Events of the past weeks...

I haven't been blogging for a month! That's a new record... haha... So gotta recap as much as possible things that have happened since my last post.

Chinese New Year
Went back to dad's hometown during CNY... There's much less hype during CNY nowadays... There's still the Karaoke singing session, mahjong, cards, firecrackers etc., but the house was relatively quiet than let's say 5 years ago.

Anyway, every year we would spend an evening travelling to see the paddy fields at Sekinchan. This year was a bit different... we decided to travel up to Sabak Bernam; then we decided to travel up further north; in the end we travelled all the way to Teluk Intan... The picture on the left was taken at the famous "leaning tower of Teluk Intan"

Yu Sheng
I make an effort to eat 鱼生(yu sheng) every CNY. Based on Chinese culture, people are supposed to eat yu sheng on the seventh day of the first lunar month (正月初七). Didn't manage to get most of my ASEAN friends to go with me. So we ended up eating not-so-nice food and paying quite a sum... *sigh*... not gonna organize next year unless more people are willing to go.

Hall Bazaar
Hall 5 had its annual Bazaar on the 7th and 8th of February. We did manage to get people from other halls to join us, but seemed to be mainly a localised event... I manned the drinks stall for some time and also the Rosti stall. We made all sorts of weird drinks... like mixing syrup with soya bean etc. (Didn't taste really nice in my opinion) I think rosti was made popular by Marché Mövenpick (a popular Restaurant); it's bascially fried potato shreds served with other stuff like sausages and sour cream. The sub-groups in hall such as our Jam Band "Techinical Fault" performed as well, though it wasn't really great... haha...

Aerospace Launch
NTU officially launched its Aerospace Engineering degree programme on the 10th of February. All aerospace students were involved... Some as usherers, some (like me) were in charge of explaining experiment equipment on display... My group was in charge of explaning this machine (sorry, forgot what it's called liao) capable of displaying stress lines/fringes on photoelastic material.

Canvassing
As a JCRC Recreation division subcommer, I have a responsibility of canvassing S$50 for the division. So I took up this job in Kovan. It was a Chap Goh Meh (正月十五元宵节) festival. I was suppose to manage this game stall:

Basically there are 12 "boxes" which contain 6 pairs of zodiac animals. The game is supposed to be played this way: First the "doors" to the boxes are closed. Then a player comes and I'll open all the doors. Give him/her so-and-so seconds to memorise, I close the "doors", then they're supposed to match the pairs. But this obviously won't work! Coz people queueing up will be able to see many many times and by the time the 3rd (or even the 2nd) player comes, everyone behind will get away with a prize! (By the way, I didn't design this game...). So after their 大老板 ("big boss") noticed this fundamental error, he changed the game; players will get a prize if they shoot the pair of zodiac animals using toy guns (the type with the sticky arrow one).

Eric's Birthday
I had called upon Jesmie and gang to think of how to 整 Eric for his birthday... It'll surely be quite dirty so when he wanted to take bath I told him he shouldn't take bath (without stating a reason though). He didn't heed my advice loh... haha... In the end all of us were wet+kena flour+kena cake. Oh, and Eric drank a cocktail of all sorts of liqour (and puked afterwards... haha...).

German and Physics of Sports test
German was not supposed to be so hard for me as I enjoyed learning it. However, if you don't study properly it'll still be the same; a simple test can turn into a rather difficult one. For my Physics of Sports module test, the MCQ was just like A-level physics... but the structural questions part was more difficult.

Bouldering
Went for my first "bouldering lesson" with Eric. It was quite OK... though the boudering wall wasn't as novice-friendly as TJ's one. Had the usual stiff forearm problem... Hope to make this a weekly event.

Asian Aerospace Exhibition
Ah the privileges of being an Aerospace student! Muahaha... got to go to the Asian Aerospace Exhibition 2006 for free (usual price S$50 bucks) and on trade days (public members usually go on public days)! There was an airshow but it was a bit disappointing... Got to see Airbus A380 again, but we still didn't get to go in (darn!). Most of the static displays were outdoors, and as I didn't put on a cap or sunblock, I got "chao da" (sunburnt) after the trip. Posed with a RollsRoyce Trent 900 Engine (used on Airbus A380), got some posters and also bought some stamps. Asian Defence Technology 2006 was also on at the same place so I also went to have a look...

Trip to NUS
Went to NUS last Saturday to meet up with my Batu Pahat friends Fei Ling and Joon Huan who had come down to represent Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) for a friendly Chinese debate with NUS. It was quite some time since I heard Chinese being spoken at this speed and at this level of proficiency (though the students still get tied up with words at times... with "uh..." and "ah..."). I'm thankful I still know 95% of what's going on...

Stayed at Wai Kit's place after that to do my tutorials... haha... coz the next event I was attending was 7.30pm at University Cultural Centre (UCC), so I had time to spare mah... Anyway the free concert was better than I expected. Sheares Hall's choir is really good and their a cappella group was fabulous too. Yusoff Hall was below par though... the conductor was waving his arms madly when he conducted... so improper... haha... NUS choir also didn't do very well. I say that because relatively speaking they weren't much better than the hall choirs.

Choir

NTU Choir's concert will be coming up real soon (this Saturday), so people are getting really lensed up now. Victoria Concert Hall doesn't seem to be a nice place for the second half of our performance... But I really hope all the problems will be ironed out soon. Don't wanna disappoint the audience.