CPF Life? my ass

Okay, so all of us who are even somewhat educated, already know that this grand scheme from the GAHMEN, despite its numerous options, has ZERO PROTECTION against INFLATION, and thus is clearly INSUFFICIENT to cover our retirement NEEDS (which is assuming that we even live long enough to at least 65, to retire). For those of us who are poor and prefer to keep more liquid assets (aka cash) with us, this is really a burden. Heck, even an option that allows us to invest in terms of gold bars is better than that. Golds bars never depreciate, you see? But the GAHMEN is unlikely to listen, I think at this rate, I'm really going to stay single and be free from such headaches. I don't mind living a third rate kind of life by myself, but there's no reason why my family should be suffering the same fate. It's funny, in every part of the world there are poor people, but they survive anyway. In Singapore, it seems that surviving as poor people is getting more and more difficult.

Life is costly yes, but having powers that be making decisions for you, isn't really going to change any of that. Looking from the GAHMEN's point of view, the BIG picture, they are only taking care of their backside. They know that there will always be people who cannot make it in life, it is only a matter of numbers. They are satisfied as long as they feel that have done something to deal with whatever problems they can perceive/project/predict. Most of them do not take public transport, eat at hawker centres, live the life of the laymen, but they think they are well qualified to make any decision for the man on the street. As for individuals, they can go rot in hell. As always, the government takes care of the country, while the people take care of themselves.

Of course, there's always an alternative: becoming rich. Rich enough that GST hike and tax reductions actually benefit you. Rich enough that you will not be bothered about the puny amount of money you have in the CPF account. I must be more money-minded.

malaysian elections

Sometimes I treat political news like entertainment news (particularly stuff about taiwan); read and laugh and forget, but this time round, what's brewing over the other side of the causeway seems to be quite interesting, rather than just mildly entertaining. Riding atop the momentum of recent scandals, uniting against a common enemy, fielding every single worthy candidate they could find without infighting (issues abt wck and fpt seemed to have been resolved according to recent reports), and almost getting some defectors from the incumbent BN(?), the opposition seems to have gotten quite a few things right at least. I have no time to really follow this due to recent hectic work commitments, but I would most certainly expect an interesting fight.

brief update

Hereby, I shall mourn the demise (or rather, stillbirth) of my mid term break; I'm celebrating its end before it has even begun, and such is the irony of life.

busy, midterm projects(<- note the s -> plural) scramble
2 programming assignments in 7 days? jangan main main
not to mention test scramble that follows right after.

double week = 6.5; // I should call this

but today I went crazy with sms rampage, sending a nothing-too-special msg to nearly 20 pple while I kenna stuck in traffic jam as usual aboard bas nombor sepuloh
about half of them actually were kind enuff to haf responded....thought of putting their responses here but maybe i shld protect the innocent? wahaha

this month still have 200+ free outgoing, maybe I will save it for the special day!

the leap years.....whoa

oso, fixed the access privileges for unix account, now the embedded music shld work again

Friendship Day....some thoughts

It is a nice feeling to have friends, and feeling more like a normal person, really.
I felt like making a mental list of all pple I've known through my classes, just to sorta commemorate them.....but realized it is too big even for a person like me who don't actually know *that* many people, and maybe a little pointless too.....most of them we have had too little contact in the long run which makes calling them friends now a little insincere on my part.

Maybe I should just talk about something general.

Taking those 'outside' classes, particular translation, have fringe benefits, in allowing me to harness aspects of myself that I've never knew , e.g. with regard to social engineering. Given the right context and situation, I can actually socialize pretty well. But the situation is very different back home when the work has little bearing on life, which makes blending work and life that much harder, and usually I'll tend to indulge in one to the abandonment of the other. Discipline, is what I need.

I'm just thankful for not getting a certain card this year :)

If he doesn't get killed, I think this guy can change the world.

"For one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn't the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn't want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles.

This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all."

New evaluation method

Work listing has been done, but I need to identify the ones of higher priority and now I shall do so with a new method..... btw, the weekend was not very productive but at least I caught up on some sleep and finished the bloody cl3281 group assignment, and yeah I got a kamus with example sentences and 2 malay books for toddlers from mpbl

The week ahead:

Monday, nothing is due but certainly I should read up more on XML before the meeting later, and prepare something for malay 1hr tutorial . Tuesday is a hell of a day with more database, c++, translation and malay 2hr tutorial, so I should prepare something for each of these modules inclusive of cl3281 tutorial, after that it will be time for some chess at MPSH4.

Readings/Prep-to-do list:

0. CS1280

**Lab 2
*go through Lecture2

1. CS2102S

**XML
*SQL
*project init

2. CS2105

**tutorial 2 (online assignment due 9th)
*read that fancy textbook
*cs2105 project init

3. CS3243

*Breakthrough project init

4. CL3281
**tutorial 4
*tutorial 5 (more of Sara I suppose)

5. LAM1201

*watch suria/malay news/channel 5 shows with malay subs (that mobtv subscription could really be useful this time round beyond maggi & me)
*start a word/vocab book

* Indicates level of urgency
# Indicates level of extra difficulty