The place for yakking, yakking, yakking. The place for talking, chatting, commenting, whining, cursing, gloating.
The online version of the old-fashioned diary - the web blog.

I'm contemplating shutting down my blog. For no reason, other than the fact that I don't seem to be writing anything of interest to anyone, not even of interest to ME. My blog has become THE convenient place for me to whine about work, muse about shopping trips... BUT beyond that it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Somehow staying in PGP robs me of the ability to write, which, to a large extent, I attribute it to having an utterly boring life. I mean, it's kinda hard to get any inspiration when all you do is sit and stare at the 4 walls of your room, wondering how many bugs are infesting your room, how to kill those bugs, logging into Yahoo Auctions to find what's the latest cheapo offering you can bid for without burning a hole in your pocket.. and of course doing work, work and more work (right now that's Accounting which simply CANNOT be finished... and the exam is like next Monday!!!)

I guess being in the middle of the exam period I'm sick and tired of studying. Been studying accounting for the past 3 days non-stop... meaning I wake up to stare at the book, take short breaks to cook my meal (yess... I'm now only eating 1 official meal for the day because I'm too lazy to cook.... can snack away the rest of my hunger pangs or cook myself quick and simple stuff like instant porridge), then go back to staring at the book. It's not the staring at the book that is sickening.. it's the doing of the questions. After every chapter, there are at least like 30 questions... and I'm doing them all. You can't believe how long that takes... it takes me about like 1-2h to finish reading one chapter (eg. 1030am - 12pm)... and after that it will take me roughly till about 7-8pm working non-stop to finish those questions (okok... I know I got distracted halfway by taking short breaks to surf flowerpod and yahoo auctions... but hey... I'm going crazy for accounting lahz...) ... and my target is to clear 2 chapters a day!! Madness!!!

Anyway, I'm officially broke for the month. Why? Haiz... I've developed this crush on Hollister and Abercrombie stuff which is NOT at all good for my wallet. To add to the trauma, I've discovered that the F.O.S. (Factory Outlet Store) stores in Singapore carry Abercrombie and Hollister stuff (Yes.. I checked out both the Marina Square and IMM branches already) and right at the beginning of the month I promptly blew like $50 for three tops. Oh, also the $40 that went towards the Esprit denim mini (they were having 50% off you know... so hard to resist!!) That is excluding the 2 Abercrombie minis I bought last month (and also paid last month) which cost me $68. Grrr. Other purchases this month include my new bedset, my Ettusais powder foundation (actually starting to regret a bit... after all Ettusais isn't exactly well known for good foundations... the coverage is non-existant... but that's precisely why it's natural, I suppose... shall simply have to get an additional Lancome one when the time is ripe, I guess)... erm.. eating out also costs money... Hmm... Argh... Maybe I shall copy what nanyko did... which is to use accounting knowledge to do financial statements to keep track of his monthly expenditure... haa.. can you imagine doing up a "Profit and Loss Statement" and a "Balance Sheet" every month to keep track of your "Revenue" (OMG I don't have any revenue), "Expenses" and "Assets" (OMG... what kind of assets can I possibly have???)?

I've been 'chaoing' Trax for the past few days to come to school so I can see him.... hmm.. maybe not because I really want to see him lahz.. but at least it's more entertaining than staring at my accounting textbook 24h a day!!! Haa.. everyday I start off, fresh in the morning, convincing myself that I will finish my alotted work earlier today, so that I can go out in the evening (ie. take a bus down to Marina Square to the F.O.S shop to check for new Abercrombie tees.... hehe) but of course that never happens! Plus I won't go out tomorrow, I think.... psychoed myself that I must stay in to watch the last episode of the 9pm TCS drama... yupe.. I watch that particular swimming drama everyday nowdays because otherwise I read 1h more of Accounting...

And being the materialistic creature I am, I shall wax about what I bought myself....so let this section NOT be read by guys lest you all die of boredom....

My Abercrombie Emily mini! Love the skirt... the ruffles... though the color isn't as nice as the one in the picture...

The Lesley Floral Flare... quite nice too although it has only one single layer... but a bit loose for me... trying to swap/sell this... Yupe the picture definitely looks nicer...I mean the colors..

Abercrombie spaghetti that I got at F.O.S... muahaha... the exact thing is selling on Yahoo Auctions for $25 but I only paid $13.90 for mine!!

Also got the Hollister Pink Sands Hotel tee and a very nice Jill Stuart top.. .but can't find the pictures anywhere online...

My new Ettusais foundation... there's of course not much to see... it's the limited edition compact case that looks good.. but as the official Ettusais site uses flash... too bad I can't just directly use their image links...

Anyway think I should go back to mugging... haiz... but before that, it's of course good to have Trax sprouting more nonsense on his blog again after a hiatus of 3 months... (well the job of the gal is always to make trouble for the guy you know...)

CS3214 is finally history, ever since after the presentation on Wednesday. There were quite a number of small glitches during the presentation, but thankfully no major ones. Regardless, suffice it to say my entire group went 'siao' after the presentation... as the hour after our presentation was free, we actually spent some time snapping pictures of our group, with our evaluators in the presentation room???? And making a lot of noise lolz...

Life post 3214 is wierd. Immediately on that very Wednesday, my group went out for lunch at Holland V... then we went downtown to 'idle'. REALLY wierd coz it's 'idle'... we weren't doing any 'activities' like watching movies, shopping, eating... most of our time was spent 'idling'... well... not too bad for my pocket (which is starting to hurt again... ouch!!)... though I splurge some $30++ on a bedset...

Thursday. Had piano lesson in the afternoon, so had no choice but to get out of my room. Even best.. My mum wanted to go town to get her EL moisturiser so badly... my dad picked me up after my class and drove us to Orchard... whereby commenced a round of shopping for skincare products!!! Felt so liberated and tempted by all the Xmas goodies offered by all the cosmetic counters... Arghh... Temptation!!! Heez.. Ettusais was having this UOB card promotion in which I would get 2 cans of pink/purple powder with a pouch & a powder compact case if I bought their foundation cake and case.... And it so happened I was looking for foundation!! Muahaha.. best was mum had some $50 Metro voucher which I used partially to offset the bill so I only ended up paying an extra $17 for my new goodies... heez...

Sigh... I need to start mugging for Accounting. Exam in 11 days more but I still don't feel the urgency. What's wrong with me manz???

At last... at Loooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggg last.. sent out the cs3214 code liao! Full of bugs, dunno whether we even sent out the correct version.. whatever. FINISHED. Only presentation left. I never want to see SunApp in my life ever again. On the other hand wouldn't mind TomCat though. Haha. Although I learnt nothing in the course of the project, it sparked of a bit of interest in Tomcat, though highly unlikely I will follow up and act on it.

In the middle of readnig the 6 of 7 papers for 4250 tomorrow. Sigh. So boring. Sent out review to JLim after like 2 reminders (opps!!). Now in a super nuah mood and I don't feel like doing anything, which is obviously BAD. It's the beginning of the month, and so I'm richer with my allowance having been granted. Whoo. Feel like indulging in an online shopping spree buying up Abercrombie minis. Opps.

In any case, will have to finish reading the papers for 4250. You know I still can't adjust to life after 3214; it's like my life feels so empty now. My engine has stopped completely and I just don't feel like moving. Even though my UROP proposal is due in 3 days. Sheez.

Want:
1. Buy The Sims 2 and play. (When was the last time I truly played a computer game?)
2. Do UROP (anything but coding or studying... opps)
3. Kick back and relax. (Was so shocked to learn that Xi Li Men was showing on TV today... err... I didn't even know when it restarted)
4. Go shopping.

......

From now on, I shall change my philosophy... never do complicated stuff initially... coz they just don't work :(

Was integrating the blog, which took me like 2+ days (unacceptably slow u know!!!) Ran into so many unforeseen, funny little errors, like:

-The login form. Turns out that the blog submits to a servlet, and I have absolutely no idea how the fields are later processed (though I looked at the code lahz... but can't see the linkages between the various .java source files)... Was fretting how to change the login page, because it's written in Velocity and I can't import jsp tag libaries and henceforth get the session objects (eg. userid). Played around with VelTag (which was a big mistake.... took a few hours just to find the CORRECT way to compile the tag library, which the people at Apache just REFUSE to put up a compiled version for download and their JJAR doesn't work!!!) Was under the false impression that Veltag allows me to write a jsp page and then import in the Velocity commands (so can cut n paste from the original login page)... but somehow whole thing didn't work... plus after I did the page... I realized I didn't know in which directory to put it into in order to reference all the java methods!!! Haiz... Anyway, after some nap.. woke up, thought... hey.. why not try submitting to the servlet path directly? N it worked!!! Haha... so I can use a pure jsp page now liaoz...

-The path to the blog. Of all things, the blog had to use virtual servlet mappings to map to some path... there are several various kinds of path, which was initially quite confusing... for eg: the installation path in the server directory (kekez.. .this is easy to understand); the servlet mapping (some virtual path that doesn't EXIST actually, but is only used to access the blog)... anyway, this part was actually the easiest in the end...

-Javascript! Oh my goodness.. this was the worse thing... a 5 minute job turned into a 15h job because body onload simply couldn't work for me!!!! I was so frustrated that all the form auto submit scripts that I got from the Internet couldn't work and I just didn't know why! Was it because jsp doesn't support document and body onload in javascript? Actually was about to give this part up liaoz when hand a brainwave this afternoon... yet another crazy idea to try... realize that the javascript submit function had the same name as my submit button... as in both were named submit... And you know what? It was because my button was called "submit" that the browser refused to perform the javascript submit operation and kept on giving me errors!!! ARRRGHHHH!!!!!! So stupid!!!

Anyway, back to writing more interfaces... the forum, now, on hindsight looks easier to integrate than the blog... At least it uses jsp and not Velocity and I can thus edit the files manually... haiz... must work harder to clear everything ASAP....

Ooo... am in extremely high spirits today... Wahahaha.. .Blojsum works! Finally! Muahahaha... And I got a new present of a Microsoft Natural Keyboard today because my dad wanted to take back my desktop's keyboard!!

In short, I'm convinced that it doesn't do one good to be stressed up. Rather, weekly outings with parents, without any work-related stress, but plenty of pampering, are good for one's mental well-being.

Now in seventh heaven... so much so that I forgot what I wanted to say while I was in the bus this afternoon.. Never mind... save that for another depressing day..... While the strains of 'Consolation', the piece I got from the esteemed you-know-who from NUSPE rings in my head... I realized my rendition of the piece sounds 100 miles away from his.... I just don't have the required subtlety to make it work...

Can't wait to see what Rach piece Rahul is supposed to come up with for our next concert piece... Generally speaking, we're sooo convinced we should try to do Rach before we graduate.... Heez... I haven't had any piano excitement for a long while...

I know I'm babbling incoherently... but I just can't help it.. heez... hope my ridiculously joyous mood infects everybody... right now I feel so on top of the world that I can vanquish anything that comes in my way... a mood, which I'm afraid, won't last long, needless to say.

How nice if everyday could be this pleasant.... My cluster leader finally came back and opened the mailbox, and I found my Hollister mini skirt waiting... Opps... fell so in love with the material that I'm going to bid for another two more on Yahoo Auctions.... Opps... going broke again...

Haa.. this is life... to live and enjoy it to the fullest. Don't you agree?

When it's 4:44AM in the morning, and I'm still sitting in front of the screen doing my presentation for 4250, I smell trouble.

Actually it's not because it's particularly difficult to do. Just sianness. I spent less time doing the ppt than in engaging in other, frivolous, distracting online activities.

In any case, I've come to the amazing conclusion that NUS is a place of cronyism. Oh, let me rephrase that. I think it's not just NUS; it probably applies to any university in the world.

Case in point? Research. Research publications. In any journal paper (one worth its salt, at least), there will definitely be >2 authors. 3 or 4 names are actually very common.

So what has this to do with cronyism? Well, if one would just glance at the publications by NUS professors, one would realize quite soon that a professor would always work with several other professors to produce his papers. So, always the same names are linked together in a publication.

Cronyism.

Anyway, realized that the homepages of our NUS professors are actually quite entertaining (when one is so bored as to read them). Amongst them, other than the stsndard fare like resume, list of publications, courses teaching etc., some of them have also put up rather non-standard material:

- Prof A lists all his research publications. Hardly unusual, BUT he lists them all with the ranking of the journal the paper is published in. A highly questionnable move, since most of his papers are in journals ranked level 2 or 3? (erm... why so proud? Not level 1 lehz...)

- Prof B puts up ah-lien raps. In wav format, mind you.

- Prof C attempts chinese translation, with hilarious results.

But if in future I ever become a TA, I suppose I could do what one TA do to. Proclaim her favorite brand of cosmetics and clothing on her professional, university homepage.

The wonders of homepages, and their abilities of networking.

In any case, had my UROP discussion with Juliana today. And, settled on a direction that I will be taking for the forthcoming semester. And then, I shall try my hand, as she once did, to get published with a trend analysis study, a rather uncommon and unorthodoux article for reputable journals. But heck, she got it into Communications of ACM, why can't I do the same.

The other tidbit of interest... apparrently the starting pay of Assistant Professors is 72K annually... for working 9 months a year. Heez.. not too bad a deal, just that will have to go through hell to get that phd in the first place.

Decided to take a break after yesterday's Accounting test by going to town and engaging in a shopping spree!! Oh my goodness... I really haven't been to town for ages.... so much so I actually 'discovered' the following changes:

1. Esprit is going to open in Wisma Atria!!! (opps)
2. Isetan was having a Bazaar sale!!! (yeah!!!)
3. Ground level shops in Wisma had a huge layout change. Urban & Co disappeared, replaced by Matchbox Girl; and a lot of the shops 'moved' around to another unit.
4. Hotel Meridien's food court (the one that opens till 3am) can now 'make it'.
5. Robinson's doesn't close at 8:30pm on Saturdays.

... In other words, I indulged in a shopping spree yesterday! Hee.. walked smack into Wisma's Isetan Bazaar sale and omg!!! Fashion Lab pieces were like so cheap! Splurged on 3 pieces (although I think I tried something like 10... haha... too bad they didn't fit..), including this long, floaty dress (which I would never have thought would look good on the rack, but it looked good on me!)

Tried to look for this particular Esprit cami as featured in Her World, but all I found were the XL pieces... In any case bought a spag top and another top and managed to make it to $50... reason why I needed $50 of purchases was so that I could apply for the Esprit card (which originally needs $300 in a single receipt, but they're having some promotion with Her World so it only costs $50). Nearly fainted when I was told I need to spend $1000 in a year to renew that card... well... I guess... Nope... definitely not renewing the card, unless I strike lottery.

Landed up eating at Hotel Meridien's kopitiam. Food was quite good...(or was it because I was hungry??) Had carrot cake and hokkien mee...

And Trax finally re-bought the SIGG bottle which I gave him for his birthday present, but which he lost in some LT. Haiz.

Hehe... had a 'too' enjoyable weekend.... Shall have to work extremely hard on CS3214 now... sigh...

I guess I'm more or less alright now. If it hurts, it still will hurt. Anyway, life still goes on. Ours is a merciless world that only demands one thing: results, results and more results. If one doesn't churn out the results, one is screwed. Big time. Having said that, I'm still pissed.

I guess my ability to be rational and my control of emotions just isn't up to scratch yet. Am still too temperamental. It's halfway through the semester... logically also the MOST common period of time for me to freak out at all the things that seem to be going wrong. That said, everything will just work out fine in the end, so why must I always put myself through this unpleasant, self-caused period of extreme stress? I think I still bother too much about what others think. I try too damn hard to live up to expectations, but I never can please everybody. As a result, others have extremely high expectations on me and when I don't live up to them because I just CAN'T spare the time required to placate everybody, I disappoint, others as well as myself. And disappointment hurts.

It's always easy to throw a tantrum, to cry, to take the 'escapist' way and just not let what hurt bother you. Ultimately, I find that so much easier to deal with than disappointment. I dunno... I am perhaps still a little depressed; heck I don't even feel the urge to do shopping (since the two things I bought from auctions STILL hasn't arrived in the mail yet!!!) , the urge to play a computer game, most dangerously, the urge to work hard, hard, hard for the upcoming 4250 research proposal. No urge to continue with 3214, no urge to do anything about my UROP, maybe a slight urge to put everything in order for accounting, but it's so slight that it's insignificant. Still I should finish the 4250 stuff soon; it's a tingling bother on the back of my mind.

My left eye has felt like it has this bruise on it for a long time, only it obviously isn't a bruise because I did not ever get myself hit by any object in that area before. At first, I advocated it to insufficient sleep for too many days in a row, but when after the documentation was finally handed up and I forced myself to sleep, yet didn't change anything after I woke up, I began to get a little worried. Luckily the bruise feeling subsided a bit by this morning and now, I can probably conclude it's just not enough sleep. Sigh.

I'm just feeling calm now. You know, the feeling of 'que sera, sera'. if things go wrong, hug my pig and look away. Ultimately, why should I even care what others think if they don't care what I think? I'm just making myself upset for nothing. It's not worth it. Really wish everyone could just be simply, naively, happy. Then there would be no more troubles on this earth. After all, isn't happiness the prime reason for us wanting to exist in this world???

I'm severely demoralized.

On the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Maybe I should just find the courage to jump. To end it all. The open window beckons.

I don't see how hell could get any worse.

Haiz...

I spent half my day waking up and going through the 3214 documentation, checking for grammar errors...

... Then Juliana called. And asked me to pass her the formatted articles and forms ASAP. So I'm going to give them to her tomorrow...

... And I spent the rest of the day editing and formatting 2 miserable articles (Can you believe that??)

Yupe... those 2 articles which I slogged for one whole month in July have been accepted in some funny encyclopaedia... just received the news this weekend (actually yesterday 'coz I didn't check my mailbox for days!!)

And the 3214 documentation is still paralyzed at chapter 5.. I'm so going to die for this...

I can only say one thing.. I dunno what I'm doing anymore...

Why am I in UROP when I'm not doing any readings? Why am I in 4250 when my research proposal is going to be a failing grade? Why am I doing the 3214 documentation last minute? The sort of crap I've managed to cook up for 3214 even amazes me, the creator.

To date, I think my slowest writing speed still goes to those 2 UROP articles. 20 pages in 1 month. Snail's crawl. At least for the documentation, although I landed up writing only 3 pages in the first day, that pace picked up pretty quickly. But still not fast enough for my liking.

It's so sad that I'm the perfectionist who is always doomed for failure.

There are so many things I wanna do, but I can't do them because of deadlines. This deadline, that deadline. So many deadlines. I feel stifled and suffocated. And it's going to remain like this all the way till at least after November 4th.

Boy. NUS. Manz. This life sucks.

I'm very tired of doing all the work myself. Working and getting some results at least is something. Working and getting no results, however, seems to be the norm.

Right now, I can't make up my mind between reading the 4250 textbook or trying to write the next chapter of the 3214 documentation (& I've conveniently forgotten there's an accounting tutorial hanging around somewhere undone).

Oh, there's accounting test coming up too. I had better not forget it.

Documentation is now paralyzed. I feel I'm the one at fault again for not having done anything about it. The IBM laptop is sitting, lid open, half accusing me of neglecting it.

And I feel a sense of calmness wash over me at the piano music from the hifi telling me to let it go. Maybe I should just hug my pig and go to sleep.

Went Dasio with my parents after my piano class today. And whoo!!! The 3-tier drawers that I'd been looking for so long were in stock!!! Yeah!!! So bought 3 of them because there were 3 colors and I couldn't decide which color I liked best... opps... Anyway they now contain all my cosmetics items and am sitting in my cupboard... whereas the previous rubberized 3-tier drawer is now sitting next to the 3 new 3-tier drawers... hehehe...

That's the high part. Now's the low.

I'm seriously worried. At the rate I'm progressing with my documentation, it's damn slow. TOO slow. I feel I will end up finishing it like the night before I hand it up (which is a severly no... Thursday is a Singapore Idol night and usually I don't do a lot of work as a result...) But I'm TOO slow... and I don't like to push it till the last-minute coz it's very dangerous.. But it's like, if I'm perfectionistic (and I'm feeling maybe a bit too perfectionistic in this project? Hmm... should try to cut corners maybe?) then I'll need a good amount of time to churn out something good (heck... must even go back to read through what I've written to spend time correcting, for goodness say, the PHRASING.. so it doesn't sound too couth and unpolished!!! And I've a 1001 things that I need to finish! And documentation is eating up all my time!!! ARghhhhh!!!!!

I foreesee a very stressed 1 month period.. and I dunno whether I can pull it through.. the deadlines I have are just so damn scary... how to achieve everything to a sufficiently high standard????

Oct 1: Documentation
Oct 5: Research proposal (Damn... i dunno even how to start this man)
Oct 9: Accounting test somewhere in between muz do Accting project.. haiz
Nov 1: 3214 project
Nov 4: UROP proposal

UROP is another thing that has me up in stitches... but dammit.. I haven't done ANY reviews of articles... what kind of report am I going to write? Once my documentation is handed up, I'm going to make UROP my priority before anything else... including 3214... Heck... 3214 I won't die, but UROP I may just fail.... it's like a life-and-death situation already.. :(:(

So there I have a very terrible time ahead. Still dunno why I even have the time to blog now. I'm writing documentation from the minute I awake till the minute I fall asleep... Hmm.. not working hard enough I think... I'm awake 18 hours a day and I only work 12 hours, I think.... can't help it... arghh... must attend to 'daily affairs' like washing dishes, eating, bathing etc lehz....

Yess... I'm starting to freak, I think.

To end this with a high note, I've just received my YSL palette and my 3 Glam Shine lipsticks, presents from Aunt Winnie back from her Thailand trip... hurray... the YSL palette looks really glam and the colors are sooooo elegant!!! Arhhhh... I like......

Trax is right. He says I'm an auntie (Waahh... I dun want to be an auntie!!!!)

For some strange reason, my love for classical piano music has been revived.

After a long period of 'sianzness' and fatigue at having to play the same pieces over and over again and never getting them to scratch, it's quite bizairre that this first love has just returned without any warning.

The only aggravation is that I've decided that amassing a huge collection of classical mp3s on my new IBM T42 laptop and listening to them daily or whenever I'm doing work is fundamental to remembering the 'goodness' of classical music.

Somehow, from the deepest recesses of my memory, I can vaguely remember how FM 92.4 was once my favorite radio station.

Or is it because I am nearing the end of September, and crawling ever closer to 2005 that I am getting nervous about having achieved absolutely nothing fruitful for my next exam, hence not having removed the obstacle of technical incompetence which renders me incapable of probably even going to try for the LRSM exam.

I have to admit that staying in PGP is horrible for my piano. That my digial piano is next to my bed doesn't help at all, since what I'm training for is even touch for Chromatic Fantasy and sound quality + banging prowness on the Prokofiev sonata.

In any case, it's very shiok listening to the Prokofiev sonata on my newly converted wma file. Am going to convert all my classical CDs into wma format and store them on my laptop. If harddisk space runs out, I'll probably buy a new USB external drive??

I shall resolve to practise my piano. And I shall start by doing the following things:

1. Go down to CFA 3 times a week, including the crucial Saturday morning. No more sleeping in late, no more trying to squeeze accounting reading on a Saturday morning. And no more caring even if Trax waahs.

2. Practising my Hanon/Cramer/Beringer daily for at least half/hour on my keyboard.

3. Listening, listening, and listening to classical piano stuff.

4. Hmm. maybe one day drop by at Mrs See's place with my laptop and copy out all her CDs... hehee...

5. Start to read all those 'composer books' one day... to garner the information that will be needed for viva voce? (Sigh... i hate this manz...)

Finally, the 4250 presentation is done. DONE. Finally DONE. Sigh.. but at such high price. I didn't manage to do anything fruitful today, because I was so sleepy from staying up to do the presentation, plus I nearly fell asleep at the Accounting tutorial (which I had skipped to do 4250 previously anyway)

Anyway, should be going out to town tomorrow... but only in the evening 'coz there's again CS3214 meeting again *groan*. Was happily playing my Prokofiev sonata earlier on at midnight and can say that practice does help, but haiz.. I'm still very, very far away from the CD standard....

I can hardly believe it.. my laptop conked off yesterday... so it's at the service centre awaiting a quotation for repair right now...

I can hardly believe it... I may be getting myself a new laptop... went down to look at all the various brands at Sim Lim yesterday... seems like all are too expensive... so I'll probably end up buying Dell...

I can hardly believe it... today Mum called me up to go for dinner because she wanted to go to some sports warehouse sale at the Sportslink branch at the ex-Turf Club. Anyway, all of us ended each buying a pair of sports shoes (Got a very nice Nike pair.. except the base is white so scared it'll get dirty easily.. anyway got it at half price lah)... The worst thing was we didn't know the Food court there was under renovation, so we had nothing to eat. By the time we finished shopping for groceries at the Giant hypermart, it was already 8.40pm.. landed up going to Holland Village (the market area) to eat XO Fish beehoon because that was one of the few places open for dinner at that late hour..

Anyway, I now have a 3-tier drawer.. which mum bought me coz she couldn't stand me waiting to buy it at Dasio.. except I always miss it as it gets out of stock.

Just did my laundry, and unbelievably, handwashed my bowling bag (dunno what possessed me!!).. Should continue mugging for 4250... argh.. did you know I haven't started reading any of my 'external' pdfs yet? Sheez.. how to present like that on Tuesday??

Watched SG Idol tonight (finally!!) Still in a statement of shock.

Was awed by Candice Foo's performance, or maybe because she just picked the right song, a song I liked. Of the bunch of people up tonight, think she was one of the few who really can sing and wasn't relying on popularity. As Dick Lee put it, she just 'emerged from nowhere'. Was so impressed I actually voted for her (my gosh! I wasted 50 cents on a meaningless affair!) She had the best balance in not overdoing and underdoing her song, and she clearly put in quite a bit of effort in training her vocals.

But she has plenty to improve on; lack of suitable expressions in her face when singing (probably still at the stage worried on producing the notes!!), doesn't exactly have the X-factor or screen charisma, appears too reserved... ironically it worked because I detested quite a number of the other contestants who were just damn toooooo over the top and so damn high it's quite irritating to watch them...

I like steady, hard, determined workers. Not gimmicks. Not idiots. And certainly not those who only rely on popularity.

In any case, Alicia Keys' If I Ain't Got You is now playing on repeated loop on my computer. Found the next song I will stick with for quite some time, though ironically I like Candice Foo's rendition more; Alicia Keys' ultra sleek and smooth delivery cancels out some of the moving effects of this song...

SG Idol could get interesting if more dark horses like these appear... hmm... I don't think Candice Foo has a good chance of winning because she doesn't have sufficient stage presence, but dammit I just like the number she did today!!!

Been very busy this past couple of days... after the 3214 static website was done, the next thing I landed up doing was the class diagram... sigh...

Anyway, the efforts to do dynamic roles via the Role-Based-Access-Control model has turned out well because Jie Mien approved it straightaway... basically I think we're on the right track... just need small cosmetic changes here and there to get the architecture to work. My group wants to dedicate every Wednesday to do group coding.. was haggling with Trax just now, and basically, I've secured myself usage of his laptop on Wednesday (but must let him know in advance blah blah blah... so that he can 'redirect' his work flow so that he won't have to use his laptop on Wednesday, which means he won't go to CIR (Center of Internet Research) on Wednesdays etc etc etc.)

Soo, that's 3214.

BUT coming up next is 4250... the dreaded, comprehensive topic presentation me and SJ have to put up by next Tuesday (*shudders*). Well, apparrently Prof Lim wants comprehensiveness... so I'm going to give comprehensiveness to him.. haiz... which means I'll have tons of reading to do in the meanwhile... since I didn't do anything yesterday other than slacking, playing my Prokofiev (because I wanted to continue slacking 'legitimately') and slacking.

I SHALL, MUST start research on 4250 today.

It's been quite a 'happening' week. In the end didn't go for the Swenson's thingy... suppose everyone else forgot about it and was too lazy to go anyway. Purchasing quite a few things on Yahoo Auctions nowadays... my conditioner (1 auction finished so I should get it soon, another still in process), a few skirts and tops (from FP forum in the process of negotiation)... ohoh.. only beginning of the month and I'm spending like a duke again (opps!!) Kekez... must buy less things. But met up with the Shiseido PN blush seller on Tuesday so now I have a new cream blush (and I got it at like 1/5 to 1/6 of the counter price... what a bargain!!!

Speaking of which, I had a completely lousy dinner last night. Somehow I dunno is it because I put too much oil, or never turned the fries in time... I was frying them nicely, golden brown... but one side of them all became black and the fries had this funny burnt taste to it. To 'curb' the problem, I decided to eat it with chilli sauce. Now, as everyone who has eaten with me knows, my chilli sauce comes from the free fast food chilli packets due to lack of storage space. And I had the bad luck to squeeze 3 chilli packets, of which 2 seem to have gone bad, leaving me effectively with 1 chilli sauce. AND before the lettuce in my fridge spoils, I should finish it soon.

Wonder how's Mrs See after her operation, that is if she's well enough to call me up for lesson on Saturday (Erm.. haven't touched the Bsch Fugue yet... opps) The other piece of good news however, is that wf gave me a Gmail account yesterday so effectively now I have 1GB of email space... wahahaha... and 6 invites (who I dunno who to give to??)

Now eagerly wondering what to cook tonight. And there's of course Singapore Idol, which I shan't miss this time round (went Comedex last time so as to skip the PGP fire drill... opps). In the meantime, must do more work. And am pleased, pleased, pleased. But haiz.. if only I had money... then I could spend on my latest whim, the Abercrombie mini skirt....

It's been an eventful week. The 3214 website is almost done. But 'cept for that, can't say I've made any progress in anything else.

Have been having endless CS3214 meetings... typically early weekday mornings at 8 or 9am. It's always the same place, S15 Level 4, in the corner next to the door. And we always end up climbing 4 storeys of stairs to reach the place. Grrr... so tiring.

Tuesday was Trax's birthday, so we went down to town to eat. Landed up having dinner, at, of all places, Swenson's next to Heeren. The food was so-so.. only high point was that we got a free Firehouse ice-cream because it was his birthday. Landed nuahing around Orchard, buying his Muvo ^2 remote control (I also want!!!!!! BUT not willing to pay $45 for one leh...), eating cheap, Tuesday promotional ice-cream waffle at Cafe Gelato... Ohh... the waffle was very nice; hot and crispy. After this, I think I"m going to dump Waffle Town at Coronation permanently. And yes, I developed a yearning to buy myself a printer after seeing the i255 selling at Best Connection for only $99.

That fetish became fully overblown on Thursday, the day Comex 2004 (the computer exhibition) opened. Got to know of a Going-back-to-school promotion at the NUS Co-op from nyanko, in which this unknown Canon ip1000 printer was going fo $79!!! So cheap! But didn't dare to buy, because wasn't sure whether it would be cheaper at Comex, plus it was an unknown model. After some checking up, sorta discovered that this model was ultra new and was only being launched at Comex. So pulled Trax along to Comex, since he had to buy his wireless adapter for cmc anyway. Grrr... Comex was selling ip1000 at $99... was so tempted to buy the i475 which was slashed from #300++ to $149.. but managed to restrain. But the getting back from Suntec that night was tough. We walked all the way from Suntec to Hotel Intercontinental to try to flag a cab, but still couldn't get one. In the end, the surcharge for making a telephone booking for a cab still couldn't be avoided. Haiz..

Still Thursday wasn't so bad. Had the meeting with Jie Mien(our advisor) for 3214. Website was only up right till the middle of the meeting because the navigation screwed up and I was fixing it all morning.... (Dammit... late again as a result but I didn't get fined.... but 2 other unlucky people did!!!)

Friday. 9am 3214 meeting again (Haiz!!) to finalize the functionalities. Well, trying to narrow down the specific user groups for each function turned out to be a chore that took place all the way till 5pm! In the interim, went down to Co-Op to book my printer, then found out it had become cash and carry and was soon carting my ip1000 home. Went back to CFA to do some piano practice in the DT since nyanko had booked the place. Well, I still didn't start learning the Bach Fugue because I ended up trying to repair my Prokofiev sonata 3!!! Oh no!!!

NUSPE dinner took place at Marche in the end. Last I heard, we're going for some cheap Swenson 5-scoop affair on Wednesday. Let's see how it'll go. In the meantime, 4 chapters of Accounting, endless research papers, and the 1542-page long J2EE tutorial awaits me. Arghhh.

I've just finished lunch... well.. sort of lah... lunch consists of a century egg, frosties cornflakes and canned fried dace with salted black beans.

Had an extremely un-eventful morning doing all the questions in chapter 1 of the Accounting textbook as well as my 1st tutorial. Grrr.... it took me ONE WHOLE morning and caused me to develop backache!!! Have been in a neverending state of 'nuahness' since... anyway targeting to finish the 3214 website by TODAY. Really hate it that it takes up ALL my time such that I don't even have time to do my UROP readings. And yes, I think I'm going to cut Accounting lecture tomorrow again.

It's getting hot in my room again and for some reason it's damn sunny today. Even worse. It seems to be one of those lazy, hot, unproductive Sunday afternoons when I will typically accomplish nothing.

Watched the table tennis semi finals yesterday... grr... damn wasted that she lost by so few points. Anyway, went to IMM for dinner and conveniently stopped by DASIO to get myself another basket, another letter holder, this mini scale (that weights till 500g) and another 2 towel hangers. I still couldn't find the 3-tier drawers which I have heard so many people rave about in Flowerpod about... sigh.. just out of luck.

Life seems to be progressing in a neverending state of boring-ness. My UROP is stagnant, I seem to be busy for the sake of being busy yet accomplishing little.. in short am just doing nothing or not enough. Haiz.. where has all my time gone to? And Mrs See is going for some operation so there won't be piano classes next week, so out of impulse I promised her I'll finish learning the notes of my Bach Fugue the next time I see her. Problem is, it's something like 10 pages long and not at all simple... opps I might have just made an empty promise.

It's 8am now and I've been up for an hour. Amazing!!

Been sleeping earlier and earlier these days, due to inability to remain in a state of alertness. Grrr... it's always the food. After I have a late dinner, which typically finishes at about 10pm after all the washing up, the digestion effect sets in... and I'll be in Zzzzz state at midnight which is goddamn early!!

Zlave came to visit my room last night (surprisingly??) so we had dinner whilst watching Singapore Idol, which due to my blurness, caused me to miss 1/2h because I thought it would start at 8.30pm when it started at 8pm!!!

Life is getting Sooooo busy. The website interface that I've started doing for CS3214 forever seems to be in a perpetual state of un-conpletedness. Add to that after our meeting with the advisor yesterday morning, it seems that we must additionally read research papers about e-learning functionalities on portals and what makes them effective in order to substantiate for why we should include our proposed functionalities... and we've to submit her some proposal next week!!! Grrr!!! The website is taking ALL my time away... haven't been reading my readings for CS4250, haven't been reading accounting, haven't beenr eading UROP papers... Ouch.

Anyway, today is going to be another full-fledged workday. Hopefully I can finish the whole website thingy by today.. and in the meantime make a decision whether to attend Accounting lecture at 10am tomorrow... NUS sucks manz... this lecture is due to the one that we missed because it was National Day.. hullo.. Singapore sucks lorz... a public holiday is still NOT a holiday and has to be made-up...

Still in pretty high, chirpy spirits (no idea why!)... need to go shopping this weekend to scout for SIGG waterbottles.... which place has the best designs huh??

As each day passes, my urge to work, to go out, to go shopping, is diminishing at an alarming rate... looks like I had better take some action before everything degenerates into chaos again....

Ohh.. finally made a trip to Dasio, the $2 Japanese stall, descendant of the 100 yen shop and ancestor of $1.99. Got lots of stuff, including the long-awaited letter holder which is now hanging behind my door.

Came back, opened the fridge, discovered that the pieces of fillet my mum passed to me had leaked out a teeny bit of water. Alarm alert!!! Immediately used my new Dasio basket to contain all food that should be in the freezer but was instead in my fridge due to lack of freezer space and carted them over to the main freezer in the kitchen. So sad.. now I still don't have a basket to carry all my barang barang to the kitchen when I cook???

Tonight's food wasn't that great. Was feeling hungry early on in the evening, so spent so much time opening a can of Dou Si Fish to eat. OMG!!! This particular China brand is so gross!!! People put Dou Si with the fried dace fish, but this brand put.. I dunno what... some soggy veggie?? Couldn't bring myself to finish it so threw out the can. Haiz. 2nd thing thrown away.. this morning also, threw away some of my yong tau foo cause it tasted funny (Suspect it might have gone a bit bad...)

Anyway, dinner was boring ole fish & chips again. 'Cept this time I dipped the fish in batter first, so it turned out a little crispy (Hmm... how to achieve the thick crust layers which we find in Long John's???)The remains of my egg batter, which was used as part of the dip, eventually became plain, simple egg soup, rather bland and tasteless, but a perfect complement to all the other salty food.

Disaster of the night however must go to the baby carrots. As I was lazy, I didn't feel like boiling the carrots in the pot, the step I always use to cook vegetables. So, I decided to fry the carrots in butter in the pan. BIG mistake. The carrots took so long to cook because they were so hard, whereas the butter had burnt itself out long before the carrots cooked. So, I had carrots coated with burnt butter, that tasted absolutely disgusting. But managed to swallow all 6 down with my egg soup to wash away the bad after taste.

Having 8am-12pm lectures tomorrow. Yawn. Should sleep soon, I guess.

I've more or less settled into PGP, or so I thought.

Have tried cooking for quite a number of days. The sink is still choked, though considerably so after some amount of repairs done by the technician. I've gone shopping at Carrefour, Giant and NTUC all in the span of one week. Amidst all kinds of trials and tribulations, well, I'm living rather comfortably on my food supplies.

Went for NUSPE last night for the first time in dunno how long. And was pleasantly surprised to find everyone back (or have I been away for so long??) Yeah, I should be more loyal to this small community of friends.

In any case, I've enough in my room now to hibernate. BUT my mother brought that concept to new heights today when she came to visit and bring over more food stuff. She brought so much that now my entire fridge+ freezer is completely full, such that I have trouble squeezing even my vitamins into the fridge. Plus, I have a basket full of vegetables, compliments of her, sitting on my desk now because I have nowhere else to put it. And of course, the other new addition is the cardboard box under my bed, which officially holds all my canned food, rice cooker, and egg boiler now.

As if that wasn't enough, the thermos flask of home-made soup on my table is probably turning cold right at this moment. I've strict orders to drink it by tonight.

Sigh. To relieve a bit of the burden of the fridge tonight, I shall fry 4 pieces of dory fish fillet as supper. Since, it is but one of the numerous items in the fridge (not the freezer!!) and I'm really not sure meat won't spoil in the fridge.

To anyone who cares to know, the resident is back home again.

So it's back to PGP days. Of course I've learnt a lesson since my last escapade there; hence MY room now has tons of other stuff to make my life comfortable.

To those who remembered my ex-room and it's share of electrical appliances, as of now, that has been increased. Things which run on electricity now include:
-Hifi
-Desktop
-Japanese table lamp (cheap, good-looking find from BKK days...)
-Tower fan (New... specially bought to combat the HEAT...)
-Fridge
-TV
-Digital keyboard (88 keys to stand in for my piano for the time being...)
-Rice cooker
-Boiler

...The non-electrical stuff meanwhile includes:

-Tons of hangers (No MORE shortage nowadays...)
-Laundry rack (to be opened and 'displayed' along the corridor whenever I next do laundry)
-Shoe rack
-Four-tier plastic tray (to contain my new-found passion in skincare products, FOOD, and of course stuff like boilers..)
-Plastic 'combination' tray (My savior to contain all miscellaneous items like batteries, smart cards, stationary...)
-Laundry bag (No more hanging of dirty clothes behind the door!!)
-IKEA hanging partitions (This is my savior.. now the tiny wardrobe can contain 5 times as many clothes as before since all the vertical space can be used...)

...In short my room has literally grown. Just that it seems a little dark without my desk lamp... hm... should bring that in soon I think...

Speaking of which, I'm so proud of myself for learning how to dump a comforter into a quilt cover in the shortest of times... by pegging it with clothes pegs all along the edges whilst in the process of doing so so the comforter cannot move inside the cover while it's been arranged... Hopefully I can make my tomato soup tomorrow without burning down the kitchen.. and did I mention the sinks in the kitchen are still choked? Haiz....

Been going out for the past three days consecutively. In a state of 'high', the calm before the storm, before school reopens.

Monday. Went out with yv and hanged around, mostly, in the Suntec/Raffles City area. It was love at first sight when I saw the Esprit bedsheets. Oh dear.. red and grey checkered patterns...so mundane, yet so special. Esprit does have excellent colors lohz, but at the hefty price of $120 - 30% for a single bedset (which excludes the bolster case as well).

Tuesday was the day of shopping at Sim Lim Square with the Swedes. As usual, I went back to PGP to deposit a portion of my stuff, before making my way to Orchard to, hopefully, do some shopping for bed linen. The day would have been perfect if I had not forgotten I was supposed to meet this guy to hand him my CS2103 textbook before leaving NUS. As it was, I forgot, so I had to double back. Only to find my cluster gate jammed, which eventually led to me complaining at the main office, where I was told the technician would come in 1/2h. $%)(*&)(*&@#%$ when I was already late!!!! Thank god Trax appeared and helped me solve the problem of the gate, so I was less late, and it was eventually a no-brainer to catch a cab to Sim Lim. Yupe, the 3 Swedes and their 3 friends, in my opinion, don't really need us, for they are excellent bargain hunters! Still it was quite a fun shopping trip. Eventually after we left them I pulled Trax along to continue my hunt for bed linen, but to no avail, after which we went to drink bubble tea (why? Because that's the only thing outside Bugis OG lorz...)

Wednesday. Agreed to go shopping with my mum in Orchard. So many good things happened on this day that I'm still quite super high now:

1. Amidst my morning grumblings about having FINALLY seen a pink imitation Burberry Blue Label bag that didn't look so fake, my mum generously offered to buy me the bag and thereby not pester Aunt Winnie when she's finally going to HK (It seems the entire trip is in jeopardy now that it is not known whether Uncle Robin has diabetes and hence cannot eat HK mooncakes, thus cancelling the need for the trip.) So now I have a new bag... hahahhaha... *high high high*

2. After buying the bag at Bugis, stopped by at the Bugis Market... whereby I got another present.. a shorter umbrella... thanks to my grumblings about my current terribly spoilt, super-long umbrella that can't fit into my jelly bag. Hehehe... morale of the story is to grumble more often...

3. Bought a Jean Perry bedset which was on offer at Takashimaya finally today. Cost me $49, but then Tangs was selling the same set at $79 (and still claimed it was on sale!!)

4. Mum wanted to buy her long sleeved shirts. Anyway, we found ourselves in Future State for some reason or other coz she was attracted to the $19 sale sign for jeans and decided to try a pair. But guess what... she couldn't fit, so I ended up buying the jeans plus another skirt... and splurged a total of $28... wahahaha... the original price was actually $49 + $59... (*always have been a cheapskate so nothing gets me higher than a bargain...*)

5. Mum wanted sunglasses (Well, the obsession now is that the health magazine told her that excessive sun would cause cataracts for the eyes...) Two of us went Isetan and tried umpteen pairs. The result? I got another present in the form of a pair....

To sum it up, I resolve to go shopping more often with my mother, especially after she has sold some of her shares successfully.. hehe...

Now for today.

Well, finally my cluster is 'sufficiently' occupied now... at least several other occupants have moved in, including my left neighbor. I still haven't seen or talked to anyone in that cluster, but then I can hardly do that when I don't even see anybody walking around can I?

The kitchen sink remains choked (since the blk RA stays in my cluster why isn't there something being done about it????) The cluster gate is still damaged (the metal panelling which contains the handle is still slightly agape). The only change seems to be that whoever owns the mop in the toilet has finally decided that placing it in the toilet only helps keep it wet, and that person has now sensibly decided to hang it up on the sidewalk railings to dry. A much more sensible decision indeed.

Anyway, I digress. Amidst all the hoo-haa and the pleasantries of not having to stress myself up these past few days by absolutely NOT doing anything substantial or useful, that cocoon of safety has just been punctuated by with the realization that school is going to reopen. Next Tuesday, specifically. Which means that:

-Long, long days of work and more work. Mugging in the hostel eating dinner at 9, 10, 11pm. And horrible food at that with a severe lack of variety.

-Having to force myself to learn J2EE and brush up my software engineering concepts severely. I don't have confidence in either; the dilemma is that I absolutely MUST master the latter (since I foresee the biggest problem in CS3214 to lie in that area), yet I can't spend ALL my time doing just concepts since I MUST learn J2EE otherwise I will feel insecure. So there I have it... to master both to a sufficiently high level... that will eat up my entire first week of school term, that is if I still have time left over...

-Reading, summarizing, a TON MORE UROP research readings. Reading, summarizing, a TON MORE UROP research readings. Reading, summarizing, a TON MORE UROP research readings.... (I should develop this into a chant that I can chant everyday...)

-Starting to check up on what is required of my modules. Up to now, I haven't started doing any of the pre-module preparation work.. .(what happened to the kiasu me??)

I'm still just drifting in a bliss. My engine hasn't started.. it's not even making a whimper and more likely than not has just stalled. To get the machine up fully running will require that thing which I lack now... determination... how to gain determination when my days are marked by so much more pleasant activities... watching tv, sleeping (the MOST major activity haha), idling on the computer....

Well, at least I now have my Burberry bag. That should solve some hunger pangs so that I can go back to the state of calmness before the storm.

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