Points to Ponder?

I am amazed at the number of people who aren’t aware of the existence of the word “oppress”. They all seem to think it was something TR made up while giving this passionate speech. Kinda sad when you think that TR apparently knows more English than most of the people I know.

Another thing I dont get is the purpose of fire alarms. I was sitting in the YIH the study room a few hours before exam. Its usually a very very quiet place, people frown at you if you as much as sneeze loudly. Suddenly the fire alarm started ringing, but no one paid it the least bit attention. They just took out their headphones and tried to drown out the noise of the alarm with webcasts. It was apparently obvious to everyone in the room except me that the alarm was tripped by accident and that there was no fire. It turned out that it finally was a mistake but I wonder what the point of alarm is, if it cant even “alarm” anyone into not studying for a couple of minutes. How do you tell the difference between a real fire and bobby smoking under the Smoke detectors by just listening to the alarm anyway?

As all of the three of you know, Im working these days. One good thing about work is the flexible lunch hours. Working in Raffles Place has its own advantages, like the numerous overpriced foodcourt and fastfood joints that surround each building. When I get sick of the overcrowded foodcourt(where people reserve seats with PAPER NAPKINS ), I walk over to the starbucks(there are 4 very close to my office, I walk to the furthest) because its usually quite empty during lunch hours, and I can also read the newspaper while eating. For those who dont stay in Singapore, there are two kinds of news.

1) Singaporean “news”, which usually goes like this :

Headlines : Minister Mentor Lee’s message to the nation and/or “JC Girl wins 100m race in Singapore Invitational International JC Athletics event!”

National News : Minister Mentor Lee’s views on the nation today

Financial News : Minister Mentor Lee’s views on finance

International News : Minister Mentor Lee’s thoughts on why and how China uberpwns the West.

3 pages are now dedicated to NTUC’s latest bargain offerings.

Weather Forecast : Minister Mentor Lee’s views on the weather Its sunny, and will remain sunny for the next 3 days!

Sports news : Uzbekistan 7 Singapore 3

Editorial : Everything is pleasant and wonderful! The rest of the world has problems, but lets not worry about all that! There is a beach party at Sentosa this weekend!

2) The second type of news is, of course, real news.

Let me give you an example. I was reading the Straits Times one day, because some scum bag had beaten me to the Herald Tribune. There was an editorial on why China is uberawesome because it has as many nuclear missiles as Japan or something. He was arguing that China having nuclear missiles and continuing to make them was for the greater good. All this was fine, it is his opinion after all, but suddenly in the middle of the editorial I read this statement “China follows United’s strategy, a strong defense automatically translates into a powerful offense”. I spent two minutes wondering if he was talking about United Airlines or United Arab Emirates or maybe the United Nations. After reading the next line, which I cant recollect right now, I realised he was actually talking about Manchester United. It was unbelievable the way he referred to a football club in a cavalier fashion in an article on world security, where most journalists wouldn’t take the liberty of mentioning “Bush” without suffixing “President of the United States”, if only to confirm. Everyone knows most of manUre’s fanbase is in Southasia (after all, there has to be SOME reason why Park Ji Sung is still playing) but show some class man. Maybe it says something that the editor of the national newspaper mentions football clubs and expects all his readers to immediately understand what they have to do with China’s nuclear weapons. It means that Mancs are commies. Kill them all.

Well there is still a lot to rant about but no time right now. I shall be bach.

Cartographically me

The end of semester exams for my second semester began a couple of days ago. While for most people here it is going to end this saturday, I still have 3 more exams. In fact, I have an exam on the last day of all exams. Sigh, life is sad.

One of my friends had his “EAP” exam(I dont know what it stands for), a module you have to do if you flunk the “QET“(Qualifying English Test) which we all have to write when we join. Though I must say, your english knowledge has nothing to you passing or failing the module, their method of evaluation is apparently totally random. As a side fact, 7 of the 10 people from DAV flunked QET. This is just a side fact, I am not implying anything. So anyway, he had his english exam today(incidentally, hes from DAV too) and after the exam, his gtalk status message(more on status messages later) was “And so it beings…”. I thought he was making sarcastic references to having learnt english in the EAP module etc etc but I wanted to make sure anyway. This is a short piece of conversation that followed. The italicised part is him changing his status message.

Rushi so it beings?you are showing that now that eap is over, you have forgotten english already?

aku: And so it begins…

Rushi LOLLOLOLOLOLOLOL

aku awrite awrite… screw u… am gonna study MA1506

Rushi lol

Seems he HAD forgotten english already. Lesson : Never overestimate people from DAV.

I am doing a module called EE2006(Digital Design) this semester. I basically learn stupid things I will probably forget as soon as the exam ends, if I manage to learn it before. While this is true for most modules I am doing, it is particularly true for EE2006 because even after writing tests and attending labs worth 40% my grade, I still have no clue about the module. But my point is actually about how they decide to release the results of the CAs. Now, most of the other professors release the grades in the lectures, in the tutorials, send them as emails, put them up on the WorkBin or the course webpage. But for some reason, the people in charge of EE2006 decide that it is enough if they put up the marks on a stupid notice board which is on the other side of campus. To get an idea about exactly how stupid it is, look at this map :

I, who am too lazy to walk to the canteen which is located in my residence(refer picture below), am expected to catch a bus all the way to the other side of campus to check my grades for a subject which I dont even want to read :

But next year, I am going to live at Eusoff hall, which is not a bad thing at all considering my faculty is also shifting pretty close to there. So now, distance will not be an issue if I decide to attend classes.

Another good thing is that now, when I wake up at 745 and find out I have an exam at 8, I wont have to rush to the busstop without taking anything and borrow a pen from the invigilator. I actually went 15 minutes late for my cs1102 midterm. But now, I can wake up at 745, grab a pen and start running at 750 and still make it there by 8. Now that is not bad at all, considering Ive managed to arrive exactly on time for an exam only three times and all the other times, I was *almost* on time or *slightly* late. It would have taken me atleast half an hour to run from PGP to the exam halls btw. That sucks.

Oh well thats enough maps, now I have to get some sleep. Sayanora.

IN SOVIET RUSSIA, MAPS DRAW YOU!!!

Tidbits and taxi rides

I saw a few construction workers at the construction site of the MRT station near college. They were holding nokia phones, complete with bluetooth headsets. You know, those things abhishek bachchan and bipasha basu wore in Dhoom2 when trying to amaze us with advancements in thief catching technology.

If you thought listening to auto drivers complain about rising petrol prices and new government policies from the moment you stopped hassling about the fare to the moment you actually paid up was payment enough for the journey, you are a comrade of mine. But believe me when I tell you, singaporean taxi drivers make their indian counterparts seem as loquacious as a lamp post struck by a silencio spell. The thing is, the fare is metered so you dont hear much about the “naasama pona government raising the petrol prices”, or about the traffic or even the next India-West Indies cricket match. The taxi drivers here take on the role of the high school guidance counsellor you are now thankful you never had. This is an actual conversation I had with a taxi driver while returning from the airport.

(I should mention that there is no way I will be able to capture the *singaporean* accent and without that, I must admit it doesnt have quite the same effect)

Td : So what are you doing in singapore lah ?

Me : Im student..in NUS

Td : Ah NUS..good university..which country are you from ?

Me : India..

Td : India..In India there are no universities?

Me : No no there are lots..I just decided to come to singapore..

Td : Are universities good?

Me : Universities are very good..

Td : Then why did you come to singapore ?

Me : Uh..international exposure and all that..

Td : Yes yes very important. You stay in hostel lah? How many people in one unit?

Me : Unit ? Well..around 300 ppl I thnk..

Td : No no unit, house, unit, not block

Me : Oh room..well one person per room..

Td : Oh ok..what course are you doing ?

Me : Computer engineering..

Td : How long you stay in singapore?

Me : Well course is for 4 years..so another 3 and a half years i guess..

Td : 4 year course lah? What you going to do after college ?

Me : Uh I dont know… I havent decided yet..

Td : You should keep studying lah, study for as long as you can. Look at uncle now, uncle too old
to study. Cant study any more lah. Do you have a girlfriend???

Me : Uh no…..

Td : Dont listen to girlfriend. Study first, most important, girlfriend come after that lah. Make
lots of money for your children. Thats what every father wants lah, he wants his children to do
well. That is why we earn money.

Me : Um ok….

And then thankfully we reached my hostel. So after my parents, teachers, tuition teachers, uncles, aunts, grandparents, neighbours and my sister’s stuffed lion, it was the taxi driver’s turn to tell me what I should do in life.

Hoo boy, give me an over charging autodriver any day. Even when he rips my wallet, he has considerations for my soul which has always believed in “start thinking about tomorrow when today gets over”, “plan not and have feelings about not sticking to your plans, not” and “If the taxi driver is actually asking for the right price, he probably has a wrong destination in mind”.

It is now 3:42 AM. I was about to publish this post and sleep when I got a phone call from another nocturnal friend who, unfortunately for me, lives in the same block. He wanted me to come and take a look at his new hairdo.

Ladies and gentlemen, Karthik Balasubramanian. If you were dragged out of your room to be asked to take this picture when you had an 8 o clock Digital Design lecture, you would be outraged. But then, that was if you were planning on attending the lecture.

And while I am at posting pictures, here is one I took just outside the typing room at school. Most of you can guess who wrote that. I prefer “not to talk”. Get ittcch ?

And a picture I took at the NUS library bookstore

And my wonderful friends at it again…(They have a thing for bonking stuff)

Notice red circle. But that didnt stop her from trying to shoot the eyelashes off that poor mongoose. (Click to enlarge)

And dd with our prize

And no this is not the elec engineering lecture, though the scene wont be much different(if he actually managed to wake up in time for the lecture that is). Aswin aka M*tter(rhymes with batter) B*tch(rhymes with pitch) doing what he does best.

And our resident VHP activist..free….

ZOMGWTFBBQPWNSAUCE GIVE MY PHONE BACK!!!

Reflections and Reverberations…

This post bears no relation to two little known cultural festivals organised by two little known schools called VM and PSBB. They are not very scintillating, if you know what I mean.

First semester at NUS is over, just seven more to go. Hmm time sure flies. Heres something I found out while preparing for my Statistics finals : There are 215 girls and 82 guys doing the module. There are around 40 computer engineering students in the course, the rest being Life Sciences students. Most of the 40 are guys. Now, if you, like me, had been wondering WHO would be willing to waste their life by reading life sciences, the “dumber sex” anyone ?

Pardon the chauvinist remarks and just concentrate on the issue at hand, WHY ?! Biology should be abolished.

Hmm end of semester doesnt seem to be such a bad thing actually. From now on, every time I go past lt32(where my stats classes are held), I dont have to think about all the lectures I should have attended and start feeling guilty. I dont have to set 5 alarms every night before I sleep. I dont have to wake up everyday thinking “Oh fish did I sleep through the alarms again..? “. I dont have to start preparing for discrete structures tests 2 hours before the test. And I dont have to wonder if chling lives in the slow dimension too (refer previous posts on the HideouslyStreakedD).

I saw dhoom2 today. Yes, my hindi vocabulary consists of 4 words all of which will never appear in any movie but I still managed to sit through it and was able to follow in bits and pieces. The tune was very catchy but the film looked as if the director had ripped off from every english movie he had ever seen starting from oceans 11, mission impossible II and ending with johnny english. Abhishek bachchan(or however many ch’s his astrologer has told him to add) displayed a wide range of emotions in the flim ranging from gloomy face 1 to gloomy face 3, taking up gloomy face 2 during song sequences. Oh and he would have lasted about 10 seconds in a CounterStrike game. And he also gives Vijaykanth a run for his money when it comes to dancing.

Though quite a few people I know liked the movie, I found it kinda predictable most of the time. The only surprise was during the last scenes when hrithik falls down and doesnt have a spare parachute or a hidden water ski somewhere. But they dont show us how he gets away so I might even be right. We already figured out the plot of dhoom3 so mark this post, ill sue Vijay Krishna Acharya for plagiarism when the next movie comes out.

Warning : Plot details follow. Dont read if you actually got surprised when you watched that movie.

Theres a new thief who pulls some far fetched stunt. Little B thinks its Arya 6-fingers and goes after him. Forces him to go after new thief. Arya goes after new thief. Anticipates what he is going to pull and steals that stuff before him. Final showdown, they try to steal the crown jewels and Arya uses some incredibly advanced super crows to pick it up for him so get ready to be amazed. Plot point : Lots of master strokes. Expect to see oceans 12 all over again, with a dash of Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Eragon. Oh and new thief is John Abraham.

There, I just saved you a hundred bucks.

Of a full circle

My end sem exams began today yesterday well sometime in the past 24 hours. Electrical engineering was never one of my favourite subjects. That it came under physics and that I had endured 2 years of chitra did little to help matters. But when compared to my eg1108 lectures, physics class actually seems very interesting now. Ok maybe more of entertaining than interesting but the point is it had a positive side too. For the purpose of this rant, lets label my(very much fictional) eg1108 professor “chilling” without the first ‘i’ and ‘l’ which makes it “chling” which I repeat is not the name of a real person, just a random character I have come up with.

Disclaimer : The following events are merely figments of the author’s overactive imagination and have no relation at all to any real life incidents or people. Lawyers and Singapore Secret Police, stay away. You got nothing on me.

Every lecture, “chling” enters the lecture theatre and starts giving us lessons on how to read word by word from the text book and make it so boring that the author starts turning in his grave. Actually, I am not sure if this happens every lecture, I attended only 2 before I found better ways of spending 2 hours every monday evening. CounterStrike is just so much more interesting. Chling makes physics class feel like a Metallica concert, with his soporific voice which puts the Overhead projector to sleep. He doesnt care if the lecture theatre is only half full. Or even if its half full only because wifi in lt7A (the lecture theatre) is really good. Or even if you get up and proclaim your undying love for Biology (just WHY anyone would want to do that subject is beyond me). He just goes on and on about why the current phasor is lagging behind the voltage phasor by 67.52 degrees. He is happy, as long as there are pages to read and an empty hall to bore.

Oh well, no more electrical engineering for me for another year, no more chlings and transformers that dont transform properly. No more rushing to eg lab 15 minutes late, no more writing stories for a question for which you are supposed to draw a graph. Woot !

Oh and garlic bread and molten chocolate, nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. The noodles with oreos were honestly better.

To be or not to be…

Here are a few things I learnt in NUS…

1) If somethings wrong with your yahoo messenger, reformat your computer

2) The most effective way of pushing someone over the edge after irritating them is by saying “free…”

3) Come to think of it, I actually learnt #2 from BK in school

4) Kvkk was right, not listening in class, bunking lab sessions and asking if the compiler supports TIME.H IS college life after all. Ofcourse, the reasons why i asked the TIME.H question were different.

5) It doesnt matter how many graded tutorials you bunk. What matters is whether you can convince your tutor that you were better off not sitting in class.

6) “I am mentally frustrated and feel claustrophobic” might not work for everyone

7) When your cs tutor says the practicals is going to be fun, you know you have to read up recursion.

8) Listening to people argue about why “Dan detective school” is better than “Captain Tsubasa” is a really sad way of spending your time.

9) And then you realize that it was either that or talk about PSBB culturals. And suddenly, Captain Tsubasa doesnt sound so bad after all.

More later, feeling extremely sleepy now.

and that is the question…

CAs, PE and acronyms overkill

So as the end of the semester is nearing, we are having exam more frequently. Assignment papers, practical exams(or PE) and quizzes (all of which constitute the “CAs” or continual assessments) really take the fun out of life. sigh how I miss school with the million assignments which I never studied for(and flunked, but it didnt matter back then), the practicals which might be difficult if you werent fortunate enough to have a nice person at the same table to draw your diode circuits for you. And connect the wires and take your readings for you too. Only, it wasnt so nice when I had no idea about her potentiometer experiment. Bah she was still nice enough to draw the circuit again for me during the half yearlies. And connect the wires and take the readings too. Sigh school…

Everything in singapore has an acronym. Buildings, banks, roads and even people. Isnt “Kent Ridge” a nice name for a road? (Its actually the name of 3 roads – Kentridge drive, kentridge crescent and kentridge avenue, all of which are inside campus). Now why would anyone want to call it “kr” ? The banks here have cool names like POSB and DBS. When expanded, they read “Post office savings bank” and “Development bank of singapore”. Then again, thats why we need acronyms. Maybe we should start calling singapore ROSE for “Republic Of SingaporE” ? hyuk hyuk I wonder why you guys still come and read this blog.

Sometimes, its just so hard to say everything you really want to. Like now. Whats not easy might not always be whats right. Whats not easy is figuring out whats actually right.

Sigh to be in 12th again….I would give a great deal…Atleast for ross, it was an honest mistake…

Shoot, practicals in 8 hours. Got to go sleep.

Life in a fishbowl, midterms and some weirdness

Ok maybe Singapore is slightly larger than a fishbowl. Never mind the technicalities..

Hostel life has its own ups and downs. You learn to live by GMT, you get used to having noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner. When you wake up 10 minutes late for a class that began at 11, you learn to say “Oh what the hell” and get back to sleep. When you wake up after the class ends, you decide to go to YIH to play pool. When you do manage to make it to the lecture, you learn sleep there. Or if really bored, chat on yahoo messenger. Or if REALLY bored, play virtualtennis over the wireless network with your friend who is supposed to be in the same class but for some reason is in the TV room. When you get bored of subway you go to McDonalds. When you get bored of McDonalds, you go to KFC. When you get bored of KFC you go to Rangoli(an Indian restaurant not far from campus).

My midterms got over last week. The Elec engineering one was o….k….. It made me wish I had paid more attention to Chitra. For about 10 minutes after the exam. The statistics exam was ultimate comedy. Firstly, I dont know why I am taking that stupid module. We learn to calculate the probability of some totally random crap like

“What is the chance that grandchildren of a man who has 14.64 % chance of having a cardiopulmonary disability when a) The parents of the children smoke b) The mother alone smokes c) Neither smoke if i) the children are identical twins ii) they are nonidentical twins iii) They are not twins given that the model follows a Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium”.

One tutorial question was

In the semester I, 2006/2007, 304 students are taking ST1232.
Find the probability that all of them will survive in the next 3 months. Justify your
answers.

Wait, some of this sounds kind of cool. I should be finding this interesting right? Oh wait, I just realised, I dont give a damn what is the probability that there occurs exactly 31 road accidents a week or whether whether light smokers are more likely to get anigma than heavy smokers. I would much rather sit back and read about it in the newspapers. That is ofcourse if there is no cover story about Alonso dying due to a malfunctioning toilet seat.

I am going to India this weekend for diwali. I was also given “subtle” hints that I needed to get gifts for my friends celebrating their birthdays soon. And “half-birthdays”. WTF are half birthdays anyway ? And how come I didnt get a halfbirthday gift all these years ?

Cant think of anything else, more later. Got to wrap up the gifts, pack all the stuff, start on the SS essay, do the cs lab assignment and study for the discrete structures test.

Ah yes, discrete structures.

CS1231 is another weird module. Its been 5 weeks since I attended the last lecture. We have weekly tests each of which contribute 5% to the final marks. This is too little to “motivate” me to prepare for it while this is also a little too high for me to ignore. This results in a lot of friday afternoons being spent in cramming for the test. We basically learn about everything RP almost taught us but never got around to it because Swarun bunked that monday.

Well back to discrete, cant wait till friday afternoon this time. Flights at 830 while exam gets over only at 6. Going to be cutting it fine…half birthday presents are on the line here :

Gun them red devils !!!

I just found out how it feels to be a gunners fan at Old Trafford.

I went to Temasek hall at 11 to watch the ManU Arsenal match. They telecast the matches live in the halls while at PGP(which is a residence and theres a whole world of difference between halls and residences) we hardly watch tv coz we get nothing but Channel5 and Channel 5 sucks. Raghavendra, Varun and I headed over to the Temasek lounge where they were showing the match on a giant screen. There were us 3 arsenal fans and about 40 manU diehards. When Gilberto(@%#%#) missed that penalty, the roof came down. When Ronaldo kicked the ball straight into Lehmann’s face( I still hate him), the walls shook. When Adebayor sneaked the ball through whatshisname’s legs and into the goal, the room was silent but for the three of us shouting ourselves hoarse.

Ah life is too good to be true.

Except for the statistics class this morning. Actually, its in 5 hours. I need to get more sleep.

My home…my rules…

I promised some pictures of my room sometime ago and tada here they are.

Well, this is my room. its kinda small but I took three pictures from different angles to make it appear slightly larger.

My bed…(and my bag too)…

And ..hem hem..the rest of my room…dont mind the mess.

The cluster kitchen where we can make noodles in the middle of the night. We are at it often coz the PGP dinner sucks(PGP is the place where I stay)

The residence 6 lounge or “common room”. This is where we play CounterStrike or watch movies or pretend to study. If you are lucky, you can also find some seniors you can “re-orient”(observe varun nagu, middle left of picture). What goes around comes around.

I took more pictures of PGP but the card reader stopped working suddenly and I am not able to load them onto my computer. Wait for a bit more, patient reader(s?).

Also, I am proud to say that my organization skills have improved greatly. I refuse to elaborate though.