I was discussing with Ah Huay and Samwin Clive about meeting up tomorrow. Ah Huay suggested a Sichuan restaurant at Bugis. Below is our conversation.

Ah Huay: ok,,the restaurant is not the classy classy kind hor, its in a shop house along beach road, opp plaza hotel
StupidGenius: duno plaza hotel.
Ah Huay: actually i nvr been there b4
Ah Huay: later i go racky the place
StupidGenius: recce
Ah Huay: ar?
StupidGenius: it's spelled recce. not racky.
Clive: hahaha..
Ah Huay: not rackey meh..hahaha
Clive: yalor.. i tot rackey
Clive: not recce

Oh Well. Check here.

That's the year we are moving house. My block kena the Land Acquisition Act. They offering us new flats in Dover in exchange. Interestingly, a difference of 5 sq meter, is $15k. My dad prefer the bigger unit, though my mum prefer the smaller one. I prefer the smaller too.

This time, my 2,4km timing is 13:22. Much slower than the last time.

• Last time is at night, but now is at 10am. The weather is hotter.
• I did not have as good a warm up.
• I run too fast in the first round and ran out of steam after that.
• Something wrong with the trainer's watch this week.

What a day!

Although the first half ends up goalless, the 2nd half more than makes up for it. Steven Gerrard misses a penalty, but still manage to score on the rebound. Jamie Carragher scores his 1st goal in a long long long time. Garcia is actually capable of spectacular headers. Mark Gonzalez, while still trying to come to terms with English football, manages to score a very good free kick in injury time. Fowler shows good movements, wasted he did not score any goals. This is the 2nd time in a month, Liverpool wins 4-0. Now we are 3rd in the table. Haha!

I am not confused about the meaning of subsidy. My understand of it has always been, I buy something at $X dollars, and I can claim all or a portion of it as subsidy, so that the thing is not really $X, but $X - $Subsidy.

A recent charity organisation brings a new meaning to it. Let's say the product cost $x. The patient do not buy the product themselves. T managed to procure it at $6. They sold it to the patients at $8 and claim that they are subsidised $2. But NKF actually earns $2 from the subsidy they gave to the patients. This baffles me. How do come can give people subsidy and still earns from it. Isn't it just a sales at a competitive price? So now all the shops out there when they want to give discounts, they can claim it as subsidy? This is all fine if the organisation in question not a charity organisation that get huge amount of donation from the public to subsidise the patients...

Then even more recent, my friend told me about something that HDB said. HDB has always given us Singaporeans the opportunity to own flats in a subsidised rate. So nice of them. But with the rising price of the flats, there had been complaints about the subsidy that HDB gives. Someone from HDB say that the flats are subsidised based on market rates.

Wait, isn't that similar to the charity organisation case? In fact they go 1 up on it. Isn't the market rate for HDB flats specified by HDB themselves? So now, I make my own product where my cost is $5, and claim that the market price is $10, so I sell it at $8 and claim that you are subsidised $2. I wonder if the private developers can do that...

Kuomintang's candidate for Kao Hsiung's mayor, Huang, lost Minjintang's candidate, Chen. It was pretty exciting. Their votes had been close. At 1 point, Chen lead by mroe than 10,000 votes, but in the end, it's only a mere 1120. There is no drama of last minute overtaking, but there will probably be a recount. Let's see what happens then. At last, KMT won the Taipei seat.

My cable modem is getting on it's years. Although it's still alive and well, it's not able to perform it's job to an acceptable standard anymore. Since yesterday morning, it had not been able to hold on the connection for more than 20 seconds. I called up the ISP service center and they told me they had diagnosed it to be faulty and cannot be used anymore.



I've had this modem for about a year. It's job was to be the voice modem for my phone line. When the old modem retired, this voice modem has been promoted to cover my internet connection duties as well. I've no immediate plans to get another modem to cover the internet connection duties, so all the best to this modem and hope it do a good job. If it should fall sick, I'll be without both internet connections and phone. Gasp!

You carry great responsibilty now. Gambate!

Another obituary. Times are really bleak. I don't have the details to what has happened, so I wrote down what understand so far. I received news of Art Beng's dad being hospitalised slightly more than 1 month ago. At the age of 85, his body was weak. The doctors diagnosed him to have about 6 months left.

If things are bad enough, the hospital staff says that they are not eligible for govenrment subsidy. Somehow, the means testing that's not supposed to be implemented somehow crept into the way the hospital handle their patients. Fortunately, Art Beng is able to argue his case against the staff.

And, since there's no hope for the old guy, the hospital requests that he moved his dad to hospice instead. They conveniently overlooked the fact that his dad is not able to eat anything and has to be on drip. There's no dripping facility in the hospice...

Last friday, he's still complaining to me about the hospital. Yesterday, when I asked him about it, he told me his dad is already in a hospice. Today, he told me his dad has died. I hope his family can deal with it well enough. At least his dad lives to a ripe old age. All his sons are all grown up now.

I had my first 2.4km run in a long long time. I can't remember when's the last time I run this distance.

I was pleasantly surprised that I run the full distance. I half expect that I'll run out of steam halfway thru and walked. It's good to have the run after so long.

I finish the 2.4km in 13 minutes and 6 seconds. 26 6 seconds more than the passing mark. But well, it's only the first run after so long. It can only get better as I go for more RT trainings. The worrying station is the chin-up station. I don't know how to pass that...

I failed my fitness test last year. So I have to complete my RT by September. Unfortunately, I left it till too late to book my training sessions. I managed to get the very last session. Even then I forgot to go. So I was charged.

Luckily I was let off with a warning this time. But they booked a session for me starting last Sunday. I have to go for RT training on Sunday afternoon and Thursday evenings. During the first session, I saw my primary school classmate, Puma. Then I saw Philip, my CSM. It was a small world I thought.

Philip and I decide to change our session to Sunday morning and Tuesday evenings. Having RT training on Sunday afternoon spoils the whole Sunday. I went for my first weekday lesson yesterday, and I found out that the world is even smaller. First, I met Mark. He was assigned to me for his Industrial Attachment 6 years ago. Then I saw 2 of my men during active time, 10 years ago. Follwed by another friend. This guy I forgot how I met him. Should be my junior during secondary school. Then I saw another 3SG of my unit there. I just keep bumping into friends and say Hi again and again. I gues I have a lot of friends born in the the later part of the year.

A Battle Of Wits

I went to watch A Battle Of Wits, 墨攻 with Angie yesterday. At first, I was apprehensive about watching it after having seen similarly high acclaimed movies like 十面埋伏 and 无极 turning out to be crappy movies. But after hearing good words of it from Kian, I decided to give it a try.

May contain spoiler. Click here to read.

It's about Liang City (梁城), that is coming under the attack of Zhao country (赵国). Zhao sent an army 100,000 troop to conquer Liang. The ruler of Liang is someone who is more concerned about lives his life on the high side and maintaining his power than the welfare of his people. At first, he asks the people of Mo (墨家) to help him. Unfortunately, Mo is against war and decided not to help them. With the Zhao army almost at their doorstep, and the Mo people nowhere in sight, he decided to surrender.

He sent his general to the Zhao army to negotiate surrender. However, the Zhao vanguard arrives before the surrender team meets with the Zhao general. The prince of Liang decides to not fight the Zhao vanguard, but to tell them their surrender intentions. Just then, Ge Li (革离) of Mo came. He tells them that the people will still suffer when they surrender. The Zhao army will not give them a good time. They should fight on. People may die. But if they survive, they'll live with pride.

At first, they are skeptical of him. The city only has 4000 people. And that's including the old and the young and the ladies. They are facing an army of 100,000. Ge has no experience in fighting a war. Ge came alone. How are they to hope to overcome such overwhelming odds?

By employing superior tactics, Ge manages to turn away the enemy again and again. Slowly, he gains the respect of the people. However, this incurs the jealousy of the Liang ruler. He fears that Ge will usurp him as ruler of Liang, despite the fact that the Mo people are known for their willingness to help people in trouble and not seek any payment. More importantly, he cannot stand that his people respect other people more than him. So when the Zhao army finally retreats, he sets about getting rid of Ge.

Ge manages to escape, but the prince was killed in the process. And the Zhao army returns to conquer Liang. Just when all seems gone, Ge returns to save them again. This time, the Liang ruler manages to kill the Zhao general and claimed the credit of turning away the enemy. He got back his respect while Ge leaves quietly with the orphans of Liang to spread Mo teachings.

5 years later, the Liang ruler was overthrown. But that's to be expected.
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Hamsup had told me that this movie is only average. It starts with some nice war scenes and ends with some nice war scenes, but in the middle it's all lovey dovey. However, I found that to be not really true. There is really a love element to the story, but I thought it's only a small part of the story, and it serves to illustrate Ge's character more. Overall, it's a nice story with the characters nicely developed. It’s definitely with the price of the weekend movie ticket.