MERRY CHRISTMAS

AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

this time tomorrow i will probably have less rights than guaranteed to POWs

farewell

it has been the best 4 years in my life.

it has been the best 2 years of my stay in this foreign country.

i know i will come back,

probably in only a month's time.

but somehow, i just don't want to leave this island.

here, i left all my memories.

thank you, don and aaron.

for being my greatest friend in my jc life.

i will always remember the afternoons in the library with u guys,

the trip to little india,

the aimless walking around at city hall, novena.

the jokes abt andy and mila.

sorry if i was moody and easily-pissed.

thank you for all the tolerance that you all spared.

you made my 2 years in jc.

thank you, stho and mark.

for being such nice friends,

i really regret not to know u guys earlier.

stho, you are really generous...you will be the greatest doctor. please give me discount next time when i am sick.

mark, you are really nice.. no wonder wang jue told me that u r the nicest guy in her class.

thank you, lenny and yiheng,

for bringing fun to our mudane and communist class.

i guess years later,

i will still remember ur little hottie,

yiheng's extreme reaction about his boldness.

there are just too many ppl that i would like to mention here, but since i have to check out in half an hour and i still have not finished packing and washing up.. 

all the best my friend.

with army, overseas uni, local uni etc,

maybe last night was really our last dance together..

i am really glad that i saved it for you.

special thanks to Jordan,

who made my rafflesian experience complete.

wish u a great holiday and all the best in army!

"I am PRC, 

I like failing GP,"

don, maybe you want to help me complete the song that u wrote.

i was pissed off for the first time with don when he sang this song to me,

now, it has become something to remember.

2 years is really short.

i was just singing while packing just now, and 

"new beginnings,

new surroundings,

new faces that you've never seen.

walking through the doorway,

don't know anybody...."

first time i sang, i had difficulty remembering the lines, and can barely find the tune.

now, it is a part of me,

just like you made the last two years for me, a part of me.

its weird singing new beginnings and new surroundings after 2 years.

everything s so familiar. 

farewell, guys.

it is snowing in harbin

when i land,

everything will be white.

a son of singapore

i dont think staring at my uk essay for 5 mins and then making insignificant tweaks is the way to get my uni apps out of the way. fk. my chances at uk are already how small even when im just applying to pussy schools like durham. lol.

LSEUCLDurhamWarwick guess what i cant even remember where else i am applying to. maybe i applied to more than 1 course in 1 school. lol. but i know i am applying to philo and econs and ppe in those that offer ppe. im really quite screwed. havent done much and ns is in 10 days?

well well, i work well under pressure. sat mugging hasnt been too good, have been able to keep distracting myself with nonsense like Theory of Justice and Conflicts. but already i know more about the Earl of Warwick, the kingmaker and the traitorous shit. i also know a lot more about the 8 crusades which were mostly failures. how they affect my life, i dont know.

class chalet last week was quite good because all the fun people turned up. i think i like the class more than i liked it the same time last year. and the chalet this year is really so massif compared to last year. it was fun just talking cock and fooling around and doing stupid stuffs. aaron brought ice cream, which was good, but which she did not eat, because it wasnt chocolate. she was just being an asshole. or maybe just playing hard to get. yiheng and lenny crashed outside hendon camp, at the mouth of it where you can see the sacred parade square of the red berets. yiheng and his red beret. hahas.

din tai fung with stho mark and zhenan was good. hardly have chance to meet up with stho. was reminded about how good his life was. nusmed, dunneed do anyth now, so screw around. pes c, enlist jan 28, enlist alr still slack, as good as screwing around.

im fked. gotta go in so early, get my ass raped and raped and raped like everyday is sunday. i see my pink ic and i wonder whether its worth it. 2 years of my life down the drain. 3 months in resort tekong where i get to feed the commando mosquitos, develop a dick rash and a love for sand soil and dirt in my face. where i learn to be and become a subservient and unthinking individual for my country. majulah singapura.

actually i should try to be more positive. proms tomorrow. but i dont know whether i get to survive past the morning. interview with mdmas looks tough. especially with shenghao the rapist interviewee who got past edb. wowoweewow.

auspicium melioris aevi

with god to guide the way

looking for answers from the great beyond

supposed to be doing my university applications. but havent done a single one. the Social Contract by rousseau has consumed most of my yesterday that i did not spend on porn. was supposed to read it to sharpen my personal statement and all that, especially since i want to show my interest in pursuing philosophy. but i ended up reading it out of interest, more than i should. it is really interesting, but difficult to understand because the arguments are sometimes disjointed and there is a whole lot of digression between his points. i think it has something to do with the poor translation.

went to common apps but i couldnt key in my area code.

irrational exuberance and unjustified fear characterize my sad and short existence. just a few days ago i was high from getting the call. because suddenly the image of fass started fading. but then, i didnt apply to any other scholarship and if my dick gets kicked come wednesday im still going to end up there. i received the usp mail, which is a real foamer pussy mail. was just thinking, they says these are the top 180 students. but then, medfac and lawfac do not participate. so that would be at least 600 students out? and we can assume most of these students probably belong to the creme of nus. and then there are the real men who go oxbridge and hyp. how exactly are those in usp really scholars in the traditional sense of the word?

anyways, my ns is in 13 days. or 12 days, depending on how you count. cant believe it. if theres anything the social contract did, it made me feel like a victim of society's tyranny as it committed me and my life, mine 2 best years to the service of a nation for the greater good of the nation at the expense of the individual, a great expense to me as an individual, incompletely justified but done anyway. i have been subject to it by the Will of the People, of which the Will is a Civil will which is disparate of the individual's Free Will which has now become subordinate to the Civil Will, set a long time before i was borne, committed upon me before my person existed. while i do not accept it, not serving ns is akin to being an enemy of the state, and that allows the state all means at its disposal to diminish and destroy me, as an enemy of the state. i was born free, but am now in the bondage of chains put upon me by the Social Contract which has so far protected me and now askes that i repay of its protection. the state and the sovereign are like shepherds who look after the herd only so that it may devour its members. thuggery and all, not forgotten, but accepted. tyranny on the individual, not unnoticed, but accepted.

in short, damned if i do, damned if i dont.

i really need some feel-good thing to do to lift my sorry self from this state of being. i want to watch high school musical 3 again. vanessa hudgens is hot!

in defence of the guys behind the scdf ragging incident

its been weeks but some have continued flogging the dead horse in the forum. a bit like multiplier. after the autonomous injection it takes time to taper out. like the female writers who probably have never been in actual uniformed service, i also enjoy flogging dead horses. because they are already dead, they probably wont throw me off and i wont land face down in the sand. on my stupid face. and maybe get a few kicks up my sorry ass.

it is completely unacceptable for ragging to this extent, and it was brazen for the persons involved to have posted it on youtube for all to see. i agree that the person kiwied all over would have an indelible scar forever etched into his person, that he would remember and he would be traumatised for life. this action on the part of his friends is completely unforgiveable and disciplinary action should and must be taken.

but before calling for their blood, let us be reminded of the situation they are in. these are hot blooded males feeding on probably misplaced ego and misdirected masculinity. or perceptions of masculinity. in such a world, the heart comes second; guts come first. in such a world, there is time for thinking, but only after action. inasmuch we do not want this, this is the world.

it is also important to point out that these individuals, at the tender age of 18,19,20 have been plucked from their families, dumped in camps across the island with who knows who. under such circumstances, they must already be under severe stress. add to this a completely different social construct. in such uniformed organizations, they surrender part of their individuality to the group, and in this part of the individuality rests their ability to think and reason. in such a situation, they are not just prone to groupthink, they are generally nothing but groupthink. couple it with the bravado that comes with the age, it is crystal clear that it takes little to unleash such a maelstrom of mischief. and such a conclusion.

acts of violence against anyone should not be condoned anywhere. but let us not assume a holier than thou attitude. if you have a maid, think of how you treat her. i know for sure that many people have their maids do ridiculous things like clean the parapet. i also know for sure that many people staying in puny hdb flats and pussy upgrader condos have their maids housed in the teeny bombshelters or kitchens. in the former there probably isnt a lot of air, in the latter there probably isnt a lot of privacy. i know of many people who stock up their houses with instant noodles of different grades, with the lowergrade noodles fit only for the maids consumption. there must be very many persons guilty of such. sure, there is nothing wrong with doing it. no Law forbids it and no fatwa or papal bull explicitly goes against it, and there is nothing wrong. this is the society that breeds these young men who kiwi their friend.

and then as mentioned, ragging is everywhere an inseparable component of the uniformed services. the writer points out that colonials tend to only pick up all the bad habits of their colonial masters, and ragging is one of them. just like judicial corporal and capital punishment which we so embrace. before i waft back into pinkerton mode, consider the social contract and the social construct. we as humans did not come fully programmed to know etiquette or the ways of society. we certainly did not come virtuous. in fact virtue is in many ways a social construct to prevent the social fabric from being torn apart. anyways, we learn by example. when we were young, we learned not to shit in public and not to piss into the wind. we learned to bow our heads low when we see our teachers and offer to carry their books and lick their boots if necessary.

in the context of the camp, the social construct is different from the social construct in the outside world. no one barks orders at you in the outside world. no one knocks you down for being slow. no one tells you his grandmother can walk faster than you can run, and then knock you down. no one can make you wash a toiletbowl with a toothbrush. no one can make you march up and down in the hot sun. no one will curse you, your mother, your father, your grandmother, your grandfather and your dick and expect you to apologize to him. but that is life in camp. you go in hating it, but you end up practising it. people accept it. this is army/scdf life. life is tough, and this is life.

at 18, this young men were conditioned to accept what they see, and it would not be surprising as such that ragging and abuse is passed down from one batch to another batch, and each time they try to one-up on each other. ragging, just like abusing the lesser persons, is machismo, or warped machismo, it is the machismo of the simple 18 year old man. the unthinking man, but a son of singapore nonetheless, one who has been consigned to living out 2 prime years of life in the service of this nation that so many so dearly love.

yes, what they did was wrong, but there are very many mitigating factors. young, innocent, impressionable individuals who slurp up every bit of shit coming their way. with this total change of environment, they probably lost their marbles and their bearings. in tekong/ jalan bahar, i dont think you can see the north star. in this new and vastly different environment where they are starting to see how they fit in and try to fit in, it is inevitable that their moral compasses go haywire and all point south.

so when they are disciplined, let it be in the light of rehabilitation, not retribution. these persons involved are no longer juveniles, but let us not forget that they have a long future ahead of them (unless they get knocked down by a car or get scarred so bad by the punishment they kill themselves) and we should also consider the impact it would have on their young lives. let us not forget that while these people have been charged with fighting fires and saving lives, these people are still not of majority and cannot vote. they are too young, and the Laws of the Land find them so.

let us all be enlightened, and stop asking for their blood. even after world war ii, the victors knew better than to punish every single japanese footsoldier for the atrocities he might have committed, because under such immense stress and deprivation of normalcy, the footsoldier is also a victim. similarly, these young men are also victims of a system and the whole new world. let these young men not be sacrificed like frederick white a century before.

Before I become a public good (12/12)

i enjoy reading the forum in the straits times. because always there are some puerile articles that make you spit hard on them. sometimes there are also articles that make you go, what was tan kin lian doing in his time as ceo? sometimes, some articles make you think hard about things you held true.

in today's copy there is this article about giftedness being something that one can nurture. basically. this parent was talking about how people can spend up to 2000 per subject at p2 to prepare for the gep test at p3, when giftedness is supposedly innate. and then 2000 is a princely sum that many would not be able to afford, so in the end gep ends up helping those already privileged members of society somewhat at the expense of the masses. and then how life is tough and unfair. i think that was implied.

in the first place i think there is an extent to which one can prepare for the gifted test. the test is probably not foolproof and evidently, some fools like myself do get through. of course, i didnt prepare for it, for if i did, i wouldnt have flunked in in p3 and live out the rest of my primary school in anguish, pain and misery.

i remember that day my world collapsed around me.

i still have that computer generated letter, all yellowed, in my possession to remind me that life can give you lemons.

but even if there are people who can train the children for the test rather successfully, i do not think that most people, at least from my batch had such training. in fact, i know for a fact that a respectable number of people never had tuition. and most of them are really brilliant people.

anyway, i dont think it would be unfair if people could get to places in society because they have been afforded an opportunity such as this. i have to agree that 2000 per subject is exhorbitant, but hey, if the method is tried, tested and proven, why not? anyway, nothing in society has ever been completely fair, and it would be foolish to try to make unequal things equal.

meritocracy as i know it is about people with the right skillset getting deserved commensuration. life is a game, and in this game, there are 3 factors- skill, strategy and chance. the right family background falls into chance. so does having the right mentors in life. the confluence of these factors then maketh a person who he is.

in a sense, meritocracy in a capitalist society means promoting and rewarding the party that so contributes the most. in a firm, if you do well, you get rewarded with bonuses and promotions, and if you do badly you get fired. it does not actually matter whether you didnt meet your kpi because you were on a bald patch of hard luck or you caught a flu or some std. of course bosses should be and can be benevolent, but after a number of months, they have to cut off a loss making tumor to prevent it from sapping off the others. in essence, it is about 'glow or go'. in more sophisticated parlance, 'shape up, or ship out'.

life's like that.

nobody would care that you made cold calls every night. nobody cares if you have 20 children, a sickly great great grandmother and Lucky, your pet dog, to feed. in fact it probably should not matter at all. just think about it, if it were your colleagues who have been such uncontributive members, would you not be pissed off that they are leeching off you?

ok back to the topic. the gifted test is about that child at p3 and his performance at that test at p3 and nothing else. it should not be important that his father is a corporal in the army or the ceo of a fortune 500 company. it is all about him and his pencil and eraser and the test booklet.

life has never provided all of humanity with a smooth playing field. and we have to accept it. if someone has the chance of a great family and you dont, be envious, but accept it and move on. i am quite satisfied that the playing field in singapore is generally already fairly equal. no one is prevented from taking the gep test unless he is late for the paper. more than 1/2 hr late, if i did not remember long. they dont have you declare your parent's income taxes before you can take the test. they dont have you declare if you own a dog. they only care about the quality of your answers to the test.

besides that, 2000 is a princely sum, but if we assume the median family income to be 5000, then it is affordable. it is all about prioritizing and wisdom in investing. if one so believes that that investment in the child is worth it, then one has to make sacrifices. with 2000 you can buy yourself 4 boxes of SK-II masks, or you can send your child for tuition. in both cases you take a chance, since your face might also be too shit for improvement in the first place. or you can buy yourself an osim massage chair or go on a tour to europe. and if you really think that your child is worth it, then hello, make some sacrifices?

i know of parents who insist of playing mahjong and inviting friends over even in a month to important examinations of their children. with the huge ruckus, i dont think it would be very conducive for the child to study, even if the child wants to study.

singapore is no sparta. we dont lump all the young men and women together in a gymnasium, strip them and whip them into shape all at the same time. i dont think parents would like that system that gives everyone virtually completely equal opportunities in life. this system is not perfect, but it is generally adequate. instead of thinking about how it is unfair, make some sacrifices for your child. and to think about it, if you cannot provide your child with that equal opportunity, is it because you have not worked hard or smart enough? blame it on chance if you have to, but nothing is going to change, so make the best out of it, i suppose.

and always remember mencius and his mother. if she can move 3 times just so that her son has a conducive environment, what is sacrificing some time doing the chores for one's child or not enjoying SK-II masks for a few months?

Suck it and beat it

i know aware has been around for umpteen years but i still do not know what it stands for. but it really is not because i am chauvinistic. since i have become really free i went to their website. after navigating around i still do not know what it stands for. but i think W stands for Wo-man. (volunteer to wo-man the phoneline. hurhur) hurhur. probably has A for association or action somewhere.

anyway i came across some beauty redefined campaign. where they are trying to get women to be happy about the body their in, or so i glean. they are encouraging people to widen their definition of beauty and they are pointing to healthy bodies being beautiful bodies. and then at the side of their nauseous pink page there is this ad saying, "$50 can teach a teenage girl how to love her body".

beauty has been and always will be subjective. beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. different cultures emphasize different attributes and prize different qualities of the female form. i know among orientals, porcelain skin is very highly prized. in surfer-dude paradise, probably healthy tanned skin. but up to a certain point, some biological features are more appreciated than others, because it is inherently the way people have been wired.

it is a biological function, really. in the prehistoric times, you look for a mate with whom you can produce healthy offspring and then fend for them. so women have been wired to look out for well built men to live off, and men have been wired to look out for fertile women to conquer. nice breasts and decently sized hips pointed to child rearing and producing ability, and full, healthy looking lips indicate youthfulness and vitality. of course, some idiots would tell you that this is all cultural. it isnt. and then there are always exceptions. but we know that evolution will weed these exceptions out. and on exceptions, yupp, some people are wired to be attracted to flat chested women for whatever reason, and some people are homosexual.

whatever the reason, the mainstream of society does have beauty defined. so suck it and beat it. if a girl doesnt conform to societal norms on beauty, then it is completely right of her to feel inadequate, because she is inadequate. redefining beauty to make it more inclusive just dilutes the meaning of beauty. it doesnt spread beauty around.

at this point i would like to quote abraham lincoln. "how many legs does a dog have if you call its tail a leg? 4, because calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg."

if you are flat chested, you are flat chested, you know you are flat chested, and everyone who scrutinizes your chest when he or she loses eye contact will know you are flat chested. if you are fat, you are fat, you know you are fat and everyone will know you are fat. if you have thunder thighs, you have thunder thighs.

and saying that flat chestedness, thunder thighs, excessive weight or even excessive skinniness is beautiful wont make them beautiful. because they just are not. at least not to the mainstream of society.

of course i concede that after a certain point, if you cannot do anything about it, just accept it and move on with life. but if you want to be beautiful and youre not, then work for it. go for plastic surgery. use silicon. whatever.

the quest for beauty does not demean women.

come to think of it, parallels can be drawn with redefining beauty and redefining excellence. there are pros, and there are pussies. not everyone is pro. in fact, most are just pussies.

there is no one single definition for a pro either. u can be an academic pro, or u can be a sporting pro. but to a certain point, we acknowledge prowess. there is no niggling doubt that ylq is a pro. 2nd in the world for chem o is just below godliness. if ur a mere mortal, u have the right to pursue excellence and try to match up. i dont see any advocacy groups advocating students to leave and let leave, and psych themselves into thinking they are pros. and at the risk of sounding 1337ist, n0rmal really is not n0rmal. giving everyone A1 for cca doesnt make everyone good at cca. it just cheapens that A1.

really, its quite similar to beauty. in both cases you can choose to pursue excellence or fall along the wayside. of course, only 1 person can be beauty queen, just as only 1 person can be valedictorian.

maybe we should have an advocacy group for pussies like me. they should have a group that seeks to redefine excellence and look for excellence everywhere. The Best Cock-talker. The Best Antcatcher. The Best File Sorter. The Best Window Closer. The Best Tray Clearer. So everyone can be recognized for being Best at something.

Excellence Redefined.

The Jumping Club

Target: For all persons without straight As for A Levels.

Purpose: Because everyone is equal in death. Whether you get 1A or 4As you will still bleed or concuss and you will still die.

Activities:

For Kinematics Addicts, take off from Block A, Level 7. subject yourself to the power of gravitational force and then try to find out whether you can reach terminal velocity before you slam into the ground and your brain turns to mush.

For Electricity Addicts, insert skewers into live and neutral at the mains and then hold the skewers to your chest. and then die ala ted bundy in the ted bundy movie video. not advised, cos it would probably be too messy.

For Chemistry Addicts, seal a classroom and then try to produce as much CO as possible and inhale deeply. apparently, burning damp charcoal produces lots of CO. inhale deeply so the CO will complex with the iron in the haem group and become irreversibly bonded so you will lack carriers for oxygen and die.

For History Buffs, relive the spanish inquisition as the Club makes an iron maiden out of made in china knives. the knives will be sharp so they cause fatal wounds, but blunt enough so that you dont die right away. feel the spasms of pain waft through a few seconds before dying.

For lovers of Le Republique et Liberte, Egalite et Fraternite, theres always the guillotine. and then for stoners, there is stoning. for orgasm addicts, there's always some wayy...

Theres always some way to satisfy your craving for life after life. it is called the jumping club, but hey, members do more than jump. just like the cricket club does more than play cricket.


Note: Please write your epitaph and last will and testament before joining. no one will be there to take your last words, because, seriously, if you are loser enough to join, your last words probably aren't all too important.

Fiscal Policy and Government Intervention

1. Fiscal Policy

the use of government spending or reduction in taxation to stimulate economic activity to the desired level. in times of recession, an expansionary fiscal policy is used, where G is increased and T is decreased.

how G is increased in singapore.

money goes to the armed forces. some get earmarked to the air force. then some of it gets earmarked for airforcecareer promotion. and then the money is used to buy a cardboard box, have some words inked on it. then inside the box, stick 3 bottles of new moon essence of chicken, and cover each bottle with some sticker so that new moon actually appears only on the bottlecap. and then employ someone to drive a van around to distribute the box inside a nice paper bag which says 'i am the wind'.

the multiplier effect kicks in. in part 1, the cardboard box makers get more money, so they spend this increase in income on durians. then the durian sellers spend it on alcohol, and then it goes on and on and trickles out. in part 2, more chickens get murdered and more bottles are made. represents a negligible increase in autonomous spending since chickens dont cost much. in part 3, the deliveryman gets more pay, probably goes and gets himself some new moon essence of chicken. and then the cycle continues until the multiplier tapers out.

government spending in essence of chicken and 2 pathetic navy batteries (btw my batteries has the navy woman stuck poorly she juts out) will cause an autonomous increase in AE=C+I+G+X-M. this autonomous increase stimulates a more than proportionate increase in NY. although some say singapore's multiplier is <1.

2. Government Intervention

Negative externalities occur when a third party is affected by an action for which the third party neither receives nor pays any compensation. the usage of roads causes the externality of pollution. the individual only considers his cost, which is time and fuel, and does not consider that he/she is polluting the environment.

solution: draw buslanes all over. so on busy stretches like upp bt timah road, 3 lanes become only 2 lanes. then the jam that stretches for about 200m now stretches to almost 300m. and then the buslane is empty and you still see 2 67s coming in a row, and then the rest of the buslane is pretty empty. no one enters the buslane, because no one wants to get fined or have demerit points.

buslanes are a good solution. buslanes help internalize the external cost. the external cost of pollution is internalized as time! how cool! previously, in the soviet cashless system, people pay up their surplus by queuing in line. buslanes are taking a leaf out of that book. instead of having the western capitalist take, that we can internalize the cost of time and charging it in monetary terms, here we assume time is the internal cost. so if people spend more time, less people will be willing to travel that stretch of the road, so there is less pollution, so the trees in macritchie will be healthier.

i think coase should come to singapore. then he can learn more about transaction costs and whether time can actually be considered part of the cost of negotiations. cool man.

Read My Lips: No More Chemistry

One Score and five months ago, there abouts, we decided on a combination that would seal our fates for the next 2 years of our lives. and then it lingers on for a little while, through the scholarship interviews and the university interviews. and then its impact more or less completely fades away.

One Score and five months ago, was a don tan, in a classroom on the 7th floor of raja block. it was a much younger don, a much happier, a more confident, a more personable, don. and there he was after the lessons had ended, filling in his subject combination. Math and Economics went down first. cock sure, he was, about doing them. and then under the influence of his most honorable and talented friends, ticks appeared beside H2 Physics and H2 Chemistry.

that was a masochistic decision. as i inked the ticks i knew i was giving my life up to torture. chemistry was a bane to me, even when ocj was a good chem teacher. yea, we had teachers then. but i was from 4p, and at that point in time i felt almost indomitable. life was pleasurable, even if chem was wasnot. my results werent spectacular, but hey, with a 4.0 in chem, i thought, how bad could i be?

i was real bad at chem. for 2 years, i toiled at chem, got whipped by it, got spat on by it. chemistry rammed me through the door; chemistry bashed me through the floor. my experience with chemistry was like rubbing myself with sandpaper all over, and then dousing salt all over. only worse. when the exams came, it was like stuffing a satay stick up my dick and twisting it round and round until the canal bled like it was menstruating.

getting a B, after a B, after a B, after a B, and also getting a C was like getting dunked in a pool of shit and then having your head forced under, so you are asphyxiating in the pool of shit. of course, there are others like you in that foul mess, but then there are others who soar above and laugh at you and spit on you. some whip out their manhoods and piss all over you.

that was how the 2 years have passed. 2 years of life i would have rather not led. to complicate matters, prcs are drawn to pcme like pigs drawn to swill. so i was stuck in a class full of prcs. of course there are nice prcs. but as we all know, they are few and far between. (at this point i would like to point to a review in the Straits Times, within which some comment invariably links china with fakery and fakery with china. for a country with such a conservative and relatively mild or isit gutless media, i am quite surprised.)

so i was in a cesspool getting pissed on and then i hear pots and pans falling around me all day. "ching chong ching chong" was really an anthem for a doomed don.

anyway let's not digress. some say a levels is free frag. as they always say, "there's always the bell curve." well it wasnt free frag for me. i got raped by p3, p2, p1. real hard. p3 was tough. i made so damned many careless mistakes. p2 was foamy cos i thought RT= room temp.and then today, i got 5 wrong.

which is shit. i am not going to assume false modesty. i want to get an a for chem. i dont want to lead a life full of fun and danger. i want to lead a good life. and a nice cert is a ticket to the life worth living.

but chem was pure rape. i am seriously hoping that the rest get fked more than i got fked. yea, this is asinine, but this is be the best that i can muster from a person who is mostly already dead.

baahhh..

anyways, on the bright side, chemistry has become a figment of my past, has stopped being part of my present, and will not be part of my future. except for a stretch in mar next year.

and no, please, i dont want to end up in 09/10s06t.

a waste of time

"Stranger, If you passing meet me and desire to talk to me,
Why should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?"

I was supposed to read my Econs notes in the library. But after a few minutes' interaction with price elasticity of demand and monopolies, I was sick of it and found it extremely unflattering. So I turned to the well-packed bookshelves, after all, what on them are the end of the existence of library itself, the air-con, the carpetted floor, the confy sofa are just the means to the end, maybe, I wondered.

After ten minutes, I set myself in the sofa, with my "welcoming" Econs notes beside my feet and four books in my hand.

I opened the first one. It was named "Is this the end to Harry Potter?" Judge me, but believe it or not, Harry Potter was and will be my favourite collection and first English book that I have ever read. The book was cute, but not smart. The author was definitely a hardcore HP fan as me. But the difference between us is that I would not write a book with a 13-page chapter dedicated to interpret the meaning behind each character's name in the Harry Potter series.

The second book was "The beauty of infinity" or something like that. It was a book about math published by oxford. I remembered seeing the name on the Cambridge Mathematics Department's reading list. I was actually supposed to have read it before my interview, but no harm read it now as well. I only got to one third of the first chapter before I threw it onto the floor, joining my lonely Econs notes. It was rather a history book. Here is a summary of that 20+ pages that I read: the introduction of zero into number was a pure coincident when people invented 10, a double digit number that 1 larger that 9; since 0 can exist here, then there must be a number 0, and it should denote emptiness; when one divides something by 0, one gets infinity. Then the whole bunch of intricate theorems comes out, GOSH!

The quote at the start of the post comes from the third book I read. Though I could not remember the name of the book, it was something like "How to read a poem". Anyway, I always think that a deliberate effort to interpret a poem is like using a brush to paint over a great art piece. All you are doing is just adding what you think that the author must be thinking into the poem. Ruin! The book further acknowledged my stand by using long prose and reckless attempts to "explain" poems to laymen like me. In vein, the author of the book only did one thing well, to provide the original poem before she butchers them with her "fabulous" vocabularies.

I could not get to the fourth book as I realized how much time I had spent on reading these "junk" 2 days before the most important examination so far in my life. So I put Shakespeare's "Hamlet" together with the other three books on the floor and picked up my beloved Econs notes and rejoined those oligopolistic firms in judging themselves of exploiting the society and causing inequality by means of excessive non-price competition and potential collusion.

Now I realized that I have once again wasted my time writing this post instead of nourishing my brain with the fruits of Adam Smith, J. M. Keynes and Milton Friedman. Before I end, just want to share a poem that I loved in that third book I mentioned. Pay attention to the last few lines, don't try to interpret, feel it.

"The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow,
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow,
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me,
I will not, cannot go."

All the best every one! Cheers!

I do not see the basics! I'm upset!!!

i just dont know how to do econs. but im trying real hard, and i hope the effort pays off.

died for chem real bad, foamed the whole of question 2. surely got explanations wont get fullmarks. died for physics to some extent. hopefully math can get a.

chemistry is a really depressing subject

today's chemistry paper 3 was a really simple paper. a free frag paper, but i botched it really badly. i foamed for both elucidation questions. and then my ratio was totally out. and the best part was when i used Na instead of H for the cathode reaction. that was the bomb. so basically of 80 marks i have cut myself off of 15, and now all that i hope for is that the rest of singapore didnt find this paper damn simple, or else i will be looking at a B, or worse, a C for chem.

i felt really horrible after the paper today. in recent memory, it ranks 2nd only to the afternoon after my mas psycho test. i remember that day i saw my future flash before me, and then disappear, all i saw was empty space. or is it some blackhole so dense nothing can escape from it.

today somehow it became clearer. first it appeared as a kaleidoscope, like hirst's swirls. and then the image sharpened. and then i see fass. nusfass. with today's chem paper i have moved myself down the bell curve and towards a spot in fass. no, not in the respectable faculties of nus, but in fass. the fass that lenny the potential safos has been spitting on.

maybe i didnt study hard enough. i studied more for chem than any other subject, but just as sodium has little affinity for electrons i have little affinity for chem. my being doesnt get stimulated by reflux. or anything vaguely related to chem.

anyway it must be obama's fault. i spent a good portion of my time yesterday following the results. like most of america, i was captivated by this black man. i was captivated by the american dream and the hopes of the founding fathers. i was convinced of the beauty of a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and i was heartened by the fact that that was a night for change we can believe in.

just that i was in singapore studying for my a levels, and whether i actually prefer mccain has no bearing on anything. i should have pored over george chong instead of immersing myself in his colorful rhetoric and references to washington and the founding fathers.

i really am damn screwed for chem now. now my streak for a levels looks tough. i really need to hard rape the other chem papers, or else seriously im going to foam real hard come april 09.

life is really a long, hard and bitter struggle for a pussy like me.

anglophilia

who's the best statesman in the world? winston spencer churchill
who's the best economist in the world? cant decide between adam smith and john maynard keynes
what's the best band? the beatles
who's the best writer? eric arthur blair
who's the best soldier? montgomery
who's the best detective? ... 007, licence to kill
what's the best car? rolls royce phantom

there's a place in a foreign field, that will be forever england...

God Save the Queen.

Be Resolute

next week and the week after is what makes memories and what which makes real men. so we shall all go forth and rape, or get raped. of course, all of you can go get raped for all i care. i just dont want to get raped. but already i find math tough and i cannot remember a sliver of definitions.

gaah.

it was fun

Cambridge test yesterday, it was fun. and as expected, i flunked it! it was actually just math, but it is MATH! anyway, i was satisfied, at least i used paper from cambridge, i mean the real paper with the school crest on it. i wanted to bring it out to keep as it would probably be my only chance to use such paper... but it was not allowed.

four years back, i could work out 239081536 divide by 27984652 in a split of a second without a calculator. but yesterday, i spent like a million years trying to work out what is 3097 divided by 8092. life was tough.

my cambridge dream was gone. time to wake up. maybe it will be a bright morning!

i walk a lonely road

i should be mugging but i cannot seem to focus. not just because i am at home, but because of the mas round 2 i just went for. i know i screwed it up really bad, and if they dont pick me, they are doing the right thing.

turns out that only 8 progressed to the 2nd round, among them 4 including myself, from 4P. 6 rj 2 hwach. all of them were brilliant individuals. except me. you have juanha, yongjin?, shida, shenghao, charles, and kuangli from hwach and another guy.

i didnt do too good in the discussion. i have never been good at this kind of imaginary situation. truth be told, if i had to choose people for the silly fallout shelter, i will just hurl myself off a cliff and meet my maker.

i just died for the psycho test. psycho testing is my weak suit. surrounded by godlike people, i was a complete idiot. my complete lack of speed was made more obvious by shida n juanha sitting to my left and across me. and then i made it worse when i had to clarify some instruction during the test. which was foamy. cos the section only has 3 mins or sth.

so i am screwed. the 2nd round is basically atest on academic prowess and intellect. i have neither. i have not been numismatic, and i have never been good at inverting or flipping nonsense like Rs. of course, i have never been fast, because for most exams, slow and steady wins the race, and i always dallied.

it was made much worse by the fact that every 5 sec my life flashed in front of me. here i was sitting in a conference room with 7 godlike individuals, making a fool of myself as i try to get the job and career that i have dreamt of since i started secondary school. i worked hard at school, i tried to go for cca, i hit my testimonials, and i got past the first round, and i see myself wasting away all i have done in those 3, 3, 4, 5, 6 mins. my mind raised furiously, but it just wasnt up to the task. i am not cut out with a good brain.

during the first round i emphasized that i think i am a prime choice because of the strength of my character, not because of my omnipotent mental faculty. i told them of the grit, determination and passion running through my veins, not the mathematical formulae that run along juanha's fingertips. but obviously it wont matter no more, because the second round is all about the atas, and compared to all those assembled it is apparent, and without a doubt that i am in a league of my own. if they are the english premier league, i am the sunday school field league for football ahpeks. i didnt dazzle with speed with precision with anything. but i distinguished myself with my abject stupidity and ineptness.

i got past the first round because i brought some knowledge and intense interest in banking. i could,because i was born into it. i was born to do it, or so i demonstrated, but hey, these brilliant young men, btw, all were dudes, no dudettes, could easily pick up all this stuff. it wasnt because i was good, i was because i was from a somewhat lucky sperm club.

i can accept it if they dont pick me. they should pick scholars, not losers. and i want scholars of the highest caliber to entrust my money and my economy with. from this alone, i know i deserve the cut. i still feel that psychometric assessments are not fair, but this completely doesnt matter, because it is the best method of testing. it isnt completely fair, but it is the fairest. to paraphrase, it is the worst form of assessment except all others.

so i am crushed. as i came along home, i was looking into the future. what used to be a nice comfy job in a nice comfy office with a nice car and nice house has now become an empty space. maybe a blackhole. nothing escapes it. no light. nothing. it is so dense, because i am going to be so dense and so hopeless a failure. i am going to be wasted. all that i have done, to naught. it pains me as the loser in an all pay auction. i worked, i moved, i positioned myself. i slogged, i piahed, i took pain. but then in just one morning, this faithful morning, i throw it all away. it is right for them not to pick me, i cannot even be entrusted to make good mine own life. much less that of others. i am screwed. so how am i going to be able to apply to any other scholarship?

i have a letter from caas. but now i wonder.

antidepressants

this is the worst of times. in the library just now i really, really felt like dying.

all alone on the 2nd floor of the library with nobody in sight, piles of books and notes in front of me. the library was freezing. even with my jacket i was shivering. my fingers were cold and my palms were blue. nary a ray of natural light.

to compound the problem, got banged by complex number. no matter how i do it, i get it wrong. i always use the wrong method, and in the rare occurence that i get the method right id probably bungle up the steps. add to this that the a levels is in hardly 10 days. and ive forgotten most of my physics and my econs revision is nonsense.

i actually entertained the thought that rj might be so poorly built that the library will suddenly collapse and consume all in it. sometimes when i come out from the toilet, instead of turning left i want to turn right, go on the bridge and plunge down and away from all the nonsense. away from complex numbers and probability. away from ketones and transition metals. away from all the crap.

so i can go meet my maker. because i have got enough of this world. and this life.

i yearn for yesterday once more.

about the art exhibition

it has come to my attention that some members of the art club were quite unhappy about my post. after reading the post myself, i have edited it, and i unreservedly apologize if i was overly critical or if i did not understand exactly what the work was about. although i still feel that if one has to go through all those storyboards to understand the piece at all, then it cant be too fantastic a piece of art.

if i had offended anyone with that post, i really am very sorry. please forgive me by that i have not received any formal instruction in art so i probably deal with art with my baser emotions. so i might not have responded as i should or as was intended, and i am sorry. and i should not have made any homsexual references because it is very inaccurate and unfair to the guy in question. no malice intended.

i know i am slow

but hey, now i know whats a MILF!!

because the red indians are gathering lots of wood

its going to be a cold, cold, cold winter.

the next 2 weeks seem so long, yet so short.
so much to do, so little time. so much to revise, so little motivation. so much hinges on the a levels, yet so little effort goes into preparing for it. yet i cannot wait for the a levels, to get over with physics chem math and econs and get myself my life back.

they say that luck is what you make out of it.

all i know is, i really need lots of luck if i were to get the marks i need to secure any decent university place.

i yearn for normalcy. the normalcy of ri. life before the prc infestation. life before pw, life before mongrels. life before all this nonsense. but then soon after i will stop being don tan and become K L TAN. to you to me to everyone.

i am freaking out. depressed. i need help. somebody save me.

what's tinklefriend's number?

it doesnt feel like the a levels is slightly over 2 weeks away. somehow i dont feel that sense of urgency that i felt for prelims. mugging has been totally fked. like today i depressed around for most of the morning and then didnt do any proper work in the afternoon. stats look so foreign to me, i didnt know half the stuff i was reading. i took 1 hour to go through S4B, and i bet if u asked me about it tomorrow i cant even remember. i studied econs just a few days ago, but i cannot remember much about it either. chemistry, hopefully still have some inkling of what i am doing. but im always lousy at explanation questions.

tomorrow i had better mug hard and this weekend really must make up for all the lost time this week. this week has been quite productive until the afternoon before my interview lol. maybe the interview really distracted me a lot. and probably cos my notes are strewn all over i really dont want to go around picking stuff up.

ri secondary really sounds stupid. they should wake up their idea.

and after considering the role of mas as a regulator, i have decided that hey, those old folks who poured their life savings into minibonds should be rescued because seriously they didnt know what they were getting in to, and the regulator probably didnt do a good job in regulating the toxic byproduct of excessive competition among banks.

felicity

they are a well efficient government body. and i am really extremely stressed. tomorrow decides for me my fate. really.

i am crossing my fingers.

givememorerope

it's been 2 years.

the interview looks to be harrowing. firstly, people like shida decide to submit all his ct results. just to make me look bad with my total tally of 13As 10Bs 2Cs. fks. serious la. 44.5%ile. wah all my percentiles seriously quite foamy. and anyway its no A for econs. ever. before.

econs mugging has been going nowhere. somehow i keep questioning the question. pretty easily distracted even without pretty girls in sight. haiz.

ri and rjc are merging and they are now called ri. its a good thing that they dont rename it something silly like what happened to the chinese high. but i hope they dont screw it up with ri (college) and ri (secondary). anyway all the ri secondary students end up in ri college so i dont think they should bother with this nonsense.

we all know who plastic bag will support

that's pussy

farewell assembly was pussy. it wasnt very nice sitting around with queer guys who just keep camwhoring and getting in your way. fk man. the certificate was pussy, but heck, its the first time i have ever gotten any decent thing from rjc. i mean, with my lack of aptitude in everything, i didnt expect anything. ya, i know more than 1/3 of the school got it, and among them, many got 2,3 one man even 5. but hey, something is better than nothing ya.

the art exhibition was nice. i liked joshuas yongfengs ians and benedicts. and isit lorraine. all really nice. but i dont think its worth the effort. sacrificing mugging time and rest time for weeks and weeks on end before the prelims. art should at most be a hobby at this stage, and it is really subjective and difficult to seal the grade. and i think some people are just not cut out for art. just dont have the dexterity of managing the materials. i thought lc's sucked. who cant cut an edge of an acrylic cube give the right tools? her exhibit was as outstanding as the minimalist plastic stools for people to view the video right beside hers. and then the foamer who put up the freaking small display of letters and stamps. snap my dick. cant even spell properly. probably too clever for his own good. i thought the fashion design was morbid and the material was disgusting. but the pictures were not too bad. overall i enjoyed myself.

mugging makes for crazy people. talked cock with ali and royce and lenny and christy and yiheng, which was real fun stuff especially when everyone was spitting on something or someone. royce was real funny, especially when he said he will step in to end the debate on who's smarter, of christy and yiheng. with 5As, plaque and gupta, probably in the best position to stop them. haha. and talking about university studies became a talk about gynecology and mona lisa in the bedroom. basically, marcus said that seeing pussies all day make you enjoy pussies less. its probably true, but i dont think having sex once a year would be any good. maybe thats what he will do with his wife. but hey, thats why affairs are so alluring, the forbidden fruit. and then talking about universities with royce and lenny became a discussion on academics and pussies who dream too big and spitting on pussies by the 2 realmen. and then it moved on to achievements, and then to girlfriends or the lack thereof and how best to get a girlfriend. we digress alot.

just 3 weeks to a levels, and im still foaming at all my subjects. seriously i dont know how im going to remember the last 2 years by, other than failures and disappointment. and slogging.

MIL-F

i think one of the best things daojie has done for himself is get himself a good girlfriend. happy birthday daojie.

---

life is wanky. died for mathmock. after going without math for 2 weeks, was damn rusty. slow, and couldnt really hump it. what about i foamed the vectors question with my brilliant 4^2=18? and i just got tricked by integration. mental assault.

---

spitting is in full swing. juanha was spitting on jc econs and how jc econs is taught. now lenny spits on engineering too. and then mark spits on my pussy deans list count. fk everyone is spitting on someone or something. and, stop rubbing it in if u know u double, triple, quadruple or quintuple my deans list count. because it doesnt feel good.

---

tomorrow is farewell assembly. 2 years have sprinted past, and i have probably been exposed to more disappointment in the 2 short years than the previous 16 in my life. within and without academics. i just hope that after tomorrow, i will be less distracted, and focus more and better on acing my As.

auspicium melioris aevi.

"she definitely has to go (for physics mock), hello?!"

the spitting culture has to stop. it is getting really unhealthy. the College is supposed to be a place of learning and progress as a group with the students as more or less one monolithic corps. the stronger students are to help the weaker students along and they should all live happily ever after. but nope, because somehow spitting has come to College and looks like its here to stay.

because cool guys do most of the spitting, and unless you are the last student in school, you can probably find someone to spit on, something to spit at, whether it be about results or the lack of hair. everyone is along the Spitting Order, and once the vicious circle is catalyzed by a set of pussy marks, it takes very long to taper out. exactly the same as shifting AE in a keynesian cross. and the bloody graph is real elastic.

the prevalence of groupspit has exacerbated the problem. calling people pussies is no longer acceptable; nasty justifications have become mandatory. and these justifications make the spit more acidic and more hurtful. egos get digested by higher egos, and spit piles up right at the lowest rung of the College Ladder.

It is sad, really. Higher rungs should thank lower rungs for being fillers, but the higher rungs dont think so and probably believe that they got up there because they have a God-given right. you know, dieu et mon droit. and then it comes along from the fount which provides them with their good fortune, the right to spit on mere plebians for existing, for being themselves and for breathing.

really, its unhealthy. spitting is unhealthy. spitting on others and partaking in groupspit is unhealthier. it is sad really, that College students are engaging in such damaging acts. but nothing can be helped. because meritocracy's underbelly is spitting. and because the highest echelons do it, the blind followers in the middle rungs find their place by following the sterling example and then spit down the ladder.

this must stop. seriously. lets kick condescension out of the College.

problem gamblers are lousy gamblers

there is no denying of this fact. gambling is a skills, and the existence of game theory and calculation of risk clearly and completely validates it. plus, in some gay endgames, you take the risk of hoping that your opponent is too blind or too dumb to notice your funky endgame. so stop spitting on gambling, spit on bad gamblers. bad luck comes around to them because they are just lousy gamblers.

on luck, i have decided that sons are a sign of good karma. because sons can help carry the family name. it is important. dont listen to girls who tell you otherwise. if u have all girls, u better hope ur ancestors dont all go stab ur dick or something. but if u have all girls then u better love them and make the best of it.

getting your family name on by having the male change his surname doesnt work, because the offspring doesnt belong to the patrilineal lucky sperm club. and if ur daughter can marry such a guy, she is probably running herself into a wall because the guy is spineless.

we all know tt its not good to have no sons. if we is married in the first place. and of course, if we is have a whole litter of daughters, its better than no daughters.

cinquecento

im way behind schedule. got depresed when i couldnt do 4 qns in a row, n then went on to watch stupid tv shows. been depressing around about the email. maybe they made a mistake and they decided im a wuss so they just kicks me from the list.

artattack!

hahaha. i watched an episode of it on youtube. reminds me of the good old days in p4 when i kept watching all these silly shows on kidscentral before it was known as kc. yea. i remember it was at 4pm on mondays. and then i would go do homework for 1/2 hr before watching the repeats on channel 8. haha. life was good then. it was like, reach home around 130, bathe, eat lunch, watch tv. sometimes if i get home early i watched days of our lives. and then around that time there would be some repeats of comedies, like poyintai. and then go wank around and read newspaper until its tv time again.

life rocked.

now life sucks. just sucks sucks sucks. im only living because i hope that life will be better after the As. i think i see the light at the end of this damp tunnel. and i hope its not a bloody mirage.

depression is contagious

life is tough.
because

chem is tough.

now im wondering how im going to get a for chem.

the thing is

good defenders and midfielders are very important. good dribbling, crossing and tackling are all very important too. good looks and good footwork and the ability to bend it like beckham are pluses. mourinho is +0.0025. solid defence is important, solid passing is also very important. shots at goal are bloody important too. but. what matters, is not how good the dribbling crossing tackling are, or how many shots at goal.

what matters is how many of those tackles become passes and become shots at goal that become goals.

life's like that. what matters isnt how close you get, but whether you get there.

getting 100m from shore is no better than getting stranded 1000m from shore. ur still stranded. getting 69 is as good as getting 65 or 50 or 30. ur still a foamer.

and im feeling sick that i havent gotten the email!!!

foamers

i understand the concerns, and i also understand the principalagent problem. but seriously, caveat emptor. im quite sure they those people who bought into minibonds n highnote5 didnt walk into them blind. and they probably shouldnt be puerile that they dont know the basic principle of high risk, high return. walau, if low risk high return, why the hell will i need u to invest man, i will just invest in it and reap the gains by myself. why share man. bet all these faggots trying to pull a fast one. in good times, they never ever complain about caveat emptor man.

wall street is also foaming around, and somehow it reminds me of game theory.

another nsman died, well, nothing we can do about it. hopefully i will ord in 2 years time in one full well piece. i dont like to be myself a contributor to such a morbid statistic. because im too young to die. and i dont think dying will running 2.4 or doing chinups is attractive.

geochallenge

my new goal in life is to rape geo challenge!

on top of something less achievable, like straight As for A levels.

in fact, the new goal jeopardizes the old.

especially when u consider that im already very easily distracted.

if only I could write this well. always.

There was a time when people believed that the Sun and stars revolved
around the Earth. Of course, now we know that the Earth is not the
center of the universe, or even the center of our little solar system.
In the somewhat more recent past, economists thought that the
non-financial sector in a modern economy revolved around financial
markets, despite the facts that only 4 percent of the workforce was
employed in the financial sector (including insurance and real
estate), and even today that sector employs only 6 percent of the
total. President Bush and supporters of the recent massive Wall Street
bailout plan still believe Wall Street to be the center of the entire
economy.

Economic research over the last couple of decades rejects this belief.
It has shown that the financial and non-financial sectors experience
quite independent changes, especially over the short and medium term.
Take for example the promised yield on the best commercial paper.
Fluctuations in this yield are critically important to persons in the
financial sector (such as money market traders), but have hardly
anything to do with activity outside of that sector. Since World War
II, the correlation between the inflation-adjusted commercial paper
yield and subsequent inflation-adjusted growth of GDP per capita is
zero. That is, GDP growth has been high following high yields just as
often as it has been low. It is equally hard to detect a correlation
between stock returns, long term bond returns, or commodity returns
and subsequent GDP growth. Quite simply, history has shown that the
non-financial sector can do well when the financial sector does
poorly, and vice versa.

In order to find good predictors of non-financial sector performance,
and GDP growth generally, we look to the non-financial sector itself.
One of those predictors is the profitability of non-financial capital,
or the "marginal product of capital" as we economists call it. The
marginal product of capital after-tax is a measure of how much profit
(revenue net of variable costs and taxes) that each unit of capital is
producing during, say, the last year. When the marginal product of
capital after-tax is above average, subsequent rates of economic
growth (and subsequent marginal products of capital) also tend to be
above average.

Since World War II, the marginal product of capital after-tax averaged
between 7 and 8 percent per year. During 2007 and the first half of
2008 – exactly the time when financial markets had been spooked by oil
price spikes and housing price crashes – the marginal product had been
over 10 percent per year: far above the historical average. Compare
this to the marginal product of capital in 1930-33 (the years of
Depression-era bank panics): 0.5 percentage points per year less than
the postwar years and significantly less than in 1929. The marginal
product of capital was also below average prior to the 1982 recession
(in this case, far below average) and prior to the 2001 recession.
Thus, the surprise was not that GDP continued to grow 2007-8 despite
the bleak outlook from Wall Street's corner of the world, but that GDP
growth failed to be significantly above the average. More important
from today's perspective is that much capital in America continues to
be productive, and that this will likely permit Americans to advance
their living standards as they have in years past. The non-financial
sector today looks nothing like it did in 1930.

The weak correlation between asset prices and non-financial sector
performance and the strong profitability of today's non-financial
capital are two good reasons to scoff at the idea that the
non-financial sector will collapse because of the recent events on
Wall Street, and even better reasons to scoff at the
Bernanke-Paulson-Bush idea that a massive bailout of financial firms
is the key to avoiding a non-financial collapse. Wall Street's woes
are and will be largely limited to Wall Street. The Bush
administration should not use the power of the IRS to force the rest
of us to board Wall Street's sinking ship.

Of course, six percent of the workforce is bigger than zero, so a Wall
Street mess has indirect effects on the non-financial sector as it
absorbs former Wall Street employees and finds alternatives to the
financial services Wall Street once provided. But, as long as the
government does not get in the way, the marketplace will quickly react
to provide the non-financial sector with financial services, even if
the main players in that marketplace are no longer named Lehman,
Merrill, or Goldman. There are two basic obstacles that Washington
might create in this process, both of which are included in the
Bernanke-Paulson-Bush proposal. One is to pile on regulation and
further impede entry by new firms that might provide financial
services to the non-financial sector in the years ahead. The second is
to impose a heavy tax burden on the non-financial sector to pay for
Wall Street subsidies. The Treasury and the Fed should let Wall Street
drown alone, to be replaced by new financial service providers who can
swim as robustly as are non-financial American businesses.
http://caseymulligan.blogspot.com/2008/09/wall-street-will-drown-alone.html

ABABA

68% for econs, what more can i say.

i am destined for a B.
that elusive A still eludes me.
havent a sip from that holy grail.

anyway, a most important question to solve is,

mutton comes from sheep or goat?

McCain-Palin

econs + gp tomorrow

somehow i have this really, really bad feeling.

especially for econs. shit man. died for both case studies.

and gp is da shit. hopefully my aq wasnt completely irrelevant.

international women with no body hair

that's one happy dog.

BAA

i didnt expect an A for chem, so i felt pretty neutral bout the B. A would be nice, but after paper 2 i knew that all was lost. lost hope already. but 67% is respectable, considering that im a complete foamer who still cant get maxwell boltzmann and frs right. a little disappointing though, couldnt get straight As for sciences like ct1 last year. lol.

math was badly done, but at 77, it was an A so i didnt really give a shit. just need to make sure that i wont foam for math alevel by making stupid presentation errors. and i better brush up on complex numbers, cos im really not getting them at all. Yup, and my graphing techniques really damn suck, keep drawing kinky curves and all.

physics was a pleasant surprise. yea i know 80% is real suck by most standards, but after paper 2 i thought that even an A is tough to keep. made a damn lot of stupid mistakes, like substituting wrongly the tunneling coefficient, putting ^-9 for micro etc. and i keep having sf problems, just anyhow sub around and all that. heck.

yea. so BAA. jordan's on fire with AAA. hardrape.

anyway my psycho test was foamy, all as good as nia. shit really shouldnt have gone when i was sick. but nevermind, the B for chem is probably going to cost me my scholarship.

ewong and pjl went through qn 1 and 5. i did 1 and 5, and from the way it sounds, im a goner. after screwing both case studies, and micro in particular, real hard, i was betting on my essays to get B. now even a B looks tough to get.

and im praying for an A for gp.

so help me God.

i pray

tomorrow is the manday.

math n chem!

chem

c
h
e
m

ggxx
xxgg
ggxx
xxgg
ggxx

foam. i seriously hopes for the best.

@

why is it that so many people says that you can be great without doing well at your studies, and then point to bill gates?

bill gates is a dropout, but he didnt drop out from any mickeymouse ashwood college. he dropped out from harvard. so he must have already been godlike enough to enter harvard. and he dropped out not because he wasnt academically inclined, but because he had a massively impressive business idea.

frying beehoon can only get you that far. you still need some smarts if you want to be truly rich.

whistle

law looks like a very attractive proposition once again. i dont know, i just have some weakness for doing law, but i dont know whether i can make it into law school. actually, i dont even know whether i can make it to nus, much less law.

shanmugam earned around 4million a year before becoming law minister. that works out to about 10 000 a day. of course i wont be pro like him, but hey, there is money to be made. and i think i will enjoy litigation.

now the only problem is getting into law school in the first place.

maths tomorrow. arghhhhh.

die die die die die

i am dreading friday.

prelims has caused me so much anguish.

to make matters worse, ms office doesnt work on my com.

bah.

despair

1. i read that the math prelim papers are going to be returned this friday. i am getting all the jitters. i think physics is going to be returned to. i am really, really, freakin scared. especially after messing up paper 2 real bad and misreading mcq questions. i hope i dont drown below c level.

2. everyone is making nus sound like the shittiest place on earth to study. please stops it, because i think i might full well have to end up there, and not in medfac.

ive been trying to numb myself, but nothings working.

forever beautiful in my mind

forever beautiful in my mind

life's not fair

nothing in life is fair. from the first day we step into this world, some people get to be born in mount elizabeth while the plebes get out in kk hospital or some kukunehneh box in kfc. into different families. while some parents scrape the bottom of ships for a living, others just sit around and generate economic rent from the billion and one different landholdings. while some people take school buses, others ride home is a nice s600.

some people are born smarter than others. some of them use math notation as if greek was the lingua franca. yet others look at complex numbers and start scratching like monkeys. soem of them speak with such eloquence, its as if they have visited blarney and kissed the stone thousands of times, or they have gotten the stone to kiss their ass. for others, they still speak gibberish even though they have rehearsed more times than i can come in a week. (like 14 including the weekend)

some people are born stronger than others. look at daojie doing backflips like they are second nature. what about usain bolt? even if i ran from the day i was born, was raised on all the yam from jamaica, smoked weed and took all the steroids that my blood becomes like my piss and my piss becomes like my blood, i still wont even be able to run in triple his time.

some people are born handsomer than others. some people, just prettier, sexier, more fkable. look at the pussycat dolls. they is hot. they melt your heart and raise you up. just look at their bombs. and then look at those belonging to those around you. have you seen any so exquisite so pretty so pert, so nice? if you have, good for you, because people like me, havent.

some people are born more affable. and yeah.

you dont need to be nostradamus to know that.

yes, and the propensity to work hard. it is no ones fault to be lazy. a portion of laziness is innate. it is not about working on getting the right attitude, because the right attitude is innate. aspire and achieve. i hear it every morning on the radio. by some master mammary trainer. my ass. it works, because some people are unpolished gems. but if ur just a piece of petrified cowdung, no amount of sanding will make out a piece of jade. unless the cow swallowed a piece of it. and then you must be the lucky piece of petrified cowdung.

and then of course, if ur in the right place at the right time with the right skills doing the right thing, you do well in life. ur smart and talented, but if u took history and literature when everybody is into alchemy and voodoo magic, its just too bad. and some people just get lucky. have u ever wondered why there are times when you mug so hard but a jackass beats you? well because youre less favored and ended up with a worser lot. youre not lousier than him, just unluckier. because life just isnt fair.

complaining doesnt solve anything, but it sure makes me feel better.

yupp, i havent done a single bit of work today.

attinctura

it is not difficult to see why many people view prcs as little conniving dicks, sly and destructive, even though everyone knows for a fact that there are amongst them many a good prc who are not dishonest and not immoral. yes, there are nice prcs. these nice prcs are not detestable.

in recent times, we have come across way too many food safety problems in china. what with sanlu milk and melamine contamination has affected yili and dutch lady china, and almost all of china's milk supply, including the all new startup monmilk. even my childhood favorite dabaitu naitang. everyday, we see images on tv and in print of dying prcs in filthy hospitals and pissed prcs in front of government offices.

the milk problem can hardly be considered isolated. there was also the soy sauce incident, where human hair was added to darken and thicken the soy sauce. of course, who can forget the cardboard pau affair? we still do not know whether there was cardboard in the pau, or the journalist was being a weasel, or the government was making a weasel out of him so that the affair would blow over. anyhows the journalist was a prc, the first broadcaster was a prc, and the parties involved were i think prcs.

food safety aside, there was also the sichuan earthquake. the building generally crumbled like they were built from styrofoam and straw. and then again we see the many parents carrying pictures of their children wailing and attempting to rain blows on the officials, as if this would help revive their children. but here i reiterate, it is only natural to feel angry, especially if your son's school collapsed to smithereeens while the manly school beside it stayed with nary a broken window. of course, theres the perennial blast in the coal mines, although i must say this is not exactly a serious issue since such accidents occured very often in newcastle, in the 1880s.

it doesnt help that everytime after a major catastrophe, premier wen comes around and criticizes the immoral businesses and local government officials. they had no heart, or isit meiliangxin in chinese. it doesnt help that somehow it seems like a fault-finding mission every single time, and somehow it reeks of pinning the blame on the fattest black sheep that didnt cough up enough money in time.

what pisses people off is that the farce comes up to a national level. like the lip synching incident. and the fake fireworks. of course we now know that there was also a farce at the sydney olympics, but this does not in anyway diminish the fact that bocog was dishonest.

as individuals, many of them are downright irritating because they have a different cultural heritage. ok, the prcs in rj tend to be very refined individuals who tend to not have these bad habits. take the train up north to the wilderness of sembawang and yishun, and then you will hear these people shouting on the trains and all. of course, there are singaporeans guilty of all these, but as a massive minority their actions are under the scrutiny of many and then many people get pissed off.

it doesnt help that many of the sexworkers in singapore are prcs, although we must contend that horny singaporeans must keep up the demand for their good service. and theres nothing wrong with prostitution, morally, that is.

what irks many is that in attracting the bright prcs to singapore, they grant them citizenship and all their family members. maybe because of a technical glitch, their whole village gets to come along. we see many a prc selling tissue papers at 3 packets to a dollar all round the island. yes, these tissue paper sellers if singaporeans are bad enough, but it can be understood. but how is it that we allow foreigners to come here to sell tissue papers? should their children not be adequately able to support them? why on earth are we importing liabilities?

all in all, we can see from these damned many problems why prcs are quite disliked. yes, i understand it is not their fault. not every single prc cheats, steals and prostitutes himself or herself. but there are just too many prcs and too many such problems associated with them. they are attainted simply because of their nationality.

it is unfair, it is irrational, but this is the case. if one prc commits a crime, no one really cares. but if so many prcs commit so many felonies and misdemeanours, then it becomes a bad minority. of course, i dare say the majority of prcs are good, but this significant minority of this massive minority on the island gives them a really bad name. and no one can be blamed. attainder is a very british thing, and singapore was a very british colony. attainder is an abuse and excess of the westminster parliament, and this abuse and excess has fallen to the commons.

actually, even among us asiatics, attainder comes in the form of the execution of the whole family. on top of being a severe deterrent, it must have stemmed from the fact that all in one family are one and the same. similarly, as we see prc as a monolithic whole, then the crimes of so many such entities play out on all.

let it go

life has been good these past 2 days.

pussycat dolls are really damn hot. gives me the hots.

of polystyrene men, tetrasodium EDTA and coconuts

prelims are over.

and now a one week reprieve.

the fortnight has been neverending rape. got banged on the first day by econs. singala my balls man. completely had no idea what i was writing. half my ideas were brainless halfbaked shit. looked bleak. looked tough. saw foam.

math wasnt any better. complex numbers was too complex for me, and i made tons of careless mistakes along the way. coupled with my complete lack of proper presentation, math was disastrous.

and then physics2 was bad. after getting knocked over silly by math just the afternoon before my head wasnt ready, so it got bashed real hard and bashed through ala celebrity deathmatch. doing the physics paper was like pushing my head into a pencil sharpener. the automatic kind. it gets more and more painful along the way, until a certain point, then i grow numb and give up.

lets leave chemistry at that. saw it coming.

and then econs again was mindless assault as i didnt read the stimuli thoroughly enough. ended up not talking about public transport, although i still stand by my stand that public transport is not a substitute for private transport, not when u have to stand in a foul packed bus filled with foul individuals who probably hadnt bathed since soap emulsions came around. nope, not when u can be sitting on premium leather from italian calf instead of on those plastic chairs that are too small. and no so called involved member of the public will get u to give ur seat up for a folk, god knows whether the folk needs it more than u do.

of course i didnt read the other inflation policies, so i think iwill die again.

math p2 was slightly easier. made many mistakes, but didnt feel so depressed. maybe ive been lowering my standards throughout the prelims. in fact ive been lowering my standards doubly quick since entering rj. i remember times in ri, when even getting 19/20 warranted and inquiry. now, its like, pray for 70%.

physics was cock.

then the last day was serious foam. 2 mcqs, and i died for both. i dont think they were testing chemistry concepts, they were testing comprehension skillz. they were testing reading speed, and they were testing shading ability. they were, in short, testing everything about testing skills and testing everything except that which is important, chemistry.

physics was phoamy. i got jacked by a few questions cos i just read them too quickly. could not waste no time, especially after chemistry. walan eh. blue to red. cb la.

basically, prelims had been a massive misadventure, a complete cockup.

yesterday i took 171 home. its been a long long while since i last used public transport. and then along dunearn i passed a petrol kiosk where 2 attendants were marvelling at a ferrari gtb fiorano. the one attending to it was happily whistling as he motioned his friends to look over.

i wonder whether i will end up as an attendant. and then i will be happy on my job, cos i get to see cars that i dont own. but i will imagine im pumping all my cars up. and then i will imagine driving them out of the petrol kiosk. lol. actually i wonders what the attendants be thinking. whoa, today, i filled out a fiorano. the petrol went down like everydays sunday, not like some pussy toyota harrier. whoa. smooooooth. sweeeeet. it was a good pump.

and then i go out for a smoke and announce to everyone the satisfaction i get from pumping up a fiorano.

next time, all you homies out there should come to where i work to pump it up. if it is a fiorano a maranello or my favorite, the testarossa. of course, lamborghinis and bentleys and rolls are all welcome.

nope, not cherys.

ok. my obsession with coconuts.

im obsessed with coconuts since mooncake fever blue over. i think coconuts are nice, but coconut oil is disgusting. coconut oil when applied to hair, mixed with sweat, smells like vomit.

anyways, anyways, france is like a small coconut, and then canada is like 14 small coconuts. i dont know why im saying this. but clearly, my attempts at writing out of thin air doesnt work. looks like i wont even have a chance at pussy schools like boston.

alright.

going off to nurse my self worth back to me. after surfingwankingsleeping yesterday, im all charged up to watch kidscentral today.

where is grade inflation when you need it?

tomorrow doing econs...

... or is it econs going to do me?

argh. here i wish for the best.

dieu et mon droit

sometimes it pains me to know that my best days are over, long over.
i shouldnt have gone to ri.
life was just too good.

i was keying in my nfo into brightsparkss. one section was ip results. 3.87 is by no means sterling, but it was gratifying seeing the whole string of A+s. i havent seen anything come that close to me since leaving ri.

those were the best days of my life. when life was that good. it didnt take much effort to get that kinda grades, especially when all you had to do was mash yourself with a group of good stash and your final grades will be good.

life was good then. there werent any girls so guys acted normal. while america went to war in iraq and the rgsncc girls started preparing for their mutuals in spec course, i was having fun wanking around with the 1i2j gays. i still remember the times we were knocked down in sarimbun, but other than that less than pleasant experience, ri was fun. during french, we be bubbling behind playing with the silly sange, the monkey with a wire in the tail. we played and we were crazy.

those were gay times. time couldnt have been gayer. with yichao and gary gaying each other. with all the gay name calling in 4p.

i wouldnt be honest if i said i didnt mug. but mugging was for the library, and the hml closed at 5. thats all the mugging that was required, since ca results exceed 100% and i was so well clear that all i wanted was a decent set of grades.

and now all i can do is swim in my shit. life is horrid. time is running out. results are bad. pain. anguish. suffering. lifes like that.

im asphyxiating. maybe death is a deliverance.

salt and suicide

i dont think im going to apply this year.

knn. all the tests are scheduled for 5th nov, just a day before chem pII. which is the killer paper for me at least. walan eh.

cbcbcbcbcbcbcb

with my kinda sch grades i really need to pull off a good a levels. and fooling around with chem and at a levels is just no bananas.

cbcb

it doesnt help that saf sends a nice mail inviting me to the safos scholarship tea session next saturday. it comes with a nice plastic card with your ic number barcoded behind. nice shiny white plastic. it just makes me feel even more sore, that

1. my academics suck
2. i cant even pass napfa.

and im depriving more deserving peoples of an invite.

baah.

anyways it seems like lse has an option i likes.

philo n econs.

now i hope lse wants me.

vaincre

life is really depressing.

C: why you come school today?
D: mug lah. not going to fail chem again.
C: you fail before meh?
D: ya. C.
C: C is not fail.
D: bet if you got C you'd jump down.
C: nope. i'd just be looking through ITE pamphlets.

anyway according to fernie, nus requires all As or Bs.

looks like life is really damn tough. life is foam. foamboarding is fun.

looks like i cannot apply to oxford. cos i cannot decide what i want to do in life, and i shouldnt even think about it in the first place. with my kind of results, cca records and probably testimonials, i think im thinking a bit too far. too far from the natural non accelerating rate of delusion. disequilibrium delusion.

im disillusioned.

mark has results, daojie has his girl, lenny has results and girls and i have myself to blame. im not in the doldrums. im in a cavernous cave filled with bats that shit on me. and snakes that shit on me and constrict me. and bugs that shit on me and bite me. im miserable and these shitters have the strength of numbers and familiarity. i just keep getting shitted on.

suddenly i dont see why i should study hard. because whether i study hard or not im going to be a failure in life. because i dont even know whether i can get into nus. and im quite sure i dont want to go to ite then poly then uni. cos by the time im done with uni id have no more sexdrive and no more life. cb.

going to a university is not just about getting an education. for me, i think it doesnt really matter, of course, unless i choose to do law. uni is a good screening device. as mentioned by dixit and skeath, uni education helps differentiate type A for abled from type C for challenged. now that half the world and all the chiuchengkias from polies all can go to uni, the only way to signal that i am type A is to go to a good foreign uni, since im not going to enter nusmed.

and i seriously need to signal. because the signal is not perfectly accurate, but think of signalling and not signalling in terms of a game tree. then add in the conditional probabilities and u can c how the firms will c u and so choose to hire u. and i generally suck so i hope i get stirred in with the right crowd and get pushed along by the right current so i dont end up in a shit hole.

time is running out

ive spent most of the afternoon investigating:

capital punishment
government
responsibility to society
the role of religion

i enjoyed reading crap on wikipedia with 'when i grow up' in the background.

but i still dont know what is an enlightened society. this concept is really hard to define. im jjust going to use the pussy definition of liberte, egalite, fraternite and respect for the sanctity of life.

hopefully my stars will shine on me tomorrow. and for the rest of the prelims.

ziegler

tomorrow is gp prelims. and i am online now. surfing randomly.

i am not mugging for gp even though i suck at it. i lost my spark.

i am depressed. i feel miserable. why are so many pros applying to oxford? at first i thought all of them were applying to cambridge, and i thought, all was going well. and then yesterday jassie told me that so many arts people are applying to oxford. i was foaming away.

i know my uk dream borders on delusion.

actually i think i have stopped dreaming.

i think im going to waste myself away.

zhenan's personal statement

here i am, sitting in front of my laptop, listening to the old chinese songs that yh will definitely like, stoning at the almost empty word document. i was supposed to send don my ps tonight, but i hav been writing, deleting and rewriting for the entire night, and now, i got almost nothing but the title.

is this how i gonna make it into cambridge? if don put me in his delusion graph, i guess i would be somewhere near the gal, or is my point going to be fit outside the A3 paper? getting into cambridge is tough, but i made it harder by putting my name down under the best college together with ming quan and competing the same subject area with all the math genius like mila, hj, sj, st and his gf. but i still would like to thank jh and ronald, for giving chance, so that i still can dream that there might be a tiny minute chance for me to get in.

i just went to xiaonei, the chinese version of facebook, and saw the full list of all the prcs from hci, rjc and vj who went overseas to study. they are real gods. u penn, yale, stanford, mit, caltech, cambridge, oxford, imperial, williams, amherst, chicago, etc. etc. if i could get into any of these, i would be happily dancing naked! but let's be realistic. 9As, C for GP. how? 2130 for SAT, dream on! what can i do now?

my toefl result coming out tomorrow, hopefully it will help me move closer to my targets. anyway, i hav already finished the test and sent the results to all the top schools, what can i do about it now anyway? maybe a little bit of divine intervention would be helpful now. help me pray, dudes.

ok, i need to get back to my personal statement. GP tomorrow. i told jarrod that i will get my A this time. good night!

aaron will stop slamming doors, because that's irritating.

nothing much has transpired. been mugging hard. trying hard to mug, at least. ive spent most of today looking through my math file and until now i still dont know what has gotten into my brain and displaced the filth. (all i know is, he's called the stig.) at least now i think i know a differential equation question when i see one. actually de at h2 lvl is not tough, just that i cant interpret their difficult to comprehend question. i mean, in out in out shake it all about. why dont they just cut the crap and go straight to the point. this is a math test. gp already tests linguistic comprehension.

about gp, well i think im going to fail. somehow i dont have the positive vibe. the vibe that i get when i know that i can attack the essay and rape it. the vibe i get when im going to get so cocky i decide to do the summary from memory and cant be bothered that its a 4/8.

the gp relief tutor was a real foamer. mostly, people daoed her. she was interested, but not effective. the controversial topics clearly cut no ice. she was boring. and i was pretty bored through her lessons. of course she wasnt soporific. i pitied her. but then she says she is going to warwick for ppe. and then i stopped pitying her.

went for the oxbridge law talk with lenny. i dont think im cut out to do law, much less even dream the oxford dream. we were there with this young, rightly cocky intellectual, some wolf from cambridge. in lt 6 with all the real men, and many a dreamer like me.

the main point that i gleaned from the talk was that oxbridge wanted smart people. whether you have extracurricular achievements doesnt matter to them. as long as ur smart. stupid people like me will be spat at. or is it spat on. whatever, im too stupid to care. actually whether or not they looked at eca, i will still probably be kicked, just on my puss academics alone. real pussy.

anyway i was there among real men who ask questions as if they were already accepted by cambridge. of course some of them were pedigree, like the attorneygeneral's sons, some of them were master debaters, and then someone who probably is a little too deluded. if we had a scale for delusion and i was on point 100 with the average at 50, i think we have to take logarithms to fit her point on an A3 piece of graph paper even if we shrink the units to 1point/cm.

im just consumed and engulfed by self doubt. and not wrongly so, especially when everyone who is someone is applying to emmanuel or gonville and caius and all you can do is sit and stare into space and imagine. and of course, feel sad for yourself.

i just hope i do ok for my prelims. i really want to go overseas real bad. i know im a jumping of the hoho scale of delusion, but i really want to live the dream. i hope a miracle comes along.

congrats

so team A won the gold. but good job team B.
tmr got school. hope everything goes well.

china is on its way for more gold????
hopefully, it seems that all china's strong games hav alr finished.

we the pussies

yup, singapore won the silver in women's ping pong. and im quite happy about it. i suppose im happy that at least they imported medallists, not some pussies who just keep getting 4th and whatnot. yup phelps the man has won so many golds its getting a little boring.

i hears that somepeople were abit displeased with all the faking durng the olympics opening ceremony. anyway i thought the ceremony was quite crap, very kitsch. grand, in your face, but little more. just showed how extravagant prc is. back to the faking. please relax. after fake guccis, fake facai and fake foods, its just a matter of time they faked something on a grander scale. heck i wont be surprised if that supposed jade on the back of the medals was just some stained glass or granite composite.

anyways my life is da shit. the biggest mistake i made last year was to take chemistry and subject myself to all sorts of nonsense repulsion theories, exceptions, bondings, donations and a class full of prcs. shit.

im going to fail chem, along with all my other subjects. somehow my attention span is short and i cannot do no nothing about nothing. im going to get whooped. and im going to get all my dreams of a good overseas education dashed. like soon.

aww life is tough.

China vs Singapore @ 730pm

so Singapore entered the table tennis final.. not bad. on one hand, i hope that Singapore can win the gold, since China already got like 28 in her pocket. but on the another hand, as quoted from David Lu, how can China's team B beat China's team A?

anyway, i juz read the university application criteria for Hong Kong University and I totally cancelled it out of my uni list. 

it says, "Singapore GCE Alevel exam, at least 2 E at H2 level and 1 E at H1 level."

dotssss......they call themselves 18 in the world? and better than Stanford? good luck to those who are planning to go.