thoughtless ramblings

after so long, the team b list is finally out.

strangely, having been so anxious and worried about the selection results, i have to honestly say that i do not feel the thrill and exhilaration that i thought i would feel.

rather, my thoughts went out to the friends that have left, or were left out. these are the friends with whom we went through months of training together, endured strenuous trainings together, suffered misery at the hands of persons unknown together. and we came through it all, somewhat closer, bonding through the experiences we had.

yet as the time drew nearer for the selection, one left, soon to be followed by another. the number of friends were lessened.

and with the announcing of the selection results today, another two fell to the evil arbitrariness that is the selection process.

at the risk of coming across as being fake, i would just like to say that i really enjoyed the times i had with the four of you. though you may no longer be in the team, but i still regard all of you as friends and i hope to see you around.

sigh. lectures. the inavoidable bane of university/tertiary life.

sitting here, listening to a random stranger rambling on and on about a topic that i have the least notions about, and worse, having to endure jokes that are clearly meant for a different generation. well. that's just about the most i can endure.

ROAR. SCHOOL OF COMPUTING. HA. HA. HA.

crap. totally random.

and why is hard work and commitment level not synonymous with success? having put in so much work, and having dedicated a large portion of time to it, yet, you do not see the end result being on par with the amount of effort. it just sucks to have put in so much sweat and blood (literally), and someone just comes along, on an express ticket to replace you. that *really* sucks. i know that my skills and techniques suck, but those can be trained, right? it's not as if i'm totally averse to trying to improve myself.

wow.

i passed my ippt.

simply amazing.

time to sleep. shag.

after a certain amount of fear and trepidation, my foundation mathematics paper is finally over.

at the beginning of the semester, perhaps it was due to a lack of interest and lack of understanding, but this module was one of the modules for which i feared i would fail and re-take next semester.

but during the light-weight mugging sessions prior to the quiz, i managed to grasp a little of the part on statistics, thus reducing my chances of scoring a big fat 0, by 50%.

after the statistics and probability lectures were over, calculus took over and for the second time in my life (first time was in poly), i am profoundly happy that i took a-maths in secondary school. differentiation and integration thus did not seem that alien or unfamiliar to me, like statistics or the rest of the calculus chapters covered such as matrices and vectors.

after today's paper, i can be sure that i will not score, but at the same time, i do not think i will fail, though the possibility of that happening is still frightfully high.

well. one can only move on in the face of adversity.

such as sleeping.

such as sheer lack of understanding.

such as red alert 3.

<rant>

studying has to be the worst form of torture any student can endure.

c'mon, eating books and regurgitating them onto the exam scripts? hasn't anyone heard of google nowadays?

</rant>

<mug></mug>

it doesn't seem much too long ago that i was having my FOC in NTU, having fun and enjoying it while it lasted.

now, with exams coming up on friday, fear and uncertainty clouds my mind. fear of not being able to pass the module, coupled with the uncertainty of my own understanding of the various modules makes me worry for my own future in NTU.

damn.

personal resolution: if i manage to scrape thought this semester, i'll never procrastinate and leaving revising for the last damn minute.

grr.

well. after so many months of worrying, i finally received NTU's acceptance letter today.

can't described how relieved i am to have been accepted by them. all this time, i was mentally preparing myself for yet another crushing rejection, but i guess lady luck was smiling on me this time round.

though i'm rather ecstatic, but when i think of the journet to and from school in future, i shudder in dread.

guess there's always a price to pay for everything, eh?

MacBook Pro NTU, here i come!

well. had our second GYPS '96 gathering today. was a blast being able to see so many old, yet new faces gathered around after so long.

not only did the students turn up, our two beloved teachers, Mrs Tjan and Mdm. Yap, came for the gathering as well! and after all these long years, they still looked the same as i remembered them.

arranged to meet up with wenrong @ dover mrt station around 1910 as he wasn't really sure where the crystal jade we were going to was located at. met ming jian @ outram mrt station as i was going up the escalator. turns out he was on the same nel train as i was.

after meeting with wenrong, boarded 106 to holland village and we were the earliest to get there, but not surprising since we were there early anyways. wenny was the next to arrive and after a few minutes, left with ming jian to check out the neighbouring crystal jade outlet.

standing on the sidewalk with wenrong, suddenly spotted mdm yap and mrs tjan walking past and went forward to approach them. thought they couldn't remember our names, but it was evident from their joyous faces that they still recognized us as their students.

 where do you find teachers who recognize you even after not seeing you for 12 years?

after meeting up with them, went up to the second floor and 'claimed' the table wenny booked. sat around chatting and catching up till matchy arrived with ee von. after them came adeline, followed by zhiyuan, then michael and his girlfriend, felicia. eileen was the second last to arrive and yao hui got there at around 2045.

final attendance list:

• mrs. tjan
• mdm yap
• wenny (thanks for booking table!)
• eileen
• ee von
• adeline
• felicia
• michael
• ming jian
• wenrong
• yao hui
• matchy
• zhiyuan
• me

before eileen got there, all 12 of us squeezed around one table as there weren't any available tables nearby and we joked that eileen and yao hui would have to spend a romantic evening alone at one of the tables by the window-side. but eventually, we managed to get a smaller table adjacent to ours and we settled into a more comfortable arrangement just before dinner arrived.

dinner was à la carte style and wasn't too bad. loads of chatting and laughing and catching up all throughout dinner. just after we'd finished eating, yao hui finally arrived and we almost made him eat the leftovers. thankfully, we are all merciful people and he placed his order which came relatively quickly. it soon transpired that yao hui acutally went down to GYPS to personally invite mrs. tjan and mdm. yap to our gathering, so here a big kudos to you, yao hui. YOU DA MAN!

sat around there long after dinner until around 2230, upon which wenny left with mrs. tjan & mdm. yap to send them back home. adeline left to buy dinner for her hubby & eileen went off with ee von for some chit-chat.

the rest of us wandered around holland v for a while and finally settled down at NYDC for some dessert/refreshments. zhiyuan left us just before we spotted nydc as he wasn't feeling too well the entire evening. eileen re-joined the troupe soon after and spent the next couple of hours there just chilling. wenny was supposed to come back to look for us, but ended up back home instead. next time, we'll dispatch an escort with her to make sure she gets back to our gathering. just kidding.

finally left nydc @ 0150, to the relief of the manager, and that concluded the second gathering of the GYPS '96 batch. hope we'll have many more gatherings to come throughout the years!

with regards to the contact list, i've finished compiling them and will e-mail them out to everyone as soon as wenrong confirms his MSN e-mail address with me. the pictures i've taken are already up on facebook and i'll be looking for a suitable place to host them (probably imagehost) and will include the link in the e-mail as well.

to michael, ee von: if you want, i can meet up with you to get your photos and upload them online as well.

cheers!

so.

i caught Cloverfield at GVMax last friday. having bought into all the hype and what-not prior to its release, i was pretty psyched about the movie, despite it being shot in The Blair Witch Project style.

here's how my first movie of 2008 went down (AvP2 doesn't count; i watched that on new year's eve):

1900: bought seats in the sixth row from the front (Row F)

2015: got into seats and put iPaq into silent mode

2035: badass rumbling sound effects

2125: head starts spinning from all the shaking of the screen

2210: left GVmax with a serious case of motion sickness and 'WTF' thoughts running through my brain, or what was left of it anyways

to sum it all up in the words of a friend of mine (lOi), Cloverfield = epic failure.

serious.

i've never gotten motion sickness on any form of transport and yet this dumb biatch of a movie made me want to hurl my Filet-O-Fish at the next poor soul sitting in front of me. pfft.

next up - things that pissed me off:

• Hud is a serious whiney S.O.B. and he ought to be castrated then disemboweled with a blunt wooden spatula. serious hate for the guy here and i couldn't stop wishing for him to be one of the first few to be killed by the godly indestructible monster (more on that later). that, and his sucky camera skills.
• above-mentioned godly indestructible monster. like, what's up with that? if you tell me that carbines and machine guns can't hurt the guy, fine. i'd accept that. tanks and RPGs can't scratch it too. oh-kaaay. stretching the limit here, but digestable too. after all, we're talking about a 30-storey mutant. but B-2 bombers can't even hurt it? no f***ing way i'm gonna buy that.

if you value your sanity, go watch something else instead.

or if you're a sucker for dizziness, do yourself a favour and watch it on an empty stomach.

*hurl*

i have no idea how they accomplished this, but it's abso-fricking-lutely amazing.



p.s. for the clueless, it's tetris.

at long last. after countless repetitions of bashing out python code and restarting the Zope server, i've finally managed to get my first ever Product to appear in the ZMI (Zope Management Interface).

well. one down, a few gazillion more to go. hurrah.

i'm not sure what to make of this. ever since monday, i've not been able to sleep past 9am without someone calling me to either arrange for an interview, or ask me for more details with regards to some information i requested from that particular company.

not that i'm exactly complaining, but it is somewhat of a stark contrast with my general lifestyle for the past few weeks or so where i lazed in bed till noon or sometimes even later, depending on what time i got into bed. usually somewhere between 4am to 7am.

so, sue me already.

moving along. plone.

what's it with wysiwyg tools for plone? till now, i've yet to see anything that looks remotely like a wysiwyg editor for plone interface designing. i really dread having to return to the days of bashing out html code in notepad.

*shudder*

dammit. the spider clan ninjas in tairon are highly irritating. they're like, even worse than anything else i've seen in NG:S thus far, including the level bosses. i mean, first off, they come in group of threes AND they're highly agile. granted, their sword attacks do not break your blocking stance, but they do have this move whereby they get past your block, grab you and stab you in the back.

ok. point noted. no more block-camping. fine.

secondly, they have incendiary shurikens. what kind of a ninja has incendiary shurikens? you deflect them, they hit a surface and explode there. what often happens is either the deflected shurikens hit a surface near you and explodes, or another shuriken does not injure you but sticks somewhere underneath or behind you and explodes. either way, your blocking stance goes down and you get stuck with a few more boom-booms or you get sashimied.

o-kaaay. lesson learned. listen for hissing noises that means you're about to experience a world of hurt. fine.

thirdly, assuming if you get stuck with a boom-boom and you go into a blocking stance, you take relatively less damage (but damage nonetheless) and your blocking stance goes down, during which you are HIGHLY susceptible to further attacks. if you JUMP however, you take even more damage than if the spider nutjobs carved you up with their swords. WTF.

some choice expletives would be highly suitable for this situation. levelled up; don't get stuck with boom-booms. fine.

fourthly, did i mention that they come in threes?

well, things are slightly turning up. managed to get a job, salary's not too bad, location's quite ideal as well. starting training on the 16th.

now, next on my agenda: get an MCSE and MCSA certification. they ain't cheap though. the MCSE course and exams alone would cost at least $4,500 and coupled with the MCSA? i'm definitely gonna go broke. and this on top of my plans to get a MacBook Pro...

purty, ain't she?

bah. tough choices, tough decisions. i'll have to rustle up some freelance website work if i'm to accomplish my plans. but then again, getting the MacBook will actually depend on whether i'm successful in my Big Application next year.

having said that, it's odd how those companies which provide the microsoft certification courses don't advertise their prices anywhere on their sites. only one company, New Horizons, actually does show the prices for individual certifications on their site. or .pdf, for that matter. perhaps i suck at surfing sites. i dunno.

but i was slightly surprised that HP provides certification courses. i was under this impression that they dealt mostly with hardware and software solutions. interesting.

on a different note: keyboard skills on new keyboard are, happily, levelling up. still lack the speed at which i bash out code on the traditional keyboards, but i'm getting somewhere there. thank microsoft for IntelliSense. without it, i'm, in a nutshell, fucked.

well. i'm off to go dig deeper into the enigma that's Plone. i'm definitely sinking deeper into geek-dom.

having been bitten by the reality bug more than once, until recently, it still did not factor into a lot of my considerations. i blithely went about my life as usual and made plans as per normal. but life has its own way of bringing a person back down to earth.

now that things are the way they stand right now, i don't have many options left open to me. with this recent setback, i've wasted yet another year, thus putting me another year behind my peers. a heavy price to pay for arrogance, for it is paid with one of the things in life that cannot be bought by money.

time.

a year.

twelve months.

three hundred and sixty five days.

eight thousand and sixty hours.

five hundred and twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes.

thirty one million, five hundred and thirty six thousand seconds.

i'm morbid, i know. but i tend to do weird stuffs in the wee hours of the night anyway.

on a lighter note, i seem to be getting slightly better with Ninja Gaiden: Sigma. initially when i started, i totally sucked at it. even the most basic of enemies could trash me to ninja heaven and back. took me a while to realise the importance and boon of using ultimate techniques. i'm still getting the hang of it, but at least i do not get horribly raped by creeps anymore.

- attempts to master wall-running technique but fails horribly and has intimate encounter with floor -

< mental type = 'note' destination = 'self' runat = 'mind' >

dim ramble as string

ramble = 'finish up work on blogger template that has been sitting in dreamweaver ever since it was in MX 2004 and now in CS3'

< /mental >

wow.

perhaps not the best word i could use to describe the movie 'Transformers', but it was the first word i uttered when i saw Barricade transform. i mean, having read both negative and positive reviews about this movie, it was with mixed feelings that i stepped into the cinema. but i left it with a profound sense of child-like awe and wonder. kudos to michael bay for doing a spectacular job of bringing my childhood fantasies to life.

Optimus Prime. Jazz. Rachet. Ironhide. Bumblebee. Megatron. Starscream. Scorponok. Barricade. Frenzy. Bonecrusher. Blackout. Brawl.

all of them, brought to life on the big screen, gratifying that inner child in me. the transformation from their vehicle mode to their upright robot form is nothing short of amazing and wondrous. you can almost make out where each part on the transformer belongs on its vehicular form and the amount of detail lavished on each transformer borders on the impossible. despite the autobots and decepticons being totally cgi-generated characters, they were dosed with near-human emotions, the most prominent example of this being displayed by Frenzy, when his attempt at hacking the defence network was thwarted at the last possible second and he bashes his head against the monitor in cyber-frustration. that takes the cake.

apart from the visual eyecandy, the script itself was no letdown either. interjected with humor and the right amount of emotions coupled with the spectacular pyrotechnics, it stands out from the usual gigantic robot slugfest that most people would expect it to be (not to say that you don't get all the transformers duking it out with each other towards the end).

apart from a few loopholes (how does bumblebee get his voice actuators to work again? what happened to scorponok? wasn't Prowl supposed to be the police car?) which are very much forgivable, this is THE movie of the year to watch.

bashing out this post on my new keyboard, Microsoft's Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, was an experience in frustration. fingers kept going to the wrong position after having received years of conditioning on normal keyboards. d'oh. punctuation is going to be yet another problem. commas and periods getting all messed up.

gah. if all goes well, i'm going to hafta learn how to use Plone and brush up on my Java skills. hopefully by then, i'd have mastered this keyboard. else my neighbours are gonna hear some very colourful swear words emanating from my room.

"Autobots! Transform, and roll out!"

ord.

the most eagerly anticipated event (at least for me) for the past two years.

looking back upon these two years, it doesn't seem as horrific as i once expected it to be. i still remember the trepidation and hesitation with which i boarded the ferry to pulau tekong for the first time. the unfamiliar surroundings and the stifling sensation of discipline and orderliness, not to mention the first taste of 'wayang', the oath-taking ceremony in the auditorium.

well. it is over and done with. pink ic retrieved and objective met.

- ff7 victory tone -