to Yuanyiu!

Dear Yuanyiu,

Hey dude! What have you been up to! Hehehe =)

Here's wishing you a very Happy 24th Birthday!

Hope to hear from you soon ok?

From Pawsie and Me!!

To Pawsie

Dear Pawsie,

Hey, Though I've already wished you in person,

I will wish you Happy Birthday here as well!

Jia you for your FYP, and yes...

I will try to jia you for mine as well. =)

Competency test

Today, I went for Alcatel Company’s competency test, which showed that I was totally incompetent. I think one of the easiest questions was “what’s the difference between a hub, switch and router.” EH?!? K lah… maybe it serves me right to not have a clear idea of what I wanted to specialize in. Here I am someone who never took any communications or computer engine module trying to get a job at a company focusing on broadband and IP networks. I bet these questions will be easily answered if I took computer com networks or something.

And then what happens!?? There are 2 IQ questions at the back, which I maybe shouldn’t have bothered to do since I flopped the beginning part, but oh well.. what do you know… they asked my dear ol 8 balls and a weighing balance question. Hahahaha! So to all of you out there, go and read my brain teaser, you never know when it will come out for your competency test when you are looking for a job!!

Have not looked at you so closely for so long. My mind went blank for an instance, and I felt a strange feeling inside which I couldn't explain.

I have a love-hate relationship with you. Yes, the feelings change week to week, day to day, minute to minute. Who’s that?

Matlab.

You are so much more than I make you out to be.

matlab

Today I programmed for 12 hours straight.
Yah right. just almost. I started doing my assignment at 4pm and now its 4am. minus off dinner which I packed, final year meeting, which lasted like almost 2 plus hours, plus my shower, I have been a very good girl today. if only I had the time and diligence everyday.

Therefore, I am proud to say my assignment (one of my assignments actually)is about done. The bulk of the programming part that is. I have no idea how long the written report is going to take, probably longer? Yes! I am going to finish this blardy assignment in record time. I am proud to say that after being tortured by my fyp, which is not really progressing, I actually have acquired amazing matlab skill to finish this assignment in record time, as compared to what I hear others are taking. ahahahaha! CHOPCHOP! 100% efficiency! Who says need 3 days for programming.. nonsense lah..

Ok, I just needed to give myself a pat on the back, cos there is no one else awake to do so. dont waste time le, go Zzzz..

opinions opinions

Sigh, How can I speak ill of a guy who just wants to have a job well done. Driven guy in my project emailed me requesting a copy of our final project, and also wrote a whole paragraph reiterating issues raised in class over the topic of our project (even when its already over) and then wrote another paragraph saying he now understands why RJ is so special and that I left him with a strong impression and it was an honour to know me. He's from RJ too. Cham... Actually, he really is a responsible and committed worker and a sincere person. Alamak. A day that I complain someone is too hardworking, when usually people complain about free-riders. It's unfortunate that we have different expectations I guess. Our working style just clashes. But maybe he can do so much, because he doesn't have a zillion distractions in hall. It's really ridiculous. I am not going to make it if this continues.

However, I really cannot stand people who act concerned when sorry, they just seem that they can't be bothered. Stop patronizing me or just show me that you actually bother with action.

Night cycling and Meeting friends

Okay, maybe I deserve it, because despite my heaps of deadlines, I went for night cycling on friday, and well.. I don't regret it. Cos it was my first time night cycling with C blk and it was really loads of fun. Even though I felt my thighs cramping up alll the time during the journey, and even though my butt is aching like mad now. We left hall friday 8.15pm only to return back at 8.30am the next day. I then had a mega- long marketing project meeting from 2 to 7, and was really tempted to go back to bed.
Instead, I chose to meet up with Qianming, Zhixu, Jianhao and by sure luck, Mel too. Really happy that I met up too, because oh well, just felt great meeting up with my familar pals once again. Qianming entertained us with endless gossip from the medicine faculty. We had dinner at Carl's Junior and later Zhixu offered to treat us to dessert. And well... I decided that I should finally go to Ben and Jerry's. And so off we went. And there and then, I knew my decision was correct. Thanks guys, I'm comforted just knowing that I have you guys with me. N mel, you have all of us there for you too. =)




Awkward positions, what are we trying to do?


The way it should be. We're trying to take a photo with the table.


Me and my Ben and Jerry's Table.

If I don't care, why should it bother me. Becos I have no idea y myself.

Warning: lots of complaining done. I need an outlet.

I just got back from a lab from 2 to 5.15pm and my head is ready to explode. I really think
I benefited a lot from the season, but I can just feel the material threatening to burst out
of my head, plus I am dreading the ANOTHER lab report I have to complete.
This semester has been really hectic for me. Firstly, it was the IHG seasons that got me
occupied. Next, even when I realli did want to settle down and concentrate on my FYP. I had
endless subject pool sessions, labs, assignments, marketing projects to look to. Really feel
that I have endless deadlines to meet, which is a huggge change from last semester even
though I am still taking just 3 extra modules on top of my FYP. What happened man?

I realised something. I have been living in my comfort zone too long. Never felt
that it took soo much time to do a project before. Was it because we were all efficient and
knew what each other wanted? oR was it simply because I made the rest, most likely haoxian
do all the work. I think we really did work well with each other, well meaning, we didn't
spend too much time on the projects. Such is my definition of well. As a student who needs to juggle 5 or 6 modules at a go, go for lecturs, tutorials, do labs, assignments, projects, study for exams, plus commit to hall, plus spend time with my friends and family, I'm always priortising or allocating my resources carefully. I'm not afraid to admit that in NUS, i will never aim to do a project to its 100%. Why? simply because it is not the smart way to work in NUS. It takes 80% effort to do up a project to its 80% best, but to make it 100% perfect, you need to spend another 200% and by the time you do that, you're going to be so dead, cos you'd be way
behind for all your other assignments and modules. It's because of the nature of the grading. Putting in another 20 hours into your project is just changing it from a 70 to a 75.

Let's take 2 exams of different nature, my argument is not perfect and I dont know the
right terms, so someone can help me out here. For an engine module with 4 questions and an econs module with 4 essay questions, the approach is entirely different. For my engine module, if I have not studied a particular subject, I can spend all my time on just 3 questons and leave one question black. And if I
get complete marks for the 3, I can be pretty confident of an A. Such is the strategy for EE2011 guys, if anyone is taking it this semester. For econs, if I become obsessed with perfecting my first 3 questions and end up handing in a blank paper for my 4th question, chances are that I'd be lucky settling with a C. You'd never get full marks. And even if you changed your grade from 16/20 to 20/20 for question 1, what about that whole 20 you lost in question 4?

Why am I spending so much time on this? I don't know.. Because I think my previous group
members, chris, haoxian, xin en all deeply understood this concept. And sure we always did
our projects, yeah sure! But it was always just till sufficient. And then everyone else can
do whatever million things on their list.

I spent so much time on marketingthis time, I'm peeved. no. 1, because there's a guy in the group who's very
driven to getting a good grade on the project. We looked at almost every aspect and answered
all the questions on the list given to us, when we knew very well that doing so will exceed
the pages. We then ended up with 24 pages of info, only to have to cut it to 12. I'm really
not a motivated person ain't I? Here, in my brain, I'm yelling, why did we just do what was
required and come up with that 12 pages of info, which usually what we always did. Eg,
for recommendations, we come up with almost 16, which I think is impossible to fit into the paper, yet when I suggest not to do so, this guy doesn't change his mind, so OKAY... we then select
about 6 each, and in the end, there are so many we cut it from 16 to about 8. And luckily 5 of mine
are in, though in the first place I choose the ones that were more relevant to our topic, instead of
those extras. And true, in the end, I had to spend more time then others editing it in the second
draft, 3rd draft and finally was the one who did almost all the recommendations. But seriously, i rather that, then spend time to come up with it, only to have the entire chuck taken out after I have actually written it. Low efficiency to the max. Cannot imagine how yq felt, when his paragraphs were deleted one by one.

Usually, everyone gets parts to work on, and I guess there is a certain amount of trust
going around. I trust that everyone comes up with decent work that needs minimal correction
of structure or grammar. I am sorry xin en , haoxian and chris that I have taken our good
working relationship for granted. Or was it good?? A little hiccups here and there, but
still efficient in my opinion. Yet this time, I'm going mad, because I feel that there is so
much editing to done, and with one weak member in the group, this "driven" guy is trying to
give her as little work as possible so as not to affect the "quality" of our overall
project. Can you do her part for her?? eh.. ok? Can you do her final analysis for her?? Then
there's more flow? What?? I simply refuse, what lousy reason is tat, then what is she
supposed to do? Can you do the final editing for the report?? Suddenly, I am termed GP shen and have major responsibilities to get this report to make sense. Sigh.. but then again, i kind of understand what he means, because when I read her work, I too, feel that there are loads to touch up on. Touching up one poor grammar is easy as compared to illogical arguments or when the person has just plagarised the whole reference. Me paraphrasingyour work for you, is like me doing half the work for you, your half being finding the relevant material to copy inside. So here I understand. But maybe I am selfish, like you so want a good grade, you do her part lah! Why me again! So why can't I just make him do it you ask? Because he is occupied doing other stuff for the project. Stuff which I feel are either irrelevant, or not worth
the amount of time he is spending on it, eg reading up on all 50 of nokia's models? What's up!? Which I refuse to do, and therefore only agree to do work that I feel will actual appear in the final report. Plus the fact that his GP is weak and therefore he claims he spent a 6 hours editing the report, which I believe, but really, how much time do you want to spend on one module??

Oh btw, we got a B for the report. Alamak... seriously. Luckily I got an A minus for individual presentation, else I will really really feel that this whole thing was not worth my while.

Driven guy, if you ever ever read this, I don't think you are a bad person, or that at any point of time you weren't doing your job. I'm probably peeved cos of my FYP and yes I guess, you are more anxious because this is your core module, But well... Don't be too ambitious. Even is your want a 100% report, there's only so much you can put in, take what you can handle, allocate resources properly, listen to suggestions, and of all, learn how to do work more efficiently. You're only year one, you have a long way to go.