Thoughts

It's one of those nights again. Having lots of random thoughts in my mind. Always comes along when I'm in a stressful/depressed mood. I've just added some classmates' blogs in my links. Read in Wenliang's blog about Inferiority Complex and also read Lin Sui's blog and these actually made me want to write this post.

I've came to realised that many aerospace students have lost family members and this has made me reflect. I never think how lucky I am. I talk about others being born with a golden spoon in their mouths, being rich etc. etc. when I am actually rather a spoiled brat myself. Oh, all the whining and self-pity I have done.

Procrastination has been my greatest enemy all my life and I have been unsucessful in fighting it. Lin Sui wrote:"Living with regrets again..." That's how I have felt, to different degrees, almost every day, every week, every month, every year, since a long way back. How nice it would be to turn back time, I say; or nowadays, how nice it would be to live in an alternative dimension. I think it's rather pathetic cause I know no matter how I wished and hoped it would never come true. And yet I've done it so many times in my life, especially when I was much younger, when I even cried myself to sleep over it, and still hoping that when I wake up I'll be back in my younger days and live life all over again, correctly. Childish thoughts.

I am suffering from Inferiority Complex, and while Wenliang seems to have found strength from that, deep down I was feel that I haven't really done so. I still try my best to lift my head high, and I've tried lots of new stuff. I have become more extroverted, more vocal and more sporty, yet sometimes it seems like it's all a facade I have put on, as if I have been lying to myself all this while. Or maybe it's just a phase, a resistance to change within me?

So when's the time to overcome all this? I don't know. I hope sometime soon. Time will tell.

Claire's Birthday

Went out with Janan, Sam and KV soon after I came back from Malaysia on Monday. We all had stuff to settle outside. After that we went to Tampines jalan-jalan until 7+pm. Then we headed to Aloha Loyang to celebrate Claire's 21st birthday. I'm not very close to Claire but decided to go anyway since like 1/3 of the class (or more) was there.

All in all, we had fun, lots to chat and gossip about, and people are still teasing about me and Ge Yao. -_-"'

Some of us decided to throw Tim into the pool. In the end many more fell in... and some got their handphones and wallets wet... hope they are not spoiled... Kok Vui recorded the incident on Sam's camera so I think we can see it soon on Sam's blog, and also see the "bad guys" who pushed some of the guys into the pool.

回家

回家的途中没发生什么大事件。回家的巴士上（KKKL）坐在一位穿马来服装（应该是Baju Kebaya吧）的华裔少女旁边。她看起来还蛮面善的，聊了几句后发现原来她是我中学（SMKDOJ, 俗称 pesta）的学姐。可惜啦，没问她她的名字。她不认得我但认识我很多的中学朋友，因为他们当时都是活跃的华文学会会员。她现在在新山的一间师训念书，专修在国小教导华文。国小开办华文班是政府鼓励华裔父母把孩子们送进国小的一项新策略。

Batu Pahat hasn't changed too much compared to the last time I came back (Chinese New Year). I managed to see the plot of cleared land opposite Sri Gading more clearly this time; it's a township project by Asiatic Development Berhad called Pura Kencana, also known in chinese as 旺金城 (how auspicious =P). Their tagline for this project... "The New Metropolis of Batu Pahat". Metropolis? Not so big lar... But the project is definitely one of the biggest in recent times. MPBP better be building more access roads to link the main downtown area and the surrounding towns! The major roads are really packed nowadays.

Things done:
- Bought new clothes!
- Cut my hair!
- Ate my favorite dishes!
=)

Going back to Singapore tomorrow though. Lots of things to settle before I go off to China.

In preparation for the 10-km run

Wednesday night, me, Kok Vui, Paul, Janan and Samuel met up around 9pm. After some stretching etc. we decided to run (ok, as Sam puts it, jog) the circumference of NTU (5.2 - 5.4km). In the end we ran about 6km in total in about 1 hour. The last time I ran this much was probably Stanchart's 10km run, and I didn't even jogged the full length--see this entry). This time however, it was a leisurely pace...I guess if I can maintain a pace slightly faster than what I did on Wednesday maybe I can complete 10km in a hour's time.

Oh, forgot to blog that I've decided to join 2 runs this year before I go to Germany (if I don't get to go to Germany I'll probably join 4). They are:

1. Mizuno Wave Run 2007, Bedok Reservoir, 22 July 2007. - 10km

2. Sheares Bridge Run (and Army Half Marathon) 2007, CBD, 26 August 2007. - 12km

After the run we did some pull-ups and situps, then chatted/gossiped/bitched until 1+/2+am. Me, Janan and KV went to eat supper after that. Ah Fang was closed (renovation) so we had to go all the way to City Harvest. Couldn't sleep properly after bathing... only slept around 2-3 hours. Surprisingly, felt ok and energetic but eventually got the headache in the afternoon. So didn't go to Daniel's Farewell Gathering at Brewerkz as intended.

Hope to exercise more (jog, swim, play badminton + gym) and improve my overall fitness before going to Germany. Gambatte!

****

Updates: Janan claims that we ran around 7+km instead. Got a map to prove it somemore:

And since I ran an additional 400m at the SRC, I suppose I ran nearly 8km. Well then, that's good progress. Hopeful to run below 1 hour for 10km =)

Father's Day

Happy Father's Day Dad!

Sorry I won't be able to celebrate it with you today, but I'll be back home next weekend =)

For this Father's Day, I hope that you will take life more easily now and don't stress on work so much. The trip to OZ was a good step... hehe... Hope you'll have more trips and other leisure activities.

National Chinese Debate Competition (Malaysia) and 华仁中学

Ok I suppose I should blog this in Chinese, but lazy lah =P Anyway, this is actually some old news. Wai Kit told me that Batu Pahat's 华仁中学 won the National Chinese Debate Competition. Well well well... it was not my school, but nevertheless, I believe the capabilities of fellow BP friends/juniors. The surprising thing was that Wai Kit said his Alma Mater, 公教中学 (which has churned out national and international chinese debaters for many many years), didn't even get into the national level.

华仁中学。。。Although I didn't get a chance to study there it still remains in a part of my memory. I stayed there for a few nights under a 生活营 programme during primary school, which they also used to promote their school to us. You see, 华中 (the simplified version of 华仁中学) is an independant school, and as such, to study there you'll need to pay school fees, whereas you don't have to in national schools. Also, the syllabus and medium of instruction is all Mandarin, except for language subjects. Instead of studying Form 1 to Form 6 (7 years altogether) and taking PMR, SPM and STPM, students there study 初中 高中 (6 years) and take 统考. That's why those 独中生 who come to Singapore to study are younger than their 国中生 counterparts.

One thing I kinda regretted not trying out is to take their entrance test... Wonder how I would've scored? Haha... Btw if you had taken it in primary 5 and were accepted, you'll be able to skip one year of primary 6. But if I had gone in, I wonder what different type of life I would be living now... Possible scenarios include becoming more "Chinese" and playing basketball. Lol. But I would've been struggling also lah... because I'm not very good at Chinese, relatively speaking.

So You Think You Can Dance (season 3)

I've been a fan of SYTYCD since season 1. I've been so looking forward to season 3 that I wrote down when they will start showing it in US. However, as I can't use BitComet and I couldn't find it on ShareScan or mIRC, I have resorted to... YouTube. Which is quite sad lah... coz people usually don't upload the entire episode so I've only been able to catch bits and fragments of the show.

Still, I found some really awesome auditions, and the one below is currently my favorite.


Don't you think she dances beautifully? It's like lyrical/contemporary dance meet hip-hop locking. I love it at 0:54 when she stretches out her hand in the air and retracts it along the same path. Lovely.

Engineering Innovation and Design

Engineering Innovation and Design (EID) is a programme that was initiated by NTU 8 years ago. It consists mainly of 2 parts. The first part consist of some one-week modules (kinda like crash course), where we learn about writing business plans, computer-aided design (on Solidworks) etc. For aerospace students, we learnt about computational fluid dynamics using Gambit and Fluent, and also about composite structures.

The second part, which I feel is the more interesting part, is building a marketeable prototype of some kind of useful machinery. There were 4 categories, and each group was placed in one: Design, Automation, Safety & Environment, and Assistive Technologies. And...

Yay!!! My group won 1st prize in the Design category!

So we get S$1400... but split between 13 people lah. Anyway, our prototype was a Badminton Shuttlecock Launcher, which we simply called "Launch IT" (and our fake company name, "Sportz Xcessorize". Like other groups, we could claim up to S$700 to buy necessary equipment etc. The machine consisted mainly of 2 parts: A lauching mechanism and a feeding mechanism.

It took us quite some time to come up with the launching mechanism. But the basic idea was that a spring and rod system attached to a rotating cam (driven by a motor) would undergo compress and release modes that will launch the shuttlecock placed in front of the plunging rod. The point of contact is the back portion of the shuttlecock head.

We didn't really know what to do for the feeding mechanism at first, but thanks to one of my groupmates Teck Chin, we had a fantastic feeding mechanism for our shuttlecock launcher--a robotic arm! It was a centre of attaction for our machine. Teck Chin was able to do it perfectly well because his URECA project was on something similar (that's good for him, don't think I learnt a lot in my URECA project. *shame shame*). Basically there's a feeding tube located somewhere where we load our shuttlecocks (can fill in at least 24 shuttlecocks), and the robotic arm grabs a shuttlecock out through the constriction and places it in front of the spring-rod. Good timing is necessary and this is done by sensors and microcontrollers.

All in all I think our prototype was really cool and some students couldn't believe we did this on own... most believe we outsourced it (coz that's how some groups did their stuff). The only stuff we "outsourced" was the stand (around 1m in height) that the launcher was placed on, the manufacturing of the cam (however, the cam design/profile was done by ourselves), and the motor (which was actually taken from an abandoned structure in one of the labs). Really wanna thank all my group members! I'm glad to have them as my new friends.

Oh, and there was a lot of media coverage today... Channel News Asia came to our booth (twice), there was Lianhe Zaobao etc. And since EID was featured on TV, we also had our teeny weeny seconds of fame (saw myself on TV... but less than 1sec though... lol). The reporter wanted to end her report by talking and returning the shots from our shuttlecock launcher at the same time... saw that on TV too, but in reality she NG like 10+ times (well, not her fault also lah, our machine had some slight problems, and there was some miscommunication between them and us). Really tough being a reporter/newscaster sometimes.

Here's some excerpts I got from channelnewsasia.com on our project (full report - here, will be gone in a few days):

**** ****
A mechanical innovation in five weeks, complete with a business plan to make sure it sells - that was the challenge to 600 Mechanical Engineering students at the Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) Engineering Innovation and Design Competition.
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Asst Professor David Lee Butler, School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Singapore Institute of Manufacting Tech, said: "This goes back to 1999 when we decided to give our students a chance to become technopreneurs.
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Now it's in the eighth year and we've had 5,000 students on the scheme. This year the quality is quite good, I'm quite happy. Some amazing ideas such as the fish scaling device and the shuttlecock launcher," said Mr Butler.

There is no limit to innovation and creativity.

An automated shuttlecock launcher, which can adjust the launching angle of shuttlecocks, came in tops in terms of design.

Currently there are no mechanical shuttlecock launchers in the market.

But this launcher can not only be produced at a low cost, but also help beginners execute different strokes.
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**** ****

And to those who organised EID... great job! I honestly felt this is one of the better NTU initiatives. Keep up the good work!

Here's our group photo... all 13 of us:

Front (l-r): Wayne, Teck Chin, Kok Vui, Hongbin, Ke Yeng, Sihan, Vik, Tuck You.

Back (l-r): Jonathan, Fane, Sami, Chee Loong, Sze Fei (me).

Will upload more photos on this blog itself once I get my hands on them. This has been a real boost to my confidence after being slightly depressed these few days. Woohoo!

火锅

火锅, steamboat.

Went to eat 火锅 at 麻婆豆腐小厨 at 345, Beach Road. Alighted from Bugis MRT and walked over there. Booked before going... which was a right move, because although the shop was rather empty when I arrived, it was soon packed. Ate from 7pm to 9+pm... hehehe

Apart from the usual steamboat fare, they specialise in Sze Chuan 四川cuisine. I liked their Pig's Ears. Hehe... Buffet style, Weekdays $15 nett, weekends $17 nett for steamboat; drinks and towelette not included inside the price. We went on Friday night and it costed us$17 each... so must take note. Ge Yao says it's rather Chinese, so if you want more authentic Sze Chuan food/steamboat at affordable prices, here's one place to go. Can find out more from this forum.

Might go there eat again next time. =P

After dinner she didn't feel well so we decided to go back straight away... and I saw Yi Cheng, Kok Vui and Jiann Hooi near the MRT! Why they come out never jio me! :'( Oh well, maybe they think coz I'm attached le... and KV said it was a "singles" outing... diaoz...

Exam Results Out

Exam Results for semester 2, 2006/2007 was out 8th June, 0000 hours (i think).

I aimed for 2 things this sem:
1. Get higher than 4.5 for Grade Point Average (GPA)
2. Get an A+ for at least 1 subject

I didn't achieve point 2, which means I already have 2 semester without A+. I feel like I'm dropping below the average level amongst aerospace students in my batch. Other people might say to me stuff like "hey come on, I got worse than you lah", "it's not that bad lah..." or "WALAU!!", but the fact is, I wanna be a high achiever. Results are not everything, but it is an indication of how well you know your stuff, and clearly, I don't know my stuff well enough.

0.014 away from 1st class honours. I just need to push a bit more...

Airport Surprise

My parents and my two sisters went to Australia recently. Visited my uncle in Melbourne, then went off to Sydney. Shen Bao was sick in Melbourne... maybe not used to the weather lah... haha...

Hope my 2 sisters are happy now that they've gone overseas finally (Singapore always doesn't count; don't think Singaporeans count Malaysia as overseas too). Got to see snow somemore. =) But I think it's my parents that should travel overseas more often... After working hard for so many years of their lives, it's time to enjoy.

Anyway, I went to surprise them at Changi Airport last Thursday when they flew back. They didn't know I was coming... Hope they were pleasantly surprised =P Too bad I didn't get to spend a lot of time with them.

My mom gave me some apple pie to eat at the airport. I said they should eat it but they said they would just throw it away if I didn't eat. Apparently they also ate mostly Chinese food when they were there. I was like "omg! how can you do that?!" Then I remembered what happened when I went with TJChoir to Europe last time: the tour agency made us have dinner at a Chinese restaurant every night! Supposedly, because most tourists couldn't tahan European food. *sighz* Then you lose the fun of travelling overseas liao lah. Oh well, but my mom is a "rice" person lah, must have rice one =) Guess I'm more Westernized? Nah... I just have a more international palatte lah. Hehe.

Going home on 22nd June! =)

Kok Vui's 21st Birthday

So Kok Vui has finally left the adolescent league of less-than-21 year olds. Hahaha... Present were: KV, Yi Cheng, Jonathan, Jiemin, Jeremy, Sihan, Vik, Bing Feng and me. Anyway... Basically we all had dinner at Pu Tien restaurant. And finally saw Ah Bing (Bing Feng) after so long. He thinks Georgia Tech was better than NTU and so he's a bit sian about coming back to NTU now. Caught up a lot on gossip... haha...

After the dinner we made Kok Vui wear the New Urban Male singlet we bought him. Fitted him quite OK, but some places were a bit tight.

Then Sihan presented her cake to us... it was humongous. We decided to put 21 candles on the cake and the Black Forest Cake was then named "Flame of The Forest" instead =P.

Sitting(l-r): Sihan, Kok Vui; Standing(l-r): Jiemin, Vik, Jon, Ah Bing, Jeremy, Yi Cheng, me

There was still a cake left after we ate, so... we played 终极密码. Sihan thought of a number between 1-100, and we went round the table clockwise from Vik. And who would've guessed it, the birthday boy kena ;)We said he had to eat the cake without using his hands and without moving the cake, so...

After paying we just walked around the area and went home...

How to Change Your Life in 7 Steps

"How to Change Your Life in 7 Steps" by John Bird

Ok, there are lots of self-help books out there, and you can find lots of inspirational articles online just by Googling. I'm not claiming this book to be a magnificent one. But as the Daily Mail newspaper says, the book is 'inspirational but down-to-earth', which I cannot agree more. Some facts: The book is the small type (roughly 20cm X 12.5cm) and has only 84 pages. I finished reading it in Borders itself but decided to buy it anyway.

Why? I guess it described many of the problems that hinder my progress in life pretty well, it used simple words, and examples were kinda "Chicken Soup for the Soul" inspirational style. Basically it suited me fine, and I felt compelled to share the book with others if I get the chance, and to apply the advices suggested inside in my life. And these few days, more than ever, I feel the need and urge to make myself more organised and focused on the tasks at hand. So I'm perhaps a bit biased...

So if you are looking for an easy inspirational read, you can consider this book. My "library" always open... hahaha...

Once in a while I go to YouTube to find interesting videos to watch. I usually click on the "top rated" and "this month" buttons to find the best videos around, as voted by youtubers (is there such a word?).

I came across this video and I was wondering what was so amazing about it... After I watched I realised she sings quite really well! Her own rendition on Justin Timberlake's song "What Goes Around...Comes Around" from the album "Future Sex / Love Sounds". Something interesting in the end of the video which I totally didn't anticipate... Take a look:

I had to go to pay the fees for my German class at Goethe Insitut yesterday, and since I felt it was boring to travel alone I asked Sam, Kok Vui and Yi Cheng along. I think it was a good thing that I requested us to go there early, so that we had more time to go window shopping. First GSS outing! Haha... many more to go...

Had breakfast with Ge Yao then had a second breakfast with the guys. After I paid my fees we went to cineleisure, which was rather deserted (many shops were not open yet). Then went to The Heeren to look at clothes (nothing much, or too ex) and loitered at HMV for awhile. There's this Michael Buble song stuck in my head ever since I heard him sing on American Idol so I'm trying to look for it.

Had lunch at the Taka basement... then walked around somemore. Then went to Wisma Atria. Shops we went: Zara (spent the most time here, because their clothes are good! Haha... too bad they are ex...), Topman, Gap, FCUK, Lacoste... By the time we were done window shopping, trying on clothes that we didn't buy etc., it was around 4.30pm. Sam left to meet his dad for dinner.

Jiann Hooi joined us afterwards. We went to Borders and I found this book called "How To Change Your Life in 7 Steps" by John Bird. Will write more about it in my next post. I actually bought the book even though I had read the entire book already in Borders... lol...

Had dinner and then came back to NTU. Didn't go to Far East Plaza as planned with Sam... next outing? Haha...