Paradigm Shift

A full day of AS, OO, DM til 7, followed by a BGS mini-party in the lounge, thanks to Prof Raj, and the efforts of the organising committee! Kudos to them for the wonderful party on short notice! Had quite a great time, playing games, food and drinks, while Adrian and Stanley showed magic tricks to us again! Haha, as they all say, we 每天被骗! Bunch of us then sat around singing while Justin played the guitar! Fun! Gives me the resolve (once again) to learn the guitar! -.-

We left the party early to continue working on DM & OO, yes, such a sad life indeed:P Well, DM presentation due in a few hours time, and the report on Friday. OO, on Monday. Gonna be hell week again, but after this stretch, I'm home free!! Yay!

Anyways, the main thing today was, had a good chat with Andrew on the way home. Realised a very pertinent fact, a generalization that most IS students prescribe to. Like rabid dogs biting meat, we tend to seize a problem and once we get our 'fangs' on it, we refuse to let go till its dead! A rather morbid analogy, yes, but very apt in my opinion! And how true is it... had so many examples of people debugging programs waaay late at night, until the jump of joy (metaphorically speaking, on msn) brought about the time to sleep! And yes, immediately after reaching home, it happened again! *Grin* At least we managed to solve it! Phew.. amazing how the errors are always so simple in nature.. Guess that's life.. we tend to take care of the intricate, tough details, while the small, simple details often get missed in our obsession and pursuit of the completion of the main function. Perhaps what we all need is a paradigm shift, a change in thinking, a breath of fresh air in our stale minds. Easy to speak of perhaps, but certainly hard to pull off. Well, one can but hope.

Speaking of dreams also brought to mind yet another long-forgotten problem of mine... but it's 2+ am, and there's a DM presentation in 8 hours time. Had better sleep now!

Vacuous thoughts

It's been a long time since I was impressed by a movie. Watched V for Vendetta twice in 2 days. Fri - because of the free tickets from the opening of Cathay, and Sat - meeting up with old army buddies. It was really good, with so many hidden meanings while discussing philosophies of life and freedom. Good usage of symbolism, and subtle poking of fun at present-day issues. Several times during the show, there were occassions when I feared cliché(ness) would rear its head and destroy the movie, but I was pleasantly surprised. The art-form was great, the music from jazz to the orchestra accompanying the explosions was perfectly apt and well chosen. All in all, was a great movie, and I highly recommend it to any of you who haven't watched it!

P.S Never knew there were so many words with V! The starting oratory by V, brilliant!

I'm back!

It's been a long time... I'm back, hopefully!

On a sidenote, here's what I've always been wishing I could do in presentations! Woot!

Hard work... finally?

My body's aching ALL over.

Amazing what a daily workout can do! Thanks Wilson for being our 'trainer' today, think I could really feel the difference:) Really tired out myself I guess, crashed out the whole evening, but that ache is telling me that at least I did something. Finally getting started on my New Year's Resolution, which seems sooo far away though it's but 3 months. Guess a lot has happened since then, for good or for bad. Just gotta take it as it comes, and hopefully a few months down the road I'll be able to look back here and say, "This is where it all started!"

Ganbatté Né!!!

Thank you!

Been on a terrible low recently, despite any seeming cheerfulness on my part. It all seemed terrible etc etc... Yesterday started out no different, came to school disgustingly early on my supposed free day (as usual) to rush complete the OO project. Finished it in time, uploading it at 1158 (due at noon), before reading the email saying the deadline's postponed to 6pm -.- Wells, at least that's out of the way now, and though phase 3 for both projects are looming, at least that's some breathing space. Went gym for a good workout, read up a little on php, and did some DM phase 3 (the easy portion).

We planned to go to the IT fair, or so I thought. To my surprise (and it was REALLY a huge surprise!), it turned out to be a surprise birthday erm dinner for me and Ben! Heh. I must say, that must have been some logistical nightmare to keep it secret from us both, considering the numbers. Thanks loads to all ya babes and bros *sorry for plagarising, ben*, wuv you all !! It really made my day, and cheered me up inconsiderably, although I didnt manage to get to go to the IT fair :P Thanks especially to Meiqi and Cuiling for getting the cake, sorry for not finishing it! Was feeling terribly full!

On a sidenote, just read Fai's latest blog post.. angsty as usual I see. One thing I can say, your post really struck deep into my heart, bro. I know the feeling, feel the same way alot, and its so darned friggin true. We need to chill out some time again ok, too bad you can't make it later today.

Aight, gotta run. Gonna hang out at Khel's place with the guys, and visit the IT fair tomorrow. And yes, that AS assignment and presentation IS nagging away at the back of my mind, but hell, I'm in too good a mood, and that's rare enough for me not to wanna spoil it with thoughts of work. Last min work for tmr again I guess!

Happy? Birthday

This has gotta be one of the ... nah... THE most depressing birthdays I've ever had in my whole damned life. Hell, I'm starting to totally hate the guts out of OOAD. Freakin' phase 2... every bloody thing is worth so little but takes so much time! I'm no perfectionist or anything.. but still! I pride myself on at least getting the things done... but is it even worth it? Spending so much time, and the results aren't even showing.. Irritated? Angry? Depressed? Yeah.. dont even know exactly what I'm feeling anymore.. godamnit! Trying so hard to put up a cheerful front.. and yeah there are the great times.. but ... Haiz.

I really wonder whether I've made the right choice in coming to SMU. Or JC for that matter. Strange how the education system has totally fucked me up. How it's so darned easy to go through all the years of education just slacking my way through .. with probably no affect on my final grade.. or at least a rather minimal one in my opinion. There's something seriously wrong with that.. with no prep we get, being thrown into the ocean like that without a lifeline.

Feel more and more like I'm drowning. Class participation? Pfft. I'm not a freakin' public person. Yes, talking 1v1 is fine... or in a small group maybe... but put me in front of a audience and I blank out. I know.. practice makes perfect blah blah... but I don't see it happening. Breaking out in cold sweat and stumbling over words despite all those rehearsals for BGS presentation.. my probably non-existant class participation marks? Sigh. I quote (rephrased): "AS? No class participation marks what.. why bother speaking out in AS class?" End quote. Practical? Certainly. But it certainly pisses me off.. especially when I have to labour so hard just to attempt to speak out in class. I must really thank those friends around me who have encouraged me to speak out. Thank you. It surely helps some, and I need all the help I can get, if I'm gonna even survive this 4 years.

Guess I'm starting to babble... not even really coherent to me when I read what I've written. Ah wellsssss back to OO.. maybe i should name it Uh Oh instead..

Destressing Day

Damn irritated now, sometimes things just happen that you have no choice or control over, and you feel like railing, screaming and generally punching something, even if you know it won't help matters. Very very sian.. esp. since it was generally a good day up until... Well, guess I should talk about the happier things...

Managed to complete at least some work, OO phase 2 looks promising, then went for DM talk, which ended earlier than expected, luckily. Went for movie after that, come to think of it, it's been a REALLY long time since I last watched a movie. Went with Ben, Marcus, Yuanru and Meiqi to watch Big Momma 2 at Suntec, basically because of Ben's longing for a Ben and Jerry icecream (pun unintended). Rushed some food... I had the misfortune of choosing a disgustingly bland noodle, that I could barely stomach. I shall digress here again to whine: Eng Wah booking system really sucks!! Geez, it irritates me even more after taking DM, cos their database system really sucks! Bleah... too fast a finger while booking + no self seat choice = bad combination. Had 4 seats together and 1 seat apart. Bah! Thank god there was an empty seat beside the 4. Geez.

The movie was quite good, especially as a destresser. The plot was kinda old, in a nutshell, a good cop getting out of the field to be with family, getting into trouble, hearing about mentor getting killed, going under cover, lies, crossdressing, sexual innuendos and situations, and a bunch of other comedy scenes. The last scene with him giving a 'moral' teaching was kinda cheesy, and overall might have been better if they didn't try to combine so many things (or come to think of it, maybe it was trying to parody), but overall the humour and comedy was superb. Great for relaxation!

After movie, Marcus left for home, and the rest of us trooped off to Ben and Jerry's for some long-awaited ice cream. Alas, fate just wasn't on our side, the place was crowded, and the queue so long that we decided to give up, and visit Gelare (is that the right spelling??) . Wasn't a really good idea though, since yr and mq didn't really enjoy the ice-cream heh.. lucky i didn't order anything:) Coincidence of coincidence, Xiaowei and her friend popped in to have Gelare too! Amazing eh...

Anyways, after some I-Screams, we decided to share cab back, though we somewhat regretted not taking the train. Waited quite some time for cab at a long queue, inching forward, until we gave up and called. Even then, there were 'no available cabs' for the booking, until at least 10 min later we got one. Finally... home! Well, guess it's time to get some sleep! Táta!

Guilt!

Oh my.. just spent 2 hours reading online stories! Well, more like re-reading, though it's been a long time! Gee, never realised how interesting and addictive those old RPG stories are! Go have a look... Green Dragon Inn, also at the side-bar links:)

Sigh.. back to BGS research! Laws laws laws... bleahz

Eventful Day!

Finally back at the comforts of home... what an eventful day it's been... Woke up disgustingly early for a Wednesday to meet Andrew and Mingfei at Buona Vista. But! When I reached bishan station to find Andrew, the darned train was delayed for almost half an hour, with repeated announcements of "The train service will be delayed for 10 minutes". We finally gave up waiting for the train, and decided to cab down, since we were kinda late already, but the queue was disgustingly long! Finally, we decided to take the long route down, and give Mingfei an apology call:P It was a long 54 bus ride to Orchard, but rather enjoyable.. After all, it's been a looooong time since I've chilled out in a bus, reading newspapers quietly! Finally we reached Orchard, then we took bus down to Holland, and cabbed down to CASE directly, picking up Mingfei on the way. Yes... a long and twisted journey indeed! -.-

Trip to CASE was a very fruitful one indeed, the library search yielded more results than we expected. Had a field time searching through all the books and extracting all the info... information overload! Almost killed my fingers typing out all the stuff... until we finally gave up and started taking pictures using a digital camera.. Hehe.. Finally left at around 1pm, totally famished!
Pictures of us in the CASE 'library'

Went to Ghim Moh (is that the right spelling?) Market for lunch! Been a long time sia!! Mingfei wanted to eat MacDonald, but we vetoed the idea... No way were gonna eat a mere MacDonalds meal after travelling so far to the vicinity! Ate beef horfun (Mingfei's first time!!!!!!! She was very impressed hahaha, took a picture, but dun seem to be able to upload it!) and 汤圆! Mmmmmmmmmm DELICIOUS!!!!

After the delicious lunch, we were all feeling terribly drowsy.. trudged back to school harbouring thoughts of skipping BGS... Still, we managed to drag our sorry asses to class! After all, had to support our classmates presentations right! The presentations were okay, and somewhat funny, though I was really too sleepy to fully concentrate on what was going on. Only one really caught my attention, through the sheer lousiness of it.. but let's not go there! The lameness factor was also kinda high... Sigh... Argh:P

After BGS, went kopitiam to have a long chitchat with Marcus, Andrew and Mingfei... where we somehow started talking about the 'old days'! Wah.. so jealous.. wish I went boarding school too! Sounds like damn fun! Haha, think my memories totally pale in comparison! Ah wells, no use crying over spilt milk!

After that, went to GSR to do work... big surprise eh ... Well, at least I finally finished one part of the darned OO project phase 2, still a looooong lloooong way to go! Ganbatté ne!!!