Novocain For Your Brain

This blog is moved to http://mrnovocain2.blogspot.com/

This is going to be a last task I will do for the day----> bloggin. Recently brought a bmx bike to replace my old rusty bike which serve me well over the years. It's a boyish craving of mine to have a simple bmx bike even tout i am not a pro in that arena.
Used to have an aluminium mountain bike but gave it away. I prefer the simple smaller bike like this type which i can get better control (landing my foot on the floor pad) and whereby I can cycle casual which serve my purpose of travelling short distances around my neighbourhood. Mountain bikes are better for long distances but the posture of bending forward during the ride is quite tiring at the end of the cycling journey. Tested out my bike at ECP yesterday. It's fine except that when going upslope, temendous effort has to be put in as it does not have a set of gears, so i couldn't possibly switch to Gear 1 to make upslope cycling easier. That's all for now.

Novocain was away from city life for the past few days in a place not quite far from home. Staying in the mist of clouds and paintings of beautiful greenery. A place of fine weather and fresh air. A rural yet peaceful small town; away from the hustle and bustle of city life.
A place for relaxation for the mind, body and soul- Cameron Highlands. It's a nice place with great scenery and man-made landscape catered for plantation. A place with ample supply of fresh vegetables, flowers and strawberries!! Being a meat-lover myself, I find it hard to believe that I enjoy eating large volumes of vege instead of meat during my stay here.


We ended the trip with a tour to Genting and KL. Great thanks to ZF's malaysian friends who are extremely warm and kind to show us around KL and bring us to different "makan" sites throughout the night. :)

It's been a hectic 3-days event show for me. A few weeks ago, Ks called to replace him for SG&P fair event at suntec. First day at work: it started at 10am, and I was busy keying in the particulars for visitors. Visitors after vistors. They come in swarms and the que is getting longer. Feeling the stress signals , I heightened my obligation to work faster and faster. To me, it somehow feel alike playing a game similar to "Dynasty warrior-xtreme lengend" whereby I had to "finish off" the que as fast as possible so to cut-short the waiting time for everybody.Feeling hungry but I continued to work just like everybody in the counter. Keying and keying, time passes and my stomach status changed from "Hungry" to "Hungry-until-full". The next moment somebody ask for me to take a break while she replace me, is also the time when I had time to peek at my hp. Shock! I found that it is already 3pm! 5hours have passed. Incredible. when u are busy, the clock seems to fast-forwarded itself rapidly.
Second day- I was switch from pre-regist to on-site. Life is still as busy as usual.
Third day- Things seems to cool down a little bid but we were still busy. And in the annoucement, I heard that there are about 5000 visitors for the the first and second day. And it was a "record-breaking" high number than the previous year.
The event finally ended, and we had to pack-up everything before we get our pay. It's the last day and it's also our pay-day. I feel tired but glad that it's over. Busy, yet slightly happy. And it give me another good excuse to have another peaceful slack & sleazy day at the comfort of my room next time.

-"it's more worthwhile to take a brief walk after a race than to run after the race is over"

kiSince I recovered from my episode of bad flu, I tried to search for part-times to preoccupy some of my time and to earn some cash. But unfortunately, the Relc Job did come with a high opportunity cost. I planned to take-up admin jobs but this time round, most admin jobs found require us to committed for at least 3-months which I cannot take-up as my semester will start in about 2mths time or so. Although I am unemployed, in economics sense, I am more like a discouraged worker who are not searching for job, so I will not be part of the unemployment statistic and cannot be officially termed as "unemployed"( Unemployment= Number of people searching for job but could not find one that matches his/her criteria).

Being out of job, out of income also makes me kindda thrify abit. I feels bad at times going out with friends and spending $$ . Although I am still taking allowances from parents, I feel bad spending their money which I dun deserve (as i did not work for it coz i am currenty not studying now). Sometimes it's hard to reject friends outing but I hope they can understand my current situation.

For my current free-time, i will be spending time with my sweetie, playing games and training for my ippt. Always wanted to do something for myself, like training up my body or learning how to cook from my grandma but I will be always preoccupied with something else with my free-time. I do feel at times that what i am doing and enjoying now is worth more than the per hour pay that I would get from certain low paying job-lobangs I was offered. :)

DJ Max Portable 2

This is my second rhythem music game I played after my younger brother first introduced DJ Max 1 to me. Assure you, this game is highly addictive! It may seem to be rather stupid to hit buttons in synchronization to bars dropping down from the top with the correct keypad but it requires great skills, speed, accuracy, music rhythem and eye-finger coordination to get pass the difficult levels. For me I am still a rookie playing 4-buttons at a speed of 3.5. You can go up to 8-buttons if you are damn pro, and you must be an octopus to do that.

It's been ages! And finally we meetup for a lunch treat @ Esplanade today. Used to see each other almost everyday and after classes for CCA/ECA as we called it that time. Now, it's hard for us to even plan our schedule to meetup with each other. Limin's working and YC with his campus activities. But we promised to increase our meetup from an annual frequency to twice or even three times annually. Limin's busy pursuing her career and I think about 5years from now, I will be having lunch again with this rich lady who will be earning big bucks. As for YC, I think he will be a profound engineer earning a big sum too next time. While chatting about career, I ponder and worry much about my future job prospective. How far can my Arts Degree take me? Accountancy is known for risk of beta zero. It's basically needed in every company. The feeling for me is like climbing a mountain, even tout I am climbing higher, all I can see and focus on is the rocky wall I am holding-on to. When will I reach the top where I can see what the world for me is like from there. Where will I be in the near future?

I am feeling quite unwell right now. Possibly be the result of a series of western food as dinner and fastfood as supper + late nights. Haven truely rested after my exams. I long for a quiet afternoon at home, waking up late in the noon, putting eye pads to remedy my dark eye rings problem and just relax myself. I wanna cure the bad habit of sleeping late and waking up early. Used to sleep at 10pm sharp during secondary sch last time, but now, seems like I am finding it hard to even force myself to sleep more. At first I tout was the exam that make me sleepless but now, it's over and there is nothing much basically to stress me. Yet, why do i still have sleeping problems. Enough of my crap.And here's the pic.

Three of us again taken last year.

Wonder why I always look so bad in photos. Not photogenic at all I guess... And I find it quite hard to smile for a photo actually. There was once in the pic, where my friend had to tickle me for a shoot during NS outing.

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~ Life is what happens

While you're busy making your excuses

Another day

Another casualty

But that won't happen to me~ Lyrics by Simple Plan "When I'm Gone".

I survived the 3 horrible consecutive papers on Monday 9am, Tuesday 5pm Wed 1pm. While most of my friends had already ended their war, I had one last battle to be fought.
J called me today to ask me out for celebration as they just finished last paper today, not knowing that there are still ppl (like me) who are still having exam...

Holiday mood partially sets in for me. Smsed Mei and found she's @ SJ clubbin. Furry kitten seems too preoccupied wif the coming paper and yet reply me. While I was supporting local 9pm drama and battling it out in Tekken PSP whenever my brain is overheated.

In the normative sense, I shouldn't be here. Novocain was a consistent student all along, but why everytime during exam, he got the tendency to went stray. Stiff neck syndrome is often bundled in the exam package for me. Including with it a special offer called : "Insomia: My Mind conversing Wif Myself."

~Think I ThinK too much , done Too little~

Mugging Mugging. After years of taking so many endless examinations, I have come to the conclusion that not all we studied and mug for are actually tested.
In certain exam papers, questions are shaped in such a way not to test our memorizing power but more of thinking and critical evaluation of subject matters.
Most of us like myself, are often preoccupied with studying EVERYTHING so that we will feel a sense of confidence and security on the module.

Effort /= Grades (Effort put in is not equivalent to scoring good grades)
At this point, we have to come to understand that our performance and grade depend on the performance of others and their grades, our performances on the day of examination, our presentation of points and outline of our answers. And other situational factors including mental disposition, ambient, luck etc.
Nonetheless, we will try to outdo one another and "if he works hard, I will work harder".
This mindset, will eventually cause us to set higher standard for ourselves, to mug more & more. Giving us the feeling that we had not done our best and that we can push ourselves further. We are frustrated when we can' accomplish certain "task" we set for ourselves each day. Feeling that that time is too short and 24hrs is not enough for a day. I agree that competition is good as it will raise the our standard but it must be weighted with the emotional and psychological stress that we experience in the course of preparing for examinations.

After weighting all the cost and benefit of exams woes and with the high calculated probability that effort put in mugging will not necessary translate to good grades, I have derived my own resolution.
I will revert back to the intial purpose of examination. Other than differentiating good students from the bad students and classifying student into different grades, the basic purpose of examintation is to "Ensure that we actually study for the subject".
The purpose of education is to pursue the subject of interest and to broaden our perspective and our knowledge of the world around us.

Sometimes, we are studying for the sake of studying or for the sake of exams. We are blinded and lost in the mist of pursit when Terms like "C.A.P", "GPA", "S/U", "A+", C- affect how we initially view things. We started to think about what the others think. We act not according to why we act but how we should act according to what we think others are acting. We mug because everybody is mugging (I am not asking you to stop mugging coz if you do so the reality will not change for you as the level playing field will still be raised even when you stop mugging and the result will be that you are maintaining the same level while others have risen upon you).

My point is to be revert back to simplicity in terms of our mindset. Pursue our interest and derive joy from studying at our own pace regardless of pressures that may affect us emotionally and mentally. Unnecessary stress will outweights the benefits we derive from the probability of getting good grades. The examination system is a fair one. Hopefully like other enlightened beings, I will look beyond the lust for good grades and pursue knowledge in a fruitful and enjoyable way, far away from the taints of psychological stress and frustration in the course of the pursuit. :)

"SINGAPORE: A new two—rating classification system for video games will be
launched end of the month, the Board of Film Censors (BFC) under the Media
Development Authority (MDA) announced on Monday."-Channel NewsAsia - Tuesday, April 14
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/cna/20080414/tap-341374-231650b.html

Referring to the article above, MDA will be rating games into different classification just like what they did to movies and films into ratings like "Mature 18" (M18) etc. With effect from 28 April, "retailers (will be asked to) exercise responsibility by not selling Age Advisory—labelled games to those below 16." This will mean that kids will need to show their IC or other documents to verify that they are of "suitable age" to buy the games from retailers for games with certain ratings.

Will this censorship practice be really effective? The whole idea of censorship in games is to "protect" children (below 16 years of age) from media content which may depict violence, sexual activity, drug abuse, nudity or coarse language. Parents will be the one who are likely to welcome this censorship policy on games but whether this type of restriction is likely to be effective is another matter.

According to psychological reactance theory when people feel that their freedom will be restricted in some way, they are likely to respond by wanting something even more than before (http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/reactance.htm), censorship on certain game titles will be likely to make those games more appealing. Childrens below age of 16 can ask help from older friends or siblings for game purchases and this simple act can by-pass the entire censorship system. Similarly, the system may lead to shift of game demand from official game retail to parrallel imports or from other unofficial sources. This may lead to fall in revenue for game retails store. All these may undermine the practicality and effectiveness of the system.

It is considered a blessing that we are well taken care off in the sea of information. With censorship, we are spoon-fed and had our diet of information properly filtered. Pampered like a baby, one could not stop but ponder when we will grow up in the eyes of our parents, to be discerning enough to pick and discriminate information critically.

Giving an "extreme makeover" for my blog is a time-demanding process for a noob like myself. There are alot of self-help blogging basics for dummies but I had to browse and search through relevant and easy websites that is easy to read. Found one great webby for blog templates: http://www.bloggerbuster.com . Gonna Sign-Off for now.



Choice of a clear liquid theme
or...




A dark theme.