Oh no oh no.. Whatever happens to my internet connection. I can't watch webcast lectures at home anymore. The video buffers every second.
Argh. There goes my Thursdays.
Why? I can save 3 hours of travelling time and I really watch the webcast at home. I've been good this semester so far. :(
romanced at 21:55hr
Tuesday, August 30, 2005Hello, I just woke up from my 10 min power nap. I'm falling asleep everywhere now that it's school term again, in buses, in computer lab, in lecture theatre. Help me! haha.. think it's quite common to have lack of sleep. Actually it's not supposed to be. We don't have to have more work to do as we grow older. Why can't we have a relaxing life? Why must we all read and study till 2 a.m. in the morning to be considered proper University students? Why must we all be super busy with meetings and rushing before deadlines to be considered as having a succesful career?
Which reminds me, there's this Mandarin drama playing at Channel 8 every weekday at 9 p.m about families. One of the family featured is that of typical dual-income, child being left at home, early quality retirement dream and good life for the children in the future. The husband and wife work so hard because they both aim to retire at 50. While there's nothing wrong with that, dreams aside, I think we all should enjoy lives to the fullest. There are different entertainment that we seek as we go through stages of our lives. We can't be keep saving money for the future and what happens when we are old and weak and all those money we save for travelling around the world becomes useless.
I wouldn't want to be visiting the Disneyland only when I'm 50. Or to climb the Eiffel tower, go on gourment cruises, shopping in London, sightseeing in Paris, etc.
Of course whatever we do it has to be within our means. Don't enjoy at the expense of others right. On the other hand, we really need to work very hard to have the means to enjoy life. And when we have to work hard, we don't have time to enjoy life. Oh well. Back to my webcast and carbocat-tat* lecturer.
*spelt carbocat-ion (kar-bo-kat-ion), soon I will forget how to pronounce it.
romanced at 14:48hr
Sunday, August 28, 2005I don't like my family again. :(
romanced at 23:46hr
Thursday, August 25, 2005Thursday has become the not-so-official free day for me for this semester. I really can't take having to go to school everyday. My lessons all start rather early. And it has to be dragged unnecessarily till late afternoon due to unreasonably long break. Thursday is the only day without tutorial and both of the lectures on that day are webcasted*. So thursday it shall be. Actually Monday on even weeks is a pretty good candidate as well. But I have to submit my chem lab report on even week, cause my lab is on odd week, and we are only given one week to do the report. I can't believe they make us go back to the lab just to submit the report. Sigh, the lab is on the top of a hill, and we are Engineering student who always hang around the Engineering department while the lab is all the way at Science.
This week is bad. I've missed quite a number of lectures and I haven't managed to catch up despite not going to school today. Urgh, that means extra work this weekend.
romanced at 18:59hr
Tuesday, August 16, 2005I've managed to buy some second-hand textbooks and I've wrapped them up nicely. Now I can actually use them cause I dare to touch them already. Hehe. They were not really dirty lah. Just that I feel like I have to clean them first, which I did. They all have hard cover so I can use some wet tissue paper to rub on the surface. I can't do anything about the pages but they are in good condition still. Though the older books have rusty stain on some of the pages. Yup, they're that old. The senior whom I bought the book from actually dared to tell me that she bought the book only last year (implying she bought new ones).
It's okay to lie if she can pull it off. But there is a price tag on the book dated year 2002. When I first looked at the book I was already suspicious. The first page is stained. It couldn't be if she just bought it last year. Then I saw the tag, and when I flipped the book I saw the receipt! dated 2002. Haha. Anyway, I asked her to lower the price of the book some more since it was not very new. In the end it costs me $25. Original price was $41 in 2002. The new book now costs $44.90. Quite alright I guess. It should have been cheaper. But since it's exactly the same book and the same edition, the book doesn't depreciate a lot. So it's reasonable.
Okay, 2 more textbooks to get. Going broke already.
romanced at 23:45hr
Total no. of lectures so far = 10
No. of lectures missed = 2
No. of lectures I went late* to = 2
Earliest time = 10 mins before lect
Latest time = 1 hr 15 mins late for 2 hr lect
I'm good. But seriously, this is an improvement.
*late is defined as more than 10 mins after the lecture starts.
romanced at 23:38hr
Friday, August 12, 2005How to walk without sound? Really. Can anyone teach me how? I think my sister need to share a room with someone else for eg. in a hostel to understand the constraints I am under all these time. She only knows she has insomnia and she will be waken up by any sound before she falls into deep sleep. That is if she can fall into deep sleep at all. And therefore her roommate, which is me, cannot make noise when she's sleeping or about to sleep.
Fine. So she tells me if she wants to sleep early a few hours before. And I fail to cooperate. I plan my time, but I do not follow the plan. I'm at fault. But there isn't a cooperation at all here. I am the only one making the efforts. What does she do? She only have to warn me when she wants to sleep. Hey, I don't have insomnia. Why am I suffering as well?
Okay, the deal is this. We sleep at the same time because I usually make noise if I don't sleep and she cannot sleep like that. If I wake up earlier I must not do anything that will wake her up. If she wake up earlier, she usually don't make so much noise. So there's no problem there. Is this fair?
I sleep like a pig. I can even sleep through the sound of hairdryer blowing of course I won't hear her footsteps. She said her footsteps are lighter. Well, she is lighter. What can I do? And who don't make sound? If I'm not sleeping that means I'm doing something, not stoning in front of my desk, duh, and whatever I do create sound. Tell me an activity that doesn't.
She's not the only one being disturbed here. Can't she see that? I AM being disturbed too. I don't dare to turn and toss about at night when I can't sleep. And I have to adjust my blanket softly, unfolding it, pulling it at the corner, using my leg to push. And when I turn to find a better sleeping position, I have to do so slowly. Actually, if you can see it the my way, though quite extreme view, I am the only one being disturbed. She has insomnia so she can't sleep, that's her problem. It's no fault of mine. But she has insomnia and I can do anything in the room when she's sleeping, that's her fault.
My mother ask me to cooperate. Sisters sleeping together, so both must give way. I asked my sister what efforts does she have to put in to cooperate. What she has to give up to compromise. She said she has tolerated the noise I make. Tolerate. Tolerate. She said she has not made so much noise when I disturbed her, i.e. complain less. Sometimes she was awaken by me but she didn't say anything. Hey, I can do tolerate too. I can tolerate her sleeping early if she wants to. I never ask her to stay awake with me. It will all be so much better if the only thing I have to do is to tolerate. It's always "don't make noise when you wake up ah", and never "you can do what you have to do, I can sleep", so where's the compromise?
I have to finish packing before sleeping, cause cannot pack in the morning, it's noisy. She said my footsteps are loud. So I walk less in the morning. When I open my drawer, I take everything that I will need so I don't make a second round to the drawer. Sometimes I stop in front of my drawer or table so long cause I am trying to remember all the things I need to take. But even then she said I hang around too much, and she cannot understand why. Well, I cannot understand how she can feel me standing there more than 2 metres away from her. And I was't staring at her. You know sometimes you can feel someone staring at you right.
I think she should sleep beside family treasures. Cause she can be a good alarm in case anyone break into the house.
romanced at 11:57hr
Sunday, August 07, 2005School's starting tomorrow. My mum is more anxious than my sis and I, hehe. Prepared ginseng powder for us to drink this morning, even threatened to give us an earful if we forget. Cooked delicious meals because we will not get to eat at home so often when school starts. Haha. A mother is really noble. Well, at least my mum is. I know not all mothers are like that. My mum thinks about her children all the time. :)
Okay, what do you do when you do not have an older brother who can help you fix things? You learn to fix them by yourself. Between my sis and me, I believe I am the 'guy'. I mean, look at her. (Haha, no offense ce, you're just very gentle).
I am the naughty tomboy. Yet I am somehow the vain one. I don't know how come but it's true. I move the cupboard in our room, and I am the one who wraps our parents' gifts. I chased after my sis's bullies (back back then, more about that below) and I braid hair and cut my own fringe. It's like I'm both violent and gentle. A feminine tomboy perhaps.
When we were younger, in Primary school, my sis would look for me whenever she got bullied. And I'll go after whoever bullied her. Chased him (usually a boy) around the school. I wouldn't stop until I got him. Usually I managed to get him after at most 4 rounds. My school was very small, we didn't have a soccer field like those in Singapore, just a basketball one in the middle of the school. Even if the boy ran faster, he could only manage a few rounds and would stop for mercy. Then I would be by his side, giving him a few kicks and hits and warned him not to bully my sis anymore.
After a year in the school, all my sis's friends knew about me. And my sis just had to say "If you tease me some more, I'll ask my sis to chase you". And they'd stop. Haha. My sis has an easier job though, if I get bullied and I couldn't fight back, my sis just have to tell the boy off by threatening to report him to the teachers. Well, kids.. they are afraid of anyone older, cause the teachers usually trust the words of senior students more than the juniors.
I realised I was quite bad. Not that I was a bad student, or a bully. I never hit others first. But I had no mercy. I did hit back very hard. I remember kicking some boys' private parts, throwing one boy's bag to the floor a few metres away (the metal box President suitcase one), that kind of bag would spoil under such a treatment, but I could not be bothered. I also remember grabbing a boy by his sleeve and punching him on his back many times, hard. Whoa.., I was scary.
But all those stopped when I got to Secondary 1. The naughty boys grew taller and bigger. I feel pain when I hit them. So I didn't. And I couldn't run in narrow knee-length skirt that was the uniform of Secondary female students. But I was still the class prefect, five years since Primary 4, till I asked not to be the perfect because I did not want to attend meetings. The form teacher made me the class secretary. Then I came here after a week.
Ah, my sis and I, we do have sweet memories of our school lives in Medan. I was rather sad when I have to move here. The first few years we kept talking about our old friends, our teachers, other school stuffs and how we missed all of those. Now it's okay. It's been 7 years. How time flies.
romanced at 23:24hr
Thursday, August 04, 2005It's time to change the template again. =) Yup, it's been six months since I last changed the look of my blog. Anyway, I've decided not to take a sixth module. I was outbidded heh. I guess I wasn't really serious or very keen about it cause I kinda forgot to check on it. So I didn't realise my bid points were insufficient.
Oh, what do you think of my blog's new look? I notice that I have used a lot of white background for previous templates so I thought some change would be good.
Ah, school's starting in 3 days time. The holiday has been good. But I do miss having something routine to do like going to school hehe. Not just any routine okay.
romanced at 17:34hr
Tuesday, August 02, 2005The most important question of all time. Okay, just for the time being then.
Should I take Heavenly Mathematics: Cultural Astronomy ?
romanced at 23:21hr