Will update tomorrow! :D

Stress-free weekend. Will update tomorrow (external HD ftw!)

In the meantime, pet peeve that I think we all experience, on our twin XL uni beds:

KNNCCB.

-Left (brand-new) iPod in laundry.
-Laptop broke down and international warranty's not holding up too well. (Using comp labs now)
-Exams this week.
-Sick with the flu (probably not swiney).

FML.

Think

It's going to a busy week; here are some fantastic quotes as a substitute for content :D

Read them, think about what they mean, get a whole new perspective on things.

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here."
- Richard Dawkins

"Once the game is over, the King and the Pawn go back in the same box."
- Italian Proverb

"Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel."
- Bedouin Proverb

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. "
- Dr. Seuss :D

"You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life."
- Unknown

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than whose who think differently."
- Nietzsche

Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, "What road do I take?"
The cat asked, "Where do you want to go?"
"I don't know", Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it really doesn't matter, does it?"
- Alice in Wonderland, LEWIS CARROLL

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
-Mark Twain

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
-Carl Sagan

Three Point One Four

20th - 24th September, Sunday - Thursday

20th, Sunday

Got free tickets to a piano concert, courtesy of Court-Kay-Bauer (my residence hall :D).
Was in Bailey Hall, our largest auditorium.

The pianist, Gabriela Montero performed at Obama's inauguration ceremony. She's famous for her improvisation, which I really have to say is exceptional.
Sneak-photo of the piano =_="
Anyway, the Brahms she performed, supposedly the "highlight" of the show, was mediocre. Her improvisation was just mind-blowing lol. Crowd suggestions include "Take Five", "Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star", a coupla spanish songs and one by some fool who went up and played his crappy composition.
Her style of improv is pretty unique. Improvises a tune sampai it's like a classical piece, grade 8 or higher I'd say -_-" pokkai.

Youtube kinda failed me lol, and I'll say this now: scroll down if you're not a piano person. Might get sien, cause it's improv to classical.

Here's twinkle twinkle little star, from another performance. No video.

Improvising Rachmaninoff to a tango-ish style.

Improvising "Happy Birthday", video out of sync -_- Youtube fail.

Lol Phiroze was next to me, and he was like "Brahms... so shallow. " (as in, she played it badly)
We all liked the improv, I had my hand up hoping to get her to improv on Campanella, but I wasn't lucky enough ):
Problem is it's the same style of improv all the way. Super freakin cool and all, but kinda sien after awhile XD


21st, Monday.

Astronomy prof being awesome again. He set up an infra-red video camera.
Whiter areas are hotter, darker areas are colder. Note the hot drink in the cup, the cold nose and ears (they get less blood!)
Blowtorch!
Some things are transparent in real life, but completely opaque on infra-red :D (See the real thing on the bottom-left). He also had some other material that was the opposite, opaque IRL but transparent on screen lol.
Liquid nitrogen splashed on the floor. Then he took a cup of tea and a cup of iced water, took a sip from the tea and opened his mouth. White mouth! Then iced water, black mouth! Lol damn funny lah this guy.

It was a beautiful day, so there were lotsa people just lying around the campus.
The Arts Quad lol. Lovely scene. Btw, almost every college in Cornell has a Quad (engineers have the Engineering Quad), which is like a field/lawn surrounded by buildings.

Oh yes, by this date I had made the team (: Awesome, hellish lifestyle ahead.

22nd, Tuesday

Hadn't done my FWS essay due today. Started it at 2am or so, gave up and went to sleep, overslept and finished it an hour into the class :D Champion. Then I bought a cookie.
Quite tasty. Too big.

By now my schedule had been more-or-less finalized. My earliest class is at 10.10, latest one's at 11.40. In exchange for gracious amounts of sleep (which I still don't get), I don't get lunch. Ever. Except weekends. Every other Tuesday I have Astronomy lab at night, which is right after frisbee, which is right after class. So no dinner either. KNNCCB.

Lunch today:
Was super hungry, bought too much food. A calzone (folded pizza that was delicious) and a dozen wings. Mmmmmm fatdom. TI arh TI. TI is what the Singaporeans call fat lol. "Tummy Index".

23rd, Wednesday
Astronomy Prelim was today! K almost every class has prelims, kinda like our sem-1/midterm/sem-2 exams. Except there are (usually) 2 prelims and a final every semester. That's a lot of exams lol. Crammed half the night for this one, cause I hadn't been doing my readings. Hadn't started at all actually XD Still, MCQ, and I fucking rock at MCQ. 38/40.
Prelim season had begun :O

Also, I stole commissioned a pie.
This is a pie from the RPCC dining hall. It's in the 2-Bauer fridge. They had just put out a new pie, so I just grabbed it, layered it with tissue so as to not stain the frisbee that I used as a pie-hider. Use of a frisbee #23: Pie-stealing accessory.

Felt very awesome. If they're gonna charge me two thousand USD a semester for dining, I'm gonna get my (government's) money's worth.

24th, Thursday
Nothing eventful I can remember about this day, but..

A happy surprise when I got back from classes.
Cindy and Jen from down the hall made me a poster! So nice of them :D Note the pie.

Oh speaking of pies. The frisbee team has this weird tradition of sorts they call "two pie", or the pie challenge. Here's how it's done:

Step 1: Procure 2 pies from RPCC.
Step 2: Find a person of the opposite gender who is sitting alone.
Step 3: Place a pie in front of him/her.
Step 4: Sit down, and place one in front of yourself.
Step 5: Start eating really, really fast. Do not say anything, just eat.
Step 6: If he/she starts eating too.. WIN!

... ahaha. Mind you the pies are of a respectable size. A freshman on the women's team did the pie challenge a week or so ago, but with one pie cut into two instead of two whole pies. The guy she tried it on was like huuuuuuh?!! for 1.5 seconds then just started eating the half-pie Lol, which is when the frisbee table (20-30 of us?) started cheering. They finished all the pie! Holy shit hahaha! Right after dinner, too!

The (scarily fit) captain can solo a whole pie. Saw him do it coupla weeks ago (present-time). I tagged in for a failing teammate and proceeded to fail miserably. Do not force down blueberry pie after a heavy dinner. At least I didn't puke (someone did). And there's this guy who fucked up his stomach somehow and lost all the nerves there; his stomach doesn't tell him when he's full. Rule #1: Do not challenge him to an eating contest. Saw him in action a few times, really fucking awesome ahaha.


.. Been spending too much time online. Won't you have some MLIA?

• Today, I took my sister to a park so she could run her 5K. The guy in charge told the people to feel free to shout something when the starting gun went off (i.e. "Freedom", "Charge" etc.). One boy pumped his fist in the air and shouted, "FOR NARNIA!". It made my Labor Day Weekend. MLIA.
• Yesterday, we were playing dodgeball in PE. One of the rules is if you hit someone in the face, they stay in and you're out. Since I'm no good at throwing, I was running around putting my face where the balls would hit it. My team won. MLIA
• Today, a friend and I had a discussion about dinosaurs and came to the conclusion that t-rexs were only angry and aggressive because their arms were too short to hug one another. MLIA.
• Today , I went to the new Harry Potter movie with a friend . At the part where Dumbledore died , a man close to the front row yelled "NO!" and ran out the emergency exit door . It made my day . MLIA .
• Today, I realized that if the world ends in 2012, I will never see the last Harry Potter movie. I am more upset by this than I am about dying. MLIA
• I realized that when my fiancee and I get married our name will be Lillie and James Potter. We've already agreed our first born son will be Harry. I knew I fell in love with the right guy. MLIA
• Today, I went out to dinner with my family, and I was seated at the window, on a popular street. Every time someone would lean against the window, I would give them bunny ears or antlers, and their friends would laugh, but I would act normal when they turned around. The other tables called out requests. I am apparently the only one who has ever thought of this fun idea. The management took my picture and stuck it on the wall. MLIA
• Today, I was having lunch with my friend and telling him all about my new job. He asked me how strict my boss was and I replied, "Not at all. They don't care that I'm on Facebook all day either. It's pretty nice." He was shocked and so jealous that I had such a cool boss. This kept going for a while and I never told him that I work at Facebook as a programmer. MLIA
• Today I was on a long train ride. To kill some time I decided to chat to the guy next to me. I said, "How now hath thy day been?" He turned around, held my hands and answered, "My Lady, 'tis been nothing but canker-blossomed train rides." That was the best response I've ever gotten for that question. MLIA

Some of my favorites from the past month.

"Why were the statues on Easter Island built? No one is sure. What is sure is that over 800 large stone statues exist there. The Easter Island statues, stand, on the average, over twice as tall as a person and have over 200 times as much mass. Few specifics are known about the history or meaning of the unusual statues, but many believe that they were created about 500 years ago in the images of local leaders of a lost civilization. Pictured above, a large stone statue appears to ponder the distant Large Magellanic Cloud before a cloudy sky that features the bright stars Canopus and Sirius. " -NASA's astronomy picture of the day


Temperature: 10-15 (day), 3-8(night)
Cold! Also, note the weather-widget under the chatbox!

Expenditure:
About 15USD (RM52) in BRBs total? There was a week where I didn't use any cash at all. BRBs are awesome. And tax-free.

Will update more from now on :D

In NYC now! Will update later.

Bak Kut Teh should have no pepper

15th - 19th September.

15th, Tuesday.
They have a video game night at Appel Commons on Tuesday and Saturday nights.
Smash Bros. Lol. Americans play SHITLOAD of Smash Bros. I know a guy from Kay who played 6 hours straight one night. Six hours of Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Wii. Lol Bing Zhao (guy who cooked for us) loves the game, bought a Wii just for SSB back in S'pore. He's fkg happy that so many people play here ahaha.
Rock Band too!

16th, Wednesday
Supper:Instant, MSG-less Udon. Fail loool.

18th, Friday.
Astronomy class today was pretty cool! The TA's were giving out paper-framed glasses at the entrance. At first I thought they were 3-D glasses or something, but..Wtf lol? Lol. Diffraction Grating Glasses? Wtf?
Basically it diffracts/scatters the light (something about wavelength/frequency and speed remember?) so you see the component colours.
I don't really know much about it in-depth, but it basically turns lighted shit into rainbows. One left, one right. See the two lines in the middle, one on each side? That's from the lightbulb in the centre.

Also, different elements have different emission spectra, so you get different results.

Here's Mercury in a flourescent lamp. Mercury? Can't remember.

Can't remember what this is either. Yaaay phyiscs major.

19th, Saturday.

Lotsa events today.
Morning was the first football match of the season, vs. Bucknell University. Every year it's every Ivy vs each other, plus two random unis like Bucknell and Colgate Lol.
Enemy.
Marching band passed us on the way in! They were pretty good I guess.
Sub-event: Freshmen on the Field. Exactly what it sounds like.
The "Clappers" They gave out! Thunderstix, they're called. So fun. Knock them together lengthwise and they're super loud! Resonance, I think :D
Free tiny football with frat advertising. Lol.Lollol.
So we lined up..
and the ugliest-fucking bear mascot ran around high-fiving people.. (honestly? That's the best they can do for a BEAR?! Bears are AWESOME. Not this one. Dammit. Also, guess the Cornell colour? =_=)

And the footballers came out! The team has a HUNDRED players. THREE DIGITS. In no way should a sports team have that many players. Offense line, Defense line, Kick team... too many.
The cheerleaders :3
And it starts! ... Didn't catch the kickoff though.
Band playing right next to us! They play a tune everytime something happens. Usually something along the lines of "Kick Their Ass! " ==" Not kidding. They played some popular ones, and some obscure ones (Time Warp? Hahahahaha! Sure brings back memories.)
It's a brutal game. They just literally jump all over each other. The linesmen are HUGE.
Half-time show! Band.
Their baton-twirler chick was AMAZING. Twirling the thing eeeeverywhere. Around the neck, on the nose and on the head. She threw it super high and caught it behind her back a few times. All while dancing to the band's music lol, damn pro.
Huhwhaat?!

Left the match during half-time. I was later told that we won by like 20 points or something lol, good victory. Btw, the Cornell Malaysian Association was having a picnic or something and we skipped to go for football and this next thing.
?!!?!!?!

... Prawn Mee :D Tonight was Makan Mania, an annual Singaporean event (for other people) that's pretty popular. Basically every Singaporean in Cornell helps to cook stuff for the event. Tickets were $10, 200 or 250 tickets sold out Lol. Pretty popular.
The food list. Well done and coordinated, impressive. Tasty, too!
The house I helped out at was in charge of Prawn Mee and Sambal Kangkung.
Kangkung was fantastic. Yuuuuummmm. We made like 6 trays. All gone by the end lol.
It was held in Willard Straight Hall :D
Being populated.
KANGKUNG GARRRRR. SOOOO NICE. BELACAN. GARRRRGHHH.
The prawn mee stand lol. I was on the assembly line too! Took a break to snap some pics :D
Career option #298.

So much food! Prawn Mee, Sambal Kangkung, Curry Laksa, Chicken Rice, Bak Kut Teh, Curry Puffs, Lontong, Satay, Fruit Rojak, Kaya Toast, Milo (lol), buncha chinese desserts like Almost tea/Honeydew Sago etc. Ate so much for free cause I was volunteering XD Chicken Rice was really good, cooked by Bing Zhao lol. Hawker stall-quality! Hungry...

There was an old concert grand Steinway in the hall, played it for like an hour after it ended (everyone was cleaning up and snapping pics Lol). Yaaay. Better than the one in RPCC. So fun! Lotsa piano/music people from Singapore/China too! These two girls from China join the Msian/Singapore events btw XD

After that it was too fucking cold so we went to watch "Moon" in Willard Straight cinema. I really, really liked this show. Make sure you watch it when it's out in Msia! Very thought-provoking, poignant and well-written, but really slow. Not a show for everyone lol. Of all of us there, 3 people really liked it, really hated it. Blarrgh. GO WATCH.
The crappy little cinema lol. It's no GSC (screw TGV), but the picture and sound are clear. Good enough for me!

Astro Pic!
Butterfly Nebula, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. OOOOooooooooooo.

Astro quote!
"We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time."
-T.S Eliot

I like that quote (:

Temperature: 17 (day), 8-12(night)
Getting pretty chilly.

Expenditure:
Can't think of any. Assume 0.

Vote ChenChow

Every Malaysian here who is now studying in the States/has applied to the States/wants to go should know this guy. Yeoh Chen Chow is a Cornell Alum who has helped out countless students applying to study in America.

Kinda busy, so this will be brief; Chenchow...

- single-handedly interviews EVERY applicant to Cornell. After the individual interviews, he conducts group interviews where he tells 7-8 people about Cornell for two-to-three hours. That's like three months of weekends spent on hopeful applicants. If you've applied to Cornell, I'm sure you'll agree he's been doing a great job.
- gave up a high-paying job at Accenture (international consulting firm, gigantic) to work at Jobstreet (Malaysian job-sourcing company, not so gigantic), so he could help young graduates find their place in the working world.
- set up ReCom, a huge student network where Malaysians all over the world connect with each other. Really useful for applicants/students.
- has a really freaking active blog where he posts information about events around Msia, (leadership/education/conferences) and stuff to do with uni applications.
- is really helpful in general lols.

and most importantly (for this post), he's been selected as one of the four finalists for the Asian Youth Ambassador's "Most Outstanding Youth" award. I don't really know the details, but vote XD

tl;dr,
vote ChenChow for Most Outstanding Youth 2009.
http://www.ayaawards.com/vote/youth_profile.cfm#youth4

Cheers,
Bryan

p.s.: It's really, really cold.