Rainy weather these days 30 July, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Around the House, Dear1, For Him For Her.add a comment
Just 2 weeks ago, it was still very very hot. I remember wanting to switch on the air con every night becos the nights are so warm that I can’t sleep. Nearly every morning, I would wake up with sweaty and sticky skin which is so uncomfortable. But the high electric cost stopped me from turning on the air con, just the fan will do, and maybe wear thinner clothes and dun use the blanket. But of course there are good sides to hot weather. For one, the washed clothes dry fast! Haha… In fact, sometimes, we dun even have to put the clothes out to dry; hanging indoors and drying via heat permeating from the kitchen windows is quite sufficient.
Nowadays, it is quite different. It’s raining most afternoons and cool and moist most mornings that we can hardly hang our clothes out. There just isn’t much sun. As a result, our clothes aren’t returning to the wardrobe fast even and we end up wearing some of the ‘older’ clothes out to work. Hmm… I wonder if that’s the reason why some families own a dryer in addition to a washer. So that their clothes can be dry regardless of the weather status.
Of course there are other pros to rainy weather too. Like always have cool mornings, making it so comfortable to tuck in a blanket and laze in bed until 10am on weekends. Haha… Personally I prefer cool to warm and hence I’ve always wanted to go on a tour to cold places if not staying there long term. Cool and not so rainy would be perfect. Cool and rainy like these days in Singapore is just plain inconvenient. Where won’t be a cool and not so rainy climate? Hong Kong?
I think last time we didn’t even notice things like rainy weather becos we’re not doing household chores. Now that we have a home and taking care of everything around the house, we started realize a lot of the minor details that we were ignorant to before, like the effects of weather on the day to day operation of the house. If I were to do all these alone, I think it would be quite boring and frustrating. But I have my dear with me, both of us sharing the housework. On an occasionally sunny morning, we would both drag ourselves up at 7am on a weekend just to hang out the clothes to dry then crawl back into bed to laze until 10am. Haha… To learn and to do all these with Dear2 makes it all fun and interesting, and makes me like my dear even more, knowing that we can depend on and support each other for things both big and small.
-Dear1
Dun think too much 25 July, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Slice of Life.add a comment
Recently, I’ve been feeling a bit unmotivated, undriven. I find myself keep thinking about the past and not forward looking enough. The question in my mind is “Why aren’t I as productive as last time?” And I keep trying to compare the differences between now and last time to see what wrong wrong or what was different. From there, if I can identify the problem, I can tackle it and I’ll be back to my old productive self again. Sounds like a nice plan. Nope! The problem is, no matter how I compare, I always end up finding fault with the environment that I’m in, and the environment is something that I cannot change. The only thing that I can change is myself.
So Dear2 tell me: “U think too much.” Hmm… Simple words, but somewhat applicable to the situation I’m in. Perhaps I did think too much, or try too hard to think but ended up thinking too hard on how to think. So to prevent this from becoming a downward spiral, I should just do things as per normal. Again, that’s what Dear2 mentioned to me. I think it really take someone with an objective view to look at the situation from a different perspective and provide some feedback. I myself cannot see what’s wrong with what I was doing or that what I was trying to do was in fact impeding what I set out to do.
The answer is really quite simple, just do what I know works for me. And Dear2 quoted an example, that I work well when I’m doing alot of things at the same time. Like doing homework while downloading stuff, virtual chatting with a few friends and watching the tv with some other music on at the same time. Quite true, quite true… I really did used to do things this way. And if it gets work done, then I should continue to work this way. Of course there must be evolution and improvement, but these are a slow and unnoticable process. Sometimes we refine the way we do things without even realizing it. So, the lesson I gather is that to do things like I am used to and to take things one step at a time, to make changes one step at a time. Perhaps I’m seeking too drastic a change that even I couldn’t convince myself. So instead, I can change and tweak my way of work bit by bit until I observe the desired results.
For now, I must overcome the irritation of other people peeping over my shoulders to see what I am doing. So be it if I’m watching some videos on youtube, but that is the way I work, and my computer simulation is running even when I’m seemingly relaxing. Open my mind and look forward. Others won’t slow me down.
-Dear1
(or am I still thinking too much? :P)
Singapore Bay Run, here we come! 23 July, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Sports & Health.1 comment so far
Yes! Dear1 and Dear2 are headed towards the Singapore Bay Run or otherwise known as the Army Half Marathon, our country’s official half marathon event. This decision came just a few hours after the Mizuno Run yesterday. This is because the deadline for registration for the Singapore Bay Run is yesterday and we had to decide fast whether we wish to join or not. And we did. If u find this post’s title familiar, u are right! Find the earlier post here.
As mentioned before, we’re really gearing up for the full marathon at the end of the year. This is going to be our first full marathon and the main aim is going to be completion. Since we were participants of the half marathon last year, we’ve already received our special discount rates for this year’s race. It’s $44 per person, register before 31 July. Sometimes I ask myself, why are we paying money to torture ourselves? Huhuhu… Nay. It’s the process of training, the determination, the discipline, the fulfillment and all these intangible assets that we’ll be gaining, and not to mention that coverted Finisher’s Tee!
We had initially planned to join the Singapore Bay Run at 21km, but in the end signed up for the 12km instead. Reason being, our bodies were not well conditioned yet. We’ve only very recently restarted our training program, so that’s why we’re taking things step by step. One other thing is that we always sign up for the competitive run, not because we’re very fast runners, but because competitive run flag off earlier. Earlier runs means a more cooling weather without the scorching morning sun.
This year’s Singapore Bay Run is going to be something special too, as it is held in conjunction with the National Day celebrations. The ending point is going to be at the floating platform at Marina, interesting ya? Registration fee is $18 per person and a free t-shirt in the goodie bag. I think it’s going to be a regular cotton t-shirt rather than the dry fit running singlet. Should be quite fun to have the carnival and all around the floating platform area, or maybe even on it.
1 more month for training. We must go jogging this weekend yo dear!
-Dear1
Lousy Mizuno Wave Run 22 July, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Sports & Health.2 comments
From our limited event experience, the Mizuno Wave Run 2007 at Bedok Reservoir has got to be the worst of the worst event so far. Seriously, I can’t imagine an event being worse than this. Well… actually, it’s pretty easy to make an event worse than this, but this type of professionally organized event from a famous name in the sporting world certainly dun get any worse.
First of all it rained heavily last night, right up to 6+am this morning. With this in mind, we know that it’s going to be a wet wet wet run. But since we’re west side dwellers and have never ran in Bedok before, we didn’t expect the ground to muddy. Yes, muddy! Ok, so this is not the event organisers’ fault, but from now on, everything else is.
When we arrived, we were busy looking for the bags deposit area to deposit our bags. So we approached an event staff, which pointed us in the wrong direction. Becos of this, we wasted a lot of time in searching for the baggage van and couldn’t do our warm up properly and couldn’t start the event on time other runners.
Next, there are 2 serious choke points right about 200 metres from the starting point. This was certainly something unexpected. This caused a huge human traffic jam that lasted around 10mins before we could get out.
At around the 3.5-4km mark, we passed the finishing line. Apparently, the runners will mark a circuit elsewhere and eventually completing the race using the same 3-4km part of the track. Hmm… definitely a source of confusion. I really didn’t expect such a ‘track reuse’ scenario to occur. And the thing is, there is a lack of ushers at the fork road after this and we took a wrong turn that led us to some Aljunied GRC morning event! Who would have thought that they had decided to organise 2 events at the same location? Save on tentage rental perhaps? Confusion confusion confusion.
Wet and confused and frustrated, we decided to stop running and head back to the end point to collect our goodie bags and take a sip of water. There is 1 goodie bag queue, which was good and well organised. Until we discovered that there was 2 queues, one for competitive runners and one for non-competitive. Frustrated again, we joined the competitive runners queue which we had registered for and managed to get our goodie bags in less than a minute. But I suppose the real confusion started after this. In the 30 mins after we collected our goodie bags, queues started forming everywhere, and everywhere, and everywhere. From that 1 queue in the beginning to about 6 queues starting from everywhere. Some queues even split into 2 only to remerge further down. Can u imagine the confusion? Absolute lack of queue control. Luckily, we’ve already collected ours.
The final straw came from the baggage collection. The bags were collected in 2 or 3 lorrys at the starting point and ferried to the ending point. In the time that the runners were running, I seriously don’t know what the event organisers are doing. Only when the runners are back and going to collect their bags did they start unloading the lorry. And mind you, it’s a lorry, totally unorganised. How are u going to find 1 single bag in the heap of bags now. So they started unloading the bag one by one. By this time, runners are all frustrated. Some runners even went up on the lorry to help with the unloading. I think this is a serious breach of security. Where’s the crowd control? What is someone just take any bag and run? The staff didn’t even check the bib number of the runner? Anyway, we were there during the agonizingly slow and unsecured bag retrieval process and took around 30-45min before our bag emerge. Even then, we have to shout out our numbers: “1234 here! Pass that bag here!” It’s like a mini stock exchange market with people shouting all over the place, raised hands, bib papers in the air, bags being passed around overhead. It’s was amusing on hindsight, but definitely irritating on the actual ground.
That sums it up. Lousy run. Will we join again next year? Chances are pretty low.
-Dear1
My laptop is breaking down 20 July, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Consumer Electronics, Dear1.1 comment so far
My faithful Toshiba Portege is breaking down, after 5 good years. I bought this laptop way back in 2002, when I first joined NUS. At that time, I was still considering very hard whether I need a laptop or not. I think I have the impression then that a uni student should have a laptop and it makes life so many much convenient. Coupled with the fact that my desktop had broken down during my time in the army. So finally, during orientation week, I decided to buy a laptop.
Then came shopping time. I can only remember at that time, Toshiba and Fujitsu were sold by the Co-op. I finally chose this Toshiba Portege 4010 because it is light weight and portable. It is definitely not very value for money because in electronics, things just get more expensive the small it becomes. I remember a larger, about 1 kg heavier, Satellite series laptop is more powerful but only cost half my price. So anyway, I didn’t choose the lightest one either, that’s wayyyy too expensive, so I settled for the second lightest, and added a RAM upgrade for another $120 I think. Also, this laptop is entirely ‘Made in Japan’. Haha… So rare to find truly made-in-Japan goods at that time.
This laptop is very dependable and I used it as my desktop replacement, which implies heavy heavy usage. Nearly 90% of the posts in this blog is written on this laptop too. Many a times, I even left it on overnight, merely in screensaver mode, not even in hibernate. Let’s do a short recount of the times that it was spoilt.
Since I bought it from the school, it came with a 4 years warranty with a servicing centre right in school making it very convenient should anything go wrong. During my first year 3 month holiday, the laptop was at home for 3 months, and I took out the battery and ran on AC power for 3 months. This turned out to be a big mistake. The battery went dead, literally. I simply cannot be recharged when I put it back in 3 months later. So I had to bring the battery back to the servicing centre to have them jump start it, free. :D
About at the end of my 3rd year of usage, all the replacable components decide to spoil at the same time, which was really a blessing in disguise and something that I’ve secretly hoped to happen, and it did. First, the CPU fan spoilt, which implied changing the whole motherboard. Then the harddisk spoilt, then the keyboard spoilt, then the DVD drive spoilt. Haha… Everything became brand new at that moment. The only thing that didn’t spoil and still in excellent working condition now 5 years down the road is the LCD screen, still zero dead pixels. This boosted my confidence for Toshiba LCD products. So with 3/4 of my warranty gone, practically the whole laptop was swapped for a new one. Great!
Now, at 5 years, things are starting to fall apart. But I think the investment is well spent considering my usage. Just last week, my laptop suddenly gave off this loud explosive ‘pop’ sound. I thot it was a goner, but everything is still running fine and no sign of smoke or charring. I assume the ‘pop’ is just something simple and won’t burn my laptop. Well, it’s still working now, so… Just yesterday, the battery stopped working. Perhaps because I left it in the bay for too long. But because of my prior experience, I dared not take the battery out for too long either, hence I opted to just leave it in there. Now it’s spoilt, it won’t charge and I guess I have no choice but to work without a battery now.
Currently, I just using this laptop as per normal and see how much longer it can last. The timing for this beginning of breaking down is just nice as well. I’ve graduated, I’ve bought my desktop computer at my new house, I have a work computer so I won’t really need a laptop, and I’m going to be moving out soon. I think the timing couldn’t have been better. But I really liked this laptop. At that time, when laptops were still quite bulky, I went ahead and gotten this lightweight one. Many ppl have thot that this was designed for ladies, but I think otherwise and bought it. It is truly convenient and easy to carry around, simply stuff it into my backpack. I’ll continue using it until the fatal blue screen of death tells me to stop. But even after that, I might not have the heart to throw it away.
Thanks, buddy.
-Dear1
Stocks and Shares 18 July, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Dollars & Cents, Slice of Life.add a comment
Recently I’ve been wondering, is it that when people reach a certain age, have a job, and a certain amount of disposable income, they will start looking at the stock market? Since graduating, I’ve seen many friends around me start buying stocks. And the question I ask is, how much do they know about how the economy works and the company that their stocks are coming from? I think, for many, the stock market is viewed as a pseudo gambling den, buy and hope that it goes up. Maybe a better word for this is ’speculation’, but in essence it is just a fancy word.
I dunno much about investing myself so I shall not be commenting on how others buy stocks. Rather, I’ll just describe what I observe and why I feel that it is not right. Instead of properly research the company, reading their annual reports and analysing accounts, I have friends who buy on impulse, buying because ‘people on the forums’ say it is a good stock to buy. Because its price have fallen for the past 3 days. Because my friend bought it and is earning paper profits right now. Because I *think* it will rise. Huh?? Is that really the way to be investing? If so, why not bet on soccer instead? After all, it’s still win or lose, and u dun even need to pay the brokerage fee, and potentially u can gain higher returns on investment if the odds are good.
I think there’s a de-sensitizing effect as with all other things. At first, people are cautious, buying just 1 lot or 2 lots. Later, becoming more ya ya papaya, people start buying 10 lots, 20 lots, 50 lots. Then, they become numb to risk management and start short selling. It’s just like driving. As people gain more road experience, many tend to start driving faster and faster, which increases their risk. And chances are that they’ll only stop when something happens, and this ’something’ will usually be rather unpleasant.
All the money that we have right now are hard earned money. We didn’t strike any lottery, no Toto, no 4D. All these are earned by exchanging time with money, by working, by giving tuition. I think we should be prudent in spending and not develop risky gambling habits. Not that I’m against buying stocks, I just dun agree with how people any any how buy. I’m definitely someone with low risk appetite, so unless I have spare spare cash (repeated usage intended), or maybe have a dependable expert to guide me along, otherwise stocks are out of my portfolio for now.
-Dear1
Room for bargain at Courts, Best Denki, Harvey Norman? 15 July, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Consumer Electronics, Dear1.1 comment so far
Most of us would think that at big stores like Courts, Best Denki and Harvey Norman, we won’t be able to bargain for a better price. Recently, I think otherwise. I’ve encountered this incident twice so I thought that’s a possibility of bargaining, but the success would really depend on the ‘power’ of the bargainer.
First incident: I was at Harvey Norman looking for my washing machine when I overheard a salesperson promoting a particular machine to this uncle. Over the course of the conversation, I repeatly heard the uncle saying, “Expensive leh… cheaper lah…” And to my surprise, the salesperson actually complied and replied, “Ok lor, less $20 just for u. Plus free delivery and disposal.” This kind of conversation made me think that bargaining is possible. As I was leaving the store, I saw this electric shaver on offer and decided to get it. Off I went to the cashier. The casher had wanted to charge me $19.90 for the shaver, but I protested as it was advertised as $16.90 on the display unit. The cashier went over to the display and confirmed that it was shown as $16.90 and promptly changed the invoice to $16.90. Suspicion rose. Isn’t their system suppose to be fully automated and running on some barcoded system or such? Why is it that the cashier is allowed to freely key in any figure she likes and changing it at will? This reinforces my guess that bargain is possible since prices on invoice can be easily changed by the staff.
Second incident: This time at Courts. We were there to get a iron for ourselves. Recently, all our clothes were not ironed and quite crumpled. Not very presentable ya? So we spotted this Phillips iron for $32.90. We liked it, the design, the colour, the functionality, the price. Good, but not stock! -_-” So we went for our second favourite, which is a cheaper one at $17.90. As usual, off we go to the cashier to pay for our item. There a mistake in the invoice again. The cashier wanted to charge us $19.90 for the iron. We protested, it was $17.90 on the shelf. The cashier doesn’t believe us and asked another colleague about the price of the item. The colleague replied $18.90. Omg… This is getting nowhere. So this colleague went to the display unit to confirm the price. I tagged along to make sure he doesn’t swap the labels when I’m not looking. Confirmed, it’s $17.90. This other colleague claimed that they forgot to update the label but will sell us the item as displayed at $17.90. Rightfully so, I won’t accept anything else. So again, the cashier, with ease, change the invoice to $17.90. No barcode, no system. Does it really mean they sales people really have some capacity to manipulate the prices to some degree?
Eventhough I have some confidence of my hypothesis, I won’t be testing it out any time soon. Haha… young people don’t want to pai seh mah. If it’s at Sim Lim Square then I’ll bargain lah, but at this kind of larger shops, I also a bit pai seh to bargain. Maybe they’re playing on this kind of consumers mentality as well. So anyway, if anyone is keen and daring enuff, I encourage u to try it out and let me know the outcome. :D
-Dear1
Midnight movie 13 July, 2007
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, For Him For Her, Slice of Life.add a comment
Last weekend, Dear1 and Dear2 went for a midnight movie at our neighbourhood movie theater. Haha… We’ve never been to a midnight show before, not even when we’re dating. That’s mainly becos of transportation issues. Imagine watching a midnight show at Orchard and after that still have to spend at least $20 taking a cab home. I don’t think that’s worth it at all. And at that time, there’s no cinema that’s really near to any of our homes. But now, things have changed.
Our new place is just near a shopping centre with a cinema. Hohohohoho… Since we started staying over, hmm… even before we started staying over, Dear2 had been talking about catching a midnight movie, dress in casual home wear, and taking a breezy midnight stroll home. And that’s exactly what we did last Friday. Gee…
We reached home around 9.30pm and we were considering our weekend plans. Somehow the idea of midnight show came up and we were both very keen on it. Plus, recently, many ppl have been saying that Transformers is a really good show and that we should watch it. So that settles it, we take a quick bath and walked to the cinema to catch the 11.45pm Transformers on a Friday night, dress in casual t shirt and slippers. :D
When we got there… wow! I really didn’t expect so many ppl to be watching a late night movie in a neighbourhood cinema on a Friday night. And most of these people are casually dressed as well, meaning they must stay nearby and probably walked too. Suddenly, this huge group of about 4 adults and 6-8 children walked into the ticketing booth. Wow! Even families came for midnight movies. Dear1 and Dear2 must be really outdated.
One complain though, the popcorn not nice to eat one! I think it’s becos the popcorn were ‘popped’ in the afternoon or evening and we’re essentially eating leftovers. The popcorns were all soft and uncrispy, and the honey is also insufficient, lots of popcorn without coating. Yucks.
After the movie, we take our usual route home. It was a cooling night at around 2.30am or so. It’s a bit different to look at our neighbourhood deep in the night like that. So peaceful. Some lights were still on and we spotted a few families still ringing with the sound of mahjong. We’d definitely enjoy a game of late night mahjong with our friends too. Surprisingly, no one walked the same way as us, perhaps not much ppl in our vicinity watch late night movies. I really enjoyed taking a relaxing slow walk with my dear through the park. We must do this again dear.
Once we reached home, it’s off to the bed for a good night’s sleep and we woke up at 12pm the next day. Hey, it’s a Saturday morning, it’s an entitlement to 赖床. Gee…
-Dear1
