The Online Citizen, Volunteer today if you feel bored and got a camera

Well, basically i’ve been with www.theonlinecitizen.com for probably a half-official member for the past 2 mths or so. And today, in about 3 hrs, i’ll be flming (With a Canon XH-A1!!) for them over at speaker’s corner. So for you guys interested somewhat in politics and singaporean economical and social news, you might be interested in the website.

Not sure what Andrew, my team leader, wants for today, but basically they’ve got 6 speakers over 1.5 hrs to speak about transport woes in singapore. Of course, the most recent fare hike thing would be a popular subject.

Apparently James Gomez (yes, the election form/bakchormee guy), is back in singapore from some other country and will speak later on today.

Going to meet shimin now at funan, she’ll be helping me as the photographer today. So i’ll update soon after actually editing all the footage later on (first time working in HDV format.).

What a break from blogging.

With the completion on my 3 IL portfolio assignments (yes… excluding the 3 remaining, lol), i finally return to one entry of blogging since june.

Lets have a quick scan of whats going on to my life recently

1. Skipping alot of school to go teach and dunman high, forgive me.

2. Above made Richard Adams not too happy, obviously

3. Skipping abit of school to go do NJRC, hopefully no one sees, resulting in slightly more of the above

Fortunately, i believe my trombone skills are finally starting to take hold again. It feels like i lost direction for a while. Thank god.

Anyway, NJRC 2008 ended 2 days ago on saturday, about 6 pm. Yet again, i tell my friends i don’t regret skipping that presentation finals and not being able to get the award for “Tertiary Best Presentation”. This entire NJRC 2008 without winning has been too much of an experience. Running back and forth to the field tells me that a dummy robot and a friend would have actually helped. And getting into the finals and somehow not getting 40 points in a goal tells me once more to ffs program 4 balls seperately (i had 3 mins to collect 5 balls, plus i didn’t care about the cans).

Actually to my horror, i only knew the re-tries did not reposition the position of the props, so on mistake, dislodgding the balls and not collecting them means you’ll probably not collect them in a re-run. I was that close to getting a 2nd for best-robot performance (assuming it was based on only the finals). Considering i got 4th position in the surprise mission, i yet again console myself. Lol.

Teaching Dunman High started out as a horror, i must admit. But at the end of the day, they were all happy with the pizza (haha) and also i made friends with at least one dunman high junior. There was melissa from sec 1 who eventually asked me to help her recover some files from a corrupted thumbdrive. I like a variety of friends! So it was pretty good an experience. Then the guys like yankai and especially lester proved to be pretty nice actually. As a music diploma student, i do understand why most people feel robotics is awfully boring, why robolab is again horribly boring.

But i tell you, i believe that people program and construct the robots for that 2 minutes of success.

So tell me, you have a chinese saying that goes 台上一分钟，台下十年工. (There i variations, of course)

It roughly equates to, “A minute on stage, 10 years below it.”

So lets just say that 3 months in the robotics lab, and about 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 3 (including finals), 11 mins on the playing field.

10 years/1 min = roughly 5.256 mil

3 mths/11 mins = roughly 11781

You get what i’m saying, no preparation is VERY fun. Lol.

Okay fine, its hard to find a good title for messy post like these.

So lets see its 3.48 am now on my laptop clock and i have just about 4 hrs left (allocated for sleep and computer usage) to take some rest before starting the day again, begin with helping Siti out with guiding japanese student tourists around from 9 am to 1 pm.

And the great dilemma, which till this day the tour organisers and japanese schools have yet to thought about and/or solved, is a solution for the absolute lack of entertainment from about 9 am to 11 am. To think that the trip starts of at York Hotel (thats at mt elizabeth, near orchard road), and you leave orchard to another location to burn time, most often chinatown (where imho cheap and kinda low quality stuff is sold there at a not-so-cheap retail price), and you bring e tourist kids back to orchard road after that where the real shopping begins. The japanese sure love singapore for mainly shopping i guess!

After that i’d be at St Gabriel’s primary school helping Dr Chang (in essence also Mr Wan and glasgow science) to teach Lego NXT robotics. I’m going to be frank and sincere now to say that my knowledge of robotics is really surface. Though i and jarred, along with priscillia have signed up for NJRC this year, and i purchased a set along with the registration fees ($495.40). This would probably give me ample experience to deal with most of the training requirements over with mr wan, i just don’t like to be too uninformed while teaching something.

And to add just a few words for my fellow friends who might also, coincidentally, be participating in NJRC this year, you can get some spoilers (regarding e playing field and challenges) from the World Robot Olympiad 2007 and 2008, just visit their websites. You’ll notice that the playing fields for WRO 2007 Taiwan look far too familiar, lol:

http://wro.erobot.com.tw/property_en.html

Its been a while sinced i’ve done any philosophical preaching… ahem, i mean commentary, lol. But theres going to some today, so if you’re not prepared, theres always the choice of Alt-F4! I try not to push my ideas too far into people though!

If you look at my latest MSN nickname, its in japanese:

“人生にそんな人の無駄な苦衷はいつも自分の問題になるでしょう。”
Jinsei ni sonna-hito no muda-na kuchuu wa itsumo jibun no mondai ni naru deshou.

Translating directly:
(in) Life, certain people’s pain/suffering (regarding this), always oneself’s problems, it becomes (probably).

Basically, in life, the difficulties of certain people can often become ours. In deep intepretation, these problems can be, but certainly not neccesarily a result of ones over-concern or nosiness. Consequently, it might very well be a internal struggle of an acquaintance or another individual, which unfortunately strikes onto you in one way or another which in turn puts you in a equally dilemmatic position.

For example, your fellow colleague whines to your manager about the unprecedented amount of work to be produced in an awfully short amount of time, and gives your incomparable availability of free-time which seems to be a direct opposite of his work-load as an excuse! Next morning you realized that a stack of extra paperworks appears at the desk and a note from your manager. When you turn to look at your colleagues, life seems normal with as-per-normal usual amounts of workload.

Star Wars Episode 6, Return of the Jedi, Lando Calrissian says:
“They’ll never know where we hit em’!”

As expected, you had absolutely no idea where the paper-work came from.

And if you did know, it wouldn’t help too much to face your “rival” in a series of cold-war style battles.

These individuals may inherently be mischevious, malicious or simply do not appreciate or find jealously while viewing your position, where he sees as superior to yours. Perhaps his bickering is a result of his personal issues, ie. family problems, social-circle issues, school problems, being a victim of violence/bullying, stress, money… the list goes on.

Your passing remarks and actions can pretty-much and similar, and probably unbeknownst to you, put somebody else in a similar difficult sub-position!

Potentially, such problems in life come short of an easy remedy and most drift away and dissolve with the passing of time, no doubt fortunately.

So next time if you find yourself in such an issue, perhaps the best way to deal with it is to put in intelligent words to minimize possible damage, especially if it damaged relationships in your social circle. Not too many, just a few words will do.

Carrying on in life is the crucial solution, often we get to stuck with the negative issues and things seem to be glued into position. In any case, do comment if you feel like it. I am more than willing to accept attacks of my philosophical approach. An effort to be neutral, lol.

[S]o [E]xpensive and [N]othing [TO] [S]ee [A]ctually

Okay, thats rather biased. I do have to admit sentosa’s facilities have improved slightly since the last time i visited. This time round, my handy Panasonic GS-300 camcorder. I guess after some practice, still shots off the GS-300 are actually pretty clear and good, despite of course the inferior and rather primitive 3.1 megapixels resolution (versus the likeness of 8.1 to 10 megapixels off a canon/nikon standard these days).

So after Jarred’s ranting and non-stop persuasion on on thursday, i decided to finally wake up at 9.25 am on friday, rushed, bathed and met the TPJBanders over at harbourfront MRT station at 10.15 am, 15 minutes late. Fortunately, some other bunch of band people were later. So spent some time messing with the camera and went to swiss-bake and harbourfront centre and grabbed a croissant. Wow, you really need to try a croissant yakitate (okay the anime/manga really means “freshly baked) in the morning, you can feel the delicious streaks of semi-salted butter run down the layers of bread.

So instead of the monorail which actually cost the same, we spent $3 to take the shuttle bus near the kopititam on the other side of vivocity, reached sentosa, walked to and settled down at Palawan Beach. Ok today was pretty warm (fortunately not too humid). Beach was still pretty empty then so finding a spot under the tree wasn’t much of a problem. Sincerely, i wasn’t there to have fun/play games at the beach, rather more interested with taking pictures so spent most of my time filming and taking pictures:

Oh yeah, then there was this peacock roaming on the sands:

 

Then jarred was a little bored so we walked the wooden bridge over to southermost point of the asian continent (not sure what the name of the place was). And took more shots from the tower, this one was with max opticial zoom:

 

Had a cheng teng with jarred at the koufu foodcourt located just beside palawan beach, and after their captain balls game Jarred, Boon Kiat, Sung Lee and some other band juniors decided to go find a cheap spot to play pool over at siloso beach, so i tagged along. Though we found the $2/game open-air pool spot to have been booked by two white tourist so we headed to Subway, which was a close walk away, to have lunch. Those familiar with www.failblog.wordpress.com would be surprised now… my first contribution (very good one i would say), of a “fail” pic, take a look:

Besides that, i shared a teriyaki chicken subway with boon kiat, which in my opinion tasted very inferior to those you might find back in singaporean “mainland” (not too politically correct i know), the already flavourless (except saltiness, teriyaki was almost absent) chicken masked twice by the vegetables (they serve yellow tomatoes there, a nightmare), and again by the sauce (we had honey mustard, its quite appetising). And apparently, they only had italian and hearty italian [almost (baked lightly) baguette-like breads, taste like it without the that crust], and the way the guy put it to us,

“I can only accept italian and hearty italian”, guess who’s the customer here? Lol.

So after that meal, we tried our luck again, fortunately this time the pool table was freed up and had one game. Before leaving for palawan beach (for bags) again, while i tried americano (yet again, very low standard coffee at sentosa’s coffee bean) when the gang finally decided to leave earlier to catch a movie at vivocity. This time we went by monorail, apparently the gates to the monorail were ez-link like now? (Or am i ignorant that they were since a long time ago?)

We were supposed to watch kungfu panda but were told at the counter “There are only row 1 seats left” so that left us wondering on what to do to satisfy our original intentions of watching a movie. Guess what, we ended up travelling to Tampines safra to play bowling. That took us about an hour and 15 mins of travelling time by MRT. And god, all the bowling lanes were filled up (friday night). So, we ended up playing pool and photo-hunt at the game machine. Something interesting about tampines safra, now they have a computerised dart alley system were you pay $2 for 6 throws, didn’t try it, but apparent a bunch of pros (ah peh champions) were getting 3 bulls-eyes out of 3 throws every round. Had this $4.10 fried rice at the bowling centre, somewhat over-priced but the guy meticulous spent 15 minutes frying the rice and it turned out to be really good. Oh yeah, my one-on-one pool game with jarred ended with jarred hitting the 8-ball in just as he cleared his 2nd last colour (i was left with 4, luck issue, or bloody excuse).

So the day ended with me taking bus 59 and switching to 81 at TPJC busstop.

Oh yeah and so the last packet of 100g japanese cuttlefish ($1.95 offer price) at cheers was purchased by me.

   

 

 

 

 

When you thought public apologies was a anglican thing.

True, since the days of Dr Boon being in power, public apologies have become a common part of Anglican High Morning Assembly culture. And i do remember one occurance when boon made 2 alumni boys’ brigade members (one of which i rmb to be Jonathan Tan, my batch) apologise to the school for locking up the backgate with an external lock.

(Apparently i heard rumours that they were made scapegoats…?)

Well today (yesterday effectively), 7th June 2008 was SYCO’s annual concert, dubbed as usual “March of the SYCO”. So the public apology thing plays in when i had to apologize for my pretty serious lateness for the rehearsal on friday. Apparently i was working in the morning then returned home from a nap, when i overslept and woked at 6.50 pm (10 mins before rehearsal at sch…).

So here was my speech i gave to the staff and SYCO members, its in chinese (the reason is obvious why its not in english…):

各位及此下的SYCO伙伴们和SCO的老师和长辈们，我是唢呐小组的李廷丰。昨天，二零零八年，六月六日，星期五的重大彩排当中，本人因工作后的午觉无意间睡过钟，造成我迟到了整整五十七分钟半。我的这一番严重失错带给我们的指挥老师，工作人员，和所有其他的SCO老师们难以原谅的烦恼以及不安。

虽然我这一番的马虎，不负责任的态度，无可原谅的疏忽，可说是造成了不堪设想的后果，姚指挥老师却依然允许我在这一场演出上继续演奏。对此，我无比的感激。

我想再次向所有SYCO的伙伴们，SCO所有的老师和工作人员们，诚恳道歉以及请求贵人无比的宽容和大量，原谅我这次的疏忽，希可让我能重返SYCO的大家庭中学习以及成长。也想利用这机会，在此希望今天的演出能够完美，一帆风顺地完毕。谢谢大家。

Apparently the SYCO people laughed and clapped (not a bad speech, i hope you agreed, especially e 57.5 mins part lol), and Ms Lum over at administration got angry and reprimanded the CO lightly for not taking this public apology seriously. Well at least i’m glad everyone was at least sort of entertained by my speech? It was just before concert anyway, we shouldn’t be too stressed up. Forgot to mention that we had to arrive at SCH at 5.30 pm for the concert, after e apology was some admin briefing and stuff, regarding SYCO re-admission exam criterias and score distribution for people playing for beautiful sunday (i suppose i won’t be playing).

Then concert started at 8 pm with minor issues. Reed was abit irresponsive and sounded damn flat during “The General Command”, fixed that quickly and things went fine.

Apparently during 古槐寻根，Jun He started to cough uncontrollably and Liu Jiang had to get shurong to help him off the stage. Wasn’t well played by the other suonas anyway i guess, rhythm wisem, it was somewhat choppy i felt.

Then for 丰年祭 (in my opinion the best played song), everything was pretty much well done, suonas was very well in tune for this piece.

Then Chang Le’s solo 关中情 after the intermission, definately not bad, full of emotion and dynamic variance, but i guessed nervousness kicked in and took away the top honours as compared to his performance during the rehearsal? Though he has this really thick and harmonically colourful tone, that can really touch the hearts of the worse suona haters.

Didn’t really listen to the guzheng solo though, can’t comment on this one.

Then came 嘎达梅林交响诗. Though the suona parts are pretty straight forward (very western orchestral and rhythmically simplistic, mostly variations on a main theme, though many different key changes challenge the chinese orchestra somewhat). Mr Boo was on my left (it was an SCO and SYCO combined effort performance), and he was loud enough to deal with my mistakes (if any, lol). And gada meilin has always been the piece i was most confident with anyway.

After which, sean and eldric came to meet me at SCH and apparently cherine tagged along with us (she came to support Li Han at the SY Concert) and we had supper at Lau Pa Sat. I and Sean ordered Ayam Penyet. I’d say the only half-successful part about the penyet was the chilli (sweet and spicy enough), though the batter was obviously not very penyet-like. Jonathan Tan would use the word “Fail” in this case. Apparently the entire lau pa sat did not seem to feature even a single vegetarian stall (perhaps closed at these hours) and eldric was fine with 2 plain pratas with sugar. Cherine had average tasting Carrot Cake (i’ve not really tasted superior carrot cake to be honest, i don’t love it).

Well lau pa sat might be a tourist attraction, and even more with one entire road closed beside it for Singapore Food Festival (transformed into a Satay Lane), the food, i would say, really isn’t all that to be raved about.

Lets see, whats the next food trip going to be? Pig ear’s sashimi at Mimigar (okinawan, yeah it sounds disgusting, we can always order their soba) or perhaps some North Indian cuisine thats restaurant quality? I was thinking about a good Dim Sum buffet somewhere… If you’re interested in eating out, look for me.