Your Blog Should Be Purple 
You're an expressive, offbeat blogger who tends to write about anything and everything.
You tend to set blogging trends, and you're the most likely to write your own meme or survey.
You are a bit distant though. Your blog is all about you - not what anyone else has to say.
Accurate? Nay, this is just a summary of my response to very few of the questions there. The easiest kind of online tests to write and take that will always be accurate!
BTW, I don't like purple.
Spotted this one out of eighty-five QQ cars in Singapore. These cute little 0.8l cars just hit the local market in less than 3 months and I'm lucky enough to spot one recently, that is cutely decorated too.
Hey, pardon my composition as I'm risking my life to take this photo. No joke, I had to expose my rear to the oncoming traffic to get far enough to take this shot with my F11. All the risk just to take the shot.
The back of the Chery QQ
It's blue and it have the same "Wife's Taxi" thingy at the back of the car. And guess who's the wife favourite cartoon character?
Let's count Pooh...
Yes, you got it, it's Winnie the Pooh(s)
More cute cute stuff on this QQ car
This new car in town has got to be the cheapest around at a price of about $32,000 w/coe, a whole $6,000+ less than what I paid for my 1.1 Getz. But god knows how they play around with these figures when they sell vehicles. Hyundai always quote price for immediate purchase while Kia always quote prices whereby you need to bid for COE etc. Won't know for sure since the figures aint out on the MTA website.
Cute Japanese words. Can some Japanese elective students decode this? Always facinated by Japanese in the past since I played so many games (mostly dragonball) without ever understanding the language.
Reviews on the QQ car is less than spectacular with major complains on important aspects of a car such as poor brakes system and lousy quality control etc.
Dad swear that he saw the speedometer up to 200+ km/h but reviews quote the top speed of 130km/h (no fear of speeding over 50km/h on the expressways). Only time will tell if the QQ is a worthy competitor to the Getz 1.1, Picanto 1.1, Kelisa 1.1 or the coming what's its name Chevrolet, heck, just Chevvy Spark. Budget cars for people on budget like me.
singapore chery qq cars
From Questionable Content.
Saw this comic just after I had prepared a lesson on Einstein's special relativity. It's just my soft spot.
Alcohol, like Physics, can be hazardous to your health.
Anyway, good luck to those year 3 taking their end of year exams starting tomorrow!
physics relativity quantum comics
Because you will get photographed and posted online...
Boo Hoo.. I want my toy
This is the hardest bolster I ever had... Boo Hoo...
This is what happens when you don't change diapers often enough
Let me try mastermind's shoes
Opps.. too big.. how about this instead...
All photos taken with either the Sony A100 or Fuji F11.
singapore candid photoblog sony a100 alpha fuji f11
There is this park near NUS that is very inaccessible to the public that offers some view of the port, plenty of green stuff, joggers and artillery guns and howitzers. Here's some photos from my H1 of Kent Ridge Park, my first visit there even though I spent 4 years at NUS which is so near to it.
Panoramic view of the port
A fast squirrel, which I only managed this poor shot before it went out of sight
Army signallers on reservist? 
This used to be a vantage point with guns against enemy navy ships.
All photos taken with the Sony H1
singapore photoblog sony dsc h1 kent ridge park
Just some simple thoughts I have lately on the above mentioned topic to share.
1.) Be sincere - Mean what you say and do what you mean.
2.) Be caring - Send an sms to check if her day is fine, send a email/ecard at work or even just call her up to chat for 5 minutes.
3.) Be sweet - Hide a note in her bag or bring her a stalk of rose occasionally.
4.) Companionship - Help her in her chores or go shopping for daily products with her. Simply just do some things together with her.
5.) Be helpful - Help her open the car door or hold her shopping bags.
6.) Be considerate - Sometimes you have to put yourself in her shoes and think for her. Don't do things that would make her angry.
7.) Be a listening ear - Just lend her your shoulder and listen to her woes when she have a bad day.
8.) Be thoughtful - Bring her breakfast but skip all the oily stuff because she has a sore throat.
... ...
You don't need to do everything at the same time to be Mr Nice but if you showered her regularly and consistently for a long period of time with such actions your girl will be the happiest girl in the world.
This list can go on forever and ever but there is one principle behind this list. If you truly love and treasure her (more than or as much as yourself), then your actions will reflect your feelings and the list will become redundant.
Guys, think about it...
singapore love relationship essay
The Physicist's Bill of Rights
We hold these postulates to be intuitively obvious, that all physicists are born equal, to a first approximation, and are endowed by their creator with certain discrete privileges, among them a mean rest life, n degrees of freedom, and the following rights which are invariant under all linear transformations:
- To approximate all problems to ideal cases.
- To use order of magnitude calculations whenever deemed necessary (i.e. whenever one can get away with it).
- To use the rigorous method of "squinting" for solving problems more complex than the addition of positive real integers.
- To dismiss all functions which diverge as "nasty" and "unphysical".
- To invoke the uncertainty principle when confronted by confused mathematicians, chemists, engineers, psychologists, dramatists, and other lower scientists.
- When pressed by non-physicists for an explanation of (4) to mumble in a sneering tone of voice something about physically naive mathematicians.
- To equate two sides of an equation which are dimensionally inconsistent, with a suitable comment to the effect of, "Well, we are interested in the order of magnitude anyway".
- To the extensive use of "bastard notations" where conventional mathematics will not work.
- To invent fictitious forces to delude the general public.
- To justify shaky reasoning on the basis that it gives the right answer.
- To cleverly choose convenient initial conditions, using the principle of general triviality.
- To use plausible arguments in place of proofs, and thenceforth refer to these arguments as proofs.
- To take on faith any principle which seems right but cannot be proved.
This is one of the many classic Physics jokes around on the net that only physics majors would appreciate. I don't consider myself a Physicist but all the years of Physics education made me guilty of the above bill of rights today. Sorry Sucre that I had to invoke some of the above to answer your Quantum Mechanics problems.
I used item 3, 8, 10, 11, 12 and 13 to reverse engineer a solution that had little physical meaning to me. As a results, I get more laugh from this joke than ever.
Now I remember that in order to invoke a small change in H with respect to lambda, you had to do 'this' to those idiotic non-commuting, non-intuitive and tongue-twisting operators. Try reading this lines repeatedly...
"Partial lambda partial axe times partial delta lambda partial axe plus pee partial lambda partial axe ..."
Greek alphabets make poor poems
physics physicists quantum mechanics jokes humour
More than 1/2 a year ago, my Dad had his first aloe vera flower blooming right at the door step and I gladly shot it with my H1 then. Now we are in the third round and I had the chance to explore these flowers with a different tool.
Then:
Taken with the Sony H1 with its native lens. Didn't bother to try with my close-up lens now that I have one because of the shape of the flower makes it difficult to frame a nice shot with the shallow depth of field available.
Now:
Taken with the Alpha with my close-up lens attached to my 18-70mm kit lens, so I can focus much closer to the flower but still a bit far from the 2cm macro the H1 is capable of. And I used flash with this shot too taken at night. If only it is easier to focus when I stack my close-up lens with my telephoto lens.
singapore flower photoblog sony a100 alpha dsc h1
Finally I had sort of completed my 3 basic courses for the year only after surviving through another mind boggling super condensed course filled with acronyms of all sorts. Frankly speaking, I don't like the way they deal with those topics personally because they gave a brief outline to SO MANY different models (one acronym for each) and we barely scratched the surface to see for ourselves if those wonderful theoretical models would work or not.
I PREFER DEPTH OVER BREADTH!
I admit that its important to cover a wide breadth but PLEASE! Select one method/area/focus to cover in sufficient depth! You don't do yourself credit and get others interested in those wonderful methods that you preach without going in depth at all!
Just like people who are interested with photography most likely picked up an old 35mm dummy camera or started off with a digital point and shoot (both applies to me at different stages of my life) rather than going through all the technical jargon of aperture, shutter speed, depth of field blah blah blah.... I don't believe that anyone's first experience with photography is through learning the rule of thirds and he/she fell in love with it ever since. There's a higher chance that I would get killed by a falling meteorite of krytonite and get reincarnated as Superman instead!
So please just show us puny beginning teachers a useful and easy to learn model for us to apply back in school. If that model worked, it will get us hooked. And when we find situations where it does not apply, we will return with a greater hunger for more. You didn't teach your kid how to run before he/she start to crawl right? These courses are really bad teaching examples for teachers to follow. Tsk Tsk!
singapore teach teacher course education essay
Yah... I know it's a week behind time. But here's some photos from that last day of term break. Where did the whole week go man?! 
Guess what did she saw.
That could cause such a difference in expression so quickly.
(Ans: The toy windmill at the window, spinning and stopping)
Dinner @ Johnson Duck
This place will be very near the holding school site that I will be teaching in the next 2 years at least. Nice food with very reasonable prices. $3 per claypot, $2 per soup etc...
This is how Sucre perceive the market
This is me when Sucre is playing with my camera
The week break was good while it lasted...
singapore food kids photoblog sony a100 alpha
Great O'Sullivan - video powered by Metacafe
For those who know what snooker is all about. Ronnie O'Sullivan with his fastest maximum break (score full marks lar) in record time (5 minutes plus). Try doing that for a physics paper! Plenty of Physics in these stuff, look forward to it in year 5. The Physics of Pool and Snooker
snooker Sullivan video
physics
And I shall focus on the negative instead.
Been reading the news about the upcoming fare hike and wanting to blog about it. But since straits times interactive is for subscribers only, figured it won't be the best source to talk about so will take the today version of the story instead. The actual story can be found here.
For some obvious reasons, the local media managed to report a bad news for the public as if it was good news. Here's some gems I uncovered behind the "congratulations Singaporeans on the upcoming fare hike" article.
#1
In fact, one in five rides — or 23 per cent of some 4 million rides daily — will not be affected by the fare hikesSo that means four in five rides are affected. So who are those not affected? Children/Students with concession pass and National Servicemen with concession pass which may make up over 1 million rides daily. If we take a visit to the Singapore statistics website here and download some statistics on student transport patterns, we find that about 320, 000 students take public transport to school. Assuming that all of them uses concession and they take an average of 4 bus rides per day (gross over-estimation since I did not consider school holidays), I came out with 1.28 million trips from students. Even much less for National servicemen so what happen to at least 2.72 million other trips that will not be affected?
They are cash rides which is already much more expensive in comparison. So tourists who have no reason to buy an EZ-link card would not be hit with the fare increase. In actual fact, Singaporeans who are not affected by the price hike may consist of only one in twenty rides instead. I won't be sure since I don't know how many locals travel by bus with cash payment.
#2
Fares up – but not as much as last yearSo the title of the Todayonline article says "Fares up - but not as much as last year". I'm really impressed with the author for finding a positive to put as the title in an essential tragic news for everyday commuters. We could have look at this in many different negative ways like as follows:
The council approved the maximum 1.7-per-cent fare hike applied for by both public transport operators. Last year's maximum fare hike application of 2.4 per cent was also approved by the PTC.
a) Fares up - Total of over 4 percent in two years
b) Fares up - Transport fare increase by maximum twice in two years
c) Fares up - Once Again
d) Fares up - Despite healthy earnings of public transport companies
#3
out of five rides will see a 1-cent fare increase, three in five will see a 2-cent hike, while 16 per cent of all rides will cost 3 cents more.
If you can't convince them that fare hike is good, confuse them. 2/5 + 3/5 = 1. So where did that 16% that will cost 3 cents more? Maybe this is a genuine typo but shouldn't they be a bit more careful with those figures? What if some IMF/World bank big shot picked up a copy of Today at Suntec and found this mathematical mystery embeded in the newstory? Bet they would have a good laugh along with their cup of expresso during breakfast.
#4
To alleviate the impact of such fare hikes on the elderly and needy, both SBS Transit and SMRT have come up with $500,000 worth of transport vouchers
SBS Transit has extended the concession hours for the elderly, a move which will cost an additional $373,000 over the next 12 months.
So the SBS transit and SMRT are paying through their noses to come out with some forms of aids for the needy to help alleviate the impact of such fares? Or is this a publicity act? Let's look at the figures...
In 2005, there are 157 000 households with total income of $1000 or below monthly. If you consider them to be needy, that means the SBS and SMRT prepared to fork out less than $4 per household. Just for comparison, if you work 300 days a year to chalk out 600 trips on bus with $0.01 increase per trip means you pay $6 more a year.
Of course, we all knew that not every needy household will actually receive the transport voucher, that's why people get $20 vouchers instead. (Wonder what happen to the majority of the needy households)
On the other hand, with almost 20 million trips daily, and average of 1 cent increase per trip for 4 in 5 trips would mean $160 000 more income per day or $58.4 million a year (Actually about $50 million if I don't do rounding off but hey, I only consider 1 cent increment okay, so I think is fair!). Now the amount they forked out to help the needy from the increased income seems to be peanuts in comparison. They break even within a week.
#5
"This means that the fare adjustment, which will yield $8.7 million for a full year, will only provide partial relief for the increased cost pressures we face," said SBS Transit spokesperson Tammy Tan.I wonder if I did my math wrongly or SBS is lying blatantly. I think it will yield at least 2 times more and I don't think they pay such heavy tax that will reduce their yield by that much. It must be a magical figure quote after discounting some money here and there or comparing with operating costs in India or something. I won't know.
----------------------------------------
Just for records, I sourced some financial records from the SMRT website for comparison too. Here's a summary of those key findings
a) SMRT earned $27.4 million after tax for first quarter of FY2007 compared to $25.7 million for the 4th quarter of FY2006. That's a 6.6% increase in profits without the fare hike.
b) Total operating expenses increased from $148.9 million to $151.2 million during the same time. That's a 1.5% increase only
c) Compared to first quarter of FY2006, profits went up by 5.7% also
So SMRT is doing great business and bringing in increasing profits without fare hike. So is it really necessary to increase transport fare? Like what the PTC said, there is not reason to reject, nor is there a reason to approve, so they approved. Darn! I'm too lazy to go see what SBS have to offer for their financial reports, I don't want to lose what little confidence I have left of the public transport system by looking at more figures.
Oh, in my simple research on this issue, I found even more depressing news from the statistics that I dug out. Compare to 2000, 2005 saw an 13.6% increase in household in Singapore but the number of families with low household income (below $1000) increased by 35.0% instead. The other end of the great income rift is that families with household income above $10,000 monthly increased by a whooping 46.2%. So the poor Singaporeans are getting poorer will the rich Singaporeans are getting richer in the past five years.
Feeling crappy after looking deep beneath the positive stories that the local media always present. Ignorance is a bliss certainly applies to Singaporeans.
singapore transport fare hike smrt sbs today media essay
The classic white moon
How holidays are short and it's time for the new term again. Legends always say that the (almost) full moon always make man go crazy and stuff... So after seeing the (almost) full moon yesterday up close and personal I started to do some crazy stuff to. But only to the moon.
Red or pink moons for you?
The minolta 75-300mm lens could only fetch a focal length of 450mm equivalent on the alpha system, which is 18mm more than the 432mm equivalent of the native lens of my H1. Considering that the alpha has twice the megapixels of H1, I could at most get a moon that is 47% greater than the native H1 moon (or 636mm equivalent at 5mp). But if I add the 1.7x tcon to my H1, I would get 734mm equivalent for H1 or 15% larger than my Alpha minolta moon! So a crazy idea was born!
Yellow or green moons?
My minolta lens is non APO lens, i.e. I can't get a teleconverter for dSLR to increase the focal length. Moreover, these teleconverter eats light for lunch and would make lens really dark, and they aren't common and aren't cheap either. The H1 tcon lens on the other hand do not cost any light and is many times cheaper. It is optically excellent with the H1 but wonder how it would fare with the Alpha. So I just placed the tcon in front of the Alpha and looked through the viewfinder. Bingo! Now I just need a step up ring to attach the tcon to my Alpha since the threads are different size. Off to search for the old market!
Blue or violet moons? Having fun with photoediting indeed...
So now armed with my minolta lens, my step up ring and my sony dh1758 tcon, I awaited for the night to do the moon. On paper, I could get up to 765mm equivalent, just a bit more than the H1 but the megapixel differents meant I could get a 47% larger moon (1080mm @ 5mp crop) than I could ever get with the H1. Size does matter? Afterall I'm just playing around with it. Sure, the camera had difficulty focussing with that small rock attached (and eat up all the battery juice) but I gave a shot with manual focus and the results was posted yesterday night.
I'm crazy isn't it?
Heck! How about all the rainbow colours on the moon at the same time?
Those dSLR purist would complain with my unorthodox methods while pixel peepers maypoint out that this method could have increased chromatic aberration bla bla stuff... Others may say that this is cheating! You are not suppose to stack lens from point and shoot cameras on an SLR. But that's the same reason why I choose Sony/Minolta over Canon or Nikon! For some reasons Canon/Nikon users would try to convince you to join them and boast of their superiority (High end lens, maybe, photographer, nah...). They troll others in forums and stuff and they haunt you in your real life. They maybe your friends, your relatives or your colleagues but they always say the same darn thing. They are on a crusade to reform photographers from professional to amatuers alike, it's like a religion or gasp! A cult!
When I heard of the Minolta story, that they produced great cameras and garnered a huge market (with over 16 million lens sold) with little to no marketing (they sell by word of mouth), I knew that this is the brand for me. Too bad they got sued and failed to survive as a company but thankfully, Sony took over their innovations at the same time as I was learning with my H1 and provided this next step up from my prosumer.
I don't care if C or N has twice the number of lens M/S would ever have, I don't care if in lens IS is better than in body AS (H1 is in lens IS while Alpha is in body AS, which is better? I always attach the lens adaptor and hold the H1 like an SLR and use the EVF to get a good grip anyway. And both cameras are comfortable to hold with good weight distributions unlike C where user complain of their poor ergonomics). Ok, I simply don't care if the camera could produce the goods and I get photographs that is pleasing to my and also Sucre eyes and capture those special moments!
Did I say I went crazy earlier?
Ok, enough of banter... time to go back to work tomorrow.
singapore moon essay photoblog sony a100 alpha
Wanted to do an Alpha moon but the skies were unforgiving until tonight. Here's a sized down Alpha moon! Can you believe it? The original size is much at least 25% larger than this. Of course I don't own any expensive lens that could get this huge moon, but I did some improvisation and got a moon much bigger than my H1 + DH1758 moon.
This is just fresh from the oven, but it's cooked and no long raw (pun intended)... lol..
The Alpha preliminary moon. Just cropped and did some basic sharpening. This is a resized version, you can click on the image to get the larger one. 
Just for comparison, this is a 100% crop of my previous H1 + DH1758 moon.
Getting tired, maybe I may have time tomorrow to do some photo editing to make a blue moon out of it. Most likely a fake one that is... so as not to raise any expectations. Haha...
Finally I have a moon that is worthy as a wallpaper, that is big enough to set as one.
singapore moon photoblog sony a100 alpha dsc h1
Had some free time to play around with some of my photos to see if I can make it look better than before. What do you think? Is the original better or does the new version have more ohmph in it?
#1
This was part of my old banner series of the sea view at Pasir Ris park. Several shots stitched together taken with my H1. The sky looks a bit flat
Did some burning to the midtones and adjusted the colour curve. The clouds now seem to be popping out and the sky prettier, isn't it?
#2
From the SJAB parade. I liked the angle of the shot but the challenging conditions meant I burnt the background but the faces were still a tad underexposed.
Cropped some of the burnt skies to give a 3 by 2 aspect ratio (for printing of 4R too) and brighten up the faces.
#3
#4
This sunset shot is from the fireworks festival period too. Thought I could add more drama mama to the shot..
Here's a redder, or rather, orangy skies. Brighten up the buildings a bit too. Could be better but my basic skills could only do so much..
#5
Again difficult lighting conditions caused the background to be burnt. But it opens up opportunity to try something different in my editing...
Might as well desaturate and burn all the highlights of the background stuff to make xiaobudian stand out even more. At full size, can even see the water trail on her face. Cool!
Oh.. left out this one in the last update. Another version of xiaobudian's photo. This one is just desaturation
Well.. hope ya like what you see here...
2 more days to term 4..
singapore photoshop photoblog sony a100 alpha dsc h1
Okay, now that I had gotten the approval to post away with the photos (with a restraining order on unflattering ones). Here's some more pictures from the pool with Yuxin.
Enjoy this photo story
Look at her little feet, she's so afraid of the huge pool of water at first
So she wanted Mummy to comfort her from her fears
Mummy wants her daughter to learn swimming so she slowly introduce water to Yuxin. "See, don't you love water when you shower?"
It took her all 3 minutes to go from "I'm so scared" to this smile
"I'm not afraid anymore"
Of course it makes things easier when there are people to play with her
And mum to be always by her side to make her feel safe
This is so much fun, I bet that she will run towards the pool the next time we bring her there.
Some bonus pics from my house before the swim
Is she riding something? Taken with the 18-70mm kit lens
What is she looking at?
All photos taken with the Sony Alpha A100 camera with the Minolta 75-300mm f4.5-5.6 (D) lens unless stated otherwise.
singapore Swimming kids photoblog sony a100 alpha
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