Memories of the half past sem

Hello again. It's been a while.

I'd been home safe and sound since Friday relishing the good food and comfort of home sweet home. Missed my family dearly and glad to be back home with them. :)

My brother had just completed his UPSR examination and gained his ultimate freedom. So envious of him! I do miss the time when those major exams over and there's no need to worry about anything academic for a few months. My sister is so engrossed in movies recently, movies on you tube, and I just found another Titanic fan club member. Steward take note! Meanwhile, my youngest sister had just performed for her kindergarten and after watching the video I must say she danced awesomely for such a young age! Can try rival with Xiao Ci in the future. :P

Jonathan and Kerry stayed for the weekend and we had fun in Times Square and Sunway Pyramid before they head back to Johor Bahru on Sunday. I'm supposed to buy a new pair of shoes but end up buying a pair of pants instead.

It's Wednesday. Planning to hang out with Graham and his friend so will take this oppurtunity to shop for my shoes. Hopefully, no distractions too great to tempt me this time! I think I have more than enough outfits in my wardrobe for now.

As for now, the long promised update that I kept putting off. I apologised for the delay..

Memories of the half past sem (1st year 2nd sem in UTP)

As you can read from the sign: it says: UTP Book Fair 2009

The night before the event, and lots of preparation need to be done!

Balloon people! JkJk! They did a great job in decorations. Thumbs up!

I'm in Logistic Department. Introducing my Head of Department: Kalaimany. Also known as Kalai$$ Show me the money! :D

Can you spot me? Heh heh


Sze Mei, Yi Herng, Graham, Jonathan

After the events, logistic people need to shift everything back to where they belong..

That's Eric behind me. He's kind enough to lend a helping hand despite not being in Logistic Department. Thanks :)

Kalai the driver! No la, he's sitting beside the driver actually..

P.S: The rest of the Bookfair pictures are in my Facebook (or someone's else profile). More great pictures there. Sorry can't show every single picture in my blog. :P

Lecture time! The chemical gang are very enthusiatic people!

Until our extent of enthusiasm runs dry.. due to lots of limiting factors. :P

An atom separated from the gang! XD


UTP food is err.. to politely put it (edible for stomach fulfilling purpose)..that's why there's always the need to savour franchise food from outside. In this example:Pizza Hut!
Starring (clockwise from left: Yi Herng, Harold, Eric, Michael)

Tired of franchise food? You can always go for the local food!

Mouth-watering indeed..


Emo moments

Guys version of Pillow talk! These two are the hosts. I'm the main sponsor for pillow, bed, bolster, and err.. ya that tin of Jacob biscuits..

Time for fun!
Cool moves!

Also cool!

Coolest!


Want to know how 'cool' really feels like? Head for Cameron Highlands!
Clockwise from center: Guy on the stone: Michael, followed by: Pei Ying, Graham, Shih Gin, Lawrence, Kerry, Me, Fang Yee, and Eric




Again, the rest of the pictures are on facebook. :P



That's all for now.
Bye!

I wanna be back home

Half a sem is over. Time flies when you're too busy to notice anything. But anyhow, I can't wait to go back home!

Finally I'm able to heave a sigh of relief, relax, and slow down. Yes, there's still some homework to be done during the break but I'll worry about all that later. There's plenty of updates to post regarding what had happened this first half of the semester.

Tonight I'm suppose to dota as much as I can but surprisingly I don't have the mood. I don't feel like burning away my last night in UTP by playing dota.

Packing but really don't have any idea what to pack except for some clothes and books. It's late. Tomorrow will see me sleeping on the train. Graham sleeping so soundly on my bed till I don't have the heart to wake him up. Lol..

That's all for now. Updates coming soon when I finally reach home.

SELAMAT HARI RAYA to all my Muslims friends! :D

A day off

It’s a whole new month! Time really flies and I’m still caught in my never-ending cycle of hectic schedule.

Finding time to update my blog is getting tougher. But I’m still capable of some constant burst of short updates like this post.

Going to Cameron with a few friends this weekend. Despite being busy and having two tests next week, I really need this ‘runaway trip’ to give myself some time to relax and enjoy. Hopefully after this trip, I’ll be back refreshed and ready to tackle all my tasks and exams! Will update soon, see ya!   

Happy Birthday!

Actually…my birthday was two days ago, so this post is a tad late. This is just a short update bcoz it’s way past my bedtime!

Just wanna drop by and say that I had a great birthday. Despite being on a busy lecture day, my friends and birthday well-wishers had made my day especially special with both some nasty and pleasant surprises.  ^_^

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all. Thanks for the wishes, thanks for the treats, thanks for the gifts, and most important of all thanks for the priceless time, fun, and laughter shared together! I would really like describe everything in full, but I guess I would have to save it for some other time for now. Thanks again. Goodnight!     

Photoshop for Dummies

What have I done in one week’s time?

Selected as one the members of PnP Department for EDX, the timing of the unexpected one week holiday could not have been better. Although I whine about it at first, the temporary halt on all academic activities means that I could focus on improving and sharpening my Photoshop skills.

But I must admit, there’s so much more for me to learn as my current knowledge about Photoshop is only slightly above basic level!

I had only begun to explore Photoshop during last semester’s break.  From being dazzled by the arrays of weird buttons placed before me when I first open the software after installing it, at least I have progressed by knowing the main functions of each tools (which I initially called them “buttons”). Of course, knowing is not enough, I had yet to practise and use each of the tools to their full potential. Right now, I’m extremely interested in ‘vectors’, which are readily designed shapes and images for Photoshop that can be freely manipulated. There are tons of them that can be downloaded for free from the internet. That’s only one aspect on Photoshop. There’s a lot more new terms I will learn soon hopefully as there’s always room for improvement, only time is the limit. 

Photoshop talk brushed aside, I had done nothing except the mundane, from fervently buying back my friends in ‘Friends For Sale’ in Facebook to watching an outdated movie ‘Dragonball Evolution’ that I accidentally stumbled upon in my computer. Who knows how many movies I had downloaded but never have the time to watch? 

To update things, on Thursday, I dined with my family and bought some supplies from Giant supermarket. My returning load has increased to an additional bag, filled with the supplies I’d bought earlier and stuff that I’d initially forgotten to bring back before the semester started.

On Friday, I went to Damai station and followed Calvin’s car back to UTP, along with Kalai and Arun as well. Thanks Calvin for the ride! To be able to drive long-distance journey on busy highways is not an easy task (at least I think so, because I’m not a hardened road warrior yet), so kudos!

We arrived at UTP around 7pm and I was wondering how the ‘health screening’ was going to be conducted. Seeing that they had divided all the villages’ residents into different dates for the screening, I was expecting a throughout health check which will probably be time-consuming, hence the different timeslots to avoid the sudden massive crowd of students coming back on Sunday.

But to my surprise, after filling up a form, each of us only get a less than one minute forehead scanning and temperature record! Forgive me, I admit I do not know how sophisticated that forehead scanning device thingy is, but I couldn’t help but doubt its reliability since it did not even made contact with the skin, so how accurate can the temperature recording be?

Those within the normal healthy body temperature range are given a slip verifying that we are healthy, and we are required to bring the slip along at all time in the campus for a week. Upon returning to our rooms, I had another surprise. Our rooms are untouched and there was no detoxification process carried out. Well, at least my food, bed sheet and clean clothes are spared.  They closed down the campus and advised us to evacuate so that they can carry out all these cleaning and detoxifying, do they not?

I cannot make head or tail on what’s going really going around here but I hope the management know what they are doing. I certainly do not hope that UTP was closed down again (although it is unlikely for an institution to be closed down twice @_@). Enough with dousing us with cold water and plummeting us back to holiday mood just when we had warmed up our engines and ready to get the semester going.

Now that we had gone through the few introductory lessons to our courses in the first two weeks, the real challenge shall starts after this week! That means less blogging too, unless I have the time to complain about my how busy I am! Bye for now.         

Freaky Friday

So much for my passionate ramblings about time management in looking forward to a smooth-sailing semester, who would expect things to go to such awry extend that it felt like a huge meteor had just crashed on your path and throwing everything out of sync?

It was 31st of Friday, I had finished my one and only 10-11am lecture for that day and was expecting a leisurely weekend ahead and perhaps going to Ipoh with my course mates.

Walking back from lecture, I was dropped the bombshell news that UTP was going to close down on that very day!

At first, I cannot believed it at all. This is serious matter to begin with. UiTM in the local area had also been shut down recently due to H1NI. If it was true UTP was shutting down as well, such matter should be announced in the e-learning earlier. UTP had been monitoring and quarantined many students lately so I assumed things should be under control. It is simply illogical that UTP would mete out this big decision without at least notifying the students. 

Disregarding the news as rumours, I joined my friends for lunch. But the “rumours” soon gained momentum and everyone was talking about it, although it was only from words of mouth as there was no official announcement on the website. Yet, barely after an hour, almost everyone was convinced it was true, especially when the sources of grapevines were from lecturers and block O officers themselves!

While I was still in shock and confusion trying to digest the truth, or whether to believe it at all, my elated friends had already made fast plans on how to leave UTP. It’s all talk followed by immediate actions. I hurriedly shower and packed my lightest travelling load ever in less than 30 minutes, bringing only my laptop and some clothes. A whole bunch of us left for the bus station and bought the soonest ticket possible to KL.

By evening we reached KL Sentral after taking the monorail. Putting our luggage in the lockers, we went to MidValley and had a great dinner at Manhattan Fish Market. After having fun the whole night, we returned to Kl Sentral and bid farewell. Graham, Kerry, and Steward would be staying overnight to take the earliest bus to LCCT the next morning to catch their flight to Sarawak, while Jonathan, Chin, Mike and Su Fang stayed at my house for the weekend as they would be heading to Johor Bahru on Sunday.

Things happened so fast that I can’t believe I’m already home when I had just attended my IMSE lecture in UTP on the very same day. Nevertheless, the “Home Sweet Home” feeling has started to seep in and it feels awesome to be back at home with my family again.

To update the weekend, on Saturday, the five of us went to Sunway Pyramid and had a great time ice skating, shopping, and eating out in food franchises that cannot be found in Ipoh. Waffle World was fantastic! It does burn a big hole in the pockets so I suggest only to try it out once in a blue moon. I bought a literally cool T-shirt and a pair of slacks at an unbelievable discount in Padini and it was worth it.

On Sunday the foursome left early in the morning to Pudu. After bidding them farewell, I continued my sleep and woke up in the late afternoon. Engulfed by the sudden silence and absentees of my friends, it felt almost surreal that things had been so hectic the past few days.

As much as I want to follow my fellow friends to Johor, I have a few plans pending so I would prefer spending this week at home. Despite this uncalled “holiday” disrupting one week of my academic calendar, I realised that it is a blessing in disguise and an opportunity for me.    ;) 

That’s all for now, will update soon.       

Balancing

Approaching my second week of lecture, things are not as hectic as I expect them to be. Labs and tutorials will start at third week, a few classes are postponed due to absence of lectures, so this week is gonna be a breeze for me. :)

Last semester had been quite hectic so this semester I’ve been trying to achieve a balance in my academic life before I’m caught in another vortex. In other words, time management.

Having only 15 credit hours this semester, apart from lectures, tutorials, and labs, I presume I’ll be having plenty of free time at hand.

OCM Convofair Performance and this year’s BookFair will occupy some of my time, only temporarily though, so I feel the need to sign up for something extra to do.

Stumbling upon that chance today in Pocket D, where Minggu Mesra Kampus has started this week with plenty of clubs to join, I signed up for the Rotaract Club and International Cultural Club. There’s going to be an I-Cheme Recruitment Drive tomorrow too so I’m going for a shot at it.

Studies, sports, co-curriculum, events, and clubs are few of the things on my balancing scale. Of course, there’s need for fun with friends and time for myself as well. It feels good to know you are in charge of your own life. Planning what to do and what need to be done for the day ahead always help.

If things do get hectic, it’s a sign that there’s a need to trim and cut down part of my schedule somewhere. For instance, the Dota temptation is coming back, and I need to exercise some self-control and cut down on it before I get addicted like last semester!