The Future of Energy is Nuclear.......get used to it....

All anti-nuclear campaigners and protesters much be lined up and shot.

The future looks bleak my friends, make no bones about it. We are more heavily dependent on oil than you can possible imagine. What used to be a clean, abudant energy source, is now expensive, dirty, and getting progressively more difficult to find.

The Oil Age is ending, and its high time the Nuclear Age started. Just how humans weaned themselves off coal dependance and onto petroleum, it is possible to still depend on the ground to provide us with fuel.

I live in Singapore, a nation heavily dependent on oil import to sustain its power needs. Naturally, as oil prices rise, this small country with hardly any large industries to speak of experiences high electricity tariff hikes.

We are currently ranked second behind London for the world's largest electricity tariff hikes. And its only a matter of time before we are ranked first.

Singapore is expensive. Expensive housing, expensive transportation (the MRT isn't exactly cheap), very expensive cars and fuel, and its not going to improve. What do you expect from a country so heavily plugged into the world market so much so it cannot rely on anything internal to keep prices down.

Heck, even Australia is cheaper! Cheaper good food, groceries, housing, transportation, AND the country's economy is still growing.

The point of the above is this :

WE HAVE NO OPTION BUT TO START INVESTING IN NUCLEAR POWER

Yes, i mean everyone. And please do some research before opening your mouth to start feeding me rubbish about nuclear energy being unsafe, dirty, and will make mutants of us all, and that a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant will result in a big boom.

Rubbish.....

Nuclear energy is only technology intensive. Once you get the complicated science and construction right, its cheaper than petroleum and hydrogen fuel sources. Nuclear waste is recycled and reused in many modern plants. All those stories you hear about spent fuel rods lying buried is true........for plants built 50 years ago. Not for the new generation plants.

A nuclear fuel source goes through a cycle where once it is used, it is sent for reprocessing and then for reuse, making it a very efficient and potentially cheap future power source. Its enviromentally friendly too, nuclear plants produce zero emissions, waste and even zero radiation outside the reactor.

They are built like bunkers, able to withstand missile strikes and airplanes flying into them. The initial cost is expensive, but hydroelectric dams are even more so and more enviromentally damaging too.

With regards to nuclear weapons manufacturing, making nuclear fuel is not the same as making weapons grade uranium. And you need missile tech to really make the weapons useful.

The only option now is to start getting tough on hippies and anti-nuke nutjobs who NEVER do their homework and study a bit of nuclear science to learn a bit more about what they're fighitng against :

A clean, safe, sustainable and cheap energy source, waiting to be used. Uranium deposits are plenty, and hardly explored too.

I for one stand by the nuclear industry and I want it to grow. To learn more about nuclear power, read this website:

World Nuclear Associsation

And please, before making some snide anti-nuke remarks in the comment section, do your homework to avoid coming across as a complete idiot.

Other than that, see you in the nuclear future!

Cheers from the,

Matrix

Chatroom...

I'm home for a month for the holidays. The last time i was home for this long was more than a year ago and its because i get bored easily at home. There really isn't much to do. On campus on the other hand, I could be working on my research project on microbubble pumps, cycling, and of course move about more easily since it had very good public transport.

This time however, things are a little different.

Since i'm going to be interning next semester at Emerson Singapore, and won't be able to come back for another 6 months, i just decided to bring my bicycle back to keep me occupied and healthy for a month. And its working surprisingly. My evenings are spent cycling and playing football, and strangely, that's enough.

And now, i found something new to do online besides the blog reading, online gaming addiction, news and facebook.

Chatting with random strangers online.....

I know, it sounds distasteful, but lets look past the many weirdos and sexual fantasy addicts out there and just concentrate on one fact. You meet new people very easily and rather safely. You get fresh perspectives, new ideas, insights into a place you've never been to, all from the comfort of a laptop chair.

I am painfully aware that many people, my friends included, are incredible uncomfortable with this idea, obviously having heard and possibly experienced horror stories regarding internet chatrooms.

Ignoring the remarks i've got from mates when i tell them about this, i do find this annonymous chat thing rather interesting. Truth be told, i'm a bit tired of talking to the same old friends everyday. Its not that i don't value them as friends and all that rubbish. Its just, i like meeting new people. Not for the sake of fulfilling some deep yearning for more companionship and other psycho-babble, but rather because it is very interesting.

I have, within the span of 3 day of using this website :

1) Met a chap in Sao Paulo, Brazil who introduced me to life for the common man i Brazil, and that its not the party town filled with hot women and men and cheap yet good beer that we have all come to associate Brazil with.

2) Met a 17 year old who's writing a final high school year history paper on Singapore, and had an interesting conversation about the lack of civil liberties and controversies regarding how the ruling party is maintaining control in Singapore, to add to the many good things she has already researched. It did amaze me, the depth of thinking, regarding potential economic and political consequences an asian city she has never visited, that she had, something i wished more Singaporen youths had. Heck, even I wasn't thinking on such a matured level at that age about my country!

3) Talked to a girl from Massachusetts who was doing a Bachelor in Fine Arts, and was a stage manager. Its great to talk to someone about a field i have never even considered. She's now a pen-pal. I did have one previously though. A girl from Australia during the snail mail era, but the i got tired of writing letters.....

4) A 23 year old woman from Shanghai, China who was fed up with trying to live upto to her parents expectations of marrying and settling down and is on the verge of migrating to the US after secretly securing a job as an analyst for a financial institution.

5) A guy called Dieber from Amsterdam who think the city's reputation as a "fun town" doesn't make it very conducive for raising children and had some whacky ideas on what would happen if weed was oulawed in the Netherlands.

Of, course, i did have exceedingly brief conversations with sex starved men and women, and one chap who wanted to know what color were my underpants =.="

Well, you have no choice but to filter these weirdos out and find the really interesting people out there who genuinely want to share their life stories, experiences, local cultures and lifestyles and then you start gaining new perspectives.

All said and done, all that's left is to try it out here , IF you dare.....

Cheers from the,

Matrix

Its THAT time of the year again....

I'm a HUGE fan of the Grinch. You see, he symbolises what i think is sanity in this time of the year. A time of insane guilt free retail therapy , a holiday that a i feel has been grossly over commercialized and exploited by the retail industry to satisfy our misguided perceptions that a time of giving translates into senseless extravagant shopping and not true giving. Things like love, true generosity (not flexing of financial muscles) and sincerity.

Forgive me.

Christmas makes me cynical. I think its hugely over rated. It is a holiday which symbolises the start of an entire month of discount "xmas" sales, "cheap" shopping, streets being decked out in chirstmas colors and bangs and whistles, fake santas holding little kids in shopping malls and the worst of them all.......

....the abomination called a turkey.....

I mean wtf?? Turkey is dry, bland and needs lots of gravy to make it taste good. And during christmas, this poor excuse for poultry is charged like RM100-300 for an entire bird, depending on what sort you want. Imported, grilled, pre baked, raw, whatever.

Christmas, to me, is nothing but coordinated retail therapy on a gargantuan, global scale. No one bothers with tradition nowadays. Kids like christmas because its that time of the year where they get loads of presents. Food is an extra bonus, and so is snow. Adults like it , well, cause its a reason to party, let your hair down for a while, have a holiday.

And i've run out of grouchy things to say.. =.="

All i can say is, cheers to this month of a festival that has lost its true meaning in a materialistic world.

Merry Christmas from the cynical,

Matrix

Are Singaporeans patrotic beyond following the law?

I've been living in Singapore for 2 years and 6 months now. I came here with expectations of a society that safer, more civil, and more free than the one i left (Kuala Lumpur).

My expectations have not been fulfilled.

You see, Singapore being a trading and commercial hub in Asia, a society largely influenced by Western culture with a good blend in of the east as well has set itself standards which come naturally with a country claiming to be a first world nation. One of them being freedom of expression.

Lets not go there shall we for the moment? Suffice to say you would probably agree with me that Singapore's reputation in that is similar to Malaysia's, only difference being, get on the wrong side of the powers-that be in Malaysia, and you'll end up in a lockup, and probably dead the next day.

In Singapore, its going to be a defamation suit, cause yes, if you go by the law, what you do say is slander and yes, you will get prosecuted.

There have been accusations that the Singapore Law Society and the Judicial system is heavily influenced by the government. A lot of accusations actually, by individuals officially deemed not credible by the ruling party such as the...... well....... opposition.

That being said, one does wonder. There can't be smoke without fire.

I find all my singaporean friends to be politically impotent. They have no critical arguments against the ruling party, nor do they have much opinion at all about government policies or the way the country is run.

I get this aura of fear whenever i talk critically about a government policy, as if one wrong word from me, and everyone around me gets arrested on the spot and charged with sedition. In Malaysia? I do not.

Yes, at home things are horrible compared to Singapore. Singapore is a dream city. Its safe, its civil, you can run a business here without the political bullshit.

But, in Malaysia, the youth are not afraid of speaking up and voicing strong opinions about the government. We do not get listened to, what we say falls on deaf ears , BUT we have opinions. Opinions beyond complaining about lack of parking spaces to the local MP, or complaining about ERP price hikes and then doing nothing about it, its all pathetic.

Noone is questioning their government's popularity with Amnesty International, The International Herald Tribune and The Committe to Protect Journalists.

Noone questions the non-renewal of employment visas for international journalists.

The government may or may not have solid reasons for doing this (i honestly don't know), but i wonder why the youth don't really care, but rather want to get on with their lives and try to make it big in financial terms.

I wish my friends would be a bit more patriotic and really, genuinely voice their opinions about government/economic/social policies, because that shows you're not here to just make a living. You're here because you are Singaporeans, people who have invested their lives here and want the best for their nation's future.

If this carries on, the future of Singapore is going to be decided by individuals without passion for their nation , people without a history of having critical views on policy, a history beneficial to creating new policies that will help keep Singapore competitive in the world market and keep her friends in the western,eastern world.

And FYI, i am getting tired of the line:

"You are here getting educated with Singaporean taxpayer dollars in your MOE grant. so don't complain".

Please, Singapore got me in, cause i'm talented, and my country's gone to the dogs. I came here wanting a better life. It is only reasonable i feel concerned about a country i am considering calling home. And being critical does not mean i am spitting in the face of the taxpayer. Get your facts right.

Cheers from,

The Matrix

Exams and more ......

Apologies for not MIA in this blog and stooping low to posting random stuff from youtube to compensate.

I have been busy. This semester is , though not a killer , it is by far the most challenging of the lot. Juggling between 3 major projects, tons of work and reading and impromptu mechatronics lab self programming sessions in a bid to become better at programming a Motorola 68HC11 microcontroller , and the hours spent in front of the QNX Realtime Operating System workstations trying to figure out how to spawnl( ) a process , use threads and set up communication between 2 simultaneous programs is mega draining.

I'm so thankful for the exam period. The madness can stop and i can finally have time to sleep more, cycle more, run more, and catch up on the lectures i barely fully appreciated. I like what i'm doing, i really do.

I had some really good company for my runs and a bike ride last night.

I FINALLY CRACKED THE 400KM MARK ON TREKKIE =))).

I'm flying home on the 8th of December with my road bike to help mom out with some stuff, and I plan to tackle the Kenny Hills area on trekkie for the whole duration of the semester, catch up with my old friends from high school, and gorge on good old malaysian food, and then burn off all that extra blubber by burning rubber on the road =P.

I'be become fitter btw. Hahas. Came into this semester with a slight tummy and flabby thigs, and now its all tightened up and i'm getting slight hint of wings (the muscled side of the torso). Feeling good.

Oh, and for only the second time this sem, i finally had my lazy 10 hour sleep =P.

On an entirely different note, this sem seems like one prone for breakups. I know its non of my business nor should be a concern of mine (judging from my single status which btw i'm actually enjoying thank you very much).

G mentioned his friend breaking up after like a 7-8 year relationship. Wow. That's pretty major. Another friend is going through a pretty bad period now after falling for someone and then having to endure reality after a very short period of time. I do feel sorry for him/her. Undergoing emotional trauma (wonder if there is such a thing) is certainly not the best way to start off one of the toughest semesters.

And i shall end here.

Cheers from the

Matrix

If Everyone Cared by Nickelback with Lyrics

Nickleback addiction. Cheers and good luck for the finals ppl =)

Dating is Confusing **HD**

what....... =.="