Monthly Archive

i have a strange fetish for writing assignments and working on projects. that is, if they are individual assignments. in fact, i adore working on assignments and projects and i would rather submit them every lesson if only i could be excused from classes. for some strange reason, i detest attending classes, unless they’re kickass classes involving a subject i’m absolutely interested in.

just like how i was really tempted to skip today’s afternoon class because seriously, i don’t learn much from this class. the only reason why i’m taking this module is because it’s a core module. i turned up eventually since i was expecting to collect an assignment which we submitted before the term break. turned out that the assignment would only be returned to us next week. no complaints, but i was kinda cranky throughout the class, especially since it’s winter and the sun sets early. it depresses me to end classes when the sky is dark. my good mood only kicked in when we reached the last page of the lecture handouts and by the time i packed up, i was humming to myself.

i also have the strange habit of forgetting to wake up after the alarm goes off. sure enough, i use the snooze button like there’s no tomorrow. the problem is, my phone has a weird snooze function. upon pressing the snooze button, it shuts up and goes off again in another 9 minutes. don’t ask me why it’s 9 minutes, it puzzles me as well. the worst thing is, the snooze function disables itself without any major warning an hour after the original timing. so for the past few mornings, i’ve been waking up late.

waking up too late for classes is not a good way to start the second half of the semester.

lorne - a town along the great ocean road

the week-long melbourne trip has ended. am glad to be back among my huge bed and a spacious bathroom and internet and a clothes rack to dry everything and not having to live out of a luggage and canberra air. am cranky from the ending term break and ended melbourne trip and no more laughing and drinking and hanging out and having to go in different directions from the travel mates and having to face school hell from now on.

am too tired to blog about melbourne, gotta catch up on some sleep and work first.

it’s that time of the semester when stress starts to build up, but it seems to have started a lot earlier this semester. i go to bed thinking about assignments and having to wake up early to clear assignment preparations. then i would wake up countless times in the middle of the night, scaring myself awake. it’s either because i had a totally ridiculous but frightening nightmare or that i thought i had overslept and it was time to wake up and clear the damned work. sometimes i lie in bed drifting in and out of sleep while waiting for morning to come so that i can get out of bed in peace (yes, the irony) and begin work for the day.

this kind of sleeping pattern has been haunting me for a couple of years, mostly when i’m stressed or troubled. i wonder what happened to the sleeping bug in me that put me to sleep anytime, anywhere, for long stretches of time. gone were the days i could just lie down and sleep peacefully for 16 hours every other day.

say hi to the new owl.

what’s up with people who pepper their sentences with bombastic words and yet fail to be grammatically correct? bombastic words, poor sentence structure, grammar mistakes. it’s a pain to read their writings.

doesn’t anyone believe in writing simply anymore? what about writing to cater to the audience?

does it boost their ego when they toss big words around carelessly? does it serve any purpose or prove a point at all?

it’s killing me, it really is.

when i was considering whether or not to do this masters course, one of my main considerations was whether i should put myself through the horrors of the statistics course again. ridiculous as this may sound, i was on the verge of not doing this course because the statistics module is a core course. there was no way i could avoid it if i were to enrol in the course. i remembered the painful semester when i was an undergrad trying to comprehend statistics. to date, i believe i passed because of moderation and pure luck. logically, there was no way i could have passed the course with my kind of grades and even the stats assignments and projects i submitted were crap.

fast forward to now: half the semester has passed and damn it, i’ve been skipping too many stats classes. i swear i turned up for classes the first few weeks but no matter how hard i tried i was just LOST. i’ve also tried catching up with the lectures while refreshing the basic knowledge i should have learnt from undergrad days but it just doesn’t work.

right now i’m getting more and more confused by all the stats lingo and analytical models and what not. even with a very good textbook that explains everything in quite a clear-cut manner i can’t figure out tonnes of things. there’s still the stats project which i’ll be doing alone and some other assignment which the lecturer hasn’t released details of yet.

keeping my fingers crossed i pass the stats course and graduate as planned. i might become suicidal if this stats course keeps me in school for another semester, touch wood.

i love the way bookstores here hire people who care about books. i was very impressed by their care when straightening the paper bag before placing the book inside carefully, making sure they didn’t fold the pages by accident. it was as if the cashier was a book-lover and knew exactly how anal readers like me simply cannot stand damaged books. in contrast, the bookstore cashiers in Singapore dump the books in plastic bags without a care in the world.

i must say that unwrapping books in straight and crisp paper bags are so much more delicious than unwrapping one in a crumpled plastic bag way too big for an average paperback.

the beloved printer is running terribly low on toner again. i’ve just bought a new compatible cartridge online and damn it, i hate buying necessities which cost more than $10. this also means i’ve gone through more than 4,000 sheets of paper, excluding those printouts done in school. eight packs of paper! gosh, i’ve been very hardworking indeed.

i’m hoping the parcel comes at a timely moment when someone is at home, otherwise i’d probably have to travel to some kampung post office to pick it up. it totally defeats the purpose of convenient online purchases delivered to the doorstep. kampung post offices are a nightmare cos they’re located in some very-suburban residential areas with just one bus service that arrives hourly. it’s an ultimate horror story.

the term break is finally here! i have a love-hate relationship with term breaks, especially this last term break that i will be enjoying as a student. only half a semester left before the good life ends.

the term break is an ingenious idea. people like my dad wonder why can’t school just carry on so that it’ll end earlier. just like how he thinks we should have more classes every week instead of a three day week so that it’ll shorten the semester. of course he doesn’t know that the current workload and timetable is enough to kill if i were to conscientiously do my work. by the time half the semester passes i’m usually so tired i need a break or literally die.

but term break isn’t all fun and play. i’ve been so keyed up with deadlines i couldn’t sit back and relax yesterday, i just couldn’t. i performed much better today, slept most of the day away, did some leisure reading and watched plenty of dramas online. guess i have to allow myself some breathing space before i plunge into deep waters again.

this time next week i’ll be bumming away in melbourne. hanging out, sightseeing, drinking, having fun. for the sake of that i think i should work slightly harder this week, eh?

i feel strangely accomplished because i woke up before the housemate left for work. i actually woke up at 8am this morning, without any alarms pissing me off!

there can only be two reasons why i’m behaving abnormally:

1) i’ve been waking up at 4am and 5am for the past two days to complete my assignments. those were desperate measures cos after i woke up i had like, six hours to finish my papers or i’d be dead. so i guess in comparison 8am is kind of late.

2) i went to sleep at 10pm last night. it was good to sleep when feeling all relaxed and happy. for the past week or so i’ve been going to sleep with globalization and logistics and self-serving bias and decision-making and corporate governance and problems of the Japanese firms during the economic crisis in my mind. so after submitting the last assignments for this week yesterday, i couldn’t convince myself to do the readings for today’s classes. not for all the chocolates and junk food in the world would i ever do that.

and a good sleep puts me in a good mood. i can now save the world.

squeezing words out of my brain, word by word, in order to meet the word limit for assignments is no joke. especially so when the topics are not my favourite ones, corporate governance and the impact of self-serving bias on decision-making.

my brain hurts from trying to churn out more arguments.

there are times i feel like stabbing myself cos i am so hopelessly confused most of the time. i thought i have improved slightly over the past two years since i’ve seemingly screwed up on fewer occasions. that is, until i broke the records again.

a month ago i started straightening out my deadlines and made a mental note to start on my pre-term-break assignments early cos there were a lot of readings for them. somewhere along the way i got mixed up by the course codes and my memory turned fuzzy. then, two weeks ago, the logistics lecturer started telling us about  what he expected from our logistics essay. so for the past two weeks i thought the essay on logistics was to be submitted this thursday.

being the confused person i am i couldn’t remember whether the logistics paper was to be submitted on wednesday or thursday so i decided to check the course outline again. this happened around noon on tuesday.

freaking hell, the logistics paper is actually due in may! so i panicked and checked everything again. turned out that i had mixed up the logistics paper with the corporate governance paper. needless to say, i hadn’t started on the corporate governance paper at all.

two papers in 24 hours. i don’t know whether to applaud myself for my efficiency, to hope for the best grades i can get out of this or to just end my tragic life before it gets worse.

i have ridiculous food cravings that hit me all the time. it gets worse when i’m in a bad mood or when i have tonnes of deadlines to meet.

whenever i get stressed by deadlines i have to have sweet food. i don’t even like sweet food very much. but i bought half a dozen of krispy kreme doughnuts today cos damn it, i gotta have unhealthy sweet food! guess they’ll last me a couple of meals. they were sinfully satisfying though.

can’t figure out which food attack is worse. i finished most of the cake during the last attack and i’m all by myself this round.

if i die young from a heart attack it’s because school killed me.

for some unknown reason, there is no running water in the kitchen or bathroom. the house owner isn’t in so i can’t go bug them about things.

i can’t wash my empty thermos cup, wash the damned potato i was planning to cook for dinner, i can’t rinse the tomato or wash my hands while preparing dinner and i can’t wash dishes if i have dinner. i can’t pee either cos i wouldn’t be able to flush the toilet or wash my hands.

this is worse than those water rationing exercises they used to conduct when i was a kid. how come they don’t have anymore of those exercises ah? i thought it was pretty fun having to (watch my mum / brother) bring buckets to the void deck so that they can get some water for the entire day. or was it that the water supply was cut for about half a day and we would have to fill up buckets and basins with water before that? my memory’s a little fuzzy about this, was it just my imagination?

hmm. is this a real emergency now?

hello there, i’m now two hours ahead of Singapore! that’s a good thing cos one hour does make a difference. i hate it when the three hours’ time difference obstructs me from chatting online with people.

and like i know i should be calling my dad just to keep him updated on my life (otherwise he’ll nag and nag and nag) but i can only call him late at night. after a day of research articles my brain is reduced to pulp and i can’t stay awake for late night phone conversations. now that it’s daytime, i’m waiting for my cordless phone battery to charge. -_-||

one thing i hate about daylight savings is that i have to go around setting clocks and watches back by one hour. only ally is nice enough to set herself back by one hour, the rest of the gadgets and stuff have zero initiative, bah.

1) don’t worry about having no rice in Singapore, our trusty government will never let that happen. oh, you mean people are stocking up rice because the prices are gonna be higher? ohhhh…then better continue stocking up cos the backup rice supply is not going to become a mechanism to keep prices down. rice is still gonna become more expensive. for the low-income group people, don’t worry! the GST offset package is about to save your life in July. it can buy you a year’s supply of rice! no, wait. wasn’t the GST offset package supposed to help everyone with the increase in GST and not inflation?

what’s growth dividends anyway? am i eligible for that? i seriously have no idea and i can’t keep track, with so many different schemes to help needy people like me. i’m gonna be unemployed and utterly broke in july.

2) plenty of ways we can spend money and we choose to develop a place that is constantly developing. yeah, i know Orchard is the MAIN shopping belt every tourist has to visit and stuff like that, but the way they have to make every tourist destination state-of-the-art simply reminds me why there are no historical districts in Singapore. to the people in charge of planning and developing Singapore, the very few few-decades old buildings and handful of barely-a-century-old buildings scattered around seem to suffice as historical value.

3) fortunately we’re not only spending on town areas. the government has decided to invest in Jurong! oh wow! Jurong will no longer be The Industrial District and All Places Weird of Singapore! i cringe when i think of the Discovery Centre, the Science Centre, the abandoned Tang Dynasty, etc. finally, the place i’ve lived in all my life would no longer be the kampung of Singapore. that is, if all things turn out well and Jurong doesn’t become a white elephant. i mean, a place in the extreme west is a place in the extreme west and i guess i’m not overly confident about how things will turn out.

one point remains baffling: they want to build 2,800 hotel rooms in Jurong in anticipation of visitors? who the hell would want to rent a hotel room which is so far away from everything else? turning Jurong into a commercial hub doesn’t mean it will become popular with tourists right? or maybe Jurong hotels will become the popular place for business travellers cos hell, it’s just next to Tuas where a lot of MNCs are located, you know? like the time i was stunting as a receptionist at The Office and this overseas business visitor called in advance to ask if there were any hotel rooms within 30 minutes drive from The Office. hurhurhur.

4) now that Jurong is gonna be the location, maybe those who had rejected HDB flats in Jurong would change their minds. better to buy them cheaply now and sell them a decade later when prices rise. for the next ten years, just tahan a bit and travel to town more often lor. maybe that’s what they mean when they say there’s no housing shortage in Singapore, there are still plenty of vacant flats in Jurong available. all along there were plenty of flats in Singapore hor, this very same guy said it’s because applicants were fussy whaaat; want good location, good price, good schools, etc. etc.

5) am i the only one who doesn’t remember any problem gambling campaigns before the IR was decided upon? the IR is still far, far off from operating and there are like, a million and one campaigns for problem gambling. problem gambling is a problem Singaporeans should never have. we must have a casino in Singapore so that we can attract more visitors, but don’t get negatively influenced by all the evils yeah? Singapore Pools not that bad an influence what, they only offer 4D and Toto and Big Sweep and soccer betting and dunno what. not as sinister as a casino mah.

6) lastly, duh. young, affluent Singaporeans expect world-class standards. world-class standards of what? are they sure it’s only young and affluent Singaporeans? i’m young but not affluent and i expect world-class standards also what. i thought being affluent wasn’t a criteria to become a world citizen? strange, strange.

can’t stand those bloody idiots who leave half the page empty for margin spacing. what is the point behind excessively-wide margins? everytime i try and save some paper (and toner) for my research articles i turn cross-eyed trying to read these damned articles. i thought people with common sense would decrease the margin to a maximum of 1.5 inch. why couldn’t they have made smaller pages without the excess margin spacings? then my printout would be easier on the eyes what!

ugh. the horrors of being a student doing research for assignments..

i used to hate salads with a vengeance, until i realised the beauty of it - quick and easy to prepare. still, i avoid salads as much as i can. mainly because i don’t like the taste of raw veggies. why eat uncooked plants when there’s meat?

i was all out to prepare meat patties for dinner, until i checked on the microwave and realised i had cooked the chicken mince instead of defrosting it. there wasn’t anything much i could do with a bowl of cooked chicken mince so i decided to turn it into a salad instead.

so i threw in random ingredients and it turned out pretty nice. doesn’t look too appetizing, but it tastes fine. guess this is one recipe i would be using often, cos it’s a one-bowl recipe and hey, i’m lazy.

i can’t believe i’m doing this on my blog, but i gotta note down the ingredients cos i have never managed to replicate the better food i cook. so there, for the sake of future meals, this was how it went: a bowl of chicken mince, half a chopped onion, two cloves of chopped garlic, coriander, chopped tomatoes, a chopped boiled egg, a tiny can of four-bean mix, a slice of cheese, some cream cheese, dash of salt and pepper. so the basic idea is, nuke the chicken mince, mix it with the onions, garlic, salt, pepper and coriander and nuke it for a minute. mix in the other ingredients, adding in the cheese and cream cheese on top of everything. nuke it again until the cheese melts and mix everything nicely.