Are some of you out there wondering how it feels without any school work to worry about, what subjects to take next sem and etc? I can tell you that it feels very GOOD!! haha..
These days, I work up without worrying about the assignments I need to do and so on. What makes me feel better is that I am not aiming to get good grades to get any honours, which means there’s no disappointment when there’s no expectation. I am almost certain that I would pass my core modules, only that I might fail my business modules that will cost me my minor. However, I can’t turn back time to redo my exams, so why worry so much now, enjoy man!!
So what am I doing these days?? I am enjoying life, but not really slacking… I have started cleaning my room with the fan and cupboard. Managed to set aside some clothes to throw and give away. Occasionally, I will go with either with dearie or friends. Oh.. almost forgot, I am also practicing hard on my chanter and pipes to become better!! I managed to record some scottish favourites over last weekend with Brandon and Nicklaus.
I think that’s all that I have been doing. Will slowly expore more stuff to do before I enter army!
Just as you some of you would think that I’m going to abandon my blog due to laziness, I’M BACK!! Back to share more of my life with you. Finally blogged after completing my exams and majority of the presentation preperation of the FYP presentation. Just a wee bit of improvements required to it.
Today, I’m here just to share some of thoughts in my mind, rather that update about my life. Just I am thinking of how I should present my thoughts, I wondered if I should either bullet my different thoughts, number it, or should I just write like an essay. This makes me wonder since there are many ways of leading a life, so why am I doing what I’m doing now? Also, what life am I leading exactly? And, what do I want to achieve in my life? As there are so many things to think about in this secular world, I suppose I will continue to lead what my hearts wants me to be, and hopefully I can be the person God wants me to be.
As you can see, I have already started my thoughts in form of an essay, I shall continue with it. Sometimes, life is not in questions and answers form and also not in point form. I wonder do we need to do a presentation to God after we pass on. In front of God where we tell Him about the things we have done in life. Ha.. just a random thought.
Yesterday (Sunday), I came across a thick file of transparencies containing songs of worship that was used for BB parades. Remembering those joyful days where we sing praises to God not in a comfortable aircon room, nor with state-of-the-art (or not so) projector and laptop to project the lyrics on the screens. A simple classroom with pre-arranged chairs by the duty squad, 1 or 2 guitarist, and a worship leader had done the job, uniting us in one voice. It was fun those days, especially for me since I quite like singing, with easy lyrics and catchy tunes, sometimes with action too!! It was certainly great to see those and I started singing some of those that were familar to me. I thought to myself, maybe I should lead worship either during parades or officers’ fellowship, singing these classics. Actually, I have these thoughts for quite sometime, but for many reasons, I haven’t yet to put it into action, such as shy, busy and etc. Well, I’m not sure if I will ever have the chance to share these songs with anybody else, but hope that someday I can, even it’s for only one person. I have included a YouTube video of one of my favourite songs. The verse and chorus can harmonise!! Enjoy.
Talking about YouTube, I think that it’s probably the best internet tool after search engines. I feel that I have improved as a piper musically just through the exposure of YouTube. Get to know more pipe tunes, more types of music besides bagpipe, more techniques and more. Looking at others sharing of knowledge, music, life and more makes me want to put up more videos on it!! I am might consider to invest in a good video camera and the mighty H2. haha… But all these will come after I find a job ba… BTW, I strongly recommend you to check out YouTube Symphony, which gathers majority of its musicians through YouTube auditions and staged a performance on Carnegie Hall. Quality stuff.
Some say that as you graduate, it means that you have just became jobless. Especially during recession, it would be difficult to find a job, let alone a well paid one. Right now, I am not looking for one aggressively, but keeping a look out in the industry of my interest, Product Design. FYI, I should have a Bachelor Degree in Materials Science and Engineering in July and product design is not really related to my field of study. Mechnical Engineering or Industrial Design graduates would be more suitable. Well, I am interested in this field because I am always facinated with how new products are developed, how simple toothbrush evolved, how products are mass produced and so on. My course have given me an introduction on these and interest is developed, however they did not really equip me with the necessary skills to get into this field as I think we (Materials Engineer) are meant to do other stuff. All I can say is that in order for me to excel in what I am doing, I have to have an interested and eventually passion for it. I am starting to think about ways to equip myself to get into this industry before and during my re-enlistment to army. A starter will be learning CAD or/and soildworks, which is essential in this field. Thereafter, I may learn and develop a portfolio of my ideas and drawings that might come in handy during job applications. If anybody out there with such experiences can educate me, please let me know what I can do to get a product design job. Utimately, I think that all degrees are the same, most of the things you learnt in your 4 years of study will probably be useless to your career. What universities teaches you is the resourcefulness in obtaining information and problem solving.
Received my re-enlistment letter sometime back. Argh.. can’t find it now to share with you what it says. But it roughly talks about me reporting to my unit’s S1 department on 1st July 09 in No. 4. I hope I will be able to squeeze into my uniform by then. I will be working on reducing weight and keeping fit, as I will be required to run as fast as I used to during PT (which is not very fast because I was never a fast runner). If anyone of you out there (that I know) feels like swimming, gymming or any other form of sports, please “jio” me, I will gladly join you if I am free and not feeling lazy. Also, I have signed with the the NTU Alumni Club recently with a year of subscription for only $100. In the mean time, I would want to fully utilize the facilities there so that I can shed some weight.
Alright, that’s a very long post that takes quite me quite awhile to write. God Bless…
Thank you Dearie for everything that you have given. I thank God for providing me with a person that loves me so much. Happy 3rd Year!! Jia you for this exams!!
After day and night of study over the past few days, I have finally saturated myself with disorganised knowledge. Which means, I still have lots of studying to do to “organise” the things I have studied so that I can remember. This is my last examination season, at least for awhile before I intend to further my studies. 5 more exams to go over a period of 9 days, with more than half of it ocurring over the next 2 days. It’s so tiring to know that you have 3 exams in a row, and certainly stratigic planning on text to study and time to sleep plays an important role in surviving.
Here’s my examination schedule:
16 Apr 09, 9am – 11am -> MS4003
16 Apr 09, 5pm – 7pm -> MB215
17 Apr 09, 2.30pm – 4.30pm -> MS4503
20 Apr 09, 9am – 11am -> MS4030
24 Apr 09, 9am – 11am -> MS4555
Don’t ask me what’s the name of the subjects, because I only know them by code. As for the content, I am starting to mix up what I have learnt in individual sujects with each other. Ultimately, the fundamentals are almost the same and I believe that as long as you provide a logical answer, you will get some of the marks.
I do not have ambitious aim, I only crave for a pass and graduate with a degree. Alright, enough of blogging, back to the “battle”.
I have been quite sway these days. Last week, I left a supposedly water resistant addias watch on the basin over night, and the LCD screen numbers went very fade to my horror. Ended up, I have to open up the back over and dry it over a day before closing and wearing it again. I wonder is it because the salesgirl back at city chain not screwing the back cover properly when I changed the battery.
Yesterday, I went for a performance (I’ll tell you more about it another day) at swissotel at Raffles City. While changing out of my kilts after the performance, I forgot I placed my phone over my vest, and when I was just grabbing any clothes I see there to put in my bag, the phone fell into the toilet. Luckily, the bowl auto-flushed after the peed few minutes ago… haha.. Because of that, my phone don’t smell like my pee.. haha.. When I got home, I quickly open up the shell and start drying any part that I see, and tried switching on again. It died after a few seconds. Thank God, the phone is working fine now. I suppose the inner parts are dried.
Today afternoon, I appointed myself as the stand-in Drum Major for the band for enrolment parade, after knowing that Kenneth is involved in the Geography Competition (I wonder how are they going to compete man!!) Just as I was having fun, it started raining… and best part of all, Raymond did not tell us to get to the shade!! Being a “professional” Drum Major, I must not allow myself nor my band to leave the parade square without instructions. We ended up suffering in the rain for the next few minutes before he come to realised that the rain will not stop so soon. I was drenched.. so were the drums… hope that parts will dry naturally and not get rust…
That’s all for my wet wet experiences… will tell you all more about my birthday experiences soon…
Just took out the dusty weighing machine below my bed and weighed myself. The figure surely doesn’t look good as it stands at 94.4kg.
I was suppose to study for my quiz tomorrow but as usual, I will only buck up at the 11th hour no matter how much I tried convincing myself to prepare early. So I did the normal routine; wake up, eat, study abit, nap, wake up, eat…. etc etc. However, today is very different. I suddenly felt like running. Actually this is not the only time that I felt like running, but the difference today is I ran! The main reason was because of the warm weather making me feeling sticky, so I thought to myself, “why don’t I just have a good exercise to purge those fats out of my body?” Hahaha…
Running is so boring. Many said that during a run, they can have time to think about things, but not for me. My mind is more preoccupied with, “oh man.. how long more??” Finally, I cannot take the tiredness and stoped after running just a mere 1km. That is so sad. The “Wey Shi” that used to be able to complete a half marathon only ran a miserable 1km today. To make matters worst, I have to go back to army in a few months time.
On the other hand, I managed to get myself to run. I think it was more than 6 months since I last ran, not counting the futsal games. I suppose it was a good start and hopefully I can continue to exercise.
I shall give myself a goal. That is to get back my fitness in a 3 months time. My aims shall be:
Shed 10 kg.
Pass my ippt 2.4km run.
Actually I want to set more aims like doing 5 chin-ups but let’s be realistic. I am not even sure if I have the time to exercise as exams are coming.
Okay, I shall start looking for my swimming trunks and goggles and swim as often as I can for the next 2 weeks. Hope I can do it.
Well, the title says it all. I just re-read my previous post and was disgusted by the standard of English I have written. Who would think that an ACS Boy would write his blog with such poor English. ARgh.. wth… Anyway, I will put in more effort to update my future blogs and probably pen in more sense in my sentences.
Recently, I got to know about this Australian singer Lenka, all thanks to Brandon. YES YOU!! Your post of the cover in your blog made me like the song. Managed to find a video of her performing 3 songs. ENJOY!!
It has been a week since I submitted my draft to my supervisor. Since then, it has been very much enjoyable.
I went to JB on last Thursday and go in by the new customs. I should be quite impressed by the new facilities that they have built, but in order for me to get the city square, I have walk round and round. As we were in a rush to watch 3.05pm movie, it wasn’t a good thing. Luckily, we manage to reach the box office by 2.55pm to buy the tickets and some snacks. We watched Marley and Me, a movie that dearie has been desperated to watch before it stop showing. Well, I think she is quite crazy about owning a dog… haha… The movie was quite a nice one, talking about life of a special dog, Marley. Overall, it was quite an interesting show and a sad when as the dog dies, worth RM10… haha…
Later, met up with Othniel, Shawn and Samuel for dinner in JB!! haha.. all thanks to Samuel, they came very late and only manage to stay for the dinner. We ate Kenny Rogers, which was very disappointing, then did a little shopping and headed to the petrol station to pump oil for Shawn’s car before we head back to Singapore. Shawn was so kind to send all of back later, makes me want to go to JB with him again.. lol…
My weekend wasn’t really interesting. On Saturday, I went to teach piping, then back to barker to do some of my own practice with Nicklaus and Brandon around. On Sunday, it’s piping again as I went to barker for band practice. Thereafter, Brandon and I saw Xavier around and went to have dinner together.
For the past few days, I spent most of my time relaxing and not doing much. Don’t really remember what I did on Monday other than eating Botak Jones (Depot Road) with dearie and studying in Queenstown library. The dinner at the food centre was quite good too, as I finished 1 plate of Wonton Mee and 1 bowl of porridge.
Went to school on Tuesday to discuss about project presentation for MS4030 (Engineer & Society). I felt quite guilty for not doing much, but thankfully I managed to redeem myself by volunteering to redo the Kallang Airport slides for my groupmate to present. Also, I thought about an ingenious idea for conclusion, that include the concept of Total Defence to the materials we are presenting.
Wednesday came and pass. Woke up at 6AM!! haven’t woke up this early since eons, because I have substituted the morning lectures with online lecture.. haha.. Reached school at 8.30am to be present with my groupmates presenting. I think the lecturer was quite happy with our presentation especially with my conclusion idea.. hehe.. The rest of the day was plan boring with me going home straight after breakfast and sleep… whole day!! woke up at 6pm to cut my hair.. then wasted most of my time doing dunno what till now as I decided to blog…
There’s a quiz coming up!! it’s on Friday!! Alrite.. I shall start studying now….
It has been quite sometime since I have last blogged. So sorry to those who bother to check whether I update my blog. I will now tell you how I have been up to.
After striving for the past few weeks, I am so glad that I have completed my FYP program and report. If you are wondering what I am doing for project, the topic is on the development of electromigration simulation program using MATLab. It certainly wasn’t easy, come to think of it, why did I ever choose such a project? Is it because of the supervisor? Or because I was confident with my programming skills. Whatever the case, I kinda regret this choice. Instead, I should have work on an experiment project where I can just do those necessary experiments and report on the results and do a wee bit of analyzing. However, dearie had been having lots of problem trying to pass her online SEM and XRD test. Plus, she had so much problems with her booking of equipment that she gets so depressed. Well, I guess I should be happy to be doing something that can be done at my own time.
Back to my epic journey on my FYP. I started my engine on the report around the last time I blogged, which is 6 Mar. Then it went on full throttle on Sunday, 8 Mar. During this time, I aim to complete my project by Wed, 11 Mar. For that few days, I can say that I have had eat, shit sleep FYP. My mind have never stopped thinking about it; how to improve the program, what to write in my literature review, where to find the necessary documents and so on. It was really fustrating. Then on Monday night, I really couldn’t take the stress anymore and decide to ask for extension. That night, although I haven’t got the reply from my supervisor, but I stopped working. If I continued that night, I really don’t know what I will become, whether I will do anything crazy…
Luckly, my supervisor was kind enough to give me the extension, and my tension was slacken for awhile. While I was relaxing for the next few days after that, I suddenly thought of what I can add to the program to make it impressive. I shall not bore you with the technical stuff. So I am back at full throttle on 13 Mar again. I finally completed my literature review on Monday night and proceed with the alteration of program. On Tuesday, I stared at the two programs that was done by the previous students and the journal of electromigration for the entire afternoon and evening. Finally, I developed the concept and know what equation I should add into the program. When my brother came home, I tried asking him for help with the commands, but it din’t work out because we had a disagreement on a particular function. MATLab is not that difficult after all, eventually I figured out the problems and solved it by 12 midnight on Wednesday. In order to reward myself, my bro brought me to my favourite prawn mee stall down at MacPherson to have my dinner.
For the next 7 hours, I have typed non stop to complete 2 more chapters of the FYP report. Around 8.30am, I am really exhausted and went to take a short nap which lasted 2 hours. When my mom woke me up at 10am as instructed, I was sulking like a kid infront of my com. I continued to stare at it for another 30 mins before writing something. Type type type… I slowly finish the conclusion (ONLY 2 PAGES!!) and work on my misc pages.. I always knew that references are difficult to work on, but I never knew acknowledgement and abstract is so difficult to write, especially when you are so tired that everything in your mind is sleep sleep sleep. I realised that I have absolutely nobody to thank because I depended on myself to do the entire project.. and I didn’t even consulted my “mentor”, who always tells me to find out myself.
At last, I completed my report at around 3.30pm. I am so tired and really don’t feel like going to school, but whatever the case, I called my supervisor and asked if he is still in school in 2 hours time so that I can submit the report. TO MY JOY!! he said that I can come on Thurs to submit… YAY.. but not for long.. coz dearie got angry that I spoiled her Thursday plan.. of course with my great planning skills, I managed to come out with an alternative to pacify her… haha..
Thursday, I woke up later than I planned, and made my way to school the submit the report. When I entered his room and hand over the report, he put it under another 6-7 reports and told me that he will get back to me sometime later… WAH.. he still have so many to read.. pity him man…
ok.. dearie wants to see this blog quickly.. and Im getting tired blogging..will update my other experiences another day…
Well.. it’s 11.40 pm now.. and I have only started writing 1 page of my FYP.. I am suppose to write around 50 pages.. but what the heck.. was so lazy the entire day… totally unproductive.. hate it..
Anyway.. I have realised that it has been quite awhile since I last put some pictures on top.. I shall put up 2 pictures of myself performing at the Highlanders’ 2nd anniversary. Found it off a website that Brandon sent me.
“This is when I am marching along the shops by the Clarke Quay”
“This is performing at the fountain in front of Highlanders”
After the performance, we are entited to freeflow of beer.. but I only got to drink 2 glasses of it. Also, by the time I went to the buffet table prepared in the pub, it was too late.. most of the food were all taken.
That’s all, I am going back to do my report.. let’s hope I can finish most of it by this weekend… Jia you!!
of course with my great planning skills, I managed to come out with an alternative to pacify her… haha..
“This is when I am marching along the shops by the Clarke Quay”
“This is performing at the fountain in front of Highlanders”