Thursday, December 9, 2010

Refreshing Self Discovery

I was talking to my brother about owning a cat. I listed to him all the advantages of having a cat over a dog. Here are some:

1. Doesn't eat too much
2. Doesn't require walking
3. Doesn't require showers
4. Doesn't require cleaning up after
5. No saliva drools
6. Doesn't bark
7. Kills cockroaches
8. Can sleep on the bed without shedding too much fur
Just to list a few...

I: "So I want to get a cat, what do you think?"

He said: "I know why you want a cat. You want a cat because you like the feeling a getting rejected."

I: "... ..."

"It may seem like you like to be accepted, but deep down, and in secret, you long to be rejected."

(Cats are known to reject people, a fact.)

.......

I must say, he is correct, to an extent, of which I do not know how much of.

Wow Abe, thanks! Good to discover things about yourself.
I also realize that many people do not understand themselves as well as you may perceive them to understand themselves.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Weight Watch!

5 year weight watch comes to fruition:

2005 - 60kg
2006 - 63kg
2007 - 68kg (after Taiwan trip, I believe)
2008 - 66kg
2009 - 74kg (after China trip, definitely. I don't believe i was 70+kg in Feb 2009 in Malaysia)
2010
Jan - 75kg (in Taiwan)
Mar - 74kg
May - 74kg
Aug - 73kg
Nov - 70.5kg

Could be loss of muscle, but i prefer a loss of fat! (Doesn't everyone? Even this ultra skinny guy reader that I know JP)

How i think i can lose fats: move very fast at timed intervals e.g. punch the air for 5 seconds, take a rest for 10 seconds. Fats just don't like that and want to be lost asap.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Evaluation Of A Game

Hey hey check out this game!


After playing this game quite extensively, I have learned a valuable lesson. (No reviews for the game available in this post.)

---------
Lesson:

1. If I lose the game, I get angry (not angry angry, not that dumb to get angry at a piece of software, just a bit arrgg!).
And I:
- Think about how I can do better next time
- Think whether I should lower the difficulty level

2. If I win the game, I feel empty - the i-wanted-to-beat-you-computer-to-show-off-my-skill-but-now-you-are-dead-and-can't-see-how-great-i-am-not-that-i-get-satisfaction-from-showing-computer-players-my-greatness-anyway type empty.
And I:
- Think whether I should raise the difficulty level
- Reminisce about all of the moments where I kicked the computer's ass, and how I can do more of that in the next difficulty level
---------

As you can see the cycle goes on and on, in that if I lose, I feel angry (how could the computers cheat like this!!?) and go to an easier difficulty level. After going to the easier level, I win, and I feel empty, and want to play a harder level. Either win or lose, I gain negative emotions.

Does it ever end?

Yes. I shall not play this game anymore (in the short to medium term).

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Great Massage

Great massage is in the persistence.

For me.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Shite Kudasai! Nani Ka Omoshiroi

FINALLY ordered one of these!


It wasn't so nice. But when the boss comes out and announces the dish name for you, it sure is worth it.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

The Internet

"I have so many emails to check everyday. I have so many email accounts to check everyday. I have so much news i need to feed on that constantly updates. There are so many updates on sites related to school, work, play, hobbies - such that after i check everything i need to check, i need to go back to the start to check it all over again, because people keep updating content and sending me emails, and stuff."

Sound familiar?

Well, it's not me.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Fat Lag Effect

I believe the human body has a fat lag effect. Which means the certain body fat increasing or decreasing activities will not take effect until a 3-4 weeks later, while this period does depend on the individual.

SO,
for the eater: don't be too glad when you've eaten a huge amount of food and see no added fats to your body within a few days.

for the exerciser: don't be too discouraged when you've exercised a huge amount and see no decrease of fat within... immediately =]


Thursday, August 26, 2010

Brilliant Advertising

Today, came across an ad campaign for an Arnotts product in the city, but didn't have a camera!
It is very effective.

Here it is:



"Random. But Right." Haha!

Made me laugh because it seems random, but not really very right. In fact, it seems kinda wrong... BUT in a good way.

Don't forget to blog.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Forty Hour Famine Specials

Hello,

Today three PLC girls ding-dong'ed my doorbell twice, very rapidly and hard. I caught them leaving just as I opened the door, and they said:

"Oh, hi. We're from PLC and we are doing the forty hour famine. We were wondering if you could donate some loose change for our cause."

Not a question, but a statement. So i said: "Yes." Then asked what they were going to do for the forty hour famine.

One of the girls said: "I'm going forty hours without food, she's going forty hours without internet, and..." and was interrupted by one of the other girls, who said: "and I'm doing fingers."

... "What? Fingers?"

"Yes I'm going to tape my fingers together for forty hours, so i can't use them."

Hahahaha. I think the original method - food is still the most difficult.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

The 4:8 Principle

Yesterday, I went on a band camp type graduation, where all of the members retreated to a place to prepare for their final group performance of music and dance. It was in a place with big animals, especially groups of dogs, and other big things like pincer crabs, which walked funny and clucked its pincers together a lot. I took lots of photos and videos so that I can compile them when I get back. (The day before I was looking for golden retriever wallpapers on google but could not find any good ones!)

The place was like a typical camp, with a hall, cabins, dining hall, camp food, main area to play in, stairs, girls rooms and boys rooms. I did not know any of the people there. And none of them knew who I was. After a lot of playing around, I came to this place where I found a variety of real life high quality masks of faces of the girls and boys in the camp. I admire them for a brief moment, and came to one which looked particularly pretty. It was very pretty. She must be very pretty too, in real life.

So I tried on the fit. I matched the forehead line with mine and covered the line with the fringe. The scalp fitted nicely between my ears, and the long hair draped over my ears. The face mask was just a piece of skin, and it came with all the features such as the outlined eyes, lips, lipstick, blush, cheek contours, and the fit was perfect. I also changed into a dress.

I walked outside and to no surprise, no one thought I was abnormal. I was a girl. I attended the final musical practice in the main hall. Some boys commented that I looked a bit tired, and some said that I looked pretty. A visit to the bathroom showed me that the facial foundations was getting a bit smudged, and that there was makeup on my hair! I quickly washed my hair, kept it wet, and let it hang down and straight. Another look in the mirror, saw a beautiful young girl, with good smiles, bright face, lovely hair and big eyes. Soon I was out again in that practice session, but this time practising the way I should move, or the way a girl of my type would move. It started from the gentle manouevres from side to side, to the elegant steps, to the eyes not looking higher than the horizon, to the dusting of my dress, to the flick and fix of my hair, and at times to the self handhold position that covered my crotch (because it looked bulgier than a normal girl’s). After that I was mixing with the girls and having much fun. It all felt soo free and fully liberating.

The end of the band camp was drawing near. Kevin Rudd performed in the last musical, where he had no idea what was going on. But his son made him say all sorts of things, uncharacteristic of him. Then some guys tried to kill me simpily because they found out that I was the main character of the dream, but they were all defeated at the touch of my hand (i.e. fell to the floor via a flip, twist or turn and groaned to themselves). It was a lovely dream. At the time I videoed the big animals, I really thought I could take them home to edit!


“…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”


The characteristics of my ideal girl has seven. She is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, which is praiseworthy. And I shall think of her all the day long.

Thank you.

p.s. this post, after writing it, is dedicated to Amoz A, who usually shows much keenness to get into a girl's mind to understand what she is thinking.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Your Power Is Weak, But Your Integrity Is Strong

I was having a cruisy time one afternoon down in Box Hill, where i saw:



Senior man getting frustrated over something =]

Then came across the Louis' Economy Shop, which is the direct competitor of Super Bargains, which has recently changed its name to Crazy Bargains (because 'Super' most probably didn't sound cheap enough). Here it is below:



And then:

Louis' Economy Shop is now on Facebook. HAHAHA.


I found that funny, as i did this:


(Only realized the 'Sam Hu' in the photo was a girl, only recently!!)

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

I Love Taiwan Restaurants

Because:


Big dogs come up to sit next to your table


There's a dog outside most stores


They like to block the door to get all the attention


And eagerly anticipate customers' FOODS in a well trained manner!


Plus there are cats that lie on the bar counter


These cats also don't mind eating ON THE SAME TABLE as customers


And sleep all over the dishes (because the dishes are being warmed - they are really asleep!)


And go actively go after the customers' foods

Woah! Did you check out those animals in the restaurants??

Animal Restaurants in Taiwan should be a Taiwanese specialty.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Spa For Sale

We are selling our spa! Didn't know we had a spa did you? We've only used it once since moving into this house, SO when we opened up the lid of the spa we found:
  • very stale water - water that looked like it was past its expiry date
  • mouldy floaties
  • roaches (also floaties)



This was after we cleaned it out of course.

But, on the topic of spas, check out one of our competitors on the trading post.

Hahaha... @ the shadow of the guy taking the photo

Abe said that this was a poor listing.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Containers Hahaha

So i'm studying Java on the internet at the moment (something you do when the lectures aren't so helpful) for my Java subject, and i found something really funny.

OK so we're talking about Java J2EE containers, which are virtual application environments that provide enterprise level services to an application.

Containers were a hard concept to grasp because it was program modeling, virtual, J2EE, technical, information systems architecture, so I needed to look up more information.

And behold...


'Ads by Google' was advertising Aussie shipping containers on a J2EE Java container information website!!! I did laughed out loud at that one.

Talk about targeted advertising! (by Google)

Monday, May 31, 2010

Force-Adopt as New Action - New Sister!

Alright. So in Taiwan I adopted a little sister, by default.
By default, because this aunty really wanted to adopt me as her son. And she did.

But my new adopted little sister didn't like being my new adopted little sister, because 1) it was by default and not by permission, and 2) she didn't like me anyway (like most 12 year olds). But too bad, she didn't have a choice!~xo

Therefore, i was very happy that i have a small sister to play with!

So here she is:



That's one shy girl. But only at first.

After she got to know me better, she wouldn't stop pinching, hitting, tickling, and annoying me. Or pretending to dislike me (pretending!).

So to make it a two-way relationship, I pretended to dislike being pinched, hit, tickled and annoyed, which was sometimes hard to do. Hahaha. (Now, if she can occasionally say some sweet things, it would be perfect!)

Saturday, May 15, 2010

May It Be Filled With Lots And Lots Of Unexpected Double Happiness!

Happy birthday messages appreciated!
Random birthday messages appreciated!
Interesting thought-pattern-following messages appreciated!

This year, and some of the previous years, i thought that the son's birthday should be for the MUM. To celebrate for the MUM! It would make a lot more sense.

So here's what i did for my birthday.

Receive Love Packet

And...




Beating Abe in Cricket - hohoho

Of course.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Oversimplified Yet Effective

There are these types of emails floating around telling us receivers that the senders have an 2 million dollar inheritance, but need our help to transfer it to their account. As compensation for our efforts, we will be rewarded a portion of the 2 million inheritance.

Usually these emails are a few paragraphs long, and are very much the same - it's about time that they change the style and format.

Here, is one I had never seen before (and decided to move it from my junk mail to my inbox):


Hahaha. Oversimplified, yet super effective.

Posing with Grandpa Chen in park

Male airport security flirting with female counter staff at Taipei Airport


Thursday, April 29, 2010

Google Trends - How To Make Bombs

Today we want to look at the worldwide trends of Google searches on “how to make bombs”.

Take a look at the results from www.google.com/trends




>> We can see that this search query has been decreasing since 2004, which can lead us to these possible conclusions:
  • People are feeling less threatened by bomb maker
  • People have less interest in making bombs
  • People who used to search for the term “how to make bombs” now know how to make bombs, so have no need to research it anymore. Scary.
>> We also see that the biggest search interest has come from Australia, New Zealand, United States and Canada. This leads us to these possible conclusions:

  • All the other nations (those we thought would be interested in bomb-making) ALL already know how to make bombs
  • Many bombing terrorists have resided in these countries and have been researching and perfecting the art of bomb-making for the past 6 years.

    OR

  • Bombing terrorists are not really from where you think…

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Weird Jewish Naming

I realized one day that many English proper names of today were once derived from very traditional Jewish names.

Few examples below:

Daniel
Esther
Hannah
Nathan
Josh
Samuel
Simon
Peter
David

On the same day, I asked myself the question: would Jewish people find it weird that a significant number of people in western civilizations are giving their kids Jewish names (rather than a name like as Frank, Clive or Melvin)?

I didn't really find it weird, until I imagined an American couple naming their first child Confucius (a Chinese derivative). Now that would be weird (!!)

I assume that you are Chinese, if you're reading this post.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Cricket Cricket

I was inspired by something that a friend said in a train conversation about cricket coaching for year 7s and 8s at Wesley College.

He said: "Cricket coaching is great. But i'm like the worst coach ever. Every single time, at the end of the trainings, i would be like: OK BOYS. IT'S MY TURN." (Referring to: 'my turn to bat')

Hahahaha.

Inspirational.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

You Need Trace Minerals

A quick one today.

"Intensive Salad"... !

Some more crazy cuts. This time, with Jine, Otis, and Bigi.

At this shop, you get tariffed for taking on "Ear-picking Services"


And lastly, you need trace minerals! Roommate very excited about trace minerals

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Headaches No More Over Allocation of House Chores

Because boys are generally bad with doing house chores, but still need to do house chores, we have come up with a new system for house chore allocations. View in picture below.

As you can see, it's a chore matrix. Nicely hand drawn.

And then we paper-scissors-rock off every box. Hahaha. Like this.


My mum was getting very worried at one stage that one of us was going to get all the chores for the month.

Abe told my mum to let probability handle everything.

Abe gets good allocations, so the reverse for me.

And it (probability) did it for him! (A very happy Abe)

Helps keep things (and the chores) exciting every week.


Wednesday, March 17, 2010

To Maximize Utility

Define: utility
In economics, utility is a measure of the relative satisfaction from, or desirability of, consumption of various goods and services.

1. You have two peaches in your lunch box.
2. You plan to eat both of them one after the other.
3. One of which is sweet and one of which is not so sweet.
4. But pretend that you didn't know that - you have no idea whether each individual peach is sweet or not.

Question:
By eating which peach first, will you maximize utility?

My personal answer is:
The sweeter peach first.
Because while eating the first sweet peach, i will be thinking about the sweetness of the second peach. Mmm...

And that to me, is value.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

The Days After the Chinese Revolution

The movie "The Day After Tomorrow" (2004) was such a success that it was translated into many other languages - with one of the other languages as Chinese.

Here is the poster you would see in Taiwan.


The movie title is translated into "明天過後", which literally means: 'after tomorrow is past', which makes a lot of sense.

----------

And here is the poster you would see in China.

"后天" ??!!
Hahahahahahaha. That's so weak (and funny)!!!

p.s. sorry to those who don't understand Chinese. Also, I don't mean to offend the readers from mainland China (edit: who would be reading this after migrating out of mainland China).

Monday, March 1, 2010

Add NT$5 For Bubbles

Food manicure! And the 'Ear Plug' service gives some unpleasant imagery =]

No thank you, don't have the time!

Incredible web URL! Tremendously disadvantaged business!

"Add NT.5 for Bubbles"! Hahaha. Why would you want bubbles??

Two months in Taiwan seemed like a lonnnggggg dream. Alongside with all the people i met. They seemed fictional.

I'll be back.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Roommate Diary

About Roommate

Name: Jun Ting Lin (Junts)
Age: 24
Ethnicity: Taiwanese

He lives with me in the same apartment in the same room. And we share everything together, including stuff inside the apartment, which include jokes and fun times, clothes and foods, taxis and friends. Good times in 2010.

X --- Here are "Lin Jun Ting's Top 10 Qualities" from what I have observed as his roommate for months:

(1) Cleans and tidies room regularly. Super clean guy. No complaints about my mess, because he cleans it up.
(2) Humbler than most - humbly agrees with suggestions and criticisms many a times.
(3) Understands brokenness. Can sympathize with people in difficulty.
(4) Doesn't take up much space. If our room is 6 x 7 m squared, then he takes up about 2 x 3 m squared! (Work out the maths) I completely take over the room in terms of stuff. That's a super good roommate!
(5) Needs little face among strangers. Doesn't care about what strangers think of him. And can sing very loud in public with little hesitation.
(6) Patient. When browsing books together, listening/singing a song, listening to a story, he will wait for the finish before moving onto something else.
(7) Doesn't mind snorers. Although he tells me that i snore every night, i can tell that in his tolerance, he really doesn't mind.
(8) Content with any food. He even eats the ginger, cooked in soups, and anything that appears in the bowl.
(9) Gifted song writer. He writes one song a week. He sings til 2am in the morning, and thinks about songs.
(10) Knows how to hang out with older people. Attends 28yrs+ cell groups.

X --- Here are his bad qualities as observed in the past months:

(a) Brushes his teeth for 20 minutes - and that's 19+ minutes too long, way way too long.
(b) Likes to take off all his clothes when he gets back to the apartment (at least its helped me to be more open).
(c) If "overreacts around cute animals" doesn't count, then that's all i can really think of...


Jun Ting brushing teeth with no clothes on

Overjoyed holding a big cute sleeping giraffe

Forgets an appointment with his teacher and looks embarrassed

Taking care of his girlfriend's aquarium in facebook's "開心水族箱". Cute!

Abe comes back to the dorm and greets Jun Ting, as per usual.

Gets a nice hug for coming home! And Abe looking awkward in front of the camera.


*** Recommended Roommate [STAMPED - VERIFIED]

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Dirty Dealings

For some people,

1. Playing dirty can help with forgiveness. Because since they also did something sneaky to the 'opponent', there is wrong on their behalf to absorb the anger caused by what the 'opponent' did to them.
example: in a school yard fight

2. Being less hygienic when younger can improve health on the way to maturity, and during maturity. Because the immune system would have had more chances to familiarize itself with germs in acceptable doses.
example: fully gripping and turning off the public toilet taps after washing hands

Monday, February 8, 2010

"I would rather be a beggar and single, than a queen and married." - Elizabeth I

"The thief is no danger to a beggar."
"It is a beggar's pride that he is not a thief."


Question:
Do Taipei beggars serve any benefit to the city of Taipei?


Long Answer:
Ambiguous. Reasons as below:

A1. Earn more money per hour than a worker at McDonalds.

2. Save very little of money earned.

3. Spend a lot of money earned. Very liquid. Great for nearby shops.

B1. Stirs up more of a giving spirit in the hearts of Taipei people.

2. It is more blessed to give than to receive. Great for givers.

C1. A way to fulfill the need to 'do good' in Taipei. Makes people feel important.

D1. However, negative impacts are inconclusive. Therefore cannot say whether beggars bring about higher welfare or not.

Short Answer: Yes!
When they (beggars) cheerfully give to those in need.

Hahahaha

Beggars are fantastic.