan. It's quite unbelievable that a seemingly experienced lecturer could have caused so many problems, but it will be useless to point fingers now. On the positive side, APMI Kaplan will hopefully start scrutinize their new lecturers closely from now on to prevent the Malar Incident from reoccurring.

Chronicle of events

Testing something new may cause complications beyond your wildest dream

• May 11 : Software Architecture lesson 1. Malar failed to cover topic 1.

• May 13 : Software Architecture lesson 2. Malar failed to cover topic 1 and 2. Course content becomes available over LMS, and it was discovered that Malar had not taught according to course content.
• May 19 : Complaint lodged against Malar for failing to teach according to course content. Mr Danny promptly got Malar to cover topic 1 and 2 in lesson 3.
• May 20 : Software Architecture lesson 3. Malar covered topic 1 and 2.
• June 3 : Software Architecture lesson 4. Malar failed to cover topic 3 and deviated from course content again.
• June 5 : Complaint lodged against Malar for outright incompetency in the subject.
• June 6 : Exchanged emails with Mr Danny to prove our case.
• June 9 : Malar has been replaced by Dr Loo.
• June 10: Lesson 5 is canceled as Dr Loo needs to prepare material.
  
  
• June 12 : Malar was dropped from BIS2 as well.
  

Not attending classes is actually better

[Edited on 5th June 2008, 11pm for clarity]

Never in my life, I felt like killing somebody really badly

On the topic of impressive lecturers, there is another lecturer who have left a deep impression on me. Never in my life do I have to describe a lecturer as grossly incompetent in the subject that she is teaching us, ICT306 Software Architecture.

After 4 lessons with Malar, I can only say that it has been a painful waste of time attending her lessons so far. On average, it cost me $180 per lesson and that means I have already wasted $720 on 4 sub-standard lectures. That is excluding personal expenses such as transport and meals. Multiply that with the number of students attending her classes and that should give you an idea how much we should sue her for liquidated damage.

Of course I agree that these are very dreadful things to say but I can justify my position on this by going through what happened during her first 4 lectures.

Lesson 1 and 2

• Did not teach topic 1 or 2 of the course material, instead Malar taught the basics of programming using java. Despite that the subject is suppose to be Software Architecture, there is no hint that what she taught had any resemblance to the subject.
  
  
• Did not install IDE or Java SDK, instead Malar opted to use notepad and manually compile in her head with terrible results, rejecting our offer to use one of our properly configured personnel laptop. She is no star material and her codes are not compilable.
  
  
• Did not have the official lecture slides, and did not inform us that she was teaching non-related material. I was very angry when I downloaded the official lecture notes and discovered that she had taught unrelated material to us, all because that did not perform due diligence in preparing for the lecture before hand, deceived us and did not even bother to apologise for her blunder !
  

Lesson 3

• I had logged a complaint to Murdoch regarding lesson 1 and 2 and to run 2 more lessons so that we can cover topic 1 and 2 with the course material. However, Malar went through topic 1 and 2 instead of topic 1 according to the course schedule as promised by Murdoch. We had to endure and pay for her mistake by taking 2 topics in 1 lesson. Even so, we are still 1 lesson behind official schedule.
  
  
• Still refused to install IDE or Java SDK, instead she continue to use notepad. She played smart and no longer used her own codes. Instead, she used examples from the text book.
  

Lesson 4

• Went through topic 3 instead of topic 4 according to the original course schedule. We are still 1 lesson behind the initial schedule and there is no word from APMI Kaplan on how we should be compensated for the loss of 1 lesson and the impact on our assignments and examination.
  
  
• The IDE or Java SDK are still MIA, and we now understand that notepad is her best friend. Obviously, an IDE or Java SDK is impossible to be installed on her computer, instead she used her all-time favorite notepad and manually compile in her head with "Titanic" results.

Notepad is Malar's favorite Java code editor despite the absence of colour highlighting, ability to compile codes and proper formatting of text. Our poor eyes suffered in silence,

After 4 weeks from the start of the trimester, I found it difficult to understand why she continued to use notepad and not an IDE because she refused to put in effort to install the IDE and Java SDK on her computer before the lesson. Obviously, she got a problem preparing for her lessons. Why is this a big deal ? Since you cannot execute the Java programs from notepad, there is no way to find out if her codes work right away. Instead, we had to replicate her codes on our personal laptops to play detective (her codes usually fails to compile 1/2 the time). When she opens up files containing coding examples from the textbook, due to notepad's less than perfect handling of line breaks, we will just see a mess of codes on the screens due to misalignment.

Lesson 4 was also the most memorable lesson of all. We spotted 6 errors in her lecture with the first hour of her lecture ! Her lack of knowledge in Java really shows all too clearly. I can tell that she had a weak foundation in both the theory and programming aspect of Java, and she is only reading from the slides like what the acrobat reader does without understanding the material. Because of this, not only that she is unable to add value to the lectures, she actually REDUCES value to the lecture due to her errors !!! This is outrageous and horrible !!!

So during the first hour of lesson 4, I made a record of her mistakes in her lecture.

Giving Malar a chance to redeem her mistakes in lecture 1 and 2 proved to be very costly indeed. Instead of losing 2 lectures, we have increased our losses and lost a grand total of 4 lectures, which is 40% of the time that was allocated to the subject.

Mistake 1 :

Malar : Java stores a short integer using 4-bits
Me : (After googling) It's 16 bits.
Proof = Wikipedia - Integer.

Mistake 2 :

Malar : What is objects ? It is nothing but variables in C !
Me : Variables ??? It's more like a structure !
Proof = The relationship between C Structures and Java Classes

Mistake 3 :

Code snipplet :

public String getCourseName() <-- What is this method expecting ? OMFG !?!
{
return courseName;
}

Malar : This method is expecting an argument. What is it?
T : (stunned look) None ?
Malar : Oh oh... (points to another method with a valid argument)
Proof = This is a no-brainer. No proof provided

Mistake 4 :

Malar : A class can have many constructor, with different names, and does not have be the same as the class name.
Me & T : There can be many constructors, but the names must be the same as the class name and the input arguments can vary. It's call overloading.
Proof = Java Constructors

Mistake 5 :

Malar : Class, compile this and tell me the result. (Using an abstract class example)
T : (Did not bother to type out the codes) You cannot do that. It's an abstract class. Nothing is defined and there is no main function.
Malar : Oh ...
Proof = Abstract class | Interface

Mistake 6 :

Me : (Points to slide 37 of topic 3, UML diagram) Why is there 2 arrows joining 2 objects in an UML diagram ? There should only be one relationship between 2 objects !
Malar : There is no rule saying that there cannot be more than 1 arrow joining 2 objects.
Me : WTF ?? 2 objects should only be associated with 1 relationship ! The arrow is actually an annotation, which is explained on the next slide (slide 38). Clearly, she never read the material.

On top of this, she made a lousy and confusing example which actually doesn't make any sense to show us that Java assigns a NULL value to a integer when a variable is declared. She simply displayed the output of a method twice and happily claimed that that it shows that a NULL value has been assigned.

Her explanation for inheritance in classes was made ... without the use of the keyword, inheritance. This is in line with her style of explaining the creation of instances of objects without using the keyword, instances (it was also explained wrongly anyway).

After the first half of the lesson, after our 1/2 time break, she did not make any more mistakes because she stopped trying to "add value" to the lesson. That is probably because of the way that T and I have questioned her grip on the subject. Instead read from the textbook and pseudo codes instead. Pseudo codes is not covered in topic 3, and I was wondering if she was teaching unrelated things to us again.

The only question in 2007 examination paper asking for Java codes is Question 2(b), which is worth a godly 5 marks ! Distinction question !

And guess what? Not only there is no pseudo codes in the past year examinations, there is no coding requirement in the papers at all !!! It's pure theory !!! Malar had been teaching the subject as if it is a programming subject, but it's a theory subject. I can tell you, whatever she had taught us is of no relevant to the examinations !!!!!!!!!!!! Unless you tell me that the 4 sample past year examination papers available the school website is a joke, and 2008's paper will be totally revamped, we are dead meat. We had been chasing after the wrong things from day 1 !!!!!! I knew it when I find very little emphasis on software architecture in her lectures.

For the non-IT people out there, imagine this .... it's like teaching us how to DRIVE A CAR when the subject is "Singapore's transport system architecture" using a driving textbook.

After 4 lessons of learning to drive a car, then I realised that not only most of the lectures taken were irrelevant. I got no freaking idea what the architecture is about ! Then the driving textbook is suppose to be used to show the DRIVING RULES in Singapore, not to teach us how to drive !

Then the final examinations is not a practical driving test. It's an advance theory examination !!!

At this rate, BIS1 is going to fail ICT306 Software Architecture !!!
The whole subject had been taught wrongly !!!
The focus is wrong from the beginning !!!
This is not a Java programming subject !!!
This is a pure theory subject !!!

By the way, can you imagine a student being able to spot errors from a lecturer? Isn't it suppose to be the other way round? Is she even qualified to teach us? If a lecturer is unable to add value, and actually reduces value, why even bother to attend her lessons? It will only taint our knowledge on the subject ! Did she even read what is supposed to be covered in the exams? Why is she spending so much time on programming when it's a theory subject ? She did not prepare her lectures. She do not know the topic. She taught the wrong things. She misleaded us.

I regret to say this, but to be frank, i am seriously casting doubts of Malar's credibility and ability. If this continues any longer, it's either BIS1 retake ICT306 Software Architecture or we will get terrible results because of Malar.

And to this date, because of Malar, we had to squeeze topic 1 and 2 into 1 lesson. And don't forget we are still 1 lesson behind schedule too. Murdoch and APMI Kaplan went silent on how to compensate us for this, be it scheduling of additional lessons or the dates of assignment submission and exams.

I have been writing this blog entry for 2 hours, and my blood is boiling hotter and hotter as I continue. For my own sake, I am stopping here and let the flames begin.

Edit: One of our fellow coursemate turned up more dirt on Malar from informatics website.

Vaithilingam Malarkodi

Academic credentials:
Qualification: Bachelor of Engineering (Telecom) - graduated in 1993, Bangalore University of India. Additional certification: - Diploma in Computer Applications, TAD Computer Point, India.

Working Experience: In the teaching line since 1996. Before joining ICS, w worked in secondary schools to teach computer applications. Currently teaching DCS and DIT maincontents. Unit leader for DIT 203, ADIT403 and ICT 108.

University of Bangalore, India

If this is really her, she is certainly not a degree grade lecturer. This is a massive downgrade from our dear Dr Loo. I cannot take this shit anymore. Seriously.

On the bright side, Carol has become our program manager. Now at APMI Kaplan, we have actually reached the end of the escalation process because there is no one else to go to if she does not respond to us. She was suppose to be the last person but let's hope things turn out well. With our history of conflicts and problems with APMI Kaplan, it will not long before we have to seek Carol's improvement before we start telling everyone we know that APMI Kaplan sucks.

Oh, probably after Carol saw the pictures of the "World Class Facilities" at YMCA in one of my recent blog articles, Carol arranged us to use their office's meeting room for Tuesday's lesson instead of dumping us at YMCA because of a shortage of classrooms.

I do feel a little guilty because the poor receptionist had to stay till 9pm because of us to do guard duty, but at least she got her boyfriend to help her kill time while we got Malar to entertain us.

Feel free to flame in the new forum

For 99% of the visitors here who didn't notice the new forum link at the top, I have created a new forum for all of you to use.

So feel free to trash out the stuff buried in your heart !

http://badguyswin.mybb3.org

Vesak day email and World Class Facilities at YMCA

On Monday, taking advantage of the Vesak day holiday, I wrote an email to our Danny Toohey in the wee hours of Monday morning to try to put an end to the nonsense to ICT306 Software Architecture. I knew I was going to write to a person whose native language is English. Thus I tried very hard to squeeze as much mileage as I can from my 'O' level English certificate.

And so here is the naked and uncensored content of my message to Mr Danny

Dear Sir,

I will like to bring a matter of great importance to your attention regarding our first 2 sessions for ICT306 Software Architectures.
According to our study guide, we are suppose to cover topic 1 in session 1 and topic 2 in session 2.

However, our first 2 sessions on May 11 and May 13 covered none of the material in the 2 topics. We noted that our lecturer did not use the lecture material on both sessions, prompting the BIS1 class to wonder if the lecturer had access to the study material.

On May 13 night, the study material was made available to the students and we found that what the lecturer had covered were not as what is detailed in the topic 1 and 2 slides. Instead of covering the course info & introduction and client-server architecture, we were given what is best described as a beginner's programming class using Java. I am very sure that after going through 2 trimesters of C and C++ programming, we do not need to be instructed on what is an variable or function.

This is a grave concern as this means that we have been fooled into wasting time to attend 2 sessions which were essentially worthless. That leaves us with less time to actually cover the topics needed for this subject. We are now behind schedule by 2 sessions and we will like to know how are we suppose to be compensate for this.

Right now, we have many questions in our mind that we will like someone to answer.
- Is there going to be 2 make up sessions? Is examinations going to be delayed by 2 weeks?
- Why is the lecturer not given the relevant teaching materials? How can classes start without the relevant materials?
- How come we are not informed about this? Trying to cover things up this way certainly is an insult to me, personally. We are not adolescents, but working adults, so please respect that.

I find this outrageous and very unfair to us. We are full paying students paying with our own money for what APMI Kaplan promised us during orientation as "World Class Education Experience". Unfortunately, for every trimester, things just get worse along the way, to the extend that even the lecture content becomes virtually non-existence to us. If the lecturer starts inventing their own material without telling us that there is no relevance to our examinations, and without our acknowledgment, what is the point of paying and going for classes? This is a serious breach of integrity and trust. We are not trying to be difficult but this clearly sub-standard.

Our next class is on May 20. If the situation does not improve, we will boycott this subject outright since there is no value in attending classes. We have also little faith in the lecturer to deliver the subject material properly after realising that we have been hood-winked.

Please do something about this and give us a satisfactory outcome on this matter.

In protest,

Foong Jia Khang
BIS1

So, the email pretty summed up everything I had to say regarding the matter. To Mr Danny's credit, he reverted back at 10am promising us that he would be looking into it. Obviously, he didn't read my previous email to him which contained the link to Singapore National Holidays. He put in effort to try to ring up everyone in Kaplan but got no response because it's Vesak day here.

In the end, our next lesson on Tuesday was Topic 1 and Topic 2 at YMCA. APMI Kaplan ran out of space and decided to dump us there for the whole week. We heard that they had dumped diploma course students from rumors but never did we imagine that we will get the same treatment. The YMCA building is so sad that even MacDonalds have to close their doors because their business sucks so bad, hence we didn't have high hopes for the facilities there.

At least BIS2 got sent to Meridian Hotel...do APMI Kaplan hate BIS1 so much that they rather save money and dump us at YMCA?

Warning, the pictures taken below sucks because of my sad O2 Atom's lousy built-in camera. I am also too lazy to photoshop them before posting.

Behold the World Class Facilities experience at YMCA !

The classroom didn't come with a projector screen. We have tried to display the projector image on the white board but the resulting glare is so bad that I could feel my migraine coming. I got pissed off and disrupted the lesson until the problem was resolved.

Our AV equipment expert Hui Ming rotated the projector to the right and used the wall as the projector screen. At least my head will not hurt now.

The World Class Facilities at YMCA also came with world class markers. The blue marker was so faint that it was as good as invisible ink and the red marker squeaked so loudly that it hurts my ear drums.

It really brought a sense of deja-vu to me when I first saw the class furniture. These are the same tables and chairs that I had last used during my secondary school days.

We found several test papers below the desks. We got a scholar here doing 4/30 for English. Fantastic, the marker must have finished marking the paper in 1 minute flat.

And there is Internet access... prepaid ... you have to pay the hotel to use their internet facilities. There is also insufficient power points should we all bring our notebooks.

That's all for now, let's see what will happen in BIS1 never ending saga of screw-ups. Some of the BIS1 guys already felt desolated and rejected from the way that we were handled. Our program manager Juiliana had left, making her the 2nd program manager to leave our cursed cohort to our doom. I guess that we are doomed to get a change of program manager every trimester because we are so hard to please.

Born prematurely, dead on arrival

Sometimes, I really hope I can stop complaining about my degree course but with the regular disruptions in our promised "world-class education experience", my blog has been filled with bad one experience after another.

Our 3rd trimester started just after a week's break from the trimester 2's examinations. All seems well, except for one major problem with subject, ICT306 Software Architecture. The first half of the first lesson is the typical get-a-feel session ripped right off the study guide as expected. However, when the second half of the first lesson resumed after the break, things started to make a turn for the worse.

The lecturer for the subject is Malar, and she didn't prepare the slides before coming to class. She tried to access the Murdoch's website to retrieve the slides but the APMI Kaplan's Wifi connection did not cooperate with the PC in the classroom. That was strange as we were not having any problems with the Wifi connection on the day. We tried logging into Murdoch's website on our laptops but the material was not available yet for all the subjects.

This is strange as the other 2 subjects that we had went through earlier in the week were instructed with lecture slides despite that they were not available on Murdoch's website. I can only conclude that the local lecturers involved were given the slides before hand, with the exception of Malar.

The moment she started using the marker to teach us the basics of programming in Java, I knew this is going to be a total waste of time. She went through extremely basic stuff that should have been taught to a layman rather than IT graduates who had just undergo 2 trimesters of intense C and C++ programming.

I was expecting a lesson structure with a description of software architecture, not a basic lesson in programming using Java ! It is suppose to be hard, but instead, it was so easy that it actually felt ridiculous. Towards the end of the day, it dawn on me that Malar actually had nothing to teach us, and she was probably wasting our time by filling in with semi-related nonsense. So in the end, I felt that I had just wasted a Sunday morning learning about things that shouldn't even be taught to us. If I knew things were to turn out this way, I would have rather hug my pillow and pig it out at home. What a waste of time !

The next lesson was 2 days after on Tuesday. Things didn't improved. Malar still didn't have any slides and she went on wasting our time on basic programming stuff. I gave up listening to her nonsense and spent the whole night surfing the internet. I didn't expect to learn what is a variable or how to return result from methods, I was expecting to learn the difference between C/C++ and Java. She could have just tell us the difference and get it over with.

She couldn't get the Java SDK and a Java code editor installed on the PC in the classroom due to the lack of administrator rights. Instead of accepting our offer to loan her one of our personal laptop with the properly installed software, she spurred our offer and proceeded to code in notepad, with the compulsory syntax errors as part of the education package. This is needless and a waste of our time.

Then Malar stunned me with her explanation of objects in Java. For the Java coders out there, the code snippet below should be familiar. She was using a similar example for her explanation.

//Defining class Something
class Something
{
//A string named as variable1
String variable1;

//assign a value to variable1
variable1="Hello";
}

//creating a variable with type object, with a reference to
//a new instance of the Something object
Something object1=new Something();
Something object2=new Something();

//access the content of the objects
System.out.println(object1.variable1);
System.out.println(object2.variable1);

Instead of explaining the above statement correctly as I have commented above, she explained a piece of code without the use of the 2 key terms, object and instance! It didn't make any sense at all! My NYP lecturer back in my poly days drilled us until we understood what object and instance means, and without understanding the two key terms, it is impossible to learn what is Java all about.

Then she went on to describe wrongly how multiple instances of the object stores their variables separately and are accessible separately. The correct way to explain it is that each instance of the object has it's own memory space to store it's own variables inside it but guess what? She told the class that the Java is able to do this akin to an array in C! That's absurd! And of course, she explained the whole thing without the use of the key terms, object and instance.

Disgusted, I switched off for the remaining of the lesson, spending time to rip episodes of Bleach off Youtube instead. Not only the lesson had no lesson structure due to the lack of lecture slides, whatever she was doing was so basic that it could have been done in 30 minutes tops. Indeed, she ran out of things to crap about and class was terminated 30 minutes earlier.

The more I think about it, the angrier I was. I had this feeling that the 2 lessons were done without any lecture materials at all, and thus were conjured out of the air just to fill in the first 2 lessons until the lecture material are ready. I have learn nothing new at all, and thus the lesson is a complete waste of time. Later in the night, I went to Murdoch's website and found that the course material was now available.

My suspicion was confirmed when I went through lecture topic 1 and 2. The lecture slides and the lessons that we had went through were completely different. The lecture slides had much more than what was taught in the first 2 lessons. There wasn't any software architecture to be found, just plain old Java programming. In short, the course material was not ready and yet lessons was started without informing us about the problem! BIS1 are short changed yet again! Such dishonesty must not be tolerated!

I will be rallying for support from my fellow BIS1 course mates to confront APMI Kaplan on the matter. Each lesson cost $200 on average and I am not going to let them get away with wasting 2 of my lessons on rubbish. That's $400 !!! This is crucial as if there is no makeup lessons, we have to squeeze the actual course material into the remaining lessons, which is terribly unfair to us. If we factor in the amount we spent needlessly on transportation and food because of the useless lessons, APMI Kaplan had done a good job in wasting our time and money.

Screw it, just when we are just about to get over the examination schedule fiasco of trimester 2, another cock-up occurred right away to mess up everything. This promise of "world-class education experience" is anything but the opposite.

Oh by the way, we were notified today that our next week's classes were all relocated to YMCA instead of APMI Kaplan campus. It appears that APMI Kaplan didn't assign our classrooms before our lesson started. Perhaps we were just an after-thought all along. And if my future-telling skills do not fail me, the lessons at YMCA will be done without providing us with sufficient power points for our laptops and internet access. Over-sight and failure to learn from past mistakes is part of their culture.

Round 3 begins ...

Saved by a paperclip

On Thursday, the most expensive MP3player that I have ever bought refused to work as my mobile phone as well. Hmmph MP3 player working as a phone ? Yah, that's the O2 Atom I am using.

I broke 8 stylus because of my butter fingers

You see, on the 8th of August 2006 (that's a easy to remember date for the fellow patriots to remember right?), I was shopping for a mp3 player that can display a full playlist. However, none of the MIC Ipod clones could do that. My Nokia 6610 keypad was already malfunctioning, and I still have a burning desire to get another PDA after my old Palm III gave up the ghost 2 years ago.

PocketMusic is a clone of Winamp, my favorite MP3 player.

All the ingredients of the perfect storm were ready. So I purchased an O2 Atom, a PDA phone. As the term PDA phone suggest, it's a good PDA with lousy phone functions. I got Pocket Music installed and slapped a 2GB mini-SD card to get my 2GB MP3 player that can show a full playlist. Therefore, 8 August 2006 went down into my history books for the day that I spent the most $$$ on an impulse purchase.

Fast forward back to 8th May, the O2 Atom started to give me problems. The headphone jack was malfunctioning. It thought that a headphone was plugged in, so it could not take any calls without a hands-off kit.

I went around look for a shop which can get it fixed but none stocked replacement parts for the O2 Atom. That's what you get for buying a non-main stream phone. Getting desperate, I started to look for new PDA phones but I was trying very hard not to because I wanted to look at the upcoming G-phones first.

This is unrelated but I can't resist. Ta da !The annoying Microsoft Office 97 paper clip which is a classic example of bad UI design.

And so I went for the best cure all solution of all, performing a google search in hope of a solution. Well, I got what I wanted in 5 minutes. There is a post in a forum that pinpoints the problem to a stuck switch inside the earphone jack. By inserting a paper clip into the correct spot, the problem is resolved!

The morale of the story is ...

• Don't buy a non-main stream phone
• PDA phones is a PDA with phone functions, not a phone with PDA functions
• Google is your best friend
• And lastly, keep a paper clip around you always, you will never know when it can save the day !

The good news and the bad news

Lets start with the good news first

Trimester 2 results
My 2nd trimester results was released this afternoon, just 2 weeks after the exams. That's fast, and my results was surprising good. The hellish 2 weeks of preparation and 1 week of leave was worth it. But I will still stick with my plan to take 2 subjects per trimester. Now for the Brewserk celebration session .. heh

And the bad news...

Stupid Phone
My O2 Atom ear piece jack is not working properly. I can only take and make calls using the hands off kit, which is a lousy piece of shit. This phone has barely made it passed 1.5 years and it better not die before a decent G-phone is out in the market.

Big Fat Poison Arrows
Because that I have worked overtime this evening, I was also rewarded and assigned to tackle a problematic project with has a vendor who cannot commit resources and have to liaise with an infamous user. I hope that I will not be the 3rd casualty in my team to fail to get the project to work out properly.

And APMI Kaplan screws up yet again
We were told that the first lesson for Software Architecture will be on Sunday, but no time was set in the time table. It was only when one of my fellow course mate emailed our course coordinator, that we knew it was already scheduled on Sunday 2pm to 5pm. Then later in the evening, we were informed that it should be 10am to 1pm. The fact that the lecturer is from India made me uncomfortable too. It sounds like a cost cutting move and I made a promise to my course mates that I will walk out of class if the lecturer speaks in heavy cannot-be-understood-ed Indian accent. Let's wait and see.

The Myth of the 2 Wheelers

It's seems to be in our Singaporean culture that we always have to ask where do everyone else live on our tiny island and our mode of transport, at least once. It's like chatting up someone with the generic one liners like : "Have you eaten?" and "How's the weather?"

And when it's my turn to answer the question, I can tell that many people are surprised to hear that I have been cycling to the MRT station in shirt and pants for as long as I have worked. In fact, I have been cycling during my secondary and poly days too. There are a couple of factors which make it very appealing for me to do so ...

And so here is the obviously pro-bicycle Q & A !

Q : How much time do you save ?

A: Quite some.

1. Walking - 15 mins
2. Bus - 20 mins
3. Taxi - Don't have $$$ to try
4. Cycling - 5 mins

You see, it's not hard to make a choice on the mode of transport to get to the MRT station. The more time that I save on transportation, the more time I can pig, and hence the later I can stay awake in the wee hours. It's also very economical and environmentally friendly.

Q : Don't your shirt smells after all that physical activity ?

A: Actually no. I perspire less than walking and walking to the bus stop. How can this be ? Yes, the HDB block that I am living in, is located on a gentle slope. That means in the morning, I just have to glide down the slope to the flat road leading to the MRT station. It helps greatly when my bike is not the cheapo Carrefour or Giant sub $100 bikes. So the amount of physical activity from cycling is actually less than walking. It is also quite cool to cycle in the morning, so any perspiration will dry up quickly.

Q: You mean a cheapo bike cannot make it?

A: Many people didn't know the difference between the cheapo bikes and the more expensive bikes. For many, a cheapo bike is a no-frill MIC 2-wheelers which you get to rent in our parks. All bikes have wheels, so why pay more ? The obvious difference is that anything beyond $150 will give you forward suspension, and if you are willing to pay beyond $300, you will get an alloy frame, rather than a steel frame which weights a ton.

Q: Then what do I get for more than $300?

A: Depending on what you choose that is.

1. Sealed bottom bracket ball bearings
   This is a big draw. It convert most of your physical movement into actual movement, not lost to friction due to cheap sleeve bearings. The bicycle will also glide much longer too, saving a lot of physical work. The cheap sleeve bearings are also susceptible to wear and tear. On the average, I worn out 2 pairs of sleeve bearings a year before I see the light and change to sealed bearings.
   
   
2. Good wheels with ball bearings.
   Similar to the above, the bicycle glides longer without additional physical input.
   
   
3. Pedals with ball bearings.
   Yes there are all bearings too ! I personally like aluminum pedals for their better grip in wet conditions. Add point 1 to 3 together and you get a bicycle that goes a long way per pedal cycle.
   
   
4. Gear sets and gear shifters.
   All mountain bikes come with gear shifters. Unfortunately, not all are able to change gears properly. The better bikes come with gear shifters that will always change at 1 gear stop at a time, every time. You will appreciate this when riding on slopes.
   
   
5. Brakes that works.
   I had experience with cheapo bikes that didn't have proper working brakes right off the shelves, and I can assure you that's very dangerous. Cheapo bikes brakes do not grip evenly or hard enough on both sides of the wheel. Some braking pads are so bad that they will wear out in a matter of weeks. Speed without control is suicide and I will refuse to ride a bike without working brakes. My bike's 3 years old brake pads are still working well so far.
   
   
6. Rust resistance.
   The more expensive bikes do not rust, at least for most of the components. You just have to spray some WD40 and you are done. The junks that you see rusting at the MRT station are rusting because they are made of steel and not oiled.
   
   
7. Bicycle seat.
   For some reason, I couldn't pull off the bicycle seat completely even after loosening the bolts securing it. That's why it's not stolen yet...ha ha.
   
   
8. Suspensions.
   Sub $100 bikes come with none. $150 bikes comes with forward suspension. $250 will give you full suspension. So pay $250? No! Then idea of having suspension should be from a safety aspect. The forward suspension will be sufficient for you to keep your hands from flying off the handle bar. If you get a $250 bike with full suspension, it's very likely that every other part on the bike is crappy. It will also make the bike a natural giant magnetic target for bicycle thieves at your favorite MRT station.

Q: Then if I buy such an expensive bike, it will only get stolen! I know that [INSERT NAME]'s bike was stolen, and it was a cheap bike at that!

A: The value of the bicycle does not matter. The duration that it was left at the MRT station isn't either. It is how it is secured. I have never lost a bike before at the MRT station, even if i's overnight parking. I used a motorcycle lock and a heavy chain lock to secure both wheels to the body frame, which makes it hard for the typical opportunist bicycle thief to steal it. It will take heavy equipment to saw through the 2 locks, taking a long time and make a lot of noise.

My last $300 bike was lost after 3 years of use because my mom borrowed my bike and refused to use my locks. Instead, she happily ignore me and used a cheap and light $10 lock for her own convenient and lost the bicycle within a week. She came up with all sort of excuses such as conspiracy theories but refuses to acknowledge her error. My next bike cost over $500 and it is still in operation for the 4th year running now. Oh the locks cost slightly under a hundred bucks, making it more expensive than some of your cheapo MIC bikes.

Q: What did you buy? Can you show a picture of it?

A: I am not attaching a photo of my bike in case someone read this and target my bike. ROFL.

That's all folks. Hope this article will clear up the misconception on bicycles.

Ironman

I have just caught Iron Man on Friday night and it's certainly quite entertaining. A recommend watch for the Super Heroes type of movies, and I am not referring to the dump ass Super Heroes Movie.

As a show of goodwill, IBM passed 10 free tickets to Friday night's Iron Man movie to the infrastructure team earlier this week. It's sort of like a kickback for awarding them contracts and usually, the tickets will be distributed among the infrastructure team. So on Friday, we were expecting the ticket holder on our side to allocate us some tickets by the end of the day.

Strangely, for some odd ball reason, the ticket holder claimed that the tickets have already been given out despite that none of our team members received any. We smelt a rat but did not confront the ticket holder in order to preserve world peace. So for the guys who were dead bend on watching the movie, we had to consider alternative plans and explore further options.

All reasonably good seats at Vivo City were sold out, so we bought tickets for Tiong Bahru at Vivo City. Yes, the ticketing systems are interlinked for GV. You can buy tickets from any GV cinemas for any GV cinemas.

At the popcorn counter, I got a shock. A popcorn, a drink with a lousy toy goes for $9 bucks. That's robbery, so I didn't get any. It's too expensive ! I think I will smuggle my own next time I visit a GV cinema. And thus, GV's attempt to rip me off failed.

As for the movie, it has good dialogs and funny scenes, with a twisted sense of humor which kept the audience laughing. The CG is good and the characters are pretty well played. The only grief is the short battle scene between and the big fat grey robot and Iron Man at the end. I thought it was War Machine but there was no named given to it, so let's just call it the big grey fat robot for now.



For the 99% of the folks who don't read the comic, the light in the center of the armor is the power source. It's suppose to be a super high tech battery that keeps Iron Man alive, a job that was initially done with an acid battery. However, the playboy Tony Stark built the super high tech and powerful battery to replace the acid battery. I personally find this part insanely unbelievable. If the power source is powerful enough to power his Iron Man armor, it will be required that the power source generate 99.99999% pure power and almost no heat....or our super hero here will be fried and toasted. Ok forget the science.

This will have been seriously cool to see this in glorious Hollywood CG.

I was expecting to see the big ass Proton Cannon blasting the hell out of everything that moves but all Iron did was fire some micro missiles, precision machine gun and flies around. He got his uni-beam and strong punch from the Marvel Super Heroes line of games from Capcom though.

I want this !!! Kill someone !!!

Overall, this movie is justifiable to watch on the screens for $10 bucks. Not suitable for kids though due to the dark adult character of Iron Man.