..:: ZOMBiE Destinee ::..

Saturday, August 22, 2009
Another Beefy Attempt
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 11:11 AM --- Post#9221690494705453512

That's the induction cooker.

I tried another piece of beef, this time from Giant. Bloody hell, they showed me a tub of beef and I chose the smallest one. End up that thing is like four inches thick? I ask the person to slice it for me and she slice until one big one small. End up screwing my cooking time and such. And yewwww...Giant beef taste so dry! Unlike the packaged Cold Storage Aussy Beef, which tasted without marination and sauce, this Giant beef taste really inferior, and the price isn't any cheaper.

Presented together with some Chinese food. Why Chinese food? Cos there aint any other Western food around.

I need to experiment more to get my perfect slice of beef. Tips and advices welcome.

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Saturday, August 15, 2009
DIY Beef Steak
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 11:45 PM --- Post#7397287649906486261

"Steak for you sir?"

About medium done.

As a beef lover and life hacker, there is no way that I'm not going to DIY beef. Ok, so my dad got me a 250g Sirloin from Giant for my "experiment and research". Guess the cost? $2.60 only! Plus, this piece of meat was pre-marinated = save time && great for beginners. Sure, you can purchase a "blank" meat if you want to marinate yourself.

Rightfully, most of the beef steaks are charbroiled. "Broil" actually just means "grill" (IIRC its an American term), and "charbroiled" means use charcoal to grill la! Time is an important factor, and I have no BBQ pit or what sort at home. So I decided to grill it over a pot using my dear induction cooker. That was the best I could to grill the beef. The pot was much bigger than the beef, and thus it acted more like a pan.

It took about 5mins at 150 degrees before I decided to stop the grilling. Some parts are beginning to toughen due to overcooking, and later on I discovered that some are still quite red. But the whole beef is warmed up and no real blood could be seen flowing. I would say it was medium-rare to medium done. The taste would probably be "the usual steak", but that was good enough for $2.60. It could own any coffee-shop Western Food's bagua-thin beef steak selling for $5 or $6, but probably lag behind Jack's Place by a bit.

I could see nicer cutleries, a baked potato + spring onion + mayo + beacon sprinkles, onion ring side dish and my DIY Mocha together with the steak as a complete meal.

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"Crawford Lane" Road Sign Fell Mysteriously
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 11:31 PM --- Post#4917071628087086781

Me and yan were walking towards a clay pot rice stall near Beach Road when we came across this fallen road sign. The strange thing is, there was no sign of an accident happening, and then why would this road sign fell out of no reason? Dun look like a repair or renovation work in progress as well.

No traces of abuse seemed to be found on the road sign, other than that one of the semi-circular plate that would cuff and clamp the road sign onto its pole were seen detached from the road sign itself just next to it, in the top picture.

Hmmm, what would had happened?

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Meow Meow
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 11:26 PM --- Post#3105747426683882255

zzzzzzzzz....

This cat lives around my neighbourhood. It is one of the cleanest cat around, though one of the most non-human-socialable as well. It got a cat collar though it is a stray.

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Cheese Fries
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 11:21 PM --- Post#1167025616272370572

This is my clothes that I wore a few days ago. Yellow top and white FBT

And I tot the colour scheme of my clothes and pants looked like...

KFC CHEESE FRIES!
Photo from webshots by twinkle427

Why do I keep thinking of food?

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Thursday, August 13, 2009
Does characters in anime watch anime?
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 1:57 PM --- Post#3626111545983850048

A scene from Elfen Lied.

Though I had not watched much anime, but till now, I had not seen anime character watching anime in an anime. I had seen them reading manga though.

So, do they?

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Wednesday, August 12, 2009
LASALLE
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 2:34 AM --- Post#6654376112383409101

Weird name, Weird school. LASALLE.

So, somehow I made it into LASALLE. I questioned myself - did I make a hasty choice? Before we dwell further into that question, probably you would be wondering why did I asked that question as it sounded rather ironic. Ironic because I liked creativity, always wanted to improve on my hand drawing skills, and graphic design was what I did freelance for the past few years.

Now, let me tell you why...I will try to be as transparent and truthful to myself as possible, but it's not easy as my ego would tend to show people how great my choice of school is.

The first shock that I had was the people and culture. Imagine stepping into school, and everyday is a fashion show. You see people with strikingly coloured hair roaming around, some had exaggerated piercings, fanciful clothings or daring tattoos. I am visually bombarded with clothings, make ups, hair styles, bags etc daily. Call me an unker, but I do not fare well with ppl with outlandish appearance. I do much better with uncles and aunties at the coffee shop or XMM in uniform. From my counselling session, I realised I had some sort of trauma with ppl of outlandish appearance as they tend to be the school/class bullies. Guess what, I'm the victim, not once, not twice, but all the time during my primary and part of secondary school. Sure they aint gg to wack me up in LASALLE, but the strong magnetic push was present and I do not mix well with them. Moreover, it made me feel kind of weird as I'm someone who do not give 0.002x10^3 hoots for my appearance, you see, when everyone is dressed up weirdly, and I dun look weird, I am the weird one. Sure, I could pass off saying that "I'm a big slaxxor and that's my way of self-expression", which is actually true - I'm too lazy to try to make myself horrible face and body look good.

The second factor is that I realised when a hobby turns into an academic subject, it would lose interest value. In fact, it had lost most of its interest value and "value-add" with freebies like "stress" and "not-enough-time-to-watch-anime". Now I understand why Lily said she likes teaching but hate her school days. I used to misunderstood her by saying that she brought unhappiness upon herself, but now, I truly understand what she meant. Using Photoshop + Illustrator to pwn and impress ppl, plus earn some money, is one thing, while learning all the sketches, drawing your face seven times, each with different silly effects (hairy, watery, distorted), figuring out the poor instructions by lecturers and lugging heavy sketchbook to school is another. School and hobby, in my case (not sure about others), coincided only by a small margin and differentiated negatively in a large portion. Good Game!

Thirdly, I always though I would stand advantage because I
1. served army (more skilled in management and admin).
2. had previous relevant work experiences.
3. am a A level cert holder.
4. am 21 (somehow ppl see being 21 as an important 'achievement').

And then...it turned out that:
1. No one gives a damn about army, those who never been through it yet (majority of the ppl) dunno how it's like.

2. Seems like ppl can thrash me in hand drawing even without previous work experiences. Those who have worked before came from reputable companies.

3. No one have any idea what is "A Level" like since majority comes from Sec School or ITE. When you were young, did you really get an idea what would JC or Poly life be about?

4. Ppl though I was kidding when I told them I'm 21. Ppl 16 = 21, I 21 = 16 || 60.

Those are the three main factors why I would question myself "did I make a hasty choice?". So so so..did I? Nope. If you look at it from the other way round, I entered LASALLE because:
- There wasn't any other better institute I could go.
- There might be some other courses for my A level score, but I'm sure it would end up being more boring than drawing your own face in seven styles.
- It is near my house and SLS/SLT area, would help in my hobbies.
- Cheap, relatively.
- Fulfil my mom's demand for me to get a degree or dip instead of letting me work full time.
- I just want a damned degree at the end of four years.

LASALLE was a choice among no other choice. Further more, I could not find any accurate info on the school culture and workings and syllabus, thus I was unable to review the school before committing. Call me careless...if you want to. So the three main factors I'm disturbed by were unknown prior to choosing the course and making the decision to admit to LASALLE. With all that, I conclude that I did not make any hasty decision when choosing LASALLE. If anything were go wrong, I myself will have to take up that responsibility.

Fucked-up stuff aside. There are some good points about the school which I loved.
- No long dumb stupid talks, all the admin and information distributed were short and sweet.
- Not much school rules. You can sleep in lecture, miss a tutorial, no one will care.
- No attire limitation. If ppl can dress as fancifully as they want to, the opposite is the same - you can dress as casually as you want to. Good for slackers like me.
- No overdrafted lessons. Lessons always end BEFORE time, and there is no drag or teaching chionging to book slots for make up...
- Professional teaching. Unlike AJC teachers, teachers in LASALLE are all nice peepz who really know what they are doing and teaching. They will help you out and explain stuff until you understand. The lectures were not boring at all, and the tutorial classes are very interactive, much like attending a discussion session. Technology were constantly applied in lessons, all the teachers are good in IT and can set up presentation without begging student to help. Latest news were used as examples in lectures instead of old stale happenings.
- Good time table
- Good supporting stuff. Fast in admin processing and requests.

So...how? How how? I also dunno how. As this is probably my only choice left..I think I will try my best and see how it goes. Hopefully, with luck, things will not be as complicated as I thought it would be. Do not forget one of my favourite doing - bypassing and hacking real life systems :)

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Tuesday, August 11, 2009
System Self Check
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 10:43 PM --- Post#4111628846077473844

School has started for a week, and I though it's time to actually do a self-reflection. For people who knows me well, I'm pretty much the same old ZOMBiE, the guy who
- drops into depression easily
- has lots of gadgets around him
- stays at home and have no life
- do lots of crazy IT stuff
- is uncouth and badly-mannered
- cracks super lame joke (either you love it or hate it)
- had married his computer
- with weird mp3 player and earphones
- is always emo
- money minded
- not very socialable
- blabber technical stuff that no one understands
- cant give two hoots to his outlook and appearance
- loves the heartland, the food and Singlish of Singapore
- never off his comp
- talks too much

The list is so long, but I believe my combination of personality traits would be rather unforgettable, be it positively or negatively. I would wish to use the words "character" and "personality" but din't cos some of my properties defined me cover both or will get mixed up. So, I came up with two terms - "core" and "interface".

Core is a mix of character and personality that defines me, while Interface is a part of my personality esp in the area of human interaction as well as perception of the world, plus probably my five senses and how they sense stuff. I am still essentially the same person as the one you saw when I was Sec 1. It's just that my interfacing with the world have been updating and changing to fit the society.

Some people would say that you should not change yourself for the society, just be you, but I had failed terribly in the past that it had impeded my self-development, it shows that you cannot deviate off mainstream too much without careful consideration and probably some kind of skills. I will be constantly updating my Interface to match with the environment that I’m in, and polish up my cores as well. If I attain a high level for my Interface, that would mean I would be able to control my personality very well dynamically – different personality for different scenarios and able to keep hypocrisy to a minimum level most of the time unless the situation calls for a need to conceal my true self.

I have a lot of catch up to do in my Interfacing, especially when it comes to socializing. Note that interfacing is not just input and output, but the way the input is taken in could very possibly affect the processing and thus a change in my character and perception of the world.

Anyway, I decided to come up with a list of achievement that aided me in my personal development (Core, Interface, Character, Personality all that shit):

- Passed the test of socializing with a very small community through work experiences. I am able to communicate and interact with them without much problem, with the help of my counselor.

- Able to be more empathetic towards people around me. I started to appreciate what my friends do for me, what my parents do for me and even what strangers (food court aunty, cleaning unker, bus driver, politicians etc) do for me. Though a lot of times I could find more fault in them than good, but still, I did realized the good in them.

- Immerse myself with more insights of life through novels, PC games, anime and movies. I like to listen to stories about someone else, somehow I can “store” such an insight, information and probably second hand experiences (be it real or fiction) and hopefully use it as a reference in life.

- Breakthrough of understanding in electronics. My DIY stuffs were probably a tip of the ice berg when compared to professionals, but I would consider it an achievement since it’s a hobby and the skills are self taught. It goes hand in hand with one of my belief listed right below.

- Able to try out different skills (cooking, electronics, audio, graphic etc) across different areas and cross use them in times where needed. It will give me a triumph card as I would have sufficient knowledge on something else that could be brought in and applied, where other opponents in that particular field would normally not have.

- Shave off some of my egoism. I hate egoistic behavior, but I have it in me as well. Most guys have a huge load of egoism and pride, that’s why you often see them fight and duel in many different fields. I managed to keep it under control, but giving ppl a chance to talk, and giving myself some time to think through, and forcefully end an argument by keeping close monitor on the logic part of me. If the opponent is correct, I would sniff that judgment out from the many layers of egoism and self delusion and forcefully acknowledge it with an appropriate action (Say “sorry” or something).

- Being nice to my sister. I think I had made an improvement to be more caring for her, lending her my ear and giving advices, though sometimes I may prank and irritate her when I’m bored.

- Patience. Other than one defining moment with my family members, I did not blow up or get mad this year at all. Frustration and “dulan-ness” incidents were kept low. Patience and coolness (in the sense of not being hot tempered) is one point I’m proud of myself.

Now to conclude, here are some goals which I will be trying to get:

- "Live your lifestyle, but do not impose your philosophy on others". Quote taken from wwenze’s blog. I will try to quit imposing my own beliefs onto others, that does not mean I do not state and inform ppl of my belief, it’s just that I will try to be less aggressive when promoting my own beliefs. Means, no more “ipod sucks”, “Mac is bullshit”, “J*ben rip off”, “AJC fucked up” etc .
- I would further cut my egoism dynamically. For most people, I will try to spend more time listening and putting myself in your shoes, and like in the above point, will try not to demolish your views and impose mine on you (unless you asked for it). But for some handful of people, ownage is the best way to deal with them.

- Completing my final test in socializing. I had set LASALLE to be my final test for socializing (for now at least), it is way harder than any previous test as it involves a large number of ppl and all of them have background very different from mine. They form groups and cliques which is one of my weakness as I’m often a lone ranger. The character of a lot of ppl there are also against mine, and now it puts my Interfacing to test to neutralized (superficially at least) the differences.

- Concreting my Core. I wish to continue my long founded definition of myself throughout my stay in LASALLE.

- “Low Flyer” attitude - taught to me by KTK. I found out that after so much, the most important thing is to stay happy. You dun need a degree or a good career to stay happy, some ppl need, but I find my happiness in doing things that I like (DIY, forum, movies etc), in places that I love (my room, my warm-hearted neighborhood, sitting one corner and look at crowds in shopping mall filled with happy faces, being in peaceful solitude etc) and with ppl whom I adore (friends, family, cats maybe). At this point in life, I would not have tremendous supporting myself, I can easily find a job that support myself alone well enough. Thus no matter how stressful the it would be in school, comfort and relaxing comes first, of course, that does not mean giving up in studies completely, I will still try to make it through with min. effort.

- Further enhance my skills. I would wish to enhance my skills and learn new ones across the fields.

- Closer ties to friends. I would wish to amend previous damage or insuffice in friendship (damage control), and build better bonds with my friends. I still stand on “quality friends” over “quantity friends”. No matter how little friends I have, I would always cherish those I already had as their friendship would be the upmost premium.

- 改变世界，改变自己. Translation: Change the world, Change yourself. One of the album by Wang LiHom. My counselor changed my view of the world, Yantronic changed the way I look at front line service provider. Front Line Service Provider refers to the aunty uncle who sells u laksa, drive bus for you or clean public toilet, they dun refer to the whole company, just the front line ppl. I always see him being so polite and cheerful to them, and he always get good services from them. I followed his path, and found that by being patient and polite to them, you will get good services in return, and I feel happy when I make that grumpy promoter smile and feels proud of his job. It shows that you can change the world. Maybe I can start by changing people around me, by making them feel better and by helping them. Then slowly, probably my actions could change Singapore. I do not like the ruling party, but I do love Singapore along with her culture, and I believe that (like gadgets and electronics), some tweaking and modding would let the country perform slightly better, if not optimally. Thus I’m quite keen to change my environment for the better, and as things go by, I would be able to change myself (ie Level UP) then.

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Happy National Day
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 10:39 PM --- Post#548985706462481239

Errr...I think this is a WOB. But ya, happy national day. Thank you for the holiday.

Erm, No, I dun really (actually not at all) celebrate national day.

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Unfinished Fats
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 9:30 PM --- Post#2572275319519943835

This is a pork trotter.
Photo from Flickr user, topquark22.

I was at a hawker center last nite, and my dinner was the "O-so-damn-juicy" pork trotter with gravy rice. The thing about pork trotter is that the most delicious part lies in the fats, ligaments, tendons etc whatever that's gooey and slimy. Oh ya, I forgot that pork skin is shiok too!

After I finished my dinner, I was leaving the hawker center when I saw this plate of unwanted and half finished pork trotter left on the table beside me. the skins was peeled open and all the meat was gone, leaving a lump of fats/ligaments/tendons sitting depressingly on the plate.

I asked my sis to come over to look at it, and she was listening to music on her IEM, and so I tot I should speak louder, "Ooi! Come see this. WAH LAO! Waste food lor! Never eat all the fats and the skins...those are the most precious parts of a pork trotter lor!"

My sis widen her eyes and pushed me away, as she signal me to look behind. Behind me was a table of around 6 or 7 people, probably a family, staring at me as if I'm some criminal. Immediately I understood - they were the one who ate that plate of pork trotter and left it next table after they were done with it to make space for more food on their table.

A pang of guilt embraced me and I thought a tinge of pink was shown on my cheeks in embarrassment. OH NOs.......

*Smiled and took off at full speed*

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Would You Sample Mango Liddat?
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 3:12 AM --- Post#1075502504877012806

I was travelling in a shopping center and came across the Fruits Section, and this was how the mangoes were sampled. The fruit was cut into many slices and put onto an expanded polystyrene foam plate. A thin film with two large holes held over the plate which several toothpicks were stuck in, containing the mango pieces.

I was observing the toothpicks, I could not really tell if those were
1. New toothpicks
2. Used ones or
3. Meant to be publicly shared and reused

Upon further inspection, I realised that the same sampling method goes for other fruits around that area, where I saw consumers walking past and just used their bare fingers to pick a few up and ate them down.

I do not give doubts that this method of sample fruits MAY BE hygienic enough for consumption, as I am no hygienologist, but I'm somehow disturbed and felt uneasy upon seeing how those mango slices were presented. Ewwww...

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Sunday, August 09, 2009
ASADI
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 12:56 AM --- Post#2852453438523423206

ASADI

Looking for branded sandals?

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Monday, August 03, 2009
Laser Mod
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 12:35 AM --- Post#2590734174277908042

Better focus, distance and visibility after modding

Modification:
- Change to a new lens, old one scratchy
- New lens is thread-locked to the grip in such a way that the entire lens-grip assembly is longer. Meaning to say it can go nearer to the diode, and focus even further away. I can now focus a small concentrated red dot on distant buildings without the dot becoming bigger.

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Thats me!
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 12:34 AM --- Post#1537147500549459389

This will be me when I grad from LASALLE....wheeee....

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Colour Balancing Piece
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 12:31 AM --- Post#146288740068574096

In this photo, you can see the green lego piece with three strips of colour - grey, white and black. Using this piece, I can easily adjust the colour balance and exposure to be near accurate. The problem lies with how to remove it from the picture afterwards. This method seems more practical for studio shots where the object will be taken out form the background.

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