Ooo yeah Bobby,

Thanks for reminding me that I've actually made this no-budget video for our diploma's final year project.

And thanks, Matt, for trying to make a date. Make it happen!

Now I am feeling a little hyper-charged.

It amazes me that one of my superiors is such an accurate representation of the Pointy-Hair Boss (PHB).

The year is coming to an end, and he is taking his PHB antics up a notch.

Imagine it's a combination of these:

When i was a little younger, I would be munching bags of Roller Coaster rings and gulping bottles of (sweet and unhealthy) Pokka green tea while watching football during the night and early mornings. Likewise when I was doing projects at home during the polytechnic years. In fact, I am doing the same at this very moment.

Sin.

It wasn't helpful to know that there is a snacks wholesaler very near where I am staying!

This little addiction was being curbed quite effectively until the snack vending machine in camp started stocking on Roller Coasters yesterday. Argh!

Speaking of food sins, take a look at this article listing the techniques food manufactuers used persuade us to buy their products - some of which we have fell for, willingly or not.

To think that twenty years ago I was still crawling around and learning to walk, Dilbert was born (and became an adult instantaneously). A little more than a decade later, we crossed paths for the very first time - thanks to The New Paper (TNP).

I started reading TNP when I was in Primary 4, in 1997.  Back then, I read the newspaper from the last page. You guessed it - the sports news. In those days, reading reports describing the rivalry between Arsenal and Manchester United was more "important" - and no doubt interesting - than knowing that Mah Bow Tan and his team won the Tampines GRC contest (again) by walkover, or that Bill Clinton won a second term to serve as the President of the United States.

And there's the daily dose of Dilbert's life working under the Pointy Hair Boss (PHB). To be hoenst, I have never understood the meanings conveyed in it until I graduated from secondary school. As I started to soak myself in the atmosphere of business, management, and corporate culture - through a better understanding of the world issues, my diploma programme, and some work experience - I started to appreciate and laugh genuinely at these comic strips.

Ridiculous co-workers, silly managers and lame policies - things that I have either read or experienced, Scott Adam (Dilbert's author) manages to portray them so funnily. In fact, there's this story of Adams, together with a design consultancy, designing the Ultimate Cubicle (notice the emergency shoe polisher on the bottom right):

I couldn't get enough of Dilbert.

In the Army camp, I access Dilbert's website on my mobile phone daily. Periodically, I visit the library (in case you couldn't recall what's that, it's actually a place set apart to contain books, periodicals, and other material for reading, viewing, listening, study, or reference, as a room, set of rooms, or building where books may be read or borrowed.) near my house to borrow past Dilbert collection books.

It just doesn't stop there.

Six months ago, while attending a military course, I chanced upon one of Scott Adams's best seller, The Dilbert Principle. Man, that brightened up my days in the military school.

And now, Scott Adam is releasing a mega-collection of Dilbert comic strips, rejection letters, and his personal opinions, packed into a 600-pages, 4kg book. It looks pretty exquisite from the picture posted on Amazon.com.

It is a must-have Dilbert lovers.

And Christmas is coming soon. *wink*

My recent SAT score is terrible:

Admittedly, my command of the English Language has never been good. My best result ever gotten in an English Language test was a B3 for 'O' levels. That couldn't have happened without the constant nagging reminders from my wonderful English teacher then, Mrs Karen Yeo.

"You can't force a horse to drink water when it doesn't wants to" - Mrs Yeo

In polytechnic, two language-related modules - Business Communications 1 and 2 - smeared my academic transcript. The two Bs became my lowest-scoring modules.

Now that I am in the Army, the only nagging I get everyday are from my superiors, who are... not exactly the kind of people that can help to improve my command of English. My vocaburary is hopelessly limited, my grammar is helplessly poor, and my mind is simply unprepared.

With questions such as identifying sentence errors and improving sentence structure, the SAT is damn technical. Growing up in an environment where broken English (with some extreme variations such as "howww ishhh euuuu?? gudd or nott?") is practiced commonly, taking the SAT while serving the Army is like being thrown into scalding hot oil, and I am the chicken nugget.

SMU's requirement to gain exemption for their English module, Academic Writing, is to achieve a combined score of 1210, made up scores in the Critical Reading and Writing sections. Having missed the cut by 70 marks (out of a possible 1600), I should just, in perfect Singlish, suck thumb.