If a human could fly, this would be it.

If a human could fly, this would be it. Since ancient times, humans have always dreamt of flight, but perhaps it is only in this century that it has actually become more probable.

This video reminded me of the following cute animated short called "Kiwi", only that the guy doesn't go splat at the end.

He just wanted to fly.

Sophisticated fuckery.

Have you ever read an article and at the end of it wondered just what it was about? If you have experienced such writing by supposed intellectuals, you are not alone.

There was once a hoax perpetuated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University in 1996. The hoax, called the Sokal affair, was basically an attempt by him to show that intellectuals had become ensconced in their ivory towers of intellectuals. He showed that as long as you wrote something intelligent sounding that was actually full of obtuse balderdash and sprinkled with random esoteric facts, it would actually be published in a scientific journal, even if it was absolute rubbish.

That one hoax so embarrassed the intellectual community that they closed ranks, and walled themselves off even further in their ivory castles of intellectualism by instituting the system of peer review. That is effectively a system where smart people give backslaps and backrubs to other smart people while others die trying to get a look in.

I tried to read the article, a link of which is posted here. I didn't understand one bit of it, and for once I didn't even have to pretend to, because the owner admitted just as much that it was absolute nonsense. But I have read other things that actually made me realise that for all of my education, I am not even scratching the surface of smart. I think that is the hallmark of genius, when something is just so ridiculously difficult to understand that it is just about complete rubbish to most people, but makes perfect sense to a special few.

As to what I mean by not even scratching the surface of smart, try understanding this esoteric programming language. It is called brainfuck, and with good reason. Don't feel sad if you read the whole thing and did not understand a word. And people actually code in that, some of them for fun. And while reading up on that I learnt about a formula that supposedly plots itself on a graph, called Tupper's Self-Referential formula. I thought it was cool enough that this was possible, nevermind that I did not understand one iota of what it was all about. Then you get some Indian genius (and yes he had to be Indian because this is IT stuff) who debunks the whole thing here.

This is why I end up reading Reddit and 9gag in my office. It is so lame at times, it makes me feel happy. I feel like I belong to the community.

In this age though, where so much information is now readily available on so many things, is there really an excuse for anyone to claim that they could not learn or do something because they never learnt it in school? You can learn just about anything off the Internet these days. I've learnt half a million things off Youtube.

Granted, there are some things you can't learn on Youtube, like how to increase Singapore's birth rates. That is one problem so difficult, you can put all of Singapore's best brains in a thinktank, and the best solution you have in the end is to give extra baby bonuses and to get the old man to exhort (yet again) for married couples to have more babies. Which is the same solution that has been used all these years that has proved ineffective.

I guess the government doesn't get that raising a family is not just about getting the baby out there, which is effectively all the one time baby bonus is good for. There is the bigger question of having to raise the kid for 21 years, which the government cannot do for you, and it is perfectly understandable if couples don't want to have more kids because they don't want to commit to anything like that.

Have you seen how families here have to fight for Primary 1 school places? Would you want to raise a kid in a place where you can't even get a place in a school that's right next to your overly expensive flat, which means you have to pay even more for school buses, an additional financial strain next to your already crushing housing loans. And all that because you paid a premium for the flat as it was near to the school, so you could get your kid into that very same school? Oh, the fuckery.

I'd actually go with creating a department in some ministry somewhere for married civil servants to dance the horizontal tango during work hours to create the kids, but I am not sure Singaporeans are ready to pay the government to have babies for them. I am sure glad that I'm not a policymaker, because there are some problems that cannot really be solved.

A North Korean family just delighted to meet their Dear Leader

You can't fake the sheer joy this family displays as they pose with their Dear Leader. I can't tell whether they are overjoyed that they are getting extra rice rations, whether somebody is pointing guns at them, or whether they are a few moments away from pissing in their only pair of good pants from being in the presence of the divine.

Interesting note: As someone on the internet pointed out, the kid in the middle has a badass haircut.

Revenge is a dish best served pink.

Quite possibly, the best f-rape revenge ever. Thank you sir for this. Epic lols.

The human jukebox

The basic premise: Put a coin into one of those bottles and they play a song for you. Quite a cool idea really and quite entertaining to watch.

The end of the video is an example of why although this is a good idea, you can't do this more than once. $76.38 after several hours? You earn far more money selling chicken rice, or luring men into 17-year old underaged honeytraps. And really after awhile the novelty wears off, unless you're a troll with a lot of coins who just enjoys putting more and more coins into Bach and then Fast Forward to see how long it takes before one of them gives up.

But in any case, the channel collectivecadenza, or cdza featuring these guys is quite interesting. I'm waiting to see if they come out with any more interesting stuff, like this.


Press 2:02 to get rickrolled. You're welcome.

You can also watch how the songs get progressively worse. The people who say music ain't what it used to be? Maybe they have a point.

Only in Russia.

If you asked me which country had the craziest people on the roads, I would tell you Russia. You think China has it bad? Wait till you see this following video.



As though a troll on a trolley wasn't bad enough, they have monster trucks. And their monster trucks aren't just simply monster trucks, they are literally monsters on the roads, as the next two videos will attest.


I have it on good authority that the expression used by the driver before the crash, "Ay Blet!" means "Oh fuck!" in Russian.


You would literally wet your pants if you were a driver and saw this one. And there are worse videos where vehicles and their drivers get obliterated, but you can search for those yourself.

And if you're wondering why every car in Russia has a dash cam on it, its because the drivers there are routinely victims of insurance scams where cars swoop and squat in front of your car to have you ram into them, so they can try to claim insurance money from you, and the only way to prevent it is to well, have a dashcam, as shown in this video.

Call Me Maybe - Carly Rae Jepsen (Chatroulette Version)

This video. So fucking funny. I split my sides laughing at this shit and I watched it three more times after that. You'd think it'd be impossible to make another Call Me Maybe parody considering there are already hundreds out there, but this is the only one that features a scantily clad bearded woman on Chatroulette. 

And the guy at 1:09 is freaking creepy, he looks like the kind of guy who drives a van around kidnapping and raping people.

But apparently such antics are not an isolated case, going by this rendition of Lady Gaga's Telephone.



This uploader is quite the joker. His description reads "Hello internet world, my name is Steve Kardynal. Today you need to smile. You need to smile so big it hurts your cheeks."

Don't watch his other stuff though. It's crap, these are just the rare exceptions.

Movie, why you so expensive.

Today I watched The Bourne Legacy, and it cost me $10. I remember the days when a movie cost $5 on Tuesdays, which was back in my secondary school days. Then it became $7, then $7.50, then $8. And then they closed all the seedy places with sticky seats and strange smells like Princess and the infamous Yangtze, where almost all the moviegoers had tissue paper and newspapers, and I was left with the ridiculously expensive places.

Now, what's the problem with paying $10 for a movie? Well, the basic premise is this. If a movie costs me $10, it better be damn bloody awesome. Unfortunately, it is impossible for most movies to be damn bloody awesome, because in the past when I went to watch movies, it was just to have a good time and fritter away 2 hours in mindless entertainment. But because it is now so expensive, there is a value premium added on to it that just about ruins every single movie experience I have in the cinemas.

Now, I evaluate every movie, and by the halfway point I usually already know whether I'm watching a great movie, or whether I just wasted $10. The key is, if you are actually thinking about whether you wasted money, its garbage. Or maybe it's just blah, but movies cannot be blah for $10 a pop.

Very blah. Lots of explosions, but too much shit about biology, viruses and chemicals that blew my mind and made me wish that this just focused on being an action flick. Sorry Jeremy Renner, you had balls of steel in The Hurt Locker, but Matt Damon as Jason Bourne still owns big time.

On the other hand, I can't wait for this. The first movie was the best action flick ever, because Liam Neeson was just that badass.



By the way, this is what happens if you take his daughter, who just happens to be the impossibly hot Maggie Grace. Just saying.


"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."

Life advice: Don't fuck around with a dad who has a hot daughter. Chances are, he will look for you, he will find you, and he will kill you.

Who say Ah Gong die one? Show you proof.

Ah Gong appears at NDP 2012

To all those gossiping that he had passed on, here's a choice quote for you.

"Even from my sick bed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel something is going wrong, I will get up." - Ah Gong at 1988 NDP Rally.

Because he is the Ah Gong of Singapore, he does not go until he wants to. Which is probably never, as evidenced by the next quote.

"Who dares to tell me that my time is up? I'm on the J.P. Morgan board, the (French oil giant) Total board and a few other boards. When they reappointed me, I told them,'Look, the moment I'm slipping, please tell me. I'm already 80-plus"
-Source: The Straits Times 22 Jan 2011

Live and repent! 

Earworms earworms.

Oppa Gangnam Style! You either get it or you don't. If you don't you're missing out!

Like T-Pain said, "Words cannot even describe how amazing this video is..." I don't normally give a shit what T-Pain says, but this time he's right.

And of course, with anything this awesome, you just gotta learn the dance!



Here's another one of my latest earworms, but this one silently crept up on me and now its stuck. Presenting "My Party" by Brandon and Leah.



And the last one is a guilty pleasure. I know he's the British Justin Bieber but the song's catchy.

Ready, get set, go!

Do your patriotic duty and tap your lady all night like you tap an EZ link card. Come on.

Ridiculously funny subtitled videos.

Singlish at its best.


And the reason why we love Chinese people speaking English. I spent a whole morning at work going through Miss World videos but this one really took the cake.

The best comment off Youtube? This one.

i liked her... until she opened her mouth. lol transcript:
hi, i'm wen xi yu; i come from china. i low to smell, and the, i like music. i study chinese folk music. people think, the new work such as farming or peeking tea lives. so i think, it is simple and beautiful, and music is universal. if i win miss word, i hope to shell my comb patient, and the, to help pee pole imp para-tate. thank you.

And in a random aside, my app of the week is this funny app called Office Politics. While its a classic whac-a-mole game, its still wickedly funny going through the descriptions of the different clans and identifying people you know who actually belong to each one, like the Shadow Ninjas and Office Bimbos and so on. The gameplay itself is quite engaging too, good for time wasting on MRT rides.

The more work there is, the higher their level.

Sound like anyone you know?

Adorable screenshots from the Apple store and website. Just search "Office Politics" on the Apple store and have fun!

newest guilty pleasure

I love this show. I never understood Barney Stinson's obsession with suits, until I watched this drama and realised that a suit is a modern day superhero costume. It exudes power, confidence and money. Basically, this drama is about work in one of the top law firms in New York, with a fascinating backstory involving an associate with an eidetic memory that you should really find out for yourself.

That aside, this drama has probably some of the wittiest dialogue I've ever seen, like the example below.

Louis: So what, is this new cologne the scent of jealousy?
Harvey: You don't recognize your wife's perfume? I know, you're not married. Still funny.

The dialogue is snarky, filled with clever pop culture references, and you never know what to expect, except to find yourself constantly amazed at the quick turns of phrase and situations that turn up. I really like how watching dramas gives me an insight into different worlds, like Gossipgirl did, except that after awhile I started smashing my head into the wall at how one dimensional the characters in that show were. In other words, insecure, rich, ultimately boring.

And refreshingly, this show also has a cast of really strong women. By strong women, I mean hot women who are not flower vases, neither are they afraid to go toe to toe with the men, unlike so many other shows out there where they just play second fiddle. In this show, the women actually make their screen time count, and not only are they smarter than the men in some cases, they have other tricks up their sleeves which they use to get what they want. And most of all, they are not bitchy, which after watching Gossipgirl for awhile really made me want to give Blair one kick up the backside and ask her to grow up.

But of course words don't do the show justice. Here's a clip from the show featuring my two favourite characters Harvey and Donna.



No more boring MRT rides for another 2 weeks woohoo.

The Queen is back.

If you don't understand the shiny packaged music that is Kpop, this is not for you. Otherwise, fuck yeah. BoA is back, and in Kpop terms that is cataclysmic. Jpop fans would probably howl in protest, but I personally think she's more talented than Ayumi Hamasaki because Ayumi could never dance like that.

BoA started out early and achieved success in both the Korean and Japanese charts at the young age of 15, at a time when the Japanese and Korean markets were hostile to each other, having only recently opened to each other since World War 2 following the joint hosting of World Cup 2002. That gave the rising Korean wave all the impetus it needed to gain ascendancy and become mainstream, with the release of the ridiculously weepy Winter Sonata and the advent of the unstoppable pop sensation known as BoA forming a twin pincer attack to ensnare both the young and the old. As anyone who has encountered a pincer will know, it has one hell of a deathgrip.

For once, Japan had a 15-year old female idol who was actually cool and unafraid to show it, instead of one prancing around in a school uniform acting cute while selling her underwear in some vending machine elsewhere. Even the Japanese got sick of their own twisted shit that revolves around a fantasy of eternal adolescence. But old habits die hard. They have recently taken to another group that is called AKB48 that is exactly like that, only that there are literally hundreds of these nubile cutesy teenage girls in the same group. After all, it is like drug withdrawal, after awhile one girl won't do, you need one hundred to get that same twisted kick.

Well, going back to the queen of Kpop, how talented is BoA? She writes some of her songs, she dances extremely well, and her singing would put most of the current batch of Korean idols to shame. To put it succinctly, she is not only the predecessor of the current batch of Korean idols, she is also more talented than many of them put together, and on top of that, she achieved success by herself at an age when most of them were still training in Korea, and in the traditionally closeted and xenophobic Japanese market. That means she had to sing in Japanese, because there is no other way the Japanese will buy your albums, and she paved the way for all future Kpop groups in Japan.


She did this at 15. While I was 15 I didn't know jackshit. Even now this is still ridiculous for a 15 year old.

She then lost her way a little in trying to expand to the US, because no matter how hot or talented you are, Americans will not hit anything with small eyes, even if that thing is BoA, but they will hit rubbish like Paris Hilton and Justin Bieber.

But now she's back and I'm loving it, though I still hate McDonalds for charging 30 cents for curry sauce. Capitalist bastards.

I'm going to enjoy this while it lasts.

Feng Tianwei clinches Singapore's first Olympic table tennis singles medal

View Poll Results: Do you feel proud as a Singapore when FTW won the medal?
Yes		16	15.84%
No		85	84.16%
Voters: 101.

Poll taken off hardwarezone forums

Singapore's Feng Tianwei celebrates winning a point during her table tennis women's bronze medal singles match against Japan's Kasumi Ishikawa for The London 2012 Olympic Games at The Excel Centre in London on Aug 1, 2012. -- PHOTO: AFP

As a Singaporean, I have mixed feelings about this victory, but the two feelings are very distinct. While I am happy for FTW (she has the initials FTW how awesome is that), her victory is very hollow for me as a local born and bred Singaporean.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not denying that she has put in a lot of hard work, and that her heart is very much with Singapore. She has demonstrated that countless times, and I feel that as a nation we really can't thank the brave ladies of the table tennis team enough. You have to salute the courage and audacity of this woman, to go to a stage like the Olympics consistently against higher ranked opponents and taking the game to them. But perhaps you could argue that was what she was brought here to do.

As a Singaporean who was born here, her victory will never resonate with me at the same level as one won by someone who is truly one of our own, who grew up in a HDB flat, eating nasi lemak and chicken rice and playing childhood games like chapteh and hopscotch. Sure, those days are a fast fading memory of a time when Singapore was a simpler place populated by our own, where everyone knew each other because we all grew up together. But those are the days that tie me to the land of my birth, the days when Singapore was well and truly my home, not the strange country that it has become these days, where I am more likely to run into a foreigner than a fellow Singaporean on the streets in some parts of the country.

I think the poll on hardwarezone forums pretty much demonstrates the level of national pride at the victory. You can say what you want about the denizens of that forum, but they do very much represent the young heartlanders of the Singaporean population.

It might also represent the general malaise that afflicts our sporting scene, where effectiveness and efficiency is prized over passion. Sports is all about passion, because only passion will drive sportsmen to the Olympian heights through all the hurdles of rigorous training, through the injuries, through the inevitable disappointments. I once read a news article about a swimmer, which went along these lines. "She got up at 4am every day, and hit the pool when it was still cold, swimming 50 laps before the sun was up. Every single day, come rain or shine, no matter how tired she was, no matter how much her body screamed at her wanting that extra bit of sleep." I know how painful and difficult it is to get up early in the mornings to train. I do it myself, and I don't succeed every time. That is the level of dedication it takes to become an Olympian. You sacrifice everything for a single goal.

But though it is pretty obvious that team sports like soccer and basketball are some of the great national passions, Singapore has chosen to place its faith in individual sports like swimming, sailing, bowling, shooting and table tennis, for the obvious reason that they have the chance for higher medal tallies, and not team sports like soccer, basketball or volleyball. But how many Singaporeans actually do these sports consistently? Do you notice that we have far more people populating our basketball courts and soccer courts than table tennis tables or shooting ranges? Even if I were to reduce each team of basketball or soccer players to count as one, I'm still pretty sure there are more soccer teams than table tennis players in Singapore.

Just because its easier to train athletes in hothouses for certain sports so you can try to manufacture success doesn't mean that it is the right way to do it. The heart of the athletic youth in our population is simply not in sports in table tennis or shooting. Try finding me 10 Singaporeans who can understand how shooting is scored, and I don't mean that you find me the school's air rifle team.

Funding for sports in Singapore is often limited, withdrawn the moment athletes fail. But failing is pretty much part and parcel of sport. No athlete wins all the time. But the athletes here are brought up in a culture where they cannot fail, and because of that, they fail. Because if you cannot fail, you cannot learn. I'm not advocating a blank cheque, but I am advocating more faith in local sportsmen. Rather than spend all that money bringing foreigners here, invest a little more in our own, give them that extra money to fail and try again. To try again till one day they succeed and we can truly call the victory our own. Give some more time to build a base of sporting talents, rather than parachuting in foreigners to try and fill the talent gap.

It is possible for small nations to feature at international team competitions like the World Cup. I will give you the example of Uruguay, with a population of 3.2 million, much less than that of Singapore, with a GDP that is nowhere near ours. If they can produce stars like Diego Forlan, and are currently ranked #2, yes I kid you not, they are just behind Spain, and ahead of traditional footballing powerhouses like Germany, Italy and Brazil, why not Singapore? I am arguing for soccer because it is without a doubt the biggest sport here. Just look at how many people follow the BPL.

I hope that within my lifetime, I will see a Singaporean born and bred here win an Olympic medal, or a Singaporean team make it to the World Cup.