Here's My Story

I've realised long ago (and it's still true till today) that my dreams have some recurring themes: Late for class/exam Forget to bring something important to school Can't find my timetable to determine the next class and its venue Running away from something I fear, usually either something supernatural like vampires or monsters/dinosaurs but could be humans too e.g. assassins  Except for the last one, noticed a similar thread for the rest? :) As for the last one, oftentimes I got tired of running away in my dreams and I would simply stood still, bracing for the 'attack'. My pulse quickened while waiting for the impact of the attack but it usually never materialise. Either the assailants simply vanished or they just lost interest in me. How about you? Any recurring theme for your dreams?

Oftentimes I hear people lamenting about their impotency at saving money. So, when my (then) colleague in Singapore lamented the same thing, I demonstrated to him, in about 5 mins, that he could actually save nearly 50% of his gross salary if he wanted too. He appeared to be truly amazed by this fact. How did I do it? Just purely by budgeting. Here's a more elaborated example: assume a gross salary of S$2,500. Food Breakfast: bread with some bread spread, with a loaf of bread lasting for 4 days (i.e. a little more than 3 slices per day). Generous budgeting of S$3 every 4 days i.e. about S$24 per month. You probably can have soft-boiled egg every now and then. Lunch and dinner: mixed rice for one of these meals and noodle or anything about S$5/S$6 for the other meal, with possibly one drink for one of these meals. Budget of S$10 per day i.e. S$310 per month Luxury food: Treat yourself to some nicer food, with budget of S$25 per meal, once a week i.e. S$100 per month Lodging...

Friend: Do you know that I was conceived as an insurance for my family? Me: Huh? What do you mean? Friend: Well, my elder brother was the only child for sometime until one day, he was nearly knocked down by a car. My grandmother then insisted that my father have another son. Hence me! Me: What?! *laugh* Although it seems rather funny at that time, it is actually rather sad. I personally know of people whom parents view them as 'investment' e.g. they are born and bred with the sole purpose of looking after their carers (I don't view them as 'parents') once they're mature in future. Oftentimes this is demanded. For goodness sake, please don't do this to your children. It's hurtful and I'm pretty sure they would rather not be born than to suffer this. Parents should just do their best in raising their children and if they turn out right and treat you well, then it's a bonus. If not, then you've done your best and move on.

Until last year, policymakers could always produce a new rabbit from their hat to reflate asset prices and trigger economic recovery. Fiscal stimulus, near-zero interest rates, two rounds of "quantitative easing", ring-fencing of bad debt, and trillions of dollars in bailouts and liquidity provision for banks and financial institutions: Officials tried them all. Now they have run out of rabbits. - Noriel Roubini, in his commentary "Is capitalism doomed?"

The topic was what Sis requested for me to talk about. Well, I honestly don't know much about Australia's politic but I do have some points to make. The strangest thing about Australia's politic is the election cycle: it is a mere 3 years. What on earth can one party hope to achieve in 3 years? The first 0.5 year is honey moon. The 3rd year is spent on preparing for election. That leaves only 1.5 years to do real work. How much can be accomplished in 1.5 years that will hopefully leaves such a good impression on the voters and encourage them to re-elect that party again? Remember, any major project involves lots of work such as establishing objectives (this could be argued for months!), committees, draft bills, debates, redrafts, debates, posturing, gazette, implementation. Also, how about its effect? Will the effect of any major project be felt in time for the next election? Such short election cycle probably encourages the government to just try to come up with shor...

Although I knew that most likely it would be the same price as last time (now that I think about it, why did I ever except the price to be lower?), I couldn't resist to buy the soy sauce chicken drumstick a few days ago: Yup, it is still RM5. I now suspect that the drumstick was counted as equivalent to 2 portions of meat. What do you think?

Recently, I've purchased the game King's Bounty: The Legend, which is like the rpg version of Heroes of Might and Magic. Recommended for fans of the latter. Anyway, after playing it for some time, I began experiencing frequent crashes. The error message stated that my laptop's DEP closed the programme for security reason blah blah blah. At first, it wasn't a big deal as I diligently saved the game often but it came to a point where it crashed within 10 mins of loading/reloading a saved game. Googling time It seems to be a problem shared by quite a number of people with most of them having in common the following: Windows Vista (such a troublesome Windows!) Nvidia graphic card It's very disappointing that the game's developer didn't release a patch to fix this (unlike the developer of the free MMORPG Trickster). I have tried the following suggestions but didn't work: (1) Turned off the sound of the game (2) Disable Nvidia display driver se...

To all those who love to advertise where they are or where they are going via Facebook: Robbers Checked Facebook Status Updates To See When People Weren’t Home Three robbers in New Hampshire are suspected of using Facebook to find status updates of people who wouldn't be home. It was a pretty genius strategy actually, they scored $200,000 worth of goods until they got caught. Apparently, the robbers checked Facebook to see who would be out of their house at a certain time of the day. It obviously helped because the police say that the robbers managed to break into 50 homes and took items like monitors, watches, motorcycle helmets (?), and fireworks (not to mention the cold hard cash above). No word whether they were social network-savvy enough to use Foursquare as a "research tool" too. Source: http://gizmodo.com/5636025/robbers-used-facebook-to-see-when-people-werent-home http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/burglars-picked-houses-based-on-fac...

Saw this at Damansara Damai. Made me smile.

Italy does, of course, face issues of political strife and corruption. (And in other news, the sun rose again this morning...) - Andrew Lilico, in his article 'Italy unlikely to default'.

Here's something I recently discovere that helps with my pseudo-sinusitis : heat pack placed on eyes covering the area right below the eyes. This idea came about when I came across a heat pack in Daiso that was shaped such that it seem to fit just snugly on the eyes and avoiding the nose. So I tried it at night before sleep when I felt the pressure around that area. It worked well, even when the pressure was bad enough to cause slight headache. I slept well. Thanks to my sister who lend me her heat pack, although I initially borrowed it for my hand :)