After a long period of 2 years and 7 months, my occupation will be student again. In the past 2 years, I have been an NSF, then unemployed, an usher, teacher, then unemployed again. Long holidays aren't as good as they seem. Unless you have the motivation to keep learning new things, they dull your mind. However, it's difficult to learn new things unless you constantly apply your new self taught skills. As a result, I usually only learn enough about something to accomplish a specific task. Google comes in very handy. I learnt just enough CSS to do a blogskin, enough JavaScript to do random numbers and a countdown timer, enough MS Excel to make spreadsheets that do away with tedious calculations. I had the most fun during my stint as a relief teacher. Kids are cute and seem to have an infinite supply of energy, haha, and they're much smarter then what many people give them credit for.

I'll have to check-in to my hall this week. It's so much trouble. Entering NS was much easier. I didn't have to do anything. Although I went down to the army market to buy some stuff, I realised that the SAF provided everything I need, including bed sheets, pillow cases, footwear, towels, clothes and even toilet paper. Now I have to go buy my own linen, find a spare pillow and bring in clothes.

Hall orientation will be two weeks long, and I haven't got a laptop yet, so chee hui, looks like there'll be no solitaire showdown for some time, and you'll have to find someone else to proofread your blog posts, haha. There's a lot of paperwork to be done and still many unknowns ahead. The bidding system looks like some kind of incomprehensible auction with 2 types of currencies and with different stages like the primary school admission exercise.

There were a couple of forum letters last week which I found interesting. One was about how motorists should treat cyclists as fellow road users. In response, someone else wrote one which gave examples of how cyclists only obey rules when it is to their advantage. That is certainly very true. Cyclists consider themselves road users, till they need to go past red lights or zebra crossings. Suddenly they become pedestrians. Some even cycle against the flow of traffic.

The other letter implied that scientists and mathematicians are not the most creative of people. That received a few replies in today's forum. The first writer failed to appreciate the creativity required to solve scientific and mathematical problems. Perhaps it isn't music or poetry, but I think problem solving certainly requires a great deal of creativity.

Some board or committee decided that it would be a brilliant idea to erect a large NDP board on the roundabout near an MRT station. Hock, Jol and YH should know which one I'm referring to. Now I can't see the traffic on the whole roundabout at one time when using it to make a U turn. It's not really a safety problem as drivers should still be able to see approaching traffic going around the roundabout, but the reduced visibility makes me uneasy.