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."
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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.

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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!"
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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.