My Digital World

It has been two weeks ago that I do a post on my blog. These two weeks fly by very fast. The week starts with going to the dentist. I don't like to go to the dentist since it wastes of of my time. I usualy spend there for 1-2 minutes and then I go home. In this short time, nothing happened actually. The very bad thing is, is that he charges me for almost 50Euro for doing nothing! Sigh, this week I receive the bill and my bankaccount is almost debit...:P

After visiting the dentist I made a move to Rotterdam. I called Fon Phoei to check if she took the same train as me. She said that she was late and would like to take the next train. The next train departs over 30min and I decided to wait at her at the station. Together we go to Rotterdam and while we were sitting in the undergound, I meet my two friends (Jok and Siu Mei). They were just back from holidaying. They were on their way to visit the theatre which is located next to the place where I live. It was so coincidentally that I meet my two friends in Rotterdam.

Anyway, the next day started with working in Amsterdam. That week, the company rent a new space since the company keeps growing. In the afternoon my department had to move to the new space. I helped with the guys with packing in. After packing many of them are free since there was no space for them to work. I thought that I was free too but my manager got a place for me to work which was in the department of the Editor Builder.

After working, I met Airin at th Amsterdam Central Station. I am very glad to have Nancy and Airin as my friends. Two weeks ago I called them to ask whether they can find books for me about anaethesia since I have to write a long report for one of my Biomedical course. I called Airin first but she did not pick up the phone. Then I tried to call Nancy and (as usual) she arranged stuff for me to get the books. I really have to thank Nancy and Airin :)

On the way to Rotterdam, Huo Fei Fei called me. I really forgot that she invited me to go to her place to have a dinner. It was very nice of her. It is very rare that people cook for me since I the cook usually.

The next day was also a working day. Very boring tough but that is the only way to get money. :P After working I went to Delft to play badminton. I took bus but there was nobody (except me and the busdriver) in the bus. The busdriver was very nice because he stopped in front of the sport centre although I did not ask for it.

Lately I played badminton very bad. I could not concentrate and I just hit the shuttle. If I have an opponent who can play very well, I am sure I will lose since I do not how to play seriously or good anymore. But the most important of playing games, is the fun. I have (a bit) fun while I am playing badminton. Let me play well next time and see how good I am :P

The Thursday started with attending lecture. It was my first lecture after 3 months since I skipped lectures during these months. I also don't know why I attend lectures again. Maybe because I want to have a student feeling :P Anyway, the lecture is quite interesting. It was about Solar Cells. I noticed I like technology part of micro-electronics more than the circuit design. But my focus will be on the circuit design for applications in medical fields which has nothing much to do with the technology parts.

After attending lecture, I moved to my "office" (18th floor). While I was working on my pacemaker project, a guy came along and asked me to remind me that the next day we (people from the 18th floor) go to Walibi (Walibi is one of the big themepark in Holland) and that I have to take my camera with me to take pics. I had to disappoint him since I could not go. At that day (in the afternoon) I go to Bou's diploma ceremony. I told him that I will join the next event.

It is weird that I am asked to take pics lately. My image for other poeple seems like a photographer in stead of being a student. Maybe it is a wise step to attend lectures to show I am a student and not a photographer :P

The Friday started with working very hard in the morning for my pacemaker project. In the late morning, I have an appointment with my professor. It was a very bad time with him. Both of us were sitting for more than 2 hours looking at the computer and analysing my circuit design. We had no clue why my design did not work. All at once my professor had a wild guess. Because of his wild guess, we solved my problem. Both of us were released.
Although the problem is solved, it still doesn't mean I am finished with the project. My professor wanted me do a calculation on the things that appears on the computer screen. First I had no idea how to do that. Now, I almost found out what I need to do. But the calculation might be tedious and I need to read some fundamental things about low-pass filter, phase, pole-zero, bandwidth, sampling frequency and cut-off frequency.

When I finished with the appointment, I rush to the canteen to grab food. I tried to finish my lunch in 5 minutes since I wanted to go to the lecture about Nano-Electronics. When I arrived in the class, the professor started talking to me. He knows me since we usually see each other at the 18th floor and sometimes we talked about all kind of stuff.

Once the lecture was finished I called Bou to ask him where he had his diploma ceremony. Fortunately, he was on his way to Delft which means I am not late. :P I met Bou's family in the canteen and Wang Yan came along later. All of us went together to the lecture hall where all graduated students from Computer Science, Media and Knowledge Engineering and Applied Mathematics received their M.Sc. diploma.


This is the hall where students receive their M.Sc.


Check how many people support Bou!


Bou must have been waiting for this day for a very, very and very long time. Here you can see Bou and his professor. The least and not the last, the Sony dog.


Signing the papers!


The congratulation!


"My son is now grown up!"


The family photo outiside the EWI-building.


Bou and his girlfriend Sherry.


Bou with his best friends. Left is Yu and right is Pu (Yu's girlriend).


The groupphoto! Too bad that my lens was dirty which gave a glowing effect on the left side of the pic.

After Bou's ceremony, we all were invited to go to Rotterdam to have a dinner. Again, as many Chinese do, we go to Chinese restaurant to have a dinner. After the dinner the parents and Bou's sister were going home while we went to play pool.
It was a tiring day because I had to rush. But I enjoyed it ;)

The next day, which was weekend already, Bou, Sherry, Yaowen, Luna, Wang Yan, Shabir and me went to see parade of flowers. We drove to Leiden where we rent bikes to cycle to see parade. The very bad thing was that all bikes were rent. So, we had to search for another alternatives. Finally, after a long discussion and calling, we decided to go there by cars and while we were half of our way, we walk to the way to Keukenhof. Keukenhof is a very big park where you can find many flowers, especially tullips! Our intention is not going to Keukenhof. We just wanted see the parade.


The cars were filled with many kind of flowers.


The yellow tullips.


Later more people join our group :P

The walk to Keukenhof and seeing the parade were very tiring for many people. At that day, we have walked for hours and hours. In total we have walked for 14km++.

The Sunday started with taking good rest. In the late afternoon, I went to Bou's house since Bou and his family wanted to take a family picture. And I was asked to do their favor. This is the shot of that day:


For this pic, I did some photoshop.

So, the first week was filled with many activities.

The fresh new week started with attending lectures in the early morning. The lecture was about devices that has been used in medical centre. After the lecture, I go to the professor to ask him about Master projects since I am interested in his researches. He is very glad with my questions and he asks me to send him an e-mail to make an appointment. So, I did and now I am waiting for his reply for ages, which is very usual. Next week, during the lecture, I want to remind him for having a talk with me.

The next day, I go to Amsterdam for working. Getting up in the early morning (6AM) and I took the train at 07:29AM from Rotterdam Central Station. It seems that from this week on, I am getting busier at work. Currently I run two projects.

This Wednesday I did not go to play badminton since my student Zhoa Duan invited me to go to his place to try steamboat. He also invited other friends to join the steamboat. It was a ind of house warming party of him because he moved to a new place recently.


This is Zhoa Duan. It is very kind of him to invite me to try their steamboat.


The one with the red T-shirt is Wang Jin Rong. He is also one of my students.


They really like the food very much!


Since the food has been liked by many people, it means that Zhoa Duan can cook very well :P


Who says that girls do not eat that much? :P


There were two kind of steamboat. This one is the non-spicy one. The other one is spicy.


The food brought to many happiness to people too.


After having the steamboat, they played game that is called "murder game".


Lots of people enjoyed the game.


Look at their smiles!


One more smile!


These are the people who attend the party.

This Thursday I had a meeting with my professor. I thought I am almost done with the pacemaker project, but there two more things to do: doing the calculation and design the OpAmp. Time is limited again since I have other things to do.

This Friday, I have an appointment with the international students and the organizer of the very big walk event that will be held nect month. I know the organizer since I attened at her kungfu lessons for a couple of weeks. Bou and me were asked to let the international students know about this event.
After the appointment I am asked by her to take pics at the event and also pics from the kungfu lessons that she still gives.

After the appointment I rush to go to attend lecture. And after the lecture I moved to Amsterdam since Airin gave a BBQ party at her house. It was my first time being at her house.


Nancy with her boyfriend HC.


Shuk Yee and Nancy.


The girls!

Many thanks to Stephanie for taking these pics!

I slept very early and I woke up very early this week. My week started with working in Amsterdam. I woke up at 05:00AM and took the train of 06:30AM from Groningen to Amsterdam. After working I went to Rotterdam. I cooked my dinner and buy some stuff for other days and at 11:00PM I went to sleep since I had to get up at 06:05AM. At 07:28AM I took the train to Amsterdam to work again.

It was very boring at working since there were nothing much that I needed to do. My manager was absent, but he sent me an e-mail to give me orders. I finished his orders within one hour and the rest of mine time I was on msn to look for people to chat with. But there were not so many people whom I can have a nice chat. Besides, most of them were working too and were offline or they were attending lectures. This week the last quarter started. I had no mood to find out when I had my courses since I did not like attending courses. Maybe I will go to lectures next week. But let me see how my mood will be.

After finishing working in Amsterdam, I went immediately back to Delft, since I needed to work on my pacemaker project. I made an appointment with my professor last week and since I had no time to work on my assignment, I need to start working on it in the evening after I finished with working in Amsterdam. I took my dinner at the canteen of the sportcentre and after that I moved ahead to my faculty to work on my pacemaker project. While I enjoyed my dinner, I had an appointment with Faruk since he borrowed my camera last week, because his neice had a wedding and he had been asked to took pics. Because he did not have a 'good' digital camera, I offered him mine. He called me the day before to thank me for my camera. I told him that I needed my camera Thursday since I wanted to take pics at the badminton tournament.

The problems that I encountered with my pacemaker project made me very tiring, because I had no idea what was wrong with my design. Everything parts before integration worked perfectly and once they were attached into one big system, it failed! I feeled very tired and I lost my concentration. So I decided to go home.

The next day, I got up very early again, which was around 06:00AM. I had an appointment at 09:30AM with my prof and I did not want to show him any progressing of my project. Therefore I went very early to Delft to work on the project. I have never been so early at my University to work. I arrived at my department (18th floor) at 07:30h and in the fresh morning I could do things better. Finally I knew where the errors come from, but I was not able to solve them. During the meeting, I showed things to my prof and luckily he knew how to solve them. It was because I had to use other setting when I had to do simulation for the whole system integration. However, after fixing these errors, more mystrious things came out. We both had no idea how this could happened. While we did checks, I notice something strange that could lead to a failure in the system. That was, the very small delay of around 5 micros-second in the forward configuration. Now I am finding out if all time switches were correctly powered on and turning off.

Apart from working in Amsterdam and doing project, I reserve time for doing sport. Shabir, me, my prof and the secretary organise a badminton tournament for our department. It was a great pity that only my prof was joining. The other ones were too busy. But I am glad to see many PhDs joining the game. I also asked my student Zhoaduan to join us since he also belonged to our department soon. Below I add some pics of that day. Most of the pics were taken by Wangyan, since I was too busy with playing.


Shabir is on the left. Suhaib is on the right. Suhaib is doing his Master thesis about satelites that will be launched in the air this year.


In the middle you can see my prof (W. Serdijn). He was checking my schedule that I create. Left on the pic is Marion. She is the secretary of the professors.


This is the hall where we played the tournament. It is also the place where I play badminton for years.


This is Gunjan! He helped me when my cadence had errors. He is also doing his Master thesis.


The last and not the least, the groupphoto!

It was a tiring week. A week without many rest. But I enjoy this week very much.

It has been a while that I touch my blog. In the past few days, I have been busy and besides there were moments where I don't have mood for blogging. In the meanwhile, many things happened.

First of all, I want to start with Henry. At Mondaynight, around 3AM, I received his call. While my handphone was ringing, I thought I was dreaming because I am rarely called in the very late night. But somehow I pick up the phone and surprisely I was not dreaming. Henry had a very nice thing to share with me: he is accepted to get into MIT for doing his Master study. I am very happy to hear that. He had put many and many energy and time for the tests for getting into MIT. He had failed for exams but he hadn't given up. He retakes and finally his dream comes out. BRAVO!
I am not only glad that he gets into MIT but I am also very glad that he shares his (good) thing with me. Not everyone likes to share his/her happiness with others. I am so glad to be the one who can share.

Many people have their own goal in their life. Some of the people works very hard to hope that their wishes will come true. Other people are very lazy and they are satisfied with every little thing they have. And so there also people walking around this world without any goal. For me, I have asked myself what I like to do. I used to want to earn lots of money and get into a very good University. Although I am not working hard, I care about my marks of the exams. Now I am changed. Money is not very important for me anymore. And I even don't care about the results of my exams. I also realise that there are many, many and many things that are very meaningful. I am happy that I (still) can help people. When I was in Singapore, I did volunteerwork work. Surprisely, I noticed that doing volunteerwork is very tiring: you need alot of patience. Plus you have to know what people want and making them happy. I thought I have patience since I used to fish alot. But fishing and having patience doesn't have any relationship with each other.

I have asked some friends what kind of person I am because I am also asked at the interview. So far, everyone is very positive. I really don't think I am that person as what they think. Besides many people think that I like expensive stuff, such as brand clothes, expensive lens, high-class dinner etc. All these things are nice if I can get or afford, but the "real" thing that I like is the true friendship. If I have money, I like to share that with my friends by treating them for a dinner or something else.

Last week, I am very glad and also surprised to receive a card that Shan Shan sent to me. She asked me what I like to have from Singapore or Malaysia, except camera-related-things. To be honest, there are nothing that I really want since I am quite satisfied with many things I have now. I feel that our friendship is present, although we know each other short. The little thing that comes from her heart (xinyi) can let me smile.

Talking about my friends, currently two friends of me are now attached. One of my friends asks me when it is my turn. To be quite honest, I really don't know since love is mutual thing which you cannot have fully control by yourself. I also don't want to spend time on love-related-stuff because of some issues. But I am open for girls. I think that in this world, there is no MUST to have your other part to continue to live. Someone might say that you may lose many good things. But if you never have love before, you have nothing to lose. It seems that begin of this year brings many love to my friends.

Two weeks ago, I started with my new part-time job in Amsterdam. My student assistance is finished since the lab was over. My new part-time is about software testing. The company is originally settled in US. I like to work at that company. My collegeas are nice people although they are computer-nerds.

A very good friend of my, Siu Mei, has had her graduation two weeks ago too. I am one the very few friends that she invited to attend her graduation. Siu Mei is very nice to me. Two years ago, we went to London for holidaying. She organised everything for me, e.g. hotel, transport-card, etc. Anyway, the week before her graduation, she and her boyfriend Jok had a dinner with me. I invited them to come to my place to eat roti prata that I made by myself. In that week I also had many visits of my other friends. It was a very tiring week, but I am glad that I can see my true friends regularly.

I can't believe myself what I have bought last two weeks. Now I have two toplenses of Nikon. Each of them are very, very and very expensive. I did some shooting with one of my new lenses, which is Nikon 80-200mm f2.8 AF-S. The pics are amazing sharp! I think it is the sharpest lens I have, although I haven't tested my Nikon 17-35mm f2.8 AF-S yet.

Faruk borrows my camera + some lenses, because his cousin's wedding and he has been asked for taking pics. Now Faruk is enjoying the wedding and shootings in UK. I wonder how the pics are.

This week, Shabir and me are organising badminton-competition in the sportcentre for our group of Micro-electronics from the 18th floor. This coming Friday, the tournament starts. I am looking forward it because my professor and other staff also join.