the speed of light

My house's two year ADSL Broadband contract was up, and the hunt was on for the next plan. Given that the Optical Fibre Termination Point was recently hooked up to my house, the decision was made to switch to Fibre Broadband. After some dragging of feet due to rather expensive price plans, we subscribed to a 50Mbps plan from Singtel [not that it was cheap, more about that later].


Optical Network Terminal. Connects to the Termination Point and converts light signals to electrical signals and vice versa.


A new sexy black router.


Apparently there's a speed limit when using wireless, even though 802.11g has a theoretical speed of 54Mbps.


Shall stick to LAN cables when I am home.


Overseas speeds were at best decent. Sydney, Australia.


Hong Kong. Wtf is this?


USA.


Was expecting better from Seoul.


My new table which I bought in December, laptop, and my desktop with a freshly installed Windows 7!

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A Singtel 50Mbps fibre plan listed on the website cost $64.90 a month, plus a rental of the 2wire router at $5.35 a month, to a total of ~$70 a month, along with some other hidden charges like installation charges. One night while I was not at home, a Singtel salesman came house to house to promote their plans, and after the salesman said that there wouldn't be installation charges and the rental of the router would be free, my father took up the plan.

However, apparently the $64.90 a month "did not include GST", therefore after GST was added in, the cost came up to ~$70 again. After I reached home and pointed out that the $64.90 on the website actually included GST, my father approached the salesman again. In the end the salesman confessed that it was indeed a 'ploy'.

This is already not the first time I encountered this. Back in December when we bought my new table and the double decker bed, my mother also bargained with the shop, only to be given a 'discounted' price that 'excluded GST'.

Haha I guess its the art of selling things. But at least there was really no installation charges, and I'm enjoying my table.

a short breather

Past few days had been chaotic with deadlines for my software engineering assignment and physics lab report both due today. Now that I have done both I take a short breather before I continue to work on my pile of tutorial..later.

This year's Chinese New Year was my most 'ordinary' one yet. Since my uncle passed away, my entire aunt's family, which includes three cousins and their families, are not celebrating this year, and so the only house I have visited so far was of another aunt's at Sengkang. The two cartons of drinks still sit pretty much untouched on my TV cabinet, where the only consumers of those drinks will probably be my brother and me. Coupled with the fact that I spent Saturday and Sunday in school, I hardly felt any CNY spirit.

Haix.

Well things are not that bad actually; for I went to Chinatown a couple of weeks back for a walk, and it turned out to be not bad.

I went there twice, first night for the official lighting up of the place, and the following day for the actual walk.


Some entertainment before the opening.


It started raining later; was one of those days where the rain came on and off, but luckily it didn't last long.


电音三太子。 Probably the most amusing and successful integration of old and new haha.


Lion dance.


Lion dance 2.


Some robot which didn't do anything much.


People hanging around after the light-up ceremony, because there was this whole bunch of firecrackers that had not gone off yet.


Turned out the firecrackers were part of an ongoing performance on the stage, and it went off all of a sudden, so smoke was the only thing I could capture.


Lights are decent this year.


From the start I chose the wrong place to stand, causing me to miss out almost all the fireworks and the firecrackers. Oh well.


The VIP leaving.


Back on the second day for a walk around the stalls.


People mountain people sea.


People mountain people sea 2.


Groundnuts.


There were at least 4-5 stalls carrying this brand this year. Not quite what I want to see because they reduced the variety of things on sale there.


They were mostly selling the same thing: jellies from Taiwan.


But they were the ones making the most noises there, which lifted the overall atmosphere of the place. In this particular photo, the two tallest guys were screaming at passers-by to try their jellies for free. I tried a couple too hehe, not bad!


Singaporeans.


My walk took me to an Indian temple just nearby.


I didn't go in though, although many non-Indians there for strolls like me did.


A stage was set up for daily performances.


Some performance.


Sadly if one looked long enough, one would realise the majority of audience were the lonely elderly there to kill time.


Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. I didn't go in though.


I couldn't get good long shots because of the traffic light nearby.


When I went home I realised there was a little concert just opposite my house. Unfortunately because of my Chinatown trip I missed out most of it.

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Last but not least, my first Computer Graphics assignment!