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.

If I need to explain myself

1. I have been away. In Chicago. It was cold and the snow fell horizontally (that's not a logical sentence but you had to see it to believe it). I shopped so much, I now have to live on Indomee for the rest of the term. I spent 2 days studying in the wonderful student union at University of Illinois. I wish our union were like that. When I got back to London however, I had to kiss the sunny ground and shout for joy at the beautiful sound of the English accent! Lionel and I both agree that we could not thank our lucky stars more for not going to UIUC for undergrad!

2. My laptop has died. Actually my laptop's AC jack is just loose and needs soldering... and I will slap the next person who tells me "4 years of Electrical Engineering and you can't solder?". I can't, alright! Leave me alone. Actually the more worrying part is taking my laptop apart and finding the little wiggly bit on the motherboard that I have to solder back... and I have nightmares of snapping the board or losing the screws, so until I find someone kind enough to do an outpatient surgery on my laptop... my laptop is dead.

3. Exams are in exactly 1 week. I have not studied... enough. No one would actually believe me if I say I haven't studied. Neither would anyone believe me when I say I haven't studied enough... but it's true this time! Really!

4. My sleep cycle is completely whacked. You try going 6 hours backwards to the US and then staying up all night trying to finish your FYP report!

and for all the reasons above... blogging shall be stagnant and appearances on MSN rare.

But you know where to find me...

Procrastination is an art

I have yet to master it to perfection, but believe me I am trying very hard.

The first week of easter holidays is drawing to a close. I have sucessfully covered half a subject and given my final year project a glance over. Just a glance, nothing serious, you know.

Lionel was supposed to be arriving on Wednesday, but is now taking a flight out that is one day earlier.

Crap! Now I have one day less to study.

We're flying off to Chicago on the 6th so Lionel can attend his interviews at UIUC. I will be happily shopping down town at Chicago's Magnificent Mile! This is what I have saved up so hard for! American shopping! Even though Abercrombie & Fitch has opened its first out-of-US store in London, I shall thumb my nose at it and walk in to the Chicago one. Then I will walk out, having bought nothing because I really can't afford A&F.

I managed to form a blister on my toe, due to my shoes being too loose. Ouch!

The final phase (illustrated... now)

Spring term ended yesterday, on a rather unexciting note because I had no last lectures to celebrate having missed most of them in the process of catching up on sleep and collecting orders for EEE polo t-shirts.

The EEE Malaysians tried to celebrate the end of term by dragging 27 overworked, fatigued and coursework drained Malaysians for a Lebanese dinner in High St. Kent (which XQ aptly called the Rombongan budak-budak Malaysia dari IC ke High St. Kent).

We tried to squash in as many people as we could into one photo!

I say tried because dinner turned out to be excruciatingly slow and many starved to death. Nevertheless, for a first time department gathering, the company was fun!

The 4th year seniors - or also known as the oldies!

The 3 EEE girls - we lasted till the very end!

And the many photos we took should be up on facebook soon.

As for the many photos taken of me when I had (drunkenly) concussed at Nimalen's place in the wee hours of the morning...
I'm still trying to figure out how I can bribe my way out of this... obviously cheesecakes aren't going to do the trick this time.


In other news - I got a Japanese haircut for 5 pounds! And I'm loving it, even if no one else can tell the difference.


So it's the last 3 months of life in Imperial. The curtains are closing, hopefully not before I finish revising for the last 6 engineering papers of my life!

The end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?

The end of term is just a short 3 days away. As usual, I haven't started revising anything. So many things to procrastinate, so little time.

I've added back blog links on the right but I'm missing a whole lot of links because I've lost my old template for good. Give me a holler if I've missed yours. This Guy, you've changed your blog address so many times... I've given up remembering it.

If all goes well with Lionel's interviews, I'll be popping over to Chicago for a short holiday during Easter. Yay! If all doesn't go well, I still get to stay in London and do stuff... I guess.

These few weeks have been very trying, but at the same time quite self-gratifying. It's nice to know you have so many friends who care when you thought you had none. I still miss the old people though. More than ever now! Nevertheless... cheesecakes all around, when Christina finds me some Oreos! You can't find Oreos in London! Believe me, I spent half a Saturday trying.

It's really reeeeeally cold now. The middle of March just decided to go all frosty on us! *shiver*

Echoes of thoughts bouncing back in the darkness

I don't read much Malaysian news when I'm too stressed with work/societies/MSoc elections (lol at that one) etc.

But I can't ignore the blaring trumpets heralding the brilliant SPM results (16, 17, 18 'A's?). When will the fanfare stop? Remember the days when 9A1s were almost impossible to obtain? Tell me now what happens to those 15 or 16A1 students when they reach university? I just need to look around Imperial and I can easily tell you that of the Malaysian scholars (JPA, Mara, Petronas) sent here, a good 5% fail and are never heard from ever again, or else repeat a year at the expense of our tax payers money. While the Singaporeans are always in the top percentile, a few rare Malaysians make it there and many more appear to be only mediocre or even at the back of the pack. Why make us feel good about our brilliant SPM results only to be outshone during our prestigious overseas education period?


On the British frontier...

Malaysian Society elections are heating up. Chien liq says I'm suffering from a common disease that afflicts some 'warga emas' of MSoc, namely 'IC-MSoc-Withdrawal-Symptoms'. Yes, CL, no insult of yours goes unnoticed! However this is a society I care too much for to lose to the Malaysian disease of apathy and cronyism and playing of racial cards. Our committee took great pains to build it up, it'll take only a day to tear it apart.


On the academic side...

Andrew says "FYP going up in smoke? Who cares?". Lol... you made my day lah, tai kor!


On other Charlotte-ism's news

Shopping is an afliction and Zhern Yoong will not let me go out unless he approves my dressing style and co-ordination.

I sang at the EE Revue yesterday, and if I get hold of the videos and recordings - they will be posted everywhere - blog, youtube, facebook, etc.

I also stepped on a foot with my 3 inch heels yesterday. That foot belonged to Prof. Peter Cheung head of undergraduates in EEE. If he hadn't been so impressed with my singing, I'm not sure he would have allowed me to graduate.



And on to the weather...

Spring is here!!!

Tiada masa lah...

Sebab malam ini aku akan dihibur oleh Evita. Janganlah menangis untuk aku...

On another note... I need to stop acting like a fresher and grow up. And that includes getting my work done on time and not yak away until 5 in the morning.

Meanwhile heard in room D5...

"You know I have two grandmothers? Eh, you also got two grandmothers???!!!"
"Erm, doesn't everybody?"

Everyday I try to go out and grab lightning... but it always strikes me down...

Charlotte is still busy, with this:


At least she's done with the designing part, and hopes to see the pillars at the Sherfield walkway plastered with eyes when she walks past them today. The fruits of her labour had better be... well... fruitful.

The week ahead looks stormy, with her many many to-do lists set to rain upon her.

If she had more time, she'd wanna finish this:
but lately her head hits her pillow before she can even pick it up...

When she isn't busy drafting up her to-do lists, she's humming the following songs in her head, the ultra stylish I write Sins not Tragedies, and (forgive her for taking a liking to American Teeny Rock Wheatus-sound-alikes) Geeks get the Girls by American Hi-Fi





and if she finds her guts, she'll be singing this at the EE Revue next month:



(the Mandy Moore version lah, but the New Radical's video is cooler)

She still has no time to read the papers or browse news-blogs, but recently this made her happy:
Fun programme to teach students about integration
because she's mellowed and become optimistic and hopes this will not fail (and if all goes well should replace the ridiculous National Service tragedy that has befallen her country), oh and because she likes camping anyway.

And because she leads such a fast paced life and finds it difficult to leave time for simple things like sitting in the park, enjoying the sun and praying... she's had to download prayers-as-you-go to her iTunes to well, pray as she goes. Religion in the 21st century? Or just a reminder not to worship her laptop and feel like life is crashing down on her when her internet is taken away.
And now its back to starting her busy schedule for the week. Thank you for listening.

What's keeping me on my toes?

This apparently...


Eye-catching?