Discovery channel

Discovering Monkeys

I was fascinated when my dad, while watching the news, told me how in the 60's, merchants brought Monkeys out from Indonesia to Singapore, to be sold to Americans.

At the time when Apollo had a taste of Moon's crust, yup, sold to them for space research.

How true? I dont really know.

But how interesting it will be, next time if you come across those pictures showing how they used to experiment with monkey in space suits, and thinking that, well, that the monkey used to breath the same air as you. ;p


Discover Mcdonalds

Was studying in a mac the other day, and focus point came onto the McDelivery person.

To think of it, this is quite a brilliant idea by them... You recruit people to make trips with their own bike, thus, unlike the other food chain, you save on the asset purchase cost and depreciation of own fleet of bikes, and also the logistic trouble to management the fleet (dont forget, bike insurance more tricky than 4-wheels)

And yet, you dont lose your own corporate identity. While competitor put logo'd boxes onto the bike, you simply custom made Backpacks for the riders. Backpack is big and red with the yellow arc, miles away you knew it is mcdelivery. Identity retained, without customing their bike. And flexible too, having able to carry the entire thing upstairs, and also slot directly onto that waist level height counter for food to be inserted.

Numerical flexibility, check. Nicely thought and executed plan, check. A strong brand and service extension, check. ....only if they can make the fries less soggy after the journey...


Discover Airport

Here you are, at Airport terminal 1, bus terminal (no punning intended) . You just reached and saw the bus moving off, missed it by a margin. You knew that the next bus will take forever to come. You also knew that it has to pass through another security check at Terminal 2 entrance, and will stop at T2 for some time cos driver taking toilet break and checking in at office. Would you run over via sky train to T2?

There we are, after a tiring day of studying at airport, in the above mentioned situation. Within the split second, we decided, to make the run to T2.

So we did. Rushing up the escalator, squeezing into the front of sky train, wheaving through the crowd along the passage way, we reached T2 in minutes.....


And here's a quick Evoxiang.blogspot test of the day. If you missed a bus at T1 and attempted to catch up on foot at T2,


dont bother. you'll still miss it, miles apart.



(The worst yet to come.
Within minutes of waiting and panting at the T2 bus bay,
.....the second one came.)


Discover myself

After the conclusion of my second year of exams, i seem to notice a trend.

Those essay paper which i'm confident, i dont do well. Those i'm scared, i did better.

Last year I was anticipating to use great examples for IBM, and i crash thru it. I was worried for sociology, it end up as one of the better done pieces.

This year, I slept well before marketing, and it was a nightmare. I was prepared for a thunderstorm for HRM, in the end it was, not that bad as i thought, like a windy day only.

So with this logic, shouldnt i be scared about everything in life to do well?

"Low confidence is the key to obtain results".... eh, that not suggested in Human resource theories eh.


maybe i think too much bah. -_-"


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hot day + hot marketing + hotter bus

Last sunday, few more days to the first paper, intensive studying.

The heat is rising in us, and true enough, singapore was very heated too. In the sense of the humid hot day.



Yes you saw it right. Outside temp: 36.5 C !! As warm as our body!

(Alright, the car manual claims that while travelling at low speed, the temp shown is slightly higher than the real one outside, so the actual can be around 35+ C... which is still damn high.)

Oh, that study area at UniSIM was not air con-ed.



So you got to get the fan to work. Believe me, when someone screws the settings it can take delicate fingers and lots of patience to get all 4 to spin.



Some frustrated, some tired but still smile, and some, falls asleep.


And when motion sensor cant detect us amd switch off fans & lights?



The magic arm saves the day, to get the fan back again.

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thanks to wl, got to try out her mazda2 for 15min. (That sunday night, same day at above)

What to say? Really great to drive, handling is as true as what's tested by the Australian mag.

Very responsive throttle,
Engine have mid-range gut which is good for over taking, (despite having 4 pax onboard)
smooth and rapid auto gear change,
nice weighted steering,
Balanced turn in and rigid body that flows with you...as nimble as your limps.
'cos of the weight saving high strength steel?

But how i wish the leather seat can be more gripper. Seems thicker than the non-leather one i sat in roadshow.
And there's no lummination on the auto gear at night, which led to me, the manual gear regular, ashamely forgot the order of PRNDS and was lost for a short moment. Only at HUD they show you which gear you are in now...

& Sadly, when it's good value at Aussie, this wl's Auto Spec-R example cost at much as a base Mazda3 1.6 auto. So hard to argue.

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HOT marketing...

OK, when the real time comes for the real exam paper to be taken, you dont exactly feel hot. Some get cold feet, you get what i mean. Me, having really read through many materials, and having known which is my strength, i'm guess i'm still ok...despite not having a good feeling after i woke up... 6th sense, 6th sense.

Which....my ok was put to an abrupt halt once the paper starts. Just 15mins into it, i was lost. What was thought to be the examiner's favourite topic and what gave me confidence...was not there, at all. I do know the rest i guess, but to think of it now, at that point of time the unsettled me cant think straight and chain of thoughts and writing was not smooth anymore...

15mins, and half the battle was lost.
Never felt so bad in a paper, like trying to crawl through mud.


What to do? That's the limitation of such courses.

No matter how brilliant or how bad you are in the past 1 year,
you screw that 3hours of essay paper, you are screwed.


Once the pen was ordered to be placed on table, it seems to be many people around me look troubled. True enough, friends complained the same problem.. "Cannot finish", "unsure what to write", "Q too general", etc etc.


Seems like the last line of hope now is moderation.

Other than that, Move on.
.....no more "if"s. Just "see how lor."


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How hard can it be, to move to the rear?

This is a really funny thing it observe always, while on bus. What really amuse me is that, abundants of seats (not standing space, but seats) are available at the rear, yet these people just like to crowd around the alighting door.

OK lor, you crowd there, new passengers who board follows/dont bother/too shy to squeeze past, newer passengers stack up to the front door, and even newer passengers cant board the bus at the stop, cos there's no space to enter. When the rear is empty. I repeat, empty with seats.

And what's even more amusing is that from my random observation of samples, 70% of the time such person fits the profile of School girls in uniform with a very big backpack (school bag). Dont ask me why, but it's always so.

The best part is, while some adults who does this did it with that type of attitude that "it's my right to stand here", these girls do rather troubled when they realised that they are blocking passengers who are alighting, and will try to shift quickly for them to alight. After which, move back to the same point at the door, when they still have several more stops to alight.

Why? why dont you just take that seat there, so you wont have to block others?

Oh, our bus companies have those new Euro4 buses that have even more standing place right? At times, it seems worse on them. 'Cos a seat is defined as 1 seat, while place to stand for one pax...well, have no defined area. So MORE crowding occurs. MORE standing nearer to the driver...while, i repeat, there are seats behind....


This not a new issue it seems, 'cos i heard from my dad that at those good old days in the 70's, people do also crowd around in front. But back then, bus drivers would shout out loud in hokkien along the line of:
"Move back lar! Behind got ghost arh?!"

Today? In the era when bus drivers had been given a punch by passengers, you think that is possible again?


Maybe they should get promoter to give free Red Bull at the rear of buses. Or paste at the rear 4 lucky digits for Wed, Sat and Sun.


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