Per Ardua Ad Astra

I shall never ever go into KL on a weekend anymore!

The trains are late, people inside packed like sardines, the streets are flooded during rains, traffic light’s defective and there are people everywhere!

That about sums up my trip down to Low Yat to dispose of some hardware last Saturday with Louis. Brandon had a ‘graduation’ ceremony so he’s N/A. Unlike previous trips, I managed to come back with more money than I brought there (finally!). Unfortunately, it wasn’t such a pleasant trip.

As you can gather I had issues with the trains, the weather, our lovely ‘First World’ infrastructure and people itself. Trains were late so we had to pack ourselves into them; it rained and flooded the streets I had to walk through from Sentral to the monorail; the stupid traffic lights at the station’s not working so it’s jaywalking Malaysian style and there are people, people and more people! Again, I must reiterate that I’m not anti-social or anything but I was just in an irritable mood that day (I blame that on sleep deprivation). In a place with narrow corridors like Low Yat, people do not have the common sense to move orderly and move out of the dammed way when they stop for something! Thankfully, I didn’t do things like shoving people out of the way or yell at them (I still had enough self-control to resist the maddening urge).

At the least, I still walked away with extra cash and more space at home. A couple of hundred bucks for a motherboard, processor, RAM cards and graphics card. They’re sold for about 15% of its original value, but it’s better than nothing. Too bad nobody wants to buy Pentium II era hardware anymore. I guess I have to donate them to charity or something. If not, I can decide to wait 50 years and try auctioning them.

The moral of today’s post?

Don’t shop on a weekend.

I should probably be sleeping at 4am, but I can’t sleep. So, I was going around trying to find something worthwhile to do when I decided to try out this IQ test.

Given that I was tired and multitasking online (which research has shown to be IQ impairing activities) I was pleasantly surprised at the score.

Your IQ score is 131!

You have a strong ability to process visual-spatial and mathematical information and this, combined with your logical mind, means you are a Visual Mathematician. You can manipulate multiple parts of the picture (or problem) to come up with a solution and can understand the "big picture," which is partly why people may turn to you for direction.

Like Einstein, your ability to detect patterns and your skills in maths and logic, make it natural for you to come up with ideas and theories that simplify processes for everyone.

Apart from the flattery (I can’t deny that I always try to look at the big picture, but the accuracy is probability slightly better than chance at 60% perhaps?), the obvious question pops to mind: Is this damm thing rigged? It’s too damm high!

Naturally, I had to try and see the lowest score I could get.

By choosing the first option for all the questions, I get:

Your IQ score is 79!

You’ve got a very experiential way of learning and a strong mathematical mind and you have mastered the art and science of precision. That’s what makes you a Precision Processor. For you, life is a series of equations.

Your brain is naturally predisposed to intense mathematical acuity, so it’s second nature for you to cut to the heart of an issue, to discover quick solutions while others get bogged down in unnecessary details. This allows you to communicate a variety of ideas to other people, so don’t keep it to yourself.

With the last answers, I get:

Your IQ score is 82!

Your unusual talent of being equally good at both mathematical and verbal skills, paired with the way you learn through experience, makes you an Inventive Inquisitor. You understand the world by "learning through living" and are able to teach others by taking them through actual experiences.

Most people search their brains for previously stored information that might help in a given situation, but you are open to an unusual amount of change and take things as they come and see things as they are.

Hmm, so everyone gets the sweet tongue treatment. How nice. Guess what? Nobody gets a score below 75! Cool! Now if I would just try getting all the answers wrong and see what I would end up with. But I’m tired now, so I guess it’s an experiment for another day.

After a whirlwind tour of S’pore, I returned home to recuperate from the rigors of travel and to prepare for the return trip. There’s plenty to blog about, but so little time. Maybe I should have brought the camera with me, but 1)I’m not photogenic, 2)I’m relatively incompetent with cameras, 3)I don’t have much photography targets, and most of them are intended to highlight negative aspects of something and 4)I’m plain lazy. Furthermore, you might just as well follow LS’s blog. He’s dedicated enough to blog daily, unlike me.

To summarise, I’ve been doing the usual stuff, going places and meeting new people. In truth, it’s not much of meeting new people since I’ve met them someplace before (it’s a small world after all). To be honest, I’m being slightly anti-social. I haven’t been joining the Malaysian Student’s League activities and have mostly been on-and-off. In fact, I’m hoping to be able to skip as much Orientation and Matriculation as possible because I’m sick of them, for they have the ‘been there, done that’ quality attached to it. I’d rather take my time in forming long lasting friendships instead of just saying hi and pretty much nothing else to a lot of people. Plus, being back with the remaining AJ scholars is more than enough with the only drawback being that I don’t speak the DoTA language. Now I must figure out how to avoid being a sponsor for their attempts for WCG Singapore glory while being able to mooch off them when they do win something at the Cybergame Olympics. Hehehehehe. In the meantime, I must try to survive being an anti-DoTA person.

Anyhow, first impressions on accommodations are so-so. Prince George’s Park Residence is nice, on the outside. They don’t seem to do much of indoor maintenance for the rooms here, so I guess we’ll have to bear with the wear and tear. It’ll be nice if they could do more to make the place more cheerful. After all, a dash of paint would go a long way in lifting spirits. The rest of the campus itself is still quite nice, but since we’re not matriculated yet, I’d reserve judgment until we’ve been here a bit longer. To be fair, the place would seem like a dream for our local students here but can you blame me for expecting so much more? I’m a person of high standards, hence my unrealistic expectations. Plus, I’m being a skeptic for good reasons. Still, I’m hoping for my misgivings to be proven wrong however small the likelihood.

Let’s see, at the moment I got rejected from the SEP to Europe. I’m not really bothered by that yet, since there’s still SEP to other places to consider. I’m much more attracted to the US-UK rather than France-Germany in the first place, so screw it. As for the University Scholars Program (USP) interview, it was ok. I wouldn’t mind getting a place in the program. The good side is I get guaranteed accommodation at NUS for the entire duration of my degree studies. Plus, I get to do some side studying into humanities (with economics, literature, psychology and history cited by the interviewer as examples). At the least, I was lucky that the interviewer gave those topics for examples as I have my interests in ALL of the subjects and I can talk my way out of it. Even luckier is the part where they decided not to test how deep my knowledge pool is (they only tried history, the only subject given that I’m actually confident of). If they actually tried probing into all the subjects, they might end up disappointed. As for CCA’s I can show that I’m not a bookworm, but not an overachiever. It’s a draw, I suppose. All in all, the negative aspect is that USP might just be another stress vehicle to add to the usual burdens of studying, and I think I already have plenty on my plate to start with by taking Engineering Science (ESP).

It’s really still too early to see how everything will turn out. Heck, I might even fail to get USP in addition to SEP and not get to pass QET too! Then I’ll be stuck with ESP and have stupid English language modules to take. Then it’ll be a real bummer.

P.S: To be clear here, I don’t bear a grudge against our southern neighbor. It’s just that I’ve seen through some of the gloss others put over my eyes, and I’ve seen that S’pore has its own imperfections. I never liked pressure cookers and I’m a rebel. Therein lies my problem.

Been settling in for the past day or two.

QET was relatively uneventful. It is essentially an English test, so what’s there to say about it. But I must say, the language of the text is slightly different from the usual way writers usually write it. It’s kinda like missing the elegance. Like monotonous music. And you guessed it correctly, it leads to sleepiness.

There’s quite some stuff that’s of some interest, but I think I’ll put them up later on. I’m loaning other people’s laptop for now. Stupid WiFi needs accounts and I have to wait at least one week! Great, this is simply great! Just when the only way I could access the Internet on my own is WiFi!!!

Things never go according to plan…

And so, today marks the completion of one circle.

If I may interject with a little Physics, my displacement as measured by a point I went to in December 25, 2003 amounts to a grand total of ZERO! By any standards of mine, that’s one heck of an accomplishment (apart from repeating the feat the other way in July 2004?). Oh well, no biggie after all. After all, I saw this coming for a very long while now. As endgame draws near, history repeats itself the way I anticipated it to be (with the usual inaccuracies inherent in my predictions).

Of course, there are subtle differences this time. Hopefully, I have my priorities in the right order and I know what I’m doing although my heart is not of one accord with my mind. The same country but not the same location (yep, no blue and yellow this time around) and I got the same status again (many thanks to MOE!). Heck, the company’s gonna be a little different too.

Nevertheless, there are a few good things to look for. The optimism is slightly forced, since there’s plenty of the usual stuff we can look forward to but rest assured, some bits of it are genuine. Time for reunion of sorts.

All right, here we go. Annie Lenox’s Into The West would be a good song for this situation, just that we’re going to a place much much smaller and less grander than Valinor. We’re going South, the only expanse of water being crossed is a small strait and we’re going to a puny island. Ok, better stop before this degenerates into nitpicking and fatalism. See you on the other side!

P.S.: This would make it seem much less dramatic, but I’m only going down for about a week at most. As such, this is only a pre-taster of sorts. However, there’s no denying it. We’re all almost there anyway.

Let’s take a break and let me tell you about something that is much less life-threatening and depressing, has lesser implications on the global stage and practically no significant outcomes on anything important which is my life.

After much procrastinating, I finally went back to my workplace to collect my bag of coffee beans, return my uniform and have a chat with my fellow managers and partners. Boy, it is times like this that reminded me why work was fun! To keep things short (most of them involved IPP by myself or my wonderful colleagues), I walked away with plenty of goodies that I didn’t really expect. If you’re wondering what the heck is IPP, ask me when you get the chance. You’ll be amused. It was one of those spontaneous things that led to another, then another and so on. My only regret of the day was not being able to stay for the regular coffee tasting sessions of the day so I could try out the new goodies. Oh well, at least I managed to enjoy the Javanese chip frappucino. Now I’m stuck with two whole bags of coffee beans to finish by Sept! For a coffee junkie, that’s seriously too much beans for me!!! Maybe I should have tried trading off one bag for another bunch of goodies.

As for planning to buy a laptop, I’m still not committed to a particular choice when the deadline is zooming towards me like a missile. See, my problem is I take far longer than the average person before taking a pick. Talk about commitment issues. Before you lob the usual slowcoach remarks, I’ll tell you something. I can take a pick very quickly and be happy with it, but most of the time external factors (read: interference) always come into play and lengthens the time for me to finally get on with it. In this instance, it’s the price tag. I’m terrible at negotiations because I will never give in sufficiently to achieve a compromise. A compromise is always better than an impasse, but I’d rather take my chances elsewhere than concede every single bargaining chip on the table. In the meantime, I’ll just have to live with my pda for my trip to S’pore. Despite my misgivings about our socialist neighbor down South, its facilities are far far better than what you’d get from our beloved homeland. Plenty of WiFi everywhere to ultilise when you need it.

As I was wandering around the net, I came across a set of cartoons on the recent conflagration on the Mediterranean shores. Below are some of the better ones. Click on the link above to see the whole set.

Cartoons from MSNBC

I also stumbled across an unlikely gem today. While digging around in a follow-up to my previous post on the birds and the bees, I came across the Joelogon’s Foolproof Guide to Making Any Woman Your Platonic Friend. Before you go on and have a look at the site, I’ll have some words of caution. Firstly, this is a site that is slightly biased in favour of the guys, so could the ladies please adopt an open minded approach? Secondly, for the guys viewing the site you could end up in the following situations: 1) Get plenty of the best medicine, laughter; 2) Don’t see the whole point of the guide and shake your head at the patheticness of some guys or 3) Be tremendously depressed at the renewed thought of a harrowing experience, ending up in the dumps or suicidal mentality as a worse case scenario. Nevertheless, in the unlikely event that you end up in scenarios 2 and 3, 1 should more than make up for it. Sigh, if only I had found this site in 2004 instead of 2006. Never mind, I could always use the humor anytime.

P.S.: I probably have too much time on my hands, but here goes. The guide defines the social definition of platonic friendship as relationships of a purely non-sexual nature. However, the more original term platonic love is defined as the chaste but passionate love, based not on uninterest but virtuous restraint. Therefore, if you define a relationship as platonic you could actually define it as ‘just friends’ (social definition) or signaling the beginning of ‘new level’ (not so social definition). If you’re not getting the point, what I’m saying is that both definitions do not rule out romantic love. I know, it’s pretty stupid arguing about definitions when you know the general intent, but it might help when you’re about to try the second time around? It’s a loophole anyhow, so best to exploit it to its fullest. Just doing my part in defeating the Psychological Warfare Division of the Sisterhood to Destroy All Men.

This,

or this?

The Dell Inspiron 6400 and Sony Vaio VGN-FE28GP both came to a strong finish in my consideration for my first ever laptop, so it’s a difficult choice. In fact, the trade-offs of the two balanced out quite nicely. To be perfectly honest, the Dell is slightly stronger in terms of specifications and warranty but Vaio’s sleek looks and a slightly more durable build had me sold. Plus, I’ll be plunking down roughly RM7,000 for the purchase (a bargain, considering that I’m aiming for a mid to high end laptop) so I’d better make the right choice. And time is running out…

Successfully put into the heavens at an altitude of 550 kilometers by a converted Russian Intercontinental Ballistic Missile in recent days, a prototype for Bigelow Aerospace’s proposed ’space hotel’ has inflated and operating nominally with a diameter of roughly 3 meters and internal temperature of 26 degrees Celsius.

In case you think it’s a hoax of some sort, the U.S. Space Command has catalogued the object, Genesis-1 and giving it an International Designation Code. You can track it here if you’re curious. Yep, the dawn of space tourism is coming steadily along. Here is the first thumbnail picture released a few hours ago.

Image taken from livescience.com Blogs

Being a module that essentially inflated (uh, think of it like an airbag) to reach its final configuration, there are obvious concerns of hull integrity. So far, it’s holding out, which means that the design is relatively sound for now. This is to be the first in a series of prototypes designed to test the model’s capability to survive in near Earth orbit. Micrometeorites are also a major concern here. Hey, it’s like a huge balloon so what do you think? One big prick, and you get a nice and big BANG that you can’t hear! Just exaggerating. The other concerns are mostly operational related as was originally a NASA design, so the only problem left now is to see if it works. If all goes well, Robert Bigelow should be able to officiate the first privately sponsored space hotel ever by the end of this decade.

That is, if he could find transportation to his hotel.

Oh, there’s the ‘tiny’ problem of getting there. See, shuttles are going to be retired around 2010 (plus NASA don’t take too kindly to piggybacking hitchhiking space tourists, being a government agency) and the Russian space modules are too costly and take too long to build. Heck, the SpaceShipTwo in construction by Rutan Composites (successor to the shuttlecock looking contraption that won the Ansari X-Prize just a few years ago?) won’t be able to reach the altitude the hotel will be in. Bigelow knows about the problem, but he’s lazy to spend money to actually build his own spaceship to reach his hotel. So what did he do? Copy the Ansari X-Prize and come up with the America Space Prize! $50 million to whoever that can fly to his hotel twice within 60 days. Once you snag the prize, there’s a contract for you to sign for sole flying rights to Bigelow Space Hotel. If you want to win the prize, it expires in 2010 so you’d better hurry up. Another catch is you’ll have to be an American company to get the contract.  That’s because the paranoid State Department wants to keep a tight lid on ‘technology transfer’. While you ponder where to base your company, you’ll have to think about your spaceship model too. That’s all there is to it folks. Piece of cake, isn’t it?

When somebody gets that right too, the One Mile High Club would be superseded by the One Hundred Mile Club. To be fair, the former will still be the ‘most exclusive club’ on Earth, unless somebody comes up with a One Mile Deep Club. Not catchy and cheap enough I suppose. Until you’re a millionaire with enough cash to burn as rocket fuel, you’re still stuck with an Earthly honeymoon plan. In case you’re wondering what it’s like trying to make out in zero gravity, it’s going to be harder than you imagine. Nah, I didn’t do the Gedankenexperiment, some space entrepreneurs did it and I read their book. If you’re not enterprising enough to build a spaceship, then perhaps you could be enterprising enough to make ‘toys’ specially catered for 0G. A whacky thought? Welcome to the budding world of space entrepreneurship.

There’s one more thing. The vacation is gonna be ‘at your own risk’, so you won’t be able to sue them if anything goes horribly wrong. Best to keep your space vacation plans under wraps for 20 more years at least, IMO.

That was the first thing I heard when I came in. I saw what was before my eyes, and I immediately understood. It was assembly and the students are singing like a graveyard choir. Some things just never change. Of course, I couldn’t help but grin to myself as I remembered the years long passed since…

Like others before me, I returned to my alma mater with my friends to get the 1119 cert, get some documents certified and do the usual chatting with the teachers. Come to think about it, I missed out a few teachers! Ah, well you couldn’t get them all in one swoop. Heh, I actually went back not once but thrice and yet I could still miss things. How pathetic of me.

Let’s see, it has been 3 years since I ceased to be a Seafieldian. As expected there have been a lot of changes. In fact, the first and most obvious was the colour. Okay, it matches the primary school on the other side of the field and the new furniture, but I think I prefer the blueness of the past (I’m severely biased towards blue anyway). As for the rest of the school, I can’t help but envy the improved environs. Darn it, it used to be blander around these parts. No matter, we’re only visitors now anyway. In fact, I think this would be my last trip that I’ll be able to meet some students that I actually know (they’re all in Form 6 now and I probably won’t be around for the next 3 years at least).

At least there are still plenty of familiar sights. The teachers are still around in their usual places. Classes and my usual hangout places still look the same. Invariably, they always started with requests of checking this and that out. After all, you don’t get the ‘three muskeeters’ in one place very often nowadays. I did break the mantra of ‘You see one, you see three’ for two of my three visits. Oops. It seems that there’s nobody left around to help keep things running after our batch of ‘helpers’. I think it’s just me, or is it that students today are becoming less and less IT literate? Then, it’s the usual questions of ‘Where are you now? What course? How long? How much?’. I tell you, they must have a standard list of ‘Questions to ask to former students’! Being someone who took plenty of roads not taken, I have a loooooong story to tell. Unless I felt like it, I just kept things short and said I got a scholarship and going down to NUS to do an engineering course. It’s not a lie, as that is precisely what I’m gonna do in less than a week’s time but I’m simply too tired to elucidate on my whole plan. After all, I’m not satisfied with having to endure a ‘7 year detour’ in my plans. Having the alternate plans come to fruitation is another matter entirely, so it’s not worth going into them at the moment.

All the same, it’s been nice to drop by and see how things has changed. In the meantime, what happened to the plans for an Alumni?!?!?!?!!?!?!?

To digress a little the 2006 World Cup has finally come to an end, and we shall have to look forward to South Africa in 2010. For me, the current one ended on a bittersweet note. Germany, the hosts managed to come in third place, but France sundered and conceded to Italy. What a bummer. Zidane, the man everyone looked to in bringing Italy to heel, and France to victory has finally reached the end of the road, but in a truly unexpected way. What felled him wasn’t his talent, but his character. This would probably end up as a classic example on the strengths and weakness in relying on one man to rally a team to victory. A truly disappointing end, but we’re not the ones who are going to endure a lifetime’s regret for a passionate moment. Nonetheless, both the world’s best player and his team still deserved accolades for having made it so far. As for König Kahn, it’s time to call it a day too. Too bad he didn’t get to play against Italy. If he had, the former world class goalkeeper might be able to make the difference. Nevertheless it’s been a great World Cup, and it’s time to look for fresh talent.

The inspiration for this post came from a rather unusual source, an IELTS practice passage. A friend graciously loaned the IELTS practise book to me in an instant, so I decided to accept the offer. And so, I came across this rather intriguing passage that describes two psychologist’s attempts to classify the different aspects of love in a relationship.

As I as lazy to replicate the entire passage, I turned to Google first and then Wikipedia in the hopes of locating a substitute (I needed complete names, then a formal name for the theories which was not given in the original passage). As always, they produced what I’m seeking for. I can’t imagine Internet life without them, that’s for sure.

Behold the two theories.

Firstly, the triangular theory of love by psychologist Robert Sternberg that characterizes love in an interpersonal relationship on three different scales: intimacy, passion, and commitment.

Next are the love styles, models of lovers developed by Susan Hendrick and Clyde Hendrick. They identified six basic theories that people use in their interpersonal relationships.

IMHO, I think Sternberg’s theory is more popular. Perhaps it’s because his theory is simpler to understand and easier to apply by the laypeople in characterising their relationships. The love style is admittedly more complicated, but provides a deeper insight. However, our human brains are typically attracted to the simpler option, therefore Sternberg triumph. But, as the two theories are not mutually exclusive it is a good idea to have a look at both sides.

From their studies, it was ascertained that a relationship based on a single element is less likely to survive than one based on two or more elements (Sternberg). On the other hand, Hendrick and Hendrick found that men tend to be more ludic, whereas women tend to be storgic and pragmatic. Mania is often the first love style teenagers’ display. Relationships based on similar love styles were found to last longer. People often look for people with the same love style as themselves for a relationship. No surprises there.

Have fun reading and trying to figure out where you fit in!