Sunday, August 31, 2008

Take the first step

Even if you cant see the whole staircase,
Take the first step anyway

Even if you cant see the road ahead,
Take the first step anyway

Even if you may fall and hurt yourself,
Take the first step anyway

For the path to your destination always start with a first step

i know how to solve that!

sprained~...


kid: argh...I think I have sprained my neck...someone give me a hand?~"

so difficult....



dyw: AA306 claims another...

cargo? shipment?

If it's sent by ship then it's a cargo, if it's sent by road then it's a shipment.

- quote from David Allen

Friday, August 29, 2008

step by step

as my load becomes heavier by the day...my primary school motto comes to mind,

step by step towards excellence

simple yet powerful...

to the point!

"dont give me names...I dont care who they are or who are their mistress....go straight to the point..............btw....I dont have a mistress..."

- quote from LKW

whats next?

venturing into new territory...things are looking good...but how should I make my next move...

Thursday, August 28, 2008

POP!

tutor: ok class...kp away your txtbk...we are going to have a quiz now

student 1: WAT!!!??? *fainted
student 2: medic! medic! man down!!!
student 3 (medic durinng NS): AYE! help is here!

*assess the situation...whisper to the tutor

tutor: alright...quiz cancelled...
student 1: REALLY!!!?? YAY!!!

*student 1 was rained down by shoes, bags, unfinished apples, empty bottles, and 1 auditing txtbk

tutor: enough nonsense...you all have 10 mins to finish and hand the quiz in

*at 1 corner of the room...

student 4: damn it...I cant do this...
student 5: sorry...I cant help you...this is a quiz.................. I would really want to help....but I only got 1 dice....

*at the other corner of the room...

student 6: whats that noice?

* POP.....POP....POP....

student 7: oh...those are eyeballs popping out...
student 6: that was retarded lah....mine pop out when she asked us to kp away our txtbk...
student 8: oh...so thats how the name "pop quiz" came about...
student 6: anyway...wats that in your mouth?
student 8: ring pop
student 6: what?! you are still into sweets?
student 8: yup...legend has it that pop a ring pop in your mouth during a pop quiz will give you luck! =)
student 6: ...

* 10 mins passed...

tutor: alright....times up!...hand in your answer now!

student 9: WHAT!!! start already?!! she never say "get set! GO!"...olympics rules leh...

happy hungry ghost festival!!!

nice one sir!

"dont know why today so popular...phone keep ringing...usually the phone wont even ring once in a week..."

- quote from LKW

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Nice Speech

Below is the speech given by Adrian Tan at the NTU Convocation Ceremoney 2008:


Life and How to Survive It

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan "Arbeit macht frei" was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

You’re going to have a busy life. Thank goodness there’s no life expectancy.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Sunday, August 24, 2008

neverending cycle

old faces fade away...
new faces appear...

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Be Flexible

in hell...do as the ghosts do...
in heaven...do as the angels do...

for the rocks who insist on maintaining their form...their ultimate fate is to be eroded away...

for the water who changes its form in response to its surrounding...they are a force to be reckoned with...

Friday, August 22, 2008

=)

大肚能容,容天下难容之事
开囗就笑,笑天下可笑之人

Is this it?

I think I have stumbled into the ancient tomb...

pay up or i will....




dyw: don't hit me...i will pay for that burger alrite~

eh buck uP!! dun slack le!



dyw: eh...time to buck up...dun slack le
cw: but olympics haven over leh...
dyw: see what happens to spiderman when he slacks too much -------------->

TAKE COVER!!!!


dyw: TAKE COVER!!! ITS AA306 again!!!

same and different



- adapted from TDE

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

learn chinese the easy way?




- contributed by KCM


readers' caution: contain vulgarities...not for the pure minded

try not to sprain the brain

try to do this mentally as fast as possible...

A borrows $100 from B
B borrows $200 from C
C borrows $300 from D
D borrows $400 from A

How should they settle their debts with the least amount of money changing hands?

- adapted from mediacorp 933 afternoon programme


Solve within 5 mins ---> NOT BAD!
Solve within 3 mins ---> GOOD!
Solve within 1 min ---> EXCELLENT!
Solve within 30 sec ---> dun bluff~
Solve within 10 sec ---> you cheater!
Solve within 5 sec ---> you heard this before...

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

endurance

sailor: sir! our men are growing restless, weak and mutinous...
captain: sail on! sail on! sail on and on!
sailor: sir! our food supplies are running low...
captain: sail on! sail on! sail on and on!
sailor: sir! what if we still do not find land ahead by dawn...
captain: sail on! sail on! sail on and on!
sailor: sir! what do we do when all hope is gone...
captain: sail on! sail on! sail on and on!

- adapted from a poetic tribute by Joaquin Miller to Columbus

Monday, August 18, 2008

the dust has settled

The dust has settled...
The classes are fixed...
The corpse of warriors are everywhere...
The sorrowful souls linger...


computer mouse: finally the add/drop period is over...
dyw: some say that you can still hear long cries of sorrows in the middle of the night...
computer mouse: yea...pitiful mice...
dyw: -.-"...i wasn't refering to the mice...

Sunday, August 17, 2008

i see...

dyw: see past the names and labels...go to the source
hungry friend: yea...pass me the chilli sauce...thx
dyw: ...

MJ CODE (ver1)

As professional mj players, one is required to abide by the following code. Failure to do so will result in years and years of bad luck...

1. You must not say "NO" when there is 3 "YES"
2. You will not show mercy for you will receive none
3. You must not taunt the losers unless they are asking for it
4. You must not flip the table even if you are losing unless there is really no more chips in your drawer
5. You must not cough or sneeze to your left unless you want your "shang jia" to stop throwing out useful tiles
6. You should not cheat unless you are confident of not getting caught
7. You should never tell the truth unless it is regarding the amount to be paid to you
8. You should never reveal or abandon your ally no matter what happen until he has served his purpose
9. You must never be late for mj games..............by more than 1 hour
10. Above all, you must be accomodative, merciful, polite, forgiving and honest.........................if it is necessary to collect back your winnings

Saturday, August 16, 2008

how grown up are you?

you can test how grown up you are by your position on the double decker bus,if you find yourself at,

top front ---> you are still kids

top back ---> you have become a teenager

top middle ---> you have grown up

bottom back ---> you are getting old

bottom front ---> you are getting really old

bottom right at the front ---> you have become a bus driver

adapted from "Never hit a
jellyfish with a spade"
by Guy Browning

Friday, August 15, 2008

without fear or favour


cat: eh...see what see?
mouse: why? you not happy is it? you think I will fear you because I may become your food? HA!
cat: you better watch your back...you think I will show you favour just because you may become my food? HA!

why?

perhaps its out of interest...
perhaps its for the feather on convocation...
perhaps its just to pave the way for future exit...

1 world 1 dream 1 currency!!!

one world, one dream, one currency

dyw: yay!!! no more foreign exchange exposure!

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Yawnzz

some paths I have to walk alone...some jokes only I will laugh

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

cold~


dyw: hey pal! this is my blog =)
maarrrcuuuus: Bark!!
dyw: wat the~...

Sunday, August 10, 2008

getting old le...

mj overnight...

12am ---> 0_0

2am ---> >_<

4am ---> -_-

6am ---> ._.

age is really creeping up on me...

anyway HAPPY belated 43rd BIRTHDAY SINGAPORE!!!

meanwhile...at 9pm plus...as the fireworks were displayed

girl at esplanade: so niceeeeee!!!
boy at esplanade: ya right...
man at toto booth: huat AR!!
CIT: may there be many more year of assessment to come!!!
auditor: $%#@!@#$....why still cannot balance?~~

Monday, August 4, 2008

patience

"...keep still...very still...steadyyyy....steadyyy...THERES A VANCANCY!!!....CLICK!!!!"

computer mouse: haizz...its the add/drop season again...

Friday, August 1, 2008

true wealth

"...a person is at his poorest when there are no love ones around not when he has no money..."

Blindly pursuing monetary wealth and neglecting all others is foolish...stubbornly denying the importance of money is just trying to act noble. I think the key is to keep in mind both extreme and try to find a balance.