The network is down

I guess I've been looking for excuses to post, but something got in the way. I actually got around to fixing my desktop PC. So instead its because the network at work is down.

It actually worked for quite a while. I mean, back in Australia. Hummed like a chior without a fault. Well anyway, it didn't quite make the trip here unscathed. There were plenty of loose things here and there. I didn't check all of them.

So after a while, I fried the motherboard. There was actually smoke coming out of it somewhere. That was about 2 months ago now. Since I had nothing else to do, I bought another one. Obviously doing what was super quality work, I installed it. The CPU fan didn't fit anymore, so I cut bits off it so it at least had contact with the CPU. Not ideal, but that measn that the motherboard can't go vertical with the case. Therefore it sits on the floor. Also, it doesn't need to be bolted down to the case, so, me being me, didn't bolt it down.

Another mistake.

My new flatmate is moving in with me soon, so I had to move all my stuff out of that room. During the move, something came loose, and kinda went under the motherboard. So after I'd moved it, it wouldn't start again. Usually I like problem solving, in fact, its one of the big things that I miss as part of my old job. But this was a problem I couldn't really find a solution to since there was only really one symptom. The system wasn't powering up.

This was the same symptom I got on my old motherboard, but without the smoke. Normally I'm the one who tells people to RTFM, so I tried to take my own advice. I went to the troubleshooting part of the motherboard manual. 'Check to see whether the motherboard is short circuited'. I checked. 'Unplug everything with only the power supply and see.' I saw. Since I didn't really get any further than that, I naturally assumed I'd done the same thing again, and out I went to buy another motherboard, this time, as cheap as I could find.

Same issue again. No, it couldn't be the motherboard right? Well, what comes before the motherboard? Oh thats right, the knee bone power supply. I took my time getting this one, since I thought I was spending way too much money on this and if I did end up getting it working again, I'd just spend lots more time playing games. However, a friend convinced me to. He needs some help with his MMORPG character.

So back I went and installed this brand spanking new power supply.

It failed =( What could possibly be wrong?!?!

I'm lucky I have a laptop to play around with as well, otherwise I would be totally screwed. So the first thing I thought could be a problem now was the power switch. Maybe I yanked it too hard and it broke.

So I googled atx power switches and so forth. That didn't last long - making a new switch was thrown in the "too hard" basket, and it was a long shot anyway.

Next - testing the power supply. It took a bit more googling to find that some people happen to use the power supply for non-computer purposes. Don't ask me what - I wouldn't know. But they wanted to know how to 'turn on a power supply without a power switch'. Apparently you just short a couple of wires in the ATX power cable thing. Specifically, the green one and any of the black ones. They suggested a paper clip to help with the job.

I didn't have any paperclips, but conviniently remembered that my parents, aunts and uncles told me never to stick cutlery in power points, and in the case of my grandmother, toasters. (What? Sometimes those little toasties get stuck because they pop out at the wrong angle!) 5 minutes later i'm sitting on the floor of my bedroom sticking forks into a power supply in an apartment to which only I have the key in a country where nobody would really notice if I went missing.

Not that the ridiculousness of the situation was on my mind at the time. With the benefit of hindsight, that was probably a bad idea.

It wasn't all that bad though. I've had worse shocks in primary school when kids would deliberately rub their socks on the floor and me around to give an electric shock. It also helped to prove that the power supply was absolutely fine. Both of them. Fan started spinning, and apparently electricity was flowing.

Back to the motherboards then.

Pull out the motherboards from the case, attach it to the power supply, and then short the power switch with a fork. Easy enough right? Yes, actually. The CPU fan starts spinning. Right. So its not the motherboard... back to the switches.

I plugged the switch into the appropriate position on the motherboard while it was still outside the case, lying on the floor of my room.

Whhiiiiirrrrrr....

Seriously considering leaving all the hardware sitting out on the floor while I went back to playing games, I went back on MSN for a break. Who ever thought that shorting your power supply and motherboards with a fork would be so much work?

Later on I found the problem. It was a bit of metal from a SATA cable that fell off when I moved it. It was under the motherboard and was shorting it! Argh.

Singapore Pizza

I had a craving for pizza tonight, so I ordered some. I really wasn't very satisfied. Theres something about the pizza here which makes it a bit NQR. Now I realise why, when I went to Italy with a couple of friends from this country, they LOVED the pizza. Of course, after a couple of weeks of nothing but pizza and pasta, they got sick of it, but the standard is so much different over there. Its a bit like flying from Antarctica to the middle of Botswana and discovering the difference in temperature difference. Thats if you can equate the weather to the taste of pizza. If in some sick way you can't, join the club. I don't understand what I write most of the time either.

I've actually had a couple of pizzas here, and neither of them are any good at all. I thought that maybe the first was just an abnormal sample, but as I'm now doubling the sample size, my significance level is getting just that much better.

So I think I figured out what it is. A couple of things actually:

The Cheese

The first thing is the cheese. Its really not er.. cheesy enough. I don't actually know much about cheese, but normally the cheese I eat on pizzas is melted and stretches when you pull the next piece off the pizza. The cheese here just breaks. Thats just wrong. Theres no slippery slide of cheese between you and the rest of the pizza. It also spoils the whole pizza eating experience.

I don't know if its the same thing that makes cheese stretchy as well as taste better, but its the best that I can come up with.

The Meat

All the Aussies I talk to here all agree that the meat in this country is two things: bad and expensive. The only American I'm on speaking terms here also agrees. I guess it only makes sense. Apart from chicken, all the other types of land animal meat on sale here has to float halfway around the world before it actually gets here. The beef, lamb and pork comes from either Brazil, Australia or New Zealand.

The meat on this particular pizza I had tonight looked like spam. I ordered a super supreme, so I was guessing it was either ham or salami. It tasted like neither, which is a bit scary. If I wake up sick tomorrow, then I'll know why.

So point to note: If you ever come to Singapore, don't eat the pizza, even if you have a REALLY big craving for it. Its also very expensive ($25~ SGD). Try the chilli crab instead.

A night of hilarity

I was reading some of the old posts on this blog and its actually quite funny. I think it has actually made me want to start writing again. That, coupled with the fact that my game playing desktop machine is kind of broken right now gives me the perfect oppurtunity to start trying. So I thought I'd share something because nobody I talk to on a regular basis actually knows about this situation, and I found it really quite funny. I still chuckle to myself when I think about it a few weeks later. It actually happened on one of those rare occasions I went clubbing.

To put it in perspective, I don't actually go clubbing very often. Once every 3 months at the most. The average is probably closer to once every 6 months. I think I've written before about why I don't go. Its somewhere in the plethora of words that somehow made it from my computer to Blogger in the past few years. Personally I wouldn't go searching for it, but suffice to say that I'm not someone who has the personality nor the physical dexterity to make an impression in that sort of environment. Plus, its not exactly cheap.

So anyway, it was a Friday night, and I'd been to a work team building function thing where people just seem to drink and eat, and then drink some more. Throw in some games and collegues making a fool of themselves, and you have a night of hilarity for people to talk about during the next week in the office and to spread rumours about others to those who didn't attend. It was in some ways quite an eye opener.

Instead of staying around to make a fool of myself in front of my boss and the people who tell me what to do at work, I thought I should go catch up with a friend I haven't seen since I started uni. She was at a club down the road drinking, so I went and met up with her. We went in, and I met some of her friends, and we drank. I'm not sure what I was drinking, but I thought it actually tasted quite bad. Normally I wouldn't keep drinking, but it was free, and being from an Asian background, I just can't say no to free stuff. In fact, the only junk mail I keep is where they give you free samples or vouchers for things. But I digress.

So we did the usual thing. Cheers to just about anything you could think of, and cheers to about an equal or more number of things that we couldn't think of. I remember meeting a few people, but if you put them in front of me today and asked me who they were, I probably couldn't tell you. It was dark, and it was a club! I never actually saw any of them in the light. Its probably better that way, they end up looking better.

Needless to say, I probably had about 5 drinks too many, and had to go to the bathroom to make it all come out wrong. At last count I think it was about 3 times. In the end I kind of went back to the table we were sitting at and promptly fell asleep. Not exactly the best impression to have on a friend I used to have a crush on. Oh well. No, I didn't come to this country because of her. It was a long time ago, and girls skipping the country after I start to have a thing for them seem to happen more often than not. I think theres just not enough room in the country for my ego and them, so its usually them who make room for my ego, and now my belly.

The next thing I knew was that I was sitting at a table with drained drinks with another couple who looked vaguely familiar. I think they were my friend's friends. However, at that stage, they could have been complete strangers and I wouldn't really have cared. All that really mattered was that I wasn't quite alone in a club which was rapidly becoming empty. They looked at me sympathetically. I gave a relatively weak smile in reply.

Someone else who looked quite familiar and was probably smoking weed earlier in the night came by with a couple of girls who seemed quite pleasant and started dancing around near the table. Not knowing what to do and too lazy to do anything, I stared. From what I remember, they were wearing things that were quite flattering. Well, actually, anything would have looked flattering in my state of mind. One of them asked me to dance. As much as I would have liked to, I think that would have just led me to falling over again, so I, as graciously as I could under the circumstances, declined her offer. She seemed to take it as a mortal insult and walked away. Now that I think back on it, I think it must have been the way I was slouched with googly eyes talking to her breasts rather than her face. I have, however, been wrong before.

The couple on the other side of the table seemed quite amused about my state of being, and after a while asked if I would like to dance in the usual way people do when nobody can hear what you're saying:

Girl: *Mouth moves while jerking thumb towards dancefloor and a questioning look*

I surprised myself by replying:

Me: *Expression of surprise coupled with a slight nod and a mouthing of 'okay'*

So she led me by my hand towards the dancefloor. Clearly I wouldn't have been able to make it on my own. The (what I assumed to be) boyfriend, however, was not impressed. To tell you the truth, I wouldn't be either, but the expression on his face was priceless. She started dancing and I waved my arms about and shuffled my feet. Boyfriend stood on the side and watched us glumly. I was trying to milk this for all it was worth.

After a short while he pulled her away a bit. Thinking that it would be stupid to stop dancing by myself, I kept going, making a general fool of myself in front of people I'd never met before. Something else which is not the first time. She seemed to look sorry for me, but also had to placate the boyfriend, so spun a few moves and went back to their seats. Feeling more foolish than before, I thought I should make an exit and stop eliciting spurts of jealousy from the boyfriend, however entertaining it was. I announced to my new found pals it was time for me to go home. We wouldn't want him to start off on a worse impression than I was already giving, in the event that I ever meet them again.

I thought that would be the end of it. I would have been quite content to leave him and his alone. But he seemed quite insistent that once I'd made my announcement, he should escort me to the door. Not exactly the most confident move by a guy in front of his girlfriend, but who am I to judge? All my confidence at the time was alchohol induced. He seemed to also have an issue that I left my bag in the cloak room and needed to fetch it. He really wanted to get rid of me.

I shook his hand on the way out.
'Thanks mate.'

I'm coming back with a bang!

How its all been going

The short answer is: Well.

The long answer is, well, long.

Its vague yes. I guess there are plenty of stories to tell, and not all of them flattering, but there are plenty of good things going on too. I'm finally starting to get settled into my job and actually getting some productive work done. Its not actually a job which requires a lot of brains, but its not a job which could be done by me 5 years ago either.

The thing is, I'm almost defining my job scope as we go along. There is of course a certain minimum standard I have to meet, but apart from that, the amount of work is really only constained by the amount of time we have to do it. Technically its only meant to finish up by June next year, so it sounds like plenty of time, but theres a lot to cover.

I need to go through data from lots of different countries and make sure its 'right'. This is all to report figures to regulatory authorities to determine how much money our bank needs to do its everyday things and keep some on the side for a rainy day. Its nice to know the outcome of my work will have a profound impact - think billions of dollars of funds going to or fro.

Apart from my job, I seem to be meeting plenty of people. However, they all seem to be similar to me. That is, they're all from western countries who've moved to Singapore to work. I think now I understand why the foreign students in Australia all seem to hang out together. Its not really that they don't want to hang out with the locals, it can be hard to meet them if you're not from around there. They all have their circles already set up, and its not easy to be a part of them. The background and things which bring them together are likely to be different. Whereas if you're with people who are 'like you', then you have more in common, more to talk about, and therefore are more likely to hang out together.

I guess its not all bad. At least they don't hang out with me because of my money. Yeah you know the stereotypical Singaporean girl who seems to think thats a huge status thing - the ones who buy Gucci bags on credit because it apparently reflects how good a person they are. Well, it seems true on the male side too. However, bags aren't quite so common. Its more about their car or shirts.

Or maybe I'm just jealous I don't have a Gucci bag.

I'll let you decide.

EDIT: Apparently, I've already written about this before