How well do you know yourself?

1. What do you think is your position in the society (Social identity)?

Just another bugger who plays games in the cluster and distracts others from their studies


2. What do you see yourself as (Personal identity)?

Serious gamer (someone who likes to play games very much is always trying to play very well)


3. How do you imagine yourself to be in your personal identity? (Role identity):

A monster killer!!


4. Do you have any conflicting expectations arising from the role you mentioned above (Role strain)?

Should I attack the enemy base or should I defend my own base?


5. To what degree do you support your role (Prominence)?

I kill monsters about every alternate night, so that makes it a very important part of my life.


6. Is there any support for your role from others (Role support)?

There should be, judging from my previous blog entry (regarding being asked to kill monsters over the weekend).

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Is it difficult to tell I'm getting bored from studying HR notes?

Justifications

Some say I'm abusing school resources.

Some say I'm disrupting the peaceful environment and affecting others in their studies/work.

Some say I'm breaking the rules.

Some say I've been playing too much and not studying enough.


It's about time I stand up and speak up for myself (and my fellow monsters killers as well).

Point number 1: There are other people who run simulations on the computers as well (hey, I'm running war simulations ok) and they do it overnight, or even over the weekends. Someone even use not just 1 computer but 3.

Just to emphasis it's THREE computers, running simulations simultaneously.

Point number 2: There are people who talk very loudly, switch on their speakers or behave in a lovey-dovey way inside the clusters. Does that create a conducive study/work environment?

Point number 3: There are a lot of people eating and drinking inside the clusters, when there're already signs outside the cluster stating no food or drinks allowed. But there're no signs saying no games allowed.

Point number 4: A quote from a dear friend cum fellow monster killer "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy".

By the way, someone even encouraged me to play Warcraft 3 all the way from Saturday night till Monday morning.


I just love finding excuses for myself.

To someone: No offence, but you just gave me the perfect excuses I needed. As a sign of gratitude, I offer to teach you how to play Warcraft 3.

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I disrupted my bio-clock quite severely today - I had breakfast at 10 am, lunch at 5 pm and dinner at 10 pm (in my opinion, this is quite bad). To top it off, I ate McDonald's for breakfast and lunch, Sakae Sushi for dinner, and went to Coffee Bean for a drink and a cheesecakes immediately afterwards.

I have sinned. Very much, as compared to my usual eating habits. Worse of all, I had been sitting down the whole day.

But I still think it was worth it. I killed monsters with Fengchun for the afternoon, went for dinner with Ru-Tian and Diane and we were chatting so happily that we lost track of the time completely. When Ru-Tian deemed it necessary to check the time, it was already 2350. Anyway, we didn't care about the time and resumed chatting away.

When we finally decided to go home, Ru-Tian was hoping to catch her last bus while Diane and I took a cab (I can already imagine my mom saying "Thou hast sinned again!!" when she gets to know about this).

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Another food review: Coffee Bean's Triple Layer Cheesecake is absolutely fabulous. But I can't remember its price.

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I'm a sinner! I can't live with myself anymore!

I need to sleep my sins away.

Automation in Manufacturing

Statement: Engineers and scientists never earn as much as businessmen and salesmen do.

Proof:

Assumptions:

Knowledge = Power
Time = Money

As we all know,


After substituting the above assumptions in, we get


As Knowledge tends towards zero, Money will tend towards infinity regardless of the Work done. Therefore, we can say that businessmen and salesmen always make more Money than engineers and scientists do.


Believe it or not, this is what I've learnt from my Automation in Manufacturing lecture yesterday. How can anyone ever blame me for skipping those lectures all these while.....

The start of a beautiful day

I hate approaching lab technicians. They're generally rude and arrogant, with the exception of those in Workshop 2. I think facing machines in the long term made them forget their manners and social etiquette.

Anyway, I was looking for plastic bolts in Engineering Workshop 2, when the nice technicians there kindly redirected me to the EE workshop in the same building (they even told me how to get there) where I would have a higher chance of finding them.

By the way, the EE workshop is the cleanest workshop I've ever entered. The equipment there looks very much untouched as well. They even have a sensor at the door that sounds off everytime someone passes by (like those in 7-11, only much very louder and it echos around the mostly empty workshop).

As I walked through the workshop, I saw an open cupboard with all kinds of nuts and bolts inside, so I started looking for any plastic ones.

Suddenly, a voice shouted at me, "Hello! Who gave you permission to open that cupboard?"

Sounds are usually amplified when made in a room that echos very easily. His voice almost made me jump.

For all I know, he could have been shouting at a thief who was trying to break into the workshop and getting away with all his precious nuts and bolts. To think he was the one who left the cupboard that kept his precious nuts and bolts open.

I pointed out that the cupboard doors were open before I came. His tone became much softer, "You have to ask for permission before you take anything ok?"

I'd rather manufacture my own bolts than to take anything from you, thank you!

On my way back to my lab in E3, I took a lift up with another guy. He was impatiently pressing the lift button to close the door, but he kept pressing the "door open" button......

Nevermind, I'll be camping at DSO for the rest of the day. At least the people there are sane and pleasantly well-mannered.

Jian4 Gui3 Le4

HCl just saw something on yesterday's copy of Today that looks like
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Demon!!

This is what he saw



Demon posing for an ITE ad?


Slight resemblance perhaps. Let's put it next to her actual photo and do a comparison.





The actual Demon picture is a little small, but can't be helped. Resemblance gets closer the more I look at both pictures.

I'm actually haunting my own blog with demonic pictures.....

New career option

Research.

The very word brings to mind adjectives such as boring, mundane, repetitive, etc. However, I think that depends on what research one is doing. Research work can be rather exciting and frightening, for example, research on the existence of ghosts.

I'm not kidding, there are such research going on in America. They call it Electronic Voice Phenomena, or EVP. Imagine that the work you're doing involves proving the existence of ghosts. It's like hunting for ghosts and capturing their images or sounds. Doesn't sound boring anymore does it?

Singapore has its own version of of studies on ghosts as well. It's a scientific research, somewhat applicable to engineering (can probably design devices to help study EVP or something, good for EE people).

Start sending resumes now.

TJC Idol 2005

11th March, 2005

The day when TJC's very own Idol will emerge.

But the outcome lies in your hands!

Vote for Yeo Chai Luang, Sharon, for the TJC Idol!!



Sharon bringing out her karaoke VCD to play in her player at home

Sharon, the most promising contestant among the 8 finalists, represents the cream of the Yeo Clan as well as the Teochew bloodline (the fact that I share these 2 traits is pure coincidence).

Future TJC Idol hard at work practicing

Nevermind the guy at the back.

Just kidding. That's Bryan, who went to Karen's place for Chinese New Year with Yap and Danny after I left. Although they had more fun at Karen's place, I get more ang pows than they did. So we're still even.

Just a normal blog

Enough of complaints about FYP already.

Today I finally (after 2 failed attempts earlier this sem) had lunch with Liangming & Lishuang.

NB: "&" means the 2 are a couple. You know, couple, moment, torque, 2 equal forces acting in opposite directions at different locations. Who am I bullshitting?

The atmosphere was rather relaxed and easy when hanging out with those 2, unlike some others. They joked around and bickered as though they are 2 very very close friends. There's hardly a need to keep looking away because they don't engage in those mushy tete-a-tete around friends.

I seem to bump into Irene more and more these days. Bumped into her at the canteen while waiting for Liangming to turn up, bumped into her again when I went to the pc cluster after lunch. It should be quite fun to play bumper cars with her.

As usual, we ended up bitching in the pc cluster. Bitching subjects of the day were Huimin and Justin. Irene was telling me how Huimin repeated her test over and over again because she wasn't satisfied with her performance. Not fair!! Why don't I get to repeat the tests? Justin's topic is too sensitive to be mentioned here.

I decided to make a star appearance for lecture today since I was unable to do my FYP. But I was so flustered over not being able to locate my lab officer (refer to previous entry), that I walked to LT7A (the venue for Tuesday's lecture) instead of LT7 (the correct venue). Luckily I saw Peifen before I stepped into LT7A, and she corrected me. But the embarrassment was.....extreme. All I wanted to do was to dig a very deep hole and jump inside, and I do mean a very deep hole.

Went to Clementi hawker centre for dinner after the lecture with Karen and Danny. Just as we were eating, a lion dance troupe came out of nowhere and started to perform. How on earth do lion dancers dance inside a hawker centre? The drum was placed on a trolley and pushed it around the hawker centre, the other instruments could be played while walking around. The lion dancers simply carried their lion costume and walked from stall to stall, stopping only in front of stalls which showed approval to do a short dance and then accept an ang pow from them.

Suddenly, the trolley transporting the drum stopped about 2 tables away from mine and the drummer started hammering away. Each beat on the drum (and each reverberation of my ear drums) made the food that were halfway down my digestive system do a little hop backwards.


*Bang*

*Hop*

*Bang*

*Hop*

*Bang*

*Hop*

*Puke*

It was my ego that prevented me from throwing up in front of Karen.

Never say die is.....

• Not to become depressed no matter how impossible it seems to complete my work


• Re-seal my Radio-translucent spine tester no matter how many times it leaks


• Not to return home until I've run through at least 1 set of experiment

Unless I'll miss the last bus

My career

Contrary to popular belief, I don't intend to kill monsters for a living (although I would very much love to do so).

Instead, I've found a more innovative, though rather tiring way, of earning money - going around Singapore collecting ang pows and getting free meals from others during Chinese New Year.


Saturday 1900h 12th Feb, 2005

Prof. Teoh, my FYP supervisor, invited personnel from at least 4 different labs (on the Bioengineering corridor) to his house for Chinese New Year cum 50th birthday celebration. Though I was late for about 20 minutes, I have to hand it to Kuan Ming for making a guest star appearance almost an hour later.

But let's not dwell too much on the mistakes of others

The catered food was quite good (and most probably quite expensive as well) and there was tiramisu served at the end. The tiramisu was excellent, but this is not a food review, so I shall leave out the details.

Prof. Teoh shared with us his life experiences and stories, as well as his hobby, which is collecting biographies of handicapped people. It's actually a sharing session, so most of us were not paying much attention.

Group photo taken at Prof. Teoh's house

Jeremy (seated, extreme right) wasn't looking at some babe. There's 2 photographers taking photos simultaneously and most of us were confused as to who to look at 1st.


Sunday 1200h 11th Feb, 2005

Finally found Karen's unit in the HDB flat. Thankfully, I didn't had to backtrack too much while looking for it. I was the only one visiting her that early, Bryan, Yap and Danny were coming later in the afternoon.

Karen's youngest sister, Cai Pei, opened the door for me and greeted me happily. But she had to add a "ni3 zhang3 gao1 le4!" as well..... I thought I'd only get such remarks from elders (she's only about 8 years old). Cai Luan, the 2nd youngest sister, was busy baking Valentine's Day cookies for her friends in the kitchen, but she came out to greet me nonetheless. Karen was still bathing when I arrived.

After going around the place to greet everyone in the family, Cai Pei immediately grabbed my hand and dragged me along to play with her. She really seemed to enjoy my company. In fact, she was so reluctant to let me go when I had to leave for Cheryl's place at 2 pm that I stayed for another half an hour.

Although I went over by myself, it was still quite fun to be able to play with Cai Pei, help Cai Luan bake her cookies, do some idle chit-chat with Karen, observe Karen and Cai Luan argue over how to bake cookies properly.....hardly a boring moment. They had a brother too (2nd eldest in the family) but I forgot his name

I left the place with more ang pows than expected (because Karen's dad invited friends over at the same time and they gave me ang pows as well ) and 2 Valentine's Day cookies (although I sampled a few while helping to bake them, but hey, I should put my Quality Engineering skills to good use).


Sunday 1500h 11th Feb, 2005

Arrived at Cheryl's place after 15 minutes of walking in the hot hot sun. I had only been there twice previously and was surprised I still managed to remember how to get there. I ate my takeaway lunch at her place (consisting of a da4 bao1 and glutinous chicken rice), and everyone said that I looked very pathetic eating such fare on the 5th day of the Chinese New Year. Blame it on the host for not providing any food

Cheryl's parents did get a fruit cake for all of us (Christopher, Loo, Kara and of course Cheryl), sort of a birthday cake for ren2 ri4. Very thoughtful of them. Pity it didn't rub off Cheryl.


Sunday 1700h 11th Feb, 2005

Rendezvous with Dengli at Kara's place. Kara's house is HUGE . It's HUGE enough for 4 families to live inside. Actually there are 4 families living inside.

Her family members were warm and friendly too. Her mom was constantly making sure we felt at home and her brother mixed in with us quite easily. Christopher finished 1/5 of a jar of her pineapple tarts. If I wasn't having sore throat that day, I would have finished even more.

We spent the rest of the day playing her board games, mahjong, Uno Stacko, and before we left, we took pictures of her brother's 3-D jigsaw puzzles. 1st time I've saw a 3-D jigsaw and boy are they impressive. There was the NASA space shuttle, the Eiffel Tower, the Titanic...to name a few. They look like pretty big models, only difference is that one can easily tell they were build from pieces of jigsaw.

Great people, great games, great food, great house. Correction, HUGE house. It was certainly great to be able to visit Kara on Chinese New Year.


Cash Flow Statement for the year 2005

Analysis indicates that net cash flow has increased by approximately 20 %.

All the house visits I did has really paid off.

M&M&M

What does Chinese New Year signify to you?

I use 3Ms to represent what I did this new year:

MONEY
From ang pows of course. Getting a bit more ang pows than usual this year because I'm going to bai4 nian2 at a few of my friends' places. Going to Sherry's, Karen's, Cheryl's, Dengli's and Kara's places. Maybe I'll spring 'a particularly sweet girl' a little surprise while I'm still lingering around the eastern part of Singapore.

MONSTERS
Someone has to do the dirty work of keeping the neighbourhood safe so that others can celebrate their new year.

MAHJONG
Played more mahjong than usual this year. No money involved, because I was playing mostly with beginners. Played late into the night last night with Kok Kin, Sherry and Huiying. We were talking so much cock that everyone had stomach cramps from laughing too much.

Everyone came to a unanimous decision that Huiying should not become a teacher, because she couldn't count!!! She made quite a few blunders on misreading the words on the tiles (like 50 thousand became 60 thousand), while the rest of us gently reminded her that she may become a teacher in future and could not afford to make such errors. Over the course of the game, we pointed out her mistakes to her so many times that at a certain point during the game, she grabbed her hair in frustration and screamed "I DON'T WANNA BE A TEACHER ANYMORE!!".

At least it's still not too late for her to realise that.

Although no money was involved in last night's mahjong game, we decided to determine our winnings using chips (in order to simulate real time battle conditions) and the one with the least chips at the end of our game will have to treat the other 3 to a meal each. And the outcome is
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Huiying will be treating the rest of us to Engine Cuisine sometime next week.

After Huiying left the battlefield a defeated person, Kok Kin, Sherry and I resumed playing 3 player mahjong, but reduced the stakes to loser treats the other 2 to a drink. Despite whatever homeground advantage she had (a mother who's a very good mahjong player for consultant), Sherry ended up having to buy 2 drinks.

A free meal and a free drink. It has been a fruitful day for me.

Chinese New Year eve blog

It is a norm to blog about what one did for the day and end with a happy Chinese New Year message today. But all I did today was to meet with a stupid accident, so I shall do something different from the norm.

What should I do? Hmmmmm.....



*Oh bother. Think, think, think, think, think.*

A "cock" to signify a year with no 'cock ups' and less 'talk cock' ahead for the Year of the Cock for everyone (guess where I got this picture from).

Good luck will come your way when you've used up all of your bad luck
- Tengkia

World class literature researcher

I didn't camp at DSO today. I hid myself at the deepest corner of the E2 pc cluster. Just when I thought I was pretty well hidden, along came a paparazzi by the name of Caiyun and took 2 shots of me using her handphone's built-in camera. Thankfully she's not going to upload those.

She's listening to a webcast lecture beside me, but in fact she's reading my blog as I type it. So much for being attentive. Not that I mind having a new reader for my blog. She already requested that I send her the link when I see her online next time

Guess what I've been doing today. Then again, don't guess. It's already stated on the entry title. I bet no one has been doing as much literature research as I have for FYP. I've been doing it since VIP until now, on and off. Most of the time, I've found information for my friends and my co-supervisors more than for myself. Feel like a winner and a loser at the same time. Dilemna. Self-contradiction. Headache. Time to blog.

Still worrying about the house visits I have to do over the coming weekend (beyond the standard ones between relatives). I've been invited to a few places to do house visiting (my FYP supervisor inclusive, but the reason is mainly his 50th birthday). Whatever it is, it simply means I'm going all over Singapore and letting everyone see my.....new haircut (let's just leave it as that).


Everyday is a bad hair day when you don't have much hair to speak of
- Tengkia

Haircut

I went for a hair cut today. At the usual hair saloon in Fajar. Nothing classy nor fanciful. On the contrary, it was disastrous. The lady boss who cut my hair today had somehow lost her sense of symmetry, her sense of judgement...everything. It's not the 1st time she cut my hair, and it's not that I requested for a different style. But why did it have to end up as a disaster??!! I should have checked her handiwork properly. On top of everything, the price was jacked up due to the festive season. Oh well. I'm not going to leave my house without a cap for the next 2 weeks. I shall hide in my little wormhole at DSO whenever I go to school.

Why did I have to cut my hair today......


Never ever ever let someone who just cut the hair of a little kid cut your hair immediately afterwards
- Tengkia

It was another lonely day at the cold research staff room situated at the 4th level of DSO inside the NUS campus. All of my friends had left the campus already (my 2 co-supervisors inclusive). Dinner was a solo affair at the nearby cafe, Coffee Grounds, consisting of a lasagne and an Oreo Cheesecake.

Much to my surprise, there was hardly a trace of meat to be found in the lasagne. Perhaps they are catering to the vegetarians. The cheesecake was a normal cheesecake with Oreo biscuit crumbs base, topped with a chocolate sauce. Sweet but not too rich. I believe I can down 2 of those without feeling any difference (try that on cheesecakes elsewhere and you'll live to regret it).

Knowing my greedy self can never be satisfied by such a light fare, I bought myself a packet of Doritos nachos, cheese flavoured. Cheese again. I've overloaded myself with them tonight. Warning alarms that indicate a serious need to exercise are sounding off in my mind, for the upteenth time this sem.

Time for myself. The only occassions when I had time for myself are when I killed monsters with Fengchun for some of the nights over this week. I seem to have lost track of the time already. After FYP, there's HR presentations to prepare for. After school there'll be friends who need my listening ear. Poor little Furball hasn't left its cage for almost a week already. On top of that, my mom's hand suddenly became infected for some unknown reason. That makes me in charge of the household chores now.

Just realised that I've been writing nothing but complaints. It's time I get my life back.

Monster Killer Club Mag

Announcement:

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm most proud to present to you the newest member of the monster killer club: HCl!

Is it me or did he seem to have aged a little? Ooops.....wrong photo. Pardon me.

May I present to you again: HCl!

Currently, he's undergoing intensive training on single Hero control, and has been showing good results. By the end of this semester, he could very well be a full fledged monster killer. We wish him all the best in his future endeavours.

More ways to while my time away at DSO...

I just found out very recently, and to my pleasant surprise, that Irene's lab is also at DSO!! She's based on the 11th floor, while I'm on the 4th (seems that higher level means higher level of secrecy). Now I have someone to go to lunch at science canteen, canteen breaks at Coffee Grounds, and while time away at DSO staff lounge with

Won't have to feel so lonely at DSO anymore. Don't have to wait for people, who only take 1 module this sem, to be in the mood to come down to school and have that long-awaited-but-no-idea-when-it-will-be-fulfilled-lunch with me.

Didn't really get to know Irene well until yesterday. I was in E2 pc cluster talking to Caiyun (face to face) until she came along and joined in the conversation. I spent the whole of yesterday afternoon talking to them about where we wanted to go after graduation, and Caiyun was even surfing the websites to look at the locations as we spoke. Even after Caiyun left to go for the Automation in Manufacturing lecture, I continued to stay (YEAH! FINAL CHANCE TO SKIP LECTURES) and talk to Irene about potential holiday plans. We gradually came to the topic of her Student Exchange Program to Sweden and talked about the things she did, the places she went to, and even gossiped about Ru-Tian and Qiujin

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For Ru-Tian only: What's that thing that's blocking the Eiffel Tower in the photo?
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Finally, I can have someone to have Jap food at science canteen with (who needs HCl ), enjoy the cheese cake at Coffee Grounds with (who needs min ), and while away time with 20 cents of coffee and 50 cents of pool with (don't even need Kuan Ming and Jeremy to bring me there anymore). YEAH!!

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HCl please stop reading my blog 1st hand again.....

Status report

While I'm not capable of coming up with intelligent IQ questions, I can still play guessing games, like the following:

Guess who's the 'face-less' person in the picture below.

No no, not either of those leaning to the left or right. Not the owner of "THE HAND" either. Guess who's the one cleverly camouflaged behind the bouquet of flowers.






























The answer is: Sherry!

Operation Surprise Sherry was a success. This report came in late because I was waiting for the photos to be uploaded by my dear busy friend. Boy, is she going to complain again when she reads this.

Mission: Operation Surprise Sherry

Objective: Surprise Sherry
...duh
Ok ok, the whole plan was to celebrate Sherry's birthday when she thinks none of us gives a hoot about her. To ensure that she remembers us for life, we even decided to buy her flowers and made her parade up and down Orchard Road.

Status: Success
Brilliant success if I may say so myself. Sherry was really caught off guard when Kok Kin appeared with a bouquet of flowers for her. She liked the present, which was a bed sheet, pillow case and bolster case set with Winnie the Pooh characters printed on them. Not forgetting the self-made birthday card, courtesy of Huiying. After dinner at Cafe Cartel (Cineleisure branch), we conducted our march pass, up and down and up and down, until we finally stopped at Coffee Club Express (Wisma branch).

Remarks: Sherry shall remember us for life
She'd better, if not we'll make her march across the whole of Singapore.