From 2007 to 2009

Survival Kit 2009

My sidekicks for 2009:

• Nokia 6600 Slide
• Moleskine Weekly Notebook
• iPod Touch
• MacBook
• WD Passport Essential

2008 was never blog-worthy…

2009 is gonna be loads better than 2008

Happy New Year!

Everybody’s Changing

Gosh, It’s been more than half a year since I last posted. I’ve already come to the end of my first term at SMU as an Information Systems (IS) major.

Thank God I’m here. I went for an NUS medical in May and received orientation packages. I was that close to entering a dreary fate in engineering. My perceptions have not changed and thank goodness the SMU offer arrived at the end of May. That’s the jitters you get for being so indecisive and making your choices only after 2 years of waiting.

Another significant change in my life: I succumbed to the appeal of Apple and bought myself a MacBook haha. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Mac OS X is just neat. I was on the verge of buying an ASUS A8SC but after seeing Vista crash and burn way too many times during my first week in school, I decided to take the plunge and haven’t looked back since. Adium, iMovie, Keynote and the notorious Photo Booth, it’s been the perfect companion for college life.

Some random stuff I made with Comic Life for a web assignment I had to complete (Captions aren’t that exciting, I know haha. It had to be Prof-friendly material):

It all began with StarringSMU, a community service project i joined to clock up the mandatory 70 hours of CIP all students have to complete. Got to know loads of people there. The first 2 pictures were from the celebration we had on the roof of the admin block next to the swimming pool – great views of the city. The 2nd pic of Winnie and I is just one of the many jump pics we take everywhere we go as SMU students haha. I went for 3 orientation camps and the last pic is from the SMUX (SMU Xtremists) Camp, taken at some playground at the Chinese/Japanese Gardens.

Yeah, so I still couldn’t escape from Windows. IS200 is some software foundations module I had to take and the applications I had to use were Windows-based. There are of course OS X equivalents but it wasn’t worth the time to go figure out new things by yourself when half the time I was lost in class. Programming, Java, UML, SQL and numerous other acronyms which will become my best friends for the next 4 years of my life, I seriously need to brush up on my programming skills this hols or I’m just going to be even more lost next term.

Leadership and Teambuliding (LTB) is the rite of passage for every SMU student. We did a community service project aligned with the aims of the Yellow Ribbon Project. In our case, we taught English at Breakthrough Missions and even organized a car wash together with them to raise funds. The first pic’s actually a photo used in our poster campaign: Zeling, Claire, Cheryl, Me, Xiaodong, Cherry. At first glance it looks like an all-girl group, thankfully Manan and I provided the much needed testosterone in the group. LTB’s my favourite module this term as I had an absolutely fantastic team to work with. And I’m banking on LTB for an A this term haha, there’s not much hope for my other subjects.

SMU is infamous for the 2347809 presentations we have to do every term. For quite a while this term, I was decked in formal attire every week. A typical day – 9am: Presentation Rehearsal, 12pm: Presentation, 4pm: Mugging, 7pm: Meeting. Not much of a life at times but I guess I’m getting the hang of things over here.

Anyways, that’s Brandon and I using Photo Booth to good effect, adjusting our ties just before our presentation: Facebook as a Corporate Advantage. This was for our Management Communication module, where you hone your wayang skills, not only in acting but in writing too haha. My comms group (Brandon, Jessie, Krystle, Vivan, Me) has also been loads of fun and comms comes in as a close 2nd behind LTB as my favourite subject, partly because it’s kind of difficult to score when it’s almost near impossible to get an A for your written assignments. Without LTB and Comms I guess this term would have been really dreary. Swimming in the vast ocean that is IS, I sometimes really wonder why I’m here.

Then again, this term has been super slack for me. I’m more or less relaxed now with only one exam next week (IS200), much to the chagrin of everyone around me. Next term’s gonna be killer with lots more mugging subjects.

Enough about school. Check out Lily Allen’s cover of Keane’s Everybody’s Changing.

It’s a really cool acoustic version so different from the keyboardy emotion of Keane.

The link to the MP3’s on this site: Galaxy fm

Enjoy the music. Meanwhile, I’ll try to be more faithful to this blog.

Let’s go to the park

Lake Léman (Lake Geneva)

Canon PowerShot A80

1/500 sec @ f/6.3 – 7.8mm

8 Dec 2003 16:00:11

Riding in Cars with Boys

Johnny, the new chauffeur arrived, with 2 weeks driving experience under his belt.

On our way to the supposedly refurbished original Casino Royale.

Dinner @ NUS Subway. I sooo hope that I won’t be a regular customer here for the next 3 years of my life, SMU hasn’t gotten back to me… yet

Johnny had hot pink nails after he got raped by Gardenia and friends (his all-girl fellow scoopies at Ben & Jerry’s Raffles’ City) the night before.

March – The opening of the new table! The old one was destroyed after Kevin flipped the table too many times because his home ground luck at the original Casino Royale is always disgusting.

“I’ll show you the roof. It’s upstairs.” – Cora (Music and Lyrics)

Just like roofs which are expected to be upstairs (I hope so), my earlybird application antics produced a desired result. I snapped up the earliest slot for the interviews on Wednesday morning, and turned up for an unorthodox interrogation of sorts along with 5 random potential classmates. Overall, it went bad for me. The way I planned my answers was completely wrong as I found myself being interrupted mid-sentence everytime, partially because I did not adhere to a “one-minute rule” for answering, which runs counter to my “orthodox” interview strategy of giving embellished answers which usually go like this, “<pseudo-intellectual analysis><insert interesting anecdote here><pseudo-intellectual conclusion>”, terribly fake but generally effective. To make things worse, they had to ask the question I’ve dreaded most during interviews albeit indirectly – “Which is your weakest subject?”. Thank goodness they didn’t ask me to explain my grade in math, which blighted my otherwise decent A Level results.

Anyway, speaking to SMU students this past week has been extremely discouraging. With exams coming up and countless projects to complete, their zombified dispositions from camping in the library (I just heard it’s open 24/7) is extremely daunting. On the bright side, the late nights are terribly similar to my current lifestyle, except I probably get 3x the amount of sleep, and I thought JC was the worst of the lot.

My options are few right now, and 4 years in Stress Management University is still more appealing to me than NUS Engineering. I’ve already thrown my overseas opportunities out of the window, including a large envelope from the UWA faculty of medicine which went into the bin, hopefully that wouldn’t prove to be my biggest regret ever. Damn it, this chronic indecision, what do I really want?

Push me
And then just touch me
Till I can get my
Satisfaction

~Nothing actually happened~

I just blew a chance right IN MY FACE. Ugh.

Fucked is a terribly inadequate adjective for my current state of mind.

Maybe I’ll tell you if you ask.

Driven -> Driving

My next challenge is to get hold of the car. My Dad almost always needs the Car 24/7 so my hopes aren’t that high. But since I’m hoping, I might as well go all the way shouldn’t I?

sgCarMart has some good deals which look tempting… I particularly like this Toyota Celica GT-Four, this Toyota MR2 (SW20), and another MR2. Oh yes, this faux Ferrari (actually another MR2) is really happening too, what a bodykit. If I had a bit more cash to spare I’d go for this Ferrari Mondial. It’s always nice to dream…

Khairul’s cat died yesterday.

*a minute’s silence*

Then again, if you’ve been to his house, you’ll know that he has unlimited pussy.

Here’s one for the collection…

Check out his feline fantasies at khairulinho.net.

To drive or be driven

At around 9-10am tomorrow morning I will be in a ‘96 Honda Civic (EJ6) on Ang Mo Kio Ave 6 looking for an opening to get onto the rightmost lane in a space of 600m before Ang Mo Kio 9, hoping that people will be gracious when they see the double ‘L’ plates on my bumpers.

I had my final driving lesson this morning and went to Thomson Plaza after that to have my hair cut. I hopped onto bus service 162 at Yio Chu Kang MRT station and I had a pleasant surprise – it was a Nokia Music Bus haha. I will let the pictures do the talking.

In promotion of their music cell phone, the Nokia 5300, this Nokia Music Bus is 1 of 3 deployed to plow the routes of SBS bus services 132, 162 and 153. Decked out with swanky leather seats perfect for lounging on and the latest music videos playing on a screen, it was entertaining to see the reactions of commuters as they boarded the bus. The whole concept reminded me of a certain Carlsberg commercial on TV where some English blokes board a train which ends up at the front row of Anfield.

I have just about 7 hours of sleep now before I have to go for the test, and no I’m not being driven to SSDC as my parents have to attend Founder’s Day at Barker where my brother’s going to receive a prize for his 7A1s in the Os. Hopefully all those years of Need For Speed and Gran Turismo pay off tomorrow, a REAL steering wheel over my PS2 controller anytime.

On the Seventh Day…

Seven swans didn’t go a-swimming, not because it was a biblical day of rest, but because it was a day for yusheng 鱼生 to be tossed and everyone to grow a year older. It was the Seventh day of Chinese New Year aka renri 人日, so as always my family had dinner with the customary Lo Hei and my cousins and I snapping at the crackers in the yusheng.

Chris and QiLin were at Tanjong Pagar watching some NUS singing competition at Amara Hotel. Jarrod, our source of endless entertainment during our band days in ACJC, also participated and according to the 2 of them he has shown much improvement since his days of imitating the chapel divas – Gracia Ng and Rosalind Tan. I met up with them later at Clarke Quay for dinner/supper.

After walking aimlessly around, brushing shoulders with throngs of expats and SPGs, we finally settled on Hooters. Chris had plenty to say about the Hooters’ girls and their FBT-esque shorts, which in my opinon, probably DO NOT draw in the crowds – it’s the EPL action on plasma screens that’s doing the job.

We had our birthday cake by the riverside, and struggled to keep the candles alight while we fiddled with the timer on my camera.

Our photowhoring exploits left us missing the last train home

Which reminds me of a song that has been in my head the past week, courtesy of Heroes.

Rogue Wave – Eyes

Missed the last train home
birds pass by to tell me
that im not alone
well im pushing myself
to finish this part
i can handle a lot
but one thing i’m missing is in your eyes

have you seen this film
it reminds me of walking down the avenue
well im washing my hands of attachments,
yeah i will land on the ground
but one thing I’m missing is in your eyes

***

Simple, yet poignant.

Chinese New Year

The festive mood differed somewhat this year, maybe because for the first time CNY wasn’t a respite from work/school. CNY was perhaps even more taxing than my typical weekday which only begins at noon, and is spent doing random things at home / hanging out in town. Endless smiling, handshaking and trying to hold conversation with people you meet once a year are all part of the festive spirit no matter how fake you think you may be. CNY phoniness is tiring too, but I don’t loathe it because I accept that it’s what everybody’s conditioned to give and expect as part of society’s necessary niceties.

On Monday, Chris, TIAS, Kevin, Pig and I went to the airport to see off Geoffrey. His Gayness had an entourage of around 25 people to bid him farewell.

Haha, I remember it was barely a month ago that he was resigned to a fate with maids in NUS engineering. Animals and big bucks are definitely a better choice anytime! Unfortunately I’ve still got a place there but I’m submitting my SMU application later, my one and only lifeline.

Geoffrey, all the best to you and your new life in Perth. Hopefully, you can say ‘zizhu wu zabor’ soon. We’ll miss the noob host for our late night Dota sessions but we’ll definitely not miss you taking all the winnings from Casino Royales haha. But what hurts the most is…

… I’ve lost my personal chauffeur.