Quote of the day

Dr Lucy Chen: " what do you get when you cross-match an islandic and a cuban"
Ans: "Little Ice Cubes"

Dr Lucy Chen: " what do you get when you cross-match a chicken and a turkey"
Ans: "Chickey"

when your professor is around 27-30 years of age. Lectures can be a rather interesting affair..

汉语拼音方案

汉语拼音 is celebrating its 50 years old birthday this year. I think is a really important tool to learn when you want to communicate with a chinese. See my friend has a rather weird name, his name is Rude. Well not Rude as in rude but Ru De. When he was in America, the Americans and the American-Chinese keep pronouncing his name as simply rude. He had a hard time convincing them that it is Ru De instead of Rude.

cny come and go just like that..

After all the gambling, interrogation during chu 1 2 and 3, it is time to chill abit. This year's cny is very happening as compared to the previous 3 years, which is good. The sad thing though is that i got to watch carefully what i put inside my mouth. Nothing spicy, nothing acidic in nature, no caffine, no oily fried stuffs (no ba kwa). only ate food that are qing dan,they are really hard to find though. it is pure sufferance i tell you...yen ba ba de kan zhe relatives gobble down my favourite ba kwa.....

Well back to work. I am in charge of doing heat integration for the design of a hydrogen plant. There are 7 units in total and each of us are required to write about 30-40 pages of report on the unit design. After which, we will need to do other things like cost analysis, safety health and environment, regulation issues, control systems, pipings et cetera. Past year reports are all around 350-400 pages..darn.. another thing is, the 6 of them are designing only for a single unit. however for me,i need to design a lot of heat exchangers each varying in design. also i cant do anything much until they have all finished designing their own units and then integrate them all together.

This is how a student sees a heat exchanger...

This is what it looks like in real life.. some looks like a mini truck or amoured vehicle



some looks like a torpedo...



some looks like a space shuttle...

It can cost millions just to build one exchanger so as to save on utilities as you are transferring heat from a stream that needs to be cooled to another stream that needs to be heated without any external load. if i design that space shuttle or torpedo-like heat exchanger out ah, i will get murdered...

You De Mei De...

My stomach hasnt felt this good for eons. Seriously, i have forgotten the 'normal' feeling that one should feel about meals. It has never been an enjoyment to munch on something for the past 3 months or so, slowly though , i am beginning to have cravings. The bill just came for the gastroscope..guess how much it costs? gastroscope plus half-a-day B1 ward along with ac and meals...... it's only $161.. i really have no idea why am i subsidied so much, my grandma underwent the similar thing at SGH for $300+, shouldnt an elderly get more subsidy? hmm.. weird ... also, consultation alone costs $40+, but day surgery cost $161.. what gives? i was recommended to go to CGH by my sis bf, who is doing his housemanship there. He said that the waiting list is really short relatively speaking and that there are fewer patients there as compared to TTSH and SGH.... indeed, it is a world apart as compared to TTSH and SGH.

Anway... my finance tutor is kinda qualified, he is a CFA and a CPA .. hell...

His current holdings:

25%-China 25%-India 50%-Taiwan (all equity funds) 0% Cash.. (Clap clap got guts.. tonnes of guts)

Mine:

34%-T Bills (No guts) 5%-Real Estate 4%-Infrastructure 30%-Bond and 27%-Equity(global index fund+individual stock)

Holding a lot of cash and bonds now..too risk adversive maybe..abit too much for my age...am transfering my cash position to equity though abeit at a really slow pace given the current market situations. Waiting for the news guy to shout "Stocks selling on discounts!! Buy Ah!!, " like real... haha..what they would really say though is something like " US stocks stumbles overnight, Dow Jones Industrial Index fell 5000 points... ". Whatever lar, as long as it falls i happy. . i tried to type about technical analysis here the previous night but it is really hard... so maybe i will discontinue my previous post on trading/investing for now...

took me a while to find this video, cos, i dunno its title..cept for the chinese opera sounding music at the beginning and in the middle, the rest are okie..

Gastroscopy, i slept right through it...

i said Hi to my stomach for the first time in 23 years, it's cute and pink in colour, with some tiny dots (inflammation) that arent suppose to be there. It turns out that i have Gastrities, nothing too serious, but will have to watch my diet and not to overkill myself from now on (less hectic lifestyle) before it turns more severe. Looking back i wonder why they perform all the other tests on me when one scope can do it. Did blood test, stool test, thyroid/pancreas/gall bladder/liver function test, ECG(heart wave tracing) and some CT scans and X-rays.... for what i am still not too sure, at least all turns out normal. Seen 7 doctors in jan'08 great start to the new year, tai li hai le, hope today's one is the last. Think i dun have to do these tests for the next few years already or so i hope. If i sign up for the NUH health screen premium package, i think i will covered like 60% of my entire body already. Looking at the smile on my mum's face when she found out that it was nothing serious felt really good. Oh well, probably have to cut myself some slack from now on... stop tuitioning, stop stock picking just use dollar/value cost average with index funds, stop mahjong-ing hmmm (cos keep losing money and alcohols are no good for my stomach) .. be a sleeping partner instead and dun read too far ahead of the lectures...

Army Style SOC



Children Style SOC



Children having fun
While we are holding guns
have you ever wondered,
why must we served
Because we love our land
and we want it to be free to be free..

I can't say that I'm in a state of despondency but it has been a while since I felt really happy. Part of it has got to do with my tummy, a lot of wind inside. But the wind tend to decrease a lot once i eat something but i have no appetite so gotta force the food down...called a couple of hospital today to check for their earliest appointment date to see a gastro specialist. SGH is filled till july. earlist appt for TTSH is in april. NUH is in may. So the current appointment i have is still the earlist, CGH in feburary. hmm .. come to think of it,i have forgotten to call CGH to see if they have got any patients that have cancel their appt or not. Will give AH a miss though after having my knee and ankle treatment there. Private hospitals are outta the question, too expensive. Another reason for my current state is, well, in school i have like no friends. Only 1 or 2 really close ones are around, rest are mere acquaintances. Damn.

Anyway, i think i have a common face. Quite a no. of ppl have ask me questions like, "Hey i think i have seen u b4." ," are from blah blah blah" or " were you in this school? " This sort of thing. I was in army back then and some officers came to me and told me, "I know your father" then walked away. (what the hell..) In BMT, a bunkmate asked me if i was from XXX primary school. Last semester's lab assistant ask me a lot of personal question during a particular session only to reveal that she was checking if i was her long lost nephew. When i was helping out in engine o week, a fellow helper came up and ask me if i do sailing on a regular basis as she felt that she has seen me b4. Last week i was waiting for a buyer of my book in engine canteen and a friend introduced 2 friends to me, one of them ask me if i was in the medic corps during army, he seem to have seen me somewhere b4 he says. In JC, when i was in J2.. one J1 girl came up and ask if i was in from RV previously. Also, in J2, a friend told me that there is a guy whom looks just like me in J1. Friends of my friends told my friends that they seemed to have seen me before after they saw me talking to my friends whom are their friends as well (get it?) (this had happened a few times) zzz. Guys whom said that they have saw me b4 might indeed have becasue i was a guardroom specalist. So anyone entering or leaving my camp will bound to see me when i check their camp passes. If that is not the case, i think i needa start differentiating myself from the rest of the equally common-faced guys. . grow a beard and shave off my eye brows?

Back to school, go Bata buy shoes..

These days, my stomach is giving me problem again, it is always bloated and i need to burp constantly to get rid of these exessive air, experience some heartburns at times. Been to numerous checks all turn out fine. even got my lungs and heart scanned dunno for what.. Got an appointment with the gastro specialist in Feb, it is going to be really frustrating for me till then, just hope that i dun go mad before that date.. one thing though, being a singaporean has got its perks, the hospital bill is subsidies a lot.. needa pay about 300 bucks for one of the visit, but they subsidies till i only needa pay 75.. how come?? not that i am complaining but i din know that i will be subsidied this much...

well well, so school is back.. got 6 modules already. pondering over the 7th. Anyway, i will be overloading myself till i graduate, probably taking design 2 as one "bu shi ren" is taking that module, he asked me to join him,hahaa ask me to join him so that i can leech on him.. hahaa!woohooo.... he took 9 modules last semester and his lowest grade is B+ . Different league man... he got full CAP till the 4th semester when a A- pulled it down from 5.00... bu shi ren lo...

the modules i am taking this semester:

Managerial Economics
Legal Environment of Business
Management Science
Operations Management
Finance
Chemical And Bio-Catalysis
Design Project 2