NTDLR continues

So I thought I fixed it, but when Key tried to switch on the laptop, it has the same problem. Quick investigations using the enclosure reveal that the ntldr, ntdetect.com files are being deleted everytime the computer starts up! A quick call to Junx establishes it might be a virus. So I scan it and detect several viruses, and the McAfee automatically cleans them: W32/Squirrel, W32/Oror.dll, W32/Oror-G@mm. And copy all the relevant files.

Only, when I switch on the laptop again, the files are no longer automatically deleted, but... the computer can't seem to run .exe files anymore! It actually asks me what to use to open .exe. The files themself run, if I open some random file and specify word or excel or whatever then the word or excel will actually run. Silly, no? Whole of control panel is also down with some rundll32.exe is missing error, even though the file is right there in the folder.

Pissed off with the virus, so since I've got her files backed up I'm gonna reinstall windows. But silly bird that I am, I forgot to bring along the power cable. Quick check on symantec website reveals that Oror-C@mm and related viruses will insert themselves in the registry to make them run with every exe, so maybe that's the error. Damn. I can't seem to get this problem solved.

NTDLR is missing

Key's laptop went down yesterday, with the error "NTDLR is missing". Couldn't even boot. At first we feared the HDD was dead, and Junx suggested that I could try recovering the files using a 2.5" HD enclosure hooked up to my PC.

So I bought the enclosure from Audio House.. a $20 piece of equipment, basically just a little aluminium case, a cable, and a small piece of circuitry. (As to why Audio House: I was going to office which is near Liang Court. And as to why working on a Sunday, I'll blog about it once I know what the IT staff at company have to say about this particular piece of sillyness).

My first problem: taking out the HDD from the laptop. Never done this before, the closest was when I stripped apart my own Acer laptop to try to fix the lines on the display. Unscrewed two panels and discovered that neither looks like the HD. Took a step back, looked at the thing and decided that the HDD should be the little block next to the battery. But I couldn't find the button to release it!

In the end, googled a hardware manual from internet, found a product manual from Compaq. Figured out which screw to release the HDD (but I still had to pry the disk out with a screwdriver!) and then stuffed it into the enclosure. I really mean stuff, because the case was just exactly the size of the disk. Took a lot of stuffing!

Backed up her files, copied the files "NTLDR" and "NTDETECT.COM" from my root.. it's weird, the error is NTDLR but the file is NTLDR! weird weird.. Stuffed the HDD back in, and it works! Phew.. saved a couple hundred in maintenance costs.. Junx, owe you a treat d00d.

Wild wild wet

Went to Wild Wild Wet with Key and Xp and Nekki on Saturday, was fun! We've been quite lucky with rain, first on Friday which was the only non-raining day the whole week, then with Wild Wild Wet where the rain receded, so that the theme park opened at 4pm.. By the time the park was almost due to close, we were just about sianz. Rides were fun, particularly the group rides (the Samsung, that was fun!) and the Tsunami. All in all, it was worth the time since we had free tickets. If we had to pay $12 for it I might be a bit disappointed.

A bit worried for Key.. her knee is hurting more and more. Well, soon be seeing a specialist, hope it's nothing serious.

As an aside, there's the basketball arcade game that we used to play in Taiwan every day we were there... it's at the arcade in DownTown East! A little bit expensive, because for the arcade, you gotta buy a $2 non-refundable deposit on the card with the value, and each bball game costs $1.05.. weird number.. Still, the cool thing was, there was this awesome girl playing the game. In Taiwan, the best we saw was this guy who would pick up the ball with right hand, toss it to the rim, then left hand, toss to the rim, and so on. That guy was accurate plus fast!

But this girl, she was shooting with both hands but at an unbelievable rate of like 2 shots every second! And extremely accurate too, it's more like watching a factory line then a game! End result, 600+ points... what a sight!

Why Watson's Tissue is so thin

Choon Leng was saying that he didn't like Watson's tissue because it was so thin it kept tearing when he wiped his face. Other than uncomplimentary comparisons between his face and sandpaper, the other thought that struck me was one of the small lessons from the Undercover Economist:

Basically, the tissue is designed to be lousy, so that you'll buy the slightly higher quality brand of Watson's tissue right next to it, that costs twice as much. The cheaper one is for the price-conscious people, and the expensive one is for people willing to pay a bit more. Now, the funny thing is, the cost difference between the two brands is probably much smaller than the price difference, and it may cost less than 5cents for Watson's to improve the quality of their tissue, but they won't, otherwise they won't be able to make you pay lots for the other pack anymore!

It's part of this strategy where they deliberately sell one cheaper product to the price conscious, and the higher quality but even more highly marked-up product to the price-insensitive.

(The example given is actually like, the Safeway Select and other housebrands which are sitting right next to the expensive Post cereals and Free Range eggs, where they purposely pay for bad packaging that makes you think the product is dodgy, but I've found that in Singapore I don't really notice the difference, whereas in US and UK I did!)

Kino books!

I just, finally got my member's card at Kino! Figure I'll be buying lotsa books anyway...

Well, I was at Kino with Key. My intention was to get my membership and pick up two books. While I was walking around though, I saw a funny thing.. Two books next to each other that showed someone at Kino had a lame sense of humour.. =p

Book 1. Malcolm Gladwell's Blink (which I have), subtitled: The power of thinking without thinking.

Book 2. Michael leGault's Think!, subtitled: Why crucial decisions can't be made in the blink of an eye.


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Well anyway, if you didn't think that was funny, you're probably not lame. Anyway, my two new books are:

1. Sandman vol 1: Preludes and Nocturnes, by Neil Gaiman



This is pretty cool. After reading Gaiman's American Gods and Anansi Boys, I find that I quite like his writing style. Interesting thing is, you'll see more and more of his work popping up on the shelves at Times the Bookshop ( I was at PS store the other day), and the shop is quite popularist about which books it puts on its sci-fi and fantasy shelves. So I guess he's becoming mainstream popular.

Anyway, will review as I read, and as I add more of the volumes to my collection.


2. The Undercover Economist, by Jim Harford



This book was recommended by Wei Shyong. He'd read the first two chapters and shared with me the example: Who makes the most money in getting you the Starbucks coffee? The answer? Think, who along the entire chain has the rarest commodity?

So I'll slowly read this and free-associate myself through its principles. First off..
If scarcity increases the share of profit to the holder of scarce resource, and abundance of buyers transfers profit to sellers.. then Singapore's drive to produce "entrepreneurs", not the Silicon Valley types but more properly people who start small businesses... that will drive rentals and the price of commercial property up, while making it harder for those businesses to make good profits..

Kind of half-baked, but hopefully it'll get better as we go along..

Good food on the weekend

The other day Andy mentioned that he was running out of places to eat.. So here's a couple of good places where I ate on the weekend. It's not rocket science food review, I'm just a simple person, if I like it, it's good! Otherwise, it's not! =p

Anyway, Saturday evening was Ramen Ramen Ramen at the Rail Mall, along Upper Bukit Timah. Accessible by bus if you know the Upp Bt Timah stretch well. Dish: Ramen, Ramen, Ramen, their signature. Think ramen noodles in tonkotsu (pork) broth, really really good! Like all the ramen dishes I've eaten, light on meat, but it's really very delicious! And only a teeny weeny bit spicy, even to me with my super-sensitive pepper-detecting fire-breathing tongue. There's also a chizu ramen (cheese!) which I didn't try but it seemed interesting. Side dishes: the codfish was pure heaven, the meat had just a bit of fish oiliness, like snowfish, and blended perfectly with the sauce. I would not recommend the tempura stuff though, kind of bland. Is it supposed to be? Anyway, it's quite affordable too, think the ramen cost was $7.50, well worth the money.

Sunday evening: Margarita's in... Clementi, somewhere. Off Commonwealth avenue, opposite the Clementi fire-station, near Nanhua Primary? Yeah. there. That is so so so so so a drive-in place, unless you want to work up a sweat before AND after dinner. There's a couple of restaurants there, right in the middle of all this landed property. Serves mexican food, I wanted the fajitas, but waiter cautioned it was spicy. In the end... Dish: Some fish (I forget) in avocado sauce. The non-spiciest dish, but it was only so-so. The catfish (which is off the menu) which my mom was having was much much better, and the vegetable paste it came with went superbly well. Drink: Peach honey was only so-so. But the place seems to serve sangrea, next time will try. Side: Nacho's were good, even without sauce. (I don't take salsa sauce, same culprit again.) The fried mushrooms were fantastic, some of the best mushrooms I've ever taken. Bring on the portobello's!

Ban smoking?

This article talks about yet another city that's banning smoking. I like this part:

...defending the right to smoke is politically as appealing as defending the right to pick your nose.

Sunset Grill and Bar

Met Jav, HJ, CZ, Jon and Pierre at the Sunset Grill and Bar for dinner today. Well, out of the whole gang I'm the only one who hasn't bought a car, so had to finagle a lift from CZ. Met him at Yio Chu Kang, and went down Jalan Kayu towards Seletar Camp. It's the hardest place to go, so for the benefit of others I will now provide instructions.

Let's start from the northern end of Jalan Kayu, at the entrance to Seletar Camp. Go through the entrance.. yes, it's inside the camp, don't be like Pierre and wander around outside looking for it. At Picaddily circus, take the second exit, East Camp. Head down and keep going straight, looking for the Seletar Base Golf Course entrance on your right. Turn right, go past the golf course clubhouse, and take the first left turn, there's a sign for "East Camp". Follow the road (ignoring the two right turns) until you come to a T-junction. Take the left turn, and follow the road until you have a chance to right-turn. There should be a signboard here as well. Follow on till you come to the hangars. There should be a left turn that goes behind the hangars... You'll know you're on the right road because next to the road on the right side there's a red Fokker building. Also, there's signs that say no left turn and no right turn before the building.

Almost there! Just follow the road till the end, and left turn at the T-junction. Park, and the sunset grill is just there!

Well now the tough part is over. It's quite a nice place, cool and with the standard Wallaby's kind of fare: Steak, pork chops and fish for main, buffalo wings, calamari, nachos and fried mushrooms for starters. Kind of expensive: My pork chops were $16+, steaks are $22+ to 28+ for ribeye, and wings were $13 for half a dozen level 0 wings. (no, they don't play warcraft, it's a spiciness measure. Level 0 is fried wings, buffalo wings start at level 1.) Verdict: good food, pricey. Jon would add, good place to bring girls because of the dark areas all around... lol..

Conversation was mostly catching up, and crapping, the usual. But before everyone else arrived I had quite an interesting conversation with CZ. He was talking about swimming, the wet kind. He's kind of into sports and fitness now, going for biathlon next week. Now for me, I was swimming since before nursery, was actually competing and winning prizes as a little kid in swimming club, but got yanked out of swimming classes when primary school started. So I thought my basics were pretty good. But here CZ was talking about all the research he had done into swimming: how you're supposed to spin on your long axis in free style, how your arms are supposed to be making a "hold" like you're doing rock climbing and hauling yourself along, how you're supposed to twist your arm like you're diving into a sweater. Really cool stuff analysing the process of swimming! Was superb interesting, thinking about this kind of thing.. physics and swimming.

Anyway, he recommended a book, Total Immersion.net. Maybe I'll go look it up.

We're out of Europe! :<

Woke up to sad news.. we lost, out of Europe now. Well. let's hope we can overhaul Man U...

Parliament was fun!

I spent a day in Parliament yesterday. It was fun! too bad I couldn't bring a camera in to show and tell.. but I don't understand why, anyway, it's a televised session, why no camera?

Right at the gate to exchange passes I had my first incident of note. The queue had two lines, "Ministry officials" and "public". I was behind my friend who was being served, and I'd just noticed that the other counter was open, but I didn't walk over (my friend's name and mine were together so it was easier to serve us both). Instead, this lady walked past us to the counter, past the rest of the queue. So the guy behind us spoke up and said, "Excuse me, why don't you have to queue?" And the lady said she was a ministry official. Whereupon the guy who spoke up said, "Well, so are we!" The lady just ignored him at that point...

You know those magnetic walkthrough scanners? At the airport, I always worried that the screw in my wrist would set it off. Now with the screw out, I confidently unloaded all metal objects and walked through. Set it off. In fact, no-one managed to get through. This tells me two things. (1) Why bother with the big scanner? The policeman's gonna have to screen you with the handheld scanner anyway. (2) If someone walks through without setting it off, as a police personnel I would really be suspicious.

Well, on to the debate proper. Three main funny bits and 1 interesting one:

1) PhD from USC v Hon D from SCU
1 MP's speech touched on the misuse of honorary doctorates. In particular the raised the example of one CEO who recently had to clarify that he did not have a PhD from University of Southern California, he had an honorary doctorate from Southern California University. "The former a top 30 university, the latter... couldn't be found in a listing of universities in California."

2) So long as it's a male costume...
Dr Ng Eng Hen made a joke about Mr Lim Swee Say's being a chef one week and a roadsweeper the next. He was remarking on the success of the JRP and wondered what uniform he would wear next - but so long as it was a male costume it was okay!

3) Bao bao bao
Mr Seng Han Thong also had a very nice speech in Chinese. I actually thought the Mandarin speakers were much more entertaining than most of the English ones. Anyway, he made a few jokes based on the use of the word "bao" in outsourcing, comparing "wai bao", "hao bao", "lan bao" and others. I'm looking for a Mandarin transcript, anyone have one?

4) NUS University Fees
Out of order here, but this was the interesting one to me. Basically the argument is that NUS can practice "needs-blind admission" (true) and maintain a high-quality education ( some would disagree) based on 3 factors: Govt funding, realistic fees, and financial assistance for the poorest. And NUS/NTU/SMU together offered 25% of each cohort a high quality education.

Now, I first must say that I think that the fees generally are reasonable - whether hikes are, or whether consultation is necessary, I don't know. And the quality of education is not poor - Despite all of the stories I head bandied around, my memory of NUS education was a rigorous one, even if it was somewhat boring compared to my overseas experiences.

Therefore, I would not mind sending my child to NUS. However, I would not expect the same standard of education of say an Ivy League institution, no matter what the rankings say. That's not a slight to NUS. I simply think (and have always thought), that NUS has a dilemma at its being, in that it has to provide education for Singaporeans in general and is unable to restrict itself to an elite bunch of entrants.

Just remember. 25% of each cohort. I'm not sure how many students NUS has, but I'm pretty sure that entrance grades for NUS are far far lower than MIT, or most of the Ivy League schools. And that's the way it has to be, otherwise even more Singaporeans won't be able to get in. Not that Singaporeans are dumb, far from it, but it is not appropriate to compare NUS with the Ivy Leagues.

There's a lot to say here, but at the end of the day, I would say that NUS students should stop bitching about the "shortcomings" of NUS, and realise that their university education is in their own hands. If you think that your NUS degree won't get you places, well, you have plenty of time between classes and during holidays to do stuff to build up your resume.

Well, that takes care of quality. That leaves cost. Simply consider this: your education will help you earn higher wages. If you think that having an $x increase in your starting wage (NTU reported $2600 right?) and even larger increments over the rest of your working life are not worth the university fees and 4 years of your life, then my advice to you is, don't! If it is an economically sound decision, then why should anyone pay you to do what is profitable to you? If it's not a sound decision, then go seek out whatever gives you the best opportunity cost: entrepreneur, retailer, hawker, insurance agent, soccer player, Singapore idol. If you are at this juncture of your life, you have the opportunity to make of your life what you will. Your most precious resources are time and hope. Don't waste time burning your own hope...

ASK! and win something

Heh, Gahmen initiatives do tend to give away nice stuff nowadays. Last time it was that CPF financial planning game (how DID those guys score so high anyway?!!) and now, NLB is offering iPod Shuffles and other prizes, if you just ask questions...

Best part, you can ask by email... fire away! Me, I've got a ton of questions. Dunno if they're interesting or thought-provoking though, lol. Don't think I'll be lucky enough to win the iPod Shuffle, but books and movie tickets sound good too!

Check your wireless connection

Read this article on NYTimes, and thought, I've set up my wireless encryption from day 1,b but I'd better hop back and take a look.

Can you legislate against discrimination?

There's been a lot of focus in the last few months on discrimination: age, sex, race, even weight! New York Times had a feature which touched on this today. Basically, Craigslist is being sued for advertisements appearing on it which say things like, (and I quote from the NYTimes article)

"African Americans and Arabians tend to clash with me so that won't work out,"

and that's apparently against the law -- specifically, the federal Fair Housing Act. The person making the ad can be sued -- and now they're testing to see if Craigslist, carrying the ad, can also be sued.

My question is, if Mr XYZ placing the ad actually did feel that way, how would forcing him to place an ad minus the discriminatory comments, help to give fair housing? In the end, he would have those thoughts in his head when he makes a choice of room-mate.. Unless of course, you're saying that say an African American applied for the room and didn't get it, then he would be able to sue Mr XYZ for discrimination because he didn't get the room! Which would be mind-boggling to me, because, what, if I were letting out a room, I would discriminate actively against smokers, against druggies, against... well, if I just didn't think that I'd enjoy staying with him I wouldn't let him the room would I?

Or, look at this other NYTimes article, on an imam in NY. On page 4, the imam discusses how a tone-deaf man could sue for discrimination if he were not allowed to give the call to prayer. That's like, if people who couldn't sing wanted to lead praise and worship and could sue you if you didn't let them.

Of course, that's robably an extreme view of discrimination legislation in the US. But still, the main thing is that you can't effectively legislate against it. Instead, changing mindsets is the way to go...

Question: Is discrimination bad for the person discriminating, relative to the rest of society? If it is, we shouldn't need to bother, those guys can figure out what to do to help themselves. So for instance, if people refused to do business with people who discriminate, then the practice would soon die out.

On the other hand, if discrimination imposes costs on society (probably true, though I won't argue that at length today), but doesn't hurt the person discriminating: then there's no reason for him to stop discriminating. It's like the negative externality of traffic congestion.. no individual person has enough of incentive to stop driving, because most of the costs he inflicts is on others.

So if you want to end discrimination: discriminate against those who discriminate, today!

Two new blogs

Nekki just reloaded his blog, and XP finally started up her own. So, refresh the blog a bit so that can add theirs in!

I'm barely home for dinner nowadays. Other than the financial impact, the main thing is that I'm getting home late everyday and tired. And I'm missing out on catching up with friends + having any time for say, THC stuff. Am I happy? I feel comfortable with my current lifestyle.. but def got to make more time for friends. As for THC.. I don't know, I feel partly guilty about living a selfish life, but somehow the fire's gone out...

Career. what a thing to think about 6 months into work

Today, I had a discussion with my boss. It's part of this 6 month review thing because I just started work. Anyway, my boss is really a fantastic guy, in the sense that he does care very much for us subordinates' well-being both in the short term and in our careers. So he took the time to describe to me the various qualities that I would be rated on throughout my career, the concept behind CEP and what I could expect.

Basically, if I proceed like an average average MX, I can probably expect to be earning about 9k a month when I'm 38 to 40. And maybe 16k when I'm 50 through to retirement.

Is that alright / enough for me? I don't know. It's not a fantastic amount compared to what private sector could pay.. but of course it's an unbelievably stable (for the nonce) rice bowl. And a family could get by comfortably on that salary, if not fantastically. So... how? I enjoy my job... I just don't know if at the end of it I'll be happy with the compensation... It's not that I'll be unhappy. Just that I don't know. Well... 5 years is a long time, I'll know more soon.

Dinner today was at this union event. I was attending cos I need to research, but anyway, I'm discovering more and more that I can be a very reserved person... As in, I can interact easily with a fun bunch of people, but with older people, authority figures or just people I don't generally see as fun, I tend to clam up. Not a very good thing for networking. Maybe I would be better off in an academic setting? heh.. something to consider in the future.