Holidays are here for a reason, that is for people to take a break. It will be too sad to just spend it to catch up on school work, since we have already spent so much time and effort during term time on projects and assignment. So far the term break was fantastic for me and I'm really enjoying it.
Went for the internal shoot on Tuesday and although I was not one of the top archers, I was very satisfied with my own performance. Compared to the last internal shoot which I totally flunked, my score was much more respectable this time round. Slowly and surely, I am catching up on the likes of the senior archers. First competition coming up in one week's time but no pressure since I wasn't expected to win anything this time round, just hope that I fall within the median range.
After the shoot went for a Kbox outing with some of the Greenies. The Kbox session where the most number of English songs were sung due to the 'kang dang' influence by demong, nat and lewis. Nat's 我要你的爱 was totally owning and made us burst out in laughters.
Last night went for Wheels for Meals, a round-island expedition cum makan section organised by SMUX. Started off at ECP, we cycled to Old Airport Road, Newton, Bukit Timah, Lau Pa Sat and finally Geylang for good food. What can beat having the chance to eat all your favourite food all in one night? Wanton mee in Old Airport Road, cheese prata, ice cream prata and other pratas in Bukit Timah, dou jiang you tiao in Geylang, etc. Even typing these makes me hungry now. And cycling in a group gives u the advantage of trying out all the different variety of food without feeling too full. It's not just the food that makes the trip fun, but the accompany as well. Especially with Lia in the group, there's hardly a moment of peace but plenty of entertainment.
Before Set-off
Old Airport Road
Lao Pa Sat
Geylang 豆浆油条
People say when you do good things you will get good karma. Probably clearing up the room is a good deed for me, considering how messy my room is and I did not even bother to clear up my room during CNY since no one is coming to visit. Since holiday is here, no harm spending some time cleaning up.
Before:
After:The evening was spent with good food and cakes. Bakerzin cakes rox! So far had tasted three flavours of their cake and found that the best is the Frasier, a must-try.
It sure look more like a room nowThe best surprise of the day and the best karma I can get is when I reach home, my dad told me he had recovered all the data in my portable harddisk. By using some adaptors or what I'm not too sure, but all my photos are back. My precious! Now everything is backed up now. It sure feels good to get back my 'lost memories'
clockwise from bottom: Bloom, Frasier, Strawberry shortcake
The final presentation on Tuesday marks the end of my Creative Thinking module. What we did for this project was to trade with people for stuff of a higher value, starting with an Ikea pencil. Proceeded on to ask random people and friends in SMU to trade with us. On a couple of days me and Sarah even went out on the street to ask the public to trade with us, an of course we received countless rejections.
The Stating Item
Just an overview of what item we managed to exchange:
Starting item Ikea pencil
Using the Ikea pencil, we traded for S$12 worth of ringgit, rupiah and baht
->a kbox card, gutters and laser pointer
->a pair of Bone concert tix
-> a pencil box
-> a wallet
-> a calculator
-> earrings
-> a bag
...And finally a printer
Quite a series of good deal right? However, our project is not meant to earn from the exchanges but rather to see the human reactions to such requests. While doing the project didn't think too much of the grades but rather enjoy the process. How many people actually have an opportunity to approach random people on the street for these purposes? With all the experience begging and terrorizing, CT's the most fun modules I had so far. Of course there's hardwork too. Lost count of the distance me and Sarah walked around SMU and to Orchard and Bugis for this project, as well as the amount of time and effort that we put in for this project. This project also make me test the new cab midnight surcharge twice and learn how to use Adobe Premiere to edit the videos. It's usually not that difficult to do video editing but when suay-ness step in, anything can go wrong. We found so many computers that actually can't read .avi files and computers without Moviemaker and the last straw is after editing for 2hrs plus the night before, the program just close itself!!
On the actual day of presentation, we put up a static display as well. A rather different static display which look more or less like an obstacle course where we put the display under the table, hang on the ceiling etc, so the class and prof have to crawl at times to look at the charts. After which we showed the video which we did. I've uploaded the video on Youtube and here so do take a look!
The obstacle course
Think we will do well looking at how hard the class and prof laugh and commented on the presentation. Looking at others' presentations, some of them were very interesting and entertaining as well, but there was one particular group which was disastrous. Had a skit on 'should CT be abolished' and neither the topic and the presentation was interesting and it still exceeded by 20mins. The group just proved that creative thinking cannot be taught and all the hype of diversification (the group consist of 4 nationalities) is false. If I were Kirpal, I would be so sad that this is what they can present after teaching them for six weeks.
Other groups aside, I'm not that happy about my own group as well. 90% of the work is done by me and Sarah, 8% is done by our friends and only 2% is done by the other 2 group members. That's the worst free-loading I've ever seen and I wonder how people can freeload to this extent without feeling guilty. Sadly, there's no peer evaluation as well otherwise I'll file a freeloading report cause they seriously don't deserve to get the same grades as me and Sarah. Very thankful that Sarah is in my group otherwise I think I may just pull up to do up a project myself.
Overall I enjoyed this module a lot with inspirational talks by Kirpal each week and the opportunity to try creative stuffs. Get to know myself better as well in terms of my creativity ability though it's not that good to know that I can conceptualise and optimize well but can't generate new ideas and implement well. Nevertheless, that's it, CT is over and here comes my two-days-week!!!
The last sad post is there for quite some time so it's time to post something so that sadness don't appear right on top of my blog and people will not think that I have died from depression. Especially since I don't feel sad after Vday or I should say I had no time to feel sad after Vday.
Greenies outing on Saturday with nice steamboat buffet and of course gambling. Since it's quite over shan't elaborate too much on it. Just let pictures do the talking.
Think my luck has changed after Vday?
Think again
The girls are so mean to me that day, causing physical (see above) and emotional damage to me. After Bin told everyone how sad my valentines day is they actually formed a mini choir singing "All you need is love" Rub salt into my wound.. Awww...
Money are at stake
Unexpectedly I actually won money during the blackjack session. Initially I was losing quite badly but with Cai Shen Chih as banker, it's actually quite hard to lose. Just hope that the little winnings won't cause me to play Wii this Xmas.
My most hatred day of the year is here again and too bad, I have lesson today, in fact for the whole day, so I can't stay home to avoid seeing things that makes me sad. Boys and girls dressing up preparing for the date at night, bazaar selling things in pairs at the concourse and people carrying flowers around. These make me feel more alone than alone.
Throughout the day this song keeps sounding in my mind: All you Need is Love. Perhaps it's the lyrics which pointed out exactly what I felt."All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love."Even after school at home, I'm feeling the effects of Valentines' Day. My parents want to eat outside and initially thought I have tuition, so asked mum not to cook. In the end, tuition is canceled and I have nothing to eat. Not wanting to eat outside, I decided to cook myself. Ba Kwa Soba, now with prawns and mushrooms. Sounds nice but not too nice tasting though as I was cooking in a rush and it was sort of impromptu. Tried out a new drink too, peach vodka with green tea. It seems to be the perfect drink to drink alone on Valentines' Day as the vodka brings out the bitterness of green tea and bitter plus bitter equal super bitter, just like how singles feel on Vday. Definitely not a drink which I would want to try again.
My favourite activity during emo times is to listen to emo songs. Recently seems to have quite a number of good emo songs springing out, with one song which I would like to highly recommend. 洋葱 by 杨宗维 of 星光班. One of the very rare good voices nowadays and with a good song like this written by 阿信 of Mayday, it's definitely a must-listen to song, regardless of emo or not.It's getting harder and harder to endure the sufferings during such festivals and I really don't wish to suffer more.
Despite the amount of work piling up, CNY still has to be enjoyed. Went to Derrick's place together with some other NP guys to visit and chill up. CNY is one of the few times in the year to gamble, so we had some games of blackjack. As the theory stands that this year I shall 赌场失意，情场得意， so I ended up being the biggest loser again, with losses of $20plus. I did not lose on purpose though, just that luck is seriously not on my side, play around $1-$2 also can lose so much. Hopefully the girl comes quick otherwise I will be too broke to go out on a date by then. Carried on to play FIFA which I'm better at with my Italian style of playing, holding on to 0-0 and win at penalties.
Later on went to Bugis to watch CJ7. A good brainless Stephen Chow style movie to watch during the CNY to relax. Not much plot to talk about but it was very funny and most importantly of all, the alien dog CJ7 is so so so so cute, with the expressions that it can make in the movie. I might just be tempted to get the plush/ voodoo doll of it if I see it.
It's even cuter in the movies
Chinese New Year is here again and it's the year of the rat. What is associated with Chinese New Year? Ang Pow, food, gambling, visiting...
Ang Pow
One of the few wonderful things you can look forward to during CNY and I'm waiting for the Ang Pows to finance my post-CNY retail therapies. Had been holding back my spendings as income doesn't seem to be able to catch up with expenses most of the time. Sad to say in times of inflation, everything had gone up but ang pow money seems to shrunk and the mode of the ang pows collected so far is $4. Haiz... And got my first CNY ang pow from my sis and this year I need not collect ang pows on behalf on her coz she's not eligible to collect ang pow anymore.
Food
Don't seem to be able to eat so much this year. Ate very little rice for lunch and dinner and a little CNY goodies but that made me felt so full for the entire day. Got to maintain my weight below 60kg but guess it's gonna be real hard. After CNY gotta exercise hard and think I shall replace some of my meals with salad and snacks next week.
Gambling
Thought after selling off my PSP I will rot at my granddad hse but all thanks to Mahjong, I'm pretty occupied this CNY. Usually my dad is the one who's playing Mahjong but this year he gave up the chance to play. Started with the normal 20cents/40cents game with the less pro players. Won $10 this game and later the pro players started to arrive and wanted to start a game with stake 3-6 which I know is quite big but dun really know how big is it, so I din really wanted to play. But my mum asked me to pay and she said she'll pay for my loss and if I win I'll keep the winning, so why not? It's only when I started playing I realised how big is the stakes. Min is $1 and max is $20. 'Zi Mo' still add $2. Even an 'An Kang' cost $4, which is more than the limit of what I usually play. Real scary sia considering that my hands started shivering even when I play the 20cents/40cents game. Totally pawned as my tiles CMI sia, during the less pro game still can overcome with skill but against the pro it's gg for me. Report card after 2 rounds: $79 lost. Ouch!! The consolation is that all lost is covered by my dad and 赌场失意，情场得意！！
Visiting
More visiting to go for the next few days meaning more ang pow, more food and perhaps more gambling (hopefully not coz I know I'll be down on gambling luck this year) At the same time got to start on my work as well. Week 6 and week 7 will be extremely busy with the CT project taking out most of my time. Since it's a fun project I dun mind doing for the fun of it but quite sad coz seems like only me and Sarah is interested and committed in this project. Also got to do up my BGS assignment. Maybe Sunday got to go NLB to do up my essay and not go visiting. Haiz, Mugtatouile is here!!
