iphoting's Sink

Really great. Having been in camp for 2 weeks, we got to book out 3 times. So much for the compulsory 2 week-long confinement. Apart from the number of holidays, thank God the company I’m assigned to is pretty relaxed.

That aside, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Alright, enlistment tomorrow morning and hence won’t be around for the next 6 days. I’ll probably be out by the 20th December, thanks to public holidays.

Now, it takes me roughly 4 minutes to solve the $1 imitation Rubik’s cube. I’ll go get the proper one with butter smooth axles when I can find it.

All praise be to God.

Went off for InnovateIT this morning with only two half-days of preparation (out of the given 7) and was still hacking the powerpoint together right before the preliminary round presentation. Having little to no presentation preparation and/or rehearsal, we went in with the aid of a timer available in the presenter’s view.

That aside, thinking that we’ll hardly be able to make it to the finals given the amount of effort we placed in, we just played Bridge during the lunch time, right before the preliminary results announcement.

Half-way through the Bridge game with another guy from NJC (as out team consists of 3 people only), we were told that we got into the finals. “Oops,” we had to stop the game, get out laptops out and start fixing some issues and implementing suggestions given by the judges.

We’re ushered into the auditorium, to be ready for presentations in 20 minutes, during which, we hastily generated a few more screenshots for the mock up. Amusingly, due to the way we randomly chose to sit in the second row, we were team 5 to present, allowing a more time to rush. We went up when it’s our turn and gave it the best shot we could, impromptu.

Prizes available were the Macbook, O2 XDA, and the iPod Touch. Personally, I was eying the touch as it’s a product which I didn’t already have, but would like to own one.

At the result ceremony, we’re glad to be recognised for the team which ‘put in the most effort’ into our presentation, much to our extremely wide cynical grins.

Moments later, we’re declared champions of the competition and walked away with new Macbooks each.

Hallelujah! Amen.

Was at my favourite Tea House with my family and chatted with the owner of the shops. Talked about many things but the most amusing and outstanding was his knowledge of the law and how to walk on it for the best of his business advantage. Somehow, the conversation turned to foreign workers and he commented over the ingenuity of the Singapore government.

By liberally offering Permanent Residency to mainlanders and indians, they solve 3 direct issues at one go. The first issue is the outflow of cash as these foreign workers send the wages back to feed their family. The second is to drive up demand for the 3 to 4 room flats, triggering a boom in housing market. The third is to create supply to ~$1000 salaried factory workers.

By issuing PR to a worker, the worker has to sell his house in his homeland, bring all his savings to SG in order to pay for a house to live. In one shot, the govt has managed to bring back years of outflow and created demand for the housing market. Next up, the spouse of the worker and children will be brought over and hopefully, due to high cost of living, the spouse has to look for jobs and hence, the shortfall of workers for the ~$1000 range is solved.

That’s why these days you’ll notice that 1 in 4 people in SG are foreigners.

A week or so ago, I met up with members of the ‘NS Escapees Club’ at a Cafe in Hong Kong. It was quite interesting, sharing live experiences on how to beat the system. Taking opportunity costs into account, the money needed to be spent while relocating could be well worth it. Thinking back, I seem to be a royal idiot for not accepting their invitation to join the club. I have all I needed to do so, only short of cash flow.

That aside, I’m back in Singapore, busy tying up loose ends, and preparing for a competition this Saturday. People have asked what the ‘Hong Kong withdrawal syndrome’ (HKWS) entail. Well, the HKWS is commonly experienced by native Hong Kong-ers returning to their respective countries.

The first effect is the feeling that everything moves very slowly, as if the person’s stuck in a slow motion dream. Busses travel at half-speed. People ostensibly block paths, escalators, and train doors, slowing traffic movements without any remorse.

The second effect felt by the person would be that all food seems inconveniently inaccessible, far, expensive, and not-delicious-enough.

The third effect is the loss for places to shop and hang out. The person would find that shops close ridiculously early and late-night shopping is impossible and does not exist. In Singapore, the person has to make his way home by 11 pm as all shops would have been closed by then and the public transport system is shutting down. City becomes dead after 12 am.

The forth effect is the frustration over the public transportation system. In Singapore, there is no bus that brings you anywhere popular within 1 bus change and/or 45 minutes, whichever is earlier. Furthermore, Taxis here have a vast array of surcharges imposed by economists without business knowledge, resulting in artificially induced shortages. Solution being to eradicate all surcharges, allowing only ERP, $1 booking charge, and a new $1 per baggage (excludes wheelchairs and prams) carried in boot charge. An even better solution would be to remove all Taxi companies, shift taxi licensing to the LTA or Ministry of Transport, and offer taxis for sale, not rent.

That approximately sums up the syndrome.

I’m always impressed by the inventors of the game, Mahjong. It really encompasses the efficiency, and clever nature of the Chinese race. The game is dealt using the most efficient and hard to cheat methods, and the strategies and techniques required are complex and interesting.

At our last class party, we played the Hong Kong variant of Mahjong and it was quite interesting. I’ve compiled a printable sheet depicting the winning criteria and the scores (番) associated with the various winning meld-types, courtesy of the Wikipedia article.

Also, I’ve found a rather good (but a little buggy with the scoring at times) Mahjong game, written in Java. I fail to locate the author and its source and hence decided to post it for your convenience. The network-play mode is quite good.

Without a shadow of doubt, I have more than a few things to say given my long absence here.

The purpose of this blog is about to be fulfilled and after completing this last thing, I’ll have to make a decision on whether to close it or to determine a new direction. This isn’t my first blog, but it’s one of the longest running ones around, carrying a mix of school, computing, movies, and generic social commentary, with the ultimate aim of improving my English writing skills. Now that I’ve almost graduated, it’s done. Well, I could always continue scurrying the web for interesting developments, but I doubt if I can keep up with these developments myself, much less post them.

Testimonials are calling for themselves to be written, and I guess this post has to end here.

This is thus my 627th post.