Are you in a bad mood?

Whenever I'm in a bad mood, I would always turn my eyes towards my hamster cage. If my hamster happened to be awake, I would take it out from its cage and let it crawl all over my hands. If it happened to be asleep, I would observe it for minutes, looking at the way it sleeps. My hamster can sleep at a hundred different locations in the cage, while adopting a hundred different sleeping postures for each location. But not matter how it sleeps, it always looks so peaceful. So much so that it soothes my heart and makes me feel better.

For people who don't appreciate pets, they have other avenues to relieve their moods. Some of them are.....















or


or



or



or








If you are still in a bad mood, what I wish to say is





Regardless of how many people there are spoiling your day, all it takes is one who truly understands you to make you feel better
- Tengkia

Beyond the scope of duty

I killed more than just monsters yesterday.

Command & Conquer Generals

I killed some tanks, infantry and aircraft as well. Real-time strategy (RTS) games are so much fun when you have a lot of people playing together. 4 is about quite a lot, but 6 to 8 will be even more exciting. The only problem is there is usually a lag when there are too many people playing.

The clusters are only infested with monsters, no tanks, infantry nor aircratf can be found there yet. But not to worry, if there's any infestations, you know who to call.


If you don't even listen to your heart, what else would you listen to?
- Tengkia

Life is turning sour

Is it a case of sour grapes?

Nope.

Is there something worth getting jealous (suan1 liu1 liu1 de4 cu4 wei4) over?

Wrong again.

There are two aspects of my life that are turning sour:

1. Beancurd sold at vegetarian stalls.
The 3 last vegetarian food stalls I've visited over the past month served SOUR beancurds. I don't know what's wrong with vegetarian food stalls' beancurds. They should be the same as another other beancurds. Even the wu3 xiang1 stalls which serve beancurds cooked in the same manner doesn't have sour beancurds. For the benefit of the vegetarian-eating people, these three stalls are located at: YIH, engine canteen and one of the food centre at jurong east central (the one beside fruit stalls and S11). The YIH vegetarian food stall was the one responsible for causing me to have upset stomach for 3 days.

2. Muscle ache (ji1 rou4 suan1 tong4).
I've not being exercising for months, until my exams were over (three days ago). During those three days, I've been cycling, playing badminton and going to the gym. My (long gone soft) muscles were so tired that I had leg cramps when I went for the SITEX fair at Expo today (for those who don't know, the "L" made by the hand of the smiley stands for "loser")


The secret to success is not how to stop falling, but how soon you can pick yourself up no matter how many times you have fallen
- Tengkia

I can't believe I actually let Fengchun talk me into not blogging about holidays. Hey! This is MY BLOG!! I shall blog about what I like!!! So there!!!!

Heh heh heh.

Alright. Let's talk about what I did today:

I borrowed comics from Kangwei to read in the morning.

Went to school to update myself on my FYP. Seems that Kuan Ming could do a lot more without me around

Killed some monsters in school with Christopher

Will be playing badminton in the afternoon with some friends (and strangers but heck, all it matters is that I'm playing).

Got to think of what to do tomorrow.....

If it takes one and a half hour to cycle to Geylang, but only 1 hour to cycle back, does it show that my resolve is stronger when I was on my way back? Or does it show I have a lot of frustrations to vent?

Or maybe it's the overcast sky, which threatens to pour any moment on my return journey that kept me going at that pace.....


How do you finish a three quarters of a cake when every bite of it reminds you of a very very big mistake?

I think I'll let my brother finish the cake. He'd love to do so.


What are the chances of something, which everyone agrees upon is wrong?

Very low actually, but not impossible, as evident from the past tests' and exams' results. However, it wouldn't have mattered that much if it was a wrong answer for an exam.

You can stop looking now

No no, I'm not refering to my blog. Please read on.....












THE HOLIDAYS ARE HERE!!!


Nothing can bring about an impulse as great as when the radio plays a song that reflects the exact sentiments in the mind
- Tengkia

Look! Look over there! Do you see that? The holidays are coming!

Following my common practice, I've started celebrating the end of exams after my second last paper. To think of it, if I have only one paper, that means i'll be celebrating the end of exams st the start of the semester. Pity I never had a chance to try that out.

As anyone can easily guess, Chris and I resumed our monster killing spree right after lunch today, and we happily killed monsters till 5.30 pm in the evening. From shine, to rain, to dusk, we tirelessly sought to purge the world of evil, making up for all the times when exams (novus actus interveniens) prevented us from fulfilling our duty (of care).

Looks like I've been suffering an overdose of law for the past few weeks. Hmmm.....if I ever get anything close to an 'A' for the paper, I shall auction the license of using my flowchart to my friends in EE.

*Le-long le-long*


One of the greatest sources of strength, is the knowledge that each and everyone of your friends is behind you, and supporting you in whatever you do.
-Tengkia

Copy and paste

After looking at what Christopher did for his Industrial Automation cheat sheet (he took "cut and paste" to its literal sense), Huimin's 'copy and paste blog entry', and not forgetting Fengchun's 'song ad blogs', I was inspired to do a little copying and pasting of my own.

怀念你柔情似水的眼睛
是我天空最美丽的星星
异乡的午夜特别冷清
一个男人和一颗热切的心
不知在远方的你是否能感应


慌乱城市中
连风都不自由
热闹的街头
就属我最寂寞
是爱的蛊惑
让我又兴起贪求的念头


多想再为某人
忙碌和分享
又怕空忙一场
情歌满街
淹没人心房
我却没有一个倾吐对象


心是一个容器
不停的累积
关於你的点点滴滴
虽然我
总守口如瓶
思念却满溢
溅湿了我眼睛

Can anyone guess which songs did these sections of lyrics come from? Each paragraph is taken from a different song.

Once again, my mind has wandered off.....

I love exams

How do you design a ladder diagram for a sequence that repeats 10 times without using 10 times the number of relays?














Ooops.....I think I just mistaken my blog window for my chat window. It's my turn to go nuts after HCl. Soon, the final year students for the Faculty of Engineering, National University of Singapore shall go to the Institute of Mental Health to fulfill their graduation requirement.

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To Jeremy: I've stopped playing Warcraft 3 and I go online to discuss work with my friends. I've been a good boy. Honest.

To ThisDemon: One day, your head will drop off from excessive shaking. The cervical section of the human spine has the smallest cross-section, thus experiencing a higher level of stress than other regions of the spine when subjected to forces like shaking of your head, Furthermore, the muscles surrounding that section are weaker as compared to the other regions. Coupled with the strength of your cervical spine, this makes your neck more likely to break than any other parts of your body.....

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Disclaimer: The author is not in the right state of mind when he wrote this blog, and therefore, his 'professional statements' hold no legal capacity.


The outcome of a war is unknown, until the war is over
- Tengkia



For those who don't understand the disclaimer, it simply means the author is going crazy and cannot be sued for tort of making negligent misstatements.

Top monster killer in FoE

Yup, that's me alright. Not bad looking if I may say so myself.

Mechanical spine testing

That's how I carry out my FYP experiments.

Slave at work

My mom always make me do all sorts of errands for her.....

Knight in shining armour

I've always liked to dream of becoming one.....but the only thing I can ride is a bicycle.

My mind is wandering off from my law notes again.....

The delicate balance of Nature

Survival of the fittest. I kill monsters. Exams kill me.

I think it's quite obvious by now, that I play Warcraft 3 more often during the exam period than any other time of the sem. Even my mom has run out of things to say about my habits. She has decided to prolong her lifespan by ignoring me.

The fact that Deepavali and Hari Raya Puasa just passed gives me more excuses to explain my holiday mood, although I'm neither Hindu nor Muslim and that makes my stand rather unconvincing. How many people would believe that a Chinese in Singapore would celebrate Deepavali and Hari Raya Puasa? To be precise, by sacrificing monsters to no one in particular?

I think exams should be abolished wherever possible. At least it would stop the monsters from dying too quickly.

Just to add on, I've reserved 2nd December for a KTV outing. That makes 2 outings on my holiday itinerary.....and still counting.

I need to redeem myself after the defamatory post put up previously. Pity they didn't teach defamtory laws in my law module, because they felt only local politicians would ever have a need for them. Engineers don't usually have a reputation worth suing for.

Time flies during study week. I know I spent an average of three hours on Warcraft 3 and maybe 5 hours on study (doesn't sound like a final year student having exams soon right?) a day, and 8 hours on sleep. That leaves me with 8 more hours for the rest of the day. But I never knew where these 8 hours disappeared to. And I have no recollection on how I spent these 8 hours. David Copperfield should step aside for me.

I've been spending these few days planning what to do for the holidays. I think ThisDemon will shake her head at me again when she sees this. Well, our former PM used to emphasis the importance of maintaining our old customs, and this one has been around for as long as I've been in NUS. Anyway, we shouldn't ignore our former PM's words just because he has stepped down.

Just to make everyone itch a little, I shall reveal what I've planned to do so far. I'm going to KL with Bryan, Yap, Karen and her family on 10th to 12th December. We'll be staying at the Palace of the Golden Horses, which I heard, is the most luxurious hotel in KL. Loo is trying to organise a day where some of us from ME can get together, have a game of soccer followed by lunch etc. A typcial all guys outing. And not forgetting, killing monsters whenever possible. Do you suddenly feel an itch somewhere inside your chest that you can't reach?


Love is a beautiful thing, it should not be hidden away
- mynasy

haha.. this is interesting.. coz u will find that suddenly the level of english has dropped for this blog.. coz this is not tengkia.. haha.. who izzit?... i shall remain silence..

first time blogging in another person's blog.. dunno wat to write, coz i m writing to a diff set of readers... shall not write too much as it will destroy his reputation (although tengkia dun have much of it left, oops... haha)...

i hereby wish everyone of tengkia's blog reader, all the best for ur coming exams, u all dun need any luck coz u all are too good to depend on luck... (haha, sounds over confident)..

anonymous

The day had started out perfectly fine: I woke up automatically at 7.30 am to see the sunlight shining into my bedroom. Breakfast was already laid out by my mom on the dining table. I finished my breakfast, fed Furball his favourite food (cai4 xin1 flowers) and departed for school.


Furball (the cutest hamster of all)

Ru-Tian came over to my lab to study today. I was happily boasting to her what a conducive environment yesterday. It's quite true that BIOMAT is a rather quiet place, the air conditioning just nice and not much human traffic.



BUT.....

There was some construction work going on at E3 today. Right beside my lab. All the drilling and hammering didn't help get anything into my head. Two people came down to use the brand new workstation (that was untouched since it came into the lab) beside me. The one connected to 2 brand new LCD flat-screen monitors. Yes, 2. Are you drooling yet?

Anyway, I have always wondered who uses this workstation until now. The 2 came to use the workstation while Ru-Tian and I were having lunch, and VERY CONVENIENTLY took the chairs that we used. And one of them sat so far back that he obstructed me from sitting properly in front of my desk. Normally I'd have sent such people packing (or give them the boot if you prefer), but that guy seems to be some big-shot in this place. Luckily for him.

On top of everything, the researchers in my lab were conducting some pneumatic controlled experiments today. The loud hiss of air leaking out from the tanks added onto the already ongoing pandemonium generated by the construction works.

Ru-Tian seemed to be able to concentrate despite everything. I really admire her tolerance. Not a word of complaint came from her. I feel sorry about bringing her to my conducive study place, only to let her put up with all these irritations.



AND THEN.....

有怪兽有怪兽有怪兽缠著我
有怪兽大怪兽丑怪兽粘著我
.....


There can never be a day of peace in the life of a monster killer
- Tengkia

What shit is this?

I must ask everyone to bear with this seemingly vulgar heading.

Let me start by saying I was crazy enough to promise Christopher to go cycling this morning after my Saturday night cycling trip. I felt I needed the exercise and there aren't many opportunities to go cycling lately, due to the rainy season. Anyway, it rained again this morning but stopped before I woke up. So Chris suggested an alternative route from our usual Bukit Timah cycling trail. Lim Chu Kang.

We rendezvous at Lot 1 at 0840h. The route we took generally circled around Kranji Reservoir (following the blue line in a clockwise direction starting and ending at the star).


our cycling route

Chris knew the area very well, having lived there since he was born until he moved to Choa Chu Kang. Lim Chu Kang is mainly a 'farming' place - there were poultry farms, cattle farms, fish (tropical and marine) farms and gardens (flower farms, ha ha). As Chris led the way through various twists and turns, I identified smells of waste products coming from the farms. The stretch of farms along Lim Chu Kang Road (the thick yellow line that coincides with the blue line) were poultry farms (chicken and duck shit). After turning right, away from Lim Chu Kang Road into Neo Tiew Road (the point where the blue and thick yellow line deviates), were the cattle farms (cow and goat shit). Further down, we passed by several flower and fish farms (fertiliser and fish shit). Some point before Kranji Dam (the section of the blue line that cuts across the sea) was the Singapore Turf Club's quarantine area for their horses (you can already guess.....horse shit). That place has the weirdest smell of all. Kranji Dam, with its polluted waters, has its own brand of stinky smell (no shit).

Cycling along Neo Tiew Road was rather pleasant (if you ignore all the shit there). Hardly any vehicles use that road, saving us from having to look out for passing vehicles and their lung cancer-inducing exhaust. Things were not always so pleasant on the other parts of the journey. On my way to Lot 1, I was almost knocked down by a taxi (which wanted to turn left) cutting in front of me suddenly. Heavy vehicles frequent Sungei Kadut Drive and Choa Chu Kang Way (the stretch of road from Kranji Dam back to Lot 1), because a lot of development are going on in that region.

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Sad to say, majority of the Singaporeans (be it pedestrians or drivers) have little tolerance for cyclists. Cyclists were often viewed as nuisances and as a result, few ever gives way to a cyclist depite the cyclist having the right of way.

Take for example, a cyclist and 2 pair of pedestrians (walking side by side) moving towards each other on a narrow pavement. Usually, the pair of pedestrians are quite unwilling to walk in a single file to let the cyclist pass by. However, if I replace the cyclist with another pedestrian, the one of the pedestrian of the pair will give way automatically.

Despite being recognised as a road user in the eyes of our law, accidents will continue to occur as long as the other road users don't share this view. While it's true that there are some careless and playful cyclists around causing mischief, I'm sorry to inform that accidents, as far as I've heard, involve the safety conscious cyclists.

Are people really that indifferent to accidents that may end up in loss of lives? Did the taxi driver (who cut in front of me suddenly) already plan to just run off as quickly as he can, in the event that he knocked me down?

I think the society will still be in a sorry state even without terrorists and wars.


The best tactician is one who can turn any disadvantage into an advantage
- Tengkia

Guess Guess Guess

It's not Tuesday night, but we can still have a bit of fun playing guessing games. Can anyone guess who is this?

Disclaimer: Author is only good at engineering drawings. Anything else he draws may not resemble the subject itself.

Quote for today is in honour of the biggest reader of my blog. He claims that he does not have any form of alert to my blog posts when they are published, but I think he's lying.


There's no place in Singapore that you can't travel to solely by foot
- HCl

Law

Today, I witnessed something that defied laws. And it occured during my law lecture.

As I was seated down in my lecture theatre, I was suddenly surrounded by obnoxious fumes that seem to have originated from a guy sitting in front of me. No, it wasn't his body odour, but it's almost as bad. It was his perfume (didn't smell like guys' cologne to me).

A single whiff from his perfume jolted my five senses to maximum alert. The smell was very strong. I think 1 ppm (part per million) can be detected by anyone within a 5 metres radius. I put up with it as I believed that the smell will eventually diffuse away.

Recall: Diffusion is the movement of particles from a region of high density to a region of low density. It occurs naturally.

On the contrary, whiffs of his perfume kept surging through my nostrils. It wasn't so bad if the smell was not so strong. I asked Lishuang (who sat behind the stinking guy and to my right) if she could smell him. She replied that she was feeling nauseous. Cheryl who was sitting on my left couldn't detect anything. Maybe she has lost her sense of smell, but still I envy her.

For the remainder of the 3 and a half hour long lecture, Lishuang and I were continuously assaulted by this chemical warfare agent. The smell kept coming and disappearing and reappearing. It was like how scientists described photons - they seem to behave like particles that move in discrete packets. I wonder where he managed to find perfume whose particles behave according to the law of quantum physics. Not only that, the smell never got weaker (hence further proving that it obeys quantum physics and not diffusion). He reminds me of the automated air-freshener in the school toilets that eject perfume into the air once every few minutes.

More than an hour into the lecture, Lishuang seemed to have lost the ability to comprehend the lecturer's words and wasn't able to think at all. The poor girl. Poor me too. I can feel tumours popping out from within my lungs.

I think I'll form a contract with Patrick and Mingwei. They agreed to provide me with a laser pointer for pointing to a certain person (who likes to ask a lot of questions during law lecture and as a result, slow down the pace of the syllabus) so that they can send a hail of artillery shells raining on him. I'll tell them I'll accept this job only if they agree to rain artillery fire on whoever else I point at as well.

Offer, consideration, acceptance and there we have it: a contract!


The flame of hope that burns in the heart can only be extinguished by the mind
- Tengkia

"Incorrigible" is my middle name

I confess. I played 3 hours of Warcarft 3 today.....

I'm a sinner.

Zhenyi, Erin, Cheryl.....practically everyone who saw me today were shaking their heads. Except my 2 kakis and Loo, the latter whose head will fall off if he shakes it anymore. I apologise for any loosening of ligaments around your neck, but I shall not be held liable for any injury that results (a liability limitation clause). I did study my law notes, though this part is not included in the quiz next Saturday.

Just to shift the focus of attention a little, Erin went for a 3 hour lunch break today. She's my fellow incorrigible study partner at the BIOMAT lab for the past 2 days. Both of us get distracted by every little thing that occurs around us. If she had a working pc in front of her, I think she won't be able to do any work at all.

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Singapore's court system has a lot of courts. In descending order of jurisdiction, we have

1. Supreme courts:

• Court of Appeal
• High Court

2. Subordinate courts:

• District court
• Magistrate's court
• Family court
• Juvenile court
• Coroner's court
• Small Claims Tribunal

Luckily I don't need to use my toes to help count them all. Court of Appeal has the most power and as its name implies, hears appeal cases. The decision it makes is final. One of the judges is the Chief Justice. Recalled the cases the lecturer mentioned about appeal cases made during the time of our current Chief Justice, mostly about people who felt that their sentences are too harsh and thus seeking leniency. Big big mistake. All of them were slapped with harsher sentences than what was previously given. Moral of the story: don't appeal.

Listening to law lectures are quite fun actually. The lecturers and tutors are rather witty and they have lots of "stories" to tell. Stuff like how a shopkeeper in Penang wants to sue someone else for defamation for $250,000 (or some figure like that).

I think lawyers are people who are exposed to the darkest side of humanity.But that doesn't put me off. I still think being a lawyer is cool.


No one can get you down unless you let them
- Tenkgia

Open MOB

I was happily doing my Industrial Automation tutorials (oh what a blatant lie!), when I suddenly received this message:

All NSMen with the call sign "Virtual Spine" please report to seminar room E4-04-02 immediately.

What the?!?! I'm under IHL (Institute of Higher Learning) for goodness sake!! They can't just recall me as and when they like!!

Best of all, only Erin and I (didn't have to initially but Prof Teoh was a little displeased at the turnout) turned up for the MOB briefing today. The others are going to squat in the Detention Barracks (aka DB, some sort of military prison for offenders) for 3 months because of Absence Without Official Leave (AWOL). Here's the list of offenders:

• Kek Wei Kiat
• Keh Enli, Justin
• Kong Weizhao, Benjamin
• Lee Hon Choon
• Tey Shuwen

Being dragged along to attend some totally irrelevant talk just to make my supervisor happy, is probably the most stupid thing I've ever done in my 4 years in NUS. The talk was given by a guest speaker (a 1st class honours NUS grad and currently an entrepreneur), on High Performance Computing.

How wonderful. I hoped he couldn't tell from my expression that I have absolutely no idea what those three words stand for when put together. Anyway, Puay Siang (whose call sign isn't even "Virtual Spine") was lucky enough to be passing by the seminar room when Prof Teoh 'pushed the button' (army slang for activation of recall manning), bumped into Prof Teoh, who said to her, "Puay Siang, there's a very interesting talk on High Performance....."

Jeremy, who witnessed the above event together with me, and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

The speaker commenced, while Erin was still making her way down from Engine Auditorium (it's not anywhere near, trust me). While he went through his presentation slides, I noted down the proportion of terms that I have never heard of before. Should be at least 70%. So I sat down there like a fool, puzzling over the "Beowulf concept of building a supercomputer by networking a few personal computers together", some TCP/IP issues that affect data transfer and a whole lot of other nonsense for almost 2 hours (and mind you, the speaker was already zooming through his slides [thankfully]).

If Prof Teoh is planning to buy a cluster (i.e. buy a few pcs), that means all of us (FYP sutdents) will have enough pcs of a reasonable standard for our use. But Jeremy had to say "No" when he was asked for his opinion. Great move Jeremy.

After the talk and blogging for this post, I realised didn't accomplish anything after lunch today. I could have completed one tutorial before my Industrial Automation lecture. Got to go for lecture now.

Irony of life

It's ironic how a painful sprained neck can bring out a smile from my heart. Please do not laugh at me if you see a funny expression on my face today.


A smile from the heart is always a beautiful smile
- Tengkia

In response to a very special request, I have come up with a rather special entry for this blog.

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Huimin likes to bully me into treating her to a meal

Huimin likes to make me carry her things for her

.
.
.
.
.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hee hee, just kidding.

I've found out a very good way to fulfill this special request. But copying it into my blog would result in plagiarism, which means she can sue me for violation of copyrights. Alas, I'm not rich enough to fight a lawsuit with her, at least not until I get my double degree in law (if I ever do).

Speaking of double degree in law, I've had aspirations of being a lawyer when I was young. Actually it's because I like to argue (not competing to see who can shout vulgarities more loudly) with others and twist words around. Always do that to my parents, heh heh. But when they couldn't out-talk me, they'll just abuse their authority as parents and exercise the iron grip of dictatorship. There's no democracy in this world.

I'm kidding again. But I do out-talk my parents often enough to make them remark that I would make a good lawyer. Sadly, my GP results (for both 'O' and 'A' levels) showed otherwise. It was during one law lecture when the lecturer commented that engineering graduates make good lawyers (because of their powers of analysis), that rekindled some hope in me. Nah. I'll consider that again a few years later. Need to get a job first to relieve my dad as much as I can.


To love someone, you should follow your heart, not your mind
- mynasy