people who don't use their brain

I had to spend 15 minutes explaining to some COPA (i.e. Auntie) why it was in her best interest that we did not send some form to her. Apparantly she (and her CO) thought that it was "inefficient" for him to pick up the form on his next visit and wanted the form to be dispatched to her. I kindly explained to her that if we were to start doing this, we would then be posting forms all over singapore.

I also had to spend 5 minutes today explaining to some captain why her chief clerk had no jurisdiction over my department.

And to top it all off, i had to explain to someone why i typed the expected time of arrival of the guests at 0850, when on the email i received the expected time of arrival was 0850.

does anyone use his/her brain these days?

london kena bomb. again.

Just read in the news that london fell prey to a smaller series of blasts today.

Firstly, who?

Next, why?

Thirdly, who next?

My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims.

bang! bang! bang! - the universal bullet

In recent headline news (Telegraph UK) the British Army seems to be running out of blanks for training purposes.

To quote direcly from the article: A "senior army officer" (i.e. who could be anybody speaking on condition of anonymity) said "There is nothing more dispiriting than soldiers having to go on exercise and shout 'bang, bang' because there is not enough blank ammunition. Any benefit from the exercise will be lost because soldiers just won't take it seriously. Why should soldiers who are being sent to Iraq, where their lives will be endangered, be forced to shout 'bang' in training because someone in the Ministry of Defence can't do basic arithmetic? It's a disgrace."

Makes you wonder if:
a) The SAF will ever "run out" of blank rounds.
b) If such event came to pass, the SAF would admit it in public.
c) why in BMT we had to go "BANG BANG BANG BANG".

hairy porter

as my brother would have it...

the new book is much darker than the previous 5 books, and annoyingly ms rowling has chosen to deal with much teenage angst in the book. but without attempting to spoil the book for those who haven't read it yet: (some parts have been censored).


1. ************* dies.

2. Harry does ************.

3. Hogwarts is invaded by ************.

come on, go read the book!

One key gripe i have, however, is the inordinately large font the publishers insist on using for the books. I mean, on a cm-for-cm basis, Half-Blood Prince and Order of the Phoenix had the same size (approximately) as my hard cover copy of Clancy's Executive Orders and The Bear and the Dragon. But, and it is a very lengthy but, Rowling's books have approximately 40% of the text that Clancy's books has. This is a completely scientific process, involving estimation, scientific reasoning and bare-faced lying.

Therefore, it is no surprise that I finished Rowling's books within 5 hours each, whilst Clancy takes me up to 12 hours per book.

Maybe the Rowling publishers could use a smaller font and save more trees that way.

what may be an acceptable proposition for potential donors

1. join the petition here .

2. Cancel donation.

3. Wait till the organisation takes acceptable steps to correct this oversight.

4. Reinstate donation

more on the "non-profit organisation with S$200 000 000 in reserves" fiasco....

As someone put it today - "no wonder they have so many shows every year: the first two go to paying their CEO."

how to screw yourself (and your company) over

Steps to ensure that you burn in heck forever, and pour scorn on your family name for generations to come. Oh, and make a fool of yourself in court.

1. Become CEO of a non-profit company with over S$200 million in cash reserves.

2. Convince your board to pay you shedloads every month to fly around the world in business class.

3. attempt to sue the gah-men backed newspaper for slander.

4. be guilty of the things they accuse you of.

5. withdraw your accusation after being "owned" by the opposition's lawyer.

Hmm. This is one sure way for people to cancel their donations to your organisation.

Oops.

update on my knee

the orthopedic surgeon i saw on wednesday (having waited 90min past my appointment time) told me that i need an operation.

therefore, it's scheduled for a day op on 10 Aug 05.

in other news, somehow some of the payments from MINDEF to SGH aren't going through. i've left them to settle it between themselves, though.

london. and all that.

Just caught the news on CNA.

Won't go into too much detail (that's all to be had in the papers) but it was very sobering and depressing to see police cordons and all that around the places and streets which i had walked along.

Sob.

Dilbert!

The idiocies of PHBs. 

efficiency, my foot!

or, more precisely, my knee.

Got a letter from SGH saying that due to blah blah blah they have pushed my appointment with the orthopedic surgeon to this wednesday. bah.

To top it all off, my MO's "promise" that there were two medical boards to be convened in June and my case would "most definitely" be heard fell apart, and the medic told me that "we'll try to board you sometime next month". i.e. August, not this month (July).

Therefore, I've gotten my medical excuse LL/IPPT extended for another 2 months.

Any bets on whether I'll have to go extend the excuse due to my case not being boarded?

this week flew by

without realising it, this week has literally flown by, and all of a sudden comes july.

a fairly hectic week, with lots of things happening, both in and outside of camp.

Tuesday was the so long and thanks for all the fish dinner for the 4 regulars who have/are/will be leaving us for (allegedly) greener pastures (read: ORD) or back to the mothership (read: Mowbray). The event went rather well, i thought, mostly picking up after i had finished my emcee duty. There was freeflow of beer (1 keg) and wine (3 bottles) and most people left before the event really started to get into swing. ah well. less man more share i say.

Wednesday was a PSC MAP/AS brief. It's kinda like the standard "how would you like to become a perm sec/minister?" talk, with a little side track into "why topping out at director isn't all that great" thrown in for effect.

Thursday saw two events - firstly, a PSC Psychological interview (to check if yours truly is Psycho(tic) enough to join the aforementioned MAP/AS). a brief summary of the results:

a) PSC thinks i'm smart.
b) My priorities in life are 1: Religion 2: Pursuit of Knowledge ..... last: pursuit of political power. hmm.
c) i'm very direct.
d) my leadership styles are 1: Authoritarian 2: Persuasion ..... last: democratic
e) i like jello

wait. the last one was just to throw you off. Maybe my take-away was slightly different than two of my friends, who got (in their own words):

Friend A: You're an arrogant b**tard
Friend B: You have no morals.

As a wit in camp would put it - friends A and B are ideally suited for the MAP/AS, whilst i have to do a little losing of morals to get in.... stay tuned for that....

The second thing that happened on Thursday was the SPUG launch of the Palm LifeDrive at the unbelievably low price of $765 (hint hint: irony in effect). From a RRP of $868, no less. Most previous SPUG launches came associated with a 15-20% discount, so the 12% or so discount they offered was not very well received. They also offered the T|E2 at $375, down from a RRP of $418. That 10% discount didn't sell too well either.

Plus the fact that the demonstration was more of a "Palm Lifedrive 101" than an attempt to allay the attendees concerns about various aspects of the LD. They spent an hour or so saying "The LD can do this" and "The LD can do that", and not much actually explaining the technical details. You would expect that your audience are interested in the device, and would have done their homework reading about the specifications and capabilities of the device. But no, it became a "Palm LD for dummies" session. Bah. Neither the friend i went with nor i bought one. Not that i was looking for one in the first place...

Then, today, Friday, is the last day of the week! TGIF!!!!!!