Some of my best,er, soul searching or self discovery often if not always happens at the most inconvenient times. Its always when im cramming for a paper. Probably because that's when Im the most bored haha.
Lately i have been watching alot of old movies. it is because all the new ones are horrible waste of my time. Old movies usually make you think. The phantom of the opera was one of my fave classics. okay i didnt watch the play. i watched the movie which was only 4 years ago but its story is an old one. Very well written.
In the movie, the Phantom, despite giving up the girl to the young viscount, never really left her. When she died sum 40 years later, he was STILL around, looking after her, in his own creepy stalking way. Sweet, but creepy. It got me thinking, why didnt he give her up? She was happily with another guy. It must be bloody painful to watch the love of your life happy with another guy, kissing him, and.... you know what. He is a really good spy so i dont think a simple door at the bedroom is going to keep him out.
He must really love her to actually watch over her for 40 years. 24/7
Yet it must hurt like hell to just watch. Surely a very BIG heart too to not rip the hubby's head off. The phantom doesnt think twice to kill so.... that mustve required alot from him. The girl has NO idea about all these sacrifices that the phantom does. So he has no other reason to do it besides love. really, deep love.
It got me thinking, how would i react should my.... should the love of my life move on like that and i am forced to watch it daily? i couldn't imagine it simply because i have no ex.
As usual, this is where i get silly and my daydreaming gets out of control. i started to imagine that ive, well, broken up. 10 years later, im single, having a nice brunch by myself with a book at my favourite eating place. Sounds like something i would do. Done it before actually. All alone. Then my ex shows up. Happen to be walking pass me with his gf......or wife. Then my imagination ran away and... suddenly im depressed. lol
really,truly depressed!
lol
NOW there is really no mood to cram software engineering into my head now, is there? lol
so i kinda realized, you cant really... move on. If you loved the person once, and nothing happened to take away that love, then you dont really move on. Im talking about me by the way. I cant safely talk about everyone but most people, save those who end things really badly, always has that look of longing or... regret whenever they take a moment to think about their ex. The fondness never really goes away.
From that thought, i digressed into thinking about this particular friend of mine who, is stuck in the past and cant get out of it. People who are stuck in the past are never really joining us here in the present. Since they are half in half out, they tend to screw up the present. I guess when something unbelievable happens in your life that is unexpected, you deal with it with a little bit of delusions. Pretending as if everything is okay.... might help making things okay. Reality is all about perception anyway.
Delusion, up to a certain level, is healthy. I think if mankind didnt have delusions, we would all be mad. Some level of delusions are needed in this crazy world we live in. I mean, God is a delusion. Thinking that there IS someone with power somewhere among the clouds is looking down on our tiny earth is making sure that our lives are in order, is delusional. If i met God one day, i would pull his ears. i would demand to know why innocent people are tortured. Why babies are born after 9 hard months on the mothers part just to be destined to die 2 days later. or during labour. why drive the parents crazy like that. I would demand to know why he did nothing while lunatics drive this world mad. Why its not the good people who prosper but those who are evil enough to run over others for worldly gains that do. How can anyone with so much compassionate and wisdom let these thugs and evils get away? What more if you are God. Are you telling me that you created this world and all this is INTENDED???
Sorry, im not buying it.
I flew back from penang to malacca the other day. Malacca dont have an airport yet so i flew to KLIA. I was writing a blog about it but halfway through i was just too tired. Basically it was a bad trip but all wasnt lost. i will now write the bit that i wanted to blog in the first place. The first time i flew on an airplane was when i was 12. i dont remember much. There wasnt much to remember because i was in the middle of the plane and half the time i had a terrible pain in my head. my ears. its as if someone had put pins in my ear and no amount of my walkman volume could make it go away. i decided then and there i hated flying. The return trip wasnt any better. Last week was the third time i flew. i hoped that the experience would be different. i was alone this time and now im older. the experience was very different. i was a very very dumb noob lol. like a deer caught in a headlight. but i manage to fumble through. had a window seat this time. right by the plane's wing. Omg it was awesome. i was so amazed at the science of an airplane.
i never quite got the concept so i decided to watch the wings as we take flight. it was amazing. i never took my eyes off the scenery and the wing from the moment we started moving until we stopped moving.
The pain in my ear came back though. It was the air pressure on decend. So everytime the plane dropped, my ears scream. I swear they were bleeding. But no blood haha. If i was a Christian, and i wanted to convince my child that there are angels and heaven, i would only need to take her on a plane. Have you ever been among the clouds on a beautiful sunny day?
Its breath taking. So beautiful. I caught myself thinking that if there is a heaven, THIS would be it. I imagined myself as an angel, louging among the clouds, having an afternoon nap.
It was so pretty i was so sad to decend. Then i was really sad and in pain. lol
For a long time, i cant decide if humans were really at the bottom of the food chain, or the top. i still cant
Having the ability to think is amazing. A wonderful gift. But i dont think we made it that way. Most of us dont use the capacity of the thinking function. ALL of us only use thinking as a means to get our selfish wishes. Usually evil.
All animals are based on the natural selection method. Strongest live. Best ones survived. only the best genes spread. Not us though. We have medicine to help the weak live. Oh things like ability to fix a broken hand is good la. Because its positive feedback. Giving the blind good eye is great! We are helping each other out. But things like.... Giving a heart disease patient a bypass is ... well of course im human so i agree that its one of the miracles of medicine. but if you look at it from the natural selection view, you are giving that man a way to continue to live. he has the heart problem genetics and you are allowing him to breed, to pass it down to his offsprings. All the genetically related diseases, can be, WILL be passed down to the next generations. There's a reason only the strongest live. There's a reason why nature is that way. Cruel, but its a necessity. So, from that point of view, i say we are more backwards than the animal kingdom. We keep the weak around and the stupid to fuck up our world!
Our world is slowly dying from all the bullshit we dump on it. We are its cancer. Its no surprise once in awhile, it fights back!
Another thing is that animals are smart. They find places that gives them the best chances to live and make a life there. If its not working, pack up! We are moving. But humans! oh no! nonono. Unhabitable you say? Well, i will just create something to make it habitable! Grow a plant in the moon to breed oxygen. Sell air conditioners all over the world to make it cooler. Migrate certain crops to certain places to make more money. Hey mother nature can go fly kite. I know better. It doesnt matter that the world has been around for 5billion years. Im smarter!
Thats why the world is ending. We are its cancer. Sad to say, when the world comes to an end, we all deserve it. Many people believe in the greater powers as God. i believe in repurcussions.
And i think, humans arent the smartest beings in the world despite having the ability to think.What use is an ability when we dont use it?
On Keppel's 'incident'
Posted by Reign226 at 6:25 AM | Labels: Keppel FELS, work Friday, April 24, 2009Something funny happened last night. While I was sleeping soundly, apparently a bout of rough winds and seas occurred and caused some damage to rigs moored near the dock.
When I got in the following morning, there were some people discussing about the damage that had occurred. It wasn't really serious so I didn't think much about it.
Tonight it made the news, with the reported showing grainy pictures taken of some of the 'damages' to the helideck area. Apparently one of the rig shook loose and had a 'meeting' with the rig next to it. Really unlucky too as that rig is almost near completion. One of the senior drafter says these things happen always near the end of a project; can;t afford to slack even a little bit.
Today I learned a bit about the Anchorage. I thought it's some fancy place with a fancy sounding name, until one of the drilling section people told me it's just a parking space in deeper waters off the port. They go there to do some of the more demanding tests that require deeper waters. I wonder if they jack up the jackups to full operating draft? The seabed must be quite solid for this to be possible, with so many jackups being built here.
Been helping out with B302 project, so called a comfort luxury accommodation module based on semi design. The significance of this didn't really occur to me until I was invited by my boss to sit in on a little presentation done by DNV concerning noise and vibration. Apparently, they find that the rules and regulations surrounding noise and vibration limits for offshore vessels (they call them MODU - mobile offshore drilling units) are so stringent that they EXCEED that of luxury cruise liners, sometimes with quite a significant margin. So ladies and gentlemen, the most luxurious and comfortable vessel on the high seas is none other than oil rigs (that follow the NORSOK standard)! A little surprising, no?
Well granted, the 'luxury' and 'comfort' is evaluated using noise and vibration limits - you won't find casinos and other creature comforts here save for TV and rec lounges. Another interesting thing I discovered is that some of the regulations call for cabins which are so silent that privacy becomes an issue; if you do not insulate the walls enough, you can participate in a conversation going on next door because it's just so silent!
One way to solve this problem is to increase the sound insulation between cabins, but on certain situations this is simply not feasible due to the amount of insulation you would require, so another solution is to add in 'white noise' as a psychological way of artifically increasing the noise inside the cabin, which is done in luxury vessels: they would increase the noise slowly 1 hour before a planned concert then after that, gradually decrease the noise back down. The artifical background noise effectively masks any detrimental effects of the concert noise, although they did not specify what kind of background noise this was (white noise? pink noise? those fancy anti-phase noise cancellation noise?).
Today I saw some of the engineers looking up stuff that I myself was looking up when I don't understand something. Makes me feel less stupid, haha. I guess most of us, especially the newcomers, are still picking things up as we go along as this is not a field we studied in.
And today's fruity day so they gave us 4 bananas this time around. I guess the ancient greeks would call them aphrodisiacs; as for me, I haven't had banana in a long time, simply because for some reason when I came over to Semenanjung Malaysia, all the bananas sold here are those 'berangan' strain, huge and not really nice. I grew up eating traditional bananas grown in abundance in Sabah (small, very yellow) and its near impossible to find in Melaka, although I do spot them in Singapore. I guess it's not a famous trait or it's probably not grown locally and is imported from elsewhere. Whatever the case, I miss my Sabahan banana =P.
Oh ya and for the benefit of those in the future, Sabah has this interesting fruit called Tarap. Here is the picture:
This fruit is unique to Sabah/Borneo island and can be best described as...something like a jackfruit (nangka). Albeit the insides are much smaller than the jackfruit and the outside resembles a velvet-y textured porcupine as is evident from the picture above. If you go to Sabah, you must have a taste of this unique fruit and take lots of pictures, because it'll be the only place you'll ever find it.
My mom used to bring me to eat these at the nightmarket. I didn't really appreciate its uniqueness until today. I still remember lobbing the seeds of the tarap pass a ditch to the other side, proudly telling my mommy that in 10 years time we can go back here and harvest these fruit to eat for free.
That day never came.
Here i am in Malacca, on a typical Sun night. Well, not so typical. Since when have u ever seen me study on a Sun nite? hehe. i have a paper on tuesday afternoon. The only paper standing between me and my ticket home - Penang. i wont be seeing home for a longgggggggggggg long while so... i am going to make the best of it while i can. Something else has made tonight an atypical night though.
Im sitting here just reading my boring notes and listening to Kris Allen attempting to make me melt (and succeeding) with the speakers my darling bought for me from Singapore and it kinda hit me. i love it when these things happen. I would get a question in my head for no reason other than boredom and ill be left with no answer until suddenly, it hits me.
People talk about sacrifice alot. All the time. ALOT.
Not everyone who talks about it knows what it is.
If you want to know about sacrifice, endurance,patience and love, ask those who never whine about them. THESE are the people who give real sacrifices, possess real patience and endures more than any bitching bitches out there. No one is spared from these miseries so why dont these people whine? They experience it too. They just got better things to do.
Many people tell me that i am very naive. Well, up til last 2 years la. Since then i have not spent enough time with anyone who knows me well enough who has earned that right to say it and really make me think.
Many people also tell you that to grow up, you need to fall in love. i always thought that THAT was bullshit. now not so much anymore haha. Looking back, i admit i was naive. Everything was always black or white. it has helped me in many things in my life. you dont fix something that isnt broken right?
anyone who has had a relationship can tell you that theres no such thing as black or white when it comes to people. so yeah, ive grown up.
once in awhile, my loving darling would subtly remind me that no, i am not all grown up yet. i am still naive in certain ways. very much still want to hold on to my version of the world. where theres good and there is evil. there is always accountability. there is always proper repercussions. WRONG!
my loving darling would never say it aloud. hehe probably didnt want to risk my wrath should i not like what i hear. sowee sweetie.....
somehow though,the message gets through. albeit delayed. very delayed. better late than never is my motto.
sometimes....... to really see a picture, you have to take a few steps back to get the real meaning behind it. too close can be... it creates blindspots. same goes for people
haha i bet you guys wonder where im going with this or am i just rambling again.
well.....i do have a particular reason for writing today...but im not going to say it
everytime i discover something overwhelming about my sweetest darling in the world, im compelled to share it here. now i realize its very...very lame thing to do hehe
so today i am not going to say it! but i want the world to know that my love, you have helped me answer a very very intriguing question by just being you ( he is in another country now actually) and you have helped me grow justtttttttttttttttt a little more today.
and i LOVE you because of these little things that you do!!! muakz!
missing my lil boytoy now. oh well. theres always that face to look forward to =)
Here i am in Malacca, on a typical Sun night. Well, not so typical. Since when have u ever seen me study on a Sun nite? hehe. i have a paper on tuesday afternoon. The only paper standing between me and my ticket home - Penang. i wont be seeing home for a longgggggggggggg long while so... i am going to make the best of it while i can. Something else has made tonight an atypical night though.
Im sitting here just reading my boring notes and listening to Kris Allen attempting to make me melt (and succeeding) with the speakers my darling bought for me from Singapore and it kinda hit me. i love it when these things happen. I would get a question in my head for no reason other than boredom and ill be left with no answer until suddenly, it hits me.
People talk about sacrifice alot. All the time. ALOT.
Not everyone who talks about it knows what it is.
If you want to know about sacrifice, endurance,patience and love, ask those who never whine about them. THESE are the people who give real sacrifices, possess real patience and endures more than any bitching bitches out there. No one is spared from these miseries so why dont these people whine? They experience it too. They just got better things to do.
Many people tell me that i am very naive. Well, up til last 2 years la. Since then i have not spent enough time with anyone who knows me well enough who has earned that right to say it and really make me think.
Many people also tell you that to grow up, you need to fall in love. i always thought that THAT was bullshit. now not so much anymore haha. Looking back, i admit i was naive. Everything was always black or white. it has helped me in many things in my life. you dont fix something that isnt broken right?
anyone who has had a relationship can tell you that theres no such thing as black or white when it comes to people. so yeah, ive grown up.
once in awhile, my loving darling would subtly remind me that no, i am not all grown up yet. i am still naive in certain ways. very much still want to hold on to my version of the world. where theres good and there is evil. there is always accountability. there is always proper repercussions. WRONG!
my loving darling would never say it aloud. hehe probably didnt want to risk my wrath should i not like what i hear. sowee sweetie.....
somehow though,the message gets through. albeit delayed. very delayed. better late than never is my motto.
sometimes....... to really see a picture, you have to take a few steps back to get the real meaning behind it. too close can be... it creates blindspots. same goes for people
haha i bet you guys wonder where im going with this or am i just rambling again.
well.....i do have a particular reason for writing today...but im not going to say it
everytime i discover something overwhelming about my sweetest darling in the world, im compelled to share it here. now i realize its very...very lame thing to do hehe
so today i am not going to say it! but i want the world to know that my love, you have helped me answer a very very intriguing question by just being you ( he is in another country now actually) and you have helped me grow justtttttttttttttttt a little more today.
and i LOVE you because of these little things that you do!!! muakz!
missing my lil boytoy now. oh well. theres always that face to look forward to =)
On Anwar and I Not Stupid.
Posted by Reign226 at 2:40 AM | Labels: politics, singapore Tuesday, April 14, 2009Some of my friends have expressed their dislike of Singapore to me which I find to be something that interests me.
Some of them have said that the society here is conformist, obeying whatever the government tells them with unquestioning loyalty and this level of conformity is something they cannot stand. Hence they don't want to come here at all.
For the sake of historical purposes, the ruling coalition the PAP have commanded a near total majority of the parliament here, and the opposition are very weak, certainly not as strong or controversial than their counterparts in Malaysia. After all, I have never heard of any famous opposition figures in Singapore, with the exception of one Indian fella (whose name I forgot) who managed to win a seat in parliament but was subsequently sued into oblivion and died before his wish to re-enter parliament is ever realized. He spent his dying days peddling books written that were critical of the government. Not a very nice ending, and probably something some people would say only the 'law abiding' country of Singapore can come up with.
Years of enjoying massive financial prosperity have probably bred a sense of complacency and that's the reason why the Singapore political scene have remained a largely one-party occasion.
In fact, our neighbours from the south seem to be even more keen on political developments in Malaysia than in their own lands. The other day, news of Anwar's successful entry back into Parliament made front page news in the dailies in Singapore, something I am amused to discover.
Mahathir have criticized Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew for controlling the strings behind the scenes when he retired and set up a Minister Mentor post while transferring power to his son. The irony is made profound when he rejoined UMNO last week and subsequently got his son Mukhriz back into politics after he was defeated in the UMNO Youth elections. I guess we can expect more 'mentoring' from Mahathir in the near future, for better or worse.
Another have expressed their dissatisfaction with how the Singaporean government treats their citizens; those who can perform are looked after while those who cannot excel (especially in school) are ignored and sidelined. A truly meritocratic society to the fullest. The Singaporean parent's obsession with education is exemplified in the popular TV show I Not Stupid, which brings this issue into the forefront and makes fun of it, while carrying undercurrents of the feelings of hope for the well-off and despair for the less-to-do that every child faces here.
But is Malaysia any better? At least here, those who perform gets rewarded, but in Malaysia, there have always been stories of able, talented people who are sidelined due to the affirmative action policies and double standards practised here. Unfortunately nobody in Malaysia have yet to make a funny, snide and frank movie about the education system here. But many have gone on to accept positions in Singapore, which I guess is why the Singaporean media like to keep the Malaysians working here updated on things happening back home.
So in the end I ask you, which country is more open and tolerant of opposition views? This is a deeper and more complicated issue than it appears on the surface.
So forget about the generalization and misconceptions you may have about Singapore. It's just another country with its own pros and cons; long-held beliefs that may have passed to you from your parents or even the last generation have rapidly eroded although we still hold these to be the truth and nothing but the truth. Things like kiasu, kiasi, and all the other types of kia kia out there.
But chew on this for a moment.
Will we see an Anwar rising from political ashes in Singapore? Probably not anytime soon. But will we ever see an I Not Stupid movie made in Malaysia and stamped with the Malaysian government's stamp of approval? Definately not. As a society, we still have a long walk ahead if we were to look back at ourselves and laugh.
My Academic Supervisor, Ms Rohana, paid me a visit two days ago. Throughout the course of my attachment, there will be two visits. The first was by my faculty Dean (who came to Singapore with his family) Prof Razali. He just chatted with one of my bosses and gave me some forms to fill up. That was about three months ago.
This time it was Ms Rohana. While she was here I learned that the Dean has changed to En Rizal and Prof Razali was promoted to some other position that I didn't catch the name of. She was in charge of doing the layout for our temporary faculty, which will be shared between a few buildings. I asked if there will be night classes, and she said it could well be, due to the space and time constrains.
I realized that it will be a tough semester next sem. I have about three more weeks to figure out a final year project to submit in. If I miss that date then I will have to choose from predetermined subjects from the lecturers. I haven't really given this much thought yet. I thought to do some simulation regarding skirted spudcan extraction and effects of jetting system but I realized it would be difficult to find a centrifuge to run the experiment. Furthermore, it would be hard to get data from my company as it's in a different department which is more secretive.
I suppose one of these days I will have to approach my boss for his thoughts. I hope there are some experiments or data crunching that he can provide that the department has been meaning to do but didn't have the time. That would be perfect.
I did my presentation for them and had a little chat and that was it. I only did the slides last Saturday (presentation was Tuesday) so I barely scraped through, haha. I guess then again I didn't talk about much, just about the company business and talked my way through some pictures. Pictures are always a nice thing on a slide, I realize. If we have words up there, we end up most of the time just reading them. It also helps that literally hours before the presentation, I was practicing by whispering under my breath. I bet that scared my co-worker who was sitting next to me.
So that's that. All the official crap is out of the way. Only one more thing left and that's my report. But my supervisor told me not to worry about it, as long as the industry is happy with me, they are satisfied. So after I clear out that last thing on my list, I can finally get back to doing some real work and learning some more new stuff.
I told Pn Rohana that there's not a day that goes by without learning anything new. It has been some 15 weeks now, and that's still true! I know how absurd that might sound, but its really not that unbelievable. During my first two months or so here at Keppel FELS, I didn't really do much. Basically showed my face, read a few documents (you have no idea how much effort it takes to stay awake doing thing), write stuff in my log book and go home. Most of the things I don't understand so I have to go home and look it up on the Internet, and I can't do that at work.
But I am really really glad that introductory phase is over now. Engineering is definately something with a steep learning curve. No wonder most of the attaches who are here for a short duration (2 to 3 months) gets sent to production. No doubt with that kind of time frame, they stand to learn more doing the actual work and witnessing on-site operations rather than sitting in the office reading.
But I feel that the time I have invested in all those documents are paying off. Finally I am no longer bewildered by the massive information overload. It also gave me some measure of hope when I realize that some of the things that I don't know, the other engineers don't know as well. So we're all still learning and this is not something that you can master quickly.
Maybe in 10 years, that will come.
Sometimes, as I stand in the corridor at the ground floor outside KOM Tower, I can smell the salt in the air blowing past. The breeze would slam the door close and bring me back to the tiled floor of Wisma Merdeka in Sabah. The breeze reminds me of home, something that is long gone now, shattered and lost in the wind, only fragments remaining in the depths of memories long lost, but not forgotten.
We all go through life with goals that we want to achieve. Dreams and futures we want to pursue. Everything has to have meaning somehow, otherwise, what would be the point of it all?
Just now in the office, the fire alarm went off. It was quite annoying but the funny thing is all the engineers just looked at each other and continued to do their work.
After awhile, the boss came out and said what the commotion was about. See fire only run, now smoke also don't have. Everybody laugh then went back to work.
There is a certain humour in watching everybody continue to do their work as the fire siren drones on and on incessantly at the background. A sort of...inertia, I suppose.
And it stopped. But I don't think anybody cared.
