Category: Daily Ramblings

The government has done a good job in restricting smokers from smoking in air-conditioned places. But can the restriction be imposed in residential areas as well?

We should implement the yellow-box smoking area on every floor. Probably at the staircase area. It’s darn irritating when smokers smoke along the corridor.

My flat, is just beside the lift. I’m ok when smokers smoke at the lift area, since it’s common area. But not when they smoke along the corridor! The cigarette smoke is darn irritating!

And it happened not just once.

My neighbour always invite friends to their house. (There are only 2 units on this side of the lift, with mine along the corridor and neighbour’s at the corner) That’s pretty cool actually, the cosiness and stuff like that.

BUT.

Not when their visitors smoke at my doorstep! My neighbour’s family is nice enough not to smoke along the corridor lah.. I’ve no qualms about that actually. But if the visitors attempted not to smoke in the house, why can’t they walk further (probably just 10-20steps away) to smoke? Why sit at my doorstep? Why stand along the corridor?

If I’m one who don’t really care about neighbourhood ties, I’d have just opened my door and said “if you want to die earlier by smoking, don’t drag innocent people in by smoking here lah”. And that’s being nice enough.

Ok lah.. not blaming them actually. They moved to somewhere else to smoke after we requested them not to smoke at my doorstep.

But I thought the anti-smoke campaign should be extended to include residential areas as well. Especially public housing where corridors are a common sight.

I’ve got neighbours who smoke at home too. Every night I get the cigarette smell from outside my room (it’s opposite the room along the corridor). Well.. that’s something out of our control. Not even governments. Nothing that we can do anyway. You smoke at home, I don’t care. Just don’t do it at common areas please.

Thought I’d just pop by before jumping onto my bed.

Cleared the shyt that happened on Wed. Seriously I’ve never felt so down that day. Probably I did, but each time I had that feeling, it’s always worse than the previous.

The past week hadn’t been so smooth. Lots of OTs, something which shouldn’t happen at all. Especially when I left office only at 11.30pm, and worked from home till 3am. It’s not my principle to work from home.

Friday night was supposed to be spent at a dinner with close frens, but one fell sick. Was in office till 9+pm instead, planning to meet Fen & gang @ Pump Room. The headache got so bad that I had difficulty walking. Not to mention that I waited a long time before I could board my bus, and had to stand all the way back home. All thanks to Comex that’s held next door.

Saturday was supposed to be spent relaxing. Went for an expensive haircut in the morning. Freaking $400. -.- Kill me.

Got called back to work. From home. Great. And I’m just done with it. What’s the deal with me checking what you’ve done when you’re supposed to test and make sure everything’s fine before passing to me? WTF. Wasted my saturday. But then, I feel like I’m pro enough to teach people how to do programming. =D

Dead tired. Time to sleep.

Pretty speechless actually.. But I need to type something to stop myself from thinking too much into what happened and to stop blaming myself for it.

Just took another pill. Yeah I’m officially down with flu, started yesterday? Monday? I’ve no idea. Just knew that I’m glad the tissue box was beside me while I was rushing work in office today. And to say that I was talking about revitalised in my previous entry. Big contrast. But yeah. Wasn’t feel good with the flu, and things was made worse when something happened in the day. Felt so down, that I left office after clearing as much work as I could, strolling around aimlessly.  Didn’t feel any better when my feet brought me to Raffles City. Neither did it help when I blasted the radio on my mp3 player.

It felt so bad, that I didn’t know who I could call. The only choice I had was to walk and think what went wrong. Until my feet brought me back home. No I didn’t walk back home all the way from Raffles City, in case you are wondering. Though I almost took bus 16 to East Coast Park.

Oh well.. not that I felt any better after typing it out. And yes my flu got worse.

I need another break. I can’t handle what I’m facing now. I can’t say I’m on the verge of tears, trying to act normal as if nothing had happened.

It didn’t feel any better when I didn’t get the kind of response I want. :'(

As the title says. =(

Work hadn’t been too smooth for the past week, but I’m working hard to prove that my standard is actually higher than the one I’m being compared to. Was feeling quite demoralised those days, this shall be a challenge that I’ll set for myself. My expectations are high, standard is high. I just have to prove it.

Work aside, it had been quite a mundane week. Somehow I lost my motivation again. I should try not to bring issues at work out of the office. It affects me somehow.

There was quite a big hoo-haa recently within my guild. While I don’t understand their rationale when it’s just a game, my mood was affected. What’s the motivation in playing game when you lost a group of game-mates? New maps! Yeah man. Took me a good 2 hours plus before I managed to login successfully into the game last night. Then my laptop had to give way. I kept having graphics error. LOL. Great.

Sian. Mundane life now. Probably I should face the fact that I’m still not fully adapted to work life. bleah.

Convocation ceremony for NTU Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Engineering)  was held on 27th July 10am.

Graduands were to report by 9am for robing and to register latest by 9.40am. Guests were to seated by 9.30am.

Attire for graduands: long sleeve with pants/knee-length skirts(female graduands only)

Attire for my khakis: white-based long sleeve with stripes (of any colour) =D

==========

I thought I was early when I reached Boon Lay Bus Interchange at 8.30am. Never expect the auditorium to be packed when I reached at 9am. LoL.

Robing session began when I found my khakis near the stairs. We had to be robed to get registered.

Serial number 64. Seat number E4. =)

Seated.

10am. Academic procession began. The academic staff started to proceed towards the stage. Normal orange & blue robes, until.. BLACK! Dracula?!?! But nice ! XD

After speech by Guest Of Honour, the graduands finally started to go up the stage.

As most of my khakis are seated together, we cheered for the rest of the gang who were seated far away from us ;p Thanks to Klenn for bringing up the atmosphere lol

It was quite a long wait, seeing that there were quite a few hundreds of CE graduands, not including the 10 Computer Science graduands.

12noon, academic procession out of the auditorium.

Photo taking session!! Frantically looked around for familiar faces, ran around finding people, took quite a number of photos.

Suddenly the truth struck upon me.  This is going to be the last time the whole cohort are in school together at the same time. Though it won’t be the last time we are all meeting up, I suddenly realise that this chapter has been closed, and I’m stepping into the next chapter of my life. Not that there’s nothing memorable about my years in NTU, there are a few nice memories. Friends that I’ve made especially. Memories on the times spent rushing assignments, struggling with revision for exams with my khakis.. I’m glad I have this group of khakis who are all so willing to stand by one another. The strong friendship among us (we’re a big group with 13-15 members) was my motivation to carry on when I felt so devastated with school work. Thanks pals!

The next episode of our lives has just started. Work life will kill many of us since we’re all in the IT industry. Let’s all work hard and keep the friendship going! Whether you’re in government sector or the private sector, in Singapore or in Japan, salaried-worker or self-employed, no matter who you are, buddies, close friends, good friends or just friends, keep in contact! Especially Ans! Don’t forget to nudge me on msn when you’re bored over at Japan! I’ll gladly keep you entertained! =D

Due to LW’s work nature, she was invited to the screening of this documentary film. And me being her good friend and buddy, gets to enjoy this screening as well =D

Invisible City, or  「备忘录」 in Mandarin, is a documentary film. As the title depicts, it’s about the city that existed and still exists, but yet invisible to many of us. You got it, it’s about the history of Singapore, from a different context.

Filmed by a local director, Tan Pin Pin, the main aim of this documentary film, is to let viewers understand the fast pace of change of Singapore from the 1950s till the Singapore that you see today. My point of view, however, I think the film is more on allowing us to appreciate how our peers (e.g. the archaeologists) are trying their best to protect our existing knowledge of Singapore’s history, as well as to dig out more truth about what we’ve learnt from our history textbooks.

It’s an interesting film in general, but you’ll get bored easily if you totally detest history.

I’m actually touched by the works of the characters featured in the film. Especially the foreign expatriates, one who was a housewife here and took photos and developed her own photos in her house just out of pure interest (but hey! She was actually creating memories of Singapore at that time!), and another who took coloured videos in the 60s(or 50s?) (which was the first of its kind at that point of time)  and he being an old man now, still tries his best to keep his films alive by rerecording them again.

In this fast pace of life in Singapore, how much memories do you possess? 10 years down the road, would you remember what you have done today, or would there be any significant event that might happen? Try taking your camera, and take snapshots or short videos as often as you can. Film your family, your grandparents, your friends, all short-lived happiness (like those gatherings you always have with khakis). 10 years or 20 years down the road, you’ll be glad that you have these photos and videos for memories.

30, 50 years down the road, the “Invisible City” that existed today, will be invisible to people of that generation. They will not be able to fully understand what we are going through now in year 2007. The only way to let this city be visible always, is to share your own history, regardless of which media you use.

Let us all create our own history and share with the next generation.

Not surprised? Here’s an interesting read