Kuala Lumpur.

After 3 days in relative wilderness, I am now sitting in the Internet kiosk provided by Burger King (for RM15, may I add) in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. I must say that the trip itself was eye-opening, but at the same time somewhat uninteresting. I guess I shall leave the details to a post later on with some of the rather interesting pictures that I’ve taken. The good thing was that I managed to see a couple of my relatives, many of them I have not met for almost 10 years. The food was always great, but the weather definitely wasn’t!

The flight from Pekanbaru to Kuala Lumpur wasn’t exactly the most exciting flight that I’ve ever been on, but then again given that it’s Air Asia, I should not have expected too much. Budget airline and all that. The only good thing to have come out from the flight was that the plane touched down at KLIA even before I fell asleep! Apparently the flight took 35 minutes instead of the scheduled 45. All the same, I appreciate a nice airport to be hanging around in.

Would be taking the flight scheduled for 12pm, even though Malaysian Airlines somehow managed to mess up my booking. Apparently they got my passport number, date of birth and even credit card number right, but my all-important name wrong! I guess perhaps that’s the good thing being in Malaysia instead of somewhere else, because they managed to sort out the problem fairly quickly and now I’m on my way back to Singapore. That said, if it was in Singapore or with the SIA I’m pretty sure they would not have such a problem arising. Or maybe they would?

Will be back in Singapore in about 2 hours’ time, and somehow I am not looking forward to it as much as I have a few days back. Spent too much time pondering about life when I was in Indonesia, and I didn’t have any good conclusion, or should I say, the conclusion to have come out from it wasn’t good. So I guess perhaps going back to reality wasn’t as exciting as it was for me a few days back. Oh well, at least I have the whole house to myself for a full 2 days. That’s something to look forward to.

See you guys around – a short update became much longer, so I guess the next one would be much longer.

Great day.

After a few days of uncertainties and confusion, finally I had a good day today. As far as I’m concerned I think I thoroughly enjoyed today, and I hope that it would be the same for me for the next couple of days as well. I also bought my required reading – Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress – and I think I’ll have something to do on the planes that I’m going to be taking in the next couple of days. I don’t think I would finish the entire book, but at least I’ll have something to kill time.

Will be away for a couple of days in Indonesia. Don’t know what to expect – but I hope it would be nice. I’ll be in Indonesia for about 3 days, and then I’ll be coming back to Singapore via Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday. I think I should be back at Changi Airport at about 1 in the afternoon. I don’t know if I’ll get to check my emails or update my journal, but in case I don’t, please don’t miss me! I’m still contactable via my Singapore mobile number anyway, so there’s no worries.

I had a great day and I hope things will be good for me for a long time to come, and suddenly I find the inspiration to life again!

Thoughts.

I think I’m falling in love with my Understanding Careers class. For one reason or another, I seem to love Wednesday mornings now, even though I have to wake up at 6.45 to attend the class that starts at 9 in the morning.

That said, today wasn’t exactly a good day for me. Didn’t have a good day in school after class cos I kinda found out some things that I didn’t expect – not really a shock but just something rather unpleasant to listen, then came home and quarreled with my Dad (even though as usual I think he’s being unreasonable). And as usual I’m feeling ever so exhausted throughout the whole day that I really could have collapsed onto the bed at 9. All these didn’t make a good day for me.

Sometimes finding out truths are not always a nice thing. But that is still an essential process in life, because it is the truths that would make you think and grow. You can have people telling you about all the nice things, or what I term them to be diplomatic things, but it is not going to be value-adding if they aren’t the truth because that wouldn’t make sense. These diplomatic things would just make you kid yourself that everything’s fine and in order, when the truth can’t be further away. So I guess having people telling you honest opinions is always a nice thing, even though it may not sound nice, but at least it’s value-adding.

And then sometimes I think I tend to overestimate myself a bit too much. Maybe I am really not as important or as value-adding as I think I am. Maybe some people don’t even appreciate that I am around. I think perhaps things have really changed, and what I am is not what I perceive I am. Whether it is a period of one year, one month or one week, sometimes people change, and I do as well; and whenever the changes between myself and the others do not reconcile, that’s where problems arise. Like I said today in school, sometimes I cared too much to be bochup, but I don’t realize that some people would rather me being bochup than to care so much.

And yes, I don’t like it when I have to go through so much as well – I think I need a counsellor.

Ministry of Sound.

Yesterday was a long day. It started in the morning with the NOC Homecoming Reunion at Staff Club and while I still remain skeptical about the things that the NOC Alumni is doing, I did have a bit of fun mingling around with the other people who have gone to other colleges. The thing was that I was horribly tired and I simply couldn’t last the day. Ended up leaving at 4 and reached home at about 5. Took a short nap before leaving home again to meet the other people at Ministry of Sound.

By the time I reached Clarke Quay, it was raining rather heavily, and because I was always too eager to check the place out, I ran in the rain towards MOS and in the process dropped my phone in a puddle of rainwater – I don’t know what’s the effect on the phone yet but it seemed to be still working OK so I’m not too concerned at this point of time. Ministry of Sound was a decent place, but I don’t think it’s a nice spot for a school bash because you are never going to have a good crowd, and it showed. The crowd was kinda wrong, and I think it would be safe to say that the bash was rather unsuccessful. I think the place is OK, and chances are I probably would go again if the people and the time are right. Managing to know one of the resident DJs there who happened to be a Manchester United fan (apparently he’s behind the goal when Solskjaer scored the winning goal in the Champions League final in 1999) – that gave me additional incentive to go back there again.

Ministry of Sound.

Was over at Engin the other day and caught the cleaner in action – practicing calligraphy on the ground with water!

Have been feeling horribly tired for the past few days, and it seems like I’ve been rather short of sleep. It doesn’t help when I can’t even sleep to my heart’s content on a Sunday – getting brutally woken up at 9.30 is hardly the best way to start a Sunday, especially when I slept at 3 the “night” before.

Timetable.

After being away from school for a year, finally I’ve gotten my timetable up!

Monday: Free Day!

Tuesday:
[1200 – 1400] Lecture – CS4264 E-Commerce: B2C Applications

Wednesday:
[0900 – 1200] Seminar – GEK1039 Understanding Careers

Thursday:
[1100 – 1300] Lecture – CS4252 Security, Control & Audit of Information Systems
[1300 – 1400] Consultation – CS4264
[1600 – 1800] Lecture – CS3261 IT Marketing

Friday:
[1500 – 1600] Tutorial – CS3261

The timetable looks nice, and I think I’ll enjoy my semester.

Found a very meaningful quote today: Miracles happen to those people who believe in it.

I believe in miracles, and I know it will happen to me. I don’t know where or when it will happen to me, but I believe somehow somday it will happen to me somewhere. After all, if there’s no belief, then what’s there to look forward to in life?

Lessons.

The reality of lessons are getting to me. I was really tired for the past two days trying to do so many things at the same time. I think I really need a rest of some sorts alraedy. After going almost non-stop for the past 2 weeks, I think I’ve finally run out of energy to continue.

I only need a break – not a full system shutdown. It would be good if I won’t have to wake up so early for the next few days, but I kinda have too many things to do, and I don’t really have the luxury of time. Not when suddenly somebody throws me new arrows again.

It didn’t help when I kinda screwed up my first job assessment just now. Really shouldn’t have done it at night. And it sucked when I don’t even have a calculator with me. Argh.

Not a good day.

Thoughts.

Didn’t update for three days, mainly due to laziness, but also because of having a lot of things going through my head.

Attended the NUS Global Entrepreneurship Summit as a student helper at the request of my dajie Sarah. I think the experience itself was interesting because this is after all the first entrepreneurship-related event that I’ve attended since coming back from Shanghai, but it actually brought upon me more questions about this whole deal of entrepreneurship. I was chatting with one of the NUS professors for entrepreneurship during the dinner reception, and he said what I have been thinking all along – Singapore is glorifying entrepreneurship. In fact I would go to the extent to say that Singapore has glorified it so much that people are now jumping blindly onto the entrepreneurship bandwagon that they don’t realise the difficulties and the obstacles that lie ahead. It’s all very well saying that to become an entrepreneur you have to overcome difficulties and obstacles, but as far as I’m concerned, jumping blindly into entrepreneurship, without considering the difficulties and obstacles, is not exactly a very clever thing to do. Shouldn’t the people who are keen to become entrepreneurs be more aware of the real world, and find out more about whatever they want to do, before taking the plunge. I don’t think we should applaud those who just take the plunge, but instead we should understand all the tough things that are associated with being an entrepreneur. It would be silly to glorify this whole deal on entrepreneurship which would make people ignore everything else and go blindly into it.

And then I was thinking of my participation level with the Computing Club. I have been back for a week and to be absolutely honest, I am actually quite disappointed with the state of the club now. The element of companionship is gone, and it seemed to be replaced by rules and regulations. I still remember that the club used to be a very happening and interesting place which I love to be in, but now whenever I go into the club office the place actually feels cold to me. I’ve talked to a lot of people for their opinions of the club, and of course I’ve heard a lot of different aspects. But whatever I see doesn’t lie to me. The club is indeed very different from the one that I was so happily to be proud of in one and a half years ago, and because of that, I actually am getting to be in a loss over whether I should still be so committed towards it. I’ve told a lot of people that “if the club needs me I’m here”, which I still maintain my stand, but it’s just that would it be a case of me being pro-active in being involved with club activities, or would it be me being passively requested to help in club activities that’s my concern now. I know that I won’t like to be controlled, so I kinda like what I am now, not under the jurisdiction of anyone. But if I want to really contribute more to the club, then chances are I would need to get into situations which I will be controlled by people, and I don’t know if I can handle that. Well, I want to live life like a student, and being active in student activities is the best way to do so. But I don’t even know how I would want to be part of this whole thing, especially when I honestly don’t see things happening or moving in what I perceive to be a right direction. It’s nice to be appreciated, when people are telling me that they would love to have me around, but it’s still hard because of the fact that I feel that the club did not seem to have gone on the right track. I could choose to stay away, and to be honest, the club was close to me because of the atmosphere that it used to have. But the coldness that it demonstrates now is getting me a bit skeptical about a “comeback”. Now I think I’m kinda stuck in the middle, so I think whoever that can convince me now would probably someone that will be able to dictate if I will or will not be active again. To put it bluntly, I am now being quite confused about if I want to be part of something that I don’t, or at least I haven’t been able to, believe in?

And of course there are a lot of other things that are going through my head these few days, but I guess that two thoughts on entrepreneurship and Comp Club are the two most “disturbing” thoughts that I’m having now. I guess the only excuse that I can offer so far for all these thoughts going on in my head is that “things have changed – and so have I”.

To a certain extent, like what someone said to me today, I wish I’m back in Shanghai.

Presentation.

The presentation for my business case went relatively well, except in the morning when Elaine called me to say that we are all supposed to be at the presentation together, and listen to everybody else’s presentation. When she called me I was already in school, but I was trying to get my presentation slides printed out, so I rushed through the printing, got changed, and arrived at the conference room just in time. I guess as far as the presentation was concerned I did OK, just that I had so much things to share with everyone in the end it became a bit rushed. Now I just hope that it’s going to turn out well in my result slip.

Without me realising, I’ve been back in Singapore for more than a week already. It’s scary to think that time passes so quickly. But I guess I’m happy being so busy right now, and I hope the semester would be very fulfilling for me as it goes on.

The weekend’s here and I think it’s a good time for me to take a short break. After a few days of non-stop work, a short break like this is always appreciated.

Was pondering about the fact that MC was telling us just now – after coming back to Singapore some familiar friends in the past have gone to become just hi-bye friends. To a certain extent I think it’s true. After such a long while without seeing one another, I guess it would be natural that the friendship and the bonding would become weaker. I kinda have that kind of feeling as well. Granted, my group of friends at Computing Club still remained relatively close to me, but it’s the others that I kinda feel are not really with me already. Maybe in the future even if we see each other it would probably be just a “Hi, how are you doing? I’ll see you around”, which I think is pretty sad, but to a certain degree I think that’s how interpersonal relationships between people have evolved. I’m worried that the same thing would happen to my friends in Shanghai, but like what my dad said, some things are always best to allow nature takes its course, because if we were to force things through it may not be the best result for everyone.

I think I need some sleep to replenish that philosopher in me. And crazy enough, I’m already looking forward to next week’s classes! I guess I should be the only one in the whole of NCSH3 who’s feeling that way…

Lecture.

I had two classes today, one of them was more like a briefing for the module, while the other one began lessons proper today! I was meant to have taken these two modules before I left Shanghai, and it was heartwarming to realise that one of the lecturers actually remembered me by name!

Spent the time while not having class to finish up my internship report. I think I have tried my best in writing the report and I don’t think the report should be so bad that I would actually get an unsatisfactory grade. Oh well, it’s up to whoever reading the report to feel if the report is good or not now.

Would be doing my business case presentation tomorrow and I hope it would turn out well – in fact to an extent I’m looking forward to it because after my presentation tomorrow I will be liberated (at least until the reality of school work kicks in)!

I think after one year away in Shanghai everyone has changed for the better – it seemed like all the girls I know have all grown prettier, and all the guys I know have gotten more handsome as well. Why is it that I’m the only one that has remained the same?

Have been really busy for the past few days, but I’m enjoying my life as a student very much.

Class.

Too excited about going to class today that I woke up at 6.15. Arrived in class and I think God has answered my prayers yesterday – I’ve got a few cute and pretty girls in my class! It was added incentive to an already interesting class.

Went back to Computing after the class for lunch and worked on my internship report after that. Didn’t really managed to write a lot, but I think I would try to complete it tomorrow instead. Yes, I’m procrastinating, but I believe I could kinda round off whatever I have written so far and submit it cos I think I’m almost there already.

Two lectures tomorrow and my day is going to end at 6. Probably may want to hang around in school for a while more to do up whatever I need to be doing.

Nothing much to talk about today, so I guess I’m off to sleep.