Oh yes, did you manage to catch a glimpse of the Imperial College Malaysians in The Star?
If not, here it is:
Students keep our flag flying high

I have no words to describe how proud I am of my countrymen in IC. They never fail to keep me in awe. And, er... don't try looking for me in that article. I was sitting for a Software Engineering exam while the whole thingamajig was going on and everyone else got their 15 seconds of fame.

In recent Malaysian news...

The PM has agreed to a 5-day work week for civil servants, as well as the re-introduction of the Cost of Living Allowance (Cola - for lack of a better, 'grander', name).

This means, less working hours for my daddy. He will be called on to spend more time at the golf course with Rafidah Aziz, yes? Oh, so much for spending family quality time.
Perhaps I kid you.
Perhaps it means my mum can now give my daddy the task of doing more Saturday morning errands. He shouldn't be playing golf anyway, with his bad back.

And on behalf of a legion of scouts, guides and rangers and other uniformed groups, I am bemoaning the 5 day work week. It was bad enough when they cut the working week to allow civil servants to take the 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month off. All of a sudden, Saturdays - which were usually meant for earning our guiding badges or ranks and taking tests and planning hiking or cooking activities were limited to 2 Saturdays a month. Because teachers weren't available on the 1st and 3rd Saturday. Such an encouragement to character building through healthy, organised, activities. And it wasn't just the uniformed groups that were hit by this. As Interactors, who try our best to hold our charity events and activities outside of school hours - Saturdays became a headache for us as we fought for venues in school with other societies and the school authorities who were themselves limited to holding school functions on those precious, precious Saturdays.

Now with the greenlight to get rid of Saturdays for civil servants altogether, we can say farewell to our brother scouts and sister guides (and aunty rangers). All the talk about the need for National Service, about the wasted youth and their incorrigible activities, about the lack of patriotism or the motivation - is really such utter rubbish if you can't see for yourself what is being done (or rather not being done) in our National schools. As it is, my sister has to attend guiding activities during that small 1 hour window on Fridays, when the seniors in the morning session can meet the juniors in the afternoon session to take their tests and hold important events like installations or inaugarations - events which are supposedly landmarks in a guide's life, hastily squashed into a one hour period. My sister has yet to learn how to pitch a tent or do any nature tests. There hasn't been a Saturday where a teacher is willing to spend time to supervise these girls. And with the new proposal it looks like there won't be, for a long time!

Lu si hokkien lang boh??

Well, technically I am half hokkien. My dad's side still retains all the nuances of what I call the brash, rougue-ish hokkien syndrome. My amah when I was a kid was hokkien, and whatever hokkien I picked up was from listening to her speak it to the other amahs around the block. Of course she didn't speak hokkien in the house. Not around my mother, a daughter of a respectable cantonese family. As the saying goes, in a cantonese house a Hokkien is not a person. They're lang.

How my mum got away bringing us kids up to speak more Cantonese than Hokkien right under the nose of my proudly Hokkien father still amazes me.

Which anyway, brings me to this
Wa Si Hokkien Lang
I can't understand most of it, but it's funny all the same. How can hokkien sound so unbelievably rude and funny at the same time?

ps: The link is courtesy of Tock: The Paratocks

The exam period has come to a temporary standstill for now. I have an itsy bitsy break to study for Math and Language Processors while the EEE people toil over Power, Fields and Devices and curse the ISE people lolling about enjoying their peace.

Sometimes I wonder what gets me through exam times here. I seem to hover around aimlessly like a cloud with no wind to guide it, while back in JC, I was frustrated to the max and at my books from the crack of dawn till the lights in the study room were turned off and all I had to fuel my drive was the fear of my escalating stupidity and Charme and Sherene.

I'm feeling a sudden nostalgic 'home-sickness' for the days when we'd gather in the cold boarding school study room in our varied colourful pyjamas, with a pile of notes so high, armed with no less than 10 past year papers. I miss the "Good BRAINS" notes, Charme slipped me before A-Level Maths. When I jump around before my exams and Vidu and David tell me to stop looking so nervous because I look like a petrified hamster, I wish I was holding hands and jumping while chanting the '4 As, S-Paper Distinction and GP A1' mantra with Charme and Sherene, like we did every night before A levels. 2 thirds of us didn't achieve it, but that's besides the point. It really made me feel like there was a goal and I knew which way to shoot.

Right now, I know there's a goal, but I don't seem to know which side of the field it is. I'm getting distracted by every little thing, until Lionel puts on that disapproving tone and I'm back at my notes for another 15 minutes more before something else catches my eye. My attention span is as bad as Charme's was back in JC. Hehe...

These exams are probably more important than A Levels and yet I don't seem to be giving much of a hoot about it. I'm taking last year's achievements for granted.

I will be kicking myself at the end of it all.

Why do I always, ALWAYS, do this!

Watching Star Wars after spending 2 nights mugging for Control Engineering is a bad idea. Mostly because of the intense pressure in my eyes after the paper ended. I woke up with one rather red eye just before the exam which, although was causing me no pain, garnered alot of unnescessary attention from everyone else. And I think I've pretty much learnt my lesson that red eyes and flashing light sabers can lead to pretty painful migraines.

I don't think I'll post up my verdict on Star Wars, by the way. The only reason I watch Star Wars is because of Ewan McGregor, and to say he gave a stunning performance is one hell of a big big lie. The other reason I watch Star Wars is because of Natalie Portman (and NOT the styrofoamic Hayden Christiansen). She's watchable. Very watchable. (Stop giggling about saphists, Amar!)

Exams start tomorrow

Coffee buzzes, haunting nightmares and heart palpitations to follow.

3 weeks till this torture ends! It hasn't even started and I'm already sick of it. Or more eloquently put - wahlaueh! i really buay tahan liao!!!

Just a year ago I wrote this:

macro proc CodeToSummer(sunshine, flowers, &summerloving)
{
while(1)
{
do
{
hitch up those skirts
and in flimsy flip flops
or thongs
blatant on your feet
discretely beneath sheer clothes
run to lectures
past the wilting bluebells
forgotten in the bloom
of the red red roses
the daffodils have had their day
and now the tulips have come out to play
and the grass has never felt this great
as frisbees fly overhead
and the smell of barbecues
pulls me away from my books
} while (the sun is shining);
do
{
snuggle under my plump duvet
peek out at the falling raindrops
breathe in the fresh eau de summer
even in this faded English city
the sun never sets
undaunted by rainclouds
they don't get a chance
not in summer
just as my notes
don't stand a chance of being read
not in summer
as they flutter in the breeze
} while (summer rains are a pouring);
if (autumn should come) then
{perhaps it'll be time to take a break from this summer spell}
else
{i'll just enjoy this summer loving!}
}
}

I could do with some of that summer right about now!
The weather this year is just too cold for its own good. You know it is when you still have to scamper around the house in search of warmer areas until you figure it's best to just snuggle under a duvet!

A little conversation in Baa's comment box triggered a memory in the deep rusted recesses of my brain. I suppose it will always be spoken of as the RJ Odac tragedy. It's been more than 5 years now, but I don't think it's become an urban legend yet to batch 21 and beyond. The accident at Ubin still plagues us. When we think it's been forgotten (and rightfully it shouldn't), it comes up in a random conversation which leads to a random google search which leads to this:

Rachel Wu's guestbook.

Which up till February 2004 had been regularly visited by a loyal friend and her boyfriend. Her homepage (which xiaokai showed me a few years ago) no longer exists. Nor any of the links to websites of her friends and homepages dedicated to her. Five years after she has passed on, she has ceased to exist on the world wide web, save for this guestbook.

But she, and Sharon Lee, the other victim of the accident, will never cease to exist in the memories of RJC Odacians.

It's a brilliantly sunny, blue sky-ed morning. I've been working on a problem sheet since 8.30am and only noticed the beautiful weather now (time check: 10.40am). I'm in such an awful blur. That's what you get when you've spent 15 minutes trying to work out a question on Middle Earth and all it's species for Software Engineering. Apparently the Fellowship of the Ring has an immense wealth of class associations. Not like it should be a surprise to me, after all - geeky software engineering teachers and Lord of the Rings always walk hand-in-hand. Brings to mind Jason Fox of Foxtrot.

Ignoring all the above blather.
Today I shall vow to study until noon.
At least.
Without any distractions.

It's torture to just concentrate on work for even more than an hour!

Alright, if I make it till noon... I will... erm... pass all my papers!!!

5 days left to my first paper.
Shouldn't I feel a little more terrified?
Not even a cold chill down my spine?

Second year makes you so relaxed.
Or maybe it's just the aftermath of M-nite.

Instead of practising on past year papers, what do I do?
Watch 50 first dates (oh-so-tissue-box-emptying-sobbable!), and make glutinous rice balls for desert.
If I manage a 2-1 this year, it'll be a miracle.
If I manage a 1st, my classmates are going to throw me into the Thames.
Now is that motivation to study, or what?

I am renting this blogspace to Lu for his 20th birthday today.

He would like the world to know that he is now the proud owner of a new pair of Creative Inspire T3000 Speakers. He also pretty much let the whole building know by test blasting them last night.
Oh, and here's the latest in Charlotte's series of lame and sadistic jokes:

"A babyseal walks into a club. The end."

Oh, oh! And there's more.

"A babyseal walks into a bar. Looks like babyseals never learn."

Don't ask me why babyseals. It's nothing personal towards you, Anu or Ronan Keating.

Your SAT Score of 1510 Means:

You Scored Higher Than Howard Stern You Scored Higher Than George W. Bush You Scored Higher Than Al Gore You Scored Higher Than David Duchovny You Scored Higher Than Natalie Portman You Scored Lower Than Bill Gates

Your IQ is most likely in the 140-150 range

Equivalent ACT score: 34

Schools that Fit Your SAT Score: California Institute of Technology Stanford University Princeton University Yale University Harvard University

What Does Your SAT Score Mean?

This is so amusing. I didn't apply to a single one of those! I got into Brown instead! Looks like I'm smarter than the average American, but dumber than the average Singaporean. Don't ask about Malaysians.

Houston, we have KAYA!

The latest prize trophy in Emperor's Gate is a 200ml bottle of home-made kaya, now sitting sweetly in our fridge after more than an hour of flapping like worried hens around it, watching it cook and frantically worrying that it will never thicken or turn into a horrible egg mush like the first attempt. Second time round, we cheated. We asked Tao for advice, and everyone knows when it comes to the subject of food, Tao never fails!

The things exam pressure does to us. We make kaya and bake chocolate chip cookies (which everyone finished by the next morning! I should know by now to double my recipes instinctively in Emperor's Gate!).

Just passing by.
It's a Beautiful Saturday morning! But it will rain this afternoon. Getting to Chinatown and back in the rain will be most fun. Our supply of asian food products has hit an all time low. That usually means we're running out of the essentials like IndoMee or Lingams or Kicap Manis. This time we've run out of easy-to-cook Lee Kum Kee sauces. No one has time to prepare proper meals with exams coming up, yet we can't bear to compromise our usual proper, 'wholesome' dinners. (A dinner of rice, 1 meat and 1 veg is as wholesome as it gets in Emperor's Gate). And after Lu's sister decided to use my Asam curry to cook BEEF last night (like, huh???) I think a trip to Chinatown is not just justified, it's out of desperation!
Oh yeah, I finally finished off the Da Vinci Code in a day. Not so brilliant. Not so captivating. I cannot stand Americans writing about Europe. As for the church and the sacred feminine, not even a hint of a whisper about Mother Mary - THE sacred feminine of the church. Wonderful fiction though. Why didn't I do more code puzzles when I was a kid? Then I wouldn't be an engineer!
Otherwise... I was just passing by here.

The lunch of a pitiful exam student. A self made tuna sandwich and a glass of apple juice. That's my sexy vampiress glass. It came in a set with one for each of our household members. Lu got the Dracula one, Yi Shan the Frankenstein one, and Lionel the Werewolf which Marvin broke and has yet to replace!!! 

The latest additions to the 'Furry & Cuddly' family - Fei Fei Ya and Tiger, from Sweden. Have I ever mentioned that Lionel is also very much elligible to be part of the Furry & Cuddly family?  

These days I'm picking up really weird quotes from my Computer Architecture textbook. So there really is that little ray of sunshine bursting through in my oh-so-cloudy room. I mean you've got to laugh out loud when sub chapter 4.4 on logical operations begins with:

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."

Lewis Caroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865

Come to think of it, my software engineering lecturer does talk like Tweedledee, which has really helped my understanding of OOP loads! Sanjeev still believes he lives at home with his mother.