In my own weird little world

A part of my FYP worked. I was so excited I couldn't sleep and stayed up to program a bit more until I was satisfied with the result. It's only a small percentage of what I am meant to achieve, but at least it's getting somewhere.

It's been raining non-stop since the weekend started. That's the way to dampen my motivation to go to college and work.

Tock stopped by yesterday because he was hungry, and so I fed him.

My neighbour, Gemma, got locked in today. A carpenter came and tried to get to her room from my window, but no luck there. They've had to bust her door open and now there's sawdust everywhere. That's the most exciting thing that's happened today. Apart from it being Ohm's birthday, I guess.

I've made another Oreo cheesecake. That should settle part of my debts with the 3rd years.

I'm bored. Can't you tell?

Things I wonder if I'll regret about uni life

That I never studied in the IC library. Sure I borrowed books and used the computers there when I had no internet. But I never went to the library specifically to study. I hated the atmosphere of despair and desperation of the last minute muggers and sixth cup of espresso chuggers. Where did I study? My bed of course! But that's one uni experience I never was a part of.

That I never joined the clubs I really wanted to. Like Leonardo or MT or even fellwanderers. I did the Dramsoc stint for abit, am in more committees than I would wish to be in, ran two of the biggest cultural shows in IC, and yet I wish I'd done a bit more stuff out of my league. But I've been skema and didn't dare. I don't know why I gave up rock climbing. I wasn't good, but I wasn't bad and now it's been 4 years since I last touched a rockwall. Damn it.

That I didn't really get to know my coursemates in the first year. My first year is a blur of Linstead and a bit of Mnite memories, and nothing of my coursemates and the friends I hang out with now. I wish I hadn't ditched those ISE outings, I wish I had made friends with CL and XQ and Wei earlier (especially XQ who would have been a great help for courseworks), wish I remembered more of my first year than just being in Linstead. Although I wouldn't give up those crazy Linstead memories for the world!

That I never went on the Engineers without Borders programme to help some third world country build a power station, although my mum would say I should just come back to Malaysia because we are a third world country too. I can't build a power station anyway. I could help to program a communications satellite though. But what third world country needs that?


That I didn't do a 3 year course and leave with the rest. But it was fun to hang around for a fourth year and get my masters for doing almost nothing.

That we never went on a road trip. Whether in the UK or back home. We talked about it and never did it. Because we were never in the same place at the same time for long enough.

That I never developed a polished British accent. But that's just crazy talk.

That I've never been to Greece. I've been to lots of places, but I want to go to Greece! Enough said.


And the many many things I didn't get to do... because 4 years of university life isn't enough time.

Go Spidey!

I'm so behind with movies... but whatever. Spiderman 3 was awesome (if you can forgive the very lame Uncle Sam moment of spidey swinging past a huge American flag).

And because Spideman 3 actually didn't suck that bad... the spidey movies have overtaken X-Men in my ultimate comic book movies poll. I still love Wolverine though. No, not Lionel (hairy as he may be)... the real Wolverine!

Onto other news... Lionel and I are checking out the possibility of haunting Angkor Wat for a day or two. Apart from temples, the floating boat villages and the killing fields, nothing else in Cambodia sounds remotely interesting to me. But just being back in 3rd world Asia would be nice for a change.

Sunny Days

... are not to be wasted. Here's a photoblog entry assisted by Ohm.



How can you possibly do any work on a day like this?
Lazy Charlotte signing off...

Lol!

Things that make me LOL on a dreary Tuesday morning.

quoted from The Star:

"In another report, the daily quoted the Association of Private Employment Agencies (Pikaps) president Datuk Baharom Abdul Ghani as saying that many foreign maids were here not for the jobs but to get close to their lovers."


I just find it hilarious that there's an association called "pick-ups"

On fire!

Linstead's fire alarm went off three times yesterday. Once at 7pm, once again at 10pm and the last one finally woke me up from sleep at midnight. I was so confused I turned off my alarm clock when the last fire alarm went off.

While we were huddling outside Linstead in the cold, waiting for the alarm to go off and the A-ok from the fire officers to enter the building, I could hear lots of cursing and veiled threats at the apparently irresponsible person who had managed to set off the fire alarm, not once but THREE times! What could only make it worse was the number of people who had to be dragged away from their books in the middle of the exam period, THREE times! The story going around Linstead is pinning the blame completely on room 212, and I'm letting that story stay.

Well at least until Zhern's exams are over and he will no longer get angry at the real person who set off the 7pm alarm, otherwise face the prospect of having no dinner.

In pursuit of happyness

Intentionally misspelled.

I'm never very good at celebrating the end of exams. In the first year, I came back and sorted out all my notes and filed them neatly into two big ring binders. I only stopped for dinner. In my second year, I started reading up on z-transforms almost immediately after the end of the-worst-digital-paper-in-the-world to begin my UROP project which didn't go anywhere. Last year, after Control, we ended up being conned by Jia Hong into producing a careers powerpoint presentation for MSoc when all we wanted to do was to get the hell out of EEE. Which I think we eventually did, and headed to Masala Zone for a good dinner and a good laugh with old friends. After which I proceeded home to sort out my notes again. It's like an after exam ritual.

This year however, my notes are still in complete disarray. Exams have been so long and draggy, I've forgotten how to get out of exam mode (apart from sleeping disproportionately long hours every day). I had drinks with ISE at the union on Wednesday and Wei Kiat treated us to dinner on Thursday and I spent all of Friday in a blur of Malcolm in the Middle, Scrubs and CSI.
I can just feel my life becoming exceedingly worthless if I don't start on my Final Year Project anytime soon. I know I'm going to regret this! In the mean time, I'm heading out to get stuff to make the very overdue cheesecakes I've been promising the 3rd years and I've decided to cook Pandan Chicken tomorrow. Yes, I'm free. Very free!

The Grand Finale

One last paper to go...

But all I can think about is how tired I am and how much I want to go home. I even looked up Petaling Jaya on Wikipedia. That's how much I want to be home!

I've got laksa and fatty crabs and cendol and steven's corner and the Curve and Astro and the Star and parking tickets and proton sagas all on my mind now.

It's been 7 years since I was ever truly home.


---------

On a more comical note - as heard in the comp labs today

Omar (to me, after talking to Soha): Are you Malaysian too?
Me (pointing to Soha): Couldn't you tell? Don't Soha and I look similar?
Soha: Of course we do. She's just a bleached version of me.

(Soha's Indian by the way. And Omar is now very confused.)

4 down, 2 to go!

The last two exam papers of my university life (I hope!).

Wednesday could not seem any further than it is now.

I haven't got a clue what I should be studying for DSP and Digital Filters. It seems like a lost cause to me. Image Processing is more interesting, yet being the last exam suffers from last-exam-depression (also known as non-existent exam motivation).

Speech processing was so fun, my mind toyed dangerously with the idea of a PhD in speech recognition for one wild moment. That was rather scary. I don't really think the frontiers of communication technology welcome me at all.

I'm looking for a reason not to go back to work. So I ordered my copy of May 13 and had it sent to my Malaysian address. I'm expecting it to arrive before the ban is sanctioned.

Alright, back to filters...

Sesungguhnya Syurga Terletak Di Bawah Tapak Kaki Ibu

I usually delete my dad's emails as soon as they pop into my mailbox. I'm not all that heartless, but those forwarded powerpoints really take up a lot of space! 9 times out of 10 I've read those jokes and stories before and really daddy, I get the message already - pray more, give thanks to God, and don't take too much soya sauce.

But this one was a rare gem - it's almost as if the writer knew my mother personally (and left out the neurosis that runs in my family bit). And at the same time I was also left thinking "Wah, daddy also quite sedar diri hor?"

Happy Mother's Day! You too, Grandma!


Mom and Dad were watching TV when
Mom said, "I'm tired, and it's getting late.
I think I'll go to bed."
So she went to the kitchen to make
sandwiches for the next day's lunches,
rinsed out the popcorn bowls, took
meat out of the freezer for supper
the following evening,
She filled the sugar bowl, put
spoons and bowls on the table and
prepared the coffee pot for brewing
the next morning.
She then put some wet clothes in
the dryer, put a load of clothes into
the washer, ironed a shirt and
sewed a loose button.
She picked up the game pieces left
on the table, put the phone back on
the charger and put the telephone
book into the drawer
She watered the plants, emptied a
wastebasket and hung up a towel to dry.
She yawned and stretched and
headed for the bedroom.
She stopped by the desk and
wrote a note to th e teacher,
counted out some cash for the
field trip, and pulled a text book
out from hiding under the chair.
She signed a birthday card for a
friend, addressed and stamped the
envelope and wrote a quick list
for the grocery store.
She put both near her purse.
Mom then washed her face with
3 in 1 cleanser, put on her night
solution & age fighting moisturizer,
brushed and flossed her teeth and
filed her nails.
Dad called out, "I thought you were going to bed."
"I'm on my way," she said
She put some water into the dog's
dish and put the cat outside, then
made sure the doors were locked
and the patio light was on.
She looked in on each of the kids and
turned out their bedside lamps and
TV's, hung up a shirt, threw some
dirty socks into the hamper, and
had a brief conversation with the
one up still doing homework.
In her own room, she set the alarm;
laid out clothing for the next day,
straightened up the shoe rack.
She added three things to her six
most important things to do list.
She said her prayers, and visualized
the accomplishment of her goals.
About that time, Dad turned off the
TV and announced to no one in
particular. "I'm going to bed"
And he did...without another thought.

If I had one piece of advise to give, it would be to never drink the water your noodles are boiled in

Being a re-app/hall senior (who more accurately doesn't do very much for her hall), I get inundated with questions all the time, which I'd like to think I answer with a sense of wordly wisdom, offering incredibly important pieces of information which are vital for your daily life.

What you probably don't know is that most of my answers are rubbish and handed down to me from one-off experiences, quirky habits or my mum. All of which are usually not realiable unless you are me and think they are really important and above all... think that they work.

Take for instance my propensity for not keeping the water from my boiled instant noodles to use as a soup base, and boiling a new batch of water instead. The eco/humanitarian warriors are screaming at me because I'm wasting water that a Somalian child would trade his donkey for, but here's my theory. When you boil instant noodles - what's left in the water is wax and other cancer causing agents (everything's a cancer causing agent these days). Well, I'm gonna die from the ajinomoto in the instant noodles anyway... but here's the other (neurotic) part of my health plan. When eating Indomee in particular, I throw away the bumbu powder and only keep the garlic, sesame oil and soya sauce. It still tastes good. Honest! This is important information, I think you should know.

My latest gem of information came about while searching online for cooking conundrums. I've been trying to figure out the importance of selecting the right type of wok and seasoning it properly. Why it's so inportant to me, I have no clue. Perhaps it's just a fundamental part of my Chinese DNA. Anyway, kuali.com gives a wonderful explanation of how to season your wok properly (which only involves oil, old pieces of ginger and spring onions... and you thought they didn't really mean SEASON, didn't you?). This reminds me of another important piece of advise - if all recipes fail (including mum's), kuali.com is your next port of call, always!

Kicap manis and maggi chilli sauce (preferably the bawang putih one) are vital ingredients in your kitchen. If used in moderation, it can cover up any cooking mishaps.

Never wear white when cooking. Never wash your hair before cooking either, or live to regret it.

Always offer to cook. That way you never have to wash up. Believe me, it's easier.

Other incredibly important things I've learnt are to soak satay skewers for at least an hour, add sweet potato to the flour when making onde-onde and all ovens are different and moody - get to know yours better.

I don't think this post has a point. Nor do I know why it's become skewed towards cooking. But it's only typical of me to use food to rid my mind of Speech Processing and this morning's exam.

p/s: Dr. Naylor is no longer the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse all in one. He is kind and benovolent, his mercy knows no bounds, he rules supreme in the kingdom of cepstrums and formants where mel frequencies are normalised (I hope).

Updates for the week

1. If I had to be a character from Sex and the City, I might be a hybrid of Charlotte and Miranda. Compulsively old fashion/conservative and yet power hungry.

2. Watching Heroes at 4am in the morning surprisingly has not messed up my schedule... yet. I still woke up before 9, probably due to the rising panic for Speech Processing on Thursday.

3. The EE library really is the most wonderful place to study in blissful quiet and at the right temperatures. *sticks out tongue at people melting in the main library*

4. Coffee gives me pimples. It took me 24 years to figure that out!

I'm sleepy. Goodnight.

I've gotten over my depression from my previous paper after I realised it really is rather stupid to be overly depressed because my failure standard is at 60%. Yes, I am kiasu, I never said I wasn't.

I hate these one week breaks between papers. I never know what to do, how much to revise and how to spread out my revision so I won't end up forgetting stuff, but the trade off is exam burn out. The next paper is Speech Processing and I really really really love this course. Dr. Naylor is an amazing lecturer with amazing notes. However when it comes to setting exam questions, he's the four horsemen of the apocalypse all in one.

I still need to survive Speech Processing to sit for DSP and digital filters and Image Processing. There's a lot of overlap which I am very grateful for. But somehow all this studying is also overlapping with my current addiction to season 3 of Sex and the City. Although their glamourous lifestyles are pretty entertaining, I still have a morbid fear of being a single, unmarried 30 something in a power suit. Who hates children.

That's my update for the week. Back to work. Line Frequency Spectrums are calling.

Nerd Girls... more from xkcd...

Says it all...

For the love of Digital...

this one's for Lionel, with whom I can no longer play sudoku on MSN with since my laptop died...

*cries*

And this one is for Wayn, Zhern, Ohm and other CS n00bs!

You know that feeling when you've had a really bad exam?

I do.


This was the only thing that made me laugh today. Otherwise, you could probably read how terrible the paper was off my face...

The New (n00b) map of the World