Life @ NCP

First entry on the new blog 🙂

I have tried to blog in many different places but until now i still haven’t get used to the habit of blogging. I really think that blogging is a great way of exchanging thoughts and also keep my thoughts in perspective. Hopefully I will think about it better. WordPress is great and I cannot wait to use more of its features as I get used to it more.

Yesterday was a blow. I went to the dentist after so much postponing (after more than one year). I have an extras insurance already in place for about a year but I haven’t managed to go until yesterday. I think part of the reason is that I am scared. When I was little, my mum always brought me to the lady dentist who never put ANY anesthetic whatsoever. After so many visits, the pain traumatised me to say the least. I always wondered why my mum had to pay so much money to her just to hurt me.

Back to the topic, I have known for a while that at least three of my wisdom teeth are growing. All three of them are not placed as nice as I would like it to be – the worst one is the bottom left side: growing to my cheek ouch. The dentist told me that another one is growing (and this one will be to the cheek again!) and he advised me to have an oral surgery to remove all four. Not to go through the pain that I can imagined, the cost for one tooth will be about $300-$400 eeek.

So today, I thought I should put more thoughts into my teeth so I follow the dentist’s advice to buy an electric toothbrush and use dental floss regularly. To my surprise electric toothbrush is much (WAY much) cleaner compared to the traditional one. It is not too expensive either, only about $25 for an oral B 🙂 I really hope I can keep up the good habit and keep my teeth on its current stage (11 fillings need to be done is enough). Sigh sigh sigh, talking about savings…

futile attempt…

On another note, I should assume that I will have no time to do anything on the weekend. It just passed like a *snap* and it is naive of me to think that I can clear up my to-do list. I put more emphasis of sleeping later (with the help of coffee and v and the top pic below) every second night just to make me feel a bit more productive, but it is not always easy. Even sleeping at 2 am in the morning doesn’t really mean that I am more productive, sometime I kept on getting distracted (like installing this wordpress) instead of doing things that I am supposed to do 🙁
Below (the bottom one) is one of my unfinished business. Been doing this puzzle for a long time, will be longer if I don’t get my act together fast.

hope to finish this soon

Enough for the day. Will post things more frequently *I hope*

Other things that happened:

• Managed to put an order for Four-hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss in Kinokuniya. I checked on Dymocks, Angus and Borders during the weekend but none of them have it. The Kinokuniya lady said it will come in a fortnight.

Shot by Laura Poitras, Citizenfour is a documentary featuring a small blip of Edward Snowden’s life when he leaked classified documents from NSA to Glenn Greenwald, now famous as the NSA Spying Scandal.
I wouldn’t call myself an avid fan of Snowden. I know what he did, I watched his ted digital appearance , and the response from NSA. I knew he was a solid, decent characters who did not do this for fame, but I didn’t expect him to be so calm, well thought out character, who have gathered his intention from ²⁰⁰⁷⁄₂₀₀₈, waited for Obama to change the game, only to be disappointed when he didn’t. It took him 5 years to do what he did, and when he did, he surely have done it in the most effective way. I cannot imagine the burden / thoughts went through his mind for five years. I certainly wouldn’t have done it. His age when he did that, 29.

Talking about lifestyle, this is the crux of my thought of the day. What kind of job will lead me to the lifestyle that I want? The lifestyle that I particularly enjoy? One answer relating to the above is having a great job.

• working in a slow-pace company
  o stable income
  o good job security
  o very restrictive, less challenging, may not get colleague that I enjoy

• working in a fast-pace company
  o stable income
  o more challenging
  o less job security. up or out policy from accenture (do not say the name)

• working as an academic
  o stable income
  o i can work on more things that I find interesting

• working as an enterpreneur
  o no stable income
  o very challenging
  o need creativity and wide general knowledge and awareness about new things that happen around me
  o can do whatever I want without real restriction from employer
  o risky business to start with

If there is one American TV series that I am obsessed with, it is Wipeout. Specifically, it is the US version Wipeout – not UK’s Wipeout, although Richard Hammond’s hosting it, and definitely not the new ¹⁄₅^th of the prize Australian Wipeout. The Wipeout that I’m talking about dangles $50,000 to 24 contestants, alluring them to get through a series of “obstacles” grouped into four stages of the game. In each stages, contestants get eliminated: from 24, it’ll become 12, 6 and then 3. These obstacles are physically tough, usually it involves jumping through stilts while a sweeping arms chasing the contestant from behind. …

Wipeout America is the third most popular TV game show in blah (citation needed). It is quite amazing that it has been able to extract BLAH season out, from the most basic humour of all: that seeing people fall is funny and horrendously enjoyable. It reminds me of the Australian Funniest Home video that I used to watch every Saturday night. I knew what I was going to see, and it’s repeated again and again and again within the hour, and yet I still watch it and get so much laugh out of it.

LALALA

After jagabee

I have learnt through my experience that the worse time to arrange for meetups is on a Sunday which the Daylight Saving Time just ticked over. Typically, my “rubber-time” friends, who would usually be late in a normal situation, will be guaranteed to be at least one hour late.

Do you ever wondered why we have Daylight Saving Time (DST)? Or more importantly, the purpose of having one? In Sydney, every October (?), the clock move back/forth for one hour, only to be readjusted back to what it is in March (?).

Reason for DST creation was to ration candle usage -> wikipedia

This is why world time buddy site exist. Is it really needed when the problem is completely man made?

Australian states make things even harder, because for example in 2008, every states other than Western Australia would do the clock shift in October 5, where as the special state would only do it in October 26.

I wonder why there seems to be more people who cares about changing our calendar (link to the perfect calendar thingo that I’ve seen), rather than fixing this daylight saving stuff.

Some countries have chose to stay permanently on their Daylight Savings Time, which then becomes their Standard Time. When can we do the same here?