I have just heard the most exciting news that can happen to me.

"From 1 July, MaxOnline 2000 and MaxOnline FlexiSurf 2000 will be MaxOnline 4000 and MaxOnline FlexiSurf 4000. With higher combined download speeds of up to 4,000Kbps, you can surf, play and shop at double the bandwidth at no additional cost!

What's more, existing customers will enjoy an automatic upgrade. There's no change in hardware nor subscription rate. Simply power off and on your existing cable modem from 1 July to enjoy faster access speed right away!"

From here

YYYAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have experienced download speeds of 300++KB/s, which translated to 2400++kbps, during some of my downloads recently, which I thought was impossible for my 2000 plan. But I never thought they were going to increase the download speeds!

Actually the increase does not really affect me much; a price cut would have been better, but I'm easily contented =D

TALKING TO MYSELF...... II

My mum is at home today; her day off from work, although the house doesn't make too much of a difference with or without her around.

The PC Show is back again this year, showing just about the same stuff these IT exhibitions show every year. But wth PC Show is shifted to Suntec this year from Expo, meaning its a longer trip down, should I decide to go.

Anyway, these IT exhibitions doesn't exhibit things that I want to see, and going to these shows just make me more desperate in wanting to get a new computer. Argh.

Do I sound weird in my entries? I wonder, because these days my entries sound (or rather, read) differently from my usual self. Either I have been stressed out by school too much before the holidays, or I have been "bored" out by the holidays. Someone drag me out of my house!!!

Alternatively, I can bury myself in more books as a countermeasure, but this computer is stopping me to do so. So perhaps someone can do me the favour by destroying this computer so that I can get a new computer I can get my ass down to work.

TALKING TO MYSELF......

After feeding myself with two of the four dumplings on the table, and drinking a cup of coffee, I'm here, again.

Am I contradicting myself? Never mind.

Lately I have been eating quite a bit of durian, and now that Dragonboat Festival is coming, soon I will be stuffing myself with more dumplings. Coupled with my procrastination to run three times a weeks at the stadium, very quickly I will be down with all kinds of highbloodpressurediabetesfatscholesterolheroinandwhatnot and I may die by the end of the holidays!

I just realised Fedora Core 5 came with a "Gnomad 2", which is an application that allows me to read and write to my Zen's MP3 compartment. (I kind of knew it exists, but I didnt know it was inside the CDs.) This means I don't have to switch to Windows to transfer my songs anymore!

Actually I seldom use Windows now, because for some weird reason the virtual memory is disabled and I can't enable it, and it crashes applications one by one.

I spent half a day yesterday fiddling around with the computer, installing Java plugin and Realplayer 10, and connecting the hi-fi to the sound card. Muahaha.

FC5 actually came with Bluetooth capability, but I don't know how to activate it and I don't have a device to try on now. I'm quite reluctant to read the lengthy documentation.

Argh. Seriously, I should be mugging instead. But I hope by the end of the holidays I can fully understand the Linux filesystem.

FORMULA ONE

For now I shall just treat this blog as a partition out from my mind which I dump some of my thoughts so that my mind can be freed up for other stuff.

Like, studies.

I was following the live timing for today's Formula One's race, Monte Carlo in Monaco. This race is especially exciting because its a very tight road being converted to a race circuit, making overtaking extremely difficult.

Michael Schumacher initially qualified for the pole position, but was kicked to the back of the grid, because of a cheat he committed.
I was happy to see him start last, because it meant that Kimi Raikkonen would move forward to third.

As I watched the numbers jumped on my screen, I was so delighted when I saw Kimi overtook second position Webber, then threatened Alonso in the lead with an average 0.5 seconds behind, with several best lap timings and sector timings. I was so confident he could overtake Alonso and be champion today.

Until Kimi's car caught fire at lap 51.

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Watching him did an fantastic race before retiring when there's only a third to the end is really very disppointing, not just to him, but also to me.

The fact that the guy at the last ended the race in sixth position does not help matters.

Perhaps a little consolation is that Montoya came in second, which helps McLaren Mercedes get some much-needed points. Still, I'm a little worried for Kimi because he has not been performing well this season, while his competitors are doing very well.

Well, the only reason why I support Kimi is because he is the number one driver in McLaren Mercedes, which is just about the only Mercedes car I like in the entire fleet. And the only reason why I support McLaren Mercedes is because its black-and-grey paint looks cool to me. Haha. Somehow I just don't feel comfortable with red-coloured cars dominating almost every race.

Then there is the shocking news that Kimi may be moving over to Ferrari next season. If he really moves over, should I still support him? Never will I support that red coloured company!

Singapore should have an F1 circuit. A tight street circuit will be best man!

Strange the World Cup is coming and I'm yakking about Formula One instead.

WHY DIDNT I BLOG AS OFTEN AS BEFORE II

Because I don't know why I am blogging in the first place.

It started off as an interest, but now I wonder why I should have this blog. Blogs fall broadly into two categories, either write for others to see, or for oneself to see. I thank the little group of my friends who visit my blog every now and then, but seriously, I got nothing for anyone to see. I read other blogs and they can give their opinions on everything under the sun in fantastic English, either in essay or in poem form, then I look at my own blog and see that I write nothing but rubbish, and can write nothing but rubbish, using horrible English with primary-school-level vocabulary. I deeply regret that I'm not well-versed in languages, and I sat on the fence too much that I am now deprived of my own opinions, but then, there's nothing much I can do.

I can easily dismiss this by convincing myself that this blog is to store all my memories so I can refer to it when i'm "old". However, I *think* I am not one who clings onto the past, or at least for most of the things. Anyway, I can't imagine my memories being stored on some servers which can be read by anyone on Earth. A written diary sounds much better than that.

Furthurmore, my blog is being read by too many people that I cannot really say what I want to say, or store any memories which I think should be kept intact with the passing of time.

So what exactly why am I keeping this blog? So that my friends have something to read whenever they come? So that I can rightfully declare that I have a blog?

Should people care anyway if VJC has a good soccer team or they can't even score a goal in ten matches? Should people care anyway if I'm using Linux or Windows? Should people care anyway if I am the top student in the world or I am kicked out of school? Should people care anyway if I'm alive or dead?

I'm not saying that I don't want to blog anymore; its just that I find it hard to blog properly when I don't know why I am doing it.

So, I need to know the purpose of doing something before I can do that something properly. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

Look, its yet another piece of rubbish. And when I say its rubbish, its really rubbish. Don't read too much into it.

WHY DIDNT I BLOG AS OFTEN AS BEFORE I

My life in the past few weeks had been very monotonous, thus I find it unnecessary to blog about how I rush my tutorials in the wee hours of the morning to catch up with the pace.

Until recently.

The past two weeks were jam packed with sports finals, and the college had called for students to go down and support. I went for basketball finals, badminton finals, soccer girls finals and of course the soccer boys finals.

Watching the basketball finals and badminton finals made me felt like a jinx. Up till that point of time I had watched a total of 5 finals, since last year, and VJC lost all. For a moment I thought maybe my absence would help the soccer guys win this year's title.

In the end, I believed that those losses had nothing to do with me, so on Wednesday I went for soccer girls finals (skipped hockey finals as a precaution haha). Watching girls play soccer was, well, kinda entertaining. I shall not go into the details, but VJC played well. And for once, I managed to see my own college winning -.-''

Thursday was the big day. Instead of a half day the principal declared we use Friday's timetable as most of us end early on Fridays, then ordered buses to transport the entire school down to Jalan Besar Stadium. The match was an exciitng one, watching VJ coming back first from 0-1 down then later 1-2 down, then scoring 3 goals in 4 minutes to take back the title we lost last year.

Frankly speaking, MJ played a better match with their excellent skills and accurate passing. VJ won because they had better stamina and fitness, as all can see from the last goal where the VJ guy ran down the length of the field to score after intercepting a corner kick.

Interested parties can catch the last 4 minutes of the match here. Its at the last couple of minutes of the video.

Friday was spent going to school only to hear them announce that it was a full day off, then while the rest of the school can go off to have fun, my class had to walk the stone path three times and climb up a 25-storey HDB flat for "healthy lifestyle".

Ended yesterday by watching the Da Vinci Code.

I have lots more to talk about, but I guess that's all for now. Maybe I will blog more next time. Maybe.

Am I too late to say that the ruling party won again?

I don't know whether to believe them that we should not compare this elections results with the one in 1997, because the 2001 elections was an exceptional case. Personally I think, 9/11 and SARS does not have any effect on elections results.

Maybe they are coming up with some excuse to explain the drop in their results when compared to the 2001 elections.

Anyway, congratulations to the opposition for retaining the 2 seats they already had, and almost winning one GRC. Let's hope that they will do better.

For the past week a flu virus has been spreading around the class, and a conservative estimate of 5 pple, including me, had since fell victim to it.

I attended a business symposium organised by our Firefly Club and EDB today, held at the PT. The theme was on the transport industry, and different jcs sent in teams earlier to give presentations on one of six topics. Today was the finals for three jcs, and they all chose the same topic on whether the Airbus A380 was a worthy investment.

Luckily, the symposium was very general for non-econs students like me, perhaps except someone can explain the term "supernormal profits" to me. Haha. The symposium was very enlightening, as the teams presented views and opinions on the A380 which I have never thought of in the past. But I thought the keynote speech by the guest-of-hounour was abit too long.

Attending lectures in Lecture Theatre 5 is a test of one's tolerence and patience towards noise pollution. I'm usually quite tolerant with the amplified murmurs, and lately I find myself increasingly difficult trying to keep my cool with all the noise behind. I have not exploded because I have high tolerance. Just today in the PT, a bunch of students seated at the last row were talking loudly among themselves while the guest was making his speech, and they seem rather comfortable with all the racket they were creating.

Of couse, I'm not trying to say I don't make noise. But I guess I know when to stop ba.

It feels weird when the entire PE department knows that my class has a civics tutor who is the cross country teacher-in-charge and himself a champion runner for the past 9-10 years, and then all the teachers expect us to run as fast as him.

Pressuried? Stressed? Special? I dunno.

My class's PE is on the first two periods on Friday, and we happen to be the only Year2 class among the bunch of kids.

The rule:
Year1 guys: five items today, 2.4km run next week,
Year1 girls: 2.4km run today, five items next week,
Year2 girls: 2.4km run today, five items next week,
Year2 guys: all six items today.

So only 12 males ran six rounds on the track today, under a light drizzle and the eyes of the legendary civics tutor.

This. Is. The. Toughest. Run. I. Ever. Had. To. Endure.

My lungs were tearing apart by the fourth round, and I seriously wanted to walk. But I couldn't, and didn't want to, because I know I would get into trouble if I did. Yet I can't slow down, because more trouble will come if my timing is bad.

I was moltivated enough to run as fast as my lungs could take it, but the timing is nothing to shout about.

The highlight of the run was the horizontally-challenged guy in my class, who had the "honour" to train under, who else, but our CT, in college and at Turf City. He did a very impressive run today, improving by one minute and for the first time, not occupying the last position.

And I realised I got E for sit-and-reach. Which means I have to retake everything again. Congrats to me.

Argh. I need to exercise more.

Went to Nanyang Polytechnic today for a talk on the development of games.

The speaker was Mr Yuji Yasuhara, a programmer who single-handedly programmed a game for PS, and now part of a team that created Gran Turismo 3 and 4 for PS2.

Listen to him talked, was haha, abit uncomfortable, because he's a Japanese and his English isn't good. He spent all the time talking about how he designed and created his game for PS, everything from scope of vision to Assembly code that accesses the register. He even went into the ever-so-familiar C, talking about floating point operations (or rather, the fact that PS lacked floating operation and everything have to be done using integers).

Later he showed us the game, using a PS2 plugged in there, then pressing cheat codes that unlocks all the levels (he told us only he knows the cheat code), and explaining to us the game.

Running out of time, he gave a quick description on the production of GT4, like about him going home only 3 to 4 days in a month, taking only 3-4 days leave in 6 months, 60 people spending 3 years on the game etc etc.

A Q&A session followed after that, with a panel consisting of him, and people from local game companies.

Well, I have learnt abit from this talk, and I guess its not easy to whether set up my own game company, or joining a game company and working under the noses of others. Still, a career in this field is not bad, and I shall seriously consider that.

He revealed something interesting. Although CPU and memory speeds are getting faster and faster, acessing registers is getting slower and slower, because of the fact that CPU speeds are increasing much faster than memory speeds (err something along this line la).

Time taken:
PS1: 16 cycles
PS2: 50 cycles
PS3: x000 cycles (he declined to reveal the actual figure haha)

NAPFA's tomorrow! AH!

As the incident is being continously blown up, with words of "Liar!" and "Cheat!" and "making a molehill out of a mountain" flying between the parties, elections are getting more and more exciting!

Well, its not everyday that we can see wayang shows in the Singapore politics scene, which are just short of exchanging blows (aka Taiwan Parliamant), where politicians criticise contesting parties like they are murderers. Haha.

When a particular politician went to a certain place to meet residents to try to win votes, the news reported that no resident asked him about the incident which happened recently. So the claim was that the people of Singapore have already understood what had happened.

I wonder has it occurred to him that the reason why no one asked anything is because we (hmm..maybe only me) do not find it as important and as serious as what they made it out to be? Has it occurred to them that perhaps they are about the only people in Singapore who are creating this mountain out of that molehill?

On the other hand, I wonder why the national newspapers have to specially put up one BIG page on the ruling party talking about the incident and how he should be sued and sacked and whatever.

Also, the news kept saying that whether the citizens of Singapore support him or condemn him, we shall wait for results on Polling Day. Given their reputation, I wonder why they can't do a survey on it or grab some people on the streets to ask them instead of waiting for Polling Day results?

(Perhaps they are afraid that everyone they asked did not think of that mistake as something major, thereby after that they have nothing else to report on?)

Perhaps I'm thinking too much, but the posters put up by the ruling party looks weird, especially the one with The One smiling happily and sticking his palm out in the "air". Weird as in...hypnosis effect or something......