台中市 in 3 hours

passed by 2 taiwan TV stations today, quite a number of them are located in the 内湖 district within taipei:

 they happened to be side by side. there was another less familiar tv station across the road as well

had a very short 3 hour stop in taichung, because dad's friend wanted the 太阳饼 from a shop there. high speed rail tickets seemed to have increased in price, i recall that earlier last year it was about S$50 for a two-way ticket, the ride today costs S$60.

fortunately the taxi driver who brought us around taichung lives in that city, so he did a quick intro of some of the well known 土产 of taichung, one of which is 太阳饼:

中港街 features a couple of dozens of shops selling 太阳饼, all of them claiming to be the original, authentic version

more celebrity adverts seen around town:

陈妍希 in some children's charity cause

 

隋棠 of 犀利人妻 fame

will be doing some 'star-gazing' with mum at an 偶像 event tomorrow, in the meantime, here's an early x'mas greeting:

never get tired of travelling by bullet train

cloudy, windy, rainy

the weather in taiwan now is best described with the above 3 words... temperature today dipped to almost 11 degrees C, according to the informative display in the MRT. did quite a bit of travelling by railway today, and trains or shopping malls are good places to hide from the cold.

spotted a 天灯 being released at 菁桐, it's one of those wish lanterns that taiwanese use to pray that their dreams will come true, as seen in the 那些年 movie.

as i mentioned earlier it gets dark here really early, like by 5.30pm the sky's dark already, giving you a false impression that the night is very long:

at 基隆港

some other notable taiwanese artistes' advertisements/endorsements spotted today:

柯震东's new album, at a CD shop

宅男女神 安心亚, advertising for lingerie

best haul today: japanese CDs from a CD shop at taipei main station

AKB48, 新垣結衣、水樹奈々 CDs, which i believe are actually original japanese versions just that they're priced lower and packaged with song titles translated to traditional chinese for sale in taiwan (or rather, the rest of Asia besides Japan itself, as stated on the packaging)

temperatures expected to dip even more tomorrow, shall try and escape it by heading southwards for the day.

12 hours to get from sg to tw

unbelieveable. 2 flight re-timings meant it took me almost half a day to get from home to taipei.

once again taoyuan city is prone to cloudy skies in winter, and this was what it was like just seconds before landing:

some quick thoughts for the day:
1. shilin night market has dropped standard terribly
2. i think taipei metro system is more intelligent (and probably more reliable) than our mrt network
3. hotel given to us by the tour agency this time around was disappointing - minimal toilet amenities, a LAN cable connection that's hidden behind a dusty cupboard, barely any hangars in the room, no shower curtain in the bathroom - it's the worst of the 3* hotels i've ever stayed in in my 3 F&E trips to taiwan so far...
4. i see more posters for 蔡英文 than for 马英九 around taipei today

familiar taiwanese celebs spotted around taipei today:

show luo for manhattan portage

rainie yang for olympus pen series cameras

ok, it's been a very very long day indeed (starting from 10pm yesterday), i'll probably sleep like a log tonight.

before that SMS wakes me up later today

maybe i'm used to it after 5 semesters, or i'm too distracted by my family holiday, that i'm not getting the extreme 'butterflies in my stomach' kind of sensation today.

as with all previous semesters i've told my predicted grades to my mum, of course, this is just for the fun of guessing. hopefully it won't turn out worse than i expect, but even if it does, what can i do? just move on with life, right?

i realised i've not written down any thoughts about this semester, especially when this sem has been an overload semester. 6 modules, but the workload feels as heavy (or light?) as 5 modules. if microecons didn't have so many questions to tackle for every homework assignment then it would have felt like 4.5 modules, perhaps.

ec3101, microeconomics: lecturer taught too fast at the start of the sem, and a lot of self-studying involved. flunked mid-terms, although a majority of the cohort didn't do well either. but i think i'm at the bottom 25% percentile before the finals. doesn't look good, haha.

ec3102, macroeconomics: AT lecturer's lectures are barely audible when he relies on a wireless mike that goes dead 10minutes into his lectures. no one tells him it's malfunctioning, fortunately he speaks loudly enough that the back of the LT can still discern what he's saying. mid-term was not good on the bell curve since a lot of people scored close to full marks while i dropped 25 marks. final paper wasn't too difficult either, with quite a handful leaving before the 2 hour was up. probably will do better than ec3101, but not as good as ec3303.

ec3303, econometrics: another AT lecturer, but this one lectures better than the one mentioned above. very statistics-related course. did quite well for the mid-term and group assignments, but with a lot of people thinking the final paper is manageable, it's pretty much up to the bell curve to decide where i stand.

ph2218, business ethics: american lecturer was entertaining. did reasonably well for summaries, and mid-term take home essays were above expectations. will be hoping for a good grade for this one.

cg3207, computer architecture: seriously speaking, even during the exam of 40MCQs, i still cannot figure out what this module's about, apart from hardcore systematic VHDL programming, and something called pipelining. project demo dragged into the reading week, eating up precious revision time. i had a late exam start (Wednesday evening of the first exam week) to thank for, otherwise i think my econs final papers will go down the drain. i left the exam hall 25mins before the paper ended, most others left 1 hour after the paper started, LOL. and my friends and i will never know the answers to the MCQ paper which was 90% reused from last year since we didn't attend the lecturer's 'review session' after exams were over.

gek1527, genes & society: lecturer was enthusiastic, although there were quite a few components in the CA - 5 short surveys, 1 individual short answer assignment, 1 brochure, 1 long essay. 60 MCQ final was one of the trickiest mcq papers i've encountered to date (cg3207 doesn't count! since it was meant to troll), would be lucky to scrap through with a very good grade.

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anyway, in the middle of exams i got my visa done, and it was an expensive visa indeed. took one week to process before i got the visa sticker with a nice watermark pasted in my passport.

and about a few days ago, i received news of my accomodation (announced just a few days after the deadline for application)! since they provided an exact address, i went to google maps to check it out:

heard these buildings were built in 2008, so they should be pretty new apartments. now to settle the payment for it, before i'm deemed to have reserved my accomodation.

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two days ago, i finally cleared my ippt for this year! confidence dipped after the PTI discounted 2 of my pullups, leaving me with 2 points for it, and out of contention for a silver award which would have given me $200 pocket money for x'mas.

nevertheless, i still persevered with the other stations (got the cool weather to thank for) and got the pass with incentive, so i still get a tidy sum from saf this year :P

flipboard for iphone

having heard about the app from qingwei over the last semester when he had an ipad for cs3216, i couldn't really feel the awesomeness of this app (since i don't use it)... until they released it for iphone very recently (like yesterday, was it?)

screenshots to come soon. but yeah, you can experience reading through your social networking news 'like a magazine', as qw put it.

edit: so, as promised, the screenshots and a short and sweet review of flipboard:

apart from offering a couple of categories like news, travel, sports, IT (mostly U.S. based news), flipboard allows you to display your fb and twitter account information like a magazine.

i like the way it displays photos to almost full size in the background for twitter:

as for videos, they'll show a thumbnail along with the tweet:

and a quick look at what their travel category has to offer:

last but not the least, the 'main page' of flipboard: cover stories. somehow it intelligently selects the more interesting bits of info from fb, twitter, and its own categories and displays it as highlights, so you don't have to really go thru' every single tweet and fb update status:

according to qw the flipboard for ipad was flipped horizontally, whereas due to the much smaller screen on the iphone the flipping is done vertically instead, nevertheless it doesn't discount the awesomeness of this app. i no longer rely on the official fb and twitter apps for the phone ever since flipboard was installed. not even after twitter did a revamp of their official app to version 4.

AFA11

wasn't willing to part with so much money this year, and the anisong concert artistes weren't my favourite, so i just popped by on sunday:

first thing that caught my eye once into the suntec convention hall:

menma nendoroid on display at a booth selling Anohana stuff, together with some of the anime sketches which my friends and i saw at the noitaminA shop in july...

friend and i decided to see if our luck was as good (and as bad) as when we were in japan:

$12 for one try, the madoka figurine was still available amongst the few prizes left, but i ended up with 3 clear folders, at least still better than my friend who got some button badges.

one of the main reasons why i went on sunday: there were 2 AKB48 members who made an appearance at noon, although they aren't familiar to me even after watching tens of episodes of AKBingo! and Naruhodo High School...

tanabe miku and nakaya sayaka. they had to paste the 2 big posters of them at the booth, as though they were expecting you wouldn't know their names (which most of the people at AFA prolly wouldn't bother, only the die-hard AKB fans)

this is also the first time i've seen any AKB member up close, IRL.

and then there was the screening of the 2nd installment of the mardock scramble movie, a continuation of last year's:

talkshow with the director and producer, hosted by danny choo, whom i think still isn't a very good host for japanese-english 'live' events. but i doubt there's anyone better than him, even the host for the AKB segment i felt, was kinda lousy at translating the members' conversations.

JNTO booth promoting some anime destinations in japan, which definitely includes this place, which my friends and i went on a 'pilgrimage' in july:

movie in progress!

speaking about movies, it happens to be けいおん！movie opening day in japan today. a pity air tickets to jp have already gone back to usually expensive levels...

and to add in some media fun they invited nico-nico douga to set up shop, screening fate/zero:

at the end of the day this was what i looted home:

a whole stack of brochures... and

madoka jigsaw (taiwan version, which cost surprisingly, just S$15), the clear folders drawn from the booth for $12, and the 'You Hobiron!' tee from Hanasaku Iroha which i saw on display in tokyo anime center but wasn't on sale yet in july!

a few days after AFA one of the coursemates who went on the july trip suggested having another japan trip as a graduation trip sometime down the road, and asked me for suggestions. i listed kanazawa city (where Hanasaku Iroha is based), chichibu city (inspiration for Anohana) as some of the must-visit spots, lol.

the 2 paper finale

there isn't the 'yay exams is over!' kind of feeling today, because exams seemed to have ended last saturday when all the econs papers were tackled.

anyway, for the last two papers today and yesterday, there was a trend of lecturers preferring to just simply repeat questions from last year's final paper. not necessarily helpful for cg3207, since the lecturer himself has never gone thru' answers and even said 'the answer may change from year to year', but for biz ethics today, fortunately i'd seen last year's paper and did a bit of brainstorming for one of the essays beforehand.

wanted to blog about AFA now, but was too preoccupied with searching more info about flights to manchester and i'm getting tired after a whole day out with qw travelling to 2 travel agencies. but no matter what, my flight should be booked by saturday with the other guys going to sheffield.

two-thirds done + SEP distractions

4 papers down, 2 left to go!

went down to robinson road to make my visa for the UKyesterday, and when i submitted my application, was told that i needed to give them my previous passport (since i recently changed to a biometric one) to prove my previous overseas trips. so, an hour and a half wasted travelling back home and to the visa office a 2nd time.

applied for school accomodation too, should be expecting to get a single room which is about 1km from where the main action in school is. that'll make good exercise for me every morning since my timetable so far indicates about 3 days of lessons beginning at 9am. since the sun rises much earlier in the northern hemisphere i'd prolly make it a habit to wake up earlier too?

what's next is to book the flight, which should be settled with the other guys going to the same partner U as i am right after exams are done, since they want to capitalise on the lower student fares. and to decide where we would stay temporarily when we arrive and throughout orientation week, since accomodation would not be ready for us to move in until the last day of orientation.

so far everything's looking on track, hoping that my visa and passport can be returned to me by the 5 working days which the application staff predicted...

in the meantime, shall try not to be too distracted with all these planning, and get the last 2 papers done and over with before i am greeted with my 2-month holidays.

终极密码

may tomorrow's 5 min project demo go thru' smoothly so i can be done and over with it (and get on with life aka revision for exams).

my econs mods would probably suffer had their exams not been scheduled only on the later half of next week.

in the meantime, some incoming information about applying for visa for SEP means i'm a step closer to the UK, but this came at a rather unconvenient time... and it'll be better to apply for the visa together with others who're heading to the same partner uni as i am.

and just a few days back, i was chatting with one of the chem engineers going to the same PU, he was considering flight options which ranged from the uber expensive SQ to the cheapest deal from recently crowned 5 star airline qatar airways. and then there's emirates too.

but now isn't really the time to be distracted by all these, they shall be settled after 1st December.

cg3207 project - clueless?

it's nearing the end of the sem, and this project needs to be completed by friday, which is the due date for presentation and report...

garang guni-ed ribbon cable came in really handy

throughout the sem, my peers and i have been half clueless about what's going on for this module on Computer Architecture (some other students in the module may 'appear' to be even more blur about what's going on than my project group has been)...

if we can pull this off, this is supposed to mimick a 终极密码 game. (but with just one digit display now, it's definitely quite a long way to go...)

P.S.: this is my 4th consecutive semester handling 7 segment displays!

4.3 -> 5.0

it was the last of most of these blue rectangular popups...

and then, i figured out how to access the camera from the lockscreen, it was two presses of the home button, rather than just a single click:

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iOS5 incoming!

finally, the wait is over for the operating system that was announced months back during apple's annual WWDC conference.

another 40mins of waiting on itunes should do it! first impressions to come sometime over the weekend, perhaps.

24hours++

in the past one day:

1. apple disappointed many with no iphone5.
2. turnout for jmc was the worst this semester - just 3 people.
3. i received my offer letter from Sheffield, my partner uni for SEP.
4. steve jobs passes on...

what a day it's been!

cousin peter's wedding

it was a rather simple affair that comprised of a solemnisation ceremony in the late morning witnessed by family members of both parties in the late morning, followed by a wedding lunch at the Holiday Inn Atrium hotel yesterday.

holiday inn atrium used to be the old concorde hotel (hidden behind tree)... another cousin's wedding dinner was held at the hotel on the right many many years back

whatever happened to all the old traditions of having to wake up really really early in the morning and playing those funny 'bully the groom' games?

anyway, it was a good opportunity for my micro-4-3rds GF2 to finally get into some serious action, and let the cat out of the bag to my dad, whose first reaction was '那么有钱买新camera 哦？' but later he was impressed with the quick autofocus of the camera...

my cousin also handed me his DSLR so i could be a backup photographer for his solemnisation ceremony. it was a nikon D60 bought about 2 years back:

my MFT camera feels like a feather in the hand compared to the bulky DSLR

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sneak peek: windows developer preview

the so-called future windows 8, in its early stages:

start menu is familiar if you use a windows phone 7, and the desktop itself still looks like that of windows 7

only thing is, it's difficult to access 'all programs' from the start menu because you'll immediately be presented with those tiles when you hit the 'windows' key

just when i thought the new IE10 looks pretty awesome with the large fonts and almost borderless web surfing, this only happens if u use IE from the start menu tile. if you drag it out to the desktop it's no different from using IE as you would now.

used it for a night on my old laptop, and that was it. i reinstalled windows 7 today before handing the laptop back to dad.

it looks clear and good visually, but user-friendliness wise, i think it'll take some getting used to.

garskin-ned GF2

i received this in my mailbox last night! it arrived faster than i'd expected.

i was expecting that they'll have an instruction leaflet of sorts that comes along with it, but it's just a decal after all, how hard can it be to stick it on?

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stargazing: 吴尊 at the airport

this was the first time that the GF2 was engaged in some 'real action'...

吴尊, who used to be of 飞轮海 fame until he broke away from the group recently, came to sg over the weekend to promote his new tw drama on channel U.

mum said she wanted to 'gai gai', and i thought it would be a good chance to test out the new gadget, so we headed down to the airport to catch a glimpse of him:

spot on!

this was also the first time that i fixed on the 14-42mm zoom lens onto the camera ever since i bought it:

long nosed.

since i was already at the airport i took the opportunity to take some other random stuff, like the beautiful orchids near the pick-up area of T1:

GF2 first shots with kagamiku

it's exactly a week after i bought the GF2 home, and i'd been using the 14mm F2.5 pancake lens on it for the entire week. the blurring-of-background effect is nice!

took a couple of photos just now with kagamiku as the subject, and magazines/posters as backdrop:

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the lumix GF2

after about half a month of deliberation i decided to invest in a micro-4/3rds camera:

pearly white! with no lens attached.

now, rewind back to 2 days ago, when i went to comex with mum. i'd seen the following poster about a week ago, but i was still expecting panasonic to set up a booth there. well, even if they weren't selling cameras directly, at least they would have gotten a dealer to set up shop at suntec convention centre right...?

i was so dead wrong, the only panasonic stuff i found at comex were DECT phones sold by harvey norman.

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what's my next do-ra-ma?

i've been either preparing for jmc's welcome tea, or buried under 2 microecons assignments of 15 questions each for the past week, or just nua-ing my free thursday away (after a very tiring wednesday at school), that i've not came here to blog.

anyway, i realised i've been listening to akb48 songs a lot ever since i came back from the summer jp trip, and i was glued to a couple of songs in their 2nd album 神曲たち kamikyokutachi (ie. masterpieces), which i listened to on the flight there and back.

 if the cover's familiar you've probably seen it here

with the current anime season almost coming to an end, and i've not been watching a lot of anime this season like i used to one year ago, i decided to start watching some less recent j-drama, which was brought to my attention by my mum who was flipping thru' her TVB magazines a few days ago:

 isn't that 大島優子 in that big hat in 霊能力者小田霧響子の嘘

got to thank funshion for the video streams, otherwise there's no way to watch this (or most other jp dramas) on tudou nor youku nowadays, after the viewer lockdown restrictions.

and the other j-drama featured in the mag:

ninomiya from arashi in フリーター、家を買う。

up till today i still can't quite distinguish between aiba masaki and sakurai sho in arashi. as for the other 3 members, well i've seen them often enough to know who's who.

comex is coming up this weekend, and i might pop down to suntec on thursday to beat the crowds and have a look at my wishlist item. right now i'm still contemplating whether a micro four thirds camera would be as worthwhile as an entry-level dslr, and whether i should just buy the gf2/gf3 with just the pancake lens first or with both kit lenses, which would naturally cost more.

夏祭り

it's the first time i took part in a japanese summer festival here, and it's the first time in 7 years which i set foot in the japanese school (changi) campus:

the events started at 5pm, we reached there on time

the weather was sunny, but it was humid. the hitachi uchiwa came in handy for us to cool down, but i'd have preferred to get the ANA pokemon jet uchiwa instead.

nice clouds

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