doing some last minute reading for my tests tomorrow. and it sets me pondering if I should take the advance course. hmmmm. how useful will that be for my career in future and whats my career path like, I wonder. chatting with those colls whos more experienced sets me thinking further. lifes tough with all these decisions. nevertheless, studying while working gives me some time away from the boring office. im not complaining, serious. :p this is the 1 and only job interview I went and I got it. should be happy with what I chose right. hehehehe. anyways tmr is just another use alot of HP day with the test in the afternoon, theb.... korean food!!!! SLURPS! Watchinf all the korean drama just make me crave for the chicken. and so many of the dramas have someone owning a cheekin shop!! make me gian more!

need to hurry in tagging my pages and go to bed. tmr then read thru more of the notes! so slack right, this course. and it entitles me to 4 daysweek for 3 months. awesome much!!

The present, the future and soon-to-be past.

Things don't come easy. You just gotta work hard for it! All for the future that we are dreaming for! Glad that most of my friends had gotten a job before we grad or a goal in life. We used to be kinda goal-less and take it easy kind(: things still turn out great, aite!

Putting in my last bit of effort as a student, and hope I can get my desired grades(: all is well, shall not stress myself too hard, but will still put in whatever effort I can afford in this final lap!

不可以 get my honors class, kenehahahaha 养我咯! Hor kenehahahahahahahahahahah! Kekekekekeke^^

the final leap

You only learn how to cherish things when you have lost them before.

Time.

Used to be spending up to about 4 hours a day on travelling up and down to school. It seems fine in year 2 and 3 when I'm able to miss the peak hours, and not be sick of travelling. But instead love it, as I am able to do work on the train or get some "free" time to catch my korean dramas on the iphone. However, in year 4 things are no longer the same. All lectures start at 930 means going school at 8, which meant hitting head on with the crazy peak hours. When i will be wasting half the journey time standing up or being squeezed, instead of doing my work): [tell me about the 7mil population!!] going home isnt any better, either with the peak hour crowd or past my dinner time, when I will be so tired once i reached home. Stoning for a while before dragging myself to shower, and barely starting on my electures or compiling on my data before i start dozing off in my seat.

This is how sad year 4 is. those who said uni life is a breeze after JC ought to be shot. Alright, year 2 and 3 are the most fun times, it might be stressful during exams, but i really love going school, cos of my fun bunch of coursemates. However year 4 is a chore. I dont see them as much for lectures, and we just seemed to be stuck in the lab. People in lab are selfish and anal. having a mentor that doesnt do lab with me (ONLY ONCE!) isnt any better. Whenever i need anything, i have to go around and beg for things or just kop things.

So glad that Sem 1 passed by very quickly, and i did pretty alright for my exams as well. Managed to pull it up a class, and now the final sem is about maintaining it which I'm feeling rather apprehensive about. Hence decided to stay in hall to try to save on whatever time I have to spend it on my studies, instead of feeling like I'm always doing my fyp the whole of the weekdays.

Now that I've learnt how to appreciate those weekday nights hours better (imagine starting work at 8pm instead of 11pm!) and will try to rush through those online lectures during the weekdays. Been doing this for the past 2 weeks, and feel rather accomplished! This way, i will have some free time for 1 more tuition and also for my FYP report (YES 50 pg report! FYP IS JUST A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME!!) Been doing this for the past 2 weeks and weekends had been packed with spending time with my family as well and of course yummy indulgent dinners to pamper and cheer myself on for the following week.

Always looking forward to the weekends, being able to see my kaibaby, kaylallaalala, kynan monster and of course spending some quality time with kenehahahahahahahahhaa. hehehehe. my life revolving ard the K's! kenehahahaha been really nice and patient with me and my temper, helping me with the moving in to hall and all, listening to my FYP woes and complaints. hohoho. blessed to have found him and of course his loving family! always feel so overwhelmed with the concern his parents shower on me, cos I think my mom and dad are easy and wants us to do everything on our own kind, hence not so used to all the concern I have now. like asking keneh for a panadol for my throbbing headache the entire sat, and his mom knew abt it, and wanted to cook the porridge that I said it was nice the other time. feels good to be pampered! not complaining that my own parents dont pamper me, but I'm glad they are like that cos I feel that my sisters and I are so independent! so im just enjoying the best of both world!! ^^

Sucha a long post after so long! Need to go back on a SUNDAY for my drug release. frigging hell i know. But keneh making it so much better by ferrying me to and fro from school and then to reunion dinner with the ZHU family! hehehee..

 life isnt so bad afterall, just be contented and learn how to focus on the better things in life! all will be over my march and i cant wait! seriously wouldnt mind studying 4 more modules for that darn FYP and all the time that it has wasted! Mentor asked me if i wanna take pHd scholarship, oh please, cant wait to get out of hellish-lab!

Insignificant babbling

There's no such thing as crying all out. Just crying and crying. Crying non-stop till you are so tired that you fell asleep. And life goes on the next morning. Suck it up. And move on.

There's no easy way out. Never was there any.

Be Hated

Don’t work. Be hated. Love someone.

Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.

—–

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

From: http://halfhalf.posterous.com/dont-work-be-hated-love-someone

Chasing time

Some what feels like im continuously chasing time.

Monday to Friday, I'm rushin from classes to labs and vice versa. Then meals and home to grab whatever sleep I can get.

Friday night to sunday I'm chasing time to try to maximize whatever time I have left to revise my week's work and spending time with my love ones.
Tell me why, Time? Why are you constantly on a move? Can you stop for a moment and lemme catch some breath? I need some time for myself, some time for me to sleep without feeling guilty or so stressed up.

Whoever who says final year is when everything slows down and you get to enjoy your last bit of education, ought to get shot in the head!

Wonder why I got myself into this shit and if it's ever gonna be worth it.

2nd last semester is starting!!!

Internship extended. It ended.
My one month holiday started and ended as well. BKK trip went past rather quickly! Some yays and nays for the entire trip, I could only say going overseas with different cliques of ppl really takes some adapting! Going with my sisters, mom and w6 is the best of course! Different spending types, different places that we prefer to visit and all. I shall just let the photos do the job(; (INSTAGRAM is real good for Overseas trip! Beautifies and adjust your lighting instantly!)

Photos are not in order (I think!) cos all done using blogger on my phone during my long bus ride!

Below are some of the loot from my trip. Total weight is about 10kg?? Hehehe.. Managed to take alot of it on the plane with me!