a sign...

If life were so easy, we wouldn't need religion.

It's a sign, it's time I left.

$2...

What can you buy with $2? Chicken rice will be the standard answer most people will give. But since Wednesday, the answer is COE [certificate of entitlement]. You need one of those to own a car in Singapore. And they don't come cheap. It's usually a couple of thousand of dollars. But since it works on a bidding system, once in awhile, the price happens to be a single digit. It has happened before.

And why might you ask have this happened now? I will tell you. Just a theory, might not really be TRUE. The Singapore government releases a certain number of COEs at each bidding and people bid a price for it. It works something like the NUS module bidding system. IF the number of COEs exceed the number of bidders, then the price will be the price of the lowest bid. In this case $2.

In this time of recession, most people who buy the <1300cc category of cars are the ones that are most affected. So logically, you don't expect these people to buy cars now. I mean, if you can afford a high end Ferrari, even if the downturn affected you that badly, you're not going to downgrade to a new 1300cc car now.

And this cheap COE has sparked a wave of people buying 1300cc and below cars. I hope they know that the influx of people buying would mean that in the next round of COE bidding, there will likely be a higher number of bidders than COEs. Which means that the price is going to go back up.

So what can you buy with $2? Definitely not a COE in the next round.

days ahead...

3 days to the first paper.

Starting is definitely the hardest.

english major...

What is the root word of destruction?

I answered, destruct.

Haha, so wrong, there is no such word. The correct answer is destroy.

what was he thinking...

Did you read? A man dresses in a tudong [a traditional Malay headgear] tried to rob a bank in Singapore.

Do you know why you don't hear about bank robberies in Singapore more often? Yes, it's because, all the previous bank robbery attempts have ended in failure. I think within the last ten years, there were only 2 or 3 other incidents of bank robberies. And all of the robbers got caught. So logic screams out quite loudly, that you shouldn't do it. BUT, in the rare case you do, you definitely need to think through it more thoroughly than doing it on your own.

Also, in the attempt to scare the bank, the man claimed to have a bomb in his bag. A bomb that he could detonate with his mobile. Well, isn't that just the smartest thing to do? I mean in this age of terrorism and DIY bomb making instructions that can be easily obtained online, that believable right? WRONG. First of all, bomb. how much attention do you want to attract to yourself? Say bomb and most kids will make fun of you. Say bomb and all the adults will look at you.

Using a mobile to detonate the bomb might have been the only smart thing that he did. No one really knows if a mobile can detonate a bomb even though many terrorist bombings have claimed that they detonated it by mobile. Play on the fears of the uncertain.

But saying bomb would allow the ISA to detain you forever without trail. Haha, backfired.

But, please. robbing a bank? Imagine if he actually did manage to get a pile of money. If the rest of the customers in the bank realise that he is making away their money, I think they would be more than willing to stone him there and then.

a new convert...

I have officially given up on Internet Explorer. Yes. If Microsoft is reading this, please make it more reliable. It keeps hanging if I have more than 2 or 3 tabs open.

So now, I'm a Firefox user. The add-ons are extremely interesting.

The only thing that I will use IE is to check NUS mail. For some reason, the NUS mail turns up really ugly on Firefox.

spider...

so random. while waiting for a bus outside church.