rey.blog

After dinner at Ootoya at 313, I went home to finish my packing, last minute paper work and double checking some of the important stuff I needed to bring. I left the house at ~2.45am since the meeting time at the airport was supposed to be 3.30am. Only when I arrived did I realise that the mentors were just being kiasu and told us to report more than an hour ahead of the check-in time at 4.40am!

Waiting at the airprot… bored.

Queuing up for check-in took a long time since US flights require passengers to clear a primary security check BEFORE u even enter the check in counter! After finally checking in, I received my 3 tickets and saw my seats. I was getting a aisle for the Singapore-Hong Kong flight, a window seat for the HKG-Chicago flight and a middle seat for the last leg to Boston.
Read the rest of this entry »

(That was the captacha image that Google asked me to enter when I signed up for a dummy gmail account a few weeks ago for my FYP! LoL)

As of last Friday, my FYP was officially over!!! It was sort of rewarding to see 11 weeks of hard work go into something ‘final’ that you just don’t have to touch anymore. The huge load on my shoulders that just vanished right there and then when the presentation ended (and it did on a good note too – might i add). Fortunately or unfortunately, my project isn’t quite ‘over’ per se, my team got selected as one of the five finalists in the HPB Game Dev Challenge (and yes, HPB as in Health Promotion Board), so it means I probably have to work on it a bit more since we’ll be exhibiting the game this weekend at the Expo during some event there. (Which means my entire long vesak day weekend is probably gonna be burnt at Expo!)

In other news, after a really short 2 day holiday (not quite a holiday since it was saturday and sunday which are normally off anyway!), I started my internship on Monday! I’ll be on ‘orientation’ until next wednesday at NUS before I fly off next Sunday to Boston, where I will be working on a game for the next two and a half months. I’ll need to reach the airport at an unearthly hour of 4am next Sunday and will be flying for almost 30 hours to get to my destination! Oh and sadly, due to the Icelandic volcano, I wont get to fly SQ via London, but will instead be on a 3 stop flight with United crossing the pacific… My gosh! 30 hours without any form of entertainment! (No, United doesn’t have those little TVs in every seat, they only have an overhead projector and an amazing selection of 9 channels of audio!) And whats more, its on a day flight, so I most probably won’t be able to sleep… Oh well… its paid for, so I guess I really shouldn’t be complaining.

All the photos posted here were taken on my handphone, so yea…

One last look at my Post-It-filled desk before I started clearing it out…

To see more random pictures, click to Read the rest of this entry »

Unlike the majority of poly students who are currently enjoying their 2nd day of the new school year, I’ve already crossed that point of no return. Its now Week 7 for me (out of 9 for submission and 12 for ‘official presentation’) and the stress of the past six weeks have started to tire me out. Its like climbing a mountain and being stuck in the middle – hiking up the steepest slopes, you look down but you’re too high up to see the ground, tilt your head towards the sky and the peak too, is nowhere in sight. To make things worst – You’re climbing alone (I’m the only programmer in my team), carrying all the load on your shoulders with no one to share with, no one to give you encouragement when you fall, no one to lean on. Now imagine if you had to keep changing your path, walking backwards and going round in circles, because you have no map and someone else who isn’t in your predicament said so on the walkie talkie and you have no choice but to obey. That’s exactly what I’m experiencing now.

I leave you with this picture I took during a soccer tournament in my school some months back using my 300mm.

On Sunday, for the first time ever in my life, I punched those 3 numbers into my handphone. I was on my way to YCK Stadium for a run after Tuition, waiting at the bus stop in Sengkang when an old lady beside me had blood squirting out of her leg like a water fountain! I won’t go into the gory details, but basically everyone at the bus stop (It was one of those really long bus stops with lots of people) just crowded around her, looking at each other for a while, talking among themselves! Since no one called the ambulance yet, I whipped out my phone and dialed the prohibitive numbers 995 and an operator answered within 10 seconds. He was speaking in a very nonchalant-y tone!

Operator: (Incomprehensible)… what is the emergency?
Me: “There is an old lady here. She’s bleeding very badly.”
Operator: Okay, can you give me your location?
Me: “I’m not sure. Its at a bus stop in Sengkang.” *Looks straight ahead and sees the bus stop code in front of me* “Bus stop code 65061.”
Operator: Sir, I (incomprehensible)…
Me: The bus stop code is SIX FIVE *pause* “zero” *I got interrupted*
Operator: (Sounding very pissed off) I’ve told you, we don’t have bus stop codes here! You need to tell me an address! I need an address!
Me: (Shouting to people at the bus stop) Anybody know where this place is? I need the address? Block number?
All I got were a few shrugs and many blank faces. I moved around trying to look at the block number of the HDB flat nearby and later saw the block number written on the bus stop pole.
Me: The bus stop at Punggol Road Block 298A in Sengkang.
Operator: Okay, I’m sending an ambulance right now. *Hangs Up*

The kay-poh crowd that gathered earlier had dispersed by the time my call ended, except for me and one other guy – he was wearing a civil defence uniform. (Irony is, he was just going to book into camp and it was his first day, so he knew nuts about saving people!) It took the ambulance another 10 odd more minutes to reach, by which time my bus had came and left, but I decided to stay anyway.

When the ambulance arrived, it went straight to block 298A instead of stopping at the bus stop! The C-D guy was trying to flag down the ambulance as it drove pass the bus stop – to no avail of course. I ended up chasing the ambulance to the block and bringing the paramedics to the bus stop! Again, I wont go into the bloody details, but at the end of it, they put her on the stretcher and sent her to Changi General Hospital.

*Sigh*. How the hell could the 995 operator not know what bus stop codes are?! They are issued by the government to every single bus stop in Singapore! Not to mention the very bo chap attitude and incomprehensible (at times) voice of the operator; he also obviously forgot to tell the ambulance that the old lady was at the bus stop NEAR the block and not AT the block. Many precious minutes were lost and I would be dammed if I ever needed help in an emergency! Imagine waiting 15 minutes for help to arrive – I can think of only too many scenarios where 15mins would have been too late!

EDIT: I realised that some of the other phone numbers in my call log were quite visible, so I had to black them out… theres only so much my camera can do at 300mm f5.6…

(It’s not long enough!)
The past week has been rather slow for me at the office mostly due to the fact that the $@&*$ T/O decided to accidentally reformatted my computer by mistake. Even though I eventually recovered (almost) all my data (after spending the whole of Monday & part of Tuesday on it!), I was still extremely demoralized and just could not find the motivation to accomplish most of my intended tasks. This is compounded by the fact that my art team had to change some of their art concept and are a bit behind as well. I counted down the days, hours, minutes, (but no, it didn’t get to seconds) til Thursday 6pm – the long awaited long weekend!

And well, the reason I didn’t ‘count to seconds’ was because at 5.57pm, I saw something special in my email Inbox. The letter that I have been waiting for, for that whole of March (Well, they DID say they’d tell us by March), and almost gave up (well since March just ended and it was already April 1st). I got accepted into the Gambit Summer Program at MIT in Boston! It was like a HUGE load lifted off my shoulders!

Anyway, I’ve been spending my long weekend mostly without my laptop. (C’mon, I already HAVE TO stare at a computer screen for 8 hours+ everyday!) I taught both my students on Friday (morning til mid afternoon) and there after I skated to Pierce Reservoir with Brian and we had a Flash Forward Marathon at night. We woke up on saturday morning, and ran from my house to Mactirche and did a 4.8km there before heading for breakfast and had a nice swim at the Bishan pool after that. Then in the afternoon, my relatives came and I played majong with them for awhile. I’ll be teaching again tomorrow and running at the Stadium in the evening. Gosh, I love my weekends! =]

Oh which reminds me, Good Friday wasn’t all that good for me… other than having to teach BOTH my students on that day, the temple near my house was packed and the entire Sin Ming Ave was jammed! On my way home from work, I took a bus from Marrymount Station to go home, only to have the bus diverted due to ‘traffic conditions’! The bus did not make a right turn into Sin Ming Ave as it was supposed to, instead, it headed straight along upper Thompson Road and turned in to AMK Ave 1! Amazingly, despite the detour, the bus stopped at any stop that passengers wanted, so I alighted somewhere near the AMK Sec bus stop (the one facing Bishan Park) and walked across the park back home! Its the first time ever that something like that has happened to me! (Okay, I shall stop ranting)

Heres some photos I took on a Photography trip to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve last year. For some reason of other, I’ve never posted them anywhere… (until now of course)

Read the rest of this entry »

Before I start the post proper… The school T/O just reformatted my work desk computer! All of my hard work for the past 3 weeks, GONE! $*#$(&*&*&^^% My last backup was quite some time ago, so it would really suck to have to redo all that work. Arghhh! I’m running a recovery software on it now and praying REALLY hard that my files are still there somehow. So in the meantime, I’m gonna write this post instead of just rotting infront my of screen.

EDIT: Yay! I’ve recovered 90% if my work (pretty much all the important stuff) and I’ve only lost a few of the easily redo-able things I’m now waiting for admin access to reinstall all my softwares, databases, servers, yada yada…

We took this just before we left the place.
Read the rest of this entry »

Hello world! (Again) It’s been 5 whole months since I last posted on my blog, during which I have wanted, time and again, to revive my blog, but to no avail; largely due to the never ending pile of school work I had (or have, since I still do), but of course I wont discount my laziness as a contributing factor. Heh… During these 5 months, I’ve been posting my photos onto facebook as an interm solution (thats looking more and more permanent, unfortunately), so I wont re-post them here. Well, lets see quick update about my life right now…

First and foremost, I now must report to school EVERYDAY (weekday I mean) from 9am to 6pm for my Final Year Project – no exceptions. You can imagine the look on my face when on the very last week of school, I was told that my March holidays would last a whooping THREE WHOLE DAYS! (I really wanted my 6 week break! Especially since the last few weeks of year 2 were so stressful and tiring. But in retrospect, it might not be all that bad, at least I still have my Sept & Dec holidays intact. Backpacking trip, anyone?) So as of the 8th of March, I officially became a Year 3 student – The worst (Yr1&2) is finally over!

On another note, my fitness level has dropped tremendously ever since I left my CCA in December and to make matters worse, the now CLOSED (for renovations/ ‘upgrading’) Bishan Park means I can’t train in my usual running grounds anymore. I’ve also not continued my ‘one race a month’ routine that I started last year. I did not sign up for any races in Jan & Feb and in the North East Run 16Km that I took part in two weeks ago I didn’t do as well as I had hoped for (1:31:46), but oh well…

Okay, this (originally short) post has become quite lengthy so I shall refrain from ranting any further for now…

I took this picture on the very last day of school while on my way to my course chalet..

Anyway, I’ll try to update my blog regularly, so do check back often. Commenting on my posts helps motivate me to blog more since its the only way I’ll know that someone actually reads my blog, so comment away!

Read the rest of this entry »

[14th Nov]Yes, I do realise that its been a long time since I blogged. My last post was dated 28th Sept in the midst of my holiday and a lot has happened and changed since then. My ‘holidays’ were, well, not really holidays, considering I had almost no time at all to enjoy myself, with barely a day to stop; relax and do absolutely nothing. Whats more, its already the 4th week of school and I already have assignments due from this week! I wont bore you with the details, so heres a summary of whats been going on:
-Climbed Mount Stong with my CCA in Sept!
-Just completed (a few days ago) my 20 lessons of SSDC driving in exactly 4 weeks, booked my TP for 9th Jan!
-Bought a new (2nd hand) D90 + 70-300mm zoom lens!
-Had class/school chalet at Aloha Changi, right next to OCH. (Oh did I mention, we saw A LOT of bah pohs at Changi Village at 2am!)
-Went Hari Raya visiting with my CCA (got a few Ang Pows!)
-Edited my Photo Moasiac Software for the YOG Can Green event 2 weeks ago (see below)
-Survived through my tuition student’s SA2 exams! (YES! their exams are finally over! Time for mine! =[ )
-Ran a few races (see below)

In the past few months I’ve been running quite actively, targeting about one run a month, which I have so far upheld:
Aug -> Singapore Bay Run/AHM 10km == 1:05:03
Sept -> Yellow Ribbon Prision Run 10Km == 0:59:05
Oct -> Nike Human Race 10Km == 0:53:35
Nov -> New Balance Real Run 15Km =1:23:52
I don’t quite have anything planned for december yet since I missed the SCM registration in Aug, so we’ll see… Scratch that, I’ve signed up for the Mizuno Tiong Bahru Challenge 5Km+ 30 floors vertical climb! Anybody wants to run with me?

(Photo Mosaic for YOG)

Well, another reason for my long hiatus is that when Rachel moved hosts, I forgot to save my theme (which I had previously painstaking edited), plugins and settings files and backed up only the database stuff. So that meant it took me a while to reinstall wordpress, and edit a theme to suit my photo requirements (I quite like this one, did take me a while to edit though) among other things. For some reason, it doesnt show up correctly on Internet Explorer, so you’ve got to be on Chrome or Firefox with min 1024×768 for the photo frames to show correctly… meaning it also wont look good on mobile phones…

I’ll be slowly posting back dated updates as and when I get the time and they will not be in chronological order. Speaking of which, I’m supposed to be doing work, but I’m slacking and I think I’m probably not going to get any of my ever growing pile of work done this weekend… =[ Someone please motivate me!

19/9: Met up with Peiyi, ShiKai, Leonard, MK, ZY at peiyis house, then I went overnight cycling with Wilson….

The view from PeiYi’s room!
Read the rest of this entry »