GBH

I read about the date rape drug, GBH, last night. No, I do not intend to use them. It's just that a recent toy recall was because the toy converted into GBH when indigested. Strange how I make to insert such disclaimers now because of some newly gained audience who'll think I'm some bastard just cause I talk like one.

Ah but then again, Gwen blogged that behind my seemingly superficiality, lies, more superficiality. Haha. Here it is:

If there is one virtue I like most about him, it is his honesty. Behind those seeming superficiality is still superficiality. Shocking? Yes. But goodness, he’s so honest with appreciating God’s wonderful creations in the female species that it’s amazing. Compared to those hypocritical shit that tell me they don’t give a hoot how their girlfriend looks or the size of her boobs and all that matters is her heart, I rather his blunt honesty.

..followed by some praises that I'm too modest to put up. HAHA. Anyway, I don't have her blog's address. She refused to give it to me. Wait, I'm turning into Jeryd. Enough about Gwen.

Back to GBH. So, I googled it last night before I slept, and had the weirdest dream. I dreamed I scored grades G G B H for my four modules.

G G for java and information systems
B for singapore studies
and H for math.

What's H? In my dream, H means I failed, but the school mercifully lets me pass on the condition that I receive only half the modular credits. Haha. Sounds like a good deal ya?

Sigh. I hope for a D for math.

Oh and I've no idea what's G.

SIA

Singapore Airlines

Fly the don't-get-too-friendly skies

Singapore Airlines inaugurates the Airbus A380, the world's largest jet, with a seven-hour flight from Singapore to Sydney. To the chagrin of those who forked out $15,000 for one of 12 private, double-bed-equipped suites, the airline asks its passengers to refrain from having sex. Says first-class passenger Tony Elwood: "So they'll sell you a double bed, and give you privacy and endless champagne, and then say you can't do what comes naturally?"

British Airways Part 2

Fly the oh-gross-oh-gross-oh
gross-get-it-away-from-me
skies

On a British Airways flight from New Delhi to London, first-class passenger Paul Trinder wakes up from a nap to find the corpse of a woman who had died in the economy cabin being placed in the seat next to him. Upon complaining about the incident, Trinder - a gold-level frequent flier who logs 200,000 miles a year with the airline - says he is told he will not be compensated and should just "get over it."

tired

Shanghai makes me tired. I've no idea why, but even though I'm sleeping a lot more than when I'm in Singapore, somehow I just don't wake up feeling as rested. Maybe it's the extensive shopping that's draining me. Haha. Actually maybe it's more of the cold.

I came to Shanghai intending to work on a java project that, to put it nicely, is due soon. Some might say it's long overdue. But .. ah I'll just take it that I have till 28th december, the date of the next swc meeting, to get it done. It might be my passport back to hall when I return from exchange, so I need to get it done, by hook or by crook.

Being in love makes you lose all good sense. Hrms, wait, that sounds like infatuation. Okay, being in love makes you lose all sense of what one should and shouldn't do in a courtship. Remember me saying in a previous post about loving but expressing that love sparingly? Well, that all goes out of the window now that I find myself being in the position of romantically loving someone.

A strange fact about people is that sometimes we only like what others want. That's how fashion trends get started, and also how girls become popular. Guy A gushes to Guy B about Girl L and Guy B gushes to Guy C and Guy D and it spreads like wildfire.

Girls will never turn away chivalry. That makes chivalry one of the most effective ways of winning a girl's heart. Combine it with sincerity and charm, and you'll seldom find a closed door. Lack charm? Load up on the chivalry. It works. Beware of becoming suffocating though. Show concern for the girl, not smother her with attention. Treat her like a lady, not a baby.

Scheme, but Scheme with some cunning. Don't scheme, and get caught. Unskilled scheming insults your mark's intelligence.

I should publish a book - Unsolicited Proverbs by Shaun

I miss good beer. I've been drinking tsing tao and bud. I want my erdinger, my hoegaarden, my little creatures.

I've not cursed in a while.

I've not climbed in a while.

Greetings from behind the iron curtain

I was about to tuck into my steaming hot plane dinner when a housefly buzzed above it. Absent-mindedly I waved it away before it hit me - why the heck is there a housefly in the plane?! Imagine the poor fellow boarding the plane in sunny singapore only to find itself in winter shanghai 5 hours later. Should be quite a shocker to say the least.

Anyway, I'm sitting now in my mum's living room in Shanghai. There's no internet in my room unlike the previous years where there was wireless. Apparently the wireless didn't work out so well.

I know my writing sucks. It's always like that after I stop writing for a while. I'll get it back soon. China banned blogspot though so I can't access some blogs to read amazingly profound posts punctuated with "..." like how I used to do in secondary school. Ah well. I'll make do. Wikipedia's blocked too.

I'll be back soon folks. Catch you guys on msn.

gwen

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Now playing: roy orbison - Crazy Little Thing Called Love
via FoxyTunes

how time crisis 2 should be played

Click for full view
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Now playing: Blur - Tender
via FoxyTunes

Over

Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce that my examinations for this semester are OVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

:)

I'll fail my maths though. =\ Some divine intervention please?

Californication

Modern day Dorian Gray, witty, funny and a show totally lacking in morality. At least that's the impression most people will get from watching the pilot. Gratuitous flashing of boobs and sex scenes bordering on soft porn do nothing to help the series' image.

In fact, many pro family activists lobbied against the show and caused some advertisers to boycott it; which is ironic really, considering the show, Californication, puts across some of the most heart warming displays of realistic parenting, love between a father and a daughter, mother and daughter(the parents are separated), and how even sexual debauchery, marijuana smoking and incessant drinking can not come between a man's love for his child.

Look hard enough into Californication, and its virtues start surfacing. The sex scenes are gimmicks really, to hook you into the show before passing on moral values such as responsibility and good parenting.

Ok gotta go. Maths tomorrow.

stompAIDS

According to this poster ..

We should engage in mass orgies to stomp aids.

Studying blues

I've been mugging, or rather, trying to mug. What's new. I'm still refusing to touch my maths but I think I'm going to cave soon. Japheth's grand scheming plan of mapping our stats module to waterloo doesn't look like it's going to work. Some insurance is in order.

Anyway. Mugging has been done late at night at the Biz faculty. Here're some pics by request of Gwen who has been bugging me since last night to blog about our studying.



Or maybe she wanted to world to see how she resembles someone famous:



Oh, the photos were taken using my new SE w910i with only a 2mp camera, so pardon the quality. Speaking of new phones, my n73 very intelligently backed up only slightly more than half the contacts due to space constraint on my SIM card. I understand if there's not enough space, but at least tell me! So.

If your name starts with a letter after "M" and you're my friend, please text me your name and contact number. Thanks. (Yes, Qingwei, if you're reading this. Please sms me.)

Blood

Check out the Hooha cafe along Pasir Panjang Road. They claim to have the best steaks in the region, and I must agree; they have the best steaks in the price region - $32.90 for a 200g cut of tenderloin.

The steak comes unmarinated, with a choice of the usual sauce offerings - herb, garlic, mushroom and their much touted black pepper sauce which I tried. I'm not particularly impressed with the sauce but I must say the steak was cooked, in my opinion, to near perfection. I ordered mine the usual medium rare and was slightly disappointed at the lack of oozing blood upon first cut. That was soon compensated by the melt-in-your-mouth experience when I took my first bite. Yum.

I ended up finishing the steak with only minimal dabs of sauce every now and then. The natural flavor of the beef was enough. Yum.

Ok, enough about yummy stuff, here are the some pics of the diners. None of the food, I'm afraid. The lighting in the restaurant wasn't exactly the most conducive place for my N73 to take decent shots of the steak.


Missing is another diner who left before we took the photos. Suffice to say he's a friend of a friend who spent the whole night futilely trying to AMOG me and afterward remarked to the said friend that my, watch for it, Smoothness worries him and he fears that I'm a Player. Didn't he hear me stutter? Haha.

I'm sorry Daryl and Jianming weren't there to witness my outstanding display of patience and utter lack of condescension though. Ok, maybe not "utter" - I stumbled once or twice. Here's one:

Me: I hear the steak here is really good!
Him: Heh, I'm sure it won't be as good as Harry's.
Me: Harry's? (thinks: huh isn't Harry's a pub)
Him: Yeah, at Oriental.
Me: Oh .. you mean Morton's?
Him: Oh yah yah, the one above Harry's.

Note: There isn't a Harry's in the Oriental Hotel. And yes, there's a Harry's Steakhouse but that's located at the Esplanade.

In other news, I did get full marks for my EJB assignment, but screwed up a previous assignment, making my total practical marks 36/40. On a totally unsour note, Japheth scored 40/40 =) haha.

Also, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is pretty good :)

And you know you've either made an enemy or a fan when someone googles "shaun sheares" and finds your blog:

17 Nov, Sat, 00:59:06	Google: hoegaarden singapore
17 Nov, Sat, 02:27:38	Google: shaun, sheares
17 Nov, Sat, 05:29:33	Google: n73 dead pixels

The Real Anti-Player

"You know the saying, 'Nice guys finish last'? Well, that's bullshit. I'll tell you who finishes last: passive guys."

Ken's shoulders sagged. His eyes drifted to the suds in his beer. "I don't get it. How's that different?"

..Read more

the bog

I'm not really sure whether this theory belongs to her or whether it was through dating her that I came up with the theory.

Why do people cheat? Every one of us has a variety of needs, and we want someone who fulfills all of them. Realistically, however, finding a partner usually means looking for someone who satisfies as many of those needs as possible. For example, traits such as steadfastness and dependability probably would not be found in someone who's charismatic, charming, and romantic.

Ok, I'll admit that's debatable, but for sure someone who's all of the above would be pretty hard to get. Maybe it's easier to look for each set of the above traits in a different person. So you'll date someone who's steadfast and dependable, and another who romances you and sweeps you off your feet.

Am I making any sense? Maybe not :D

Liberty

The projects are over and done with. Exams loom a mere 3 weeks away but what happens 3 weeks later can take care of themselves. Or at least I'll comfort myself with that thought for a couple of days at least. That much I deserve, for finally working my ass off in NUS for a change.

Caught Stardust today. I love it for its wittiness and quirkiness. Maybe some might not agree, but then again, I hated 881 and many others loved it.

It was a good day, with awesome company.

Spinning

I've been neglecting the whole world for my Java project. It's due on Friday, together with another video project that I have not even started on yet. I'm so dead.

Head's spinning, but Java's almost completed.

See ya world; Yes, I'm a student.

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Now playing: Modest Mouse - Blame It On The Tetons
via FoxyTunes

Breather

I'm taking a break from working on my Enterprise JavaBeans project. Actually, with the amount of time I spend on the project, it might be more apt to describe the time I spend working as breaks from my usual surf-listentomusic-watchsmallville-watchanimes. Do you get what I'm trying to say? Crap, I'm picking up bad habits from a certain shorty.

A long time ago there was Man, and there was Woman, and Man spent most of his waking hours in pursuit of Woman.

A strain of Man, known as the Alpha Male, emerged and by virtue of his masculine superiority over his fellow males - be it in terms of physique, sports, or bearing - gained an edge over them in the dating game, and thus got to mate a lot more than the average man.

Then emerged the Player, who through a deadly combination of wit, charm and an easy confidence, turned the strengths of the Alpha Male against himself. The Player ridicules the Alpha Male's overinflated ego and makes disparaging remarks about the size of Alpha Male's muscles, insinuating that brawn is all the Alpha Male has to boast of.

And for the longest time, the Player reigned. In the course of time, every male actively involved in the dating game begun sprouting traits of the Player. This new breed of Man read the same books, listen to the same doctrine, and apply the same tricks to an increasingly less unsuspecting population of women.

It is now time, for the Anti-Player. Much like how the early Players turned the strengths of the Alpha Males into weaknesses to be exploited, the accomplished Anti-Player exposes the tricks of the Players, reveal their hypocrisy and knocks over their carefully built array of smoke and mirrors.

Just as how Man evolved in the course of their pursuit of Woman, so has Woman progressed from being emotional, financial and physical dependents of Man into skilled manipulators capable of breaking down the strongest men and turning them into subservient puppies.

Why is it so difficult to love, and to be loved genuinely. When you're in love, you want to spend every waking moment with the person you love. But you can't. When you're apart, you miss the other, and you want nothing more than to tell the other that you do. But you shouldn't.

Why not? Because, love can be suffocated. And the more you tell a person you miss him/her, the less he or she will miss you. Strange, isn't it?

Love, but express this love sparingly.

Poor Bush

Poor guy looked damn stressed. Maybe he needs The FAQ Book =)

The FAQ Book - On Public Speaking

Some of my friends are really successful.

Nic, Weiqi and Sam won the local Superband competition and went on to release their very own album as Mi Lu Bing, gaining thousands of fans in the process.


Now, another one of my friends, Eric Feng, has co-authored and released a highly acclaimed book on public speaking, titled The FAQ Book on Public Speaking. It has been selling like hot cakes although only the electronic version is currently available.

Pretty amazing for a fresh NUS graduate. Eric's also a personal speech consultant and has Irene Ang as a mentor. Enough of my singing his praises, read more about Eric here and read his Public Speaking Blog here.

Eric gives solid, practical advice in his book, advice that we can put into use immediately and not general mambo jumbo you get from motivational speakers asking you to be positive, visualize success blah blah. I hate those stuff as much as I hate shallow sermons, so yes, I'm a huge fan of The FAQ Book.

For example, here's an excerpt that I took from a website writing about his book, since I can't copy and paste directly from the ebook:

1) Stage time, Stage time, Stage time
You can read all the books on public speaking in this world but nothing’s going to happen unless you go ahead and apply what you learned. Don’t be just a learner, be a doer and make use of the tips from the book. That’s definitely the fastest way to become a better speaker!

2) Get yourself a mentor
All successful people have mentors. Need I say more?

3) Be sincere
Speak with the intention to help your audience. Your sincerity will naturally shine through.

4) Content is King!
When you get up that stage and speak, realize that you are taking up people’s precious time. Always make sure that you have quality content that your audience can benefit from. Remember this question every time you make a speech: “What’s in it for them?”

5) Observe winners (and Losers)
Many people tend to only look at the winners so that they can model their success. It’s equally important to observe the “losers” so you know what NOT to do when you are up on that stage.

Of course the book gives a lot more practical advice but don't take it from me, download the free chapter and check it out yourself =) or if you're lazy to sign up, msg me on msn and I'll send it to you.

There's a hell lot more information in the book's website here where you can also purchase the e-book for SGD$30. If you're interested in this book, either follow the links from my blog or message me on msn for the direct link =)

Oh anyway, Eric was my tutor for CS1105, one of the lamest modules in School of Computing, but he turned his tutorials into debates on technological and ethical issues, dishing out public speaking tips for free.

In fact, Japheth and I learned a hell lot simply by watching him and seeing how he carries himself, and how he manages to make the class comfortable, even getting them to contribute significantly to the discussions; trust me, Computing students have really tight lips.

Ok so once again, to purchase the book, click here =)

Mad World

Milk

I have a rabbit, his name is Milk and he lives with his maternal family =)

Finally saw him again after 4 years last night in Charis' place.

This is how he used to look like:


And this is him now: