You see how easy it is? Don't blog for five months, then blog thrice in one night.
This one is important; I am still at the same contract, the rate sucks, it is a tad more than half what I used to get two years ago, before the Depression brought the world to its knees, but in my week off work (oh, yeah, I took this week off) I have found a way to increase the rate by almost fifty percent. Just need to get it to happen now.
Friday, October 7
Google Sucks
Okay, that's official, Google is even worse than Microsoft. In fact I strongly suspect that the CEO of Google is a genetic fusion of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
I was going to post a question on how to get the new system to function as well as the old, or how to get the old one to function at all, but a total lack of realistic help options combined with several forums that were mostly full of customers complaining that despite Google's promise of a reply within 24 hours they had not been contacted in over a month does seem to indicate that Google is just another evilness in a world of evil. So I will see if any independent forums have anything of use.
Seriously; to read those forums is to be convinced never to become a paying customer.
I was going to post a question on how to get the new system to function as well as the old, or how to get the old one to function at all, but a total lack of realistic help options combined with several forums that were mostly full of customers complaining that despite Google's promise of a reply within 24 hours they had not been contacted in over a month does seem to indicate that Google is just another evilness in a world of evil. So I will see if any independent forums have anything of use.
Seriously; to read those forums is to be convinced never to become a paying customer.
Like a Light Sabre
Wow, I cannot believe that it has been so loooong!
1st of May to 7th of October; five whole months!
This time, (almost) needless to say, has been bad, well, in the sense that it started bad and I just didn't want to talk about it and then it got to be a habit not to blog anymore. In fact, to be more precise the bad time was really the bit before I stopped blogging.
So no, just to be sure that I don't have any medical issues, I am going to ease into this slowly. And stop here for now...
Okay, edit, the new 'blogger' interface sucks; it drops line breaks and paragraphs and it refuses to publish from the old interface.
Nice one.
Sunday, May 1
Here We Go Again
Once more, dear friends...
I am once again falling into infatuation with a girlie band.
My friends are not surprised.
Last weekend I came across them when I refined a you tube search gradually down into 'Japanese girl rock band', I came up with about half a dozen that I quite liked, as in their music was good, we are not talking about their looks at this point. But one kind of grew on me during the week, and yesterday I checked out their fan sites, official websites, downloaded a few albums, ordered a few albums on eBay, and stripped off mp3s from the videos that I downloaded both then and last weekend. And then spent the rest of the evening watching and re-watching their clips and interviews, and then retired to bed to listen to the mp3s.
Good music, cute girls, spunky image. What more could I ask for?
I am once again falling into infatuation with a girlie band.
My friends are not surprised.
Last weekend I came across them when I refined a you tube search gradually down into 'Japanese girl rock band', I came up with about half a dozen that I quite liked, as in their music was good, we are not talking about their looks at this point. But one kind of grew on me during the week, and yesterday I checked out their fan sites, official websites, downloaded a few albums, ordered a few albums on eBay, and stripped off mp3s from the videos that I downloaded both then and last weekend. And then spent the rest of the evening watching and re-watching their clips and interviews, and then retired to bed to listen to the mp3s.
Good music, cute girls, spunky image. What more could I ask for?
Friday, April 22
Disappointment
Specifically, Portal 2.
An extremely clunky and buggy serve that was.
A few maps / puzzles / rooms that were a tad too obtuse so I had to google a walkthrough. Amazing that within a couple of days of release there were good walkthroughs, GamesRadar being the one that I used. But such a clunky game that alt tabbing out to check the guide and alt tabbing back in usually meant it killed my computer. Not just crashed the game, locked the whole cpu. Had to reboot my machine about three times. And all of that for a game that was not appreciably any better, or even equal, to the first instalment. Graphics were not noticeably better either, so more of a Portal 1.2 rather than a Portal 2 if you ask me. Still have to try the multi-player, but we shall see.
Contract is going slowly, not my work, just that this is the most 'yes ministery' government department that I have ever contracted to. Seriously, you could fire half the staff and still get twice as much work done. I am testing a new application, I am meant to be user testing, not testing the system or design, I make a new journal, there is no save button, task cannot be completed. Did none of the programmers even look at the screen to see if it was complete before dumping it on the finance team to test? Not just one example, there have been dozens of similar events. The shoddiest programming that I have ever seen.
This is the Easter break; the harvest was brought in during Spring, yes? I am not too sure about how these things work in the Northern Hemisphere, but Winter is when things grow here, Summer is dead, maybe in Europe the crops are planted in Spring? Either way, lots of work in the fields during Spring, the full moon lets peasants work late, the full moon after the Spring Equinox is called the Harvest Moon, again, yes? I am not too sure about all this old Northern Hemisphere stuff. The Harvest Moon lets the peasants get the harvesting finished, and the next weekend is party time! And xians call it Easter.
Typical, steal a good old pagan festival and re-badge it with some daft xian mythology.
But here ANZAC day comes soon after, very soon, in fact this year they run together and we get a five-day weekend. Not good for shopping, this being Adelaide, they shut the shops at the slightest excuse. Five days of shut shops. Lovely.
Okay, not strictly true, they are letting them open for the Saturday, and half the Tuesday.
I have been play Fallout 3 a lot lately, a HUGE game that is. So big, and the story just kind of goes on and on and on, that one does tend to get quite bored with it all.
Shogun 2 out recently. I have played it through a few times, have completed four clans now. It did take my two or three tries before I worked out how the mechanics work for this one, how to plan ahead to make sure that I get enough regions before the time limit runs out. But a good game, quite enjoy that one.
Did get all of the Dawn of War 2's, well the three out so far. Kind of so-so on that one. I don't really like the lack of base management. I do like that I can play the Guard, took a few extensions before that came along though, didn't it. Am looking forward to playing the co-op campaign with friends.
Other than that, life still really sucks.
Work, game, sleep.
That's my life.
And working just to clear my cards for now. Since lovely, little old Adelaide is so the arse-hole of the civilised world it is so slow to recover from the recession. The BIG recession, the Great Recession, aka the GFC, but remember; the markets fell further than they did in the Great Depression, more people lost their jobs than during the Great Depression, it is taking longer for Adelaide to crawl out of it than the Great Depression. All of which adds up to my rates being half what they were before the Great Recession. So it will be quite a while before I clear those damned cards.
I so regret returning to this place.
I so regret having left Singapore.
I was so much happier there, this has been a very salutary lesson for me.
When I get back it will be with a lot more dedication.
An extremely clunky and buggy serve that was.
A few maps / puzzles / rooms that were a tad too obtuse so I had to google a walkthrough. Amazing that within a couple of days of release there were good walkthroughs, GamesRadar being the one that I used. But such a clunky game that alt tabbing out to check the guide and alt tabbing back in usually meant it killed my computer. Not just crashed the game, locked the whole cpu. Had to reboot my machine about three times. And all of that for a game that was not appreciably any better, or even equal, to the first instalment. Graphics were not noticeably better either, so more of a Portal 1.2 rather than a Portal 2 if you ask me. Still have to try the multi-player, but we shall see.
Contract is going slowly, not my work, just that this is the most 'yes ministery' government department that I have ever contracted to. Seriously, you could fire half the staff and still get twice as much work done. I am testing a new application, I am meant to be user testing, not testing the system or design, I make a new journal, there is no save button, task cannot be completed. Did none of the programmers even look at the screen to see if it was complete before dumping it on the finance team to test? Not just one example, there have been dozens of similar events. The shoddiest programming that I have ever seen.
This is the Easter break; the harvest was brought in during Spring, yes? I am not too sure about how these things work in the Northern Hemisphere, but Winter is when things grow here, Summer is dead, maybe in Europe the crops are planted in Spring? Either way, lots of work in the fields during Spring, the full moon lets peasants work late, the full moon after the Spring Equinox is called the Harvest Moon, again, yes? I am not too sure about all this old Northern Hemisphere stuff. The Harvest Moon lets the peasants get the harvesting finished, and the next weekend is party time! And xians call it Easter.
Typical, steal a good old pagan festival and re-badge it with some daft xian mythology.
But here ANZAC day comes soon after, very soon, in fact this year they run together and we get a five-day weekend. Not good for shopping, this being Adelaide, they shut the shops at the slightest excuse. Five days of shut shops. Lovely.
Okay, not strictly true, they are letting them open for the Saturday, and half the Tuesday.
I have been play Fallout 3 a lot lately, a HUGE game that is. So big, and the story just kind of goes on and on and on, that one does tend to get quite bored with it all.
Shogun 2 out recently. I have played it through a few times, have completed four clans now. It did take my two or three tries before I worked out how the mechanics work for this one, how to plan ahead to make sure that I get enough regions before the time limit runs out. But a good game, quite enjoy that one.
Did get all of the Dawn of War 2's, well the three out so far. Kind of so-so on that one. I don't really like the lack of base management. I do like that I can play the Guard, took a few extensions before that came along though, didn't it. Am looking forward to playing the co-op campaign with friends.
Other than that, life still really sucks.
Work, game, sleep.
That's my life.
And working just to clear my cards for now. Since lovely, little old Adelaide is so the arse-hole of the civilised world it is so slow to recover from the recession. The BIG recession, the Great Recession, aka the GFC, but remember; the markets fell further than they did in the Great Depression, more people lost their jobs than during the Great Depression, it is taking longer for Adelaide to crawl out of it than the Great Depression. All of which adds up to my rates being half what they were before the Great Recession. So it will be quite a while before I clear those damned cards.
I so regret returning to this place.
I so regret having left Singapore.
I was so much happier there, this has been a very salutary lesson for me.
When I get back it will be with a lot more dedication.
Wednesday, March 9
A Long Dry Spell
Yes, it has been a long time, and there is a very good reason for this; I have been through what is probably the worst three months of my life.
The basic problem was my decision, undoubtedly the stupidest decision that I have ever made in my life, to leave Singapore and return to Australia almost two years ago. What I came back to was a total mess, a nation wracked by the Great Recession (a.k.a. the 'GFC'), and in particular a state (that is to say; a city) brought to its knees and still incapable of getting off them. Unfortunately the expense of returning and setting up was so great that it precluded me just turning around and heading back to SG as soon as it became obvious that this had been a very big mistake.
So, this mostly centres around the lack of work that there is in Adelaide. I have had interviews over the last couple of months and been asked to start the next Monday with the job then not materialising. But in the last three days I have had three calls from agencies asking if I was interested in a position, and one interview. Does this finally mean that the drought is over? Because as soon as it is I start my countdown to returning to SG, and this time with no intention of ever returning to AU. (Family visits aside.)
Okay, update that, I just took a call from one of the agencies and I start on Monday - a six month contract with a probable three month extension.
Anyhow, the main point is that I did not want to blog whilst I was feeling near suicidal from the voidness that is my meaningless existence.
The basic problem was my decision, undoubtedly the stupidest decision that I have ever made in my life, to leave Singapore and return to Australia almost two years ago. What I came back to was a total mess, a nation wracked by the Great Recession (a.k.a. the 'GFC'), and in particular a state (that is to say; a city) brought to its knees and still incapable of getting off them. Unfortunately the expense of returning and setting up was so great that it precluded me just turning around and heading back to SG as soon as it became obvious that this had been a very big mistake.
So, this mostly centres around the lack of work that there is in Adelaide. I have had interviews over the last couple of months and been asked to start the next Monday with the job then not materialising. But in the last three days I have had three calls from agencies asking if I was interested in a position, and one interview. Does this finally mean that the drought is over? Because as soon as it is I start my countdown to returning to SG, and this time with no intention of ever returning to AU. (Family visits aside.)
Okay, update that, I just took a call from one of the agencies and I start on Monday - a six month contract with a probable three month extension.
Anyhow, the main point is that I did not want to blog whilst I was feeling near suicidal from the voidness that is my meaningless existence.
Monday, January 3
I Hate Life
I have been going through a rough patch. Basically suicidally rough. Funny thing just now is another stuff up with Steam. Start with that, shall we?
My desktop has been dead for a month or two. Turns out that somehow the CMOS had reset its clock to zero, not sure I see how that stopped the box from running, but at least it is running again. My laptop has died as well; it was running like a dog, the fan and thermal bridge were not getting the heat away from the graphics chip. But then it started blue screening (still is) with an iastor.sys message. I have stuff on the damned thing, but I got off my finance assignment, which is the most important thing as it is due next week (managed to send to a flash drive on a rare two minute period before the blue screen). When I moved on to trying to install windows seven (which won't install from disc unless windows has already booted, which it won't, so w7 won't install) I decided to play something on the desktop whilst I waited. My steam password has been reset since the last time the box was running (and what a battle that was) and that password was on the laptop so I tried to reset the password when I started steam on the desktop. This requires you to answer a secret question and was where I seemed to have trouble last time, now I know; the steam secret question does not work. True; both times I got the answer right (after the reset I had to set a new question and answer), neither time did steam take it, end conclusion - steam doesn't work.
Oh, naturally Steam on the desktop has to reconnect via the net before it will run and naturally the Steam servers are drowning (due to Valves total lack of service provision for their customers).
Can I rehash something old? Coming back to Australia was probably the single stupidest thing that I have ever done in my life. I got all antsy because they wouldn't pay me anything near what I got here, but I come back here to find that Australia (most particularly Adelaide) has been totally killed by the GFC and not only is my rate usually about HALF what it was three years ago, but I can only get contracts for less than HALF my time; so I am on less than a quarter (annually) what I got before, and half what I would have gotten in Singapore. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.
There is a very thin line of hope that I could grasp; it means returning to SG, but with some dedication this time, i.e. taking what I can get and casting off AU for good. If I can pull that off then I can clear the mountain of debt that returning to, and setting up in, Australia has cost me. This time I need to find a job in SG from here, before I go there.
I have talked about this with almost everyone that I know; their question usually boil down to where was I happier (isn't that sweet of them) but they all then acknowledge that I was much happier in SG than here. Even sweeping streets I would be happier there.
My desktop has been dead for a month or two. Turns out that somehow the CMOS had reset its clock to zero, not sure I see how that stopped the box from running, but at least it is running again. My laptop has died as well; it was running like a dog, the fan and thermal bridge were not getting the heat away from the graphics chip. But then it started blue screening (still is) with an iastor.sys message. I have stuff on the damned thing, but I got off my finance assignment, which is the most important thing as it is due next week (managed to send to a flash drive on a rare two minute period before the blue screen). When I moved on to trying to install windows seven (which won't install from disc unless windows has already booted, which it won't, so w7 won't install) I decided to play something on the desktop whilst I waited. My steam password has been reset since the last time the box was running (and what a battle that was) and that password was on the laptop so I tried to reset the password when I started steam on the desktop. This requires you to answer a secret question and was where I seemed to have trouble last time, now I know; the steam secret question does not work. True; both times I got the answer right (after the reset I had to set a new question and answer), neither time did steam take it, end conclusion - steam doesn't work.
Oh, naturally Steam on the desktop has to reconnect via the net before it will run and naturally the Steam servers are drowning (due to Valves total lack of service provision for their customers).
Can I rehash something old? Coming back to Australia was probably the single stupidest thing that I have ever done in my life. I got all antsy because they wouldn't pay me anything near what I got here, but I come back here to find that Australia (most particularly Adelaide) has been totally killed by the GFC and not only is my rate usually about HALF what it was three years ago, but I can only get contracts for less than HALF my time; so I am on less than a quarter (annually) what I got before, and half what I would have gotten in Singapore. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.
There is a very thin line of hope that I could grasp; it means returning to SG, but with some dedication this time, i.e. taking what I can get and casting off AU for good. If I can pull that off then I can clear the mountain of debt that returning to, and setting up in, Australia has cost me. This time I need to find a job in SG from here, before I go there.
I have talked about this with almost everyone that I know; their question usually boil down to where was I happier (isn't that sweet of them) but they all then acknowledge that I was much happier in SG than here. Even sweeping streets I would be happier there.
Monday, December 6
When Support Does Not Mean Help
Why do the staff at Valve (i.e. Steam Support) have to be such useless shits?
Seriously, for two weeks or more I have been asking them to reset my password. Nothing more, just that. But will they? Noooooo, they insist on trying all of this useless shit that we all know is not going to achieve anything. Please send us a system info file (note that you have to 'save' not 'export', same output, but they are too useless to convert it). Please turn off all of these programs if they are running in the background. None of this achieves anything, and we all know that it won't. Only two things ever work with steam; reinstall or reset.
Just that, nothing else. Uninstall and reinstall the application, or reset your password.
But, as usual, it is my password that is the problem. And, as is often the case, I cannot reset it because their application (more probably at their end methinks) won't accept my answer to my secret question. So I have to ask them to reset the damned password. This is not the first time that I have had to do this, it is not the second, nor the third, nor the fourth, nor the fifth...
You see how useless the application is.
But will the stupid prick at the other end do what I ask?
Noooooo.
Fuckwit has to try all the shit that they always want to try to absolutely no avail.
Won't just reset my password as I asked for two weeks ago.
Dickwads.
Seriously, for two weeks or more I have been asking them to reset my password. Nothing more, just that. But will they? Noooooo, they insist on trying all of this useless shit that we all know is not going to achieve anything. Please send us a system info file (note that you have to 'save' not 'export', same output, but they are too useless to convert it). Please turn off all of these programs if they are running in the background. None of this achieves anything, and we all know that it won't. Only two things ever work with steam; reinstall or reset.
Just that, nothing else. Uninstall and reinstall the application, or reset your password.
But, as usual, it is my password that is the problem. And, as is often the case, I cannot reset it because their application (more probably at their end methinks) won't accept my answer to my secret question. So I have to ask them to reset the damned password. This is not the first time that I have had to do this, it is not the second, nor the third, nor the fourth, nor the fifth...
You see how useless the application is.
But will the stupid prick at the other end do what I ask?
Noooooo.
Fuckwit has to try all the shit that they always want to try to absolutely no avail.
Won't just reset my password as I asked for two weeks ago.
Dickwads.
Friday, December 3
Just Quickly
I have not been blogging, principally because I have been depressed, principally because I have been 'between contracts' for too long. I have exams this week and next, indeed two tomorrow, so don't expect this to be too long.
Let me start by saying that I like Lee Hsien Loong's view on social welfare; the burgeoning welfare state is the biggest single challenge to the Anglo world but few have the inclination to recognise it for what it is. In my view the leadership of Singapore has been wise in avoiding this trap.
My younger brother is a father; his girlfriend has given birth to a daughter - at present she only has two states; crying or sleeping. She kind of looks Asian, I am guessing this comes from my brother's mother who has Asiany looking eyes, I have no idea where she gets that from, but the little girl looks more Asian than my friend's children - who have a Chinese mother. I wonder if it will stay that way as they all grow?
I am having a 'cultural' issue; I am getting pissed, totally pissed, at the ethnics at uni, specifically at the fact that their stupidity and ignorance wastes an hour of most lectures. On one hand there are really dumb questions; we have to use a financial calculator, for financial functions you enter a number, press the button for that variable, you enter all variables except one, then you press 'compute' and press the last variable button, a slide shows all of these buttons, it has numbers above the buttons for all except one, it has the answer below that button. How hard can it be? Apparently it is still quite difficult if you are Indian. But then there are the totally irrelevant questions; if we are talking about interest rates some Indian will have to ask the lecturer if they think bank interest rates are fair and then make some comment about them being mercenary. Then there are questions, lots of them, from Indians that have supposed to have done degrees (we are doing a post grad) and done them in English, that show a total lack of understanding of basic English such as how to write a list of numbers.
My younger brother was complaining about how this was wasting so much time in his lectures. There are about four hundred in his class, of which six or so are White, the rest are Indian and Chinese. He says that he understands the Chinese having troubles and can sympathise; English is not their first language and their accounting system is different from the European model, but the Indians are meant to have studied in English and they are meant to use the same accounting principles, yet they are wasting the lecture with stupid-level questions. My observation is that they also have a tendency to throw out seemingly random answers, perhaps hoping for some recognition for participation, although to be fair, randomness would entail a fifty percent chance of being right whereas they are almost always wrong.
The bottom line is that I am being significantly held back by having to share my lectures with foreigners and our universities should offer Australian-only classes so that we can study at a faster rate. The other major point is that catering to these ethnics is lowering the overall quality of education provision.
I am having trouble with Steam again. I can log in offline, but it will not let me log in online. I tried to reset my password, but it would not let me, it would not accept the answer to my secret question. I have asked Steam Support to reset the password, but rather than simply do as I ask they insist on a lengthy series of email exchanges and a system info output. Why? All they ever do is tell you to reinstall and reset the password; they have no other answers to anything.
I have a contract starting on Monday, it is in the same division of the same department as one of the long term contract offers I had a while ago. I am hoping that I will impress them enough to get this other one happening again. It was advertised in the government notice of vacancies and they did not like any of the applicants, it was advertised in the public press but they got no responses, it was taken to recruitment agencies and I am the candidate that they got offered (indeed I was the only candidate put forward by the largest agency in town) but they then said that they had to get approval to actually progress the position. What does that mean? You advertised it three times without permission to fill the job?
I had a health scare recently; I had a choking problem. My father said that he had the same problem and it was only resolved when he lost weight, and further that the only way he lost weight was through starvation and totally no bread and no potato. ARRGGGGHHHH my two most favourite foods! Anyhow, I have been pretty good with this, I have stopped eating so much bread and am only having flat bread to make 'roll-ups' for lunch, I have reduced the number of times I eat a day, and I have reduced the amount that I eat at each meal. Almost immediately I could swallow better and have had only a few minor issues there. I have not noticed being any thinner though and was whinging about how no amount of exercise and diet got me any skinnier (remember walking the entire length of East Coast Park (two to three hours) every day for six months and not losing any weight?) HOWEVER; my underwear is all suddenly too loose. This must mean something...
Let me start by saying that I like Lee Hsien Loong's view on social welfare; the burgeoning welfare state is the biggest single challenge to the Anglo world but few have the inclination to recognise it for what it is. In my view the leadership of Singapore has been wise in avoiding this trap.
My younger brother is a father; his girlfriend has given birth to a daughter - at present she only has two states; crying or sleeping. She kind of looks Asian, I am guessing this comes from my brother's mother who has Asiany looking eyes, I have no idea where she gets that from, but the little girl looks more Asian than my friend's children - who have a Chinese mother. I wonder if it will stay that way as they all grow?
I am having a 'cultural' issue; I am getting pissed, totally pissed, at the ethnics at uni, specifically at the fact that their stupidity and ignorance wastes an hour of most lectures. On one hand there are really dumb questions; we have to use a financial calculator, for financial functions you enter a number, press the button for that variable, you enter all variables except one, then you press 'compute' and press the last variable button, a slide shows all of these buttons, it has numbers above the buttons for all except one, it has the answer below that button. How hard can it be? Apparently it is still quite difficult if you are Indian. But then there are the totally irrelevant questions; if we are talking about interest rates some Indian will have to ask the lecturer if they think bank interest rates are fair and then make some comment about them being mercenary. Then there are questions, lots of them, from Indians that have supposed to have done degrees (we are doing a post grad) and done them in English, that show a total lack of understanding of basic English such as how to write a list of numbers.
My younger brother was complaining about how this was wasting so much time in his lectures. There are about four hundred in his class, of which six or so are White, the rest are Indian and Chinese. He says that he understands the Chinese having troubles and can sympathise; English is not their first language and their accounting system is different from the European model, but the Indians are meant to have studied in English and they are meant to use the same accounting principles, yet they are wasting the lecture with stupid-level questions. My observation is that they also have a tendency to throw out seemingly random answers, perhaps hoping for some recognition for participation, although to be fair, randomness would entail a fifty percent chance of being right whereas they are almost always wrong.
The bottom line is that I am being significantly held back by having to share my lectures with foreigners and our universities should offer Australian-only classes so that we can study at a faster rate. The other major point is that catering to these ethnics is lowering the overall quality of education provision.
I am having trouble with Steam again. I can log in offline, but it will not let me log in online. I tried to reset my password, but it would not let me, it would not accept the answer to my secret question. I have asked Steam Support to reset the password, but rather than simply do as I ask they insist on a lengthy series of email exchanges and a system info output. Why? All they ever do is tell you to reinstall and reset the password; they have no other answers to anything.
I have a contract starting on Monday, it is in the same division of the same department as one of the long term contract offers I had a while ago. I am hoping that I will impress them enough to get this other one happening again. It was advertised in the government notice of vacancies and they did not like any of the applicants, it was advertised in the public press but they got no responses, it was taken to recruitment agencies and I am the candidate that they got offered (indeed I was the only candidate put forward by the largest agency in town) but they then said that they had to get approval to actually progress the position. What does that mean? You advertised it three times without permission to fill the job?
I had a health scare recently; I had a choking problem. My father said that he had the same problem and it was only resolved when he lost weight, and further that the only way he lost weight was through starvation and totally no bread and no potato. ARRGGGGHHHH my two most favourite foods! Anyhow, I have been pretty good with this, I have stopped eating so much bread and am only having flat bread to make 'roll-ups' for lunch, I have reduced the number of times I eat a day, and I have reduced the amount that I eat at each meal. Almost immediately I could swallow better and have had only a few minor issues there. I have not noticed being any thinner though and was whinging about how no amount of exercise and diet got me any skinnier (remember walking the entire length of East Coast Park (two to three hours) every day for six months and not losing any weight?) HOWEVER; my underwear is all suddenly too loose. This must mean something...
Tuesday, November 2
So Many Thoughts
I haven't blogged for a while, mostly because I just haven't bothered 'netting, whenever I have turned my pc on I have played. But I have had quite a few things that I wanted to write about and so I thought that I should get them off my chest.
The Kommunists
Spider Wasps
More Kommunists, specifically perverting justice
The SGX attempt to buy the ASX, second bite of the cherry
Elders selling their share in Rural Bank for 27M
Bob Brown's comments on SG being an oppressive dictatorship
Councillors
Rare Earth
Tax Returns, or rather the effect tax has upon returns
Window Dressing
Let's see if I can get through them all.
Australia, like most Western nations, employs far too many public servants. One in three people that work in AU work for government; our income tax is one third of our pay, so effectively one third is taken out of two people's pay and given to the third who is told that he was paid three thirds but one third was withheld for tax. Our non-income taxes pay for all of government's non-salary expenses. These bureaucrats don't do anything; for example, Health SA employs 35,000 people but there are only 9,000 hospital beds. Do you think that there are three and a half people to every bed? No way! There is only one nurse for every ten beds, one doctors for every thirty, one ancilliary for every ten, the rest are all administrating! Most tax dollars in Australia are spent on welfare, but for every dollar actually given to a recipient, four are spent on salaries for bureaucrats to make sure that one dollar isn't being ripped off!
So when the South Australian Treasurer says he is going to get rid of a couple of thousand leaches I think it is a small start, SA could get rid of 90,000 of them! But four thousand of these bureaucrats take to the streets and march. They have fire engines leading the parade; we pay our taxes to have them on station ready for emergencies, not being used as political props.
Spider Wasps
Ichy subject, I know.
The other day a woman in the next office (with the door open) made some statement about Aboriginals bludging at white man's expense. I thought of popping my head in and saying that she could get into trouble for making comments like that. Then I thought; only if someone that didn't agree with her heard it.
Then it reminded me of spider wasps...
If you have ever watched Discovery Channel (or Animal Planet or any of a dozen doco channels you can get on cable) then you have seen a wasp hunting a spider. Maybe you saw the spider behave in fear and try to escape.
Funny thing is that apparently if you put the spider in a glass cage in a white laboratory, i.e. out of his environment, and release the wasp into the cage, then the spider will hunt, and kill, the wasp.
Freed of her programming she knows that she has the upper hand. It is only because she has been 'programmed' into submission that the parasitic wasp can have her way.
This is the world that we live in.
This is Socialism, Feminism, and Humanism.
Perfectly, to a 'T'.
More Kommunists.
And this time perverting justice.
In civilised nations you are innocent until proven guilty.
Not so in Australia.
Specifically whit regards to unions accusing employers of OHSW breaches. The legal onus is on the employer to prove his/her/its innocence.
That is sick.
But it is specifically the situation that the Labor premier of NSW wants to keep.
The SGX is trying to buy the ASX.
That is to say the Singapore stock exchange is trying to buy the Australian stock exchange. They initially called it a 'merger' to make it sound more pallatable, but I don't think it is still going to be swallowed.
Funny thing is though; they tried something like this before, well more the real merger thing, with the two exchanges connecting live and traders being able to access the other. It didn't work, well to be more precise, it didn't get used.
This time around it is really just one company taking over another.
Bob Brown, our resident 'Green', that should, of course, be 'Red', doesn't llike it. His speech on the subject accused Singapore of being a totallitarian and oppressive state and therefore the deal was no go for him.
I think he lives in la la land, but he has proven that often enough.
Elders is selling its share in Rural Bank. For a mere $27M. Well, that may be all it's worth. Two things get me about this; firstly my total amazement that Elders is still alive, and secondly their fascination with selling everything that makes money so that they can keep running the things that lose money!
Rare Earth.
What can I say?
Well, something it appears.
Okay, the name means minerals that are scattered, as in 'rarefied', not actually rare as such. And that they all come from China, and the evil Chinese have decided to ration them so that they don't run out. How dare they think like that.
What it makes me think though, is what did we do before China opened up and traded with the world? Did we not have any 'rare earths'? Did we get them from somewhere else, but they were more expensive so we have forgotten how? Did we not build high tech equipment until China gave us these magical ingredients?
All seem pretty stupid to me.
Tax Returns
Ah yes, I made a model (that's what I do, remember?) for currency trading. Highly compounding, daily trading, each week at a set level before ramping up a level for the next week, taking out tax and safety margin each month, with tax rates, return rates, risk levels, etc built in.
I ran it to find out the starting funds I would need, at a conservative leveraging level (half what is common in the market), with a conservative rate of return (less than half what is common in the market), with a conservative risk level and a very safe safety margin withdrawal rate, blah blah blah, in order to find out what starting funds I would need to get a given return for a year.
The next bit is where it gets exciting.
I then changed the tax rate to SG to see the effect, since as you know, I am partial to moving there (again). The result was astounding; the return increased tenfold!
I then put in SG's currency trading tax rate (as opposed to ordinary company tax rate), the return increased another fourfold!
The funniest thing is; that although the tax rate was going down, the amount of tax being paid was going up! At 20% tax versus Australia's 30% tax SG would actually receive five times more tax, this is because it allowed a much faster rate of compounding, therefore far more profit was made. And by halving the tax rate for currency trading SG would double the tax it received.
I did some further modelling to find out what tax level would actually maximise the amount of tax a country would receive; 9.05% is what I got, so Singapore's 10% is not far off the mark.
Window Dressing
This is a funny one, the US SEC went public with an accusation that some accounting firms, they named Lehman Bros, were temporarily selling assets to 'cook' the books and improve companies' credit ratings. What I got from this was that they named Lehman, of all the companies that you could kick, they kick one that is down, in fact truly dead! Why not shame one that is still trading?
And I am not going to bother about councillors.
The Kommunists
Spider Wasps
More Kommunists, specifically perverting justice
The SGX attempt to buy the ASX, second bite of the cherry
Elders selling their share in Rural Bank for 27M
Bob Brown's comments on SG being an oppressive dictatorship
Councillors
Rare Earth
Tax Returns, or rather the effect tax has upon returns
Window Dressing
Let's see if I can get through them all.
Australia, like most Western nations, employs far too many public servants. One in three people that work in AU work for government; our income tax is one third of our pay, so effectively one third is taken out of two people's pay and given to the third who is told that he was paid three thirds but one third was withheld for tax. Our non-income taxes pay for all of government's non-salary expenses. These bureaucrats don't do anything; for example, Health SA employs 35,000 people but there are only 9,000 hospital beds. Do you think that there are three and a half people to every bed? No way! There is only one nurse for every ten beds, one doctors for every thirty, one ancilliary for every ten, the rest are all administrating! Most tax dollars in Australia are spent on welfare, but for every dollar actually given to a recipient, four are spent on salaries for bureaucrats to make sure that one dollar isn't being ripped off!
So when the South Australian Treasurer says he is going to get rid of a couple of thousand leaches I think it is a small start, SA could get rid of 90,000 of them! But four thousand of these bureaucrats take to the streets and march. They have fire engines leading the parade; we pay our taxes to have them on station ready for emergencies, not being used as political props.
Spider Wasps
Ichy subject, I know.
The other day a woman in the next office (with the door open) made some statement about Aboriginals bludging at white man's expense. I thought of popping my head in and saying that she could get into trouble for making comments like that. Then I thought; only if someone that didn't agree with her heard it.
Then it reminded me of spider wasps...
If you have ever watched Discovery Channel (or Animal Planet or any of a dozen doco channels you can get on cable) then you have seen a wasp hunting a spider. Maybe you saw the spider behave in fear and try to escape.
Funny thing is that apparently if you put the spider in a glass cage in a white laboratory, i.e. out of his environment, and release the wasp into the cage, then the spider will hunt, and kill, the wasp.
Freed of her programming she knows that she has the upper hand. It is only because she has been 'programmed' into submission that the parasitic wasp can have her way.
This is the world that we live in.
This is Socialism, Feminism, and Humanism.
Perfectly, to a 'T'.
More Kommunists.
And this time perverting justice.
In civilised nations you are innocent until proven guilty.
Not so in Australia.
Specifically whit regards to unions accusing employers of OHSW breaches. The legal onus is on the employer to prove his/her/its innocence.
That is sick.
But it is specifically the situation that the Labor premier of NSW wants to keep.
The SGX is trying to buy the ASX.
That is to say the Singapore stock exchange is trying to buy the Australian stock exchange. They initially called it a 'merger' to make it sound more pallatable, but I don't think it is still going to be swallowed.
Funny thing is though; they tried something like this before, well more the real merger thing, with the two exchanges connecting live and traders being able to access the other. It didn't work, well to be more precise, it didn't get used.
This time around it is really just one company taking over another.
Bob Brown, our resident 'Green', that should, of course, be 'Red', doesn't llike it. His speech on the subject accused Singapore of being a totallitarian and oppressive state and therefore the deal was no go for him.
I think he lives in la la land, but he has proven that often enough.
Elders is selling its share in Rural Bank. For a mere $27M. Well, that may be all it's worth. Two things get me about this; firstly my total amazement that Elders is still alive, and secondly their fascination with selling everything that makes money so that they can keep running the things that lose money!
Rare Earth.
What can I say?
Well, something it appears.
Okay, the name means minerals that are scattered, as in 'rarefied', not actually rare as such. And that they all come from China, and the evil Chinese have decided to ration them so that they don't run out. How dare they think like that.
What it makes me think though, is what did we do before China opened up and traded with the world? Did we not have any 'rare earths'? Did we get them from somewhere else, but they were more expensive so we have forgotten how? Did we not build high tech equipment until China gave us these magical ingredients?
All seem pretty stupid to me.
Tax Returns
Ah yes, I made a model (that's what I do, remember?) for currency trading. Highly compounding, daily trading, each week at a set level before ramping up a level for the next week, taking out tax and safety margin each month, with tax rates, return rates, risk levels, etc built in.
I ran it to find out the starting funds I would need, at a conservative leveraging level (half what is common in the market), with a conservative rate of return (less than half what is common in the market), with a conservative risk level and a very safe safety margin withdrawal rate, blah blah blah, in order to find out what starting funds I would need to get a given return for a year.
The next bit is where it gets exciting.
I then changed the tax rate to SG to see the effect, since as you know, I am partial to moving there (again). The result was astounding; the return increased tenfold!
I then put in SG's currency trading tax rate (as opposed to ordinary company tax rate), the return increased another fourfold!
The funniest thing is; that although the tax rate was going down, the amount of tax being paid was going up! At 20% tax versus Australia's 30% tax SG would actually receive five times more tax, this is because it allowed a much faster rate of compounding, therefore far more profit was made. And by halving the tax rate for currency trading SG would double the tax it received.
I did some further modelling to find out what tax level would actually maximise the amount of tax a country would receive; 9.05% is what I got, so Singapore's 10% is not far off the mark.
Window Dressing
This is a funny one, the US SEC went public with an accusation that some accounting firms, they named Lehman Bros, were temporarily selling assets to 'cook' the books and improve companies' credit ratings. What I got from this was that they named Lehman, of all the companies that you could kick, they kick one that is down, in fact truly dead! Why not shame one that is still trading?
And I am not going to bother about councillors.
Tuesday, October 12
Time to Blog
I have been slack on blogging the last few months, a sign of the stress I have been under, but I should keep it up, after all - the main purpose of this was to document my journey to living permanently in Singapore and I am not there yet.
Okay, first up, I get a new contract, great rate and a long project. It stalls. It is still out there, but lagging a few months. I get another contract offer, it hangs for a couple of weeks whilst people are off sick, then it goes belly up. It is a month and a half now. Then I get a new contract, the rate sucks, it is a tad over half what I got before the GFC but anything to pay the rent right now. It gets delayed, first by two weeks, which I don't mind as I have exams, then by another weeks. Then on the day that I get the call delaying it I get another offering a short one to fill this week.
So I spent today at a radio station. Office to myself off in some quiet corner, only five minutes walk from home. And the rate is a little better.
Originally it was because they couldn't roll their financial reporting model over for their new year. They have a UK owner so their year is different. I look at it with the Financial Controller, "seems like ten, maybe fifteen minutes work" after all, wrapping a formula inside an IF statement to deal with there being no 'previous period' data at the start of the year would do it. I get to work, I uncover that once this problem is resolved there are others that will become visible, previously hidden by the lack of data flowing through the model. I have a good look at this, at least for fifteen to twenty minutes, I undo the previous work and I make one change to one formula in one cell on one sheet. Problem solved.
Fun
But then I ask the philosophical question; you have previous period data, it is from the previous year but it could be shown, so why not? They like the sound of this, so I do it. Then I correct a few formulae errors through the model, simplify things, cut out some redundancy. Take it a lot further in one day then they thought that they would get in a week. But a chat reveals that there is a lot more work that they would like if I am willing to stay the rest of the week. Who am I to say no?
But the repeated false starts of this were echoed at uni. I have received three different course schedules for next semester, each time the reception ask me not to enrol as it will change again. I get told that it is finalised and that the last one I received is right to go, but the next day I get another one. I ask reception to enrol me in the two evening courses, whatever they may be. It doesn't happen. I meet the IT guy at the desk on my last day there last semester, he promises to do this. It doesn't happen. So I am using the printed form method.
Paul and Cheng fly off to Singapore this week. They will spend a month there, one week will be in MY seeing Cheng's family. The last two weeks staying with Jaz, Cheng's sister in SG. I was thinking of flying over for their last weekend there but I suspect that I will be too busy and so will drop that idea.
Have only been half watching the post-election games; Gillard seems to be lying and conniving at every chance. But the main thing was that I have noticed several times that the text stories on Foxtel's news multichoice have been very strongly, indeed outright aggressively, worded pro-Labor, pro-Gillard and anti-liberal, anti-Abbott.
So much for fair, balanced reporting.
People try and engage me in political debates and I respond only partially. I always come back to "I really don't care anymore, the country is going down the gurgler and I have made the decision to leave". This even happened with my step-mother at the agricultural show when she was getting upset at most of the orchids being foreign and I made some comment about non-Australian not worrying me and she responded with "you're already half in Singapore though". So true. I admired the beauty of those that I like without any consideration for their botanical political correctness.
Oh, yeah, exams last week. I expect to come top in both my subjects. The economics exam was outright FUN! The management accounting was, true to form, all cost accounting but not as bad as it could have been and my decision to actually revise paid off. I won't know the actual results for a while, but I am confident enough to judge that I can take on a heavier load and undertake three subjects next semester.
Okay, first up, I get a new contract, great rate and a long project. It stalls. It is still out there, but lagging a few months. I get another contract offer, it hangs for a couple of weeks whilst people are off sick, then it goes belly up. It is a month and a half now. Then I get a new contract, the rate sucks, it is a tad over half what I got before the GFC but anything to pay the rent right now. It gets delayed, first by two weeks, which I don't mind as I have exams, then by another weeks. Then on the day that I get the call delaying it I get another offering a short one to fill this week.
So I spent today at a radio station. Office to myself off in some quiet corner, only five minutes walk from home. And the rate is a little better.
Originally it was because they couldn't roll their financial reporting model over for their new year. They have a UK owner so their year is different. I look at it with the Financial Controller, "seems like ten, maybe fifteen minutes work" after all, wrapping a formula inside an IF statement to deal with there being no 'previous period' data at the start of the year would do it. I get to work, I uncover that once this problem is resolved there are others that will become visible, previously hidden by the lack of data flowing through the model. I have a good look at this, at least for fifteen to twenty minutes, I undo the previous work and I make one change to one formula in one cell on one sheet. Problem solved.
Fun
But then I ask the philosophical question; you have previous period data, it is from the previous year but it could be shown, so why not? They like the sound of this, so I do it. Then I correct a few formulae errors through the model, simplify things, cut out some redundancy. Take it a lot further in one day then they thought that they would get in a week. But a chat reveals that there is a lot more work that they would like if I am willing to stay the rest of the week. Who am I to say no?
But the repeated false starts of this were echoed at uni. I have received three different course schedules for next semester, each time the reception ask me not to enrol as it will change again. I get told that it is finalised and that the last one I received is right to go, but the next day I get another one. I ask reception to enrol me in the two evening courses, whatever they may be. It doesn't happen. I meet the IT guy at the desk on my last day there last semester, he promises to do this. It doesn't happen. So I am using the printed form method.
Paul and Cheng fly off to Singapore this week. They will spend a month there, one week will be in MY seeing Cheng's family. The last two weeks staying with Jaz, Cheng's sister in SG. I was thinking of flying over for their last weekend there but I suspect that I will be too busy and so will drop that idea.
Have only been half watching the post-election games; Gillard seems to be lying and conniving at every chance. But the main thing was that I have noticed several times that the text stories on Foxtel's news multichoice have been very strongly, indeed outright aggressively, worded pro-Labor, pro-Gillard and anti-liberal, anti-Abbott.
So much for fair, balanced reporting.
People try and engage me in political debates and I respond only partially. I always come back to "I really don't care anymore, the country is going down the gurgler and I have made the decision to leave". This even happened with my step-mother at the agricultural show when she was getting upset at most of the orchids being foreign and I made some comment about non-Australian not worrying me and she responded with "you're already half in Singapore though". So true. I admired the beauty of those that I like without any consideration for their botanical political correctness.
Oh, yeah, exams last week. I expect to come top in both my subjects. The economics exam was outright FUN! The management accounting was, true to form, all cost accounting but not as bad as it could have been and my decision to actually revise paid off. I won't know the actual results for a while, but I am confident enough to judge that I can take on a heavier load and undertake three subjects next semester.
Friday, October 1
Keyboards
I surrender, I give in, I give up.
Microsoft wins.
I can no longer tolerate having to constantly change the fracken keyboard setting because Microsoft Vista cannot understand that just because I speak English English, as opposed to American English, that I do still us a US keyboard, and not what Microsoft seems to think is an English keyboard - which Microsoft is adamant has the '@' and '"' signs transposed, so my email addresses always turn out someone"somewhere.
So I have turned the language back to US English since that is the ONLY way to get Vista to keep the keyboard setting as 'US'. Seriously, if my language is set to English (UK, Australian, or Singaporean) the keyboard reading goes stupid. Thank you morons at Redmond. Now I will have to constantly be resetting the dictionary when I use Word.
ACCA v CPA
Google it, see what you get.
I get either English people considering their options 'cos they are moving to Australia, Asian students chatting amongst themselves with no idea of the facts, or USers not understanding how the world works outside their own small universe.
I have been pondering it for a few days and have come to some conclusions.
1) ACCA is a British organisation. Yeah, I know, they 'claim' to be the biggest international accounting association, but that is because they are the only one that accepts international membership per se. ACCA is not recognised anywhere but Britain, if you come to Australia then you will have to join either CPA Australia or ICA Australia. The latter has a relationship with ACCA but is less than half the size of CPA Australia.
2) ACCA offers no real benefits for me vis-a-vis working in the Orient. CPA Australia has a joint membership arrangement with CPA Singapore, and the legislatively mandated body in both Singapore and Hong Kong is called 'CPA'.
3) The total world membership of ACCA is less than the combined memberships of CPA Australia and ICA Australia, so they aren't that big after all.
All of which totals up to ACCA being an irrelevance.
With regards to the snob value. There is a tradition in Australia of CAs thinking that they are better than CPAs. It is based on their requirement for one or two extra subjects when studying, so it limits your choice of electives in your degree, but other than that, no diff. In my experience, having had to clean up after both for twenty years, I find them, in the main, equally incompetent.
ACCA also requires one more subject; the MPA I am doing qualifies for both CPA and CA, but not for ACCA - for that I need to do advanced management accounting. Now given that 'management accounting' in Australia is actually not management accounting, rather it is cost accounting, and given that I do work in that area, I am considering doing that extra subject anyhow. But having done that, I then see no reason to apply for ACCA membership. As I have said, it seems irrelevant, meaningless, of no benefit.
Some of the English lecturers speak highly of it, and say that it is big in Asia, but I cannot find any proof of that, and I strongly suspect their prejudices are due to it being and English body. All I can find is that membership will work for you in Britain, but in any other country you will still need to join the local body.
It is my birthday next week, the day is sandwiched between two exams so I will be spending my birthday studying said management accounting. Not that my birthdays mean anything to me, I gave up on that back in my mid twenties.
I have postponed starting my next contract until after this exam week. They did want me to start earlier, but were having trouble with line managers all going on leave (long weekend coming) and so I pointed out that I had exams and would not mind postponing the start - my consultant at the employment agency called back within ten minutes to say the offer had been accepted.
I just got three assignments back. A distinction for one, a high distinction (well, 100%) for the other economics one, but a strangely low mark for management accounting. Even though the lecturer could only point out one error when we went through it (I did find a second later on my own), still I only got a credit.
Now why is that?
I was checking SG blogs the other day, ones that I have had bookmarked for years and used to regularly check, and noticed that several have gone quite stale, as in the authors are no longer posting. Big names in the SG blogsphere too. I guess people grow, change, and move on.
One of my best friends and his Chinese Malaysian wife and their two children will be visiting SG later this month. I was pondering flying over for a weekend whilst they are there. I have enough points in my KrisFlier account for one leg of the trip. It would be a chance to catch up with friends (my SG friends that is). Funny thing; I have more friends in SG than in AU.
Microsoft wins.
I can no longer tolerate having to constantly change the fracken keyboard setting because Microsoft Vista cannot understand that just because I speak English English, as opposed to American English, that I do still us a US keyboard, and not what Microsoft seems to think is an English keyboard - which Microsoft is adamant has the '@' and '"' signs transposed, so my email addresses always turn out someone"somewhere.
So I have turned the language back to US English since that is the ONLY way to get Vista to keep the keyboard setting as 'US'. Seriously, if my language is set to English (UK, Australian, or Singaporean) the keyboard reading goes stupid. Thank you morons at Redmond. Now I will have to constantly be resetting the dictionary when I use Word.
ACCA v CPA
Google it, see what you get.
I get either English people considering their options 'cos they are moving to Australia, Asian students chatting amongst themselves with no idea of the facts, or USers not understanding how the world works outside their own small universe.
I have been pondering it for a few days and have come to some conclusions.
1) ACCA is a British organisation. Yeah, I know, they 'claim' to be the biggest international accounting association, but that is because they are the only one that accepts international membership per se. ACCA is not recognised anywhere but Britain, if you come to Australia then you will have to join either CPA Australia or ICA Australia. The latter has a relationship with ACCA but is less than half the size of CPA Australia.
2) ACCA offers no real benefits for me vis-a-vis working in the Orient. CPA Australia has a joint membership arrangement with CPA Singapore, and the legislatively mandated body in both Singapore and Hong Kong is called 'CPA'.
3) The total world membership of ACCA is less than the combined memberships of CPA Australia and ICA Australia, so they aren't that big after all.
All of which totals up to ACCA being an irrelevance.
With regards to the snob value. There is a tradition in Australia of CAs thinking that they are better than CPAs. It is based on their requirement for one or two extra subjects when studying, so it limits your choice of electives in your degree, but other than that, no diff. In my experience, having had to clean up after both for twenty years, I find them, in the main, equally incompetent.
ACCA also requires one more subject; the MPA I am doing qualifies for both CPA and CA, but not for ACCA - for that I need to do advanced management accounting. Now given that 'management accounting' in Australia is actually not management accounting, rather it is cost accounting, and given that I do work in that area, I am considering doing that extra subject anyhow. But having done that, I then see no reason to apply for ACCA membership. As I have said, it seems irrelevant, meaningless, of no benefit.
Some of the English lecturers speak highly of it, and say that it is big in Asia, but I cannot find any proof of that, and I strongly suspect their prejudices are due to it being and English body. All I can find is that membership will work for you in Britain, but in any other country you will still need to join the local body.
It is my birthday next week, the day is sandwiched between two exams so I will be spending my birthday studying said management accounting. Not that my birthdays mean anything to me, I gave up on that back in my mid twenties.
I have postponed starting my next contract until after this exam week. They did want me to start earlier, but were having trouble with line managers all going on leave (long weekend coming) and so I pointed out that I had exams and would not mind postponing the start - my consultant at the employment agency called back within ten minutes to say the offer had been accepted.
I just got three assignments back. A distinction for one, a high distinction (well, 100%) for the other economics one, but a strangely low mark for management accounting. Even though the lecturer could only point out one error when we went through it (I did find a second later on my own), still I only got a credit.
Now why is that?
I was checking SG blogs the other day, ones that I have had bookmarked for years and used to regularly check, and noticed that several have gone quite stale, as in the authors are no longer posting. Big names in the SG blogsphere too. I guess people grow, change, and move on.
One of my best friends and his Chinese Malaysian wife and their two children will be visiting SG later this month. I was pondering flying over for a weekend whilst they are there. I have enough points in my KrisFlier account for one leg of the trip. It would be a chance to catch up with friends (my SG friends that is). Funny thing; I have more friends in SG than in AU.
Tuesday, September 7
More Green
What I forgot to put in the last post was what I thought the outcomes would be.
I feel that if Labour gets (sorry 'Labor') enough indies then they will deliver a short term government. Firstly with the two 'green' indies they only need two of the three country indies, therefore there is a high possibility of one of them going Conservative. And then it will only take one by-election to change government, because you can guarantee that if any borderline left or indie seat goes up for by-election it will go to the right strongly.
However, if the Conservatives get the three country indies, then they will only pick up any by-elections as well, and, the next full election they will get one or two of the three country indie seats and at least one of the green seats. So they will only get stronger and thus they will deliver a longer term government.
Still on politics, but SG not AU.
Senior Minister Goh has flagged the idea of approaching 50,000 of the 500,000 permanent residents in Singapore and strong-arming them into taking citizenship.
I think that this is a no-win situation, specifically a lose-lose-lose.
Firstly, half a million PRs is a lot, just as a general observation, for a country of four and a bit million citizens. I know that there are going on a million foreign workers and a few hundred thousand tourists at any one time, but these PRs are the business expertise that built Singapore's thriving economy. If he is planning on approaching some of them, then I am betting that it will be the better, or the longer term, one tenth. These people may have good reasons for not taking citizenship and by cajoling them Singapore will probably drive them away. And it makes a mockery of the term 'Permanent' Resident, you know, the kind that isn't permanent. So these PRs will probably leave, they lose, and Singapore loses them, and the SG government loses face over a failed policy.
Mind you, I would like to see the demographics. And I would also like to see the results of any interview based survey on why they didn't take citizenship.
Mind you, I could be reading this wrong, maybe they are the Malaysian Chinese PRs? I know two of those that took citizenship a few months ago (well, one's husband did, she kept her MY citizenship and SG PR-ship). In this case maybe a squabble between Chinese? But what I see in my Malaysian Chinese friends living PR in Singapore is that they don't like MY, but they have so much family there that they feel compelled to return. And also they like that they can work for good money in SG and buy a good house in MY to retire to. Dual citizenship would resolve that, but create its own problems. So in this case I see them all leaving SG, moving to Jahore Bahru, and commuting to SG to work. This will free up a lot of HBDs, forcing their price way down, and it will move a lot of grocery shopping over the bridge, forcing prices way down. Maybe both are good things, but will it achieve much else?
I feel that if Labour gets (sorry 'Labor') enough indies then they will deliver a short term government. Firstly with the two 'green' indies they only need two of the three country indies, therefore there is a high possibility of one of them going Conservative. And then it will only take one by-election to change government, because you can guarantee that if any borderline left or indie seat goes up for by-election it will go to the right strongly.
However, if the Conservatives get the three country indies, then they will only pick up any by-elections as well, and, the next full election they will get one or two of the three country indie seats and at least one of the green seats. So they will only get stronger and thus they will deliver a longer term government.
Still on politics, but SG not AU.
Senior Minister Goh has flagged the idea of approaching 50,000 of the 500,000 permanent residents in Singapore and strong-arming them into taking citizenship.
I think that this is a no-win situation, specifically a lose-lose-lose.
Firstly, half a million PRs is a lot, just as a general observation, for a country of four and a bit million citizens. I know that there are going on a million foreign workers and a few hundred thousand tourists at any one time, but these PRs are the business expertise that built Singapore's thriving economy. If he is planning on approaching some of them, then I am betting that it will be the better, or the longer term, one tenth. These people may have good reasons for not taking citizenship and by cajoling them Singapore will probably drive them away. And it makes a mockery of the term 'Permanent' Resident, you know, the kind that isn't permanent. So these PRs will probably leave, they lose, and Singapore loses them, and the SG government loses face over a failed policy.
Mind you, I would like to see the demographics. And I would also like to see the results of any interview based survey on why they didn't take citizenship.
Mind you, I could be reading this wrong, maybe they are the Malaysian Chinese PRs? I know two of those that took citizenship a few months ago (well, one's husband did, she kept her MY citizenship and SG PR-ship). In this case maybe a squabble between Chinese? But what I see in my Malaysian Chinese friends living PR in Singapore is that they don't like MY, but they have so much family there that they feel compelled to return. And also they like that they can work for good money in SG and buy a good house in MY to retire to. Dual citizenship would resolve that, but create its own problems. So in this case I see them all leaving SG, moving to Jahore Bahru, and commuting to SG to work. This will free up a lot of HBDs, forcing their price way down, and it will move a lot of grocery shopping over the bridge, forcing prices way down. Maybe both are good things, but will it achieve much else?
Post Election Greens
Still no government.
We are meant to hear today from the three independents that have been holding the country to ransom. As in, they said that they would deliver their final decision today. So I wanted to write this before I find out what way they go, then I can see how well I went.
I think that they will back Socialism.
These are my reasons:
1. Costings.
The Conservatives' costings were savaged by the Civil Service. Despite lots of experienced commentators reminding people that the government bureaucrats are not very good with numbers the majority of journalists still believe that 'Treasury' are somehow sacrosanct. Despite Treasury using a fallible interest rate projection, despite Treasury applying current government policy to the Conservatives' budget to warp it. And despite the Socialists' 43 billion dollar broadband project not being included in their costings. The independents still made lots of comments about the Conservatives being fiscally irresponsible. Yet after adjusting for all of the smoke the Conservatives will deliver nearly a billion in surplus versus the Socialists delivering more than four billion in deficit annually. In short the independents are economically naive.
2. Politics.
The independents come from seats that the Conservatives will contest and may take from them, so any alliance would be fraught with danger. The Socialists will never get those seats and so they will welcome the independents and value them, their alliance would be far more secure.
3. Personalities.
The three independents are all renegades from the minor party in the Conservative Coalition. They have severe issues with the Nationals' leadership; they will never sit well together.
4. Politics 2.
The independents have all made quite a lot of leftist sounding policy statements; therefore it seems more likely for them to side with the left. An alliance of Agrarian Socialism, Environmental Socialism, and Union Socialism.
In the meantime, they have been holding the country to ransom, to ensure that both sides of politics would agree to a range of demands prior to their making a decision. That is to say; they laid out a list of demands, and demanded both sides to affirm these, then they would decide which side they would support.
One of the 'Environmental' Socialists, as opposed to the Agrarian Socialists, and I put 'Environmental' in single quotes because he is a member of the Greens and they are red not green in this country, demanded a hospital as the price for his support. The Conservatives offered him one billion dollars, the Socialists offered him one quarter of a billion, with ongoing funding - which is to say a billion dollars but with a schedule. He then went public with both offers and condemned the Conservative offer as irresponsible.
The Agrarian Socialists also published the Conservatives' offers and costings. Which the Conservatives had only given them on the understanding that the content of the negotiations remain confidential.
So complete under-handedness and untrustworthiness on the left.
What's new?
We are meant to hear today from the three independents that have been holding the country to ransom. As in, they said that they would deliver their final decision today. So I wanted to write this before I find out what way they go, then I can see how well I went.
I think that they will back Socialism.
These are my reasons:
1. Costings.
The Conservatives' costings were savaged by the Civil Service. Despite lots of experienced commentators reminding people that the government bureaucrats are not very good with numbers the majority of journalists still believe that 'Treasury' are somehow sacrosanct. Despite Treasury using a fallible interest rate projection, despite Treasury applying current government policy to the Conservatives' budget to warp it. And despite the Socialists' 43 billion dollar broadband project not being included in their costings. The independents still made lots of comments about the Conservatives being fiscally irresponsible. Yet after adjusting for all of the smoke the Conservatives will deliver nearly a billion in surplus versus the Socialists delivering more than four billion in deficit annually. In short the independents are economically naive.
2. Politics.
The independents come from seats that the Conservatives will contest and may take from them, so any alliance would be fraught with danger. The Socialists will never get those seats and so they will welcome the independents and value them, their alliance would be far more secure.
3. Personalities.
The three independents are all renegades from the minor party in the Conservative Coalition. They have severe issues with the Nationals' leadership; they will never sit well together.
4. Politics 2.
The independents have all made quite a lot of leftist sounding policy statements; therefore it seems more likely for them to side with the left. An alliance of Agrarian Socialism, Environmental Socialism, and Union Socialism.
In the meantime, they have been holding the country to ransom, to ensure that both sides of politics would agree to a range of demands prior to their making a decision. That is to say; they laid out a list of demands, and demanded both sides to affirm these, then they would decide which side they would support.
One of the 'Environmental' Socialists, as opposed to the Agrarian Socialists, and I put 'Environmental' in single quotes because he is a member of the Greens and they are red not green in this country, demanded a hospital as the price for his support. The Conservatives offered him one billion dollars, the Socialists offered him one quarter of a billion, with ongoing funding - which is to say a billion dollars but with a schedule. He then went public with both offers and condemned the Conservative offer as irresponsible.
The Agrarian Socialists also published the Conservatives' offers and costings. Which the Conservatives had only given them on the understanding that the content of the negotiations remain confidential.
So complete under-handedness and untrustworthiness on the left.
What's new?
Monday, August 23
Post Election Blues
We had an election on Saturday, by midnight on Saturday we had a projected result of Socialists 73, Conservatives 73, Independents 4. However 4 seats were still in doubt. They had all Sunday to keep counting, but it hasn't changed. What have they been doing? Concentrating on counting the safe seats?
One of the independents is a 'Green', which in this country means a 'Red'; there is nothing pro-environment about them, they are just a cover for the Socialist Alliance (Socialist Workers Party (full of students, not workers) and the Socialist Party of Australia). There is no CPA (Communist Party of Australia) anymore, they disbanded; but they were pure Maoist - they all moved into the left wing of the Labor Party, you can recognise the Maoists in the Labor Party because they learn to speak Mandarin, like our recent ex-Prime Minister.
Given that the other three independents are all ex-Nationals (the minor party in the conservative coalition) then we would normally expect them to make a pact with the Coalition. But remember that here in South Australia the National Party member joined with the Labor Party. Yes, at the next election her voters turned on her ferociously. Those three ex-Nationals have said that they will move as a bloc, whilst the 'Green' has said that he will support the left.
But right now no one has a majority, and one major party will have to get three of four independents to form government.
We probably have a week or two of negotiations before we get any outcome.
I did not say last post, but I am back on Spellforce 1. I realised what I had to do to get past that point and went back to it. You see I had been following a strategy suggested in a walk through, rather than my usual play style. He had said that if you build up the Orcs on the left and then go kill the boss monster the little monsters will pour out of the Rift in a flood to the west and destroy your Orc base and that there was nothing you could do about it. You would be left to build a Troll base in the east to take the map with. His suggestion was to run through the Rift, kill the boss on your own, the horde have nothing to destroy so you can then build both bases.
Well, my strategy, which worked, was to build the Orc base, use an Orc army to fight through the Rift and kill the boss, and then build the Troll base. The demon horde flooded out of the Rift to my Orc base alright, but apparently this walk through author is not too good on his defensive strategies because the horde never got through my tower line. Well, more of a tower field.
Turned out to be a pretty boring map really.
I am now two or three maps beyond that point.
I am still unemployed, by Thursday last week I was suspecting that I might spend this week not working. I have two assignments (both nearly finished) and a test this week, so will be busy. But I would like some positive cashflow.
I have been back in Australia for a six month contract, two months off over xmas new year, a three month contract, and then a four month contract, so a year. A year that I could have been in Singapore and working if only I had accepted that last offer. I regret that so much now. Hubris; it has definitely been my downfall.
One of the independents is a 'Green', which in this country means a 'Red'; there is nothing pro-environment about them, they are just a cover for the Socialist Alliance (Socialist Workers Party (full of students, not workers) and the Socialist Party of Australia). There is no CPA (Communist Party of Australia) anymore, they disbanded; but they were pure Maoist - they all moved into the left wing of the Labor Party, you can recognise the Maoists in the Labor Party because they learn to speak Mandarin, like our recent ex-Prime Minister.
Given that the other three independents are all ex-Nationals (the minor party in the conservative coalition) then we would normally expect them to make a pact with the Coalition. But remember that here in South Australia the National Party member joined with the Labor Party. Yes, at the next election her voters turned on her ferociously. Those three ex-Nationals have said that they will move as a bloc, whilst the 'Green' has said that he will support the left.
But right now no one has a majority, and one major party will have to get three of four independents to form government.
We probably have a week or two of negotiations before we get any outcome.
I did not say last post, but I am back on Spellforce 1. I realised what I had to do to get past that point and went back to it. You see I had been following a strategy suggested in a walk through, rather than my usual play style. He had said that if you build up the Orcs on the left and then go kill the boss monster the little monsters will pour out of the Rift in a flood to the west and destroy your Orc base and that there was nothing you could do about it. You would be left to build a Troll base in the east to take the map with. His suggestion was to run through the Rift, kill the boss on your own, the horde have nothing to destroy so you can then build both bases.
Well, my strategy, which worked, was to build the Orc base, use an Orc army to fight through the Rift and kill the boss, and then build the Troll base. The demon horde flooded out of the Rift to my Orc base alright, but apparently this walk through author is not too good on his defensive strategies because the horde never got through my tower line. Well, more of a tower field.
Turned out to be a pretty boring map really.
I am now two or three maps beyond that point.
I am still unemployed, by Thursday last week I was suspecting that I might spend this week not working. I have two assignments (both nearly finished) and a test this week, so will be busy. But I would like some positive cashflow.
I have been back in Australia for a six month contract, two months off over xmas new year, a three month contract, and then a four month contract, so a year. A year that I could have been in Singapore and working if only I had accepted that last offer. I regret that so much now. Hubris; it has definitely been my downfall.
Friday, August 20
Cuddly
I have just rescued a baby brush-tailed possum, well, six months so maybe 'child' not 'baby'. Found her under a tree in the sparse parkland at the corner of Grenfell and East Terrace. Just at that moment, as I was bending down to pick her up, a man walked passed that is a member of Fauna Australia and he gave me a ride to a 'participating' vet. Although by law all vets have to take in native animals and pass them on to a carer organisation.
It had heaps of fleas mind you, I got four of them either off her or off my shirt. Curled up she just fills a double handful. Her main need for the next day is warmth, she was on the way to dying from exposure, but by tomorrow she will be able to take milk (special marsupial milk, not cow milk). (And also banana, rolled oats, stuff like that.) I have raised a few ring-tails in my time, but I have never held a brush-tail before. Fed wild ones a few times.
I am still unemployed. One contract, the better one, is in government and as usual for our wonderful Australian public service, they are not organised and need to delay for a few months. The other I just haven't heard back from the agency about. I have tried calling the consultant, but he hasn't answered yet.
We have to vote tomorrow. I must try not to forget. And I must remind Radar, 'cos he used to forget a lot. The polls are close, the last two that I have seen both said about fifty-fifty, but polls and 'town halls' in the marginal seats show a dissatisfaction with Labor. All the people in the world could vote Labor and I wouldn't care, so long as they live in safe left-wing seats. The way the Australian democracy works it is only a few thousand voters in the dozen marginal seats that matter, the other ten million voters are effectively marginalised.
Still, it is not as bad as the USA where Clinton got elected on forty percent of the vote.
I live in a close seat, the city of Adelaide, i.e. the CBD seat. It has swung a few times, currently red, was blue not long ago and may go blue again this time.
The Democrats, this is a laugh, have discovered that one of their South Australian candidates is a convicted paedophile. By law it is too late to remove him from the ticket. This late revelation should hurt them in the polls; they won't get any lower house seats anyhow, but I wonder if it will cost them an upper house seat or two. SA has always been their stronghold, they only need to lose a couple of seats to lose the balance of power in the Senate.
And just to close off; I regret having left Singapore, I should have taken one of the jobs offered to me there and stuck it out, risen the ranks, studied part time, and above all, not come back to Australia. I so regret this. I miss it so much. I miss my friends there, I miss the culture, it was just a totally better place to be. But if I was there I would still be expected to vote in this election tomorrow. How does that work? I would not reside in any lower house electorate, so how do they do that? I do know that one senator wanted Australia to have a seat for the diaspora, like Italy has two seats for them. I'm going to google how this works.
No, the electoral commission says that it is not compulsory to vote if you are living overseas. Further, if you have been overseas for less than three years and intend to return to Australia within six years then you may register to vote. That makes nine years, and yet if you have been living overseas for more than six years, or you intend to be doing so, then you are meant to be removed from the electoral roll and cannot vote. This would mean that if I moved back to Singapore, as I intend to do, and it is my intention to stay there, as it is, then I will lose the right to vote in Australian elections. I would not gain the right to vote in Singaporean elections until I obtained Singaporean citizenship (of course). This means that Australia disenfranchises its citizens.
Kind of similar to the health care situation if you live overseas. If you ever return to Australia you will be 'fined' every year for not having been paying for private medical coverage in Australia during that period that you were not in Australia. How stupid is that?
What the electoral commission doesn't elucidate upon is who are you voting for? If I am living overseas and still get to vote, then for what lower house seat am I voting? Quick google! According to the Southern Cross Group (advocacy for Australians abroad) you either stay registered where you were last registered or where you have near kin (as a lot are children that turn eighteen whilst living with their parents overseas, so have no previous enrolment in Australia).
There are about two thirds of a million Australians living overseas and old enough to vote; this would be enough for a few electorates on their own. Like Italy or Portugal, Australia could have two or three 'virtual' electorates. I don't see it happening though, principally because most Australians are hostile to anyone that leaves the country for anything more than 'a trip to Bali'. But as it stands it seems that less than two percent of Australian citizens living overseas are allowed to vote. Whilst the government states that ten percent of Australians overseas vote, that is mostly tourists only out of Australia for a short time.
Further more, whilst changes have been made in the last ten years, many long term OS residents have, under both the previous laws and the current laws, permanently lost the right to vote for the country of which they are a citizen. And that kind of sums up the way the Australian government and public service thinks about issues like this.
When Australia does so little for Australians living overseas, why should they do anything for Australia? The Senate enquiry in the Australian Diaspora looked at using Australian residents in other nations as 'ambasadors', but in reality these nearly one million Australians overseas are treated like shit by their own government (both bureaucrats and politicians), so why should they think nice thoughts about their nation?
It had heaps of fleas mind you, I got four of them either off her or off my shirt. Curled up she just fills a double handful. Her main need for the next day is warmth, she was on the way to dying from exposure, but by tomorrow she will be able to take milk (special marsupial milk, not cow milk). (And also banana, rolled oats, stuff like that.) I have raised a few ring-tails in my time, but I have never held a brush-tail before. Fed wild ones a few times.
I am still unemployed. One contract, the better one, is in government and as usual for our wonderful Australian public service, they are not organised and need to delay for a few months. The other I just haven't heard back from the agency about. I have tried calling the consultant, but he hasn't answered yet.
We have to vote tomorrow. I must try not to forget. And I must remind Radar, 'cos he used to forget a lot. The polls are close, the last two that I have seen both said about fifty-fifty, but polls and 'town halls' in the marginal seats show a dissatisfaction with Labor. All the people in the world could vote Labor and I wouldn't care, so long as they live in safe left-wing seats. The way the Australian democracy works it is only a few thousand voters in the dozen marginal seats that matter, the other ten million voters are effectively marginalised.
Still, it is not as bad as the USA where Clinton got elected on forty percent of the vote.
I live in a close seat, the city of Adelaide, i.e. the CBD seat. It has swung a few times, currently red, was blue not long ago and may go blue again this time.
The Democrats, this is a laugh, have discovered that one of their South Australian candidates is a convicted paedophile. By law it is too late to remove him from the ticket. This late revelation should hurt them in the polls; they won't get any lower house seats anyhow, but I wonder if it will cost them an upper house seat or two. SA has always been their stronghold, they only need to lose a couple of seats to lose the balance of power in the Senate.
And just to close off; I regret having left Singapore, I should have taken one of the jobs offered to me there and stuck it out, risen the ranks, studied part time, and above all, not come back to Australia. I so regret this. I miss it so much. I miss my friends there, I miss the culture, it was just a totally better place to be. But if I was there I would still be expected to vote in this election tomorrow. How does that work? I would not reside in any lower house electorate, so how do they do that? I do know that one senator wanted Australia to have a seat for the diaspora, like Italy has two seats for them. I'm going to google how this works.
No, the electoral commission says that it is not compulsory to vote if you are living overseas. Further, if you have been overseas for less than three years and intend to return to Australia within six years then you may register to vote. That makes nine years, and yet if you have been living overseas for more than six years, or you intend to be doing so, then you are meant to be removed from the electoral roll and cannot vote. This would mean that if I moved back to Singapore, as I intend to do, and it is my intention to stay there, as it is, then I will lose the right to vote in Australian elections. I would not gain the right to vote in Singaporean elections until I obtained Singaporean citizenship (of course). This means that Australia disenfranchises its citizens.
Kind of similar to the health care situation if you live overseas. If you ever return to Australia you will be 'fined' every year for not having been paying for private medical coverage in Australia during that period that you were not in Australia. How stupid is that?
What the electoral commission doesn't elucidate upon is who are you voting for? If I am living overseas and still get to vote, then for what lower house seat am I voting? Quick google! According to the Southern Cross Group (advocacy for Australians abroad) you either stay registered where you were last registered or where you have near kin (as a lot are children that turn eighteen whilst living with their parents overseas, so have no previous enrolment in Australia).
There are about two thirds of a million Australians living overseas and old enough to vote; this would be enough for a few electorates on their own. Like Italy or Portugal, Australia could have two or three 'virtual' electorates. I don't see it happening though, principally because most Australians are hostile to anyone that leaves the country for anything more than 'a trip to Bali'. But as it stands it seems that less than two percent of Australian citizens living overseas are allowed to vote. Whilst the government states that ten percent of Australians overseas vote, that is mostly tourists only out of Australia for a short time.
Further more, whilst changes have been made in the last ten years, many long term OS residents have, under both the previous laws and the current laws, permanently lost the right to vote for the country of which they are a citizen. And that kind of sums up the way the Australian government and public service thinks about issues like this.
When Australia does so little for Australians living overseas, why should they do anything for Australia? The Senate enquiry in the Australian Diaspora looked at using Australian residents in other nations as 'ambasadors', but in reality these nearly one million Australians overseas are treated like shit by their own government (both bureaucrats and politicians), so why should they think nice thoughts about their nation?
Tuesday, August 17
Post and Non
So, the mid semester exam turned out to be this and that.
Okay, firstly it was pretty easy, I took it slow and read everything twice, and took my time on the answers, and still left ten minutes passed half-way.
But it was interesting that after the lecturer told us it was in room 102 on the first floor, and wrote it on the whiteboard, and said again very slowly that it was not in our normal room but on a lower floor, and it was listed as 102 on the calendar, I was the only person to show up at 102; everyone else, including the guy that set up the room, showed up at our normal third floor room.
Obviously, on this occasion, the rhetorical question "is it just me? or..." has the rhetorical answer, "yes, it was just me".
I am unemployed. You knew that was coming from last post, but the contract promised to me has not come through and, I have been told, may not for a few months. Public sector. But I was asked about another one on Friday. Today is Tuesday and I haven't heard anything about that yet. But it is a previous client and I am reasonably confident. It won't pay as much as the other, and these are the people that last time paid me half my normal rate. I am trying to split the dif between that and what I was paid on the one just finished, that will do a bit better than cover my rent and will allow me to live a bit. Although in my case 'live' means dine out a couple of times, buy a game or two, and pay off my cards.
I am pretty sure that next weekend is the election, wait, let me just Google that, yep, next Saturday. The two major parties have yo-yoed a bit, which is a good sign in that it means the communists are not a shoe-in. Maybe even might lose, wouldn't that be nice. Methinks that Tweedledee is not quite as odorous as Tweedledum. Funny watching the Liberals try to compare themselves with "the desire for change that elected Obama". Funny that "Obama" passes the spell check but Tweedledee and Tweedledum don't.
I am playing Spellforce 2. Yeah, quick change of subject, but be honest, the last one wasn't exactly riveting, was it? This is crashing more often than Spellforce 1, and on its own as well, not when I make it think two things at once. It must only be the Spellforce Universe pack, because I don't remember either of them doing that before. Anyhow, I found out why I never played the two Spellforce 1 expansions - there is a monster that I can't get passed. We are the same level, but my hits do little to him whilst his severely hurt my character. Shame that. Good game kind of ruined. Neither of them crashes cleanly, they kill Windows on the way, but without causing a reboot, just lock it up, so I have to hard reset the machine. Which is very annoying.
Other than that, life in general sucks and I am starting to severely question why I bother.
Okay, firstly it was pretty easy, I took it slow and read everything twice, and took my time on the answers, and still left ten minutes passed half-way.
But it was interesting that after the lecturer told us it was in room 102 on the first floor, and wrote it on the whiteboard, and said again very slowly that it was not in our normal room but on a lower floor, and it was listed as 102 on the calendar, I was the only person to show up at 102; everyone else, including the guy that set up the room, showed up at our normal third floor room.
Obviously, on this occasion, the rhetorical question "is it just me? or..." has the rhetorical answer, "yes, it was just me".
I am unemployed. You knew that was coming from last post, but the contract promised to me has not come through and, I have been told, may not for a few months. Public sector. But I was asked about another one on Friday. Today is Tuesday and I haven't heard anything about that yet. But it is a previous client and I am reasonably confident. It won't pay as much as the other, and these are the people that last time paid me half my normal rate. I am trying to split the dif between that and what I was paid on the one just finished, that will do a bit better than cover my rent and will allow me to live a bit. Although in my case 'live' means dine out a couple of times, buy a game or two, and pay off my cards.
I am pretty sure that next weekend is the election, wait, let me just Google that, yep, next Saturday. The two major parties have yo-yoed a bit, which is a good sign in that it means the communists are not a shoe-in. Maybe even might lose, wouldn't that be nice. Methinks that Tweedledee is not quite as odorous as Tweedledum. Funny watching the Liberals try to compare themselves with "the desire for change that elected Obama". Funny that "Obama" passes the spell check but Tweedledee and Tweedledum don't.
I am playing Spellforce 2. Yeah, quick change of subject, but be honest, the last one wasn't exactly riveting, was it? This is crashing more often than Spellforce 1, and on its own as well, not when I make it think two things at once. It must only be the Spellforce Universe pack, because I don't remember either of them doing that before. Anyhow, I found out why I never played the two Spellforce 1 expansions - there is a monster that I can't get passed. We are the same level, but my hits do little to him whilst his severely hurt my character. Shame that. Good game kind of ruined. Neither of them crashes cleanly, they kill Windows on the way, but without causing a reboot, just lock it up, so I have to hard reset the machine. Which is very annoying.
Other than that, life in general sucks and I am starting to severely question why I bother.
Friday, August 6
Whoa!
Sometime things happen so quickly.
Last week was the end of my contract, and I was asked to extend to the end of September.
Today I am told that due to some fundamental mismanagement the project has run out of money and can I please leave.
Or put another way:
Yesterday I was asked to start a job.
Today I was asked to leave a job.
Yeah, I got asked if I had 'capacity' to undertake some other work if it did not threaten the project that I was on. And now I find out that I won't be staying on that project, so I can focus just on the other one.
And now begins the game.
The contract comes to me, and I take it to the agency, not the other way around. So the agency is meant to only add a payroll handling fee on top, but of course they try to get as much gravy as they can.
So I start with the client, and I introduce them to the going rate for BAs (Business Analysts), currently in this town about $135 an hour. From that the BA will be getting about $80 an hour. The rest goes: as it is a government contract then the department of admin services takes a twenty or thirty percent cut depending on whether it is a financial or an IT contract, there is nine percent superannuation which in my opinion is dead money, there are work cover and payroll taxes, then there is the agency cut, and what is left over goes to the worker.
Of course, most contracts the employer goes to the agency who then goes to the contractor. In my case almost always the employer comes to me and I take the contract to the agency. This means that I get a better deal because the agency takes a much smaller cut, just a payroll handling fee in theory. Admin services still take their huge slice for doing nothing, but that is the Australian public sector for you.
Which means that I can give a little ground on that $135.
Conversely if I under value myself too much then other people just get paid more than me for not being any better. So I need to toughen up. After all, the reason contractors and consultants get paid a higher rate is because we don't get paid holidays, we don't get paid sick leave, we don't have secure jobs - I had spend most of this damned GFC living off my reserves! There was just no work around. And when I got some I had to take some hefty rate cuts to get anything to pay the rent.
Anyhow, the whole point to this was how quickly things can change on you.
One day being told that you have a job and being asked to extend it.
The next being told that you don't and being asked to leave.
Last week was the end of my contract, and I was asked to extend to the end of September.
Today I am told that due to some fundamental mismanagement the project has run out of money and can I please leave.
Or put another way:
Yesterday I was asked to start a job.
Today I was asked to leave a job.
Yeah, I got asked if I had 'capacity' to undertake some other work if it did not threaten the project that I was on. And now I find out that I won't be staying on that project, so I can focus just on the other one.
And now begins the game.
The contract comes to me, and I take it to the agency, not the other way around. So the agency is meant to only add a payroll handling fee on top, but of course they try to get as much gravy as they can.
So I start with the client, and I introduce them to the going rate for BAs (Business Analysts), currently in this town about $135 an hour. From that the BA will be getting about $80 an hour. The rest goes: as it is a government contract then the department of admin services takes a twenty or thirty percent cut depending on whether it is a financial or an IT contract, there is nine percent superannuation which in my opinion is dead money, there are work cover and payroll taxes, then there is the agency cut, and what is left over goes to the worker.
Of course, most contracts the employer goes to the agency who then goes to the contractor. In my case almost always the employer comes to me and I take the contract to the agency. This means that I get a better deal because the agency takes a much smaller cut, just a payroll handling fee in theory. Admin services still take their huge slice for doing nothing, but that is the Australian public sector for you.
Which means that I can give a little ground on that $135.
Conversely if I under value myself too much then other people just get paid more than me for not being any better. So I need to toughen up. After all, the reason contractors and consultants get paid a higher rate is because we don't get paid holidays, we don't get paid sick leave, we don't have secure jobs - I had spend most of this damned GFC living off my reserves! There was just no work around. And when I got some I had to take some hefty rate cuts to get anything to pay the rent.
Anyhow, the whole point to this was how quickly things can change on you.
One day being told that you have a job and being asked to extend it.
The next being told that you don't and being asked to leave.
Saturday, July 31
Mid Terms 01
"01" because there is a high probability of another post on this one.
Yeah, mid-terms are in two weeks.
Scary, I haven't done real serious study for so long and I want to get this right.
Only in one subject, the other does a couple of assignments instead, one of which I have just emailed to the lecturer.
If I do well at this, i.e. get distinctions or better for both subjects, then I will seriously consider taking on another subject. Not a day one - the two that I do are the evening ones - but an online one in another course. Currently doing the Masters of Professional Accounting (which always make me ask "is there a masters in amateur accounting?) and the other being the Masters of Applied Finance, the trading major, i.e. options, derivatives, rates arbitrage, etc.
The MAppFin has four core subject, and two other compulsory at masters level (since it has a nested diploma and certificate which also include the four core but not those other two) and four electives which can be taken from a shorter list of five each to get different majors. Those two compulsory subjects I could get status for from the MPA. So, with the MPA having eight subjects, and taking me four trimesters, then I could have four plus two equals six of the ten required for the MAppFin completed by the time that I finish the MPA, and thus need only two trimesters to finish it.
This in two years I could have two masters degrees.
The plan would then be to move back to Singapore and do the SMU MBA.
When I was looking at MBAs this one caught my eye due to its cosmopolitan nature. Australian MBAs make small talk about multiculturalism and globalisation and might offer one relevant subject as an elective, but the SMU MBA has things like 'communicating across cultures' as a required subject and a few like 'trading in ASEAN' as an elective. So more realistically a global (although specifically an Asian, and even more specifically an Oriental) education.
On to other things.
A contract has been signed, but the project still hasn't really begun and I have been on this contract for three months so far.
That is SAG for you.
(i.e. South Australian Government for anyone that strolls in from out of town.)
I was going to blog about this months ago, but here it is now because I have noticed the effect far more of late.
Used to be that Oriental girls here had long hair, there weren't many and they stayed within their cultural groups, but they kept that long hair thing from their culture. Then more Orientals were noticeable, and the girls started cutting their hair short and being more like Anglos. Now there are LOTS of Orientals in Adelaide, and a lot of them are short term (they are foreign students mostly now) and so do not take to the local culture. So their hair is longer, not as long as it was in the first wave though, and they are keeping the styles and fashions from whence they came.
The main point to this is that they tend to show a lot more skin than the local girls. i.e. mini-skirts and shorts. When winter started coming on they started wearing shorts with pantyhose underneath, so they could still 'show' more, but not be as cold (logical really). What I noticed was that after a few weeks the Anglo bitches started to copy this style. Maybe they noticed the lack of attention that they were getting. I found this very interesting.
Adelaide girls are probably the most boring in Australia, and Australian women are the most boring of all Anglo Bitches, and Anglo Bitches are the worst of all Western women, and Western women are the worst of all White women. You know the way this one goes, you have probably heard it from so many guys, especially middle-aged guys that are on better incomes and so have travelled and have some experience to make the judgement. Like me.
Interesting that they felt the need to change their appearance.
What do you think the chances are that they might realise that they have to change their behaviour as well?
Not going to waste too much time on the upcoming Australian federal election. The Socialists thought that appointing a woman as prime minister could save them, and it had some initial effect with female voters, but that has decreased a lot as women realised that this woman has nothing in common with the average woman and is not a champion for women.
Interesting though that my economics lecturer, who I would have pegged as a wet liberal, i.e. the typical type of Liberal Socialist that would have voted for her, pointed out in class that the Labor government was the most incompetent government that Australia had experienced for a long time. He illustrated this with such things as the 'alcopop' fiasco where they brought in a huge tax on low-alcohol drinks (vodka mixers etc) that kids were drinking, in an attempt to curb their use. As any economist would tell you, the result was that the kids moved on to something else, in this case hard spirits like Jack Daniels. Further he pointed out the mis-use of terms like 'super profit', which economically means a profit in excess of that which you would get from moving your investment into something else. In this case the government was using the term pejoratively against the mining industry which had come out of the GFC ahead of the rest of the country due to other nations getting out first (Australia typically lagged) and their demand for resources ensured that our resources industry made good profits. So the government automatically (as all Socialists do) decided to punish them for their success.
The lecturer didn't word it like that of course, but it is a standard rant of mine that our Socialist culture in Australia is always seeking to punish success and reward failure.
And yes, they spell it 'Labor', we don't in English usually of course, but that is how the party concerned spell their name.
Avcon was a bit of a fizzle for me this year.
I didn't enjoy last year that much either, it is kind of like it lost something in the move out of the Uni and into the Convention Centre. I don't mind the increase in focus on games (that is what the government sponsors are behind) but it has come at the expense of the anime/manga. For example, one of the theatres that would have been showing anime was used for a series of presentation on game design.
It's not that I don't want there to be a series of presentation on game design - after all, I attended a few myself - but I do not want there to be a decrease in the amount of anime being screened.
Also a lot, and I mean a LOT, of vendors have withdrawn. Less than half of the displays/booths/whatever were anime and manga oriented. There were a few game oriented, and there were a lot of government ones (TAFE, libraries, Trade and Development, etc.).
It's just not the same.
And just to finish off.
I left Metro 2033 unfinished somewhere half way through and moved on to a Spellforce that I had bought - it had 1 and the two expansions and 2 and its one expansion all on one disc. I started from the very start and am redoing Spellforce 1. Not using any cheats, but using a walkthrough for its map, i.e. where to find people, you know, when you have a mission to take this to that person but it doesn't tell you where they are and you can't remember which of the maps they were on. Playing as a necromancer, but currently in reasonably good armour, with a sword and shield, I am not using the magic so much. I was raising skeletons a lot, but I am getting to level 20, although my magic skills are still only at level 5 and so I am not finding the skeletons much use right now.
It was the first game to mix role play and strategy, and playing a necromancer is always way cool dude.
And it has a long story ahead for me. Weeks, if not months, of gaming.
Yeah, mid-terms are in two weeks.
Scary, I haven't done real serious study for so long and I want to get this right.
Only in one subject, the other does a couple of assignments instead, one of which I have just emailed to the lecturer.
If I do well at this, i.e. get distinctions or better for both subjects, then I will seriously consider taking on another subject. Not a day one - the two that I do are the evening ones - but an online one in another course. Currently doing the Masters of Professional Accounting (which always make me ask "is there a masters in amateur accounting?) and the other being the Masters of Applied Finance, the trading major, i.e. options, derivatives, rates arbitrage, etc.
The MAppFin has four core subject, and two other compulsory at masters level (since it has a nested diploma and certificate which also include the four core but not those other two) and four electives which can be taken from a shorter list of five each to get different majors. Those two compulsory subjects I could get status for from the MPA. So, with the MPA having eight subjects, and taking me four trimesters, then I could have four plus two equals six of the ten required for the MAppFin completed by the time that I finish the MPA, and thus need only two trimesters to finish it.
This in two years I could have two masters degrees.
The plan would then be to move back to Singapore and do the SMU MBA.
When I was looking at MBAs this one caught my eye due to its cosmopolitan nature. Australian MBAs make small talk about multiculturalism and globalisation and might offer one relevant subject as an elective, but the SMU MBA has things like 'communicating across cultures' as a required subject and a few like 'trading in ASEAN' as an elective. So more realistically a global (although specifically an Asian, and even more specifically an Oriental) education.
On to other things.
A contract has been signed, but the project still hasn't really begun and I have been on this contract for three months so far.
That is SAG for you.
(i.e. South Australian Government for anyone that strolls in from out of town.)
I was going to blog about this months ago, but here it is now because I have noticed the effect far more of late.
Used to be that Oriental girls here had long hair, there weren't many and they stayed within their cultural groups, but they kept that long hair thing from their culture. Then more Orientals were noticeable, and the girls started cutting their hair short and being more like Anglos. Now there are LOTS of Orientals in Adelaide, and a lot of them are short term (they are foreign students mostly now) and so do not take to the local culture. So their hair is longer, not as long as it was in the first wave though, and they are keeping the styles and fashions from whence they came.
The main point to this is that they tend to show a lot more skin than the local girls. i.e. mini-skirts and shorts. When winter started coming on they started wearing shorts with pantyhose underneath, so they could still 'show' more, but not be as cold (logical really). What I noticed was that after a few weeks the Anglo bitches started to copy this style. Maybe they noticed the lack of attention that they were getting. I found this very interesting.
Adelaide girls are probably the most boring in Australia, and Australian women are the most boring of all Anglo Bitches, and Anglo Bitches are the worst of all Western women, and Western women are the worst of all White women. You know the way this one goes, you have probably heard it from so many guys, especially middle-aged guys that are on better incomes and so have travelled and have some experience to make the judgement. Like me.
Interesting that they felt the need to change their appearance.
What do you think the chances are that they might realise that they have to change their behaviour as well?
Not going to waste too much time on the upcoming Australian federal election. The Socialists thought that appointing a woman as prime minister could save them, and it had some initial effect with female voters, but that has decreased a lot as women realised that this woman has nothing in common with the average woman and is not a champion for women.
Interesting though that my economics lecturer, who I would have pegged as a wet liberal, i.e. the typical type of Liberal Socialist that would have voted for her, pointed out in class that the Labor government was the most incompetent government that Australia had experienced for a long time. He illustrated this with such things as the 'alcopop' fiasco where they brought in a huge tax on low-alcohol drinks (vodka mixers etc) that kids were drinking, in an attempt to curb their use. As any economist would tell you, the result was that the kids moved on to something else, in this case hard spirits like Jack Daniels. Further he pointed out the mis-use of terms like 'super profit', which economically means a profit in excess of that which you would get from moving your investment into something else. In this case the government was using the term pejoratively against the mining industry which had come out of the GFC ahead of the rest of the country due to other nations getting out first (Australia typically lagged) and their demand for resources ensured that our resources industry made good profits. So the government automatically (as all Socialists do) decided to punish them for their success.
The lecturer didn't word it like that of course, but it is a standard rant of mine that our Socialist culture in Australia is always seeking to punish success and reward failure.
And yes, they spell it 'Labor', we don't in English usually of course, but that is how the party concerned spell their name.
Avcon was a bit of a fizzle for me this year.
I didn't enjoy last year that much either, it is kind of like it lost something in the move out of the Uni and into the Convention Centre. I don't mind the increase in focus on games (that is what the government sponsors are behind) but it has come at the expense of the anime/manga. For example, one of the theatres that would have been showing anime was used for a series of presentation on game design.
It's not that I don't want there to be a series of presentation on game design - after all, I attended a few myself - but I do not want there to be a decrease in the amount of anime being screened.
Also a lot, and I mean a LOT, of vendors have withdrawn. Less than half of the displays/booths/whatever were anime and manga oriented. There were a few game oriented, and there were a lot of government ones (TAFE, libraries, Trade and Development, etc.).
It's just not the same.
And just to finish off.
I left Metro 2033 unfinished somewhere half way through and moved on to a Spellforce that I had bought - it had 1 and the two expansions and 2 and its one expansion all on one disc. I started from the very start and am redoing Spellforce 1. Not using any cheats, but using a walkthrough for its map, i.e. where to find people, you know, when you have a mission to take this to that person but it doesn't tell you where they are and you can't remember which of the maps they were on. Playing as a necromancer, but currently in reasonably good armour, with a sword and shield, I am not using the magic so much. I was raising skeletons a lot, but I am getting to level 20, although my magic skills are still only at level 5 and so I am not finding the skeletons much use right now.
It was the first game to mix role play and strategy, and playing a necromancer is always way cool dude.
And it has a long story ahead for me. Weeks, if not months, of gaming.
Wednesday, July 7
Metro
There was something that I forgot last night about Metro 2033, the installation process really pissed me off - I bought a disc and yet it installed via steam and took more than an hour, then it wouldn't play saying it was missing some PhysX thing and that I needed to reinstall.
You can imagine my screaming: if you need PhysX you fracken moron why didn't you install it dickweed???
Anyhow, I found a copy in my UT folder and copied it across, obviously the UT guys know how to package a programme...
It still splashes an error message about my Nvidia drivers needing updating (which my Nvidia control panel disagrees with) and that game play might be degraded.
What is degraded is that, like Stalker, I have to turn the graphics way down or else it is very jerky. Both my desktop and my laptop have high-end graphics cards (naturally) and can play any other game on its highest settings, but not the games out of Kiev...
You can imagine my screaming: if you need PhysX you fracken moron why didn't you install it dickweed???
Anyhow, I found a copy in my UT folder and copied it across, obviously the UT guys know how to package a programme...
It still splashes an error message about my Nvidia drivers needing updating (which my Nvidia control panel disagrees with) and that game play might be degraded.
What is degraded is that, like Stalker, I have to turn the graphics way down or else it is very jerky. Both my desktop and my laptop have high-end graphics cards (naturally) and can play any other game on its highest settings, but not the games out of Kiev...
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