It seems that some people are actually making a Grey's Anatomy GAME on the Wii, DS Lite and PC. To add on to that, a search on the net yielded 3 screenshots.


For some reason, Meredith and Derek are looking weird.
But Mark looks pretty good (whatever happened to his grey hair?!?!?! They were charming!).

I'm hoping that these aren't ACTUAL (by that I mean real) scenes of what we can expect from the game. Tell me this is a spoof and that the REAL one will be better or I think I'll be better off watching the show.

3.68km in 30mins today. Looking at that time, I wonder how I ever clocked 15min25s when I was in Secondary 2.

But then again, that was the month after I spent my school holidays camped up in CCA camps (both school and course camps), only to have classmates comment that I looked as if I spent my one month break locked up in some concentration camp to come out looking like a POW (not to trivialise real POWs and concentration camps but I did have a couple of classmates making that comment, and that was the year I finally got out of the national Trim And Fit (TAF) club, which has since been abolished by the government after numerous complaints that the program was causing students to lose all sense of self-esteem, of course I wouldn't know, having spent 'only' 8 years in said program).

I got mistakened for a 16 year old by this middle aged guy who's a tutor at the gym today. He actually thought I was his 16 year old student. Right....

I'm behind in my textbook readings now, and I blame it all on last week's massive workload. And the same amount of work looms next week (and more, since I actually have a test next week).

Of course I just had to google for the Grey's Anatomy Season 5 promotional trailers this afternoon and now I can't stand not knowing who Meredith was shouting "NO!" for. And it's disgusting how Shonda Rhimes said that McPlant wouldn't be pregnant and then modify it to become a fake-pregnancy plot. Die McPlant, DIE!

And then there's the US Presidential Election. Sarah Palin for VP? COME ON! She labels all crimes as hate crimes, leaving out the reason why people actually call them hate crimes (because they're targetted against a specific group of people, usually of a particular race). She is effectively against affirmative action. She is anti-abortion, pro-guns. How can any woman vote for someone like that? Woman.. the focus on women as the swing vote in this upcoming election, it's long overdue how they finally recognise that appealing to women voters, especially if you can get them involved in the political process, can pay off. Sarah Palin is riding in Hillary Clinton's work. Clinton got them energised, involved, gave them hope and then Palin is just trying to build on that, with the bulk of the work already accomplised by Clinton. Palin's hoping that women will vote for her just because she wears skirts, wears her hair in a up-do, possess 2 X-chromosomes. All these without considering that Palin stands for everything Clinton is against.

She may be charismatic (kind of like the Caucausian female version of what Barack Obama is to the Democrats) but she has a non-existent track record. Sure, she's the governor of Alaska, the ex-mayor of Wasilla. But how can you compare that to running a nation? Republicans are calling Democrats and the US media sexist for putting Palin under the spotlight and no one even batted an eyelid when Clinton was subjected to worse. The Democrats may have made a wrong choice is nominating Barack Obama and then leaving Clinton out of the VP ticket but voting a McCain/Palin ticket into the White House may prove to be an even bigger mistakes.

A campaign that initially started out as full of hope and promise has turned to a deeply disppointing one with mistakes made all around. It was supposed to be an election for the Democrats to lose after 8 years of disastrous Bush administration and with mistakes being made all around, the question now is, who's making the bigger mistake? A Democrat as the next President? Now I'm not so sure.

Hopefully Clinton runs again in 2012 and puts right things that went awfully wrong this time round.

I was surfing the net when I came across this banner.

It's not very big but the Singapore 'flag' is most definitely there. So now, we have a language of our own! Or so some deluded company thinks. Oh and American and British English are so different they really ought to be 2 separate languages. Right......... o.O

EDIT: I blacked out the company's name. ;)

There are some things you really wished scientists didn't study but they do it anyway. I saw this just now and it's really quite freaky to me.

Scientists say menstrual blood can repair hearts TOKYO -

THE monthly discomfort many women see as a curse could pay off someday as Japanese researchers say menstrual blood can be used to repair heart damage.

Not too long ago, in the year 2004, my group mates and I proposed the idea that more youths in Singapore were suffering from mental illnesses like depression. In turn, we submitted a report on how we felt the issue should be handled. Suggestions included things like increasing awareness of mental illness through campaigns and television advertisements and increasing the number of psychologists in school. Both of which were since implemented but we were only given a B for our effort.

Today, it was reported that the Health Minister is thinking about decentralising the hospital structure within Singapore to one limited by geographical boundaries. It means that if you live in area A, should you need to go to a hospital, you have to go to the one serving your area, which ideally speaking, should be the one closest to you. I raised that same point in 2005 during an interview when I was applying for medical school (thank goodness I didn't get in!) when I was telling them of one change that I felt should be made to the healthcare sector, only to be greeted by scoffs. Now, take that you myopic, arrogant and elitist doctors/lecturers!

THIS

All I can say is

1. Your English isn't very good, but then again, I understand. Since the school in question (my alma mater) isn't known for getting students who are good in English.

2. You are childish for making such a minor issue public.

3. The man you accused and shamed does not deserve this.

Short summary if you haven't read the blog post.

The discipline master of the junior college I attended from 2004 to 2005 has been publicly shamed by an insolent student of the college. The incident involves 2 students who obviously couldn't be bothered to prepare and rehearse for a skit-styled announcement that they wanted to enact in front of the school after morning assembly. For most students (not these students), they would rehearse and seek approval from the discipline master before they would be allowed to make the announcement. These students decided that rules didn't apply to them. For one, they were unprepared and they sought permission at the eleventh hour. Needless to say, their demonstration was horrible and they were made to redo a 2nd demonstration on the morning of the actual day. So on that morning, they apparently couldn't find the discipline master (makes me wonder if they're even students of the school because there are only so many places he can be, especially in the morning). So out of compassion (I reckon), he allows them to perform their skit/announcement without the 2nd demonstration. During the announcement, the female student gives the male student a "pat", which draws a commotion from the school. So the students are made to write letters of apology for the "pat" (because conservative people within the school may question the discipline master).

The next thing we know, it's on the Straits Times Media Club website (Straits Times= company that publishes our national daily, the Straits Times).

I see absolutely NO REASON why this even has to reach the media. But it has. If the students had done their preparations, they would have gotten the proper go-ahead and the whole issue wouldn't have been raised. But due to the sheer laziness of the students involved, which resulted in a rather confusing situation, which in turn resulted in a teacher (the discipline master) exercising his compassion by letting them go ahead (seriously, he had every right to say 'no'), the school is probably going through some sort of publicity nightmare and the teacher will be implicated in an issue that shouldn't have even occurred.

I know this teacher, he taught me General Paper for a year in junior college and while he may not be the best teacher around and while I completely disagree with him regarding certain issues in current affairs, I know that he is not the sort of person the students painted him out to be in both the blog and the website. Face it, discipline masters are rarely popular teachers in schools because they enforse the school rules and many students find breaking school rules irresistible.

So maybe he's caught you without your school tie on too many Wednesdays this term, or maybe you've been late for assembly too many times this term, but to capitalise on a minor mistake and turn it into something so overwhelmingly public?

Sure, his values system might be a little outdated but you have to bear in mind that he's not looking out for his values systems, he's looking out for the value systems of the other people who will be watching the announcement, that includes his superiors, colleagues and students. Moreover, after being a student for so long, I know how good students are in twisting words (I had my fair share of twisting but I never put a teacher's career in jeopardy), so I doubt that the pat was even a pat. It was probably more or a slap. He's not that traditional, so the pat/slap probably didn't give him a mental crisis on how a girl gave a boy a slap on the back, but right now he is being punished for trying to help the students and for carrying out his job.

He may not done a great job, but nonetheless, he's done it for years without issue, until you guys. Think about it, if he were unkind and unreasonable, he could have simply said "you didn't turn up to show me your 2nd demonstration, so you will not be allowed to perform your skit/announcement". That would have been very easy and you would have been unhappy but the incident would have passed with nary a concern. However, he knew that your announcement had to go out by that morning, so he let the announcement go through, assuming that it would be similar to what he saw the last time (a raw, unrehearsed version). It was his fault for not vetting the 2nd demonstration, but it was your fault for not tracking him down (he's actually pretty easy to hunt down on normal school days). It was your fault for procrastinating. It was your fault for being unprepared.

He's a nice person, but you've managed to make him sound like an old-fashioned person with archaic values who tries to shirk his responsibilities after making an error. Truth be told, his biggest mistake was letting you make the announcement. He bent TWO rules to let your announcement go through and this is what he gets.

Right now you're probably extremely proud of what you've done, of how you've done the discipline master in and you've probably told all your friends, within the college or outside, of your antics, But in a few years time, if you mature, you'll realise that what you did has serious repercussions on the discipline master's life. If you broke a few rules, even if they were major, you'd only get a warning, a scolding or maybe a mark on your school leaving certificate and no matter what, people are going to forgive you for you were young, naive, rash and unexposed to the world.But what you did is going to cause people to question his abilities, and that includes his employer, the Ministry of Education. That, for all we know, may leave a permanent mark on his record. People are always going to remember this and how do you expect him to continue teaching in this school (he's an ex-student of the school too)?

I'm just utterly disappointed in the people that are studying in the school. Students will be students, but these students are clearly not good enough to be studying in a school like this. I wasn't proud of it but the school really deserves better students.

I encountered my first potential sleaze bag on Facebook this morning. I was twiddling around my profile when I received a message in my inbox and lo and behold, it came from someone who I don't even know. An expat living in Singapore (supposedly) wanting to talk to me because I seem "cool".

Now, after close to 20 years, I know I'm one of the last people I could ever possibly meet to be "cool". I'm relatively studious (and generally studious people aren't cool), quiet and introverted (not cool either), sometimes snarky and sarcastic (not cool material too). In addition, I have an anal side of me that I have to reel in from correcting just about every single person's grammatical, pronunciation or spelling error. I refer you to Lynne Truss' "Eats, Shoots and Leaves".

So I have no idea what would prompt this person to possibly message me with the message that says something along the lines of "Hi, I'm new here and you seem cool. Want to talk?" Moreover, I'm pretty sure that this person is only seeing my limited profile (which is really nothing except for a profile picture, some basic information and a news feed). I mean, sorry man, I don't know you, so no, I don't really want to add you, the last thing I need would be to add anonymous people I don't know (as of now, I know all 94 people on my facebook to varying degrees but there is one commonality, that I've at least met them in person and have interacted with them enough to know they're not about to subject me to identity theft).

And if I were to jump the gun, I'd say this expat in Singapore might have the impression that what? Just because I'm obviously Asian, I'd suffer from a case of Pinkerton's Syndrome and basically worship him, placing him on an imaginary pedestal, thereby inflating his ego? Sorry man, NOT GONNA HAPPEN. I don't do good with inflating egos, BUT I am EXTREMELY GOOD at DEFLATING them!

Of course, being a tad more educated and reasonable, I WILL NOT jump the gun and give the guy the benefit of doubt, but I am sticking to my principle of only adding people I know on Facebook. So you've been warned.

Hiro: I am very special. I offer myself in trade. Release unspecial Ando and I go with you, okay?

Too adorable. Heh!

I walked into 2 HMV outlets (Citylink and Heerens) on Tuesday after my trip to the Cute Orthodontist only to be spurred.

The first time occurred at Citylink's HMV. You see the only reason I went there was to check out the price of the DVDs to CSI Season 6. No luck at Citylink because...despite putting Seasons 1-4 on sale, Seaon 6 was simply out of sight.

So I went down to the main store at Heeren, FINALLY found it, flipped it over and then my heart sank again. STILL $149.90. I was flabbergasted. After 3 months of waiting, the price reminds unchanged; it hasn't gone down a single cent! Sigh, if I knew, I would have bought it at the Virgin Megastore in LA. Now that would have cost $135, after taxes and converting it to local currency.

Denny: I've never heard you make so much sense

Alan: I make sense all the time, you just listen intermittently.

Denny: Could be.

Onto other stuff, I'm back to being bored.

I just finished all the episodes contained within the Boston Legal Season Two DVD so yes,I'm back to being bored because I've just about completed watching/reading everything I got to last me till I actually fly off to the states and now I'm bored.

I've finished Boston Legal Season 2, more or less finished CSI Season 5 weeks ago, finished reading Freakonomics (I'm not even going to talk about Eragon which I finished last December plus I'm not much of a Harry Potterish storyline kinda fan (for those, I watch the movies).

To top things off, I still have 3 and a half weeks before I leave. What am I going to do till then? And as a random thought, I hate the Squid (watch BL Season 2 and you'd know who I'm referring to).

I'm looking at the very real prospect of rotting at home for 3 weeks. ARGH. The only real 'work' I would be doing would be the twice weekly "tuition" sessions I'm having with my 17 year old cousin to TRY to help her cope with her economics and chemistry (god knows why I help with the chemistry, that was my worst subject in junior college!). I only hope I don't miss a session out of sheer laziness (and the inability to get out of bed earlier than I normally would-no fears, I generally make my appointments!).

I'm finally watching Pirates of the Caribbean tomorrow night, as long as my boyfriend doesn't get hit with OT but it being the eve of a public holiday (it's Vesak Day on Thursday), movie tickets are sky high, good seats are running low and I am seriously contemplating buying tickets online so I don't end up within the first 6 rows and end up looking at the screen with my head inclined at an angle of approximately 50degrees. Not nice.

There's work tomorrow, thank goodness it's only for the morning. Whenever I see my supervisor, I have this inexplicable urge to smack him over his balding head with a wet fish. Right, now I have to find something that entertains me, CSI Season 6 isn't on tv tonight. Darn it.

I'm bored.

Anyway, it hit the news last night that the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Asia is shutting down 10 weeks after its first batch of students started lessons here.

Yes, I'm talking about UNSW, thats your university Yee Chien.

I'm surprised, yet not so surprised.

Surprised mainly because this is a renowned university that's shutting down, one that is immensely popular. I actually thought that it would stand a chance, but apparently not.

Not so surprised because our university market is a little saturated. Sure, a minority of the population makes it to university, but mainly because

1) the others aren't exactly good enough

2) the others can't afford it

3) the others have already gone overseas

Those that are good enough, can afford it and mostly end up in UniSIM (our private university, mostly catering to working adults). Or else they're in some institute like Stansfield, PSB Academy, ACCA, Kaplan Singapore etc etc. So the number of students left for UNSW Asia? Not large. Especially after you're done factoring how much more they have to pay. Just so you know, UNSW Asia students pay the same amount as UNSW students in Sydney , which amounts to 4 times the amount the average National University of Singapore/Nanyang Technological University/Singapore Management University student pays.

UNSW is offering the Singapore campus students places in Sydney, and scholarships too. Sounds like a pretty good deal, as long as they pretty much cover travel and accommodation. I make no secret of my desire to study overseas (which I shall pseudo-fulfil come June-August lol). But then again, I turned down a 5 thousand pounds a year scholarship from a UK university and more ridiculously, a 1500pounds a year scholarship from another because the scholarship amounts were too small (the pound is annoyingly strong, ok???), so I would understand how the students felt if the scholarship offered doesn't cover all additional costs incurred than if they had continued studying in Singapore, especially with respect to cost of living.

I need to go off now, primarily because I ran out of brain juice. Lol.

It came to my attention that the Newpaper (our local daily tabloid-bah!) wrote an article on the major boo-boo that occurred during an exam conducted by the local partner of a foreign university (note my attempts at being vague but if you're in Singapore and if you read yesterday's Newpaper, you would know, otherwise the details I provide should be fine).

For one, I'm not unaccustomed to lecturers giving students the wrong hint, it's happened to be before in my first semester in university where a lecturer gave blatant hints for the exam/CA only to have NONE of the topics blatantly hinted at appear. What did I learn? Ignore whatever blatant tips lecturers (especially that particular lecturer) give because sometimes, those hints can really screw you up during your test; like how you end up spending 2 days studying the hinted topics and 1 day on the rest (when you could have given equal time to each, but personally, I start studying a week or two before CAs) and then the entire test is based on the portion you spent 1 day on. Boo to such lecturers.

Anyway, it seems the real case in this matter is that:

1) Exam paper was split into 3 portions; Sections A, B and C. Section A accounts for 50%, consisting on 1 compulsory short answer question (with many parts to it). Section B has one compulsory essay question accounting for 25%. Section C accounts for the remainder and allows candidates to select 1 out of a number of questions.

2) The lecturers at this private university in Singapore decided to teach to to the paper. What do I mean? They taught their students how to handle the paper specifically. Something I didn't encounter in my tertiary institution and I took a Sociology module myself this semester and the exam in question? Sociology! Yes, the news did report that they had 21 weeks to teach but guess what? We had 13 weeks to learn and we covered more than they did? The lecturers spent 4 weeks prepping them for Section C, and instead of covering multiple topics, they had chosen to cover one topic. Murphy's Law came into action and that one topic they were prepped for was mistakenly omitted. The result? One exam hall full of panicky students.

3) Examiners (more senior than invigilators) didn't want invigilators helping the students out too much. My presiding examiner insisted the students were wrong, I in turn could only appease them by saying that everyone has the same problem so the best solution would be to try their best and then reflect the problem to the university.

4) We weren't notified that a lecturer was on site, so without knowing, how were we supposed to ask him?

Essentially, the fault pretty much falls on every party available.

The London side for leaving questions out by mistake, the examiners for not being sure and reprimanding the invigilators whenever we tried to help them clarify some of their doubts (I was ignored the first 6 times I brought the problem up to my examiner), the local lecturers for teaching to the paper (seriously, it's a little naive to conduct your syllabus in that manner, especially when you're taking the paper as an external candidate and the setter isn't even in the same country and timezome, always good to play safe by prepping for 3-4 topics).

And one more grouse, there was a remark that the first section was uncharacteristically difficult, I glanced through the paper and recognised it to be solely based on the topics I was lectured for at my first lecture for my Sociology module. Actually, it was pretty easy, a little annoying though for the portions on research and experiment. I just didn't like their compulsory essay question, that one sucked.

All in all, I don't get why the tabloid would write something essentially one-sided and I'm pretty disappointed in some university programs have resorted to teaching to the paper. It seems as if the program is there simply to throw a degree to the student; that takes the sacrosanctness out of attending university as an institution, one where you're supposed to learn and challenge your thoughts, broaden your perspective (most of the time I sound like a jaded undergraduate but hey, I do appreciate the value and role of a university, and it isn't as simple as torturing students so as to throw a degree at them). Attending such a university takes the point out of attending university altogether. The practical nature of the Singapore society has evidently won and has reduced the institution of attending university to one that provides a stepping stone to a better future (arguably); the means to an end. To an idealist, this is tragic and it's a nightmare. And I'm not much of one myself, but yet even I can see the sadness in how the institution of education has deteriorated.

I just found out that Shrek the 3rd won't be out in Singapore this week (officially it'll be out tomorrow I think). Noooooo!!!

We'll only get it on May 31.

Darn you MDA, darn you Golden Village, darn you Eng Wah, darn you Cathay!!!

I'm freee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lol.

The exams are finally over. The statistics paper was rather challenging but at least the first half of the paper was manageable.

Then I went over to HMV and FINALLY bought Boston Legal Season 2's DVD. And did I mention I just about broke my heart into a zillion pieces when I had to leave CSI Season 6 sitting on the shelf? One look at the price tag ($150) was enough to send me into heart palpitations, so I wasn't going to buy it. I'm going to wait for the price to drop before buying it. At least for now, I have Boston Legal to be content with.

I seriously need a shower (and put the clothes to wash). Will talk soon.

Spiderman 3 tomorrow!

EDIT: I just realised my Boston Legal DVD... is a Code 1. Not a problem if I were Canadian or American. The catch is, I'm not. So why would HMV Singapore bring in Code 1 DVDs for Boston Legal Season 2 when we watch Code 3? Especially after they managed to get Boston Legal Season 1 DVDs for Code 3? I am very selectively switching my DVD drive's area code....=S

I find this song hauntingly beautiful.

Enjoy.