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.