Online

While everyone ushered in the year 2006, I was online.

While everyone were busy looking at fireworks, I was online.

While everyone were wishing each other ‘Happy New Year’, I was also online (and I received them too).

The holidays have left me too much time to remain online so hours and days, while the rest of the time when I wasn’t online were devoted to gaming. This is bad, because I haven’t actually been playing for a long time, and it is probably quite hard to rid of this form of addiction in such a short notice. Holidays is really the best times to shuffle your thoughts and be happy, but it is also a good time to slack, game, and feel that life is nothing.

There seem nothing recent that happened, and is great enough for me to comment on. While erpz.net might stay around, I may no longer stay around to blog because of other stuff to do and the heavy workload in wherever I am going. I might still be writing political articles but they will not come online any time soon. In any case, they are more likely to be in Chinese and there’s no point posting them, with no readers willing to stop by and read chinese characters.

In fact, I am thinking of revamping the blog such that it just displays pictures I post, sort of like a photoblog, except there’s probably no text at all. 2006 will probably the same as every other years which have past, with the same number of hours and days, with the same old people ruling the world, and the few coffeeshop critics reflecting on the society. Then of course, there will be new buildings around the world; Olympics Village in Beijing (or is it done?), some more houses in Aceh, more ‘piers’ in Jalan Besar’, and IRs on our island. Oh, and there’s something new actually, not a new building, in fact it is pretty old, but it just begin serving mankind – the Buangkok MRT Station.

Eve of New Year's eve

I realised how vulgar bash.org was, but there were clean, funny jokes as well. I picked out a few good ones:

#25464
kow `: “There are 10 types of people in the world… those who understand binary and those who don’t.”
spacerain: That’s only 2 types of people, kow.
spacerain: STUPID

#171987
th3no0b: Im going to be the next hitler
th3no0b: Im going to kill all the jews and 1 clown
rageagainsttheamish: why the clown
th3no0b: See? no one cares about the jews
rageagainsttheamish: lmao

#291262
mendo: lmao there’s a wicked lookign spider on my monitor and if i move the mouse around he chases after it
spitfire: haha mendo
spitfire: take a screen shot
spitfire: wait
spitfire: that made no sense

Enjoy the last day of the year!

Eve of New Year’s eve

I realised how vulgar bash.org was, but there were clean, funny jokes as well. I picked out a few good ones:

#25464
kow `: “There are 10 types of people in the world… those who understand binary and those who don’t.”
spacerain: That’s only 2 types of people, kow.
spacerain: STUPID

#171987
th3no0b: Im going to be the next hitler
th3no0b: Im going to kill all the jews and 1 clown
rageagainsttheamish: why the clown
th3no0b: See? no one cares about the jews
rageagainsttheamish: lmao

#291262
mendo: lmao there’s a wicked lookign spider on my monitor and if i move the mouse around he chases after it
spitfire: haha mendo
spitfire: take a screen shot
spitfire: wait
spitfire: that made no sense

Enjoy the last day of the year!

Xmas Gift?

I am pretty lag to realise this only now and I guess that’s a Xmas Gift for web designers – or not, as mentioned in the article that too many of the existing sites online are coded exclusively for Internet Explorer. In fact, I have been experiencing so much problems with IE, that I may some times give up designing work because people request for the site to appear exactly the same in IE and the other browsers.

I wonder what’s with Bok’s Wine thing and Mib’s Christmas, which I still couldn’t figure out why the stuff he mentioned in his blog ‘is a bummer’. If you have nothing better to do, having finished with Xmas Celebrations, I recommend you visit Teddy’s Cameron Highlands ‘Photos Webpage’ (I don’t really think that’s a photoblog), to waste some time.

Christmas

I guess Mib’s got his Christmas present of producing an error when he tries to change his blog template. Mib, I advise you to make a switch to WordPress! I was particularly busy on the 22nd, after attending a meeting that my complicate my 2 years ahead with added responsibilities, then the 2 days that follows, including today, is about slacking, and doing nothing. For once, I felt that playing computer games was more productive than what I was doing (basically lazing around, changing TV channels, and trying to cook up some lame stories to blog about, though I eventually couldn’t think of any).

Hence, I dug up my dusty old ‘Age of Empires II: Age of Kings’ CD from the old cupboard where I store my encyclopedias and installed it into my old computer (almost as old as Windows XP, in fact, slightly younger). When I started gaming, there was apparently no stopping. I played for 4-5 hours straight and was tackling 7 hard enemies (the maximum number with a stage less than the maximum difficulty). Of course, I was being Kiasu by setting a giant map and including plenty of resources on the map. I know I am getting pretty bad at the game, and reasonably so because the last time I played the same game was some time 2 years back, when Mib was still back in Singapore, and I was still quite mad about Computer Games.

That was the first ‘real’ computer game I ever played (yes, I mean Solitaire and Hearts are not real games). Somehow, it doesn’t seem to get outdated to me – partly because the Age of Empires III didn’t come out until some time at the beginning of this year. But it didn’t really matter because within the 5 hours of game play, I was forced to use a few cheats to produce more resources, and a few ‘Cobras’ (that is if you know what it is in the game) to strengthen my military. I knew I was getting lousier and thus, after that session, I have to admit defeat (not in the gaming sense but the mental sense). It is this incident that I understand the reason to admire Mib, for his incredible persistence in slacking and gaming.

My Christmas Wishlist (if I really had one), would probably be filled with books, ranging from novels to social science papers, in contrast to Mib’s series of ‘Games-to-buy’ for the festive season (if you consider it one). Let’s hope Bok receives at least a new pillow, in addition to the heaps and heaps of chocolate, chicken wings, drumsticks, strawberry cream rolls and Mathematics Ten-Year-Series(es) for the occasion.

Internet Blues

Out of greed or whatsoever, I decided to sign up a free 60-day Internet connection for my computer and happily used it for one whole day until today, when it fail to respond to the call of my Windows PC. Somehow, the connection can still work with my Mac and hence, I have no choice but to blog with my Mac.

My previous connection is no longer linked to my current PC and so for now, there is no hope of getting my Windows PC back online. I tried renewing the IP address but with no avail. Somehow, the Windows PC is not able to configure everything automatically like my Mac. Here’s another reason for you to hate Microsoft.

i seriously would not have anything against this darn company if not for repeated incidents like that. The strange thing is that if you leave the machine alone and not touch the settings or whatsoever, it suddenly works for you. That leaves you with precisely no idea what happened or what’s wrong. In fact, almost every single device in my Home have contracted this deadly diesease and by far, the only solution I have is to whack them. Though not exactly effective all the time, the PC does start to run again after failing to boot sometimes.

Come on, make sure this Windows PC give me no more trouble tomorrow. Oh yes, have you seen the latest JibJab.com animation?

Mt. Fuji

I went somewhere for a whole week and thus was unable to blog for such a long time. I took this shot at whichever place I went and thought it was one of the best photograph I took this year, so I thought it would be nice to share it with readers.

I am pretty much running out of things to write, having increased dosage of apathy that seem to come into me almost everyday. I probably will not continue with consistent blogging next year with increased workload in school. In any case, Propagator will only remain as a frustration venting tool for the whole of the next two years (provided Mib continues supporting the existence of erpz.net, and is willing to remain as the owner of erpz.net with a leecher like Vib).

GEPer’s Rage

It all started with a simple entry in the ‘Today’ Newspaper Forum, on the undue stress applied to students in the GEP. Somehow, it caused reactions that seem to have no direct connections with the main arguement that ‘GEPers are under undue stress’. Whoever first replied the first letter was a student who have ‘benefitted’ from the programme and was extremely interested in telling the world that GEP students do interact with main stream students – also as an attempt to rebut the first guy’s claim that the GEP students are somewhat isolated from the others.

So soon, the net, and webcomics, are talking about the GEP – so many years after its implementation. Dumb, I must say, but people are starting to realised that GEP isn’t that special at all. For once, the students in GEP are torn between 2 camps: the first supporting the argument that they are ‘gifted’ and different, thus special enough to obtain special ‘trainning’ or whatever, defying the laws of meritocracy our dear ministry have been trying so hard to promote about our education system; the second supporting the fact that GEP isn’t really that different except the students have took the challenge to undergo more intensive intellectual grilling, that will probably make them better persons – nothing beyond that.

If you are in the programme, which would you support?

In fact, I know of students who flunk in the programme but decide to stay around, or was forced to stay around for a couple of dumb reasons; these reasons got to do mainly with ‘face’, and reputation – not worth elaborating. I also know of students who excelled and aced, and trashed everyone, earning the nicknames he deserves – ‘mugger’, ‘nerd’, ‘study-type’, ‘GEPer’, ‘Study Saiyan’, etc. It is all about the path you want to take. I have understood the whole idea of ‘living with the system’. Yes, there is such thing as GEP in our education system, so accept it or not, it is your choice. In a way, those who are in the mainstream are simply gifted students who are rejected by the programme (or you can say you reject the programme).

Apparently, ‘GEPer’ is somehow similar to the term ‘workaholic’, they can be negative or positive, varying from person to person. The fact remains that such programme is some kind of eugenic marginalisation that should not be tolerated in the ideal society. Unfortunately, nothing ideal exist, and we must accept that.

GEPer's Rage

It all started with a simple entry in the ‘Today’ Newspaper Forum, on the undue stress applied to students in the GEP. Somehow, it caused reactions that seem to have no direct connections with the main arguement that ‘GEPers are under undue stress’. Whoever first replied the first letter was a student who have ‘benefitted’ from the programme and was extremely interested in telling the world that GEP students do interact with main stream students – also as an attempt to rebut the first guy’s claim that the GEP students are somewhat isolated from the others.

So soon, the net, and webcomics, are talking about the GEP – so many years after its implementation. Dumb, I must say, but people are starting to realised that GEP isn’t that special at all. For once, the students in GEP are torn between 2 camps: the first supporting the argument that they are ‘gifted’ and different, thus special enough to obtain special ‘trainning’ or whatever, defying the laws of meritocracy our dear ministry have been trying so hard to promote about our education system; the second supporting the fact that GEP isn’t really that different except the students have took the challenge to undergo more intensive intellectual grilling, that will probably make them better persons – nothing beyond that.

If you are in the programme, which would you support?

In fact, I know of students who flunk in the programme but decide to stay around, or was forced to stay around for a couple of dumb reasons; these reasons got to do mainly with ‘face’, and reputation – not worth elaborating. I also know of students who excelled and aced, and trashed everyone, earning the nicknames he deserves – ‘mugger’, ‘nerd’, ‘study-type’, ‘GEPer’, ‘Study Saiyan’, etc. It is all about the path you want to take. I have understood the whole idea of ‘living with the system’. Yes, there is such thing as GEP in our education system, so accept it or not, it is your choice. In a way, those who are in the mainstream are simply gifted students who are rejected by the programme (or you can say you reject the programme).

Apparently, ‘GEPer’ is somehow similar to the term ‘workaholic’, they can be negative or positive, varying from person to person. The fact remains that such programme is some kind of eugenic marginalisation that should not be tolerated in the ideal society. Unfortunately, nothing ideal exist, and we must accept that.