yandao.com - Memoirs of a player wannabe

My good buddy, also by the name of Kelvin, pasted me a link to a STOMP article with the photograph of two students from RP hugging, and that it was severely tarnishing the school’s name:

You can read the full article at: http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/viewContent.jsp?id=39733

Let me quote from the article:

A STOMPer caught this guy intimately hugging this
girl in the Republic Poly canteen, while the former was having a meal
with his friends and thinks this behaviour projects a bad image of the
school.

The incident occurred at about 10am today (Oct 24).

PS, dearest poster, if you can actually read between the lines, the editor who approved the story did it for the sake of doing so (in my opinion). Notice the usage of the words, “thinks”, and the subtle way in which he laid YOUR story out.

That said, here is my response. I can’t resist, sorry:

Firstly, it's people like you, the OP who waste precious news space.
Maybe you're deprived of love, or maybe you've never read something
called "news" before.

Maybe you should turn on your TV at home, and write in about Channel 5
having some angmoh flick where one guy's on top of the girl. OOH, it
spoils the image of our national television, it's detrimental to
Singapore's image!

In fact, I've helped you think of an even better line: "What will
the angmoh's/FT's think of us? How can we show hugging shows on TV?"

Granted, you, the OP, has probably attended only a conservative local
primary school, whereby the only hand holding contact you might have
is from your female partner when you're walking with her from class
Primary 3A to 3C. We can't blame you for that, it's natural that
anyone of such childish nature would think this way.

Being mentally challenged is acceptable by our society, OP. It's
alright.

That said, I'm a student from Republic Polytechnic, and a Final
Year student, I must add.  You can go have your lunch at Riverside
Secondary School, or my alma mater, Qihua Primary - if you so hold
dearly to your 50 cent Primary School noodles whereby there're no
kids hugging.

I despise people like you, who take out their handphone, secretly
make shots, and pretend they're news. However, I even further
despise creatures in Singapore who think a good night peck on the
cheek in the MRT train is taboo and films it down with a cheap
melamine-laden camera phone, and that said, I'm happy for you,
OP - that you've not yet been able to even afford one of those.

(PS: I'm pretty sure that I know who this couple is, and I'm also
pretty sure about your psychological state of development)

Regards,
Kelvin / Yandao.com

Dear all,

Last night, I saw this comment from Chris:

“Kel, r u getting owned by the school or u’re just being humble and let them be more powerful? Many times when i am under vpn i totally cannot enter this site, and when i am able to, just like Ling, the photo database now is worse than when it just started, you have to type EXACTLY the name that is of the person’s to get results. Things like student id, module or class or even juz surnames amount to zero results. What happened man..?”

..and to be honest, I think his comment was the first which accurately described the problem with the current DB.

Some of you guys have been messaging me saying stuff like “It’s broken”, and “please fix it” - but nobody really described the problem at all!

Anyways, what’s done is done, and, it’s time for work to be done, too. I’ve created a new version of the database, and this time, you guys and gals are going to get to test it first - before it’s officially open to the public.

Features currently IN (that means i build already, lah) already are:

- Everyone’s photo, of course.

- Searching back past THREE years in RP’s history of classes (yes, means you can see everyone’s class for THREE years = SIX semesters)

- Reviewing your facilitators, whether they rock, or suck, or both

- Commenting on other students

- Automated requesting of handphone numbers and MSN addresses

- Viewing what class a facilitator has EVER taken/taught

Features to be implemented:

- Finding RP’ians who live near your house based on postal code

- ..loads more.

Hence, as with all “beta” (meaning, testing - and means it will work, but NOT flawlessly) programs, this is invitation only.

To get an invitation to the new database, you can either:

a) Drop me a message on Facebook - search for “Kelvin Leong”, it’s the picture with the tilted head

b) E-mail me at kelvin@yandao.com - with the subject “Yandao.com Beta Invite”

c) Leave a comment below, and in the e-mail box, fill up your real e-mail address. Nobody can see it except me.

That’s about it, if you want access to it *now*, do one of the following, I’ll get back to you within the day. Or else you can wait like everyone else.

Chris: For constructive comments, you get the first invite. Please contact me via MSN - same email as above.

..okay, so it’s not really a food scandal - but I think that got your attention, didn’t it?

For now, I have decided to be kinda “guai” (or rather, leaning towards the more docile side) - and instead of posting geeky stuff, followed by kinky stuff with innuendos, and well, vulgarities, I’ll post er, food.

No, really. Food in the literal sense - as in those that you eat for dinner and all. REALLY!

That said, allow me to introduce to you some rather fine, well-cooked delicacies in which my school, RP, (well, technically they subcontracted the food to ISS Catering - the Cafe 155 guys, who then subcontracted it to the China vendors - but what the hell). If nobody files anything, I’m gonna file it.

Since this is a story about Chinese food, I shall use “Chinese synonyms” to describe it - because, if I remember correctly, my command of chinese was kinda, well, bad.

Here goes:

On one wind and day sunny morning (which literally means - “yi ge feng he ri li de zao chen“), I decided to take Fish (yes - you mean you don’t know who’s Fish? go Google the word, “fish” then ;)) to the good ol’ Cafe 155 located in RP.

Well, yes, we all heard the scandal whereby nose was and cockroaches and feelers and flies were found in food from various stores, but well, no, I’m not so lucky to taste such tainted delicacies served by our dilligent canteen vendors.

(This makes me think, er, if we were only capable of spotting foreign entities inside our food at THIS age, damn, what have I been eating for the past 10+ years of government education?)

The queue was kinda long everywhere, so of course, we opted for shorter queues: Fish actually went to the fishball noodles store, which typically had undersized portions of noodles for $2 - think of it as noodles in which you had at Secondary School - not the coffee shop portions.

I, of course, decided to be more adventureous (Read: “Kay Kiang“) and went for the only China-ran, I mean, er, China-national ran food store in the school, the one which had stickers all over for a name like “Liu Da Ma”.

Man, I must tell you - they serve the finest China-Chinese cuisine I’ve ever tasted!

Having ordered Fried Dumplings and Fried Rice from them, I was amazed at the cashier’s impeccable service - he flashed me that look which told me that he was deep-in-thought about food, so much that he was in a daze at times. Of course, cannot blame him for that, he must be a dedicated cashier at heart, so thoughtful about his food.

I do believe that due to the cashier cum chef’s enthusiasm, he apparently applied secret ancient Chinese methodology (which is non-existent by *any* local eatery or chef) to simmer these dumplings in oil.

Look how the base forms a delicious black crisp.

Of course, the dumplings had very nicely mixed feelings, which tasted like “jiu chai” mixed with raw pork (meat?). I see that the chef had found a way to make Medium-rare Pork, which of course adds to the juiciness of the whole thing. The versatility of the chef’s skills never fails to impress a layman like me!

Such amazing cooking style which due to Singapore’s cultural advancement, can only be uncovered by native chefs like this. It is exceptionally rare to find perfectly friend dumplings, I tell you.

Though I must say, due to a lack of cultural clashes (in turns of taste), I gleefully contributed these dumplings to the “Return Tray” counter, hoping some other hungry soul could appreciate them.

The next dish, the fried rice, was also tastefully fried.

Each mouthful had the distinct taste of recycled vegetable oil - which, during this global oil crisis, is a commendable effort on the chef’s part to probably re-use the oil which fried the dumplings to re-fry the rice.

One could easily feel the mouth being doubly coated with oil after the very first spoon - and I must say, it’s an amazing taste, so much that I had to compliment it with my milk tea which effectively musked it’s taste. Such added recycled oil brings great flavour to the rice.

Don’t you notice how the oil seems to make the rice just GLOW in the morning (well, actually, artificial) lights of the cafe/canteen? Notice how the rich colours seem to highlight the generous spread of ingredients used! Wow!

With that said, I shall leave you guys to drool over these amazing dumplings which, honestly, was beyond me, and I do believe it would be beyond anyone of you with “standard” taste buds.

The China-Chinese people in the food and milk industry have their tradition deeply set within melamine, the pride and joy of their produce, and this is way superior than what we have in Singapore’s culture, man!

*start rant*

OMGWTF - I scratched my MacBook Pro (which I’ve lovingly taken care off since like Day Zero of purchase) on some stupid metal railing around RP’s canteen. Now there’s a very disturbingly, eye-soring, and UGLY 2mm scratch on the lid.

For those of you who *don’t* own a Mac, well, think of it as a nice diamond - perfectly cut, shiny, and glamorous - and then there’s a silly scratch right slap in the middle of it, which takes away like 90% of the glamour. And it’s 2 millimetres some more! *coughs* =X

*end of rant*

Okay, seriously, I saw this message spread around on my Facebook buy a gal called Dwayne Yu - and.. I don’t remember her name - but I think I saw the face somewhere… so, well, I’ll give due credit of it to her, and wherever she got it from:

A business man met a beautiful girl and asked her to spend the night with him for $500. And she did.

Before he left in the morning, he told her that he did not have any cash with him, but that he would have his secretary write a cheque and mail it to her, calling the payment “RENT FOR APARTMENT.”
On the way to the office, he regretted what he had done, realizing that the whole event was not worth the price. So he had his secretary send a cheque for $250 and enclosed a note:

Dear Madam:
Enclosed find a cheque in the amount of $250 for rent of your apartment. I am not sending the amount agreed upon because when I rented the apartment I was under the impression that:
(1) it had never been occupied;
(2) that there was plenty of heat;
(3) that it was small enough to make me cozy and at home Last night, however, I found out that it had been previously occupied, that there wasn’t any heat, and that it was entirely too large.

Upon receipt of the note, the girl immediately returned the cheque for $250 with the following note:

Dear Sir, First of all,
(1) I cannot understand how you expect a beautiful apartment to remain unoccupied indefinitely.
(2) As for the heat, there is plenty of it if you know how to turn it on.
(3) Regarding the space, the apartment is indeed of regular size, but if you don’t have enough furniture to fill it, please don’t blame the landlord.

Moral of the story: Don’t rent beautiful apartment if your furniture too little!

Edit: I mixed up Dwayne’s gender. My bad, I didn’t click her Facebook profile. Apologies, Dwayne. Paiseh!

WOOOOOT.

Hahahah, yes, I’m like very, very happy. Because, finally, after quite a very long while, there finally exists an application (or program or software or whichever you may prefer to label it) which allows the iPhone to make VoIP (Voice over IP - meaning that you can make calls over the internet - like your MSN voice chat, or Skype).

Yes, I know, I know, as a Nokia N95 user too, such applications has been built-in to the phone - in fact, for almost *any* newer Nokia phones - you can make free* calls too, you know or not? Go into the options, and mess around - you’ll see something like “Internet Telephony” or “SIP” - and if that works, you can go sign up for pFingo and get 6 months of unlimited free outgoing calls, and.. once the 6 months up, sign up AGAIN to get trial again lah

Yes, if you got these few options, it means you can make internet calls for free. Duh!

Ok, back to the iPhone, long story short - I’ll cut the crap:

• 1. Data connection costs $$$ (You know the GPRS/3G Data connection - the one use to browse internet on your phone, is expensive!)

• 2. One fine day, SingTel (and other telcos) decided to provide “unlimited” traffic for like $10/month - because most of us, naive Singaporeans, obviously are not tech savvy - so only use for browsing internet, download a few images, maybe go to private websites….. and, like that. hahah!

• 3. Some bloody clever users figured out that: Hey, we could watch YouTube, send internet SMS and make internet calls to save on our phone bill!

• 4. Of course, this knowledge was limited to, as I said, clever/savvy people and majority of people dunno how to do it

• 5. Now that Apple has iPhone (and.. did you know that SingTel *pays* Apple shitloads of cash to sell its iPhone?) and that it’s SO easy to install applications, its EASY to make voice calls via internet?

• 6. So, if everyone “save” their phone bill - SingTel earn what? (in US - AT&T earn what?

• 7. Obviously, they make it damn difficult for you to call via internet, such as restricting you to wireless hotspots. PLEASE LAH. WHO GOES TO MCDONALDS OR STARBUCKS JUST TO MAKE/RECEIVE A CALL? MIGHT AS WELL DON’T CALL, RIGHT?

• 8. Fring, the software used to make internet calls finally came out last night, but can only make calls via WiFi (yes, means you must be the stupid fella in step 7 to stand outside McDonalds to make a call)

• 9. Some clever bastard cracks Fring to make it such that you can call anywhere, anytime, for FREE! HUAT AH! (Hokkien slang for, uh, “Let’s get rich!”… saving money =X)

SOOOOO, for the people who’s been reading this blog, and well, uhm, have an iPhone, you can grab the cracked Fring for iPhone 3G (and patched to enable calling over 3G from HERE).

(PS: Kelvin, being uber psychic and having super cool powers, will also predict that Dexter will be the first bastard who copies most/all of my post and publishes it on his own website. Wanna bet?)

Oh yes, how to install it.. Uhh, you will need a Jailbroken iPhone (you can download the tool called QuickPwn to jailbreak your iPhone/iPod Touch in less than 3 minutes - but you gotta update it via iTunes first by, uh, going into iTunes, plugging in your device and click update lah!).

Aiyoh, I’m not going to show you the geeky side of Kelvin here. You should really go read up on Jailbreaking and MobileInstallation stuff.

Here, lemme blind you with beautiful images:

Here are the stuff which can be used with Fring, notice that there’s Skype, MSN Messenger, ICQ (oh yea, my ICQ number’s 64514888 for those who’re interested - I’ve got an affinity with 888’s lah :)), SIP (aka, almost ANY VoIP provider, Google Talk, blah blah)

Yes, it also means you can talk to your family in Australia for free or something like that.

Here, the contact list of one of my many MSN accounts. This one belongs to kelvin[at]yandao.com And yes, you can add me if you wish. I don’t bite, I don’t paw, I don’t…. wait, too much info. Hahah!

See, you can even choose to Chat or Call someone via MSN. Power right? If only the iPhone had front cam, then you can camchat with…. whoever you wish to - for whatever purpose you wish for. HAHA!

There, see, I’m chatting with Malcolm already. Poor Malcolm - he’s going to be famous after this.

Oh yes, did I mention, that this thing automatically takes you iPhone address book too? So now you can click to call ANY friend of yours for FREEEEE! (*cough* - thanks to Kelvin’s advice *cough*)

..and, the part which everyone wants to see, the keypad to call any number - notice that there’s no WiFi icon at the top, but rather the 3G (which means you don’t have to stand outside McDonalds, Burger King, Novena Square, Causeway Point, Starbucks, Subway, or some other ulu library to call).

Yes, I know you look silly.

And here it is! The call in progress to my other phone.

No, you can’t have my number if you’re going to bug me to fix viruses, worms, or other crappy, geeky stuff. You can go bug those mechanical people for that. For any other reason (such as lunches, dinners, and kopi*) - yes, I’ll give my number =X

* This is a clause with exception, because, uhm, anything is always applicable to pretty gir….. pretty great people, I mean. Yes, great people.

Behold, my N95 picking up the call… and missing it. BLAH.

See? 3-eights. ALWAYS. I told you, right?

Okay. Go explore, and knock yourself out. And well, be happy, most importantly. If it’s no fun, don’t do it, yea?

OH YES, one last thing… I have something brewing… Maybe some of you can smell what this is? *winks*

(click to see the larger size - it’s part of a MUCH bigger picture. but it’s not called a surrrprise for nothing, right?)

Well, if you guess it correctly, together with the features.. drinks, no matter how pricey, are on ME, Kelvin!