i probably have mentioned this song before. but i just like. i like the music, i like the feeling, i like the meaning. just let me leave a record of its lyrics.

a sad song, for a loud sad moment. perhaps i shall add it to the funeral playlist, depending on mood.
Richard Wagner's Trauermusik (WWV73) should go on the list too.



梁静茹 - 如果有一天

现在也只能欣赏 唯一的合照一张
淡忘了的是那个街角 想念的是当时的微笑
生活中交错失望 越想念就越孤单
若再被寂寞迎头赶上 多感伤原来只是正常
你是不是也在品尝 一个人的咖啡和天光
是不是也忽然察觉到 多出时间看天色的变换
如果有一天 我们再见面 时间会不会倒退一点
也许我们都忽略 互相伤害之外的感觉
如果哪一天 我们都发现 好聚好散不过是种遮掩

如果我们没发现 就给彼此多一点时间
生活中交错失望 越想念就越孤单
若再被寂寞迎头赶上 多感伤原来只是正常
你是不是也在品尝 一个人的咖啡和天光
是不是也忽然察觉到 多出时间看天色的变换
如果有一天 我们再见面 时间会不会倒退一点
也许我们都忽略 互相伤害之外的感觉
如果哪一天 我们都发现 好聚好散不过是种遮掩

如果我们没发现 就给彼此多一点时间
如果有一天 我们再见面 时间会不会倒退一点
也许我们都忽略 互相伤害之外的感觉
如果哪一天 我们都发现 好聚好散不过是种遮掩

如果我们没发现 就给彼此多一点时间

if there's anyone who knows how to use Unison over an SSH connection, please help me. it's a great program for synchronising folders, but i dont know how to get it to work through SSH. preferably through plink/putty.

as jx exclaimed, it's news that the tuition fees are not going up for the next AY. WOWz. i mean, come on, shall we have annoucements weekly that oh i am not going to increase the price of wanton noodles next week. flabbergasted.

it's like those SILLY advertisements by SILLY advertising companies thinking that the populace is as SILLY as them "GST absorbed", 'non-expletive'. what the heck, we're in an u-n-i-v-e-r-s-i-t-y, even though i have to admit that not every student i see around here is highly intelligent, but we are at least sufficiently educated ( /cynical/critical/anti-establishment), or so i like to think, that we are above silly ploys.

why are the tuition fee reviews taken in consideration of the proposed (/declared) GST hikes, as opposed to normal running costs. so does that mean that they have zilch problems balancing their budget without increasing tuition fees. so why do they need to think so hard about whether they need to increase it. or are they running at a deficit so that next year they can increase more to compensate.

by the way, we still need to pay more than last year. coz the GST did rise.
and 3% of $6k is like close to $200.

let's go live somewhere with higher taxes And higher returns per tax dollar paid.

disastrous bow tuning. shall Pray that i can fix it tmr. ... bloody itchy finger me, should have just left it as it was.

the unbelieveable happens, Bill Wee finally gets back to singapore (yeah he likes to stay in U S of A), and i get my Hoyt CRX limbs. yum yum, they look so pretty.

new ACC arrows, new CRX limbs, new string(handmade, with a correct brace height). too bad NTU shoot is so close, not much time to get adjusted. shall have to adjust to the poundage and tune it and fix the nocking point soon. but everything seems to fit in quite easily though.

ok that last post was somewhat 'high' because i'm at home and i get to touch my dear computer and i still can't wait to play C&C3. Other than waiting for the official date, now i'm waiting for the appearance of the game demo. woohoo. which could be soon!

and i've got new arrows. bleh. shall take photos when i have time.
20 shots on A/C/C

google earth distance of within school running route is 4.25km. not taking into account the slopesss. 2 rounds so far this sem.

Thai Army decides to go back to using walkie-talkies (instead of handphones) for communication because they are afraid the the mobilephone transmissions will be tapped by the phone companies. The telecommunication companies having been taken over by our dear Temasek Holdings in recent years. I wonder since when was Thailand so afraid of the Singapore Corporation.

Do they fear sg's NS military? walkie-talkie, fantastic. seems like Thailand is really out of sorts recently. and also with the furore over Thaksin's visit to Singapore. now they really weren't pleased with that. wonders wonders. perhaps they were worried. perhaps they worry that, that, that Thaksin would gain access to Thai military knowledge through Singapore through Temasek Holdings through the phone network. hmm hmm hmm. what a long chain of events. Doesn't it sound like some Tom Clancy thing, just like the Russian spy radioactive poisoning.

Perhaps. Since the Thai telecommunication companies were controlled by Shin Corp. before Temasek bought them over, the Army chiefs fear that there were wire-tapping mechanisms put in place by Thaksin and family, who owned Shin Corp. I hope I'm getting the names right. Anyway, so perhaps Temasek inherited them, and then Thaksin drops by Singapore, and the coalition govt gets really worried whether all these might be true. Perhaps when they were organising their coup d'état, they used walkie-talkies to communicate and so now they go back to their trusted devices.

but of course all these are just plain speculations from little me based on whatever little info that filters out from the media. don't come and sue/bomb/assassinate me.

given the recent spate of bombings in Bangkok and the Thai govt's anti-Singapore moves, I hope that my friends don't go to Bangkok for shopping in the meantime. It really wouldn't be worth it to get blown up over such a fanciful dispute.

during the past General Elections in Sg, I was wondering whether a 'revolution' in Sg would be worth it. As shown by the polls, the majority of the voting population(*) still prefer to stick with the tried and tested PAP. They trust in the current batch of people to make the right decisions. Despite the dominance of the PAP and their declining legacy, the sufficiently smooth-sailing economy of Sg seems to perpetuate their continued existence. ah well. the Sg atmosphere does not really ring of adventure and revolution. I feel a sudden failure, leading to a loss of confidence in the leading party, would precipitate a revolutionary change in governance. It is more probable than a slow musical chairs erosion of their number of seats.
However, a great change like that would undoubtedly lead to a certain period of instability and certain damage to the economy. Properly done, this would only be a temporary phenomenon and the subsequent rise would negate this. As it is, with the current economic climate, this tradeoff does not yet seem to be sufficiently compelling. As with blackjack, we can make educated guesses, but we never know whether the extra card might improve or destroy the hand. Meanwhile perhaps the banker might kill himself.
(* in a general population demography, the voting population would come from the above 21yo, which would make them 66-75% of an even distribution. Would it be a fallacy to infer that since the population of Singapore is aging, the proportion of the higher aged voters would be even higher. As such, the voting population would more likely appear from the older generation/WWII generation/LKY generation. therefore the voting population would be more in tune with PAP syndrome. just thoughts.)

Which leads me to an astonishing revelation that my bridge games have been rather good recently. I hope the luck carries on to CNY, but then nobody plays bridge during CNY. 1.they are too money-minded, or rather i feel that many young kids are. so silly. it's like such a small and insignificant sum of winnings/losses. 2.they aren't intelligent enough to play decent bridge. i think it's an sufficiently complicated and free-form game. Probably ranks in the harder difficulty of games to pick up, and even harder to properly play it, but only require fine-tuning and a sharp memory to master. Still, the game fails if the players fail.
Rather surprised to win at 4 Clubs yesterday, and thereafter 5 Clubs. the fancy thing was that I was partnered with Sylvia. the unsurprising thing was that I won the bid.
I very much enjoy those games with weizheng where the two of us would just sweep the entire game, in entire control, passing control non-stop between us.
I do wish that the girls would bid more, and better. (and perhaps higher).

yay

MediaCorp actor Christopher Lee has been slapped with five charges relating to drink driving which resulted in an accident that seriously injured two people.
...
consumed alcohol beyond the legal limit when driving, caused an accident which seriously injured a motorcyclist and his pillion passenger, did not stop after the incident and did not help the two injured men.

He also removed his car from the accident scene without police permission.
...
Lee's appearance lasted a few minutes as his lawyer requested from District Judge Wong Peck for an adjournment because of work commitments.

The judge however refused, setting a date of March 1st for Lee's next appearance in court.

french lessons and micropipettes make my day. i am so going to miss these days.

uh-oh i forgot what they call this thing. Lyon was famous for it's silk or something. tissu. like ultra high class and ultra expensive cloth. and they made it by hand.


the drivers are mad


and they've got so many of these painted walls all over the city. and the tourist map doesnt really show them. so just walk around and stumble upon them, unless you're privy to the information


mid-day and Lignes A et B: Fermé, Ligne C et D: ouvert
fun


went back to sch for lunch. yum yum yum. nus food might be cheap, but darn unhealthy


skip to the evening. after an afternoon out jalan-ing, a few of us popped over to cheukfung's place to do i dunno what. but we ended up being forced to try some food, even though we didn't want to impose on them. unfortunately it was dinner time. 'elp. nice old apartment in middle of town. apparently so that it's easy to walk to sch when there are strikes.

anyway that afternoon was a disaster. the transport strike got worse. my class ended earlier than the other group and we got the tram out of INSA without problem. went to Part-Dieu (the shopping centre) and then after that wanted to go somewhere else, but waited almost forever for the bus(thankfully there was one), i think we went to bellecour(orchard rd like place, across the river). later we heard that the other class barely managed to take the last tram out of INSA. and upon exiting, the driver stopped somewhere and declared that he was going on strike and told everyone to get off. so some ppl did, and the rest just stayed put, including our friends(who actually maybe didn't understand what was going on). so he drove on, and the ppl who got off were rather pissed and starting running after the tram and banging on the doors and demanding to get back on. bleh. not nice to be stuck somewhere.
then cheukfung also wanted to get from Part-Dieu to bellecour or sth, but he waited like an hour and there wasn't any bus, even tho we got it earlier. so he had to walk all the way over.
pandemonium. it's just all crazy. and it was a very hot afternoon. very hot meaning non-20 deg weather.

then we went out for Fête de la musqiue. and this is the first one we came across. bunch of kids doing i dunno what. ultra cute.


back alley. it's got this really lovely feel though


us 3 going around trying to see everything. which isn't possible coz there are so many things in so many places going on at the same time. cheukfung, me and jeremy.


dunno why there's this photo of me


this group was rather nice. and they sell beer on the streets.


another group outside somewhere. many little groups all over, very nice


yucks. i din like that guy, take note of what he's wearing


singing, hmm. at a more ulu street corner. i think the theme is, just go out and make whatever music you like, anywhere you like


a rock concert near Vieux Lyon.


and while watching something we noticed this cameraman, and we did some crazy things infront of him. and jeremy's host mother later told him that we appeared on telly the following sunday. darn amusing

that night, some people, who stay in ulu neighbourhoods, because of the strike, didn't have any bus home. their bus services are sparse, and generally shut down after 9 or 10pm, very early. and we were too poor for cabs. so a few of them walked like an hour uphill to get home, zzz. good thing i had bus. but kk, jeremy and me were rather apprehensive on the bus, there was this bunch of youngsters, drinking some dunno what, singing at the top of their voices, practically rocking the bus, and it seems like the bus was going to explode. i was glad to get off. poor jeremy had a long trip.

hm seems like i bought a textbook from my ex-TA. how odd. i think she was.

guess what i found on Channel News Asia's online RSS feed. total nonsense (ok maybe half) on the Sembawang Archery Open. i have no idea why that pathetic reporter wanted to even write on it. but it's fundamentally grossly inaccurate.
the event was 2 days, saturday And sunday. it was supposed to be the open field, but it was changed to the indoor area. half-assed reporting, can't even get his stuff right. probably didn't even see the place. somehow he neglected to mention the MP guest-of-honour as well. i suppose it's not very important. and it's a freaking competition, not a fun-fair, what "game to try their hand at the sport"

Home>
SINGAPORE NEWS

Sembawang Archery Open 2007 attracts 250 participants
By Patwant Singh, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 14 January 2007 2009 hrs


Modern day Robin Hoods were in full force at Sembawang on Sunday taking part in the Sembawang Archery Open 2007.

Some 250 participants showed their skills at the open field in front of the Sembawang Community Club.

Young and old, all were game to try their hand at the sport.

The enthusiasts came from Malaysia, Indonesia and hosts Singapore.

The two-day event also saw Singapore's national competitors in action competing for the more than a hundred trophies and medals at stake. - CNA/ch

dang 2006 was Last Year. Means i dont get to go to europe this year. sniff.
just a few starting photos from 21-6-06 to keep the thing going.

rather Happening day. woke up to a transport strike. on hindsight we were rather surprised the bus out of the house to the interchange was functioning normally. but as you can see from the pictures, not all services are up and running. the screens and boards list the percentage of each service that's available. no idea how they calculate the percentages, maybe by driver turnup rate.
so that was the first major strike we experienced. seems like with a timeframe of one month, it's hard to avoid strikes. actually the first day we arrived in lyon, a sunday, the families heard rumours of a strike the next day, the monday. the first day we were supposed to get on the public transport to go to school. and it's a bus -> metro -> tram combo ride. so it's somewhat tricky. on top of wondering if we'll find out way to INSA, they were also planning to drive us there if there really was a strike. but it turned out fine.



so they strike. and there's plenty of staff at the metro telling people how to get to their destinations. it's remarkably well-planned. i dunno. it's just like the contingency plans are well in place.


Les TCL ne sont pas à la fête. TCL is the transport company in Lyon. la fête refers to the festival of music which is that day. exactly. the joke is that TCL kept advertising their special festival tickets for ppl to get home late at night. and then this happens. diao.
apparently the papers said that the same thing happened the year before as well. yeah those free newspapers are useful, and i do read them.



the orchard road equivalent. but here the morning crowd is walking, because that metro line is closed. but it's walkable if you want to get to the next interchange. good thing the weather and streets there are friendly, unlike singapore's.



there were many many problems that day.

and another thing was that we were supposed to meet somewhere for a visit to a museum. and since the transport system was screwed up, most people had difficulty getting there. and since we didn't have convenient handphones, it was hard to communicate. and the teacher was late too, haha. early morning when kk and i took metro C, it was working. later on, according to the rest, it wasn't working anymore. huh. yar i have no idea why their strike varies throughout the day. perhaps in response to negotiations. a big mess in general. but extremely exciting. it didn't inconvenience me that much, but it was hell for some people. i'll mention more as the photos appear. what a day.

Libellés : Lyon, photos, strike

just watched another C&C3 teaser video, my gosh their gameplay is darn fast. and i'm so glad that they have the construction bar, i am so sick of always having to go back to the base to build stuff. whee.

Kane, lives.

managed to get the E6300 CPU to run sorta stable at 2.8GHz. original speed was 1.86GHz. but i have already started to increase voltages. 3GHz seems to be tricky though, it keeps counting prime numbers wrongly. I think I need better RAM or more cooling, or just more volts.
really need to find a stable set of settings. so many things to test! haven't even played with RAM speeds yet. and also the graphics card.

old prices:
E6300 1.86GHz US$183
E6400 2.13GHz US$224
E6600 2.40GHz US$316
E6800 2.67GHz US$530
Extreme X6800 2.93GHz US$999

basically, you can't buy a dual 3GHz processor yet. and it's ultra expensive.

but can't tinker much now that school is starting. zz. so much more fun than playing games. dang. but the Core2Duo is really amazing. 50% more performance for little risk. it also makes PC manufacturers more and more unappealing to me. Though Acer is now selling some thin and small pc the height of two drink cans. but what can that thing do. even though on paper it looks like a good price for those components, the performance is actually far worse. their BIOS are like half disabled to hide most settings. i so cannot live with something i cannot customize.

ok the computer goes back down to 1.86GHz for normal use. until 28March. nobody else in the house actually makes much use of the speeds anyway.

and the internet cables still dont seem to be properly fixed.

Libellés : overclock

20th June 2006
another day of misc photos

daily dose of indulgence / expensive tarts / after-school shopping centre jaunts. monthly public transport ticket is good! =]


had to rush home after the tart, coz i went along with Mme Jaillard to the youngest daughter Ségolène's Play. so we went to some dunno-what neighbourhood on the other side of town. discovered alot of things.

they have these world war monuments everywhere. like one in every locality. both wars were very big things to them. like half the road names are named with the war and the other half with great frenchmen. obsessions.



yeah primary school kids sorta Play. amusing, of course, kids being kids. it's so funny the way they act. and so cute too. many parents, many videocameras. i liked the interval music, and i was very fascinated with how two kids were playing some hand game but i couldnt follow it, looked fun.


the older kids. segolene is 5th from left. this one was a disaster. they forgot their lines and were going around in circles, and they were speaking so softly it was inaudible. the teacher wasn't very happy with them and apologised to the audience, bleh.


then we got home quite late. and i think i missed most of a world cup match. and i can't stand it that they don't seem to need dinner, or just a small dinner. i think i ate one small sandwich before the plays, and a little bit of tidbits after it, and then some bread with cheese at home. hungry.

Libellés : France, Lyon, photos, Play

19th June 2006. misc photos around the place. i guess we didn't do much that day, except buy some chocolates

hey that's Gorge de Loup station. a critical part of our travel routine there. buses go to many ppl's houses. i actually got sick of that place. boring station. Lyon metro is boring.


free papers. every morning we collect 2 or 3, as we feel like. only thing is that we spend our trip trying to understand the news. the gist of it anyway. but sudoku's easier, though it gets boring too.


they have driverless trains too, so what's the big hooha about NEL? the best (and worst) thing is that it's immune to strikes.

our block, les humanités. it's rather dinghy actually. wintercold concrete walls and echoey stairwells. but it suffices. too used to NUS's nice rooms.


hitchhiking time. nah.

Libellés : France, Lyon, photos

Of the riot of colors and umbrellas outside the schools at midday
Of the exact decade ago when i entered RI
Of the normal sucky weather of Singapore (it finally rained today, a decent local thunderstorm instead of a chinese monsoon, guess the weather is back to boring normal)
Of Moove Media that disappeared after the blaring bugle call that was its launch.
Of the scrawny kids at HDB void decks, in singlets and slippers.
Of the bare walls and cold staircases.
Of the squeaky swings in the playground in the narrow abandoned grass patch sandwiched by the ugly kitchen side of the HDB blocks, how enticing.
Of the glitter casino forever on the other shore.
Of the simple folk and banglas on the promenade dressed in their best shirts, face aglowing in the aftermath of the fireworks firing in the other direction.
Of the things I see and do not see.
Of Love with a capital L, a big start and a small end.
Of God be with ye, which is Goodbye, which perhaps i will refrain from using furthermore.
Of a broken down driving centre car.
Of a amk macdonald's that blooms in the night, like the lilies in the pond two hundred paces away
Of the casuarinas in the HCJC driveway.
Of the whites and blues and dark blues running around inside.

this is who i am

18th June 2006
up again at unearthly hour, can't tell coz the sun rises so early. but i woke up like 5 or 6am. on holiday. to catch the slow chugging train to Geneva. we just couldn't resist touching swiss soil, since it's so close to Lyon. this was the next day after Annecy.
thankfully Euros work fine there, if you pay in exact change or are willing to take back swiss money. but i think we spent extremely little. brought food and walked around and enjoyed free music.


try not to go into one of these, i believe my friends were screaming about 1 euro toilet.


more World Cup fever, would you eat McGermany, McSwiss, McMexico, McItaly, McFrance, yucks


flowers again, yeah. but they've got nice pretty flowers. not boring bougainvilleas.


big artificial geyser in the huge lake. it's just a boring waste of electricity to me. as a sidenote, jeremy and cheukfung would remember that me had a beer and got half drunk for half the day, haha. bleh. it was only one bottle, one dose of alcohol.


i always thought Bata was just a crappy brand for school shoes, bleh


nothing much, just that it's a really pretty photo of a pretty duck. it looks real pretty when you open up the photo


absolutely ridiculous swiss knife. even comes with antenna. it's just totally useless


hey there's this Indian Community of Geneva. not bad


are the wheels cute? round round one


beetle with Spoiler?? har?


more nice cars everywhere. sigh


i want!


the Ferrari price. looked rather cheap.


Brazil supporters. world cup.


would have gone to drink from Evian spring, but not feasible


Fete de la Musique in Geneva (music festival), what a coincidence, we totally expected to have nothing much to do in Geneva. but the whole city was alive and out in the streets. party time. so we went on the correct Sunday. later on there was also the same festival in Lyon. so we had double, woohoo.
and there was also a sailboat race or something on the lake. big big big lake. which we couldn't see anything of coz they were far out on the water.

orchestra. seemed v popular


violin recital sia. in a very cool place with a nice audience. looks pro.


slacking around in one of those parks. with many good-looking ppl around, haha. and entertainers.


choir. big stage + big audience


rock. but oddly, their rock stage is small and the crowd is sparse. seems like they prefer the classical stuff


main UN building in Geneva. but we went too late in the day and it was closed. they have alot of UN building around though. maybe next time.

Libellés : Geneva, photos, Switzerland