It is not a good start of the year and perhaps it ended really badly last year.
The departure of Kenny was quite a piece of shocking news since he had been a very healthy and energetic. I thought his career was promising. I did not ask around but it seemed to be that he started off with persistent bad cough.
The recent news of Mingen meeting an accident in Thailand proves to me once again how fragile life can be. Initially I thought it was because of his reckless driving but he was actually knocked down by a lorry while walking alone on the pavement in the night. He has survived but on the other hand, he has lost his left eye. I did not usually talk a lot to him but we used to play volleyball and go out together in the past. It was hurtful to watch a loud guy landing in such situation.
Among my FYP team of UOW, we had been mentioning about Jeremy, our lost team-mate, almost every time we contacted each other. He was a very friendly and outgoing guy and our team consisted of friendly guys, and thus we had no clue why he disappeared out of a sudden when things were going smoothly. I organised a meet-up recently more than a year after Jeremy’s sudden disappearance, which was a few days before the FYP submission and presentation. Soon Siong was telling me that he had added someone by the name of Jeremy in Facebook and the person seemed to have updated his account recently. After that night, I went to check the account and realised someone had used his account to post pictures of his tombstone. It was almost half a year after the FYP, he had left us.
I am not sure why I have been making my own life so difficult. I never know how much lifespan I have but I am sure that I need money to survive in order to achieve some of my goals. If I were born in a silver spoon, you would see the improvement in charities clearly.
It was my last struggle on Saturday morning to finish up all the work, including updating the site and flash video. I was nodding so badly since I had already exhausted myself the night before; and yet, I went off to bed after 3am again.
As expected, I could not wake up a couple of hours later. I was late but the waiting for bus 75 delayed my trip furthermore, such that I was late for more than twenty minutes. I went straight to the student lounge and waited there. While I was trying to setup my laptop to look at the PowerPoint slides, I realized I did not bring my adapter along and my laptop was the only one with PHP installed, which was required for presenting the website. Thus, I sat there without setting up my system, and did my best to recall the contents.
It was near nine AM when I started to message them. Soon Siong called and told me they were already at the third level. The setting up of the game using Ad-hoc network was problematic somehow even though we managed to do it easily at Starbucks a couple of times. The latency was bad. I tried to install PHP into Andy’s system but his MySQL did not seem to be working. We gave up on showing the site as my laptop failed to stay as the server to demonstrate the game, which was the most crucial part.
The assessors were not very interested in all the PowerPoint slides, which disappointed me since lots of efficient was spent. I did not want to skip the parts immediately since Mr Prem did mention a lot during the previous lecture and I thought I need to show him we had made drastic improvements; moreover, I was afraid that the entire presentation would end too early.
The setting up of the game was disastrous. The projector’s screen size turned the interface haywire. Somehow, the connection socket was not working well. Things were not within my anticipation. We wasted a lot of time on the preparation, but luckily, the assessors were not annoyed over it, or at least, they did not appear to. Mr Prem sounded more like trying to help us than to pinpoint us, but, his words had destroyed my hopes of getting a better grade completely.
We were deciding to go for lunch together but Andy dropped out since he had to go to find his girlfriend. Stephen suddenly decided to go off as well. Soon Siong and I ended up going to Clementi hawker to eat instead. I recommended him the famous chicken cutlet. After that, we took the train home. The lack of rest had provoked my backaches.
I tried to clear my emails at home before playing game, but I was too tired to stay conscious for long. In the evening, I went for a jog towards the Marina Barrage again using the Polar system. The strap attached with the device to measure my heartbeat went loose after a while and it made me very uncomfortable. Somehow, it caused problems to my constant pace for I tried to inhale more each time to stop the strap from slipping down. It somehow made my heart work harder to weaken it, and I felt discomfort on my chest to pace my way. After passing by the bus-stop nearest to Marina Bay MRT station, the strap slipped down. It was disastrous. I had to slowly adjust it when there were fewer people around.
Marina Barrage was as crowded as usual with couples, families and groups of friends; inclusive of babes. The strong wind dried me up soon but it did take a break for a short period of time. I sat there alone to watch all the happy faces till the darkness almost overwhelmed the entire sky. My mum gave me a call to tell me that she wanted to dine outside and thus I made my way back. This time, I fastened the Polar strap more. I was hot on my pace but somehow it was not as fast as what I had thought. When I was near the carpark near my place, I saw a babe from the manicure shop.
My mum and younger brother wanted to go to Bugis but we decided to stop at The Central where I met Christine. Then, we went to Billy Bombers after buying my mum Christmas present. We had some advantages since it was my younger brother’s birthday the day before and they had some promotions. The fish was less than what my younger brother had described but the strawberry milkshake was nice.
Date: 12/12/2009 Time: 18:23 Duration: 23:12 Calories: 311 kcal Average Heartbeat: 176 Maximum Heartbeat: 197 Fat Burn: 00:54 Fitness: 22:18
Date: 12/12/2009 Time: 19:41 Duration: 22:29 Calories: 319 kcal Average Heartbeat: 182 Maximum Heartbeat: 196 Fat Burn: 00:15 Fitness: 22:04
I had my final FYP meeting on Friday, the last day before the actual presentation.
I chose to go back to SIM since the lighting was better than Starbucks’ romantic ones, the seats are better for working and that nobody would chase us out. Lunch was at the canteen where I got to chat with the western food auntie again.
Soon Siong and Stephen took leave as well to meet up to complete the rest of the work together. We met another team and one of them told us of the deliveries to submit to shock us out of our lives. Our plan to finish everything by the evening was destroyed.
All the rushing almost wrecked my brain. We decided to stop the improvement of the main documents and quickly went down to the library to start printing, however, the printer played trick on us. I paid with my ez-link card and the machine was unable to refund. The photocopying shop was closed and we had to give up.
The canteen was closed and I had to cook my own noodle after reaching home.
On Thursday, my FYP team had our meeting with the supervisor for the last time. It was mainly to discuss about the PowerPoint for presentation.
I had taken leave and spent the entire afternoon working on flash. Somehow, it took me very long to start recapping it.
The meeting was held at the usual place and at the usual time. The only difference was that the girl-next-door staff, Alicia, was around.
I had a quick run-through of the draft PowerPoint slides with Mr John Lim and he left soon after. We continued with testing of setup and in the midst, I was badly distracted. A cute girl wearing a purple dress was at the shop next door. I did not expect much until she and her friends came in to get some drinks. I would consider it a lucky night for the sight even though it was just minutes of pleasure to the eyes. While we were leaving, I saw her sitting near the glass door.
Out of so many babes I had seen over at The Cathay Starbucks, she was the greatest to my liking, even though she was not extremely pretty.
On Tuesday morning when I reached my desk, I saw the driving basic theory book. Kevin remembered it well and spent extra efforts to even place it there, which made me very touched.
It was not an easy morning when there was invigilation to do, especially having to arrange the messed up tables and seats in the normal classroom. Luckily, I was seeing my favourite class.
I had one of the weirdest lunching team. Since Mei Hoe had work to do, Vivian joined Daniel and I at the “Dead end”. I took a plate of wantan mee while both of them had fish soup. The stall was ridiculous to charge Daniel an extra forty cents for changing the noodle to rice, but Daniel claimed that the bowl of soup had more ingredients.
We had half an hour lunch, one of the fastest ever. After sending Vivian back, I accompanied Daniel to IMM’s Giants to get apples. I wanted to get some for Mei Hoe but the expensive and big ones did not have very good skin. After choosing for very long, I gave up.
I was studying for my driving test all the way inside the car on both trips. However, on the returning trip, I almost dozed off completely a couple of times.
I stayed for longer than usual again in the late afternoon before walking alone to the MRT station. I went to Long John Silver’s at Plaza Singapura for dinner and Stephen joined me after that. We moved to The Cathay’s Starbucks to meet up with Soon Siong and later, we did some testing and I was quite amazed by both the programmers’ work. Andy did not go down due to work. We stayed until around 10.30pm before we called it a day.
Yesterday morning, I took honeystar with milk followed by a carrot for brunch.
After watching the “Plan A” at channel 8, I started working on the FYP website, which absorbed my brain cells. When I checked my phone in the afternoon followed by a missed call from Soon Siong, I realized they were all meeting up, whereas I thought only Soon Siong was supposed to tie up with Stephen with the coding part. I did not go down.
I got stuck when I tried to challenge SQL statements and it took me hours before Soon Siong did the magical rescue within a few minutes to solve the problem.
My elder brother and his girlfriend packaged chicken rice for me while I was resting from doing my project and thus I had a late dinner.
On the second morning of my MC, I went to the MacDonald’s with my brother and his girlfriend. The new restaurant was renovated again to accommodate more people, at the cost of the coziness. We shared a nugget meal with a chicken roll, and another cup of drinks and fries at the cost of $10 exactly using coupons.
I woke up in the noon and my brother had bought nasi lemak. However, he did not know I preferred chicken wing to drumstick.
The afternoon was spent resting, playing and working on my FYP’s website, which killed much of my brain cells.
In the evening, I was expecting the most unexpected for the couple started cooking. The food was edible and the best thing was that they did not use onion, garlic or ginger at all.
Yesterday morning, I woke up having my left calf cramp suddenly after a normal little wake-up stretch, or rather, straightening of my legs. Luckily, the pain subsidized soon. I struggled for some time to decide whether which type of doctor should I visit – western or Chinese physician. Alas, I took the latter.
I was the third in queue, but before that, I was lectured by the cashier who told me that that was a charity organization and thus I should not have passed her a fifty dollars note for the four dollars registration fee but my wallet was already empty and there was nothing I could do.
The doctor said I was extremely “heaty” and that indeed I had flu. I went out quite soon to get my medicine, handing over the used empty bottle over to the pharmacist, who further nagged at me for not removing the previous label. Since more than ten years ago it was okay for them to paste new labels over the old ones and I was not sure of their new restriction, so much for disallowing recycling of the bottle months ago since the H1N1 outburst.
I went to report to work still after getting changed at home. Once I reached the office, I almost started to shiver under the air-conditioner and thus I had to move to an empty classroom again. It was in fact, too late, that my illness was already worsened before the shifting.
Lunch was together with Daniel, Dorothy, Jingkun and surprisingly, Chi Chiang. We went to West Coast hawker centre and I took chicken chop despite the “heatiness” inside my body. The meat was quite disappointing.
In the afternoon, I went to the lecture theatre for the briefing organized by the Fitness Department in regarding of the health improvement challenge. Actually, I was only interested in the results of the previous health screening. I was given a student trainer who could not escape my nose that he was a smoker. However, since he looked quite soft and nice, I did not want to make things difficult for him and thus, I did not say anything nor request for a change. The Polar watch loaned was quite interesting and I could not wait for my illness to be cured so that I could go for a jog using it.
I went for dinner with Mei Hoe. We went to the Clementi new shopping centre and decided to dine at Sakae Sushi. I did not feel good that Mei Hoe insisted to foot the bill again, saying that she was treating me as her god son. I did not want to owe anyone any favour no matter how close we were.
Anyway, she showed me her medical report, displaying the extreme low blood cells in her body to worsen my mood. She could have collapsed anytime. Worrying for anyone was the worst thing I would want to do after being drained off totally more than a month ago.
When I was reaching The Cathay’s Starbucks, I checked my phone and realized Andy had dropped me a message that he was not feeling well and thus would not be going down. Soon Siong and Stephen were already there and there was no sign of Mr John or Jeremy would come down, let alone to reply our emails. Seeing that I was weakened by the illness, both of them decided to call it a day soon.
It could be a long weekend for Friday was a holiday, but I had FYP meeting on Sunday. It was never like a year before that I could really go out with friends.
We were stuck outside of The Cathay Starbucks for inside was packed. The place was cool with the fans on top of the ceiling, better than what we had always expected. The only problem was the lack of power supply.
Jeremy continued to stay missing in action but we did not blame him since he had done a fair amount of work since beginning. We felt weird and worried for him instead. We did not expect anyone to give up after so many months of hard work.
We moved into the air-conditioned place after some time when Stephen’s laptop was going to dry up, but having to split into two tables.
In the late afternoon when we were almost done up at around 5pm, I gave Irwin a call. Instead of meeting at Vivocity, he had arranged a meet up with Eugene at Bugis at around 7.30pm. I was not feeling well and thus, decided to stay at home instead.
Yesterday, I had lunch with Xiao Mei at IMM where I received my belated birthday treat. We chose Ajisen for the reasonable set meal price. It was quite okay but I would prefer western food. After finishing our meals, we shopped at one of the baby shops and followed by Daiso.
In the evening, Bernard dropped Mdm Seet and me at Dover MRT station. Mdm Seet accompanied me for dinner at Plaza Singapura’s food court and treated me a cup of milk tea at the Xin Wang café at the basement level.
It was not long before I would not have time to meet up with all the great people.
I made a wrong choice of getting a venti size Dark Mocha frappuccino at The Cathay Starbucks during the FYP meeting, which was so sweet that I could not finish.
The cloud could hold it so well that the sky was grey since early afternoon and it started pouring right after I got home after 5pm, such that I could not make it to the Marina Barrage after my FYP.
Nevertheless, it was quite an enjoyable afternoon at The Cathay’s Starbucks because basically, there were babes everywhere.
We took the sofa seats at the corner and there was a girl-next-door babe just a table away. Further away, near the more sofa area, there was a very girly girl sitting alone by herself. There was a time when a group of young girls were waiting outside near the taxi stand, and one of them was a sunshine girl, seducing me in her gorgeous dress. After changing seats with Soon Siong, I saw another two babes at the external Starbucks area.
The Cathay was a big distracting place, though, really good for mind-relaxing.
In the early Monday, I did not feel like leaving Choa Chu Kang and thus I tried to contact Bianhong. He responded fast and told me to meet up at the MRT control station. After buying drinks at the 7-11, I grabbed a packet of chicken rice at the coffee shop nearby before walking to Street 51 - It was of walking distance away from Avenue 3.
His mum was inside the living room and greeted me almost instantly when I walked in. I felt so ashamed of myself for not visiting them earlier. I met her quite a few times when I was going to work and she asked me to meet up with Bianhong soon. I had too many loyal friends who were kind to me and I was being an ass friend.
They hosted me with great hospitality, except that Lucky took very long to stop the hostile barks. Both Lucky and Happy made me miss my dog, Jack, very much. They were of the same breed – Jack Russell. The dogs jumped onto the bed to sleep with us. Happy snored.
I dared not leave the house since Bianhong’s mum was sleeping in the living room and that the two dogs would make more noises. I was holding to my phone and slept only at around five AM and woke up in an hour’s time.
I wore Bianhong’s formal wear, including his leather shoes to work. Without my watch, key stick, laptop’s lock’s key, thumbdrive, I felt quite naked. The worst thing was when I realized one of the shoes was spoilt. Luckily I still had my jeans and informal shoes.
The day did not end early. I had to go for FYP meeting right after work.
When I reached office, I saw a birthday present and a muffin on my desk. The tie was my second birthday present and I was very touched by Hirman. The muffin was from my dear Xiao Mei - Joy.
Lunch was at West Coast Plaza. Conversation was as messy as the fish market like usual but this time, the topic “friend” was too unbearable to hit on. Mei Hoe told me to “put down the chair” but she did not do it herself.
In the late afternoon, Hirman caught me in the office and told me he was going to town area and thus I decided to hop onto his car. Christine joined us since she was going Ions to meet her husband. I went in search of “red packet” with Hirman afterwards for he left his inside the office. After walking around Paragon and Lucky Plaza, we finally went back to the hotel and got one for free.
Jeremy and Andy could not make it for the FYP meeting. I had to cancel my volleyball session again and I could have met up with girlfriend if she was free instead. The remaining three of us proceeded. It was a lousy night for I was pinched by headache.
FYP is like a demoralizer. It is not only that I have lost touch with Java, but to maintain consistency with others is a terror, especially to understand and use others’ design and coding.
I had been dozing off in the past few days, leaving my system on overnight.
The worst thing was to wake up early in the morning and started knocking out again soon, but to regain conscious only after noon and was late for my project meeting. My body was too exhausted and I even felt giddy and brain block for very long.
I need to doze off even earlier on my free-will and not accidentally dozing off.
I managed to pull through my Sunday outside when I was not feeling well. The usual weekend burnt was back again for my studies.
As Soon Siong had predicted, the meeting would drag for an hour before everyone was present. We met up at the usual place, at The Cathay Starbucks, but the seats with power source were all taken up and the guests did not seem to be leaving after standing there together with Soon Siong for nearly forty-five minutes. A group of youngsters were playing Dota while another ang moh lady occupied two tables with five chairs, and she reminded me of those Dracula shows in her red and curly hair.
We moved to SMU where Jeremy met up with us. Jeremy and I formed a recce team in search of a better place. We shifted to the accountancy’s study table to realize that there was no Wireless@SG connection. After wasting so much time, we set off for early dinner at the Kopi Tiam across the road after some discussion. I had a big plate of char siew rice, which was very rare, yet I was not full after finishing the entire plate. It was probably due to the bad diarrhoea the night before. In fact, I was feeling very weak, moreover, with the muscle aches from the continuous days of sports for the past few days.
We moved to the first level of SMU after dining. I bought a cup of soya bean drink and Jeremy soon admitted that he could not withstand the heat. We decided to move to some café instead of going down to the SMU’s basement that was secluded from the free internet access.
Our first station at the Coffee Bean café was a disappointment with the number of students occupying the tables. After that, we decided to try our luck back to our usual meeting place again. We split into two tables until the sofa seats were empty, and we finally merged together as a team. I was exhausted by the. This day, Andy seemed to have come to enlightenment that he managed to spot some major flaws, which we could have improved a lot. I was very glad that he had pointed them out, but at the same time, I was very disappointed with the continuous changes of our project game play. It had been months and we had been making major changes for almost every meeting. We were too short of time.
I tried to read up about the sockets notes given by Jingkun in my tiredness and discomfort body, and it spelled only exhaustion. I had been missing Java programming for years and the basics were enough to give me problems.
The meeting lasted until 10.30pm and the preparation for the next day was a phobia and caused frustration.
Last week was the rarest week of the year. I played volleyball thrice in a week alone. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday marked the history ever since I started working in my current job almost two years ago.
I did not play as good as in the past anymore.
On Thursday, I stayed alone inside the office until six plus. The effort to start setting up the poles and net boiled me up so much when one of the Pilipino guys started bringing his laptop out to pretend busy. The group of them was good players but certainly freeloaders. The game was full of ups and downs, but I was glad enough to amaze myself a couple of times. I walked home by myself.
On Saturday, I had my FYP lecture 2 before going home to change up and meeting Jingkun and Weitat at Vivocity. Dinner was settled at Long John Silver’s before we set off for Clementi. The game was boring at times and my performance was never consistent. We had dinner at Changi Airport Terminal 1 where Jingkun and I lost to the temptation of Popeye's chicken. We ended our night at the Mustafa before Jingkun sent me home.
Saturday was finally over. It was days of torment before that, trying to design and do content population for a new site for FYP. I could not take the stress that many works were pending; but luckily, boss gave me a green light to focus on my studies first.
I quite liked my own design of the topmask, but due to the lack of time, my anxious mind could not come to a term with me.
Listening to Mr Prem was a hundred times more useful for the project. His mind was clear and he knew well what were required.
Reaching SIM at 9am, I only got to go home after 4pm. However, I got to see quite a number of babes around as usual, which was enjoyable.
Another Sunday was spent meeting up for project discussion. Life of working and studying at the same time was dreadful.
After having a bowl of green bean soup in the morning, my stomach was bloated throughout that I had to packet my packet rice out of the house. My lunch was taken after 4pm during the meeting.
At night, I started feeling more like pregnant. The discomfort on my stomach was indescribable and I felt a bit giddy. I lost my appetite.
