I remembered my days as an army mechanic. There was a saying among we mechanics when we were working on heavy components of armoured vehicles " If nothing works, theres's the 5-pound" 5- pound is the name we call a heavy hammer which has a steel head that weighs 5 pounds. It can knock out most ceased bolts due to rust, pin joints being trapped under heavy components and connectors bigger than the holes into place.

During a conversation with one of the older engineers in the company. He always jokes around and talks about his love for wine and last time ciggies. Then we started a chat on politics, made jokes of some present ministers. When we started of with talking about opposition, he turned serious and said something that I find very meaningful, " When a person fights for something so hard even when the odds are greatly against them, and the costs of losing is much greater than giving up and heavily outweighs the benefits of winning and of course the person is not someone crazy, it goes beyond the tangible benefits"

This year the opposition is coming strong..

I wasn't a big fan of local politics, since my constituency has always been a walkover by the ruling party. It's different this year, even though the ruling party is most likely to win since the opposition here is in quite a bad shape over lawsuits and leadership issues. But the media has showed me how the ruling party oozes with pure arrogance and power hunger. They are the highest paid politicians in the world but have never been truly challenged because their godfather embroils and bbqs all possible opponents with bankrupcy lawsuits.

I remembered in my JC days, I lost my IC after forgetting to take it back after sitting for a chinese exam paper. I was pretty disturbed the next few days and hoping that some nice fellow will return it to me. Mid that week, I took a Maths test in a big lecture hall. Being distracted over my lost IC, I did my test like anyone else but forgot to hand up my answer script, instead I mistakenly handed up the question paper. The next day, my math lecturer called me up after another lecture and said she can't find my paper, I found it damn weird but maybe "just in case" look through my file and there it was.

She told me that she see my face quite honest looking chap, so she'll just take the script back. And she said. " this test won't mean anything anyway. most important is your A level"
She got her point straight, I said sorry and we moved on. I was sad the day I got my A level results because I got a B for Maths C when usually I get Fs coz she was no longer teaching in my JC and I couldn't find her to tell her I got a B.

Well, if she was running for parliamentary position, she might just make it difficult for me in taking my A level exam and call me a liar and question my integerity and I'll hate her for life. It could go both ways.

The ruling party chose the latter in a similar situation.

I used to respect ministers from the ruling party, but they have turned to name calling and mud flinging, have they finished talking about all their election issues?. Some say,its only the few in the leading realms and not the party, but didn't the govenment encourage whistle blowers? Unless everyone in the party believes in the same stand and support fellow ministers who are digging their own graves by increasing the hatred against them? Can another lawsuit save them? If one of their cronies read this blog and sue me today for going against the media rules over elections, I am comforted to know that there's a "5 pound hammer" who'll challenge stupid stuff like this.

Ok i'm just taking it figuratively, I'm a nobody in a land of 4 million people. But there's a group out there who'll challenge stupid and biased policies. If government policies are good, I'm sure opposition won't fight with them. If its not that good, someone will be able speak up. Rather than letting a bunch of scholars drawing fat cheques get another blank cheque from the people and make all decisions, good or bad without any criticism or opposition. It's like only allowing yourself to look at things from one angle which may not be yours.

There is some saying like this somewhere, "The world is evil not because of evil people but because of good people who don't do anything."

Slogan of the day," Lightning never strikes the same place twice, but the hammer will always be somewhere in my toolbox." Makes absolutely no sense but most locals will know what I'm talking about.

It's been a while since I wrote a blog.

I have been damn busy.
Taekwondo has been rather taxing, especially with all the pattern trainings after work. Alas IVP (the long awaited) is over!. It's been two weeks since I reached home earlier than 11pm!..
But there's also this little void now, it always happens. It's like suddenly so free after being super busy. The same feeling as after last IVP and NDP during my army days. First year's IVP wasn't like that coz I wasn't in any pattern team. It just felt like an additional one or two days of training per week.

Anyway, I didn't win anything this year and girls won the silver. But I'm so proud of them. Coz on the more obligatory side, as a pattern AI, together with the other ee jang team's AI, we managed to clinched the gold, silver for NTU. (That happens every year if we send 2 teams competing in the same pattern competition.), so I'm kinda relieved coz I'm not the weak link and proud that we made it coz it wasn't easy.

I have plenty of excuses to give about my fighting, I think it's most likely I haven't got the tempo yet. Bout no.5... What the heck, my mind not even ready to go in and kick and I've to compete with an old friend to get seeded into the semi final. But I'm not sore over my defeat, it's a bit wasted but I'm not sore coz my opponent Gladwin was the better player that day, mentally. More like on par on the physical side.

Work is getting tougher and tougher, as my company starts tendering for big time infrastructural projects. My working hours get longer and longer and my brain gets more and more tired. But I think if we can clinch the underwater tunneling project, it will be damn good for my resume next time.

I hope to be able to specialise in Coastal Hydraulics and Sediment Transport. The market is opening up in Singapore with all the new projects that will be built on reclaimed land in the marina bay area and East Coast area. But the industry is well establish in places like Hong Kong and Australia and places where people live near the coastline.

Anyway I lost my wallet today. The taxi company say they found it , hope I can get it back in the whole piece, with money still intact. But I won't be to grouchy if a new dollars were missing.

Finally completed the project my supervisor gave me.. I had a terrible headache calculating the bending moments and reactions of a continuous beam on 4xsupports...Until this china dude gave me a spreadsheet which does all the calculations.

Training the pattern team is tough+ IVP is postponed... That is so sian.

My company has been doing a lot of underground infrastructural projects, generally very very large scale and high value. A section of a tunnel requires hundreds of drawings and so much boring stuff to do.. But boring is interesting. Haahaa, sounds wierd right? Boring refers to drilling holes to the ground lah....

It's been 2 days of work.

The first which was yesterday was a freaking boring day, my supervisor was busy, everyone was busy. So I was given a book, or rather an operators manual for this computer programme that's supposed to do "finite element analysis of soil and rock". That's like MEng /PhD level man. Yah the guy who gave me this task was Dr (some angmoh name) who got his PhD in "finite element blah blah blah" from the UK. So basically I sat through 8 hours of reading that user manual. Along the way, this Dr came by and gave me some contracts that the company had tendered for reading; mostly legal stuff with some techinal details.

In a real MNC, it's really not like on TV, with nice brightly decorated furniture, spacious and managers having big offices with a stunning view. etc etc , although I was told that the head office in UK was much bigger. And yah there are literally thousands of rolls of drawings all over the office from projects past.

Second day was horrendously different. I was told to do work. Yes, I was given the task to see what was wrong with the design retaining wall using the a/m software and see if my results match the ang moh's. But I couldn't do it, as in I don't even know how to start. Then after lunch, I was given a much simpler task, to design a H-Pile, 8m long girders to link the pile and another 8m long secondary beam to allow the slab to be placed on it to be 2-way spanning. It's supposed to be something that I just did. CV3301 and CV3202. Which is worse because I can't recall how to do it. I racked my brains until I got a bad headache.

Luckily, coffee and tea is free flow.

Since exams ended like the last week of november, I have been on a long holiday, about 2 months long. But I've been kept rather busy with inter-hall games and trainings and taekwondo training. Just a summary of my IH season that just came to an end, Hockey got into the finals and lost to hall 3. Rugby got into the semis and lost to hall 1.

Tomorrow I begin a new chapter of my school life. I am finally going on attachment, to this big MNC. but the pay is rather low at $600 per mth, only slightly better than NSF pay. But what to do, my occupation is still student. hopefully I could save a fair bit and go on holiday after IA.

I was chatting with this insurance sales girl(She chat me up first) then she was saying her friend who's also in ntu is rather sad coz he's only getting $750 per mth for IA..!!! #@$^%@ I was saying that is damn good liao leh... roommate only got $550, I getting only $600 and we are both working for really big MNCs in the mech and civil engineering sector respectively and the market average for IA students is about $550 per mth Then her reply was that some of those going for overseas IA are taking like 2k a month... Like that how can compare????.... Some people are just big bleddy assholes.

I'm down with a flu, had been thinking of being garang and attend yesterday's hockey friendly matches and tkd training, then I heard on the news that another NSman conked off during RT. Then the old 2WO Simpson's words came to my mind. So I decided I just skip trainings this week.

Got my results today. I passed everything, not exactly very good but better than I expected. Thank God. I now have one less headache.
Structures 2 got an A-
Foundation Design got C
Transport got B+ and the rest RC Design, Steel Design, Spatial info and Environment Engineering got B-..
So that means in half a year's time I only need to concentrate on year 4 subjects, which is good. I can now go on holiday after my IA, not necessary for me to catch on GE AUs.

An immigrant from Malta was surprised and shocked when he heard I'm staying in Australia for merely a week. I was in Perth for the past week on holiday with family, went to the pinnacles which are weathered rock formations in the desert, new norcia which is a monastary town. Also had seafood at Frementle, chocolate and wine tasting at the Margaret river.

Then there was this Singapore Girl i.e SIA stewardess who was rather friendly with and of course really very chio...

It has come to a point where I just want to sit back relax, work in a job that interests me do the stuff I want to do in between.

One of the reasons why I feel so drained from the great variety of ccas I'm in is probably due to the fact that all those is not where I'll actually carve a niche nor am I really in love with,

Oh well..

Tried friendster blogging. but I realised I can't write bad things about people who are 'friends' with me.

HSOC 05 is finally over. Life goes on, school re opens and the mugging begins. Amfri won the overall best OG..!!! YEY!!!! And at least no one has shot at me horribly yet for the amazing race screw up. Screwing up is all part and parcel of learning I guess.

Wondering who the new OC chair would be.. so as to decide whether to join or not next year.