Random thought:

"Buddha jumps over the wall", in my opinion, is by far the BEST name that any dish can have. The name of the dish is itself a complete and grammatically correct sentence. Being the name of a dish, this makes it a proper noun too. This leads to interesting possible constructions of garden-path sentences such as:

"The Buddha jumps over the wall tastes good."

"I like Buddha jumps over the wall."

Seriously, how cool is it to have the name of a dish being a complete sentence? What's more, this complete sentence tells you nothing about the dish, which makes its name all the more cool.

Supposedly the name of the dish is meant to imply that the dish, which contains meat, is so good that even Buddha himself, an advocate of vegetarianism (if there's such a word), would jump over the wall to eat it. Good thing though that Buddha is mortal, otherwise that would constitute as blasphemy.

Perhaps the name of the dish itself pokes fun at Buddhism. The name does make sense, since Buddha doesn't have special powers, so he could only jump over a wall. But what if the one whom one wishes to suan has some powers? Let's see...

Moses parts the wall.
Jesus rebukes the wall.
Muhammad flies over the wall.
Xenu H-bombs the wall.
Xun Zi punishes the wall.
Lao Zi becomes one with the wall.
Mencius nurtures the wall.
Shiva destroys the wall.
Vishnu creates an opening in the wall.
Brahma... preserves his status of hunger.

I'm off for England tomorrow, not sure if I'll have internet access. Blog may die.

Random thoughts.

Hindsight bias: "I knew I loved you before I met you."

And the perfect retort: "Don't say you love me, you don't even know me."

Ok old joke.

The weather, in my opinion, has been PERFECT recently. Sunny and Windy at the same time! Sunlight supposedly has an anti-depression effect, and being able to keep cool in the blazing sun is just wonderful. Maybe it is the effect of PSLE Science on me, but it always reminds me that it's a good day to take out the laundry (despite the fact that I don't do housework).

If you are feeling random, click here.

I've discovered the ultimate IM act-cute expression:

squee~ *dies*

I wonder if people with Prosopagnosia(inablility to recognize faces) can judge beauty. Could they be the "disinterested observers" that Kant seek?

Angst ahead. Be forewarned.
____

I don't want to be a bad person. I try not to appear like one. But I could just end up not appearing like a bad person. I still have bad thoughts, and bad thoughts are punished by bad feelings.

Why do I deserve bad feelings? I have tried hard to be good. But it seems like there is more to being a good person than acting like one. Good people have good thoughts, that's why they behave well, right?

I have bad thoughts, and I am punished by bad feelings, but I have tried to be good!

Why do good people deserve to feel good? They are born this way. It so happens that good thoughts are what they think. They become good people, and they feel good. Not fair! I want to be a good person too! I want to have good thoughts like a good person, so that I don't need to try hard act like a good person, and still be good. I want to be a self that is good.

But changing the self is as foreign a concept as death. It seems like it is impossible to become a good person with good thoughts, since I am already a bad person with bad thoughts. Whether I act like a good person or a bad person, I will still be punished by my bad thoughts. Why do I still act like a good person, then?

Because doing bad things will make me feel even worse than thinking bad things. If I act like a good person, I will only be punished by bad feelings due to bad thoughts; if I act like a bad person, I would be punished for both my bad thoughts and bad action.

I don't feel good even if I act like a good person, because I don't have good thoughts like they do. But at least I don't feel worse than I currently do. Maybe if I do more good, they become a habit, then I don't have to listen to be bad thoughts and be punished by them so much.

I don't know who are the good people. But if I meet one, I won't know if he or she is a good person or not. His or her good intentions and thoughts will surely be doubted by my bad, cynical self. And my bad thoughts and actions will surely be interpreted as those having good purposes and good intentions.

In my world, I can't find good people. In their world, they can't find bad people. I am a bad person, and I feel sad for other bad people, because they are punished for their bad thoughts, and I don't think it's their fault. The good people, on the other hand, are glad that everyone is good, because they are rewarded for having good thoughts, and they don't have to work for it.

I want to be a good person. But I don't know how.
___________

Two incidences involving little kids.

When I was at Metro, I saw two boys, around the age of 5, playing on a chair. Then, a man came by and pushed a pram with a boy in it, and the boy looked like he was 4 years old. One of the boys playing on the chair pointed at the pram, and shouted, "Baby! Baby!" The other boy on the chair turned around, and also pointed at the boy in the pram, shouting, "Baby!"

I chuckled to myself, "50 bu4 xiao4 100 bu4."

The boy in the pram turned and just looked at those two boys. The man appeared embarrassed, and he explained to me, "He's not a baby, he's just lazy to walk." Then, the man pushed the pram along the aisle, and I heard him say, "They called you a baby. Why? It's because you are sitting in the pram. You are already so old..."(cannot hear) Then, he pushed the pram back to where the two boys were, and again, the two boys pointed at him and again shouted, "Baby! Baby!" It appeared that this time, the boy in the pram understood that he was being insulted by them, and he climbed out of his pram, walked up to them, and GLARED at them. Boy, did he look furious! The boys who called him "Baby" stopped immediately, and went behind the chair, staring at that boy. That boy continued glaring at them. This stalemate ended when the man held the boy's hand and walked away.

Really, that scene is priceless.

Today, I sat next to a little girl, about 4 years old. She smiled at me! Goodness. It brought joy to me.

Random stuff:

Why are the words that you are supposed to shout when you are in an emergency so difficult to shout? For example, in English you shout "Help!" which ends with a "p", so it doesn't carry. In Mandarin you shout "Jiu Ming" which is even worse. (Although Mandarin has an advantage that you can add an "ah" at the back, so "Jiu Ming Ah!" is still proper mandarin, but "Help ah!" just sounds weird.) Perhaps, when we need help, we should just shout "AHHHHHH" since it is probably an exclamation word in every language, and it is easier to shout.

Horlicks contains as much calcium as 5 glasses of milk, as much vitamin B6 as 48 bananas, and as much iron as 3 kg of spinach! Wow! I'll bet sea water contains more of these. Of course, that would depend on how much Horlicks and seawater you are comparing. (Don't you think "Horlicks" is a rather provocative name?)

As I browsed through NTUC aimlessly, I found out that they stock palm margarine, sunflower seed margarine, canola margarine, olive margarine, and extra virgin olive margarine. Wait, canola and olive margarine? Aren't canola and olive oil considered healthy oils because of their high monounsaturated fat content? So when you hydrogenate canola/olive oil, wouldn't you get really expensive margarine that has as much monounsaturated goodness as palm kernal oil? But that's not just it. Theoretically, hydrogenation is reversible, so some dehydrogenation should take place at the same time, and by Saytzeff's rule, you should get some extra trans fatty goodness too!

So theoretically, canola and olive margarine should be more expensive and contain more trans fats than palm margarine, since palm oil naturally contains more saturated fats and thus need to be hydrogenated to a lesser extent. However, it turns out that from a comparison of the nutrition value chart, the proportion of trans fats os as follows:

Praise(Palm) > Canola > Olive > Planta(Palm) > Extra Virgin Olive

Quite surprising. But once you consider price, Planta owns all. And it doesn't even need to be refrigerated.

I was somewhat against ranting about people not blogging despite the fact that A levels are over (assumption is correct as none of the blog-owners whom I read from take H3 Econs), since my math teacher used to say, "When you point a finger at others, four more are pointing at yourself." Thus, if I didn't blog despite my A levels being over, then I would be a hypocrite. But wait, the very act of ranting against all the others who do not blog after A levels constitutes a blogging action, and thus I am immunized against the tetraretrophallanx attack. Hence, I continue.

When blogs close down and become inactive as A level approaches, one would suspect that the approach of A levels is the cause of the inactivity. However, the converse of the hypothesized cause, i.e., the end of A levels, does not reverse the trend. Blogs remain dead. It is possible that blogs have a certain natural lifespan, because the creator gets bored after too long, regardless of whether he has other important things to do. In normal times, you see blogs dying, then getting resurrected, or new people starting to blog, with no regular pattern. CT 2 come, they start dying. But unlike neopets, dying blogs do eventually become dead when nobody visits it anymore.

So will blogs resurrect after A levels? I hope so, because they are sources of entertainment. However, some blogs may die for a long long time as the creators have something (or someone) to occupy themselves with, and thus are far too busy to blog. Oh well.

I think Stephanie Sun's "ASEAN Rise" is nice.

I was feeling lethargic before the A levels were over, because there was this nagging feeling that I should study despite me not wanting to. Now that the A levels are over, I hear people making self-improvement plans, and stress starts again! This signals the end of the competition for grades, and the beginning of the competition in life. The end of A levels doesn't really feel that great after all. When we were preparing for A levels, there was an end in sight, and we could look forward to it, and expect ourselves to be truly free from our sole responsibility of study. Doesn't it seem so? Regarding anything that bugs you in a couple of years time, you are told that "It's okay, focus on your A levels first." Now that A levels has ended, it starts to dawn on me that "WTF it's just the beginning!" There are still some 60 years ahead, and the supposedly best part of life, teenage, is over. Perhaps, reminiscing the old times would make it seem more wonderful than what it truly felt like at that time, because our memories are fallible, and people prefer to share the happier moments with others. Thus, as time passes by, the bad events fade out of our memories and the happy memories get exaggerated, distorted, and reinforced. Moreover, as past events are communicated in language and not in terms of emotion and sensation, the value judgment on an event would change as we age, since the connotations of words change as we use words differently.

It is a rather scary thought that the way we alter our memories of the past implies that past can always seem like a better period than the present or future. Wouldn't it seem like life has always been getting worse as one ages? From Dan Gilbert's TEDTalk, it seems like we can rationalize our joy and pain away, such that a person who is paralyzed and a person who won the top prize in lottery would feel just as happy in a year's time (it doesn't sound convincing here, but go watch the talk, it's good). As such, even though we strive towards what we believe to be our sources of happiness, our rationalization ensures that once we get there, we'll stop being happy, and we are back to square one in terms of happiness. Happiness that we aim for is not the happiness we get.

Yet is there any source of happiness that the mind cannot rationalize away, such that we can constantly rely on it as a source of happiness despite making no actual progress? I think the answer lies in a certain part of the brain that can be triggered by an electric impulse. Sounds amazing. That person getting treated by the impulse may be rendered useless to the society as he may simply work towards the trigger, but he'll be very happy unless the people who give him to electrical impulses decide to use him as a remote controlled human. He'll probably feel like a slave to his passions instead of being a real slave who is forced to do the things he don't want to do. If you pity this guy, maybe you should pity those who are in love as well. It doesn't seem like they have a choice either.

I digress much. Therefore I win.

I can see how crocodiles and hippos survived the Cambrian Explosion that killed the other dinosaurs, but what about elephants? They couldn't all have been in the water at the time it happened. And they were too big to be underground with the small ratty mammals from whence we evolved. Why do we still see elephants today? --Fuhghettaboutit 01:15, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Dug from Wikipedia. Entertaining.

You are a

.

For some reason, the popiah store in teck whye has always been a good source of random inspiration.

My mother asked me to da bao 2 popiahs for her, but she said that she wouldn't be able to finish it, so I'll need to eat half of it for her (which is simple, considering that this popiah store cuts its popiah into 6 parts, remember?). However, I'm having a sore throat, so I decided to buy one with chilli and one without chilli. Then, I had this idea. I recalled that in RJ Philo circle some teacher told us that "According to chinese philosophy, with yin there must be yang, and in music the yin and yang are silence and sound."

In Dao De Jing, this corresponds to a verse that says something like "Where beauty is defined, ugliness is implied."

So, if non-spiciness is defined, would spiciness be implied? I decided to try it out.

"Auntie, I want two popiahs, one not-spicy. Packet."
"Ok. One spicy, one not-spicy issit?"

Result: Positive.

Random.

Some advertisements are so good that it grabs more attention than the TV shows that are supposed to hold your attention long enough to get you to watch the advertisements. MOCCA adverts. Sure enough, the car advert and the partner seeking adverts were quite different from the rest of the advertisements shown, but that bodybuilder advertisement is seriously attention grabbing. I think there are more people talking about it than there are people talking about the TV shows.

Some advertisements are so standard that you don't even consciously realise that it even exists... until 5 years later, when you see the brand and you remember the jingle or catchphrase. It's kinda like subliminal messaging; it subconsciously affects your preferences and decision-making, which leads to a higher probability of you buying their product, but you don't remember paying much attention to the advertisement when it was being broadcast.

But the UIC advertisements are seriously horrible! I shall summarize it for you. "Omg our washing powders suck!""Yeh, it is so difficult to clean stuff!" Protest, protest! Then a man-in-white comes along. "Don't worry, use UIC cleaning chemicals!" And everyone is happy about his solution(no pun intended), and the man-in-white saves the day. (Yes, I can see that a society like that really needs a paternalistic government indeed.)

Then you have another one about a daughter going to get married, but she's worried about the housework. Then her mother reassures her, and they sing the jingle "UIC oh UIC, clean and green for you and me!" "If, with the help of UIC, your mother and your grandma have no problems managing the household, then neither would you!" "Ahh yes, we must thank UIC!" (No dear, that's not the point. You are supposed to thank your mother and grandma! Afterall, it's they who do the cleaning!)

The two advertisements are painful to watch. I'll change channel when I see them if the remote is in my hand.

Maybe I've been talking more about advertisements than TV shows, which might make you wonder if I turn on the TV just to watch advertisements. Actually, if there's nobody else in the house, I hardly turn on the TV. It's my parents who watch TV drama. It's perhaps rather silly to actually practice what I learn in KI, but when I watch TV drama, I have to watch it, attempt to understand the storyline, and also actively suppress any beliefs that I gain from it which I may later generalize to the real world. There's this part of the brain that says, "For goodness sake, you are watching drama! Suspend your disbelief!" Then there's the other part that asks me, "What is the producer trying to convince you to think? You are supposed to think that this guy is in the wrong, because everyone else in the show thinks so, but what is the assumption here? In real life, would this person really behave this way?" It's quite tiring. But when I watch advertisements, I know that their purpose is to convince me to buy their wares. There's no suspension of disbelief, so I can carefully line up the arguments involved. Besides, advertisements keep repeating, so there's less memory work too!

Have been randomly surfing youtube. For the sake of efficiency, I shall not post the videos here.
_______

Superheroes usually have some superpowers based on some scientific phenomena, like "Magneto" or "Electrika", but hey, where would science be without math? Here we have a superheroine, Math Girl!

Math Girl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgMSgJdr4k0

Go ahead, cringe at the cliched storyline, and the moral of the story thinly veiled in the battle against adversity, "I must pay attention during every math lecture from today onwards!"
_______

Masochism Tango: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TytGOeiW0aE

Don't worry, it's not really a video about SM. It's just a guy playing a piano and singing a song.

On a random note, some American schools, noting that Singapore topped the TIMSS Math, tried to use the Singapore math textbooks as a teaching resource. They call the math in it "Singapore Math". One website abbreviates it as SM. Compared to American Math, it's a pretty apt abbreviation, I must say. (Some of their criticisms of SM is that there's not enough drilling. Drilling you want? I welcome you to send your child to South View Primary School. If we can finish 3 exam papers per day 7 days a week, so can your child!)

I remember that at this time of last year, I liked to blogsurf, and read how people are dying for Promos. Now, I don't get the joy of doing that anymore because people either stop blogging altogether, or improve a great deal for Prelims. Probably the only person to consistently blog about his results is Ivan, which is demoralizing every time you read it. Inevitably, he'll mention Shang Hui's results too, which demoralizes you even more.

At this point in time, people are working very hard. People are also preparing uni applications, such that all of a sudden the person sitting next to you seems damn imba.

Rather demoralising, really.
___________

I still don't know what knowledge is.

The most common definition of knowledge is "true, justified belief". I'm not sure if "truth" and "justification" are necessary conditions.

And now the problem becomes: "What is true?"

Correspondence theory: If a statement describes an object, and the object is really as it describes, then it is true. I think it is a trivial description, because unless we are talking about a fictional world, there is no way for us to know what that object "really is like". If you attempt to extend this theory of truth to metaphysical concepts, it is only possible for you to know if a statement is true only if you somehow have access to this realm of "knowledge of what statements are really true". At the end of it, it really just means "a statement is true if it is true."

Coherence theory: If the rejection of that statement entails the rejection of many other statements, then that statement is likely to be true. Note that unlike the correspondence theory, it doesn't try to define truth, doesn't assume the existence of knowledge about what something is like, and doesn't guarantee that what is coherent is true.

Pragmatic theory: If you can use that statement to do something, and it works, then it is likely to be true. Problem is, it is difficult to evaluable how "pragmatic" a statement is, especially certain aspects of pure math.

In response to the skeptical attack, I question the viability of the correspondence theory of truth. The only statements that are certain is transcendental statements, and regarding everything else, you cannot be sure that there exists an external reality, where true statements can be made about it, and you cannot be sure if your reasoning faculties are working fine. An implication of this is that if one were to subscribe to correspondence theory of truth, the only truths are transcendental statements, and nothing else, including mathematics, can be considered as knowledge.

Clearly, we use the word "knowledge" to include many other things, such as scientific knowledge, mathematical knowledge, and general knowledge. Since the definition of knowledge given above would not consider "scientific knowledge" and "general knowledge", we can conclude, it is either that "scientific knowledge" and "general knowledge" are misnomers, that the definition of truth is inadequate, or that the definition of knowledge is inadequate.

Suppose we use, instead, the coherence theory of truth in the definition of knowledge. Since the coherence theory of truth does not say what is true, but rather what is likely to be true, there is a certain degree of fuzziness in the boundary between the set of statements that are true and the set of statements that are not true. Since truth is one of the criteria in the definition of knowledge, it must also mean that there is a certain degree of fuzziness in what constitutes knowledge, unless the justification and belief criteria are much more stringent than the truth criterion. Belief is pretty much a universal set, so that leaves us with justification, and let's see if the justification criterion is more stringent than the coherence truth criterion.

The problem with justification is that it must be a way with which the infinite regress of justification can be arrested. Three methods of stopping infinite regress: foundationalism (branches into empiricism and rationalism), coherence, and pragmatism (deja vu?).

Foundationalism is based on faith. Ironically, there is no good reason to believe in rationalism rather than empiricism or religious fundamentalism. Why do we not doubt our reasoning faculties? If it has failed us once, it could fail us again (although that is actually an inductive argument, but never mind that), so why should we use it as the basis for justification? Why should we reject what we sense in favour of what is reasonable? If our basis for knowledge is faith, I think there is much to worry about (appeal to consequences, but let's not go into that too).

Perhaps you are questioning, "Can't we use some common sense to tell us which faith is more reasonable than others?"

I'm reminded of a quote from George Carlin.

Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do..And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! ..But He loves you.

But some other things we wholeheartedly believe nowadays are pretty absurd too. Science has convinced people that friction is caused by the complex intermolecular forces of attraction between the billions upon billions of rugosities of two surfaces, and when they slide across each other, the bonds formed between the rugosities of the surfaces continuously form and break. Yet, the frictional resistive force is simply proportional to the normal force that each surface exert on each other. Or that when you take the limit of (1-1/n)^n as n tends to infinity, and then you take that number to the power of product between the ratio between the circumference of a circle to its diameter, and the square root of negative one, you get exactly negative one! Brilliant, but it's not a lot more common-sensical than religious doctrine, no?

So let's cast aside foundationalism as a means to stop the infinite regress, and consider coherence. Amazingly, it is the pretty much same thing as the coherence theory of truth, that is statement is likely to be justified if it is coherent with other beliefs. The implication of this would be that a belief that is coherent with other beliefs is likely to be knowledge.

However, there is a big problem here. As I've mentioned before, the set of statements that people can conceivably believe is the universal set. This also means that for any belief, if I hold strongly onto it enough, such that I generate many other beliefs that cohere with it (e.g, conspiracy theories), then it may end up being more coherent than many other beliefs, and it is conferred the title of "knowledge". Surely, we would not accept that anything can become knowledge as long as we will it to be, we cannot use the coherence as a test of how justified a belief is.

We have ignored our good old friend "pragmatism" for quite a while, and we'd revisit him now.

William James: "the 'true' is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the 'right' is only the expedient in our way of behaving."

Somehow, I kinda like that. But I can't justify it.

Heck.

(remind to self: post about inevitability of increasing inequality in society)

Is the current state of positive social science that different from natural science?

-Repeatability: Meteorology?
-Complexity: Thermodynamics?
-Ideal types: Ideal gas? Simple harmonic motion?
-Adaptive behaviour/observer effect: Zoology?

There appears to be many problems that surround the study positive social sciences, which are not present in the study of natural sciences. With a suitable choice of examples, it is possible to show that the two disciplines are so different in their fundamental nature that the method applied by one would not work for the other. However, the contrary may also be achieved by a different choice of examples.

There is a problem of complexity. Each human being has a complex structure. As with many-body problems in physics, even with simple underlying principles governing the interactions between the bodies, when the number of interacting bodies goes above three, the resultant behaviour may be so complicated that the equations of motion cannot be solved analytically. What more, with each body being so complex on its own, and the interactions being even more difficult to understand, how can we possibly come up with any understanding of the human society?

Let consider a box of gas. Each atom has a complex structure. When molecules collide, the resultant behaviour is due to the interactions between their electron clouds and their nuclei. Even when the molecules do not collide, every electron has a non-zero probability of being anywhere in the box, such that we can consider a box of gas as a scenario where every molecule interacts with all other molecules at once. Now, it is highly likely that a box of gas would contain more molecules than the entire world population. Yet, why is it that reliable models can be made for the behaviour of gases?

Some phenomena that do not arise on the small scale start to appear on the large scale. One example is temperature. Temperature is a concept that arises from the simultaneous exchange of energy between a large number of molecules of the system with the molecules of another body. Pressure is another. It is caused by the force exerted by a large number of molecules on the walls on the container. However, the concepts of pressure and temperature are not relevant when one is describing molecules themselves. Hence, on an molecular scale, it may be difficult to discover simple laws that describe the properties of a large number of gas molecules, because the properties that hold simple relationships to each other do not appear at the molecular scale.

So could it simply be that on a human scale, it is difficult to discover properties of societies? Or is it that the large scale properties that hold simple relationships to each other have not been defined or discovered yet? Bear in mind that some properties of gases in thermodynamics, such as entropy and free energy, are not exactly intuitive or obvious properties to discover. Or could it be that human behaviour is so much more complicated than atoms and molecules that it would forever be impossible to find simple laws on the large scale? I'm not sure if the answer can be easily given in one paragraph.

Quotable quotes from H.S. Tan on the last day of physics:

"So what I did was that I made a rip in the fabric of space-time to counter the strong attraction between the black holes."

"I think she's really beautiful..." (Referring to Lisa Randall)

Stuff I noted in Teck Whye.

There is this coffeeshop where all the people who sell drinks would wear neatly ironed shirts and long pants. It's a pretty rare sight for a coffee shop. The drinks seller are very courteous too. In the same coffee shop, there is this stall that sells dim sum. When you order dim sum, they will take out a small dish from the big metallic steamer (which ironically looks somewhat like a refrigerator) and place it in the bamboo zhen1 long2. I thought it was rather strange, since the zhen1 long2 are meant to hold the dim sum while they are being steamed, instead of being used as containers. However, it seems to me that it was a pretty good idea, since putting the dim sum in the zhen1 long2 allows people to see from a distance that there is a dim sum stall from afar.

But just to be sure, I'll ask the stall holder someday.

Then I went to the optician's, because my spectacles are loose. He looked at my specs and said, "Sigh. Bad habit."

"What bad habit?"

"You pull off your specs with your right hand. If you pull it off from the side, you will bend it outwards. I can fix it back for you, but after a few times your spectacles will break. You should pull it off with both hands, or from the bridge."

For a while I was impressed, I was thinking, "Woah, he can tell the way I take off my spectacles just by looking at my spectacles."

Then later as I thought about it, I realised that I had to take off my specs before I could pass it to him! So most probably he just saw the way I took off my specs.

"Hey, the horizontal displacement of that pendulum is decaying with time!"
"No, it is obviously oscillating. You must be imagining things."

Question: How many times does the earth make a complete rotation about its own axis in the time it takes to orbit the sun? Round off to the nearest integer. (Think carefully! Try not to check any sources.)

The wonders of integration:

If your download speed decreases the moment you start downloading, such that your download speed is inversely proportional to time elapsed since the start of the download, you will ALWAYS be able to finish your download in a finite amount of time.

Suppose you have a tall glass. Its inner diameter decreases with depth, such that the inner diameter is inversely proportional to the depth. The inner diameter at the end of the tall glass is of a finite diameter, and extends infinitely downwards. This tall glass can hold a finite volume of water, but has infinite cross sectional area.

When you first see a car, would you expect it to have dents on the other side?

Quote Math Tutorial S2B: "...and the probability that a patient needs an injection after he is seen by the gynecologist is 0.002."

A Boston Cream Pie is a cake. A Cheese cake is a pie.

Birds and insects are unaffected by capsaicin. Pain induced by capsaicin is not an indication of tissue damage.
________

In Teck Whye, a new popiah store opened, and it is just as good as the one before! For this store, instead of peeking out and checking how many people there are, the store owner would just carry a huge bundle of chopsticks and deal accordingly.

Most popiahs are cut into 5 pieces. However, this store owner cuts the popiah into 6 pieces, which I thought is very considerate, since 6 is a multiple of both 3 and 2, so if you have 1, 2 or 3 people, you can just share any number of popiah and don't have to think about who should eat the remainder. (Unlike 5, which is a prime number.)

I was so impressed by this, I thought that this was precisely the reason why the popiah is cut into 6 pieces instead of 5. However, I decided I shouldn't argue from consequences, so I asked the store owner.

"Auntie, why do you cut the popiah into 6 pieces? Most stores cut them into 5."
"Orh, if it is too big then you have to bite it. So I cut it smaller to make it one mouthful."
"So if you could cut it even smaller, would you?"
"No, the filling will come out too easily when you try to pick it up."

And hence, 6 is the magic number arising from 2 contradicting factors, and it so happens that this particular number is also a factor of 2 and 3! This is amazing.

I was thinking that books that deal with amazing statistics might have to use the exclamation mark sparingly. It might be mistaken for a factorial.

Maybe in some African math class, you hear: "The formula for n choose r is n *click* over n-r *click* times r *click*."

Elastic collision: Energy is conserved.
Inelastic collision: Energy is not conserved.
Totally Inelastic collision: Energy is like, totally not conserved.

My mother's comment about the guy who sneaked an assault rifle out of army camp: "He's very handsome!"
_______

What is the difference between "exchange" and "sacrifice"? It's the same right? Sacrifice just sounds more noble, and implies an exchange on unfair terms.

And in any case, "sacrifice" sounds much cooler! Like, if you play an RPG game, there are two skills to learn. One of their descriptions say "Exchange HP for an AOE spell dealing a great amount of damage" and the another's say "Sacrifice HP for an AOE spell dealing a great amount of damage". Okay I'm not sure about you, but if it's me I'll definitely choose the latter, since the word sacrifice seems to imply that more HP is exchanged for MUAHAHAHA more AOE damage MUAHAHAHA MORE POWER!!

Ok I'm going nuts over cool-sounding words. I asked an NUS professor, what do you call superstring theory in Chinese?

It's called 超弦理论. Like omg cool! Can totally imagine Ouyang Feng sparring with Ling Hu Chong with his newly founded 超弦真经 or 超弦七十二掌 or 超弦神功 or something like that, with superstrings flying and recombining into some weird object and making the whole place explode.

Nevermind, Ling Hu Chong will defend himself with "Loop Quantum Gravity"... whatever that's called in Chinese. And Zhang Wu Ji can also join in the fight with his newly learnt "Sacrificial Hyper Conjugation", whatever you call that in Chinese.
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I believe that the two fruits whose value will increase by the greatest amount if rendered seedless would be mango and pomegranate. I say mango, because unless you buy the super expensive Taiwan Mango King, the seed accounts for about 20-30% of the volume of the fruit. Pomegranate is another, because consumption of pomegranate has been made a very irritating experience because of the seeds. Don't you think every pomegranate sac looks like a Soul Booster? Each sac looks so valuable, as though eating one will greatly increase your stats or something. But the experience of eating something so exquisite is spoiled by the presence of seeds. Would you expect to find something like a seed in something so valuable? Separating the seed from the sac is rather troublesome, and is always rather wasteful.

Imagine seedless pomegranates. It would be a bright red, spherical shell that encloses numerous rubies, which you can just pick and eat at leisure. (I admit, I was never good at describing stuff. It is supposed to sound really nice.) It would be a perfect fruit for misers. One pomegranate can serve an entire crowd, and each one of them just looks so good. Or perhaps you could add it to ice-kacang, to complement the corn that they add.

Perhaps you are supposed to eat the pomegranate seeds. But then again, the same can be said for grapes and watermelons as well; and they are also made seedless. Maybe the apprehension of biting into a seed spoils the fruit-eating experience.

Sing-along Mathematical Induction

When n= 1, P(n) is true
When n= 1, P(n) is true
And if P(n) is true implies P(n+1) is, too
That means when n =2, P(n) is also true.

When n= 2, P(n) is true
When n= 2, P(n) is true
And if P(n) is true implies P(n+1) is, too
That means when n =3, P(n) is also true.

Just read "The Prince" again. The argument seems to be generally quite faulty. But Machiavelli says very cool things, like "It is better to be feared than loved." And Machiavelli is such a cool name too! Not like Kant. If they said the same things I'll rather quote Machiavelli than Kant any day.

Really, having a cool name makes a lot of difference. Einstein is clever; so is Kant. But when describing a person as clever, people say "He's such an Einstein", but people don't go "He's such a Kant."

Raffles helped build Singapore; so did Farquhar. But really, if there were a school named after each person, and one of the Raffles Schools were to be up against a Farquhar School for some sports competition, the cheering would go like this:

"Raffles Kemama! Ole ole ah ah!..."
"Farquhar Kemama! Ole ole ah ah!..."

"North! South! East! West! ... R-A-F-F-L-E-S!..."
"North! South! East! West! ... Far--quhar is the best!..."

"Say RA-RA-RA-Raffles! Say RA-RA-RA-Raffles!..."
"Say... eh darn."

Speaking of which, Fajar Secondary School has never been up against RI in matches where there are actually people cheering.

If it is true that the deceased can receive the things you burn, it seems like hell is a pretty interesting place:

Sir Stamford Raffles must be quite sad that the sports seasons never coincide with the 7th month, so he can't come out even if councilors and prefects are frantically summoning his Spirit.

When Hiroshima and Nagasaki were A-bombed, two cities, together with the souls and all the possessions in ground zero, would have instantaneously been transferred to hell. The people living there probably didn't even know they were dead until quite a while.

Rubbish must be quite a problem in hell, since people incinerate a lot of rubbish. But that's okay, it's compensated by all the Indonesian forest fires, so pollution shouldn't be that bad.

If the moment one is dead, the soul goes to hell, then when you cremate his body, wouldn't the body also go to hell? What will the soul do with his body? (There might just be a Black Market for bodies, for the dead Necrophiliacs. Mai4 Shen1 will take on a new meaning there.)

If you are American, rest assured that your dead relatives can celebrate Independence Day. American Flags are in large supply there.

Also, plastic items should also be very cheap in hell, since there is so much crude oil there.

I wonder if when the Heidelberg exploded, a bunch of people in hell started speaking in a higher pitch, due to the sudden influx of hydrogen.

The Chinese historians must be quite happy when they go to hell, since all the books that Qin Shi Huang and the revolutionists burned are intact.

There must also be a lot of pirated VCDs and DVDs there, since people keep burning them. I suggest that if you really want your relatives to do well, you should burn them a lot of televisions, VCD players and DVD players, so that they can sell it to other people who want to watch all those videos.

I think we should only burn items to them. Money means absolutely nothing to them, since it is a promise of equivalent exchange. Exchange for what? Supply of money is completely controlled by the people burning stuff. Imagine your great great great grandfather trying to buy something. He offers to pay $1000000000000000 to some guy with the stuff. But the guy has absolutely no use for $10000000000000000 since he can easily get $1000000000000000000000000000000000 anyway, and so is it for everyone else. You try to be smart, and burn him a $10 note, but claim that it is in base googolplex. Your great great great grandfather then tries to buy stuff with a $10 note. The guy with the stuff laughs and states that it is easy for him to obtain $100 in base googolplex, and so is it for everyone else. Your grandfather still doesn't get the stuff he wants. He'll probably have to barter trade for it.

Which makes sense to think that hell probably has its own legal tender which cannot be obtained by burning.

So don't burn hell notes. It's pointless, and it's bad for the environment anyway.

Kant's method of Categorical Imperative is pretty useful sometimes.

And so there is a "Mr Muscle" detergent advertisement.

The ad goes like this: This housewife is unable to clean off the dirt and grime in her house, so she shouts "Help! Mr Muscle!" And this muscular guy wearing shades and orange spandex flies into the house. He analyzes the situation, and sprays the dirt and grime with Mr Muscle detergent, which supposedly allows you the clean the dirt "effortlessly". After saving the day, he receives a ping from another housewife who needs his help, and flies off. The last sentence goes something like "Mr Muscle: the effective scientifically formulated detergent".

Wait a minute, if the Mr Muscle detergent really allows you to clean off the dirt effortlessly, what's the use of all his muscles? (My sister: To entice the housewives to buy the detergent.)

Besides, how is a "scientifically formulated" detergent supposed to be better? Why scientific anyway?

"Dumex 3! + , mathematically formulated milk for fit and active champions!"

"Slim Ten, historically proven to be safe and effective!"

"Wash your hair the ethical way today!"

By the way, the UK Mr Muscle mascot is a lanky nerd. Check this.

Frankly speaking, I would prefer watching the Singapore version of Mr Muscle ad.

I remember in primary school we used to have something called "pop-com" for English and Chinese, which is a comprehension paper, but the passages used are lyrics from pop songs. They'll play the song, let you do the questions, then play the song again.

I heard this song from campus superstar, and I thought, hey, why not have it for Math as well?

"Given that 十个男人七个傻，八个呆，九个坏，还有一个人人爱, how many combinations of men are possible in a given group 10 men? Assume that all the above traits are independent of each other."
______

Recently I've tried Googling the term "Quine-Dubhe problem" and found that there is no such thing! It's called "Duhem-Quine problem". Gosh, I've used this term for at least 3 KI essays, and Mrs Leong hasn't spotted it yet. I think this can potentially be exploited, considering the fact that Mrs Leong is a very busy person.
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The mentos advertisement doesn't make sense.

It goes like this, this guy is late for lecture. He finds that the teacher is teaching, but the teacher hasn't noticed him yet. So he pops a mentos and walks backwards into an empty seat. When the teacher spots him, he leans forward to look like he was walking out. The teacher snarls, "Where are you going? Sit down!" Then he sits down, makes faces at the girl sitting next to him and pops another mentos.

It would only make sense of the teacher is known for chasing out students who come late for lessons. It's weird to chase out people who come late for lessons but ask the students who want to sneak out to sit down. In the former case, at least the student is willing to attend the lesson. Sneaking out during the lesson is plainly disrespectful for the teacher.

So would you really rather be spotted sneaking out of lecture than to being late for lecture? Firstly, walking backwards is way slower than walking forward, so he might have a chance of being able to sneak into the class before he gets spotted. Secondly, why is he even trying to sneak in from the front of the lecture hall? He wouldn't even need to sneak if he entered from the back. Thirdly, walking backwards in front of the lecture hall would make you look like a complete jackass if things don't turn out the way you want. Fourthly, try walking into the lecture theatre backwards from the front door, and also keeping the people on the seats quiet.
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For a while I also thought that the Darlie advertisement doesn't make sense, then my sister explained it to me.

Basically, it shows a few scenes. The following was my interpretation.

'One of the scenes shows a lady in the lift with another guy. She shows him her teeth and breath. He is delighted.

In the next scene the guy drops his files. The lady picks it up for him. The guy shows her his teeth and breath. She is delighted.

The last scene shows a waterpolo player shooting into the goal, and scores. The scorer shows everyone his teeth.'

The following is my sister's interpretation.

'One of the scenes shows a lady entering a lift, and she meets a guy she knows, so she says "Hi!" The guy smiles back in response.

In the next scene, the guy drops his files, and the lady picks it up for him. The guy says "Thanks!" and the lady smiles back in response.

The last scene shows a waterpolo player shooting into the goal, and scores. The scorer jumps and shouts "Yay!" in delight.'

I can't be an Interpretivist Social Scientist.

KI IS is finally done. Gone are the days of slacking with guilt; now I can slack in peace.

School is generally an interesting place, because of the large number of people that you know interacting with each other, and yourself. It is much more interesting than staying at home, because you have actually an excuse to drag yourself out of bed to interact with people for the next 5 hours of the day. The part is getting out of bed, so having a regulated time for school is a pretty nice thing. The lack of emphasis on group work also means that you can spend more time with friends.

Now, as school becomes less regulated, more and more people adjourn to the library to mug. Whee. Less people to play with me. It might worsen in the future, as there is no more regulated school time. I still want to wear school uniform because I don't want to think of what to wear.

It gets more lame as time goes on. Oh the boredom!

Play Street Fighter Online. It's fun and challenging.

Random thoughts:

There are some biological names for certain species that sound rather dumb. The black rat is called "Rattus rattus." The common gorilla is called "Gorilla gorilla".

The funkiest thing about the biological names is that they are Latin. Which means that some of the species are probably spells in Harry Potter.

Harry Potter picked up his wand, pointed it at [insert name of adversary here], and yelled, "Ad Hominem!"

Maybe when he's in deep trouble and all hope seems lost, he could cast "Deus Ex Machina".

Quine-Dubhe problem: I'm not avoiding your gaze. I just can't bear the sight of your retina.

___________________
Can a strong absolute belief be regarded as knowledge?

Guang Liang once said,

我会变成童话里
你爱的那个天使
张开双手
变成翅膀守护你

But he didn't turn into an angel with wings. Oops.

The angels in the bible are pretty scary actually.

Random comments.

A few days ago I went to a prata shop. Normally, all the shop attendants would be Indians, so I was mentally prepared to say something like "one egg, one kosong, makan". However, this shop has a Chinese attendant. She approached me with "Xiao3 Di4, ni3 yao4 shen2 me4?" For a while I couldn't think of what to say, since I've never ordered prata in Mandarin before.

Zilin has a very nice variation to the story. But I wouldn't decide for her to post it here.

Once, I was eating grapes without plucking off the grapes from the stalk, just eating it from the stalk. I said, "I feel like a king. Like, in the movies or drama serials, in the past only the kings can afford to eat grapes." My sister asked, "What about farmers?" I replied, "Nah, they are too poor." She replied, "What about grape farmers?"

I realize that when a game you play is suspected to be a hentai game, stating that YY plays it too doesn't vindicate you at all.

Watched Jay Chou's "Secret" and watched campus superstar.

I can't say much about "Secret" because the nature of the movie makes it very easy to spoil. Nevertheless, after the movie, everyone was poking each others' cheeks and I tell you, IT IS FRIGGING GAY! Sarge poked my cheek when I was eating, it felt very queer. Yes, I mean queer in every sense of the word queer.

Campus superstar. the RGS girl went off key quite a few times. Keely got 25.5, which is the highest score that anyone ever got in the whole show. I didn't like her performance very much though.

The guys, they are VERY good. Shawn sang "爱你不是爱给别人看" which is a very nice song. But it's an emo song, which he didn't sing in an emo way. One of the judges showed off his imba singing to show Shawn what the falsetto is supposed to sound like. Marcus sang "爱如潮水" which is also a nice song. (but I liked Shawn's song better.) Emo song which he sang in an emo way, pretty good. Benjamin picked "Xiaxue" which I don't really like. But his ability to 放电 kinda makes up for it.

On a random note, there is a guy from Odex Singapore called Stephen Sing Xin Yang, who is probably the most hated person by the Singapore anime downloaders. For more details, here.

Anyway, my point is, I'm glad that he has a Christian name, so the anime downloaders will curse Stephen Sing instead of inadvertently cursing me.

Another random note, one of the two national day songs, "Where I want to be"

I’ve walked the streets of Cairo and Bombay
I’ve seen the neon signs on ole Broadway
I’ve climbed the Eiffel Tower
The Great Wall in one hour
Experienced the sweet and sour but that’s okay

Limerick!

Today marks the day when I first completed a game of Freecell.

On a random note, Haoyi said that the only computer game his father plays is Freecell.

On another random note, did typists count quick brown foxes jumping over lazy dogs to sleep?

One might want to burn the national flag, so that our forefathers can celebrate national day with us too.

NaBiO3 crystals can oxidize Mn2+ ions to MnO4-, which is pretty bomb considering the oxidation potential. I want to try adding some NaBiO3 crystals to glycerine someday.

My shirt caught the stain of Iron(III) thiocyanate. It couldn't be washed off. Not surprisingly, bleach didn't help. I need a transparent reducing agent. Sarge suggested LiAlH4 in dry ether. Zeyan suggested H2 with Ni/Pt catalyst. But I feel that a stain is better than a hole.

Any more suggestions?

In my opinion, the highlight of national day celebrations was shijie shouting "Ni nia eh!" after breathing helium.

Hence, I shall talk a bit about helium speech.

The fact that helium can change the frequency of our voice seem to show that our vocal cords are not really like string instruments, but more like woodwind instruments.

Our eardrums interpret the frequency, and not the wavelength of the sound as pitch. Thus, when a pure note is heard as higher pitch than another, it implies that the one of higher pitch also has higher frequency, but it says nothing of its wavelength.

The difference between string and woodwind instruments is that string instruments directly vary the frequency of vibrations in the air, whereas woodwind instruments directly vary the wavelengths of vibrations in the air. For example, the pitch of the sound from a violin string is determined by the frequency by which the string vibrates, whereas the pitch of the sound from a recorder is determined by the resonant frequencies of the air column in the recorder.

Since our interpretation of pitch is based on frequency and not wavelength, this means that the pitch of a string instrument is not affected by the speed of sound in the air, but the pitch of a woodwind instrument is. Since is the speed of sound is inversely proportionate to the square root of the density of the medium, the speed is sound is greater in helium than in air. Also, since, f = v/λ, the frequency of sound in a woodwind instrument is higher in helium than in air, since the wavelength is fixed.

Interestingly, deep sea divers cannot breathe air at high pressures, since at high pressures nitrogen induces an intoxicated state in the diver. Thus, they breathe a mixture of helium and oxygen, averting this problem somewhat. However, this also causes the voices of the divers to become higher. (Shijie should join the navy and become a deep sea diver someday, for the amusement of his colleagues.)

I would like to hear zilin or libing speak after breathing helium.

On a similar note, xenon is able to lower the pitch of peoples voice. It is more dangerous than helium, since it's high atomic mass makes its diffusion slow, allows high concentrations of Xenon to sit around and asphyxiate people. Although if you are really tall, you might more likely die of asphyxiation by helium than by xenon.

Just think about it. Hearing someone die of asphyxiation by breathing in helium must be pretty amusing. It would probably sound like happy tree friends. Or maybe a person dying from xenon asphyxiation would sound like Darth Vader at the end of Star wars III ("No...........").

In any case, if a potential Evil Overlord chances by this blog, I recommend you kill your adversaries with helium, and add some carbon dioxide to hear him/her struggle. Guaranteed laughter, which is good if you haven't quite mastered your evil laughter yet. Or you can use xenon instead, if you do get bored.

Yesterday, I went to J8 to walk around with kenneth, shi jie, sarge, taru and choon wing. Shijie went into Harvey Norman to buy earphones, and the rest of us followed. The circumstances was such that choon wing saw us looking at stuff, so he looked at other stuff while waiting. The rest were waiting for choon wing to finish looking at his stuff and so we looked at other stuff. Basically we were watching Simpsons, and testing a home theatre system.

At the home theatre place, shi jie happened to ask something about sub woofers. We explained that sub woofers is to enhance the bass. Then I mentioned that there is a special chair that can be connected to appliances to create the effect of a bass without disturbing others. Someone questioned the effectiveness of such a system. I suggested that perhaps they could use electrical impulses connected to skin to give the effect of low frequency vibrations, something like uZap. Then shi jie mentioned an Osim product that supposedly massages the foot, but when you step on it, it would cause your foot muscles to twitch in such a way that it feels like a cramp. Contemplating on the fact that electrical impulses can control our movement, we wondered if we can use movement to control electrical impulses. We mentioned stephen hawking, who twitches his finger to say things, with the help of a voice synthesizer, but with current technology, he can control the device with his mind. Sarge stated that there would be a need to implant a device into his brain for it to work. I was wondering out loud that it would be damn cool if we could mind control very cool machines or robots. Then shijie said that mind control might be dangerous since others might also control our mind. I dismissed this, since mind control doesn't work both ways.

Then kenneth asked a very important question, "How did we get from speakers to mind control?"

OMG OMG OMG OMG CAMPUS SUPERSTAR GUYS ARE SUPER!!!!!

Marcus sang and danced well, and Benjamin really exhibited the "I'm a champion so what" aura, which is really really good (but he coughed right after he finished, which was quite amusing).

Towards the end I was thinking, ok how is Shawn going to pull this off? The other guys have an age advantage so they can act cool, but Shawn is only 13 how would he exhibit his charisma?

"Song: Lian4 Ai4 ING"

When he appeared on stage and started singing I would have screamed if not for my sore throat. He's seriously IMBA. Throwing off his cap, letting the audience sing the "L-O-V-E" part, and the final glitter throw. Charisma indeed. Lian4 Ai4 ING being a cute song suits him very well. Power.

STO >>>>>>SHAWN<<<<<<< orz

Random comment:

People speak of multitasking when you talk to many people online. However, even when you are just talking to one person, you are actually having more than one conversation. For example:

A: Hi.
B: Hi.
A: Tomolo wad time report school?
B: How's your fish?
A: It's not recovering well.
B: 9.30 am.
A: I think it will die soon leh.
A: Ah thanks.
B: Yar, how old is it?
B: No problem.

The above is just a random convo I came up with to illustrate my point. I think you get the idea. This takes place until the importance or juiciness of one convo overshadows the other over time.

In group convos, things are even messier. In a group of 4, a potential of 4P2+4P3 convos can take place at the same time.

So when you are talking to 4 people on msn at once, remember that5 you are really multitasking quite a lot, especially if you just signed in.

I had an interesting conversation today.

I was waiting for my father at a pharmacy, so I was squatting down and reading the words on some antiseptic solutions on the shelf. (You may ask: what's there to read? Frankly speaking, it is quite interesting, but only if you have read about them before, so you can laugh at the subtle differences between their descriptions. For example, all the other antiseptic solutions read "For treatment of wounds and abrasions." but povidone iodine reads "For effective treatment of wounds and abrasions." Shameless advertising? Nope, povidone iodine is indeed the best antiseptic amongst them, according to my sister's textbook.)

Two kids came to me and called me, "Uncle. Can I call you uncle?" (They spoke in mandarin. However, due to the horrendous chinese language support, I shall instead translate what they said. From here on, Y is me, A is one guy and B is the other guy.)

Y: "Yes you can." (Of course you may. I'm not going to miss such an opportunity for bragging rights.)

A: "Uncle, why are you looking at the shelf for so long? Is there a lot of things to see?"

Y: "I'm reading the words on the bottles. There is a lot to read."

A: "Oh yes, there really is a lot to read. I can't read the words."

B: "Take panadol!" (Referring to an advertisement of panadol extra with the ambulance driver)

Y: "I'm not sick, why should I take panadol?"

B: "Then you can be like that guy." (Pointing to the ambulance driver in the advertisement)

A: "I'm never taken an ambulance before."

Y: "Do you want to take an ambulance?"

A: "I want to be a taxi driver." (When I was his size I also wanted to be a taxi driver too.)

Y: "Why?"

A: "Because they earn a lot of money! They just need to start and stop the car and after a while they get a few dollars." (I used to think that way too.)

Y: "That's true." (I'm not going to spoil his dream.)

A: "What do you work as?"

Y: "I'm still studying."

A: "Where do you study?"

Y: "Raffles Junior College."

A: "Where is that?"

Y: "Bishan."

A: "Do you go by MRT?"

Y: "Yes."

A: "How many stops away?"

Y: *without thinking* "13 stops." (I used to count the number of stops when I was in sec 1 and not used to the long commute.)

A: "Wah, that's very far away, which stop is 14 stops away?"

Y: "Braddell."

A: "15 stops?"

Y: "Newton." (I'm not sure of my answer. I think they were testing me.)

A: "16 stops?" (That's it, they are really testing me.)

Y: "I'm not sure."

B: "How many stops away is Sembawang?"

Y: "10. No wait, " (interrupted)

B: "Wah, that's really far."

A: "You don't have school bus?"

Y: "Yar, we don't."

A: "Why not?"

Y: "There are too many of us, and we all live too far away."

A: "Our school has school bus. There are about 10 school buses to fetch us to school."

Y: "Ahh."

A: "Which gate are you?"

Y: "Gate?"

A: "Which gate do you go home by, gate 1, gate 2?"

Y: "Our gates are not labeled."

A: "How could it be?"

Y: "We just call it by the street it is closest to, like 'Bishan St 21 gate', 'Bishan St 22 gate', but the gates don't have specific labels."

A: "Oh. We are from South View." (Cool, I was from South View too!)

Y: "I was from South View too."

A: "So you used to be a baby?"

Y: "Yar, I wasn't so big all this while. Didn't you use to be a baby too?"

A: "No, I was never a baby. I have always been a kor kor."

Y: "Oh, so you are older, but he looks bigger than you."

A: "That's because he keeps stealing my food to eat."

B: "No such thing!"

Y: "So how much older are you, or are you twins?"

A: "He's 8 and I'm 9."

B: "Your school really don't have school buses?"

Y: "Yar, we don't, there are too many of us."

A: "How many?"

Y: "More than 2000."

A: "Wah! Why so many?"

Y: "The school is big."

B: "Primary what?"

Y: "I'm J2, but you can think of it as primary 12."

A: "Oh, we've got to go, bye!"
B: "Bye!"
Y: "Bye!"
___________________

Random thoughts.

The "Pool. Inspired by Guinness" advertisements have problems. In one advertisement they have the cue sticks without the barriers and pockets. In another, they have the barriers and pockets without cue sticks. They contradict each other.

My mother mentioned that in Jay Chou's "Secret", the female lead has the upper half of the face that looks like Gong Li and the lower half that looks like Stephanie Sun. I fully agree.

This year's "Will You" NDP theme song sounds very nice, but it is hard to sing.

Whether someone cuts his/her hair short or shaves bald, it is still accurate to consider it as getting rid of 三千烦恼丝. Because once you cut your hair, 3000 strands becomes 6000, then you get rid of the 3000 from the lower end. Perhaps, that's why the ruggers cut their hair before the national schools?

Or perhaps, if you use shavers of different depths to shave a few times, then even though you may only have 3000 strands of hair, you can get rid of 30000 strands.

Interesting advertisements:

Cranberry. Pomegranate. Surreal humour for the win.

Heaven and Earth jasmine tea. The dinosaur with tears is seriously imba. Non sequitor humour wins too.

I recently realized how deeply advertisements have gotten into my subconscious. I remember my father was browsing in the pharmacy for vitamin c. Then he casually mentioned "Hicee". And I followed with "Cu4 Jing4 Jian4 Kang1, Zeng1 Qiang2 Huo2 Li4 !"(Promotes health, improves vitality) Which I kinda amazed myself with, since I haven't heard the Hicee advertisement for a long time.

When I first tasted peaches, I found the taste really familiar. After a while I exclaimed, "oh, it tastes just like peach tea!"

I mean, it's pretty weird. Any similarity between "peach" the fruit and "peach tea" the drink seemed purely semantical before I ate a peach. Maybe if there is such a thing as peach flavouring, I'll still think of it "peach tea flavouring".

Perhaps, it's like the difference between me and a French guy. When I first drank beer, I thought "Yuck it tastes like herbal tea with gas." When the French guy first drank herbal tea, he said with a frown, "It tastes like beer without gas."

Speaking of French, I was reminded of syphilis. In the 15th century, syphilis was known as "The French Disease" to pretty much everyone in Europe. Except the French. Sound like "French Fries" or "French Toast", doesn't it? Or maybe "Penang Laksa", but that's different because it really came from Penang. The Penang people just call it "Laksa".

Which makes me wonder, do Hong-Kongers call athlete's foot "Hong Kong feet" as well?

Some bored people do quizzes. Some bored people create quizzes. Some very bored people do time-consuming quizzes. I shall create a time-consuming quiz.

Is this your lucky day?

1. Close your eyes. Turn left. Walk 1 metre forward. Turn right and take 2 steps back. Turn right again. Now open your eyes. Note the first object that you see. Search that object on Wikipedia. Click the sixth link to appear on the page. Do this 5 times. What is the title of the page you arrive at?

2. Grab the nearest book to you. Turn to 286th page. What is the 437th word from the start of that page?

3. Find the number of pixels on your screen according to your screen resolution. Take the natural logarithm of that number. Add up the first 4 digits. Divide this number by 26 and take the remainder. Let 1 be A, 2 be B and so on. What letter do you arrive at?

4. Now from the previous 3 answers, you have a title, a word and a letter. If you can find the letter in the word and the word in the title, today is your lucky day!

From my personal experience in RJ, people are envied and respected based on their potential, and not so much on their achievements. For example, two people may achieve the same thing, but if one of them is perceived to have put in less effort, he/she would be more greatly envied.

This, I believe, has led to a phenomenon called "closet mugging". In RI, you can tell who mugs or not, because the people who want to be cool don't bother to mug anyway, since there are no consequences to not-mugging. In RJ, everyone mugs, and it's only a matter of whether you see them mug or not.

It is not a new phenomenon. My sister in RJ experienced this 9 years ago. People will claim that they have not studied, when in fact they obviously have, and then proceed to ace the tests and exams. It is not that worrying though, since by J2 everyone would have wised up, and there is no point hiding the fact that you are mugging, since it is frigging A levels and there is absolutely no reason not to mug.

According to my mother, the fact that people respect and envy the people who put in less effort shows a lack of maturity. One cannot expect to succeed without putting in the necessary effort, and the people who persevere will ultimately prevail. It is the people with determination whom we ought to respect and envy.

I don't agree. I'm not really sure who the people we "ought to" respect are, but it is quite clear that if given a choice, we would like to have greater potential. Determination requires more determination to maintain. While potential does not require maintenance, it is also not mutually exclusive to determination. You can see that many people in RI and RJ who seem to have achieved their PSLE grade effortlessly are now working very hard.

Even if determination and potential is equally valued by students, determination can only be perceived where there is a lack in potential. Potential is best perceived in the lack of effort, but not necessarily determination. When you see someone working hard in one aspect that you breeze through, it shows determination, and at the same time, a lack of potential. However, when someone breezes through something that you have to work hard in, it shows potential, but it does not show whether that person lacks determination or not. This justifies why people envy those who can achieve without seemingly putting in effort.

From an outsider's point of view, "closet mugging" is deceitful, and only serves to lower the guard of others so that one can gain the upper hand, resulting in nothing but loss for the school community. However, if we view this from the point of view of a student, we can see that this act can also be perceived as an attempt to raise one's standing in school, and not a malicious act.

It is strange, but sometimes I feel that my dreams do have a rather large effect on my life. Sometimes after I wake up, the way I think just changes.

In around May, I felt that I have suddenly lost something, and I don't know what it is. The way I think suddenly changed, and it felt like my IQ just dropped by like 10 points. It became difficult for me to consciously relate memories to my thoughts, and I find myself saying rather silly things.

This morning, it dawned on me that I can't remember my past in first person perspective. I would remember what I did in terms of the facts, how I reacted, and the words that went in my mind then in an attempt to describe how I felt, but I can no longer feel what I had seen or felt then. An attempt to relate the past to the present is no longer simply empathy with my past, but rather the recalling of hard facts of the past and synthesizing them with the current information. I'm not sure if you can understand how this feels like, but I'd suppose you can see that it makes thinking rather tedious for me.

It is useful to remember the past in the first person's perspective, and I didn't realize how helpful that was until I have, perhaps, lost it. For example, I could try to recall reading a particular page in a textbook, and the picture of the text could appear in my mind without any understanding involved. This helped a lot, because it gave me ample time to think over what I have learned but not really understood, without the hassle of referring to a textbook all the time.

I have wanted to say this for a long time. But no matter how I tried to put it, it just seems like angst, and yet it doesn't really feel like angst to myself. Now that I have finally found the words for it, I'm quite appeased, because I have a feeling that if I don't try to describe it in words, I'll eventually forget it. It is rather scary when your memories depend on how you describe the event in your mind.

Random thoughts:

If iron(III) thiocyanate is the same colour as blood, and the colour is only due to the inter transfer of 3d electrons in Fe­3+, does that imply that thiocyanate causes the same splitting of the 3d orbital energy levels of Fe3+ as the haem group and oxygen? That is rather strange, because iron(III) thiocyanate is symmetrical, but haem and oxygen bound to Fe3+ isn't.

Knowledge of microbiology is heavily dependent on culture.

I can't stand the thin guy on channel U's "Shoot 3". He always talks like he's on moral high ground, and his arguments are full of holes, assumptions, hasty generalizations and slippery slopes. You can't possibly be convinced by him if you already disagree with him, and if you already agree with him you would start wondering if you were right in thinking so.

I can't believe that the Singapore ARMY actually sponsors a mediacorp drama serial. Again, I can't bring myself to watch it because I don't know if what it says about the army is true.

I'm back.

Usually I'm not very interested in reading about other peoples' trips, so I shall not talk much about it too.

After being treated like kings for the past 10 days, it takes a while to get used to go back to studying. It doesn't help that the two days of school that I've had so far are extremely boring. Oh well, looking at the bright side, I am enduring 10 less days of school than others. I can't imagine how I'm going to survive until A levels.

I'm very bored.

I'm very very bored.

People are busy studying and writing stuff to help their future, and they are not in the mood to play anymore. I suspect that this situation will worsen, and school will get even more boring.

I'm not looking forward to school like I used to.

Good luck have fun, to the chem, bio and math Olympiad people.

Random:
On the bus I once saw a tanker with the Milo logo painted on it. I wonder why Milo is transported in tankers. Why don't they just transport the powder?

In the pokemon breeding centre, if you breed any pokemon with ditto, you get back the same pokemon in an egg. But wait, suppose your original pokemon is male, then ditto will copy and turn into a male, right? Then how can they breed?

In "Switched" (the Fann Wong and Ou Xuan drama), the characters don't seem to behave like they are switched anymore. [Actually the initial stage Ou Xuan doesn't really remind me of Xinyu, she just seemed like a kinder version of Xinhui, but Fann Wong really reminded me of Xinhui.]

What has grapefruit got to do with grape, mangosteen to do with mango, and pineapple to do with apple?

More random stuff.

Found this picture as part of a skin-care product advertisement. If you can't read it, the caption says "Intensive research & development". The intensive research & development involves pouring a blue liquid from a beaker to a measuring cylinder. Wow, I feel really pro, I use even more sophisticated equipment, like burette and pipette, than the people doing intensive research & development. And I also know how to use a measuring cylinder properly! Why is he staring at the beaker? He should place the measuring cylinder on the table and look at the desired mark at eye level. But I do agree that doing so would make him look a lot less pro to the untrained eye.

My sister also found this pamphlet for a brand of soap (A-Yuan) that is supposedly made famous in Taiwan even without official advertising. I'll leave you to judge its merits from the pamphlet.

'Handmade Soap Q&A

1. Can handmade soap be used to wash the face?

"A‑Yuan Soap" does not contain chemical properties. It cleanses and moisturises completely, you can definitely wash your face with it!

2. Why does some handmade soap leave a stinging sensation on the skin after wash?

This is because of the citrus tangerine ingredient. It has the effect of killing bacteria and cleaning. It can also remove the dirt on your skin. Please put your mind at ease.

3. How do we preserve handmade soap?

Handmade soap contains lots of glycerine and moisturising fats that is not yet saponified, thus place the soap in a cool and dry place at all times so that the moisturising properties in the soap can be kept fresh. To extend the life of the soap, keep the soap dry after use and do not soak it in water.

4. What are those white specks on Taiwan Soap?

Those are the crystals formed when the essential oil meets the cold air. In overseas, the purity of natural properties in handmade soap is judged by the crystallisation.

5. Soap and shower cream, which is better for the skin?

Soap is better, but it depends on which one. Reason: Shower cream is a complete composition of chemical properties with coupling active agent as the key ingredient. It is said to contain moisturising cream or vitamins, but to maintain these nutrients in the liquid, preservatives, anti‑oxidants and bactericides must be added to preserve it for as long as three years. On top of that, in order to give the consumers that "moisturising smoothness*, ingredients like phenyl trimethicone (dimethicone fails under this category) is added. Hence after washing off the shower cream, if you still feel the smoothness, you have better be careful. The cheap bars of natural soap sold in the market have had the glycerine removed so they are only useful for cleaning.

6. Shower cream is more convenient than soap.

Most people use shower cream for the convenience it brings; nonetheless, being convenient does not mean it is healthy. Profit is the ultimate goal from this convenience which is created to stimulate production, thereafter profits will start rolling in. To the manufacturers, the importance of gains outweighs the health of the consumers. Therefore, although the invention of shower cream brings convenience to the consumers and profits to the manufacturers in what seems to be a win‑win situation, the consumers are always at the losing end!'

I'm sure you will have no problems finding its logical flaws. But some non-logical flaws:

A stinging sensation is a mild form of pain. Pain is an indication that you are taking damage and losing HP. There are other bactericides that do not leave a stinging sensation, which means that they are better than citrus tangerine as an additive.

"Purity can be judged by crystallization" does not mean that things that produce crystals are pure; the crystals that are produced need to have a constant melting point for the crystals that are produced to be considered pure. Even if the crystals that are produced by a soap is pure, it does not imply that the soap is pure. In fact, soaps should not be pure. Natural soap is a mixture of saponified oil, glycerine, unsaponified oil and water. Pure saponified oil makes the skin dry, and the rest of those do not have any cleaning effect.

Preservatives added to soap are in concentrations that are too low to cause any harm. Preservatives and antioxidants prevent bacteria from growing on the soap and oil from turning rancid. Rancid oils and bacteria that grow on soap can cause rashes or infection, creating worse problems than can possibly be created by preservatives. Anti-oxidants are usually good for skin.

Technically, you cannot say that the facts given in the pamphlet are wrong, but the way they are presented is very misleading. If they have to use these pamphlets to persuade people to buy their soap, I'm skeptical of its effectiveness in doing whatever it is supposed to do.

问世间情为何物，直教生死相许？

I think this question is more relevant to damselflies than humans.

I believe Richard Dawkins has an answer to that.

The washing powder advertisement: "Mum! My shirt has a lipstick mark on it!" "Don't worry, such a small stain is no trouble for me at all!"

Imagine if she finds out that her family doesn't have this particular colour of lipstick.
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Yang Guo is just like a fairy godfather! The way he grants Guo Xiang's wishes one by one (except the last one), and the way he descended from the sky after her wishes were granted, it's totally GODLIKE.
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Today the PSC day (not PSC nite) was quite interesting. The first interesting thing was that the MOH people gave out big red sweet crunchy fuji apples! I ate two on the spot. I mean, fuji apples! They are really quite big, I think I ate the equivalent of 3 normal apples.

While waiting for the MOE talk to start, I went hunting for goodies. I think MCYS gave the best stuff, a book light! (quoting kin kit, "So that you can mug anywhere even if there is no light") Just the thing you need to help you become a PSC scholar.
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When tutoring my sec 4 "nephew" today, I actually forgot a lot of the stuff I learnt in sec 4. I made up a method of solving trigonometric equations on the spot that sec 4 students can easily understand, and it seems like he's taking it in pretty well. At the end of the session, I was quite amazed at myself for being able to come up with such an unorthodox yet effective way of solving trigonometric equations! But on hindsight, it is actually based on complex numbers, just that neither of us knew about it at that time. So strange sia. But anyway, when tutoring him, I pretended to know my stuff all along, so now

I gain 20 mysticality!
I gain 50 moxie!

I amazed myself this time for teaching and learning at the same time. Seriously, complex numbers rock.

Some thoughts that I get from watching TV advertisements.

Advertisements of TV. They show you a High Definition TV. The image on it looks really clear. But wait... that images comes from your TV!! So if a High Definition TV image looks so good on your TV that you actually want to buy it... then you already have a very good TV, and you don't need a new one!

Milo advertisement. "You have dived one thousand times, now you will dive like never before. With the new formula powered by MORE MILK, MORE MALT, with the same GREAT CHOCOLATY TASTE, Nestle Milo brings out the champion in you."

If what you want to be is a champion, how does the chocolaty taste actually matter?

Another random thing, when I went to Woodlands library, I went to look for the toilet, following the toilet sign. But when I entered the door with a toilet sign outside, when I went in, it was a long corridor with a door at the end. Naturally, I went out to check if I saw the sign wrongly. Then a stranger walked out towards me from the corridor, and seeing me looking for the sign, casually remarked, "It's in there."

It was an interesting feeling then, rather strange and warm at the same time. Strange that he knew what I was thinking from the way I acted. Warm that he bothered to make a remark rather than giggling away.
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Happy things first.

I only need 11 more marks to get an S grade for Physics!

The structure of aluminum chloride reminds me of 69.

Today was the most shiok Bridging session I've had! In that session I played a 1 no-trump and a 1 yellow game each, because everyone had lousy cards, and won both! Played another 4 yellow game, and won with continuous feeding, eating and out-trumping with the entire game under control. SHIOK! I think most of the fun comes from winning with lousy cards. And Furen learnt how to play bridge in less than 1 hour. Smart! But he quite suay get lousy cards; no beginner's luck. (Unlike my first bridge game, where I had 3 aces and 5 hearts, and I bid 3 hearts and won.) Of course, I must claim some credit, along with kinwai, on teaching him how to play bridge.

But the part that made me feel good about myself was, there was one part when I got good cards, and I let him play "because I want [him] to have the joy of winning". I'm not sure if he won that game. I think he did. But damn, that made my day. He seems to be quite interested in bridge now, cos he was talking about it even after we stopped playing.

Sometimes I think that there is net happiness that comes out of playing bridge. Just like many things in life, there are some elements that can be controlled, some elements that can't be controlled. Therefore whenever you lose, you think "nah, I did everything right, it couldn't be helped" but when you WIN, you think "OH MAN EVERYTHING WORKED OUT RIGHT AT THE END DAMN I'M GOOD". Chances are, you won't lose every single game, so bridge should turn out to be quite an enjoyable experience.

Sarge placed his UNO cards into a box that resembles a box of condoms, but actually it contained sunblock. I like the naughty descriptions. (To think that in the Shakespearean times, "naughty" connotes evil intent. Just imagine a pastor who travels from the Shakespearean times to the present to preach to homosexuals.)

Received a lot of criticisms for my IS. I thank my classmates, especially Shin Jung and Zilin, who gave the most constructive ones. (There were also many others who helped too, but if I list everyone here then "especially" would lose its meaning) I think I chose something quite challenging. But never mind, it was quite fun finding sources to back up a heretical stand. When I stepped up to the board, I wasn't so confident of my stand, but after the session, the direction to take was illuminated.

(Random discovery: if you do spelling correction for the word "Zilin" on blogger, "smiling" turns up as the first alternative.)

I'm very happy to meet the class after so long. It feels strange coming out of me, but I did miss some of my schoolmates.
________

Now for not so happy things.

Bad CT results, though I shouldn't have expected anything much considering the amount of effort I put in. I guess I was too conceited.

I don't have the drive that I had in JC 1. But I think the source of the drive was partly emotional. Lacking the emotional source of drive, I'm now feeling quite tired of studying. I know, I must study, but at this point in time I feel like the path ahead is predetermined to be boring and tiring. I might get into some mischief in the near future, just for the fun of it.

The way I think now is very different. At any point in time, I don't remember much about the past. I respond to stimuli spontaneously, and hardly any thinking goes through. Last time, whenever I do or say anything, I felt like my mind was reading off a script somewhere, but now I just talk or act without thinking. I just follow instinct. Perhaps that's why I don't really keep track of what people do or say. In fact, I probably pay more attention to what is said by in-game characters than what is said by real people.

Despite almost 2 years in JC, I'm still shy around girls. When I entered JC, when Mr Hodge briefed all of us, I had hoped it would get better. It hasn't gotten much better, and I don't reckon a miracle will take place in the span of 2 months of dreary school life. I think I mature slow.

I think the reason why suicide is wrong is because those who make the choice never get to present their case. No, I'm not contemplating suicide, even though I'm slightly depressed. Don't worry about me, in case you do.

Most who contemplate suicide don't die anyway.
_________

Hmm, causes of sadness = causes of happiness. I must feeling quite... balanced.

Watched Shen Diao Xiao Lv, and returned with some thoughts.

The "Passion Flower Poison" supposedly causes a person to hurt at the place where he/she was pricked whenever he/she thinks about someone they like.

I think I diluted version of it would be sought after by BDSM people.

Li Mochou EXPLODED when she flew into the fire. Maybe some of her poisons are unstable concoctions.

Xiao Long Nv's clothes NEVER get dirtied! I wonder how much white cloth the producers need to perpare whenever they film an outdoor scene. I think she could be the spokesperson for some washing powder brand.

It is fun to misquote someone. I shall misquote someone now.

"today's maths paper was so hard (...) that i finished the last question like 45 minutes early." - Ivan, 27/06/07

But the actual quote is:

"today's maths paper was so hard but so fun. omg there were so many that i couldn't do that i finished the last question like 45 minutes early."

Whole meaning change rite!

Which is why I don't always trust quotes in newspapers, especially if you can find ellipses in them.

Random thoughts:

When you get a chance to see a rainbow, look out for something. Look carefully at the spot just below the violet band.

Do you see something?

No? Ahh, by the way, you allowed some UV radiation to enter your eye directly.

________

I remember that quite a few years ago, when I was helping out with spring cleaning, I complained that my back ached. My mother then said, "At our age, the elderly would say that children can't get backache, because it is an ailment of the elderly. So unless you are elderly, you don't complain of backache."

Then yesterday, my mother happened to talk about growing rice (she grew up in a village in Perak). She said these:
"When it is the sowing season, the elders like our parents would shave the end of a long stick of wood such that it is sharpened at one end, and they would take two of these and make rows of holes in the ground. The children like us would get a piece of hollow bamboo that is covered at one end, which is filled with rice seeds. We'd have to bend down and put some seeds into each hole and cover up the hole with the end of the piece of bamboo. Only the children would sow the seeds; the elders reasoned that it's a job for the children because the children don't get backache."

Then I asked, "But did your back ache?"

"Of course it did!"

______

I randomly chanced upon this, and I was reminded of one of zilin's post.

Chinese also got 牛头不对马嘴.