Increasingly, i'm thinking that i should adopt a new life motto, the motto being "i can't abide stupid people". today's most memorable occurrence was this woman on my morning bus commute who didn't press the bell, but tapped her card and stood expectantly at the exit door as if the bus driver should know to open it for her. if i were driving the bus, i'd have continued the journey, just to teach her a lesson. but that's easy for me to say, because i don't have to deal with the consequences of the passenger possibly complaining, causing a scene, or otherwise being a karen somehow. there were the usual idiots who pressed the bell again for the same stop after someone had already pressed it. to me, it's a sign that people are getting more self-absorbed. i blame wireless earphones. but even then, there's a big lit-up sign in front that says "STOPPING". surely it isn't too much to expect people to look at it before they decide whether to press the bell or not? given the state of society these days, it may very well be.

the next thing impinges on my weird thing for fairness. remember that M18 treasure hunt i blogged about in the last post? the organizer posted an update that the object was picked up by someone else on accident, and asked us to state our best guesses as to where the location was. i thought i had pretty good guesses, and hence a chance to get it right. but he revealed that the location was somewhere that the clues did not explicitly point to. sure, the clues brought you to the vicinity, but nothing there would tell you to search in the particular location where it was originally placed. and this does not sit well with me.

see, the whole premise of a game is that the player has to have a fair chance to win. that is a different consideration from it being easy. the difference between the clues and the final location felt like this video:

it's nonsensical! even then, i honestly do think i could have found the object had it not been moved, because i did poke around the correct location, but it wasn't in my top few guesses. we'll never know, since the thing wasn't there when i poked around. and i should state for the record that although the feeling of losing sucks, i can accept it if i were beaten fair and square. obviously, i don't feel that that's the case in this scenario.

how does this tie into stupidity? the organizer is stupid, in that he set stupid clues and could not justify or explain them well. not only that, he was deliberately misleading. i asked if the item was in plain sight, to which he answered that it was subjective. but then, it was completely covered by something. how is that "in plain sight!?". i feel that he got defensive, as he resorted to the "i'm not a professional game designer, don't play if you don't like it" thing.  i guess some people can't take criticism. and he didn't even offer to make things better by at least doing something to acknowledge my effort. i'll also say here that (1) he is not obligated to do so, and (2) i participated willingly, but some recognition beyond "thanks for playing" would have been nice, even if there was no M18 element involved. thankfully i wasn't really in it for the reward, otherwise i think i'd be even more upset. i wasn't super attracted to him to begin with, and the attraction has basically fizzled out now. 

to be fair, it did stretch my brain a bit, and in a way that is quite directly relevant to my job! see, a huge chunk of IP is this thing called claim construction. the root word for construction in this case isn't "construct", but "construe". so claim construction is basically how we interpret a claim. example: let's say it's 1900, and someone invented the e-ink tablet way before its time. if he applied for a patent with the claim being "a device comprising a surface capable of receiving and displaying an input, and an object for creating said input on the surface", that patent would not get granted as the claim could be construed to cover things known at that time like paper and pen, or clay tablet and stylus, or even a finger and sand on the beach, just to name a few examples! so, it's part of our job to think laterally or out of the box, to make sure that the patent has a broad enough scope, yet is not overly broad. guess getting some practice in counts as a positive for me, which should help to ameliorate the negativity a little.

good thing that happened today was that i finally had lunch with gym guy again! work and the renovations for his new place have kept him busy for the past 2 weeks. we hadn't met up since that time at the gay bar, and our texting frequency also took a hit. was nice to catch up with him and get updates on everything going on with him. we ate at arnold's at city plaza. my first or second time having arnold's fried chicken, and definitely my first time eating at the place itself. it was good, if a little bit heaty. i can feel something in my throat despite drinking almost 3 litres of water since lunch. we the went over to kinex to get coffee (him) and dessert (me). had the pandan cheesecake again, and it was good! pandan flavour/aroma was a little lacking this time compared to previously, though. i also bought a red velvet + cream cheese cookie for an afternoon snack. nothing to shout about, unfortunately.

mild digression. our lunch set came with drinks. in this kind of scenario, i usually choose mineral water if it's available. and it tends to come in a bottle. so, i recycled the bottle at a BCRS collection machine after lunch, my first time ever doing so! the process was smooth, thankfully, don't even need to orient the barcode in a particular way. i got the 10 cents for recycling the bottle credited into my paylah wallet immediately, no fuss at all. happy with the positive first experience, but i'm still against the whole scheme on principle.

sometimes i wonder if the timing at which things happen are truly coincidental and i'm reading too much into it, or if someone from a higher plane of existence is trying to give me a sign. see, i just blogged about my earphones not working, and my company is organizing an e-waste disposal drive. so, i can bring the earphones as well as my old laptop for disposal. OR...i could just throw them into the e-waste disposal bin at the block next door. i really should spend an afternoon to hook my hard drives up one by one and see which ones are still readable and have data that i still want to keep. no point lugging them with me for subsequent moves if i never touch them again, right? something to do by this year.

on the topic of waste in general, i realized that i might be due for a wardrobe refresh...a part of it, at least. because i only have to wear formal attire less than 5 times a year, some of my shirts have developed orange mould stains. at least, that's what i think the stains are. some other shirts have also yellowed quite significantly. considering i got those shirts made in early 2019, it seems to be about time for a change. or maybe just a cull without adding anything new, since i don't wear them all that often anyway!

-random thought of the day: Feeling a bit better.-