My magical hair

Haven't been blogging for a while, so here's a short random blog post about... my hair.

When I was living in the US, my hair did magical things overnight. Some mornings I wake up and my hair is in an incredible state of disarray.

I had many more photos but most of them were deleted accidentally, so I am left with these. Enjoy.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="288"] This ain't so bad yet..[/caption]



[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="288"] How does my hair become like that seriously. This almost looks deliberately styled.[/caption]



 

That is all

My Professor is a troll!

Context: My module Psychology of Learning has two mid-terms and one finals - all of which are MCQ (or so we are told). We had our first mid-term earlier in the semester which was 25 MCQ, and today was my second mid-term, which was supposed to be 25 MCQ too.

So at 3.30PM the professor walked into class and gave out the bubble form to shade our MCQs. As we filled in our details, he began writing some stuff on the board, and said "As you know, this mid term has 25 MCQs...' and he wrote '25 MCQ - 1 mark each'. Then he continued writing: "1 Essay - 4 marks'.

Murmurs and gasps of surprise/shock/disbelief echoed throughout the lecture room (yes it's kind of a room here, not a hall or theatre like in NUS). I heard a girl mutter 'can he do this??!' and others go 'omg' as the room was abuzz with a light chatter.

The professor kept a straight face and began handing out the papers, and said something along the lines of "If you have any questions, just raise your hand, like if the essay question is too difficult..." as he gave out the papers.

Personally, I was actually smirking inside and somehow felt confident because, well, NUS has prepared me well with MAINLY essay exams and it's only in the US here in Boston Uni that everything somehow is MCQ. I didn't doubt my smoking skills will trump the Americans.  Thus, in my mind, I wasn't thinking 'I am so screwed' but 'I may be screwed but these people are more screwed than me" LOL.

Naturally, when everyone got a copy of the exam paper we all flipped to search for this mysterious surprise essay question. When I saw it, my eyes rolled to the back of my head and came back down the other side.

"In more than one sentence, suggest how this course can be improved. Full marks will be given as long as your answer is clearly and sensibly written. (4 marks)"

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="210"] And below the question there was this image[/caption]

Ok fine there wasn't a trollface but walaoeh!!! So troll!

 

Oh, I got a 24/25 for the quiz (he let you check answers after you hand it in). Damn it silly single mistake. (oh, and +4m for the ESSAY question. Gave him a good three lines of feedback, including 'Professors should not give students heart attacks'.) (Ok fine I didn't write that)

 

The Dark Knight Climbs a Well

Today I went to watch 'The Dark Knight Rises' for free, because of some SAFRA competition that I won. Pretty easy contest, just email them saying that you want the tickets and presto! They replied saying 'Congratulations! You have won... etc'.

I must say, the show was pretty draggy and confusing, and seemed to be filled with plot holes. The movie was about 2 hours 45 minutes long and many scenes felt pretty redundant or draggy. And I was relying on the Chinese subtitles for many parts to try to decipher what they were saying in their try-to-act-cool-mumbling, and given how bad my Chinese is it doesn't always work. I'm going to give my interpretation of what was happening for the movie below... spoilers ahead! Don't read on if you don't want to be spoilt for the movie!

How the news should be

My mother is a compulsive worrier, and much of it is due to the Straits Times. She's the kind of person who glances through the headlines, spots a sensationalized headline, then reads the whole story, then warns me about it 24 times, then plays through the scenario in her head but this time with me as the protagonist, then warns me another 8 times. Then she continues worrying that it may actually happen to her or someone she knows and tells everyone about it.

It's really all the news' fault. It's an unfair portrayal really - for every 1 robbery reported, there's another 10000 people who did not get robbed in the exact same circumstances. For every molest case on the train, there's another 99999 people who did not get molested on the train. Presenting only the negatives leads to a certain expectation bias in people and unnecessary paranoia.

Here's the kind of news I would publish if I was editor:

A China national who entered the bedroom of a co-tenant and had a chat with her was not jailed for six weeks on Tuesday.

Zhong Zihao, 25, then an electrical assembler, admitted to entering into the bedroom of the 19-year-old student, shaking her hands and having a delightful conversation which lasted for two hours.

The 19-year-old-student, who declined to be named, had this to say: "(He) was very kind and friendly. He asked about my family and how they were doing, and even offered me some cake!"

The court heard that he was in the kitchen in the early hours on Jan 4 when he found some spare keys. He recognized this as the student's bedroom keys and promptly returned it to her.

"I knew I had to do the right thing," Zhong said. "I always return lost keys when I find them."

He entered the victim's bedroom with the pretext of returning the victim's spare keys. They ended up having a long, meaningful conversation and the two still remain friends.

 Original news article here.

And another one:

A young man who did not molest or sexually abuse a 17-year-old girl on their first date was not jailed for any duration on Thursday.

Choo Chen Hung, 24, admitted to having a great time at Block 932 Yishun Road at about midnight on April 20, 2011.

A district court heard that Choo contacted the victim after getting her number through a mutual friend on April 19. They arranged to meet at McDonald's at Northpoint Shopping Centre at about midnight.

While sitting outside the fast-food restaurant, Choo suggested that they order a Double McSpicy meal but she refused.

The 17-year-old girl, who only wanted to be known as Lin, said: "I was on a diet so I definitely not want a Double McSpicy. We compromised and got a single McSpicy meal instead."

The couple had their supper and chatted late into the night. They are reportedly having their second date tomorrow night.

Original news article here.

Disclaimer: This entry was written in an attempt at humor. No plagiarism or false reporting was intended.

I know who realFASS is!

For those of you who are unfamiliar, @realFASS is a parody/fake account of NUS FASS, and it has been running for over a year now, with its tweets revolving around random comments on current affairs, lame jokes and NUS-related tweets.



Some examples would be:

"#12daysofFASS" series where it tweeted a modified version of the song '12 days of Christmas', with a FASS/NUS theme.

"BREAKING: Criminal who failed English in Primary School has just broke out of prison!
He could never complete a sentence"

"#thatawkwardmoment when you are studying in CL and you stretch your legs and accidentally kick the person sitting across you."

And so on. They also had a blog which I made no secret about contributing to.

So, after a long time, I finally found out who was behind the @realFASS twitter account! -drumroll

[S] Cool story, bro

If you haven't already heard, the latest online furore occurred yesterday or two days ago when pictures of Xiaxue was posted on Temasek (something)'s Facebook Page, inviting people to post (rude) captions.

What ensued is elaborated well here.

The gist of it - dirty old men called XX and her friends sluts and whores, and XX retaliated by posting up their photos in her blog entry.

And Straits Times covers it here too.

I'm not here to debate who's right or wrong, because clearly both are wrong to some extent (though I do find the lewd comments utterly disgusting and think they deserve it), but I was reading the Straits Times' cover story on it when something just made cringe.

Context: One of the disgusting men, let's call him 'SC', posted the Facebook comment on XX's photo:

"Pretty and sexy girls, which part of Geylang they work?"

When asked by the Straits Times about his comment, "he said that his comment was 'incomplete', and that 'he didn't meant that at all', adding that he was actually trying to defend her. "(directly quoted from the Straits Times article)



HAHAHHA BULLSHIT . Yea, insinuating that they are Geylang hookers is totally trying to defend her!

And as for the 'incomplete' comment... well a screenshot tells it all: (6th comment down)

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="466"] Taken from xiaxue.blogspot.com[/caption]

Yea, it was totally incomplete because the rest of his text is invisible!

Seriously, if you want to post such bullshit then man up and take ownership of your post! Simisai trying to defend her.

Ok that's all I have to say. Cool story bro.

An interesting cover letter

Big companies have to process hundreds of resumes and cover letters daily, so how do you make yours stand out?

I saw this off a forum that I frequent (sc2sea.com), apparently this guy was trying to apply to Razer for a job position, and he decided to write a unique cover letter. He got called up for an interview after sending in this cover letter :) Have a look!

(You probably won't get most of it if you're not a gamer, but you should be able to appreciate the gist of it)

Psycho Douchebag

I am a drama magnet.

Well, at least when it comes to group projects. I seem to attract the weirdest and most complicated group members in my projects in school.

If you have not read about my experience last year with my SEA group, do check it out here.

This post is about my philo group this semester, and the drama that has occurred. Here's a sneak preview:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="There's apparently a convention for using exclamation marks, according to Psycho Douchebag"][/caption]