crazyarnie

crazy memoir 001

2012-03-04T20:40:00.002+08:00

Dear Blog,

I think I have take a bite too large for me to chew.... Should I spit it out and cut the chuck into small pieces first before deciding to eat it again???

I know that taking a large bite is a nonsensical, crazy thing to do. However, as since I have named myself crazyarnie, I tend to head towards more unusual and unorthodox procedures of doing things. Is that wrong too??

Someone once said: " Be crazy or die." I am not sure who said that, but it might be someone who is a little crazy, someone perhaps like me.

I wonder, if by posting up crazy bit of my crazy mind, and using this blog as a platform to write the crazy little things that come up in my life (the real and the virtual parts) will make you my readers more interested.

Yes, the world is crazy. But I believe, that I am crazier. I delved on logical craziness, where things that can be done, but not likely to be done should be done. RIGHT??

Signed: The crazy ME :P

ps. expect more crazy stuff.

as stress levels increase, so do the crazy moments and thoughts.

LYNAS

2012-02-26T23:06:00.001+08:00

This post is in direct reply to the news article which appeared on The Malaysian Insider (read it here).

All the hype against Lynas is necessary and important. It is also important that this plant does not begin operation and never sees the light of day.

What is Lynas?
Lynas is company that deals with rare earth. Rare earth is essential in electronics and processing rare earth to extract these ingredients is indeed a very lucrative business venture.
However, one of the by-products of processing rare earth is thorium which is radioactive.
Radioactive waste if not leaked into the environment will cause severe health problems and serious environmental risk. Go google and see what kind of problems these type of waste will do to a human beings.

My argument is with what our prime minister said in response to the huge protest about the plant. Mr Najib said in the quoted article that the plant is “factually and scientifically” safe. He also said other things about making sure that the plant was safe before allowing it to operate.

My response:
What do you mean by factually and scientifically safe???

Factually and Scientifically safe = To us in the engineering field, environmental field and science field.
Something that you say is scientific usually has a string of conditions attached to it. For example: the apple falls to the ground due to gravity. Yes, this is scientifically proven and the condition here is that gravity must be present. Try throwing something across an area with no gravity and see whether it falls to the ground. Facts are something that can be sure to be true no matter what happens. In this aspect: no matter how many times or how many ways in which you throw an apple in the presence of gravity, it will fall to the earth. Hence, facts means you know for sure that in no matter what kind of conditions, this will be the outcome, it is certain, it is 100% going to be that way. Scientifically is just another term to make things sound more professional.

Anyhow.
In truth, Lynas can operate safely if strict measures are taken to ensure that the plant operates safely, within a very very strict standard of codes. Fail-safe measure must be taken to the third degree where you have fail safe mechanisms for the fail safe mechanisms.

Cutting all the long stories short and you can read a good article which gives a balance view here

My point:
1.ONLY good governance and good management with the highest code of standards with the unwavering will and integrity will ensure that the plant runs smoothly and that public risk is minimal.

My second and final point:
WE DO NOT HAVE what it takes to ensure good governance and good management that is capable of ensuring that the plant operates at the highest standards of safety and disposal of waste.
Imagine the people doing the checks accept some form of bribe to close one eye. What would happen then??

Think about it. It is not just because the waste is dangerous. But because we cannot trust the people that will be in charge of overseeing and handling of these waste to hold to the highest standards.

And for this reason: LYNAS must not be allowed to be begin operations.

This keeps me going

2012-02-22T06:43:00.002+08:00

When your music playlist bores you, when you don't know what youtube to listen to, when local music start to be a drag...

Z88.3FM (safe for the little ears) keeps me going.

This online radio station has been keeping me going for the past 7 months. In exams, when rushing assignments and even when studying this radio station help to keep me awake and focus (perhaps) a little better on what I am doing.

Of course, it feels a little weird getting Orlando's traffic reports and getting announcement of daylight saving measures.

But I have discovered new songs, even ones that can make me tear.

Also I have been spamming my sister occasionally on US universities that were advertised over this channel. :P

Oh. It is a Christian Radio station. And you can listen to it here

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

2012-02-11T16:09:00.000+08:00

My university library, shared this on their facebook page - which I took some time of to watch.

Books bring color to life.
Watch it. Don't ask why, just do it.

Enjoy.

"All the news that's fit to print"

2012-02-11T08:39:00.001+08:00

I read this article recently about American Journalism. You can find it here, and have decided to give my feedback and some input on the matter.

According to the article the tag line: ALL NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT appeared on the masthead of the New York Times 115 years ago.
While those words meant different things to at different points of the history of the daily, the line is interpreted

as a "war cry" for honest journalism, and scoffed at as pretentious, overweening and impossibly vague

I would like to throw a new light onto the meaning of this famous line. One more controversial view, and in this view, I am not implying that this is what any daily meant when they used this line.

"All news that's fit to print" could mean in plain terms that only news approved by the government is fit for the print. In other words, who decides what is fit to be printed in the news??? If so, will that person or body allow ALL NEWS to be printed or ONLY NEWS THAT IS FIT to be printed???

And here I play on the word "fit", fit means that the news has to match a certain criteria before allowed to be printed. Imagine a door way that has a limited size, and only news that fit through the door are permitted to make their way to the public eye and those news that do not fit are discarded.

Hence, does this line really mean freedom of the press?? Or does it have some subdue meaning behind it???
Something to think about.

A Malaysian Malaysia

2012-02-10T07:12:00.001+08:00

Are we able to drop the meaning of races? Probably not - it is hard when the physical features of races: skin color, tone/accent of voice and other race specific characteristics are hard still there.

But the beauty of being different it being united even in differences. This is exactly why fruit salads and other food presentations involves different foods of different colors.

A Malaysian Malaysia, where we are for each other and not for ourselves.

This video is the inspiration for this post. Enjoy it.
Find the lyrics here.

Come blow your horn

2012-02-05T07:36:00.000+08:00

I wanted to go to KE7's hall play - COME BLOW YOUR HORN. But due to the price (of tickets) and the fact that I am tired, play it such that even an expected sms from Ruth to buy tickets did not really motivate me to fork out 15 dollars to go watch the show.

However, because other people were not free, I got to watch the show for free. :)

Come Blow Your Horn was written by Neil Simon back in the 1960s.

The play tells the story of a young man's decision to leave the home of his parents for the bachelor pad of his older brother who leads a swinging '60s lifestyle. At the beginning of the story, Buddy is a 21-year-old virgin and his older brother Alan is a ladies' man. But as the play progresses Alan discovers real feelings for one of the many women with whom he is currently sleeping and when she elects to leave him, he falls apart in response. This juxtaposes Alan's hunger for companionship with Buddy's metamorphosis into a ladies' man himself. The playwright points out the fundamental spiritual and emotional emptiness of the playboy lifestyle for which the younger sibling desperately yearns

The play? Well it was excellent. The actors and actresses played their roles well.

KE7's hall play taught me a few things:
1. A smaller number of cast can still do justice to the entire show.
If you compare it to RH hall productions, the number of cast KE had were much smaller. Of course you can't compare a musical to a play. But it does show that if you are short on manpower, a smaller cast does not necessarily have to mean a show of lesser quality.

2. Simple sets with props that bring out the show
While I was appalled at the number and sheer size of RH production's sets (and the massive amount of work that had to be done), the sets in this play was simple, non-changing (always the same scene) and by the looks of it, easier to build. In my opinion, sets and props are not supposed to wow the audience too much, but is to amplify the acting of the people on stage.
I would say that KE7 did this well, because it was clear that the telephone and the door - simple props were the ones that brought out the best in these characters.

I enjoyed the performance tremendously and am really really glad I went. So it is all smiles when leaving the theater.

Enjoying class

2012-02-01T09:34:00.000+08:00

Two factors to enjoy a class:
1. Awesome lecturer
2. Interesting stuff

and of course: an awesome student :)

You thought history was NOT FUN??? Think again, I found history so interesting.

I am taking GEM1536 Darwin and Evolution. This is not really a history module but for half of the semester we are being taught about the history of geology, people in the field of natural philosophy, Darwin's history and how the theory of evolution (or the origin of species) came about. So yes, this class is about the history of natural sciences and of the people who made some of the most major contributions related to evolution.

My lecturer is Dr. John van Wyhe. And he even has his own wikipedia page. He is an historian of science whose focus is on Darwin. Check out his website here. He even has written some awesome stuff about this subject.

So this is the best class of the semester so far. And I already know who to nominate for the best lecturer this semester.

I thought of writing my thoughts about Darwin and Evolution here, but I think I will do it in another post.

Flying with Airasia

2012-01-29T23:57:00.000+08:00

No. This is not an advertisement for Airasia.

And no. I was not in anyway bribed or blackmailed into writing this post.

However, in the light of certain past events, this post is written to convey my simple and yet perhaps meaningful experience, perhaps you as the reader will find it meaningful too.

To date, I have traveled by two budget airlines. Jetstar and Airasia.

If I were to compare the two, I would openly admit that airasia pilots seem to fly better than those in jetstar's hire. While, I could feel us taking off and landing (something you don't really feel, when flying with MAS), it was smooth and not jerky.

LCCT was not all bad. Yes, it was crowded, and the toilets did not have the first-class look. But it definitely shows that it is in good use. I think that an upgrade might be a good idea.

I must say, that I should have chosen to take an earlier flight, one cannot catch the 10am class if the plan lands around 8:30am. Perhaps better planning for future flights.

All in all, taking flight during Chinese New Year is a smart choice, but you need to plan early and take a small gamble that the class you miss are not those critical classes.

Mad-rush, not really.

2012-01-24T11:06:00.000+08:00

Chinese New Year. A time where everyone (at least those who celebrate it) go home. Actually, come to think of it, even if you are not celebrating Chinese New Year - the holiday will prompt you to either go home or go on a holiday.

My journey home was sadly an uneventful one.

Last year, I had the ktm flooding problem. And was stranded in Kluang.
This year, I took the NTU-NUS bus home. Traveled early on Saturday morning, and there was no traffic. Nothing. I arrived back at Seremban at 11am.

Next year, I guess I will be chasing bus with NTU-NUS bus again. :)

I am actually disappointed that ktm did not flood again this year, the floods last year left me stranded in Kluang. The bad experience made me take bus this year. But this year it did not flood. Unhappy, but glad to be back.

Slow but steady improvement

2012-01-16T09:33:00.000+08:00

NUS is no walk in the park and unless you are born a genius or 天才, getting a string of As is next to impossible.

Hence I would like to thank God for the slow but continuous improvement in my results. I am happy to announce that last semester I did not get any Ds as I did in the previous semesters. Everything remained above the C grade, which was a pleasant surprise.

My CGPA or we call it CAP here is super low, but the thing about being super low is that your grades can only go upwards now. I am happy to say that it has been an steady improvement of 0.1 per semester. I am hoping for more though.

I have not been able to grasp an A yet in any of the module I have taken thus far and am hoping for a better chance this semester.

Yups, God has been good. I am starting to enjoy my course of studies - since the year 1 killer modules are almost over. And am looking forward to some of the weird modules that I am about to do.

For this semester modules that I look forward to are Darwin and Evolution and Making Sense of Society. Both have interesting topics and the lecturers are great.

Well. Steady and slow improvement. Thanking God for that.

THE WOE of KTM

2012-01-05T21:24:00.001+08:00

Dear KTMB, as promised my this post is to rant about your lack of efficiency.

Delays are unavoidable, especially for a train service so old with no upgrades. And with the opposition pointing out that the government is inefficient, how much more the train service.

We as Malaysian can accept and have come to expect delays in the train service. It is part of being in Malaysia. 1MALAYSIA (as the PM calls it) and being the only train service that runs across the whole peninsular, 1KTM.

I for one can tolerate a 2 hour delay for any KTM train. It is to be expected. However, anything more than two hours is beyond acceptable.

Yesterday, I took the overnight train to Singapore. The ticket read departure at 00:18 from Seremban and arrival at 6:35am at woodlands. At 00:18, there was no sign of the train, not even a whisper, a hoot or an announcement. No train till about 00:40!! But this is to be expected. It is always late and I have come to accept and embrace that fact.

I got on, found my bunk, waited for my ticket to be checked and than went to sleep. 6:00am I WOKE UP hoping to find myself in JB with the custom officers on board checking my ticket. BUT NO, it turns out we were STILL IN SEGAMAT!!!!! not even reached Kluang.... there was no announcement on what happened, nothing. It was like we were stranded somewhere in the middle of the night in the middle of no where. Rumors on board was that the train broke down.

I should sue for compensation. I think it was because of KTM, my bag gave me so much problem from woodlands to NUS (but that is just rhetorically speaking and based on superstition).

ANYHOW. I CANNOT TOLERATE a 5hour delay... I WAS HUNGRY!!!! and there was no food on the train. I HAD TO USE THE HORRIBLE TRAIN TOILET (I am still shivering at the thought of it). AND not to mention the jerks and rocking and rumbling of the train I HAD TO TOLERATE IN MY SLEEP and the rest of the journey!!!!!

I CAN understand if the train stopped BECAUSE OF FLOODING - like during CNY last year. BUT A DELAY DUE TO A FAULT!!!!! UNACCEPTABLE.

I call for a revamp of the ENTIRE KTM.

TO THE GOVERNMENT: forget the freaky tall building. NO POINT building a super tall building while your ONLY TRANS-STATE train system is the BIGGEST JOKE OF THE NATION!!!!

I recommend, changing the entire tracks, newer and faster trains. DO SOMETHING about the flooding!!!! IT IS NOT right for the only train service to be suspended DUE TO FLOOD!!!!!

Right now. I AM TOTALLY PISSED OF WITH KTM. 56 years after declaring MALAYSIA an independent state and we are still stuck with a rotting, constantly breaking down and old train system.

FIX IT. FIX IT NOW.

Singapore 2012

2012-01-04T19:50:00.000+08:00

And my Singapore adventure for 2012 starts tonight with my night long journey via KTM.

I look forward to going back. But at the same time I dread it.
I dread it because there is tons of work to do, I do not particularly look forward to my coming timetable, 8am classes are TOTALLY not my style. Besides, I will be facing my maths-phobia this coming semester as I face my second maths module (and thankfully my last) of my university life. I also dread going back to the CCA work and dislikes the fact that I have to put my shoulder to the plow. I really wished I could be hall phantom but due to the responsibility and my reputation I have to make sure it works.

But I do look forward to seeing my friends again, and the faster internet speed. I do look forward to my sociology class and perhaps the project management class which are part of my timetable this semester. I miss my room (although small) for it is cozy and wind-swept most of the time.

I also do need to get back so that my library fine does not go beyond what I can pay. The book I borrowed out during the holidays got requested by some idiot who could not wait for school to start to request it.

I do look forward to a semester of fun (with friends and hopefully with studies).

Hoping for great semester 2, which would mark the end of my year 2 in one of the most stressful university ever.

Watermelon Chicken

2011-12-14T01:49:00.001+08:00

The following is an untested recipe, test at your own risk, you have been forewarned.

20 watermelons
1 chicken
Salt, pepper and other spices

Take the 19 watermelons, squeeze each of them one by one and slowly boil the juice and allow water to evaporate. The juice of 19 watermelons should evaporate till about less than 750-1000 ml of watermelon essence.

Watermelon essence: The highly concentrated watermelon juice obtained from evaporating water from a large quantity of watermelon juice until a small fraction of the liquid remains. It is believed that the famous Brands Chicken essence is obtain in the same way: boiling many chicken for long time and evaporating till only the chicken essences remains and is served in glass bottles. Inspired by Nicole Mones' book - The Last Chinese chef but in that case the chef used many crabs to get the essence to make a crab dish.

The last watermelon is skinned, half of it is cut into slices the other half is diced.

The chicken is than soaked into the watermelon essence. Pat the chicken with salt and other spices according to taste. The diced watermelon is stuffed into the chicken and the slices are placed on top of the chicken like bacon strips. Leave the chicken to marinate for 12-24 hours.

The chicken is then baked till cook. Serve.

This recipe was a crazy idea that popped up at a crazy moment. I do not know anyone who has tested it.

My mom is not allowing me to try it out - at least not in her kitchen.
My sister thinks I am crazy...

Hence, it is an untested recipe and might be too dangerous to be carried out in a normal kitchen.

What is writing?

2011-12-07T22:57:00.001+08:00

Writing. Recently I have been trying to figure out what does writing a blog really mean. Well, to be honest, I am just trying to problematize the reason why I am not blogging.

I think there are two reasons why the number of blog post have decreased significantly to such an insignificant number, even after changing blogs.

So what is writing? Is it the random strings of words to make up a sentence, jumbling sentences together to make up a story and produce a interesting bit of work? Or perhaps it is something more..

Every time I write, I hope to introduce a world of possibilities to the reader. To paint a picture using a thousand words, to open up a new world for you to see. But I am afraid of failing that, that is why I do not write.

In the past, I figured that getting published would mean writing a book and getting yourself published by a notable publishing house. But I found out that you could me more than that.

So my quest, is to find out why we write and what inspires us... and through that, perhaps and hopefully, I will be able to convey the pictures that are constantly playing in my head into words that will paint even more awesome pictures in your mind.

How I wish, I could be telepathic and I could just transfer my thoughts to your mind instead.

I guess, I am smoke screening too much already. I will write, but I dunno what to write. I want this blog to be more than a blog and not just a bog of words.

Perhaps I need to read more, or perhaps I should write more.... well, I guess I need to start somewhere.

What is going on back home????

2011-10-30T11:50:00.000+08:00

Yes. I am here. Overseas, away from home, not that far away, just across the Causeway.

However, with that small body of water called the Singapore Straits, I feel detached from my homeland. Sometimes, I feel more Singaporean than Malaysian.

People who I have just met usually ask me first: "Are you Singaporean?" and sometimes, I like to deliberately conceal the fact that I am Malaysian.
When I they hear my name, they assume: "So you are from Indonesia?" Does my name sound Indonesia??? Usually I introduce myself as Arnan, either over the phone and even emails. People who I am suppose to meet for the first time tell me that they were actually looking out for an Indian guy not one with "yellow" skin. Amusing. :)

But I do keep (try) up with what is going on in Malaysia. With little time for TV and my music always tuned into Z88.3 (A Christian radio from Orlando, Florida - which gives traffic reports), my primary source of information of what is going on in Malaysia is through the online newspaper "The Malaysian Insider" and people updates on facebook and twitter (which might be at times bias).

However, it is sad to see that all the articles I have read, the news that I hear is BAD. It looks like Malaysia is always in a total mess. Quite shameful when you compare it to the local Singapore news.

Voting in the coming general elections will be hard, as I don't see anyone with the potential to lead Malaysia out of the current problems into greener pastures. Both the opposition and government seems to have flaws. Am I suppose to choose between the better of the two?

The heated debate over whether Maths and Science should be taught in English or Bahasa Malaysia is laughable and silly. We are in a democratic nations, couldn't the government call for a vote to see what the majority of parents want? But I guess, the opposition and the people in Bersih don't trust the government to hold a clean and fair election.
This is really ridiculous, people you need to stop thinking about yourself and think about the young children. These are the children you are suppose to protect, to nurture and to bring up as the next generation. They are the most important people of these country. I think that Bahasa Malaysia is a beautiful language - many Singaporean are jealous that they do not really know how to speak this language (and even take it as a subject in University).
But for the purpose of advancement, it is advisable teaching Maths and Science in English. Look at China and its emphasis on the English Language. Sure we cannot neglect our native language, I agree. But studying Maths and Science in Bahasa Malaysia is not going to improve our BM skills. After all, many of the terms used is just converted directly from English. We are already learning History and Moral in BM, these two subjects are full of text, and involve lots of writing during exams, which is good for BM improvement. Maths and Science are just full of short sentences, facts and equations learning these stuff in English would improve the chances of the next generation to be equipped to take on the world.
Well, these are my 2 cents worth of thoughts on the topic.

But the politicking back in Malaysia, it is making the administration go into a default tilt. Nothing gets done. I am reading the book "The Broken Branch" where the authors talk about how the US Congress ha lost its focus and failing the US and what it can do to get back on track.
It is good to have a government and opposition. But both parties must have one common goal: TO IMPROVE OUR NATION. Not simply disagreeing in parliament just because you hate each other.

I think, if the current leaders, the current generation stop thinking about protecting their asses, and start thinking about the children and the next generation (in the manga Naruto - they refer these children as the "king" and would lay down their lives to protect them) we would be able to move forward.

What are we fighting for? For our own ideals? Instead lay down your lives to see that the next generation get to live to their full potential.

Going green

2011-10-29T00:44:00.001+08:00

I just did a project which advocated for green roofing and high density living.

Yes. I got crazy over green roofs after watching a video by big ideas for a small planet

Big Ideas for a Small Planet (Sundance Channel) from Oliver Lief on Vimeo.

Yups. So my project was on sustainability and I saw sustainability for Singapore in terms of high density living and green roofs and re-term the concept as Sky Gardens.

Green roofs are awesome. Imagine having a garden on your roof!!!

Green roofs, can reduce flash flooding, clean city air, make a city space more lively and beautiful. Imagine taking a helicopter ride over a city and seeing green instead of the dirty and grey bare roofs.

Oh and it helps cool the building. A huge plus for us here in a super HOT country.

After watching the above video, I drafted a rough plan for green roofing in my hall. But I limited it to the covered walkways between the blocks.

If I find the time and the will, I guess I might just write a proposal and submit it to the hall and see whether they will want to do something about it.

Perhaps, when buying/building a future home, consider incorporating a green roof into your building, home. It will sure make it stand out from all the other houses. Perhaps even make you popular. Which should not be the motivation for building a green roof.

As for me, I want to install one in my future home.

Productivity and Weirdness

2011-10-03T08:25:00.001+08:00

Currently the most productive time of the day: 3am - 7am.

Current sleep pattern: Sleep early, wake up early. Meaning sleeping at 10 am or earlier and waking at 3am in the morning.

I find myself tired after dinner at 8pm. Hence, I lowest productivity at that time. Hence, I decide to take a nap (my nap = SLEEP) leaving the lights on so that my body will auto-wake up when it has enough sleep.

After waking up, I feel that I am more alert and able to finish more things over a short period of time. I think that this is going to be my sleeping pattern for the next week to see how it works out.

The bad part is that I will be sleeping away the time needed to go for CCAs. My captain for one, is going to kill me because I felt asleep and forgot to wake up to go training.

Well, let see how this week goes....

What I won at PRC Night

2011-10-01T01:28:00.001+08:00

Did you know that China celebrates its National Day today on the 1st of October.

I won the lucky draw prize. We were supposed to put our Chinese name on small pieces of paper to be in the running and our hall master picked out mine. Perhaps my Chinese name more "lucky" than my English name since I did not win anything during Malayisan Night....

What should I name him????
Oh I won a pillow too... thinking of bring it back home to Seremban since I SERIOUSLY HAVE TOO MANY PILLOWS. If I include this pillow, I will have five pillows - how to use all five together....

... perhaps I will give it to a special someone...

... who knows...

Music to...

2011-09-26T21:19:00.000+08:00

... to drown your sorrow and to lift your spirit

When things go bad....

2011-09-26T20:21:00.001+08:00

.... I find the motivation to rant on my blog. *sheepish grin

After 2.5 semesters, I have selected a few modules that I enjoyed studying:
1. Environmental Engineering
2. Messing with Nature: Unintended Consequences
3. Strategies for Sustainable Architecture.

For these two, I am not so sure about them yet:
1. Sociology of Food
2. Place, Environment and Society.

Now, I ask myself, what do these modules have in common???

They involved the environment. Sociology of food to a certain extend.
They involved writing.
And they involved coming out with proposals, plans or ideas (especially the first three).

So myself discovery journey led me to this conclusion: I like writing articles which have a lot of smoke screening and particularly on environmental issues, planning and policy making.
Smoke Screening is a sophisticated term to make "writing crap" sound nice.

I also discovered that I get quite lost when maths get involved. Perhaps I have a phobia of maths.

Another thing to note: I am in the right course, after God put me here. He can't be wrong right ??? After all, I was prayed specifically for God to close the door to things He didn't want me to do... I got shut out of doing business, chemical engineering and other stuff that I applied for. And I got environmental engineering.

So I am quite sure this is the course for me.... So why is everything on this road so sour??? Perhaps a lesson to learn here????

I have nothing to blog about

2011-09-23T20:52:00.001+08:00

The reason why I have not written anything in three weeks is because I have nothing to talk about.
The other reason is that with so many assignments that are all writing based, there is very little motivation to write anymore since I have already written so much during the week.

Somehow facebook status is a better way to get out what I want to say at this that very moment. So by the end of the day (or week) I have nothing much left on my mind to ponder about.

Perhaps you could comment on things you want me to touch on.

One random fact: Trinity gave everyone a super large umbrella each. *smiling.

Arnan's Octo-Lacto Vegetarianism: Day 2

2011-09-07T00:33:00.004+08:00

6/9/2011

Today, I really pity Maryann's choice of diet. Octo-Lacto makes a vegetarian's life so manageable.
Breakfast @ Raffles Hall: 2 half-boiled eggs, 4 pieces of toast and milo.

A bit of background information: the most filling breakfast in hall is this. 4 piece of bread plus 2 eggs. This year they reduced the number of bread that we can request to two piece, I complaint till they conceded and gave four. (Just background nonsense).

Notes: Easy access to food.

Lunch @ Arts Canteen: Rice with 2 vegetables and 1 mock meat. Cost SGD2:20. Dragonfruit and kiwi fruit juice. Cost SGD1.40.

I noted that the amount of varities of vegetarian dishes in arts canteen vegetarian stall was significantly lesser than the vegetarian stall in Techno Edge. WHY?

I have yet to ask the aunty about the reasons of making mock meat when it defeats the whole purpose of being a vegetarian.

One of the reasons that I could come up with is: mock meat is a way to diversify the vegetarian diet. Perhaps the makers ran out of ideas of what to do with all the soya beans and were tired of making various versions of tofu.

Dinner @ Raffles Hall: Rice with 2 green vegetables, tofu and hard boiled eggs.
While writing this, I realized that I have just eaten three eggs today. People who are watching thier fat and calorie intake would be scolding me for taking in so many eggs.

Again. It was quite easy to get just be a vegetarian in hall.

However, after dinner I craved for meat. I realized that I miss the taste of chicken or pork in my diet. The feeling however disappeared quickly as I was super busy and did not have time to moan about the need for meat.

Had training at night, and it seems that excersice makes me more hungry.

My friends don't really understand why I am going vegetarian. They seem to think I am dieting to loose weight or something. They just don't get it....

I talked to a friend today and talked to him about my diet and about reasons to be a vegetarian. He is not vegetarian, but says that he would only turn vegan if that is the requirement to get a certain "girlfriend". Of course, I think he is joking.

But do some people turn vegetarian for love???

Arnan's Octo-Lacto Vegetarism: Day 1

2011-09-07T00:32:00.002+08:00

5/9/2011

To be honest I realized nothing much has changed even though I am now abstaining from eating meat. I do not feel any major change but this is probably because the octo-lacto diet is one of the easier vegetarian diets - as in I do not have to activly hunt around for special foods to meet my dietary needs, I just don't eat meats. Simple.

Breakfast @ Raffles Hall

Breakfast was easy. It is what I eat mostly everyday. Fried noodles(just fried noodles and black sause), some cabage and a hard boiled egg with a cup of coffee.

Availability: Easy

Lunch @ TechnoEdge

Again lunch was not hard. Techno Edge has a vegetarian stall, however this brings into question the ethics behind eating mock meat.

Lunch: Fried noodles, long beans, egg plant, and some type of mock meat.

I am currently also reading the boook The Gerson Therapy by Charlotte Gerson and Morton Walker. The book mentions a diet where people abstain from eating meat for up to a year to improve health. Gerson Therapy is an alternate treatment to cancer. The authors mention that while the Gerson therapy proves that following the Gerson diet which includes juicing, coffee enema and a vegetarian diet is successful in curing cancer paitients and other illness, the pharmaceutical industry has supressed this diet. Anyhow, in my opinion, if people are going vegetarian for health reasons, than eating "mock" meat is not right. From just tasting the mock meat in today's lunch, I realized that there is a lot of flavouring and artificial stuff added into the mock meat (which I suspect is made up of soya beans) to make it taste like meat. However, mock meat maybe an acceptable exchange for people just starting on the vegetarian diet.

Dinner @ Raffles Hall

Again it was not hard to be a vegetarian. Just abstaining from meat is not as hard as I thought it would be. I just picked dishes that had no meat in them.

[no pic because i forgot to bring phone to dinning hall]

Dinner: Rice with cucumber dish, a stir fried green vege, potatoes and fried egg.

I think being allowed to eat egg and dring milk makes the vegetarian diet easier to manage.

Final thoughts:Vegetarian diet has not brough no major impact yet on my daily life. I feel hungry at the usual times and do not really miss eating meat.

Semester 3

2011-09-03T04:40:00.000+08:00

_it is about time to write something_ sorry for the wait.

This semester I feel more like an Arts students rather than being an engineer in the making. Reason for being so is that I am taking 2 modules(which are subjects) in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS for short).

Oh. For your information these are the modules that I am taking this semester ( I think my family would want to know):
Hydraulics (this is the hard one - lots of principles and calculations)
Environmental Processes
Strategies for Sustainable Architecture (the most heavy module: lots of readings and reading responses)
Sociology of Food
Place, Environment and Society

TO be seriously honest. I LOVE THIS SEMESTER!!! It really feels that I am studying the environment. So I am busy but I am happy.

So what do I really study in these modules? To be honest the module names are quite vague and do not give a clear picture of what exactly we are doing. Even when I tell my parents the module names, they have little idea of what is actually going on.

So here is to give some light into what I am doing here in Singapore.

1. Strategies for Sustainable Architecture.
Taken in the School of Design and Environment: this is a compulsory module for architect students but it is compulsory for me too.
What do we do. We actually do as the title suggest, we look as strategies for a sustainable earth. Basically it looks like a GREEN module. We talk about the environment and how buildings are built, how we are not making most of the natural processes around us. How architects are building things the wrong way, about people ignoring the natural environment and just go ahead with development only to realized that the area is flood prone(New Orleans is a fine example). We also look at successful building sites and suggest plans for the future.

2. Place Environment and Society
A geography module. Mainly a module for Geography major students in year 1. I am taking this as a general education module.
I wanted to take "Science Fiction and Philosophy" instead but since I was outbidded. So this module was for me. It is fun too.... the lecturers are the most engaging of all the modules I am taking. Really fun and we laugh the most in this class(oh class seems to be 400++ students). This modules talks about human and physical geog. Currently we are doing human geog, we talked about images of a geographical location and how different people have their own image. There is a field trip waiting to happen too.

3. Sociology of Food
A sociology module for Sociology majors.
I skipped the basic sociology modules and took this module just for fun. Why not? I like eating and there is a lot of background things behind why we eat and how we do it. Initially, I thought we would be studying how we eat and what kinds of food we eat. But it seems the module has different ideas. We are defining what is food and what is not (in a previous post I posted up two videos on unusual foods). We also looked at the history of how food evolved. I just watch the movie Food Inc. for our last class, it shows us the DARK side of food production. Perhaps mom was right when saying we should eat "kampung" chickens more even if it is more expensive and has less meat. Part of my assignment is to go vegetarian for a few days and keep a journal about it. I will be starting next week and probably post some of the journals here on this blog.

4. Environmental Process
Compulsory module.
This module is the first module that addresses us as environmental engineers, this is also the first module by the environmental engineering department prior to this we were taking "crap" engineering modules like electrical engineering, maths, statics, programming... etc. This module is fun too. The lecture is okay but the things we learn involve the environment and things that happen in the environment which include chemical processes.

5. Hydraulics
Another compulsory module
I do not see myself using this module in the future, but I guess our Deans see its usefulness. Well the lecture is actually dean of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. The module is hard. Hard to understand, hard to apply and hard to digest. However, tutors do help us a bit to understand better. The lecturer although admits that this is a hard module, is trying his best to help us get everything he is trying to teach. So not all that bad.

Well. This semester should be fun. I THINK.