Before dawn

NM2216 paper to clear tomorrow, and I've only began to straighten out some crinkles.



Mugging session progressed at an excruciating rate today, partially because of the temperamental weather and exam fatigue. Jack could attest to it by the huge tantrums the both of us threw in the course of 10 hours of mugging. PLUS we had the great company of loud-mouthed seniors studying just one storey under us.

And I thought NUS was a smoke-free campus. Those 7 guys were SMOKING ON CAMPUS, in broad daylight! What on Earth was that?! They were talking really loudly and clamped cigarettes between their lips! Oh God. I have a few questions to raise here.

1. Don't the students have any knowledge that the pungeant fumes were being blown upstairs to the rest of the students studying in the area? Do you want us to DIE with you all cursed ones?
2. Isn't the campus security supposed to be making their rounds around the campus and keeping things in order?
3. So are those things attached to the ceilings of our campuses pseudo sprinklers? Don't the SCDF or relevant authorities do checks? It's impossible that we have so many grown-up guys blatantly smoking together and the sprinklers are not activated?
4. What if a fire started because of their selfish and self-harming behaviour? Who will answer to the nation, and the entire educational field?



This is absurd.

And to add fuel onto fire, we had the WORST Japanese food on Earth (which, unfortunately, comes from NUS' Engine canteen), if 'food' is what you call it.

I pried open the box, all smiley and ready to tuck in to my dinner and forget that I still have 6 lectures to revise.

Fish was palatable, but rice was PASTY. Who in the world eats PASTY rice? And it was so PASTY that it clumped together, and it stuck obstinately to my chopsticks when I tried to dig into it. Yes, I had to DIG into my PASTY rice, which covered two-thirds of my rice box. The egg gravy was salt-laden, with onions that were cooked so hastily that they weren't even brown. The Miso soup looked like a combo of miso paste, water and hand-squashed tofu.

Who eats this?!

I know I'm a terrible sinner for not eating my rice (wait, I had a few mouthfuls), but seriously I'd rather go hungry. Jack finished his soggy tempura and a few mouthfuls of rice, which was plaudable. I swear that this would be the last time I'd be wasting money on such food. I'd rather eat cai fan.

Snooze.

Illustrations courtesy of Cathy Wilcox

After living off on-and-off supplies of unhealthy MacD's from Techno Edge for the past week, I have made Jack keep off fast food for 2 months. Putting back on those pounds that I fought so hard to lose will definitely kill me.

Effective of today.

I find it weird that none of the canteen stalls are open during the weekends of Reading Week; it's the best time to milk hungry scholars of their pocket money, because that's when everyone's dying to fill their crania with not-so-good food and head back to their little hibernating holes on campus. And they're offering us MacD's and Subway?! For the entire mugging population? Some proper coordination can actually be ironed out with the various canteens, and request that a number of stalls be open on each faculty to serve the ever-hungry, ever-demanding muggers, so that we don't have to burn at least 5 bucks on each meal.

NM3215 paper wasn't too bad; my toes were freezing, but I managed to stave off the cold by trying to burn holes in my question paper with questioning stares. I think I might not survive the next 2 days of mugging. Someone save me.

Oh, and I found the miracle cure (no doubt, a little useless) for my sleepiness! Coke Zero! It keeps me bright and awake for 2 hours. And the effects are wearing off now, so I better finish up on those dreaded 3204 lecture notes and hit the sack.

(PS: you can't catch me! Hehe...)

Heypi.

Oh, and I just saw the meter jump.





Happy 14 months, my dear. You deserve all the love in the world, for as long as it gets.

Roar.

You know, if you haven't heard about Spidee at NUS, you must be living under a rock in LalaLand, and totally devoid of all social networking tools. Blogsurf-ed, and read about what other people said. One comment went something like, "Wait. What are these students doing in the library at 130am?"

C'mon, fellow Singaporeans. Face it: if your Uni kids slept at 10pm after their bedtime stories, Singapore wouldn't be where it is today. You can do a simple snowball survey to ask Singaporean students 16 years and up; their average sleeping time would probably be 12am to 2am. Speak about moving the country.





Mugging is starting to get excruciating, especially when it's past the first paper, I'm sitting for one of my favourite modules tomorrow, and I scored just passes for the mock tests I found online.

Panic. Tell me about it.

Weather was... horrid today. One moment it was sweltering hot, and the next it was raining cows. Brought Baby Eeyore out to accompany Jack and I on our mugging mission. He's cute. But that wasn't any form of relief for butt-flattening mugging. Someone should do some study to find out that sitting for long hours and milking your brain juice and having MacDonald's as one of your very few food choices on a Sunday is a health-threatening activity. Please tell me that.

1 down, 3 to go

Yawn.

JS2224 paper was manageable. I didn't breeze through it, and wrote until my right hand cramped. Serious. It was down to the essay part and 1 hour to go when I twitched and felt this horrid pain in my right hand. Well, at least I survived an extremely essay-ey paper and an inpromptu cramp.


I wonder how much would it take to stop having people pile their expectations on me. I vaguely remember blogging about it, but it came back to haunt me these few days prior to the exams, and all it did was to make me feel even lousier about myself, as a sister, a friend, a daughter, a girlfriends and whatevernot. And it's going to be a dark mark on me, because I'll have to bear these obligations. It's not that I'm trying to take all responsibility off me, because I understand that when Dad is overseas, I'll have to shoulder half of the responsibility of managing the family. But I had hoped better of my sisters, who are already in their teens and are still being spoonfed and baby-ed by my parents. Jack was right to say that I have to play my part simply by the fact that I'm the eldest in the family and my sisters tend to look upon me as someone to help them. But I'm doing all I can, and yet be taken for granted. Disheartening. I mean, I can't be there for them 24/7, I still need my own breathing space and have the freedom to do my stuff. It's not like helping with the dishes or the bed linen is solely my responsibility. And I'm just sick of the fact that no matter what I say or do, this carrot and stick will never work.



I just hope I don't bring up my kids this way in future. I'll just convulse and die.

Of muggers and Spidee

EA has been my temporary shelter for the past week or so, prior to the exams. I recalled mugging for hours on end last semester at PGP's SuperSnacks, only to find that it has been revamped and is unavailable for our mugging soon after the exams. *Sigh* Geyao had a good time there. So we had no choice but to turn into marauders this semester, roaming the Engineering and FASS corridors for a decent butt-planting spot with a working power socket and a conducive study environment. And we have to play inpromptu street directories for the public who were attending seminars at Engineering, and yet be excluded from their sumptuous buffet spreads. (The BTech seminar buffet tables took up whatever space there was at EA to set up buffet counters. Obscene.) And they have to make this place obscenely cold as well, and I would have froze to death if it hadn't been for the warm water dispenser and Jack's jacket (no pun intended).

Mugging process has been painfully slow and sleepy, but I've managed to finish my first rounds revision for JS and NM3215. AND FOR GODDAMMITSAKE PLEASE STOP SUCH ABSURDLY LONG READINGS FOR 3204 IF YOU'RE NOT COVERING THEM IN YOUR LECTURES!

*calms down*

So we were assigned to copy close to half of a book in the RBR for our readings, and they all look like scriptures to me. After grasping those few points for the first few lines, I would never fail to drift off to Facebook or back and forth my lecture notes and readings, trying to make them coherent. I think this module's going to screw me real bad. And I'm going to screw the feedback as well.

Oh, and for some exam humour, someone decided to don his superhero suit and throng through the Central Library in the wee hours this morning! Hilarious...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoTUNfjFCcA

Sleep-y

Sorely disappointed with myself for not having the willpower to fight lethargy and the temptation of boardgames. Mugging in school in the morning was torturous, especially with a good breakfast, the rainy weather and a comfortable shoulder to sleep on. Then we found ourselves journeying to Vivocity for Ben and Jerry's Free Cone Day! The security lady had a really bad attitude, and I had problems trying to quell Jack's fiery temper. But ice-cream was good (Gordon said that anything that's free has to taste good.) Then it was to Gerlyn's place for Pandemic, mahjong and Bridge. Oh God I actually picked up Bridge!

Plus the long MRT ride home was a slumber torture; I had to try to keep myself from swaying sideways while I doze off between my notes (which I always do). So I was in a perpetual bad mood from the moment I alighted from the MRT to the moment I plopped down in front of my laptop and chat with Jack. Speak about exam blues...

I need to stay awake

My attention span is taking its toil on me. I've been constantly drifting in and out of this sleepy spell every day, and it's hindering my studying progress. And the sweltering heat is not helping.

Took a break from mugging on Friday and went down to Gordon's place for boardgames. And pasta salad from Ashton's at Thomson was delightful! The potato in their potato salad was slightly too crunchy, and their garlic bread wasn't as fantastic as the ones I could make with my toaster. But the pasta salad was heavenly. Got thrashed at Catan: Cities and Knights. I've never won at that game, because I never bother to remember the point system, and I'm always picking the wrong spots to start with.

And when you get too stressed, this is what you do.

And I actually bothered to upload it. Which further goes to show how stressed I am. I need comfort food, minus the sinfulness and fat!!!

17 Again

To celebrate the closure of my NM2208 and NMJS2224 projects today, I just had to drag Jack to this.

To clarify, I was never into Zac Efron. Not even with those side-swept bangs, crystal-blue eyes, ripped body and witty charisma. Maybe other celebs, but I never gave Zac Efron a chance. Maybe it's because I can't see why girls are gushing at him. But I gave the movie a chance, and it worked out great this time. Okay, it was a little HSM-ish, but Zac Efron without Vanessa Hudgens was all smoke and no sparkle, if not for the chemistry with the other characters in the movie. Shall not be a spoiler, but I'm giving it a 3.8/5 for the laughter it provided, plus the absolutely good seats and theatre (GVMax, S16&S17). The demerit points for the cliche, the Star Wars side-theme, for awkward kiss scenes of Efron with some other ladies apart from Hudgens and the bad link (Matthew Perry didn't have bright blue eyes. Annoying.).

"I want to be your sun, to rise and set with you everyday."

Annoying project mate spoils the day. How many annoying people did God make? Because I think I just met all of them this semester.

Of bad journalism

This Straits Times hoohaa called Ms. Tham is really something.

Dimwits on Facebook?
(accessible at http://blogs.straitstimes.com/2009/4/15/dimwits)


"A new study has shown that college students who use the social network have significantly lower grade-point averages (GPAs) than those who do not, according to Time.com. The survey of 219 undergraduate and graduate students was done by doctoral candidate Aryn Karpinski of Ohio State University and Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican University. They found that GPAs of Facebook users typically ranged one grade point lower than those of non-users. For instance, users' grades range from 3.0 to 3.5 compared with a 3.5 to 4.0 range for non-Facebook users. "

Sometimes I find it ironic that while I'm picking up all the right skills to write journalistic articles, you have such people out there who are simply wrecking the reputation of that career path. I mean, you can walk stark naked at Holland V or run down Orchard Road in a bikini to garner attention, but this is simply poor job ethics. Yes it's a blog but, no, it's not a place for you to rant about how disconnected you are from the outside world. By questioning the intelligence of millions of Facebook users should be the last thing to do, especially if you decide to sit at the bottom of the well. If you have University of Colorado fraternities using FB to recruit members (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1891277,00.html), are you going to imply that these people are destined to have low intelligence? If the University of Melbourne says that FB at work makes better employees (http://uk.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUKTRE5310ZH20090402?rpc=401), are you going to say that these companies are recruiting dumb people? Are you going to dismiss New York University's students as 'dimwits' as well (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1889298,00.html?iid=sphere-inline-bottom)?

For the record, although my grades are just average, I do see alot of A-lister friends who are on the Dean's list getting obsessed with FB games, and they're still sitting pretty on the top of the league. Of course I'm not condemning the research results, because I've read OTHER articles that carry such views as well. But isn't it too much to rant about it? What about YOUR GPA?

And the utmost annoying thing? Most of the articles I quoted above are from the TIME.com website. Hello?! You call yourself a reporter and write reports like a 3-year-old biased thumb-sucker without doing other forms of research? Was that what your journalism course taught you? Or are you simply drying out of ideas, and HAD to roil readers' emotions by writing such stuff?

Tsktsk.

Of male bosses, schoolgirls and bad lecturers

This is going to hurt, I swear.



Some guys can be huge jerks, and alot of us can attest to that. Even as a student, many past stints with companies required me to work directly with the bigheads of the companies and, I swear, these guys know nothing about employee management. They tend to subject their employees to boundless restrictions and protocol, and then proceed to do carry out intricate steps of finger-pointing and backstabbing. C'mon, do these guys even have BALLS? Since when has the men stab their thumbs in the pie of office politics? And the worst? The bosses, waaay up there; they're basically comparable to a bad case of piles. And wow, they sure have a hand at pointing fingers. A close one once iterated to me her case; her male boss was always working late and he expects her to do the same (or else she gets branded 'lazy'), he refused to stand up for her when she was awfully wronged and even marked her down in her appraisal, and she becomes his personal kopi-soh cum inventory manager cum maid. After the appraisal case, she decided that she wasn't going to be all smiley in front of him again. Not when she has another few more bosses to serve, plus the mother of three children.

Hello?! What is this? Human slavery? Or you guys have no concept of female sensitivity? Simply because you lead a sad and meaningless life with your children who don't talk to you and your wife who doesn't sleep with you doesn't give you the right to perpetuate such haughty behaviour. Simply because you're some overpaid big hoo-haa with a small head doesn't render everyone else the same pathetic way. So what if you draw a 5-figure paycheck every month? So what if you drive an oil-guzzler or own some District 10 property? So what? It doesn't make everyone else less human, neither does it make you less of a moron. So even if you don't want your rotten balls, don't throw them in people's faces.

---

Then we have the children. Salah, if you call them 'children', you'll get bashed to death by their profound knowledge of profanities. Let's say we profile them as angsty, emo secondary school students who love nothing more than to demonstrate their well-versed vocabulary of vulgarities. And I was honoured to witness that moment of outburst by one of them on the bus yesterday. Barely 16, the girl in her blue-top-white-skirt uniform proceeded to rant aloud like she was doing a recital about some matter which bothered her so much, to her friend who was sitting in the seat in front of her. For God's sake, and I could hear her, what, across the aisle? As she switched proficiently to and fro dialects and languages, she had every other commuter grumbling in their heads. I was. Jack was. Chee Yong was (he was so pissed he sent me an SMS). And we wonder if the schools are switching to teach such stuff instead. That particular girl would probably get an A for a subject called Mastering Multilingualism in Insinuation and Abstract Profanities. I'll probably score a C+.

---

You sure you wanna hear about bad lecturers? I think I'll let the Teaching Feedback take the brute instead.

13th week

My group was totally slain during JS2224 presentation today. Thiam Huat looked like he was going to devour us when I concluded the presentation. OMG. Too much deviance from the main topic was the pitfall. We kind of went on a huge merry-go-round about our project, talking about language learners, then to perpetuators, to pop culture, to anime, manga, TV dramas, JCC and back. Even I myself felt the puke at the back of my throat when Thiam Huat waved the 1-minute mark. I totally messed it up, when we had so much confidence in it the day before. Oh well, everyone has their bad days.

And I'm simply baulking from the amount of backlog revision I had set for myself. Jack was right after all; it's all about setting achievable goals, not goals that are simply meant for dreaming. NM2208 has been taking the toil on me, with many late nights and insanely early mornings spent on keeping awake and trudging through every single assignment for the past 3 months. Torturous, but the feeling of putting together you've worked on for so long evokes some forlorn sense of attachment to the final masterpieces. And each of them has a story behind it.

Ok.

Back to work.

Turning Nocturnal

I ought to be shot to be awake at this hour. But I'll probably shoot myself if I don't finish my portfolio on time.


Time out with Jack is always precious; we just witnessed the drawbacks yesterday. So it was productive mugging today, including a sumptous dinner by Jack's mum, together with his maternal grandparents. I felt bad the moment his grandma asked me why I didn't take meat; I didn't know how to answer her without sounding self-centred and stubborn. I'll find some proper justification, soon. Then it was back to school to mug, all the way from Tiong Bahru. We're creatures of bad time management, I swear.

Oh dear. shall get back to work.

The Fast & The Furious 4

Yes, I DO know that the exams start in 2 weeks' time and yes, I know I'm lagging behind my schedule. But who can resist such a temptation?

The 8th Deadliest Sin (which applies to me, unfortunately): Speed.

Yes, we're movie junkies, and even more so when it's The Fast and the Furious 4. Having caught the other TF&TF movies, I have to admit that I was sorely disappointed by TF&TF4. My reason: I hate muscle cars!!! And I can declare that a hundred and one times, and the producers still won't hear my desperate cries. I loved Tokyo Drift to bits (thanks to Jack), LARGELY due to the plot, the action, the beautiful swerves those amazing machines can perform, and those pampered machines with huge engines and fun-to-ogle-at Japanese guys. Not this. Vin Diesel's already a major put-off (he looks like some guy who's more suitable for delivering LPG to my house), and you have to put that guy together with an ugly muscle car. Jack consoled me with the fact that those guys in America are far more fascinated with their own cars than the darlings we get in Asia (Nissan GT Skyline, Honda mods) and Europe. But if I'm not mistaken, this should be the final sequel to the series. So it's time someone else attempt to wow me with such adrenaline-pumped movies. Plus they had Paul Walker in a Nissan, so I'm appeased.







I still loved Tokyo Drift. Will probably kop it from Jack and watch it again and again after the exams.

Breathe

I survived!


NM3215 presentation on Tuesday morning was more nerve-wrecking than doing a bungee; we had Bernard grading us, apart from the managers of Ben and Jerry's and The Spark sitting in our presentation. But hey, we pulled it off!!! I was freaking out just half and hour before the presentation, after stalling at promo mix during the final rehearsal, but I saw the presentation as a means of redeeming myself for not working as hard as the others on the written report. Oh God. It seemed so surreal! Thanks for all the toiling these 2 months, my group members!


And I had my last lesson at the tuition centre. It broke my heart when I had students asking me "Teacher Julie, so will you come back to teach us after your exam?", and I had to find means and ways to escape their questioning, and to avoid the heartbreak I'll have to handle. It was a tough task to bring it up to the management, because I never really had something clear in mind that I wanted to say to them. But I realised that a status quo for another few more months will render me mentally unsound, so the best option was to let it go. As hard it was for me to say goodbye to the kids whom I have taught for the past year, it was harder to manage the building tension and stress that's overwhelming me. So it's goodbye, but not so-long.



3204 lecture was a waste of time; no attendance taken, just presentations. Plus we had to sing Mahjulah Singapura in lecture. I seldom have such 'WTF?!' moments in life, and this was one of those. Chee Yong came in at 9am, just to sing the national anthemn and say byebye. The look on his face was priceless. And Khern had a bad case of Twisties addiction.



Finally had the time to pop by Jack's home. It's been almost a month, I think, since I went over, and 2 months since I last tasted his mum's cooking. It's just like my own homecooked food! And it's amazing how Jack tickles those funny bones of everyone. *hugs* And the best thing? He's mine.

独りて

Lunched alone for the first time in many months. NUSSUSAVE had to paste this irritating sticker on all the disposable lunch boxes at the Deck. It says "Huge amounts of resources are used to extract, manufacture and transport this box to serve you for 10 mins. Be a responsible consumer, bring your own reusable box! - THE PROJECT BOX Team. nussusave.org." For goon's sake, I could prolly edit the above paragraph and send it back to NUSSUSAVE. "Huge amounts of trees and gum are used to manufacture this damn sticker you pasted on this box. Screw it if I'm wasting resources, but screw you for wasting even more resources and claiming to be environmentally friendly! - THE PROJECT MINDYOUUROWNBUSINESS team. www.getalife.org." But I shall continue to assume the role of the submissive little NUS student and carry on with life. Just to tell NUSSUSAVE that they should all go take both NM2219 and NM3215. Oh, and throw in NM1101E. For God's sake, it's the Web 2.0 era! Who cares about stickers? Do we look like primary school kids to you? Or are we just plain gullible in your eyes?



Then I made Jack really angry. Long story, but he's alright now. Apparently his girlfriend's too much of a goondu.

Judgement week: day 1

Things are getting crazy from today onwards.

NM3204 Presentation (Today)
NM3215 Presentation (7/4)
NM2208 Presentation (9/4)
JS2224 Presentation (14/4)
JS2224 Project due 14/4
NM2208 Project due 16/4
NM3204 Project due 17/4
NM2208 Portfolio due 20/4


Am I not thankful for the Good Friday holiday this Friday?


Dad asked Jack out with us for Saturday's dinner. And watching that guy coping with the questions and food getting loaded on him simply amazes me. Liza was dealing with a bad head day, so she was severely unstable with her mood swings. Anyway, Jack came home with us and was showing my sis his circuit. "Oh LED!" was what my sis squirmed when she first saw his circuit. I love that guy. His circuit screwed up on Friday night, and he got it back up on Saturday afternoon. He needs more than just a few good hugs. Good luck for your presentation today.

And off to school I am, to slay the Presentation monster.

To see a thousand stars

Today we sat and looked at the stars weaving in and out of puddles of clouds in the sky. And like every other time, I sat and thought to myself about the stars; what if we had been born as stars instead? To be the admiration of a billion pairs of eyes, and yet face the truth of a lonesome life. When we collide, we vanquish, leaving sparkles of bright light, and still the admiration of a billion pairs of eyes. Would it be worth? To not have the chance to fall in love, to not have the chance to say 'I love you' to the one you want to hold so much? Would it be worth?



Then I'd rather sit real still in your arms, be really quiet, and breathe the air you breathe. To look into those eyes and see the stars shine through them with the brilliance of a million diamonds. To let my nose linger in your hair and take in the familiar scent of you. To see you smile wide smiles and gather the impulse to want to keep all of them in a bottle. To weave my fingers in yours, and feel the heat warm up my chilly fingers with all the love in the world. And to have you nudge my ear playfully with your nose and whisper those words I want to hear so much.



We are much better off not being stars, I guess.
Because I can't make myself not love you.

I hate tardy people!!!

Yesterday was spent recursing the CS president and yabbling on and on about rallying to repeal those dumb policies set by him. He gets on my nerves SOOO much, it's revolting.



And I HAVE got to learn about the consequences of sleep debt. I had burnt countless Sunday and Monday nights to know better, but it looks like the leopard never changes its spots. So despite the fact that I have slept for a collective 14 hours for the past 2 days, it couldn't make up for the 4-hour nights I had for the days before that. I NEED to learn. Oh God.


Had mugged in school with Jack for the past 2 days, and I really appreciated the emptying out of my workload. Well, I'm still struggling to get back on the chair to start studying (yes I know it's 3 weeks to the exams and I'm still relatively busy with projects), but finishing off with work is a relief itself. I'm throwing out tuition classes (and foresee myself quitting the centre someday soon), I'm taking GEYAO out (it's time to mug my dears, no more jamming for me), and I'm on the verge of throwing some projects out. Oh well, I should say they threw me out. Oh well. I should learn my lesson about joining groups with unfriendly, unrelenting people. And I had to put up with sulky faces EVERY SINGLE MEETING. If you're trying your best to look like a tardy asshole, then congratulations, because you look every inch like one. Pardon my honesty.



Oh, and did I mention that I ran into KKT yesterday? I had to WAVE twice before actually realised that someone was yelling at him, it took him a whole 5 seconds to register it, and another 5 seconds for him to recognise me. Did I migrate to Mars or what? It's weird how people change, isn't it? He was like, "Wah I couldn't recognise you leh! You changed so much." Felt like telling him, "If I hadn't changed I would prolly go commit suicide".

Some people can be so screwed

It's Week 11, guys. Time to sit tight, hang on to your safety belts, and get ready for the wild ride ahead.


We officially wrapped up the last Geyao meeting before the exams today. It's been a tough semester for everyone, especially those who were involved in the FBH, but I'm glad we sort of pulled it off in a fashionably acceptable way. Time to delve back into the books. We'll have plenty of time to think up reenactments of the infamous Cultural Revolution after the exams. They organised a jamming session today, but it's a shame I had to miss it because of the pile of work which is enveloping me. 3 weeks to the exams, and I'm still hanging on to 4 projects. Fantastic piece of crap.



And a "kind" fellow club member just had to infuriate Jack. That's the last thing anyone should do, just for information. Anyway, to put it short, the moral of the story is to stick to working with yourself unless you're so very sure that that 'friend' of yours wouldn't submit his part of work which is entirely plagarised from websites. I had learnt it the hard way in Semester 1, and Jack just took that lesson too late. I'm contemplating to coerce Jack into submitting an irregularity report against his group member, in case some parts of the paper run into walls. What a bastard.



And I hate people to impose their set of silly rules on me, especially when you're "two legs bad".