w.w.W.

Life is rolling along nicely. Work is fine, my colleagues at work are helpful if somewhat distracted by their heavy workload. I hope that I will blend into the crowd of new hires more effectively soon. It will make lunches more enjoyable and informative. 


Concert is at last seeing some results; I almost have 2 songs out of the door! Yay. :) It's also encouraging to see people not staying in hall being enthusiastic about Concert (or at least, not being totally uninterested). I am more comfortable with the work that I am producing this time round; compared to my similar efforts 3 years ago, being more closely involved in the creative process has given me useful perspectives on songwriting, integrating songs with the script, staging, and so on. 


Met the pianists for the upcoming production, who agreed to the job after heavy persuasion from Billet. I wish them all the best, and I feel a tinge of regret myself at not being able to participate as a live musician in this production. But it is very a tiny tinge.



Back to emailing, one of the more tedious but crucial tasks in composing. :D

Just had an entire week of interviews- argh I am so tired. This must be how working feels like, but worse. The travelling, waking up in the morning... all combine to create a distinctly anti-work sentiment. Not to say that I'm lazy... just that holiday mood has permeated into me more deeply than expected.

At least the weekend is coming. yayy!

Spoilers!!! Do not read the following 2 paragraphs if you don't want to know about concert!! :D

And following up on the last concert update, songs 1 and 2 have been changed a bit... I felt the need for a stronger theme for Song 1. So it is now "Living the Right And Royal Way". In addition I'm hoping for a Koi bubble tea dance in the middle, which means the song will easily breach the 7-minute mark (more work =.='). Also, Song 2 has changed its focus from Queenie's "I Want" song to a comic conversation between the Prince and the Queen, which honestly is better considering the situation in that scene. However the "I Want" now has to be shifted into the first song. Still thinking how to do that and not make it a super-long song.

BTW the "I Want" is a common characteristic of musicals in which the lead character expresses his/her ambitions or motivations early in the musical, i.e. the queen expresses her determination and whatnot. It's important because it motivates the rest of the plot, and for this particular script it's especially important to establish that early on. For this reason the only chance to have it is in Song 1 or Song 2. Song 3 is Prince + King already and therefore too late.

 = end of spoilers =

OK now time for the last interview of the week! Gah I hope all goes well. Just got off the phone with XX company and now wishing the others would just hurry up a bit and save me the tension.

byebye! one weekend of manga and songwriting coming up :D

I'm going to Europe on Friday night!! Whee! There have been so many preparations, and even now my room is in a mess and I haven't packed my luggage, let alone the stuff i need to store in the basement during the holiday. I hope everything will go well, just need to trust more. :)

I suddenly have another interview, this time with Xilinx. It's on Friday morning... the day that I leave. Arranging for the interview was a Humongous Pain in the Nethers, because M1 chose today for their network to go down!!!! arghs!!!*&%$ Anyway I was able to use the hall office courtesy of Azlinah so that was OK. Incredibly Lucky there.

Househunting is going fine... I feel bad that I won't be around to do the work and see the houses, but at the same time Gail and Jon and Yew Hong can do it... I feel very lucky to be housing with them. I hope this place meets all the necessary requirements. :D *stay positive!* *jiayou!*

I have been addicted to a several-year-old fantasy novel series by Naomi Novik. The series is set in the Napoleonic period where Britain is buckling against the onslaught of the Continental army... except everyone has dragons!!! hahaha the series is incredible fun, and the relationships between the central characters is most charming. It is the most unexpected find in the Central Library, even more so than The Sorceror's Son by Phyllis Eisenstein that I found a few years ago. I am reading far more than I should, considering that there is a concert meeting in 2 hours and I have NO SONGS. AArgh!!! And I'm supposed to read the new Act 2 also!! Which I haven't really. Argh!!

Anyway there is no time to breathe until I get onto the plane on Friday 11.50pm, bound for London. I suspect I should save the novels for then.. but so hard to resist... argh... need to find the ebook versions tonight...

Okay, need to do lyrics now. sigh. "No Complaints" is settled as Song #1, "The Perfect Princess" as Song #2... that's all I've got. rawr. byebyes.

Omigosh!!! it has been so many donkey years since I wrote anything here. I guess blogging is not one of my prime hobbies after all oops.

It's less than 2 months to graduation! I am soooo relieved this is finally happening! What with grad trip planning, going out with friends, boardgaming, music etc etc there has been so little time to really consider the fact that I am MOVING ON with life. Crossing a Significant Threshold in my life!! Granted the threshold has been very gradual but I guess I'll feel it most acutely when I actually move to my new place (wherever that is...) WOOTS! So high now. And also slightly woozy from lack of sleep. :/

Concert music is going along most wonderfully NOT =.=" my flow of ideas seems to have dried up from the time I started using the phone to listen to music. All I can hope for is that all of us in CCC creative side will see a smooth transition to the juniors. For music this possibility is a bit *mm* but the directors' and producers' side seems most healthy and brimming with action. I can't wait to see the final product!!! I hope I can catch it though, it is only for ONE DAY ARGH why is the booking so messed up. I understand it's not their fault but still the thought of not being able to see the LAST musical that I worked on, and one which I have the most passion for, is seriously killing me bigtime. phoooph.

Dinner now!! Goodbye world, although we have a love-hate relationship let's try to get along ok? deal!! :D :D

The first week of the semester has come and gone, and it still feels like the new academic year hasn't got off to a proper start yet. It's probably due to the lack of freshmen in Raffles this year. No freshies means no-one to remind you that you're getting on in years. Oh, that's another thing that still surprises me - I'm a third year already! Which makes me sort of "senior" in the pecking order of hall, I suppose. Half of my university life is done and the reality hasn't sunk in yet.

***

My timetable is finalized and it looks pretty spacious, with a lot of empty spaces that I had reserved for labs or additional modules. As far as I can see, only two of my modules have mandatory lab sessions, which means that I will be attending fewer labs this year. I had initially wanted to take a 2 MC Music module or a GEM but my low General Account balance put an abrupt end to that plan. So I shall wait until next semester when I can hopefully take Intro to Urban Planning. It looks so exciting! I will exhaust all my points though, and still have 3 UEMS to clear after that. Gakk. Maybe I will just overdose on EE modules if I'm too poor.

***

First impression of my modules so far. The first I attended was EE3001, the project module which doesn't have a proper name. I still don't know what it entails, but my team of 8 will be working on a feasibility report for a hypothetical engineering product. We're meeting the supervisor tomorrow evening to pin down our topic. There are no lectures or tutorials, so this is my first all-project module. Sounds intimidating, but we'll pull through somehow.

EE3103, Communications was next. Jon and I were a little late for the first lecture and so we had to squeeze into LT3 which was packed. It seems like quite an interesting module so far; we've covered amplitude modulation so far. I first heard about it from Kavan who took it last year. At the time I wasn't really interested in the module - it sounded pretty dull to me. Well... at the time, I was feeling pretty dismal about choosing EE as my major, so that's not a surprise then. Now Comms is going to be my specialization. Wahoo! Big turnaround.

The lecturer for Part 1, has been teaching this for over 20 years in some form or another, so it's no wonder that he sticks to the old transparency style. His delivery reminds me of Bernard Tan who lectured Science of Music. Enough said there. Mm, perhaps I can add that I attended less than half of those lectures. No serious consequences though.

EE2007, Microprocessor Systems was next. This one looks pretty important and I shall be putting a lot of effort into it because I know nuts about microprocessors and my programming skills leave a lot to be desired. Lots of familiar faces here, as all the EE students in Group B are taking it.

EE3408, Integrated Analog Design was not on my list at first, but it quickly became my best option for 5th module to take after I discovered that EE2007 clashes with a lot of modules. :(( It's a continuation of EE2005 with emphasis on using CMOS transistors to make circuits. There are no practicals, only simulations which we can do on our laptops. (There is a follow-up module where students can design chips and actually have them manufactured - sounds cool but I'm not really interested in that area.) It's a Design module so it satisfies one of the EE elective rules.

Last one is EG2401, Engineering Professionalism and a 3 MC module. It seems quite interesting so far, the material on ethics and real-life engineering situations is a welcome breather from the deluge of technical stuff that I weathered last year. There will also be a group project. Wonder how that will be like.

So there you have it, my 5 modules and 19 MCs this semester.

***

Concert this year is really suffering, as it's traditionally a freshmen-powered event. Music is having its own problems too, which I shall say nothing about, except that I will probably have more work coming my way soon. Aargh how!? I have a mental block for melodies and my recent improvisations were pretty crappy.

***

Joined Electronic Music Lab last week... it's a campus group under CFA so there are CCA points, maybe. But I wasn't thinking about the points when I joined, to be frank. I've been wanting to expand my compositional skills beyond the usual piano-based ramblings, and EML seems to provide that opportunity . It's a composing-focused group, unlike the others like Choir , Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Band where performance is their main activity. Went  for a first lesson in Saturday, and hopefully the rest will be of use to me. And hopefully I can contribute to the group in some way too. It's really really small, and quite low-profile too though it's been around since the 1980s.

***

Suppertime now. Uncle Vincent has resumed supper now that Tasty Aunty has closed shop for good. Can't say that her food was uniformly good, but she's a household name in hall and seeing old-timers go is always sad.

Raffles Hall Float won the prize for Least Cost Float at NUS Rag Day 09/10! Congratulations to all the floaters who slaved away day and night to make it happen, and all the other people who came back to help!


It was my second time observing the float from the spectator stalls, the first being in my second year (I was pushing the float itself as a freshie). Our theme - well, I can't explain it properly, not really understanding the story behind it. Something steampunk-ish with uh, an angel and stuff. Arrgh, I think our plot is too difficult for simple old me. The typical float plot involving idyllic villagers, marauding villains and a miraculous rescue by a powerful guardian, followed by a "We're All Happy Happy Friends Now" dance - now, that's something more up my alley.

Raffles Hall has no freshies this semester, so we were operating solely on Senior Power. That meant fewer dancers, and a smaller workforce to paint and glue and cut. We pulled it off anyhow, and that makes me happy! I shouted myself hoarse during the cheering session. Our contingent of people was minuscule compared to the sizable sea of other halls' supporters. But still, we managed quite decently. Hooray, a nice start to the semester!

***

I got my printer-scanner today from IT Co-op. Finally, no more treks to Yusof Ishak House to print tutorial sheets. I spent the larger part of the night getting the printer to print my EE3103 notes. After a disastrous trial with Foxit Reader (some text appeared upside-down - I had to sacrifice 39 pages), I managed to get double-sided printing successfully, with a lot of help from Jon. Whew. No More Foxit Reader for Me.

PS. EE3103 is Communications. It looks Fun! Fun upon Endless Fun!!! Fourier Transform- welcome! Modulation - hey old buddy! Ah ha ha!

*ahem*

Sorry, just a little psyching myself up so that I can face the first lecture tomorrow.

***

The theme for this year's hall experience is "New Beginnings". The hall is undergoing extensive renovation to make it a better place for us to live in. (But not for the master and resident fellows - so sad, their dilapidated rooms are not receiving a facelift!) It has been the top item on everyone's wishlist for ages upon ages, and finally it's happening. In addition to new rooms, we have new toilets (big cheers!), a new covered walkway to the YIH bus stop (yay!) and a fresh Communal Hall (next year). In the meantime there is going to be some inconvenience as we vacate blocks 3 and 5 for the contractor to move in, but it's a small price to pay.

Gant and a few of the other incoming JCRC members shared some of their visions for the coming year with the hall residents. With a crowd comprising seniors entirely, the discussion was quite open and fun-filled compared to the usual forums. I look forward to the proposed squirrel house and RH dog. That generated amazing laughter.


Not the exact words spoken, but something like that.

***

EE3001 briefing today was so boring that I dare not describe it. I have formed a group with Jerold, Abhinav and some of Jerold's friends. This module looks frightening. It's a technology assessment project, in which we have to conduct feasibility studies on product proposals related to Electrical Engineering. It appears quite daunting. Gahhh.

Hmm, it seems that my narration of the Senior's Camp is quite overdue this year. Senior's Camp has been greatly expanded this year since RHOC does not have Orientation to organize due to the lack of freshmen. So they gave us The Amazing Rhace instead.

Initially, I had not intended to join, being inclined instead to fritter away time in the relative peace and quiet of my room. Something, though - I can't recall exactly what it was now - something slapped me awake and I realized how foolish I was, craving seclusion when that was the last thing I needed. Perhaps it was the long 12 weeks of the internship. I've got a nagging feeling that I could have done something much more productive than that this vacation, although I can't imagine exactly what now. Perhaps it was the seclusion of the past year - entirely my own doing, that one. Perhaps some random event or conversation. I don't know. Anyway, when Jon asked if I could go, I replied "Yay!!!" with more exclamation marks than would be considered sane.

Ah, what to say about the RHace. Fun? Yup! It was conducted ala the Amazing Race that we see on television. RHOC arranged a variety of exciting activities all over Singapore, ranging from human hamster balls to Laser Quest to... handicraft under the Esplanade... all right, maybe not so exciting, that... Camping at the East Coast Park was fun - I don't recall camping before - oh, we did lots of walking too. Cabbing also. We cabbed all over the place, mainly when public transport was tortuously slow. Especially bus 2 to Changi Village. We could have rode into the next century on that bus.

I was quite amazed at the effort and expense spared for the activities. Some of the events like the hamster ball and water skiing were really expensive. And nine RHOC-ers rushing around Singapore to coordinate must have been really hectic. All the same, we had to pay our share of transport and food, and the expected reimbursement did not amount to much in the end - only $12, out of $30 spent per person. But I guess it was worth it for the experience and company.



Company: Me, Jia Voon, Gail, Jon. Someone took this during the bumboat ride to Pulau Ubin, i.e. Granite Island.

I was going to write a full and detailed description of the whole thing but as Gail has already done a wonderful job (and I daresay my narration would be quite similar to hers) I changed my mind.

***

One of our tasks was to walk to Bedok from East Coast Park and eat the bak chor mee there. The food centre was in Bedok North, which was still abuzz with people when we reached it at midnight, hungry and tired from a long day. Jia Voon, Jon and I thought the noodles were really good and we decided to return before our holiday was at an end.

Which we did last Thursday. Gideon followed us. Upon arrival Gideon commented that it was the same place that he brought his orientation group when he himself was in RHOC, in my first year. Immediately, I realized that I was in Gideon's group during orientation and I had been to that very same food centre when I was a freshie, after busy hours flagging at the town centre! Imagine how quickly such memories fade from my mind. I was completely lost then, clinging on to a senior in the midst of an unfamiliar world. A small wave of nostalgia washed over me, on top of the smell of the noodles and chicken wings that comprised our dinner.

- Oh no, I'm hungry. This is why I avoid blogging about food.

***

I watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Gail and Jon yesterday on his computer. Or should I say, Willy Wonka and his Chocolate Factory, because it wasn't the recent movie with Johnny Depp in it. This was actually the 1971 version, which I didn't know existed. It was pretty charming. and full of chocolate (of course). Later all of us went to Cheers to get chocolate. This was mainly for their benefit and not mine, as I don't enjoy chocolate that much. Maybe I haven't found the right kind of chocolate yet.

- It was a musical, with songs that I felt did not fit into the story well. Really random songs, which broke up the flow of the movie. I would have much preferred it without all the songs, I was thinking, until Gene Wilder (who played Willy Wonka) started singing Pure Imagination. I suddenly realized that I had heard this song before! Audra McDonald sang it beautifully in one of her concerts (I discovered her while searching for Sondheim's songs on Youtube, as I often do) and she said it came from Willy Wonka. So I did know the movie after all.

I will attempt to play it on the piano in the comm hall. No more teatime, so the piano lounge will hopefully be less noisy.

*Insert nice warm feeling here*

Just a short post before I pop off to bed.

My internship has unofficially ended, since I'm taking leave tomorrow (or later this morning, rather) for the Amazing RHace. My supervisor and two other people from my section treated me to a nice lunch at Swensen's today... it's a tradition for the staff to treat internees before they leave. Very touching.  - Said goodbye to all the people who helped me throughout the 12 weeks I was in LTA... and would have felt emotional on the journey back to hall if I hadn't  felt drowsy the whole way.

It's still pretty hard to think that two and a half months have passed, just like that. I didn't do very much in LTA but I'm grateful for all the people who have taken time and effort to make sure I learnt something... which is pretty amazing really, seeing that I was just dry deadwood in there. To be rather frank I didn't get to do very much, apart from seeing testing works at MRT stations and trying to be very interested in cabling. But still, I think I would choose LTA if I could do it all over again. Public transport is so so so fun! :D

So that's an ending. Another one is the Raffles School of Leadership Development, a camp which just concluded today... all the participants are fired up about the future of the hall, and my little part in the whole scheme of things suddenly seems a lot clearer now. Thanks a million to Eng Hai, the alumni who conducted the sessions for us. He's a great guy whom I first met through Pei Yiing when we were working on the 50th Anniversary Commemoration Book, and I really must take my hat off to him. Although I never wear hats, but you know what I mean. So it's an ending that marks a beginning.

Concert is slowly heating up... I just got wind of my part in the upcoming concert and suffice to say it will probably KILL me. I was just supposed to crank out some little song and suddenly BIG WHAMMY! But it sounded SO VERY FUN that I couldn't pass it up,,, well all right, this hinting of things left and right is kind of irritating, I know, but nothing is set in stone yet so we'll see.

Module bidding has started and I've got my EE modules... now time to handle my GEM and UEM. I realized that my carefully worked-out plan was quite impossible to carry out after being shocked by the measly balance in my General Account... but a backup plan has been made in the form of EE3408 (Integrated Analog Design), a topic which I ABSOLUTELY ADORE but from online research the project is going to be tough. Never mind, will handle that during Round 2A next week.

Amazing RHace tomorrow! Jonathan (who by now deserves to be simply Jon), Gail, Jia Voon and I will traipsing around Singapore doing silly things. Will blog about it, if I'm still conscious afterward.

-What the heck! This was supposed to be short. Sigh. Good night world!

I had just returned from dinner when Lee Hoong asked if I was free. Apparently, the Chapel Choir of Pembroke College, Cambridge University was to perform in half an hour. I was quite happy to go, as my last attempt at attending a life performance ended in a huge thunderstorm and running for cover (so much for the Night Festival at Bras Basah) and the resulting mild pangs of dissatisfaction were still making an occasional appearance. So off to the UCC for an hour of choral music.

I still find it hard to believe that RH is so near to the UCC. It makes me wonder why I don't go there more often, given the wide array of interesting events put on throughout the year. I shall resolve to attend more events there. And no more piano events. Sigh, I feel sick of piano events. Must be an overdose of piano.

The repertoire, I was delighted to discover, included the oratorio A Child of Our Time by Michael Tippett. I can still recall the day I found out about this English composer: in a specimen paper for my music theory exams in one of my grades. I remember playing the comprehension passage out on the piano and thinking to myself, "Hey this isn't bad! I must look out for this composer." Then I forgot about him for about six years.

They sang the same negro spiritual tonight, Steal Away. I still remember the entrance. It brought a warm feeling. Not nostalgic. New yet comforting.

The other spirituals from the oratorio were quite fun to listen to compared to the works by Holst and Byrd that came before that. I ust admit that I didn't care much for those pieces. I can't remember a single one now, sitting at my laptop merely hours after the show. Byrd was more traditional and Elizabethan (well, I didn't know what Elizabethan-era music sounded like, so now I know) and closer to my imaginings of medieval music, while Holst was... not what I'm used to for Holst. I think I'm too accustomed to hearing his Planets suite. I know he was also heavily involved in English traditional music but... Planets is so mega-famous that it left a stubborn imprint on my mind. Time to undo!

So, all in all, a fun night? Yes, fun. Quite different from my night work at Orchard MRT last night, in which I sat around the station at 3am listening to people arguing and being confused about series and parallel wiring until 5am, at which point my supervisor let me go back. But that was fun in its own way...

Staring at my Signals textbook for the past hour has been eminently unproductive. Typically half a page manages to sink in before I am suddenly confused by the algebra and go read news websites. Which of course, leads to more unproductivity... sigh... and now I am blogging...

*

Anyway, the Signals E-test on Thursday turned out all right. It was on the first half of the module, but fortunately no questions on modulation appeared. I guess it was just my luck, as the questions are randomized for everybody. Got a weird mouse that made it very difficult to click on the multiple-choice answers. Oh well, that's over now. We get a second try next month and the higher score counts, so must try harder! Yeah! Um.

On Thursday we are having our VHDL test, and for those who don't know what this funny thing called VHDL is, it's a programming language used in designing digital circuits. It was an amazing relief to find that the language templates can be accessed during the test, because I don't want to memorize all the funny syntax failing which we get a nice friendly BAD SYNCHRONOUS DESCRIPTION error or something as jolly. I have a small phobia of VHDL already because I flunked the question for that on our mid-term test. Didn't study properly.

Now I come to think of it, I had a bad feeling for the whole of Digital Design which started from the nightmarish lab where we were supposed to design our Guess The Number circuit... due to general panic my brain stopped working. Jon managed to finish his design :( So stressful. Then again, he is working on a different assignment from me and Swee Yee. I only got the design late one night after browsing through an interesting book on the hidden spaces of the New York underground... esoteric bedtime reading.

We are actually encouraged to use VHDL to test our Guess The Number circuit beforehand, but I have faith in my design. :P This means that when I finish wiring I will be either very happy or very depressed. I suspect the latter.

*

I realize I don't enjoy lab sessions.  I always freeze up and do not know what to do next. Like in the last Signals lab, I was struggling to finish, so the lab officer came and told me what to do. (This is quite strange. Usually the lab officers just stand by the side and do paper work. Ms. Ho was very helpful.) I guess the stomach upset halfway through the lab didn't help either. Reminder to self: no more Indian food before labs.

*

All right that sounds depressing enough. On the bright side I got good marks for the Systems and 2012 tests! Very happy. *pats self on back* Wonder if the others did OK.

*

EE2012, which is "Analytical Methods in Electrical and Computer Engineering" - hence everybody calls it 2012 - is one heck of a funny module. Our lecturers, and the module itself. Our first lecturer, Hari K. Garg is very jovial and enthusiastic during lectures. I notice he likes to use the word "folks" frequently - example of usage:


The first half of the module is basically A-level statistics from Further Maths, so most of the material was just revision. And that's a good thing because if I was completely fresh in this area it would be too tough to take everything in.  He goes very fast. The tutorials are even less helpful because our tutor spends about 35 minutes re-teaching the material and then crams the questions into the last ten. (But she is very nice and approachable.) In the end it's more helpful reviewing everything on my own, seeing that all the detailed solutions are given anyway.

The second part is taught by Ben Chen (oo he's from China, I used to think he was a local) who is very straightforward. How so? He spent the introductory lecture explaining that this module contained all the leftover bits that don't really fit in elsewhere but need to be included to satisfy accreditation requirements... followed by some remarks about the ECE department which he delivered in a somewhat resigned tone. Nice start. Interesting to know these things. His part is on complex analysis which I think will be quite a nice change, like going back to MA1505 days. Nice quote: