Monday, January 31, 2011
Chocolate Rain metal version
In case you guys aren't aware of the crazily viral video that is Chocolate Rain, here it is:
OK, now that we've all been acquainted with Tay Zonday, here's what I really want you to see:
Pure epicness. This guy is amazing. If you've got a Youtube account, subscribe to him. If you don't, make one and subscribe to him. Simple as that.
OK, now that we've all been acquainted with Tay Zonday, here's what I really want you to see:
Pure epicness. This guy is amazing. If you've got a Youtube account, subscribe to him. If you don't, make one and subscribe to him. Simple as that.
Escalator broke down
I'm trying to picture someone just standing on a stationary escalator for hours, but I just can't. Honestly, I just can't.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
It's Will Wright's fault
OK I think I've been neglecting this place a bit, especially since the last few days have been pretty eventful. I blame it all on discovering Spore, which is definitely one of the most addictive games ever. Every time I considered updating this place, I ended up playing Spore instead. So yeah, you know who to blame (NOT ME!!!).
So anyway, last Thursday I went with lionel, edmund, junjie and rayson for dinner at the Plaza Sing Carl's Junior (so there goes my two-year streak of only eating there on my birthday), and after that we went to window-shop at the collectors' toy shops on the top floor. They had some really cool figurines, especially the Gundam and Transformers figurines. I'll definitely seriously consider starting some sort of collection in future when I have a stable income. Oddly enough, we also noticed that those shops loved stocking up on Adolf Hitler figurines for some reason, which I found mildly disturbing to say the least.
Friday was CNY celebrations at DSO (also a paid day :D ) and in the morning I formed a team with some fellow interns to participate in their CNY challenge. We didn't manage to fare exceptionally well in the "build a tower using chopsticks, oranges and pomelo" section (AKA 步步高升) despite careful planning the day before, but for the "fold a paper aeroplane that can fly the furthest" section (AKA Leaping into an Auspicious 2011) we decide to heck all the gliding aerodynamics and fold what was essentially a spear, which eventually managed to fly the furthest. So I'm sure we all learned a valuable lesson about hard work: that it doesn't pay off :)
Today started off pretty badly. I woke up in the morning to go to ECP for cycling with some 28 people, but got terribly lost on the way because I'm me, and spent about 20 minutes or so walking around aimlessly in the rain between Paya Lebar and Tanjong Katong (don't ask me how I got there, I don't know either) before throwing in the towel and calling edmund for directions, which is when I discovered that the outing had been cancelled -.- In the evening, my dad brought the family to The Art House where I met melissa working at the reception counter of one of the exhibits. Honestly when she first told me about her job a few weeks ago I thought The Art House was some arts supplies shop, so that came as a surprise to me. Anyway, we were there because my dad wanted us to watch this choir concert called 7 by a group called ONE, which comprises young singers probably around my age or slightly older (and by the way, I'm fairly certain that one of them is an NJ senior). The performance was pretty good - the standard of singing is definitely there, and they made things interesting with the use of choreography and lighting (or rather the dramatic lack of it at specific times). Overall it was a good experience which definitely helps add to my high-brow art cred :P
Tomorrow's my last work day :)
So anyway, last Thursday I went with lionel, edmund, junjie and rayson for dinner at the Plaza Sing Carl's Junior (so there goes my two-year streak of only eating there on my birthday), and after that we went to window-shop at the collectors' toy shops on the top floor. They had some really cool figurines, especially the Gundam and Transformers figurines. I'll definitely seriously consider starting some sort of collection in future when I have a stable income. Oddly enough, we also noticed that those shops loved stocking up on Adolf Hitler figurines for some reason, which I found mildly disturbing to say the least.
Friday was CNY celebrations at DSO (also a paid day :D ) and in the morning I formed a team with some fellow interns to participate in their CNY challenge. We didn't manage to fare exceptionally well in the "build a tower using chopsticks, oranges and pomelo" section (AKA 步步高升) despite careful planning the day before, but for the "fold a paper aeroplane that can fly the furthest" section (AKA Leaping into an Auspicious 2011) we decide to heck all the gliding aerodynamics and fold what was essentially a spear, which eventually managed to fly the furthest. So I'm sure we all learned a valuable lesson about hard work: that it doesn't pay off :)
Today started off pretty badly. I woke up in the morning to go to ECP for cycling with some 28 people, but got terribly lost on the way because I'm me, and spent about 20 minutes or so walking around aimlessly in the rain between Paya Lebar and Tanjong Katong (don't ask me how I got there, I don't know either) before throwing in the towel and calling edmund for directions, which is when I discovered that the outing had been cancelled -.- In the evening, my dad brought the family to The Art House where I met melissa working at the reception counter of one of the exhibits. Honestly when she first told me about her job a few weeks ago I thought The Art House was some arts supplies shop, so that came as a surprise to me. Anyway, we were there because my dad wanted us to watch this choir concert called 7 by a group called ONE, which comprises young singers probably around my age or slightly older (and by the way, I'm fairly certain that one of them is an NJ senior). The performance was pretty good - the standard of singing is definitely there, and they made things interesting with the use of choreography and lighting (or rather the dramatic lack of it at specific times). Overall it was a good experience which definitely helps add to my high-brow art cred :P
Tomorrow's my last work day :)
Friday, January 28, 2011
More epic trolls
Oh look, the last one is a Singaporean troll! I guess the internet really is everywhere.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Positive Zero Punctuation Review! :O
OK, remember when I said that "Not words" will be the tag for all the posts that are not about words? Well, I guess I kind of when back on my word when I posted a link to a Times article... But like a good politician, I know that when I've talked myself into a corner the best thing to do is to distract the listeners by OH LOOK ZERO PUNCTUATION!!! A ZP review that actually speaks good of a game is a rare sight indeed as fans should know, since Yahtzee couldn't be impressed by even near-universally acclaimed blockbuster games. So here's his review of Minecraft, that game where you dig stuff to make stuff to build stuff for because-it-looks-cool-ness:
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Tiger Mom: Amy Chua Parenting Memoir Raises American Fears
Here is a really good article from Time magazine's website regarding the highly controversial book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, which recounts a Chinese mother's very strict, perhaps even cruel methods of bringing up her children, which nevertheless yield amazing results in the form of talented, even prodigal children.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Renovation
Today on the bus I was thinking to myself: "I post a lot of retarded pictures and videos on Facebook and Twitter, so shouldn't I post them on my blog too?" I'm only putting a fraction of the nonsense I enjoy everyday into my posts and already I keep finding myself having to resort to awkward "on a random note..." connectors to bring them in, so I thought that it might be a good idea to finally relent and start a Tumblr just like seemingly everyone else. But since I'm a lazy technologically-impaired duck who doesn't want to abandon his Blogger for a Tumblr and can't be bothered to keep both running at the same time, I decided to compromise and create a new labeling system for my posts. From now on, my posts will be free of irrelevant pictures and videos and under "Words", and all the random stuff that I compulsively feel that I have to share with the world will be filed under "Not words", so you can click either heading to sieve out what you want to see. Alternatively, you can click neither and be treated to the chaotic mess which is my mind. Like an actual Tumblr, I'll try to update with "Not words" posts as frequently as I can, hopefully at least once a day whenever I have access to a computer (this really shouldn't be too difficult seeing how my daily ritual involves visiting failblog and various webcomics).
Did I mention that I played CS during work today? That's right, my job is officially more awesome than yours :) It's gonna end in less than a week, and it's bittersweet for me. On the one hand, I'll definitely appreciate not having to wake up at 6.30am everyday to reach work on time, but on the other hand it's been a really great close-to-a-month with the bunch of new friends I met at DSO. In any case time marches on, so there's no use dwelling on the past.
Did I mention that I played CS during work today? That's right, my job is officially more awesome than yours :) It's gonna end in less than a week, and it's bittersweet for me. On the one hand, I'll definitely appreciate not having to wake up at 6.30am everyday to reach work on time, but on the other hand it's been a really great close-to-a-month with the bunch of new friends I met at DSO. In any case time marches on, so there's no use dwelling on the past.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Meta-post?
Do I have an emo blog?
Well, personal blogs are meant for people to express their emotions and obviously frustration is one of those emotions that really needs to be vented for a healthy state of mind, so it shouldn't be striking that many personal blogs are more on the emo ranting side. Still, there are certain implications of FML-ing on a blog. Does it make you a drama queen who loudly proclaims her every little grouse hoping for swarms of concerned people to rush to her consolation? If not, why post your rants in a public medium like a blog if you're not trying to get attention?
Personally, I think that for myself at least, blogging is sort of a compromise between keeping your feelings bottled up within yourself and blaring them out for everyone and their neighbour to hear. I like to think that I'm not being too much of a whiner but still have a few people in the vast ocean of the internet to hear what I have to say. I guess in a way it's like a non-religious session of confession. And also instead of being repentant for our sins, we flame unsatisfactory aspects of our lives, but hey, nothing is sacred on the internet.
Oh look, I just posted all that on a blog.
On a random note (I think thats my most frequently used phrase on this blog), "look at this toaster" is starting to go viral. I really hope it becomes a full-fledged meme, because really it's pretty awesome :)
Now, I may have a slightly above-average taste for hardcore music, but I don't usually dabble in extreme metal. That being said, I'm pretty captivated by this song by extreme progressive metal band Meshuggah called Bleed:
And to wean all y'all non-metalheads, here's the same song "diluted" with a some pop:
I say "diluted" with quotation marks because Paparazzi actually does a pretty good job at complimenting the other songs. Both are pretty awesome :)
Well, personal blogs are meant for people to express their emotions and obviously frustration is one of those emotions that really needs to be vented for a healthy state of mind, so it shouldn't be striking that many personal blogs are more on the emo ranting side. Still, there are certain implications of FML-ing on a blog. Does it make you a drama queen who loudly proclaims her every little grouse hoping for swarms of concerned people to rush to her consolation? If not, why post your rants in a public medium like a blog if you're not trying to get attention?
Personally, I think that for myself at least, blogging is sort of a compromise between keeping your feelings bottled up within yourself and blaring them out for everyone and their neighbour to hear. I like to think that I'm not being too much of a whiner but still have a few people in the vast ocean of the internet to hear what I have to say. I guess in a way it's like a non-religious session of confession. And also instead of being repentant for our sins, we flame unsatisfactory aspects of our lives, but hey, nothing is sacred on the internet.
Oh look, I just posted all that on a blog.
On a random note (I think thats my most frequently used phrase on this blog), "look at this toaster" is starting to go viral. I really hope it becomes a full-fledged meme, because really it's pretty awesome :)
Now, I may have a slightly above-average taste for hardcore music, but I don't usually dabble in extreme metal. That being said, I'm pretty captivated by this song by extreme progressive metal band Meshuggah called Bleed:
And to wean all y'all non-metalheads, here's the same song "diluted" with a some pop:
I say "diluted" with quotation marks because Paparazzi actually does a pretty good job at complimenting the other songs. Both are pretty awesome :)
Friday, January 21, 2011
Drift Along
My recent posts have been about my day-to-day experiences, but now I'm shifting my thoughts to events in the near future... If you glanced at that countdown clock at the top-right corner, you'd have guessed right.
I've said this so many times before that I think it would have become pretty annoying to hear, but I'm completely unprepared for NS. Between catching up with friends and working, I barely had time to work up a sweat. For one thing, I know that I'm gonna fail my pull-ups, and that's before factoring all the near-fails I had during NAPFA (chiefly sit-ups).
Work's ending soon, and then I'll have roughly a week left before going into Tekong. Part of me wants to stage a last-ditch effort to get into shape, but the other part is asking how much I can improve in that short time. If I can't make much of a difference anyway, wouldn't I be better off spending my last week living it up to the fullest? In any case it's CNY week, so I'll most likely default to the latter option anyway.
Whatever, I don't need or want any fancy rank there. I'm currently just aiming to survive the two years so there's no need to go all protein powder-obsessed all of a sudden.
I've said this so many times before that I think it would have become pretty annoying to hear, but I'm completely unprepared for NS. Between catching up with friends and working, I barely had time to work up a sweat. For one thing, I know that I'm gonna fail my pull-ups, and that's before factoring all the near-fails I had during NAPFA (chiefly sit-ups).
Work's ending soon, and then I'll have roughly a week left before going into Tekong. Part of me wants to stage a last-ditch effort to get into shape, but the other part is asking how much I can improve in that short time. If I can't make much of a difference anyway, wouldn't I be better off spending my last week living it up to the fullest? In any case it's CNY week, so I'll most likely default to the latter option anyway.
Whatever, I don't need or want any fancy rank there. I'm currently just aiming to survive the two years so there's no need to go all protein powder-obsessed all of a sudden.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
March of music
Went for dinner with a bunch of 28 people at the AMK S11 today, basically just ate and talked, then moved on to the AMK Hub Macdonald's for ice-cream and watching soccer. Nothing particularly special about this dinner, but enjoyable all the same. I notice that I've been going out for dinner with friends a lot lately, but it's really now or never since I'll be going off to NS in a few weeks' time. By the way, I got shifted from BMTC school 2 to school 1, which means that I'm now further from the jetty T_T Unfortunately, it also means that I'll no longer be with the huge number of friends who were also in school 2 with me. Well, at least I know that josias and guanhao have been shifted over too, so maybe a few more friends have come over as well.
With new album releases from both The Human Abstract and Protest The Hero, March looks set to be the most epic month of the year, and I'm predicting that even though it's only January now. THA just released a new song, Patterns, and the album art for Digital Veil:
Still no new song from PTH (why oh why! :( ), but they did release the title of their upcoming album, Scurrilous, as well as the album art:
With new album releases from both The Human Abstract and Protest The Hero, March looks set to be the most epic month of the year, and I'm predicting that even though it's only January now. THA just released a new song, Patterns, and the album art for Digital Veil:
I'm loving their new style with heavier metal combined with a heavier classical influence. This looks set to rock the musical world when it comes out. And personally I think the album art looks cool too :)
Still no new song from PTH (why oh why! :( ), but they did release the title of their upcoming album, Scurrilous, as well as the album art:
Yes, it does look like something out of a drug addict's dream, but there's a background story to this. This is actually a painting done by the bassist Arif's grandfather a long time ago, and the name of the painting was Scurrilous. I did some research on the title and it turns out that it isn't a made-up word: "scurrilous" is actually an antiquated word meaning "vulgar or crude", which I think is a hint at theme of the album. Also, we can infer where Arif got his stoner genes from.
Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm drifting too much. There are people my age already making investments and actively working towards university offers, while I'm here living each day by the day and waiting for things to happen. I'm just afraid that if I even try to do things on my own I'll screw up completely. I'd rather wait and see what everyone else does, even if it means losing early bird privileges.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Look at this toaster
After work on Friday was the 4A dinner! :D It never ceases to amaze me that I'm actually in contact with and occasionally going out with ex-classmates from *counting...* 8 years ago! :O It was the usual gang minus melvin plus jocelyn and we had dinner at the Prata House, where the service was glacially slow (maybe like michelle suggested it was because it wasn't a table full of girls haha), the drinks are diabetic (though to be fair this seems to be a common trait amongst all prata shops) but the food is still pretty good at the end of the day. On a random note, I finally got back the Monopoly and Game Of Life sets that I lent to zhaoming at the start of the holidays, though it really isn't of much significance since I never play with them at home anyway. *end of random note* After that jocelyn had to go and the rest of us went to the Thomson Plaza Starbucks, where we were joined by melvin and clarence, who came by completely by happenstance, so the 8 of us shamelessly hogged 8 seats and 3 tables with only 2 drinks :D Had a great time with them, and there was some chatter going on about a 4A trip to Pulau Ubin or something, but it still remains to be seen if that can be finalised before bryan and I head off to Tekong T_T
Yesterday my family went over to my grandmother's house to celebrate my mom's birthday, and somewhere along the way it became a look-at-my-facebook-pictures session. The question constantly coming from my aunt was "who's that girl in the photo with you", and when she stumbled across the "seven wonders" pictures of me and val during orientation the crowd went wild -.- Oh well it's my mom's birthday after all so I didn't put up much of a fight for my privacy.
I was surfing teh internetz when I came across this picture:
Yesterday my family went over to my grandmother's house to celebrate my mom's birthday, and somewhere along the way it became a look-at-my-facebook-pictures session. The question constantly coming from my aunt was "who's that girl in the photo with you", and when she stumbled across the "seven wonders" pictures of me and val during orientation the crowd went wild -.- Oh well it's my mom's birthday after all so I didn't put up much of a fight for my privacy.
I was surfing teh internetz when I came across this picture:
Be warned, what follows is a typical example of me over-analyzing something which is clearly meant to be appreciated mindlessly.
It's always being said by parents and counselors and psychologists that being a teen is rough and we have to deal with sudden maturing, hormonal changes and the awkward feeling of not fitting into the child or adult crowds, but at the end of the day we need to sit down and see if it really is such a big deal. We're not even into our second decade of existence; can any of our problems even compare with those of our world-weary predecessors, let alone hold any significance in the big scheme of things? Of course there are teenagers with serious problems, but I'm talking about the stereotypical teenage dilemmas of today, those along the lines of "nobody understands how unique I am!" and "you're not my boss, stop controlling my life!", which sometimes seem trivial and petty in the face of bigger problems. We need to consider why we're known as the easy-to-bruise "strawberry generation" (literal translation from Chinese haha). To put things simply and bluntly, maybe we just need to suck it up and deal with it.
I dunno, I just find myself chuckling to myself every time I see that picture. And for the record that toaster is pretty awesome.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Pack light
I guess I need to face up to facts: I'm an ex-NJCian. Those were two of the craziest and awesomest years of my life, but the time has come to move on. I may be able to return occasionally as a "wise old man", but my time as a student is up. The past has been great, sure, but the future will always be greater because it alone holds the element of mystery. I guess we need to pack light to travel through life: nothing but the memories in our mind, the people by our side and the horizon in our sights.
In other news, I finally did something today that could be considered work :P We finally got to experiment with an FPGA. Well fine that still isn't working, but it's closer to work than all the other stuff I've been doing the past week or so.
Here's a random song that I heard a few days. Quite catchy and proof that I do not listen solely to metal:
Only the young can break away, break away
In other news, I finally did something today that could be considered work :P We finally got to experiment with an FPGA. Well fine that still isn't working, but it's closer to work than all the other stuff I've been doing the past week or so.
Here's a random song that I heard a few days. Quite catchy and proof that I do not listen solely to metal:
Only the young can break away, break away
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Career path
So I've been told that I think too much for my own good. While that's an accusation that I've been trying to refute ever since, I must agree that their argument does hold water when I'm sitting alone at home on a quiet evening and my mind starts to wander uncontrollably. Honestly, it's one of the fastest ways to get me in a depressed mood.
Since the only interesting thing at work today was the visit to the electronic circuits failure analysis lab at NTU, I decided to take the second half of the day off to go back to NJ. Unfortunately, I happened to choose the wrong half of the day -.- Not only did I miss the walk-in, I also missed the group of people who went back to watch the walk-in in the first place. The OGLs were all busy OGLing and most of the teachers had gone home since it's only the second day of school, so it was more or less a wasted trip for me.
I just keep getting this feeling that I'll have to give up more and more of what I want to do for the sake of work in future. I guess I'm really just over-reacting here, but the thought of being enslaved to a job seriously frightens me. Already I had to give up watching the walk-in (both of them, since I'm going into NS before the SH walk-in), which frankly is taking an unexpectedly large toll on my mood because I've been looking forward to it since maybe last year's orientation. If we work to earn money to spend, why do we work so hard that it takes the fun out of whatever potential spending we might do? If the money is for the bare essentials then it can't be helped, but beyond a certain level of material comfort is a career really that important?
Which is why I cannot fathom how people are willing to choose jobs solely based on pay. I'm talking about jobs that are so boring, mundane and run-of-the-mill that the only reason why anyone would even think of them as ambitions is because they just happen to pay ridiculously well. I mean, take for example dentistry. How many people take dentistry out of a genuine burning passion for incisors, canines, pre-molars and molars, and how many people take it because it's near-guaranteed employment with an impressive salary? I'm not saying that every dentistry course hopeful is in it for the money, but I'm sure most of them are, at least initially.
You see, this is why I don't like thinking too much. It makes me emo and seriously side-tracks my train of thought and writing.
Since the only interesting thing at work today was the visit to the electronic circuits failure analysis lab at NTU, I decided to take the second half of the day off to go back to NJ. Unfortunately, I happened to choose the wrong half of the day -.- Not only did I miss the walk-in, I also missed the group of people who went back to watch the walk-in in the first place. The OGLs were all busy OGLing and most of the teachers had gone home since it's only the second day of school, so it was more or less a wasted trip for me.
I just keep getting this feeling that I'll have to give up more and more of what I want to do for the sake of work in future. I guess I'm really just over-reacting here, but the thought of being enslaved to a job seriously frightens me. Already I had to give up watching the walk-in (both of them, since I'm going into NS before the SH walk-in), which frankly is taking an unexpectedly large toll on my mood because I've been looking forward to it since maybe last year's orientation. If we work to earn money to spend, why do we work so hard that it takes the fun out of whatever potential spending we might do? If the money is for the bare essentials then it can't be helped, but beyond a certain level of material comfort is a career really that important?
Which is why I cannot fathom how people are willing to choose jobs solely based on pay. I'm talking about jobs that are so boring, mundane and run-of-the-mill that the only reason why anyone would even think of them as ambitions is because they just happen to pay ridiculously well. I mean, take for example dentistry. How many people take dentistry out of a genuine burning passion for incisors, canines, pre-molars and molars, and how many people take it because it's near-guaranteed employment with an impressive salary? I'm not saying that every dentistry course hopeful is in it for the money, but I'm sure most of them are, at least initially.
You see, this is why I don't like thinking too much. It makes me emo and seriously side-tracks my train of thought and writing.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Going back
So it turns out that department I was assigned to in DSO had scheduled an "interaction session", so halfway through the day we went out for lunch and a movie (The Centurion, which is barely more than a gorefest in my opinion) :P I think in terms of salary-to-effort ratio I've struck the goldmine with this internship :) Having said that, we've already gone through basic PCB design and HDL, so it can't be much longer before we're given actual assignments. Personally I'm looking forward to when that happens; frankly I'm getting rather embarrassed of free-loading off DSO.
Yet despite all that, tomorrow will be yet another half-day for me because we're visiting a lab in NTU with circuit design tools such as an x-ray machine for the circuit boards, so I'm utilising my new-found free time to go back to NJ! :D Perhaps half a year ago I would have slapped myself on the head for wanting to go to school in my free time, but I really want to see how this year's orientation is shaping up, and also maybe say hi to a few juniors and teachers too. It's a pity that I'll still be missing the JH walk-in in the morning, but at least I can say hi to some of my juniors-turned-OGLs and maybe sneak a peek into the Ignis practice sessions with lionel. It may get kind of awkward since I'm not a councillor or anything, but I'll be in Tekong by the time the SH walk-in comes by so I'm willing to thicken my skin to see them at least once.
I think I'll crash CNY celebrations too, since my internship will be over by then :)
Here's a random anecdote from the day: while waiting for the movie to start, I went to the CD shop on the ground floor of The Cathay (the name escapes me) with the rest of my group to browse a bit, and just for fun I decided to see how much of my music I could find on the shelves. The answer: not a lot :( From Avenged Sevenfold I could only find Diamonds In The Rough, which is weird because it's neither old nor new, and it's not even their first concert DVD, so I don't know it was there instead of, say, Nightmare (which I might actually have bought if it was there). From System Of A Down I found their self-titled debut album as well as Steal This Album, which is once again an odd choice since it wasn't even their breakout album (which was Toxicity by the way). From Iron Maiden they had Killers, which is a freaking old album which I don't even listen to (Powerslave FTW :D ). And... that was pretty much it, I guess. Nothing from Protest The Hero, The Human Abstract, Abandon All Ships, Mastodon, Last Chance To Reason, Little Boots, and not even the more "mainstream" and "famous" ones like Daft Punk and Metallica. Freakin' Metallica. I don't know if my eyes deceived me, but I saw Megadeth but not Metallica. What is the world coming to? I've never claimed to be a musical snob who only listens to music nobody's heard of, but when literally all your favourite bands and artistes can't be found in your average CD shop then it's a sign that you're a musical deviant.
Yet despite all that, tomorrow will be yet another half-day for me because we're visiting a lab in NTU with circuit design tools such as an x-ray machine for the circuit boards, so I'm utilising my new-found free time to go back to NJ! :D Perhaps half a year ago I would have slapped myself on the head for wanting to go to school in my free time, but I really want to see how this year's orientation is shaping up, and also maybe say hi to a few juniors and teachers too. It's a pity that I'll still be missing the JH walk-in in the morning, but at least I can say hi to some of my juniors-turned-OGLs and maybe sneak a peek into the Ignis practice sessions with lionel. It may get kind of awkward since I'm not a councillor or anything, but I'll be in Tekong by the time the SH walk-in comes by so I'm willing to thicken my skin to see them at least once.
I think I'll crash CNY celebrations too, since my internship will be over by then :)
Here's a random anecdote from the day: while waiting for the movie to start, I went to the CD shop on the ground floor of The Cathay (the name escapes me) with the rest of my group to browse a bit, and just for fun I decided to see how much of my music I could find on the shelves. The answer: not a lot :( From Avenged Sevenfold I could only find Diamonds In The Rough, which is weird because it's neither old nor new, and it's not even their first concert DVD, so I don't know it was there instead of, say, Nightmare (which I might actually have bought if it was there). From System Of A Down I found their self-titled debut album as well as Steal This Album, which is once again an odd choice since it wasn't even their breakout album (which was Toxicity by the way). From Iron Maiden they had Killers, which is a freaking old album which I don't even listen to (Powerslave FTW :D ). And... that was pretty much it, I guess. Nothing from Protest The Hero, The Human Abstract, Abandon All Ships, Mastodon, Last Chance To Reason, Little Boots, and not even the more "mainstream" and "famous" ones like Daft Punk and Metallica. Freakin' Metallica. I don't know if my eyes deceived me, but I saw Megadeth but not Metallica. What is the world coming to? I've never claimed to be a musical snob who only listens to music nobody's heard of, but when literally all your favourite bands and artistes can't be found in your average CD shop then it's a sign that you're a musical deviant.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Dinners
Friday was my last day of work for the week. There was a sharing session, first among the interns where I pretty much just sat around and talked cock with the fellow slackers from my room, then from the sensors division who talked about some pretty cool technology which I'm afraid of sharing in case I get gunned down by snipers for releasing classified information (or get a pay cut). My group also had a real-life lesson, as opposed to leeching off the MIT website, but it was barely more than staring at slides and nodding politely. Still, work is an overall enjoyable experience with my new-found colleague-intern-friends, and I can really count myself lucky to be grouped with laxing people like them :)
After work, I headed down to Marina Square Xin Wang Hong Kong Cafe for dinner with OG10, where once again we stayed for hours after all of us had finished our food to annoy everyone within earshot (which was a lot of people, considering how loud we were). After so many weeks in planning and so many postponements, it finally happened! :) Due to some communication problems we couldn't get everyone over, but we still got 11 of us. It was crazy and random as usual, and as always the same old jokes and scandals got refueled -.- Sometimes I wonder what they talk about when I'm not around, because my presence seems to generate the most conversation (and subsequently the most . I guess some scandals never die... (unfortunately) All in all, it was a great time, albeit filled with many facepalm moments (for me anyway).
The next day, I went out for dinner with jacob, junjie, victor and edmund to console junjie over missing the chalet haha. So anyway we went to the AMK Hub Pepper Lunch Express for dinner (minor lulz when jacob complained about his spaghetti before realising that he forgot to add the sauce that was provided), then went up to the cinema to see if there was anything worth watching, but unfortunately The Fighter (I want to catch this movie before going to Tekong!) isn't released in Singapore yet and everything else just didn't seem worth it, so we walked to the playground opposite AMK library to experience "The Spinny Thing of Doom" (according to jacob), which is best described as a rope pyramid with a merry-go-round at its base. So lots of hanging on to dear life on that contraption, some swinging, some sand-playing and lots of general immature behaviour and we went home. Hope to have a few more outings with friends like this before enlisting.
Random video of randomness!!!
:D
After work, I headed down to Marina Square Xin Wang Hong Kong Cafe for dinner with OG10, where once again we stayed for hours after all of us had finished our food to annoy everyone within earshot (which was a lot of people, considering how loud we were). After so many weeks in planning and so many postponements, it finally happened! :) Due to some communication problems we couldn't get everyone over, but we still got 11 of us. It was crazy and random as usual, and as always the same old jokes and scandals got refueled -.- Sometimes I wonder what they talk about when I'm not around, because my presence seems to generate the most conversation (and subsequently the most . I guess some scandals never die... (unfortunately) All in all, it was a great time, albeit filled with many facepalm moments (for me anyway).
The next day, I went out for dinner with jacob, junjie, victor and edmund to console junjie over missing the chalet haha. So anyway we went to the AMK Hub Pepper Lunch Express for dinner (minor lulz when jacob complained about his spaghetti before realising that he forgot to add the sauce that was provided), then went up to the cinema to see if there was anything worth watching, but unfortunately The Fighter (I want to catch this movie before going to Tekong!) isn't released in Singapore yet and everything else just didn't seem worth it, so we walked to the playground opposite AMK library to experience "The Spinny Thing of Doom" (according to jacob), which is best described as a rope pyramid with a merry-go-round at its base. So lots of hanging on to dear life on that contraption, some swinging, some sand-playing and lots of general immature behaviour and we went home. Hope to have a few more outings with friends like this before enlisting.
Random video of randomness!!!
:D
Friday, January 7, 2011
Salaryman Man
I am now a salaryman... man:
Yup, after such a long time of talking about finding a job, I finally started this Monday as an intern at DSTA (well technically it's DSO but those two are virtually synonymous as far as I'm concerned). I went in expecting to have to tackle mountains of mundane paperwork trickled down to us peons from the higher-ups who are too busy inventing missiles and tanks to bother, but what actually happened was in fact the complete opposite. Not only were there no mountains of paperwork, but there were also no mountains of cool engineering/inventing projects. In fact, there haven't been mountains of anything. My past 4 working days have been spent pretty much watching MIT video lectures online all the time (full-length lectures at that, each one lasting nearly an hour) in preparation for the real work that never seems to arrive. I know that I'm insane (like, more than usual) for complaining about getting paid for watching youtube videos, but honestly speaking I didn't sign up for the money. $55 a day is great and all but I really have no intention or target to spend it on right now. I joined the internship really to get some first-hand experience of work life in DSTA, and now it seems that every group besides mine has at least something to do. And there's a sharing session later... What the heck am I gonna tell the other interns, seriously.
Sometimes you just want to drift along aimlessly, but then you see people around you who have taken full control of their lives, charted their course perfectly and are speeding miles ahead of you, and you look at yourself and wonder if you're doing the right thing with your life. Sure you can drift, it's only a matter of getting used to everyone else overtaking you.
The past two nights I've also been going from work to the 25/27 chalet :D Basically just treated the chalet as my house. As expected, it was pretty awesome, when the two craziest classes in the NJC 2009-2010 batch have concurrent chalets next door to each other. It was a pity that I could only join them in the evenings though, and missed out on night cycling because I had to get up early the next day for work :( Still, it was a blast having one last huge party with the awesome 28 gang before we all shave our heads :)
I've had quite a persistent sore throat/throat infection (I suspect the latter) since Tuesday which has been seriously bugging me. I'm just spamming water to try and keep it under control right now and hopefully it will go away soon.
I really need to get used to not blogging during late night hours before going to work. In fact, this is probably not doing any favours to my throat either, so I'd better just go to slee-
WAIT. There's something I've wanted to do for weeks now but I just kept procrastinating. About a month ago, I discovered this awesome band called Mastodon. If I had to describe their music, I'd say they're kind of like Protest The Hero but slower-paced, heavier and more experimental, but I don't have to describe them so I won't, because honestly I don't think I have the musical vocabulary to do them justice in my introduction. So just have a listen:
OK, now I'd better go to sleep.
Yes, I did embed this completely at random. How did you guess?
Yup, after such a long time of talking about finding a job, I finally started this Monday as an intern at DSTA (well technically it's DSO but those two are virtually synonymous as far as I'm concerned). I went in expecting to have to tackle mountains of mundane paperwork trickled down to us peons from the higher-ups who are too busy inventing missiles and tanks to bother, but what actually happened was in fact the complete opposite. Not only were there no mountains of paperwork, but there were also no mountains of cool engineering/inventing projects. In fact, there haven't been mountains of anything. My past 4 working days have been spent pretty much watching MIT video lectures online all the time (full-length lectures at that, each one lasting nearly an hour) in preparation for the real work that never seems to arrive. I know that I'm insane (like, more than usual) for complaining about getting paid for watching youtube videos, but honestly speaking I didn't sign up for the money. $55 a day is great and all but I really have no intention or target to spend it on right now. I joined the internship really to get some first-hand experience of work life in DSTA, and now it seems that every group besides mine has at least something to do. And there's a sharing session later... What the heck am I gonna tell the other interns, seriously.
Sometimes you just want to drift along aimlessly, but then you see people around you who have taken full control of their lives, charted their course perfectly and are speeding miles ahead of you, and you look at yourself and wonder if you're doing the right thing with your life. Sure you can drift, it's only a matter of getting used to everyone else overtaking you.
The past two nights I've also been going from work to the 25/27 chalet :D Basically just treated the chalet as my house. As expected, it was pretty awesome, when the two craziest classes in the NJC 2009-2010 batch have concurrent chalets next door to each other. It was a pity that I could only join them in the evenings though, and missed out on night cycling because I had to get up early the next day for work :( Still, it was a blast having one last huge party with the awesome 28 gang before we all shave our heads :)
I've had quite a persistent sore throat/throat infection (I suspect the latter) since Tuesday which has been seriously bugging me. I'm just spamming water to try and keep it under control right now and hopefully it will go away soon.
I really need to get used to not blogging during late night hours before going to work. In fact, this is probably not doing any favours to my throat either, so I'd better just go to slee-
WAIT. There's something I've wanted to do for weeks now but I just kept procrastinating. About a month ago, I discovered this awesome band called Mastodon. If I had to describe their music, I'd say they're kind of like Protest The Hero but slower-paced, heavier and more experimental, but I don't have to describe them so I won't, because honestly I don't think I have the musical vocabulary to do them justice in my introduction. So just have a listen:
OK, now I'd better go to sleep.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
The air was filled with aerosol fumes
I need to document the events of last night and this morning before it all slips from my mind, so here goes:
Met you'en, chin, weijian and jianzhong at Clarke Quay MRT. Dinner was Subway, then we walked over to a bridge near Riverside point to play cards and lepak, where we were joined by joshua tan, lionel and joshua ng. Things were pretty slow and relaxed at first, but as we approached midnight there formed a sort of silly string and foam snow mosh pit at the centre if the bridge with complete strangers spraying each other for the fun of it, andeven innocent bystanders such as us were implicated. The family we were sitting next to actually bought four whole boxes of silly string and the children were literally expending a can a minute.
Finally when the clock struck twelve, we realised that the fireworks were happening behind us, blocked by the scape building, so all we could only see the smoke and faintly hear the bangs -.- It didn't matter much though, because the mosh pit turned into a full-blown riot of canned craziness and nobody bothered looking out for fireworks anyway. We purposely sang jianzhong's birthday extremely loud in front of all the revelers, and naturally he became a primary target and was literally soaked from head to toe in silly string an foam snow. One stranger even treated him to his first gulp of hard liqour (expensive stuff, mind you!), resulting in him acting half-drunk on the way to you'en's house.
Once we reached his house, we fiddled around with his electronic drum set for a while (I suck at drumming T_T ) before settling on mahjong and Xbox. Played DOA (button-mashing!!!) and Guitar Hero for a while, then jianzhong and I played Halo. Halfway through our second match (and I was winning OK!) my controller ran out of battery, so just for the fun of it I decided to use the Guitar Hero controller to play just to see how it would turn out, with pretty interesting results. I couldn't figure out how to move or control my shooting (it just keeps firing until it runs out of ammo...), but the whammy bar moves the camera left and right, physically tilting the guitar up and down moves the camera vertically, and the fret buttons correspond to the similar-coloured buttons on the normal controller. Amazingly, even with jianzhong pulling off cheap shots at me with the guitar controller, I managed to kill him once by melee attacking him when he let his guard down XD
So now I'm back home. Feeling kind of groggy since I only had less than 4 hours of sleep, but this year's countdown was awesome and definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience, especially for jianzhong I have to imagine.
Oh, I also had my first taste of beer, which honestly was disgusting. It was like bitter soda water and I couldn't catch the supposed aftertaste that the rest say makes beer enjoyable. I guess I'm just not an alcohol person.
And there are no more concession fares for buses and MRTs! :( My trip back from you'en's house cost $1.16...
Met you'en, chin, weijian and jianzhong at Clarke Quay MRT. Dinner was Subway, then we walked over to a bridge near Riverside point to play cards and lepak, where we were joined by joshua tan, lionel and joshua ng. Things were pretty slow and relaxed at first, but as we approached midnight there formed a sort of silly string and foam snow mosh pit at the centre if the bridge with complete strangers spraying each other for the fun of it, andeven innocent bystanders such as us were implicated. The family we were sitting next to actually bought four whole boxes of silly string and the children were literally expending a can a minute.
Finally when the clock struck twelve, we realised that the fireworks were happening behind us, blocked by the scape building, so all we could only see the smoke and faintly hear the bangs -.- It didn't matter much though, because the mosh pit turned into a full-blown riot of canned craziness and nobody bothered looking out for fireworks anyway. We purposely sang jianzhong's birthday extremely loud in front of all the revelers, and naturally he became a primary target and was literally soaked from head to toe in silly string an foam snow. One stranger even treated him to his first gulp of hard liqour (expensive stuff, mind you!), resulting in him acting half-drunk on the way to you'en's house.
Once we reached his house, we fiddled around with his electronic drum set for a while (I suck at drumming T_T ) before settling on mahjong and Xbox. Played DOA (button-mashing!!!) and Guitar Hero for a while, then jianzhong and I played Halo. Halfway through our second match (and I was winning OK!) my controller ran out of battery, so just for the fun of it I decided to use the Guitar Hero controller to play just to see how it would turn out, with pretty interesting results. I couldn't figure out how to move or control my shooting (it just keeps firing until it runs out of ammo...), but the whammy bar moves the camera left and right, physically tilting the guitar up and down moves the camera vertically, and the fret buttons correspond to the similar-coloured buttons on the normal controller. Amazingly, even with jianzhong pulling off cheap shots at me with the guitar controller, I managed to kill him once by melee attacking him when he let his guard down XD
So now I'm back home. Feeling kind of groggy since I only had less than 4 hours of sleep, but this year's countdown was awesome and definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience, especially for jianzhong I have to imagine.
Oh, I also had my first taste of beer, which honestly was disgusting. It was like bitter soda water and I couldn't catch the supposed aftertaste that the rest say makes beer enjoyable. I guess I'm just not an alcohol person.
And there are no more concession fares for buses and MRTs! :( My trip back from you'en's house cost $1.16...
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