Probability

The Big Question Mark

Looks like I’ll miss out on the most anticipated national event this year.
All these while, I had been hoping for the day to fall on the end of May earliest. According to the widespread speculations, it was quite unlikely to drag on until then, especially when the parties are already all-prepared to face the coming contest.

Frankly I’m not really keen in voting. For us citizen voters, it’s just a very simple process. I had tagged along my parents to the polling centre on two occasions, and it seemed like a mere errand, like going to the post office to post a letter etc (I know nobody does that nowadays).

Basically you just head to the registration counter to register with your registration slip, get the voting slip, queue up in front of the booth, enter the booth, mark a cross on the voting slip, fold it into half and insert into a box.
That’s why I don’t see how it is so exciting to vote for the first time. We have many chances in the future (maybe). Yea we get a say in deciding our MPs, but ultimately it depends on how our fellow neighbours decide. Yea I’m pretty pacified when it comes to politics.

So why am I so concerned about missing out on the polling day?

I’m more interested in the suspense which comes during that night. From bottom to top nationwide, everyone is thrown into great suspense. People will be guessing and speculating while watching the live broadcast, and such atmosphere is pretty electrifying. What’s more it only comes once in 5 years.

Each contested constituency is like a subject module. Hearing the election results is like checking up the module grades, except that the former is usually announced one by one, which further enhances the excitement factor. If all areas are contested, it would be like looking at 27 module grades haha.

Whatever the case, I might have to wait another 5 years to experience such nationwide suspense again.

Forces of Nature (add-on)

Recall some time ago I posted a video on the Japan tsunami?




A woman was seen rushing into her car, trying to drive away from the tsunami. So did she manage to survive? Some said she might be dead.



The tsunami washed in too fast and her car was caught by the waves.



The waves shattered the glass and she quickly swam out of the car. Fortunately she managed to get up the roof of a building.



She was frantically looking out for her son, whom she feared might not have escaped in time. Luckily he was seen to be at the rooftop of another building.



After spending one night at the roof, she managed to get out of the rubble.



As she was being interviewed, she said that many people were screaming and shouting at her from the hill, when she was rushing into her car.


She is one lucky person, but unfortunately not many shared the same fate.

On the other hand, it really sucks to go through months of anticipation, anxiety, planning and excitement for nothing.

The Good and the Ugly

This article is so graphic...


Those who could, ran
Published in The Straits Times, Mar 16, 2011

Bodies found in villages mostly of old folk who couldn't outrun tsunami

NATORI (MIYAGI): Septuagenarian Hirosato Wako stared at the ruins of her small fishing hamlet: skeletons of shattered buildings, twisted lengths of corrugated steel, corpses with their hands twisted into claws. Only once before had she seen anything like it: World War II.

'I lived through the Sendai air raids,' Ms Wako, 75, said, referring to the Allied bombings of the north-east's largest city. 'But this is much worse.'

For the elderly who live in the villages along Japan's north-eastern coast, it is a return to a past of privation that their children have never known.

As in so much of the Japanese countryside, young people have largely fled, looking for work in the city. The elderly who remained are facing devastation and possible radiation contamination, a challenge equal only to the task this generation faced when its defeated, despairing nation had to rebuild from the rubble of World War II.

In this hamlet of Yuriage, the search for survivors was turning into a search for bodies. And most of those bodies were old - too old to have outrun the tsunami.

Mr Yuta Saga, 21, was picking up broken cups after the earthquake when he heard sirens and screams of 'tsunami!'. He grabbed his mother by the arm and ran to the junior high school, the tallest building around.

Traffic snarled the streets as panicked drivers crashed into one another. When they reached the school, mother and son found the stairs to the roof clogged with older people who appeared unable to muster the strength to climb them. Some were just sitting or lying on the steps. As the bottom floor filled with fleeing residents, the wave hit.

At first, the doors held. Then water began to pour through the seams and flow into the room. In a panic to reach the roof, younger residents began pushing and yelling, 'Hurry!' and 'Out of the way!' They climbed over those who were not moving or elbowed them aside.

'I couldn't believe it,' Mr Saga said. 'They were even shoving old people out of the way. The old people couldn't save themselves.'

Then the doors burst open, and the water rushed in. It was quickly waist level. Mr Saga saw one older woman, without the strength or will to stand, sitting in water that rose to her nose. He said he rushed behind her, grabbed her under the arms and hoisted her up the stairs.

Another person on the stairs grabbed her and lifted her up to another person. The men formed a human chain, lifting the elderly and some children to the top.

'I saw the ugly side of people, and then I saw the good side,' he said. 'Some people thought only of themselves. Others stopped to help.'

One woman handed him her infant.

'Please, at least save the baby!' she pleaded as water rose above his chest.

Mr Saga said he grabbed the baby and ran up the stairs. Many of those still at the foot of the stairs were washed away.

He joined about 200 people on the second floor of the building. The baby's mother rushed upstairs, and he put the baby into her arms.

From the windows, they watched uprooted homes and cars flowing by. People did not speak, he said. They just cried and moaned, a collective 'Ahhhh!' as they watched the destruction unfold.

He saw one of his classmates, whose parents had gone back home to get something as the wave came and did not make it to the school. His friend sat on the floor, in tears.

Ms Hisako Tanno, 50, was working at a warehouse when the quake struck. She rushed home to get her 77-year-old father. As she parked in front of her home, she heard screams. She looked down the street to see a 'mountain of garbage' moving down the street at her. It was the wave.

Her neighbours called to her from their home, and she ran up to their second floor. Then she remembered she had left her father.

She could see her house from the window. When the wave hit, it smashed the sliding doors. Then, to her horror, she saw her father swept outside. The water was by now the height of a one-storey building. She saw him grab the ironwork on her home's second-storey balcony and hold on.

'He was trying to pull himself up, but he has a bad leg,' she said.

As the water surged, her father was able to somehow hoist himself over the metal railing and onto the balcony. There he held on for dear life.

'I didn't know he had it in him,' she said. 'He wanted so badly to live that he found that last burst of strength.'

After the earthquake, Mr Jun Kikuchi, 33, who owns a local taxi company, drove to the homes of a half-dozen residents aged 70 or older to ask if he could take them to higher ground. They refused, saying that there was no tsunami alert, so they would stay home.

The next morning, he found out that the homes of all six of the older residents were washed away.

'The elderly can't take care of themselves in a disaster like this,' he said. 'They didn't stand a chance.'

NEW YORK TIMES

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Another upsetting thing is that some countries and media are spreading unfounded rumours like no one's business. Creating panic among masses? Or just trying to sensationalize the whole incident?

Forces of Nature

This town, Kamaishi, in Iwate prefecture, held the record of having the deepest breakwater in the world to shield from tsunami strike, but...



Pay attention to the 0:40 part. Did that person manage to escape??


And this person (shooting the footage) was pretty brave. I probably won't do that if I were him/her. But this video indeed shows the extent of destruction that tsunami can cause, from ground-zero POV.



When one problem triggers another...sigh.

The Shriveling Pasture

From: The Straits Times, Life! 29 October 2010

Low ratings for local dramas. By Lin Wenjian

Viewers say the lack of variety, unrealistic dialogue and similar plots turn them off.

Is local TV drama in dire straits?

Even Singapore’s original TV First Couple, Huang Wenyong and Xiang Yun, cannot prevent current MediaCorp Channel 8 drama series, The Score, from, well, failing to score good ratings.

In fact, it might even have less than half the number of viewers a top-rated local drama gets.

Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao recently reported that The Score has a viewership rating of between 10 and 11 percent since it debuted in the traditional prime time slot of 9pm on Oct 4. On some nights, the rating even fell to a single digit. The series, a soap opera cum crime drama, will end next Friday.

In 2007, Like Father Like Daughter, a popular Channel 8 drama in the same time slot, achieved 20.5 percent in ratings. The Little Nyonya, MediaCorp’s most-watched series in the last eight years, chalked up a rating of about 26.3 percent, or about 934,000 viewers.

One percentage point is equivalent to 1 percent of all TV households in Singapore.
A MediaCorp spokesman responded to Life!’s queries, saying: “The average reach of the The Score is 14.3 percent.”

However she did not refute the lowest-rating figure of a single digit, as reported in the Chinese paper.

The Score’s poor showing may not be an exception. Earlier this year, Korean drama Cruel Temptation, which ended its run on Channel U recently, dealt a ratings blow to Channel 8’s home-grown production, the family drama Your Hand In Mine. The 94-episode drama became the first Korean series to beat a local production showing in the same time slot in Channel 8.

The poor ratings do not surprise some viewers who have stopped watching Channel 8 dramas.

Customer service manager Eva Siow, 30, says: “Local scriptwriters and producers lack creativity. The plots of many Channel 8 drama series are very similar and sometimes I can’t even tell them apart.”

Lianhe Wanbao entertainment journalist Tan Chew Yen agrees. She says: “The main problem with local dramas is their lack of variety. All year round, we get regular doses of family drama.”

Account executive Ken Kuan, 28, says he and his family have not followed a Channel 8 drama since they subscribed to cable TV more than five years ago.

His biggest bugbear is he “unrealistic dialogue” in local dramas. “Who talks like that in real life? I cringe every time I switch to Channel 8.”

Life!’s Asian TV reviewer Foong Woei Wan elaborates on this shortcoming in local drama scripting. “With some Channel 8 dramas, you don’t get a sense of the complex multilingual reality of Singapore,” she says. “In the Zoe Tay housewife drama La Femme, you have people saying ‘songbing’ and not ‘muffin’. Who says ‘songbing’?”

“It’s more believable to have characters who can discuss important dramatic stuff in Mandarin, but would still say ‘muffin’. But as it is, some dramas seem to take place in some strange parallel universe.”

She compares the situation here to Hong Kong, where TV scriptwriters have no qualms about using English buzzwords to add a dose of reality to the lines.

While retail supervisor Chen Wenxin, 38, says he watches Channel 8 dramas, he notices “the TV company seems to like to promote the good-looking actors, rather than the experienced ones”.

The result, he says, is mediocre acting dished out by “the newbies”.

This also bugs Ms Foong, who misses former TV thespians such as Xie Shaoguang, “who are charismatic actors capable of filling up the screen on their own”.

Consultant Wayne Weng, 29, says he watches local dramas, but only some of those shown on Channel U, as “they usually have better cinematography and direction and are more innovative as well”.

He was referring to recent Channel U shows such as The Illusionist, which aired in March and starred Thomas Ong.

Despite the recent spate of poor ratings, Channel 8 dramas still have their regular supporters. Retiree Wee Siew Eng, 60, says she enjoyed Ann Kok’s portrayal of an abused wife in The Family Court, which aired just before The Score.

“She is pretty and acts well. If we don’t watch local shows, who will?”

Despite his grouses, Mr Chen will also continue to watch Channel 8 dramas – out of necessity.

“The cost of living is already high enough, so I don’t want to spend more money on cable TV subscription. Besides, Channel 8 dramas can be rather entertaining in terms of how bad they can be.”

-----

This issue has been discussed to death since the beginning of the decade. Every now and then such articles will be published, criticizing the standard of home-grown productions and proving how unpopular it has become, especially whenever a drama fails to achieve good ratings.

The ‘grass is always greener on the other side’ argument is not very applicable here as a huge standard gap can be observed even if you put the two patches of grass side by side.

Putting the topic of drama quality aside, there might be other underlying compounding factors that perpetuate this ‘local crisis’.


It looks like the diversity of Singapore’s culture has taken a toll on the viewership of local programmes, particularly Channel 8 dramas.

Diversity means that people of other races like Malay and Indians are less likely to watch Chinese dramas.

Diversity means that foreigners are generally not supportive of local dramas. The local-flavored plots are unable to strike a chord with these people.

Diversity also means that English-orientated faction within the Chinese community may not appreciate dramas presented in Chinese language.

With such heterogeneity in the population, only a small slice of potential audiences can be carved from the pie. The problem of SG’s small market was already highlighted as the main reason for the media merger 6 years ago.

The true competitors are not rival TV stations, but the formidable foreign opponents, whose productions are posing an ever huge threat to local programme ratings.

In the recent years, the availability of foreign programmes through the Net and increasing choices of cable TV subscription have encouraged many to depart from traditional TV watching.

Without any actual figures, I’m guessing that the proportion of teenage viewers (around age 12 -25) has been declining over the years. Most of the current viewership probably comes from middle aged folks who experienced the ‘golden age’ of local dramas in the 1990s. These folks are also less tech-savvy than the young to search for other foreign programmes online, hence they tend to stick to watching free-to-air dramas.

I predict that the viewership of local programmes will continue to dwindle in the future as people start to seek their own preferred forms of entertainment elsewhere.


Talking about dialogues being unrealistic? Let’s bring the argument further.

Singaporeans are well-known for their broken language and tendency to mish-mash different languages in a single sentence. Well, that’s our way of life - our natural way of speaking, but the aims of local productions (or rather MDA) are attempting to change that, by promoting the use of good language. Thus it is no wonder why dialogues can be so unrealistic and unreflective of our interaction style.

To exemplify, police and court scenes are as unrealistic as it can ever get. English is the official language of communication used across all governmental boards. Is it even possible to see the police describing a crime case in Chinese, or a lawyer addressing the judge as ‘法官大人’? How about large companies having their corporate meetings entirely in Chinese?

The ‘no-dialect’ policy adopted by local TV also contributes to the disparity as a large proportion of older folks are still using dialects as their main language.
Yet on the other hand, viewers will start complaining if programmes were to incorporate Singlish or Singnese. Clearly the best of both worlds can’t be achieved in this case.

With so many native PRCs in Singapore speaking in their perfect Mandarin, we don’t need local Chinese programmes to deal a further blow to our weak language abilities.


Everyone speaks English, but why are local English shows not appealing?

English dramas definitely win Chinese dramas hands down in terms of being realistic. However that does not necessarily mean that the dialogues are more natural. Singaporeans are not native English speakers after all, and have a weird cheena accent that can even make our own people cringe. Singlish is deemed as inappropriate, while fake accents put people off. Let’s face it, we are better off speaking in our own mother tongue instead. At least the accent is more acceptable.

The problem is aggravated by another issue - the local showbiz industry is facing a lack of talent inflow and replacement.

Good looking artistes can’t speak Mandarin well, and the fact that local productions are skewed towards Chinese doesn’t help. English speaking artistes are often forced to participate in Chinese shows if they want to develop their career and popularity. Unfortunately, speaking in a non-familiar language is major barrier even to experienced actors. Look at Pierre Png and Adrian Pang. Their acting skills are still very much limited by the way they speak, which is a waste as they are unable to exhibit their full potential.

Due to economic influence, coupled with its small market and instability, the local entertainment industry is repelling potential artistes with its low payout to risk ratio. One might not be able to gain much benefits of fame and recognition despite being capable and talented. The time and effort invested into local showbiz is often not worth it compared to other countries like Hong Kong.

Sadly, judging from the way it is going now, I see no future in local drama productions if the current veteran artistes begin to retire.

From Tutee to Tutor

There is a recent controversy about the knowledge 'gap' between school textbooks and exams. As what many teachers would explain, the 'gap' is present so as to encourage students to read beyond the textbooks and do their own supplementary revision. However most parents interpret it as a need to engage tuition for their children.

To put it bluntly, the children are lazy and unwilling to study extra, that is why tuition is there to 'force' it upon them. But anyway which kid is so hardworking to spend his/her precious childhood mugging away? It's natural for children to seek enjoyment in things like games, toys and TV, which adults often see as 'trivial', 'waste of time and money'. This is especially so when children still cannot see how studying may affect their lives in the future.

In university, lecturers would say that including every piece of information in the notes would equate to 'spoonfeeding'. This word is so popular in the university context, as it can act as an ultimate defense against various complaints on badly organized lecture notes, boring lecturers and killer exams.

I used to have home tuition during my primary school days. That was my laziest period, spending tons of time on TV and being most reluctant to complete my homework. So my mum decided to hire a tutor for both my bro and me. It was twice a week and I remember we would dread those particular two afternoons (or evenings). The tuition was seen to spoil our fun and we always wished the tutor was sick, couldn't make it or something.

Along the years we changed several tutors. Most were young working adults around mid 20s. Fresh A-level graduates or NSFs seemed to be quite rare those days. My bro and I were quite a playful and mischievous bunch, so probably some tutors didn't want to 'babysit' us further. I remember making one tutor very angry and she quitted soon after. She was lousy anyway - she claimed that the past tense of 'put' is 'putted'. She must have played too much golf already. But anyway that was not the reason why I made her angry.

Then there was another tutor who looked like some mamasan, from the way she dressed. (I realised kids tend to look at adults older than they actually are.) Her perfume smell was terribly strong. Thankfully she didn't last long.

Until a point of time, we finally found a tutor that can tolerate us, and was someone we felt comfortable with. She lasted for quite a few years I think. She works at Singapore Science Centre and often introduced interesting exhibitions to us. Hope to meet her again but I've totally forgotten her full name, since we usually called her by surname only.

Despite having many years of tuition, I felt that I didn't really benefit much from it. I used the tuition time to complete my school homework, and often neglected homework that the tutor gave from assessment books. Moreover I tend to take tuition homework less seriously and did not make much effort in attempting the questions. Some tuition sessions became very unproductive as the tutor just sat there while waiting for us to finish our schoolwork. I guess the tutor didn't mind since she was getting paid after all. $180 for 8 sessions of 2 hours each. Sounds very cheap compared to now hor?

As we get more familiar with the tutor, we started to chit chat on various things, like simple social issues and scientific theories. I remember she took a whole session explaining how we can look into the past if we were to travel at the speed of light. When my mum noticed how the tuition session turned into a chit chat session, she became quite unhappy about it and eventually our tuition ceased ever since.

Tuition does not guarantee results yet many are willing to invest a lot on it. That's why it's a such a lucrative job for university students, with one of the highest hourly rates.

Hopefully MOE will not implement strict measures to control the tuition industry so that people like us can continue to earn a keep for ourselves.

YOG again

With so many YOG-related reports these few days, I can't help but to talk about it too.

To begin, I would like to congratulate the three young sportsmen (including one sportswoman) for clinching two bronze medals and one silver medal for Singapore. This should create less controversy than China-born athletes winning a medal for Singapore...

Slip-ups and letdowns are still present here and there though. Such as the food poisoning incident, poor media coverage of YOG in other countries, collapse of tent under heavy rain, barring of water bottles that bear Nike or Adidas logos, parents not able to watch their son win a medal as they could not get the tickets while seats were only half-occupied, etc.

There were also saddening pictures, uploaded by someone in Facebook, which showed the extremely poor turnout of the YOG carnival held at Marina Bay. Even on a Sunday afternoon, the whole place was quite deserted, dotted with mostly volunteers. Musicians performed in front of a sea of vacant seats.

Ticket sales for the matches are said to be 'encouraging', but most tickets are actually snapped by MOE, who distributes them to schools, that in turn send their students to watch the games. While some schools did not turn up or were reluctant to attend due to examinations, resulting in many vacant seats at the venues, some schools took a harsher approach to impose a penalty of $5 should anyone fail to turn up.

This reminds me of my secondary school days when we were 'forced' to attend the track and field finals and support our school team. But most of us were reluctant to attend, and attempted to find ways to skip the event haha. Generally we are not interested in watching matches unless our friends are participating.

Sports culture in Singapore is still pretty weak, especially when the society is so economically driven.

Let's look at the more pleasant stuffs. Those who watched the YOG opening ceremony last Saturday would have noticed how spectacular the cauldron-igniting finale was. I wonder how they created the flame vortex, which looked really impressive.

Here are some nice pictures on YOG in the following news website. Most of them are beautifully taken, especially the first one. =)

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/singapore_2010_youth_olympics.html


And wait, what's this???

http://www.singapore2010odyssey.sg/

Wow... Anyone wants to try? Lol.

YOG Doomed?

First, think about how many people around you are genuinely interested and excited about the coming Youth Olympic Games. This will give you a rough gauge of how well-received this 'one of the greatest sporting events of the year' is, among the citizens of the host country.

Is the government putting too much faith in Singaporeans' enthusiasm?

The recent YOG bus lane saga has revealed that some motorists are not very willing to give way to YOG buses, citing impertinent reasons like being in a traffic jam and their cars cannot even move an inch, let alone giving way to the bus. However most motorists expressed that they will give way if necessary, to avoid getting fined.

The additional move to reward souvenirs to those who give way was deemed to be redundant. Errant motorists are already getting fined for disregarding the rule, so why is there another need to reward the rest of the motorists who obey the rule? Such measures are probably needed to overcome Singaporeans' well-known reluctance of giving way to others. Sadly, the thought behind the considerate act has transformed into something due to personal gains.

Volunteers and staff rant about the disappointing standard of the meals they are served. Considering Singaporeans' fussiness about food, this is seen as a mere trivial matter.

It has been reported that SAF units were given hundreds of complimentary tickets to a YOG soccer match, in order to send their NSFs to attend and fill up the unsightly voidage. Judging from Singaporeans' cold response towards soccer matches other than EPL & World Cup, such move is not entirely impossible.

It was also noticed that primary school children are made to line up along the roadside in the rain, to welcome the torchbearers to the otherwise empty streets. The same goes to many other students whose schools the torch relay will pass by. Are they truly supportive of the relay, or just instructed by the school management to create a crowd around the area?

There is even word of some polytechnic students who are forced to volunteer for the event, otherwise they would not get the credits required for graduation.

The budget for YOG is said to have exceeded 4-fold. Is there too much overspending on the lavish facade and incessant publicity to stimulate the locals' interest in the event?

With so many dissatisfaction and complaints even before its opening, how will this milestone event turn out to be? A groundbreaking first, or a lackluster beginning?

Looks like Singapore is not 'sporting' enough the host the YOG in the first place.

August 2008 - Food for Thought

Only three-quarters of the month have passed and I'm already writing an overview of it. Usually I don't have any habit of summarising every month I've been through, but this August is special, in the sense that it has been a fulfilling month with a number of noteworthy events. From the Beijing Olympics to National Day, from my university matriculation to my leisure recreation, there is a range of topics to blog about hehe.

First off let's talk about the big events. After watching the broadcast of Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, the NDP performances the following day seemed awfully pale in comparison. Unlike many of my peers, I still maintain the tradition of watching NDP every year, even for 2 particular years when I was directly involved in the parade and couldn't catch the live broadcast in TV. However every year my sense of excitement will dampen, until I'm involved in the next NDP when my spirits will experience a boost again. That probably explains why I could commit myself to watching the parade every year without fail, whereas others feel it's a repetition and a waste of time to watch.

One of the main focus of every year's NDP is the singer of the theme song. Quite glad that Joi was given the opportunity to sing this year, upon recognising her efforts and contributions to the Chinese music industry. Not to forget about her feat in being nominated in the Taiwan Melody Awards. From what I remember, she used to sing a sub-theme for NDP in one particular year, however the song was not very popular and easily forgettable. Not sure if she did appear live in that year's parade, but the possibility of the different singer of the English version of that song appearing was higher.

This year it rained during the parade, the first time since many years. Not only on the actual day, it also rained during the rehearsals, forcing many to perform in the rain. Is this a bad omen? Not quite. For the first time in many years too, Singapore managed to clinch an Olympic medal. Even the important annual broadcast of the Rally was postponed for the first time to make way for the finals match. Let's not argue about the fact that the medalist wasn't a pure Singaporean, but instead look at their determination and hard work in order to make our medal dream come true.

However I regret to say that out of all the full table tennis matches played by our country's representatives I've watched thus far (from 2000 to present), none was victorious for our team. I guess this is true for a handful of people too. In 2000 I watched my first full table tennis match on TV, hoping that Jing Jun Hong would win. We lost. In the bronze playoff, we lost again. At that time there weren't much debate on the use of foreign sportsmen (or sportswomen). 4 years later in 2004 the same thing happened. I watched the two matches which we lost. People were starting to be aware of the lack of national identity by having foreigners to play for us. Another 4 years later, I watched the team finals which ended in trashing defeat. It's a shame that I only caught the last round of the last game in the victorious semifinals. This led many to question the significance of the medal, and whether it's justifiable as a Singaporean to be proud of such accomplishment.

Once again, I watched our defeat in the singles semifinals yesterday. Another defeat followed. Why does it seem that every match I'm watching will end up in defeat? Why is it that whenever the TV broadcast the match live, we will lose? When can I watch a victorious match where I can jump along with joy? I know this is a fallacy but I'm sure some of the audience might have felt that way at some point of another. We were often left disappointed after every initial excitement prior to watching the match, and this has probably made many disillusioned on the results, thinking 'Oh, we have entered the semis? Then we will lose subsequently.'

Of course it's already very remarkable for someone to reach that stage. With exceptionally strong opponents, winning isn't easy. However I feel some people take this for granted. They expect our table tennis players to enter the semis every Olympics, then expect them to lose it. I agree that having higher expectations might result in greater disappointments, but we should not have too low an expectation for our players too. Perhaps it's the short of luck and powerful opponents that caused the loss, but I don't think we have the right to criticise our players for their failure to win, especially without knowing the hardships they have been through all these years.

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Tutorial classes start next week and this might probably mark the end of the honeymoon period of semester. I guess I should clear my readings and tutorials before they start piling up to unmanageable amounts. So far I'm enjoying the flexibility of my timetable, and the liberty to report to school anytime. For lectures nobody will care if anyone is late or if anyone leaves in the midst. However I'm quite frustrated with the issue of being late. Giving the students the responsibility to take charge of their own studies indirectly encourages them to think lightly of being late. Regrettably I was late for the first tutorial on Monday haha. As well as for the lecture on the following day. I'm still feeling vexed over these.

Then I started to think about the reasons of being late, and came up with a theory: Quantisation of time. Like how energy values of each electron in an atom are quantised, our arrival times to school is also quantised, thanks to the reliance on bus and train services. Well, I think most of you have already understood what I mean (after all it's common sense) but I shall illustrate further:

I shall take on the assumption that all NUS students go to school by bus as a last transport, and the lecture theatres/classrooms are close to the bus stop. If we observe at the bus stop, buses only arrive at intervals, be it regular or irregular. If the frequency of the bus is 10 minutes, we can safely predict that the next batch of students will arrive approximately 10 minutes after the first batch. If we happen to miss the bus we intend to take, we can say that we might reach our destination 10 minutes later than expected. If we plan to reach school by 12pm, we will definitely be late if we miss the bus that is expected to arrive in school at 11.55am. Extending the frequency to 25 minutes now, if we miss the bus that is expected to arrive at 11.36am, we will definitely be late. Either we are early by 24 minutes, or late by 1 minute. In other words there is no way we can safely expect to arrive right on time, or even slightly before time, especially with buses of low frequency.

Unfortunately we often assume to reach school on time, or maybe 5 minutes before, in our calculations. Usually we will try to add the waiting time, traveling time and walking time, then subtract the total time off the appointed time to derive the time we have to leave house. However such methods will normally result in the underestimation on time, which will lead to lateness (and probably frustration), unless we deliberately overestimate the time taken. Of course we want to leave home as late as possible, so most of us usually avoid overestimation.

Now we assume that the travel time of the bus is 30 minutes. (frequency still 25 minutes) If the bus is expected to arrive in school at 11.36am, it will arrive in the our home stop at 11.06am, 54 minutes before 12pm. If our pre-calculations is any less that 54 minutes, then we are doomed. If we could reach the home stop at 11.05am, then we are lucky. But merely 2 minutes late implies doom, and we have to wait for another 24 minutes. Hence we can see that the waiting time really varies a lot, any number within the frequency.

So the safest bet to estimate total time taken is to add up bus travel time and bus frequency, rather than approximate waiting time. The more optimistic we are with estimating the waiting time, the more chances we will be late. However the problem is, how do we know the frequency? The one shown on bus guides or bus stop panels is pretty inaccurate, and gets more inaccurate the further the stop is from the terminal.

Due to the fact that no one is able to tell the exact frequency of the bus, it's no wonder why many are late for class as they tend to include an optimistic waiting time into their estimations. If you happen to be early for 20 minutes, even leaving home 10 minutes later for the next day might result in...doom.

If you even read that huge chunk of rubbish I've written above, then I thank you (and apologise and the same time).

Currently I'm taking 2 buses from home to school. The first bus has a good frequency and speedy drivers, furthermore I'm get up at the first bus stop right after its terminal. But the 2nd leaves much to be desired. For its distance covered, the time taken is far too long, and I feel the main cause is its route and number of traffic lights. The service takes too many right turns. Those who take traffic theory should understand that it takes much longer to make a right turn than a left turn at any junction. But then again, there is nothing much we can do about this.

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It's getting too long, so I shall it end here. Sorry for my ramblings haha. (Realised the more I type, the more incoherent I get.)

Toa Payoh

Did you know Toa Payoh is voted to be the most self-contained residential town in Singapore? You can find almost every shop, facility and recreation there. A Toa Payoh resident can find no reason in leaving their town.

That's probably one reason why both its MRT station and bus interchange were kena-ed yesterday morning for the emergency exercise. Dhoby Ghaut was down too, but kinda expected cos it's the biggest station in sg. Ironically one of the most ulu stations in sg, Marina Bay, was chosen. >_> Anyway dunno why early sunday morning still got so many MRT passengers.

Saw the Renci item which Jacelyn was 'complaining' abt, probably that perilous stunt that Michelle Chia pulled off at the end. Looked as though her arms were abt to get twisted...

Hmm, ming yi fa shi cried...meanwhile the numbers jumped greatly, haha. Sgeans may not be generous but they are definitely sympathetic.

Maybe I'll go for Jap lessons after all, I feel like I'm rotting at home. Being invaded by mould hyphae.