Its a question of Ethics isn't it?

The supermarkets

Like every other person, my roomie and I frequent NTUC Fairprice (a supermarket along the lines of Carrefour and Tesco). We do it cos its convenient, everything is in one place, neatly catalogued and well priced as they buy in bulk.

I live in Singapore.

A small island off the coast of Malaysia. Its a typical asian society. Well, not that typical. Singaporeans are very westernised though everyone speaks mandarin which i feel is their only connection to their asian chinese roots. I can't say much for myself in the department too. I'm an ethnic indian, though i do speak tamil, i like everyone else in Singapore, am westernised to a good extent. But this is another story.....

That being said, lets get straight to the point shall we?

The large super stores kill the small businesses nearby. Those small sundry shops that have been around for eons just close up the minute a large chain store open next door.

But the consumer wins. We get to enjoy low prices, and give no thought to the person who just lost his livelihood and possibly his ability to support a family. Which begs the question:

If the consumer always wins, is something unethical justified? Does enjoying lower prices for a carton of milk and a few oranges justify killing someone's livelihood?

Cheers from the,

Matrix

Blog Revival....

Been too long since i posted anything.

I've started working, well interning actually. For a duration of 22 weeks since Jan 11th. And for the record, if you've been hearing stories of all the wonderful time and how much fun interns have on a one semester break from exams and earning moolah monthly, mine's not really a stroll in the park.

I've signed up with a boss who expects (during peak periods) upto 72 hours of overtime per month from his interns (according to a senior), expects us to handle optimization and automation software for multi-million dollar power plants around Asia Pacific and even go on site (the previous batch were sent to a power plant in Shanghai).

A boss who wants a daily report in his email inbox before the next day. A boss who adds you on msn, takes your handphone number and expects you to answer calls as late as 1 or 2 am regarding work the following day.

Not to mention a boss who appears to be on msn ALL the time.

I won't lie and say its all lovely and i love the pressure, yada, yada, yada. But i've got to admit. 6 months from now, come June, i'm going to come out pretty seasoned from a tough working environment and that's enough. Going into year 4, knowing i've handled work seasoned engineers do, not small jobs interns normally get. I mean, how many graduating students can actually say they've handled projects in Pakistan and Indonesia from a computer terminal all the way in Singapore under a gruff boss?

yes, there is a guy named that where i work.

work area. Cabinets of processors and input/ouput modules and rows of connected computer terminals.

You all probably already know i'm slightly obsessed with cycling.


So, no surprises for the following few upgrades *HUGE GRIN*.

beautiful rare TIME cycling shoes. I'm the only one in the team to wear TIME shoes =). A tad bit pricey but absolutely worth it. Stiff soles, good power transfer to the wheels and now i'm zipping about at 32kph, and hit an all time high of 55kph. All i now need is full carbon bike and i'd hit 60kph easy =)

second hand Shimano 105 groupset. I made the huge leap from a cheap 7 speed set to this 10 speed one. Big big investment, but its going to pay off. The way i ride the old mongrel bike, its not going to last unless i did this upgrade.


see what i mean? notice the missing gear mechanism that's supposed to be attached to the gears. It snapped off while i was shifting to ride faster uphill.


bike in a bus.

I went home to KL for a month, flew back in fact, something i regret doing with a bicycle. The airline took one look at the box, asked what was in it, and the classified the bike as a sports equipment and charged an additional 30 bucks for it. Not to mention the MRT staff who didn't allow my bike which was packed neatly into a box, so i had to splurge on a cab to the airport.

Took a bus back, and it went as planned with no extra surcharge.



PS : On an entirely unrelated note, i'm getting good at talking to random women and not making them feel uncomfortable. Probably cos Y tells i have an uber good guy face (whatever that means). I liked that intelligent malay girl i chatted to at the MRT station. She was promoting a charity thing for the local cancer society and her mature opinions on how pragmatic and materialistic Singaporeans are , and how local stagnant politics will be this country's undoing in future were kind of sexy.

I'm frankly getting tired of talking to immature 21 year old girls who's world is limited to bags, shoes, relationships and painted nails. I need a girl that can spew politics and has strong opinions or i'd probably go crazy and tired of playing gentleman to a useless bum.


And cheers to you too!!


Matrix

Save Gas, Go Green, Get Fit.

I hope this will be a common sight in offices of the future

High time everyone started taking bicycle commuting seriously. The US is and most european cities are starting bicycling programs to encourage more drivers to ditch their cars.

The US federal bailout has set aside billions in tax benefits for bicycle commuters and employers who encourage bicycle commuting at work. I think its the way to go. Give em monetary benefits and people will respond.

I find most asian cities very cyclist un-friendly. Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, even Singapore is not cycle friendly. I get treated like garbage on the road. Taxis honk, busses side swipe me, and once a driver side swiped me and when i caught upto him at a traffic light to confront the dude, the chap challenged me to a fight and shouted i had no right to be on the road.

I mean, wtf?

We aren't allowed by law to ride on pavements, and so the road is our only option. True, there maybe laws about road use that do protect cyclists, but what good are they when we're already dead, run over by some ignorant driver?

What needs to be done, is not a slew of laws to keep drivers in check, but a massive awareness program with monetary benefits to really attract attention in asian cities. Up the profile of cyclists, make helmets compulsory by law for us as well as blinkers, give tax cuts for bicycle purchasing, give tax benefits per person for bicycle commuting.

Make space on trains for bicycle storing. British Railways and Amtrak have bicycle carriages, so why not the MRT, KTM and LRT systems?

Have more bicycle parking facilities and up their security to deter bicycle theft. I mean, carparks have security no? Why not bicycles? They aren't second rate transportation for the poor! Bicycles deserve dignity, and giving them the same treatment as cars is essential to improve the asian perception that bicycling is for the poor.

Start a bicycle registration program. Equal to that of car registration. This is another step towards bicycle security.

If all these are in place, people will start to take out their old dusty bicycles, refurbish them and start cycling. One thing i;ve learnt over the 21 years i've been on this earth is, once a trend starts, it will grow, and bicycling is a trend waiting to be started. You just have to make it convenient enough.

It will not come cheap , making cities bicycle friendly. But it will reap benefits in future, i promise you.

Cheers from the

Matrix

New Year!

Right, time for another annual review of my life. Its been eventful, 2009 that is.

Sports :

I picked up road cycling and i've stuck with it and have come to love it. Its improved my fitness, made me new friends and is starting to drain me of my money. Still, i'd rather spend on something that will keep me healthy rather than on something pointless like an iPhone or a new bag.

Tennis and badminton is officially over for me...for at least another year. My right arm really cannot take the stress anymore. On the downside, i won't be able to enjoy the challenge BC, Vee and Whei Yeap give me on the court for some time, not that it matters anymore seeing the latter 2 are away for 6 months in moose-land.

Projects :

Started off the year with a mega one involving a giant rube goldberg machine for the 2010 Youth Olympic Games. It was by far the most challenging project ever , stressful and bloody rewarding.

EID success , finishing as champions for the Safety and Security category and as champions of the mechatronics robot building competition. Am awfully thankful and honored to have had awesome people to work with on all 3 projects.

Year 3 however was rather quiet. Overloaded with 24 AUs and was studying and cycling most of the time. Pretty dull if you ask me and i would have lost my mind with the regime were it not for a bicycle.

Exams and Disappointments :

I applied for an overseas internship in Japan with the Ford Motor Company. It really was a sweet deal. All expenses paid travel and lodging in Japan, plus the prestige of interning at the huge auto company.

I was shortlisted twice, ending up going head to head with a 3rd year student from Aerospace Engineering, and i lost to her in the end. Painful defeat and i do admit i hate losing. Its an ego thing and its not bad. It keeps me on my toes, always wanting something better.

Speaking of ego bashing.....my examination results weren't good, let alone to awesomeness i was thinking it would be.

I got a freaking C+ in an exam i actually finished an hour early, checked twice and walked out 30 minutes before time. I am truly baffled, perhaps it was soo easy that everyone in the cohort scored bloody well, pushing the graph up and leaving me in the C zone. Or perhaps in my blazing overconfidence, i overlooked several important things and ended up crashing and burning.

Not to mention the B- i got in a ridiculously simple programming paper. I did score 2 marks less for the practical CA than almost every other super genius in mechatronics, but the paper itself was easy. Overconfidence and carelessness again i suspect.

Anyway, i did finish with 4 A-'s in subjects i thought i had bombed in becos i did not finish the papers and solved some questions after making some assumption because the questions were vague. Hur hur. I seem to do well in papers that are tough.

No matter, i can walk out of this knowing i know the subjects well and did not go into the exam hall unprepared, and that it was just a exam cock up. Pity everyone else is going to judge my knowledge based on the 2 hours plus papers. Damn.

On the upside, i did get my first choice internship and Emerson Process Management. Working on a power plant control software for the Fortune 500 American company is a pretty sweet deal and i'm looking forward to that.

Love life :

Non-existant as per norm and quite frankly after listening to 1 semester's worth of breakups and relationship fiascos and cock ups, i'm pretty glad i've been spared the misery.

21st Birthday :

It was special.

I almost never celebrate my own birthday(though i wouldn't say no if a few buddies turn up with a bottle and lots of ice) and it was awfully nice to be surprised at the door by my closest friends and a simple dinner the next day with Garen and Richelle. Best birthday ever.

My bicycles :

Bear with me will you. I know i've been absolutely nutty about bicycles for the past 1 year. Some of my best memories this year were on a bicycle, and the old Jamis and the new trekki deserve some mention in this annual post.

The Jamis. A 450 dollar investment that cost me an arm (literally) and left me with fond memories of it.

Trekkie. The second hand 400 dollar energy draining 40 km/h plus speed demon which introduced me to long distance cycling, sprinting, climbing and riding in large groups with riders from all over singapore. Met new similar minded people on it and improved my fitness on it.

And so, here's to a new year!

Cheers from the,

Matrix

The Future of Energy is Nuclear.......get used to it....

All anti-nuclear campaigners and protesters much be lined up and shot.

The future looks bleak my friends, make no bones about it. We are more heavily dependent on oil than you can possible imagine. What used to be a clean, abudant energy source, is now expensive, dirty, and getting progressively more difficult to find.

The Oil Age is ending, and its high time the Nuclear Age started. Just how humans weaned themselves off coal dependance and onto petroleum, it is possible to still depend on the ground to provide us with fuel.

I live in Singapore, a nation heavily dependent on oil import to sustain its power needs. Naturally, as oil prices rise, this small country with hardly any large industries to speak of experiences high electricity tariff hikes.

We are currently ranked second behind London for the world's largest electricity tariff hikes. And its only a matter of time before we are ranked first.

Singapore is expensive. Expensive housing, expensive transportation (the MRT isn't exactly cheap), very expensive cars and fuel, and its not going to improve. What do you expect from a country so heavily plugged into the world market so much so it cannot rely on anything internal to keep prices down.

Heck, even Australia is cheaper! Cheaper good food, groceries, housing, transportation, AND the country's economy is still growing.

The point of the above is this :

WE HAVE NO OPTION BUT TO START INVESTING IN NUCLEAR POWER

Yes, i mean everyone. And please do some research before opening your mouth to start feeding me rubbish about nuclear energy being unsafe, dirty, and will make mutants of us all, and that a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant will result in a big boom.

Rubbish.....

Nuclear energy is only technology intensive. Once you get the complicated science and construction right, its cheaper than petroleum and hydrogen fuel sources. Nuclear waste is recycled and reused in many modern plants. All those stories you hear about spent fuel rods lying buried is true........for plants built 50 years ago. Not for the new generation plants.

A nuclear fuel source goes through a cycle where once it is used, it is sent for reprocessing and then for reuse, making it a very efficient and potentially cheap future power source. Its enviromentally friendly too, nuclear plants produce zero emissions, waste and even zero radiation outside the reactor.

They are built like bunkers, able to withstand missile strikes and airplanes flying into them. The initial cost is expensive, but hydroelectric dams are even more so and more enviromentally damaging too.

With regards to nuclear weapons manufacturing, making nuclear fuel is not the same as making weapons grade uranium. And you need missile tech to really make the weapons useful.

The only option now is to start getting tough on hippies and anti-nuke nutjobs who NEVER do their homework and study a bit of nuclear science to learn a bit more about what they're fighitng against :

A clean, safe, sustainable and cheap energy source, waiting to be used. Uranium deposits are plenty, and hardly explored too.

I for one stand by the nuclear industry and I want it to grow. To learn more about nuclear power, read this website:

World Nuclear Associsation

And please, before making some snide anti-nuke remarks in the comment section, do your homework to avoid coming across as a complete idiot.

Other than that, see you in the nuclear future!

Cheers from the,

Matrix

Chatroom...

I'm home for a month for the holidays. The last time i was home for this long was more than a year ago and its because i get bored easily at home. There really isn't much to do. On campus on the other hand, I could be working on my research project on microbubble pumps, cycling, and of course move about more easily since it had very good public transport.

This time however, things are a little different.

Since i'm going to be interning next semester at Emerson Singapore, and won't be able to come back for another 6 months, i just decided to bring my bicycle back to keep me occupied and healthy for a month. And its working surprisingly. My evenings are spent cycling and playing football, and strangely, that's enough.

And now, i found something new to do online besides the blog reading, online gaming addiction, news and facebook.

Chatting with random strangers online.....

I know, it sounds distasteful, but lets look past the many weirdos and sexual fantasy addicts out there and just concentrate on one fact. You meet new people very easily and rather safely. You get fresh perspectives, new ideas, insights into a place you've never been to, all from the comfort of a laptop chair.

I am painfully aware that many people, my friends included, are incredible uncomfortable with this idea, obviously having heard and possibly experienced horror stories regarding internet chatrooms.

Ignoring the remarks i've got from mates when i tell them about this, i do find this annonymous chat thing rather interesting. Truth be told, i'm a bit tired of talking to the same old friends everyday. Its not that i don't value them as friends and all that rubbish. Its just, i like meeting new people. Not for the sake of fulfilling some deep yearning for more companionship and other psycho-babble, but rather because it is very interesting.

I have, within the span of 3 day of using this website :

1) Met a chap in Sao Paulo, Brazil who introduced me to life for the common man i Brazil, and that its not the party town filled with hot women and men and cheap yet good beer that we have all come to associate Brazil with.

2) Met a 17 year old who's writing a final high school year history paper on Singapore, and had an interesting conversation about the lack of civil liberties and controversies regarding how the ruling party is maintaining control in Singapore, to add to the many good things she has already researched. It did amaze me, the depth of thinking, regarding potential economic and political consequences an asian city she has never visited, that she had, something i wished more Singaporen youths had. Heck, even I wasn't thinking on such a matured level at that age about my country!

3) Talked to a girl from Massachusetts who was doing a Bachelor in Fine Arts, and was a stage manager. Its great to talk to someone about a field i have never even considered. She's now a pen-pal. I did have one previously though. A girl from Australia during the snail mail era, but the i got tired of writing letters.....

4) A 23 year old woman from Shanghai, China who was fed up with trying to live upto to her parents expectations of marrying and settling down and is on the verge of migrating to the US after secretly securing a job as an analyst for a financial institution.

5) A guy called Dieber from Amsterdam who think the city's reputation as a "fun town" doesn't make it very conducive for raising children and had some whacky ideas on what would happen if weed was oulawed in the Netherlands.

Of, course, i did have exceedingly brief conversations with sex starved men and women, and one chap who wanted to know what color were my underpants =.="

Well, you have no choice but to filter these weirdos out and find the really interesting people out there who genuinely want to share their life stories, experiences, local cultures and lifestyles and then you start gaining new perspectives.

All said and done, all that's left is to try it out here , IF you dare.....

Cheers from the,

Matrix

Its THAT time of the year again....

I'm a HUGE fan of the Grinch. You see, he symbolises what i think is sanity in this time of the year. A time of insane guilt free retail therapy , a holiday that a i feel has been grossly over commercialized and exploited by the retail industry to satisfy our misguided perceptions that a time of giving translates into senseless extravagant shopping and not true giving. Things like love, true generosity (not flexing of financial muscles) and sincerity.

Forgive me.

Christmas makes me cynical. I think its hugely over rated. It is a holiday which symbolises the start of an entire month of discount "xmas" sales, "cheap" shopping, streets being decked out in chirstmas colors and bangs and whistles, fake santas holding little kids in shopping malls and the worst of them all.......

....the abomination called a turkey.....

I mean wtf?? Turkey is dry, bland and needs lots of gravy to make it taste good. And during christmas, this poor excuse for poultry is charged like RM100-300 for an entire bird, depending on what sort you want. Imported, grilled, pre baked, raw, whatever.

Christmas, to me, is nothing but coordinated retail therapy on a gargantuan, global scale. No one bothers with tradition nowadays. Kids like christmas because its that time of the year where they get loads of presents. Food is an extra bonus, and so is snow. Adults like it , well, cause its a reason to party, let your hair down for a while, have a holiday.

And i've run out of grouchy things to say.. =.="

All i can say is, cheers to this month of a festival that has lost its true meaning in a materialistic world.

Merry Christmas from the cynical,

Matrix