"Nowadays people look at the kind of car we drive, the type of house we live in, the uni we get our degree from ah! If you want to make it, you must act as if you have already made it!"
--Singapore Dreaming

Technique-wise, it lacked the woos and ahhs of movies that were running simultaneously in other cinemas. Story-wise, it was flat. The entire movie was rather draggy, as though the movie makers were desperately trying to stretch it long enough to term it a 'movie'. I can't blame it actually, given the basic fact that most local productions suffer from the lack of funds. The songs are nice.

However, it does provide plenty of food for thought.

"We are different. You gave up your dream to do something you do not like for money. I am doing something I do not like to earn money for my dream."
--A conversation between an insurance salesman who wanted to be a musician where he was young, and a girl selling beer who wants to be a fashion designer

Then again, Singapore is a realistic place. If your boss asks you to go back and work, you have to, even if you are in the middle of your father's funeral, even if all you have to do is photocopy papers and brew coffee, even if you are pregnant with a child. No work, no money. Can't help.

After the son graduated from university, his parents pinned their hopes on him, hoping he would get a good job that paid him big bucks, hoping he would buy a nice condominum for the family to live in, hoping he would bring home money and provide for the family.

I foresee that will happen to me in the future. That will mean work.

If work, then, my dream how? But if dream, then, my family how?

******

I had a big surprise when i opened up my mailbox just moments ago.

"By now you would have received an email providing details to your new
vjc.sg account. It is essentially an integrated gmail + calendaring +
instant messaging application which allows the college to maintain
links with you after your 2 years in VJC. ie the account remains with
you for life."

Then as I read more, even a bigger surprise.

"Please note that the email alias 05s44@vjc.sg contains all 05s44
vjc.sg addresses and is now available for use. 05S44 is the only JC2
class allocated with this service (for now). We hope you can make use
of this meaningfully and keep in contact with one another and the
college as you advance in your education and career in life."

No wonder my friend was asking me about this. I now, too, wonder how the hell they managed to ink such a deal with Gmail. Is that a vjc thingy or a moe thingy?

EDIT

This is seriously getting very interesting. This has been long since I got this excited over something.






END OF EDIT

D E E O B4. fuck.
I thought I better do this, or someone will turn up in the dead of the night, rip my door apart, storm into my bedroom, and with his deadly hands, send me to hell, making me his 1 millionth victim or something.

Well, I downloaded the windows media player skins placed on the tagboard, and here they are:


I wonder what he calls it the "thewestdoor" skin. Because I have used a duck for my MSN display picture before? Better don't question him. I want to live to 100years old with a wife and kids.


This is even more puzzling. Why is it called the gnome skin when it has nothing in common with GNOME? Hmm..

Tomorrow I will be returning to school to get back my results. I can't help but feel nervous.

EDIT

Someone wrote into the papers today regarding him incurring high IDD charges because he called back the +86 number. So I guess its true after all.

I wonder what those people can benefit from this.

END OF EDIT

Have anyone of you received a phone call, which hung up before you could react to it, leaving you staring at a missed call with a unusually long chain of numbers starting with +86?

I have received one before, near midnight. Because I am a shy person by nature, I did not call back. That also reminded me of my friend who received it when I was studying with him in the library weeks earlier.

Today, a good friend of mine sent me this:
If u receive miss call starting with +861, DO NOT CALL BACK! Its a latest spam going on which u'll incur high IDD charges unknowingly.

Curious to know if its true or not, I googled around the net, and the general idea is that it may be a scam, perhaps not so much about the high IDD charges part, more about fake lottery. But there are people (businessmen who are worried that the miss call belonged to their clients from China) who called back to find themselves talking to a answering machine.

I decided to do a casual search on the number that phoned me. A check with my favourite website revealed that +86 refers to a call coming from China, and the next 3 digits, 1xx, refers to the service company. The following three digits refers to the area code. Unfortunately my search ends there because I could not find the area code that correspond to the one in my phone.

Googling the number directly also returned nothing. And so my search ended there. It doesn't really matter actually.

Not exactly a big issue, but just be a little careful.

Anyway because of the addictive nature of the site I went on to read up on telephone lines, then on ISDN, then DSL, then ADSL, then coaxial cables, twisted pair cables, Wi-Fi and Wi-MAX. Haha you try to link them together.

And yes! MY ZEN MICRO IS REPAIRED!

Repairing of the earphone jack took a painfully long time because I don't have a soldering iron small enough to solder one of the joints in between the jack itself and the usb port just millimetres away. Today my father came home with one that has a tip small enough.

It cost 5bucks, but I guess this is more worth it compared to the 139bucks it cost to send it for repairs. They do not solder it back you see, they change the entire board. -.-''

I was bored, so I read my blog entries I typed two years back, when I took my Sec4 prelims. I did not do well then, scoring 9points, with B3s for all my sciences.

Now a similar situation is happening, except this time round it is much, much, much worse. I can't even get a D for either of my sciences. -.-''

I do note that my A'Levels is quite good so far, with a Band 1 for Project Work, and a hint from my computing teacher that I did well for coursework 3. The only $%^& thing is my B3 for Higher Chinese. I hope I can repeat my "feat" two years back.

"So a l1r5 of 9 should be able to get me into tj...though i havent decide yet...i haf frens who are persuading me to go vj...But wif my sci liddat, if i go vj i will be slaughtered..."

I should have known better.

I'm reading alot more after prelims than I do before prelims. Haha.

For the past 4 days, I have been reading up on the Linux filesystem, the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, from Wikipedia and a 52-page PDF document taken from a website. I was really opening up a can on worms, for the more I read, the more I encounter terms that I do not understand.

And while I am making some headway understanding how Linux works, I am beginning to get confused over how Windows work. -.-'' Or maybe I'm just comparing an apple to an orange.

I also read up Wikipedia on how the Graphics User Interface works, having confused over the terms like "X Window System" and "GNOME". Now that I read it, I realise that GUI is not a simple case of just "graphifying" all the commands sent to the computer. A windowing system makes everything appear as windows on screens, while a separate windowing manager decides all the colouring, the font, the size, and even the iconifying of windows when one presses ALT-F4.

And so, a windowing system like X + a windowing manager like Metacity + text editor, calculator, calendar, games etc = a desktop environment like GNOME.

Also, there seems to be remote access in windowing systems, which I cannot fully comprehend yet.

Finally after months of procrastination, I bought a Bluetooth adaptor! For connecting my X680 to my computer. It worked well with my Windows XP, but not with Linux. The gnome opex server refuses to start. =(

On a sidenote, I met my sec 3/4 geography teacher while going home yesterday! Quite a surprise that she still remembered me and my name. She called out to me before I realise she was there. Apparently she had just went for some exhibition on Saudi Arabia culture. Showed me some phtotos she took there, mostly artifacts done by artists there, and stuffed a bunch of souvenirs in my hands, even though those were for her students. "Ex-student also can la!" so says her.

I have been thinking of having a blog where editing and publishing can be done on the same page, or at least no needing to go through so many pages. I seemed to have found a solution in Mediawiki, the engine that powers all the wiki sites. Its kind of tedious, however, given that I have forgotten all the PHP and mysql that had once propelled me to an A for computing (Heh.).

Sometimes I wonder why I give myself so much trouble, when I can be content living with Windows and Blogger and MSN.

To the tune of "All Rise", there is "All Rice"!

U always say that u don’t like what I cook
U never touch my curry or my soup
I must confess that I just about had enuf
From this day on, got to put this to a stop

Baby I swear I know what u do
U feed the dog with the food I give u
And if u thot u had me fooled
I’m telling u now, this is what I’m gonna do (so listen)

CHORUS
One, no vegetable, no meat
Two, from now, u only eat
All Rice
Plain Rice

Three for the dog u’ve been feeding
U eat his dinner, no kidding
That’s right That’s right

One, no vegetable, no meat
Two, from now, u only eat
All Rice White Rice

Three for the dog u’ve been feeding
U eat his dinner, no kidding
That’s right (let me tell u now)
That’s right (I rest my case)!

Also, to popular demand (haha actually only one person), new song from Jay's album 依然范特西:

小朋友你是否有很多顽抗
为什么别人在那看漫画
我却在学画画
对这钢琴说话别人在玩游戏
我却在躲在家背abc
我说我要一架大大的飞机
我却得到一只旧旧螺旋机
为什么要听妈妈的话
长大后你就会开始懂得这段话

长大后我开始明白
为什么我跑得比别人快
飞得比别人高
将来大家看的都是我画的漫画
大家唱的都是我写的歌
妈妈的心她不让你看见
温暖的事都在她心里面
有空就得多摸摸她的手
把手牵着一起梦游

听妈妈的话别让她受伤
想快快长大才能保护她
美丽的白发幸福中发芽
天使的魔法温暖中慈祥

在你的未来音乐是你的王牌
那王牌谈的恋爱
而我不想把你教坏
还是听妈妈的话吧
晚年再恋爱吧
我知道你未来的路
干嘛比我更清楚

你因为太多学习的同学在这块写东写西
但我建议最好听妈妈我会用功读书
用功读书怎么会从我嘴巴说出
不想你输所以要叫你用功读书

妈妈挑给你的毛病你要好好的收着
因为不知道是我要告诉她我还留着
对了我会遇到我(周润发?)
所以你对跟同学炫耀赌神未来是你爸爸

我找不到你写的情书
你喜欢的要承认因为我会了解你会在操场上牵她
你会开始喜欢唱流行歌
因为张学友开始准备唱吻别

听妈妈的话别让她受伤
想快快长大才能保护她
美丽的白发幸福总发芽
天使的魔法温暖中慈祥

听妈妈的话别让她受伤
想快快长大才能保护她

长大后我开始明白为什么我
跑得比别人快飞得比别人高
将来大家看的都是我画的漫画
大家唱的都是我写的歌
妈妈的心她不让你看见
温暖的事都在她心里面
有空就得多摸摸她的手
把手牵着一起梦游

听妈妈的话别让她受伤
想快快长大才能保护她
美丽的白发幸福中发芽
天使的魔法温暖中慈祥

Its really a nice song actually, same style as 爷爷泡的茶. And yup, there is a important message behind the song.

I realised I have become a victim of technology.