Sunday.

I know I haven’t been writing enough in July. A rough check with my journal entries for the entire month shows that I’ve written about 11 entries – that’s about one every 3 days! Compared to the times when I was writing almost everday, I certainly feel bad. But then again, you won’t want to see me moaning about things everyday after all, right? I mean, if I were to be writing 31 entries for the entire month of July and all they are about are me moaning about everything in life, I’m sure you won’t find it particularly interesting anyway, right? (Or perhaps you would be amazed about how many things I can actually moan about…)

Since Sis got a place in City University of Hong Kong and Mum has decided to accompany her to Hong Kong to settle some of her admissions stuffs, I would probably have the whole house to myself for 2 weeks in August! Of course it depends if Dad’s going to be back in Singapore during that period (which I kinda hope that he doesn’t), but having the whole house to myself certainly sounds like an interesting prospect. Actually I was supposed to have been the one that’s accompanying my Sis to Hong Kong, but with faculty orientation activities as well as HYP looming, I don’t think I can afford the time. Whatever it is, Sis is going to be there for a while, so I can always go visit her during my one-week break in the semester. Better still, since I hope to be moving back to Hong Kong to work after I graduate, I should be able to see her more often then!

As I was doing my preparatory readings for my HYP, I was thinking about the possibilities of me doing a postgraduate degree. I know I’ve said before I’m not really made for research, but somehow I like the challenge of doing such stuffs. I always believe that if probably guided, I could be a decent researcher myself. Of course my dream is still to work for Commercial Radio Hong Kong (yes, it kinda changed after a few months), but doing a postgraduate degree is definitely another option for me.

Was looking at the rewards for Starhub subscribers just now and found something interesting. As I somehow managed to chalk up close to 300 dollars of mobile phone bills for the past 2 months or so, I suddenly qualified myself for a lot of nice stuffs. The less tangible ones contain the usual “subscription to this service and that service, but what interested me more was a weekend stay at Conrad Hotel – too bad I don’t have someone to stay with me for that otherwise I would have gotten it without even thinking!

And yes, I hold my hands up and admit – I flew Edwin’s aeroplane on Friday! I was really doing some work for my orientation stuffs (reading lots of reports…) and my eyes were almost closed by the time I actually wanted to leave home. And considering that I needed to be in school at 9 in the morning on Saturday for the Orientation Week preparations, I decided that I would stay at home and catch up on some sleep, which has been a luxury lately. Knowing how Edwin’s like, I know he’s not going to mind! He’s not that petty as far as I know. Haha.

Orientation programs are scheduled to start in 2 days’ time. Am I not nervous.

Sigh.

Quotes of the day: 水能載舟，也能煮粥。

I don’t really understand the thinking of some people. Do we want to attend a freshmen camp with the aim of winning the camp? Must we be so competitive? Is it us seniors’ wish to be competitive, and we put that aim on our freshmen and expect them to be competitive because we want them to be? And yes, since it’s a camp catered for the freshmen, shouldn’t the freshmen’s well-being come first all the time? If we seniors have to suffer a bit to make sure that the freshmen have fun, shouldn’t we do it? Why should we be casting our differences and little selfish goals and objectives on the freshmen? Why must we create in them a sense of such rivalry and politics? Shouldn’t it be left to the freshmen to decide what they want to do with the lives, instead of us telling them what we want them to do? How can people up there believe that us students are good enough when we are doing such things at this level?

If you are in this thing called “Freshmen Orientation Projects”, then jolly well put the freshmen as your top priorty. Put it in a harsher way, during orientation, your freshmen are your bosses. Your job is to make them happy and feel welcomed. If you can’t do that, then please get out.

21

Sis turned 21 yesterday. Happy birthday!

This was the little dinner that we had yesterday at Crystal Jade in Jurong Point. Looks nice hor?

The prices certainly were too!

The board game “Dividends” the Union Camp Committee played at Settlers’ Cafe last week. I personally didn’t think this game was particularly fun though.

There was a flu epidemic emergency exercise islandwide last week, so I was made to wear a mask for my visit to the Bukit Batok Polyclinic Dental Clinic. And this was how I looked like. Silly, eh?

HYP is on the up for me as I’ve fixed on two final topics to decide on. So now the job is just to decide one of them and work on it. Wish me luck.

Sunday.

I did something today that I’ve not done for a long time – go back to school on a Sunday.

I managed to fight the lazy bug in me and made my way to school to get some of my to-be-read-but-can-never-understand-fully academic journal papers printed. The labs were understandably empty today, and I had a good time getting these papers printed. You may be wondering why I don’t do that at home and instead travel for an hour to school (and then another hour back) to get them printed in school. Well, for a start, the printer at home has run out of ink and I haven’t got it replaced yet. Then it actually costs more to buy a catridge than to buy a print quota of 400 pages from school. Furthermore the printers in school are all laser printers, meaning that the quality is better. Not forgetting – I’ve got a student bus concession pass, meaning that it costs me nothing to go to school (or more like I’ve already pre-paid my bus fare at the start of the month). With all these reasons, it made sense to go to school and print them today. Without anyone fighting the print queue with me today was of course an added bonus.

After printing the papers I made my way home (this is when I wish NUS is just across my home), but not before getting a coffee at the newly-opened Subway at Jurong Point. On my way home I stayed for about 20 minutes in the newly opened Jurong West Community Library to read one of my papers, and I eventually reached home at 5. More journal papers reading followed and now at about midnight, I’m about done with the papers that I need to be reading!

Would be in school early tomorrow for a workshop. The one tomorrow would be the 3rd in the series and I have 2 more to go. Hopefully they would be interesting, but chances are I will sit through the 2 hours of the workshop not really understanding what the heck is going on. Oh well, so much being a “research student”, as my assignment of the HYP allows me to temporarily boast.

My wisdom tooth is still giving me problems.

Dentist.

I have never seen a dentist before in my life, and now I’ve seen 2 in 3 days. How exciting – and I’ve got another one coming up on 31st July. The amazing thing is that the two dentists I’ve seen have both told me the same thing, and I have a gut feeling the third one that I’m going to see at Alexandra Hospital will tell me the same thing too.

Did some journal papers reading today, and I am having some doubts about myself: am I really a good so-called researcher? I have a lot of thoughts about things that I want to do, and they all seem interesting to me. Though I can never seem to be able to interest my supervisor about these ideas that I have. Oh well.

One more semester – can’t wait for it to be over.

Wisdom Tooth.

Went to a dentist today and was told that I need to get my wisdom tooth removed because it has apparently grown in such a way that it is brushing against the tooth next to it. Not exactly the most exciting thought ever, but I guess for the sake of my other teeth, I have to get this irritating wisdom tooth out of the way. I think I’ll get it removed by next week.

This little wisdom tooth has kinda put me in a rather bad mood today. I just didn’t feel like doing anything at all because of this. In fact I feel kinda scared about this whole thing about wisdom tooth removal. Argh.

Mambo.

My third (or was it fourth) Mambo of the year was good! It was always going to be fun to have a whole lot of people clubbing with me, and in tonight’s case I got almost the entire Union Camp there. It was always great to see people whom I know there at Zouk, and it was definitely fun to have them there as well. John and Weiqiang got all of us a couple of drinks (the Long Island Tea today tasted weird though) and before I knew it I was already seeing a few stars. The next thing I know I was on the podium already! I remained there until I got out of the place (I think…) and I think I totally forgot what happened along the way already…

Oh well, I hardly go to Zouk nowadays anyway, so I don’t think it’s really that bad… Nonetheless I think I’m seeing a few stars now, so I guess I can make do with some sleep now… And yes, I think I need to go see a dentist later after I wake up – one of my tooth is giving me a lot of pain and hopefully it’s not a wisdom tooth!

Closing Eyes.

The fatigue and exhaustion for the past week have kinda forced me to be very lethargic for the whole of today. I don’t know how much I have slept for the whole day, but what I’m very sure is that I don’t think I have enough sleep. Worse still, a bad headache is setting in and I generally felt terrible for the whole day. And as such, I tried very hard to have a good rest today to recuperate as much as possible. And I just hope that tomorrow’s going to be better for me cos I need to be moving back into normal working mode again!

And anyway, here’s some of the memories for Union Camp 2006…

Packing 400 goodie bags can only end up in one thing – a horribly painful back the next day.

Junming, our Camp VPD, giving a briefing to the councilors at the camp.

Day 1 of the camp, when the freshmen are getting into the hyper mode with cheers led by the seniors.

Some of the pretty ladies that I was fortunate enough to have worked with.

Zhichang with the “Huh?” sign that I’ve made in preparation of the Cheer Squad on the beach games day.

Our NUSSU FOCC Director Cheryl giving an unfortunate friend a bandage. She seemed pretty good at it (keyword: seemed).

Sunset @ Palawan Beach, Sentosa. What a view.

The campfire that wrapped up the day at Sentosa.

And after all the hard work for the past couple of days, all we got was steamed rice at the Guild House as reward!

Whatever it is, thanks for all the memories at UC06. It was great. Now life goes back to normal. All hail the HYP. Haha.

Union Camp.

After a whole week spent in school with the Union Camp, I’m finally sitting in front of my laptop at home.

In my opinion I think UC06 was OK. It was a typical union camp with typically loud and enthusiastic people. I as part of the camp committee went through a lot of things to get the camp running in order, be it helping with the logistics movement, or with the planning of the program, or even the actual running of some of the activities during the camp itself. I think as far as I’m concerned, I’ve made a decent effort in helping the camp turn out the way it was. There were obviously a lot of problems that I have to encounter, a lot of people who were left unimpressed with the programs (especially the game that I designed which had to be cut halfway through because of the rain), a lot of non-constructive criticism. But heck, at the end of the day, it’s the freshmen that are supposed to be the ones to have fun in the camp, and as long as they did, it doesn’t really matter what kind of trash I have to go through and everything would be worth the while.

That said, there were of course a lot of things that I would make noise about as far as the camp was concerned. But whatever it is, now that I’ve experienced union camp both as a freshmen and as a camp committee member, I think I’ve understood more things. And of course, there are a lot of good things – at least for a start I managed to know more people, while some people whom I’ve previously known I got to know them better. So yup, I would still say it’s not too bad a camp to be involved in.

Thank you Joelle and Amelia for being my lovely partners for planning and executing the “Missing” game. It’s a shame that we didn’t see the completion of the game.

Thank you Peijun for arranging for the meals in the camp so that I know I always would have things to eat.

Thank you Junyuan for being another practical joker and I definitely appreciated having you as part of the whole team for the camp.

Thank you Scott, Serene and Zhichang for allowing me to have my little bit of fun at Sentosa with the Cheer Squad.

Thank you Kaori for going crazy with me at Sentosa as the other half of the Cheer Squad.

Thank you Audrey for handling all those nitty-gritty yet very important things at the camp.

Thank you Weiqiang, Amanda and Philip for the great logistics. What would I do without you guys!

Thank you Junming for being such a great VPD and also a wonderful listening ear. I’m sure I wouldn’t have carried on with the camp if you aren’t around.

Thank you Cheryl for being so understanding. It’s perhaps a pity that I didn’t get to know you earlier and thus didn’t have the chance to work with you. But you are a great FOCC director and I definitely appreciate having you around to give those instructions and encouragements.

Now it’s time to focus back on the SOC FOP. One week away from Computing actually made me miss everyone a lot.

Things to do before the new semester starts.

After almost a week of non-updates, you can hardly blame me for wanting to write something again. But well, I need somewhere to remind myself of the things that I should be doing…

1. New layout & contents for kubicwave.com
2. Put something at kubicwave.hk (yes I have that domain)
3. Come out with something new with QR Code, so maybe something like qr.kubicwave.com would be fun
4. Read more journal papers
5. Have fun at Union Camp
6. Have fun minding FOCC
7. Ponder about life – it’s been a long time since I last did that
8. Sort out my mind – who the heck is it on?
9. Update my 2 Chinese blogs
10. Have a good night’s sleep

Then my birthday wishlist – well it’s coming soon after all!

1. A trip to Japan!
2. A great FOCC – any plaque on Rag Day would be brilliant
3. MacBook Black
4. A Japanese food buffet
5. The Korean national team jersey
6. A new mug
7. A Dim Sum buffet
8. A bicycle
9. A new Nike bag
10. A new Nike wallet

And ya, a girlfriend for a birthday prseent sounds like a cool idea too. Haha.