the lastsplash

My posts have been few and far between lately. But this is worth the time to share with everyone. Neil Gaiman , my favourite author, gave a commencement address at  University of the Arts in Philadelphia . This is the third commencement transcript I have ever posted. First, Mr Steve Job's speech at Stanford and second, Mr Chan Yen Kit's speech at my commencement (IDA seemed to have taken out the speech). Yes, I am seeing the testament of my choice now... Anyway,  Neil's advice is applicable for everyone beyond the field of Arts. I find his following points really useful: We need to try and not be afraid of making mistakes. Do things others have not tried before. The tried and tested way gives you the same result. But your new way may yield great rewards, just keep trying. We also need confidence to believe we are able to do it, pretend to be someone who can. Often, we are tasked with work we never do before. Think beyond your experiences and skills. Imagine ho...

We were fortunate that this time, my mother-in-law was willing to babysit for us, so that we could attend the launch of WSC Alumni Association launch. Yes, our dear son is blessed with grandmothers who dote him! It had been more than five years since we graduated from NTU. That is more than five years since I did any meaningful volunteering work . I guess family and work take precedence. The turnout was relatively small, considering WSC is the largest student organisation in NTU, other than the Student Union. The number of volunteers over the years should be in thousands. However, it was good to rekindle the bonds with a few friends. The video which showcased the various regular volunteering programmes and subcommittees brought back many memories. It was like Welcome Tea all over again. For those who ain't familiar, Welcome Tea is an annual event where WSC volunteers introduce the club activities to the freshies. This is to let the prospective volunteers understand more before goin...

It was six months ago when we had our pre-wedding shoot. Now, a sneak peek at some behind-the-scene photos... Dear wife putting on make-up... The difficult part, sticking on the eyelashes! Our fantastic make-up artist, Candy, from La belle Couture . Our photographer, Kenny, giving dear wife some tips during the indoor shoot... I had make-up too. ;-) Had failed many times to create this hairdo... The mature look... Princess look... My sweetie pie! And the groom all ready too... Hah . One of the outdoor location we had chosen was our Alma Mater, NTU. With the help of our former lecturer, Prof Yeow, we obtained the kind permission of the university to shoot in the school grounds. Some of the places we went included the laboratory, lecture theatre, library and the green roof of the School of Art, Design and Media . Dashing through the famous "fingers" of the university spines. The staffs at the various facilities were informed and welcomed us. In fact, School of Computer Engineer...

It had been almost a year since I finished my Masters. Over the course of two years, I had written quite a few papers on varied topics, mostly related to innovation. Although they weren't particularly well-written, I thought I should publish them online. It may be useful for anyone doing their academic papers - at least the references can be starting point for further research. But if you really-really-ever-by-very-slim-chance decide to extract of my content for your paper, please kindly put in the necessary citation. :-p My friends/colleagues will also be able to find out what I had been digging my head into then - some stuffs that were totally unrelated to work. So, I did just that. You can find some of my papers/group reports on Scribd . I also uploaded an essay titled " Rights of Muslim Women ". I wrote that during my undergraduate days (Year 1?) for the module Religion In Culture and Society . My professor's comments are also included in the paper. I stopped sho...

It was official. Not sure how much impact I made in the past two years. Probably none. For three hours, two to three days a week, I felt more like a guest. But yet, I gained quite a bit. Neither am I sure when or how I can use what I gained. For now, I know at least I made a few people proud. =) The traditional photos at the staircase, And with the giant ceremonial bear! One of the best thing is to have accomplished it together with my dear. Before we take the next steps of our lives together, arm in arm. A moment for us to pause and celebrate! And I will leave the rest of the reflections to another day bah... hah .

I declare "It's over!". No more writing and reading of papers, no more projects, no more late night classes, no more char siew bao dinner, no more spending annual leaves on doing assignments, no more exams! -throws confetti!- Wheeeee!

Last night a close friend asked me where do I get the energy for work and study . The truth is I don't. But I have no choice. I had already committed to them two years ago. And what made me commit was the thirst for self-satisfaction , knowledge , recognition and better job prospect . As it is three weeks and one examination paper away from this chapter of my education life, I want to reflect. Perhaps it'll also serve as some kind of reference for people considering part time studies. So what did I go thru' so far? Looking back, it feels easy - only because I have gotten used to the hours and demands. It does not mean I did well,but at least I don't see the need to grumble anymore. I remember at the peak of my commitments, I was juggling work, tuition, a Java certification exam, and my coursework projects. Understanding colleagues, understanding family, understanding friends. Subsequently, I knew that I could handle them all. I must admit with really limited resource...

This isn't exactly news, as it has been quite a while... but I am announcing (no! not that I am getting married already... ha ha) that I am a proud owner of (no! not that I already have a baby... ha ha) a new weblog. Actually it was part of an assignment for a module, Creativity and Innovation, which I took this semester. Creativity Expression , is a "portfolio of my creativity", ie. a showcase of my creative works. It is a live weblog, which means it is not a one-time effort just for the assignment, and I will be updating it periodically. And the reason I decided to post about it is because today I received an email from my Prof, Dr. Marcelo Ang, with some kind words about the weblog. So it served as a motivation for me to invite everyone to take a look and for me to keep working on it. Hope you'll enjoy!

Yeah!!!* (do a Stresemann imitation) ... Finally killed off the exam! It was the last nail on the board, keeping me from enjoying my break since end of hell-month. Of course there is still the ICT (aka Reservist for those not in tune with military term), but it'll end tomorrow anyway! Double Horray! After the morning paper I had lunch at Lau Pa Sa with my dear and Theresa. The last we had lunch together was the end of one paper last semester. Time flies. Since it was a good six hours before my dinner appointment, I had chance to go Christmas shopping and get a feel of ' oh-so-free-nothing-to-do '. I started out with some meaningful activities like reading the newspaper throughly at the Esplanade library, and finishing a book. Then I made the mistake of leaving the library... Everything seemed so 'you-must-buy-me-for-someone'. Perhaps it was the Christmas bug - the spirit of giving. I discovered some fantastic shops at Raffles City Shopping Mall basement. There wer...

I attended a couple of lectures by Dr Charles Lee in the Creativity and Innovation classes a few weeks ago. After discussing with my girlfriend today about what he said, I am more convinced now and I want to share it with you. Hopefully, it will benefit more people. Essentially his lecture was not only about being innovative, but really, it was the secret to being successful. Dr Lee described that there are two types of people, the River-people , and the Goal-people . Example of River-people are those who lead a carefree life and doing mostly what they feel like, eg. his elder son who is a successful artist in NY. While, Goal-people target at achieving certain things in life, eg. himself, a venture capitalist. He said that happiness is in the process of pursuing the goals. Thus, the importance of having goals and plans, in particular, the Plan for Life . Before we start to pursue our goals, we need health. In order to stay healthy, we should exercise regularly. This means exercise at...

Yesh, the last paper for this semester is over! But I am feeling uneasy about it. I finished the paper an hour before time while many others were furiously writing and even asked for more answer booklets. The thing is all the answers can be found in the three pieces of handwritten notes which I had burnt, boiled with two cups of water and drank. That's supposed to be good news? But how do you explain the mark allocation of 4 marks for the one-liner answers I gave and two points for 8 marks, 3 points for 12 marks? That's the worrying part. I can't really bull since I can only regurgitate what I drank.. erm memorized. And guess what, I spotted the invigilator, a co-lecturer frowning and shaking his head as he read the questions. Please tell me its perfectly okay to give short answers and thats just the American-style of exams, no one-point-one -mark nonsense!

After nights of struggling, it finally came down to this night. It's over - at least for now. No more term papers for the next couple of months! And... akan datang, EXAMS!

Three weeks of exam and study leave, deployment support, has finally come to an end. Although I don't like exams, it was a nice break from work and the support shifts. Hopefully I will not regret come 27 Dec when the results will be out. Aiyar , its first semester, not in study mood yet mah , abit rusty too, so if don't do so well also understandable bah ? ha ha. Anyway Christmas is round the corner, next few weeks will be in holiday mood lo! Heh heh , it is also the time of the year when I feel I have the time to do some catch up with my friends. So don't be surprised if I give you a call or ask you out for dinner. Give face okay? ;op In the meantime, as the clock tick tick tick, I can feel the Monday blues slowly creeping in...

By the way, I would also like to announce to the world that I had just finished one paper, as someone else did . Heh heh. One more paper to go. Examinations are dreadful, no matter how many you have taken before. Amazingly, I finished the paper within an hour. That was because I did not know how to do 2 outta 5 questions (40 marks). There was no way I could have bs in any way. So I sat there till the last minute, trying to fill up every blank lines with some words. As the professors always say, "How to give you marks if you don't write anything?". I wonder why some students could write so much. They used both pages and were writing till the last minute! Only one side was printed with lines leh , ie. just give one page answer will do, correct? Anyway back to fire-fighting, tomorrow onwards till next Wednesday. 12-hour shifts here I come...

After more than one year, I finally have the $ for studio graduation photos with my family. Tho' its not like really important to have one, I think it makes my parents proud to see our family picture, with their children in graduation gown, hanging on the wall. It's a feeling difficult to describe with words. Putting two children thru university isn't easy at all. Thank you daddy and mummy! So now, when will I have the $ to go for my graduation trip??? Or do I have to postpone it to a "retirement trip"?

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Solutions at sg.edu.nus.5208.midterms. //stacktrace omitted Crash! Boom! Bang! ... TWANG! As the C/C++ folks will put it, I tried to enter into one of my ISR aka bullshit. Unfortunately, I hit a coredump. Congrats to myself, midterms over, time to move on!

I had my first taste of mugging in the pod at BiCL. It wasn't good at all. Had backache after awhile. The open tables were all taken up, I had no choice. Tried to blog outside for the 2nd time, but the net connection was way too slow. Note sure if it had anything to do with the pod itself. But its okay, I am blogging live in NUS from one of the seminar rooms. And its much more comfortable here. Tables, chairs, air-con, peace, and the only distraction the laptop in from of me. Despite losing count of the number of exams I had taken my whole life, I still hate them that much and feel nervous about taking them. Its really tough to juggle "mid-term-exams" and "endless-OTs". Mid-terms exams can take study leave one or not? Sigh sigh. Btw, the previous post was a milestone 200th entry. Congrats to myself for generating that much crap to the world wide web.

I was very honoured to be invited to write a line or two last week, to be featured during the Tea Reception for SCE applicants and on the Alumni Website. The main aim was to inspire and guide the freshmen on education at NTU SCE, and to recount my memorable experience in SCE. A difficult task at first, it turned out that a couple of lines were not enough for me. Below is a preview to my lil' contribution. Hopefully it'll be useful to potential NTU SCE freshmen who will not be able to make it for the Tea Reception. =) During my Convocation last July, the guest speaker, Mr Chan Yeng Kit, CEO of IDA Singapore, reminded us of our decision to place the bets of our future in the IT industry shortly after the bust of the dot-com bubble. He portrayed us as brave souls, passionate about IT. And he painted the future of us as future professionals in the dynamic and exciting industry, where we can make a difference across the society. He also presented past statistics that half of the IT-...

The change to the NTU Points Award Scheme (PAS) did not come as a surprise to me. The enrollment has increased steadily with the opening of the new schools (Humanities, Physical Science, Design and Media). The demand for hostels will definitely go up as well. Therefore a revamp of the system is needed, especially to cater for students who live far from the campus. However, I feel the abolishment of points system completely in the new Hall Allocation Scheme (HAS) is not very good move. Of cuz, the new scheme has its advantages (you can read about it here ). The best thing about the new scheme is that students who are staying far from school will worry less about getting up early and travelling so far to campus (unlike SMU or NUS, NTU is situated at this far corner of Singapore!). Students who never have got a chance at hostel life will do so now too. Student leaders will also be rewarded. Locals will also get more chance to stay with international students in the new scheme. Although th...

It has been almost two weeks since my Convocation. It was a defining moment of my life. I first heard of his name when I was serving my National Service. He was the big big boss of my department - the Director of Manpower at MINDEF. The speech by the guest speaker, Mr Chan Yeng Kit, CEO of IDA Singapore, reminded us of our decision to place the bets of our future in the IT industry shortly after the bust of the dot-com bubble. He portrayed us as brave souls, passionate about IT. And he painted the future of us as future professionals in the dynamic and exciting industry, where we can make a difference across the society. He also presented past statistics that half of the IT-graduates will take up non-IT professions. I guess I have chosen the path of the other half - following my heart where I think the money will be. Five to six years down the road, I'll see the testament of my choice. Thank you Mr Chan, for continuing to support our dream, pumping millions into Infocomm annually, ...