A star named after you

Just came across this thing while watching a TV program so went an checked it out (International Star Registry) and guess what you can get to name a star anything you want so can be after your self or another person or thing. You even get to pick a constellation - say for example the one corresponding to your birth month or just one at random. Thought it was a cute gift idea too since they have the whole gift packacges and stuff going. Hmm rather ex though so I guess ill have to wish on that star :D

Fighting over everything

Everything we do seems to be a fight over a small number of resources. When I mean fight I dont mean physically punches or a full fledged war but ... err well I think everyone knows what I mean. We struggle! We struggle for housing and land. If your working then your fighting for resources or funding to finish a project - even though you are working for the same company. Even studies - everyone doesn't get equal marks... theres something called a bell curve so you have to fight to get to the other side of the curve even if you generally do well. Then you fight for a limited number of jobs and promotions. Sometime you push yourself other times you try to push off the other person. People even fight to keep friends or find a 'soulmate'!
Ok someones going to say wow brainiac are you just seeing this now! I guess so. So I guess thats existence a fight to survive. And you spend so much time on the fight that you have no time to spend on what you actually fought for. I guess thats why reality programs do pretty well .... they just exaggerate and make an obvious competition out of what we all do.

Thesis and deadlines

Every heard of having to write up a thesis in 4 days. Ya thats what I had to do; was a draft but nonetheless having to start with a "New Word Document" 4 days before it was due was no fun. Serves me right for nodding vigourously everytime my prof says "you must start writing this now" "dont put it off for later", "you can finish the lit review now", get the idea. He must have thought my nods actually meant I had started wrting stuff. Initially he gave me 2 days but managed to get it extended to 4. Well in the midst of all that had to put aside one day for an interview and another for going shopping - lack of clothes for the interview.
Well to see how people change in the midst of me complaining and writing one of school friends comes online and say its no big deal and how if it was him he would have finished it long time ago since he does his work before the deadline - couldnt figure out if he was joking or not considering this was the same guy who played the fool most of the time. Speaking of deadlines this next month is going to be sooo much fun... got another game project due in 2 weeks, 2 labs this week and a test next week - for which i havent gone for a couple of lectures so need to see the webcast as well. and at the end of the month I have to submit my main draft thesis, finish all my experiments and have a presentation!. - and still people wonder why I look stressed!

Bushfires

Did you know we had bush fires in Singapore. I sure didn't till yesterday - nevermind fires I didnt know there were bushes to have bushfires. Turns out there have been close to 10 a day in the recent days. That would explain the burning smell that we seem to be getting in the air these days. Been having realy hot days and the air is very warm and dry too, no wonder fires are breaking out - its just that I couldnt beleive that you could have that sort of thing in a city.

Getting Lost

Well it is said that you cant get lost in Singapore - true but I managed to - not entirely but slightly befuddled. Then again my friends know my sense of direction is off. I got to the place by cab and once I was done decided to meet up with my friends at City Hall. I knew that City Hall had to be within walking distance cause I had looked it up on the map at home - but for the life of me couldnt figure out which way. The road signs were so familiar but none of the buildings were. Called my friend same problem. Asked the bus drivers if they were headed that way but no. Well the easiest way to get out of this one would have been to jump into a cab again but I was determined to find it. Anyway I decided to go in a general direction since the place was surrounded by 3 mrts and I was bound to bump into one of them at least. Finally I see the YMCA up ahead and another building which tells me that I near one of the mrts. Turned out that I had been standing in front of the YMCA all that time but couldnt see it cause of some new construction and hence had to go all the way round.

Brilliant timing for network downtime!

What with Chinese New Year right smack in the middle of the week it seemed like a good time to finish off the project. Well come Tuesday the network started acting up; one minute it was connected and then nothing. Tried the VPN thing too that prolonged the time it was up but it was realy frustrating to be downloading a bit of code or something and then have it conk out in the middle. And it wasnt like it was the network was down or something - each persons connection just kept behavin erratically. It didnt help that the project was a network based thing!!. Anyways on Friday it finally stabilized - I hope. And then a new thing happens - Google chucks us off - says our network is sending infinite requests so we may have a virus etc so we cant process your request now! - well having gotten used to typing google everytime you wanted to look something up it was rather annoying when you automatically went there and then had to switch to another search engin. Well the new year period made it worse I guess cause with all the tech staff off on holiday just had to wait it out.

Lab Safety

Apparently there has been a new thing to inspect all the labs in the area for safety and such. We got inspected quite recently and they found things to complain about esp the lack of notices. Well our poor lab officer decides to remdy that by putting all the safety manuals right up front and plastering each and every door with numerous notices along the lines of "Practice Lab Safety" "Keep the lab clean and organised" "take care when operating this equipment" " wear protective gear".... Hmm now the whole door to each room is full of notices that its a veritable fire hazard!