Just a bit more...

1 paper down! Relaxing for a bit before I continue chionging=)

Was just reading up and saw...
Financial crisis hits coffee sales at Starbucks
No Starbucks no! I need my coffee fix to last me.. at least for the rest of my SMU lifetime!

Was talking about the various 'must-go's and fave eats in HK/China/Macau earlier during lunch and now I'm reminiscing about the yummy stuff I tried there.. my amazing food hunt!

Just a couple of them:
Alice Travelogue: MACAU TRIP 5 (TAIPA VILLAGE-PORK CHOP BURGER ) - Yummy Pork Chop burger, only sold at 3pm daily!
Margaret's Café e Nata - Restaurants in Macau | Macau.com - Portuguese egg tarts! Crispy on the outside, yummyliciously creamy on the inside.. mmmm!=D

Till after exams~~

Konnichiwa!

It's been a really eventful term - academically, socially, emotionally. I seen more, heard more, and hopefully, understood a bit more about the people around me. I don't know how good that is though - it seems that the things I been hearing.. maybe I'd rather not know. Wave after wave.. the more I understand, the more I don't understand. Lol.

Hopefully after this term, people can be more optimistic and see things in a positive. Guess it doesn't sound very 'me', but it's quite saddening to see people so discouraged around you, yet there really isn't much you can do - it's really up to them to see things from a positive perspective.

And.. I guess different people place importance on different things. I really don't get it. Maybe I just view it differently. Just so many unanswered questions.

On the upside, I'm going to Japan!!! Wheee=DD With carol!! Wheehee! It's really been sth to look forward to - can't wait!

Formulating..

The world is your stage.. and I'm having stage fright now=x

ohwell.

Still been a pretty stressful week and just a somehow not very happy one.

Still, I was pretty high yesterday after my SE team meeting=D The following picture was taken at the meeting and is strictly copyrighted =p

SISS Elections and stuff

Firstly, if it so happens you're from SMU SIS, vote for Jess! I'm seconding her for this=) Decided not to run but wanted to be somewhat part of the fun, so yea=pp

Ok so it's been a pretty trying and tiring week for many - both academically and emotionally - but jiayou everyone! We'll all pull through together!

Weird, but..

It's the end of the first week of school! I'm actually a lot happier now than last week, when school hadn't started. Why? Cos I've gone through each class once and it's some relief to know that they're more or less ok. (Except econs i guess but nevermind) More importantly, we've got the course outlines plus the prof's explanation of what the module's about. Even more importantly, most of the project outlines are out so we've got work to do! Sounds kinda sadistic, but it somehow feels lots better now that we know what to do so we can plan our next step.

Today was Vivace i.e. SMU CCA day! Loved the atmosphere today in school! Super happening=) Jess and I joined SMU Film Society too (aka Movie Club?) LOL. I'm not able to take this term's Intermediate Salsa class though=x Pretty disappointed about this since it served as a great destresser throughout my Year 1. Oh well.

Been thinking a lot lately. Oh wellll. Some things are just beyond our control. Bah.

That irritating carol left for M'sia on tues! Hope she can get used to the food! Wahahaha.

Beijing 2008

Was just watching the 50km Race Walk, and.. it was really amazing. The determination and perseverance shown by those guys was just so unbelievable. Especially when the champion - Alex Schwarzer - came into the stadium, I could just feel that emotion emanating from him. All that effort just paid off. Mannn it's truly amazing.

School's started! and I need to get my motivation back!

MetamorphoSIS 2008, among other things

Ok so the really big event is over. At least, it's one of the bigger events I've helped to organise so far. And I've learnt quite a lot from it, from a few photoshop tricks along the way, to invaluable lessons on human relationships. So many things have happened since we formed the organising committee - we lost a friend, but forged many new friendships. And not to forget we now have nearly 250 new members in our SIS family.

Stress levels were high and we saw some different sides of the people we usually work with, some good and some we may not want to see so often. Even then, it's quite sad that relationships may be tainted due to a few clashes in working styles. Naive perhaps, but one of the things I say about SIS with pride is that most of us know each other and are friends, and I really hope this holds true till I graduate (and beyond!).

Well, everyone made mistakes, (I think I made quite a few=x) but these are inevitable and it's probably the least we can do to grant our friends some leeway. University is afterall a stepping stone to the working world - sure, we can be pissed off and all, but as a favour to your friend, tell him/her. If it's not appreciated, then at least you've done your part and it'd be up to that person to improve.

Oh well, really hope things go well. In any case, despite feeling somewhat doubtful about my decision to join MetamorphoSIS 2008 halfway through, I'm really glad I stuck to it. It was, and still is, a success!!

School's starting again! Hmm. Just gotta do my best I suppose, not sure what to expect.

Gambatte!

And carol's going off to KL on monday! Guess I'll (kinda) miss her. Been seeing her practically daily this week, so I'm sure she'll miss me too since she won't be seeing me for the next 2 weeks! wahahahahaha. Carol: I wanna take more polaroids!!!=D

Cruise to.. nowhere!

Went for a cruise on SuperStar Aquarius with carol last weekend! whee!

We went for lots of cruise activities tgt! Tried the sauna, massage, learnt basic cha-cha.. and danced with indians! We were quite hesitant initially cos it felt weird to be the minority there, but they were all really nice! It was like one big indian family! With kids, grandpas and so on! lollll. Hardly the dancing crowd you see back in the sunny island of multi-racial Singapore. Anw, I really enjoyed the cruise and chilling out on the deck with my most darling carol!! wheeheee.

After dancing:


Go see more of my photos on facebook!
Cruise Camwhoring 1
Cruise Camwhoring 2

I'm sure the pics speak lots more than a thousand words=)

WWDC trip to SF

Okay so I know I've not been blogging yet about my trip to San Francisco for the WWDC, but things have been just happening one after another so I've been pretty zonked out! But I'll just mention some of the main stuff we've been up to so far=D

Flight: (SIN - HK, 14 hours in transit, HK - LAX, LAX - SF)
SIN-HK was fine so I shan't go any further on that. As for the transit, let's just say we seriously seriously doubted ours was a good deal(as compared to the more expensive airlines e.g. SQ). Klaw went back home with his dad in HK, so it was down to jy and myself to while the time away. In short, we practically walked the whole of Kowloon and HK Island (yes I am exaggerating but it didnt feel too far from that) - with the shops all closed. How perfectly entertaining huh?

But that in any case managed to kill 4 hours of our time, and with help from a very helpful staff member in Crawford Lane, we found our way to the bus stop and took a bus back all the way to the airport.

The rest of the painfully long flight to LAX and the domestic flight is just that - painful. I did manage to sleep, which made it a little more bearable.

Went straight to the hostel after touching down, and the guys all slept once we got the room. Took the chance to arrange some of my stuff and settle down a little. Nothing much after that except for a quick fast food dinner at Jack-in-the-Box (our soon-to-be regular) nearby.

Pre-WWDC 1st Day
Fisherman's wharf in the morning!=)) Despite having gone there 3 times, I still love the place! Only thing was I didn't manage to get my ben and jerry's cookie dough ice-cream this time=x We basically walked around, took a look at the shops (again=p), and for the 2 photographers, took photos. I did take some photos, but not many since most of them would simply be repeats of what I'd taken before.

Saw one thing I didn't see previously though - fruits! For some reason, Walgreens, while plentiful, doesn't seem to sell any fruits at all, so seeing a wide variety here was definitely a welcome change!=D Plus the strawberries looked huge and sweet, not to mention the cherries, apples and all.

Lunch was at the Fisherman's Grotto (or something like that, can't really remember the exact name) and tried the crab chowder in a bread bowl! whee. Klaw and I bought the calamari and chips as well - bad choice! Despite sharing that one serving between the four of us, we still couldn't finish it.=x

Anyway went back to the hostel for a recharge (they slept again), then went down to Union Square. Didn't do much shopping though, just quickly browsed through stuff. (Never mind, there's the whole of next week to shop=DD)

Rest of the evening passed by without anything much happening.

Pre-WWDC 2nd Day
Woke up at 6.30am for the Asian Student's Bus Tour! Met some of the NUS, NTU students plus the HongKongers, Koreans, etc.

First stop was Stanford University!!! Totally blew us away! Campus was simply beautiful - we were like, just a whiff of the air there would somehow magically increase our IQ (and so our GPA=p) But it was seriously amazingly beautiful. I've seen campuses on TV and everything, but it never struck me as particularly outstanding nor beautiful. Seriously wish I could study there man=x Unfortunately it's only for the cream of the crop plus I've got no money so yep.

Next was lunch enroute to Twin Peaks. Since I'd never been to Twin Peaks as well, I took some photos then walked around and enjoyed the scenery. Wind was howling though, could actually hear it whistling past my ears lol.

Third stop: Golden Gate Bridge. Well..... my third time there and seriously, it's just that - a bridge. Yeah it's windy and nice and everything. But I'm no pro photographer and any photos I've taken over the last two times is probably going to be the same this time. So I happily kept my camera and just walked along with the two photographers along the bridge. Oh and I'm not sure I noticed this before, but there's this sign in the middle of the bridge that provides the suicide hotline and says "There is hope. Make the call." Guess too many suicides take place there, which really isn't that bad a choice. Pretty scenic actually. Hmm.

Last stop of the bus tour was the Palace of Fine Arts. Apparently it's some kind of science museum, but we didn't go in since it wasn't free. Lol. In any case, the exterior was pretty nice (though I still very much love Stanford University lots lots more).

After that, the bus brought us back to San Francisco, Moscone Center, to register for WWDC!!! So yup, we got our WWDC bags, pass and lanyard, and tshirt!=D After which, something pretty interesting but somewhat.. um unorthodox.. happened. Heh.

WWDC
Well, actually I'd planned to write a lot more here.. but I'm writing an article for our school publication PRISM Sept issue, so that'll be a repetition already=p So just stay tuned for a future post of my article in PRISM once the hardcopy's out! Don't want any leaks here! hahahaha.

Post-conference Roadtrip!
Don't mean to be a wet blanket here, but I'm just much too lazy to type out all the fun stuff we did during our roadtrip! We basically rented a car and roadtripped all around California!!! wheeee. In short, we went: SF > Sacramento / Davis > Lake Tahoe > Mariposa / Yosemite > Los Angeles > San Luis Obispo (Pismo Beach) > Big Sur > Monterey > San Jose (Silicon Valley) > Back to SF!

I've over a thousand photos, which really is very few compared jy/kelv, but that plus my live running commentary of what happened, most ppl took around an hour or so to complete the entire slideshow=pp So I won't be recounting the various incidents that happened here on my blog this time (*sighs of relief all round..?*) But I'd be happy to repeat my live commentary + photo slideshow for you anytime - just look for me in person!=pp

I'm really really glad I've had the chance to go for this trip! Firstly, of course to be able to attend the ultimate Apple evangelism event of the year=D Despite having little technical knowledge compared to the gurus present there, it was definitely a whole new experience for me. Secondly, spending 3 weeks with just 3 guys sounding kinda daunting to me before the trip, but after the first few days of the conference, I was totally used (well, almost!) to it and it was super fun!!!=DD

Possibly one of the more interesting hostel experiences was at Monterey -
1) Due to the summer drought, we were each allocated 2 bath tokens, with one bath token equivalent to 4 min of water! It is with great satisfaction that I now say this: I completed my bath using just 1 token!!!
2) Kelv and I bought a budweiser each earlier at San Luis Obispo, but didn't have a chance to drink it then. Unfortunately, we didn't have a fridge in the hostel room of course, but.. we had ice and salt in the hostel common kitchen. Heh. Think ice + salt + budweiser. mmmm=) Ice cold B's! LOL
3) The hostel provides all-you-can-make pancakes for breakfast, so basically they provide the pan and pancake mix, and you do the rest of the work (making the pancakes + washing up!). JY and I did come up with the pancakes of course.. though they somehow weren't as nice as that on the box. Ok maybe that was a tiny understatement. Anyhow, they were good enough to eat and I really had lots of fun making them despite the less-than-satisfactory results! =DD

So yep, sharing a room with those 3 other guys was actually lots of fun (not to mention they were really nice as well! Well, minus the constant teasing I guess lol) and as I've mentioned to all those I talked to about my trip, waking up in my own room back in Singapore was simply weird at first without them!

Conclusion: WWDC + Roadtrip was such an exhilarating experience - I wanna go overseas again!!!

Last updated: 26 Jul 08

made of honour!.. and parental controls

I just figured out what has been bugging my macbook! Just the day before, my macbook's been making a lot of noise - hard disk spinning at high speed + fans @ >6k rpm - it was pretty irritating cos of the noise and got me pretty worried for a while.. what if my hard disk dies on me during WWDC??? Furthermore, I surfed through mac forums and googled in depth - most recommended repairing disk permissions, which I did to no avail. Another suggested resetting the SMC, but I didn't really want to try that unless I had no other choice.

But all's well that ends well! I finally checked out iStat's 'processes' section (I had it turned off initially) and realised it was parental controls! I'd just enabled that the day before for a 'Strictly Work' user account - just trying it out since I could use it to block facebook.com and the like to prevent myself from wasting time online and concentrate on my work instead. But, on seeing that it took up 90%-100% (!!!) of my processing power, I promptly deleted that user account, disabled parental controls, and immediately restarted my macbook.

Voila! Problem solved and I'm happy again=)

Alright due to complaints from carol that I've been talking too much about techie stuff lately, I shall stop that geek talk for today!

Met up with carol and watched 'Made of Honour'!

Patrick Dempsey!! Totally our eye candy throughout the movie! Apart from that, conversation's pretty funny and it's really touching too! I won't deny that the eye candy made a (big) difference too=p Wahahaha=)

And after hearing that Iron Man's nice from carol, I'm starting to regret not watching!=x Oh well, no worries I guess, I'll get to watch it somehow heh=D

apple triumphs!

Okay so I've twittered about this already. (in case you haven't seen it: Engadget Awards)

Basically, here's the summary taken from The Apple Blog:

iPhone won Best Gadget, Best Smartphone, and Most Anticipated Gadget (3G) for the editors and the readers.
The iMac won Best Desktop for both readers and editors.
MacBook Pro won Laptop of the Year for readers while the Dell XPS M1330 won out for the editors.
iPod Touch won for Portable Media Device of the Year for both editors and readers.
The Apple thin keyboard won Peripheral of the Year for readers.

Funny thing was this line right at the end of the Engadget Awards post:

*As you may recall, while not really gadgets released in 2007, both Vista and the Foleo were included by popular demand as nominees for worst gadget of the year.

An Ideal Apple Inventory for myself

Was just thinking (while doing my TWC research heh) and this would probably be my ideal set of Apple stuff I'd love to own - inclusive of imagined products. LOL

• 24" 4GHz iMac
• 15" MacBook Pro
• MacBook MultiTouch tablet
• 3G iPhone
• 1TB Time Capsule
• Final Cut Studio
• .Mac

good enough for you

How true's the above comic? hmmmm.

Had a video shooting session yesterday in school for Meta08! and it went surprisingly well and took an even more surprising 4 hours only! not bad for a first time filming and a one take video.

Just to be a little random here, i love SIS! hahaha sorry for the random patriotism but i love the people around me, all the friends I've made so far. Our first year's over and while we're all apprehensive about the 'horror' module next term (SE!) I'm sure it'll add to our memories of SIS - times we see ourselves helping each other out during crucial periods.

and I can't wait for my June San Francisco trip to Apple WWDC08!! not to mention travelling around the area for a while after that=P

and of course, the short break with carol!! wahaha. (watch out carol! I've got.. plans=D nah just kidding)

Cheerio~

eclectism

I've updated my blog design! It's a pretty simple layout and all but I sort of wanted to have two 'themes' i.e. brighter/richer colours on this left hand side, and pastel colours on the right sidebar. I'm certainly not keeping to the usual colour conventions of sticking to just a few colours, but this is my blog anyway, and I'd have more themes if it weren't so jarring to the eyes.

alright, I'm going off to meet carol now!! to catch harold & kumar=DD hope it's nice. and I'm so going to have my salty popcorn that I missed the other time.

I still wish I've got less to do. bleargh

NOT my new blog design!

my summer term just started this week! oh well. there're so many things to do!

hopefully can finish my design asap.

oh bleargh.

btw did i mention it? I'm going to San Francisco!!! for the third time!!!!!! how cool is that?=DD Not only that, but I'll be there for the Apple WWDC 2008 under the Student Scholarship Program! yayy!! scholarship covers conference entrance ticket of US$1,595 plus a travel allowance of US$500. not that much, but I don't care!! I'm going to WWDC and I'll see Steve Jobs!! albeit probably not face-to-face, but it'll be great either way!!

wheeee~

all fun and play=)

i made luncheon meat & cheese omelette for myself during the one-week study break!!

bought a cookie monster for myself and big bird for carol!!

so now my exams are officially over!! unfortunately, i've signed up for summer term classes which will keep me busy for the whole of May (which i kinda regret but oh well) so i've only got a week to chillax!

anw i've really been playing pretty hard after my exams=DD here's the pictorial evidence=p

k-boxing @ marina!

met up with huiyi and carol for dinner at arnold's - known for its fried chicken! hadnt seen huiyi for a long time so it was great to catch up with her!=DD

pigging out at arnold's, city plaza

i've also watched 'Definitely, Maybe' with carol and it rocks!! quite touching=))

hoping to revamp my blog very soon!=D

exams exams exams

it's the happiest time of the semester again - exams! whee. the joys of optimism.

anw, i'm still mugging, and having been cooped up at home for the past.. 5-6 days?!?!? i can't wait for exams (at least i'll be out of the house, and it also means i'll be closer to the end of exams=D)!

BUT, i am fully packed after finals as well!
If I remember correctly, these are my commitments, starting immediately after finals:

• MetamorphoSIS planning
• Meta Retreat
• Google Challenge
• Summer Term 3A
• TJChoir Alumni Performance
• SL314 JSP/Servlets Workshop
• SISS Miscellaneous

I doubt that's all. And that's excluding some personal stuff I wanna do! Like, cleaning up my room, and of course, revamping this blog! I'm getting pretty sick of this design now, so I can't wait to change it!=) Any suggestions for my design?

Alright, enough blogging for now! Like I mentioned in my previous post, check out my Twitter badge to the right, and try out Twitter for yourself too and spread the love! Warning: it can pretty addictive!=p

just a note..

Okay so I haven't been blogging much yet again. what's new?=x

shall keep this short though - i've added a 'Twitter Badge' along the right sidebar.. see it? so i'll have short updates now and then (when i feel like it, obviously) by twittering them over there. heh. the lazy way out since sometimes i feel like blogging but can't be bothered to login to blogger. Twitter's easy enough - just gotta IM them using google talk=)

will blog when hols come!

K back to mugging! cheers=)

one week into sch

classes, projects and all have started and they're all pretty alright i guess. but for some reason i just feel like i'm not up to it. sheesh. BUT i gotta somehow push myself to do it!!!! argh.

i'm not sure if i want things to be this way? dont wanna think abt it but just cant help it. bleargh!

lalalallaalalala.

SISS investiture bash was cool though i didnt stay long enough to see a different side of everyone lol=p

laaaaa.

okayyy i gotta be optimistic!!! love my friends=)) carol u are a POS but love ya too!

hopefully shall post some pics the next time i blog!