make money

"for those people who haven't found a direction in life yet."-cj

Start small by first setting up your own Ah Long Pte Ltd..

business plan

Frustrating, the lack of motivation i see in some of the group members. No opinions. No initiative. No group cohesion. I blame myself for my inability to manage the group, their lack of interest and the halfhearted manner in the way they presented the business plan. What a joke it would be if people from the other group found out the fact that I have no idea how my last group member looked like until the day from the presentation. It is not like as if I hadn't tried. Email was a one sided communication channel. Unexplained absences from the several group meetings. Every meeting, we re-enact among ourselves the "Who is Thibaud?" followed by "Finding Thibaud?" scenes. Earlier, Thibaud had written to me describing his passion for the 'Product to Service' topic, it made me want to laugh at myself whenever I give him the benefit of the doubt for his absence from our discussions. Worse, there's more than one group member who caught the Thibaud syndrome in my group. How can we function with only half the group (the asians and africans) turning up for meeting each time? Me being me would have presented the slides myself, if not for the fact that my language competency isn't up to the mark. Sometimes, I am almost convinced that people do not want to cooperate and work with us not because we are incompetent, but because we are asian. Cultural integration becomes much harder when a handful of misfits takes away what the rest of the school is trying to achieve.

"failure has a compounding effect.
laugh it off.
and start behaving like a winner."-cj

Tmr is a new day. Let's begin it with a tabula rasa..

Socrates

"By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."

breakfast

Toasted bread with ham and egg, anyone?

I

Sometimes I'm grateful to know how screw up a person I am. At least knowing that, I do not have to try very hard to look for explanations to expound my failings in several aspects of my life. I constantly try to identify myself through my success and hide my shortcomings behind my CV. I do not hold a bitterness towards life, but certainly I'm not enjoying myself like I feel I should be. Turning 24 soon, I have developed the cynicism equivalent of a 60 year old war veteran. I cant expect everyone to love me as much as I love myself. I was told that I should lower my expectations, cut everyone some slack and meet them halfway. Maybe i will be able to see the world in a better light. Try and make everyone's happiness my happiness.

In my whole-world-evolved-me paragraph, I wrote a total of 30 'I's , 'me's and 'my's. Let's hope by the time I get back, I can make everything about you.

psychoanalysis

He entered the room, switched off the lights and lowered the blinds. Without saying a word, he picked up a chalk and scratched out an equation. "Chia. You are an engineer, you are good in mathematics. Try and solve this one." I took the chalk from his hand and stared at the board - helpless. Wide eyed, I waited to be shame. Maybe I'm not cut out to become a psycho analyzer. Kindly, he continued, "To be able to understand fully the realm of psychoanalysis, you have to first be able to make sense of this equation."

[(R-R1)^gamma] /angle (65 rad) + girls = castration

Once you are able to grasp the concept behind the equation, you will be able to solve the next equation.

Florence Nightingale + Empire State Building + King Kong = ?

I'm dense. I'm not able to see the rationale behind both equations. But did you managed to guess that the answer is still Castration?

material

What is 10 times lighter but potentially 500 times stronger than steel?

It's none other than. Buckypaper.

print your own heart

Here is a breaking news. Research are being done with an Epson printer, you cannot now print out a 3D structure of your heart. The idea is for the printer to drop cells one by one into the right spots and repeats the process for many layers, it creates a 3D organ. This totally change the rules of the game for organ transplant. And Japanese scientist Makoto Nakamura is the rain maker.

Straits Times article.

the geek inherits the world.

孟子曰：

「天将降大任于斯人也，必先苦其心志，劳其筋骨，饿其体肤，空乏其身，行拂乱其所为，所以动心忍性，增益其所不能。」

我何德何能...

psychoanalysis

Dear aa, I am just not capable of squeezing what we do in psychoanalysis class into the small comment box. Thus, I hope this entry would allow me to fully express my utter disdain for the module. Let me start by giving you an idea of what i had thought the class would be like. So that when i put the ideal against the reality in juxtaposition, you can imagine my shock at how the class turned out.

Psychoanalysis, I had read, involved Freudian theory. The ego, the superego and the id; and how together they help an individual resolve his inner conflicts. Sigmund Freud's study of the body's defence mechanism and the unconscious mind helped in the development of related areas like psychotherapy, anger management, peer pressure , social norms and etc. interesting isn't it.

The lesson began interestingly enough. He touched on how analysis done during hypnosis actually conforms to the social norms and beliefs of the hypnotist. Thus, is not an unbiaised study of the unconscious mind. He touch on how dream interpretation is actually a branch of psychoanalysis. How the mind tried to protect itself by allowing the bad things to only manifest itself as subtle symbols in our dreams. The crux of the dream analysis is actually the study of the fringe symbols rather than the obvious happenings in the dream.

Then..

"So do you know what is the explanation for you dreaming about yourself writing in your dream?", he asked.
"No", the class responded in unison.
"You are thinking of sex. The pen is a symbol of the p*nis. The ink is you know what. The act of staining the sheets with ink is, in fact, sex.", he concluded.

goodness. He continued..

"Do you know what does the door symbolise?", he asked.
Me being quick as I am, caught on really fast. "It's a symbol of the vag*na."
"Yes and n0. If the door is hinged on one side, meaning you have to swing it open to either the left and right, it might not be a representation of the vag*na. However, if the door is hinged on both sides and opens from the center, then it is what you think it is.", he replied beaming.

omg.. He moved on to the topic of hypnosis..

"Do you know that during hypnosis, most women admitted to being sexually abused by their father? However, this doesn't mean that they are actually being abused. Instead, it could mean that they have a little Electra complex. Same goes for the boys and Oedipus complex."

This left my jaw hanging. How apt to hire a quack to conduct a class on psychoanalysis; brainwashing us with his perverted ideology.

Damn i still have to spend the next 6 Wednesday afternoons with him.

theater

I went for a language themed class - Theater. What I was expecting was to go in to the class, sit down and listen passively to the teacher who will talk about The Arts. The first step into the class and i had to double check the classroom number. Earlier, I came from a class with the tutor calling us "The P*nis Club" as there wasn't a single female in the Psychoanalysis class. So I was a little taken aback when i stepped into a classroom with only girls huddling around the teacher (the small handful of guys were late). The whole class hushed when i stepped in (probably a little disappointed to find out that the first guy to step into the class is an asian). Nonetheless, I was thrilled. The rest of the guys streamed in only after the lesson has begun.

First activity - the usual oral self introduction was unusually quick. The prof ushered in the next activity with a Bang. She got the whole class to form a circle and we started playing ice breaker games.. the same type as the ones you would expect to play during orientation with equally spffy names like "Catch the ball", "Three Claps" and etc etc. Then it sunk in. This is an acting class.

I'm glad that I do not have to sit through long lectures on the evolution of the Stage. All I need to do to pass is to do what I do best.

Talk.