Yulia Tymoshenko

Earlier this week, Viktor Yanukovich narrowly defeated Tymoshenko in the Ukrainian presidential election with 49% of the vote to Tymoshenko’s 45.5%. Political analysts say that it is no coincidence that exactly 45.5% of Ukrainians are hot and 49% are only good-looking. Well political analyst can say anything they want. Too bad for me, there is going to be less news of Tymoshenko from now on. For the ignorant, she's already 50 but she still looks like this...

"Ex Ukraine Prime Minister"-cj

"she has got character too."-cj

"She is a force to reckon with too."-cj

I mean. She is one of the richest person in her country, got a PhD in economics. If you are as powerful, as beautiful, as smart and as rich as her; you can point a middle finger anywhere. Read more about Yulia Tymoshenko. So now that she is no longer a prime minister, I thought about possible successors who can claim the hottest head of state title. I kept my finger crossed that it will be Queen Raina of Jordan and googled and. I then found this website - Hottest Heads of State. Huh. Interesting. Someone actually complied and updated the list. Tymoshenko is now listed as the former #1. The current reigning queen? I have no idea who Michaelle Jean (Governor General of Canada) until today. And guess who made it to #16. Our very own Prime Minister Lee who came in right after US President Barack Obama. To my disappointment, Queen Raina did not make it to the list. Perhaps the list is exclusively Head of State. But I will post a photo anyway.

"Queen Raina of Jordan."-cj

Now this has become a sociopolitical blog. barely.

quote

"Today, my friend explained to me that if you write 3.14 on a piece of paper and hold it in a mirror, it will say pie."

pie? or pi?

feeling grumpy?

Feeling grumpy 'is good for you'

In a bad mood? Don't worry - according to research, it's good for you.

An Australian psychology expert who has been studying emotions has found being grumpy makes us think more clearly. In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed. While cheerfulness fosters creativity, gloominess breeds attentiveness and careful thinking, Professor Joe Forgas told Australian Science Magazine.

'Eeyore days'

The University of New South Wales researcher says a grumpy person can cope with more demanding situations than a happy one because of the way the brain "promotes information processing strategies".

“ Negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world ” Professor Joe Forgas

He asked volunteers to watch different films and dwell on positive or negative events in their life, designed to put them in either a good or bad mood. Next he asked them to take part in a series of tasks, including judging the truth of urban myths and providing eyewitness accounts of events. Those in a bad mood outperformed those who were jolly - they made fewer mistakes and were better communicators. Professor Forgas said: "Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, co-operation and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world."

The study also found that sad people were better at stating their case through written arguments, which Forgas said showed that a "mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style". His earlier work shows the weather has a similar impact on us - wet, dreary days sharpened memory, while bright sunny spells make people forgetful.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/8339647.stm
Published: 2009/11/05 17:15:23 GMT © BBC MMX

*growl* grr

give.sg

Give them a round of applause. Support them and catch them at cnn.go. Social entrepreneurs. Small start up with big hearts.

Go boys!

pathetic fallacy

or anthropomorphic fallacy is the treatment of inanimate objects as if they had human feelings, thought, or sensations.

do you talk to your pillow? or your soft toys? pathetic.

habits

good habits are so easy to lose; and bad habits are so easy to pick up..

loss of appetite

The recent compulsive obsessiveness with his research has led to his loss of appetite for other worldly activities. He could not sit still to finish a copy of yesterday's Straits Times. New research ideas keep popping up into his head and he felt this urge to go and code it out immediately. For the past 2 nights, he got stirred out his sleep in the middle of the night by his desire to go to school to run his simulations. He no longer carried story books to read on long bus rides, instead he carried along research papers. He was non conversational during Friday's dinner at Fridays as he was in his own 30 dimensional world. Do you see what I see? He needs help. Somebody organize a trip.

budding symptoms of a workaholic.

friday night question

I was on my way out of the CBD when I saw a transvestite. Then. I felt a urge to go to the gents. Then. A question popped up in my head. When nature calls; a transvestite visits the gents or the ladies? or just use the Handicapped?

pls don't answer me.

thy sons are we

One of my friends got posted back to VS as a teacher and I felt happy for him. Though it has been 10years since we left the school, I believe that he, like me, still feel the pride of being a Victorian. We used to be pretty good at pissing off our teachers, so I guess this is karma for him. Hahaa. He told me he still see a few familiar faces. Maran is still there. Lee KS, Chew HS and Lee HP too. Khoo KY, Lau HB and others. I still remember that being a Victorian, is to be a professional, a sportsman and a gentleman. I am currently failing as a sportsman.. I better get those legs moving again. Parked in front of a computer, now I am knd of a creamy white soft yogurt from the prolonged bathing under florescence light. Sigh. I remember those days as a teen when I still could spend afternoons under the sun chasing after a ball in the basketball court. The chaotic scene of weaving past basketballers, hundreds of feets and no rules. I was a sun baked yummy brown chocolate then.

How have you fare?

at the end

somebody has to do the dishes...

stand by area

First time in 2 years I retake the task of doing spring cleaning at home. Mum had performed a 1000% dilution of the cleaning agent and generously flooded the marble floor with 2cm of water. Then she asked me to dry it up. Hmm. For the first time, I am relief from my usual toilet duties. Keeping the toilet sparkling clean has always been my job until this lunar new year. Whether is it during uniformed group camps, orientation camops, Basic Military Training, Out Field Camp, Combat Medic Course or at home, the unglamorous task of cleaning the washroom had always fallen on my lap. Perhaps I can claim rightful heir to the toilet's throne? Or rite of passage huh? Rite of passage to become a house husband. Anyway, I am becoming rather familiar with the broom and mop with which I got an whole afternoon to get acquainted. Soon enough, I would be able to wield them as gracefully as I had once wield the toilet brush. On a more serious note, in one afternoon, I was able to develop the Flying Dust Broom Grip and the Water Droplet Splitting Mop Swipe. That was before I was scolded and duly subdued. "Boy, don't play play around. Hurry up then we can start dinner." orh. u win.

Wish you all a happy lunar new year.

忙忙忙

洗刷刷。。 洗刷刷。。洗耍耍。。

GTA

I took my occasional prowl from my strategic observatory spot in slow deliberate steps. Moving silently between the rows of people hard at work. One of them lifted his eyes from the small fonts on his handout. I shifted my stare at his direction. Our eyes held for a split of a second and he immediately dropped his head and buried himself with work. I continued to stare at his direction, but focused at infinity. Hmpt. Before I finished my round, I felt a pair of eyes at the back of my head. Instinctively, I flicked my head back. She was looking at me, wide eyed. I reciprocated with a similar wide eye look. Does she want my attention? We held our stance for a few more seconds, letting the qi of bewilderment flow between us. I rotated my body to square with her and, after a moment of hestitation, she raised her hands. I advanced towards her in quick steps.
"Yes?"
"Can I have some papers to print on?"
"Sure."
I heaved a sigh of relief. I had enough unclever questions for an afternoon already. Thankfully, I do not have to answer one more. But guiding the students in the lab session was only the easy part. At the end of the lab session, I hauled the pile of reports back to my desk. I prepared myself for the worst and flipped open the pandora box of scratchy illegible handwrittings, words written over smudged liquid paper ink and scribblings all over the answer sheets. A guy even punctuated his statements not with a period, but with a smiley face. I looked at his name and tried to recall if he's cute. That certain memory drew a blank.. oh well. After marking a few scripts, a smile break across my face. The easiest script to mark is a blank script.

教師謝？はい女の子？

new year dinners

If we measure the amount of food we eat by the mass throughput down the esophagus, then this week I had hit a new high for this new year. I am currently facing an overcapacity problem or constipation. The number of fishballs I ate this week probably took the massacre of a whole school of fishes to supply. Probably few more steamboats before the lunar new year celebrations end its run, but I am starting to get sick of frozen fishballs.

Can we do new year gatherings at KFC instead? where there's no fishballs?

PB

I realized how the abbreviation PB had meant different things to me at different points of my life. When I was young, PB stood for peanut butter. For most part of my adolescence , PB stood for personal best. More recently, PB stands for performance bonus.

PB.

Certificate

We hereby confirm that I am certified as SAP Certified Business Associate with SAP ERP 6.0

最近很忙。。

awakening

As I was reading through my neural networks notes. I read about the part titled Assignments. The assignment for this module is facial recognition. I am supposed to train my program by machine learning to identify expression such as happiness, sadness, anger and etc. Then. It dawned upon me. Sadly. Suddenly. That I have become one of them.

Do you remember the post where I cited a BBC News article. Right at that moment, I was thinking," 83% happy? Damn these scientist must be really bored." What a ridicule. What a waste of research funding. Now, I as I program this learning machine, I am eating my own words. I can totally see myself doing the same thing 10years down the road, if I were to pursue a phd. hah.

Maybe I am becoming one of them. g-e-e-k.