Countdown!

It's officially Chinese New Year Eve now! 20+ hours to CNY itself! Strange how this year's festive holiday season doesn't seem to be a holiday to me.. Perhaps it was that long stretch of monsoon rain that dampened everyone's spirits.. Or maybe it was that BGS test 2 days ago, after all I'm used to slacking off at least a week or so before CNY to chill out and start enjoying the holiday mood. It could be the project deadlines just after CNY. Or maybe it's the fact that a few hours ago I was in school, and a few hours from now I'll be in school again... WhooopY!

Strange how we always take the things we enjoy for granted, until we don't get the luxury of them anymore.. I've always enjoyed CNY, although it was a pain at times thanks to the early hours and long travel times. Still, its great to see relatives and friends, and get together sessions are always fun. It's also one of the rare times we indulge in some friendly gambling and other games. Then I look around and see how some of the international students are spending their CNY, away from their families! :( Well, we must go out one of the days!!! Anyways, my point is, I guess I shouldn't spend so much time fretting about my misfortunes, but enjoy what I have now! Great friends and family, and well, at least there IS a holiday to enjoy! So, Happy Chinese New Year all you out there! Forget your troubles for this festive season at least! 恭喜发财！红包一个来！哈哈！

Lunchtime Thoughts...

Just finished DM class early... waiting for everyone else to finish lessons and go for lunch! I must say that DM is probably my favourite class this semester! Well, at least it's more based on logic and common sense so far.. and it's the rare class where I can understand what's going on! Sigh..
Heard from Ben how his AS Prof came super late for class today.. haha.. should have expected it.. yesterday was my first AS lesson with him too, and we even had a 15 min break. That's gotta be a first for AS! Still, he seems like quite a nice guy... but its probably too early to tell. His accent's a little funny, but interesting, and one gets used to it.

Terribly busy week ahead, esp with Wed's BGS test and Thur's CT presentation.. These 2 lessons are probably my most hated classes of the semester! Sigh... Ah wells, back to studying BGS!

Oops!

I'm about to start on my OO homework... sigh... Can't seem to bring myself to actually start. In fact, I probably should have done it like on Monday! Had such a great time yesterday, going out and all.. no mood to do any work! Still, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!

More about yesterday.. Met up with George, Brad and Mah at Yishun.. was supposed to meet Yew Tee, but that's waaaay too far, especially since I was going out in the evening. Lucky managed to persuade them to change venue haha. Still, had a great time there. Went to comics connection after that to look for 魔帝，but turns out the latest book hasn't been written yet! Argh, it's already been almost 2 months! What's the author doing man.. These Korean authors.. always come out with a whole sluice of books at one short, then spend months before they come out with the next one.. sigh.. cliffhanger!

Evening was the highlight of the day, visit to 南翔馒头店 (Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant) in Bugis with my sis, cousin and 2 of their friends. It's supposed to be very very famous in China, so I was anticipating a good meal ahead! Their speciality was those steamed 包点 with all the soup still inside! MMMmmmmm!!!

Glutinous Rice 小龙包! I thought it might be a weird combination, but turned out to be very nice!









扬州炒饭！Don't often eat that, so have no basis for comparison, but was quite delicious in my opinion!







I have no idea what's this called, but it's delicious! Crisp exterior with toufu inside! Very interesting mix!







This is one of their famous baos, with the soup still inside steaming hot! Almost scalded my tongue, but was worth it! :)






Their signature dish, a huge 小龙包 look alike, with a straw to drink up the soup inside, before eating up the whole thing:)







Dessert - With red bean inside.. was okay, but nothing special, sadly..





All in all, was a great meal! Only thing was the price (too expensive!) and their veggie soup (which I refused to show) as it was too salty and didn't taste good in my opinion.

Anyway, I've spent waay too long on this... time to go back to OO homework! Sigh..

讲华语！

今天在 data management 课上，看了Mingfei 的 blog. 她竟敢瞧不起我的华语 （虽然我的程度的却不好！） ：（　因此我今天要用华语写 blog, 为了证明自己！哈哈。昨天很迟才回到家，到了房间吓了一大跳，原来我的妈妈把我整个房间整理掉，我都不认识我自己的房间了！天啊。。现在不知道我的东西放 到哪里去了。。我是乱中有序的人啊，现在虽然看起来好多了，但是我找不到东西啊！当然，这也是我活该的吧，新年也快到了，该做大扫除了！这里要对妈妈说一 声对不起与谢谢！

大学果然比我想象中还困难。。 第二学期了，我快要疯掉了！尤其是他们将我们乱分组，我连组员都不知道是谁，希望能与他们好好合作。。其他人像 benjamin 或 mingfei 不要伤心了, 你们可以的！哈哈哈哈哈哈哈！

好了。。我已经写我几年来最多的华语了。。 这应该是最后一次我在blog上用华语写吧!　再见了！

Its not so bad after all...

Thanks to all my friends who made me feel better. It's amazing how just a presence of a friendly face, a smile or laugh, can lift the heart and make the gloom go away. Thanks. And thanks to George for the treat! Sorry to make you guys wait so long...

Anyways, just read my sis' blog.. turns out she's feelin about the same too.. amazing eh. Cheer up sis! It gets better after all.. don't lose hope.

On a sidenote, just had my first AS class.. OMG my prof is sadistic.. sigh... "enjoy watching students squirm" isn't exactly the nice quote i'd expect my prof to say... oh wells.. we shall see. This is gonna be a back breaking course, though it seems rather interesting indeed!

Disappointment

Strange how it is we always set ourselves up for disappointment. Whatever it is that made us sad or disappointed, it's actually ourselves causing it. It's always the things we hold close to us, or the things we hope and expect, that end up hurting us the most. Perhaps if we held no expectations, no assumptions, we'd never face such a thing. Of course, that'll mean a dead, boring and emotionless life. Either way, we lose. Depressing isn't it? Don't know why I even try so hard anymore... is it worth the effort?

First week

Amazingly... the first week of school is over! Well, at least the academic week. Thank god that I have no lessons on friday! Well, tomorrow's it, the E.Y.E welcome party we've been organizing. No idea how it'll turn out, but I sure hope it goes well...

A roundup of the week - Monday was supposed to have AS (Analytical Skills) and OO(Object Oriented Analysis and Design), but since it was a holiday, no lessons!:) Well, I'm happy about that now, but a little apprehensive if we can keep up. Oh well, we'll see when the time comes. Carpe Diem! Best thing is, Chinese New Year holidays will fall on monday too, so that's another lesson to miss! Heh.. of course there will be make up lessons, but already got the message that this week's will not be made up!

Tuesday was the busiest day of the week so far, I had two lessons - data management and stats. After dragging myself up for the data management lesson, I actually found it was a little better than I had expected.. at least I could follow the lesson. Still, its too early to judge, only the first lesson, the bare basics! When I heard the project, my blood ran cold... Make a database system for the SMU ebooking system for GSRs and classrooms. Geez, I don't even LIKE the system! Also, don't even know if I can choose own group.. since the prof mentioned she will give out groupings... I sure hope not!! After DM, Benjamin, Mingfei and I went around looking for a cake shop to get a cake for Miki... We found out that Coffee Club does not sell whole cakes! Argh.. we then ventured to PS, wondering the basement and almost buying the crappy bread talk cheese cake before we finally remembered that there was a Secret Recipe on the upper levels! Thank you Andrew:P However, due to unforseen circumstances, we had to walk back and forth sooo many times... my legs were aching at the end of the day. Guess it was worse for Benjamin, who was playing soccer at 4am... (Who asked you to be so stupid anyway:P) We all ended up eating lunch at Secret Recipe, all of us had lasagne (cheapest I guess), besides Benjamin who ate some expensive lamb chop, and Weiwei, who had already eaten! Then we had the cake! Oreo Cheese Cake!! It was quite nice, though I'm quite miffed that they couldn't be more flexible and let us have half of each cake... After the cake, we had to rush off for lessons.. but we ended up late for class. Lucky for me, stats hadnt gone on for long when I reached.. Thanks Xiwen for helping me keep a place:) Now... Stats was terribly boring.. I had trouble keeping my eyes open, thanks in part to the lack of laptop I guess. Luckily Xiwen's laptop helped alot, as did the coffee break in the middle of class. After stats, I met up with Xiaowei to get my DM text, THANKS ALOT!! After that, I went for E.Y.E meeting to get updated on things, met 3 new people (actually I met them before, just never talked to them), Terry, Joycelyn? (sorry, is that the right spelling:P) and Lydia. Lucky Lydia had the same BGS prof as me, and she offered to sell me her old textbook, phew, one down. Oh yeah, must thank Benjamin, Meiqi, Xiwen, Xiaowei, Weiwei and Yuanru for waiting for me! Thanks and Sorry!!!! After that, rushed back for dinner with family.

Woah, guessed I wrote much more than I expected, will summarise the rest of the week. Anyway, Wednesday was BGS (Business Government and Society) class. It sounded rather interesting, the interaction of the three parties, but sadly a lot of emphasis being put on class participation again. We shall see.

Today, Thursday, was another busy day. Went to Verts to get 2nd hand books. Sadly, couldn't find any AS textbook, so I went down to booklink to buy that, as well as the OO textbook. That was a huge mistake. Later when I went library to meet Ben, he told me he had a friend who was selling... SIGH... Guess I was too kancheong... Sob, what a waste of 10++++ bucks. Thank god I didn't have to buy that other stats textbook, 50 BUCKS MAN! Argh.. THANK YOU YAOCONG!!! After all the buying, we went for lunch, then library to slack til our 330 lessons. I went up to find Ben to talk about our grand plan to form CCA.. intellectual Games! Yeah! Looks good! Really hope it will happen man.. After some more slacking in the library, we went for our CT class. Once again, almost totally IS students besides 10 business and 1 accountancy student. Sigh... there are good and bad points I guess. Still, quite glad we could form group of 7, all old faces:) The lesson itself was kinda boring, guess its because I was rather tired and couldn't really focus.. Anyway, lesson was over early, at 6pm, as the prof had something on later!! Yeah!

Anyway, now, here I am at the library, writing and waiting for time to pass.. Guess it's time to go! Geez, this has gotta be one of the longest posts I've written:P Tata

Last Day of Holidays

As I write this... it is the last one hour before school officially starts (yes, school has started even those of you with no classes on tuesday! lucky *******s :P )! Anyway, it was a long and hectic day, but really fun too!

First, woke up at the insane hour AGAIN to go for swimming... followed for some gaming before going to watch Narnia with my sis. It was great, one of the rare movies that actually followed closely to the storyline of the book they were adapting the movie from. Even though I read the book like 10 years ago, I could feel memories unlocking as I watched on. A little cheesy at times, but indeed it was a great show! Don't know why people feel the urge to compare with other movies, heard some people calling it a toned-down copy of LOTR. Geez guys, go read the book, watch with a clear mind. Why not enjoy the show for what it is instead of comparing with everything?

I digress. Anyway, after Narnia, met with Shuhying cuz to watch The Family Stone. It was a lighthearted comedy, freakin hilarious and enjoyable. Still, there were many underlying issues that really struck deep. Recommended watching!

After the shows, we went to Nomoto Restaurant at Orchard Shopping Centre to eat shabu shabu and yakiniku! Yes!!
Picts : Shabu Shabu (top) , Yakiniku(middle) and ice cream Dessert (bottom - we had 3 bowls each!! SO SINFUL!!)


It was totally delicious!! Ate from 6 all the way non stop til 8++, then had dessert there =) Buffets are like that... Argh... But it's a new year celebration so yeah!! Still it was really expensive, 40+++ per person.. because it's a holiday price.. but I think even a normal day might come up to 40 bucks. Not for the broke soul like me. So.. THANK YOU CUZ for the treat!!!



Well... so much for New Year Resolution #4. MUST RESIST TEMPTATION...

Oh well, guess I'll go sleep now, long day tomorrow, need to recharge those dying batteries already.

So Cute!!!

Here's picture from xmas eve party I just found! Oh man... my nephew's *sigh... I'm an uncle already=( * so cute!!! *love*

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! Yes, it's 2006 now! A new year, a new beginning, hopefully. Well, it's been a very eventful year for 2005...

The downsizing of KAD... our relocation to TAD and our slack days there. How George and I overturned the DCC, while Jonathan slept his way through... thanks to our dear Apa... Will never forget the LAST DAY where we STILL had to do stock check, but we sure showed them by opening all the cans of worms! Grin, bet they won't forget it either. Then came ORD - finally got back our pink IC =) !

Then came months and months of slacking til university started... Yes... I should have looked for a job, or took up some course or something useful. Took up driving but never completed it. I'll have to do it some day. No use crying over spilt milk though, it was a great holiday period! Grin, will have to work extra harder in 2006 then.

Finally, university started... really enjoyed myself, despite all the late nights, projects and all. A lot more competitive than I'm used to, but there are good points to that too. Many thanks to all you guys in my classes, really glad to know you all. I know we complained a lot about the new system, and we have to see each other almost everyday, but it's great! Luv you all man! Haha! Must keep in touch this year also okay, even if our timetables are quite different now!

Enough of sentimentalism, I've thought of a new list of New Year Resolutions!!!! Dunno how many of you read this, but if you are my friend, REMIND ME! Haha!

1. Play less, work more! :p
2. Complete driving
3. Work during summer break
4. Lose weight!
5. I better stop here :P

Shall see if I can keep to my resolutions! Argh...

Anyway, HAPPY NEW YEAR again! Oh yeah, and Happy Bdae to you, Meiqi! The only new year baby i know! HAHA!! Even if you abandon me today! No paddle pop for you le oh!