This is another question that I was asked but was unable to answer. I will like to share the question to test your understand.
Assuming you are running on a track at speed V1 for the first lap. Now, you are running the second lap at V2. What should be the speed V2 (In terms of V1 or independently) so that the average speed is 2V1 (2 * V1)?
Hint (Hightlight to see):
Average speed = Total distance / total time
Saturday, 28 October 2017
Random Question - 1
I was asked by my colleague this question but I thought it will be interesting to share.
The profit of selling 15 oranges is the selling price of 5 oranges. What is the profit margin of selling 1 orange?
Have fun!
The profit of selling 15 oranges is the selling price of 5 oranges. What is the profit margin of selling 1 orange?
Have fun!
Thursday, 26 October 2017
Overseas Community Involvement Programme
I suddenly felt like writing this topic as I remembered how people usually promote it as helping the less fortunate overseas. While it might be true that it helps them but I question the true value of these Overseas Community Involvement Programme (OCIP) or also known as Overseas Volunteering Programme.
Background
When I was 15 years old or Secondary 3, I joined one of the trip which is to go Chiang Mai, Thailand. Our aim was to teach the children English and so on. The trip was supposed to take place for a week. However, the trip was cancelled due to some natural disasters that either took place or was about to happen (I forgot) and our teachers decided to cancel the trip for the sake of our safety. Hence, I did not manage to go for the trip. Being young and naïve, I sought for similar chances in future where I was in Junior College as I really thought that I, will help bring about change to people's lives, no matter how small it is. However, after looking at the itinerary of the trips, I found out that sometimes, a trip of 7 days, will have about 3 days of Rest and Recreation (RnR). I wondered if that is to trip to go overseas and play or is it to really help the community. After asking people for their experiences, I found out that it is true that the trip is too short to help others. Sometimes trips such as helping the people to dig wells or to build toilets, ended up having the locals to do themselves as we are not experienced with these and the trip is too short to do anything significant. Overall, the trip seemed more like an eye opener for people like us that are born into more privileged familes rather than doing anything meaningful to help. In the end, I did not go for any OCIP trips and I guess I cannot criticise or provide much comments on the trips as there will certainly be trips which are helpful to the community but in my opinion, many just seem to be excuses for more overseas exposure and a means to boost the resume. In the end, I chose to join the Interact Club to teach underprivileged children in Singapore every Saturday but I feel that I did not do a good job as a tutor and I might have ruined their chance of having a better tutor for a year. So sorry for my shortcomings.
When I was 15 years old or Secondary 3, I joined one of the trip which is to go Chiang Mai, Thailand. Our aim was to teach the children English and so on. The trip was supposed to take place for a week. However, the trip was cancelled due to some natural disasters that either took place or was about to happen (I forgot) and our teachers decided to cancel the trip for the sake of our safety. Hence, I did not manage to go for the trip. Being young and naïve, I sought for similar chances in future where I was in Junior College as I really thought that I, will help bring about change to people's lives, no matter how small it is. However, after looking at the itinerary of the trips, I found out that sometimes, a trip of 7 days, will have about 3 days of Rest and Recreation (RnR). I wondered if that is to trip to go overseas and play or is it to really help the community. After asking people for their experiences, I found out that it is true that the trip is too short to help others. Sometimes trips such as helping the people to dig wells or to build toilets, ended up having the locals to do themselves as we are not experienced with these and the trip is too short to do anything significant. Overall, the trip seemed more like an eye opener for people like us that are born into more privileged familes rather than doing anything meaningful to help. In the end, I did not go for any OCIP trips and I guess I cannot criticise or provide much comments on the trips as there will certainly be trips which are helpful to the community but in my opinion, many just seem to be excuses for more overseas exposure and a means to boost the resume. In the end, I chose to join the Interact Club to teach underprivileged children in Singapore every Saturday but I feel that I did not do a good job as a tutor and I might have ruined their chance of having a better tutor for a year. So sorry for my shortcomings.
Therefore, I feel that people who do OCIP for the sake of doing or feeling that they do help out with the community just be exposed to this viewpoint where hopefully they will not just do these volunteering work as a one off event but consistently help so that they will be able to provide a greater help for the communities in need. In addition, I would apologise if I hit any nerve here due to this view point but I need to voice it out after seeing all the OCIP trip fund raising and so on as I feel that the funds will be used to fund the student's trip to have fun rather than the actual help given.
Sunday, 22 October 2017
Amount of Time Wasted Everyday
I need to type this post as I realise that I waste a lot of time everyday on something that I find it very hard to reduce - NEWS READING. People do tell me that it is good that I read a lot of news and I am kept up to date with the current affairs which I do think so too. However, I doubt it is very healthy to spend sometimes more than 3h reading news. Most of the time after reading, I will forget the majority of the news and only some that are more significant are remembered. Hence, I find it a waste of time but I cannot seem to reduce the amount of news that I consume.
Time I spent every weekday:
Newsloop - I tried to reduce my browsing by reading only Personal Finance and Business
The Newpaper - I read whatever that is interesting but sometimes there isn't any (not much news)
Straits Times - I read Technology, Business, Singapore, Asia and World (spend the most time here)
Estimated total time spent: 2-3 hours
Time I spent every weekend:
Newsloop - I tried to reduce my browsing by reading only Personal Finance and Business
The Newpaper - I read whatever that is interesting but sometimes there isn't any (not much news)
Straits Times - I read Technology, Business, Singapore, Asia and World (spend the most time here)
Asiaone - Read Singapore, China, Asia, World, Business, Digital (cover the ones that are not present in the other sites)
Channel News Asia - Technology, Business, Singapore (cover the ones that are not covered in the other sites, especially Technology and Business where Straits Times focus more on Singapore ones and CNA focus on the happenings in the world) I managed to convince myself not to read the Asia and World news here as it will take too much time.
Estimated total time spent: 4-5 hours (mainly on Saturday as Sunday does not have much news)
Things that I am happy that I managed to cut down on:
Instagram - Browse everyday but not much time spent on it
Facebook - Browse only once a week (I still find it too much though)
9gag - Broswe everyday (need to cut down more)
Looking at the time I spent everyday, I think I need help. However, I do not have a solution to reduce the time spent in these sites. I have other better things to do but it seems that I cannot function without reading news in the morning. Does anyone have any suggestion?
Time I spent every weekday:
Newsloop - I tried to reduce my browsing by reading only Personal Finance and Business
The Newpaper - I read whatever that is interesting but sometimes there isn't any (not much news)
Straits Times - I read Technology, Business, Singapore, Asia and World (spend the most time here)
Estimated total time spent: 2-3 hours
Time I spent every weekend:
Newsloop - I tried to reduce my browsing by reading only Personal Finance and Business
The Newpaper - I read whatever that is interesting but sometimes there isn't any (not much news)
Straits Times - I read Technology, Business, Singapore, Asia and World (spend the most time here)
Asiaone - Read Singapore, China, Asia, World, Business, Digital (cover the ones that are not present in the other sites)
Channel News Asia - Technology, Business, Singapore (cover the ones that are not covered in the other sites, especially Technology and Business where Straits Times focus more on Singapore ones and CNA focus on the happenings in the world) I managed to convince myself not to read the Asia and World news here as it will take too much time.
Estimated total time spent: 4-5 hours (mainly on Saturday as Sunday does not have much news)
Things that I am happy that I managed to cut down on:
Instagram - Browse everyday but not much time spent on it
Facebook - Browse only once a week (I still find it too much though)
9gag - Broswe everyday (need to cut down more)
Looking at the time I spent everyday, I think I need help. However, I do not have a solution to reduce the time spent in these sites. I have other better things to do but it seems that I cannot function without reading news in the morning. Does anyone have any suggestion?
Learning Programming
Trying to learn programming is very daunting as there are a lot of things out there to learn but most of the time we do not know where to start and where to continue. Ususally, we are used to the structured nature of our education system where we know after learning A, we learn B, then to C and so on. However, when trying to learn on our own, such structures do not exist and we will have to find out on our own. It is either we take a major/minor in Computer Science or we ask someone who has experence to guide us. For now, it is hard for people to guide if they do not know what exactly you want to do. Do you want to learn Web, app making and so on? Different things uses different languages and you will have to start somewhere. A good thing about university is that it forces engineering student to learn basic C so that we can understand other languages more easily. However, trying to proceed from there seems daunting to me as I myself do not know what I want to do and hence what I need to learn Do I learn everything? (Quite impossible given the limited time that I have.)
I have tried to do some programming with my friend but I realised that what seemed easy to him is very hard for me as I totally do not understand how the thing works. Reading documentation is not helping when I do not understand. I really wonder how am I supposed to be able to catch up to at least be good enough to understand and do some simple code rather than just googling and copy pasting without really understanding the code. (This is a bad habit of mine) Also, sometimes people just conveniently say, "just google". Yes, googling may be the fastest way to go about it but sometimes, when you google something, you are unsure if it is the right thing other than trying it and wasting a lot of time, also, when you google, you might realised you don't know another 1,000 things and more googling is done and you get more confused. I might sound whiny but I do feel that even though a lot of people struggled through by googling and learning through googling, it will take too much time when there is little time available.
So now here I am confused and don't know where to start. Some of the introduction courses are too easy, and I am not sure how to proceed from here. However, I will try to commit time to learn (hopefully). This is the future, if we do not follow the current trend, future generations will overtake us and we will find ourselves useless in the job market as the younger generations are exposed to programming in school.
I have tried to do some programming with my friend but I realised that what seemed easy to him is very hard for me as I totally do not understand how the thing works. Reading documentation is not helping when I do not understand. I really wonder how am I supposed to be able to catch up to at least be good enough to understand and do some simple code rather than just googling and copy pasting without really understanding the code. (This is a bad habit of mine) Also, sometimes people just conveniently say, "just google". Yes, googling may be the fastest way to go about it but sometimes, when you google something, you are unsure if it is the right thing other than trying it and wasting a lot of time, also, when you google, you might realised you don't know another 1,000 things and more googling is done and you get more confused. I might sound whiny but I do feel that even though a lot of people struggled through by googling and learning through googling, it will take too much time when there is little time available.
So now here I am confused and don't know where to start. Some of the introduction courses are too easy, and I am not sure how to proceed from here. However, I will try to commit time to learn (hopefully). This is the future, if we do not follow the current trend, future generations will overtake us and we will find ourselves useless in the job market as the younger generations are exposed to programming in school.
Tuesday, 17 October 2017
Further Studies
During internship, I am slowly being exposed to the further study segment. Masters? PhD?
Looking at how indecisive I am currently, it is not easy to come up with a decision so soon as I have no idea if I want to further study in Mechanical Engineering or move on to something else. However, it is one aspect of my life which I will consider as long as the tuition fees are sponsored.
Looking at how indecisive I am currently, it is not easy to come up with a decision so soon as I have no idea if I want to further study in Mechanical Engineering or move on to something else. However, it is one aspect of my life which I will consider as long as the tuition fees are sponsored.
Thoughts on Industrial Attachment/Internship
I have always thought that people are just claiming that Industrial Attachment/Internship is a good part of your university process because it exposes you to the working world but it might not offer much of a good working experience due to the negative experiences shared by others about their internship life. A few examples include those mundane work like photocopying and things that do not teach you much about the company or the industry that you will be in. However, after going through at least half of my internship, I realise I have gained much from my company.
My company deals with product design and the department that I work with develops the mechanical part of the products. When I started university, I thought that doing product design and development will be very interesting due to the fact that you will be able to use your imaginations to create products and hopefully not much restrictions will be placed on you. Imagine developing the next cool thing such as an IPhone. However, I realise the product development part is not as glamourous as I thought due to the need for a lot of qualification to pass some standards to suit the needs of the consumers and also to ensure that the products do not break down easily. Hence, after the initial design phase, a lot of time is spent on testing where it is really mundane and time consuming. Furthermore, due to the large size of the company, softwares are used to ensure that the products have a certain structure to them so as to ensure everyone conform to the same standards, but that also meant more administrative work has to be done. However, being a sort of large company, they have a lot of good practices such as proper documentation so that the future new workers or other colleagues will be able to pick up the problems and solutions faced by other people. In addition, you get to see how they work together with different departments but another flaw is the seemingly endless amount of meetings that the employees have to attend, reducing their producitivity.
Coming back to my point, going through this internship made me reconsider my choice of joining the product development route as the amount of administrative work and tests are mind numbing. All of the sudden, I realised that I do not know what I want to do in life in the future again. Do I want to continue in the field of product development? Do I still want to continue doing mechanical work? I am not so sure anymore
My company deals with product design and the department that I work with develops the mechanical part of the products. When I started university, I thought that doing product design and development will be very interesting due to the fact that you will be able to use your imaginations to create products and hopefully not much restrictions will be placed on you. Imagine developing the next cool thing such as an IPhone. However, I realise the product development part is not as glamourous as I thought due to the need for a lot of qualification to pass some standards to suit the needs of the consumers and also to ensure that the products do not break down easily. Hence, after the initial design phase, a lot of time is spent on testing where it is really mundane and time consuming. Furthermore, due to the large size of the company, softwares are used to ensure that the products have a certain structure to them so as to ensure everyone conform to the same standards, but that also meant more administrative work has to be done. However, being a sort of large company, they have a lot of good practices such as proper documentation so that the future new workers or other colleagues will be able to pick up the problems and solutions faced by other people. In addition, you get to see how they work together with different departments but another flaw is the seemingly endless amount of meetings that the employees have to attend, reducing their producitivity.
Coming back to my point, going through this internship made me reconsider my choice of joining the product development route as the amount of administrative work and tests are mind numbing. All of the sudden, I realised that I do not know what I want to do in life in the future again. Do I want to continue in the field of product development? Do I still want to continue doing mechanical work? I am not so sure anymore
Saturday, 26 August 2017
Thoughts On Free Marketing Of Apps
After helping my friend spread the word of his 2 android apps: CompareFirst and PriceText, I realised that it is really hard to do free advertisement, and gain users and downloads due to the lack of reach. How to do free advertisement for free? Easiest ways are through word of mouth to friends to help you to download and try the apps or through social media like Facebook. However, there are flaws to these methods. It is highly dependent on the number of friends that you have and how many of those friends of yours are close enough to you to bother helping you. These apps are not games where it can go viral easily but more of online shopping. In addition, if you look around you, you will find out that in Singapore, many people are using IPhone and it is not possible to ask them to download android apps. (Most of my friends use iPhones)
I have researched online about free ways to market apps but it seems like most are too time consuming or too difficult if you have no skills. Ways to market include making videos or websites to promote your app, write to popular app reviewers or to influencers to help. However, it is not the skills that we have and not quite possible to do unless we get someone to do for free, it will incur costs.
Hence, this just shows that we shouldn't be too blinded by success stories of apps that garner a lot of downloads and users, but should work hard on a good app that is marketable to apply to those influencers and reviewers. The dream of working from home or working for a while and let the app generate money for you is a far away dream and will take a lot of effort and luck to be successful. This also tells me that if in the future, I would like to jump ship to learn coding and make apps for fun, it should just be a hobby or a side job where I will still have a permanent job to keep myself alive.
I have researched online about free ways to market apps but it seems like most are too time consuming or too difficult if you have no skills. Ways to market include making videos or websites to promote your app, write to popular app reviewers or to influencers to help. However, it is not the skills that we have and not quite possible to do unless we get someone to do for free, it will incur costs.
Hence, this just shows that we shouldn't be too blinded by success stories of apps that garner a lot of downloads and users, but should work hard on a good app that is marketable to apply to those influencers and reviewers. The dream of working from home or working for a while and let the app generate money for you is a far away dream and will take a lot of effort and luck to be successful. This also tells me that if in the future, I would like to jump ship to learn coding and make apps for fun, it should just be a hobby or a side job where I will still have a permanent job to keep myself alive.
Saturday, 29 July 2017
Respect to Everyone Who Works
Previously, I have never worked long hours until university forced us to get working experience through internships with various companies. Now, it is compulsory for us to do a minimum 24 weeks industrial attachment in order to graduate from NUS. Initially, I thought that work will not be that bad. I will get used to it. What is more, I will be able to earn some money and use that money to invest for my future retirement (or even bring forward my retirement). However, after going through it, I realised that the working hours are too long. It might seem like I am just another one from the strawberry generation that is unable to take hardship (might be true), but I feel that with the long hours, it is really hard to find time after work to do something meaningful such as learning new skills or even to read a book. My mind is usually quite dead and I will be too tired to do anything once I reach home. Given such long working hours, it is close to impossible to upgrade ourselves with new skills other than using weekends. Hence, I salute those people who are able to either work 2 jobs or learn new skills like coding and so on while they are doing full time work.
Now I wonder, if in the future I am able to find a job and work comfortably, isn't it easy to be retrenched when we are not needed and we do not have new skills? Those thoughts will be able to keep me on my toes for a while but I feel that too many work have to be done in the office. If only there will be more work-life balance or even more work from home sessions.
Time spent on a typical work day:
Sleep: 8h
Travelling: 3h (To and fro, depends on MRT CONDITION ALSO)
Work: 8h + 1h lunch
Time left: 4h (What lies)
These calculations do not include the time needed to prepare for work, breakfast, dinner and so on. Also, it assumes that you arrive and leave on the dot.
Wake up: 7am
Leave House: 7.30am
Work: 9am - 6pm
Lunch: 12.30pm - 1.30pm
Reach home: 7.30pm
Finish dinner: 8pm
Slack time: 8pm - 11pm (seems a lot right? 3h worth, assuming no overtime work)
What I thought is, if there is more flexible arrangement where more work can be done at home, the travelling time can be cut short and we will be freer by an average of 3h everyday! Now that is the idealistic case to work towards to. If only work can be brought home... However, it does has its demerits such as unconsciously doing work past office hours. However, aren't we all guilty of that, but I think we should take small steps and flexible working hours is the way to go, especially working from home.
Now I wonder, if in the future I am able to find a job and work comfortably, isn't it easy to be retrenched when we are not needed and we do not have new skills? Those thoughts will be able to keep me on my toes for a while but I feel that too many work have to be done in the office. If only there will be more work-life balance or even more work from home sessions.
Time spent on a typical work day:
Sleep: 8h
Travelling: 3h (To and fro, depends on MRT CONDITION ALSO)
Work: 8h + 1h lunch
Time left: 4h (What lies)
These calculations do not include the time needed to prepare for work, breakfast, dinner and so on. Also, it assumes that you arrive and leave on the dot.
Wake up: 7am
Leave House: 7.30am
Work: 9am - 6pm
Lunch: 12.30pm - 1.30pm
Reach home: 7.30pm
Finish dinner: 8pm
Slack time: 8pm - 11pm (seems a lot right? 3h worth, assuming no overtime work)
What I thought is, if there is more flexible arrangement where more work can be done at home, the travelling time can be cut short and we will be freer by an average of 3h everyday! Now that is the idealistic case to work towards to. If only work can be brought home... However, it does has its demerits such as unconsciously doing work past office hours. However, aren't we all guilty of that, but I think we should take small steps and flexible working hours is the way to go, especially working from home.
Sunday, 16 July 2017
New Apps By DanbooruWorks
DanbooruWorks is a team that is making new android apps to help improve the lives of people. As of now, the team has made 2 relatively similar apps that are based on online shopping website price comparison. They are only available in Google Play Store. Personally, I feel that due to their lack of budget, it is very hard to market to the masses or even get people to download and try. I guess I will use this blog post to try marketing to the people and if the apps sound interesting to you, please do try them. If you are interested, you can view DanbooruWork's blog to know more about them. The 2 apps are:
This is online shopping, rethinked. Just enter your search term once to search all your favorite websites. Supported websites include Aliexpress, Lazada, Ebay, Amazon, Carousell, Qoo10 & more.
Save time from opening new tabs and repeating your searches. We do all that for you. Make bookmarks and compare products from any supported website. Bookmarked products show up all in one screen, making price comparison easy. Purchases are handled by the original website so transactions are seamless.
Supercharge your shopping by making yourself an informed consumer. Only make your purchase after you're sure that you have gotten the best price.
Even better, Prix contains zero irritating popups or notifications. Non-intrusive advertisements are present to fund the development of this app. Take control of your shopping and shop only when you want to. Currently, Singapore is the only officially supported region in Prix. More shopping websites will be added in time as we expand to other regions.
Countries
✔ Singapore / SG
MAIN FEATURES
✔ Search up to 3 shopping sites with just one tap
✔ Bookmark products from any supported shopping site
✔ Compare prices of bookmarked products with ease
✔ Non-intrusive ads
✔ No irritating notifications
PREMIUM FEATURES
✔ Zero advertisements
✔ Search more than 3 shopping sites at once
✔ Real-time currency conversion (coming soon)
✔ Email support by developer
More features are planned for both versions!
SUPPORTED SHOPPING WEBSITES
✔ AliExpress
✔ Amazon
✔ Carousell
✔ Ebay
✔ Lazada
✔ Qoo10
✔ Shopee
✔ Taobao
AND
Do try them out. If you have any questions, direct them to DanbooruWorks and hopefully they will get back to you.
PriceText is a floating application that allows you to search and compare the prices of the things you want to buy at that moment. Just select and copy the text! No longer switch screens to check prices and compare the price of the things you want! Search many different sites at once! Look and compare the average prices of the items listed before diving into the website!
Search in 3 easy steps!
1. Read any text in the browser of your choice anywhere on your phone
2. Highlight and copy the item’s name that caught your eye
3. Click on the popup that appears!
OR
1. Type any text in the app
2. Click search
3. Scroll through the shopping sites and enjoy!
Features:
- Simple and easy to use!
- Only have to search once on multiple sites!
- Quick searches at some of the major shopping sites such as Amazon, Ebay and AliExpress!
- Region selection is available!
- Convert the currency to the native one you use!
Current websites:
- AliExpress
- Amazon
- Ebay
More features to come!
- Search suggestions for items!
- Desktop integration through google chrome extension
Future shopping sites to come!
- Best Buy
- Flipkart
- Lazada
- Walmart
- And many more!
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