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.

“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

Valentine’s Day / Singles’ Awareness Day (S.A.D.)

How apt that the first post should be something close to my heart. Valentine’s Day has somehow never garnered much significance in my S.A.D. life, though it has always brought many pensive sleepless nights every year in the days leading up to VDay (with exception to 2005, when I was stranded on a certain island. VDay was spent as a romantic evening under the stars with bald companions). “Should I ask her out?” wasn’t really the dilemma in question, I would definitely pop her the question unless I already knew she was unavailable on the day or already taken (definitely a choice day for blatant snatching if I was that kind of a person). Somehow I have never had the opportunity to ask the girl out on VDay, because somehow the 2 previously mentioned scenarios keep happening, and therefore I have never spent a VDay with the girl that I like.

The SADness continues this year, although I did what I was supposed to do.

“Love ACtually” was the slogan of the day, emblazoned on the optional attire for the day in ACJC. Love ACtually for the students’ council, with an excuse to add another “collectible” to your bursting AC wardrobe for $12, flower sales and song dedications, VDay commercialism at its finest. Whether you have a sweetheart or not, it’s hard to be SAD when there’s cakes to be shared, cheesy love songs to laugh with on the air and gifts aplenty from panda-eyed girls. The scandalous are teased and shocking revelations made, all make delicious fodder for ‘void deck’ gossip. Reminiscing as well as reliving the AC VDay atmosphere made the trip back all the more worthwhile.

There’s lots of cash up for grabs on this Hallmark holiday but the florists probably hit the jackpot. What clever marketing, throw in a bunch of meanings for rose colours and numbers and the bouquet suddenly says more than I love you. I too was taken in, contributing to the windfall of one happy florist in Novena, placing my hopes in a message carried in a flower.