nuah

In 2008, I attended a conference in Vancouver. While passing Chinatown with a fellow NUS student from India, he commented that my awareness of the surrounding danger is low. I admit this is true. Singapore has been traditionally a very safe place. This breeds complacency in personal safety. Unfortunately, with the mass influx of all kinds of foreigners, the country is getting less safe. It appears that incidents of petty crimes and serious crimes are on the increase. But I guess, having grown up in an environment that has been sterile for too long means that changing our habits of letting our guard down is difficult.

Much of this complacency is reflected in how people look after their belongings. Throughout my nine and a half years there as a student, I have seen many examples.

1. NUS regularly reminds its students not to leave their belongings unattended. Despite such warnings, high-value items do regularly get lost, no thanks to students regularly leaving valuables such as wallets, watches, phones, and laptops unattended for extended periods of time. Interestingly, at my current workplace, some of my colleagues regularly leaves behind their personal belongings at random places. Old habits die hard.

2. There was once at the Multi Purpose Sports Halls where I literally saw a trail of Fujitsu laptops still in their boxes. Evidently, the delivery man could not push his trolley of Fujitsu goods to his destination the place was only accessible by staircase. Some way or another, stacks of laptops were left in groups lying on the floor with nobody looking after them. It must have been very tempting for people passing by to just grab one or more boxes and run away.

3. Several years ago, I approached some unknown fellow student to exchange a note for coins so that I can buy Coca-Cola from a vending machine. Very unexpectedly, this person, still yakking on his handphone, simply handed me his wallet. I was speechless, at his complacency towards this total stranger. After recovering from the surprise, I quickly got the change I wanted and quickly returned his wallet back to him. This incident must be the icing on the cake.

Most of the personal belongings can be easily safeguarded by always carrying them or keeping them in sight all the time. Wallets, watches, and phones belonging in this category. However, laptops are a notable exception. In a public place where a person is alone, while in the middle of doing something, it is particularly impractical to shutdown a laptop, put it into its casing, and lug it along just for buying a coffee or taking a pee, and then to start it up all over again. Due to such impracticality in securing the laptop, news regarding laptop theft for the purposes of stealing secret information regularly appears in the media. Certain kind of technological improvements that allows a laptop to be secured in-place would be beneficial for the mobile worker who needs to leave his place for a very short period of time.

The IPPT report is becoming an annual feature on this blog, if it is not already so. This year's IPPT report is almost exactly four weeks late, but also three months early. The thing is, my birthday is in June and I tend to wait until the last minute before I take my IPPT, but from this year onwards MINDEF wants us to clear our IPPT three months before our birthday, so there.

Again, I chose to do my IPPT in Maju Camp out of habit and familiarity of the place, despite the venue being very far away from where I work and live. This time, I passed with Silver award, many thanks for being able to jump far enough compared to my previous IPPT. How my jumping technique improved without training, I totally have no idea.

One observation I make is that in the past IPPTs, there is usually about one guy in tights. This time, there were five or six, although some chose to wear tights under shorts. In addition, quite a few more were wearing high-end gear such as 2XU. Apparently not all of these guys were gunning for Gold, but this particular batch of test takers had quite a lot of fit-looking Cat X guys, heavy in exercise gear.

As for me, I am already Cat Y1, my fitness level going down over the years despite trying to exercise once per week. Chin-ups weren't as easy as before, I find it harder to turn during the shuttle run, and the 2.4 km run left me panting for a good half hour before my breathing recovered to normal.

As I mentioned, there were so many young and energetic Cat X people in this batch. These people make me feel really old, especially during the 2.4 km run. I know that twelve minutes is a time of envy of many at my age, but I was in the second detail and so many guys from the later details overtook this slow-moving uncle and left me very far behind. You can imagine how fast these people ran.

Anyway, the raw results are as follows:

Sit-up: 38 (5 points)
Standing broad jump: 222 cm (3 points)
Chin-up: 8 (4 points)
Shuttle run: 10.7 s (3 points)
2.4 km run: 11:59 min (3 points)

Recently, I received such a leave application from one of my colleagues.

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Chaos has once again rampaged the lands and I have been called upon by Tristram to battle against the impending Hordes of Hell.

As such, I will like to request to take leave from XX to XX May, a total of X working days,

so that I will be able to embark upon this Epic Quest of Good vs Evil.

In case if you are not aware of the crisis that is at hand, please visit this link for more information: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/

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I approved this leave application.

In Singapore, the one-cent coin is legal tender but basically unseen in the past few years. Basically, our shops already quote prices inclusive of GST, and in these years our shops basically all round down the final price (inclusive of GST) to the nearest five cents. I suspect some behind-the-scenes governmental push for the removal of one-cent coins, but banks charging fees based on the number of coins deposited is certainly a factor.

Recently, taxi prices have increased across the board. This is the first time when cents are introduced into the fare structure. Now each jump in the taxi meter is twenty-two cents plus whatever surcharge that may be applicable. Instruction to taxi drivers is to round down the fare to the nearest five cents, like what is done in stores.

Problem is, this is not implemented consistently. Slightly more than half the time, taxi drivers actually round down the metered fare to the nearest ten cents. The remainder actually rounded up the metered fare to the nearest ten cents, overcharging the customer ever so slightly. Extremely rarely would a taxi driver actually round down the fare to the nearest five cents as instructed. Personally, I am not bothered by the inconsistent rounding, because the difference is a measly ten cents and the standard deviation in taxi fare is much larger than that.

One major cause is that people here do not carry large numbers of five-cent coins, except for store clerks who have to be very strict in the change they pay out, or else they will be held accountable. On the other hand, taxi drivers are effectively running their own business, so they do not want to be bothered by the fairly useless five-cent counts. Yes, five-cent coins are still better than one-cent coins, but they are not accepted by vending machines which greatly reduces their utility.

Perhaps the next move is for the government to start eradicating five-cent coins. After all, the majority of people never want to deal with five-cent coins, preferring to price everything in units of ten cents. This includes practically all the small mom-and-pop shops.

The following kind of price structure can often in seen in photo shops offering to develop print photos.

Each 4R photo - $0.20.
Minimum total cost - $2.00.

The above is in plain language. That is, if you develop less than $2.00 worth of photos, the shop will charge $2.00.

However, when writing the same price structure as a mathematical expression, the total cost in dollars is often expressed as follows.

max(n * 0.20, 2.00), where n is the number of photos.

I remember a time eons ago when I had a bit of difficulty comprehending how come the minimum became a maximum. Minimum and maximum are supposed to be exact opposites of each other.

This is one of those oddities with language.

The following problem has been making its rounds on the net.
And... oops. I solved it in less than a minute.

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This problem can be solved by pre-school children in 5-10 minutes, by programer - in 1 hour, by people with higher education ... well, check it yourself! :)

8809=6
7111=0
2172=0
6666=4
1111=0
3213=0
7662=2
9313=1
0000=4
2222=0
3333=0
5555=0
8193=3
8096=5
7777=0
9999=4
7756=1
6855=3
9881=5
5531=0
2581=?

( Spoiler hint )

In crowded food courts, a rather curious but very common conversation exchange I hear is:

"Is this seat occupied?"
"Yes, you may sit here."

I don't like the "Yes" part in the response because it is confusing. It is not unusual to see people to walk away upon hearing "Yes" only to hear the second part and say something like, "Oh, thank you." To make matters worse, some people will even only respond with either "Yes." or "No." with a full stop, which is pretty ambiguous.

To avoid such ambiguity, my usual response to such a question is simply to stretch out my hand indicating that the seat is available. When asking, I usually ask "Can I sit here?" instead so that "Yes." really means I can take the seat.

May all have a good year ahead. =)

Recently, I got attracted by the signs placed outside various Levi's stores advertising a $50 discount for a new pair of jeans upon exchange of an old pair of jeans. In addition, there would be $50 worth of vouchers.

One thing I noticed is that many Levi's stores are now mainly employing non-Singaporeans, mostly speaking with either Indonesian or Filipino accent, but some are obviously mainlander Chinese. These people are mostly hardworking and have good service attitude, but sometimes I doubt their knowledge of their products. Quite a few times I asked questions like, what is the difference between 510, 519, and 595, and the reply I received is that they are all skinny jeans, and they are all the same. Of course I know they are all skinny jeans, but their cutting are different, and this is what I wanted to and was not able to find out without actually trying them on. (Answer: 595 is the tightest on the legs, and 519 is the loosest on the legs.)

So one day I brought a pair of unwanted jeans and purchased a pair of 595. As part of the deal, I also received two vouchers. The first voucher is $20 discount for purchasing a top, and the second voucher is $30 discount for purchasing an item over $80. So, these vouchers came with strings attached. Slightly deceptive, I would say. T-shirts typically cost $40 to $50, and other kinds of shirts typically cost $70 to $90, so the vouchers actually aim to make consumers spend more money. In addition, all Levi's jeans cost over $100, so it would be even more cost-effective to trade in an unwanted pair of jeans for $50 discount rather than using that $30 discount voucher.

Anyway, I was looking to use those two vouchers. Another thing I observed about their service standards dropping is that their stores are relatively understaffed, usually between two to four per store. Problem is, when there are about a dozen customers in the store, which I won't say is many in a crowded shopping mall, the employees appear a bit overwhelmed. So I picked up a shirt from the rack and it took eons before an employee was available to attend to me. I asked if there is a M-sized shirt of the same model. She replied that there is a M-sized shirt and proceeded to search. However, I stood there for a long time only to find that she had totally forgotten about me. She must have received too many customer requests, but it wasted my time and made me look like a fool.

One problem with Levi's stores is that they never place all sizes of their merchandise on the racks. For many models of clothing, they only place one size on the hanger. This causes a lot of unnecessary work for the employees because customers always have to enquire for sizes. I often find it difficult to purchase things from Levi's, because often I don't know exactly what I want at the first place, so I would have to try on many pieces of clothing for size, cutting, and colour before I decide on buying one. To avoid imposing on the employees at any one time, I have the tendency to visit multiple stores at different times and try on one or two pieces each time if I have a vague inkling of what I fancy.

Anyway, one of Levi's main selling point is quality and this is reflected in the expensive prices in what they sell. However, I find their designs rather conservative, and that they are quite behind the curve when it comes to fashion. In addition, I don't really need that kind of quality because I normally retire my clothes a few years after purchasing, and it is quite rare for my clothes to fail before then, which makes Levi's merchandise not really value for money at their forever increasing original prices. In conjunction with the experience that I mention previously, I have decided that I will simply let my vouchers expire at the end of December, and spend my dollars elsewhere. I did try to give away my vouchers to my colleagues, but nobody wanted them.

I successfully defended my thesis on November 17, marking yet another major milestone towards the completion of my Ph.D.. For the passing of the defense, I follow the tradition of past Ph.D. candidates and treated fellow lab mates for a celebratory dinner. Separately, Min wanted to treat me for a dinner as well. Originally I thought of organizing a combined dinner, but after consultation with others I decided to hold two dinners instead.

November 25 (Friday): Paradise Inn, 313@somerset

I treated eight people for this dinner. With quite a few days to select a venue, I decided upon a slightly upscale restaurant. I settled upon Paradise Inn because I know food would be good and many of my colleagues are from China, then I looked for a more central location. 313@somerset was not ideal for those coming from NUS but that was the best location available.

To my pleasant surprise, a large round table was allocated for my reservation instead of joining many smaller tables into one long table. This made for very good ambiance which facilitates conversation.

After discussing with Long, I ordered a set meal for eight to ten people. The braised peanuts that came up as appetizers were good so they were finished quickly. The other dishes did not disappoint me as well. The cucumber stew that came out first was exceptional, and so were the shrimp balls in wasabi. The tofu on hotpot was pretty good as well, and I found the spinach in three kinds of eggs quite special as well. Two or three of the dishes were quite ordinary, but importantly there were no bad dishes. Even the dessert of red bean with sago soup was pretty decent, given my past impression that Paradise Inn was not strong in desserts.

One improvement they could make is to serve the fried rice in the set menu first. I had to ask for the fried rice to be served first after two or three dishes have appeared on the table, because some of my colleagues were not used to eating dishes without rice. Also, for a final price tag of between $280 and $290, the portions could have been larger. A minor regret I have is that I should have just ordered an additional dish instead of asking my guests whether they had enough, and one of the insisted that I do not have to order more because I would go broke feeding his stomach full.

Overall, this is a pretty satisfying dinner, with others saying that the food is good. Paradise Inn should be commended for making seemingly ordinary dishes look good and taste good, and this is no easy task. It was two years since our research group had a celebratory dinner, and it was great catching up with them. I am happy that everybody had a great time during the dinner.

Food: 8
Ambiance: 8
Value: 7
Service: 7
Overall: 8

November 28 (Tuesday): Tajimaya, Vivocity

Following the dinner on Friday, I asked Min to suggest a day for our dinner, knowing that he will be going back to the States in the subsequent week. So one day before, he suggested the next day and asked me to choose a venue. This caught me by a bit of surprise due to the short notice, and I broadcasted an invitation for the three colleagues who were not able to attend the first dinner, for which only Kaz was able to attend. On Tuesday afternoon, due to lack of time, I picked Vivocity as the location and then pseudo-randomly selected a restaurant that I never tried before, and seeing Japanese beef with beautiful texture on the website and considering Kaz is a Japanese, I settled on Tajimaya and placed a reservation without really looking into its menu.

Being an extremely wet day, I had arrived at work wet from the waist down, and was still slightly wet when I arrived at the restaurant. As I was about five minutes late, Min and Kaz were already seated in all the way inside the restaurant. On this Tuesday evening, the restaurant was hardly full, so we were given a table overlooking the harbour to a beautiful Sentosa night scene. The restaurant has a very traditional Japanese decor, with tastefully placed Christmas accessories which made the ambiance so much the better.

Upon opening the menu, I realized that I had selected a very expensive yakiniku place. I would not mind if I was treating, but my dinner was on Min. Luckily Kaz's share is on me. However, Min suggested that we should try the wagyu beef set because U.S. beef is very cheap within the U.S.. And so we ordered a wagu beef set for two and a plate of sashimi moriawase. The beef set came with various cuts of Kobe beef, small portions of chicken and sausages, plus vegetables and salad, as well as soup and rice, with ice cream as dessert.

Min was very adapt at grilling and serving the food. He explained that he often visited a yakiniku restaurant while he was on sabbatical because it offered great value for U.S. beef, so he was very familiar with the procedure. He quickly filled our plates full of food!

It would have been better if the waiter explained the different kinds of cuts, but luckily Kaz was able to identify most of the cuts. Some cuts were purely lean meat, some were slightly fatty, and some were more fatty. It is the fat that intermixed with the lean meat that produced such beautiful texture as well as the very special taste. I have never tried wagyu beef before, and this grilled beef was very special. As I slowly chewed it, it sort of slowly melted inside my mouth. It was a very smooth and awesome sensation I never had before for beef. The very delicious feeling is very hard to describe in words and had to be experienced.

The dinner experience itself is wonderful. We had a good chat over various random things. Somehow, the air-conditioned restaurant must had a system to remove the excess heat from the grill which would have made dining a sweaty experience.

I would recommend that people try wagyu beef yakiniku at some point in their life, even though wagyu beef is very expensive. A few days after the dinner, my saliva still keeps dripping whenever I think of this dinner. For a very long time prior to this dinner, I had never had anything that is close to this good. The only thing that could have been better about the overall experience is that Min's dinner should be on me rather than the other way round, but if I have not chosen Tajimaya I most probably would have missed out on such delicious food.

For those interested, the total bill came out to almost $200. It makes it difficult for me to decide upon a rating for value, because it is expensive but very satisfying.

Food: 9
Ambiance: 9
Value: 7
Service: 7
Overall: 9