Doomsweek

Pinning down deadlines is like drawing multiple pits in my timeline.


31 March - NM2208 full-color CGs due
3 April - NM3215 final report
4 April - JS2224 Draft due
6 April - NM3204 Presentation
7 April - NM3215 Presentation
7 April - JS2224 Presentation
16 April - NM2208 Project due
17 April - NM3204 Webquest due
20 April - NM2208 Portfolio due



And all these does not include the time that I need to study for my papers, which are all crammed into 7 days. Sometimes I really wonder if finishing your papers early is a curse or a blessing. And I suck at doing Webquests. And I suck at using Illustrator and Photoshop. Sometimes I wonder if there's anything else I can do apart from CNM, and I brush the thought off. Sometimes I wonder if I'm really good at anything, at all.


Popped over to school to accompany Jack, and partially to escape from homemade chicken rice. Didn't really finish much stuff today, although it's ironic that I finished stuff for Tuesday's tutorial before I finished stuff for tomorrow's tutorial. Maybe it's because I'm starting to get lost in FTA and Human Security issues, or maybe it's because I'm just starting to find 2216 tutorials really clueless. Hello?! You want me to conjure answers out of thin air? Oh well, at least the huggies and kisses are well worth it. Minus the sweltering heat/blistering cold.

It's 12.55am, Monday morning, and it's back to doing up the storybook. For the Nth time.

Blesses

And it's good to have Dad back, after his business trip which was extended and extended countless times. And I don't have to Skype him every night to report that my younger sis is on the computer, my second sis is sleeping on the sofa and Mum's bathing.

And finally there wasn't any food! Apparently we had problems clearing out our Chinese New Year supplies PLUS the stuff Dad brought back everytime he flew back, which is on a monthly basis.

Oh, and something happened.

The present he bought for Mum got lost on the conveyor belt. But thank God he made a report, and SATS was speedy enough to grab his lost lugguage.

Presenting the new family member:

While my sister's raking her scalp to think up a name for him, everyone's fussing over this 1.5m huggy thingy at home. I feel like a kid just carrying it around and dragging its feet on the ground. My mum wanted something she could hug to sleep when my Dad's not around. Can I have one of those as well? I need some huggies at night too...

And Dad got 2 Baby Stitches (see above family portrait haha) for each of my sisters, and his favourite (me!) got my favourite YOYO keychain and Paul Frank pencil case. Speaking of monkeys.

Give me another 25 minutes to finish up my JS2224 readings and I'll be packing myself to school for Round 2 of mugging plus huggies for Jack.

Chugging

My engine's still coughing and puffing, but going strong. Lectures are starting to become a drag, because all I want to do is to throw away all those projects and lectures and tutorials and start to mug like some insane nerd. Sounds easier said than done. ALL my projects are still in the development stage, when presentation and deadlines are less than a month away. I need more than just a lucky charm to get me through this all. I need 48 hours a day. And I've acquired a new habit of dozing off on public transport, just that it's starting to get out of hand recently. Like today, I was trying to concentrate on revising today's 2216 lecture, when all of a sudden I just blacked out. The next thing I knew, I was nearing Clementi and my lecture notes are vandalised by my sleepy hands.



Being out with Jack is a routine so integrated into my life that things don't feel quite the same without him around. I know some people still judge us, but the closeness is something not everyone will learn to appreciate. 13 months with those fingers weaved so tightly between mine, and I still miss that warm and fuzzy feeling of feeling belonged to you. Just a warning; It's 1 month to the exams, and Jack and Julie will be glued to each other almost everyday. You should either get used to it already, or shut up and go dig your own trench.



Ah, the lovely midnight rain is beckoning.

Are Singaporean men like THIS?!

Something came over me when I was taking sneak peeks at 《主婦的假期》, this primetime show that they broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 8 every weekday at 9pm.

These three (unfortunate) housewives in the show have husbands with horrible traits. One either plays MMORPGs the entire day or womanizes, one is an MCP, and one is a gambler. I mean, this show is HORRID. I mean, housewives will start to speculate if their husbands are having extra-marital affairs and such, and then contemplate to run away from home, just like what the three protagonists did. And people start to stereotype about Singaporean men and their poor wives. WTH. Seriously, are Singaporean men and women mutating? So are Singaporean taxi drivers going to sneak across the Causeway over the weekend to gamble? Are rich businessmen going to be leashed by their boastful tai tai wives? And are men going to cheat on their timid wives with some young voluptous pub owner? And I think that's precisely why we're lways being barked at to get married, have kids, etc. Because your future leaders are seriously put off by such messages put across by the media! Because we're so afraid that marriages will eventually end up in divorces, so we'd rather kill the idea before it materialises!

And women will always be women, if you ask me.

Update: Two of those three men in the show cheat on their wives. Fantastic.

NUS 歌謠 FBH @ YIH

And FBH's officially over! *Breathes sigh* Not really a sigh of relief, but really just a sign that we have to revert back to our everyday-mundane-lifeless routines again. The past 4 months and so have been phenomenal, and everyone's making some kind of sacrifice or another just to make this a dream come true for every vocalist, instrumentalist, composer, arranger and our chairman for this project. And considering the fact that we're all but just normal students stuck in a screwed system, this is a big feat we've overcome as a united group.

Anyway, our FBH original CD is still available for those who have missed out on our two performances (where have you been all this while?), and you can just drop me an SMS if you wish to pick a copy up for just $10!

So ya, back to 2208 lecture I go.

NUS GEYAO 發表會 @ Secret Recipe, CPF Building

I'm almost drained.


NUS Geyao FaBiaoHui @ Secret Recipe was a success, with an almost full-house turnout. The audience was lovely, and we had Winson, William, Loy Yong, and our Guowens over as well. I admit it was super stressful to sing in front of them, but nothing else matters when you have to thrust the mic into your face and sing out to these 60 people in front of you. The venue was pretty cosy, so we we just 2 steps from the audience. And I love small venues, like what we had at Supersnacks last semester. The closeness took all the stress away, because you are able to put yourself on the same level as them.

Moving equipment was the pretty shitty part, because God knows how many humps those architects gave NUS. Raymond, a.k.a the storeman, did a great job with packing the elephant to brim with three quarters of our full band equipment, so things would rattle if I negotiated a corner or hit a bump.



And now for the thankies...

Thanks to Secret Recipe for giving us the venue for free! And they serve a wicked cheesecake, carrot cake and brownie, so do give their stuff a try!

Thanks to our lovely audience who clapped, laughed, listened and felt our songs. Thanks for supporting original music, even when we're neither famous nor veterans at music production.

Thanks to the entire Geyao crew: Xuanyu our chair for the event, MD Yuching who made everything sound really good, Bowen who helped alot with the compositions, sound engineers Shee Leng and Shu Min for all the time taken to edit our tracks and do the recording, Logistics head KeeBoon for rallying his entire Logis team into this effort, Raymond and Jiahui for pumping so much time and resources into this event, Yuanhong and friend for the CD and poster design (and our unsung heroine as well), our fantastically good Geyao live band, Yuehru who took out so much time and patience to help me with You who Came and our 3 lovely MCs.

Of course, how can I miss out these people; Daddy and Mummy who endured my late nights and entrusted the car to me to use for FBH despite knowing that I'm such a horrible driver, and hubby Jack for all the love in the world. Nothing can describe how much these people mean to me.

Photos soon! (I realised I didn't take any photos. Shit.)

Mook

I'm going to traumatize myself so much by simply counting down the days to the 發表會.



Sunday morning was spent waiting for a parking lot. I'm serious. Mum wanted to visit the Jurong West market to pick up fish, so we ended being stranded on the car for close to half an hour. Then I skipped the step of placing coupons, helped Mum pick fish (when she was the one who wanted to buy it), then bought lunch. I hate driving, for the last time.



Lazy afternoon with zonked-out Jack. He's pulling his hair out over his circuit, I was pulling hair out over my design. Sama sama. So CL closes at 4.30pm on Sundays. Wow.



Rehearsal. Full stop. I wish I could have went further to talk about rehearsal at 7pm, but that would render me incoherent and wading in self-bashing again. So ya. But I've promised myself and my loved one that I'll do better. And hopefully it'll be a promise that I won't break.

I have the sudden urge to murder Kane for asking me to help him up his Mafia count in Mafia Wars. And I ended up playing it myself (-_-)" I'm slightly on the verge of giving up on my 2208 postcard assignment, because I still can't find inspiration after 2 and a half days, and even after flipping through my throngs of postcards at home (yes, I collect postcards.). I'm super dead. Even more so at this moment in time.

The very few hours I had with Jack on Friday night was spent largely on watching Dragonball Evolution. Nice plot, and because I knew nuts about Dragonball Z, I think it wasn't too much of a letdown. Still, the usual plot plays like some warped cassette tape. Cute guy, cute girl, nice movie. Plenty of laughs as well.

And I'm stuck. Still stuck with 2208. I'm torn between drifting off to lalaland and staying awake til something pops into my brain.

Perpetually pissed

And I have to do the most random thing in the world at 9am in the morning (which is now); I’m filing my module notes, arranging them according to weeks and labeling them. Bleah. Hello, I’m supposed to be busy drowning myself with mountains of assignments and papers to write, remember?


Assignments due next week:
NM2208 Postcard design with different colour palettes (17/3)
NM2216 Prototyping assignment with (16/3)
NM3204 Task Analysis (14/3)
NM3215 Brand Proposition, advertising channels and angles (17/3)
NM3215 Tutorial 6
JS2224 Survey results analysis


And I screwed 2 out of 3 songs for rehearsal yesterday. It has got to be one of the worse days. And it sucked even more for the fact that I had to drag the band down with me. Sometimes I really wonder if I should just make this my last attempt at putting out my voice to everyone. But if it hadn’t been for darling there to cheer me up, I would have screwed way worse, maybe falling down to the sides like those 2 NTU students.

Spent the past few days being perpetually pissed, be it self-induced or incurred by someone else. Life has got to be better than this.

NUS Geyao FaBiaoHui 2009 is here!

After taking a year-long break from original compositions,
NUS Geyao is back with FaBiaoHui!



This used to be a yearly event for NUS Geyao but, due to some REASON, we didn't have it last academic year.

C'mon, how can we break the cycle?

Credits: NUS Geyao

This year's theme is Our KTV, carrying a connotation that everyone sings together, just like in a karaoke session! Expect 10 songs infused with various musical elements, presented to you with our very own vocalists and NUS Geyao 'Live' Band!

Credits: NUS Geyao

To introduce our original music to both the NUS body and external public, we are bringing our band out into the heart of Singapore, right at the centre of the CBD area!

For our external event, here's the details:
Date: 21 March 2009
Venue: Secret Recipe @ CPF Building
Time: 7pm til late
Ticket prices: $12 (ticket)/ $17 (ticket with CD)

And the internal event (for NUS staff/students ONLY):
Date: 23 March 2009
Venue: YIH Function RoomS (Yes, ALL 3 FUNCTION ROOMS!)
Time: 7pm, jamming til late
Ticket prices: $7 (ticket) / $12 (ticket with CD)


OR...

If you have no time to pop by both our performances, you can pick up our original CD for just $10! (The CD will go on sale only AFTER both our events, on 24 March 2009.)

So see you there!

For ticketing, simply contact our ever-friendly (sometimes moody) ticketing head Jack @ 96287347, or visit www.fabiaohui.nusgeyao.com.

Midnight muse

I just love to kill my body, don't I? Time check: 1.39am, Monday morning.


Had belated birthday lunch with the birthday girl and Gurlies on Saturday at Curry Favor at Velocity, Novena. The selection wasn't very wide, I must confess, but the food's alright. The waitressing was... relatively slow. Hadn't it been for the fact that we were one of the 3 tables there, it could have taken longer.

Was joking about how the softshell crab looked like a deep-fried tarantula trying to claw its way out of the bowl. Haha.

With HY! We happened to be in white top and denim that day! I dressed way sloppier, naturally. Plus my nose looked huuuuuuuuuuuuuge.

Mochi ice-cream was the ultimum. I swear nothing there came close to the mochi ice-cream. Thin glutinous rice flour encased creamy chocolate ice-cream with a chocolate centre that oozed out when you bit into it. Lurve. It's from King's Ice-Cream, if you're interested to know.

And since I was in Novena, it would be a waste not to pop by Gordon's house, where the husband was playing boardgames at. And I think I'm getting better at them! Although I totally flopped in Aquaretto (because I forgot all the rules for Zooleretto), I played Power Grid for the first time and loved it! I thought it was an engineer's game at first (since Gordon and Darling were raving on and on about it and Gerlyn hated it), but I got the hang of it, managed to persuade Jack to part with alot of money, and outplayed Gerlyn. Pandemic was another good game, although I still find some characters useless, and Gordon was controlling the entire gam through and through. Still, it was time worth spending. And we had great tom yam soup for dinner by Gordon's mum! It felt as though I was sitting at the table and having dinner with my darling, his brother and his sister-in-law, and their parents. Haha. And Coco was a naughty pup.

Sunday was spent working on my assignments (as usual). I never got a single break on weekends this semester, and this sick routine is going to take it toil on me until Week 12. But having the husband over to mug together made every single lament seem useless. It's good to know that my place is conducive for him to study at, despite the din whenever my sisters and I started quarrelling. And my mum's feeding him like a kid from the refugee camp! She shoves every dish in front of him every 5 minutes or so, while he entertains everyone at the dining table with anecdotes. *Laughs* Plus my sis started pushing questions to him and asking him to help her with them. *Continues to laugh* My darling has officially integrated himself into my nuclear family. And that's the best thing in the world up to this point of time, neglecting the fact that I'm done with my 2208 assignment.

Attack of the Zz Monster

It's 9.23am, I've been up since 7.30, and I'm already on the brink of falling back into the great oblivion of sleep. Bleah. Busy-ing myself with my NM2208 blog, since I won't want to scramble to assemble my stuff when it hits week 12.


Things to complete:
NM2216 Paper prototype for project
NM2208 Poster
NM3215 Tutorial (done)
NM2216 Week 8 Reflections
NM3204 Assignment 3 (Time to check with Ridza if any changes have to be made)
NM3215 Brand Proposition and marketing campaign
NM2208 Photo story blog (uploading)
JS2224 Grab that cursed book from library - I swear someone hid the book!!!


Friday afternoon was spent grumbling and laughing myslf senseless in 2216 lecture with prototyping. Those IM designers are sure geniuses with such stuff, I swear. They can paper-prototype a card dispenser, for God's sake. And JiaHui and I did the silliest thing ever - listening to the boys behind us. And they gave us the WRONG instructions for class activity. Thank God I'm always conjuring impromptu points that are presentable to be handed up, or else we would have wound up killing our dignity as Year 2 students by handing in arguments that oppose our initial stand. Time to go on a hunting spree for those two guys...







Then it was straight to Fay's house after lunch and jalan with the husband. Fluffy the spunky one is always at the door and, depite the numerous times we've been there, he always treats us like strangers. And I was always talking to him, I realised. And he loves to ignore me. Fine.






And the present reached its intended recipient just in time! Happy 21st to Jane! Hope someone lucky will come by and realise you're the one for him.



And I'm due at Jurong East at 11am.

Slumdog Millionaire

If you haven't watched it, do spend that few dollars to watch it. Better still, have it flashed in your face in GVMax at Vivo, so you'll worry about every single dollar and every single child that passes by.

Shall not be much of a spoiler here, but this is one that tugs at your heartstrings with the crude realities of India's "slum dogs", or what they call people living in the numerous slums in India. You can definitely find more stuff than what you can read here if you simply Google "indian slums", and don't say I didn't warn you that reality hits you square in the face.

Mumbai, home to India's financial powerhouse, with the highest land prices among the highest in the world. Mumbai, also home to Asia's largest slum, with 1 million people mushed into 3 square kilometres of land. Don't you find it an irony? Below the aluminium roofs run a bustling population of street kids, large families with more mouths than they can feed, insane sanitary conditions, slum gangsters who pick people off like they swipe ants off the table... And such stuff go on. Then you get the filthy rich bastards who pick such kids off the streets and make them beg, either with a single empty plate or an inflicted disability (they did it, of course).

"Blind people sing double", they say.

And I realised that *gasp* there's nothing much we can do to help them. Give them more monetary funds? Rebuild their homes for them? (Hello, I just told you Mumbai's land is literally gold. Where are you going to house 1 million people?) Nab those nasty guys?

*Shrugs*

On a deeper level, the movie reconstructed the biased view that many people harbour against people who seem to be on a lower societal strata. Don't say you're innocent.

On the other hand, I was just praying (in vain) that this movie would spare me of the goosebump-y Bollywood mass dances. It didn't, naturally.

Pulls hair out

It has been brought to my attention as to how horrible I sound in those FBH tracks. It's like, I just wanna dig a hole and hide myself when Yu Ching blasted Change the World during the meeting just now. I could pick out a hundred and one flaws with my voice even with the voice turned down. Plus 手心 got the usual comment of being a very ah-pek-ish song. Hello?! Who was the ah pek composer in the first place? Plus I realised that throwing down my position as treasurer would be a huge load off my back this sem, then I'll be able to retreat into the shadows and concentrate on pulling up my CAP. But so far there hasn't been any impressive figure out there whom I can depend on to fight for the monetary business of Geyao. *Sigh*


Just something random:

I was studying at E4, near LT6 in the morning, then I got approached by this guy.

"Hi, I'm looking for 3rd year Engineering students..."

And I cut him off.

"Urm, sorry I'm not an Engineerng student."

Horrible

Blogging before 2208 starts. Hope I don't get demerit points because of that.


Promised Darling a shopping date this afternoon, but Ryan reminded me about our 3215 meeting at the Deck at 4pm. Arrrgggghhh!

*Proceeds to pull hair out*

And I have to let him down again, over and over again.

And 2208 is going to start soon. Hope I don't screw stuff up, like I do every week.

Superficially bored

I clicked open the input box at 11.53am, and only started to type in my entry at 12.48pm. Bleah.

Saturday was spent lazing in bed, but I had to be up by 10.30, because the darling came over to mug. We managed to finish our mugging by dinner, but that's after I got into subsequent quarrels with both my sisters. Bad way to approach the end of the day with. So the rest of the night was spent watching some horrid Taiwanese soap serial, doing my 2216 Project and Tutorial, and sulking in the husband's arms.

The rain at 9pm changed everything. Because of the rain, we ran into my relatives, who were in the dark about us all along. Perhaps I had been too protective of us; I didn't want anyone to say 'no' to having my hand in yours, and I was too afraid to run into walls. But after yesterday's rain, after I realised I had the strength to kiss you goodbye in my relatives' presence, nothing else matters anymore.



Nothing else.