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No entry for the time being.

Seeking dx/dt = 0

Still can't believe the mid term break has just ended like that. I remember how relieved I was after pulling through the busy final week of the 1st half semester. There were so many plans laid out in my mind for the following week - "I shall do this and this...", "I will start this and there should be time for this too...". So many hopes and plans for that short duration.

It started off quite well though, as I managed to complete a few assignments on CNY eve, a day which one normally wouldn't have the mood to do any homework at all. So proud of myself haha. Was thinking that if I were to continue at this pace, I'll be left with plenty of time for the weekend before school starts.

Even went as far as bringing my notes along when visiting relatives. Better to make good use of the time rather than to sit around waiting for the 'mandatory period' to pass. My plan looked pretty good so far.

There were days where I stayed home almost all day, giving me lots of room to clear off my workload, and hoping to proceed to the 'extras' (reading supplementary materials, etc).

Within a blink of eye, the other weekend had come. Why was I still struggling to clear my primary workload? I had started working on it on the eve, and tried to utilize time during visiting. What happened?

Nevertheless I continued. Until the final night of the break, I still had some unfinished work, which was pushed to Monday night. Was I really that busy? Was the workload really that unmanageable?

Looking back at each and every day I spent, it appeared quite alright as I did complete some work during the free time in between. So what went wrong?

Then I realised something: I was steady but SLOW. In other words, I was inefficient. I took a longer time to complete a work than what is normally required. Was surprised at how terribly inefficient I was.

Often, I spend a considerable amount of time pondering over what I did. I would try to double-check if it's indeed correct, or try to convince myself even though I don't really understand. This is more time consuming than expected.

'The more time you spend, the better the work produced.' I wonder if this is true. So what if I spend so much time trying to make sure something is perfect (or at least close)? Will this extra time spent be better utilized on other tasks to achieve a reasonable standard?

Let's say you're given 1 hour to finish 2 questions. Would you spend 45 min trying to perfect the 1st and the remaining 15 min to give a half-hearted answer for the 2nd? Or split the time equally and attempt to answer both to a reasonable standard?

Sometimes, spending more time on things doesn't pay off. The result you get upon spending 3 hours may not be any much different from the result after 2 hours. Most of the time, spending extra time is just for the sake of self-satisfaction. We would feel uneasy if something is missing, or not up to our expected standard. We may feel satisfied with our perfect work, but then start crying when we realise that there is no time left for subsequent tasks.

To comfort myself, I could say that I'm more conscientious and willing to put in effort. But to put it crudely, I spend lots of unnecessary time trying to create an insignificant difference, resulting in inefficiency.

Time is limited. It passes and never returns. Thus sacrificing time for ineffective work is usually a bad move. That's why there is this concept termed 'optimization', which teaches us to make use of minimum time to produce maximum work.

And here I am wasting precious time typing this entry...

Whether something is worth the extra effort, it's up to us to decide. But the speed of passing time is not up to us to control. Between spending time and getting best possible result - which consideration should take priority? The answer is obvious.

See and Whine

For obvious reasons, I neglected my blog for almost 2 weeks. We all know what takes priority for a student.

Very relieved that the CNY break cum recess week is here. An early pit-stop would mean that I'll have to endure more for the next subsequent 8 weeks. High chance that school work might accumulate to even more than what I had experienced for the past week. No thanks to the disappointing email which came few days ago.

Enough about school, let's talk about CNY.

Since n years ago, I've heard people, especially youngsters, complaining about how the CNY atmosphere isn't as lively and bustling as in the past, which makes them look forward less to the festive season. As for me, whether the atmosphere has dwindled or not doesn't matter that much and I still very look forward to CNY, for various reasons:

- Compared to my childhood days, I'm not as excited when receiving hongbao anymore, but receiving some cash still has the value of being looked forward to. The total amount received is not much though, but it still gives me a little more spending power. Despite inflation throughout the years, the amount in each packet never changes. I wonder if 10 years down the road people will still give the same amount. Can tradition be ever adjusted to suit the economy?

- Food!!! Eating good food makes me happy haha. Although people rarely visit my house, my mum still buys snacks and cookies every year. The guys in my home will then quickly finish them up hehe. Unfortunately most snacks my mum bought aren't that fantastic (some even tasted like plastic/rubber), so I normally eat a lot at my relatives' house haha, where the quality is much better. My mum doesn't buy bak kwa, so I've to eat them elsewhere. Therefore, the first thing I do upon entering my relatives' house is to scavenge the table for goodies haha.

- Anyone noticed these few years there is always a four-day long holiday? As long as chu yi falls on a Saturday, Sunday, Monday or Thursday there will be an extra long holiday. So the chances are actually quite high eh. Sadly this year's potential has been wasted, thanks to the flexibility in adjusting the term calendar. For dating NUS students, won't it be a double whammy? Hahaha...

I wonder what I can eat tomorrow...yum ^_^

To end off, enjoy your 'see and whine' holidays everyone!

Kang Xi

Upon being heavily exposed to maths and science related work all these years, I've already lost the ability to appreciate and understand literature.

This realization came when a literature text was given as homework for my Japanese module. Reading and knowing what is happening in the story is not a problem. However after the reading the last line, I was stunned - 'Huh? It ended? What is the story trying to say?'. Then I went to read the questions which followed, and sadly I couldn't answer most of them at the first glance. 'What did that person do wrong? Was he even wrong at all?' I was bewildered by the question which asked to list the bad things that the characters had done. And there was this question about the moral of the story. There were 5 points but I could only fill up one point at most.

Of course I tried to force myself to answer all the questions, based on my own interpretations which I had convinced myself over a long period of time. Well, there was no right or wrong answers after all but I was quite surprised that I had to spend such a long time to answer those seemingly simple questions.

There was another time when I didn't even realise that the story I was reading is from a romance novel... The interaction between the personage didn't appear very romantic to me...

Despite the difficulty in grasping the hidden meaning at first, the inference is actually pretty clear. I could understand it right away when the teacher explained. But why couldn't I figure it out by myself? It should be my own problem then.

Not sure if this is necessarily a bad thing, but I think I'm more suited to objective texts like news articles. There is also a kind of article where the author will describe an anecdote and attempt to link it to some philosophy. Yea, I'm bad at reading that as well, as I don't see the link most of the time.

'If you can see it, you can. If you can't, you can't no matter how much you try.'

Looks like I'll be facing a huge challenge in my Japanese module.

It has come!

Yep, the Singapore version of Just for Laughs Gags. We used to watch it often on TV Mobile, and laugh at foreigners being teased. How about watching our fellow Sgeans being teased?



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnoeXIeMpu0
Embedding disabled


Considering how Sgeans hate being made a fool of in the public, I believe the production team has met with several difficulties dealing with the unsporting attitude of the people teased. Comparatively, the foreigner 'victims' shown in the episode appear to be more accepting towards the joke.

Somehow it becomes unsettling (as well as annoying) to see the frowning and anger expressions by Sgeans. Because it seems to signal an incoming complaint bomb... (via online forums, newspapers, Stomp, etc)

Compared to the original version, the jokes were rather mild - probably to avoid being scolded by the victim as much as possible. Can't imagine how badly the production team will be bashed if the more 'thrilling' ones were carried out.

Previously there were some reports of jokes being played on local artistes, which failed pretty badly. The artistes felt that their trust was betrayed, and the silly unproductive joke deprived them of their precious time.

After all it's natural for people to enjoy looking at people being teased but not themselves being teased.

Makes me want to watch 'Gotcha', hosted by Moe Alkaff many years ago, to know why it used to be so popular then.

As for this one? Somehow it doesn't have sufficient pulling factor to make me want to watch further...

Anyway to those interested, the show is currently airing on Channel 5 every Tuesday 9pm.

Back to Mugging

Somehow the 1st week of this semester doesn't feel the same as that of the previous semesters. The stress of school term can already be felt right from the first day. Was bombarded with assignments and group work (due tomorrow >_<) during the first Japanese lecture. Can't complain much about that since I already knew Japanese modules are notorious for having a huge workload.

Tutorials and labs will begin from the 2nd week for me. Don't really understand why chem engin modules require one additional week of tutorials. This means I've to rush through everything within the first weekend, and the subsequent weeks will be worse. With 4 out of 5 days ending at 6pm (except Friday but I'll most probably go out till late anyway) I can foresee most of my work being pushed to the weekends. If possible, try not to organise any outings during the weekends haha. Even Monday evenings are fine with me, since I won't be doing much work anyway.

Lab is another headache. It's like some kind of biweekly group project, requiring a 20++ pages of lab report each time. The hard part about doing group reports is trying to find a common schedule to discuss and consolidate. And sometimes due to various circumstances you have to do it at the last minute but other members may not want to do so.

Can feel a greater stress approaching. Have to switch to the mugging mode fast before my pace starts to collapse.

Just feel like ranting and grumbling...

Black Market

Before the start of every semester, one of the must-do tasks in my preparation list is textbook buying. Sometimes I feel that buying textbooks is more of a cumbersome affair than bidding modules. We search the forum and try to look out for cheaper prices, but most of the time we don't even know what's the true market price for the brand new original textbook. Therefore we're usually in the dark of how much can we actually save by buying secondhand books. We often base our target price on what the buyers set, but buyers too, often base their selling price on what other buyers set. As a result, the prices will not deviate much from a certain value, which is good in a way though.

We'll probably try to search for one that sells for below the 'standard' price. But those cheaper ones tend to get snapped up pretty quickly. Occasionally there will be slightly better deals when sellers throw in extras such as lecture notes, tutorials and reports. (Good riddance of wastepaper eh?) And sometimes we might have to compromise for an older edition if we are really determined to protect our wallets. The problem is, how low should it get before we're convinced to pay? Will you settle for the same textbook for $30 if you happen to see a sold $25 one? Does the $5 make a big difference? If we decide to become picky and wait for another $25 to come, there might be a chance that it might never come at all. And even if it does come, we must check the forum regularly enough to make sure that we can catch the good deal before others. If we really can't get hold of the desired textbook from the forum, buying from the bookstore is the only alternative. Most of us will be curious to compare the prices between bookstores first before buying, which means more hassle. If we're slow, the textbook may be sold out already and we've to wait for another week or so before the stock comes. This means additional return trip, and more more hassle.

Buying textbooks usually accompanies selling those from previous semester. Selling is more relaxed than buying I feel, since we just have to create a new topic in the forum and wait for somebody to contact us. Occasionally we might need to 'bump' up our topics when it gets too old. But there are some nitty gritty stuff in the transaction which I find interesting to talk about. Haha.

- Do I need your name?

Since the buyer knows the seller's name, it would be courtesy for the buyer to introduce his/her name too. But apparently knowing the buyer's name doesn't matter much to the seller (and vice versa) since both parties will most likely address each other as 'modulecode-seller/buyer', like 'GEM2901 textbook seller'. Probably this same 'name' is also used to save the other party's phone number in the phonebook. In fact I think it might be more confusing to identify yourself as your own name, especially when several transactions are going on at the same time, since we attach the module code to the identity of the buyer/seller rather than name. Furthermore, we will probably conveniently delete the number of the other party from our phonebook after the transaction is settled, so a proper identity is not required. Unless the buyer wants a refund later haha.

Talking about refund, since there is no Consumer Act covered for such textbook trading activities, trust and integrity plays an important role here.

Knowing the other party's name does give you other information too, which will bring us to the next point.

- Guy or Girl?

This is one thing a curious seller would want to know. We would probably try to deduce the gender of the other party so that it will be easier to visualize the person when communicating, or to identify the right person when meeting face-to-face. If the name is known, gender can be easily deduced. But sometimes when the name seems ambiguous, in other words - appears unisex, we can't confirm the gender with 95% confidence. Take for example, an hanyu pinyin name without English name, like 'Yihui'. (Sorry to use your name, if you're called Yihui') Can you tell if Yihui is a guy or girl? 义辉 and 怡慧 do make a difference.

Another way perhaps is to deduce from the SMS style. The use of smiley faces tend to give me a female impression, though I know many guys do use it casually too. Personally I don't use smiley, tongue or whatever face towards strangers, or someone whom I've never met before. It's like smiling to a blank wall - you can't visualize a face to smile to at all. The use of extra 'z' or 'x' added to the end of a word might be a indicator of girl too, like 'See ya denz!' A more formal style might indicate a guy. But well, all these are just based on gender stereotypes. Exceptions exist everywhere. The best we could do is to deduce a personal probability that one is a guy or a girl.

- Which faculty are you from?

People who are not very very curious may not want to know this. Plays a little part in setting a convenient venue to meet up, but not very important. If the textbook belongs to a module of a specific course, it's natural to assume that the person is from the particular course or faculty. But it gets tricky for general modules like GEM and SS. My assumption will depend on which department the module belongs to. But somehow my faculty stereotypes will start to kick in haha. I tend to think that girls will belong to Arts, guys will belong to Engin or Science, those who type SMS in a more formal style will belong to Business... Wahahaha...

- The truth is out!

Eventually the buyer and seller have to meet up face-to-face. Have you ever had a shock (ok 'shock' is too big a word, how about 'little surprise') when the other party is different from what you have thought him/her to be?

Hahaa...why does it sound like some kind of blind date...lol.

Anyway hope everyone can get their desired textbooks.

I must be too free to write all these...