LITEMaX.journal();

Losing Hope

2011-12-09T22:03:00.000+08:00

I'm slowly losing hope of ever finding a boyfriend before I turn 31.

People just seem to be more interested in having fun instead of being friends and getting to know you well first.

It's Time

2011-11-26T12:38:00.000+08:00

Hoping that marriage equality arrives in Australia soon. I would love to move there if not New Zealand.

Unfavourited

2011-10-19T06:19:00.000+08:00

I've unfavourited the guy I like on grindr, plus a bunch of other guys.

After a few weeks, I've still not found the courage to tell him I like him and want to know him better. It's not surprising, though; it took me 2 years of stalking one guy I liked before I mustered the courage to tell him I liked him, only to be rejected.

But on the other hand, I'm a changed guy. Rejection will probably not affect me much as running now takes my mind off a lot of depressing things. So if I get rejected, it's just means an extra run on my marathon training schedule and everything will be back as normal.

So if I see him again on grindr, I've promised myself that I'll message him.

Mustering Courage

2011-10-06T15:26:00.001+08:00

Prepared the following message to send to the guy I'm attracted to on Grindr.

howdy. i kind of like your pic and would like to know you better.

grindr does not have much of a profile but if you like what you see of mine and are interested in knowing each other, do chat me up.

anyway, thanks for reading. cheers.

Now.... I need to muster the courage to actually send it.

Hmmm

2011-10-04T20:51:00.001+08:00

Played around with Grindr ever since I got my Android-powered Nexus S.

Seeing lots of hot guys around made me realise that Malay guys are hot too.

For too long I thought only Caucasian guys were hot.

Maybe my time for a boyfriend will come soon.

Trolling

2011-09-29T22:18:00.002+08:00

Been trolling Grindr and OkCupid. Still no luck. Fuck my life.

I think I aim too high.

At Crossroads

2011-02-08T20:08:00.003+08:00

I applied for a job at two different companies some time back; one granted me an interview and it looks like I didn't get the job, but at least they gave me constructive feedback. The other has called me for two interviews but have not gotten back to me on the outcome.

In short, I think I didn't make it at all.

I've been thinking of submitting for other job openings, but I think I have to tackle the situation differently based on the feedback I have received from one of the interviews.

My skillsets - that is my major downfall. I basically only have LAMP experience, which apparently is useless. Looks like I may need to start learning stuff like Ruby on Rails and Java servlets and other Java-based tech and probably build up a personal portfolio.

My love of running - apparently it's weird for me to prioritise running in my life. I don't know what it does for others, but running (and cycling) makes me happy and makes me want to perform and achieve great things in life. And it keeps me healthy and fit and means I take less medical leave, if at all. And it's weird to bring up the company's ideal location due to closeness to various fitness venues.

The other thing was that I stupidly wanted to know if they had an fortnightly pay cycle instead of monthly.

Anyway, there are basically a few ways I'm thinking of tackling the situation.

It has been suggested that I take up freelancing, but that probably won't solve my lack of relevant skills for I 'only' know LAMP. A slightly differently route is to be a sub-contractor to any personal contacts who are doing freelance projects.

Another route I'm thinking of is to start a personal project portfolio, but that means I won't be making money and I need money to have servers, etc. So I'll probably will have to do some non-IT related work to earn money. But doing that probably means I won't have much time to work on my IT portfolio.

The third route is to leave IT permanently and move on to teaching, which was something I wanted to do two years ago, but was advised against.

I'm kinda lost now, but I'm still waiting upon news from the other company before I decide what to do next.

The positive news is that I received a message from a guy who liked my OkCupid profile and I found his profile pretty likeable too. But I'm a 'weird' person, so I'm not expecting much from this encounter as yet.

Old Stuff

2011-01-21T15:49:00.000+08:00

I think the idea of not subscribing to consumerism is doing me good. Many gadgets I'm using are really, really old.

Nikon D70s DSLR camera - November 2005
Sony Ericsson W880i mobile phone - August 2007
Sandisk Sansa E280 MP3 player - December 2006
Medion notebook - May 2004
Dell Inspiron 1420 notebook - October 2007 (Inherited in 2009)
Asus EEEPC 701 - May 2008
Canon LIDE20 scanner - January 2005
Garmin Forerunner 405 - December 2008

The only newish gadgets I'm using are mostly my LED torchlights and my external HDDs. I think my 1TB WDC was bought sometime in 2009 (or maybe 2008) and my Hitachi in May 2010.

I hope I can continue with this good work, though I'm actually planning on buying a new desktop sometime in the next few months and possibly an 11-12" netbook, though my EEEPC suffices for my current on-the-go computing needs. Even then, my desktop will be low-endish; planning to get an Athlon II X2 260, AMD890GX-based mobo, 16GB RAM and 2TB HDD.

Lost My.....

2010-12-24T21:17:00.000+08:00

.... favourite Billabong drawstring mobile phone bag today. Bought it in 2004 for $12.90. That means an investment of about $2.60 a year. Hopefully, I can get a suitable replacement bag.

Marathon Post-Mortem

2010-12-14T09:08:00.000+08:00

It's been just over a week since the Marathon Singapore and I thought I should put down my two-cents worth.

The run was not too bad and the route was interesting. As printed countless times in the papers, the merging with the half-marathoners and 10km runners for the last 5km of the route was horrible. Nonetheless, I managed to complete it in 5 hours 16 minutes, or an improvement of about 40 minutes over my former personal best. I estimated that if I had managed to run the last 5km at a fairly leisurely pace of 7.5km/h instead of walking with the crowd, I would have finished the marathon in about 5 hours, give and take a minute or two.

Still, I am very happy with the way the marathon turned out and hopefully the organisers will attempt to fix the merging problem next year and choose a route with more shelter. The run through Marina East was a killer. On my part, I should carefully look through all the route maps to figure the merges and pace myself accordingly. If I had realised the route was to merge with the lower categories, I should have run faster in the earlier part of the marathon and walk during the merged section.

And a tip to all future endurance runners: attempt to walk home (or at least about 5km) after a race even if you are absolutely tired. I've done this trick twice, previously at the Army Half Marathon and both times, it really limited the extent of DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). On Monday, there was minimal pain and I could walk as normal. On Tuesday, there was absolutely no pain and everything was as if I did not run a marathon just two days earlier. What makes this more amazing is that I did not take any painkiller.

So there you go, my two-cents worth on this year's StanChart Marathon Singapore.

Wedding Receptions

2010-11-28T11:29:00.001+08:00

Got news that a friend of mine is expecting their her first child. I don't think I have ever been this excited over a baby.

Naturally the conversation moved onto marriage receptions. The couple won't be having any wedding banquets, but will instead be throwing a wedding party, which I think is an awesome idea. A small group of friends having a time of their lives would be indefinitely more fun than a very formal and expensive wedding banquet that can cost more than $20K. This is something I absolutely approve.

From a young age, I have always though wedding receptions are an expensive and useless activity which just serves to show-off. I have always preferred a small and close-knit party which would be a lot more meaningful. The smaller the better. In fact, if I ever do have such a opportunity, I'm probably going to make mine really small or maybe even none at all. Hopefully any future partner of mine thinks the same way too.

3-D Secure

2010-11-08T16:07:00.002+08:00

Many banks have now embarked on utilising 3-D Secure. My first experience with it was in Australia back in 2006. Locally, banks have just started using it this year. Some banks happen to implement it better than others, but alas, the bank I use, MayBank, has a very poor implementation.

For 10 transaction attempts, I get only 1 successful transaction and this happens with two 3-D Secure merchants - EZLink and SingTel. But when I use my mum's DBS card, it works the first time round. I hope Paypal, which handles most of my online transactions, won't start using 3-D Secure before Maybank works out all the kinks with their implementation.

Chin-Ups and Pull-Ups

2010-11-03T17:04:00.000+08:00

I have a few fitness targets I would like to achieve by the end of the year:

Completing a full-marathon within 4.5 hours with a maximum of 5 hours.

20 Pull-Ups and 20 Chin-Ups at seperate sittings.

So far, my training runs are progressing well. 4.5 hours gives me a buffer of 18 minutes at 10km/h, so I don't see a major problem achieving a sub-5-hour run.

I have so far achieved 11 pull-ups and 16 chin-ups at seperate sittings, so I will probably be able to do 20 pull-ups and 20 chin-ups before the end of November and I'll probably will change my target to eventually do all 40 pull-ups and chin-ups at a single sitting. It's gonna be a killer, so I'll probably will try for 15/15 or 10/20 or maybe 20/20 with a 10 to 15-minute break in between tries.

Six-pack wise, I'm seeing a little bit of them. Right now, I'm hovering at 54kg. I've been trying to get down to 50kg for the marathon, but with all the compound body exercises I've been doing, I probably have been gaining a little muscle too. Here's hoping that my six-pack abs appears by the end of the year.

Getting Old

2010-10-25T10:48:00.000+08:00

I'm getting old and my memory is fading.

I can't remember if I counted my eighth rep correctly; if I did, then I have a new record of 14 chin-ups. If I did not, I still have a new record of 13 chin-ups.

Next-up: Hopefully 16 chin-ups.

Another Personal Best

2010-10-23T12:20:00.000+08:00

2.4km at 10 minutes 40 seconds

7 pull-ups

While doing some tests after this morning's run, it seems like I probably could do more than 7-pull ups at a go as long as I improve my grip and swing less while on the bar.

Next weekend or the weekend after will be my personal 25km time-trial. I'm probably going to go 15-20km at an average of 10+km/h and the remaining distance as part of a long-slow-distance run.

It'll be ramped up to 30-35km by mid-November and then I'll wind down for the Stanchart Marathon.

Fuck Yeah! 12 Chin-Ups

2010-10-20T14:51:00.001+08:00

So I was right yesterday. If you do it fast, you can achieve more.

I did 12 chin-ups today and that's a major record for me considering barely a year ago, I was doing none and then peaked at 4 for a while until a few weeks back when I started training my chin-ups and pull-ups once again.

Update: Another fuck yeah! I did 6 pull-ups this evening, beating my previous record of 5 pull-ups. Another awesome day.

9(.5) chin-ups and 5 pull-ups

2010-10-19T09:50:00.000+08:00

Officially, I've done a maximum of 9 (almost 10, but couldn't get my chin reasonably high enough to get over the bar) chin-ups and 5 pull-ups.

I've also noticed that if I do them fast even when I'm tired, I can still manage a decent number of chin-ups (like 6), so the next time I do a self-test, I will do them fast instead of slow and steady like this morning. I expect doing them fast should help me hit over 10.

Next is to try to get my pull-ups to 6 and over. Looks like I should be able to hit my target of at least 20 chin-ups by year's end and if I continue to progress well, maybe even 20 pull-ups.

Awesome!

xcompmgr and OpenBox

2010-10-16T10:36:00.001+08:00

On my lightweight LITEMaX.OS();, I am using xcompmgr along with OpenBox. Apparently, the display bug I have been having with Chrome may be due to the interaction between xcompmgr and OpenBox. The display bug I have is one of the possible negative interaction. I have read reports where certain screen areas are no longer responsive to mouse clicks where Docks are being used.

I could do without xcompmgr, but that means conky will not have transparent background support, which I really like. So for now, I'm using Chrome with native window borders, which resolves the display bug.

At least this display bug is relatively minor and goes away with a quick hide/unhide.

Update: Apparently, I wrote too soon. Chromium exhibits a similar problem, but so far only with pop-up windows, even when running Metacity WM+xcompmgr. This leads me to believe that Chromium has a problem running with xcompmgr.

Happy Coming Out

2010-10-11T13:09:00.000+08:00

Today (tomorrow in the UK) is the National Coming Out Day in some countries. Of course that excludes fabulous Singapore where the government does not believe that homosexuals should be allowed to have sex.

Having came out four years ago, I wished I had gave it more thought rather than rushing through it.

I do think about going back into the closet at times, but decided to stick to a variant of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Basically, if others assume that I'm straight and it is making me uncomfortable, then I'll say that I'm not interested. Otherwise, I won't say that I'm gay unless you ask me at point blank.

It's something I don't talk about in my life, but coming out has made me more at ease with myself, even though it's not going the way I hope it would have. Different people come out publicly in different ways. For me, I wanted do it in a big way, but decided not to at all. Society's conservative, family's conservative and even some of my friends who are fine with me being gay still have some negative prejudiced opinion about gay people in general.

Still actively looking for the one, but I am not expecting to meet someone any time soon.

I'd finish this post with a chart showing the path into my heart courtesy of OK Cupid. Maybe the one would encounter this post and I'll get to live happily ever after.

8 Chin-Ups

2010-10-07T18:21:00.000+08:00

8 chin-ups this afternoon. Probably not in proper form yet, but it's getting closer to my target of 20 by year's end!

Chrome Problem

2010-10-07T07:17:00.000+08:00

Here's a bug that I have had with Chrome for as long as remember, regardless of using the production, beta or developer's version; a silly blank area at the bottom of the Chrome application that appears after a while into the session.

It disappears only with an window resize (eg, maximise then restore). Not sure why it is happening, though.

Nonetheless, Chrome is really really fast and remains responsive when loading new tabs. However, it is still not my main browser as I still don't like the way we interact with the extensions, nor does it scroll quickly and smoothly through long windows such as reading 200 RSS posts in Google Reader. Firefox still wins on that and hopefully a future Firefox version will run each tab in an individual process.

Unplanned Upgrade

2010-10-06T08:39:00.000+08:00

I made an unplanned upgrade on my eeePC this morning. Apparently something broke; I suspect the /lib directory has corrupted files. Short of reinstalling all files due to the lack of space to download all relevant .debs, I decided to do a clean install of Ubuntu 10.10 RC (and restoring my .mozilla directory later).

It was running Xubuntu 9.10 previously, but I skipped version 10.04 and was planning to skip 10.10 for 11.04 since everything was working perfectly.

Why Ubuntu instead of Xubuntu? In my experience, Xubuntu is not lighter than Ubuntu. In fact, it feels as bloated as Ubuntu, so I might as well run Ubuntu. What I will be doing to this installation is that I will be substituting certain Ubuntu applications with light-weight ones such as Metacity with OpenBox, eog with GPicView, etc.

As much as I'd like to use a much lighter-weight distribution for my eeePC, I find that using a GUI-focused system makes using a small keyboard and touch pad much easier than one more biased towards the command line (such as scp'ing files using Nautilus vs scp or sftp).

I may try out LXDE later since it runs much lighter than GNOME and looks good enough for everyday use on a netbook.

Chin-Ups

2010-10-02T10:01:00.000+08:00

For the first time, I've done 6 chin-ups at one go a few days back and somewhat broke that barrier with 6.5 chin-ups yesterday.

I was aiming to do 20 chin-ups by the year's end, but I think I'll focus on attempting to do proper chin-ups which means using my back instead of bi-ceps. I think, right now, I'm using more of my bi-ceps than my back.

Awesome, and I'm proud of myself.

Yay

2010-09-25T10:20:00.000+08:00

Despite 2 personal visits to the Starhub Customer Service Centre at Plaza Singapura in June and July, I could not get them to terminate my Starhub email account. Only after a very 'loud' email to their customer service did I finally manage to get the service terminated.

Bloody Starhub.

But now it's all over, and I'm finally happy again.

LEGO NXT Mindstorm Handjob

2010-09-21T13:08:00.004+08:00

Some funny shit.

Firefox 4

2010-09-21T10:29:00.000+08:00

Just started playing around with Firefox 4 on Ubuntu Lucid . It still does not feel very 'fast' as compared to the Chromium Project. In fact, it feels 'slower' than Firefox 3.6 . Maybe it's something wrong with my notebook, which is running a 2GHz Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM.

Nonetheless, I'm going to try it out on my eeePC where Firefox 3.6 keeps on stalling the computer when loading new tabs. Maybe that's where I still see the improvement.

LITEMaX.OS();

2010-09-13T11:49:00.003+08:00

That's gonna be my new GNU/Linux OS distribution, which I forsee, will be for private use only.

Sure, there are many other lightweight OSes out there, but sometimes, it is more fun building up your own OS from a minimal installation to learn how things actually work.

Another thing is that I have always wanted something light and nice to look at and that is where my OS comes in.

Some highlights of my OS:

Currently based on Ubuntu Maverick because I like the numerous Personal Package Archives available. These are custom application builds that are meant to work with Ubuntu.

Nonetheless, there is a chance I may eventually move to Debian as a base as Debian has proved to be more stable that Ubuntu, but since my distribution uses a very minimal subset of Ubuntu and things work up from there, I don't expect major problems, except when upgrading from one Ubuntu version to another.

One highlight of Debian is that using the sid distribution (aka unstable), you get the advantage of a rolling release, which means there are no major versions and improvements are incremental. Although called unstable, sid is pretty much stable for desktop use in my opinion. It will still break from time to time, so I may end up using sidux, which is Debian sid-based distribution that utilises additional packages to minimise breakages.

For the moment, it is based on the Openbox windowing manager, xcompmgr compositing manager and lxpanel panel, with PCManFM as the file manager. The reason why I chose PCManFM over thunar is that PCManFM can manage desktop icons and the wallpaper. And now that PCManFM can utilise gvfs, I don't really prefer using thunar.

Right now, the wallpaper is manually set by using hsetroot and there is no provision of desktop icons as I find them messy.

Conky provides the custom system monitor that you see on the top right hand corner of the screenshot.

For apps, I am using Swiftfox, an optimized Firefox build. I am considering using Chrome/Chromium, but I still prefer Firefox due to the numerous extensions that I utilise even though Firefox is no longer the same light-weight Phoenix browser that came out in 2002. For those not in the loop, the Mozilla browser suite spawned a light-weight browser-only programme called Phoenix in 2002 that was renamed Firebird in 2003 and subsequently Firefox in 2004.

I don't use much Office-like software, so I only have AbiWord installed. If I need a basic spreadsheet, I'll just use Google Docs or install Gnumeric.

Multimedia playback is provided by VideoLAN. To make VideoLAN and other QT4 programmes look similar to their GTK2+ counterparts, I have configured QT4 is use the GTK2+ widget theme instead of the default QT4 theme. This way, anytime the GTK2+ theme is changed, QT4 will inherit it. There is a minor quirk in my current GTK2+ theme changer where it does not write the theme name in the gtkrc-2.0 file which is required by QT4 to enable the inheritance feature (QT4 ignores the include directive), so for now, the name is manually edited in.

That's all for now.

There's Something ...

2010-08-26T23:35:00.000+08:00

... fascinating about seeing overheight trucks crashing into overheight crash barriers.

Enjoy!

Hotness

2010-08-02T15:22:00.000+08:00

Damn. I can't decide who is hotter. Model Brandon Van Bergen (left) or Olympian Matthew Mitcham.

Both are hot and Matthew had the honour of being the first to attract my eye (since June 2008).

Awesome Live Rendition of Run

2010-07-24T10:04:00.001+08:00

This is probably one of the most awesome live rendition of Run. The audience is amazing.

Run is my favourite song of all time. It's a very emotive song.

TriRun 2010

2010-07-14T10:34:00.000+08:00

Ran the 21km Timex Tri-Run 2010 last Sunday and did it in 2 hours 12 minutes and 19 seconds, which, unexpected, is worse than the 2 hours 11 minutes I did to reach the 21km mark in the 25km Passion Run in May and 6 minutes off the 10km/h target of 2 hours 6 minutes.

The bad performance was probably due to lack of carb-loading (I ran out of energy at the start of the last lap) and poor hydration as I started cramping halfway through the last lap. But nonetheless, I managed to complete it in 149th placing out of 331-placed runners or about the 45th percentile. I think that is respectable performance since this run attracts the more serious runners as it is part of the Tri-Factor challenge.

My next run will be the Safra Army Half Marathon in September as I am thinking of giving the Hat Yai Nature Run Half Marathon a miss. Hopefully, I'll be able to train properly and achieve a sub-2 hour timing in the AHM.

LTA Responds

2010-07-01T11:14:00.001+08:00

In my previous post, I highlighted a fare calculation glitch when carrying out a 100+ km trip on 966 and transferring to 858 or a combination of train and bus rides.

LTA has acknowledged that there is an error.

Dear Mr Yusry

DISTANCE FARES CALCULATOR ERROR/TWO HOUR JOURNEY RULE
FEEDBACK NUMBER: 20100617-0957

We refer to your email of 17 June 2010.

We have noted the errors and will rectify it. We thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.

Yours sincerely

(SIGNED IN LOTUS NOTES)
Jxxxx Dxxxx (Ms)
Executive
Project Communications & Feedback

Both errors have not been fixed correctly. Train from Airport to Woodlands and bus back to Airport has been corrected to show 194 cents, but riding the bus a loop back to Woodlands still has an error.

Additionally, I have written to the ST Forums regarding an inconsistency in calculating the MRT train fares.

The letter is here.

And LTA's and PTC's reply is here.

If LTA and PTC's reply is true, then the Distance Fare Calculator should give a distance of 7.4km for a trip between Paya Lebar and Bishan stations instead of the 14.4km specified by the calculator. A trip on the CCL takes only 12 minutes, but the EW/NS line would take around 30 minutes if I recall correctly during my time in Raffles Institution.

I could spend 15 minutes waiting for a train and the CCL line would still get me to Bishan faster than the EW/NS lines specified by the calculator.

So their reply is inconsistent with their actions.

Daniel Chin has his two cents worth of opinion over here and here.

2010-06-25T08:19:00.000+08:00

Sent the following mail to LTA and still no response till today. The bug still exists on the fare calculator website.

Hi,
#1

According to "http://www.ptc.gov.sg/qosNfares/doc/Fare_revision_2010_news_release.pdf", the maximum fare on trunk bus services is 194 cents.

However, computing the following trip:

966: From 83109 Opp Eunos Stn to 46009 Woodlands Reg Int (35.4km)
858: From 46009 Woodlands Reg Int to 46289 Blk 891c Cp (70.5km)

gives me a fare of 201 cents (over a distance of 105.9 km).

This is definitely an error and it is possible that there are more undetected errors in the calculator.

#2
In the old transfer rebate scheme, the last boarding must be done within 2 hours of the 1st boarding to enjoy the transfer rebates even though the journey may not be completed in 2 hours.

Reference: http://www.transitlink.com.sg/transfer.html#1

The Distance Fare scheme has a different wording that says the journey must be completed within 2 hours, but the FAQ says that the transfer criteria has been kept the same except one may make up to 6 trips, up from the current 4 trips.

Reference ("completed within 2 hours"): http://www.publictransport.sg/publish/ptp/en/distance_based_fares.html
Reference ("kept the same"): http://www.publictransport.sg/publish/etc/medialib/distance_fares.Par.15101.File.dat/Distance%20Fares%20Web_FAQs.pdf

The example EZLink screens showing the Distance Fares seem to show that transfer eligibility is determined at boarding instead of alighting (similar to the current transfer rebate scheme) and leads me to believe that the last boarding must be done within 2 hours instead of ensuring that the journey is completed within 2 hours.

If the 2-hour completion rule is correct, then there will be a statistically significant number of users affected, in particular those involving border crossings who can easily be held up by Customs.

Please advise which "rule" is correct with regards to Distance Fares.

I have noticed that the fare calculator bug occurs when a bus ride is added in the 2nd or subsequent trips. Taking 858 from Woodlands to Airport and the train back reveals the correct fare of 194 cents, but taking a train to Airport and 858 back shows the wrong fare of 206 cents.

GoogleCL

2010-06-19T08:31:00.004+08:00

GoogleCL is probably one of the most interesting stuff to come out of Google, at least for me.

It allows you to utilise Google services, like posting a blog post using the super-awesome command-line.

And that is what I have done with this post.

DNS Hijacking

2010-06-13T23:19:00.000+08:00

Starhub has begun hijacking DNS queries and returning 204.232.231.43 instead of NXDOMAIN for non-existant domains. This breaks established RFC standards and screws up the Internet.

To fix this, use L3's or Google's DNS servers. I'm using Google's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and L3's 4.2.2.2 .

Passion Run 2010

2010-05-31T15:08:00.001+08:00

Ran the Passion Run two Saturdays ago and did it in a respectable 2 hours 34 minutes and 52 seconds, putting me somewhere between 15% and 21% mark depending on the classification category.

Based on my personal GPS timing records, I completed the equivalent of a half-marathon or about 21.1 km in 2 hours 11 minutes. Hopefully, I'll be able to do a sub 2 hour run in this July's 21km Timex Tri-Run and improving July's timing in September's Army Half Marathon.

If so, I hope that I'll be able to do a 4 hour 30 minute or faster run in the year-end's StanChart Marathon.

IDAHO 2010

2010-05-17T05:17:00.004+08:00

Today is the (partly) International Day Against Homophobia. It is nice to have, but I don't know how effective they are especially since not every country recognises such days and even those that recognise such days may not put in much effort in publicising the event.

Pink Dot 2010

2010-05-16T18:04:00.001+08:00

Some shots from yesterday's Pink Dot 2010 event. Official photos can be found over at the Pink Dot website.

Sexuality Education

2010-05-01T17:54:00.000+08:00

I've been a fairly logical and research-based person, so I never quite needed a proper sexuality education in school. And the endless grounding in not being in a relationship until being ready to raise a family did certainly help.

But I do kind of worry for teenagers of today.

And even more worrying after I read that MOE awarded the contract to teach additional sexuality education programmes to several religious organisations, making up a majority of the contract holders.

Religion and sex don't really mix; not quite like water and oil, but more sugar and water. Too much sugar, and it doesn't dissolve.

Right now, the syllabus are not publicly known, so it is hard to say how things will turn out, but we can make a guess at based on what is currently known. The syllabus will probably focus a lot on abstinence and not contraception. And things like masturbation and homosexuality will probably be given a cursory overview, if mentioned at all. And I think that is when shit happens.

I don't know how it is like being a teen for those ten or more years older than me, but orgasms ARE nice and are still nice at this age and day.

You can't stop teens being teens any more you can stop some adults from being kids. They are bound to experiment and eventually have sex. And this is where I think they need to know the full picture.

I don't know about the government and others, but to me, sexuality education is to teach them how their bodies are changing, how they can be safe and the risks of sex. That is to say, that they need to know that babies can appear and disease spreading when least expected.

The best way is to abstain from sex before marriage and once married, the need to stay faithful to their partner. What about those who can't legally get married? What options do they have? That's when you teach about relationships and where their relationship stands. Are they ready to take the next step? Are they ready to settle down and be life partners despite not being able to get married? These are the kind of stuff that totally relevant in today's world, but conspicuously absent in sexuality education.

And if all that fails, they need to learn how to use contraceptives. Abstinence is still the safest, unless you believe in Immaculate Conception, but barring that, contraceptives, when used properly, will help to reduce the risks of disease and pregnancy and I believe that is the main aim of teaching sexuality education to teenagers.

Lucid Lynx

2010-04-26T13:19:00.007+08:00

If all goes well, the next release of Ubuntu and its derivatives will be released on the 29th.

I've been playing with Lucid Lynx on my soon-to-be main machine, a 2.5-year-old Dell Inspiron 1420. Lucid looks good so far and everything on the Dell seems to be working as expected including the webcam.

What's more interesting is the unofficial. but possibly soon-to-be Cannonical-endorsed, LXDE-powered Ubuntu derivative known as Lubuntu. I've been on a hunt of an even lighter desktop than the current XFCE-powered Xubuntu I am using on my EEEPC. I've been playing with Lubuntu on my current 6-year-old 1.6Ghz Centrino notebook under VirtualBox and it is very smooth, indeed. Looks like it may end up replacing Xubuntu 9.10 on the EEEPC once the final 10.04 release comes out.

Two down and many more to go.

I'm talking about my runs.

Did the F1 Nature Run yesterday. Not too bad of a race, but too bad there was no electronic timing. The advantage is that there are many other runners to give you the motivation to overtake them and ultimately, run faster. It's amazing to see runners all decked-out in Zoot and 2XU compression clothings slowly being overtaken by yours truly who has more or less maintained a fairly constant running speed without walking unless having a drink.

Ended up averaging 8.6km/h along the course of 12.88km (according to my Garmin) or 9.45km/h along the course of 14.15km (compensating based on the distance markers totem poles, finishing the course in 1 hour 30 minutes, far far ahead of my estimate of 2 hours and a given maximum of 3 hours.

And this is despite uneven ground and hilly terrain.

And my Brooks Cascadia did a fine job. No pain in my knee, ankles and shins and grips the terrain very well despite being wet due to the rain the previous day.

But stupid me forgot to do some post-run stretching and got a muscle cramp in my left calf in the shower leaving me in a tip-toe-like position and probably to the amusement of the rest of the bathers.

Oh well. For now, I'm looking forward to some swimming practice (found some interesting and probably useful Youtube videos on how to swim the freestyle) and my next race - the 25km Passion Run, which I hope to complete in 2.5 hours or less.

Trains

2010-04-19T15:44:00.005+08:00

I don't like trains.

Well, actually, I do; just not those operated by SMRT and SBSTransit because, they are expensive in terms of profit margin (obscenely high at around 30 - 40%) as well as the difficulty in obtaining a seat, say compared to those operated by CityRail in Sydney, or MetroTrains in Melbourne.

So when an opportunity arose where I could ride the Circle Line for free, I hopped aboard one.

Before this, the last time I took a local metro train was in July 2007. Since then, I have given up on them.

The Alstoms on the Circle Line have got the best acceleration AFAIK among the local trains, but not a good choice in since we have so little seats and grab poles. For most trips, trains are still more expensive than buses, so I'll stick to buses. And despite being driverless, the NE and CC Lines are more expensive than the NS/EW lines. I mean who the fuck wants to pay $0.73 - $0.83 when the same trip costs $0.68 on the NS/EW lines and $0.69 on buses. Certainly not me.

No Creativity

2010-04-16T14:12:00.001+08:00

Looking at the list of members on the Singapore Public Transport Information Net Forums confirms what I have suspected in ages - Singapore bus enthusiasts have no creativity in deciding their usernames.

Luckily there are still some people with relatively easy to recall names such as arsenalR0x, deepmuziq, ngweitong, etc, whoever they may be.

MacRitchie Recce

2010-04-09T18:08:00.002+08:00

Went out recceing MacRitchie today prior to my F1 Nature Run on April 25th. The loop was approximately 11 km, but the run is planned for 15km, so I'm not sure how that would work out; probably some sort of diversion along the trail to Bukit Timah.

It was also a test for my new Brooks Cascadia 4 trail running shoes I bought a few weeks back. Not too bad of a shoe. Since this is my first trail run in about 8 years, I can't feel an improvement over a pair of normal running shoes. I suppose there is a difference in terms in grip, but so far, they seem to be doing to job well.

Being a recce session, I didn't run much; more walking, but still managed to finish the trail in about an hour 45 minutes. I'm targeting a finish time of 2 hours 30 - 45 minutes for the 15km trail. That should cater for some of the climbs and obstacles that I would likely face along the route, but still be able to run at 8.5 - 10km/h along the smoother parts.

MacRitchie has definitely improved. There's a cafeteria there, which I think serves halal food since the operation seems to be overseen by a Muslim woman. Lots of lockers charging $1 or $2 depending on size. And best of all, free use of the shower rooms; cubicles for the shy ones and open overhead showers for the not-so-shy ones. I think there were a total of 14 spaces - 6 cubicles and 8 overheads. Not sure how it's gonna cater to the crowd during the F1 Nature Run. Probably ends up like during NS time; lots of sharing and speedwork.

Also ended up signing up for the Timex Tri-Run today instead of after the changeover of my credit card's billing period. Timex is offering a free Timex watch for those to sign up during the roadshow at Centrepoint Robinson's Level 4 Timex-booth and complete either the 10km or 21km distances. 21km distance for $32.90 is very very cheap.

Smartbus 903

2010-04-05T12:22:00.003+08:00

I just found out that the new SmartBus 903 (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) takes between 3 to 4 hours to complete a single-direction journey depending on the time of the day.

Plotting the route in Google Maps gives me a route of approximately 81 km end-to-end.

Makes me want to visit Melbourne just to be able to ride this route end-to-end.

View Larger Map

2010 Running Calendar

2010-04-04T14:19:00.002+08:00

Ran my first race earlier last month - the 16km North East Run. Over the past week or so, I have been planning my race schedule for the rest of the year.

March: 16km North-East Run (completed)
April: 15km F1 Nature Run (applied and paid)
May: 25km Passion Run (applied and paid)
June: 45km Runway Cycling (to apply)
July: 21km Timex Tri-Run (to apply)
August: Rest - Ramadhan
September: 21km Army Half Marathon (applied and paid)
October: TBA
November: Rest - Pre-Marathon Training and Ramp Down
December: 42km Marathon (to apply)

The K310UD Demonstrator

2010-03-31T19:13:00.002+08:00

The photo of the Scania K310UD Demonstrator is now out; just use the search term SBS7888K.

Hopefully, the gearbox will be well-optimised; remember that this is the Euro IV 8.9-litre engine like in the first batch of K230UBs and it is well-known that the initial gearbox firmware sucked.

What I am enthused is the window line. It is awesomely low and I like it. The upper deck windscreen looks suitably large too and will definitely provide a great gunzelling view! Awesome and I am looking forward to seeing this bus body on more chassis in the future even though the interior is the same ugly brown in like all other SBSTransit Gemilang buses.

On the other hand, I am slightly pissed. Apparently the online-shop that I wanted to shop in had a 20% off coupon that expired two days back. 20% off 73 GBP is a fucking load of money. What makes it worse is that I had been planning the purchase over a week ago, but only to make the transaction later next month during my credit card's new billing period. If I knew of the existence of this coupon, I would have done the transaction then instead of waiting for the new billing period.

Shitz.

Speeding Up Firefox

2010-03-29T15:48:00.002+08:00

I have been a fan of Firefox ever since it was known as Phoenix and then Firebird before being named what it is today.

I love the fact that supports extensions and that is what makes Firefox extremely customizable. Unfortunately, my favourite extension - TabMixPlus - slows down Firefox performance considerably. Even my other bloated extensions such as Greasemonkey and AdBlock Plus do not slow down Firefox noticeably.

But a few days back, I decided to play around with TabMixPlus' settings and switched off the Unread Tabs and Progress Bar on Tabs features and wham! Firefox now runs as fast as it is does without TabMixPlus.

So there you go; sometimes only certain features of an extension is bloatware and not the whole extension.

On another note, my current notebook will be turning 6 years old in May. I am amazed that it has lasted this long. Even the battery still lasts around 50 minutes which is quite an achievement.

OkCupid Seems Promising

2010-03-02T08:53:00.002+08:00

Decided to try out OkCupid. It looks promising so far and I like the way it tries to match people; it asks you questions and gets your answers. Additionally, it also asks you what kind of answers your match should have and the importance of them answering that way.

Looks like I might be able to find something good out of this.

Anti-Atheist

2010-02-25T17:03:00.003+08:00

While perusing some threads on the net last night, something got me thinking whether the reason that some theists are so against atheists is due to the misconception that atheists are anti-theists instead of the actual meaning of non-theists.

Atheism simply means denying God and not being against those who believe in God. This misconception might be the reason for the hostility towards atheists.

Daemon

2010-02-21T01:35:00.002+08:00

I have finally finished reading Daniel Suarez's Daemon and it is one awesome book.

It's a techno-thriller and has pretty accurately depicted technical jargons, though a computer-controlled world, ala Matrix, is still pretty far-fetched, though not entirely impossible.

Now, I'm looking forward to obtaining a copy of his new novel, Freedom.

Fatherhood and Relationships

2010-02-21T00:52:00.003+08:00

A year or two back, I gave myself until the eve of my 31st birthday to be in a relationship or have experienced one before. No more to that.

My new target is to be a dad, hopefully, by the eve of my 41st birthday.

I've thought long and hard; I don't think I'll ever be comfortable being in a relationship in today's society and the thought of finding the one that society approves of is extremely remote. Yes, I have read about people who are generally attracted to those of the same sex having found the one in someone of the opposite sex and have the perfect marriage and kids, but those are extremely rare.

I'm not totally closing the door to being in a relationship if I have found the one, but I am not going to spend the time and effort in hunting down the one.

Relationships between two strangers are inherently fragile and even more so of same-sex relationships; I do not think I can handle that fragility. I'm into strict monogamy and the till death do us part mantra and without legal protections and benefits and societal acceptance, I have little hope in making such relationships work. The longing of being in a relationship remains, but having been without one for almost 29 years, I'm pretty sure I'll be fine without one for the rest of my life.

A parent-child relationship, with the various legal protection and general societal acceptance, is something I think I can handle. Single-parent families may not be fully accepted, but it is way more accepted throughout the world than same-sex relationships.

There are so many deserving children in need of a loving family and I think adoption will be something I look forward to in the future. And if I can afford it, I'll probably do some fostering and donate my time, money and assistance to orphanages.

On a side note, I wonder how many couples would prioritise adoption over making babies. That's probably a question that'll never be answered.

I also think I came out prematurely; at least label-wise.

I don't deny that I have, generally, same sex attraction, but I also don't deny the fact that the one for me may end up being of the opposite sex.

I have thus far successfully not acted upon my sexual urges and do not see any problems in maintaining the status quo. I may have once attempted to be in a same-sex relationships and that still does not change anything. Well, let's just say that that attempt did not go so well and it did put a damper, but I am kind of over it.

I think the appropriate label for me is queer and not gay. Queer just means unusual; different; and I definitely don't fit in the social norm. I also don't fit in the gay stereotype too and that has been the subject of some soul-searching for me. Am I gay, asexual, straight, bi, or chimera with a little bit of everything? What I have discovered is that there is no label to fit me and queer fits best. Sexuality is fluid as long you don't close all doors.

As long as I can find someone who I am attracted to and feel that is the one for me; makes me happy and loves me for who I am; believes in monogamy and the till death do us part mantra; it does not matter whether the someone is a guy or a girl; or a M2F or F2M or somewhere in between. Sex is not everything in a relationship. For me, I'll be perfectly happy with being a to cuddle; to hug and cuddle; and show our love in other ways. Maybe that's why my bolster , and not my hand, is my current best friend. I find touching to be very sensual and I like it a lot. And I'm not alone in that. Many asexuals, who do not demonstrate sexual urges, do demonstrate a need for touch and that's one of the few reasons they are in relationships and marriages.

Fucking Messenger Spam

2010-02-18T10:09:00.002+08:00

Windows Live Messenger is giving me the shits.

Too many fucking spammers have added me to their lists and now I'm considering an alternative username.

Fucking Spammers.

Just an Update

2010-01-24T08:31:00.000+08:00

When I renamed this blog to LITEMaX.journal(); from LITEMaX.blog(); many moons ago, I was hoping to make my blogging more personal, thence the 'journal' function name. But alas, that has not come into fruition as I did not feel comfortable writing personal stuff with my identity wide open.

Nonetheless, I will continue updating this blog (along with a possible rename back to LITEMaX.blog();), but on an irregular basis. Most of my blogging will probably be about boring stuff like buses, LED lights, some running and cycling, among other things. I don't think I'll be writing any personal thoughts on this blog.

Don't be surprise if I don't update this blog for months.

Stale

2010-01-19T06:28:00.001+08:00

The blog's getting rather stale, so here's a demonstration video of a two-sized table to freshen it up.

Shit Happens

2010-01-08T11:41:00.002+08:00

I have no fucking idea, but my rarely used Australian Paypal account was somehow accessed and a EUR 59.99 payment was withdrawn from my bank account as it was an eCheque payment. I managed to get the payment cancelled, but the money was still withdrawn from my bank account.

That was still okay since I could still transfer the money from my Paypal account back into my bank account UNTIL STUPID PAYPAL decided to put my account into limited mode. Now I have to freaking do an address verification once again and that's not easy considering I am now in Singapore instead of Australia.

I'm going to see if I can do a bank account verification with my dormant credit union account. If that goes fine, then I should be able to transfer the money back into my bank account. Otherwise, I'll have to enlist the help of a friend to carry out the address verification.

Welcoming 2010

2010-01-01T00:01:00.002+08:00

Dilbert says 'Hi' to 2010.

2009 may not have been a perfect year, but it certainly has not been a bad one, either.

I started 2009 with an aim of finishing a marathon and I certainly achieved that. This single aim or resolution, if you like, has spurred me to make 2010 an even better one.

It goes to show that if you put the effort in achieving your resolutions, you certainly will.

Here's to a fruitful 2010!

True Love 1980

2009-12-30T15:37:00.003+08:00

Awesome song from Ash. Last 30 seconds or thereabout is N(ot)S(afe)F(or)W(ork).

Emo boy is played by Drew Aguilera and the jock is played by Ben Farmer. Cuties.

Goodbye Scania Eλbo

2009-12-14T12:28:00.002+08:00

We had a farewell tour of the Scania Eλbo last Saturday. The Eλbo may be one of the worst city bus bodies we have, but these buses will be sadly missed. I know I will.

Taken at Duck Tours landing site off Republic Avenue.

Mission Accomplished

2009-12-07T08:34:00.002+08:00

I started 2009 with a mission - to start running.

And I did.

In May, I did my first 10K.

In August, my first half-marathon.

Now, in December, my first full marathon - the whole 42.195km.

This is not the end, but just a beginning.

For next year, I hope to run more marathons AND lose more fats. A lighter and leaner me would help a lot with my joints when I run.

What can I say, but it was an absolutely AWESOME first-time marathon and I look forward to many more!

42195th Visitor Before 42195 Metres

2009-12-05T11:38:00.003+08:00

It just so happened that while I was checking my blog, I noticed that I have had 42195 recorded visitors before I was about to embark on a 42195-metre race tomorrow.

So here is a shout-out to the 42195th visitor who is from Brazil and arrived at my blog while searching for a translation of As Tu Deja Aime's lyrics.

StanChart Singapore Marathon 2009

2009-12-04T10:56:00.004+08:00

Collected my race pack yesterday at Expo and was assigned bib number 32492.

I'm expecting to complete the race in 5 hours 30 minutes, which I do not think is unrealistic considering in the previous Safra Half Marathon, I managed to complete it in 2 hours 45 minutes AND limping between the 13km and finish markers. If I had kept to my planned pace, I would probably finished it in around 2 hours 20 minutes.

This time round, I'm going to take care of my feet landing position to prevent a similar occurrence from happening. In anycase, feel free to drop by the finish line at the Padang and say Hi to me.

While at the Expo yesterday, there were some really nice goodies available. Energy gels were being sold at $50+ for 24 packets and Newton shoes going at a 28% discount which is awesome. I've always wanted Newtons, but I don't really have the funds right now. But at $193 for the pair I'm eyeing, it is certainly a bargain as I am naturally a forefoot strike runner even though I am trying to transition into mid-foot strike.

Also found out that replacement nose-bridge and side grips for my Rudy Project Rydon will cost $20, so I'm planning to change my currently blue Rydon into a red one. That will go awesome with my red Adidas cap. I'm also looking at buying a new road bike. No models that I'm eyeing now, but it has to be red. For 2010, I'm going red. Red has always been my favourite colour and will always be. So in addition, I'm also planning to get myself a red Casio G-Shock. I've already got a red mobile phone and a red EDC torch. I'm hoping to paint my future room red, but I think that will be vetoed by my mum, so I'll probably go with red (and black) furniture instead.

I have big plans for next year; I am eyeing participating in overseas marathons. There are three marathons I'm eyeing right now; Gold Coast Airport - 4th July, Sydney Running Festival - 19th September and Penang Bridge - 21st November.

If I can get cheap accommodation at friend's place over ~90 days, I would probably participate both the Gold Coast Airport and Sydney Running Festival marathons. Penang would be a definite shoe-in as travel and accomodation expenses would be cheap as well as the awesome RM20 weekly Rapid Penang tourist bus ticket for sightseeing, but is too close to the Singapore Marathon. I'm not sure if I can run two marathons in two weeks.

But there is still a lot of time for me to plan and what I'll do next year will depend on how this Sunday's race turns out. In any case, I'm unlikely to be doing any ultra-marathons next year; though I am particularly interested in doing triathlons if I can get a swimming coach.

Jorge Lopez Mercado

2009-11-24T09:05:00.001+08:00

Arranging an Outing?

2009-11-22T17:50:00.005+08:00

As a follow-up to my earlier outburst about the lack of planning when organising outings, I decided to write a short article listing some pointers to note.

The article can be found here.

Nonetheless, a few events following my outburst has affected me even more negatively.

I have decided that I would prefer having less friends who understand me rather than more friends, but ones that do not understand me. It's not that I have many friends now; probably in the region of 30 max and less than 10 that I still hangout with on an occasional basis.

I was reading the 1988 street directory a few minutes back and it brought back many happy memories. Back in 1988, I had 2 close friends, one of whom I lost contact with until Facebook reunited us. Even with 2 friends, I had a good time.... maybe even more than now.

Is two my new target; should I even attempt trimming my current 10-30 friends down to 2? I'm thinking that might be the case. Maybe even 1 would suffice.

I don't care so much anymore. I'm happy being alone. In fact, I even prefer doing things alone. I don't get distracted and function much better. That's just me being me and I like that.

I've been giving in to the preference of others without getting anything in return. I don't know why people can't plan outings in greater detail once in a while just to keep me happy. The closest thing to detailed planning I have encountered are the local bus tours. Even then, they sometimes don't even follow the plan. I can't recall any other gathering I've been in that has any planning at all.

I'm not asking much. Just properly plan an outing say once in every 5 - 10 outings and I think I'll be sufficiently happy. But no, I must have went out at least 20 - 30 times this year and only the lone bus tour in Feb had any form of planning.

Anyway, I have decided to participate in the Adidas Sundown Marathon (42.195 km) as well as the 50km Northface run and Singapore Marathon 2010. That being the case means I am now unavailable for any outings until approximately December 2010. So don't bother inviting me to any outings.

Bus tours, overseas bus gunzelling trips and training runs are, however, exempted from this rule.

25km Route

2009-11-18T17:53:00.002+08:00

After a few pissed moments, I have finally embarked on my planned 25km route.

But since I started late (at noon), I made it into a speed walking session due to the heat. If I were to run the route, I would probably collapse half way.

With an effective 1 week left to the marathon - I rest and ramp down my training during the last week - I hope to run the above route (with minor variations like extension to Fort Road and ending at Maccas ECP) at least twice more.

Looks like I don't even need people to set up refreshment stands for me during my training runs.

I'm still targeting a 5 - 5.5 hour finishing time for the marathon and looks it won't be too difficult to achieve it. Let's hope my feet do not give any problems. Time to load up on diclofenac tablets.

End of Brawn

2009-11-18T09:07:00.002+08:00

Looks like this is now the end of Brawn GP, having been bought over by Mercedes-Benz a few days back and rechristened as Mercedes GP.

It also means that their striking and luminous white and lime-green/yellow livery will be replaced by a silver-based livery - think McLaren-Mercedes without the red.

2009 has proved to be a very exciting year for me as this is the first season that I followed more-or-less from the start to the end.

BrawnGP also proved to be an amazing team, with 100% championship wins as well as being the second ever team to obtain a 1-2 finish in their debut race, after Mercedes GP in 1954. I guess this is a suitable take-over.

But still, I'm looking forward to 2010 especially if the rumours of Jenson Button moving onto McLaren-Mercedes and Mercedes GP attempting to form an all-German driving team hold true.

Outings

2009-11-14T01:07:00.005+08:00

I don't know if I will lose more friends, but I have had enough of lack of planning.

Do not plan any more outings with me except for the already planned Penang Trip and Christmas Carol movie until Singapore Marathon is over.

I get fucking stressed when I don't get to run my planned training runs. LIKE FUCKING TODAY. I was so fucking excited to run a new route I had planned, but all hopes was dashed when it started fucking raining at 11.30 pm and we have yet to even attempt to make a fucking move.

Common sense tells you that if I wake up at 7 - 8 am each day means I fucking sleep at 11 pm - midnight the previous day. That means I have to fucking start my fucking run around 2 hours prior which means around 9 - 10 pm.

I thought people would have common sense to make a move by 9.30 - 10 pm, but apparently not.

For many, many times I have endured outings that have not been accurately planned before hand.

Now, I put a stop to all outings until at least Singapore Marathon is over. Any outings after that has to have an accurate plan presented to me beforehand.

I cannot handle this anymore, so don't try to irritate me further. I have had fucking enough.

Only consolation is that I have a wedding to attend at Eunos CC tomorrow and that is close enough to my planned starting point of my newly planned running route - about 2km downstream out of a total of 13km.

Elzetta ZFL-M60 First Impressions

2009-11-12T16:11:00.005+08:00

My Elzetta ZFL-M60 with a High/Low tailcap arrived after an excruciating long wait of approximately 9 days. This is my third real LED torch light after the Regalight EDC and Fenix L2D.

The ZFL-M60 is powered by the wonderful Malkoff Devices M60 drop-in. The M60 has an operating voltage of 3.8V - 9V and outputs 235 lumens using a Cree XR-E and TIR optics.

The ZFL-M60 is a very, very hefty torch and feels very good in my hand. The torch sample I have seems to have a very slightly off-centred beam that probably won't show when I'm outdoors. The head seems to be screwed on very tightly and I have problems unscrewing it. I hope it has not been Loctited, since reviews of the original release (twisty with momentary button) show it being disassembled. I'll have to ask Elzetta about this.

The Malkoff M60 itself is a single-stage drop-in and the two levels (235 and 15 lumens) are controlled by the tailcap. Tighten for high and loosen for low. It is a forward clicky and thus allows the torch momentarily switched on. There are no silly strobes or SOS modes.

Once I have had a chance to play around with it further when my RCR123As and charger arrive, I will post a proper review.

2009-11-12T12:54:00.002+08:00

There has not been any clarity in my life since..... probably 2001.

It was not like this before that. Sure, I had the grandiose of dreams in high school like owning the most successful IT company in the world with companies such as IBM, HP, 3Com and Microsoft as subsidiaries as well as being the next Bill Gates. But that is no longer the case now.

Now, I'm simply happy with taking a small step at a time and hoping for an acceptable tomorrow.

Or am I actually not?

I don't really know. My heart says one thing and my brain another. One minute I am happy with something I have thought about and the other, I decide that I am not actually happy with it. I guess I am just being overwhelmed by all the possibilities in life. Probably it is because that I tend to plan and evaluate possible outcomes. Just leaving things as is and deciding on paths as they come seems pretty alien to me.

Maybe I will spend some time reorganising my thoughts before I write something stupid and subsequently regret. Oh damn... there I go again. Looks like planning, organisation and evaluation will always be part of me.

O.405Ns and Their Engines

2009-11-06T15:12:00.003+08:00

For a long time, due to the flat and slightly sloping floor, I had thought that the O.405N/N2/GN/GN2 had a vertically mounted engine like the Citaros and the Volvo B7L. Apparently I have been wrong.

The Ns (with the exception of the NH, which I will cover later) still had a longitudinally mounted engine, but was placed closer to the side. This allowed for a level floor all the way to the mid-doors and a gently sloping floor to the rear. Additionally, LHD vehicles could mount a 3rd door behind the rear-axle, but not on RHD vehicles as illustrated by the O.405Ns with Newcastle Buses (fleet numbers 3405 and 3406).

As for the O.405NH which are found mostly in Australia, they are basically a chimera - they have the rear of an O.405 MkII and front of the O.405N. This results in steps in the rear half of the bus.

The Citaros have the engine vertically mounted to allow for an even flatter floor all the way to the rear of the bus, but unlike those from Volvo, the radiator remains mounted on the other side of the bus and thus does not have the water closet appearance of the B7L. But this means the last door will not be able to be placed as far rear as the B7L.

As always, I'm amazed at German engineering.

Oh Noes!

2009-11-04T18:27:00.002+08:00

It looks like Kobayashi will be working at his father's sushi restaurant as Toyota has just announced its withdrawal from Formula 1.

mobiTweet

2009-11-04T13:17:00.002+08:00

Starhub has just launched their mobiTweet VAS which allows the use of Twitter through SMS. And for one of those rare moments, it is available for use with Green Prepaid plans.

I've yet to actually tweet using SMS, but I have been receiving my selected tweets just fine. I'm happy with that.

Circular Reasoning

2009-11-01T12:33:00.004+08:00

Firstly, we have a fucking minister who says Singapore is not a country. (Straits Times, 30th October 2009, Page A18) Then why did I have to fucking waste 30 months doing National Service then?

Now we have a fucking Prime Minister who uses fucking circular reasoning to explain the increase in ERP prices.

Awesome and we actually pay each of them millions of Singapore Dollars a year?

Ubuntu 9.10 Is Finally Here

2009-10-29T22:35:00.003+08:00

I've been refreshing the Ubuntu homepage since morning and it is finally here.

The ISO image host is current down, but when it finally gets back up, you can access the files here.

I'm already running the Release Candidate version of Ubuntu 9.10 so it just a simple sudo aptitude update and sudo aptitude safe-upgrade for me.

Another Feedback to LTA

2009-10-29T22:07:00.001+08:00

Sent another feedback message to LTA now that the roll-out of the new bus stop poles has commenced.

I refer to my previous feedback # 20090617-0419 regarding the new bus stop poles.

Despite my earlier feedback, the new poles now being deployed in the east continue not have the fare stages displayed, nor are the fare tables updated to display the fare stages.

Short of memorising the fare stages of all bus services in Singapore or troublesomely carrying the Transitlink Guide, is LTA planning another mechanism that public transit passengers will be able to utilise in verifying the accuracy of the fare consoles before tapping their CEPAS cards?

The old combination of knowing the boarding fare stage and fare allows us to verify the accuracy of the alighting fare stage within a given range, but with just the fare, we are not able to verify both the boarding and alighting fare stages to any degree of accuracy.

Being able to verify the fare stages before a potential wrong fare deduction saves us precious time and money that would otherwise be spent filing a claim with Transitlink which may or may not be approved.

Let's kick back and relax while we wait what kind of response they are going to give.

Breakdown Mode

2009-10-27T09:07:00.002+08:00

The stupid fucking driver did not set the card readers to Breakdown mode and my mum was charged 69 cents for her trip between Outram and Bugis when it should have been free.

So now I have to claim back 19 cents from Transitlink as she was given a 50-cent rebate for her follow up trip home. I wonder how much money has SBSTransit profited from the breakdown buses.

And for you public transport users, familiarise yourself with the bus breakdown procedures. As long as the card readers are working, they MUST BE in Breakdown Mode. This will credit back the initial fare deducted. Unlike the ENTRY/EXIT mode, this mode takes around 1 - 2 seconds to process. That means from the time you tap and hold your CEPAS card on the reader, the green light and beep will only happen 1 - 2 seconds later instead of almost immediately in the ENTRY/EXIT modes.

And make sure you get your free complimentary ride ticket which is valid on all services of the same company, so feel free to utilise it on the super duper expensive Night and Premium bus routes.

I'm planning to utilise mine on either route 502A, 518A or 536.

On a more positive note, I managed to get the value of my trial FlashPay CEPAS card down to 2 cents after having 90 cents stuck in it for a few weeks. Took route 30 to Bedok from Eunos (max fare is 69 cents) and then transferred to 229 to Bedok South (max fare 19 cents).

Awesome Brazilian Race

2009-10-19T01:52:00.003+08:00

Just finished watching the F1 Brazilian Grand Prix and was an awesome one from start to finish.

Barachello had a very good start (P1), but ended up getting only one point and thus Vettel is now second overall.

But more awesomer, hottie Jenson is now first with 15 points ahead and thus is mathematically the F1 World Champion and so is BrawnGP, the F1 Constructor's Champion with 25.5 points ahead.

All that's left is the 2-3 placing which will be finalised at the brand new Abu Dhabi track, hosting its debut F1 race. Hopefully Barachello will move up back to second and thus allow a 1-2 World Championship for the BrawnGP drivers.

Coincidentally, this afternoon's MotoGP race was won by Australian Casey Stoner and now, the F1 Champion is another Australia, Mark Webber.

Karmic's A Little Better.....

2009-10-17T08:43:00.003+08:00

.... but still not as perfect as Intrepid.

Since the upgrade to Jaunty did not do much for me, I decided to upgrade to Karmic beta in hopes that it would fix the problems with X and XVideo on my ageing notebook's Intel 855GME graphics.

Well, it certainly partly fixes it..... as long as I disable Kernel Mode Setting.

When KMS is disabled, XVideo works as it is meant to, but I still get the missing mouse cursor in X, which I can temporarily resolve by switching to a TTY console and back to X.

When KMS is enabled, behaviour is the same as in Jaunty... missing XVideo support, but no disappearing mouse cursor problems.

Well, at least, there are now temporary workarounds, but something in me wants to switch back to Intrepid which worked perfectly but will no longer be supported when 10.04 comes out. Or maybe it is time for me to junk Ubuntu and move to Debian.

Unofficial Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for CEPAS NETS Flashpay, EZ-Link and LTA Concession Cards

2009-10-14T10:26:00.004+08:00

I'm maintaining an Unofficial Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for CEPAS NETS Flashpay, EZ-Link and LTA Concession Cards over on my website.

If you have a question on CEPAS, post it as a comment on this post and I'll answer it over on my website.

It is definitely a work in progress and may not look very nice in the mean time. I'm working on getting it hyper-referenced.

Pea-Sized Human Brains and CEPAS

2009-10-12T16:16:00.003+08:00

The introduction of CEPAS cards really brings out the pea-sized brains in humans.

CEPAS cards introduce transparency by removing the $3 travel-only deposit and allowing full utilisation of the card's value.

This means, travel usage cannot go into negative (aka semi-credit) as there is no more travel deposit. With this, train operators have made a minimum requirement of $3 value when travelling on trains. This is not surprising as maximum travel fare on trains is around $2.65.

Having $3 in a CEPAS card is virtually the same as $0 + $3 travel deposit ( = $3 )in the old Sony EZLINK cards, so I am wondering if human brains are really pea-sized and have difficulty in comprehending this.

Should Have Stayed on 8.10

2009-10-11T18:07:00.002+08:00

Jaunty 9.04 is fucking awful.

I have one problem after another with X.

I thought I had fixed the problem with the disappearing mouse cursor as mentioned in an earlier post.

Now I have problems with XVideo. Basically I can't do direct rendering anymore and have to go through the fucking slow X11 interface.

And the bleeding edge X drivers for Intel chipsets now require Kernel Mode Setting and I'm not in the mood to compile a new kernel.

Fuck you Jaunty. I hope Karmic will be a lot better and probably time to reformat my notebook and do a fresh install of Karmic to avoid any possible fucked up configuration files.

The New NETS Flashpay Card

2009-10-10T22:31:00.006+08:00

Update: Unofficial NETS FlashPay, EZ-Link and LTA CEPAS Cards FAQ

NETS Flashpay was officially launched on 9th October 2009. I have been a limited pre-launch user of FlashPay since August 2009.

The pre-launch card had a very plain look compared to the officially launched card.

On the front, the officially launched card (thereafter referred to as OLC) has a cute bee mascot and the FlashPay Logo has been resized to fit nicely in a rectangle - both NETS and FlashPay and now of the same length.

The back of the OLC is of a slightly darker blue and sports the new logo stamp on the top right hand corner as well as the logo being part of the background similar to the EZLink and LTA-issued CEPAS cards.

As part of the launch, you can get them at $12 with $12 value from outlets such as 7-Eleven, Cheers, Transitlink Offices, etc. If you get them from the iNETS Kiosk, they cost $5 + top-up value and you get $7 + top-up value. I'm not sure if you avoid doing a top up, but if you can, then you get a nice 40% extra value.

Update: I have checked the machines. Minimum top up is $10, so $2 bonus value equates to 13.33% extra. Still not too bad value. Just go and buy new cards when you run out of value.

Some Number Crunching

2009-10-08T18:14:00.003+08:00

Too much free time today due to the rain, so I decided to do some number crunching.

Since obtaining my prepaid SIM card back in August 2007, I have spent a total of $73.50 for $83.50 credit. As of today, I have $21.82 in credit which means $61.68 have been spent over the last 26 months. As I spent only $73.50 to obtain $83.50 credit, the actual expenditure is approximately $54.29 or around $2.09 a month. Not bad, I would say.

Next, I'd like to calculate my travel expenditure, but due to the utilisation of 4 different cards in September, I would probably have to restart calculations from this month onwards. But up till late August, I have been topping up around $20 a month; some months less, and some months more. I remember that my expenditure in April was $2.07 (three 69 cent trips).

Ubuntu 9.10 is coming out later this month, so I thought I should update my Ubuntu 8.10 installation to 9.04. Little did I know it was gonna give me lots of X problems. Apparently something between GDM, X.org Server, Intel's X drivers and my Acer X223HQ monitor was gonna give me some cursor problems.

Basically, I get a cursor during the login screen, but when X switches over to FullHD resolution, the cursor disappears. I have to switch to a tty screen and switch back to X which is when the cursor reappears. Other than that, everything seems to work fine, but I'll probably reformat the disk when I feel like upgrading to 9.10.

Statistics FAIL!

2009-10-08T13:29:00.002+08:00

Someone failed her high school statistics.

Hello Again

2009-10-04T21:51:00.002+08:00

It certainly has been a while since I posted anything on this blog.

As usual, I am having an articulation block. That means I have a lot in my mind that I would like to blog about, but am not able to articulate it into words that I can subsequently type out and post it here.

But, when I'm pissed, I find it extremely easy to articulate. Anyone notice that autistic people do that too?

So here is what I'm pissed about.

I'm pissed that Golden Village is having a special promotion in conjunction with Chinapore's National Day. Granted that they are partly owned by Hongkees, so they are well within their personal right to have such a promotion. But that does not mean I approve, so it is also within my personal right to boycott them until they redeem themselves by having a special promotion in conjunction with Australia Day for Aussies.

Other than that, I'm more or less at peace. I still get pissed once in a while, but am in more control nowdays. And yes, ear plugs help too. I probably need to get more from the pharmacy.

Maybe one day, I'll find time to articulate my thoughts. It is known that things get better if thoughts are not kept bottled up inside.

Awesome HD

2009-09-15T22:39:00.006+08:00

Since my notebook's LCD screen started giving me problems, I have been using my ageing Samsung SyncMaster 151S, a 15" 4:3 LCD monitor I bought just before my POP in 2001. The resolution is not good enough to do anything reasonable nowadays (1024 by 768 pixels), so I have been searching for a new monitor.

I had more or less set my sights on Dell's new H-IPS 24" U2410 monitor which is now on sale at $739 with an additional $60-off coupon, making $679 the final price, which is a very very good deal.

Even though $679 is an awesome price for a 24" Full-HD H-IPS-paneled LCD monitor, I was not sure whether it was really worth spending $679. For one, I'm partnering the new monitor with my notebook which is VGA-out only. VGA at FullHD 16:9 or 16:10 is definitely going to be more blurry than using digital output such as DVI-D, HDMI or DisplayPort.

Next, I'm not sure if I'm going to be in Singapore for at least the next five years. I don't want to spend $679 and then realise I have to spend hundreds more to ship the monitor overseas.

So, I ended up buying Acer's TN-paneled 21.5" X223HQ for $209 in cash at Comex. I still like my S-IPS Dell 20" 2001FP LCD monitor best, but the Acer will do. I get 1920 x 1080 in a nice 21.5" package. 16:9 does need some getting use to, but probably not as bad as the transition from 4:3 to 16:10.

And due to its large physical size and high resolution, it is pretty comfortable to read PDF files, 2 pages side by side.

Fucking Pissed

2009-09-09T00:04:00.002+08:00

I'm absolutely pissed.

I thought I had gotten out of the free PC repair business ages ago, but it decided to return and haunt me once again.

I used to enjoy repairing and fixing computers, but with the advent of the Internet and fucking aweful Windoze, too many computers are getting infected with viruses, trojans and malware. I fucking hate fixing such software shit that could be avoided if people used more secure operating systems like GNU/Linux.

FUCK WINDOZE, FUCK MALWARE, FUCK VIRUSES.

Go fucking learn GNU/Linux and fucking use it securely.

Happy 5th Anniversary

2009-09-07T19:55:00.004+08:00

The first post went up at this day and time five years ago.

Yay!

It has been five years. Posts are slow now, but hopefully things will pick up soon. I have not been able to articulate my thoughts very well these days.

Aussie Buses

2009-08-29T22:38:00.003+08:00

Yay, m/o 4805 arrived in my hands this evening.

Here is a lineup of the Aussie buses I have.

From left to right:

(Canberra) ACTION #371: Scania L94UB CC CB60 CNG
(Sydney) Sydney Buses #1275: Mercedes Benz O.405NH CC CNG
(Sydney) Sydney Buses #4805: Volvo B12BLE CC CB60 EuroIII
(Sydney) Public Transport Commission (Predecessor of Sydney Buses) #1111: Leyland Atlantean

NETS Flashpay

2009-08-27T18:34:00.008+08:00

Update: Unofficial NETS FlashPay, EZ-Link and LTA CEPAS Cards FAQ

I got my NETS FlashPay last week.

The front is a specific NETS FlashPay design and the rear looks similar to any CEPAS card. EZLink and LTA issued cards integrate their logos into the card's background, but NETS puts their logo as a stamp on the top right corner.

Topping up, however, did not go as smooth as I had expected. The TransitLink Office girl at Eunos Station said that her machine did not have the updated software to top up NETS FlashPay cards, but I now think she does not know how to do it as my mum got the card topped-up without problems at Bedok Interchange.

I have also joined the NETS Ride-and-Redeem promotion where a minimum 60 transport rides by 25th September will net me a free $20 voucher. My mum is now using the FlashPay card as she easily does 20 rides a week (2 bus rides per journey, 10 journeys a week).

I just found out that the EZLink Top-and-Tap scheme is not specific to OCBC's Mobile Banking service, but you can utilise it with Mastercard and VISA cards! Like DPAY AXS and DBS ATMs, minimum top up is $5 and the 25 cent convenience fee is waived till 30th September 2009.

Unfortunately, I did not realise this earlier as I would have otherwise be charging the top-up amounts to my credit card. Basically, you preload your EZLink online using your credit card and tap it at an DPAY AXS machine to update it with the new value. I tried it just now and I like it as I don't actually have to reimburse my mum the top up value until the credit card bill is due (around 25 - 55 days later) unlike paying through DPAY or ATM machines.

I now have a FlashPay CEPAS card, a customised adult Sony EZLink Card and my old NUS Tertiary (now a converted Adult card) Sony EZLink card. I think having three CEPAS cards (after exchange) is kind of an overkill and I am particularly fond of keeping my concession cards.

Unfortunately, GIRO auto-topups have been disabled for Sony cards for many months now. Otherwise I could do the trick I did with my GIRO-linked NS concession card - report it lost and the refund will be credited into my bank account. Of course, I will get to keep the card as a souvenir instead of surrendering it.

So here is my dilemma - exchange the former tertiary card for an an Adult CEPAS card or try to spend as much as possible and keep the card as a souvenir. For now, I'm leaning towards the latter - I am planning to keep the card as low as possible and then take a ride on the $5-a-trip Premium 587 from Woodlands to CBD. This way, I probably can even claim part of the $3 card customisation cost I had to pay.

Passion Run Newsletter

2009-08-23T23:23:00.002+08:00

The Passion Run 2009 Newsletter finally arrived in my mailbox last week, after a wait of almost 3 months.

Pretty nice stuff, but my finish line photo is very very very dark.

But still a nice touch nonetheless. In fact, this was the incentive that made me want to run the Passion Run.

It has been a week since the Army Half Marathon. The results and statistics are out and I am placed around the 70% percentile. Apparently, I was only 5 minutes or less away from the 50% percentile (median) and if I had kept to my 2hr 30 minute target, I would be somewhere in the 40% - 50%. Interesting statistics.

I have yet to resume training as I am nursing an aching left foot. Things, however, have gotten a lot better and I think my left foot is a day or so away from being perfectly fine. Yay!

For now, I'm going to take things slow by cycling instead of running; at least for this week. Hopefully, I can resume running next week.

SMRT Yutong

2009-08-20T13:23:00.003+08:00

The Yutong (#135) is out! Yes, you read that right. The bus is now operating on route 854 between Bedok and Yishun interchanges.

Army Half Marathon

2009-08-16T13:04:00.003+08:00

Yay! Got back from Army Half Marathon. Ran the half marathon in 2 hours 45 mins which is way slower than my expected time of around 2 hours 30 minutes due to an ache in my right foot. Not sure what the exact cause is, but there is a small very red patch where it is aching - seems to some sort of swelling.

HDB Flat Prices

2009-08-14T14:41:00.000+08:00

I don't usually bother reading the spam mail I receive in my mailbox, but a recent one caught my eye - it listed the recent selling prices of various types of flats in my area.

Apparently, similar flats to mine (Type 4A) in my estate (Eunos South) recently sold (I don't know the actual time frame, but let us assume it is recent, and probably within 2009) between $384,000 and $415,000.

When my mum bought the flat in 1984, it cost her $77,500 before interest for a 20-year loan. I can't remember the final amount of the loan, so I won't use the interest amount in my calculations, but I estimate it would probably be around a third of the loan amount.

Using statistics on the official Singapore Government website - http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/themes/economy/hist/cpi.html - 76.6 1984 cents buys you 110.3 2008 cents.

So my flat that cost $77,500 in 1984 would cost $(77,500 / 76.6 * 110.3 = 111,596) in 2008. Not even accounting for a possible deflation in 2009, similar flats in my estate are being sold for over thrice (more like 3.3x - 3.6x) as much as their cost price!

No fucking wonder the government switched to selling flats at market rates. Singaporeans were too greedy and thus the next generation are now suffering.

Just another two days to the Army Half Marathon. I hope I can make it past the finish line in 2.5 hours, but hopefully closer to 2.25 hours.

The next big race I have signed up for is the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon. I'm running the full 42.195km route; finally fulfilling a dream since 2004. After the AHM, I will begin my marathon training proper and this time, I will attempt to fully document my training online as well as prepare training plans a week ahead and attempt to follow it as close as possible.

Chromium

2009-08-14T10:50:00.003+08:00

Chromium (the core behind Google Chrome) is progressing very, very fast. It is now up to version 4 where the final version of Chrome is still at 2 and Chrome BETA is at 3. I have been playing around with both Chrome 3 and Chromium 4 and both feels very much faster and smoother than Firefox 3.5. I still use Firefox 3.5 (or rather a pre build, which is a alpha/beta build one version higher than the released version) on a regular basis due to my need for the various extensions.

Chrome (and Chromium) are fairly usable on Ubuntu nowadays especially with support for plugins which was sorely missing a few weeks back. It will still be a while before I make Chrome my default browser as I want Adblock+Element Hider and Flashblock-like extensions on Chrome.

Change

2009-08-05T16:12:00.004+08:00

I changed the blog colours from black to maroon/red. In the future I'll try out blue and green too.

I hate door to door salesmen. If I need something, I'll go buy them myself. I'm surprised that I actually entertained this guy before eventually brushing him off.

He was trying to sell insurance.

I also hate those insurance and financial planning booths at the train and bus stations and I always actively avoid them.

But there was this one time where the guy actually avoided me and I found that funny.

I guess these people are not interested in those holding a Starhub prepaid top up card in one hand and a Nokia 8210 in the other trying to do a top up. Ha ha ha.

Coming out is easily among the hardest things I have ever done in my whole life. Even deciding which secondary school to go to was not this hard.

The next hardest thing is deciding on how to tell someone that you like him and I just did. No matter what the outcome is, I'm happy that I took this step. Kinda of a late bloomer at 28, but I have never done this before in my life, so this is the first time I have done such a thing.

Took me ages to think about this, but it is because, deep inside, I was afraid. So I took comfort in doing up a decision tree, scrapping it and restarting over and over again.

Woot!

We Are Golden

2009-08-03T01:49:00.002+08:00

Mika's latest single - We Are Golden - is fucking awesome. Both music and video are awesome!

Mika / We Are Golden (Official Music Video)
Uploaded by mactyer87. - See the latest featured music videos.

Books

2009-07-26T23:50:00.000+08:00

I have managed to read all three books written by Johann S Lee. As I had expected, all three are excellent reads and I thoroughly enjoyed them and am looking forward to any future titles that Johann writes.

Unfortunately, they all paint an unfortunate picture of LGBT relationships.

Despite actually having read these three books, I am hoping that Borders sells them as they are currently having a 25% printable coupon promotion and I want to buy all three books.

Dean Koontz is a good writer, but for the past 20 - 30 titles I have borrowed, I did not enjoy only one title and thus did not finish reading it.

But what are the odds that I did not enjoy reading the two of the latest titles I have borrowed from the library? I can't remember the 1st title I hated, but the current ones are The Darkest Evening of the Year and False Memory.

Today's F1 and MotoGP races are pretty interesting.

Hamilton's McLaren seems to have had the kinks all cleaned out and performing well enough to enjoy the top of the podium.

Major surprises sprung out at today's MotoGP with Dovizioso, Edwards and de Puniet taking the podium.

Been A Month

2009-07-25T07:56:00.002+08:00

It has been slightly over a month since Jonathan left.

Deaths certainly have a funny effect on people. When death arrives, you wished that you had that little extra time to tell the dead the feelings that have held off.

Same with Jonathan, same with my grandma.

But have you ever thought about never holding off feelings and thoughts before going to sleep? Before going off to school or work?

It's like synchronously letting the feelings out as they arrive and never letting them go into an asynchronous queue where possible.

It is hard, but sometimes, I think I should be doing exactly just that.

Anyway, I don't know if 28 is a young age to be thinking about (living) wills and medical power of attorney, but I am thinking of exactly what I am thinking about now.

So far I have come up with a Do Not Resuscitate statement along with No Life Support.

I have a candidate in mind to hold the medical power of attorney over me in the event I am unable to make medical decisions of my own.

He has not been informed, but he is my high school classmate and he is a very logical person, which I like. In a life and death situation, I would prefer someone who is able to follow my wishes and use logic and weighted decision trees in the events of doubt.

Death of Common Sense

2009-07-17T23:24:00.003+08:00

Rest In Peace

Common Sense

From beginning of times - July 2009

Today, we mourn the loss of Common Sense.

SMRT has started fining people sipping plain water and sucking sweets. The no-eating and no-drinking bans were imposed to ensure that every passenger gets a comfortable journey without having endure food and drink smells, stains and associated litter.

Sucking sweets (without littering the wrapper) and drinking plain water from small-mouthed bottles and hydration packs do not affect fellow passengers.

This is the trouble when enforcement officers have no common sense and follow everything by the book. Even the Law Minister has the common sense not to use Section 377A in most circumstances when they do not affect third parties.

Quiet Time

2009-07-11T20:11:00.001+08:00

I have finally managed to read Johann S. Lee's third novel - Quiet Time - after borrowing a copy from Marine Parade Library. I first read about this novel many months back and have been waiting for a sale before buying a copy, but alas, the appropriate sale never came and I never got around buying a copy.

Personally, I have a certain bias against local authors. I never really enjoyed the writings of the very few local works (think Catherine Lim) I have read and therefore local works were not quite in my reading list. However, a very positive review of Lee's third novel as well as the LGBT theme changed my mind.

I must say the novel is a really good read and is probably the best LGBT themed fiction (autobiographical or otherwise) I have ever read. It touches on a lot of things that many LGBT people go through and that resonates a lot in me. The book is about relationships and family-things I long for.

Gonna try to get to get a copy of Lee's first novel - Peculiar Chris - as well as his second - To Know Where I'm Coming From. I don't think these will be a letdown and hopefully as good as Quiet Time. Seems like Kinokuniya stocks all three books, so I'm waiting for the next 20% off storewide sale.