Musings of a Daydreaming Wanderer

I know I haven’t been blogging for almost a month now, but it can’t be helped, since I miscued my assignment datelines and thus, leads me to a two week mad rush for assignment completion, and finally another two weeks for exam studying. The curious thing about university exams is that in the 3 hours given to you, some people will start walking out of the exam hall as fast as 30 minutes to 1 hour after the starting time. I speculate that it could be that these people are really good, they have no idea how to do the paper, they just want to pass the exam, or they have no time to finish the paper since they’ve got appointments that clash with the exam timing.

I’ve got to reformat my laptop soon (because its getting more and more slower, as I install and uninstall stuff regularly),  but my parents are heading to Taiwan at the end of this year and the temptation to ask them to buy an Asus eee PC is running  high. Oh, I’ve got to get a pencil box with stationery for the next sememster of school as well.

Finally, lately, I’ve been dreaming of a person for  a few nights already, wonder if it means anything.

Yep, title says it all - I’ve been busy rushing for assignments the past week, and am still rushing for assignments till the end of the first week of December. From two simple assignments, it has ballooned to three, and two labs are dependent on one assignment, so its pretty much tight. Unfortunately, this is also a busy time at work (for some strange and unknown reason), so the pressure is on. Just today I had to help a teacher with converting her CCA video to VCD (for speed purposes, its a waste of time to do a DVD on a really slow computer, moreover the deadline is in 3 hours), and I finished just in time for her to show it to her students, despite the blackout happening during transcoding to VCD. Not that it’s a bad thing though - this sort of stuff is like tying shoelaces to me, and she has an easygoing personality, so its not really stressful.

Recently, StarHub’s internet speed has slowed down to a terrible crawl to the point that I am almost frustrated at the speed at which websites load - as bad as 56k access. Wish they could do something about it - as much as I’d like to complain, I’d doubt they’d do anything about the complaint, since they seem to care for their profit margins more than customers.

At work, I’ve found a nifty open source software inventory & deployment solution, and it is compatible with both linux and Windows. The solution to my insanity is now here. I can deploy applications en masse by simply packaging and deploying the software installation down to all the agents installed in the PCs. Can’t wait to try it out - looks like I’ll have to wait till the end of the university semester to play with it.

Bought a 6-pack box of Alpen energy bar for $7 yesterday, and realized that chocolate is the “in” thing now for this type of bars. Basically this should serve me for the rest of my RT phase 2 days (at roughly $1 a bar, you could potentially save $4 per RT day after transport), and probably for my evenings at SIM as well. Only caveat is to drink water and probably eat something small and light (like a croissant or something) so that your stomach doesn’t feel empty while the energy bar is being digested.

Monday’s tutorial was interesting, in the sense that when our tutor showed the class an e-mail from our lecturer, stating that as third year students, we are supposed to know how to do our assignment, and if not, look up for the relevant information ourselves instead of badgering our lecturer. Well, that’s not surprising. It’s hard to get your friends to look for the information themselves, because if you know the information, they will flock to you for the direct answer. Talk about independence.

Finally…anyway my timing’s 1hr 15mins+, not too bad. Sadly, no one (friends from my time as an airman) believes that I can run that fast, so I guess I’ll have to wait for sportsphotox.com to upload the pictures and show them. Anyway, there are lots of interesting things to note during the run:

• While running, some male participants will dash off into the bushes and pee. One young Caucasian female runner commented “it’s easier for men”
• Surprisingly there are lots of 小妹妹s running in the event…not much people of my age though.
• Never drink too much water/isotonic drinks at the water points while running.
• Running on sand is hell on your knees and ankles - try running near the shoreline.
• The runway surface doesn’t feel like a runway at all - it feels like a normal road.
• Beware of foot cramps while driving out.

On another note, I have finished reading the Subtle Knife yesterday, and again, an all-round vivid and intriguing book to read. Only one last book left to read, and it’s the thickest of the whole series (I think) - The Amber Spyglass. Hopefully will have time to read finish by this weekend.

Today’s Systems Administration tutorial was pretty fun, but out of 11 part-timers from my course, only three of us turned up, and the rest are people from the other specialization. Thus, I am speculating if the remaining 8 are really busy and could not make it, saw that the schedule on the board did not have the course code listed, or decided to skip tutorial. Ah well, have to wait and see tomorrow’s turn out - hopefully it’s better.

Guess who I saw on the bus today?

The one, the only, Legendary Rare Character, Lui JY!

Seriously though, it was really good to see him, since the last time I saw him was like, around a year ago? We chatted awhile on the bus while I was on the way back from SIM tonight. Looks like he’s doing fine with his architectural work, and with the currently hot real estate industry, I expect him to be very busy recently.

Recently the lectures are 2 hours long, and I don’t know if its a good thing, or a bad thing. Good, since I get to go home earlier, and bad, since this means that the focus will be on lab and tutorials…and I’ve got 2 more weeks to finish two assignments, which is another strange thing, because I don’t know whatever that I am doing is correct. Also, today, we found out that our tutor is actually sitting in lecture for the module. Again, good thing or bad thing issue here.

I’m left with a year’s worth of blog posts to sort out, but I have found out that some of my blog posts have lost their original text in chinese, and some posts were cut short. Therefore, I will have to manually scan through all my past posts again in order to figure out which ones were cut short. So far only one post was cut short, but I won’t know until I have fully checked all my posts up till January 2006. Sigh, more work for me.

Friday is the day that my direct supervisor will be leaving his position, and I will be giving a little presentation on how to work effectively for the guys under his charge at the “Changeover-cum-Farewell Ceremony” at a school near Khatib MRT. All the best for him and his future endeavours.

Went for a buffet at the Mushroom Pot at Orchard Point with CheekyHan and Ah Tham, and it was…very exotic. Ate lots of mushrooms, and had a few servings of meat as well. After that, we headed down to SLS to look for a USB thumbdrive header connector so that I can repair the spoilt thumbdrive properly. $1.50 for a USB connector sounds just right. Then we took a bus to Island Creamery at Serene Centre, where CheekyHan ate a slice of Alaskan Cake (Can’t remember what was it called), while me and Ah Tham had their Sundae. As expected, their ice-cream was done superbly. Hopefully CheekyHan can work here after he has finished his “pastry and dessert” course downtown, so that we can get discounts…haha.

(I did not vandalize the swivel table with a pencil, it was already there when I took the seat.)

The first week of my part-time university undergraduate life has begun, and it has been very taxing on me so far, since by the time I reach home from SIM, it’s almost 11pm and I need to sleep for the next day. Anyway, it’s only for one week, so it’s not so bad. First day of school a few people were in the wrong lecture theatre, and I had to be proactive and get the 10+ people in the room to go to the correct venue after calling up one of the course co-ordinators. Sheesh. 15 minutes of $6,000+ wasted. Anyway, DFS is a really cool lecturer (he’s 30 this year), and he never fails to surprise us with his jokes and sudden calls for volunteers for demonstrations by the audience. There was food and coffee/tea/water provided, too, so overall it wasn’t so bad.

I nearly got hit by a ladder this week, while returning the ladder to its proper place in school. Additionally, one of the teachers found my 4GB Imation thumbdrive (seemingly, ages ago), but forgot all about it until recently and she returned it to me. What a twist of luck.