Joy

I need an internship to graduate. I know what I don’t want (finance, civil service). I can’t apply for internships I don’t qualify for. And I need at least S$700 in stipends to fend for myself here. Total sum of internships I found? 0.

Unluckiest weekend ever

And to top it off, I left my spare phone in KL as my phone died. Time of death; 3:30am. RIP.

I Am Sam

I never knew I would like a Sean Penn movie, but heck. Better use of Beatles songs than Across the Universe.

Wow, that was fast

I decided to take a bus around 11:30-12ish at Queen St Terminal to Johor Bahru, so it would be easier to wait for 2 am bus and reach KL at a godly hour. Instead, I arrived in Larkin around 12:05ish. I decided to take the 1am bus instead, so I’ll reach KL around 5:30-6ish am. Just that I arrived at Pudu, KL at 4:30am.

Total travel time: 5 hours. Never happened to me. I guess, the beauty of no congestion (the causeway was slightly congested though with lorries blocking several lanes at the JB customs area).

Malaysian ads

I have this smug believe that Malaysian ad’s generally are much better than Singaporean ones. I mean, Singapore (well, largely, Raintree) may whoop us in movies, and Channel 8 produces good shows, but we rule when it comes to ads.

Like this:

The words says, “I’m free… in my own world, I’m free… with my modest life, I’m free… in a new phase of my life, I’m free… when the boss is not around, I’m free… around the next generation, I’m free… when I’m done with work early. Whatever your definition of “free/independence”, one things for certain. Without independence before, there won’t be independence now. I’m free. Closer in your own way”.

Singapore would never have this. It would be too individualistic for them. My favourite is this:

Politically very daring. Festive ads:

Or, plain corporate commercials:

I’ll stick to econs

Besides Jason Ong, Joseph Wee, Daniel Yuan, etc. (that bunch), everyone has been saying, “Stick to econs”. And I think I will. This besides the fact that if I switch to social science, I wasted two subjects (BSocSc has less flexibility), and all I gain from it is avoiding one more econs subject and doing an easier International Economics A instead of the harder B.

Though, social science students are infinitely cooler than econs students, but what the hell. I value the fact that I have options. Options baby. Plus, I shouldn’t jump ship from econs because of Nicolas Jacquet (may you have an uneasy death, monsieur). That’s one subject. Just proves I can’t do his exams, not that I can’t do macro.

Irony, because I came to SMU to avoid exams-only subjects.

2008 Resolutions

2007 was the only year I made resolutions on New Year’s Eve itself. Seeing how an unmitigated disaster that year has been, I decided to think through my resolutions for 2008.

1. Lose weight: notably absent in 2007, now back with vengeance. I have my exercise plan and diet plan down, and closely going to build myself to going to the gym six times weekly. Original, pre-sprained neck plan was to ween myself off alcohol for a month, keep off the liquids for half a year (save March 2, a national holiday) and slowly reintegrate it as I get fitter.
   Post-neck sprain with alcohol-hating drugs, I’ve been alcohol free for, uhm, 14-days now. Sadness. (I’m not alcoholic, btw – never been drunk. Just like drinking. Selectively). After 20 baht beers were gone, sobriety was surprisingly easy.
2. Internships: Going to push real hard for this. No concrete plans. At all. Story of my life. I do have a plan for internship money, and it relates to rewards for accomplishing #1.
3. Well, I’m saving money for a gynecomastia-removal surgery. Can’t be done any other way. It serves as a dual-incentive structure – for me to lose weight and for me to do the surgery (I’m hospitals-adverse). Funny how my mind works. But my gynecomastia stop being a point of mental torture for me – now it is more of some medical annoyance. Can’t really describe it.
4. I’ve planned to sacrifice my debating for internships this summer. Just recently decided to try out anyway, in case I can accommodate both. But beyond summer, I’m more of aiming at Worlds – I want to go to Cork, and I want to kick ass. I know my weaknesses and already working to fix it. Academically-speaking, no goals.

More self-flagaration

Part of 2007 that was quite painful for me was that prior to it, I got by with the excuse that I’m that good: I just never bothered applying myself. And to a large degree, it was true: way, way too many teachers have said my grades don’t reflect my intellect. Just that 2007 made me doubt that.

To be fair, I could have done a lot better. But I did quite a bit. Quite a lot actually. Yet I was hitting this brick wall academically. Severely depleted my self-esteem. Part of the reason why I wished I never tried in 2007 was that the very least, I would still have some smug image about myself.

(Granted, I’m probably that good: I just applied myself really, really wrongly).

2007 in review

I’ve been delaying this for some time, but what better time than insomnia time? 2006 before was, for the most part, characteristically good. Got bad STPM results – yes, but got into a highly selective school. A huge amount of regret thrown in for good measure, but hindsight in 20/20, so I’m not beating myself too much over it. The important bit is that 2006 ended on a high note: new friends, a great new place to stay and for the first time in years some semblance of academic success (I was well within magna cum laude). Best of all, 2006 ended with new friends in one of the best New Years parties (that involved no countdowns, no alcohol and no loud music) I’ve been too.

2007 was horrible on so many counts. Not to say nothing good came out of it – I had two RA-ships, bunch of good friends, good courses, etc. – the bad was overwhelming. Academically, I tanked. I don’t know why. I really don’t know. I tried really hard. Perhaps too hard. 2006 I didn’t even try that hard (revision week was largely spent watching Channel 5).

Debating, the good was that I went for two international competitions, the bad was for the earlier one, it was for the lack of anyone else wanting to try and for the latter, the gap between non-freshmen and freshmen (the prior counted exactly the number of spaces available). I’m a good debater. At least I think I am. But I didn’t exactly do my best in these two vital competitions (oh, fine, I did win some, but I didn’t win a lot more). Socially, while I gain some new friends in Singapore, a lot of my friends back home seemed relegated to “old friends” – closing in my social circle.

Worse, it ended on a horrible note – to a weird pair of DJs in Bangkok’s Siam City Park (ask any Worlds participant the tune of the “Happy New Year, Happy New Year…” song). 2006 ended with me having a great place and a huge increase of friends plus a huge measure of academic success – 2007 ended with me being in a horribly sucky place, a regression socially and a severe, painful, heart-wrenching drop academically – and debating was not much of a saving grace.

If 2006 I got by with blind luck, 2007 the luck reversed itself. The irony is that all my resolutions (save reading the bible through and through) was met. 2007 was the year of detailed and realistic planning and rather good executions of it. 2008 would be of 2006-like neglect. Hopefully, with 2005-like happiness to boot. Gosh, I miss 2004.

Is Singapore too crowded?

Yes and no. But lets deal with the latter: a lot of Singaporeans (and foreigners) perceive Singapore to be extremely crowded and space-strap because of how crowded it is. Go to some far-off suburb like Tampines and be shocked by the crowd. I’ll beg to disagree: a lot of it has to do with the urban planning of the city.

Some 90% of Singaporeans live in publicly-built HDB flats – but notice how concentrated HDB flats are? I don’t have a map, but I remember during the National Day rally speech by the Prime Minister, I was beyond shock to see how small the combined total of HDB estates and towns on the Singaporean map.

A further note on urban planning: while Singapore has been attributed to have good urban planning – a lot of it is due to the fact the planning has (yet) to be disastrous. I’m of the personal pet theory that organic urban growth is much better than a command one. In other words, if I were Lee Kuan Yew, instead of HDB, I would have housing vouchers that encourages the building of low-cost housing.

Part of the problem is that urban planning in Singapore follows the goal of efficiency – in the sense that if something needs to be built, it better be in a position to serve the maximum amount of people. And when most industrial buildings, a vast majority of houses and a number of commercial buildings government-built – well, it clearly shows overcrowding being a function of urban planning.

And to the question – yes too. It is bad enough the “sprawl” (as if it is a negative thing) is severely limited in Singapore, it is also limited to Singapore. But when Singapore is merely separated by a 1km-wide body of water with a country dying to get rid of immigration controls and build thousand of bridges over – the idea of Singapore being crowded seems more and more an artificial element rather than a real one pertaining to Singaporean geography.