Meme

I Kena tagged by Chuwen, so here goes:

Four jobs you've had in your life:

• Admin assistant in an accountancy firm
• Salesman in a MLM company. (Read: Fuck-up Company!)
• Camp Instructor for secondary schools camps (freelance)
• Tuition teacher for 2 primary school kids and a JC guy. (Current)

Four movies you could watch over and over:

• Shall We Dance?
• Harry Potter
• Forrest Gump
• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

Four places you've lived in:

• (1984 – 1992) Somewhere in Bendemeer (Forgot the name of the street)
• (1992 – 1996) Towner road, somewhere in Bendemeer too.
• (1996 – Now) Pipit road, somewhere in Circuit road (Paya Lebar area)
• (May, 2003 – Mar, 2005) Bedok camp 2

Four TV shows you love(d) to watch:

• American/Singapore Idol
• Charmed
• Friends
• Lost

Four Two places you've been on vacation:

• Palau Tioman – July 2005
• Rockhampton, Australia (Exercise Wallaby) – Dec 2003

*Lowers head* I dun travel much…

Four Five websites you visit daily:

• Yahoo Mail
• Nus ivle
• Chuwen's Blog
• TodayOnline
• Tomorrow

Four of your favourite foods:

• Roti Prata with egg or cheese drown in lots of curry
• Laksa
• Minced meat noodles
• Chocolate waffle with a scoop of chocolate overload (Gelare's)
  

Four places you would rather be in:

• The Outdoors
  
• Palau Ubin – Why? Read this.
• Cycling on the road
• Sydney

Four words I want to say right now:

• Happy
• Chinese
• New
• Year!

Four tagged:

• Eng Kiat
• Kang Rui
• Gelhead
• NinjaZG

Alright, I am done!

Idol fever!

Came home this evening after a long day in school and noticed something on my brother’s door.


Hmm what’s that?


What the? Take a closer look.


Ya right… zzz

Yes idol fever is here again and Singapore idol is back! Auditions start on the 11^th of February. Register at www.singaporeidol.com now! But before plunging into that, let’s watch the American idol first. The 1^st few episodes are really must watch. Not just for American idol, but also for the channel U’s superstar project, super host, super band, and all the super-shit shows. I mean really, the first few episodes which feature all the auditions are really the highlights of such competition (other than the semi and finals). You get to see all sort of people, we have the daring yet no talent ones, the totally cannot make it yet think they are the best kind, super ultra thick skin with very bizarre performance ones, etc etc. And of course we have got inspiring ones, like the blind with a truly mesmerizing voice, the mute using hand signs to perform their song, etc. These are the people who, despite their disability, are brave enough to step out and do things which were perceived to be for the “normal” people. These are the people, who grab hold strongly to the opportunity to fulfill their own dreams despite the unfavorable circumstances.

Catch American Idol on channel 5 every Wednesday and Thursday at 8pm. Also check out the Singapore idol when it begins, we might get another of this amazingly thick skin yellow-underwear-guy.

Timetable for sem 2

The 2nd week of semester 2 is coming to an end and thus our no-tutorial-no-labs period is going to end soon. Tutorials, programming labs, online tutorials & quiz will start coming into the picture to keep us all busy. Anyway, the following is what my official timeable looks like after all the tutorial balloting and swapping:



This looks scary. Monday and Wednesday from 9am to 6pm.. Thursday also seems like a long day. And Friday with that 10am to 5pm back to back lesson without break. Oh my, where's lunch then?

But, its not.

Actually, the lab (physics) on tuesday is only for 2 weeks. Week 5 and 10. So this can be ignore.

Next, the cs lab on thursday is a week-long assignment and can be done at home. Going down to the lab itself is optional. I will most probably be doing them from home. So ignore those 2 slots too.

And not forgetting that i am going to webcast all the MA1506(maths 2) lectures, not because TBP is lousy but webcasting is good & his lectures are all so late.. So delete all the maths lectures.

Also, for EG1413 (Critical thinking & writing) tutorial, we will be having it on tuesday and only the 2nd hr for the friday slot. So there, remove another 1 hr.

Lastly, i shall shift the EG1413 lecture from thursday to Tuesday and join group D. There is a reason for doing this. Read on. =p


So I will end up with this:



PC1432 (physics 2) tutorial is only on odd weeks; so this means that i will have my thursday free for alternate weeks and more or less considered a 4 day work week. Woah, thats pretty amazing for a 6 modules semester.

And oh yes, tests are coming up too. Will be having a test for the module "Living with fluids" on next wednesday. This is the first of the four tests we will be having for this module and each test contributes 25%. No exam.

This module till now is my favourite, the lecturer is interesting, the contents are useful & informative and also relevant to our everyday life. Now i have a better appreciation of why planes and cars are designed the way it is, why racing cars are so different from the normal production cars, and why fighter planes have such sweptback wings (delta wings) which are so different from the normal commercial planes.

Oh yes tests. There will be more tests coming up after the chinese new year..
16th feb - Maths
17th feb - Physics
18th feb - Programming and Econs...

Alright, its time to tune my mood back into studying again, have been slacking too much for the past 2 weeks.. Time to mug.

Mee soup

Ever brought mee soup back home and realized by the time you pour the contents out, the mee turned so soggy and stick to each other that you lost your appetite for the meal? Well that’s the reason why we seldom buy mee soup back home. But for today, my mom suddenly had the urge to eat mee soup and being a filial son, I hopped over to the hawker centre to get our lunch.

What the hawker did amazed me. She heated up the mee and the cooked ingredients like meat, fish cakes, vegetables and prawns, and placed them in one bag. Subsequently, she poured the boiling soup into another bag. The intention was clear; the soup wasn’t poured together into the bag with the mee so as not to dampen up the mee and cause the sogginess as mentioned above. I have never seen other hawker doing such thing before and in order to confirm my inference, I asked her purpose for doing so. Indeed, she did it out of consideration for her customers and her understanding of the soggy problem. Thoughtful and smart, I would say. I shall patronize this stall more often. All it took was a little kindness and a little effort and she will get contented patrons like me.

Anyway i asked my mom what she loved most about mee soup, guess what she said?

Mom: Tau gay (bean sprout) !
Me: Mom??? How about the meat, prawns and the mee? No?
Mom: Nah, you can have the meat and prawns if you want. *Dumps prawns and meat to me*

My mom... I love my mom. =)

Soup and mee separated.

Nope its not soggy, nice. =)

Indian Rojak to go with the mee.

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Hall production: Fame

Attended a theatrical hall production “Fame” yesterday in the University Cultural Centre (UCC). Well, we were strongly encouraged by Liu Ting to watch this wonderful performance by NUS King Edward VII hall (her hall) at a special price at $15. Hall plays have been the tradition for KE VII hall for more than 30 years and charity has been the main motivation for preserving this custom. As for this year, the beneficiary is the Andrew and Grace home (AG home).

What is the price of fame? The cast of fame aims to answer that question through their terrific acting and dancing skills. The play began with auditions of applicants who wished to get into this School of Performing Arts in New York City. Everyone came from different background but all with a determined dream in mind, the pursuit of fame. The audiences were presented with the different problems each individual encountered during the pursuit and how they came to terms with their setbacks.

Doris, who developed the most in the play in my opinion, learned to be beautiful in her own ways and not be like a puppet who were more or less manipulated by her mummy.

Ralph Garcy, the clown cum the professional asshole, was the best in my opinion that brought out most of the laughter. This guy was really damn good lar. He was always in the quest of making people laugh, either through annoying others or making the fool out of himself. He eventually learned that he needs to make people laugh with him and not at him.

Also, Leroy was the street-smart but academic failure who did not get past 3^rd grade (if I remember correctly) and pissed the hell out of the English teacher and yes we cannot really understand his English sometimes but that’s understandable. Probably only his talent and passion in the dancing field can lead him to success.

Montgomery was in an army academic before coming over to this arts school. In the beginning, he portrayed his dread for loneliness in the barracks and his need for companionship, particularly his mom in the beginning and later became friends in the school. I think he was in love with Doris.

Ok, last but not least in my list of favorite characters in the play is Hillary Van Doren, Eunice played this role and she danced very elegantly, totally mesmerized in her beautiful moves and steps, especially the dance with Leroy where the audience applauded unanimously.

All in all, it was a great play and it was $15 well spent, not forgetting that it was a pleasant gathering with the OACians last night (well although not all turned up). Looking forward to our Chinese New Year gathering. Cheers!

Rain rain go away

Oh gosh, it’s raining like as though the sky is falling once again this morning and it’s showing no signs of stopping at all. Well, it’s a good thing that there is no lesson for me today, but I still had to go out and buy my brunch just now and it was so freaking cold that I was literally shaking while gripping on to the umbrella which almost served no purpose in that terribly heavy downpour. I just cannot stand cold weather; I will shake, sniff and sneeze like shit, nose will run like mad, brains will probably freeze and I might just become plain intolerant to other disturbances around me.

hmm why was the west side sparred from the rain??

I check up the rain locations in Singapore via this site just now and realized that the entire Ubin Island was engulfed in the moderate and heavy rain region. Well, this brought back memories of our ubin trip just one month back where we celebrated Liu Ting’s birthday. The rain dampened our bodies but not our spirit; we continued cycling in the rain, well actually we had to until we found a shelter. It was a pretty heavy rain but I doubt it’s heavier than the rain right now, and visibility was terrible. Riding in such conditions was dangerous, especially dashing down a rather steep slope where I feared for the safety of those behind me. Fortunately, nothing awful happened. Upon reaching the pavilion, we continued chatting, catching up and sharing of uni survival tips, oblivious to the merciless rain. Oh well, not surprisingly, we all fell sick after the trip.

Only got one decent pic nia..

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Diablo 2

Oh yes yes I did it; raise my Druid, a werewolf, to the level of 50 and equipped him with a "rain" runeword armor. It wasn't a really difficult task; all I did was to change the player setting to 8 and just whack Baal and his minions probably a dozen times. Changing player setting can be done by typing “/playersX” in the chat box where X is the number of players you want to set. By changing the setting to 8 means that the monsters will be 8 times tougher as though there are 8 players in the game and correspondingly, the amount of experience points you get will be higher (not 8 times but something else, forgot the figures liao). Actually, “rain” runeword wasn’t very impressive; “enigma” is the real thing, but that’s really almost impossible right now as it requires not one, but two very rare runes, jah and ber. Ok, just some pics here and I should be done with this game until the next vacation.

See what has the rainy season done to the char in d2 lar, not just me(the werewolf) is freezing, my bear & oak sage and even Mr baal were also turning blue due to the coldness...

Engulfed in fire and err ice..?
hmmm, weird combination..

The weapon i am currently using, bonesnap with a shael rune socketed in it. shael rune gave 20% increased attack speed which changed my attack speed from fast to very fast, sweet.



"Rain" Nothing very impressive, just the +2 to druid skill, 15% dmg to mana and the chance to cast cyclone armor and twister upon struck and striking respectively.



5% of casting twister on striking and with my very fast attack speed, the chances of casting increases. =)



Twister have low dmg but have a stunning effect on monster, its only 0.4 sec but can be critical at very tight situations.. *monster on the right kena stunned*

At the threshold of a new semester

This is it. Semester 2 is about to commence with most of us already successful been allocated all our modules through the bidding via the cors system. The bidding this semester was rather exciting, unlike the last semester’s where we more or less got our modules through the engine faculty’s protected system with a mere 1 point. This time, much more time was spent into the bidding, monitoring as well as discussion with fellow classmates and friends.

The bidding for Principles of Economics was unexpectedly intense. At first, I thought since it’s a SARTOR module and the fact that it’s protected, it shouldn’t be too difficult to get and with little points. Yet, just before closed bidding, people started getting panicky and the minimum successful bid rose up from 1 to 50+ and with 80+ people competing for 70 seats. So I decided to dump in 200 points while Jian Cheng only threw in 100. The minimum successful bid was 109. Oops! That was so unfortunate. Well, he bid again in round 2a and got it.

Next for Living with Fluids, I was shocked the moment I saw the bidding status when I logged in. 1/1/1193 (lowest /min successful/highest) and within a few hours this rose to 1/103/1193 and just before the closed bidding, it was 1/121/1374 with 102 bidders for 75 seats. Shucks. I decided to just show hand since I expected many would do that. I was right; many did. Yet I am glad that not everyone was willing to risk it, if not we will end up with a high successful bid. 293 was the minimum successful bid and it’s about what I would want to invest in this module.

And so, it’s now finalized. This is going to be a hectic semester with 6 modules and out of these 6, I can expect Programming and Critical Thinking & Writing to be the more time-consuming and challenging ones, Economics to be the more disadvantaged one as I have no background and Fluids to be the more relax one.

Anyway, this is how my timetable looks like now (without CS1102C’s tutorial & labs and EC1301’s tutorial):

Oh my, look at those undesirable long breaks during Monday and Wednesday. I will either slot in some tutorials or probably find some program to fill in those breaks, perhaps go swimming with Liu Ting?

After some planning, this is what I would like my timetable to turn out after the tutorial balloting:

Also, i might just skip the math lectures to watch the webcast. One, the lectures are all so late. Two, its Tan Ban Pin anyway.