Thursday, March 30, 2006

No update for now

Exams are coming up, and I've been cramming my mind with Microbiology and Neuroscience. There is no way I can offer you a post that is written without the distraction of the looming exams.

If I cannot offer a blog entry of proper standard, then I won't blog until I can.

Come back next week!

Sunday, March 26, 2006

How to study for Microbiology (and contribute at the same time)

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Suicide - think about it

In not-so-recent news, one student from TPJC and another from VJC topped themselves. Reactions on the blogosphere were mixed. Some refered to it, but refused to talk about the students' names, mode of death, their lives or anything. Some pretty linguistic acrobatics were used - the words 'death', 'suicide', 'funeral', 'jumped' and etc were never even used once in many of their posts.

On the other hand, other blogs provided some interesting information. They mentioned that those 2 suicidees (is there such a word?) never appeared as though they were going to kill themselves. They were rather popular people, it seems.

Many of the bloggers called suicide a selfish and irrational act. However, did they actually think about why people kill themselves? I bet not.

Statistics show that most suicidees have had mental illness. While I won't deny that mental illness can make a person make an illogical decision, we still have to look at 2 points: 1. Does mental illness make suicide a logical decision? 2. Teen suicidees do not fit the profile of the typical depressed or schizophrenic suicidee. What's with that?

1. Mental illness may be emotionally harmful, but there are many more mundane reasons why a diagnosis of mental illness may make suicide more attractive. For example, patients with mental illness are often unable to secure a good job, simply due to their medical history. In addition to having friends and family ostracise them, and the mounting psychatrist's bills, those factors can send a totally sane person to suicide. It's a logical decision to deem one's life worthless, if one's quality of life falls so drastically that the advantages of death are greater than the advantages of life.

2. There is limited evidence on whether the 2 abovementioned teenagers had a abnormal psychiatric history. There are also 2 teen suicides I heard of during my younger days, and there was no evidence of psychiatric history too. The following will be pure speculation.

I therefore guess that the typical teen suicidee in Singapore doesn't seem to have overt mental illness, as opposed to the typical suicide demographic of obviously depressed or otherwise ill people. So how does this tie in?

Minusing off those who commit suicide because of their inability to cope with extreme emotions, it seems that these teen suicidees might have logical reasons for topping themselves. There's no other explaination.

What are these so-called reasons?

Before I elaborate, I shall simplify things a little. For a logical decision of suicide to be made, some criteria must be fufilled:

1. The net advantages of death must exceed the net advantages of life.
2. These 'advantages' must be analysed comprehensively, not forgetting questions such as: "Will continued life be advantageous to one's existence after life?"
3. Each individual places different value on the various aspects of life. This is to be respected. e.g.: If a person values honour above all; when he is forced to commit dishonour or kill himself, killing himself would be a logical decision.

Possible grounds of suicide in teens:

Failing grades
Failing grades may seem to be a temporal setback at first glance, but it has great implications especially in Singapore. If one fails to make the grade, he will lose 1 year of his life having to repeat the year at the very least. In the worst case scenario, his ability to succeed in the workforce will be severely hampered, and life may end up beig a struggle to pay off one bill after another. In the extreme of cases, that may not be a life worth living.

For example, if I were to fail my exams this year, I would definitely consider exiting my life altogether, as life would turn pretty nasty. I would have to repeat the year, which brings enormous financial costs, in school fees, living expenses and loss of potential income. In addition, it would also mean that it is very likely that I might keep on failing and never get to graduate, ending up with a hefty loan to pay off without a job. It is also a burden for those who have invested their time and money in me. In that case, death would be relatively advantageous to life, therefore suicide would be logical.

Family problems
It may not necessarily be worth it for some to live through two decades of hell just to lead another 50 unhappy years.

Poor health
Physical incapability, financial incapability, burden, etc. It's obvious in many cases.

There are many grounds for reasonable suicide. Of course, that is if you're not religious.

So do any of you still feel the inability to empathise with those who have had to choose suicide?

What we need to do is to tip the balance such that those who are considering suicide get to see more advantages to living.

Befriend them. Talk to them. Don't leave them feeling that they're all alone. I for one can swear that having great friends in my secondary school days made a difference.

Don't be a fucking judgemental prick.

Help them whenever you can, you'll get a friend in return.

And if all else fails, understand that they probably had a good reason to top themselves. Most people don't kill themselves on impulse.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Doctors, evil. Gun owners, good.

Bozo found this online:

Kids these days

It's a little depressing when I think about it. When I was a younger, I followed rules, acted like a nice guy, didn't punk around, hardly skipped school and gave authority figures the respect they deserve.

Now kids act like loutish gangsters, talk loudly and rudely, skip school like it's cool to do so, and treat others condescendingly. And those who smoke, they smoke like they're proud of it.

From what I see around, no school is spared from such a decline of behaviour. Even despite my alma mater faring quite well in the behaviour department, I can see a significant change from my time.

Other schools are worse. Their students act like they own the world, the people on the world, the patents to every invention on the world, and the galaxy. They walk with an arrogant swagger that makes you want to bash their noses in.

Some of those arrogant pricks come from the ITE, and they talk like they're experts in everything. To be studying in ITE, one has to successfully fail several layers of exams, which really means that they do not have much academic ability, like it or not. To be honest, they gotta understand and accept that they will naturally be inferior when it comes to academic-type discussions.

Bah, I don't claim to be about sure about things that I don't know about. But what I know, I make sure I'm solid sure before I speak. If not, I pepper my statements with disclaimers.

My favourite buses are vandalised by students of Bishan Park Secondary School. The backs of the seats of buses on service 162 in particular. Sometimes I wish they'd put all these underperformers in one corner of Singapore, and let the rest of us live peacefully. But then that won't be ethical would it?

Kids who solicit for donations in public and insult you when you refuse. Those should have their heads chopped off, stuffed by a taxidermist and auctioned at Sotheby's. All profits will go the charity.

Why are kids behaving so badly these days? I dunno. But they had better treat me with respect, because I speak my mind when I feel insulted.

Idiot kids. They're everywhere.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Please whore your blog in the comments field

I've got nothing to read. I'd be glad to read your blog, no matter how crappy.

Please. I'm bored. Today I didn't get any school work done. It's a sunday.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

KC's Illustrated Microbiology and Immunology


Mechanism of antigenic shift in the influenza A virus


Location of the antigens on an E. coli bacterium


Cryptococcus - route of transmission


Clinical features of prion disease




Helminths


HIV - pathogenesis


Opsonisation

Hermitage Shanks

OK after almost 1 week of the 3 week study break, I feel like a hermit. Day in day out, hitting the books, surfing the net, hitting the notes, eating, blah.

Existing but not living. Stupid exams to clear.

It's not like I study 24/7, but simply, it's that there's nothing else I can do except stay at home and do whatever people do when they stay at home. Play Halo. Listen to Smashing Pumpkins and the Arctic Monkeys for the 20th time. Tie up all the cables behind the computer.

On one hand I know it'll be healthier for my mind to meet up with my friends or something. To talk or whatever. But on the other hand, I know I do not have the right to intrude in their lives. If they're comfortable living as it is, I'm not going to poke my nose into their activities.

I wish people were in demand of my company though. Too bad I'm not one of those popular guys who goes to the gym and follows the latest fashion trends and knows the funkiest places and listens to the most popular stuff on radio.

But conformity for the sake of itself is so damn shallow.

But it's alright, that's how life is like.

I'll remain in my cave. At least there's a good computer, a good hifi, books to read.

2 weeks more to go. Perhaps I'll turn myself in to the asylum by then.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Me against the world (and technology)



Me. 21 year old, male, human, unpredictable.
vs
World. billions of years old, genderless, consisting of millions of species, even more unpredictable.

What was meant to be a breather between an exam and another bout of exam preparation, has turned into a nightmare.

There was the wireless adaptor fiasco, where I bought a USB wireless network adaptor and it didn't work on either of 2 computers that I wanted to use it on. (One of them has since been retired since I got my laptop.) I needed to determine if it was the problem with the 2 computers, or that of the USB device.

Initial sample size of 3:
Athlon desktop - works
Pentium 3 laptop - doesn't work
Pentium 3 desktop (the one made from discarded parts) - doesn't work
(1/3 working)

New laptop:
Centrino Duo laptop - works
(2/4 working)

Brought it back to the shop, the guy tested it on:
Unknown desktop - works
Another unknown desktop - works
(4/6 working)

With this sizeable sample size, it's very likely that the results are not due to the USB adaptor, but 2 isolated situations of incompatibility. Damnit. Now I dunno what to do with that USB adaptor.

And in the meantime, I'm struggling hard to try to get myself started on revision proper. Microbiology, neuroscience.

And as though to mock me, the field of microbiology decided to reward me with a viral cold. I'm sneezing alot.

And the new laptop, thanks to NUS, has lots of weird crap installed on it. I had to uninstall some firewall thingie manually (doesn't appear on the add/remove programs list), and run some registry hack from the net to enable me to choose my Windows Update settings. And also I gotta reconfigure everything to my preferences.

This dual core notebook has its potential, but the current crop of software, as I found out, never pushes the CPU usage past 50%, meaning that they can't use both cores simultaneously. Only certain programs such as Photoshop (no surprise, graphic designers have been using dual CPU rigs since the dinosaur ages, thus the demand for a software that can make use of that) are able to fully utilise the power.

OK enough of tech ranting. I know you dudes don't dig it, but I gotta get it off my chest anyhow.

In other unrelated news, Orson's No Tomorrow is one great song. It's a fusion of funk rhythms, rock instrumentation and corny rhyming lyrics (Tomorrow there's no school/ So lets go drink some more Red Bull - wha..?)

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

New Laptop PC

OK so I got a laptop PC today, which is great because they told me the waiting time is 2-3 weeks, but I got it in 4 days from the NUS notebook scheme.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

It's pretty nifty, with all sorts of features that I may or may not use, and at a good price. The new Core Duo CPU notebooks are certainly packs alot of punch for its price.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

The new CPU is amazing. It trounces an AMD FX-57, which by itself costs about a thousand bucks. Granted, the Core Duo doesn't perform as well on real-life benchmarks, but having the raw processing power there means that future programs will probably work alot faster on the Core Duo.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

What was irritating was that NUS installed lotsa crap on the laptop, such as Trend antivirus (slows down web browsing, inferior to Grisoft AVG Free, needed a password 'trend' to uninstall), BlackIce firewall (doesn't uninstall easily, requires some semi-hidden file) and NUS VPN.

But overall, it's great. No dead pixels, no real issues, I like it.

(Images are hosted on imageshack today as Blogger is really unstable and slow these days.)

Sunday, March 12, 2006

So much to do!


Won a book.
Bought a CD.
Having to install wireless networking, such a pain in the ass.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Asian, so what?



This is how the Asian community and its press reacted to the results of the Oscars.

Best Director - Lee Ang:
Yaay. Finally! See he's so good because he's Chinese! And the Americans are so racist, they never let a Chinese win before! Yaay Asians rock! Down with the Americans! Those bloody bigots! It's obvious that there's no one better than a Chinese!

Best Picture - NOT Brokeback Mountain:
What???!!! Those damn bloody racist selfish Americans! I hate them! Just because the director is Chinese they refuse to let it win even despite good public opinion! You bloody racists!

Doesn't it seem like asians - especially those of Chinese heritage - love to feel victimised? There's so much asian pride going on for Lee Ang's victory, but it's filled mainly with contempt for the western civilisation. They're acting like they had deserved some Oscars to their name since the beginning of time. But look, let's get real.

There simply aren't many asian-made movies that met the criteria for the Best Director award. I don't doubt the talent of asian directing in general, but face it, asian directors usually are in the running of asian awards, not a western award. I don't see any Americans whining about how they never managed to win a Golden Horse (Taiwan) award.

As for not getting the Best Picture award. That is just retarded. Underdogs win all the time. Just because a non Chinese directed film wins, doesn't mean they're being racist, OK? There is simply nothing to suggest any American bigotry happening here.

And I've said, asians love to feel victimised. It's not racism when a Chinese calls a westerner a 'gweilo' (devil man) but when an American calls a Chinese a chink, it has to be on the newspapers, the tabloids, the magazines and billboards.

They call Americans sexually loose and uninhibited. But many asian countries have a flourishing sex industry that attracts even Americans.

Asians are so much more technologically advanced than the western world. Because they invented paper thousands of years ago. While the western world was never complacent, and managed to invent our telephones, our computers, the printing press (to print on Chinese paper), sturdy concrete buildings, cars, electricity. And now China produces copycat goods but they're still technologically superior? Why? Because they invented paper!

If an American happens to choose Chinese food over their own, the Chinese would say he has good taste. If a Chinese eats western food at any regularity, slurs such as 'jiak kantang' (a derogatory phrase, literally means 'eat potato') would be thrown at him. He would also be accused of not recognising his own culture.

And when Australia declines to let Singapore make use of its trans-pacific aviation route, the Singaporean press called them some rather nasty things.

I'm not joking. Such double standards are an asian heritage that reporters are proud to flaunt in the national newspapers here. There are many things that disgust me when I read the papers these days. Shameless political advertising, stuck-up reporters and worst of all, asian bigotry. I can hardly finish reading the newspapers these days without feeling waves of disgust within me.

You want to know how I really feel after all these? I feel disugsted at being an asian, living in the same space, breathing the same air, eating the same food of the people that continually discriminate and mock the western world, while expecting them to treat us as their superior overlords.

Monday, March 06, 2006

Exam Fever a.k.a. Pyrexia of Undergraduate Overwork

A summary of Continual Assesment 3:

Community Occupational and Family Medicine - COFM:
Similar to reading tea-leaves in a cup, except you read a bunch of numbers and graphs. But still very doable.


Pharmacology:
Make a list of 10 different major disorders such as asthma, hypertension, etc.
From each major disorder, make a list of 10 classes of drugs.
From each class of drug, make a list of 5 of these drugs.
Of these drugs, make a list of about 3 theories on its mechanism.
And 5 adverse effects.
And the 1 to 3 different routes of administration.
And a list of 3 pharmacokinetic parameters.
That gives you a total of 10*10*5*(3+5+2+3)= 6500 factlets to know and memorise.
No wonder the notes and textbook are so damn thick.

Needless to say, I'm either barely passing or barely failing it.

Neuroscience:
One of the main lecturers is believed to have descended from the Royal Family of Hamsters, sharing the same ancestry as Hamtaro. This family is known for their hamster-like appearance and kind and helpful disposition.
This would have been an impossible subject to study, but our kind lecturer led us on to what topics will be set, thus allowing the students to do well, even despite neuroscience being such a heavy topic.
Generations of medical students continue to show their gratitude to this descendent of the Royal Family of Hamsters.

Homemade reflector



In order to maximise the efficiency of the floroscent light in my room, I removed the cover. However, this led to excessive light leaking out and shining out of the room, leading to a very distracting glow from my door.

Using aluminium foil, a few pieces of old and yellow A3 drawing block, blutak, paper glue and thread (tied around the reflector, giving it a curve), I made a practical and utilitarian reflector to reflect the leaked light back into my room.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Mac Mini - hype/fad/toy?



About a year ago, Apple's release of the Mac Mini G4 was groundbreaking news, both to the Macintosh and PC camps. True to Apple's repuatation for innovative yet functional designs, this gadget is merely the size of a stack of CDs, but yet functions as a real computer. (Though one of the reasons they had managed to shrink it down so much was to make the power supply unit a separate external box.)

In addition, it sold at a price point of USD$500, putting it in direct competition with budget PCs. Needless to say, many PC users were tempted to jump ship. Macs no longer were lifestyle products for the yuppies. The Mac Mini was well-suited for practical computing.

However, the hype rapidly fizzled out after the technical limitations became known:
1. A G4 chip was sadly underpowered even for a computer of that size

2. There were only 2 USB ports - use 1 one for the keyboard/mouse and you have only 1 left

3. Wifi was an option you had to pay extra for

4. There's no way you can reasonably upgrade it

These were enough for many to dismiss the Mac Mini as just a lifestyle gadget that appeals only to a niche market.

==

Now, 1 year later. Apple is undergoing its switch to Intel processors, after deciding that their PowerPC chips were underpowered for their needs. The iBooks and Macbook Pros with Intel chips performed admirably, but only on the condition that the software was rewritten for Intel CPUs. Software originally written for the PowerPC still ran albeit slowly.

It was only natural that Apple releases a new Mac Mini. And they did, with some changes. They added in Wifi and Bluetooth into their base model, they used Intel chips that essentially doubled the raw computing power, they added a remote control, and made incremental upgrades to RAM and hard disk space. This was done at a slight price premium of USD$100 for the base model though.

Not only that, they provided 4 USB ports, which means that they solved 3/4 of the issues I had mentioend above, except for the issue of it having limited upgrade potential (that's inevitable I guess.).

So what's the verdict on real-world performance like? Not good. (hyperlink)

Software optimised for the Intel CPU ran admirably, but the fact remains that much of the software around is still optimised for the PowerPC, and we aren't going to see new versions in the the very near future.

This is exceedingly sad, a great piece of hardware marred by the software's inability to fully utilise it.

I think it's a better idea to wait for the next Mac Mini. Let the software guys catch up.

They tell me that I have to do some things to promote my blog

And I'm an attention whore.

1. Maximising my hits on Google
The trick, they say, to increasing blog hits, is to talk about current and hot issues. Or at least, mention them so that they'll appear on Google when some bored loser searches for these hot issues. In fact, I believe that the mere mention of the keyword is enough to trigger Google. Such as:

Tammy NYP Xiaxue Bush Blair Weapons of mass destruction Hermione Granger Emma Watson Dan Brown Brokeback Mountain Arctic Monkeys Munich Britney Jay Chou Jolin Tsai Abortion Xbox PS3 Mac Mini Core Duo Intel AMD iBook iPod iTunes Steve Jobs

Stuff like that. Yeah I'm shameless.

2. Location, location, location!
Have a catchy title! I hope mine is catchy enough. At least it's from a catchy song. By a catchy band. The Arctic Monkeys rock.

3. Shameless promotion
I put my blog in one of the forums I go to regularly, in addition to putting up an entry on a Friendster blog to redirect the people here. Friendster blogs are good in the way that they whore your blog to whoever is in your friend list via email.

There's also various blog directories you can submit your blog to.

And always remember to leave a link on any blog you visit that allows you to do so.

4. It's the content, stupid
People don't come back if the content is crap. Or if there aren't any pictures. So I hope you like what I write.

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Poseurs. A review.

Don't you just hate them.

They're everywhere. In your city and in my city. In America you have your skater boys and hoodie-clad gangsta rapper wannabes. In the UK you have your chavs who wear the latest sporting apparel, no matter how loutish they may look.

Singapore of course, is a nation that always endeavours to top everything. Topping the lists for busy ports, outrageous world records, lack of free speech. And we have exactly 3 different kinds of poseurs.

1. True Ah bengs
These are the real stuff dude. Rising from the ashes of Singapore's heritage of chinese gangsterism, they are people you really should avoid. They not only feel at ease with their loutish and disgraceful behaviour, but embrace it as a form of counterculture.

The true ah bengs have a love for anything shiny, outlandish or attention-seeking. Huge garish tattos cover their arms. Earrings. Many of them. And I'm not taking about any specific gender. They brandish the latest mobile phones - though modded with disgraceful flashing lights - and are not afraid to show the whole world how terrible Chinese pop tunes can sound when they're converted into ringtones.

And they speak almost exclusively in hokkien. But it's not really an effective form of communication, when most of what they say are in reference to various genitalia of both sexes, and suggestions to check out their own mothers.

Avoid them at all costs. They can be nasty. In the late 90s, they were well known for 'staring incidents', where a group of ah bengs would accost a lone guy, accusing him of having stared at them or one of their girls. This often ended up in fights. Whether the poor guys actually stared at them still remains a mystery.

2. Jay-Chou-and-Jolin-Tsai-wannabes-who-end-up-acting-like-ah-bengs (JCAJTWWEUALAB)

Actually when I think about it, those JCAJTWWEUALABs are actually quite a pitiful bunch. Due to their misfortune of having a really retarded taste of music, they worship these idols and adopt their garish and lame culture. What's with the badly-dyed hair and poorly-matched outfits? I'm sure they didn't mean to look terrible, but dude, this is just so wrong. Please pick your sartorial idols more wisely.

They're strongly infuenced by Taiwanese culture, and can quote you a biography of any Taiwanese star, in addition to humming a couple of tunes from each. It's quite impressive that they can do that, since they all look the same, and their music all sound the same, save for some subtle differences that really takes a keen eye or ear to notice. Honestly I can't see the point of filling up one's CD collection with songs that all sound the same.

There's not much to say about them. But they aren't a very civilised bunch, having almost as much social disregard as their true ah beng counterparts.

3. Fairly-Uninvolved-Classy-Kids-Earning-Rights-to-Showoff (FUCKERS)

As you can tell from their elegant-sounding name, they are the worst of the lot. These FUCKERS, like the name says, are fairly uninvolved in the psyche of the common man. They may pretend to act like they're like any average kid and all, but they can NEVER UNDERSTAND how it feels like to be average. (Refer to the lyrics of Pulp's Common People)

They are classy. Or at least they act like it. They listen to high class jazz (a.k.a. elevator music), drive high class cars that their parents paid for, read high class quasi-literature, wear high class clothes which cost more than a week's pay of the common man. And they talk like they own the world, acting like spoilt brats and insisting that the Earth doesn't revolve around the sun, but rather around themselves.

They're kids. Mainly of the undergraduate age, or fresh into working life (but still living on their parents' dough - they can't possibly pay for the BMW they're already driving).

They earn the rights to show off because they happen to conform to the image of an individual with class - having loads of (their parents') dough, being a student or a graduate of some elite course or scholarship or whatever, and most importantly, adopting the fashion.

Expensive hair salons and professionally-dyed hair is a must. If one needs prescription eyewear, contact lenses is the way to go. Gyms are a must too, because looking fit is a symbol of the higher class - the class that doesn't have to spend every waking hour slogging, the class who has enough time and money for vanity. Oh. And don't forget the Crumpler messenger bags. Expensive fashion is always good fashion.

Oh and did I mention? They love to think they're always right. When they're not. And when an intellectual guy who happens not to be popular pokes holes into their pseudo-intellectual fodder, they'll call that guy a troublemaker unworthy of their high and mighty debate.

That's all to it. Poseurs make me sick.

This blogger has lofty ambitions.



He will take over the world with his socially-aware commentary, glowing raves, scalding rants and whatever suits his fancy.

He's not a very nice guy, he's not a people pleaser. He's going to write what he wants, and screw off if you don't like it.

And if you're too dumb to spell 'inconspicuous', he's glad you're never ever going to return here.