I’ll be across the causeway till Tuesday evening, so hopefully I can get as much inspiration and time there so as to complete that bloody essay.

Bee tee double you, here’s a list of things to do during the Chinese New Year:

• Wednesday

1. Submit for AW Assignment 2 for peer review
2. Settle two teaser mailers for Proj. Sunshine

• Thursday

1. Academic Writing Assignment 2

• Friday
  1. Business Law Midterms
  2. Statistics Home work assignment 3
  3. Analytical Skills Home work assignment 5
  4. Secure all Contacts for interview on our CSP

• Saturday
  1. Interaction with the orphans

PS: If you have contacts with people of profession like: accountant, police officer, fire fighter, car mechanic. I would like to do an interview with him/her in regards to the working experience as one of the listed profession. Please help =)

I hope all of you will be enjoying a better and happier CNY than me. Wish you all, good health and wealth!

Business Law is giving me one hell of a headache. There’s simply so much reading to do that I’m hardly able to prepare myself for class. More over, I find it clearer when the seminar questions are being discussed in the class, and hence I rather spend time doing those questions.

I finally completed my first assignment for AW. I was dropped with a bombshell a day before submission. Just when I thought I’m able to finish the assignment ahead of time, I realised that my critique was totally out of the point. In a sense, I’ve failed to bring up one of the dilemmas of how youths create a persona in my critique. Thankfully with the help of my friends, I’m able to tweak my essay to fit in the point. Let’s hope it’s coherent.

Speaking of hope, I thought of a scene in The Matrix: Reloaded, when Neo meets The Architect, who talks about what hope can do to us, humans.

“Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.”

The Architect

As those weeks progresses, the assignments are just getting tougher and tougher. Case in point, AS is just mind fucking. I always thought I have no problems with logics, but after doing the second and third assignments… I would like to recall that thought. Hidden premises, strength of argument, sound or unsound, valid or invalid argument, oh come on cut me some slack. Statistics is just another silent killer. The assignment deadlines are two weeks behind the actual lesson. It is during then, I realise how poorly I’ve understood the lesson. It took me TWO days to finish up those ten questions, I felt like an idiot wasting my precious time on those questions.

Bee tee double you, I’ve signed up for an overseas community service project! I’m really excited that I got selected for this project! I’ll be working on marketing, assisting the committee in marketing our events such as fund raising and awareness programmes. I’ll be flying to Laos this summer for a week or so. Can’t wait!

I almost forgot about LTB. Our team is facing a lot of problems, you can see the enthusiasm and energy level hitting rock bottom when responses from respective organisations seems bleak. I’m just glad the rest of the team and car are very supportive with each other. I really hope (in this instance, it will be in the form of strength,) that we can make it through and learnt from this experience.

Anyways, I’ve watch The Hurt Locker recently. I think it is a really good piece of film. The dangers that these young Americans faced in Iraq, are everywhere. There can die any time if they’re not a single bit careful with their job. Then again, they should pull out from Iraq ASAP and stop wasting precious lives there.

The Hurt Locker Trailer from Premier PR on Vimeo.

Good night!

Reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written. The person who say he knows what he thinks but cannot express it in words usually does not know what he thinks (49)

Mortimer Adler in How to Read a Book

Community Service Project

As mentioned before, my team and I will need to plan out a community service project (CSP) and execute it. This is part of our LTB module, applying the skills of leadership and teambuilding that’ve learnt into use. This is tough. Firstly, I’ve no prior experience in doing any CSP project before. I’ve been thinking for the past few days, in search of an idea of the kind of CSP that my team can do.

Please let me know if:

• you have any contacts in an organisation that requires help
• or, an organisation that would like to sponsor
• an idea of what I can do as a CSP

Aussie Trip in Summer

I had a pleasant evening meeting up with Yi Ling, Dorothy, How Keat and Cam. It’s been at least three years since I last saw Dorothy. I happen to see her on my campus, and to my surprise, she recognises me. Hahaha! Unlike most, we really did meet up for dinner! Listening to all the outdoor activities that she tried, I can’t wait to fly over and tried all of them! Sky diving, bungee jumping are two things I definitely want to do. The rest of the activities, I’ll let the money decide.

I’m really keen in having a summer holiday in Australia, a treat for myself! How can I save up enough money to pay for the tickets and other expenditures? Perhaps, I should start off wtih cutting down on expenses on food eh? From today onwards, I shall go out no more than twice in a week. I shall not spent unnecessarily on drinks, and stick to my good old plain water.

The Blind Side

Anyways, I caught the Blind Side. The story is based on life of Michael Oher of the Baltimore Ravens. It’s a wonderful story on how a white family took the then home-less Michael. They gave him a proper place to sleep over, bought him clothings and gave him food. Michael was slowly becoming part of the family. He plays football for the school and he played well. He was so good that news about Michael spread around the colleges. Many colleges came to recruit him, offering many perks along with college education. However, Michael’s academic performance wasn’t as good as his athletic capability. Eventually, Michael managed to scored well enough to earn himself a scholarship to college.

Leigh Anne Touhy: [from trailer] Find some time to figure out another bedroom for you.
Michael Oher: This is mine?
Leigh Anne Touhy: Yes sir.
Michael Oher: I never had one before.
Leigh Anne Touhy: What, a room to yourself?
Michael Oher: …A bed.

Every Monday, I’ll be greeted with Mooney’s jokes and intriguing Irish accent.  It’s a short one and half hour lesson, perhaps that is why I find it enjoyable. I’ve yet to make any attempt on his homework, let’s hope it wouldn’t pose much challenge to me. After all, they say in Analytical Skills, it is all about logic. That is something I should have plenty of it, I used to be a programmer you know?

Business Law kicks start my Tuesdays. I didn’t bid this class with anyone and hence, it was suppose to be a lonely three-hour lesson. Surprisingly I saw Hazel. Apparently, Hazel and Cathleen are in the same class too! Unfortunately, we were separated after the professor requested we split the group up! Gosh! On top of that, the readings for law are like endless! Just flipping through the first five pages, I actually fell asleep! I can’t understand any law jargon they use. The text in the book is as confusing as the legal documents you see in the contracts. Help?

My Tuesday ends with Academic Writing. It’s the slowest one and a half hour lesson in my life. The standard of English used in the essays are way over my level. Critical reading means reading the essay multiple times. How nice. For the first time in my life, I’m analyzing who is the author, what he does, why he wrote this essay and even where it is published. Tough one.

Next up on Wednesday is, Leadership and Team building! According to Prof. Kong, this is a module taken straight from Wharton. Hmmm! Again, I got separated from Gernaine. Oh well, new team mates means new friends to make right? I’m really really hoping we can do a good CSP for the less fortunate in our society. More importantly, the meetings better be short and concise.

Thursday is my last of the week! Unfortunately it is also the longest day in my week. Statistics class in the morning, feels exactly like Calculus class. A lot of things that he talk about I don’t understand. What’s Box Plot graph? It’s my first time seeing that sort of chart. Astonishingly, Saurabh, Caroline and Ai Ling is in the same class. What a coincidence! Just too bad I was seated away from them. Oh well, next week.

Five hours later

Again it’s Academic Writing in the late afternoon. Why can’t they just make it a weekly class? I wonder what’s the rationale behind this two one and a half hour session for Academic Writing.

Today I learnt to skate! I got extremely excited when I saw the emailer of Skating Clinic! The seniors were really patient in teaching. I want to skate like them too! I manage to skate on my own for quite a distance without stopping too much! Felt like I achieve quite a bit today! There is definitely room for improvement, I need to keep my knees bent. One day, I’ll be able to skate along the East Coast. Maybe I should join them every Friday. First thing first, must someone to go with me.

Please correct me if you see any mistake I make in my post, trying to improve my English you see?

On hindsight, let’s see what happened in 2009.

• My first trip to Japan!
• I’m no longer 21…
• Gaynamic trio from ‘ntrnat fwens overseas trip
• I fought with 7000 applicants for 700 vacancies in SMU
• Let me reiterate that there is no need for two wheelchair bay on our buses
• NUSSU Union Camp, the place where I met this group of wonderful people! 万岁！
• More friends are getting married every year.
• My very first Apple product, the iPhone 3GS!
• Enrolment to SMU! Hell beings.
• Kayak from Pasir Ris to Sembawang, East Coast to Pasir Ris!
• My first Macbook Pro!!! OMG!
• Never mugged that hard in my life before
• My first 10km run/jog/walk.
• My first moleskine.

SMU

Clearly, I have blog a lot lesser ever since I’ve started schooling. Just looking back the past four months, I felt like I sprint through those four months of my life. Never have I ran so fast, I guess that’s call university life. Throughout this short period, I had a really tough time initially. I struggled with most of my modules. If it wasn’t for my friends and family, their support and encouragement, I don’t think I have the motivation to survive through the semester. In some sense, it’s like a culture shock? It’s like the JC Polytechnic, sometimes I feel like I don’t belong to the community. Good news is, at least I’ve worked with wonderful people in my projects. Unfortunately, friendship in uni always seems to remain at that surface level, never able to go any further. That’s just isn’t me. I want to make real friends there…

‘ntrnat fwens

As most of us fulfilled our liability, everyone moved on in their own way. Work and school life kept us from meeting up as often, but I’m glad we still managed to do so. I hope in 2010 we’ll be able to spend time together (as in with full attendance) and have fun!

Others

I can kind of say I’m pretty done with my National Service, with just 1.5 months left. Easy peasy. I should count myself lucky for being posted to such a great department. It isn’t the most glorious one, but hey my supervisors and friends, we take care of each other. Well, I’m so glad I went Union Camp, Booza’s such a fun OG! Despite being in SMU, i’m happy that we still can meet up occasionally. =)

Resolutions

Now let’s see what resolutions I accomplished.

• I did achieve my 2 stars kayaking that I set out in 2009! Wee!
• Failed to redesign Creation Wing. The more I delay it, the more I’m going to leave behind my web designing skills
• Overseas trip with ‘ntrnat fwens. Well, only three of us went.

So what’s for 2010:

• I want to remember more birthdays of my friends and family
• No more ‘C’ in transcripts!!!
• *that’s all for now*

Below is one of the question posted to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in one of his lectures:

There are currently thousands of private military contractors in Iraq and you were just speaking of rules of engagement in regards to Iraqi personnel and US personnel. Could you speak to, since the private contractors are operating outside the Uniform Code of Military Justice, can you speak to what law or rules of engagement do govern their behavior and whether there has been any study showing that it is cost effective to have them in Iraq rather than US military personnel. Thank you

Will privatized military companies play a bigger role in future conflicts, wars and operations? More soldiers will want to work for such companies given that they would pay higher? Who would want to serve the Army then? And who or what will govern their behavior or actions in another sovereign land?

Just questions in my head… disturbing.

Hello everyone! It’s the time of the year again! Let me wish everyone a merry merry Christmas. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, spend this good day together with your loved ones. Make it extraordinary, give ‘em a hug, kiss, tell ‘em you love ‘em.

Thanks to all my friends who sent me their wishes and gifts. I really really appreciate it.

Once again, Happy Holidays!

If I did hop on the plane, I’ll be missing out 5 days’ classes and probably a mid-term test… There are so many possibilities, given that I’m taking modules that are based more on in-course assessment. Academic writing, with its endless essays. That’s not all, the other modules which might require me to be doing the projects? ARGH!

I want to go Japan!

Alternatively, I’ll just be a good mugger and stay in Singapore.

My results are out, a week ago. Ha! Haven’t had that feeling of nervousness for quite a while. Yeap, I thought I did okay, with the exception of Accounting. I’m very disappointed with my results, plus I was given the grade for my final papers, like WTF. As I was saying, I thought I did okay until my friends from Kayaking were like doing 3.5 – 3.7 for their GPA. I was speechless. Am I kayaking with a bunch of elites or it happens that the school is awarding ‘A’s to many people (and that I wasn’t eligible).

Whatever la. I’m just glad I made it to the second semester. University is so much more difficult than Polytechnic, someone told me it’s suppose to be fun. Fun your head!

P.S.: I lost my watch some 2 weeks back. Totally got no recollection of how I lost it. FML.

I was trying to setup the Internet Tethering and then came and error. Ever since then, the Internet Tethering was disabled. Along with that, MMS was no longer available.

I called up Apple, and was told that it was because I didn’t had my data plan and MMS activated. It’s ridiculous, I have been sending MMS and occasionally using my 3G network to surf (despite without a data plan).

Well two days after that phone call to Apple was made, I saw a iPhone Carrier Settings update on the iTunes and promptly updated it. It was great to see that the Internet Tethering and MMS settings are re-enabled in the phone. But this is when i realise the APN settings are missing.

What that this means is that you can no longer edit the settings inside. What I use to do is insert a wrong username in the field, so that my phone will not be able to use cell data network. Without access to the settings, one can easily be clocking data charges with any apps that uses Internet access.

This is unfair, i’m forced to get a data plan. Let’s hope there’ll be offer for existing M1 iPhone customers.