Propagator

Looks like my name isn’t that much of a goods news if you live in America; fortunately I’m a Singaporean plus I’m intending to study in UK.

As an urbanite sporting hi-tech gadgets and capable of fixing computers I was stumped by the classic zipper problem. My sister’s imitation Longchamp bag had a zipper that came off track, and I was asked to fix it. Fortunately I’ve the Internet or I’d never be able to solve it. Try not to pretend to use branded stuff next time, I advised. I might be able to start a service fixing Load-Bearing Vest zippers soon.

This is not the first time I’m complaining about the Delifrance Baguette, and I’ve no idea if the recovered-from-food-poisoning-Vib is getting a little whiny about food but then I should at least expect to eat something good upon having recovered from this serious bout of sickness. After a full (plus another half) day of suffering, I started craving for the French Baguette so my Dad got me one from the nearby petrol kiosk.

Unfortunately the French Baguette from Delifrance is not only overpriced but the taste have moved from sub-standard to absolutely intolerable. The bread is neither crispy nor tasty and the inside of the dough was barely allowed to rise – the flour feels all clumped together because the bread was frozen previously before ‘baking’ in the oven.

When I’m free I must learn how to make a proper, fresh baguette – I believe I deserve a better treat.

It wasn’t that long since the last time I was very sick. I had a serious upper respiratory tract infection in June, which gave me fever for 5 days and I was suffering from muscular pains, sore throat, coughing, inability to conduct day-to-day affairs and confined to eating just a little stuff and sleeping for most of those days. One of those days I almost fainted, feeling a total loss of control of my limbs, breathing and thinking.

This time it isn’t that bad, but still bad enough. I started off with a stomachache in the morning, which wasn’t really that bad. In the afternoon, I felt a little nauseous and so skipped the Laksa lunch and survived on 2 packets of Muruku and a slice of watermelon. I’m not sure if it was the combination that was nasty or just the sheer quantity of Muruku I’ve taken and after that I started having diarrhoea and the urge to vomit became so overwhelming I was rushing back and forth the office and toilet. In that situation, it felt really bad to be in camp. I reported sick and was given a couple of medicine, after being at the Medical Center for close to 2 hours. It was a long wait (I vomited twice and had a single diarrhoea while there) in retrospect.

Eventually the medicine from the MO didn’t seem to work and I was developing a fever so I went to the SGH A&E and got a jab to stop my vomiting. The doctor thinks it’s food poisoning and I got back home tired, sleeping all the way with loads of discomfort coupled with the nausea.

This morning I woke up feeling a little better, sleeping again after breakfast and then waking up for lunch before sleeping again. In the evening I almost recovered but still with the feeling that the headache might come back anytime. I’m typing right now feeling slightly better than that and praying that I can last a little longer at the computer.

Yea, yea. I know.

As people who have been following my blog probably knows, I’ve been trying to finish Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams since the last summer in the Southern Hemisphere and I’ve yet to even complete half of it. Right now I’m page 151 of 313 – close to half way that is. Usually a boring book will take a me a long time to hit halfway and then I’ll speed through the rest of it, knowing roughly what the author as to say and at the end I’ll say something good about it. But this Wikinomics simply looked too promising for me to be warned.

As the Wikipedia entry for the book quoted from Harvard Business Review, “like its title, the book’s prose can fall into breathless hype.” Indeed, the hype over mass collaboration seems a little overwhelming and when one is more of the skeptic the book becomes quite a disaster, especially when the book was first published in 2006 and 3 years on, you don’t quite see how the subtitle ‘How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything’ manifest itself in the real world at all. Yes I know mass collaboration did help people and changed things but then it wasn’t that breathtaking and mostly, life just went on as usual. Perhaps more important was the fact that this Subprime Financial Crisis seemed to be the working of a ‘mass collaboration’ of stupid people. In other words, Tapscott and Williams thought nothing of the risk of Groupthink in mass collaboration.

The prose is rather academic, starting with their ‘hypothesis’, which is the subtitle of the book somewhat and then the authors goes on to show how mass collaboration is being played out in different sectors, industries, different markets and such. To be fair, Wikinomics is a business sort of book, it focuses on the methods to harness the benefits of mass collaboration, possibly the mechanics of motivation that drives this phenomenon and discuss the success of these various means. The problem is that Wikinomics does this over and over again on different case studies as if they’re saying something new each time. It’s the business sort of academic compared to what I generally prefer, the intellectual sort of academic. I believe students of A Levels would be way more intrigued by Wisdom of the Crowds by James Surowiecki, which I gladly finished almost a year ago.

I rarely write bad reviews of books but when you spent $27.85 on a book that is hardly intellectually stimulating; rambling on about the same product like an advertisement; and better off in the bookshelf of traditional business schools rather than bookstores around the world, you can’t help but warn people even if it’s a little too late. Unless of course, you’re interested in extracting their case studies for your use in business studies; but even then, don’t spend money on it.

After seeing the IKEA advertisement of the BILLY bookcase on the newspaper I really wanted to get one of those limited edition bookcases but alas, when I booked out of camp I forgot about it totally until this weekend. So I got down to IKEA and book a good look at the choices I had.

Eventually I settled on the BILLY 40x202cm White one that would probably fit into the small space I have in my room. The good news is that it’ll definitely fit all the books I have that are piling up on the table in my room. It doesn’t appear like a space hogger compared to its double-sized counterpart and I was really keen on getting it. Best of all, it’ll cost me $59, quite a steal. I’ve never really chosen a piece of furniture in my room for myself (besides my current super single sized bed) so I was really prepared to pay for it myself and lug it home the IKEA-style.

I went to the self serve furniture section, Row 6, where all the bookcases are and took a good look at the labels to make sure I’m getting the piece of bookcase I want and started lugging it towards the cashier only to realise I might have a problem bringing it home. It was 202cm long, a little over 2m, which means it was taller than me. That means that I’ll have problems fitting it into a taxi, whether it’s the passenger seat or the boot. Buses would be a bigger headache because it was practically impossible for it to negotiate that bend that you have to go through from the front entrance towards the rear where you have to pass the friendly bus captain. At 9pm Singapore time with no real help I can get from anyone close to me with a vehicle large enough to carry my dear BILLY, I had to give up the purchase. I realised I’ve stopped near the cashier and pondered for about 8 minutes.

I dragged the bookcase flat pack towards the shelves where I got it from; the IKEA guys who saw me helped out with it and asked where I wanted to move it to. I said, “Back to the shelves, because I can’t find any means to bring it back home on public transport”. Smiling, one of the guy answered after putting the bookcase flat pack back into position, “Maxi Cab. Only that’ll work.”

Perhaps IKEA, while designing a means to flatpack their furniture and designing their items such that they can be dismantled into a flatpack, should consider about the means of transport consumers might be able to use to bring them home. Of course, they’d be glad to offer home delivery, but hey, I’m getting the cheap old dear BILLY you know? I’m out to save wherever I can.

Desmond did the Anniversary video for our unit and when it was screened, the computer was playing another soundtrack over the video and it masked the sound of the photo montage.

Quek: Eh, they played the wrong music for the video right?
Des: Yea, they were playing another song over it that’s why I went to the control room to alert them, they replayed it correctly after that.
Quek: I preferred the first song…
Des: -___-||