< streams of consciousness >

home office on bed

i have no life! actually thank goodness i have no life because i have damn a lot of work to do. been spending a lot of time on my bed lately doing work. when i plan my new room, i must have a table and a really comfortable chair so i will not spend so much time on my bed. but in my current room, it really can't be helped. actually, i guess i could go downstairs and work at the dining table, but somehow i feel that i'm more focused when i'm flat on my stomach! gonna get fat!

i've been working on fyp and another research proposal for my masters application (am only saying this here because hardly anyone is reading and i estimate my chances of getting in as 20%?). so i chionged finish whatever i had to do for fyp on friday, procrasted and got stuck yesterday, sent a panicky email to my fyp prof asking for help. somehow in the course of writing the email i managed to figure out what i DID want to do. so i waited for her reply as a confirmation, slept 12 hours, woke up again, spent the last 5 hours writing the research proposal, and now i'm done! my prof must be damn scared of me now, giving her so much extra work to do wahaha. feel bad. but no choice leh. and she seems willing to take me as a grad student so i have no choice but to take advantage of her...she must be regretting being so nice to me, haha.

while procrastinating all this work--i actually get work done quite fast if i don't procrastinate for 50% of the time--i was reading all the gip stuff i blogged in 3rdaugust.blogspot.com. i was depressed then and thank goodness i'm back, but the nostalgia factor is really powerful. i actually miss certain aspects of it like the cheap food, the not-that-shitty-volunteering, and especially the post-attachment period where i ended earlier than everyone else and spent my days waking up late and just slacking like crazy. and of course travelling with mk and ssy. i was talking to ssy a while ago that i still miss the last 3 days we spent in shanghai after getting back from sichuan, in which we soaked up all the good stuff shanghai has to offer, namely good shopping and good food, with the knowledge that we'd be HOME again in a couple of days! and seriously, i think packing is super fun, even though unfortunately we were flying on jetstar from kl to sg and had a weight limit so i had to panic about how my luggage ended up so heavy.

i love my current 2-day-week and 5-day-weekend. 5 day weekend gives me plenty of time to procrastinate before i start doing work, and when i do get cracking it's nice not to have to panic about how little time i have left. so i get tons of work done and feel productive. yayy! it rocks to be a year 4, now that i've discovered that fyp is actually not shitty at all and in fact the most rewarding AUs i've done in ntu.

xh stumbled at Monday, January 18, 2010 4:21 AM | ouch. (0)

twentyten!

wow! it's been super long since i last updated! when did i last go through so long without blogging? to think that i thought that twice a month was quite cui, now i realllly don't think anyone is reading but it's still good to have a record so i shall blog anyway and *wave* if anybody else happens to see this:P

my last update in late october and i have so many new things going on in my life that it will take forever to talk about all of them so i shall just outline briefly.

1. FYP. i spent my life in ntu sci's cati lab for 7 days (feels much longer!) doing a nationally representative survey about perceptions on h1n1. i thought it would be the shittiest thing ever, but in the end it's really quite fun and not that shitty since i didn't actually have to call anyone myself:P not to mention that it became quite rewarding cos we exceeded our call targets everyday and ended up with n=1055! it was also fun interacting with people from different parts of the school and laughing about random things with the friends we pulled over to help us call (hey, they get paid!). now to hope that the results make sense!

2. school. i'm officially back into the 2nd upper honours range! however, this is pending non-disaster in my last module this semester and fyp of course. this is going to be my slackest semester with only 1 subject left and the data collection for fyp finished, but i shall have to put in all the effort into ensuring neither go below B+. but i'm really looking forward to my last module, fortunately, and it's theory-ish stuff which i love:D

3. langkawi trip. went to langkawi with ssy for 5 days last week and i have too many photos to post up but what i shall miss most is the 4 adorable kittens frolicking outside our door every day:D 3 white kitties and one orange kitty....usually we only see the 3 white kittles possibly because the pretty orange kitty has been abducted somewhere else. driving in langkawi was also great fun especially as a passenger:D

4. NEW HOUSE! after 10 years renting houses and months of house hunting (in which my mom has looked at more than 60 houses), we have finally bought ourselves a new house, all our own! for a good price and within 1km of where we have been moving around for the last 10 years so life will not change much apart from the better surroundings. what a relief to not have to move to serangoon or some other random place. we will be 2 bus stops from the future pasir panjang mrt and directly opposite cold storage. and we will have such great fun renovating! (even though my mom insists it's going to be a headache she knows it will be great fun too). we'll be moving in may, and i totally can't wait! (except that i'll be graduating at the end of it...unless...*crosses fingers*)

okay...so those are the main points over the last 2 months. and now it's the beginning of what is possibly the most important year of my life so far! i'm currently in cs lib waiting for veron to finish whatever she's doing so that we can spend the rest of the afternoon chionging fyp after happily slacking the last 3 weeks before meeting our supervisor tml. and then tonight i shall play netball for isg and possibly for the last time in my life (unless we manage to beat hss, which is quite impossible with year 2s on exchange and year 3s on attachment, but oh well we've beat them 2 years in a row so they deserve something:P)

i think i'm typing damn loudly because my typing's the only thing i hear in the library haha. my poor keyboard! oh well, till next time!

xh stumbled at Tuesday, January 12, 2010 3:48 AM | ouch. (0)

weirdos galore

it's been quite a while since i last blogged, i wonder if anyone is even reading this haha. so since nobody is reading it, i shall use this entry to VENT MONTHS OF PENT UP FRUSTRATION.

i shall rant about the quantities of weirdoes/does-not-mix-well-with-others-types i have come across this year, which is like MUCH more than usual!

weirdo #1: met on gip china. at first, of course, everyone tries to be nice to everybody, but he starts emitting weirdo vibes from day 1. this is because, if you're even halfway friendly to him, he sticks to you like a burr during the next gatherings and you literally have to dodge him. he's known as the "hi-hi-hi' by ssy, because he never fails to msg "hi" everytime he sees me online, but i don't reply...so the chat log shows up a string of "hi"s.

weirdo #2: the wtf in my sections. he's really desperate to be principal of the section, but he plays out of time and out of tune and doesn't realise it, which really pisses me off. his ego is the size of the universe and you cannot penetrate that thick skin of his. he affects a tortured, "expressive" playing look. mk asked me after the concert "why does that guy behind you look like he's trying to give birth?" fortunately, he gets on so many people's nerves that there's usually someone to complain to.

weirdo #3: com437 project mate. he does not understand the concept of "group" work. he thinks group work is splitting the parts and then throwing it together. his catchphrase is "you can just give this part for me to do myself because....mumble mumble...i'm a freelancer". of course, he has no clue what the rest of the group is actually doing and we end up having to edit his part so much that we might as well have done it ourselves. he's also always coming up with convoluted ideas which we have to spend time understanding and explaining why we can't use it before we can get back to work.

weirdo #4: brag tan, the drama king lecturer who's always talking about his accomplishments in third person. takes pleasure in shouting WRONG!! in the middle of a presentation. need i say more?

weirdo #5: also met on gip china. at first he seemed normal, and quite helpful during the volunteering sessions i was coordinating. his company guys didn't like him much, but i didn't ask why. the weird vibes presented themselves when he practically begged me to help him proofread his IA report. i don't mind sharing my so-called "expertise", but he had not even proofread it the FIRST time, so i had to deal with sentences like "a summary of the above is summarized below". it was 15,000 words, and all engineering stuff. after spending 3 hours reading through half of it, i decided to condemn him to the ash heap of weirdos. WHO is that thick-skinned??

these are the worst ones. without resorting to attacks on looks, etc:P

xh stumbled at Saturday, October 24, 2009 11:00 AM | ouch. (0)

$#(^*#)(%

lately i've been feeling angry about lots of stuff and it really sucks because it totally spoils my day, and i need to slowly get distracted by something else before i can forget about it and not feel it so deeply. it's sad that karma rarely seems to really work on a daily basis. life is unfair. but i will continue consoling myself that cars who drive in a reckless fashion are more likely to get into accidents (and hopefully learn a good lesson) and people who have (euphemistically) social problems, are bound to suffer once they get into the workplace and have to deal with people who won't put up with their shit. even if i don't have the satisfaction of seeing it happen.

xh stumbled at Wednesday, September 09, 2009 3:15 PM | ouch. (0)

final year as a student...

sigh...one more year to enjoy the decadence of university life before being hurled into the wilderness of adulthood! i played mahjong in hall 13 after settling fyp issues and was reminded anew of the crazy life students live, especially hostelites....school comes second to all sorts of fun and games. but okay lah first week. oh well, no hall for me this year so i can make the transition back to normal life. and anw it's so bloody hot nowadays i don't envy them their non-aircon rooms.

it's been crazy since i got back though. having fun filling up my new iphone's calendar and discovering 10-hour blocks of activities everywhere. got 2 quartet engagements next week...including one super fun one with good pay. shall just enjoy that one last time before i start sharing jobs with the other cellists...haha...abusing my power for too long. i love quartet too much!

feel quite good now cos we finally came up with a decent fyp topic and the prof replied one HOUR after we sent the email (10pm) saying it sounded interesting and asking us to meet her. whee! one huge load off.

xh stumbled at Thursday, August 13, 2009 8:02 PM | ouch. (0)

home!!!

i'm home at last!

long hiatus on this blog due to crashing and then going to china. but now that i'm home i shall move back to ebloggy~ symbolic...haha.

anyway. i touched down at 10.25pm yesterday night. now that i've been home for 24 hours, i shall blog about..

what i shall NOT miss about china:
1) smokers everywhere, including enclosed spaces like restaurants.
2) spitters everywhere. thank god singapore has a rule against spitting. those that spit in enclosed areas especially are disgusting, disgusting.
3) having to always wonder if somebody is trying to cheat me.
4) bloody lousy customer service. they are damn nice to you when they want you to buy something useless and treat you like dirt when you patronise them for service you actually want.
5) horrible, disgusting villagers with zero personal hygiene and concept of personal space.
6) hard china beds. hotel beds are hard and at home i sleep on a sofa bed that's getting progressively less even and harder. omg my bed felt so soft when i got home.
7) not being able to read menus easily and understand explanations for things.
8) beggars everywhere who kneel to you in the train.
9) being followed around by salespeople in stores. in the end i didn't do that much shopping cos i escape when a salesperson starts following me and extolling the virtues of everything i glance briefly at.
10) peak hour on transport. ugh....

yes. i am so glad to be home. singapore rocks!

but okay lah. to be fair...

things i shall miss about china
1) cheap food everywhere. restaurant quality food for around SGD5 and sometimes much less!
2) bi feng tang's good food, lillian cake's amazing hot soft egg tarts, etc....
3) ridiculously cheap shopping...though you have to look out for stuff that is obviously AT and damn orhbiang.
4) cheap and good dvds near my house for less than SGD2!

on the whole, i am very very glad to be home. our stuff may be more ex, but thank goodness for our standard of living!

xh stumbled at Monday, July 27, 2009 5:51 PM | ouch. (0)

links galore

i am amazingly and inexplicably in china, a country i never thought i'd want to visit, let alone spend 6 months in doing my internship. oh well. more details in 3rdaugust.blogspot.com cos the other providers are blocked at my office. i am a consistent and uncreative person, yes.

xh stumbled at Monday, February 23, 2009 12:31 PM | ouch. (0)