Spent the entire Saturday out from 8am to 11pm. Wow now that's what you call weekend. Whee~

Started the day with a tour organized by my SS module prof..every student is supposed to go for at least one of the series of tours around Singapore (related to module contents of course) and I very predictably signed up for Civic District Tour. Yeah coz it involves touring my favorite "emo place" even though it's during daytime (night scenery is so much better). Anyway, started off with the Arts House (used to be a Parliament House ages ago), then walked along the roads all the way to Marina Bay Sands while pausing here and there to listen to prof's "lectures" on the history and ideas behind those constructions. Under the baking hot sun. Whoosh. Snapped pictures like a tourist hahaha. Think I might need to revisit the place soon because I wanted to write about the sights and sound of Singapore River for my term essay and need inspiration and pictures. Shall do that at night :)









Lepak a bit around Marina Square and Suntec while waiting for Stel who was supposed to join me for the rest of the day's adventures. Headed off to Pizza Hut for lunch coz we had coupons for free personal pan pizzas. Haha cheapo. Next stop, IT Show 2011 at Suntec Convention Centre! I wanted to buy a camera since last sem and finally decided to get one during this IT fair..plus some other gadgets. Crowd was crazy as usual (come to think of it, maybe crazier, guess everyone is doing well economically?). Headed straight to the camera company booths to grab some brochures..price was my only main concern as a really good camera probably will just go to waste in my possession. Initially targetted a Sony camera..but after playing around with it didnt like it too much for some reason. Ended up at the Samsung booth and they have a couple of nice promotions..tempted me. Sat down somewhere and pondered my choices while Stel went to buy her Mac stuff...eventually decided on a Samsung model but when we went back to the booth..we were just in time for their daily promotion hour. Wasted a good half an hour waiting for the first model to be sold...the promoter damn chiong hei lor..and we din dare to move coz we were at a rather good spot. Thankfully the second model promoted was the one that caught my eye...and they suddenly dropped the news that there were only 10 sets remaining. Cue lots of squeezing and raised arms waiting to grab the offer paper.

"Going for $249!!!"

*grabs paper* FAILED TO GET ANY

*tries again* SNATCHED ONE PIECE YEAHHH.

In fact I accidentally grabbed two pieces instead of one. Threw the other piece into the air on the whim and and Indian lady who had just given up caught it in surprise. Wow must be her lucky day.

First time involved in such intense "fight" and left with a sore chest (i think i overstretched myself) and my new toy :) Din even have time to buy other stuff! Wanted to buy handphone pouch, headphones and a new memory card for my phone. Zzz. Coz we were behind schedule alr.


Walked to this place in Bugis area to try out Tom's Palette. Supposedly a really good ice cream parlour with original flavours and NUS students get 10% discount. And it lived up to our expectations! Medium cup with two flavours for $3.30 only. Other shops probably sell for $5. They have a lot of flavours but they rotated them..as in you see different flavours each month or something. Really friendly staff too! Thumbs up. (Why do I sound like I am writing a review?) Forgot to take pictures though.

Took a bus to St. James Power Station to visit....


Won myself a pair of tickets for her live showcase..she is in town promoting her new album. Thought I was one of the privileged and lucky few until we reached there at around 5+ and the queue was already 100m long. =.= Okay I think i exaggerated a bit but you get my point. Luckily we ended up standing at a rather acceptable spot...not as near as the earlybirds but good enough to see her clearly and snap nice pics. :) And her live performance is awesome! (Some singers can only record well) Mostly songs from her new album except a couple from a previous album when she was accompanied by live piano and violin. Niceeeee. The organizers even slotted in a segment where a male fan tried to surprise and propose to his long time friend. Ultimate corny lah in my opinion and the girl din even look impressed or touched. Plan failed? Whatever. Fish Leong is awesome, that is what's important. Hahah.




Went over to Vivo/Harbour Front Centre for dinner and a bit of window shopping..had dinner at this Vietnamese restaurant and even tried Gong Cha (贡茶)...was not bad...pics below.


Burnt a hole in my wallet as a result and was damn tired at the end of the day =.= But yeah an enjoyable day out wif the bff and I got to see one of my favourite singers live and I got a new toy. Nice little break from all those school work. Heheh.

Labels: around singapore, outings, techno

Anyway, to follow up on the previous post.

Last Sunday..the last day of the PC Show, I made my way there for a second time coz I was immensely interested in Singtel's deals. My contract will be expiring at the end of July and I am already eligible to re-contract. Add on to the fact that my N81 8GB which have served me faithfully for two years (It never died on me, at least) is quite sadly in a miserable shape now even though I wanted it to last for four years. (I guess my sweaty hands did most of the damage). Hence I have been visiting Singtel Shop website quite frequently this hols trying to find a phone that I will like.

Most of the phone these days are touchscreen. If not, they are the big, fat ones like the E series (I am a loyal Nokia user). I was even willing to pay up to $200 given that my last phone costed that much. That was before I went to PC Show. "Earth shattering deals", as they call it, drew me back there for a second time and I got a queue number, supposedly to ask more about recontracting but the lady there treated me as if I have already made up my mind and did the procedures for me in a flash. She sort of made up my mind for me. And I thought I was doomed coz I ended up choosing the $0 model which I didnt read up too much on and walked away without paying a single cent.

After exploring it a bit...turned out that I am very pleased with my new phone :D My cheapest and best phone yet!

• Display: TFT resistive touchscreen, 16M colors, Proximity sensor for auto turn-off, accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate, Handwriting recognition
• Sound: Built-in stereo speakers, 3.5mm audio jack
• Memory: Internal 81MB storage, 128MB RAM, Card Slot for microSD up to 16GB, 8GB included.
• Camera: Primary 3.15MP, 2048x1536pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, dual-LED flash, Geotagging. Secondary QVGA videocall camera
• OS: Symbian OS v9.4, Series 60 rel. 5
• GPS: Yes, with A-GPS support, Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch
• Java: Yes, MIDP 2.1, MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV/MP3/WAV/eAAC+/WMA player, Photo editor, Voice command etc.
• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology
• Bluetooth: Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
• USB: Yes, v2.0 microUSB
• Dedicated Media Bar touch key for access to music, images & video, share online, Video Centre and web

Labels: techno

Nah...much as I hope for a new human skin...I am referring to a new blogskin!

Spent time hunting and choosing a new ones...finally settled on this one...white background instead of black for once...in fact the first time its white since my first template from blogger. Didnt reli mean much to me but I like its style. Hmm...feeling like taking some basic photoshop courses already..haha yea call me noob but I never know how to photoshop.....

Anyway..I am home :D And finally able to get back to my old way of sleeping soundly without waking up a few times at night. Whee~~

The sad thing is nobody is reli back here and so have been staying at home for the past few days. Going Limbang to renew my driving license though...passed "P" period without losing any points (obviously, I havent even been driving in Malaysia at all). Wondering what are the procedures if I were to convert to a Singaporean license. That is if I am able to convert in the first place..

Oh, and the pics mentioned in the previous post:

Labels: around singapore, holidays, techno

Looking back, it was probably a bad decision but I am glad I made it anyway. Probably I am getting used to the madness of the past two weeks or I have just resigned to the fact that I will be busy all the way until 4th of May (oh maybe 7th or 8th of May to include post-exam plans and packing) (Omg-why-am-i-thinking-about-it-so early-=.=).

Started out trying to complete my part of a lab report without much success. Wanted to try to at least do something else before going out but all else fails...bleh. First stop, Bugis to meet up with alice and mic, kheun and thank came along too. Walked around to find food before ending up in MOSBurger. Kind of a brief meeting lor coz the trio left after the "tea"..alice and I hanged around to watch wait for adam lambert. =.= Was not a fan of him at all but kind of interesting to watch the fans' crazy antics hahaha. And kind of weird coz we were actually in quite a good position and can actually see him close up when he turned up. (weird coz you wud expect such placed to be taken up by crazy fans alr). Poor fans coz it had to rain...bet they must be cursing coz we just went thru an extremely dry month and it had to rain when they were queueing for his signature. Before that (two hours ago) there was some sort of activity and Michelle Chia turned up. Haha duno why but was kind of nice to see her coz she is one of the very few MediaCorp artistes which I like.

Next stop, IT Fair...had nothing to buy at all but decided to go anyway since I am already out...well seriously nothing better to do right? Why go IT Fair during weekend when there were millions of people there. Two years ago I wud rather die than go squeeze with the people there but I duno why I dun mind that much anymore. Gosh the amount of rubbish generated was unbelievable. Environmentalists would have fainted at the sight. Was thinking of buying another mouse coz I had problems scrolling with my current one. Also regretted a bit for buying my comp last sem...they released a new version of my model with multi-touch screen! And at a affordable price too! (ok was $200 more exp). Sigh but then i recognise that such things happen all the time and how many times can you regret right. Better to be content with what I have. I still love my comp :D

Walked a bit in Citylink Mall before heading to PS. Caught up with a few JC classmates, and kind of enjoyed the session. We ate at Ichiban Sushi (second time in a row we had a gathering there) before moving on Swensens coz MeiLin had a voucher from OpenHouse. Had a good time reminiscing and finding out more about others...like Lynn, for instance I think I never really chatted with her a lot..and MF whom i always have "chim" conversations with. lol. A break definitely helps to recharge the tired and battered body and brain!

Anyway...let me just talk a bit about the week...i think having 6 chapters for a quiz and only started studying at 11pm the night before is definitely a first for me. Especially when there is so much more things in your mind...I ended up mistaken the quiz as a closed-book one and was quite stressed about it....so what a pleasant (or unpleasant) surprise when I found out it was open book right before the quiz. Here is how it happened: i knew i had two quizzes on two consecutive days this week, and I know one of them is open book and one is closed. Having just sat for the closed book one, I had no idea how I still thought it was open book and started stressing out about the "closed book" one which I havent started on. Blur. Surprisingly both quizzes went well (or at least that is what I thought).

Submitted my forensic tut and was kind of disheartened by the grade i got...duno if I can blame it on "its my first attempt at this sort of question" because I skip the first tut coz of CNY. Its a competitive class as lecturer pointed out in the first lecture. Sigh. Law is quite interesting though it is really not my thing. There are so many ways to exploit and work around it. Judges recognise this point because they keep amending or further explain certain statutory laws to justify their sentence. It all depends on how you argue and admittedly I am not very good at it. Supposed to complete 3 essays in two hours during finals, reminds me a lot about econs. :S Moots demonstration by the lecturers were quite fun to watch though. Very fun to watch the normally strict (well she is strict when lecturing) acting out her role as a mentally-challenged girl with an IQ of a 12year old, as well as a cheapskate lady with fake angmoh accent.

5 more weeks to reading week. Exactly the same amount of time we have to endure while waiting for CNY break to arrive...which, really, looks long but is really short...gotta buck up now. Or try to.

Labels: around singapore, forensics, NUS, techno, updates

I actually have less time to spend in front of my comp after exams...didnt even get to sound my horn much. =.=

But yay! Exams are over! Hydraulics paper was much easier than expected...and most ppl choose the 4 easier questions and I chose a difficult question without knowing it. =.= Hope that doesnt kills me...

Went out almost everyday and juggled all my packing in between...didnt know I had that much stuff..wonder where they all come from. Ended up with 5 super full boxes and 1 more super big luggage bag...staged quite a scene when i was trying to move them all to the vacation storage space. I think I can win the most cheapo resident liao...stacked quite high some more lol.

Volunteered for Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon on Sunday. Had to report at midnight and waited until 3 sth before finally deployed to ECP...another 3 hours before the leading runners finally passed by us. We were supposed to be route marshals but it was so pointless anyway since the road's straight, and the runners were in such a big group that nobody can possibly go off course (other than going behind the bushes to, you know) so we focused on our secondary purpose..cheered our hearts out for the runners..the front runners are too focused to respond and the walkers dont reli cared much either and so only the runners behind the leading pack were responding and it's definitely encouraging for us too :) Saw a few familiar faces too...and towards the end its pointless to cheer them on and we just sat there waiting for the sweeper car to "sweep" the last walkers...

Had to endure last minute-packing but its ok. I am safely at home now :D and blogging for the first time using this:

Labels: holidays, techno, volunteering

And I am not done with exams yet. :(

Hydraulics paper tomorrow and despite almost 4 full days to prepare for it - I declare myself as under-prepared. Can't seem to focus after the 4th paper, especially with distractions around. We shall see what happens tomorrow - have set a low target for it and I hope I get the minimum.

Comp manage to come to life after the previous post. =.= Turned out that it was a power supply problem after all. Tweaked the connections of the adapter a bit and voila...comp is back on although the connection is a kind of fragile now. Touch it a bit and "poof" - blackout. Stuff my 1GB thumbdrive so full that it burps (sorry, had to recycle that line :D) and the remainder goes into my phone which had 8GB internal memory. Lol. Rest of the not-so-important things like movies and dramas will have to wait...

Discussed with parents and sister and they thought I should get a new comp anyway - :D :D :D and how convenient that SITEX is taking place and I had a 4 day break to my next (and last) paper. And yeah. I did it. Lol. It's still in its box though....dun dare to take it out and play with it...as if I dun have enough self-induced distractions...next post should be about it :)

Plan to pay for at least half of it myself since I sort of earned it lor. By staying in a double room this academic year = save $$. I feel good about this point :)

Exams so far - I suppose din have any major screw ups...or maybe i am not aware of it...but I suppose I am mentally prepared for a big one tomorrow..

Looking forward to post-exam stuff! Volunteering for Standard Chartered Marathon..outings and outings :) YOG sent me two emails yesterday, one offering me a post as a techinical officer for BMX Cycling - need to pay for training and its in December = no way I am staying back for that. Another one is transport assistant for some Friendship Camp - supposedly a form of hands-on for the actual YOG - also in December. Too bad, have to continue waiting lor...

One more week to home...:)

Labels: exams, techno, volunteering

Some things just happen at the wrong time.

I have seen more than one person complaining about why SEP results came out in the midst of finals and people were not given too much time to consider the offer. Not that I was offered anything - that bit was, at least to me, expected, given that Canada is a popular destination and my arsenal consists of a few Bs and B+s - not enought to fight with people. Abel says it could be a blessing in disguise - I could probably apply for some other country next sem - let's just hope I can add on something to my arsenal this week.

Next thing, laptop decided that he couldnt hang on anymore - he gave me enough warnings i guess, and I didnt take in those. Finally it collapsed last night. Just when I have a fair bit of work to do on my comp! I actually dun reli know what is its problem - either power supply problem or Windows problem. Freaked out and decided to go to ThinkLab - ended up rather productive. It is currently trying it best to start up too - let it rest for a few hours and it can manage 5 minutes - including boot time - sad. Not enough for me to salvage anything. Got official permission to buy a new comp already though, might be heading to Expo this weekend. Meanwhile hopefully I can rescue some of the stuff in my comp...

60% done with finals! Must accumulate as much positive energy as possible so that I can defeat Hydraulics!

Labels: exams, SEP, techno

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

Holidays is a time when u get to do random things that you couldnt find time to do during term time..hence the change of blog skin :P. This one is looks neat and simple..found another one and spent one whole day looking at gibberish-codes before inserting in my own blog posts, but decided that it looked a bit 'girly' in the end..so discarded it..eventually settle down for this one instead.

Written a post out for my blog's 3rd "anniversary celebrations" but i think i wont post it up larh..was planning to post it up in a coded form but then that doesnt mean anything also so didnt in the end.

Oh..a lot has happened since my last post..Was out almost everyday since end of exams..not to mention a lot of packing in between. Let's see..JDP interview was over, wasnt too bad in the sense that I really talked better than during Oral Defence, i.e. no talking rubbish, but I think I was a bit lucky coz one of the interviewers left halfway to talk on his phone, only rejoining to say "bye" to me.

Haha, i still hope I can get it though, even though I might get myself into a tricky spot if I left halfway thru the academic year..which brings me to another topic..I got into the Master's List in the end. Yayz. (the 'high' feeling had died down long time ago :S) Oh well..if i leave halfway thru next year i think i will be hunted down and murdered (or am I thinking too much). Whatever lah..

And that means confirmed floating this hols..sandwiched between AYG volunteering which I haven received any news about since the training the other day.

Managed to play some tennis too before I left..and also went jalan-jalan around..which means splurge more..:( Oh yea, Singapore Flyer was kind of boring as well..I wonder if going at night will be nicer? Just found out Singtel users can go for free on weekends and public hols if I am not wrong...duno if I would want to give it another try at night some time soon...

Right now am back at home..nobody's back yet and very few ppl will come back also..by the time they come back I think I will be busy floating d..:( :(

Bored bored :S

Labels: holidays, techno, updates

I finally added twitter to my sidebar after signing up for it months ago yet never got around to use it. Haha.

So I dun need to update blog that often anymore. Haha...kidding.

But not yet link my phone to it yet..if I can do that I am sure updates would be even more frequent...lol..but i think i need to send whatever i wanna post to a UK number so it would be very exp and hence i dun think i will be doing tat.

Anyway, on to the second part of the title: Blackout.

-Story begin-

I was happily (well, maybe not that happy) solving some questions to prepare for my Programming Practical Exam on Wednesday..so while tearing my hair out trying to figure out the code...

WHOOSH. (rite, I made up that sound)

The whole room went pitch black and for a moment it didnt register to me that there was a blackout coz I can still hear the songs playing in my ears (I was listening songs from my phone). But when reality sets in...

"Crapz, my program!"

Coz my laptop battery died long long time ago and I didnt get a new one, so it was running on AC power all the time, and so~~.

First and normal reaction is of course to come out to see what happened. Apparently Block 5 was the only affected block. Ppl started coming out of their rooms, RHesidents who reacted faster already took out small candles(those small, circular, fat ones in a tin casing) and light them up at the corridors, torchlights are coming out, and a group of girls started singing "Happy Birthday to Block 5" at the top of their voices. Yeah right.

The RF came out and of course he started trying to control the situation by getting somebody to call CAMPUS SECURITY. I was like why on earth would you call campus security for situations like this (unless you are in McNair then you really shud call the security guard. No kidding.) Turned out that they need campus security people to get to the campus maintenance ppl to ask them to come over to help(Oh..so that theory is equally applicable in RH). And as it's quite late already..it would take some time for them to come over as well.

So we went over to Sam and EiHong's room in search for a light source and managed to distract Sam for almost half an hour and irritate EiHong who was trying to cram for Practical Exam on Wed, as well as being fed with supper by them. Haha..what a worthy trip.

Anyway I didnt manage to find out what happened in the end but when we went back to Block 5 electricity has been restored and the night continues. Thank goodness I managed to recover my program.

-The End-

Labels: Raffles Hall, techno

I don't understand Skype. Like, seriously don't.

I don't get why I can hear my parents perfectly well when they were talking to me while they either hear me 2 seconds after i speak or they cant hear me properly at all. So the problem lies with who? My connection?

But it functions perfectly well as in my other friends can hear me perfectly well when i talk to them on Skype. When my sister chat with my parents, they can hear it perfectly well as well.

Stupid Skype is the main reason why I am having bad conversation with my parents these days. And I cannot call them. That is Singtel's fault. So I get a feeling that I am drifting away and away from them and I absolutely hate that idea, because I have a lot to say, just that the words cant find their way into my parent's ears before fast enough and that is enough to cause me to blow up, for, unfortunately, I am not a very patient guy.

RAHHH. Sorry for complaining.

Labels: techno

I love my new phone.

I love everything about it. :)

It costs a bomb (yea, right now it is a bomb to me), but I still love it.

It is not exactly the version I wanted, but I still love it.

It is not the colour I wanted, but I still love it.

I even love the way Nokia packaged it.

Haha! I am crazy liao. :P

BUT...

I hate Singtel.

I hate their stupidity for forbidding foreign students to make international calls.

I hate it!

The only sensible thing they did was to allow global sms. But, the ugly part is that it is costly. :(

Sigh. I guess life can never be perfect.

Labels: techno

• Operating system: Symbian OS ver. 9.2
• User interface: S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack (S60 3.1)
• Dedicated media keys for quick and easy access to music and video: play/pause, forward, rewind, stop
• WLAN IEEE802.11 b/g with UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) support
• Bluetooth Specification 2.0
• Micro USB 2.0 Full Speed (mass storage class)
• Nokia AV Connector 3.5 mm (can also be used with standard 3.5 mm headphones)
• Up to 2 megapixel (1600 x 1200 pixels) camera, MPEG-4 QVGA video capture of up to 15fps (okay, this may not be exactly very good but good enough for me i guess..I dun camwhore a lot. =P)
• Zoom: digital up to 20x
• Nokia Nseries digital music playersupports MP3 (VBR), AAC, eAAC+, AAC+, WMA/M4A, WAV
• Synchronize music with Windows Media Player 11 (okay, maybe not as cool as iPod and iTunes)
• FM Radio with Visual Radio support
• Full-screen video playback on the device to view downloaded, streamed or recorded video clips

Full specifications can be found here.

And the good news is: I can get it for $198, $148 if I sign up by 25 July 2008, for a SingTel postpaid plan, since there is a promotion for students. (Sam, probably I have to ditch you all. Hehe)

Hmm..am I considered to be splurging? Hopefully not.

Labels: techno

3rd post of the day. Hehe..

Anyway..I decided to give my blog a new look..guess I really can't think of something to do huh? Spend about 2 hours looking for one new blogskin, one that i think I like...as usual, I am too un-creative to design one myself, hence I have to resort to using other people's creation..Thanks to whoever designed this (on the bottom right hand corner).

And after another hour of editing, trying to figure out how HTML codes work..well, here we are.

Its not perfect yet though..but best I can find. =p

Labels: techno