But then again, this little dent (ok it’s more than a dent) seems minuscule compared to the fates of thousands of cars (and lives) following the massive earthquake in Japan.

Thus she could only hope that this incident (with its hefty repair bill … grrr …) will serve to bring an end to a difficult month – a month that oversaw a bout of illness, a family bereavement and, to a lesser extent, ongoing renovation woes.

But then again, hundreds of thousands of others are having it much, much worse.

As a frequent visitor (and shopper) to Japan, she can only pray for all in the land that has given her many ideas and inspirations in the past (as evident throughout this blog).

And with random stories like these coming through, she has faith that with typically strong moral and social foundations in place, everyone will pull through this ordeal …

… even though there may not be a single cherry blossoming tree left standing by the waterside for now …

More donation links (please do you own due diligence before donating)

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

Huat Ah!
All requests for Miss Loi’s car plate number will be firmly denied

While Miss Loi now desperately hunts for a windscreen repair shop to solve this Maxima & Minima problem (which most of you Sec 4 AMaths students may get to encounter after your first CA in March/April), she would nonetheless like to wish everyone

Huat Ah … *sob sob*

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

All students should be shifting to your highest gear by now!

And your wheels should be set in motion …

It may seem daunting for you to cram all the endless formulae, especially when your brain seems to lack the storage space, like this minuscule boot. But things will be much, much better through regular PRACTICE.

And may you rev rev rev towards your Salvation!

Take all setbacks you encounter as temporary, but make sure you LEARN from every one of them

Time to spread your wings!

Where is Miss Loi’s car?

Time for a new set of distance-time graph, speed-time graph and acceleration-time graph =)

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

On a less obvious note, it’s been awhile since she last wrote anything on the adventures of her little car, as things can get a little mundane revolving around life-threatening incidents and tragic parking tickets.

When the sun rose this morning to reveal the car in its usual daytime splendor, however, Miss Loi was encouraged to write about it again, for she’s glad in some ways that Mathematics is never far from people’s minds:

Click to view the graph-fitti in its full glory

Mr Vandal, it’s highly unlikely that Singapore has run out of graph paper, but even if that should happen, a car (albeit driven by a sexy maths tutor) is most certainly NOT an appropriate medium for you to practice your graph sketching.

Furthermore, assuming you were trying to sketch an exponential graph y=a^−x, a > 1 (since your graphfitti resembles it the most) using the rear door of Miss Loi’s car as the y-axis, note that marks will be deducted for that unnecessarily “wavy” portion for x > 0 since all exponential curves (i.e. y=ka^x, k > 0, a > 0, a ≠ 1) have NO turning point and are supposed to be smooth.

Lastly, please remember to label your graph and axes the next time.

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

And this festive season would not be complete without mentioning the Christmas present she received from the warm and friendly locals, who were so sad to see Miss Loi leave that, in the true spirit of giving, they stopped her on her way back in the middle of the highway to present her with this parting gift:

.
.
.
.
.

They were so sincere that Miss Loi
didn’t have the heart to ‘reject’ this gift (for RM50)

In order to stop this blog from degenerating into a traffic fine farce (if it hasn’t already) and potentially having to rename its title to “For Non-Effective Prevention Of Kena Saman Syndrome”, Miss Loi now has a pretty good idea of what her New Year’s Resolution will be.

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

Acceleration = Force/Mass

that’s why in a bid to reduce the mass component of the above formula, racing car interiors are always stripped bare of unnecessary weight items like spare tyres, rear seats, carpet floorings etc., like this:

Miss Loi has been driving around like this since yesterday, after having her car’s rear seats removed and the carpets stripped for drying following the Great Flood.

No wonder she has been finding it easier to out-sprint the irritating uncles who speed up the moment she signals to change lanes.

And in the absence of sound insulation, the car now sounds like a race car too: with an engine roar comparable to that from a turbocharged Ah Beng car that drove alongside hers this morning, that also managed to drown out her techno tracks, and whatever that’s left of her hearing.

Let’s hope that she doesn’t drown out her students’ hearings during lessons today

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

No, you’ll never be able to convince Miss Loi
to part with her $$$. [source: VR-Zone]

When last night’s joss sticks sessions ended early, Miss Loi did a quick calculation by plotting some distance/speed/acceleration-time graphs, and by assuming that the number of P-Plate road-hoggers on the roads at the time followed a discrete probability distribution (though in reality it’s probably a continuous probability distribution), decided there was still enough time to make a dash for the closing stages of the IT Show.

Her decision was fully vindicated when, after parking her car at her usual spot, she managed to breeze through two levels of exhibition halls and bought her ultra-cheap Fujifilm FinePix Z5 in under an hour, with none of the insane crowd (described here and here) present.

Thoroughly satisfied with her evening’s achievement, Miss Loi returned to her usual spot only to be surprised that some chap had left a note asking her out for a date …

The very first pic taken by the Z5
How sentimental.

… with the courts.

Oh she forgot to mention in the first para that she’s pretty popular with the boys from a certain government agency too. So now Sergeant Ang has just found himself a new rival.

And unlike the traditional dating game, the girl (i.e. Miss Loi) has to pay $70 in order to reject this date.

Thank You, SERGEANT BENEDICT KHO, for upgrading the price of her low-end camera to a mid-range one. Where’s your sense of sympathy, especially when Suntec City’s carparks were all jam-packed?!

There goes another of her ‘usual spots’.

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

First, fresh and shiny from a morning car wash, she was caught moments later in one of those brief 10-minute shower that served no purpose whatsoever in the grand scheme of things except to make the roads wet, soak Miss Loi’s Charles & Keith shoes, and cover her shiny car with bits and pieces of Indonesia (courtesy of the haze):

Aftermath of an Indonesian meteor shower on car’s roof

On the following day, an illegally-parked JB car, a stubborn Toyota Rush (no, judging from the two burly uncles sitting inside, it’s unlikely to be this one belonging to this prominent Pingster ), an oddly-protruding kerb, and some sublime driving on Miss Loi’s part combined to leave a heartbreaking scratch on her shiny chrome wheel.

Sorry, no detailed account or diagrams of what happened this time as the reputation of Singapore’s entire population of lady drivers is at stake here!

Feeling upset about the whole incident, she went to the car wash again the next morning, hoping that by getting the car clean and shiny again will go some ways in alleviating the heartache that she was suffering.

Fresh and shiny from the car wash, she was caught moments later in ANOTHER brief 10-minute shower that made the roads wet, soaked her Charles & Keith shoes, and covered her car once again with more bits and pieces from Indonesia.

Aftermath of ANOTHER Indonesian meteor shower on car’s roof

Hence deduce, by Mathematical Induction or otherwise, that there’s a jinx it has been a bad couple of days for Miss Loi’s car.

Think she’d better just focus on her maths tuition

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

On the fourth day of Christmas, Miss Loi zhng-ed her car.

Before …

New steering cover

One pair of charms

One little toy car

One furry mat

One pair of fog lamps

One pair of wipers

Two pairs of visors

ONE NEW LOGO!!!

*pause to take a breath*

One pair of side skirts

One front lip

One rear bumper

And a photo for the memory!

PART ONE ENDS

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.

Christmas comes early this year for Miss Loi’s car.

The above shows what’s left after a desperate impromptu car wash. Not shown, however, are the fierce streaks of freshly-splashed white paint stretching from the wheels to the doors, as Miss Loi was simply too distraught to be in the mood for photo-taking at the time of discovery.

Recalling her uneventful route today, she still has no idea what might have caused this.

In all probability, it could be due to a LTA scholar engineer lacking the common-sense to inform his Foreign Talent underling who lacked the common-sense to know that his Road Works barrier should only be removed AFTER the paint has dried.

Tsk.

© 2007-2011 Jφss Sticks. Copycats will be mercilessly hunted down.