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Friday, May 20, 2011
So just a few weeks ago I went into a frenzy to find out about other university courses. I'm not exactly sure what started it off. The main reason why I did it is because I had a sudden irrational fear that I wouldn't be able to pick up programming easily.
It's a really silly fear, that's why I called it irrational. After all, we are all going into a university course without knowing what we'll expect. I'm pretty sure most JC students have never did anything related to business or accountancy, and the only thing remotely close to it is Economics. Similarly, medicine, law and dentistry isn't a walk in the park.
Furthermore, I read that it's perfectly fine to get into Computer Science without any foreknowledge of it at all. In fact, some of those who enter without any knowledge can end up doing better than those who do.
Explanations of the irrationality aside, here's what I thought of the courses I decided to look into. I didn't make a blog post about this did I? So here it is.
I first looked into accountancy. I looked into it first because I have two good friends going into accountancy (although it's for two different universities), and accountants seem to have a good life (albeit a boring one). They make lots of money, they're heavily sought after, and the only time they seem to be busy is when they are fresh and green, and when it's time to do their accounting stuff (as in, "that time" of the year). But seriously, all those numbers and finance stuff, it confuses me to the ends of the Earth. And yep, it's boring.
I looked at Science next. Seems useless. It's like a really general degree. Honestly, I didn't research much about it.
Engineering was next. Since I was young, I always had this perception of engineers: people who carry spanners, going around fixing stuff. Blame games like Command & Conquer and Red Alert. I'm not too sure if this perception is too far off, but I do think that engineers do go around fixing things, whether is it a machine, or some sort of chemical or nuclear plant. Basically, I don't have a good impression of engineers. Too many guys anyway.
I like Geography. It's my favourite subject when I was in JC. Physics was a very close second, possibly even tied for top. But the future of a geographer in Singapore seems really risky. Sure, there are things like Marina Barrage which needs the help of a geologist, but I bet I'll just end up being a geography teacher or something of the sort.
What's left is Computer Science. I have plans to learn programming before the next university application date, so I can see whether it's for me. So far, either the books for programming are loaned out from the library, or it's not suitable for me. iPhone application development hit a roadblock when I needed a Mac. The Blackberry application development for Dummies book assumed I had knowledge in Java. The Android application development books are loaned out. I might try C++, but the books are loaned out too.
Anyway, I am comfortable with a computer (like duh, I can use it all day long), and the future is IT. Smartphones are growing exponentially, hackers are happily hacking companies, and even
viruses are being developed for warfare. In the future, the people who know how to make products out of blocks of text will be powerful people. So yeah, I do want to be in Computer Science. I'm just scared. A very irrational fear. And I don't want 50% foreigners in my course, who are most likely stereotypical Indians.
posted @ 8:13 pm
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Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Fate Vs Choice
Fate vs Choice. Many people have been asked their opinions on this, and often the reply I see is that they believe that they live their lives making choices. However, is this really the case? I want to present some examples, as well as some trains of thought. To me, fate is having your life and actions already predetermined before you have made the action, and choice is, simply put, being able to make choices and decisions for the paths that lie ahead of you. I'll be using examples from the movie Minority Report, the Bible, as well as the illusion of choice.
A little background information about Minority Report, in case you haven't watched it yet or you require a refresher. In short, the movie takes place in the future, and they are able to predict murders before it happens. The main character, John, soon becomes a to-be murderer, and he tries to escape capture, and tries to prevent himself from committing the heinous act itself. In the end, he does commit the murder.
So as you can see, the prediction of murder is fate, and the main character is trying to go against fate by attempting to not murder. If he did have a choice, then why did he still choose to murder, knowing that he did not want to do it in the first place, and knowing that it is wrong. To give you more background information, John works as a officer in the PreCrime department, where they discover murders before it happens. Many people have argued that there is no such thing as fate, and that you always have a choice. However, let me pose this question to you. If the John never found out that he was going to murder someone, and he somehow still managed to evade capture, would his murder be considered fate, or a choice?
And this brings me to my next point. The illusion of choice. Do we really have a choice? Us choice-believers live out our lives day by day, doing what we decide to do. However, how do we know that what we do isn't already pre-determined? How do we know that we aren't following what fate has laid out in front of us? Look in front of you. Press a letter on your keyboard. Did you choose to pick that letter, or did you just do what fate meant for you to do all this while? Simply put, just because you were not told that pressing the letter "k" was something that you were fated to do, does not mean that you chose to press "k". Hence, the illusion.
The last thing I'm going to cover is the Bible. I'm pretty sure you have some sort of basic idea of what I'm going to talk about. Divine powers and God would eventually lead to the foretelling of events. I will use a more prominent example in the Bible - the events leading to the crucifixion of Christ. Jesus foretold the betrayal of some of his disciples, and sure enough, it happened. I'm not going to explain this. It's the same concept; they seemed to have been given no choice at what they do at all, since what they were going to do was already predicted and pre-determined for them.
Instead, I'm going to present a different idea here. Was Christ predicting the choice of his disciples, or was he laying out their fate for them? In fact, this question can be applied to John in Minority Report as well.
I am not going to support any side in this argument. This is something that can never be answered. There will be no definite answer, and no one will know the answer, unless they meet God or whichever higher power there is in their afterlife. As you can see, I have asked many questions in this argument. I never laid out any sure and definite points, instead only giving examples and questioning certain ideas.
If you were to really ask me what I believe in, I would say that we have a choice in our actions. What you believe in is up to you. I just had to write this to express what I've been thinking about for quite some time.
posted @ 9:28 pm
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Thursday, May 05, 2011
1. I'm full of energy and awake at first, but when I enter camp, all energy is sucked away from me and I start to feel really sleepy.
2. My knee starts to hurt sporadically.
3. I start to itch.
4. I suddenly have the need to take naps in the morning and afternoon.
5. I am capable of sitting around and staring into space, thinking about absolutely nothing at all.
6. I can't seem to solve or answer simple questions that I could have solved in Secondary school.
7. I have no idea what day or date it is unless
its Friday. Why? Because after that it's Saturday, and then its Sunday.
8. Time literally stops. I have little semblance of it and when I do, I suddenly realized that time has skipped forward. "Hey, where did my time go?"
9. I run out of books to read.
10. The MINDEF Forums become my number one source of entertainment.
11. I'm capable of leveling up to level 99 in a certain RPG on my PSP, just because I can.
12. But I don't, because I'd rather sit around doing nothing.
13. I never seem to be able to sleep at night without waking up at least once.
14. I randomly decide to SMS spam to my friends. And I think one of them decided to block me. Sigh.
15. After listening to 98.7FM for a day, you understand the meaning of "ONLY the hits".
16. I suddenly have at least three mosquito bites on myself.
17. I write blog posts on paper in camp.
posted @ 9:26 pm
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