Exams

There is absolutely no mood for me to study now. When I saw what Michelle posted in her blog I was stunned that everyone [or almost everyone I know] is studying much, much harder than me.


I'm screwed, bloody well screwed.



-People tend to judge you when you feel relaxed?-
-Yes.-
-Psychoanalysis testing-

Freedom

No more ESD workshops for next week.

No more Chem labs for next week.

Hotel 626 to play.

This is one hell of a slack period for me, even though exams are coming up. I'm screwed.

Tuition

Just got back from Box Hill.

Tutoring is not easy, repeat not easy even though you understand the topic well enough. It may be easy for you to understand, but it's the explanation to your student which is slightly harder. But luckily for me I got a student who kinda understands what I'm saying, so I'm fine for now.

-I will not say the words "easy money".-

Winamp + Live Messenger

Toaster - some plug-in I found online.
Basically it's a plug-in for Winamp, which lets Live Messenger read the currently playing song and display it as your personal message in Live Messenger. Which basically is the similar to using WMP to play your songs, and then displaying the Now Playing song in your PM.
If you're like me - anti-WMP and prefers Winamp - then I strongly suggest that you get this plug-in. It works, and it appears to be slightly more versatile than the WMP version.

WMP - replaces your PM with your Now Playing song
Winamp/Toaster - adds your Now Playing song to your PM, as shown below in the red box:Final comments: I like this plug-in. It works with Vista although it's only rated for XP, so that's an advantage for most of us.

-Google is the most useful tool here in Melbourne. 95% of anything you need is online, and Google has 99% of that 95% catalogued, you just need to know where and how to look for what you need.-

Dinner

I eat in front of my laptop. Some people have said it isn't good for digestion. I don't know.

I don't think I'd try either.

Creative writing fail

Ok, this is a piece of short fiction we "wrote" in class today. By saying "wrote", it actually means that 5 different people had a go on different sections of the story.
Try and see what is wrong with it - it should be quite obvious!

***

I am an invisible man. With my magic axe, I disappear behind my enemies' backs, trying to reach the orb of power before it slips away. Skeleton warriors and ents clash furiously, whilst I blend into their midst and head for my enemies. I see the orb of power hanging from his back. The undead general, proud and tall even in undeath, he marched with his troops, his orb glowing bright. I sneak towards him, trying to be as quiet as possible. The crunch of my feet on the dry leaves scattered around the graveyard is masked by the cracking of bone in socket as the skeletons mill around confusedly, trying to find the smell of meat that has awoken them. I am close now, the orb of power is mere feet away. I can feel its otherworldly power drawing me in, the world disappears, fading to white. My energy starts to drain away, I know I don't have much time. If I take too long I'll just collapse in a heap, pray for the scavenging skeletons that are getting ever closer on their quest for fresh meat.
In my peripheral vision my eye catches the undead general's rotting corpse as it plunders around the graveyard. "He knows I'm here" is the only thing that I must avoid. Be decisive, I told myself firmly. There is no room for uncertainty on the battlefield.
Gripping my axe firmly, I slithered forward silently, shrouded from the general by my axe. I held my breath, careful not to give away my presence.
Within striking distance now. I swung my axe high - and then I woke up. Feeling, once again, that I don't belong in this reality, that I shouldn't open my eyes to see through my window the tall buildings and barely moving cars in the streets. I know there is somone out there who needs to be saved from skeleton warriors.

Talents

Talents are everywhere. I've been seeing a lot of it since I got here. Most of my friends can play some instrument or other. Some can talk a lot and make it seem as though they really know what they're talking about. Some like me, write long [and hopefully good] stories.
I'm starting my final creative writing assignment, writing about a crystal shatter-proof sword. I'm hoping the idea actually works out, since some of it is based on the idea of Tiberium. Haha.

-Some people can sing, some can play instruments, some are good at sports, some can write well, and some can do nothing.- 5 random observations

Job applications

I have seen some of the most outrageous stuff on job vacancy advertisements ever since I started looking for part time jobs. My favourite so far:
Location: my house/at my home.

I mean, come on, we know you'd like home tutoring sessions. We'd like to know where your home is, or else we can't go to your place to give tuition, right? Just let us know where you stay. That's what the location means. Horribly sad.

Ski Trip

Argh. Just got off the phone with my parents. Mega ski trip is bloody well cancelled for me, and this isn't an event I can just write off and disappear round their backs for. I mean, they'd know if $540 just vanished from my account. So to disappoint all those hoping I'd go, I can't make this year's ski trip. Parents and money permitting, I'm going for the next one. Bloody hell, I want to go for this year's trip. Don't get me wrong on that.

Resonance

There was a mini-debate yesterday as to why some people tend to join in all, if any, activities or gathering of friends. I must say that I gathered this from the debate:

#1. If you tend to stay further out from your friends, you'll prefer to join in all activities/gatherings planned by friends.
Reason: You're cut off from your friends by distance. You can't just call them for a gathering at Melbourne Central.

#2. If you don't have many classes with your friends, you'll also prefer to join in all activities/gatherings planned.
Reason: You know they're in uni somewhere, but you can't meet up due to classes and timetables. You'll also wanna see more of them.

So there you have it. That's why I tend to join in when anyone asks me to join them for lunch/dinner/games etc etc.

Lunch

It's a good time for us friends to get together. We catch up with each other's weekends. We catch up with our non-mutual friends. We just spend some time together, enjoying each other's company. Eating and chatting brings some sense of kinship and comradeship during these times, especially with tests and exams drawing nearer. We need some protection, don't we? And so we find solace in our friends. Of course. We just kinda have to find a shoulder to cry on, a caring fellow to listen to you and your hopeless problems. It makes sense, doesn't it?

Refer to first pic you see below.

Creative writing

Finally managed to finish writing the nonfiction piece I'm supposed to write for my current assignment. It's due tomorrow, 4 pm. I'm done with the writing part, now I just have to put in the other section on aims and influences, where I'm required to expound what suggested to me to write on whatever topic I've chosen. If that doesn't sound right, its because I'm writing this at 2 in the morning, so that I can catch some quick shut-eye in the afternoon tomorrow.

When committees get together...

Magic happens. Anyway, it was fun. We went down to SK's [IESS ex-president 2 terms ago] place in Maribyrnong. Karaoke session, and lots of food, and better yet, we learnt bridge! Although not everyone likes singing, I was pretty sure I could hear the whole house full of people sing when "Mandy" played. Although I'd wager not all of us sang. It was a potluck lunch, with plenty of stuff to go around. Lots of fried food, as well as pasta. I think that's one of the easiest to cook when it comes to students. As for myself, I brought jelly.
Induction meeting this Monday [tomorrow]. And I'm going to have to finish off my work fast to be able to spend time on that.

Malaysia

No, this is not some soppy nostalgic post about how much I miss that "fair land".

I want to highlight the common perception that foreigners have of Malaysia.

It's a good place for shopping. It's a tourist haven. Food galore!

To tourists, they see more of the scenic part of Malaysia. We see the hopeless side of Malaysia - the constant bickering in Parliament, the idiocy between the two biggest political parties at home, and a myriad other hopelessly useless things we witness daily.

Well, I guess the best thing is that 80% of Malaysians at Melbourne Uni are Chinese. So we get to whine and do stuff we really wanna do, like studying properly, or working.

HA.

Good morning again!

I'm back to my laptop, and I'm continuing from where I left off yesterday. Today looks like the start of a 26 hour marathon. [and the clock's still ticking.] The heater cleaning guy is in the house now cleaning all the heating stuff, getting all the residue from the renovations out of the ducts. The jelly is still sitting in the fridge, waiting for me to take it out to the potluck lunch later.

Anyway, 26 hours is just a start. I'm seeing if I can stretch this to tomorrow night, when I literally crash for the night. So just keep an eye open on this blog. I'll update whatever stuff happens in the meantime.

Morning

Another sleepless night in Surrey Hills. Midnight snack's still sitting next to me [a delectable mud cake], and my laptop's blaring Korean DBSK songs. Jelly's setting in the fridge, haven't checked it since I left it in the fridge. Since I've nothing better to do, I'll start ranting and grumbling.

First off, it's disgraceful how democracy has been perverted in Malaysia for so long now. How can you drag the speaker of the house out, "escorting" him with police? That's disgusting.

And secondly, I'm sure of another thing. The Malaysian education system has been a hopeless failure since some smart aleck decided to start using only Malay in teaching. Now, the conventional argument is to ask, if the Chinese can do it, why can't the Malaysians? Ok, the answer is simple. Look at a simple book like Harry Potter. When the 6th book, The Half-Blood Prince came out, within 2 weeks the Chinese translation was on the shelves. Look at how long it took the Malay translation to hit the shelves. Now change the book from a popular novel to academic texts. Then you tell me how long it'll take a Malay translation to hit the shelves compared to the Chinese translation.
So, Muhyddin, take a hint. You don't need your local and foreign experts to tell you what is going on or going wrong. Ask your students, they'll tell you all you really need to know.

This is Malaysia [not Sparta you smart aleck], and we're just gonna have to demand change or force it ourselves. Which is no longer democracy if we take to the streets like in Thailand.

Study

ESD is hard. Especially when your team members decline to help you out enough. So far only Constantine on my group is helping me to complete the report. Which is good. But the girl isn't doing much.

I'm gonna stop whining and get on with the job. Currently updating my Matlab coding and scripts.

Another attempt at productivity

Whee. My Thursday is going to be another "record-breaking" day. Firstly, I'm going to try and get my Matlab part for ESD done with. That's due on Tuesday. Secondly, I'm going to have to finish off my Creative Writing article, which is due on Monday. And then I'm going to have to try and break the sleeping record. I'm going to sleep soon, so that I'll be charged up for tomorrow morning. Ha. This will be fun, I'm sure. Await my next few posts to see what I'm up to!

For the record

I am not gonna go without sleep for that long again. Because of sleep deprivation, I missed some lectures, stoned all the way to uni and back. But then, on the plus side, I managed to go to Crown, had good food, and got elected into a committee.

37 hours 45 minutes sleepless in Melbourne. Epic.

-Trade offs are difficult.-

IESS AGM update

Ok, I was half stoned when I went into the meeting, all owed to my epic lack of sleep - 29 hours without sleep. So going into that tiny lecture theatrette made for a little incoherence, as well as an accompanying disdain for authority. And so, in delivering my policy speech for the editor's position in IESS, I inadvertedly took swipes at the outgoing editor, Luke. I mean, it wasn't, and was never meant to be, a personal attack on him. *Side note: If this were in Star Wars it would have been the master [Luke] being dug at by the student [Kyp]. *

Jun Yeu also made a similar slip, taking a jibe at the outgoing publicity chief, Daniel. Luckily for the both of us, our outgoing seniors were sporting fellows, who understand what the IESS voting process is like. So for now, we can get along with our seniors and the exco members quite well.

New IESS exco:
President - Kok Keong
Vice - Wai Kit
Treasurer - Eric
Secretary - Luke

General committee:
Activities - David, Rachel
Logistics - Chun Yu
Publicity - Jun Yeu
Welfare - Shu Jie
Sponsorship - Michelle
IT - Kee Ching
Editor - Me

This will be fun. I mean it.