A little whisper in the dark

The long paper trail

I used to play the trumpet back in secondary school, well, it wasn't because I was musically inclined, but extra curricular activities were compulsory for every student. And so I had to choose one, since big brother was in a military marching band playing the drums, for lack of a better choice, I signed up.

As it turns out, lack of interest often dooms an endeavour to failure, none better exemplified than this one - I hardly learned how to play the trumpet, couldn't figure out the notes on the music score, and at this stage I discovered that skipping band practice meant I could go play elsewhere. And so, lack of attendance became no attendance, somehow I manage to leave secondary school without having been hauled up by the teacher in charge for not having an extra curricular activity. I suppose my name was nominally still on the roster, maybe that's why, but I never got any ECA points. Not that I really cared, anyway.

Much later, I enlisted in the army, and there was a recruitment going on for the armed forces marching band, (and this is how far back records go around here) I'm told to go for the audition with some other bald-headed blur recruits. We're asked what we used to play, I said trumpet, and then off I went to join the queue. Most of them were excited, asking one another which band they played for, competitions and stuff. I was absolutely aghast......

Pretty soon it was my turn on the stage, and I picked up the trumpet, looked at the auditioning panel, and said, I forgot how to play. I didn't know what to expect next.

"OK, fall out, return to your company!"

I suppose they see enough guys like me. But I hope that next week, when I sit for my Biometrics exam, my memory won't escape me and leave me wondering what the formulas for the 1 and 2 sample T and Z-tests, and chi square tests are......

posted by Chung Leong @ 6:52 PM 3 comments

Who do you wanna be?

That was often asked when I was in primary school. Around the class, you get all sorts of answers, doctor, lawyer, policeman, nurse, and I always wanted to be a pilot.

But as we grew up, people stopped asking that; you began to be judged first based on your academics, and as you move into the working world, your possessions. It seems, what you were, doesn't matter as much as what you have.

They say that you take up a job you love and you never have to work a day in your life. Perhaps we should all try to recall who we wanted to be when we were kids.

posted by Chung Leong @ 7:18 PM 1 comments

If email boxes had physical limitations......

......mine would be chock full of junk mail. Being a fairly old email address (I would think by now it is around 7 to 8 years?) and being fed by two other email addresses, enough email address harvesting scripts have gotten it into their databases. Remember, in the past, there wasn't such a thing as spam mail. You posted your email address so that people could reply to you easily, and I didn't understand why people stuck NO-SPAM into the middle of their email addresses.

I do, now. I get about 200 junk mail a day, as classified by Yahoo's spam filter.

Its not such a bad thing, actually. I don't really have to go look at them if I don't want to. But Yahoo's spam filter is too aggressive - I had to rescue my airline travel itenerary from the spam box because of the way the logic filter is phrased. I have had to rescue uni correspondence out of there as well. And so, for fear of missing something important like that, I end up scanning the spam box anyway:

Cialis. Nigerian money laundering schemes. "Confirmation" of purchase email headers. Pre-approved platinum cards. Dating websites. Porn sites.

At least I don't have to look at their contents.

posted by Chung Leong @ 11:44 AM 0 comments