Just had dinner at my professor's house with the food his wife cooked.. YUMMY. haven't had good chinese food in so long and she made enough to feed an army. It's kind of sad that I got to know my class as we were ending school though, since it's a senior seminar most of the class is graduating too.

It's Spring Weekend! In other words, it's time for everyone on campus to go party, get drunk and hook up.
Except of course, us people with an over-developed sense of responsibility who can't even imagine doing that :-p
Ah well... I would say they're young, but I don't think even at 17 or 18 (typical incoming age for a freshman) I was ever that young. Actually even at 14 I was never that young.
Or maybe I go backwards I become less responsible with age. Maybe when I'm 30 you'll find me drunk in a disco or a bar. :-p

The Yaoi Selector: Which Uke are You?
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yay tsuzuki... I love him.. I'm happy... for the uninitiated he's from Yami no Matsuei - a shoujo manga.

Road collapses along Nicoll Highway

have to admit when I first saw that on J's blog, I looked at my watch to check if it was April Fools. It's definitely way past, and I checked the ST. The second thing I thought of was terrorism. The article had an understated feel to it and I suspect that's how the government would portray it if it really was terrrorism.. which it probably isn't but no harm being paranoid.

Lol. I just realised that I should link to the draft bill at least so you guys know what I'm talking about.. .
so here...

papayagirl: About the draft bill, some thoughts :-p....

Wow. I'm studying China and democracy at the moment as a class... and one of the topics that came up was how China looked to Singapore in several ways. One was that a fraction of the pro democratic segment thought that china could reach democracy through first having a benevolent dictator (in our case LKY). Which i don't agree with but that could be left to another time to argue. The second was when Deng XiaoPing himself referred to Singapore as a model for China... i.e. retaining confucian values, and lack of personal freedoms while being economically successful and relatively free.

All I can say is I can definitely see those marks on the draft bill. J, the exclusions and exemptions for net public benefit or strong public interest definitely did jump out at me. Especially when I start wondering who determines the net public benefit or the strong public interest? Is the Government going to be regulating this bill? or an independent authority. Because if it is the government directly then i can definitely see that there might be problems with govenment-owned enterprises (the ones that are privately run and thus subject to that bill) claiming that it is doing net public interest when it isn't.

I think haivng article 12 raises the same problem because the exceptions too general and i can see too many loopholes in it. I suspect that the exceptions may be necessary for one or two special cases but if in general implemented are going to be huge loopholes. Maybe if they set a harder procedure for an exception to be granted... like exceptions only granted after analysis by independent body?

Although since gov. and stat bodies aren't included in the bill that's an even bigger problem with the stat boards.

I think what I'm really interested in seeing is how independent this competition commission is going to be, and how much under the government they are. As well as how incorruptible they are, especially since if you're dealing with monopolies and supernormal profits of any kind, there is going to be a huge amount of money involved. While I know singapore is generally relatively low in corruption, I'm also interested in the kind of pressure these people will be under because I suspect that if they aren't granted that much power, they will be walked all over, or powerful companies will call in favours with even more powerful people to get themselves exempted.

Or maybe I've just been in the US too long to think that this is how the world works and that Singapore is no different.
Interesting thought. :-p

It's hillarious. My grammar sucks. I know it, it's the worse part of my languages for every language... and yet...


You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!


How grammatically sound are you?
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I hate to see how everyone else writes if this is what my standard is.

In response to Singaporeans maxxing out class limits... I wonder if it's because somewhere along the way we actually accumulated a love of learning.. or rather never lost it in the first place. One of the few things I like about the Singapore system is that, it's actually okay for you to be good at school work rather than social poison. Of course the problems come in when you realise that all singaporeans care about is schoolwork. but possibly the first is what made us the way we are... wanting to learn too much :-p

btw, the last of my midterms is finally over.. .beyond this it's just papers and finals.. whoo hoo

the world has not stopped spinning since yesterday morning. Well not spinning exactly but it won't stay still... it's kinda rocking... If i can just keep myself moving i can function almost normally.. but if i sit still at all it hits me. I haven't felt like this since the months after I blacked out from donating blood. I am beginning to think that it's more than just lack of sleep because I have gotten sleep and I have drunk lots of water and I've eaten. If I still feel this way come Monday, I'm going to health services.. but meanwhile there is the whole weekend.

whoo hoo.. linear algebra here I come... one year from now :-p I simply don't have space next semester... and eek I also have to take the GREs in september
Guess what I'm doing over summer? :-p

Am beginning to enjoy the fact that econ is very much applied math. Also figured out I need to take Linear Algebra sometime soon if I want to even consider Grad school

Drugged with tea, lack of sleep and chocolate. All in all not a bad combination, except for the weird sensation of the world not staying in one place. I'm not sure why it's spinning. I can't figure out if it's the lack of nutrients/food, or the lack of sleep or some weird combination of all of the above...

response to E.E.: Actually about cars I thought it was the other way round, In singapore and in the Japan, because of government policies, people change their cars after 10 years. Here, most people I know definitely drive cars that are more than 10 years old, some more than 20 years old.

Schools started again. Took my LAP class today alone because the other two volunteers are jewish and it's passover. *sigh* I guess as lessons go it wasn't that bad. The kids in this program are definitely much harder to handle than the kids in Japan though.