Lesson Learnt
If I can't join my cell group for fellowship from the start, then don't join them at all.

Because people will always rub me the wrong way.

Long & Smelly
Monday: test revision (part 2/3)
Tuesday: LTA career fair, Keppel Shipyard interview, IPPT, presentation touch-up
Wednesday: FYP meeting, getting backstabbed, lecture, presentation
Thursday: test revision (part 3/3), tutorial, test, immerse in architecture books at library, night class
Friday: weekend!

And what a weekend. Abundantly blessed with lots of eating, first on Sat with the biking guys and then today with the cell group. Been some time since service was such an awesome one too, the strong atmosphere during the closing... Woohoo also received one more gift LEGO set this year and clocked a 90km ride (2nd longest since I started riding I think). Must have been the feast during our East Coast Park pitstop - sprinted up two flyovers and through an underpass along Bt Timah Rd on my way home! OK quick report this and one more feast to follow! =D

The Blessing
2 more days and it's Chinese New Year. The death of my laptop and having to make do with the backup desktop that doesn't work smoothly simply takes away some of the mood. And my concern materialised - the laptop I'm looking at isn't available at West Mall's Harvey Norman nor their Bukit Panjang Plaza outlet anymore. Which means, more legwork to hunt it down or turn to an alternative. So pretty much the only things I'm looking forward to this CNY are meeting my younger cousins and a couple of gatherings with friends. And the movies on TV too. And the long weekend. Other than that, it's just the usual few visits. Somehow I remember visiting more relatives when I was younger but for quite some time now, it's just been that few.


I've always like G-Shocks especially the Mudman name. It gives a sense of tenacity and brings out my identity just about right, given the condition sometimes when I cycle offroad - just muddy. Yet the thing is this - this liking has always been confined to my head and heart; never have I told anyone. So I was all the more overjoyed by this divine gift.

This I Vow to Myself.
How has 2011 treated you so far?

The past 19 days have been painful. It's only January and it feels like a long time. On the 2nd day of a brand new year, my laptop died. Pulled the hard disk, sent it to the service centre the next day and the fateful call came before the weekend did. The verdict confirmed my suspicion - the motherboard had given up its soul and a replacement costs me more than half a new laptop. Perfect. Laptop loan not even started to be repaid and just when my FYP interim report and presentation are due in a week and two respectively. And they had been hanging off the back of my head since Christmas. Thankfully there was a spare CPU lying around. Pentium 4, but only 512MB (that's 0.5GB) of RAM. Windows 7 ran - what a feat, and a source of tantrams and flaring tempers. Thankful that programmes worked - Powerpoint, Word even Photoshop and sometimes concurrently - but being the old system that it is, without wifi, internet came by using my phone as the modem, which was sketchy at best, until the genius in me updated the system with an obscure driver. Using the phone as a modem proved so miserable I would have slammed a hammer into the phone if not for the telco contract. And the best part - Flash had a newfound hobby of crashing like 40% of the time while surfing the net, at the same time taking down Chrome with it.

Thing is this, being a uni student and coming from a low-medium income family means there is little spare cash lying around. So this I vow to myself, when I start working I will always have enough money to replace anything when it breaks.

ASUS K42Ja: $1398
Bursary surplus: $200
fMRI participation: $45
Remainder: Mum says after Chinese New Year

But if the laptop isn't available anymore when the time comes then it isn't good enough. Still I'm thankful for the bursary and LEGO shall cheer me up. Here's hoping.

Yet despite it all, I'm blessed but that's for another post.

The End 2
Feeling somewhat deflated so pictures will do most of the talking.


Despite being into cycling, I've never been a fan of motorbikes much less Yamaha ones (to me Yamaha makes musical instruments not bikes) but simply fell for this while taking a revision break. Probably influenced by the movies especially 海角七号. Love the classic touch. Rough search puts it at S$30,000 with change. Not practical for a family though.