little nyonya

Despite all of Channel 8's attempts to look like it's finally breaking out of the normal nonsense they so love to churn out, Little Nyonya is in exactly the same mould.

I've been pondering this question ever since I woke up to the truth that Channel 8 dramas are all crap; why do they so adore putting mentally challenged people into dramas?
Take Little Nyonya for example: the one episode I actually bothered to watch so that I could critic it contained... you guessed it, a retarded person asking for duck rice. Does this remind you of the other 58349672490752 Channel 8 dramas which all contained retards who could also be easily pacified with, say, duck rice or fishball noodles?
And for some strange reason, all the retards are extremely peaceable and all have useful talents, from picking birds' nests and solving Rubik's Cubes (this was in the time when solving a cube could still be considered a unique talent), and they all have this person whom they adore. Also, somewhere along the series, the abovementioned adored person will get attacked, or compromised in some way or another, and the retard will just happen to pass by and witness it, which will work him up into a frenzied rage where he will run in screaming "YAAAAAAAA" and beat the compromiser up.

However, my mum and grandma remain avid fans of the Little Nyonya show, which they believe has broken out of all known conventions.
I blew apart their theory rather lazily one day in the car. My mum and grandma were discussing the latest development of the show, which was that some random aunty got pushed over a railing during (what else?) a scuffle where she found out a deep dark secret, and in the process of trying to conceal his secret, an over-zealous person inadvertently pushed her- whoops a daisy- over the railing, out of a window which so happened to be conveniently opened.

Note that she only mentioned the part about the random aunty getting pushed over, and I extrapolated the other lengthy bit myself, based on evidence I've gathered over the years regarding Channel 8 shows. But I am right. I just asked my mother for confirmation.

Anyway,
Mum: So how? Do you think she'll die?
Grandma: I dunno. First floor only, so she probably won't.
Me: Don't bother arguing la. She'll definitely die.
Mum: But she only fell from the first floor!
Grandma: Yeah, and the main character fell into a well and didn't die!
Me: That's because she's the main character. The main character could get shot in the chest a gazibillion times, and she'd still miraculously survive. But the random aunty's not a main character, so it wouldn't matter if she fell from a height of 1m onto a soft fluffy mattress. She'd die.
Mum/Grandma: I don't believe you. :/
Me: Wait and see. You'll find out I was right.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I was right.

Little Nyonya is just a scam. You THINK they're breaking out of the monotonous regime of formula-based Channel 8 shows, but they're NOT. They just transported it into... the Peranakan time.

Oh btw my grandma just called. She told my mum I was right. >)

Keyun says:
oh oh you can make announcement over the pw!
Keyun says:
*PA

(Quoted from Keyun re. NOI training)

A list of things that made me smile:

1. Despite this whole thing starting on a really bad note the night before(which resulted in practically no sleep), it turned out much better towards the end. :) For one I could actually code something for the test and despite it being PE all over it actually works!

2. I've gotten less afraid of asking questions :) I think. It's another matter altogether for answering questions though.

3. Zhenghao isn't that scary now. :) He's been very patient and nice for the whole time and though I felt really bad making him explain over and over it was very amusing with all his weird analogies and koping tic tacs/chocolates practically everytime he passed by. Not to mention forgetting to bring money for the lunches everyday except the first and having to ask from Daniel/Minghan :p

4.Pw came on the last day! :D Surprise surprise. The duet was a total failure though(no chair so we played standing up, and both of us made mistakes everywhere coming in at different places with no moqi at all :p) but at least we played it together (: He's surprisingly very gentle for the secondo part while I.. hmm. Managed to stuff the money inside his file with no suspicion aroused(I hope.) The best thing is he seemed fine so I feel a little bit more relieved.

5. Okay I have to say this now haha. It feels strange to imagine them with dads! Somehow when Zhenghao/pw said their dad was picking them up (on diff days) it sounded wrong. Like they're not supposed to have dads. Maybe it's because they behave maturely(which coming to think of it, they don't.) and we just have this impression that they should be independent.

6. The way Minghan goes around going"Questions? Problems?" is really addictive and cute! Then when you ask him a question in response he'll sort of ascertain it by putting it into his array of "questions" by saying "Question." Hahaha.

7. I never realised Daniel was so violent :p It's been very entertaining watching him do bad things to Zhenghao heehee.

--

AWWWWWWW :) That made me smile so hard I almost... uh, well, smiled too hard.

I wanna make a list too.

My PM today was "Yule Shoot Your Eye Out", because everyone else's was the typical "Merry Christmas" stuff and I wanted to be... different.

(5:14 PM) Daniel Chia:
haha what this i see about shooting your eye out
(5:14 PM) Daniel Chia:
lol
(5:14 PM) ♥victoria!;:
it's a song
(5:15 PM) ♥victoria!;:
hahaha all shooters seem to get really excited everytime they see the word shoot
(5:15 PM) Daniel Chia:
haha
(5:15 PM) Daniel Chia:
of course
(5:15 PM) Daniel Chia:
that's why we're shooters!
(5:15 PM) Daniel Chia:
:P

Walau lor. He totally missed the whole "Yule" part. So much for festivities.

a solemn vow

I have sworn a solemn vow to myself than I will code at least one problem each day, in preperation for NOI.

And I've been, uh, doing well so far. I submitted Gift yesterday, and Prime today.

Although in my frank opinion, Gift was kinda like a cheat because I coded it in all of 20 minutes. Debugging included, which with me usually takes about an hour and a half and a MSN convo with whichever instructor's online at the moment.

Prime... well, Prime was actually more of a three-days-worth of work kinda question. I've been working on it since Sunday, where my program screwed up and I asked Zhenghao, who told me that I should try recoding it. So on Monday I tried recoding it, but it screwed up again. And finally today, Tuesday, I asked Pangwei for more help, and then I discovered a bug. -_- I wonder why my debugging instincts only ever kick in AFTER I've asked someone for help and disturbed them.

Anyway the program was still buggy after that, and I couldn't figure out what the hell was wrong until Pangwei pointed it out to me: the 10000th prime (Which I was supposed to be finding) is 104279, and I'd mixed up the numbers and was checking until a number smaller than 104280. Lol.

But at least Prime was finally solved. After three damn days.

Gosh, I hate debugging.

sudo

Today when Pangwei came, he was wearing one of his cool T-shirts again.

(Random sidenote: HAHA now I kinda know what every instructor wears! Almost all of them wear formal shirts tucked-out with jeans, except that Zhenghao never buttons the first button, and Pangwei always has damn cool T-shirts with funny stuff on them.)

So today's T-shirt was a dialogue between 2 stick figures that went as such:

Stickfigure1: Make me a sandwich.
Stickfigure2: What? Make it yourself!
Stickfigure1: Sudo make me a sandwich.
Stickfigure2: Okay.

I read that and reread that, and by the end of the lesson I still hadn't got the joke and was pretty pissed, because I got almost all the previous T-shirts. Like the mathlete and robots in disguise one.

It bugged me enough that I had to go to Pangwei and ask him to explain his shirt. ><

Pangwei: Oh. Sudo is a Unix programming term. It means Super User Do.
Zhenghao (who was listening in): No! It's a swear word! It's Spanish for the f-word!
Pangwei: No it's not.
Zhenghao: Yes it is.
Pangwei: Who you trust more? Me or him?
Me: LOL from experience, Zhenghao is a scammer :D

But I couldn't resist checking once I got home. I googled Sudo, and yes it does in fact stand for Super User Do.

I still googled Sudo Spanish as well, because there was always the off chance that Zhenghao wasn't scamming me this time and I'd have learnt a useful new swear word. (Imagine: "Array you!" "Huh?" "Well, sudo you!")

Well, guess what. Zhenghao scammed me. Surprise, surprise. Sudo IS a Spanish word, but it is, according to wiktionary, the first-person singular present tense of "sudar", which means "to sweat". LOL.

("Well, sweat you!" Not particularly threatening.)

Reading the NOI webpage makes me feel very zi bei!

Gosh our instructors are super pro.

JJ went to IOI in SEC 3. :O AND SEC 4. (where he got BRONZE. OMG.) AND J1.
And then there's that crazy Chris Moh person that Zhenghao always tells us about. Gosh he got full marks for the 2000 NOI. Scaryscaryscary.

Oooh Daniel went twice! AND GOT A GOLD MEDAL ONCE OMG WOAH.

Pangwei went twice also! And got a bronze once!

If I get anything at NOI I'll be super happy already lor. ): Although, according to the NOI results page, there have only been 7 (!) female medallists since 1998.

They had a surprise award for the best female medallist awhile ago though. It's kinda sexist if you think about it, but hey if there's an extra medal up for grabs who's complaining!

But note that I doubt I'll actually get anything. If I DO get something I'll be like whooping and dancing around.

However, since most people interested in programming are guys, and there's only Keyun and me from RGS in the programming class now, and as Zhenghao very nicely pointed out, each school can only send at most 5 people, and 2 < 5, therefore it logically follows that both Keyun and I will be representing RGS, since our Infocomm club is, to tell the truth, pretty sucky and probably knows nuts about programming.

Having 2 people doesn't mean anything much except that RGS will definitely NOT get ranked as one of the top sec schools.

Well, good. They didn't want to pay for us to have the course, and it was only because Pangwei Zhenghao and Daniel were kind and decided that, um, I dunno, our interest was enough to pay them and let us come for free. Awww :)

I dunno if RGS paid them in the end, but I doubt so because RGS hates technology and other futuristic stuff like that. Anyway it's fine I don't mind. RGS can't say that they're one of the top schools in NOI, but Pangwei Zhenghao and Daniel can take the credit, because they totally deserve it anyway :D

earliness

Q: What's the earliest example of recursion?
A: When God said: "I am what I am." in the Bible!

LOL and we were all thinking along the lines of Fibonacci.

Zhenghao showed us a graph. Not the y=x^2 nonsense but real programming type of graphs. Which are nodes with edges! And then when we were all like :O he said, "But that's okay. We're only doing trees!" Which are still nodes with edges, but still. A node is basically just a cheem way of saying "circle".

Zexi was being annoying and decided to ask cheem questions like: "Can you have a tree where a node is both the root AND a leaf?"
Zhenghao: Uh can. It looks like this: *draws a node* It's called a self-sufficient tree.
Daniel: No! It's a circle!

Anyway we were trying out DFS today and Keyun and I couldn't get around it ): So we saw Pangwei on googletalk, who was apparently checking our OJ submissions from home, and spent super long arguing via our pm thingys on gtalk about who should ask Pangwei. I suggested that maybe we just ask Zhenghao, and then Keyun wrote on her pm, "Zhenghao is scaryyyyyyyyyyy". We'd both thought that Pangwei was afk when all of a sudden (just as Keyun realised that it was incriminating and was about to take it down) he said to Keyun, "hahahahahahahah what did Zhenghao do?"

Then we got scared that he'd tell Zhenghao that so we asked him a question to distract him. (: Something about how to code DFS.

And then the next thing we knew Zhenghao was zipping over to help us code DFS. ._. We were pondering for awhile over whether Zhenghao really was psychic or not, because he suddenly asked, "Did you ask Pangwei anything about programming? Anything at all?"

In the end all was revealed when Zhenghao's handphone buzzed. He picked it up, looked at it, and shouted across the room: "OI! JOSEPH! ARE YOU USING -insert random cheem programming term here-"

Joseph: :O HOW'D YOU KNOW?!?!?!
Zhenghao: I have eyes everywhere >) And ears everywhere >) And a handphone. :)

We finally finished coding our DFS and were playing with it.
Daniel: You two aren't still playing with Anagram, are- well, clearly I was wrong.

Then Zhenghao walked past us with Daniel on their rounds awhile later.
Zhenghao: OMG you're still playing with Anagram?
Daniel: I think this would be a good time to bang your head on the table.
Zhenghao: Uhh no the table's too low.
Daniel: I bang your head on the table for you :D

But anyway debugging my code was super hard. Because for some weird reason I found it very amusing whenever the code wouldn't compile and kept laughing.
Daniel: The only person I know who gets so happy whenever their code won't compile is you *points at Zhenghao*
Zhenghao: What?
Daniel: Last time, he sent me a code to compile and when I tried compiling it there were 430 compile errors. 430!

They were so happy when they finally finished debugging my code that they got up and hugged each other and thumped each other on the back really hard.

For some reason during lunch, the caterer forgot to pack Zhenghao's share, but gave us two bunches of bananas.
Daniel: Oh. Looks like Chen will have to eat bananas >)

Anyway Zhenghao ate cupnoodles so there were loads of bananas left over. Cue more of Zhenghao's weird comparisons. Halfway through our coding...

Zhenghao: CODING... IS LIKE A MARATHON.
Everyone: Is this some inspirational bs? :/
Zhenghao: Wait la! CODING IS LIKE A MARATHON. YOU NEED LOTS OF BANANAS. Here, I've got bananas for everyone :)

yay

I have weird friends. They are willing to bribe me to pass my 2.4.

Crystal Ong says:
okay so let's lay down the ground rules
Xinyuan says:
hmm okay 5
Xinyuan says:
go on
Crystal Ong says:
if vic passes she gets, uh, $4.50
Crystal Ong says:
max i'm willing to pay
Crystal Ong says:
if she passes with D she gets $5.50,
Crystal Ong says:
with C 1 mcspicy meal,
Xinyuan says:
C only mcspicy?
Xinyuan says:
just give her the money for a mcspicy lah
Crystal Ong says:
it's not just a mcspicy, it's a mcspicy MEAL
Crystal Ong says:
also can switch for money la
Xinyuan says:
whatever, give her the $ for a mcspicy meal then
Xinyuan says:
with c $7 lah :D
Crystal Ong says:
the amount the mcspicy meal costs
Xinyuan says:
eh do you have next year's running timings reqs
Xinyuan says:
is?
Crystal Ong says:
i think it's $6+
Xinyuan says:
oh okay
Xinyuan says:
but isn't it more convenient to give her $...
Crystal Ong says:
if both of you beat my timing i pay $15 to be added to vic's atm balance
Crystal Ong says:
(so that i can pay in instalments)
Xinyuan says:
then if only vic beats your timing she doesn't get the $15?
Crystal Ong says:
uh, maybe $8
♥victoria!; sexysixfifteener! says:
okay so i clarify
♥victoria!; sexysixfifteener! says:
if i beat both of your timings
Xinyuan says:
yeah, it'll be humiliating if vic beats mine
♥victoria!; sexysixfifteener! says:
and xinyuan beats crystal's timing
Xinyuan says:
you get $20
♥victoria!; sexysixfifteener! says:
i get $15 from crys, and $5 from xinyuan

I told them that if I really were their friend, I'd help them save the money and fail it even more spectacularly this year.

Anyway programming today was funny, as usual! Zhenghao uses VERY WEIRD ANALOGIES.

Zhenghao: Okay, a struct is kinda like when you take two variables and... tie them together with string.
Me: What?
Zhenghao: Uh okay put it this way: A struct is like... zha cai fan! And the variables are like meat, and veggies, and rice...

And then there was debugging time.
Josie: Zhenghao, there's something wrong with my code.
Zhenghao: You're hardcoding too much.
Josie: No I'm not!
Zhenghao: The actual solution is like, 20 lines. Yours is 207 lines long.
Josie: ...Not very long what...

For the first time in my life I coded something entirely without help (: Except for debugging, which even Zhenghao admitted was a cunning bug. (: Yay me! *clap clap clap*

I know this sounds like an angsty teen punk-rocker wannabe, but my life is absolutely screwed up.

I just got the worst news, and gosh I absolutely cannot believe it because it's just so wrong. I shan't elaborate, because I figure it's the person's news to spill and I already feel kinda bad for blabbing to one person. ): But it is way unfair and just proves the theory that life is horrible.

That was screwed up in a bad way. But the next thing is screwed up in a somewhat mildly amusing way.

I also recently discovered (only last night, in fact) that my surname's not supposed to be Yeow but the more commonly seen Yeo, but is only Yeow because of a clerk working the name registering department a long long time ago, who screwed up.

My granddad's surname is Yeo, and therefore my dad and thus my surname ought to be Yeo too. Even though the chinese character is still pronounced yao. It's just a weird dialect... uh, mutation? of yao. But apparently when my granddad was registering my dad's and my uncle's names, the clerk decided to be clever and added an extra w to make the English version sound more like the chinese one.

Whatever (: Yeow sounds cooler anyway.

go fug yourself

There's a Facebook group that goes something along the lines of "People who t@Lk Lyk D1z should attend English class more often".

Well, I'm not going to join that group because I disagree.

People who t@Lk Lyk D1z should not be made to attend English classes more often. They should just curl up and die, period.

Why you should not taLk Lyk D1z:

For one, it is SO irritating to type. If you're sharp you'll have notice that I replaced the @ above with a normal "a", because blogger keeps reading this as a mail address and hyperlinking it, never mind that I doubt there's a mail server called Lk.

And what is wrong with normal "a"s and "i"s? Oh, alphabets not cool enough for you? Must replace it with funky signs? Or are half your keys broken? If words were meant to be spelt with dollar signs, @s, and exclamation marks, they wouldn't have invented a 26-letter alphabet.

According to linguist David Crystal, you have to KNOW your words before you can PLAY with them, which means that all these people mutilating words (in a bad way, too) CAN spell their words. Either that or they just hopped on the bandwagon; if you're one of those hop-on-the-bandwagon-even-though-I-can't-actually-spell-the-words-properly people, go and die. There are better trends to follow. And for those people who actually CAN spell the words but for some obscure reason choose to waste time typing out weird forms of the word, (I grudgingly excuse some forms of sms lang that actually shorten the word. It's those that don't shorten the word, or in fact, lengthen it, that piss me off) you go curl up and die too. Why waste English lessons on people who can spell but don't want to?

(Speaking of sms lang, why the hell do some people shorten "tomorrow" to "tomolo"? It sounds like some obscure cousin of the pomelo. Tomorrow is rarely ever pronounced as "tomoLO", unless of course you can't pronounce the letter r. In which case, why spread your inability to pronounce the letter r to your writing too?)

I buy Teenage just to read the love declaration sections whenever I'm feeling emo, because then I can ridicule the language of the soppy messages and ponder why people would go to such lengths to make their messages un-understandable. HELLO, this is real life, not a James Bond movie. We don't need codes!

Look at this fine example of code:

"To: other honey
hh0neyy, I lurbb3rzx euuzx al0tts w0rhhszx!
pw3ase acceptt muaiizx lubb3zx w0rhhszx (:
From: honey"

I'm sorry, did you experience violent tremors while your fingers were hovering above the "h" key? And the "y" key? And the "b", "u", and "t" keys? C'mon. Say it out loud. Not so cool now that you sound like a stuttering freak, eh?

"H-h-zero ney-ey, I lurb-buh three ruhzuhsss eu-ou al zero tuh-tuhssss wzero huh-huh ssszuhsss."

Also, is there a need to put "zx" or "szx" after practically every word? You are not a bee. Bees probably have a better command of English than you do. For the life of me I just cannot see how people can actually think that making a weird zzzzz sound is actually cool.

AND WHAT IS UP WITH "LURBBBB"? I hate the way I sound when I have a cold or an otherwise blocked nose, YET people here are trying to imitate a blocked nose. I'll give you a blocked nose.

And to any twit zzzzing in rage right now, save your trembling fingers from having to type anymore. Go read a dictionary. In the (oh, very short, I'm sure) time you used to type a retort which I'll just laugh at and then mock again later, you could possibly learn the proper spelling of the words on the first page of the dictionary.

Disclaimer: This, any insecure readers, is not elitist. It is merely how I demonstrate my language purist feelings. I don't care whether "honey" or "other honey" come from either Pulau Ubin Ulu Sec Sch or RGS; I'll mock their language all the same. So please don't vent your insecurity by calling me an elitist because you have an inferiority complex and happen to ttalkzx lykzx d1z w0rhhzxszxszxszxs.

I, for the thousandth and second time, have nothing against people who hail from neighbourhood schools. But I do have something against people who refuse to respect the sanctity of the English language.

Oh, and don't even get me started on bad grammar.