Mahler 2

O glaube, mein Herz, o glaube:

Es geht dir nichts verloren!

Dein ist, ja dein, was du gesehnt!

Dein, was du geliebt,

Was du gestritten!

O glaube

Du wardst nicht umsonst geboren!

Hast nicht umsonst gelebt, gelitten!

Was entstanden ist

Das muß vergehen!

Was vergangen, auferstehen!

Hör' auf zu beben!

Bereite dich zu leben!

~~~~ o ~~~~

O believe, my heart, O believe:

Nothing to you is lost!

Yours is, yes yours, is what you desired

Yours, what you have loved

What you have fought for!

O believe,

You were not born for nothing!

Have not for nothing, lived, suffered!

What was created

Must perish,

What perished, rise again!

Cease from trembling!

Prepare yourself to live!

~~~~ o ~~~~

German text and English translations of the "lyrics" from Mahler's Symphony No.2 Fifth Movement (taken from wikipedia). I find it to be such a great mugging anthem for the exams. I am not too confident for the physics exams today, but I'll let it pass. Other exams are more important!

On a side note, the dinner today was awesome. In a sense that they are not cheap. Crayfish and steak don't come to your dinner plates often!

Vietnamese Coffee

My first contact with Vietnamese coffee was at Vivocity, after the Msian scholars' outing to Sentosa. We ate at a Vietnamese restaurant which offered set meals at around S$6, which was suprisingly budget, considering its location. BX ordered hot Vietnamese coffee, and we were so intrigued by the weird contraption served to him- a cup on a plate on a cup.

Those who ordered iced coffee only got iced coffee in a plastic cup (top-right).

Turns out, the stainless steel cup above is a coffee filter which has ground coffee powder inside, and hot water from metal cup will seep through the coffee powder and drip out as dark coffee. "Oooh gravity's pulling it down!" exclaimed the Physics students.

Since then I've always wanted to make my own Vietnamese coffee, and finally I had the chance to do so when I visited Hanoi in June. It's a pity I didn't get to drink any authentic coffee from the coffee shops in Hanoi. (We did get to eat a lot of authentic and awesome street food though) But we did get to drink some coffee on the morning of our Halong Bay Cruise, and it was horribly bitter, as though each drop of coffee contains the 'essence' of a thousand bittergourds. But then again, the coffee was brewed beforehand, and was poured from a glass into our cups. We didnt use any coffee filters at all, which is what I want to do.

Yay and the chance came when our friends brought us to a mall when we returned to Hanoi. We bought coffee - both instant coffee packs and ground coffee powder, and *ta-da* a coffee filter.

I tried to make my own Vietnamese coffee, but failed terribly on the first try. Some of my mistakes:

• Using only one and a half teaspoons of coffee powder. By right: at least 3-4 teaspoons required.
• Pouring a lot of boiling water into the filter, causing the water to gush pass the thin layer of coffee powder and the filter. Result: water does not have enough time to mingle with the coffee, causing bland coffee; coffee powder falls through the filter easily. By right: pour only ~20ml of boiling water into the cup at first, and let the coffee powder absorb the water. The powder will then enlargen and clump together, and will be less likely to fall through the filter. Let the powder absorb the boiling water for a few seconds, then add a cup-ful of hot water to the filter, and let it drip
• Did not use a glass cup

My second try was much better. The coffee was much thicker and flavourful, much drinkable. But there is still quite a lot of coffee powder which fell through the filter, and hence the coffee isn't so 'clean'. More room for improvements.

Making your own cup of Vietnamese coffee is an art in itself. There are so many things that go into a perfect cup of coffee. It's like Chinese calligraphy, like playing piano or gardening. There is no way you can get it perfect in your first try. Often, you fail badly. But with repeated tries, and of course, some learning of technique, you gain experience and expertise. You can't be perfect - that is very subjective - but you can get better. The danger of this is that with each try, you want to improve on your previous try, and achieve better. I haven't tasted such a yearning for improvement in such a long time, and I fear that I may become addicted to making coffee. With each sip of your own coffee, you marvel at how much you have improved from your previous try (or how little), but you always think of how you can make your coffee better on your next try. More powder? A little more/less water for the coffee to absorb? More condensed milk? How to make the coffee richer, how to reduce the amount of coffee powder which fell through the filter?

But the best thing about Vietnamese coffee is not its flavour per se. It's waiting for your coffee to drip, and tasting from your cup the passion and affection that was poured in together with your coffee. Each bead of coffee dripping down from the filter has its own story to tell. It is the result of an invisible journey of water through coffee powder. The results of small individual droplets of coffee gathering together, forming a suspended bead below the filter. Each bead then falls and cluster to form a cup of coffee. Watching the coffee drip is such a therapeutic experience. You can't be 'hasty', as Treebeard will call it. It would be pointless to force the coffee to flow down faster - you run the risk of ruining your coffee. In the hectic world where instant coffee is the norm, filtering your own coffee offers a respite from all the hustle and bustle of the city. That is what makes this coffee so attractive.

Hence, not using a glass cup was a mistake. You can't see the coffee drip.

New earphones

I got the Klipsch reference S4i earphones from Singapore's IT fair. So far, I have no complaints, cos the sound from these earphones is really crisp and rather accurate. I don't know how to praise it in the correct earphone jargon, but its great and definitely worth the bucks. Comes with a two-year warranty :)

On first sight, the pair of earphones did not appeal to me at all. I am used to earphones which are either all black or all white, and this black/copper combi seemed a bit nauseating. The wire of the earphones feel thin and plasticky too. But my scorn quickly disapeared, as I realised that the thud-thud noise whenever the wires of such in-ear headphones bounce of your chest is much lesser than other headphnes, and it's plastic rigidity makes it more tangle-free. The wires are actually made of the same material as home theater cables, and it reeks of durability and practicality. 

After I found out that these earphones are actually modelled after the Klipsch Reference home theater system, with its black and gold colour scheme, my impression of the earphones changed immediately from "cheap-looking" to "classy".

I used to have another pair of sound-cancelling earphones from Sony, and that really sucked- pain in the ears and poor sound quality. This pair of Klipsch has oval-shaped earbuds (patented) and it is supposed to fit more comfortably in the ears. The default size suits my ears better, imo. I don't know if its me or the earphones, but when I tried on the earphones with the other earbud sizes, sound quality differs. It deteriorated, to be exact. So I stuck with the default, medium size.

I brought the earphones along to Vietnam, and watched Pirates of the Caribbean with the Reference s4i in my ears. Noise cancellation is superb, and it was quite comfortable. The sounds were great too: ranges in dynamic and pitch can be heard clearly amid the bustle of the LCCT. However, I needed quite a lot of breaks in between the movies, as I'm still not to the in-ear headphones being in my ears for too long.

The bass was not too boomy, like the Jays a-jay four which I tested during IT fair. Uuh Mahler on the a-jay four sounded disgusting with the bass overpowering everything else. I didn't regret buying this pair of earphones, considering the sound quality was good, and it wasn't exceptionally expensive.

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By the way, I just jailbroke my iPhone about a week ago, and I am still learning a lot about jailbreaking. First thing I did was to remove the slider and the clock from the lock-screen, and the larger picture area of the lock screen was fantastic.

I also installed the VLC player, along with the SSH stuff so I can use my phone to watch movies of almost all formats, especialy .avi which the iPhone does not support. I just installed installous today, and hehe I downloaded Sparrow and Asphalt 7. Still downloading, in fact. :)

Traveling

Yesterday while on the bus to BTP, I met a guy at the Singapore customs. "Excuse me", said he, and pointing to a Singapore map in a small book, he asked whether he was waiting in the correct bus lane to go to Queen street. "Yes, correct, you take this bus all the way, and you will be at Queen street."

"Are you Japanese?" I asked, as I noticed that his book has some Japanese on it. The book is what I will call a map-book. It is roughly A5 size, easy to fit in any bag, and on its pages are rectangle cut outs of maps, something like what my dad uses to find his way around Singapore, a primitive, hard-copy GPS (my dad's map-book is way larger in size though)

"Yea, yea, I'm Japanese" he said, and in a rather broken English, told me that he's here in Singapore to tour, and he'll be in Singapore for two days. Then he'll go to Malaysia, and visit the Penang island.

"You have to go to the beaches!" I said, knowing islands sure have beaches, but partly because I can't remember what other tourist attractions does PP have xD

And he went on to tell me that he'll be touring South-east Asia for one whole month. And that's not all. After South-east Asia, he will tour Europe for another month. Alone. Orz. And he's just 22 years old.

He's so young, and he's doing exactly what I want to do: travel. Which made me think, I'm still young too, and I still have a lot of time left. My dream of going overseas may not be realised so soon, but it is certainly not dashed. I can, and I will tour the world another day.

An update of my life:

我到了我人生中一转定终生的十字路口。
- NTU Chem engineering with ASEAN scholarship?
- SUTD with ASEAN scholarship?

NUS has not given their reply.
Because of financial woes, I am not going to Imperial College London for its Chem Engineering course, unless I receive a scholarship. 我可不想为了一张文凭、几年的狂欢，而欠上一大屁股债。

I do want to try out SUTD, but if they do not deliver what they promise, I'll be really let down. Then again, the government will not allow SUTD to fail.

In SUTD, I believe, you have to create your own university life. It has a tiny campus. It does not have the crowd. You have to create your own CCA. This translates to either a boring uni life if you do not have any initiative at all, or a very exciting one if you are enthusiastic. Then again, it also depends on the people around you, your peers. I believe that those who choose SUTD are like-minded people who really wish to try out new things, and who are passionate about creating something different. Face it, SUTD is pretty unorthodox.

If my concern about SUTD is about the uncertainty regarding the teaching staff quality, I shall put on my 啊Q cap, and realise that SUTD has really good staff, which I probably would not get in Malaysia. And of course, the staff will be trying their best too. Effective learning relies on the effort made by both parties- teachers and students.

If my concern about SUTD is about the people around me, I hope to eventually realise that they are all similar people who are trying to challenge themselves, to put themselves into foreign land and see how much they can learn from it. Those who have subscribed to SUTD will not let themselves fail.

If my concern about SUTD is about the probable lack of depth in engineering knowledge, I shall compensate that with knowledge I gain from independent studies and reading. I know I can do it. This is a very brave claim, but whatever.

If my concern about SUTD is the small campus and the lack of facilities compared to other universities, well, size is not everything, and hopefully they provide quality over quantity.

If my concern about SUTD is the fact that I may not be used to the curriculum, well, it is invalid. Adaptibility, if not already inherent, is best aquired for your own good.

If my concern about SUTD is the lack of reputation and the uncertainty whether its degree can get me what I want, well, it may not be as easy as the traditional paths, but I believe it will eventually work out.

OK i need to stop thinking. My dandruff is coming back.

a comment by a malaysian on http://harismibrahim.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/dear-mahathir/

If we want to criticise the government for its race based policies, it is only fair we also criticise our own race based mentality. To point the finger only one way is sheer hypocrisy. We have ALL contributed to the rot in some way – with our way of thinking, our actions, our words, our inactions, our apathy. None of us can claim to be innocent.

How many of us see ourselves as Malaysians first followed by our ethnicity? I think we all know the answer is not many. How many of us hold on to age old stereotypes i.e. Malays are lazy & stupid, Indians are untrustworthy & violent, Chinese are greedy & selfish? I think we all know the answer is quite a lot. How many of us then are willing to (to quote the late Michael Jackson) ‘start with the man in the mirror and ask him to change his ways’?

Just as the government is guilty of playing us against each other, we are also guilty of playing ourselves up against each other. If Malaysia is to have any chance of a better future, we MUST change our mindsets. The old way of ‘every race for itself’ is NOT going to work. We need to see ourselves and each other as MALAYSIANS first and everything else a distant second. Then and only then will the wheels of change begin to turn. Until then we will remain stuck in the pit of quicksand that is the past, sinking lower with each passing minute.

There is still some hope left but my fellow Malaysians (yes, MALAYSIANS not Indians, Chinese, Malays or dan lain-lain), voting is just the tip of the iceberg. In the same way we’re all gung ho about getting people to vote, we need to get them (ourselves included) to think or rather re – think. The real change starts much sooner. In fact it starts right now.

“Be the change you want to see” – Gandhi

Setuju! Setuju!

Too long since I last posted here

It has been so long since I last posted on this blog. Looking back at all the previous posts I made, I can't help but feel embarassed by all the crap I spilled out across this blog.

And hence this attempt to refurbish my blog, with an *ahem* two-prong approach. (I've never used that phrase for years. It's not a phrase I like to use in my Econs and GP essays)

1) Remove (some) traces of glaring immaturity, by changing the blog skin, and removing (some of the) irrelevant 'gadgets' at the side of the blog. #Minimalism.

2) Hopefully, I will be able to write more thoughtful posts here. Personal stuff will go to my diary; other stuff here on Blogger, or Tumblr.

I'm now in the next phase of life, post-A-levels and pre-university. And I'll divide this phase into different sections:

1) Before the release of A Level results. One of the most carefree periods in life. I get to find a job, learn how to drive, and chill around, practice my music and exercise.

2) After the release of A Level results. One of the busiest periods of my life. After the emotional roller coaster on results day, after feeling down and discouraged for not achieving my desired results, I really think it's time to move on. After all, my results are not that bad either.

3) After the scholarship and uni applications. I really don't know what to expect here.

There's so much things running in my head now- whether I made the correct decision on uni choices and uni courses previously; whether I am doing enough, whether the decisions I am going to take are reasonable and appropriate.

I applied for Chemical Engineering in UK universities, so if I go UK, I'll be studying the course.

But I am starting to doubt whether I'll like ChemE. The careers it offers are not exactly what I envisioned myself to be in. Petroleum industry - my family is not very keen on this because you get exposed to many health problems; pharmaceutical industry - we don't really support the use of presciption drugs or medicines because of the many side effects they cause. But of course, showing negative support to the use of drugs would be injustice to those that are really required to save lives. Food industry - I refrain from eating mass-produced food as much as possible. My family is quite purist in nature.

Of course these are not the only career paths offered to Chem Engineers. There are some which could be aligned with my interests and values. For example clean energy, waste management, etc. But there are other courses such as Materials and Civil/Env engineering which can bring me there also.

And what about my childhood dream of becoming a marine biologist, a vet, an archeologist, an environmentalist, a nutritionist, a musician, or a TCM shifu? Should I continue to pursue these fields of study? Since making the decision not to take Bio in Sec 3, I've sort of relegated these interests from "ambitions" to "possible past-times".

I would most probably stick with Chemical Engineering.

There are many other things in my consideration for uni courses, but I can't say all of them here. In essence, I feel like I'm going through a mid-life crisis now.