iphoting's Sink

There’s this Peoples of the World; Inscribe the Bible project going on. My cell got Acts (of the Apostles) 23 to copy. Apparently, all the participating churches in Singapore would help hand-copy a portion of the bible. Amusingly, my church is assigned the New Testament, while the Old Testament is split among everyone else in Singapore.

The concept of the project is quite interesting.

That aside, listen to what Dick Lee has to sing:-

Today, we went to IKEA for lunch after school. Chatted and chatted until it was like 4.30 pm and decided to make our way home.

Then, while walking towards Queenstown MRT station, we saw the Mercedes-Benz showroom and decided to give it a visit. After all, we are poor and have nothing to lose, no sales people would be mad enough to hard sell cars to 18 year olds who don’t even have jobs. That’s when the amusement starts, and we were to soon discover something first hand.

Apart from the Mercedes-Benz showroom, we also went to BMW, Honda, Volkswagen, Renault, Subaru, Toyota, Lexus, and walked past Jaguar, Peugeot, Hyundai, Volvo, and Mini.

All the showroom with unoccupied sales personnel exhibited this amusing behaviour. Conventionally, students dressed in uniform entering a car showroom would probably be ignored by most sales people. After all, it’s a waste of breath talking to people who won’t and can’t buy your product.

Apparently, when we walked passed the reception counters and when our school badges became more prominently recognisable, sales people kick into action and bother to pose the standard question, “Hi, how may I help you?” or “Would you need any assistance?”. The best was, “If you’re just looking around, I’ll be right here if you need any help.”

From this, I’ve learnt that the school badge and name holds more value than all three of our net worth combined. It’s so high that even Mercedes-Benz sales people bothered to talk to us students.

The service we got was the following, in order of quality:-

1. Renault
2. Mercedes-Benz
3. Subaru

Others listed have sales people either too busy or can’t be bothered. Special mention goes to Toyota and Lexus which have null service.

Well, I guess in the future when I were to buy a Mercedes-Benz, I’ll enter the showroom dressed normally, not looking expensive in any way. The sales person who bothers would be lucky.

All in all, this was a fascinating and interesting experience and experiment.

Early this morning, amusing things happened on my way to school. Along a stretch of expressway, knowing that rain is imminent, my father was driving at a speed (~110 km/h) drafting the Honda Integra in front, on the right most lane. Then, cars zoomed passed us on our left. First was a BMW, then followed by a Mazda, then after a while, a Benz, and finally a Toyota. Those cars must have been going at 150 km/h at least.

Then this morning, another interesting sight can be seen. A few years ago, the 600 million dollar Esplanade, or more affectionately known as the Durians, were found leaking. Today, this 40 million dollar campus extension was found leaking too.

It was an amazing and funny sight. Even the lights couldn’t bear to stay on and watch. I’ll post pictures when I can get my hands on them.

In my class, there are resident spontaneous lame joke generating classmates. One of them is exceptionally good at generating on-the-spot puns and another is exceptionally good a creating full sized lame jokes, by just staring at coins, he claims.

As an example, he was staring at another guy playing with twenty cent coins and came up with the following:-

Q: How do you make competitions legal?

A: Introduce a tourney. (short for tournament; read it out for full effect).

Here’s a second one which he came up with within minutes of the first:-

Q: Molly, Sally, and Dolly went hunting and they, in random arrangement, shot an ant, a tiger, and a lion. Who shot the ant?

A: Molly. This is because Molly kills are small.

These are really good ones, given the spontaneity, that made me laugh rather than go “uhhhh”.

In other news, my Macbook’s Bluetooth revived after waking it up from sleep this morning. Speaking of which, AppleCare support line as of last week operates from 9 am to 9 pm.

Then today, B & M came to the chapter on Leadership, which I dare say that the Wikipedia page provides more information that the notes I’ve received.

Stereotypically, there are the following generic types of leadership: Authoritarian, Democratic, Laissez-faire, and Paternalistic. And at the end of it says, “the most successful managers are those who can adapt their style to suit different situations”.

That aside, I’m pissed. My Macbook’s Bluetooth module or the USB bus connected to it has died and I must bring down to the service centre as the machine is not very efficient at this state. The OS attempts to restart the USB bus every second which the bluetooth module is connected to but fails, resulting in 1.5 error messages every second, streaming into the log files. This simple loop generates approximately 10ºC of more heat too. This will kill my battery if I bring it out on the move.

Annoying.

What can be more thrilling or scary than meeting a ghost face to face?

I believe is discovering that your Extended Essay (EE) research question is not ‘science enough’ at this stage. That’s what my classmate got although he is one of those that completed his EE way ahead of time. I wish him all the best, with prayers and all.

I would have freaked out too. Thank God, it has yet to come.

“The greatest healing therapy is fellowship”.

How interesting.

While studying motivation in my B & M classes, I have come to a conclusion that people are all very unique and interesting. No generalising can work across the board for everyone. One-size fits all never works with people, not even socks.

In the notes I’ve received, there are at least three general theories about factors that influence people (Maslow, Herzberg, & McGregor), one on psychological influences that may affect motivation (McClelland), and another on the process of motivation itself (Vroom). Amusingly, each one of them is not sufficiently comprehensive nor completely compatible with each other. A selective synergy is required to produce one that is tailor made for the particular situation or group of people.

That, mastering the art of relating to and with people, is the key to this world, success and all.

Couple of months back, I found this cool choir, or ‘boy band’ they call themselves, Libera, which makes very very good sound. No idea why I didn’t post this earlier though, but I ought to do so now before I forget again.

Here’s one of their live performances on ‘When Will I Become Famous?’. The piece performed is titled Sanctus, an adaptation of Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

Heavenly.

Oh gosh, looks like I’m mistaken. There’s indeed this cool dude who wrote a complimentary commentary on the school socks.

Then, there’s this commentary on the school spirit in general which I’m trying to get across since like 3 years ago.

Signed up for the SGX StockWhiz InterSchool Challenge. Coincidentally or otherwise, the STI fell by 109 points today.