Finally got around to posting something after a hiatus.

Let's see..the last time I blogged was after Day 1 of Concert...where a lot of things went horribly wrong. If it looks quite bad from the audience's point of view, it was even more chaotic in the tech room. Combination of a lot of factors which I shall not elaborate anymore. Sunday was perfect except for the first dance item where things went horribly wrong, despite all the checks we made before the show. The lighting board decided to play a trick on us..and grouped almost 10 cues together, resulting a chaotic lights "show". :( But I guess things can be worse and thank god everything is over. Post-mortem last week wasnt exactly too helpful either - since everyone could see what the single problem is.

Two weeks with every night taken up by rehearsals, comm hall runs and UCC days left me lagging more than ever. Had minimum time to study for GEK paper, which ended up requiring a lot of memorizing work and I obviously didnt. Had half a night to study for 2184 quiz the next morning after concert, and surprisingly didnt do too badly. The bad news is a I feel that a lot of ppl did much better..the row of PRCs in front of me in the LT mostly got full marks. Ok, am exaggerating, but I did see 2 or 3 full marks among them. Oh, and did I mention I had a quiz every week starting from concert week? It would have been quite ideal if not for..oh well, you know what I want to say.

Been feeling guilty because I am not pushing myself hard enough and usually that feeling goes away fast enough so its bad :( Imagine still lagging by 6 topics in Hydraulics, 3 weeks worth of numerical methods a.k.a maths and 5 weeks of concrete and mechanics. And the problem is these are the scary topics. Was planning to finish catching up by this weekend but then 2184 project which I am ashamed to say I hadnt contributed as much as I can is in the way. And next week is the last week of class already!


SEP application yet to be submitted. And you know what? I havent talked to my parents about this. Top choices stand at University of Waterloo and McGill currently. Yet to do in-depth research about them, and I doubt I will get around doing it.

Am looking forward to a break from hall activities so that can really study hard. Even though I understand the need to attract freshmen to apply for hall now since on-campus accomodation for Sem2 is about to open - but having hall warming right when the whole world is busy mugging is a BAD idea. Sigh. And room balloting had just concluded - no drama this time round coz supply > demand. 1-pointers can get their preferred single room. I ended up sticking in a double..sometimes I dun understand why also..but I guess in the end of the day, I don't mind. I think.

Am so looking forward to going home lah. And oh, will be spending CNY in Brunei next year! Damn happy :D

Gonna spend everyday I can in music library from tomorrow onwards. Library camper! Hopefully it will work. Though I had a feeling it might not. :(

Labels: NUS, offscript, Raffles Hall, SEP

The following is just concert rants, as usual. Skip if you don't feel like reading.

Heading to UCC tomorrow.

I feel like I am not doing enough. I can't communicate with my members effectively and hence I can't manage them properly. I can't get HER to listen to me; and I end up listening to her suggestions. Then THEY come around, viewing me as incompetent because I am unable to make her listen to me. THEY make more noise. THEY don't trust me in getting their spotlight positions right. But I have been there for 8 nights. I make notes. I make the effort to remember what's happening in each and every song, and when it will happen. HE doesnt, and continues to think of less fancy lights, over riding what THEY want. In addition, I will have to answer to HER and the UCC people too. Bombs, bullets, knifes coming towards me in four directions. Brilliant.

I will do things my way. Though I don't think I am not mentally strong enough to stand firm.

I will be a very relieved person if I make it out of this mess in one piece.

Labels: offscript, rants

Have loads to complain.

You. I respect you, and I don't want to boss around and order you around. Having your own ideas is good, but it shouldnt be an excuse for you to dodge your responsibilities.

You. It's hell for everybody else when you seem to expect more from everybody else, but little from your own people, especially when they are fooling around most of the time. It's also hell for everyone else because you just cant make things organized and prefer them last minute.Though I understand the bit where you have to take up a job yourself because other people decided to be irresponsible.

Essentially just these two "tiny" issues that makes me wish that I wake up tomorrow and it is already the Monday of Week 10. I wish I can be more rational, comfort myself and say "let's view it as a challenge". Yeah, for the briefest period I really thought I could do it. My mood just goes down every night when I thought of the two issues above combined.

I am now made to miss my favourite class and I have no choice because my heart will not be in the LT at all. And you. Don't give me that look when I say I can't miss my quiz. 

And I havent even got to the part about SEP plans being messed up. Unfair allocation! WTH.


All these are just gonna worsen my psoriasis problem (at least, according to the doc).

Please, please, just let me focus on what I need to do!

Labels: offscript, rants, skin

*clearing spider webs*
*vacuuming thick layers of dust*

Blog has been left unattended for quite some time already so its time for some spring cleaning :) I think I realize blogging is much more productive then spending time roaming around aimlessly online.

Shall not go into details about last two weeks - replacing the layers of dust with a super wordy post doesnt seem to be a good idea. But anyway, during recess week:

• Cleared 2.5 auxes alone, though it comes with a price.
• Debated with myself before finally deciding to attend a consultation with Hydraulics prof, and dun reli know wat is going on for about quarter of the time.
• Field trip to supreme court wasnt too interesting. 
• Broke the frame of my specs, and had to buy a new one, while discovering my degree actually went down.
  
• Wanted to go jalan-jalan for one day during recess week, ended up going Funan only after supreme court trip, and felt like buying a new comp again.
  
• Procrastination and more procrastination

Where has my past self gone? I reckon if anybody from my secondary school see me now, they probably cannot believe this is me. Not in terms of physical appearance of course. I gave myself a break after Form 5, no more of those competing for the top spot, and I guess my break is a bit too long. So long that I don't know how to get back on track.

I half suspect I have this case of addiction to the online world. I will know I have work to do, but somehow I cant resist going online for a while, even when most of the time I don't know what to do online. I check my mails multiple times each day. The worse thing is it is not like I don't have enough things to keep me busy and away from the computer. Which results in work piling up.

The NSC doctor told me psoriasis will stick with me for the rest of my life (which sounds seriously depressing when he said that, but it is a fact), and that when I have it controlled, stress will aggravate it easily, so he advised me to try not to give myself too much pressure. I guess he forgot that I am in Singapore, and given my personality the feat is almost mission impossible.

Knowing your weakness is not good enough. Getting rid of it is the only way out.

********************

I have been making so many wrong decisions this semester, focusing on the wrong things even when I know exactly where my priorities lie. SEP applications open next week and I am yet to do proper research. As usual - "I will do it during e-learning week". At this rate my e-learning week a.k.a self study week will not be my rest week again.

I more than half wish concert is over. It's one of the wrong decisions I made this semester, and no way I am going to repeat this mistake.

*********************

Hall tech training session today was one of the worst I have been in. I couldnt really see the point of conducting this training when, admittedly, I still have so much to learn and I am conducting it on a guy who has much more experience than me. Ended up listening to him lecture because he gets more and more excited about sharing his experiences in his church band. Complete waste of time and throwing us off the real purpose of the training. [Ok, I was getting impatient that time coz i wanted to end fast]. I cant help but wonder why he doesnt feedback to us earlier when he has been in hall for the past two years.

*********************

I sort of foresee this coming but just didnt expect it to happen so soon. Perhaps I am just too idealistic. Things are way different from back then but how did it turned out this way? I am very sure I am not at fault. I tried and I got fed up. Even if it is my fault it wouldnt do harm to enlighten me about it would it? I am clueless. It is disturbing, I don't know how to 除掉我们心中的那根刺.

Times like this makes me miss the 4 of you most.

Labels: NUS, offscript, Raffles Hall, rants, skin, updates

Its finally here.

10 days of pseudo-holidays, but then a day or two of rest is on the top of my to-do list. :)

Last week kind of rushed by that I almost can't believe its over. Especially the much dreaded 15th of September. Submitted the CE2184 ppt slides, and lecturer actually gave positive feedbacks about our topic during lecture. *clap clap*. Was completely lost during concrete mix design lab, because, unfortunately, didnt get to read the notes or do any kind of preparation beforehand. Though it was kind of interesting. And i didnt really get to heave a sigh of relief after the three torturous hours (because I was lost most of the time) as I have to rush down to help tech set up for convocation dinner. Which, from a technical point of view, wasn't too great...the worst thing was we kelam-kabut because master was on the stage in a flash and started giving his speech while we were still trying to find out why one of the emcee mics are not working...and so forgot to un-mute his mic. Hurriedly switched it on without realizing the gain was too high and thus resulting in a sudden and shrill "EEEEEEEEE". Disaster. I kind of don't dare to look at Looi after that. [oops, too many technical terms in the previous two sentences]. Rest of the performances are quite good, but our support definitely could be better, if only we had time for techinical runs before the dinner. Food was okay also, did manage to eat a bit before rushing down to hard court to set up for Night Market. Surprisingly there are more than 5 stalls (I expected less, really)..and it wasnt too bad in the end.

Was kind of frustrated during the meeting with EMCC and UCC technical officers on Wednesday. Because the directors came up with a bump-in schedule which was totally unrealistic, because they did it based on their knowledge. The UCC officer, he didnt recognise me (though I worked with him twice already) so he thought I must really have sub-zero experience to agree with a schedule like that. And he spent a good half an hour explaining to us how it could be improved, which, essentially, is something which I am familiar with. And I couldnt exactly tell him I know what he is talking about and I havent actually seen the schedule they came up with before.

Fell sick for the second time in as many weeks on Thursday, but fortunately it went away fast enough, thanks to Panadol and a good night sleep..so I woke up feeling fresher for my labs day on Friday. Aluminium beam fabrication was almost a complete disaster. The only reason why it wasnt a complete one is that we have something to submit. We did not do enough planning and we were incredibly slow because of errors when cutting the aluminium strips. We ended up finishing at 2.30pm when we should stop at 12pm, and the technician was fuming when he saw us there when he came back from sembahyang. Gosh. I don't really want to think about the result.

Fingerprinting lab at night was more fun though. Even though I couldnt get very good prints for my fresh prints for some unknown reason. My toe prints were quite nice. And the idea of writing a 5-page report wasnt very appealing to me. Nevertheless, supper was very enjoyable even though I was late by almost an hour.

Yesterday was supposed to be my rest day and instead it turned out completely opposite. Signed up for hall maintenance aux and somehow became the "float representative" and they bugged me with questions on what to keep and what not to keep in lower lounge. Sigh. I don't have much ideas myself, because you can't really decide whether a particular item is useful or not until you know what you are building. Some may not be useful for a particular year but dead useful for another. Not to mention the decision to throw away all the unused cloth from float/concert costumes. I wasnt the one making the decision but was partly at fault too because I didnt exactly stop them either. And the result? Helping YiShiean to salvage the cloth and a few completed costumes for this year's concert, from the huge junk container in the middle of the night, because it's partly my fault it ended up there. I did tell people to contact her but forgot to check if she has been contacted.

And yeah. Add all these together and you have....I think I cant find a word to describe this.

Time to mug and catch up on my studies, which I am lagging in though to a lesser extent. But I have doubts on whether I will be able to motivate myself to do so. And yeah, I am missing home terribly now..actually thought of buying an air ticket and fly back home for a few days because, after all, I only have one midterm after recess week. But then the thoughts of various meetings, consultations, reports and field trip immediately wiped out the idea of going home and sigh, I will need to wait until december. 

I hope I will still emerge as a refreshed person by the end of this week.

Labels: holidays, NUS, offscript, Raffles Hall, rants, updates

Blogging from my new room now :) Internet is not up yet, but thank god can detect wireless from my block..quite strong and steady too so am not dying.

Summary: longer tables, which is not too bad but it reduces space for towel rack, my bucket and laundry basket etc. Less storage space, but i managed to fit in somehow. New mattresses (coming soon), new and much powerful ceiling fan (YAY!), new toilets which looks more modern but have some minor drawbacks...but basically am quite satisfied :)

This week was rather hectic..but next week will be even worse. The whole LT went "Whewww" when Prof Cheong announced that he will try to hold the quiz on week 7..which gives us the whole recess week to prepare for (assuming not too much time lost on resting etc etc.). Though there are two tech set ups, two lab projects, one practical exam, two long meetings, one powerpoint presentation to keep me "entertained" this week. Some other people might have worse ones, but for somebody like me who have trouble focusing, it's enough to kill.

I feel like ranting about concert now.

This year's concert is so un-concert! Except for dance practices and maybe cast (I haven't heard anything about those) practice a lot of things are somewhat done in private. Costumers settle their costumes quietly - unlike last year when you can see them working every night. Sets apparently only need to prepare the props - again, unlike last year. Off-stage departments have been silently working as usual. Even tech - I am yet to organize a first meeting...only got to send them a formal welcome email and get them to read the script a bit. Suppose to have one before recess week and I still hope it happens. Only thing is, I AM STILL IN THE DARK. I have no idea what the directors want and at this rate if i don't go after them, they will settle it with the EMCC person themselves.

Probably its my fault for not initiating discussions but I can't help but feel wasted. There is a meeting with the EMCC people this week and at this rate I am going to be a flowerpot there (i.e for deco puposes) because we don't bother communicating with each other. I am not the producer, but was thinking maybe if all department heads have regular meetings together we could at least know what is going on elsewhere lor. Like if the director wants to know anything can always bring up during meeting lor. Sigh.

Coupled with the fact that I haven't exactly been very helpful in my group projects..felt quite bad. I know where my priorities lie. But I just got carried away. For instance, a (I realize this after I came back) very unnecessary trip to Suntec for COMEX 2009 since I know the brochures and flyers will be uploaded soon anyway, and I could have spent those few hours helping out with what they are doing. And the worse thing is, I am still unable to decide if I should get my new laptop or wait.

Rawr. I am hoping I can somehow skip this week altogether.

Labels: NUS, offscript, Raffles Hall, rants, techno