. . . le plaisir délicieux et toujours nouveau d'une occupation inutile
Couple of interesting links:
Google Scholar allows you to search scholarly literature.
del.icio.us lets you save your bookmarks online, tag and search your bookmarks, and allows for social bookmarking, where you can see what other people have bookmarked! Quite cool, makes for endless surfing fun, but the interface is still rather awkward to use. More here. Much thanks to spoon, for the link.
My browser remembers my password, but I can't.
Was extremely frustrated that I couldn't remember my password for a particular site, though my browser, being set to remember my passwords, could. I really wonder why, since I don't have that many permutations of passwords.
My memory's really been deteriorating. I hope it's temporary as a result of being in NS, rather than a permanently delibilitating condition. It's a bit worrying that I've been using google as an extension of my memory - using associated key words to zero in on what precisely I was trying to remember. I guess this really supports the idea that Sergei Brin expounded to us at a google talk in Stanford once, that [google] search could be seen as a form of artificial intelligence.
It sure seems that way to me now - but doesn't that leave me kinda incapacitated away from the net?
When I was younger (and still in school), I used to scoff at the idea of writing as an aid to memory. I saw putting things down physically on paper as a crutch, that the brain could do without, and that writing would mean that your brain wasn't working as hard, since your hand was taking over. As a result, I religiously refused to practice writing 习字 when studying chinese - if I could visualize the entire word in my mind, it would be better than writing it out. In math, I tried to think my way through the problem to solve it in my head without writing it out - it's better training for the mind, I postulated. Even in the mugging subjects, I trained myself to memorze visually - using the layout of the points on the page as a mental stimulus to aid recall.
Yes, I used to pride myself having a pretty decent long-term memory, but all of it seems lost now. It is rather sad, but I guess rather inevitable, when your mental faculties start slowing down. You start questioning yourself, about whether you remember what you've done, what you've said, whether you've remembered what you have to do. You start testing yourself, about simple things like what you've eaten today, what you did today, what was the headlines in the papers, only to discover how little you can remember. And then you feel more and more worried and less and less confident about your memory.
And it's these things that google can't even help.
Was at Kino today when I came across a book that I'd read about in the papers, Galbraith's The Economics of Innocent Fraud. At only 60 pages and costing 28 bucks, I resolved to finish it in the bookstore. Quite an interesting read, found his arguments convincing, but being totally untrained in economics, I probably should take everything with a grain of salt.
Galbraith writes of the innocent fraud - the chasm between perception popularised by economic theory and modern society, and reality in modern economic systems. I jotted down some notes in my trusty SAF notebook right after reading it:
Went for MOF open house today and met Lim Siong Guan. Witty, intelligent, sharp, compassionate, sensitive to the average Singaporean. Now I know how he became a PS at 33, and has been a PS since 1981. Wish I could write more about what he said, but I've gotta go back to camp. Will fill it in when I get back.
Ok so I'm back and here are some quotes from the session, as best as I can remember them.
"It's not about the money, money is merely a tool for us to effect change."
"How many of you live in 3-room HDBs? Are you in touch with the average Singaporean?"
"Some people think we should get rid of GLCs to allow for the smaller companies to compete. But what they don't understand is you can't just get rid of such a large company - it has to be sold off. So it's either a case of having a large company owned by another large company around, or a large company owned by the government."
"Work from home? MTI tried it out once but it failed. What was missing is the element of human interaction which is critical in work."
"The real skill you'll discover as you rise is the ability to manage resources, and to use them to influence decisions."
"Some ministries are like crying babies... you have to learn to find out who really needs help."
"It is important to develop instincts... a feel for things"
When asked about how much MOF influences Temasek:
"Temasek is totally autonomous... we read about what they do in the papers like you do"
I also found the whole PPP concept rather appealing. And Lim Siong Guan knew a thing or two about PKI and web security - way to go Mr eGovt man!
That with the Straits Times requiring subscription to access the news, it has stopped being indexed by google news?
Searching for Singapore in google news returned this. Great, I'll just get all my Singapore news from the Malaysian Star. Ok I guess there's always CNA.
Upon realising that I lived in Marine Parade, YJ in Ang Mo Kio and YL in Tanjong Pagar,
Me: My goodness, we have the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost...
YJ: You mean the the Father, the Son and the Holy Goh...
On watching a particularly young SPG with a particularly old ang mor:
Me: Ah the powers of the flesh...
YL: But he's so old!
Me: Her flesh lah, not his!
With reference to 50 Young Singaporeans to Watch Out For in the papers today:
Me: Did you check out the marital status of these people? If you take out the married ones, you've got a list of the most eligible people in Singapore...
YL: Well did you notice that all the female academics are single, while all the female civil servants are married and with 2 children?
Finally back after a couple of weeks in Australia. Didn't have too bad a time there, except for the rather bad weather - blazingly hot in the day, and freezing at night, and when it rained, it poured and poured and poured.
Some interesting stories to tell:
Living Conditions
No proper bunks for us there - we squeezed into a huge tent, with each tent occupying 16 guys. No beds either, we slept on safari beds (essentially a canvas sheet propped up by pieces of metal). Totally spartan, but the good thing - no need for area cleaning. Unfortunately my safari bed gave way after a few days and I spent a good part of my stay there sleeping in my sleeping bag on the ground. Showers were also very interesting, consisting a water bag with a shower head at the bottom, hoisted up by a nylon rope around a pulley attached to the ceiling. So, very troublesome to shower, must fill pail with water (very slow, as hot water came out in trickles) to pour into water bag. Also, no cubicles, which proved to be quite awkward when your superiors were showering at the same time as you were.
Wildlife
Yes, we saw kangaroos out in the wild a la safari-style, but that was nothing compared to finding a frog in the toilet bowl. I kid you not. The first time I used the toilet, I did the usual routine when using a public toilet - toilet bowl? check. toilet seat? check, then proceeded with my business. When I flushed after I was done though, I saw these two dark slivers peek out from under the rim of the toilet bowl... only to discover, to my horror, that they were the legs of a frog. Very nice, all this while I had been sitting on the toilet bowl with a frog in it. Well as a result the new routine before using the toilet included the flush even if bowl is clean to check if there are frogs. After all, I had found frogs in the bowl, under the rim, and worse, on the toilet seat.
And we all discovered the amazing pest called the tick, which leapfrogged (pun intended) its way to the top of the most-annoying blood sucker above the sandfly and mosquito. Why? Well the mosquito is really annoying when it flies around your ears, making that irritating humming sound when you're trying to sleep, and the sandfly's bites are really painful, but the tick... when it bites you, it embeds itself in your skin and stays there. And that's just plain gross.
Modes of Transport
Over the course of my stay in Australia, I had taken a:
Plane: To fly there, obviously
Coach: From the airport to the camp
Bike: Which was one of the things we had to do there, riding bike cross country.
3 and 5 tonner: The usual military lorry
M113: An armored personnel carrier - they're all tanks to me
Super Puma: A helicopter of some sort.
Ferry: We were brought to some island during R&R
And of course, my own 2 feet.
Exercise in Boliaoness
So for the last few days I was there, I was attached to another unit to participate in some experiment, where they made us carry an extremely heavy signal set, and an extremely fragile PDA and GPS to test out some system where they can track our movement (the GPS sends our location via the signal set), and we can see each other in our PDAs. Sounds good in concept, but it totally didn't work. The radio link was so flakey (either that or the protocol they were using sucks, which is what I'm inclined to believe, since we can usually send data over the radio link) that we could almost never see each other. Best part was that the whole thing was so ill-planned we weren't briefed on what we were supposed to do till we were outfield, just before we moved off on the mission. The DSTA engineers were quite panicky by then, as we were supposed to be showcased to all the high ranking dudes who would observe our movements from some remote computer. One wonders if they'd gotten to a demo-ready stage, the thing should actually work, but no.... Minus points for DSTA engineers.
The Great Class Divide
But some strange twist of fate, an old friend from JC and college happened to go to Australia - only thing is that she was there as staff of DSTA. Wanted to talk to her during the only time in the camp I met her - at the final dinner, but she was *gasp* sitting with the Brigade Commander, and constantly surrounded by the big shots, while I was skulking around foraging for food. Oh the pariahs we are!
Finally, I overheard a conversation between a couple of my NS mates, going something like:
A: Aiyah, don't want la...
B: Must try leh...
A: No money la...
B: If you try the ang mor zha bor, you'll be king lor! Imagine what your friends will think? You can tell them all you've tried ang mor lor! I'll kowtow to you!
Very nice.
Anyway, some pics my friend took while we were there.
